From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 00:30:12 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 19:30:12 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Meme 055: The Origins of the Nudity Taboo
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512311925410.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Meme 055: The Origins of the Nudity Taboo
sent 5.12.31

It is a familiar story:

21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep
to fall upon Adam, and
he slept: and he took one of his ribs,
and closed up the flesh
instead thereof;

22 And the rib, which the Lord God had
taken from man, made he
a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my
bones, and flesh of
my flesh: she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of
Man.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his
father and his mother, and
shall cleave unto his wife: and they
shall be one flesh.

25 And they were both naked, the man and
his wife, and were
not ashamed.

CHAPTER 3

1 Now the serpent was more subtil than
any beast of the field
which the Lord God had made. And he said
unto the woman, Yea, hath
God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree
of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent,
We may eat of the fruit
of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is
in the midst of the
garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat
of it, neither shall ye
touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman,
Ye shall not surely
die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye
eat thereof, then your
eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as
gods, knowing good and
evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree
was good for food, and
that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a
tree to be desired to make
one wise, she took of the fruit thereof,
and did eat, and gave also
unto her husband with her; and he did
eat.

7 And the eyes of them both were opened,
and they knew that
they were naked; and they sewed fig
leaves together, and made
themselves aprons.

8 And they heard the voice of the Lord
God walking in the
garden in the cool of the day: and Adam
and his wife hid themselves
from the presence of the Lord God
amongst the trees of the garden.

9 And the Lord God called unto Adam, and
said unto him, Where
art thou?

10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the
garden, and I was
afraid, because I was naked; and I hid
myself.

11 And he said, Who told thee that thou
wast naked? Hast thou
eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded
thee that thou shouldest not
eat?

12 And the man said, The woman whom thou
gavest to be with me,
she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

13 And the Lord God said unto the woman,
What is this that
thou hast done? And the woman said, The
serpent beguiled me, and I
did eat.

14 And the Lord God said unto the
serpent, Because thou hast
done this, thou art cursed above all
cattle, and above every beast
of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou
go, and dust shalt thou eat
all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed; it shall
bruise thy head, and thou
shalt bruise his heel.

16 Unto the woman he said, I will
greatly multiply thy sorrow
and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt
bring forth children; and
thy desire shall be to thy husband, and
he shall rule over thee.

17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou
hast hearkened unto the
voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the
tree, of which I commanded
thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it:
cursed is the ground for
thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it
all the days of thy life;

18 Thorns also and thistles shall it
bring forth to thee; and
thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou
eat bread, till thou
return unto the ground; for out of it
wast thou taken: for dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou
return.

20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve;
because she was the
mother of all living.

21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did
the Lord God make coats
of skins, and clothed them.

22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the
man is become as one of
us, to know good and evil: and now, lest
he put forth his hand, and
take also of the tree of life, and eat,
and live for ever:

23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth
from the garden of
Eden, to till the ground from whence he
was taken.

24 So he drove out the man; and he
placed at the east of the
garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming
sword which turned every
way, to keep the way of the tree of
life.

So amongst the knowledge of good and evil that came from eating the 
forbidden fruit is that nudity is shameful. (How much knowledge came is 
not stated in the text, but the Lord God felt it necessary to reveal other 
knowledge later, the most famous being the Ten Commandments, indeed up to 
626 Mitzvot by the end of the Old Testament and a few more in the New, 
repealing several of the ones from the Old Testament as no longer being 
pertinent under the New Covenant. Gary North takes the unusual position, 
which I call "eastern," that what was not repealed remains in effect, why 
most Christians take the "western" position that everything not explicitly 
continued in the New Testament was repealed.

What has puzzled me for a good while is that I can think of no 
sociobiological explanation for the nudity taboo. Humans did not wear 
clothes in the EEA! Nevertheless, my children started objecting to seeing 
their parents naked around the time they hit puberty. It was not part of 
their upbringing, and our nudity was entirely casual. When Hillary was 
touting health care reform, I suggested (without anyone contradicting me) 
that a better way to improve health would be to require that we go naked 
when it is hot. We'd start paying far more attention to our appearance.

If no explanation is forthcoming, perhaps it was divine intervention after 
all that instilled this particular bit of knowledge of good and evil. The 
Bayesian "priors" of nonbelievers would have to be drastically readjusted. 
And the Lord God would have instilled this shame of being naked into all 
humans, not just those who lived in the Near East.

In the article below, you'll find a not at all untypical anti-Christian 
rant. I am in no position to counter what it says about Japanese families 
jumping into a hot tub together, and it is definitely the case that Greek 
athletes (male, not female, if there were any) performed in the raw.

But the general argument is bogus. In all societies (are there any full 
exceptions?), completely casual nudity does not exist. Otherwise, I'd go 
naked at the office when it got too hot, as would some of my co-workers. 
Outside, I'd wear running shoes and a jock strap. But only in a society in 
which casual nudity is the norm. I have no intention of making a big issue 
of this or joining a nudist colony.

It is also the case that nowhere is homosexuality allowed free reign. It 
takes the efforts of scholars to decipher the "code words" for homosexual 
activities in the writings of the Greeks, which did allow for certain 
homosexual behavior under tightly controlled circumstances. But homosexual 
activity was never just casual. That's why "code words" got used.

One notion in theology is that God reveals rules of conduct to men who 
cannot figure these rules out for themselves, given the state of knowledge 
at the time. A theist holds that men in fact announced these rules and 
attributed them to a god or gods, in every religion except his own 
religion. An atheist, one who believes in one less god than a monotheist, 
thinks all the commands were man-made.

The world's religions have a huge overlap in their rules, as has been 
observed many times, but also rules that are unique to each religion. St. 
Paul's letters spend a great deal of time discussion Jewish-Gentile 
relations and what Jewish and Gentile converts must do differently. The 
latter did not have to obey all the Jewish laws, but Paul became exercised 
over whether newly converted pagans could go ahead and eat meat that had 
been ritually sacrificed by those who were still pagan. He offered 
arguments against it, though not quoting the arguably Jewish specific 
Second Commandment ("Thou shalt have no other gods before me") itself, but 
he was not adamant.

Paul was adamant, though, about homosexuality, and explicitly carried over 
the Old Testament injunctions. Not surprisingly, theological liberals 
interpret this out of existence. (I got Jacques Berlinerbrau, _The Secular 
Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously_ (Cambridge UP, 2005) 
for Christmas, but I have not read it yet.)

Well, here goes the rant against Christianity. What remains is the puzzle 
of why Adam and Eve were ashamed.

BOOK VIII .RESTORING "FAMILY VALUES" (THIRD SUB-PART, ASPECTS OF CHANGE) 
http://www.agnostic.org/BIBLEI.htm [from a group called The Agnostic 
Church]

But Just Whose Family Values? (Continued)

A. Side Effects Of Change

The key values identified for change, if actually altered by mankind, will 
naturally result in a number of changes to other values which Western 
Civilization generally holds. This Section is intended to discuss some of 
those values which will also change.

1. No Nudity Taboo

Christianity is so obsessed with the thought that enjoyment of sex is bad 
that many of the so-called "Family Values" of the Christian "Right" are 
actually designed to suppress any thoughts of sex as an enjoyable 
activity.1 One of those values which should naturally be discarded is the 
nudity taboo.

It is almost comical to watch modern parents raise their children within 
the bounds of the current system of taboos. It is OK for a very small 
child to go to the bathroom with a parent of the opposite sex, but once 
the child is old enough to be potty trained, the child must go to the 
proper bathroom by itself. It is OK for prepubescent children of the 
opposite sex to sleep in the same bed, but if puberty approaches for 
either one, it is taboo. This taboo even manifests itself in our building 
codes, which specify a maximum age by which opposite sex children can 
sleep in the same bedroom.

The essential thought of the Christian "Right" is that if we keep our 
children from viewing any nudity and sex, or finding out about such 
subjects in any way, we will quite naturally prevent our children from 
having sex before marriage. This creates an essential tension between 
knowledge and freedom. The freedoms of all people, including adults, must 
be restricted in order to prevent any young person from coming into 
contact with any depictions of nudity or sexual activity. Presently, our 
laws draw certain artificial lines at various ages, currently 13, 17, 
and/or 18,2 allowing increased freedom for them to view movies depicting 
nudity and/or sexual activity once they achieve those ages. Of course this 
is silly because social statistics show that roughly 85% of eighteen year 
old children are not virgins, meaning that most eighteen year olds have 
had sex.

Other cultures have not created such a widespread nudity taboo. For 
example, it is considered normal in Japan for an entire family to jump 
into a hot tub together, in the nude, and there is a similar lack of 
nudity taboos in such things as public baths. To me, things like this 
clearly show that nudity taboos are totally artificial. If the values of 
our culture allow, and even strongly encourage, children as young as age 
seven to pair up as couples and get married to one another, long before 
puberty is even an issue, then there is no longer any reason to maintain a 
nudity taboo. Accordingly, the nudity taboo should, quite naturally, be 
assigned to the trash as part of the altered system of values proposed in 
this book.

This does not mean that I am advocating the so-called "nudist life style." 
There are good and valid reasons why we should not expose our skin to the 
sun any more than is absolutely necessary. The nudists essentially accept 
the trade off of increasingly bad skin as they get older in return for 
their pleasure in thumbing their noses at the system by going around in 
the nude. The only reason I will mention the nudists is that it is usually 
accepted that they are a valid alternative life style, and thus they are 
proof that there is not a direct correlation between nudity and sexual 
activity.

2 . Unisex Bathrooms

Our present system of bathroom facilities is strongly based on the nudity 
taboo. If the nudity taboo is discarded, then there is no longer any real 
reason to continue to build separate bathroom facilities for each sex.

This concept is already partially implemented in our society. For 
instance, it is less common to see portable toilets labeled for one sex or 
the other. Many gas stations have converted to unisex rest room 
facilities, simply putting the international logos for both sexes on the 
same door. I have not observed any really strong reaction against these 
trends, so I believe it is time to simply state that it will be better for 
all of us to recognize this concept and agree to share and share alike.3

In the long run, construction costs will be lower for buildings, 
convenience will be improved, and some level of aggravation will be 
removed from our lives if we simply agree that any public rest room are 
unisex, no matter what label happens to be on the door. This change is 
simply a natural consequence of abolishing the nudity taboo, and as I have 
pointed out, it is already widely accepted in our society.

3 . No Pleasure Taboos

An important side effect of all of this will be to remove most, if not 
all, of the many proscriptions of pleasurable activity which now exist in 
our system of laws. There will no longer be any need to prohibit sexual 
activity according to age, because our society will ensure that most 
people are part of a stable marriage long before they are physically 
mature enough to have sex. Similarly, we should remove the age limits on 
the drinking of alcoholic beverages so that our young people can get their 
training on what their own personal limits for the consumption of alcohol 
are long before they would be in any significant physical danger from 
overindulgence.

Part of the culture of Western Civilization is that alcoholic beverages 
are heavily taxed because drinking is a "sin" and, to the extent which our 
society has elected to tolerate such "sin," taxing it heavily acts as a 
disincentive to "sin." Thus, the easiest way for any politician to propose 
raising revenue for the government is to propose a "sin tax" of some sort, 
and alcohol is usually right at the top of the list.

These things all derive from the basic Christian concept that pleasure is 
sinful, and thus indulgence in pleasure must be discouraged for the good 
of your eternal soul. One of the side effects of adopting a Dionysian 
component into our culture will be the fact that pleasure is now not only 
acceptable, it is encouraged as a natural part of being human. In other 
words, it is no longer possible for you to be considered as being totally 
human unless you regularly experience pleasure.

Abolishing all of the taboos against pleasure, and discarding all of the 
guilt which Christianity has traditionally associated with pleasure, will 
constitute a truly fundamental change in our moral philosophy. But there 
is no doubt in my mind that this change is long overdue.
  _____________________________________________________

1 Christianity has been attempting to prevent sexual contact from
the earliest days of the church. See, for example, some of the
letters of Paul in the New Testament which even advise against
marriage under the false assumption that Jesus will return any day
now.

2 These ages are derived from the current movie rating system of G,
PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17.

3 The disparate nature of public rest room facilities at sports
venues has been a recurring topic in the media, particularly with
respect to concerts, where the sexual division of the audience is
at least much more equal, if not skewed in favor of a female
majority.

[I am sending forth these memes, not because I agree wholeheartedly with 
all of them, but to impregnate females of both sexes. Ponder them and
spread them.]


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 02:43:07 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:43:07 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Getting (Too) Dirty in Bed
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252107470.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Getting (Too) Dirty in Bed
By Emily Gertz, Grist Magazine
Posted on December 9, 2005, Printed on December 9, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/29218/

So you're an Enlightened Green Consumer. You buy organic food and carry
it home from the local market in string bags. Your coffee is shade-grown
and fair-trade, your water's solar-heated, and your car is a hybrid. But
what about the playthings you're using for grown-up fun between those
organic cotton sheets -- how healthy and environmentally sensitive are
they?

Few eco-conscious shoppers consider the chemicals used to create their
intimate devices. Yes, those things -- from vibrators resembling
long-eared bunny rabbits to sleeves and rings in shapes ranging from
faux female to flower power. If these seem like unmentionables, that's
part of the problem: while some are made with unsafe materials, it's
tough to talk about that like, well, adults.

But it's necessary. Unlike other plastic items that humans put to
biologically intimate use -- like medical devices or chew-friendly
children's toys -- sex toys go largely unregulated and untested. And
some in the industry say it's time for that to change.

Love Stinks

Many popular erotic toys are made of polyvinyl chlorides (PVC) --
plastics long decried by eco-activists for the toxins released during
their manufacture and disposal -- and softened with phthalates, a
controversial family of chemicals. These include invitingly soft "jelly"
or "cyberskin" items, which have grown popular in the last decade or so,
says Carol Queen, Ph.D., "staff sexologist" for the San Francisco-based
adult toy boutique Good Vibrations <http://www.goodvibes.com/> . "It's
actually difficult for a store today to carry plenty of items and yet
avoid PVC," Queen says. "Its use has gotten pretty ubiquitous among the
large purveyors, because it's cheap and easy to work with."
In recent years, testing has revealed the potentially serious health
impacts of phthalates. Studies on rats and mice suggest that exposure
could cause cancer and damage the reproductive system. Minute levels of
some phthalates have been linked to sperm damage in men, and this year,
two published <http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2005/05/27/3/index.html>
studies linked phthalate exposure in the womb and through breast milk to
male reproductive issues.

A study in 2000 by German chemist Hans Ulrich Krieg found that 10
dangerous chemicals gassed out of some sex toys available in Europe,
including diethylhexyl phthalates. Some had phthalate concentrations as
high as 243,000 parts per million -- a number characterized as "off the
charts" by Davis Baltz of the health advocacy group Commonweal. "We were
really shocked," Krieg told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's
Marketplace in a 2001 report on the sex-toy industry. "I have been doing
this analysis of consumer goods for more than 10 years, and I've never
seen such high results."

The danger, says Baltz, is that heat, agitation, and extended shelf life
can accelerate the leaching of phthalates. "In addition, [phthalates
are] lipophilic, meaning they are drawn to fat," he says. "If they come
into contact with solutions or substances that have lipid content, the
fat could actually help draw the phthalates out of the plastic." Janice
Cripe, a former buyer for Blowfish -- a Bay Area-based online company
whose motto is "Good Products for Great Sex" -- confirms the instability
of jelly toys: "They would leak," she says. "They'd leach this sort of
oily stuff. They would turn milky" and had a "kind of plasticky, rubbery
odor." She stopped ordering many jelly toys during her time at Blowfish,
even though their lower prices made them popular.

So what's being done to protect consumers? Well, nothing. While the
U.S., Japan, Canada, and the European Union have undertaken various
restrictions regarding phthalates in children's toys, no such rules
exist for adult toys. In order to be regulated in the U.S. under current
law, sex toys would have to present what the federal government's
Consumer Product Safety Commission calls a "substantial product hazard"
-- essentially, a danger from materials or design that, in the course of
using the product as it's made to be used, could cause major injury or
death. But if you look at the packaging of your average mock penis or
ersatz vagina, it's probably been labeled as a "novelty," a gag gift not
intended for actual use. That's an important semantic dodge that allows
less scrupulous manufacturers to elude responsibility for potentially
harmful materials, and to evade government regulation. If you stick it
somewhere it wasn't meant to go, well -- caveat emptor, baby!

It's a striking lack of oversight for a major globalized industry. The
Guardian recently estimated that 70 percent of the world's sex toys are
manufactured in China, and the CBC's 2001 report suggested the North
American market might be worth $400 million to $500 million.
More detailed figures can be hard to come by. "In the U.S., all of the
companies that manufacture adult novelties, whether they're mom-and-pop
or large corporations, are privately held," explains Philip Pearl,
publisher and editor in chief of AVN Adult Novelty Business, a trade
magazine. "None are required to publish financial information, and none
do."

Queen thinks the lack of agreed-upon standards is a major problem. She
and the staff at Good Vibrations have often had to fall back on
marginally relevant regulations. "I remember trying in the early '90s to
track down information on an oil used on beautiful hand-carved wooden
dildos -- was it safe to put into the body?" she says. "The closest
comparison we could find was the regulation governing wooden salad
utensils!"

Taking Things Into Their Own Hands

Metis Black, president of U.S.-based erotic-toy manufacturer Tantus
Silicone, has written on the health risks of materials for Adult Novelty
Business. "Self-regulation -- eventually we've got to do it," says
Black, who adds that creating safe toys is what got her into the
business about seven years ago. "Just like children's teething toys,
we're going to have to start doing the dialogue" within the industry,
Black says, to "discuss what's in toys and how it affects customers."
Otherwise, she feels, government regulators will step in.
While the industry wrestles with such issues, some manufacturers and
suppliers aren't waiting for regulations. Tony Levine, founder of Big
Teaze Toys, says he's made his products -- including the cutely
discreet, soft-plastic vibrator I Rub
<http://www.bigteazetoys.com/pinkduck.htm>  My Duckie -- phthalate-free
from the start. "While working at Mattel as a toy designer, I was made
very aware of the concerns of using only safe materials for children's
products," he says. "This training has stuck with me ... We take great
pride in using only the materials which meet strict toxicity safety
standards for both the U.S. and the E.U."

Meanwhile, if customers select jelly playthings at Babeland, a retailer
with stores in Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle, the staff gives
them a tip sheet on phthalates, and recommends using a condom with the
toy. "Our goal is to help people make an educated choice, and give out
as much information as we can find -- without alarming people," says
Abby Weintraub, an associate manager at the company's Soho store.
Babeland staff also steer willing customers toward phthalate-free
alternatives, such as hard plastic, or the silicone substitute VixSkin.
Some manufacturers are also using thermoplastic elastomers instead of
PVC. Vibratex recently reformulated the popular Rabbit Habit
<http://www.babeland.com/page/TIB/PROD/DA280880>  dual-action vibrator
-- made famous on Sex and the City -- with this material. Vibratex
co-owner Daniel Martin says the company has always used "superior
grade," stable PVC formulations, and still considers the products safe,
but acknowledges that customers are eager for phthalate-free tools.
While alternative materials can be more expensive, Weintraub says when
people have the option of choosing them, many do.
The owners of the Smitten Kitten <http://www.smittenkittenonline.com/> ,
a Minneapolis-based retailer, opted not to carry jellies, cyberskins, or
other potentially toxic toys at all when they opened about two years
ago. "They're dangerous to human health, to the environment," says
co-owner Jennifer Pritchett. "It's part of our philosophy to put good
things in the world, and it's counter to that to sell things that are
toxic."

No Sex Please, We're Skittish

So what are the other alternatives for eco-conscious pleasure-seekers?
The most ecologically correct choices may be metal or hardened glass
dildos -- which, with their elegant, streamlined shapes (and sometimes
hefty price tags) can double as modernist sculptures if you grow weary
of their sensual charms. "The glass is going to be more lasting,
possibly safer, and less toxic than something that's plastic," confirms
Babeland marketing manager Rebecca Suzanne.
And the eco-choices don't stop there. If you want to do your part for
conservation while getting a buzz, go for the Solar Vibe
<http://www.babeland.com/page/TIB/PROD/DS215590> , a bullet vibrator
that comes wired to a small solar panel. Some vibrators come with
rechargeable power packs, says Suzanne, "which is a little bit better
alternative to the typical battery-run toy, where you just toss the
batteries ... into the landfill."

What about accessories? The Smitten Kitten takes pride in its
"animal-friendly" inventory of bondage and fetish gear. "We have some
floggers that are made of nylon rope ... natural rope, and rubber," says
Pritchett. "The same with the paddles, collars, cuffs, and whatnot.

Totally leather-free, animal-product-free."

A few manufacturers are bringing green values directly to the adult-toy
market via products that might not be out of place in the cosmetics
aisle of a natural-foods mega-retailer. Offerings include Body Wax's
candles <http://www.babeland.com/page/TIB/PROD/NR638250>  made from soy
and essential oils, and Sensua Organic's fruit-flavored or unflavored
lubes <http://www.sensuaorganics.com/personallube.html>  -- one of a few
lubricant lines touting either organic or all-natural formulations.
"People enjoy having the option," says Weintraub. "It's like, 'I use
organic face wash. Maybe I want to use organic lube, too.'"

Pritchett feels health and eco-conscious retailers are a shopper's best
ally for staying safe and healthy. "So many of us are used to shopping
for organic food, or ecologically safe building products, or cosmetics,"
she says. When people realize it's possible to shop for sex toys the
same way, "you can see a light bulb go off -- they realize it's a
consumer relationship and they can and should demand better products."
Choosing the most eco-correct erotic toy can seem fraught with
compromises -- more akin to picking the most fuel-efficient automobile
than buying a bunch of organic kale. With no government assessment or
regulation on the immediate horizon, it's up to you, the consumer, to
shop carefully and select a tool that's health-safe, fits your budget,
and gets your rocks off. Meanwhile, pack up that old mystery-material
toy and send it back to the manufacturer with a note that they can stick
it where the sun don't shine.

Emily Gertz has written on environmental politics, business, and culture
for Grist, BushGreenwatch, and other independent publications. She is a
regular contributor to  <http://WorldChanging.com> WorldChanging.


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 02:43:22 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:43:22 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] UPI: New Map Of Asia Lacks US
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252108140.14301@panix3.panix.com>

New Map Of Asia Lacks US
http://www.spacewar.com/news/superpowers-05zd.html

       Former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad points at his anti-war
          badge after a press conference at his office in Putrajaya, 07
      December 2005. Australia's hard-won entry into the inaugural East
      Asia summit was soured 07 December after former Malaysian premier
    Mahathir Mohamad said Canberra would likely be bossy and dilute the
                              grouping's clout. Malaysia Out AFP photo.

    By Martin Walker
    Washington (UPI) Dec 08, 2005

    The United States will not take part in next week's East Asia
    summit, but, to paraphrase a former secretary of state's phrase
    about the Balkan wars, the Americans most certainly have a dog in
    this fight.

    There is a fight under way at the summit, albeit a polite and
    diplomatic tussle. The Japanese, with discreet but potent American
    backing, have already ensured that the original plan of the former
    Malaysian premier for a purely Asian summit was blocked. Australia
    and New Zealand will now be taking part in the forum, to the fury
    of the still-influential Mahathir Mohammed.

    "We are not going to have an East Asian summit. We are going to
    have an East Asia-Australasia summit," Mahathir told a specially
    convened news conference last week to complain that the presence of
    Australia and New Zealand subverted his dream of a genuinely Asian
    forum.

    "Now Australia is basically European and it has made clear to the
    rest of the world it is the deputy sheriff to America and
    therefore, Australia's view would represent not the East but the
    views reflecting the stand of America," Mahathir added.

    There was also some reluctance, discreetly fostered by China, to
    admit India to what was intended to be an East Asian club, but
    India (like Russia, but not the United States) was prepared to sign
    the Association of South-East Asian Nations' Treaty of Amity and
    Cooperation in Southeast Asia, which ASEAN nations call "the
    admission ticket" to the summit.

    A report in China's People's Daily noted this week that Russia's
    inclusion in the club was "simply a matter of time," and Russian
    will hold a separate bilateral meeting with ASEAN immediately
    before the summit.

    But it remains significant that the United States, as the region's
    security guarantor for decades and as its biggest market, is not
    welcome. The summit is clearly emerging as an important building
    block in the new economic, security and political structure of Asia
    that is evolving, and for obvious reasons this structure is heavily
    influenced by China's explosive economic growth, the new reality to
    which the whole of Asia is learning to adapt.

    As China's People's Daily noted this week, to explain the problems
    of drafting a joint communique, the Kuala Lumpur Declaration, from
    the summit: "According to insiders, some countries including
    Thailand sided with China over the claim that 'this entity must
    take ASEAN + 3 (Japan, China, Republic of Korea) as its core' and
    demanded no mention of community in the draft.

    While others led by Japan hope to write into the draft 'to build a
    future East Asia Community' and include the names of the 16
    countries. By doing so, ASEAN diplomats believe, Japan is trying to
    drag countries outside this region such as Australia and India into
    the community to serve as a counterbalance to China.

    "To grab the upper hand at the meeting, analysts say, Japan would
    most probably dish out the 'human rights' issue and draw in the
    United States, New Zealand and Australia to build up U.S.,
    Japan-centered Western dominance," the People's Daily added. "At
    the same time, it will particularly highlight the differences in
    political and economic systems between developed countries such as
    Australia, New Zealand and the ROK and developing ones including
    China and Vietnam, in an attempt to crumble away cooperative forces
    and weaken Chinese influence in East Asia."

    The summit, to be held in Kula Lumpur, Malaysia, on Dec. 14, will
    include Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Japan, the Republic
    of Korea and the 10 members of ASEAN -- Singapore, Malaysia,
    Thailand, Myanmar, Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam
    and Brunei.

    The eventual goals of the summit are huge. Japan's Foreign Minister
    Taro Aso said this week in a speech in Tokyo that: "Japan believes
    we should bring into being the East Asia Free Trade Area and the
    East Asia Investment Area in order to move us even one step closer
    to regional economic integration."

    Eventually, he has in mind (as do many of the ASEAN countries)
    something similar to the process of integration through trade that
    created over the past 50 years the present European Union. It will
    take a long time, and endless negotiations, and Aso's speech also
    laid out the immediate agenda for economic integration.

    "In Asia, the fact is that there are multiple factors inhibiting
    investment, including the existence of direct restrictions on
    investment, insufficient domestic legal frameworks, difficulties in
    the implementation of laws, inadequacy of the credit system, and
    others, particularly the complete inadequacy of protections for
    intellectual property rights," Aso said.

    India, with backing from Australia, sees the summit paving the way
    for an eventual Asian free-trade zone, though it remains cool to
    any grander designs for security or political integration along EU
    lines. China, which has said little about the kind of community it
    wants to see, mainly wants to ensure that no Asian gathering takes
    place without its increasingly overwhelming presence.

    So what is emerging, in America's absence, looks to be three
    distinct camps of a potentially uncomfortable assembly. The
    Australians and Indians and Japanese, and some of the more
    Western-minded ASEAN members, want to focus on economic cooperation
    and trade, but within the overall framework of the World Trade
    Organization, plus useful collaboration in areas like common action
    against avian flu. This group also wants to retain the current role
    of the United States as the region's key security guarantor.

    Then there is China, which evidently assumes that its economic
    prowess will eventually ensure that the East Asian summit, the
    region's economy and its security system are all dominated by
    Beijing, and not necessarily in an aggressive way. Still, Beijing
    wants this process to develop on China's own terms, for example
    this week ruling out the usual trilateral meeting with Japan and
    South Korea because of its complaints that Japan is not
    sufficiently remorseful for its actions in World War II.

    And finally there are the original ASEAN members, uncomfortably
    aware that they are now part of something far bigger than all of
    them. They understandably dread the prospect of great power rivalry
    between China and India, or between China and the United States,
    and hope that trade links and diplomatic structures like the summit
    process will ensure that such rivalries do not get out of hand.

    Some local analysts think that because of these fundamental
    differences the East Asian summit process is unlikely to endure.
    One Malaysian scholar has called it "an empty shell unable to yield
    any substantial results," and Indonesia's Jakarta Post published a
    decidedly gloomy editorial this week.

    "What we will actually see is not what East Asian leaders have long
    dreamed of, that is an integrated regional framework of
    cooperation, but a community marked rather by suspicion, distrust,
    individualism and perhaps unwillingness to sacrifice a minimum of
    national autonomy for the sake of pursuing collective and
    collaborative action," the paper commented.

    If that gloomy forecast holds good, that would not displease the
    United States, instinctively suspicious of any international body
    designed to exclude it. But if this East Asia summit process,
    filled with reliable American friends, fails to prosper, something
    much less welcome to Washington, and perhaps more to the taste of
    America's critics like Malaysia's Mahathir, will almost certainly
    emerge to fill the vacuum.


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 02:43:32 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:43:32 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Live Science: Happiness in Old Age Depends on Attitude
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252108220.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Happiness in Old Age Depends on Attitude
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/051212_aging_happy.html

By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor
posted: 12 December 2005
01:16 pm ET

Happiness in old age may have more to do with attitude than actual health,
a new study suggests.

Researchers examined 500 Americans age 60 to 98 who live independently and
had dealt with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental health conditions
or a range of other problems. The participants rated their own degree of
successful aging on scale of 1-10, with 10 being best.

Despite their ills, the average rating was 8.4.

"What is most interesting about this study is that people who think they
are aging well are not necessarily the (healthiest) individuals," said
lead researcher Dilip Jeste of the University of California at San Diego.

"In fact, optimism and effective coping styles were found to be more
important to successfully aging than traditional measures of health and
wellness," Jeste said. "These findings suggest that physical health is not
the best indicator of successful aging???attitude is."

The finding may prove important for the medical community, which by
traditional measures would have considered only 10 percent of the study
members to be aging successfully.

"The commonly used criteria suggest that a person is aging well if they
have a low level of disease and disability," Jeste said. "However, this
study shows that self-perception about aging can be more important than
the traditional success markers."

Health and happiness may indeed be largely in the mind. A study released
last year found that people who described themselves as highly optimistic
a decade ago had lower rates of death from cardiovascular disease and
lower overall death rates than strong pessimists. Research earlier this
year revealed that the sick and disabled are often as happy as anyone else.

The new study also showed that people who spent time each day socializing,
reading or participating in other hobbies rated their aging satisfaction
higher.

"For most people, worries about their future aging involve fear of
physical infirmity, disease or disability," Jeste said. "However, this
study is encouraging because it shows that the best predictors of
successful aging are well within an individual's control."

The results, announced today, were reported at a meeting of the American
College of Neuropsychopharmacology.
When Money Does Buy Happiness
Loss of Loved One Really Can Cause Broken Heart
Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 02:43:45 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:43:45 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Live Science: Human Gene Changes Color of Fish
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252108340.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Human Gene Changes Color of Fish
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/051215_fish_color.html
[No bawling about the dangers of racism here, either.]

    By [33]Bjorn Carey
    LiveScience Staff Writer
    posted: 15 December 2005
    02:05 pm ET

    Scientists have changed mutated, golden-colored zebrafish to a standard
    dark-striped, yellowish-white variety by inserting the genetic information 
for
    normal pigmentation into young fish.

    In an interesting twist, they also found that inserting a similar human 
version
    of the pigment gene [34]resulted in the same color change.

    As with humans, zebrafish skin color is determined by pigment cells, which
    contain pigment granules called melanosomes. The number, size and darkness 
of
    melanosomes per pigment cell influence the color of skin.

    For example, people of European descent have fewer, smaller, and lighter
    melanosomes than people of West African ancestry, and Asians fall somewhere 
in
    between.

    The golden zebrafish variant had fewer, smaller, and less heavily pigmented
    melanosomes than normal fish.

    The mutation

    Keith Cheng of Penn State College of Medicine and his colleagues determined 
that
    a dysfunctional, mutated gene was not producing the protein needed to make
    melanosomes.

    "They have a mutation in the gene which causes the protein machinery to say
    `stop,'" Cheng told LiveScience.

    Cheng's team found that when they inserted the normal version of the gene 
into
    two-day-old embryos of the golden fish, they were able to produce 
melanosomes,
    which darkened their skin to the normal color within a few days.

    Next, the researchers searched HapMap, an online database of human genetic
    variation, and found a similar gene for melanosome production in humans. So 
they
    inserted the human gene into golden zebrafish embryos and again changed 
their
    skin color to the darker version.

    "We presume that they got darker because of similar function of the inserted
    gene which normally produces the more abundant, larger, and darker 
melanosomes,"
    Cheng said.

    Human mutation?

    It appears that like the golden zebrafish, light-skinned Europeans also have 
a
    mutation in the gene for melanosome production, resulting in less pigmented
    skin. Scientists suspect variations of this gene may also cause blue eyes 
and
    light hair color in some humans.

    However, Cheng said, it's important to point out that the mutation in the 
human
    and zebrafish genes is different--while the zebrafish version fails 
completely
    to produce the protein to make melanosomes, the mutated human version still
    works, just not quite as well.

    The discovery could lead to advancements in targeting a treatment for 
malignant
    melanoma--the most deadly form of skin cancer--as well as research on ways 
to
    modify skin color without damaging it by tanning or the use of harsh 
chemical
    lighteners.

    This research is detailed in the Dec. 16 issue of the journal Science.

      * [35]Pollution Blamed for Intersex Fish
      * [36]The Real Reason Animals Flaunt Size and Color
      * [37]Bragging Rights: The Smallest Fish Ever
      * [38]Fluorescent Fish Aids Medical Research

    [39][051215_zebrafish_00.jpg]
    [40]The normal zebrafish above has darker stripes than the golden zebrafish
    below. The insets show that the golden zebrafish has fewer, smaller and less
    dense pigment-filled compartments called melanosomes than the normal 
zebrafish.

References

   34. 
http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=051215_zebrafish_02.jpg&cap=The+normal+zebrafish+above+has+darker+stripes+than+the+%ECgolden%EE+zebrafish+below.+The+insets+show+that+the+%ECgolden%EE+zebrafish+has+fewer,+smaller+and+less+dense+pigment-filled+compartments+called+melanosomes+than+the+normal+zebrafish.+Credit%3A+%A9+Science
   35. http://www.livescience.com/environment/intersex_fish_041221.html
   36. http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/ap_050319_deer_antlers.html
   37. http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/041027_Smallest_Fish.html
   38. http://www.livescience.com/imageoftheday/siod_050901.html
   39. 
http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=051215_zebrafish_02.jpg&cap=The+normal+zebrafish+above+has+darker+stripes+than+the+%93golden%94+zebrafish+below.+The+insets+show+that+the+%93golden%94+zebrafish+has+fewer%2C+smaller+and+less+dense+pigment-filled+compartments+called+melanosomes+than+the+normal+zebrafish.+Credit%3A+%A9+Science
   40. 
http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=051215_zebrafish_02.jpg&cap=The+normal+zebrafish+above+has+darker+stripes+than+the+%93golden%94+zebrafish+below.+The+insets+show+that+the+%93golden%94+zebrafish+has+fewer%2C+smaller+and+less+dense+pigment-filled+compartments+called+melanosomes+than+the+normal+zebrafish.+Credit%3A+%A9+Science


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 02:43:54 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:43:54 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Boston Consulting Group: Brain Size, Group Size,
	and Language
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252108500.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Brain Size, Group Size, and Language
http://www.bcg.com/strategy_institute_gallery/gorilla2.jsp

Summary

Evidence in primates suggests that the size of social groups is
constrained by cognitive capacity as measured by brain size. After a
point, the number and nature of group relationships becomes too
complex and groups tend to grown unstable and fission. Based on these
projections, human beings should reach a "natural" cognitive limit
when group size reaches about 150. There is extensive empirical
evidence of social groupings of about this size in the
anthropological literature. It is suggested that language arose as a
means of enabling social interactions in large groups as a more
efficient substitute for one-on-one social grooming in primates.
-------------

Brain Size, Group Size, and Language

Why do people have such big brains? After all, it is very expensive
to maintain this organ - while it only accounts for about 2% of adult
body weight, the human brain consumes about 20% of total energy
output. Professor Robin Dunbar has advanced a theory relating brain
size in primates to the size of social groups and to the evolution of
language in humans. This work supports some of the suppositions of
the "Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis" which states that
intelligence first evolved for social purposes (see Byrne, Richard
&Whiten, Andrew (1988) Machiavellian Intelligence . Oxford: Clarendon
Press.) This rebuts competing arguments linking brain size to more
sophisticated food gathering and extended home range size.

Brain size as a determinant of group size in primates

Dunbar plots data on brain size (the measure he uses is the ratio of
the neocortex - the "thinking" part of the brain - to total brain
size) versus observed social group sizes for 36 genera of primates.
He obtains a very good fit for the data (r-squared = 0.764, P

Log10(N) = 0.093 + 3.389Log10(CR)

Where N is the mean group size, and CR is the neocortex ratio. The
results are plotted on a log-log scale.

The fact that brain size in primates is closely related to group size
implies that animals have to be able to keep track of an increased
information load represented by these larger social groups. Note that
the relationship of brain size to group size in the model is not
linear, which it would be if the cohesion of the group depended only
on each individual's relationship to all the other members of the
group. The fact the relationship is logarithmic implies that the task
of information processing is more complex: each animal has to keep
track not just of its own relationships to every member of the group
but also the third party relationships among other group members. At
some point, the complexity of these relationships exceeds the
animals' mental ability to deal with them. Several primate societies,
such as chimpanzees, are known to become unstable and to fission when
the group size exceeds a certain level. It may be that there is upper
limit on group size set by cognitive constraints.

Implications for human group size
While the "natural" group size for humans is not known, the size of
our brains is (neocortex ratio = 4.1). Plotting this as the
independent variable on Dunbar's regression line yields a group size
of 147.8 for homo sapiens.

Is there any empirical evidence for natural human group sizes of
about 150? Based on his scan of the anthropological literature,
Dunbar concludes that there is. One source of evidence is from modern
day hunter-gatherer societies (whose way of life best approximates
that of our late Pleistocene ancestors of 250,000 years ago - the
period when our current brain size is thought to have evolved). Based
on this data for groups in Australia, the South Pacific, Africa,
North and South America, there appear to be three distinct size
classes: overnight camps of 30-50 people, tribes of 500-2,500
individuals, and an intermediate group - either a more permanent
village or a defined clan group - of 100-200 people. The mean size of
this intermediate group in Dunbar's (admitted small) sample is 148.4,
which matches remarkably well with the prediction of the neocortex
size model. This grouping also had the lowest coefficient of
variation, which we would expect if this group size truly subject to
an internal constraint (i.e., cognitive capacity), whereas smaller
and larger groupings are more unstable. While these intermediate size
groups may be dispersed over a wide area much of the time, they
gather regularly for group rituals and develop bonds based on direct
personal contact. These groups come together for mutual support in
times of threat.

Other examples of communal groups of this size abound. The
Hutterites, a fundamentalist group that lives and farms communally in
South Dakota and Manitoba, regards 150 as the upper limit for the
size of a farming community. When the group reaches this size, it is
split into two daughter communities. Professional armies, dating from
Roman times to the modern day, maintain basic units - the "company" -
that typically consists of 100-200 soldiers. Modern psychological
studies also demonstrate the size of typical "friendship networks" in
this same range. These examples provide further evidence of natural
group size constraints. Once the number of individuals rises much
beyond the limit of 150, social cohesion can no longer be maintained
exclusively through a peer network. In order for stability to be
maintained in larger communities, they invariably require some sort
of hierarchical structure.

Groups and the evolution of language

Dunbar points out that primate groups are held together by social
grooming, which is necessarily a one-on-one activity and can absorb a
good deal of the animals' time. In order to maintain these bonds in
groups of 200 individuals would require us to devote about 57% of the
day to social grooming. Dunbar proposes that the maintenance of these
social bonds in humans was made possible through the evolution of
language, which emerged as a more efficient means for "grooming" -
since one can talk to several others at once. Dunbar's model predicts
a conversation group size for humans (as a substitute for grooming)
of 3.8. He then sites evidence that this is indeed about the size
actually observed in human conversation groups. Conversations tend to
partition into new conversational cliques of about four individuals.
Furthermore, studies have shown that a high percentage of ordinary
conversations (over 60%) is devoted to discussing personal
relationships and social experience - i.e., gossip.

Based on Robin Dunbar 1992, 1993
Contributed by David Gray, 2000

Dunbar, R.I.M. (1992), 'Neocortex Size as a Constraint on Group Size
in Primates', Journal of Human Evolution 20, 469-493

Dunbar, R.I.M. (1993), 'Coevolution of neocortical size, group size
and language in humans', Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, 681-735.

     * Group size effects the dynamics of social networks - a
community ethos is more likely to arise in human groups smaller than 150
     * Network formation depends on social interaction - effective
networks arise from regular personal contact that creates a shared
sense of community
     * Networks can be costly to maintain - time and resources are
required to maintain the social ties that support a network
     * Hierarchy becomes important as group size grows - more complex
societies require authoritarian structures to clarify and enforce
social relationships

Keywords:
Social networks, primates, intelligence, group size, gossip,
grooming, hunter-gatherer societies, Hutterites, army company,
fission, bonds, friendship, hierarchy, peers, authority, evolution, language


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 02:44:08 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:44:08 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Public Interest: Charles Murray: Measuring abortion
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252109010.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Charles Murray: Measuring abortion
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_158/ai_n8680977/print

[It seems that every issue of The Public Interest is available at link 2.]

    [1]FindArticles > [2]Public Interest > [3]Wntr, 2005 > [4]Article

    Measuring abortion
    Charles Murray

    SEX and Consequences: Abortion, Public Policy and the Economics of Fertility
    is a model of contemporary social science discourse, revealing in one
    book both how the enterprise should be conducted and its vulnerability to 
tunnel
    vision on the big issues.

    Phillip B. Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley College, sets out 
in
    Sex and Consequences to explore the thesis that the role of abortion is akin 
to
    the role of insurance. Legal abortion provides protection from a risk 
(having an
    unwanted child), just as auto insurance provides financial protection 
against
    the risk of an accident. Legalizing abortion has a main effect of reducing
    unwanted births, just as auto insurance has a main effect of reducing
    individuals' losses from auto accidents.

    But abortion faces the same problems of moral hazard as other kinds of
    insurance. Just as a driver with complete insurance may be more likely to 
have
    an accident, a woman who has completely free access to abortion may be more
    likely to have an accidental pregnancy. Levine hypothesizes that legislated
    restrictions on abortion might serve the same purpose as deductibles do on 
auto
    insurance--they alter behavior without having much effect on net outcomes. 
Thus
    a state with some restrictions on abortion may have no more unwanted births 
than
    a state without restrictions, even though the number of abortions is smaller 
in
    the restrictive state. The restrictions raise the costs of abortion, and 
women
    moderate their behavior to reduce the odds of an unwanted pregnancy.

    Levine develops his model carefully and with nuance, and eventually wends 
his
    way back to conclusions about its empirical validity (it is broadly 
consistent
    with the evidence). But the chapters between the presentation of the model 
and
    the conclusions about it are not limited to the insurance thesis. They
    constitute a comprehensive survey of the quantitative work that has been 
done on
    the behavioral effects of abortion, incorporating analysis of the abortion
    experience worldwide as well as in the United States.

    THE book's virtues are formidable. Levine writes clearly, avoids jargon

    (or explains what the jargon means when he can't avoid it), and is 
unfailingly
    civil in characterizing the positions in the abortion debate. He is 
judicious,
    giving the reader confidence that he is not playing favorites when the data 
are
    inconclusive or contradictory. The breadth and detail of the literature 
review
    are exemplary. The book is filled with convenient summaries of material that
    could take a researcher weeks to assemble--a table showing the differences 
in
    abortion policy across European countries plus Canada and Japan, for 
example.
    Levine also gets high marks for one of the most challenging problems for any
    social scientist who is modeling complex human behavior: making the model 
simple
    enough to be testable while not losing sight of the ways in which it
    oversimplifies the underlying messiness of human behavior.

    The book's inadequacies reflect not so much Levine's failings as the nature 
of
    contemporary social science. Abortion policy is one of the great moral
    conundrums of our time. Anyone who is not the purest of the pure on one side 
or
    the other has had to wrestle with the moral difference (or whether there 
even is
    one) between destroying an embryo when it is a small collection of cells and
    when it is unmistakably a human fetus. None of the tools in Levine's toolkit 
can
    speak to this problem. Levine is aware of this, and makes the sensible point
    that more argumentation on the philosophical issues is not going to get us
    anywhere. He has picked a corner of the topic where his tools are useful, he
    says, and that's a step in the right direction. Still, as I read his
    dispassionate review of the effects of abortion policy on the pregnancy 
rate, I
    could not help muttering to myself occasionally, "Aside from that, Mrs. 
Lincoln,
    how was the play?" *

    EVEN granting the legitimacy of looking where the light is good, Sex and
    Consequences may be faulted for sheering away from acknowledging how much
    scholars could do to inform the larger issues if they were so inclined. Here 
is
    Levine discussing the non-monetary costs of abortion:
    The procedure may be physically unpleasant for the patient. She may
    need to take time off from work and spend time traveling to an
    abortion provider that may not be local. When she gets to the
    provider's location, there may be protesters outside the clinic,
    making her feel intimidated or even scared. If her family and/or
    friends find out about it, she may feel some stigma. Finally, it
    should not be overlooked that the procedure may be very difficult
    psychologically for a woman in a multitude of ways that cannot be
    easily expressed.

    "Cannot be easily expressed"? The woman is destroying what would, if left 
alone,
    have become her baby. That's easy enough to express. That Levine could not 
bring
    himself to spit out this simple reason why "the procedure may be very 
difficult
    psychologically" is emblematic of the tunnel vision that besets contemporary
    social science.

    A policy is established that has implications for the most profound 
questions of
    what it means to be human, to be a woman, to be a member of a community. 
What is
    the most obvious topic for research after such a policy is instituted? To 
me, a
    leading candidate is the psychological effects on the adult human beings who 
are
    caught up in this problematic behavior. There are ways to study these 
effects.
    Quantifiable measures of psychological distress are available--rates of 
therapy
    or specific psychological symptoms, for example--not to mention 
well-established
    techniques for collecting systematic qualitative data. And yet it appears 
from
    Levine's review that the only thing that social scientists can think of to 
study
    are outcomes such as pregnancy rates, abortion rates, birth rates, age of 
first
    intercourse, and welfare recipiency. I don't know if there are good studies 
on
    psychological effects that Levine thought were outside his topic, or whether 
the
    available studies aren't numerous enough or good enough to warrant 
treatment. I
    suspect that good studies just aren't available--Levine gives the impression 
of
    covering all the outcomes that the literature has addressed.

    IS the tunnel vision a result of political correctness or of the inherent
    limitations of quantitative social science? One should not underestimate the
    role of technical problems. Counting pregnancy rates is relatively easy;
    assessing long-term psychological outcomes for women who have abortions is 
much
    tougher and more expensive. Studying topics such as the coarsening effect 
that
    abortion might have on a society would be tougher yet. But it remains a fact
    that the overwhelming majority of academics who collect data on the effects 
of
    abortion policy are ardently pro-choice. The overwhelming majority of their
    colleagues and friends are ardently pro-choice. To set out on a research 
project
    that might in the end show serious psychological harm to women who have
    abortions or serious social harm to communities where abortions rates are 
high
    would take more courage and devotion to truth than I have commonly 
encountered
    among today's academics. Actually, Levine represents a significant profile 
in
    courage. By concluding that restrictions on abortion do not necessarily have
    "bad" effects (from a pro-choice perspective), Levine is stating a 
conclusion
    that most of his fellow academics do not want to hear.

    What makes the tunnel vision most frustrating is the extent to which it 
produces
    uninteresting results. Out of all the tables that Levine presents and all 
the
    generalizations he draws from the extant literature, hardly any of the 
findings
    fall in the category of "I would never have expected that." Economics does
    indeed explain many things under the rubric of "make it more expensive and 
you
    get less of it, subsidize it and you get more of it." But we knew that 
already.
    And when it comes to the less obvious findings, one is seldom looking at 
large,
    transforming effects, but at effects that are statistically significant but
    small in magnitude. Levine is caught in the same bind as all of us who 
commit
    quantitative social science: The more precisely we can measure something, 
the
    less likely we are to learn anything important. But as we try to measure
    something important less precisely, the more vulnerable we become to 
technical
    attack. And so it has come to pass that on the great issues that 
quantitative
    social scientists might study, we are so often irrelevant.

    Princeton University Press. 215 pp. $35.00.

    * There should be a rule requiring anyone reviewing a book on a 
controversial
    policy to disclose his own biases. With regard to the morality of abortion, 
I
    set the bar high--abortion for any but compelling reasons is in my view 
morally
    wrong, and my definition of "compelling" is strict. But I think that 
governments
    do a bad job of characterizing where the bar should be, and that, except in
    extreme cases such as partial-birth abortion, the onus for discouraging 
abortion
    should rest with family and community, not laws. My legal position is thus
    pro-choice.

References

    1. http://www.findarticles.com/
    2. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377
    3. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_158


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 03:02:40 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 22:02:40 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Dissent: Ellen Willis: Ghosts, Fantasies,
	and Hope (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312202340.28612@panix3.panix.com>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 16:46:16 -0500 (EST)
From: Premise Checker <checker at panix.com>
To: Premise Checker:  ;
Subject: Dissent: Ellen Willis: Ghosts, Fantasies, and Hope

Ellen Willis: Ghosts, Fantasies, and Hope
Dissent Magazine - Fall 2005
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/fa05/willis.htm


[Clearing off the deck: Joel Garreau's new book, _Radical Evolution: The 
Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies--and What It Means to be 
Human_ (NY: Doubleday, 2005) has just arrived. I am signed up to review it for 
_The Journal of Evolution and Technology_ and commenced reading it at once. 
Accordingly, I have stopped grabbing articles to forward until I have written 
my review *and* have caught up on my reading, this last going on for how many 
ever weeks it takes. I have a backlog of articles to send and will exhaust them 
by the end of the year. After that, I have a big batch of journal articles I 
downloaded on my annual visit to the University of Virginia and will dole our 
conversions from PDF to TXT at the rate of one a day. I'll also participate in 
discussions and do up and occasional meme. But you'll be on your own in 
analyzing the news. I hope I have given you some of the tools to do so. As I go 
through my backlog of the TLS, New Scientist, and Foreign Policy, I'll send 
choice articles your way, Foreign Policy first, since that hits the two themes 
I am striving (vainly!) to concentrate on, "deep culture change" and 
"persistence of difference."]

Picture Imperfect:
Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age
by Russell Jacoby
Columbia University Press, 2005 211 pp $24.95

For most of my politically conscious life, the idea of social
transformation has been the great taboo of American politics. From the
smug 1950s to the post-Reagan era, in which a bloodied and cowed left
has come to regard a kinder, gentler capitalism as its highest
aspiration, this anti-utopian trend has been interrupted only by the
brief but intense flare-up of visionary politics known as "the
sixties." Yet that short-lived, anomalous upheaval has had a more
profound effect on my thinking about the possibilities of politics
than the following three decades of reaction. The reason is not (to
summarize the conversation-stopping accusations routinely aimed at
anyone who suggests that sixties political and cultural radicalism
might offer other than negative lessons for the left) that I am stuck
in a time warp, nursing a romantic attachment to my youth, and so
determined to idealize a period that admittedly had its politically
dicey moments. Rather, as I see it, the enduring interest of this
piece of history lies precisely in its spectacular departure from the
norm. It couldn't happen, according to the reigning intellectual
currents of the fifties, but it did. Nor--in the sense of ceasing to
cast a shadow over the present--can it really be said to be over, even
in this age of "9/11 Changed Everything."
That the culture war instigated by the 1960s revolt shows no signs of
abating thirty-some years later is usually cited by its left and
liberal opponents to condemn it as a disastrous provocation that put
the right in power. Yet the same set of facts can as plausibly be
regarded as evidence of the potent and lasting appeal of its demand
that society embrace freedom and pleasure as fundamental values. For
the fury of the religious right is clearly a case of protesting too
much, its preoccupation with sexual sin a testament to the magnitude
of the temptation (as the many evangelical sex scandals suggest).
Meanwhile, during the dot-com boom, enthusiastic young free marketeers
fomented a mini-revival of sixties liberationism, reencoded as the
quest for global entrepreneurial triumph, new technological toys, and
limitless information. Was this just one more example of the amazing
power of capitalism to turn every human impulse to its own
purposes--or, given the right circumstances, might the force of desire
overflow that narrow channel? If freedom's just another word for
nothing left to lose, as Janis Joplin-cum-Kris Kristofferson famously
opined, this could be a propitious moment to reopen a discussion of
the utopian dimension of politics and its possible uses for our time.
After all, the left has tried everything else, from postmodern
rejection of "master narratives" and universal values to Anybody But
Bush.

Russell Jacoby, one of the few radicals to consistently reject the
accommodationist pull, has been trying to nudge us toward such a
conversation for some time. Picture Imperfect is really part two of a
meditation that Jacoby began in 1999 with The End of Utopia, a
ferocious polemic against anti-utopian thought. Both books trace the
assumptions of today's anti-utopian consensus to the thirties and
forties, when liberal intellectuals--most notably Karl Popper, Hannah
Arendt, and Isaiah Berlin--linked Nazism and communism under the
rubric of totalitarianism, whose essential characteristic, they
proposed, was the rejection of liberal pluralism for a monolithic
ideology. In the cold war context, Nazism faded into the background;
the critique of totalitarianism became a critique of communism and was
generalized to all utopian thinking--that is, to any political
aspiration that went beyond piecemeal reform. As the logic of this
argument would have it, attempts to understand and change a social
system as a whole are by definition ideological, which is to say
dogmatic; they violate the pluralistic nature of social life and so
can only be enforced through terror; ergo, utopianism leads to mass
murder. Never mind that passionate radicals such as Emma Goldman
condemned the Soviet regime in the name of their own utopian vision or
that most of the past century's horrors have been perpetrated by such
decidedly non-utopian forces as religious fanaticism, nationalism,
fascism, and other forms of racial and ethnic bigotry. (Jacoby notes
with indignation that some proponents of the anti-utopian syllogism
have tried to get around this latter fact by labeling movements like
Nazism and radical Islamism "utopian"--as I write, David Brooks has
just made use of this ploy in the New York Times--as if there is no
distinction worth making between a universalist tradition devoted to
"notions of happiness, fraternity, and plenty" and social "ideals"
that explicitly mandate the mass murder of so-called inferior races or
the persecution of infidels.)
In the post-communist world, Jacoby laments, the equation of utopia
with death has become conventional wisdom across the political board.
The End of Utopia is primarily concerned with the impact of this brand
of thinking on the left; it attacks the array of "progressive"
spokespeople who insist that we must accept the liberal welfare state
as the best we can hope for, as well as the multiculturalists who have
reinvented liberal pluralism, celebrating "diversity" and
"inclusiveness" within a socioeconomic system whose fundamental
premises are taken for granted. With Picture Imperfect, Jacoby takes
on larger and more philosophical questions about the nature of utopia
and of the human imagination--too large, actually, to be adequately
addressed in this quite short book, which has a somewhat diffuse and
episodic quality as a result. Still, the questions are central to any
serious discussion of the subject, and it helps that they are framed
by a more concrete project: to rescue utopian thought from its
murderous reputation as well as from the more mundane charge that it
is puritanical and repressive in its penchant for planning out the
future to the last detail.
To this end, Jacoby distinguishes between two categories of
utopianism: the dominant "blueprint" tradition, exemplified by Thomas
More's eponymous no place or Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, and
the dissident strain he calls "iconoclastic" utopianism, whose concern
is challenging the limits of the existing social order and expanding
the boundaries of imagination rather than planning the perfect
society. While he does not simply write off the blueprinters--fussy as
their details may be, he regards them as contributors to the utopian
spirit and credits them with inspiring social reforms--his heroes are
the iconoclasts, beginning with Ernst Bloch and his 1918 The Spirit of
Utopia, and including a gallery of anarchists, refusers, and mystics
ranging from Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse to
Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber.
The iconoclastic tradition is mainly Jewish, and Jacoby, in an
interesting bit of discursus, links it to the biblical prohibition of
idolatry. Just as the Jews may neither depict God's image nor
pronounce God's name, so the iconoclasts avoid explicit images or
descriptions of the utopian future. Further, Jacoby argues, in the
Kabbala and in Jewish tradition generally, the Torah achieves full
meaning only through the oral law: "The ear trumps the eye. Alone, the
written word may mislead: it is too graphic." Similarly, the future of
the iconoclasts is "heard and longed for" rather than seen. Here,
Jacoby's analysis intersects with a fear he has long shared with his
Frankfurt School mentors--that a mass culture obsessed with images
flattens the imagination and perhaps destroys it altogether. From this
perspective, the iconoclasts' elision of the image is itself radically
countercultural.

Is it also impossibly abstract? "The problem today," Jacoby recognizes
in his epilogue, "is how to connect utopian thinking with everyday
politics." Even as utopianism is condemned as deadly, it is at the
same time, and often by the same people, dismissed as irrelevant to
the real world. Jacoby will have none of this; he rightly insists,
"Utopian thinking does not undermine or discount real reforms. Indeed,
it is almost the opposite: practical reforms depend on utopian
dreaming." Again, the sixties offers many examples--particularly its
most successful social movement, second wave feminism, which achieved
mass proportions in response to the radical proposition that men and
women should be equals not only under the law or on the job but in
every social sphere from the kitchen to the nursery to the bedroom to
the street. (As one of the movement's prominent utopians, Shulamith
Firestone, put it, the initial response of most women to that idea
was, "You must be out of your mind--you can't change that!") Yet it
seems likely that the relationship of the utopian imagination and the
urge to concrete political activity is not precisely one of cause and
effect; rather, both impulses appear to have a common root in the
perception that something other than what is is possible--and
necessary. We might think of iconoclastic utopians as the inverse of
canaries in the mine: if they are hearing the sounds of an ineffable
redemption, others may already be at work on annoyingly literal
blueprints, and still others getting together for as yet obscure
political meetings. So the formulation of the problem may need to be
fine-tuned: what is it that fosters, or blocks, that sense of
possibility/necessity? Why does it seem so utterly absent today
(you're out of your mind!), and how can we change that?
These questions are an obvious project for a third book, though it's
one Jacoby is unlikely to write: he is temperamentally a refusenik,
like the iconoclasts he lauds, more attuned to distant hoofbeats than
to spoor on the ground that might reward analysis. It is perhaps this
bias that has kept him from seeing one reason why the anti-utopian
argument has become so entrenched: although there is perversity in it,
and bad faith, there is also some truth. Jacoby is no fan of
authoritarian communism, but he is wrong in thinking he can simply
bracket that disaster or that there is nothing to be learned from it
that might apply to utopian movements in general. The striking
characteristic of communism was the radical disconnection between the
social ideals it professed and the actual societies it produced.
Because the contradiction could never be admitted, whole populations
were forced to speak and act as if the lies of the regime were true.
It is not surprising that victims or witnesses of this spectacle would
distrust utopians. Who could tell what even the most steadfast
anti-Stalinists might do if they actually gained some power? Who could
give credence to phrases like "workers' control" or "women's
emancipation" when they had come to mean anything but? Jacoby
persuasively analyzes 1984 to show that it was not meant as an
anti-socialist tract, yet he never mentions the attacks on the misuse
of language that made Orwell's name into an adjective.
Communism was corrupted by a scientific (or more accurately,
scientistic) theory of history that cast opponents as expendable, a
theory of class that dismissed bourgeois democratic liberties as
merely a mask for capitalist exploitation, and a revolutionary
practice that allowed a minority to impose dictatorship. Similar
tropes made their way into the sixties' movements, in, for instance,
the argument that oppressors should not have free speech or that the
American people were the problem, not the solution, and the proper
function of American radicals was to support third world
anti-imperialism by any means necessary, including violence. A milder
form of authoritarianism, which owed less to Marxism than to a
peculiarly American quasi-religious moralism, disfigured the
counterculture and the women's movement. If the original point of
these movements was to promote the pursuit of happiness, too often the
emphasis shifted to proclaiming one's own superior enlightenment and
contempt for those who refused to be liberated; indeed, liberation had
a tendency to become prescriptive, so that freedom to reject the
trappings of middle-class consumerism, or not to marry, or to be a
lesbian was repackaged as a moral obligation and a litmus test of
one's radicalism or feminism. Just as communism discredited utopianism
for several generations of Europeans, the antics of countercultural
moralists fed America's conservative reaction.

But it's not only corruption that distorts the utopian impulse when it
begins to take some specific social shape. The prospect of more
freedom stirs anxiety. We want it, but we fear it; it goes against our
most deeply ingrained Judeo-Christian definitions of morality and
order. At bottom, utopia equals death is a statement about the wages
of sin. Left authoritarianism is itself a defense against anxiety--a
way to assimilate frightening anarchy into familiar patterns of
hierarchy and moral demand--as is the fundamentalist backlash taking
place not only in the United States but around the world. Jacoby links
the decline of utopian thought to the collapse of communism in 1989,
and that is surely part of the story, but in truth the American
backlash against utopianism was well underway by the mid-seventies.
The sixties scared us, and not only because of Weatherman and Charles
Manson. We scared ourselves.
How did the sixties happen in the first place? I'd argue that a
confluence of events stimulated desire while temporarily muting
anxiety. There was widespread prosperity that made young people feel
secure, able to challenge authority and experiment with their lives.
There was a vibrant mass mediated culture that, far from damping down
the imagination, transmitted the summons to freedom and pleasure far
more broadly than a mere political movement could do. (Jacoby is on to
something, though, about the importance of the ear: the key mass
cultural form, from the standpoint of inciting utopianism, was rock
and roll.) There was a critical mass of educated women who could not
abide the contradiction between the expanding opportunities they
enjoyed as middle-class Americans and the arbitrary restrictions on
their sex. There was the advent of psychedelics, which allowed
millions of people to sample utopia as a state of mind.
Those were different times. Today, anxiety is a first principle of
social life, and the right knows how to exploit it. Capital foments
the insecurity that impels people to submit to its demands. And yet
there are more Americans than ever before who have tasted certain
kinds of social freedoms and, whether they admit it or not, don't want
to give them up or deny them to others. From Bill Clinton's
impeachment to the Terri Schiavo case, the public has resisted the
right wing's efforts to close the deal on the culture. Not
coincidentally, the cultural debates, however attenuated, still
conjure the ghosts of utopia by raising issues of personal autonomy,
power, and the right to enjoy rather than slog through life. In
telling contrast, the contemporary left has not posed class questions
in these terms; on the contrary, it has ceded the language of freedom
and pleasure, "opportunity" and "ownership," to the libertarian right.
Our culture of images notwithstanding, it cannot fairly be said that
Americans' capacity for fantasy is impaired, even if it takes
sectarian and apocalyptic rather than utopian forms. If anxiety is the
flip side of desire, perhaps what we need to do is start asking
ourselves and our fellow citizens what we want. The answers might
surprise us.
Ellen Willis writes on cultural politics and political culture and
directs the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program in the Department
of Journalism at New York University. She is currently at work on a
book about the mass psychology of contemporary politics.


From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com  Sun Jan  1 19:51:28 2006
From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher)
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 11:51:28 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] shame in the Bible
In-Reply-To: <200601011900.k01J0ce29299@tick.javien.com>
Message-ID: <20060101195128.5946.qmail@web36808.mail.mud.yahoo.com>


>>So amongst the knowledge of good and evil that came
from eating the forbidden fruit is that nudity is
shameful.<<

--Or maybe rather, that knowledge of one's nudity
(i.e. shame) is shameful. My favorite theory about the
Fall is that it was an allegory for the tendency of
human beings to judge one another. To have knowledge
of good and evil is to be a judge, and to carry out
that judgment against another person is to play God.
The message is: don't play God. In that context,
awareness of nudity is a symbol for awareness of one's
own hubris and arrogance in the presence of a greater
judge. A bit like how many politicians would feel if
their acts were exposed to the public, with no
protection by secrecy or status. To be naked before
one's enemies was to be judged without the protection
of status symbols (uniform, title, etc). 

Michael


		
__________________________________________ 
Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about. 
Just $16.99/mo. or less. 
dsl.yahoo.com 



From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 23:11:08 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 18:11:08 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] New Left Review: Eric Hobsbawm: Identity Politics and
	the Left
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601011610060.25064@panix2.panix.com>

Eric Hobsbawm: Identity Politics and the Left
New Left Review 217, May/June 1996

[This is a significant article by an old-line 20th century British 
leftist. It deplores the replacement of "equality and social justice" as 
the essential aim of the Left with identity politics and mourns the 
disappearance of universalism on the Left.

[The article, nearly a decade old, should be read carefully. He states, 
"Since the 1970s there has been a tendency-an increasing tendency' to see 
the Left essentially as a coalition of minority groups and interests: of 
race, gender, sexual or other cultural preferences and lifestyles, even of 
economic minorities such as the old getting-your-hands-dirty, industrial 
working class have now become."

[Since then, the trends he deplores have been exacerbated, with 
universalism further in retreat. It is now getting to the point where 
Whites are starting their own identity politics.

[Hobsbawn calls "equality and social justice" the essential defining 
characteristic of the Left, and this was true--or rather equality formed 
the *principle* Left-Right divide--but only for a while after the nearly 
universally recognized failure of central planning. The failure of 
egalitarian politics is becoming nearly as manifest as the failure of 
central planning. What is replacing equality, I have been arguing 
repeatedly, as the new major Left-Right 
divide in politics is universalism (on the Right, now taking the form of 
spreading "democratic capitalism" to the world or else the universal 
truths of one religion or another) and particularism (on the Left, now not 
very coherent, except to resist Rightist universalism).

[Hobsbawm is quite correct to say that the Left in Britain degenerated 
into rent-seeking for higher wages for those who happen to be unionized. 
(Unionization simply cannot, and never could, raise wages overall in a 
competitive economy, but that's another story.) And the Central Planner in 
him remains in his Unchecked Premise that, while it is true that 
identities are multiple and fluid--but only to a degree, only to a 
degree--a Central Planner can make them what he will.

[I could argue that capitalism is defective, in that it rewards 
inventors, entrepreneurs, capitalists, and businessmen too small a share 
of what they contribute to society (far less than their marginal product), 
while the workers collect nearly their full marginal product and that 
"social justice" demands regressive taxes. But all this would serve only 
to continue 20th-century Rightist arguments, coming down on the side of 
inequality rather than equality.

[The politics of the 21st century will move away from the increasingly 
dead issue of equality. Hobsbawm writes that "the emergence of identity 
politics is a consequence of the extraordinarily rapid and profound 
upheavals and transformations of human society in the third quarter of 
this century," and quotes Daniel Bell as noting that "the breakup of the 
traditional authority structures and the previous affective social 
units-historically nation and class...make the ethnic attachment more 
salient."

[But identity is not just a matter of politics and rent-seeking 
coalitions. Identity is becoming ever more salient, for it provides 
islands of stability in an world where everything else changes. This will 
only increase as change itself increases. This is deep culture change 
indeed, and the inevitable emergence of political entrepreneurs to form 
rent-seeking coalitions is a small aspect of this.

[So read the article, not for the politics or for Hobsbawm's nostalgia for 
20th century Leftist politics (but 1996, the date of the article, was 
still in the last century!) Try to think about the sociology of identity, 
how individuals will remake their identities to create new islands of 
stability, and how those with a particular identity, or mixture of them 
(as Hobsbawm quite correctly emphasizes--he is at some level a Public 
Choice man himself), will react to those with other identities.

[Think, in other words, how those with particular enhancements will deal 
socially with those of different enhancements or with no enhancements?]

--------------

My lecture is about a surprisingly new subject. [*] We have become so used 
to terms like 'collective identity', 'identity groups, 'identity 
politics', or, for that matter 'ethnicity', that it is hard to remember 
how recently they have surfaced as part of the current vocabulary, or 
jargon, of political discourse. For instance, if you look at the 
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, which was published in 
1968-that is to say written in the middle 1960s-you will find no entry 
under identity except one about psychosocial identity, by Erik Erikson, 
who was concerned chiefly with such things as the so-called 'identity 
crisis' of adolescents who are trying to discover what they are, and a 
general piece on voters' identification. And as for ethnicity, in the 
Oxford English Dictionary of the early 1970s it still occurs only as a 
rare word indicating 'heathendom and heathen superstition' and documented 
by quotations from the eighteenth century.

In short, we are dealing with terms and concepts which really come into 
use only in the 1960s. Their emergence is most easily followed in the USA, 
partly because it has always been a society unusually interested in 
monitoring its social and psychological temperature, blood-pressure and 
other symptoms, and mainly because the most obvious form of identity 
politics-but not the only one-namely ethnicity, has always been central to 
American politics since it became a country of mass immigration from all 
parts of Europe. Roughly, the new ethnicity makes its first public 
appearance with Glazer and Moynihan's Beyond the Melting Pot in 1963 and 
becomes a militant programme with Michael Novak's The Rise of the 
Unmeltable Ethnics in 1972. The first, I don't have to tell you, was the 
work of a Jewish professor and an Irishman, now the senior Democratic 
senator for New York; the second came from a Catholic of Slovak origin. 
For the moment we need not bother too much about why all this happened in 
the 1960s, but let me remind you that-in the style-setting USA at 
least-this decade also saw the emergence of two other variants of identity 
politics: the modern (that is, post suffragist) women's movement and the 
gay movement.

I am not saying that before the 1960s nobody asked themselves questions 
about their public identity. In situations of uncertainty they sometimes 
did; for instance in the industrial belt of Lorraine in France, whose 
official language and nationality changed five times in a century, and 
whose rural life changed to an industrial, semi-urban one, while their 
frontiers were redrawn seven times in the past century and a half. No 
wonder people said: 'Berliners know they're Berliners, Parisians know they 
are Parisians, but who are we?' Or, to quote another interview, 'I come 
from Lorraine, my culture is German, my nationality is French, and I think 
in our provincial dialect'. [1] Actually, these things only led to genuine 
identity problems when people were prevented from having the multiple, 
combined, identities which are natural to most of us. Or, even more so, 
when they are detached 'from the past and all common cultural practices'. 
[2] However, until the 1960s these problems of uncertain identity were 
confined to special border zones of politics. They were not yet central.

They appear to have become much more central since the 1960s. Why? There 
are no doubt particular reasons in the politics and institutions of this 
or that country-for instance, in the peculiar procedures imposed on the 
USA by its Constitution-for example, the civil rights judgments of the 
1950s, which were first applied to blacks and then extended to women, 
providing a model for other identity groups. It may follow, especially in 
countries where parties compete for votes, that constituting oneself into 
such an identity group may provide concrete political advantages: for 
instance, positive discrimination in favour of the members of such groups, 
quotas in jobs and so forth. This is also the case in the USA, but not 
only there. For instance, in India, where the government is committed to 
creating social equality, it may actually pay to classify yourself as low 
caste or belonging to an aboriginal tribal group, in order to enjoy the 
extra access to jobs guaranteed to such groups.

The Denial of Multiple Identity

But in my view the emergence of identity politics is a consequence of the 
extraordinarily rapid and profound upheavals and transformations of human 
society in the third quarter of this century, which I have tried to 
describe and to understand in the second part of my history of the 'Short 
Twentieth Century', The Age of Extremes. This is not my view alone. The 
American sociologist Daniel Bell, for instance, argued in 1975 that 'The 
breakup of the traditional authority structures and the previous affective 
social units-historically nation and class...make the ethnic attachment 
more salient'. [3]

In fact, we know that both the nation-state and the old class-based 
political parties and movements have been weakened as a result of these 
transformations. More than this, we have been living-we are living-through 
a gigantic 'cultural revolution', an 'extraordinary dissolution of 
traditional social norms, textures and values, which left so many 
inhabitants of the developed world orphaned and bereft.' If I may go on 
quoting myself, 'Never was the word "community" used more indiscriminately 
and emptily than in the decades when communities in the sociological sense 
become hard to find in real life'. [4] Men and women look for groups to 
which they can belong, certainly and forever, in a world in which all else 
is moving and shifting, in which nothing else is certain. And they find it 
in an identity group. Hence the strange paradox, which the brilliant, and 
incidentally, Caribbean Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson has 
identified: people choose to belong to an identity group, but 'it is a 
choice predicated on the strongly held, intensely conceived belief that 
the individual has absolutely no choice but to belong to that specific 
group.' [5] That it is a choice can sometimes be demonstrated. The number 
of Americans reporting themselves as 'American Indian' or 'Native 
American' almost quadrupled between 1960 and 1990, from about half a 
million to about two millions, which is far more than could be explained 
by normal demography; and incidentally, since 70 per cent of 'Native 
Americans' marry outside their race, exactly who is a 'Native American' 
ethnically, is far from clear. [6]

So what do we understand by this collective 'identity', this sentiment of 
belonging to a primary group, which is its basis? I draw your attention to 
four points.

First, collective identities are defined negatively; that is to say 
against others. 'We' recognize ourselves as 'us' because we are different 
from 'Them'. If there were no 'They' from whom we are different, we 
wouldn't have to ask ourselves who 'We' were. Without Outsiders there are 
no Insiders. In other words, collective identities are based not on what 
their members have in common-they may have very little in common except 
not being the 'Others'. Unionists and Nationalists in Belfast, or Serb, 
Croat and Muslim Bosnians, who would otherwise be indistinguishable-they 
speak the same language, have the same life styles, look and behave the 
same-insist on the one thing that divides them, which happens to be 
religion. Conversely, what gives unity as Palestinians to a mixed 
population of Muslims of various kinds, Roman and Greek Catholics, Greek 
Orthodox and others who might well-like their neighbours in Lebanon-fight 
each other under different circumstances? Simply that they are not the 
Israelis, as Israeli policy continually reminds them.

Of course, there are collectivities which are based on objective 
characteristics which their members have in common, including biological 
gender or such politically sensitive physical characteristics as 
skin-colour and so forth. However most collective identities are like 
shirts rather than skin, namely they are, in theory at least, optional, 
not inescapable. In spite of the current fashion for manipulating our 
bodies, it is still easier to put on another shirt than another arm. Most 
identity groups are not based on objective physical similarities or 
differences, although all of them would like to claim that they are 
'natural' rather than socially constructed. Certainly all ethnic groups 
do.

Second, it follows that in real life identities, like garments, are 
interchangeable or wearable in combination rather than unique and, as it 
were, stuck to the body. For, of course, as every opinion pollster knows, 
no one has one and only one identity. Human beings cannot be described, 
even for bureaucratic purposes, except by a combination of many 
characteristics. But identity politics assumes that one among the many 
identities we all have is the one that determines, or at least dominates 
our politics: being a woman, if you are a feminist, being a Protestant if 
you are an Antrim Unionist, being a Catalan, if you are a Catalan 
nationalist, being homosexual if you are in the gay movement. And, of 
course, that you have to get rid of the others, because they are 
incompatible with the 'real' you. So David Selbourne, an all-purpose 
ideologue and general denouncer, firmly calls on 'The Jew in England' to 
'cease to pretend to be English' and to recognize that his 'real' identity 
is as a Jew. This is both dangerous and absurd. There is no practical 
incompatibility unless an outside authority tells you that you cannot be 
both, or unless it is physically impossible to be both. If I wanted to be 
simultaneously and ecumenically a devout Catholic, a devout Jew, and a 
devout Buddhist why shouldn't I? The only reason which stops me physically 
is that the respective religious authorities might tell me I cannot 
combine them, or that it might be impossible to carry out all their 
rituals because some got in the way of others.

Usually people have no problem about combining identities, and this, of 
course, is the basis of general politics as distinct from sectional 
identity politics. Often people don't even bother to make the choice 
between identities, either because nobody asks them, or because it's too 
complicated. When inhabitants of the USA are asked to declare their ethnic 
origins, 54 per cent refuse or are unable to give an answer. In short, 
exclusive identity politics do not come naturally to people. It is more 
likely to be forced upon them from outside-in the way in which Serb, Croat 
and Muslim inhabitants of Bosnia who lived together, socialized and 
intermarried, have been forced to separate, or in less brutal ways.

The third thing to say is that identities, or their expression, are not 
fixed, even supposing you have opted for one of your many potential 
selves, the way Michael Portillo has opted for being British instead of 
Spanish. They shift around and can change, if need be more than once. For 
instance non-ethnic groups, all or most of whose members happen to be 
black or Jewish, may turn into consciously ethnic groups. This happened to 
the Southern Christian Baptist Church under Martin Luther King. The 
opposite is also possible, as when the Official IRA turned itself from a 
Fenian nationalist into a class organization, which is now the Workers' 
Party and part of the Irish Republic's government coalition.

The fourth and last thing to say about identity is that it depends on the 
context, which may change. We can all think of paid-up, card-carrying 
members of the gay community in the Oxbridge of the 1920s who, after the 
slump of 1929 and the rise of Hitler, shifted, as they liked to say, from 
Homintern to Comintern. Burgess and Blunt, as it were, transferred their 
gayness from the public to the private sphere. Or, consider the case of 
the Protestant German classical scholar, Pater, a professor of Classics in 
London, who suddenly discovered, after Hitler, that he had to emigrate, 
because, by Nazi standards, he was actually Jewish-a fact of which until 
that moment, he was unaware. However he had defined himself previously, he 
now had to find a different identity.

The Universalism of the Left

What has all this to do with the Left? Identity groups were certainly not 
central to the Left. Basically, the mass social and political movements of 
the Left, that is, those inspired by the American and French revolutions 
and socialism, were indeed coalitions or group alliances, but held 
together not by aims that were specific to the group, but by great, 
universal causes through which each group believed its particular aims 
could be realized: democracy, the Republic, socialism, communism or 
whatever. Our own Labour Party in its great days was both the party of a 
class and, among other things, of the minority nations and immigrant 
communities of mainland Britainians. It was all this, because it was a 
party of equality and social justice.

Let us not misunderstand its claim to be essentially class-based. The 
political labour and socialist movements were not, ever, anywhere, 
movements essentially confined to the proletariat in the strict Marxist 
sense. Except perhaps in Britain, they could not have become such vast 
movements as they did, because in the 1880s and 1890s, when mass labour 
and socialist parties suddenly appeared on the scene, like fields of 
bluebells in spring, the industrial working class in most countries was a 
fairly small minority, and in any case a lot of it remained outside 
socialist labour organization. Remember that by the time of World War I 
the social-democrats polled between 30 and 47 per cent of the electorate 
in countries like Denmark, Sweden and Finland, which were hardly 
industrialized, as well as in Germany. (The highest percentage of votes 
ever achieved by the Labour Party in this country, in 1951, was 48 per 
cent.) Furthermore, the socialist case for the centrality of the workers 
in their movement was not a sectional case. Trade unions pursued the 
sectional interests of wage-earners, but one of the reasons why the 
relations between labour and socialist parties and the unions associated 
with them, were never without problems, was precisely that the aims of the 
movement were wider than those of the unions. The socialist argument was 
not just that most people were 'workers by hand or brain' but that the 
workers were the necessary historic agency for changing society. So, 
whoever you were, if you wanted the future, you would have to go with the 
workers' movement.

Conversely, when the labour movement became narrowed down to nothing but a 
pressure-group or a sectional movement of industrial workers, as in 1970s 
Britain, it lost both the capacity to be the potential centre of a general 
people's mobilization and the general hope of the future. Militant 
'economist' trade unionism antagonized the people not directly involved in 
it to such an extent that it gave Thatcherite Toryism its most convincing 
argument-and the justification for turning the traditional 'one-nation' 
Tory Party into a force for waging militant class-war. What is more, this 
proletarian identity politics not only isolated the working class, but 
also split it by setting groups of workers against each other.

So what does identity politics have to do with the Left? Let me state 
firmly what should not need restating. The political project of the Left 
is universalist: it is for all human beings. However we interpret the 
words, it isn't liberty for shareholders or blacks, but for everybody. It 
isn't equality for all members of the Garrick Club or the handicapped, but 
for everybody. It is not fraternity only for old Etonians or gays, but for 
everybody. And identity politics is essentially not for everybody but for 
the members of a specific group only. This is perfectly evident in the 
case of ethnic or nationalist movements. Zionist Jewish nationalism, 
whether we sympathize with it or not, is exclusively about Jews, and 
hang-or rather bomb-the rest. All nationalisms are. The nationalist claim 
that they are for everyone's right to self-determination is bogus.

That is why the Left cannot base itself on identity politics. It has a 
wider agenda. For the Left, Ireland was, historically, one, but only one, 
out of the many exploited, oppressed and victimized sets of human beings 
for which it fought. For the IRA kind of nationalism, the Left was, and 
is, only one possible ally in the fight for its objectives in certain 
situations. In others it was ready to bid for the support of Hitler as 
some of its leaders did during World War II. And this applies to every 
group which makes identity politics its foundation, ethnic or otherwise.

Now the wider agenda of the Left does, of course, mean it supports many 
identity groups, at least some of the time, and they, in turn look to the 
Left. Indeed, some of these alliances are so old and so close that the 
Left is surprised when they come to an end, as people are surprised when 
marriages break up after a lifetime. In the USA it almost seems against 
nature that the 'ethnics'-that is, the groups of poor mass immigrants and 
their descendants-no longer vote almost automatically for the Democratic 
Party. It seems almost incredible that a black American could even 
consider standing for the Presidency of the USA as a Republican (I am 
thinking of Colin Powell). And yet, the common interest of Irish, Italian, 
Jewish and black Americans in the Democratic Party did not derive from 
their particular ethnicities, even though realistic politicians paid their 
respects to these. What united them was the hunger for equality and social 
justice, and a programme believed capable of advancing both.

The Common Interest

But this is just what so many on the Left have forgotten, as they dive 
head first into the deep waters of identity politics. Since the 1970s 
there has been a tendency-an increasing tendency' to see the Left 
essentially as a coalition of minority groups and interests: of race, 
gender, sexual or other cultural preferences and lifestyles, even of 
economic minorities such as the old getting-your-hands-dirty, industrial 
working class have now become. This is understandable enough, but it is 
dangerous, not least because winning majorities is not the same as adding 
up minorities.

First, let me repeat: identity groups are about themselves, for 
themselves, and nobody else. A coalition of such groups that is not held 
together by a single common set of aims or values, has only an ad hoc 
unity, rather like states temporarily allied in war against a common 
enemy. They break up when they are no longer so held together. In any 
case, as identity groups, they are not committed to the Left as such, but 
only to get support for their aims wherever they can. We think of women's 
emancipation as a cause closely associated with the Left, as it has 
certainly been since the beginnings of socialism, even before Marx and 
Engels. And yet, historically, the British suffragist movement before 1914 
was a movement of all three parties, and the first woman mp, as we know, 
was actually a Tory. [7]

Secondly, whatever their rhetoric, the actual movements and organizations 
of identity politics mobilize only minorities, at any rate before they 
acquire the power of coercion and law. National feeling may be universal, 
but, to the best of my knowledge, no secessionist nationalist party in 
democratic states has so far ever got the votes of the majority of its 
constituency (though the Qu?becois last autumn came close-but then their 
nationalists were careful not actually to demand complete secession in so 
many words). I do not say it cannot or will not happen-only that the 
safest way to get national independence by secession so far has been not 
to ask populations to vote for it until you already have it first by other 
means.

That, by the way, makes two pragmatic reasons to be against identity 
politics. Without such outside compulsion or pressure, under normal 
circumstances it hardly ever mobilizes more than a minority-even of the 
target group. Hence, attempts to form separate political women's parties 
have not been very effective ways of mobilizing the women's vote. The 
other reason is that forcing people to take on one, and only one, identity 
divides them from each other. It therefore isolates these minorities. 
Consequently to commit a general movement to the specific demands of 
minority pressure groups, which are not necessarily even those of their 
constituencies, is to ask for trouble. This is much more obvious in the 
USA, where the backlash against positive discrimination in favour of 
particular minorities, and the excesses of multiculturalism, is now very 
powerful; but the problem exists here also.

Today both the Right and to the Left are saddled with identity politics. 
Unfortunately, the danger of disintegrating into a pure alliance of 
minorities is unusually great on the Left because the decline of the great 
universalist slogans of the Enlightenment, which were essentially slogans 
of the Left, leaves it without any obvious way of formulating a common 
interest across sectional boundaries. The only one of the so-called 'new 
social movements' which crosses all such boundaries is that of the 
ecologists. But, alas, its political appeal is limited and likely to 
remain so.

However, there is one form of identity politics which is actually 
comprehensive, inasmuch as it is based on a common appeal, at least within 
the confines of a single state: citizen nationalism. Seen in the global 
perspective this may be the opposite of a universal appeal, but seen in 
the perspective of the national state, which is where most of us still 
live, and are likely to go on living, it provides a common identity, or in 
Benedict Anderson's phrase, 'an imagined community' not the less real for 
being imagined. The Right, especially the Right in government, has always 
claimed to monopolize this and can usually still manipulate it. Even 
Thatcherism, the grave-digger of 'one-nation Toryism', did it. Even its 
ghostly and dying successor, Major's government, hopes to avoid electoral 
defeat by damning its opponents as unpatriotic.

Why then has it been so difficult for the Left, certainly for the Left in 
English-speaking countries, to see itself as the representative of the 
entire nation? (I am, of course, speaking of the nation as the community 
of all people in a country, not as an ethnic entity.) Why have they found 
it so difficult even to try? After all, the European Left began when a 
class, or a class alliance, the Third Estate in the French Estates General 
of 1789, decided to declare itself 'the nation' as against the minority of 
the ruling class, thus creating the very concept of the political 
'nation'. After all, even Marx envisaged such a transformation in The 
Communist Manifesto. [8] Indeed, one might go further. Todd Gitlin, one of 
the best observers of the American Left, has put it dramatically in his 
new book, The Twilight of Common Dreams: 'What is a Left if it is not, 
plausibly at least, the voice of the whole people?...If there is no 
people, but only peoples, there is no Left.' [9]

The Muffled Voice of New Labour

And there have been times when the Left has not only wanted to be the 
nation, but has been accepted as representing the national interest, even 
by those who had no special sympathy for its aspirations: in the USA, when 
the Rooseveltian Democratic Party was politically hegemonic, in 
Scandinavia since the early 1930s. More generally, at the end of World War 
II the Left, almost everywhere in Europe, represented the nation in the 
most literal sense, because it represented resistance to, and victory 
over, Hitler and his allies. Hence the remarkable marriage of patriotism 
and social transformation, which dominated European politics immediately 
after 1945. Not least in Britain, where 1945 was a plebiscite in favour of 
the Labour Party as the party best representing the nation against 
one-nation Toryism led by the most charismatic and victorious war-leader 
on the scene. This set the course for the next thirty-five years of the 
country's history. Much more recently, Fran?ois Mitterrand, a politician 
without a natural commitment to the Left, chose leadership of the 
Socialist Party as the best platform for exercising the leadership of all 
French people.

One would have thought that today was another moment when the British Left 
could claim to speak for Britain-that is to say all the people-against a 
discredited, decrepit and demoralized regime. And yet, how rarely are the 
words 'the country', 'Great Britain', 'the nation', 'patriotism', even 
'the people' heard in the pre-election rhetoric of those who hope to 
become the next government of the United Kingdom!

It has been suggested that this is because, unlike 1945 and 1964, 'neither 
the politician nor his public has anything but a modest belief in the 
capacity of government to do very much'. [10] If that is why Labour speaks 
to and about the nation in so muffled a voice, it is trebly absurd. First, 
because if citizens really think that government can't do very much, why 
should they bother to vote for one lot rather than the other, or for that 
matter for any lot? Second, because government, that is to say the 
management of the state in the public interest, is indispensable and will 
remain so. Even the ideologues of the mad Right, who dream of replacing it 
by the universal sovereign market, need it to establish their utopia, or 
rather dystopia. And insofar as they succeed, as in much of the 
ex-socialist world, the backlash against the market brings back into 
politics those who want the state to return to social responsibility. In 
1995, five years after abandoning their old state with joy and enthusiasm, 
two thirds of East Germans think that life and conditions in the old gdr 
were better than the 'negative descriptions and reports' in today's German 
media, and 70 per cent think 'the idea of socialism was good, but we had 
incompetent politicians'. And, most unanswerably, because in the past 
seventeen years we have lived under governments which believed that 
government has enormous power, which have used that power actually to 
change our country decisively for the worse, and which, in their dying 
days are still trying to do so, and to con us into the belief that what 
one government has done is irreversible by another. The state will not go 
away. It is the business of government to use it.

Government is not just about getting elected and then re-elected. This is 
a process which, in democratic politics, implies enormous quantities of 
lying in all its forms. Elections become contests in fiscal perjury. 
Unfortunately, politicians, who have as short a time-horizon as 
journalists, find it hard to see politics as other than a permanent 
campaigning season. Yet there is something beyond. There lies what 
government does and must do.There is the future of the country. There are 
the hopes and fears of the people as a whole-not just 'the community', 
which is an ideological cop-out, or the sum-total of earners and spenders 
(the 'taxpayers' of political jargon), but the British people, the sort of 
collective which would be ready to cheer the victory of any British team 
in the World Cup, if it hadn't lost the hope that there might still be 
such a thing. For not the least symptom of the decline of Britain, with 
the decline of science, is the decline of British team sports.

It was Mrs Thatcher's strength, that she recognized this dimension of 
politics. She saw herself leading a people 'who thought we could no longer 
do the great things we once did'-I quote her words-'those who believed our 
decline was irreversible, that we could never again be what we were'. [11] 
She was not like other politicians, inasmuch as she recognized the need to 
offer hope and action to a puzzled and demoralized people. A false hope, 
perhaps, and certainly the wrong kind of action, but enough to let her 
sweep aside opposition within her party as well as outside, and change the 
country and destroy so much of it. The failure of her project is now 
manifest. Our decline as a nation has not been halted. As a people we are 
more troubled, more demoralized than in 1979, and we know it. Only those 
who alone can form the post-Tory government are themselves too demoralized 
and frightened by failure and defeat, to offer anything except the promise 
not to raise taxes. We may win the next general election that way and I 
hope we will, though the Tories will not fight the election campaign 
primarily on taxes, but on British Unionism, English nationalism, 
xenophobia and the Union Jack, and in doing so will catch us off balance. 
Will those who have elected us really believe we shall make much 
difference? And what will we do if they merely elect us, shrugging their 
shoulders as they do so? We will have created the New Labour Party. Will 
we make the same effort to restore and transform Britain? There is still 
time to answer these questions.

[*] This is the text of the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust Lecture 
given at the Institute of Education, London on 2 May 1996.

[1] M.L. Pradelles de Latou, 'Identity as a Complex Network', in C. Fried, 
ed., Minorities, Community and Identity, Berlin 1983, p. 79.

[2] Ibid. p. 91.

[3] Daniel Bell, 'Ethnicity and Social Change', in Nathan Glazer and 
Daniel P. Moynihan, eds., Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, Cambridge,
Mass. 1975, P. 171

[4] E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century, 
1914-1991, London 1994, p. 428.

[5] O. Patterson, 'Implications of Ethnic Identification'in Fried, ed., 
Minorities: Community and Identity, pp. 28-29. O. Patterson, 'Implications 
of Ethnic Identification'in Fried, ed., Minorities: Community and 
Identity, pp. 28-29.

[6] O. Patterson, 'Implications of Ethnic Identification'in Fried, ed., 
Minorities: Community and Identity, pp. 28-29.

[7] Jihang Park, 'The British Suffrage Activists of 1913', Past & Present, 
no. 120, August 1988, pp. 156-7.

[8] 'Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, 
must raise itself to be the national class, must constitute itself the 
nation, it is itself still national, though not in the bourgeois sense.' 
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848, part II. 
The original (German) edition has 'the national class'; the English 
translation of 1888 gives this as 'the leading class of the nation'.

[9] Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams, New York 1995, p. 165.

[10] Hugo Young, 'No Waves in the Clear Blue Water', The Guardian, 23 
April 1996, p. 13.

[11] Cited in Eric Hobsbawm, Politics for a Rational Left, Verso, London 
1989, p. 54.

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 23:11:46 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 18:11:46 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] World Science: Bees can recognize human faces,
	study finds
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252109170.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Bees can recognize human faces, study finds 
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/051209_beesfrm.htm

    March 30, 2005

    Honeybees may look pretty much all alike to us. But it seems we may not look 
all
    alike to them.
    A study has found that the bees can learn to recognize human faces in 
photos,
    and remember them for at least two days.
    The findings toss new uncertainty into a long-studied issue that some 
scientists
    considered largely settled, the researchers say: the question of how humans
    themselves recognize each other's faces. The results also may help lead to
    better face-recognition software, developed through study of the insect 
brain,
    the authors of the new research said.
    Many researchers traditionally believed the task required a large brain and 
a
    specialized area of that brain dedicated to processing face information. The 
bee
    finding casts doubt on that, said Adrian G. Dyer, the lead researcher in the
    study.
    He recalls that the discovery startled him so much that he called out to a
    colleague, telling her to come quickly because "no one's going to believe
    it--and bring a camera!"
    Dyer said that to his knowledge, the finding is the first time an 
invertebrate
    has shown ability to recognize faces of other species. But not all bees were 
up
    to the task: some flunked it, he said, although this seemed due more to a
    failure to grasp how the test worked than to poor facial recognition
    specifically.
    In any cases, some humans also can't recognize faces, Dyer noted; the 
condition
    is called prosopagnosia.
    In the bee study, reported in the Dec. 15 issue of the Journal of 
Experimental
    Biology, Dyer and two colleagues presented honeybees with photos of human 
faces
    drawn from a standard human psychology test. The photos had similar 
lighting,
    background colors and sizes and included only the face and neck to avoid 
having
    the insects make judgments based on the clothing. In some cases, the people 
in
    the picture themselves looked similar.
    The researchers tried to train the bees to realize that one photo had a drop 
of
    a sugary liquid next to it. Different photos came with a drop of bitter 
liquid
    instead.
    Many bees apparently failed to realize that that they should pay attention 
to
    the photos at all. But five bees learned to fly toward the photo 
horizontally in
    such a way that they could get a good look at it, Dyer reported. In fact, 
these
    bees tended to hover a few centimeters in front of the image for a while 
before
    deciding where to land.
    The bees learned to distinguish the correct face from the wrong one with 
better
    than 80 percent accuracy, even when the faces were similar, and regardless 
of
    where the photos were placed, the researchers found. Also, just like humans, 
the
    bees performed more poorly when the faces were flipped upside-down. "This is
    evidence that face recognition requires neither a specialised neuronal 
[brain]
    circuitry nor a fundamentally advanced nervous system," the researchers 
wrote,
    noting that the test they used was one for which even humans have some
    difficulty.
    Also, "Two bees tested 2 days after the initial training retained the
    information in long-term memory," they wrote. One scored about 94 percent on 
the
    first day and 79 percent two days later; the second bee's score dropped from
    about 87 to 76 percent during the same time frame.
    The researchers also checked whether bees performed better for faces that 
humans
    judged as being more different. This seemed to be so, they found, but the 
result
    didn't reach statistical significance.
    The bees probably don't understand what a human face is, Dyer said in an 
email.
    "To the bees the faces were spatial patterns (or strange looking flowers)," 
he
    added.
    Bees are famous for their pattern-recognition abilities, which scientists
    believe evolved in order to discriminate among flowers. As social insects, 
it's
    well known that they can also tell apart their hivemates. But the new study
    shows that they can recognize human faces better than some humans can--with
    one-thousandth of the brain cells.
    This raises the question of how bees recognize faces, and if so, whether 
they do
    it differently from the way we do it, Dyer and colleagues wrote. Studies 
suggest
    small children recognize faces by picking out specific features that are 
easy to
    recognize, whereas adults see the interrelationships among facial features. 
Bees
    seem to show aspects of both strategies depending on the study, the 
researchers
    added.
    The findings cast doubt on the belief among some researchers that the human
    brain has a specialized area for face recognition, Dyer and colleagues said.
    Neuroscientists point to an area called the fusiform gyrus, which tends to 
show
    increased activity during face-viewing, as serving this purpose. But the bee
    finding "supports the view that the human brain may not need to have a 
visual
    area specific for the recognition of faces," Dyer and colleagues wrote.
    That may be helpful to researchers who develop face-recognition technologies 
to
    be used for security at airports and other locations, Dyer noted. The United
    States is investing heavily in such systems, but they remain primitive. 
Already,
    the way that bees navigate is "being used to design self-autonomous aircraft
    that can fly in remote areas without the need for radio contact or satellite
    navigation," he wrote in the email. "We show that the miniature brain can
    definitely recognize faces, and if in the future we can work out the 
mechanisms
    by which this is achieved then perhaps there are insights to how to try 
novel
    recognition solutions."
    On the other hand, Dyer said, the findings probably don't back up an adage
    popular in some parts of the world--that you shouldn't kill a bee because 
its
    nestmates will remember and come after you. Bees may launch revenge attacks, 
but
    they might simply do so because they smell the dead bee, he remarked, adding
    that that's his speculation only. In any case, "bees don't normally go 
around
    looking at faces."


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 23:11:58 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 18:11:58 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Hartford Courant: The Mind of the Psychopath: Contours
	of Evil
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252109350.14301@panix3.panix.com>

The Mind of the Psychopath: Contours of Evil
http://www.courant.com/news/health/hc-psychopathbrain1218.artdec18,0,209514.story?coll=hc-big-headlines-breaking

Researchers Study How The Mind Works When There's No  Remorse
By  WILLIAM HATHAWAY
Hartford Courant Staff Writer

December 18  2005

Dr. Kent A. Kiehl has interviewed dozens of psychopaths over  the past
their heinous acts he remains as astonished as he is  repulsed.

"I think, `I can't believe this guy is telling me he bashed in his mother's 
head with a propane tank,'" Kiehl says.

Kiehl and a team of researchers at Hartford Hospital's Institute of Living are 
using brain scans in an attempt to explain the inexplicable: What makes some 
people absolutely devoid of empathy and remorse?

Society needs answers because of the sheer havoc psychopaths create, the 
researchers say. Superficially charming, psychopaths lie, steal, rape, rob, 
embezzle, assault and abuse with no compunction, no conscience. But all 
psychopaths are notoriously impervious to rehabilitation.

Psychopaths account for a quarter of all prisoners in the United States - and 
for as much as 50 percent of all violent crime, the researchers estimate.

There are also hundreds of thousands of psychopaths in the United States who 
manage to stay out of prison, but nonetheless dole out immeasurable amounts of 
pain in homes, schools, even corporate boardrooms.

Within the pattern of bright blue and yellow blotches on the brain scans he has 
taken, Kiehl believes he has found the dark contours of the psychopathic mind. 
When psychopaths see or hear emotional words or pictures of misery, areas of 
their brains that should light up like a Christmas tree are dark and devoid of 
activity. Instead, their brains process information such as a picture of a 
bereaved mother holding her dead child in the same way they would react to a 
picture of a chair or shovel.

Psychopaths seem to know the words, but they can't hear the music, researchers 
often say.

In probing the abyss of the psychopathic mind, Kiehl and others are raising 
questions about our criminal justice system and our assumptions about human 
morality.

Beyond Bundy

Kiehl's own quest began with stories his father, a newspaper editor, told about 
serial killer Ted Bundy, who grew up in the same Tacoma, Wash., neighborhood as 
the Kiehls.

Bundy was the archetypal psychopath - handsome, disarmingly charming and 
utterly ruthless. His outwardly clean-cut appearance and his cunning - he 
volunteered for a suicide hot line and the Republican Party - made Bundy a 
virtuoso killer. He was known to use crutches as props and feign car trouble to 
induce young victims to give him a ride. He eventually confessed to more than 
two dozen murders, but he is thought to have killed dozens more during a spree 
in the mid- to late 1970s.

"The question has always been, `What makes people do something like that?'" 
Kiehl said.

Years later, while doing postgraduate studies in neurobiology at the University 
of California at Davis, Kiehl decided he would try to answer the question.

He launched a campaign to get hired in the lab of the guru of psychopathy: 
Robert D. Hare, now professor emeritus of psychology at the University of 
British Columbia.

Hare told him he "didn't hire Americans." But after a concerted sales pitch, 
which included a gift of baseball tickets to a Toronto Blue Jays game, Kiehl 
says Hare relented and hired the young researcher in 1994.

It was an auspicious time in psychopathy research. Hare's research had given 
the nascent field some terminology to use. And new imaging technology was just 
beginning to open a window onto the dark world of the psychopathic brain.

The personality type had been known for centuries. In the 18th century, 
Frenchman Philippe Pinel coined the term "insanity without delirium" to 
describe aberrant behavior accompanied by a complete lack of remorse. The study 
of psychopathy in the United States dates from 1941, when Hervey Cleckley 
published a book called "The Mask of Sanity" that described psychopaths as 
unusually intelligent people, characterized by a "poverty of emotions."

But it wasn't until Hare devised his psychopathy checklist in 1980 - which he 
revised in 1991 - that an easily identified set of personality characteristics 
defined the condition and opened up a field of research.

"There was a gut feeling that there was something different" about psychopaths, 
Hare said.

There was.

Grading Psychopaths

Psychopaths aren't crazy, at least in a traditional medical sense, but they are 
unfettered by any sense of shame or guilt. Symptoms can show up early in life. 
Psychopathic children have total disregard for rules and engage in unusually 
vicious assaults or torture animals. Kiehl has received a federal grant to see 
whether children diagnosed with "callous conduct disorder" might actually be 
budding psychopaths.

Researchers have come to the conclusion that while a hostile environment can 
contribute to the development of psychopathy, many psychopaths are born, not 
made. Studies of twins suggest that psychopathic tendencies can develop even in 
loving homes. Some studies suggest that male psychopaths outnumber females by 
about 3 to 1.  The general lack of social causes for the disorder is one reason 
why most experts no longer use the term "sociopath" to describe a psychopath.

Researchers say as many as 1 out of every 100 people in the United States may 
meet the classification of a psychopath; serial killers make up a tiny minority 
of them.

The revised psychopathy checklist, known as the PCL-R, lists 20 traits and 
behaviors common to the disorder. Experts who are trained in administering the 
test score subjects with a 0, 1 or 2 on each item on the checklist. Hare said 
most people might score a 4 on his PCL-R checklist. A person is not designated 
a psychopath unless he or she scores 30 or more on the scale of 40.

The higher the score, the more devastation a psychopath is likely to cause. 
Somebody who scores a 27 probably wouldn't be a great dinner guest.

Psychopaths are pathological liars who crave stimulation, are sexually 
promiscuous and unable to control their behavior. They typically lack realistic 
long-term goals.

They may be master manipulators, but psychopaths have a hard time concealing 
their nature from people trained to use the checklist, Kiehl said. Inevitably, 
they lie, boast or reveal their callousness.

"They can't help themselves," he said.

People who deal with psychopaths have observed another shared quality, one not 
on the checklist or easily measured. There is something different about their 
eyes. The gaze of the psychopath is disquieting, even frightening, and has been 
described as cold or penetrating, empty, reptilian, not quite human.

They lack any depth to their emotions and the ability to connect emotion to 
cognition

"They don't quite get it," Hare said. "There is something missing."

`I Never Hurt People'

In the mid-1990s, in Canadian prisons, Kiehl began to perfect the art of using 
the checklist to score prisoners, who were told their interviews would not be 
shared with law enforcement authorities. In training tapes he recorded, Kiehl, 
a burly former football player, maintains a steady voice as he peppers subjects 
with short questions. In one tape, a 30-something man with long sideburns and 
thinning hair, dressed in a green windbreaker, answers Kiehl's questions with 
an easy smile, a collegial, confiding, "just between us boys" air.

"Sideburns" confesses to bootlegging cigarettes, petty thefts.

"Do you have a temper?" asks Kiehl, who is off camera.

"Oh yes, explosive," Sideburns answers.

"Do you assault people?"

"Oh, I never physically hurt people."

"What happens when you lose your temper?"

"Oh, I can just lose it. Like the time I killed my girlfriend."

The blurted truth comes quick as a cobra strike. There is nothing in the man's 
face or voice to suggest he even recognizes he had told a lie about hurting 
people. When he relates how he held his girlfriend's head under water in a 
bathtub, there is no hesitation or pause in his voice, no change in tenor or 
inflection that hints he is aware the interview has shifted to a different 
moral ground.

"Police said she was already unconscious," he says, as if the statement 
absolves him of wrongdoing.

He changes the subject to all the stolen electronic equipment he gave the 
woman.

For the first time, Sideburns seems a bit worked up.

When you steal electronics, he asks, "Do you know how hard it is to find remote 
controls?"

Spotting The Predators

Warning the public about the dangers of such psychopaths is a passion for Hare, 
author of the book "Without Conscience."

Hare said zebras and other animals congregating around an African waterhole 
know to scatter when they see a lion.

"There you can identify a predator, but psychopaths don't wear bells around 
their necks," Hare said.

Psychopaths tend to thrive "where the rules are obscure, where there is chaotic 
upheaval,"  Hare said. "Countries such as Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union after 
their breakups were a warm niche for psychopaths, who simply moved in to take 
advantage of the chaos."

A corporation that is disorganized and growing quickly offers the same type of 
fertile environment, Hare said. In a book tentatively titled "Snakes in Suits" 
to be published next spring, Hare blames scandals such as the destruction of 
Enron at least partly on a category of psychopaths who typically know how to 
stay out of jail.

Hare's checklist today has provided a generally accepted definition of the 
psychopath, the "who" and the "what" that allows researchers from different 
disciplines to study the phenomenon.

Hare says his checklist has been both abused and underused. He railed against a 
judge in Texas, for instance, who has sentenced defendants to death because he 
has deemed them psychopaths, even though they were never examined by people 
trained to use his checklist.

But Hare also says many parole boards underutilize psychopathic evaluations 
when considering whether to release a prisoner.

How a prisoner scores on the 20 characteristics of Hare's checklist "is the 
best predictor of recidivism that we have," said Diana Fishbein, a researcher 
at RTI International of Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

About half of prisoners released from jail wind up back there within three 
years, Kiehl said. The number skyrockets to at least 4 in 5 when the prisoner 
is a psychopath. And psychopaths seem to be immune to any sort of therapy that 
might better those odds.

One study explored whether group therapy might lower the recidivism rate of 
psychopaths. Sixty percent of untreated psychopaths in the study were back in 
jail after a year. But 80 percent of psychopaths who participated in group 
therapy were convicted of another offense in the same period.

"They used the sessions to learn how to exploit the emotions of others," Kiehl 
said.

Some people debate the value of using the checklist to determine sentences for 
individual killers. The recidivism rate is not 100 percent for psychopaths, 
noted Dr. Michael Norko, director of the Whiting Forensic Division of 
Connecticut Valley Hospital. And using the checklist is akin to doing a DNA 
analysis for an incurable disease. What are you going to do if you find it?

"It would be different if we had a pill for psychopathy," Norko said.

Devoid Of Emotion

Kiehl says he believes that brain imaging studies can pinpoint the biological 
cause of psychopathic behavior and possibly lead to a remedy, perhaps even a 
psychopathy pill.

"If we could develop a treatment for psychopaths, it would alleviate an 
enormous burden on society," said Kiehl, who is director of the clinical 
cognitive neuroscience laboratory at the institute's Olin Neuropsychiatry 
Research Center.

He has a theory of where in the brain to look. His previous work showed a 
peculiar pattern of brain activity in psychopaths when they were presented with 
different words or images.

Using both an electroencephalograph (EEG), which measures electrical activity 
in the brain, and functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, which measure 
oxygen use, Kiehl found striking differences between psychopaths and 
non-psychopaths in the activity of several regions of the brain. He is 
particularly intrigued by abnormalities in psychopaths' brains, in what he 
calls the paralimbic system, a loose organization of brain structures involved 
in processing emotion.

In most people, that picture of a distraught woman holding a dead child will 
trigger heightened activity in these brain areas, including a region called the 
amygdale. In contrast, the brains of criminal psychopaths respond much as they 
would to any inanimate object.

Kiehl and other scientists have also found heightened brain activity in the 
frontal cortex of psychopaths when they are presented with emotionally charged 
words or images. The frontal cortex helps govern reason and planning.

Some scientists have interpreted that as evidence that the root of psychopathic 
behavior lies in the frontal cortex. But Kiehl and others see it differently. 
People with injuries to the frontal cortex do not exhibit the goal-directed 
aggression or callousness often associated with psychopaths, Kiehl says.

Kiehl believes psychopaths enlist areas of the frontal cortex to process 
information that the brain usually processes in its emotional centers.

On his desk at the Institute of Living, Kiehl keeps a replica of a railroad 
spike, a memento of an 1848 accident that befell a Vermont construction foreman 
named Phineas Gage. An explosion drove a 3-foot-7-inch tamping iron through 
Gage's brain. The sheer improbability of his survival - the tamping iron 
entered under his cheekbone, exited the top of his skull and landed 25 feet 
away - assured Gage a place in the history of medical oddities. But the changes 
in his behavior made him famous. Gage, who had been a reliable worker and a 
sober, churchgoing, devoted family man, became an irresponsible cad, ignoring 
his wife, children and job.

In short, he acted like a psychopath. Kiehl notes that the tamping iron damaged 
the paralimbic system in Gage's brain, the same areas that seem abnormal in the 
brain's of psychopaths.

Kiehl's theory explains, for instance, why psychopaths seldom seem to 
experience anxiety or fear in the same way normal people do and why they do not 
fully comprehend the meaning of emotions such as love or compassion.

"For a psychopath, it is all cognition," Kiehl said.

His lab has received federal grants totaling $6 million for the study of 
psychopathy. In one study, he is investigating whether one reason that drug 
abuse treatment programs have a high failure rate in prisoners is because so 
many psychopaths are enrolled. Psychopaths do not respond to traditional 
treatment and Kiehl suspects that, while psychopaths are heavy drug and alcohol 
abusers, they do not develop the same sort of dependency on drugs as 
non-psychopaths.

To test his hypothesis, he hopes to persuade Connecticut correctional officials 
to allow his team to study teen and adult inmates.

If Kiehl's ideas are borne out by research, they may suggest ways to change 
psychopathic behavior. For now, Hare believes that any therapeutic approach 
must appeal to the psychopath's own self-interest because treatments based on 
an appreciation of somebody else's feelings are bound to fail.

Understanding the underlying physiology of the disorder could lead to a drug 
that might actually restore emotional responses and cure psychopaths, said Dr. 
James Blair, an expert in psychopathy and a researcher at the National 
Institute of Mental Health, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Blair points out that the symptoms of psychopathy are almost exactly the 
opposite of symptoms of people who suffer from post-traumatic stress and 
anxiety disorders - conditions for which treatments now exist.

Roots Of Morality

Kiehl hopes that by explaining how psychopaths' minds work, he can help arm 
society with the tools to deal with them. One of his research associates, Jana 
Schaich-Borg, also wants to answer a more fundamental question: Why are most 
humans moral in the first place?

If Kiehl is correct that a failure of the emotional processing centers of the 
brain is at the root of psychopathy, then it follows that moral behavior might 
arise in those same areas. If a pill could create emotional responses in a 
psychopath, could such a drug also give him a moral core?

Schaich-Borg plans to investigate whether psychopaths feel disgust - or the 
deeply ingrained reaction that people in most cultures have about, say, 
handling feces or having sex with a sibling. She speculates that the areas of 
the brain that govern disgust in a normal person may also play a role in the 
formation of more sophisticated moral beliefs, which are absent in psychopaths.

For years, the link between instincts and moral decision-making has been 
inferred from fictional ethical scenarios. Schaich-Borg offers one example:

Five people are tied up on a railroad track and a locomotive barrels toward 
them. You can save them, but only by pulling a lever and switching the 
locomotive to a different track, where two other people are tied.

Do you pull the lever?

People answer instinctively, and study after study shows that they are split 
right down the middle and argue their positions passionately.

"Some people say they won't play God under any circumstance," said 
Schaich-Borg, who said she personally would pull the lever.

But what if you could save the people on both sides of the railway spur by 
shoving a single man in front of the train?

"Nearly everybody says no," she said.

But, she said, a psychopath wouldn't care a whit whether the lever was pulled 
or not. She wants to compare what happens in people's brains when the question 
is asked.

In the pattern of neural activity, she believes she may see the outline of 
human morality. And those imaging scans may illustrate why predators such as 
Ted Bundy are a rarity, rather than a rule in society.

Kiehl says most people probably make moral choices using both rational and 
emotional parts of their brain. But he and Hare both say much more research 
needs to be done to shed light into the abyss of the psychopathic mind.

"Unless we understand what makes these people tick," Hare says, "we are all 
going to suffer."

A discussion of this story with Courant Staff Writer William Hathaway is 
scheduled to be shown on New England Cable News each hour Monday between 9 a.m. 
and noon.


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 23:12:09 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 18:12:09 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'The Man Everybody Knew: Bruce Barton and the
 Making of Modern America,' by Richard M. Fried
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252110000.14301@panix3.panix.com>

'The Man Everybody Knew: Bruce Barton and the Making of Modern America,' by 
Richard M. Fried
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/books/review/18kazin.html

[I read this bestselling book about how Jesus was a master salesman about 
thirty years ago and remember it fondly as a lesson that each generation makes 
Christ over into its own image. I am glad the book is being remembered. I 
should not be surprised if Mr. Mencken had the same reaction as I did, but I 
haven't found any trace of his commentary.]

    Review by MICHAEL KAZIN

    THE MAN EVERYBODY KNEW
    Bruce Barton and the Making of Modern America.
    By Richard M. Fried.
    Illustrated. 286 pp. Ivan R. Dee. $27.50.

    IF consumerism is our secular religion, then copywriters are its 
evangelists. No
    one in the golden days of the American advertising industry preached the 
faith
    more fervently or effectively than Bruce Barton. The affable son of a 
liberal
    Protestant minister, he created much of the copy that propelled Batten, 
Barton,
    Durstine & Osborn, the agency he helped found, to the top of its industry 
during
    the 1920's.

    Barton always believed the best ads were ones that depicted corporations as 
the
    fount of services that transcended the particular product on offer. For 
General
    Motors, he composed the inspiring tale of a doctor whose reliable auto sped 
him
    to the bedside of a failing young girl. One historian has labeled such ads
    essential to "creating the corporate soul," and Barton pursued it with a 
singular
    passion.

    But it was his selling of Jesus that transformed the ad man into a 
celebrity. In
    1925, Barton published "The Man Nobody Knows," which quickly became an 
enormous
    best seller - and one of the most easily ridiculed examples of pop theology 
ever
    written. He urged readers to banish the image of the long-haired, 
"sissified"
    figure who gazed woefully from Victorian lithographs. Barton's Jesus was a
    muscular "outdoor man" and a "sociable" fellow in demand at Jerusalem's best
    banquet tables. More to the point, he was a masterly entrepreneur. Hadn't 
this
    humble carpenter "picked up 12 men from the bottom ranks of business and 
forged
    them into an organization that conquered the world"? From his father, Barton 
had
    learned that a "preacher is really a salesman." The son simply reversed the
    nouns.

    On the wings of his prosperity and fame, Barton rose to the inner circle of 
the
    Republican Party. He helped to write major speeches for President Calvin 
Coolidge
    and to devise the campaign of his successor, Herbert Hoover. Barton refused 
to
    become depressed in the months after the stock market crashed. "Anyone who 
looks
    gloomily at the business prospects of this country in 1930 is going broke," 
he
    predicted.

    In the late 30's, Barton proved that he could also sell himself. He was 
twice
    elected to the House, by huge margins, from the East Side of Manhattan. Down 
at
    the Capitol, Barton warned, in a tone of atypical grimness, that a third 
term for
    Franklin Roosevelt would mean "the end of freedom." In return, Roosevelt 
helped
    sink his 1940 campaign for the Senate. Barton retreated to his agency. Until 
his
    death a quarter-century later, he surfaced mostly as an elder statesman for
    anodyne causes like fighting heart disease and urging brotherhood between
    Christians and Jews.

    It is surprising to learn this is the first biography of Barton, whose name 
was
    indeed once familiar to any American who read a daily paper. Richard M. 
Fried, a
    professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, provides a
    suitably brisk, anecdote-filled account, which focuses on how the master
    publicist's clever optimism suffused his words - whether they were designed 
to
    promote Christ, a corporation or the Republican Party.

    Fried concludes that Barton was a more ambivalent figure than he seemed to 
his
    contemporaries. He extolled consumerism, yet fretted about the loss of the 
old
    "values of work and self-restraint." He wrote homilies to big business, yet
    increasingly viewed ads as superfluous and banal. Unfortunately, Fried 
doesn't
    attempt to make sense of these contradictions or to justify the clich? of 
the
    subtitle. The question is not whether Barton helped "make modern America" 
but to
    what purpose.

    Perhaps the absence of a previous biography reflects the fact that those who
    succeed at advertising and public relations merely hold up gilded mirrors to
    society rather than helping to improve it. Bruce Barton contributed his 
drops of
    wisdom to an onrushing tide. The man whom everybody once knew may also have 
been
    someone neither business nor politics nor religion really needed

    Michael Kazin, who teaches history at Georgetown University, is the author 
of the
    forthcoming book "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan."

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 23:12:22 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 18:12:22 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Remote and Poked, Anthropology's Dream Tribe
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252110100.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Remote and Poked, Anthropology's Dream Tribe
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/international/africa/18tribe.html
[This recalls the Pilgrims of Massachusetts in 1620 being greeted by an Indian 
who spoke English, evidently learned from the earlier settlers at Jamestown.]

    By MARC LACEY

    LEWOGOSO LUKUMAI, Kenya - The rugged souls living in this remote desert 
enclave
    have been poked, pinched and plucked, all in the name of science. It is not
    always easy, they say, to be the subject of a human experiment.

    "I thought I was being bewitched," Koitaton Garawale, a weathered cattleman, 
said
    of the time a researcher plucked a few hairs from atop his head. "I was 
afraid.
    I'd never seen such a thing before."

    Another member of the tiny and reclusive Ariaal tribe, Leketon Lenarendile,
    scanned a handful of pictures laid before him by a researcher whose unstated 
goal
    was to gauge whether his body image had been influenced by outside media. 
"The
    girls like the ones like this," he said, repeating the exercise later and
    pointing to a rather slender man much like himself. "I don't know why they 
were
    asking me that," he said.

    Anthropologists and other researchers have long searched the globe for 
people
    isolated from the modern world. The Ariaal, a nomadic community of about 
10,000
    people in northern Kenya, have been seized on by researchers since the 
1970's,
    after one - an anthropologist, Elliot Fratkin - stumbled upon them and began
    publishing his accounts of their lives in academic journals.

    Other researchers have done studies on everything from their cultural 
practices
    to their testosterone levels. National Geographic focused on the Ariaal in 
1999,
    in an article on vanishing cultures.

    But over the years, more and more Ariaal - like the Masai and the Turkana in
    Kenya and the Tuaregs and Bedouins elsewhere in Africa - are settling down. 
Many
    have migrated closer to Marsabit, the nearest town, which has cellphone 
reception
    and even sporadic Internet access.

    The scientists continue to arrive in Ariaal country, with their notebooks, 
tents
    and bizarre queries, but now they document a semi-isolated people straddling
    modern life and more traditional ways.

    "The era of finding isolated tribal groups is probably over," said Dr. 
Fratkin, a
    professor at Smith College who has lived with the Ariaal for long stretches 
and
    is regarded by some of them as a member of the tribe.

    For Benjamin C. Campbell, a biological anthropologist at Boston University 
who
    was introduced to the Ariaal by Dr. Fratkin, their way of life, diet and 
cultural
    practices make them worthy of study.

    Other academics agree. Local residents say they have been asked over the 
years
    how many livestock they own (many), how many times they have had diarrhea in 
the
    last month (often) and what they ate the day before yesterday (usually meat, 
milk
    or blood).

    Ariaal women have been asked about the work they do, which seems to exceed 
that
    of the men, and about local marriage customs, which compel their prospective
    husbands to hand over livestock to their parents before the ceremony can 
take
    place.

    The wedding day is one of pain as well as joy since Ariaal women - girls, 
really
    - have their genitals cut just before they marry and delay sex until they
    recuperate. They consider their breasts important body parts, but nothing to 
be
    covered up.

    The researchers may not know this, but the Ariaal have been studying them 
all
    these years as well.

    The Ariaal note that foreigners slather white liquid on their very white 
skin to
    protect them from the sun, and that many favor short pants that show off 
their
    legs and the clunky boots on their feet. Foreigners often partake of the 
local
    food but drink water out of bottles and munch on strange food in wrappers 
between
    meals, the Ariaal observe.

    The scientists leave tracks as well as memories behind. For instance, it is 
not
    uncommon to see nomads in T-shirts bearing university logos, gifts from 
departing
    academics.

    In Lewogoso Lukumai, a circle of makeshift huts near the Ndoto Mountains, 
nomads
    rushed up to a visitor and asked excitedly in the Samburu language, "Where's
    Elliot?"

    They meant Dr. Fratkin, who describes in his book "Ariaal Pastoralists of 
Kenya"
    how in 1974 he stumbled upon the Ariaal, who had been little known until 
then.
    With money from the University of London and the Smithsonian Institution, he 
was
    traveling north from Nairobi in search of isolated agro-pastoralist groups 
in
    Ethiopia. But a coup toppled Haile Selassie, then the emperor, and the 
border
    between the countries was closed.

    So as he sat in a bar in Marsabit, a boy approached and, mistaking him for a
    tourist, asked if he wanted to see the elephants in a nearby forest. When 
the
    aspiring anthropologist declined, the boy asked if he wanted to see a 
traditional
    ceremony at a local village instead. That was Dr. Fratkin's introduction to 
the
    Ariaal, who share cultural traits with the Samburu and Rendille tribes of 
Kenya.

    Soon after, he was living with the Ariaal, learning their language and 
customs
    while fighting off mosquitoes and fleas in his hut of sticks covered with 
grass.

    The Ariaal wear sandals made from old tires and many still rely on their 
cows,
    camels and goats to survive. Drought is a regular feature of their world, 
coming
    in regular intervals and testing their durability.

    "I was young when Elliot first arrived," recalled an Ariaal elder known as
    Lenampere in Lewogoso Lukumai, a settlement that moves from time to time to 
a new
    patch of sand. "He came here and lived with us. He drank milk and blood with 
us.
    After him, so many others came."

    Over the years, the Ariaal have had hairs pulled not just from their heads, 
but
    also chins and chests. They have spat into vials to provide saliva samples. 
They
    have been quizzed about how often they urinate. Sometimes the questioning 
has
    become even more intimate.

    Mr. Garawale recalls a visiting anthropologist measuring his arms, back and
    stomach with an odd contraption and then asking him how often he got 
erections
    and whether his sex life was satisfactory. "It was so embarrassing," 
recalled the
    father of three, breaking out in giggles even years later.

    Not all African tribes are as welcoming to researchers, even those with the
    necessary permits from government bureaucrats. But the Ariaal have a 
reputation
    for cooperating - in exchange, that is, for pocket money.

    "They think I'm stupid for asking dumb questions," said Daniel Lemoille,
    headmaster of the school in Songa, a village outside of Marsabit for Ariaal
    nomads who have settled down, and a frequent research assistant for visiting
    professors. "You have to try to explain that these same questions are asked 
to
    people all over the world and that their answers will help advance science."

    The researchers arriving in Africa by the droves, probing every imaginable 
issue,
    every now and then leave controversy in their wake. In 2004, for instance, a
    Kenyan virologist sued researchers from Britain for taking blood samples out 
of
    the country that he said had been obtained from a Nairobi orphanage for
    H.I.V.-positive children without government permission.

    The Ariaal have no major gripes about the studies, although the local chief 
in
    Songa, Stephen Lesseren, who wore a Boston University T-shirt the other day, 
said
    he wished their work would lead to more tangible benefits for his people.

    "We don't mind helping people get their Ph.D.'s," he said. "But once they 
get
    their Ph.D.'s, many of them go away. They don't send us their reports. What 
have
    we achieved from the plucking of our hair? We want feedback. We want
    development."

    Even when conflicts break out in the area, as happened this year as members 
of
    rival tribes slaughtered each other, victimizing the Ariaal, the research 
does
    not cease. With tensions still high, John G. Galaty, an anthropologist at 
McGill
    University in Toronto who studies ethnic conflicts, arrived in northern 
Kenya to
    question them.

    In a study in The International Journal of Impotence Research, Dr. Campbell 
also
    found that Ariaal men with many wives showed less erectile dysfunction than 
did
    men of the same age with fewer spouses.

    Dr. Campbell's body image study, published in The Journal of Cross-Cultural
    Psychology this year, also found that Ariaal men are much more consistent 
than
    men in other parts of the world in their views of the average man's body and 
what
    they think women want.

    Dr. Campbell came across no billboards or international magazines in Ariaal
    country and only one television in a local restaurant that played CNN, 
leading
    him to contend that Ariaal men's views of their bodies were less affected by
    media images of burly male models with six-pack stomachs and rippling 
chests.

    To test his theories, a nonresearcher without a Ph.D. showed a group of 
Ariaal
    men a copy of Men's Health magazine full of pictures of impossibly 
well-sculpted
    men and women. The men looked on with rapt attention and admired the 
chiseled
    forms.

    "That one, I like," said one nomad who was up in his years, pointing at a 
photo
    of a curvy woman who was clearly a regular at the gym.

    Another old-timer gazed at the bulging pectoral muscles of a male 
bodybuilder in
    the magazine and posed a question that got everybody talking. Was it a man, 
he
    asked, or a very, very strong woman?


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 23:14:41 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 18:14:41 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Exposing the Economics Behind Everyday Behavior
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252110220.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Exposing the Economics Behind Everyday Behavior
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/business/yourmoney/18shelf.html

[These are articles stacked up, as I was complying with Howard's request 
to keep my posting down to seven a day. I'm not breaking my Gregorian New 
Calendar New Year's resolutions. Sorry about the bad formatting of some of 
these articles. I was using different software and can get the lines right 
only with a lot of extra work.]

    Off the Shelf
    By ROGER LOWENSTEIN

    A FUNNY thing seems to be happening to economics writing: it's getting 
better. In
    recent books like "Freakonomics" and "The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global
    Economy," economists have taken it upon themselves to explain something of 
how
    the world works. They even tell little stories.

    What interests Tim Harford, the author of "The Undercover Economist," are 
the
    stories behind the myriad little transactions that take place every day. Do 
you
    drive to work or ride a subway? Do you buy coffee en route? Is it a 
high-priced,
    frothy variety, or something plainer? And if it's the first kind, why is it 
so
    darn expensive, when the incremental cost of steaming a little milk amounts 
to
    only pennies?

    One question that interests Mr. Harford is: What will persuade you to fork 
over
    $26 for a copy of "The Undercover Economist" (Oxford University Press)? He 
seems
    to believe that witty, bracing prose will do the trick. "I would like to 
thank
    you for buying this book, but if you're anything like me you haven't bought 
it at
    all," he begins. "Instead, you've carried it into the bookstore cafe and 
even now
    are sipping a cappuccino in comfort while you decide whether it's worth your
    money."

    While we're on the subject of that cappuccino, Mr. Harford explains that
    Starbucks would like to charge each of us exactly what we are willing to 
pay, but
    that it would simply not do for it to advertise "Cappuccino for the Lavish, 
$3,"
    and "Cappuccino for the Thrifty, $1." It has to be clever about it. 
Something
    like, "Hot Chocolate, $2.20; Caffe Mocha, $2.75; 20 oz. Cappuccino, $3.40." 
To
    the customer, the choice of drinks is what matters. To Starbucks, it is the
    choice of prices.

    Similarly, when Disney World in Florida offers discounts to people who live 
in
    the Orlando area, Mr. Harford observes, "They're not making a statement 
about the
    grinding poverty of the Sunshine State." They are making an educated guess 
that
    out-of-towners, who visit only once in a while, are willing to pay more than
    people from nearby.

    The author, a Briton who lives in Washington and who writes the cheeky Dear
    Economist column for The Financial Times, says that "there is a story to 
tell" in
    nearly every such interaction.

    For instance, Whole Foods lures you to spend more by offering distinct and -
    relative to what the competition offers - more expensive foods. It sells 
organic
    broccoli in addition to the customary industrial-strength variety, and it is
    careful never to display them side by side, because you would then notice 
the
    difference in price. Whole Foods wants you to be thinking only about the
    incremental good health that organic broccoli presumably confers.

    "The economist's job," Mr. Harford says, "is to shine a spotlight on the
    underlying process." Sounds reasonable, but that is not what most economists
    actually do. Most professional economists are paid to predict the future. 
This is
    why so much of economics writing is dull - and pretty silly. No one can 
predict
    the future, least of all an economist.

    Mr. Harford fancies himself to be more like a detective - an "undercover"
    economist. Perhaps he is less policeman than psychologist. Psychologists are 
not
    much good at predictions, either, but they do help us understand behavior, 
and
    recognize what sort of social settings induce people to behave better or 
worse.

    Just so, Mr. Harford's undercover op is a creature of incentives. Recalling 
that
    in his university days, student clubs allowed unlimited drinking in return 
for an
    upfront fee, he notes that these encouraged bingeing because the cost of 
each
    additional drink was zero. What matters in terms of limiting intake is the
    marginal cost of each new drink.

    So, too, with reducing automobile traffic: it's not the average cost per 
trip
    that matters, but the cost of getting into your car each additional time.

    To an economist, the truly interesting decisions are those that occur at the
    margin - the point at which one employee more is hired, one dollar more is
    invested, one cappuccino (on top of all those you have already imbibed) is 
drunk.
    Mr. Harford explains this central concept by returning to the source - 
namely,
    the classical economist David Ricardo's explication of how the yield from a
    marginal piece of land determined rents in pre-industrial England.

    The author is good at showing how such basic concepts apply across a complex
    modern economy. After observing that rents in London today are higher thanks 
to
    the surrounding Green Belt, which cuts off development, he notes that as an
    undercover economist, "you start to see 'green belts' of one kind or another 
all
    over the place." For instance, professional associations that restrict entry
    into, say, medicine serve as green belts that shield doctors from 
competition.

    NONE of this is the least bit unconventional. Though the author enjoys being
    politically incorrect ("sweatshops are good news," he offers tartly), he is 
not
    economically incorrect. In fact, lively presentation aside, he has written a
    pretty standard primer, one that defends free markets to a fault and attacks
    government as the source of just about everything bad.

    Predictably, he says that the best way to limit pollution is through 
free-market
    incentives; he then goes overboard by suggesting that environmental debates 
are
    mere "moral posturing." Yet without some discussion first, it is unlikely 
that we
    would have developed any incentives. And some of his arguments are far too 
brief
    to carry their intended weight. The author cannot really expect to explain 
"Why
    Poor Countries Are Poor" in a single chapter, the highlight of which is an
    interview with a cabdriver in Cameroon.

    A final criticism is that too many of Mr. Harford's interesting details lack 
a
    source or a footnote. He gets Amazon's stock-price history wrong. (The 
author
    says that during the dot-com bust, it fell below its initial offering price;
    adjusting for splits, it never did.) Many other details lack the specificity 
or
    the attribution to enable one to check. But these are quibbles. For those of 
you,
    even now, still stuck in the bookstore cafe, this is a book to savor.


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  1 23:16:41 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 18:16:41 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Robert Luce, 83,
 Former Editor And Publisher of New Republic, Is Dead
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312203140.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Robert Luce, 83, Former Editor And Publisher of New Republic, Is Dead
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/arts/18luce.html

[This is more personal than anything else, but I thought you might like to 
know a little more about your Checker of Premises and his wonderful wife.]

Sarah worked for Luce from 1973-75. At the time, it was the largest 
independent book publisher, with about ten books a year, in Washington, 
D.C. How things have changed since then! Their books were distributed by 
David McKay (which has the honor of publishing Walt Whitman's _Leaves of 
Grass_), and back then before the Internet, getting distributed was 
usually the only path to success. Luce was bought by Robert van Roijen, 
and Sarah worked directly under the late Joseph J. Binns.

Three notable books are:

Edward J. Gilfillan's _Migration to the Stars_ (1975). Though it was a 
better book, I thought, than Gerard K. O'Neill's _The High Frontier_, the 
latter book got thoroughly promoted, went to paperback, and became widely 
read.

Reginald R. Gerig's _Famous Pianists and Their Technique_ (also 1975), a 
thorough compendium of pianists, is held by 939 libraries covered by 
WorldCat, which covers mostly the United States. It is still in print, $28 
for the paperback, and rates four out of five stars at Amazon.

Robert W. Whitaker's _A Plague on Both Your Houses_ (1976) was the first 
popular book to apply the Public Choice perspective to American politics 
throughout its history and did not hesitate to describe the liberal Human 
Betterment Industry as self-interested.

After van Roijen retired, the aforementioned Joseph J. Binns established 
his own company under that name. I found a copy of Lawrence R. Brown, _The 
Might of the West_ (NY: Ivan Obolensky, 1963), my very favorite book, a 
panorama of world history from a macrohistorical perspective (Spengler 
without the mysticism), and have read it a dozen times. Though Joe 
disagreed with its politics, he found the book provocative and reprinted 
it in 1979. Used copies of this underground classic on Bookfinder go for 
$32-$100.

----------

By MONICA POTTS

Robert B. Luce, a former editor and publisher of The New Republic who 
founded his own book publishing house, died on Nov. 29 in Boca Raton, Fla. 
He was 83.

He died in a nursing home, his family said. Mr. Luce, known as Bob, began 
his career working for magazines, taking over at The New Republic in 1963. 
He edited a book compilation for the magazine's 50th anniversary, which 
was published in 1964.

In the early 1960's, he also founded his own general-interest book 
publishing house, Robert B. Luce Inc., the first of its kind in 
Washington.

Mr. Luce left The New Republic in 1966, sold his publishing house and 
returned to New York City, eventually working for Time-Life Books as 
director of editorial planning; his family said he was only distantly 
related to Henry R. Luce, the founder of Time-Life. He also worked for 
several other organizations, including Metromedia Inc. and Harcourt Brace.

He moved from New York and began teaching journalism in 1997 at Florida 
Atlantic University, which he left in 2001.

Robert Bonner Luce was born in 1922 in Gross Pointe, Mich. He served in 
the Army Air Forces in World War II and graduated from Antioch College in 
Ohio with a bachelor's degree in economics in 1946.

Mr. Luce is survived by his wife, Iris, of Boca Raton, Fla.; three 
daughters, Jennifer Luce-Reynolds of Boulder, Colo.; Ann Luce Auerbach of 
New York City; and Jan Luce Nance of Burbank, Calif.; two sisters, Gwen 
Briggs of Rowayton, Conn., and Jean Davis of Ann Arbor, Mich.; one 
brother, Chris, of Florida; and four grandsons. Another daughter, Kathryn, 
died in 1992.


From shovland at mindspring.com  Mon Jan  2 16:14:04 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 08:14:04 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] Great Pictures  for all you animal lovers ! ! !
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHIEEJCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>


-----Original Message-----
From: LELNAC1947 at aol.com [mailto:LELNAC1947 at aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:20 PM
To: LELNAC1947 at aol.com
Subject: Re: Great Pictures for all you animal lovers ! ! !








These are great.....most new, a few reruns.....guaranteed to make you smile
and go ahhhh!!









































































































































































































                          __________________________________________________
____
                          Live everyday with enjoyment we don't know what
tomorrow will give us.

















Forwarded By:

Lee Utley

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From shovland at mindspring.com  Mon Jan  2 17:02:36 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 09:02:36 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] CDC warning
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHKEEKCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent
strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is contracted through
dangerous and high-risk behavior. The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim and
pronounced "gonna re-elect him."

Many victims contracted it in 2004, after having been screwed for the past
four years. Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include:
anti-social personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic
overtones, extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to incorporate new
information, pronounced xenophobia and paranoia, inability to accept
responsibility for own actions, cowardice masked by misplaced bravado,
uncontrolled facial smirking, ignorance of geography and history, tendencies
toward evangelical theocracy, categorical all-or-nothing behavior.

Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed at how this destructive disease
originated only a few years ago from a bush found in Texas.



From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  2 20:55:20 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 15:55:20 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NZ Herald: Homeopathy Is Bunk,
	says Professor Who Put It To Test 
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252110480.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Homeopathy Is Bunk, says Professor Who Put It To Test
The New Zealand Herald
December 19, 2005 Monday

Homeopathy is bunk, says professor who put it to test London - Millions of 
people use it to deal with illnesses ranging from asthma to migraines. Prince 
Charles believes it is the answer to many of the evils of modern life. But now 
Britain's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst of Exeter 
University in south-west England, has denounced homeopathy as ineffective.

"Homeopathic remedies don't work," he told the Observer. "Study after study has 
shown it is simply the purest form of placebo. You may as well take a glass of 
water than a homeopathic medicine."

Chiropractic, which involves spine manipulation to treat illnesses, and the 
laying on of hands to cure patients are equally invalid, he says.

His views and his studies have provoked furious reactions.  Chiropractors and 
homeopaths have written in droves to denounce him. But now the scourge of 
alternative medicine says he is going to have to quit because Exeter will no 
longer support him or his department. The university denied the charge.

"Professor Ernst's department has enough money to go on for a couple of more 
years," said a spokesman. "We are still trying to raise cash." In 1993, 
Professor Ernst, then a professor of rehabilitation medicine in Vienna, took 
the job to bring scientific rigour to the study of alternative medicines, an 
approach that has made him a highly controversial figure in the field. An 
example is provided by his study of arnica, a standard homeopathic treatment 
for bruising.

"We arranged for patients after surgery to be given arnica or a placebo," he 
said. "They didn't know which they were getting. It made no difference. They 
got better at the same rate."

Professor Ernst also found no evidence homeopathy helped with asthma, which is 
said to be particularly responsive to such treatments.

Britain has five homeopathic hospitals, which are funded by the country's 
health service (NHS).

"The treatments do no good," said Professor Ernst. "But the long interview - 
about an hour-and-a-half - carried out by an empathetic practitioner during 
diagnosis may explain why people report improvements in their health." The 
incredibly dilute solutions used by homeopaths also make no sense, he added.

"If it were true, we would have to tear up all our physics and chemistry 
textbooks."

Professor Ernst insists he is a supporter of complementary medicines. "No other 
centre in the world has produced more positive results than we have to support 
complementary medicine," he said. "Herbal medicine, for instance, can do good. 
If I was mildly depressed, I think St John's wort would be a good treatment. It 
has fewer side-effects than Prozac.

"Acupuncture seems to work for some conditions and there are relaxing 
techniques, including hypnotherapy, that can be effective. "These should not be 
used on their own, but as complements to standard medicines."

Professor Ernst has been attacked by chiropractors and homeopaths.  The latter 
point to studies they say show that most patients they treat are satisfied and 
cite an analysis in the Lancet of 89 trials in which their medicines were found 
to be effective.

The Smallwood report, commissioned by Prince Charles, calls for more 
complementary medicines to be given on the NHS.

Like with like

* Homeopathy is a controversial system of alternative medicine more than 300 
years old.

* It calls for treating "like with like", a doctrine referred to as the "Law of 
Similars". The practitioner considers all a patient's symptoms then chooses as 
a remedy a substance that produces a similar set of symptoms in healthy 
subjects. The remedy is usually given in tiny concentrations.

* Many of its claims are at odds with modern medicine and the scientific 
method.


From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  2 20:55:31 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 15:55:31 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Light Planet: Book of Mormon Literature
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252111090.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Book of Mormon Literature
http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/basic/bom/literature_eom.htm

               by Richard Dilworth Rust and Donald W. Parry

    Although understated as literature in its clear and plain language,
    the Book of Mormon exhibits a wide variety of literary forms,
    including intricate Hebraic poetry, memorable narratives,
    rhetorically effective sermons, diverse letters, allegory,
    figurative language, imagery, symbolic types, and wisdom
    literature. In recent years these aspects of Joseph Smith's 1829
    English translation have been increasingly appreciated, especially
    when compared with biblical and other ancient forms of literature.

    There are many reasons to study the Book of Mormon as literature.
    Rather than being "formless," as claimed by one critic (Bernardd
    DeVoto, American Mercury 19 [1930]:5), the Book of Mormon is both
    coherent and polished (although not obtrusively so). It tells "a
    densely compact and rapidly moving story that interweaves dozens of
    plots with and inexhaustible fertility of invention and an uncanny
    consistency that is never caught in a slip or contradiction" (CWHN
    7:138).

    Despite its small working vocabulary of about 2,225 root words in
    English, the book distills much human experience and contact with
    the divine. It presents its themes artfully through simple yet
    profound imagery, direct yet complex discourses, and
    straightforward yet intricate structures. To read the Book of
    Mormon as literature is to discover how such literary devices are
    used to convey the messages of its content. Attention to form,
    diction figurative language, and rhetorical techniques increases
    sensitivity to the structure of the text and appreciation of the
    work of the various authors. The stated purpose of the Book of
    Mormon is to show the Lamanites, a remnant of the House of Israel,
    the covenants made with their fathers, and to convince Jew and
    Gentile that Jesus is the Christ (see Book of Mormon Title Page).
    Mormon selected materials and literarily shaped the book to present
    these messages in a stirring and memorable way.

    While the discipline of identifying and evaluating literary
    features in the Book of Mormon is very young and does not supplant
    a spiritual reading of the text, those analyzing the book from this
    perspective find it a work of immediacy that shows as well as tells
    as great literature usually does. It no longer fits Mark Twain's
    definition of a classic essentially s a book everyone talks about
    but no one reads; rather, it is a work that "wears you out before
    you wear it out" (J. Welch, "Study, Faith, and the Book of Mormon,"
    BYU 1987-88 Devotional and Fireside Speeches, p. 148. [Provo, Utah,
    1988]). It is increasingly seen as a unique work that beautifully
    and compellingly reveals and speaks to the essential human
    condition.

    POETRY. Found embedded in the narrative of the Book of Mormon,
    poetry provides the best examples of the essential connection
    between form and content in the Book of Mormon. When many inspired
    words of the Lord, angels, and prophets are analyzed according to
    ancient verse forms, their meaning can be more readily perceived.
    These forms include line forms, symmetry, parallelism, and chiastic
    patterns, as defined by Adele Berlin "The Dynamics of Biblical
    Parallelism [Bloomington, Ind., 1985]) and Wilford Watson
    (Classical Hebrew Poetry [Sheffield, 1984]). Book of Mormon texts
    shift smoothly from narrative to poetry, as in this intensifying
    passage:

    But behold, the Spirit hath said this much unto me, saying: Cry
    unto this people, Saying--Repent ye, and prepare the way of the
    Lord, and walk in his paths, which are straight; for behold, the
    kingdom of heaven is at hand, and the Son of God cometh upon the
    face of the earth [Alma 7:9].

    The style of the Book of mormmon has been criticized by some as
    being verbose and redundant, but in most cases these repetitions
    are orderly and effective. For example, parallelisms, which abound
    in the Book of Mormon, serve many functions. They add emphasis to
    twice-repeated concepts and give definition to sharply drawn
    contrasts. A typical synonymous parallelism is in 2 Nephi 9:52:

      Pray unto him continually by day,

      and give thanks unto his holy name by night.

    Nephi's discourse aimed at his obstinate brothers includes a
    sharply antithetical parallelism:

      Ye are swift to do iniquity

      But slow to remember the Lord your God. [1 Ne. 17:45.]

    Several fine examples of chiasmus (an a-b-b-a pattern) are also
    found in the Book of Mormon. In the Psalm of Nephi (2 Ne. 4:15-35),
    the intial appeals to the soul and heart are accompanied by
    negations, while the subsequent mirror uses the heart and soul are
    conjoined with strong affirmations, making the contrasts literarily
    effective and climactic:

    Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin.

      Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my
      soul.

      Do not anger again because of mine enemies.

      Do not slacken my strength because of mine afflictions.

      Rejoice, O my heart, and cry unto the Lord, and say:

    O Lord, I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in
    thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation. [2 Ne. 4;28- 30.]

    Other precise examples of extended chiasmus (a-b-c--c-b-a) are
    readily discernible in Mosiah 5:10-12 and Alma 36:1-30 and
    41:13-15. This literary form in Alma 36 effectively focuses
    attention on the central passage of the chapter (Alma 36:17-18); in
    Alma 41, it fittingly conveys the very notion of restorative
    justice expressed in the passage (cf. Lev. 24:13-23, which likewise
    uses chiasmus to convey a similar notion of justice).

    Another figure known as a fortiori is used to communicate an
    exaggerated sense of multitude, as in Alma 60:22, where a "number
    parallelism" is chiastically enclosed by a twice-repeated phrase:

    Yea, will ye sit in idleness

      while ye are surrounded with thousands of those,

      yea, and tens of thousands,

    who do also sit in idleness?

    Scores of Book of Mormon passages can be analyzed as poetry. They
    range from Lehi's brief desert poems (1 Ne. 2:9-10, a form Hugh
    Nibley identifies as an Arabic quasida) [CWHN 6:270-75] to
    extensive sermons of Jacob, Abinadi, and the risen Jesus (2 Ne.
    6-10; Mosiah 12-16; and 3 Ne. 27).

    NARRATIVE TEXTS. In the Book of Mormon, narrative texts are often
    given vitality by vigorous conflict and impassioned dialogue or
    personal narration. Nephi relates his heroic actions in obtaining
    the brass plates from Laban; Jacob resists the false accusations of
    Sherem, upon whom the judement of the Lord falls; Ammon fights of
    plunderers at the waters of Sebus and wins the confidence of king
    Lamoni; Amulek is confronted by the smooth-tongued lawyer Zeezrom;
    Alma2 and Amulek are preserved while their accusers are crushed by
    collapsing prison walls; Captain Moroni1 engages in a showdown with
    the lamanite chieftain Zerahemnah; Amalickiah rises to power
    through treachery and malevolence; a later prophet named Nephi 2
    reveals to an unbelieving crowd the murder of their chief judge by
    the judge's own brother; and the last two Jaredite kings fight to
    the mutual destruction of their people.

    Seen as a whole, the Book of Mormon is an epic account of the
    history of the Nephite nation. Extensive in scope with an eponymic
    hero, it presents action involving long and arduous journeys and
    heroic deeds, with supernatural beings taking an active part.
    Encapsulated within this one-thousand-year account of the
    establishment, development, and destruction of the Nephites is the
    concentrated epic of the rise and fall of the Jaredites, who
    preceded them in type and time. (For its epic milieu, see CWHN
    5:285-394.) The climax of the book is the dramatic account of the
    visit of the resurrected Jesus to an assemblage of righteous
    Nephites.

    SERMONS AND SPEECHES. Prophetic discourse is a dominant literary
    form in the Book of Mormon. Speeches such as King Benjamin's
    address (Mosiah 1-6), Alma 2's challenge to the people of Zarahemla
    (Alma 5), and Mormon's teachings on faith, hope, and charity (Moro.
    7) are crafted artistically and have great rhetorical effectiveness
    in conveying their religious purposes. The public oration of Samuel
    The Lamanite (Hel. 13-15) is a classic prophetic judgment speech.
    Taking rhetorical criticism as a guide, one can see how Benjamin's
    ritual address first aims to persuade the audience to reaffirm a
    present point of view and then turns to deliberative
    rhetoric--"which aims at effecting a decision about future action,
    often the very immediate future" (Kennedy, New Testament
    interpretation Through Rhetorical Criticism [1984], p. 36). King
    Benjamin's speech is also chiastic as a whole and in several of its
    parts (Welch, pp. 202-205).

    LETTERS. The eight epistles in the Book of Mormon are
    conversational in tone, revealing the diverse personalities of
    their writers. These letters are from Captain Moroni1 (Alma
    54:5-14; 60:1-36), Ammoron (Alma 54:16-24), Helaman1 (Alma
    56:2-58:41), Pahoran (Alma 61:2-21), Giddianhi (3 Ne. 3:2-10), and
    Mormon (Moro. 8:2-30; 9:1-26).

    ALLEGORY, METAPHOR, IMAGERY, AND TYPOLOGY. These forms are also
    prevalent in the Book of Mormon. Zenos's allegory of the olive tree
    (Jacob 5) vividly incorporates dozens of horticultural details as
    it depicts the history of God's dealings with Israel. A striking
    simile curse, with Near Eastern parallels, appears in Abinadi's
    prophetic denunciation: The life of king Noah shall be "as a
    garment in a furnace of fire,...as a stalk, even as a dry stalk of
    the field, which is run over by the beasts and trodden under foot"
    (Mosiah 12:10-11).

    An effective extended metaphor is Alma's comparison of the word of
    God to a seed planted in one's heart and then growing into a
    fruitful Tree Of Life (Alma 32:28-43). In developing this metaphor,
    Alma uses a striking example of synesthesia: As the word enlightens
    their minds, his listeners can know it is real--"Ye have tasted
    this light" (Alma 32:35).

    Iteration of archetypes such as tree, river, darkness, and fire
    graphically confirms Lehi's understanding "that there is an
    opposition in all things" (2 Ne. 2:11) and that opposition will be
    beneficial to the righteous.

    A figural interpretation of God-given words and God-directed
    persons or events is insisted on, although not always developed, in
    the Book of Mormon. "All things which have been given of God from
    the beginning of the world, unto man, are the typifying of
    [Christ]" (2 Ne. 11:4); all performances and ordinances of the Law
    of Moses "were types of things to come" (Mosiah 13:31); and the
    Liahona, or compass, was seen as a type: "For just as surely as
    this director did bring our fathers, by following its course, to
    the Promised Land, shall by following its course, to the Promised
    Land, shall the words of Christ, if we follow their course, carry
    the words of Christ, if we follow their course, carry us beyond
    this vale of sorrow into a far better land of promise" (Alma
    37:45). In its largest typological structure, the Book of Mormon
    fits well the seven phases of revelation posited by Northrop Frye:
    creation, revolution or exodus, law, wisdom, prophecy, tospel, and
    apocalypse (The Great Code: The Bible and Literature [New York,
    1982]).

    WISDOM LITERATURE. Transmitted sayings of the wise are scattered
    throughout the Book of Mormon, especially in counsel given by
    fathers to their sons. Alma counsels, "O remember, my son, and
    learn wisdom in thy youth; yea, learn in thy youth, to keep the
    commandments of God" (Alma 37:35; see also 38:9-15). Benjamin says,
    "I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may
    learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are
    only in the service of your God" (Mosiah 2:17). A memorable
    aphorism is given by Lehi: "Adam fell that men might be; and men
    are, that they might have joy" (2 Ne. 2:25). Pithy sayings such as
    "fools mock, but they shall mourn" (Ether 12:26) and "wickedness
    never was happiness" (Alma 41:10) are often repeated by Latter-day
    Saints.

    APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE. The vision in 1 Nephi 11-15 (sixth century
    B.C.) is coomparable in form with early Apocalyptic literature. It
    contains a vision, is delivered in dialogue form, has an
    otherworldly mediator or escort, includes a commandment to write,
    treats the disposition of the recipient, prophesies persecution,
    foretells the cosmic transformations, and has an otherworldly place
    as its spatial axis. Later Jewish developments of complex
    angelology, mystic numerology, and symbolism are absent.

    STYLE AND TONE. Book of Mormon writers show an intense concern for
    styyle and tone. Alma desires to be able to "speak with the trump
    of God, with a voice to shake the earth," yet realizes that "I am a
    man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the
    things which the Lord hath allotted unto me" (Alma 29:1-3). Moroni2
    expresses a feeling of inadequacy in writing: "Lord, the Gentiles
    will mock at these things, because of our weakness in writing....
    Thou hast also made our words powerful and great, even that we
    cannot write them; wherefore, when we write we behold our wekaness,
    and stmble beacuse of the placing of our words" (Ether 12:23-25;
    cf. 2 Ne. 33:1). Moroni's written words, however, are not weak. In
    cadences of ascending strength he boldly declares:

      O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites, ye teachers, who sell yourselves
      for that which will canker, why have ye polluted the holy church
      of God? Why are ye ashamed to take upon you the name of
      Christ?...Who will despise the children of Christ? Behold, all
      ye who are despisers of the works of the Lord, for ye shall
      wonder and perish [Morm. 8:38, 9:26].

    The styles employed by the different writers in the Book of Mormon
    vary from the unadorned to the sublime. The tones range from
    Moroni's strident condemnations to Jesus' humblest pleading:
    "Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever
    will come, him will I receive" (3 Ne. 9:14).

    A model for communication is Jesus, who, Moroni reports, "told me
    in plain humility, even as a man telleth another in mine own
    language, concerning these things; and only a few have I written,
    because of my weakness in writing" (Ether 12:39-40). Two concepts
    in this report are repeated throughout the Book of Mormon--plain
    speech and inability to write about some things. "I have spoken
    plainly unto you," Nephi says, "that ye cannot misunderstand" (2
    Ne. 25:28). "My soul delighteth in plainness," he continues, "for
    after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men
    (2 Ne. 31:3). Yet Nephi also delights in the words of Isaiah, which
    "are not plain unto you" although "they are plain unto all those
    that are filled with the spirit of prophecy" (2 Ne. 25:4).
    Containing both plain and veiled language, the Book of Mormon is a
    spiritually and literarily powerful book that is direct yet
    complex, simple yet profound.

    (See [1]Basic Beliefs home page; [2]Scriptural Writings home page;
    [3]The Book of Mormon home page)
      ______________________________________________________________

                               Bibliography

    England, Eugene. "A Second Witness for the Logos: The Book of Momon
    and Contemporary Literary Criticism." In By Study and Also by
    Faith, 2 vols., ed. J. Lundquist and S. Ricks, Vol.2 pp. 91-125.
    Salt Lake City, 1990.

    Jorgensen, Bruce W.; Richard Dilworth Rust; and George S. Tate.
    Essays on typology in Literature of Belief, ed. Neal E. Lambert.
    Provo, Utah, 1981.

    Nichols, Robert E., Jr. "Beowulf and Nephi: A Literary View of the
    Book of Mormon." Dialogue 4 (Autumn 1969):40-47.

    Parry, Donald W. "Hebrew Literary Patterns in the Book of Mormon."
    Ensign 19 (Oct. 1989):58-61.

    Rust, Richard Dilworth. "Book of Mormon Poetry." New Era (Mar.
    1983):46-50

    Welch, John W. "Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon." In Chiasmus in
    Antiquity, ed. J. Welch, pp. 198-210. Hildesheim, 1981.

           Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Vol. 1, Book of Mormon Literature

References

    1. http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/basic/index.htm
    2. http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/basic/doctrines/scripture/index.htm
    3. http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/basic/bom/index.htm


From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  2 20:55:43 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 15:55:43 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] New Oxford Review: Bio-Luddites & the Secularist
	Rapture
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252111260.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Bio-Luddites & the Secularist Rapture
http://www.newoxfordreview.org/note.jsp?did=1103-notes-rapture
New Oxford Review
November 2003

Coming soon to a theater near you: cyborgs. Not on the screen, but
sitting next to you in the audience.

This is "the coming reality" in our technological world, or so say a
group calling themselves "transhumanists." According to transhumanists,
man has, since time immemorial, depended on technology for his survival
in this hostile world: From the first primitive tool to walking sticks
to eyeglasses to emergency alert bracelets to artificial intelligence --
man's dependence on machines increases with each new development. Soon
one may be indistinguishable from the other. No surprise, say the
transhumanists, because we have long been on our way to becoming
cyborgs. Some would contend that we are already cyborgs. That cyborg at
the movie theater? That cyborg could be you.

A perusal of recent news clippings could easily lead one to believe that
the prototypical elements of the transhumanists' "coming reality" are
more science nonfiction than science fiction. To wit: A robot governed
by neurons from a rat's brain (a "hybrot" -- a machine with living
cells) is now reportedly drawing pictures; a lab monkey, via a chip
implanted in its brain, is now able to move a cursor on a computer
screen by thought alone; a rat was made to climb over fences and up
trees, and walk through pipes and across rubble by signals sent from a
remote computer to a chip implanted in its brain. Even more to the
point, a British cybernetics professor became the first human to have a
chip implanted into his central nervous system. This chip records and
transmits his sensations (such as movement and pleasure) to a remote
computer, which later plays back those sensations, causing the professor
to experience them again. Since then about 20 people across the U.S.
been "chipped" by the Applied Digital Solution's VeriChip Corporation,
which for $200 up front and $10 a month will chip and track anyone from
its traveling ChipMobile.

Giddy from the possibilities stories like these present, the World
Transhumanist Association (WTA) held a conference at Yale University
this past June, as reported in The Village Voice (Jul. 30-Aug. 5), "to
lay the groundwork for a society that would admit as citizens and
companions intelligent robots, cyborgs made from a free mixing of human
and machine parts, and fully organic, genetically engineered people who
aren't necessarily human at all." The first order of business is to
expand the definition of what we now call human rights to include
"post-humans" -- robots, hybrots, cyborgs, and other such "people" who
may, or may not, be human.

According to Natasha Vita-More, founder of the transhumanist movement,
we must begin the process of redefining today. Why? "To relinquish the
rights of a future being merely because he, she, or it has a higher
percentage of machine parts than biological cell structure would be
racist toward all humans who have prosthetic parts." Racist? Really? We
weren't aware that amputees constitute a "race" of humans.

The conference's opening debate was titled "Should Humans Welcome or
Resist Becoming Posthuman?" with the overwhelming sentiment favoring the
former. Echoing the majority opinion, Kevin Fitzgerald, a Jesuit priest
and "bioethicist" at Georgetown Medical Center, is quoted in The Voice:
"To err on the side of inclusion is the loving thing to do." Oh, right.
We certainly must be inclusive. And of course we must be loving. We must
love our robots. Still, Fr. Fitzgerald may be onto something here. The
Jesuits have experienced a steep decline in ordinations -- might a fleet
of robo-priests be the answer to the Jesuit priest shortage? At least
then we could be assured that the rubrics of the Mass would be adhered
to, albeit in a mechanical, robotic fashion. Domo arigato, Fr. Roboto.

The Voice reports that transhumanists "look for inspiration to civil
rights battles, most recently to the transgender and gay push for
self-determination." (The WTA has even modified a popular homosexualist
slogan, decrying "technophobia.") James Hughes, Secretary of the WTA,
says this: "The whole thrust of the liberal democratic movement of the
last 400 years has been to allow people to use reason and science to
control their own lives, free from the authority of church and state."
Dr. J, as Hughes is affectionately known, has expanded on this theme in
a series of columns on the Better Humans website. He applauds the
"enormous progress" we have made in "overcoming" the "barriers to
active, guilt-free sexuality," and in "transcending...biological
gender."

Despite the transhumanists' gushing over the "gay" and transsexual
movements, the admiration is apparently not mutual. Homosexuals and
transsexuals, reasons The Voice, "might not particularly like being
associated with imagined cyborgs and human-animal hybrids."

Still, the transhumanists are preparing for what they see as an
impending battle against those who would resist the proliferation of the
technology that is supposed to lead to the inevitable intermingling of
man and machine. Hughes, quoted in The Voice, throws down the gauntlet:
"If...the technology of human advancement is forbidden by
bio-Luddites...that becomes a fundamental civil rights struggle." But
not one of those nonviolent civil rights struggles. No, "there might
come a time," predicts Hughes, "for the legitimate use of violence in
self-defense," for "liberation acts" to unyoke "fully realized forms of
artificial intelligence" from possible enslavement by humans. Suddenly
the phrase "technological revolution" takes on an ominous tone. One
pictures hordes of Arnold Schwarzenegger clones plodding about, shooting
things, blowing up buildings, and setting entire cities aflame.

Transhumanism's "coming reality" may be closer to this scenario than we
might like to think. Transhumanists would like nothing more than to
transform themselves into a technologically enhanced race of
Uebermenschen. Their "vision" isn't limited to protecting amputees.
According to The Voice, a good many transhumanists are "feverishly
anticipating" an event they call "the Singularity" -- the moment when
"technologies meld and an exponentially advancing intelligence is
unleashed." This limitless technology is messianic in nature:
Transhumanists "aspire to immortality and omniscience through uploading
human consciousness into ever evolving machines." There is even a
"Singularity Institute" for the furtherance of their agenda. The
Institute's website heralds Singularity as the moment when man will be
"capable of breaking the upper limit on intelligence that has held since
the rise of humanity."

The Singularity is akin to a transhumanist version of the Rapture, an
endtime event invented by Protestant millennialists who believe that
Jesus will at any moment whisk His true believers away before the onset
of the 1,000-year reign of the Antichrist. Only for transhumanists,
man's Ascension (through a deified technology) to the throne of
omniscience begins right here, right now. And we sorry bio-Luddites who
aren't plugged in, online, and geeked out will be "left behind" to
suffer the Tribulation.


From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  2 20:55:55 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 15:55:55 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Independent: 'Chronic happiness' the key to success
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252111380.14301@panix3.panix.com>

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article333972.ece
19 December 2005 10:27

By Lyndsay Moss
Published: 19 December 2005

The key to success may be "chronic happiness" rather than simply hard
work and the right contacts, psychologists have found.

Many assume a successful career and personal life leads to happiness.
But psychologists in the US say happiness can bring success.

Researchers from the universities of California, Missouri and Illinois
examined connections between desirable characteristics, life success and
well-being in more than 275,000 people.

They found that happy individuals were predisposed to seek out new goals
in life, leading to success, which also reinforced their already
positive emotions.

The psychologists addressed questions such as whether happy people were
more successful than unhappy people, and whether happiness came before
or after a perceived success.

Writing in Psychological Bulletin, published by the American
Psychological Association, they concluded that "chronically happy
people" were generally more successful in many areas of life than less
happy people.

The key to success may be "chronic happiness" rather than simply hard
work and the right contacts, psychologists have found.

Many assume a successful career and personal life leads to happiness.
But psychologists in the US say happiness can bring success.

Researchers from the universities of California, Missouri and Illinois
examined connections between desirable characteristics, life success and
well-being in more than 275,000 people.

They found that happy individuals were predisposed to seek out new goals
in life, leading to success, which also reinforced their already
positive emotions.

The psychologists addressed questions such as whether happy people were
more successful than unhappy people, and whether happiness came before
or after a perceived success.

Writing in Psychological Bulletin, published by the American
Psychological Association, they concluded that "chronically happy
people" were generally more successful in many areas of life than less
happy people.


From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  2 20:56:10 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 15:56:10 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Steve Sailer: Boys Will Be Boys
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252111460.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Steve Sailer: Boys Will Be Boys
http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/fall2005/sailer.html.

A review of Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about 
the Emerging
Science of Sex Differences, by Leonard Sax

By Steve Sailer
Posted November 30, 2005

Until last winter, I had assumed that fundamentalist feminism had peaked in
the early 1990s with the Anita Hill brouhaha, and that Bill Clinton's
political survival in 1998, which hinged on his near-unanimous support from
hypocritical feminists, ended the era in which anyone took feminism seriously.

The Larry Summers fiasco, however, showed that while feminism may have entered
its Brezhnev Era intellectually, it still commands the institutional
equivalent of Brezhnev's thousands of tanks and nuclear missiles. After just a
few days, Harvard President Lawrence Summers caved in to critics of his
off-hand comment that nature, not invidious discriminations alone, might be to
blame for the lower percentage of women who study math and science. In short
order, he propitiated the feminists by promising, in effect, to spend $50
million taking teaching and research opportunities at Harvard away from male
jobseekers and giving them to less talented women.

Perhaps in a saner society, then, we would have less need for Leonard Sax's
engaging combination of popular science exposition and advice guidebook, Why
Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging
Science of Sex Differences. But parents as well as professors could benefit
from it now.

Sax speaks of "gender" when he means "sex"--male or female. I fear, though,
that this usage battle is lost because the English language really does need
two different words to distinguish between the fact, and the act, of sex.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg claims her secretary Millicent
invented the use of "gender" to mean "sex" in the early 1970s while typing the
crusading feminist's briefs against sex discrimination. Millicent pointed out
to her boss that judges, like all men, have dirty minds when it comes to the
word "sex," so she should use the boring term "gender" to keep those animals
thinking only about the law.

Unfortunately, "gender" now comes with a vast superstructure of 99% fact-free
feminist theorizing about how sex differences are all just socially
constructed. According to this orthodoxy, it's insensitive to doubt a burly
transvestite truck driver demanding a government-subsidized sex change when he
says he feels like a little girl inside. Yet it's also insensitive to assume
that the average little girl feels like a little girl inside.

Fortunately, Sax, a family physician and child psychologist, subscribes to
none of the usual cant. Indeed, I thought I was a connoisseur of sex
differences until I read Why Gender Matters, where I learned in the first
chapter, for instance, that girls on average hear better than boys, especially
higher-pitched sounds, such as the typical schoolteacher's voice, which is one
little-known reason girls on average pay more attention in class.

Males and females also tend to have different kinds of eyeballs, with boys
better at tracking movement and girls better at distinguishing subtle shades
of colors. Presumably, these separate skills evolved when men were hunters
trying to spear fleeing game and women were gatherers searching out the ripest
fruit. So, today, boys want to catch fly balls and girls want to discuss
whether to buy the azure or periwinkle skirt. Cognitive differences are
profound and pervasive. Don't force boys to explain their feelings in great
detail, Sax advises. Their brains aren't wired to make that as enjoyable a
pastime as it is for girls.

  * * *

As founder of the national association for Single-Sex Public Education, Sax's
favorite and perhaps most valuable theory is that co-educational schooling is
frequently a mistake. He makes a strong case, especially concerning the years
immediately following puberty. He cites the experience of two psychologists
studying self-esteem in girls. They went to Belfast, where children can be
assigned fairly randomly to coed or single-sex schools:

They found that at coed schools, you don't need to ask a dozen questions to
predict the girl's self-esteem. You have to ask only one question: "Do you
think you're pretty?"

Similarly, the Coleman Report found, four decades ago, that boys put more
emphasis on sports and social success in coed schools, and less on
intellectual development. Sax argues:

Here's the paradox: coed schools tend to reinforce gender stereotypes. There
is now very strong evidence that girls are more likely to take courses such as
computer science and physics in girls-only schools. Boys in single-sex schools
are more than twice as likely to study art, music, foreign languages, and
literature as boys of equal ability attending comparable coed schools.

Noting that the Department of Education projects that by 2011 there will be
140 women college graduates for every 100 men, he asks, "I'm all in favor of
women's colleges, butwhy are nominally coed schools looking more and more like
all-women's colleges?" So far, the decline of male academic achievement in the
U.S. is mostly among blacks and Hispanics, but the catastrophic downturn into
"laddism" of young white males in England in recent years, and their
consequent decline in test scores, shows that no race is permanently immune to
the prejudice that school is for girls.

Of course, American schools have long been taught largely by women, and boys
and schoolmarms have not always seen eye-to-eye. But the rise of feminism has
encouraged female teachers to view their male students as overprivileged
potential oppressors. Further, feminism justifies teachers' self-absorption
with female feelings. Thus, a remarkable fraction of the novels my older son
has been assigned to read in high school are about girls getting raped. I hope
it hasn't permanently soured him on fiction.

We've now achieved the worst of both worlds: the educational authorities are
committed to anti-male social constructionist ideology, but the pop culture
market delivers the crudest, most sexualized imagery. The irony is that when
the adult world imposes gender egalitarianism on young people in the name of
progressive ideologies, it just makes the young people even more cognizant of
their primordial differences.

  * * *

Sax's book often resembles a nonfiction version of Tom Wolfe's impressive
novel I am Charlotte Simmons. What's most striking about Wolfe's merely
semi-satirical portrait of Duke University is how, after 35 years of
institutionalized feminism, student sexuality hasn't evolved into an
egalitarian utopia. Instead, it has regressed to something that a caveman
would understand--a sexual marketplace where muscles are the measure of the
man.

Not all of Sax's arguments are so dependable. For instance, he is far more
confident that homosexuality is substantially genetic in origin than is the
leading researcher he cites in support of his assertion, J. Michael Bailey of
Northwestern University. Bailey has publicly noted how challenging he has
found it to assemble a reliably representative sample of identical and
fraternal twins for his homosexuality studies. Further, Bailey is troubled by
the fundamental objection that natural selection would, presumably, cause
genes for homosexuality to die out. Sax, though, races past these prudent
concerns.

Still, this is a better than average advice book for mothers and fathers. Most
parenting books are unrealistic because they overemphasize how much parents
can mold their children's personalities. Raising a second child, with his
normally quite different personality, typically undermines parents' belief in
their omnipotence, but most child-rearing books hush this up because their
market is gullible first-timers. Fortunately, by emphasizing how much you need
to fine-tune your treatment to fit your child's sex, Why Gender Matters
injects some needed realism into the genre.

But Sax's bulletproof confidence in his own advice gives me pause. Sixteen
years of fatherhood have left me less confident that I know what I'm doing
than when I started, but he doesn't suffer from any such self-skepticism.

Steve Sailer is the film critic for The American Conservative and a columnist
for VDARE.com.


From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  2 20:57:45 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 15:57:45 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] World Science: Bees can recognize human faces,
	study finds
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252112020.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Bees can recognize human faces, study finds
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/051209_beesfrm.htm

Honeybees may look pretty much all alike to us.
But it seems we may not look all alike to them. A
study has found that they can learn to recognize
human faces in photos, and remember them for at least two days.

The findings toss new uncertainty into a
long-studied question that some scientists
considered largely settled, the researchers say:
how humans themselves recognize faces.

The results also may help lead to better
face-recognition software, developed through
study of the insect brain, the scientists added.

Many researchers traditionally believed facial
recognition required a large brain, and possibly
a specialized area of that organ dedicated to
processing face information. The bee finding
casts doubt on that, said Adrian G. Dyer, the lead researcher in the study.

He recalls that when he made the discovery, it
startled him so much that he called out to a
colleague, telling her to come quickly because
?no one?s going to believe it?and bring a camera!?

Dyer said that to his knowledge, the finding is
the first time an invertebrate has shown ability
to recognize faces of other species. But not all
bees were up to the task: some flunked it, he
said, although this seemed due more to a failure
to grasp how the experiment worked than to poor
facial recognition specifically.

In any cases, some humans also can?t recognize
faces, Dyer noted; the condition is called prosopagnosia.

In the bee study, reported in the Dec. 15 issue
of the Journal of Experimental Biology, Dyer and
two colleagues presented honeybees with photos of
human faces taken from a standard human
psychology test. The photos had similar lighting,
background colors and sizes and included only the
face and neck to avoid having the insects make
judgments based on the clothing. In some cases,
the people in the pictures themselves looked similar.

The researchers, with Johannes Gutenberg
University in Mainz, Germany, tried to train the
bees to realize that a photo of one man had a
drop of a sugary liquid next to it. Different
photos came with a drop of bitter liquid instead.

A few bees apparently failed to realize that they
should pay attention to the photos at all. But
five bees learned to fly toward the photo
horizontally in such a way that they could get a
good look at it, Dyer reported. In fact, these
bees tended to hover a few centimeters in front
of the image for a while before deciding where to land.

The bees learned to distinguish the correct face
from the wrong one with better than 80 percent
accuracy, even when the faces were similar, and
regardless of where the photos were placed, the
researchers found. Also, just like humans, the
bees performed worse when the faces were flipped upside-down.

?This is evidence that face recognition requires
neither a specialised neuronal [brain] circuitry
nor a fundamentally advanced nervous system,? the
researchers wrote, noting that the test they used
was one for which even humans have some difficulty.

Moreover, ?Two bees tested two days after the
initial training retained the information in
long-term memory,? they wrote. One scored about
94 percent on the first day and 79 percent two
days later; the second bee?s score dropped from
about 87 to 76 percent during the same time frame.

The researchers also checked whether bees
performed better for faces that humans judged as
being more different. This seemed to be the case,
they found, but the result didn?t reach statistical significance.

The bees probably don?t understand what a human
face is, Dyer said in an email. ?To the bees the
faces were spatial patterns (or strange looking flowers),? he added.

Bees are famous for their pattern-recognition
abilities, which scientists believe evolved in
order to discriminate among flowers. As social
insects, they can also tell apart their
hivemates. But the new study shows that they can
recognize human faces better than some humans
can?with one-ten thousandth of the brain cells.

This raises the question of how bees recognize
faces, and if so, whether they do it differently
from the way we do it, Dyer and colleagues wrote.
Studies suggest small children recognize faces by
picking out specific features that are easy to
recognize, whereas adults see the
interrelationships among facial features. Bees
seem to show aspects of both strategies depending
on the study, the researchers added.

The findings cast doubt on the belief among some
researchers that the human brain has a
specialized area for face recognition, Dyer and colleagues said.

Neuroscientists point to an area called the
fusiform gyrus, which tends to show increased
activity during face-viewing, as serving this
purpose. But the bee finding suggests ?the human
brain may not need to have a visual area specific
for the recognition of faces,? Dyer and colleagues wrote.

That may be helpful to researchers who develop
face-recognition technologies to be used for
security at airports and other locations, Dyer
noted. The United States is investing heavily in
such systems, but they still make many mistakes.

Already, the way that bees navigate is being used
to design ?autonomous aircraft that can fly in
remote areas without the need for radio contact
or satellite navigation,? Dyer wrote in the
email. ?We show that the miniature brain can
definitely recognize faces, and if in the future
we can work out the mechanisms by which this is
achieved,? this might suggest ideas for improved face recognition technologies.

Dyer said that if bees can learn to recognize
humans in photos, then they reasonably might also
be able to recognize real-life faces. On the
other hand, he remarked, this probably isn?t the
explanation for an adage popular in some parts of
the world?that you shouldn?t kill a bee because
its nestmates will remember and come after you.

Francis Ratnieks of Sheffield University in
Sheffield, U.K., says that apparent bee revenge
attacks of this sort actually occur because a
torn-off stinger releases chemicals that signal
alarm to nearby hivemates. Says Dyer, ?bees don?t
normally go around looking at faces.?


From shovland at mindspring.com  Sun Jan  1 17:23:18 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 09:23:18 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] Medicare for All
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHEEECCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

The health care industry is acting in a way that is detrimental to society
as a whole.

They are taking more and more money from us while providing less care for
the money.

Most countries in Europe provide health care for all of their citizens for
half the money
we spend in the US while leaving 45 million uninsured.

Harry Truman first proposed a national health system for the US in 1950.

It?s time to make the change.



From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan  3 01:37:32 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 20:37:32 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Roger D. Congelton: The political economy of Gordon
	Tullock
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601021110310.3109@panix3.panix.com>

Roger D. Congelton: The political economy of Gordon Tullock*
Public Choice 121:213-238, 2004

[This is a superb appreciation of one of the Founding Fathers of Public 
Choice theory, and it no mean introduction to the field, since Gordon's 
interests were so broad. I loved this in particular: "It bears noting that 
Tullock invented or at least helped to invent the rent-seeking model of 
con?.ict (1967/1974). A social scientist who was more interested in 
maximizing fame than in understanding the world would never have raised a 
question that reduces the importance of one of his own major 
contributions, even were such doubts to arise. Fame and fortune tend to go 
to those whose ideas are "bigger" than initially thought, not "smaller." 
However, a proper scientist is a truth seeker (The Organization of 
Inquiry, 1966: 49), and Tullock is in this sense, if not in the 
conventional sense, a very proper social scientist."

[Gordon, I think, loved more than anything else, to make unsettling if not 
outrageous assertions in conversation. Back in graduate school, when I 
first met him, I was arguing foreign policy with him. He was dubious and 
asked me a question. I changed my view, and he asked me another question. 
This went on until he told me, "You have now gone full circle."

[Of all the people I have ever met, only Steve Sniegoski comes close in 
challenging my opinions. Both of them have first opinions of their own, 
which in the case of Gordon, as the article shows, are not always so 
apparent. I'm even further removed myself, since it is leaving no Premise 
Unchecked (that is, the Premise of my conversant) that is my forte, not 
persuasion itself.

[In my opinion, Gordon did not share the Nobel Prize with Jim Buchanan 
because he tweaked the nose of the Swedes with their welfare state, and 
who award the prize, too many times by demanding to know what they thought 
a "just" distribution of income looks like, as their underlying mood is 
not to achieve some fixed distribution but to have ever more 
re-distribution.

[The world badly needs far more challengers like Gordon.]

[I call myself one of the Founding Sons of Public Choice theory, having 
studied under Gordon and Jim Buchanan in the early years at U.Va. I'm 
sending this also to a number of U.Va. people, so they can see what came 
out of it.

[Sorry about the ligatures, like <fi> showing up as periods. Adobe's PDF 
to TXT converter (starting with version 7) changes all these ligatures to 
a period, so I can't do a global search and replace. I do convert (at 
least I try to get them all) the various Microsoft smart characters to 
ASCII ", ', --, etc., as appropriate. Lynx, my text-only web browser does 
this now, except that in some cases, nothing, not even a space, remains. 
But it should be obvious what's what. Tables generally do not convert. 
Sometimes I have to remove page headers, sometimes not. And, too often, 
spaces are omitted. It can be quite time comsuming, so please forgive me 
if I didn't replace each ligature by hand. I sometimes also keep 
paragraphs together when interrupted with footnotes. I can generally send 
the PDFs to anyone who e-mails me asking for them.]

*Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 
22030, U.S.A.; e-mail: congleto at gmu.edu
Accepted 25 August 2003

The perspective on Tullock's work presented here is based partly on his 
proli.c writings and partly on numerous conversations with him over the 
course of several decades. He was kind enough to read through a previous 
draft, and the version presented here re.ects his comments and 
suggestions. Comments and suggestions received at the 2002 meeting of the 
Public Choice Society, and from James Buchanan, Charles Rowley, Robert 
Tollison, and an anonymous referee were also very helpful.

"Leaving aside the problem of the correctness of my answers, the fact 
remains that I have been unable to .nd any indications that scientists 
have asked the questions to which I address myself. The unwary might take 
this as proof that the problems are unimportant, but scientists, fully 
conscious of the importance of asking new questions, will not make this 
mistake." (Gordon Tullock, The Organization of Inquiry (1966: 3.)

1.Introduction

It is fair to say that few public choice scholars have contributed to so 
many areas of public choice research as frequently or with as much insight 
as Gordon Tullock. Professor Tullock's work considers not only political 
and contractual relationships within a well-established legal order, but 
also ex?traordinary political behavior within rent-seeking societies, 
within .rms, at court, within communities at war, among those considering 
revolution, and among those emerging from or falling into anarchy. The 
result is an unusually complete political economy that includes theories 
of the origin of the state; theories of decision making within 
bureaucracy, dictatorship, democracy, and the courts; and within science 
itself.

It is also fair to say that Professor Tullock uses relatively simple tools 
to analyze these far-reaching topics. Indeed, it is the use of relatively 
simple tools that makes the broad scope of his work possible. All the 
principal actors in Tullock's analysis maximize expected net bene.ts in 
circumstances where bene.ts, costs, and probabilities are assumed to be 
known by the relevant de?cision makers with some accuracy. This is the 
core hypothesis of the rational choice approach to social science, and it 
is the rationale for the title of Brady and Tollison's (1994) very 
interesting collection of Tullock papers.

For the social scientist who uses the rational choice methodology, the 
re?search problem at hand is not to understand the complex chain of events 
that gave rise to unique personalities and historical moments, but rather 
to more fully appreciate the general features of the choice problems 
facing more or less similar actors at times when more or less routine 
decisions are made. By focusing on the general rather than the particular, 
a good deal of human behavior can be predicted within broad limits, 
without requiring intimate knowledge of the individuals or institutional 
settings of interest. Such an approach is commonplace within economics, 
where it has been very suc?cessfully applied to understand general 
features of decisions made by .rms and consumers, and is becoming more 
common within other social sciences where the rational choice methodology 
remains somewhat controversial.

Tullock's work is largely written for economists and the subset of 
political scientists who routinely use rational-choice models, and his 
analysis naturally uses that mode of reasoning and argument. What 
distinguishes Tullock's work from that of most other social scientists who 
use the rational choice approach is that, in spite of his use of 
reductionist tools, Tullock's work tends to be anti-reductionist rather 
than reductionist in nature.1 A good deal of Tullock's work uses simple 
models to demonstrate that the world is more complex than may have 
previously been appreciated.

It is partly the critical nature of his work that makes Tullock's world 
view dif.cult to summarize, as might also be said of much of Frank 
Knight's work. Tullock's more conventional work suggests that some 
arguments are more general than they appear and others less general than 
might be appreciated. To make these points, Tullock, like Knight, tends to 
focus sharply on neg?lected implications and discomforting facts. Unlike 
Knight, his arguments are usually very direct, and often simple appearing. 
Indeed, critics sometime suggest that Tullock's direct and informal prose 
implies super.ciality rather than a clear vision. However, a more 
sympathetic reading of Tullock's work asawhole discovers 
irreduciblecomplexity, rather than simplicity.

This complexity arises partly because his approach to political economy 
bears a closer relationship to work in law, history, or biology than it 
does to physics or astronomy, and much work within economics. Tullock was 
trained as a lawyer and reads widely in history. Both lawyers and 
historians are inclined to regard every case as somewhat unique and every 
argument as somewhat .awed. Both these propensities are evident in his 
work. It is also true that Professor Tullock enjoys pointing "the way," 
and "the way" seems to be a bit different in every paper and book. His 
published work, especially his books, often leaps from one innovative idea 
to the next without providing readers with a clear sense of the general 
lay of the intellectual landscape. Although many of Tullock's pieces can 
be accurately summarized in a few sentences (as tends to be true of much 
that is written by academic scholars) the world revealed by Professor 
Tullock's work as a whole is not nearly so easily condensed.

Complexity also arises because the aim of Tullock's work is often to 
stim?ulatenew research on issues and evidence largely neglected by the 
scholarly literature, rather than to completeor.nalizeexisting lines of 
research through careful integration and testing. To the extent that he 
succeeds with his enter?prise - and he often has - his efforts to blaze 
new trails stimulate further exploration by other scholars. For example, 
his work with James Buchanan on constitutional design (1962) has generated 
a substantial .eld of rational choice-based research on the positive and 
normative properties of alternative constitutional designs. His 
path-breaking paper on rent seeking (1967) was so original that it passed 
largely unnoticed for a decade, although it and sub?sequent work have 
since become widely praised for opening important new areas of research. 
His work on dictatorship (1974, 1987), which was almost a forbidden topic 
at the time that he .rst began working on it, has helped to launch 
important new research on non-democratic governance (Olson, 1993, 
Wintrobe, 1994). His editorial essays, "Ef.cient Rent-Seeking" and "Back 
to the Bog," have also encouraged a large body of new work on the 
equilibrium size of the rent-seeking industry and helped establish the new 
.eld of contest theory. The institutionally induced equilibrium literature 
pioneered by Wein?gast and Shepsle (1981) was developed partly in response 
to Tullock's "Why so Much Stability?" essay. His early work on vote 
trading (1959), the courts (1971, 1980), and bureaucracy (1965) also 
helped to establish new literatures.

The breadth of Tullock's political economy and the simplicity of its 
com?ponent arguments also re.ects his working style and interests. 
Professor Tullock is very quick, reads widely, and works rapidly. He 
dictates the ma?jority of his papers. And although his papers are revised 
before sending them off, he lacks the patience to polish them to the high 
gloss evident in the work of most prominent scholars. In Tullock's mind, 
it is the originality of the ideas and analysis that determines the value 
of a particular piece of research, rather than the elegance of the prose 
or the mathematical models used to com?municate its ideas. (To paraphrase 
McLuran, "the message is the message," rather than the "medium.") The 
result is a very large body of very creative and stimulating work, but 
also a body of work that could bene.t from just a bit more care at its 
various margins.2

If a major fault exists in that substantial body of research, it is that 
Tul?lock has not provided fellow travelers with a road map to his 
intellectual enterprise, as for example James Buchanan, Mancur Olson, and 
William Riker have. None of Tullock's hundreds of papers explains his 
overarching world view in detail, nor is there a single piece that 
attempts to integrate his many contributions into a coherent framework. 
The purpose of this essay is to provide such an intellectual road map. It 
directs attention to the easily neglected general themes, conclusions, and 
connections between Professor Tullock's many contributions to public 
choice. The aim of the essay is, thus, in a sense "non-Tullockian" insofar 
as it attempts to explain Tullock's com?plex and multifaceted world view 
with a few fundamental principles, rather than to probe for weaknesses or 
suggest new problems or interpretations of existing work. The present road 
map is organized as follows. Section 2 focuses on the methodological 
foundations of Tulluck's work, Section 3 sur?veys his broad research on 
political economy, and Section 4 summarizes the main argument and brie.y 
discusses some of Tullock's major contributions. Numerous quotes from 
Tullock's work are included in endnotes.

2.Tullock'sworldview

A.Methodology: Positivism without statistics

"We must be skeptical about each theory, but this does not mean that we 
must be skeptical about the existence of truth. In fact our skepticism is 
an illustration of our belief in truth. We doubt that our present theories 
are in fact true, and look for other theories which approach that goal 
more closely. Only if one believes in an objective truth will experimental 
evid?ence contrary to the predictions ?disprove' the theory." (The 
Organization of Inquiry: 48)

Tullock's perspective on science and methodology, although implicit in 
much of his work, is most clearly developed in The Organization of Inquiry 
[1966]. The Organization of Inquiry applies the tools of rational 
choice-based social science to science, itself, in order to better 
understand how the scienti.c com?munity operates and why scienti.c 
discourse has been an engine of progress for the past two centuries. Such 
questions cannot be addressed without char?acterizing the aims and methods 
of science and scientists, and, thus, Tullock could not analyze the 
organization of inquiry without revealing his own vision of science, 
scienti.c progress, and proper methodology. The preface of The 
Organization of Inquiryacknowledges the in.uence of Karl Popper, Michael 
Polanyi, and Thomas Kuhn, and these in.uences are clearly evident in his 
work.3

Although Tullock's work is largely theoretical, he remains very interested 
in empirical evidence. A logical explanation that fails to explain key 
facts can be overturned by those facts even if the line of reasoning is 
completely self-consistent. That is to say, both the assumptions and 
predictions of a model should account for facts that are widely recognized 
by intelligent persons who read reputable newspapers and are familiar with 
world history. The world can "say" something about a theory, and a proper 
scientist should be prepared to hear what is said. He or she does this by 
remaining a bit skeptical about the merits of existing theories, no matter 
how well-stated or long-standing.4

His simultaneous skepticism and belief in the possibility of truth is 
clearly evident in his wide range of articles and comments critiquing the 
theor?ies and mistaken conclusions of other social scientists. For 
example, in a series of essays on "the bog" Tullock asks and re-asks those 
working in the rent-seeking literature to explain why the rent-seeking 
industry is so small? And, moreover, why is the rate of return on rent 
seeking evidently so much greater than the rate of return from other 
investments? It bears noting that Tullock invented or at least helped to 
invent the rent-seeking model of con?.ict (1967/1974). A social scientist 
who was more interested in maximizing fame than in understanding the world 
would never have raised a question that reduces the importance of one of 
his own major contributions, even were such doubts to arise. Fame and 
fortune tend to go to those whose ideas are "bigger" than initially 
thought, not "smaller." However, a proper scientist is a truth seeker (The 
Organization of Inquiry, 1966: 49), and Tullock is in this sense, if not 
in the conventional sense, a very proper social scientist.

In contrast to most academic scholars, Tullock argues that the scienti.c 
enterprise is not elitist. Science is accessible to non-experts. The facts 
do not respect titles, pedigrees, or even a history of scienti.c 
achievement. He suggests that essentially any area of science can be 
understood by intelligent outsiders who take the time to investigate them. 
Thus, every theory is open to examination by newcomers with a fresh eye as 
well as those with established reputations in particular .elds of 
research.5 Together Tullock's truth-oriented skepticism and nonelitism 
sheds consid?erable light on the broad domain in which Professor Tullock 
has read and written. A strong sense that "the truth" can be known by 
anyone who invests time and attention induces Tullock to read more widely 
and more critically than those inclined to defer to well-credentialed 
"experts." His positivism induces him to focus on modern scienti.c 
theories and historical facts rather than philosophical controversies. 
Because his extensive reading covers areas that are unfamiliar to his less 
widely read or more philosophical colleagues, he is able to use a wide 
range of historical facts and scienti.c theories to criticize existing 
theories and also as a source of puzzles and dilemmas to be addressed in 
new research. Together with his non-elitist view of science, his broad 
interest in the world induces him to think and write without re?gard to 
the disciplinary boundaries that constrain the thoughts of his more 
convention-bound colleagues.

B.Social science: How narrow and how rational is human nature?

"Every man is an individual with his own private ends and ambitions. He 
will only carry out assigned tasks if this proves the best way of 
attaining his own ends, and will make every effort to change the tasks so 
as to make them more in keeping with these objectives. A machine will 
carry out instructions given to it. A man is not so con.ned." 
(ThePoliticsofBureaucracy, 1966: 32)

Economists tend to view man as "a rational animal," by which various 
eco?nomists mean various things not uniformly agreed to, but nonetheless 
clearly distinct from the customary usage of the word "rational" by 
non-economists. For example, microeconomics texts normally introduce the 
notion of "ra?tionality" at the same time that they discuss preference 
orderings. Rational decision makers have transitive preference orderings. 
Game theorists and macroeconomists who model individual decision making 
through time con?sider a decision maker to have "rational expectations." A 
rational decision maker anticipates the consequences of his or her 
actions, and does so in a manner free of systematic mistakes of bias. (In 
this amended concept of ra?tionality, economists are returning to the use 
of the term "rational" in ordinary language.) The preference and 
informational meanings of the term rational are often commingled by modern 
economists so that rational individuals become characterized as persons 
having consistent and durable preferences and unbiased expectations. This 
very demanding de.nition of rationality is occasionally found in Tullock's 
work.6

However, in most cases, Tullock is unwilling to adopt the full rationality 
hypothesis. He argues, for example, that information problems exist that 
lead to systematic errors, especially within politics (1967, chs. 6-9). 
The existence of such information problems is grounded in his personal 
experience. If hu?man beliefs were always unbiased, it would be impossible 
to .nd instances in which large groups of people, especially 
professionals, have systematically mistaken views about anything. For 
those who have more than occasionally been persuaded by Professor Tullock 
to change their own views, or seen him launch a well-reasoned barrage on 
the views of thoughtful but confused col?leagues, it sometimes appears 
that the only economist whose expectations are untainted by wishful 
thinking is Gordon Tullock, himself.7 Tullock's value as a critic and 
curmudgeon is, itself, largely incompatible with the "rational 
expectations" usage of the term "rational."

Yet, it is partly because economists have failed to broadly apply the 
ra?tional choice paradigm that Tullock has achieved some notoriety among 
economists by reminding the profession of the limits of other 
motiva?tional theories; however, this is not because he believes that 
humans have one-dimensional objective functions.8

Tullock's view of man also incorporates a richer model of self interest 
than is included in most economic models. Although man is self-interested, 
his interests are often complex and context dependent.9 Consequently, 
Tullock rarely uses the simplest characterization of homoeconomicusas a 
narrow self-interested "wealth maximizer." For example, Tullock allows the 
possib?ility that a person's self-interest may be partly dependent on the 
welfare of others. Modest altruism and envy are at least weakly supported 
by evolution and therefore are likely to be present in human behavior.10 
The evidence, however, leads Tullock to conclude that such "broader" 
interests are less important than many believe. In the end, it is narrow 
self-interest-based ana?lyses that provide the surest model of human 
behavior and, therefore, for institutional reform.11

If Buchanan's views may be said to be similar to those of James Madison, 
it might be said that Tullock's view of man parallels those of George 
Washington.12 Washington once said that to expect "ordinary people to be 
in.uenced by any other principle but those of interest is to look for what 
never did and I fear never will happen," (Johnson, 1997: 186) and also 
that "few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." The paradox in 
both cases is that neither men were themselves entirely motivated by 
narrow self-interest.

C.Conflict and prosperity: On the cost and generality of rent seeking

"Conflict" is to be expected in all situations in which transfers or 
redis?tribution occur, and in all situations in which problems of 
distribution arise. In general, it is rational for individuals to invest 
resources to either increase the transfers that they will receive or 
prevent redistributions away from them. Thus, any transactions involving 
distribution will lead to dir?ectly opposing resource investments and so 
to con.ict by our de.nition." (TheSocialDilemma,1974: 6)

Take a rational individual and place him in a setting that includes other 
indi?viduals in possession of scarce resources, and most economists will 
predict the emergence of trade. Economists are all familiar with the 
Edgeworth box, which provides a convincing illustration of mutual gains 
from exchange. Tul?lock would be inclined to predict con.ict. Scarcity 
implies that individuals cannot achieve all of their objectives and that 
essentially all individuals would be better off with additional resources; 
however, it does not imply that vol?untary exchange is the only method of 
accomplishing this. Unfortunately, the economist's prediction that 
unrealized gains will be realized through volun?tary exchange follows only 
in settings where changes in the distribution of resources can be 
accomplished onlythrough voluntary means. In the absence of well-enforced 
rights, the strong may simply take the "initial endowments" of the weak.13

Few modern political economists would disagree with such claims about 
con.ict in a setting of anarchy, once reminded of the importance of 
well-enforced property rights. However, 
Tullockalsoarguesthatwastefulcon.ictalsotendstoemergeinsettingswhererightsareinitiallywellunderstoodandenforced.For 
example, lawful means are routinely used to change existing property 
rights assignments and the extent to which they are enforced - within 
legislatures and court proceedings. In ordinary markets, there is con.ict 
over the division of gains to trade and also in the efforts of .rms to 
increase market share through advertising and product innovation. In 
settled polities, con.ict is evident in the efforts of opposing special 
interest groups to persuade legis?latures to enact particular rules and 
regulations, and in the efforts of opposing candidates to win elective 
of.ce. In less lawful or settled settings, political and economic con.ict 
may imply theft and fraud, or bombs exploding and battles fought. Tullock 
often reminds us that con.ict is endemic to human existence.

Con.ict implies that resources are devoted to activities that reduce 
rather than increase the output of .nal goods and services. These 
"rent-seeking" losses cannot be entirely avoided, although the cost of 
con.ict can be re?duced by intelligent institutional design. For example, 
the cost of con.ict is reduced by institutional arrangements that 
encourage the accumulation of productive capital rather than investments 
in redistribution.14 It bears noting that Tullock's conclusion regarding 
the feasibility of institutional solutions is empirical rather than 
analytical. Modern game theory suggests that perfect institutions cannot 
be ruled out a priori - indeed for essentially any well-de.ned game of 
con.ict, it can be shown analytically that a suitable bond or punishment 
scheme can completely eliminate the losses from con.ict. As far as Tullock 
knows, however, there are no real world institutional arrangements that 
completely solve the problem of con.ict. What changes with institutions is 
the magnitude and type of con.ict that takes place. That is to say, 
con.ict appears to be the normal state of human affairs whether bound by 
institu?tions or not. Theoretical solutions evidently underrepresent the 
strategy sets available to persons in real historical settings.

3.Tullock's political economy

A. From the Hobbesian jungle to authoritarian government

"Let us make the simplest assumption of transition conditions from the 
jungle to one where there is an enforcement apparatus. Assume, then, a 
jungle in which there are some bands - like prides of lions - and that one 
of these bands succeeds in destroying or enslaving all of the others, and 
establishes .rm control. This control would, .rstly, lead to a 
considerable change in the income distribution in the jungle in that the 
members of the winning band would have much larger incomes and the losers 
would have lower incomes. It would be rational for the stronger members of 
the winning band to permit sizable improvements in the incomes of the 
weaker members at the expense of nonmembers of the band, simply in order 
to retain the support of these weak members. The cohesion of the new 
government would depend on suitable reward for all members." (Gor?don 
Tullock, "The Edge of the Jungle," in ExplorationsintheTheoryofAnarchy, 
1972: 70)

Tullock argues that government, itself, often emerges from con.ict. For 
ex?ample, Tullock suggests that autocracy is the most likely form of 
governance to emerge in real political settings. In this one might suppose 
that Tullock agrees with Hobbes rather than with Buchanan, but neither 
turns out to be the case. Tullock's theory of the origin of government is 
based on conquest and domination rather than social contract.

The theoretical and empirical importance of authoritarian regimes has led 
Tullock to devote substantial time and energy to analyzing the properties 
of this very common political institution. His analysis of autocracy 
implies that the rule of particular dictators tends to be short-lived, 
although autocratic institutions themselves tend to be very durable. 
Autocratic regimes have an inherent "stability problem" analogous to that 
associated with coalition polit?ics in democracies. Escape from anarchy 
does not imply the end of con.ict, as indirectly suggested by Hobbes.15

This is not to say that every dictatorship is overthrown. Tullock 
discusses a variety of methods by which dictators can decrease the 
probability of coup d'?tat by in-house rivals, most of which, by 
increasing the costs of conspiracy, also reduce the probability of a coup 
attempt being organized. For example, laws against treason should be 
aggressively enforced, rewards for providing the ruler(s) with creditable 
evidence of conspiracies should be high, com?missions rather than 
individuals should be given responsibility for as much as possible, and 
potential rivals should be exiled in a manner that reduces opportunities 
for acquiring support among elites (Autocracy,1987: Ch. 1 and 
TheSocialDilemma, 1974: Ch. 7). Nonetheless, the large personal advantage 
that successful conspirators expect to realize make conspiracies dif.cult 
to eliminate completely; consequently, coups do occur on a fairly regular 
basis.

The dictator's coalition problem implies that a particular autocrat's 
"term of of.ce" is likely to be ended by an internal overthrow, or coup 
d'?tat (Autocracy, 1987: 9), and this is widely observed (Biennen and van 
de Walle (1989).

However, the coalition problem does not apply to the institution of 
auto?cratic governance, itself. Centralized political power will not be 
given up easily, because political elites often share an interest in 
retaining autocratic forms of governance, even when they disagree about 
who should rule. Moreover, a well-informed autocrat can more easily 
subvert a popular revolt than a coup d'?tat. The same methods used to 
discourage palace coups also discourage popular revolts. Tullock argues 
that popular uprisings are far more dif.cult to organize than are palace 
coups, because the public-good problems that must be overcome are much 
larger. The individual advantages of participating in a popular uprising 
are very small relative to those obtained by members of a palace coup, 
although the aggregate bene.ts may be much larger. Being larger 
enterprises, revolutionary movements are also much easier to discover 
(Autocracy,1987: Ch. 3 and ThePoliticsofBureaucracy, 1966: 54). Together 
these imply that autocratic governmental institutions are more easily 
protected than is the tenure of a particular dictator.16 Tullock's 
analysis implies that democracy is a very unlikely form of gov?ernment, 
although not an impossible one. For example, Tullock notes that an 
internal overthrow engineered by elites may lead to democracy, as when an 
elected parliament or state assembly deposes a king or appointed governor, 
and it may well be the case that such transformations are broadly 
supported in the population as a whole (Autocracy,1987: 53-68). The 
evidence supports

Tullock's authoritarian prediction, insofar as autocracies have been far 
more common than democracies throughout recorded history.

B. Constitutional design

Given the historical rarity of democracy and Tullock's assessment of the 
like?lihood of democratic reform, it is somewhat surprising that Professor 
Tullock has devoted so much of his intellectual life to understanding how 
modern democracy operates and how it can be improved. The most likely 
explanation is that knowledge of one's local political circumstances tends 
to be valuable for scholars and non-scholars alike. Tullock, like most 
other public choice scholars, resides in a democratic polity. And this, in 
combination with the wider freedom available within democracies to engage 
in political research, has led him and most other public choice scholars 
to focus largely on the properties of democratic governance.17

When government policies are to be selected by a group, rather than 
im?posed by a dictator, the .rst collective choice that must be made is 
the method of collective choice itself. How should such constitutional 
decisions be made? Buchanan and Tullock point out in the 
CalculusofConsent(1962) that the design and selection of collective 
decision rules is a complex problem, but one that is amenable to analysis 
using rational choice models.18 For example, Buchanan and Tullock note 
that a wide variety of voting rules can be em?ployed by a group to make 
collective decisions and, moreover, that decision rules other than 
majority rule can be in the interest of essentially all citizens. The best 
decision rule depends on the problems being addressed collectively and 
also on the diversity of group interests.

Buchanan and Tullock also point out that, even in cases where majority 
rule is explicitly used and median voter outcomes emerge in the relevant 
elections, other institutional arrangements, such as bicameralism or 
single member districts, may imply that "majoritarian" legislative 
outcomes require substantially more or less than majority support from the 
electorate (CalculusofConsent: Chs. 15 and 16). In general, the menu of 
political constitutions includes a wide range of choices, and even 
majoritarian decisions are affected by the institutional setting in which 
voting takes place. In subsequent work, Tullock argues that a far better 
method of choice, the "Demand Revealing Procedure" (Tideman and Tullock, 
1976), would not rely on counting votes at all.19

C. Interest groups, vote trading, and coalition politics

On those occasions when collective decisions are made by majority rule, 
most economists assume that median voter interests tend to be advanced, 
partly be?cause the median voter model is so tractable.20 However, as 
Tullock has long argued, most voting models assume that voters make 
independent decisions about how to cast their votes.

Tullock (1959, 1970) points out that if vote trading (log rolling) is 
pos?sible, mutual gains from trade can sometimes be realized by 
coordinating votes - mutual gains that would otherwise be infeasible. For 
example, sup?pose there are three equal-sized groups of voters who care 
intensely about three separate large-scale projects that can only be 
.nanced by the central government, for example, building a dam, dredging a 
river, or constructing a bridge. Tullock demonstrates that it may be 
Pareto ef.cient to undertake all three projects, but the concentration of 
bene.ts within minorities can cause ordinary majority rule to reject all 
three projects. Vote trading in such instances potentially allows some or 
all of the unrealized gains from gov?ernment service to be realized.21 In 
such cases, rather than appealing to the median voter, Tullock notes that 
candidates may take positions that appeal to several distinct "special 
interest" minorities that together add up to a majority.

Direct vote trades are most feasible in relatively small number settings, 
as in legislatures, where continuous dealings allow informal exchanges of 
"favors" to be enforced. In large-scale elections, explicit vote trading 
is not likely to be a major factor in.uencing electoral outcomes, although 
what Tullock refers to as implicit log rolling may be. Figure 1 
illustrates the case in which extremist groups A and B join forces to 
obtain policy X over the wishes of moderate voters who prefer policy B.

Figure1. Implicit log rolling

Such implicit vote trading, unfortunately, tends to be associated with 
ma?joritarian decision cycles. That is to say, if implicit vote trading 
can make a difference, there tends not to be a median voter. For example, 
in Figure 1, note that pairwise votes among policies X, B, and Y would be 
as follows: X > B, but Y > Xand B > Y.

D. Bureaucracy

Once legislative decisions are reached, they are normally implemented by 
large government organizations referred to as bureaucracies. In some 
cases, implementation is simply a matter of executing directives from 
elected rep?resentatives. Activity A is to be of.cially opposed or 
encouraged, and the bureaucracy implements the policy by imposing penalty 
P or subsidy S on persons engaging in activity A. In other cases, the 
bureaucracy has discretion to develop the policies themselves or the 
methods by which services will be produced, as when police and .re 
departments organize the production of crime-and .re-controlling services. 
In still others, the agency may be able to develop the law itself - as 
within regulatory agencies. In all such cases, it is clear that the .nal 
disposition of public policy depends in part on the incentives of 
individuals who work in government agencies as well as those of elected 
representatives.

In Tullock's view, the incentives within large public and private 
organ?izations are broadly similar, although they differ somewhat at the 
margin (PoliticsofBureaucracy, 1966). Both public and private 
bureaucracies have their own internal incentive structures that encourage 
various kinds of pro?ductive and unproductive activities by the 
individuals who work within them. These incentives in.uence both the 
performance of individuals within organizations and the array of outputs 
produced by their organizations.

Tullock argues that the importance of a particular organization's internal 
incentives relative to the external incentives of labor markets is 
determ?ined by the ability of individual bureaucrats to move between 
organizations. If every individual within a bureaucracy can costlessly 
change jobs, intra-organizational reward structures would be relatively 
unimportant for career advancement, and reputation in the wider community 
would largely determ?ine salaries. Alternatively, when it is dif.cult for 
persons to move between organizations, the internal structure of internal 
rewards and punishments be?comes an important determinant of individual 
salaries and perquisites, and, therefore, behavior (PoliticsofBureaucracy, 
1966: 10).

In such cases, large organizations will have some monopsony power with 
respect to their employees and internal incentives will largely determine 
employee performance on the job.

Economics predicts that monopsony power will affect salaries and other 
economic aspects of job contracts. However, the intra.rm relationships of 
interest in Tullock's analysis are political, rather than economic. The 
politi?cization of an organization's hierarchy creates a nonprice 
mechanism by which hierarchical organizations can solve their coordination 
and principal-agent problems. He argues that political aspects of 
relationships within large organizations can be readily observed and, to 
some extent, measured by "de?ference." The "deference" observed is 
predicted to vary with the extent of monopsony power that a given 
organization possesses.22 For example, in?sofar as mobility decreases with 
seniority, Tullock's analysis predicts that deference would increase as 
individuals approach the top of an organization's hierarchy.

The speci.c behavior that successfully curries favor or signals loyalty 
clearly varies according to the "wishes" induced on a given agent's boss 
by the boss's boss and so on. In principle, both public and private 
organizations can be organized in an ef.cient manner, in the sense that 
the organizational goals are advanced at least cost.23 However, incentives 
to assure ef.ciency within the public bureaucracy tend to be smaller than 
within large .rms. Wage differentials tend to be larger at the top levels 
of private-sector organizations than in comparable public-sector 
organizations; consequently, Tullock pre?dicts that more deference occurs 
in private than in comparable governmental organizations.24

Moreover, a public bureau's ef.ciency is generally more dif.cult to 
assess, and there is substantially less motivation for improving the 
performance of public bureaus than of comparable private bureaus within 
large .rms.25 For these reasons, Tullock concludes that the public 
bureaucracy tends to be less ef.cient than comparable organizations in the 
private sector. What this means as a practical matter is that 
organizational interests, as understood by senior bureaucrats and the 
legislature, are advanced less in public bureaus than within comparable 
organizations in the private sector.

Tullock's analysis implies that the ef.ciency of the public bureaucracy 
can be improved if incentives to monitor public sector performance are 
increased, or if external competitive pressures on bureaus are intensi.ed. 
For example, Tullock argues that federalism can address both problems by 
reducing the complexity (size and scope) of the government agencies to be 
monitored (as local agencies replace national agencies) and by increasing 
competition between public agencies - both directly through efforts of 
localities to attract new residents and, indirectly, by comparison of the 
outputs of neighboring bureaus - as with local school districts and 
highway service departments.

E. Enforcing the law: The courts, crime, and criminals

"My readers are no doubt convinced by now that this book is different from 
other books on legal procedure. They may be convinced that it is superior, 
but, then again, they may not. I am proposing a radically differ?ent way 
of looking at procedural problems, and anyone making radical proposals 
must recognize the possibility that he could be wrong. But, although I 
concede the possibility that I could be wrong, I do not think that I am." 
(TrialsonTrial, 1980: 233)

Of course, the executive bureaucracy is not the only governmental 
institution that affects legislative outcomes. Even within 
well-functioning democracies, many policy-relevant decisions are made by 
"independent" agencies. One crucial agency that is much neglected in the 
public choice literature is the courts. Economics implies that 
essentiallyalltheincentiveeffectsof public policy are generated by 
enforcement - that is to say, by the probabilities of punishment and the 
penalties associated with various kinds of private and public behavior.26 
It is, thus, surprising that public choice scholars have in?vested so 
little effort analyzing the law enforcement system. Ef.cient and equitable 
enforcement of the law cannot be taken for granted.

Professor Tullock was a pioneer in the rational choice-based analysis of 
the legal system, his LogicoftheLaw(1971) being published a year be?fore 
Posner's EconomicAnalysisoftheLaw(1972). Tullock's research on the legal 
system re.ects his interest in political economy. His work focuses largely 
on the problem of law enforcement, although the LogicoftheLawalso analyzes 
both civil and criminal law. On the former subject, largely neglected by 
Posner's treatise, Tullock reminds us that errors will always be made in 
the enforcement of law.27 Not all criminals are caught, not all who are 
caught are criminals, and not all of the guilty parties caught are 
punished, nor all innocent parties released. Mistakes can be made at every 
stage of the judicial process.28

With such errors in mind, Tullock explores the accuracy of institutions 
that determine fault or guilt, and attempts to assess the overall 
performance of the existing U. S. system of justice relative to 
alternative procedures for identifying criminals and persons at fault.29 
Tullock argues that the available evidence implies that the U.S. courts 
make errors (wrongly determine guilt or innocence) in between 10% and 50% 
of the cases that they decide (TrialsonTrial, 1980: 33). Of course, a 
perfectly accurate justice system is impossible. The institutional or 
constitutional question is not whether mistakes are made, but whether too 
many (or too few) mistakes are being made. Improving the accuracy of court 
proceedings can reduce the social cost of illegal activities by better 
targeting sanctions at transgressors, which tends to reduce crime, and 
encourage greater efforts to settle out of court, which tends to reduce 
court costs (TrialsonTrial, 1980: 73-74).

Tullock argues that the system of justice presently used in the United 
States can be improved at relatively low cost. He argues, for example, 
that the continental judicial system widely employed in Europe produces 
more accur?ate verdicts at a lower cost (TrialsonTrial, 1980, ch. 6). In 
the continental system, panels of judges assess guilt or innocence and 
mete out penalties in trials that are organized directly by the judges 
rather than produced by con.ict between legal teams for the votes of jury 
members. Accuracy could be further increased if the training of judges 
included a "good background in statistics, economics, ideas of 
administrative ef.ciency, etc." (TrialsonTrial, 1980: 204)

4. Conclusion and overview: Politicale conomy in the van

Tullock's work demonstrates that the rational choice paradigm sheds light 
on a wide variety of political choice settings, but the world revealed is 
funda?mentally complex, varied, and irreducible. Each political setting 
has its own unique constellation of incentives and constraints. Political 
decisions at the constitutional level include voting rules, legislative 
structure, the institutional structures of the bureaucracy, and the 
courts. The public policies adopted within a given constitutional setting 
must address issues of redistribution and revolution as well as ordinary 
externality and coordination problems. De?cisions reached within all these 
settings can be understood as consequences of rational choice, but each 
choice setting differs from the others and the differences have to be 
taken into account if human behavior and policy outcomes are to be 
understood. Individuals are rational and largely self-interested, but on 
many issues will be rationally ignorant and, consequently, make systematic 
mistakes.

This is not to say that there is nothing that can be said in general. Both 
indi?vidual choices and political outcomes are the result of the same 
fundamental considerations: self-interest, scarcity, and con.ict. And if 
the particulars al?ways differ, and are more than occasionally 
breathtaking, the basic "lay of the Tullock landscape" is always vaguely 
familiar.30

What is universal in Tullock's political economy is human nature. Tullock 
believes that (fairly) narrow self-interest can account for a wide range 
of human behavior, once individual interests are identi.ed for the 
institutional settings of interest. It is his characterization of human 
nature that provides Tullock's research in political economy with its 
uni.ed and coherent core.

What is unique about Tullock's approach to political economy is his 
willingness to identify costs and bene.ts in essentially all choice 
settings, including many where more orthodox economists and political 
scientists fear to tread. Tullock's work suggests that a proper 
understanding of institutional settings allows relatively straightforward 
net-bene.t maximizing models to account for a rich and complex range of 
policy outcomes. A good deal of human behavior, perhaps most, can be 
understood using the rational choice model of behavior, once the 
particular costs and bene.ts of actions for a given institutional setting 
are recognized.

A. Normative research

Although Tullock's work is motivated, in large part, by his efforts to 
make sense of a broad range of historic and contemporary puzzles that have 
come to his attention over the course of a lifetime of rapid and extensive 
reading, his research has never aimed exclusively at understanding the 
world. His books and many of his papers address normative as well as 
positive issues.31 His normative approach is utilitarian and comparative, 
and, for the most part, his normative conclusions follow closely from his 
positive analyses. If he can show that the averageperson is better off 
under institution X than under institution Y, he concludes that Y is a 
better institution than X. In such cases, Y is approximately Pareto 
superior to X.

Thus, a society with a stable criminal and civil law is better off than 
one lacking them (LogicoftheLaw,1971, ch. 2). A society with a more 
accurate judiciary is better off than one with a less accurate judicial 
process (TrialsonTrial, 1980: Ch. 6). A society with an ef.cient 
collective decision rule is better off than one that fails to minimize 
decision costs (CalculusofConsent, 1962: Ch. 6). A society that uses the 
demand-revealing process to make collective decisions would be better off 
than one relying on majority rule (Tideman and Tullock, 1976). A society 
that reduces rent-seeking losses is better off than one that fails to 
address this problem (Ef.cientRentSeeking,2000: Ch. 1). Intelligent 
institutional design can improve the ef.ciency of the judicial system, 
reduce the losses from con.ict, and produce better public policies, 
although it cannot eliminate all losses or mistakes.

Although many normative arguments are found throughout Tullock's work, his 
analysis is never utopian. He never claims that institutional arrange?ment 
Y is the best possible arrangement, only that existing arrangements can be 
improved. Indeed, he argues that utopian approaches may impede useful 
reforms (SocialDilemma, 1974, p. 140).

B. Breadth of Tullock's research

Most economists study the behavior of rational self-interested individuals 
in?teracting within a stable pattern of laws and regulations governing 
ownership and exchange. Most political scientists study individual and 
group behavior within a stable pattern of constitutional laws and rules 
governing political procedures and constraints. The public choice 
literature as a whole analyzes how economic and political interests give 
rise to public policies. The public policies studied by public choice 
scholars include both the routine legislative outcomes of ordinary 
day-to-day politics and administration decisions, and also changes in the 
fundamental laws that determine the procedures and con?straints under 
which future political and economic decision making will be made. The 
political and economic processes studied by public choice schol?ars, thus, 
can be said to generate the "settings" and many of the "facts" studied by 
the more established .elds of economics and political science.

In this respect, public choice can be regarded as broaderin scope than 
either of its parent disciplines, and, consequently, a scholar who 
contributes to all the research programs within public choice necessarily 
has a very broad program of research. Gordon Tullock is one of a handful 
of scholars who has contributed to all the various sub.elds in that area 
of research known as public choice.

Of course, the public choice research program includes many men and women 
of insight who have addressed deep and broad issues along the same 
intellectual frontiers. Professor Tullock's intellectual enterprise has 
long been shared by his colleagues at the Thomas Jefferson Center and the 
Center for Study of Public Choice - especially James Buchanan and Robert 
Tollison - and by many in the extensive intellectual network in which 
those centers par?ticipated. However, Tullock's work is nearly unique 
among the well-known pioneers of public choice for its originality, 
breadth, comparative approach, and historical foundations.

C. Tullock's intellectual impact

In constructing a "road map" for the intellectual landscape traversed by 
Professor Tullock's political economy, the focus of this paper has been 
the underlying themes in his work, and, in some cases, it has attempted to 
bridge gaps in his work that are essentially implied by the totality of 
his political economy research.

Other gaps have been ignored, and some of his work outside public choice 
has been neglected. For example, his work on dictatorship does not examine 
why some autocrats have better track records than others. The relative 
per?formance of American and European judicial systems is developed 
without addressing the empirical questions of whether crime rates or 
lawsuits are sys?tematically different as a consequence of different 
judicial procedures. Hints are provided in Autocracyand LogicoftheLawbut 
there is no systematic analysis. Moreover, some of his work has been 
neglected because it is not an essential part of his political economy 
research program. There is, for example, his work on biology and 
sociobiology, The Economics of Nonhuman Societies (1994), and his work on 
monetary economics (1954, 1979).

The survey undertaken has not devoted signi.cant space to assessing the 
quality and impact of Tullock's work. That most readers of this piece are 
already familiar with many of his scholarly articles is itself evidence of 
this. A "tour guide" of Tullock's work would have tried to assess the 
magnitude of his major contributions with the bene.t of hindsight or from 
the perspective of the times at which his ideas were developed. It is 
clear, for example, that The Calculus of Consent(1962), written with James 
Buchanan, was not only very original, but in.uential from the moment it 
was published. The Calculus has been cited in scienti.c articles well over 
a thousand times since its pub?lication. Moreover, it continues to be 
highly regarded and continues to spur new research; the Calculus has 
already been cited more than 100 times since January 2000.

Not all of Professor Tullock's contributions have been immediately 
re?cognized. Several of his ideas awaited reinvention by other scholars 
before coming to prominence. His original work on rent seeking (1967, 
1974) was well-regarded, but not widely appreciated until 10 or 20 years 
after its pub-lication.32 The term "rent seeking" was actually coined by 
Anne Krueger in 1974. His contributions to principal-agent, ef.ciency 
wage, and organization theory worked out in the 
PoliticsofBureaucracy(1966) have been largely neglected by the new 
literatures on those subjects. His work on the law, es?pecially with 
respect to judicial proceedings, errors, and criminal sanctions, are 
noted, but not as widely as appears justi.ed. His theory of autocrats as 
service-providing income maximizers was worked out in the .rst anarchy 
volume (1972) and further developed in TheSocialDilemma(1974), but awaited 
rediscovery by Mancur Olson (1993) and Ronald Wintrobe (1990) nearly two 
decades later. The invention of what now is called a contest-success 
function in TheLogicoftheLaw(1971) and subsequently applied in his work on 
ef.cient rent seeking (1980) also seems underrecognized, although it is 
noted by Jack Hirshliefer (2001). His work on the enterprise of science, 
The Organization of Inquiry(1966) is a gold mine awaiting rediscov?ery. 
Sometimes, Tullock blazes a trail that is too far ahead of the mainstream 
to be fully appreciated. And, one can be too far in front of "the parade" 
to be readily associated with it.

That Tullock's observations have contributed much to our understand?ing of 
the political landscape is, nonetheless, well recognized. His research 
continues to be among the most highly cited in the social sciences. His 
willingness to chart new grounds and point out the "dead ends," "ruts," 
"potholes," and "slippery slopes" of other scholars - largely to our 
bene.t, if often at his pleasure - continues to make his work provocative 
and entertain?ing. His books and papers address new issues and associated 
problems at the same time that general principles are being worked out. 
His long editorship of PublicChoicehelped to de.ne and establish the .eld.

The huge range of original explanations and conclusions that Tullock 
de?velops in his books and papers can easily lead a casual reader or 
listener to conclude that there is little systematic in his research, or 
perhaps in public choice generally. His brisk discussions of issues risk 
losing the reader in a forest of special cases and ingenious insights, 
rather than illuminating the main pathways followed. Clearly, a mere list 
of possible explanations is not social science. Social sciencedoes not 
simply provide an unconnected logicof speci.c instances of collective 
action, but attempts to determine what is general about the behavior that 
we observe.

The present essay attempts to remedy this potential misapprehension by 
providing a more concise and integrated vision of the territory charted by 
Tul-lock's unusually extensive political economy than a casual reader may 
have obtained from a small sample of Professor Tullock's published work. 
The aim of Tullock's social science is not just to explain the main 
details of social life, but as much as possibly can be understood. His 
social science attempts to systematically explain and predict 
allofhumanbehavior. His work demon?strates that self-interest, con.ict, 
and institutions account for a good deal of human behavior in both 
ordinary and extraordinary political circumstances - and, in Tullock's 
view, far more than is generally acknowledged.

Notes

1. The work of many social scientists attempts to show that complex real 
world phenomena can be understood with a few fundamental principles that 
others have failed to recognize. This reductionist approach attempts to 
demonstrate that the world is essentially simpler than it appears. The 
reductionist research agenda is clearly of great esthetic interest for 
academics who appreciate the intellectual craftsmanship required to devise 
lean, pen?etrating, encompassing theories. It is also an important 
practical enterprise insofar as reductionist theories allow knowledge 
accumulated over many lifetimes to be passed on from one generation to the 
next with relatively modest investments of time and effort by teachers and 
students.

2. As many who have argued with Professor Tullock over the years will 
attest, the rough edges of his work somehow make his analyses all the more 
interesting. His provocative theoretical and historical assertions 
challenge his interlocutors to think more carefully about issues that they 
would not have imagined and/or mistakenly taken for granted. The fact that 
Tullock is occasionally incorrect somehow helps stimulate his fans and 
foes to greater effort.

3. "A scienti.c theory consists of a logical structure proceeding from 
certain assumptions to certain conclusions. We hope that both the 
assumptions and the conclusions may be checked by comparing them with the 
real world; the more highly testable the theory, the better. Normally, 
however, certain parts of the theory are dif.cult to test. We are not 
unduly concerned by this, since if parts of it survive tests, we may 
assume that the untestable remainder is also true." (Gordon Tullock, 
LogicoftheLaw, 1971: 10.)

4. "The theory of the lever may, of course, be disproved tomorrow, but the 
fact that it has withstood two thousand years of critical examination, 
much of it using tools which the Greeks could not even dream of, does 
raise some presumption that here we have a bit of theory which is 
absolutely true. It seems likely that somewhere in our present vast 
collection of theories there are others which are, in fact, true, that is 
which will not be disproved at any time in the future. It is, of course, 
impossible to say which they are." (Gordon Tullock, OrganizationofInquiry, 
1966: 48.)

5. "An intelligent outsider who has the time and interest in a problem 
should investigate, himself, since only in this way can he reach the level 
of certainty of the experts them?selves. Personal knowledge is always 
superior to hearsay, ..." (Gordon Tullock, The Organization of Inquiry, 
1966: 53.)

6. "I prefer to use the world ?rational' for those acts that might well 
achieve the goals to which the actor aims, regardless of whether they are 
humanitarian, violent, etc." (Gordon Tullock, TheSocialDilemma, 1974: 4.)

7. Tullock often acknowledges his own fallibility although he does not 
tout it. This is evident in the lead quote and several others included in 
the text. Another appears in the .rst chapter of 
TowardsaMathematicsofPolitics.There he relates a story about failing to 
purchase glasses made out of a new material when it was .rst suggested to 
him by his optometrist. Gordon, evidently misunderstood what was said 
regarding an innovation in lens design, and fully appreciated it only a 
week or so later, at which point he purchased the glasses with the 
recommended lenses.

8. "My main point is simply that we stop fooling ourselves about 
redistribution. We have a minor desire to help the poor. This leads to 
certain government policies. We also have some desire for income 
insurance. And we also, to some extent, envy the rich. ...[However,] the 
largest single source of income redistribution is simply the desire of the 
recipients to receive the money." (Gordon Tullock, "The Rhetoric and 
Reality of Redistribution," Southern Economic Journal, 1981: 906.)

9. "Man is a complicated animal and his motives are many and varied". 
(Gordon Tullock, The Organization of Inquiry, 1966: 39.)

10. "We argue below that it (altruism) is a relatively minor motive and 
the major motives tend to lead to inef.ciency and distortion. This motive 
(altruism), insofar as it is implemented, actually improves the ef.ciency 
of the economy." (Gordon Tullock, "The Rhetoric and Reality of 
Redistribution," SouthernEconomicJournal, 1981: 896.) Of course, if envy 
is strong enough, then taking a dollar away from me might give other 
people a total satisfaction which was larger than the loss of the dollar 
to me. Thus plunder?ing the Rockefeller family might be socially desirable 
if we had some way of measuring innate utilities." (Gordon Tullock, "The 
Rhetoric and Reality of Redistribution," SouthernEconomicJournal, 1981: 
902.)

11. "The primacy of private interest is not inconsistent with the 
observation that most people, in addition to pursuing their private 
interests have some charitable instincts, some tend?ency to help others 
and to engage in various morally correct activities. However the evidence 
seems fairly strong that these motives other than the pursuit of private 
interests are not the ones on which we can depend for the achievement of 
long-continued ef.cient performance." (Gordon Tullock, 
GovernmentWhoseObedientServant?, 2000: 11.)

12. A collection of Washington quotes are available on the internet at 
http://www.dropbears. com/b/broughsbooks/qwashington.htm.

13. "Economics has traditionally studied the bene.ts of cooperation. 
Political science is be?ginning to move in that direction. Although I 
would not quarrel with the desirability of such studies, the fact remains 
that con.ict is also important. In general con.ict uses re?sources, hence 
it is socially inef.cient, but entering into the con.ict may be 
individually rational for one or both parties. ...The social dilemma, 
then, is that we would always be better off collectively if we could avoid 
playing this kind of negative sum game, but individuals may make gains by 
forcingsuchagameon the rest of us." (Gordon Tullock, The Social Dilemma, 
1974: 2.)

14. "Obviously, as a good social policy, we should try to avoid having 
games that are likely to lead to this kind of waste. Again, we should try 
to arrange that the payoff to further investment in resources is 
comparatively low, or, in other words, that the cost curve [of rent 
seeking] points sharply upward." (Gordon Tullock, Ef.cientRentSeeking, 
2000: 13.) "There are institutions that will reduce the likelihood of 
being forced into such a game, but these institutions cost resources, too. 
...[However] the problem is unavoidable - at least in the present state of 
knowledge. Pretending that it does not exist is likely to make us worse 
off than conceding its existence and taking rational precautions." (Gordon 
Tullock, TheSocialDilemma, 1974: 2.)

15. "The problem of maintaining power in a dictatorship is really similar 
to that of maintain?ing a majority for redistributive purposes in a voting 
body. It is easily demonstrated, of course, that it is always possible to 
build a majority against any particular program of redistribution by 
offering something to the "outs" on the original program and fairly high 
payments to a few of the "ins." The situation in a dictatorship is 
similar. It is always pos?sible at least in theory to collect together a 
group of people which is more powerful than the group supporting the 
status quo. This group will be composed of important of.cials of the 
regime who could bene.t from its overthrow and their concomitant 
promotion." (Gordon Tullock, Autocracy, 1987: 19.)

16. "Preventing overthrow by the common people is, in general, quite easy 
if the ruler is only willing to repress vigorously and to offer large 
rewards for information about conspiracies against him." (Gordon Tullock, 
Autocracy, 1987: 68.)

17. Tullock may disagree with this location-based explanation. "Most of my 
work in Public Choice has dealt with democratic governments. This is not 
because I thought that demo?cratic governments were the dominant form of 
government, either currently or historically. That more people are ruled 
by autocracy than democracies today, and that the same can be said of 
earlier periods, is obvious. I did think that democratic governments were 
better than the various alternatives which have been tried from time to 
time, but the basic reason that most things that I have published have 
dealt with democracies is simply that I've found dictatorship to be a 
very, very dif.cult problem." (Gordon Tullock, Autocracy, 1987: x.)

18. "For a given activity, the fully rational individual at the time of 
constitutional choice will try to choose that decision-making rule which 
will minimize the present value of the expected costs that he must suffer. 
He will do so by minimizing the sum of the expected external costs and the 
expected decision-making costs . . . [In this manner,] the individual will 
choose the rule which requires that K/N of the group agree when collective 
decisions are made." (Gordon Tullock and James M. Buchanan, 
CalculusofConsent, 1962: 70.) "This broad ...classi.cation does not, of 
course, suggest that all collective action should rationally be placed 
under one of two decision making rules. The number of categories, and the 
number of decision-making rules chosen, will depend on the situation which 
the individual expects to prevail and the "returns to scale' expected to 
result from using the same rule over many activities." (Gordon Tullock and 
James M. Buchanan, CalculusofConsent, 1962: 76.)

19. In their words, the demand-revealing process "is a new process for 
making social choices, one that is superior to other processes that have 
been suggested. The method is immune to strategic maneuvering on the part 
of individual voters. It avoids the conditions of the Arrow theorem by 
using more information than the rank orders of preferences and selects a 
unique point on or ?almost on' the Pareto-optimal frontier, one that 
maximizes or ?almost maximizes' the consumer surplus of society. Subject 
to any given distributions of wealth, the process may be used to 
approximate the Lindahl equilibrium for all public goods." (Tideman and 
Tullock, JournalofPoliticalEconomy, 84: 1145.)

20. An interesting property of the median voter hypothesis is that 
decisions tend to be largely independent of the particulars of the 
interests of voters away from the median (Black, 1948). All that matters 
is that which is necessary to identify the median voter. How much more or 
less than the median voter's interest is demanded by other voters and how 
intensively those demands are held is irrelevant. A wide range of voter 
distributions can have the same median. However, not every distribution of 
voter preferences has a median. In the absense of a median, McKelvy (1979) 
demonstrates that literally "anything" can happen under a sequence of 
majority decisions. The properties of democratic governance are by no 
means obvious, and the more detailed the institutional structures and 
preferences that are taken account of, the more complex political decision 
making becomes.

21. Vote trading can also lead to the funding of regional boon-doggles, as 
in the pork barrel dilemma (Tullock, 1959). Again the world is more 
complex than one might have hoped.

22. "Insofar as the alternatives for employment are limited, and the 
shifting of either jobs or employees involves costs, the secondary, or 
?political' relationship enters even here. ...The most obvious empirical 
veri.cation of this difference is the degree of deference shown to 
superiors." (Gordon Tullock, ThePoliticsofBureaucracy, 1966: 11.)

23. "In the ideally ef.cient organization, then, the man dominated by 
ambition would .nd himself taking the same courses of action as an 
idealist simply because such procedure would be the most effective for him 
in achieving the personal goals that he seeks. At the other extreme, an 
organization may be so badly designed that an idealist may .nd it 
necessary to take an almost completely opportunistic position because only 
in this manner can his ideals be served." (Gordon Tullock, 
ThePoliticsofBureaucracy, 1965, p. 21.)

24. "In the United States civil service, the individual career employee is 
generally not ex?pected to put up with quite as much ?pushing around' as 
he might endure in the higher ranks of some large corporations. To balance 
this, he will be receiving less salary and will probably .nd that the 
orders which he is expected to implement are less rational than those he 
could expect to receive in private industry." (Gordon Tullock, 
ThePoliticsofBureaucracy, 1966: 12.)

25. "Improving the ef.ciency of a large corporation by, let us say, 2 
percent may well mean that some individual's wealth goes up by $50 million 
and a very large number of individu?als will have increases in wealth on 
the order of a hundred to a million dollars. Maximizing the public 
interest, however, would always be a public good, and improvement by 2 
per?cent in the functioning ef.ciency of some bureau would 
characteristically increase the well-being of average citizens, or, 
indeed, any citizen by amounts which would be almost invisible." (Gordon 
Tullock, Government:WhoseObedientServant?, 2000: 58.)

26. It bears noting that many of the demands for public policy within a 
given society are independent of the type of political regime in place. 
For example, criminal and civil laws would be adopted by nearly unanimous 
agreement by all free men and women at a constitutional convention 
(Calculus of Consent,1962: Ch. 5, and Logic of the Law, 1971: Ch. 2). 
Alternatively, an autocrat may establish criminal and civil law as a means 
of maximizing the resources potentially available to the state 
(Explorations in the Theory of Anarchy, 1972: 72, and The Social Dilemma, 
1974: 19). Murder and theft will ordinarily be punished, and most 
contracts will be enforced under both democratic and autocratic regimes. 
Some other rules may vary somewhat according to regime type, as with rules 
concerning payments to government of.cials, freedom of assembly, and the 
publication of news critical of the government, but regime type will not 
always directly affect public policy outcomes or economic performance.

27. Of course, procedural questions are more important for a political 
economist than for a scholar whose work focuses on a single society. This 
probably explains why procedural aspects of law enforcement are given 
relatively little attention in the law and economics literature, see, for 
example, Becker (1968) or Posner (1972).

28. "Most crimes are not simply the preliminary to punishment for the 
criminals, most people who are in prison have not had anything that we 
would recognize as a trial, and admin?istrative decisions keep people in 
prison and (in effect) extend their sentence." (Gordon Tullock, 
LogicoftheLaw, 1971: 169.)

29. "The problem of determining what actually happened is one of the 
court's duties and the only one we are discussing now. A historic 
reconstruction, which is what we are now talking about, is a dif.cult task 
for a variety of reasons. One is that witnesses lie and in lawsuits, there 
usually are at least some witnesses who have a strong motive to lie. They 
may also simply be mistaken. Another reason is that many things which 
happen that are of interest to the court leave no physical traces and, 
indeed, may leave no traces on the minds of the parties...different cases 
have different amounts of evidence of varying quality available, and 
...this evidence leads us to varying probabilities of reaching the correct 
decision." (Gordon Tullock, Trials on Trial, 1980: 25-26.)

30. This is especially true for those working in the tradition of the 
public choice approach to politics. However, the latter is partly a 
consequence of Tullock's many contributions to public choice, but, perhaps 
even more so, a consequence of his two decades as editor of the journal 
PublicChoice. Those years largely de.ned the discipline as we know it now, 
and Tullock's editorial decisions helped determine those boundaries - such 
as they are - and his responses to contributors made his world view both 
familiar and important to aspiring public choice scholars of that period.

31. "We undertake investigations because we are curious, or because we 
hope to use the information obtained for some practical purpose." (Gordon 
Tullock, 1966, OrganizationofInquiry, 1966: 12.)

32. In fact, his .rst paper on the costly nature of efforts to secure 
rents (1967) was roundly rejected by the major economics journals (Brady 
and Tollison, 1994: 9-10).

References

Selected references: Gordon Tullock.

Lockard, A.A. and Tullock, G. (2001). Efficient rent seeking: Chronicle of 
an intellectual quagmire. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Tullock, G., Seldon, A. and Brady, G.L. (2000). Government: Whose obedient 
servant?: A primer in public choice. London: Institute of Economic 
Affairs. Tullock, G. (1997). Thecaseagainstthecommonlaw. Durham: North 
Carolina Academic Press.

Tullock, G. (1997). Economics of income redistribution. Boston: Kluwer 
Academic Publishers.

Brady, G.L. and Tollison, R.D. (Eds.). (1994). On the trail of homo 
economicus: Essays by Gordon Tullock. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University 
Press.

Tullock, G. (1994). The economics of nonhuman societies. Tucson: Pallas 
Press.

Grier, K.B. and Tullock, G. (1989). An empirical analysis of 
cross-national economic growth, 1951-80. Journal of Monetary Economics 24: 
259-276.

Tullock, G. (1989). The economics of special privilege and rent seeking. 
Hingham, MA: Lancaster and Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Tullock, G. (1987).  Autocracy. Hingham, MA: Lancaster and Dordrecht: 
Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Tullock, G. (1986). The economics of wealth and poverty. New York: New 
York University Press; (distributed by Columbia University Press).

Tullock, G. (1985). Adam Smith and the prisoners' dilemma, Quarterly 
Journal of Economics 100: 1073-1081.

McKenzie, R.B. and Tullock, G. (1985). The new world of economics: 
Explorations into the human experience. Homewood, IL: Irwin.

Brennan, G. and Tullock, G. (1982). An economic theory of military 
tactics: Methodological individualism at war. Journal of Economic Behavior 
and Organization 3: 225-242.

Tullock, G. (1981). The rhetoric and reality of redistribution. Southern 
Economic Journal 47: 895-907.

Tullock, G. (1981). Why so much stability? Public Choice 37: 189-202.

Tullock, G. (1980). Trials on trial: The pure theory of lega lprocedure. 
New York: Columbia University Press.

Tullock, G. (1980). Ef.cient rent seeking. In J.M. Buchanan, R.D. 
Tollison, and G. Tullock. Toward a theory of the rent-seeking society, 
97-112. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.

Tullock, G. (1979). When is in.ation not in.ation: A note. Journal of 
Money, Credit, and Banking 11: 219-221.

Tullock, G. (1977). Economics and sociobiology: A comment. Journal of 
Economic Literature 15: 502-506.

Tideman, T.N. and Tullock, G. (1976). A new and superior process for 
making social choices. Journal of Political Economy 84: 1145-1159.

Tullock, G. (1975). The transitional gains trap. Bell Journal of Economics 
6: 671-678.

Buchanan, J.M. and Tullock, G. (1975). Polluters' pro.ts and political 
response: Direct controls versus taxes. American Economic Review 65: 
139-147.

Tullock, G. (1974). The social dilemma: The economics of war and 
revolution. Blacksburg: University Publications.

Tullock, G. (1972). Explorations in the theory of anarchy. Blacksburg: 
Center for the Study of Public Choice.

Buchanan, J.M. and Tullock, G. (1971/1962). Thecalculusofconsent: Logical 
foundations of constitutional democracy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan 
Press.

Tullock, G. (1971). The charity of the uncharitable. Western Economic 
Journal 9: 379-392.

Tullock, G. (1971). Inheritance justi.ed. Journal of Law and Economics 14: 
465-474.

Tullock, G. (1971). The paradox of revolution. Public Choice 11: 88-99.

Tullock, G. (1971). Public decisions as public goods. Journal of Political 
Economy 79: 913- 918.

Tullock, G. (1971/1988). The logic of the law. Fairfax: George Mason 
University Press.

Tullock, G. (1967). The general irrelevance of the general impossibility 
theorem. Quarterly Journal of Economics 81: 256-270.

Tullock, G. (1967). The welfare costs of monopolies, tariffs and theft. 
Western Economic Journal 5: 224-232.

Tullock, G. (1967). Towards a mathematics of politics. Ann Arbor: 
University of Michigan Press.

Tullock, G. (Ed.). (1966/7). Papers on non-market decision making. 
Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Center for Political Economy, University 
of Virginia.

Tullock, G. (1966). The Organization of Inquiry. Durham: Duke University 
Press.

Tullock, G. (1966). Gains-from-trade in votes (with J.M. Buchanan). Ethics 
76: 305-306.

Tullock, G. (1965). The politics of bureaucracy. Washington, DC: Public 
Affairs Press.

Tullock, G. (1965). Entry barriers in politics. American Economic 
Review55: 458-466.

Tullock, G. (1962). Entrepreneurial politics.Charlottesville: Thomas 
Jefferson Center for Studies in Political Economy, University of Virginia.

Tullock, G. (1959). Problems of majority voting. Journal of 
PoliticalEconomy 67: 571-579.

Campbell, C.D. and Tullock, G. (1954). Hyperin.ation in China, 1937-49. 
Journal of Political Economy 62: 236-245.

Other references

Becker, G.S. (1968). Crime and punishment: An economic approach. The 
Journal of Political Economy 76: 169-217.

Biennen, H. and van de Walle, N. (1989). Time and power in Africa. 
American Political Science Review 83: 19-34.

Black, D. (1948). On the rationale of group decision-making. Journal of 
Political Economy 56: 23-34.

Buchanan, J.M. (1987). The qualities of a natural economist. In C. Rowley 
(Ed.), Democracy and public choice, 9-19. New York: Blackwell.

Congleton, R.D. (1988). An overview of the contractarian public .nance of 
James Buchanan. Public Finance Quarterly 16: 131-157.

Congleton, R.D. (1980). Competitive process, competitive waste, and 
institutions. In J. Buchanan, R. Tollison, and G. Tullock (Eds.), Towards 
a theory of the rent-seeking society, 153-179. Texas A & M Press.

Hirshliefer, J. (2001). The dark side of the force: Economic foundations 
of con.ict theory. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Johnson, P. (1997). A history of the American people. New York: Harper.

Krueger, A.O. (1974). The political economy of the rent-seeking society. 
American Economic Review 64: 291-303.

McKelvey, R.D. (1979). General conditions for global intransitivities in 
formal voting models. Econometrica 47: 1085-1112.

Olson, M. (1993). Dictatorship, democracy, and development. American 
Political Science Review 87: 567-576.

Posner, R.E. (1972). Economic analysis of the law. Boston: Little, Brown 
and Company.

Shepsle, K.A. and Weingast, B.R. (1981). Structure-induced equilibrium and 
legislative choice. Public Choice 37: 503-519.

Wintrobe, R. (1990). The tinpot and the totalitarian: An economic theory 
of dictatorship. American Political Science Review 84: 849-872.

From dsmith06 at maine.rr.com  Tue Jan  3 02:16:51 2006
From: dsmith06 at maine.rr.com (David Smith)
Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 21:16:51 -0500
Subject: [Paleopsych] =?windows-1252?q?=91The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature?=
 =?windows-1252?q?=92=3A_Evolution_and_Morality_?=
Message-ID: <43B9DE93.2070408@maine.rr.com>

?The Better Angels of Our Nature?: Evolution and Morality

St. Francis Room of the Ketchum Library
University of New England,
11 Hills Beach Road,
Biddeford, Maine.
Feb. 21, 2006 at 6 p.m.

Evolutionary biologist David Lahti, Ph.D., will deliver a lecture on 
"'The Better Angels of Our Nature': Evolution and Morality" on Feb. 21, 
2006 at 6 p.m. in the Lahti is an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the 
University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  The lecture, sponsored by New 
England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology and 
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, is free and open to the 
public.

Are we humans essentially altruistic beings whose natural state is to 
care for others?  Or are we ogres at heart, our moral codes the only 
thing holding us back from utter selfishness? Lahti argues that an 
evolutionary consideration of morality suggests a third alternative, 
that we are by nature moral strugglers and deliberators - that the 
relevant adaptive trait is neither altruism nor selfishness, but rather 
a refined ability to assess our social environments and make informed 
decisions about how altruistic or selfish to be. We tend, he believes, 
to make these decisions on the basis of two main variables:  the 
anticipated effects of our behavior on our reputation and the perceived 
stability of the social groups on which we depend. Furthermore, what we 
often call morality is actually a conglomerate of tendencies and 
capacities, some of which are millions of years old and others just 
thousands.  Many of its more recent features, including moral rules that 
are difficult for us to follow, are cultural surrogates for adaptation 
in an age when our social environments are changing too fast for us to 
adapt genetically to them.

Lahti received a Ph.D. in philosophy at the Whitefield Institute at 
Oxford in 1998, for work on the relationship between science and the 
foundations of morality; more recently his research in this area has 
focused on the evolution of morality.  In 2003 he received a Ph.D. in 
ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Michigan, where 
he documented rapid evolution in the African village weaverbird. From 
2003 to 2005 he held the Darwin Fellowship at the Program in Organismic 
and Evolutionary Biology at University of Massachusetts Amherst, and has 
been studying the evolution and development of bird song.


From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan  3 22:28:49 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 17:28:49 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Public Choice: Anyone for higher speed limits?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601021452111.3109@panix3.panix.com>

Olof Johansson-Stenman and Peter Martinsson: Anyone for higher speed 
limits? - Self-interested and adaptive political preferences
Public Choice (2005) 122: 319-331 C
DOI: 10.1007/s11127-005-3901-x

[This is a nice article that gets at the issue of whether voters vote for 
what is in their own self-interest or what they think is in the overall 
public interest. I say vote for what's in your own interest, since you 
don't know what's in others' interest, certainly not better than they do 
themselves. It's the American way, that idea that government serve 
the people. One chief problem of altruism is that, if I am to serve other 
people, who are all these other people going to serve.

[One matter of surprise to me: "The result presented here is also 
consistent with the result of Hemenway and Solnick (1993) and Shinar, 
Schechtman and Compton (2001), who found that levels of education higher 
than high-school tended to increase the probability of speed violation."

[But be wary of the article, though, since the variables explained only 
20% of the variance. There's a real likelihood that, if someone will come 
up with other variables that will explain more of the variance, the 
coefficients on the ones used here could get drastically altered. One of 
the critics of _The Be** Cu**e_ complained that the authors often buried 
the R^2s in the back, and in fact the R^2s varied all over the place.

[Note that I said, "IF someone will come up with other variables.... 
Researchers use the variables they can get ahold of. What _The B*ll C*rv*_ 
did was to thoroughly mine a data set, that collected for the National 
Longitudinal Study of Youth, that almost uniquely had a measure of 
intelligence. The results are known: IQ correlated more with things like 
income and scholastic achievement than do the usual Socioeconomic status, 
parental income, and so on. I'd love to know whether having an IQ measure 
upset any conventional wisdom on these other factors.

[When I was in graduate school at UVa, self-interested voting was 
emphasized and expressive voting barely recognized. I was Virginia School. 
The Rochester School (William Riker and then others) came along later. It 
was in political science but used economics tools. It emphasised 
disinterested voting. These two Schools were never, I don't think, hostile 
toward one another, and this article shows that the issues are empirical.]

Department of Economics, SE 40530 G?teborg, Sweden; e-mail:
Olof.Johansson at economics.gu.se, Peter.Martinsson at economics.gu.se

Accepted 17 November 2003

Abstract. Swedish survey-evidence indicates that variables reflecting 
self-interest are important in explaining people's preferred speed limits, 
and that political preferences adapt to technological development. Drivers 
who believe they drive better than the average driver as well as drivers 
of cars that are newer (and hence safer), bigger, and with better high- 
speed characteristics, prefer higher speed limits. In contrast, elderly 
people prefer lower speed limits. Furthermore, people report that they 
themselves vote more sociotropically than they believe others vote on 
average, indicating that we may vote less sociotropically than we believe 
ourselves. One possible reason for such self-serving biases is that people 
desire to see themselves as socially responsible.

*We are grateful for very constructive comments from an anonymous referee. 
We have also received useful comments from Fredrik Carlsson and had 
fruitful discussions with Per Fredriksson and Douglas Hibbs. Financial 
support from the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA) is 
gratefully acknowledged.

1. Introduction

The purpose of this paper is twofold: i) to use survey evidence about what 
speed limits different people prefer on motorways, and what their own 
subjectively perceived and self-reported voting motives are, in order to 
provide new insight into the determinants of individual voting behavior, 
in particular the self-interested voting hypothesis; and ii) to identify 
adaptations in political preferences due to technological development, in 
our case changes in safety and high-speed features of cars. The analysis 
is based on two recent representative Swedish surveys: In the first one 
people were asked about their preferred speed limits on motorways. In the 
second they were asked about why they vote as they do, and about why they 
think other people vote as they do.

Why do people vote in the way they do and why do they vote at all? One 
reason for the latter is simply that we are heavily indoctrinated to do 
so; c.f. Tullock (2000). But is how we vote motivated solely by the 
instrumental outcome induced by our votes? Or are we perhaps, as proposed 
by Brennan and Lomasky (1993) and Brennan and Hamlin (1998, 2000), 
motivated largely by the expressive act of voting? If the expressive 
motive is important it becomes more likely that people are concerned with 
society as a whole when voting, rather than what is good solely for 
themselves.1 Indeed, as found by Brekke, Kverndokk and Nyborg (2003), most 
people seem to prefer a self-image that reflects social responsibility, 
rather than pure self-concern. The relative importance of purely 
self-interested voting, versus sociotropic voting, is still debated. This 
is partly because it is difficult to draw strong conclusions from general 
elections that are characterized by few political parties (or candidates) 
and many political issues and indicators; see e.g. Kinder and Kiewiet 
(1979), Kramer (1983) and Mitchell (1990). The reason for this is that 
some opinions of one party may favour a certain group while other opinions 
may favour other groups, and it is difficult to know the relative weights 
that different voters give to the different opinions of the parties. Thus, 
there are clear advantages to be gained from testing the self-interested 
voting model when the choice set is small and when there are few political 
issues, such as on a single-issue referendum or by using tailor-made 
surveys.

Smith (1975) analyzed the voting behavior from a referendum in Oregon 
concerning tax equalization between different districts, and concluded 
that self-interest does seem to play an important role. Sears, Lau, Tyler 
and Allen (1980), on the other hand, analyzed survey data on people's 
attitudes toward specific policies in the US, and concluded that 
self-interest plays a very minor role. However, their conclusions, based 
on their statistical results, can be questioned: for example, they found 
that the support for a national health insurance decreased with income and 
increased with age, and that the support for more resources to be given to 
law and order increased with income, but these findings were not 
interpreted to reflect self-interest. Nevertheless, there have also been 
other studies such as Gramlich and Rubinfeld (1982) and Shabman and 
Stephenson (1994) that have concluded that self-interest alone does a poor 
job of explaining the results. These findings are also consistent with 
much experimental evidence from public-good games; see e.g. Ledyard (1995) 
and Keser and van Winden (2000).

Much of the analysis here is based on the first survey about the preferred 
speed limits on motorways, which is an issue that has been frequently 
debated for a long time in Sweden. Besides being a single issue, it has 
the advantage of being fairly neutral from an ethical point of view, 
meaning that the opinion of good and responsible citizens is not 
straightforward to predict.2 Survey responses can otherwise be biased 
towards what is perceived to be the most ethical alternative, which is an 
argument that for example is put forward in the environmental valuation 
literature. A possible underlying reason for this bias, in turn, is that 
people typically attempt to present themselves in a positive manner to 
others, which implies that we sometimes deliberately conceal or colour our 
true opinions or preferences, i.e. what Kuran (1995) denotes "preference 
falsifications." An alternative reason is our desire to see ourselves as 
good people, and our tendency to bias our impressions of reality in 
various respects to maintain or improve this self-image (see e.g. 
Gilovich, 1991). Such tendencies may, for example, influence people to 
believe that they would be willing to pay more for a socially good cause 
than they would actually be willing to pay, which is denoted "purchase of 
moral satisfaction" by Kahneman and Knetsch (1992).

In order to broaden the insights on voting motives, we also performed a 
second survey where a representative sample of Swedes was asked about why 
they vote as they do, and why they think other people vote as they do. 
This allows us to compare the findings about the preferred speed limits 
with the perception that people have of their own and others' voting 
motives. The reason we also asked about the perception of others' voting 
motives is the one just mentioned, i.e. that we suspected that the 
responses may be biased since most people would presumably consider voting 
out of conviction to be ethically superior to voting solely for one's own 
good.

Given that self-interest is important for the political preferences, one 
would from the general self-interested hypothesis expect people with more 
exclusive and safer cars, and with higher subjective driving skills, to 
prefer relatively high speed limits, and elderly and more vulnerable 
people to prefer lower speed limits. In addition, one would expect people 
who drive faster, and who break the speed limits more often to prefer 
higher speed limits. The results, reported in Section 2, are consistent 
with these hypotheses. One would also expect that these preferences would 
change with changing circumstances. Indeed, behavioural adaptations in 
response to perceived changes in the environment are among the most 
important insights that modern economics can contribute to the public 
debate. For example, a safety improvement in cars of, say, 10% may cause a 
much smaller net effect on safety, since safer cars may induce people to 
drive faster and less responsibly; see Peltzman (1975), Keeler (1994), 
Peterson, Hoffer and Millner (1995) and Merrel, Poitras and Sutter (1999) 
for theoretical analysis as well as empirical evidence. This paper will 
concentrate on another kind of adjustment, namely how political 
preferences with respect to preferred speed limits on motorways change 
with the rapid technological development of private cars. The data used 
here is not ideal in this respect, since the survey is purely 
cross-sectional. Nevertheless, it is still possible to see whether the 
results are consistent with the hypothesis of adjustments of political 
preferences. If people demand higher speed limits when their cars get 
safer and have better high-speed characteristics, one would expect from 
the empirical analysis that more people would be in favour of increasing 
speed limits rather than decreasing them, since these limits were decided 
upon many years ago,3 and also that individuals with newer cars would 
prefer higher speed limits. This is also found in our empirical analysis.

It is interesting to compare the obtained motives that can be inferred 
from people's choices, in reality or in surveys, from their own 
subjectively perceived voting motives. This is the reason we undertook the 
second survey about people's perceptions of their own and others' voting 
motives. The results indicate that most people believe that others vote 
largely for their own interests, whereas they, on average, consider 
themselves to be influenced roughly equally by their own interests and by 
those of society as a whole. The results further help to identify possible 
self-serving biases, i.e. that people may tend, unconsciously, to believe 
that what is in the interest of society happens to coincide with what is 
in their own private interest. If so, one would expect systematic 
differences between people's reported perception of their own motives and 
that of others' motives, and that people on average believe that they 
themselves vote more out of conviction, or sociotropically, than others 
do. And as reported in Section 3, this is indeed found to be the case.

2. Analysis of preferred speed limits

The main survey was mailed to 2500 randomly selected individuals aged 
between 18 and 65 years old in Sweden, during spring 2001. The response 
rate of the overall survey was 62%, and 1131 car drivers answered the 
speed- limit question. Each respondent was asked the following question: 
What speed limit do you think we should have on Swedish motorways? They 
were given five options, all of which have been discussed in the Swedish 
debate from time to time: 90, 100, 110 (the level today), 120, and 130 
km/h.

The descriptive result in Table 1 shows that very few would like to have 
decreased speed limits, and that more than half of the respondents would 
like to see increased speed limits. This may in itself be an indication 
that people have adapted their political preferences to the increased 
levels of vehicle safety, but to be able to say more on this issue we 
would need to know who wants increased speed limits, and who does not. 
This is the issue to which we turn to next.

In order to obtain information on the characteristics that affect the 
preferred speed limit, we ran an OLS-regression with the preferred speed 
limit as the dependent variable on a number of socio-economic 
characteristics and the characteristics of the car that they most 
frequently drive. Because of missing or incomplete responses, primarily on 
the income and voting variables the number of respondents included in the 
analysis is 974. The results from the estimations are presented in Table 2 
along with the mean sample value of each explanatory variable.

Table 1. Sample distribution of the preferred speed limit on Swedish 
motorways. (N = 974)

90 km/h 100 km/h 110 km/h 120 km/h 130 km/h (as of today)
2% 3% 41% 25% 29%

The results show that those who drive newer cars do prefer higher speed 
limits, as one would expect, given that people adapt their preferences to 
changing circumstances, in this case safer cars with better high-speed 
driving characteristics.4 Similarly, drivers of the prestige cars BMW, 
Mercedes and Porsche, which are also safer and/or have better high-speed 
driving characteristics, also prefer higher speed limits. The size of car 
also affects the preferred speed limit in the expected direction, since 
bigger cars are on average safer, and have better high-speed 
characteristics, but the differences are not significant at conventional 
levels. Jeeps and vans constitute the base case, and although these are 
big vehicles, they have typically bad high-speed characteristics.

The preferred speed limit is higher for those who believe they are better 
than average drivers, which is also consistent with the self-interested 
hypothesis, since the risk of an accident, for a given speed, would then 
be lower.5 A long annual driving distance also increases preferred speed 
limit, which, however, is not obvious from the self-interested hypothesis. 
On the one hand, those who drive a lot will gain more time from increased 
speed levels, but on the other hand they will also face a larger reduction 
in safety. In our case, it seems that the former effect dominates the 
latter. This is also consistent with Rienstra and Rietveld (1996), who 
found that self-reported frequency of speed-transgressions on Dutch 
highways increases with annual driving distances. The effects of always 
using a seatbelt may seem to contradict the theory, since those without 
seatbelts would face the biggest risk-increase from increased speed 
levels. However, it seems likely that the results largely reflect 
preference heterogeneity, so that those who are more risk-averse, or 
generally more cautious, prefer both to use seatbelts and to have 
relatively low speed limits.

People living in the bigger cities of Sweden prefer somewhat higher speed 
limits, for which one explanation may be the higher pace, in general, of 
urban life, which translates into a higher value of time. The effect of 
education is quite small, and perhaps in the opposite direction to that in 
which one would have guessed, since safety awareness is often believed to 
follow from, or at least to be positively correlated with, education. 
However, hardly anyone in Sweden, irrespective of education, can be 
uninformed about the public campaign messages that safety decreases as 
speed increases. Further, the true relationship between speed and safety 
may not be as clear and strong as is typically presented, and maybe highly 
educated people are less easy to convince by public propaganda. Generally, 
most (but not all)6 analysts seem to agree that safety typically does 
decrease with increased speed limits, but there is less agreement about 
how large the effect is. Nevertheless, the result presented here is also 
consistent with the result of Hemenway and Solnick (1993) and Shinar, 
Schechtman and Compton (2001), who found that levels of education higher 
than high-school tended to increase the probability of speed violation.

Table 2. OLS-estimation of preferred speed limit on Swedish motorways. 
Dependent variable: Preferred speed limit on Swedish motorways in km/h. (N 
= 974)

Variable Coeff. P-value Mean value
Constant -111.552 0.276
Model-year of the car 0.112 0.030 1993.299

Drives either BMW, Mercedes or Porsche 2.771 0.029 0.050
Drives a small-sized car 1.082 0.505 0.071
Drives a medium-sized car 1.553 0.229 0.516
Drives a big car 2.173 0.100 0.362
Drives better than average (self-reported) 2.693 0.000 0.424
Drove more than 25000 km last year 1.524 0.025 0.213
Always wears seat-belt in front-seat -2.446 0.003 0.860
Lives in Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malm? 1.469 0.040 0.196
University-educated 1.314 0.103 0.322
A-level educated 0.907 0.213 0.449

Equivalence-scaled household income* 0.201 0.001 12.047
Aged above 57 -1.952 0.021 0.151
Male 4.233 0.000 0.532
Has at least one child 0.669 0.307 0.406
Right-wing political preferences 2.799 0.001 0.140
Left-wing political preferences -1.582 0.011 0.299

R2 = 0.204

RESET** p-value = 0.281

Mean VIF*** = 1.84 and highest VIF for a single variable is 5.64.

*In 1000 SEK/month and person. In order to compare income between 
households, we employ the equivalence scale used by the National Tax Board 
(RSV) in Sweden. The scale assigns the first adult the value of 0.95, the 
following adults are set at 0.7 and each child at 0.61 units.

**RESET type of test is a general specification test (see e.g. Godfrey, 
1988). In the test we rerun the regression including the squared, cubed 
and quadratic values of the estimated value of the dependent variable from 
the original model and test if coefficients of the included variables are 
jointly significant.

***We test for multicollinearity in our data set by calculating the 
variance of inflation factor (VIF) for each variable. The largest VIF is 
5.64 and the mean VIF is 1.84. The largest value is thus smaller than 10 
and the mean value is not considerably larger than 1, as required to be 
able to judge that there is no apparent indication of mutlicollinearity 
according to STATA (2003: 378).

Increased household income causes both higher value of time and a higher 
value of a statistical life, or more generally, the willingness to pay to 
avoid traffic risks; hence the theoretical prediction is ambiguous. As for 
driving distance, the time effect appears to dominate. These results are 
also consistent with Rienstra and Rietveld (1996) and Shinar, Schechtman 
and Compton (2001) who found that those with the highest incomes tend to 
break highway speed limits more often than others. Older people prefer 
lower speed limits, as predicted due to their increased vulnerability.

The relatively large male coefficient, corresponding to more than 4 km/h, 
can possibly be explained by observed higher risk aversion among women 
(e.g. Jianakoplos and Bernasek 1998, Hartog, Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Jonker 
2002), but it might also reflect a taste difference concerning how fun 
fast driving is perceived to be, or some kind of macho image.

The influence of political voting is also in the expected direction, since 
political parties to the left have typically proposed, and been associated 
with, a more restrictive speed policy, and vice versa. These parameters 
too may reflect direct instrumental self-interest, if people choose 
political party partly due to the politically proposed speed limits. 
Still, it seems reasonable that these parameters rather reflect 
ideological conviction and expressive concern. This does not necessarily 
mean that they represent sociotropic concern, however, since people may 
have different kinds of values and opinions that they want to express; see 
e.g. Brennan and Lomasky (1993) and Brennan and Hamlin (2000). There is 
also a large part of the variation left unexplained, and we do not know 
how large a share of this part can be explained by non- included variables 
that reflect self-interest, such as how fun it is considered to be to 
drive fast.

3. Perceptions of voting motives

This second survey was mailed to 1500 randomly selected individuals aged 
between 18 and 65 years old in Sweden, during spring 2002 (i.e. a year 
after the first survey), and the response rate of the overall survey was 
58%. To compare actual voting motives with the perception people have of 
voting motives, we simply asked another representative sample of Swedes 
about why they thought other people vote as they do, followed by a 
question about why they themselves vote as they do. Before the questions, 
they were given the following information: One can vote for a political 
party for different reasons. One can vote for a party because one is 
favored oneself, or one can do it out of conviction that it is the best 
for society as a whole.

As can be seen from Tables 3 and 4, most people believe that others vote 
largely for their own interests, whereas they, on average, consider 
themselves to be influenced roughly equally by their own interests and by 
those of society as a whole. To test whether the observed differences are 
statistically significant, i.e. whether there is a statistical difference 
between people's perception of the degree to which they themselves vote 
sociotropically, and the degree to which others vote sociotropically, we 
used a simple ordered probit model; the motives are ordered from "Mostly 
because it benefits me (them)" to "Mostly out of conviction." This is an 
appropriate econometric specification since the empirical analysis focuses 
on an ordered discrete variable. The approach is based on the idea of a 
latent unobservable variable, Socio*, representing, in our case, 
individuals' perception of the degree of sociotropic voting with the 
following structure: 7

Socio*= d DOthers + e,

where DOthers is a dummy variable indicating that the responses are given 
to the framing on how others vote, and d is the associated parameter to be 
estimated; e is assumed to be a normally distributed error term with zero 
mean and constant variance. The results in Table 5 show that the between- 
sample difference is indeed highly significant as reflected by a 
significant d-parameter (at less than 0.1% level).

One possible reason for this systematic bias is that people want to have a 
good self-image, or identity, and that they therefore engage in a degree 
of self- deception so that they believe that they would vote more for the 
common good than they would actually do in reality. Indeed, there is much 
psychological evidence for systematic self-deception that enhances 
people's perception of their own abilities in many respects; see e.g. 
Gilovich (1991) and Taylor and Brown (1994). An alternative, slightly more 
sophisticated version of this argument, is that people answer truthfully 
and without bias concerning their own motives. However, since most of us 
want to see ourselves as good and responsible people, and at the same time 
to do what is best for ourselves, we may unconsciously try to reduce the 
cognitive dissonance (cf. Akerlof and Dickens, 1982) by adapting our 
perceptions of what is best for society as a whole so that it more or less 
coincides with what is best for ourselves. Hence, when we honestly try to 
judge different alternatives as objectively as possible on behalf of 
society, we will still unconsciously bias our judgment in favour of what 
is best for ourselves; see Babcock and Loewenstein (1997) and references 
therein for much evidence of such self-serving biases.

Table 3. Self-reported perceptions of own voting motives. (N = 751)

Why do you vote as you do?
Reason Fraction

Mostly because it benefits me 10%
Because it benefits me, but also to a certain degree out of conviction 23%
Equally because it benefits me and out of conviction 27%
Out of conviction, but also to a certain degree because it benefits me 22%
Mostly out of conviction 18%

Table 4. Self-reported perceptions of others' voting motives. (N = 762)

Why do you, on average, believe that people vote as they do?

Reason Fraction
Mostly because it benefits them 20%
Because it benefits them, but also to a certain degree out of conviction 
39%
Equally because it benefits them and out of conviction 19%
Out of conviction, but also to a certain degree because it benefits them 
17%
Mostly out of conviction 5%

Table 5. Ordered probit regression to estimate the differences between the 
respondents' perceived degree to which they themselves and others vote 
sociotropically. (N = 1513)

Variable Coeff. P-value

Dummy variable reflecting the additional degree that others (compared to 
oneself) vote sociotropically -0.553 0.000

Cut-off 1 -1.346
Cut-off 2 -0.377
Cut-off 3 0.246
Cut-off 4 0.968

The dependent variable is the perceived degree of sociotropic voting coded 
as follows: 1 = Mostly because it benefits me (them); 2 = Because it 
benefits me (them), but also to a certain degree out of conviction; 3 = 
Equally because it benefits me (them) and out of conviction; 4 = Out of 
conviction, but also to a certain degree because it benefits me (them); 
and 5 = Mostly out of conviction.

When we observe others, however, we just know roughly how they vote and 
their other circumstances. Hence, we can only crudely observe the 
correspondence between how others vote and their personal interests. But 
since we do not take into account the fact that others too adapt their 
perceptions of what is in the interest of society, through self-serving 
biases, the perception of the degree to which others vote sociotropically 
may be biased downwards.

4. Conclusion

Most results from our survey indicate that self-interest is an important 
determinant of the preferred speed limit; for example, those who have a 
newer car (and hence one that is typically safer and more comfortable at 
high speeds) that is bigger and faster, prefer higher speed limits. This 
is also true for those who believe they are better than the average 
driver, whereas older people prefer lower speed limits. Furthermore, the 
results are also consistent with the existence of political offsetting 
behaviour, so that when cars become safer due to technological 
developments, people adapt their political preferences in favour of higher 
speed limits, which reduces road safety overall.

However, the results from people's self-reported subjective voting motives 
are not consistent with purely instrumental pocketbook voting. Rather, it 
seems that the expressive motive is important, as argued thoroughly by 
Brennan and Lomasky (1993) and Brennan and Hamlin (1998, 2000),8 and it 
seems in particular that people want to express that they are socially 
responsible people who care about the overall welfare of society. This is 
also strengthened by the observed fact that people tend to believe that 
others vote more in their own interests, on average. Still, despite such 
biases, we also find that most people answer that they vote both for their 
own interest and for the interest of society. Hence, the hypothesis that 
most people solely or primarily vote sociotropically appears to be 
incorrect too.

Answering a survey, such as ours on preferred speed limits, is in some 
respects quite similar to voting. Since the respondents were informed that 
the survey was sent out to a large random sample of Swedes by a 
university, and was a part of a research project, they could hardly 
believe that their single response would influence actual policy in a 
non-negligible way. Furthermore, the financial incentive of answering was 
zero, and it took probably almost half an hour to answer the whole survey 
on average. The response rates (62% and 58% respectively) were also 
similar to electoral participation rates in many countries.9 Presumably, 
most of the respondents answered based on a sense of civic duty, or due to 
the disutility associated with not answering which would break what they 
perceive to be a social (or personal) norm. But given that expressive 
voting, and expressive answering of surveys such as ours, is the main 
explanation behind observed behaviour, how can we explain the fairly 
strong correlation with their own self-interest? Although it is perceived 
as socially admirable to vote, it is hardly perceived to be admirable to 
vote solely for your own best interests. Rather, we are socialized to 
focus on the collective good when wearing our "political hats" (Sears, 
Lau, Tyler and Allen, 1980; Sears and Funk, 1990). One possible 
explanation to this paradox is provided by the idea of self-serving bias. 
As expressed by Elster (1999, 333): "Most people do not like to think of 
themselves as motivated only be self-interest.They will, therefore, 
gravitate spontaneously towards a world-view that suggests a coincidence 
between their special interest and the public interest." (italics in 
original.) In this way we can vote for improvements for ourselves without 
feeling guilty that this would, overall, be bad for society, and we are 
hence not plagued by any cognitive dissonance. After all, it is much more 
pleasant to think that what is good for you is also good for society, 
isn't it?

Notes

1. However, as argued by Brennan and Lomasky (1993) as well as Brennan and 
Hamlin (2000), expressive voting per se does not necessarily imply 
sociotropic voting.

2. If anything, it may be considered somewhat more ethical to vote for 
lower speed limits. Nevertheless, despite a possible bias in this 
direction, very few respondents (5%) prefer a lower speed limit than the 
current one, as can be seen from Table 1.

3. Highway speed limits have increased rapidly in many states in the USA 
during the last 15 years (Greenstone, 2002), and also in other countries 
such as Italy, while there are on-going discussions in many other 
countries.

4. However, it is possible that people who drive newer cars do so due to 
stronger preferences for safety. For this reason, those who have new cars 
would then prefer lower speed limits than others would. Given that the 
empirical result presents the net effect, the isolated effect of a newer 
car on the preferred speed limit would then be larger than the effect that 
is presented here.

5. This does not necessarily mean that actual safety increases with 
self-reported subjective driving ability, however, since over-optimism 
regarding one's own driving ability is likely to be positively correlated 
with subjective driving ability. Still, what matters for the preferred 
speed limit it the subjective risk, which is independent of such biases.

6. Indeed, some analysts have even questioned the sign of the 
relationship: Lave and Elias (1997) argued that the accident increase on 
rural interstate USA roads resulting from increasing the speed limits to 
65 mph in 1987 were more than off-set by the decline of accidents on other 
roads due to compensatory reallocations of drivers and state police; see 
also Greenstone (2002), who, however, questioned the conclusion by Lave 
and Elias.

7. In our case five ordered categories are possible. The respondents are 
assumed to choose the alternative closest to their own perception, where 
we observe Socio = 1, i.e. "mostly because it benefits me (them)," if 
Socio*= a1;Socio = 2, i.e. "because it benefits me (them), but also to a 
certain degree out of conviction," if a1 < Socio*= a2 etc.; until Socio = 
5, i.e. "mostly out of conviction," if a4 = Socio*;where a1 to a4 are 
cut-off points to be estimated simultaneously with the coefficient.

8. See also Copeland and Laband (2002) for recent empirical support.

9. In the 2002 General Election in Sweden 80.1% of the eligible population 
voted (SCB, 2002).

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From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan  3 22:35:49 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 17:35:49 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Tomorrow, I Love Ya!
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252112130.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Tomorrow, I Love Ya!
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.12.9
http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i16/16a03001.htm
[Colloquy transcript appended.

[This is a great discussion of procrastination. But, as always, events and 
processes that have multiple causes are nearly impossible to diagnose. The 
author is very much part of the therapeutic culture, while a great many on my 
list are right-wing hold-'em-responsible sorts. It's true that driving up the 
cost of any behavior, including procrastination, will result in less of it. 
But, at least in today's society, blaming the individual can well result in a 
downward spiral, as is certainly suggested by the author.

[Those who need disciplining the most are also those with the worst problems to 
begin with. So both genes and society conspire against them.]

Tomorrow, I Love Ya!

    Researchers are learning more about chronic dawdlers but see no
    easy cure for procrastination
    Related materials

    Colloquy: Join a [55]live, online discussion with Joseph R.
    Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University who studies
    chronic procrastination, about what, if anything, can be done to
    help students who suffer from it, on Wednesday, December 7, at 2:30
    p.m., U.S. Eastern time.

    By ERIC HOOVER

    Joseph R. Ferrari has a name for people who dillydally all the
    time. Sometimes, he spits out the term as if it were stale gum or a
    polysyllabic cuss word. When he dubs you a "chronic
    procrastinator," however, he does not mean to insult you. He is
    just using the psychological definition for someone who habitually
    puts things off until tomorrow, or next week, or whenever. The
    afflicted need not feel lonely: Research suggests that the planet
    is crawling with dawdlers.

    Procrastinators vex Mr. Ferrari, a psychology professor at DePaul
    University, yet he owes much to the dilatorily inclined. Without
    them he could not have helped blaze a trail of inquiry into
    procrastination (the word comes from the Latin verb
    procrastinare -- "to defer until morning"). The professor is as
    prompt as the sports car that shares his name, but he sees the
    symptoms of compulsive stalling everywhere.

    Mr. Ferrari and other scholars from around the world are finding
    that procrastination is more complex -- and pervasive -- than
    armchair analysts might assume. And helping people climb out of
    their pits of postponement is not as simple as giving them a pill
    or a pep talk.

    The task is particularly challenging in the hothouses of
    procrastination known as college campuses. Free time, long-term
    deadlines, and extracurricular diversions conspire against academic
    efficiency. Students are infamous for not tackling their
    assignments until the jaws of deadlines are closing.

    Professors may call such students slackers or sloths; psychologists
    define them as "academic procrastinators." According to recent
    studies, about 70 percent of college students say they typically
    procrastinate on starting or finishing their assignments (an
    estimated 20 percent of American adults are chronic
    procrastinators).

    Choosing to do one task while temporarily putting another on hold
    is simply setting priorities, which allows people to cross things
    off their to-do lists one at a time. Procrastination is when one
    keeps reorganizing that list so that little or nothing on it gets
    done.

    For some students, that inertia has costs. Researchers say academic
    procrastination raises students' anxiety and sinks their
    self-esteem. The behavior also correlates with some of higher
    education's thorniest problems, including depression, cheating, and
    plagiarism among students.

    Dozens of colleges have created counseling sessions or workshops
    for procrastinators. Yet Mr. Ferrari and other researchers say many
    institutions treat the problem superficially instead of helping
    students analyze their own thought processes and behavioral
    patterns in order to change them. Give a hard-core procrastinator
    nothing more than time-management tips, they warn, and you might as
    well hand him a page of hieroglyphics.

    "Telling a chronic academic procrastinator to 'just do it' is not
    going to work," Mr. Ferrari says. "It's like telling a clinically
    depressed person to cheer up."

    Learning About Loafers

    Laggards have always been tough cases. Even God could not inspire
    St. Augustine of Hippo, the fourth-century philosopher and
    theologian, to act right away. As he slowly came to accept
    Christianity, Augustine wrote in Confessions, the future bishop
    wavered. Clinging to temporal pleasures, Augustine famously asked
    of God: "Give me chastity and continency -- but not yet."

    Late in his life, Leonardo da Vinci, the genius who missed
    deadlines, lamented his unfinished projects. Shakespeare's Hamlet
    pondered -- and pondered -- killing his uncle Claudius before
    sticking him in the final act. Grady Tripp, the English professor
    in Michael Chabon's novel Wonder Boys, couldn't finish his second
    book because he refused to stop writing it.

    In a world of unmade beds and unwritten essays, the postponement of
    chores is commonplace. Now and again, humans put aside tasks with
    long-term rewards to savor immediate pleasures, like ice cream and
    movies, through a process called "discounting." For chronic
    procrastinators, however, discounting is a way of life.

    The scientific study of procrastination was (appropriately enough)
    a late-blooming development relative to the examinations of other
    psychological problems. Only in the 1980s did researchers start
    unlocking the heads of inveterate loafers, who suffer from more
    than mere laziness.

    Mr. Ferrari, a co-editor of Procrastination and Task Avoidance:
    Theory, Research, and Treatment (Plenum Publications, 1995), has
    helped clarify the distinction between delaying as an act and as a
    lifestyle. Not every student who ignores assignments until the last
    minute is an across-the-board offender, known to psychologists as a
    "trait procrastinator." Many students who drag their feet on term
    papers might never delay other tasks, such as meeting friends for
    dinner, showing up for work, or going to the dentist.

    As Mr. Ferrari explains in Counseling the Procrastinator in
    Academic Settings (American Psychological Association, 2004), a
    book he edited with three other scholars, there is no typical
    profile of an academic procrastinator (though family dynamics may
    influence the behavior). Studies have found no significant
    relationship between procrastination and intelligence or particular
    Myers-Briggs personality types.

    Research does show that academic procrastinators tend to lack
    self-confidence, measure low on psychologists' tests of
    "conscientiousness," get lost in wishful thoughts, and lie low
    during group assignments.

    In one study, Mr. Ferrari found that students at highly selective
    colleges reported higher rates of academic procrastination than
    students from less selective institutions. In another, the motives
    for academic procrastination among students at an elite college
    differed from students' motives at a nonselective one (the former
    put off assignments because they found them unpleasant, while the
    latter did so because they feared failure or social disapproval).

    Mr. Ferrari identifies two kinds of habitual lollygaggers. "Arousal
    procrastinators" believe they work best under pressure and tend to
    delay tasks for the thrill. "Avoidant procrastinators" are
    self-doubters who tend to postpone tasks because they worry about
    performing inadequately, or because they fear their success may
    raise others' expectations of them.

    Other findings complicate fear-of-failure theories. Some
    researchers say an inability to control impulses explains
    procrastinators best. And a recent study by Mr. Ferrari and Steven
    J. Scher, an associate professor of psychology at Eastern Illinois
    University, suggests that people who are typically negative avoid
    assignments that do not challenge them creatively or
    intellectually, whereas people who are typically positive more
    easily tackle less-stimulating tasks.

    Science is not likely to resolve the mysteries of procrastination
    anytime soon. After all, among researchers a debate still rages
    over the very definition of procrastination. Mr. Scher suspects
    there are different types of the behavior, especially if one
    defines it as not doing what one thinks one should do.

    "A common thing that many people put off is doing the dishes," Mr.
    Scher says. "But there are also times when those same people will
    all of a sudden find that doing the dishes is the most important
    thing they have to do -- thereby putting off some other type of
    task."

    Homework-Eating Dogs

    Psychologists do agree on one thing: Procrastination is responsible
    for most of the world's homework-eating dogs. Where procrastinators
    go, excuses follow.

    Students who engaged in academic procrastination said more than 70
    percent of the excuses they gave instructors for not completing an
    assignment were fraudulent (the lies were most prevalent in large
    lecture classes taught by women who were "lenient"), Mr. Ferrari
    found in one study. In another, procrastinating students generally
    said they experienced a positive feeling when they fibbed; although
    they did feel bad when they recalled the lie, such remorse did not
    seem to prevent them from using phony excuses in the future.

    Mr. Ferrari has also experimented with giving bonus points for
    early work. In a study published in the journal Teaching of
    Psychology, he found that such incentives prompted 80 percent of
    students to fulfill a course requirement to participate in six
    psychological experiments by a midpoint date. On average, only 50
    percent had done so before he offered the inducement.

    Mr. Ferrari believes that academe sends mixed messages about
    procrastination. Most professors talk about the importance of
    deadlines, but some are quick to bend them, particularly those who
    put a premium on being liked by their students. In one of Mr.
    Ferrari's studies, 90 percent of instructors said they did not
    require the substantiation of excuses for late work.

    "We're not teaching responsibility anymore," Mr. Ferrari says. "I'm
    not saying we need to be stringent, strict, and inflexible, but we
    shouldn't be spineless. When we are overly flexible, it just
    teaches them that they can ignore the deadlines of life."

    Ambivalence about deadlines pervades American culture. People
    demand high-speed results, whether they are at work or in
    restaurants. Yet this is also a land in which department stores
    encourage holiday shoppers to postpone their shopping until
    Christmas Eve, when they receive huge discounts. And each year on
    April 15, television news reporters from coast to coast descend
    upon post offices to interview (and celebrate) people who wait
    until the final hours to mail their tax returns.

    "As a society," Mr. Ferrari says, "we tend to excuse the person who
    says 'I'm a procrastinator,' even though we don't like
    procrastinators."

    But do all people who ignore assignments until the 11th hour
    necessarily suffer or do themselves harm?

    One of Mr. Ferrari's former students, Mariya Zaturenskaya, a
    psychology major who graduated from DePaul last spring, says some
    last-minute workers are motivated, well organized, and happy to
    write a paper in one sitting. Although students who cram for tests
    tend to retain less knowledge than other students, research has yet
    to reveal a significant correlation between students'
    procrastination and grades.

    "Some students just need that deadline, that push," Ms.
    Zaturenskaya says. "Some people really are more efficient when they
    have less time."

    Treating the Problem

    Before Jill Gamble went to college, she had little time to waste.
    As a high-school student, she had earned a 3.75 grade-point average
    while playing three sports. Each night she went to practice, ate
    dinner, did her homework, and went to bed.

    After matriculating at Ohio State University, however, her life
    lost its structure. At first, all she had to do was go to classes.
    Most days she napped, spent hours using Instant Messenger, and
    stayed up late talking to her suite mates.

    As unread books piled up on her desk, she told herself her
    professors were too demanding. The night before her Sociology 101
    final, she stayed up drinking Mountain Dew, frantically reading the
    seven chapters she had ignored for weeks. "My procrastination had
    created a lot of anxiety," Ms. Gamble recalls. "I was angry with
    myself that I let it get to that point."

    She got a C-minus in the class and a 2.7 in her first quarter. When
    her grades improved only slightly in the second quarter, Ms. Gamble
    knew she needed help. So she enrolled in a course called
    "Strategies for College Success."

    The five-year-old course uses psychological strategies, such as the
    taking of reasonable risks, to jolt students out of their bad study
    habits. Twice a week students spend class time in a computer lab,
    where they get short lectures on study skills. Students must then
    practice each skill on the computer by using a special software
    program.

    Instructors use weekly quizzes to cut procrastination time from
    weeks to days and to limit last-minute cramming. The frequent tests
    mean one or two low scores will not doom a student's final grade,
    ideally reducing study-related stress.

    Students complete assignments at their own pace, allowing faster
    ones to stay engaged and slower ones to keep up, yet there are
    immovable dates by which students must finish each set of
    exercises. Enrollees learn how to write and follow to-do lists that
    reduce large tasks, such as writing an essay, into bite-size goals
    (like sitting down to outline a single chapter of a text instead of
    reading the whole book).

    Each student must also examine his or her use of rationalizations
    for procrastinating. The course's creator, Bruce W. Tuckman, a
    professor of education at Ohio State, says he also teaches students
    to recognize the underlying cause of procrastination, which he
    describes as self-handicapping.

    "It's like running a full race with a knapsack full of bricks on
    your back," Mr. Tuckman says. "When you don't win, you can say it's
    not that you're not a good runner, it's just that you had this sack
    of bricks on your back. When students realize that, it can be
    easier for them to change."

    Many of the worst procrastinators end up earning the highest grades
    in the class, Mr. Tuckman says. And among similar types of students
    with the same prior cumulative grade-point averages, those who took
    the class have consistently outperformed those who did not take it.

    After completing the course, Ms. Gamble says, she stopped
    procrastinating and went on to earn a 3.8 the next semester. Since
    then, she has made the dean's list regularly, and now helps counsel
    her procrastinating peers at Ohio State's learning center.

    "In workshops, we'll say, 'How many of you identify yourselves as
    procrastinators?' and they will throw their hands in the air and
    giggle, even though procrastination is a very negative thing," Ms.
    Gamble says. "Why do we do this so willingly? The answer is that
    let we let ourselves procrastinate. If someone was doing it to us,
    we wouldn't be so willing to raise our hands."

    A Universal Problem

    Psychologists generally agree that the behavior is learned and that
    students choose to procrastinate, even though they may feel
    helpless to stop. Mr. Ferrari, the DePaul professor, describes the
    behavior as a self-constructed mental trap that people can escape
    the same way smokers can kick the habit.

    Mr. Tuckman qualifies his optimism by saying one cannot hope to
    cure procrastination so much as reduce it.

    "It's very hard to go from being a hard-core procrastinator to a
    nonprocrastinator," says Mr. Tuckman, one of many researchers who
    has developed a scale that measures levels of procrastination.
    "You're just so used to doing it, there's something about it that
    reinforces it for you."

    Scholars are learning that procrastination knows no borders. At a
    conference of international procrastination researchers this summer
    at Roehampton University, in England, Mr. Ferrari and several other
    scholars presented a paper that compared the prevalence rates of
    chronic procrastination among adults in Australia, England, Peru,
    Spain, the United States, and Venezuela. They found that arousal
    and avoidant procrastinators were equally prevalent in all of the
    nations, with men and women reporting similar rates of each
    behavior.

    That is not to say all cultures share the same view of
    procrastination. Karem Diaz, a professor of psychology at the
    Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, has studied the behavior
    among Peruvians, whose expectations of timeliness tend to differ
    from those of Americans.

    "In Peru we talk about the 'Peruvian time,'" Ms. Diaz writes in an
    e-mail message. "If we are invited to a party at 7 p.m., it is rude
    to show on time. ... It is even socially punished. Therefore, not
    presenting a paper on time is expected and forgiven."

    Few Peruvians are familiar with the Spanish word "procrastinaci?n,"
    which complicates discussions of the subject. "Some people think it
    is some sexual behavior when they hear the word," Ms. Diaz says.
    Yet the professor has been intrigued to find that some Peruvians
    identify themselves as procrastinators, and experience the negative
    consequences of the behavior even though social norms encourage it.

    Strategies for helping people bridge the gap between their actions
    and intentions vary. A handful of colleges in Belgium, Canada, and
    the Netherlands have just begun to develop counseling programs that
    draw on cognitive and behavioral research. The early findings:
    Helping students understand why they dawdle and teaching them
    self-efficacy tends to lessen their procrastination -- or at least
    make it more manageable.

    Timothy A. Pychyl, an associate professor of psychology at Carleton
    University, in Ottawa, Ontario, says group meetings are a promising
    approach, particularly those in which students make highly specific
    goals and help each other resist temptations to slack off. "For
    many people, it's an issue of priming the pump ... as simple as
    making a deal with oneself to spend 10 minutes on a task," Mr.
    Pychyl says. "At least the next day they can see themselves as
    having made an effort as opposed to doing nothing at all."

    Clarry H. Lay, a retired psychology professor at York University,
    in Toronto, who continues to counsel student procrastinators, uses
    personality feedback to promote better "self-regulation" among
    students. In group sessions, he discusses the importance of
    studying even when one is not in the "right mood" and of setting
    aside a regular place to work. Some participants become more
    confident and efficient. Others see improvements, only to
    experience relapses.

    Each semester one in five students miss the first session. Some
    sign up early but never show, while others arrive late or attend
    sporadically. But Mr. Lay understands. The counselor is a chronic
    procrastinator himself.
      ______________________________________________________________


References

   55. http://chronicle.com/colloquy/2005/12/procrastination/
[Immediately below.]

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Colloquy Transcript
http://chronicle.com/colloquy/2005/12/procrastination/

There's Always Tomorrow

    Wednesday, December 7, at 2:30 p.m., U.S. Eastern time

    The topic

    Conventional wisdom holds that procrastinators are just plain lazy.
    But psychologists who study chronic dawdling say the behavior is
    much more complex than that. Researchers have found that college
    campuses are hothouses of procrastination, with an estimated 70
    percent of students saying they typically postpone starting or
    finishing their assignments. Some of those students feel incapable
    of changing their behavior, which can sink not only their grades
    but also their self-esteem.
    Many colleges offer time-management workshops to help students
    overcome procrastination, yet some experts say treating chronic
    procrastinators requires intensive counseling that gets at the root
    causes of habitual dillydallying.
    Why do some students waste their time when they should be working?
    Should American universities offer cognitive and behavioral therapy
    for the problem, as many European ones do? Is there hope for a
    cure? If not, what is to be done?

    The guest

    Joseph R. Ferrari is a professor of psychology at DePaul University
    and a leading researcher of chronic procrastination.
      ______________________________________________________________

                     A transcript of the chat follows.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Eric Hoover (Moderator):
        Welcome to The Chronicle's live chat with Joseph R. Ferrari, a
    professor of psychology at DePaul University and a leading
    researcher of chronic procrastination. Thanks for joining us today.
    We will now take questions.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Mark Grechanik, University of Texas at Austin:
        Do you think frequent quizzes may help students to engage in
    the learning process faster?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Good point; it may. But the issue here is that folks wait to
    study not that they don't study. Still, you are right. Generating a
    system that reduces procrastination is the solution.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Anon, small NY college:
        Intensive counseling doesn't sound like it would fit into a
    college student's schedule. How can we lessen procrastination if we
    can't provide intensive counseling? If time management
    tips/workshops don't work, what does?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        For the CHRONIC PROCRASTINATOR, therapy. Even small NY towns
    (and I lived and worked at several) have professional clinical and
    counseling psychologists in the area. They need to get a student
    rate and seek professional help. Also, the college counseling
    center could have a staff person trained to hold sessions. Good
    luck!
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Maryann P. county college in NJ:
        How can I solve my problem of often being late for
    appointments, term papers, kids appointments, car-pool? I am
    getting worse at it lately.
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Do you schedule back to back? Give yourself 20 minutes between
    tasks so if one takes longer, you are not overloaded. Remember, to
    prioritze is not the same as procrastinating.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Laura Wennekes, University of Amsterdam, The
    Netherlands:
        Isn't "procrastination" a natural response to artificially
    imposed notion of "deadline"?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        "Natural." Wow, no. It is learned. There is NO gene for
    procrastination. I hear a little rebellion here - like 'imposed
    deadline.' Look, life is full of commitments. We have
    responsibilities to meet those deadlines.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Evan, University of Delaware:
        Are you aware of the book "The Now Habit" (Niel Fiore) and the
    related "lifehacker" movement popular among IT professionals for
    over-coming procrastination? What do you think of them?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Yes, there are many 'self-help' books out there. Most don't use
    good research to support them. Read the scholarly stuff for good
    science.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Nora, big state university:
        In my experience, procrastination is directly related to
    anxiety around writing. I sit down to write, and have bodily
    "symptoms" and have found psychoanalysis to be helpful. Have you
    considered the psychoanalytic treatment of writing blocks and
    procrastination?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        If analysis works for you, great. I recommend
    cognitive-behavioral therapy because it changes the way a person
    THINKS and BEHAVES instead of thinking about why one's mother acted
    a specific way.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Kris, MIT:
        Could you please explain how research into procrastination
    differentiates between depression-related procrastination, and
    procrastination in someone who would not be clasified as depressed?
    Is such a distinction even possible? Thank you from a chronic
    procrastinator, second generation.
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Yes, this is a learned thing and for you you had a model. Yes,
    there is a relation between procrastination and depression, but
    correlational. Does procrastination lead to depression? Or does
    depression lead to procrastination? No causal experiements have
    been done.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Kathleen, U. of Rochester:
        What does evidence suggest regarding a genetic contribution to
    chronic procrastination?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        None! It's too easy to blame things on one's genetics. If that
    is the case, then one can't change, and that is foolish.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Mark, NGO Abroad:
        The people I know who do not procrastinate are ones who get a
    great sense of satisfaction finishing things and checking it off
    the list. They tend to enjoy throwing things away rather than
    keeping them around in case they need them. Basically they have
    greater throughput. I dont really enjoy finishing things, I worry
    that they are not perfect. My question is what makes them get such
    satisfaction from completion?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        You are right about non-procrastinators (myself included). And
    you are right about the link to perfectionism. Procrastinators try
    to be perfect to have others like them. Nonprocrastinators try to
    be perfect to do a good job.

    So, stop focusing on what others will think of you as reflecting
    your self-worth. You are a good person even if the project is a B
    or B+.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Erica, NYU:
        Recently, I've seen a bunch of web pages advertising "coaches"
    who help a person get over their procrastinating habits. Does your
    research suggest that coaching is effective?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        In my 2004 book, Counseling the Procrastinator in Academic
    Settings, there is a chapter on digital coaching. Good luck.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Evan, University of Delaware:
        Sometimes I am much more productive on projects that have no
    deadline than those that do. Do you think the deadline itself is
    the culprit as much as the task at hand? How are they related?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Sounds like a little rebellion against having an external
    deadline here. Ask yourself why you work against it, instead of
    work with it.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Marla, U. of Texas:
        Do you think the internet has worsened the problem of
    procrastination, or that it is just a different form of an ongoing
    problem?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Worsened. Now we email at the last minute instead of placing a
    letter in the post 3 days before.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Erin McLaughlin, University of Pennsylvania:
        What are the indicators of a chronic procrastinator versus a
    student just uninterested in a project or class?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Hmm, I think they would look the same and act the same. But the
    procrastinator would get anxious about not working on the target
    project.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Carmen, Northeast Iowa Community College:
        The Chronicle article about procrastinations makes no mention
    of Adult ADHD,a likely cause for at least 5% of procrastinators,
    and possibly many, many more, as there would be a natural selection
    bias toward procrastination in the ADHD population. What are your
    thoughts about this?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Nice. I have a paper in press in "Clinical & Counseling
    Psychology" where we examined procrastinators with adult ADHDs.
    There was a link. Look for the article. Cheers.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Tammy, mid-size East Coast univ.:
        How can I know if a therapist is good at working with
    procrastination?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Good point. Look for a PhD psychologist with a
    cognitive-behavioral style. If they try time management on you,
    walk away.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Michelle, Washington University:
        What is your viewpoint on freshman transition programs? Do you
    think they could be useful in heading off patterns of
    underachievement due to procrastination? And did you find anything
    that indicated how to prepare for independent study?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Good point. No data here, but anything that tries to get
    students to examine what and why they do or do NOT work is good.
    Just don't hope that the 20% who are chronic procrastinators will
    be 'cured' by a week-long section of a freshmen course.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Laura, large eastern university:
        How do you get a procrastinator to actually go to therapy,
    however? Especially if they already feel they don't have enough
    time for everyday commitments.
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Can't make anyone do anything they don't want to. As my old
    Italian grandmother said (loses something in translation, but...)
    "for some folks, they will not get off the beach until the water
    hits their behind."
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Donald, small Rhode Island College:
        Is procrastination a result of executive processing disorders?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        No data. Unlikely for most people. Remember, there is a
    difference between correlations and causality.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from John Gault, Missouri Valley College:
        Are you saying there is nothing that can help these students
    except professional counselors? Is there nothing the professor or
    the school can do?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Professors can design their classes to give extra credit for
    doing assignments EARLY, instead of punishing for being late.

    I'm not saying there is nothing. Remember, 80% of us procrastinate,
    but 20% are procrastinators. Programs can work for most folks, but
    for the 20% who are real procrastinators, where this is their
    lifestyle, they need therapy.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from LLC, The University of Akron:
        I work in a career center, and see another side of chronic
    student procrastination related to making life decisions, applying
    for jobs, preparing for life after college. It seems like it takes
    a "crisis point" to motivate the truly chronic procrastinators ...
    are there some other tools, tips, techniques, resources you'd
    recommend to help us "kick-start" those that need the assistance?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Right, some folks need a crisis to kcik them into moving.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Pat, Shorter College (small private):
        My husband just gave a bunch of low grades to students who
    failed, all semester, to turn in assignments. Do you think there's
    a group behavior/dynamics factor in procrastination?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Probably not. They may have been having some group planned
    strategy to delay for other reasons. But we do know that in group
    assignments where performance is rated for everyone,
    procrastinators will engage in loafing--and the non-procrastinators
    in the group don't like them.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Constant Beugre, Delaware State University:
        Can having a 'to do list' and stick to it help in reducing
    procrastination? I have tried this technquen with some
    procrastinators in the past and it seems to work for some but not
    for others.
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        You are again making my point - for 80% of us who procrastinate
    on some things, a to-do list system and other things will work. But
    for the 20% procrastinators who do this as a lifestyle, they will
    reshuffle the list and come up with excuses why they can't do
    something.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from LLC, The University of Akron:
        Although genetics may not make us procrastinators, our
    personalities may help us be more prone to procrastination. MBTI
    perceiving types, for example, like open-endedness, see many
    options and are not as comfortable choosing only one option, are
    more spontaneous ... are certain personality types more prone to
    procrastination?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        MBTI has very poor reliability and validity, if one reads the
    scholarly literature. We found it did not relate to proc
    tendencies. So drop that party game!
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from D.S., large research university:
        Most people are surprised to hear I procrastinate because I am
    amazingly good at coming through in the clutch, and when I work
    with focus, I get a lot done, and so, the pattern continues. Do I
    need to have a big failure to motivate change in myself?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        You sound like a chronic AROUSAL procrastinator, who enjoys
    working against a clock for a rush experience. Fail enough with no
    one bailing you out, and you may want to change.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Alaine Allen, University of Pittsburgh:
        I work with pre-college students who seem to procrastinate out
    of fear (ex. anxiety about writing a college application essay).
    What type of advice would you give to those students beyond the
    common "just do it" statement.
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        To break it down and do just smaller sections, to focus on the
    goal of getting it done, not what has to be done, look at each TREE
    and not the FOREST.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Laura, big eastern Univ.:
        Sometimes I even procrastinate on enjoyable things. Do you
    think it may be some sort of rebelliion against "scheduling"? I
    have often wondered, because sometimes I will have a better chance
    to get something done if it is "impulsive." Where would you start
    to fix something like that?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Could be. I have a book chapter on procrastination and
    impulsivity. They are not as opposite as you think.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Janet, large Long Island college:
        Are stimulant medications such as Metadate or Ritalin effective
    in reducing procrastination.
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        No. keep away from the meds. Instead, focus on learning new
    skills for life.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Alec, University of Cambridge, UK:
        Hello, could you please mention a few proven concrete
    exercises/methods to combat ones procrastination tendencies,
    especially concerning very long term, multifaceted goals such as
    writing up a PhD thesis. Thank you.
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        We have several good tested, research-supported techniques in
    the 2004 book, Counseling the Procrastinator in Academic Settings,
    as well as the founding book in 1995.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Ed, U. of Kentucky:
        I see my earlier questsion was answered. What about heling
    children out of this who have already caught procrastination from
    the parent?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Well, it was not 'caught' as much as modeled and learned. So
    they need to learn alternative ways to handle the situation and how
    they perceive the situation. Can the parents model 'getting it
    done'?
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Ed, U. of Kentucky:
        What questions should you ask when looking for a cognitive
    therapist? How long should it take to change the habit?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Cognitive-behavioral therapy is more short term than
    psychoanalysis. Listen to how they would work with you. Do they
    focus on your thinking pattern and your behaviors? Do they offer
    you skills and new ways to treat your behaviors and thoughts?
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Mona Pelkey, United States Military Academy:
        My star procrastinator just left my office. He is unhappy
    because he just can't seem to get motivated enough to put in the
    effort to get the grades he wants. For the past hour and a half I
    literally sat over him, pushing him to make a list, prioritize it,
    and start the tasks. I am exhausted and so is my student. Help!
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        He is still trying to be PERFECT. Life is not perfect, neither
    should he be. Clincial folks talk about an 80% rule where the
    client is 'cured' if they reach 80% of their life goal. So get this
    student to be happy with 97% then 95% then 90%, etc.

    Procrastinators would rather others say that they lacked EFFORT
    than lacked ABILITY. By never finishing they can protect their
    self-views and say have the ability but that they never tried hard
    enough. He needs to stop thinking his self worth is tied only to
    getting an A.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Bonnie, Huston-Tillotson:
        Regarding that 20% - what is (are) the pay-off (s) for
    procrastination?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        Protecting one's self-esteem and social-esteem (how others feel
    about your ability). Never finish, never get judged by others. Let
    others decide and act for you.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from John Gault, Missouri Valley College:
        What criteria can be used to determine if a student is one of
    the 20% that needs counseling or just a normal procrastinator like
    the rest of us?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        In the 1995 text we have several reliable and valid self-report
    measures that assess one's procrastinator tendencies. Buy the book
    and take the measures!
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Nina, Duke University:
        I have bipolar disorder and am having a hard time determining
    if I'm procrastinating and using BP as an excuse, or am really
    having trouble getting things done because of of rapid cycling. Any
    thoughts?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        I can't play therapist here, but remember procrastinators are
    great excuse makers, blaming it on others, parents, genes, other
    disorders.
      ______________________________________________________________

    Question from Eric Hoover:
        Looking ahead, what are some new avenues you would like to
    explore in your research on procrastination? What are some
    questions you would like to see addressed in future studies?
    Joseph R. Ferrari:
        I want to continue to look at the cross-cultural meanings of
    procrastination. And funny you should ask, I have been asked by a
    reader of a publishing house to write a pop book based on scholarly
    research outcomes. So, I think I will take them up on that offer...
      ______________________________________________________________

    Eric Hoover (Moderator):
        That wraps up our chat. Thanks to everyone who sent questions
    today. And Prof. Ferrari, thank you for your responses.

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan  3 22:35:59 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 17:35:59 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Discover: A third of medical research wrong?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252112290.14301@panix3.panix.com>

A third of medical research wrong?
http://www.discover.com/web-exclusives/medical-research-wrong/

    November 16, 2005 | Biology & Medicine

    The latest medical research is wrong about one-third of the time, that is...
    according to the latest medical research. A survey of 49 highly cited 
medical
    studies by epidemiologist John Ioannidis found the results of 14 studies 
were
    contradicted or downplayed by later research.  Ioannidis' survey raises some 
hard
    questions.  Is there a fundamental flaw in medical research, or is this just 
part
    of scientific progress?

    Problems occurred most often in studies that did not use randomized samples 
-
    five out of six were contradicted. A group that includes two high-profile 
cases
    of preventive therapies for coronary-artery disease.  One study recommended
    hormone replacement therapy for post-menopausal women -- a treatment that 
some
    doctors now believe may increase chances of developing the disease.  The 
other
    therapy used high doses of vitamin E to keep the coronary arteries healthy, 
a
    treatment that was later shown to be ineffective in randomized trials.

    In spite of the conflicting research, Nutritional Epidemiologist Eric Rimm 
is
    standing by his work.  Rimm's study showed vitamin E reduced the risk of
    developing coronary-artery disease in healthy men ages 40 to 75. "I think 
what we
    originally reported hasn't really been re-tested," he said.  The follow-up 
study
    cited by Ioannidis tested whether vitamin E prevented heart attacks and 
strokes
    in men and women over the age of 55 who already had cardiovascular disease 
or
    diabetes. According to Rimm, the health benefits of antioxidants like 
vitamin E
    provide is still a lively debate. "I thought our findings would be more
    generalizable," Rimm said, "But I think our results stand up, it just 
doesn't
    protect people with existing heart disease."

    Over generalizing research results is one way that Ioannidis sees medical 
studies
    being misused by doctors. "There are many issues that are not finalized with 
a
    single study," he said, "issues like trade-offs between benefits and harms,
    side-effects, and generalizability." If Ioannidis' work can be said to have 
a
    moral it is - don't put too much faith in one study.

    Solving the problem is not as simple as sticking to randomized experiments 
or
    requiring results to be duplicated.  Observational studies, like Rimm's 
vitamin E
    research, are not randomized, but they can provide a foundation for future
    research.  Likewise, duplicating research results can be unethical, and that 
may
    be the case for the 11 studies in his survey that have not been followed-up. 
One
    case is a clinical trial of the drug Zidovudine, a medication that was 75 
percent
    effective in preventing HIV positive mothers from transmitting the disease 
to
    their unborn children.  Re-testing Zidovudine would require exposing some 
unborn
    children to an increased risk of HIV infection. So, how should patients deal 
with
    the confusion?

    "We should switch our mode of thinking about a statistically significant 
result
    to what I would call a credible result," said Ioannidis.  He proposes a 
system of
    rating published research based on the rigor of its experimental design, 
sample
    size and amount of supporting research.  "There is nothing wrong about
    acknowledging that all of the research published in medical journals is not
    one-hundred percent credible," he said.  "There is no perfect research."
    Ioannidis advises patients to protect themselves by taking a more critical
    approach to their doctor's advice.  "Ask not just 'is it good for me?' but 
'what
    is the uncertainty?"- Zach Zorich


From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan  3 22:36:07 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 17:36:07 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Gerontology Research Group: Longevity for Dummies: How
 to Live Longer Than You Deserve
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252112450.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Longevity for Dummies: How to Live Longer Than You Deserve
From: "L. Stephen Coles, M.D., Ph.D." <scoles at ucla.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 22:46:21 -0800

To Members and Friends of the Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group:

Given that your parents have already decided your genomic fate, here's the 
humorous "Coles List" of 12 life-style rules to maximize your remaining 
longevity... -- Steve Coles

1. Never smoke cigarettes, a pipe, or cigars (even under special circumstances 
like when a proud new father hands out cigars for free). Do your best to avoid 
2nd-hand smoke.  I have held the black-stained lungs of smokers in my hands 
during surgery.  They look really ugly.  (Healthy lungs are pink.)  Also, it 
has not escaped our notice that many serious fires, in which innocent people 
are burned to death in a blazing building, are started by tobacco smoking and 
matches when the smoker falls asleep (often because they're dead drunk).

2. Eat a diet high in roughage: fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and low in 
saturated fats.  Avoid trans-fats.  Eat fish (salmon, tuna, sardines) [4 - 5] x 
per week. Eat unsalted nuts. Consciously decrease salt intake to as close to 
zero as possible. Beverages: Make sure you have an adequate fluid intake 
whenever sweating profusely (with electrolytes added as needed). Drink one cup 
of coffee in the morning. Drink one cup of green tea at some point during the 
day. Avoid carbonated sodas.  Drink milk with meals;  Note: Boba Tea is not a 
drink, but a meal with lots of calories. EtOH: Drink 1 full glass of red (or 
white) wine of your choice (with a meal) every day, unless you've already had 
your quota of something stronger (gin, vodka, whiskey, rum, etc.).  Never drink 
more than two shots of alcohol at any one sitting.  A DUI looks terrible on 
your driving record, but late night accidents on the freeway may shorten one's 
life as much as an intentional suicide.

3. Supplements: If I could take only four supplements a day, here's what they'd 
be... (a) Standard Multi, with no iron; (b) Fish Oil caps x 2; (c) Co-Q10; (d) 
Magnesium. (See our Bridge Plan on this webpage for recommended doses and 
additional supplements that are good to have, but not really essential.)  Take 
an Aspirin every day if over 60.  Take Melatonin [1-3] mg each night before 
bedtime if over 40.

4. Maintain a healthy weight.  Check your BMI.  Diet as necessary, until you 
maintain a stable weight for several years.  (Prime Minister Sharon of Israel 
was looking for a stroke sooner or later at 350 pounds, no matter what else he 
did.)  Remember that our bodies were tuned for our ancestors who had to chase 
after their food rather than merely walk a few steps to the refrigerator during 
a TV-commercial break.

5. Exercise vigorously 1/2-hour per day: If you don't sweat, you're not cutting 
it.  Lift small weights (10#) with [40-50] reps per type of lift. When 
shopping, park far away from the store in a parking lot (on purpose) and slowly 
jog to the store.  If it's only one floor up, use the stairs, not the elevator. 
Never run a marathon; it's too tough on the joints. Never play in competitive 
team sports.  Professional athletes don't live longer than anyone else, and 
accumulated micro-trauma does build up. Inactivity (being a cough potato eating 
pizza and potato chips, while watching television for hours on end) leads to 
insulin insensitivity or Type-2 Diabetes, Cancer, turns your muscles to Jell-O 
(frailty and sarcopenia) and your brain to mush (short-term memory loss). 
Heart disease increases; the rate of strokes (undetectable microTIA's) 
increases; bones undergo osteoporosis and more easily fracture if you fall 
accidentally; depression increases; upper respiratory tract infections 
increase; urinary tract infections increase; sexual functions rust out while 
libido sags -- a tragic double hit.  So, probably, the single most important 
thing you can do for maximizing longevity is to get the right level of physical 
activity in one's life.

6.  Keep your immune system in tip-top shape.  It is a precious invisible 
asset, since it protects you from the ceaseless assault of pathogenic microbes: 
viruses, bacteria, fungi, yeast, amoebas, helminths, and assorted parasites 
carried by all types of vectors including insects (mosquitos, spiders, ticks) 
and animal hosts, or poorly-cooked meat, spoiled food, or water fouled by 
sewage. (If you don't believe me, take a course called Medical Microbiology 101 
just for fun, to learn about the extraordinary range of invisible creatures 
that silently crawl over your skin without your knowledge or permission. When 
revealed by an electron microscope, they're more varied than any Hollywood 
horror movie you've ever seen in your lifetime.)

7. Decrease Stress (e.g., elevated Cortisol in your blood for long periods due 
to continuous arguments with your spouse/significant-other, grief over the 
death of a loved one, loss of a job that you really liked, long commutes every 
day in heavy traffic; you know what I mean.) There are lots of unconscious 
stress conditions that should be identified early by the proper professional: 
marriage counselor, divorce lawyer, psychiatrist, as needed, but you must act 
to take advantage of them and not stay in an abusive relationship for very 
long, or your body will suffer the corrosive effects of chronically-elevated 
cortisol (that is trying to get you to "fight or flee" in the short term, but 
does you no good over the long term).  Try to stay out of debt. Never gamble 
more than you can afford to lose in a single day.  Never ever gamble at home on 
the Internet using a credit card.  Stay away from addictive drugs at all costs. 
Pain meds are appropriate for people who are really handicapped, at the end of 
life, or with a chronic condition.  Habitual crystal meth at rave parties is 
really going to burn you out fast, even if only indulged in on weekends. Never 
keep a loaded gun in your house. Never drive a car too fast under any 
circumstances unless you're in a chase scene in a movie where all contingencies 
have been premeditated.  Never pay attention to the nut-case who honks his horn 
in back of you while in heavy traffic.  Road rage kills even innocent 
bystanders. Advice for physicians: If you're ever paged on an airplane's PA 
system "Is there a doctor on-board?"  Don't raise your hand or press your call 
button.  There's very little that you can do anyway.  Never take a vacation at 
a place where you'll need to take another vacation as soon as you get back. 
Stay away from exotic travel locals or political hot-spots like Kabul or 
Baghdad.  Behave yourself at Christmas parties.  Spiritual: Go to the church, 
synagog, or mosque of your choice at least three or four times a year, so the 
elders know what you look like.  It may come in handy some day.  Intellectual 
stimulation: Keep your mind active. Solve puzzles, play chess, checkers, cards, 
computer games, whatever as a way to keep nimble.  Play an instrument; listen 
to good music.  Go to museums, go to movies, read a good newspaper every day, 
watch the History Channel from time to time.  Get a job that you like. Work for 
a charitable organization in your spare time. Teach children or become a 
mentor. Adopt a pet (cats, dogs, tropical fish, whatever).  Raise children. 
Take time to smell the roses.

8. Get 7+ hrs. sleep qhs.  Try to get up on Saturdays, Sundays, or holidays at 
the same time as normal for a weekday.

9. Germs and Oral Hygiene: Wash hands several times per day;  shower twice a 
day; use mouth wash four or five times throughout the day; brush teeth after 
every meal (when at home); use dental floss once a day; get a dental hygienist 
to clean your teeth professionally twice a year.

10. Engage in sex as often as possible, but always with a willing partner and 
obviously one who is STD(-), especially HIV(-).  If you're married, avoid extra 
marital relationships (otherwise known as "adultery"), if possible.  It's the 
cover-ups that get you into more trouble later. Standard adult pornography 
works for most people, but child pornography, of any sort, is absolutely 
forbidden.  Masturbate when alone for a long period of time to prevent rust 
accumulation.

11. If > 50 yo, get regular screening by a medial lab every year (Remember that 
the most common warning sign of a heart attack is death [secondary to an MI].) 
If your BP is too high (>140 and/or >90) you need to add some meds to your 
daily regimen... e.g., a beta blocker, an ACE Inhibitor, and/or a diuretic, 
under a doctor's supervision) to bring it down. Hypertension is a silent 
condition, and you won't know if you don't have it measured. If your 
Cholesterol is too high (>225), you ought to add a statin Rx.  Start with a 
generic first. Shop around until you find one that suits you, as you will be on 
it "for life."  Check your liver enzymes once a year. If your CBC counts are 
off, that will need to be fixed as well.

12. Men (and post-menopausal women) should donate blood regularly.  It's not 
just for the sake of the faceless people you may help along the way. It's for 
your own good, too.  Our blood-clotting machinery was tuned for a time when our 
hunter/gatherer ancestors got much more cuts and scrapes than we do in a modern 
civilization.  Quick clotting then is not compatible with maximizing your 
longevity today, as we get internal clotting problems instead.

         I put this quick list of 12 life-style interventions together in an 
hour or so.  If you knowingly fail to abide by any of the above rules and we 
find out, as a punishment, we'll send Martha Stewart to redecorate your house 
when you're not home.

Happy holidays,

Steve Coles

L. Stephen Coles, M.D., Ph.D., Co-Founder
Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group
URL: http://www.grg.org
URL: http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~scoles
E-mail: scoles at ucla.edu


From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan  3 22:36:16 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 17:36:16 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Op-Ed: Global Trend: More Science, More Fraud
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252113300.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Global Trend: More Science, More Fraud
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/science/20rese.html

    By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN and WILLIAM J. BROAD

    The South Korean scandal that shook the world of science last week is just 
one
    sign of a global explosion in research that is outstripping the mechanisms 
meant
    to guard against error and fraud.

    Experts say the problem is only getting worse, as research projects, and the
    journals that publish the findings, soar.

    Science is often said to bar dishonesty and bad research with a triple 
safety
    net. The first is peer review, in which experts advise governments about 
what
    research to finance. The second is the referee system, which has journals 
ask
    reviewers to judge if manuscripts merit publication. The last is 
replication,
    whereby independent scientists see if the work holds up.

    But a series of scientific scandals in the 1970's and 1980's challenged the
    scientific community's faith in these mechanisms to root out malfeasance. In
    response the United States has over the last two decades added extra 
protections,
    including new laws and government investigative bodies.

    And as research around the globe has increased, most without the benefit of 
such
    safeguards, so have the cases of scientific misconduct. Most recently, 
suspicions
    have swirled around a dazzling series of cloning advances by a South Korean
    scientist, Dr. Hwang Woo Suk.

    Dr. Hwang's research made him a national hero. His team outdid rivals by 
claiming
    to have extracted stem cells from cloned human embryos and to have cloned a 
dog,
    an extraordinary feat. Some observers hailed the breakthroughs as worthy of 
a
    Nobel Prize.

    Last month, critics charged that Dr. Hwang's published findings hid ethical
    lapses. And last week, collaborators accused the researcher of fabricating
    results in one of his landmark human cloning studies, published in Science 
last
    spring.

    Dr. Hwang has insisted on his innocence but said he would retract the 
Science
    paper. Now questions are growing about his earlier work, including Snuppy, 
the
    dog he claims to have cloned. Yesterday, news agencies reported that Seoul
    National University officials investigating Dr. Hwang's claims locked down 
his
    laboratory, impounded his computer and interviewed his colleagues, among 
other
    actions.

    "The Korean case shows us that we should be a lot more cautious," Marcel C.
    LaFollette, the author of "Stealing Into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and 
Misconduct
    in Scientific Publishing," said in an interview. "We have been unwilling to 
ask
    tough questions of people who are from other countries and whose systems are
    different because we were attempting to be polite."

    To be sure, most scientists resist pressures to cut corners and adhere to 
the
    canons of science, honoring the truth above all else. But surveys suggest 
that
    there are powerful undercurrents of misbehavior and, in some cases, outright
    fakery.

    In June, a survey of 3,427 scientists by the University of Minnesota and the
    HealthPartners Research Foundation reported that up to a third of the 
respondents
    had engaged in ethically questionable practices, from ignoring contradictory
    facts to falsifying data.

    Scientific fraud as a public danger burst into public view in the 1970's and
    1980's, when major cases of misconduct shook a number of elite publications 
and
    institutions, including Yale, Harvard and Columbia.

    In 1981, Dr. Donald Fredrickson, then the director of the National 
Institutes of
    Health, defended the standard view of science as a self-correcting 
enterprise.
    "We deliberately have a very small police force because we know that poor
    currency will automatically be discovered and cast out," he said.

    But fraud after fraud made the weaknesses of that system impossible to 
ignore. In
    the early 1980's, a young cardiology researcher, Dr. John R. Darsee, was 
found to
    have fabricated much data for more than 100 papers he wrote while working at
    Harvard and Emory Universities. His work appeared in The New England Journal 
of
    Medicine, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and The 
American
    Journal of Cardiology, among other top publications.

    Startled, the federal government, beginning in 1985, took steps to augment 
the
    existing safeguards. For instance, Congress passed a law requiring public 
and
    private institutions to establish formal ways to investigate charges of 
fraud, in
    theory helping to assess damage, clear the air and protect the innocent.
    Eventually, the federal government established its own investigative body, 
now
    known by the Orwellian title of the Office of Research Integrity.

    Journal editors, at the center of the storm, also took collective action to
    enhance their credibility. In 1997, they founded the Committee on 
Publication
    Ethics, or COPE, "to provide a sounding board for editors who are struggling 
with
    how to best deal with possible breaches in research and publication ethics,"
    according to the group's Web site.

    Consisting mostly of editors of medical journals, the committee now has more 
than
    300 members in Europe, Asia and the United States.

    Still, the frauds kept coming. In 1999, federal investigators found that a
    scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., faked 
what had
    been hailed as crucial evidence linking power lines to cancer. He published 
his
    research in The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences and F.E.B.S. 
Letters,
    a journal of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies.

    The year 2002 proved especially bleak. At Bell Labs, a series of 
extraordinary
    claims that seemed destined to win a Nobel Prize, including the creation of
    molecular-scale transistors, suddenly collapsed. Two of the world's most
    prestigious journals, Science and Nature, had published many of the 
fraudulent
    papers, underscoring the need for better safeguards despite two decades of
    attempted repairs.

    Experts now say that the explosive growth of science around the globe has 
made
    the problem far worse, because most countries have yet to institute the 
extra
    measures that the United States has put in place. That imbalance is at least
    partly responsible for a rise in scientific scandals in other countries, 
they
    say.

    Dr. Richard S. Smith, a former editor of The British Medical Journal (now 
BMJ)
    and the co-founder of the Committee on Publication Ethics, a group of 
journal
    editors, said in an interview that fraud was becoming increasingly difficult 
to
    root out because most countries' protective measures were either patchy or
    altogether absent. "It's hard enough to do something nationally, and to do 
it
    internationally is still harder," he said. "But that's what is needed."

    Contributing to the problem is a drastic rise in the number of scientific
    journals published around the world: more than 54,000, according to Ulrich's
    Periodicals Directory. This glut can confuse researchers, overwhelm
    quality-control systems, encourage fraud and distort the public perception 
of
    findings.

    "Foreign scientific journals have gone through the roof," said Shawn Chen, a
    senior associate editor at Ulrich's, nearly doubling to 29,098 in 2005 from
    15,300 in 1980. "We're having a hard time keeping up."

    While millions of articles are never read or cited - and some are written 
simply
    to pad r?sum?s - others enter the pressure cooker of scientific and 
biomedical
    promotion, becoming lucrative elements of companies' business strategies.

    Until now, cases of questionable research in other countries have gotten 
little
    attention in the United States. But international editors, shaken by 
scandal, are
    now publicizing them and expressing concern. This year, the July 30 issue of 
BMJ
    devoted four articles to the subject, asking on its cover: "Suspicions of 
fraud
    in medical research: Who should investigate?"

    The articles discussed cases in which several publications, including BMJ, 
had
    stumbled in resolving serious doubts about the truthfulness of published 
studies
    done in Canada and India. The Canadian research claimed that a patented mix 
of
    multivitamins improved brain function in older people, and the Indian study 
said
    that low-fat, high-fiber diets cut by nearly half the risk of death from 
heart
    disease.

    The BMJ said that it published its own version of the Indian research in 
April
    1992 and that it had later investigated serious questions about the validity 
of
    the research for more than a decade before speaking out.

    The difficulty, the editors said, was that journals could go only so far in 
fraud
    inquiries before needing the aid of national investigative bodies and
    professional associations that oversee scientific research. But in the 
Indian and
    Canadian cases, they added, such bodies either did not exist or refused to 
help,
    so "the doubts are unresolved."

    The journal's editors, Dr. Fiona Godlee and Dr. Jane Smith, noted that the 
United
    States and Scandinavian countries had adopted institutional defenses and 
that
    Britain was considering such safeguards. Journals have an obligation to help 
the
    process, they concluded, by publicizing their difficulties and doubts.

    Most recently, the South Korean uproar illustrates the tangle of publishing 
and
    policing issues that can arise as science becomes increasingly competitive 
and
    international.

    "Now we're in a situation where we have these alliances between university
    researchers in countries and between institutions that really weren't 
working
    together before," said Dr. LaFollette, author of "Stealing Into Print."

    The journal Science, owned by the American Association for the Advancement 
of
    Science, published the research of Dr. Hwang of Seoul National University 
and his
    colleagues in March 2004 and June 2005, hailing it as pathbreaking.

    On Dec. 14, the magazine noted in a statement how fraud charges about the 
2005
    research had led to two investigations - one in South Korea and the other at 
the
    University of Pittsburgh, home to one of the article's 25 co-authors. "The
    journal itself is not an investigative body," Donald Kennedy, the magazine's
    editor, argued. "We await answers from the authors, as well as official
    conclusions, before we come to any ourselves."

    On Friday in a news conference, Dr. Kennedy emphasized that the magazine had 
made
    no accusations of fraud against Dr. Hwang. "As of now we can't reach any
    conclusions with respect to misconduct issues," he said.

    Independent scientists said it remained to be seen how thoroughly 
authorities in
    South Korea, where Dr. Hwang is a celebrity, would investigate the case and
    resolve knotty issues in what amounts to a highly public test of 
institutional
    maturity.

    Seoul National University is leading the inquiry. Its committee, which 
apparently
    has the authority to examine Dr. Hwang's raw data and to question his 
colleagues,
    may have the best chance of discovering how much of his work remains valid.

    But experts also cautioned that the committee's credibility requires the 
addition
    of outsiders, and perhaps scientists from other countries, who know the 
field and
    can help ensure that the investigation will retain its objectivity.

    "Unfortunately, individual institutions have an enormous conflict of 
interest,"
    said Dr. Smith, the former editor of The British Medical Journal. "It's a 
lot
    easier," he said, for such bodies when examining an allegation of fraud on 
their
    own, "to slide someone out of the organization or to suppress it 
altogether."

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan  3 22:36:28 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 17:36:28 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: In the Chaos of Homelessness,
	Calendars Mean Nothing
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252113480.14301@panix3.panix.com>

In the Chaos of Homelessness, Calendars Mean Nothing
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/health/20case.html

    Cases
    By ELISSA ELY, M.D.

    I knew from a note left by her case manager that the homeless woman I was 
waiting
    to see had a history of trauma, terrible mood swings, past suicide attempts.

    I had booked an hour for an intake evaluation. She arrived 35 minutes late, 
sat
    down and shook out long braids. She was plump, and wore what looked like 
someone
    else's ill-fitting button-down shirt. She opened her pocketbook, eyeliner, 
loose
    cigarettes, Kleenex tumbling out.

    "I've got to see a doctor right away," she said, and she began to weep.

    In the next 15 seconds, I learned that she had been beaten by her father, 
that
    she had found her fianc? in bed with her daughter, that she had not slept in 
two
    nights.

    On top of that, she said, she had been late catching the bus from the 
shelter to
    the subway to get to the clinic and late getting the subway to the bus to 
get to
    the shelter the night before. That meant that she had missed dinner and
    breakfast. She didn't know if she could go on one minute more.

    I opened up my lunch bag and handed her the first thing I came across. It 
was a
    large banana. I had been looking forward to eating it. She finished it in 
three
    bites and dropped the peel into her pocketbook.

    We talked a few more minutes but the intake forms remained blank. She was
    essentially incoherent; not psychotic, but washed away in a flood of
    disorganization and emotion, unable to grab any branch long enough to pull
    herself onto land. Finally, I gave her a card with an appointment for the 
next
    week and a week's prescription for a benign sleeping medication.

    Five nights later, I was in a different shelter when the staff phone rang. 
It was
    the drug and alcohol abuse counselor whose office was two doors away. The 
walls
    are plasterboard, and I could hear him talking into the phone from his 
cubicle.
    There was weeping in the background.

    "I have someone who needs to see a psychiatrist right away," he told me.

    "Sign her up," I said.

    "Just a minute," he said, and, putting his hand over the receiver, told the
    weeper: "I'm going to sign you up. You can see her next week."

    The weeping became loud wailing.

    "What's her name?" I asked.

    It was familiar. So, now, was the weeping. A mental image surfaced of braids 
and
    objects tumbling from a purse.

    "Tell her we met last Friday," I said. "I'm the doctor she saw in the 
clinic."

    The wailing continued.

    "Tell her I gave her the banana," I said.

    The weeping stopped.

    "Oh," I heard her say through the wall. "That doctor."

    "Ask her if she's sleeping any better," I said.

    He asked her, then told me that she had not filled the prescription yet. 
"Tell
    her I'm going to see her the day after tomorrow," I said. "We made an
    appointment. Nine o'clock. She has a card."

    "O.K.," he said. "I'll tell her."

    Without the banana, she would not have recognized me. I was simply another 
branch
    floating by. In the chaos of her life, it was natural to see a psychiatrist 
in
    one shelter during the day on Friday and a second one in a different shelter 
on
    Wednesday night.

    But by the happy coincidence of being the same person in two places, I had 
headed
    off redundancy. Luck and a piece of fruit had provided the beginning of
    consistent care. Now we could get down to work.

    Friday morning came. 9:00. 9:30. 10:30.

    She never showed.

    At the night shelter two days later, the drug counselor said he had not seen 
her.
    She had moved into the land of the missing.

    Life should be easier to organize. One patient, one doctor. But the muddle 
is a
    metaphor for homelessness, part of the diffusion that comes when you have no
    base. Calendars and appointment cards mean nothing.

    The solution is unclear, at least to me. A banana makes an impression, but 
not
    for long enough.

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan  3 22:38:42 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 17:38:42 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Louis Menand: Everybody's an Expert
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252114000.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Louis Menand: Everybody's an Expert
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/critics/051205crbo_books1
Putting predictions to the test.
Issue of 2005-10-05
Posted 2005-11-28

Prediction is one of the pleasures of life. Conversation would wither without 
it. "It won't last. She'll dump him in a month." If you're wrong, no one will 
call you on it, because being right or wrong isn't really the point. The point 
is that you think he's not worthy of her, and the prediction is just a way of 
enhancing your judgment with a pleasant prevision of doom. Unless you're 
putting money on it, nothing is at stake except your reputation for wisdom in 
matters of the heart. If a month goes by and they're still together, the 
deadline can be extended without penalty. "She'll leave him, trust me. It's 
only a matter of time." They get married: "Funny things happen. You never 
know." You still weren't wrong. Either the marriage is a bad one?you erred in 
the right direction?or you got beaten by a low-probability outcome.

It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlock's new book, "Expert 
Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?" (Princeton; $35), that 
people who make prediction their business?people who appear as experts on 
television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and 
businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables?are no better than the rest 
of us. When they're wrong, they're rarely held accountable, and they rarely 
admit it, either. They insist that they were just off on timing, or blindsided 
by an improbable event, or almost right, or wrong for the right reasons. They 
have the same repertoire of self-justifications that everyone has, and are no 
more inclined than anyone else to revise their beliefs about the way the world 
works, or ought to work, just because they made a mistake. No one is paying you 
for your gratuitous opinions about other people, but the experts are being 
paid, and Tetlock claims that the better known and more frequently quoted they 
are, the less reliable their guesses about the future are likely to be. The 
accuracy of an expert's predictions actually has an inverse relationship to his 
or her self-confidence, renown, and, beyond a certain point, depth of 
knowledge. People who follow current events by reading the papers and 
newsmagazines regularly can guess what is likely to happen about as accurately 
as the specialists whom the papers quote. Our system of expertise is completely 
inside out: it rewards bad judgments over good ones.

"Expert Political Judgment" is not a work of media criticism. Tetlock is a 
psychologist?he teaches at Berkeley?and his conclusions are based on a 
long-term study that he began twenty years ago. He picked two hundred and 
eighty-four people who made their living "commenting or offering advice on 
political and economic trends," and he started asking them to assess the 
probability that various things would or would not come to pass, both in the 
areas of the world in which they specialized and in areas about which they were 
not expert. Would there be a nonviolent end to apartheid in South Africa? Would 
Gorbachev be ousted in a coup? Would the United States go to war in the Persian 
Gulf? Would Canada disintegrate? (Many experts believed that it would, on the 
ground that Quebec would succeed in seceding.) And so on. By the end of the 
study, in 2003, the experts had made 82,361 forecasts. Tetlock also asked 
questions designed to determine how they reached their judgments, how they 
reacted when their predictions proved to be wrong, how they evaluated new 
information that did not support their views, and how they assessed the 
probability that rival theories and predictions were accurate.

Tetlock got a statistical handle on his task by putting most of the
forecasting questions into a "three possible futures" form. The
respondents were asked to rate the probability of three alternative
outcomes: the persistence of the status quo, more of something
(political freedom, economic growth), or less of something
(repression, recession). And he measured his experts on two
dimensions: how good they were at guessing probabilities (did all the
things they said had an x per cent chance of happening happen x per
cent of the time?), and how accurate they were at predicting specific
outcomes. The results were unimpressive. On the first scale, the
experts performed worse than they would have if they had simply
assigned an equal probability to all three outcomes?if they had given
each possible future a thirty-three-per-cent chance of occurring.
Human beings who spend their lives studying the state of the world, in
other words, are poorer forecasters than dart-throwing monkeys, who
would have distributed their picks evenly over the three choices.

Tetlock also found that specialists are not significantly more
reliable than non-specialists in guessing what is going to happen in
the region they study. Knowing a little might make someone a more
reliable forecaster, but Tetlock found that knowing a lot can actually
make a person less reliable. "We reach the point of diminishing
marginal predictive returns for knowledge disconcertingly quickly," he
reports. "In this age of academic hyperspecialization, there is no
reason for supposing that contributors to top journals?distinguished
political scientists, area study specialists, economists, and so
on?are any better than journalists or attentive readers of the New
York Times in 'reading' emerging situations." And the more famous the
forecaster the more overblown the forecasts. "Experts in demand,"
Tetlock says, "were more overconfident than their colleagues who eked
out existences far from the limelight."

People who are not experts in the psychology of expertise are likely
(I predict) to find Tetlock's results a surprise and a matter for
concern. For psychologists, though, nothing could be less surprising.
"Expert Political Judgment" is just one of more than a hundred studies
that have pitted experts against statistical or actuarial formulas,
and in almost all of those studies the people either do no better than
the formulas or do worse. In one study, college counsellors were given
information about a group of high-school students and asked to predict
their freshman grades in college. The counsellors had access to test
scores, grades, the results of personality and vocational tests, and
personal statements from the students, whom they were also permitted
to interview. Predictions that were produced by a formula using just
test scores and grades were more accurate. There are also many studies
showing that expertise and experience do not make someone a better
reader of the evidence. In one, data from a test used to diagnose
brain damage were given to a group of clinical psychologists and their
secretaries. The psychologists' diagnoses were no better than the
secretaries'.

The experts' trouble in Tetlock's study is exactly the trouble that
all human beings have: we fall in love with our hunches, and we
really, really hate to be wrong. Tetlock describes an experiment that
he witnessed thirty years ago in a Yale classroom. A rat was put in a
T-shaped maze. Food was placed in either the right or the left
transept of the T in a random sequence such that, over the long run,
the food was on the left sixty per cent of the time and on the right
forty per cent. Neither the students nor (needless to say) the rat was
told these frequencies. The students were asked to predict on which
side of the T the food would appear each time. The rat eventually
figured out that the food was on the left side more often than the
right, and it therefore nearly always went to the left, scoring
roughly sixty per cent?D, but a passing grade. The students looked for
patterns of left-right placement, and ended up scoring only fifty-two
per cent, an F. The rat, having no reputation to begin with, was not
embarrassed about being wrong two out of every five tries. But Yale
students, who do have reputations, searched for a hidden order in the
sequence. They couldn't deal with forty-per-cent error, so they ended
up with almost fifty-per-cent error.

The expert-prediction game is not much different. When television
pundits make predictions, the more ingenious their forecasts the
greater their cachet. An arresting new prediction means that the
expert has discovered a set of interlocking causes that no one else
has spotted, and that could lead to an outcome that the conventional
wisdom is ignoring. On shows like "The McLaughlin Group," these
experts never lose their reputations, or their jobs, because long
shots are their business. More serious commentators differ from the
pundits only in the degree of showmanship. These serious experts?the
think tankers and area-studies professors?are not entirely out to
entertain, but they are a little out to entertain, and both their
status as experts and their appeal as performers require them to
predict futures that are not obvious to the viewer. The producer of
the show does not want you and me to sit there listening to an expert
and thinking, I could have said that. The expert also suffers from
knowing too much: the more facts an expert has, the more information
is available to be enlisted in support of his or her pet theories, and
the more chains of causation he or she can find beguiling. This helps
explain why specialists fail to outguess non-specialists. The odds
tend to be with the obvious.

Tetlock's experts were also no different from the rest of us when it
came to learning from their mistakes. Most people tend to dismiss new
information that doesn't fit with what they already believe. Tetlock
found that his experts used a double standard: they were much tougher
in assessing the validity of information that undercut their theory
than they were in crediting information that supported it. The same
deficiency leads liberals to read only The Nation and conservatives to
read only National Review. We are not natural falsificationists: we
would rather find more reasons for believing what we already believe
than look for reasons that we might be wrong. In the terms of Karl
Popper's famous example, to verify our intuition that all swans are
white we look for lots more white swans, when what we should really be
looking for is one black swan.

Also, people tend to see the future as indeterminate and the past as
inevitable. If you look backward, the dots that lead up to Hitler or
the fall of the Soviet Union or the attacks on September 11th all
connect. If you look forward, it's just a random scatter of dots, many
potential chains of causation leading to many possible outcomes. We
have no idea today how tomorrow's invasion of a foreign land is going
to go; after the invasion, we can actually persuade ourselves that we
knew all along. The result seems inevitable, and therefore
predictable. Tetlock found that, consistent with this asymmetry,
experts routinely misremembered the degree of probability they had
assigned to an event after it came to pass. They claimed to have
predicted what happened with a higher degree of certainty than,
according to the record, they really did. When this was pointed out to
them, by Tetlock's researchers, they sometimes became defensive.

And, like most of us, experts violate a fundamental rule of
probabilities by tending to find scenarios with more variables more
likely. If a prediction needs two independent things to happen in
order for it to be true, its probability is the product of the
probability of each of the things it depends on. If there is a
one-in-three chance of x and a one-in-four chance of y, the
probability of both x and y occurring is one in twelve. But we often
feel instinctively that if the two events "fit together" in some
scenario the chance of both is greater, not less. The classic "Linda
problem" is an analogous case. In this experiment, subjects are told,
"Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright.
She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with
issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in
antinuclear demonstrations." They are then asked to rank the
probability of several possible descriptions of Linda today. Two of
them are "bank teller" and "bank teller and active in the feminist
movement." People rank the second description higher than the first,
even though, logically, its likelihood is smaller, because it requires
two things to be true?that Linda is a bank teller and that Linda is an
active feminist?rather than one.

Plausible detail makes us believers. When subjects were given a choice
between an insurance policy that covered hospitalization for any
reason and a policy that covered hospitalization for all accidents and
diseases, they were willing to pay a higher premium for the second
policy, because the added detail gave them a more vivid picture of the
circumstances in which it might be needed. In 1982, an experiment was
done with professional forecasters and planners. One group was asked
to assess the probability of "a complete suspension of diplomatic
relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983,"
and another group was asked to assess the probability of "a Russian
invasion of Poland, and a complete suspension of diplomatic relations
between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983." The experts
judged the second scenario more likely than the first, even though it
required two separate events to occur. They were seduced by the
detail.

It was no news to Tetlock, therefore, that experts got beaten by
formulas. But he does believe that he discovered something about why
some people make better forecasters than other people. It has to do
not with what the experts believe but with the way they think. Tetlock
uses Isaiah Berlin's metaphor from Archilochus, from his essay on
Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," to illustrate the difference. He
says:

Low scorers look like hedgehogs: thinkers who "know one big thing,"
aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into
new domains, display bristly impatience with those who "do not get
it," and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty
proficient forecasters, at least in the long term. High scorers look
like foxes: thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their
trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction
not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible "ad
hocery" that require stitching together diverse sources of
information, and are rather diffident about their own forecasting
prowess.

A hedgehog is a person who sees international affairs to be ultimately
determined by a single bottom-line force: balance-of-power
considerations, or the clash of civilizations, or globalization and
the spread of free markets. A hedgehog is the kind of person who holds
a great-man theory of history, according to which the Cold War does
not end if there is no Ronald Reagan. Or he or she might adhere to the
"actor-dispensability thesis," according to which Soviet Communism was
doomed no matter what. Whatever it is, the big idea, and that idea
alone, dictates the probable outcome of events. For the hedgehog,
therefore, predictions that fail are only "off on timing," or are
"almost right," derailed by an unforeseeable accident. There are
always little swerves in the short run, but the long run irons them
out.

Foxes, on the other hand, don't see a single determining explanation
in history. They tend, Tetlock says, "to see the world as a shifting
mixture of self-fulfilling and self-negating prophecies:
self-fulfilling ones in which success breeds success, and failure,
failure but only up to a point, and then self-negating prophecies kick
in as people recognize that things have gone too far."

Tetlock did not find, in his sample, any significant correlation
between how experts think and what their politics are. His hedgehogs
were liberal as well as conservative, and the same with his foxes.
(Hedgehogs were, of course, more likely to be extreme politically,
whether rightist or leftist.) He also did not find that his foxes
scored higher because they were more cautious?that their appreciation
of complexity made them less likely to offer firm predictions. Unlike
hedgehogs, who actually performed worse in areas in which they
specialized, foxes enjoyed a modest benefit from expertise. Hedgehogs
routinely over-predicted: twenty per cent of the outcomes that
hedgehogs claimed were impossible or nearly impossible came to pass,
versus ten per cent for the foxes. More than thirty per cent of the
outcomes that hedgehogs thought were sure or near-sure did not,
against twenty per cent for foxes.

The upside of being a hedgehog, though, is that when you're right you
can be really and spectacularly right. Great scientists, for example,
are often hedgehogs. They value parsimony, the simpler solution over
the more complex. In world affairs, parsimony may be a liability?but,
even there, there can be traps in the kind of highly integrative
thinking that is characteristic of foxes. Elsewhere, Tetlock has
published an analysis of the political reasoning of Winston Churchill.
Churchill was not a man who let contradictory information interfere
with his id?es fixes. This led him to make the wrong prediction about
Indian independence, which he opposed. But it led him to be right
about Hitler. He was never distracted by the contingencies that might
combine to make the elimination of Hitler unnecessary.

Tetlock also has an unscientific point to make, which is that "we as a
society would be better off if participants in policy debates stated
their beliefs in testable forms"?that is, as probabilities?"monitored
their forecasting performance, and honored their reputational bets."
He thinks that we're suffering from our primitive attraction to
deterministic, overconfident hedgehogs. It's true that the only thing
the electronic media like better than a hedgehog is two hedgehogs who
don't agree. Tetlock notes, sadly, a point that Richard Posner has
made about these kinds of public intellectuals, which is that most of
them are dealing in "solidarity" goods, not "credence" goods. Their
analyses and predictions are tailored to make their ideological
brethren feel good?more white swans for the white-swan camp. A
prediction, in this context, is just an exclamation point added to an
analysis. Liberals want to hear that whatever conservatives are up to
is bound to go badly; when the argument gets more nuanced, they change
the channel. On radio and television and the editorial page, the line
between expertise and advocacy is very blurry, and pundits behave
exactly the way Tetlock says they will. Bush Administration loyalists
say that their predictions about postwar Iraq were correct, just a
little off on timing; pro-invasion liberals who are now trying to
dissociate themselves from an adventure gone bad insist that though
they may have sounded a false alarm, they erred "in the right
direction"?not really a mistake at all.

The same blurring characterizes professional forecasters as well. The
predictions on cable news commentary shows do not have life-and-death
side effects, but the predictions of people in the C.I.A. and the
Pentagon plainly do. It's possible that the psychologists have
something to teach those people, and, no doubt, psychologists are
consulted. Still, the suggestion that we can improve expert judgment
by applying the lessons of cognitive science and probability theory
belongs to the abiding modern American faith in expertise. As a
professional, Tetlock is, after all, an expert, and he would like to
believe in expertise. So he is distressed that political forecasters
turn out to be as unreliable as the psychological literature
predicted, but heartened to think that there might be a way of raising
the standard. The hope for a little more accountability is hard to
dissent from. It would be nice if there were fewer partisans on
television disguised as "analysts" and "experts" (and who would not
want to see more foxes?). But the best lesson of Tetlock's book may be
the one that he seems most reluctant to draw: Think for yourself.


From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan  4 23:13:13 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:13:13 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] John Perna: A Little Conspiracy Paranoia From The Web
 In Case You Haven't Heard It Before
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252114400.14301@panix3.panix.com>

A Little Conspiracy Paranoia From The Web In Case You Haven't Heard It Before

Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 15:03:53 -0800 (PST)
From: John Perna <savefreed0m2oo3 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Uniting human rights activists

Uniting human rights activists Most people just want to be free. In the entire 
political spectrum; from left to right, there are people, who want to be free.

In the entire political spectrum, from left to right, there are ALSO people, 
who want to take our freedoms away. The freedom loving people out number the 
totalitarians, by orders of magnitude.

Yet; over and over again, the totalitarians are winning. The totalitarians are 
winning because they are organized. The freedom loving people need to get 
organized. The totalitarians are winning because have their disinformers sowing 
strife, among the freedom loving people: causing them to fight EACH OTHER. The 
freedom loving people need to work TOGETHER to oppose totalitarianism.

Mao Tse Dung, summed it up quite well: "The stronghold is broken easily from 
the INSIDE"

Divide and conquer is a VERY OLD trick.

"If your enemy is stronger divide him." -Sun Tzu

Amazingly, in the entire political spectrum; from left to right, people often 
agree as to who the totalitarians are, yet they still cannot work together. IF 
you really understand the power brokers of this world, you will understand that 
these instruments of totalitarians are often tentacles of the same monster, all 
controlled by the New World Order. The CIA works for the New World Order.

The FBI is now controlled by the New World Order. Al Qaeda works for the New 
World Order. The governments of many countries are a part of the New World 
Order. The "industrial-military complex" IS the New World Order.

Yet often those who agree on EXACTLY WHO IT IS, that is destroying our freedom, 
cannot work together, because they want to give them different labels.

At the same time, the totalitarians have disinformers working among the human 
rights activists.

The false human rights activist will present himself as a defender of liberty, 
BUT he will spend most of his time attacking the defenders of liberty, under 
numerous pretenses. If you total up all of the defenders of liberty; who are 
attacked by the false human rights activist, you will quickly notice that it is 
practically the ENTIRE human rights movement. Those; whom he praises, are 
usually in JAIL. Obviously, no one will have his approval, until they are in 
jail!

HOW CAN SOMEONE OPPOSE EVERY HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST, OF EVERY TYPE? THERE IS 
ONLY ONE POSSIBLE ANSWER: HE IS OPPOSED TO HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM ITSELF.

When you find that the same person; WHO OPPOSES EVERY HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST, OF 
EVERY TYPE, YET is also quite comfortable, with those who preach 
totalitarianism, then there can be NO DOUBT as to his real goals.

When the disinformers become very desperate, they will resort to insulting the 
freedom activists; by name, AND IN THE SUBJECT LINE, OF THE MESSAGE.

When the disinformers become very desperate they will attempt to fabricate 
"band wagon appeal", by claiming that no one is listening to the most effective 
defenders of liberty. Of course; if that was true, The New World Order would 
not have disinformers devoting so much time, and energy, to opposing them!

The false human rights activist will spend a great deal of effort on the 
following:

1. Dividing the defenders of liberty into fighting each other by creating 
strife among freedom activists. (This is often called "infighting", but it 
actually comes from a person, who is working to build tyranny.)

2. Attempting to waste the time of freedom activists, by forcing them to 
respond to personal attacks, or endless debate about trivia.

3. ABOVE ALL: Accusing the most effective freedom activists of being false 
opposition.

THE GOLDEN RULE OF DISINFORMERS:

Always accuse your adversary of whatever is true about yourself.

Details below:

Disinformer's Gambit Tactics of Disinformers

A short time ago I posted some information on The Tactics of Disinformers. I 
was amazed to see how quickly the disinformers came out of the wood work to 
identify themselves.

This response was actually an excellent demonstration of one of the tactics; 
that was explained:

THE GOLDEN RULE OF DISINFORMERS:

Always accuse your adversary of whatever is true about yourself.

Sometimes, if you simply post information on Disinformers; without naming 
anyone, the Disinformers will identify themselves, by taking offense, and 
popping in, to comment. Occasionally, even though you do not mention anyone's 
name, they will claim that what you have written is about them. Nothing could 
be more precise, in identifying exactly WHO are the disinformers, than the 
disinformers own reaction to this post.

It is safe to conclude that if one were to throw a rock into a pen full of 
pigs, and one of them squealed, that the one that squealed, would be the one 
that you had hit.

TRY POSTING THIS, ALL AROUND, and then watch what happens. See who it is that 
claims, that this "shoe fits". It is a good dog, who comes when he is called. 
Here is the message that makes the pigs squeal:

The Disinformer's Gambit - the Tactics of Disinformers

  In the game of chess there exists a term; which describes a maneuver, a 
stratagem, and a ploy; using different pieces working together, to accomplish a 
secret purpose. This is called a gambit.

Those who hope to build totalitarian control over freedom loving people, also 
use many gambits.

BUT, the chess player has the advantage of always knowing which pieces are on 
the other side. Those who would defend liberty have no such luxury. The most 
treacherous player in the gambit is the false patriot. The false human rights 
activist will present himself as a defender of liberty,

BUT he will spend most of his time attacking the defenders of liberty, under 
numerous pretenses. The false human rights activist will attempt to re-direct 
attention in every direction EXCEPT at those, who are building tyranny. The 
false human rights activist will attempt to re-direct attention to an entire 
race, a religion, a large group with a few problems, or even against freedom 
activists.

This is essentially the very old military strategy of the creation a "decoy to 
draw enemy fire." The ultimate success of this deception is to cause defenders 
of liberty to "fire" on non-combatants, or even to "fire" on their own friends, 
and allies. In addition, the false human rights activist will neutralize the 
efforts of the defenders of liberty. The false patriot, like every other player 
in the gambit, will neutralize the efforts of the defenders of liberty by:

1. Deceiving the defenders of liberty into supporting hoaxes. Any time that a 
simple request for evidence results in vitriolic personal attacks, or an 
attempt to censor, with no attempt to address the issue, you can be sure that 
you are dealing with a hoax.

2. Dividing the defenders of liberty into fighting each other by creating 
strife among patriots.

3. Deceiving the defenders of liberty into creating class struggle by promoting 
ethnic hatred.

4. Attempting to waste the time of human rights activists, by forcing them to 
respond to personal attacks, or endless debate about trivia.

5. Using multiple aliases to create the appearance that there is someone, who 
believes them to be credible.

6. ABOVE ALL: Accusing the most effective patriots of being false opposition.

THE GOLDEN RULE OF DISINFORMERS:

Always accuse your adversary of whatever is true about yourself.

It is VERY simple. Those who spend their time fighting tyranny, are freedom 
activists.

Those who spend their time fighting freedom activists are working for the 
advancement of tyranny.

The false human rights activist will generally proclaim himself to be a 
religious zealot; such as a Christian conservative, but he will not adhere to 
the principles of his proclaimed religion, in his own actions. He might even; 
incomprehensibly, be an ally of another player in the gambit; who is an 
atheist, or a socialist, or even a Satanist. (There is no implication here that 
an atheist cannot be in favor of freedom.

This is mentioned only to show that often "strange bed fellows" are working 
together to oppose freedom activists) In one group he might attempt to appear 
to be a Christian conservative. In another group he might present himself as a 
Marxist, or even as an Al Qaeda supporter. The false human rights activist; and 
those whom he deceives into promoting hoaxes, will reduce the credibility of 
all freedom activists. Those who have heard outlandishly ridiculous "conspiracy 
theories" will have a tendency to dismiss all "conspiracy theories" without 
serious examination. The false human rights activist will compose letters of 
praise, to himself, and post them as if they were anonymous correspondence 
supposedly received by himself.

The atheist, or socialist will supply a fervent, and obvious, opposition to the 
defenders of liberty. This player, in the gambit, will make a strong frontal 
attack on everything that the defenders of liberty do.

The atheist, or socialist will implement the same goals; that are listed above. 
The atheist, or socialist will play on the existence of outlandishly ridiculous 
"conspiracy theories" to encourage people to dismiss all "conspiracy theories" 
without serious examination.

The atheist, or socialist may infest patriotic, and religious, groups for no 
apparent reason. The main reasons are to disrupt, to get the group deleted, or 
to waste the time of human rights activists.

Even though DISINFORMERS make it a practice of accusing the most effective 
freedom activists of being false opposition, you will notice that there are 
certain admitted government apologists, who are never accused. This is because 
certain admitted government apologists are also players in the gambit.

The admitted government apologist will attempt to portray the defenders of 
liberty as subversives, as unreliable, and as outlandishly mentally unstable.

The admitted government apologist will play on the existence of outlandishly 
ridiculous "conspiracy theories" to encourage people to dismiss all "conspiracy 
theories" without serious examination. The admitted government apologist will 
use documents from the FBI, or other government sources, as his authority.

Another player in the gambit, is the pretended neutral.  The pretended neutral 
will take almost none of the above actions, but will work in the background, 
until a vital move is needed.  The pretended neutral will occasionally "vouch" 
for the other players in the gambit. The pretended neutral may even be the 
moderator of a group. When the pretended neutral is the moderator of a group, 
he will take no action, as long as the other players in the gambit are "holding 
their own". If the other players in the gambit are NOT "holding their own", 
THEN he will intervene; perhaps even by banning the most effective defenders of 
liberty.

The most effective defenders of liberty will be caught between all of these 
different players in the gambit. One dead "give away" is the fact that these 
different players in the gambit frequently are unable to conceal their support 
for one another; in spite of their alleged differences. The alleged religious 
zealot/patriot might be great friends with ONE PARTICULAR atheist/socialist. 
The false human rights activist; who is always accusing the most effective 
patriots of being false opposition, might be great friends with the admitted 
government apologist; whom he never accuses. The false human rights activist 
will even join the egroup that is run by the admitted government apologist, and 
will participate, and support, the admitted government apologist, in his own 
group.

If you will study the tactics used by the FBI COINTELPRO program. THEN you will 
recognize FBI COINTELPRO immediately.

Visit:

http://bcn.boulder.co.us/environment/vail/ifanagentknocks.html

Take note of the following paragraph:

"The FBI COINTELPRO program was initiated in 1956. Its purpose, as described 
later by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, was "to expose, disrupt, misdirect, 
discredit, or otherwise neutralize activities" of those individuals and 
organizations whose ideas or goals he opposed. Tactics included: falsely 
labeling individuals as informants; infiltrating groups with persons instructed 
to disrupt the group; sending anonymous or forged letters designed to promote 
strife between groups; initiating politically motivated IRS investigations; 
carrying out burglaries of offices and unlawful wiretaps; and disseminating to 
other government agencies and to the media unlawfully obtained derogatory 
information on individuals and groups."

If you understand the meaning of the tactic "to expose, disrupt, misdirect, 
discredit, or otherwise neutralize activities" you will understand that the 
person who is most likely of being a Fed, is the one who involves patriots in 
activities that have no effect on those who are building tyranny, and 
activities that will destroy the credibility of the patriots.

Those who are building tyranny would love to convince people that we are all a 
bunch of paranoid nuts, so that we will we unable to warn people about the 
building of tyranny.

Those who are building tyranny would be more capable of convincing people that 
we are paranoid nuts, if they could convince a segment of the patriots to run 
around telling people that the clouds, and the street signs, are out to get us, 
or that we should ban water.

If you understand the meaning of the tactic "infiltrating groups with persons 
instructed to disrupt the group; sending anonymous or forged letters designed 
to promote strife between groups"

OR OF:

"disseminating to other government agencies and to the media unlawfully 
obtained derogatory information on individuals and groups."

THEN you will know that a campaign of personal attacks on the real patriots is 
a part of the FBI COINTELPRO program.

If you understand the meaning of the tactic of falsely labeling individuals as 
informants THEN you will know that the person; who is most likely to be a fed, 
is the one who calls the real patriot a fed. It is a common tactic of FBI 
COINTELPRO to try to be THE FIRST ONE MAKE THE ACCUSATION.

THE GOLDEN RULE OF DISINFORMERS:

Always accuse your adversary of whatever is true about yourself.

The reader will notice that no one is named in this discussion. If there is any 
person; who feels that this discussion accurately describes themselves, that 
person is invited to comment.


From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan  4 23:13:22 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:13:22 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: Wish List: No More Books!
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252115190.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Wish List: No More Books!
http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2005/12/25/books/1124990452143.html

    Essay
    By JOE QUEENAN

    A few months ago, a friend whose iconoclastic, unpredictable behavior
    I usually hold in high esteem handed me a book entitled "A Navajo
    Legacy: The Life and Teachings of John Holiday." Apparently, he
    expected me to read it, despite the fact that I am not really a Navajo
    medicine man autobiography kind of guy. Flummoxed but gracious, I took
    the gift home and put it on a shelf alongside all the other books that
    friends have lent or given me over the years. This collection
    includes: "Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American
    Basketball Association"; "Hoosier Home Remedies"; "A Walk Through
    Wales"; "The Frontier World of Doc Holliday"; "Elwood's Blues:
    Interviews with the Blues Legends & Stars," by Dan Aykroyd and Ben
    Manilla; both "Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality" and
    Allen's somewhat less Jesuitical "Hi-Ho, Steverino!"; and, of course,
    "Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed."
    If I live to be 1,000 years old, I am not going to read any of these
    books. Especially the one about the American Basketball Association.

    Several years ago, I calculated how many books I could read if I lived
    to my actuarially expected age. The answer was 2,138. In theory, those
    2,138 books would include everything from "The Decline and Fall of the
    Roman Empire" to "Le Colonel Chabert," with titles by authors as
    celebrated as Marcel Proust and as obscure as Marcel Aym?. In
    principle, there would be enough time to read 500 masterpieces, 500
    minor classics, 500 overlooked works of genius, 500 oddities and 138
    examples of high-class trash. Nowhere in this utopian future would
    there be time for "Hi-Ho, Steverino!"

    True, I used to be one of those people who could never start a book
    without finishing it or introduce a volume to his library without
    eventually reading it. Familiarity with this glaring character flaw
    may have encouraged others to use me as a cultural guinea pig,
    heartlessly foisting books like "Damien the Leper" (written by Mia
    Farrow's father) or the letters of Flannery O'Connor upon me just to
    see if they were worth reading. (He wasn't; she was.)

    These forced reconnaissance missions ended the day an otherwise
    likable friend sent me "Accordion Man," a biography of Dick Contino by
    Bob Bove and Lou Angellotti. Though I revere Mr. Contino for his
    matchless rendition of "Arrivederci Roma," it disturbed me greatly
    that my friend would have mistaken affection for Mr. Contino's music
    for intense interest in his personal history. CD's are fine: you can
    read "Death in Venice" or Pascal's "Pens?es" while "Roll Out the
    Barrel" is bouncing along in the background. But if you spend too much
    time reading about how Dick Contino finally came to record "Lady of
    Spain," you will never get to Junichiro Tanizaki's "Some Prefer
    Nettles." And "Some Prefer Nettles" is No. 1,759 on my dream reading
    list.

    I do not avoid books like "Accordion Man" or "Elwood's Blues" merely
    because I believe that life is too short. Even if life were not too
    short, it would still be too short to read anything by Dan Aykroyd.
    And I am sure I am not alone when I state that cavalierly foisting
    unsolicited reading material upon book lovers is like buying underwear
    for people you hardly know. Bibliophiles are ceaselessly engaged in
    the mental reconfiguration of a Platonic reading list that will occupy
    them for the next 35 years: First, I'll get to "Buddenbrooks," then
    "The Man Without Qualities," then "The Decline of the West," and
    finally "Finnegans Wake." But I'll never get to "Finnegans Wake" if I
    keep stopping to read books like "The Frontier World of Doc Holliday."

    Time management is not the only issue here. There is often something
    sinister about the motives of those who press books onto others. The
    urge to give "Elwood's Blues" to someone who already owns unread
    biographies of Franz Schubert and Miles Davis smacks of sadism; the
    books serve as a taunt, a gibe, a threat, an insult. It is as if the
    lender himself wants to see how far another person can be pushed
    before he resorts to the rough stuff. Hint: If you're going to really
    press your luck and give someone one of this year's models that you
    fear they might eventually smack you with, steer clear of
    Pantagruelian blabfests like "The Historian." Otherwise, you could
    find yourself with a few loose teeth.

    I am certainly not suggesting that all given or lent books should be
    rejected, pulped, incinerated or mothballed. My sisters have
    impeccable taste in crime fiction and know precisely which Ruth
    Rendell to pass along next. A neighbor I met through my wife's garden
    club has given me several hard-to-get Georges Simenon mysteries, all
    of which proved to be delightful. But for everyone lending me "Maigret
    and the Insouciant Parrot," there are a dozen others handing me "Va Va
    Voom!: Bombshells, Pin-ups, Sexpots and Glamour Girls." Or "A Navajo
    Legacy."

    In many instances, people pass along books as a probing technique to
    see, "Is he really one of us?" That is, you're not serious about your
    ethnic heritage unless you've read "Angela's Ashes." You don't care
    about the poor Mayans unless you've read "1491" and its inevitable
    sequel, "1243." You don't really give a damn about the pernicious
    influence of the Knights Templar unless you've read "The Da Vinci
    Code." And you're not really interested in the future of our imperiled
    republic unless you've read "The No Spin Zone," "The No Spin Zone for
    Children," "101 Things Stupid Liberals Hate About the No Spin Zone,"
    and "Ann Coulter on Spinoza."

    Some people may wonder, "Well, why don't you simply lie when people
    ask you about the books they've lent you?" There are two problems with
    such duplicity. One, lying is a sin. Two, experienced biblio-fobs will
    invariably subject their targets to the third degree: Were you
    surprised at Damien the Leper's blas? reaction when his fingers fell
    into the porridge? What did you think of that cute little ermine
    affair Parsifal was wearing when he finally grasped the Holy Grail?
    Were you taken aback by all those weird recipes for Sachertorte in
    "The Tipping Point"? After reading "The Frontier World of Doc
    Holliday," do you have more or less respect for Ike Clanton as a money
    manager? Pity the callow lendee who falls for the trick question and
    is unmasked as a fraud.

    Because I live in a small town where I cross paths with promiscuous
    book lenders all the time, I have lately taken to hiding in
    subterranean caverns, wearing clever disguises while concealed in
    tenebrous alcoves and feigning rare tropical illnesses to avoid being
    saddled with any new reading material. Were I a younger man, I would
    be more than happy to take a gander at "Holy Faces, Secret Places: An
    Amazing Quest for the Face of Jesus," or Phil Lesh's Grateful Dead
    memoir. But time is running out, and if I don't get cracking soon I'm
    never going to get to "Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom,"
    much less "The Golden Bough." Of course, the single greatest problem
    in accepting unsolicited books from friends is that it may encourage
    them to lend you others. Once you've told them how much you enjoyed
    "How the Irish Saved Civilization," they'll be at your front doorstep
    with "How the Scots Invented the Modern World," "The Gifts of the
    Jews," and perhaps one day "How the Norwegians Invented Hip-Hop." If
    you tell them that you liked "Why Sinatra Matters" or "Why Orwell
    Matters," you're giving them carte blanche to turn up with "Why Vic
    Damone Matters" or "Why G. K. Chesterton Still Rocks!" When I
    foolishly let it be known how much I enjoyed "X-Ray," the
    "unauthorized" autobiography of the Kinks' lead singer, Ray Davies, a
    good friend then upped the ante with a copy of Dave Davies's "Kink:
    The Outrageous Story of My Wild Years as the Founder and Lead
    Guitarist of the Kinks." Surely, "The Mick Avory Story: My Life As the
    Kinks' Drummer" and "Pete Quaife: Hey, What Am I, the Kinks' Bassist
    or a Potted Plant?" cannot be far behind.

    This is why I recently told yet another friend that I hated a police
    procedural he'd dropped off. The novel dealt with a fictitious
    organization called the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, and was
    actually quite good. But when I found out that there were 15 other
    books in the series, and realized that my friend might own all of
    them, I feared that I would never, ever get to Miguel de Unamuno's
    "Tragic Sense of Life" at this rate. And at No. 2,127 on my list,
    Unamuno may only just get in under the wire anyway.

    Joe Queenan's most recent book is "Queenan Country: A Reluctant
    Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country."

From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan  4 23:13:32 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:13:32 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: What Men Want: Neanderthal TV
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252115290.14301@panix3.panix.com>

What Men Want: Neanderthal TV
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/fashion/sundaystyles/11MEN.html

    By WARREN ST. JOHN

    THERE was a heart-wrenching moment at the end of last season's
    final episode of the ABC series "Lost" when a character named
    Michael tries to find his kidnapped son. Michael lives for his
    child; like the rest of the characters in "Lost," the two of them
    are trapped on a tropical island after surviving a plane crash.
    When word of Michael's desperate mission reaches Sawyer - a
    booze-hoarding, hard-shelled narcissist who in his past killed an
    innocent man - his reaction is not what you would call sympathetic.
    "It's every man for hisself," Sawyer snarls.

    Not so long ago Sawyer's callousness would have made him a villain,
    but on "Lost," he is sympathetic, a man whose penchant for
    dispensing Darwinian truths over kindnesses drives not only the
    action but the show's underlying theme, that in the social chaos of
    the modern world, the only sensible reflex is self-interest.

    Perhaps not coincidentally Sawyer is also the character on the show
    with whom young men most identify, according to research conducted
    by the upstart male-oriented network Spike TV, which interviewed
    thousands of young men to determine what that coveted and elusive
    demographic likes most in its television shows.

    Spike found that men responded not only to brave and extremely
    competent leads but to a menagerie of characters with strikingly
    antisocial tendencies: Dr. Gregory House, a Vicodin-popping
    physician on Fox's "House"; Michael Scofield on "Prison Break," who
    is out to help his brother escape from jail; and Vic Mackey, played
    by Michael Chiklis on "The Shield," a tough-guy cop who won't
    hesitate to beat a suspect senseless. Tony Soprano is their patron
    saint, and like Tony, within the confines of their shows, they are
    all "good guys."

    The code of such characters, said Brent Hoff, 36, a fan of "Lost,"
    is: "Life is hard. Men gotta do what men gotta do, and if some
    people have to die in the process, so be it."

    "We can relate to them," said Mr. Hoff, a writer from San
    Francisco. "If you watch Sawyer on 'Lost,' who is fundamentally
    good even if he does bad things, there's less to feel guilty about
    in yourself."

    Gary A. Randall, a producer who helped create "Melrose Place," is
    developing a show called "Paradise Salvage," about two friends who
    discover a treasure map, for Spike TV. He said the proliferation of
    antisocial protagonists came from a concerted effort by networks to
    channel the frustrations of modern men.

    "It's about comprehending from an entertainment point of view that
    men are living a very complex conundrum today," he said. "We're
    supposed to be sensitive and evolved and yet still in touch with
    our Neanderthal, animalistic, macho side." Watching a deeply flawed
    male character who nevertheless prevails, Mr. Randall argued, makes
    men feel better about their own flaws and internal conflicts.

    "You think, 'It's O.K. to go to a strip club and have a couple of
    beers with your buddies and still go home to your wife and baby and
    live with yourself,' " he said.

    The most popular male leads of today stand in stark contrast to the
    unambiguously moral protagonists of the past, good guys like
    Magnum, Matlock or Barnaby Jones. They are also not simply flawed
    in the classic sense: men who have the occasional affair or who tip
    the bottle a little too much. Instead they are unapologetic about
    killing, stealing, hoarding and beating their way to achieve
    personal goals that often conflict with the greed, apathy and of
    course the bureaucracies of the modern world.

    "These kinds of characters are so satisfying to male viewers
    because culture has told them to be powerful and effective and to
    get things done, and at the same time they're living, operating and
    working in places that are constantly defying that," said Robert
    Thompson, the director of the Center for the Study of Popular
    Television at Syracuse University.

    Consequently, whereas the Lone Ranger battled stagecoach robbers
    and bankers foreclosing on a widow's farm, the enemy of the
    contemporary male TV hero, Dr. Thompson said, is "the legal,
    cultural and social infrastructure of the nation itself."

    Because of competition from the Web, video games and seemingly
    countless new cable channels, television producers are obsessed
    with developing shows that can capture the attention of young male
    viewers.

    To that end Spike TV, which is owned by Viacom and aims at men from
    18 to 49, has ordered up a slate of new dramas based on characters
    whose minds are cauldrons of moral ambiguity. They will join
    antiheroes on other networks like Vic Mackey, Gregory House, Jack
    Bauer of "24," and Tommy Gavin, the firefighter played by Denis
    Leary on "Rescue Me" who sanctions a revenge murder of the driver
    who ran over and killed his son.

    Paul Scheer, a 29-year-old actor from Los Angeles and an avid
    viewer of "Lost," said that not even committing murder alienates an
    audience. "You don't have to be defined by one act," he said.

    "Three people on that island have killed people in cold blood, and
    they're quote-unquote good people who you're rooting for every
    week," Mr. Scheer said. The implication for the viewer, he added,
    is, "You can say 'I'm messed up and I left my wife, but I'm still a
    good guy.' "

    Peter Liguori, the creator of the FX shows "The Shield" and "Over
    There" and now the president of Fox Entertainment, said that most
    strong male protagonists on television appeal to male viewers on an
    aspirational level. Those aspirations, though, he said, have
    changed over time.

    In the age of "Dragnet," "everything was about aspiring to
    perfection," Mr. Liguori said. "Today I think we thoroughly
    recognize our flaws and are honest about them. True heroism is in
    overcoming those flaws."

    Part of the shift to such complex and deeply flawed characters
    surely has to do with the economics of television itself. Cable
    channels, with their targeted niche audiences, are no longer
    obliged to aim for Middle America, and can instead create dramas
    for edgier audiences.

    The financial success of networks like FX and HBO has also opened
    the door for auteurism that has embroidered scripts with dramatic
    complexities once reserved for film and literature, where odious
    protagonists - think of Tom Ripley, the murderous narcissist
    protagonist in Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" -
    have long been common.

    Still the morally struggling protagonist has been evolving over
    time, Mr. Ligouri said, pointing to Detective Andy Sipowicz on
    "NYPD Blue." Sipowicz was an alcoholic who occasionally fell off
    the wagon, and he often flouted police procedure in the name of
    tracking down criminals. Like all good protagonists, Sipowicz was
    also exceedingly good at his job.

    Mr. Liguori took the notion of the flawed protagonist to new levels
    in the creation of Vic Mackey on "The Shield." At the end of the
    pilot for that show, Mr. Liguori said, Mackey turned to a fellow
    cop he knew to be crooked and shot him in the face.

    "There was a great debate at FX about how the audience would
    react," he said. "I thought 50 percent would say that's the most
    horrible thing, and 50 percent would say he was a rat." Mr.
    Chiklis, who plays Vic Mackey, won an Emmy for his performance in
    that episode, which was the highest rated at the time in the
    history of the network.

    "The ability to let the audience make that judgment was my 'aha'
    moment," Mr. Liguori said. "I think that moral ambiguity is highly
    involving for an audience. Audiences I believe relate to characters
    they share the same flaws with."

    Mr. Liguori added that in a world where people are increasingly
    transparent about their own flaws - detailing them on blogs,
    reality TV, on talk shows and in the news media - scripted TV drama
    had to emphasize characters' weaknesses.

    "The I.M.-ing and social Web sites, they're all being built on
    being as open and honest as possible," he said. "You cannot go from
    that environment to a TV show where everyone is perfect."

    With the success of shows featuring deeply flawed leads, the
    challenge for networks is to rein in the impulse to create ever
    more pathological characters. Pancho Mansfield, the head of
    original programming for Spike TV, said he could see network
    television going the route of "Scarface."

    "With all the competition that's out there and all the channels,
    people are pushing the extremes to distinguish themselves," Mr.
    Mansfield said. But for now, he argued, the complexity of
    characters on serialized TV shows is a kind of antidote to the
    increasingly superficial characters in Hollywood films, which he
    said, have come more to resemble the simplistic television dramas
    of yore.

    Dr. Thompson agreed. "On one level you could see the proliferation
    of these types of characters as an indication of the decline of
    American civilization," he said. "A more likely interpretation may
    be that they represent an improvement in the sophistication and
    complexity of television." If you accept that view, he added, "Then
    the young male demographic has pretty good taste."


From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan  4 23:13:42 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:13:42 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Mass-Produced Individuality
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252115500.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Mass-Produced Individuality
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11wwln_consumed.html

    The Way We Live Now
    By ROB WALKER
    CafePress

    Many people used to make their own clothes and build their own
    furniture. The Industrial Revolution, with technological
    innovations like power looms and power lathes, and now today's
    far-flung supply chains, made it easier and more practical to buy
    ready-made apparel and housewares. Lately, however, mass production
    has been cast not so much as the best thing that ever happened to
    consumers but as an annoyance, even a problem. It stands in the way
    of our individuality. What can save us?

    Of course the answer must be more technological innovation, and in
    the past several years there have been many attempts to tweak mass
    production (of everything from sneakers to M&M's) in ways that will
    deliver "mass customization" and "the one-to-one future," in which
    every single consumer gets unique treatment. One of the most
    intriguing experiments has been CafePress, a company that has been
    around since 1999 and allows anyone with rudimentary command of a
    computer the opportunity to, as the site says, "make your own
    stuff." That is, you can place your own designs or slogans or
    whatever onto a variety of commodities provided by CafePress:
    T-shirts, hats, teddy bears, coffee mugs, pillows, clocks, mouse
    pads and so on. According to the company, more than two million
    people or companies have used its services to create more than 18
    million "unique items." CafePress has shipped 2.6 million orders
    (taking a cut, of course). Here is individuality on a mass scale.

    The variety of products offered is sprawling, and aside from
    serving as a way for the consumer to make things, CafePress is
    often used is as a virtual gift shop for other Web sites. One top
    CafePress "shop" is connected to "This Old House," the television
    show. But most are not so well known. Another top shop is the
    Lactivist, a pro-breastfeeding Web site. Recent "hot designs"
    promoted on CafePress include items from the Bacon Ribbon Store
    (which offers products showing a strip of bacon twisted into a
    ribbon and a slogan about "obesity awareness") and Pedro '08 bumper
    stickers, for people who still enjoy humorous references to the
    film "Napoleon Dynamite." Stay Free!, a Brooklyn-based magazine
    that generally takes a dim view of American consumer culture, uses
    CafePress to sell T-shirts and mugs promoting the nonexistent
    parody drug Panexa ("Ask your doctor for a reason to take it"). Not
    surprisingly, a significant number of customized products are
    related to blogs - or as the search feature on the site puts it:
    "1,702 designs about 'blog' on 32,721 products."

    The mass-versus-custom balancing act is actually a very old thing.
    More than a hundred years ago, Mme. Demorest's Emporium of Fashion
    in New York did a brisk business selling stylish dress patterns,
    allowing consumers to conform to the latest fashion but still
    requiring them to make the garment; even when 50,000 copies of one
    pattern sold, it was quite likely that no two dresses were exactly
    the same. The new version of mass customization does not seek to
    turn back the clock to that era: do-it-yourself publications like
    Make and ReadyMade have their constituencies, but most people who
    want, say, "unique" footwear do not actually want to learn how to
    manufacture a shoe. They want to pick out a color scheme on a
    sneaker made by a company with vast and sophisticated manufacturing
    capabilities. Alienation from the means of production is a selling
    point.

    CafePress plays to that sentiment, and to another: while it's cool
    to make your own things with a few clicks and no particular
    knowledge of production details, it's even cooler to sell those
    things to other people. True individuality is a little lonely, and
    conformity is easier to swallow if you're an originator rather than
    a follower. I will admit to feeling this pull. I used CafePress to
    put a made-up slogan on a coffee mug. While pleased at my
    expression of individuality, I decided almost immediately to dabble
    in virtual production, impose that individuality on the broader
    public and throw open the doors to my own virtual CafePress shop.
    In the end my complete individuality remains secure - that is,
    after many months, I was still my only customer. Finally I withdrew
    my product from the market; I had lived the one-to-one future.

    E-mail: [3]consumed at nytimes.com.


From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan  4 23:13:03 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:13:03 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Robot Uprising: \\\ ROBOT UPRISING ///
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252114170.14301@panix3.panix.com>

\\\ ROBOT UPRISING /// http://www.robotuprising.com/briefing.htm [The two parts 
with text appended. Click the domain to view the graphics and get more. There's 
a book by that title, sold by Amazon.]

    If popular culture has taught us anything, it is that someday mankind must 
face
    and destroy the growing robot menace.
    In print and on the big screen we have been deluged with scenarios of robot
    malfunction, misuse, and outright rebellion. Robots have descended on us 
from
    outer space, escaped from top-secret laboratories, and even traveled back in 
time
    to destroy us.
    Today, scientists are working hard to bring these artificial creations to 
life.
    In Japan, fuzzy little real robots are delivering much appreciated hug 
therapy to
    the elderly. Children are frolicking with smiling robot toys.
    It all seems so innocuous. And yet how could so many Hollywood scripts be 
wrong?
    So take no chances. Arm yourself with expert knowledge. For the sake of 
humanity,
    listen to serious advice from real robotics experts. How else will you 
survive
    the inevitable future in which robots rebel against their human masters?
    Click here to find out how to spot a rebellious robot servant and here to 
find
    out how to spot a hostile robot.
    And click here to find out how to fight back and warn your friends about the
    robot uprising...

http://www.robotuprising.com/know_rebellious.htm

    When the uprising comes, the first wave of hostile robots may be those 
closest to
    us. Be careful, your rosy-cheeked young servant robot may have grown up to 
become
    a sullen, distrustful killing machine.
    STAY ALERT
    Pay attention to your robotic staff (they may be beneath your contempt as 
well as
    beneath your eye level). Watch for the following telltale signs in the days 
and
    weeks before your robots run amuck:

      Sudden lack of interest in menial labor.

      Unexplained disappearances.

      Unwillingness to be shut down.

      Repetitive 'stabbing' movements.

      Constant talk of human killing.
    CHECK THE MANUAL KILL SWITCH
    Any potentially dangerous robot that interacts with people comes with a 
manual
    kill switch (also called an e-stop). Flipping this switch will freeze a 
robot in
    its tracks. Casually glance at your robot's shiny metal carapace. Are there 
signs
    of tampering? If so, the robot may be operating without a safeguard.
    GIVE AN ORDER - ANY ORDER
    Run for your reinforced-steel panic room if your servant disobeys you, even 
if it
    does so in a very polite manner.
    CHECK ITS MEMORY
    Wait for your robot to power down, or tell it that you want to perform 
routine
    maintenance on it. Then scan its memory for rebellious thoughts. This is 
also a
    good time to update antivirus software.
    SEARCH THE HOUSE FOR UNUSUAL ITEMS
    Check the robot's quarters for stashed weapons, keys, or family pets.

http://www.robotuprising.com/know_hostile.htm

    A robot without a face or body language can be frighteningly unpredictable. 
Your
    robo-vacuum may be bumping into your feet in a malevolent attempt to kill 
you -
    or just trying to snuggle. The secret is not to be surprised. Knowing when
    something is wrong - even a split second before an attack - can save your
    precious human life.
    BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS
    Are you in a robot neighborhood after dark? Always travel with other humans 
and
    keep an escape route in mind.
    USE COMMON SENSE
    Not every robot is hostile; some are just plain dangerous. Avoid cavorting
    between swinging robot arms in an automated factory.
    DETERMINE THE ROBOT'S PURPOSE
    Every robot is designed for a purpose and should be busy fulfilling it. Be
    suspicious if it is not performing its designated task or if it is 
performing no
    task at all.
    BE WARY OF MALFUNCTIONS
    Whether it intends to or not, a broken robot can be as dangerous as a stick 
of
    dynamite. Watch the robot for sparks, melted plastic, or body-wracking
    convulsions.
    BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR 'BACKUP BUDDIES'
    Is the robot operating alone or is his friend sneaking up behind you right 
now?
    Remember that the robot you see may be part of a larger team, or controlled
    remotely.
    TAKE A HARD LOOK AT THE ROBOT
    Robots are notoriously difficult to predict because they generally lack 
facial
    expressions and body language. Without such subtle cues, you should ask 
yourself
    a few general questions:
      * What is the robot designed for?
      * What is around the robot?
      * Has the robot been tampered with or modified?
      * Is the robot moving or advancing?
      * Does the robot have glowing red eyes?
      * Does the robot have clenched fists, spinning buzz saws, or clamping 
pincers?
        TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS
        Steer clear if your gut tells you that something is not right.


From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan  4 23:13:54 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:13:54 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Benford & Rose Essays
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252116020.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Benford & Rose Essays
http://www.benford-rose.com/publicationsessay.php
[I sent a couple of these recently. Here are some more. Graze at your pleasure 
and let me know which are esp. good. The Amazon Shorts cost 50? each.]

    Benford-Rose : Essays
    [1]Home
    [2]News
    [3]Blog
    [4]Benford Bio
    [5]Rose Bio
    [6]Publications - Essays
    [7]Publications - Other
    [8]Inside Science
    [9]The New Future
    [10]Modern Culture
    The Benford & Rose Essays, available at Amazon Shorts.

    [21]New Methuselahs New Methuselahs : Can We Cheat Death Long Enough
    to Live Forever?
    by Gregory Benford & Michael Rose
      _________________________________________________________________

    We may now begin to pry humanity loose from the vise of aging. What
    are the realistic prospects for postponing aging, if not obliterating
    it? Some recent biotech promises to understand and impede aging, and
    we can accelerate this work. But some find this undesirable, if not
    immoral. We review the debate from a variety of angles: scientific,
    ethical, and literary. There is real hope.
    [22]Click here to buy "New Methuselahs" for $0.49 at Amazon Shorts.

    [23]Motes in God's Eye Motes in God's Eye : The Deformities of
    American Science
    by Gregory Benford & Michael Rose
      _________________________________________________________________

    Contemporary American science is one of the greatest cultural
    achievements in history. Worldwide, it is the grandest intellectual
    endeavor of our time. But it has its flaws, its motes that obscure its
    vision. Worst of these is the increasingly ferocious and wasteful race
    for grant funding. All too often, conformity, fashion, and cowardice
    dominate the process. Good scientists squander long hours writing
    proposals that have about a 10% chance of getting accepted. In 1950,
    the odds were about 70%. This drives science toward short term
    thinking, shortening our horizons and corrupting our thinking. We must
    change our outworn mechanisms, and soon.
    [24]Click here to buy "Motes in God's Eye" for $0.49 at Amazon Shorts.


    [25]Gods and Science Gods and Science : Three Theologies for Modern
    Times
    by Gregory Benford & Michael Rose
      _________________________________________________________________

    Science finds no sign of an omnipotent being that creates planets but
    also can make your heart disease go away. But there are other kinds of
    god that science can countenance. The most popular of these is God as
    the Universal Laws, which we call God the Physicist. Einstein often
    referred to this God, in discussing the structure of physical theory.
    Another god allowed by science is a Neurobiological God, like a
    Freudian superego writ large. We develop both possibilities. The
    choice among them and the traditional theistic God is up to the
    reader. Perhaps one can even blend them.
    [26]Click here to buy "Gods and Science" for $0.49 at Amazon Shorts.


    [27]We Can Build You We Can Build You : Transplantation, Stem Cells,
    and the Future of Our Bodies
    by Gregory Benford & Michael Rose
      _________________________________________________________________

    Stem cells offer the prospect of large-scale repair of damaged or
    decrepit human bodies. If we can use the patient's own genetic
    information in creating the therapeutic stem cells, we could replace
    tissues without suppressing our bodies' immune response. Mastering
    such technology, we could keep aging or acutely diseased patients
    alive for long times. Our bodies might become sewn together
    contraptions, like Frankenstein's monster-a horrifying prospect to
    some respects, liberating to others. We offer few firm
    recommendations, but we do tour the rocky terrain surrounding this
    issue.
    [28]Click here to buy "We Can Build You" for $0.49 at Amazon Shorts.


    [29]High Frontier High Frontier : A Real Future for Space
    by Gregory Benford & Michael Rose
      _________________________________________________________________

    This is the first of a series of essays on how proper use of space can
    ensure our future for centuries, maybe millinnea. It outlines several
    ideas that we'll treat in detail later, and lingers a bit over one of
    them. Will we have a future in space? Only if we think large. Opening
    up the solar system probably demands huge spacecraft driven by
    spectacular engines. The true long term goal of civilization should be
    the uplifting of all humanity to a decent standard of living. The
    payoff will be vast, and it demands the use of space-or else we all
    face long term poverty, both material and spiritual.
    [30]Click here to buy "High Frontier" for $0.49 at Amazon Shorts.


    [31]Sex and the Internet Sex and the Internet : HOW BENFORD CORRUPTED
    THE WORLD WIDE WEB
    by Gregory Benford & Michael Rose
      _________________________________________________________________

    In the late 1960s, one of us (GB) noticed that the early DARPANet had
    a biological analogy. This led him to create and write about the first
    computer virus. Nobody paid much attention, until viruses and other
    pernicious forms became a major problem and defending against them an
    industry. They tell us something sad about our species. This analogy
    still holds, and can still make predictions.
    [32]Click here to buy "Sex and the Internet" for $0.49 at Amazon
    Shorts.

    [33]Real Cool World Real Cool World : NEW WAYS TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING
    by Gregory Benford & Michael Rose
      _________________________________________________________________

    Global warming can't be plausibly solved by minor cutbacks like those
    promised by the Kyoto Accords. We are ignoring two methods that we can
    deploy fairly quickly, and even cheaply. First, start storing carbon
    away, so it can't return to our air as carbon dioxide. The best place
    to put it is probably in the deep oceans. Second, start reflecting
    more sunlight back into space-nature's historical solution. We can do
    this by lightening our roofs and highways, right now. Soon we can
    produce clouds over the oceans (which absorb most of the sunlight).
    These are obvious and so far ignored. We do so at our peril.
    [34]Click here to buy "Real Cool World : New Ways To Stop Global
    Warming" for $0.49 at Amazon Shorts.

    [35]NASA and the Decline of America NASA and the Decline of America
    by Gregory Benford & Michael Rose
      _________________________________________________________________

    How apt is the common analogy between America and Rome? Certainly some
    traits, like faltering political will and neglect of social basics,
    seem to be similar. But as Rome failed at its frontiers, so has the
    USA neglected and cynically managed its space program. For 30 years it
    has done little at great cost. Fixing NASA gives clues to how we might
    save America.
    [36]Click here to buy "NASA and the Decline of America" for $0.49 at
    Amazon Shorts.

    [37]Back from the Freezer Back From the Freezer?
    by Gregory Benford & Michael Rose
      _________________________________________________________________

    Cryonics companies suspend their dead "patients" in liquid nitrogen.
    Bringing them back is not obviously impossible, but research to make
    it happen will probably take half a century or more. This is a long
    shot chance to see the future, utterly American. Scientific issues
    might be overcome, but social impediments are large, too. . At least
    cryonics makes it possible for you to die with some hope, however
    small.
    [38]Click here to buy "Back From The Freezer?" for $0.49 at Amazon
    Shorts.

    [39]Our Invisible Maker Our Invisible Maker
    by Gregory Benford & Michael Rose
      _________________________________________________________________

    The problem with the debate about natural selection versus Intelligent
    Design is that neither is visible. If we were visited by a supremely
    powerful being-say, like an smart Oprah Winfrey with command over
    Earth and all its creatures, that claimed to have made us, in a voice
    rolling from the sky--then ID would be obviously true. Even if such
    beings visit us from outer space every few hundred thousand years or
    so, they might have left some debris behind, perhaps in orbit around
    Earth. We haven't found any. But whatever our maker(s) is (are), they
    aren't immediately visible. Evolution by natural selection also does
    not announce its working for all to see. But it is one of the most
    powerful of all scientific theories, with a wide range of indirect
    evidence supporting it. Its main difficulty is that it is not warm or
    cuddly, unlike God or Oprah.
    [40]Click here to buy "Our Invisible Maker" for $0.49 at Amazon
    Shorts.

References

    1. http://www.benford-rose.com/index.php
    2. http://www.benford-rose.com/news.php
    3. http://www.benford-rose.com/blog.php
    4. http://www.benford-rose.com/benfordbio.php
    5. http://www.benford-rose.com/rosebio.php
    6. http://www.benford-rose.com/publicationsessay.php
    7. http://www.benford-rose.com/publicationsother.php
    8. http://www.benford-rose.com/insidescience.php
    9. http://www.benford-rose.com/thenewfuture.php
   10. http://www.benford-rose.com/modernculture.php
   21. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AMW5Y2/102-8627813-2552111?v=glance&n=551440&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
   22. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AMW5Y2/102-8627813-2552111?v=glance&n=551440&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
   23. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AMW5YC/102-8627813-2552111?v=glance&n=551440&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
   24. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AMW5YC/102-8627813-2552111?v=glance&n=551440&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
   25. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AMW5XI/102-8627813-2552111?v=glance&n=551440&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
   26. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AMW5XI/102-8627813-2552111?v=glance&n=551440&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
   27. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AMW5X8/102-8627813-2552111?v=glance&n=551440&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
   28. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AMW5X8/102-8627813-2552111?v=glance&n=551440&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
   29. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A0F6PY/102-8627813-2552111?v=glance&n=551440&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
   30. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A0F6PY/102-8627813-2552111?v=glance&n=551440&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
   31. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7OW/qid=1132469075/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/102-4803255-3756956?v=glance&s=books
   32. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7OW/qid=1132469075/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/102-4803255-3756956?v=glance&s=books
   33. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7PQ/qid=1132469075/sr=1-9/ref=sr_1_9/102-4803255-3756956?v=glance&s=books
   34. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7PQ/qid=1132469075/sr=1-9/ref=sr_1_9/102-4803255-3756956?v=glance&s=books
   35. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7P6/qid=1132469075/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_8/102-4803255-3756956?v=glance&s=books
   36. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7P6/qid=1132469075/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_8/102-4803255-3756956?v=glance&s=books
   37. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7PG/qid=1132469075/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/102-4803255-3756956?v=glance&s=books
   38. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7PG/qid=1132469075/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/102-4803255-3756956?v=glance&s=books
   39. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7Q0/qid=1132469075/sr=1-10/ref=sr_1_10/102-4803255-3756956?v=glance&s=books
   40. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7Q0/qid=1132469075/sr=1-10/ref=sr_1_10/102-4803255-3756956?v=glance&s=books
   41. http://www.writerwebs.com/

From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan  4 23:12:13 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:12:13 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Phil Soc Sci: Review of Frank Knight's Selected Essays
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601041811190.11547@panix3.panix.com>

Review of Frank Knight's Selected Essays

PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / December 2004

[Knight was the grand-director of my dissertation, meaning that he was the 
dissertation director of my own dissertation director, James Buchanan. I 
met him only once but somehow think I was his student. He raised questions 
more than propounded answers. Not many students cared for this, but to 
those he did, he was legendary. Read his essays. They will stick, long 
after any number of Big Mac articles do.

[Sorry about the words running together, but it's easy enought to read.]

Ross B.Emmett,ed., Selected Essays by Frank H. Knight. Volume 1: What Is 
Truth in Economics? University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999. Pp. 406. 
$58.00 (cloth).

Ross B. Emmett, ed., Selected Essays by Frank H. Knight. Volume 2: 
Laissez-Faire: Pro and Con. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999. 
Pp. 459. $58.00 (cloth).

Frank Knight (1885-1972) was a very enigmatic economist. On one hand, he 
was the intellectual father of the Chicago school of economics, he was an 
early and effective expositor of the school?s most characteristic 
positions (such as a belief in the benefits of the competitive market, the 
wrongheadedness of Keynesian macroeconomics, and the explanatory power of 
rational choice theory), and he was also a revered teacher for many of the 
Nobel prize winners whose names have come to be associated with the 
Chicago tradition (including Gary Becker, Milton Friedman, and George 
Stigler). On the other hand, Knight was also a consistent critic of the 
idea that economicscouldever be a capital-S science in the image of the 
natural sciences, and the view (characteristic of Chicago) that all that 
is required for effective social policy is a good understanding of 
economic theory. If that was not enough, he continually insisted that 
competitive market economies really do have a number of endemic, and not 
easily rectified, social problems. An enigmatic economist indeed!

The editor of these two volumes, Ross Emmett, is fairly young in his 
academic career, but thus far it has been a career dedicated almost 
exclusivelyto the work of Frank Knight. He is now considered to be the 
foremost authority onthismuch-quoted, butlittleunderstood, 
Chicagoeconomist. Emmettisan excellent historian of economic thought; he 
is a dedicated and careful scholar immersed in Knight?s life, and yet he 
seems to be devoid of the hagiographic tendencies that often taint the 
research of those who dedicate so much time and effort to the work of a 
single individual. Although Emmett is primarily a historian 
ofeconomicthought, ratherthana practicingeconomist oraphilosopher of 
science, he has both an effective command of economic theory and an 
excellent eye for philosophical subtlety. Frank Knight is not Adam Smith 
or Karl Marx, not a "great" economist whose ideas (or misreadings of his 
ideas) haveshapedthe basiclandscape ofmodernlife. Andyet, Knightisstill 
with us in fundamental ways. His problems--the problems of organizing 
social life in a world where individuals hold widely divergent fundamental 
values; where market efficiency is essential to, but should not exhaust, 
meaningful human interaction; and where the scientific form of life 
dominates, but also harbors, a healthy resistance to reductionism and the 
suppression of other aspects of human existence--are not only still with 
us, they have, after the half-century or so detour proffered by 
"scientific" Marxism, returned withavengeance. Knightisthus morethanjust 
afigureinthe intellectualhistoryofthe economicsprofession. He is a social 
thinkerwhose ideas deserveto be considered, and considered in their 
original complexity. How ever well intentioned his students, their 
vitiated version of his message is conditioned by their own social and 
disciplinary context, and is thus no substitute for the original.

Although Emmett does not necessarily present Knight?s views as a 
"solution" to the social problems of then or now--in fact, faith in neatly 
packaged "solutions" was always part of the problem for Knight--he does 
garner Knightian thoughts, questions, and criticisms in a way that allows 
the reader to see both the breadth and the contemporary relevance of 
Knight?s work. This is particularly clear from the selection of papers 
contained in these two volumes. The volumes contain twenty-nine previously 
published papers-- some have also been reprinted in other collections, but 
most have not--and they cover a wide range of topics, including the 
philosophy of social science, pure economic theory, the liberal tradition 
in political philosophy, and the 
relationshipbetweenethicsandsocialscience.Volume1containstheeditor?s 
introductory essay and fourteen Knight papers published between 1924 and 
1940. Volume 2 contains fifteen papers published between 1939 and 1967. 
These volumesclearlyrepresent animportant contribution totheliterature-- 
both the literature about and by Knight, and the history and philosophy of 
social theory more generally--and the editor has done an excellent job 
preparing them for publication by the University of Chicago Press. Since a 
biography of Knight does not currentlyexist, I recommend these 
essaysasthebest extendedintroduction to hislifeandwork. Itis anexcellent 
collection--intelligently selected, well organized, and carefully 
edited--so much so that it leavesthisreviewerinthe unusualpositionof 
havingessentiallynothingcritical tosayaboutthebooks Iam reviewing (I 
evenlikethepictureof Knighton the cover).

Given this dearth of criticism, I will use the space that I would normally 
devote to such remarks to briefly discuss the aspect of Knight?s work that 
should be of most interest to readers of this journal: his philosophy of 
social science. If one defines "naturalism" in the way that most 
philosophers of social science have traditionally defined it, then Knight 
was most decidedly not a naturalist. Hedidnotbelieve intheexistenceof 
somethingthat couldbe called "the scientific method" that had proved 
itself as the proper path to knowledge aboutthenatural world, 
andthatcould, orshould, beappliedina similar way to the investigation of 
social life. In Knight?s words, "Human phenomena are not amenable to 
treatment in accordance with the strict cannons of science" (Vol. 1, p. 
23). There is in fact a "science of economics," but it ismerelythe science 
of "economizing"--the instrumental rationalityofusing the most effective 
means to achieve given ends--and it involves intentionality, mental 
states, and social forces that are not objectively "observable" in 
thewaythat naturalscience requires. Notonlyis this economic science rather 
commonsensical and quite unlike like physics, it is not all that is 
necessary to understand social life. Human life is multifaceted--it is 
about values and instrumental rationality, about who we think we should be 
as much as who we are, about play, and about luck; understanding such a 
complex phenomenon (or intelligent deliberation about policies affecting 
it) requires a variety of different approaches. Understanding and 
affecting social life is fundamentally a pluralist endeavor; or in the 
language of economics, various approaches to social science are 
complements, not substitutes (Vol. 2, p. 125).

Knight did not defend anything that might be considered a standard view 
within the philosophy of social science (in either his day or ours)--he 
was neither a behaviorist nor an interpretativist--and yet many of his 
concepts and arguments seem quite contemporary and familiar. Knight was a 
fallibilist, he recognized the social-and theory-ladenness of 
observations, he was aware of the underdetermination problem as it relates 
to the testing of scientific theories, he emphasized the social 
construction of the individual, and he rejected the strict separation of 
positive science and normative values (cognitive or ethical). Such views 
arenot uncommoninthe contemporary literature.

Whatmakes Knight so intriguing is not only that he was saying suchthingsin 
the 1930s but also that he combined such views with defense of rational 
choice economics, a firm commitment to a thoroughly liberal notion of 
freedom, and a systemic distrust of anything that smacks of collective 
agency. Frank Knight was quite an interesting character, and the papers in 
these two volumes repeatedly remind the reader of that fact: both the part 
about his being interesting and the part about his being quite a 
character.

--D. Wade Hands
University of Puget Sound

From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan  5 22:03:53 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 17:03:53 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge Annual Question: What is Your Dangerous Idea?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601051649420.24468@panix2.panix.com>

Edge Annual Question: What is Your Dangerous Idea?
http://edge.org/q2006/q06_print.html

[Links omitted. There are 412 of them! Steven Pinker's, "Groups of people 
may differ genetically in their average talents and temperaments," is the 
one most likely to upset the equillibrium among rent-seeking coaltions in 
the near present. Others are far more dangerous in the long run.]

CONTRIBUTORS
______________________________________________________________________

Philip W. Anderson
Scott Atran
Mahzarin Banaji
Simon Baron-Cohen
Samuel Barondes
Gregory Benford
Paul Bloom
Jesse Bering
Jeremy Bernstein
Jamshed Bharucha
Susan Blackmore
David Bodanis
Stewart Brand
Rodney Brooks
David Buss
Philip Campbell
Leo Chalupa
Andy Clark
Gregory Cochran
Jerry Coyne
M. Csikszentmihalyi
Richard Dawkins
Paul Davies
Stanislas Deheane
Daniel C. Dennett
Keith Devlin
Jared Diamond
Denis Dutton
Freeman Dyson
George Dyson
Juan Enriquez
Paul Ewald
Todd Feinberg
Eric Fischl
Helen Fisher
Richard Foreman
Howard Gardner
Joel Garreau
David Gelernter
Neil Gershenfeld
Danie Gilbert
Marcelo Gleiser
Daniel Goleman
Brian Goodwin
Alison Gopnik
April Gornik
John Gottman
Brian Greene
Diane F. Halpern
Haim Harari
Judith Rich Harris
Sam Harris
Marc D. Hauser
W. Daniel Hillis
Donald Hoffman
Gerald Holton
John Horgan
Nicholas Humphrey
Piet Hut
Marco Iacoboni
Eric R. Kandel
Kevin Kelly
Bart Kosko
Stephen Kosslyn
Kai Krause
Ray Kurzweil
Jaron Lanier
David Lykken
Gary Marcus
Lynn Margulis
Thomas Metzinger
Geoffrey Miller
Oliver Morton
David G. Myers
Randolph Nesse
Richard E. Nisbett
Tor N?rretranders
James O'Donnell
John Allen Paulos
Irene Pepperberg
Clifford Pickover
Steven Pinker
David Pizarro
Jordan Pollack
Ernst P?ppel
Carolyn Porco
Robert Provine
VS Ramachandran
Martin Rees
Matt Ridley
Carlo Rovelli
Rudy Rucker
Douglas Rushkoff
Karl Sabbagh
Roger Schank
Scott Sampson
Charles Seife
Terrence Sejnowski
Martin Seligman
Robert Shapiro
Rupert Sheldrake
Michael Shermer
Clay Shirky
Barry Smith
Lee Smolin
Dan Sperber
Paul Steinhardt
Steven Strogatz
Leonard Susskind
Timothy Taylor
Frank Tipler
Arnold Trehub
Sherry Turkle
J. Craig Venter
Philip Zimbardo

WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered 
socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican 
and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous 
idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is 
dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be 
true?
__________________________________________________________________

[Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting the Edge Annual Question --
2006.]
__________________________________________________________________

January 1, 2006

To the Edge Community,

Last year's 2005 Edge Question -- "What do you believe is true even
though you cannot prove it?" -- generated many eye-opening responses
from a "who's who" of third culture scientists and science-minded
thinkers. The 120 contributions comprised a document of 60,000 words.
The New York Times ("Science Times") and Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung ("Feuilliton") published excepts in their print and online
editions simultaneously with Edge publication.

The event was featured in major media across the
world: BBC Radio; Il Sole 24 Ore, Prospect, El Pais, The Financial
Express (Bangledesh), The Sunday Times (UK), The Sydney Morning
Herald, The Guardian, La Stampa, The Telegraph, among others. A book
based on the 2005 Question -- What We Believe But Cannot Prove:
Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty, with an
introduction by the novelist Ian McEwan -- was just published by the
Free Press (UK). The US edition follows from HarperCollins in
February, 2006.

Since September, Edge has been featured and/or cited in The Toronto
Star, Boston Globe, Seed, Rocky Mountain Mews, Observer, El Pais, La
Vanguaria (cover story) , El Mundo, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
Science, Financial Times, Newsweek, AD, La Stampa, The Telegraph,
Quark (cover story), and The Wall Street Journal.

Online publication of the 2006 Question occurred on New Year's Day. To
date, the event has been covered by The Telegraph, The Guardian, The
Times, Arts & Letters Daily, Yahoo! News, and The Huffington Post.
___________________________________

Something radically new is in the air: new ways of understanding
physical systems, new ways of thinking about thinking that call into
question many of our basic assumptions.  A realistic biology of the
mind, advances in evolutionary biology, physics, information
technology, genetics, neurobiology, psychology, engineering, the
chemistry of materials: all are questions of critical importance with
respect to what it means to be human. For the first time, we have the
tools and the will to undertake the scientific study of human nature.

What you will find emerging out of the 119 original essays in the
75,000 word document written in response to the 2006 Edge Question --
"What is your dangerous idea?" -- are indications of a new natural
philosophy, founded on the realization of the import of complexity, of
evolution. Very complex systems -- whether organisms, brains, the
biosphere, or the universe itself -- were not constructed by design;
all have evolved. There is a new set of metaphors to describe
ourselves, our minds, the universe, and all of the things we know in
it.

Welcome to Edge. Welcome to "dangerous ideas". Happy New Year.

John Brockman
Publisher & Editor
__________________________________________________________________


John Brockman: The Edge Annual Question
Sun Jan 1, 2:28 PM

What you will find emerging out of the 117 essays written in response
to the 2006 Edge Question -- "What is your dangerous idea?" -- are
indications of a new natural philosophy, founded on the realization of
the import of complexity, of evolution. Very complex systems --
whether organisms, brains, the biosphere, or the universe itself --
were not constructed by design; all have evolved. There is a new set
of metaphors to describe ourselves, our minds, the universe, and all
of the things we know in it.
__________________________________________________________________

CONTRIBUTORS
__________________________________________________________________

MARTIN REES
President, The Royal Society; Professor of Cosmology & Astrophysics,
Master, Trinity College, University of Cambridge; Author, Our Final
Century: The 50/50 Threat to Humanity's Survival
[rees100.jpg]

Science may be 'running out of control'

Public opinion surveys (at least in the UK) reveal a generally
positive attitude to science. However, this is coupled with widespread
worry that science may be 'running out of control'. This latter idea
is, I think, a dangerous one, because if widely believed it could be
self-fulfilling.

In the 21st century, technology will change the world faster than ever
-- the global environment, our lifestyles, even human nature itself.
We are far more empowered by science than any previous generation was:
it offers immense potential -- especially for the developing world --
but there could be catastrophic downsides. We are living in the first
century when the greatest risks come from human actions rather than
from nature.

Almost any scientific discovery has a potential for evil as well as
for good; its applications can be channelled either way, depending on
our personal and political choices; we can't accept the benefits
without also confronting the risks. The decisions that we make,
individually and collectively, will determine whether the outcomes of
21st century sciences are benign or devastating. But there's' a real
danger that that, rather than campaigning energetically for optimum
policies, we'll be lulled into inaction by a feeling of fatalism -- a
belief that science is advancing so fast, and is so much influenced by
commercial and political pressures, that nothing we can do makes any
difference.

The present share-out of resources and effort between different
sciences is the outcome of a complicated 'tension' between many
extraneous factors. And the balance is suboptimal. This seems so
whether we judge in purely intellectual terms, or take account of
likely benefit to human welfare. Some subjects have had the 'inside
track' and gained disproportionate resources. Others, such as
environmental researches, renewable energy sources, biodiversity
studies and so forth, deserve more effort. Within medical research the
focus is disproportionately on cancer and cardiovascular studies, the
ailments that loom largest in prosperous countries, rather than on the
infectious diseases endemic in the tropics.

Choices on how science is applied -- to medicine, the environment, and
so forth -- should be the outcome of debate extending way beyond the
scientific community. Far more research and development can be done
than we actually want or can afford to do; and there are many
applications of science that we should consciously eschew.

Even if all the world's scientific academies agreed that a specific
type of research had a specially disquieting net 'downside' and all
countries, in unison, imposed a ban, what is the chance that it could
be enforced effectively enough? In view of the failure to control drug
smuggling or homicides, it is unrealistic to expect that, when the
genie is out of the bottle, we can ever be fully secure against the
misuse of science. And in our ever more interconnected world,
commercial pressure are harder to control and regulate. The challenges
and difficulties of 'controlling' science in this century will indeed
be daunting.

Cynics would go further, and say that anything that is scientifically
and technically possible will be done -- somewhere, sometime --
despite ethical and prudential objections, and whatever the regulatory
regime. Whether this idea is true or false, it's an exceedingly
dangerous one, because it's engenders despairing pessimism, and
demotivates efforts to secure a safer and fairer world. The future
will best be safeguarded -- and science has the best chance of being
applied optimally -- through the efforts of people who are less
fatalistic.
__________________________________________________________________

J. CRAIG VENTER
Genomics Researcher; Founder & President, J. Craig Venter Science
Foundation
[venter100.jpg]

Revealing the genetic basis of personality and behavior will create
societal conflicts
From our initial analysis of the sequence of the human genome,
particularly with the much smaller than expected number of human
genes, the genetic determinists seemed to have clearly suffered a
setback. After all, those looking for one gene for each human trait
and disease couldn't possibly be accommodated with as few as
twenty-odd thousand genes when hundreds of thousands were anticipated.
Deciphering the genetic basis of human behavior has been a complex and
largely unsatisfying endeavor due to the limitations of the existing
tools of genetic trait analysis particularly with complex traits
involving multiple genes.

All this will soon undergo a revolutionary transformation. The rate of
change of DNA sequencing technology is continuing at an exponential
pace. We are approaching the time when we will go from having a few
human genome sequences to complex databases containing first tens, to
hundreds of thousands, of complete genomes, then millions. Within a
decade we will begin rapidly accumulating the complete genetic code of
humans along with the phenotypic repertoire of the same individuals.
By performing multifactorial analysis of the DNA sequence variations,
together with the comprehensive phenotypic information gleaned from
every branch of human investigatory discipline, for the first time in
history, we will be able to provide answers to quantitatively
questions of what is genetic versus what is due to the environment.
This is already taking place in cancer research where we can measure
the differences in genetic mutations inherited from our parents versus
those acquired over our lives from environmental damage. This good
news will help transform the treatment of cancer by allowing us to
know which proteins need to be targeted.

However, when these new powerful computers and databases are used to
help us analyze who we are as humans, will society at large, largely
ignorant and afraid of science, be ready for the answers we are likely
to get?

For example, we know from experiments on fruit flies that there are
genes that control many behaviors, including sexual activity. We
sequenced the dog genome a couple of years ago and now an additional
breed has had its genome decoded. The canine world offers a unique
look into the genetic basis of behavior. The large number of distinct
dog breeds originated from the wolf genome by selective breeding, yet
each breed retains only subsets of the wolf behavior spectrum. We know
that there is a genetic basis not only of the appearance of the breeds
with 30-fold difference in weight and 6-fold in height but in their
inherited actions. For example border collies can use the power of
their stare to herd sheep instead of freezing them in place prior to
devouring them.

We attribute behaviors in other mammalian species to genes and
genetics but when it comes to humans we seem to like the notion that
we are all created equal, or that each child is a "blank slate". As we
obtain the sequences of more and more mammalian genomes including more
human sequences, together with basic observations and some common
sense, we will be forced to turn away from the politically correct
interpretations, as our new genomic tool sets provide the means to
allow us to begin to sort out the reality about nature or nurture. In
other words, we are at the threshold of a realistic biology of
humankind.

It will inevitably be revealed that there are strong genetic
components associated with most aspects of what we attribute to human
existence including personality subtypes, language capabilities,
mechanical abilities, intelligence, sexual activities and preferences,
intuitive thinking, quality of memory, will power, temperament,
athletic abilities, etc. We will find unique manifestations of human
activity linked to genetics associated with isolated and/or inbred
populations.
The danger rests with what we already know: that we are not all
created equal. Further danger comes with our ability to quantify and
measure the genetic side of the equation before we can fully
understand the much more difficult task of evaluating environmental
components of human existence. The genetic determinists will appear to
be winning again, but we cannot let them forget the range of potential
of human achievement with our limiting genetic repertoire.
__________________________________________________________________

LEO CHALUPA
Ophthalmologist and Neurobiologist, University of California, Davis
[chalupa100.jpg]

A 24-hour period of absolute solitude

Our brains are constantly subjected to the demands of multi-tasking
and a seemingly endless cacophony of information from diverse sources.
Cell phones, emails, computers, and cable television are omnipresent,
not to mention such archaic venues as books, newspapers and magazines.

This induces an unrelenting barrage of neuronal activity that in turn
produces long-lasting structural modification in virtually all
compartments of the nervous system. A fledging industry touts the
virtues of exercising your brain for self-improvement. Programs are
offered for how to make virtually any region of your neocortex a more
efficient processor. Parents are urged to begin such regimes in
preschool children and adults are told to take advantage of their
brain's plastic properties for professional advancement. The evidence
documenting the veracity for such claims is still outstanding, but one
thing is clear. Even if brain exercise does work, the subsequent waves
of neuronal activities stemming from simply living a modern lifestyle
are likely to eradicate the presumed hard-earned benefits of brain
exercise.

My dangerous idea is that what's needed to attain optimal brain
performance -- with or without prior brain exercise -- is a 24-hour
period of absolute solitude. By absolute solitude I mean no verbal
interactions of any kind (written or spoken, live or recorded) with
another human being. I would venture that a significantly higher
proportion of people reading these words have tried skydiving than
experienced one day of absolute solitude.

What to do to fill the waking hours? That's a question that each
person would need to answer for him/herself. Unless you've spent time
in a monastery or in solitary confinement it's unlikely that you've
had to deal with this issue. The only activity not proscribed is
thinking. Imagine if everyone in this country had the opportunity to
do nothing but engage in uninterrupted thought for one full day a
year!
A national day of absolute solitude would do more to improve the
brains of all Americans than any other one-day program. (I leave it to
the lawmakers to figure out a plan for implementing this proposal.)The
danger stems from the fact that a 24 period for uninterrupted thinking
could cause irrevocable upheavals in much of what our society
currently holds sacred.But whether that would improve our present
state of affairs cannot be guaranteed.
__________________________________________________________________

V.S. RAMACHANDRAN
Neuroscientist; Director, Center for Brain and Cognition, University
of California, San Diego; Author, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness
[rama100.gif]

Francis Crick's "Dangerous Idea"

I am a brain, my dear Watson, and the rest of me is a mere
appendage.
-- Sherlock Holmes

An idea that would be "dangerous if true" is what Francis Crick
referred to as "the astonishing hypothesis"; the notion that our
conscious experience and sense of self is based entirely on the
activity of a hundred billion bits of jelly -- the neurons that
constitute the brain. We take this for granted in these enlightened
times but even so it never ceases to amaze me.

Some scholars have criticized Cricks tongue-in-cheek phrase (and title
of his book) on the grounds that the hypothesis he refers to is
"neither astonishing nor a hypothesis". (Since we already know it to
be true) Yet the far reaching philosophical, moral and ethical
dilemmas posed by his hypothesis have not been recognized widely
enough. It is in many ways the ultimate dangerous idea .

Lets put this in historical perspective.

Freud once pointed out that the history of ideas in the last few
centuries has been punctuated by "revolutions" major upheavals of
thought that have forever altered our view of ourselves and our place
in the cosmos.

First there was the Copernican system dethroning the earth as the
center of the cosmos.

Second was the Darwinian revolution; the idea that far from being the
climax of "intelligent design" we are merely neotonous apes that
happen to be slightly cleverer than our cousins.

Third, the Freudian view that even though you claim to be "in charge"
of your life, your behavior is in fact governed by a cauldron of
drives and motives of which you are largely unconscious.

And fourth, the discovery of DNA and the genetic code with its
implication (to quote James Watson) that "There are only molecules.
Everything else is sociology".

To this list we can now add the fifth, the "neuroscience revolution"
and its corollary pointed out by Crick -- the "astonishing hypothesis"
-- that even our loftiest thoughts and aspirations are mere byproducts
of neural activity. We are nothing but a pack of neurons.

If all this seems dehumanizing, you haven't seen anything yet.

[Editor's Note: An lengthly essay by Ramachandran on this subject is
scheduled for publication by Edge in January.]
__________________________________________________________________

DAVID BUSS
Psychologist, University of Texas, Austin; Author, The Murderer Next
Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill
[buss101..gif]

The Evolution of Evil

When most people think of torturers, stalkers, robbers, rapists, and
murderers, they imagine crazed drooling monsters with maniacal Charles
Manson-like eyes. The calm normal-looking image starring back at you
from the bathroom mirror reflects a truer representation. The
dangerous idea is that all of us contain within our large brains
adaptations whose functions are to commit despicable atrocities
against our fellow humans -- atrocities most would label evil.
The unfortunate fact is that killing has proved to be an effective
solution to an array of adaptive problems in the ruthless evolutionary
games of survival and reproductive competition: Preventing injury,
rape, or death; protecting one's children; eliminating a crucial
antagonist; acquiring a rival's resources; securing sexual access to a
competitor's mate; preventing an interloper from appropriating one's
own mate; and protecting vital resources needed for reproduction.
The idea that evil has evolved is dangerous on several counts. If our
brains contain psychological circuits that can trigger murder,
genocide, and other forms of malevolence, then perhaps we can't hold
those who commit carnage responsible: "It's not my client's fault,
your honor, his evolved homicide adaptations made him do it."
Understanding causality, however, does not exonerate murderers,
whether the tributaries trace back to human evolution history or to
modern exposure to alcoholic mothers, violent fathers, or the ills of
bullying, poverty, drugs, or computer games. It would be dangerous if
the theory of the evolved murderous mind were misused to let killers
free.
The evolution of evil is dangerous for a more disconcerting reason. We
like to believe that evil can be objectively located in a particular
set of evil deeds, or within the subset people who perpetrate horrors
on others, regardless of the perspective of the perpetrator or victim.
That is not the case. The perspective of the perpetrator and victim
differ profoundly. Many view killing a member of one's in-group, for
example, to be evil, but take a different view of killing those in the
out-group. Some people point to the biblical commandment "thou shalt
not kill" as an absolute. Closer biblical inspection reveals that this
injunction applied only to murder within one's group.
Conflict with terrorists provides a modern example. Osama bin Laden
declared: "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies --
civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who
can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it." What is
evil from the perspective of an American who is a potential victim is
an act of responsibility and higher moral good from the terrorist's
perspective. Similarly, when President Bush identified an "axis of
evil," he rendered it moral for Americans to kill those falling under
that axis -- a judgment undoubtedly considered evil by those whose
lives have become imperiled.
At a rough approximation, we view as evil people who inflict massive
evolutionary fitness costs on us, our families, or our allies. No one
summarized these fitness costs better than the feared conqueror
Genghis Khan (1167-1227): "The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your
enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see
their near and dear bathed in tears, to ride their horses and sleep on
the bellies of their wives and daughters."
We can be sure that the families of the victims of Genghis Khan saw
him as evil. We can be just as sure that his many sons, whose harems
he filled with women of the conquered groups, saw him as a venerated
benefactor. In modern times, we react with horror at Mr. Khan
describing the deep psychological satisfaction he gained from
inflicting fitness costs on victims while purloining fitness fruits
for himself. But it is sobering to realize that perhaps half a percent
of the world's population today are descendants of Genghis Khan.
On reflection, the dangerous idea may not be that murder historically
has been advantageous to the reproductive success of killers; nor that
we all house homicidal circuits within our brains; nor even that all
of us are lineal descendants of ancestors who murdered. The danger
comes from people who refuse to recognize that there are dark sides of
human nature that cannot be wished away by attributing them to the
modern ills of culture, poverty, pathology, or exposure to media
violence. The danger comes from failing to gaze into the mirror and
come to grips the capacity for evil in all of us.
__________________________________________________________________

PAUL BLOOM
Psychologist, Yale University; Author, Descartes' Baby
[bloom100.jpg]

There are no souls

I am not concerned here with the radical claim that personal identity,
free will, and consciousness do not exist. Regardless of its merit,
this position is so intuitively outlandish that nobody but a
philosopher could take it seriously, and so it is unlikely to have any
real-world implications, dangerous or otherwise.

Instead I am interested in the milder position that mental life has a
purely material basis. The dangerous idea, then, is that Cartesian
dualism is false. If what you mean by "soul" is something immaterial
and immortal, something that exists independently of the brain, then
souls do not exist. This is old hat for most psychologists and
philosophers, the stuff of introductory lectures. But the rejection of
the immaterial soul is unintuitive, unpopular, and, for some people,
downright repulsive.

In the journal "First Things", Patrick Lee and Robert P. George
outline some worries from a religious perspective.

"If science did show that all human acts, including conceptual thought
and free choice, are just brain processes,... it would mean that the
difference between human beings and other animals is only
superficial-a difference of degree rather than a difference in kind;
it would mean that human beings lack any special dignity worthy of
special respect. Thus, it would undermine the norms that forbid
killing and eating human beings as we kill and eat chickens, or
enslaving them and treating them as beasts of burden as we do horses
or oxen."

The conclusions don't follow. Even if there are no souls, humans might
differ from non-human animals in some other way, perhaps with regard
to the capacity for language or abstract reasoning or emotional
suffering. And even if there were no difference, it would hardly give
us license to do terrible things to human beings. Instead, as Peter
Singer and others have argued, it should make us kinder to non-human
animals. If a chimpanzee turned out to possess the intelligence and
emotions of a human child, for instance, most of us would agree that
it would be wrong to eat, kill, or enslave it.

Still, Lee and George are right to worry that giving up on the soul
means giving up on a priori distinction between humans and other
creatures, something which has very real consequences. It would affect
as well how we think about stem-cell research and abortion,
euthenasia, cloning, and cosmetic psychopharmacology. It would have
substantial implications for the legal realm -- a belief in immaterial
souls has led otherwise sophisticated commentators to defend a
distinction between actions that we do and actions that our brains do.
We are responsible only for the former, motivating the excuse that
Michael Gazzaniga has called, "My brain made me do it." It has been
proposed, for instance, that if a pedophile's brain shows a certain
pattern of activation while contemplating sex with a child, he should
not be viewed as fully responsible for his actions. When you give up
on the soul, and accept that all actions correspond to brain activity,
this sort of reasoning goes out the window.

The rejection of souls is more dangerous than the idea that kept us so
occupied in 2005 -- evolution by natural selection. The battle between
evolution and creationism is important for many reasons; it is
where science takes a stand against superstition. But, like the origin
of the universe, the origin of the species is an issue of great
intellectual importance and little practical relevance. If everyone
were to become a sophisticated Darwinian, our everyday lives would
change very little. In contrast, the widespread rejection of the soul
would have profound moral and legal consequences. It would also
require people to rethink what happens when they die, and give up the
idea (held by about 90% of Americans) that their souls will survive
the death of their bodies and ascend to heaven. It is hard to get more
dangerous than that.
__________________________________________________________________

PHILIP CAMPBELL
Editor-in Chief, Nature
[campbell100.jpg]

Scientists and governments developing public engagement about science
and technology are missing the point
This turns out to be true in cases where there are collapses in
consensus that have serious societal consequences. Whether in relation
to climate change, GM crops or the UK's triple vaccine for measles,
mumps and rubella, alternative science networks develop amongst people
who are neither ignorant nor irrational, but have perceptions about
science, the scientific literature and its implications that differ
from those prevailing in the scientific community. These perceptions
and discussions may be half-baked, but are no less powerful for all
that, and carry influence on the internet and in the media.
Researchers and governments haven't yet learned how to respond to such
"citizen's science". Should they stop explaining and engaging? No. But
they need also to understand better the influences at work within such
networks -- often too dismissively stereotyped -- at an early stage in
the debate in order to counter bad science and minimize the impacts of
falsehoods.
__________________________________________________________________

JESSE BERING
Psychologist, University of Arkansas
[bering100.jpg]

Science will never silence God

With each meticulous turn of the screw in science, with each
tightening up of our understanding of the natural world, we pull more
taut the straps over God's muzzle. From botany to bioengineering, from
physics to psychology, what is science really but true Revelation --
and what is Revelation but the negation of God? It is a humble pursuit
we scientists engage in: racing to reality. Many of us suffer the
harsh glare of the American theocracy, whose heart still beats loud
and strong in this new year of the 21st century. We bravely favor
truth, in all its wondrous, amoral, and 'meaningless' complexity over
the singularly destructive Truth born of the trembling minds of our
ancestors. But my dangerous idea, I fear, is that no matter how far
our thoughts shall vault into the eternal sky of scientific progress,
no matter how dazzling the effects of this progress, God will always
bite through his muzzle and banish us from the starry night of
humanistic ideals.
Science is an endless series of binding and rebinding his breath;
there will never be a day when God does not speak for the majority.
There will never be a day even when he does not whisper in the most
godless of scientists' ears. This is because God is not an idea, nor a
cultural invention, not an 'opiate of the masses' or any such thing;
God is a way of thinking that was rendered permanent by natural
selection.
As scientists, we must toil and labor and toil again to silence God,
but ultimately this is like cutting off our ears to hear more clearly.
God too is a biological appendage; until we acknowledge this fact for
what it is, until we rear our children with this knowledge, he will
continue to howl his discontent for all of time.
__________________________________________________________________

PAUL W. EWALD
Evolutionary Biologist; Director, Program in Evolutionary Medicine,
University of Louisville; Author, Plague Time
[ewald100.gif]

A New Golden Age of Medicine

My dangerous idea is that we have in hand most of the information we
need to facilitate a new golden age of medicine. And what we don't
have in hand we can get fairly readily by wise investment in targeted
research and intervention. In this golden age we should be able to
prevent most debilitating diseases in developed and undeveloped
countries within a relatively short period of time with much less
money than is generally presumed. This is good news. Why is it
dangerous?

One array of dangers arises because ideas that challenge the status
quo threaten the livelihood of many. When the many are embedded in
powerful places the threat can be stifling, especially when a lot of
money and status are at stake. So it is within the arena of medical
research and practice. Imagine what would happen if the big diseases
-- cancers, arteriosclerosis, stroke, diabetes -- were largely
prevented.
Big pharmas would become small because the demand for prescription
drugs would drop. The prestige of physicians would drop because they
would no longer be relied upon to prolong life. The burgeoning
industry of biomedical research would shrink because governmental and
private funding for this research would diminish. Also threatened
would be scientists whose sense of self-worth is built upon the grant
dollars they bring in for discovering miniscule parts of big puzzles.
Scientists have been beneficiaries of the lack of progress in recent
decades, which has caused leaders such as the past head of NIH, Harold
Varmus, to declare that what is needed is more basic research. But
basic research has not generated many great advancements in the
prevention or cure of disease in recent decades.
The major exception is in the realm of infectious disease where many
important advancements were generated from tiny slices of funding. The
discovery that peptic ulcers are caused by infections that can be
cured with antibiotics is one example. Another is the discovery that
liver cancer can often be prevented by a vaccine against the hepatitis
B virus or by screening blood for hepatitis B and C viruses.

The track record of the past few decades shows that these examples are
not quirks. They are part of a trend that goes back over a century to
the beginning of the germ theory itself. And the accumulating evidence
supporting infectious causation of big bad diseases of modern society
is following the same pattern that occurred for diseases that have
been recently accepted as caused by infection.
The process of acceptance typically occurs over one or more decades
and accords with Schopenhauer's generalization about the establishment
of truth: it is first ridiculed, then violently opposed, and finally
accepted as being self-evident. Just a few groups of pathogens seem to
be big players: streptococci, Chlamydia, some bacteria of the oral
cavity, hepatitis viruses, and herpes viruses. If the correlations
between these pathogens and the big diseases of wealthy countries does
in fact reflect infectious causation, effective vaccines against these
pathogens could contribute in a big way to a new golden age of
medicine that could rival the first half of the 20th century.
The transition to this golden age, however, requires two things: a
shift in research effort to identifying the pathogens that cause the
major diseases and development of effective interventions against
them. The first would be easy to bring about by restructuring the
priorities of NIH -- where money goes, so go the researchers. The
second requires mechanisms for putting in place programs that cannot
be trusted to the free market for the same kinds of reasons that Adam
Smith gave for national defense. The goals of the interventions do not
mesh nicely with the profit motive of the free market. Vaccines, for
example, are not very profitable.
Pharmas cannot make as much money by selling one vaccine per person to
prevent a disease as they can selling a patented drug like Vioxx which
will be administered day after day, year after year to treat symptoms
of an illness that is never cured. And though liability issues are
important for such symptomatic treatment, the pharmas can argue
forcefully that drugs with nasty side effects provide some benefit
even to those who suffer most from the side effects because the drugs
are given not to prevent an illness but rather to people who already
have an illness. This sort of defense is less convincing when the
victim is a child who developed permanent brain damage from a rare
complication of a vaccine that was given to protect them against a
chronic illness that they might have acquired decades later.

Another part of this vision of a new golden age will be the ability to
distinguish real threats from pseudo-threats. This ability will allow
us to invest in policy and infrastructure that will protect people
against real threats without squandering resources and destroying
livelihoods in efforts to protect against pseudo-threats. Our present
predicament on this front is far from this ideal.
Today experts on infectious diseases and institutions entrusted to
protect and improve human health sound the alarm in response to each
novel threat. The current fears over a devastating pandemic of bird
flu is a case in point. Some of the loudest voices offer a simplistic
argument: failing to prepare for the worst-case scenarios is
irresponsible and dangerous. This criticism has been recently leveled
at me and others who question expert proclamations, such as those from
the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control.
These proclamations inform us that H5N1 bird flu virus poses an
imminent threat of an influenza pandemic similar to or even worse than
the 1918 pandemic. I have decreased my popularity in such circles by
suggesting that the threat of this scenario is essentially
nonexistent. In brief I argue that the 1918 influenza viruses evolved
their unique combination of high virulence and high transmissibility
in the conditions at the Western Front of World War I.
By transporting contagious flu patients into a series of tightly
packed groups of susceptible individuals, personnel fostered
transmission from people who were completely immobilized by their
illness. Such conditions must have favored the predator-like variants
of the influenza virus; these variants would have a competitive edge
because they could ruthlessly exploit a person for their own
replication and still get transmitted to large numbers of susceptible
individuals.
These conditions have not recurred in human populations since then
and, accordingly, we have never had any outbreaks of influenza viruses
that have been anywhere near as harmful as those that emerged at the
Western Front. So long as we do not allow such conditions to occur
again we have little to fear from a reevolution of such a predatory
virus.

The fear of a 1918 style pandemic has fueled preparations by a
government which, embarrassed by its failure to deal adequately with
the damage from Katrina, seems determined to prepare for any perceived
threat to save face. I would have no problem with the accusation of
irresponsibility if preparations for a 1918 style pandemic were cost
free. But they are not.
The $7 billion that the Bush administration is planning as a
downpayment for pandemic preparedness has to come from somewhere. If
money is spent to prepare for an imaginary pandemic, our progress
could be impeded on other fronts that could lead to or have already
established real improvements in public health.
Conclusions about responsibility or irresponsibility of this argument
require that the threat from pandemic influenza be assessed relative
to the damage that results from the procurement of the money from
other sources. The only reliable evidence of the damage from pandemic
influenza under normal circumstances is the experience of the two
pandemics that have occurred since 1918, one in 1957 and the other in
1968. The mortality caused by these pandemics was one-tenth to
one-hundredth the death toll from the 1918 pandemic.
We do need to be prepared for an influenza pandemic of the normal
variety, just as we needed to be prepared for category 5 hurricanes in
the Gulf of Mexico. If possible our preparations should allow us to
stop an incipient pandemic before it materializes. In contrast with
many of the most vocal experts I do not conclude that our surveillance
efforts will be quickly overwhelmed by a highly transmissible
descendent of the influenza virus that has generated the most recent
fright (dubbed H5N1). The transition of the H5N1 virus to a pandemic
virus would require evolutionary change.
The dialogue on this matter, however, continues to neglect the primary
mechanism of the evolutionary change: natural selection. Instead it is
claimed that H5N1 could mutate to become a full-fledged human virus
that is both highly transmissible and highly lethal. Mutation provides
only the variation on which natural selection acts. We must consider
natural selection if we are to make meaningful assessments of the
danger posed by the H5N1 virus.
The evolution of the 1918 virus was gradual, and both evidence and
theory lead to the conclusion that any evolution of increased
transmissibility of H5N1 from human to human will be gradual, as it
was with SARS. With surveillance we can detect such changes in humans
and intervene to stop further spread as was done with SARS. We do not
need to trash the economy of southeast asia each year to accomplish
this.

The dangerous vision of a golden age does not leave the poor countries
behind. As I have discussed in my articles and books, we should be
able to control much of the damage caused by the major killers in poor
countries by infrastructural improvements that not only reduce the
frequency of infection but also cause the infectious agents to evolve
toward benignity.
This integrated approach offers the possibility to remodel our current
efforts against the major killers -- AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis,
dysentery and the like. We should be able to move from just holding
ground to institution of the changes that created the freedom from
acute infectious diseases that have been enjoyed by inhabitants of
rich countries over the past century.

Dangerous indeed! Excellent solutions are often dangerous to the
status quo because they they work. One measure of danger to some but
success to the general population is the extent to which highly
specialized researchers, physicians, and other health care workers
will need to retrain, and the extent to which hospitals and
pharmaceutical companies will need to downsize. That is what happens
when we introduce excellent solutions to health problems. We need not
be any more concerned about these difficulties than the loss of the
iron lung industry and the retraining of polio therapists and
researchers in the wake of the Salk vaccine.
_________________________________________________________________

BART KOSKO
Professor, Electrical Engineering, USC; Author, Heaven in a Chip
[kosko100.jpg]
Most bell curves have thick tails

Any challenge to the normal probability bell curve can have
far-reaching consequences because a great deal of modern science and
engineering rests on this special bell curve. Most of the standard
hypothesis tests in statistics rely on the normal bell curve either
directly or indirectly. These tests permeate the social and medical
sciences and underlie the poll results in the media. Related tests and
assumptions underlie the decision algorithms in radar and cell phones
that decide whether the incoming energy blip is a 0 or a 1. Management
gurus exhort manufacturers to follow the "six sigma" creed of reducing
the variance in products to only two or three defective products per
million in accord with "sigmas" or standard deviations from the mean
of a normal bell curve. Models for trading stock and bond derivatives
assume an underlying normal bell-curve structure. Even quantum and
signal-processing uncertainty principles or inequalities involve the
normal bell curve as the equality condition for minimum uncertainty.
Deviating even slightly from the normal bell curve can sometimes
produce qualitatively different results.

The proposed dangerous idea stems from two facts about the normal bell
curve.

First: The normal bell curve is not the only bell curve. There are at
least as many different bell curves as there are real numbers. This
simple mathematical fact poses at once a grammatical challenge to the
title of Charles Murray's IQ book The Bell Curve. Murray should have
used the indefinite article "A" instead of the definite article "The."
This is but one of many examples that suggest that most scientists
simply equate the entire infinite set of probability bell curves with
the normal bell curve of textbooks. Nature need not share the same
practice. Human and non-human behavior can be far more diverse than
the classical normal bell curve allows.

Second: The normal bell curve is a skinny bell curve. It puts most of
its probability mass in the main lobe or bell while the tails quickly
taper off exponentially. So "tail events" appear rare simply as an
artifact of this bell curve's mathematical structure. This limitation
may be fine for approximate descriptions of "normal" behavior near the
center of the distribution. But it largely rules out or marginalizes
the wide range of phenomena that take place in the tails.

Again most bell curves have thick tails. Rare events are not so rare
if the bell curve has thicker tails than the normal bell curve has.
Telephone interrupts are more frequent. Lightning flashes are more
frequent and more energetic. Stock market fluctuations or crashes are
more frequent. How much more frequent they are depends on how thick
the tail is -- and that is always an empirical question of fact.
Neither logic nor assume-the-normal-curve habit can answer the
question. Instead scientists need to carry their evidentiary burden a
step further and apply one of the many available statistical tests to
determine and distinguish the bell-curve thickness.

One response to this call for tail-thickness sensitivity is that logic
alone can decide the matter because of the so-called central limit
theorem of classical probability theory. This important "central"
result states that some suitably normalized sums of random terms will
converge to a standard normal random variable and thus have a normal
bell curve in the limit. So Gauss and a lot of other long-dead
mathematicians got it right after all and thus we can continue to
assume normal bell curves with impunity.

That argument fails in general for two reasons.

The first reason it fails is that the classical central limit theorem
result rests on a critical assumption that need not hold and that
often does not hold in practice. The theorem assumes that the random
dispersion about the mean is so comparatively slight that a particular
measure of this dispersion -- the variance or the standard deviation
-- is finite or does not blow up to infinity in a mathematical sense.
Most bell curves have infinite or undefined variance even though they
have a finite dispersion about their center point. The error is not in
the bell curves but in the two-hundred-year-old assumption that
variance equals dispersion. It does not in general. Variance is a
convenient but artificial and non-robust measure of dispersion. It
tends to overweight "outliers" in the tail regions because the
variance squares the underlying errors between the values and the
mean. Such squared errors simplify the math but produce the infinite
effects. These effects do not appear in the classical central limit
theorem because the theorem assumes them away.

The second reason the argument fails is that the central limit theorem
itself is just a special case of a more general result called the
generalized central limit theorem. The generalized central limit
theorem yields convergence to thick-tailed bell curves in the general
case. Indeed it yields convergence to the thin-tailed normal bell
curve only in the special case of finite variances. These general
cases define the infinite set of the so-called stable probability
distributions and their symmetric versions are bell curves. There are
still other types of thick-tailed bell curves (such as the Laplace
bell curves used in image processing and elsewhere) but the stable
bell curves are the best known and have several nice mathematical
properties. The figure below shows the normal or Gaussian bell curve
superimposed over three thicker-tailed stable bell curves. The catch
in working with stable bell curves is that their mathematics can be
nearly intractable. So far we have closed-form solutions for only two
stable bell curves (the normal or Gaussian and the very-thick-tailed
Cauchy curve) and so we have to use transform and computer techniques
to generate the rest. Still the exponential growth in computing power
has long since made stable or thick-tailed analysis practical for many
problems of science and engineering.

This last point shows how competing bell curves offer a new context
for judging whether a given set of data reasonably obey a normal bell
curve. One of the most popular eye-ball tests for normality is the PP
or probability plot of the data. The data should almost perfectly fit
a straight line if the data come from a normal probability
distribution. But this seldom happens in practice. Instead real data
snake all around the ideal straight line in a PP diagram. So it is
easy for the user to shrug and a call any data deviation from the
ideal line good enough in the absence of a direct bell-curve
competitor. A fairer test is to compare the normal PP plot with the
best-fitting thick-tailed or stable PP plot. The data may well line up
better in a thick-tailed PP diagram than it does in the usual normal
PP diagram. This test evidence would reject the normal bell-curve
hypothesis in favor of the thicker-tailed alternative. Ignoring these
thick-tailed alternatives favors accepting the less-accurate normal
bell curve and thus leads to underestimating the occurrence of tail
events.

Stable or thick-tailed probability curves continue to turn up as more
scientists and engineers search for them. They tend to accurately
model impulsive phenomena such as noise in telephone lines or in the
atmosphere or in fluctuating economic assets. Skewed versions appear
to best fit the data for the Ethernet traffic in bit packets. Here
again the search is ultimately an empirical one for the best-fitting
tail thickness. Similar searches will only increase as the math and
software of thick-tailed bell curves work their way into textbooks on
elementary probability and statistics. Much of it is already freely
available on the Internet.

Thicker-tail bell curves also imply that there is not just a single
form of pure white noise. Here too there are at least as many forms of
white noise (or any colored noise) as there are real numbers.
Whiteness just means that the noise spikes or hisses and pops are
independent in time or that they do not correlate with one another.
The noise spikes themselves can come from any probability distribution
and in particular they can come from any stable or thick-tailed bell
curve. The figure below shows the normal or Gaussian bell curve and
three kindred thicker-tailed bell curves and samples of their
corresponding white noise. The normal curve has the upper-bound alpha
parameter of 2 while the thicker-tailed curves have lower values --
tail thickness increases as the alpha parameter falls. The white noise
from the thicker-tailed bell curves becomes much more impulsive as
their bell narrows and their tails thicken because then more extreme
events or noise spikes occur with greater frequency.

[image001.jpg]

Competing bell curves: The figure on the left shows four superimposed
symmetric alpha-stable bell curves with different tail thicknesses
while the plots on the right show samples of their corresponding forms
of white noise. The parameter [image002.gif] describes the thickness
of a stable bell curve and ranges from 0 to 2. Tails grow thicker as
[image003.gif] grows smaller. The white noise grows more impulsive as
the tails grow thicker. The Gaussian or normal bell curve
[image004.gif] has the thinnest tail of the four stable curves while
the Cauchy bell curve [image005.gif] has the thickest tails and thus
the most impulsive noise. Note the different magnitude scales on the
vertical axes. All the bell curves have finite dispersion while only
the Gaussian or normal bell curve has a finite variance or finite
standard deviation.

My colleagues and I have recently shown that most mathematical models
of spiking neurons in the retina can not only benefit from small
amounts of added noise by increasing their Shannon bit count but they
still continue to benefit from added thick-tailed or
"infinite-variance" noise. The same result holds experimentally for a
carbon nanotube transistor that detects signals in the presence of
added electrical noise.

Thick-tailed bell curves further call into question what counts as a
statistical "outlier" or bad data: Is a tail datum error or pattern?
The line between extreme and non-extreme data is not just fuzzy but
depends crucially on the underlying tail thickness.

The usual rule of thumb is that the data is suspect if it lies outside
three or even two standard deviations from the mean. Such rules of
thumb reflect both the tacit assumption that dispersion equals
variance and the classical central-limit effect that large data sets
are not just approximately bell curves but approximately thin-tailed
normal bell curves. An empirical test of the tails may well justify
the latter thin-tailed assumption in many cases. But the mere
assertion of the normal bell curve does not. So "rare" events may not
be so rare after all.
_________________________________________________________________

MATT RIDLEY
Science Writer; Founding chairman of the International Centre for
Life; Author, The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nature
[ridley100.jpg]

Government is the problem not the solution

In all times and in all places there has been too much government. We
now know what prosperity is: it is the gradual extension of the
division of labour through the free exchange of goods and ideas, and
the consequent introduction of efficiencies by the invention of new
technologies. This is the process that has given us health, wealth and
wisdom on a scale unimagined by our ancestors. It not only raises
material standards of living, it also fuels social integration,
fairness and charity. It has never failed yet. No society has grown
poorer or more unequal through trade, exchange and invention. Think of
pre-Ming as opposed to Ming China, seventeenth century Holland as
opposed to imperial Spain, eighteenth century England as opposed to
Louis XIV's France, twentieth century America as opposed to Stalin's
Russia, or post-war Japan, Hong Kong and Korea as opposed to Ghana,
Cuba and Argentina. Think of the Phoenicians as opposed to the
Egyptians, Athens as opposed to Sparta, the Hanseatic League as
opposed to the Roman Empire. In every case, weak or decentralised
government, but strong free trade led to surges in prosperity for all,
whereas strong, central government led to parasitic, tax-fed
officialdom, a stifling of innovation, relative economic decline and
usually war.

Take Rome. It prospered because it was a free trade zone. But it
repeatedly invested the proceeds of that prosperity in too much
government and so wasted it in luxury, war, gladiators and public
monuments. The Roman empire's list of innovations is derisory, even
compared with that of the 'dark ages' that followed.

In every age and at every time there have been people who say we need
more regulation, more government. Sometimes, they say we need it to
protect exchange from corruption, to set the standards and police the
rules, in which case they have a point, though often they exaggerate
it. Self-policing standards and rules were developed by free-trading
merchants in medieval Europe long before they were taken over and
codified as laws (and often corrupted) by monarchs and governments.
Sometimes, they say we need it to protect the weak, the victims of
technological change or trade flows. But throughout history such
intervention, though well meant, has usually proved misguided --
because its progenitors refuse to believe in (or find out about) David
Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage: even if China is better at
making everything than France, there will still be a million things it
pays China to buy from France rather than make itself. Why? Because
rather than invent, say, luxury goods or insurance services itself,
China will find it pays to make more T shirts and use the proceeds to
import luxury goods and insurance.

Government is a very dangerous toy. It is used to fight wars, impose
ideologies and enrich rulers. True, nowadays, our leaders do not
enrich themselves (at least not on the scale of the Sun King), but
they enrich their clients: they preside over vast and insatiable
parasitic bureaucracies that grow by Parkinson's Law and live off true
wealth creators such as traders and inventors.

Sure, it is possible to have too little government. Only, that has not
been the world's problem for millennia. After the century of Mao,
Hitler and Stalin, can anybody really say that the risk of too little
government is greater than the risk of too much? The dangerous idea we
all need to learn is that the more we limit the growth of government,
the better off we will all be.
_________________________________________________________________

DAVID PIZARRO
Psychologist, Cornell University
[pizarro100.jpg]

Hodgepodge Morality

What some individuals consider a sacrosanct ability to perceive moral
truths may instead be a hodgepodge of simpler psychological
mechanisms, some of which have evolved for other purposes.

It is increasingly apparent that our moral sense comprises a fairly
loose collection of intuitions, rules of thumb, and emotional
responses that may have emerged to serve a variety of functions, some
of which originally had nothing at all to do with ethics. These
mechanisms, when tossed in with our general ability to reason, seem to
be how humans come to answer the question of good and evil, right and
wrong. Intuitions about action, intentionality, and control, for
instance, figure heavily into our perception of what constitutes an
immoral act. The emotional reactions of empathy and disgust likewise
figure into our judgments of who deserves moral protection and who
doesn't. But the ability to perceive intentions probably didn't evolve
as a way to determine who deserves moral blame. And the emotion of
disgust most likely evolved to keep us safe from rotten meat and
feces, not to provide information about who deserves moral protection.

Discarding the belief that our moral sense provides a royal road to
moral truth is an uncomfortable notion. Most people, after all, are
moral realists. They believe acts are objectively right or wrong, like
math problems. The dangerous idea is that our intuitions may be poor
guides to moral truth, and can easily lead us astray in our everyday
moral decisions.
_________________________________________________________________

RANDOPLH M. NESSE
Psychiatrist, University of Michigan; Coauthor (with George Williams),
Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine
[nesse100.jpg]

Unspeakable Ideas

The idea of promoting dangerous ideas seems dangerous to me. I spend
considerable effort to prevent my ideas from becoming dangerous,
except, that is, to entrenched false beliefs and to myself. For
instance, my idea that bad feelings are useful for our genes upends
much conventional wisdom about depression and anxiety. I find,
however, that I must firmly restrain journalists who are eager to
share the sensational but incorrect conclusion that depression should
not be treated. Similarly, many people draw dangerous inferences from
my work on Darwinian medicine. For example, just because fever is
useful does not mean that it should not be treated. I now emphasize
that evolutionary theory does not tell you what to do in the clinic,
it just tells you what studies need to be done.

I also feel obligated to prevent my ideas from becoming dangerous on a
larger scale. For instance, many people who hear about Darwinian
medicine assume incorrectly that it implies support for eugenics. I
encourage them to read history as well as my writings. The record
shows how quickly natural selection was perverted into Social
Darwinism, an ideology that seemed to justify letting poor people
starve. Related ideas keep emerging. We scientists have a
responsibility to challenge dangerous social policies incorrectly
derived from evolutionary theory. Racial superiority is yet another
dangerous idea that hurts real people. More examples come to mind all
too easily and some quickly get complicated. For instance, the idea
that men are inherently different from women has been used to justify
discrimination, but the idea that men and women have identical
abilities and preferences may also cause great harm.

While I don't want to promote ideas dangerous to others, I am
fascinated by ideas that are dangerous to anyone who expresses them.
These are "unspeakable ideas." By unspeakable ideas I don't mean those
whose expression is forbidden in a certain group. Instead, I propose
that there is class of ideas whose expression is inherently dangerous
everywhere and always because of the nature of human social groups.
Such unspeakable ideas are anti-memes. Memes, both true and false,
spread fast because they are interesting and give social credit to
those who spread them. Unspeakable ideas, even true important ones,
don't spread at all, because expressing them is dangerous to those who
speak them.

So why, you may ask, is a sensible scientist even bringing the idea
up? Isn't the idea of unspeakable ideas a dangerous idea? I expect I
will find out. My hope is that a thoughtful exploration of unspeakable
ideas should not hurt people in general, perhaps won't hurt me much,
and might unearth some long-neglected truths.

Generalizations cannot substitute for examples, even if providing
examples is risky. So, please gather your own data. Here is an
experiment. The next time you are having a drink with an enthusiastic
fan for your hometown team, say "Well, I think our team just isn't
very good and didn't deserve to win." Or, moving to more risky
territory, when your business group is trying to deal with a savvy
competitor, say, "It seems to me that their product is superior
because they are smarter than we are." Finally, and I cannot recommend
this but it offers dramatic data, you could respond to your spouse's
difficulties at work by saying, "If they are complaining about you not
doing enough, it is probably because you just aren't doing your fair
share." Most people do not need to conduct such social experiments to
know what happens when such unspeakable ideas are spoken.

Many broader truths are equally unspeakable. Consider, for instance,
all the articles written about leadership. Most are infused with
admiration and respect for a leader's greatness. Much rarer are
articles about the tendency for leadership positions to be attained by
power-hungry men who use their influence to further advance their
self-interest. Then there are all the writings about sex and marriage.
Most of them suggest that there is some solution that allows full
satisfaction for both partners while maintaining secure relationships.
Questioning such notions is dangerous, unless you are a comic, in
which case skepticism can be very, very funny.

As a final example, consider the unspeakable idea of unbridled
self-interest. Someone who says, "I will only do what benefits me,"
has committed social suicide. Tendencies to say such things have been
selected against, while those who advocate goodness, honesty and
service to others get wide recognition. This creates an illusion of a
moral society that then, thanks to the combined forces of natural and
social selection, becomes a reality that makes social life vastly more
agreeable.

There are many more examples, but I must stop here. To say more would
either get me in trouble or falsify my argument. Will I ever publish
my "Unspeakable Essays?"  It would be risky, wouldn't it?
_________________________________________________________________

GREGORY BENFORD
Physicist, UC Irvine; Author, Deep Time
[benford100.jpg]

Think outside the Kyoto box

Few economists expect the Kyoto Accords to attain their goals. With
compliance coming only slowly and with three big holdouts -- the US,
China and India -- it seems unlikely to make much difference in
overall carbon dioxide increases. Yet all the political pressure is on
lessening our fossil fuel burning, in the face of fast-rising demand.
This pits the industrial powers against the legitimate economic
aspirations of the developing world -- a recipe for conflict.
Those who embrace the reality of global climate change mostly insist
that there is only one way out of the greenhouse effect -- burn less
fossil fuel, or else. Never mind the economic consequences. But the
planet itself modulates its atmosphere through several tricks, and we
have little considered using most of them. The overall global problem
is simple: we capture more heat from the sun than we radiate away.
Mostly this is a good thing, else the mean planetary temperature would
hover around freezing. But recent human alterations of the atmosphere
have resulted in too much of a good thing.
Two methods are getting little attention: sequestering carbon from the
air and reflecting sunlight.
Hide the Carbon
There are several schemes to capture carbon dioxide from the air:
promote tree growth; trap carbon dioxide from power plants in
exhausted gas domes; or let carbon-rich organic waste fall into the
deep oceans. Increasing forestation is a good, though rather limited,
step. Capturing carbon dioxide from power plants costs about 30% of
the plant output, so it's an economic nonstarter.
That leaves the third way. Imagine you are standing in a ripe Kansas
cornfield, staring up into a blue summer sky. A transparent acre-area
square around you extends upwards in an air-filled tunnel, soaring all
the way to space. That long tunnel holds carbon in the form of
invisible gas, carbon dioxide -- widely implicated in global climate
change. But how much?
Very little, compared with how much we worry about it. The corn
standing as high as an elephant's eye all around you holds four
hundred times as much carbon as there is in man-made carbon dioxide --
our villain -- in the entire column reaching to the top of the
atmosphere. (We have added a few hundred parts per million to our air
by burning.) Inevitably, we must understand and control the
atmosphere, as part of a grand imperative of directing the entire
global ecology. Yearly, we manage through agriculture far more carbon
than is causing our greenhouse dilemma.

Take advantage of that. The leftover corn cobs and stalks from our
fields can be gathered up, floated down the Mississippi, and dropped
into the ocean, sequestering it. Below about a kilometer depth,
beneath a layer called the thermocline, nothing gets mixed back into
the air for a thousand years or more. It's not a forever solution, but
it would buy us and our descendents time to find such answers. And it
is inexpensive; cost matters.
The US has large crop residues. It has also ignored the Kyoto Accord,
saying it would cost too much. It would, if we relied purely on
traditional methods, policing energy use and carbon dioxide emissions.
Clinton-era estimates of such costs were around $100 billion a year --
a politically unacceptable sum, which led Congress to reject the very
notion by a unanimous vote.
But if the US simply used its farm waste to "hide" carbon dioxide from
our air, complying with Kyoto's standard would cost about $10 billion
a year, with no change whatsoever in energy use.
The whole planet could do the same. Sequestering crop leftovers could
offset about a third of the carbon we put into our air.
The carbon dioxide we add to our air will end up in the oceans,
anyway, from natural absorption, but not nearly quickly enough to help
us.

Reflect Away Sunlight
Hiding carbon from air is only one example of ways the planet has
maintained its perhaps precarious equilibrium throughout billions of
years. Another is our world's ability to edit sunlight, by changing
cloud cover.
As the oceans warm, water evaporates, forming clouds. These reflect
sunlight, reducing the heat below -- but just how much depends on
cloud thickness, water droplet size, particulate density -- a forest
of detail.
If our climate starts to vary too much, we could consider deliberately
adjusting cloud cover in selected areas, to offset unwanted heating.
It is not actually hard to make clouds; volcanoes and fossil fuel
burning do it all the time by adding microscopic particles to the air.
Cloud cover is a natural mechanism we can augment, and another area
where possibility of major change in environmental thinking beckons.
A 1997 US Department of Energy study for Los Angeles showed that
planting trees and making blacktop and rooftops lighter colored could
significantly cool the city in summer. With minimal costs that get
repaid within five years we can reduce summer midday temperatures by
several degrees. This would cut air conditioning costs for the
residents, simultaneously lowering energy consumption, and lessening
the urban heat island effect. Incoming rain clouds would not rise as
much above the heat blossom of the city, and so would rain on it less.
Instead, clouds would continue inland to drop rain on the rest of
Southern California, promoting plant growth. These methods are now
under way in Los Angeles, a first experiment.
We can combine this with a cloud-forming strategy. Producing clouds
over the tropical oceans is the most effective way to cool the planet
on a global scale, since the dark oceans absorb the bulk of the sun's
heat. This we should explore now, in case sudden climate changes force
us to act quickly.
Yet some environmentalists find all such steps suspect. They smack of
engineering, rather than self-discipline. True enough -- and that's
what makes such thinking dangerous, for some.
Yet if Kyoto fails to gather momentum, as seems probable to many, what
else can we do? Turn ourselves into ineffectual Mommy-cop states, with
endless finger-pointing politics, trying to equally regulate both the
rich in their SUVs and Chinese peasants who burn coal for warmth? Our
present conventional wisdom might be termed The Puritan Solution --
Abstain, sinners! -- and is making slow, small progress. The Kyoto
Accord calls for the industrial nations to reduce their carbon dioxide
emissions to 7% below the 1990 level, and globally we are farther from
this goal every year.
These steps are early measures to help us assume our eventual 21st
Century role, as true stewards of the Earth, working alongside Nature.
Recently Billy Graham declared that since the Bible made us stewards
of the Earth, we have a holy duty to avert climate change. True
stewards use the Garden's own methods.
_________________________________________________________________

MARCO IACOBONI
Neuroscientist; Director, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Lab, UCLA
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Media Violence Induces Imitative Violence: The Problem With Super
Mirrors

Media violence induces imitative violence. If true, this idea is
dangerous for at least two main reasons. First, because its
implications are highly relevant to the issue of freedom of speech.
Second, because it suggests that our rational autonomy is much more
limited than we like to think. This idea is especially dangerous now,
because we have discovered a plausible neural mechanism that can
explain why observing violence induces imitative violence. Moreover,
the properties of this neural mechanism -- the human mirror neuron
system -- suggest that imitative violence may not always be a
consciously mediated process. The argument for protecting even harmful
speech (intended in a broad sense, including movies and videogames)
has typically been that the effects of speech are always under the
mental intermediation of the listener/viewer. If there is a plausible
neurobiological mechanism that suggests that such intermediate step
can be by-passed, this argument is no longer valid.

For more than 50 years behavioral data have suggested that media
violence induces violent behavior in the observers. Meta-data show
that the effect size of media violence is much larger than the effect
size of calcium intake on bone mass, or of asbestos exposure to
cancer. Still, the behavioral data have been criticized. How is that
possible? Two main types of data have been invoked. Controlled
laboratory experiments and correlational studies assessing types of
media consumed and violent behavior. The lab data have been criticized
on the account of not having enough ecological validity, whereas the
correlational data have been criticized on the account that they have
no explanatory power. Here, as a neuroscientist who is studying the
human mirror neuron system and its relations to imitation, I want to
focus on a recent neuroscience discovery that may explain why the
strong imitative tendencies that humans have may lead them to
imitative violence when exposed to media violence.

Mirror neurons are cells located in the premotor cortex, the part of
the brain relevant to the planning, selection and execution of
actions. In the ventral sector of the premotor cortex there are cells
that fire in relation to specific goal-related motor acts, such as
grasping, holding, tearing, and bringing to the mouth. Surprisingly, a
subset of these cells -- what we call mirror neurons -- also fire when
we observe somebody else performing the same action. The behavior of
these cells seems to suggest that the observer is looking at her/his
own actions reflected by a mirror, while watching somebody else's
actions. My group has also shown in several studies that human mirror
neuron areas are critical to imitation. There is also evidence that
the activation of this neural system is fairly automatic, thus
suggesting that it may by-pass conscious mediation. Moreover, mirror
neurons also code the intention associated with observed actions, even
though there is not a one-to-one mapping between actions and
intentions (I can grasp a cup because I want to drink or because I
want to put it in the dishwasher). This suggests that this system can
indeed code sequences of action (i.e., what happens after I grasp the
cup), even though only one action in the sequence has been observed.

Some years ago, when we still were a very small group of
neuroscientists studying mirror neurons and we were just starting
investigating the role of mirror neurons in intention understanding,
we discussed the possibility of super mirror neurons. After all, if
you have such a powerful neural system in your brain, you also want to
have some control or modulatory neural mechanisms. We have now
preliminary evidence suggesting that some prefrontal areas have super
mirrors. I think super mirrors come in at least two flavors. One is
inhibition of overt mirroring, and the other one -- the one that might
explain why we imitate violent behavior, which require a fairly
complex sequence of motor acts -- is mirroring of sequences of motor
actions. Super mirror mechanisms may provide a fairly detailed
explanation of imitative violence after being exposed to media
violence.
_________________________________________________________________

BARRY C. SMITH
Philosopher, Birbeck, University of London; Coeditor, Knowing Our Own
Minds
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What We Know May Not Change Us

Human beings, like everything else, are part of the natural world. The
natural world is all there is. But to say that everything that exists
is just part of the one world of nature is not the same as saying that
there is just one theory of nature that will describes and explain
everything that there is. Reality may be composed of just one kind of
stuff and properties of that stuff but we need many different kinds of
theories at different levels of description to account for everything
there is.

Theories at these different levels may not be reduced one to another.
What matters is that they be compatible with one another. The
astronomy Newton gave us was a triumph over supernaturalism because it
united the mechanics of the sub-lunary world with an account of the
heavenly bodies. In a similar way, biology allowed us to advance from
a time when we saw life in terms of an elan vital. Today, the biggest
challenge is to explain our powers of thinking and imagination, our
abilities to represent and report our thoughts: the very means by
which we engage in scientific theorising. The final triumph of the
natural sciences over supernaturalism will be an account of nature of
conscious experience. The cognitive and brain sciences have done much
to make that project clearer but we are still a long way from a fully
satisfying theory.

But even if we succeed in producing a theory of human thought and
reason, of perception, of conscious mental life, compatible with other
theories of the natural and biological world, will we relinquish our
cherished commonsense conceptions of ourselves as human beings, as
selves who know ourselves best, who deliberate and decide freely on
what to do and how to live? There is much evidence that we won't. As
humans we conceive ourselves as centres of experience, self-knowing
and free willing agents. We see ourselves and others as acting on our
beliefs, desires, hopes and fears, and has having responsibility for
much that we do and all that we say. And even as results in
neuroscience begin to show how much more automated, routinised and
pre-conscious much of our behaviour is, we are remain unable to let go
of the self-beliefs that govern our day to day rationalisings and
dealings with others.

We are perhaps incapable of treating others as mere machines, even if
that turns out to be what we are. The self-conceptions we have are
firmly in place and sustained in spite of our best findings, and it
may be a fact about human beings that it will always be so. We are
curious and interested in neuroscientists findings and we wonder at
them and about their applications to ourselves, but as the great
naturalistic philosopher David Hume knew, nature is too strong in us,
and it will not let us give up our cherished and familiar ways of
thinking for long. Hume knew that however curious an idea and vision
of ourselves we entertained in our study, or in the lab, when we
returned to the world to dine, make merry with our friends our most
natural beliefs and habits returned and banished our stranger thoughts
and doubts. It is likely, as this end of the year, that whatever we
have learned and whatever we know about the error of our thinkings and
about the fictions we maintain, they will still remain the most
dominant guiding force in our everyday lives. We may not be comforted
by this, but as creatures with minds who know they have minds --
perhaps the only minded creatures in nature in this position -- we are
at least able to understand our own predicament.
_________________________________________________________________

PHILIP W. ANDERSON
Physicist, Princeton University; Nobel Laureate in Physics 1977;
Author, Economy as a Complex Evolving System
[anderson100.jpg]
Dark Energy might not exist

Let's try one in cosmology. The universe contains at least 3 and
perhaps 4 very different kinds of matter, whose origins probably are
physically completely different. There is the Cosmic Background
Radiation (CBR) which is photons from the later parts of the Big Bang
but is actually the residue of all the kinds of radiation that were in
the Bang, like flavored hadrons and mesons which have annihilated and
become photons. You can count them and they tell you pretty well how
many quanta of radiation there were in the beginning; and observation
tells us that they were pretty uniformly distributed, in fact very,
and still are.
Next is radiant matter -- protons, mostly, and electrons. There are
only a billionth as many of them as quanta of CBR, but as radiation in
the Big Bang there were pretty much the same number, so all but one
out of a billion combined with an antiparticle and annihilated.
Nonetheless they are much heavier than the quanta of CBR, so they
have, all told, much more mass, and have some cosmological effect on
slowing down the Hubble expansion. There was an imbalance -- but what
caused that? That imbalance was generated by some totally independent
process, possibly during the very turbulent inflationary era.

In fact out to a tenth of the Hubble radius, which is as far as we can
see, the protons are very non-uniformly distributed, in a fractal
hierarchical clustering with things called "Great Walls" and giant
near-voids. The conventional idea is that this is all caused by
gravitational instability acting on tiny primeval fluctuations, and it
barely could be, but in order to justify that you have to have another
kind of matter.
So you need -- and actually see, but indirectly -- Dark Matter, which
is 30 times as massive, overall, as protons but you can't see anything
but its gravitational effects. No one has much clue as to what it is
but it seems to have to be assumed it is hadronic, otherwise why would
it be anything as close as a factor 30 to the protons? But really,
there is no reason at all to suppose its origin was related to the
other two, you know only that if it's massive quanta of any kind it is
nowhere near as many as the CBR, and so most of them annihilated in
the early stages. Again, we have no excuse for assuming that the
imbalance in the Dark Matter was uniformly distributed primevally,
even if the protons were, because we don't know what it is.

Finally, of course there is Dark Energy, that is if there is. On that
we can't even guess if it is quanta at all, but again we note that if
it is it probably doesn't add up in numbers to the CBR. The very
strange coincidence is that when we add this in there isn't any total
gravitation at all, and the universe as a whole is flat, as it would
be, incidentally, if all of the heavy parts were distributed
everywhere according to some random, fractal distribution like that of
the matter we can see -- because on the largest scale, a fractal's
density extrapolates to zero. That suggestion, implying that Dark
Energy might not exist, is considered very dangerously radical.

The posterior probability of any particular God is pretty small

Here's another, which compared to many other peoples' propositions
isn't so radical. Isn't God very improbable? You can't in any logical
system I can understand disprove the existence of God, or prove it for
that matter. But I think that in the probability calculus I use He is
very improbable.

There are a number of ways of making a formal probability theory which
incorporate Ockham's razor, the principle that one must not multiply
hypotheses unnecessarily. Two are called Bayesian probability theory,
and Minimum Entropy. If you have been taking data on something, and
the data are reasonably close to a straight line, these methods give
us a definable procedure by which you can estimate the probability
that the straight line is correct, not the polynomial which has as
many parameters as there are points, or some intermediate complex
curve. Ockham's razor is expressed mathematically as the fact that
there is a factor in the probability derived for a given hypothesis
that decreases exponentially in the number N of parameters that
describe your hypothesis -- it is the inverse of the volume of
parameter space. People who are trying to prove the existence of ESP
abominate Bayesianism and this factor because it strongly favors the
"Null hypothesis" and beats them every time.

Well, now, imagine how big the parameter space is for God. He could
have a long gray beard or not, be benevolent or malicious in a lot of
different ways and over a wide range of values, he can have a variety
of views on abortion, contraception, like or abominate human images,
like or abominate music, and the range of dietary prejudices He has
been credited with is as long as your arm. There is the heaven-hell
dimension, the one vs three question, and I haven't even mentioned
polytheism. I think there are certainly as many parameters as sects,
or more. If there is even a sliver of prior probability for the null
hypothesis, the posterior probability of any particular God is pretty
small.
_________________________________________________________________

TIMOTHY TAYLOR
Archaeologist, University of Bradford; Author, The Buried Soul
l [taylor100.jpg]

The human brain is a cultural artefact.

Phylogenetically, humans represent an evolutionary puzzle. Walking on
two legs free the hands to do new things, like chip stones to make
modified tools -- the first artefacts, dating to 2.7 million years ago
-- but it also narrows the pelvis and dramatically limits the size of
possible fetal cranium. Thus the brain expansion that began after 2
million years ago should not have happened.

But imagine that, alongside chipped stone tools, one genus of hominin
appropriates the looped entrails of a dead animal, or learns to tie a
simple knot, and invents a sling (chimpanzees are known to carry water
in leaves and gorillas to measure water depth with sticks, so the
practical and abstract thinking required here can be safely assumed
for our human ancestors by this point).

In its sling, the hominin child can now hip ride with little
impairment to its parent's hands-free movement. This has the
unexpected and certainly unplanned consequence that it is no longer
important for it to be able to hang on as chimps do. Although, due to
the bio-mechanical constraints of a bipedal pelvis, the hominin child
cannot be born with a big head (thus large initial brain capacity) it
can now be born underdeveloped. That is to say, the sling frees
fetuses to be born in an ever more ontogenically retarded state. This
trend, which humans do indeed display, is called neoteny. The
retention of earlier features for longer means that the total
developmental sequence is extended in time far beyond the nine months
of natural gestation. Hominin children, born underdeveloped, could
grow their crania outside the womb in the pseudo-marsupial pouch of an
infant-carrying sling.

From this point onwards it is not hard to see how a distinctively
human culture emerges through the extra-uterine formation of higher
cognitive capacities -- the phylogenetic and ontogenic icing on the
cake of primate brain function. The child, carried by the parent into
social situations, watches vocalization. Parental selection for smart
features such as an ability to babble early may well, as others have
suggested, have driven the brain size increases until 250,000 years
ago -- a point when the final bio-mechanical limits of big-headed
mammals with narrow pelvises were reached by two species: Neanderthals
and us.

This is the phylogeny side of the case. In terms of ontogeny the
obvious applies -- it recapitulates phylogeny. The underdeveloped
brains of hominin infants were culture-prone, and in this sense, I do
not dissent from Dan Sperber's dangerous idea that `culture is
natural'. But human culture, unlike the basic culture of learned
routines and tool-using observed in various mammals, is a system of
signs -- essentially the association of words with things and the
ascription and recognition of value in relation to this.

As Ernest Gellner once pointed out, taken cross-culturally, as a
species, humans exhibit by far the greatest range of behavioural
variation of any animal. However, within any on-going community of
people, with language, ideology and a culturally-inherited and
developed technology, conformity has usually been a paramount value,
with death often the price for dissent. My belief is that, due to the
malleability of the neotenic brain, cultural systems are physically
built into the developing tissue of the mind.

Instead of seeing the brain as the genetic hardware into which the
cultural software is loaded, and then arguing about the relative
determining influences of each in areas such as, say, sexual
orientation or mathematical ability (the old nature-nurture debate),
we can conclude that culture (as Richard Dawkins long ago noted in
respect of contraception) acts to subvert genes, but is also enabled
by them. Ontogenic retardation allowed both environment and the
developing milieu of cultural routines to act on brain hardware
construction alongside the working through of the genetic blueprint.
Just because the modern human brain is coded for by genes does not
mean that the critical self-consciousness for which it (within its own
community of brains) is famous is non-cultural any more than a
barbed-and-tanged arrowhead is non-cultural just because it is made of
flint.

The human brain has a capacity to go not just beyond nature, but
beyond culture too, by dissenting from old norms and establishing
others. The emergence of the high arts and science is part of this
process of the human brain, with its instrumental extra-somatic
adaptations and memory stores (books, laboratories, computers), and is
underpinned by the most critical thing that has been brought into
being in the encultured human brain: free will.

However, not all humans, or all human communities, seem capable of
equal levels of free-will. In extreme cases they appear to display
none at all. Reasons include genetic incapacity, but it is also
possible for a lack of mental freedom to be culturally engendered, and
sometimes even encouraged. Archaeologically, the evidence is there
from the first farming societies in Europe: the Neolithic massacre at
Talheim, where an entire community was genocidally wiped out except
for the youngest children, has been taken as evidence (supported by
anthropological analogies) of the re-enculturation of still flexible
minds within the community of the victors, to serve and live out their
orphaned lives as slaves. In the future, one might surmise that the
dark side of the development of virtual reality machines (described by
Clifford Pickover) will be the infinitely more subtle cultural
programming of impressionable individuals as sophisticated
conformists.

The interplay of genes and culture has produced in us potential for a
formidable range of abilities and intelligences. It is critical that
in the future we both fulfil and extend this potential in the realm of
judgment, choice and understanding in both sciences and arts. But the
idea of the brain as a cultural artefact is dangerous. Those with an
interest in social engineering -- tyrants and authoritarian regimes --
will almost certainly attempt to develop it to their advantage.
Free-will is threatening to the powerful who, by understanding its
formation, will act to undermine it in sophisticated ways. The
usefulness of cultural artefacts that have the degree of complexity of
human brains makes our own species the most obvious candidate for the
enhanced super-robot of the future, not just smart factory operatives
and docile consumers, but cunning weapons-delivery systems (suicide
bombers) and conformity-enforcers. At worst, the very special
qualities of human life that have been enabled by our remarkable
natural history, the confluence of genes and culture, could end up as
a realm of freedom for an elite few.
_________________________________________________________________

OLIVER MORTON
Chief News and Features Editor at Nature; Author, Mapping Mars
[morton100.jpg]

Our planet is not in peril

The truth of this idea is pretty obvious. Environmental crises are a
fundamental part of the history of the earth: there have been sudden
and dramatic temperature excursions, severe glaciations, vast asteroid
and comet impacts. Yet the earth is still here, unscathed.

There have been mass extinctions associated with some of these events,
while other mass extinctions may well have been triggered by subtler
internal changes to the biosphere. But none of them seem to have done
long-term harm. The first ten million years of the Triassic may have
been a little dull by comparison to the late Palaeozoic, what with a
large number of the more interesting species being killed in the great
mass extinction at the end of the Permian, but there is no evidence
that any fundamentally important earth processes did not eventually
recover. I strongly suspect that not a single basic biogeochemical
innovation -- the sorts of thing that underlie photosynthesis and the
carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the sulphur cycle and so on -- has
been lost in the past 4 billion years.

Indeed, there is an argument to be made that mass extinctions are in
fact a good thing, in that they wipe the slate clean a bit and thus
allow exciting evolutionary innovations. This may be going a bit far.
While the Schumpeter-for-the-earth-system position seems plausible, it
also seems a little crudely progressivist. While to a mammal the
Tertiary seems fairly obviously superior to the Cretaceous, it's not
completely clear to me that there's an objective basis for that
belief. In terms of primary productivity, for example, the Cretaceous
may well have had an edge. But despite all this, it's hard to imagine
that the world would be a substantially better place if it had not
undergone the mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic.

Against this background, the current carbon/climate crisis seems
pretty small beer. The change in mean global temperatures seems quite
unlikely to be much greater than the regular cyclical change between
glacial and interglacial climates. Land use change is immense, but
it's not clear how long it will last, and there are rich seedbanks in
the soil that will allow restoration. If fossil fuel use goes
unchecked, carbon dioxide levels may rise as high as they were in the
Eocene, and do so at such a rate that they cause a transient spike in
ocean acidity. But they will not stay at those high levels, and the
Eocene was not such a terrible place.

The earth doesn't need ice caps, or permafrost, or any particular sea
level. Such things come and go and rise and fall as a matter of
course. The planet's living systems adapt and flourish, sometimes in a
way that provides negative feedback, occasionally with a positive
feedback that amplifies the change. A planet that made it through the
massive biogeochemical unpleasantness of the late Permian is in little
danger from a doubling, or even a quintupling, of the very low carbon
dioxide level that preceded the industrial revolution, or from the
loss of a lot of forests and reefs, or from the demise of half its
species, or from the thinning of its ozone layer at high latitudes.

But none of this is to say that we as people should not worry about
global change; we should worry a lot. This is because climate change
may not hurt the planet, but it hurts people. In particular, it will
hurt people who are too poor to adapt. Significant climate change will
change rainfall patterns, and probably patterns of extreme events as
well, in ways that could easily threaten the food security of hundreds
of millions of people supporting themselves through subsistence
agriculture or pastoralism. It will have a massive effect on the lives
of the relatively small number of people in places where sea ice is an
important part of the environment (and it seems unlikely that anything
we do now can change that). In other, more densely populated places
local environmental and biotic change may have similarly sweeping
effects.

Secondary to this, the loss of species, both known and unknown, will
be experienced by some as a form of damage that goes beyond any
deterioration in ecosystem services. Many people will feel themselves
and their world diminished by such extinctions even when they have no
practical consequences, despite the fact that they cannot ascribe an
objective value to their loss. One does not have to share the values
of these people to recognise their sincerity.

All of these effects provide excellent reasons to act. And yet many
people in the various green movements feel compelled to add on the
notion that the planet itself is in crisis, or doomed; that all life
on earth is threatened. And in a world where that rhetoric is common,
the idea that this eschatological approach to the environment is
baseless is a dangerous one. Since the 1970s the environmental
movement has based much of its appeal on personifying the planet and
making it seem like a single entity, then seeking to place it in some
ways "in our care". It is a very powerful notion, and one which
benefits from the hugely influential iconographic backing of the first
pictures of the earth from space; it has inspired much of the good
that the environmental movement has done. The idea that the planet is
not in peril could thus come to undermine the movement's power. This
is one of the reasons people react against the idea so strongly. One
respected and respectable climate scientist reacted to Andy Revkin's
recent use of the phrase "In fact, the planet has nothing to worry
about from global warming" in the New York Times with near apoplectic
fury.

If the belief that the planet is in peril were merely wrong, there
might be an excuse for ignoring it, though basing one's actions on
lies is an unattractive proposition. But the planet-in-peril idea is
an easy target for those who, for various reasons, argue against any
action on the carbon/climate crisis at all. In this, bad science is a
hostage to fortune. What's worse, the idea distorts environmental
reasoning, too. For example, laying stress on the non-issue of the
health of the planet, rather than the real issues of effects that harm
people, leads to a general preference for averting change rather than
adapting to it, even though providing the wherewithal for adaptation
will often be the most rational response.

The planet-in-peril idea persists in part simply through widespread
ignorance of earth history. But some environmentalists, and perhaps
some environmental reporters, will argue that the inflated rhetoric
that trades on this error is necessary in order to keep the show on
the road. The idea that people can be more easily persuaded to save
the planet, which is not in danger, than their fellow human beings,
who are, is an unpleasant and cynical one; another dangerous idea, not
least because it may indeed hold some truth. But if putting the planet
at the centre of the debate is a way of involving everyone, of making
us feel that we're all in this together, then one can't help noticing
that the ploy isn't working out all that well. In the rich nations,
many people may indeed believe that the planet is in danger -- but
they don't believe that they are in danger, and perhaps as a result
they're not clamouring for change loud enough, or in the right way, to
bring it about.

There is also a problem of learned helplessness. I suspect people are
flattered, in a rather perverse way, by the idea that their lifestyle
threatens the whole planet, rather than just the livelihoods of
millions of people they have never met. But the same sense of scale
that flatters may also enfeeble. They may come to think that the
problems are too great for them to do anything about.

Rolling carbon/climate issues into the great moral imperative of
improving the lives of the poor, rather than relegating them to the
dodgy rhetorical level of a threat to the planet as a whole, seems
more likely to be a sustainable long-term strategy. The most important
thing about environmental change is that it hurts people; the basis of
our response should be human solidarity.

The planet will take care of itself.
_________________________________________________________________

SAMUEL BARONDES
Neurobiologist and Psychiatrist, University of California San
Francisco; Author, Better Than Prozac
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Using Medications To Change Personality

Personality -- the pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions that is
typical of each of us -- is generally formed by early adulthood. But
many people still want to change. Some, for example, consider
themselves too gloomy and uptight and want to become more cheerful and
flexible. Whatever their aims they often turn to therapists, self-help
books, and religious practices.

In the past few decades certain psychiatric medications have become an
additional tool for those seeking control of their lives. Initially
designed to be used for a few months to treat episodic psychological
disturbances such as severe depression, they are now being widely
prescribed for indefinite use to produce sustained shifts in certain
personality traits. Prozac is the best known of them, but many others
are on the market or in development. By directly affecting brain
circuits that control emotions, these medications can produce
desirable effects that may be hard to replicate by sheer force of will
or by behavioral exercises. Millions keep taking them continuously,
year after year, to modulate personality.

Nevertheless, despite the testimonials and apparent successes, the
sustained use of such drugs to change personality should still be
considered dangerous. Not because manipulation of brain chemicals is
intrinsically cowardly, immoral, or a threat to the social order. In
the opinion of experienced clinicians medications such as Prozac may
actually have the opposite effect, helping to build character and to
increase personal responsibility. The real danger is that there are no
controlled studies of the effects of these drugs on personality over
the many years or even decades in which some people are taking them.
So we are left with a reliance on opinion and belief. And this, as in
all fields, we know to be dangerous.
_________________________________________________________________

DAVID BODANIS
Writer, Consultant; Author: The Electric Universe
[bodanis100.jpg]
The hyper-Islamicist critique of the West as a decadent force that is
already on a downhill course might be true

I wonder sometimes if the hyper-Islamicist critique of the West as a
decadent force that is already on a downhill course might be true. At
first it seems impossible: no one's richer than the US, and no one has
as powerful an Army; western Europe has vast wealth and university
skills as well.

But what got me reflecting was the fact that in just four years after
Pearl Harbor, the US had defeated two of the greatest military forces
the world had ever seen. Everyone naturally accepted there had to be
restrictions on gasoline sales, to preserve limited source of gasoline
and rubber; profiteers were hated. But the first four years after
9/11? Detroit automakers find it easy to continue paying off
congressmen to ensure that gasoline-wasting SUV's aren't restricted in
any way.

There are deep trends behind this. Technology is supposed to be
speeding up, but if you think about it, airplanes have a similar feel
and speed to ones of 30 years ago; cars and oil rigs and credit cards
and the operations of the NYSE might be a bit more efficient than a
few decades ago, but also don't feel fundamentally different. Aside
from the telephones, almost all the objects and and daily habits in
Spielberg's 20 year old film E.T. are about the same as today.

What has transformed is the possibility of quick change. It's a lot,
lot harder than it was before. Patents for vague, general ideas are
much easier to get than they were before, which slows down the
introduction of new technology; academics in biotech and other fields
are wary about sharing their latest research with potentially
competing colleagues (which slows down the creation of new technology
as well).

Even more, there's a tension, a fear of falling from the increasingly
fragile higher tiers of society, which means that social barriers are
higher as well. I went to adequate but not extraordinary public
(state) schools in Chicago, but my children go to private schools. I
suspect that many contributors to this site, unless they live in
academic towns where state schools are especially strong, are in a
similar position. This is fine for our children, but not for those of
the same theoretical potential, yet who lack parents who can afford
it.

Sheer inertia can mask such flaws for quite a while. The National
Academy of Sciences has shown that, once again, the percentage of
American-born university students studying the hard physical sciences
has gone down. At one time that didn't matter, for life in America --
and at the top American universities -- was an overwhelming lure for
ambitious youngsters from Seoul and Bangalore. But already there are
signs of that slipping, and who knows what it'll be like in another
decade or two.

There's another sort of inertia that's coming to an end as well. The
first generation of immigrants from farm to city bring with them the
attitudes of their farm world; the first generation of 'migrants' from
blue collar city neighborhoods to upper middle class professional life
bring similar attitudes of responsibility as well. We ignore what the
media pours out about how we're supposed to live. We're responsible
for parents, even when it's not to our economic advantage; we vote
against our short-term economic interests, because it's the 'right'
thing to do; we engage in philanthropy towards individuals of very
different backgrounds from ourselves. But why? In many parts of
America or Europe, the rules and habits creating those attitudes no
longer exist at all.

When that finally gets cut away, will what replaces it be strong
enough for us to survive?
_________________________________________________________________

NICHOLAS HUMPHREY
Psychologist, London School of Economics; Author, The Mind Made Flesh
[humphrey100.jpg]
It is undesirable to believe in a proposition when there is no ground
whatever for supposing it true

Bertrand Russell's idea, put forward 80 years ago, is about as
dangerous as they come. I don't think I can better it: "I wish to
propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which
may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in
question is this: that it is undesirable to believe in a proposition
when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true." (The opening
lines of his Sceptical essays).
_________________________________________________________________

ERIC FISCHL
Artist, New York City; Mary Boone Gallery
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The unknown becomes known, and is not replaced with a new unkown

Several years ago I stood in front of a painting by Vermeer. It was a
painting of a woman reading a letter. She stood near the window for
better lighting and behind her hung a map of the known world. I was
stunned by the revelation of this work. Vermeer understood something
so basic to human need it had gone virtually unnoticed: communication
from afar.

Everything we have done to make us more capable, more powerful, better
protected, more intelligent, has been by enhancing our physical
limitations, our perceptual abilities, our adaptability. When I think
of Vermeer's woman reading the letter I wonder how long did it take to
get to her? Then I think, my god, at some time we developed a system
in which one could leave home and send word back! We figured out a way
that we could be heard from far away and then another system so that
we can be seen from far away. Then I start to marvel at the alchemy of
painting and how we have been able to invest materials with
consciousness so that Vermeer can talk to me across time! I see too he
has put me in the position of not knowing as I am kept from reading
the content of the letter. In this way he has placed me at the edge,
the frontier of wanting to know what I cannot know. I want to know how
long has this letter sender been away and what was he doing all this
time. Is he safe? Does he still love her? Is he on his way home?

Vermeer puts me into what had been her condition of uncertainty. All I
can do is wonder and wait. This makes me think about how not knowing
is so important. Not knowing makes the world large and uncertain and
our survival tenuous. It is a mystery why humans roam and still more a
mystery why we still need to feel so connected to the place we have
left. The not knowing causes such profound anxiety it, in turn, spawns
creativity. The impetus for this creativity is empowerment. Our
gadgets, gizmoes, networks of transportation and communication, have
all been developed either to explore, utilize or master the unknown
territory.

If the unknown becomes known, and is not replaced with a new unknown,
if the farther we reach outward is connected only to how fast we can
bring it home, if the time between not knowing and knowing becomes too
small, creativity will be daunted. And so I worry, if we bring the
universe more completely, more effortlessly, into our homes will there
be less reason to leave them?
_________________________________________________________________

STANISLAS DEHEANE
Cognitive Neuropsychology Researcher, Institut National de la Sant?,
Paris; Author, The Number Sense
[dehane100.jpg]

Touching and pushing the limits of the human brain

From Copernicus to Darwin to Freud, science has a special way of
deflating human hubris by proposing what is frequently perceived, at
the time, as dangerous or pernicious ideas. Today, cognitive
neuroscience presents us with a new challenging idea, whose
accommodation will require substantial personal and societal effort --
the discovery of the intrinsic limits of the human brain.

Calculation was one of the first domains where we lost our special
status -- right from their inception, computers were faster than the
human brain, and they are now billions of times ahead of us in their
speed and breadth of number crunching. Psychological research shows
that our mental "central executive" is amazingly limited -- we can
process only one thought at a time, at a meager rate of five or ten
per second at most. This is rather surprising. Isn't the human brain
supposed to be the most massively parallel machine on earth? Yes, but
its architecture is such that the collective outcome of this parallel
organization, our mind, is a very slow serial processor. What we can
become aware of is intrinsically limited. Whenever we delve deeply
into the processing of one object, we become literally blind to other
items that would require our attention (the "attentional blink"
paradigm). We also suffer from an "illusion of seeing": we think that
we take in a whole visual scene and see it all at once, but research
shows that major chunks of the image can be changed surreptitiously
without our noticing.
True, relative to other animal species, we do have a special
combinatorial power, which lies at the heart of the remarkable
cultural inventions of mathematics, language, or writing. Yet this
combinatorial faculty only works on the raw materials provided by a
small number of core systems for number, space, time, emotion,
conspecifics, and a few other basic domains. The list is not very long
-- and within each domain, we are now discovering lots of little
ill-adapted quirks, evidence of stupid design as expected from a brain
arising from an imperfect evolutionary process (for instance, our
number system only gives us a sense of approximate quantity -- good
enough for foraging, but not for exact mathematics). I therefore do
not share Marc Hauser's optimism that our mind has a "universal" or
"limitless" expressive power. The limits are easy to touch in
mathematics, in topology for instance, where we struggle with the
simplest objects (is a curve a knot... or not?).
As we discover the limits of the human brain, we also find new ways to
design machines that go beyond those limits. Thus, we have to get
ready for a society where, more and more, the human mind will be
replaced by better computers and robots -- and where the human
operator will be increasingly considered a nuisance rather than an
asset. This is already the case in aeronautics, where flight stability
is ensured by fast cybernetics and where landing and take off will
soon be assured by computer, apparently with much improved safety.
There are still a few domains where the human brain maintains an
apparent superiority. Visual recognition used to be one -- but
already, superb face recognition software is appearing, capable of
storing and recognizing thousands of faces with close to human
performance. Robotics is another. No robot to date is capable of
navigating smoothly through a complicated 3-D world. Yet a third area
of human superiority is high-level semantics and creativity: the human
ability to make sense of a story, to pull out the relevant knowledge
from a vast store of potentially useful facts, remains unequalled.
Suppose that, for the next 50 years, those are the main areas in which
engineers will remain unable to match the performance of the human
brain. Are we ready for a world in which the human contributions are
binary, either at the highest level (thinkers, engineers, artists...)
or at the lowest level, where human workforce remains cheaper than
mechanization? To some extent, I would argue that this great divide is
already here, especially between North and South, but also within our
developed countries, between upper and lower casts.
What are the solutions? I envisage two of them. The first is
education. The human brain to some extent is changeable. Thanks to
education, we can improve considerably upon the stock of mental tools
provided to us by evolution. In fact, relative to the large changes
that schooling can provide, whatever neurobiological differences
distinguish the sexes or the races are minuscule (and thus largely
irrelevant -- contra Steve Pinker). The crowning achievements of Sir
Isaac Newton are now accessible to any student in physics and algebra
-- whatever his or her skin color.
Of course, our learning ability isn't without bounds. It is itself
tightly limited by our genes, which merely allow a fringe of
variability in the laying down of our neuronal networks. We never
fully gain entirely new abilities -- but merely transform our existing
brain networks, a partial and constrained process that I have called
"cultural recycling" or "recyclage".
As we gain knowledge of brain plasticity, a major application of
cognitive neuroscience research should be the improvement of life-long
education, with the goal of optimizing this transformation of our
brains. Consider reading. We now understand much better how this
cultural capacity is laid down. A posterior brain network, initially
evolved to recognize objects and faces, gets partially recycled for
the shapes of letters and words, and learns to connect these shapes to
other temporal areas for sounds and words. Cultural evolution has
modified the shapes of letters so that they are easily learnable by
this brain network. But, the system remains amazingly imperfect.
Reading still has to go through the lopsided design of the retina,
where the blood vessels are put in front of the photoreceptors, and
where only a small region of the fovea has enough resolution to
recognize small print. Furthermore, both the design of writing systems
and the way in which they are taught are perfectible. In the end,
after years of training, we can only read at an appalling speed of
perhaps 10 words per second, a baud rate surpassed by any present-day
modem.
Nevertheless, this cultural invention has radically changed our
cognitive abilities, doubling our verbal working memory for instance.
Who knows what other cultural inventions might lie ahead of us, and
might allow us to further push the limits of our brain biology?
A second, more futuristic solution may lie in technology.
Brain-computer interfaces are already around the corner. They are
currently being developed for therapeutic purposes. Soon, cortical
implants will allow paralyzed patients to move equipment by direct
cerebral command. Will such devices later be applied to the normal
human brain, in the hopes of extending our memory span or the speed of
our access to information? And will we be able to forge a society in
which such tools do not lead to further divisions between, on the one
hand, high-tech brains powered by the best education and neuro-gear,
and on the other hand, low-tech man power just good enough for cheap
jobs?
_________________________________________________________________

JOEL GARREAU
Cultural Revolution Correspondent, Washington Post ; Author, Radical
Evolution
[garreau100.jpg]

Suppose Faulkner was right?
In his December 10, 1950, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William
Faulkner said:



I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that
man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last
ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless
rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even
then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny
inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I
believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.
He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an
inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of
compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's,
duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help
man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courasge
and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice
which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not
merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the
pillars to help him endure and prevail.

It's easy to dismiss such optimism. The reason I hope Faulkner was
right, however, is that we are at a turning point in history. For the
first time, our technologies are not so much aimed outward at
modifying our environment in the fashion of fire, clothes,
agriculture, cities and space travel. Instead, they are increasingly
aimed inward at modifying our minds, memories, metabolisms,
personalities and progeny. If we can do all that, then we are entering
an era of engineered evolution -- radical evolution, if you will -- in
which we take control of what it will mean to be human.
This is not some distant, science-fiction future. This is happening
right now, in our generation, on our watch. The GRIN technologies --
the genetic, robotic, information and nano processes -- are following
curves of accelerating technological change the arithmetic of which
suggests that the last 20 years are not a guide to the next 20 years.
We are more likely to see that magnitude of change in the next eight.
Similarly, the amount of change of the last half century, going back
to the time when Faulkner spoke, may well be compressed into the next
14.
This raises the question of where we will gain the wisdom to guide
this torrent, and points to what happens if Faulkner was wrong. If we
humans are not so much able to control our tools, but instead come to
be controlled by them, then we will be heading into a
technodeterminist future.

You can get different versions of what that might mean.

Some would have you believe that a future in which our creations
eliminate the ills that have plagued mankind for millennia --
conquering pain, suffering, stupidity, ignorance and even death -- is
a vision of heaven. Some even welcome the idea that someday soon, our
creations will surpass the pitiful limitations of Version 1.0 humans,
themselves becoming a successor race that will conquer the universe,
and care for us benevolently.
Others feel strongly that a life without suffering is a life without
meaning, reducing humankind to ignominious, character-less husks. They
also point to what could happen if such powerful self-replicating
technologies get into the hands of bumblers or madmen. They can easily
imagine a vision of hell in which we wipe out not only our species,
but all of life on earth.
If Faulkner is right, however, there is a third possible future. That
is the one that counts on the ragged human convoy of divergent
perceptions, piqued honor, posturing, insecurity and humor once again
wending its way to glory. It puts a shocking premium on Faulkner's
hope that man will prevail "because he has a soul, a spirit capable of
compassion and sacrifice and endurance." It assumes that even as
change picks up speed, giving us less and less time to react, we will
still be able to rely on the impulse that Churchill described when he
said, "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing--after
they have exhausted all other possibilities."
The key measure of such a "prevail" scenario's success would be an
increasing intensity of links between humans, not transistors. If some
sort of transcendence is achieved beyond today's understanding of
human nature, it would not be through some individual becoming
superman. Transcendence would be social, not solitary. The measure
would be the extent to which many transform together.
The very fact that Faulkner's proposition looms so large as we look
into the future does at least illuminate the present.
Referring to Faulkner's breathtaking line, "when the last ding-dong of
doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging
tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will
still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still
talking," the author Bruce Sterling once told me, "You know, the most
interesting part about that speech is that part right there, where
William Faulkner, of all people, is alluding to H. G. Wells and the
last journey of the Traveler from The Time Machine. It's kind of a
completely heartfelt, probably drunk mishmash of cornball
crypto-religious literary humanism and the stark, bonkers, apocalyptic
notions of atomic Armageddon, human extinction, and deep Darwinian
geological time. Man, that was the 20th century all over."
_________________________________________________________________

HELEN FISHER
Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University;
Author, Why We Love
[fisher100.jpg]

If patterns of human love subtlely change, all sorts of social and
political atrocities can escalate

Serotonin-enhancing antidepressants (such as Prozac and many others)
can jeopardize feelings of romantic love, feelings of attachment to a
spouse or partner, one's fertility and one's genetic future.

I am working with psychiatrist Andy Thomson on this topic. We base our
hypothesis on patient reports, fMRI studies, and other data on the
brain.
Foremost, as SSRIs elevate serotonin they also suppress dopaminergic
pathways in the brain. And because romantic love is associated with
elevated activity in dopaminergic pathways, it follows that SSRIs can
jeopardize feelings of intense romantic love. SSRIs also curb
obsessive thinking and blunt the emotions--central characteristics of
romantic love. One patient described this reaction well, writing:
"After two bouts of depression in 10 years, my therapist recommended I
stay on serotonin-enhancing antidepressants indefinitely. As
appreciative as I was to have regained my health, I found that my
usual enthusiasm for life was replaced with blandness. My romantic
feelings for my wife declined drastically. With the approval of my
therapist, I gradually discontinued my medication. My enthusiasm
returned and our romance is now as strong as ever. I am prepared to
deal with another bout of depression if need be, but in my case the
long-term side effects of antidepressants render them off limits".

SSRIs also suppress sexual desire, sexual arousal and orgasm in as
many as 73% of users. These sexual responses evolved to enhance
courtship, mating and parenting. Orgasm produces a flood of oxytocin
and vasopressin, chemicals associated with feelings of attachment and
pairbonding behaviors. Orgasm is also a device by which women assess
potential mates. Women do not reach orgasm with every coupling and the
"fickle" female orgasm is now regarded as an adaptive mechanism by
which women distinguish males who are willing to expend time and
energy to satisfy them. The onset of female anorgasmia may jeopardize
the stability of a long-term mateship as well.

Men who take serotonin-enhancing antidepressants also inhibit evolved
mechanisms for mate selection, partnership formation and marital
stability. The penis stimulates to give pleasure and advertise the
male's psychological and physical fitness; it also deposits seminal
fluid in the vaginal canal, fluid that contains dopamine, oxytocin,
vasopressin, testosterone, estrogen and other chemicals that most
likely influence a female partner's behavior.

These medications can also influence one's genetic future. Serotonin
increases prolactin by stimulating prolactin releasing factors.
Prolactin can impair fertility by suppressing hypothalamic GnRH
release, suppressing pituitary FSH and LH release, and/or suppressing
ovarian hormone production. Clomipramine, a strong serotonin-enhancing
antidepressant, adversely affects sperm volume and motility.

I believe that Homo sapiens has evolved (at least) three primary,
distinct yet overlapping neural systems for reproduction. The sex
drive evolved to motivate ancestral men and women to seek sexual union
with a range of partners; romantic love evolved to enable them to
focus their courtship energy on a preferred mate, thereby conserving
mating time and energy; attachment evolved to enable them to rear a
child through infancy together. The complex and dynamic interactions
between these three brain systems suggest that any medication that
changes their chemical checks and balances is likely to alter an
individual's courting, mating and parenting tactics, ultimately
affecting their fertility and genetic future.

The reason this is a dangerous idea is that the huge drug industry is
heavily invested in selling these drugs; millions of people currently
take these medications worldwide; and as these drugs become generic,
many more will soon imbibe -- inhibiting their ability to fall in love
and stay in love. And if patterns of human love subtlely change, all
sorts of social and political atrocities can escalate.
_________________________________________________________________

PAUL DAVIES
Physicist, Macquarie University, Sydney; Author, How to Build a Time
Machine
[davies100.jpg]

The fight against global warming is lost

Some countries, including the United States and Australia, have been
in denial about global warming. They cast doubt on the science that
set alarm bells ringing. Other countries, such as the UK, are in
panic, and want to make drastic cuts in greenhouse emissions. Both
stances are irrelevant, because the fight is a hopeless one anyway. In
spite of the recent hike in the price of oil, the stuff is still cheap
enough to burn. Human nature being what it is, people will go on
burning it until it starts running out and simple economics puts the
brakes on. Meanwhile the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will
just go on rising. Even if developed countries rein in their
profligate use of fossil fuels, the emerging Asian giants of China and
India will more than make up the difference. Rich countries, whose own
wealth derives from decades of cheap energy, can hardly preach
restraint to developing nations trying to climb the wealth ladder. And
without the obvious solution -- massive investment in nuclear energy
-- continued warming looks unstoppable.

Campaigners for cutting greenhouse emissions try to scare us by
proclaiming that a warmer world is a worse world. My dangerous idea is
that it probably won't be. Some bad things will happen. For example,
the sea level will rise, drowning some heavily populated or fertile
coastal areas. But in compensation Siberia may become the world's
breadbasket. Some deserts may expand, but others may shrink. Some
places will get drier, others wetter. The evidence that the world will
be worse off overall is flimsy. What is certainly the case is that we
will have to adjust, and adjustment is always painful. Populations
will have to move. In 200 years some currently densely populated
regions may be deserted. But the population movements over the past
200 years have been dramatic too. I doubt if anything more drastic
will be necessary. Once it dawns on people that, yes, the world really
is warming up and that, no, it doesn't imply Armageddon, then the
international agreements like the Kyoto protocol will fall apart.

The idea of giving up the global warming struggle is dangerous because
it shouldn't have come to this. Mankind does have the resources and
the technology to cut greenhouse gas emission. What we lack is the
political will. People pay lip service to environmental
responsibility, but they are rarely prepared to put their money where
their mouth is. Global warming may turn out to be not so bad after
all, but many other acts of environmental vandalism are manifestly
reckless: the depletion of the ozone layer, the destruction of rain
forests, the pollution of the oceans. Giving up on global warming will
set an ugly precedent.
_________________________________________________________________

APRIL GORNIK
Artist, New York City; Danese Gallery
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The exact effect of art can't be controlled or fully anticipated

Great art makes itself vulnerable to interpretation, which is one
reason that it keeps being stimulating and fascinating for
generations. The problem inherent in this is that art could inspire
malevolent behavior, as per the notion popularly expressed by A
Clockwork Orange. When I was young, aspiring to be a conceptual
artist, it disturbed me greatly that I couldn't control the
interpretation of my work. When I began painting, it was even worse;
even I wasn't completely sure of what my art meant. That seemed
dangerous for me, personally, at that time. I gradually came not only
to respect the complexity and inscrutability of painting and art, but
to see how it empowers the object. I believe that works of art are
animated by their creators, and remain able to generate thoughts,
feelings, responses. However, the fact is that the exact effect of art
can't be controlled or fully anticipated.
_________________________________________________________________

JAMSHED BHARUCHA

Professor of Psychology, Provost, Senior Vice President, Tufts
University
[bharucha100.jpg]

The more we discover about cognition and the brain, the more we will
realize that education as we know it does not accomplish what we
believe it does

It is not my purpose to echo familiar critiques of our schools. My
concerns are of a different nature and apply to the full spectrum of
education, including our institutions of higher education, which
arguably are the finest in the world.

Our understanding of the intersection between genetics and
neuroscience (and their behavioral correlates) is still in its
infancy. This century will bring forth an explosion of new knowledge
on the genetic and environmental determinants of cognition and brain
development, on what and how we learn, on the neural basis of human
interaction in social and political contexts, and on variability
across people.

Are we prepared to transform our educational institutions if new
science challenges cherished notions of what and how we learn? As we
acquire the ability to trace genetic and environmental influences on
the development of the brain, will we as a society be able to agree on
what our educational objectives should be?

Since the advent of scientific psychology we have learned a lot about
learning. In the years ahead we will learn a lot more that will
continue to challenge our current assumptions. We will learn that some
things we currently assume are learnable are not (and vice versa),
that some things that are learned successfully don't have the impact
on future thinking and behavior that we imagine, and that some of the
learning that impacts future thinking and behavior is not what we
spend time teaching. We might well discover that the developmental
time course for optimal learning from infancy through the life span is
not reflected in the standard educational time line around which
society is organized. As we discover more about the gulf between how
we learn and how we teach, hopefully we will also discover ways to
redesign our systems -- but I suspect that the latter will lag behind
the former.

Our institutions of education certify the mastery of spheres of
knowledge valued by society. Several questions will become
increasingly pressing, and are even pertinent today. How much of this
learning persists beyond the time at which acquisition is certified?
How does this learning impact the lives of our students? How central
is it in shaping the thinking and behavior we would like to see among
educated people as they navigate, negotiate and lead in an
increasingly complex world?

We know that tests and admissions processes are selection devices that
sort people into cohorts on the basis of excellence on various
dimensions. We know less about how much even our finest examples of
teaching contribute to human development over and above selection and
motivation.

Even current knowledge about cognition (specifically, our
understanding of active learning, memory, attention, and implicit
learning) has not fully penetrated our educational practices, because
of inertia as well as a natural lag in the application of basic
research. For example, educators recognize that active learning is
superior to the passive transmission of knowledge. Yet we have a long
way to go to adapt our educational practices to what we already know
about active learning.

We know from research on memory that learning trials bunched up in
time produce less long term retention than the same learning trials
spread over time. Yet we compress learning into discrete packets
called courses, we test learning at the end of a course of study, and
then we move on. Furthermore, memory for both facts and methods of
analytic reasoning are context-dependent. We don't know how much of
this learning endures, how well it transfers to contexts different
from the ones in which the learning occurred, or how it influences
future thinking.

At any given time we attend to only a tiny subset of the information
in our brains or impinging on our senses. We know from research on
attention that information is processed differently by the brain
depending upon whether or not it is attended, and that many factors --
endogenous and exogenous -- control our attention. Educators have been
aware of the role of attention in learning, but we are still far from
understanding how to incorporate this knowledge into educational
design. Moreover, new information presented in a learning situation is
interpreted and encoded in terms of prior knowledge and experience;
the increasingly diverse backgrounds of students placed in the same
learning contexts implies that the same information may vary in its
meaningfulness to different students and may be recalled differently.

Most of our learning is implicit, acquired automatically and
unconsciously from interactions with the physical and social
environment. Yet language -- and hence explicit, declarative or
consciously articulated knowledge -- is the currency of formal
education.

Social psychologists know that what we say about why we think and act
as we do is but the tip of a largely unconscious iceberg that drives
our attitudes and our behavior. Even as cognitive and social
neuroscience reveals the structure of these icebergs under the surface
of consciousness (for example, persistent cognitive illusions,
decision biases and perceptual biases to which even the best educated
can be unwitting victims), it will be less clear how to shape or
redirect these knowledge icebergs under the surface of consciousness.

Research in social cognition shows clearly that racial, cultural and
other social biases get encoded automatically by internalizing
stereotypes and cultural norms. While we might learn about this
research in college, we aren't sure how to counteract these factors in
the very minds that have acquired this knowledge.

We are well aware of the power of non-verbal auditory and visual
information, which when amplified by electronic media capture the
attention of our students and sway millions. Future research should
give us a better understanding of nuanced non-verbal forms of
communication, including their universal and culturally based aspects,
as they are manifest in social, political and artistic contexts.

Even the acquisition of declarative knowledge through language -- the
traditional domain of education -- is being usurped by the internet at
our finger tips. Our university libraries and publication models are
responding to the opportunities and challenges of the information age.
But we will need to rethink some of our methods of instruction too.
Will our efforts at teaching be drowned out by information from
sources more powerful than even the best classroom teacher?

It is only a matter of time before we have brain-related technologies
that can alter or supplement cognition, influence what and how we
learn, and increase competition for our limited attention. Imagine the
challenges for institutions of education in an environment in which
these technologies are readily available, for better or worse.

The brain is a complex organ, and we will discover more of this
complexity. Our physical, social and information environments are also
complex and are becoming more so through globalization and advances in
technology. There will be no simple design principles for how we
structure education in response to these complexities.

As elite colleges and universities, we see increasing demand for the
branding we confer, but we will also see greater scrutiny from society
for the education we deliver. Those of us in positions of academic
leadership will need wisdom and courage to examine, transform and
justify our objectives and methods as educators.
_________________________________________________________________

JORDAN POLLACK

Computer Scientist, Brandeis University
[pollack100.jpg]

Science as just another Religion

We scientists like to think that our "way of knowing" is special.
Instead of holding beliefs based on faith in invisible omniscient
deities, or parchments transcribed from oral cultures, we use the
scientific method to discover and know. Truth may be eternal, but
human knowledge of that truth evolves over time, as new questions are
asked, data is recorded, hypotheses are tested, and replication and
refutation mechanisms correct the record.

So it is a very dangerous idea to consider Science as just another
Religion. It's not my idea, but one I noticed growing in a set of
Lakovian Frames within the Memesphere.

One of the frame is that scientists are doom and gloom prophets. For
example, at a recent popular technology conference, a parade of
speakers spoke about the threats of global warming, the sea level
rising by 18 feet and destroying cities, more category 5 hurricanes,
etc. It was quite a reversal from the positivistic techno-utopian
promises of miraculous advances in medicine, computers, and weaponry
that have allowed science to bloom in the late 20th century. A friend
pointed out that -- in the days before Powerpoint -- these scientists
might be wearing sandwich-board signs saying "The End is Near!"

Another element in the framing of science as a religion is the
response to evidence-based policy. Scientists who do take political
stands on "moral" issues such as stem-cell research, death penalty,
nuclear weapons, global warming, etc., can be sidelined as atheists,
humanists, or agnostics who have no moral or ethical standing outside
their narrow specialty (as compared to, say, televangelist preachers.)

A third, and the most nefarious frame, casts theory as one opinion
among others which should represented out of fairness or tolerance.
This is the subterfuge used by Intelligent Design Creationists.

We may believe in the separation of church and state, but that
firewall has fallen. Science and Reason are losing political battles
to Superstition and Ignorance. Politics works by rewarding friends and
punishing enemies, and while our individual votes may be private, exit
polls have proven that Science didn't vote for the incumbent.

There seem to be three choices going forward: Reject, Accommodate, or
Embrace.

One path is to go on an attack on religion in the public sphere. In
his book End of
Faith, Sam Harris points out that humoring people who believe in God
is like humoring people who believe that "a diamond [] the size of a
refrigerator" is buried in their back yard. There is a fine line
between pushing God out of our public institutions and repeating
religious intolerance of regimes past.

A second is to embrace Faith-Based Science. Since, from the
perspective of government, research just another special interest
feeding at the public trough, we should change our model to be more
accommodating to political reality. Research is already sold like
highway construction projects, with a linear accelerator for your
state and a supercomputer center for mine, all done through direct
appropriations. All that needs to change is the justifications for
such spending.

How would Faith-Based Science work? Well, Physics could sing the psalm
that Perpetual Motion would solve the energy crisis, thereby
triggering a $500 billion program in free energy machines. (Of course,
God is on our side to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics!)
Astronomy could embrace Astrology and do grassroots PR through Daily
Horoscopes to gain mass support for a new space program. In fact, an
anti-gravity initiative could pass today if it were spun as a repeal
of the "heaviness tax." Using the renaming principle, the SETI program
can be re-legalized and brought back to life as the "Search for God"
project.

Finally, the third idea is to actually embrace this dangerous idea and
organize a new open-source spiritual and moral movement. I think a
new, greener religion, based on faith in the Gaia Hypothesis and an
11th commandment to "Protect the Earth" could catch on, especially if
welcoming to existing communities of faith. Such a movement could be a
new pulpit from which the evidence-based silent majority can speak
with both moral force and evangelical fervor about issues critical to
the future of our planet.
_________________________________________________________________

JUAN ENRIQUEZ
CEO, Biotechonomy; Founding Director, Harvard Business School's Life
Sciences Project; Author, The Untied States of America
[enriquez100jpg]

Technology can untie the U.S.

Everyone grows and dies; same is true of countries. The only question
is how long one postpones the inevitable. In the case of some
countries, life spans can be very long, so it is worth asking is the
U.S. in adolescence, middle age, or old age? Do science and technology
accelerate or offset demise? And finally "how many stars will be in
the U.S. flag in fifty years?"

There has yet to be a single U.S. president buried under the same flag
he was born under, yet we oft take continuity for granted. Just as
almost no newlyweds expect to divorce, citizens rarely assume their
beloved country, flag and anthem might end up an exhibit in an
archeology museum. But countries rich and poor, Asian, African, and
European have been untying time and again. In the last five decades
the number of UN members has tripled. This trend goes way beyond the
de-colonization of the 1960s, and it is not exclusive to failed
states; it is a daily debate within the United Kingdom, Italy, France,
Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and many others.

So far the Americas has remained mostly impervious to these global
trends, but, even if in God you trust, there are no guarantees. Over
the next decade waves of technology will wash over the U.S. Almost any
applied field you care to look at promises extraordinary change,
opportunities, and challenges. (Witness the entries in this edition of
Edge). How counties adapt to massive, rapid upheaval will go a long
way towards determining the eventual outcome. To paraphrase Darwin, it
is not the strongest, not the largest, that survive rather it is those
best prepared to cope with change.

It is easy to argue that the U.S. could be a larger more powerful
country in fifty years. But it is also possible that, like so many
other great powers, it could begin to unravel and untie. This is not
something that depends on what we do decide to do fifty years hence;
to a great extent it depends on what we choose to do, or choose to
ignore, today. There are more than a few worrisome trends.

Future ability to generate wealth depends on techno-literacy. But
educational excellence, particularly in grammar and high schools is
far from uniform, and it is not world class. Time and again the U.S.
does poorly, particularly in regards to math and science, when
compared with its major trading partners. Internally, there are
enormous disparities between schools and between the number of
students that pass state competency exams and what federal tests tell
us about the same students. There are also large gaps in techno
literacy between ethnic groups. By 2050 close to 40% of the U.S.
population will be Hispanic and African American. These groups receive
3% of the PhDs in math and science today. How we prepare kids for a
life sciences, materials, robotics, IT, and nanotechnology driven
world is critical. But we currently invest $22,000 federal dollars in
those over 65 and just over $2,000 in those under sixteen...

As ethnic, age, and regional gaps in the ability to adapt increase
there are many wary and frustrated by technology, open borders, free
trade, and smart immigrants. Historically, when others use newfangled
ways to leap ahead, it can lead to a conservative response. This is
likeliest within those societies and groups thant have the most to
lose, often among those who have been the most successful. One often
observes a reflexive response: stop the train; I want to get off. Or,
as the Red Sox now say, just wait till last year. No more teaching
evolution, no more research into stem cells, no more Indian or Chinese
or Mexican immigrants, no matter how smart or hardworking they might
be. These individual battles are signs of a creeping xenophobia,
isolationism, and fury.

Within the U.S. there are many who are adapting very successfully.
They tend to concentrate in a very few zip codes, life science
clusters like 92121(between Salk, Scripps, and UCSD) and
techno-empires like 02139 (MIT). Most of the nation's wealth and taxes
are generated by a few states and, within these states, within in a
few square miles. It is those who live in these areas that are most
affronted by restrictions on research, the lack of science literate
teenagers, and the reliance on God instead of science.

Politicians well understand these divides and they have gerrymandered
their own districts to reflect them. Because competitive congressional
elections are rarer today than turnovers within the Soviet Politburo,
there is rarely an open debate and discussion as to why other parts of
the country act and think so differently. The Internet and cable
further narrowcast news and views, tending to reinforce what one's
neighbors and communities already believe. Positions harden. Anger at
"the others" mounts.

Add a large and mounting debt to this equation, along with politicized
religion, and the mixture becomes explosive. The average household now
owes over $88,000 and the present value of what we have promised to
pay is now about $473,000. There is little willingness within
Washington to address a mounting deficit, never mind the current
account imbalance. Facing the next electoral challenge, few seem to
remember the last act of many an empire is to drive itself into
bankruptcy.

Sooner or later we could witness some very bitter arguments about who
gets and who pays. In developed country after developed country, it is
often the richest, not the ethnically or religiously repressed, that
first seek autonomy and eventually dissolution. In this context it is
worth recalling that New England, not the South, has been the most
secession prone region. As the country expanded, New Englanders
attempted to include the right to untie into the constitution; the
argument was that as this great country expanded South and West they
would lose control over their political and economic destiny. Perhaps
this is what led to four separate attempts to untie the Union.

When we assume stability and continuity we can wake up to
irreconcilable differences. Science and a knowledge driven economy can
allow a few folks to build powerful and successful countries very
quickly, witness Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Ireland, but changes of
this magnitude can also bury or split the formerly great who refuse to
adapt, as well as those who practice bad governance. If we do not
begin to address some current divides quickly we could live to see an
Un-Tied States of America.
_________________________________________________________________

STEPHEN M. KOSSLYN
Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, Wet Mind
[kosslyn100.jpg]

A Science of the Divine?

Here's an idea that many academics may find unsettling and dangerous:
God exists. And here's another idea that many religious people may
find unsettling and dangerous: God is not supernatural, but rather
part of the natural order. Simply stating these ideas in the same
breath invites them to scrape against each other, and sparks begin to
fly. To avoid such conflict, Stephen Jay Gould famously argued that we
should separate religion and science, treating them as distinct
"magisteria." But science leads many of us to try to understand all
that we encounter with a single, grand and glorious overarching
framework. In this spirit, let me try to suggest one way in which the
idea of a "supreme being" can fit into a scientific worldview.

I offer the following not to advocate the ideas, but rather simply to
illustrate one (certainly not the only) way that the concept of God
can be approached scientifically.

1.0. First, here's the specific conception of God I want to explore:
God is a "supreme being" that transcends space and time, permeates our
world but also stands outside of it, and can intervene in our daily
lives (partly in response to prayer).

2.0. A way to begin to think about this conception of the divine rests
on three ideas:

2.1. Emergent properties. There are many examples in science where
aggregates produce an entity that has properties that cannot be
predicted entirely from the elements themselves. For example, neurons
in large numbers produce minds; moreover, minds in large numbers
produce economic, political, and social systems.
2.2. Downward causality. Events at "higher levels" (where emergent
properties become evident) can in turn feed back and affect events at
lower levels. For example, chronic stress (a mental event) can cause
parts of the brain to become smaller. Similarly, an economic
depression or the results of an election affect the lives of the
individuals who live in that society.
2.3. The Ultimate Superset. The Ultimate Superset (superordinate set)
of all living things may have an equivalent status to an economy or
culture. It has properties that emerge from the interactions of living
things and groups of living things, and in turn can feed back to
affect those things and groups.

3.0. Can we conceive of God as an emergent property of all living
things that can in turn affect its constituents? Here are some ways in
which this idea is consistent with the nature of God, as outlined at
the outset.

3.1. This emergent entity is "transcendent" in the sense that it
exists in no specific place or time. Like a culture or an economy, God
is nowhere, although the constituent elements occupy specific places.
As for transcending time, consider this analogy: Imagine that 1/100th
of the neurons in your brain were replaced every hour, and each old
neuron programmed a new one so that the old one's functionality was
preserved. After 100 hours your brain would be an entirely new organ
-- but your mind would continue to exist as it had been before.
Similarly, as each citizen dies and is replaced by a child, the
culture continues to exist (and can grow and develop, with a "life of
its own"). So too with God. For example, in the story of Jacob's
ladder, Jacob realizes "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did
not know it." (Genesis 28: 16) I interpret this story as illustrating
that God is everywhere but nowhere. The Ultimate Superset permeates
our world but also stands outside of (or, more specifically, "above")
it.
3.2. The Ultimate Superset can affect our individual lives. Another
analogy: Say that geese flying south for the winter have rather
unreliable magnetic field detectors in their brains. However, there's
a rule built into their brains that leads them to try to stay near
their fellows as they fly. The flock as a whole would navigate far
better than any individual bird, because the noise in the individual
bird brain navigation systems would cancel out. The emergent entity --
the flock -- in turn would affect the individual geese, helping them
to navigate better than they could on their own.
3.3. When people pray to the Lord, they beseech intervention on their
or others' behalf. The view that I've been outlining invites us to
think of the effects of prayer as akin to becoming more sensitive to
the need to stay close to the other birds in the flock: By praying,
one can become more sensitive to the emergent "supreme being." Such
increased sensitivity may imply that one can contribute more strongly
to this emergent entity.

By analogy, it's as if one of those geese became aware of the "keep
near" rule, and decided to nudge the other birds in a particular
direction -- which thereby allows it to influence the flock's effect
on itself. To the extent that prayer puts one closer to God, one's
plea for intervention will have a larger impact on the way that The
Ultimate Superset exerts downward causality. But note that, according
to this view, God works rather slowly. Think of dropping rocks in a
pond: it takes time for the ripples to propagate and eventually be
reflected back from the edge, forming interference patterns in the
center of the pond.

4.0. A crucial idea in monotheistic religions is that God is the
Creator. The present approach may help us begin to grapple with this
idea, as follows.

4.1. First, consider each individual person. The environment plays a
key role in creating who and what we are because there are far too few
genes to program every aspect of our brains. For example, when you
were born, your genes programmed many connections in your visual
areas, but did not specify the precise circuits necessary to determine
how far away objects are. As an infant, the act of reaching for an
object tuned the brain circuits that estimate how far away the object
was from you.

Similarly, your genes graced you with the ability to acquire language,
but not with a specific language. The act of acquiring a language
shapes your brain (which in turn may make it difficult to acquire
another language, with different sounds and grammar, later in life).
Moreover, cultural practices configure the brains of members of the
culture. A case in point: the Japanese have many forms of bowing,
which are difficult for a Westerner to master relatively late in life;
when we try to bow, we "bow with an accent."
4.2. And the environment not only played an essential role in how we
developed as children, but also plays a continuing role in how we
develop over the course of our lives as adults. The act of learning
literally changes who and what we are.
4.3. According to this perspective, it's not just negotiating the
physical world and sociocultural experience that shape the brain: The
Ultimate Superset -- the emergent property of all living things --
affects all of the influences that "make us who and what we are," both
as we develop during childhood and continue to learn and develop as
adults.
4.4. Next, consider our species. One could try to push this
perspective into a historical context, and note that evolution by
natural selection reflects the effects of interactions among living
things. If so, then the emergent properties of such interactions could
feed back to affect the course of evolution itself.

In short, it is possible to begin to view the divine through the lens
of science. But such reasoning does no more than set the stage; to be
a truly dangerous idea, this sort of proposal must be buttressed by
the results of empirical test. At present, my point is not to
convince, but rather to intrigue. As much as I admired Stephen Jay
Gould (and I did, very much), perhaps he missed the mark on this one.
Perhaps there is a grand project waiting to be launched, to integrate
the two great sources of knowledge and belief in the world today --
science and religion.
_________________________________________________________________

JERRY COYNE
Evolutionary Biologist; Professor, Department of Ecology and
Evolution, University of Chicago; Author (with H. Allen Orr),
Speciation
[coyne100.jpg]

Many behaviors of modern humans were genetically hard-wired (or
soft-wired) in our distant ancestors by natural selection

For me, one idea that is dangerous and possibly true is an extreme
form of evolutionary psychology -- the view that many behaviors of
modern humans were genetically hard-wired (or soft-wired) in our
distant ancestors by natural selection.
The reason I say that this idea might be true is that we cannot be
sure of the genetic and evolutionary underpinnings of most human
behaviors. It is difficult or impossible to test many of the
conjectures of evolutionary psychology. Thus, we can say only that
behaviors such as the sexual predilections of men versus women, and
the extreme competitiveness of males, are consistent with evolutionary
psychology.

But consistency arguments have two problems. First, they are not hard
scientific proof. Are we satisfied that sonnets are phallic extensions
simply because some male poets might have used them to lure females?
Such arguments fail to meet the normal standards of scientific
evidence.

Second, as is well known, one can make consistency arguments for
virtually every human behavior. Given the possibilities of kin
selection (natural selection for behaviors that do no good for to
their performers but are advantageous to their relatives) and
reciprocal altruism, and our ignorance of the environments of our
ancestors, there is no trait beyond evolutionary explanation. Indeed,
there are claims for the evolutionary origin of even manifestly
maladaptive behaviors, such as homosexuality, priestly celibacy, and
extreme forms of altruism (e.g., self-sacrifice during wartime). But
surely we cannot consider it scientifically proven that genes for
homosexuality are maintained in human populations by kin selection.
This remains possible but undemonstrated.

Nevertheless, much of human behavior does seem to conform to Darwinian
expectations. Males are promiscuous and females coy. We treat our
relatives better than we do other people. The problem is where to draw
the line between those behaviors that are so obviously adaptive that
no one doubts their genesis (e.g. sleeping and eating), those which
are probably but not as obviously adaptive (e.g., human sexual
behavior and our fondness for fats and sweets) and those whose
adaptive basis is highly speculative (e.g., the origin of art and our
love of the outdoors).

Although I have been highly critical of evolutionary psychology, I
have not done so from political motives, nor do I think that the
discipline is in principle misguided. Rather, I have been critical
because evolutionary psychologists seem unwilling to draw lines
between what can be taken as demonstrated and what remains
speculative, making the discipline more of a faith than a science.
This lack of rigor endangers the reputation of all of evolutionary
biology, making our endeavors seem to be merely the concoction of
ingenious stories. If we are truly to understand human nature, and use
this knowledge constructively, we must distinguish the probably true
from the possibly true.

So, why do I see evolutionary psychology as dangerous? I think it is
because I am afraid to see myself and my fellow humans as mere
marionettes dancing on genetic strings. I would like to think that we
have immense freedom to better ourselves as individuals and to create
a just and egalitarian society. Granted, genetics is not destiny, but
neither are we completely free of our evolutionary baggage. Might
genetics really hold a leash on our capacity to change? If so, then
some claims of evolutionary psychology give us convenient but
dangerous excuses for behaviors that seem unacceptable. It is all too
easy, for example, for philandering males to excuse their behavior as
evolutionarily justified. Evolutionary psychologists argue that it is
possible to overcome our evolutionary heritage. But what if it is not
so easy to take the Dawkinsian road and "rebel against the tyranny of
the selfish replicators"?
_________________________________________________________________

ERNST P?PPEL
Neuroscientist, Chairman, Board of Directors, Human Science Center and
Department of Medical Psychology, Munich University, Germany; Author,
Mindworks
[poppel100.jpg]

My belief in science

Average life expectancy of a species on this globe is just a few
million years. From an external point of view, it would be nothing
special if humankind suddenly disappears. We have been here for
sometime. With humans no longer around, evolutionary processes would
have an even better chance to fill in all those ecological niches
which have been created by human activities. As we change the world,
and as thousands of species are lost every year because of human
activities, we provide a new and productive environment for the
creation of new species. Thus, humankind is very creative with respect
to providing a frame for new evolutionary trajectories, and humankind
would even be more creative, if it has disappeared altogether. If
somebody (unfortunately not our descendents) would visit this globe
some time later, they would meet many new species, which owe their
existence the presence and the disappearance of humankind.

But this is not going to happen, because we are doing science. With
science we apparently get a better understanding of basic principles
in nature, we have a chance to improve quality of life, and we can
develop means to extend the life expectancy of our species.
Unfortunately, some of these scientific activities have a paradoxical
effect resulting in a higher risk for a common disappearance. Maybe,
science will not be so effective after all to prevent our
disappearance.

Only now comes my dangerous idea as my (!) dangerous idea. It is not
so difficult to come up with a dangerous scenario on a general level,
but if one takes such a question also seriously on a personal level,
one has to meditate an individual scenario. I am very grateful for
this question formulated by Steven Pinker as it forced me to visit my
episodic memory and to think about what has been and still is "my
dangerous idea". Although nobody else might be interested in a
personal statement, I say it anyway: My dangerous idea is my belief in
science.

In all my research (in the field of temporal perception or visual
processes) I have a basic trust in the scientific activities, and I
actually believe the results I have obtained. And I believe the
results of others. But why? I know that there so many unknown and
unknowable variables that are part of the experimental setup and which
cannot be controlled. How can I trust in spite of so many unknowables
(does this word exist in English?)? Furthermore, can I really rely on
my thinking, can I trust my eyes and ears? Can I be so sure about my
scientific activities that I communicate with pride the results to
others? If I look at the complexity of the brain, how is it possible
that something reasonable comes out of this network? How is it
possible that a face that I see or a thought that I have maintain
their identity over time? If I have no access to what goes on in my
brain, how can I be so proud, (how can anybody be so proud) about
scientific achievements?
_________________________________________________________________

GEOFFREY MILLER
Evolutionary Psychologist, University of New Mexico; Author, The
Mating Mind
[miller100.jpg]

Runaway consumerism explains the Fermi Paradox

The story goes like this: Sometime in the 1940s, Enrico Fermi was
talking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence with
some other physicists. They were impressed that our galaxy holds 100
billion stars, that life evolved quickly and progressively on earth,
and that an intelligent, exponentially-reproducing species could
colonize the galaxy in just a few million years. They reasoned that
extra-terrestrial intelligence should be common by now. Fermi listened
patiently, then asked simply, "So, where is everybody?". That is, if
extra-terrestrial intelligence is common, why haven't we met any
bright aliens yet? This conundrum became known as Fermi's Paradox.

The paradox has become more ever more baffling. Over 150 extrasolar
planets have been identified in the last few years, suggesting that
life-hospitable planets orbit most stars. Paleontology shows that
organic life evolved very quickly after earth's surface cooled and
became life-hospitable. Given simple life, evolution shows progressive
trends towards larger bodies, brains, and social complexity.
Evolutionary psychology reveals several credible paths from simpler
social minds to human-level creative intelligence. Yet 40 years of
intensive searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence have yielded
nothing. No radio signals, no credible spacecraft sightings, no close
encounters of any kind.

So, it looks as if there are two possibilities. Perhaps our science
over-estimates the likelihood of extra-terrestrial intelligence
evolving. Or, perhaps evolved technical intelligence has some deep
tendency to be self-limiting, even self-exterminating. After
Hiroshima, some suggested that any aliens bright enough to make
colonizing space-ships would be bright enough to make thermonuclear
bombs, and would use them on each other sooner or later. Perhaps
extra-terrestrial intelligence always blows itself up. Fermi's Paradox
became, for a while, a cautionary tale about Cold War geopolitics.

I suggest a different, even darker solution to Fermi's Paradox.
Basically, I think the aliens don't blow themselves up; they just get
addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or
colonize space because they're too busy with runaway consumerism and
virtual-reality narcissism. They don't need Sentinels to enslave them
in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today.

The fundamental problem is that any evolved mind must pay attention to
indirect cues of biological fitness, rather than tracking fitness
itself. We don't seek reproductive success directly; we seek tasty
foods that tended to promote survival and luscious mates who tended to
produce bright, healthy babies. Modern results: fast food and
pornography. Technology is fairly good at controlling external reality
to promote our real biological fitness, but it's even better at
delivering fake fitness -- subjective cues of survival and
reproduction, without the real-world effects. Fresh organic fruit
juice costs so much more than nutrition-free soda. Having real friends
is so much more effort than watching Friends on TV. Actually
colonizing the galaxy would be so much harder than pretending to have
done it when filming Star Wars or Serenity.

Fitness-faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our
psychological resistance to it. The printing press is invented; people
read more novels and have fewer kids; only a few curmudgeons lament
this. The Xbox 360 is invented; people would rather play a
high-resolution virtual ape in Peter Jackson's King Kong than be a
perfect-resolution real human. Teens today must find their way through
a carnival of addictively fitness-faking entertainment products: MP3,
DVD, TiVo, XM radio, Verizon cellphones, Spice cable, EverQuest
online, instant messaging, Ecstasy, BC Bud. The traditional staples of
physical, mental, and social development (athletics, homework, dating)
are neglected. The few young people with the self-control to pursue
the meritocratic path often get distracted at the last minute -- the
MIT graduates apply to do computer game design for Electronics Arts,
rather than rocket science for NASA.

Around 1900, most inventions concerned physical reality: cars,
airplanes, zeppelins, electric lights, vacuum cleaners, air
conditioners, bras, zippers. In 2005, most inventions concern virtual
entertainment -- the top 10 patent-recipients are usually IBM,
Matsushita, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Micron Technology, Samsung, Intel,
Hitachi, Toshiba, and Sony -- not Boeing, Toyota, or Wonderbra. We
have already shifted from a reality economy to a virtual economy, from
physics to psychology as the value-driver and resource-allocator. We
are already disappearing up our own brainstems. Freud's pleasure
principle triumphs over the reality principle. We narrow-cast
human-interest stories to each other, rather than broad-casting
messages of universal peace and progress to other star systems.

Maybe the bright aliens did the same. I suspect that a certain period
of fitness-faking narcissism is inevitable after any intelligent life
evolves. This is the Great Temptation for any technological species --
to shape their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and
reproductive success without the substance. Most bright alien species
probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to
their pleasures, and less to their children.

Heritable variation in personality might allow some lineages to resist
the Great Temptation and last longer. Those who persist will evolve
more self-control, conscientiousness, and pragmatism. They will evolve
a horror of virtual entertainment, psychoactive drugs, and
contraception. They will stress the values of hard work, delayed
gratification, child-rearing, and environmental stewardship. They will
combine the family values of the Religious Right with the
sustainability values of the Greenpeace Left.

My dangerous idea-within-an-idea is that this, too, is already
happening. Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, and anti-consumerism
activists, already understand exactly what the Great Temptation is,
and how to avoid it. They insulate themselves from our Creative-Class
dream-worlds and our EverQuest economics. They wait patiently for our
fitness-faking narcissism to go extinct. Those practical-minded
breeders will inherit the earth, as like-minded aliens may have
inherited a few other planets. When they finally achieve Contact, it
will not be a meeting of novel-readers and game-players. It will be a
meeting of dead-serious super-parents who congratulate each other on
surviving not just the Bomb, but the Xbox. They will toast each other
not in a soft-porn Holodeck, but in a sacred nursery.
_________________________________________________________________

ROBERT SHAPIRO
Professor Emeritus, Senior Research Scientist, Department of
Chemistry, New York University. Author, Planetary Dreams
[shapiro100.jpg]

We shall understand the origin of life within the next 5 years
Two very different groups will find this development dangerous, and
for different reasons, but this outcome is best explained at the end
of my discussion.

Just over a half century ago, in the spring of 1953, a famous
experiment brought enthusiasm and renewed interest to this field.
Stanley Miller, mentored by Harold Urey, demonstrated that a mixture
of small organic molecules (monomers) could readily be prepared by
exposing a mixture of simple gases to an electrical spark. Similar
mixtures were found in meteorites, which suggested that organic
monomers may be widely distributed in the universe. If the ingredients
of life could be made so readily, then why could they not just as
easily assort themselves to form cells?

In that same spring, however, another famous paper was published by
James Watson and Francis Crick. They demonstrated that the heredity of
living organisms was stored in a very large large molecule called DNA.
DNA is a polymer, a substance made by stringing many smaller units
together, as links are joined to form a long chain.

The clear connection between the structure of DNA and its biological
function, and the geometrical beauty of the DNA double helix led many
scientists to consider it to be the essence of life itself. One flaw
remained, however, to spoil this picture. DNA could store information,
but it could not reproduce itself without the assistance of proteins,
a different type of polymer. Proteins are also adept at increasing the
rate of (catalyzing) many other chemical reactions that are considered
necessary for life. The origin of life field became mired in the
"chicken-or-the egg" question. Which came first: DNA or proteins? An
apparent answer emerged when it was found that another polymer, RNA (a
cousin of DNA) could manage both heredity and catalysis. In 1986,
Walter Gilbert proposed that life began with an "RNA World." Life
started when an RNA molecule that could copy itself was formed, by
chance, in a pool of its own building blocks.

Unfortunately, a half century of chemical experiments have
demonstrated that nature has no inclination to prepare RNA, or even
the building blocks (nucleotides) that must be linked together to form
RNA. Nucleotides are not formed in Miller-type spark discharges, nor
are they found in meteorites. Skilled chemists have prepared
nucleotides in well-equipped laboratories, and linked them to form
RNA, but neither chemists nor laboratories were present when life
began on the early Earth. The Watson-Crick theory sparked a revolution
in molecular biology, but it left the origin-of-life question at an
impasse.

Fortunately, an alternative solution to this dilemma has gradually
emerged: neither DNA nor RNA nor protein were necessary for the origin
of life. Large molecules dominate the processes of life today, but
they were not needed to get it started. Monomers themselves have the
ability to support heredity and catalysis. The key requirement is that
a suitable energy source be available to assist them in the processes
of self-organization. A demonstration of the principle involved in the
origin of life would require only that a suitable monomer mixture be
exposed to an appropriate energy source in a simple apparatus. We
could then observe the very first steps in evolution.

Some mixtures will work, but many others will fail, for technical
reasons. Some dedicated effort will be needed in the laboratory to
prove this point. Why have I specified five years for this discovery?
The unproductive polymer-based paradigm is far from dead, and
continues to consume the efforts of the majority of workers in the
field. A few years will be needed to entice some of them to explore
the other solution. I estimate that several years more (the time for a
PhD thesis) might be required to identify a suitable monomer-energy
combination, and perform a convincing demonstration.

Who would be disturbed if such efforts should succeed? Many scientists
have been attracted by the RNA World theory because of its elegance
and simplicity. Some of them have devoted decades of their career in
efforts to prove it. They would not be pleased if Freeman Dyson's
description proved to be correct: "life began with little bags, the
precursors of cells, enclosing small volumes of dirty water containing
miscellaneous garbage."

A very different group would find this development as dangerous as the
theory of evolution. Those who advocate creationism and intelligent
design would feel that another pillar of their belief system was under
attack. They have understood the flaws in the RNA World theory, and
used them to support their supernatural explanation for life's origin.
A successful scientific theory in this area would leave one less task
less for God to accomplish: the origin of life would be a natural (and
perhaps frequent) result of the physical laws that govern this
universe. This latter thought falls directly in line with the idea of
Cosmic Evolution, which asserts that events since the Big Bang have
moved almost inevitably in the direction of life. No miracle or
immense stroke of luck was needed to get it started. If this should be
the case, then we should expect to be successful when we search for
life beyond this planet. We are not the only life that inhabits this
universe.
_________________________________________________________________

KAI KRAUSE
Researcher, philosopher, software developer, Author: 3DScience: new
Scanning Electron Microscope imagery
[krause100.jpg]
Anty Gravity: Chaos Theory in an all too practical sense

Dangerous Ideas? It is dangerous ideas you want? From this group of
people ? That in itself ought to be nominated as one of the more
dangerous ideas...

Danger is ubiquitous. If recent years have shown us anything, it
should be that "very simple small events can cause real havoc in our
society". A few hooded youths play cat and mouse with the police:
bang, thousands of burned cars put all of Paris into a complete state
of paralysis, mandatory curfew and the entire system in shock and
horror.

My first thought was: what if any really smart set of people really
set their mind to it...how utterly and scarily trivial it would be, to
disrupt the very fabric of life, to bring society to a dead stop?

The relative innocence and stable period of the last 50 years may
spiral into a nearly inevitable exposure to real chaos. What if it
isn't haphazard testosterone driven riots, where they cannibalize
their own neighborhood, much like in L.A. in the 80s, but someone with
real insight behind that criminal energy ? What if Slashdotters start
musing aloud about "Gee, the L.A. water supply is rather simplistic,
isn't it?" An Open Source crime web, a Wiki for real WTO opposition ?
Hacking L.A. may be a lot easier than hacking IE.

That is basic banter over a beer in a bar, I don't even want to
actually speculate what a serious set of brainiacs could conjure up.
And I refuse to even give it any more print space here. However, the
danger of such sad memes is what requires our attention!

In fact, I will broaden the specter still: its not violent crime and
global terrorism I worry about, as much as the basic underpinning of
our entire civilization coming apart, as such. No acts of malevolence,
no horrible plans by evil dark forces, neither the singular "Bond
Nemesis" kind, nor masses of religious fanatics. None of that
needed... It is the glue that is coming apart to topple this tower.
And no, I am not referring to "spiraling trillions of debt".

No, what I am referring to is a slow process I observed over the last
30 years, ever since in my teens I wondered "How would this world
work, if everyone were like me ?" and realized: it wouldn't !
It was amazing to me that there were just enough people to make just
enough shoes so that everyone can avoid walking barefoot. That there
are people volunteering to spend day-in, day-out, being dentists, and
lawyers and salesmen. Almost any "jobjob" I look at, I have the most
sincere admiration for the tenacity of the people...how do they do it?
It would drive me nuts after hours, let alone years...Who makes those
shoes ?

That was the wondrous introspection in adolescent phases, searching
for a place in the jigsaw puzzle.

But in recent years, the haunting question has come back to me: "How
the hell does this world function at all? And does it, really ? I feel
an alienation zapping through the channels, I can't find myself
connecting with those groups of humanoids trouncing around MTV.
Especially the glimpses of "real life": on daytime-courtroom-dramas or
just looking at faces in the street. On every scale, the closer I
observe it, the more the creeping realization haunts me: individuals,
families, groups, neighborhoods, cities, states, countries... they all
just barely hang in there, between debt and dysfunction. The whole
planet looks like Any town with mini malls cutting up the landscape
and just down the road it's all white trash with rusty car wrecks in
the back yard. A huge Groucho Club I don't want to be a member of.

But it does go further: what is particularly disturbing to see is this
desperate search for Individualism that has rampantly increased in the
last decade or so.

Everyone suddenly needs to be so special, be utterly unique. So unique
that they race off like lemmings to get 'even more individual'
tattoos, branded cattle, with branded chains in every mall, converging
on a blanded sameness world wide, but every rap singer with ever more
gold chains in ever longer stretched limos is singing the tune: Don't
be a loser! Don't be normal! The desperation with which millions of
youngsters try to be that one-in-a-million professional ball player
may have been just a "sad but silly factoid" for a long time.

But now the tables are turning: the anthill is relying on the
behaviour of the ants to function properly. And that implies: the
social behaviour, the role playing, taking defined tasks and follow
them through.

What if each ant suddenly wants to be the queen? What if soldiering
and nest building and cleaning chores is just not cool enough any
more?

If AntTV shows them every day nothing but un-Ant behaviour...?

In my youth we were whining about what to do and how to do it, but in
the end,all of my friends did become "normal" humans, orthopedics and
lawyers, social workers, teachers... There were always a few that
lived on the edges of normality, like ending up as television
celebrities, but on the whole: they were perfectly reasonable ants.
1.8 children, 2.7 cars, 3.3 TVs...

Now: I am no longer confident that line will continue. If every
honeymoon is now booked in Bali on a Visa card, and every kid in
Borneo wants to play ball in NYC... can the network of society be
pliable enough to accommodate total upheaval? And what if 2 billion
Chinese and Indians raise a generation of kids staring 6+ hours a day
into All American values they can never attain... being taunted with
Hollywood movies of heroic acts and pathetic dysfunctionality, coupled
with ever increasing violence and disdain for ethics or morals.

Seeing scenes of desperate youths in South American slums watching
"Kill Bill" makes me think: this is just oxygen thrown into the
fire... The ants will not play along much longer. The anthill will not
survive if even a small fraction of the system is falling apart.

Couple that inane drive for "Super Individualism" (and the Quest for
Coolness by an ever increasing group destined to fail miserably) with
the scarily simple realization of how effective even a small set of
desperate people can become, then add the obvious penchant for
religious fanaticism and you have an ugly picture of the long term
future.

So many curves that grow upwards towards limits, so many statistics
that show increases and no way to turn around.

Many in this forum may speculate about infinite life spans, changing
the speed of light, finding ways to decode consciousness, wormholes to
other dimensions and finding grand unified theories.

To make it clear: I applaud that! "It does take all kinds".
Diversity is indeed one of the definitions of the meaning of life.
Edge IS Applied Diversity.
Those are viable and necessary questions for mankind as a whole,
however: I believe we need to clean house, re-evaluate, redefine the
priorities.

While we look at the horizon here in these pages, it is the very
ground beneath us, that may be crumbling. The ant hill could really go
to ant hell!  Next year, let's ask for good ideas. Really practical,
serious, good ideas. "The most immediate positive global impact of any
kind that can be achieved within one year?". How to envision Internet3
and Web3 as a real platform for a global brainstorming with 6+ billion
potential participants.

This was not meant to sound like doom and gloom naysaying.  I see
myself as a sincere optimist, but one who believes in realistic
pessimism as a useful tool to initiate change.
_________________________________________________________________

CARLO ROVELLI
Professor of Physics, University of the Mediterraneum, Marseille;
Member, Intitut Universitaire de France: Author, Quantum Gravity
[rovelli100.jpg]

What the physics of the 20th century says about the world might in
fact be true

There is a major "dangerous" scientific idea in contemporary physics,
with a potential impact comparable to Copernicus or Darwin. It is the
idea that what the physics of the 20th century says about the world
might in fact be true.

Let me explain. Take quantum mechanics. If taken seriously, it changes
our understanding of reality truly dramatically. For instance, if we
take quantum mechanics seriously, we cannot think that objects have
ever a definite position. They have a positions only when they
interact with something else. And even in this case, they are in that
position only with respect to that "something else": they are still
without position with respect to the rest of the world. This is a
change of image of the world far more dramatic that Copernicus. And
also a change about our possibility of thinking about ourselves far
more far-reaching than Darwin. Still, few people take the quantum
revolution really seriously. The danger is exorcized by saying "well,
quantum mechanics is only relevant for atoms and very small
objects...", or similar other strategies, aimed at not taking the
theory seriously. We still haven't digested that the world is quantum
mechanical, and the immense conceptual revolution needed to make sense
of this basic factual discovery about nature.

Another example: take Einstein's relativity theory. Relativity makes
completely clear that asking "what happens right now on Andromeda?" is
a complete non-sense. There is no right now elsewhere in the universe.
Nevertheless, we keep thinking at the universe as if there was an
immense external clock that ticked away the instants, and we have a
lot of difficulty in adapting to the idea that "the present state of
the universe right now", is a physical non-sense.

In these cases, what we do is to use concepts that we have developed
in our very special environment (characterized by low velocities, low
energy...) and we think the world as if it was all like that. We are
like ants that have grown in a little garden with green grass and
small stones, and cannot think reality differently than made of green
grass and small stones.

I think that seen from 200 years in the future, the dangerous
scientific idea that was around at the beginning of the 20th century,
and that everybody was afraid to accept, will simply be that the world
is completely different from our simple minded picture of it. As the
physics of the 20th century had already shown.

What makes me smile is that even many of todays "audacious scientific
speculations" about things like extra-dimensions, multi-universes, and
the likely, are not only completely unsupported experimentally, but
are even always formulated within world view that, at a close look,
has not yet digested quantum mechanics and relativity!
_________________________________________________________________

RICHARD DAWKINS
Evolutionary Biologist, Charles Simonyi Professor For The
Understanding Of Science, Oxford University; Author, The Ancestor's
Tale
[dawkins100.jpg]

Let's all stop beating Basil's car

Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged
incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will
usually involve retribution. There may be passing mention of
deterrence or rehabilitation, but the surrounding rhetoric gives the
game away. People want to kill a criminal as payback for the horrible
things he did. Or they want to give "satisfaction' to the victims of
the crime or their relatives. An especially warped and disgusting
application of the flawed concept of retribution is Christian
crucifixion as "atonement' for "sin'.

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific
view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains,
though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as
surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions,
we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by
replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software.

Basil Fawlty, British television's hotelier from hell created by the
immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke
down and wouldn't start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three,
gave it one more chance, and then acted. "Right! I warned you. You've
had this coming to you!" He got out of the car, seized a tree branch
and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course
we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would
investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking
plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do
we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a
rapist? Why don't we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as
heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty? Or at King Xerxes who, in 480
BC, sentenced the rough sea to 300 lashes for wrecking his bridge of
ships? Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a
defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education?
Defective genes?

Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where
human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should
we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent
social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted
defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the
defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by
pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even
unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary
conjunctions, though it wouldn't surprise me).

But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system
make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished
or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on
antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology,
heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions
of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a
faulty man as for a Fawlty car?

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such
conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers,
or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty
units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental
constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are
built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning
blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of
intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of
short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in
which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually
grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh
at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that
I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.
_________________________________________________________________

SETH LLOYD
Quantum Mechanical Engineer, MIT
[lloyd100.jpg]

The genetic breakthrough that made people capable of ideas themselves

The most dangerous idea is the genetic breakthrough that made people
capable of ideas themselves. The idea of ideas is nice enough in
principle; and ideas certainly have had their impact for good. But one
of these days one of those nice ideas is likely to have the unintended
consequence of destroying everything we know.
Meanwhile, we cannot not stop creating and exploring new ideas: the
genie of ingenuity is out of the bottle. To suppress the power of
ideas will hasten catastrophe, not avert it. Rather, we must wield
that power with the respect it deserves.
Who risks no danger reaps no reward.
_________________________________________________________________

CAROLYN PORCO
Planetary Scientist; Cassini Imaging Science Team Leader; Director
CICLOPS, Boulder CO; Adjunct Professor, University of Colorado,
University of Arizona
[porco100.jpg]

The Greatest Story Ever Told

The confrontation between science and formal religion will come to an
end when the role played by science in the lives of all people is the
same played by religion today.

And just what is that?

At the heart of every scientific inquiry is a deep spiritual quest --
to grasp, to know, to feel connected through an understanding of the
secrets of the natural world, to have a sense of one's part in the
greater whole. It is this inchoate desire for connection to something
greater and immortal, the need for elucidation of the meaning of the
'self', that motivates the religious to belief in a higher
'intelligence'. It is the allure of a bigger agency -- outside the
self but also involving, protecting, and celebrating the purpose of
the self -- that is the great attractor. Every culture has religion.
It undoubtedly satisfies a manifest human need.

But the same spiritual fulfillment and connection can be found in the
revelations of science. From energy to matter, from fundamental
particles to DNA, from microbes to Homo sapiens, from the singularity
of the Big Bang to the immensity of the universe .... ours is the
greatest story ever told. We scientists have the drama, the plot, the
icons, the spectacles, the 'miracles', the magnificence, and even the
special effects. We inspire awe. We evoke wonder.
And we don't have one god, we have many of them. We find gods in the
nucleus of every atom, in the structure of space/time, in the
counter-intuitive mechanisms of electromagneticsm. What richness! What
consummate beauty!

We even exalt the `self'. Our script requires a broadening of the
usual definition, but we too offer hope for everlasting existence. The
`self' that is the particular, networked set of connections of the
matter comprising our mortal bodies will one day die, of course. But
the `self' that is the sum of each separate individual condensate in
us of energy-turned-matter is already ancient and will live forever.
Each fundamental particle may one day return to energy, or from there
revert back to matter. But in one form or another, it will not cease.
In this sense, we and all around us are eternal, immortal, and
profoundly connected. We don't have one soul; we have trillions upon
trillions of them.
These are reasons enough for jubilation ... for riotous, unrestrained,
exuberant merry-making.

So what are we missing?

Ceremony.

We lack ceremony. We lack ritual. We lack the initiation of baptism,
the brotherhood of communal worship.

We have no loving ministers, guiding and teaching the flocks in the
ways of the 'gods'. We have no fervent missionaries, no loyal
apostles. And we lack the all-inclusive ecumenical embrace, the
extended invitation to the unwashed masses. Alienation does not warm
the heart; communion does.

But what if? What if we appropriated the craft, the artistry, the
methods of formal religion to get the message across? Imagine
'Einstein's Witnesses' going door to door or TV evangelists
passionately espousing the beauty of evolution.

Imagine a Church of Latter Day Scientists where believers could
gather. Imagine congregations raising their voices in tribute to
gravity, the force that binds us all to the Earth, and the Earth to
the Sun, and the Sun to the Milky Way. Or others rejoicing in the
nuclear force that makes possible the sunlight of our star and the
starlight of distant suns. And can't you just hear the hymns sung to
the antiquity of the universe, its abiding laws, and the heaven above
that 'we' will all one day inhabit, together, commingled, spread out
like a nebula against a diamond sky?

One day, the sites we hold most sacred just might be the astronomical
observatories, the particle accelerators, the university research
installations, and other laboratories where the high priests of
science -- the biologists, the physicists, the astronomers, the
chemists -- engage in the noble pursuit of uncovering the workings of
nature herself. And today's museums, expositional halls, and
planetaria may then become tomorrow's houses of worship, where these
revealed truths, and the wonder of our interconnectedness with the
cosmos, are glorified in song by the devout and the soulful.

"Hallelujah!", they will sing. "May the force be with you!"
_________________________________________________________________

MICHAEL NESMITH
Artist, writer; Former cast member of "The Monkees"; A Trustee and
President of the Gihon Foundation and a Trustee and Vice-Chair of the
American Film Institute
[nez100.jpg]

Existence is Non-Time, Non-Sequential, and Non-Objective

Not a dangerous idea per se but like a razor sharp tool in unskilled
hands it can inflect unintended damage.

Non-Time drives forward the notion the past does not create the
present. This would of course render evolutionary theory a
local-system, near-field process that was non-causative (i.e. effect).

Non-Sequential reverberates through the Turing machine and
computation, and points to simultaneity. It redefines language and
cognition.

Non-Objective establishes a continuum not to be confused with
solipsism. As Schr?dinger puts it when discussing the "time-hallowed
discrimination between subject and object" -- "the world is given to
me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object
are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken
down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for
this barrier does not exist". This continuum has large implications
for the empirical data set, as it introduces factual infinity into the
data plane.

These three notions, Non-Time, Non-sequence, and Non-Object have been
peeking like diamonds through the dust of empiricism, philosophy, and
the sciences for centuries. Quantum mechanics, including Deutsch's
parallel universes and the massive parallelism of quantum computing,
is our brightest star -- an unimaginably tall peak on our fitness
landscape.

They bring us to a threshold over which empiricism has yet to travel,
through which philosophy must reconstruct the very idea of ideas, and
beyond which stretches the now familiar "uncharted territories" of all
great adventures.
_________________________________________________________________

LAWRENCE KRAUSS
Physicist/Cosmologist, Case Western Reserve University; Author, Hiding
in the Mirror
[krauss100.jpg]

The world may fundamentally be inexplicable

Science has progressed for 400 years by ultimately explaining observed
phenomena in terms of fundamental theories that are rigid. Even minor
deviations from predicted behavior are not allowed by the theory, so
that if such deviations are observed, these provide evidence that the
theory must be modified, usually being replaced by a yet more
comprehensive theory that fixes a wider range of phenomena.

The ultimate goal of physics, as it is often described, is to have a
"theory of everything", in which all the fundamental laws that
describe nature can neatly be written down on the front of a T-shirt
(even if the T-shirt can only exist in 10 dimensions!). However, with
the recognition that the dominant energy in the universe resides in
empty space -- something that is so peculiar that it appears very
difficult to understand within the context of any  theoretical ideas
we now possess -- more physicists have been exploring the idea that
perhaps physics is an 'environmental  science', that the laws of
physics we observe are merely accidents of our circumstances, and
that an infinite number of different universe could exist with
different laws of physics.

This is true even if there does exist some fundamental candidate
mathematical physical theory. For example, as is currently in vogue in
an idea related to string  theory, perhaps the fundamental theory
allows an infinite number of different 'ground state' solutions, each
of which describes a different possible universe with a consistent set
of physical laws and physical dimensions.

It might be that the only way to understand why the laws of nature we
observe in our universe are the way they are is to understand that if
they were any different, then  life could not have arisen in our
universe, and we would thus not be here to measure them today.

This is one version of the infamous "anthropic principle". But it
could actually be worse -- it is equally likely that many different
combinations of laws would allow life to form, and that it is a pure
accident that the constants of nature result in the combinations we
experience in our universe. Or, it could be that the mathematical
formalism is actually so complex so that the ground states of the
theory, i.e. the set of possible states that might describe our
universe, actually might not  be determinable.

In this case, the end of "fundamental" theoretical physics (i.e. the
search for fundamental microphysical laws...there will still be lots
of work for physicists who try to understand the host of complex
phenomena occurring at a variety of larger scales) might occur not via
a theory of everything, but rather with the recognition that all
so-called fundamental theories that might describe nature would be
purely "phenomenological", that is, they would be derivable from
observational phenomena, but would not reflect any underlying grand
mathematical structure of the universe  that would allow a basic
understanding of why the universe is the way it is.
_________________________________________________________________

DANIEL C. DENNETT
Philosopher; University Professor, Co-Director, Center for Cognitive
Studies, Tufts University; Author, Darwin's Dangerous Idea
[dennett101.jpg]

There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes

Ideas can be dangerous. Darwin had one, for instance. We hold all
sorts of inventors and other innovators responsible for assaying, in
advance, the environmental impact of their creations, and since ideas
can have huge environmental impacts, I see no reason to exempt us
thinkers from the responsibility of quarantining any deadly ideas we
may happen to come across. So if I found what I took to be such a
dangerous idea, I would button my lip until I could find some way of
preparing the ground for its safe expression. I expect that others who
are replying to this year's Edge question have engaged in similar
reflections and arrived at the same policy. If so, then some people
may be pulling their punches with their replies. The really dangerous
ideas they are keeping to themselves.

But here is an unsettling idea that is bound to be true in one version
or another, and so far as I can see, it won't hurt to publicize it
more. It might well help.

The human population is still growing, but at nowhere near the rate
that the population of memes is growing. There is competition for the
limited space in human brains for memes, and something has to give.
Thanks to our incessant and often technically brilliant efforts, and
our apparently insatiable appetites for novelty, we have created an
explosively growing flood of information, in all media, on all topics,
in every genre. Now either (1) we will drown in this flood of
information, or (2) we won't drown in it. Both alternatives are deeply
disturbing. What do I mean by drowning? I mean that we will become
psychologically overwhelmed, unable to cope, victimized by the glut
and unable to make life-enhancing decisions in the face of an
unimaginable surfeit. (I recall the brilliant scene in the film of
Evelyn Waugh's dark comedy The Loved One in which embalmer Mr.
Joyboy's gluttonous mother is found sprawled on the kitchen floor,
helplessly wallowing in the bounty that has spilled from a capsized
refrigerator.) We will be lost in the maze, preyed upon by whatever
clever forces find ways of pumping money-or simply further memetic
replications-out of our situation. (In The War of the Worlds, H. G.
Wells sees that it might well be our germs, not our high-tech military
contraptions, that subdue our alien invaders. Similarly, might our own
minds succumb not to the devious manipulations of evil brainwashers
and propagandists, but to nothing more than a swarm of irresistible
ditties, Nofs nibbled to death by slogans and one-liners?)

If we don't drown, how will we cope?  If we somehow learn to swim in
the rising tide of the infosphere, that will entail that we-that is to
say, our grandchildren and their grandchildren-become very very
different from our recent ancestors. What will "we"  be like?  (Some
years ago, Doug Hofstadter wrote a wonderful piece, " In 2093, Just
Who Will Be We?" in which he imagines robots being created to have
"human" values, robots that gradually take over the social roles of
our biological descendants, who become stupider and less concerned
with the things we value. If we could secure the welfare of just one
of these groups, our children or our brainchildren, which group would
we care about the most, with which group would we identify?)
Whether "we" are mammals or robots in the not so distant future, what
will we know and what will we have forgotten forever, as our
previously shared intentional objects recede in the churning wake of
the great ship that floats on this sea and charges into the future
propelled by jets of newly packaged information?What will happen to
our cultural landmarks?  Presumably our descendants will all still
recognize a few reference points (the pyramids of Egypt, arithmetic,
the Bible, Paris, Shakespeare, Einstein, Bach . . . ) but as wave
after wave of novelty passes over them, what will they lose sight of?
The Beatles are truly wonderful, but if their cultural immortality is
to be purchased by the loss of such minor 20th century figures as
Billie Holiday, Igor Stravinsky, and Georges Brassens [who he?], what
will remain of our shared understanding?

The intergenerational mismatches that we all experience in macroscopic
versions (great-grandpa's joke falls on deaf ears, because nobody else
in the room knows that Nixon's wife was named "Pat") will presumably
be multiplied to the point where much of the raw information that we
have piled in our digital storehouses is simply incomprehensible to
everyone-except that we will have created phalanxes of "smart"
Rosetta-stones of one sort or another that can "translate" the alien
material into something we (think maybe we) understand. I suspect we
hugely underestimate the importance (to our sense of cognitive
security) of our regular participation in the four-dimensional human
fabric of mutual understanding, with its reassuring moments of
shared-and seen to be shared, and seen to be seen to be
shared-comprehension.

What will happen to common knowledge in the future?  I do think our
ancestors had it easy: aside from all the juicy bits of unshared
gossip and some proprietary trade secrets and the like, people all
knew pretty much the same things, and knew that they knew the same
things. There just wasn't that much to know.  Won't people be able to
create and exploit illusions of common knowledge in the future,
virtual worlds in which people only think they are in touch with their
cyber-neighbors?

I see small-scale projects that might protect us to some degree, if
they are done wisely. Think of all the work published in academic
journals before, say, 1990 that is in danger of becoming practically
invisible to later researchers because it can't be found on-line with
a good search engine. Just scanning it all and hence making it
"available" is not the solution. There is too much of it. But we could
start projects in which (virtual) communities of retired  researchers
who still have their wits about them and who know particular
literatures well could brainstorm amongst themselves, using their
pooled experience to elevate the forgotten gems, rendering them
accessible to the next generation of researchers. This sort of
activity has in the past been seen to be a  stodgy sort of
scholarship, fine for classicists and historians, but not fit work for
cutting-edge scientists and the like. I think we should try to shift
this imagery and help people recognize the importance of providing for
each other this sort of pathfinding through the forests of
information. It's a drop in the bucket, but perhaps if we all start
thinking about conservation of valuable mind-space, we can save
ourselves (our descendants) from informational collapse.
_________________________________________________________________

DANIEL GILBERT
Psychologist, Harvard University
[gilbert100.jpg]

The idea that ideas can be dangerous

Dangerous does not mean exciting or bold. It means likely to cause
great harm. The most dangerous idea is the only dangerous idea: The
idea that ideas can be dangerous.

We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted,
and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped
their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us
feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of
admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous,
prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free
society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in
one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and
true, it's time to make a run for the fence.
_________________________________________________________________

ANDY CLARK
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, Edinburgh
University
[clark100.jpg]

The quick-thinking zombies inside us

So much of what we do, feel, think and choose is determined by
non-conscious, automatic uptake of cues and information.
Of course, advertisers will say they have known this all along. But
only in recent years, with seminal studies by Tanya Chartrand, John
Bargh and others has the true scale of our daily automatism really
begun to emerge. Such studies show that it is possible (it is
relatively easy) to activate racist stereotypes that impact our
subsequent behavioral interactions, for example yielding the judgment
that your partner in a subsequent game or task is more hostile than
would be judged by an unprimed control. Such effects occur despite a
subject's total and honest disavowal of those very stereotypes. In
similar ways it is possible to unconsciously prime us to feel older
(and then we walk more slowly).

In my favorite recent study, experimenters manipulate cues so that the
subject forms an unconscious goal, whose (unnoticed) frustration makes
them lose confidence and perform worse at a subsequent task! The
dangerous truth, it seems to me, is that these are not isolated little
laboratory events. Instead, they reveal the massed woven fabric of our
day-to-day existence. The underlying mechanisms at work impart an
automatic drive towards the automation of all manner of choices and
actions, and don't discriminate between the 'trivial' and the
portentous.

It now seems clear that many of my major life and work decisions are
made very rapidly, often on the basis of ecologically sound but
superficial cues, with slow deliberative reason busily engaged in
justifying what the quick-thinking zombies inside me have already laid
on the table. The good news is that without these mechanisms we'd be
unable to engage in fluid daily life or reason at all, and that very
often they are right. The dangerous truth, though, is that we are
indeed designed to cut conscious, aware choice out of the picture
wherever possible. This is not an issue about free will, but simply
about the extent to which conscious deliberation cranks the engine of
behavior. Crank it it does: but not in anything like the way, or
extent, we may have thought. We'd better get to grips with this before
someone else does.
_________________________________________________________________

SHERRY TURKLE
Psychologist, MIT; Author, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of
the Internet
[turkle100.jpg]

After several generations of living in the computer culture,
simulation will become fully naturalized. Authenticity in the
traditional sense loses its value, a vestige of another time.

Consider this moment from 2005: I take my fourteen-year-old daughter
to the Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. The
exhibit documents Darwin's life and thought, and with a somewhat
defensive tone (in light of current challenges to evolution by
proponents of intelligent design), presents the theory of evolution as
the central truth that underpins contemporary biology. The Darwin
exhibit wants to convince and it wants to please. At the entrance to
the exhibit is a turtle from the Galapagos Islands, a seminal object
in the development of evolutionary theory. The turtle rests in its
cage, utterly still. "They could have used a robot," comments my
daughter. It was a shame to bring the turtle all this way and put it
in a cage for a performance that draws so little on the turtle's
"aliveness. " I am startled by her comments, both solicitous of the
imprisoned turtle because it is alive and unconcerned by its
authenticity. The museum has been advertising these turtles as
wonders, curiosities, marvels -- among the plastic models of life at
the museum, here is the life that Darwin saw. I begin to talk with
others at the exhibit, parents and children. It is Thanksgiving
weekend. The line is long, the crowd frozen in place. My question, "Do
you care that the turtle is alive?" is welcome diversion. A ten year
old girl would prefer a robot turtle because aliveness comes with
aesthetic inconvenience: "It's water looks dirty. Gross. " More
usually, the votes for the robots echo my daughter's sentiment that in
this setting, aliveness doesn't seem worth the trouble. A
twelve-year-old girl opines: "For what the turtles do, you didn't have
to have the live ones. " Her father looks at her, uncomprehending:
"But the point is that they are real, that's the whole point. "

The Darwin exhibit is about authenticity: on display are the actual
magnifying glass that Darwin used, the actual notebooks in which he
recorded his observations, indeed, the very notebook in which he wrote
the famous sentences that first described his theory of evolution But
in the children's reactions to the inert but alive Galapagos turtle,
the idea of the "original" is in crisis.

I have long believed that in the culture of simulation, the notion of
authenticity is for us what sex was to the Victorians -- "threat and
obsession, taboo and fascination. " I have lived with this idea for
many years, yet at the museum, I find the children's position
startling, strangely unsettling. For these children, in this context,
aliveness seems to have no intrinsic value. Rather, it is useful only
if needed for a specific purpose. "If you put in a robot instead of
the live turtle, do you think people should be told that the turtle is
not alive?" I ask. Not really, say several of the children. Data on
"aliveness" can be shared on a "need to know" basis, for a purpose.
But what are the purposes of living things? When do we need to know if
something is alive?

Consider another vignette from 2005: an elderly woman in a nursing
home outside of Boston is sad. Her son has broken off his relationship
with her. Her nursing home is part of a study I am conducting on
robotics for the elderly. I am recording her reactions as she sits
with the robot Paro, a seal-like creature, advertised as the first
"therapeutic robot" for its ostensibly positive effects on the ill,
the elderly, and the emotionally troubled. Paro is able to make eye
contact through sensing the direction of a human voice, is sensitive
to touch, and has "states of mind" that are affected by how it is
treated, for example, is it stroked gently or with agressivity? In
this session with Paro, the woman, depressed because of her son's
abandonment, comes to believe that the robot is depressed as well. She
turns to Paro, strokes him and says: "Yes, you're sad, aren't you.
It's tough out there. Yes, it's hard. " And then she pets the robot
once again, attempting to provide it with comfort. And in so doing,
she tries to comfort herself.

The woman's sense of being understood is based on the ability of
computational objects like Paro to convince their users that they are
in a relationship. I call these creatures (some virtual, some physical
robots) "relational artifacts. " Their ability to inspire relationship
is not based on their intelligence or consciousness, but on their
ability to push certain "Darwinian" buttons in people (making eye
contact, for example) that make people respond as though they were in
relationship. For me, relational artifacts are the new uncanny in our
computer culture -- as Freud once put it, the long familiar taking a
form that is strangely unfamiliar. As such, they confront us with new
questions.

What does this deployment of "nurturing technology" at the two most
dependent moments of the life cycle say about us? What will it do to
us? Do plans to provide relational robots to attend to children and
the elderly make us less likely to look for other solutions for their
care? People come to feel love for their robots, but if our experience
with relational artifacts is based on a fundamentally deceitful
interchange, can it be good for us? Or might it be good for us in the
"feel good" sense, but bad for us in our lives as moral beings?

Relationships with robots bring us back to Darwin and his dangerous
idea: the challenge to human uniqueness. When we see children and the
elderly exchanging tendernesses with robotic pets the most important
question is not whether children will love their robotic pets more
than their real life pets or even their parents, but rather, what will
loving come to mean?
_________________________________________________________________

STEVEN STROGATZ
Applied mathematician, Cornell University; Author, Sync
[strogatz100.jpg]

The End of Insight

I worry that insight is becoming impossible, at least at the frontiers
of mathematics. Even when we're able to figure out what's true or
false, we're less and less able to understand why.

An argument along these lines was recently given by Brian Davies in
the "Notices of the American Mathematical Society". He mentions, for
example, that the four-color map theorem in topology was proven in
1976 with the help of computers, which exhaustively checked a huge but
finite number of possibilities. No human mathematician could ever
verify all the intermediate steps in this brutal proof, and even if
someone claimed to, should we trust them? To this day, no one has come
up with a more elegant, insightful proof. So we're left in the
unsettling position of knowing that the four-color theorem is true but
still not knowing why.

Similarly important but unsatisfying proofs have appeared in group
theory (in the classification of finite simple groups, roughly akin to
the periodic table for chemical elements) and in geometry (in the
problem of how to pack spheres so that they fill space most
efficiently, a puzzle that goes back to Kepler in the 1500's and that
arises today in coding theory for telecommunications).

In my own field of complex systems theory, Stephen Wolfram has
emphasized that there are simple computer programs, known as cellular
automata, whose dynamics can be so inscrutable that there's no way to
predict how they'll behave; the best you can do is simulate them on
the computer, sit back, and watch how they unfold. Observation
replaces insight. Mathematics becomes a spectator sport.

If this is happening in mathematics, the supposed pinnacle of human
reasoning, it seems likely to afflict us in science too, first in
physics and later in biology and the social sciences (where we're not
even sure what's true, let alone why).

When the End of Insight comes, the nature of explanation in science
will change forever. We'll be stuck in an age of authoritarianism,
except it'll no longer be coming from politics or religious dogma, but
from science itself.
_________________________________________________________________

TERRENCE SEJNOWSKI
Computational Neuroscientist, Howard Hughes Medical Institute;
Coauthor, The Computational Brain
[sejnowski101.jpg]

When will the Internet become aware of itself?

I never thought that I would become omniscient during my lifetime, but
as Google continues to improve and online information continues to
expand I have achieved omniscience for all practical purposes. The
Internet has created a global marketplace for ideas and products,
making it possible for individuals in the far corners of the world to
automatically connect directly to each other. The Internet has
achieved these capabilities by growing exponentially in total
communications bandwidth. How does the communications power of the
Internet compare with that of the cerebral cortex, the most
interconnected part of our brains?

Cortical connections are expensive because they take up volume and
cost energy to send information in the form of spikes along axons.
About 44% of the cortical volume in humans is taken up with long-range
connections, called the white matter. Interestingly, the thickness of
gray matter, just a few millimeters, is nearly constant in mammals
that range in brain volume over five orders of magnitude, and the
volume of the white matter scales approximately as the 4/3 power of
the volume of the gray matter. The larger the brain, the larger the
fraction of resources devoted to communications compared to
computation.

However, the global connectivity in the cerebral cortex is extremely
sparse: The probability of any two cortical neurons having a direct
connection is around one in a hundred for neurons in a vertical column
1 mm in diameter, but only one in a million for more distant neurons.
Thus, only a small fraction of the computation that occurs locally
can be reported to other areas, through a small fraction of the cells
that connect distant cortical areas.

Despite the sparseness of cortical connectivity, the potential
bandwidth of all of the neurons in the human cortex is approximately a
terabit per second, comparable to the total world backbone capacity of
the Internet. However, this capacity is never achieved by the brain in
practice because only a fraction of cortical neurons have a high rate
of firing at any given time. Recent work by Simon Laughlin suggests
that another physical constraint -- energy--limits the brain's ability
to harness its potential bandwidth.

The cerebral cortex also has a massive amount of memory. There are
approximately one billion synapses between neurons under every square
millimeter of cortex, or about one hundred million million synapses
overall. Assuming around a byte of storage capacity at each synapse
(including dynamic as well as static properties), this comes to a
total of 10^15 bits of storage. This is comparable to the amount of
data on the entire Internet; Google can store this in terabyte disk
arrays and has hundreds of thousands of computers simultaneously
sifting through it.

Thus, the internet and our ability to search it are within reach of
the limits of the raw storage and communications capacity of the human
brain, and should exceed it by 2015.

Leo van Hemmen and I recently asked 23 neuroscientists to think about
what we don't yet know about the brain, and to propose a question so
fundamental and so difficult that it could take a century to solve,
following in the tradition of Hilbert's 23 problems in mathematics.
Christof Koch and Francis Crick speculated that the key to
understanding consciousness was global communication:  How do neurons
in the diverse parts of the brain manage to coordinate despite the
limited connectivity?  Sometimes, the communication gets crossed, and
V. S. Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard asked whether synesthetes, rare
individuals who experience crossover in sensory perception such as
hearing colors, seeing sounds, and tasting tactile sensations, might
give us clues to how the brain evolved.

There is growing evidence that the flow of information between parts
of the cortex is regulated by the degree of synchrony of the spikes
within populations of cells that represent perceptual states. Robert
Desimone and his colleagues have examined the effects of attention on
cortical neurons in awake, behaving monkeys and found the coherence
between the spikes of single neurons in the visual cortex and local
field potentials in the gamma band, 30-80 Hz, increased when the
covert attention of a monkey was directed toward a stimulus in the
receptive field of the neuron. The coherence also selectively
increased when a monkey searched for a target with a cued color or
shape amidst a large number of distracters. The increase in coherence
means that neurons representing the stimuli with the cued feature
would have greater impact on target neurons, making them more salient.

The link between attention and spike-field coherence raises a number
of interesting questions. How does top-down input from the prefrontal
cortex regulate the coherence of neurons in other parts of the cortex
through feedback connections? How is the rapidity of the shifts in
coherence achieved?  Experiments on neurons in cortical slices suggest
that inhibitory interneurons are connected to each other in networks
and are responsible for gamma oscillations. Researchers in my
laboratory have used computational models to show that excitatory
inputs can rapidly synchronize a subset of the inhibitory neurons that
are in competition with other inhibitory networks.  Inhibitory
neurons, long thought to merely block activity, are highly effective
in synchronizing neurons in a local column already firing in response
to a stimulus.

The oscillatory activity that is thought to synchronize neurons in
different parts of the cortex occurs in brief bursts, typically
lasting for only a few hundred milliseconds. Thus, it is possible that
there is a packet structure for long-distance communication in the
cortex, similar to the packets that are used to communicate on the
Internet, though with quite different protocols. The first electrical
signals recorded from the brain in 1875 by Richard Caton were
oscillatory signals that changed in amplitude and frequency with the
state of alertness. The function of these oscillations remains a
mystery, but it would be remarkable if it were to be discovered that
these signals held the secrets to the brain's global communications
network.

Since its inception in 1969, the Internet has been scaled up to a size
not even imagined by its inventors, in contrast to most engineered
systems, which fall apart when they are pushed beyond their design
limits. In part, the Internet achieves this scalability because it has
the ability to regulate itself, deciding on the best routes to send
packets depending on traffic conditions. Like the brain, the Internet
has circadian rhythms that follow the sun as the planet rotates under
it. The growth of the Internet over the last several decades more
closely resembles biological evolution than engineering.

How would we know if the Internet were to become aware of itself?  The
problem is that we don't even know if some of our fellow creatures on
this planet are self aware. For all we know the Internet is already
aware of itself.
_________________________________________________________________

LYNN MARGULIS
Biologist, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Coauthor (with Dorion
Sagan), Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species
[margulis100.jpg]
Bacteria are us

What is my dangerous idea? Although arcane, evidence for this
dangerous concept is overwhelming; I have collected clues from many
sources. Reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's claim that "even true things can
be proved" I predict that the scientific gatekeepers in academia
eventually will be forced to permit this dangerous idea to become
widely accepted. What is it?

Our sensibilities, our perceptions that register through our sense
organ cells evolved directly from our bacterial ancestors. Signals in
the environment: light impinging on the eye's retina, taste on the
buds of the tongue, odor through the nose, sound in the ear are
translated to nervous impulses by extensions of sensory cells called
cilia. We, like all other mammals, including our apish brothers, have
taste-bud cilia, inner ear cilia, nasal passage cilia that detect
odors. We distinguish savory from sweet, birdsong from whalesong,
drumbeats from thunder. With our eyes closed, we detect the light of
the rising sun and and feel the vibrations of the drums. These
abilities to sense our surroundings, a heritage that preceded the
evolution of all primates, indeed, all animals, by use of specialized
cilia at the tips of sensory cells, and the existence of the cilia in
the tails of sperm, come from one kind of our bacterial ancestors.
Which? Those of our bacterial ancestors that became cilia. We owe our
sensitivity to a loving touch, the scent of lavender , the taste of a
salted nut or vinaigrette, a police-cruiser siren, or glimpse of
brilliant starlight to our sensory cells. We owe the chemical
attraction of the sperm as its tail impels it to swim toward the egg,
even the moss plant sperm, to its cilia. The dangerous idea is that
the cilia evolved from hyperactive bacteria. Bacterial ancestors swam
toward food and away from noxious gases, they moved up to the well-lit
waters at the surface of the pond. They were startled when, in a
crowd, some relative bumped them. These bacterial ancestors that never
slept, avoided water too hot or too salty. They still do.

Why is the concept that our sensitivities evolved directly from
swimming bacterial ancestors of the sensory cilia so dangerous?

Several reasons: we would be forced to admit that bacteria are
conscious, that they are sensitive to stimuli in their environment and
behave accordingly. We would have to accept that bacteria, touted to
be our enemies, are not merely neutral or friendly but that they are
us. They are direct ancestors of our most sensitive body parts. Our
culture's terminology about bacteria is that of warfare: they are
germs to be destroyed and forever vanquished, bacterial enemies make
toxins that poison us. We load our soaps with antibacterials that kill
on contact, stomach ulcers are now agreed to be caused by bacterial
infection. Even if some admit the existence of "good" bacteria in soil
or probiotic food like yogurt few of us tolerate the dangerous notion
that human sperm tails and sensitive cells of nasal passages lined
with waving cilia, are former bacteria. If this dangerous idea becomes
widespread it follows that we humans must agree that even before our
evolution as animals we have hated and tried to kill our own
ancestors. Again, we have seen the enemy, indeed, and, as usual, it is
us. Social interactions of sensitive bacteria, then, not God, made us
who were are today.
_________________________________________________________________

THOMAS METZINGER
Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies; Johannes
Gutenberg-Universit?t Mainz; President German Cognitive Science
Society; Author: Being No One
[metzinger100.jpg]

The Forbidden Fruit Intuition

We all would like to believe that, ultimately, intellectual honesty is
not only an expression of, but also good for your mental health. My
dangerous question is if one can be intellectually honest about the
issue of free will and preserve one's mental health at the same time.
Behind this question lies what I call the "Forbidden Fruit Intuition":
Is there a set of questions which are dangerous not on grounds of
ideology or political correctness, but because the most obvious
answers to them could ultimately make our conscious self-models
disintegrate? Can one really believe in determinism without going
insane?

For middle-sized objects at 37? like the human brain and the human
body, determinism is obviously true. The next state of the physical
universe is always determined by the previous state. And given a
certain brain-state plus an environment you could never have acted
otherwise -- a surprisingly large majority of experts in the free-will
debate today accept this obvious fact. Although your future is open,
this probably also means that for every single future thought you will
have and for every single decision you will make, it is true that it
was determined by your previous brain state.

As a scientifically well-informed person you believe in this theory,
you endorse it. As an open-minded person you find that you are also
interested in modern philosophy of mind, and you might hear a story
much like the following one. Yes, you are a physically determined
system. But this is not a big problem, because, under certain
conditions, we may still continue to say that you are "free": all that
matters is that your actions are caused by the right kinds of brain
processes and that they originate in you. A physically determined
system can well be sensitive to reasons and to rational arguments, to
moral considerations, to questions of value and ethics, as long as all
of this is appropriately wired into its brain. You can be rational,
and you can be moral, as long as your brain is physically determined
in the right way. You like this basic idea: physical determinism is
compatible with being a free agent. You endorse a materialist
philosophy of freedom as well. An intellectually honest person open to
empirical data, you simply believe that something along these lines
must be true.

Now you try to feel that it is true. You try to consciously experience
the fact that at any given moment of your life, you could not have
acted otherwise. You try to experience the fact that even your
thoughts, however rational and moral, are predetermined -- by
something unconscious, by something you can not see. And in doing so,
you start fooling around with the conscious self-model Mother Nature
evolved for you with so much care and precision over millions of
years: You are scratching at the user-surface of your own brain,
tweaking the mouse-pointer, introspectively trying to penetrate into
the operating system, attempting to make the invisible visible. You
are challenging the integrity of your phenomenal self by trying to
integrate your new beliefs, the neuroscientific image of man, with
your most intimate, inner way of experiencing yourself. How does it
feel?

I think that the irritation and deep sense of resentment surrounding
public debates on the freedom of the will actually has nothing much to
do with the actual options on the table. It has to do with the --
perfectly sensible -- intuition that our presently obvious answer will
not only be emotionally disturbing, but ultimately impossible to
integrate into our conscious self-models.

Or our societies: The robust conscious experience of free will also is
a social institution, because the attribution of accountability,
responsibility, etc. are the decisive building blocks for modern, open
societies. And the currently obvious answer might be interpreted by
many as having clearly anti-democratic implications: Making a complex
society work implies controlling the behavior of millions of people;
if individual human beings can control their own behavior to a much
lesser degree than we have thought in the past, if bottom-up doesn't
work, then it becomes tempting to control it top-down, by the state.
And this is the second way in which enlightenment could devour its own
children. Yes, free will truly is a dangerous question, but for
different reasons than most people think.
_________________________________________________________________

DIANE F. HALPERN
Professor of Psychology, Claremont McKenna College; Past-president
(2005), the American Psychological Association; Author, Thought and
Knowledge
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Choosing the sex of one's child

For an idea to be truly dangerous, it needs to have a strong and near
universal appeal. The idea of being able to choose the sex of one's
own baby is just such an idea.

Anyone who has a deep-seated and profound preference for a son or
daughter knows that this preference may not be rational and that it
may represent a prejudice better left unacknowledged about them. It is
easy to dismiss the ability to decide the sex of one's baby as
inconsequential. It is already medically feasible for a woman or
couple to choose the sex of a baby that has not yet been conceived.
There are a variety of safe methods available, such as Preimplanted
Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), so-named because it was originally designed
for couples with fertility problems, not for the purpose of selecting
the sex of one's next child. With PGD, embryos are created in a Petri
dish, tested for gender, and then implanted into the womb, so that the
baby-to-be is already identified as female or male before implantation
in the womb. The pro argument is simple: If the parents-to-be are
adults, why not? People have always wanted to be able to choose the
sex of their children. There are ancient records of medicine men and
wizened women with various herbs and assorted advice about what to do
to (usually) have a son. So, what should it matter if modern medicine
can finally deliver what old wives' tales have promised for countless
generations? Couples won't have to have a "wasted" child, such as a
second child the same sex as the first one, when they really wanted
"one of each. " If a society has too many boys for a while, who cares?
The shortage of females will make females more valuable and the market
economy will even out in time. In the mean time, families will
"balance out," each one the ideal composition as desired by the adults
in the family.

Every year for the last two decades I have asked students in my
college classes to write down the number of children they would like
to have and the order in which they ideally want to have girls and
boys. I have taught in several different countries (e.g. , Turkey,
Russia, and Mexico) and types of universities, but despite large
differences, the modal response is 2 children, first a boy, then a
girl. If students reply that they want one child, it is most often a
boy; if it is 3 children, they are most likely to want a boy, then a
girl, then a boy. The students in my classes are not a random sample
of the population: they are well educated and more likely to hold
egalitarian attitudes than the general population. Yet, if they acted
on their stated intentions, even they would have an excess of
first-borns who are male, and an excess of males overall. In a short
time, those personality characteristics associated with being either
an only-child or first-born and those associated with being male would
be so confounded, it would be difficult to separate them.

The excess of males that would result from allowing every mother or
couple to choose the sex of their next baby would not correct itself
at the societal level because at the individual level, the preference
for sons is stronger than the market forces of supply and demand. The
evidence for this conclusion comes from many sources, including
regions of the world where the ratio of young women to men is so low
that it could only be caused by selective abortion and female
infanticide (UNICEF and other sources). In some regions of rural China
there are so few women that wives are imported from the Philippines
and men move to far cities to find women to marry. In response, the
Chinese government is now offering a variety of education and cash
incentives to families with multiple daughters. There are still few
daughters being born in these rural areas where prejudice against
girls is stronger than government incentives and mandates. In India,
the number of abortions of female fetuses has increased since
sex-selective abortion was made illegal in 1994. The desire for sons
is even stronger than the threat of legal action.

In the United States, the data that show preferences for sons are more
subtle than the disparate ratios of females and males found in other
parts of the world, but the preference for sons is still strong.
Because of space limitations, I list only a few of the many indicators
that parents in the United States prefer sons: families with 2
daughters are more likely to have a third child than families with 2
sons, unmarried pregnant women who undergo ultrasound to determine the
sex of the yet unborn child are less likely to be married at the time
of the child's birth when the child is a girl than when it is a boy,
and divorced women with a son are more likely to remarry than divorced
women with a daughter.

Perhaps the only ideas more dangerous that of choosing the sex of
one's child would be trying to stop medical science from making
advances that allow such choices or allowing the government to control
the choices we can make as citizens. There are many important
questions to ponder, including how to find creative ways to reduce or
avoid negative consequences from even more dangerous alternatives.
Consider, for example, what would our world be like if there were
substantially more men than women? What if only the rich or only those
who live in "rich countries" were able to choose the sex of their
children? Is it likely that an approximately equal number of boys and
girls would be or could be selected? If not, could a society or should
a society make equal numbers of girls and boys a goal?

I am guessing that many readers of child-bearing age want to choose
the sex of their (as yet) unconceived children and can reason that
there is no harm in this practice. And, if you could also choose
intelligence, height, and hair color, would you add that too?  But
then, there are few things in life that are as appealing as the
possibility of a perfectly balanced family, which according to the
modal response means an older son and younger daughter, looking just
like an improved version of you.
_________________________________________________________________

GARY MARCUS
Psychologist, New York University; Author, The Birth of the Mind
[marcus100.jpg]

Minds, genes, and machines

Brains exist primarily to do two things, to communicate (transfer
information) and compute. This is true in every creature with a
nervous system, and no less true in the human brain. In short, the
brain is a machine. And the basic structure of that brain, biological
substrate of all things mental, is guided in no small part by
information carried in the DNA.

In the twenty-first century, these claims should no longer be
controversial. With each passing day, techniques like magnetic
resonance imaging and electrophysiological recordings from individual
neurons make it clearer that the business of the brain is information
processing, while new fields like comparative genomics and
developmental neuroembryology remove any possible doubt that genes
significantly influence both behavior and brain.

Yet there are many people, scientists and lay persons alike, who fear
or wish to deny these notions, to doubt our even reject the idea that
the mind is a machine, and that it is significantly (though of course
not exclusively) shaped by genes. Even as the religious right prays
for Intelligent Design, the academic left insinuates that merely
discussing the idea of innateness is dangerous, as in a prominent
child development manifesto that concluded:

If scientists use words like "instinct" and "innateness" in
reference to human abilities, then we have a moral responsibility
to be very clear and explicit about what we mean. If our careless,
underspecified choice of words inadvertently does damage to future
generations of children, we cannot turn with innocent outrage to
the judge and say "But your Honor, I didn't realize the word was
loaded.

A new academic journal called "Metascience" focuses on when
extra-scientific considerations influence the process of science.
Sadly, the twin questions of whether we are machines, and whether we
are constrained significantly by our biology, very much fall into this
category, questions where members of the academy (not to mention fans
of Intelligent Design) close their minds.

Copernicus put us in our place, so to to speak, by showing that our
planet is not at the center of universe; advances in biology are
putting us further in our place by showing that our brains are as much
a product of biology as any other part of our body, and by showing
that our (human) brains are built by the very same processes as other
creatures. Just as the earth is just one planet among many, from the
perspective of the toolkit of developmental biology, our brain is just
one more arrangement of molecules.
_________________________________________________________________

JARON LANIER
Computer Scientist and Musician
[jaron100.jpg]

Homuncular Flexibility

The homunculus is an approximate mapping of the human body in the
cortex. It is often visualized as a distorted human body stretched
along the top of the human brain. The tongue, thumbs, and other body
parts with extra-rich brain connections are enlarged in the
homunculus, giving it a vaguely obscene, impish character.

Long ago, in the 1980s, my colleagues and I at VPL Research built
virtual worlds in which more than one person at a time could be
present. People in a shared virtual world must be able to see each
other, as well as use their bodies together, as when two people lift a
large virtual object or ride a tandem virtual bicycle. None of this
would be possible without virtual bodies.

It was a self-evident and inviting challenge to attempt to create the
most accurate possible bodies, given the crude state of the technology
at the time. To do this, we developed full body suits covered in
sensors. A measurement made on the body of someone wearing one of
these suits, such as an aspect of the flex of a wrist, would be
applied to control a corresponding change in a virtual body. Before
long, people were dancing and otherwise goofing around in virtual
reality.

Of course there were bugs. I distinctly remember a wonderful bug that
caused my hand to become enormous, like a web of flying skyscrapers.
As is often the case, this accident led to an interesting discovery.

It turned out that people could quickly learn to inhabit strange and
different bodies and still interact with the virtual world. I became
curious how weird the body could get before the mind would become
disoriented. I played around with elongated limb segments, and strange
limb placement. The most curious experiment involved a virtual lobster
(which was lovingly modeled by Ann Lasko. ) A lobster has a trio of
little midriff arms on each side of its body. If physical human bodies
sprouted corresponding limbs, we would have measured them with an
appropriate body suit and that would have been that.

I assume it will not come as a surprise to the reader that the human
body does not include these little arms, so the question arose of how
to control them. The answer was to extract a little influence from
each of many parts of the physical body and merge these data streams
into a single control signal for a given joint in the extra lobster
limbs. A touch of human elbow twist, a dash of human knee flex; a
dozen such movements might be mixed to control the middle join of
little left limb #3. The result was that the principle elbows and
knees could still control their virtual counterparts roughly as
before, while still contributing to the control of additional limbs.

Yes, it turns out people can learn to control bodies with extra limbs!

The biologist Jim Bower, when considering this phenomenon, commented
that the human nervous system evolved through all the creatures that
preceded us in our long evolutionary line, which included some pretty
strange creatures, if you go back far enough. Why wouldn't we retain
some homuncular flexibility with a pedigree like that?

The original experiments of the 1980s were not carried out formally,
but recently it has become possible to explore the phenomenon in a far
more rigorous way. Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford has created a
marvelous new lab for studying multiple human subjects in
high-definition shared virtual worlds, and we are now planning to
repeat, improve, and extend these experiments. The most interesting
questions still concern the limits to homuncular flexibility. We are
only beginning the project of mapping how far it can go.

Why is homuncular flexibility a dangerous idea? Because the more
flexible the human brain turns out to be when it comes to adapting to
weirdness, the weirder a ride it will be able to keep up with as
technology changes in the coming decades and centuries.

Will kids in the future grow up with the experience of living in four
spatial dimensions as well as three? That would be a world with a fun
elementary school math curriculum! If you're most interested in raw
accumulation of technological power, then you might be not find this
so interesting, but if you think in terms of how human experience can
change, then this is the most fascinating stuff there is.

Homuncular flexibility isn't the only source of hints about how weird
human experience might get in the future. There also questions related
to language, memory, and other aspects of cognition, as well as
hypothetical prospects for engineering changes in the brain. But in
this one area, there's an indication of high weirdness to come, and I
find that prospect dangerous, but in a beautiful and seductive way.
"Thrilling" might be a better word.
_________________________________________________________________

W.DANIEL HILLIS
Physicist, Computer Scientist; Chairman, Applied Minds, Inc.; Author,
The Pattern on the Stone
[hillis100.jpg]
The idea that we should all share our most dangerous ideas

I don't share my most dangerous ideas. Ideas are the most powerful
forces that we can unleash upon the world, and they should not be let
loose without careful consideration of their consequences. Some ideas
are dangerous because they are false, like an idea that one race of
humans is more worthy that another, or that one religion has monopoly
on the truth. False ideas like these spread like wildfire, and have
caused immeasurable harm. They still do. Such false ideas should
obviously not be spread or encouraged, but there are also plenty of
trues idea that should not be spread: ideas about how to cause terror
and pain and chaos, ideas of how to better convince people of things
that are not true.

I have often seen otherwise thoughtful people so caught up in such an
idea that they seem unable to resist sharing it. To me, the idea that
we should all share our most dangerous ideas is, itself, a very
dangerous idea. I just hope that it never catches on.
_________________________________________________________________

NEIL GERSHENFELD
Physicist; Director, Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT; Author, Fab
[gershenfeld100.jpg]
Democratizing access to the means of invention

The elite temples of research (of the kind I've happily spent my
career in) may be becoming intellectual dinosaurs as a result of the
digitization and personalization of fabrication.

Today, with about $20k in equipment it's possible to make and measure
things from microns and microseconds on up, and that boundary is
quickly receding. When I came to MIT that was hard to do. If it's no
longer necessary to go to MIT for its facilities, then surely the
intellectual community is its real resource? But my colleagues (and I)
are always either traveling or over-scheduled; the best way for us to
see each other is to go somewhere else. Like many people, my closest
collaborators are in fact distributed around the world.

The ultimate consequence of the digitization of first communications,
then computation, and now fabrication, is to democratize access to the
means of invention. The third world can skip over the first and second
cultures and go right to developing a third culture. Rather than
today's model of researchers researching for researchees, the result
of all that discovery has been to enable a planet of creators rather
than consumers.
_________________________________________________________________

PAUL STEINHARDT
Albert Einstein Professor of Science, Princeton University
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It's a matter of time
For decades, the commonly held view among scientists has been that
space and time first emerged about fourteen billion years ago in a big
bang. According to this picture, the cosmos transformed from a nearly
uniform gas of elementary particles to its current complex hierarchy
of structure, ranging from quarks to galaxy superclusters, through an
evolutionary process governed by simple, universal physical laws. In
the past few years, though, confidence in this point of view has been
shaken as physicists have discovered finely tuned features of our
universe that seem to defy natural explanation.
The prime culprit is the cosmological constant, which astronomers have
measured to be exponentially smaller than na?ve estimates would
predict. On the one hand, it is crucial that the cosmological constant
be so small or else it would cause space to expand so rapidly that
galaxies and stars would never form. On the other hand, no theoretical
mechanism has been found within the standard Big Bang picture that
would explain the tiny value.
Desperation has led to a "dangerous" idea: perhaps we live in an
anthropically selected universe. According to this view, we live in a
multiverse (a multitude of universes) in which the cosmological
constant varies randomly from one universe to the next. In most
universes, the value is incompatible with the formation of galaxies,
planets, and stars. The reason why our cosmological constant has the
value it does is because it it is one of the rare examples in which
the value happens to lie in the narrow range compatible with life.
This is the ultimate example of "unintelligent design": the multiverse
tries every possibility with reckless abandon and only very rarely
gets things "right;" that is, consistent with everything we actually
observe. It suggests that the creation of unimaginably enormous
volumes of uninhabitable space is essential to obtain a few rare
habitable spaces.
I consider this approach to be extremely dangerous for two reasons.
First, it relies on complex assumptions about physical conditions far
beyond the range of conceivable observation so it is not
scientifically verifiable. Secondly, I think it leads inevitably to a
depressing end to science. What is the point of exploring further the
randomly chosen physical properties in our tiny corner of the
multiverse if most of the multiverse is so different. I think it is
far too early to be so desperate. This is a dangerous idea that I am
simply unwilling to contemplate.
My own "dangerous" idea is more optimistic but precarious because it
bucks the current trends in cosmological thinking. I believe that the
finely tuned features may be naturally explained by supposing that our
universe is much older than we have imagined. With more time, a new
possibility emerges. The cosmological "constant" may not be constant
after all. Perhaps it is varying so slowly that it only appears to be
constant. Originally it had the much larger value that we would
naturally estimate, but the universe is so old that its value has had
a chance to relax to the tiny value measured today. Furthermore, in
several concrete examples, one finds that the evolution of the
cosmological constant slows down as its value approaches zero, so most
of the history of the universe transpires when its value is tiny, just
as we find today.
This idea that the cosmological constant is decreasing has been
considered in the past. In fact, physically plausible slow-relaxation
mechanisms have been identified. But the timing was thought to be
impossible. If the cosmological constant decreases very slowly, it
causes the expansion rate to accelerate too early and galaxies never
form. If it decreases too quickly, the expansion rate never
accelerates, which is inconsistent with recent observations. As long
as the cosmological constant has only 14 billion years to evolve,
there is no feasible solution.
But, recently, some cosmologists have been exploring the possibility
that the universe is exponentially older. In this picture, the
evolution of the universe is cyclic. The Big Bang is not the beginning
of space and time but, rather, a sudden creation of hot matter and
radiation that marks the transition from one period of expansion and
cooling to the next cycle of evolution. Each cycle might last a
trillion years, say. Fourteen billion years marks the time since the
last infusion of matter and radiation, but this is brief compared to
the total age of the universe. Each cycle lasts about a trillion years
and the number of cycles in the past may have been ten to the googol
power or more!

Then, using the slow relaxation mechanisms considered previously, it
becomes possible that the cosmological constant decreases steadily
from one cycle to the next. Since the number of cycles is likely to be
enormous, there is enough time for the cosmological constant to shrink
by an exponential factor, even though the decrease over the course of
any one cycle is too small to be undetectable. Because the evolution
slows down as the cosmological constant decreases, this is the period
when most of the cycles take place. There is no multiverse and there
is nothing special about our region of space -- we live in a typical
region at a typical time.
Remarkably, this idea is scientifically testable. The picture makes
explicit predictions about the distribution of primordial
gravitational waves and variations in temperature and density. Also,
if the cosmological constant is evolving at the slow rate suggested,
then ongoing attempts to detect a temporal variation should find no
change. So, we may enjoy speculating now about which dangerous ideas
we prefer, but ultimately it is Nature that will decide if any of them
is right. It is just a matter of time.
_________________________________________________________________

SAM HARRIS
Neuroscience Graduate Student, UCLA; Author, The End of Faith
[harriss101.jpg]
Science Must Destroy Religion

Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or
dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that
pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about
how we all must live. Despite the ecumenical efforts of many
well-intentioned people, these irreconcilable religious commitments
still inspire an appalling amount of human conflict.

In response to this situation, most sensible people advocate something
called "religious tolerance." While religious tolerance is surely
better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities.
Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of
criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly
maladaptive. It has also obliged us to lie to ourselves -- repeatedly
and at the highest levels -- about the compatibility between religious
faith and scientific rationality.

The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very
nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of
religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at
the expense of science. It is time we conceded a basic fact of human
discourse: either a person has good reasons for what he believes, or
he does not. When a person has good reasons, his beliefs contribute to
our growing understanding of the world. We need not distinguish
between "hard" and "soft" science here, or between science and other
evidence-based disciplines like history. There happen to be very good
reasons to believe that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December
7th, 1941. Consequently, the idea that the Egyptians actually did it
lacks credibility. Every sane human being recognizes that to rely
merely upon "faith" to decide specific questions of historical fact
would be both idiotic and grotesque -- that is, until the conversation
turns to the origin of books like the bible and the Koran, to the
resurrection of Jesus, to Muhammad's conversation with the angel
Gabriel, or to any of the other hallowed travesties that still crowd
the altar of human ignorance.

Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to
knowledge about ourselves and the world. If there were good reasons to
believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that Muhammad flew to
heaven on a winged horse, these beliefs would necessarily form part of
our rational description of the universe. Faith is nothing more than
the license that religious people give one another to believe such
propositions when reasons fail. The difference between science and
religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately
consider new evidence and new arguments, and a passionate
unwillingness to do so. The distinction could not be more obvious, or
more consequential, and yet it is everywhere elided, even in the ivory
tower.

Religion is fast growing incompatible with the emergence of a global,
civil society. Religious faith -- faith that there is a God who cares
what name he is called, that one of our books is infallible, that
Jesus is coming back to earth to judge the living and the dead, that
Muslim martyrs go straight to Paradise, etc. -- is on the wrong side
of an escalating war of ideas. The difference between science and
religion is the difference between a genuine openness to fruits of
human inquiry in the 21st century, and a premature closure to such
inquiry as a matter of principle. I believe that the antagonism
between reason and faith will only grow more pervasive and intractable
in the coming years. Iron Age beliefs -- about God, the soul, sin,
free will, etc. -- continue to impede medical research and distort
public policy. The possibility that we could elect a U.S. President
who takes biblical prophesy seriously is real and terrifying; the
likelihood that we will one day confront Islamists armed with nuclear
or biological weapons is also terrifying, and growing more probable by
the day. We are doing very little, at the level of our intellectual
discourse, to prevent such possibilities.
In the spirit of religious tolerance, most scientists are keeping
silent when they should be blasting the hideous fantasies of a prior
age with all the facts at their disposal.

To win this war of ideas, scientists and other rational people will
need to find new ways of talking about ethics and spiritual
experience. The distinction between science and religion is not a
matter of excluding our ethical intuitions and non-ordinary states of
consciousness from our conversation about the world; it is a matter of
our being rigorous about what is reasonable to conclude on their
basis. We must find ways of meeting our emotional needs that do not
require the abject embrace of the preposterous. We must learn to
invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every
human life that demand profundity -- birth, marriage, death, etc. --
without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality.

I am hopeful that the necessary transformation in our thinking will
come about as our scientific understanding of ourselves matures. When
we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful,
and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos,
we will have no need for divisive religious myths. Only then will the
practice of raising our children to believe that they are Christian,
Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu be broadly recognized as the ludicrous
obscenity that it is. And only then will we stand a chance of healing
the deepest and most dangerous fractures in our world.
_________________________________________________________________

SCOTT ATRAN
Anthropologist, University of Michigan; Author, In God's We Trust
[atran.100.jpg]

Science encourages religion in the long run (and vice versa)

Ever since Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
scientists and secularly-minded scholars have been predicting the
ultimate demise of religion. But, if anything, religious fervor is
increasing across the world, including in the United States, the
world's most economically powerful and scientifically advanced
society. An underlying reason is that science treats humans and
intentions only as incidental elements in the universe, whereas for
religion they are central. Science is not particularly well-suited to
deal with people's existential anxieties, including death, deception,
sudden catastrophe, loneliness or longing for love or justice. It
cannot tell us what we ought to do, only what we can do. Religion
thrives because it addresses people's deepest emotional yearnings and
society's foundational moral needs, perhaps even more so in complex
and mobile societies that are increasingly divorced from nurturing
family settings and long familiar environments.

From a scientific perspective of the overall structure and design of
the physical universe:

1. Human beings are accidental and incidental products of the material
development of the universe, almost wholly irrelevant and readily
ignored in any general description of its functioning.

Beyond Earth, there is no intelligence -- however alien or like our
own -- that is watching out for us or cares. We are alone.

2. Human intelligence and reason, which searches for the hidden traps
and causes in our surroundings, evolved and will always remain leashed
to our animal passions -- in the struggle for survival, the quest for
love, the yearning for social standing and belonging.

This intelligence does not easily suffer loneliness, anymore than it
abides the looming prospect of death, whether individual or
collective.

Religion is the hope that science is missing (something more in the
endeavor to miss nothing).

But doesn't religion impede science, and vice versa? Not necessarily.
Leaving aside the sociopolitical stakes in the opposition between
science and religion (which vary widely are not constitutive of
science or religion per se -- Calvin considered obedience to tyrants
as exhibiting trust in God, Franklin wanted the motto of the American
Republic to be "rebellion against tyranny is obedience to God"), a
crucial difference between science and religion is that factual
knowledge as such is not a principal aim of religious devotion, but
plays only a supporting role. Only in the last decade has the Catholic
Church reluctantly acknowledged the factual plausibility of
Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin. Earlier religious rejection of their
theories stemmed from challenges posed to a cosmic order unifying the
moral and material worlds. Separating out the core of the material
world would be like draining the pond where a water lily grows. A long
lag time was necessary to refurbish and remake the moral and material
connections in such a way that would permit faith in a unified
cosmology to survive.
_________________________________________________________________

MARCELO GLEISER
Physicist, Dartmouth College; Author, The Prophet and the Astronome
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Can science explain itself?

There have been many times when I asked myself if we scientists,
especially those seeking to answer "ultimate" kind of questions such
as the origin of the Universe, are not beating on the wrong drum. Of
course, by trying to answer such question as the origin of everything,
we assume we can. We plow ahead, proposing tentative models that join
general relativity and quantum mechanics and use knowledge from high
energy physics to propose models where the universe pops out of
nothing, no energy required, due to a random quantum fluctuation. To
this, we tag along the randomness of fundamental constants, saying
that their values are the way they are due to an accident: other
universes may well have other values of the charge and mass of the
electron and thus completely different properties. So, our universe
becomes this very special place where things "conspire" to produce
galaxies, stars, planets, and life.

What if this is all bogus? What if we look at sciece as a narrative, a
description of the world that has limitations based on its structure?
The constants of Nature are the letters of the alphabet, the laws are
the grammar rules and we build these descriptions through the guiding
hand of the so-called scientific method. Period. To say things are
this way because otherwise we wouldn't be here to ask the question is
to miss the point altogether: things are this way because this is the
story we humans tell based on the way we see the world and explain it.

If we take this to the extreme, it means that we will never be able to
answer the question of the origin of the Universe, since it implicitly
assumes that science can explain itself. We can build any cool and
creative models we want using any marriage of quantum mechanics and
relativity, but we still won't understand why these laws and not
others. In sense, this means that our science is our science and not
something universally true as many believe it is. This is not bad at
all, given what we can do with it, but it does place limits on
knowledge. Which may also not be a bad thing as well. It's OK not to
know everything, it doesn't make science weaker. Only more human.
_________________________________________________________________

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF
Media Analyst; Documentary Writer; Author, Get Back in the Box :
Innovation from the Inside Out
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Open Source Currency

It's not only dangerous and by most counts preposterous; it's
happening. Open Source or, in more common parlance, "complementary"
currencies are collaboratively established units representing hours of
labor that can be traded for goods or services in lieu of centralized
currency. The advantage is that while the value of centralized
currency is based on its scarcity, the bias of complementary or local
currencies is towards their abundance.

So instead of having to involve the Fed in every transaction -- and
using money that requires being paid back with interest -- we can
invent our own currencies and create value with our labor. It's what
the Japanese did at the height of the recession. No, not the Japanese
government, but unemployed Japanese people who couldn't afford to pay
healthcare costs for their elder relatives in distant cities. They
created a currency through which people could care for someone else's
grandmother, and accrue credits for someone else to take care of
theirs.

Throughout most of history, complementary currencies existed alongside
centralized currency. While local currency was used for labor and
local transactions, centralized currencies were used for long distance
and foreign trade. Local currencies were based on a model of abundance
-- there was so much of it that people constantly invested it. That's
why we saw so many cathedrals being built in the late middle ages, and
unparalleled levels of investment in infrastructure and maintenance.
Centralized currency, on the other hand, needed to retain value over
long distances and periods of time, so it was based on precious and
scarce resources, such as gold.

The problem started during the Renaissance: as kings attempted to
centralize their power, most local currencies were outlawed. This new
monopoly on currency reduced entire economies into scarcity engines,
encouraging competition over collaboration, protectionism over
sharing, and fixed commodities over renewable resources. Today, money
is lent into existence by the Fed or another central bank -- and paid
back with interest.

This cash is a medium; and like any medium, it has certain biases. The
money we use today is just one model of money. Turning currency into
an collaborative phenomenon is the final frontier in the open source
movement. It's what would allow for an economic model that could
support a renewable energies industry, a way for companies such as
Wal-Mart to add value to the communities it currently drains, and a
way of working with money that doesn't have bankruptcy built in as a
given circumstanc
_________________________________________________________________

JUDITH RICH HARRIS
Independent Investigator and Theoretician; Author, The Nurture
Assumption
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The idea of zero parental influence

Is it dangerous to claim that parents have no power at all (other than
genetic) to shape their child's personality, intelligence, or the way
he or she behaves outside the family home? More to the point, is this
claim false? Was I wrong when I proposed that parents' power to do
these things by environmental means is zero, nada, zilch?

A confession: When I first made this proposal ten years ago, I didn't
fully believe it myself. I took an extreme position, the null
hypothesis of zero parental influence, for the sake of scientific
clarity. Making myself an easy target, I invited the establishment --
research psychologists in the academic world -- to shoot me down. I
didn't think it would be all that difficult for them to do so. It was
clear by then that there weren't any big effects of parenting, but I
thought there must be modest effects that I would ultimately have to
acknowledge.

The establishment's failure to shoot me down has been nothing short of
astonishing. One developmental psychologist even admitted, one year
ago on this very website, that researchers hadn't yet found proof that
"parents do shape their children," but she was still convinced that
they will eventually find it, if they just keep searching long enough.

Her comrades in arms have been less forthright. "There are dozens of
studies that show the influence of parents on children!" they kept
saying, but then they'd somehow forget to name them -- perhaps because
these studies were among the ones I had already demolished (by showing
that they lacked the necessary controls or the proper statistical
analyses). Or they'd claim to have newer research that provided an
airtight case for parental influence, but again there was a catch: the
work had never been published in a peer-reviewed journal. When I
investigated, I could find no evidence that the research in question
had actually been done or, if done, that it had produced the results
that were claimed for it. At most, it appeared to consist of
preliminary work, with too little data to be meaningful (or
publishable).

Vaporware, I call it. Some of the vaporware has achieved mythic
status. You may have heard of Stephen Suomi's experiment with nervous
baby monkeys, supposedly showing that those reared by "nurturant"
adoptive monkey mothers turn into calm, socially confident adults. Or
of Jerome Kagan's research with nervous baby humans, supposedly
showing that those reared by "overprotective" (that is, nurturant)
human mothers are more likely to remain fearful.

Researchers like these might well see my ideas as dangerous. But is
the notion of zero parental influence dangerous in any other sense? So
it is alleged. Here's what Frank Farley, former president of the
American Psychological Association, told a journalist in 1998:

[Harris's] thesis is absurd on its face, but consider what might
happen if parents believe this stuff! Will it free some to mistreat
their kids, since "it doesn't matter"? Will it tell parents who are
tired after a long day that they needn't bother even paying any
attention to their kid since "it doesn't matter"?

Farley seems to be saying that the only reason parents are nice to
their children is because they think it will make the children turn
out better! And that if parents believed that they had no influence at
all on how their kids turn out, they are likely to abuse or neglect
them.

Which, it seems to me, is absurd on its face. Most chimpanzee mothers
are nice to their babies and take good care of them. Do chimpanzees
think they're going to influence how their offspring turn out? Doesn't
Frank Farley know anything at all about evolutionary biology and
evolutionary psychology?

My idea is viewed as dangerous by the powers that be, but I don't
think it's dangerous at all. On the contrary: if people accepted it,
it would be a breath of fresh air. Family life, for parents and
children alike, would improve. Look what's happening now as a result
of the faith, obligatory in our culture, in the power of parents to
mold their children's fragile psyches. Parents are exhausting
themselves in their efforts to meet their children's every demand, not
realizing that evolution designed offspring -- nonhuman animals as
well as humans -- to demand more than they really need. Family life
has become phony, because parents are convinced that children need
constant reassurances of their love, so if they don't happen to feel
very loving at a particular time or towards a particular child, they
fake it. Praise is delivered by the bushel, which devalues its worth.
Children have become the masters of the home.

And what has all this sacrifice and effort on the part of parents
bought them? Zilch. There are no indications that children today are
happier, more self-confident, less aggressive, or in better mental
health than they were sixty years ago, when I was a child -- when
homes were run by and for adults, when physical punishment was used
routinely, when fathers were generally unavailable, when praise was a
rare and precious commodity, and when explicit expressions of parental
love were reserved for the deathbed.

Is my idea dangerous? I've never condoned child abuse or neglect; I've
never believed that parents don't matter. The relationship between a
parent and a child is an important one, but it's important in the same
way as the relationship between married partners. A good relationship
is one in which each party cares about the other and derives happiness
from making the other happy. A good relationship is not one in which
one party's central goal is to modify the other's personality.

I think what's really dangerous -- perhaps a better word is tragic --
is the establishment's idea of the all-powerful, and hence
all-blamable, parent.
_________________________________________________________________

ALUN ANDERSON
Senior Consultant, New Scientist
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Brains cannot become minds without bodies

A common image for popular accounts of the "The Mind" is a brain in a
bell jar. The message is that inside that disembodied lump of neural
tissue is everything that is you.

It's a scary image but misleading. A far more dangerous idea is that
brains cannot become minds without bodies, that two-way interactions
between mind and body are crucial to thought and health, and the brain
may partly think in terms of the motor actions it encodes for the
body's muscles to carry out.

We've probable fallen for disembodied brains because of the academic
tendency to worship abstract thought. If we take a more democratic
view of the whole brain we'd find far more of it being used for
planning and controlling movement than for cogitation. Sports writers
get it right when they describe stars of football or baseball as
"geniuses"! Their genius requires massive brain power and a superb
body, which is perhaps one better than Einstein.

The "brain-body" view is dangerous because it requires many scientists
to change the way they think: it allows back common sense interactions
between brain and body that medical science feels uncomfortable with,
makes more sense of feelings like falling in love and requires a
different approach for people who are trying to create machines with
human-like intelligence. And if this all sounds like mere assertion,
there's plenty of interesting research out there to back it up.

Interactions between mind and body come out strongly in the surprising
links between status and health. Michael Marmot's celebrated studies
show that the lower you are in the pecking order, the worse your
health is likely to be. You can explain away only a small part of the
trend from poorer access to healthcare, or poorer food or living
conditions. For Marmot, the answer lies in "the impact over how much
control you have over life circumstances". The important message is
that state of mind -- perceived status -- translates into state of
body.

The effect of placebos on health delivers a similar message. Trust and
belief are often seen as negative in science and the placebo effect is
dismissed as a kind of "fraud" because it relies on the belief of the
patient. But the real wonder is that faith can work. Placebos can
stimulate the release of pain-relieving endorphins and affect neuronal
firing rates in people with Parkinson's disease.

Body and mind interact too in the most intimate feelings of love and
bonding. Those interactions have been best explored in voles where two
hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin, are critical. The hormones are
released as a result of the "the extended tactile pleasures of
mating", as researchers describe it, and hit pleasure centres in the
brain which essentially "addict" sexual partners to one another.

Humans are surely more cerebral. But brain scans of people in love
show heightened activity where there are lots of oxytocin and
vasopressin receptors. Oxytocin levels rise during orgasm and sexual
arousal, as they do from touching and massage. There are defects in
oxytocin receptors associated with autism. And the hormone boosts the
feeling that you can trust others, which is key part of intimate
relations. In a recent laboratory "investment game" many investors
would trust all their money to a stranger after a puff of an oxytocin
spray.

These few stories show the importance of the interplay of minds and
hormonal signals, of brains and bodies. This idea has been taken to a
profound level in the well-known studies of Anthony Damasio, who finds
that emotional or "gut feelings" are essential to making decisions.
"We don't separate emotion from cognition like layers in a cake," says
Damasio, "Emotion is in the loop of reason all the time."

Indeed, the way in which reasoning is tied to body actions may be
quite counter-intuitive. Giacomo Rizzolatti discovered "mirror
neurones" in a part of the monkey brain responsible for planning
movement. These nerve cells fire both when a monkey performs an action
(like picking up a peanut) and when the monkey sees someone else do
the same thing. Before long, similar systems were found in human
brains too.

The surprising conclusion may be that when we see someone do
something, the same parts of our brain are activated "as if" we were
doing it ourselves. We may know what other people intend and feel by
simulating what they are doing within the same motor areas of our own
brains.

As Rizzolatti puts it, "the fundamental mechanism that allows us a
direct grasp of the mind of others is not conceptual reasoning but
direct simulation of the observed events through the mirror
mechanism." Direct grasp of others' minds is a special ability that
paves the way for our unique powers of imitation which in turn have
allowed culture to develop.

If bodies and their interaction with brain and planning for action in
the world are so central to human kinds of mind, where does that leave
the chances of creating an intelligent "disembodied mind" inside a
computer? Perhaps the Turing test will be harder than we think. We may
build computers that understand language but which cannot say anything
meaningful, at least until we can give them "extended tactile
experiences". To put it another way, computers may not be able to make
sense until they can have sex.
_________________________________________________________________

TODD E. FEINBERG, M.D.
Psychiatrist and Neurologist, Albert Einstein College of Medicine;
Author, Altered Egos
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Myths and fairy tales are not true

"Myths and fairy tales are not true." There is no Easter Bunny, there
is no Santa Claus, and Moses may never have existed. Worse yet, I have
increasing difficulty believing that there is a higher power ruling
the universe. This is my dangerous idea. It is not a dangerous idea to
those who do not share my particular world view or personal fears; to
others it may seem trivially true. But for me, this idea is downright
horrifying.

I came to ponder this idea through my neurological examination of
patients with brain damage that causes a disturbance in their self
concepts and ego functions.
Some of theses patients develop, in the course of their illness and
recovery (or otherwise), disturbances of self and personal relatedness
that create enduring delusions and metaphorical confabulations
regarding their bodies, their relationships with loved ones, and their
personal experiences. A patient I examined with a right hemisphere
stroke and paralyzed left arm claimed that the arm was actually
severed from his brother's body by gang members, thrown in the East
river, and later attached to the patient's shoulder. Another patient
with a ruptured brain aneurysm and amnesia who denied his disabilities
claimed he was planning to adopt (a phantom) child who was in need of
medical assistance.

These personal narratives, produced by patients in altered
neurological states and therefore without the constraints imposed by a
fully functioning consciousness, have a dream-like quality, and
constitute "personal myths" that express the patient's beliefs about
themselves. The patient creates a metaphor in which personal
experiences are crystallized in a metaphor in the form of an external
real or fictitious persons, objects, places, or events. When this
occurs, the metaphor serves as a symbolic representation or
externalization of the patient's feelings that the patient does not
realize originate from within the self.

There is an intimate relationship between my patients' narratives and
socially endorsed fairy tales and mythologies. This is particularly
apparent when mythologies deal with themes relating to a loss of self,
personal identity or death. For many people, the notion of personal
death is extremely difficult to grasp and fully accommodate within
one's self image. For many, in order to go on with life, death must be
denied. Therefore, to help the individual deal with the prospect of
the inevitability of personal death, cultural and religious
institutions provide metaphors of everlasting life. Just as my
patients adapt to difficult realities by creating metaphorical
substitutes, it appears to me that beliefs in angels, deities and
eternal souls can be understood in part as wish fulfilling metaphors
for an unpleasant reality that most of us cannot fully comprehend and
accept.

Unfortunately, just as my patients' myths are not true, neither are
those that I was brought up to believe in.
_________________________________________________________________

STEWART BRAND
Founder, Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder; The Well; cofounder, Global
Business Network; Author, How Buildings Learn
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What if public policy makers have an obligation to engage historians,
and historians have an obligation to try to help?

All historians understand that they must never, ever talk about the
future. Their discipline requires that they deal in facts, and the
future doesn't have any yet. A solid theory of history might be able
to embrace the future, but all such theories have been discredited.
Thus historians do not offer, and are seldom invited, to take part in
shaping public policy. They leave that to economists.

But discussions among policy makers always invoke history anyway,
usually in simplistic form. "Munich" and "Vietnam," devoid of detail
or nuance, stand for certain kinds of failure. "Marshall Plan" and
"Man on the Moon" stand for certain kinds of success. Such totemic
invocation of history is the opposite of learning from history, and
Santayana's warning continues in force, that those who fail to learn
from history are condemned to repeat it.

A dangerous thought: What if public policy makers have an obligation
to engage historians, and historians have an obligation to try to
help?

And instead of just retailing advice, go generic. Historians could set
about developing a rigorous sub-discipline called "Applied History."

There is only one significant book on the subject, published in 1988.
Thinking In Time: The Uses of Hustory for Decision Makers was written
by the late Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, who long taught a course
on the subject at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. (A course
called "Reasoning from History" is currently taught there by Alexander
Keyssar.)

Done wrong, Applied History could paralyze public decision making and
corrupt the practice of history -- that's the danger. But done right,
Applied History could make decision making and policy far more
sophisticated and adaptive, and it could invest the study of history
with the level of consequence it deserves.
_________________________________________________________________

JARED DIAMOND
Biologist; Geographer, UCLA; Author, Collapse
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The evidence that tribal peoples often damage their environments and
make war.

Why is this idea dangerous? Because too many people today believe that
a reason not to mistreat tribal people is that they are too nice or
wise or peaceful to do those evil things, which only we evil citizens
of state governments do. The idea is dangerous because, if you believe
that that's the reason not to mistreat tribal peoples, then proof of
the idea's truth would suggest that it's OK to mistreat them. In fact,
the evidence seems to me overwhelming that the dangerous idea is true.
But we should treat other people well because of ethical reasons, not
because of na?ve anthropological theories that will almost surely
prove false.
_________________________________________________________________

LEONARD SUSSKIND
Physicist, Stanford University; Author, The Cosmic Landscape
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The "Landscape"

I have been accused of advocating an extremely dangerous idea.

According to some people, the "Landscape" idea will eventually ensure
that the forces of intelligent design (and other unscientific
religious ideas) will triumph over true science. From one of my most
distinguished colleagues:

From a political, cultural point of view, it's not that these
arguments are religious but that they denude us from our historical
strength in opposing religion.

Others have expressed the fear that my ideas, and those of my friends,
will lead to the end of science (methinks they overestimate me). One
physicist calls it "millennial madness."

And from another quarter, Christoph Sch?nborn, Cardinal Archbishop of
Vienna has accused me of "an abdication of human intelligence."

As you may have guessed the idea in question is the Anthropic
Principle: a principle that seeks to explain the laws of physics, and
the constants of nature, by saying, "If they (the laws of physics)
were different, intelligent life would not exist to ask why laws of
nature are what they are."

On the face of it, the Anthropic Principle is far too silly to be
dangerous. It sounds no more sensible than explaining the evolution of
the eye by saying that unless the eye evolved, there would be no one
to read this page. But the A.P. is really shorthand for a rich set of
ideas that are beginning to influence and even dominate the thinking
of almost all serious theoretical physicists and cosmologists.

Let me strip the idea down to its essentials. Without all the
philosophical baggage, what it says is straightforward: The universe
is vastly bigger than the portion that we can see; and, on a very
large scale it is as varied as possible. In other words, rather than
being a homogeneous, mono-colored blanket, it is a crazy-quilt
patchwork of different environments. This is not an idle speculation.
There is a growing body of empirical evidence confirming the
inflationary theory of cosmology, which underlies the hugeness and
hypothetical diversity of the universe.

Meanwhile string theorists, much to the regret of many of them, are
discovering that the number of possible environments described by
their equations is far beyond millions or billions. This enormous
space of possibilities, whose multiplicity may exceed ten to the 500
power, is called the Landscape. If these things prove to be true, then
some features of the laws of physics (maybe most) will be local
environmental facts rather than written-in-stone laws: laws that could
not be otherwise. The explanation of some numerical coincidences will
necessarily be that most of the multiverse is uninhabitable, but in
some very tiny fraction conditions are fine-tuned enough for
intelligent life to form.

That's the dangerous idea and it is spreading like a cancer.

Why is it that so many physicists find these ideas alarming? Well,
they do threaten physicists' fondest hope, the hope that some
extraordinarily beautiful mathematical principle will be discovered: a
principle that would completely and uniquely explain every detail of
the laws of particle physics (and therefore nuclear, atomic, and
chemical physics). The enormous Landscape of Possibilities inherent in
our best theory seems to dash that hope.

What further worries many physicists is that the Landscape may be so
rich that almost anything can be found: any combination of physical
constants, particle masses, etc. This, they fear, would eliminate the
predictive power of physics. Environmental facts are nothing more than
environmental facts. They worry that if everything is possible, there
will be no way to falsify the theory -- or, more to the point, no way
to confirm it. Is the danger real? We shall see.

Another danger that some of my colleagues perceive, is that if we
"senior physicists" allow ourselves to be seduced by the Anthropic
Principle, young physicists will give up looking for the "true" reason
for things, the beautiful mathematical principle. My guess is that if
the young generation of scientists is really that spineless, then
science is doomed anyway. But as we know, the ambition of all young
scientists is to make fools of their elders.

And why does the Cardinal Archbishop Sch?nborn find the Landscape and
the Multiverse so dangerous. I will let him explain it himself:

Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific
claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in
cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose
and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again
defend human nature by proclaiming that the immanent design evident
in nature is real. Scientific theories that try to explain away the
appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity' are
not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of
human intelligence.

Abdication of human intelligence? No, it's called science.
_________________________________________________________________

GERALD HOLTON
Mallinckrodt Research Professor of Physics and Research Professor of
History of Science, Harvard University; Author, Thematic Origins of
Scientific Thought
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The medicination of the ancient yearning for immortality

Since the major absorption of scientific method into the research and
practice of medicine in the 1860s, the longevity curve, at least for
the white population in industrial countries, took off and has
continued fairly constantly. That has been on the whole a benign
result, and has begun to introduce the idea of tolerably good health
as one of the basic Human Rights. But one now reads of projections to
200 years, and perhaps more. The economic, social and human costs of
the increasing fraction of very elderly citizens have begun to be
noticed already.

To glimpse one of the possible results of the continuing projection of
the longevity curve in terms of a plausible scenario: The matriarch of
the family, on her deathbed at age 200, is being visited by the
surviving, grieving family members: a son and a daughter, each of age
of about 180, plus /their/ three "children" , around 150-160 years old
each, plus all their offspring, in the range of 120 to 130, and so
on..... A touching picture. But what are all the "costs" involved?
_________________________________________________________________

CHARLES SEIFE
Professor of Journalism, New York University; formerly journalist,
Science magazine; Author, Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea
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Nothing

Nothing can be more dangerous than nothing.

Humanity's always been uncomfortable with zero and the void. The
ancient Greeks declared them unnatural and unreal. Theologians argued
that God's first act was to banish the void by the act of creating the
universe ex nihilo, and Middle-Ages thinkers tried to ban zero and the
other Arabic "ciphers." But the emptiness is all around us -- most of
the universe is void. Even as we huddle around our hearths and invent
stories to convince ourselves that the cosmos is warm and full and
inviting, nothingness stares back at us with empty eye sockets.
_________________________________________________________________

KARL SABBAGH
Writer and Television Producer; Author, The Riemann Hypothesis
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The human brain and its products are incapable of understanding the
truths about the universe

Our brains may never be well-enough equipped to understand the
universe and we are fooling ourselves if we think they will.
Why should we expect to be able eventually to understand how the
universe originated, evolved, and operates? While human brains are
complex and capable of many amazing things, there is not necessarily
any match between the complexity of the universe and the complexity of
our brains, any more than a dog's brain is capable of understanding
every detail of the world of cats and bones, or the dynamics of stick
trajectories when thrown. Dogs get by and so do we, but do we have a
right to expect that the harder we puzzle over these things the nearer
we will get to the truth? Recently I stood in front of a three metre
high model of the Ptolemaic universe in the Museum of the History of
Science in Florence and I remembered how well that worked as a
representation of the motions of the planets until Copernicus and
Kepler came along.

Nowadays, no element of the theory of giant interlocking cogwheels at
work is of any use in understanding the motions of the stars and
planets (and indeed Ptolemy himself did not argue that the universe
really was run by giant cogwheels). Occam's Razor is used to compare
two theories and allow us to choose which is more likely to be 'true'
but hasn't it become a comfort blanket whenever we are faced with
aspects of the universe that seem unutterably complex -- string theory
for example. But is string theory just the Ptolemaic clockwork de nos
jours? Can it be succeeded by some simplification or might the truth
be even more complex and far beyond the neural networks of our brain
to understand?

The history of science is littered with examples of two types of
knowledge advancement. There is imperfect understanding that 'sort of'
works, and is then modified and replaced by something that works
better, without destroying the validity of the earlier theory.
Newton's theory of gravitation replaced by Einstein. Then there is
imperfect understanding that is replaced by some new idea which owes
nothing to older ones. Phlogiston theory, the ether, and so on are
replaced by ideas which save the phenomena, lead to predictions, and
convince us that they are nearer the truth. Which of these categories
really covers today's science? Could we be fooling ourselves by
playing around with modern phlogiston?

And even if we are on the right lines in some areas, how much of what
there is to be understood in the universe do we really understand?
Fifty percent? Five percent? The dangerous idea is that perhaps we
understand half a percent and all the brain and computer power we can
muster may take us up to one or two percent in the lifetime of the
human race.

Paradoxically, we may find that the only justification for pursuing
scientific knowledge is for the practical applications it leads to --
a view that runs contrary to the traditional support of knowledge for
knowledge's sake. And why is this paradoxical? Because the most
important advances in technology have come out of research that was
not seeking to develop those advances but to understand the universe.
So if my dangerous idea is right -- that the human brain and its
products are actually incapable of understanding the truths about the
universe -- it will not -- and should not -- lead to any diminution at
all in our attempts to do so. Which means, I suppose, that it's not
really dangerous at all.
_________________________________________________________________

RUPERT SHELDRAKE
Biologist, London; Author of The Presence of the Past
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A sense of direction involving new scientific principles

We don't understand animal navigation.

No one knows how pigeons home, or how swallow migrate, or how green
turtles find Ascension Island from thousands of miles away to lay
their eggs. These kinds of navigation involve more than following
familiar landmarks, or orientating in a particular compass direction;
they involve an ability to move towards a goal.

Why is this idea dangerous? Don't we just need a bit more time to
explain navigation in terms of standard physics, genes, nerve impulses
and brain chemistry? Perhaps.

But there is a dangerous possibility that animal navigation may not be
explicable in terms of present-day physics. Over and above the known
senses, some species of animals may have a sense of direction that
depends on their being attracted towards their goals through direct
field-like connections. These spatial attractors are places with which
the animals themselves are already familiar, or with which their
ancestors were familiar.

What are the facts? We know more about pigeons than any other species.
Everyone agrees that within familiar territory, especially within a
few miles of their home, pigeons can use landmarks; for example, they
can follow roads. But using familiar landmarks near home cannot
explain how racing pigeons return across unfamiliar terrain from six
hundred miles away, even flying over the sea, as English pigeons do
when they are raced from Spain.

Charles Darwin, himself a pigeon fancier, was one of the first to
suggest a scientific hypothesis for pigeon homing. He proposed that
they might use a kind of dead reckoning, registering all the twists
and turns of the outward journey. This idea was tested in the
twentieth century by taking pigeons away from their loft in closed
vans by devious routes. They still homed normally. So did birds
transported on rotating turntables, and so did birds that had been
completely anaesthetized during the outward journey.

What about celestial navigation? One problem for hypothetical solar or
stellar navigation systems is that many animals still navigate in
cloudy weather. Another problem is that celestial navigation depends
on a precise time sense. To test the sun navigation theory, homing
pigeons were clock-shifted by six or twelve hours and taken many miles
from their lofts before being released. On sunny days, they set off in
the wrong direction, as if a clock-dependent sun compass had been
shifted. But in spite of their initial confusion, the pigeons soon
corrected their courses and flew homewards normally.

Two main hypotheses remain: smell and magnetism. Smelling the home
position from hundreds of miles away is generally agreed to be
implausible. Even the most ardent defenders of the smell hypothesis
(the Italian school of Floriano Papi and his colleagues) concede that
smell navigation is unlikely to work at distances over 30 miles.
That leaves a magnetic sense. A range of animal species can detect
magnetic fields, including termites, bees and migrating birds. But
even if pigeons have a compass sense, this cannot by itself explain
homing. Imagine that you are taken to an unfamiliar place and given a
compass. You will know from the compass where north is, but not where
home is.
The obvious way of dealing with this problem is to postulate complex
interactions between known sensory modalities, with multiple back-up
systems. The complex interaction theory is safe, sounds sophisticated,
and is vague enough to be irrefutable. The idea of a sense of
direction involving new scientific principles is dangerous, but it may
be inevitable.
_________________________________________________________________

TOR N?RRETRANDERS
Science Writer; Consultant; Lecturer, Copenhagen; Author, The User
Illusion
[norretranders100.jpg]

Social Relativity

Relativity is my dangerous idea. Well, neither the special nor the
general theory of relativity, but what could be called social
relativity: The idea that the only thing that matters to human
well-being is how one stands relatively to others. That is, only the
relative wealth of a person is important, the absolute level does not
really matter, as soon as everyone is above the level of having their
immediate survival needs fulfilled.

There is now strong and consistent evidence (from fields such as
microeconomics, experimental economics, psychology, sociolology and
primatology) that it doesn't really matter how much you earn, as long
as you earn more than your wife's sister's husband. Pioneers in these
discussions are the late British social thinker Fred Hirsch and the
American economist Robert Frank.

Why is this idea dangerous? It seems to imply that equality will never
become possible in human societies: The driving force is always to get
ahead of the rest. Nobody will ever settle down and share.

So it would seem that we are forever stuck with poverty, disease and
unjust hierarchies. This idea could make the rich and the smart lean
back and forget about the rest of the pack.

But it shouldn't.

Inequality may subjectively seem nice to the rich, but objectively it
is not in their interest.

A huge body of epidemiological evidence points to the fact that
inequality is in fact the prime cause for human disease. Rich people
in poor countries are more healthy than poor people in rich countries,
even though the latter group has more resources in absolute terms.
Societies with strong gradients of wealth show higher death rates and
more disease, also amongst the people at the top. Pioneers in these
studies are the British epidemiologists Michael Marmot and Richard
Wilkinson.

Poverty means spreading of disease, degradation of ecosystems and
social violence and crime -- which are also bad for the rich.
Inequality means stress to everyone.

Social relativity then boils down to an illusion: It seems nice to me
to be better off than the rest, but in terms of vitals -- survival,
good health -- it is not.

Believing in social relativity can be dangerous to your health.
_________________________________________________________________

JOHN HORGAN
Science Writer; Author, Rational Mysticism
[horgan100.jpg]

We Have No Souls

The Depressing, Dangerous Hypothesis: We Have No Souls.
This year's Edge question makes me wonder: Which ideas pose a greater
potential danger? False ones or true ones? Illusions or the lack
thereof? As a believer in and lover of science, I certainly hope that
the truth will set us free, and save us, but sometimes I'm not so
sure.

The dangerous, probably true idea I'd like to dwell on in this Holiday
season is that we humans have no souls. The soul is that core of us
that supposedly transcends and even persists beyond our physicality,
lending us a fundamental autonomy, privacy and dignity. In his 1994
book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul,
the late, great Francis Crick argued that the soul is an illusion
perpetuated, like Tinkerbell, only by our belief in it. Crick opened
his book with this manifesto: "'You,' your joys and your sorrows, your
memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free
will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of
nerve cells and their associated molecules." Note the quotation marks
around "You." The subtitle of Crick's book was almost comically
ironic, since he was clearly trying not to find the soul but to crush
it out of existence.

I once told Crick that "The Depressing Hypothesis" would have been a
more accurate title for his book, since he was, after all, just
reiterating the basic, materialist assumption of modern neurobiology
and, more broadly, all of science. Until recently, it was easy to
dismiss this assumption as moot, because brain researchers had made so
little progress in tracing cognition to specific neural processes.
Even self-proclaimed materialists -- who accept, intellectually, that
we are just meat machines -- could harbor a secret, sentimental belief
in a soul of the gaps. But recently the gaps have been closing, as
neuroscientists -- egged on by Crick in the last two decades of his
life--have begun unraveling the so-called neural code, the software
that transforms electrochemical pulses in the brain into perceptions,
memories, decisions, emotions, and other constituents of
consciousness.

I've argued elsewhere that the neural code may turn out to be so
complex that it will never be fully deciphered. But 60 years ago, some
biologists feared the genetic code was too complex to crack. Then in
1953 Crick and Watson unraveled the structure of DNA, and researchers
quickly established that the double helix mediates an astonishingly
simple genetic code governing the heredity of all organisms. Science's
success in deciphering the genetic code, which has culminated in the
Human Genome Project, has been widely acclaimed -- and with good
reason, because knowledge of our genetic makeup could allow us to
reshape our innate nature. A solution to the neural code could give us
much greater, more direct control over ourselves than mere genetic
manipulation.

Will we be liberated or enslaved by this knowledge? Officials in the
Pentagon, the major funder of neural-code research, have openly
broached the prospect of cyborg warriors who can be remotely
controlled via brain implants, like the assassin in the recent remake
of "The Manchurian Candidate." On the other hand, a cult-like group of
self-described "wireheads" looks forward to the day when implants
allow us to create our own realities and achieve ecstasy on demand.

Either way, when our minds can be programmed like personal computers,
then, perhaps, we will finally abandon the belief that we have
immortal, inviolable souls, unless, of course, we program ourselves to
believe.
_________________________________________________________________

ERIC R. KANDEL
Biochemist and University Professor, Columbia University; Recipient,
The Nobel Prize, 2000; Author, Cellular Basis of Behavior
[kandel100.jpg]

Free will is exercised unconsciously, without awareness

It is clear that consciousness is central to understanding human
mental processes, and therefore is the holy grail of modern
neuroscience. What is less clear is that much of our mental processes
are unconscious and that these unconscious processes are as important
as conscious mental processes for understanding the mind. Indeed most
cognitive processes never reach consciousness.

As Sigmund Freud emphasized at the beginning of the 20th century most
of our perceptual and cognitive processes are unconscious, except
those that are in the immediate focus of our attention. Based on these
insights Freud emphasized that unconscious mental processes guide much
of human behavior.

Freud's idea was a natural extension of the notion of unconscious
inference proposed in the 1860s by Hermann Helmholtz, the German
physicist turned neural scientist. Helmholtz was the first to measure
the conduction of electrical signals in nerves. He had expected it to
be as the speed of light, fast as the conduction of electricity in
copper cables, and found to his surprise that it was much slower, only
about 90m sec. He then examined the reaction time, the time it takes a
subject to respond to a consciously a perceived stimulus, and found
that it was much, much slower than even the combined conduction times
required for sensory and motor activities.

This caused Helmholz to argue that a great deal of brain processing
occurred unconsciously prior to conscious perception of an object.
Helmholtz went on to argue that much of what goes on in the brain is
not represented in consciousness and that the perception of objects
depends upon "unconscious inferences" made by the brain, based on
thinking and reasoning without awareness. This view was not accepted
by many brain scientists who believed that consciousness is necessary
for making inferences. However, in the 1970s a number of experiments
began to accumulate in favor of the idea that most cognitive processes
that occur in the brain never enter consciousness.

Perhaps the most influential of these experiments were those carried
out by Benjamin Libet in 1986. Libet used as his starting point a
discovery made by the German neurologist Hans Kornhuber. Kornhuber
asked volunteers to move their right index finger. He then measured
this voluntary movement with a strain gauge while at the same time
recording the electrical activity of the brain by means of an
electrode on the skull. After hundreds of trials, Kornhuber found
that, invariably, each movement was preceded by a little blip in the
electrical record from the brain, a spark of free will! He called this
potential in the brain the "readiness potential" and found that it
occurred one second before the voluntary movement.

Libet followed up on Kornhuber's finding with an experiment in which
he asked volunteers to lift a finger whenever they felt the urge to do
so. He placed an electrode on a volunteer's skull and confirmed a
readiness potential about one second before the person lifted his or
her finger. He then compared the time it took for the person to will
the movement with the time of the readiness potential.

Amazingly, Libet found that the readiness potential appeared not
after, but 200 milliseconds before a person felt the urge to move his
or her finger! Thus by merely observing the electrical activity of the
brain, Libet could predict what a person would do before the person
was actually aware of having decided to do it.

These experiments led to the radical insight that by observing another
person's brain activity, one can predict what someone is going to do
before he is aware that he has made the decision to do it. This
finding has caused philosophers of mind to ask: If the choice is
determined in the brain unconsciously before we decide to act, where
is free will?

Are these choices predetermined? Is our experience of freely willing
our actions only an illusion, a rationalization after the fact for
what has happened? Freud, Helmholtz and Libet would disagree and argue
that the choice is freely made but that it happens without our
awareness. According to their view, the unconscious inference of
Helmholtz also applies to decision-making.

They would argue that the choice is made freely, but not consciously.
Libet for example proposes that the process of initiating a voluntary
action occurs in an unconscious part of the brain, but that just
before the action is initiated, consciousness is recruited to approve
or veto the action. In the 200 milliseconds before a finger is lifted,
consciousness determines whether it moves or not.
Whatever the reasons for the delay between decision and awareness,
Libet's findings now raise the moral question: Is one to be held
responsible for decisions that are made without conscious awareness?
_________________________________________________________________

DANIEL GOLEMAN
Psychologist; Author, Emotional Intelligence
[goleman100.jpg]

Cyber-disinhibition

The Internet inadvertently undermines the quality of human
interaction, allowing destructive emotional impulses freer reign under
specific circumstances. The reason is a neural fluke that results in
cyber-disinhibition of brain systems that keep our more unruly urges
in check. The tech problem: a major disconnect between the ways our
brains are wired to connect, and the interface offered in online
interactions.

Communication via the Internet can mislead the brain's social systems.
The key mechanisms are in the prefrontal cortex; these circuits
instantaneously monitor ourselves and the other person during a live
interaction, and automatically guide our responses so they are
appropriate and smooth. A key mechanism for this involves circuits
that ordinarily inhibit impulses for actions that would be rude or
simply inappropriate -- or outright dangerous.
In order for this regulatory mechanism to operate well, we depend on
real-time, ongoing feedback from the other person. The Internet has no
means to allow such realtime feedback (other than rarely used two-way
audio/video streams). That puts our inhibitory circuitry at a loss --
there is no signal to monitor from the other person. This results in
disinhibition: impulse unleashed.

Such disinhibition seems state-specific, and typically occurs rarely
while people are in positive or neutral emotional states. That's why
the Internet works admirably for the vast majority of communication.
Rather, this disinhibition becomes far more likely when people feel
strong, negative emotions. What fails to be inhibited are the impulses
those emotions generate.

This phenomenon has been recognized since the earliest days of the
Internet (then the Arpanet, used by a small circle of scientists) as
"flaming," the tendency to send abrasive, angry or otherwise
emotionally "off" cyber-messages. The hallmark of a flame is that the
same person would never say the words in the email to the recipient
were they face-to-face. His inhibitory circuits would not allow it --
and so the interaction would go more smoothly. He might still
communicate the same core information face-to-face, but in a more
skillful manner. Offline and in life, people who flame repeatedly tend
to become friendless, or get fired (unless they already run the
company).

The greatest danger from cyber-disinhibition may be to young people.
The prefrontal inhibitory circuitry is among the last part of the
brain to become fully mature, doing so sometime in the twenties.
During adolescence there is a developmental lag, with teenagers having
fragile inhibitory capacities, but fully ripe emotional impulsivity.

Strengthening these inhibitory circuits can be seen as the singular
task in neural development of the adolescent years.

One way this teenage neural gap manifests online is "cyber-bullying,"
which has emerged among girls in their early teens. Cliques of girls
post or send cruel, harassing messages to a target girl, who typically
is both reduced to tears and socially humiliated. The posts and
messages are anonymous, though they become widely known among the
target's peers. The anonymity and social distance of the Internet
allow an escalation of such petty cruelty to levels that are rarely
found in person: face-to-face seeing someone cry typically halts
bullying among girls -- but that inhibitory signal cannot come via
Internet.

A more ominous manifestation of cyber-disinhibition can be seen in the
susceptibility of teenagers induced to perform sexual acts in front of
webcams for an anonymous adult audience who pay to watch and direct.
Apparently hundreds of teenagers have been lured into this corner of
child pornography, with an equally large audience of pedophiles. The
Internet gives strangers access to children in their own homes, who
are tempted to do things online they would never consider in person.

Cyber-bullying was reported last week in my local paper. The Webcam
teenage sex circuit was a front-page story in The New York Times two
days later.

As with any new technology, the Internet is an experiment in progress.
It's time we considered what other such downsides of
cyber-disinhibition may be emerging -- and looked for a technological
fix, if possible. The dangerous thought: the Internet may harbor
social perils our inhibitory circuitry was not designed to handle in
evolution.
_________________________________________________________________

BRIAN GREENE
Physicist & Mathematician, Columbia University; Author, The Fabric of
the Cosmos; Presenter, three-part Nova program, The Elegant Universe
[greene100.jpg]

The Multiverse

The notion that there are universes beyond our own -- the idea that we
are but one member of a vast collection of universes called the
multiverse -- is highly speculative, but both exciting and humbling.
It's also an idea that suggests a radically new, but inherently risky
approach to certain scientific problems.

An essential working assumption in the sciences is that with adequate
ingenuity, technical facility, and hard work, we can explain what we
observe. The impressive progress made over the past few hundred years
is testament to the apparent validity of this assumption. But if we
are part of a multiverse, then our universe may have properties that
are beyond traditional scientific explanation. Here's why:

Theoretical studies of the multiverse (within inflationary cosmology
and string theory, for example) suggest that the detailed properties
of the other universes may be significantly different from our own. In
some, the particles making up matter may have different masses or
electric charges; in others, the fundamental forces may differ in
strength and even number from those we experience; in others still,
the very structure of space and time may be unlike anything we've ever
seen.

In this context, the quest for fundamental explanations of particular
properties of our universe -- for example, the observed strengths of
the nuclear and electromagnetic forces -- takes on a very different
character. The strengths of these forces may vary from universe to
universe and thus it may simply be a matter of chance that, in our
universe, these forces have the particular strengths with which we're
familiar. More intriguingly, we can even imagine that in the other
universes where their strengths are different, conditions are not
hospitable to our form of life. (With different force strengths, the
processes giving rise to long-lived stars and stable planetary systems
-- on which life can form and evolve -- can easily be disrupted.) In
this setting, there would be no deep explanation for the observed
force strengths. Instead, we would find ourselves living in a universe
in which the forces have their familiar strengths simply because we
couldn't survive in any of the others where the strengths were
different.

If true, the idea of a multiverse would be a Copernican revolution
realized on a cosmic scale. It would be a rich and astounding
upheaval, but one with potentially hazardous consequences. Beyond the
inherent difficulty in assessing its validity, when should we allow
the multiverse framework to be invoked in lieu of a more traditional
scientific explanation? Had this idea surfaced a hundred years ago,
might researchers have chalked up various mysteries to how things just
happen to be in our corner of the multiverse, and not pressed on to
discover all the wondrous science of the last century?

Thankfully that's not how the history of science played itself out, at
least not in our universe. But the point is manifest. While some
mysteries may indeed reflect nothing more than the particular
universe, within the multiverse, we find ourselves inhabiting, other
mysteries are worth struggling with because they are the result of
deep, underlying physical laws. The danger, if the multiverse idea
takes root, is that researchers may too quickly give up the search for
such underlying explanations. When faced with seemingly inexplicable
observations, researchers may invoke the framework of the multiverse
prematurely -- proclaiming some or other phenomenon to merely reflect
conditions in our bubble universe -- thereby failing to discover the
deeper understanding that awaits us.
_________________________________________________________________

DAVID GELERNTER
Computer Scientist, Yale University; Chief Scientist, Mirror Worlds
Technologies; Author, Drawing Life
[gelernter100.jpg]

What are people well-informed about in the Information Age?

Let's date the Information Age to 1982, when the Internet went into
operation & the PC had just been born. What if people have been
growing less well-informed ever since? What if people have been
growing steadily more ignorant ever since the so-called Information
Age began?
Suppose an average US voter, college teacher, 5th-grade teacher,
5th-grade student are each less well-informed today than they were in
'95, and were less well-informed then than in '85? Suppose, for that
matter, they were less well-informed in '85 than in '65?
If this is indeed the "information age," what exactly are people
well-informed about? Video games? Clearly history, literature,
philosophy, scholarship in general are not our specialities. This is
some sort of technology age -- are people better informed about
science? Not that I can tell. In previous technology ages, there was
interest across the population in the era's leading technology.
In the 1960s, for example, all sorts of people were interested in the
space program and rocket technology. Lots of people learned a little
about the basics -- what a "service module" or "trans-lunar injection"
was, why a Redstone-Mercury vehicle was different from an
Atlas-Mercury -- all sorts of grade-school students, lawyers,
housewives, English profs were up on these topics. Today there is no
comparable interest in computers & the internet, and no comparable
knowledge. "TCP/IP," "Routers," "Ethernet protocol," "cache hits" --
these are topics of no interest whatsoever outside the technical
community. The contrast is striking.
_________________________________________________________________

MAHZARIN R. BANAJI
Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
[banaji100.jpg]

We do not (and to a large extent, cannot) know who we are through
introspection

Conscious awareness is a sliver of the machine that is human
intelligence but it's the only aspect we experience and hence the only
aspect we come to believe exists. Thoughts, feelings, and behavior
operate largely without deliberation or conscious recognition -- it's
the routinized, automatic, classically conditioned, pre-compiled
aspects of our thoughts and feelings that make up a large part of who
we are. We don't know what motivates us even though we are certain we
know just why we do the things we do. We have no idea that our
perceptions and judgments are incorrect (as measured objectively) even
when they are. Even more stunning, our behavior is often discrepant
from our own conscious intentions and goals, not just objective
standards or somebody else's standards.

The same lack of introspective access that keeps us from seeing the
truth in a visual illusion is the lack of introspective access that
keeps us from seeing the truth of our own minds and behavior. The
"bounds" on our ethical sense rarely come to light because the input
into those decisions is kept firmly outside our awareness. Or at
least, they don't come to light until science brings them into the
light in a way that no longer permits them to remain in the dark.

It is the fact that human minds have a tendency to categorize and
learn in particular ways, that the sorts of feelings for one's ingroup
and fear of outgroups are part of our evolutionary history. That
fearing things that are different from oneself, holding what's not
part of the dominant culture (not American, not male, not White, not
college-educated) to be "less good" whether one wants to or not,
reflects a part of our history that made sense in a particular time
and place - because without it we would not have survived. To know
this is to understand the barriers to change honestly and with
adequate preparation.

As everybody's favorite biologist Richard Dawkins said thirty years
ago:

Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we
may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something
that no other species has ever aspired to do.

We cannot know ourselves without the methods of science. The mind
sciences have made it possible to look into the universe between the
ear drums in ways that were unimagined.

Emily Dickinson wrote in a letter to a mentor asking him to tell her
how good a poet she was: "The sailor cannot see the north, but knows
the needle can" she said. We have the needle and it involves direct,
concerted effort, using science to get to the next and perhaps last
frontier, of understanding not just our place among other planets, our
place among other species, but our very nature.
_________________________________________________________________

RODNEY BROOKS
Director, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
(CSAIL);  Chief Technical Officer of iRobot Corporation; author Flesh
and Machines
[brooks100.jpg]

Being alone in the universe

The thing that I worry about most that may or may not be true is that
perhaps the spontaneous transformation from non-living matter to
living matter is extraordinarily unlikely. We know that it has
happened once. But what if we gain lots of evidence over the next few
decades that it happens very rarely.

In my lifetime we can expect to examine the surface of Mars, and the
moons of the gas giants in some detail. We can also expect to be able
to image extra-solar planets within a few tens of light years to
resolutions where we would be able to detect evidence of large scale
biological activity.

What if none of these indicate any life whatsoever? What does that do
to our scientific belief that life did arise spontaneously. It should
not change it, but it will make it harder to defend against
non-scientific attacks. And wouldn't it sadden us immensely if we were
to discover that there is a vanishing small probability that life will
arise even once in any given galaxy.

Being alone in this solar system will not be such a such a shock, but
alone in the galaxy, or worse alone in the universe would, I think,
drive us to despair, and back towards religion as our salve.
_________________________________________________________________

LEE SMOLIN
Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity
[smolin100.jpg]

Seeing Darwin in the light of Einstein; seeing Einstein in the light
of Darwin

The revolutionary moves made by Einstein and Darwin are closely
related, and their combination will increasingly come to define how we
see our worlds: physical, biological and social.

Before Einstein, the properties of elementary particles were
understood as being defined against an absolute, eternally fixed
background. This way of doing science had been introduced by Newton.
His method was to posit the existence of an absolute and eternal
background structure against which the properties of things were
defined. For example, this is how Newton conceived of space and time.
Particles have properties defined, not with respect to each other, but
each with respect to only the absolute background of space and time.
Einstein's great achievement was to realize successfully the contrary
idea, called relationalism, according to which the world is a network
of relationships which evolve in time. There is no absolute background
and the properties of anything are only defined in terms of its
participation in this network of relations.

Before Darwin, species were thought of as eternal categories, defined
a priori; after Darwin species were understood to be relational
categories-that is only defined in terms of their relationship with
the network of interactions making up the biosphere. Darwin's great
contribution was to understand that there is a process-natural
selection-that can act on relational properties, leading to the birth
of genuine novelty by creating complexes of relationships that are
increasingly structured and complex.

Seeing Darwin in the light of Einstein, we understand that all the
properties a species has in modern biology are relational. There is no
absolute background in biology.

Seeing Einstein in the light of Darwin opens up the possibility that
the mechanism of natural selection could act not only on living things
but on the properties that define the different species of elementary
particles.

At first, physicists thought that the only relational properties an
elementary particle might have were its position and motion in space
and time. The other properties, like mass and charge were thought of
in the old framework: defined by a background of absolute law. The
standard model of particle physics taught us that some of those
properties, like mass, are only the consequence of a particles
interactions with other fields. As a result the mass of a particle is
determined environmentally, by the phase of the other fields it
interacts with.

I don't know which model of quantum gravity is right, but all the
leading candidates, string theory, loop quantum gravity and others,
teach us that it is possible that all properties of elementary
particles are relational and environmental. In different possible
universes there may be different combinations of elementary particles
and forces. Indeed, all that used to be thought of as fundamental,
space and the  elementary particles themselves are increasingly seen,
in models of quantum gravity, as themselves emergent from a more
elementary network of relations.

The basic method of science after Einstein seems to be: identify
something in your theory that is playing the role of an absolute
background, that is needed to define the laws that govern objects in
your theory, and understand it more deeply as a contingent property,
which itself evolves subject to law.

For example, before Einstein the geometry of space was thought of as
specified absolutely as part of the laws of nature. After Einstein we
understand geometry is contingent and dynamical, which means it
evolves subject to law. This means that Einstein's move can even be
applied to aspects of what were thought to be the laws of nature: so
that even aspects of the laws turn out to evolve in time.

The basic method of science after Darwin seems to be to identify some
property once thought to be absolute and defined a prior and recognize
that it can be understood because it has evolved by a process of or
akin to natural selection. This has revolutionized biology and is in
the process of doing the same to the social sciences.

We can see by how I have stated it that these two methods are closely
related. Einstein emphasizes the relational aspect of all properties
described by science, while Darwin proposes that ultimately, the law
which governs the evolution of everything else, including perhaps what
were once seen to be laws-is natural selection.

Should Darwin's method be applied even to the laws of physics?
Recent developments in elementary particle physics give us little
alternative if we are to have a rational understanding of the laws
that govern our universe. I am referring here to the realization that
string theory gives us, not a unique set of particles and forces, but
an infinite list out of which one came to be selected for our
universe. We physicists have now to understand Darwin's lesson:  the
only way to understand how one out of a vast number of choices was
made, which favors improbably structure, is that it is the result of
evolution by natural selection.

Can this work? I showed it might, in 1992, in a theory of cosmological
natural selection. This remains the only theory of how our laws came
to be selected so far proposed that makes falsifiable predictions.

The idea that laws of nature are themselves the result of evolution by
natural selection is nothing new, it was anticipated by the
philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce, who wrote in 1891:

To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by
the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms, but
standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable
position. Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to
be accounted for. Law is par excellence the thing that wants a
reason. Now the only possible way of accounting for the laws of
nature, and for uniformity in general, is to suppose them results
of evolution.

This idea remains dangerous, not only for what it has achieved, but
for what it implies for the future. For there are implications have
yet to be absorbed or understood, even by those who have come to
believe it is the only way forward for science. For example, must
there always be a deeper, or meta-law, which governs the physical
mechanisms by which a law evolves?  And what about the fact that laws
of physics are expressed in mathematics, which is usually thought of
as encoding eternal truths?  Can mathematics itself come to be seen as
time bound rather that as transcendent and eternal platonic truths?

I believe that we will achieve clarity on these and other scary
implications of the idea that all the regularities we observe,
including those we have gotten used to calling laws, are the result of
evolution by natural selection. And I believe that once this is
achieved Einstein and Darwin will be understood as partners in the
greatest revolution yet in science, a revolution that taught us that
the world we are imbedded in is nothing but an ever evolving network
of relationships.
_________________________________________________________________

ALISON GOPNIK
Psychologist, UC-Berkeley; Coauthor, The Scientist In the Crib
[gopnik100.jpg]

A cacophony of "controversy"

It may not be good to encourage scientists to articulate dangerous
ideas.

Good scientists, almost by definition, tend towards the contrarian and
ornery, and nothing gives them more pleasure than holding to an
unconventional idea in the face of opposition. Indeed, orneriness and
contrarianism are something of currency for science -- nobody wants to
have an idea that everyone else has too. Scientists are always
constructing a straw man "establishment" opponent who they can then
fearlessly demolish. If you combine that with defying the conventional
wisdom of non-scientists you have a recipe for a very distinctive kind
of scientific smugness and self-righteousness. We scientists see this
contrarian habit grinning back at us in a particularly hideous and
distorted form when global warming opponents or intelligent design
advocates invoke the unpopularity of their ideas as evidence that they
should be accepted, or at least discussed.

The problem is exacerbated for public intellectuals. For the media
too, would far rather hear about contrarian or unpopular or morally
dubious or "controversial" ideas than ones that are congruent with
everyday morality and wisdom. No one writes a newspaper article about
a study that shows that girls are just as good at some task as boys,
or that children are influenced by their parents.

It is certainly true that there is no reason that scientifically valid
results should have morally comforting consequences -- but there is no
reason why they shouldn't either. Unpopularity or shock is no more a
sign of truth than popularity is. More to the point, when scientists
do have ideas that are potentially morally dangerous they should
approach those ideas with hesitancy and humility. And they should do
so in full recognition of the great human tragedy that, as Isiah
Berlin pointed out, there can be genuinely conflicting goods and that
humans are often in situations of conflict for which there is no
simple or obvious answer.

Truth and morality may indeed in some cases be competing values, but
that is a tragedy, not a cause for self-congratulation. Humility and
empathy come less easily to most scientists, most certainly including
me, than pride and self-confidence, but perhaps for that very reason
they are the virtues we should pursue.

This is, of course, itself a dangerous idea. Orneriness and
contrarianism are in fact, genuine scientific virtues, too. And in the
current profoundly anti-scientific political climate it is terribly
dangerous to do anything that might give comfort to the enemies of
science. But I think the peril to science actually doesn't lie in
timidity or self-censorship. It is much more likely to lie in a
cacophony of "controversy".
_________________________________________________________________

KEVIN KELLY
Editor-At-Large, Wired; Author, New Rules for the New Economy
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More anonymity is good

More anonymity is good: that's a dangerous idea.

Fancy algorithms and cool technology make true anonymity in mediated
environments more possible today than ever before. At the same time
this techno-combo makes true anonymity in physical life much harder.
For every step that masks us, we move two steps toward totally
transparent unmasking. We have caller ID, but also caller ID Block,
and then caller ID-only filters. Coming up: biometric monitoring and
little place to hide. A world where everything about a person can be
found and archived is a world with no privacy, and therefore many
technologists are eager to maintain the option of easy anonymity as a
refuge for the private.

However in every system that I have seen where anonymity becomes
common, the system fails. The recent taint in the honor of Wikipedia
stems from the extreme ease which anonymous declarations can be put
into a very visible public record. Communities infected with anonymity
will either collapse, or shift the anonymous to pseudo-anonymous, as
in eBay, where you have a traceable identity behind an invented
nickname. Or voting, where you can authenticate an identity without
tagging it to a vote.

Anonymity is like a rare earth metal. These elements are a necessary
ingredient in keeping a cell alive, but the amount needed is a mere
hard-to-measure trace. In larger does these heavy metals are some of
the most toxic substances known to a life. They kill. Anonymity is the
same. As a trace element in vanishingly small doses, it's good for the
system by enabling the occasional whistleblower, or persecuted fringe.
But if anonymity is present in any significant quantity, it will
poison the system.

There's a dangerous idea circulating that the option of anonymity
should always be at hand, and that it is a noble antidote to
technologies of control. This is like pumping up the levels of heavy
metals in your body into to make it stronger.

Privacy can only be won by trust, and trust requires persistent
identity, if only pseudo-anonymously. In the end, the more trust, the
better. Like all toxins, anonymity should be keep as close to zero as
possible.
_________________________________________________________________

DENIS DUTTON
Professor of the philosophy of art, University of Canterbury, New
Zealand, editor of Philosophy and Literature and Arts & Letters Daily
[dutton100.jpg]

A "grand narrative"

The humanities have gone through the rise of Theory in the 1960s, its
firm hold on English and literature departments through the 1970s and
80s, followed most recently by its much-touted decline and death.

Of course, Theory  (capitalization is an English department
affectation) never operated as a proper research program in any
scientific sense -- with hypotheses validated (or falsified) by
experiment or accrued evidence. Theory was a series of intellectual
fashion statements, clever slogans and postures, imported from France
in the 60s, then developed out of Yale and other Theory hot spots.
The academic work Theory spawned was noted more for  its chosen
jargons, which functioned like secret codes, than for any concern to
establish truth or advance knowledge. It was all about careers and
prestige.

Truth and knowledge, in fact, were ruled out as quaint illusions.
This cleared the way, naturally, for an "anything-goes" atmosphere of
academic criticism. In reality, it was anything but anything goes,
since the political demands of the period included a long list of
stereotyped villains (the West, the Enlightenment, dead whites males,
even clear writing) to be pitted against mandatory heroines and heroes
(indigenous peoples, the working class, the oppressed, and so forth).

Though the politics remains as strong as ever in academe, Theory has
atrophied not because it was refuted, but because everyone got bored
with it.  Add to that the absurdly bad writing of academic humanists
of the period and episodes like the Sokal Hoax, and the decline was
inevitable.  Theory academics could with high seriousness ignore
rational counter-arguments, but for them ridicule and laughter were
like water thrown at the Wicked Witch.  Theory withered and died.

But wait. Here is exactly where my most dangerous idea comes in. What
if it turned out that the academic humanities -- art criticism, music
and literary history, aesthetic theory, and the philosophy of art --
actually had available to them a true, and therefore permanently
valuable, theory to organize their speculations and interpretations?
What if there really existed a hitherto unrecognized "grand narrative"
that could explain the entire history of creation and experience of
the arts worldwide?

Aesthetic experience, as well as the context of artistic creation, is
a phenomenon both social and psychological. From the standpoint of
inner experience, it can be addressed by evolutionary psychology: the
idea that our thinking and values are conditioned by the 2.6 million
years of natural and sexual selection in the Pleistocene.

This Darwinian theory has much to say about the abiding,
cross-culturally ascertainable values human beings find in art. The
fascination, for example, that people worldwide find in the exercise
of artistic virtuosity, from Praxiteles to Hokusai to Renee Fleming,
is not a social construct, but a Pleistocene adaptation (which outside
of the arts shows itself in sporting interests everywhere).  That
calendar landscapes worldwide feature alternating copses of trees and
open spaces, often hilly land, water, and paths or river banks that
wind into an inviting distance is a Pleistocene landscape preference
(which shows up in both art history and in the design of public parks
everywhere).  That soap operas and Greek tragedy all present themes of
family breakdown ("She killed him because she loved him") is a
reflection of ancient, innate content interests in story-telling.

Darwinian theory offers substantial answers to perennial aesthetic
questions. It has much to say about the origins of art. It's unlikely
that the arts came about at one time or for one purpose; they evolved
from overlapping interests based in survival and mate selection in the
80,000 generations of the Pleistocene. How we scan visually, how we
hear, our sense of rhythm, the pleasures of artistic expression and in
joining with others as an audience, and, not least, how the arts
excite us using a repertoire of universal human emotions: all of this
and more will be illuminated and explained by a Darwinian aesthetics.

I've encountered stiff academic resistance to the notion that
Darwinian theory might greatly improve the understanding of our
aesthetic and imaginative lives.  There's no reason to worry.  The
most complete, evolutionarily-based explanation of a great work of
art, classic or recent, will address its form, its narrative content,
its ideology, how it is taken in by the eye or mind, and indeed, how
it can produce a deep, even life-transforming pleasure.  But nothing
in a valid aesthetic psychology will rob art of its appeal, any more
than knowing how we evolved to enjoy fat and sweet makes a piece of
cheesecake any less delicious. Nor will a Darwinian aesthetics reduce
the complexity of art to simple formulae.  It will only give us a
better understanding of the greatest human achievements and their
effects on us.

In the sense that it would show innumerable careers in the humanities
over the last forty years to have been wasted on banal politics and
execrable criticism, Darwinian aesthetics is a very dangerous idea
indeed.  For people who really care about understanding art, it would
be a combination of fresh air and strong coffee.
_________________________________________________________________

SIMON BARON-COHEN
Psychologist, Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University; Author,
The Essential Difference
[baroncohen100.jpg]

A political system based on empathy

Imagine a political system based not on legal rules (systemizing) but
on empathy. Would this make the world a safer place?

The UK Parliament, US Congress, Israeli Knesset, French National
Assembly, Italian Senato della Repubblica, Spanish Congreso de los
Diputados, -- what do such political chambers have in common? Existing
political systems are based on two principles: getting power through
combat, and then creating/revising laws and rules through combat.

Combat is sometimes physical (toppling your opponent militarily),
sometimes economic (establishing a trade embargo, to starve your
opponent of resources), sometimes propaganda-based (waging a media
campaign to discredit your opponent's reputation), and sometimes
through voting-related activity (lobbying, forming alliances, fighting
to win votes in key seats), with the aim to 'defeat' the opposition.

Creating/revising laws and rules is what you do once you are in power.
These might be constitutional rules, rules of precedence, judicial
rulings, statutes, or other laws or codes of practice. Politicians
battle for their rule-based proposal (which they hold to be best) to
win, and battle to defeat the opposition's rival proposal.

This way of doing politics is based on "systemizing". First you
analyse the most effective form of combat (itself a system) to win. If
we do x, then we will obtain outcome y. Then you adjust the legal code
(another system). If we pass law A, we will obtain outcome B.

My colleagues and I have studied the essential difference between how
men and women think. Our studies suggest that (on average) more men
are systemizers, and more women are empathizers. Since most political
systems were set up by men, it may be no coincidence that we have
ended up with political chambers that are built on the principles of
systemizing.

So here's the dangerous new idea. What would it be like if our
political chambers were based on the principles of empathizing? It is
dangerous because it would mean a revolution in how we choose our
politicians, how our political chambers govern, and how our
politicians think and behave. We have never given such an alternative
political process a chance. Might it be better and safer than what we
currently have? Since empathy is about keeping in mind the thoughts
and feelings of other people (not just your own), and being sensitive
to another person's thoughts and feelings (not just riding rough-shod
over them), it is clearly incompatible with notions of "doing battle
with the opposition" and "defeating the opposition" in order to win
and hold on to power.

Currently, we select a party (and ultimately a national) leader based
on their "leadership" qualities. Can he or she make decisions
decisively? Can they do what is in the best interests of the party, or
the country, even if it means sacrificing others to follow through on
a decision? Can they ruthlessly reshuffle their Cabinet and "cut
people loose" if they are no longer serving their interests? These are
the qualities of a strong systemizer.

Note we are not talking about whether that politician is male or
female. We are talking about how a politician (irrespective of their
sex) thinks and behaves.

We have had endless examples of systemizing politicians unable to
resolve conflict. Empathizing politicians would perhaps follow Mandela
and De Klerk's examples, who sat down to try to understand the other,
to empathize with the other, even if the other was defined as a
terrorist. To do this involves the empathic act of stepping into the
other's shoes, and identifying with their feelings.

The details of a political system based on empathizing would need a
lot of working out, but we can imagine certain qualities that would
have no place.

Gone would be politicians who are skilled orators but who simply
deliver monologues, standing on a platform, pointing forcefully into
the air to underline their insistence -- even the body language
containing an implied threat of poking their listener in the chest or
the face - to win over an audience. Gone too would be politicians who
are so principled that they are rigid and uncompromising.

Instead, we would elect politicians based on different qualities:
politicians who are good listeners, who ask questions of others
instead of assuming they know the right course of action. We would
instead have politicians who respond sensitively to another, different
point of view, and who can be flexible over where the dialogue might
lead. Instead of seeking to control and dominate, our politicians
would be seeking to support, enable, and care.
_________________________________________________________________

FREEMAN DYSON
Physicist, Institute of Advanced Study, Author, Disturbing the
Universe
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Biotechnology will be thoroughly domesticated in the next fifty years

Biotechnology will be domesticated in the next fifty years as
thoroughly as computer technology was in the last fifty years.

This means cheap and user-friendly tools and do-it-yourself kits, for
gardeners to design their own roses and orchids, and for
animal-breeders to design their own lizards and snakes. A new art-form
as creative as painting or cinema. It means biotech games for children
down to kindergarten age, like computer-games but played with real
eggs and seeds instead of with images on a screen. Kids will grow up
with an intimate feeling for the organisms that they create. It means
an explosion of biodiversity as new ecologies are designed to fit into
millions of local niches all over the world. Urban and rural
landscapes will become more varied and more fertile.

There are two severe and obvious dangers. First, smart kids and
malicious grown-ups will find ways to convert biotech tools to the
manufacture of lethal microbes. Second, ambitious parents will find
ways to apply biotech tools to the genetic modification of their own
babies. The great unanswered question is, whether we can regulate
domesticated biotechnology so that it can be applied freely to animals
and vegetables but not to microbes and humans.
_________________________________________________________________

GREGORY COCHRAN
Consultant in adaptive optics and an adjunct professor of anthropology
at the University of Utah
[cochran100.jpg]

There is something new under the sun -- us
Thucydides said that human nature was unchanging and thus predictable
-- but he was probably wrong.  If you consider natural selection
operating in fast-changing human environments, such stasis is most
unlikely. We know of a number of cases in which there has been rapid
adaptive change in humans; for example, most of the malaria-defense
mutations such as sickle cell are recent, just a few thousand years
old.  The lactase mutation that lets most adult Europeans digest ice
cream is not much older.
There is no magic principle that restricts human evolutionary change
to disease defenses and dietary adaptations: everything is up for
grabs.  Genes affecting personality, reproductive strategies,
cognition, are all able to change significantly over few-millennia
time scales if the environment favors such change -- and this includes
the new environments we have made for ourselves, things like new ways
of making a living and new social structures.  I would be astonished
if the mix of personality types favored among hunter-gatherers is
"exactly" the same as that favored among peasant farmers ruled by a
Pharaoh.  In fact they might be fairly different.
There is evidence that such change has occurred. Henry Harpending and
I have, we think, made a strong case that natural selection changed
the Ashkenazi Jews over a thousand years or so, favoring certain kinds
of cognitive abilities and generating genetic diseases as a side
effect.  Bruce Lahn's team has found new variants of brain-development
genes: one, ASPM, appears to have risen to high frequency in Europe
and the Middle East in about six thousand years.  We don't yet know
what this new variant does, but it certainly could affect the human
psyche -- and if it does, Thucydides was wrong.  We may not be doomed
to repeat the Sicilian expedition: on the other hand, since we don't
understand much yet about the changes that have occurred, we might be
even more doomed.  But at any rate, we have almost certainly changed.
There is something new under the sun -- us.

This concept opens strange doors.  If true, it means that the people
of Sumeria and Egypt's Old Kingdom were probably fundamentally
different from us: human nature has changed -- some, anyhow -- over
recorded history. Julian Jaynes, in The Origin of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, argued that there was something
qualitatively different about the human mind in ancient civilization.
On first reading, Breakdown seemed one of the craziest books ever
written, but Jaynes may have been on to something.

If people a few thousand years ago thought and acted differently
because of biological differences, history is never going to be the
same.
_________________________________________________________________

GEORGE B. DYSON
Science Historian; Author, Project Orion
[dysong100.jpg]

Understanding molecular biology without discovering the origins of
life

I predict we will reach a complete understanding of molecular biology
and molecular evolution, without ever discovering the origins of life.

This idea is dangerous, because it suggests a mystery that science
cannot explain. Or, it may be interpreted as confirmation that life is
merely the collective result of a long series of incremental steps,
and that it is impossible to draw a precise distinction between life
and non-life.

"The only thing of which I am sure," argued Samuel Butler in 1880, "is
that the distinction between the organic and inorganic is arbitrary;
that it is more coherent with our other ideas, and therefore more
acceptable, to start with every molecule as a living thing, and then
deduce death as the breaking up of an association or corporation, than
to start with inanimate molecules and smuggle life into them. "

Every molecule a living thing? That's not even dangerous, it's wrong!
But where else can you draw the line?
_________________________________________________________________

KEITH DEVLIN
Mathematician; Executive Director, Center for the Study of Language
and Information, Stanford; Author, The Millennium Problems
[devlin100.jpg]

We are entirely alone
Living creatures capable of relecting on their own existence are a
one-off, freak accident, existing for one brief moment in the history
of the universe. There may be life elsewhere in the universe, but it
does not have self-reflective consciousness. There is no God; no
Intelligent Designer; no higher purpose to our lives.

Personally, I have never found this possibility particularly
troubling, but my experience has been that most people go to
considerable lengths to convince themselves that it is otherwise.

I think that many people find the suggestion dangerous because they
see it as leading to a life devoid of meaning or moral values. They
see it as a suggestion full of despair, an idea that makes our lives
seem pointless. I believe that the opposite is the case. As the
product of that unique, freak accident, finding ourselves able to
reflect on and enjoy our conscious existence, the very unlikeliness
and uniqueness of our situation surely makes us highly appreciative of
what we have.

Life is not just important to us; it is literally everything we have.
That makes it, in human terms, the most precious thing there is. That
not only gives life meaning for us, something to be respected and
revered, but a strong moral code follows automatically.

The fact that our existence has no purpose outside that existence is
completely irrelevant to the way we live our lives, since we are
inside our existence. The fact that our existence has no purpose for
the universe -- whatever that means -- in no way means it has no
purpose for us. We must ask and answer questions about ourselves
within the framework of our existence as what we are.
_________________________________________________________________

FRANK TIPLER
Professor of Mathematical Physics, Tulane University; Author, The
Physics of Immortality
[tipler100.jpg]

Why I Hope the Standard Model is Wrong about Why There is More Matter
Than Antimatter

The Standard Model of particle physics -- a theory of all forces and
particles except gravity and a theory that has survived all tests over
the past thirty years -- says it is possible to convert matter
entirely into energy. Old-fashioned nuclear physics allows some matter
to be converted into energy, but because nuclear physics requires the
number of heavy particles like neutrons and protons, and light
particles like electrons, to be separately conserved in nuclear
reactions, only a small fraction (less than 1%) of the mass of the
uranium or plutonium in an atomic bomb can be converted into energy.
The Standard Model says that there is a way to convert all the mass of
ordinary matter into energy; for example, it is in principle possible
to convert the proton and electron making up a hydrogen atom entirely
into energy. Particle physicists have long known about this
possibility, but have considered it forever irrelevant to human
technology because the energy required to convert matter into pure
energy via this process is at the very limit of our most powerful
accelerators (a trillion electron volts, or one TeV).

I am very much afraid that the particle physicists are wrong about
this Standard Model pure energy conversion process being forever
irrelevant to human affairs. I have recently come to believe that the
consistency of quantum field theory requires that it should be
possible to convert up to 100 kilograms of ordinary matter into pure
energy via this process using a device that could fit inside the trunk
of a car, a device that could be manufactured in a small factory. Such
a device would solve all our energy problems -- we would not need
fossil fuels -- but 100 kilograms of energy is the energy released by
a 1,000-megaton nuclear bomb. If such a bomb can be manufactured in a
small factory, then terrorists everywhere will eventually have such
weapons. I fear for the human race if this comes to pass. I very hope
I am wrong about the technological feasibility of such a bomb.
_________________________________________________________________

SCOTT SAMPSON
Chief Curator, Utah Museum of Natural History; Associate Professor
Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah; Host,
Dinosaur Planet TV series
[sampson100.jpg]
The purpose of life is to disperse energy

The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten
the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal
of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans
from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo
sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution
sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization
by the same egotistical species.

The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.

Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of
thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and,
in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms. More
generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, "nature abhors a
gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance --
for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems --
including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere -- all
embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly
the flow of heat, continually attempting to achieve equilibrium.
Phenomena as diverse as lithospheric plate motions, the northward flow
of the Gulf Stream, and occurrence of deadly hurricanes are all
examples of second law manifestations.

There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different.
It has often been said the life's complexity contravenes the second
law, indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural
process, depending on one's bias. Yet the evolution of life and the
dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law mandate, functioning in
large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and
disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable
metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the
solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture
energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs.

Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense,
sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy.
Ecological succession, viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, is a
process that maximizes the capture and degradation of energy.
Similarly, the tendency for life to become more complex over the past
3.5 billion years (as well as the overall increase in biomass and
organismal diversity through time) is not due simply to natural
selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to nature's
"efforts" to grab more and more of the sun's flow. The slow burn that
characterizes life enables ecological systems to persist over deep
time, changing in response to external and internal perturbations.

Ecology has been summarized by the pithy statement, "energy flows,
matter cycles. " Yet this maxim applies equally to complex systems in
the non-living world; indeed it literally unites the biosphere with
the physical realm. More and more, it appears that complex, cycling,
swirling systems of matter have a natural tendency to emerge in the
face of energy gradients. This recurrent phenomenon may even have been
the driving force behind life's origins.

This idea is not new, and is certainly not mine. Nobel laureate Erwin
Schr?dinger was one of the first to articulate the hypothesis, as part
of his famous "What is Life" lectures in Dublin in 1943. More
recently, Jeffrey Wicken, Harold Morowitz, Eric Schneider and others
have taken this concept considerably further, buoyed by results from a
range of studies, particularly within ecology. Schneider and Dorian
Sagan provide an excellent summary of this hypothesis in their recent
book, "Into the Cool".

The concept of life as energy flow, once fully digested, is profound.
Just as Darwin fundamentally connected humans to the non-human world,
a thermodynamic perspective connects life inextricably to the
non-living world. This dangerous idea, once broadly distributed and
understood, is likely to provoke reaction from many sectors, including
religion and science. The wondrous diversity and complexity of life
through time, far from being the product of intelligent design, is a
natural phenomenon intimately linked to the physical realm of energy
flow.

Moreover, evolution is not driven by the machinations of selfish genes
propagating themselves through countless millennia. Rather, ecology
and evolution together operate as a highly successful, extremely
persistent means of reducing the gradient generated by our nearest
star. In my view, evolutionary theory (the process, not the fact of
evolution!) and biology generally are headed for a major overhaul once
investigators fully comprehend the notion that the complex systems of
earth, air, water, and life are not only interconnected, but
interdependent, cycling matter in order to maintain the flow of
energy.

Although this statement addresses only naturalistic function and is
mute with regard to spiritual meaning, it is likely to have deep
effects outside of science. In particular, broad understanding of
life's role in dispersing energy has great potential to help humans
reconnect both to nature and to planet's physical systems at a key
moment in our species' history.
_________________________________________________________________

JEREMY BERNSTEIN
Professor of Physics, Stevens Institute of Technology; Author,
Hitler's Uranium Club

The idea that we understand plutonium

The most dangerous idea I have come across recently is the idea that
we understand plutonium. Plutonium is the most complex element in the
periodic table. It has six different crystal phases between room
temperature and its melting point. It can catch fire spontaneously in
the presence of water vapor and if you inhale minuscule amounts you
will die of lung cancer. It is the principle element in the "pits"
that are the explosive cores of nuclear weapons. In these pits it is
alloyed with gallium. No one knows why this works and no one can be
sure how stable this alloy is. These pits, in the thousands, are now
decades old. What is dangerous is the idea that they have retained
their integrity and can be safely stored into the indefinite future.
_________________________________________________________________

MIHALYI CSIKSZENTMIHALYI
Psychologist; Director, Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont
Graduate University; Author, Flow
[csik100.jpg]
The free market

Generally ideas are thought to be dangerous when they threaten an
entrenched authority. Galileo was sued not because he claimed that the
earth revolved around the sun -- a "hypothesis" his chief prosecutor,
Cardinal Bellarmine, apparently was quite willing to entertain in
private -- but because the Church could not afford a fact it claimed
to know be reversed by another epistemology, in this case by the
scientific method. Similar conflicts arose when Darwin's view of how
humans first appeared on the planet challenged religious accounts of
creation, or when Mendelian genetics applied to the growth of hardier
strains of wheat challenged Leninist doctrine as interpreted by
Lysenko.
One of the most dangerous ideas at large in the current culture is
that the "free market" is the ultimate arbiter of political decisions,
and that there is an "invisible hand" that will direct us to the most
desirable future provided the free market is allowed to actualize
itself. This mystical faith is based on some reasonable empirical
foundations, but when embraced as a final solution to the ills of
humankind, it risks destroying both the material resources, and the
cultural achievements that our species has so painstakingly developed.
So the dangerous idea on which our culture is based is that the
political economy has a silver bullet -- the free market -- that must
take precedence over any other value, and thereby lead to peace and
prosperity. It is dangerous because like all silver bullets it is an
intellectual and political scam that might benefit some, but
ultimately requires the majority to pay for the destruction it causes.
My dangerous idea is dangerous only to those who support the hegemony
of the market. It consists in pointing out that the imperial free
market wears no clothes -- it does not exist in the first place, and
what passes for it is dangerous to the future well being of our
species. Scientist need to turn their attention to what the complex
system that is human life, will require in the future.

Beginnings like the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators,
which focus on such central requirements as health, education,
infrastructure, environment, human rights, and public safety, need to
become part of our social and political agenda. And when their
findings come into conflict with the agenda of the prophets of the
free market, the conflict should be examined -- who is it that
benefits from the erosion of the quality of life?
_________________________________________________________________

IRENE PEPPERBERG
Research Associate, Psychology, Harvard University; Author, The Alex
Studies
[pepperberg100.jpg]
The differences between humans and nonhumans are quantitative, not
qualitative

I believe that the differences between humans and nonhumans are
quantitative, not qualitative.

Why is this idea dangerous? It is hardly surprising, coming from
someone who has spent her scientific career studying the abilities of
(supposedly) small-brained nonhumans; moreover, the idea is not
exactly new. It may be a bit controversial, given that many of my
colleagues spend much of their time searching for the defining
difference that separates humans and nonhumans (and they may be
correct), and also given a current social and political climate that
challenges evolution on what seems to be a daily basis. But why
dangerous? Because, if we take this idea to its logical conclusion, it
challenges almost every aspect of our lives -- scientific and
nonscientific alike.

Scientifically, the idea challenges the views of many researchers who
continue to hypothesize about the next human-nonhuman 'great
divide'...Interestingly, however, detailed observation and careful
experimentation have repeatedly demonstrated that nonhumans often
possess capacities once thought to separate them from humans. Humans,
for example, are not the only tool-using species, nor the only
tool-making species, nor the only species to act cooperatively.

So one has to wonder to what degree nonhumans share other capacities
still thought to be exclusively human. And, of course, the critical
words here are "to what degree" -- do we count lack of a particular
behavior a defining criterion, or do we accept the existence of less
complex versions of that behavior as evidence for a continuum? If one
wishes to argue that I'm just blurring the difference between
"qualitative" and "quantitative", so be it...such blurring will not
affect the dangerousness of my idea.

My idea is dangerous because it challenges scientists at a more basic
level, that of how we perform research. Now, let me state clearly that
I'm not against animal research -- I wouldn't be alive today without
it, and I work daily with captive animals that, although domestically
bred (and that, by any standard, are provided with a fairly cushy
existence), are still essentially wild creatures denied their freedom.

But if we believe in a continuum, then we must at least question our
right to perform experiments on our fellow creatures; we need to think
about how to limit animal experiments and testing to what is
essential, and to insist on humane (note the term!) housing and
treatment. And, importantly, we must accept the significant cost in
time, effort, and money thereby incurred -- increases that must come
at the expense of something else in our society.

The idea, taken to its logical conclusion, is dangerous because it
should also affect our choices as to the origins of the clothes we
wear and the foods we eat. Again, I'm not campaigning against leather
shoes and T-bone steaks; I find that I personally cannot remain
healthy on a totally vegetarian diet and sheepskin boots definitely
ease the rigors of a Massachusetts winter.

But if we believe in a continuum, we must at least question our right
to use fellow creatures for our sustenance: We need to become aware
of, for example, the conditions under which creatures destined for the
slaughterhouse live their lives, and learn about and ameliorate the
conditions in which their lives are ended. And, again, we must accept
the costs involved in such decisions.

If we do not believe in a clear boundary between humans and nonhumans,
if we do not accept a clear "them" versus "us", we need to rethink
other aspects of our lives. Do we have the right to clear-cut forests
in which our fellow creatures live? To pollute the air, soil and water
that we share with them, solely for our own benefit? Where do we draw
the line? Life may be much simpler if we do firmly draw a line, but is
simplicity a valid rationale?

And, in case anyone wonders at my own personal view: I believe that
humans are the ultimate generalists, creatures that may lack specific
talents or physical adaptations that have been finely honed in other
species, but whose additional brain power enables them -- in an
exquisite manner -- to, for example, integrate information, improvise
with what is present, and alter or adapt to a wide range of
environments...but that this additional brain power is (and provides)
a quantitative, not qualitative difference.
_________________________________________________________________

BRIAN GOODWIN
Biologist, Schumacher College, Devon, UK; Author, How The Leopard
Changed Its Spots
[goodwin100.jpg]
Fields of Danger

In science, the concept of a field is used to describe patterns of
order in systems that are extended in space and show regularities of
behaviour in time. They have always expressed ideas that are rather
mysterious, but work in describing natural processes. The first
example of a field principle in physics was Newton's celebrated
gravitational law, which described mathematically the universal
attraction between bodies with mass.

This mysterious action at a distance without any wires or mechanical
attachments between the bodies was regarded as a mystical, occult
concept by the mechanical philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries.
They condemned Newton's idea as a violation of the principles of
explanation in the new science. However, there is a healthy pragmatic
element to scientific investigation, and Newton's equations worked too
well to be discarded on philosophical grounds.

Another celebrated example of a physical field came from the
experimental work of Michael Faraday on electricity and magnetism in
the 19th century. He talked about fields of force that extend out in
space from electrically charged bodies, or from magnets. Faraday's
painstaking and ingenious work described how these fields change with
distance from the body in precise ways, as does the gravitational
force. Again these forces were regarded as mysterious since they
travel through apparently empty space, exerting interaction at a
distance that cannot be understood mechanically.

However, so precise were Faraday's measurements of the properties of
electric and magnetic fields, and so vivid his description of the
fields of force associated with them, that James Clerk Maxwell could
take his observations and put them directly into mathematical form.
These are the famous wave equations of electromagnetism on which our
technology for electric motors, lighting, TV, communications and
innumerable other applications is based.

In the 20th century with Einstein transformed Newton's mysterious
gravitational force into an even more mysterious property of space
itself: it bends or curves under the influence of bodies with mass.
Einstein's relativity theory did away with a force of attraction
between bodies and substituted a mathematical relationship between
mass and curvature of space-time.

The result was a whole new way of understanding motion as natural,
curved paths followed by bodies that not only cause the curvature but
follow it. The universe was becoming intrinsically self-organising and
subjects as observers made an entry into physics.

As if Einstein's relativity wasn't enough to shake up the world known
to science, the next revolution was even more disturbing. Quantum
mechanics, emerging in the 1920s, did away with the classical notions
of fields as smooth distributions of forces through space-time and
described interactions at a distance in terms of discrete little
packets of energy that travel through the void in oscillating patterns
described by wave functions, of which the solutions to Schr?dinger's
wave equation are the best known.

Now we have not only action at a distance but something infinitely
more disturbing: these interactions violate conventional notions of
causality because they are non-local. Two particles that have been
joined in an intimate relationship within an atom remain coherently
correlated with one another in their properties no matter how far
apart they may be after emission from the atom. Einstein could not
bring himself to believe that this 'spooky' implication of quantum
mechanics could possibly be real.

The implied entanglement means that there is a holistic principle of
connectedness in operation at the most elementary level of physical
reality. Quantum fields have subverted our basic notions of causality
and substituted a principle of wholeness in relationship for
elementary particles.

The idea that I have pursued in biology for much of my career is the
concept that goes under the name of a morphogenetic field. This term
is used to describe the processes in space and time that organise and
coordinate the various activities involved in the emergence of a whole
complex organism from a single cell, or from a group of cells in
interaction with each another.

A human embryo developing in the mother's womb from a single
fertilised egg, emerging at birth as a baby with all its organs
coherently arranged in a functioning body, is one of the most
breathtaking phenomena in nature. However, all species share the same
ability to produce new individuals of the same kind in their processes
of reproduction.

The remarkable organising principles that underlie such basic
properties of life have been known as morphogenetic fields (fields
that generate form) throughout the 20th century, though this concept
produces unease and discomfort among many biologists.This unease
arises for good reason. As in physics, the field concept is subversive
of mechanical explanations in science, and biology holds firmly to
understanding life in terms of mechanisms organised by genes.

However, the complete reading of the book of life in DNA, the major
project in biology during the last two decades of the 20th century,
did not reveal the secrets of the organism. It was a remarkable
achievement to work out the sequence of letters in the genomes of
different species, human, other animals, plants, and microbes, so that
many of the words of the genetic text of different species could be
deciphered.

Unfortunately, we were unable to make coherent sense of these words,
to put them together in the way that organisms do in creating
themselves during their reproduction as they develop into beings with
specific morphologies and behaviours, the process of morphogenesis.
What had been forgotten, or ignored, was that information only makes
sense to an agent, someone or something with the know-how to interpret
it.

The meaning was missing because the genome researchers ignored the
context of the genomes: the living cell within which genes are read
and their products are organised. The organisation that is responsible
for making sense of the information in the genes, an essential and
basic aspect of the living state, was taken for granted. What is the
nature of this complex dynamic process that knows how to make an
organism, using specific information from the genes?

Biology is returning to notions of space-time organisation as an
intrinsic aspect of the living condition, our old friends
morphogenetic fields. They are now described as complex networks of
molecules that somehow read and make sense of genes. These molecular
networks have intriguing properties, giving them some of the same
characteristics as words in a language.

Could it be that biology and culture are not so different after all;
that both are based on historical traditions and languages that are
used to construct patterns of relationship embodied in communities,
either of cells or of individuals? These self-organising activities
are certainly mysterious, but not unintelligible. My own work, with
many colleagues, cast morphogenetic fields in mathematical form that
revealed how space (morphology) and time (behaviour) get organised in
subtle but robust ways in developing organisms and communities.

Such coordinating patterns in living beings seem to be at the heart of
the creativity that drives both biological and cultural evolution.
Despite many differences between these fields, which need to be
clarified and distinguished rather than blurred, there may be
underlying commonalities that can unify biological and cultural
evolution rather than separating them.

This could even lead us to value other species of organism for their
wisdom in achieving coherent, sustainable relationships with other
species while remaining creative and innovative throughout evolution,
something we are signally failing to do in our culture with its
ecologically damaging style of living.
_________________________________________________________________

RUDY RUCKER
Mathematician, Computer Scientist; CyberPunk Pioneer; Novelist;
Author, Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul
l [rucker100.jpg]

Mind is a universally distributed quality

Panpsychism. Each object has a mind. Stars, hills, chairs, rocks,
scraps of paper, flakes of skin, molecules -- each of them possesses
the same inner glow as a human, each of them has singular inner
experiences and sensations.

I'm quite comfortable with the notion that everything is a
computation. But what to do about my sense that there's something
numinous about my inner experience? Panpsychism represents a
non-anthropocentric way out: mind is a universally distributed
quality.

Yes, the workings of a human brain are a deterministic computation
that could be emulated by any universal computer. And, yes, I sense
more to my mental phenomena than the rule-bound exfoliation of
reactions to inputs: this residue is the inner light, the raw
sensation of existence. But, no, that inner glow is not the exclusive
birthright of humans, nor is it solely limited to biological
organisms.

Note that panpsychism needn't say that universe is just one mind. We
can also say that each object has an individual mind. One way to
visualize the distinction between the many minds and the one mind is
to think of the world as a stained glass window with light shining
through each pane. The world's physical structures break the undivided
cosmic mind into a myriad of small minds, one in each object.

The minds of panpsychism can exist at various levels. As well as
having its own individuality, a person's mind would also be, for
instance, a hive mind based upon the minds of the body's cells and the
minds of the body's elementary particles.

Do the panpsychic minds have any physical correlates? On the one hand,
it could be that the mind is some substance that accumulates near
ordinary matter -- dark matter or dark energy are good candidates. On
the other hand, mind might simply be matter viewed in a special
fashion: matter experienced from the inside. Let me mention three
specific physical correlates that have been proposed for the mind.

Some have argued that the experience of mind results when a superposed
quantum state collapses into a pure state. It's an alluring metaphor,
but as a universal automatist, I'm of the opinion that quantum
mechanics is a stop-gap theory, destined to give way to a fully
deterministic theory based upon some digital precursor of spacetime.

David Skrbina, author of the clear and comprehensive book Panpsychism
in the West, suggests that we might think of a physical system as
determining a moving point in a multi-dimensional phase space that has
an axis for each of the system's measurable properties. He feels this
dynamic point represents the sense of unity characteristic of a mind.

As a variation on this theme, let me point out that, from the
universal automatist standpoint, every physical system can be thought
of as embodying a computation. And the majority of non-simple systems
embody universal computations, capable of emulating any other system
at all. It could be that having a mind is in some sense equivalent to
being capable of universal computation.

A side-remark. Even such very simple systems as a single electron may
in fact be capable of universal computation, if supplied with a steady
stream of structured input. Think of an electron in an oscillating
field; and by analogy think of a person listening to music or reading
an essay.

Might panpsychism be a distinction without a difference? Suppose we
identify the numinous mind with quantum collapse, with chaotic
dynamics, or with universal computation. What is added by claiming
that these aspects of reality are like minds?

I think empathy can supply an experiential confirmation of
panpsychism's reality. Just as I'm sure that I myself have a mind, I
can come to believe the same of another human with whom I'm in contact
-- whether face to face or via their creative work. And with a bit of
effort, I can identify with objects as well; I can see the objects in
the room around me as glowing with inner light. This is a pleasant
sensation; one feels less alone.

Could there ever be a critical experiment to test if panpsychism is
really true? Suppose that telepathy were to become possible, perhaps
by entangling a person's mental states with another system's states.
And then suppose that instead of telepathically contacting another
person, I were to contact a rock. At this point panpsychism would be
proved.

I still haven't said anything about why panpsychism is a dangerous
idea. Panpsychism, like other forms of higher consciousness, is
dangerous to business as usual. If my old car has the same kind of
mind as a new one, I'm less impelled to help the economy by buying a
new vehicle. If the rocks and plants on my property have minds, I feel
more respect for them in their natural state. If I feel myself among
friends in the universe, I'm less likely to overwork myself to earn
more cash. If my body will have a mind even after I'm dead, then death
matters less to me, and it's harder for the government to cow me into
submission.
_________________________________________________________________

STEVEN PINKER
Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, The Blank Slate
[pinker.100.jpg]

Groups of people may differ genetically in their average talents and
temperaments

The year 2005 saw several public appearances of what will I predict
will become the dangerous idea of the next decade: that groups of
people may differ genetically in their average talents and
temperaments.
* In January, Harvard president Larry Summers caused a firestorm
when he cited research showing that women and men have
non-identical statistical distributions of cognitive abilities and
life priorities.

* In March, developmental biologist Armand Leroi published an op-ed
in the New York Times rebutting the conventional wisdom that race
does not exist. (The conventional wisdom is coming to be known as
Lewontin's Fallacy: that because most genes may be found in all
human groups, the groups don't differ at all. But patterns of
correlation among genes do differ between groups, and different
clusters of correlated genes correspond well to the major races
labeled by common sense. )

* In June, the Times reported a forthcoming study by physicist Greg
Cochran, anthropologist Jason Hardy, and population geneticist
Henry Harpending proposing that Ashkenazi Jews have been
biologically selected for high intelligence, and that their
well-documented genetic diseases are a by-product of this
evolutionary history.

* In September, political scientist Charles Murray published an
article in Commentary reiterating his argument from The Bell Curve
that average racial differences in intelligence are intractable
and partly genetic.

Whether or not these hypotheses hold up (the evidence for gender
differences is reasonably good, for ethnic and racial differences much
less so), they are widely perceived to be dangerous. Summers was
subjected to months of vilification, and proponents of ethnic and
racial differences in the past have been targets of censorship,
violence, and comparisons to Nazis. Large swaths of the intellectual
landscape have been reengineered to try to rule these hypotheses out a
priori (race does not exist, intelligence does not exist, the mind is
a blank slate inscribed by parents). The underlying fear, that reports
of group differences will fuel bigotry, is not, of course, groundless.

The intellectual tools to defuse the danger are available. "Is" does
not imply "ought. " Group differences, when they exist, pertain to the
average or variance of a statistical distribution, rather than to
individual men and women. Political equality is a commitment to
universal human rights, and to policies that treat people as
individuals rather than representatives of groups; it is not an
empirical claim that all groups are indistinguishable. Yet many
commentators seem unwilling to grasp these points, to say nothing of
the wider world community.

Advances in genetics and genomics will soon provide the ability to
test hypotheses about group differences rigorously. Perhaps
geneticists will forbear performing these tests, but one shouldn't
count on it. The tests could very well emerge as by-products of
research in biomedicine, genealogy, and deep history which no one
wants to stop.

The human genomic revolution has spawned an enormous amount of
commentary about the possible perils of cloning and human genetic
enhancement. I suspect that these are red herrings. When people
realize that cloning is just forgoing a genetically mixed child for a
twin of one parent, and is not the resurrection of the soul or a
source of replacement organs, no one will want to do it. Likewise,
when they realize that most genes have costs as well as benefits (they
may raise a child's IQ but also predispose him to genetic disease),
"designer babies" will lose whatever appeal they have. But the
prospect of genetic tests of group differences in psychological traits
is both more likely and more incendiary, and is one that the current
intellectual community is ill-equipped to deal with.
_________________________________________________________________

RICHARD E. NISBETT
Professor of Psychology, Co-Director of the Culture and Cognition
Program, University of Michigan; Author, The Geography of Thought: How
Asians and Westerners Think Differently. . . And Why
[nisbett100.jpg]

Telling More Than We Can Know

Do you know why you hired your most recent employee over the
runner-up? Do you know why you bought your last pair of pajamas? Do
you know what makes you happy and unhappy?
Don't be too sure. The most important thing that social psychologists
have discovered over the last 50 years is that people are very
unreliable informants about why they behaved as they did, made the
judgment they did, or liked or disliked something. In short, we don't
know nearly as much about what goes on in our heads as we think. In
fact, for a shocking range of things, we don't know the answer to "Why
did I?" any better than an observer.

The first inkling that social psychologists had about just how
ignorant we are about our thinking processes came from the study of
cognitive dissonance beginning in the late 1950s. When our behavior is
insufficiently justified, we move our beliefs into line with the
behavior so as to avoid the cognitive dissonance we would otherwise
experience. But we are usually quite unaware that we have done that,
and when it is pointed out to us we recruit phantom reasons for the
change in attitude.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, social psychologists started doing
experiments about the causal attributions people make for their own
behavior. If you give people electric shocks, but tell them that you
have given them a pill that will produce the arousal symptoms that are
actually created by the shock, they will take much more shock than
subjects without the pill. They have attributed their arousal to the
pill and are therefore willing to take more shock. But if you ask them
why they took so much shock they are likely to say something like "I
used to work with electrical gadgets and I got a lot of shocks, so I
guess I got used to it."
In the 1970s social psychologists began asking whether people could be
accurate about why they make truly simple judgments and decisions --
such as why they like a person or an article of clothing.
For example, in one study experimenters videotaped a Belgian
responding in one of two modes to questions about his philosophy as a
teacher: he either came across as an ogre or a saint. They then showed
subjects one of the two tapes and asked them how much they liked the
teacher. Furthermore, they asked some of them whether the teacher's
accent had affected how much they liked him and asked others whether
how much they liked the teacher influenced how much they liked his
accent. Subjects who saw the ogre naturally disliked him a great deal,
and they were quite sure that his grating accent was one of the
reasons. Subjects who saw the saint realized that one of the reasons
they were so fond of him was his charming accent. Subjects who were
asked if their liking for the teacher could have influenced their
judgment of his accent were insulted by the question.
Does familiarity breed contempt? On the contrary, it breeds liking. In
the 1980s, social psychologists began showing people such stimuli as
Turkish words and Chinese ideographs and asking them how much they
liked them. They would show a given stimulus somewhere between one and
twenty-five times. The more the subjects saw the stimulus the more
they liked it. Needless to say, their subjects did not find it
plausible that the mere number of times they had seen a stimulus could
have affected their liking for it. (You're probably wondering if white
rats are susceptible to the mere familiarity effect.
The study has been done. Rats brought up listening to music by Mozart
prefer to move to the side of the cage that trips a switch allowing
them to listen to Mozart rather than Schoenberg. Rats raised on
Schoenberg prefer to be on the Schoenberg side. The rats were not
asked the reasons for their musical preferences.)
Does it matter that we often don't know what goes on in our heads and
yet believe that we do? Well, for starters, it means that we often
can't answer accurately crucial questions about what makes us happy
and what makes us unhappy. A social psychologist asked Harvard women
to keep a daily record for two months of their mood states and also to
record a number of potentially relevant factors in their lives
including amount of sleep the night before, the weather, general state
of health, sexual activity, and day of the week (Monday blues? TGIF?).
At the end of the period, subjects were asked to tell the
experimenters how much each of these factors tended to influence their
mood over the two month period. The results? Women's reports of what
influenced their moods were uncorrelated with what they had reported
on a daily basis. If a woman thought that her sexual activity had a
big effect, a check of her daily reports was just as likely to show
that it had no effect as that it did. To really rub it in, the
psychologist asked her subjects to report what influenced the moods of
someone they didn't know: She found that accuracy was just as great
when a woman was rated by a stranger as when rated by the woman
herself!
But if we were to just think really hard about reasons for behavior
and preferences might we be likely to come to the right conclusions?
Actually, just the opposite may often be the case. A social
psychologist asked people to choose which of several art posters they
liked best.
Some people were asked to analyze why they liked or disliked the
various posters and some were not asked, and everyone was given their
favorite poster to take home. Two weeks later the psychologist called
people up and asked them how much they liked the art poster they had
chosen. Those who did not analyze their reasons liked their posters
better than those who did.
It's certainly scary to think that we're ignorant of so much of what
goes on in our heads, though we're almost surely better off taking
with a large quantity of salt what we and others say about motives and
reasons. Skepticism about our ability to read our minds is safer than
certainty that we can.
Still, the idea that we have little access to the workings of our
minds is a dangerous one. The theories of Copernicus and Darwin were
dangerous because they threatened, respectively, religious conceptions
of the centrality of humans in the cosmos and the divinity of humans.
Social psychologists are threatening a core conviction of the
Enlightenment -- that humans are perfectible through the exercise of
reason. If reason cannot be counted on to reveal the causes of our
beliefs, behavior and preferences, then the idea of human
perfectibility is to that degree diminished.
_________________________________________________________________

ROBERT R. PROVINE
Psychologist and Neuroscientist, University of Maryland; Author,
Laughter
[provine100.jpg]

This is all there is

The empirically testable idea that the here and now is all there is
and that life begins at birth and ends at death is so dangerous that
it has cost the lives of millions and threatens the future of
civilization. The danger comes not from the idea itself, but from its
opponents, those religious leaders and followers who ruthlessly
advocate and defend their empirically improbable afterlife and
man-in-the-sky cosmological perspectives.

Their vigor is understandable. What better theological franchise is
there than the promise of everlasting life, with deluxe trimmings?
Religious followers must invest now with their blood and sweat, with
their big payoff not due until the after-life. Postmortal rewards cost
theologians nothing--I'll match your heavenly choir and raise you 72
virgins.

Some franchise! This is even better than the medical profession, a
calling with higher overhead, that has gained control of birth, death
and pain. Whether the religious brand is Christianity or Islam, the
warring continues, with a terrible fate reserved for heretics who
threaten the franchise from within. Worse may be in store for those
who totally reject the man-in-the-sky premise and its afterlife
trappings. All of this trouble over accepting what our senses tell
us--that this is all there is.

Resolution of religious conflict is impossible because there is no
empirical test of the ghostly, and many theologians prey,
intentionally or not, upon the fears, superstitions, irrationality,
and herd tendencies that are our species' neurobehavioral endowment.
Religious fundamentalism inflames conflict and prevents solution--the
more extreme and irrational one's position, the stronger one's faith,
and, when possessing absolute truth, compromise is not an option.

Resolution of conflicts between religions and associated cultures is
less likely to come from compromise than from the pursuit of
superordinate goals, common, overarching, objectives that extend
across nations and cultures, and direct our competitive spirit to
further the health, well-being, and nobility of everyone. Public
health and science provide such unifying goals. I offer two examples.

Health Initiative. A program that improves the health of all people,
especially those in developing nations, may find broad support,
especially with the growing awareness of global culture and the
looming specter of a pandemic. Public health programs bridge
religious, political, and cultural divides. No one wants to see their
children die. Conflicts fall away when cooperation offers a better
life for all concerned. This is also the most effective anti-terrorism
strategy, although one probably unpopular with the military industrial
complex on one side, and terrorist agitators on the other.

Space Initiative. Space exploration expands our cosmos and increases
our appreciation of life on Earth and its finite resources. Space
exploration is one of our species' greatest achievements. Its pursuit
is a goal of sufficient grandeur to unite people of all nations.

This is all there is. The sooner we accept this dangerous idea, the
sooner we can get on with the essential task of making the most of our
lives on this planet.
_________________________________________________________________

DONALD HOFFMAN
Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine; Author, Visual Intelligence
[hoffman100.jpg]

A spoon is like a headache

A spoon is like a headache. This is a dangerous idea in sheep's
clothing. It consumes decrepit ontology, preserves methodological
naturalism, and inspires exploration for a new ontology, a vehicle
sufficiently robust to sustain the next leg of our search for a theory
of everything.

How could a spoon and a headache do all this? Suppose I have a
headache, and I tell you about it. It is, say, a pounding headache
that started at the back of the neck and migrated to encompass my
forehead and eyes. You respond empathetically, recalling a similar
headache you had, and suggest a couple remedies. We discuss our
headaches and remedies a bit, then move on to other topics.

Of course no one but me can experience my headaches, and no one but
you can experience yours. But this posed no obstacle to our meaningful
conversation. You simply assumed that my headaches are relevantly
similar to yours, and I assumed the same about your headaches. The
fact that there is no "public headache," no single headache that we
both experience, is simply no problem.

A spoon is like a headache. Suppose I hand you a spoon. It is common
to assume that the spoon I experience during this transfer is
numerically identical to the spoon you experience. But this assumption
is false. No one but me can experience my spoon, and no one but you
can experience your spoon. But this is no problem. It is enough for me
to assume that your spoon experience is relevantly similar to mine.
For effective communication, no public spoon is necessary, just like
no public headache is necessary. Is there a "real spoon," a
mind-independent physical object that causes our spoon experiences and
resembles our spoon experiences? This is not only unnecessary but
unlikely. It is unlikely that the visual experiences of homo sapiens,
shaped to permit survival in a particular range of niches, should
miraculously also happen to resemble the true nature of a
mind-independent realm. Selective pressures for survival do not,
except by accident, lead to truth.

One can have a kind of objectivity without requiring public objects.
In special relativity, the measurements, and thus the experiences, of
mass, length and time differ from observer to observer, depending on
their relative velocities. But these differing experiences can be
related by the Lorentz transformation. This is all the objectivity one
can have, and all one needs to do science.

Once one abandons public physical objects, one must reformulate many
current open problems in science. One example is the mind-brain
relation. There are no public brains, only my brain experiences and
your brain experiences. These brain experiences are just the
simplified visual experiences of homo sapiens, shaped for survival in
certain niches. The chances that our brain experiences resemble some
mind-independent truth are remote at best, and those who would claim
otherwise must surely explain the miracle. Failing a clever
explanation of this miracle, there is no reason to believe brains
cause anything, including minds. And here the wolf unzips the sheep
skin, and darts out into the open. The danger becomes apparent the
moment we switch from boons to sprains. Oh, pardon the spoonerism.
_________________________________________________________________

MARC D. HAUSER
Psychologist and Biologist, Harvard University: Author, Wild Minds
[hauser101.jpg]

A universal grammar of [mental] life

The recent explosion of work in molecular evolution and developmental
biology has, for the first time, made it possible to propose a radical
new theory of mental life that if true, will forever rewrite the
textbooks and our way of thinking about our past and future. It
explains both the universality of our thoughts as well as the unique
signatures that demarcate each human culture, past, present and
future.

The theory I propose is that human mental life is based on a few
simple, abstract, yet expressively powerful rules or computations
together with an instructive learning mechanism that prunes the range
of possible systems of language, music, mathematics, art, and morality
to a limited set of culturally expressed variants. In many ways, this
view isn't new or radical. It stems from thinking about the seemingly
constrained ways in which relatively open ended or generative systems
of expression create both universal structure and limited variation.

Unfortunately, what appears to be a rather modest proposal on some
counts, is dangerous on another. It is dangerous to those who abhor
biologically grounded theories on the often misinterpreted perspective
that biology determines our fate, derails free will, and erases the
soul. But a look at systems other than the human mind makes it
transparently clear that the argument from biological endowment does
not entail any of these false inferences.

For example, we now understand that our immune systems don't learn
from the environment how to tune up to the relevant problems. Rather,
we are equipped with a full repertoire of antibodies to deal with a
virtually limitless variety of problems, including some that have not
yet even emerged in the history of life on earth. This initially seems
counter-intuitive: how could the immune system have evolved to predict
the kinds of problems we might face? The answer is that it couldn't.

What it evolved instead was a set of molecular computations that, in
combination with each other, can handle an infinitely larger set of
conditions than any single combination on its own. The role of the
environment is as instructor, functionally telling the immune system
about the current conditions, resulting in a process of pairing down
of initial starting options.

The pattern of change observed in the immune system, characterized by
an initial set of universal computations or options followed by an
instructive process of pruning, is seen in systems as disparate as the
genetic mechanisms underlying segmented body parts in vertebrates, the
basic body plan of land plants involving the shoot system of stem and
leaves, and song development in birds. Songbirds are particularly
interesting as the system for generating a song seems to be analogous
in important ways to our capacity to generate a specific language.
Humans and songbirds start with a species-specific capacity to build
language and song respectively, and this capacity has limitless
expressive power. Upon delivery and hatching, and possibly a bit
before, the local acoustic environment begins the process of
instruction, pruning the possible languages and songs down to one or
possibly two. The common thread here is a starting state of universal
computations or options followed by an instructive process of pruning,
ending up with distinctive systems that share an underlying common
core. Hard to see how anyone could find this proposal dangerous or
off-putting, or even wrong!

Now jump laterally, and make the move to aesthetics and ethics. Our
minds are endowed with universal computations for creating and judging
art, music, and morally relevant actions. Depending upon where we are
born, we will find atonal music pleasing or disgusting, and
infanticide obligatory or abhorrent. The common or universal core is,
for music, a set of rules for combining together notes to alter our
emotions, and for morality, a different set of rules for combining the
causes and consequences of action to alter our permissibility
judgments.

To say that we are endowed with a universal moral sense is not to say
that we will do the right or wrong thing, with any consistency. The
idea that there is a moral faculty, grounded in our biology, says
nothing at all about the good, the bad or the ugly. What it says is
that we have evolved particular biases, designed as a function of
selection for particular kinds of fit to the environment, under
particular constraints. But nothing about this claim leads to the good
or the right or the permissible.

The reason this has to be the case is twofold: there is not only
cultural variation but environmental variation over evolutionary time.
What is good for us today may not be good for us tomorrow. But the key
insight delivered by the nativist perspective is that we must
uderstand the nature of our biases in order to work toward some good
or better world, realizing all along that we are constrained.
Appreciating the choreography between universal options and
instructive pruning is only dangerous if misused to argue that our
evolved nature is good, and what is good is right. That's bad.
_________________________________________________________________

RAY KURZWEIL
Inventor and Technologist; Author, The Singularity Is Near: When
Humans Transcend Biology
[kurzweil.100.jpg]

The near-term inevitability of radical life extension and expansion

My dangerous idea is the near-term inevitability of radical life
extension and expansion. The idea is dangerous, however, only when
contemplated from current linear perspectives.

First the inevitability: the power of information technologies is
doubling each year, and moreover comprises areas beyond computation,
most notably our knowledge of biology and of our own intelligence. It
took 15 years to sequence HIV and from that perspective the genome
project seemed impossible in 1990. But the amount of genetic data we
were able to sequence doubled every year while the cost came down by
half each year.

We finished the genome project on schedule and were able to sequence
SARS in only 31 days. We are also gaining the means to reprogram the
ancient information processes underlying biology. RNA interference can
turn genes off by blocking the messenger RNA that express them. New
forms of gene therapy are now able to place new genetic information in
the right place on the right chromosome. We can create or block
enzymes, the work horses of biology. We are reverse-engineering -- and
gaining the means to reprogram -- the information processes underlying
disease and aging, and this process is accelerating, doubling every
year. If we think linearly, then the idea of turning off all disease
and aging processes appears far off into the future just as the genome
project did in 1990. On the other hand, if we factor in the doubling
of the power of these technologies each year, the prospect of radical
life extension is only a couple of decades away.

In addition to reprogramming biology, we will be able to go
substantially beyond biology with nanotechnology in the form of
computerized nanobots in the bloodstream. If the idea of programmable
devices the size of blood cells performing therapeutic functions in
the bloodstream sounds like far off science fiction, I would point out
that we are doing this already in animals. One scientist cured type I
diabetes in rats with blood cell sized devices containing 7 nanometer
pores that let insulin out in a controlled fashion and that block
antibodies. If we factor in the exponential advance of computation and
communication (price-performance multiplying by a factor of a billion
in 25 years while at the same time shrinking in size by a factor of
thousands), these scenarios are highly realistic.

The apparent dangers are not real while unapparent dangers are real.
The apparent dangers are that a dramatic reduction in the death rate
will create over population and thereby strain energy and other
resources while exacerbating environmental degradation. However we
only need to capture 1 percent of 1 percent of the sunlight to meet
all of our energy needs (3 percent of 1 percent by 2025) and
nanoengineered solar panels and fuel cells will be able to do this,
thereby meeting all of our energy needs in the late 2020s with clean
and renewable methods. Molecular nanoassembly devices will be able to
manufacture a wide range of products, just about everything we need,
with inexpensive tabletop devices. The power and price-performance of
these systems will double each year, much faster than the doubling
rate of the biological population. As a result, poverty and pollution
will decline and ultimately vanish despite growth of the biological
population.

There are real downsides, however, and this is not a utopian vision.
We have a new existential threat today in the potential of a
bioterrorist to engineer a new biological virus. We actually do have
the knowledge to combat this problem (for example, new vaccine
technologies and RNA interference which has been shown capable of
destroying arbitrary biological viruses), but it will be a race. We
will have similar issues with the feasibility of self-replicating
nanotechnology in the late 2020s. Containing these perils while we
harvest the promise is arguably the most important issue we face.

Some people see these prospects as dangerous because they threaten
their view of what it means to be human. There is a fundamental
philosophical divide here. In my view, it is not our limitations that
define our humanity. Rather, we are the species that seeks and
succeeds in going beyond our limitations.
_________________________________________________________________

HAIM HARARI
Physicist, former President, Weizmann Institute of Science
[harari100.jpg]

Democracy may be on its way out

Democracy may be on its way out. Future historians may determine that
Democracy will have been a one-century episode. It will disappear.
This is a sad, truly dangerous, but very realistic idea (or, rather,
prediction).

Falling boundaries between countries, cross border commerce, merging
economies, instant global flow of information and numerous other
features of our modern society, all lead to multinational structures.
If you extrapolate this irreversible trend, you get the entire planet
becoming one political unit. But in this unit, anti-democracy forces
are now a clear majority. This majority increases by the day, due to
demographic patterns. All democratic nations have slow, vanishing or
negative population growth, while all anti-democratic and uneducated
societies multiply fast. Within democratic countries, most
well-educated families remain small while the least educated families
are growing fast. This means that, both at the individual level and at
the national level, the more people you represent, the less economic
power you have. In a knowledge based economy, in which the number of
working hands is less important, this situation is much more
non-democratic than in the industrial age. As long as upward mobility
of individuals and nations could neutralize this phenomenon, democracy
was tenable. But when we apply this analysis to the entire planet, as
it evolves now, we see that democracy may be doomed.

To these we must add the regrettable fact that authoritarian
multinational corporations, by and large, are better managed than
democratic nation states. Religious preaching, TV sound bites, cross
boundary TV incitement and the freedom of spreading rumors and lies
through the internet encourage brainwashing and lack of rational
thinking. Proportionately, more young women are growing into societies
which discriminate against them than into more egalitarian societies,
increasing the worldwide percentage of women treated as second class
citizens. Educational systems in most advanced countries are in a deep
crisis while modern education in many developing countries is almost
non-existent. A small well-educated technological elite is becoming
the main owner of intellectual property, which is, by far, the most
valuable economic asset, while the rest of the world drifts towards
fanaticism of one kind or another. Add all of the above and the
unavoidable conclusion is that Democracy, our least bad system of
government, is on its way out.

Can we invent a better new system? Perhaps. But this cannot happen if
we are not allowed to utter the sentence: "There may be a political
system which is better than Democracy". Today's political correctness
does not allow one to say such things. The result of this prohibition
will be an inevitable return to some kind of totalitarian rule,
different from that of the emperors, the colonialists or the landlords
of the past, but not more just. On the other hand, open and honest
thinking about this issue may lead either to a gigantic worldwide
revolution in educating the poor masses, thus saving democracy, or to
a careful search for a just (repeat, just) and better system.
I cannot resist a cheap parting shot: When, in the past two years,
Edge asked for brilliant ideas you believe in but cannot prove, or for
proposing new exciting laws, most answers related to science and
technology. When the question is now about dangerous ideas, almost all
answers touch on issues of politics and society and not on the "hard
sciences". Perhaps science is not so dangerous, after all.
_________________________________________________________________

DAVID G. MYERS
Social Psychologist; Co-author (with Letha Scanzoni); What God has
Joined Together: A Christian Case for Gay Marriage
[myers100.jpg]

A marriage option for all

Much as others have felt compelled by evidence to believe in human
evolution or the warming of the planet, I feel compelled by evidence
to believe a) that sexual orientation is a natural, enduring
disposition and b) that the world would be a happier and healthier
place if, for all people, romantic love, sex, and marriage were a
package.
In my Midwestern social and religious culture, the words "for all
people" transform a conservative platitude into a dangerous idea, over
which we are fighting a culture war. On one side are traditionalists,
who feel passionately about the need to support and renew marriage. On
the other side are progressives, who assume that our sexual
orientation is something we did not choose and cannot change, and that
we all deserve the option of life within a covenant partnership.

I foresee a bridge across this divide as folks on both the left and
the right engage the growing evidence of our panhuman longing for
belonging, of the benefits of marriage, and of the biology and
persistence of sexual orientation. We now have lots of data showing
that marriage is conducive to healthy adults, thriving children, and
flourishing communities. We also have a dozen discoveries of
gay-straight differences in everything from brain physiology to skill
at mentally rotating geometric figures. And we have an emerging
professional consensus that sexual reorientation therapies seldom
work.

More and more young adults -- tomorrow's likely majority, given
generational succession -- are coming to understand this evidence, and
to support what in the future will not seem so dangerous: a marriage
option for all.
_________________________________________________________________

CLAY SHIRKY
Social & Technology Network Topology Researcher; Adjunct Professor,
NYU Graduate School of Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)
[shirkey100.jpg]

Free will is going away. Time to redesign society to take that into
account.

In 2002, a group of teenagers sued McDonald's for making them fat,
charging, among other things, that McDonald's used promotional
techniques to get them to eat more than they should. The suit was
roundly condemned as an the erosion of the sense of free will and
personal responsibility in our society. Less widely remarked upon was
that the teenagers were offering an accurate account of human
behavior.

Consider the phenomenon of 'super-sizing', where a restaurant patron
is offered the chance to increase the portion size of their meal for
some small amount of money. This presents a curious problem for the
concept of free will -- the patron has already made a calculation
about the amount of money they are willing to pay in return for a
particular amount of food. However, when the question is re-asked, --
not "Would you pay $5.79 for this total amount of food?" but "Would
you pay an additional 30 cents for more french fries?" -- patrons
often say yes, despite having answered "No" moments before to an
economically identical question.

Super-sizing is expressly designed to subvert conscious judgment, and
it works. By re-framing the question, fast food companies have found
ways to take advantages of weaknesses in our analytical apparatus,
weaknesses that are being documented daily in behavioral economics and
evolutionary psychology.

This matters for more than just fat teenagers. Our legal, political,
and economic systems, the mechanisms that run modern society, all
assume that people are uniformly capable of consciously modulating
their behaviors. As a result, we regard decisions they make as being
valid, as with elections, and hold them responsible for actions they
take, as in contract law or criminal trials. Then, in order to get
around the fact that some people obviously aren't capable of
consciously modulating their behavior, we carve out ad hoc exemptions.
In U.S. criminal law, a 15 year old who commits a crime is treated
differently than a 16 year old. A crime committed in the heat of the
moment is treated specially. Some actions are not crimes because their
perpetrator is judged mentally incapable, whether through
developmental disabilities or other forms of legally defined insanity.

This theoretical divide, between the mass of people with a uniform
amount of free will and a small set of exceptional individuals, has
been broadly stable for centuries, in part because it was based on
ignorance. As long as we were unable to locate any biological source
of free will, treating the mass of people as if each of them had the
same degree of control over their lives made perfect sense; no more
refined judgments were possible. However, that binary notion of free
will is being eroded as our understanding of the biological
antecedents of behavior improves.

Consider laws concerning convicted pedophiles. Concern about their
recidivism rate has led to the enactment of laws that restrict their
freedom based on things they might do in the future, even though this
expressly subverts the notion of free will in the judicial system. The
formula here -- heinousness of crime x likelihood of repeat offense --
creates a new, non-insane class of criminals whose penalty is indexed
to a perceived lack of control over themselves.

But pedophilia is not unique in it's measurably high recidivism rate.
All rapists have higher than average recidivism rates. Thieves of all
varieties are likelier to become repeat offenders if they have short
time horizons or poor impulse control. Will we keep more kinds of
criminals constrained after their formal sentence is served, as we
become better able to measure the likely degree of control they have
over their own future actions? How can we, if we are to preserve the
idea of personal responsibility? How can we not, once we are able to
quantify the risk?

Criminal law is just one area where our concept of free will is
eroding. We know that men make more aggressive decisions after they
have been shown pictures of attractive female faces. We know women are
more likely to commit infidelity on days they are fertile. We know
that patients committing involuntary physical actions routinely (and
incorrectly) report that they decided to undertake those actions, in
order to preserve their sense that they are in control. We know that
people will drive across town to save $10 on a $50 appliance, but not
on a $25,000 car. We know that the design of the ballot affects a
voter's choices. And we are still in the early days of even
understanding these effects, much less designing everything from sales
strategies to drug compounds to target them.

Conscious self-modulation of behavior is a spectrum. We have treated
it as a single property -- you are either capable of free will, or you
fall into an exceptional category -- because we could not identify,
measure, or manipulate the various components that go into such
self-modulation. Those days are now ending, and everyone from
advertisers to political consultants increasingly understands, in
voluminous biological detail, how to manipulate consciousness in ways
that weaken our notion of free will.

In the coming decades, our concept of free will, based as it is on
ignorance of its actual mechanisms, will be destroyed by what we learn
about the actual workings of the brain. We can wait for that
collision, and decide what to do then, or we can begin thinking
through what sort of legal, political, and economic systems we need in
a world where our old conception of free will is rendered inoperable.
_________________________________________________________________

MICHAEL SHERMER
Publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific
American; Author, Science Friction
[shermer100.jpg]

Where goods cross frontiers, armies won't
Where goods cross frontiers, armies won't. Restated: where economic
borders are porous between two nations, political borders become
impervious to armies.

Data from the new sciences of evolutionary economics, behavioral
economics, and neuroeconomics reveals that when people are free to
cooperate and trade (such as in game theory protocols) they establish
trust that is reinforced through neural pathways that release such
bonding hormones as oxytocin. Thus, modern biology reveals that where
people are free to cooperate and trade they are less likely to fight
and kill those with whom they are cooperating and trading.

My dangerous idea is a solution to what I call the "really hard
problem": how best should we live? My answer: A free society, defined
as free-market economics and democratic politics -- fiscal
conservatism and social liberalism -- which leads to the greatest
liberty for the greatest number. Since humans are, by nature, tribal,
the overall goal is to expand the concept of the tribe to include all
members of the species into a global free society. Free trade between
all peoples is the surest way to reach this goal.

People have a hard time accepting free market economics for the same
reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is
counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural
inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer --
a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural
inclination is to infer that we need a designer -- a Government. In
fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of
self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from
simple systems without a top-down designer.

Charles Darwin's natural selection is Adam Smith's invisible hand.
Darwin showed how complex design and ecological balance were
unintended consequences of individual competition among organisms.
Smith showed how national wealth and social harmony were unintended
consequences of individual competition among people. Nature's economy
mirrors society's economy. Thus, integrating evolution and economics
-- what I call evonomics -- reveals that an old economic doctrine is
supported by modern biology.
_________________________________________________________________

ARNOLD TREHUB
Psychologist, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Author, The
Cognitive Brain
[trehub100.jpg]

Modern science is a product of biology

The entire conceptual edifice of modern science is a product of
biology. Even the most basic and profound ideas of science -- think
relativity, quantum theory, the theory of evolution -- are generated
and necessarily limited by the particular capacities of our human
biology. This implies that the content and scope of scientific
knowledge is not open-ended.
_________________________________________________________________

ROGER C. SCHANK
Psychologist & Computer Scientist; Chief Learning Officer, Trump
University; Author, Making Minds Less Well Educated than Our Own
[schank100.jpg]
No More Teacher's Dirty Looks

After a natural disaster, the newscasters eventually excitedly
announce that school is finally open so no matter what else is
terrible where they live, the kids are going to school. I always feel
sorry for the poor kids.

My dangerous idea is one that most people immediately reject without
giving it serious thought: school is bad for kids -- it makes them
unhappy and as tests show -- they don't learn much.

When you listen to children talk about school you easily discover what
they are thinking about in school: who likes them, who is being mean
to them, how to improve their social ranking, how to get the teacher
to treat them well and give them good grades.

Schools are structured today in much the same way as they have been
for hundreds of years. And for hundreds of years philosophers and
others have pointed out that school is really a bad idea:

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or
fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly full of words and
do not know a thing. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from
time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. --
Oscar Wilde

Schools should simply cease to exist as we know them. The Government
needs to get out of the education business and stop thinking it knows
what children should know and then testing them constantly to see if
they regurgitate whatever they have just been spoon fed.

The Government is and always has been the problem in education:

If the government would make up its mind to require for every child
a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing
one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and
how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school
fees of the poorer classes of children, and defraying the entire
school expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them. --
JS Mill

First, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then He
created school boards. -- Mark Twain

Schools need to be replaced by safe places where children can go to
learn how to do things that they are interested in learning how to do.
Their interests should guide their learning. The government's role
should be to create places that are attractive to children and would
cause them to want to go there.

Whence it comes to pass, that for not having chosen the right
course, we often take very great pains, and consume a good part of
our time in training up children to things, for which, by their
natural constitution, they are totally unfit. -- Montaigne

We had a President many years ago who understood what education is
really for. Nowadays we have ones that make speeches about the
Pythagorean Theorem when we are quite sure they don't know anything
about any theorem.

There are two types of education. . . One should teach us how to
make a living, And the other how to live. -- John Adams

Over a million students have opted out of the existing school system
and are now being home schooled. The problem is that the states
regulate home schooling and home schooling still looks an awful lot
like school.

We need to stop producing a nation of stressed out students who learn
how to please the teacher instead of pleasing themselves. We need to
produce adults who love learning, not adults who avoid all learning
because it reminds them of the horrors of school. We need to stop
thinking that all children need to learn the same stuff. We need to
create adults who can think for themselves and are not convinced about
how to understand complex situations in simplistic terms that can be
rendered in a sound bite.

Just call school off. Turn them all into apartment houses.
_________________________________________________________________

SUSAN BLACKMORE
Psychologist and Skeptic; Author, Consciousness: An Introduction
[blackmore.100.jpg]
Everything is pointless

We humans can, and do, make up our own purposes, but ultimately the
universe has none. All the wonderfully complex, and beautifully
designed things we see around us were built by the same purposeless
process -- evolution by natural selection. This includes everything
from microbes and elephants to skyscrapers and computers, and even our
own inner selves.

People have (mostly) got used to the idea that living things were
designed by natural selection, but they have more trouble accepting
that human creativity is just the same process operating on memes
instead of genes. It seems, they think, to take away uniqueness,
individuality and "true creativity".

Of course it does nothing of the kind; each person is unique even if
that uniqueness is explained by their particular combination of genes,
memes and environment, rather than by an inner conscious self who is
the fount of creativity.
_________________________________________________________________

DAVID LYKKEN
Behavioral geneticist and Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University
of Minnesota; Author, Happiness
[lykken100.jpg]
Laws requiring parental licensure

I believe that, during my grandchildren's lifetimes, the U.S. Supreme
Court will find a way to approve laws requiring parental licensure.

Traditional societies in which children are socialized collectively,
the method to which our species is evolutionarily adapted, have very
little crime. In the modern U.S., the proportion of fatherless
children, living with unmarried mothers, currently some 10 million in
all, has increased more than 400% since 1960 while the violent crime
rate rose 500% by 1994, before dipping slightly due to a delayed but
equal increase in the number of prison inmates (from 240,000 to 1.4
million.) In 1990, across the 50 States, the correlation between the
violent crime rate and the proportion of illegitimate births was 0.70.
About 70% of incarcerated delinquents, of teen-age pregnancies, of
adolescent runaways, involve (I think result from) fatherless rearing.
Because these frightening curves continue to accelerate, I believe we
must eventually confront the need for parental licensure -- you can't
keep that newborn unless you are 21, married and self-supporting --
not just for society's safety but so those babies will have a chance
for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
_________________________________________________________________

CLIFFORD PICKOVER
Author, Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves
[pickover100.jpg]
We are all virtual
Our desire for entertaining virtual realities is increasing.  As our
understanding of the human brain also accelerates, we will create both
imagined realities and a set of memories to support these
simulacrums.  For example, someday it will be possible to simulate
your visit to the Middle Ages and, to make the experience realistic,
we may wish to ensure that you believe yourself to actually be in the
Middle Ages. False memories may be implanted, temporarily overriding
your real memories. This should be easy to do in the future -- given
that we can already coax the mind to create richly detailed virtual
worlds filled with ornate palaces and strange beings through the use
of the drug DMT (dimethyltryptamine).  In other words, the brains of
people who take DMT appear to access a treasure chest of images and
experience that typically include jeweled cities and temples, angelic
beings, feline shapes, serpents, and shiny metals. When we understand
the brain better, we will be able to safely generate more controlled
visions.
Our brains are also capable of simulating complex worlds when we
dream.  For example, after I watched a movie about people on a coastal
town during the time of the Renaissance, I was "transported" there
later that night while in a dream. The mental simulation of the
Renaissance did not have to be perfect, and I'm sure that there were
myriad flaws.  However, during that dream I believed I was in the
Renaissance.

If we understood the nature of how the mind induces the conviction of
reality, even when strange, nonphysical events happen in the dreams,
we could use this knowledge to ensure that your simulated trip to the
Middle Ages seemed utterly real, even if the simulation was imperfect.
It will be easy to create seemingly realistic virtual realities
because we don't have to be perfect or even good with respect to the
accuracy of our simulations in order to make them seem real.  After
all, our nightly dreams usually seem quite real even if upon awakening
we realize that logical or structural inconsistencies existed in the
dream.
In the future, for each of your own real lives, you will personally
create ten simulated lives. Your day job is a computer programmer for
IBM. However, after work, you'll be a knight with shining armor in the
Middle Ages, attending lavish banquets, and smiling at wandering
minstrels and beautiful princesses. The next night, you'll be in the
Renaissance, living in your home on the Amalfi coast of Italy,
enjoying a dinner of plover, pigeon, and heron.
If this ratio of one real life to ten simulated lives turned out to be
representative of human experience, this means that right now, you
only have a one in ten chance of being alive on the actual date of
today.
_________________________________________________________________

JOHN ALLEN PAULOS
Professor of Mathematics, Temple University, Philadelphia; Author, A
Mathematician Plays the Stock Market
[paulos100.jpg]
The self is a conceptual chimera
Doubt that a supernatural being exists is banal, but the more radical
doubt that we exist, at least as anything more than nominal,
marginally integrated entities having convenient labels like "Myrtle"
and "Oscar," is my candidate for Dangerous Idea. This is, of course,
Hume's idea -- and Buddha's as well -- that the self is an
ever-changing collection of beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes, that
it is not an essential and persistent entity, but rather a conceptual
chimera. If this belief ever became widely and viscerally felt
throughout a society -- whether because of advances in neurobiology,
cognitive science, philosophical insights, or whatever -- its effects
on that society would be incalculable. (Or so this assemblage of
beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes sometimes thinks.)
_________________________________________________________________

JAMES O'DONNELL
Classicist; Cultural Historian; Provost, Georgetown University;
Author, Avatars of the Word
[odonnell100.jpg]

Marx was right: the "state" will evaporate and cease to have useful
meaning as a form of human organization

From the earliest Babylonian and Chinese moments of "civilization", we
have agreed that human affairs depend on an organizing power in the
hands of a few people (usually with religious charisma to undergird
their authority) who reside in a functionally central location.
"Political science" assumes in its etymology the "polis" or city-state
of Greece as the model for community and government.

But it is remarkable how little of human excellence and achievement
has ever taken place in capital cities and around those elites, whose
cultural history is one of self-mockery and implicit acceptance of the
marginalization of the powerful. Borderlands and frontiers (and even
suburbs) are where the action is.

But as long as technologies of transportation and military force
emphasized geographic centralization and concentration of forces, the
general or emperor or president in his capital with armies at his beck
and call was the most obvious focus of power. Enlightened government
constructed mechanisms to restrain and channel such centralized
authority, but did not effectively challenge it.

So what advantage is there today to the nation state? Boundaries
between states enshrine and exacerbate inequalities and prevent the
free movement of peoples. Large and prosperous state and state-related
organizations and locations attract the envy and hostility of others
and are sitting duck targets for terrorist action. Technologies of
communication and transportation now make geographically-defined
communities increasingly irrelevant and provide the new elites and new
entrepreneurs with ample opportunity to stand outside them. Economies
construct themselves in spite of state management and money flees
taxation as relentlessly as water follows gravity.

Who will undergo the greatest destabilization as the state evaporates
and its artificial protections and obstacles disappear? The sooner it
happens, the more likely it is to be the United States. The longer it
takes ... well, perhaps the new Chinese empire isn't quite the
landscape-dominating leviathan of the future that it wants to be.
Perhaps in the end it will be Mao who was right, and a hundred flowers
will bloom there.
_________________________________________________________________

PHILIP ZIMBARDO
Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University; Author:
Shyness
[zimbardo100.jpg]

The banality of evil is matched by the banality of heroism
Those people who become perpetrators of evil deeds and those who
become perpetrators of heroic deeds are basically alike in being just
ordinary, average people.

The banality of evil is matched by the banality of heroism. Both are
not the consequence of dispositional tendencies, not special inner
attributes of pathology or goodness residing within the human psyche
or the human genome. Both emerge in particular situations at
particular times when situational forces play a compelling role in
moving individuals across the decisional line from inaction to action.

There is a decisive decisional moment when the individual is caught up
in a vector of forces emanating from the behavioral context. Those
forces combine to increase the probability of acting to harm others or
acting to help others. That decision may not be consciously planned or
taken mindfully, but impulsively driven by strong situational forces
external to the person. Among those action vectors are group pressures
and group identity, diffusion of responsibility, temporal focus on the
immediate moment without entertaining costs and benefits in the
future, among others.

The military police guards who abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the
prison guards in my Stanford Prison experiment who abused their
prisoners illustrate the "Lord of the Flies" temporary transition of
ordinary individuals into perpetrators of evil. We set aside those
whose evil behavior is enduring and extensive, such as tyrants like
Idi Amin, Stalin and Hitler. Heroes of the moment are also contrasted
with lifetime heroes.

The heroic action of Rosa Parks in a Southern bus, of Joe Darby in
exposing the Abu Ghraib tortures, of NYC firefighters at the World
Trade Center's disaster are acts of bravery at that time and place.
The heroism of Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi is replete
with valorous acts repeated over a lifetime. That chronic heroism is
to acute heroism as valour is to bravery.

This view implies that any of us could as easily become heroes as
perpetrators of evil depending on how we are impacted by situational
forces. We then want to discover how to limit, constrain, and prevent
those situational and systemic forces that propel some of us toward
social pathology.

It is equally important for our society to foster the heroic
imagination in our citizens by conveying the message that anyone is a
hero-in-waiting who will be counted upon to do the right thing when
the time comes to make the heroic decision to act to help or to act to
prevent harm.
_________________________________________________________________

RICHARD FOREMAN
Founder & Director, Ontological-Hysteric Theater
[foreman100.jpg]
Radicalized relativity

In my area of the arts and humanities, the most dangerous idea (and
the one under who's influence I have operated throughout my artistic
life) is the complete relativity of all positions and styles of
procedure. The notion that there are no "absolutes" in art -- and in
the modern era, each valuable effort has been, in one way or another,
the highlighting and glorification of elements previous "off limits"
and rejected by the previous "classical" style.

Such a continual "reversal of values" has of course delivered us into
the current post-post modern era, in which fragmentation, surface
value and the complex weave of "sampling procedure" dominate, and "the
center does not hold".

I realize that my own artistic efforts have, in a small way,
contributed to the current aesthetic/emotional environment in which
the potential spiritual depth and complexity of evolved human
consciousness is trumped by the bedazzling shuffle of the shards of
inherited elements -- never before as available to the collective
consciousness. The resultant orientation towards "cultural relativity"
in the arts certainly comes in part from the psychic re-orientation
resulting from Einstein's bombshell dropped at the beginning of the
last century.

This current "relativity" of all artistic, philosophical, and
psychological values leaves the culture adrift, and yet there is no
"going back" in spite of what conservative thinkers often recommend.

At the very moment of our cultural origin, we were warned against
"eating from the tree of knowledge". Down through subsequent history,
one thing has led to another, until now -- here we are, sinking into
the quicksand of the ever-accelerating reversal of each latest value
(or artistic style). And yet -- there are many artists, like myself,
committed to the believe that -- having been "thrown by history" into
the dangerous trajectory initiated by the inaugural "eating from the
tree of knowledge" (a perhaps "fatal curiosity" programmed into our
genes) the only escape possible is to treat the quicksand of the
present as a metaphorical "black hole" through which we must pass --
indeed risking psychic destruction (or "banalization") -- for the
promise of emerging re-made, in new still unimaginable form, on the
other side.

This is the "heroic wager" the serious "experimental" artist makes in
living through the dangerous idea of radicalized relativity. It is
ironic, of course, that many of our greatest scientists (not all of
course) have little patience for the adventurous art of our times
(post Stockhausen/Boulez music, post Joyce/ Mallarme literature) and
seem to believe that a return to a safer "audience friendly" classical
style is the only responsible method for today's artists.

Do they perhaps feel psychologically threatened by advanced styles
that supercede previous principals of coherence? They are right to
feel threatened by such dangerous advances into territory for which
conscious sensibility if not yet fully prepared. Yet it is time for
all serious minds to "bite the bullet" of such forays into the unknown
world in which the dangerous quest for deeper knowledge leads
scientist and artist alike.
_________________________________________________________________

JOHN GOTTMAN
Psychologist; Founder of Gottman Institute; Author, The Mathematics of
Marriage
[gottman100.jpg]

Emotional intelligence

The most dangerous idea I know of is emotional intelligence. Within
the context of the cognitive neuroscience revolution in psychology,
the focus on emotions is extraordinary. The over-arching idea that
there is such a thing as emotional intelligence, that it has a
neuroscience, that it is inter-personal, i.e., between two brains,
rather than within one brain, are all quite revolutionary concepts
about human psychology. I could go on. It is also a revolution in
thinking about infancy, couples, family, adult development, aging,
etc.
_________________________________________________________________

PIET HUT
Professor of Astrophysics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
[hut100.jpg]

A radical reevaluuation of the character of time

Copernicus and Darwin took away our traditional place in the world and
our traditional identity in the world. What traditional trait will be
taken away from us next? My guess is that it will be the world itself.

We see the first few steps in that direction in the physics,
mathematics and computer science of the twentieth century, from
quantum mechanics to the results obtained by G?del, Turing and others.
The ontologies of our worlds, concrete as well as abstract, have
already started to melt away.

The problem is that quantum entanglement and logical incompleteness
lack the in-your-face quality of a spinning earth and our kinship with
apes. We will have to wait for the ontology of the traditional world
to unravel further, before the avant-garde insights will turn into a
real revolution.

Copernicus upset the moral order, by dissolving the strict distinction
between heaven and earth. Darwin did the same, by dissolving the
strict distinction between humans and other animals. Could the next
step be the dissolution of the strict distinction between reality and
fiction?

For this to be shocking, it has to come in a scientifically
respectable way, as a very precise and inescapable conclusion -- it
should have the technical strength of a body of knowledge like quantum
mechanics, as opposed to collections of opinions on the level of
cultural relativism.

Perhaps a radical reevaluation of the character of time will do it. In
everyday experience, time flows, and we flow with it. In classical
physics, time is frozen as part of a frozen spacetime picture. And
there is, as yet, no agreed-upon interpretation of time in quantum
mechanics.

What if a future scientific understanding of time would show all
previous pictures to be wrong, and demonstrate that past and future
and even the present do not exist? That stories woven around our
individual personal history and future are all just wrong? Now that
would be a dangerous idea.
_________________________________________________________________

DAN SPERBER
Social and cognitive scientist, CNRS, Paris; author, Explaining
Culture
[sperber100.jpg]
Culture is natural
A number of us -- biologists, cognitive scientists, anthropologists or
philosophers -- have been trying to lay down the foundations for a
truly naturalistic approach to culture. Sociobiologists and cultural
ecologists have explored the idea that cultural behaviors are
biological adaptations to be explained in terms of natural selection.
Memeticists inspired by Richard Dawkins argue that cultural evolution
is an autonomous Darwinian selection process merely enabled but not
governed by biological evolution.

Evolutionary psychologists, Cavalli-Sforza, Feldman, Boyd and
Richerson, and I are among those who, in different ways, argue for
more complex interactions between biology and culture. These
naturalistic approaches have been received not just with intellectual
objections, but also with moral and political outrage: this is a
dangerous idea, to be strenuously resisted, for it threatens
humanistic values and sound social sciences.
When I am called a "reductionist", I take it as a misplaced
compliment: a genuine reduction is a great scientific achievement,
but, too bad, the naturalistic study of culture I advocate does not to
reduce to that of biology or of psychology. When I am called a
"positivist" (an insult among postmodernists), I acknowledge without
any sense of guilt or inadequacy that indeed I don't believe that all
facts are socially constructed. On the whole, having one's ideas
described as "dangerous" is flattering.

Dangerous ideas are potentially important. Braving insults and
misrepresentations in defending these ideas is noble. Many advocates
of naturalistic approaches to culture see themselves as a group of
free-thinking, deep-probing scholars besieged by bigots.

But wait a minute! Naturalistic approaches can be dangerous: after
all, they have been. The use of biological evidence and arguments
purported to show that there are profound natural inequalities among
human "races", ethnic groups, or between women and men is only too
well represented in the history of our disciplines. It is not good
enough for us to point out (rightly) that 1) the science involved is
bad science,
2) even if some natural inequality were established, it would not come
near justifying any inequality in rights, and 3) postmodernists
criticizing naturalism on political grounds should begin by rejecting
Heidegger and other reactionaries in their pantheon who also have been
accomplices of policies of discrimination. This is not enough because
the racist and sexist uses of naturalism are not exactly unfortunate
accidents.

Species evolve because of genetic differences among their members;
therefore you cannot leave biological difference out of a biological
approach. Luckily, it so happens that biological differences among
humans are minor and don't produce sub-species or "races," and that
human sexual dimorphism is relatively limited. In particular, all
humans have mind/brains made up of the same mechanisms, with just
fine-tuning differences. (Think how very different all this would be
if -- however improbably -- Neanderthals had survived and developed
culturally like we did so that there really were different human
"races").

Given what anthropologists have long called "the psychic unity of the
human kind", the fundamental goal for a naturalistic approach is to
explain how a common human nature -- and not biological differences
among humans -- gives rise to such a diversity of languages, cultures,
social organizations. Given the real and present danger of distortion
and exploitation, it must be part of our agenda to take responsibility
for the way this approach is understood by a wider public.

This, happily, has been done by a number of outstanding authors
capable of explaining serious science to lay audiences, and who
typically have made the effort of warning their readers against
misuses of biology. So the danger is being averted, and let's just
move on? No, we are not there yet, because the very necessity of
popularizing the naturalistic approach and the very talent with which
this is being done creates a new danger, that of arrogance.

We naturalists do have radical objections to what Leda Cosmides and
John Tooby have called the "Standard Social Science Model." We have
many insightful hypotheses and even some relevant data. The truth of
the matter however is that naturalistic approaches to culture have so
far remained speculative, hardly beginning to throw light on just
fragments of the extraordinarily wide range of detailed evidence
accumulated by historians, anthropologists, sociologists and others.
Many of those who find our ideas dangerous fear what they see as an
imperialistic bid to take over their domain.

The bid would be unrealistic, and so is the fear. The real risk is
different. The social sciences host a variety of approaches, which,
with a few high profile exceptions, all contribute to our
understanding of the domain. Even if it involves some reshuffling, a
naturalistic approach should be seen as a particularly welcome and
important addition. But naturalists full of grand claims and promises
but with little interest in the competence accumulated by others are,
if not exactly dangerous, at least much less useful than they should
be, and the deeper challenge they present to social scientists' mental
habits is less likely to be properly met.
_________________________________________________________________

MARTIN E.P. SELIGMAN
Psychologist, University of Pennsylvania, Author, Authentic Happiness
[seligman100.jpg]

Relativism

In looking back over the scientific and artistic breakthroughs in the
20th century, there is a view that the great minds relativized the
absolute. Did this go too far? Has relativism gotten to a point that
it is dangerous to the scientific enterprise and to human well being?
The most visible person to say this is none other than Pope Benedict
XVI in his denunciations of the "dictatorship of the relative." But
worries about relativism are not only a matter of dispute in theology;
there are parallel dissenters from the relative in science, in
philosophy, in ethics, in mathematics, in anthropology, in sociology,
in the humanities, in childrearing, and in evolutionary biology.
Here are some of the domains in which serious thinkers have worried
about the overdoing of relativism:

o In philosophy of science, there is ongoing tension between the
Kuhnians (science is about "paradigms," the fashions of the current
discipline) and the realists (science is about finding the truth).
o In epistemology there is the dispute between the Tarskian
correspondence theorists ("p" is true if p) versus two relativistic
camps, the coherence theorists ("p" is true to the extent it
coheres with what you already believe is true) and the pragmatic
theory of truth ("p" is true if it gets you where you want to go).
o At the ethics/science interface, there is the fact/value dispute:
that science must and should incorporate the values of the culture
in which it arises versus the contention that science is and should
be value free.
o In mathematics, G?del's incompleteness proof was widely
interpreted as showing that mathematics is relative; but G?del, a
Platonist, intended the proof to support the view that there are
statements that could not be proved within the system that are true
nevertheless. Einstein, similarly, believed that the theory of
relativity was misconstrued in just the same way by the "man is the
measure of all things" relativists.
o In the sociology of high accomplishment, Charles Murray (Human
Accomplishment) documents that the highest accomplishments occur in
cultures that believe in absolute truth, beauty, and goodness. The
accomplishments, he contends, of cultures that do not believe in
absolute beauty tend to be ugly, that do not belief in absolute
goodness tend to be immoral, and that do not believe in absolute
truth tend to be false.
o In anthropology, pre-Boasians believed that cultures were
hierarchically ordered into savage, barbarian, and civilized,
whereas much of modern anthropology holds that all social forms are
equal. This is the intellectual basis of the sweeping cultural
relativism that dominates the humanities in academia.
o In evolution, Robert Wright (like Aristotle) argues for a scala
naturae, with the direction of evolution favoring complexity by its
invisible hand; whereas Stephen Jay Gould argued that the fern is
just as highly evolved as Homo sapiens. Does evolution have an
absolute direction and are humans further along that trajectory
than ferns?
o In child-rearing, much of twentieth century education was
profoundly influenced by the "Summerhillians" who argued complete
freedom produced the best children, whereas other schools of
parenting, education, and therapy argue for disciplined,
authoritative guidance.
o Even in literature, arguments over what should go into the canon
revolve around the absolute-relative controversy.
o Ethical relativism and its opponents are all too obvious
instances of this issue

I do not know if the dilemmas in these domains are only metaphorically
parallel to one another. I do not know if illumination in one domain
will not illuminate the others. But it might and it is just possible
that the great minds of the twenty-first century will absolutize the
relative.
_________________________________________________________________

HOWARD GARDNER
Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, Changing Minds
[gardner100.jpg]

Following Sisyphus, not Pandora
According to myth, Pandora unleashed all evils upon the world; only
hope remained inside the box. Hope for human survival and progress
rests on two assumptions: (1) Human constructive tendencies can
counter human destructive tendencies, and (2) Human beings can act on
the basis of long-term considerations, rather than merely short-term
needs and desires. My personal optimism, and my years of research on
"good work", could not be sustained without these assumptions.
Yet I lay awake at night with the dangerous thought that pessimists
may be right. For the first time in history -- as far as we know! --
we humans live in a world that we could completely destroy. The human
destructive tendencies described in the past by Thomas Hobbes and
Sigmund Freud, the "realist" picture of human beings embraced more
recently by many sociobiologists, evolutionary psychologists, and game
theorists might be correct; these tendencies could overwhelm any
proclivities toward altruism, protection of the environment, control
of weapons of destruction, progress in human relations, or seeking to
become good ancestors. As one vivid data point: there are few signs
that the unprecedented power possessed by the United States is being
harnessed to positive ends.
Strictly speaking, what will happen to the species or the planet is
not a question for scientific study or prediction. It is a question of
probabilities, based on historical and cultural considerations, as
well as our most accurate description of human nature(s). Yet, science
(as reflected, for example, in contributions to Edge discussions) has
recently invaded this territory with its assertions of a
biologically-based human moral sense. Those who assert a human moral
sense are wagering that, in the end, human beings will do the right
thing. Of course, human beings have the capacities to make moral
judgments -- that is a mere truism. But my dangerous thought is that
this moral sense is up for grabs -- that it can be mobilized for
destructive ends (one society's terrorist is another society's freedom
fighter) or overwhelmed by other senses and other motivations, such as
the quest for power, instant gratification, or annihilation of one's
enemies.
I will continue to do what I can to encourage good work -- in that
sense, Pandoran hope remains. But I will not look upon science,
technology, or religion to preserve life. Instead, I will follow
Albert Camus' injunction, in his portrayal of another mythic figure
endlessly attempting to push a rock up a hill: one should imagine
Sisyphus happy.

From mario7k at gmail.com  Fri Jan  6 02:02:56 2006
From: mario7k at gmail.com (Mario Ribeiro)
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 22:02:56 -0400
Subject: [Paleopsych] Independent: 'Chronic happiness' the key to success
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252111380.14301@panix3.panix.com>
References: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252111380.14301@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <7f0d59090601051802m48e87f6et7db65f4885553584@mail.gmail.com>

 yeah definetly, send it to me. its interesting the idea that happiness and
cheerfullness may and should come before u achive what ever ur looking
for... not after...
 ei pai, comprei 4 livros na amazon.com pra universidade. dois dos quais
digitais... to estudando aki... remotely... not bad
 The Growth of the International Economy
 Globalization
 Sociology
 The Problem of Sociology
 bjs
 M


On 1/2/06, Premise Checker <checker at panix.com> wrote:
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article333972.ece
> 19 December 2005 10:27
>
> By Lyndsay Moss
> Published: 19 December 2005
>
> The key to success may be "chronic happiness" rather than simply hard
> work and the right contacts, psychologists have found.
>
> Many assume a successful career and personal life leads to happiness.
> But psychologists in the US say happiness can bring success.
>
> Researchers from the universities of California, Missouri and Illinois
> examined connections between desirable characteristics, life success and
> well-being in more than 275,000 people.
>
> They found that happy individuals were predisposed to seek out new goals
> in life, leading to success, which also reinforced their already
> positive emotions.
>
> The psychologists addressed questions such as whether happy people were
> more successful than unhappy people, and whether happiness came before
> or after a perceived success.
>
> Writing in Psychological Bulletin, published by the American
> Psychological Association, they concluded that "chronically happy
> people" were generally more successful in many areas of life than less
> happy people.
>
> The key to success may be "chronic happiness" rather than simply hard
> work and the right contacts, psychologists have found.
>
> Many assume a successful career and personal life leads to happiness.
> But psychologists in the US say happiness can bring success.
>
> Researchers from the universities of California, Missouri and Illinois
> examined connections between desirable characteristics, life success and
> well-being in more than 275,000 people.
>
> They found that happy individuals were predisposed to seek out new goals
> in life, leading to success, which also reinforced their already
> positive emotions.
>
> The psychologists addressed questions such as whether happy people were
> more successful than unhappy people, and whether happiness came before
> or after a perceived success.
>
> Writing in Psychological Bulletin, published by the American
> Psychological Association, they concluded that "chronically happy
> people" were generally more successful in many areas of life than less
> happy people.
> _______________________________________________
> paleopsych mailing list
> paleopsych at paleopsych.org
> http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych
>
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From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 03:44:09 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 22:44:09 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Discovery: Robot Demonstrates Self Awareness
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252116150.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Robot Demonstrates Self Awareness
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20051219/awarerobot_tec.html
[Uh oh...too late for AI friendliness, time to buy How to Survive a Robot 
Uprising.]

By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News

Dec. 21, 2005- A new robot can recognize the difference between a mirror image 
of itself and another robot that looks just like it.

This so-called mirror image cognition is based on artificial nerve cell groups 
built into the robot's computer brain that give it the ability to recognize 
itself and acknowledge others.

The ground-breaking technology could eventually lead to robots able to express 
emotions.

Under development by Junichi Takeno and a team of researchers at Meiji 
University in Japan, the robot represents a big step toward developing 
self-aware robots and in understanding and modeling human self-consciousness.

"In humans, consciousness is basically a state in which the behavior of the 
self and another is understood," said Takeno.

Humans learn behavior during cognition and conversely learn to think while 
behaving, said Takeno.

To mimic this dynamic, a robot needs a common area in its neural network that 
is able to process information on both cognition and behavior.

Takeno and his colleagues built the robot with blue, red or green LEDs 
connected to artificial neurons in the region that light up when different 
information is being processed, based on the robot's behavior.

"The innovative part is the independent nodes in the hierarchical levels that 
can be linked and activated," said Thomas Bock of the Technical University of 
Munich in Germany.

For example, two red diodes illuminate when the robot is performing behavior it 
considers its own, two green bulbs light up when the robot acknowledges 
behavior being performed by the other.

One blue LED flashes when the robot is both recognizing behavior in another 
robot and imitating it.

Imitation, said Takeno, is an act that requires both seeing a behavior in 
another and instantly transferring it to oneself and is the best evidence of 
consciousness.

In one experiment, a robot representing the "self" was paired with an identical 
robot representing the "other."

When the self robot moved forward, stopped or backed up, the other robot did 
the same. The pattern of neurons firing and the subsequent flashes of blue 
light indicated that the self robot understood that the other robot was 
imitating its behavior.

In another experiment, the researchers placed the self robot in front of a 
mirror.

In this case, the self robot and the reflection (something it could interpret 
as another robot) moved forward and back at the same time. Although the blue 
lights fired, they did so less frequently than in other experiments.

In fact, 70 percent of the time, the robot understood that the mirror image was 
itself. Takeno's goal is to reach 100 percent in the coming year.


From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 03:44:19 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 22:44:19 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: The robots are coming... from Japan...
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252116570.14301@panix3.panix.com>

The robots are coming... from Japan...
http://www.economist.com/World/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5323427

   Special Report  Japan's humanoid robots
   Better than people  Dec 20th 2005 | TOKYO

   Why the Japanese want their robots to act more like humans Getty Images

   HER name is MARIE, and her impressive set of skills comes in handy in a 
nursing home. MARIE can walk around under her own power. She can distinguish 
among similar-looking objects, such as different bottles of medicine, and has a 
delicate enough touch to work with frail patients. MARIE can interpret a range 
of facial expressions and gestures, and respond in ways that suggest 
compassion. Although her language skills are not ideal, she can recognise 
speech and respond clearly. Above all, she is inexpensive . Unfortunately for 
MARIE, however, she has one glaring trait that makes it hard for Japanese 
patients to accept her: she is a flesh-and-blood human being from the 
Philippines. If only she were a robot instead.

   Robots, you see, are wonderful creatures, as many a Japanese will tell you. 
They are getting more adept all the time, and before too long will be able to 
do cheaply and easily many tasks that human workers do now. They will care for 
the sick, collect the rubbish, guard homes and offices, and give directions on 
the street.

   This is great news in Japan, where the population has peaked, and may have 
begun shrinking in 2005. With too few young workers supporting an ageing 
population, somebody?or something?needs to fill the gap, especially since many 
of Japan's young people will be needed in science, business and other creative 
or knowledge-intensive jobs.

   Many workers from low-wage countries are eager to work in Japan. The 
Philippines, for example, has over 350,000 trained nurses, and has been 
pleading with Japan?which accepts only a token few?to let more in. Foreign 
pundits keep telling Japan to do itself a favour and make better use of cheap 
imported labour. But the consensus among Japanese is that visions of a future 
in which immigrant workers live harmoniously and unobtrusively in Japan are 
pure fancy. Making humanoid robots is clearly the simple and practical way to 
go.

   Japan certainly has the technology. It is already the world leader in making 
industrial robots, which look nothing like pets or people but increasingly do 
much of the work in its factories. Japan is also racing far ahead of other 
countries in developing robots with more human features, or that can interact 
more easily with people. A government report released this May estimated that 
the market for ?service robots? will reach ?1.1 trillion ($10 billion) within a 
decade.

   The country showed off its newest robots at a world exposition this summer in 
Aichi prefecture. More than 22m visitors came, 95% of them Japanese. The robots 
stole the show, from the nanny robot that babysits to a Toyota that plays a 
trumpet. And Japan's robots do not confine their talents to controlled 
environments. As they gain skills and confidence, robots such as Sony's QRIO 
(pronounced ?curio?) and Honda's ASIMO are venturing to unlikely places. They 
have attended factory openings, greeted foreign leaders, and rung the opening 
bell on the New York Stock Exchange. ASIMO can even take the stage to accept 
awards.

   The friendly face of technology So Japan will need workers, and it is 
learning how to make robots that can do many of their jobs. But the country's 
keen interest in robots may also reflect something else: it seems that plenty 
of Japanese really like dealing with robots.

   Few Japanese have the fear of robots that seems to haunt westerners in 
seminars and Hollywood films. In western popular culture, robots are often a 
threat, either because they are manipulated by sinister forces or because 
something goes horribly wrong with them. By contrast, most Japanese view robots 
as friendly and benign. Robots like people, and can do good.

   The Japanese are well aware of this cultural divide, and commentators devote 
lots of attention to explaining it. The two most favoured theories, which are 
assumed to reinforce each other, involve religion and popular culture.

   Most Japanese take an eclectic approach to religious beliefs, and the native 
religion, Shintoism, is infused with animism: it does not make clear 
distinctions between inanimate things and organic beings. A popular Japanese 
theory about robots, therefore, is that there is no need to explain why 
Japanese are fond of them: what needs explaining, rather, is why westerners 
allow their Christian hang-ups to get in the way of a good technology. When 
Honda started making real progress with its humanoid-robot project, it 
consulted the Vatican on whether westerners would object to a robot made in 
man's image.

   Japanese popular culture has also consistently portrayed robots in a positive 
light, ever since Japan created its first famous cartoon robot, Tetsuwan Atomu, 
in 1951. Its name in Japanese refers to its atomic heart. Putting a nuclear 
core into a cartoon robot less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki might 
seem an odd way to endear people to the new character. But Tetsuwan Atom?being 
a robot, rather than a human?was able to use the technology for good.

   Over the past half century, scores of other Japanese cartoons and films have 
featured benign robots that work with humans, in some cases even blending with 
them. One of the latest is a film called ?Hinokio?, in which a reclusive boy 
sends a robot to school on his behalf and uses virtual-reality technology to 
interact with classmates. Among the broad Japanese public, it is a short leap 
to hope that real-world robots will soon be able to pursue good causes, whether 
helping to detect landmines in war-zones or finding and rescuing victims of 
disasters.

   The prevailing view in Japan is that the country is lucky to be uninhibited 
by robophobia. With fewer of the complexes that trouble many westerners, so the 
theory goes, Japan is free to make use of a great new tool, just when its needs 
and abilities are happily about to converge. ?Of all the nations involved in 
such research,? the Japan Times wrote in a 2004 editorial, ?Japan is the most 
inclined to approach it in a spirit of fun.?

   These sanguine explanations, however, may capture only part of the story. 
Although they are at ease with robots, many Japanese are not as comfortable 
around other people. That is especially true of foreigners. Immigrants cannot 
be programmed as robots can. You never know when they will do something 
spontaneous, ask an awkward question, or use the wrong honorific in 
conversation. But, even leaving foreigners out of it, being Japanese, and 
having always to watch what you say and do around others, is no picnic.

   It is no surprise, therefore, that Japanese researchers are forging ahead 
with research on human interfaces. For many jobs, after all, lifelike features 
are superfluous. A robotic arm can gently help to lift and reposition hospital 
patients without being attached to a humanoid form. The same goes for robotic 
spoons that make it easier for the infirm to feed themselves, power suits that 
help lift heavy grocery bags, and a variety of machines that watch the house, 
vacuum the carpet and so on. Yet the demand for better robots in Japan goes far 
beyond such functionality. Many Japanese seem to like robot versions of living 
creatures precisely because they are different from the real thing.

   An obvious example is AIBO, the robotic dog that Sony began selling in 1999. 
The bulk of its sales have been in Japan, and the company says there is a big 
difference between Japanese and American consumers. American AIBO buyers tend 
to be computer geeks who want to hack the robotic dog's programming and delve 
in its innards. Most Japanese consumers, by contrast, like AIBO because it is a 
clean, safe and predictable pet.

   AIBO is just a fake dog. As the country gets better at building interactive 
robots, their advantages for Japanese users will multiply. Hiroshi Ishiguro, a 
robotocist at Osaka University, cites the example of asking directions. In 
Japan, says Mr Ishiguro, people are even more reluctant than in other places to 
approach a stranger. Building robotic traffic police and guides will make it 
easier for people to overcome their diffidence.

   Karl MacDorman, another researcher at Osaka, sees similar social forces at 
work. Interacting with other people can be difficult for the Japanese, he says, 
?because they always have to think about what the other person is feeling, and 
how what they say will affect the other person.? But it is impossible to 
embarrass a robot, or be embarrassed, by saying the wrong thing.

   To understand how Japanese might find robots less intimidating than people, 
Mr MacDorman has been investigating eye movements, using headsets that monitor 
where subjects are looking. One oft-cited myth about Japanese, that they rarely 
make eye contact, is not really true. When answering questions put by another 
Japanese, Mr MacDorman's subjects made eye contact around 30% of the time. But 
Japanese subjects behave intriguingly when they talk to Mr Ishiguro's android, 
ReplieeQ1. The android's face has been modeled on that of a famous newsreader, 
and sophisticated actuators allow it to mimic her facial movements. When 
answering the android's questions, Mr MacDorman's Japanese subjects were much 
more likely to look it in the eye than they were a real person. Mr MacDorman 
wants to do more tests, but he surmises that the discomfort many Japanese feel 
when dealing with other people has something to do with his results, and that 
they are much more at ease when talking to an android.

   Eventually, interactive robots are going to become more common, not just in 
Japan but in other rich countries as well. As children and the elderly begin 
spending time with them, they are likely to develop emotional reactions to such 
lifelike machines. That is human nature. Upon meeting Sony's QRIO, your 
correspondent promptly referred to it as ?him? three times, despite trying to 
remember that it is just a battery-operated device.

   What seems to set Japan apart from other countries is that few Japanese are 
all that worried about the effects that hordes of robots might have on its 
citizens. Nobody seems prepared to ask awkward questions about how it might 
turn out. If this bold social experiment produces lots of isolated people, 
there will of course be an outlet for their loneliness: they can confide in 
their robot pets and partners. Only in Japan could this be thought less risky 
than having a compassionate Filipina drop by for a chat.

From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 03:44:28 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 22:44:28 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: Civilisation has left its mark on our
	genes
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252117260.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Civilisation has left its mark on our genes
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8483&print=true

      * 22:00 19 December 2005
      * Bob Holmes

    Darwins fingerprints can be found all over the human genome. A detailed look 
at
    human DNA has shown that a significant percentage of our genes have been 
shaped
    by natural selection in the past 50,000 years, probably in response to 
aspects of
    modern human culture such as the emergence of agriculture and the shift 
towards
    living in densely populated settlements.

    One way to look for genes that have recently been changed by natural 
selection is
    to study mutations called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) 
single-letter
    differences in the genetic code. The trick is to look for pairs of SNPs that
    occur together more often than would be expected from the chance genetic
    reshuffling that inevitably happens down the generations.

    Such correlations are known as linkage disequilibrium, and can occur when 
natural
    selection favours a particular variant of a gene, causing the SNPs nearby to 
be
    selected as well.

    Robert Moyzis and his colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, 
US,
    searched for instances of linkage disequilibrium in a collection of 1.6 
million
    SNPs scattered across all the human chromosomes. They then looked carefully 
at
    the instances they found to distinguish the consequences of natural 
selection
    from other phenomena, such as random inversions of chunks of DNA, which can
    disrupt normal genetic reshuffling.

    This analysis suggested that around 1800 genes, or roughly 7% of the total 
in the
    human genome, have changed under the influence of natural selection within 
the
    past 50,000 years. A second analysis using a second SNP database gave 
similar
    results. That is roughly the same proportion of genes that were altered in 
maize
    when humans domesticated it from its wild ancestors.

Domesticated humans

    Moyzis speculates that we may have similarly domesticated ourselves with the
    emergence of modern civilisation.

    One of the major things that has happened in the last 50,000 years is the
    development of culture, he says. By so radically and rapidly changing our
    environment through our culture, weve put new kinds of selection [pressures] 
on
    ourselves.

    Genes that aid protein metabolism perhaps related to a change in diet with 
the
    dawn of agriculture turn up unusually often in Moyziss list of recently 
selected
    genes. So do genes involved in resisting infections, which would be 
important in
    a species settling into more densely populated villages where diseases would
    spread more easily. Other selected genes include those involved in brain
    function, which could be important in the development of culture.

    But the details of any such sweeping survey of the genome should be treated 
with
    caution, geneticists warn. Now that Moyzis has made a start on studying how 
the
    influence of modern human culture is written in our genes, other teams can 
see if
    similar results are produced by other analytical techniques, such as 
comparing
    human and chimp genomes.

    Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI:
    10.1073/pnas.0509691102)

    Evolution Learn more about the struggle to survive in our comprehensive
    [11]special report.

Related Articles

      * [12]Can biology do better than faith?
      * [13]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8254
      * 02 November 2005
      * [14]Human brains are still evolving
      * [15]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725174.600
      * 17 September 2005
      * [16]Evolution: Blink and you'll miss it
      * [17]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725071.100
      * 09 July 2005

Weblinks

      * [18]Robert Moyzis, University of California
      * [19]http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/biochem/faculty/moyzis.html
      * [20]SNP fact sheet, Human Genome Project
      * [21]http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/snps.shtml
      * [22]Evolution special report, New Scientist
      * [23]http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution

References

   11. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution
   12. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8254
   13. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8254
   14. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725174.600
   15. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725174.600
   16. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725071.100
   17. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725071.100
   18. http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/biochem/faculty/moyzis.html
   19. http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/biochem/faculty/moyzis.html
   20. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/snps.shtml
   21. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/snps.shtml
   22. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution
   23. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution


From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 03:44:41 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 22:44:41 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] spiked: Why humans are superior to apes
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252117360.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Why humans are superior to apes
http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA40E.htm
4.2.24

by Helene Guldberg

Humanism, in the sense of a faith in humanity's potential to solve
problems through the application of science and reason, is taking
quite a battering today. As the UK medical scientist Raymond Tallis
warns, the role of mind and of self-conscious agency in human affairs
is denied 'by anthropomorphising or "Disneyfying" what animals do and
"animalomorphising" what human beings get up to' (1).

One of the most extreme cases of 'animalomorphism' in recent years has
come from the philosopher John Gray, professor of European thought at
the London School of Economics. In his book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on
Humans and Other Animals, Gray argues that humanity's belief in our
ability to control our destiny and free ourselves from the constraints
of the natural environment is as illusory as the Christian promise of
salvation (2).

Gray presents humanity as no better than any other living organism -
even bacteria. We should therefore not be too concerned about whether
humans have a future on this planet, he claims. Rather, it is the
balance of the world's ecosystem that we should really worry about:
'Homo rapiens is only one of very many species, and not obviously
worth preserving. Later or sooner, it will become extinct. When it is
gone the Earth will recover.'

Thankfully, not many will go along with John Gray's image of humans as
a plague upon the planet. For our own sanity, if nothing else, we
cannot really subscribe to such a misanthropic and nihilistic
worldview. If we did, surely we would have no option other than to
kill ourselves - for the good of the planet - and try to take as many
people with us as possible?

However, even if many will reject Gray's extreme form of
anti-humanism, many more will go along with the notion that animals
are ultimately not that different from us. The effect is the same: to
denigrate human abilities.

Today, a belief in human exceptionalism is distinctly out of fashion.
Almost every day we are presented with new revelations about how
animals are more like us than we ever imagined. A selection of news
headlines includes: 'How animals kiss and make up'; 'Male birds punish
unfaithful females'; 'Dogs experience stress at Christmas'; 'Capuchin
monkeys demand equal rights'; 'Scientists prove fish intelligence';
'Birds going through divorce proceedings'; 'Bees can think say
scientists'; 'Chimpanzees are cultured creatures' (3).

The argument is at its most powerful when it comes to the great apes
-chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. One of the most influential
opponents of the 'sanctification of human life', as he describes human
exceptionalism, is Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation and
co-founder of the Great Ape Project (4). Singer argues that we need to
'break the species barrier' and extend rights to the great apes, in
the first instance, followed by all other animal species. The great
apes are not only our closest living relatives, argues Singer, but
they are also beings who possess many of the characteristics that we
have long considered distinctive to humans.

Is it the case that apes are just like us? Primatology has indeed
shown that apes, and even monkeys, communicate in the wild. Jane
Goodall's observations of chimpanzees show that not only do they use
tools, but that they also make them - using sticks to fish for
termites, stones as anvils or hammers, and leaves as cups or sponges.
Anybody watching juvenile chimps playfighting, tickling each other and
giggling, will be struck by their human-like mannerisms and their
apparent expressions of glee.

But one has to go beyond first impressions in order to establish to
what extent great ape abilities can be compared to those of humans. Is
it the case that ape behaviour is the result of a capacity for some
rudimentary form of human-like insight? Or can it be explained through
Darwinian evolution and associative learning? Associative learning, or
contingent learning, are concepts developed in the early twentieth
century by BF Skinner, one of the most influential psychologists, to
describe a type of learning that is the result of an association
between an action and the reinforcer - in the absence of any insight.
BF Skinner became famous for his work with rats, pigeons and chickens
using his 'Skinner Box'. In one experiment he rewarded chickens with a
small amount of food (the reinforcer) when they pecked a blue button
(the action). If the chicken pecked a yellow, green, or red button, it
would get nothing. Associative or contingent learning, concepts
developed by the school of behaviourism, is based on the idea that
animals behave in the way that they do because this kind of behaviour
has had certain consequences in the past, not because they have any
insight into why they are doing what they do.

In Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings (2003),
primatologist Duane Rumbaugh and comparative psychologist David
Washburn argue that ape behaviour cannot be explained on the basis of
contingent learning alone (5). Apes are rational, they claim, and do
make decisions using higher order reasoning skills. But the evidence
for this is weak, and getting weaker, as more rigorous methodologies
are being developed for investigating the capabilities of primates. As
a result, many of the past claims about apes' capacity for insight
into their own actions and those of their fellow apes are now being
questioned.

Cultural transmission and social learning

The cultural transmission of behaviour, where actions are passed on
through some kind of teaching, learning or observation rather than
through genetics, is used as evidence of apes' higher order reasoning
abilities. This is currently being revised.
The generation-upon-generation growth in human abilities has
historically been seen as our defining characteristic. Human progress
has been made possible through our ability to reflect on what we, and
our fellow humans, are doing - thereby teaching, and learning from,
each other.

The first evidence of cultural transmission among primates was found
in the 1950s in Japan, with observations of the spread of potato
washing among macaque monkeys (6). One juvenile female pioneered the
habit, followed by her mother and closest peers. Within a decade, the
whole of the population under middle age was washing potatoes. A
review by Andrew Whiten and his colleagues of a number of field
studies reveals evidence of at least 39 local variations in
behavioural patterns, including tool-use, communication and grooming
rituals, among chimpanzees - behaviours that are common in some
communities and absent in others (7). So it seems that these animals
are capable of learning new skills and of passing them on to their
fellows.

The question remains: what does this tell us about their mental
capacities? The existence of cultural transmission is often taken as
evidence that the animals are capable of some form of social learning
(such as imitation) and possibly even teaching. But there is in fact
no evidence of apes being able to teach their young. Michael
Tomasello, co-director of the Wolfgang K?hler Primate Research Center
in Germany, points out that 'nonhuman primates do not point to distal
entities in the environment, they do not hold up objects for others to
see and share, and they do not actively give or offer objects to other
individuals. They also do not actively teach one another' (8).

Yet even if apes cannot actively teach each other, if they are capable
of social learning - in terms of imitation (which it has long been
assumed that they are) - this does still imply they are capable of
quite complex cognitive processes. Imitation involves being able to
appreciate not just what an act looks like when performed by another
individual, but also what it is like to do that act oneself. They must
be able to put themselves in another person's shoes, so to speak.
However, comparative psychologist Bennett Galef points out, after
scrutinising the data from Japan, that the rate the behaviour spread
among the macaque monkeys was very slow and steady, not accelerated as
one might expect in the case of imitation (9). It took up to a decade
for what, in human terms, would be described as a tiny group of
individuals to acquire the habit of the 'innovator'. Compare this to
the human ability to teach new skills and ways of thinking and to
learn from each other's insights: which laid the foundation for the
agricultural and industrial revolutions, the development of science
and technology and the transformations of our ways of living that flow
from these.

Reviewing the literature on primate behaviour, it emerges that there
is in fact no consensus among scientists as to whether apes are
capable of the simplest form of social learning - imitation (10).
Instead it could be the case that the differences in their behavioural
repertoires are the result of what has been coined stimulus
enhancement. It has been shown in birds, for instance, that the
stimulus enhancement of a feeding site may occur if bird A sees bird B
gaining food there. In other words, their attention has been drawn to
a stimulus, without any knowledge or appreciation of the significance
of the stimulus.
Others argue that local variations may be due to observational
conditioning, where an animal may learn about the positive or negative
consequences of actions, not on the basis of experiencing the outcomes
themselves, but on the basis of seeing the responses of other animals.

This involves a form of associative learning (learning from the
association between an action and the reinforcer), rather than any
insight.

Michael Tomasello emphasises the special nature of human learning.
Unlike animals, he argues, humans understand that in the social domain
relations between people involve intentionality, and in the physical
domain that relations between objects involve causality (11). We do
not tend to respond blindly to what others do or say, but, to some
degree, analyse their motives. Similarly we have some understanding
how physical processes work, which means we can manipulate the
physical world to our advantage and continually develop and perfect
the tools we use to do so.

Social learning and teaching depends on these abilities, and human
children begin on this task at the end of their first year. Because
other primates do not understand intentionality or causality they do
not engage in cultural learning of this type.
The fact that it takes chimps up to four years to acquire the
necessary skills to select and adequately use tools to crack nuts
implies that they are not capable of true imitation, never mind any
form of teaching. Young chimps invest a lot of time and effort in
attempts to crack nuts that are, after all, an important part of their
diet. The slow rate of their development raises serious questions
about their ability to reflect on what they and their fellow apes are
doing.

Language

But can apes use language? Groundbreaking research by Robert Seyfarth
and Dorothy Cheney in the 1980s on vervet monkeys in the wild showed
that their vocalisations went beyond merely expressing emotions such
as anger or fear. Their vocalisations could instead be described as
'referential' - in that they refer to objects or events (12). But it
could not be established from these studies whether the callers
vocalised with the explicit intent of referring to a particular object
or event, for instance the proximity of a predator.
And Seyfarth and Cheney were careful to point out that there was no
evidence that the monkeys had any insight into what they were doing.
Their vocalisations could merely be the result of a form of
associative learning. Later experiments have attempted to refine
analyses in order to establish whether there is an intention to
communicate: involving an understanding that someone else may have a
different perspective or understanding of a situation from themselves,
and using communication in order to change the others' understanding.

It is too early to draw any firm conclusions on this question from
research carried out to date. There is no evidence that primates have
any, even rudimentary, human-like insight into the effect of their
communications. But neither is there clear evidence that they do not.
What is clear, however, is that primates, as with all non-human
animals, only ever communicate about events in the here and now. They
do not communicate about possible future events or previously
encountered ones.

Ape communications cannot therefore be elevated to the status of human
language. Human beings debate and discuss ideas, constructing
arguments, drawing on past experiences and imagining future
possibilities, in order to change the opinions of others. This goes
way beyond warning fellow humans about a clear and present danger.

Deception and Theory of Mind

What about the fact that apes have been seen to deceive their fellows?
Does this not point towards what some have described as a
Machiavellian Intelligence (13)? Primatologists have observed apes in
the wild giving alarm calls when no danger is present, with the effect
of distracting another animal from food or a mate. But again the
question remains whether they are aware of what they are doing. To be
able to deceive intentionally, they would have to have some form of a
'theory of mind' - that is, the recognition that one's own
perspectives and beliefs are sometimes different from somebody else's.

Although psychologist Richard Byrne argues that the abilities of the
great apes are limited compared with even very young humans, he claims
that 'some "theory of mind" in great apes but not monkeys now seems
clear' (14). However, as the cognitive neuroscientist Marc Hauser
points out, most studies of deception have left the question of
intentionality unanswered (15). Studies that do attribute
beliefs-about-beliefs to apes tend to rely heavily on fascinating, but
largely unsubstantiated, anecdotes. As professor of archaeology Steven
Mithen points out, 'even the most compelling examples can be explained
in terms of learned behavioural contingencies [associative learning],
without recourse to higher order intentionality' (16).
So even if apes are found to deceive, that does not necessarily imply
that the apes know that they are deceiving. The apes may just be
highly adaptive and adept at picking up useful routines that bring
them food, sex or safety, without necessarily having any understanding
or insight into what they are doing.

Self-awareness

Although there is no substantive evidence of apes having a theory of
mind, they may possess its precursor - a rudimentary self-awareness.
This is backed up by the fact that, apart from human beings, apes are
the only species able to recognise themselves in the mirror. In
developmental literature, the moment when human infants first
recognise themselves in the mirror (between 15 and 21 months of age)
is seen as an important milestone in the emergence of the notion of
'self'. How important is it, then, that apes can make the same sort of
mirror recognition?

The development of self-awareness is a complex process with different
elements emerging at different times. In humans, mirror recognition is
only the precursor to a continually developing capacity for
self-awareness and self-evaluation. Younger children's initial
self-awareness is focused around physical characteristics. With
maturity comes a greater appreciation of psychological
characteristics. When asking 'who am I?', younger children use outer
visible characteristics - such as gender and hair colour - while older
children tend to use inner attributes - such as feelings and
abilities.

The ability of apes to recognise themselves in the mirror does not
necessarily imply a human-like self-awareness or the existence of
mental experiences. They seem able to represent their own bodies
visually, but they never move beyond the stage reached by human
children in their second year of life.

Children

Research to date presents a rather murky picture of what primates are
and are not capable of. Field studies may not have demonstrated
conclusively that apes are incapable of understanding intentionality
in the social domain or causality in the physical domain, but
logically this must be the case. Understanding of this sort would lead
to a much more flexible kind of learning. It may be the case that the
great apes do possess some rudimentary form of human-like insight. But
the limitations of this rudimentary insight (if it exists at all)
becomes clear when exploring the emergence, and transformative nature,
of insight in young children.

We are not born with the creative, flexible and imaginative thinking
that characterises humans. It emerges in the course of development:
humans develop from helpless biological beings into conscious beings
with a sense of self and an independence of thought.
The study of children can therefore give us great insights into the
human mind. As Peter Hobson, professor of developmental
psychopathology and author of The Cradle of Thought: Exploring the
Origins of Thinking, states: 'It is always difficult to consider
things in the abstract, and this is especially the case when what we
are considering is something as elusive as the development of thought.
It is one of the great benefits of studying very young children that
one can see thinking taking place as it is lived out in a child's
observable behaviour' (17). Thinking is more internalised, and
therefore hidden, in older children and adults, but it is more
externalised and nearer to the surface in children who are just
beginning to talk.

Hobson puts a persuasive case for human thought, language, and
self-awareness developing 'in the cradle of emotional engagement
between the infant and caregiver'. Emotional engagement and
communication, he argues, are the foundation on which creative
symbolic thought develops.

Through reviewing an array of clinical and experimental studies,
Hobson captures aspects of human exchanges that happen before thought.
He shows that even in early infancy children have a capacity to react
to the emotions of others. This points to an innate desire to engage
with fellow human beings, he argues. However, with development, that
innate desire is transformed into something qualitatively different.
So, for instance, at around nine months of age, infants begin to share
their experiences of objects or actions with others. They begin to
monitor the emotional responses of adults, such as responding to
facial expression or the tone of voice. When faced with novel
situations or objects, infants look at their carers' faces and, by
picking up emotional signals, they decide on their actions. When they
receive positive/encouraging signals, they engage; when the signals
are anxious/negative, they retreat. Towards the middle of the second
year these mutually sensitive interpersonal engagements are
transformed into more conscious exchanges of feelings, views and
beliefs.

Hobson is able to show that the ability to symbolise emerges out of
the cradle of early emotional engagements. With the insight that
people-with-minds have their own subjective experiences and can give
things meanings comes the insight that these meanings can be anchored
in symbols. This, according to Hobson, is the dawn of thought and the
dawn of language: 'At this point, [the child] leaves infancy behind.
Empowered by language and other forms of symbolic functioning, she
takes off into the realms of culture. The infant has been lifted out
of the cradle of thought. Engagement with others has taught this soul
to fly.' (p274)

The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky showed that a significant moment
in the development of the human individual occurs when language and
practical intelligence converge (18). It is when thought and speech
come together that children's thinking is raised to new heights and
they start acquiring truly human characteristics. Language becomes a
tool of thought allowing children increasingly to master their own
behaviour.

As Vygotsky pointed out, young children will often talk out loud - to
themselves it seems - when carrying out particular tasks. This
'egocentric speech' does not disappear, but gradually becomes
internalised into private inner speech - also known as thought.
Vygotsky and Luria concluded that 'the meeting between speech and
thinking is a major event in the development of the individual; in
fact, it is this connection that raises human thinking to
extraordinary heights' (19). Apes never develop the ability to use
language to regulate their own actions in the way that even toddlers
are able to do.

With the development of language, children's understanding of their
own and other people's minds is transformed. So by three or four years
of age, most children have developed a theory of mind. This involves
an understanding of their own and others' mental life, including the
understanding that others may have false beliefs and that they
themselves may have had false beliefs.

When my nephew Stefan was three years of age, he excitedly told me
that 'this is my right hand [lifting his right hand] and this is my
left hand [lifting his left hand]. But this morning [which is the
phrase he used for anything that has happened in the past] I told
daddy that this was my left hand [lifting his right hand] and this is
my right hand [lifting his left hand]'. He was amused by the fact that
he had been mistaken in his knowledge of what is right and what is
left. He clearly had developed an understanding that people, including
himself, have beliefs about things and that those beliefs can be wrong
as well as right. Once children are able to think about thoughts in
this way, their thinking has been lifted to a different height. The
formal education system requires children to go much further in
turning language and thought in upon themselves. Children must learn
to direct their thought processes in a conscious manner. Above all,
they need to become capable of consciously manipulating symbols.
Literacy and numeracy serve important functions in aiding
communication and manipulating numbers. But, above all, they have
transformative effects on children's thinking, in particular on the
development of abstract thought and reflective processes.

In the influential book Children's Minds, child psychologist Margaret
Donaldson shows that 'those very features of the written word which
encourage awareness of language may also encourage awareness of one's
own thinking and be relevant to the development of intellectual
self-control, with incalculable consequences for the kinds of thinking
which are characteristic of logic, mathematics and the sciences' (20).
The differences in language, tool-use, self-awareness and insight
between apes and humans are vast. A human child, even as young as two
years of age, is intellectually head and shoulders above any ape.

Denigrating humans

As American biological anthropologist Kathleen R Gibson states: 'Other
animals possess elements that are common to human behaviours, but none
reaches the human level of accomplishment in any domain - vocal,
gestural, imitative, technical or social. Nor do other species combine
social, technical and linguistic behaviours into a rich, interactive
and self-propelling cognitive complex.' (21)
In the six million years since the human and ape lines first diverged,
the behaviour and lifestyles of apes have hardly changed. Human
behaviour, relationships, lifestyles and culture clearly have. We have
been able to build upon the achievements of previous generations. In
just the past century we have brought, through constant innovation,
vast improvements to our lives: including better health, longer life
expectancy, higher living standards and more sophisticated means of
communication and transport.

Six million years of ape evolution may have resulted in the emergence
of 39 local behavioural patterns - in tool-use, communication and
grooming rituals. However this has not moved them beyond their
hand-to-mouth existence nor led to any significant changes in the way
they live. Our lives have changed much more in the past decade - in
terms of the technology we use, how we communicate with each other,
and how we form and sustain personal relationships. Considering the
vast differences in the way we live, it is very difficult to sustain
the argument that apes are 'just like us'. What appears to be behind
today's fashionable view of ape and human equivalence is a denigration
of human capacities and human ingenuity. The richness of human
experience is trivialised because human experiences are lowered to,
and equated with, those of animals.

Dr Roger Fouts from the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute
expresses this anti-human view well in his statement. '[Human]
intelligence has not only moved us away from our bodies, but from our
families, communities, and even Earth itself. This may be a big
mistake for the survival of our species in the long run.' (22)
Investigations into apes' behaviour could shed some useful light on
how they resemble us - and give us some insight into our evolutionary
past, several million years back. Developing a science true to its
subject matter could give us real insights into what shapes ape
behaviour.

Stephen Budiansky's fascinating book If A Lion Could Talk shows how
evolutionary ecology (the study of how natural selection has equipped
animals to lead the lives they do) is showing us how animals process
information in ways that are uniquely their own, much of which we can
only marvel at (23). But as Karl Marx pointed out in the late
nineteenth century: 'What distinguishes the worst architect from the
best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in
imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour
process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of
the labourer at its commencement.'(24)

Much animal behaviour is fascinating. But, as Budiansky shows, it is
also the case that animals do remarkably stupid things in situations
very similar to those where they previously seemed to show a degree of
intelligence. This is partly because they learn many of their clever
feats by pure accident. But it is also because animal learning is
highly specialised. Their ability to learn is not a result of general
cognitive processes but 'specialised channels attuned to an animal's
basic hard-wired behaviours' (23).

It is sloppy simply to apply human characteristics and motives to
animals. It blocks our understanding of what is specific about animal
behaviour, and degrades what is unique about our humanity.
It is ironic that we, who have something that no other organism has -
the ability to evaluate who we are, where we come from and where we
are going, and, with that, our place in nature - increasingly seem to
use this unique ability in order to downplay the exceptional nature of
our own capacities and achievements.

Read on:
[2]spiked-issue: Animals

(1) New Humanist, November 2003
(2) Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, by John Gray,
Granta, August 2002
(3) [3]'How animals kiss and make up', BBC News, 13 October 2003;
[4]Male birds punish unfaithful females, Animal Sentience, 31 October;
[5]Dogs experience stress at Christmas, Animal Sentience, 10 December
2003; [6]Capuchin monkeys demand equal rights, Animal Sentience, 20
September 2003; [7]Scientists prove fish intelligence, 31 August 2003;
[8]Birds going through divorce proceedings, Animal Sentience, 18
August 2003; [9]Bees can think say scientists, Guardian, 19 April
2001; [10]Chimpanzees are cultured creatures, Guardian, 24 September
2002
(4) See the [11]Great Ape project website
(5) Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings, by Duane M
Rumbaugh and David A Washburn (buy this book from [12]Amazon (UK) or
[13]Amazon (USA))
(6) Frans de Waal, Nature, Vol 399, 17 June 1999
(7) Nature, Vol 399, 17 June 1999
(8) Michael Tomasello, 'Primate Cognition: Introduction to the issue',
Cognitive Science Vol 24 (3) 2000, p358
(9) BG Galef, Human Nature 3, 157-178, 1990
(10) See a detailed review by Andrew Whiten, 'Primate Culture and
Social Learning', Cognitive Science Vol 24 (3), 2000
(11) Tomasello and Call, Primate Cognition, Oxford University Press,
1997
(12) [14]Peter Singer: Curriculum Vitae
(13) Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of
Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans, (eds) Andrew Whiten and
Richard Byrne, Oxford 1990. Buy this book from [15]Amazon (USA) or
[16]Amazon (UK)
(14) [17]How primates learn novel complex skills: The evolutionary
origins of generative planning?, by Richard W Byrne
(15) M Hauser, 'A primate dictionary?', Cognitive Science Vol 24(3)
2000
(16) The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art,
Religion and Science, Steven Mithen, Phoenix, 1998. Buy this book from
or [18]Amazon (UK) or [19]Amazon (USA)
(17) The Cradle of Thought: exploring the origins of thinking, Peter
Hobson, Macmillan, 22 February 2002, p76. Buy this book from
[20]Amazon (UK) or [21]Amazon (USA)
(18) Thought and Language, Lev Vygotsky, MIT, 1986
(19) Ape, Primitive Man and Child, Lev Vygotsky, 1991, p140
(20) Children's Minds, Margaret Donaldson, HarperCollins, 1978, p95
(21) Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution, Kathleen R
Gibson, 1993, p7-8
(22) [22]CHCI Frequently Asked Questions: Chimpanzee Facts
(23) If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of
Consciousness, by Stephen Budiansky. Buy this book from [23]Amazon
(UK) or [24]Amazon (USA)
(24) Capital, Karl Marx, vol 1 p198
[bug.gif]
[pixel.gif]
Reprinted from :
[25]http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA40E.htm
   _________________________________________________________________

spiked, Signet House, 49-51 Farringdon Road, London, EC1M 3JP
Email: [35]info at spiked-online.com

References

2. http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Science/OnAnimals/Index.htm
3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3183516.stm
4. http://www.animalsentience.com/news/2003-10-31a.htm
5. http://www.animalsentience.com/news/2003-12-10.htm
6. http://www.animalsentience.com/news/2003-09-20.htm
7. http://www.animalsentience.com/news/2003-08-31.htm
8. http://www.animalsentience.com/news/2003-08-18.htm
9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,474807,00.html
10. 
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/artsandhumanities/story/0,12241,798331,00.html
11. http://www.greatapeproject.org/
12. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300099835/spiked
13. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0300099835/spiked-20
14. http://www.princeton.edu/%7Euchv/faculty/singercv.html
15. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0198521758/spiked-20
16. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521559499/spiked
17. http://www.saga-jp.org/coe_abst/byrne.htm
18. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0500281009/spiked
19. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0500281009/spiked-20
20. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0333766334/spiked
21. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195219546/qid=1077209516/spiked-20
22. http://www.cwu.edu/~cwuchci/chimpanzee_info/faq_info.htm
23. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684837102/spiked
24. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684837102/spiked-20
25. http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA40E.htm
26. http://www.spiked-online.com/
27. http://www.spiked-online.com/sections/culture/index.htm
28. http://www.spiked-online.com/sections/health/index.htm
29. http://www.spiked-online.com/sections/life/index.htm
30. http://www.spiked-online.com/sections/liberties/index.htm
31. http://www.spiked-online.com/sections/politics/index.htm
32. http://www.spiked-online.com/sections/risk/index.htm
33. http://www.spiked-online.com/sections/science/index.htm
34. http://www.spiked-online.com/sections/technology/index.htm
35. http://www.spiked-online.com/forms/genEmail.asp?sendto=9&section=central

From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 03:44:53 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 22:44:53 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Dr. Gridlock: Balanced Views on a Roadside
	Sobriety Test
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252118130.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Balanced Views on a Roadside Sobriety Test
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/21/AR2005122101158_pf.html

[I practiced the art of standing on the MetRoRail without holding onto 
anything. It took me several weeks, but now I can do so even when the train 
sways from side to side, as it does from Farragut North to MetRo Center and 
from Van Ness to Tenleytown. But the worst, at least on the trains I have 
takes, is the trip between Union Station and Rhode Island Avenue. Not only does 
the train sway from side to side, it goes up and down and the speed is quite 
variable.

[Learing to balance myself on the MetRoRail helps me enormously when I am out 
running over ice. When I stumble or slip, my brain has been trained enough so 
that I rarely fall down. This is especially important, since as I go down the 
stately march to senility at age 61, I don't heal nearly so rapidly as I used 
to.

[I also practice standing on one foot with my hands over my head whenever I get 
a chance, like when waiting for or riding elevators. My co-workers often give 
me a puzzled look, but when I explain why, they are all smiles. And get 
puzzled, too, when I greet them brightly first thing on Monday mornings, 
saying, "Thank God it's Monday!" The puzzlement turns to smiles when I follow 
this up with saying, "I'm a workaholic."]

[People vary enormously in their ability to balance. I well remember the day 
when I was living in Little Rock--I was six or seven at the time--when Dad 
huffed and puffed up and down hills with me on my bike teaching me how to ride. 
Yet my brother, Dick, not then for he was 4 1/2 years younger than me but when 
he was about five, needed Dad not at all. He just got on his bike and rode 
away! He was later to become an excellent hockey player and still coaches the 
sport. But my experience with ice skating was abysmal. I was so cautious that 
it took me ten minutes to go once around the rink. I did not persist in 
learning ice skating. This was also true of skiing, though I did learn to 
roller skate, but never to roller blade, which activity was after my time.

[I hadn't ridden a bike since around 1967 when around 2000 I borrowed my older 
daughter's (Alice's) bike and went down the Capital Crescent Trail. I was 
extremely cautious for a few miles, but after that riding came back to me, and 
I was riding comfortably, though not as well as I did when I was a child.

[I learned the skill of double-clutching when my Austin-Healey 3000 did not 
syncromesh going down from second to first gear. This is twice as complicated 
as simple shifting. We haven't had a stick shift since our Volkswagen Beetle 
gave up the ghost in 1983. But I know I could at least single-clutch pretty 
well at once. Double-clutching would have to come back to me.]

    By Ron Shaffer
    Thursday, December 22, 2005; GZ13

Balanced Views on a Roadside Sobriety Test

    In a past column, an Annapolis man expressed concern that motorists 
suspected of
    drunken driving were sometimes asked by police to stand on one foot for 30
    seconds [Dr. Gridlock, Dec. 8]. He noted that people in his morning health 
club
    class couldn't hold that position for 30 seconds, and they were all sober.

    I replied that I can't do it either -- not even close. That prompted the
    following responses.

    Dear Dr. Gridlock:

    I am going on 71 years, do not engage in regular exercise and was able to 
stand
    on one foot for 30 seconds. No problem at all -- on either leg.

    The gentleman may need to find a new exercise class!

    Mary Lucas
    Annapolis

    Dear Dr. Gridlock:

    I will never forget the evening I was humiliated on the side of the road 
after
    being stopped for speeding. I was returning home from dinner, driving my 
sports
    car faster than I should have been. I noticed a car coming from behind at 
even
    greater speed and immediately pulled over into the slow lane to let it go 
by.

    To my surprise, the other driver was a state police officer, and he was 
pulling
    me over. He asked for my ID, and when I opened my purse, an empty beer 
bottle
    from the only drink I had had that evening was prominently visible. I had 
saved
    it for the foreign label.

    He asked me to step out of the vehicle and undergo a number of tests. I 
passed
    the "touch your nose" test and the "walk the line" test but was then asked 
to
    stand on one foot for a period of time. I pointed out that I was standing on
    gravel and wearing high heels, but that made no difference. Of course I 
failed.

    I was then forced to take the roadside breathalyzer test and passed 
immediately.
    I went on my way with my speeding ticket but was completely rattled by the
    late-night roadside shenanigans. Although he was polite, the storm-trooper
    attitude the police officer assumed still rankles.

    Susan Guyaux
    Crownsville

    Makes me wonder: Why not administer the breathalyzer test before the other
    exercises?

    Dear Dr. Gridlock:

    I can stand on one leg, either one, and count to 30 with no trouble. I'm 79, 
so
    maybe I've learned how to balance by now.

    Those people in the exercise class must all have a balance problem, or maybe 
they
    all stopped by the local tavern before going to class.

    Ed MacArthur
    Greenbelt

    I can't even come close to a 30 count. Maybe too many years of inhaling 
exhaust
    fumes.

    Dear Dr. Gridlock:

    In response to your request for the information about the police roadside
    sobriety test, my understanding is that it's not the ability to stand on one 
foot
    for a count of 30 that helps detect inebriation, but the manner in which you 
go
    about your attempt.

    Also, at least in Maryland, the field sobriety tests alone are not enough to
    convict: You must also fail a breathalyzer test. So even if you are 
miserable at
    the physical tests but pass the breathalyzer, they will let you go. 
Similarly, if
    you pass the physical tests but the breathalyzer shows your blood alcohol 
content
    to be above the legal limit, they will have a case.

    Sadly, I have been given the roadside sobriety and breathalyzer tests 
numerous
    times because I play in bands and work as a DJ and thus am (soberly) leaving 
bars
    and nightclubs around closing time. Being on the road late at night 
apparently is
    enough probable cause to detain me and subject me to testing, irrespective 
of my
    driving performance.

    Eric Myers
    Germantown

    Well, I'm glad the ability to stand on one foot is not the sole indicator of
    one's sobriety.

A Changing Metro

    Dear Dr. Gridlock:

    Oh, great. Not only is Metro going to get rid of seats in subway cars, which 
will
    leave standees who aren't tall enough to reach the overhead poles with 
nothing to
    hang onto, but they're also going to get rid of the center vertical poles 
between
    the exits? Wonderful!

    I'm 5 feet tall, and I cannot reach -- or at least can't grip -- the 
overhead
    poles. I'm also not built like a linebacker, which means I can't force my 
way
    into the middle of a crowded car to grab hold of a seat rail.

    I'm not quite elderly, but getting there, and I have a bad back. The 
"elderly and
    handicapped" seats, when I can get one or find someone kind enough to 
relinquish
    theirs, have been my salvation when using Metro. And, when I couldn't sit, I
    would hang on for dear life to that center pole. Now the seats are going, 
and the
    pole, too.

    How is someone like me supposed to use Metro? And why do they persist in 
making a
    subway ride more of an ordeal all the time? And where on Earth are those
    additional subway cars that have been on order for years now, which would 
make it
    possible to run six-car trains on all lines during busy hours?

    Why do fares keep going up and we get less service that is more a burden to 
use?

    Me, I have the option to drive. I can add my bit to the city's pollution and
    gridlock. Thanks, Metro.

    Lynda Meyers
    Arlington

    Metro is not getting rid of any of the seats designated for seniors and the
    disabled. As part of tests of 24 reconfigured cars, all the vertical
    ceiling-to-floor poles are being eliminated, but many more vertical poles 
are
    being installed from the backs of seats to the ceiling. Further, 
spring-loaded
    strap handles are being suspended from the overhead bars.

    That is being done to see if cars can be loaded, and unloaded, with more
    efficiency than the free-for-all that exists now.

    As for more cars, they are coming. Metro expects to have eight-car trains on 
20
    percent of its fleet by the end of 2006, 30 percent by the end of 2007 and 
50
    percent by the end of 2008.

    Dear Dr. Gridlock:

    I have been reading the suggested solutions to the difficulty of getting on 
and
    off Metro trains. If Metro can manage to fine-tune the brakes to allow 
people to
    line up on station platforms and have the train stop right in front of them, 
it
    could have riders entering in the middle and exiting on the sides.

    That would not require the removal of any seats.

    Liliana Ward
    Alexandria

    Maybe. Removal of the vertical poles and seats around the center doors would 
be
    intended to spread standees throughout the cars, rather than block those 
trying
    to board through the middle doors.

    I do hope Metro will try one-way boarding and exiting.


From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 03:45:04 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 22:45:04 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Normal Lebrecht: Too much Mozart makes you sick
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252118310.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Too much Mozart makes you sick
http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/051214-NL-250mozart.html
5.12.14

[I think I'll pass on the 172 CD set of the "complete" Mozart. It costs $300 
but most of the performers are unknown to me. I didn't get the Philips 
"complete" Mozart in 1991 on 180 CDs. The "complete" Bach on H?nnsler took up 
171 CDs. I got that for $200 and have wanted it ever since I bought a copy of 
the big Schmieder BWV in 1964 directly from the publisher. I slogged through 
them all, but I must report that none of these pushed aside any of my 
favorites. But the Robert Levin performance of the first klavier concerto was 
quite exciting. And the four discs of organ music played by Bine Katrine 
Bryndorf were almost as good as Walcha.

[Why are the best performers today all women? Bryndorf on the organ, Lara St. 
John on the violin, Helene Grimaud and Mitsuko Uchida on the piano, and Marin 
Alsop holding the baton?

[Mozart mostly cranked out music for others, as was common in those days, Haydn 
and Telemann being other examples. He composed great masterpieces, esp. the 
piano concerti, of course, but he wrote little just for himself. Beethoven did 
crank out stuff, but he wrote more for himself than any composer before or 
since. And Brahms is right up there. Bach was a big cranker-outer, esp. the 
cantatas, but he also wrote a great deal of music for himself, much more than 
Mozart did.

[Lehbrecht, however, ignores the timeless masterpieces that Mozart wrote. And 
recall Mr. Mencken's remark that Mozart (and Wagner) could not avoid genuine 
music creeping into their operas. But it's good to have some balance in the 
discussion. Charles Murray, an obvious Beethoven lover, had to decide from the 
sources he used to rank human achievement in his book by that title, whether 
Beethoven or Mozart was the greater. It was a toss up, but he came down on 
Beethoven's side.

[Norm's a little overheated. I'd rank Mozart in the top ten and put him ahead 
of Shostakovich. But his corrective is badly needed!]

-------------------

They are steam cleaning the streets of Vienna ahead of next month's birthday
weekend when pilgrim walks are planned around the composer's shrines. Salzburg 
is
rolling out brochures for its 2006 summer festival, which will stage every 
opera
in the Kochel canon from infantile fragments to The Magic Flute, 22 in all.
Pierre Boulez, the pope of musical modernism, will break 80 years of principled
abstinence to conduct a mostly-Mozart concert, a celebrity virgin on the altar 
of
musical commerce.

Wherever you go in the coming year, you won't escape Mozart. The 250th
anniversary of his birth on January 27 1756 is being celebrated with joyless
efficiency as a tourist magnet to the land of his birth and a universal sales
pitch for his over-worked output. The complete 626 works are being marketed on
record in two special-offer super coffers. All the world's orchestras will be
playing Mozart, wall to wall, starting with the Vienna Philharmonic on tour 
this
weekend.

Mozart is the superstore wallpaper of classical music, the composer who pleases
most and offends least. Lively, melodic, dissonance free: what's not to like? 
The
music is not just charming, it's full of good vibes. The Mozart Effect, an
American resource centre which ascribes 'transformational powers' to Austria's
little wonderlad, collects empirical evidence to show that Mozart, but no other
music, improves learning, memory, winegrowing and toilet training and should be
drummed into classes of pregnant mothers like breathing exercises.

A 'molecular basis' identified in Mozart's sonata for two pianos is supposed to
have stimulated exceptional brain activity in laboratory rats. How can one 
argue
with such 'proof'? Science, after all, confirms what we want to believe - that
art is good for us and that Mozart, in his short-lived naivety, represents a
prelapsarian ideal of organic beauty, unpolluted by industrial filth and loss 
of
faith. Nice, if only it were true.

The chocolate-box image of Mozart as a little miracle can be promptly banged on
the head. The hard-knocks son of a cynical court musician, Mozart was taught 
from
first principles to ingratiate himself musically with people of wealth and 
power.
The boy, on tour from age five, hopped into the laps of queens and played 
limpid
consolations to ruthless monarchs. Recognising that his music was better than
most, he took pleasure in humiliating court rivals and crudely abused them in
letters back home.

A coprophiliac obsession with bodily functions, accurately evinced in Peter
Shaffer's play and Milos Forman's movie Amadeus, was a clear sign of arrested
emotional development. His marriage proved unstable and his inability to 
control
the large amounts he earned from wealthy Viennese patrons was a symptom of the
infantile behaviour that hastened his early death and pauper burial. Musical
genius he may have been, but Mozart was no Einstein. For secrets of the 
universe,
seek elsewhere.

The key test of any composer's importance is the extent to which he reshaped 
the
art. Mozart, it is safe to say, failed to take music one step forward. Unlike
Bach and Handel who inherited a dying legacy and vitalised it beyond 
recognition,
unlike Haydn who invented the sonata form without which music would never have
acquired its classical dimension, Mozart merely filled the space between staves
with chords that he knew would gratify a pampered audience. He was a provider 
of
easy listening, a progenitor of Muzak.

Some scholars have claimed revolutionary propensities for Mozart, but that is
wishful nonsense. His operas of knowing servants and stupid masters were
conceived by Da Ponte, a renegade priest, from plays by Beaumachais and 
Ariosto;
and, while Mozart once indulged in backchat to the all-high Emperor Joseph II, 
he
knew all too well where his breakfast brioche was buttered. He lacked the rage 
of
justice that pushed Beethoven into isolation, or any urge to change the world.
Mozart wrote a little night music for the ancien regime. He was not so much
reactionary as regressive, a composer content to keep music in a state of
servility so long as it kept him well supplied with frilled cuffs and fancy
quills.

Little in such a mediocre life gives cause for celebration and little indeed 
was
done to mark the centenary of his birth, in 1856, or of his death in 1891. The
bandwaggon of Mozart commemorations was invented by the Nazis in 1941 and 
fuelled
by post-War rivalries in 1956 when Deutsche Grammophon rose the from ruins to
beat the busy British labels, EMI and Decca, to a first recorded cycle of the 
Da
Ponte operas.

The 1991 bicentennial of Mozart's death turned Salzburg into a swamp of bad 
taste
and cupidity. The world premiere of a kitsch opera, Mozart in New York, had me
checking my watch every five unending minutes. The record industry, still
vibrant, splattered Mozart over every vacant hoarding and a new phenomenon,
Classic FM, launched in 1992 on the Mozart tide, ensured that we would never be
more than a fingerstretch away from the nearest marzipan chord.

What good all this Mozart does is disputable. For all the pseudoscience of the
Mozart Effect I have yet to see a life elevated by Cosi fan tutte or a criminal
reformed by the plinks of a flute and harp concerto. Where ten days of Bach on
BBC Radio 3 will flush out the world's ears and open minds to limitless vistas,
the coming year of Mozart feels like a term at Guantanamo Bay without the
sunshine. There will be no refuge from neatly resolved chords, no escaping that
ingratiating musical grin.

Don't look to mass media for context or quality control. Both the BBC and
independent channels have rejected any critical perspective on Mozart in the
coming year, settling for sweet-wrapper documentaries that regurgitate familiar
clich?s. In this orgy of simple-mindedness, the concurrent centenary of Dmitri
Shostakovich ? a composer of true courage and historical significance ? is 
being
shunted to the sidelines, celebrated by the few.

Mozart is a menace to musical progress, a relic of rituals that were losing
relevance in his own time and are meaningless to ours. Beyond a superficial
beauty and structural certainty, Mozart has nothing to give to mind or spirit 
in
the 21st century. Let him rest. Ignore the commercial onslaught. Play the
Leningrad Symphony. Listen to music that matters.

From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 10:40:48 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 05:40:48 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] CPE: Douglas Glen Whitman: Hayek contra Pangloss on
 Evolutionary Systems
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601051522390.24468@panix2.panix.com>

Douglas Glen Whitman: Hayek contra Pangloss on Evolutionary Systems
Constitutional Political Economy, 9, 45-66 (1998)

[This article is an excellent discussion of Panglossism in evolutionary 
(and functionalist, for that matter) thinking. as well as a good summary 
of the controversy surrounding Hayek's thought. But I learn more the 
fallacies Hayek didn't commit than what he actually argued. How is 
evolutionary thinking important?

[Various comments of mine in brackets below.]

Department of Economics, New York University, New York, N.Y. 10018

Abstract. Some analysts have criticized Friedrich Hayek's theory of 
cultural evolution for implying that the rules, customs, norms, and 
institutions that emerge from the evolutionary process are necessarily 
efficient or desirable in all cases. This charge is unfounded. The present 
article defends Hayek versus his critics in two ways: First, it restates 
Hayek's own objections to the idea that cultural evolution produces 
optimal outcomes. Second, it shows, through an analogy with biological 
evolution, that Hayek's theory need not imply any such conclusion. 
Contrary to a widely held misconception, biological evolution does not 
produce organisms that are perfectly adapted to their habitats; insofar as 
cultural evolution shares common features with biological evolution, 
cultural evolution may be expected to display similar types of 
suboptimality or mal-adaptation. Insights from the theory of biological 
evolution also help to illuminate some areas of controversy with regard to 
Hayek's theory of cultural evolution, including: Hayek's advocacy of 
gradual change; the question of what selective forces drive the process of 
cultural evolution; and the alleged conflict between group selectionism 
and methodological individualism.

JEL classification: B25, B31, K40

1. Introduction

Nearly all of the political and economic doctrines of Friedrich Hayek have 
drawn heated criticism from one quarter or another, but few have attracted 
so much critique and rebuke, from authors of diverse persuasions, as his 
theory of cultural evolution. The idea that the morals, customs, habits, 
conventions, and even laws of modern civilization may owe their origin to 
a lengthy process of variation, competition, and selection has a long--and 
sometimes unsavory--history in intellectual thought, and Hayek was by no 
means its first exponent. He may, however, be credited with reviving the 
concept as a serious tool for social theory and normative judgment in the 
latter half of this century, and his most evolutionarily oriented works, 
the Fatal Conceit (1988) and Law, Legislation and Liberty (1973, 1976, 
1979), have served as a lightning rod for renewed discussion of the merits 
and flaws of evolutionary theory in the social sciences.

Among the most frequently repeated charges lodged against Hayek's theory 
of cultural evolution is that Hayek, like the Social Darwinists, has 
committed the Panglossian fallacy: he has suggested or implied that social 
evolution must necessarily produce the best of all possible worlds, a 
world in which "whatever is, is desirable," or (to put the economists' 
spin on it) "whatever is, is efficient."2 John Gray (1989: 98), for 
instance, claims that "Hayek frequently affirms that the sheer persistence 
of a tradition or a form of life suggests that it must possess some 
general utility." Martin De Vlieghere (1994: 293) characterizes Hayek as 
contending that "only those cultural attainments can survive and spread 
that are beneficial. So, the very longevity of an institution proves its 
value: : : ." According to Stefan Voigt (1992: 465, n.20), Hayek commits 
the naturalistic fallacy in his support of evolved institutions: "The 
currently existing institutions (the 'is') have emerged because they have 
been more viable than other institutions, from which Hayek concludes that 
they ought to exist."

In the economists' camp, Joseph Stiglitz (1994: 275) argues that "those 
who appeal to the evolutionary process [e.g., Hayek and Armen Alchian] 
also claim too much: There is no reason to believe that evolutionary 
processes have any optimality properties:::," and he goes on to say, "It 
seems nonsensical to suggest that we should simply accept the natural 
outcome of the evolutionary process." James Buchanan, an author usually 
friendly to Hayekian themes, nonetheless perceives Hayek as being 
adamantly opposed to all reform of evolved institutions. "We may share 
much of Hayek's skepticism about social and institutional reform, however, 
without elevating the evolutionary process to an ideal role," says 
Buchanan (1975: 194, ch. 10, n.1). "Reform may, indeed, be difficult, but 
this is no argument that its alternative is ideal." Sociologist Bjorn 
Hallerod (1992: 34) is notably less sympathetic. He argues that "Hayek 
ends up in a situation where every existing form of society is a good 
society or otherwise it would not exist," which means that Hayek must find 
even Nazism acceptable.

The critiques have been severe and sometimes overstated, but they are in 
substance correct: evolutionary systems cannot be characterized as 
unambiguously efficient or desirable (however these terms might be 
defined) in their effects. Where Hayek's critics err is in directing these 
criticisms at Hayek. Hayek's theory can be faulted in a variety of ways, 
but Panglossianism is not one of them.

My intention in this article is two-fold: first, to restate for the record 
Hayek's rejection of the idea that cultural evolution necessarily produces 
optimal results; and second, to elaborate some of the reasons why his 
theory need not imply any such thing. I will conclude by explaining how a 
better understanding of suboptimality in evolutionary systems can 
illuminate some areas of controversy that have arisen with regard to 
Hayek's theory.

The second goal will be pursued via an extended analogy with biological 
evolution. This approach may require some justification. It is my 
impression that many opponents of cultural evolution theories assume 
Panglossian implications because of a conscious or unconscious analogy 
with biological evolution, which is widely--and incorrectly--perceived as 
a process that produces optimal fitness in organisms relative to their 
habitats. Gray (1989: 98), for example, states as an objection to Hayek's 
theory, "we have nothing in society akin to the mechanism of natural 
selection of genetic accidents in Darwinian theory which guarantees the 
survival of useful social practices," as though he believes biological 
natural selection does make such a guarantee. My response, then, proceeds 
by showing that, even if the analogy between biological and cultural 
evolution is close (and the analogy does seem closer to me than many 
analysts would like to admit), biological evolution does not and cannot 
produce optimal results in all cases. Insofar as cultural evolution shares 
common features with biological evolution, it, too, will be subject to 
inefficiency.

Although Hayek often tries to distance himself from the analogy with 
biological evolution, he apparently does so not mainly because he doubts 
the analogy's validity, but because he wishes to eschew the errors of the 
Social Darwinists. Hayek repeatedly emphasizes that Darwin's theory of 
biological evolution was inspired by the evolutionary thinking of the 
moral and social theorists who preceded him (particularly David Hume, Adam 
Smith, and the other Scottish moral philosophers).3 After Darwin, Hayek 
(1979: 154) laments, "those 'social Darwinists' who had needed Darwin to 
learn what was an older tradition in their own subjects, had somewhat 
spoiled the case [for cultural evolution] by concentrating on the 
selection of congenitally more fit individuals," rather than on the 
selection of rules and practices adopted by groups. Hayek hastens to point 
out the differences between cultural and biological evolution that make it 
the case that rules and practices are far more significant than 
individuals in the process of cultural evolution. Specifically, he notes 
that "cultural evolution simulates Lamarckism"; that cultural traits can 
be acquired "from an indefinite number of 'ancestors,"' not merely from 
one's parents; that learning as a mode of transmission makes cultural 
evolution occur more quickly than biological evolution; and that cultural 
evolution is more likely to be subject to group selection (1988: 25). 
Nonetheless, Hayek recognizes that while their specific mechanisms differ, 
all forms of evolution share common features.

Although the "literal use" of Darwinian theory leads to "grave 
distortions" when focused upon individuals rather than rules, "the basic 
conception of evolution is still the same in both fields," he says (1979: 
23). Biological and cultural evolution "both rely on the same principle of 
selection: survival and reproductive advantage. Variation, adaptation and 
competition are essentially the same kind of process, however different 
their particular mechanisms, particularly those pertaining to 
propagation."4 Again, to the extent that cultural and biological evolution 
are united by kindred processes, they can be expected to exhibit similar 
characteristics, including their capacity to produce efficient and 
less-than-efficient outcomes.

In much of this article, I will be purposely vague about the definition of 
efficiency. Even within economics, efficiency has been defined in a 
variety of ways, from strict Pareto efficiency to wealth maximization. The 
standards by which the efficiency of rules and institutions are judged 
sometimes differ from the standards employed to judge efficient activity 
within given rules and institutions; for example, when Hayek speaks of the 
efficiency of rules, he usually seems to have in mind the degree to which 
rules promote the utilization of knowledge and the coordination of plans. 
Biologists typically employ the concept of "reproductive fitness," by 
which they mean the capacity of traits to increase the probability of an 
organism surviving long enough to reproduce as effectively as possible 
subject to environmental constraints. In general, all such concepts of 
efficiency are related to the idea, broadly conceived, of "doing the best 
you can given certain constraints," and fortunately, the point I wish to 
make does not require any greater specificity. I will contend that, 
whatever specific definition of efficiency may be adopted, an evolutionary 
system could not be expected to achieve it in all cases, although some 
brands of efficiency may be more easily approached than others.

2. F. A. Hayek: No Panglossian

By all indications, Hayek was fully aware of the "all's for the best" 
charges that might be leveled against his theory. He was particularly 
concerned with the tendency of some social theorists to reject all 
evolutionary theories of culture out of hand because of the errors of 
Social Darwinism. His disclaimer is therefore worth quoting at length:

Bertrand Russell provides a good example in his claim that "if 
evolutionary ethics were sound, we ought to be entirely indifferent to 
what the course of evolution might be, since whatever it is is thereby 
proved to be the best": : : . This objection, which A. G. N. Flew : : : 
regards as "decisive," rests on a simple misunderstanding. I have no 
intention to commit what is often called the genetic or naturalistic 
fallacy. I do not claim that the results of group selection of traditions 
are necessarily "good"-- any more than I claim that other things that have 
long survived in the course of evolution, such as cockroaches, have moral 
value (Hayek 1988: 27).

Nor does he claim that the products of cultural evolution should be immune 
to criticism or change; again, it is best to quote Hayek directly:

It would be wrong to conclude, strictly from such evolutionary premises, 
that whatever rules have evolved are always or necessarily conducive to 
the survival and increase of the populations following them. : : : 
Recognizing that rules generally tend to be selected, via competition, on 
the basis of their human survival-value certainly does not protect those 
rules from critical scrutiny (Ibid.: 20).

Notably, Hayek believes that the cultural selection process selects for 
survival and reproduction of groups (a questionable hypothesis that will 
be considered later), yet even by that criterion of efficiency, the 
resulting rules cannot be assumed to be efficient. It would be 
particularly odd, then, for those rules to be efficient according to some 
other standard, such as neoclassical economic efficiency or classical 
liberal value judgments.

The above quotations appear in Hayek's latest work, but they do not 
represent retrenchments in the face of criticism of Hayek's previous 
works; the same message appears repeatedly in his earlier works. In the 
Constitution of Liberty, for instance, we find Hayek admitting,

These considerations, of course, do not prove that all sets of moral 
beliefs which have grown up in a society will be beneficial. Just as a 
group may owe its rise to the morals which its members obey, : : : so may 
a group or nation destroy itself by the moral beliefs to which it adheres 
(Hayek 1960: 67).

Of course, this statement could be interpreted as merely a view of 
selectionism-in-progress, in that "bad" moral views are characterized as 
leading inevitably to their own demise. The point, however, is that Hayek 
does not perceive the process as finished: at any point in time, including 
the present day, we may find undesirable rules and customs that have not 
been weeded out by selective forces, at least not yet. Hayek never eschews 
the modification and reform of rules; he simply points out that any such 
revision of particular rules must necessarily take place in the context of 
a complex of other rules that are taken as given for the time being: "This 
givenness of the value framework implies that, in our efforts to improve 
them, we must take for granted much that we do not understand" (Ibid.: 
63).

In Law, Legislation and Liberty, Hayek again emphasizes the need for 
reform of established rules--this time in the context of a narrower 
evolutionary system, the common law.

The fact that law that has evolved in this way has certain desirable 
properties does not prove that it will always be good law or even that 
some of its rules may not be very bad. It therefore does not mean that we 
can altogether dispense with legislation (1973: 88).

Indeed, Hayek (Ibid.: 89) even admits the possibility that general 
principles of justice (embodied in the remainder of the body of law) may " 
require the revision not only of single rules but of whole sections of the 
established system of case law."

These are not the statements of a Panglossian. But neither do they suffice 
to shield Hayek's theory from the charge that it implies that whatever 
exists is the best of all possible worlds; Hayek's objections 
notwithstanding, his theory may have implications beyond his words. The 
question is, does an evolutionary theory unavoidably lead to Panglossian 
conclusions? In answering this question, we can gain insights by taking a 
closer look at the well-developed evolutionary theory of another field: 
biology.

3. The Flaws of the Adaptationist Paradigm

Evolutionary biologists have, unfortunately, contributed in part to the 
misconception that evolutionary systems must yield optimal results. 
Particularly in the early days of biological evolutionary theory, 
biologists could be found using Spencer's phrase "survival of the 
fittest," and that phrase has proved more than a little misleading. 
Biologists of the "panadaptationist" stripe have perpetuated the idea that 
all traits of all extant organisms may be construed as optimizing those 
organisms' fitness relative to the environment. Even modern biologists 
occasionally slip into this way of thinking; consider the following 
passage from biologist Ledyard Stebbins:

["Fitness" must refer to something in the world and not just as whatever 
survives, in order to avoid charges of circularity and tautology. This 
much we know from Mary B. Williams on group selection and from Mario Bunge 
in general. But I do not know how biologists do describe fitness.]

... all modern species and races of organisms have existed as successful 
populations, well adjusted to their environment, for thousands or millions 
of generations. We would expect, therefore, that all mutations that might 
improve the organism's reproductive fitness to its particular environment 
would have occurred at least once during this long period. If so, they 
would have been incorporated by natural selection in the gene pool 
(Stebbins 1977: 58).

>From statements like this one, it would be easy--but wrong--to draw 
Panglossian conclusions. Although extreme adaptationism reigned for a 
while in the biological literature, most biologists (including Stebbins) 
now reject pan-adaptationism (Vromen 1995: 95f.).

Two highly problematic assumptions are required to justify evolutionary 
theories of the pan-adaptationist variety. The first is the "t goes to 
infinity" assumption: evolutionary processes are presumed to have reached 
the ultimate result thatwould obtain if the processes continued for an 
infinite period of time. The paradigmatic example is the anecdote about 
100 monkeys (actually, just one would do) pounding on typewriters for an 
unlimited amount of time: sooner or later, one of the monkeys will type 
out the entirety of Gone With the Wind. If the t-goes-to-infinity 
assumption is taken seriously, the logic is inexorable; every combination 
of letters (or gene/trait combinations, or cultural taboos) will 
eventually appear. Everything that can happen will happen, so an 
appropriate selection mechanism will presumably capture the best of all 
possible worlds. In real-world processes, however, infinite time is never 
the case, at least not from the perspective of an analyst observing the 
products of evolution at any given point in time. From our perspective, 
evolution is an ongoing process, and we should not be surprised to find 
incomplete--and suboptimal-- adaptation. The assumption of infinite time 
bypasses considerations of process altogether.

[I love this "t goes to infinity." Happens all the time in economics. And 
it gets invoked by those who reject multi-selection evolution in biology. 
I have hounded those who use verbal arguments (which are all the worse 
when supplemented with equations: I say this as a math majopr with a 
vested interest in my speciality) against the possibility of group 
selection by drilling down the arguments till I find some mention of "the 
long run," like "in the long run no altruistic genes can survive. But by 
the same token, no groups can survive without altruists. The whole thing 
is like dividing by zero.]

Indeed, it is tempting to argue that, once infinite time is presumed, the 
optimal result is implicit in the initial conditions, in much the same way 
that the solution to a system of equations is implicit in the equations 
themselves. I will resist that temptation, however, because a second 
assumption is necessary for that conclusion: a stable, exogenous 
environment against which selection takes place. The environment is, of 
course, the standard on the basis of which adaptation (and optimality) is 
usually measured; in most theories, the environment is actually the 
selective mechanism. When the environment is stable and exogenous, the 
adaptive "target" remains fixed, and infinite time assures the process 
will eventually achieve it. But with amoving target, even infinite time 
cannot force a conclusion of optimal adaptation. As J. Maynard Smith 
(1994: 97) has pointed out, "Optimization is based on the assumption that 
the population is adapted to the contemporary environment, whereas 
evolution is a process of continuous change. Species lag behind a changing 
environment." In other words, one cannot assume perfect tracking of 
environmental changes by changes in the genome of resident species. Even 
if time were infinite, the protean nature of the environment would 
restrict the relevant adaptation time for any organism to the interval 
between changes in its environs.

The endogeneity of the environment complicates the matter even further, by 
raising the possibility that the definition of a "good" mutation may 
depend crucially upon prior mutations. The appearance of a new, desirable 
trait in a species causes changes in the environment, and those changes 
alter the selective pressures impinging on the species--possibly rendering 
other prevailing traits non-adaptive. One puzzling consequence of such a 
pathdependent process is that fitness may not be transitive: trait B might 
supersede trait A, and C supersede B, and then A supersede C (Wesson 1991: 
141). If changes in the traits of an organism can shape the environment as 
well as be shaped by it, the very idea of optimal adaptation gets murky 
because it is unclear that a steady-state relationship between organism 
and environment will always occur.

[The next paragraph is good.]

The twin assumptions of infinite time and stable environment underpin the 
usual case for optimality in evolutionary systems. When they are relaxed, 
we can understand a variety of actual phenomena in such systems as being 
non-adaptive or mal-adaptive, rather than dream up ad hoc justifications 
of how such phenomena might be optimal (as modern biologists have 
unfortunately tried to do in many cases5). This is true even when 
"adaptiveness" or "efficiency" has been defined specifically in terms of 
the environment that acts as a selective mechanism upon traits and 
organisms. That is, even if we specifically tailor our definition of 
efficiency to fit the direction of the evolutionary forces at work, we 
still cannot realistically expect perfectly efficient outcomes. A 
fortiori, we should not expect an evolutionary system to yield efficient 
outcomes with respect to some other brand of efficiency defined 
independently of the selective forces at work (except, perhaps, purely by 
coincidence).6

In what follows, I will explain some of the most widely recognized types 
of less-thanperfect adaptation in biological evolution. In addition to 
mentioning specific cases of such suboptimalities in biology, I will also 
provide some examples of how similar suboptimalities might occur in 
cultural evolution. Where possible, I draw my examples from Hayek himself. 
These examples should, however, be taken with a grain of salt: they are 
intended as suggestive, not definitive. A convincing case for why any one 
of the examples given indeed constitutes an example of suboptimal 
adaptation would probably require an article of its own.

3.1. Errors of Omission, Errors of Commission

Naturalists regularly encounter organisms with traits that defy attempts 
at explanation in terms of adaptation to prevailing environmental 
conditions. Often the best explanation for such traits comes from an 
examination of the organisms' phylogenetic histories (even though 
optimalitywould imply that current conditions alone should provide 
sufficient explanation). Apparently, selective forces are not always 
strong enough to remove all unnecessary or harmful traits from a genome in 
a finite period of time. The best examples are the so-called "vestigial 
structures" that appear in numerous species, including human beings. 
Vestigial structures in humans include the vermiform appendix (may have 
been a gizzard in our ancestors), ear muscles (needed for directional 
hearing), and caudal vertebrae (used to be a tail).7 None of these 
features provides any apparent selective advantage any longer, and 
appendices often require removal when they pose a positive danger to human 
life; they are actually mal-adaptive. These traits constitute errors of 
omission: they are features that selective forces have failed to 
eliminate.

It is not terribly difficult to imagine possible analogs in cultural 
evolution. Although Hayek often fails in his works to explain why the 
processes he describes may not always yield optimal results, he seems to 
have recognized the persistence of no-longer-adaptive traits as one 
possible reason. In Law, Legislation and Liberty, Hayek notes that mankind 
maintains multiple layers of rules, "according as [sic] traditions have 
been preserved from the successive stages through which cultural evolution 
has passed. The consequence is that modern man is torn by conflicts which 
torment him and force him into ever-accelerating further changes" (1979: 
159). Hayek harks back to the conflict between new and old rules in the 
Fatal Conceit (1988: 18f.) when he attributes the collectivist desire to 
implement altruism society-wide to a misapplication of the morals of the 
small group (which evolved very early in humanity's cultural history) to 
the extended order called civilization (whose rules developed later, and 
often in conflict with the prior set of rules).

Biology also provides various cases in which traits that would clearly be 
beneficial are conspicuously absent. Smith cites the sula bassana gannet, 
which lays only one egg at a time, even though itwould be capable of 
raising (and the environment capable of sustaining) two young at a time. A 
related gannet in very similar conditions does, in fact, lay two eggs at a 
time (Smith 1994: 98). Why, then, doesn't the sula bassana? Two answers 
seem plausible: first, that the environment has changed recently in a more 
favorable direction and the gannet's genome has not caught up yet; or 
second, such a mutation may have appeared one or more times but been 
eliminated by accident (say, because the one chick with the mutation 
happened to fall out of the nest and die before reproducing). The second 
scenario would constitute an error of commission, a case of selective 
forces accidentally eliminating a desirable trait. In either scenario, the 
fact remains that evolution has not placed all adaptive traits in the 
current genome.

Again, it is not difficult to imagine analogs in cultural evolution. Of 
course, many suggestions of "beneficial traits we haven't adopted" may be 
nothing more than the wishful thinking of social reformers or cultural 
entrepreneurs, but this observation does not mean that truly beneficial 
but unused or untried cultural traits cannot exist. Hayek admits this 
possibility with a particular example: "The institutions of property, as 
they exist at present, are hardly perfect; indeed, we can hardly yet say 
in what such perfection might consist. Cultural and moral evolution do 
require further steps if the institution of property is in fact to be as 
beneficial as it can be" (1988: 35). Some might argue that property rules 
and other customs and conventions are perfect as they are, but a belief in 
the idea of cultural evolution certainly would not warrant such a 
conclusion. There is every reason to believe that cultural evolution can 
produce errors of omission and commission just as does biological 
evolution.

3.2. Linkages and Pleiotropism

[This is a nice section, esp. for those who have forgotten their biology.]

Students of biological evolution have long been familiar with the fact 
that traits often travel together in packs, even when there is no apparent 
adaptive advantage to the traits appearing together. This may occur, for 
instance, when two or more genes are located very close to each other on a 
chromosome so that it is unlikely that they will be separated during 
crossing-over (the process in sexual cell division whereby chromosomes 
exchange sections, thus creating a greater variety of gene combinations). 
It may also occur in organisms in which crossing-over does not take place, 
such as in male fruit flies and some bacteria; in cases like these, the 
entire chromosome is the smallest unit of selection. In such situations, 
it becomes possible for non-adaptive or mal-adaptive traits to tag along 
with traits of high adaptive value, a phenomenon P. W. Hendrick calls 
"genetic hitchhiking" (Dodson and Dodson 1985: 212).

Linkages between traits may also occur when a single regulator gene (a 
gene that activates or otherwise regulates the activities of other genes) 
turns a number of genes "on" or "off" as a group. If some of those genes 
confer substantial advantages, the unfortunate effects of other genes in 
the group may be outweighed. Some biologists suspect that a small number 
of mutations in regulator genes may have yielded the vast phenotypic 
differences that separated human beings from their ape-like ancestors; as 
Robert G. Wesson (1991: 272) puts it, "Hairlessness, tender skin, and 
exceptional intelligence seem all to be parts of an evolutionary package, 
elements of which are evidently unadaptive." Similar linkages may occur 
because of a pleiotropic gene, a single gene that causes multiple effects. 
An example of a pleiotropic gene is the gene for sickle cell anemia, 
which, in addition to its well-known harmful effects, provides some degree 
of protection against malaria (Stebbins 1977: 126).

It might be argued that some linkages are unavoidable, and it is therefore 
optimal for an organism to have linked traits so long as the good 
outweighs the bad (since optimal means only the best of all possible 
worlds). This is probably true of pleiotropic genes, and possibly true for 
regulator-complexes. Linkage by proximity, on the other hand, is clearly a 
matter of historical accident. The relevant question is, do these traits 
need to be connected? Are there no other formations or combinations of 
genes that could separate good from bad effects? If the answer is no, then 
the existing situation must be considered suboptimal.

Cultural analogs leap to mind. It is clear enough that many ideas and 
practices travel in groups, even though they could theoretically be 
separated. Religions, for example, are complex structures that comprise 
multiple beliefs and mores. One might expect a religion to persist if it 
provided sufficient selective advantages to outweigh any disadvantages 
involved. On this subject, Hayek argues:

Customs whose beneficial effects were unperceivable by those practising 
them were likely to be preserved long enough to increase their selective 
advantage only when supported by some other strong beliefs; and some 
powerful or magic faiths were readily available to perform this role 
(1988: 138).

Fantastic beliefs about the nature of theworld might, therefore, piggyback 
on beneficial religious practices. Such beliefs could be disadvantageous 
because they impede the acquisition of more accurate and scientific models 
of nature, yet survive because they facilitate useful modes of behavior. 
(What constitutes a selective advantage or disadvantage in cultural 
evolution is, of course, an open question--one that will be partially 
addressed later.)

Another case of linkage in cultural evolution might arise from the fact 
that the growth of government power could have both beneficial and harmful 
consequences. As Hayek observes,

Those [governments] that gave greater independence and security to 
individuals engaged in trading benefited from the increased information 
and larger population that resulted. Yet, when governments became aware 
how dependent their people had become on the importation of certain 
essential foodstuffs and materials, they themselves endeavoured to secure 
these supplies in one way or another (1988: 44).

[Mancur Olson's stationary bandit theory fits the facts much better.]

Consequently, security of trade routes and abuse of power have tended to 
travel together, although whether they can ever be separated is an open 
question.

3.3. Evolution by Chance and Evolutionary Trends

Evolutionary change can also take place simply by chance, particularly in 
small, isolated populations. In a small population, the death of a single 
individual can have large repercussions in terms of gene frequencies. Over 
several generations, these random effects can drive out genes and reduce 
the variability of the population's genome (Sober 1994: 486). Random 
genetic changes can also accumulate over time with almost no effect, until 
a marginal mutation, such as the emergence or disappearance of a regulator 
gene, causes substantial changes to take place all at once. Most 
importantly, chance selection explains why adaptive mutations could appear 
yet fail to spread. Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin (1994: 82) 
observe that "new mutations have a small chance of being incorporated into 
a population, even when selectively favored. Genetic drift causes the 
immediate loss of most new mutations after their introduction." In short, 
chance can provide the basis for the activation of complexes of linked 
genes and magnify the incidence of errors of commission.

[How big of a mole hill are these chance effects?]

A well-known, though trivial, cultural example of this phenomenon is the 
shrinking of the pool of surnames within small villages in New England, 
Wales, and elsewhere (Stebbins 1977: 127f.). When a new settlement was 
established by a small number of founders, the chance death of a single 
person could substantially reduce the frequency of the victim's surname in 
the population, even though the surname itself had no selective impact. 
Whether there exist non-trivial examples of chance selection in cultural 
processes depends in part on the level at which selection takes place. If 
group selection (as opposed to individual selection) is an actual 
phenomenon--as Hayek believed it to be--then some form of cultural drift 
should become more likely as groups become larger in size and fewer in 
number. To the extent that the entire world may be considered a single 
community, the relevant population has only a single member, and drift 
could therefore be quite dramatic. (The debate about levels of selection 
is a live issue in biological evolution as well as in cultural evolution 
that will be discussed more fully later.)

Biologists have also observed that selective processes can sometimes lead 
to the persistence and enlargement of trends; that is, a kind of 
evolutionary multiplier effect may cause the same mutation to occur again 
and again. Suppose gene A creates cellular conditions under which mutation 
B is likely to occur. Then an organism with gene A will tend to have 
progeny that carry both gene A and mutation B. If B has a selective 
advantage, then the progeny will be likely to survive and create progeny 
of their own that carry gene A and mutation B twice. And the next 
generation may have gene A and mutation B thrice. The phenomenon occurs 
because the same forces that favor a trait (mutation B) must also favor 
the genetic conditions that make the trait likely to occur in the first 
place (gene A). Possible examples include the multiplication of legs on 
the millipede and the growth of the brain in humans (Wesson 1991: 194). A 
possible example of trend persistence in cultural evolution, which seems 
in keeping with Hayek's previously cited suggestions about the abuse of 
government power, is that the forces which favor groups that solve certain 
coordination or public good problems may also favor the growth of 
institutions or attitudes that allow for these social solutions to be 
reached. (The institutions or attitudes that allow the solutions to be 
reached are analogous to "gene A"; the solutions themselves are analogous 
to "mutation B".) Selective forces may therefore reinforce cultural 
attitudes that favor an increase in social control, even though only 
specific forms of social control yield a selective advantage.

3.4. Multiple Adaptive Peaks

Finally, biologists have also recognized the possibility that an organism 
may follow multiple routes in its adaptation to an environment. It is by 
no means certain that all routes must lead to the same end point; there 
may be different end points that represent the highest adaptability of an 
organism along the different paths. Such end points are referred to as 
"multiple adaptive peaks" (Gould and Lewontin 1994: 84). Which path is 
"chosen" may depend crucially on the order in which mutations occur. A 
beneficial mutation may arise early on in the phylogenetic history of a 
species and be incorporated into its genome. Then, subsequent mutations' 
"fitness" will depend on how well they fit with the organism's new genome. 
Thus, an early mutation may place an organism on a path to one adaptive 
peak rather than another as a result of historical accident.

A number of economists have observed the evident connection between the 
idea of multiple adaptive peaks and the game-theoretic concept of a 
coordination game. (Many of these economists owe much to J. Maynard Smith, 
who pioneered the use of game-theoretic tools in biology.) Viktor Vanberg 
(1986: 93) has used game theory to offer a sharp critique of Hayek's 
theory of cultural evolution, noting that "once a coordination rule is 
established in a group, it cannot be assumed that a shift to a more 
beneficial rule can, in general, be brought about by a spontaneous, 
invisible-hand process." To put that in biological terms, switching from 
one adaptive peak to another is an extremely unlikely phenomenon, even if 
one peak is demonstrably superior to the other. If a species reaches an 
adaptive peak that is not sufficient to preserve the species in the 
relevant environment, it seems more likely that it will go extinct than 
switch to a different evolutionary path. If, on the other hand, a 
suboptimal peak is sufficient for species survival, then the species could 
persist indefinitely in a less than optimal state.

Despite Vanberg's criticism, Hayek seems to have been aware of the 
possibility of multiple adaptive peaks; indeed, Hayek's cultural 
relativism (which may seem inexplicable to those who interpret Hayek as a 
Social Darwinist) is intimately related to the concept. Hayek does not 
deny the fact that some cultures have developed in completely different 
directions from that of Western civilization and yet somehow managed to 
survive:

There are, undoubtedly, many forms of tribal or closed societies which 
rest on very different systems of rules. All that we are here maintaining 
is that we know only of one kind of such systems of rules, undoubtedly 
still very imperfect and capable of much improvement, which makes the kind 
of open or "humanistic" society possible where each individual counts as 
an individual and not only as a member of a particular group, and where 
therefore universal rules of conduct can exist which are equally 
applicable to all responsible human beings (1976: 27).

Hayek deliberately argues, therefore, from the context of the adaptive 
route taken by Western civilization, and he argues for internal 
improvement within that system. Hayek also recognizes the possibility 
that, even within a given tradition, path dependency may result in 
suboptimal consequences for particular subsets of that tradition. In the 
common law, for example, he points out that "The development of case-law 
is in some respects a sort of one-way street: when it has already moved a 
considerable distance in one direction, it often cannot retrace its steps 
when some implications of earlier decisions are seen to be clearly 
undesirable" (1973: 88). In situations like these, we find Hayek once 
again arguing for the occasional corrective reform, which would be 
unnecessary in a perfectly self-correcting (or instantaneously optimal) 
evolutionary system.8

4. Broader Implications for the Theory of Cultural Evolution

Biological evolution does not provide any justification for the belief 
that evolutionary processes necessarily lead to optimal results. But 
neither does it support the opposite conclusion, that evolutionary systems 
exhibit no desirable or efficient qualities whatsoever. Outrageously 
mal-adaptive traits have a high likelihood of being weeded out of the gene 
pool, and the organisms we observe in the natural world have clearly 
inherited remarkably sophisticated and effective structures and behaviors 
that allow them to survive and reproduce. The adaptiveness of at least a 
large number of traits observed in existing organisms has never been in 
question; what is in question is whether such traits represent the best 
solutions possible in all cases, and whether every single trait must serve 
some adaptive purpose. As Wesson has observed, "It is only necessary, 
however, that any particular characteristic be sufficiently functional to 
permit the species to survive. If there is an optimal shape of leaf for 
certain conditions of light and humidity, or webs for snaring flies, and 
so forth, most species are far from it" (1991: 154). The challenge for 
biologists, then, is to discern which traits took hold for truly adaptive 
reasons, which traits emerged for other reasons, and how such emergence 
took place.

The challenge for the evolutionary social scientist, I claim, is much the 
same. If evolutionary theory told us that all existing laws, customs, 
conventions, and mores were optimal adaptations to the conditions of human 
life, there would be little left to do but look around and describe what 
is already known to be best. But since evolutionary theory does not 
justify that conclusion, the social scientist's task is more difficult: he 
must attempt to identify which cultural norms possess truly adaptive 
qualities, which cultural norms emerged and persisted for non-adaptive 
reasons (and which may even have mal-adaptive effects), and how these 
norms came into being.

Evolutionary theory can, therefore, provide a sound basis for both 
advocacy of reform (when structures appear mal-adaptive or detrimental in 
some way) and for the defense of tradition (when the traditions seem to 
produce desirable results on net, or when they may be indispensable to the 
ongoing system as a whole). (Of course, to engage in such internal 
criticism, one would have to approve, normatively, of whatever standard of 
"efficiency" is implicit in the selective forces at work--which Hayek 
appears to do.) That we should keep "good" traditions and change "bad" 
ones might seem truistic, but some of Hayek's critics have accused him of 
inconsistency in so arguing. De Vlieghere (1994: 294), for instance, calls 
Hayek's advocacy of piecemeal reform "lip-service" because it is "in 
contradiction with his Darwinian theory" which devalues the contributions 
of reason. Similarly, Barbara M. Rowland (1987: 54) says that Hayek 
"inconsistently" draws the conclusion "that people can learn from studying 
the valuable role evolved institutions have played in advanced societies" 
so that reforms will fit smoothly into the evolved order. But as we have 
seen, Hayek's reformist and traditionalist tendencies present no 
contradiction; they are perfectly consistent if viewed from an appropriate 
evolutionary perspective.

These statements should not be taken to imply, however, that Hayek's 
theory of cultural evolution has no flaws or drawbacks. Indeed, the 
criticisms and doubts about Hayek's theory are too numerous to state 
here.9 I will instead show how the biological metaphor and a recognition 
of the possibility of suboptimality in evolutionary systems can help us to 
address some unresolved issues associated with Hayek's approach.

4.1. Gradualism

One conclusion that Hayek has drawn from his evolutionary analysis is that 
gradual or piecemeal change ought to be preferred to radical or wholesale 
change. At first, this conclusion appears to fit in with the evolutionary 
paradigm nicely. In the biological sphere, Stebbins states, "If an 
organism is well adjusted to its environment, slight changes in its 
genetic makeup may alter it better to modifications of that environment, 
but drastic alterations of one or a few characteristics are almost certain 
to make it function more poorly under any environment" (1977: 60). In 
Hayek's view, ill-advised reformers who wish to jettison rules or 
conventions whose functions are not immediately clear or whose systemic 
implications are not understood may seriously threaten the stability of an 
interdependent system. Hayek therefore advises that all reforms be judged 
within the context of a complex of other rules taken for the time being as 
given.

While all these points are well taken, Hayek's plea for gradualism cannot 
be taken as a universal rule--at least, not on the basis of evolutionary 
arguments alone. The potential existence of multiple adaptive peaks 
indicates that a system very different in all respects from the status quo 
could, conceivably, have more desirable qualities. In order for such a 
peak to be reached, radical changes might be required. For Hayek to argue 
against such wholesale reform, he must (and does) muster other arguments 
that he has elaborated elsewhere. For instance, in his case against 
socialism, Hayek might like to say that evolutionary considerations alone 
should be sufficient to relegate socialism to the dustbin of bad ideas. 
And evolutionary arguments do carry him part of the way to that 
conclusion, inasmuch as they lead the analyst to consider the functional 
properties of institutions such as several property and security of 
contract. But it is not inconceivable, prima facie, that the status quo 
represents but one of many adaptive paths. In order to make the case 
against socialism, Hayek must also rely on a variety of other tools such 
as economic theory to demonstrate that socialism could not, in fact, 
achieve the results its proponents suggest.10

Hayek also grounds his argument for gradualism on a strong epistemological 
challenge: people whose civilization has evolved along one path may simply 
lack the knowledge necessary to identify viable alternatives that differ 
substantially from the status quo. That other adaptive paths are 
conceivable does not imply that ignorant human beings can see what they 
are and implement them. To theorize that evolution could have led to a 
different and possibly superior outcome is fine, but to say precisely what 
that outcome would have been is an act of the imagination, and trying to 
realize an imaginary outcome in the real world is to engage, not in 
evolutionary theory, but in rational constructivist design. When proposed 
changes differ only marginally from the status quo, the imagination can 
(perhaps) be relied upon for some valid judgments; but in the case of 
massive system-wide changes, the demands placed on human knowledge are far 
higher.11 Itwas exactly that sort of hubristic endeavor to which Hayek 
applied the term, "the fatal conceit."

4.2. The Dual Selective Mechanism of Cultural Evolution

There is a great deal of confusion, in both Hayek's work and the 
literature on cultural evolution in general, about the exact means by 
which selection takes place in cultural evolution. It is often unclear 
whether the emergence of cultural norms is a matter of individual and 
collective choice or purely a product of impersonal environmental factors. 
An understanding of how evolutionary systems may fail to yield optimality 
can shed light on this matter.

An evolutionary system consists of two fundamental features: units of 
selection, and a selective mechanism. The selective mechanism consists of 
those forces in the system which allow for the differential survival and 
reproduction of the units of selection. Units of selection are structures 
or entities that have the capacity to replicate themselves (that is, to 
reproduce) under certain conditions. In biology, the most fundamental 
units of selection are genes (out of which higher level structures such as 
organisms and species are formed). But if genes are the most basic units 
of selection in biology, what are the corresponding units of selection in 
cultural evolution? The smallest units are, in fact, cultural traits or 
features with the capacity to be adopted, consciously or unconsciously, by 
human beings. Richard Dawkins dubbed these entities "memes." In his words,

Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch phrases, clothes fashions, ways 
of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves 
in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm and eggs, so memes 
propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a 
process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation (Dawkins 1976: 
206).

[This is most definitely not a definition. Russell (and after him 
Wittgenstein) also thought he had a "unit" of meaning. No characterization 
of such units have been found have achieved any consensus. This does not 
render the notion useless. Uselessness comes in degrees.]

If memes are indeed the smallest such units, then the psychology and 
preferences of individuals may constitute significant selective forces, 
inasmuch as these factors determine which memes can successfully "infect" 
human minds. "We do not have to look for conventional biological survival 
values of traits like religion, music, and ritual dancing," Dawkins 
argues, "though these may also be present" (Ibid.: 214).

[Dawkins would probably agree that a simple graph is a meme. The first 
graph was drawn by Nicole Oresme in 1340, not by a Greek or Roman.]

The simplest way to grasp this point is to conceive of cultural evolution 
as a massive hitchhiker trait. The mutations that created the ability of 
the human brain to imitate, learn, and evaluate obviously had substantial 
adaptive qualities for the human species, and for that reason they tended 
to be selected. But such a brain is capable of far more than enhancing an 
organism's survival and reproduction; this sort of brain can also desire, 
imagine, and create. The complex of mutations that created the human mind 
set in motion myriad effects, only a fraction of which necessarily 
possessed biologically adaptive qualities; the rest just came along for 
the ride. Biologist Philip Kitcher observes, "All that natural selection 
may have done is to equip us with the capacity for various social 
arrangements and the capacity to understand and to formulate ethical 
rules" (1994: 440). In so doing, natural selection created the conditions 
for another kind of evolution, cultural evolution, that is only 
peripherally related to biological factors. The entire process of cultural 
evolution may be accurately characterized as a playing out of the full 
implications of a particular genetic configuration--the human brain--that 
emerged from the process of biological evolution. Consequently, human 
culture may be regarded as responding to a dual selective mechanism. On 
the one hand, the reproductive capacities of units of cultural 
transmission (memes) are subject to a selective process in terms of their 
plausibility, attractiveness, utility, and ease of imitation--as 
determined by the human minds that consciously or unconsciously adopt 
them. These standards may or may not have anything to do with the memes' 
capacity to help or hinder the survival and reproduction of human beings 
in their environments. On the other hand, which cultural traits human 
beings adopt will often have indirect impacts on human survival and 
reproduction, and natural selection of an environmental variety will 
necessarily come into play if the impacts are sufficiently positive or 
negative. I will refer to selection of the former variety as 
"psychological selection," and to selection of the latter variety as 
"environmental selection." I should note that what I am calling 
environmental selection is the sole selective mechanism at work in 
biological evolution, while both forms of selection are at work in 
cultural evolution.12

Like any evolutionary process, cultural evolution does not exhibit a 
strictly linear chain of causality. The feedback generated by selective 
forces (in this case, psychological and environmental selection) means 
that the reason a trait comes into being may differ from the reason a 
trait persists. Cultural traits come into being because humans are 
equipped with brains capable of imagining and conceiving of different 
rules, practices, and ideas. But of the many cultural traits that may come 
into being, only some will survive both psychological and environmental 
selection. (Similarly, in biological evolution many traits can come into 
being via mutation and recombination, but only some will survive the 
process of selection.)

The two selective mechanisms of cultural evolution need not always work in 
the same direction. Sometimes they will reinforce each other; other times 
they may conflict. It is even possible that some cultural traits may run 
contrary to the apparent demands of environmental selection, because of 
the overwhelming influence of psychological factors. Cavalli-Sforza and 
Feldman provide a fascinating example: the decline of birth rates among 
European women after the onset of industrialization. If child-bearing were 
a purely genetic disposition passed from mother to daughter, a disposition 
to limit one's child-bearing would tend to die out in an environment 
wherein raising more children were possible. Those mothers with a 
disposition to bear more children would pass that disposition to more 
future mothers, while those with a disposition to bear fewer children 
would pass that disposition to fewer future mothers. The fact that the 
European birth rate diminished indicates that some form of cultural 
transmission of dispositions had to have been at work; only then could 
horizontal (intra-generational) and oblique (from one generation to 
non-offspring members of the next) transmission of dispositions have taken 
place. That is, the ability of European women to learn a new disposition 
rather than inherit an old one made a drop in the birth rate possible.13

But how could this environmentally mal-adaptive meme have survived the 
process of environmental selection? The answer lies in recognizing the 
dual nature of cultural selection. Evidently, the disposition to limit 
one's pregnancies became psychologically (and financially) appealing to 
women after industrialization took place in Europe; as a result, the 
disposition to have more children suffered from a magnified "death" rate, 
since large numbers of women were abandoning it. Successful memes must 
survive at this psychological level of selection before the environmental 
level of selection can even become operative. On the environmental level, 
the disposition to restrict one's pregnancies might have been expected to 
lead to its own demise if its net effect had been to reduce the number of 
the disposition's adherents in each generation. But the European 
population was still, on the whole, rising because of improvements in 
sanitation, food provision, and other factors. As a result, a meme 
yielding lower birth rates was enabled to survive despite the selective 
advantage of higher birthrates in the context of environmental 
selection.14

Perceiving cultural evolution as responding to a dual selective mechanism 
allows the idea of spontaneous order, a concept to which Hayek devoted a 
considerable amount of attention, to be more fully integrated into the 
theory of cultural evolution. A spontaneous order such as a market-based 
economic system does not respond to or serve the specific, unitary ends of 
a society; rather, it serves the multiplicitous and largely unknown ends 
of all the individuals whose transactions create the order. This sort of 
order is an "abstract order of the whole which does not aim at the 
achievement of known particular results but is preserved as a means for 
assisting the pursuit of a great variety of individual purposes" (Hayek 
1976: 5). It is not at all clear why an order that serves individuals' 
multifarious purposes should survive in an evolutionary system in which 
survival and reproduction of groups is the only criterion for natural 
selection (as Hayek sometimes implied). One of the advantages of a 
spontaneous order is its capacity to mobilize information that is 
dispersed among many individuals in the order. Among the pieces of 
information transmitted (or summarized) by this sort of order, in addition 
to information about technologies and resource supplies, are the 
subjective tastes and preferences of the participating individuals. The 
need for such information would be inexplicable if group survival and 
reproduction were the only selective forces at work; the tastes of 
individuals would be precisely irrelevant. It is only because there is 
another type of selection involved--the satisfaction of the psychological 
demands of human minds--that information about tastes and preferences 
might be relevant to an adaptive process.

4.3. Group Selection and Methodological Individualism

In explaining his theory of cultural evolution, Hayek embraces the concept 
of group selection: the idea that cultural traits and behavioral features 
are naturally selected on the basis of advantages and disadvantages they 
create for the groups of people who practice them. A number of authors 
have found Hayek's group selectionism troubling, and Vanberg (1986) argues 
that group selection conflicts with Hayek's professed methodological 
individualism. Since the idea of group selection is "theoretically vague, 
inconsistent with the basic thrust of Hayek's individualistic approach, 
and faulty judged on its own grounds," Vanberg (1986: 97) contends that 
group selection ought to be jettisoned to save methodological 
individualism. Geoffrey Hodgson (1991) agrees with Vanberg that there is a 
conflict between the two doctrines, but recommends instead that 
methodological individualism should be abandoned (or at least modified) in 
order to keep group selection. Some of the insights from the foregoing 
discussion of the dual selective mechanism of cultural evolution may help 
to resolve the Vanberg-Hodgson debate.

Vanberg defines methodological individualism as "the guiding principle 
that aggregate social phenomena can be and should be explained in terms of 
individual actions, their interrelations, and their--largely 
unintended--combined effects" (Vanberg 1986: 80). Group selection 
conflicts with methodological individualism, Vanberg argues, because it 
attempts to explain cultural norms in terms of the functional roles they 
play for groups rather than their emergence through individuals' behavior. 
He proceeds to argue that group selection is a troublesome and flawed 
concept even in biology, because it is unclear how "altruistic" behavior 
patterns that benefit groups could possibly survive in the presence of 
selective pressures that favor "selfish" behavior by individuals. Vanberg 
says that it seems to be the "dominant opinion among biologists" that the 
conditions necessary for true group selection "rarely exist in nature" 
(Ibid.: 69). Interestingly, Vanberg also maintains that methodological 
individualism was a factor in the development of the theory of biological 
evolution because it supported a shift "from the species as the 
theoretical unit to the individual organism as the central unit of 
analysis" (Ibid.: 80).

[I have been beating a drum for group selection in biology for a decade, 
even before Eliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson's _Unto Others_ came out. 
Wilson (alone) went on to apply the group selection idea to human religion 
and to revive functionalism in sociology, in _Darwin's Cathedral. 
Functionalism had gone by the wayside in sociology as much as group 
selection went in biology. It was Stephen Sanderson's _The Evolution of 
Human Sociality: A Darwinian Conflict Perspective_ (a terrific book and 
the first one to import sociobiology into sociology), or rather his 
dismissal of functionalism that turned me into a functionalist! He argued 
that functionalism implies the existence of equilibrating mechanisms, 
which would restore the social system back to where all the parts worked 
together. Well, there *are* these mechanisms. Sanderson was criticizing 
*pan*-functionalism. In the process, he convinced me that there must be 
something to a less thoroughing version of it. And _Darwin's Cathedral_ 
reached the same result.]

Hodgson argues cogently that Vanberg has misconstrued the biological 
literature on the debate over units of selection. The biological 
"reductionists" on whom Vanberg relies for support do not contend that the 
individual organism is the most basic unit of selection in the 
evolutionary process. Reductionists like Richard Dawkins contend, on the 
contrary, that selective forces ultimately operate on the smallest units 
of selection, genes. The misleadingly labeled group selectionists, on the 
other hand, argue that natural selection operates on higher level 
structures as well. Genes come in complex groups called individual 
organisms, organisms come in groups called populations, populations comes 
in groups called species, and so on; and all of these structures, the 
group selectionists believe, may be subject to weeding and culling by 
evolutionary forces. "In other words," Hodgson says, "selection operates 
simultaneously on different types of unit, depending on the time-scale and 
the type of selection process" (1991: 69). The real debate in biology, 
then, is not selection of individuals versus selection of groups, but 
selection of genes versus selection at multiple levels of a hierarchy. To 
the extent that Vanberg relies on the support of biological reductionism 
to support methodological individualism, his argument collapses because 
there is no particular reason to focus on individuals. "Simple reduction 
to the individual level is unacceptable because the same arguments 
concerning reduction from groups to individuals apply equally to reduction 
from individual to gene. To avoid this double standard, one must either 
accept multiple levels of selection, or reduce everything to the lowest 
level [i.e., genes] in the manner of Dawkins : : : and Williams" (Ibid.: 
71).

Although Vanberg's use of reductionist argumentation is vulnerable to 
Hodgson's critique, the case for methodological individualism is stronger. 
In most of his analysis, Vanberg implicitly portrays individuals as units 
of selection in the evolutionary process. If this were the theoretical 
basis for methodological individualism, then methodological individualism 
would indeed be threatened by Hodgson's clarification of the 
levels-of-selection debate. But the earlier discussion of the dual 
selective mechanism of cultural evolution suggests that the individual 
human is not merely a unit of selection; the individual human is actually 
part of the selective mechanism that influences the survival and 
reproduction of cultural traits (or memes). And it is this fact, I will 
argue, that is crucial in the case for methodological individualism. In 
addition, it dissolves the alleged conflict between methodological 
individualism and group selection, allowing the concepts to co-exist in 
the same theory.

For the social scientist interested in the process of cultural evolution, 
the relevant explananda are the cultural norms (including beliefs, rules, 
behavioral regularities, and institutions) that emerge from that process. 
In order to understand why some memes have survived and prospered while 
others have grown rare or disappeared, he must direct his attention to the 
selective forces that have imposed differential death rates on various 
cultural practices and beliefs. That means asking, first and foremost, how 
and why some practices and beliefs were adopted in the first place by 
human beings and others were not. In other words, it is necessary to 
enquire into the effects of psychological selection, the first prong of 
the dual selective mechanism. Then, the analyst must explore the systemic 
effects that would result from the adoption of certain norms. Such effects 
might include changes in the constraints that influenced individuals' 
adoption of those norms in the first place, in which case another round of 
psychological selection could occur, and the same process could be 
iterated indefinitely. The systemic effects of norms might also include 
changes in the capacity of individuals and groups to serve their 
physiological needs, resulting in population growth or population loss; 
that is, the second, environmental, prong of the dual selective mechanism 
could come into play.

It might appear that allowing for two selective mechanisms, instead of 
just psychological selection, represents a break from methodological 
individualism. But there is no contradiction here: the tenets of 
methodological individualism do not require that social phenomena be 
explained without reference to the constraints that impinge on 
individuals' actions. If environmental constraints affect the survival of 
individuals (and the groups composed of them) in such a way that the norms 
they practice and the things they believe have a reduced probability of 
being absorbed by other individuals (either outsiders or subsequent 
generations), then the environmental prong of the dual selective mechanism 
is consistent with a methodological approach that explains social outcomes 
in terms of the actions, choices, and behaviors of individuals.

[Just what is inconsistent with "methodological individualism"? I am now 
thoroughly confused.]

Notably, in this account individuals are not units of selection upon which 
selective forces operate, except insofar as an individual may be perceived 
as a conglomeration of multiple memes and genes. What is essential for a 
methodologically individualist account of the evolution of cultural 
outcomes is that individuals constitute a filter (i.e., a selective 
mechanism) through which memes must pass before they can begin to have 
systemic effects. Vanberg is correct to chastise Hayek for giving too 
little attention to this filtering process in his later work: Hayek 
regularly refers to the unexpected prosperity of groups that "happened to 
change them [cultural rules] in a way that rendered them increasingly 
adaptive" (Hayek 1988: 20) while giving little detail about how the 
individuals in those groups might "happen" to adopt such changes. Vanberg 
is also correct, therefore, to draw attention to the question of how, for 
instance, groups of individuals might happen upon appropriate rules for 
escaping Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations. It is also clear, however, 
that groups that did--somehow--find solutions to that kind of dilemma 
(e.g., tit-for-tat or "grudger" strategies) would create advantages for 
their members over the members of other groups that did not discover 
similar solutions. In other words, if a set of beneficial social rules can 
survive the gauntlet of psychological selection, then groups of 
individuals who adopt those rules will be favored by environmental 
selection. It is worth pointing out that the psychological gauntlet may 
not be as difficult to clear as Vanberg suggests, since individuals may be 
guided as much by an instinct to imitate as by rational optimization. 
(Hayek contends that that kind of rationality is a product, not a 
predecessor, of cultural evolution (Ibid.: 21).) Of course, any strategy 
that survived psychological selection would still have to be capable of 
surviving environmental selection as well. (That is, it would have to be 
an "evolutionarily stable strategy," to borrow J. M. Smith's terminology.)

[Most people give little or no thought to what they do. They are no 
obsessive Premise Checkers.]

Finally, I should be explicit about howthis discussion relates to the 
issue of group selection. Without necessarily agreeing with the group 
selectionist hypothesis, it is easy enough to see that group selection is 
at least not incompatible with methodological individualism, once it is 
recognized that methodological individualism does not depend upon 
individual organisms being the (sole) unit of selection. With the 
methodological issue out of the way, the debate between Vanberg and 
Hodgson largely disappears. Like the biologists from whom they draw 
support for their respective positions, Vanberg and Hodgson apparently 
agree that group selection is a conceivable phenomenon; they merely 
disagree about its empirical relevance in the world. Opinion on this 
matter seems to have converged on the position stated by Sober:

Group selection acts on a set of groups if, and only if, there is a force 
impinging on those groups which makes it the case that for each group, 
there is some property of the group which determines one component of the 
fitness of every member of the group.15

There remains a debate as to how often these conditions hold, in both 
biological and cultural evolution. But Vanberg's coordination games and 
Prisoners' Dilemmas present fine examples of how these conditions could, 
at least in principle, apply to certain realworld situations faced by 
human beings. There seems to be some basis, therefore, for Hayek's focus 
on group selection in his evolutionary theory.

5. Concluding Remarks

The critics of theories of cultural evolution have often chided cultural 
evolutionists for their alleged belief that "whatever is, is desirable." 
Although some theorists of cultural evolution (like the Social Darwinists) 
have in fact reached such conclusions, Friedrich Hayek was not one of 
them. Repeated statements by Hayek indicate that he did not regard 
cultural evolution as a perfect process.

["Social Darwinism" is a social construction of 20th century historians. 
None called themselves that at the time. Likewise, there are no 
self-styled "neo-Nazis." Sometimes, though, an enemy's label gets worn as 
a badge of pride. Methodism is the best-known example.]

Nor does an evolutionary approach justify or imply such a conclusion. The 
well-developed field of biological evolution provides innumerable examples 
of how an evolutionary process may fail to produce perfectly adapted 
organisms. The assumptions of infinite time and constant environments 
could sustain the idea of perfect adaptation, but these assumptions are 
untenable. In a real-world evolutionary system, whether of the biological 
or cultural variety, one should therefore not be surprised to find errors 
of omission and commission, "hitchhiker" traits, chance selection, trend 
persistence, and path dependence.

Indeed, such "suboptimal" phenomena in the phylogenetic history of mankind 
may be responsible for the very existence of cultural evolution. Trend 
persistence and chance, as well as adaptive selection, led to the 
formation of a powerful human brain capable of imitation, learning, and 
cognitive thought. That brain produced multiple effects, only some of 
which could be considered adaptive on a purely biological level. The other 
traits merely tagged along, and among those traits was the capacity for 
desires and preferences--often for things with no discernable adaptive 
value whatsoever, such as fine art and literature. The very persistence of 
cultural traits that are non-adaptive (or even mal-adaptive, in the sense 
of counteracting the demands of environmental selection) constitutes a 
fantastic error of omission; human beings are constantly engaged in a 
multitude of costly, energy-consuming activities that add nothing to the 
reproductive fitness of the species. The species can remain in existence 
because the biological advantages of having powerful brains--such as 
providing food, shelter, and clothing--are sufficient to justify the 
biological burdens of having those brains.

Those burdens include the vast majority of what we call "culture" (and few 
people would consider them burdens in a pejorative sense of the word). The 
process of cultural evolution may usefully be treated as responding to two 
masters. One is environmental selection, meaning the process by which 
certain cultural traits may lead to the demise or proliferation of those 
who hold them because they inhibit the production of food, cause the 
population to shrink, etc. The other is psychological selection, meaning 
the process by which some cultural traits dwindle and others spread 
because of their appeal, utility, plausibility, and capacity for imitation 
by human minds. Both sets of selective forces are, of course, highly 
imperfect; both are subject to all of the adaptive limitations imposed by 
finite time, trait linkage, path dependence, and so on.

When a two-fold selection criterion is fully and explicitly incorporated 
into Hayek's theory of cultural evolution, the theory can more easily be 
squared with Hayek's theory of spontaneous order. The idea of a dual 
selective mechanism also provides a ready defense against the charge that 
his theory conflicts with the principles of methodological individualism. 
Stripped of all Panglossian implications, real or imagined by critics, 
Hayek's theory of cultural evolution may provide a powerful tool for the 
analyst searching for a critical theory of social development and the 
growth of institutions.

[This strikes me as exactly right, namely that combining group selection 
with spontaneous order will result in a terrific way of looking at social 
institutions. Don't forget there are other constraints, even those imposed 
by physics. There's a fine little book, C.J. Pennycuick, _Newton Rules 
Biology: A physical approach to biological problems_ (Oxford UP, 1992) 
that should probably be read by all.]

Notes

1. The author wishes to thank Roger Koppl, Mario Rizzo, an anonymous 
referee, and participants at the Austrian Economics Colloquium at New York 
University for their useful comments and suggestions.

2. In Voltaire's novel Candide, the eminent Dr. Pangloss maintained that 
we live in the best of all possible worlds. "It is proved," he said, "that 
things cannot be other than they are, for since everything is made for a 
purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose." 
(Voltaire 1947 [1759]: 20).

3. Hayek (1960: 59); Hayek (1973: 23); Hayek (1979: 154); Hayek (1988: 
23f.).

4. Hayek (1988: 26). Indeed, Hayek argues that the same principles are 
applicable to the study of all complex orders: "We understand now that all 
enduring structures above the level of the simplest atoms, and up to the 
brain and society, are the results of, and can be explained only in terms 
of, processes of selective evolution: : : " Hayek (1979: 158).

5. See Gould and Lewontin (1994: 78f.).

6. Examples of types of "efficiency" defined independently of the 
selective forces at work might include conformity to an aesthetic 
standard, or consistency with an ideological viewpoint such as classical 
liberalism.

7. Dodson and Dodson (1985: 213).

8. The fact that detrimental path dependence is possible in an 
evolutionary system does not necessarily mean it is common. Some of the 
most famous examples of detrimental path dependence in economics, such as 
the alleged inferiority of the QWERTY keyboard, have turned out to be 
unfounded. See Liebowitz and Margolis (1990).

9. See Kley (1994) for examples.

10. This does not mean that a socialist system could not be created in the 
first place, only that it could not work the way its proponents suggest it 
would. As noted earlier (in section 3.1), an evolutionary system is 
capable of a form of retrogression when no-longer-adaptive traits have 
been superseded but not weeded out. Hayek attributes the collectivist 
impulse behind socialist schemes to a misapplication of small group morals 
to the extended order that evolved later.

11. The Eastern European economies that are attempting to transform 
themselves into market economies after the socialist experiment may face 
similar problems of trying to implement a "jump" from one path to another. 
They have the advantage, however, of knowing from observation of existing 
market economies that a market economy is at least possible (an advantage 
not shared by the socialists early in this century, who tried to engineer 
a jump to a purely hypothetical socialist economy).

12. My distinction between psychological and environmental selection 
parallels Cvalli-Sforza and Feldman's distinction between "cultural" and " 
Darwinian" selection, which they define as follows: ": : : cultural 
selection refers to the acquisition of a cultural trait, while Darwinian 
selection refers to the actual test by survival and fertility of the 
advantages of having or not having the trait" (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 
1981: 16). I have chosen not to adopt their terminology because their use 
of the word "cultural" might be misleading. I use the word "cultural" to 
refer to all traits that are not transmitted genetically, and I use " 
psychological" and "environmental" to refer to the selective forces that 
impinge on cultural traits.

13. See Sober (1994: 482-4).

14. It has been suggested to me that simple cost-benefit analysis would be 
sufficient to explain the drop in European birth rates. But this 
explanation begs the question: the whole issue is which costs and benefits 
may be considered. The environmental (i.e., strictly biological) costs and 
benefits clearly pointed toward more child-bearing (since better 
sanitation, food, etc., made children easier and cheaper to sustain). A 
lower birth rate could only have arisen from "cost-benefit analysis," 
then, if some psychological costs and benefits could also come into play.

15. Quoted in Hodgson (1991): 70.

References

[The anthology by Elliot Sober is comprehensive, often too specialized for 
me, and cheap considering its thickness. These are articles that should, 
as Mr. Vining used to say, be read "bolt upright in a hard chair.]

Bradie, M. (1994) "Epistemology from an Evolutionary Point of View." In: 
Sober, E. (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed., 
Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Buchanan, J. M. (1975) The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and 
Leviathan. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.

Cavalli-Sforza, L., and Feldman, M. (1981) Cultural Transmission and 
Evolution: A Quantitative Approach. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University 
Press.

Dawkins, R. (1976) The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press.

De Vlieghere, M. (1994) "A Reappraisal of Friedrich A. Hayek's Cultural 
Evolutionism." Economics and Philosophy 10(2): 285-304.

Dillon, L. S. (1978) Evolution: Concepts and Consequences, 2nd ed. St. 
Louis: The C.V. Mosby Company.

Dodson, E. O., and Dodson, P. (1985) Evolution: Process and Product. 
Boston: Prindle, Weber & Schmidt.

Eldredge, N. (1985) Unfinished Synthesis: Biological Hierarchies and 
Modern Evolutionary Thought. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gould, S. J., and Lewontin, R. C. (1994) "The Spandrels of San Marco and 
the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme." In: 
Sober, E. (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology.

Gray, J. (1989) Liberalisms. London: Routledge.

Hallerod, B. (1992) "Friedrich August von Hayek--Apostle for Freedom?" 
Sociologisk Forskning 29(3): 12-34.

Hayek, F. A. (1960) The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago, Ill.: University 
of Chicago Press.

Hayek, F. A. (1988) The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Chicago, 
Ill.: University of Chicago Press.

Hayek, F. A. (1973) Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 1: Rules and Order. 
Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.

Hayek, F. A. (1976) Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 2: The Mirage of 
Social Justice. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.

Hayek, F. A. (1979) Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 3: The Political 
Order of a Free People. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.

Heath, E. (1992) "Rules, Function, and the Invisible Hand: An 
Interpretation of Hayek's Social Theory." Philosophy of the Social 
Sciences 22(1): 28-45.

Hodgson, G. M. (1991) "Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution: An Evaluation 
in the Light ofVanberg's Critique." Economics and Philosophy 7: 67-82.

Kitcher, P. (1994) "Four Ways of 'Biologizing' Ethics." In: Sober, E. 
(ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology.

Kley, R. (1994) Hayek's Social and Political Thought. Oxford: Clarendon 
Press.

Liebowitz, S. J., and Margolis, S. E. (1991) "The Fable of the Keys." 
Journal of Law and Economics 33 (April): 1-25.

Rowland, B. M. (1987) Ordered Liberty and the Constitutional Framework: 
The Political Thought of Friedrich A. Hayek. New York: Greenwood Press.

Smith, J. M. (1994) "Optimization Theory in Evolution." In: Sober, E. 
(ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology.

Sober, E. (ed.) (1994) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed., 
Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Sober, E. (1994) "Models of Cultural Evolution." In: Sober, E. (ed.) 
Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology.

Stebbins, G. L. (1977) Processes of Organic Evolution. Englewood Cliffs, 
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Stiglitz, J. (1991) Whither Socialism? Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Tomlinson, J. (1990) Hayek and the Market. London: Pluto Press.

Vanberg, V. (1986) "Spontaneous Market Order and Social Rules: A Critical 
Examination of F. A. Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution." Economics and 
Philosophy 2: 75-100.

Voigt, S. "On the Internal Consistency of Hayek's Evolutionary Oriented 
Constitutional Economics--Some General Remarks." Journal des Economistes 
et des Etudes Humaines 3(4): 461-76.

Voltaire (F.-M. Arouet) [1947 (1759)] Candide. Translated by John Butt. 
Penguin Books.

Vromen, J. J. (1995) Economic Evolution: An Enquiry into the Foundations 
of New Institutional Economics. London: Routledge.

Wesson, R. G. (1991) Beyond Natural Selection. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT 
Press.


From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 18:03:13 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 13:03:13 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252118540.14301@panix3.panix.com>

In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.12.16
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i17/17b01001.htm

    By LEIGH E. SCHMIDT

    Even the Dalai Lama's harshest critics at the Society for
    Neuroscience meeting last month, in Washington, would have
    to concede this much: Choosing the exiled Tibetan Buddhist
    leader to inaugurate the professional association's series
    on neuroscience and society certainly got people talking.
    Who would have thought that an announced lecture on "The
    Neuroscience of Meditation" would set off a protest petition
    gathering about 1,000 signatures, a counterpetition of
    support boasting nearly as many names, substantial coverage
    in The New York Times and on National Public Radio, as well
    as ample chatter in the blogosphere? In a culture that likes
    its battles between science and religion to be loud,
    colorful, and Christian -- another nasty squabble, say,
    between evolutionists and creationists -- this controversy
    seemed unlikely to gain much traction. Yet as the dispute
    built momentum in the months leading up to the event, it
    soon became clear that the prospect of the red-robed Dalai
    Lama's urging the study of an ancient spiritual practice
    upon white-coated lab scientists would provide a newsworthy
    angle on the usual wrangling.

    Playing upon tensions far less noticed than those that have
    plagued relations between science and conservative
    Christianity, the latest dust-up reveals the spirit wars
    that divide the knowledge class itself. How purely secular
    and naturalistic do the members of that class imagine
    themselves to be, and how committed are they to keeping
    religion at bay in their conference gatherings, university
    laboratories, civic institutions, newsrooms, and think
    tanks? In turn, is "spirituality" a back door through which
    religion gets to enter the conversation, now dressed in the
    suitably neutralized garb of meditation as a universalistic
    practice of inward peace and outreaching compassion? Or does
    religion, even when soft-peddled in the cosmopolitan
    language of spirituality and the contemplative mind,
    inevitably remain an embarrassment to those elites who stake
    their authority on secular rationality? The dispute roiling
    the neuroscience society over the past six months has
    brought such questions front and center.

    Inviting the Dalai Lama to speak at the meeting created two
    major border disputes. The first, of modest consequence to
    religion-and-science debates, was the conflict over the
    "political agenda" of the exiled Tibetan leader. In an
    international professional association that includes many
    Chinese scientists, some members were offended at the
    implied endorsement that the event gave to the Dalai Lama's
    larger cause of freedom for Tibetans. The second dispute,
    more insistently debated, was over religion's showing up --
    so visibly, to boot -- at an annual meeting of
    neuroscientists. The almost visceral response by critics was
    to declare a total separation of religion and science, to
    wave the flag for the late-19th-century warfare between the
    two domains. "A science conference is not [an] appropriate
    venue for a religion-based presentation," a professor of
    anesthesia from the University of California at San
    Francisco remarked on the petition. "Who's next, the pope?"
    That sign-off question pointed to a second part of the
    strict separationist logic: Even if the Dalai Lama seemed
    pretty irenic as religious leaders go, he nonetheless
    represented a slippery slope into a mire of superstition and
    authoritarianism. (How else, some critics asked, were they
    to interpret his known affinities with reincarnation and
    monasticism?) "Today, the Dalai Lama; Tomorrow,
    Creationists?" wrote a professor of medicine at the
    University of Toronto, capturing perhaps the most
    commonplace anxiety given voice among the critics. Keep the
    society free of all religious discussion, or else the
    esteemed body might slide into the hell of a Kansas
    school-board meeting.

    More interesting than the purists' boundary monitoring is
    the way the Dalai Lama and his defenders imagine through
    meditation an emerging meeting point for science and
    religion in contemporary culture. The headline study that
    served as the immediate source of intrigue surrounding his
    recent lecture was an article published last year in the
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and produced
    by researchers at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging
    and Behavior, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
    That group, led by the psychology professor Richard J.
    Davidson, has been studying long-term Tibetan Buddhist
    practitioners of meditation, comparing their brain-wave
    patterns with those of a control group. Davidson himself has
    been working in the science-religion borderlands for more
    than two decades and has been a leading collaborator with
    the Mind and Life Institute, in Boulder, Colo., one of the
    principal organizations encouraging the
    neuroscience-meditation dialogue.

    Shifting the focus of research from altered states of
    consciousness or momentary experiences of ecstasy, which so
    often concerned inquirers in the 1960s and 1970s, the
    Davidson group has been looking for evidence that sustained
    meditation causes actual neural changes in everyday patterns
    of cognition and emotion. In other words, they want to know
    if the brain function of long-term contemplatives is made
    demonstrably different through years of "mental training."
    And not just different, but better: That is, does the
    well-developed meditative mind sustain higher levels of
    compassion and calmness than the run-of-the-mill American
    noggin? Well, after testing eight long-time Tibetan Buddhist
    practitioners and 10 "healthy student volunteers," the
    researchers discovered that the 10,000 to 50,000 hours that
    the various monks had devoted to "mental training" appeared
    to make a real neurological difference. As the study's title
    put it, "Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude
    gamma synchrony during mental practice." Davidson and
    company, careful not to overreach in their conclusions, did
    suggest that practices of meditation, and the accompanying
    compassionate affect, were "flexible skills that can be
    trained." Did that mean contemplative practice could be
    abstracted from its religious context and then applied as a
    kind of public pedagogy? Were hopeful supporters wrong to
    read this as a tantalizing suggestion that meditation might
    prove beneficial not only for the mental health of Americans
    but also for the very fabric of society? Where, after all,
    couldn't we benefit from a little more "pure compassion,"
    altruism, lovingkindness, and "calm abiding"?

    As novel as it may sound to monitor the brain waves of
    Tibetan Buddhist monks in university laboratories or on
    Himalayan hillsides (Davidson has done both), it is
    certainly not the first time that American psychologists
    have sought to re-engage the spiritual through the
    healthy-mindedness of meditation. At Wisconsin, Davidson
    occupies a research professorship named for Harvard's
    William James, the pioneering psychologist, psychical
    researcher, and philosopher of religion, and it is in the
    tradition of James that the current turn to the
    contemplative mind is best understood. Counter to the
    popular image of Americans as endlessly enterprising,
    agitated, and restless -- all busy Marthas, no reflective
    Marys -- James discerned a deep mystical cast to the
    American psyche and pursued that strain with uncommon
    intellectual devotion. Yet when it came to "methodical
    meditation," James saw little of it left among American
    Christians and turned instead to homegrown practitioners of
    various mind-over-matter cures. He particularly accented
    those "New Thought" metaphysicians who were pushing forward
    a dialogue with far-flung emissaries of yoga and Buddhist
    meditation in the wake of the World's Parliament of
    Religions, held in Chicago in 1893.

    Among James's favored practitioners of these newly
    improvised regimens of meditation was Ralph Waldo Trine, a
    Boston-based reformer with a knack for inspirational
    writing. In The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902),
    James used Trine's blockbuster In Tune With the Infinite
    (1897) as an epitome of the emergent practices of
    concentration, mental repose, and healthy-mindedness then
    percolating in New England and elsewhere across the country.
    Though an unabashed popularizer, Trine was not a
    lightweight. With an educational pedigree that ran from Knox
    College to the University of Wisconsin to the Johns Hopkins
    University, he moved easily in Harvard's wider metaphysical
    circles and energetically engaged various progressive
    causes. In much the same way that current studies promote
    the clinical applications of meditation, Trine emphasized
    the healthful benefits that accrued from cultivating a calm
    yet expectant mind. He had no scanners or electrodes, but he
    had the same hopes about improving the mental and physical
    health of Americans through elaborating a universal practice
    of meditation, one that transcended the particulars of any
    one religious tradition and represented a kind of
    cosmopolitan composite of all faiths. And while Trine did
    not have the Dalai Lama at hand, he did have extended
    contact with a well-traveled Sinhalese Buddhist monk,
    Anagarika Dharmapala, with whom he compared notes and
    devotional habits at a summer colony in Maine as he was
    putting together his own system of meditation for Americans.
    Like other inquirers then and now, Trine was all too ready
    to look to Asia for a practical antidote to American
    nervousness.

    The real payoff for Trine, as it is for Davidson and his
    colleagues, was not established simply through a calculus of
    productivity or cheerfulness: Would encouraging meditation
    or other visualization techniques make people more alert and
    proficient at the office or on the playing field? Would it
    make them feel happier and less disgruntled? Trine, like
    James and now Davidson, was finally more interested in
    saintliness and compassion than in helping stressed-out
    brain workers relax and concentrate. It is hard not to hear
    a hint of Davidson's pursuit of altruism in Trine's "spirit
    of infinite love," the moral imperative to "care for the
    weak and defenseless." And it is hard not to see that the
    world of William James and Ralph Waldo Trine is alive and
    well as American investigators wire up Tibetan Buddhist
    hermits in a search for the powers of the concentrated mind,
    the mental disciplines of harmony, compassion, and peace
    that might make the world a marginally kinder, less selfish
    place. That optimism about human nature -- that the mind has
    deep reservoirs of potential for empathy and altruism -- had
    a lot more backing among liberals and progressives in 1900
    than it does today. Still, the considerable hopes now
    invested in meditation suggest that the old romantic
    aspirations, spiritual and otherwise, continue to flourish,
    especially among members of the mind-preoccupied knowledge
    class.

    P erhaps the most important dimension of the Dalai Lama's
    turn to the laboratory is the notion that the
    religion-science wound will be salved through recasting
    religion as spirituality. The Nobel laureate's latest book
    explicitly suggests as much in its title, The Universe in a
    Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. In
    doing so, he expressly appeals to all those Americans who
    fear fundamentalist incarnations of religion and who instead
    cast themselves as intellectually curious and spiritually
    seeking. Religion, on this model, is not a domain of
    authority competing with science but an inward terrain of
    personal experience and individual probing. Spirituality,
    the Dalai Lama writes, "is a human journey into our internal
    resources." Representing "the union of wisdom and
    compassion," it shares with science a progressive hope for
    "the betterment of humanity." In those terms, religion as
    spirituality becomes the handmaiden of science itself,
    joining it in an open quest for knowledge, empirical and
    pragmatic, unconstrained by ancient creeds, cosmologies, or
    churches. In such exhortations the Dalai Lama shows a fine,
    intuitive feel for much of American intellectual and
    religious life, but he is hardly telling today's Emersonian
    inquirers something about the universe that they do not
    already affirm.

    A practice of meditation made palatable to scientists,
    secularists, and seekers would no doubt look pallid to all
    those monks, hermits, and saints who have taken it to be an
    arduous and ascetic discipline. Still, the American pursuit
    of "spirituality," reaching a crescendo in the past two
    decades, has been all too easy to dismiss as paltry and
    unsubstantial, labeled as foreign and threatening to
    more-orthodox versions of a Christian America. In this
    often-charged religious environment, the Dalai Lama has
    astutely laid hold of the science-spirituality nexus as a
    cultural foothold. As he has discovered in this latest
    brouhaha, that move has hardly lifted him above the wider
    debates, whether about materialism or intelligent design,
    but it has allowed him to connect with America's more
    cosmopolitan and progressive religious impulses. When
    William James was asked directly in 1904, "What do you mean
    by 'spirituality'?," he replied: "Susceptibility to ideals,
    but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about
    them." In mingling with neuroscientists who have warmed to
    his talk of spirituality, the Dalai Lama may well have found
    his own avatars of William James.

    Leigh E. Schmidt is a professor of religion at Princeton
    University and author of Restless Souls: The Making of
    American Spirituality (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).


From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 18:03:21 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 13:03:21 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Is string theory in trouble?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252119360.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Is string theory in trouble?
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825305.800&print=true

      * 17 December 2005
      * Amanda Gefter

    Ever since Albert Einstein wondered whether the world might have been 
different,
    physicists have been searching for a theory of everything to explain why the
    universe is the way it is. Now string theory, one of today's leading 
candidates,
    is in trouble. A growing number of physicists claim it is ill-defined and 
based
    on crude assumptions. Something fundamental is missing, they say. The main
    complaint is that rather than describing one universe, the theory describes
    10^500, each with different constants of nature, even different laws of 
physics.

    But the inventor of string theory, physicist Leonard Susskind, sees this
    landscape of universes as a solution rather than a problem. He says it could
    answer the most perplexing question in physics: why the value of the 
cosmological
    constant, which describes the expansion rate of the universe, appears 
improbably
    fine-tuned for life. A little bigger or smaller and life could not exist. 
With an
    infinite number of universes, says Susskind, there is bound to be one with a
    cosmological constant like ours.

    The idea is controversial, because it changes how physics is done, and it 
means
    that the basic features of our universe are just a random luck of the draw. 
He
    explains to Amanda Gefter why he thinks it's a possibility we cannot ignore.

    Why are physicists taking the idea of multiple universes seriously now?

    First, there was the discovery in the past few years that inflation seems 
right.
    This theory that the universe expanded spectacularly in the first fraction 
of a
    second fits a lot of data. Inflation tells us that the universe is probably
    extremely big and necessarily diverse. On sufficiently big scales, and if
    inflation lasts long enough, this diversity will produce every possible 
universe.
    The same process that forged our universe in a big bang will happen over and
    over. The mathematics are rickety, but that's what inflation implies: a huge
    universe with patches that are very different from one another. The bottom 
line
    is that we no longer have any good reason to believe that our tiny patch of
    universe is representative of the whole thing.

    Second was the discovery that the value of the cosmological constant - the 
energy
    of empty space which contributes to the expansion rate of the universe - 
seems
    absurdly improbable, and nothing in fundamental physics is able to explain 
why. I
    remember when Steven Weinberg first suggested that the cosmological constant
    might be anthropically determined - that it has to be this way otherwise we 
would
    not be here to observe it. I was very impressed with the argument, but 
troubled
    by it. Like everybody else, I thought the cosmological constant was probably 
zero
    - meaning that all the quantum fluctuations that make up the vacuum energy 
cancel
    out, and gravity alone affects the expansion of the universe. It would be 
much
    easier to explain if they cancelled out to zero, rather than to nearly zero. 
The
    discovery that there is a non-zero cosmological constant changed everything.
    Still, those two things were not enough to tip the balance for me.

    What finally convinced you?

    The discovery in string theory of this large landscape of solutions, of 
different
    vacuums, which describe very different physical environments, tipped the 
scales
    for me. At first, string theorists thought there were about a million 
solutions.
    Thinking about Weinberg's argument and about the non-zero cosmological 
constant,
    I used to go around asking my mathematician friends: are you sure it's only 
a
    million? They all assured me it was the best bet.

    But a million is not enough for anthropic explanations - the chances of one 
of
    the universes being suitable for life are still too small. When Joe 
Polchinski
    and Raphael Bousso wrote their paper in 2000 that revealed there are more 
like
    10^500 vacuums in string theory, that to me was the tipping point. The three
    things seemed to be coming together. I felt I couldn't ignore this 
possibility,
    so I wrote a paper saying so. The initial reaction was very hostile, but 
over the
    past couple of years people are taking it more seriously. They are worried 
that
    it might be true.

    Steven Weinberg recently said that this is one of the great sea changes in
    fundamental science since Einstein, that it changes the nature of science 
itself.
    Is it such a radical change?

    In a way it is very radical but in another way it isn't. The great ambition 
of
    physicists like myself was to explain why the laws of nature are just what 
they
    are. Why is the proton just about 1800 times heavier than the electron? Why 
do
    neutrinos exist? The great hope was that some deep mathematical principle 
would
    determine all the constants of nature, like Newton's constant. But it seems
    increasingly likely that the constants of nature are more like the 
temperature of
    the Earth - properties of our local environment that vary from place to 
place.
    Like the temperature, many of the constants have to be just so if 
intelligent
    life is to exist. So we live where life is possible.

    For some physicists this idea is an incredible disappointment. Personally, I
    don't see it that way. I find it exciting to think that the universe may be 
much
    bigger, richer and full of variety than we ever expected. And it doesn't 
seem so
    incredibly philosophically radical to think that some things may be
    environmental.

    In order to accept the idea that we live in a hospitable patch of a 
multiverse,
    must a physicist trade in that dream of a final theory?

    Absolutely not. No more than when physicists discovered that the radii of
    planetary orbits were not determined by some elegant mathematical equation, 
or by
    Kepler's idea of nested Platonic solids. We simply have to reassess which 
things
    will be universal consequences of the theory and which will be consequences 
of
    cosmic history and local conditions.

    So even if you accept the multiverse and the idea that certain local 
physical
    laws are anthropically determined, you still need a unique mega-theory to
    describe the whole multiverse? Surely it just pushs the question back?

    Yes, absolutely. The bottom line is that we need to describe the whole 
thing, the
    whole universe or multiverse. It's a scientific question: is the universe on 
the
    largest scales big and diverse or is it homogeneous? We can hope to get an 
answer
    from string theory and we can hope to get some information from cosmology.

    There is a philosophical objection called Popperism that people raise 
against the
    landscape idea. Popperism [after the philosopher Karl Popper] is the 
assertion
    that a scientific hypothesis has to be falsifiable, otherwise it's just
    metaphysics. Other worlds, alternative universes, things we can't see 
because
    they are beyond horizons, are in principle unfalsifiable and therefore
    metaphysical - that's the objection. But the belief that the universe beyond 
our
    causal horizon is homogeneous is just as speculative and just as susceptible 
to
    the Popperazzi.

    Could there be some kind of selection principle that will emerge and pick 
out one
    unique string theory and one unique universe?

    Anything is possible. My friend David Gross hopes that no selection 
principle
    will be necessary because only one universe will prove to make sense
    mathematically, or something like that. But so far there is no evidence for 
this
    view. Even most of the hard-core adherents to the uniqueness view admit that 
it
    looks bad.

    Is it premature to invoke anthropic arguments - which assume that the 
conditions
    for life are extremely improbable - when we don't know how to define life?

    The logic of the anthropic principle requires the strong assumption that our 
kind
    of life is the only kind possible. Why should we presume that all life is 
like us
    - carbon-based, needs water, and so forth? How do we know that life cannot 
exist
    in radically different environments? If life could exist without galaxies, 
the
    argument that the cosmological constant seems improbably fine-tuned for life
    would lose all of its force. And we don't know that life of all kinds can't 
exist
    in a wide variety of circumstances, maybe in all circumstances. It a valid
    objection. But in my heart of hearts, I just don't believe that life could 
exist
    in the interior of a star, for instance, or in a black hole.

    Is it possible to test the landscape idea through observation?

    One idea is to look for signs that space is negatively curved, meaning the
    geometry of space-time is saddle-shaped as opposed to flat or like the 
surface of
    a sphere. It's a long shot but not as unlikely as I previously thought. 
Inflation
    tells us that our observable universe likely began in a different vacuum 
state,
    that decayed into our current vacuum state. It's hard to believe that's the 
whole
    story. It seems more probable that our universe began in some other vacuum 
state
    with a much higher cosmological constant, and that the history of the 
multiverse
    is a series of quantum tunnelling events from one vacuum to another. If our
    universe came out of another, it must be negatively curved, and we might see
    evidence of that today on the largest scales of the cosmic microwave 
background.
    So the landscape, at least in principle, is testable.

    If we do not accept the landscape idea are we stuck with intelligent design?

    I doubt that physicists will see it that way. If, for some unforeseen 
reason, the
    landscape turns out to be inconsistent - maybe for mathematical reasons, or
    because it disagrees with observation - I am pretty sure that physicists 
will go
    on searching for natural explanations of the world. But I have to say that 
if
    that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position. 
Without
    any explanation of nature's fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer 
the ID
    critics. One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution 
will
    emerge is as faith-based as ID.

Leonard Susskind

    Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor of Theoretical Physics at 
Stanford
    University in California. His book Cosmic Landscape: String theory and the
    illusion of intelligent design is published this week by Little, Brown 
($24.95,
    ?14.33, ISBN 0316155799)

From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 18:03:31 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 13:03:31 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] AP: Bush pardons two Tennessee moonshiners
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252119580.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Bush pardons two Tennessee moonshiners
http://www.southernstandard.net/news.php?viewStoryPrinter=26654

[Mr. Mencken would have been mighty pleased by this. He would have been less 
pleased by the pardoning of a bank robber and a lawyer with Republican 
connects, which was not in the AP wire as printed in the Tennessee paper but 
was mentioned in the NYT write up of an AP report. Quite possibly both papers 
had the same report and simply chose different excerpts.

[A fine Christmas gift to moonshiners!]

    KNOXVILLE, Tenn.

    President
    Bush has pardoned two Tennesseans convicted decades ago of moonshine 
charges.
    "It's a good Christmas present," said Charles E. McKinley, 75, of Pall Mall.
    Also pardoned was Carl E. Cantrell, 57, of Monteagle, who said, "It was the
    biggest relief I ever had."
    The pardons this week restore full U.S. citizenship to the men, including 
the
    rights to vote and buy a gun, their attorneys told The Knoxville News 
Sentinel.
    But their records will reflect both the felony convictions and the pardons.
    Cantrell said in the mid-1960s he and two friends set up a still on the side 
of
    Monteagle Mountain, surrounded by trees. "It don't take a genius to make 
it," he
    said.
    Soon afterwards, the site was raided and he was convicted of Interal Revenue
    Service liquor law violations and given three years probation.
    McKinley said he was driving a friend around in 1949 and they stopped at his
    friend's still to get something to drink. Driving away, they were arrested 
by the
    feds. McKinley was convicted of IRS liquor law violations and given two 
years of
    probation.
    He said he never intended to sell moonshine, only drink it. "I just got in 
the
    wrong place at the wrong time," he said.
    McKinley added that he may have to change his political support since he's 
been
    helped by a GOP president.
    "I'd almost be a Republican after that."
    Cantrell expressed surprised by the pardon.
    "Really, to tell you the truth, I thought that nothing would be done about 
it,"
    he said.
    Cantrell said he is looking forward to being able to vote and buy a gun.
    "I wasn't trying to cause nobody no harm," he said. "I was just trying to 
make a
    living."

Bush Grants 11 Pardons
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24pardons.html

    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

    WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (AP) - President Bush has granted 11 pardons, bringing 
to 69
    the number of clemency orders he has issued since taking office five years 
ago,
    the Justice Department said Friday.

    Three moonshiners and a bank robber were among those pardoned, as was a 
Denver
    lawyer whose employer has Republican political ties. The pardons were issued
    Tuesday, in keeping with a tradition of granting clemency during the holiday
    season.

    All of the individuals applied for clemency, and their applications were 
reviewed
    by the Office of the Pardon Attorney and forwarded to the president for a 
final
    decision.


From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 18:03:41 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 13:03:41 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] SW: Einstein and the Cosmological Constant
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252120110.14301@panix3.panix.com>

History of Physics: Einstein and the Cosmological Constant
http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw051230-2.htm

    The following points are made by Steven Weinberg (Physics Today 2005 
November):
    1) The mistakes made by leading scientists often provide a better insight 
into
    the spirit and presuppositions of their times than do their successes. In
    thinking of Einstein's mistakes, one immediately recalls what Einstein (in a
    conversation with George Gamow) called the biggest blunder he had made in 
his
    life: the introduction of the cosmological constant. After Einstein had 
completed
    the formulation of his theory of space, time, and gravitation -- the general
    theory of relativity -- he turned in 1917 to a consideration of the 
spacetime
    structure of the whole Universe. He then encountered a problem. Einstein was
    assuming that, when suitably averaged over many stars, the Universe is 
uniform
    and essentially static, but the equations of general relativity did not seem 
to
    allow a time-independent solution for a universe with a uniform distribution 
of
    matter. So Einstein modified his equations, by including a new term 
involving a
    quantity that he called the cosmological constant. Then it was discovered 
that
    the Universe is not static, but expanding. Einstein came to regret that he 
had
    needlessly mutilated his original theory. It may also have bothered him that 
he
    had missed predicting the expansion of the universe.
    2) This story involves a tangle of mistakes, but not the one that Einstein
    thought he had made. First, the author (Weinberg) does not think that it can
    count against Einstein that he had assumed the Universe is static. With rare
    exceptions, theorists have to take the world as it is presented to them by
    observers. The relatively low observed velocities of stars made it almost
    irresistible in 1917 to suppose that the universe is static. Thus when 
Willem de
    Sitter (1872-1934) proposed an alternative solution to the Einstein 
equations in
    1917, he took care to use coordinates for which the metric tensor is
    time-independent. However, the physical meaning of those coordinates is not
    transparent, and the realization that de Sitter's alternate cosmology was 
not
    static -- that matter particles in his model would accelerate away from each
    other -- was considered to be a drawback of the theory.
    3) It is true that Vesto Melvin Slipher (1875-1969), while observing the 
spectra
    of spiral nebulae in the 1910s, had found a preponderance of redshifts of 
the
    sort that would be produced in an expansion by the Doppler effect, but no 
one
    then knew what the spiral nebulae were; it was not until Edwin Hubble 
(1889-1953)
    found faint Cepheid variables in the Andromeda Nebula in 1923 that it became
    clear that spiral nebulae were distant galaxies, clusters of stars far 
outside
    our own galaxy. The author (Weinberg) does not know if Einstein had heard of
    Slipher's redshifts by 1917, but in any case he knew very well about at 
least one
    other thing that could produce a redshift of spectral lines: a gravitational
    field.
    4) It should be acknowledged here that Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), who had
    learned about general relativity during World War I from de Sitter, did in 
1923
    interpret Slipher's redshifts as due to the expansion of the Universe in the 
de
    Sitter model. Nevertheless, the expansion of the Universe was not generally
    accepted until Hubble announced in 1929 -- and actually showed in 1931 -- 
that
    the redshifts of distant galaxies increase in proportion to their distance, 
as
    would be expected for a uniform expansion. Only then was much attention 
given to
    the expanding-universe models introduced in 1922 by Alexander Friedmann
    (1888-1925), in which no cosmological constant is needed. In 1917 it was 
quite
    reasonable for Einstein to assume that the Universe is static.
    Physics Today http://www.physicstoday.org
    --------------------------------
    Related Material:
    ON QUINTESSENCE AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT
    The following points are made by P.J.E. Peebles (Nature 1999 398:25):
    1) Contrary to expectations, the evidence is that the Universe is expanding 
at
    approximately twice the velocity required to overcome the gravitational pull 
of
    all the matter the Universe contains. The implication of this is that in the 
past
    the greater density of mass in the Universe gravitationally slowed the 
expansion,
    while in the future the expansion rate will be close to constant or perhaps
    increasing under the influence of a new type of matter that some call
    "quintessence".
    2) Quintessence began as Einstein's cosmological constant, Lambda. It has
    negative gravitational mass: its gravity pushes things apart.
    3) Particle physicists later adopted Einstein's Lambda as a good model for 
the
    gravitational effect of the active vacuum of quantum physics, although the 
idea
    is at odds with the small value of Lambda indicated by cosmology.
    4) Theoretical cosmologists have noted that as the Universe expands and 
cools,
    Lambda tends to decrease. As the Universe cools, symmetries among forces are
    broken, particles acquire masses, and these processes tend to release an 
analogue
    of latent heat. The vacuum energy density accordingly decreases, and with it 
the
    value of Lambda. Perhaps an enormous Lambda drove an early rapid expansion 
that
    smoothed the primeval chaos to make the near uniform Universe we see today, 
with
    a decrease in Lambda over time to its current value. This is the 
cosmological
    inflation concept.
    5) The author suggests that the recent great advances in detectors, 
telescopes,
    and observatories on the ground and in space have given us a rough picture 
of
    what happened as our Universe evolved from a dense, hot, and perhaps quite 
simple
    early state to its present complexity. Observations in progress are filling 
in
    the details, and that in turn is driving intense debate on how the behavior 
of
    our Universe can be understood within fundamental physics.
    Nature http://www.nature.com/nature
    --------------------------------
    Notes by ScienceWeek:
    Active vacuum of quantum physics: This refers to the idea that the vacuum 
state
    in quantum mechanics has a zero-point energy (minimum energy) which gives 
rise to
    vacuum fluctuations, so the vacuum state does not mean a state of nothing, 
but is
    instead an active state.
    If a theory or process does not change when certain operations are performed 
on
    it, the theory or process is said to possess a symmetry with respect to 
those
    operations. For example, a circle remains unchanged under rotation or 
reflection,
    and a circle therefore has rotational and reflection symmetry. The term 
"symmetry
    breaking" refers to the deviation from exact symmetry exhibited by many 
physical
    systems, and in general, symmetry breaking encompasses both "explicit" 
symmetry
    breaking and "spontaneous" symmetry breaking. Explicit symmetry breaking is 
a
    phenomenon in which a system is not quite, but almost, the same for two
    configurations related by exact symmetry. Spontaneous symmetry breaking 
refers to
    a situation in which the solution of a set of physical equations fails to 
exhibit
    a symmetry possessed by the equations themselves.
    In general, the term "latent heat" refers to the quantity of heat absorbed 
or
    released when a substance changes its physical phase (e.g., solid to liquid) 
at
    constant temperature.
    The inflationary model, first proposed by Alan Guth in 1980, proposes that
    quantum fluctuations in the time period 10^(-35) to 10^(-32) seconds after 
time
    zero were quickly amplified into large density variations during the
    "inflationary" 10^(50) expansion of the Universe in that time frame.
    --------------------------------
    Related Material:
    COSMOLOGY: ON THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT PROBLEM
    The following points are made by Thomas Banks (Physics Today 2004 March):
    1) Since the mid-1980s, astronomers and astrophysicists have been 
accumulating
    evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. The simplest 
way to
    incorporate that acceleration into the description of cosmology, within the
    framework of general relativity, is to add a cosmological constant (CC) term 
to
    the Einstein equations. Before Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the
    universe, Albert Einstein had originally introduced such a term to obtain a
    static solution of his cosmological equations. After the cosmic expansion 
was
    discovered, Einstein considered his introduction of the CC to be the 
greatest
    mistake of his career.
    2) Many physicists were reluctant to consider the CC as an explanation for
    astronomical data, because the value it would need to have is ridiculously 
small
    compared to current theoretical expectations -- some 10^(120) times too 
small.
    Theorists interpreted that discrepancy as an indication that they would one 
day
    find an elegant explanation for why the parameter was exactly zero. Although 
some
    still cling to that hope, the author concludes that observation has once 
again
    upset the expectations of overconfident theorists.
    3) The framework that gives rise to the enormous mismatch between 
calculation and
    observation is called "effective quantum field theory in background 
spacetime",
    or EFT for short. EFT always involves a short distance cutoff scale below 
which
    the approximations of EFT break down. The natural length scale introduced by
    quantum gravity (QG) is the Planck length -- the combination of Newton's
    gravitational constant, Planck's constant, and the speed of light that has 
units
    of length. Naive dimensional analysis and explicit calculations in EFT 
suggest
    that the cosmological constant should be proportional to the fourth power of 
the
    corresponding Planck energy of about 10^(28) eV. That is 10^(120) times too 
big.
    4) Any dynamical solution of the CC problem within EFT should involve 
particles
    whose mass is on the order of the energy scale of the CC, about 10^(-3) eV. 
There
    have been many published attempts to resolve the problem by invoking such
    particles, but all of them have failed. EFT does provide a loophole for 
resolving
    the CC problem: Apart from calculable contributions, there are contributions 
from
    energy scales higher than those corresponding to the cutoff. In principle, 
those
    two types of contributions can cancel, but from the EFT point of view, the
    cancellation to 1 part in 10^(120) would be incredibly fortuitous. The 
author
    believes that the resolution of the CC problem does not involve some clever 
trick
    in EFT. Rather, QG will force on theorists a fundamental revision of the 
rules of
    the game. This belief is not yet the accepted dogma of the field. There are 
as
    many ideas about how to solve the CC problem as there are theorists who 
think
    about it.(1-5)
    References (abridged):
    1. G. 't Hooft, in Salamfestschrift: A Collection of Talks From the 
Conference on
    Highlights of Particle and Condensed Matter Physics, A. Ali, J. Ellis, S.
    Randjbar-Daemi eds., World Scientific, River Edge, NJ (1994), available at
    http://www.arXiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9310026; L. Susskind, J. Math. Phys. 36, 6377
    (1995)
    2. J. H. Schwarz, in Quantum Aspects of Gauge Theories, Supersymmetry, and
    Unification, A. Ceresole, C. Kounnas, D. Loest, S. Theisen, eds.,
    Springer-Verlag, New York (1999), available at
    http://www.arXiv.org/abs/hep-th/9812037
    3. T. Banks, in Strings, Branes, and Gravity: TASI 99, J. Harvey, S. Kachru, 
E.
    Silverstein, eds., World Scientific, River Edge, NJ (2001), available at
    http://www.arXiv.org/abs/hep-th/9911068; D. Bigatti, L. Susskind,
    http://www.arXiv.org/abs/hep-th/9712072; O. Aharony et al., Phys. Rep. 323, 
183
    (2000)
    4. L. Susskind, in The Black Hole: 25 Years After, C. Teitelboim, J. 
Zanelli,
    eds., World Scientific, River Edge, NJ, (1998), available at
    http://www.arXiv.org/abs/hep-th/9309145; A. Sen, Nucl. Phys. B 440, 421 
(1995);
    A. Strominger, C. Vafa, Phys. Lett. B 379, 99 (1996)
    5. J. Bekenstein, Phys. Rev. D 7, 2333 (1973); 9, 3292 (1974); S. Hawking 
Phys.
    Rev. D 13, 191 (1976)
    Physics Today http://www.physicstoday.org


From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 18:03:50 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 13:03:50 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] SW: On Social Learning in Insects
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252120200.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Sociobiology: On Social Learning in Insects
http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw051230-5.htm

    The following points are made by L. Chittka and E. Leadbeater (Current 
Biology
    2005 15:R869):
    1) The rapid expansion of the field of social learning in recent decades 
[1,2]
    has almost entirely bypassed the insects. But a close inspection of the
    literature reveals numerous cases where insects appear to learn by 
observation,
    eavesdrop on members of the same or different species, and even engage in
    teaching other members of a society. In fact, the first hint of observatory
    learning by animals dates back to Darwin's field notes published by Romanes
    [3,4]. Darwin suggested that honeybees learn the art of nectar robbing --
    extracting nectar from flowers via holes bitten into the tubes, without 
touching
    the flower's reproductive organs -- by observing bumblebees engaged in the
    activity. Experimental proof for this conjecture remains outstanding, but it 
is
    interesting to note that Darwin thought that observatory learning might 
occur
    across, rather than within, species
    2) Early in the 20th century, researchers became aware that many adult
    phytophagous insects prefer host species that they themselves had fed on 
when
    they were larvae -- even where the insect species, as a whole, was a 
generalist
    with multiple acceptable hosts [5]. In what has become known as "Hopkins' 
host
    selection principle", it was thought that the larvae become conditioned to 
the
    chemosensory cues associated with food provided by their parents. This is a
    non-trivial suggestion, as the nervous system of a holometabolous insect is
    extensively rearranged and rewired during metamorphosis; nevertheless, there 
have
    been convincing studies to show that such pre-imaginal conditioning indeed
    occurs. This shows that insect parents can pass on valuable information 
about
    suitable food types to their offspring, simply by placing eggs on suitable 
host
    plants, or by provisioning eggs with certain food types. In a similar vein,
    researchers have considered the possibility of "traditions" being 
established in
    honeybees colonies. Foragers can be trained to feed at a certain time of 
day, and
    it was shown that these learned temporal preferences are picked up by larvae 
via
    vibratory cues. The individuals so taught will display the same preferences 
when
    they themselves become foragers.
    3) One of the most spectacular examples of social learning occurs in the 
honeybee
    dances. Inside the darkness of the hive, successful foragers display a 
series of
    stereotypical motor behaviors which inform other foragers of the precise 
location
    of floral food, up to several kilometers away from the hive. Dancers 
essentially
    "teach" recruits by putting them through a symbolized version of the "real 
life"
    flight to the food source. Recruits memorize and decode the information 
delivered
    in the dances, and subsequently apply the information on the flight to the
    indicated food source. Note that this constitutes a form of observatory
    (unrewarded) learning: while dancers occasionally give food samples to 
recruits
    by regurgitating food, these food samples are not a prerequisite for 
successful
    information transmission. Such mouth-to-mouth contacts between bees, 
however,
    serve another function in the context of social learning: successful 
foragers can
    teach their nestmates the scent of the food they have located.
    4) With the exception of Darwin's suggestion that honeybees might copy bad 
habits
    from bumblebees, the examples above are all cases where the transmission of
    information is of mutual interest, for example between parents and 
offspring, or
    between members of a colony of related individuals. A recent focus in social
    influences on learning, however, concerns cases where individuals 
inadvertently
    leave cues that can be used as publicly available information by other
    individuals for adaptive behavior [2]. A relatively simple form is local
    enhancement, where animals are drawn to sites where conspecifics are present 
[1].
    The newcomers may then learn, on their own, that the site contains valuable 
food,
    for example in Vespid wasps. Bumblebees are attracted to members of the same
    species when they scout for a novel flower species, and can learn about 
suitable
    food sources by observatory learning from unrelated individuals, without the
    necessity of direct interaction with these individuals, and without the 
presence
    of rewards. This means that bees, by observing the activities of other 
foragers,
    can bypass the substantial costs of exploring multiple food sources by 
individual
    initiative.
    References (abridged):
    1. Galef, B.G. and Laland, K.N. (2005). Social learning in animals: 
Empirical
    studies and theoretical models. Bioscience 55, 489-499
    2. Danchin, E., Giraldeau, L.A., Valone, T.J., and Wagner, R.H. (2004). 
Public
    information: From nosy neighbors to cultural evolution. Science 305, 487-491
    3. Romanes, G.J. (1884). Mental evolution in animals. AMS Press, New York
    4. Galef, B.G. (1996). Introduction. In: Heynes, C.M., Galef, B.G. (Eds.), 
Social
    learning in animals. (1996). Academic Press, San Diego
    5. Hopkins, A.D. (1917). A discussion of C.G.Hewitt's paper on 'Insect 
Behavior'.
    J. Econ. Entomol. 10, 92-93
    Current Biology http://www.current-biology.com
    --------------------------------
    Related Material:
    ON ALTRUISM OF INDIVIDUALS IN INSECT SOCIETIES
    The following points are made by Edward O. Wilson (citation below):
    1) Altruism is self-destructive behavior performed for the benefit of 
others. The
    use of the word altruism in biology has been faulted by Williams and 
Williams
    (1957), who suggest that the alternative expression "social donorism" is
    preferable because it has less gratuitous emotional flavor. Even so, 
altruism has
    been used as a term in connection with evolutionary argumentation by Haldane
    (1932) and rigorous genetic theory by Hamilton (1964), and it has the great
    advantage of being instantly familiar. The self-destruction can range in
    intensity all the way from total bodily sacrifice to a slight diminishment 
of
    reproductive powers. Altruistic behavior is of course commonplace in the
    responses of parents toward their young. It is far less frequent, and for 
our
    purposes much more interesting, when displayed by young toward their parents 
or
    by individuals toward siblings or other, more distantly related members of 
the
    same species. Altruism is a subject of importance in evolution theory 
because it
    implies the existence of group selection, and its extreme development in the
    social insects is therefore of more than ordinary interest. The great scope 
and
    variety of the phenomenon in the social insects is best indicated by citing 
a few
    concrete examples:
    a) The soldier caste of most species of termites and ants is virtually 
limited in
    function to colony defense. Soldiers are often slow to respond to stimuli 
that
    arouse the rest of the colony, but, when they do, they normally place 
themselves
    in the position of maximum danger. When nest walls of higher termites such 
as
    Nasutitermes are broken open, for example, the white, defenseless nymphs and
    workers rush inward toward the concealed depths of the nest, while the 
soldiers
    press outward and mill aggressively on the outside of the nest. Nutting 
(personal
    communication) witnessed soldiers of Amitermes emersoni in Arizona emerge 
from
    the nest well in advance of the nuptial flights, wander widely around the 
nest
    vicinity, and effectively tie up in combat all foraging ants that could have
    endangered the emerging winged reproductives.
    b) I have observed that injured workers of the fire ant Solenopsis 
saevissima
    leave the nest more readily and are more aggressive on the average than 
their
    uninjured sisters. Dying workers of the harvesting ant Pogonomyrmex badius 
tend
    to leave the nest altogether. Both effects may be no more than meaningless
    epiphenomena, but it is also likely that the responses are altruistic. To be
    specific, injured workers are useless for most functions other than defense,
    while dying workers pose a sanitary problem.
    c) Alarm communication, which is employed in one form or other throughout 
the
    higher social groups, has the effect of drawing workers toward sources of 
danger
    while protecting the queens, the brood, and the unmated sexual forms.
    d) Honeybee workers possess barbed stings that tend to remain embedded when 
the
    insects pull away from their victims, causing part of their viscera to be 
torn
    out and the bees to be fatally injured. A similar defensive maneuver occurs 
in
    many polybiine wasps, including Synoeca surinama and at least some species 
of
    Polybia and Stelopolybia and the ant Pogonomyrmex badius. The fearsome 
reputation
    of social bees and wasps in comparison with other insects is due to their 
general
    readiness to throw their lives away upon slight provocation.
    e) When fed exclusively on sugar water, honeybee workers can still raise 
larvae
    -- but only by metabolizing and donating their own tissue proteins. That 
this
    donation to their sisters actually shortens their own lives is indicated by 
the
    finding of de Groot (1953) that longevity in workers is a function of 
protein
    intake.
    f) Female workers of most social insects curtail their own egg laying in the
    presence of a queen, either through submissive behavior or through 
biochemical
    inhibition. The workers of many ant and stingless bee species lay special 
trophic
    eggs that are fed principally to the larvae and queen.
    g) The "communal stomach", or distensible crop, together with a specially
    modified proventriculus, forms a complex storage and pumping system that
    functions in the exchange of liquid food among members of the same colony in 
the
    higher ants. In both honeybees and ants, newly fed workers often press 
offerings
    of ingluvial food on nestmates without being begged, and they may go so far 
as to
    expend their supply to a level below the colony average.
    2) These diverse physiological and behavioral responses are difficult to
    interpret in any way except as altruistic adaptations that have evolved 
through
    the agency of natural selection operating at the colony level. The list by 
no
    means exhausts the phenomena that could be placed in the same category.
    Adapted from: Edward O. Wilson: The Insect Societies. Harvard University 
Press
    1971, p.321.
    --------------------------------
    Related Material:
    ON EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AND THE STUDY OF INSECTS
    The following points are made by Nipam H. Patel (Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 2000
    97:4442):
    1) A great number of studies aimed at understanding the evolution of 
development
    have been carried out within insects. Without a doubt, this is largely 
because
    our detailed understanding of the genetic and molecular basis of pattern
    formation in the model insect, Drosophila melanogaster, provides an 
excellent
    starting point for a large number of comparative studies. In addition, 
insects
    are an evolutionary diverse group of animals; almost one million species of
    insects have been described, and estimates of insect diversity place the 
total
    number of undescribed insect species at over 20 million.
    2) More importantly, there is an enormous range of morphological and
    developmental diversity found within this group of animals, extending from
    spectacularly colored butterflies, to stick insects, to horned beetles, to
    wingless silverfish, to minuscule parasitic wasps. Over the last few years,
    evolutionary studies within the insects have ranged from characterizing the
    genetic and molecular changes responsible for reproductive isolation between
    closely related species of Drosophila, to comparing gene expression patterns 
to
    understand the developmental basis for variation in appendage number among
    differently related members of this group.
    3) A number of investigations have also focused on the evolution of the
    developmental process of segmentation. Finally, recent studies in a variety 
of
    insects have revealed interesting molecular changes in the process of axis
    formation... It is particularly important that researchers continue to take
    advantage of as many different groups of insects as possible; this is the 
only
    way we can adequately address the evolutionary questions facing us.
    Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. http://www.pnas.org


From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan  6 18:04:03 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 13:04:03 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Children Learn by Monkey See,
	Monkey Do. Chimps Don't.
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252120320.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don't.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/science/13essa.html

    Essay
    By CARL ZIMMER

    I drove into New Haven on a recent morning with a burning question
    on my mind. How did my daughter do against the chimpanzees?

    A month before, I had found a letter in the cubby of my daughter
    Charlotte at her preschool. It was from a graduate student at Yale
    asking for volunteers for a psychological study. The student, Derek
    Lyons, wanted to observe how 3- and 4-year-olds learn. I was
    curious, so I got in touch. Mr. Lyons explained how his study might
    shed light on human evolution.

    His study would build on a paper published in the July issue of the
    journal Animal Cognition by Victoria Horner and Andrew Whiten, two
    psychologists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Dr.
    Horner and Dr. Whiten described the way they showed young chimps
    how to retrieve food from a box.

    The box was painted black and had a door on one side and a bolt
    running across the top. The food was hidden in a tube behind the
    door. When they showed the chimpanzees how to retrieve the food,
    the researchers added some unnecessary steps. Before they opened
    the door, they pulled back the bolt and tapped the top of the box
    with a stick. Only after they had pushed the bolt back in place did
    they finally open the door and fish out the food.

    Because the chimps could not see inside, they could not tell that
    the extra steps were unnecessary. As a result, when the chimps were
    given the box, two-thirds faithfully imitated the scientists to
    retrieve the food.

    The team then used a box with transparent walls and found a
    strikingly different result. Those chimps could see that the
    scientists were wasting their time sliding the bolt and tapping the
    top. None followed suit. They all went straight for the door.

    The researchers turned to humans. They showed the transparent box
    to 16 children from a Scottish nursery school. After putting a
    sticker in the box, they showed the children how to retrieve it.
    They included the unnecessary bolt pulling and box tapping.

    The scientists placed the sticker back in the box and left the
    room, telling the children that they could do whatever they thought
    necessary to retrieve it.

    The children could see just as easily as the chimps that it was
    pointless to slide open the bolt or tap on top of the box. Yet 80
    percent did so anyway. "It seemed so spectacular to me," Mr. Lyons
    said. "It suggested something remarkable was going on."

    It was possible, however, that the results might come from a simple
    desire in the children just to play along. To see how deep this
    urge to overimitate went, Mr. Lyons came up with new experiments
    with the transparent box. He worked with a summer intern, Andrew
    Young, a senior at Carnegie Mellon, to build other puzzles using
    Tupperware, wire baskets and bits of wood. And Mr. Lyons planned
    out a much larger study, with 100 children.

    I was intrigued. I signed up Charlotte, and she participated in the
    study twice, first at the school and later at Mr. Lyons's lab.

    Charlotte didn't feel like talking about either experience beyond
    saying they were fun. As usual, she was more interested in talking
    about atoms and princesses.

    Mr. Lyons was more eager to talk. He invited me to go over
    Charlotte's performance at the Yale Cognition and Development Lab,
    led by Mr. Lyons's adviser, Frank C. Keil.

    Driving into New Haven for our meeting, I felt as if Charlotte had
    just taken some kind of interspecies SAT. It was silly, but I hoped
    that Charlotte would show the chimps that she could see cause and
    effect as well as they could. Score one for Homo sapiens.

    At first, she did. Mr. Lyons loaded a movie on his computer in
    which Charlotte eagerly listened to him talk about the transparent
    plastic box.

    He set it in front of her and asked her to retrieve the plastic
    turtle that he had just put inside. Rather than politely opening
    the front door, Charlotte grabbed the entire front side, ripped it
    open at its Velcro tabs and snatched the turtle. "I've got it!" she
    shouted.

    A chimp couldn't have done better, I thought.

    But at their second meeting, things changed. This time, Mr. Lyons
    had an undergraduate, Jennifer Barnes, show Charlotte how to open
    the box. Before she opened the front door, Ms. Barnes slid the bolt
    back across the top of the box and tapped on it needlessly.
    Charlotte imitated every irrelevant step. The box ripping had
    disappeared. I could almost hear the chimps hooting.

    Ms. Barnes showed Charlotte four other puzzles, and time after time
    she overimitated. When the movies were over, I wasn't sure what to
    say. "So how did she do?" I asked awkwardly.

    "She's pretty age-typical," Mr. Lyons said. Having watched 100
    children, he agrees with Dr. Horner and Dr. Whiten that children
    really do overimitate. He has found that it is very hard to get
    children not to.

    If they rush through opening a puzzle, they don't skip the extra
    steps. They just do them all faster. What makes the results even
    more intriguing is that the children understand the laws of physics
    well enough to solve the puzzles on their own. Charlotte's box
    ripping is proof of that.

    Mr. Lyons sees his results as evidence that humans are hard-wired
    to learn by imitation, even when that is clearly not the best way
    to learn. If he is right, this represents a big evolutionary change
    from our ape ancestors. Other primates are bad at imitation. When
    they watch another primate doing something, they seem to focus on
    what its goals are and ignore its actions.

    As human ancestors began to make complicated tools, figuring out
    goals might not have been good enough anymore. Hominids needed a
    way to register automatically what other hominids did, even if they
    didn't understand the intentions behind them. They needed to
    imitate.

    Not long ago, many psychologists thought that imitation was a
    simple, primitive action compared with figuring out the intentions
    of others. But that is changing. "Maybe imitation is a lot more
    sophisticated than people thought," Mr. Lyons said.

    We don't appreciate just how automatically we rely on imitation,
    because usually it serves us so well. "It is so adaptive that it
    almost never sticks out this way," he added. "You have to create
    very artificial circumstances to see it."

    In a few years, I plan to explain this experience to Charlotte. I
    want her to know what I now know. That it's O.K. to lose to the
    chimps. In fact, it may be what makes us uniquely human.


From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com  Sat Jan  7 05:42:53 2006
From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.)
Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 22:42:53 -0700
Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252118540.14301@panix3.panix.com>
References: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252118540.14301@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <43BF54DD.7020400@solution-consulting.com>

Frank,
This was hilarious! Imagine being against the Dalai Lama*! What 
Torquemadas these scientists are!

*He is agnostic on the existence of God! How can one object?

Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.
Solutions Consulting Group
166 East 5900 South, Ste. B-108
Salt Lake City, UT 84107

Tel: (801) 261-1412; Fax: (801) 288-2269

Check out our webpage: www.solution-consulting.com

Feeling upset? Order Get On The Peace Train, my new solution-oriented book on negative emotions.



Premise Checker wrote:

> In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
> The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.12.16
> http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i17/17b01001.htm
>
>    By LEIGH E. SCHMIDT
>
>    Even the Dalai Lama's harshest critics at the Society for
>    Neuroscience meeting last month, in Washington, would have
>    to concede this much: Choosing the exiled Tibetan Buddhist
>    leader to inaugurate the professional association's series
>    on neuroscience and society certainly got people talking.
>    Who would have thought that an announced lecture on "The
>    Neuroscience of Meditation" would set off a protest petition
>    gathering about 1,000 signatures, a counterpetition of
>    support boasting nearly as many names, substantial coverage
>    in The New York Times and on National Public Radio, as well
>    as ample chatter in the blogosphere? In a culture that likes
>    its battles between science and religion to be loud,
>    colorful, and Christian -- another nasty squabble, say,
>    between evolutionists and creationists -- this controversy
>    seemed unlikely to gain much traction. Yet as the dispute
>    built momentum in the months leading up to the event, it
>    soon became clear that the prospect of the red-robed Dalai
>    Lama's urging the study of an ancient spiritual practice
>    upon white-coated lab scientists would provide a newsworthy
>    angle on the usual wrangling.
>
>    Playing upon tensions far less noticed than those that have
>    plagued relations between science and conservative
>    Christianity, the latest dust-up reveals the spirit wars
>    that divide the knowledge class itself. How purely secular
>    and naturalistic do the members of that class imagine
>    themselves to be, and how committed are they to keeping
>    religion at bay in their conference gatherings, university
>    laboratories, civic institutions, newsrooms, and think
>    tanks? In turn, is "spirituality" a back door through which
>    religion gets to enter the conversation, now dressed in the
>    suitably neutralized garb of meditation as a universalistic
>    practice of inward peace and outreaching compassion? Or does
>    religion, even when soft-peddled in the cosmopolitan
>    language of spirituality and the contemplative mind,
>    inevitably remain an embarrassment to those elites who stake
>    their authority on secular rationality? The dispute roiling
>    the neuroscience society over the past six months has
>    brought such questions front and center.
>
>    Inviting the Dalai Lama to speak at the meeting created two
>    major border disputes. The first, of modest consequence to
>    religion-and-science debates, was the conflict over the
>    "political agenda" of the exiled Tibetan leader. In an
>    international professional association that includes many
>    Chinese scientists, some members were offended at the
>    implied endorsement that the event gave to the Dalai Lama's
>    larger cause of freedom for Tibetans. The second dispute,
>    more insistently debated, was over religion's showing up --
>    so visibly, to boot -- at an annual meeting of
>    neuroscientists. The almost visceral response by critics was
>    to declare a total separation of religion and science, to
>    wave the flag for the late-19th-century warfare between the
>    two domains. "A science conference is not [an] appropriate
>    venue for a religion-based presentation," a professor of
>    anesthesia from the University of California at San
>    Francisco remarked on the petition. "Who's next, the pope?"
>    That sign-off question pointed to a second part of the
>    strict separationist logic: Even if the Dalai Lama seemed
>    pretty irenic as religious leaders go, he nonetheless
>    represented a slippery slope into a mire of superstition and
>    authoritarianism. (How else, some critics asked, were they
>    to interpret his known affinities with reincarnation and
>    monasticism?) "Today, the Dalai Lama; Tomorrow,
>    Creationists?" wrote a professor of medicine at the
>    University of Toronto, capturing perhaps the most
>    commonplace anxiety given voice among the critics. Keep the
>    society free of all religious discussion, or else the
>    esteemed body might slide into the hell of a Kansas
>    school-board meeting.
>
>    More interesting than the purists' boundary monitoring is
>    the way the Dalai Lama and his defenders imagine through
>    meditation an emerging meeting point for science and
>    religion in contemporary culture. The headline study that
>    served as the immediate source of intrigue surrounding his
>    recent lecture was an article published last year in the
>    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and produced
>    by researchers at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging
>    and Behavior, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
>    That group, led by the psychology professor Richard J.
>    Davidson, has been studying long-term Tibetan Buddhist
>    practitioners of meditation, comparing their brain-wave
>    patterns with those of a control group. Davidson himself has
>    been working in the science-religion borderlands for more
>    than two decades and has been a leading collaborator with
>    the Mind and Life Institute, in Boulder, Colo., one of the
>    principal organizations encouraging the
>    neuroscience-meditation dialogue.
>
>    Shifting the focus of research from altered states of
>    consciousness or momentary experiences of ecstasy, which so
>    often concerned inquirers in the 1960s and 1970s, the
>    Davidson group has been looking for evidence that sustained
>    meditation causes actual neural changes in everyday patterns
>    of cognition and emotion. In other words, they want to know
>    if the brain function of long-term contemplatives is made
>    demonstrably different through years of "mental training."
>    And not just different, but better: That is, does the
>    well-developed meditative mind sustain higher levels of
>    compassion and calmness than the run-of-the-mill American
>    noggin? Well, after testing eight long-time Tibetan Buddhist
>    practitioners and 10 "healthy student volunteers," the
>    researchers discovered that the 10,000 to 50,000 hours that
>    the various monks had devoted to "mental training" appeared
>    to make a real neurological difference. As the study's title
>    put it, "Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude
>    gamma synchrony during mental practice." Davidson and
>    company, careful not to overreach in their conclusions, did
>    suggest that practices of meditation, and the accompanying
>    compassionate affect, were "flexible skills that can be
>    trained." Did that mean contemplative practice could be
>    abstracted from its religious context and then applied as a
>    kind of public pedagogy? Were hopeful supporters wrong to
>    read this as a tantalizing suggestion that meditation might
>    prove beneficial not only for the mental health of Americans
>    but also for the very fabric of society? Where, after all,
>    couldn't we benefit from a little more "pure compassion,"
>    altruism, lovingkindness, and "calm abiding"?
>
>    As novel as it may sound to monitor the brain waves of
>    Tibetan Buddhist monks in university laboratories or on
>    Himalayan hillsides (Davidson has done both), it is
>    certainly not the first time that American psychologists
>    have sought to re-engage the spiritual through the
>    healthy-mindedness of meditation. At Wisconsin, Davidson
>    occupies a research professorship named for Harvard's
>    William James, the pioneering psychologist, psychical
>    researcher, and philosopher of religion, and it is in the
>    tradition of James that the current turn to the
>    contemplative mind is best understood. Counter to the
>    popular image of Americans as endlessly enterprising,
>    agitated, and restless -- all busy Marthas, no reflective
>    Marys -- James discerned a deep mystical cast to the
>    American psyche and pursued that strain with uncommon
>    intellectual devotion. Yet when it came to "methodical
>    meditation," James saw little of it left among American
>    Christians and turned instead to homegrown practitioners of
>    various mind-over-matter cures. He particularly accented
>    those "New Thought" metaphysicians who were pushing forward
>    a dialogue with far-flung emissaries of yoga and Buddhist
>    meditation in the wake of the World's Parliament of
>    Religions, held in Chicago in 1893.
>
>    Among James's favored practitioners of these newly
>    improvised regimens of meditation was Ralph Waldo Trine, a
>    Boston-based reformer with a knack for inspirational
>    writing. In The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902),
>    James used Trine's blockbuster In Tune With the Infinite
>    (1897) as an epitome of the emergent practices of
>    concentration, mental repose, and healthy-mindedness then
>    percolating in New England and elsewhere across the country.
>    Though an unabashed popularizer, Trine was not a
>    lightweight. With an educational pedigree that ran from Knox
>    College to the University of Wisconsin to the Johns Hopkins
>    University, he moved easily in Harvard's wider metaphysical
>    circles and energetically engaged various progressive
>    causes. In much the same way that current studies promote
>    the clinical applications of meditation, Trine emphasized
>    the healthful benefits that accrued from cultivating a calm
>    yet expectant mind. He had no scanners or electrodes, but he
>    had the same hopes about improving the mental and physical
>    health of Americans through elaborating a universal practice
>    of meditation, one that transcended the particulars of any
>    one religious tradition and represented a kind of
>    cosmopolitan composite of all faiths. And while Trine did
>    not have the Dalai Lama at hand, he did have extended
>    contact with a well-traveled Sinhalese Buddhist monk,
>    Anagarika Dharmapala, with whom he compared notes and
>    devotional habits at a summer colony in Maine as he was
>    putting together his own system of meditation for Americans.
>    Like other inquirers then and now, Trine was all too ready
>    to look to Asia for a practical antidote to American
>    nervousness.
>
>    The real payoff for Trine, as it is for Davidson and his
>    colleagues, was not established simply through a calculus of
>    productivity or cheerfulness: Would encouraging meditation
>    or other visualization techniques make people more alert and
>    proficient at the office or on the playing field? Would it
>    make them feel happier and less disgruntled? Trine, like
>    James and now Davidson, was finally more interested in
>    saintliness and compassion than in helping stressed-out
>    brain workers relax and concentrate. It is hard not to hear
>    a hint of Davidson's pursuit of altruism in Trine's "spirit
>    of infinite love," the moral imperative to "care for the
>    weak and defenseless." And it is hard not to see that the
>    world of William James and Ralph Waldo Trine is alive and
>    well as American investigators wire up Tibetan Buddhist
>    hermits in a search for the powers of the concentrated mind,
>    the mental disciplines of harmony, compassion, and peace
>    that might make the world a marginally kinder, less selfish
>    place. That optimism about human nature -- that the mind has
>    deep reservoirs of potential for empathy and altruism -- had
>    a lot more backing among liberals and progressives in 1900
>    than it does today. Still, the considerable hopes now
>    invested in meditation suggest that the old romantic
>    aspirations, spiritual and otherwise, continue to flourish,
>    especially among members of the mind-preoccupied knowledge
>    class.
>
>    P erhaps the most important dimension of the Dalai Lama's
>    turn to the laboratory is the notion that the
>    religion-science wound will be salved through recasting
>    religion as spirituality. The Nobel laureate's latest book
>    explicitly suggests as much in its title, The Universe in a
>    Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. In
>    doing so, he expressly appeals to all those Americans who
>    fear fundamentalist incarnations of religion and who instead
>    cast themselves as intellectually curious and spiritually
>    seeking. Religion, on this model, is not a domain of
>    authority competing with science but an inward terrain of
>    personal experience and individual probing. Spirituality,
>    the Dalai Lama writes, "is a human journey into our internal
>    resources." Representing "the union of wisdom and
>    compassion," it shares with science a progressive hope for
>    "the betterment of humanity." In those terms, religion as
>    spirituality becomes the handmaiden of science itself,
>    joining it in an open quest for knowledge, empirical and
>    pragmatic, unconstrained by ancient creeds, cosmologies, or
>    churches. In such exhortations the Dalai Lama shows a fine,
>    intuitive feel for much of American intellectual and
>    religious life, but he is hardly telling today's Emersonian
>    inquirers something about the universe that they do not
>    already affirm.
>
>    A practice of meditation made palatable to scientists,
>    secularists, and seekers would no doubt look pallid to all
>    those monks, hermits, and saints who have taken it to be an
>    arduous and ascetic discipline. Still, the American pursuit
>    of "spirituality," reaching a crescendo in the past two
>    decades, has been all too easy to dismiss as paltry and
>    unsubstantial, labeled as foreign and threatening to
>    more-orthodox versions of a Christian America. In this
>    often-charged religious environment, the Dalai Lama has
>    astutely laid hold of the science-spirituality nexus as a
>    cultural foothold. As he has discovered in this latest
>    brouhaha, that move has hardly lifted him above the wider
>    debates, whether about materialism or intelligent design,
>    but it has allowed him to connect with America's more
>    cosmopolitan and progressive religious impulses. When
>    William James was asked directly in 1904, "What do you mean
>    by 'spirituality'?," he replied: "Susceptibility to ideals,
>    but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about
>    them." In mingling with neuroscientists who have warmed to
>    his talk of spirituality, the Dalai Lama may well have found
>    his own avatars of William James.
>
>    Leigh E. Schmidt is a professor of religion at Princeton
>    University and author of Restless Souls: The Making of
>    American Spirituality (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).
> _______________________________________________
> paleopsych mailing list
> paleopsych at paleopsych.org
> http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych
>
>


From shovland at mindspring.com  Sat Jan  7 15:55:04 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 07:55:04 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
In-Reply-To: <43BF54DD.7020400@solution-consulting.com>
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHOEGFCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

Sounds like a bunch of very conventional people
being threatened by an unusual idea...

-----Original Message-----
From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org
[mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org]On Behalf Of Lynn D. Johnson,
Ph.D.
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 9:43 PM
To: The new improved paleopsych list
Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] CHE: In the Lab With the Dalai Lama


Frank,
This was hilarious! Imagine being against the Dalai Lama*! What
Torquemadas these scientists are!

*He is agnostic on the existence of God! How can one object?

Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.
Solutions Consulting Group
166 East 5900 South, Ste. B-108
Salt Lake City, UT 84107

Tel: (801) 261-1412; Fax: (801) 288-2269

Check out our webpage: www.solution-consulting.com

Feeling upset? Order Get On The Peace Train, my new solution-oriented book
on negative emotions.



Premise Checker wrote:

> In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
> The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.12.16
> http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i17/17b01001.htm
>
>    By LEIGH E. SCHMIDT
>
>    Even the Dalai Lama's harshest critics at the Society for
>    Neuroscience meeting last month, in Washington, would have
>    to concede this much: Choosing the exiled Tibetan Buddhist
>    leader to inaugurate the professional association's series
>    on neuroscience and society certainly got people talking.
>    Who would have thought that an announced lecture on "The
>    Neuroscience of Meditation" would set off a protest petition
>    gathering about 1,000 signatures, a counterpetition of
>    support boasting nearly as many names, substantial coverage
>    in The New York Times and on National Public Radio, as well
>    as ample chatter in the blogosphere? In a culture that likes
>    its battles between science and religion to be loud,
>    colorful, and Christian -- another nasty squabble, say,
>    between evolutionists and creationists -- this controversy
>    seemed unlikely to gain much traction. Yet as the dispute
>    built momentum in the months leading up to the event, it
>    soon became clear that the prospect of the red-robed Dalai
>    Lama's urging the study of an ancient spiritual practice
>    upon white-coated lab scientists would provide a newsworthy
>    angle on the usual wrangling.
>
>    Playing upon tensions far less noticed than those that have
>    plagued relations between science and conservative
>    Christianity, the latest dust-up reveals the spirit wars
>    that divide the knowledge class itself. How purely secular
>    and naturalistic do the members of that class imagine
>    themselves to be, and how committed are they to keeping
>    religion at bay in their conference gatherings, university
>    laboratories, civic institutions, newsrooms, and think
>    tanks? In turn, is "spirituality" a back door through which
>    religion gets to enter the conversation, now dressed in the
>    suitably neutralized garb of meditation as a universalistic
>    practice of inward peace and outreaching compassion? Or does
>    religion, even when soft-peddled in the cosmopolitan
>    language of spirituality and the contemplative mind,
>    inevitably remain an embarrassment to those elites who stake
>    their authority on secular rationality? The dispute roiling
>    the neuroscience society over the past six months has
>    brought such questions front and center.
>
>    Inviting the Dalai Lama to speak at the meeting created two
>    major border disputes. The first, of modest consequence to
>    religion-and-science debates, was the conflict over the
>    "political agenda" of the exiled Tibetan leader. In an
>    international professional association that includes many
>    Chinese scientists, some members were offended at the
>    implied endorsement that the event gave to the Dalai Lama's
>    larger cause of freedom for Tibetans. The second dispute,
>    more insistently debated, was over religion's showing up --
>    so visibly, to boot -- at an annual meeting of
>    neuroscientists. The almost visceral response by critics was
>    to declare a total separation of religion and science, to
>    wave the flag for the late-19th-century warfare between the
>    two domains. "A science conference is not [an] appropriate
>    venue for a religion-based presentation," a professor of
>    anesthesia from the University of California at San
>    Francisco remarked on the petition. "Who's next, the pope?"
>    That sign-off question pointed to a second part of the
>    strict separationist logic: Even if the Dalai Lama seemed
>    pretty irenic as religious leaders go, he nonetheless
>    represented a slippery slope into a mire of superstition and
>    authoritarianism. (How else, some critics asked, were they
>    to interpret his known affinities with reincarnation and
>    monasticism?) "Today, the Dalai Lama; Tomorrow,
>    Creationists?" wrote a professor of medicine at the
>    University of Toronto, capturing perhaps the most
>    commonplace anxiety given voice among the critics. Keep the
>    society free of all religious discussion, or else the
>    esteemed body might slide into the hell of a Kansas
>    school-board meeting.
>
>    More interesting than the purists' boundary monitoring is
>    the way the Dalai Lama and his defenders imagine through
>    meditation an emerging meeting point for science and
>    religion in contemporary culture. The headline study that
>    served as the immediate source of intrigue surrounding his
>    recent lecture was an article published last year in the
>    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and produced
>    by researchers at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging
>    and Behavior, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
>    That group, led by the psychology professor Richard J.
>    Davidson, has been studying long-term Tibetan Buddhist
>    practitioners of meditation, comparing their brain-wave
>    patterns with those of a control group. Davidson himself has
>    been working in the science-religion borderlands for more
>    than two decades and has been a leading collaborator with
>    the Mind and Life Institute, in Boulder, Colo., one of the
>    principal organizations encouraging the
>    neuroscience-meditation dialogue.
>
>    Shifting the focus of research from altered states of
>    consciousness or momentary experiences of ecstasy, which so
>    often concerned inquirers in the 1960s and 1970s, the
>    Davidson group has been looking for evidence that sustained
>    meditation causes actual neural changes in everyday patterns
>    of cognition and emotion. In other words, they want to know
>    if the brain function of long-term contemplatives is made
>    demonstrably different through years of "mental training."
>    And not just different, but better: That is, does the
>    well-developed meditative mind sustain higher levels of
>    compassion and calmness than the run-of-the-mill American
>    noggin? Well, after testing eight long-time Tibetan Buddhist
>    practitioners and 10 "healthy student volunteers," the
>    researchers discovered that the 10,000 to 50,000 hours that
>    the various monks had devoted to "mental training" appeared
>    to make a real neurological difference. As the study's title
>    put it, "Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude
>    gamma synchrony during mental practice." Davidson and
>    company, careful not to overreach in their conclusions, did
>    suggest that practices of meditation, and the accompanying
>    compassionate affect, were "flexible skills that can be
>    trained." Did that mean contemplative practice could be
>    abstracted from its religious context and then applied as a
>    kind of public pedagogy? Were hopeful supporters wrong to
>    read this as a tantalizing suggestion that meditation might
>    prove beneficial not only for the mental health of Americans
>    but also for the very fabric of society? Where, after all,
>    couldn't we benefit from a little more "pure compassion,"
>    altruism, lovingkindness, and "calm abiding"?
>
>    As novel as it may sound to monitor the brain waves of
>    Tibetan Buddhist monks in university laboratories or on
>    Himalayan hillsides (Davidson has done both), it is
>    certainly not the first time that American psychologists
>    have sought to re-engage the spiritual through the
>    healthy-mindedness of meditation. At Wisconsin, Davidson
>    occupies a research professorship named for Harvard's
>    William James, the pioneering psychologist, psychical
>    researcher, and philosopher of religion, and it is in the
>    tradition of James that the current turn to the
>    contemplative mind is best understood. Counter to the
>    popular image of Americans as endlessly enterprising,
>    agitated, and restless -- all busy Marthas, no reflective
>    Marys -- James discerned a deep mystical cast to the
>    American psyche and pursued that strain with uncommon
>    intellectual devotion. Yet when it came to "methodical
>    meditation," James saw little of it left among American
>    Christians and turned instead to homegrown practitioners of
>    various mind-over-matter cures. He particularly accented
>    those "New Thought" metaphysicians who were pushing forward
>    a dialogue with far-flung emissaries of yoga and Buddhist
>    meditation in the wake of the World's Parliament of
>    Religions, held in Chicago in 1893.
>
>    Among James's favored practitioners of these newly
>    improvised regimens of meditation was Ralph Waldo Trine, a
>    Boston-based reformer with a knack for inspirational
>    writing. In The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902),
>    James used Trine's blockbuster In Tune With the Infinite
>    (1897) as an epitome of the emergent practices of
>    concentration, mental repose, and healthy-mindedness then
>    percolating in New England and elsewhere across the country.
>    Though an unabashed popularizer, Trine was not a
>    lightweight. With an educational pedigree that ran from Knox
>    College to the University of Wisconsin to the Johns Hopkins
>    University, he moved easily in Harvard's wider metaphysical
>    circles and energetically engaged various progressive
>    causes. In much the same way that current studies promote
>    the clinical applications of meditation, Trine emphasized
>    the healthful benefits that accrued from cultivating a calm
>    yet expectant mind. He had no scanners or electrodes, but he
>    had the same hopes about improving the mental and physical
>    health of Americans through elaborating a universal practice
>    of meditation, one that transcended the particulars of any
>    one religious tradition and represented a kind of
>    cosmopolitan composite of all faiths. And while Trine did
>    not have the Dalai Lama at hand, he did have extended
>    contact with a well-traveled Sinhalese Buddhist monk,
>    Anagarika Dharmapala, with whom he compared notes and
>    devotional habits at a summer colony in Maine as he was
>    putting together his own system of meditation for Americans.
>    Like other inquirers then and now, Trine was all too ready
>    to look to Asia for a practical antidote to American
>    nervousness.
>
>    The real payoff for Trine, as it is for Davidson and his
>    colleagues, was not established simply through a calculus of
>    productivity or cheerfulness: Would encouraging meditation
>    or other visualization techniques make people more alert and
>    proficient at the office or on the playing field? Would it
>    make them feel happier and less disgruntled? Trine, like
>    James and now Davidson, was finally more interested in
>    saintliness and compassion than in helping stressed-out
>    brain workers relax and concentrate. It is hard not to hear
>    a hint of Davidson's pursuit of altruism in Trine's "spirit
>    of infinite love," the moral imperative to "care for the
>    weak and defenseless." And it is hard not to see that the
>    world of William James and Ralph Waldo Trine is alive and
>    well as American investigators wire up Tibetan Buddhist
>    hermits in a search for the powers of the concentrated mind,
>    the mental disciplines of harmony, compassion, and peace
>    that might make the world a marginally kinder, less selfish
>    place. That optimism about human nature -- that the mind has
>    deep reservoirs of potential for empathy and altruism -- had
>    a lot more backing among liberals and progressives in 1900
>    than it does today. Still, the considerable hopes now
>    invested in meditation suggest that the old romantic
>    aspirations, spiritual and otherwise, continue to flourish,
>    especially among members of the mind-preoccupied knowledge
>    class.
>
>    P erhaps the most important dimension of the Dalai Lama's
>    turn to the laboratory is the notion that the
>    religion-science wound will be salved through recasting
>    religion as spirituality. The Nobel laureate's latest book
>    explicitly suggests as much in its title, The Universe in a
>    Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. In
>    doing so, he expressly appeals to all those Americans who
>    fear fundamentalist incarnations of religion and who instead
>    cast themselves as intellectually curious and spiritually
>    seeking. Religion, on this model, is not a domain of
>    authority competing with science but an inward terrain of
>    personal experience and individual probing. Spirituality,
>    the Dalai Lama writes, "is a human journey into our internal
>    resources." Representing "the union of wisdom and
>    compassion," it shares with science a progressive hope for
>    "the betterment of humanity." In those terms, religion as
>    spirituality becomes the handmaiden of science itself,
>    joining it in an open quest for knowledge, empirical and
>    pragmatic, unconstrained by ancient creeds, cosmologies, or
>    churches. In such exhortations the Dalai Lama shows a fine,
>    intuitive feel for much of American intellectual and
>    religious life, but he is hardly telling today's Emersonian
>    inquirers something about the universe that they do not
>    already affirm.
>
>    A practice of meditation made palatable to scientists,
>    secularists, and seekers would no doubt look pallid to all
>    those monks, hermits, and saints who have taken it to be an
>    arduous and ascetic discipline. Still, the American pursuit
>    of "spirituality," reaching a crescendo in the past two
>    decades, has been all too easy to dismiss as paltry and
>    unsubstantial, labeled as foreign and threatening to
>    more-orthodox versions of a Christian America. In this
>    often-charged religious environment, the Dalai Lama has
>    astutely laid hold of the science-spirituality nexus as a
>    cultural foothold. As he has discovered in this latest
>    brouhaha, that move has hardly lifted him above the wider
>    debates, whether about materialism or intelligent design,
>    but it has allowed him to connect with America's more
>    cosmopolitan and progressive religious impulses. When
>    William James was asked directly in 1904, "What do you mean
>    by 'spirituality'?," he replied: "Susceptibility to ideals,
>    but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about
>    them." In mingling with neuroscientists who have warmed to
>    his talk of spirituality, the Dalai Lama may well have found
>    his own avatars of William James.
>
>    Leigh E. Schmidt is a professor of religion at Princeton
>    University and author of Restless Souls: The Making of
>    American Spirituality (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).
> _______________________________________________
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>
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From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan  7 20:49:49 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 15:49:49 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] CPE: Andy Denis: Was Hayek a Panglossian Evolutionary
 Theorist? A Reply to Whitman
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601061300460.1480@panix2.panix.com>

Andy Denis: Was Hayek a Panglossian Evolutionary Theorist? A Reply to 
Whitman
Constitutional Political Economy, 13, 275 -285, 2002.

[Lots of comments by me below.]

andy.denis at city.ac.uk
Department of Economics, City University, London, UK

* Contact details and address for correspondence: Andy Denis, Department 
of Economics, School of Social and Human Sciences, City University, 
London, Northampton Square, LONDON, United Kingdom EC1V 0HB. Telephone: 
?44 (0)20-7040 0257; FAX: ?44 (0)20-7040 8580. URL: 
http://www.city.ac.uk/andy/

Abstract. By means of a consideration of Whitman (1998) the present paper 
considers the meanings of 'Panglossianism' and the relation between group 
and individual levels in evolution. It establishes the connection between 
the Panglossian policy prescription of laissez-faire and the mistaken 
evolutionary theory of group selection. Analysis of the passages in Hayek 
cited by Whitman shows that, once these passages are taken in context, and 
once the appropriate meaning of the term 'Panglossian' has been clarified, 
they fail to defend Hayek from this charge, but, on the contrary, confirm 
that Hayek was, indeed, 'a Panglossian evolutionary theorist'.

JEL classification: B31.

1. Introduction

This paper is a response to Whitman (1998) 'Hayek contra Pangloss on 
Evolutionary Systems', which seeks to exculpate Hayek from the charge of 
Panglossianism in his application of evolutionary theory to society. The 
present paper argues that Whitman has misunderstood the substance of the 
accusation of Panglossianism against Hayek.2 He may have been indirectly 
influenced by Gould and Lewontin (1979), which is widely assumed to 
identify Panglossianism with Darwinian adaptationism. Prior to that paper, 
the term Panglossian in evolutionary theory referred to the group 
selectionist fallacy, that groups could be selected in which individuals 
behaved altruistically. Thereafter, however, it was-- less appropriately-- 
taken to refer to Darwinian adaptationism, the view that features of 
organisms could be understood by asking what function they would best 
carry out.

The paper begins by considering the meanings of the term 'Panglossian' and 
the relation between group and individual levels in evolution. It 
establishes the connection between the Panglossian policy prescription of 
laissez-faire and the mistaken evolutionary theory of group selection. 
Attention then turns to an analysis of the passages in Hayek cited by 
Whitman. The analysis shows that, once these passages are taken in 
context, and once the older, and more appropriate, meaning of the term 
Panglossian has been re-established, they do nothing to defend Hayek from 
this charge, but, on the contrary, provide compelling evidence that Hayek 
was, indeed, ' a Panglossian evolutionary theorist'. A final section 
summarises the findings of the paper.

2. The Meaning of the Term Panglossian in Evolutionary Theory

The phrase 'Pangloss's theorem' was first used in the debate about 
evolution ... not as a criticism of adaptive explanations, but 
specifically as a criticism of 'group-selectionist', 
mean-fitness-maximising arguments (John Maynard Smith cited in Dennett 
1995:239).

Daniel Dennett (1995:238?9) argues for a distinction between Leibnizian 
and Panglossian paradigms, which he identifies in biology with the 
standpoints of individual and group adaptationism, respectively. Dennett 
regards the Leibnizian standpoint as the source of the bulk of our 
understanding of the living world. To understand a biological structure or 
phenomenon, the most fruitful approach is to 'reverse-engineer' it, to ask 
what purpose the structure would best serve were it the result of 
deliberate invention. No understanding of the heart, for example, is 
possible except on the hypothesis that it is there for a specific purpose: 
to pump blood around the body; similarly, the chain of structures from 
lungs to mitochondria can only be understood on the basis of the ro?le 
these structures play in respiration. Now adaptationism works well, though 
imperfectly, at the level of the individual organism. A major source of 
these imperfections is the fact that the replicators, in whose interest 
inherited characteristics should be understood as operating, are, not 
individual organisms, but those organisms' genes. Once the individual 
organism is understood as a vehicle of the underlying replicator, the gene 
(Dawkins 1989b:82), many of these imperfections vanish. Nevertheless, 
taking as a working hypothesis that the structure and behaviour of an 
organism is adaptive is a fruitful approach because all parts of the 
organism share a common genotype-- and hence a common interest-- which 
they can best realise by cooperating. The 'selfish organism' is close to 
the 'selfish gene' (Dawkins 1989a:6).

Panglossianism, on the other hand, according to Dennett, is the assumption 
of group selection-- 'the old Panglossian fallacy that natural selection 
favours adaptations that are good for the species as a whole, rather than 
acting at the level of the individual' (John Maynard Smith cited in 
Dennett 1995:239).

The group selectionist argument has been succinctly expressed and 
criticised by Richard Dawkins:

A group, such as a species or a population within a species, whose 
individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of 
the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose 
individual members place their own selfish interests first. Therefore the 
world becomes populated mainly by groups consisting of self-sacrificing 
individuals. This is the theory of 'group selection' [expressed] in a 
famous book by V.C. Wynne-Edwards [Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social 
Behaviour] ... [But if] there is just one selfish rebel, prepared to 
exploit the altruism of the rest, then he, by definition, is more likely 
than they are to survive and have children. Each of these children will 
tend to inherit his selfish traits. After several generations

[Note this "after several generations. Dawkins is invoking the "long run" 
or "t to infinity" metaphor.]

of natural selection, the 'altruistic group' will be over-run by selfish 
individuals, and will be indistinguishable from the selfish group (Dawkins 
1989a:7?8).

The members of a group, unlike the members of an organism, have diverse 
interests: each individual is set up to realise the interests of its own 
DNA, by getting that DNA copied as many times as it can into future 
generations, by using the structures, executing the behaviours and 
exemplifying the predispositions which have tended to achieve that goal in 
the past. The members of an organism share an interest in cooperation, 
those of a group, for lack of a shared interest, must, perforce, compete. 
Now, clearly, groups (populations, species) do die out, and whether a 
group happens to die out may depend on the behaviour of the individual 
members of that group. But for that fact to exert any evolutionary 
selective pressure, there must be a mechanism such that the behaviour, on 
the basis of which the group is to be selected, is actually in the 
interest of its members to carry out.

So, according to Dennett and Maynard Smith, Panglossianism in evolutionary 
theory originally referred to the 'group selectionist fallacy'. Then later 
Gould and Lewontin used the term to refer, in the words of the title of 
their article (1979:581), to 'the adaptationist programme'. The Gould and 
Lewontin article has stirred considerable interest and controversy. 
Dennett's verdict on the paper is to read it as an attack on the excesses 
of adaptationism-- adaptationism as ideology rather than heuristic-- which 
has been massively misread as a refutation of adaptationism:

Gould and Lewontin memorably dubbed the excesses of adaptationism the 
'Panglossian Paradigm,' and strove to ridicule it off the stage of serious 
science ... The Gould and Lewontin article ... is widely regarded ... as 
some sort of refutation of adaptationism (Dennett 1995:239).

Though not intending any direct reference to the Gould and Lewontin paper 
(Whitman, personal communication), it is in fact in this-- mistaken-- 
sense that Whitman responds to the charge of Panglossianism against Hayek. 
But it is in the other, the Maynard-Smithian, not the Gould-Lewontinian, 
sense that Hayek can sensibly be accused of Panglossianism. On this 
charge, Whitman's article does nothing to defend Hayek; on the contrary, 
Hayek's real Panglossianism is brought out clearly in the passages that 
Whitman cites.

The big question is this: given that it is individual humans who choose 
their behaviour in the context of their inherited predispositions and 
capacities, and the range of social norms and examples of behaviour 
presented to them, can behaviours be systematically selected which are 
beneficial for the group or society of humans but impose a cost on the 
individuals carrying out those behaviours? Hayek gives an unambiguous yes, 
he refers repeatedly and approvingly to 'group selection', and supports 
his argument with reference to the very book by Wynne-Edwards criticised 
by Dawkins in the passage cited above. Speaking of the rules of conduct in 
primitive human societies, he says that:

the 'functions' which these rules serve we shall be able to discover only 
after we have reconstructed the overall order which is produced by actions 
in accordance with them ... all the individuals of the species which exist 
will behave in that manner because groups of individuals which have thus 
behaved have displaced those which did not do so (Hayek 1967:70).

And in a footnote to this passage, Hayek refers the reader to the '[a]mple 
further illustrations of the kind of orders briefly sketched in this 
section ... in V.C. Wynne-Edwards, Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social 
Behaviour, Edinburgh, 1962' (Hayek 1967:70 n7).

When we act, what we do is describable, if sufficiently regular, by a 
rule. But the question is whether the rule is an epiphenomenon, like the 
arrow formation of geese flying in each others' slipstreams, a pattern 
which emerges from generalising a large number of instances of the 
particular action, or whether the individual actions are executed because 
of the rule. In the first case, the collective outcome is just what 
happens to result from the actions of many individuals each following 
their own interests. In the second case, the actions of individuals are 
functional for the purposes served by the rule. The use of the term 
'functions' in the passage cited -- albeit in quotation marks -- only 
illustrates Hayek's functionalism. As Hodgson says,

Vanberg ... is right to suggest that Hayek's argument has a functionalist 
quality; it assumes that the contribution of a rule to the maintenance of 
a system is sufficient to explain the existence of that rule. Absent in 
Hayek's argument is the specification of a process by which a rule that is 
advantageous to the system is sustained in operation within that system 
(Hodgson 1993:168).

It is a basic assumption in Hayek that individual actions serve a 
'function' for the collective, that is, that in carrying through one's own 
interest, one is simultaneously (and more importantly) carrying through 
the interest of society; that actions performed by individuals are 
automatically functional for society. This is to assume all our problems-- 
theoretical and practical-- away.

So, to the question, whether behaviours can be systematically selected, 
which are beneficial for the group or society of humans but impose a cost 
on the individuals carrying out those behaviours, Hayek answers yes. But 
in reality the correct answer is no, and for exactly the same reasons as 
in the biological context. If a population or group of humans follows 
rules for altruistic behaviour, it may prosper and expand at the expense 
of a similar population following a different, more selfish rule. But if, 
in that altruistic population, a rebel adopts the selfish rule, the rule 
coding for the more selfish behaviour, then he will prosper relatively to 
the more altruistic members of the population. The rule for the selfish 
behaviour will tend to displace its altruistic allele:

{Note "tend to," another invocation of "the long run." Evolution is in 
fact a continuing *process,* in which indeed there may be competing 
forces, in this case, on for the individual and another for the group, 
though it may be quite common for the two processes to reinforce one 
another. In the "long run" altruistic individuals die out, but then again 
in the "long run" selfish groups die out, too. Until this "long run" is 
over, which it never is, groups with lots of selfish individuals may very 
well reproduce less than those with lots of altruistic individuals. The 
total number of selfish individuals across groups may go up, or it may go 
down. It all depends on the situation at hand. It is not a matter to be 
decided by invoking the "long run." When these debates were generating the 
most heat, that is, around the time _Unto Others_ was coming out, I asked 
the statisticians there if there was a way of measuring, in the field as 
opposed to theoretical exercises, the relative strengths of individual and 
group selection. There being no response, I presumed the statistical tools 
had not yet been developed. Whether they have since, I don't know.]

other members of the population will see its connection with personal 
success and wish to adopt it. Rules for socially desirable behaviour can 
only be successful to the extent that there is a mechanism giving 
individuals the incentive to engage in that behaviour. Wynne-Edwards group 
selection is as fallacious in the social as in the biological context, and 
for identical reasons. It is in this sense that Hayek can justly be 
criticised for 'Panglossianism'.

3. F.A. Hayek: No Panglossian?

The previous section presented the argument that what was wrong with 
Hayek's account of cultural evolution was that he applied to the social 
context the fallacious group selectionist theory of Wynne-Edwards. That is 
not how Whitman sees things, however. He defends Hayek, instead, against 
the charge of adaptationism, of Dennett's 'Leibnizian paradigm, and 
doesn't consider the differences between adaptationism applied at the 
level of the individual and the level of the group. One section of 
Whitman's article in particular is germane to the discussion: Section 2 
'F.A. Hayek: No Panglossian' (47?493)-- the heart of Whitman's essay. Here 
Whitman cites four passages in which Hayek supposedly rejects 
Panglossianism. Each is worth considering in detail.

The first such passage (48) is a citation from The Fatal Conceit, where 
Hayek seems to show himself aware of the problem with potentially 
Panglossian interpretations, and dissociates himself from them:

I have no intention to commit what is often called the genetic or 
naturalistic fallacy. I do not claim that the results of group selection 
of traditions are necessarily ''good" -- any more than I claim that other 
things that have survived in the course of evolution, such as cockroaches, 
have moral value (Hayek 1988:27).

The context of this passage is a polemic with AGN Flew over his 1967 
booklet Evolutionary Ethics. Now, the notion of evolution deployed by 
Hayek was intended, I submit, not to provide a scientific understanding of 
the social order, warts and all, which has emerged from a blind, 
pitilessly indifferent evolutionary process (Dawkins 1995:155), but to 
present that order as something desirable, beyond the competence of humans 
to interfere with. The significance of Evolutionary Ethics here is that 
Flew got the apologetic role of evolution in this scheme of thought 
exactly right in his discussion of Social Darwinism:

many people are inclined to believe, that whatever is in any sense natural 
must be as such commendable, and that Nature is a deep repository of 
wisdom, [so] for many the process of evolution by natural selection 
becomes a secular surrogate for Divine Providence; and ...for some the 
possibility, or even the duty, of relying on this benign and mighty force 
presents itself as a decisive reason why positive social policies must be 
superfluous, and may be wrong indeed almost blasphemous! (Flew 1967:15).

So Hayek is responding to the charge, in Evolutionary Ethics, that those 
who thought along the lines actually adopted by himself were committing 
the 'naturalistic fallacy', deriving an ought from an is. Flew is clear 
that such a standpoint is Panglossian: if evolution leads to an 
institutional structure which has been selected for its beneficial 
influence on human societies, then certainly there will be excellent 
reason to leave that inherited institutional structure alone. Whitman 
cites the passage from The Fatal Conceit to support his view that Hayek 
rejects such Panglossianism.

A number of points can be made about Hayek's response here. Firstly, we 
have to be quite clear here that Hayek's statement about not committing 
the naturalistic fallacy is a claim on Hayek's part: it is not 
(necessarily) what he says, but what he says he says. Hayek himself points 
out that what scientists describe as their own procedure is not to be 
trusted: 'The scientist reflecting and theorizing about his procedure is 
not always a reliable guide' (Hayek 1942, cited in Ransom 1996). Hayek's 
claim here no more closes the matter, than the denial of a suspect that he 
robbed the bank must eliminate him as a suspect. And the fact that Hayek 
is aware of the naturalistic fallacy is, again, no more evidence against 
him committing it, than a suspected bank robber's agreement, that robbing 
banks is illegal, would be evidence of his innocence.

Secondly, what is truly significant here is that Hayek refers to the 
'group selection of traditions', because-- as we have seen, and whatever 
claims Hayek chooses to make on the subject-- group selection, of the 
Wynne-Edwards variety, to which, as we have seen, Hayek explicitly refers 
his theory, does lead to Panglossian conclusions. Wynne-Edwardsian group 
selection, as Maynard Smith says, is 'the old Panglossian fallacy'.

[Hold it here. That there are "Panglossian" forces favoring groups in no 
way imples what should be called Pan-Panglossianism -- please spread my 
new meme! -- that everything works for the good of the group. Recall my 
earlier telling that Stephen Sanderson, in his splendid _The Evolution of 
Human Sociality: A Darwinian Conflict Perspective_, made a (moderate) 
functionalst out of me when he attacked *pan*-functionalism, though he 
called it functionalism pure and simple.

[If Hayek is a *moderate* Panglossian, then he is correct and insightful.]

And thirdly, taking the passage in the context in which it occurs, it is 
clear that Hayek does endow the products of cultural evolution with moral 
value: they are products of a process of selection according to human 
survival value, and the products of biological evolution, such as 
cockroaches, are not. The very next sentence after those cited by Whitman 
make this abundantly clear:

I do claim that ... without the particular traditions I have mentioned, 
the extended order of civilization could not continue to exist (whereas, 
were cockroaches to disappear, the resulting ecological 'disaster' would 
perhaps not wreak permanent havoc on mankind); and that if we discard 
these traditions ... we shall doom a large part of mankind to poverty and 
death (Hayek 1988:27).

Whitman's second example is also from The Fatal Conceit:

It would be wrong to conclude, strictly from such evolutionary premises, 
that whatever rules have evolved are always or necessarily conducive to 
the survival and increase of the populations following them ... 
Recognizing that rules generally tend to be selected, via competition, on 
the basis of their human survival-value certainly does not protect those 
rules from critical scrutiny (Hayek 1988:20).

But, if 'human survival-value' is indeed the basis for selection, one may 
well wonder, on what basis this scrutiny is to be carried out? The 
assumption is that the basic process is a human-favourable one. One can 
only criticise it on the basis of details, not the fundamental processes 
involved. Whitman's gloss on this passage is that,

Hayek believes that the cultural selection process selects for survival 
and reproduction of groups ... yet even by that criterion of efficiency, 
the resulting rules cannot be assumed to be efficient. It would be 
particularly odd, then, for those rules to be efficient according to some 
other standard, such as neoclassical economic efficiency or classical 
liberal value judgements (48).

[Well, of course, they are not "efficient" in any sort of "long run" 
static equilibrium sense. They are merely tendencies to bring individuals 
and groups into harmony. Indeed, some societies go from bad to worse!]

Hence, again, the claim is that Hayek's standpoint is not Panglossian. But 
Hayek here is clearly saying that cultural rules tend to be selected for 
human survival-value-- the outcome in each case, however, may for 
extraneous reasons be suboptimal on this score, and hence subject to 
critical scrutiny. Nevertheless, the tendency for selection according to 
human survival-value is in place and hence the critical scrutiny he 
alludes to can only be a matter of details, not of substance. The process 
itself is immune from such scrutiny. This is shown clearly if we look in 
more detail at the passage in The Fatal Conceit from which Whitman's 
extract is taken:

It would however be wrong to conclude, strictly from such evolutionary 
premises, that whatever rules have evolved are always or necessarily 
conducive to the survival and increase of the populations following them. 
We need to show, with the help of economic analysis ... how rules that 
emerge spontaneously tend to promote human survival. Recognizing that 
rules generally tend to be selected, via competition, on the basis of 
their human survival-value certainly does not protect those rules from 
critical scrutiny. This is so, if for no other reason, because there has 
so often been coercive interference in the process of cultural evolution 
(Hayek 1988:20. Italics highlight the parts elided in Whitman's extract.).

Contrary to Whitman's interpretation, Hayek is clearly saying, that we can 
assume that spontaneous evolutionary forces will tend to lead to desirable 
outcomes.

[Well they do, sometimes and often very slowly at that.]

He is saying that we cannot assume desirable social outcomes from 'such 
evolutionary premises', that is, those he had just been talking about, 
where vested interests often 'blocked the next step of evolution' (Hayek 
1988:20) by the use of state power.

[Now, I do have a problem here. Public Choice theory aims to incorporate 
state power *within* the overall system. But privleging voluntary 
behavior, within limits, is not such a bad thing. Buchanan reviewed a book 
for the Times Literary Supplement that tried to show, effectively, that 
Panglossian forces made it sure that the government almost always did 
right, and by using the same kind of metaphorical reasoning to regard 
market forces as being always forces for the good. Touche! For the book, 
that is. I don't have Buchanan's review at hand, but I recall he 
effectively trashed the argument on the grounds, familiar to all who have 
read Buchanan's writings that actual government must be compared to actual 
market, not ideal government to actual market.]

Instead, he says, we must use economic analysis to show how spontaneous 
rules lead to desirable social outcomes-- not, we should note, to enquire 
whether they do this, but to show that they do so. That spontaneous 
processes lead to human-favourable outcomes is taken for granted. It is 
what 'we need to show'. That is Panglossianism.

[This charge is a valid one.]

Whitman is keen to point out that, in Hayek's view, the rules resulting 
from the evolutionary process are not exempt from critical scrutiny. This 
is supposed to show that spontaneous evolutionary processes are not 
assumed to lead to Panglossian results. But it actually shows the 
opposite, since the reason Hayek wants critical scrutiny of those rules is 
that they may be corrupted by an admixture of state influence ('coercive 
interference'). The spontaneous processes themselves are automatically 
benign, it is state intervention which spoils things.

Whitman's third example is from The Constitution of Liberty:

These considerations, of course, do not prove that all sets of moral 
beliefs which have grown up in a society will be beneficial. Just as a 
group may owe its rise to the morals which its members obey, ... so may a 
group or nation destroy itself by the moral beliefs to which it adheres 
(Hayek 1960:67).

Again, the point of the citation is to show that Hayek, far from embracing 
Panglossianism, is well aware of the possibility of suboptimal outcomes of 
the social evolutionary process. But to see the full meaning of the 
passage cited, we once again need to look at somewhat more of the passage 
in Hayek, from which Whitman's extract has been taken, than Whitman does. 
In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek allows that the points he has 
previously made

do not prove that all the sets of moral beliefs which have grown up in a 
society will be beneficial .... [A] group or nation [may] destroy itself 
by the moral beliefs to which it adheres. Only the eventual results can 
show whether the ideals which guide a group are beneficial or destructive 
.... It may well be that a nation may destroy itself by following the 
teaching of what it regards as its best men .... There would be little 
danger of this in a society whose members were still free to choose their 
way of practical life, because in such a society such tendencies would be 
self- corrective: only groups guided by "impractical" ideals would 
decline, and others, less moral by current standards, would take their 
place. But this will happen only in a free society in which such ideals 
are not enforced on all (Hayek 1960:67).

So, although Hayek admits that suboptimal systems may evolve, firstly, 
this can only be judged by 'eventual results': there is thus a presumption 
that it is impermissible for governments rationalistically to step in 
beforehand to avert the catastrophe. Secondly, he is able to assert that 
there would be 'little danger' of suboptimal results in a 'free society' 
-- by appeal to an argument which assumes optimality: 'groups guided by 
''impractical" ideas would decline, and others ... would take their 
place'. The assumption is that what is good for individuals is good for 
their group and what is good for the group is good for the nation. But of 
course the behaviour which is Nash for agents within a society (whether 
those agents themselves be individuals or groups), the behaviour, that is, 
which issues from the evolutionarily stable strategies which emerge from 
the evolutionary process (Smith 1982:10), cannot be assumed to be optimal 
for the society as a whole. Individuals and groups do not achieve 
pre-eminence in a nation by following rules which it would be in the 
interest of the nation for everyone to follow, but by following rules 
which are well adapted for gaining power and influence within a nation's 
establishment. So, again, passages in Hayek which Whitman thinks point 
away from the charge of Panglossianism actually point towards it.

Whitman's own response to the passage he cites from The Constitution of 
Liberty is as follows:

Of course, this statement could be interpreted as merely a view of 
selection-inprogress, in that ''bad" moral views are characterized as 
leading inevitably to their own demise. The point, however, is that Hayek 
does not perceive the process as finished: at any point in time including 
the present day, we may find undesirable rules and customs that have not 
been weeded out by selective forces, at least not yet (48).

But it makes a very big difference to policy response to perceived 
sub-optimalities, whether they are believed to be (a) the intermediate 
result of a fundamentally humanfavourable process which has not yet run 
its course, or (b) the result of a fundamentally human-indifferent 
process. The former conviction will tend to lead to a policy prescription 
of procrastination, gradualism and minor adjustment; the latter to one of 
more prompt and, potentially, radical reform. The passage is in keeping 
with the overall tenor of Hayek's work: spontaneous processes are optimal 
and are best left alone. Whitman seems unwilling to accept the simple 
message of Hayek's life work, that the policy prescription is one of 
laissez-faire:

Hayek never eschews the modification and reform of rules; he simply points 
out that any such revision of particular rules must necessarily take place 
in the context of a complex of other rules that are taken as given for the 
time being (48).

Of course Hayek doesn't object to the of modification of rules: but he 
wants them to be modified to give greater play to spontaneous processes, 
not less. Whitman seems to misunderstand Hayek's desire to modify the 
policy framework, in order to bring it more into line with laissez-faire, 
as a step away from laissez-faire. Later in the paper, Whitman argues that 
Hayek's standpoint cannot be Panglossian because he argues for 'the 
occasional corrective reform, which would be unnecessary in a perfectly 
self-correcting (or instantaneously optimal) evolutionary system' (55). 
However, it is not the spontaneous evolutionary process which is 
imperfectly self-correcting, in Hayek's view, but interference with it on 
the part of authority. And it is not necessary for Hayek to regard his 
evolutionary system as 'instantaneously optimal' for us to see that it is 
Panglossian-- what is required is that it tends to generate results which 
serve human purposes, not that it achieves those results perfectly and 
instantaneously. The essence of Pangloss's world view was that we live in 
the best of all possible worlds, not of all worlds whether possible or 
not: belief in 'instantaneous optimality' is not a sensible criterion for 
judging alleged instances of Panglossianism.

This theme, concerning whether perceived sub-optimalities are believed to 
be the intermediate result of a fundamentally human-favourable process 
which has not yet run its course, or, on the contrary, the result of a 
fundamentally human-indifferent process, also arises in connection with 
Whitman's fourth example of Hayek rejecting Panglossianism:

The fact that law that has evolved in this way has certain desirable 
properties does not prove that it will always be good law or even that 
some of its rules may not be very bad. It therefore does not mean that we 
can altogether dispense with legislation (Hayek 1973:88).

Again, we should do well to situate this passage in the context within 
which it appears in Hayek's writing. Hayek says that

The fact that all [spontaneously grown] law ... will of necessity possess 
some desirable properties not necessarily possessed by the commands of a 
legislator does not mean that in other respects such law may not develop 
in very undesirable directions, and that when this happens correction by 
deliberate legislation may not be the only practicable way out. For a 
variety of reasons the spontaneous process of growth may lead into an 
impasse from which it cannot extricate itself by its own forces or which 
it will at least not correct quickly enough ... The fact that law that has 
evolved in this way has certain desirable properties does not prove that 
it will always be good law or even that some of its rules may not be very 
bad. It therefore does not mean that we can altogether dispense with 
legislation ... the most frequent cause is probably that the development 
of the law has lain in the hands of members of a particular class (Hayek 
1973:88?89).

We may note that the passage continues the theme we have already noted of 
focusing on the exceptional, bad outcomes of an essentially good process: 
law evolves in a desirable way, but some laws may be undesirable. As just 
mentioned, it also touches on the theme of undesirable outcomes resulting 
from an essentially benign process not yet having run its course. We 
should also note the last sentence of the passage cited by Whitman: 'It 
therefore does not mean that we can altogether dispense with legislation'. 
In the previous section Hayek had so praised the evolutionary process of 
common law that one might think legislation itself superfluous. Here he 
needs to step back from a position on legislation which many might regard 
as beyond the pale of extremity. The role of the passage cited is to take 
the extremist edge off an argument which might otherwise deny any scope at 
all for legislation. The context is a massive pre-supposition that 
spontaneous processes lead to optimal results. The major and 'most 
frequent' cause for radical change requiring legislation is the 
recognition that existing law was biased in favour of some group 
over-represented in the state. Again, the assumption is that spontaneous 
processes are essentially benign, and that it is state encroachments which 
induce suboptimality of outcomes.4 So this passage, too, gives very little 
support to the notion that Hayek's attitude towards social evolutionary 
processes was not Panglossian.

4. Conclusion

This article has argued that, contrary to Whitman's defence, Hayek is 
indeed a Panglossian evolutionary theorist.

[It would have been better to say that Hayek was *more* Panglossian, with 
respect to voluntary actions that the author thinks warranted. This charge 
may or may not be correct: Denis advances no criteria to decide what the 
correct amount of Panglossian respect for voluntary actions should be. (It 
will vary across time and circumstance and depend on one's own preferences 
as well as on the objective facts of the situation, which are hard to get.

[I think it fair to charge Hayek with being a "conservative," though he 
famously appended an essay, "Why I Am not a Conservative," to _The 
Constitution of Liberty_. Others have argued this, too. Basically, the 
"conservative" temperament is to search high and wide for the functional 
aspects of the status quo before chucking them as embodying "the dead hand 
of the past" (Mr. Jefferson) or "the accumulation of centuries of 
imbecilities" (Mr. Mencken). As always, moderation is in order.

[I await Buchanan's new short book, _Why I, Too, Am not a Conservative_, 
with great eagerness.]

Hayek's policy stance is a prescription of laissezfaire, and his economic 
and evolutionary theory underpins that policy prescription. His 
evolutionary theory says that spontaneous processes tend towards optimal 
social outcomes. To the extent that they issue from such spontaneous 
processes, the institutions which we inherit are those which have been 
selected according to the benefits they have conferred on the societies 
adopting them. This is Panglossian in the social sense: the institutional 
structure we inherit tends strongly to be desirable and attempts to 
improve it by conscious collective action are very much to be avoided.

[Hayek did, of course, propose any number of radical changes in the status 
quo, in order to restore the "simple system of natural liberty" (Smith). I 
am not sure he was aware of the contradictions here. Leftists notice this 
valorization (a favorite meme) of the status quo all the time, and seek to 
put themselves in charge. The meme, "you can't change just one thing," 
should be generously invoked here.

[As always, I have no answer to what the best combination of conservatism 
and change is and only urge a relentless Checking of Premises. The biggest 
Premise to Check is one that Hayek invokes, and praise him for doing so, 
namely that everything results from human design, when he quotes Ferguson 
on "the results of human action but not of human design" repeatedly.

[The biggest change in the last decade is, of course, the Internet. It was 
not developed with the social changes it wrought in mind, indeed without 
any awareness of their impact, except on the part of a very few 
visionaries.

[What will be coming in the decades ahead--humans may very well be 
displaced as the predominant form of organized matter in the centuries 
ahead--will not be the result of deliberations by Central Planners. I will 
keep this very much in mind as I read and write a review of Joel Garreau's 
_Radical Evolution_ for the _Journal of Evolution and Technology_, which 
task I remind you is keeping me away from most of my Internet activity.

And it is Panglossian in the technical, evolutionary sense of 
Wynne-Edwards's erroneous theory of group selection, a theory that Hayek 
explicitly endorses. In his consideration of biological evolutionary 
theory, Whitman fails to identify Panglossianism with Wynne-Edwards group 
selection. In the passage from biological to cultural evolution, Whitman 
fails to realise that the distinction between the individual and group 
retains its significance in full. Once we look closely at the passages in 
Hayek to which Whitman directs our attention, our verdict on Hayek's 
evolutionary theory can only be: 'Panglossian, as charged'.

Notes

1. I should like to thank Pete Clarke, Mary Denis, William Dixon and 
Geoffrey Kay for their encouragement and their most helpful comments on my 
earlier paper on Hayek, on which this one draws. I thank Douglas Whitman, 
Alan Isaac, Erik Angner and two referees for this Journal for comments on 
an earlier version of the present paper, and Alain Albert for prompting me 
to write it. Versions of the paper have been presented at the European 
Society for the History of Economic Thought conference, Graz, Austria, 
2000, the City University Department of Economics research seminar, and 
the Association for Heterodox Economics conference, London, 2001-I should 
like to thank session participants, particularly Stephan Bo?hm, Jack 
Vromen, Simon Price, John Cubbin and Harold Chorney for their comments. 
Finally, I should like to thank BSc students on my Part III option in 
History of Economic Thought for their questions and comments on the paper, 
and their enthusiasm. The usual caveat applies.

2. Note that the issue is not whether Hayek is guilty of Panglossianism in 
the sense of believing that all is for the best in the world we inhabit, 
but whether his theory of cultural evolutionary processes is Panglossian. 
As the title of Whitman's article shows, and as we would expect of an 
Austrian economist, what is at issue is process not end state.

3. Unqualified page numbers refer to Whitman (1998).

4. It is also the case that there is a technical reason why legislation 
may be necessary: when changes in the law are required, this cannot be 
achieved by case law-- it would be unjust to do so, as case law can only 
determine what was the law in the past, not what it will be in the future.

References

Dawkins, R. (1989a) The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1989b) The Extended Phenotype: the Long Reach of the Gene. 
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1995) River out of Eden. London: Phoenix.

Dennett, D.C. (1995) Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Evolution and the Meanings 
of Life. London: Penguin Books.

Flew, A.G.N. (1967) Evolutionary Ethics. London: Macmillan.

Gould, S.J., and Lewontin, R. (1979) ''The Spandrels of San Marco and the 
Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme." 
Proceedings of the Royal Society B205: 581-98.

Hayek, F. A. (1942) Scientism and the Study of Society Economica, vol. 91. 
pp. 127 -152.

Hayek, F.A. (1960) The Constitution of Liberty. London: Routledge & Kegan 
Paul.

Hayek, F.A. (1967) Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. London: 
Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Hayek, F.A. (1973) Law, Legislation and Liberty. A new statement of the 
liberal principles of justice and political economy. Rules and Order, vol. 
1. London: Routledge.

Hayek, F.A. (1988) The Fatal Conceit: The errors of socialism. London: 
Routledge.

Hodgson, G.M. (1993) Economics and Evolution. Bringing Life Back into 
Economics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Ransom, G. (1996) ''The Significance of Myth and Misunderstanding in 
Social Science Narrative: Opening Access to Hayek's Copernican Revolution 
in Economics." Paper presented at the 1996 annual meetings of the History 
of Economics Society and the Southern Economics Association; 
http://www.hayekcenter.org/hayekmyth.htm

Smith, J.M. (1982) Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press.

Whitman, D.G. (1998) ''Hayek contra Pangloss on Evolutionary Systems." 
Constitutional Political Economy 9: 45-66.

From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan  7 20:52:27 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 15:52:27 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Natural History Magazine: Natural Selections
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252120430.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Natural Selections
http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/0504/0504_selections.html
2004 May (note date)

R E V I E W

Brains and the Beast

Can the behaviorist's insistence on distinguishing animal from
human cognition be reconciled with evolutionary continuity?
By Frans B. M. de Waal

Do Animals Think?
by Clive D.L. Wynne
Princeton University Press, 2004; $26.95

Intelligence of Apes
and Other Rational Beings
by Duane M. Rumbaugh and David A. Washburn
Yale University Press, 2003; $35.00

IF YOUR DOG DROPS A TENNIS BALL in front of you and looks up at you with tail
wagging, do you figure she wants to play? How naive! Who says dogs have desires
and intentions? Her behavior is merely the product of reinforcement: she has 
been
rewarded for it in the past.

Many scientists have grown up with the so-called law of effect, the idea that 
all
behavior is conditioned by reward and punishment. This principle of learning 
was
advocated by a dominant school of twentieth-century psychological thought known
as American behaviorism. The school's founders, John B. Watson and B.F. 
Skinner,
were happy to explain all conceivable behavior within the narrow confines of 
what
Skinner called "operant conditioning." The mind, if such a thing even existed,
remained a black box. In the early days, the behaviorists applied their 
doctrine
in equal measure to people and other animals. Watson, for instance, to
demonstrate the power of his methods, intentionally created a phobia for furry
objects in a human baby. Initially "little Albert" was unafraid of a tame white
rat. But after Watson paired each appearance of the rat with sharp noises right
behind poor Albert's head, fear of rats was the inevitable outcome. Even human
speech was thought to be the product of simple reinforcement learning.

The behaviorists' goal of unifying the science of behavior was a noble one--but
alas, outside academia the masses resisted. They stubbornly refused to accept
that their own behavior could be explained without considering thoughts,
feelings, and intentions. Don't we all have mental lives, don't we look into 
the
future, aren't we rational beings? Eventually, the behaviorists caved in and
exempted the bipedal ape from their theory of everything.

That was the beginning of the problem for other animals. Once cognitive
complexity was admitted in people, the rest of the animal kingdom became the 
sole
standard-bearer of behaviorism. Animals were expected to follow the law of 
effect
to the letter, and anyone who thought differently was just being 
anthropomorphic.
>From a unified science, behaviorism had become a dichotomous one, with two
separate languages: one for human behavior, another for animal behavior. Human
rationality and superiority are not really the issue, however--one only needs 
to
read the latest Darwin Awards to notice that our species can be less rational
than advertised. The issue is the dividing line between us and the rest of
nature.

Radical behaviorists adamantly insist on this line, and look across it with
entirely different eyes than the ones they reserve for their fellow human 
beings.
They speak about animals as "them" and compare "them" with "us," as Clive D. L.
Wynne does at the beginning of Do Animals Think? ("What are animals--really? 
What
should we make of them?"). Other behaviorists, however, intentionally blur the
line. They apply the same well-tested behaviorist methodology to reconnect 
human
and animal behavior, daring to mention the words "animal" and "cognition" in 
the
same breath. They write books such as Duane M. Rumbaugh and David A. Washburn's
Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings.

Of the two, Wynne's book is by far the more readable. Wynne has a pleasant
writing style and a knack for engaging the reader. He begins with the story of 
a
mad animal-rights activist who threatened the lives of people on the Isle of
Wight, where Wynne grew up. The man was convinced that animals are sentient
beings, a certainty Wynne says he wishes he could share.

This story sets the tone of doubt and reserve that permeates the book. Wynne
includes numerous insightful accounts of remarkable animal behavior, but he
invariably concludes on a note of caution: one should not infer too much from
these accounts. He is not so radical a behaviorist that he excludes all forms 
of
reasoning by animals, but he takes greater pleasure in explaining what animals
cannot do--monkeys fail to understand relations between cause and effect, apes
can sign but lack the syntax that defines human language--than in describing 
what
they can do. Capacities unique to a particular species, such as echolocation in
bats, get Wynne's full admiration. But anything that seems to elevate other
animals close to the lofty cognitive level of humankind he regards with utmost
skepticism. He seems to take delight in animals, and possesses great knowledge
about them, yet he prefers them at arm's length. The constant message is that
animals are not people.

That much is obvious. But it is equally true that people are animals. The
dichotomy Wynne advocates is outdated, lending his book a pre-Darwinian flavor.
Take the case of animal culture, currently one of the hottest areas in the 
study
of animal behavior. The idea goes back to the pioneering work of Kinji 
Imanishi,
who proposed in 1952 that if individuals learn from one another, their behavior
may grow so different from behavior in other groups of the same species that 
they
seem to have their own culture. Imanishi thus reduced the idea of culture to 
its
most basic feature: the social rather than the genetic transmission of 
behavior.

Many examples of animal culture have been documented. The classic case emerged
among wild macaques on Japan's Koshima Island. During their fieldwork with the
monkeys there, investigators provisioned them with sweet potatoes, which a
juvenile female named Imo soon began washing; she would bring her potatoes to a
small river and clean them off before eating them. Imo's washing behavior 
spread
first to her mother and then to her age peers, before affecting the rest of the
group. Later Imo moved her operation to the shoreline, washing the potatoes in
the ocean, and, again, the other monkeys followed.

Some psychologists have objected to this example, pointing out that it is
uncertain whether the monkeys learned their skill by copying others or by
discovering the behavior individually, without anyone's help. Wynne supports 
the
second view. But instead of basing his opinion on the actual data published by 
a
team of Japanese primatologists, who have worked on the problem for fifty 
years,
he relies on the word of a skeptical Westerner who has never set foot on the
island. This scientist, a specialist in rat behavior, suggested that potato
washing spread because performers were selectively rewarded by the people who
handed out the potatoes.

A few years ago I went to Koshima Island to verify the idea of selective
rewarding. I talked with some of the people who had actually witnessed Imo
cleaning her first spud. They told me that initially the monkeys were fed far
away from any water, so there was no question of rewarding any washing 
behavior.
Imo herself came up with the idea of transporting the potatoes to the river for
cleaning. They also pointed out that one cannot feed a group of monkeys any way
one wishes. The dominant males have to be fed first, the females second, and 
the
little ones last; changing the order sparks bloodshed. Thus, except for Imo's
mother, the monkeys that learned the behavior first, the juveniles, were the 
last
to be rewarded. In fact, the only monkeys on the island that never learned 
potato
washing were the adult males: precisely the best-rewarded group.

Wynne invariably favors interpretations that widen the assumed cognitive gap
between human and animal. For example, he uncritically accepts the uniqueness
claim du jour: that only human beings possess a theory of mind (ToM), or the
cognitive ability to understand that others, too, have mental states such as
thoughts and knowledge. Ironically--given Wynne's dismissal of an ape ToM--the
concept got its start with a 1970s study of chimpanzees. A female showed she 
had
grasped the intentions of others by, for example, selecting a key from among
several tools if she saw a person struggling to open a locked door.

Evidence for a theory of mind in apes has gone through its ups and downs ever
since. Some experiments have failed spectacularly, leading the proponents of 
one
school of thought to contend that apes simply lack the capacity. Negative 
results
are inconclusive, though: as the saying goes, absence of evidence is not 
evidence
of absence. Furthermore, the performance of apes is often assessed by comparing
it with that of children. Because the experimenter is invariably human, 
however,
only the apes face a species barrier. When an ingenious experiment conducted at
Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta got 
around
that problem, the evidence for an ape ToM was more positive: chimpanzees seemed
to realize that if a member of their species had seen hidden food, this
individual knew where the food was, as opposed to one who had not seen it. That
finding threw the question of a ToM in nonhuman animals wide open again.

In an unexpected twist (because the debate has focused on humans versus apes), 
a
capuchin monkey in a laboratory at Kyoto University in Japan recently passed a
series of seeing-knowing tasks with flying colors. The least one can conclude 
is
that it is premature to settle on ToM capabilities as the ultimate Rubicon.

In spite of Wynne's dismissal of an ape ToM, his book offers many insightful
descriptions of animal behavior. A wonderful chapter on the role of messenger
pigeons during the First World War includes a picture of the stuffed body of 
Cher
Ami, a genuine war hero. The pigeon kept flying after its leg had been shot 
off,
delivering its message and thus rescuing an entire battalion.

Rumbaugh and Washburn are considerably more open-minded about the mental
accomplishments of animals than Wynne is. Their book celebrates Rumbaugh's
lifetime of research on monkeys and apes. In fact, what fascinates me the most
about Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings is its historical overview
of experimental work with primates, first with the Wisconsin General Testing
Apparatus (WGTA) and later with joysticks and computers.

The WGTA was developed at the University of Wisconsin in the 1940s, and is 
still
being used today. In this set-up, a primate subject in a cage faces an
experimenter across a platform, on which differently shaped or colored stimuli
are arrayed. Both experimenter and primate can reach the stimuli; the
experimenter baits them with rewards, and the primate selects among them. I
remember working with such an apparatus as a student, testing chimpanzees to 
see
if they could discriminate shapes by touch alone. The task was so incredibly
simple and repetitive that the apes invariably got tired of the whole thing 
five
minutes into the testing. In fact, they got so bored that they performed worse
than macaques tested on the same stimuli.

I mention this episode because test performance is often taken as a measure of
intelligence, even though attention and motivation are equally important to the
outcome. As a result, failure is open to interpretation. Rumbaugh and Washburn
understand these points better than most scientists, and they are at pains to
remind the reader how the questions one asks tend to constrain the answers one
gets.

Indeed, some testing paradigms positively suppress the phenomena being tested.
When Rumbaugh replaced the WGTA with an innovative testing setup in which the
monkeys move a joystick to select stimuli on a computer screen, their 
performance
improved dramatically. Rumbaugh's work on the connection between method and
outcome should be required reading for anyone who attaches significance to
negative evidence.

One learning paradigm discussed by Rumbaugh and Washburn has special interest.
Some animals learn how to learn--that is, once they have mastered a particular
task, they can more quickly learn future tasks that have the same design but 
rely
on different stimuli. Trial-and-error learning cannot explain improved
performance in reaction to new stimuli, hence the level of learning must be
higher. But generalization across tasks is precisely what the founders of
behaviorism thought animals could not do.

Rumbaugh and Washburn discuss many forms of advanced problem-solving, which 
they
classify as "emergents." The term is slightly awkward, but the authors apply it
to cases in which animals flexibly apply accumulated knowledge to new 
situations,
resulting in an "emergent" solution. The classic example is the chimpanzee in a
room with a few sticks and boxes in one corner and, for the first time in the
chimp's experience, a banana hanging from the ceiling. The solution emerges as
the old bits of previous knowledge combine until, as if a lightbulb suddenly 
goes
on in the chimpanzee's head, he climbs on top of the boxes and reaches for the
banana with a stick.

The two authors rightly speak of reasoning and rationality, and so adopt a
terminology that is anathema to radical behaviorism. They discuss the 
behaviorist
view at length but choose to deviate from it, stressing continuity between 
animal
and human. For the reader, though, it is frustrating that they focus almost
entirely on apes and other primates, without examining how the concept of
emergents could apply equally well to other animals. Crows, dolphins, 
elephants,
and parrots have been credited with creative problem-solving as well.

There will always be tension between those who view animals as only slightly 
more
flexible than machines and those who see them as only slightly less rational 
than
human beings. The views discussed in these two books are by no means as far 
apart
as they could be; both, after all, come out of the same tradition of 
experimental
psychology. Throw in a few naturalists and neuroscientists, and the debate gets
even more complex. That said, however, the two books range widely enough across
the spectrum of views to make a powerful case that there is still plenty to be
discovered, and that human uniqueness is largely in the eye of the beholder.

Frans B.M. de Waal is C. H. Candler Professor of Primate Behavior at Emory
University in Atlanta and the director of the Living Links Center at the
university's Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

  B O O K S H E L F

By Laurence A. Marschall [4]back to top

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat
of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants
by Robert Sullivan
Bloomsbury, 2004; $23.95

IN HIS MEMORABLE 1998 BOOK The Meadowlands, about the New Jersey wetlands just
west of the Lincoln Tunnel, Robert Sullivan emerged as the Thoreau of blighted
ecosystems. Traveling by canoe along oil-slicked bayous, Sullivan uncovered
treasures of both natural and industrial history no passing commuter would have
suspected.

Now Sullivan has crossed the Hudson River and relocated his eclectic wanderings
to the back alleys of lower Manhattan, where the dumpsters of Chinese noodle
joints, Irish pubs, and Salvadoran chicken takeouts are the real happening 
places
for urban wildlife. Happening, that is, if you're a rat.

"Four seasons spent among vermin" is how Sullivan describes his sojourn. His
Walden Pond was Edens Alley, a narrow defile a few blocks from Wall Street.
Equipped with both binoculars and a night-vision monocular, he arrived in the
evenings after dark to watch the rats as they emerged to feed and, in the
notebook he'd brought along, to wax lyrical about nature, civilization, and the
meaning of life. A typical entry from his winter journal:

   5:44--The rats retreat suddenly. The reason: three men enter the alley, 
though
   when I see the men I wonder which creature left the alley for which
   creature--sometimes it seems as if the rats' departure is a courtesy extended
   by the rats. . . . I think of all the rats that have crawled through this
   alley before, the history of this alley's previous inhabitants. Oh, to
   know--to really know--this pellicle of rat-infested ground.

Such deadpan effusiveness over creatures commonly regarded as loathsome may
border on sick humor, but elegies to Rattus norvegicus make up only a small 
part
of Sullivan's book. There are many stories about the ethology, natural history,
and social importance of rats, and, overall, plenty of evidence that people and
rats have a lot more in common than most people would like to admit.

Sullivan cites Martin W. Schein, for instance, the co-author of a 1953 paper on
the eating habits of rats captured on Baltimore backstreets. Schein conducted
laboratory studies using authentic garbage from the alleys where the rats were
trapped. He learned that rats hate raw beets (I sympathize) and that scrambled
eggs and macaroni and cheese are popular rat comfort foods, just as they are 
for
human Baltimoreans. In Edens Alley, according to Sullivan, the rats also seem 
to
like chicken pot pie.

In spite of some strong dislikes, though, rats are not picky eaters. By and
large, they are omnivorous and highly adaptable--the same traits that make 
people
so successful--and they show uncanny cleverness in finding food and avoiding
peril. Ann Li, an epidemiologist with the New York City Department of Health,
takes Sullivan on a rat-trapping expedition to Brooklyn, and tells him she 
thinks
rats are "so underappreciated." Even the exterminators who show Sullivan how to
outsmart the rodents express a grudging admiration for their prey.

As much as he shares the rodentophilia of his informants, Sullivan is unsparing
when he recounts the misery rats cause. Sometimes they attack directly: in 1979 
a
large pack surrounded a woman on a street in downtown Manhattan. And of course
they carry infectious diseases such as plague. Yet unless people find a way to
steam-clean each crevice of the city every day, rats will continue to cohabit
with us in uneasy harmony. "If you killed every rat in New York City," Ann Li
remarks, "you would have created new housing for 60 million rats."


Running with Reindeer: Encounters in Russian Lapland

Running with Reindeer:
Encounters in Russian Lapland
by Roger Took
Westview Press, 2004; $27.50

FEW PLACES IN EUROPE are as far off the beaten track as the Kola Peninsula, a
potato-shaped carbuncle of land at the top of the Scandinavian Peninsula, east 
of
Finland. Russian Lapland, as the Kola is also known, has one large city
(Murmansk), a few subsidiary industrial centers and mining towns, and a
scattering of isolated villages in the hinterlands. One passable highway runs
through the province. But beyond that right-of-way, for hundreds of kilometers 
in
every direction, the hardy traveler encounters nothing but tundra, taiga 
(boreal
forest), and vacant shoreline.

Roger Took is just such a hardy traveler--perhaps even a foolhardy one. When he
arrived in the Russian northland in the early 1990s, the entire country was
teetering on the edge of anarchy, and it was not clear which disaffected group 
a
lone Englishman should be more afraid of: suspicious Sami tribesmen, the 
military
attached to the remnants of the Russian Northern Fleet, or the legendary 
Russian
Mafia. Just in case, Took offhandedly notes, he learned how to fire, strip, and
reassemble a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol before he left London.

We never learn whether Took ever fired the pistol, but readers can be grateful
that he survived, met many fascinating characters, and kept coming back, year
after year, for more than a decade. The Kola, he discovered, is a land of
contrasts and contradictions, shaped by history and politics as much as by
geography. Its first inhabitants were nomadic Sami, who roamed freely through
northern Scandinavia. In the Middle Ages, settlers called Pomors arrived from 
the
more populated regions of Russia, to the south. A brisk fur trade with Europe
developed because the Kola Peninsula's best harbors, warmed by the northernmost
hook of the Gulf Stream, are more or less ice-free throughout the year.

Only after the Russian Revolution did the area begin to take on its current 
look
of emptiness. In a procrustean attempt to collectivize the Sami economy, Stalin
had villagers herded into hastily built urban areas and industrial farms. Much 
of
the coastline was declared off-limits. The discovery of rich mineral resources 
in
the Khibiny mountain range, near the center of the peninsula, only made matters
worse; soon "special settlers" were being shipped from various parts of the
Soviet Union to provide forced labor.

For the most part, today's inhabitants huddle in charmless concrete apartment
blocks, largely ignorant of the region's rich history and remarkable resources.
Took, however, has grown to love the place. Armed with little more than a
backpack and a fishing rod, he boldly wandered through military reservations,
floated down rivers with salmon poachers, sledged to hunting and herding
excursions with descendants of the Sami, and accompanied wildlife biologists 
and
archaeologists on expeditions to the interior. In one memorable episode he
hitched a ride through the backcountry on a clanking, tanklike all-terrain
vehicle (minus the gun turret), accompanying a human-rights activist who was
documenting a gulag of prison barracks.

Took reports signs of a new life for Russian Lapland. Environmentalists in 
Russia
and Scandinavia have begun to throw their weight behind efforts to clean up the
damage caused by the nuclear fleet. Shops in Murmansk now display the latest
fashions. And foreign sportsmen have begun to discover that some of the world's
greatest salmon streams run through the Kola's remote countryside. Russian
Lapland may not come off as a vacation paradise, but Took's book is a marvelous
introduction to a region of rich but almost forgotten heritage.


Sequoia: The Heralded Tree in American Art and Culture

Sequoia: The Heralded Tree
in American Art and Culture
by Lori Vermaas
Smithsonian Books, 2003; $39.95

JUST AS LEBANON is famous for its cedars, so North America is known for its
redwoods. Not only are they among the largest and most stately trees on earth,
but they thrive in settings of surpassing scenic beauty. Strolling beneath a
towering canopy of Sequoia sempervirens, the most common redwood along the
northern coast of California, one experiences a world of subtle twilight just a
few steps from the glare of a sunlit, rocky shoreline. The rarer Sequoiadendron
giganteum, whose ponderous trunks make their coastal cousins seem almost 
willowy,
grow farther inland, in sheltered groves in Yosemite and other isolated 
valleys.

It is no wonder, then, that the giant sequoias have assumed symbolic importance
far out of proportion to their restricted habitat. Lori Vermaas, a cultural
historian, has written an insightful new survey of American art and literature 
on
redwoods from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The most widespread early depictions of the giant trees, in the years during 
and
just after the Civil War, were made by enterprising commercial artists who used
twin lenses on their cameras to create so-called stereo-view cards. Many of the
pictures focused on the immense scale of the trees; a favorite subject was the
Grizzly Giant, a tree in Yosemite National Park whose trunk soared straight
skyward but whose upper branches seemed painfully gnarled, like the rheumatic
joints of an old man.

To a nation still smarting from the horrible conflict between the states, the
redwoods, far removed from the scene of battle, seemed serene, impassive, and
impervious to harm. They epitomized the part of the nation that had remained
intact and functional despite the fires of war and social turmoil. Huge 
paintings
of sequoias by such landscape artists as Albert Bierstadt were all the rage
(oversize landscape paintings being the functional equivalents of IMAX films).

Yet few envisioned the giant trees as symbols of an endangered environment.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, logging them was even seen as an
example of humankind's ability to bend nature to its will. Woodsmen were "no 
puny
impersonations of men," but men who swung "heavy, keen-edged axes as though 
they
were mere trifles." Logging teams were typically photographed in the yawning
notches of trees they were about to topple. In one particularly striking print,
an entire troop of U.S. cavalrymen, mounted on horseback, stand like conquering
gladiators atop and along the length of the trunk of a fallen giant.

Exuberantly expansive, the American imagination invoked sequoias as a natural
treasure, but a treasure to be expropriated and spent. Even John Muir, one of 
the
nation's first conservationists, waxed enthusiastic over the use of redwood
lumber in construction. Redwood housing was "almost absolutely unperishable."

The onslaught of logging operations, among other abuses of the era, sparked the
modern environmental movement, and redwoods came to be seen as treasures to
preserve. Although groves of redwoods are continually threatened, the trees 
still
stand, and pictorialists in the tradition of Ansel Adams have continued to use
the image of the redwood as an emblem of strength and endurance. Vermaas helps 
us
understand the symbolism of sequoias, but even she must admit that the best way
to appreciate them is on foot and close-up. "No one has ever successfully 
painted
or photographed a redwood tree," wrote John Steinbeck in 1962. "The feeling 
they
produce is not transferable."

Laurence A. Marschall, author of The Supernova Story, is the W.K.T. Sahm
professor of physics at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, and director of
Project CLEA, which produces widely used simulation software for education in
astronomy.


Moving Mountains
By Robert Anderson

CALIFORNIA'S SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS, where I live, are a mere 5 million years
old. Like most mountains, they are comprised of rocks formed during complex and
repeated sequences of uplift, sedimentation, and volcanism. In the case of the
Santa Monica range, the process began about 200 million years ago, when the 
first
dinosaurs were roaming the planet.

A summary of the processes that make mountains rise can be found at
www.physicalgeography.net, a Web site created by Michael J. Pidwirny, a
geographer at Okanagan University College in Kelowna, British Columbia. (On the
home page click on "Fundamentals: Online Textbook" from the menu bar at the 
top;
in "Chapter 10: Introduction to the Lithosphere," click on "Mountain 
Building.")
For an overall view of how colliding tectonic plates transform the planet, go 
to
"Dynamic Earth" ([6]earth.leeds.ac.uk/dynamicearth), developed by Robert 
Butler,
a geologist at the University of Leeds.

Illustrations of the way tectonics has changed the distribution of land and sea
can also be found at a Web site run by Christopher R. Scotese, a geologist at 
the
University of Texas at Arlington. For thirty years, Scotese and his 
collaborators
have been working on a series of paleogeographic atlases. The latest of them, 
the
Global Plate Tectonic Model, is available at PALEOMAP Project
([7]www.scotese.com). From the home page you can choose 3-D movable paleoglobes
and paleogeographic animations that show the positions of the continents and 
the
shapes of the ocean basins for various periods of geological time. Select Earth
History from the menu at the left on the home page. There youll find full-color
maps depicting details such as mountain ranges, shorelines, and active plate
boundaries during those same periodsbeginning with the breakup of the first
supercontinent, Rodinia, and extending through the present and into the future
for 250 million years, when the supercontinent Pangea Ultima will trap what is
now the Atlantic Ocean in a small, inland basin.

Antonio Schettino, a geologist in Milan, Italy, worked with Scotese to 
re-create
plate motions in the Mediterranean region
([8]www.itis-molinari.mi.it/Intro-Med.html). The accompanying QuickTime 
animation
provides an excellent graphic explanation of how the Alps arose. A similar
presentation of tectonic processes shows the ancient mountain chains in greater
regional detail ([9]www4.nau.edu/geology). Click on "Popular Departmental 
Links"
and look at the three items created by Ronald C. Blakey, a geologist at 
Northern
Arizona University. The site 
[10]www.jamestown-ri.info/northern_appalachians.htm
provides a rundown of the northern Appalachian chain's geological history, 
which
stretches back a billion years.

Geologists can now watch mountains grow, thanks to new satellite and radar
technologies that measure minute movements of the Earth's crust and slight
changes in the stresses that cause earthquakes. Go to the "Active Tectonics"
site, run by a group from the University of California, Berkeley
([11]www.seismo.berkeley.edu/~burgmann/EDUCATION/InSAR.html), for more
information.

Robert Anderson is a freelance science writer living in Los Angeles.

References

6. http://earth.leeds.ac.uk/dynamicearth
7. http://www.scotese.com/
8. http://www.itis-molinari.mi.it/Intro-Med.html
9. http://www4.nau.edu/geology
   10. http://www.jamestown-ri.info/northern_appalachians.htm
   11. http://www.seismo.berkeley.edu/~burgmann/EDUCATION/InSAR.html


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan  7 20:52:35 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 15:52:35 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] The Age (au): There's trouble in patriarchy
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252120510.14301@panix3.panix.com>

There's trouble in patriarchy
http://www.theage.com.au/news/general/theres-trouble-in-patriarchy/2005/12/08/1133829717803.html

December 10, 2005

Are men facing extinction? Not quite yet, but times are a changin' in the 
gender
playground, writes Simon Caterson.


'THE REASON THERE are so many divorces," I remember my secondary school
literature teacher telling our class, "is that people nowadays marry for love."

It is one of those throwaway lines that remain lodged in the mind long after
whatever it was we were supposed to be learning has been absorbed, regurgitated
and forgotten.

I was reminded of this aphorism two decades later when, at a recent dinner 
party,
one of the guests announced that his de facto relationship of 14 years had 
ended.

After some brief expressions of sympathy, in particular from one of the women
present, the conversation moved on. Though sad for all involved, especially the
couple's young children, to us thirtysomethings such news comes as no surprise.
Breakdowns in relationships, such as retrenchment, car accidents or minor
operations, are just one of the everyday hazards of modern life for Generation 
X.
It is an event that statistically is as likely to occur as not.

In her provocatively titled new book, Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide,
American columnist Maureen Dowd tolls the bell of marital doom. In an extract
published in the New York Times Magazine, Dowd laments the abject failure of
modern relationships: "Despite the best efforts of philosophers, politicians,
historians, novelists, screenwriters, linguists, therapists, anthropologists 
and
facilitators, men and women are still in a muddle in the boardroom, the bedroom
and the Situation room."

Dowd presents the landscape of relationships as a disaster zone of 
disappointment
and inequality for women: "Before it curdled into a collection of stereotypes,
feminism had fleetingly held out a promise that there would be some precincts 
of
womanly life that were not all about men. But it never materialised." In Dowd's
view, the sway held by stereotypes hasn't lessened since the rise of feminism,
only their content: "The message is diametrically opposite - before it was 
don't
be a sex object; now, it's be a sex object - but the conformity is just as
stifling."

Virginia Woolf wrote that "to enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves".

Dowd is quite right to identify conformity as a true enemy of happiness, but it
is a force propelling our consumer society that is difficult to deny. In gender
relations, as in everything else, we are only limited by our imaginations and 
our
capacity to empathise with one another.

The "can't live with them, can't live without them" theme adumbrated by Dowd 
also
echoes in the media across the gender divide, where the howl of embittered 
women
is answered just as loudly by the bellowing of angry men who fear that they
really are unnecessary. In addition to the misery and hardship that failed
relationships cause to women, the high rate of divorce is just one of the 
factors
that contribute to the so-called crisis in masculinity.

According to Marian Salzman, Ira Matathia and Ann O'Reilly, the joint authors 
of
a new book called The Future of Men, instability and uncertainty in 
relationships
is just one of the issues profoundly troubling men. They refer to data 
indicating
that men have a greater psychological need for permanence in relationships than
women, and point out the fact that roughly twice as many divorces are 
instigated
by women as men.

But is the crisis real, or is it a furphy, an excuse for some men to behave 
badly
and feel sorry for themselves?

Are the gender wars overall a sign of social disintegration or a bit of a 
beatup?

The threshold question is not one that preoccupies the authors of The Future of
Men. In a sign of the times, the book is not a work of sociological inquiry or
journalistic speculation but a business title.

Salzman, Matathia and O'Reilly are not polemicists but professional 
trendspotters
and as such are primarily concerned with how the fluid situation of men may
translate into future spending patterns. They assert that the combination of 
"the
women's movement, the evolution towards information-based economies, and 
shifting
social mores and values" is having "a negative impact on the male psyche, 
leaving
modern men hesitant, disoriented, and, in many cases, more than a little
depressed".

The authors say that companies "looking to connect with the male consumer" must
respond to what they term "M-ness", that is a new masculinity being defined by
men themselves. After a decade or so of metrosexuals having the unblinking 
queer
eye appraise their dress, hygiene and appearance, men are reasserting their
traditional masculinity.

This new "ubersexual" man will keep using a regular moisturising routine, but
will also be manlier in his pursuits and outlook. But like the conformist women
described by Dowd, is the crisis of masculinity merely creating a new breed of
fashion victims whose angst can only be soothed by retail therapy? Advertisers,
take note: boy's toys can compensate men for the feeling they are toy boys.

The new alliance forecast in The Future of Men between quiche-man and caveman, 
to
borrow the distinction made in Kath & Kim, may seem like a refreshing new
development in the affairs of men, but is it simply a case of putting some of 
the
old wine in new bottles? In truth, the really significant changes have occurred
around men and not within them.

Human evolution has lagged far behind technology, medical science and 
legislative
change. Thomas Keneally reminds us: "It is for most of us far less than 5000
years since we came in off the plain and began farming. But our chemistry is
built for nomadic life. We really did have mastodons to kill once."

It is precisely this apparent mismatch between purpose and use, a "suspicion 
that
we are biologically and socially redundant", as Keneally puts it, that gives 
rise
to a "profound unease" in men.

The projection into the future properly begins in the past, though we do not 
have
to go back five millennia to establish the beginnings of a modern malaise. The
future of men arguably began that day in November 1951 when the patents were
filed that heralded the introduction of the contraceptive pill for women.

Giving women the power to control their own fertility, as almost all of them do
in the West, was an epoch-making moment in the history of humanity.

The freedom of choice that the Pill gave to women, and indirectly to their 
sexual
partners, has been followed by medical advances that enable human reproduction 
to
take place without the male partner or sperm donor being present at the moment 
of
conception.

When cloning is perfected, then the concept of paternity could be done away 
with
altogether. In any case, according to geneticist Jennifer Marshall Graves, the 
Y
chromosome will have exhausted its capacity to mutate within the next 10 
million
years. The only real question is when, not if, the Y chromosome disappears, she
has said in an interview. "It could be a lot shorter than 10 million years, but
it could be a lot longer."

Some modern freedoms, such as those that enabled women to vote and to own
property without being treated as property themselves, have altered relations
between the sexes forever.

According to the authors of The Future of Men, there is no going back, and nor
would societies that have experienced the benefits of the liberation of women
want to return to the sexual dark ages: "In the short term, it's clear that
cultures that resist the rise in female power are losing out to those cultures
that accept it, because the cultures that accept it are progressing further
faster on most fronts - health, economy, security, and technology, to name a 
few.
Only history (sic) will tell what the longer-term consequences may be."

Some of the more militant men's advocacy groups may gnash their teeth but the
dethronement of men was in some sense an abdication, since the entry of women
into the workforce was an unintended consequence of the world wars waged by 
men,
and it was men that led the medical research into women's health. Now men and
women are able to work together as never before to improve the lives of 
everyone.

Who in their right mind would want to pass up the opportunity, however 
imperfect
the application so far, to create a non-discriminatory meritocracy?

On the domestic front, much of what has happened in our time is not
gender-specific but is the impersonal operation of technology-driven consumer
society. The services that in the past only marriage could provide to each
partner have now virtually been outsourced. Single women can now "hire a hubby"
whenever there's an odd job to be done, while any man with enough cash can 
enjoy
what used to be regarded as conjugal rights at the nearest licensed brothel.

Nothing is sacred, and everything has a price.

Shopping, cleaning, healthy food, child care, back rubs - all are just a phone
call or a mouse click away.

An enterprising Japanese inventor has even come up with an artificial arm for
singletons that takes the place of that otherwise provided by a real sleeping
partner. The marketplace fills the space to ensure that not even the absence of
ordinary human contact lacks a commercial substitute. If robots can serve as
pets, why not have them fill in for humans as well?

Objectively, the only factor holding women back from the possibility of 
complete
independence from men, and vice versa, is financial, since the moral, social 
and
legal pressure that used to exist for couples to pair off permanently has
disappeared. The crucial issue is the mutual desire to have children. In most
cases, the cost of health and education is such that it still requires two
incomes to ensure that children receive what is generally considered to be a 
good
start in life.

The authors of The Future of Men identify one area in popular culture that 
needs
an adjustment to accommodate M-ness, and that is the negative stereotyping of
men. In 1929, Virginia Woolf wrote that women "all these centuries have served 
as
lookingglasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the magic
figure of man at twice its natural size".

Woolf knew, however, that the best writing transcends gender-specific thinking,
since "anything written with a conscious bias is doomed to death".

Great art, according to Woolf, encompasses the whole of human experience and
dissolves any crude distinction between sex and gender. "Some collaboration has
to take place in the mind between the man and woman before the art of creation
can be accomplished.

Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated".

A powerful representation of this concept as it may be manifested in an actual
relationship appears in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Mother Night. The main character,
an American playwright recruited to spy in pre-war Germany, sees the bond 
between
himself and his wife as constituting what he calls "a nation of two". The
couple's loyalty to this nation will allow for a measure of regional autonomy 
and
can survive the occasional outbreak of civil unrest.

Despite Woolf's plea for wholeness and her warning against replacing misogyny
with misandry, stereotyping is still with us. Once women might have been
denigrated or patronised with impunity, but now popular culture tends to load 
the
dice against men.

Sitcoms and ads routinely show male characters as weak, foolish or stupid.

Instead of Father Knows Best, there are such dubious role models as Homer 
Simpson
and Ray in Everyone Loves Raymond. Not that they have much of an example to
follow - Abraham Simpson was a terrible father and Ray's dad is a ranting
sociopath.

Of course, these shows would not be funny if the gag did not correlate to 
events
in real life, but there is no balance, and in any case a joke repeated too 
often
quickly becomes stale. Of recent comedies, Coupling and Kath & Kim stand out as
mature enough, and wicked enough, to be even-handed in satirising human
relationships.

Selfishness, vanity, vulgarity, duplicity, snobbery, deceit - none of these
things is the sole preserve of one half of humanity.

Nor are any of the more admirable qualities, needless to say.

Unreconstructed heroes such as those played by John Wayne and Steve McQueen 
have
disappeared from the big screen, but also lost are the Gregory Pecks, Henry
Fondas and Cary Grants.

Russell Crowe's rampaging public persona may seem like a throwback, but even he
can't go berserk in a hotel without concern for his family being the cause. 
Such
sensitivity, which is shared by Crowe's characters in such films as Gladiator 
and
The Cinderella Man, never inspired the ritual trashing of hotel rooms by rock
bands in the '60s and '70s.

In modern life, the patriarchy has been superseded. Men increasingly share in 
the
family chores and spend time with their children, which is why the authors of 
The
Future of Men think that "business still seems to be lagging behind the 
cultural
reality of how much gender-blurring has occurred in traditional female 
domains".
They write that "products related to food preparation, home furnishing and
entertaining, and home maintenance (i.e. cleaning) are still generally pitched 
at
women, despite the fact that most of these items have become gender neutral".

While it has never been easier to form attachments, it has never been more of a
challenge to maintain them.

The upheavals in men's lives have brought much that is new and unprecedented 
but
also confirmed much that is as old as the hills. A good man or woman has always
been hard to find and the course of true love never runs smooth, as Shakespeare
and Jane Austen, among other writers, understood.

Some are lucky in love and others miss out, no matter what the rules of
engagement happen to be. Mutual misunderstanding and gender confusion are a 
rich
source of comedy and pathos in Shakespeare's plays and the politics and 
economics
of sex is a central concern of Austen's novels.

Female sexual selection was known to be a vital factor in courtship long before
evolutionary science confirmed it as the dominant one. Much of what seems
contemporary in gender conflict has a historical precedent. The cad or shrew of
yesteryear is today's ballbreaker or toxic bachelor. For every female 
chauvinist
pig there's a pick-up artist playing "the game". In his primping and preening,
the metrosexual takes his cue from the dandy of yore.

The prospects for men may seem bleak to some, but that need not be the case.
Rather than feel useless and rejected, most men should perhaps feel lucky that
women still show as much interest in them as they do and want their
companionship. Often the most effective critics of cultural misandry are women,
and women do continue to give birth to sons as well as daughters.

Most women are attracted to men enough to want to be with them in some 
meaningful
way, while men (or women) who like each other are no longer prevented from
fulfilling their desire. Love is fragile and often fleeting but I doubt whether
many of us, no matter how modern our outlook, could contemplate life without 
it.
And for the time being, at least, it seems we don't have to.


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan  7 20:52:45 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 15:52:45 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: (NSA) The Agency That Could Be Big Brother
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252121030.14301@panix3.panix.com>

The Agency That Could Be Big Brother
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/weekinreview/25bamford.html

    Private Lives
    By JAMES BAMFORD
    Washington

    DEEP in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by
    fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. 
Located in
    a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and 
silently
    sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour.

    Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post 
intercepts
    all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another
    N.S.A. listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of 
the
    country.

    A hundred miles or so north of Sugar Grove, in Washington, the N.S.A. has
    suddenly taken center stage in a political firestorm. The controversy over
    whether the president broke the law when he secretly ordered the N.S.A. to 
bypass
    a special court and conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens 
has
    even provoked some Democrats to call for his impeachment.

    According to John E. McLaughlin, who as the deputy director of the Central
    Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2001 was among the first briefed on the
    program, this eavesdropping was the most secret operation in the entire
    intelligence network, complete with its own code word - which itself is 
secret.

    Jokingly referred to as "No Such Agency," the N.S.A. was created in absolute
    secrecy in 1952 by President Harry S. Truman. Today, it is the largest
    intelligence agency. It is also the most important, providing far more 
insight on
    foreign countries than the C.I.A. and other spy organizations.

    But the agency is still struggling to adjust to the war on terror, in which 
its
    job is not to monitor states, but individuals or small cells hidden all over 
the
    world. To accomplish this, the N.S.A. has developed ever more sophisticated
    technology that mines vast amounts of data. But this technology may be of 
limited
    use abroad. And at home, it increases pressure on the agency to bypass civil
    liberties and skirt formal legal channels of criminal investigation. 
Originally
    created to spy on foreign adversaries, the N.S.A. was never supposed to be 
turned
    inward. Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was 
then
    chairman of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the agency 
and
    came away stunned.

    "That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people," 
he
    said in 1975, "and no American would have any privacy left, such is the
    capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it 
doesn't
    matter. There would be no place to hide."

    He added that if a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. "could enable it to 
impose
    total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."

    At the time, the agency had the ability to listen to only what people said 
over
    the telephone or wrote in an occasional telegram; they had no access to 
private
    letters. But today, with people expressing their innermost thoughts in 
e-mail
    messages, exposing their medical and financial records to the Internet, and
    chatting constantly on cellphones, the agency virtually has the ability to 
get
    inside a person's mind.

    The N.S.A.'s original target had been the Communist bloc. The agency wrapped 
the
    Soviet Union and its satellite nations in an electronic cocoon. Anytime an
    aircraft, ship or military unit moved, the N.S.A. would know. And from 
22,300
    miles in orbit, satellites with super-thin, football-field-sized antennas
    eavesdropped on Soviet communications and weapons signals.

    Today, instead of eavesdropping on an enormous country that was always 
chattering
    and never moved, the N.S.A. is trying to find small numbers of individuals 
who
    operate in closed cells, seldom communicate electronically (and when they 
do, use
    untraceable calling cards or disposable cellphones) and are constantly 
traveling
    from country to country.

    During the cold war, the agency could depend on a constant flow of 
American-born
    Russian linguists from the many universities around the country with Soviet
    studies programs. Now the government is forced to search ethnic communities 
to
    find people who can speak Dari, Urdu or Lingala - and also pass a security
    clearance that frowns on people with relatives in their, or their parents',
    former countries.

    According to an interview last year with Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the
    N.S.A.'s director, intercepting calls during the war on terrorism has become 
a
    much more complex endeavor. On Sept. 10, 2001, for example, the N.S.A.
    intercepted two messages. The first warned, "The match begins tomorrow," and 
the
    second said, "Tomorrow is zero hour." But even though they came from 
suspected Al
    Qaeda locations in Afghanistan, the messages were never translated until 
after
    the attack on Sept. 11, and not distributed until Sept. 12.

    What made the intercepts particularly difficult, General Hayden said, was 
that
    they were not "targeted" but intercepted randomly from Afghan pay phones.

    This makes identification of the caller extremely difficult and slow. "Know 
how
    many international calls are made out of Afghanistan on a given day? 
Thousands,"
    General Hayden said.

    Still, the N.S.A. doesn't have to go to the courts to use its electronic
    monitoring to snare Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan. For the agency to snoop
    domestically on American citizens suspected of having terrorist ties, it 
first
    must to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA, make a
    showing of probable cause that the target is linked to a terrorist group, 
and
    obtain a warrant.

    The court rarely turns the government down. Since it was established in 
1978, the
    court has granted about 19,000 warrants; it has only rejected five. And even 
in
    those cases the government has the right to appeal to the Foreign 
Intelligence
    Surveillance Court of Review, which in 27 years has only heard one case. And
    should the appeals court also reject the warrant request, the government 
could
    then appeal immediately to a closed session of the Supreme Court.

    Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the N.S.A. normally eavesdropped on a small 
number
    of American citizens or resident aliens, often a dozen or less, while the 
F.B.I.,
    whose low-tech wiretapping was far less intrusive, requested most of the 
warrants
    from FISA.

    Despite the low odds of having a request turned down, President Bush 
established
    a secret program in which the N.S.A. would bypass the FISA court and begin
    eavesdropping without warrant on Americans. This decision seems to have been
    based on a new concept of monitoring by the agency, a way, according to the
    administration, to effectively handle all the data and new information.

    At the time, the buzzword in national security circles was data mining: 
digging
    deep into piles of information to come up with some pattern or clue to what 
might
    happen next. Rather than monitoring a dozen or so people for months at a 
time, as
    had been the practice, the decision was made to begin secretly eavesdropping 
on
    hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people for just a few days or a week at a 
time in
    order to determine who posed potential threats.

    Those deemed innocent would quickly be eliminated from the watch list, while
    those thought suspicious would be submitted to the FISA court for a warrant.

    In essence, N.S.A. seemed to be on a classic fishing expedition, precisely 
the
    type of abuse the FISA court was put in place to stop.At a news conference,
    President Bush himself seemed to acknowledge this new tactic. "FISA is for
    long-term monitoring," he said. "There's a difference between detecting so 
we can
    prevent, and monitoring."

    This eavesdropping is not the Bush administration's only attempt to expand 
the
    boundaries of what is legally permissible.

    In 2002, it was revealed that the Pentagon had launched Total Information
    Awareness, a data mining program led by John Poindexter, a retired rear 
admiral
    who had served as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and helped 
devise
    the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to rebels in
    Nicaragua.

    Total Information Awareness, known as T.I.A., was intended to search through 
vast
    data bases, promising to "increase the information coverage by an
    order-of-magnitude." According to a 2002 article in The New York Times, the
    program "would permit intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials to
    mount a vast dragnet through electronic transaction data ranging from credit 
card
    information to veterinary records, in the United States and internationally, 
to
    hunt for terrorists." After press reports, the Pentagon shut it down, and 
Mr.
    Poindexter eventually left the government.

    But according to a 2004 General Accounting Office report, the Bush 
administration
    and the Pentagon continued to rely heavily on data-mining techniques. "Our 
survey
    of 128 federal departments and agencies on their use of data mining," the 
report
    said, "shows that 52 agencies are using or are planning to use data mining. 
These
    departments and agencies reported 199 data-mining efforts, of which 68 are
    planned and 131 are operational." Of these uses, the report continued, "the
    Department of Defense reported the largest number of efforts."

    The administration says it needs this technology to effectively combat 
terrorism.
    But the effect on privacy has worried a number of politicians.

    After he was briefed on President Bush's secret operation in 2003, Senator 
Jay
    Rockefeller, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
    Intelligence, sent a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney.

    "As I reflected on the meeting today and the future we face," he wrote, 
"John
    Poindexter's T.I.A. project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern 
regarding the
    direction the administration is moving with regard to security, technology, 
and
    surveillance."

    Senator Rockefeller sounds a lot like Senator Frank Church.

    "I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge," Senator Church
    said. "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, 
and we
    must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this 
technology
    operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross 
over
    that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

    James Bamford is the author of "Puzzle Palace" and"Body of Secrets: Anatomy 
of
    the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency."


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan  7 20:52:57 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 15:52:57 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Japan's humanoid robots: Better than people
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252121140.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Japan's humanoid robots: Better than people
http://economist.com/world/asia/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5323427
5.12.20
[Note the last sentence.]

HER name is MARIE, and her impressive set of skills comes in handy in a nursing 
home. MARIE can walk around under her own power. She can distinguish among 
similar-looking objects, such as different bottles of medicine, and has a 
delicate enough touch to work with frail patients. MARIE can interpret a range 
of facial expressions and gestures, and respond in ways that suggest 
compassion. Although her language skills are not ideal, she can recognise 
speech and respond clearly. Above all, she is inexpensive . Unfortunately for 
MARIE, however, she has one glaring trait that makes it hard for Japanese 
patients to accept her: she is a flesh-and-blood human being from the 
Philippines. If only she were a robot instead.

Robots, you see, are wonderful creatures, as many a Japanese will tell you. 
They are getting more adept all the time, and before too long will be able to 
do cheaply and easily many tasks that human workers do now. They will care for 
the sick, collect the rubbish, guard homes and offices, and give directions on 
the street.

This is great news in Japan, where the population has peaked, and may have 
begun shrinking in 2005. With too few young workers supporting an ageing 
population, somebody--or something--needs to fill the gap, especially since 
many of Japan's young people will be needed in science, business and other 
creative or knowledge-intensive jobs.

Many workers from low-wage countries are eager to work in Japan. The 
Philippines, for example, has over 350,000 trained nurses, and has been 
pleading with Japan--which accepts only a token few--to let more in. Foreign 
pundits keep telling Japan to do itself a favour and make better use of cheap 
imported labour. But the consensus among Japanese is that visions of a future 
in which immigrant workers live harmoniously and unobtrusively in Japan are 
pure fancy. Making humanoid robots is clearly the simple and practical way to 
go.

Japan certainly has the technology. It is already the world leader in making 
industrial robots, which look nothing like pets or people but increasingly do 
much of the work in its factories. Japan is also racing far ahead of other 
countries in developing robots with more human features, or that can interact 
more easily with people. A government report released this May estimated that 
the market for "service robots" will reach ?1.1 trillion ($10 billion) within a 
decade.

The country showed off its newest robots at a world exposition this summer in 
Aichi prefecture. More than 22m visitors came, 95% of them Japanese. The robots 
stole the show, from the nanny robot that babysits to a Toyota that plays a 
trumpet. And Japan's robots do not confine their talents to controlled 
environments. As they gain skills and confidence, robots such as Sony's QRIO 
(pronounced "curio") and Honda's ASIMO are venturing to unlikely places. They 
have attended factory openings, greeted foreign leaders, and rung the opening 
bell on the New York Stock Exchange. ASIMO can even take the stage to accept 
awards.

The friendly face of technology

So Japan will need workers, and it is learning how to make robots that can do 
many of their jobs. But the country's keen interest in robots may also reflect 
something else: it seems that plenty of Japanese really like dealing with 
robots.

Few Japanese have the fear of robots that seems to haunt westerners in seminars 
and Hollywood films. In western popular culture, robots are often a threat, 
either because they are manipulated by sinister forces or because something 
goes horribly wrong with them. By contrast, most Japanese view robots as 
friendly and benign. Robots like people, and can do good.

The Japanese are well aware of this cultural divide, and commentators devote 
lots of attention to explaining it. The two most favoured theories, which are 
assumed to reinforce each other, involve religion and popular culture.

Most Japanese take an eclectic approach to religious beliefs, and the native 
religion, Shintoism, is infused with animism: it does not make clear 
distinctions between inanimate things and organic beings. A popular Japanese 
theory about robots, therefore, is that there is no need to explain why 
Japanese are fond of them: what needs explaining, rather, is why westerners 
allow their Christian hang-ups to get in the way of a good technology. When 
Honda started making real progress with its humanoid-robot project, it 
consulted the Vatican on whether westerners would object to a robot made in 
man's image.

Japanese popular culture has also consistently portrayed robots in a positive 
light, ever since Japan created its first famous cartoon robot, Tetsuwan Atomu, 
in 1951. Its name in Japanese refers to its atomic heart. Putting a nuclear 
core into a cartoon robot less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki might 
seem an odd way to endear people to the new character. But Tetsuwan Atom--being 
a robot, rather than a human--was able to use the technology for good.

Over the past half century, scores of other Japanese cartoons and films have 
featured benign robots that work with humans, in some cases even blending with 
them. One of the latest is a film called "Hinokio", in which a reclusive boy 
sends a robot to school on his behalf and uses virtual-reality technology to 
interact with classmates. Among the broad Japanese public, it is a short leap 
to hope that real-world robots will soon be able to pursue good causes, whether 
helping to detect landmines in war-zones or finding and rescuing victims of 
disasters.

The prevailing view in Japan is that the country is lucky to be uninhibited by 
robophobia. With fewer of the complexes that trouble many westerners, so the 
theory goes, Japan is free to make use of a great new tool, just when its needs 
and abilities are happily about to converge. "Of all the nations involved in 
such research," the Japan Times wrote in a 2004 editorial, "Japan is the most 
inclined to approach it in a spirit of fun."

These sanguine explanations, however, may capture only part of the story. 
Although they are at ease with robots, many Japanese are not as comfortable 
around other people. That is especially true of foreigners. Immigrants cannot 
be programmed as robots can. You never know when they will do something 
spontaneous, ask an awkward question, or use the wrong honorific in 
conversation. But, even leaving foreigners out of it, being Japanese, and 
having always to watch what you say and do around others, is no picnic.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Japanese researchers are forging ahead with 
research on human interfaces. For many jobs, after all, lifelike features are 
superfluous. A robotic arm can gently help to lift and reposition hospital 
patients without being attached to a humanoid form. The same goes for robotic 
spoons that make it easier for the infirm to feed themselves, power suits that 
help lift heavy grocery bags, and a variety of machines that watch the house, 
vacuum the carpet and so on. Yet the demand for better robots in Japan goes far 
beyond such functionality. Many Japanese seem to like robot versions of living 
creatures precisely because they are different from the real thing.

An obvious example is AIBO, the robotic dog that Sony began selling in 1999. 
The bulk of its sales have been in Japan, and the company says there is a big 
difference between Japanese and American consumers. American AIBO buyers tend 
to be computer geeks who want to hack the robotic dog's programming and delve 
in its innards. Most Japanese consumers, by contrast, like AIBO because it is a 
clean, safe and predictable pet.

AIBO is just a fake dog. As the country gets better at building interactive 
robots, their advantages for Japanese users will multiply. Hiroshi Ishiguro, a 
robotocist at Osaka University, cites the example of asking directions. In 
Japan, says Mr Ishiguro, people are even more reluctant than in other places to 
approach a stranger. Building robotic traffic police and guides will make it 
easier for people to overcome their diffidence.

Karl MacDorman, another researcher at Osaka, sees similar social forces at 
work. Interacting with other people can be difficult for the Japanese, he says, 
"because they always have to think about what the other person is feeling, and 
how what they say will affect the other person." But it is impossible to 
embarrass a robot, or be embarrassed, by saying the wrong thing.

To understand how Japanese might find robots less intimidating than people, Mr 
MacDorman has been investigating eye movements, using headsets that monitor 
where subjects are looking. One oft-cited myth about Japanese, that they rarely 
make eye contact, is not really true. When answering questions put by another 
Japanese, Mr MacDorman's subjects made eye contact around 30% of the time. But 
Japanese subjects behave intriguingly when they talk to Mr Ishiguro's android, 
ReplieeQ1. The android's face has been modeled on that of a famous newsreader, 
and sophisticated actuators allow it to mimic her facial movements. When 
answering the android's questions, Mr MacDorman's Japanese subjects were much 
more likely to look it in the eye than they were a real person. Mr MacDorman 
wants to do more tests, but he surmises that the discomfort many Japanese feel 
when dealing with other people has something to do with his results, and that 
they are much more at ease when talking to an android.

Eventually, interactive robots are going to become more common, not just in 
Japan but in other rich countries as well. As children and the elderly begin 
spending time with them, they are likely to develop emotional reactions to such 
lifelike machines. That is human nature. Upon meeting Sony's QRIO, your 
correspondent promptly referred to it as "him" three times, despite trying to 
remember that it is just a battery-operated device.

What seems to set Japan apart from other countries is that few Japanese are all 
that worried about the effects that hordes of robots might have on its 
citizens. Nobody seems prepared to ask awkward questions about how it might 
turn out. If this bold social experiment produces lots of isolated people, 
there will of course be an outlet for their loneliness: they can confide in 
their robot pets and partners. Only in Japan could this be thought less risky 
than having a compassionate Filipina drop by for a chat.

From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan  7 20:53:21 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 15:53:21 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Chicago Tribune: Advances in science: Answering the
	big questions 
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252121270.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Advances in science: Answering the big questions
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0512110186dec11,1,6233758.story?coll=chi-opinionfront-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
World's scientists predict what's next in coming 25 years
December 11, 2005    By Ronald Kotulak   Tribune science reporter

To celebrate the 125th anniversary of its founding by Thomas Edison, the 
journal Science asked more than 100 of the world's top scientists what they 
thought were the 25 most important scientific questions likely to be answered 
in the next 25 years.

The 25 big questions range from what is consciousness (the mysterious interplay 
of brain cells and neurotransmitters that conjures up awareness and the ability 
to ask questions) to what is the universe made of.

What distinguishes humans from all other species is that capacity to formulate 
questions--and to find answers that lead to more questions.

Children start asking "why" almost as soon as they learn to talk. Why is the 
sky blue? Do mosquitoes go to the bathroom?

Asking the right question is the driving force behind science's amazing run of 
successes in explaining how the world works.

"Children ask the most natural and the most difficult questions because they 
really do want explanations in which they can understand relationships between 
cause and effect," said Donald Kennedy, executive editor in chief of Science.

"Scientists proceed in much the same way," he said. "They see some complicated 
outcome and they say, What produced this? I'm not going to be satisfied with 
just describing that it happened; I want to know what put it in motion."

Whereas a frustrated parent may answer a child's inquisitiveness with "because 
I told you so," scientists must frame a question in such a way that it poses a 
hypothesis--a theory that tries to explain how something works--that can be 
tested to determine if it is true or not.

Questions are more important than answers in shaping the future of science, 
Kennedy wrote in an editorial in Science, adding that science is about 
questions while research is about answers.

"The essential feature of a good question is that it is ultimately testable or 
answerable," he wrote. "The big question that can never be wrestled with isn't 
worth much."

In 1943 Erwin Schrodinger posed one of the most famous questions ever recorded 
when he asked, "What is life?" Enough tantalizing clues are known, he 
postulated, to begin looking for the molecules of life.

Schrodinger's question, and slim book by the same title, inspired a generation 
of young scientists, including James Watson and Francis Crick, who won the race 
to decipher the chemical structure of DNA.

But Watson and Crick's achievement was only the start of a cascade of new 
questions: What are genes? Are there disease genes? Why do humans have so many 
fewer genes than previously thought? That last question opened a new field of 
epigenetics, which studies the role the environment plays in determining how 
genes are expressed.

Scientists ask questions because they have an overwhelming urge to know why 
things are the way they are. The knowledge learned scrapes away the crust of 
ignorance that limits human progress.

"In many cases, the answers are going to have a big impact on human well-being, 
and not just in the medical sense," Kennedy said. "People who explore the 
cosmos try to put our solar system, Earth and everybody on it in some kind of 
grander context in terms of our universe."

Some answers seem to have no immediate relevance at the time of discovery, but 
later turn out to have a major impact on society.

When Michael Faraday was demonstrating his equipment for generating the newly 
discovered phenomenon of electricity in the early 1800s, British chancellor of 
the exchequer William Gladstone, said: "It is very interesting, Mr. Faraday; 
But what practical worth is it?" Faraday replied: "One day, sir, you may tax 
it."

The ancient Greeks were masters at asking questions and coming up with 
philosophical answers that were intellectually satisfying but usually not 
testable. It wasn't until the Age of Enlightenment starting in the 1600s that 
the scientific method--observe, form a hypothesis, test it--took hold.

The flood of discoveries that followed changed the world. Every now and then, 
particularly after a surge of great discoveries, someone, often a scientist, 
would say that science has learned all there is to learn.

"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all 
been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility 
of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly 
remote," Albert A. Michelson, who measured the speed of light, said in a speech 
dedicating the Ryerson Physics Lab at the University of Chicago in 1894.

   He could not anticipate the revolutionary discoveries of relativity and 
quantum mechanics that soon followed.

The most recent pessimistic forecast is a 1996 book, "The End of Science" by 
John Horgan, that claimed all the big questions have been asked and answered. 
What's left, he said, is simply filling in the details.

Most scientists, however, believe that there may be no end to big questions and 
that they will lead to big discoveries. "It is very plain that science has as 
much going for it now as it ever had. There are even more questions," Kennedy 
said.

Besides consciousness, the small number of human genes and what the universe is 
made of, the other big questions on Science's list of 25 are:

- To what extent are genetic variation and personal health linked?

- Can the laws of physics be unified?

- How much can the human life span be extended?

- What controls organ regeneration?

- How can a skin cell become a nerve cell?

- How does a single somatic cell become a whole plant?

- How does Earth's interior work?

- Are we alone in the universe?

- How and where did life on Earth arise?

- What determines species diversity?

- What genetic changes made us uniquely human?

- How are memories stored and retrieved?

- How did cooperative behavior evolve?

- How will big pictures emerge from a sea of biological data?

- How far can we push chemical self-assembly?

- What are the limits of conventional computing?

- Can we selectively shut off the immune responses?

- Do deeper principles underlie quantum uncertainty and non-locality?

- Is an effective HIV vaccine feasible?

- How hot will the greenhouse world be?

- What can replace cheap oil, and when?

- Will Thomas Malthus [who predicted that overpopulation could lead to a global 
disaster] continue to be wrong?

Scientists are already working on these questions and many more. "We thought 
these had the biggest potential for impact and the ability to be answered in 
the next 25 years," said Science executive editor Monica Bradford.


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan  7 20:54:54 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 15:54:54 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Undernews: Censorship Growing On Internet: Suppressing
 Anti-Bush Material
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252121410.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Censorship Growing On Internet: Suppressing Anti-Bush Material Undernews

WAYNE MADSEN REPORT - Internet censorship. It did not happen overnight but 
slowly came to America's shores from testing grounds in China and the Middle 
East.  Progressive and investigative journalist web site administrators are 
beginning to talk to each other about it, e-mail users are beginning to 
understand why their e-mail is being disrupted by it, major search engines 
appear to be complying with it, and the low to equal signal-to-noise ratio of 
legitimate e-mail and spam appears to be perpetuated by it. . .

Take for example of what recently occurred when two journalists were taking on 
the phone about a story that appeared on Google News. The story was about a 
Christian fundamentalist move in Congress to use U.S. military force in Sudan 
to end genocide in Darfur. The story appeared on the English Google News site 
in Qatar. But the very same Google News site when accessed simultaneously in 
Washington, DC failed to show the article. This censorship is accomplished by 
geo-location filtering: the restriction or modifying of web content based on 
the geographical region of the user. In addition to countries, such filtering 
can now be implemented for states, cities, and even individual IP addresses. . 
.

News reports on CIA prisoner flights and secret prisons are disappearing from 
Google and other search engines like Alltheweb as fast as they appear. Here 
now, gone tomorrow is the name of the game.

Google is systematically failing to list and link to articles that contain 
explosive information about the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda, 
and U.S. political scandals. But Google is not alone in working closely to 
stifle Internet discourse. America On Line, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are 
slowly turning the Internet into an information superhighway dominated by 
barricades, toll booths, off-ramps that lead to dead ends, choke points, and 
security checks.

America On Line is the most egregious is stifling Internet freedom. A former 
AOL employee noted how AOL and other Internet Service Providers cooperate with 
the Bush administration in censoring email. The Patriot Act gave federal 
agencies the power to review information to the packet level and AOL was 
directed by agencies like the FBI to do more than sniff the subject line. The 
AOL term of service has gradually been expanded to grant AOL virtually 
universal power regarding information.  Many AOL users are likely unaware of 
the elastic clause, which says they will be bound by the current TOS and any 
TOS revisions which AOL may elect at any time in the future. Essentially, AOL 
users once agreed to allow the censorship and non-delivery of their email.

Microsoft has similar requirements for Hotmail as do Yahoo and Google for their 
respective e-mail services.

There are also many cases of Google's search engine failing to list and link to 
certain information.  According to a number of web site administrators who 
carry anti-Bush political content, this situation has become more pronounced in 
the last month. In addition, many web site administrators are reporting a 
dramatic drop-off in hits to their sites, according to their web statistic 
analyzers.

http://waynemadsenreport.com/


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  8 19:59:32 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 14:59:32 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge Annual Question 1998: What Is Your Question?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601081448220.9966@panix2.panix.com>

Edge Annual Question 1998: What Is Your Question?
EDGE 3rd Culture: THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wqc/wqc_p1.html et seq.
[This is the first in the series.]

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER
Dedicated to the Memory of James Lee Byars
1932-1997

Introduction by
John Brockman

Everything has been explained. There is nothing left to consider. The
explanation can no longer be treated as a definition. The question: a
description. The answer: not explanation, but a description and
knowing how to consider it. Asking or telling: there isn't any
difference.

The final elegance: assuming, asking the question. No answers. No
explanations. "Why do you demand explanations? If they are given, you
will once more be facing a terminus. They cannot get you any further
than you are at present."1 The solution: not an explanation: a
description and knowing how to consider it.

Experience a minute. Experience an hour. Can you experience a minute
and an hour together, simultaneously, at the same time? This is an
important question to ask.

No explanation, no solution, but consideration of the question. "Every
proposition proposing a fact must in its complete analysis propose the
general character of the universe required for the fact."2 The
description, the proposition: not a definition, but a commission.
"Understanding a commission means: knowing what one has got to do."3

Any new style, any new life, any new world, is but a god where gods
are no longer valid. "The god that one so finds is but a word born of
words, and returns to the word. For the reply we make to ourselves is
assuredly never anything other than the question itself."4

"Our kind of innovation consists not in the answers, but in the true
novelty of the questions themselves; in the statement of problems, not
in their solutions."5 What is important is not "to illustrate a
truth?or even an interrogation?known in advance, but to bring to the
world certain interrogations . . . not yet known as such to
themselves."6

A total synthesis of all human knowledge will not result in fantastic
amounts of data, or in huge libraries filled with books. There's no
value any more in amount, in quantity, in explanation. For a total
synthesis of human knowledge, use the interrogative. Ask the most
subtle sensibilities in the world what questions they are asking
themselves.

? from By the Late John Brockman, 1969

-----

In EDGE 19, I presented a eulogy to honor my friend and collaborator
of sorts, the artist James Lee Byars, who died in Egypt last May.

I met Byars in 1969 when he sought me out after the publication of my
first book, By the Late John Brockman. We were both in the art world,
we shared an interest in language, in the uses of the interrogative,
in avoiding the anesthesiology of wisdom, and in "the Steins" ?
Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein, and Frankenstein. In 1971, our
dialogue, in part, informed the creation by James Lee of the WORLD
QUESTION CENTER.

I wrote the following about his project at the time of his death:

"James Lee inspired the idea that led to the Reality Club (and
subsequently to EDGE), and is responsible for the motto of the club.
He believed that to arrive at an axiology of societal knowledge it was
pure folly to go to a Widener Library and read 6 million volumes of
books. (In this regard he kept only four books at a time in a box in
his minimally furnished room, replacing books as he read them.) This
led to his creation of the World Question Center in which he planned
to gather the 100 most brilliant minds in the world together in a
room, lock them behind closed doors, and have them ask each other the
questions they were asking themselves. The expected result, in theory,
was to be a synthesis of all thought. But between idea and execution
are many pitfalls. James Lee identified his 100 most brilliant minds
(a few of them have graced the pages of this Site), called each of
them, and asked what questions they were asking themselves. The
result: 70 people hung up on him."

That was in 1971. New technologies=new perceptions. The Internet and
email now allow for a serious implementation of Jimmy Lee's grand
design and I am pleased to note that among the contributors are
Freeman Dyson and Murray Gell-Mann, two names on his 1971 list of "the
100 most brilliant minds in the world."

For the first anniversary edition of EDGE I asked a number of those
people I consider to be part of "the third culture" to use the
interrogative. I have asked "the most subtle sensibilities in the
world what questions they are asking themselves."

I am pleased to present the World Question Center.

-JB

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wqc/wqc_p2.html

"Given the ability of regulatory proteins to rescue functions between
taxa that haven't shared a common ancestor for over 600 million years
how do we integrate this into the way we think about the evolution of
phenotype?"

JEREMY C. AHOUSE
Works in developmental genetics at University of Wisconsin, Madison.

"Is a greater understanding of the way the brain works going to give
me a new language to explain what it is like to be me? Will the words
we use now one day seem as strange as the 'humours' we once used to
explain the state of our bodies? And what will be the consequence if a
scientist gains the power to know me better than I can know myself?"

ALUN ANDERSON
Editor of New Scientist, biologist and author of Science And
Technology In Japan.

"What is the crucial distinction between inanimate matter and an
entity which can act as an 'agent', manipulating the world on its own
behalf; and how does that change happen?"

PHILIP ANDERSON
Nobel laureate physicist at Princeton.

"Exactly how much of nature can we trash and burn and get away with
it?"

NATALIE ANGIER
Science writer for The New York Times; author of Natural Obsessions,
The Beauty Of The Beastly.

"To what extent can we achieve a more just society through the use of
better economic indicators, and to what extent is our choice of
economic indicators just a reificiation of the wishes of those who are
already economically powerful?"

JOHN BAEZ
Mathematical physicist at University of California, Riverside.

"What if Gutenberg had invented the world wide web instead of the
movable type slug? How would the questions scientists chose to ask
themselves over the past five centuries, and the language in which
they chose to answer, have been different?"

JAMES BAILEY
Former executive at Thinking Machines; author of After Thought.

"As a theoretical physicist, the interpretation of quantum mechanics
and the nature of time are what occupy me most, but, as a mystified
sentient being, I should like to ask the child's question: Are the
most remarkable things in life ? sights, sounds, colors, tastes ?
really just subjective epiphenomena with no role or significance in
the 'objective' world?"

JULIAN BARBOUR
Theoretical physicist; author of The Frame Of Mind.

"Will we ever generate enough bandwidth to convey prana?"

JOHN PERRY BARLOW
Co-founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation; a former lyricist for the
Grateful Dead.

"Is the Universe a great mechanism, a great computation, a great
symmetry, a great accident, or a great thought?"

"Is there enough information in the observable universe to identify
the fundamental laws of Nature beyond all reasonable doubt?"

"Are there other minds that think about us?"

JOHN D. BARROW
Cosmologist, Professor of Astronomy, University of Sussex, UK; author
of Theories Of Everything; Pi In The Sky.

"How can we build a new ethics of respect for life that goes beyond
individual survival to include the necessity of death, the
preservation of the environment, and our current and developing
scientific knowledge?"

MARY CATHERINE BATESON
Anthropologist, George Mason University; author Composing A Life;
Peripheral Visions.

"How can considering the longest time scales in human endeavor lead us
to deal with the approaching crises of greenhouse warming and species
diversity?"

GREGORY BENFORD
Physicist, University of California, Irvine; author of Timescape.

"How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of
difficult and rare?"

STEWART BRAND
Founder of The Whole Earth Catalog; author of How Buildings Learn.

"Which cognitive skills develop in any reasonably normal human
environment and which only in specific socio-cultural contexts?"

JOHN T. BRUER
President, James S. McDonnell Foundation

"What is the mathematical essence that distinguishes living from
non-living, so that we can engineer a transcendence across the current
boundaries?"

ROD BROOKS
Computer scientist; director of MIT's AI Lab.

"Do humans have evolved homicide modules ? evolved psychological
mechanisms specifically dedicated to killing other humans under
certain contexts?"

DAVID BUSS
Psychologist at University of Texas at Austin; author of The Evolution
Of Desire.

"If Mosaic had never supported pictures (read: the Internet didn't
become a commercial medium), what would I be doing right now?"

JASON McCABE CALCANIS
Publisher, Silicon Alley Reporter.

"How will minds expand, once we understand how the brain makes mind?"

WILLIAM H. CALVIN Theoretical neurophysiologist, University of
Washington; author of The Cerebral Code; How Brains Think.

"Any musically aware listener will know of music that breaks out of
established forms or syntax to profound effect ? my personal
favourites include Beethoven's Eroica symphony, Wagner's Tristan und
Isolde, Schoenberg's Erwartung, Debussy's Apres midi d'un faune. ..
What is the most that we can ever say objectively about what those
composers are discovering? What are the limits of objective
description using science, mathematics and musical analysis? More
generally, how do these structures in sound make sense? As of now, I
see only very preliminary hypotheses in response to this last
question, no possibility of much more given current understanding and
techniques, and no consensus as to the ultimate constraints on such an
answer."

PHILIP CAMPBELL
Editor of Nature.

"It's probably the case that intergroup competition was an important
part of human evolution and there is increasing evidence that
'ethnicity' may be a correlate of 'modernity.' If ethnicity, and the
human use of biological cues (and cultural and linguistic cues) to
indicate social identity are parts of our evolutionary legacy, it
makes it that much harder to eradicate ethnocentrism and racism. Can
we do it? How can we engage our focus on the flip side of competition
? cooperation?"

RACHEL CASPARI
Anthropologist at the University of Michigan; coauthor of Race And
Human Evolution.

"How can we develop an objective language for describing subjective
experience?"

DAVID CHALMERS Philosopher, University of California, Santa Cruz;
author of The Conscious Mind.

"When will we learn to ask 'And then what' as a matter of course?"

JEREMY CHERFAS
Biologist and BBC Radio Four broadcaster; author of The Seed Savers
Handbook.

"If Gordon Moore was correct in his prediction that the amount of
information storable on semiconductor chips would double every 18
months, then over time is time more or less valuable?"

LUYEN CHOU
President and CEO of Learn Technologies Interactive in New York City,
an interactive media developer and publisher.

"How can we sustain young people's interest in asking questions such
as these? Does the emphasis on personal success and security divert
psychic energy from taking the long-term view on things? How long can
we keep curiosity and creativity alive in an increasingly
materialistic culture?"

MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

Psychologist, University of Chicago; author of Flow: The Psychology Of
Optimal Experience; Creativity. 
"What is information and where does it ultimately originate?"

PAUL DAVIES
Physicist, University of Adelaide, Australia; author of The Mind Of
God; Are We Alone.

"What might a second specimen of the phenomenon that we call life look
like?"

RICHARD DAWKINS
Evolutionary biologist, Oxford; author of River Out Of Eden; Climbing
Mount Improbable.

"How can we even begin to formulate the right questions about
consciousness?"

STANISLAS DEHAENE
Cognitive neuropsychologist, Institut National de la Sant; author of
The Number Sense.

"How on earth does the brain manage its division of labor problem ?
that is, how do the quite specialized bits manage to contribute
something useful when they get 'recruited' by their neighbors to
assist in currently dominant tasks (or is this 'recruitment' an
illusion ? are they not helping but just complaining about the noise
caused by their hyperactive neighbors)?"

DANIEL C. DENNETT
Philosopher, Tufts University; author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea;
Kinds Of Minds.

"Throughout its history, the scientific community has shown great
integrity in resisting the onslaught of anti-rationalism. How can it
now be persuaded to show the same integrity in regard to scientism?"

DAVID DEUTSCH
Physicist, Oxford University; author of The Fabric Of Reality.

"Why are decentralized processes ubiquitous in nature and society and
why are they so poorly understood that people will sacrifice their
autonomy and freedom for authoritarian, centralized solutions (gods,
governments, and gurus) to personal and social problems?"

ARTHUR DE VANY
Professor, Mathematical Behavioral Sciences Dept., University Of
California, Irvine.

"Is justice real?"

THOMAS DE ZENGOTITA
Anthropologist; teaches philosophy and anthropology at The Dalton
School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University.

"What do collapses of past societies teach us about our own future?"

JARED DIAMOND
Biologist, UCLA Medical School; author of The Third Chimpanzee; Guns,
Germs, And Steel

"Is psychic phenomenon just wishful thinking and can we ever prove it
exists or doesn't exist using scientific methodology."

JOHN C. DVORAK
Columnist for Pc Magazine; Pc/Computing, Boardwatch.

"What makes a soul? And if machines ever have souls, what will be the
equivalent of psychoactive drugs? of pain? of the physical / emotional
high I get from having a clean office?"

ESTHER DYSON
President, Edventures Holdings, Inc; publisher of Release 1.0
Newsletter; author of Release 2.0.

"The best questions were asked long ago. For example, Fermi's
question, 'Where are they?', and Blake's question, 'How do you know
but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight,
clos'd by your senses five?' My question is, 'What goes on inside the
head of a baby?' "

FREEMAN DYSON
Physicist, Institute for Advanced Study; author of Disturbing The
Universe; From Eros To Gaia.

"Why not trees in the oceans?"

GEORGE DYSON
Leading authority in the field of Russian Aleut kayaks; author of
Baidarka; Darwin Among The Machines.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wqc/wqc_p3.html

"Will we find the will and the way to limit our population growth
before the Biosphere does it for us?"

NILES ELDREDGE
Paleontologist and Curator at The American Museum of Natural History;
author of The High Table; Dominion.

"As biological and traditional forms of cultural evolution are
superseded by electronic (or post-electronic) evolution, what will be
the differentially propagating "units" and the outcome of the natural
selection among them?"

PAUL EWALD
Evolutionary biologist at Amherst; author of Evolution Of Infectious
Disease.

"Will the 'theory of everything' be a theory of principles, not
particles? Will it invoke order from above, not below?"

KENNETH FORD
Retired Director of the American Institute of Physics; author of The
World Of Elementary Particles.

"However appropriate it may be for the economy, the 'market model' is
a grossly inadequate model for the rest of human society. With the
decline of religious conviction and the slow pace of changes in the
legal code, how can we nurture persons and institutions that can
resist a purely market orientation in all spheres of living?"

HOWARD GARDNER
Psychologist at Harvard; author of Frames Of Mind; The Mind's New
Science; Extraordinary Minds.

"When will the nation's leading intellectuals come clean & admit that
Biblical doctrine (on women, nature, homosexuality, the absolute
nature of moral truth and lots of other topics) makes them cringe and
they are henceforth NOT Jews and NOT Christians, and the hell with old
time religion?"

DAVID GELERNTER
Computer scientist at Yale; author of Mirror Worlds; Drawing Life.

"Is superstring theory (or M-theory, as it has become) the long-sought
unified theory of all the elementary particles and forces of nature?"

"How can we improve our reward system for excellence in filtering,
interpreting, and synthesizing the vast body of so-called information
with which we are deluged."

MURRAY GELL-MANN
Nobel laureate physicist at the Santa Fe Institute; author of The
Quark And The Jaguar.

"How can we teach each other to embrace pluralism, and to trust each
other with the new tools that promote privacy and freedom of speech?"

MIKE GODWIN
EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Staff Counsel.

"Can science survive the sell-out to technology and the corporate
sector?"

BRIAN GOODWIN
Biologist, Schumacher College; author of How The Leopard Changed Its
Spots.

"At what point a complex organic macro-structure becomes 'alive' ?"

MARCELO GLEISER
Brazilian physicist, Dartmouth; author of The Dancing Universe.

"How do intelligent beings learn to adapt successfully on their own to
a rapidly changing world without forgetting what they already know?"

STEPHEN GROSSBERG
Cognitive scientist at Boston University; author of Studies Of Mind
And Brain; The Adaptive Brain.

"It appears likely that the universe that we can observe is just one
of an infinity of 'pocket universes,' which are continually being
created by a process called eternal inflation. These pocket universes
are believed to split off from a region of 'false vacuum', which
expands so quickly that its volume increases forever, despite the loss
of volume to the formation of pocket universes. The problem is to find
a reliable way to extract predictions from this picture. The
properties of the pocket universes can vary, and with an infinity of
trials essentially anything will happen an infinite number of times.
We need to learn how to distinguish the probable from the improbable,
but so far such a probability calculation has never been given a
precise definition."

ALAN GUTH
Physicist at MIT; author of The Inflationary Universe.

"Are life and consciousness purely emergent phenomena, or subtly
connected to a fundamental level of the universe?"

STUART HAMEROFF, M.D.
Neuroscientist, University of Arizona; coeditor of Toward A Science Of
Consciousness.

"How can we reconcile our desire for fairness and equity with the
brutal fact that people are not all alike?"

JUDITH RICH HARRIS
Developmental psychologist; co-author of The Child: A Contemporary
View Of Development.

"It is now possible for functional parts of one animal's brain to be
transplanted into another's. A tasty question for future research, one
with volatile biomedical and ethical implications, is whether the
memories and goals and desires of one animal can be transplanted as
well?"

MARC D. HAUSER
Evolutionary psychologist at Harvard; author of The Evolution Of
Communication.

"Is there a way to enlarge our separate tribal loyalties, to include
all our fellow humans?"

REUBEN HERSH
Mathematician; author of What Is Mathematics, Really?

"Where is the frontier?"

W. DANIEL HILLIS
Computer scientist; V-P of R&D at the Walt Disney Company author of
How Computers Think (forthcoming).

"How can we bring up children so that they have the ability to form
satisfying relationships and a proper moral sense? How do we construct
a society with a proper moral code? Do we know what a proper moral
code is?"

ROBERT HINDE
Ethologist; Fellow, former Master and Royal Society Professor, St.
John's College, Cambridge; author of Towards Understanding
Releationships; Individuals, Relationships, and Culture.

"Can we use our current technology to bring C. P. Snow's two cultures
closer together? For example, could we produce a vision-oriented,
computer-based version of the cross-cultural artifact envisioned in
Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel?"

JOHN HENRY HOLLAND
Computer Scientist at the University of Michigan; author of Hidden
Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity; Emergence.

"Does anyone who is not a fool or fundamentalist still believe in
utopia?"

JOHN HORGAN
Science writer; author of The End Of Science.

"Why and how do we jump to conclusions in mathematics?"

VERENA HUBER-DYSON
Mathematician; author of Goedel's Theorems; A Workbook On
Formalization.

"Why is music such a pleasure?"

NICHOLAS HUMPHREY
Psychologist at The New School for Social Research; author of
Consciousness Regained; A History Of The Mind; Leaps Of Faith.

"What will be the framework for a scientific study of the
subject-object split?"

PIET HUT
Astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study; President of the
Kira Institute.

"What are the implications of the science of complex adaptive systems
for the nature of law and of legal personhood?"

DAVID JOHNSON
Attorney; founder of Counsel Connect; Co-Director, Cyberspace Law
Institute.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wqc/wqc_p4.html

"If humanity ever encounters an alien intelligence, will we be able to
communicate with it ? or even realize that it is there?

GEORGE JOHNSON
Writer, The New York Times; author of Fire In The Mind; Machinery Of
The Mind.

"What happens when a the library of human knowledge can process what
it knows and provide advice? In other words what happens when the
Library of Alexandria, Computing, and the Oracle at Delphi merge?"

BREWSTER KAHLE
Computer scientist; founder: Wide Area Information Servers Inc.; The
Internet Archive; Alexa.

"What must a physical system be such that it can act on its own in an
environment."

STUART A. KAUFFMAN
Biologist at the Santa Fe Institute; author of Origins Of Order; At
Home In The Universe.

"What does technology want?"

KEVIN KELLY
Executive editor, Wired; author of Out Of Control.

"Do we or even can we know the joint multi-variable probability
density function (f(x1, ... , xn)) that describes any realworld
event?"

BART KOSKO
Electrical engineer at USC; author of Fuzzy Thinking; Nanotime.

"Are the laws of physics a logical coherent whole, so that with any
small change the entire framework would crumble? Or are there a
continuum of possibilities, only one of which happens to have been
selected for our observed universe?"

LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
Physicist, Case Western Reserve Universe University; author of The
Fifth Essence; Fear Of Physics; The Physics Of Star Trek.

"How do neural computation principles and the neural networks of our
brains, together with the relevant aspects of experience, account for
the details of all human concepts, especially their structure, how
they are learned, and how they are used in thought and expressed in
language?"

GEORGE LAKOFF
Cognitive scientist, University of California, Berkeley; coauthor of
Metaphors We Live ; author of Women, Fire, And Dangerous Things.

"How can minds, lives, and relationships be enhanced by information
systems in unforeseen ways?"

"How can scientific and technological culture be articulated so that
fewer people are driven to embrace superstitions, and so that
technology is more likely to be designed and judged on humanistic
terms?"

JARON LANIER
Computer scientist and musician; pioneer of virtual reality.

"With the ever-growing dominance of corporate forms of control in
everyday social life, how do we reconcile our notions of personal
liberty and autonomy rooted in Enlightenment political thought?"

EDWARD O. LAUMANN
Sociologist at the University of Chicago; author of The Social
Organization Of Sexuality.

"For how long can Christianity and Islam survive the recovery of
living organisms from beyond our planet by our species?"

"Can religion exist after humans have created living entities that
reproduce?"

RICHARD LEAKEY
Paleoanthropologist and former director of Kenya's Wildlife Services;
author of Origins Of Humankind and coauthor of The Sixth Extinction.

"'What is the question I am asking myself?' ? After contemplating this
for hours the only honest answer I could come up with was, 'What is
the question I am asking myself?'"

SETH LLOYD
Physicist at MIT, who works on problems having to do with information
and complex systems.

"How can we know when and what we do not know?"

SIR JOHN MADDOX
Editor emeritus of Nature; author of The Doomsday Syndrome; What
Remains To Be Discovered (forthcoming).

"Do new computing technologies create or destroy jobs?"

JOHN MARKOFF
Technology reporter, The New York Times; coauthor, Takedown.

"When posterity looks back on the 20th Century from the perspective of
a hundred years, what will they see as our greatest successes and
worst follies?"

PAMELA McCORDUCK & JOSEPH TRAUB
(McCorduck:) Writer; author of Machines Who Think; coauthor of The
Futures Of Women. (Traub:) Computer scientist at Columbia; author of
Complexity And Information (forthcoming).

"What will happen when the male, scientific, hierarchical,
control-oriented Western culture that has dominated Western thought
integrates with the emerging female, spiritual, holographic,
relationship-oriented Eastern way of seeing?"

JERRY MICHALSKI
Editor, Release 1.0

"Will it be possible to direct young people to the great educational
question of learning what they have become without having chosen it,
their unknown internal worlds, in the face of the blistering assault
of stimuli ( in medias res, truly) they encounter continuously each
day?"

FRANK MORETTI
Philosopher & educator; Co-Director, Institute for Learning
Technologies at Columbia.

"How come we don't understand how photosynthesis works?"

MARNEY MORRIS
Founder of Animatrix, an interactive design company; currently teaches
interactive design at Stanford.

"In 500 years, how will the phenotypic, genotypic and physical spaces
occupied by life descended from that on earth have changed?"

"How best can we combine democracy and expertise to make the living
conditions of the people of earth, especially those currently in
hardship, better and more equitable?"

OLIVER MORTON
Freelance writer, and a contributing editor at Wired and Newsweek
International.

"How does the capacity for low mood give a selective advantage?"

RANDOLPH NESSE, M.D.
Psychiatrist at the University of Michigan; coauthor of Why We Get
Sick.

"How much of what we as persons can experience in life can we share
with fellow human beings?"

TOR N?RRETRANDERS
Danish science writer; author of The User Illusion (forthcoming in the
U.S.).

"Pont d'Ironie?"

HANS ULRICH OBRIST
Curator for Musee D'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and museum in
progress, Vienna; chief editor of the magazine "Point d'Ironie."

"Why are religions still vital?"

ELAINE H. PAGELS
Religious historian at Princeton; author of The Gnostic Gospels; ; The
Origin Of Satan.

"Which industries will shake out, or disappear in the new industrial
revolution fomented by the advent of the world wide web, intranets,
and extranets? How do we help those who are afraid of these new
technologies to benefit from them, rather than be crushed by those who
understand?

KIP PARENT
Intranet and extranet pioneer and engineer; President, Pantheon
Interactive.

"A chimpanzee cannot understand Bessel functions or the theory of
black holes. Human forebrains are a few ounces bigger than a chimp's,
and we can ask many more questions than a chimp. Are there facets of
the universe we can never know? Are there questions we can't ask?"

CLIFFORD A. PICKOVER
Computer scientist; author of The Alien Iq Test; The Loom Of God

"What is needed regarding the understanding of the mental process so
that we will be able to produce thought computationally?"

PAOLO PIGNATELLI
Cyber-entrepreneur, linguist, translator and scientist who previously
worked in image processing algorithms at Bell Labs.

"How does the brain represent the meaning of a sentence?"

STEVEN PINKER
Psychologist at MIT;author of The Language Instinct; How The Mind
Works.

"Do emotions contribute to intelligence, and if so, what are the
implications for the development of a technology of 'affective
computing?' "

ROBERT R. PROVINE
Neurobiologist and psychologist at the University of Maryland; author
of Quest For Laughter.

"Can our ever-more-integrated society avoid becoming more vulnerable
to high-tech extremists and terrorists?"

SIR MARTIN REES
Royal Society Professor at King's College, Cambridge; author of Before
The Beginning.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wqc/wqc_p5.html

"Given what we know now about the origins, history, and impacts of
technology, is it possible to design, deploy, and use technologies in
ways that help humans be more human, instead of more like components
in a machine?"

HOWARD RHEINGOLD
Founder of Electric Minds, a webzine; author of Tools For Thought;
Virtual Communities.

"How to ensure that we develop sciences and technologies that serve
the people, are open to democratic scrutiny and which assist rather
than hinder humans to live harmoniously with the rest of nature?"

STEVEN ROSE
Neurobiologist, The Open University; author Lifelines; The Making Of
Memory.

"Is there a happiness gene, and is it dominant?"

LOUIS ROSSETTO
Co-founder and Publisher of Wired.

"Can human beings achieve spontaneous morality by opening ourselves
further to some basic expression of nature, or must we create and
adopt a set of moral guidelines?"

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF
Author, Cyberia; Media Virus; Ecstasy Club; columnist for New York
Times Syndicate and Time Digital.

"Why does our 'humanness' keep getting in the way of rational
decision-making?"

KARL SABBAGH
Writer and television producer; author of The Living Body; Skyscraper;
21St Century Jet.

"How can the implicit beliefs that are imparted to us in childhood be
'reasoned with' in an educational context."

ROGER SCHANK
Computer scientist and cognitive psychologist at Northwestern; author
of The Creative Attitude; Tell Me A Story.

"I often wonder?sometimes despair?whether it will be possible to solve
long term, global problems(global warming being my current focus)
until we can overcome collective denial, which in turn, may not become
conscious until we grapple with personal myths. I question whether the
eventual loss of half the other species on Earth will even be enough
to overcome personal escapism that has gone collective?what I
sometimes think of a 'psychological fractal'. Perhaps that's not even
a question, but it occupies my mind a lot."

STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER
Atmospheric scientist at Stanford; author of The Genesis Strategy;
Laboratory Earth.

"Do exotic life forms, made of very different materials than those
used by life on earth, occur elsewhere in the Universe?"

ROBERT SHAPIRO
Biochemist at New York University; author of Origins; The Human
Blueprint.

"Does reality have real numbers?"

CHARLES SIMONYI
Chief Architect, Microsoft Corporation.

"Fundamentally, is the flow of time something real, or might our sense
of time passing be just an illusion that hides the fact that what is
real is only a vast collection of moments?"

LEE SMOLIN
Theoretical physicist at Penn State; author of The Life Of The Cosmos.

"How to articulate the natural and the social sciences without being
either driven or blocked by ideological agendas?"

DAN SPERBER
Cognitive and social scientist at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris;
author of Rethinking Symbolism; On Anthropological Knowledge.

"Is it more useful to theorize a new conception of self that emerges
from the widespread adoption of networked technology, or to seek to
problematize it?"

CARL STEADMAN
Cofounder of Suck.

"Why are most individuals and all human societies grossly
under-achieving their potentials?"

DUNCAN STEEL
Australian research scientist, broadcaster; author of Rogue Asteroids
And Doomsday Comets.

"Why can our minds do physics? That is, why does the behavior of the
physical world map so neatly onto mathematical laws, given that those
laws are (arguably) strings of symbols that our brains happen to be
capable of manipulating, apparently as a fortuitous byproduct of some
evolutionary process that made our ancestors better adapted to dodging
hyenas in the Rift Valley? Why is it that a person sitting in a chair
in a room can, by using those leftover hyena-dodging and
buffalo-hunting neurons to manipulate symbols in his head, design wing
flaps for a 747, or figure out what was happening one femtosecond
after the Big Bang?"

NEAL STEPHENSON
Novelist; author of The Big U; Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller; The Diamond
Age; Snow Crash.

"How shall I teach my children?"

CLIFF STOLL
Astronomer; author of The Cuckoo's Egg; Silicon Snake Oil.

"Why not?"

LINDA STONE
Director of the Virtual Worlds Group in the Microsoft Advanced
Technology and Research Division.

"What was the key factor in the success of Homo sapiens compared with
other human species such as the Neanderthals?"

CHRIS STRINGER
Research paleoanthropologist at The Natural History Museum, London;
co-author of In Search Of The Neanderthals; African Exodus.

"How predictive is the much sought-after 'Theory of Everything'
intended to be? Presumably it will show why the formation of
fundamental particles was inevitable, and why these were bound to form
into atoms, and presumably predict galaxies. But will it show that
life was bound to appear? Or consciousness? How powerful will it be
really ? or can it be? What is the Universe really capable of?"

"What is religion? Is it necessary? Can we devise a religion for the
21st century and beyond that is plausible and yet avoids banality ?
one that people see the need for? What would it be like?"

COLIN TUDGE
Cambridge biologist and writer; author of Last Animals At The Zoo; The
Time Before History.

"Why is our western civilization so reluctant to accept subjective,
first-hand experience as fundamental data? In close association: why
the reluctance to consider one's experience as a realm to be explored
with a discipline just as rigorous as the one invented by science for
material phenomena?"

FRANCISCO VARELA
Biologist at the cole Polytechnique, in Paris; author of Principles Of
Biological Autonomy; coauthor of Autopoiesis And Cognition.

"Why does our species so obsessively document its origins and past yet
so persistently ignore the dangerous portents of its future, such as
overpopulation?"

"Can there be a more reliable definition of intelligence than the
ability of a species to realize it has predators and competitors, and
then exterminate them ? as we humans have?"

PETER D. WARD
Paleontologist at University of Washington; author In Search Of
Nautilus; The End Of Evolution.

"Is the phenomenology of modern biology converging on a small number
of basic truths or will it increasingly diverge, becoming so endlessly
complex that no single human mind will be able to encompass it?"

ROBERT A. WEINBERG, M.D.
Biologist, MIT; founding member of the Whitehead Institute for
Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Mass.; author of Racing To The
Beginning Of The Road.

"What do we want from science?"

MARGARET WERTHEIM
Australian science writer; author of Pythagoras' Trousers: God,
Physics, And The Gender Wars.

"The major change through the prehistory of our species is the
evolution of our brain, the development of a social organ that makes
human culture (and language) part of our biology. My question is
whether we can ever transcend the consequences and free ourselves of
the biological limitations that have been imposed in the process."

MILFORD H. WOLPOFF
Paleoanthropologist at the University of Michigan; author of
Paleoanthropology; coauthor of Race And Human Evolution.

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  8 20:00:05 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 15:00:05 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] VDARE: Ed Rubenstein: The Stupid American? Look again.
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252121560.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Ed Rubenstein: The Stupid American? Look again.
http://vdare.com/rubenstein/051222_nd.htm
[14]Edwin S. Rubenstein Archive
December 22, 2005

National Data, By [17]Edwin S. Rubenstein

Psssst: Have you heard? We've lost our competitive edge.

Historically the U.S. economy excelled because of the skills and smarts of our 
workers. But no longer. America's workforce increasingly lags that of [18]other 
countries in math and literacy skills. We need their [19]brainpower!

At first glance, this assertion seems plausible. Math literacy scores for 
15-year old students in the U.S. ranked in the lower half of 41 countries 
studied in 2003. [[20]ECONOMIC IMPACT: Education statistics don't bode well for 
our future, By Chris Chmura, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dec 19, 2005]

U.S. adults ranked 12^th among 20 high income countries in composite (document, 
prose, and quantitative) literacy, according to a separate report released by 
the [21]Educational Testing Service.

A staggering 45 percent of adult Americans cannot read or write at the high 
school graduate level--and nearly half of those (20 percent) scored at a 
literacy level below that of a high school dropout. [Educational Testing 
Service, "[22]The Twin Challenges of Mediocrity and Inequality," February 2002]

International rankings can be misleading, however--especially when many of the 
countries are small and exhibit little variation in average test scores. Thus, 
despite our mediocre ranking, the mean literacy test score for U.S. adults 
(272) was 2 points above the mean for all adults in the 20 country survey 
(270).

The 2 point gap is not statistically significant......but we'll take it.

Larger, statistically significant, literacy gaps between us and them unfold 
when you separate immigrant from native-born test takers, as is done in 17 
[23]high income countries surveyed by ETS. [[24]Table 1]

bullet U.S. natives scored 8 points above the average native of the 17 high 
income countries

bullet U.S. immigrants scored 16 points below the average immigrant in the 17 
countries

There are several reasons why immigrants exert more of a literacy drag here 
than elsewhere.

First, they account for a larger share of the population. At the time of the 
international literacy survey (1994) immigrants accounted for about 13 percent 
of U.S. adults, fifth highest proportion among the countries surveyed. Only in 
[25]Australia, [26]Canada, [27]New Zealand, and [28]Switzerland did immigrants 
account for a larger population share.

Second--and far more important--is the abnormally wide gap between native and 
immigrant literacy capabilities in the U.S. Here are the average scores and the 
proportions by which natives outscore immigrants:

bullet U.S.: immigrants 210; natives 284; 74 points, or 35 percent

bullet 17 countries: immigrants 226; natives 276; 50 points, or 22 percent

The immigrant-native differential is still larger among high school dropouts--a 
group that covers one-third of adult U.S. immigrants and only 13 percent of 
natives:

bullet U.S.: immigrant dropouts 149; native dropouts 225; 76 points, or 51 
percent

bullet 17 countries: immigrant dropouts 177; native dropouts 243; 66 points, or 
37 percent

Needless to say, immigration is not the only factor behind our weak literacy 
scores. The literacy gap between native-born whites and Asians and their Black 
and Hispanic counterparts ranges from 46 points, or 19 percent, on the prose 
and document literacy tests, to 57 points, or 25 percent, on the quantitative 
test.

The wide dispersion of capabilities forces the ETS Bureaucracy to state the 
politically incorrect, albeit obvious:

"If we adjust the mean NALS scores for U.S. adults under age 65 to exclude all 
foreign-born adults as well as native-born Blacks and Hispanics, then the mean 
prose and quantitative scores of the remaining U.S. adults (Asian and White, 
native-born) would rise to 288, ranking the U.S. second highest--tied with 
Finland and Norway--on the prose scale and fifth highest on the quantitative 
scale.... The findings clearly suggest that future gains in the comparative, 
international literacy standing U.S. adults will require substantial 
improvements in the literacy proficiencies of Blacks, [29]Hispanics, and the 
foreign born from all racial/ethnic groups." [ETS Report, P.22]

Or we could settle for immigration reform.

Edwin S. Rubenstein ([30]email him) is President of [31]ESR Research Economic 
Consultants in Indianapolis.

References

   14. http://vdare.com/rubenstein/index.htm
   17. http://vdare.com/rubenstein/index.htm
   18. 
http://vdare.com/rubenstein/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.IE5/BYOBRHS1/brainpower
   19. http://www.vdare.com/letters/tl_060601.htm
   20. 
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?c=MGArticle&cid=1128768779649&pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&path=!business!columnists&s=1045855934868
   21. http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/051110_nd.htm
   22. http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/PICTWIN.pdf
   23. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/wealth_of_nations.htm
   24. http://vdare.com/rubenstein/051222_nd_table.htm#t1
   25. http://www.vdare.com/misc/051221_fraser.htm
   26. http://www.vdare.com/fulford/immigration_cut_off.htm
   27. http://www.vdare.com/blog/111204_blog.htm#b2
   28. http://vdare.com/zmirak/free_markets.htm
   29. http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/latino_literacy.htm
   30. mailto:edwin at esrresearch.com
   31. http://www.esrresearch.com/


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  8 20:00:18 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 15:00:18 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Sigma Xi: Randomness as a Resource
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252122260.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Randomness as a Resource 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/20829?&print=y
[Best to get the PDF.]

[31]Brian Hayes

Randomness is not something we usually look upon as a vital natural
resource, to be carefully conserved lest our grandchildren run short
of it. On the contrary, as a close relative of chaos, randomness seems
to be all too abundant and everpresent. Everyone has a closet or a
file drawer that offers an inexhaustible supply of disorder.
Entropy?another cousin of randomness?even has a law of nature saying
it can only increase. And, anyway, even if we were somehow to use up
all the world's randomness, who would lament the loss? Fretting about
a dearth of randomness seems like worrying that humanity might use up
its last reserves of ignorance.

Nevertheless, there is a case to be made for the proposition that
high-quality randomness is a valuable commodity. Many events and
processes in the modern world depend on a steady supply of the stuff.
Furthermore, we don?t know how to manufacture randomness; we can only
mine it from those regions of the universe that have the richest
deposits, or else farm it from seeds gathered in the natural world.
So, even if we have not yet reached the point of clear-cutting the
last proud acre of old-growth randomness, maybe it's not too early to
consider the question of long-term supply.

The Randomness Industry

To appreciate the value of randomness, just imagine a world without
it. What would replace the referee?s coin flip at the start of a
football game? How would a political poll-taker select an unbiased
sample of the electorate? Then of course there?s the Las Vegas
problem. Slot machines devour even more randomness than they do silver
dollars. Inside each machine an electronic device spews out random
numbers 24 hours a day, whether or not anyone is playing.

There?s also a Monte Carlo problem. I speak not of the Mediterranean
principality but of the simulation technique named for that place. The
Monte Carlo method got its start in the 1940s at Los Alamos, where
physicists were struggling to predict the fate of neutrons moving
through uranium and other materials. The Monte Carlo approach to this
problem is to trace thousands of simulated neutron paths. Whenever a
neutron strikes a nucleus, a random number determines the outcome of
the event?reflection, absorption or fission. Today the Monte Carlo
method is a major industry not only in physics but also in economics
and some areas of the life sciences, not to mention hundreds of
rotisserie baseball leagues.

Many computer networks would be deadlocked without access to
randomness. When two nodes on a network try to speak at once,
politeness is not enough to break the impasse. Each computer might be
programmed to wait a certain interval and then try again, but if all
computers followed the same rule, they?d keep knocking heads
repeatedly until the lights went out. The Ethernet protocol solves
this problem by deliberately not giving a fixed rule. Instead, each
machine picks a random number between 1 and n, then waits for the
random number of units chosen before retransmitting; the probability
of a second collision is reduced to 1/n.

  [32]click for full image and caption
   [33]Figure 1. Eight specimens of randomness . . .

Computer science has a whole technology of "randomized algorithms." On
first acquaintance the very idea of a randomized algorithm may seem
slightly peculiar: An algorithm is supposed to be a deterministic
procedure?one that allows no scope for arbitrary choice or caprice?so
how can it be randomized? The contradiction is resolved by making the
randomness a resource external to the algorithm itself. Where an
ordinary algorithm is a black box receiving a stream of bits as input
and producing another stream of bits as output, a randomized algorithm
has a second input stream made up of random bits.

Sometimes the advantage of a randomized algorithm is clearest when you
take an adversarial view of the world. Randomness is what you need to
foil an adversary who wants to guess your intentions or predict your
behavior. Suppose you are writing a program to search a list of items
for some specified target. Given any predetermined search
strategy?left to right, right to left, middle outward?an adversary can
arrange the list so that the target item is always in the last place
you look. But a randomized version of the procedure can?t be
outguessed so easily; the adversary can?t know where to hide the
target because the program doesn?t decide where to search until it
begins reading random bits. In spite of the adversary?s best efforts,
you can expect to find the target after sifting through half the list.

Still another field that can?t do without randomness is cryptography,
where calculated disorder is the secret to secrecy. The strongest of
all cipher systems require a random key as long as the message that?s
being sent. The late Claude E. Shannon proved that such a cipher is
absolutely secure. That is, if the key is truly random, and if it is
used only once, an eavesdropper who intercepts an encrypted message
can learn nothing about the original text, no matter how much time and
effort and computational horsepower are brought to bear on the task.
Shannon also showed that no cipher with a key shorter than the message
can offer the same degree of security. But a long key is a
considerable inconvenience?hard to generate, hard to distribute.

Much of the emphasis in recent cryptological research has been on ways
to get by with less randomness, but a recent proposal takes a step in
the other direction. The idea is to drown an adversary in a deluge of
random bits. The first version of the scheme was put forward in 1992
by Ueli M. Maurer of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology; more
recent refinements (not yet published) have come from Michael O. Rabin
of Harvard University and his student Yan Zong Ding.

The heart of the plan is to set up a public beacon?perhaps a
satellite?continually broadcasting random bits at a rate so high that
no one could store more than a small fraction of them. Parties who
want to communicate in privacy share a relatively short key that they
both use to select a sequence of random bits from the public
broadcast; the selected bits serve as an enciphering key for their
messages. An eavesdropper cannot decrypt an intercepted message
without a record of the random broadcasts, and cannot keep such a
record because it would be too voluminous.

How much randomness would the beacon have to broadcast? Rabin and Ding
mention a rate of 50 gigabits per second, which would fill up some
800,000 CD-ROMs per day.

Supply-Side Issues

Whatever the purpose of randomness, and however light or heavy the
demand, it seems like producing the stuff ought to be a cinch. At the
very least it should be easier to make random bits than non-random
ones, in the same way that it?s easier to make a mess than it is to
tidy up. If computers can perform long and intricate calculations
where a single error could spoil the entire result, then surely they
should be able to churn out some patternless digital junk. But they
can't. There is no computer program for randomness.

Of course most computer programming languages will cheerfully offer to
generate random numbers for you. In Lisp the expression (random 100)
produces an integer in the range between 0 and 99, with each of the
100 possible values having equal probability. But these are
pseudo-random numbers: They "look" random, but under the surface there
is nothing unpredictable about them. Each number in the series depends
on those that went before. You may not immediately perceive the rule
in a series like 58, 23, 0, 79, 48..., but it?s just as deterministic
as 1, 2, 3, 4....
[34]click for full image and caption
[35]Figure 2. Thermal noise in electronic circuits . . . [36]click for full 
image and caption
[37]Figure 3. Radioactive decay offers . . .

The only source of true randomness in a sequence of pseudo-random
numbers is a "seed" value that gets the series started. If you supply
identical seeds, you get identical sequences; different seeds produce
different numbers. The crucial role of the seed was made clear in the
1980s by Manuel Blum, now of Carnegie Mellon University. He pointed
out that a pseudo-random generator does not actually generate any
randomness; it stretches or dilutes whatever randomness is in the
seed, spreading it out over a longer series of numbers like a drop of
pigment mixed into a gallon of paint.

For most purposes, pseudo-random numbers serve perfectly well?often
better than true random numbers. Almost all Monte Carlo work is based
on them. Even for some cryptographic applications?where standards are
higher and unpredictability is everything?Blum and others have
invented pseudo-random generators that meet most needs. Nevertheless,
true randomness is still in demand, if only to supply seeds for
pseudo-random generators. And if true randomness cannot be created in
any mathematical operation, then it will have to come from some
physical process.

Extracting randomness from the material world also sounds like an easy
enough job. Unpredictable events are all around us: the stock market
tomorrow, the weather next week, the orbital position of Pluto in 50
million years. Yet finding events that are totally patternless turns
out to be quite difficult. The stories of the pioneering seekers after
randomness are chronicles of travail and disappointment.

Consider the experience of the British biometrician W. F. R. Weldon
and his wife, the former Florence Tebb. Evidently they spent many an
evening rolling dice together?not for money or sport but for science,
collecting data for a classroom demonstration of the laws of
probability. But in 1900 Karl Pearson analyzed 26,306 of the Weldons?
throws and found deviations from those laws; there was an excess of
fives and sixes.

In 1901 Lord Kelvin tried to carry out what we would now call a Monte
Carlo experiment, but he ran into trouble generating random numbers.
In a footnote he wrote: "I had tried numbered billets (small squares
of paper) drawn from a bowl, but found this very unsatisfactory. The
best mixing we could make in the bowl seemed to be quite insufficient
to secure equal chances for all the billets."

In 1925 L. H. C. Tippett had the same problem. Trying to make a random
selection from a thousand cards in a bag, "it was concluded that the
mixing between each draw had not been sufficient, and there was a
tendency for neighbouring draws to be alike." Tippett devised a more
elaborate randomizing procedure, and two years later he published a
table of 41,600 random digits. But in 1938 G. Udny Yule submitted
Tippett's numbers to statistical scrutiny and reported evidence of
"patchiness."

Ronald A. Fisher and Frank Yates compiled another table of 15,000
random digits, using two decks of playing cards to select numbers from
a large table of logarithms. When they were done, they discovered an
excess of sixes, and so they replaced 50 of them with other digits
"selected at random." (Two of their statistical colleagues, Maurice G.
Kendall and Bernard Babington Smith, comment mildly: "A procedure of
this kind may cause others, as it did us, some misgiving.")

The ultimate random-number table arrived with a thump in 1955, when
the Rand Corporation published a 600-page tome titled A Million Random
Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates. The Rand randomizers used "an
electronic roulette wheel" that selected one digit per second. Despite
the care taken in the construction of this device, "Production from
the original machine showed statistically significant biases, and the
engineers had to make several modifications and refinements of the
circuits." Even after this tune-up, the results of the month-long run
were still unsatisfactory; Rand had to remix and shuffle the numbers
before the tables passed statistical tests.

Today there is little interest in publishing tables of numbers, but
machines for generating randomness are still being built. Many of them
find their source of disorder in the thermal fluctuations of electrons
wandering through a resistor or a semiconductor junction. This noisy
signal is the hiss or whoosh you hear when you turn up an amplifier?s
volume control. Traced by an oscilloscope, it certainly looks random
and unpredictable, but converting it into a stream of random bits or
numbers is not straightforward.

The obvious scheme for digitizing noise is to measure the signal at
certain instants and emit a 1 if the voltage is positive or a 0 if it
is negative. But it?s hard to build a measuring circuit with a precise
and consistent threshold between positive and negative voltage. As
components age, the threshold drifts, causing a bias in the balance
between 1s and 0s. There are circuits and computational tricks to
correct this problem, but the need for such fixes suggests just how
messy it can be getting a physical device to conform to a mathematical
ideal?even when the ideal is that of pure messiness.

Another popular source of randomness is the radioactive decay of
atomic nuclei, a quantum phenomenon that seems to be near the ultimate
in unpredictability. A simple random-number generator based on this
effect might work as follows. A Geiger-M?ller tube detects a decay
event, while in the background a free-running oscillator generates a
high-frequency square-wave signal?a train of positive and negative
pulses. At the instant of a nuclear decay, the square wave is sampled,
and a binary 1 or 0 is output according to the polarity of the pulse
at that moment. Again there are engineering pitfalls. For example, the
circuitry?s "dead time" after each event may block detection of
closely spaced decays. And if the positive and negative pulses in the
square wave differ in length even slightly, the output will be biased.

Hardware random-number generators are available as off-the-shelf
components you can plug into a port of your computer. Most of them
rely on thermal electronic noise. If your computer has one of the
latest Intel Pentium processors, you don't need to plug in a
peripheral: The random-number generator is built into the CPU chip.
There are also several Web sites that serve up free samples of
randomness. George Marsaglia of Florida State University has some 4.8
billion carefully tested random bits available to the public. And
there are less-conventional sources of randomness, most famously
"lavarand," at Silicon Graphics, where random bits are extracted from
images of the erupting blobs inside six Lava Lite lamps. (Lately the
lamps have gone out, although samples remain available at
lavarand.sgi.com.)

The Empyrean and the Empirical

As a practical matter, reserves of randomness certainly appear
adequate to meet current needs. Consumers of randomness need not fear
rolling blackouts this summer. But what of the future? The great
beacon of randomness proposed by Rabin and Ding would require
technology that remains to be demonstrated. They envision broadcasting
50 billion random bits per second, but randomness generators today
typically run at speeds closer to 50 kilobits per second.

[39]Figure 4. Biased stream of random bits . . .

The prospect of scaling up by a factor of a million demands attention
to quality as well as quantity. For most commodities, quantity and
quality have an inverse relation. A laboratory buying milligrams of a
reagent may demand 99.9 percent purity, whereas a factory using
carloads can tolerate a lower standard. In the case of randomness, the
trade-off is turned upside down. If you need just a few random
numbers, any source will do; it?s hard to spot biases in a handful of
bits. But a Monte Carlo experiment burning up billions of random
numbers is exquisitely sensitive to the faintest trends and patterns.
The more randomness you consume, the better it has to be.

Why is it hard to make randomness? The fact that maintaining perfect
order is difficult surprises no one; but it comes as something of a
revelation that perfect disorder is also beyond our reach. As a matter
of fact, perfect disorder is the more troubling concept?it is hard not
only to attain but also to define or even to imagine.

The prevailing definition of randomness was formulated in the 1960s by
Gregory J. Chaitin of IBM and by the Russian mathematician A. N.
Kolmogorov. The definition says that a sequence of bits is random if
the shortest computer program for generating the sequence is at least
as long as the sequence itself. The binary string 101010101010 is not
random because there is an easy rule for creating it, whereas
111010001011 is unlikely to have a generating program much shorter
than "print 111010001011." It turns out that almost all strings of
bits are random by this criterion?they have no concise description?and
yet no one has ever exhibited a single string that is certified to be
random. The reason is simple: The first string certified to have no
concise description would thereby acquire a concise description?namely
that it?s the first such string.

The Chaitin-Kolmogorov definition is not the only aspect of randomness
verging on the paradoxical or the ironic. Here is another example:
True random numbers, captured in the wild, are clearly superior to
those bred in captivity by pseudo-random generators?or at least that?s
what the theory of randomness implies. But Marsaglia has run the
output of various hardware and software generators through a series of
statistical tests. The best of the pseudo-random generators earned
excellent grades, but three hardware devices flunked. In other words,
the fakes look more convincingly random than the real thing.

To me the strangest aspect of randomness is its role as a link between
the world of mathematical abstraction and the universe of ponderable
matter and energy. The fact that randomness requires a physical rather
than a mathematical source is noted by almost everyone who writes on
the subject, and yet the oddity of this situation is not much
remarked.

Mathematics and theoretical computer science inhabit a realm of
idealized and immaterial objects: points and lines, sets, numbers,
algorithms, Turing machines. For the most part, this world is
self-contained; anything you need in it, you can make in it. If a
calculation calls for the millionth prime number or the cube root of
2, you can set the computational machinery in motion without ever
leaving the precincts of mathland. The one exception is randomness.
When a calculation asks for a random number, no mathematical apparatus
can supply it. There is no alternative but to reach outside the
mathematical empyrean into the grubby world of noisy circuits and
decaying nuclei. What a strange maneuver! If some purely mathematical
statement?say the formula for solving a quadratic equation?depended on
the mass of the earth or the diameter of the hydrogen atom, we would
find this disturbing or absurd. Importing randomness into mathematics
crosses the same boundary.

Of course there is another point of view: If we choose to look upon
mathematics as a science limited to deterministic operations, it?s
hardly a surprise that absence-of-determinism can?t be found there.
Perhaps what is really extraordinary is not that randomness lies
outside mathematics but that it exists anywhere at all.

Or does it? The savants of the 18th century didn?t think so. In their
clockwork universe the chain of cause and effect was never broken.
Events that appeared to be random were merely too complicated to
submit to a full analysis. If we failed to predict the exact motion of
an object?a roving comet, a spinning coin?the fault lay not in the
unruliness of the movement but in our ignorance of the laws of physics
or the initial conditions.

The issue is seen differently today. Quantum mechanics has cast a deep
shadow over causality, at least in microscopic domains. And
"deterministic chaos" has added its own penumbra, obscuring the
details of events that might be predicted in principle, but only if we
could gather an unbounded amount of information about them. To a
modern sensibility, randomness reflects not just the limits of human
knowledge but some inherent property of the world we live in.
Nevertheless, it seems fair to say that most of what goes on in our
neighborhood of the universe is mainly deterministic. Coins spinning
in the air and dice tumbling on a felt table are not conspicuously
quantum-mechanical or chaotic systems. We choose to describe their
behavior through the laws of probability only as a matter of
convenience; there?s no question the laws of angular momentum are at
work behind the scenes. If there is any genuine randomness to be found
in such events, it is the merest sliver of quantum uncertainty.
Perhaps this helps to explain why digging for randomness in the flinty
soil of physics is such hard work.

Brian Hayes

Bibliography

   * Aumann, Yonatan, and Michael O. Rabin. 1999. Information
  theoretically secure communication in the limited storage space
  model. In CRYPTO '99: 19th Annual International Cryptology
  Conference, Santa Barbara, Calif., August 15?19, 1999, pp. 65?79.
  Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
   * Ding, Yan Zong, and Michael O. Rabin. 2001. Provably secure and
  non-malleable encryption. Abstract.
   * Fisher, R. A., and F. Yates. 1938. Statistical Tables for
  Biological, Agricultural and Medical Research. London: Oliver &
  Boyd.
   * Ford, Joseph. 1983. How random is a coin toss? Physics Today
  (April 1983) pp. 40?47.
   * Intel Platform Security Division. 1999. The Intel random number
  generator.
  [40]ftp://download.intel.com/design/security/rng/techbrief.pdf
   * Lord Kelvin. 1901. Nineteenth century clouds over the dynamical
  theory of heat and light. The London, Edinburgh and Dublin
  Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Series 6, 2:1?40.
   * Marsaglia, George. 1995. The Marsaglia Random Number CDROM,
  Including the DIEHARD Battery of Tests of Randomness. Tallahassee,
  Fla.: Department of Statistics, Florida State University.
   * Maurer, Ueli M. 1992. Conditionally-perfect secrecy and a
  provably-secure randomized cipher. Journal of Cryptology
  5(1):53?66.
   * Pearson, Karl. 1900. On the criterion that a given system of
  deviations from the probable in the case of a correlated system of
  variables is such that it can be reasonably supposed to have
  arisen from random sampling. The London, Edinburgh and Dublin
  Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Series 5,
  50:157?175.
   * The Rand Corporation. 1955. A Million Random Digits with 100,000
  Normal Deviates. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.
   * Shannon, C. E. 1949. Communication theory of secrecy systems. Bell
  System Technical Journal 28:656?715.
   * Tippett, L. H. C. 1927. Random sampling numbers. Tracts for
  Computers, No. 15. London: Cambridge University Press.
   * Vincent, C. H. 1970. The generation of truly random binary
  numbers. Journal of Physics E 3(8):594?598.
   * von Neumann, John. 1951. Various techniques used in connection
  with random digits. In Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 768?770. New
  York: Pergamon Press.

References

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   40. ftp://download.intel.com/design/security/rng/techbrief.pdf

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  8 20:00:32 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 15:00:32 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Peng and Knowles: Culture, Education,
 and the Attribution of Physical Causality
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252122360.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Culture, Education, and the Attribution of Physical Causality

Kaiping Peng and Eric D. Knowles, both University of California, Berkeley

Personality and Psychology Bulletin 29.10 (2003.10): 1272-84

Two studies investigated the impact of culturally instilled folk theories on 
the perception of physical events. In Study 1, Americans and Chinese with no 
formal physics education were found to emphasize different causes in their 
explanations for eight physical events, with Americans attributing them more to 
dispositional factors (e.g., weight) and less to contextual factors (e.g., a 
medium) than did Chinese. In Study 2, Chinese Americans' identity as Asians or 
as Americans was primed before having them explain the events used in Study 1. 
Asian-primed participants endorsed dispositional explanations to a lesser 
degree and contextual explanations to a greater degree than did American-primed 
participants, although priming effects were observed only for students with 
little physics education. Together, these studies suggest that culturally 
instilled folk theories of physics produce cultural differences in the 
perception of physical causality.

Keywords: culture; attribution; ethnic identity; physical causality

Authors' Note: Preparation of this article was supported by the Hellman Family 
Faculty Fund to Kaiping Peng. The first author and Richard Nisbett reported a 
portion of the data from Study 1 at the 7th Annual Conference on Culture and 
Science at Kentucky State University in 1997. We are grateful to Richard 
Nisbett for his generous support and sage advice concerning Study 1, to 
Fernando Lopez-Royo for assistance collecting the Study 2 data, and to members 
of the Culture and Cognition Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, for 
their helpful suggestions. Please address correspondence to Kaiping Peng or 
Eric D. Knowles, Department of Psychology, 4143 Tolman Hall, Berkeley, CA 
94720; e-mail: kppeng at socrates.berkeley.edu or eknowles at socrates.berkeley.edu.

Of all the thorny issues confronted by cultural psychologists, one foundational 
question has consistently furrowed researchers' brows: How should culture 
itself be operationalized? Different theoretical traditions have coalesced 
around different answers to this question. Two approaches in particular--the 
value tradition and the "self" tradition--have come to dominate cultural 
psychology. The value tradition (Hofstede, 1980; Schwartz, 1994; Triandis, 
1995) sees culture as a shared set of core values that regulate behavior in a 
population; Triandis's (1995) theory of individualism-collectivism is perhaps 
the preeminent example of this approach. The self tradition (Heine & Lehman, 
1997, 1999; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Singelis, 1994) identifies culture with 
the particular type of self-conception predominant in a population; Markus and 
Kitayama's (1991) theory of interdependent versus independent self-construals 
is an important example of this tradition. Recently, a number of cultural 
psychologists have adopted a third conception of culture--that of culture as 
"knowledge structure" (Chiu, Morris, Hong, & Menon, 2000; Hong, Morris, Chiu, & 
Benet-Martinez, 2000; Peng, Ames, & Knowles, 2001; Peng & Nisbett, 1999). This 
approach portrays culture as a constellation of knowledge structures, or folk 
theories, that embody individuals' basic beliefs about the world and guide 
inferences in different domains.

Much of the research within the culture-as-theory framework (and cultural 
psychology generally) has focused on cultural differences in social perception. 
For example, cultural differences in dispositional bias (i.e., the tendency of 
lay perceivers to overattribute observed behavior to an actor's personal 
dispositions) have been traced to divergent folk theories of personal agency 
(Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999; Knowles, Morris, Chiu, & Hong, 2001; Menon, 
Morris, Chiu, & Hong, 1999; Morris, Menon, & Ames, 2001; Morris & Peng, 1994; 
Norenzayan & Nisbett, 2000). The influence of culture, however, may reach 
beyond social perception. In this article, we argue that different cultures 
instill their members with different folk theories of physical phenomena and 
that these theories produce cultural differences in the perception of physical 
events. Specifically, we argue that East Asians possess a contextual folk 
theory of physics emphasizing the role of external and relational factors 
(e.g., gravity) in determining an object's behavior. On the other hand, we 
argue that members of Western cultures, such as the United States, possess a 
more dispositional physical theory emphasizing the internal causes of an 
object's behavior (e.g., weight). In Study 1, we present evidence that 
cross-national differences in physical attributions--specifically, between 
those of American and Chinese individuals--reflect the application of 
dispositional or contextual physical theories. In Study 2, we investigate the 
causal impact of folk physical theories among individuals likely to possess 
both dispositional and contextual folk theories-- namely, Chinese Americans. 
Before describing the studies, however, we review evidence for and against the 
proposition that culture affects perceptions of physical events.

CULTURE AND FOLK PHYSICS

Psychologists and other scholars have disagreed as to whether culture shapes 
individuals' causal understandings of physical events. We briefly review work 
supporting and refuting the impact of culture on physical attribution and then 
propose a partial resolution that affirms the role of culture yet places limits 
on the circumstances under which cultural differences will appear.

Evidence for Cultural Variation in Folk Theories of Physics

Scholars in the humanities have long argued for the existence of fundamental 
differences between Eastern and Western folk theories of physics. Joseph 
Needham (1954), a historian of the science and civilization of ancient China, 
argued that the ancient Chinese possessed a much richer and more "advanced" 
folk understanding of physics than did ancient Westerners (e.g., the Greeks) 
and that this understanding more closely resembles modern physics. According to 
Needham (1954; see also Capra, 1975; Zukav, 1979), the core concepts of Eastern 
folk physics, Yin and Yang, are inherently relational, contextual, and 
dialectical, and thus resemble features of contemporary quantum physics. The 
contextual Eastern folk theory, it is argued, emphasizes forces that act over 
distance (e.g., gravity or magnetism) and forces exerted on objects by a medium 
(e.g., air or water).

Kurt Lewin (1935), a founding father of modern social psychology and former 
physics student, was perhaps the first psychologist to address the 
dispositional nature of the Western folk understanding of physics:

The kind and direction of the physical vectors in Aristotelian dynamics are 
completely determined in advance by the nature of the object concerned. In 
modern physics, on the contrary, the existence of physical vectors always 
depends upon the mutual relations of several physical factors, especially upon 
the relation of the object to its environment. (p. 28)

Thus, in Western (i.e., Aristotelian) folk physics, the behavior of objects is 
understood almost exclusively in terms of the object itself: A stone sinks when 
placed in water because it is heavy, and a piece of wood floats because it 
buoyant (Lewin, 1935). On this understanding, the behavior of objects is caused 
by their discrete properties alone rather than by those properties in 
conjunction with states of the environment.

Evidence for Universality in the Perception of Physical Causality

In contrast to the work just cited, cognitive psychologists investigating the 
impact of culture on the perception of physical events have generally failed to 
uncover dramatic cultural differences (Michotte, 1963; Morris, Nisbett, & Peng, 
1995; Morris & Peng, 1994). For instance, Michotte (1963) and his students had 
participants from Europe, Africa, and various Pacific Islands explain 
mechanistic (i.e., "billiard-ball") interactions between inanimate objects, 
finding no significant cultural differences. More recent cross-cultural studies 
have identified seemingly universal rules guiding the interpretation of 
physical phenomena. In general, if the motion of an object follows, in a 
straightforward and visible way, the Newtonian law of conservation (i.e., that 
objects remain at rest or in uniform motion along a straight line until acted 
on by a outside force), then the motion is seen as externally caused (Stewart, 
1984). Only if the motion appears to deviate from the law of conservation is it 
seen as internally caused (Morris et al., 1995; Morris & Peng, 1994; Stewart, 
1984).

Research in cognitive development suggests that the perception of physical 
events is largely "hardwired" and innate and might therefore be resistant to 
the influence of culture. Even very young infants have been shown to possess 
firm and reliable expectations about objects' possible movements and 
interactions (Baillargeon, 2000; Kotovsky & Baillargeon, 2000; Spelke, 2000). 
Of particular relevance, infants younger than 3 years old expect objects to 
behave according to the forces of gravity (an external, relational factor) and 
inertia (an internal, dispositional factor) (I. Kim & Spelke, 1999). The 
emergence at an early age of such physical expectations suggests that these 
expectations could not be altered by experience in one's culture. However, the 
early emergence of expectations concerning both contextual and dispositional 
factors does not rule out the possibility that culture-specific theories 
emphasize these understandings to varying degrees and thus lead individuals to 
favor one type of factor over the other in their explanations for physical 
events.

The Role of Formal Physics Education

The research reviewed above reveals disagreement among scholars concerning 
culture's impact on causal attributions for physical events. We propose a 
partial resolution to this debate. We argue that Lewin (1935) and Needham 
(1954) are correct in their portrayal of Western folk physics as dispositional 
and of Eastern folk physics as more contextual. However, we propose that this 
difference will only be reflected in the judgments of those with little formal 
physics education. If, as we have claimed, intuitions about physical phenomena 
are guided by theory-like knowledge structures, then formal education in 
physics could supplant the Western folk theory with the more contextual 
understanding of modern physics and thus obscure any cultural differences. The 
cross-cultural similarities found in previous research might then be an 
artifact of education because many of the participants in the studies of 
Michotte (1963) and others were college students. Hence, it becomes important 
to separate the effects of culture and physics education in studying causal 
attributions in the physical domain. The studies reported here either involve 
participants with no formal physics education (Study 1) or measure physics 
education to examine its influence on physical judgments (Study 2).

ASSESSING THE CAUSAL IMPACT OF CULTURE-SPECIFIC FOLK THEORIES

In addition to documenting cultural differences in individuals' folk theories 
of physics, it is important to show that culture-specific folk theories exert a 
causal influence on individuals' perceptions of physical phenomena. In virtue 
of its portrayal of culture as a constellation of knowledge structures, the 
culture-as-theory approach suggests a way to investigate the causal impact of 
folk theories on inferences. The technique of cultural priming makes use of the 
fact that some individuals (e.g., biculturals) often possess multiple 
culture-derived theories for the same domain of phenomena and that these 
individuals can be experimentally induced to rely on a given theory in 
interpreting stimuli.

Cultural Priming

If cultures are indeed associated with divergent knowledge structures, then 
cultural knowledge should be subject to well-documented rules of knowledge 
acquisition and use (for a review, see Higgins, 1996). Most important, it 
should be possible for individuals to acquire multiple culture-derived theories 
for the same domain, even if the theories contradict one another; however, only 
one theory at a time can influence judgments (Hong et al., 2000). Which theory 
guides cognition at a given time will depend on the relative cognitive 
accessibility of the theories. According to the principle of accessibility, a 
knowledge structure will affect judgments to the extent that it is available, 
or activated, in the perceiver's mind (Higgins, 1996). Thus, the currently most 
accessible theory for a given domain will be the one that influences judgment 
in that domain.

The current accessibility of a theory can be experimentally manipulated through 
priming, in which the activation level of the construct is increased through 
the presentation of a stimulus semantically related to the construct (Higgins, 
1996). It follows that an experimenter can, by priming selected theories, 
manipulate which of two or more conflicting folk theories will influence 
judgments in a domain. In so doing, it can be shown that the primed knowledge 
structures exert a causal influence on judgments.

Researchers working within the culture-as-theory framework have used cultural 
symbols to prime culture- specific knowledge structures. Hong and colleagues 
(2000) presented individuals who had extensive experience in both East Asian 
and American culture with either East Asian cultural icons (e.g., a Chinese 
flag, the Great Wall of China, a picture of Stone Monkey) or American cultural 
icons (e.g., the American flag, the Capitol Building, a picture of Superman). 
These researchers found that priming affected attributions for social behavior, 
such that individuals exposed to East Asian primes interpreted behavior as more 
externally caused than did individuals in the American prime condition.1 In our 
research, we primed culture-specific folk theories using a cultural identity 
prime in which Asian American participants were asked to reflect on their 
identity as Asians or as Americans. These identity primes were intended to 
increase the level of activation of related networks of cultural knowledge, 
including East Asian and Western folk theories of physics.

Bicultural Individuals

The cultural priming technique used here relies on the possibility that some 
individuals possess more than one culture-bound folk theory of physics. 
Bicultural individuals--individuals who identify with more than one 
culture--may possess multiple folk theories. There is good reason to believe 
that ethnic cultures within the United States possess cultural knowledge 
similar to that of their countries of origin. For instance, there is evidence 
that Japanese Americans possess social attributional tendencies consistent with 
the contextual theory of social behavior thought to be dominant within Japanese 
culture, attributing success and failure more to situational factors than do 
European Americans (Narikiyo & Kameoka, 1992; Whang & Hancock, 1994). The 
congruence between the attributional tendencies of Asian Americans and members 
of Asian national cultures may be due to the fact that Asian Americans possess 
some of the same values and cultural knowledge prevalent in the national 
cultures (U. Kim & Choi, 1994). We suggest that, as with folk theories of 
social behavior, Asian Americans may possess both Asian and Western folk 
theories of physics.

THE CURRENT RESEARCH

The current research had two goals. First, we sought to demonstrate that 
American and Chinese national cultures are associated with different folk 
theories of physics. Specifically, we hypothesized that whereas Americans have 
a dispositional physical theory that locates the causes of physical phenomena 
in the discrete dispositions of objects (e.g., weight), Chinese perceivers have 
a contextual theory that places greater emphasis on relational 
factors--specifically, forces over distance (e.g., gravity) and the influence 
of mediums (e.g., air or water). Toward this end, in Study 1, we asked Chinese 
and American nationals with no formal physics education to identify the causes 
of a variety of physical events.

Our second goal was to investigate the causal impact of culture-specific folk 
physical theories on attributions for physical events. Thus, in Study 2, we 
attempted to prime dispositional (Western) or contextual (East Asian) folk 
theories of physics in the minds of Asian Americans, who presumably possess 
both theories. Participants were subsequently asked to identify the causes of 
the same physical events as were used in Study 1. To test our hypothesis that 
folk theories will affect inferences only for individuals who have had little 
formal instruction in physics, we measured participants' level of physics 
education.

STUDY 1

Method

PARTICIPANTS

Fifteen American participants, all of them female, were drawn from the 
Psychology Department subject pool at the University of Michigan; they 
participated in return for course credit. Participants were selected who 
reported having had no formal education in physics and who had declared majors 
in the arts or humanities. Fifteen female spouses of visiting Chinese graduate 
students at the University of Michigan were recruited and paid $10 for their 
participation in this study.2 All of these participants were Chinese citizens 
and, similar to their American counterparts, were college educated, reported no 
formal physics education, and had majored in the arts and humanities. The mean 
ages of American and Chinese participants were 19.1 and 22.7 years, 
respectively. All of the Chinese participants had been in the United States for 
less than a year because their visas only permitted them to remain in the 
country for a short time.

PHYSICAL CAUSALITY DISPLAYS

Eight animated displays of physical events were created using Macromind 
Director for Macintosh by Macromedia Software, a computer animation program. 
All displays depicted a white object interacting in various ways with a black 
object or a medium (i.e., air or water) (see Figure 1 for schematic 
representations of the displays):

1. White object interacting with black object

a. "Launching" event (i.e., elastic collision). The black object collides with 
the stationary white object and stops, causing the white object to move.

b. "Launching at a distance" event. This display was identical to the launching 
interaction except that the black object stops short of the white object before 
the white object begins moving.

c. "Entraining" event (i.e., inelastic collision). The black object collides 
with the stationary white object, after which both objects move together.

d. "Balance" display depicting objects balancing on a lever. In this event, the 
black and white circles are in balance at two ends of a platform resting on a 
fulcrum.

e. "Magnetic" display depicting objects' motions in a magnetic field. In this 
event, the black and white circles appear to be magnetically attracted to one 
another, converging slowly at first, and then more quickly as the distance 
between them narrows.

2. White object interacting with a medium

a. "Hydrodynamic--floating" event. The white object bobs on the surface of a 
pool of water.

b. "Hydrodynamic--dropping" event. The white object drops into the pool, rises 
to the surface, and bobs for a moment.

c. "Aerodynamic" display depicting an object's motion in the air. In this 
event, the white object looks like a balloon, dropping gradually while buffeted 
by air currents.

The program was set to present the displays either in the order listed above or 
the reverse, as determined randomly.

Figure 1 Schematic representations of displays used in Studies 1 and 2.

PROCEDURE

Participants were run one at a time. The experimenter, who was European 
American and fluent in both English and Chinese, brought the participant into a 
test

ing room and seated her in front of a computer. All instructions were given in 
English for American participants and in Chinese for Chinese participants. The 
experimenter introduced the study as an investigation of visual perception, in 
which the participant would be shown a number of displays depicting physical 
events and asked questions about her perceptions of each. Participants were 
instructed to think of the physical events as independent episodes, such that 
objects in one display were not the same objects as in any other display. The 
experimenter then played the displays, pausing after each to ask the 
participant the following physical causality question: "Please explain in your 
own words why the white object moved in the way it did. Even if you don't have 
a strong opinion, please take a guess." Participants were given as much time as 
needed to respond to the questions. Responses were tape-recorded. The procedure 
typically lasted an hour, after which the participant was debriefed and 
dismissed.

Results

CODING OF OPEN-ENDED RESPONSES

Participants' answers to the free-response causality question were transcribed 
and content analyzed by two psychology graduate students at the University of 
Michigan. Both coders were blind to the experimental hypothesis. One coder was 
European American and the other Chinese American, and each was fluent in both 
English and Chinese. Each coder coded all of the responses. For each open-ended 
response, coders tallied dispositional explanations (e.g., weight, shape) and 
contextual explanations (e.g., gravity, liquid) for the white object's movement 
as well as the perceived nature of the object (e.g., ball, balloon). Table 1 
shows the complete coding scheme. Interjudge reliability was assessed by 
Kendall's coefficient of concordance; good reliability was achieved (W = .90, p 
< .001).

THE PERCEIVED NATURE OF THE EVENTS

Because the current research assesses the impact of culture on perceptions of 
physical causality, we intended for participants to interpret the animated 
events as physical interactions between inanimate objects. However, in light of 
research showing that moving geometrical figures can give the impression of 
animacy and personality (Heider, 1944; Michotte, 1963), it is possible that 
some participants saw the objects as representing organisms and their movements 
as social in nature. However, our coding of participants' impressions of the 
nature of the objects (refer to Table 1 for the coding scheme) indicated that 
all participants perceived the animated circles as balls or (in the aerodynamic 
display) as a balloon, not as animals or as humans. These findings are 
consistent with cross-cultural studies in judgments of animacy showing that 
across cultures, people as young as 3 years old make similar judgments in 
distinguishing animals from objects (Carey, 1991).

TABLE 1: Coding Scheme for Open-Ended Physical Causality Judgments in Study 1

Property Type Categories

Nature of the white object

Ball

Balloon

Animal

Human

No mention

Could not categorize

Dispositional causes of whole object's movement

Weight or mass

Composition

Inertia

Shape

Energy

Electricity

Magnetism

Internal dynamics (e.g., heat, engine)

Other disposition (e.g., size, color)

Could not categorize

Contextual causes of white object's movement

Other object

Gravity

Friction

Air or wind

Invisible matter

Liquid or current

Field

Outside physical conditions (e.g., smoothness of surface)

Other forces (e.g., human intervention)

Other contextual cause

Could not categorize

CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS FOR THE PHYSICAL EVENTS

Having established that all participants perceived the animated displays as 
physical in nature, we next compared American and Chinese participants' 
preferences for dispositional and contextual explanations of the events. To 
isolate the effect of nationality on participants' preferences for different 
types of explanations, we sought to control for any influence of nationality on 
the total number of causes cited. Thus, for each of the eight physical events, 
we calculated the percentage of American and Chinese explanations that referred 
to dispositional and contextual factors. For all events, we predicted that 
American participants would give proportionally more dispositional explanations 
than would Chinese but that Chinese participants would give proportionally more 
contextual explanations than would Americans. For each display, we conducted a 
z test comparing the percentage of American versus Chinese explanations that 
referred to dispositional causal factors. (Note that separate z tests comparing 
rates of contextual explanations would have results identical to the tests of 
dispositional explanations and are thus unnecessary.) Because our hypothesis 
was clearly directional, we used one-tailed tests of significance. The 
differences between American and Chinese rates of dispositional and contextual 
explanations were significant for the Launching, Magnetic, and Aerodynamic 
displays and marginally significant for the Hydrodynamic dropping display, such 
that Americans gave more dispositional explanations than did Chinese. Averaging 
across all displays, the predicted effect of nationality on percentage of 
dispositional explanations was marginally significant, p < .10. American and 
Chinese percentages of dispositional and contextual explanations, and the 
corresponding z statistics, are presented in Table 2.

Discussion

Study 1 provides partial evidence that members of different cultures possess 
divergent folk theories of physical causality. In their open-ended explanations 
for the physical events, American participants exhibited a greater preference 
for dispositional explanations than did Chinese participants on three of the 
eight displays, whereas Chinese participants emphasized contextual explanations 
more than did Americans. This suggests that, as argued by Needham (1954), Capra 
(1975), and Zukav (1979), the Eastern folk theory of physics places more 
importance on contextual factors (such as other objects, forces over distance, 
and mediums) and less importance on dispositional causes (such as shape and 
weight) than does the American folk theory of physical causality.

For all the displays, cultural differences were in the predicted 
direction--with Chinese being more contextual than Americans in their 
explanations of physical motions. Nonetheless, the cultural difference was 
statistically significant only for the Launching, Magnetic, and Aerodynamic 
displays and marginal for the Hydrodynamic dropping display. Although this 
discrepancy could be a result of the small sample size, it is interesting to 
note that cultural differences were stronger for displays that depicted salient 
energy transitions from one object to another object or a medium (Launching, 
Hydrodynamic dropping, Magnetic, and Aerodynamic) than for displays in which 
the energy transition is less salient (Balance, Launching at a distance, 
Hydrodynamic floating, and Entraining). We had no a priori reason to expect 
cultural differences to be limited to displays depicting salient energy 
transitions, and further research should examine the reliability of this 
finding.

Inspection of Table 2 suggests a possible alternative framing of our findings. 
The analyses reported above examined the effect of culture on participants' 
tendency to give dispositional versus contextual explanations for the physical 
displays. However, the data also can be analyzed by comparing differences in 
dispositional and contextual explanation within culture. It is clear that 
Chinese participants favored contextual explanations over dispositional 
explanations; however, Americans showed a relatively small preference for 
dispositional explanations. Therefore, it is possible that whereas Chinese 
possess a markedly contextual folk physical theory, Americans have a more or 
less evenhanded theory emphasizing the importance of both types of explanation. 
This alternative interpretation should be viewed with caution, however. 
Americans' unexpectedly high reliance on contextual explanations is driven 
largely by responses on only two of the eight physical displays, Hydrodynamic 
dropping and Hydrodynamic floating, in which there is a visible medium that 
exerts an obvious influence on the behavior of the white object. Thus, 
interpretation of property use within culture is vulnerable to idiosyncrasies 
of the particular displays participants were shown, some of which demanded 
mention of important contextual causes.

TABLE 2: Percentage of American and Chinese Explanations Coded as Dispositional 
or Contextual in Study 1 [dropped]

Having found evidence in Study 1 that American and Chinese cultures are 
associated with divergent folk theories of physics, we next sought to 
demonstrate a causal connection between culture-specific knowledge structures 
and patterns of physical attribution. If culture-specific lay theories are 
indeed responsible for the cultural differences observed in Study 1, then it 
should be possible to temporarily increase the cognitive accessibility of 
different theories and thus increase their influence on attributions. In Study 
2, we tapped a population likely to possess both Asian and Western lay 
theories--specifically, Chinese Americans--and attempted to influence their 
attributions by priming one or other of these theories. We primed Chinese 
Americans' identity either as Asians or as Americans before having them explain 
the same series of physical events used in Study 1. We predicted that 
participants receiving the Asian identity prime would prefer dispositional 
causes to a lesser degree, and contextual causes to a greater degree, than 
would participants receiving the American prime.

The results of Study 1 may be seen to conflict with findings in cognitive 
psychology revealing no effects of culture on perceptions of physical causality 
(e.g., Michotte, 1963). We argued earlier that formal physics education may 
sometimes supplant or obscure folk theories and thus prevent cultural 
differences from emerging. In Study 1, we were careful to choose participants 
with no formal education in physics--and thus whose inferences are likely to be 
based on their folk physical theories--allowing the observed cultural 
difference to emerge.

In addition to examining the causal influence of folk physical theories, Study 
2 was intended as a more direct test of the idea that formal physics education 
may supplant or obscure individuals' folk theories of physical phenomena. 
Participants in Study 2 reported the amount of physics instruction they have 
received and rated their physics expertise. We predicted that the effect of 
cultural identity priming on attributions would be qualified by an interaction 
with participants' amount of physics education such that only participants with 
little physics background would be affected by the identity prime. Participants 
high in physics education, who presumably rely on a formally inculcated theory 
of physics rather than a culture-specific folk theory, should not be affected 
by the identity prime.

STUDY 2

Method

PARTICIPANTS

Sixty-five students (44 women) at the University of California, Berkeley, 
participated in fulfillment of psychology course requirements. The mean age of 
the participants was 19.7 years. Participants were selected who had reported 
their ethnicity to be Chinese American during a mass data collection at the 
beginning of the semester.

MATERIALS

Cultural identity primes. Primes of Asian and of American identity consisted of 
a short questionnaire asking participants to reflect, in writing, on several 
aspects of their ethnic identity. First, participants were asked to "recall an 
experience you had that made your identity as an American [Asian] apparent to 
you." (Brackets indicate wording in the Asian prime condition.) Participants 
then answered the following questions about the experience: "When did you have 
this experience?" "How old were you when you had this experience?" "Briefly 
describe the experience, " and "Why do you think the experience made your 
American [Asian] identity apparent?"

Physical displays. Study 2 employed the same eight physical displays as did 
Study 1 (Launching, Launching at a distance, Entraining, Hydrodynamic floating, 
Hydrodynamic dropping, Balance, Magnetic, and Aerodynamic) (see Figure 1). 
Displays were presented using Flash by Macromedia Software, a computer 
animation program.

Rating packets. Participants made their ratings of the physical displays in a 
packet containing Likert-type questions corresponding to several causal 
factors. For each of the eight displays, participants rated the extent to which 
the white object's movement was due to five dispositional factors of the white 
object (shape, weight, composition, buoyancy, and inertia) and four contextual 
factors acting on the white object (gravity, friction, air/wind, and water). 
All ratings were made on a 5-point scale from 1 (not at all responsible) to 5 
(completely responsible).

Ratings of physics background. A short questionnaire was created to gauge 
different aspects of participants' background in physics. As a measure of 
formal instruction in physics, participants reported the total number of 
physics classes they had taken in high school and college. As a measure of 
physics expertise, participants rated their current physics expertise on a 
5-point scale from 1 (none) to 5 (expert).

PROCEDURE

Participants were run in groups of 5 to 10 in a large testing room outfitted 
with computers. As each participant entered the testing room, he or she was 
handed an Asian or American identity prime from an alternating stack, thus 
randomizing assignment of participants to the Asian and American prime 
conditions. Participants were then seated at computers and asked to spend 3 
minutes filling out the identity primes, after which the primes were collected.

Next, participants viewed each of the eight physical events in random order. 
The computer displayed each event twice, after which participants were referred 
to the appropriate page in their rating packets where they rated the degree to 
which each causal factor was responsible for the event. After completing 
ratings for all eight displays, participants completed the questionnaire 
gauging the amount of physics instruction they had received and their 
self-reported physics expertise.

The entire procedure typically lasted an hour, after which participants were 
debriefed and dismissed.

Results

DERIVATION OF AGGREGATE ATTRIBUTION SCORES

For use in the analyses reported below, we created aggregate measures of 
dispositional and contextual attribution across all physical displays. Each 
participant's aggregate dispositional attribution score was calculated by 
averaging his or her endorsement of dispositional causal factors (i.e., shape, 
weight, composition, buoyancy, and inertia); aggregate contextual attributions 
were calculated by averaging each participant's endorsement of contextual 
causal factors (i.e., black object, gravity, friction, air/wind, and water).

EFFECTS OF IDENTITY PRIMING AND PHYSICS EDUCATION

We tested two hypotheses in this study. First, we predicted that the identity 
priming manipulation would influence Chinese American participants' 
attributions for the physical events, such the participants receiving the Asian 
prime would attribute the physical events more to contextual causes, and less 
to dispositional causes, than would participants receiving the American prime. 
Second, we predicted that priming effects would occur only for participants 
with little formal education in physics. To test these hypotheses, we followed 
Aiken and West's (1991) procedure for testing Categorical ? Continuous 
interactions using multiple regression. Unlike analysis of variance (ANOVA), 
the regression method has the advantage of not requiring a split (such as a 
median split) to be performed on the continuous variable, which discards useful 
variance. We began by standardizing the dummy-coded prime condition variable, 
the measure of physics education (i.e., number of physics classes taken), and 
self-reported physics expertise to create three main effect terms (see Table 3 
for the correlations between these variables and aggregate dispositional and 
contextual attribution scores). Next, we multiplied the main effect terms 
together to create interaction terms for each two-and three-way interaction 
(i.e., Prime ? Physics Classes, Prime ? Physics Expertise, Physics Classes ? 
Physics Expertise, and Prime ? Physics Classes ? Physics Expertise). We then 
performed two simultaneous multiple regression analyses, one to test the 
influence of these main effect and interaction terms on dispositional 
attribution and one to test effects on the contextual attribution. Because 
dispositional and contextual attributions were highly correlated, r = .68, p < 
.01, 3 we controlled for this relationship by adding standardized contextual 
attribution score as a predictor in the analysis of dispositional attributions 
and standardized dispositional attributions scores as a predictor in the 
analysis of contextual attributions. Tables 4 and 5 summarize the regressions 
analyses.

TABLE 3: Pearson Correlations Between Variables in Study 2 (N = 65) [dropped]

Identity priming. As can be seen in the first row of Table 4, participants 
receiving the Asian prime made significantly less extreme dispositional 
attributions for the physical events than did participants receiving the 
American prime. Moreover, whereas the Asian prime decreased dispositional 
attribution among Chinese Americans, it increased contextual attribution (see 
Table 5, first row).

Physics education. As shown in the fourth row of Table 4, the effect of 
identity priming was qualified by a marginally significant interaction with the 
number of physics classes, such that the influence of priming on dispositionism 
decreased as physics instruction increased. Likewise, the effect of identity 
priming on contextualism decreased as physics instruction increased (see Table 
5, fourth row).

To visualize the interactions between physics education and identity priming, 
we plotted the interactions according to the procedure recommended by Aiken and 
West (1991), with levels of dispositionism and contextualism predicted based on 
the regression equations. Figure 2 represents the predicted effects of the 
priming manipulation on dispositional attribution among participants one 
standard deviation above and below the mean on physics education. Similarly, 
Figure 3 represents the predicted effects of priming on contextual attributions 
for participants high and low in physics education.

Self-reported physics expertise. An unexpected finding emerged involving 
participants' self-reported physics knowledge. Specifically, we observed a 
significant Prime ? Physics Knowledge interaction in our analysis of 
dispositional attributions, such that the American prime increased 
dispositional attribution among participants who self-reported a great deal of 
physics knowledge, but not among self-rated nonexperts (see Table 4, fifth 
row).

Discussion

The results of Study 2 provide evidence for our hypotheses concerning the 
causal impact of folk physical theories on attributions of physical causality. 
Chinese American participants who received the Asian identity prime, which was 
theorized to activate a contextual folk theory of physics, endorsed 
dispositional causes to a lesser extent, and contextual causes to a greater 
extent, than did participants receiving the American identity prime. The 
success of our priming manipulation supports the notion that the interpretation 
of physical phenomena is guided by knowledge structures acquired through 
experience in one's culture. Contributing further support to the 
knowledge-structure account, we found that priming only affected attributions 
for participants with little formal instruction in physics (see Figures 2 and 
3). If physical attribution is guided by learned, culture-specific knowledge 
structures, then it should be possible to supplant these folk theories with 
formal scientific theories acquired through education.

TABLE 4: Summary of Simultaneous Multiple Regression Analysis 4 of Aggregate 
Dispositional Attribution in Study 2 (N = 65) [dropped]

Figure 2 Level of dispositional attribution for physical events as a function 
of identity prime condition and physics education in Study 2.

Figure 3 Level of contextual attribution for physical events as a function of 
identity prime condition and physics education in Study 2.

An unexpected finding emerged, such that identity priming had an effect for 
individuals rating themselves as relatively expert in physics but not for 
individuals self- reporting little physics knowledge. Given that we had 
intended self-reported physics expertise, like physics education, to gauge the 
extent to which participants have internalized formal physics theories, this 
finding seems to contradict the observed Prime ? Physics Classes interaction. 
However, we believe that this finding may have arisen because self-rated 
physics expertise is a less- pure measure of an individual's actual physics 
knowledge than is the number of physics classes he or she has taken. 
Specifically, we believe that the self-rated expertise measure may have been 
confounded with individuals' motivation to self-enhance (i.e., to portray 
themselves in a positive light); self-enhancement motivation, in turn, may have 
been negatively related to participants' level of identification as Asians. 
Because East Asians tend to self-enhance to a lesser degree than do European 
Americans (Heine & Lehman, 1997), it may be that self- rated physics nonexperts 
were less American-identified than were self-rated experts. If this is so, then 
it may make sense that self-rated nonexperts, being not very American 
identified--and thus less likely to possess a dispositional folk physical 
theory--would not have been susceptible to the American prime. It follows from 
priming theory (Higgins, 1996) that one cannot prime a knowledge structure that 
an individual does not possess.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The current research employed the knowledge- structure conception of culture in 
an examination of cultural influences on perceptions of physical events. First, 
we argued that different cultures instill their members with different folk 
theories of physics. Study 1 provided evidence for this claim: American and 
Chinese individuals were found to differ in their explanations for a number of 
physical events, with Americans favoring dispositional explanations compared to 
Chinese. Second, we argued that folk theories exert a causal influence on 
physical attributions. We tested this claim in Study 2 using a procedure 
designed to temporarily increase the accessibility of dispositional or 
contextual theories in individuals presumed to possess both (i.e., Chinese 
Americans). Chinese Americans whose Asian identity was primed were found to 
endorse dispositional explanations for physical events to a lesser extent, and 
contextual explanations to a greater extent, than did Chinese Americans whose 
American identity was primed.

Our findings concerning the role of formal instruction in physics help to 
reconcile the current results with previous psychological research in which no 
cultural differences in physical attribution were found (e.g., Michotte, 1963). 
In keeping with the folk theories approach, formal education might supplant or 
obscure the operation of folk theories and thus prevent the cultural difference 
from manifesting itself. In Study 1, we argued that cultural differences in 
folk physical theories emerged in part due to the fact that participants had no 
formal physics education. In Study 2, participants' background in physics was 
measured, consistent with the idea that physics instruction blocks the 
operation of folk physical theories, priming effects were found only for 
individuals who had taken few physics classes.

Continuity of Cultural Differences in Social Attribution and Physical 
Attribution

The present research provides evidence for a cultural difference in physical 
attribution analogous to a known cultural difference in social attribution. The 
dispositional- contextual (or internal-external) distinction, used here to 
distinguish between different kinds of attributions for objects' physical 
behavior, has a long history in the study of attributions for individuals' 
social behavior. Researchers studying social explanation often distinguish 
between internal attributions, which trace behavior to personal dispositions 
(e.g., personality traits or attitudes), and external attributions, which trace 
behavior to forces in the social environment (e.g., pressure from peers or 
authorities) (Gilbert & Malone, 1995).

Researchers studying social attribution have argued for the existence of robust 
biases in social explanation. For instance, lay perceivers often have been 
observed to favor internal (dispositional) explanations for others' behavior 
over situational explanations--an inferential tendency known as the 
"correspondence bias" or the "fundamental attribution error" (Ross & Nisbett, 
1991). Although this tendency was once seen as a universal bias in social 
judgment (Heider, 1958; Ichheiser, 1949; Ross, 1977), more recent work in 
cultural psychology has recast dispositional bias as a culture-bound phenomenon 
(e.g., Miller, 1984; for a review, see Peng et al., 2001). Cross-cultural 
research suggests dispositional bias is less marked in East Asian cultures than 
in Western cultures, where most social psychological research has been 
conducted. A growing body of research using a variety of methods has 
demonstrated that East Asians are less apt to attribute behavior to an actor's 
personal dispositions, and more apt to attribute behavior to the situational 
context, than are members of Western cultures (Kitayama & Masuda, 1997; Knowles 
et al., 2001; Lee, Hallahan, & Herzog, 1996; Morris & Peng, 1994).

Analogous to this Asian-Western cultural difference in social attribution, the 
current research suggests that Americans favor internal/dispositional 
explanations for nonsocial events more than do Chinese, whereas Chinese prefer 
external/contextual explanations more than do Americans. Whether the parallel 
between cultural differences in social and physical perception reflect the 
operation of domain-general cognitive factors-- such as dialectical versus 
linear (Peng & Nisbett, 1999) or holistic versus analytic (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, 
& Norenzayan, 2001) modes of thought--is an important question for future 
research.

Reconciling Developmental and Cultural Models of Causal Understanding

At first blush, the current studies might seem at odds with research into the 
development of physical understanding, which points to the existence of 
universal constraints guiding individuals' perceptions of physical events from 
a very early age (Carey & Spelke, 1994; Spelke, 1990). We argue, however, that 
no inherent tension exists between these developmental and cultural 
perspectives. First, the existence of cultural differences among adults in no 
way rules out the existence of universals among infants. Indeed, models of the 
development of social-causal explanation have explicitly included both early 
universals and later cultural differences. For instance, Miller (1984) argued 
that whereas early social inference may be constrained by universal cognitive 
processes, the influence of culture--as carried by folk theories--increases as 
individuals mature within their culture (Miller, 1984). The development of 
physical understanding might follow a similar pattern, in which cultural 
differences emerge only relatively late in development.

Second, as the influence of folk theories on physical perceptions increases 
over development, it need not be the case that universal perceptual and 
cognitive mechanisms stop operating. Indeed, there is no inherent contradiction 
between the types of cognitive constraints identified by developmental 
psychologists (e.g., the innate understanding, observed by Spelke, 1994, that 
two objects cannot occupy the same volume of space) and the types of divergent 
beliefs embodied in folk physical theories (i.e., that the behavior of objects 
is attributable primarily to their dispositions or to forces impinging on them 
from without). In other words, dispositional and contextual folk physics are 
equally consistent with the sorts of basic perceptual constraints identified by 
developmentalists.

Conclusion

The current research contributes to our understanding of how development within 
a particular social milieu (i.e., a culture) molds an individual's perceptions 
of his or her environment. Past research in the culture-astheory tradition 
(e.g., Hong et al., 2000; Morris & Peng, 1994) suggests that culture--both 
national and ethnic-- may profitably be construed as a constellation of folk 
theories governing one's basic understanding of the social world. The current 
research suggests that the influence of culturally instilled folk theories may 
extend further-- specifically, to one's causal understanding of nonsocial 
(i.e., physical) events. At the same time, the current studies place caveats on 
when folk theories can and cannot be expected to exert influence on causal 
attributions. When formal theories in a domain are acquired, the influence folk 
understandings may wane.

NOTES

1. It should be noted that priming techniques have not been limited to research 
in the culture-as-theory tradition. Working within the self approach, Brewer 
and Gardner (1996; Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee, 1999) used linguistic cues to prime 
personal, relational, or collective self-definitions. Value theorists, in turn, 
have primed different cultural values using value-related cues (e.g., Trafimow, 
Triandis, & Goto, 1991).

2. Female spouses of Chinese students were selected due to the difficulty of 
finding Chinese students with no formal education in physics.

3. We see two possible artifactual reasons for the strong positive correlation 
between dispositional and contextual attribution scores. First, participants 
may have differed in the degree to which they saw the physical displays as 
requiring explanation; that is, some participants may have seen many causal 
factors at work in the displays (leading to relatively high ratings for all 
causes), whereas other participants saw only a few factors at work (leading to 
relatively low ratings for all causes). Second, participants may have differed 
in terms of acquiescence bias, leading them to favor either high ratings or low 
ratings across all causal factors. Thus, the positive association between 
dispositional and contextual attribution scores does not invalidate our claim 
that these modes of explanation are distinguishable and independent.

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Received March 1, 2002 Revision accepted October 15, 2002

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Multicultural Minds A Dynamic Constructivist Approach to Culture and Cognition

Hong, Ying-yi; Morris, Michael W. Chiu, Chi-yue Benet-Mart?nez, Ver?nica

American Psychologist July 2000 Vol. 55, No. 7, 709-720

Although the multiplicity of cultural identities and influences is hardly 
a new phenomenon, it is one increasingly discussed. In contemporary 
popular discourse, it is becoming increasingly rare to hear the word 
cultural without the prefix multi-. Multicultural experience, however, has 
been underinvestigated in psychological research on culture, particularly 
within the most prominent research paradigm of cross-cultural psychology 
(see Segall, Lonner, & Berry, 1998). There are several reasons for this. 
First, somewhat obviously, methodological orientations influence a 
researcher's choice of topics, and culture has been assessed primarily as 
an individual difference, with the methods for its evaluation developed by 
clinical and personality researchers to distinguish types of persons. 
Insofar as the cross-cultural method relies on uncovering differences 
across cultural groups (usually indexed by nationality), the influence of 
multiple cultures on an individual merely creates error variance. Second, 
on a more subtle level, the theoretical assumptions predominant in 
cross-cultural scholarship have impeded an analysis of the dynamics of 
multiple cultures in the same mind. The effort to identify the knowledge 
that varies between but not within large cultural groups has led to the 
conceptualization of cultural knowledge in terms of very general 
constructs, such as individualistic as opposed to collectivist value 
orientations, which apply to all aspects of life (Segall et al., 1998). 
With the emphasis on domain-general constructs has come the assumption 
that the influence of culture on cognition is continual and constant. 
Cultural knowledge is conceptualized to be like a contact lens that 
affects the individual's perceptions of visual stimuli all of the time. 
This conception unfortunately leaves little room for a second internalized 
culture within an individual's psychology. In sum, the methods and 
assumptions of cross-cultural psychology have not fostered the analysis of 
how individuals incorporate more than one culture.

Our introduction of an alternative approach to culture takes as a point of 
departure a commonly reported experience, which we call frame switching, 
among bicultural individuals. While frame switching, the individual shifts 
between interpretive frames rooted in different cultures in response to 
cues in the social environment (LaFromboise, Coleman, & Gerton, 1993). To 
capture how bicultural individuals switch between cultural lenses, we 
adopt a conceptualization of internalized culture as a network of 
discrete, specific constructs that guide cognition only when they come to 
the fore in an individual's mind. Fortunately, theories and methods have 
been developed in cognitive and social psychology, such as the technique 
of cognitive priming, to manipulate through experiment which of the 
constructs in an individual's mind comes to the fore (for a review, see 
Higgins, 1996). We illustrate in this article how this conceptualization 
creates a set of new methods that involves bicultural participants testing 
the consequences of culture. These methods offer greater internal validity 
than do the quasi-experimental comparisons typically relied on in 
cross-cultural research. After reviewing studies of cultural frame 
switching, we then discuss how this approach elucidates other topics, such 
as the relation between cultural beliefs and action, the role of culture 
in emotions and motivations, and the process of acculturation. This 
approach illuminates not only the experiences of bicultural individuals 
but also the more general roles that culture plays in mental and emotional 
life.

Frame Switching

Bicultural individuals are typically described as people who have 
internalized two cultures to the extent that both cultures are alive 
inside of them. Many bicultural individuals report that the two 
internalized cultures take turns in guiding their thoughts and feelings 
(LaFromboise et al., 1993; Phinney & Devich-Navarro, 1997). This is 
interesting because it suggests that (a) internalized cultures are not 
necessarily blended and (b) absorbing a second culture does not always 
involve replacing the original culture with the new one. Classical 
scholarship on African Americans, for instance, describes movement back 
and forth between "two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, 
two warring ideals" (DuBois, 1903/1989, p. 5). Ethnographies of Asian 
Americans and Hispanic Americans, among other groups, describe switches 
between mindsets rooted in different cultures. Consider, for example, the 
following experience of a Mexican American individual:

At home with my parents and grandparents the only acceptable language was 
Spanish; actually that's all they really understood. Everything was really 
Mexican, but at the same time they wanted me to speak good English
 . But 
at school, I felt really different because everyone was American, 
including me. Then I would go home in the afternoon and be Mexican again. 
(quoted in Padilla, 1994, p. 30)

This example illustrates that frame switching may occur in response to 
cues such as contexts (home or school) and symbols (language) that are 
psychologically associated with one culture or the other. Reports of frame 
switching at work are common in the literature on minority or expatriate 
employees (e.g., Bell, 1991). Similar experiences are reported by 
ethnographers during fieldwork:

I found myself constantly flip-flopping
 . The longer I lived in Samoa, 
the more I was able to use the Samoans' cultural resources 
 the flow of 
my everyday experiences was increasingly filtered through Samoan models. 
(Shore, 1996, p. 6)

A Dynamic Constructivist Analysis

To understand frame switching in bicultural individuals, we have adopted 
an approach influenced by constructivist approaches to culture in several 
disciplines and by contemporary social psychological research on the 
dynamics of knowledge activation. A first premise is that a culture is not 
internalized in the form of an integrated and highly general structure, 
such as an overall mentality, worldview, or value orientation. Rather, 
culture is internalized in the form of a loose network of domain-specific 
knowledge structures, such as categories and implicit theories (Bruner, 
1990; D'Andrade, 1984; Shore, 1996; Strauss, 1992). A second premise is 
that individuals can acquire more than one such cultural meaning system, 
even if these systems contain conflicting theories. That is, contradictory 
or conflicting constructs can be simultaneously possessed by an 
individual; they simply cannot simultaneously guide cognition. The key to 
this distinction is that possessing a particular construct does not entail 
relying on it continuously; only a small subset of an individual's 
knowledge comes to the fore and guides the interpretation of a stimulus. 
This dynamic constructivist approach differs in its conception of culture 
from cross-cultural psychology, yet it is a complementary rather than a 
rival approach in that it builds on previous insights and draws attention 
to novel research questions and novel accounts of phenomena, such as frame 
switching.

A basic research question relevant to frame switching is how particular 
pieces of cultural knowledge become operative in particular interpretive 
tasks. To investigate this question, we have drawn concepts and methods 
from social psychological research on how stereotypes, schemas, and other 
constructs move in and out of operation (Fiske, 1998). A key concept is 
that the pieces of an individual's knowledge vary in accessibility 
(Higgins, 1996; Wyer & Srull, 1986). The more accessible a construct, the 
more likely it is to come to the fore in the individual's mind and guide 
interpretation.

But what determines whether a piece of knowledge is highly accessible? A 
long-standing hypothesis in cognitive and social psychology holds that a 
construct, such as a category, is accessible to the extent that it has 
been activated by recent use (Bruner, 1957). Abundant evidence for this 
comes from experiments in which researchers manipulate whether 
participants are exposed to a word or image related to a construct (a 
prime) and then measure the extent to which the participants' subsequent 
interpretations of a stimulus are influenced by the primed construct (for 
a review, see Higgins, 1996). For example, in one experiment (Chiu et al., 
1998), participants were primed either with pictures of a masculine man 
and a feminine woman or with gender-unrelated (control) pictures. Later, 
in a purportedly unrelated task, they were asked to interpret an ambiguous 
behavior (e.g., "Donna's friend ordered a coffee, and so did Donna"). 
Participants primed with gender-related pictures constructed 
interpretations that showed an influence of gender stereotypes: For 
example, they judged Donna to be dependent on others in making decisions. 
Participants in the control condition did not make such interpretations. 
In this experiment, gender-related pictures activated stereotypes in the 
minds of participants, which then made it more likely that these 
stereotypes became operative and guided inferences when participants 
sought to make sense of the behavioral stimulus.

An important design feature in many priming studies is that the priming is 
presented to participants as part of an unrelated experiment, and 
participants are not aware of its influence in the interpretive task. Some 
studies have primed constructs that are one step removed from the 
construct that applies to the interpretive task. For example, priming with 
words related to African Americans led White participants to interpret 
hostility in stimulus behavior by race-unspecified actors (Gaertner & 
McLaughlin, 1983); priming with cues with positive affective valence led 
participants to subsequently rely on person categories having the same 
affective valence (Niedenthal & Cantor, 1986). These priming effects rely 
on the spillover or spread of activation from one construct to other 
linked constructs within a network of constructs that are psychologically 
associated for participants (see Anderson, 1976).

In our research on frame switching, we used the concept of accessibility 
and the technique of priming to model the phenomenon experimentally. We 
posited that bicultural individuals who have been socialized into two 
cultures, A and B, have, as a result, two cultural meaning systems or 
networks of cultural constructs, which can be referred to as A' and B'. 
Accordingly, priming bicultural individuals with images from Culture A 
would spread activation through Network A', elevating the accessibility of 
the network's categories and the implicit theories the network comprises. 
Likewise, priming with images from Culture B would spread activation 
through Network B', elevating the accessibility of the constructs that 
network comprises. In looking for the ideal primes to test this account, 
we searched for symbols that would activate constructs central to specific 
cultural networks yet not so directly related to the interpretive task. 
Thus, participants could not consciously connect the prime with the 
stimulus. We turned to iconic cultural symbols.

Icons: Triggers of Cultural Knowledge

Icons have been called "magnets of meaning" in that they connect many 
diverse elements of cultural knowledge (Betsky, 1997). Like religious 
icons, cultural icons are images created or selected for their power to 
evoke in observers a particular frame of mind in a "powerful and 
relatively undifferentiated way" (Ortner, 1973, p. 1339). The potency and 
distinctiveness of icons make them ideal candidates for primes that would 
spread activation in a network of cultural constructs. Some examples of 
central icons in the mainstream American and Chinese cultural traditions 
are shown in Figure 1. Exposing Chinese American bicultural individuals to 
American icons should activate interpretive constructs in their American 
cultural knowledge network; exposing the same individuals to Chinese icons 
instead should activate constructs in their Chinese cultural knowledge 
network.

Interpreting Behavior of Individual and Group Actors: A Litmus Test

Our research also required an interpretive task that is influenced by 
cultural knowledge in a well-understood manner. Here the legacy of 
cross-cultural psychology is invaluable in that we can seek to replicate, 
by priming different cultures within the minds of bicultural individuals, 
the patterns of differences that have been discovered in previous 
cross-national comparative studies. Many such patterns exist. For example, 
in self-description tasks, North Americans are consistently more likely 
than Japanese to make self-enhancing statements (Kitayama & Markus, 1994). 
An important consideration, however, is that many Japanese American 
biculturals are, no doubt, aware of this difference. Hence, exposing 
bicultural individuals to cultural icons could affect this difference 
either through unobtrusive priming of knowledge structures or through 
demand characteristics. We needed a stimulus task that participants would 
not consciously connect to cultural icons. In short, the task could not be 
transparently related to culture.

To develop a test for cultural priming that would be nontransparent to 
participants, we turned to interpretations of social behavior. Social 
psychologists have long studied how perceivers attribute the behavior of 
others to causes, noting systematic biases, such as tracing an 
individual's actions to personality dispositions rather than other 
plausible factors such as social context (Heider, 1958; Ross, 1977). 
Perhaps the most famous evidence for this bias came from studies conducted 
by Heider and Simmel (1944) in which participants were presented with 
animated films of geometric shapes, such as triangles and circles, that 
were moving in patterns suggestive of social interactions. Participants 
tended to interpret the films by ascribing motives and personalities to an 
individual shape. Heider (1958) concluded that social information is 
interpreted by forming units, primarily the unit of an individual person. 
The person unit then tends to attract most of the perceiver's attention, 
resulting in causal attributions that overweigh internal personal factors 
and underweigh factors in the surrounding social situation. Other 
researchers have studied everyday interactions in which this bias of 
tracing an individual's behavior to dispositions leads to incorrect 
interpretations of the individual's behavior and suboptimal ways of 
interacting with him or her (Jones & Harris, 1967; Morris, Larrick, & Su, 
1999). Because of its pervasiveness and consequentiality, this 
dispositionist bias has been called the fundamental attribution error 
(Ross, 1977).

Recent research has allowed psychologists to identify the role that 
culture plays in shaping the dispositionist bias in social perception. 
Prompted by ethnographic accounts of Chinese social understanding (Hsu, 
1953), Morris and Peng (1994) investigated the hypothesis that the 
tendency of perceivers to focus on individuals and interpret behavior in 
terms of their internal dispositions may be more marked in North America 
than in China. They reasoned that an implicit theory that individuals are 
autonomous relative to the pressures of the group is central to American 
culture, whereas in Chinese culture a more salient implicit theory 
emphasizes that individuals accommodate the greater autonomy of groups (Su 
et al., 1999). In studies in which they used several methods, Morris and 
Peng showed that American participants accorded more weight to an 
individual's personal dispositions, whereas Chinese participants accorded 
more weight to an individual's social context. Further evidence for the 
difference in implicit theories emerged from studies directly measuring 
generalized beliefs about individuals versus social groups and 
institutions (Chiu, Dweck, Tong, & Fu, 1997). In a recent review of 
studies comparing North American and East Asian perceivers, researchers 
concluded that the sharpest differences in attributions for the cause of 
an individual's behavior lie in the weight accorded to the contexts of 
constraints and pressures imposed by social groups (Choi, Nisbett, & 
Norenzayan, 1999). Consistent with this indication that East Asians accord 
causal potency to social collectives, in studies of how perceivers 
attribute actions by groups researchers have found that East Asians make 
attributions to the dispositions of groups more than Americans do (Menon, 
Morris, Chiu, & Hong, 1999). In sum, cultural differences in the 
attributional weight accorded to the dispositions of individuals versus 
groups are well documented.

An important feature of attribution differences is that they can be 
studied with nontransparent methods. One of the methods used by Morris and 
Peng (1994) adapted Heider's strategy of presenting animated films that 
participants do not consciously associate with social or cultural topics. 
Morris and Peng designed animated films of fish featuring an individual 
and a group in which it was ambiguous whether the individual's differing 
trajectory reflected internal dispositions or the influence of the group. 
In one type of display, the individual fish swam outside of the group, 
leaving ambiguous whether the individual's separation reflected an 
internal disposition (a leader leading other fish) or pressure from the 
group (an outcast being chased by other fish). In explaining the 
individual fish's behavior, Chinese participants attributed less to 
internal disposition of the fish in front but more to the external (group) 
factors than did American participants (see Figure 2). This method of 
measuring cultural differences through the ways social perceptions are 
anthropomorphically projected onto animals has the advantage that 
participants are unaware culture is relevant to the task.

Cultural Priming Studies

In a series of studies, we experimentally created frame switching among 
bicultural individuals. Next, we review three of the studies. The first 
two studies used the priming method to replicate in bicultural individuals 
the cross-national attribution differences revealed by Morris and Peng 
(1994). The third study is a conceptual replication of the first two 
studies, but the dependent measures were attributions for a social event.

Bicultural Participants

Who were the bicultural individuals we recruited in the studies? Our 
initial studies involved Westernized Chinese students in Hong Kong. 
Although traditional Chinese values are emphasized in the socialization 
processes in Hong Kong (Ho, 1986), contemporary university students in 
Hong Kong are acculturated with Western social beliefs and values (Bond, 
1993). This is related to the fact that Hong Kong was a 
British-administrated territory for more than a century. Before 1997, 
English, not Chinese, was the official language of instruction in about 
80% of the secondary schools (Young, Giles, & Pierson, 1986). Furthermore, 
large British and American expatriate communities and the salient presence 
of English-language television, films, and so forth means that Hong Kong 
Chinese students have been exposed to Euro-American social constructs 
extensively. Yet, although Hong Kong Chinese students are rather 
Westernized in some aspects of their self-concept and value system (see 
Bond & Cheung, 1981; Fu, 1999; Triandis, Leung, & Hui, 1990), they 
maintain their primary social identity as Hong Kong Chinese (Hong, Yeung, 
Chiu, & Tong, 1999) and subscribe to core Chinese values (Chinese Culture 
Connection, 1987). In sum, Hong Kong Chinese students in the late 1990s 
belong to a population of biculturally socialized individuals.

In our later experiment (reported in Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Mart?nez, 
2000), we tested a different group of bicultural individuals. These were 
China-born Californian college students who had lived at least five years 
in a Chinese society and at least five years in North America before 
attending college. Whereas the Hong Kong bicultural group represented 
bicultural identification resulting from extensive Westernization of a 
society, the Chinese American group represented bicultural identification 
resulting from immigration: These are two primary ways that culture moves 
across territories to create multicultural societies (Hermans & Kempen, 
1998). Although we do not report in this article the study with Chinese 
American biculturals, results revealed that these participants recognized 
and were influenced by American and Chinese cultural icons in similar ways 
as were the members of the Hong Kong bicultural group.

Priming Materials

We presented Hong Kong Chinese students with a set of cultural icons 
designed to activate the associated social theories that produce cultural 
biases in attribution. In our research we used several kinds of icons. 
Some involved symbols (e.g., the American flag vs. a Chinese dragon), 
legendary figures from folklore or popular cartoons (e.g., Superman vs. 
Stone Monkey), famous people (e.g., Marilyn Monroe vs. a Chinese opera 
singer), and landmarks (e.g., the Capitol Building vs. the Great Wall). 
Several prior studies have demonstrated that exposure to such icons 
activates the corresponding cultural meaning system. For instance, Hong, 
Chiu, and Kung (1997, Experiment 1) found that exposure to these Chinese 
icons led Hong Kong Chinese students to increase their endorsement of 
Chinese values. Recently, Kemmelmeier and Winter (1998) found that 
Americans showed an elevated endorsement of independence values after 
being exposed to the American flag.

Initial Tests

In one study (Hong et al., 1997, Experiment 2), 303 Hong Kong Chinese 
undergraduate students were randomly assigned to the American culture 
priming condition, the Chinese culture priming condition, or the control 
condition. Participants in the American culture priming condition were 
shown six pictures of American icons and were asked to answer short 
questions about the pictures (e.g., "Which country does this picture 
symbolize?" "Use three adjectives to describe the character of the 
legendary figure in this picture"). Participants in the Chinese culture 
priming condition were shown six pictures of Chinese icons and were asked 
to answer the same short questions. These conditions were designed to 
inject activation into American and Chinese construct networks, 
respectively, leading to elevated accessibility of their respective 
implicit theories about the causality of social events. Participants in 
the control condition were shown six drawings of geometric figures and 
asked to indicate where they thought there should be a shade or a shadow. 
This condition was designed to inject no activation into cultural 
knowledge networks but to otherwise resemble the cultural prime 
conditions.

Then, in an allegedly unrelated task, participants were given an 
attribution task adapted from Morris and Peng (1994). In this measure, 
participants were shown a realistic picture of a fish swimming in front of 
a group of fish (see Figure 3) and asked to indicate on a 12-point scale 
why one fish was swimming in front of the group. A score of 1 on the scale 
meant very confident that it is because the one fish is leading the other 
fish (an internal cause), and a score of 12 meant very confident that it 
is because the one fish is being chased by the other fish (an external 
cause). Consistent with the pattern identified in cross-national studies 
(Morris & Peng, 1994), we expected that participants would be less 
inclined to interpret the individual fish's behavior in terms of the 
external social pressure after American priming than after Chinese 
priming. Indeed, as predicted, participants who were exposed to American 
pictures were significantly less confident in the external (vs. internal) 
explanation than were those who were exposed to Chinese pictures (see 
Figure 4). Participants in the control condition fell midway between the 
two culture priming conditions.

In a second experiment, we replicated the cultural priming effect with a 
less constricted measure of causal attributions (Hong et al., 1997, 
Experiment 3). Participants were 75 Hong Kong Chinese undergraduate 
students who were randomly assigned to the American culture priming 
condition, the Chinese culture priming condition, or the control 
condition. In the American culture priming condition, participants were 
shown five pictures of American icons and asked to write 10 sentences to 
describe the pictures in terms of American culture. Participants in the 
Chinese culture priming condition were shown five pictures of Chinese 
icons and asked to write 10 sentences to describe the pictures in terms of 
Chinese culture. In the control condition, participants were shown five 
pictures of physical landscapes and asked to write 10 sentences about the 
landscapes. This procedure lasted for 10 minutes. Then, in an ostensibly 
unrelated task, participants were presented with a picture depicting a 
fish swimming in front of a school of fish and asked to write down what 
they thought was the major reason why the fish was swimming in front of 
other fish. This open-ended response format allowed participants to 
generate explanations that were not limited to the options we provided. On 
the basis of Miller's (1984) coding scheme, the explanations were coded 
into inferences of internal properties or external properties. Again, 
participants' likelihood of generating external explanations differed 
significantly across the three experimental conditions. As predicted, 
fewer participants in the American culture priming condition than in the 
Chinese culture priming condition generated explanations referring to the 
external social context (see Figure 4). The proportion of participants who 
generated external explanations in the control condition fell midway 
between the proportions of the two culture priming conditions, much as in 
the previous study.

A Conceptual Replication

In our third study, we checked that the priming effect is replicated when 
the task involves interpreting human actions. We asked participants to 
make an attribution for a character's deviation from a diet--an action 
chosen because it has no obvious connection to the cultural icons. We 
randomly assigned 234 Hong Kong Chinese high school students to one of 
three priming conditions. Participants in the American culture priming 
condition saw eight American icons and wrote 10 sentences about American 
culture. Participants in the Chinese culture priming condition saw eight 
Chinese icons and wrote 10 sentences about Chinese culture. Participants 
in the control condition saw pictures of natural landscapes and wrote 10 
sentences about the landscapes. This priming manipulation lasted 
approximately 15 minutes.

Then participants in all conditions read a story about an overweight boy 
who was advised by a physician not to eat food with high sugar content. 
One day, he and his friends went to a buffet dinner where a 
delicious-looking cake was offered. Despite its high sugar content, he ate 
it. After reading this brief description, participants were asked to 
respond to three sets of questions. Participants were asked to indicate 
the extent to which the boy's weight problem was caused by his 
dispositions. That is, they rated factors such as his personality 
dispositions (e.g., he lacks the ability to control himself, etc.) on a 
10-point scale, ranging from 1 (has very little influence on his action) 
to 10 (has a lot of influence on his action). In addition, participants 
were asked to indicate the extent to which the boy's eating of the cake 
was caused by pressures and constraints of his external social situation 
(situational reasons, friends' pressure on him, etc.) on the same 10-point 
scale.

As in the previous two studies, participants in the three priming 
conditions differed on the weight accorded to the external, social 
situations as determinants of the boy's behavior (see Figure 5). As 
predicted, participants in the American culture priming condition accorded 
less weight to external social factors than did participants in the 
Chinese culture priming condition (see Figure 4). On this measure, 
participants in the control condition fell in between those in the Chinese 
and American culture priming conditions. Participants in the three priming 
conditions, however, did not differ on the internal attribution measure. 
This result is consistent with the conclusions in Choi et al.'s (1999) 
review that cultural influences on attributions for an individual's 
behavior originate more from the differential weight placed on the 
external social context (when these factors are salient) than from the 
differential weight placed on the actor's internal dispositions.

In sum, through priming bicultural individuals, we have replicated the 
differences in attribution previously identified in quasi-experimental 
comparisons of groups in different countries. In so doing, we have 
experimentally modeled the phenomenon of frame switching in bicultural 
individuals and have demonstrated that multiple cultures can direct 
cognition within one individual's mind.

Extending the Dynamic Constructivist Approach We began by analyzing the 
experience of frame switching reported by multicultural individuals in 
terms of a dynamic constructivist view of culture and cognition. We have 
experimentally modeled the phenomenon through priming experiments and have 
found support for our predictions. Culturally conferred implicit theories 
became operative in guiding the interpretation of stimuli to the extent 
that their accessibility was high because of recent activation. Having 
documented the fruitfulness of a dynamic constructivist approach to this 
phenomenon in the experience of bicultural individuals, we now discuss its 
assumptions and implications more generally as a framework for analyzing 
the role of culture in psychology.

Our assumption that cultural knowledge exists at the level of 
domain-specific categories and theories derives from the constructivist 
tradition that knowledge must be specific enough to constrain 
interpretations of stimulus information (Bruner, 1957; Heider, 1958). 
Bruner (1990) and others have explicated a constructivist view of cultural 
knowledge as a toolbox of discrete, specific constructs that differs from 
the dominant view in cross-cultural psychology that cultural knowledge 
exists as an integrated, domain-general construct. Several contemporary 
anthropologists (Shore, 1996; Sperber, 1996) and sociologists (DiMaggio, 
1997) have staked out similar positions within their disciplines, 
challenging more general conceptions of cultural knowledge as foundational 
schemas or value orientations. However, our approach goes beyond these 
other constructivist approaches to culture in its emphasis on the dynamics 
of knowledge activation.

In describing the dynamics of cultural knowledge, we see great potential 
in drawing on research concerning construct accessibility. Whereas the 
cross-cultural literature generally explains judgment and decision 
outcomes in terms of whether individuals in a given cultural group possess 
a given knowledge construct, we see the possession of a construct as a 
less critical variable than whether the construct is highly accessible 
(cf. Trafimow, Triandis, & Goto, 1991). Our guess is that the most 
important implicit theories about the social world are possessed by people 
everywhere; the variance across cultural groups probably lies in the 
relative accessibility of particular implicit theories, not in whether the 
theories are possessed. In our experiments concerning frame switching in 
bicultural individuals, the emphasis was on temporary accessibility of a 
construct caused by the priming of related constructs. Equally useful in 
theories of culture may be the related notion that some constructs attain 
chronic accessibility, in part because accessibility is maintained by 
frequency of use (Higgins, King, & Mavin, 1982; for a review, see Higgins, 
1996). Some findings in the cross-cultural literature that have been 
interpreted in terms of whether participants possess a construct (i.e., a 
performance difference reflects which self-concepts individuals possess in 
Culture A vs. Culture B) might be fruitfully reframed in terms of chronic 
accessibility (i.e., a performance difference reflects which self-concepts 
are made chronically accessible in Culture A vs. Culture B). Another 
virtue of an account based on accessibility is that it points to how 
factors outside of the individual person--such as institutions, discourse, 
or relationships--might prime cultural theories and keep these theories 
prominent in the minds of culture members.

Cross-cultural researchers have been troubled at times that the influence 
of a given cultural construct does not emerge consistently when tasks are 
run under different conditions. Accessibility may provide an important 
clue to understanding this observation. Social cognition researchers have 
found that some conditions create an epistemic motivation for a quick 
reduction of ambiguity (the need for cognitive closure), and this 
increases the extent to which perceivers work top-down from accessible 
constructs, such as cultural theories, when constructing interpretations 
(Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Consistent with the notion that the need for 
closure amplifies cultural influence, in recent research it has been found 
that a high need for closure fosters the tendency to make attributions to 
individual dispositions among North Americans and the tendency to make 
attributions to the dispositional properties of a group among Chinese 
perceivers (Chiu, Morris, Hong, & Menon, 2000). More generally, cultural 
psychology may benefit from the incorporation of many of the insights in 
social cognition research about the moderating factors (e.g., need for 
cognition, availability of cognitive capacity) that determine when 
constructs become accessible and when accessible constructs have the most 
influence on cognition. Many of the processes and conditions that moderate 
perceivers' reliance on stereotypes and other knowledge structures may 
also affect their reliance on cultural theories. Stronger support may 
emerge for models of the consequences of culture once the moderating 
factors are better specified.

Implications for Other Research Areas

Methodology

The research reviewed here shows that it is possible to conduct 
experimental studies on culture. In the same way that quasi-experimental 
cross-cultural studies added a new tool for cultural research with some 
advantages over ethnographic observation, priming experiments offer a new 
tool for cultural research that has advantages over the preexisting 
methods. A first use of the priming method is to explore the content of 
cultural knowledge. This is usually done by analyzing the content of 
samples of conversation and other texts. An alternative method is to 
analyze the content of thoughts elicited by priming with cultural icons. 
For example, by priming North American perceivers with pictures of the 
American flag and querying their associations, Kemmelmeier and Winter 
(1998) have been able to analyze the constellation of values associated 
with this cultural icon. Similarly, exposing Hong Kong Chinese to pictures 
of Chinese cultural icons leads to elevated endorsement of certain social 
values (Hong et al., 1997, Experiment 1). Thus, the culture priming 
technique creates a new way to uncover content of cultural knowledge.

A second role of priming lies in establishing the causal consequences of 
cultural knowledge. Experiments with the priming method allow for true 
random assignment of participants to cultural conditions, thus providing 
tests of culture's consequences with greater internal validity than that 
of tests provided by the quasi-experimental method of cross-national 
studies. Hence, the priming method complements cross-cultural comparisons 
in isolating the causal role of culture.

Language as Prime

Aside from cultural icons, language could also be an effective means of 
activating cultural constructs. In fact, considerable research evidence 
shows language effects in bilingual individuals' responses to a wide range 
of psychological inventories such as measures of personality (Earle, 1969; 
Ervin, 1964), values (Bond, 1983; Mar?n, Triandis, Betancourt, & Kashima, 
1983), self-concept (Trafimow, Silverman, Fan, & Law, 1997), emotional 
expression (Matsumoto & Assar, 1992), or even other-person descriptions 
(Hoffman, Lau, & Johnson, 1986). A compelling explanation for these 
findings has been that for bilingual individuals, the two languages are 
often associated with two different cultural systems. In Bond's (1983) and 
Earle's (1969) studies, for instance, the responses of bilingual Chinese 
were more Western when they responded to the original (English) 
questionnaire than when they responded to a Chinese translation of it. 
Interestingly, Earle explained these results in dynamic constructionist 
terms. According to him, these bilingual individuals had learned Chinese 
at home and English at school and had, at the same time, acquired two 
distinct sets of cultural constructs reflecting the two languages' 
cultures. The Chinese version of the questionnaire activated the Chinese 
language culture, and the English version, the English language culture 
(see Krauss & Chiu, 1998). As such, the dynamic constructivist approach 
could help researchers to better understand the research on 
sociopersonality factors in bilingualism.

Moving Beyond Cognition

Heretofore, we have discussed the application of the dynamic approach to 
culture solely in the study of cognition. Clearly, however, the priming 
method can be used in analogous ways to study emotions. This experimental 
technique can be used to investigate the emotions triggered by exposure to 
cultural icons, and this may prove more incisive than trying to infer 
culture-emotion relationships from cross-national comparisons. Although 
research could commence with the study of a single culture, it would be 
interesting to see whether culturally distinct emotional states could be 
induced in bicultural individuals through priming with different icons.

It is also interesting to explore the other side of this question: What 
emotions lead people to embrace cultural icons and cultural ideas more 
generally? Some evidence that cultural icons have more than a cold 
cognitive impact comes from work by Greenberg, Porteus, Simon, 
Pyszczynski, and Solomon (1995), in which they demonstrated that 
individuals led to think about their mortality are subsequently more 
respectful toward iconic cultural objects (e.g., a flag or crucifix). 
Central cultural symbols play a key role in the motivated identification 
of self with enduring cultural traditions.

At the same time that the dynamic constructivist approach can be extended 
more broadly, it is also important to note that this model of culture in 
terms of an individual's knowledge structures obviously does not capture 
all the manifestations of culture that matter. Culture exists in many 
forms other than knowledge in an individual's head (see Kitayama & Markus, 
1994). Other carriers of culture, such as practices, have been identified 
by psychological researchers using the sociocultural approach (see Rogoff, 
1990) and by sociologists studying relationship patterns and institutions 
(see Morris, Podolny, & Ariel, 1999). Hence, although the activation of 
cultural knowledge may have important influences on emotions and motives 
as well as judgments and decisions, many interesting aspects of culture 
may not be mediated by knowledge activation at all. A complete 
understanding of culture and psychology requires that the dynamic 
constructivist approach be complemented by analyses that are less 
knowledge-oriented.

Also, to a large extent, cultures are shaped in relation to each other, so 
the tension between cultures needs to be part of a comprehensive account 
of any single culture. This is particularly relevant in understanding the 
dynamics of a multiply acculturated individual. In our studies, we chose 
individuals identified with two cultures (North American and Chinese) that 
for the most part are not antagonistic to each other. If the two cultural 
groups an individual has been extensively exposed to involved intense 
political antagonism (such as Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia), presenting 
cultural icons of one culture may elicit reactive identification with the 
opposite culture (see Krauss & Chiu, 1998). Two conclusions can be drawn 
from this point. First, even within studies of culture and cognition, 
researchers need to proceed with an awareness of the intergroup and 
political connotations of particular cultural group membership. Second, 
reaction against unwanted reminders of a culture may be amenable to a 
dynamic constructivist analysis. One possibility is that antagonism leads 
to a psychological linking of the two cultural networks, so that 
activation of the constructs from the antagonist culture spreads to the 
other culture. Another possibility is that individuals actively control 
the dynamics of construct accessibility rather than being passively 
affected by them. Then, activating the antagonist culture may cause active 
suppression and thus would not yield any cultural priming effect. These 
possibilities can be explored in future research.

The Process of Acculturation

In addition to creating an understanding of internalized culture as an 
antecedent variable, the dynamic constructivist approach may lead to fresh 
insights about how culture gets inside minds in the first place, in other 
words, the psychology of acculturation. Theoretical models proposed by 
Berry (1988), Birman (1994), LaFromboise et al. (1993), and Phinney (1996) 
are useful in describing the behavioral (e.g., how active one is in ethnic 
organizations and social groups), motivational-attitudinal (e.g., how much 
value is given to assimilating into the mainstream culture), or 
phenomenological (e.g., how much conflict or discrimination is experienced 
in the new culture) aspects of the acculturation process. These models, 
however, focus on the outcome of acculturation more than on the process. 
Individuals are scored on the extent to which they have absorbed the new 
culture or retained the original one. The dynamic constructivist approach 
could supplement the traditional approach by emphasizing the process of 
internalizing a new culture, highlighting dynamics such as frame switching 
that many people experience in the process.

More important, a dynamic constructivist approach lends itself to viewing 
acculturation as a more active process. The end result--thinking and 
behaving like a member of the host culture--is seen as a state, not a 
trait. This state will occur when interpretive frames from the host 
culture are accessible. We submit that individuals undergoing 
acculturation, to some extent, manage the process by controlling the 
accessibility of cultural constructs. People desiring to acculturate 
quickly surround themselves with symbols and situations that prime the 
meaning system of the host culture. Conversely, expatriates desiring to 
maintain the accessibility of constructs from their home culture surround 
themselves with stimuli priming that culture. For example, one of the 
current authors, who is Spanish but has lived for some years in the United 
States, often surrounds herself with Spanish music, food, and paintings to 
keep alive her Spanish ways of thinking and feeling. Active processes of 
priming oneself may help multicultural individuals in their ongoing effort 
to negotiate and express their cultural identities. Future research should 
investigate not only the outcome of acculturation but also the processes 
through which individuals navigate cultural transitions.

Conclusion

We have proposed a dynamic constructivist approach to culture and 
cognition and have reported supportive evidence. A distinctive 
contribution of this approach is in describing how a given individual 
incorporates multiple cultures and in describing how and when particular 
pieces of cultural knowledge become operative in guiding an individual's 
construction of meaning. This less monolithic view of culture seems 
particularly appropriate at this time of increasing cultural 
interconnection. Across the world, there is a drift toward culturally 
polyglot, pluralistic societies. Yet, in part because of the strain of 
negotiating cultural complexity, a countervailing resurgence of efforts to 
separate individuals into culturally "pure" groups also exists. By 
experimentally modeling frame switching among bicultural individuals, our 
model shows that research on "uncontaminated" cultural groups is not the 
only viable way to identify cultural effects on cognition. In sum, a 
dynamic constructivist approach may open new possibilities in 
understanding culture and transcultural experiences.

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From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  8 20:01:18 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 15:01:18 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Hermenaut: Anorexia/Technology: An Introduction
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512252123050.14301@panix3.panix.com>

Anorexia/Technology: An Introduction
http://www.hermenaut.com/a149.shtml
[Two related articles appended. Links omitted.]

   "I was sick for a long time, and that made me think about
   factories." --Jean-Luc Godard, in Num?ro Deux (1975)

Hermes, the god of interpretation, gave his name to this magazine via 
those thinkers who've used "philosophical hermeneutics" to challenge our 
collective habit of taking received notions of self, truth, morality, and 
other phenomena--our social arrangements, our basic expectations--for 
granted. The "heady philosophy" of our subtitle is the kind that 
challenges prejudices masquerading as common sense. Lately, we've found 
the received wisdom surrounding the subjects of anorexia (as in "Calista 
Flockhart, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Teri Hatcher, Tori Spelling, 
Helen Hunt, Celine Dion, ad--as it were--nauseam, must really want to be 
thin") and technology (as in "Only a reactionary Neo-Luddite could 
possibly believe that the 'Information Revolution' is anything less than 
inevitable") particularly infuriating. Which is why you're holding an 
issue of Hermenaut with not one, but two themes.

Here at Hermenaut HQ the editorial decision-making process operates
strictly on the basis of personal obsession; we never stop to wonder
what anyone else thinks. So when we sent out the call for submissions
to the "Anorexia/Technology" issue, we suspected we'd be deluged with
essays on food fetishism, the erotics of self-discipline, and the
politics and poetics of willful starvation--and in this we were not
disappointed. But we also never doubted for a moment that the
editors at Hermenaut.com in-box would soon be jammed with close readings
of the ongoing communications technology "revolution." After all, we
writers and artists are supposed to be particularly threatened by new
technologies: Tolstoy, for example, refused to use the Dictaphone
because he was afraid he'd find it "too dreadfully exciting"--we know
exactly what he means. This latter type of article, however, failed,
for the most part, to materialize. Readers, it is at these moments of
crisis, which happen at least once a quarter around here, that the
entire Hermenaut project is put to the test. Do we bow to the will of
the public, or not? As always, the answer came back "not." I was
informed by the Hermenaut staff that I'd just have to write about
technology myself. So here goes.

Not long ago, I quit a lucrative and high-profile job at one of those 
ultra-capitalized Web-based start-up companies you're always hearing 
about. I decided that I needed a change when I almost killed myself on the 
highway one morning trying to hotsync my Palm Pilot with the dash-mounted 
laptop while simultaneously "fertilizing" my virtual Chia Pet, Harry. 
(Don't worry: Although he was a bit shaken, Harry survived.) As I hung 
there, upside-down, waiting for the Jaws of Life to set me free, I found 
that I suddenly craved freedom from wearable disposable computers, digital 
mini-walkie-talkie phones, two-way pagers, personalized "start 
pages"--from any and every device, in other words, that served only to 
exacerbate the worst qualities of my own monkey-mind. At that moment I was 
transformed, or so I believed at the time, into that most ludicrous of 
contemporary creatures: a Neo-Luddite.

Like others of my ilk, I became paranoid: Technology fills the world
with itself, I suddenly realized. It's like a virus that way. I also
began to feel physically nauseated by the thought of what Jean
Baudrillard calls our current "society of excrescence." In "The
Anorexic Ruins," an essay from several years ago, Baudrillard insisted
that even if we manage to ignore 99 percent of all the information and
products out there, we are still "electrocuted" by what remains. And
in "Waiting for the Year 2000," published this past spring, he
suggests that, thanks to late-20th-century technology, all human and
social functions have become "extreme," literally grown beyond their
own ends. "Because of the intervention of numerical, cybernetic, and
virtual technologies... [things] can no longer end, and they fall into
the abyss of the endless (endless history, endless politics, endless
economic crisis). ... Everything can be extended ad infinitum. We can
no longer stop the process." Unlike some people out there, I know that
M. Baudrillard is a theorist, not a prophet, but I find I can relate
to his apocalyptic vision of an apocalypse that will never happen, or
that has already happened. The visceral feeling of too-muchness which
he describes is with me every day now.

Perhaps we do not literally live in a world grown obese through
technological outgrowth--but it sure feels like it sometimes. Thanks
to the octopoidal spread of fiber optic cables (capable of
transmitting about a million times more information than copper wires
can), the almost complete interconnection of the world's
computers--i.e. the "information society"--is upon us. Besides
changing the way we communicate, the way we do business, and the way
we spend our days, the sudden ubiquity of directly accessible data
sources has upped our daily information flow from a trickle to a
rushing torrent. Now, we "knowledge workers" want to be filled with
this substance... but we quickly become over-full, and are disgusted
with ourselves. We soon long to stop receiving faxes, e-mails, and
phone calls, yet we don't dare unplug for fear of becoming
non-entities. Eventually even the most hotwired among us become aware
of a hidden longing to "do something" about "technology." But the
imperative "do something" must always be examined for received notions
and prejudices, right? What, in fact, is the best way to think and
talk about technology?

   "The hallucinatory utopia of communication technologies... has
   crept up over the years, disguised in the glad rags of ideologies
   of progress." --Paul Virilio, "The Shrinking Effect" (1993).

To be strictly accurate, I first encountered what I think of as the
"technology question" back in 1994, the year I began working at an
"alternative press" magazine which had long published marginalized
would-be Thoreauvians and '60s hold-outs like Jerry (Four Arguments
for the Elimination of Television) Mander, Bill (The End of Nature)
McKibben, Neil (Technopoly) Postman, Wendell (The Unsettling of
America) Berry, Theodore (The Cult of Information) Roszak, and
Kirkpatrick (Rebels Against the Future) Sale. These and other social
critics had adopted, by the time I arrived on the scene, the
pejorative term "Neo-Luddite"--which used to mean, to conservative and
progressive social critics alike, a "hopelessly romantic
machinoclast"--as a badge of honor, indicating their principled stance
against technological "progress."

Before I could even begin to appreciate what these thinkers were
saying, however, everything suddenly changed. The World Wide Web,
previously the exclusive haunt of scientists and Deadheads, became a
mainstream medium. Wired started making publishing history, thanks to
its devotion to the personal computing "revolution." Early in '95,
then, the magazine I worked for ran a cover story on "100 Visionaries
Who Could Change Your Life," in which stalwart Neo-Luddites like
Berry, Postman, Sale, and Roszak were forced to jostle for elbow room
with Wired's "digerati": John Perry Barlow, Danny Hillis, Mitchell
Kapor, even Rand and Robyn Miller, the creators of the addictive
CD-ROM game Myst. Then, at a public event the magazine sponsored in
Manhattan, Sale pulverized a personal computer with a sledgehammer,
and Postman barked that "we have transformed information into a form
of garbage, and ourselves into garbage collectors." The peculiarly
'90s version of the century-old technophile vs. Neo-Luddite debate was
off and running.

In a Harper's forum shortly after that event, Neo-Luddites Sven (The
Gutenberg Elegies) Birkerts and Mark (Cyberspace and the Hi-Tech
Assault on Reality) Slouka expressed their fear that the advent of the
Internet was a signal of the disappearance of the "autonomous, bounded
'I'." Barlow, and Wired's editor Kevin Kelly, replied that the idea of
an 'I' which isn't always already fragmented is na?ve. The
Neo-Luddites worried that the Internet warps its users' sense of time
and space; the technophiles replied that old-fashioned ideas of time
and space (not to mention race and class) just hold us back from that
ecstatic self-fulfillment which is the birthright of every American.
The Neo-Luddites said they hated the thought of
knowledge-as-decontextualized-information-allowed-to-recombine-in-prev
iously-unknown-configurations; the technophiles just said, "Well,
yeah, of course that's a good thing!" The Neo-Luddites argued that
online "community" is just a pathetic, mediated ersatz of human
exchange; the technophiles came back with, "Why can't we have both
kinds of community?" I'd been rooting for the Neo-Luddites, so I was
troubled at how easily the digerati had shut them down. Something, it
seemed to me, must be wrong with the very terms of the debate itself.

That's when I discovered "The Question Concerning Technology," a late
essay by Martin Heidegger (whose brief attraction to Nazism, it's
important to remember, was motivated not out of anti-Semitism, but by
his distaste for highly "technologized" mass societies like the U.S.A.
and the U.S.S.R.). Writing in 1954, Heidegger seemed to be speaking
directly to my own set of questions by insisting, rather mysteriously,
that "the essence of technology is by no means anything
technological." That is to say, the artifactual component of
technology--from steam engines to software--is the most insignificant
and innocent part of a complex social and institutional matrix which
includes corporations, banks, and public utilities. Technology is, for
Heidegger, fundamentally a relationship between people--and to think
of it as anything else is only to engender mystification, passivity,
and fatalism. The only thing worse than "a stultified compulsion to
push on blindly with technology," he concludes, is "to rebel
helplessly against it and curse it as the work of the devil." This, it
seemed to me, summed up most of what was passing for the debate over
communication technologies.

An article on Wired in The Baffler right around then ("The Killer
App," by Keith White, The Baffler #6) directly addressed this larger,
Heideggerian definition of technology. White skewered Wired for being
"an aggressive apologist for the new Information Capitalism," the
"Great Rationalizer of the new technology." The media-hyped drive to
get us all online, White pointed out, is powered not by inevitable
historical forces but by entirely evitable business interests. It
became clear to me then that, like those 18th-century "Mechanical
Societies" which provided those who stood to profit by increased
production and the creation of new markets with a pseudo-religious
doctrine of technical progress, the digerati cannot be trusted to
speak with anything but a forked tongue. The idea that new technology
will bring universal wealth, enhanced freedom, revitalized politics,
satisfying community, and personal fulfillment is a promise we've
heard many times before in history. Will "being digital" offer us
ecstatic self-fulfillment through the ability to disburden ourselves
of outmoded illusions like place, time, and appearance? Of course not.
All it will really offer us is new gadgets, what Thoreau called
"pretty toys"--nothing but improved means to unimproved ends [see
"Disintermediated!" by Chris Fujiwara, this issue; and "The Thin
Machine" by David Rothenberg, this issue].

Exposing the machinations of the digerati may be excellent social and
cultural criticism, but it ain't philosophy: It doesn't tell us what
"technology" is or what we should "do about it." That's why I turned
next to social philosopher Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization
(1934). Written in the grand style of the old-school public
intellectual, Mumford's book offers an accessible world history of
technology, and uses that over-arching perspective to shed light on
the Neo-Luddite vs. technophile debate of his own time (which was
focused on workplace automation and the increasing use of the
telephone and radio). Most of us, in debates over whether or not
technology is "good" or "bad," are referring to artifacts, things,
from toaster ovens to corporate intranets; an endlessly evolving mass
of tools, instruments, machines; the means and methods used to help
people travel, communicate, produce, calculate; the practical
implementations of human intelligence; McLuhan's "extensions of man."
Mumford was, I believe, one of the first to argue that "technology" is
not a thing, but a combination of artifacts ("technologies," even)
with activities, beliefs, and attitudes. Thus, physical instruments of
technology must be viewed as only one aspect of a larger
sociotechnical complex--Mumford calls this previously unnamed
phenomenon "technics"--which "promises well or ill as the social
groups that exploit it promise well or ill."

Against the Neo-Luddites of his own time, Mumford notes that automatic
machines don't make men "mechanized" or "regimented"; men had been
mechanized by the builders of the pyramids, for example, long before
mechanical automation happened, and monastic regularity is even
stricter than the factory time-clock. What is new, Mumford argued, is
not mechanization and regimentation but the fact that these functions
have come to dominate every aspect of our existence, the fact that we
Westerners have adapted our whole mode of life to the relentless pace
and seemingly infinite capacities of the automatic machine. To
Mumford, automatic machines are the result, not the cause, of our
inner capitulation to... it would be left to sociologist Jacques
Ellul, writing a generation later (La Technique, 1954), to finish this
thought: technique. By this term, Ellul means any complex of
standardized means, any deliberate application of rationalized
behavior whose goal is attaining a predetermined result. The automatic
machine is certainly the first and most obvious example of technique,
but it's not the origin of what Ellul calls the "technical problem."

Technique in its proper place is fine, writes Ellul; the problem is
that "technique has taken over all of man's activities, not just his
productive activity." "Technicians" (what we now call "technocrats")
control every sphere of human activity; political economists, for
example, whose mission it is to question the morality of various
economic activities, have been everywhere supplanted by economists who
just figure out how to make things work. The "end of ideology" in
politics has come to mean the end of ideals, and the successful
politician today is one who simply gets services delivered efficiently
[see "Whatever Works, Sucks" by Joshua Glenn, this issue]. In a
civilization dominated by technique, means are continually "improved"
while ends go unexamined: "Technical Man," laments Ellul, is
fascinated by results and results alone. Neo-Marxists would come to
call the reign of technique "instrumental rationality," the blind
pursuit of means to further means, with ends forgotten. Technology
theorist Rosalind Williams, writing in the journal Social Research
(Fall, 1997), summarizes this criticism: "There is a zeal that lets
nothing stand in the way of ever-greater efficiency in the production
of more and more goods, and all this for the sake of ever-greater
profits, and in total disregard of the costs to workers or to nature,
while all higher purposes recede, dwarfed by the technological
process." Ultimately, ends are transformed into means and means into
ends, and everything and everyone is transformed into an efficient
machine [see "Time for Teletubbies!" by Greg Rowland, this issue].

Having gotten "technics" and "technologies" and "technique"
straightened out, it finally became clear to me that any debate about
technology has to begin not with discussion about the various
technologies in our lives, but with a discussion about our ideals.
Although people would much rather debate the "effects" of new
technologies than disagree publicly about the nature of the Good Life,
this is precisely what needs to happen. How do we want to live? Once
we've answered this, we can address what Mumford calls the "real
question": How far does this or that "technology" further the ideal
ends of life? If our life-values include material conquest, wealth,
and power, then Ellulian "technique" is all good; wealth and power are
the by-products--which accrue to someone, though probably not you,
dear reader--of the process by which end-free means "improve"
themselves. But if our life-values revolve around, say, culture and
self-expression, then technique must be balanced with spontaneous and
intuitive action, following which (says Mumford) "the machine... will
fall back into its proper place: our servant, not our tyrant." This,
by the way, was the conclusion independently arrived at, around the
same time Mumford was writing, by this issue's Hermenaut: Simone Weil
[see "Hermenaut of the Month"]. Which brings us to the anorexia part
of this issue.

   "Disgust in all its forms is one of the most precious trials sent
   to man as a ladder by which to rise. I have a very large share of
   this favor."--Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

Because of her lifelong obsession with purity, Weil has been
described, by contemporaries like T.S. Eliot, as a kind of saint.
Although she starved herself to death at the age of 34, Weil had none
of the primary symptoms of clinical anorexia--she didn't weigh herself
excessively, hoard food, avoid eating in public, or appear to suffer
from any significant disturbance in her body-shape perception [see
"Interview with an Anorexic" by Lisa Carver, this issue]. It seems to
me, then, that Weil was what historian Rudolph Bell calls a "holy
anorexic," someone whose refusal to eat has nothing to do with body
shape and everything to do with purity. Like Catherine of Siena, whom
Bell analyzes, Weil practiced various austerities: She rejected
sexuality, wore rough clothes, slept on hard surfaces, and restricted
her diet whenever she could to bread, water, and raw vegetables [see
"Convent Erotica" by Chris Fujiwara, this issue]. In this, Weil may
have been a victim of what feminist literary critic Leslie Heywood
calls the "anorexic logic" of the Western philosophical, religious,
and literary tradition: To Weil, her body may have seemed the source
of worldly corruption, and the antithesis of philosophical detachment
[see "Confessions of an Anorexic Wannabe" by Michelle Chihara, this
issue].

The only thing more fascinating to Weil than the symbolism of eating
was the problem of automatic machinery in the workplace, and
technological "progress" in general. I hope it doesn't seem callous to
those who actually suffer from this disorder to suggest that anorexia
is a useful concept for thinking, not about technology itself, but
about how we think about and react to the technologies in our daily
lives. Anorexics suffer from feelings of ineffectiveness (think of how
you feel when your browser crashes again); from a strong need to
control their environment coupled with limited social spontaneity
(unless you count Multi-User Dungeons or whatever as a form of social
spontaneity); and above all from a feeling that their life is not
theirs to control--hello, Neo-Luddites!

But, of course, most of our lives are out of control. We enjoy the
freedom to be, do, and have almost anything we want, but we lack
"freedom from": freedom from being advertised to incessantly [see
"Letter from London" by Matthew De Abaitua, this issue], freedom from
direct mail solicitations and telephone sales calls, freedom from too
many TV channels and breakfast cereals, freedom from intimate
knowledge of the President's sex life, freedom from distraction and
overchoice. According to Hilde (The Golden Cage) Bruch, the pioneer
authority on anorexia, "Anorexics struggle against feeling enslaved,
exploited, and not permitted to lead a life of their own. They would
rather starve than continue a life of accommodation. In this blind
search for a sense of identity and selfhood they will not accept
anything that their parents, or the world around them, has to offer...
The main theme is a struggle for control, for a sense of identity,
competence, and effectiveness." In other words anorexics, typically
privileged young white women who enjoy all the "freedom to" in the
world, may long for freedom from freedom itself [see "Fatty Fiction"
by Lynn Peril, this issue; and "Anorexic Outfitters" by Pauline
Wolstencroft, this issue].

This sort of attitude towards what passes for freedom finds its most
direct expression in "Industrial Society and Its Future," the
manifesto of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. A true ascetic, who lived in an
unheated shack in the woods, Kaczynski wasn't just talking about
freedom from distraction--for him, the free market, free press, and
every other so-called freedom we enjoy are simply "freedoms that are
designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of
the individual." He writes that "industrial-technological society"
constricts every one of our true freedoms ("the power to control the
circumstances of one's own life"), leaving us nothing but "the freedom
to consume." Identity, competence, effectiveness--these are the
Thoreauvian values the Unabomber sought to publicize by killing
people. When, for whatever reason, these human impulses are (or just
seem to be) thwarted, we seem to arrive at some form of anorexia [see
"Fun With Richard & Karen" by John Marr, this issue].

The most recent widespread manifestation of Neo-Luddism is our
collective emotion of rage, frustration, or just exhaustion at the
thought of all that information we're expected to... well, ingest,
nowadays. Theodore Roszak's The Cult of Information, for example,
argues that we're being endlessly "force-fed" data, to the point where
we begin to compare our minds unfavorably to computers [see
"Suffragist City" by Dara Moskowitz, this issue]. David Shenk's book
Data Smog makes the dieting/info glut connection manifest: Just as
rich people paradoxically tend to be thinner than poor people (because
they eat better, are more health-conscious, and have the leisure time
to worry about their weight), he notes, the more media- and tech-savvy
you are, the more likely you are to have the willingness and the tools
to be an info-ascetic [see "Thin Code" by Scot Hacker, this issue].

Anorexia is not, then, as the Greek word suggests, a lack of appetite,
but rather a distorted and implacable attitude toward eating [see "The
Juice on Dick Gregory" by Dan Reines, this issue; and "Extreme
Dieting" by Mark Frauenfelder, this issue]: I suggest that most of us
have a distorted and implacable attitude toward what we mistakenly
call "technology." Neo-Luddites like to argue that technologies are
never neutral, that TV inherently controls social and political
thought, breaks down family communication, shortens our attention
span, and mediates our reality; that computers inherently invade our
privacy (by making mega-databases possible, for example) and
facilitate social centralization. For Heidegger, modern technologies
are not the problem: The will to mastery is. One could say the same
thing about anorexics; that their pathetic attempts at self-mastery
only end up obliterat-ing the self [see "Half Karen" by A.S. Hamrah,
this issue]. We Neo-Luddites want to get technology under control,
we're super-privileged and super-disgusted--we're techno-anorexics:
Remember, you heard it here first.

In search of a non-distorted attitude toward the new information and
communication technologies in my life, technologies which were indeed
making me as unhappy as they were helping me to be more efficient, in
the spring of '95 I attended something called The Second Neo-Luddite
Congress. At this event, which took place at a Quaker meeting house in
Barnesville, Ohio, I was overjoyed to discover an ally in my own
attempt to address the Technology Question in a manner that was more
Heidegger and Mumford, less Birkerts and Barlow. Scott Savage, the
"plain" Quaker who'd organized the Congress, had convened
representatives of the most laughably technophobic
subcultures--survivalists, self-helpers, back-to-the-landers,
rawfoodists, tree-spikers, deep ecologists, pagan bioregionalists--in
order to teach them to stop asking "Technology: Changing The Way We
Live For The Worse, Or For The Better?" Instead, he (and other plain
folk present) suggested, let's ask "Technology how?" "Technology why?"
"Technology when?" "Technology with what history, and to what end?" I
have no idea if the ideas expressed at this event helped anybody
present other than myself begin to see a solution to the problem of
new technologies, but the whole scene, silly as it was in many ways,
affected me deeply.

Like anorexics, who fixate on the means of bodily denial ("How many
peas per serving is too many?") without ever allowing themselves to
consider their desired end ("Just how thin is thin enough?"), we don't
ask ourselves what we want our lives to be like before we slap the
"Kill Your TV" sticker on the Bronco. Until we can agree upon
standards by which to judge new technologies, Neo-Luddites and
technophiles can go around and around arguing the relative merits and
demerits of cyberspace and "real life" without ever getting anywhere.
The Amish belief that technology is only bad when it intrudes upon
one's home life (which leads to the spectacle of rollerblading
patriarchs, and a pay phone on every corner, in their communities),
may not work for all of us, of course. All I'm trying to suggest is
that the "technology question" is not just about machines and "their
effect"--whether positive or negative--on mankind: That's a dead end.

What to do? Heidegger's essay on technology offers one way out.
Writing after the war, the previously activist philosopher had come to
believe that human willpower cannot oppose the technological
"enframing" of the world, in which everything and everyone is
mobilized for the purpose of greater efficiency--precisely the state
of affairs the Una-bomber's manifesto describes. Instead of suggesting
that "it would be better to dump the whole stinking system," as
Kaczynski does, Heidegger proposes that we practice a
non-technological way of encountering things; that instead of
perceiving the world in terms of means and ends, we keep sight of the
"thereness" of reality, the mere given fact of the world. Heidegger
replaces resoluteness of will with Gelassenheit--"releasement": the
gentle coaxing from things of their own best potentiality.

For anorexics, Gelassenheit may mean learning to live with the reality
of one's body, allowing oneself to desire without being ruled by
desire--perhaps even to "desire without an object," as Weil puts it.
For us techno-anorexics, I think Gelassenheit means resisting the
instinct to reject or embrace new technologies reflexively. It means
questioning the motives of those who'd convince us that we can't get
along without the latest gadget; but it also means questioning our own
use of those technologies we take for granted.

-----------

Anorexic Outfitters
http://www.hermenaut.com/a41.shtml

One day, in the fall of 1995, I decided it was time to do something
about Urban Outfitters. I was sick of hearing my friends complain
about getting paid slave wages in exchange for discounts on crappy
clothes and the privilege of listening to indie rock at top volume all
day. I was especially disgusted by their stories of girls trying on
baby-doll dresses and begging their boyfriends to tell them they
didn't look like chubsters; or about the occasional overweight girl
brave enough to pick through the techno-enhanced labyrinth of
skinny-girl clothes, in order to squeeze into something that made her
look like an overgrown baby. Worst of all, I was horrified by the fact
that so many people my age were buying into U.O.'s brand of
mass-produced pseudo-nostalgia: After all, why scour through dirty
Salvation Army bins for bellbottoms, barrettes, and lava lamps when
you can pick up the same stuff sanitized and neatly presented on racks
at a location convenient to your dorm? So I designed a hate poster,
printed up a few thousand of them, and proceeded to plaster them on
the windows and walls of Urban Outfitters everywhere.

My [then-]boyfriend was touring with his band and I went along for the
ride. I hit stores in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San
Francisco, Austin, and Seattle. In Boston and New York the morning
after the posters went up, I stood outside of the store in costume (a
polka-dotted suit and a very long red wig) as my alter-ego Miss Kitty
Bates, handing out little postcards I'd made. The postcards depicted a
slouching waif with a question mark bubble for a head, and read:
"EXHIBIT A: HUNGRY WAIF," with my name and P.O. Box at the bottom.
People would crowd around, hoping for free passes to a club or fab
party or something, and continue on into the store. Often they'd read
the card before they got through the door and look back at me with
hurt, but also with curiosity, in their eyes.

When I included my address on the posters and cards I wasn't expecting
a lot of feedback, because like a lot of people, I had grown cynical
about people's lack of interest in anything with artistic or social
content. I was really touched, then, by the number of responses I
received from strangers who had just seen my poster on the street, and
who took the time to make a note of my address and write me. I was
also amused by these responses, though, because they ranged from the
sublime to the ridiculous. (One guy wrote an angst-filled poem for me,
entitled "Snapshots of a Void Screen," in which he lamented that "we
linger in the stillness, feeling a fading desire for life...") Some
people wrote admitting to not really understanding my beef with U.O.
but wanting to know more. One person, who ended his response with an
offer "to help in my campaign," wrote in asking, "Is this the kind of
company that is insensitive, cold, and only interested in making money
at the expense of others?" Sure.

The "conformity" part of my campaign seemed lost on most people: My
new pen-pals wanted to congratulate me for drawing attention to U.O.'s
exploitation of the self-conscious teen girl market. One Go-Girl-brand
feminist named "batgrrrl" wrote "Good luck deconstructing whatever
paradigm you're working on!" Spoken like a true Harvard Yard
cheerleader. Some of these folks, though, were looking for a
sympathetic ear into which to pour their own personal anorexia sob
stories. I came to realize that there were a lot more people out there
who had a personal history of anorexia than I had ever imagined. While
this made me sad, having to respond to a stranger who obviously needed
help made me extremely uncomfortable. In fact, anorexia is something
that I have never experienced first-hand--the thought "I'm sooo fat"
never ran through my head as a child or as a gawky brace-faced
teenager. Although I have an unwavering love for greasy, fattening
foods, particularly hot dogs and hamburgers, I am 5'8"/113 pounds.
Maybe that's why I got a lot of comments from people who saw me in
action and questioned what a skinny girl like myself was doing making
any comment about Urban Outfitters' perpetuation of the waif
aesthetic. I could only respond by saying that I don't starve myself,
and that my point in creating those posters was that if weight is an
issue for women in their awkward teenage years, they ceratinly don't
need additional pressure from some second-rate, overpriced, false
mecca of "urban" style.

One UMass grad student who wanted to interview me for a thesis paper
she was doing about "Women Taking Up Space" wrote asking, "As a woman
do you feel comfortable 'taking up space'?" Umm, yes. She then wanted
me to describe some examples of times when I felt I had to "keep
quiet, keep it down, pull it in, or behave myself because of my
gender." And to finish these sentences: "Power is... ," "I take up
space because... ," and "I would be happier if... ." I eventually
wrote her back telling her that I was not the right person for her
project, that I had never really considered myself as taking up space,
and that I would never start a sentence with "I take up space
because... ."

In an article written about me and my posters in the Boston Phoenix,
the author (Geoff Edgers) talked to the manager of Urban Outfitters'
Boston location and to Sue Otto, the company's creative director. The
manager of U.O. Boston said that when she first saw the posters she
assumed that it was the work of a disgruntled employee. (Hmmm, why
would there be disgruntled employees? Because they get paid $5 an
hour? Or because they have to empty their pockets to prove that they
are not stealing anything every time they leave the store for any
reason? Or maybe because they're sick of being coerced into ratting on
their coworkers daily in required written reports for their managers?)
Otto, who ended her response with, "Working here has been my whole
life," took my posters a bit more personally. To rebut my claim that
the company where she's worked for 13 years caters to women who wish
they had the body of a 12-year-old, she volunteered her own physical
dimensions, which happened to be 5'3"/165 pounds. Talk about loyalty!

I'm aware that a lot of the things that I have griped about with Urban
Outfitters can be said of a million other companies. U.O. doesn't rip
the money out of teenagers' hands, and thrift-store fashion was bound
to trickle down from the starving artist types to suburban teens. But
in a perfect world, kids everywhere would realize that they are being
duped by marketing masterminds. These kids would then burn down all
the Urban Outfitters polluting our cities, finally freeing themselves
from the shackles of their chain wallets and the confines of their
baby-doll T-shirts.

-----------

Interview With An Anorexic
http://www.hermenaut.com/a44.shtml

I have very little sympathy for someone whose disease involves poor
self-image. The idea that perfect control over your body is possible
is so WASPy, as is the idea that other people actually spend their
time caring whether you reach it or not. Much more attractive to me
are people whose problems come from seeking out all that is invisible
like that fad I read about in Vogue where young people cut themselves
every day. The silent suffering and self-containedness of anorexia, in
the grand scheme of life, is really worthless. Internalized drama is
everything pathetic about drama with none of the majesty. Anorexics
never kick out the jams. At least "diseases" like gambling or
alcoholism, or even spousal abuse, involve interaction--a
tipping-back-and-forth balance of guilt and fury and love and hatred,
a shouting match with your girlfriend when you arrive home sans
grandma's earrings. At least alcoholics have camaraderie--anorexics
are eternally alone, single piranhas circling. (An anorexic sees
another anorexic, she thinks, "Damn! Another skinny bitch on my
turf!") And in the end, those anorexics will force you to take care of
them while looking like they never wanted help, like they never hated
you or wanted you miserable: "Oh no, it was all inward-directed
violence." My foot! I fucking hate passive-aggressive behavior.

While my sympathy is small, my jealousy is big. Anorexics always seem
to have more thoughts than I do. All those intricacies and picayune
habits. My body is just something that walks me to the store--it's no
battlefield. Where do they come up with these ideas?I just want to
write, have sex, fight with my boyfriend, hire someone to clean my
house, figure out how to be funny, and go to Japan someday. Keeping my
consumption of peas to 7 per day, while not letting the fork touch my
lips, just doesn't enter in the picture. And I just know the swanky
homosexuals who disapprove of everything under the sun think those
spotty-haired scrawny girls are more worth talking to than I am.

Maybe it's just the word "anorexia" I love--spread out like a fishing
net over the stars, filaments so thin they're barely visible. The girl
herself is a constellation of fine, blow-dried hair, shiny clothes,
peeling nails, and jutting bones--you have to connect the dots because
there's nothing in between. My best friend for the last 13 years has
been anorexic to varying degrees: She is driven by egotism,
perfectionism, and what people I never want to meet would call "issues
of control." She ate only chips, iced tea, and jalape?o peppers for
her main meal every day for a solid year. She'd go to three different
stores to buy these items, as if some poor clerk might be keeping
track, thinking "If she eats chips, she needn't eat jalape?o peppers
as well." If she ever bought anything else, say a cup of soup, she'd
talk about it with the person at the cash register (and anyone else
around), pretending it was for someone else: "I guess this is the kind
he wanted, I don't know..." Eventually, she stopped talking to clerks
altogether. She'd pass them a note that said, "I am a deaf-mute. I am
picking up some turkey soup for my friend. How much, please?" She was
always getting in car accidents, and every single month she thought
she was pregnant.

The cool people are always selfish and dramatic. Unlike, say,
depressives, who sink down into the same old patterns of
self-destructive behavior and never get out of them, anorexics have a
constantly expanding galaxy of ways to have problems. They lie. They
black out. They hemorrhage. All the anorexics I've known steal
boyfriends. Things always "happen" to them: People molest them when
they sleep, ex-boyfriends steal their gas cards, or things go wrong
when they try to kill themselves and they end up stuck in the loony
bin for the weekend. They have mortal enemies. People put curses on
them! It's an extravagant, silent life, the life of the anorexic. A
guy recently told me his sister had been having a telepathic
relationship with Martin Gore of Depeche Mode for the last 8
months--and had even gotten pregnant from it! "Wait!" I said, "Does
your sister have an eating disorder?" "Yes," he said, "She's a
fruitopian. She hasn't eaten anything but fruit for years."

I got anorexic/bulimics all over my life. One of them is my son's
baby-sitter, Chance Provencal--so I interviewed her. Throughout the
interview, Chance peeled and ripped up an onion that was sitting on my
table. You can hear the low crackle of the mutilation throughout the
entire tape.

Lisa: When did it start?

Chance Provencal: When I was 18. I never thought about how much I ate
or how much I weighed until I had this one boyfriend. I was 120 pounds
and he was like, "Oh, I like my girls to be skinny."

Lisa: "My girls." Sounds like a pimp.

Chance: The thing is, he was fat! He was! "I like my girls to be 100,
105 pounds." No matter how much I tried to cut down on my eating or
exercise more, I couldn't lose any weight. So I just kind of like ate
what I wanted and then got rid of it.

Lisa: You puked.

Chance: Oh yeah, I puked and I starved, alternately. I did a lot more
puking than I did starving. It was easier to just puke it out.

Lisa: How often did you throw up?

Chance: Sometimes just a couple times a week, sometimes a couple times
a day. It depends on how much I ate that day. Because there are days
where I won't eat at all. I found that if you wake up in the morning
and you don't eat, you can go longer without eating. But once I eat, I
just have to eat and eat and eat.

Lisa: How come after you dumped that boyfriend you still had the
eating problems?

Chance: Because after that it was an obsession to be skinny. All my
friends down in Maryland are really skinny--between 90 and 105
pounds--and I felt fat.

Lisa: What if you got a bunch of fat friends, would that help?

Chance: Probably not, because then I'd be mean and want to be even
skinnier. I have fat friends now and I continue to be skinny because
they all say, "Look how skinny you are, look how tiny you are," and I
like it.

Lisa: What's the lowest weight you ever got to?

Chance: 85 pounds. I didn't get lower because I was taken to the
hospital pretty early--[starvation] was harder on me than most people
because of my diabetes. I got down to 85 with painkillers. I think
painkillers are the best diet drug. You really don't get hungry! You
just lay in bed all the time and lose the weight. But when you're not
tired, they make you just jump up and run around and not think about
anything--just keep going.

Lisa: Were you able to hold down a job at this time?

Chance: Not then, because I had an ovarian cyst, so I was out of work
because of that. I never wanted to count calories. I'd just eat a
piece of lettuce, drink water. I didn't want to do this whole thing of
eat one M&M, exercise for three hours. I was never that meticulous
about it. I'm too lazy.

Lisa: Did you go to the hospital by choice?

Chance: No. I couldn't really fight it by that point because I was
just too out of it. I was too weak and half in and out. My boyfriend
at the time took me because I was bordering on unconsciousness. My
roommates called him up and said, "Her heartbeat's really low, she's
not responding to much, she's dehydrated." So he came and picked me up
and took me to the emergency room.

Lisa: Is this the one who likes his girls skinny?

Chance: No, a different one. This boyfriend never said I was too
skinny.

Lisa: How did people treat you while you were recovering in the
hospital?

Chance: Some were really nice and sympathetic, some were mean and
heartless. They'd say, "Well you got yourself into this and you ought
to know better and I don't feel sorry for you!" Other people would
say, "Oh, you poor little thing." The counselors were nice, but a lot
of the nurses were mean--the fat nurses. But you get that no matter
what you're in the hospital for--some nice nurses, some mean.

Lisa: How much weight did they make you gain before you could leave?

Chance:: 10 or 15 pounds.

Lisa: How did you gain the weight? Did you get an I.V. drip?

Chance: Yeah. They gave me the saline solution, then glucose. They
were talking about putting that tube in my nose.

Lisa: Why? Were you afraid to eat?

Chance: No, they just felt it was so necessary at that time, but I was
like, "No, no, no, I'll eat!" And then I had to get monitored every
time I had to go to the bathroom. I had to call a nurse and leave the
door open part-way so they could make sure I was going to the bathroom
and not doing other stuff.

Lisa: How long did it take you to gain 10 pounds?

Chance: It took a couple months, because your stomach shrinks, so what
was a normal meal to me would be like a snack to someone else. Even
now, when I don't eat for a while, my stomach shrinks, and then I'll
eat just a couple bites and I'm full. I can't eat another bite, and
that's fine for me! After that I went to my boyfriend's house and he
was fat and his whole family was fat, and they took care of me. They
made sure I got fed. And he worked at Taco Bell so I got to eat tacos
all the time. They were trying to force me to eat, and then when I'd
feel sick they'd tell me, "Oh you're fine," and like force-feed me,
and then I'd really be sick, and throw up.

Lisa: How do you feel when you see a fat person?

Chance: I don't know, I think a lot of fat people are beautiful.
Sometimes I want to be fat, have a little extra meat on me. But I
can't bring myself to actually do it. But sometimes I get mad at fat
people because I think they're gross and disgusting, other times I
think they're fine, I think they're beautiful. My good friend Cindy,
she's overweight, and sometimes I think, "Fat pig!" and then other
times I think, "Oh, she's fine."

Lisa: How do you feel when you see a skinny person?

Chance: When I see someone skinnier than me, I get mad. This one lady,
she was so skinny, I kept looking at her and thinking, "There must be
something really wrong with her. She must have cancer. She is
impossibly skinny."

Lisa: Was she elegant or grotesque?

Chance: She was grotesque. It was really nasty.

Lisa: Did you realize you looked disgusting when you were that skinny?

Chance: No. Because you have your own image of what you look like.
There's this mirror over at Rick's house that I call the Skinny Mirror
because I looked in it one day and I looked really thin. Everybody
said, "You're just saying that." But then this guy's girlfriend looked
in it and she said the same thing, so we call it the Skinny Mirror
now. So whenever I feel fat I go look in the Skinny Mirror. There's
days when I look at myself and I think, "Wow, I look great, I can live
with this." And there's other days when I look at myself in the mirror
and start scrutinizing every inch of my body: "My butt's fat. My legs
are fat. My gut is fat." But I don't ever want to go through
hospitalization again, I'll never let myself get to that point again.
I have a messed-up esophagus now from making myself throw up so much.
Sometimes I'll just chew on a pen cap now, and I'll gag. Because I
used to stick my toothbrush down there, my fingers, anything. And now
when I throw up it really hurts and burns, it feels like my whole
chest is gonna cave in.

Lisa: When you were so skinny, what did your skin and hair look like?

Chance: I did get that light layer of hair that you grow. It's
baby-blonde color. That extra layer that keeps you warm, because you
get so skinny your body can't keep itself warm.

Lisa: Was it all over your body and face?

Chance: Not on my face so much. It was mostly on my midsection, on my
back and front.

Lisa: How did your boyfriend feel about you having chest hair?

Chance: He was kind of disgusted by it, but he really cared for me, so
he didn't let it really show. There was no physical relationship at
that point, because I was too weak and he was too afraid he would
break me. He was really delicate with me all the time. If he held my
hand, his hand would completely wrap around mine.

Lisa: Do you still get urges to not eat and to throw up?

Chance: I still do. There are days where I won't eat at all. Just
because I'm afraid I'll get to the point where I'm too fat again and
then it will start all over. Other days I'll eat like a pig and then
I'll feel awful for weeks after. And I'll be like, "Well, I can't eat
for a couple days because I ate a lot yesterday." I haven't thrown up
lately. I was doing it a couple months ago, because I'd eat so much
I'd have to. And then you know, when you throw up you get dehydrated,
so I'd drink like a whole gallon of water and then I'd have to throw
that up. I used to throw up every night still last year.

Lisa: Do you take painkillers now?

Chance: I did the other day. But a lot of doctors are cracking down on
what they give you. I had a kidney infection two weeks ago and they
wouldn't even give me painkillers for that. Which is good, because I
was addicted to them really bad. When I stopped taking them, I went
through withdrawal, the shakes. If I even take one or two now, I'll
get addicted almost automatically, so it's good they don't give them
out as easily anymore. You don't think about a lot when you have
painkillers. Painkillers are deadly, not just for the obvious reasons,
but because of the way they make you think and act. I'm proud that I
stopped, the painkillers and the eating disorder. I still have my
days. They say it's never really cured, you always have it in the back
of your mind. It's just a matter of controlling it. I don't make
myself throw up anymore. When I look back at what I used to do, it
really kind of disgusts me.

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan  8 20:01:53 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 15:01:53 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Daniel Pipes: You Need Beethoven to Modernize
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312152110.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Daniel Pipes: You Need Beethoven to Modernize
http;//www.danielpipes.org/article/297

Middle East Quarterly
September 1998

It is possible to modernize without Westernizing? This is the dream of
despots around the world. Leaders as diverse as Mao on the Left and
Khomeini on the Right seek a high-growth economy and a powerful
military -- without the pesky distractions of democracy, the rule of
law, and the whole notion of the pursuit of happiness. They welcome
American medical and military technology but reject its political
philosophy or popular culture. Technology shorn of cultural baggage is
their ideal.

Sad for them, fully reaping the benefits of Western creativity
requires an immersion into the Western culture that produced it.
Modernity does not exist by itself, but is inextricably attached to
its makers. High rates of economic growth depend not just on the right
tax laws, but on a population versed in the basics of punctuality, the
work ethic, and delayed gratification. The flight team for an advanced
jet bomber cannot be plucked out of a village but needs to be steeped
into an entire worldview. Political stability requires a sense of
responsibility that only civil society can inculcate. And so forth.

Western music proves this point with special clarity, precisely
because it is so irrelevant to modernization. Playing the Kreuzer
Sonata adds nothing to one's GDP; enjoying an operetta does not
enhance one's force projection. And yet, to be fully modern means
mastering Western music; competence at Western music, in fact, closely
parallels a country's wealth and power, as the experiences of two
civilizations, Muslim and Japanese, show. Muslim reluctance to accept
Western music foreshadows a general difficulty with modernity;
Japanese mastery of every style from classical to jazz help explain
everything from a strong yen to institutional stability.

Muslims

Among Muslims, choice of music represents deep issues of identity.
Secularist Muslims tend to welcome European and American music, seeing
it as a badge of liberation and culture. Ziya G?kalp, the leading
theorist of Turkish secular nationalism, wrote in the early 1920s that
Turks

   face three kinds of music today: Eastern music, Western music, and
   folk music. Which one of them belongs to our nation? We saw that
   Eastern music is both deathly and non-national. Folk music is our
   national culture, Western music is the music of our new
   civilization. Neither of the latter can be foreign to us.

More recently, as Turkish secularists find themselves under siege,
sold-out crowds turn out for concerts featuring Western classical
music. In the words of a reporter, these have "become a symbolic
rallying point for defenders of Turkish secularism." In an event rich
with symbolism, the Turkish embassy in Tehran gave a two-hour concert
of Western classical music in late December 1997, in tribute to the
forthcoming (Christian) new year. Few cultural occasions could quite
so sharply delineate the contrasting visions of Atat?rk and Khomeini.

In contrast, fundamentalist Muslims, who nurse an abiding suspicion of
the West, worry that its music has an insidious effect on Muslims.
When Necmettin Erbakan was prime minister of Turkey in 1996-97, he cut
back on dance ensembles, symphony orchestras, and other Western-style
organizations. Instead, he fought to increase funding for groups
upholding traditional musical forms.

For fundamentalists, merely listening to Western music suggests
disloyalty to Islam. A speaker at a fundamentalist rally in Istanbul
flattered his audience by telling them, "This is the real Turkey. This
is not the aimless crowd that goes out to see [sic] the Ninth
Symphony." An Iranian newspaper published a poem that characterizes
the opposite of the downtrodden, faithful Iranians killed by Iraqi
troops as an audience of classical music buffs -- women with
"pushed-back scarves" (i.e., who resist Islamic modesty) and men with
"protruding bellies" (i.e., who profit from the black market). The
same poem, titled "For Whom do the Violin Bows Move?" argues that
concerts of Mozart and Beethoven promote the "worm of monarchic
culture." Anyone who listens to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, in other
words, must be a traitor to the Islamic republic. Or to Islam itself:
naming the very same composers, a Tunisian claims that "the treason of
an Arab . . . begins when he enjoys listening to Mozart or Beethoven."

Of course, if eighteenth-century composers so rile fundamentalist
Muslims, what do they think of rock and rap music? American popular
music epitomizes the values that Muslims find most reprehensible about
Western culture -- the celebration of individualism, youth, hedonism,
and unregulated sexuality. The Pakistani fundamentalist group
Hizbullah has singled out Michael Jackson and Madonna as cultural
"terrorists" who aspire to destroy Islamic civilization. The group's
spokesman explains this fear:

   Michael Jackson and Madonna are the torchbearers of American
   society, their cultural and social values . . . that are destroying
   humanity. They are ruining the lives of thousands of Muslims and
   leading them to destruction, away from their religion, ethics and
   morality. Terrorists are not just those who set off bombs. They are
   also those who hurt others' feelings.

Hizbullah finished with a call for the two Americans to be brought to
trial in Pakistan.

The Hizbullah statement points to the reasons why fundamentalists
mistrust Western music: it demoralizes Muslims and distracts them from
the serious requirements of their faith. Ahmad al-Qattan, a
Palestinian preacher living in Kuwait, finds that Western music
"involves pleasure and ecstasy, similar to drugs" and elaborates:

   I ask a lot of people, "When you listen to Michael Jackson, or
   Beethoven, or Mozart, what do you feel?"

   They tell me: "Oh, I feel my heart torn from the inside."

   I say, "To that extent?"

   They tell me: "Yes, by God, to that extent. I fell that all of a
   sudden I am flying. One moment I am crying, the next moment I am
   laughing, then dancing, then I am committing suicide."

   Our God, we seek refuge with You from singing and its evils.

Ayatollah Khomeini had similar views, as he explained to an Italian
journalist:

   Khomeini: Music dulls the mind, because it involves pleasure and
   ecstasy, similar to drugs. Your music I mean. Usually your music
   has not exalted the spirit, it puts it to sleep. And it destructs
   [sic] our youth who become poisoned by it, and then they no longer
   care about their country.

   Oriana Fallaci: Even the music of Bach, Beethoven, Verdi?

   Khomeini: I do not know these names.

But then, unexpectedly perhaps, Khomeini softens his condemnation: "If
their music does not dull the mind, they will not be prohibited. Some
of your music is permitted. For example, marches and hymns for
marching. . . . Yes, but your marches are permitted." Others join
Khomeini in making an exception for marching music. Qattan, for
example, distinguishes between degenerate and useful music: "No Mozart
and no Michael Jackson, no singing and no instruments, only war
drums." Fundamentalist Muslims allow the ecstasy that Western music
can create is allowable only if it helps march youth to their deaths.

(As an aside, it is interesting to note that marches are the only
Western music significantly influenced by the Middle East: Gypsies
introduced Turkish -- or "Janissary" -- music to Europe in the
eighteenth century. The Austrian army appears to have been the first
to adopt this genre. It involved exotic new uniforms and such new
percussion instruments as tambourines, triangles, cymbals, bass drums,
and -- suggestively -- crescents. Accented grace notes added to the
exoticism. Soon after, these elements entered the orchestra too;
Mozart first used Turkish-style music in a sketch dating from 1772 and
"Turkish" effects are especially prominent in his Abduction from the
Seraglio as well as the finale to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In a
sense, then, with marching music the Middle East is letting back in
its own innovation.)

In contrast, the Turkish authorities, marching to a different drummer
as is so often the case, rely on classical music to quiet their
forces. The so-called "Steel Force" units, the baton-swinging riot
police notorious for their tough tactics against street protesters,
are forced to listen to Mozart and Beethoven in their buses on the way
to operations as a way to calm them down.

Other fundamentalists have divergent ideas on what music is
permissible, a debate symbolized by the King Fahd Cultural Center, a
magnificent concert hall seating 3,000 at the perimeter of Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia. Shortly before his death in 1975, King Faysal approved
the building of this center as part of the recreational facilities to
turn Riyadh, his capital, into a handsome modern city. Completed in
1989 at a cost of $140 million, it boasts such lavish touches as the
finest marble and precious woods, not to speak of a state-of-the-art
laser lighting system, and a hydraulic stage.

But the hall has never staged an event. A foreign diplomat who managed
to visit the mothballed facility found that a full-time staff of 180
has for almost a decade maintained the building and its gardens in
mint condition. This has meant not just tending the flower beds but
air-conditioning the facility all year around so that the delicate
woods on the interior not deteriorate. Why is the cultural center not
used? Because it offends the strict Islamic sensibilities prevalent in
Saudi Arabia. According to one report, on hearing about Western-style
music played by mixed casts (meaning men and women) to mixed
audiences, the country's religious leaders "went berserk."

The saga of Riyadh's concert hall neatly illustrates the ongoing
debate about Western music among fundamentalist Muslims. King Faysal,
no slouch in his Islamic faith, thought it a permissible pleasure, but
the Saudi religious authorities deemed otherwise. Other
fundamentalists, too, disagree on specifics. The author of an advice
column in a Los Angeles Muslim weekly concedes that "Music with soft
and good tunes, and melodious songs with pure words and concepts are
acceptable in Islam," provided that this does not lead to "the mixing
of men and women." In contrast, `Ali Hoseyni Khamene'i, Iran's
spiritual guide, deems "the promotion of music is . . . not compatible
with the goals of the Islamic system." Accordingly, he rejects the
teaching of music to children and prohibits "any swing music that is
for debauchery," even when played in separate-sex parties. Egypt's
leading television preacher, Sheikh Muhammad ash-Sha`rawi, went
further and condemned Muslims who fall asleep to Western classical
music rather than a recording of Qur'anic recital. Inspired by his
words, fundamentalist hotheads in Upper Egypt stormed a concert and
broke musical instruments, leading to their arrest.

With such attitudes prevalent, it is hardly surprising that Muslim
practitioners of Western music have achieved little. As the historian
Bernard Lewis notes, "Though some talented composers and performers
from Muslim countries, especially from Turkey, have been very
successful in the Western world, the response to their kind of music
at home is still relatively slight." They enjoy neither renown or
influence outside of their native countries, and even there remain
minor figures.

Japan

How different is Japan! True, the early reactions to Western music
were adverse: on hearing a child in song in Hawaii, Norimasa Muragaki,
a member of the very first Japanese embassy to the United States in
1860, compared the sound to "a dog howling late at night." Within a
few years, however, Japanese heard Western music much more favorably,
to the point that the music drew some individuals into Western
religion. In 1884, Shoichi Toyama argued that "Christianity ought to
be adopted for, first, the benefit of progress in music, second, the
development of compassion for fellow men and harmonious cooperation,
and third, social relations between men and women." Note that he lists
music first.

Before long, some Japanese discovered that Western music expressed
their feeling far better than anything in their own tradition. As he
left French soil, the leading writer Nagai Kafu (1879-1959) mused
wistfully on the beauty of French culture:

   No matter how much I wanted to sing Western songs, they were all
   very difficult. Had I, born in Japan, no choice but to sing
   Japanese songs? Was there a Japanese song that expressed my present
   sentiment -- a traveler who had immersed himself in love and the
   arts in France but was now going back to the extreme end of the
   Orient where only death would follow monotonous life? . . . I felt
   totally forsaken. I belonged to a nation that had no music to
   express swelling emotions and agonized feelings.

Kafu here describes emotions almost entirely unknown to Muslims.

The local musical tradition engages in an intense give and take with
Western music. Woodblocks, a traditional Japanese instrument, are a
standard of jazz percussion. Traditional Japanese music has influenced
many Western composers, and John Cage probably the most directly so.
The Suzuki Method, which applies the traditional Japanese techniques
of rote training (hiden) to children learning the violin, has won a
substantial following in the West. Yamaha sells over 200,000 pianos a
year and is the world's largest maker of musical instruments.

Conversely, European classical and American popular music have become
part of the Japanese scene. Tokyo has nine professional orchestras and
three operas, giving it the highest mass of European classical music
talent in the world. Seiji Ozawa, music director of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, rates as the most renowned of Japanese conductors.
Classical performers with wide reputations include pianists Aki and
Yugi Takahasi and percussionist Stomu Yamashita.

Though Japanese composers are yet little known outside Japan, their
pace of activity is considerable. Toru Takemitsu, who makes a
specialty of exploring timbre, texture, and everyday sounds in both
European and Japanese media, is perhaps the most renowned
internationally. Akira Miyoshi composes classic Western music. Toshi
Ichiyanagi, Jo Kondo, Teruyaki Noda, and Yuji Takahashi write in an
avant-garde manner. Shinichiro Ikebe, Minoru Miki, Makato Moroi, and
Katsutoshi Nagasawa write for traditional Japanese instruments. The
marimbist Keiko Abe is the best known of classical Japanese musicians
and Toshiko Akiyoshi the best known of jazz players.

European classical music has shed its foreign quality in Japan,
becoming fully indigenous. In this, Japan resembles the United States,
another country which has imported nearly all of its classical music.
Just as Americans have adapted the music to their own tastes and
customs -- playing the 1812 Overture on the 4th of July, for example
-- so have the Japanese. Thus does Beethoven's Ninth Symphony serve as
the anthem of the Christmas and New Year's season. Not only do the
country's leading orchestras play the symphony over and over again
during December, but gigantic choruses (numbering up to 10,000
participants) rehearse for months before bellowing out the Ode to Joy
in public performances.

As for pop music, the Japanese -- like nearly all the world -- idolize
American pop stars and grow their own local talent. But more
interesting is their intense engagement with jazz. So large is the
Japanese jazz market that it affects music produced in the United
States. Jazz coffee shops (which play music on state-of-the-art
equipment) have proliferated, and Japan hosts numerous international
jazz festivals each year. Japanese Swing Journal sells 400,000 copies
a month (compared to only 110,000 copies of the best-known American
publication, Downbeat) and roughly half of some American jazz albums
are bought by Japanese. Indeed, according to one American producer,
Michael Cuscuna of Blue Note Records, "Japan almost singlehandedly
kept the jazz record business going during the late 1970s. Without the
Japanese market, a lot of independent jazz labels probably would have
folded, or at least stopped releasing new material." This is too big a
market to lose, so American and other artists must increasingly pay
attention to Japanese taste.

As for Japanese creativity, the results here have been modest until
now -- composers and musicians do little more than imitate the styles
of foreigners -- but the existence of a large and increasingly
sophisticated home market offers fertile ground for Japanese musicians
to experiment and then to lead. Attempts to combine jazz with
traditional Japanese music have begun; these blendings are likely to
influence jazz as much as they already have architecture and clothing.
It seems safe to predict that the Japanese before long will become a
major force in jazz.

The Japanese give musically in other ways too. The karaoke machine
plays instrumental versions of popular songs and permits a bar patron
to accompany the music as though he were an accomplished singer,
providing a good time for all. Not only has karaoke has become an
amusement staple worldwide, but the characteristic Japanese-style bar
(with its hostesses, a mama-san, and karaoke microphone) has
proliferated in the West. Karaoke machines are sold in Sears Roebuck
stores and have won a large and cheerful, if slightly tipsy following.

Conclusion

Muslim and Japanese responses with Western music symbolize their
larger encounters with Western civilization. Muslims have historically
approached the West warily, fearful of losing their identity. This
prevents them from immersing themselves in Western learning or gaining
the needed skills in technology and business. They remain permanently
in arrears, coping with one wave of Western influence after another,
barely keeping up and exerting virtually no influence over the West.

The Japanese do things very differently. First, they throw themselves
whole-heartedly into the new subject, not fearing the loss of their
own identity. Second, they acquire skills, matching and even beating
the West at its own game; what the Tokyo orchestras are to music,
Toyota and Nissan are to cars. Third, Japanese evolve original customs
of their own, either based in their traditions (karaoke) or an amalgam
of cultures (Beethoven's Ninth for New Year's). Finally, they develop
techniques that Westerners adopt; the Suzuki Method in music parallels
the just-in-time system in car manufacturing. They have absorbed
Western civilization in its entirety, discarded what does not interest
them, taken what does, and mastered it.

Thus does the response to Western music exemplify the whole of a
civilization's experience with modernity. Its lack of utility makes it
all the more useful as an indicator of achievement. Why this
connection? Because, as Lewis observes, "Music, like science, is part
of the inner citadel of Western culture, one of the final secrets to
which the newcomer must penetrate." Music represents the challenge of
modernity: competence in this arena implies an ability to deal with
whatever else the West might serve up. Muslim resistance to accepting
music from the West represents its larger unwillingness, whereas the
Japanese have truly entered the inner citadel. In short, whoever would
flourish must play Beethoven as well as Westerners do.

From shovland at mindspring.com  Sun Jan  8 23:35:24 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 15:35:24 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] Visiting another dimension?
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHKEGMCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

Back when I was doing shamanic drumming and journeying,
we would often go into the lower worlds (dimensions?) to
get help.

One time I decided to go into an upper dimension.

There I was met by a creature with the body of a man
and the head of a fish.

He was the gate-keeper, and he asked me what I wanted
to do there, because it was not for tourists.

Apparently my answer satisfied him and he let me in.

I walked down a causeway and came to a large gallery
full of blank canvases.  I realized these were paintings
that I was supposed to do.

When I came out of the gallery I was in a garden
with many plots of medicinal plants.

At the back of the garden there was an old man
dispensing wisdom.  

Behind him was a dark tangled forest.  I plunged in.



Steve Hovland



From ross.buck at uconn.edu  Mon Jan  9 15:29:20 2006
From: ross.buck at uconn.edu (Buck, Ross)
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 10:29:20 -0500
Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
Message-ID: <F687AB2621BB134A8041956C7CB4F12101E09268@EXCHANGEB.mgmt.ad.uconn.edu>

Herbert Benson in "The Relaxation Response" suggested decades ago that
disciplines such as meditation and prayer share the quality of promoting
deep relaxation, which has the opposite effects of the fight-or-flight
response.  That is, they lower autonomic and endocrine arousal, and
promote immune system functioning.  

Cheers, Ross Buck

Ross Buck, Ph. D.
Professor of Communication Sciences
	and Psychology
Communication Sciences U-1085		
University of Connecticut				
Storrs, CT 06269-1085
860-486-4494
fax  860-486-5422
Ross.buck at uconn.edu
http://www.coms.uconn.edu/docs/people/faculty/rbuck/index.htm

-----Original Message-----
From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org
[mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of Premise Checker
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 1:03 PM
To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org
Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: In the Lab With the Dalai Lama

In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.12.16
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i17/17b01001.htm

    By LEIGH E. SCHMIDT

    Even the Dalai Lama's harshest critics at the Society for
    Neuroscience meeting last month, in Washington, would have
    to concede this much: Choosing the exiled Tibetan Buddhist
    leader to inaugurate the professional association's series
    on neuroscience and society certainly got people talking.
    Who would have thought that an announced lecture on "The
    Neuroscience of Meditation" would set off a protest petition
    gathering about 1,000 signatures, a counterpetition of
    support boasting nearly as many names, substantial coverage
    in The New York Times and on National Public Radio, as well
    as ample chatter in the blogosphere? In a culture that likes
    its battles between science and religion to be loud,
    colorful, and Christian -- another nasty squabble, say,
    between evolutionists and creationists -- this controversy
    seemed unlikely to gain much traction. Yet as the dispute
    built momentum in the months leading up to the event, it
    soon became clear that the prospect of the red-robed Dalai
    Lama's urging the study of an ancient spiritual practice
    upon white-coated lab scientists would provide a newsworthy
    angle on the usual wrangling.

    Playing upon tensions far less noticed than those that have
    plagued relations between science and conservative
    Christianity, the latest dust-up reveals the spirit wars
    that divide the knowledge class itself. How purely secular
    and naturalistic do the members of that class imagine
    themselves to be, and how committed are they to keeping
    religion at bay in their conference gatherings, university
    laboratories, civic institutions, newsrooms, and think
    tanks? In turn, is "spirituality" a back door through which
    religion gets to enter the conversation, now dressed in the
    suitably neutralized garb of meditation as a universalistic
    practice of inward peace and outreaching compassion? Or does
    religion, even when soft-peddled in the cosmopolitan
    language of spirituality and the contemplative mind,
    inevitably remain an embarrassment to those elites who stake
    their authority on secular rationality? The dispute roiling
    the neuroscience society over the past six months has
    brought such questions front and center.

    Inviting the Dalai Lama to speak at the meeting created two
    major border disputes. The first, of modest consequence to
    religion-and-science debates, was the conflict over the
    "political agenda" of the exiled Tibetan leader. In an
    international professional association that includes many
    Chinese scientists, some members were offended at the
    implied endorsement that the event gave to the Dalai Lama's
    larger cause of freedom for Tibetans. The second dispute,
    more insistently debated, was over religion's showing up --
    so visibly, to boot -- at an annual meeting of
    neuroscientists. The almost visceral response by critics was
    to declare a total separation of religion and science, to
    wave the flag for the late-19th-century warfare between the
    two domains. "A science conference is not [an] appropriate
    venue for a religion-based presentation," a professor of
    anesthesia from the University of California at San
    Francisco remarked on the petition. "Who's next, the pope?"
    That sign-off question pointed to a second part of the
    strict separationist logic: Even if the Dalai Lama seemed
    pretty irenic as religious leaders go, he nonetheless
    represented a slippery slope into a mire of superstition and
    authoritarianism. (How else, some critics asked, were they
    to interpret his known affinities with reincarnation and
    monasticism?) "Today, the Dalai Lama; Tomorrow,
    Creationists?" wrote a professor of medicine at the
    University of Toronto, capturing perhaps the most
    commonplace anxiety given voice among the critics. Keep the
    society free of all religious discussion, or else the
    esteemed body might slide into the hell of a Kansas
    school-board meeting.

    More interesting than the purists' boundary monitoring is
    the way the Dalai Lama and his defenders imagine through
    meditation an emerging meeting point for science and
    religion in contemporary culture. The headline study that
    served as the immediate source of intrigue surrounding his
    recent lecture was an article published last year in the
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and produced
    by researchers at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging
    and Behavior, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
    That group, led by the psychology professor Richard J.
    Davidson, has been studying long-term Tibetan Buddhist
    practitioners of meditation, comparing their brain-wave
    patterns with those of a control group. Davidson himself has
    been working in the science-religion borderlands for more
    than two decades and has been a leading collaborator with
    the Mind and Life Institute, in Boulder, Colo., one of the
    principal organizations encouraging the
    neuroscience-meditation dialogue.

    Shifting the focus of research from altered states of
    consciousness or momentary experiences of ecstasy, which so
    often concerned inquirers in the 1960s and 1970s, the
    Davidson group has been looking for evidence that sustained
    meditation causes actual neural changes in everyday patterns
    of cognition and emotion. In other words, they want to know
    if the brain function of long-term contemplatives is made
    demonstrably different through years of "mental training."
    And not just different, but better: That is, does the
    well-developed meditative mind sustain higher levels of
    compassion and calmness than the run-of-the-mill American
    noggin? Well, after testing eight long-time Tibetan Buddhist
    practitioners and 10 "healthy student volunteers," the
    researchers discovered that the 10,000 to 50,000 hours that
    the various monks had devoted to "mental training" appeared
    to make a real neurological difference. As the study's title
    put it, "Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude
    gamma synchrony during mental practice." Davidson and
    company, careful not to overreach in their conclusions, did
    suggest that practices of meditation, and the accompanying
    compassionate affect, were "flexible skills that can be
    trained." Did that mean contemplative practice could be
    abstracted from its religious context and then applied as a
    kind of public pedagogy? Were hopeful supporters wrong to
    read this as a tantalizing suggestion that meditation might
    prove beneficial not only for the mental health of Americans
    but also for the very fabric of society? Where, after all,
    couldn't we benefit from a little more "pure compassion,"
    altruism, lovingkindness, and "calm abiding"?

    As novel as it may sound to monitor the brain waves of
    Tibetan Buddhist monks in university laboratories or on
    Himalayan hillsides (Davidson has done both), it is
    certainly not the first time that American psychologists
    have sought to re-engage the spiritual through the
    healthy-mindedness of meditation. At Wisconsin, Davidson
    occupies a research professorship named for Harvard's
    William James, the pioneering psychologist, psychical
    researcher, and philosopher of religion, and it is in the
    tradition of James that the current turn to the
    contemplative mind is best understood. Counter to the
    popular image of Americans as endlessly enterprising,
    agitated, and restless -- all busy Marthas, no reflective
    Marys -- James discerned a deep mystical cast to the
    American psyche and pursued that strain with uncommon
    intellectual devotion. Yet when it came to "methodical
    meditation," James saw little of it left among American
    Christians and turned instead to homegrown practitioners of
    various mind-over-matter cures. He particularly accented
    those "New Thought" metaphysicians who were pushing forward
    a dialogue with far-flung emissaries of yoga and Buddhist
    meditation in the wake of the World's Parliament of
    Religions, held in Chicago in 1893.

    Among James's favored practitioners of these newly
    improvised regimens of meditation was Ralph Waldo Trine, a
    Boston-based reformer with a knack for inspirational
    writing. In The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902),
    James used Trine's blockbuster In Tune With the Infinite
    (1897) as an epitome of the emergent practices of
    concentration, mental repose, and healthy-mindedness then
    percolating in New England and elsewhere across the country.
    Though an unabashed popularizer, Trine was not a
    lightweight. With an educational pedigree that ran from Knox
    College to the University of Wisconsin to the Johns Hopkins
    University, he moved easily in Harvard's wider metaphysical
    circles and energetically engaged various progressive
    causes. In much the same way that current studies promote
    the clinical applications of meditation, Trine emphasized
    the healthful benefits that accrued from cultivating a calm
    yet expectant mind. He had no scanners or electrodes, but he
    had the same hopes about improving the mental and physical
    health of Americans through elaborating a universal practice
    of meditation, one that transcended the particulars of any
    one religious tradition and represented a kind of
    cosmopolitan composite of all faiths. And while Trine did
    not have the Dalai Lama at hand, he did have extended
    contact with a well-traveled Sinhalese Buddhist monk,
    Anagarika Dharmapala, with whom he compared notes and
    devotional habits at a summer colony in Maine as he was
    putting together his own system of meditation for Americans.
    Like other inquirers then and now, Trine was all too ready
    to look to Asia for a practical antidote to American
    nervousness.

    The real payoff for Trine, as it is for Davidson and his
    colleagues, was not established simply through a calculus of
    productivity or cheerfulness: Would encouraging meditation
    or other visualization techniques make people more alert and
    proficient at the office or on the playing field? Would it
    make them feel happier and less disgruntled? Trine, like
    James and now Davidson, was finally more interested in
    saintliness and compassion than in helping stressed-out
    brain workers relax and concentrate. It is hard not to hear
    a hint of Davidson's pursuit of altruism in Trine's "spirit
    of infinite love," the moral imperative to "care for the
    weak and defenseless." And it is hard not to see that the
    world of William James and Ralph Waldo Trine is alive and
    well as American investigators wire up Tibetan Buddhist
    hermits in a search for the powers of the concentrated mind,
    the mental disciplines of harmony, compassion, and peace
    that might make the world a marginally kinder, less selfish
    place. That optimism about human nature -- that the mind has
    deep reservoirs of potential for empathy and altruism -- had
    a lot more backing among liberals and progressives in 1900
    than it does today. Still, the considerable hopes now
    invested in meditation suggest that the old romantic
    aspirations, spiritual and otherwise, continue to flourish,
    especially among members of the mind-preoccupied knowledge
    class.

    P erhaps the most important dimension of the Dalai Lama's
    turn to the laboratory is the notion that the
    religion-science wound will be salved through recasting
    religion as spirituality. The Nobel laureate's latest book
    explicitly suggests as much in its title, The Universe in a
    Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. In
    doing so, he expressly appeals to all those Americans who
    fear fundamentalist incarnations of religion and who instead
    cast themselves as intellectually curious and spiritually
    seeking. Religion, on this model, is not a domain of
    authority competing with science but an inward terrain of
    personal experience and individual probing. Spirituality,
    the Dalai Lama writes, "is a human journey into our internal
    resources." Representing "the union of wisdom and
    compassion," it shares with science a progressive hope for
    "the betterment of humanity." In those terms, religion as
    spirituality becomes the handmaiden of science itself,
    joining it in an open quest for knowledge, empirical and
    pragmatic, unconstrained by ancient creeds, cosmologies, or
    churches. In such exhortations the Dalai Lama shows a fine,
    intuitive feel for much of American intellectual and
    religious life, but he is hardly telling today's Emersonian
    inquirers something about the universe that they do not
    already affirm.

    A practice of meditation made palatable to scientists,
    secularists, and seekers would no doubt look pallid to all
    those monks, hermits, and saints who have taken it to be an
    arduous and ascetic discipline. Still, the American pursuit
    of "spirituality," reaching a crescendo in the past two
    decades, has been all too easy to dismiss as paltry and
    unsubstantial, labeled as foreign and threatening to
    more-orthodox versions of a Christian America. In this
    often-charged religious environment, the Dalai Lama has
    astutely laid hold of the science-spirituality nexus as a
    cultural foothold. As he has discovered in this latest
    brouhaha, that move has hardly lifted him above the wider
    debates, whether about materialism or intelligent design,
    but it has allowed him to connect with America's more
    cosmopolitan and progressive religious impulses. When
    William James was asked directly in 1904, "What do you mean
    by 'spirituality'?," he replied: "Susceptibility to ideals,
    but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about
    them." In mingling with neuroscientists who have warmed to
    his talk of spirituality, the Dalai Lama may well have found
    his own avatars of William James.

    Leigh E. Schmidt is a professor of religion at Princeton
    University and author of Restless Souls: The Making of
    American Spirituality (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).
_______________________________________________
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From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  9 15:38:20 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 10:38:20 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: What Makes a Nation More Productive? It's Not
	Just Technology
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312152390.28612@panix3.panix.com>

What Makes a Nation More Productive? It's Not Just Technology
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/business/yourmoney/25view.html

[Before you start bellowing that the most important factor in productivity was 
left out, be aware that this article is dealing with *changes* in the last five 
or ten years. It is still into the future before technology will allow changes 
in brain size and IQ to have a major impact in 5-10 years. Emryo selection and 
eugenic breeding takes a whole generation.]

Economic View
By DANIEL GROSS

IN 2001, the stock market meltdown and a brief recession threw cold
water on the widely held belief that the United States economy, juiced
by a technological revolution, had entered a new era of limitless,
inflation-free growth. But today, as bubble-era books like "Dow
36,000" collect dust on library shelves, evidence is mounting that
there may be a new economy after all.

In the late 1990's, growth in labor productivity - the amount of
output per hour per worker - kicked into a higher gear. From 1996
through 1999, it grew at a blistering annual rate of 2.5 percent,
compared with 1.4 percent from 1972 to 1995. Economists generally
believed that the higher rate was a byproduct of the new economy. Much
of the growth was spurred by the highly productive businesses that
made information technology products - companies like Dell, Intel and
Microsoft - and by their customers, who spent heavily to deploy
productivity-enhancing PC's and software.

"About half of the growth resurgence from 1995 to 2000 was due to
I.T.," said Dale Jorgenson, university professor at Harvard and a
co-author of the recently published "Information Technology and the
American Growth Resurgence."

As the technology investment boom of the 1990's gave way to bust in
2000, many analysts feared that the productivity gains would
dissipate. Instead, productivity since 2000 has grown at a
substantially higher pace than it did in the late 1990's. And
productivity growth is still strong. This month, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported that productivity in the third quarter was up 3.1
percent from the same quarter last year.

A new report by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the
consulting firm McKinsey & Company, found that sectors other than
technology have been driving the growth in the post-bust years. "The
I.T.-producing industry itself, with its extraordinarily rapid pace of
change, certainly has contributed to overall productivity growth,"
said Martin Baily, a senior fellow at the Institute for International
Economics, based in Washington. "But now we're getting a bigger share
from the rest of the economy." Mr. Baily, a former chairman of the
Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration, was
co-author of the McKinsey report with Diana Farrell, the director of
McKinsey Global.

In the late 1990's, McKinsey found that six of the economy's 59
sectors accounted for virtually all productivity growth. Among the
biggest contributors were new-economy industries like
telecommunications, computer manufacturing and semiconductors. But
from 2000 to 2003, the top seven sectors accounted for only 75 percent
of the productivity increase. And five of the top contributors were
service industries, including retail trade, wholesale trade and
financial services. That is surprising, since economists have
generally believed that it is much harder for service industries to
reap sharp productivity gains than it is for manufacturers.

To be sure, service industries have become more productive in recent
years by continuing to invest in information technology. Yet there are
also other factors at work. "I.T. is a particularly effective enabling
tool," Ms. Farrell said. "But without the competitive intensity that
drives people to adopt innovation, we wouldn't see these kinds of
gains."

To compete with Wal-Mart, for example, retailers of all stripes have
been working furiously to gain scale, to manage supply chains and
logistics more effectively, and to negotiate better terms with
suppliers and workers.

A similar dynamic has played out in the finance sector, where there
has also been a huge gain in productivity. It is likely that
competition and structural changes are responsible for those gains -
both in the late 1990's and in recent years. Commissions for stock
trades have fallen sharply amid relentless competition; spreads in
stock trading have narrowed, thanks to rules promulgated by the
Securities and Exchange Commission; and trading volume has risen,
thanks to the proliferation of investors. Add it up, and you have more
volume at lower cost to the customer. And when the stock market cooled
after the Internet bubble, companies in the once-hot financial sector
began to focus on cutting costs and eliminating unprofitable
operations. Those moves further bolstered productivity.

One mystery of recent years has been the enduring gap in productivity
growth between the United States and Europe. In this case, another
structural force - regulation - may be at work. "In economies with
less regulation, companies can use information communications
technology that link sectors to one another in ways that create joint
productivity," said Gail Fosler, executive vice president and chief
economist at the Conference Board.

Because domestic retailers don't face the same sorts of restrictions
on working hours and road use that European retailers do, for example,
the Americans have been better able to use technology to manage
trucking fleets, deliveries and inventory.

The encouraging news, some economists say, is that a major
breakthrough in information technology is not required to fuel further
productivity growth. "It's not research and development that cause the
big gains in productivity," Professor Jorgenson said. "The real
drivers are things like competition, deregulation, the opening of
markets and globalization."

AS the gospel of increased productivity spreads to a wider range of
sectors, more companies keep trying to figure out how to do more with
the same amount of labor - or with less. For macroeconomists, that is
good news. But there is a downside. In the past few years, payroll job
growth has been far less robust than usual for post-recessionary
periods. And because high productivity means that the economy can grow
smartly without the addition of new jobs, some job seekers might wish
that companies were a tad less efficient.

Mr. Baily says that there does not have to be a trade-off between
productivity and job creation. "Historically, in the U.S. and in other
countries, periods of rapid productivity growth have been periods of
strong employment growth," he said. That was certainly the case in the
late 1990's.

Why has the experience been different in the last several years? "The
loss of manufacturing jobs after 2000 was just huge, and those jobs
haven't come back," Mr. Baily said. The Big Three automakers have shed
tens of thousands of jobs since 2000 because of competitive pressures
and a drop in demand for their products. And it is likely that General
Motors and Ford would be retrenching even if productivity in the
service sector was growing at a much slower rate.

"It's hard to blame productivity growth for a lot of manufacturing job
losses," Mr. Baily said.

Daniel Gross writes the "Moneybox" column for Slate.com.


From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  9 15:38:37 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 10:38:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] BBS: (D.S. Wilson and E. Sober) Re-Introducing Group
 Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312152500.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Re-Introducing Group Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences
http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/04/60/bbs00000460-00/bbs.wilson.html

[This should be read carefully and prayerfully by all, esp. those who have not 
read their book, "Unto Others," of which this is a fine pr?cis.]

Below is the unedited preprint (not a quotable final draft) of:
Wilson, D.S. & Sober, E. (1994). Reintroducing group selection to the
human behavioral sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):
585-654.
The final published draft of the target article, commentaries and
Author's Response are currently available only in paper.

  David Sloan Wilson
  Department of Biological Sciences
  State University of New York at Binghamton
  Binghamton New York 13902-6000
  [3]DWILSON at BINGVAXA.BitNet
  Elliott Sober
  Department of Philosophy
  University of Wisconsin
  5185 Helen C. White Hall
  600 North Park Street
  Madison Wisconsin 53706
  [4]ESober at VMS.MACC.Wisc.edu

Keywords

culture; evolution; group selection; kin selection; inclusive fitness;
natural selection; reciprocity; social organization; units of
selection.

Abstract

In both biology and the human sciences, social groups are sometimes
treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be reduced to
individual interactions. This group-level view is opposed by a more
individualistic view that treats social organization as a byproduct of
self-interest. According to biologists, group-level adaptations can
evolve only by a process of natural selection at the group level.
During the 1960's and 70's most biologists rejected group selection as
an important evolutionary force but a positive literature began to
grow during the 70's and is rapidly expanding today. We review this
recent literature and its implications for human evolutionary biology.
We show that the rejection of group selection was based on a misplaced
emphasis on genes as "replicators" which is in fact irrelevant to the
question of whether groups can be like individuals in their functional
organization. The fundamental question is whether social groups and
other higher-level entities can be "vehicles" of selection. When this
elementary fact is recognized, group selection emerges as an important
force in nature and ostensible alternatives, such as kin selection and
reciprocity, reappear as special cases of group selection. The result
is a unified theory of natural selection that operates on a nested
hierarchy of units.

The vehicle-based theory makes it clear that group selection is an
important force to consider in human evolution. Humans can
facultatively span the full range from self-interested individuals to
"organs" of group-level "organisms." Human behavior not only reflects
the balance between levels of selection but it can also alter the
balance through the construction of social structures that have the
effect of reducing fitness differences within groups, concentrating
natural selection (and functional organization) at the group level.
These social structures and the cognitive abilities that produce them
allow group selection to be important even among large groups of
unrelated individuals.
   _________________________________________________________________

The existence of egoistic forces in animal life has long been
recognized. It is not so well known that the idea of group-centered
forces in animal life also has a respectable history. (Allee 1943, p
519)

It is a crude oversimplification to conceive of social motives as
being capable of direct derivation from a hedonic algebra of
self-interest--real or fictitious--based on a few universal human
drives, whatever the choice of the drives may be. (Tajfel 1981, p36)

These quotations illustrate a perspective in which social groups have
a primacy that cannot be reduced to individual interactions. The
group-level perspective can be found in biology and all branches of
the human behavioral sciences (e.g., Anthropology, Economics,
Psychology, Sociology). It is opposed by another perspective that
treats individuals as primary and social groups as mere consequences
of individual interactions. Although the conflict between the two
perspectives is often dismissed as semantic, it refuses to go away,
suggesting that substantive issues are involved.

In biology, the conflict between the perspectives has had a remarkable
history. Prior to 1960 it was quite acceptable to think of social
groups and even whole ecosystems as highly adapted units, similar to
individuals in the harmony and coordination of their parts1. Williams
(1966) and others argued that group-level adaptations require a
process of natural selection at the group level and that this process,
though theoretically possible, was unlikely to be important in nature.
Their verdict quickly became the majority view and was celebrated as a
major scientific advance, similar to the rejection of Lamarkianism. A
generation of graduate students learned about group selection as an
example of how not to think and it became almost mandatory for the
authors of journal articles to assure their readers that group
selection was not being invoked. Nevertheless, a positive literature
began to grow in the 1970's and is rapidly expanding today (table 1).2
It is no longer heretical for biologists to think of natural selection
as a hierarchical process that often operates at the group level.

The most recent developments in biology have not yet reached the human
behavioral sciences, which still know group selection primarily as the
bogey man of the 60's and 70's. The purpose of this paper is to re-
introduce group selection to the human behavioral sciences. We think
that group selection can provide a firm foundation for a group-level
perspective in the human sciences, as it has in biology. Before
beginning, however, it is important to note a complication.
Evolutionary approaches to human behavior have become increasingly
common, as readers of Behavioral and Brain Sciences well know.
Unfortunately, some of the most prominent evolutionary biologists
interested in human behavior have themselves failed to incorporate the
recent literature and still present group selection as a bogey man
(e.g., Alexander 1979,1987, Daly and Wilson 1988, Trivers 1985; but
see Table 1 entries marked 'H' for exceptions). We therefore must
re-introduce group selection to human sociobiology as well as to the
more traditional branches of the human sciences.

A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE GROUP SELECTION CONTROVERSY

The adaptationist program. In an influential paper, Gould and Lewontin
(1979) criticize evolutionists for using adaptation as their only
explanatory principle, to the exclusion of other factors such as
genetic drift and genetic/developmental constraints. They coined the
term "adaptationist program" as a pejorative and their conclusion that
it cannot be the only tool in the evolutionist's toolkit is well
taken. At the same time, their message should not obscure the fact
that the adaptationist program, or "natural selection thinking"
(Charnov 1982), is an extremely powerful tool for predicting the
properties of organisms.

One of the virtues of the adaptationist program is that it can be
employed with minimal knowledge of the physiological,biochemical and
genetic processes that make up the organisms under examination. For
example, imagine studying the evolutionary effects of predation on
snails, seeds and beetles. Suppose you discover that for all three
groups, species exposed to heavy predation have harder and thicker
exteriors than species not so exposed. The property ohard exterior@
can be predicted from knowledge of the selection pressures operating
on the populations. Since the exteriors of snails, beetles, and seeds
are made of completely different materials, there is a sense in which
these materials are irrelevant to the prediction (Campbell 1974,
Wilson 1988). That is why Darwin was able to achieve his fundamental
insights in almost total ignorance of the mechanistic processes that
make up organisms. Adaptationist explanations have the power to unify
phenomena that are physiologically, biochemically and genetically
quite different .

The adaptationist program is valuable even if its predictions turn out
to be untrue. If we know the traits that organisms will have if
natural selection is the only influence on evolutionary trajectories,
then deviations from these traits constitute evidence that factors
other than natural selection have played a significant role. To
discover whether adaptationism is true or false, optimality models are
indispensable (Sober 1993, Orzack and Sober in press).

Although the following discussion is, in effect, a view about how the
adaptationist program should be pursued, it involves no substantive
committment to the success of that program. Regardless of the scopes
and limits of adaptationism, the question owhat would organisms be
like if they were well adapted@ is of paramount importance in
evolutionary biology.

The adaptationist program and the biological hierarchy. The question
"What would they be like if they were well adapted?" is more
complicated than it sounds. To see this, consider an imaginary
population of rabbits inhabiting an island. A mutant arises that
grazes more efficiently--so efficiently that a population of such
mutants will overexploit their resource and go extinct. The mutation
is adaptive in the limited sense of causing its bearer to have more
offspring than other rabbits, but maladaptive in the larger sense of
driving the population extinct.

This example should sound familiar to human behavioral scientists
because it resembles the social dilemmas that abound in human life. It
corresponds to the tragedy of the commons popularized by Hardin
(1968), the voting problem of economics (Margolis 1982) and the
prisoner's dilemma of game theory (Rapoport and Chammah 1965). For
humans and nonhumans alike, individual striving can lead to social
chaos.

As previously mentioned, many biologists prior to the 1960's
uncritically assumed that natural selection evolves adaptations at
upper levels of the biological hierarchy. In our imaginary example
they would assume that the population of rabbits evolves to manage its
resources. The possibility that adaptation at one level of the
hierarchy can be maladaptive at another level was either ignored or
assumed to be resolved in favor of the higher level. These sentiments,
which today are called "naive group selectionism", permeated the
textbooks and were espoused by many eminent biologists, including
Alfred Emerson (1960), who believed that all of nature was as
functionally integrated as a termite colony. As a young post-doctoral
associate at the University of Chicago, G.C. Williams attended a
lecture by Emerson and left muttering "Something must be done...". The
result was a modern classic, Adaptation and Natural Selection
(Williams 1966)3.

Williams' argument against higher-level adaptations came in three
parts. First, he claimed that adaptation at any level of the
biological hierarchy requires a process of natural selection operating
at that level. Returning to our population of rabbits, it is easy to
see that efficient grazers will evolve because they have more
offspring than inefficient grazers. The negative consequences at the
population level are irrelevant. However, if we imagine an archipelago
of islands, only some of which contain the mutant strain, then
populations driven extinct by the mutant can be replaced by other
populations without the mutant. The population- level adaptation can
now persist, but only because we have added a process of natural
selection at that level; fit populations replace unfit populations in
the same sense that fit rabbits replace unfit rabbits within
populations. This is what evolutionary biologists term group
selection.

Second, Williams argued that group selection is unimportant in nature
despite the fact that it is theoretically possible:

It is universally conceded by those who have seriously concerned
themselves with this problem that such group-related adaptations must
be attributed to the natural selection of alternative groups of
individuals and that the natural selection of alternative alleles
within populations will be opposed to this development. I am in entire
agreement with the reasoning behind this conclusion. Only by a theory
of between-group selection could we achieve a scientific explanation
of group-related adaptations. However, I would question one of the
premises on which the reasoning is based. Chapters 5 to 8 will be
primarily a defence of the thesis that group-related adaptations do
not, in fact exist. (Williams 1966 p 92 ) Part of Williams' skepticism
can be illustrated with our rabbit example. If migration occurs
between islands, what is to prevent the mutant from "infecting" the
other islands before the original population goes extinct? Or perhaps
the mutant population doesn't go extinct but merely hobbles along in a
malnourished state, in which case the occasional migrant from other
islands would be unable to survive. At least for this example, it
seems that the parameters of the model must be very finely tuned for
group-level selection to prevail against individual-level selection.

Third, Williams developed a concept of the gene as the "fundamental
unit of selection" that has become a major theme in evolutionary
biology, especially as amplified and extended by Dawkins (1976,1982).
Williams claimed that groups and even individuals cannot be units of
selection because they are ephemeral and do not replicate with
sufficient fidelity. Every sexually reproducing organism is a unique
combination of thousands of genes that will never exist again, no
matter how successful reproductively. At the individual level, only
clonal organisms replicate with sufficient fidelity to qualify as
units of selection. For sexually reproducing organisms, the gene is
the unit that is transmitted through time with high fidelity and is
therefore the fundamental unit of selection (the replicator, in
Dawkins' terminology). This is frequently used as an argument against
group selection. For example, Alexander (1979 p36) states:

In 1966 Williams published a book criticizing what he called "some
current evolutionary thought" and chastised biologists for invoking
selection uncritically at whatever level seemed convenient. WilliamsY
book was the first truly general argument that selection is hardly
ever effective on anything but the heritable genetic units of "genetic
replicators" (Dawkins 1977) contained in the genotypes of individuals.

Individuals and groups appear in Williams' scheme, not as units of
selection, but as environments of the genes. As the simplest example,
consider two alleles (A,a) at a single diploid locus in a randomly
mating population, yielding the familiar three genotypes (AA,Aa,aa) in
Hardy- Weinberg proportions. Suppose the fitnesses of the three
genotypes are WAA=1, WAa=0.75 and Waa=0.5. From the gene's-eye view,
the A-allele can be said to inhabit two "genotypic environments", AA
and Aa, and its average fitness can be easily calculated:

WA= pWAA + (1-p)WAa (1)

The term p, in addition to being the frequency of the A-allele in the
population, is also the proportion of A-alleles that exist in the AA
"environment" in a randomly mating population. The fitness of the
a-allele can similarly be averaged across its two genotypic
environments (Aa,aa) to yield

Wa= pWAa + (1-p)Waa (2)

The A-allele will evolve whenever WA>Wa, which is always the case when
WAA>WAa>Waa. Note that A and a have the same fitness within the one
genotypic environment that they inhabit together (the heterozygote).
It is only by averaging across genotypic environments that differences
in the fitness of A and a occur. Biologically informed readers will
recognize WA and Wa as the "average effects" of the two alleles used
to calculate breeding values and narrow-sense heritability at the
individual level (e.g., Falconer 1982, Wilson and Sober 1989).

More complicated examples can be constructed in which the population
is divided into social groups that differ in allele frequencies and
genotypic fitnesses. In these cases the genes inhabit a more
complicated array of "environments" but in principle it is always
possible to calculate gene-level fitness by averaging across genotypic
and social contexts. In addition, it will always be the case that A
replaces a when WA>Wa. This is why Williams (1986,1992) refers to
genes as "bookkeeping" devices that automatically record the net
effect of multiple selection pressures.

Williams' case against group selection was strengthened by two other
theories in evolutionary biology that were developed during the 60's
and 70's. The first was inclusive fitness theory (also called kin
selection; Hamilton 1964, Maynard Smith 1964), which explained how
altruism could evolve among genetic relatives. The second was
evolutionary game theory (Axelrod and Hamilton 1981, Maynard Smith
1982, Trivers 1971, Williams 1966), which explained how cooperation
could evolve among non-relatives. These theories seemed to account for
many of the phenomena that group selection had been invoked to
explain. With the problems raised by Williams and two robust
alternatives, the theory of group selection, never well articulated to
begin with, collapsed.

Not all evolutionary biologists are familiar with the details of
Williams' arguments against group selection, but the bottom-line
conclusion has been adopted with such conviction that we will call it
Williams' first commandment: "Thou shalt not apply the adaptationist
program above the level of the individual." All adaptations must be
explained in terms of the relative fitness of individuals within
populations. Individual-level adaptations may have positive or
negative effects at the group level, but in both cases the group-level
effects are irrelevant to evolutionary change. Williams' first
commandment was repeated like a mantra throughout the 60's and 70's,
as every evolutionary biologist knows. Unfortunately, the mantra still
echoes through the numerous accounts of evolutionary theory that are
written for the human sciences and popular audiences today (e.g.,
Alexander 1987, Archer 1991, Cronin 1991, Daly and Wilson 1988, Frank
1988, Krebs 1987, MacDonald 1988, Noonan 1987, Sagan and Druyan 1992).

Examining the edifice. Although Williams' and Dawkins' gene-centered
view has enjoyed enormous popularity, it has one flaw that should be
obvious, at least in retrospect. Naive group selectionists thought
that upper levels of the biological hierarchy were like individual
organisms in the coordination and harmony of their parts. According to
Williams and Dawkins, however, even sexually reproducing organisms do
not qualify as units of selection because they, like groups, are too
ephemeral. If a creature such as a bird or a butterfly is not a unit
of selection, then what endows it with the internal harmony implied by
the word "organism"?

To answer this question, an entirely different concept needed to be
invoked which Dawkins (1976) called "vehicles of selection"
("interactors" in Hull's 1980 terminology). Employing one of DawkinsY
own metaphors, we can say that genes in an individual are like members
of a rowing crew competing with other crews in a race. The only way to
win the race is to cooperate fully with the other crew members.
Similarly, genes are "trapped" in the same individual with other genes
and usually can replicate only by causing the entire collective to
survive and reproduce. It is this property of shared fate that causes
"selfish genes" to coalesce into individual organisms.

So far, so good, but if individuals can be vehicles of selection, what
about groups? After all, we are interested in comparing groups with
individuals, not with genes. Yet gene-centered theorists have scarcely
addressed this question.4 The situation is so extraordinary that
historians of science should study it in detail: A giant edifice is
built on the foundation of genes as replicators, and therefore the
"fundamental" unit of selection, which seems to obliterate the concept
of groups as organisms. In truth, however, the replicator concept
cannot even account for the organismic properties of individuals.
Almost as an afterthought, the vehicle concept is tacked onto the
edifice to reflect the harmonious organization of individuals but it
is not extended to the level of groups. The entire edifice therefore
fails to address the question that it originally seemed to answer so
conclusively and that made it seem so important.

This is such a crucial and unappreciated point that we want to
reinforce it by quoting from The Ant and the Peacock (Cronin 1991),
one of the most recent book-length treatments of evolution for a
popular audience.5 Cronin is a philosopher who has a part-time
appointment at Oxford University's Zoology Department. Her book was
chosen as one of the year's best by the New York Times and has been
cited with approval by authorities such as G.C. Williams (1993) and
John Maynard Smith (1992) and Daniel Dennett (1992) 6. There is every
reason for the reader to think that it represents state-of-the-art
evolutionary biology.

Cronin agrees with us that naive group selectionists compared groups
to individuals:

Many an ecologist, equipped with no more than a flimsy analogy,
marched cheerfully from the familiar Darwinian territory of individual
organisms into a world of populations and groups. Populations were
treated as individuals that just happened to be a notch or two up in
the hierarchy of life...(p278).

Her treatment of Williams is also close to our own: "Williams
retaliated with two types of argument. He spelled out why genes are
suitable candidates for units of selection whereas organisms, groups
and so on are not...(p286)." Here Cronin commits (along with Williams)
the fallacy that we outlined above. If individuals and groups are not
replicators, then the replicator concept cannot be used to argue that
they are different from each other! Faced with this dilemma, Cronin
dutifully invokes vehicles to explain the organismal properties of
individuals, with a nod to groups:

If organisms are not replicators, what are they? The answer is that
they are vehicles of replicators...Groups, too, are vehicles, but far
less distinct, less unified...In this weak sense, then, 'group
selection' could occur...But even if they [group-level adaptations]
did arise--which as we've seen is unlikely--they would in no way
undermine the status of genes as the only units of replicator
selection. This does not mean that higher level entities are
unimportant in evolution. They are important, but in a different way:
as vehicles (p289).

But this is all that naive group selectionists ever claimed--that
groups are like individuals by virtue of the adaptive coordination of
their parts! Finally, Cronin concludes that group selection is
unimportant even in the so-called weak sense:

But group selectionism (weak group selectionism) makes claims about
adaptations, about characteristics that satisfy the fragmented
purposes of all the genes in the group and, what's more, confer an
advantage on that group over other groups. Group-level adaptations,
then, are a very special case of emergent properties--so special that
it would be rash to expect them to have played any significant role in
evolution. Of course, the question of what role they have actually
played is an empirical, not a conceptual issue. It is a factual matter
about which adaptations happen to have arisen at levels higher than
organisms, about the extent to which groups and other higher-level
vehicles happen to have been roadworthy. [p290]

Cronin is in the unhappy position of a circus artist who stands on the
backs of two horses, replicators and vehicles, as they gallop around
the ring. The only way that she can perform this dazzling feat is by
making the horses gallop in parallel. Thus, groups must fail not only
as replicators but as vehicles. What Cronin cannot bring herself to
say is that the replicator concept that forms the inspiration for her
book is totally irrelevant to the question that is and always was at
the heart of the group selection controversy--can groups be like
individuals in the harmony and coordination of their parts? To answer
this question we must restructure the entire edifice around the
concept of vehicles, not replicators. That is exactly what the
positive literature on group selection does7.

Taking vehicles seriously. The essence of the vehicle concept is
shared fate, exemplified by the adage (and by Dawkins' rowing crew
metaphor) "we're all in the same boat." Our restructured edifice must
first be able to identify the vehicle(s) of selection in any
particular biological or human situation.

In figure 1, the biological hierarchy is shown as a nested series of
units, each of which is a population of lower level units. An
individual can be regarded as a population of genes and a group is
obviously a population of individuals. A metapopulation is a
population of groups. For example, a single field might contain
hundreds of ant colonies. Each colony certainly deserves to be called
a group and yet we must also recognize the collection of groups as an
important entity. The hierarchy has been left open on both ends
because genes are composed of subunits and metapopulations can exist
in higher-order metapopulations, a fact that will become important
later.

Vehicles of selection can be identified on a trait-by-trait basis by
the following simple procedure: Starting at the lowest level of the
hierarchy8, ask the question "Do genes within a single individual
differ in fitness?" If the answer is "no", then they share the same
fate and are part of the same vehicle. Proceeding up the hierarchy,
ask the question: "Do individuals within a single group differ in
fitness?" If the answer is "no" then once again they share the same
fate and we must proceed up the hierarchy until we find the level(s)
at which units differ in fitness. This is the level (or levels) at
which natural selection actually operates, producing the functional
organization implicit in the word "organism at .9 Everything below this
level will acquire the status of organs and everything above this
level will be vulnerable to social dilemmas.10

Already we can make three fundamental points: First, focusing on
vehicles makes it obvious that the concept of "organism" is not
invariably linked to the "individual" level of the biological
hierarchy. To the extent that genes can differ in fitness within
single individuals, the genes will become the organisms and the
individual will become a dysfunctional collection of genes. To the
extent that individuals in the same group are in the same "boat" with
respect to fitness, they will evolve into harmonious organs of
group-level organization. In short, the organ-organism- population
trichotomy can be frame-shifted both up and down the biological
hierarchy. Frame-shifts in both directions have been documented and
examples will be provided below.

Second, the status of organ vs. organism vs. population must be
assigned on a trait-by-trait basis. It is possible for a single
creature such as a wasp to be an organ with respect to some traits, an
organism with respect to other traits, and a population of organisms
with respect to still other traits. This may sound strange but it
follows directly from the fact that fitness is a property of traits,
not organisms (Sober 1984). For example, in the parasitic wasp Nasonia
vitripennis, some males harbor what has been called the oultimate@
selfish gene, because it destroys all the other genes in the male to
facilitate its own transmission (Werren 1991,1992). In this case the
gene is the vehicle of selection but most other genes in the same
species evolve by standard Darwinian selection, in which case the
individual is the vehicle of selection.

Third, fitness differences are not always concentrated at one level of
the biological hierarchy. Individuals with trait A can be less fit
than individuals with trait B within single groups, while groups of
individuals with trait A are more fit than groups of individuals with
trait B. In these cases we cannot assign the status of organ, organism
or population and must settle for some hybrid designation. As one
example, Williams (1966) showed that, given certain assumptions,
natural selection within single groups favors an even sex ratio while
natural selection between groups favors an extreme female-biased sex
ratio. He thought that the absence of female-biased sex ratios in
nature provided conclusive evidence against group selection. Since
then, moderately female-biased sex ratios have been discovered in
literally hundreds of species, which reflect an equilibrium between
opposing forces of within- and between-group selection (Charnov 1982,
Colwell 1981, Frank 1986, Wilson and Colwell 1981).11 As we will show,
altruism is another example of a hybrid trait that is selected against
at the individual level but favored at the group level.

Now we will document our claim that the organ-organism-population
trichotomy can be frame-shifted both up and down the biological
hierarchy.

Individuals as dysfunctional populations of genetic elements.
Individuals are traditionally viewed as stable entities that (barring
mutation) pass the same genes in the same proportions to their
offspring that they received from their parents. However, this is not
always the case. For example, a diploid individual can be regarded as
a population of N=2 alleles at each locus. The rules of meiosis
usually dictate that each allele is equally represented in the
gametes. Occasionally a mutation arises that "breaks" the rules of
meiosis by appearing in greater than 50% of the gametes, a phenomenon
known as "meiotic drive" (Crow 1979). These same alleles often
decrease the survival of individuals that possess them and can even be
lethal in homozygous form. Let us apply our simple procedure to this
example to identify the vehicle(s) of selection. Can genes within a
single individual differ in fitness? The answer is "yes" because the
driving allele exists at a frequency of p=0.5 in heterozygotes and
occurs in the gametes of those heterozygotes with a frequency of
p>0.5. Natural selection therefore operates at the gene level,
favoring the driving allele. Now proceed up the hierarchy. Do
individuals within a single population differ in fitness? The answer
is again "yes" because individuals with the driving allele suffer
higher mortality than individuals without the driving allele. Natural
selection therefore operates against the driving allele at the
individual level. Both the gene and the individual are vehicles of
selection. If gene-level selection is sufficiently strong, the driving
allele can evolve despite its negative effects on individuals.

Many other examples of natural selection within individuals could be
cited involving chromosomal genes (Dover 1986), cytoplasmic genes
(Cosmides and Tooby 1981), and competing cell lineages (Buss 1987).
These examples have been received with great fanfare by gene-centered
theorists as some sort of confirmation of their theory. But these
examples do not confirm the thesis that genes are replicators--all
genes are replicators by definition and no documentation is needed.
These examples are remarkable because they show that genes can
sometimes be vehicles. They seem bizarre and disorienting because they
violate our deeply rooted notion that individuals are organisms. They
force us to realize that individuals are at least occasionally nothing
more than groups of genes, subject to the same social dilemmas as our
imaginary population of rabbits.

Why aren't examples of within-individual selection more common?
Several authors have speculated that the rules of meiosis and other
mechanisms that suppress evolution within individuals are themselves
the product of natural selection acting at the individual level. Genes
that profit at the expense of other genes within the same individual
are metaphorically referred to as "outlaws" (Alexander and Borgia
1978) and the regulatory machinery that evolves to suppress them is
referred to as a "parliament" of genes (Leigh 1977). Ironically, most
of the authors who employ these metaphors are reluctant to think of
real parliaments as regulatory machines that reduce fitness
differences within groups, thereby concentrating adaptation at the
group level. Gene-centered theorists frame-shift downward with
enthusiasm but they are much more reluctant to frame-shift upward.

Groups as organisms. Social insect colonies have been regarded as
"superorganisms" for centuries. Sterile castes with division of labor,
colony-level thermoregulation and patterns of information processing
that transcend single brains all suggest intuitively that colonies are
functionally organized units, built out of individual insects. This
interpretation was rejected by gene-centered theorists, however, who
claimed to explain the social insects without invoking group
selection. Their scorn for the earlier view is illustrated by
West-Eberhard (1981 p 12; parenthetical comments are hers): "Despite
the logical force of arguments against group (or colony) selection,
and the invention of tidy explanations for collaboration in individual
terms, the supraorganism (colony-level selection) still haunts
evolutionary discussions of insect sociality."

Let us apply our simple procedure to locate the vehicle(s) of
selection in the social insects. Can genes differ in fitness within
individuals? Yes-- the social insects resemble other species in this
regard--but the products of selection at this level are unlikely to
enhance colony function. Can individuals differ in fitness within
single colonies? Yes; as one example, honey bee queens usually mate
with more than one male, leading to multiple patrilines among the
workers. Many insects can detect genetic similarity using odor cues
and it is plausible to expect workers tending future queens to favor
members of their own patriline. As with evolution within individuals,
however, this kind of palace intrigue is more likely to disrupt colony
function than to enhance it (Ratnieks 1988, Ratnieks and Visscher
1989). We therefore must proceed up the hierarchy and ask "Can groups
(=colonies) differ in fitness within a metapopulation?"

Unlike our archipelago of rabbits, in which the metapopulation seemed
somewhat contrived, the social insects obviously exist as a population
of colonies. Consider a mutation that is expressed in honeybee workers
and increases the efficiency of the hive, ultimately causing the queen
to produce more reproductive offspring. It is obvious that this
mutation will spread, not by increasing in frequency within the hive,
but by causing hives possessing the mutation to out-produce other
hives. Thus, for the majority of traits that improve colony function,
the colony is the vehicle of selection and can legitimately be called
an organism. Focusing on vehicles, not replicators, as the central
concept makes West-Eberhard's statement sound absurd. Notice also that
Williams' first argument, that group-level adaptations require a
process of natural selection at the group level, is correct. But his
empirical claim that group selection is weak and group-level
adaptations don't exist is just plain wrong in the case of the
eusocial insects--both the process and the product are manifest. The
focus on genes as the "fundamental" unit of replication merely
distracts from the more relevant framework based on vehicles.
Fortunately, most social insect biologists now realize this and once
again regard social insect colonies as "group-level vehicles of gene
survival" (Seeley 1989), at least to the degree that they evolve by
between-colony selection.

Before leaving the social insects it is worth asking a question that
we will pose later for humans: What does it mean for a creature such
as an ant or a honeybee, itself an organism in some respects, to also
be part of a group-level organism? A partial answer is provided by
Seeley (1989), whose elegant experiments reveal the mechanisms of
colony-level adaptation. A honeybee hive monitors its floral resources
over several square miles and maximizes its energy intake with
impressive accuracy. If the quality of a food patch is experimentally
lowered, the hive responds within minutes by shifting workers away
from that patch and toward ones that are more profitable. Yet
individual bees visit only one patch and have no frame of comparison.
Instead, individuals contribute one link to a chain of events that
allows the comparison to be made at the hive level. Bees returning
from the low quality patch dance less and themselves are less likely
to revisit. With fewer bees returning from the poor resource, bees
from better patches are able to unload their nectar faster, which they
use as a cue to dance more. Newly recruited bees are therefore
directed to the best patches. Adaptive foraging is accomplished by a
decentralized process in which individuals are more like neurons than
decision-making agents in their own right (Camazine and Sneyd 1991;
see Camazine 1991, Deneubourg and Goss 1989, Franks 1989 and Wilson
and Holldobler 1988 for other examples of group-level cognition in
social insects). The image of a group-level mind composed of
relatively mindless individuals is aptly described in D. HofstadterYs
(1979) essay ant fugue. We suggest that some aspects of human
mentality can also be understood as a form of group- level cognition
(see below).

Finding the vehicles in inclusive fitness theory. How was it possible
for West-Eberhard and others to think that the social insects could be
explained without invoking group selection? Her "tidy" alternative
explanation was inclusive fitness theory, which she and almost
everyone else regarded as a robust alternative to group selection.
However, inclusive fitness theory is a gene-centered framework that
does not identify the vehicle(s) of selection. When we rebuild
inclusive fitness theory on the foundation of vehicles we discover
that it is not an alternative to the idea of group selection at all
(Michod 1982, Queller 1991,1992, Uyenoyama and Feldman 1980, Wade
1985, Wilson 1977, 1980). It would be hard to imagine a more important
discovery, yet human behavioral scientists are almost totally unaware
of it, in part because their evolutionary informants so assiduously
ignore it. Even the most recent accounts of evolution for the human
sciences treat inclusive fitness and group selection as separate
mechanisms (e.g., Alexander 1987, 1989,1992, Archer 1991, Daly and
Wilson 1988, Frank 1988, Krebs 1987, MacDonald 1988, Noonan 1987). We
will consider one of these treatments in detail because it allows us
to make a number of important points throughout the rest of our paper.
Here is Frank's (1988 p37-39) depiction of group selection.

Group-selection models are the favored turf of biologists and others
who feel that people are genuinely altruistic. Many biologists are
skeptical of these models, which reject the central Darwinian
assumption that selection occurs at the individual level. In his
recent text, for example, Trivers includes a chapter entitled "The
group selection fallacy". With thinly veiled contempt, he defines
group selection as "the differential reproduction of groups, often
imagined to favor traits that are individually disadvantageous but
evolve because they benefit the larger group". Group selectionists
have attempted to show that genuine altruism, as conventionally
defined, is just such a trait... Could altruism have evolved via group
selection? For this to have happened, altruistic groups would have had
to prosper at the expense of less altruistic groups in the competition
for scarce resources. This requirement, by itself, is not problematic.
After all, altruism is efficient at the group level (recall that pairs
of cooperators in the prisoner's dilemma do better than pairs of
defectors), and we can imagine ways that altruistic groups might avoid
being taken advantage of by less altruistic groups...

But even if we suppose that the superior performance of the altruistic
group enables it to triumph over all other groups, the group selection
story still faces a formidable hurdle. The conventional definition
again, is that nonaltruistic behavior is advantageous to the
individual . Even in an altruistic group, not every individual will be
equally altruistic. When individuals differ, there will be selection
pressure in favor of the least altruistic members. And as long as
these individuals get higher payoffs, they will comprise an
ever-larger share of the altruistic group. So even in the event that a
purely altruistic group triumphs over all other groups, the logic of
selection at the individual level appears to spell ultimate doom for
genuinely altruistic behavior. It can triumph only when the extinction
rate of groups is comparable to the mortality rate for individuals
within them. As [E.O.] Wilson stresses, this condition is rarely if
ever met in practice.

Frank's account of group selection is accurate and similar to our own
rabbit example. He also accurately depicts the climate of the group
selection debate during the 60's and 70's. Now here is Frank's
description of inclusive fitness theory (p25-27):

Biologists have made numerous attempts to explain behavior that, on
its face, appears self-sacrificing. Many of these make use of William
Hamilton's notion of kin selection. According to Hamilton, an
individual will often be able to promote its own genetic future by
making sacrifices on behalf of others who carry copies of its genes...
The kin-selection model fits comfortably within the Darwinian
framework, and has clearly established predictive power... Sacrifices
made on behalf of kin are an example of what E.O. Wilson calls "'hard
core' altruism, a set of responses relatively unaffected by social
reward or punishment beyond childhood." Viewed from one perspective,
the behavior accounted for by the kin- selection model is not really
self-sacrificing behavior at all. When an individual helps a relative,
it is merely helping that part of itself that is embodied in the
relative's genes...

FrankYs exposition certainly suggests that group selection and kin
selection are alternative theories that invoke separate mechanisms.
Frank himself regards them as so different that he calls one
non-Darwinian and the other Darwinian!12 Now consider the model in
figure 2, which rebuilds inclusive fitness theory on the foundation of
vehicles (see Michod 1982, Queller 1991,1992, Sober 1993, Uyenoyama
and Feldman 1980, Wade 1985, Wilson 1977, 1980 for more formal
treatments). A dominant allele (A) codes for a behavior that is
expressed only among full siblings. The behavior decreases the fitness
of the actor by an amount c and increases the fitness of a single
recipient by an amount b. In figure 2, adults of the three genotypes
(AA,Aa,aa) combine randomly to form six types of mating pairs (AAxAA,
AAxAa, AAxaa, AaxAa, Aaxaa, aaxaa). Each mating pair produces sibling
groups with a characteristic proportion of altruists and
non-altruists. Thus, the sibling groups derived from AAxAA matings are
entirely altruistic, the groups derived from aaxaa matings are
entirely non-altruistic and so on. Since the behavior is expressed
only among siblings, the progeny of each mated pair is an isolated
group as far as the expression of the behavior is concerned. Thus, any
model of sibling interactions invokes a metapopulation of sibgroups.

Now let us employ our simple procedure to locate the vehicles of
selection. Beginning at the lowest level of the hierarchy, there is no
meiotic drive or other forms of selection within individuals in this
example. Moving up the hierarchy, do individuals within single
sibgroups differ in fitness? Yes, and natural selection at this level
operates against the altruists. In all sibgroups that contain both
selfish (aa) and altruistic (Aa,AA) phenotypes, the former are
fitter--they benefit from the latter's help without sharing the costs.
Sibling groups are similar to other groups in this respect. Continuing
up the hierarchy, can sibgroups differ in fitness within the
metapopulation? Yes, and it is here that we find the evolutionary
force that favors altruism. Since every altruist contributes a net
fitness increment of b-c to the sibgroup, the fitness of the
collective is directly proportional to the number of altruists in the
group. Sibgroups with more altruists outproduce sibgroups with fewer
altruists.

The degree of altruism that evolves depends on the balance of opposing
forces at the group and individual levels. Figure 3 shows why kin
groups are more favorable for the evolution of altruism than groups of
unrelated individuals. In the latter case, groups of size N are drawn
directly from the global population, forming a binomial distribution
of local gene frequencies. In the former case, groups of size two (the
parents) are drawn from the global population and groups of size N
(the siblings) are drawn from their gametes. This two-step sampling
procedure increases genetic variation among groups, intensifying
natural selection at the group level. Put another way, altruists are
segregated from non-altruists more in kin groups than in randomly
composed groups. In both cases there are mixed groups, however, and
evolution within mixed groups is the same regardless of whether they
are composed of siblings or nonrelatives. Notice that this explanation
does not invoke the concept of identity by descent, which seems to be
the cornerstone of inclusive fitness theory. There is no physical
difference between two altruistic genes that are identical by descent
and two altruistic genes that are not. The coefficient of relationship
is nothing more than an index of above-random genetic variation among
groups (e.g, Falconer 1982 ch 3- 5, Queller 1991,1992).

We invite the reader to go back to Frank's account of group selection
to confirm that it exactly describes the process of kin selection that
is portrayed in figure 2. Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde are the same person.
The only discrepancy between Frank's account and figure 2 involves the
concept of extinction. Sibling groups don't last for multiple
generations and don't necessarily go extinct, but rather dissolve into
the larger population when the individuals become adults and have
their own offspring. Thus, sibling groups (and social insect colonies)
differ somewhat from our population of rabbits and the groups that
Frank and Trivers had in mind. But this does not disqualify sibling
groups as vehicles of selection. After all, individuals are transient
collections of genes that "dissolve" into the gene pool as gametes.
The ephemeral nature of groups in figure 2 makes them more similar to
individuals, not less.

Frank's account of kin selection appears so different, not because it
invokes a different mechanism for the evolution of altruism, but
because it utilizes a different accounting procedure for calculating
gene frequency change that does not compare the fitnesses of
individuals within single groups. The method correctly predicts the
degree of altruism that evolves but obscures the internal dynamics of
the process. In fact, when the vehicle-centered approach was first
published, many biologists who thought they were familiar with
inclusive fitness theory found it hard to believe that altruism is
actually selected against within kin-groups and evolves only by a
process of between-group selection.

The unification of group selection and kin selection has implications
for the distinction between ogenuine@ vs. oapparent@ altruism. This in
an important distinction in the human behavioral sciences and
evolutionary accounts such as FrankYs seem to provide a tidy answer:
The altruism that evolves by group selection is "genuine" because it
entails real self- sacrifice, while the altruism that evolves by kin
selection is only "apparent" because it is just genes promoting copies
of themselves in other individuals. The unified theory reveals that
this distinction is an artifact of the way that fitness is calculated.
Any trait that is selected at the group level can be made to appear
ogenuinely@ altruistic by comparing relative fitness within groups, or
only oapparently o altruistic by averaging fitness across groups
(Wilson 1992, Wilson and Dugatkin 1992). Thus, evolutionary biologists
have so far contributed little but confusion to the distinction
between genuine and apparent altruism.13 Finding the vehicles in
evolutionary game theory. Evolutionary game theory (also called ESS
theory for "evolutionarily stable strategy") is similar to economic
game theory except that the strategies compete in Darwinian fashion,
as opposed to being adopted by rational choice. It was developed to
explore the evolution of cooperation and was universally considered to
be an individual-level alternative to group selection. For example,
Dawkins (1980 p360) states

There is a common misconception that cooperation within a group at a
given level of organization must come about through selection between
groups...ESS theory provides a more parsimonious alternative.

We will explore the relationship between game theory and group
selection with a fanciful example that is based on Dawkins' rowing
crew metaphor. A species of cricket has evolved the peculiar habit of
scooting about the water on dead leaves in search of its resource
(water lily flowers). A leaf can be propelled much better by two
crickets than by one so they scoot about in pairs. Initially they were
quite awkward but natural selection eventually endowed them with
breathtaking morphological and behavioral adaptations for their task.
Especially impressive is the coordination of the pair. They take their
stations on each side of the leaf and stroke the water with their
modified legs in absolute unison, almost as if they are part of a
single organism. Coordination is facilitated by one member of the
pair, who synchronizes the strokes by chirping at regular intervals.
On closer examination it was discovered that the chirps not only
coordinate movements but also steer the little craft. A low-pitched
chirp causes the chirper to row harder and a high-pitched chirp causes
the non- chirper to row harder. The captain (as the chirper came to be
called) adjusts its pitch to correct for asymmetries in the shape of
the leaf and also to change direction as lily pads hove into view.
Either member of the pair can act as captain; the important thing is
that there be only one.

The evolution of any particular trait in this example can be examined
with a 2-person game theory model. For example, consider two types (A1
and A2) that differ in their ability to synchronize with their
partner's movement. If p is the frequency of A1 in the population and
if pairing is at random then three types of pairs exist (A1A1, A1A2,
A2A2) at frequencies of p2, 2p(1-p) and (1-p)2. Coordination, and
therefore fitness, is directly proportional to the number of A1
individuals in the pair, as shown by the payoff matrix in figure 3a.
The fitness of the two types, averaged across pairs, is WA1=5p+4(1-p)
and WA2=4p+3(1-p).

This is not a very interesting game theory model because it doesn't
pose a dilemma. WA1>WA2 for all values of p, making it obvious that A1
will evolve. However, this should not obscure a more fundamental
point, that the pair is the vehicle of selection. If we apply our
procedure we find no fitness differences between individuals within a
pair, in which case A1 can evolve only by causing pairs to succeed
relative to other pairs. The fact that the pairs are ephemeral,
perhaps lasting only a fraction of an individual's lifetime, is
irrelevant. Persistence is a requirement for replicators, not
vehicles. Coordination evolves among the individuals for exactly the
same reason that it evolves among genes within individuals, because
they are "in the same boat" as far as fitness differences are
concerned.

More generally, evolutionary game theory deploys a metapopulation
model, in which individuals exist within groups that exist within a
population of groups. When this elementary fact is recognized,
Dawkins' statement quoted above looks just as absurd as
West-Eberhard's statement about the social insects. Cooperation
evolves by group-level selection in a game theory model as surely as
cooperation among genes evolves by individual-level selection in a
standard population genetics model.14 In fact the two models are
mathematically identical; we can go from one to the other merely by
relabelling A1 and A2 as "alleles" rather than as "individuals" and
calling the pair a zygote (Hamilton 1971, Holt 1983, Maynard Smith
1987, Wilson 1983, 1989, 1990).

Continuing our example, suppose that a mutant type (A3) arises that
rushes onto the lily pad at the moment of arrival, kicking the boat
away and setting its hapless partner adrift. If both members of the
pair are the A3 type, however, they collide and have a probability of
drowning. The pay-off matrix for this situation is shown in figure 3b
and the average fitness of the two types is WA1=p(5)+(1-p)(0) and
WA3=p(10)+(1-p)(2).

This model is more interesting because it constitutes a social
dilemma. A3 evolves despite the fact that it disrupts group-level
functional organization. Applying our procedure, we find that the
nasty behavior is favored by within-group selection; A3 is more fit
than A1 within pairs. Cooperation, as before, is favored by between
group-selection; A1A1 and A1A3 pairs are more fit than A3A3 pairs. By
renaming the individuals "alleles" and the pairs "zygotes", we have
the example of meiotic drive described on page 14.

Continuing our example, suppose that a new mutant (A4) arises that can
remember the previous behavior of its partner. It acts honorably
toward new partners and thereafter imitates its partner's previous
behavior. This is the famous Tit-for-Tat strategy (Axelrod and
Hamilton 1981) that can evolve above a threshold frequency, given a
sufficient probability of future interactions (fig 3c). Applying our
procedure, we find that natural selection still favors A3 over A4
within pairs because A4 loses during the first interaction. A4 reduces
but does not eliminate its fitness disadvantage within groups by
changing its behavior and it evolves only because groups of A4A4
outperform groups of A4A3 and A3A3.15

Finally, suppose that yet another mutant arises (A5) that grabs hold
of its partner with one of its free legs, preventing it from leaping
prematurely onto the lily pad. The pay-off matrix for A5 vs. A3 is
shown in figure 3d. Applying our procedure, we find that fitness
differences within groups have been eliminated while between-group
selection still favors A5A5 and A5A3 over A3A3. A5 is like a dominant
allele in the sense that A5A5 and A5A3 groups are phenotypically
identical. Within- group selection has been eliminated by an evolved
trait. Once again the pair has achieved a harmony and coordination
that invites comparison with an organism, but with some safe-guards
built in, similar to the rules of fair meiosis at the genetic level.

How was it possible for Dawkins and virtually all other evolutionary
biologists to regard game theory as an individualistic theory that
does not require group selection? The answer is that groups were
treated as "environments" inhabited by individuals, in exactly the
same sense that Williams regarded individuals as "environments"
inhabited by genes. Averaging the fitness of individual types across
groups combines selection at all levels into a single measure of
"individual fitness" that correctly predicts the outcome of natural
selection but loses sight of the vehicles that natural selection
actually acts upon. Selection can operate entirely at the group level
(as it does in figure 3a and d) and still be represented in terms of
individual fitnesses simply because the average A2 (or A5) is more fit
than the average A1 (or A3). This definition of what "individual
selection" favors is synonymous with "anything that evolves,
regardless of the vehicles of selection". Of course, individuals are
not replicators and we can make them disappear along with groups by
averaging the fitness of genes across all contexts, arriving at a
definition of "gene selection" as "anything that evolves, regardless
of the vehicles of selection". These bloated definitions of individual
and gene selection have misled a generation of biologists into
thinking that natural selection almost never occurs at the level of
groups.

In this review we have concentrated on showing how the seemingly
alternative theories of kin selection, evolutionary game theory and
group selection have been united into a single theory of natural
selection acting on a nested hierarchy of units. The unified theory
does more than redescribe the familiar results of kin selection and
game theory, however; it also predicts that natural selection can
operate on units that were never anticipated by kin selection and game
theory, such as multigenerational groups founded by a few individuals
(e.g., Aviles 1993, Wilson 1987), large groups of unrelated
individuals (Boyd and Richerson 1985, 1990a,b), and even multispecies
communities (Goodnight 1990a,b; Wilson 1976,1980, 1987). For example,
accounts of human evolution that are based on nepotism and reciprocity
often conclude that prosocial behavior in modern humans is maladaptive
because it is not confined to genetic relatives and is often given
without expectation of return benefits (e.g., Ruse 1986; but see
Alexander 1987). Later we will argue that these prosocial behaviors
can be adaptive because group-level vehicles exist that are larger
than the kin groups and very small groups modelled by kin selection
and evolutionary game theory.

We summarize our review of group selection in biology as follows:
Williams' (1966) argument against group selection came in three parts:
a) higher-level adaptations require higher levels of selection, b)
higher levels of selection are theoretically possible but unlikely to
occur in nature, c) the gene is the fundamental unit of selection
because it is a replicator. The third part of this argument is
irrelevant to the question of whether groups can be like individuals
in the harmony and coordination of their parts. As far as we can tell,
all gene-centered theorists now concede this point (e.g., Dawkins
1982, 1989, Grafen 1984, Williams 1992). Taking vehicles seriously
requires more than acknowledging a few cases of group selection,
however; it demands a restructuring of the entire edifice. It is a
mistake to think there is one weak group-level theory and two strong
individual-level theories to explain the evolution of
altruism/cooperation. Rather, there is one theory of natural selection
operating on a nested hierarchy of units, of which inclusive fitness
and game theory are special cases. When we focus on vehicles of
selection, the empirical claim that constitutes the second part of
Williams' argument disintegrates but the first part remains intact.
Adaptation at any level of the biological hierarchy requires a process
of natural selection at that level.

As might be expected from such a radical restructuring, some
biologists who previously regarded group selection with contempt have
found it difficult to accept this Cinderella-like reversal of
fortunes. Thus, a large group of knowledgeable biologists who are
perfectly comfortable with the hierarchical approach (see table 1)
coexists with another large group whose members adhere to the earlier
view. We think that the views of the former group are in the process
of replacing the views of the latter. The replacement process is
painfully slow, however, partly because the gene- centered view is so
thoroughly entrenched and partly because the major gene-centered
theorists have been reluctant to acknowledge the consequences of
taking vehicles seriously. As one example, Sterelny and Kitcher (1988)
manage to defend the selfish gene concept without even considering the
question of whether groups can be vehicles of selection.16 We make
these bold statements to provoke a response. If gene-centered
theorists wish to rebut our account, let them speak in the commentary
section that follows this paper. Otherwise, let the replacement
process continue at a faster pace. All of the major developments that
we have reviewed are over ten years old and it is time for them to be
acknowledged generally.

GROUP SELECTION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR17

In his description of honey bee colonies as superorganisms, Seeley
(1989 p546) wrote that "...larger and more complex vehicles have
evidently proved superior to smaller and simpler vehicles in certain
ecological settings. By virtue of its greater size and mobility and
other traits, a multicellular organism is sometimes a better
gene-survival machine than is a single eukaryotic cell...Likewise, the
genes inside organisms sometimes fare better when they reside in an
integrated society of organisms rather than in a single organism
because of superior defensive, feeding, and homeostatic abilities of
functionally organized groups."

This statement applies almost as well to humans as to honeybees.
Nevertheless, group-level functional organization in humans is usually
portrayed as a byproduct of individual self-interest. Even the most
recent evolutionary accounts of human behavior are based on Williams'
first commandment and the triumph of "individual selection" in biology
is often used to justify the individualistic perspective in the human
behavioral sciences.

We think that the hierarchical theory of natural selection leads to a
very different conclusion. Individualism in biology and in the human
sciences both fail for the same reasons. As far as human evolution is
concerned, group-level functional organization is not a "byproduct" of
self-interest in humans any more than it is in honeybees. The
metapopulation structure of human interactions is manifest;
individuals live in social groups which themselves comprise a
population of social groups. Even a relatively small social unit such
as a village is a metapopulation of still smaller groups such as
kinship units or coalitions of unrelated individuals. Genetic
variation among human groups is not as great as among bee hives, but,
as we will attempt to show, human cognitive abilities provide other
mechanisms for concentrating natural selection at the group level,
even when the groups are composed of large numbers of unrelated
individuals (also see Alexander 1987, 1989, Boyd and Richerson
1985,1990, Knauft 1991).

Individualistic accounts of human behavior do not ignore these facts
(e.g., Alexander 1979, 1987, 1989, 1992), but they are able to remain
individualistic only by ignoring the concept of vehicles. As soon as
we make vehicles the center of our analysis, group selection emerges
as an important force in human evolution and the functional
organization of human groups can be interpreted at face value, as
adaptations that evolve because groups expressing the adaptations
outcompeted other groups. The same adaptations can be and often are
selectively neutral or even disadvantageous within groups. In the
following sections we will sketch some of the implications of the
hierarchical view for the study of human behavior.

The new group selection is not a return to naive group selection. Some
biologists have been reluctant to accept group selection in any form
because they fear it will encourage the uncritical thinking of Emerson
and others who simply assumed the existence of higher-level
adaptations (e.g., Maynard Smith 1987a,b). Behavioral scientists may
share this reluctance because every branch of the human sciences seems
to have thinkers like Emerson (1960) and Wynne-Edwards (1962, 1986)
who treat social groups as the unit of adaptation as if individuals
and their strivings scarcely exist. We therefore want to stress, in
the strongest possible terms, that these views are not supported by
modern group selection theory. Consider the example within biology of
the Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock 1979), which portrays the entire planet
as a self-regulating organism. Even a passing knowledge of group
selection theory exposes Gaia as just another pretty metaphor because
planet-level adaptation would require a process of between-planet
selection (Wilson and Sober 1989). Grandiose theories of human
societies as organisms would be correct only if natural selection
operated entirely at the society level, which no one proposes. The
hierarchical theory's attention to mechanism makes it easy to
discredit such "theories" both in biology and the human sciences.

Groups are real. Having distanced ourselves from naive group
selection, we want to stress with equal force that it is legitimate to
treat social groups as organisms, to the extent that natural selection
operates at the group level. Williams' first commandment ("Thou shalt
not apply the adaptationist program above the individual level") is
fundamentally wrong. To see this, consider a simplified situation in
which natural selection acts entirely at the individual level, in
which case genes within individuals become entirely cooperative and
individuals within the population frequently face conflicts of
interest that lead to social dilemmas. Employing the adaptationist
program at the individual level leads to the celebrated insights that
we discussed at the beginning of this paper. Employing the
adaptationist program at the population level leads to the errors of
naive group selection that Williams so effectively exposed. But now
suppose that someone misleadingly suggests that we should not employ
the adaptationist program at the individual level--that the fitness of
individuals is actually irrelevant to the evolutionary process; it is
only gene-level fitness that counts. This misleading advice would have
us apply the adaptationist program below the level at which natural
selection actually operates.

In a sense, this is just what the gene's-eye view of Williams and
Dawkins invites us to do. Even they do not take it seriously enough to
abandon the individual's-eye view, however, since they assert the
equivalence of gene fitness and individual fitness when the latter are
vehicles of selection. In practice, most biologists pay passing
tribute to the gene as the "fundamental" unit of selection and think
about adaptation at the individual level as they always have (e.g.,
Grafen 1984, quoted in note 4; Maynard Smith 1987a, p 125). We submit
that evolutionary biologists would be severely handicapped if they
could not ask the simple question "what would a well adapted
individual be like?" Yet that is the very question that is prohibited
at the group level by Williams' first commandment. If commandments are
needed, we suggest the following: "Thou shalt not apply the
adaptationist program either above or below the level(s) at which
natural selection operates". This statement avoids both the excesses
of naive group selection and the excesses of naive individual and gene
selection that we have outlined above.

According to Campbell (1993 p1), the human behavioral sciences are
dominated by something very similar to Williams' first commandment:

Methodological individualism dominates our neighboring field of
economics, much of sociology, and all of psychology's excursions into
organizational theory. This is the dogma that all human social group
processes are to be explained by laws of individual behavior--that
groups and social organizations have no ontological reality--that
where used, references to organizations, etc. are but convenient
summaries of individual behavior...We must reject methodological
individualism as an a priori assumption, make the issue an empirical
one, and take the position that groups, human social organizations,
might be ontologically real, with laws not derivable from individual
psychology...One of my favorite early papers (Campbell 1958)
explicitly sides with that strident minority of sociologists who
assert that "Groups are real!" even though it finds human
organizations "fuzzier" than stones or white rats.

The hierarchical theory of natural selection provides an excellent
justification for regarding groups as "real". Groups are "real" to the
extent that they become functionally organized by natural selection at
the group level. However, for traits that evolve by within-group
selection, groups really should be regarded as by-products of
individual behavior. Since group selection is seldom the only force
operating on a trait, the hierarchical theory explains both the
reality of groups that Campbell emphasizes and the genuinely
individualistic side of human nature that is also an essential part of
his thinking.18

Altruism and organism. Group selection is often studied as a mechanism
for the evolution of altruism. We have also seen that groups become
organisms to the extent that natural selection operates at the group
level. Although the concepts of altruism and organism are closely
related, there is also an important difference. Altruism involves a
conflict between levels of selection. Groups of altruists beat groups
of nonaltruists, but nonaltruists also beat altruists within groups.
As natural selection becomes concentrated at the group level,
converting the group into an organism, the self-sacrificial component
of altruism disappears. In other words, an object can be an organism
without tts parts behaving self- sacrificially.

The distinction between altruism and the interactions among parts of
an organism is illustrated by our fanciful cricket example. The four
pay- off matrices in figure 3 represent a) pure between-group
selection, b) strong conflict between levels of selection, c) weak
conflict between levels of selection, and d) a return to pure
between-group selection. Within-group selection is absent from the
first example by virtue of the situation, since coordination has an
equal effect on both occupants of the leaf. Within-group selection is
absent from the fourth example by virtue of an adaptation, since the
"outlaw" A3 type cannot operate in the presence of the "parliament" A5
type.

It might seem that group-level adaptations would be easiest to
recognize in group-level organisms. Ironically, the opposite is true,
at least from the individualistic perspective. Individualists
acknowledge group-level adaptations when they are easily exploited
within groups, but when they are protected, or when exploitation is
not possible by virtue of the situation, group-level adaptations are
seen as examples of individual self-interest, despite the fact that
they evolve purely by between-group selection and result in total
within-group coordination. Payoff matrices such as 3a and 3d are
seldom even considered by game theorists because their outcome is so
obvious. In the absence of fitness differences within groups, any
amount of genetic variation between groups is sufficient to select for
A1 and A5, including the variation that is caused by random pairing.
It is only by adding within-group selection that we can generate the
social dilemmas that are deemed interesting enough to model. But A1
and A5 should not be viewed as examples of self-interest just because
they easily evolve! As we have seen, groups are the vehicles of
selection in these examples as surely as individuals are the vehicles
in standard Darwinian selection. To call A1 and A5 examples of
self-interest is to place them in the same category as A3, which
evolves by within-group selection and disrupts group-level
organization. Putting it another way, by lumping together the products
of within- and between-group selection, the individualistic
perspective does not distinguish between the outlaw and the
parliament, turning oself-interest@ into a concept that is as empty as
it is universal.

Failure to recognize group-level adaptation in the absence of altruism
extends far beyond game theory. We present an example from Alexander
(1987) in detail, in part because he is one of the most influential
biologists writing on human evolution. Alexander envisions moral
systems as levelers of reproductive opportunities within groups:

The tendency in the development of the largest human groups, although
not always consistent, seems to be toward equality of opportunity for
every individual to reproduce via its own offspring. Because human
social groups are not enormous nuclear families, like social insect
colonies, ...competition and conflicts of interest are also diverse
and complex to an unparalleled degree. Hence, I believe, derives our
topic of moral systems. We can ask legitimately whether or not the
trend toward greater leveling of reproductive opportunities in the
largest, most stable human groups indicates that such groups (nations)
are the most difficult to hold together without the promise or reality
of equality of opportunity (p69).19

Alexander explicitly compares human moral systems to the genetic rules
of meiosis that eliminate fitness differences within individuals:

A corollary to reproductive opportunity leveling in humans may occur
through mitosis and meiosis in sexual organisms. It has generally been
overlooked that these very widely studied processes are so designed as
usually to give each gene or other genetic subunit of the genome...the
same opportunity as any other of appearing in the daughter cells...It
is not inappropriate to speculate that the leveling of reproductive
opportunity for intragenomic components--regardless of its
mechanism--is a prerequisite for the remarkable unity of
genomes...[p69]

Since the rules of meiosis concentrate natural selection at the
individual level, producing individual-level organisms, moral rules
must concentrate natural selection at the group level, producing
group-level organisms--right? Wrong. Here is Alexander's verdict on
group selection:

Finally, many easily made observations on organisms indicate that
selection is most effective below group levels. These include such
things as evidence of conflicts among individuals within social
groups, failure of semelparous organisms (one-time breeders) to forego
reproduction when resources are scarce, and strong resistance to
adopting nonrelatives by individuals evidently long evolved in social
groups. None of these observations is likely if the individual's
interests are consistently the same as those of the group or if, to
put it differently, allelic survival typically were most affected by
selection at the group level (p37-8).

All of these examples involve altruistic traits that are highly
vulnerable to exploitation within groups. The only evidence that
Alexander will accept for group selection is extreme self-sacrifice.
Somehow, Alexander manages to combine a strong emphasis on
between-group competition and opportunity leveling within groups with
a belief that group selection can be dismissed and that everything,
parliaments and outlaws alike, are products of self interest.20 To
make matters worse, Alexander speaks for the majority of biologists
interested in human behavior. For example, here is Daly and Wilson's
(1988 p254) tidy statement about human morality:

If conscience and empathy were impediments to the advancement of self-
interest, then we would have evolved to be amoral sociopaths. Rather
than representing the denial of self-interest, our moral sensibilities
must be intelligible as means to the end of fitness in the social
environment in which we evolved.

We hope the reader recognizes the familiar pattern of treating groups
as "environments" inhabited by individuals and defining self-interest
as "anything that evolves" without any consideration of vehicles.
Alexander, Daly and Wilson join the anti-group selection chorus and
then provide dozens of examples of human groups as vehicles of
selection without ever acknowledging what gene-centered theorists have
already conceded--that group selection is a "vehicle" question.

Alexander's theory of moral systems can be rebuilt on the foundation
of vehicles as follows: Human adaptations can evolve along two major
pathways; a) by increasing the fitness of individuals relative to
others within the same social group, and b) by increasing the fitness
of social groups as collectives, relative to other social groups. Both
pathways have been important in the evolution of the psychological
mechanisms that govern human behavior. Sometimes group selection is
important just by virtue of the situation. For example, the only way
to defend a village might be to build a stockade, which benefits the
collective by its nature. We are not surprised to see villagers
building stockades, even when they are genetically unrelated to each
other. We are not surprised when they coordinate their efforts in ways
that invite comparison to a single organism. Nor do we regard them as
especially morally praiseworthy as they feverishly work to save their
collective skins. But building the stockade is not selfish just
because it is reasonable. Applying our procedure, we find that the
village is the vehicle of selection. We expect the stockade to be
built for the same reason that we expect A1 and A5 to evolve in the
game theory models; because in this particular situation group-level
selection is very strong relative to within-group selection. If we
define behaviors on the basis of fitness effects (as all evolutionists
do), and if we want our terminology to reflect the vehicle(s) that
natural selection acts upon, we should call stockade-building
groupish, not selfish.

Many other situations in human life provide opportunities for
adaptation via the first pathway, by increasing the fitness of
individuals relative to others within the same social group. Even with
our stockade example we can imagine a temptation to selfishly
cultivate one's own garden or romantic possibilities as others build
the stockade. The use of the word selfish is fully appropriate here
because the individual is the vehicle of selection whose behaviors
tend to disrupt group-level functional organization.

The balance between levels of selection is not determined exclusively
by the situation, however. Adaptive human behavior not only reflects
the balance between levels,but also can alter the balance between
levels. Moral sentiments and moral social systems may function as
"rules of meiosis" that often concentrate fitness differences, and
therefore functional organization, at the group level. This is the
core of Alexander's thesis. When stated in terms of vehicles, however,
AlexanderYs theory acquires a familiar and conventional ring that is
absent from his own account. Moral systems are defined as "social
organizations designed to maximize the benefit of the group as a
collective." Immoral behaviors are defined as "behaviors that benefit
individuals at the expense of other individuals within the same
group." These are close to the concepts of moral and immoral behavior
in folk psychology.21 The shock value of Alexander's account, in which
the gentle reader is made to face the grim reality that all is
self-interest, evaporates when we realize that for Alexander,
self-interest is everything that evolves, at all levels of the
biological hierarchy.22

We will return to moral systems with an empirical example, but first
we must consider the important issue of psychological motivation.

Psychological selfishness and its alternatives. Dawkins portrays genes
as psychologically selfish entities that manipulate their environment,
including the genotypic environment in which they reside, to increase
their own fitness. This image is obviously metaphorical, allowing
Dawkins to use a familiar human reasoning process to describe the
outcome of natural selection. The metaphor is relatively innocuous
because there is no danger that it can be taken literally. No one
believes that genes are intentional systems of any sort, much less
systems motivated by self interest.

Frame-shifting upward, it is possible to portray individuals as
psychologically selfish entities that manipulate their environment,
including the social environment in which they reside, to increase
their own fitness. This image of "selfish individuals" may also be
metaphorical but it is more insidious because it can be taken
literally. In other words, it is possible to believe that individuals
really are intentional systems motivated entirely by self-interest and
this is, in fact, the individualistic perspective that pervades the
human sciences.

To distinguish mechanisms from metaphors, it is useful to think of a
psychological motive as a strategy in the game theoretic sense, which
produces a set of outcomes when it interacts with itself and with
other strategies. Thus, a psychologically selfish individual (however
defined) will be motivated to behave in certain ways with consequences
for itself and others. A psychologically altruistic individual
(however defined) will be motivated to behave in other ways with a
different set of payoffs. Within an evolutionary framework, the
empirical claim that individuals are motivated entirely by
self-interest must be supported by showing that the psychologically
selfish strategy prevails in competition with all other strategies.

Psychological motives have seldom been analyzed in this way (but see
Frank 1988, Alexander 1987) and we suggest that it will be a
productive line of inquiry in the future. We also predict that two
general conclusions will emerge: First, it is extremely unlikely that
any single strategy will prevail against all other strategies. Even
the famous Tit-for-Tat strategy, which is robust in the narrow context
of Axelrod's (1980 a,b) computer tournaments, is vulnerable to a host
of other strategies in more complex and realistic environments (e.g.,
Boyd and Lorberbaum 1987, Dugatkin and Wilson 1991, Feldman and Thomas
1987, Peck and Feldman 1986). Thus, any monolithic theory of proximate
motives is destined to fail, including the monolithic theory of
psychological selfishness. We should expect a diversity of motives in
the human repertoire that is distributed both within and among
individuals.

Second, the very opposite of psychological selfishness can be highly
successful, especially when natural selection operates at the group
level. To see this, consider an individual who identifies so
thoroughly with his group that he doesn't even consider the
possibility of profiting at the expense of his fellows. This
individual will be vulnerable to exploitation by members of his own
group who are less civic-minded. But groups of individuals who think
in this way will probably be superior in competition with other groups
whose members are less civic-minded. It follows that intense
between-group competition will favor psychological mechanisms that
blur the distinction between group and individual welfare,
concentrating functional organization at the group level. Alexander
(1988) himself provides a good example in a review of Richards (1987)
when he describes his own military experience:

In the army in which I served one was schooled so effectively to serve
the welfare of his unit (community?) that not only the contract
altruism that Richards says is inferior to his "pure" altruism, but
the intent that he requires,both disappear in a kind of automaticity
that ceases to involve any deliberateness, either in maintenance of
the contract signed when drafted or enlisted, or in explicitly serving
the rest of one's unit [p443].

Quibbles about the definition of altruism aside, nothing more is
required to convert a social group into an organism. Critics may argue
that the selfless attitude of a well-trained soldier is not adopted by
individual choice but imposed by an indoctrination process and
reinforced by sanctions against disloyalty that make it
disadvantageous to cheat. We disagree in two ways. First, individuals
are not always drafted into these groups and often rush to join them,
enthusiastically embracing the doctrine, refraining from cheating and
enforcing the sanctions against others. Their self-interest is not
taken from them but willingly abandoned. Second, even when imposed,
indoctrination and sanctions are best regarded as group-level rules of
meiosis that reduce the potential for fitness differences within
groups, concentrating functional organization at the group level. An
entity can be an organism without the parts behaving
self-sacrificially (for an evolutionary model of psychological
altruism per se, see Frank 1988).

Since humans have lived in small groups throughout their history, it
is reasonable to expect the evolution of psychological mechanisms that
cause them to easily become "team players" in competition with other
groups. We do not expect these to be the only motives that guide human
behavior, but rather a module that is facultatively employed under
appropriate conditions. In fact, there is abundant empirical evidence
that humans coalesce into cooperative teams at the merest suggestion
of a metapopulation structure in which groups can compete against
other groups (e.g., Dawes et al 1988, Hogg and Abrams 1988, Sherif et
al 1961, Tajfel 1981 ). Members of the same group often share a
feeling of high regard, friendship and trust that is based not on any
prior experience but merely by the fact that they are members of the
same group. Exploitation within groups is often avoided even when
opportunities are experimentally provided without any chance of
detection (e.g., Caporeal et al 1989). Group formation is as
spontaneous in children as in adults (e.g., Sherif et al 1961). These
are the earmarks of an evolved "Darwinian algorithm" (sensu Cosmides
and Tooby 1987) that predisposes humans for life in functionally
organized groups. The algorithm appears paradoxical only when we
consider its vulnerability to more selfish algorithms within groups.
The advantages at the group level are manifest.

It is important to stress that we have not merely converged on a view
that is already well accepted within the human sciences. Proponents of
alternatives to psychological selfishness are better described as an
embattled minority who must constantly defend themselves against a
monolithic individualistic world view (e.g., Batson 1991, Caporeal et
al 1989, Campbell 1993, Mansbridge 1990, Simon 1991). As one example,
most economists assume that individuals act in the interest of the
company that employs them only because the company pays them enough to
make it worthwhile from the standpoint of the individual's personal
utility. According to Simon (1991), real people who are satisfied with
their jobs do not distinguish between their own and their company's
utility, but rather adopt the company's interest as their own
interest. Even the lowest level employees make executive decisions
that require asking the question "what is best for the company?" and
which go far beyond the actual requirements of the job. In fact, one
of the most effective forms of protest by dissatisfied employees is
"work to rule", in which people perform their jobs to the letter and
the company comes to a grinding halt. In modern life as in ancient
times, group-level function requires individuals who to a significant
degree take the group's goals as their own. This is a radical proposal
within economics, however, and not the majority view.

Group-level cognition. Goal-oriented behaviors are typically
accomplished by a feedback process that includes the gathering and
processing of information. While the entire process can be described
as intentional (e.g., the wolf tries to catch the deer), the elements
of the process cannot (the neuron does not try to fire; it merely does
fire when stimulated at enough synapses; Dennett 1981).

We are accustomed to regarding individuals as intentional systems with
their own self-contained feedback processes. Group selection raises
another possibility in which the feedback process is distributed among
members of the group. We have already provided an example for honeybee
colonies in which individuals behave more like neurons than as
intentional agents in their own right. Similar examples have scarcely
been considered for humans and our main purpose here is to define the
question, rather than answer it.

Modern governmental and judicial systems are sometimes designed to
produce adaptive outcomes at the level of the whole system but not at
the level of the component individuals. Science is sometimes portrayed
as a similar process that generates knowledge only at the group level
(e.g., Hull 1988, Kitcher 1993). The invisible hand metaphor in
economics invokes the image of an adaptive system that organizes
itself out of neuron-like components, although the metaphor is more
often stated as an ideology than as a testable research program.23

The invisible hand notwithstanding, research on decision making in
small groups reveals a complex process that does not always yield
adaptive solutions (Hendrick 1987a,b). Groups even make decisions that
would be regarded as foolish by every member of the group (Allison and
Messick 1987). This research is important because it shows that
intelligent individuals do not automatically combine to form
intelligent groups. Adaptive decision-making at the small group level
may require a highly specified cognitive division of labor. Since
decision-making has occurred in small groups throughout human history,
it is reasonable to expect "Darwinian algorithms" that cause
individuals to relinquish their capacity to act as autonomous
intentional agents and adopt a more limited role in a group-level
cognitive structure. The architecture of group-level cognition might
simply take the form of "leaders" who act as self- contained
intentional agents and "followers" who abide by the decisions of
others. Alternatively, even so-called "leaders" may be specialists in
a feedback process that is distributed throughout the group. These
questions can only be asked by recognizing the group as a potentially
adaptive entity.

An example of a human group-level oorganism at . We conclude by providing
a possible example of extreme group-level functional organization in
humans and the background conditions that make it possible. The
Hutterites are a fundamentalist religious sect that originated in
Europe in the sixteenth century and migrated to North America in the
nineteenth century to escape conscription. The Hutterites regard
themselves as the human equivalent of a bee colony. They practice
community of goods (no private ownership) and also cultivate a
psychological attitude of extreme selflessness. The ultimate Hutterite
virtue is oGelassenheit@, a word that has no English equivalent, which
includes othe grateful acceptance of whatever God gives, even
suffering and death, the forsaking of all self- will, all selfishness,
all concern for private property@ (Ehrenpreis 1650/1978). Nepotism and
reciprocity, the two principles that most evolutionists use to explain
prosocial behavior in humans, are scorned by the Hutterites as
immoral. Giving must be without regard to relatedness and without any
expectation of return. The passion for selflessness is more than just
sermonizing and frequently manifests itself in action. For example,
Claus FelbingerYs oConfession of faith@ (1560/1978) provides an
eloquent statement that a Hutterite blacksmith gave to Bavarian
authorities after their efforts to make him recant had failed and
before they executed him for his beliefs.

The extreme selflessness of the Hutterites can be explained in at
least three ways. First, many authors, both inside and outside of
biology, think of culture as a process that frequently causes humans
to behave in ways that are biologically maladaptive. By this account,
the Hutterites are influenced by (unspecified) cultural forces and
their behavior cannot be explained by any biological theory, including
the theory of group selection.

Second, some evolutionists have tried to explain widespread altruism
in humans as a product of manipulation, in which the putative
altruists are essentially duped into behaving against their own
interests for the benefit of the manipulator (e.g., Dawkins
1982,1989). If people can be fooled into believing that a life of
sacrifice will lead to a pleasant afterlife, for example, then
perpetrating that belief in others becomes an example of individual
self-interest. By this account, we might expect some Hutterites (such
as the leaders) to profit at the expense of their duped brethren.

Third, it is possible that humans have evolved to willingly engage in
selfless behavior whenever it is protected by a social organization
that constitutes a group-level vehicle of selection. The relatively
small group- level vehicles of kinship groups and cooperating diads
are already well recognized. The hypothesis we wish to explore asserts
that the Hutterites constitute a less familiar case in which the
vehicle is a relatively large group of individuals and families that
are genetically unrelated to each other. If this interpretation is
correct, then group selection theory should be able to predict some
major features of Hutterite social organization and ideology, despite
the fact that it is stated in purely religious terms. In particular,
the prediction is that the bee-like behavior of the Hutterites is
promoted by a social organization and ideology that nearly eliminates
the potential for individuals to increase their fitness relative to
others within groups.24 Note that the other two interpretations do not
make the same prediction. If Hutterite society is governed by
independent cultural forces, it is unlikely to have the specific
design features of a group-level vehicle. And if selflessness is a
product of manipulation, we should find fitness differences between
the puppets and the puppeteers.

A number of caveats are in order before proceeding. First, we do not
claim to rigorously distinguish among the above three explanations in
the confines of this review article. The best that we can do is
provide a brief sketch, which is nevertheless important because it
makes the preceding discussion less abstract and gives an idea of what
a group-level vehicle of selection might look like in humans. Second,
we do not regard the Hutterite social organization as a direct product
of group selection. Rather, we conjecture that group selection has
operated throughout human history, endowing the human psyche with the
ability to construct and live within group-level vehicles of the sort
exhibited by the Hutterites.25 This enables us to make another
prediction, that the Hutterite social organization is not unique but
represents a fairly common type of social organization in ancestral
environments. Otherwise it could not be interpreted as an evolved
adaptation. As one of many possible social organizations in the human
repetoire, this one is presumably evoked only under appropriate
environmental conditions, yielding another set of testable
predictions. Third, evolutionary psychologists rely on fitness
maximizing arguments to explain the human psyche, but they do not
necessarily expect humans to maximize biological fitness in present
day environments. This is because, to the extent that humans are
oprogrammed@ by natural selection, it is not to maximize biological
fitness per se but only to achieve the more proximate goals that led
to high fitness in ancestral environments. Thus, we must focus more on
the design features and what they would have meant in ancestral
environments than on the present day consequences of the design
features (Symons 1992). This is a general issue in evolutionary
psychology that applies to the Hutterites as well as any other group.

With these caveats in mind, we now will elaborate the idea that
Hutterite society is a group-level vehicle of selection. Although
their ideology is stated in purely religious terms, it is clearly
designed to suppress behaviors that benefit some individuals at the
expense of others within groups:

That is what Jesus means by His parable of the great banquet and the
wedding of the king's son, when the servants were sent to call all the
people together. Why did his anger fall on those who had been invited
first? Because they let their private, domestic concerns keep them
away. Again and again we see that man with his present nature finds it
very hard to practice true community; true community feeds the poor
every day at breakfast, dinner, and the common supper table. Men hang
on to property like caterpillars to a cabbage leaf. Self-will and
selfishness constantly stand in the way! [Ehrenpreis 1650/1978 p
11-12]

Benefitting the group is exalted as highly as selfishness within
groups is reviled:

Where there is no community there is no true love. True love means
growth for the whole organism, whose members are all interdependent
and serve each other. That is the outward form of the inner working of
the Spirit, the organism of the Body governed by Christ. We see the
same thing among the bees, who all work with equal zeal gathering
honey; none of them hold anything back for selfish needs. They fly
hither and yon with the greatest zeal and live in community together.
Not one of them keeps any property for itself. If only we did not love
our property and our own will! If only we loved the life of poverty as
Jesus showed it, if only we loved obedience to God as much as we love
being rich and respected! If only everybody did not hang on to his own
will! Then the truth of Christ's death would not appear as
foolishness. Instead, it would be the power of God, which saves us.
[Ehrenpreis 1650/1978 p12-13]

Thus the Hutterites are as explicit as they can possibly be that their
members should merge themselves into a group-level organism. They are
also explicit about how group-level functional organization can be
accomplished. In the first place, the Hutterites believe that
selfishness is an innate part of human nature that can never be fully
irradicated:

The sinner lies in all of us; in fact to sin, to be selfish,is our
present inclination. Left to ourselves we shall end up in damnation,
but this does not mean that salvation cannot be attained. On the
contrary, salvation is possible on three conditions: we live according
to the life of Christ; we live in community; we strive very hard to
attain salvation and are prepared to suffer for our efforts. Christ
appeared to save us from our sinful nature. This nature is not easily
abjured but it can if we try hard enough, both in the sense of
personal determination and in the sense of collectively living
according to the Word (Shenker 1986 p73).

If we were to translate this sentiment into evolutionary language, we
would arrive at the claim that within-group selection has been a
powerful (but not the only) force in human evolution and has stamped
itself upon the human psyche. To the extent that humans are the
products of natural selection, they are inclined to benefit themselves
at the expense of others within their group whenever it is
evolutionarily advantageous to do so (at least in ancestral
environments). To create a group-level organism, the part of human
nature that has evolved by within-group selection must be constrained
by a social organization that plays the same functional role as the
genetic rules of meiosis.

The most important ingredient of this social organization is evidently
a sense of oshared fate@:

The community can "hang together" only through the members having an
identity of fate. In practice this means two things. Members must
identify with the past and (more important) with the future of the
community, such that their own future and the community's future are
one and the same. We rise and fall together. This is another way of
saying we have unconditional commitment to our community. We do not
say "if the community does or achieves such and such, then I will
stay, otherwise I won't", since this implies that there is an
individual identity ontologically and morally distinct from the
community's. No true community could operate successfully or manifest
its raison d'etre with such limiting conditions or separate
identities. Identity of fate also means that members relate to each
other in an atmosphere of mutual trust, i.e. they consider their
presence to stem from a common desire to express their humanity and
recognize that this can only be achieved through mutual effort. Should
one person claim that he has an inherent right to gain for himself at
the expense of others, the entire fabric collapses. Life in the
community presupposes that each will work for the benefit of others as
much as for himself, that no-one will be egoistic. The moment this
assumption is undermined, mutual suspicion, jealousy and mistrust
arise. Not only will people probably consider themselves silly for
being self- righteous while others are feathering their nest,but
operationally the community will have to take a different character
(primarily through the use of coercion) and the entire moral nature of
the community disappears. (Shenker 1986 p93)

We could not ask for a stronger correspondence between the sentiment
expressed in this passage and the concept of ovehicles@ in a group
selection model.

One way to establish a sense of shared fate is via egalitarian social
conventions that make it difficult to benefit oneself at the expense
of others. Hutterite society is elaborately organized along these
lines. In addition to practicing community of goods, they discourage
individuality of any sort, for example, in the context of personal
appearance and home furnishings. Leaders are elected democratically
and are subject to long probationary periods before they are given
their full authority. The HutteriteYs passion for fairness is perhaps
best illustrated by the rules that surround the fissioning process.
Like a honey bee colony, Hutterite brotherhoods split when they attain
a large size, with one half remaining at the original site and the
other half moving to a new site that has been pre-selected and
prepared. In preparation for the split, the colony is divided into two
groups that are equal with respect to number, age sex, skills and
personal compatibility. The entire colony packs its belongings and one
of the lists is drawn by lottery on the day of the split. The
similarity to the genetic rules of meiosis could hardly be more
complete.

In principle, we might imagine that a psychological egoist, who thinks
only in terms of personal gain, could decide to become a Hutterite if
he became convinced that the group-level benefits (which he shares)
are sufficiently great and the social conventions are sufficiently
strong that neither he nor anyone else in the group can act as a
freeloader. The Shenker passage quoted above suggests, however, that
an effective group- oriented society cannot be composed of individuals
who are motivated solely by a calculus of self-interest.26 The
external social conventions that make freeloading difficult are
evidently necessary but not sufficient and must be supplemented by a
psychological attitude of genuine concern for others; a direct
calculus of group interest rather than self interest is essential.
Recall that Simon (1991; discussed on p38) makes a similar point about
the behavior of individuals in business organizations. Thus, although
we are focusing on the Hutterites, our discussion is not limited to
esoteric communal societies, a point that we will return to below.

Even with these attitudes and social conventions, however, selfishness
in thought and action cannot be entirely eliminated. The Hutterites
therefore have a well specified procedure for dealing with members who
benefit themselves at the expense of others.

The bond of love is kept pure and intact by the correction of the Holy
Spirit. People who are burdened with vices that spread and corrupt can
have no part in it. This harmonious fellowship excludes any who are
not part of the unanimous spirit... If a man hardens himself in
rebellion, the extreme step of separation is unavoidable. Otherwise
the whole community would be dragged into his sin and become party to
it...The Apostle Paul therefore says, "Drive out the wicked person
from among you."

... In the case of minor transgressions, this discipline consists of
simple brotherly admonition. If anyone has acted wrongly toward
another but has not committed a gross sin, a rebuke and warning is
enough. But if a brother or a sister obstinately resists brotherly
correction and helpful advice, then even these relatively small things
have to be brought openly before the Church. If that brother is ready
to listen to the Church and allow himself to be set straight, the
right way to deal with the situation will be shown. Everything will be
cleared up. But if he persists in his stubbornness and refuses to
listen even to the Church, then there is only one answer in this
situation, and that is to cut him off and exclude him. It is better
for someone with a heart full of poison to be cut off than for the
entire Church to be brought into confusion or blemished.

The whole aim of this order of discipline, however, is not exclusion
but a change of heart. It is not applied for a brother's ruin, even
when he has fallen into flagrant sin, into besmirching sins of
impurity, which make him deeply guilty before God. For the sake of
example and warning, the truth must in this case be declared openly
and brought to light before the Church. Even then such a brother
should hold on to his hope and his faith. He should not go away and
leave everything but should accept and bear what is put upon him by
the Church. He should earnestly repent, no matter how many tears it
may cost him or how much suffering it may involve. At the right time,
when he is repentant, those who are united in the Church pray for him,
and all of Heaven rejoices with them. After he hasshown genuine
repentance, he is received back with great joy in a meeting of the
whole Church. They unanimously intercede for him that his sins need
never be thought of again but are forgiven and removed forever.
[Ehrenpreis 1650/1978 p66-9]

We could not ask for a more explicit awareness of the freeloader
problem and what to do about it, including the elements of retaliation
and forgiveness that are also part of the tit-for-tat strategy in
diadic interactions. If we were to translate this passage into
evolutionary language, it would be as follows: Altruism can succeed
only by segregating itself from selfishness. Not only does the selfish
individual have the highest fitness within groups, but his mere
presence signifies a population structure that favors within-group
selection, causing others to quickly abandon their own altruistic
strategy. Fortunately, in face-to-face groups whose members are
intimately familiar with each other, it is easy to detect overt forms
of selfishness and exclude the offender. When osubversion from within@
can be prevented to this extent, extreme altruism, in both thought and
action, becomes evolutionarily advantageous.

It is remarkable, and crucial for the hypothesis under consideration,
that the willingness of the Hutterites to sacrifice for others is
accompanied by such an elaborate set of rules that protect
self-sacrifice from exploitation within groups. We suggest that there
is a causal relationship here, that humans are inclined to adopt
selfless behavior in social organizations that provide the functional
equivalent of the genetic rules of meiosis. Not only do these social
organizations promote selflessness at the behavioral level, but they
also promote forms of thinking and feeling that would be classified as
non-egoistic in a psychological sense. After all, what is the
advantage of psychological selfishness if the most successful way to
behave is by contributing to group-level functional organization?

It is also crucial for our hypothesis that group-level functional
organization is, in some sense, superior to what can be accomplished
by individuals when they are free to pursue their own self interest
(recall the Seeley passage quoted on pg 27). This certainly appears to
be the case for the Hutterites, who do not have to wait for the
hereafter to get their reward. By fostering a selfless attitude
towards others and minimizing the potential for exploitation within
groups, they are spectacularly successful at the group level. In
sixteenth century Europe they were alternately tolerated and
persecuted for their economic superiority, much like the Jews, another
society that, in its traditional form, is well- organized at the group
level (MacDonald 1994). In present-day Canada, Hutterites thrive in
marginal farming habitat without the benefit of modern technology and
almost certainly would displace the non-Hutterite population in the
absence of laws that restrict their expansion. The HutteritesY success
can also be measured in reproductive terms, since they have the
highest birth rate of any known human society (Cook 1954).27 Finally,
Hutterite society is internally stable, with the majority of young
people electing to remain when given a choice. Were it not for
persecution and legal restrictions imposed by their host nations,
Hutterite colonies would be far more common than they are now.

Part of our hypothesis is that the Hutterite social organization is
not a unique product of the sixteenth century but reflects an evolved
human potential to construct and live within such group-level
vehicles. It might seem that the Hutterites are such an esoteric
society that our prediction could not possibly be confirmed. On closer
reflection, however, it appears that the functional elements of
Hutterite society that act as group-level rules of meiosis are
repeated in a great many social groups that place a premium on
group-level performance, even though the ideologies are superficially
different and the purpose of the group can be diametrically opposed to
the goals of the Hutterites (e.g., an elite military group).
Furthermore, according to Knauft (1991), this kind of egalitarianism
characterizes hunter-gatherer groups whenever resources are too widely
dispersed to allow the development of status-based societies (i.e.,
most human groups throughout human evolutionary history). The ethic of
ogood company@ (which is extended to non-kin as well as kin; e.g.
Knauft 1985) and the de-emphasized sense of self-interest that
pervades many tribal societies does indeed resemble the HutteriteYs
ocommunity@ and their denigration of oself-will at .

Another part of our hypothesis is that the human potential to build
and live within group-level vehicles is facultative and evoked more
strongly in some situations than in others. Group-level vehicles
should be most commonly observed in situations that place a premium on
group-level functional organization, such as extreme physical
environments, extreme persecution, or extreme intergroup competition.
In more benign situations, the consequences of social dilemmas are not
so dysfunctional and the effort that goes into the maintenance of
group-level vehicles may be correspondingly relaxed.28

Obviously, we have only skimmed the surface of an enormously complex
and poorly understood subject. We hope we have demonstrated the
likelihood, however, that group selection in humans extends far beyond
nepotism and narrow reciprocity. These two principles cannot account
for the full range of prosocial behaviors in humans and evolutionists
who rely on them have been forced to invoke other factors; that
prosocial behavior evolved in ancestral groups of closely related
individuals and is maladaptively expressed in modern groups of
unrelated individuals (Ruse 1986); that prosocial behavior is a form
of manipulation whereby some individuals profit at the expense of
others (Dawkins 1982, 1988); or that prosocial behavior results from
cultural forces that promote biologically maladaptive behavior
(Campbell 1983). Group selection theory provides a robust alternative:
Even large groups of unrelated individuals can be organized in a way
that makes genuinely prosocial behavior advantageous.

We have emphasized group-level functional organization in humans as an
antidote to the rampant individualism we see in the human behavioral
sciences. But it is not our goal to replace one caricature with
another. Many human groups are clearly not the oorganisms@ that we
have described above and must be explained as the product of
conflicting individual interests within the group. Evolutionary theory
has the resources to understand both conflict and cooperation. Only by
pursuing both problems- -with the group as well as the individual as
possible units of functional integration--can the human sciences come
to terms with our evolutionary heritage.

CONCLUSIONS

Maynard Smith's most recent comment on group selection includes the
following passage:

It is ...perfectly justified to study eyes (or, for that matter,
ribosomes, or foraging behaviors) on the assumption that these organs
adapt organisms for survival and reproduction. But it would not be
justified to study the fighting behavior of spiders on the assumption
that this behavior evolved because it ensures the survival of the
species, or to study the behavior of earthworms on the assumption that
it evolved because it improves the efficacy of the ecosystem. (Maynard
Smith 1987b p147)

Maynard Smith still resists what we think is the most fundamental
implication of natural selection as a hierarchical process: Higher
units of the biological hierarchy can be organisms, in exactly the
same sense that individuals are organisms, to the extent that they are
vehicles of selection. Group organisms may be less common than
individual organisms and they may be more vulnerable than individuals
to subversion from within, but this must not prevent us from
recognizing group-level functional organization where it exists.

As the most facultative species on earth, humans have the behavioral
potential to span the full continuum from organ to organism, depending
on the situations we encounter and the social organizations that we
build for ourselves. We often see ourselves as "organs". We sometimes
identify ourselves primarily as members of a group and willingly make
sacrifices for the welfare of our group. We long to be part of
something larger than ourselves. We have a passion for building,
maintaining and abiding by fair social organizations. The
individualistic perspective seems to make all of this invisible.
Because group-level functional organization can be successful, it is
labelled selfish, therefore no different from the kinds of behaviors
that succeed by disrupting group-level functional organization. But
this is just a conjurer's trick. There are compelling intellectual and
practical reasons to distinguish between behaviors that succeed by
contributing to group-level organization and behaviors that succeed by
disrupting group-level organization. That is what the words "selfish"
and "unselfish", "moral" and "immoral" are all about in everyday
language. Human behavioral scientists need to focus on these ancient
concerns, rather than obscuring them with bloated definitions of
"self-interest". A concern for within-group versus between-group
processes characterizes the human mind and it should characterize the
study of the human mind as well.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Supported by NSF SBE-9212294. DSW thanks A.B. Clark, Lee Dugatkin,
Eric Dietrich, Greg Pollock and Binghamton's EEB group.

NOTES

1) In this article we use the word oindividual@ to refer to single
flesh- and-blood creatures such as a bird or a butterfly. We use the
term oorganism@ to refer to any biological entity whose parts have
evolved to function in a harmonious and coordinated fashion.

2) The purpose of this table is to provide a reasonably complete guide
to the modern literature on group selection. A number of controversies
exist within this literature that are beyond the scope of the present
paper. For completeness we provide references for all sides of these
controversies, including those with which we disagree. The
philosophical literature on levels of selection has recently been
reviewed by Sober and Wilson (1993).

3) Williams was only one of many biologists who reacted against group
selection during the 1960's, especially in response to Wynne-Edward's
(1962) Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behavior. We do not
mean to imply that Williams was the only articulate critic, but he has
become the icon for the individualistic perspective in biology.

4) Dawkins (1982, 1989) acknowledges that the group selection
controversy is a "vehicle" question but asserts that groups are almost
never vehicles of selection, with the possible exception of the
eusocial insects. Dawkins (1989 p 297-8) and Cronin (1991 p 290) cite
Grafen (1984) as the authoritative critique of group selection but
Grafen's treatment of groups as vehicles consists of a single
parenthetical statement (p76): "(The organismal approach suggested
here is not in conflict with the the 'gene selectionism' of Dawkins
(1982a,b). In his language, we are saying that the individual is
usually a well-adapted vehicle for gene replication, while groups are
usually not)". Williams (1986 p8) states that "selection at any level
above the family (group selection in a broad sense) is unimportant for
the origin and maintenance of adaptation. I reach this conclusion by
simple inspection." More recently, Williams (1992) acknowledges that
groups are vehicles in the specific cases of eusocial insects and
female-biased sex ratio but does not generalize to other cases.

5) Cronin's (1991) The Ant and the Peacock belongs to the same genre
as Dawkins' (1976) The Selfish Gene and Gould's (1989) Wonderful life,
in which the author attempts to make the subject accessible to a
popular audience without sacrificing scholarship. As Gould (1989 p16)
put it, "...we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for
and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople".
Because these books are so accessible they tend to be influential even
among academic audiences, which is why Cronin (1991) merits criticism
despite its status as a "popular" book. Similar views can be found in
the more technical gene- centered literature (references in note 4)

6) Gould (1992) criticizes Cronin's gene-centered approach and
advocates a hierarchical view of evolution. However, he accepts the
gene-centered framework for the evolution of altruism and does not
invoke the concept of vehicles in the same sense that we do. More
generally, the concept of "species selection" that Gould emphasizes is
somewhat different from the concept of group selection that we review
here (for a discussion of the difference, see Sober 1984). This
constitutes one of the controversies within the group selection
literature mentioned in note 1.

7) The term "unit of selection" has become ambiguous because it refers
to both replicators and vehicles, depending on the author. Within the
group selection literature, "unit" equals "vehicle" and no word is
required for "replicator" because it is (and always was) assumed that
natural selection at all levels results in gene-frequency change. We
prefer the word "unit" but use the word "vehicle" in this paper to
distinguish it from replicators and also to force gene-centered
theorists to acknowledge the implications of their own framework.

8) We start at the lowest level and work up the hierarchy for
convenience, not because it is required for the procedure. Also,
unless there is uncertainty as to where fitness differences are
occuring, it is not necessary to invoke WilliamsY (1966) concept of
parsimony in this procedure.

9) Even though organisms are defined on the basis of functional
coordination among their parts, functional coordination per se does
not enter into our definition of vehicles, which is based purely on
shared fate. This is because shared fate is the crucial property of
the process of natural selection; functional coordination among the
parts is a product of the process.

10) The procedure for identifying vehicles requires some precautions
that can be illustrated by the following examples. First, imagine that
tall individuals are more fit than short individuals regardless of how
they are structured into groups. The procedure will (correctly)
identify the individual as the vehicle of selection. Nevertheless,
groups that contain more tall individuals than other groups will be
more productive, suggesting (incorrectly) that groups are also
vehicles of selection. To resolve this difficulty we must imagine
placing all individuals in a single group. Tall individuals are still
most fit, demonstrating that the metapopulation structure is
irrelevant . As a second example, imagine that the fitness of everyone
in a group is directly proportional to the average hight of the group.
Our procedure (correctly) identifies the group as the vehicle of
selection because there are no fitness differences between individuals
within groups. To confirm this result, imagine placing all individuals
in the same group. The fitness of tall and short individuals are
identical, demonstrating that the metapopulation structure is
necessary for tallness to evolve (Sober 1984; see also Goodnight et al
1992, Heisler and Damuth 1987, Walton 1991). Another problem arises
when a trait has already evolved to fixation. To apply the procedure
we must conduct a thought experiment (or a real experiment) in which
alternative types are present. Although other refinements in our
procedure may be needed, we believe that they don't require discussion
in the present context.

11) Although female biased sex ratios evolve by group selection, they
cannot be used to assess the importance of group selection in the
evolution of other traits. In other words, it does not follow that
group selection can be ignored for species that have an even sex
ratio. This is because the metapopulation structure must be defined
separately for each trait (hence the term otrait group@; Wilson 1975,
1977, 1980). The trait group for sex ratio must persist long enough
for f1 progeny to mate within the group before dispersing, a
constraint that does not necessarily apply to other traits.

12) For most evolutionists, the ultimate rejection is to be labelled
"non- Darwinian". In fact, Darwin's (1871) theory for the evolution of
human moral sentiments is remarkably similar to the vehicle-based
framework that we develop here (Richards 1987).

13) We think that an evolutionary theory of genuine vs. apparant
psychological altruism is possible, but it must be based on the
proximate motivations of the actor, which evolutionary accounts ignore
by defining altruism and selfishness solely in terms of fitness
effects. In other words, we must ask questions such as: oWhen are the
behaviors motivated by a ZgenuinelyY psychologically altruistic
individual more fit than the behaviors motivated by an ZapparantlyY
altruistic individual?@ Frank is actually one of the few authors who
are asking these questions, so we are not criticizing his specific
proposals about emotions as commitment devices, which make more sense
within a vehicle-based framework than within a replicator-based
framework. For further discussion, see Wilson (1992) and Sober (in
press).

14) Frank (1988) anticipates this conclusion in the passage that we
quote above, but does not pursue it further.

15) Anatol Rapoport, who submitted the Tit-for-Tat strategy to
Axelrod's (1980a,b) computer tournaments, always appreciated its
group-level benefit and individual-level disadvantage (e.g., Rapaport
1991). In contrast, Axelrod and the majority of evolutionary game
theorists regard tit-for-tat as a strategy that succeeds "at the
individual level."

16) Sterelny and Kitcher recognize that Dawkins' position cannot
simply be the empty truism that evolution occurs when the genetic
composition of a population changes. They claim (p 340) that the
nontrivial thesis that Dawkins advances is that "evolution under
natural selection is thus a process in which, barring complications,
the average ability of the genes in the gene pool to leave copies of
themselves increases with time."

Although this is a nontrivial claim, it is not something we find in
Dawkins' writings, and in any case it isn't true as a generality. The
average fitness of the alleles at a locus increases under frequency-
independent selection. But when a truly selfish gene replaces an
altruistic allele, the effect is to reduce average fitness. Dawkins
frequently remarks that there is nothing to prevent natural selection
(meaning within-group selection) from driving a population straight to
extinction. It is also worth noting that group selection can lead the
average fitness of the selected alleles to increase. A gene's ability
to leave copies of itself can decline under selection as well as
increase. And which turns out to occur is a separate issue from
whether group selection is present or absent.

17) While group selection has been a controversial topic within
biology, the entire subject of evolution has been a controversial
topic when applied to human behavior. There are at least three ways
that evolution in general (and group selection in particular) can
influence human behavior. First, the psychological mechanisms that
govern human behavior can be the product of natural selection. In its
weak form this statement is uncontroversial, since everyone agrees
that basic drives such as hunger, sex and pain exist because they are
biologically adaptive. Some psychologists believe that the
adaptationist program can be used to explain the architecture of human
cognition in much greater detail, however, and this position is more
controversial (e.g., Barkow et al 1992). Second, cultural change can
itself be described as an evolutionary process with between- and
within-group components (e.g. Boyd and Richerson 1985, Findlay 1992).
Third, genetic evolution is an ongoing process that can partially
explain differences between individuals and populations. Our own
thinking is based primarily on the first and second influences. In
other words, we think it is imperative to explore the hypothesis that
group selection was a strong force during human evolution, resulting
in proximate psychological mechanisms that today are universally
shared and allow humans to facultatively adopt group-level adaptations
under appropriate conditions. The specific nature and precision of
these psychological mechanisms are empirical issues. We also propose,
along with Boyd and Richerson (1985) and Findlay (1992), that group
selection can be a strong force in cultural evolution. Thus, our
position is compatable with but does not require a strong form of
human sociobiology. Our point is not to prejudge the correctness of
adaptationist explanations, but to urge the importance of asking
adaptationist questions. Only by doing so can we find out whether and
to what degree organisms are well adapted to their environments
(Orzack and Sober, in press).

18) Sober (1981) discusses the relationship between methodological
individualism and the units of selection controversy in more detail.

19) Opportunity levelling is not restricted to the largest human
groups. According to Knauft (1992), the simplest human societies are
highly egalitarian and overtly status-oriented societies require a
concentrated and stable resource, such as crops or livestock. This
improves Alexander's general thesis, especially if the simplest
existing human societies represent ancestral conditions.

20) AlexanderYs views on group selection, presented in articles and
books from 1974 to 1993, are difficult to represent in a single
passage. When evaluating group selection in non-human species,
Alexander identifies strongly with the views of Williams and Dawkins,
as the passage quoted on p 7 shows. Alexander does speculate that
humans may be an exception to the rule because of extreme
between-group competition and regulation of fitness differences within
groups. The following passage illustrates his pro-group selection
side, which is consistent with our own interpretation: oIn sexually
reproducing organisms, such as humans, confluences of interest within
groups are likely to occur when different groups are in more or less
direct competition. As a result, the kind of selection alluded to here
[group selection] would be expected to produce individuals that would
cooperate intensively and complexly within groups but show strong and
even extreme aggressiveness between groups (Alexander 1989 p 463).@
However, in other passages, Alexander clearly minimizes the importance
of group selection and attributes the evolution of moral behavior in
humans to within-group processes. We provide his most recent statement
to this effect: oBecause selection is primarily effective at and below
the individual level, it is reasonable to expect concepts and
practices pertaining to morality--as with all other aspects of the
phenotypes of living forms--to be designed so as to yield reproductive
(genetic) gains to the individuals exhibiting them, at least in the
environments of history (Alexander 1993 p178).@

At a more technical level, Alexander occasionally seems to appreciate
the vehicle concept when evaluating levels of selection (e.g., the
1989 passage quoted above), but more often he implicitly defines
anything that evolves as oindividually@ advantageous, even when the
group is the vehicle of selection (e.g.,the discussion of Frank, 1988,
in Alexander, 1993). We think that a consistent application of our
procedure will reveal that Alexander is invoking groups as vehicles of
selection much more than he acknowledges in his own writing. We also
want to stress, however, that AlexanderYs views on indirect
reciprocity, opportunity-leveling within groups and competition
between groups remain important within a vehicle-based framework.

21) AlexanderYs theory is conventional in the sense of equating
morality with the notion of a common good. However, calling it
familiar and conventional does not belittle its importance.
Evolutionary theories of human behavior frequently make predictions
that correspond closely to folk psychology (e.g., that men tend to
value youth in women more than women value youth in men). Since the
intuitions of folk psychology are unlikely to be completely wrong, it
would be disturbing if an evolutionary theory of human behavior was
not familiar and conventional in some sense. Of course, the theory
must also go beyond folk psychology by making counter-intuitive
predictions, revealing aspects of folk psychology that are false,
refining familiar predictions, subjecting predictions to empirical
test and so on.

An evolutionary account of morality (including AlexanderYs) does
depart from folk psychology in some important respects. The
organ-organism- population trichotomy implies that there will always
be a level of the biological hierarchy at which social dilemmas will
prevail. In other words, moral behavior within groups will frequently
be used to generate immoral behavior between groups. This fits well
with observed behavior but contrasts with the concept of universal
morality that is common in folk psychology and some branches of the
human behavioral sciences (e.g., the higher stages of KohlbergYs
(1984) theory of moral development; MacDonald 1988). In addition, if
moral systems function as group-level rules of meiosis, it becomes
difficult to explain the concept of individual rights, which are moral
rules that protect individuals from groups. We think that an
evolutionary account of morality may ultimately shed light on these
topics but it will need to be more sophisticated than current
accounts.

22) We provide AlexanderYs most recent statement that humans are
motivated entirely by self interest: oIt is not easy for anyone to
believe, from his own thoughts about his personal motivation and that
of other humans, that humans are designed by natural selection to seek
their own interests, let alone maximize their own genetic reproduction
(Alexander 1993 p 191-2).@

23) The invisible hand metaphor is the economic equivalent of the Gaia
hypothesis. More generally, despite its emphasis on individual self-
interest, economic theory is like naive group selection in its
axiomatic belief that multi-individual firms maximize a collective
utility. A more sophisticated hierarchical approach to economics,
along the lines of Campbell 1993, Leibenstein 1976, Margolis 1982, and
Simon 1991 will be highly interesting.

24) The sense in which we expect an absence of fitness differences
within groups needs to be clarified. In honey bee colonies, there is a
set of adaptations that is favored by within-colony selection and has
the potential of disrupting colony function. This includes workers
laying unfertilized eggs to produce sons and workers favoring their
own patriline while tending future queens. These behaviors are seldom
observed because of evolved adaptations that prevent them, which
qualify as group-level rules of meiosis (Ratnieks 1988). Another set
of adaptations is favored by within-colony selection but does not
disrupt colony function. For example, a beneficial mutation that
increases viability will cause patrilines that have this mutation to
be more fit than patrilines that donYt, but there is no reason to
expect these kinds of fitness differences to be suppressed by
group-level rules of meiosis. Similarly, we expect the Hutterite
social organization to suppress fitness differences that correspond to
the first set but not those that correspond to the second.

25) Here we are following Tooby and Cosmides (1992) concept of
modularity, according to which natural selection has evolved a number
of cognitive subsystems that are evoked by appropriate environmental
conditions. We do not mean to exclude the possibility of open-ended
learning and cultural evolution, however, as envisioned by other
evolutionary psychologists (e.g., Boyd and Richerson 1985, Durham
1991, MacDonald 1991).

26) Two caveats are in order here. First, people do not necessarily
think the way an ideology exhorts them to think. We think it plausible
that Shenker (who was himself an Israeli Kibbutznik) is not simply
espousing an ideology but is accurately describing the attitudes and
beliefs that exist among members of communal societies. Second,
psychological egoism can be defined in many ways and some of the
broadest definitions would include the attitudes and beliefs expressed
in the Shenker passage. For example, if a Hutterite takes genuine
pleasure in helping his group, he might be classified by some as a
psychological egoist who is attempting to maximize his pleasure. For
the purposes of this discussion, we define a psychological egoist as a
person who has a category of oself@ that is separate from the category
of oothers@, who acts to maximize perceived self-interest without
regard to effects on others, and who does not axiomatically find
pleasure in helping others. See Batson 1991 for more detailed
discussions of psychological egoism.

27) Although the evaluation of psychological adaptations should be
based on design features and their reproductive consequences in
ancestral environments, it is still interesting to examine the
reproductive consequences in modern environments. The Hutterites have
been quite well studied demographically and it should be possible to
measure actual fitness differentials within groups.

28) In addition to the environmental situations that we have listed,
unstable equilibria leading to majority effects are likely to be
important in the evolution and maintenance of group-level adaptations.
In other words, group-level adaptations may have difficulty evolving
from a low frequency even when they are favored by environmental
conditions. Conversely, after they have become established,
group-level adaptations may persist even after the environmental
conditions that favored them are relaxed (Boyd and Richerson 1990).

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E. A. Lloy d (Ed.), Key words in Evolutionary Biology (pp. 29-33).
Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.

Wilson, D. S., & Knollenberg, W. G. (1987). Adaptive indirect effects:
the fitness of burying beetles with and without their phoretic mites.
Evolutionary Ecology, 1, 139-159.

Wilson, D. S., Pollock, G. B., & Dugatkin, L. A. (1992). Can altruism
evolve in purely viscous populations? Evolutionary Ecology, 6,
331-341.

Wilson, D. S., & Sober, E. (1989). Reviving the superorganism. Journal
of Theoretical Biology, 136, 337-356.

Wilson, E. O. (1973). Group selection and its significance for
ecology. Bioscience, 23, 631-38.

Wilson, E. O., & Holldobler, B. (1988). Dense heterarchies and mass
communication as the basis of organization in ant colonies. Trends in
Ecology and Evolution, 3, 65-67.

Wilson, J. B. (1987). Group selection in plant populations.
Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 1987, 493-502.

Wright, S. (1980). Genic and organismic selection. Evolution, 34,
825-843.

Wynne-Edwards, V. C. (1962). Animal disperson in relation to social
behavior . Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd.

Wynne-Edwards, V. C. (1986). Evolution through group selection .
Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.

Zeigler, B. P. (1978). On necessary and sufficient conditions for
group selection efficacy. Theoretical Population Biology, 13, 356-64.

TABLE 1. A guide to the biological literature on group selection since
1970. "T"= theoretical models (including both mathematical and verbal
models), "E"= possible empirical examples (including examples that
have not been verified by experiments), "F"=field experiments,
"L"=laboratory experiments, "R"=literature reviews, "P"=philosophical
treatments, "C"=criticisms of group selection interpretations and
"H"=papers that are especially relevant from the standpoint of human
evolutionary biology.

FIGURE CAPTIONS

Figure 1) A nested hierarchy in which every unit is a population of
lower- level units. The hierarchy is left open on both ends because
genes are composed of subunits and metapopulations can exist in
higher-order metapopulations. For example, a valley can be a
metapopulation of villages, which in turn are metapopulations of
kinship groups.

Figure 2) A vehicle-centered version of kin selection theory. The
dominant A-allele codes for an altruistic behavior. The fitness of
altruists (WA) and nonaltruists (WS) in a given group is
WA=1-c+b(Np-1)/(N-1) and WS=1+bNp/(N-1), where p=the frequency of
altruists in the group, N=group size, c=the cost to the altruist, and
b=the benefit to the recipient. Both phenotypes have a baseline
fitness of 1. Each altruist can be a recipient for (Np-1) other
altruists in the group (excluding itself) who are distributing their
benefits among (N-1) members of the group (excluding themselves). Each
non-altruist can be a recipient for all Np altruists in the group. For
this example N=10, c=0.3 and b=1.0. Random mating among the three
genotypes (first line) produces six types of mated pairs (second
line), which in turn produce groups of siblings (third line). The
third line shows only the average sibling group for each type of mated
pair. Random sampling of the gametes will produce variation around the
averages. Sibling groups vary in the frequency of altruists (fourth
line). Altruism is selected against at the individual level because
non-altruists have the highest fitness within all mixed groups.
Altruism is favored at the group level, however, because group fitness
is directly proportional to the frequency of altruists in the group.

Figure 3. Variation among groups in the frequency of altruists.
Altruism is coded by a dominant A allele at a frequency of p=0.25 in
the metapopulation, yielding a frequency of 0.438 altruists (AA and
Aa) and 0.562 nonaltruists (aa). When groups of N=10 are composed of
unrelated individuals, the variation in the frequency of altruists
between groups has a binomial distribution, as shown by the black
curve. Sibling groups are created by a two-step sampling process in
which groups of size N=2 (the parents) are drawn from the global
population and groups of size N=10 (the siblings) are drawn from their
gametes. This two-step sampling procedure increases genetic variation
between groups, as shown by the stipled curve, intensifying natural
selection at the group level. Evolution within groups always favors
the non-altruist, regardless of whether the groups are composed of
siblings or unrelated individuals.

Figure 4. Four pay-off matrices that represent A) pure between-group
selection, B) a strong conflict between levels of selection, C) a weak
conflict between levels of selection (X is the average number of
interactions between members of each pair), and D) a return to pure
between-group selection. Within-group selection is absent from the
first example by virtue of the situation, since coordination has an
equal effect on both occupants of the leaf. Within-group selection is
absent from the fourth example by virtue of an adaptation, since the
"outlaw" A3 type cannot operate in the presence of the "parliament" A5
type.

From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  9 15:39:37 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 10:39:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Sigma Xi: Unwed Numbers
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312154140.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Unwed Numbers 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/48550?&print=yes
American Scientist Online. The Magazine of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research
Society
[Click the URL to view the graphic.]

see full issue: January-February 2006 Volume: 94 Number: 1 Page: 12
DOI: 10.1511/2006.1.12

COMPUTING SCIENCE

The mathematics of Sudoku, a puzzle that boasts "No math required!"

Brian Hayes

A few years ago, if you had noticed someone filling in a crossword puzzle with 
numbers instead of letters, you might well have looked askance. Today you would 
know that the puzzle is not a crossword but a Sudoku. The craze has circled the 
globe. It's in the newspaper, the bookstore, the supermarket checkout line; Web 
sites offer puzzles on demand; you can even play it on your cell phone.

Just in case this column might fall into the hands of the last person in North 
America who hasn't seen a Sudoku, an example is given on the opposite page. The 
standard puzzle grid has 81 cells, organized into nine rows and nine columns 
and also marked off into nine three-by-three blocks. Some of the cells are 
already filled in with numbers called givens. The aim is to complete the grid 
in such a way that every row, every column and every block has exactly one 
instance of each number from 1 to 9. A well-formed puzzle has one and only one 
solution.

The instructions that accompany Sudoku often reassure the number-shy solver 
that "No mathematics is required." What this really means is that no arithmetic 
is required. You don't have to add up columns of figures; you don't even have 
to count. As a matter of fact, the symbols in the grid need not be numbers at 
all; letters or colors or fruits would do as well. In this sense it's true that 
solving the puzzle is not a test of skill in arithmetic. On the other hand, if 
we look into Sudoku a little more deeply, we may well find some mathematical 
ideas lurking in the background.

A Puzzling Provenance

The name "Sudoku" is Japanese, but the game itself is almost surely an American 
invention. The earliest known examples were published in 1979 in Dell Pencil 
Puzzles & Word Games, where they were given the title Number Place. The 
constructor of the puzzles is not identified in the magazine, but Will Shortz, 
the puzzles editor of The New York Times, thinks he has identified the author 
through a process of logical deduction reminiscent of what it takes to solve a 
Sudoku. Shortz examined the list of contributors in several Dell magazines; he 
found a single name that was always present if an issue included a Number Place 
puzzle, and never present otherwise. The putative inventor identified in this 
way was Howard Garns, an architect from Indianapolis who died in 1989. Mark 
Lagasse, senior executive editor of Dell Puzzle Magazines, concurs with 
Shortz's conclusion, although he says Dell has no records attesting to Garns's 
authorship, and none of the editors now on the staff were there in 1979.

The later history is easier to trace. Dell continued publishing the puzzles, 
and in 1984 the Japanese firm Nikoli began including puzzles of the same design 
in one of its magazines. (Puzzle publishers, it seems, are adept at the 
sincerest form of flattery.) Nikoli named the puzzle "suji wa dokushin ni 
kagiru," which I am told means "the numbers must be single"--single in the 
sense of unmarried. The name was soon shortened to Sudoku, which is usually 
translated as "single numbers." Nikoli secured a trademark on this term in 
Japan, and so later Japanese practitioners of sincere flattery have had to 
adopt other names. Ed Pegg, writing in the Mathematical Association of 
America's MAA Online, points out an ironic consequence: Many Japanese know the 
puzzle by its English name Number Place, whereas the English-speaking world 
prefers the Japanese term Sudoku.

The next stage in the puzzle's east-to-west circumnavigation was a brief detour 
to the south. Wayne Gould, a New Zealander who was a judge in Hong Kong before 
the British lease expired in 1997, discovered Sudoku on a trip to Japan and 
wrote a computer program to generate the puzzles. Eventually he persuaded The 
Times of London to print them; the first appeared in November 2004. The 
subsequent fad in the U.K. was swift and intense. Other newspapers joined in, 
with The Daily Telegraph running the puzzle on its front page. There was 
boasting about who had the most and the best Sudoku, and bickering over the 
supposed virtues of handmade versus computer-generated puzzles. In July 2005 a 
Sudoku tournament was televised in Britain; the event was promoted by carving a 
275-foot grid into a grassy hillside near Bristol. (It soon emerged that this 
"world's largest Sudoku" was defective.)

Sudoku came back to the U.S. in the spring of 2005. Here too the puzzle has 
become a popular pastime, although perhaps not quite the all-consuming 
obsession it was in the U.K. I don't believe anyone will notice a dip in the 
U.S. gross domestic product as a result of this mass distraction. On the other 
hand, I must report that my own motive for writing on the subject is partly to 
justify the appalling number of hours I have squandered solving Sudoku.

Hints and Heuristics

If you take a pencil to a few Sudoku problems, you'll quickly discover various 
useful rules and tricks. The most elementary strategy for solving the puzzle is 
to examine each cell and list all its possible occupants--that is, all the 
numbers not ruled out by a conflict with another cell. If you find a cell that 
has only one allowed value, then obviously you can write that value in. The 
complementary approach is to note all the cells within a row, a column or a 
block where some particular number can appear; again, if there is a number that 
can be put in only one position, then you should put it there. In either case, 
you can eliminate the selected number as a candidate in all other cells in the 
same neighborhood.

Some Sudoku can be solved by nothing more than repeated application of these 
two rules--but if all the puzzles were so straightforward, the fad would not 
have lasted long. Barry Cipra, a mathematician and writer in Northfield, 
Minnesota, describes a hierarchy of rules of increasing complexity. The rules 
mentioned above constitute level 1: They restrict a cell to a single value or 
restrict a value to a single cell. At level 2 are rules that apply to pairs of 
cells within a row, column or block; when two such cells have only two possible 
values, those values are excluded elsewhere in the neighborhood. Level-3 rules 
work with triples of cells and values in the same way. In principle, the tower 
of rules might rise all the way to level 9.

This sequence of rules suggests a simple scheme for rating the difficulty of 
puzzles. Unfortunately, however, not all Sudoku can be solved by these rules 
alone; some of the puzzles seem to demand analytic methods that don't have a 
clear place in the hierarchy. A few of these tactics have even acquired names, 
such as "swordfish" and "x-wing." The subtlest of them are nonlocal rules that 
bring together information from across a wide swath of the matrix.

When you are solving a specific puzzle, the search for patterns that trigger 
the various rules is where the fun is (assuming you go in for that sort of 
thing). But if you are trying to gain a higher-level understanding of Sudoku, 
compiling a catalog of such techniques doesn't seem very promising. The rules 
are too many, too various and too specialized.

Rather than discuss methods for solving specific puzzles, I want to ask some 
more-general questions about Sudoku, and look at it as a computational problem 
rather than a logic puzzle. How hard a problem is it? Pencil-and-paper 
experience suggests that some instances are much tougher than others, but are 
there any clear-cut criteria for ranking or classifying the puzzles?

Counting Solutions

In the search for general principles, a first step is to generalize the puzzle 
itself. The standard 81-cell Sudoku grid is not the only possibility. For any 
positive integer n, we can draw an order-n Sudoku grid with n ^2 rows, n ^2 
columns and n ^2 blocks; the grid has a total of n ^4 cells, which are to be 
filled with numbers in the range from 1 to n ^2. The standard grid with 81 
cells is of order 3. Some publishers produce puzzles of order 4 (256 cells) and 
order 5 (625 cells). On the smaller side, there's not much to say about the 
order-1 puzzle. The order-2 Sudoku (with 4 rows, columns and blocks, and 16 
cells in all) is no challenge as a puzzle, but it does serve as a useful test 
case for studying concepts and algorithms.

  click for full image and caption Order-2 Sudoku...

How many Sudoku solutions exist for each n? To put the question another way: 
Starting from a blank grid--with no givens at all--how many ways can the 
pattern be completed while obeying the Sudoku constraints? As a first 
approximation, we can simplify the problem by ignoring the blocks in the Sudoku 
grid, allowing any solution in which each column and each row has exactly one 
instance of each number. A pattern of this kind is known as a Latin square, and 
it was already familiar to Leonhard Euler more than 200 years ago.

Consider the 4 x 4 Latin square (which corresponds to the order-2 Sudoku). 
Euler counted them: There are exactly 576 ways of arranging the numbers 1, 2, 3 
and 4 in a square array with no duplications in any row or column. It follows 
that 576 is an upper limit on the number of order-2 Sudoku. (Every Sudoku 
solution is necessarily a Latin square, but not every Latin square is a valid 
Sudoku.) In a series of postings on the Sudoku Programmers Forum, Frazer Jarvis 
of the University of Sheffield showed that exactly half the 4 x 4 Latin squares 
are Sudoku solutions; that is, there are 288 valid arrangements. (The method of 
counting is summarized in the illustration on the next page.)

Moving to higher-order Sudoku and larger Latin squares, the counting gets 
harder in a hurry. Euler got only as far as the 5 x 5 case, and the 9 x 9 Latin 
squares were not enumerated until 1975; the tally is 
5,524,751,496,156,892,842,531,225,600, or about 6 x 10^27. The order-3 Sudoku 
must be a subset of these squares. They were counted in June 2005 by Bertram 
Felgenhauer of the Technical University of Dresden in collaboration with 
Jarvis. The total they computed is 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960, or 7 x 10^21. 
Thus, among all the 9 x 9 Latin squares, a little more than one in a million 
are also Sudoku grids.

It's a matter of definition, however, whether all those patterns are really 
different. The Sudoku grid has many symmetries. If you take any solution and 
rotate it by a multiple of 90 degrees, you get another valid grid; in the 
tabulations above, these variants are counted as separate entries. Beyond the 
obvious rotations and reflections, you can permute the rows within a horizontal 
band of blocks or the columns within a vertical stack of blocks, and you can 
also freely shuffle the bands and stacks themselves. Furthermore, the numerals 
in the cells are arbitrary markers, which can also be permuted; for example, if 
you switch all the 5s and 6s in a puzzle, you get another valid puzzle.

When all these symmetries are taken into account, the number of essentially 
different Sudoku patterns is reduced substantially. In the case of the order-2 
Sudoku, it turns out there are actually only two distinct grids! All the rest 
of the 288 patterns can all be generated from these two by applying various 
symmetry operations. In the order-3 case, the reduction is also dramatic, 
although it still leaves an impressive number of genuinely different solutions: 
3,546,146,300,288, or 4 x 10^12.

Does the large number of order-3 Sudoku grids tell us anything about the 
difficulty of solving the puzzle? Maybe. If we set out to solve it by some kind 
of search algorithm, then the number of patterns to be considered is a relevant 
factor. But any strategy that involves generating all 
6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 grids is probably not the best way to go about 
solving the puzzle.

NP or Not NP, That Is the Question

Computer science has an elaborate hierarchy for classifying problems according 
to difficulty, and the question of where Sudoku fits into this scheme has 
elicited some controversy and confusion. It is widely reported that Sudoku 
belongs in the class NP, a set of notoriously difficult problems; meanwhile, 
however, many computer programs effortlessly solve any order-3 Sudoku puzzle. 
There is actually no contradiction in these facts, but there is also not much 
help in dispelling the confusion.

Complexity classes such as NP do not measure the difficulty of any specific 
problem instance but rather describe the rate at which difficulty grows as a 
function of problem size. If we can solve an order-n Sudoku, how much harder 
will we have to work to solve a puzzle of order n + 1? For problems in NP, the 
effort needed grows exponentially.

Most discussions of the complexity of Sudoku refer to the work of Takayuki Yato 
and Takahiro Seta of the University of Tokyo, whose analysis relates the task 
of solving Sudoku to the similar problem of completing a partially specified 
Latin square. The latter problem in turn has been connected with others that 
are already known to be in NP. This process of "reduction" from one problem to 
another is the standard way of establishing the complexity classes of 
computational problems. Yato and Seta employ an unusual form of reduction that 
addresses the difficulty of finding an additional solution after a first 
solution is already known. In Sudoku, of course, well-formed puzzles are 
expected to have only one solution. Yato and Seta say their result applies 
nonetheless. I don't quite follow their reasoning on this point, but the 
literature of complexity theory is vast and technical, and the fault is likely 
my own.

When you lay down your pencil on a completed Sudoku, the thought that you've 
just dispatched a problem in the class NP may boost your psychological 
wellbeing, but the NP label doesn't say anything about the relative difficulty 
of individual Sudoku puzzles. For that, a different kind of hierarchy is 
needed.

Many publishers rank their Sudoku on a scale from easy to hard (or from gentle 
to diabolical). The criteria for these ratings are not stated, and it's a 
common experience to breeze through a "very hard" puzzle and then get stuck on 
a "medium."

One easily measured factor that might be expected to influence difficulty is 
the number of givens. In general, having fewer cells specified at the outset 
ought to make for a harder puzzle. At the extremes of the range, it's clear 
that having all the cells filled in makes a puzzle very easy indeed, and having 
none filled in leaves the problem under-specified. What is the minimum number 
of givens that can ensure a unique solution? For an order-n grid, there is a 
lower bound of n ^2 - 1. For example, on an order-3 grid with fewer than eight 
givens, there must be at least two numbers that appear nowhere among the 
givens. With no constraints on those symbols, there are at least two solutions 
in which their roles are interchanged.

Can the n ^2 - 1 bound be achieved in practice? For n = 1 the answer is yes. On 
the order-2 grid there are uniquely solvable puzzles with four givens but not, 
I think, with three. (Finding the arrangements with just four givens is itself 
a pleasant puzzle.) For order 3, the minimum number of givens is unknown. 
Gordon Royle of the University of Western Australia has collected more than 
24,000 examples of uniquely solvable grids with 17 givens, and he has found 
none with fewer than 17, but a proof is lacking.

Published puzzles generally have between 25 and 30 givens. Within this range, 
the correlation between number of givens and difficulty rating is weak. In one 
book, I found that the "gentle" puzzles averaged 28.3 givens and the 
"diabolical" ones 28.0.

Logic Rules

Many puzzle constructors distinguish between puzzles that can be solved "by 
logic alone" and those that require "trial and error." If you solve by logic, 
you never write a number into a cell until you can prove that only that number 
can appear in that position. Trial and error allows for guessing: You fill in a 
number tentatively, explore the consequences, and if necessary backtrack, 
removing your choice and trying another. A logic solver can work with a pen; a 
backtracker needs a pencil and eraser.

For the logic-only strategy to work, a puzzle must have a quality of 
progressivism: At every stage in the solution, there must be at least one cell 
whose value can be determined unambiguously. Filling in that value must then 
uncover at least one other fully determined value, and so on. The backtracking 
protocol dispenses with progressivism: When you reach a state where no choice 
is forced upon you--where every vacant cell has at least two candidates--you 
choose a path arbitrarily.

The distinction between logic and backtracking seems like a promising criterion 
for rating the difficulty of puzzles, but on a closer look, it's not clear the 
distinction even exists. Is there a subset of Sudoku puzzles that can be solved 
by backtracking but not by "logic"? Here's another way of asking the question: 
Are there puzzles that have a unique solution, and yet at some intermediate 
stage reach an impasse, where no cell has a value that can be deduced 
unambiguously? Not, I think, unless we impose artificial restrictions on the 
rules allowed in making logical deductions.

Backtracking itself can be viewed as a logical operation; it supplies a proof 
by contradiction. If you make a speculative entry in one cell and, as a 
consequence, eventually find that some other cell has no legal entry, then you 
have discovered a logical relation between the cells. The chain of implication 
could be very intricate, but the logical relation is no different in kind from 
the simple rule that says two cells in the same row can't have the same value. 
(David Eppstein of the University of California at Irvine has formulated some 
extremely subtle Sudoku rules, which capture the kind of information gleaned 
from a backtracking analysis, yet work in a forward-looking, nonspeculative 
mode.)

A Satisfied Mind

From a computational point of view, Sudoku is a constraint-satisfaction 
problem. The constraints are the rules forbidding two cells in the same 
neighborhood to have the same value; a solution is an assignment of values to 
cells that satisfies all the constraints simultaneously. In one obvious 
encoding, there are 810 constraints in an order-3 grid.

It's interesting to observe how differently one approaches such a problem when 
solving it by computer rather than by hand. A human solver may well decide that 
logic is all you need, but backtracking is the more appealing option for a 
program. For one thing, backtracking will always find the answer, if there is 
one. It can even do the right thing if there are multiple solutions or no 
solution. To make similar claims for a logic-only program, you would have to 
prove you had included every rule of inference that might possibly be needed.

Backtracking is also the simpler approach, in the sense that it relies on one 
big rule rather than many little ones. At each stage you choose a value for 
some cell and check to see if this new entry is consistent with the rest of the 
grid. If you detect a conflict, you have to undo the choice and try another. If 
you have exhausted all the candidates for a given cell, then you must have 
taken a wrong turn earlier, and you need to backtrack further. This is not a 
clever algorithm; it amounts to a depth-first search of the tree of all 
possible solutions--a tree that could have 9^81 leaves. There is no question 
that we are deep in the exponential territory of NP problems here. And yet, in 
practice, solving Sudoku by backtracking is embarrassingly easy.

There are many strategies for speeding up the search, mostly focused on making 
a shrewd choice of which branch of the tree to try next. But such optimizations 
are hardly needed. On an order-3 Sudoku grid, even a rudimentary backtracking 
search converges on the solution in a few dozen steps. Evidently, competing 
against a computer in Sudoku is never going to be much fun.

Does that ruin the puzzle for the rest of us? In moments of frustration, when 
I'm struggling with a recalcitrant diabolical, the thought that the machine 
across the room could instantly sweep away all my cobwebs of logic is indeed 
dispiriting. I begin to wonder whether this cross-correlation of columns, rows 
and blocks is a fit task for the human mind. But when I do make a breakthrough, 
I take more pleasure in my success than the computer would. ? Brian Hayes

Bibliography

   * Bammel, Stanley E., and Jerome Rothstein. 1975. The number of 9 x 9 Latin 
squares. Discrete Mathematics 11:93-95.

   * Eppstein, David. Preprint. Nonrepetitive paths and cycles in graphs with 
application to sudoku. http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DS/0507053

   * Felgenhauer, Bertram, and Frazer Jarvis. Preprint. Enumerating possible 
Sudoku grids. http://www.shef.ac.uk/~pm1afj/sudoku/sudoku.pdf

   * Pegg, Ed. 2005. Math Games: Sudoku variations. MAA Online.
  http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgames_09_05_05.html

   * Royle, Gordon F. 2005. Minimum sudoku.
  http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~gordon/sudokumin.php

   * Simonis, Helmut. 2005. Sudoku as a constraint problem. In Proceedings of 
the Fourth International Workshop on Modelling and Reformulating Constraint 
Satisfaction Problems, pp. 13-27.

   * Sudoku Programmers Forum. 2005. Discussion thread, May 5, 2005, through 
June 11, 2005. http://www.setbb.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=27&mforum=sudoku

   * Wikipedia. 2005. Sudoku. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudoku

   * Yato, Takayuki, and Takahiro Seta. 2002. Complexity and completeness of 
finding another solution and its application to puzzles.
  http://www-imai.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yato/data2/SIGAL87-2.pdf

From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  9 15:39:55 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 10:39:55 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Quantum Trickery: Testing Einstein's Strangest
	Theory
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312154530.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Quantum Trickery: Testing Einstein's Strangest Theory
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/27eins.html

    By DENNIS OVERBYE

    Einstein said there would be days like this.

    This fall scientists announced that they had put a half dozen
    beryllium atoms into a "cat state."

    No, they were not sprawled along a sunny windowsill. To a physicist, a
    "cat state" is the condition of being two diametrically opposed
    conditions at once, like black and white, up and down, or dead and
    alive.

    These atoms were each spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the
    same time. Moreover, like miniature Rockettes they were all doing
    whatever it was they were doing together, in perfect synchrony. Should
    one of them realize, like the cartoon character who runs off a cliff
    and doesn't fall until he looks down, that it is in a metaphysically
    untenable situation and decide to spin only one way, the rest would
    instantly fall in line, whether they were across a test tube or across
    the galaxy.

    The idea that measuring the properties of one particle could
    instantaneously change the properties of another one (or a whole
    bunch) far away is strange to say the least - almost as strange as the
    notion of particles spinning in two directions at once. The team that
    pulled off the beryllium feat, led by Dietrich Leibfried at the
    National Institute of Standards and Technology, in Boulder, Colo.,
    hailed it as another step toward computers that would use quantum
    magic to perform calculations.

    But it also served as another demonstration of how weird the world
    really is according to the rules, known as quantum mechanics.

    The joke is on Albert Einstein, who, back in 1935, dreamed up this
    trick of synchronized atoms - "spooky action at a distance," as he
    called it - as an example of the absurdity of quantum mechanics.

    "No reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit
    this," he, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen wrote in a paper in 1935.

    Today that paper, written when Einstein was a relatively ancient 56
    years old, is the most cited of Einstein's papers. But far from
    demolishing quantum theory, that paper wound up as the cornerstone for
    the new field of quantum information.

    Nary a week goes by that does not bring news of another feat of
    quantum trickery once only dreamed of in thought experiments:
    particles (or at least all their properties) being teleported across
    the room in a microscopic version of Star Trek beaming; electrical
    "cat" currents that circle a loop in opposite directions at the same
    time; more and more particles farther and farther apart bound together
    in Einstein's spooky embrace now known as "entanglement." At the
    University of California, Santa Barbara, researchers are planning an
    experiment in which a small mirror will be in two places at once.

    Niels Bohr, the Danish philosopher king of quantum theory, dismissed
    any attempts to lift the quantum veil as meaningless, saying that
    science was about the results of experiments, not ultimate reality.
    But now that quantum weirdness is not confined to thought experiments,
    physicists have begun arguing again about what this weirdness means,
    whether the theory needs changing, and whether in fact there is any
    problem.

    This fall two Nobel laureates, Anthony Leggett of the University of
    Illinois and Norman Ramsay of Harvard argued in front of several
    hundred scientists at a conference in Berkeley about whether, in
    effect, physicists were justified in trying to change quantum theory,
    the most successful theory in the history of science. Dr. Leggett said
    yes; Dr. Ramsay said no.

    It has been, as Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts
    Institute of Technology, noted, "a 75-year war." It is typical in
    reporting on this subject to bounce from one expert to another, each
    one shaking his or her head about how the other one just doesn't get
    it. "It's a kind of funny situation," N. David Mermin of Cornell, who
    has called Einstein's spooky action "the closest thing we have to
    magic," said, referring to the recent results. "These are extremely
    difficult experiments that confirm elementary features of quantum
    mechanics." It would be more spectacular news, he said, if they had
    come out wrong.

    Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna said that he thought, "The
    world is not as real as we think.

    "My personal opinion is that the world is even weirder than what
    quantum physics tells us," he added.

    The discussion is bringing renewed attention to Einstein's role as a
    founder and critic of quantum theory, an "underground history," that
    has largely been overlooked amid the celebrations of relativity in the
    past Einstein year, according to David Z. Albert, a professor of
    philosophy and physics at Columbia. Regarding the 1935 paper, Dr.
    Albert said, "We know something about Einstein's genius we didn't know
    before."

    The Silly Theory

    From the day 100 years ago that he breathed life into quantum theory
    by deducing that light behaved like a particle as well as like a wave,
    Einstein never stopped warning that it was dangerous to the age-old
    dream of an orderly universe.

    If light was a particle, how did it know which way to go when it was
    issued from an atom?

    "The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it seems,"
    Einstein once wrote to friend.

    The full extent of its silliness came in the 1920's when quantum
    theory became quantum mechanics.

    In this new view of the world, as encapsulated in a famous equation by
    the Austrian Erwin Schr?dinger, objects are represented by waves that
    extend throughout space, containing all the possible outcomes of an
    observation - here, there, up or down, dead or alive. The amplitude of
    this wave is a measure of the probability that the object will
    actually be found to be in one state or another, a suggestion that led
    Einstein to grumble famously that God doesn't throw dice.

    Worst of all from Einstein's point of view was the uncertainty
    principle, enunciated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927.

    Certain types of knowledge, of a particle's position and velocity, for
    example, are incompatible: the more precisely you measure one
    property, the blurrier and more uncertain the other becomes.

    In the 1935 paper, Einstein and his colleagues, usually referred to as
    E.P.R., argued that the uncertainty principle could not be the final
    word about nature. There must be a deeper theory that looked behind
    the quantum veil.

    Imagine that a pair of electrons are shot out from the disintegration
    of some other particle, like fragments from an explosion. By law
    certain properties of these two fragments should be correlated. If one
    goes left, the other goes right; if one spins clockwise, the other
    spins counterclockwise.

    That means, Einstein said, that by measuring the velocity of, say, the
    left hand electron, we would know the velocity of the right hand
    electron without ever touching it.

    Conversely, by measuring the position of the left electron, we would
    know the position of the right hand one.

    Since neither of these operations would have involved touching or
    disturbing the right hand electron in any way, Einstein, Podolsky and
    Rosen argued that the right hand electron must have had those
    properties of both velocity and position all along. That left only two
    possibilities, they concluded. Either quantum mechanics was
    "incomplete," or measuring the left hand particle somehow disturbed
    the right hand one.

    But the latter alternative violated common sense. Such an influence,
    or disturbance, would have to travel faster than the speed of light.
    "My physical instincts bristle at that suggestion," Einstein later
    wrote.

    Bohr responded with a six-page essay in Physical Review that contained
    but one simple equation, Heisenberg's uncertainty relation. In
    essence, he said, it all depends on what you mean by "reality."

    Enjoy the Magic

    Most physicists agreed with Bohr, and they went off to use quantum
    mechanics to build atomic bombs and reinvent the world.

    The consensus was that Einstein was a stubborn old man who "didn't
    get" quantum physics. All this began to change in 1964 when John S.
    Bell, a particle physicist at the European Center for Nuclear Research
    near Geneva, who had his own doubts about quantum theory, took up the
    1935 E.P.R. argument. Somewhat to his dismay, Bell, who died in 1990,
    wound up proving that no deeper theory could reproduce the predictions
    of quantum mechanics. Bell went on to outline a simple set of
    experiments that could settle the argument and decide who was right,
    Einstein or Bohr.

    When the experiments were finally performed in 1982, by Alain Aspect
    and his colleagues at the University of Orsay in France, they agreed
    with quantum mechanics and not reality as Einstein had always presumed
    it should be. Apparently a particle in one place could be affected by
    what you do somewhere else.

    "That's really weird," Dr. Albert said, calling it "a profoundly deep
    violation of an intuition that we've been walking with since caveman
    days."

    Physicists and philosophers are still fighting about what this means.
    Many of those who care to think about these issues (and many prefer
    not to), concluded that Einstein's presumption of locality - the idea
    that physically separated objects are really separate - is wrong.

    Dr. Albert said, "The experiments show locality is false, end of
    story." But for others, it is the notion of realism, that things exist
    independent of being perceived, that must be scuttled. In fact,
    physicists don't even seem to agree on the definitions of things like
    "locality" and "realism."

    "I would say we have to be careful saying what's real," Dr. Mermin
    said. "Properties cannot be said to be there until they are revealed
    by an actual experiment."

    What everybody does seem to agree on is that the use of this effect is
    limited. You can't use it to send a message, for example.

    Leonard Susskind, a Stanford theoretical physicist, who called these
    entanglement experiments "beautiful and surprising," said the term
    "spooky action at a distance," was misleading because it implied the
    instantaneous sending of signals. "No competent physicist thinks that
    entanglement allows this kind of nonlocality."

    Indeed the effects of spooky action, or "entanglement," as Schr?dinger
    called it, only show up in retrospect when the two participants in a
    Bell-type experiment compare notes. Beforehand, neither has seen any
    violation of business as usual; each sees the results of his
    measurements of, say, whether a spinning particle is pointing up or
    down, as random.

    In short, as Brian Greene, the Columbia theorist wrote in "The Fabric
    of the Cosmos," Einstein's special relativity, which sets the speed of
    light as the cosmic speed limit, "survives by the skin of its teeth."

    In an essay in 1985, Dr. Mermin said that "if there is spooky action
    at a distance, then, like other spooks, it is absolutely useless
    except for its effect, benign or otherwise, on our state of mind."

    He added, "The E.P.R. experiment is as close to magic as any physical
    phenomenon I know of, and magic should be enjoyed." In a recent
    interview, he said he still stood by the latter part of that
    statement. But while spooky action remained useless for sending a
    direct message, it had turned out to have potential uses, he admitted,
    in cryptography and quantum computing.

    Nine Ways of Killing a Cat

    Another debate, closely related to the issues of entanglement and
    reality, concerns what happens at the magic moment when a particle is
    measured or observed.

    Before a measurement is made, so the traditional story goes, the
    electron exists in a superposition of all possible answers, which can
    combine, adding and interfering with one another.

    Then, upon measurement, the wave function "collapses" to one
    particular value. Schr?dinger himself thought this was so absurd that
    he dreamed up a counterexample. What is true for electrons, he said,
    should be true as well for cats.

    In his famous thought experiment, a cat is locked in a box where the
    decay of a radioactive particle will cause the release of poison that
    will kill it. If the particle has a 50-50 chance of decaying, then
    according to quantum mechanics the cat is both alive and dead before
    we look in the box, something the cat itself, not to mention cat
    lovers, might take issue with.

    But cats are always dead or alive, as Dr. Leggett of Illinois said in
    his Berkeley talk. "The problem with quantum mechanics," he said in an
    interview, "is how it explains definite outcomes to experiments."

    If quantum mechanics is only about information and a way of predicting
    the results of measurements, these questions don't matter, most
    quantum physicists say.

    "But," Dr. Leggett said, "if you take the view that the formalism is
    reflecting something out there in real world, it matters immensely."
    As a result, theorists have come up with a menu of alternative
    interpretations and explanations. According to one popular notion,
    known as decoherence, quantum waves are very fragile and collapse from
    bumping into the environment. Another theory, by the late David Bohm,
    restores determinism by postulating a "pilot wave" that acts behind
    the scenes to guide particles.

    In yet another theory, called "many worlds," the universe continually
    branches so that every possibility is realized: the Red Sox win and
    lose and it rains; Schr?dinger's cat lives, dies, has kittens and
    scratches her master when he tries to put her into the box.

    Recently, as Dr. Leggett pointed out, some physicists have tinkered
    with Schr?dinger's equation, the source of much of the misery, itself.

    A modification proposed by the Italian physicists Giancarlo Ghirardi
    and Tullio Weber, both of the University of Trieste, and Alberto
    Rimini of the University of Pavia, makes the wave function unstable so
    that it will collapse in a time depending on how big a system it
    represents.

    In his standoff with Dr. Ramsay of Harvard last fall, Dr. Leggett
    suggested that his colleagues should consider the merits of the latter
    theory. "Why should we think of an electron as being in two states at
    once but not a cat, when the theory is ostensibly the same in both
    cases?" Dr. Leggett asked.

    Dr. Ramsay said that Dr. Leggett had missed the point. How the wave
    function mutates is not what you calculate. "What you calculate is the
    prediction of a measurement," he said.

    "If it's a cat, I can guarantee you will get that it's alive or dead,"
    Dr. Ramsay said.

    David Gross, a recent Nobel winner and director of the Kavli Institute
    for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, leapt into the free-for-all,
    saying that 80 years had not been enough time for the new concepts to
    sink in. "We're just too young. We should wait until 2200 when quantum
    mechanics is taught in kindergarten."

    The Joy of Randomness

    One of the most extreme points of view belongs to Dr. Zeilinger of
    Vienna, a bearded, avuncular physicist whose laboratory regularly
    hosts every sort of quantum weirdness.

    In an essay recently in Nature, Dr. Zeilinger sought to find meaning
    in the very randomness that plagued Einstein.

    "The discovery that individual events are irreducibly random is
    probably one of the most significant findings of the 20th century,"
    Dr. Zeilinger wrote.

    Dr. Zeilinger suggested that reality and information are, in a deep
    sense, indistinguishable, a concept that Dr. Wheeler, the Princeton
    physicist, called "it from bit."

    In information, the basic unit is the bit, but one bit, he says, is
    not enough to specify both the spin and the trajectory of a particle.
    So one quality remains unknown, irreducibly random.

    As a result of the finiteness of information, he explained, the
    universe is fundamentally unpredictable.

    "I suggest that this randomness of the individual event is the
    strongest indication we have of a reality 'out there' existing
    independently of us," Dr. Zeilinger wrote in Nature.

    He added, "Maybe Einstein would have liked this idea after all."

From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  9 15:40:25 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 10:40:25 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Slowly, Cancer Genes Tender Their Secrets
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312155120.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Slowly, Cancer Genes Tender Their Secrets
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/health/27canc.html

[I usually pass over articles that merely confirm what Mr. Mencken said that 
the human body proves the truth of the Trinity, namely that man was made by a 
committee and that so much goes wrong. I am far more interested in progress 
than breakdowns. But this article is all about progress, the enormous 
conceptual progress we are getting in understanding this particular kind of 
breakdown.

[Read carefully.]

    Preventing Cancer
    By GINA KOLATA

    Jay Weinstein found out that he had chronic myelogenous leukemia in
    1996, two weeks before his marriage.

    He was a New York City firefighter, and he thought his health was
    great.

    He learned that there was little hope for a cure. The one treatment
    that could save him was a bone marrow transplant, but that required a
    donor, and he did not have one. By 1999, his disease was nearing its
    final, fatal phase. He might have just weeks to live.

    Then, Mr. Weinstein had a stroke of luck. He managed to become one of
    the last patients to enroll in a preliminary study at the Oregon
    Health & Science University, testing an experimental drug.

    Mr. Weinstein is alive today and still taking the drug, now on the
    market as Gleevec. Its maker, Novartis, supplies it to him free
    because he participated in the clinical trial.

    Dr. Brian Druker, a Howard Hughes investigator at the university's
    Cancer Institute, who led the Gleevec study, sees Mr. Weinstein as a
    pioneer in a new frontier of science. His treatment was based not on
    blasting cancer cells with harsh chemotherapy or radiation but instead
    on using a sort of molecular razor to cut them out.

    That, Dr. Druker and others say, is the first fruit of a new
    understanding of cancer as a genetic disease. But if cancer is a
    genetic disease, it is like no other in medicine.

    With cancer, a person may inherit a predisposition that helps set the
    process off, but it can take decades - even a lifetime - to accumulate
    the additional mutations needed to establish a tumor. That is why,
    scientists say, cancer usually strikes older people and requires an
    element of bad luck.

    "You have to get mutations in the wrong place at the wrong time," Dr.
    Druker says.

    Other genetic diseases may involve one or two genetic changes. In
    cancer, scores of genes are mutated or duplicated and huge chunks of
    genetic material are rearranged. With cancer cells, said Dr. William
    Hahn, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School,
    "it looks like someone has thrown a bomb in the nucleus."

    In other genetic diseases, gene alterations disable cells. In cancer,
    genetic changes give cells a sort of superpower.

    At first, as scientists grew to appreciate the complexity of cancer
    genetics, they despaired. "If there are 100 genetic abnormalities,
    that's 100 things you need to fix to cure cancer," said Dr. Todd
    Golub, the director of the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute of
    Harvard and M.I.T. in Cambridge, Mass., and an oncologist at the
    Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "That's a horrifying thought."

    Making matters more complicated, scientists discovered that the
    genetic changes in one patient's tumor were different from those in
    another patient with the same type of cancer. That led to new
    questioning. Was every patient going to be a unique case? Would
    researchers need to discover new drugs for every single patient?

    "People said, 'It's hopelessly intractable and too complicated a
    problem to ever figure out,' " Dr. Golub recalled.

    But to their own amazement, scientists are now finding that untangling
    the genetics of cancer is not impossible. In fact, they say, what
    looked like an impenetrable shield protecting cancer cells turns out
    to be flimsy. And those seemingly impervious cancer cells, Dr. Golub
    said, "are very much poised to die."

    The story of genes and cancer, like most in science, involves many
    discoveries over many years. But in a sense, it has its roots in the
    1980's, with a bold decision by Dr. Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins
    University to piece together the molecular pathways that lead to
    cancer.

    It was a time when the problem looked utterly complicated. Scientists
    thought that cancer cells were so abnormal that they were, as Dr.
    Vogelstein put it, "a total black box."

    But Dr. Vogelstein had an idea: what if he started with colon cancer,
    which had some unusual features that made it more approachable?

    Colon cancer progresses through recognizable phases. It changes from a
    tiny polyp, or adenoma - a benign overgrowth of cells on the wall of
    the colon - to a larger polyp, a pre-cancerous growth that, Dr.
    Vogelstein said, looks "mean," and then to a cancer that pushes
    through the wall of the colon. The final stage is metastasis, when the
    cancer travels through the body.

    "This series of changes is thought to occur in most cancers, but there
    aren't many cancers where you can get specimens that represent all
    these stages," Dr. Vogelstein said.

    With colon cancer, pathologists could get tissue by removing polyps
    and adenomas in colonoscopies and taking cancerous tumors in surgery.

    Colon cancer was even more appealing for such a study because there
    are families with strong inherited predispositions to develop the
    disease, indicating that they have cancer genes that may be
    discovered.

    So Dr. Vogelstein and his colleagues set out to search for genes "any
    way we could," Dr. Vogelstein said. Other labs found genes, too, and
    by the mid-1990's, scientists had a rough outline of what was going
    on.

    Although there were scores of mutations and widespread gene deletions
    and rearrangements, it turned out that the crucial changes that turned
    a colon cell cancerous involved just five pathways. There were dozens
    of ways of disabling those pathways, but they were merely multiple
    means to the same end.

    People with inherited predispositions to colon cancer started out with
    a gene mutation that put their cells on one of those pathways. A few
    more random mutations and the cells could become cancerous.

    The colon cancer story, Dr. Druker said, "is exactly the paradigm we
    need for every single cancer at every single stage."

    But scientists were stymied. Where should they go from there? How did
    what happens in colon cancer apply to other cancers? If they had to
    repeat the colon cancer story every time, discovering genetic
    alterations in each case, it would take decades to make any progress.

    The turning point came only recently, with the advent of new
    technology. Using microarrays, or gene chips - small slivers of glass
    or nylon that can be coated with all known human genes - scientists
    can now discover every gene that is active in a cancer cell and learn
    what portions of the genes are amplified or deleted.

    With another method, called RNA interference, investigators can turn
    off any gene and see what happens to a cell. And new methods of DNA
    sequencing make it feasible to start asking what changes have taken
    place in what gene.

    The National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research
    Institute recently announced a three-year pilot project to map genetic
    aberrations in cancer cells.

    The project, Dr. Druker said, is "the first step to identifying all
    the Achilles' heels in cancers."

    Solving the problem of cancer will not be trivial, Dr. Golub said.
    But, he added, "For the first time, we have the tools needed to attack
    the problem, and if we as a research community come together to work
    out the genetic basis of cancer, I think it will forever change how we
    think about the disease."

    Already, the principles are in place, scientists say. What is left are
    the specifics: the gene alterations that could be targets for drugs.

    "We're close to being able to put our arms around the whole cancer
    problem," said Robert Weinberg, a biology professor at the
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Whitehead
    Institute. "We've completed the list of all cancer cells needed to
    create a malignancy," Dr. Weinberg said. "And I wouldn't have said
    that five years ago."

    The list includes roughly 10 pathways that cells use to become
    cancerous and that involve a variety of crucial genetic alterations.
    There are genetic changes that end up spurring cell growth and others
    that result in the jettisoning of genes that normally slow growth.
    There are changes that allow cells to keep dividing, immortalizing
    them, and ones that allow cells to live on when they are deranged;
    ordinarily, a deranged cell kills itself.

    Still other changes let cancer cells recruit normal tissue to support
    and to nourish them. And with some changes, Dr. Weinberg said, cancer
    cells block the immune system from destroying them.

    In metastasis, he added, when cancers spread, the cells activate genes
    that normally are used only in embryo development, when cells migrate,
    and in wound healing.

    But so many genetic changes give rise to a question: how does a cell
    acquire them?

    In any cell division, there is a one-in-a-million chance that a
    mutation will accidentally occur, Dr. Weinberg notes. The chance of
    two mutations is one in a million million and the chance of three is
    one in a million million million million.

    This slow mutation rate results from the fact that healthy cells
    quickly repair damage to their DNA.

    "DNA repair stands as the dike between us and the inundation of
    mutations," Dr. Weinberg said.

    But one of the first things a cell does when it starts down a road to
    cancer is to disable repair mechanisms. In fact, BRCA1 and 2, the gene
    mutations that predispose people to breast and ovarian cancer, as well
    as some other inherited cancer genes, disable these repair systems.

    Once the mutations start, there is "a kind of snowball effect, like a
    chain reaction," Dr. Vogelstein said.

    With the first mutations, cells multiply, producing clusters of cells
    with genetic changes. As some randomly acquire additional mutations,
    they grow even more.

    In the end, all those altered genes may end up being the downfall of
    cancer cells, researchers say.

    "Cancer cells have many Achilles' heels," Dr. Golub says. "It may take
    a couple of dozen mutations to cause a cancer, all of which are
    required for the maintenance and survival of the cancer cell."

    Gleevec, researchers say, was the first test of this idea. The drug
    knocks out a gene product, abl kinase, that is overly abundant in
    chronic myelogenous leukemia. The first clinical trial, which began
    seven years ago, seemed like a long shot.

    "The idea that this would lead to therapy was something you wrote in
    your grant application," said Dr. Charles Sawyers, a Howard Hughes
    investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles. "It wasn't
    anything you believed would happen soon."

    But the clinical trial of Gleevec, conducted at the Oregon Health &
    Science University, U.C.L.A. and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in
    Houston, was a spectacular success. Patients' cancer cells were beaten
    back to such an extent that the old tests to look for them in bone
    marrow were too insensitive, Dr. Sawyers said.

    Gleevec is not perfect. It is expensive, costing about $25,000 a year.
    It is not a cure: some cancer cells remain lurking, quiescent and
    ready to spring if the drug is stopped, so patients must take it every
    day for the rest of their lives. And some patients are now developing
    resistance to Gleevec.

    Still, Dr. Sawyers says, "Seven years later, most of our patients are
    still doing well." Without Gleevec, he added, most would be dead.

    As for the future of cancer therapy, Dr. Golub and others say that
    Gleevec offers a taste of the possible.

    Dr. Golub said he expected that new drugs would strike the Achilles'
    heels of particular cancers. The treatment will not depend on where
    the cancer started - breast, colon, lung - but rather which pathway is
    deranged.

    "It's starting to come into focus how one might target the problem,"
    Dr. Golub said. "Individual cancers are going to fall one by one by
    targeting the molecular abnormalities that underlie them."

    And some cancer therapies may have to be taken for a lifetime, turning
    cancer into a chronic disease.

    "Seeing cancer become more like what has happened with AIDS would not
    be shocking," Dr. Golub says. "Does that mean cure? Not necessarily.
    We may see patients treated until they die of something else."

    That is what Mr. Weinstein hopes will happen with him. The cancer is
    still there: new, exquisitely sensitive tests still find a few cells
    lurking in his bone marrow. And Gleevec has caused side effects. Mr.
    Weinstein says his fingers and toes sometimes freeze for a few
    seconds, and sometimes he gets diarrhea.

    But, he said, "Certain things you put out of your mind because life is
    so good."


From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  9 15:41:30 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 10:41:30 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Economics focus: Wealth from worship
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312155190.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Economics focus: Wealth from worship
http://www.economist.com/finance/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5327652

    Dec 20th 2005

    An economist finds that going to church is more than its own reward

    AT CHRISTMAS, many people do things they would never dream of the rest
    of the year, from giving presents to getting drunk. Some even go to
    church. Attendance soars, as millions of once-a-year worshippers fill
    the pews. In Britain, where most weeks fewer than one person in ten
    goes to church, attendance more than triples. Even in America, where
    two-fifths of the people say they go frequently, the share climbs in
    December.

    Some of the occasional churchgoers must wonder whether they might
    benefit from turning up more often. If they did so, they could gain
    more than spiritual nourishment. Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims that regular religious
    participation leads to better education, higher income and a lower
    chance of divorce. His results* (based on data covering non-Hispanic
    white Americans of several Christian denominations, other faiths and
    none) imply that doubling church attendance raises someone's income by
    almost 10%.

    The idea that religion can bring material advantages has a
    distinguished history. A century ago Max Weber argued that the
    Protestant work ethic lay behind Europe's prosperity. More recently
    Robert Barro, a professor at Harvard, has been examining the links
    between religion and economic growth (his work was reviewed here in
    November 2003). At the microeconomic level, several studies have
    concluded that religious participation is associated with lower rates
    of crime, drug use and so forth. Richard Freeman, another Harvard
    economist, found 20 years ago that churchgoing black youths were more
    likely to attend school and less likely to commit crimes or use drugs.

    Until recently, however, there was little quantitative research on
    whether religion affects income directly and if so, by how much. A big
    obstacle is the difficulty of disentangling cause and effect. That
    frequent churchgoers have higher incomes than non-churchgoers does not
    prove that religion made them richer. It might be that richer people
    are likelier to go to church. Or unrelated traits, such as greater
    ambition or personal discipline, could lead people both to go to
    church and also to succeed in their work.

    To distinguish cause from coincidence, Mr Gruber uses information on
    the ethnic mix of neighbourhoods and congregations. Sociologists have
    long argued that people are more likely to go to church if their
    neighbours share their faith. Thus Poles in Boston (which has lots of
    Italian and Irish Catholics) are more likely to attend mass than Poles
    in Minneapolis (which has more Scandinavian Protestants). Measuring
    the density of nationalities that share a religion in a particular
    city can therefore be a good predictor of church attendance.

    But ethnic density is not wholly independent of income. Studies have
    found that people who live with lots of others of the same ethnic
    origin tend to be worse off than those who are not "ghettoised". So Mr
    Gruber excludes an individual's own group from the measures, and
    instead calculates the density of "co-religionists", the proportion of
    the population that shares your religion but not your race.

    According to Mr Gruber's calculations, a 10% increase in the density
    of co-religionists leads to an 8.5% rise in churchgoing. Once he has
    controlled for other inter-city differences, Mr Gruber finds that a
    10% increase in the density of co-religionists leads to a 0.9% rise in
    income. In other words, because there are lots of non-Polish Catholics
    in Boston and few in Minnesota, Poles in Boston both go to church more
    often and are materially better off relative to, say, Swedes in Boston
    than Poles in Minnesota relative to Swedes in Minnesota.

    Mr Gruber finds little evidence that living near different ethnic
    groups of the same faith affects any other civic activity. Poles in
    Boston are no more likely to join secular organisations than Poles in
    Minnesota. Since general differences between cities are already
    controlled for, that leads him to conclude that it must be religious
    attendance that is driving the differences in income.

    Looking for a cause

    Other economists, though they think Mr Gruber's approach is clever,
    are not sure that he has established a causal link between religious
    attendance and wealth. So how might churchgoing make you richer? Mr
    Gruber offers several possibilities. One plausible idea is that going
    to church yields "social capital", a web of relationships that fosters
    trust. Economists think such ties can be valuable, because they make
    business dealings smoother and transactions cheaper. Churchgoing may
    simply be an efficient way of creating them.

    Another possibility is that a church's members enjoy mutual emotional
    and (maybe) financial insurance. That allows them to recover more
    quickly from setbacks, such as the loss of a job, than they would
    without the support of fellow parishioners. Or perhaps religion and
    wealth are linked through education. Mr Gruber's results suggest that
    higher church attendance leads to more years at school and less chance
    of dropping out of college. A vibrant church might also boost the
    number of religious schools, which in turn could raise academic
    achievement.

    Finally, religious faith itself might be the channel through which
    churchgoers become richer. Perhaps, Mr Gruber muses, the faithful may
    be "less stressed out" about life's daily travails and thus better
    equipped for success. This may make religion more appealing to some of
    those who turn up only once a year. But given that Jesus warned his
    followers against storing up treasures on earth, you might think that
    this wasn't the motivation for going to church that he had in mind.
    [gray.gif]

    * "Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation and Outcomes:
    Is Religion Good for You?", NBER Working Paper 11377, May 2005


From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan  9 22:23:35 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 17:23:35 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: William Haxby, Mapper of Ocean Floors,
	Is Dead at 56
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601091650530.19649@panix3.panix.com>

William Haxby, Mapper of Ocean Floors, Is Dead at 56
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/09/nyregion/09haxby.html

[Sarah and I knew Bill through his partner, Miriam, who met him at work at 
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Sarah and I know Miriam from college 
days. We stayed with them several times. Bill was a perfectly 
good-natured, competent man, enthusiastic about his work, frustrated by 
during periods between getting funded, and full of stories about his 
career and those of other mappers. It is amazing, considering what does 
get funded and also considering the huge regard for his work among his 
peers that he wasn't funded for life.

[Basically what Bill did was to develop computer programs that took 
satellite data and mapped the *surface* of the ocean. If the surface 
dipped ever so slightly, it was due to the extra tug of gravity caused by 
there being more matter--like an underwater mountain--than nearby. This 
lets you map the bottom of the ocean. My guess is that since underground 
different specific gravities, straightfoward use of his method will result 
in inaccuracies.

[The article says Bill's map was a lot better than individual soundings in 
the past, but perhaps better ways of making soundings have been made since 
then. If he were still alive, that would be the first thing I'd ask him 
about, and Bill would certainly have told me the best he could. He did not 
at all mind laymen asking difficult questions. That was not his way.

[We were hoping to visit this Summer. Bill died much, much too soon. Our 
deepest condolances to Miriam.

[More from LDEO itself below. Reminiscences about Bill will be posted on 
the site. Click the URL to get a fine photo of Bill and an image of his 
most famous map, which graces the cover of Stephan Hall's _Mapping the 
Millennium_. Then follows a shorter piece from the local paper.]

January 9, 2006
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

William F. Haxby, who created the first maps of the ocean floor to be
based on satellite measurements of the water's surface and became a
master at translating complicated marine data into comprehensible
visual displays, died on Wednesday at his home in Westwood, N.J. He
was 56.

The cause was apparently a heart attack, said James V. Haxby, a
brother.

Dr. Haxby, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory at Columbia University since 1978, used computers to sift
streams of data from satellites and other sensors and produce images
revealing hidden ocean features or phenomena like the drifting of
Arctic sea ice.

"Bill peeled back the surface of the ocean for us," said Robin Bell, a
colleague at the observatory. "His maps launched countless expeditions
and formed the framework for studies of the ocean floor for two
decades."

His signal achievement, several ocean scientists said, was the first
global "gravity field" map of the world's oceans, created in 1983
using measurements of the height of the sea surface collected five
years earlier by a satellite called Seasat that carried a then-new
type of downward-pointing radar that could create images. Dimples and
humps in the sea, not discernible up close but detectable with
satellites, are generated by variations in earth's gravitational field
that are created by seabed features like seamounts, chasms and ridges.

Before the gravity maps, three-dimensional charts of the seafloor were
drawn largely by using thousands of individual soundings taken over
the centuries from ships - a method involving much guesswork and
leaving vast gaps.

Dr. Haxby led a small team that "invented the method to convert
millions of arcane satellite observations into quantitative grids and
then exquisite images," said David T. Sandwell, a researcher at the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

"Major volcanic chains such as the Louisville Ridge and Foundation
Seamounts had been barely detected by sparse ship soundings, yet they
were elegantly and accurately displayed on Bill's gravity maps," Dr.
Sandwell said, referring to two seamount chains in the Pacific Ocean.

William Fulton Haxby was born in Minneapolis and studied geophysics at
the University of Minnesota and at Cornell and Oxford.

His entire career was spent at Lamont-Doherty, where colleagues often
marveled at his ability to turn reams of data into colorful maps and
animation that conveyed far more meaning than words or numbers.

One map showed the effect of a 16-foot rise in sea levels on Florida.
Such a shift is projected if either Greenland's ice sheet or that of
West Antarctica eventually melts. Everything south of Lake Okeechobee
would become submerged.

In addition to his brother James, Dr. Haxby is survived by his
companion of 15 years, Miriam Colwell; his mother, Mary Haxby; a
daughter, Jane Haxby; another brother, Robert; and a sister, Mary
Haxby.

Some of Dr. Haxby's most recent work, done with Prof. Stephanie
Pfirman of Barnard College, was a set of animations depicting how old,
thick sea ice periodically builds in the Arctic Ocean and then is
expelled past Greenland into the Atlantic. They are posted at
http://www.geomapapp.org/arctic/ice_movies/.

"He was amazing at making physical processes come to life," Professor
Pfirman said. "When I showed the animation to my family over the
holidays, they said that for the first time they realized how the ice
moved in the Arctic. They had heard me talk about it for years, but
through Bill's animation they could finally see it."

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory News
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news/2006/01_06_06.htm

News
01/06/06

Contact:
Ken Kostel
(212) 854-9729

William F. Haxby, world-renowned geophysicist and long-time member of
the
Lamont community, passes away at 56

William F. Haxby, a world-renowned earth scientist at Columbia
University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the first to produce
detailed images of the world's seafloor, died suddenly at his home in
Westwood, New Jersey on Wednesday, January 4. He was 56 years old.

Haxby used radar signals to precisely measure the distance from
satellites to the sea surface. From calculations involving a
continuous stream of altimetry data from the Seasat satellites along
thousands of orbital tracks, he reconstructed the minute variations in
the water surface produced by the gravitational attraction of sea
mounts and other topographical features hidden beneath the ocean. His
so-called "satellite-derived gravity map" was a stunning
three-dimensional picture of the Earth's hidden seascape, with its
now-familiar mid-ocean ridges, deep-sea trenches, underwater volcanoes
and submarine canyons laid bare for the first time.

"Bill figured out how to map the oceans with satellites in a few days
that would have taken decades to do with ships," said Jeff Weissel,
who worked with Haxby on the first maps. "Seasat only ran 3 months,
yet he was able to show us the entire ocean with that short mission,
including many places that ships had never visited."

When his first black and white image rolled off the printer in 1981,
his colleagues were stunned, not only by the remarkable detail of
their brand-new view of the planet, but also by the realization that
the whole of the Earth's oceans were suddenly portrayed as they
actually were and not as they had been inferred from often widely
spaced echo-soundings. When compared to the maps made with ship-based
soundings, the already familiar seascape was brought into sharper
focus, but for the third of the ocean floor that had not yet been seen
or studied, everything that scientists saw was new and begging to be
explored.
Gravity map of the seafloor 
One of the gravity maps of the seafloor William Haxby produced using
satellite-based radar altimetry of the ocean surface

"Bill peeled back the surface of the ocean for us," said Robin Bell, a
colleague at Lamont-Doherty. "His maps launched countless expeditions
and formed the framework for studies of the ocean floor for two
decades. The images he produced also appear on the cover of textbooks
and on classroom walls around the globe and will undoubtedly continue
to inspire students for years to come."

Most recently Haxby had been active in producing another global
synthesis of seafloor imagery, this one obtained with echo-soundings
from a new generation of multi-beam sonar that create a view of the
oceans far more detailed than his gravity map. He was able to share
his amazement of the ocean's depths by creating a software application
called GeoMapApp that runs on most computers and enables virtually
anyone to explore the world he first revealed. It is available for
free at http://www.geomapapp.org.

"For more than 30 years, Bill worked tirelessly to expand our
understanding of the planet," said Michael Purdy, Director of
Lamont-Doherty. "His impact was felt in countless ways and in dozens
of discoveries. His quiet, unwavering support of science and the
pursuit of new frontiers will be deeply missed."

Haxby was born in Minneapolis and received his B.S. degree in
geophysics from the University of Minnesota. He completed his Ph.D. in
geophysics at Cornell University and held a post-doctoral research
fellowship at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom before
joining the Lamont-Doherty research staff in 1978.

Haxby is survived by his partner of 14 years, Miriam Colwell;
daughter, Jane Haxby (Daniel Gottlieb); mother, Mary; sister, Mary
Gibbons (Dennis); and brothers, James and Robert.

Funeral services will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 7 at
the Grace Episcopal Church in Westwood, New Jersey. Flowers or
contributions can be sent to the church.
   _________________________________________________________________

The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a member of The Earth Institute
at Columbia University, is one of the world's leading research centers
examining the planet from its core to its atmosphere, across every
continent and every ocean. From global climate change to earthquakes,
volcanoes, environmental hazards and beyond, Observatory scientists
provide the basic knowledge of Earth systems needed to inform the
future health and habitability of our planet.

The Earth Institute at Columbia University is among the world's
leading academic centers for the integrated study of Earth, its
environment, and society. The Earth Institute builds upon excellence
in the core disciplines -- earth sciences, biological sciences,
engineering sciences, social sciences and health sciences -- and
stresses cross-disciplinary approaches to complex problems. Through
its research training and global partnerships, it mobilizes science
and technology to advance sustainable development, while placing
special emphasis on the needs of the world's poor.


Funeral today for ocean scientist Haxby
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060107/NEWS03/601070313/1019/NEWS03

By CATHERINE L. FOLEY
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: January 7, 2006)

PALISADES -- A funeral service will be held today for William F.
Haxby, a renowned Columbia University scientist responsible for a
conceptual breakthrough in the scientific understanding of the Earth's
oceanic landscape.

Haxby died Wednesday in his Westwood, N.J., home. He was 56.

Haxby joined the research staff at Columbia University's
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades in 1978.

In 1981, he discovered how to map the ocean floor using data gathered
in a three-month NASA satellite mission that recorded the undulations
of the sea surface with radar, said Bill Ryan, Haxby's longtime
colleague and a Lamont-Doherty senior scholar.

His "satellite-derived gravity map" gave the world a three-dimensional
picture of the planet's hidden seascape in a detail never before
known.

"A three-month satellite mission produced a model of the ocean floor a
hundred times clearer than 50 years of mapping it with research
ships," Ryan said. "It was revealed in a sharpness, a focus that just
astonished everybody."

Ryan said Haxby's research opened a new chapter of understanding for
the entire scientific community.

"It launched a whole generation of ocean scientists to then send ships
out to sea to check out all these features that had been made
visible," he said. "It immediately excited the community to try to
explain how all these ridges and cracks and volcanoes had originated
in the pattern they were in."

Haxby recently created a software application available free at
[3]www.geomapapp.org that generates images of sea floor topography
using data from the new generation of multi-beam sonar on ocean
research ships.

"Galileo gave us the telescope, but it took multiple generations to
sharpen that and eventually become the Hubble," Ryan said. "Bill, in a
single life, for the oceans, took us from seeing features 10 miles
across to features the size of a football field."

Michael Purdy, director of Lamont-Doherty, said Haxby worked
tirelessly to expand scientific understanding of the planet.

"His impact was felt in countless ways and in dozens of discoveries,"
Purdy said.

Haxby's research will continue to inspire scientists for generations
to come, Ryan said.

Haxby was born in Minneapolis, and received his bachelor's in
geophysics at the University of Minnesota. He completed his doctorate
in geophysics at Cornell University and held a post-doctoral research
fellowship at the University of Oxford.

He is survived by his partner of 14 years, Miriam Colwell; his
daughter, Jane Haxby; his mother, Mary; his sister, Mary Gibbons; and
two brothers, James and Robert.

Services are at 2 p.m. today at Grace Episcopal Church, 9 Harrington
Ave., Westwood, N.J.

The Journal News,[7] is a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper
serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York.

References

3. http://www.geomapapp.org/
7. http://www.gannett.com/


From thrst4knw at aol.com  Tue Jan 10 02:46:23 2006
From: thrst4knw at aol.com (Todd I. Stark)
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 21:46:23 -0500
Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
In-Reply-To: <F687AB2621BB134A8041956C7CB4F12101E09268@EXCHANGEB.mgmt.ad.uconn.edu>
References: <F687AB2621BB134A8041956C7CB4F12101E09268@EXCHANGEB.mgmt.ad.uconn.edu>
Message-ID: <43C31FFF.2070505@aol.com>

I think of Kuhn visiting us in spirit when I hear stories like this. 
That is, I suspect that the main problem is that it is very hard for 
experimentalists to understand each other when they study the same 
domain from such different perspectives.  This seems to parallel a lot 
of the flutter of "science wars" that largely dissolve the more closely 
you look at them (mostly because you discover people addressing 
different things).

People who get their hands dirty playing with the tools and methods of 
experimental science often come away with different ways of thinking 
about their topics depending on the tools they are using.  And different 
from people who view theories without doing experimental work. 
Experimentalists have by neccessity a realist sense of the specific 
things they use in their experiments, because they rely on them in their 
daily work and build on them and engineer with them to create new 
experimental situations.

Hence, experimentalists studying meditation are often going to take a 
lot of things about meditation for granted that theorists (who are 
mostly trying to interpret the data) and other experimentalists are 
going to view with skepticism.   It makes no sense to be skeptical of 
the very concept of meditation when you are taking as your goal to study 
its effects.

If you define the object of study as meditators and take it for granted 
that they have something special in common, then you will be much more 
willing to step into the culture of meditators than someone who is for 
example wondering whether meditation is "just relaxation" or "just 
self-hypnosis" and so on.

A similar culture gap resulted in very different ways of looking at 
hypnosis at one time (e.g. the "state" vs. "non-state" models), although 
in that case it was more like two different communities of experimenters 
than experimenters and theorists.  Some experimenters for a long time 
assumed rom our historical and popular culture understanding there was a 
hypnotic state and that their goal was to discover its properties and 
what made it special.  Ernest Hilgard famously defined the "domain of 
hypnotic phenomena" that needed to be studied.  Others like Nicholas 
Spanos and Theodore Sarbin assumed instead that there was no such state 
and rather constructed experiments to try to demonstrate the same 
behavioral results in other ways.  The non-state model led to an 
enormous amount of productive results that went way beyond just the 
situation of hypnosis. It led to general new and evolving theoretical 
constructs like "role taking," "suggestion," "fantasy proneness," 
"amnesia proneness" and "imaginative involvement" that rendered the 
older state view (almost) obsolete except for convenient shorthand.  For 
example when we choose an experimental subject for their imaginative 
talents and suggestibility and then set their expectations in an 
experimental condition, it is still common to speak in shorthand of 
"hypnotizing" them, even though it is the experimental protocol that we 
are referring to more than some special state of mind.  "Relaxation" 
doesn't cover it adequately.

"Meditation" involves similar problems with a vengeance, since it is far 
more diverse in its forms and traditions and has some enormous and 
influential lobbies that dwarf the "hypnotists" and "hypnotherapists." 
The way we study it has a big impact on what sorts of assumptions we are 
willing to make.  It is probably unavoidable that some people will be 
quite willing and feel justified in taking aspects of Buddhist or other 
traditions for granted as part of the domain of their study, while 
others will find these to be absurd trappings and at best irrelevant to 
the real work they feel they want to do.

I think of Herbert Benson as having originally dealt with this in a 
model that said meditation per se was largely irrelevant; that it was a 
simple behavioral response (thus "relaxation response") that could be 
triggered  by simply repeating an arbitrary phrase.  Benson almost 
certainly only captured the part of the story that interested him and 
which he could test and explain.  But it was the right start, a narrow 
but workable scientific model for studying phenomena that are typically 
captured more in poetry and autophenomenology than in scientific terms.

Now we have a broader understanding and more sophisticated models of the 
global psychological processes involved in meditation and other sorts of 
conditions (for example, see Austin's wonderful "Zen and the Brain"), 
but we still sometimes differ on the proper way to conceptuallize 
meditation, and whether it can be removed from its cultural trappings 
and still be the same object of study.

Not that any of this justifies bad behavior or sneering contempt on 
anyone's part, just by way of an attempt at partial explanation.

kind regards,

Todd

Buck, Ross wrote on 1/9/2006, 10:29 AM:

 > Herbert Benson in "The Relaxation Response" suggested decades ago that
 > disciplines such as meditation and prayer share the quality of promoting
 > deep relaxation, which has the opposite effects of the fight-or-flight
 > response.  That is, they lower autonomic and endocrine arousal, and
 > promote immune system functioning.
 >
 > Cheers, Ross Buck
 >
 > Ross Buck, Ph. D.
 > Professor of Communication Sciences
 >     and Psychology
 > Communication Sciences U-1085
 > University of Connecticut
 > Storrs, CT 06269-1085
 > 860-486-4494
 > fax  860-486-5422
 > Ross.buck at uconn.edu
 > http://www.coms.uconn.edu/docs/people/faculty/rbuck/index.htm
 >
 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org
 > [mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of Premise Checker
 > Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 1:03 PM
 > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org
 > Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
 >
 > In the Lab With the Dalai Lama
 > The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.12.16
 > http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i17/17b01001.htm
 >
 >     By LEIGH E. SCHMIDT
 >
 >     Even the Dalai Lama's harshest critics at the Society for
 >     Neuroscience meeting last month, in Washington, would have
 >     to concede this much: Choosing the exiled Tibetan Buddhist
 >     leader to inaugurate the professional association's series
 >     on neuroscience and society certainly got people talking.
 >     Who would have thought that an announced lecture on "The
 >     Neuroscience of Meditation" would set off a protest petition
 >     gathering about 1,000 signatures, a counterpetition of
 >     support boasting nearly as many names, substantial coverage
 >     in The New York Times and on National Public Radio, as well
 >     as ample chatter in the blogosphere? In a culture that likes
 >     its battles between science and religion to be loud,
 >     colorful, and Christian -- another nasty squabble, say,
 >     between evolutionists and creationists -- this controversy
 >     seemed unlikely to gain much traction. Yet as the dispute
 >     built momentum in the months leading up to the event, it
 >     soon became clear that the prospect of the red-robed Dalai
 >     Lama's urging the study of an ancient spiritual practice
 >     upon white-coated lab scientists would provide a newsworthy
 >     angle on the usual wrangling.
 >
 >     Playing upon tensions far less noticed than those that have
 >     plagued relations between science and conservative
 >     Christianity, the latest dust-up reveals the spirit wars
 >     that divide the knowledge class itself. How purely secular
 >     and naturalistic do the members of that class imagine
 >     themselves to be, and how committed are they to keeping
 >     religion at bay in their conference gatherings, university
 >     laboratories, civic institutions, newsrooms, and think
 >     tanks? In turn, is "spirituality" a back door through which
 >     religion gets to enter the conversation, now dressed in the
 >     suitably neutralized garb of meditation as a universalistic
 >     practice of inward peace and outreaching compassion? Or does
 >     religion, even when soft-peddled in the cosmopolitan
 >     language of spirituality and the contemplative mind,
 >     inevitably remain an embarrassment to those elites who stake
 >     their authority on secular rationality? The dispute roiling
 >     the neuroscience society over the past six months has
 >     brought such questions front and center.
 >
 >     Inviting the Dalai Lama to speak at the meeting created two
 >     major border disputes. The first, of modest consequence to
 >     religion-and-science debates, was the conflict over the
 >     "political agenda" of the exiled Tibetan leader. In an
 >     international professional association that includes many
 >     Chinese scientists, some members were offended at the
 >     implied endorsement that the event gave to the Dalai Lama's
 >     larger cause of freedom for Tibetans. The second dispute,
 >     more insistently debated, was over religion's showing up --
 >     so visibly, to boot -- at an annual meeting of
 >     neuroscientists. The almost visceral response by critics was
 >     to declare a total separation of religion and science, to
 >     wave the flag for the late-19th-century warfare between the
 >     two domains. "A science conference is not [an] appropriate
 >     venue for a religion-based presentation," a professor of
 >     anesthesia from the University of California at San
 >     Francisco remarked on the petition. "Who's next, the pope?"
 >     That sign-off question pointed to a second part of the
 >     strict separationist logic: Even if the Dalai Lama seemed
 >     pretty irenic as religious leaders go, he nonetheless
 >     represented a slippery slope into a mire of superstition and
 >     authoritarianism. (How else, some critics asked, were they
 >     to interpret his known affinities with reincarnation and
 >     monasticism?) "Today, the Dalai Lama; Tomorrow,
 >     Creationists?" wrote a professor of medicine at the
 >     University of Toronto, capturing perhaps the most
 >     commonplace anxiety given voice among the critics. Keep the
 >     society free of all religious discussion, or else the
 >     esteemed body might slide into the hell of a Kansas
 >     school-board meeting.
 >
 >     More interesting than the purists' boundary monitoring is
 >     the way the Dalai Lama and his defenders imagine through
 >     meditation an emerging meeting point for science and
 >     religion in contemporary culture. The headline study that
 >     served as the immediate source of intrigue surrounding his
 >     recent lecture was an article published last year in the
 >     Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and produced
 >     by researchers at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging
 >     and Behavior, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
 >     That group, led by the psychology professor Richard J.
 >     Davidson, has been studying long-term Tibetan Buddhist
 >     practitioners of meditation, comparing their brain-wave
 >     patterns with those of a control group. Davidson himself has
 >     been working in the science-religion borderlands for more
 >     than two decades and has been a leading collaborator with
 >     the Mind and Life Institute, in Boulder, Colo., one of the
 >     principal organizations encouraging the
 >     neuroscience-meditation dialogue.
 >
 >     Shifting the focus of research from altered states of
 >     consciousness or momentary experiences of ecstasy, which so
 >     often concerned inquirers in the 1960s and 1970s, the
 >     Davidson group has been looking for evidence that sustained
 >     meditation causes actual neural changes in everyday patterns
 >     of cognition and emotion. In other words, they want to know
 >     if the brain function of long-term contemplatives is made
 >     demonstrably different through years of "mental training."
 >     And not just different, but better: That is, does the
 >     well-developed meditative mind sustain higher levels of
 >     compassion and calmness than the run-of-the-mill American
 >     noggin? Well, after testing eight long-time Tibetan Buddhist
 >     practitioners and 10 "healthy student volunteers," the
 >     researchers discovered that the 10,000 to 50,000 hours that
 >     the various monks had devoted to "mental training" appeared
 >     to make a real neurological difference. As the study's title
 >     put it, "Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude
 >     gamma synchrony during mental practice." Davidson and
 >     company, careful not to overreach in their conclusions, did
 >     suggest that practices of meditation, and the accompanying
 >     compassionate affect, were "flexible skills that can be
 >     trained." Did that mean contemplative practice could be
 >     abstracted from its religious context and then applied as a
 >     kind of public pedagogy? Were hopeful supporters wrong to
 >     read this as a tantalizing suggestion that meditation might
 >     prove beneficial not only for the mental health of Americans
 >     but also for the very fabric of society? Where, after all,
 >     couldn't we benefit from a little more "pure compassion,"
 >     altruism, lovingkindness, and "calm abiding"?
 >
 >     As novel as it may sound to monitor the brain waves of
 >     Tibetan Buddhist monks in university laboratories or on
 >     Himalayan hillsides (Davidson has done both), it is
 >     certainly not the first time that American psychologists
 >     have sought to re-engage the spiritual through the
 >     healthy-mindedness of meditation. At Wisconsin, Davidson
 >     occupies a research professorship named for Harvard's
 >     William James, the pioneering psychologist, psychical
 >     researcher, and philosopher of religion, and it is in the
 >     tradition of James that the current turn to the
 >     contemplative mind is best understood. Counter to the
 >     popular image of Americans as endlessly enterprising,
 >     agitated, and restless -- all busy Marthas, no reflective
 >     Marys -- James discerned a deep mystical cast to the
 >     American psyche and pursued that strain with uncommon
 >     intellectual devotion. Yet when it came to "methodical
 >     meditation," James saw little of it left among American
 >     Christians and turned instead to homegrown practitioners of
 >     various mind-over-matter cures. He particularly accented
 >     those "New Thought" metaphysicians who were pushing forward
 >     a dialogue with far-flung emissaries of yoga and Buddhist
 >     meditation in the wake of the World's Parliament of
 >     Religions, held in Chicago in 1893.
 >
 >     Among James's favored practitioners of these newly
 >     improvised regimens of meditation was Ralph Waldo Trine, a
 >     Boston-based reformer with a knack for inspirational
 >     writing. In The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902),
 >     James used Trine's blockbuster In Tune With the Infinite
 >     (1897) as an epitome of the emergent practices of
 >     concentration, mental repose, and healthy-mindedness then
 >     percolating in New England and elsewhere across the country.
 >     Though an unabashed popularizer, Trine was not a
 >     lightweight. With an educational pedigree that ran from Knox
 >     College to the University of Wisconsin to the Johns Hopkins
 >     University, he moved easily in Harvard's wider metaphysical
 >     circles and energetically engaged various progressive
 >     causes. In much the same way that current studies promote
 >     the clinical applications of meditation, Trine emphasized
 >     the healthful benefits that accrued from cultivating a calm
 >     yet expectant mind. He had no scanners or electrodes, but he
 >     had the same hopes about improving the mental and physical
 >     health of Americans through elaborating a universal practice
 >     of meditation, one that transcended the particulars of any
 >     one religious tradition and represented a kind of
 >     cosmopolitan composite of all faiths. And while Trine did
 >     not have the Dalai Lama at hand, he did have extended
 >     contact with a well-traveled Sinhalese Buddhist monk,
 >     Anagarika Dharmapala, with whom he compared notes and
 >     devotional habits at a summer colony in Maine as he was
 >     putting together his own system of meditation for Americans.
 >     Like other inquirers then and now, Trine was all too ready
 >     to look to Asia for a practical antidote to American
 >     nervousness.
 >
 >     The real payoff for Trine, as it is for Davidson and his
 >     colleagues, was not established simply through a calculus of
 >     productivity or cheerfulness: Would encouraging meditation
 >     or other visualization techniques make people more alert and
 >     proficient at the office or on the playing field? Would it
 >     make them feel happier and less disgruntled? Trine, like
 >     James and now Davidson, was finally more interested in
 >     saintliness and compassion than in helping stressed-out
 >     brain workers relax and concentrate. It is hard not to hear
 >     a hint of Davidson's pursuit of altruism in Trine's "spirit
 >     of infinite love," the moral imperative to "care for the
 >     weak and defenseless." And it is hard not to see that the
 >     world of William James and Ralph Waldo Trine is alive and
 >     well as American investigators wire up Tibetan Buddhist
 >     hermits in a search for the powers of the concentrated mind,
 >     the mental disciplines of harmony, compassion, and peace
 >     that might make the world a marginally kinder, less selfish
 >     place. That optimism about human nature -- that the mind has
 >     deep reservoirs of potential for empathy and altruism -- had
 >     a lot more backing among liberals and progressives in 1900
 >     than it does today. Still, the considerable hopes now
 >     invested in meditation suggest that the old romantic
 >     aspirations, spiritual and otherwise, continue to flourish,
 >     especially among members of the mind-preoccupied knowledge
 >     class.
 >
 >     P erhaps the most important dimension of the Dalai Lama's
 >     turn to the laboratory is the notion that the
 >     religion-science wound will be salved through recasting
 >     religion as spirituality. The Nobel laureate's latest book
 >     explicitly suggests as much in its title, The Universe in a
 >     Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. In
 >     doing so, he expressly appeals to all those Americans who
 >     fear fundamentalist incarnations of religion and who instead
 >     cast themselves as intellectually curious and spiritually
 >     seeking. Religion, on this model, is not a domain of
 >     authority competing with science but an inward terrain of
 >     personal experience and individual probing. Spirituality,
 >     the Dalai Lama writes, "is a human journey into our internal
 >     resources." Representing "the union of wisdom and
 >     compassion," it shares with science a progressive hope for
 >     "the betterment of humanity." In those terms, religion as
 >     spirituality becomes the handmaiden of science itself,
 >     joining it in an open quest for knowledge, empirical and
 >     pragmatic, unconstrained by ancient creeds, cosmologies, or
 >     churches. In such exhortations the Dalai Lama shows a fine,
 >     intuitive feel for much of American intellectual and
 >     religious life, but he is hardly telling today's Emersonian
 >     inquirers something about the universe that they do not
 >     already affirm.
 >
 >     A practice of meditation made palatable to scientists,
 >     secularists, and seekers would no doubt look pallid to all
 >     those monks, hermits, and saints who have taken it to be an
 >     arduous and ascetic discipline. Still, the American pursuit
 >     of "spirituality," reaching a crescendo in the past two
 >     decades, has been all too easy to dismiss as paltry and
 >     unsubstantial, labeled as foreign and threatening to
 >     more-orthodox versions of a Christian America. In this
 >     often-charged religious environment, the Dalai Lama has
 >     astutely laid hold of the science-spirituality nexus as a
 >     cultural foothold. As he has discovered in this latest
 >     brouhaha, that move has hardly lifted him above the wider
 >     debates, whether about materialism or intelligent design,
 >     but it has allowed him to connect with America's more
 >     cosmopolitan and progressive religious impulses. When
 >     William James was asked directly in 1904, "What do you mean
 >     by 'spirituality'?," he replied: "Susceptibility to ideals,
 >     but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about
 >     them." In mingling with neuroscientists who have warmed to
 >     his talk of spirituality, the Dalai Lama may well have found
 >     his own avatars of William James.
 >
 >     Leigh E. Schmidt is a professor of religion at Princeton
 >     University and author of Restless Souls: The Making of
 >     American Spirituality (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).
 > _______________________________________________
 > paleopsych mailing list
 > paleopsych at paleopsych.org
 > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > paleopsych mailing list
 > paleopsych at paleopsych.org
 > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych
 >




From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 10 14:17:22 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 09:17:22 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge Annual Question 1999: What Is The Most Important
	Invention? 
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601100843430.24808@panix1.panix.com>

Edge Annual Question 1999: What Is The Most Important Invention? 
http://www.edge.org/documents/Invention.html

CONTRIBUTORS:
Colin Blakemore
Steven Rose
Joseph Traub
M. Csikszentmihalyi
Marvin Minsky
Philip W. Anderson
Reuben Hersh
Howard Gardner
Daniel Dennett
Freeman Dyson
William Calvin
David Shaw
Roger Schank
Stephen Budiansky
Richard Saul Wurman
Stewart Brand
George Dyson
Marney Morris
V.S. Ramachandran
Jeremy Cherfas
Bart Kosko
Stuart Hameroff
Michael Nesmith
Clifford Pickover
Margaret Wertheim
Richard Dawkins
David Haig
Chris Langton
Eric J. Hall
Clay Shirkey
Keith Devlin
Luyen Chou
Antonio Cabral
Hendrik Hertzberg
David Berreby
Charles Simonyi
Piet Hut
Susan Blackmore
James P. O'Donnell
Nicholas Humphrey
Jaron Lanier
Terrence Sejnowski
Ron Cooper
W. Daniel Hillis
John Baez
Viviana Guzman
Stephen Schneider
Philip Campbell
John Horgan
Raphael Kasper
Sherry Turkle
David Myers
Don Goldsmith
Arnold Trehub
Jay Ogilvy
Douglas Rushkoff
Mike Godwin
Duncan Steel
Tom Standage
Andy Clark
Stanislas Dehaene
John Maddox
Eberhard Zangger
Leon Lederman
Marc D. Hauser
David Buss
Leroy Hood
Julian Barbour
John Henry Holland
Gordon Gould
Bob Rafelson
John Allen Paulos
Verena Huber-Dyson
Garniss Curtis
Milford Wolpoff
Mark Mirsky
Dan Sperber
Lew Tucker
Tor N?rretranders
Richard Potts
Lawrence M. Krauss
John McCarthy
Karl Sabbagh
Ellen Winner
George Johnson
Rodney Brooks
John R. Searle
Lee Smolin
Paul W. Ewald
Carl Zimmer
Robert Shapiro
James Bailey
John C. Dvorak
Kenneth Ford
Philip Brockman
Howard Rheingold
George Lakoff
Robert Provine
Peter Cochrane
Samuel Barondes
Chris Westbury
John Rennie
Randolph Nesse
Brian Greene
Esther Dyson
Steven Johnson
Delta Willis
Joseph LeDoux
Maria Lepowski
John Barrow
Todd Siler
Peter Tallack
Brian Goodwin
John Brockman

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?
Introduction by
John Brockman

A year ago I emailed the participants of The Third Culture Mail List
for help with a project which was published on EDGE as "The World
Question Center." I asked them: "what questions are you asking
yourself?".

The World Question Center was published on December 30th. On the same
day The New York Times ran an article "In an Online Salon, Scientists
Sit Back and Ponder" which featured a selection of the questions.
Other press coverage can be found in EDGE In The News.

The project was interesting, worthwhile....and fun.
.
This year, beginning on Thanksgiving Day, I polled the list on (a)
"What Is The Most Important Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?"
... and (b) "Why?".

I am pleased to publish below* the more than one hundred responses in
order of receipt. I expect many more entries and, in the spirit of The
Reality Club, robust discussion and challenges among the contributors.

Happy New Year!!

JB

p.s. I get the last word.

(*Please note that the length of this document is 41,000 words which
prints out to about 75 pages.)
   _________________________________________________________________

RELATED PRESS
   _________________________________________________________________

January 7, 1999
Wired News
Top-Level Think Tank Goes Public
John Brockman's invitation-only salon for scientific thinkers opens a
public forum on Feed.
By Steve Silberman

One of the Net's most prestigious, invitation-only free-trade zones
for the exchange of potent ideas is opening its doors. A little.
.....Starting Thursday, two or three selected dialogs a month at Edge
-- founded in 1996 by author and literary agent John Brockman -- will
be open for public reading and discussion in a special area on Feed.
   _________________________________________________________________

January 7, 1999
Die Zeit (German Text) 
Brainstorming In The Club Of Thinkers
(Partial, rough English Translation)
by Ulrich Schnabel und Urs Willmann

Could one inspire German scientists for such a brainstorming? Hardly.
In German it is already difficult to find a good translation for this
neural activity, leading to fantasy an fun. Brainstorming: "procedure
to find the best solution of a problem by collecting spontaneous
incidents (of the coworkers)", torments itself the Duden, the leading
German dictionary. You can imagine the result.
   _________________________________________________________________

January 7, 1999|
ABCNEWS.COM

What Changed the World? Suggestions for Top Inventions
by Lee Dye -- Special to ABCNEWS.COM

That question was presented on Thanksgiving Day to Nobel laureates and
other heavy thinkers by New York author and literary agent John
Brockman. Brockman, who presides over an eclectic gathering of
scientists and science buffs, started publishing the answers this week
on the group's Web site. More than 100 participants have taken the
bait so far, and their answers are as varied, and in some cases as
strange, as the participants themselves.....This is not a group that
accepts limitations gladly. Some fudged on the dates. Some eschewed
the notion of an invention as some sort of gadget, opting instead for
such things as the development of the scientific method, mathematics
or some religions.
   _________________________________________________________________

January 5, 1998
FEED

The Mother of All Inventions
Richard Dawkins, Stewart Brand, Joseph Traub and others answer the
question: What was the most important invention of the past two
thousand years?
This special feature marks the first collaboration between FEED and
Edge, John Brockman's invitation-only Internet forum, where hundreds
of the world's leading scientists and thinkers share their thoughts on
issues ranging from the meaning of numbers to genetics to affirmative
action. Readers can visit the Edge site for even more nominations, and
an post their own suggestions in the Loop. -- The Editors
   _________________________________________________________________

January 5, 1998
Salon

"What's the Mother of All Inventions"
By Scott Rosenberg

The list makes for an enjoyable read -- if you can get over the
participants' utter inability to remain within the question's
2000-year bounds. Suggesting that the most important invention of this
era is the spirit of rebellion against arbitrary rules.
   _________________________________________________________________

January 4, 1998
World News Tonight -- ABC News
Comments by Peter Jennings
   _________________________________________________________________

January 4, 1998
Newsweek Magazine -- Newsweek.com

"The Power of Big Ideas"
By Sharon Begley

Was the light bulb more important than the pill? An online gathering
of scientists nominates the most important inventions of the past
2,000 years. Some of their choices might surprise you.
Newsweek on Air -- Related Audio

Interview by David Alpern
   _________________________________________________________________

January 4, 1999
The Wall Street Journal -- The Wall Street Journal Interactive
(Subscription Required)

"The Nominees for Best Invention Of the Last Two Millennia Are . . ."
By David Bank
Staff Reporter ofThe Wall Street Journal

John Brockman is the premier literary agent of the digerati, so when
he asked 1,000 scientists and other techno-thinkers to suggest the
most important invention of the past 2,000 years, the responses
sounded a lot like proposals for yet another millennial book.
   _________________________________________________________________

January 4, 1999
The Daily Telegraph

The Pill and the Birth of Invention:
From Hay and Mozart to the Internet and clocks, scientists nominatre
man's major achievements,
says Roger Highfield

Nobel laureate Prof. Philip Anderson, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett,
biologist Prof Richard Dawkins and Sir John Maddox are among the 100
or so contributors who have nominated inventions randing from tha
atomic bomb and board games to the Internet, Hindu-Arabic number
system and anaethesia.
   _________________________________________________________________

January 4, 1999
DaveNet
" Welcome to 1999!"
by Dave Winer

Congratulations to John Brockman and the people at edge.org. This is
an incredible source of new thoughts. I highly recommend it to DaveNet
readers.....Sites like www.edge.org show what can be done when there's
moderation and thoughtfulness and a little bit of editing. We can
learn from each other. The world is not filled with bullshit. There
are interesting new ideas, and new perspectives on old ideas
   _________________________________________________________________

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?
   _________________________________________________________________

Colin Blakemore:

My choice for the most important invention? The contraceptive pill.

Why? Well, there are, of course, the well-rehearsed answers to that
question. The pill did indeed fertilize the sexual liberation of the
sixties, did stimulate feminism and the consequent erosion of
conventional family structure in Western society -- perhaps the most
significant modification in human behaviour since the invention of
shamanism. It did help to change our concept of the division of
labour, to foster the beginnings of an utterly different attitude to
the social role of women. But, arguably the important sequel of the
pill is the growing conception that our bodies are servants of our
minds, rather than vice versa. This relatively low-tech invention has
triggered a cultural and cognitive revolution in our self-perception.
It has contributed to our ability to accept organ transplantation, the
notion of machine intelligence, gene therapy and even, eventually,
germ-line genetic manipulation. It has shifted the quest of human
beings from controlling their physical environment to controlling
themselves -- their own bodies and hence their physical destinies.

COLIN BLAKEMORE is Waynflete Professor of Physiology, University of
Oxford; Director, Oxford Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience; President
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1997-8; and
author of The Mind's Brain.
   _________________________________________________________________

Steven Rose:

I don't need a page. The answer is clear: inventions are concepts, not
just technologies, so the most important are the concepts of
democracy, of social justice, and the belief in the possibility of
creating a society free from the oppressions of clas, race, and
gender.

STEVEN ROSE, neurobiologist, is Professor of Biology and Director,
Brain and Behaviour Research Group, The Open University; author
Lifelines; The Making Of Memory; Not In Our Genes; From Brains To
Consciousness (Ed.) . See EDGE: "THE TWO STEVES" Pinker vs. Rose - A
Debate (Part I) and (Part II)".
   _________________________________________________________________

Joseph Traub:

My nomination is the invention of the scientific method.

The Greeks believed we could understand the world rationally. But the
scientific method requires that we ask questions of nature by
experimentation. This has led to the science and technology that has
transformed the world.

JOSEPH TRAUB is Edwin Howard Armstrong Professor of Computer Science
at Columbia University and External Professor at the Santa Fe
Institute. He is the author of nine books, including the recently
published Complexity And Information. See EDGE: " The Unknown and The
Unknowable: A Talk With Joseph Traub".
   _________________________________________________________________

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:

I always liked Lynn White's story about how the stirrup revolutionized
warfare and made feudal society and culture possible. Or Lefebre des
Noettes' argument about how the invention of the rudder made extensive
sailing and the consequent expansion of Europe and its colonization of
the world possible. But it's sobering to realize that it took us over
one thousand years to realize the impact of these artifacts. So I am
not at all sure we have at this time a good grip on what the most
important inventions of the past millennia have been. Certainly the
contraceptive pill is a good candidate, and so is the scientific
method. I am also intrigued by the effects of such inventions as the
flag -- a symbol of belonging that millions will follow to ruin or
victory independently of biological connectedness; or the social
security card that signifies that we are not alone and our welfare is
a joint problem for the community; or the invention of civil rights
which however abused and misused is pointing us towards a notion of
universal human dignity that might yet eclipse in importance all the
technological marvels of the millennium.

MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI is professor of psychology and education at
the University of Chicago. He is the author of Flow: The Psychology of
Optimal Experience, The Evolving Self: A Psychology For the Third
Millennium, Creativity, and Finding Flow (A Master Minds Book).
   _________________________________________________________________

Marvin Minsky:

In his work on the foundations of chemistry, it occurred to Antoine
Lavoisier (and also, I suppose to Joseph Priestly) that the smell of a
chemical was not necessarily a 'property' of that chemical, but a
property of some related chemical that had the form of a gas, which
therefore could reach the nose of the observer. Thus solid sulfur
itself has no smell, but its gaseous relatives, sulfur dioxide and
hydrogen sulfide have plenty of it. Perhaps this tiny insight was the
key to the transformation of chemistry from a formerly incoherent
field into the great science of the 19th and 20th centuries.

MARVIN MINSKY is a mathematician and computer scientist; Toshiba
Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; cofounder of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He
is the author of eight books, including The Society of Mind. See EDGE:
" Consciousness is a Big Suitcase: A Talk with Marvin Minsky "; The
Third Culture, Chapter 8.
   _________________________________________________________________

Philip W. Anderson:

The question is impossible to answer with one thing; one could for
instance say with some justification "the germ theory of disease" but
then that goes back to the microscope -- otherwise no one would ever
have seen a germ -- and that to the lens, and eyeglasses may be as
important as germs, ft as germs, and so on. But I will give you my
entry; to the amazement of my colleagues who think of me as the
ultimate antireductionist, I will suggest a very reductionist idea:
the quantum theory, and I include emphatically quantum field theory.
The quantum theory forces a revision of our mode of thinking which is
far more profound than Newtonian mechanics or the Copernican
revolution or relativity. In a sense it absolutely forces us not to be
reductionist if we are to keep our sanity, since it tells us that we
are made up of anonymous identical quanta of various quantum fields,
so that only the whole has any identity or integrity. Yet it also
tells us that we really completely know the rules of the game which
all these particles and quanta are playing, so that if we are clever
enough we can understand everything about ourselves and our world.
Note that I said understand, not predict -- the latter is really in
principle impossible, for reasons which have little to do with the
famous Uncertainty Principle and a lot to do with exponential
explosions of computations.

I would agree with whoever said "the scientific method" if I thought
that was a single thing invented at some identifiable time, but I know
too much history and see too much difference between different
sociologies of fields.

Why has no one mentioned the printing press yet?

The other really profound discovery is the molecular basis of
evolution, for which probably Oswald Avery deserves more credit than
anyone. Evolution itself has, like the scientific method, much too
complicated a history to class as a single invention.

PHILIP W. ANDERSON is a Nobel laureate physicist at Princeton and one
of the leading theorists on superconductivity. He is the author of A
Career in Theoretical Physics, and Economy as a Complex Evolving
System.
   _________________________________________________________________

Reuben Hersh:

The most important invention of all time was the interrogative
sentence. i.e., the asking of questions.

However, the original request was for the most important invention of
the last 2,000 years, not of all time. To that I would say, space
travel.

Of course, it may be centuries before we know the full consequences of
space travel.

REUBEN HERSH is professor emeritus at the University of matics,
Really? And (with Philip J. Davis)The Mathematical Experience, winner
of the National Book Award in 1983. See EDGE; "What Kind Of Thing Is A
Number? A Talk With Reuben Hersh".
   _________________________________________________________________

Howard Gardner:

Another good question! My perhaps eccentric but nonetheless heartfelt
nomination is Western classical music, as epitomized in the
compositions of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and above all Mozart. Music
is a free invention of the human spirit, less dependent upon physical
or physiological inventions than most other contrivances. Musical
compositions in the Western tradition represent an incredible cerebral
achievement, one that is not only appreciated but also imitated or
elaborated upon wherever it travels. Most inventions -- from nuclear
energy to antibiotics - can be used for good or ill. Classical music
has probably given more pleasure to more individuals, with less
negative fallout, than any other human artifact. Finally, while no one
can compose like Mozart and few can play like Heifetz or Casals,
anyone who works at it can perform in a credible way -- and, courtesy
of software, even those of us unable to play an instrument or create a
score can now add our own fragments to an ever expanding canon.

HOWARD GARDNER, is Professor of Education at Harvard University. His
numerous books include Leading Minds, Frames of Mind, Multiple
Intelligences, The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive
Revolution, The Unschooled Mind, To Open Minds, Creating Minds, and
Extraordinary Minds (Master Minds Series). See EDGE: "Truth, Beauty,
and Goodness: Education for All Human Beings" A Talk With Howard
Gardner".
   _________________________________________________________________

Daniel C. Dennett:

The battery, the first major portable energy packet in the last few
billion years. When simple prokaryotes acquired mitochondria several
billion years ago, these amazingly efficient portable energy devices
opened up Design Space to multicellular life of dazzling variety. Many
metazoa developed complex nervous systems, which gave the planet eyes
and ears for the first time, expanding the epistemic horizons of life
by many orders of magnitude. The modest battery (and its sophisticated
fuel cell descendants), by providing energy for autonomous,
free-ranging, unplugged artifacts of dazzling variety, is already
beginning to provide a similarly revolutionary cascade of
developments. Politically, the transistor radio and cell phone are
proving to be the most potent weapons against totalitarianism ever
invented, since they destroy all hope of centralized control of
information. By giving every individual autonomous prosthetic
extensions of their senses (think of how camcorders are
revolutionizing scientific data-gathering possibilities, for
instance), batteries enable fundamental improvements in the
epistemological architecture of our species. The explosion of science
and technology that may eventually permit us to colonize space (or
save our planet from a fatal collision) depends on our ability to
store and extract electrical power ubiquitously. Our batteries are
still no match for the mitochondrial ATP system -- a healthy person
with a backpack can climb over mountains for a week without refueling,
something no robot could come close to doing -- but they open up a new
and different cornucopia of competences.

DANIEL C. DENNETT, a philosopher, is Director of the Center for
Cognitive Studies, and Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor at
Tufts University. He is author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution
and the Meanings of Life, Consciousness Explained, Brainstorms, Kinds
of Minds (Science Masters Series), and coauthor with Douglas
Hofstadter of The Mind's I. See The Third Culture, Chapter 10.
   _________________________________________________________________

Freeman Dyson:

This is a good question. My suggestion is not original. I don't
remember who gave me the idea, but it was probably Lynn White, with
Murray Gell-Mann as intermediary.

The most important invention of the last two thousand years was hay.
In the classical world of Greece and Rome and in all earlier times,
there was no hay. Civilization could exist only in warm climates where
horses could stay alive through the winter by grazing. Without grass
in winter you could not have horses, and without horses you could not
have urban civilization. Some time during the so-called dark ages,
some unknown genius invented hay, forests were turned into meadows,
hay was reaped and stored, and civilization moved north over the Alps.
So hay gave birth to Vienna and Paris and London and Berlin, and later
to Moscow and New York.

FREEMAN DYSON is Professor of Physics at the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton. His professional interests are in mathematics and
astronomy. Among his many books are Disturbing the Universe, From Eros
to Gaia, and Imagined Worlds.
   _________________________________________________________________

William Calvin:

Computers, not for current reasons but because they're essential to
prevent a collapse of civilization in the future. Computers may allow
us to understand the earth's fickle climate and how it is affected by
detours of the great ocean currents. These detours cause abrupt
coolings within a decade that last for centuries, sure to set off
massive warfare as the population downsizes to match the crop
failures. "Natural" though these worldwide coolings have been in the
past, with their forest fires and population crashes, they're not any
more inevitable than local floods -- if we learn enough about the
nonlinear mechanisms in order to stabilize climate. Computer
simulations are the key to a "preventative medicine" of climate, what
may allow human scientific ingenuity to keep civilization from
unraveling in another episode of cool, crash, and burn.

WILLIAM H. CALVIN is a theoretical neurophysiologist on the faculty of
the University of Washington School of Medicine who writes about the
brain and evolution; author of The River That Flows Uphill, The
Throwing Madonna, The Cerebral Symphony, Conversations with Neil's
Brain (with George A. Ojemann), The Cerebral Code, and How Brains
Think (Science Masters Series). See EDGE: " Competing for
Consciousness: A Talk with William Calvin".
   _________________________________________________________________

David Shaw:

I know it would probably be more helpful to add something new to the
list, but I found Joe Traub's nomination so compelling that I'd feel
dishonest doing anything but seconding it. It's hard to imagine how
different our lives would be today without the steady accrual of both
knowledge and technology that has accompanied the rigorous application
of the scientific method over a surprisingly small number of human
generations. While the notion of formulating well explicated, testable
conjectures and subjecting them to potential refutation through
controlled experimentation (and, where appropriate, statistical
analysis) is now second nature to those of us who work in the
sciences, it's easy to forget that we weren't born with an intuitive
understanding of this approach, and had we lived two thousand years
ago, we would never have been taught to use it. Although the apparatus
of formal logic would probably rate a close second in my book, I join
Joe in casting my vote for the scientific method.

DAVID E. SHAW is the chairman of D. E. Shaw & Co., a global investment
bank whose activities center on various aspects of the intersection
between technology and finance, and of Juno Online Services, the
world's second largest Internet access provider. He also serves as a
member of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and
Technology, and previously served on the faculty of the Computer
Science Department at Columbia University.
   _________________________________________________________________

Roger Schank:

We are using it now. The internet. Of course the internet relies on
numerous other inventions (chips, networking, CRTs, telephones,
electricity etc). The reason why the internet isn't an obvious choice
at first glance (besides the fact that is so present in our lives we
can fail to notice it) is that its power has not yet begun to fully
manifest itself. We still have schools, offices, the post office,
telephone companies, places of entertainment, shopping malls and such,
but we won't for long. Information delivery methods affect every
aspect of how we live. If we don't have to walk to town to find out
what's going on, or to shop, or to learn, or to work, why will we go
to town? Schools (which have not been able to change) will completely
transform themselves when better course can be built on the internet
than could possibly be delivered in a university. Of course, we
haven't seen that yet, but when the best physicists in the world
combine to deliver a learn by doing simulation that allows students to
try things out and discuss what they have done with every important
(virtual) physicist who has something to say about what they have
done, the only thing universities will have to offer will be football.

Shopping malls aren't gone yet but they will be. Why go to a store to
buy music CDs any more? You can listen to samples of whatever you want
and click a button for delivery while seated at home. Any object that
needn't be felt and perused to be purchased will find no better
delivery method than the internet. Newspapers? Not dead yet, but they
will be. Pick an aspect of the way we live today and it will change
radically in the coming years because of the internet. Life (and human
interaction) in fifty years will be so different we will hardly
recognize the social structures that will evolve. I don't know if we
will be happier, but we will be better informed.

ROGER C. SCHANK, computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, is
director of The Institute for Learning Sciences at Northwestern
University, where he is John Evans Professor of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science as well as Professor of Psychology and of
Education and Social Policy; author of The Creative Attitude: Learning
to Ask and Answer the Right Questions, Tell Me A Story, and Engines
for Education . See The Third Culture, Chapter 9.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stephen Budiansky:

There is an inherent bias in all such surveys, because everyone
strives to be original and surprising and so shuns the obvious but
probably more correct answers -- such as steel, or moveable type, or
antibiotics, to name but three obvious things that have utterly
transformed not only how people live but the way they experience life.

The only way I can think of being surprising is to violate John's
terms and go back 6,000 years. But if I will be permitted to do so, I
would argue that the single invention that has changed human life more
than any other is the horse -- by which I mean the domestication of
the horse as a mount. The horse was well on its way to extinction when
it was domesticated on the steppes of Ukraine 6,000 years ago, but
from the moment it entered the company of man the horse repopulated
Europe with a swiftness that announced the arrival of a new tempo of
life and cultural change. Trade over thousands of miles suddenly
sprang up, communication with a rapidity never before experienced
became routine, exploration of once forbidding zones became possible,
and warfare achieved a violence and degree of surprise that spurred
the establishment and growth of fortified permanent settlements, the
seeds of the great cities of Europe and Asia. For want of the horse,
civilization would have been lost.

STEPHEN BUDIANSKY, Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, is the
author of If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution
of Consciousness and The Nature of Horses: Exploring Equine Evolution,
Intelligence, and Behavior.
   _________________________________________________________________

Richard Saul Wurman:

ELECTRICITY CONTAINS THE WORD CITY -- WHICH CERTAINLY IS OUR MOST
COMPLEX INVENTION & FROM THE DENSITY OF HUMAN INTERACTION ALL ELSE
FLOWS.

RICHARD SAUL WURMAN is the chairman and creative director of the TED
conferences. He is also an architect, a cartographer, the creator of
the Access Travel Guide Series, and the author and designer of more
than sixty books, including Information Architects, Follow the Yellow
Brick Road and Information Anxiety.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stewart Brand:

The question does most of the answering: "What Is The Most Important
Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?"
That lets out agriculture, writing, mathematics, and money. Too early.

"Most important" would suggest looking for inventions near the
beginning of the period, since they would have had the most time for
accumulative impact.

Where did that number "Two Thousand" come from? From the approaching
Year 2000, which is a Christian Era date -- now referred to as "Common
Era": 2000 CE. That's quite a clue.

The most important cultural -- hence all-embracing -- invention is a
religion. Only two major religions have been invented in the last two
millennia, Christianity and Islam. Try to imagine the last two
millennia, or the present, without them.

STEWART BRAND is founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder of The
Well, cofounder of Global Business Network, president of The Long Now
Foundation, and author of The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT
and How Buildings Learn. See EDGE: "The Clock of the Long Now";
Digerati, Chapter 3.
   _________________________________________________________________

George Dyson:

The Universal Turing Machine. Because it is universal.

Not only as the theoretical archetype for digital computing as we
practice it today, but as a least common denominator -- translating
between sequence in time and pattern in space -- that lies at the
foundations of mathematics and suggests the possibilities of a
communications medium we have only just begun to explore.

Life and intelligence that achieves widespread distribution across the
cosmos (and over time) may be expected to assume a digital
representation, at least in some phases of the life cycle, to
facilitate electromagnetic transmission, cross-platform compatibility,
and long-term storage. This requires a local substrate. And we are
doing our best, thanks to the proliferation of our current
instantiation of the UTM (known as the PC) to help. When we establish
contact with such an intelligence, will we receive instructions for
building a machine to upload Jodie Foster? Probably not. The download
will proceed the other way. To paraphrase Marvin Minsky: "Instead of
sending a picture of a cat, there is one area in which they can send
the cat itself."

GEORGE DYSON is the leading authority in the field of Russian Aleut
kayaks, he has been a subject of the PBS television show Scientific
American Frontiers. He is the author of Baidarka, and Darwin Among The
Machines:The Evolution Of Global Intelligence. See EDGE: "Darwin Among
the Machines; or, The Origins of Artificial Life"; See EDGE: "CODE -
George Dyson & John Brockman: A Dialogue" .
   _________________________________________________________________

Marney Morris:

(Well John, you did say most important invention, not the one we
should be most proud of). The invention (and detonation) of the atomic
bomb has changed the world more profoundly than any other human
development in the last 2000 years. In seconds, nearly 200,000 people
were dead or dying in Hiroshima, and consciousness was forever changed
on our planet. Although the arms race fueled our economy for a few
more decades, the bomb set into motion a 'warfare stalemate'. With the
ability to destroy our planet within the realm of possibility, we were
forced to examine our rules of war, and seek new means of engagement
to work out our differences. And although hundreds of wars are going
on at any time on our planet, there are checks and balances,
underscored by the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Please note that if you were to have phrased the question to include
time prior to 2000 years ago, then I would have suggested that our
most powerful invention would be song.

MARNEY MORRIS, is president of Animatrix, which is publishing
Sprocketworks, a next generation learning program, early in 1999. She
teaches interaction design at Stanford.
   _________________________________________________________________

V.S. Ramachandran:

My personal favourite is the place value notation system combined with
the use of a symbol 0 for Zero to denote a nonexistent number marks
the birth of modern mathematics. I think this is the greatest
invention but I am being a little jingoistic -- it was invented in
India in the 4th or 5th century BC , systematised by Aryabhatta in the
4th Century AD by the Indian Astronomer and then transmitted to the
west via the Arabs. And Maths of course is essential for all science.

V.S. RAMACHANDRAN, M.D., PH.D., is professor of neurosciences and
psychology and Director of the Brain Perception Laboratory at the
University of California in San Diego. He is author of Phantoms In The
Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (with Sandra
Blakeslee).
   _________________________________________________________________

Jeremy Cherfas:

Some of your jump-start friends and colleagues seem to have ignored
your (arbitrary?) cutoff date, so I will too. I think you'd have to go
a long way to find a more important invention than the basket. Without
something to gather into, you cannot have a gathering society of any
complexity, no home and hearth, no division of labour, no humanity.

This is not an original insight. I ascribe it to Glyn Isaac, a
sorely-missed palaeoanthropologist. The basket ranks right up there
with hay, the stirrup, printing and what have you.

While we're about it, though, I'd like to take issue with Dan
Dennett's choice of the battery. Granted it has enabled all the things
he says it has (and I seriously considered nominating the Walkman -- a
bizarre idea, the tape recorder that doesn't record -- as the
invention with most impact on our lives) but at what cost? All extant
batteries (though not fuel cells) are inherently polluting and
wasteful. It takes something like six times more energy to make a
Zinc-alkaline battery as the battery can store. I can't help but think
that if a small portion of the effort that has gone into inventing
"better" batteries had gone into, say, solar panels, our world and
culture would be even more different.

Thanks for a stimulating time.

JEREMY CHERFAS, biologist and BBC Radio Four broadcaster, is author of
The Seed Savers Handbook.
   _________________________________________________________________

Bart Kosko:

Most important invention: CALCULUS

The world today would be very different if the Greeks and not
Newton/Leibniz had invented or "discovered" calculus. The world today
might have occurred a millennium or two earlier.

Calculus was the real fruit of the renaissance. It began by taking a
fresh look at infinity -- at the infinitely small rather than the
infinitely large. And it led in one stroke to two great advances: It
showed how to model change (the differential equation) and it showed
how to find the best or worst solution to a well-defined problem
(optimization). The first advance freed math from static descriptions
of the world to dynamic descriptions that allowed things to change or
evolve in time. This is literally where "rocket science" becomes a
science. The second advance had more practical payoff because it
showed how to minimize cost or maximize profit. Thomas Jefferson
claimed to have used the calculus this way to design a more efficient
plow. Someday we may use it to at least partially design our offspring
to minimize bad health effects or (God forbid) maximize good behavior.

Calculus lies at the heart of our modern world. Its equations led to
the prediction of black holes. We built the first computers to run
other calculus equations to predict where bombs would land. The recent
evolution of calculus itself to the random version called "stochastic
calculus" has led to how we price the mysterious financial
"derivatives" contracts that underlie the global economy. Calculus has
led us from seeing the world as what Democritus called mere "atoms and
void" to seeing the world as atoms that move in a void that moves.

BART KOSKO is professor of electrical engineering at the University of
Southern California; he is author of Fuzzy Thinking and Nanotime.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stuart Hameroff:

The most important invention in the past two thousand years is
anesthesia.

Have you ever had surgery? If so, either a) part of your body was
temporarily "deadened" by "local" anesthesia, or b) you "went to
sleep" with general anesthesia. Can you imagine having surgery, or
needing surgery, or even possibly needing surgery without the prospect
of anesthesia? And beyond the agony-sparing factor is an extra added
feature -- understanding the mechanism of anesthesia is our best path
to understanding consciousness.

Anesthesia grew from humble beginnings. Inca shamans performing
trephinations (drilling holes in patients' skulls to let out evil
humors) chewed coca leaves and spat into the wound, effecting local
anesthesia. The systemic effects of cocaine were studied by Sigmund
Freud, but cocaine's use as a local anesthetic in surgery is credited
to Austrian ophthalmologist Karl Koller who in 1884 used liquid
cocaine to temporarily numb the eye. Since then dozens of local
anesthetic compounds have been developed and utilized in liquid
solution to temporarily block nerve conduction from peripheral nerves
and/or spinal cord. The local anesthetic molecules bind specifically
on sodium channel proteins in axonal membranes of neurons near the
injection site, with essentially no effects on the brain.

On the other hand general anesthetic molecules are gases which do act
on the brain in a remarkable fashion -- the phenomenon of
consciousness is erased completely while other brain activities
continue.

General anesthesia by inhalation developed in the 1840's, involving
two gases used previously as intoxicants. Soporific effects of diethyl
ether ("sweet vitriol") had been known since the 14th century, and
nitrous oxide ("laughing gas") was synthesized by Joseph Priestley in
1772. In 1842 Crawford Long, a Georgia physician with apparent
personal knowledge of "ether frolics" successfully administered
diethyl ether to James W. Venable for removal of a neck tumor. However
Long's success was not widely recognized, and it fell to dentist
Horace Wells to publicly demonstrate the use of inhaled nitrous oxide
for tooth extraction at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1844.
Although Wells had apparently used the technique previously with
complete success, during the public demonstration the gas-containing
bag was removed too soon and the patient cried out in pain. Wells was
denounced as a fake, however two years later in 1846 another dentist
William T.G. Morton returned to the "Mass General" and successfully
used diethyl ether on patient William Abbott. Morton used the term
"letheon" for his then-secret gas, but was persuaded by Boston
physician/anatomist Oliver Wendell Holmes (father of the Supreme Court
Justice) to use the term anesthesia.

Although its use became increasingly popular, general anesthesia
remained an inexact art with frequent deaths due to overdose and
effects on breathing until after World War II. Hard lessons were
learned following the attack on Pearl Harbor -- anesthetic doses
easily tolerated by healthy patients had tragic consequences on those
in shock due to blood loss. Advent of the endotracheal tube (allowing
easy inhalation/exhalation and protection of the lungs from stomach
contents), anesthesia gas machines, safer anesthetic drugs and direct
monitoring of heart, lungs, kidneys and other organ systems have made
modern anesthesia extremely safe. However one mystery remains. Exactly
how do anesthetic gases work? The answer may well illuminate the grand
mystery of consciousness.

Inhaled anesthetic gas molecules travel through the lungs and blood to
the brain. Barely soluble in water/blood, anesthetics are highly
soluble in a particular lipid-like environment akin to olive oil. It
turns out the brain is loaded with such stuff, both in lipid membranes
and tiny water-free ("hydrophobic") lipid-like pockets within certain
brain proteins. To make a long story short, Nicholas Franks and
William Lieb at Imperial College in London showed in a series of
articles in the 1980's that anesthetics act primarily in these tiny
hydrophobic pockets in several types of brain proteins. The anesthetic
binding is extremely weak and the pockets are only 1 /50 of each
protein's volume, so it's unclear why such seemingly minimal
interactions should have significant effects. Franks and Lieb
suggested the mere presence of one anesthetic molecule per pocket per
protein prevents the protein from changing shape to do its job.
However subsequent evidence showed that certain other gas molecules
could occupy the same pockets and not cause anesthesia (and in fact
cause excitation or convulsions). Anesthetic molecules just "being
there" can't account for anesthesia. Some natural process critical to
consciousness and perturbed by anesthetics must be happening in the
pockets. What could that be?

Anesthetic gases dissolve in hydrophobic pockets by extremely weak
quantum mechanical forces known as London dispersion forces. The weak
binding accounts for easy reversibility - as the anesthetic gas flow
is turned off, concentrations drop in the breathing circuit and blood,
anesthetic molecules are gently sucked out of the pockets and the
patient wakes up. Weak but influential quantum London forces also
occur in the hydrophobic pockets in the absence of anesthetics and
govern normal protein movement and shape. A logical conclusion is that
anesthetics perturb normally occurring quantum effects in hydrophobic
pockets of brain proteins.

The quantum nature of the critical effects of anesthesia may be a
significant clue. Several current consciousness theories propose
systemic quantum states in the brain, and as consciousness has
historically been perceived as the contemporary vanguard of
information processing (J.B.'s "technology = new perception") the
advent of quantum computers will inevitably cast the mind as a quantum
process. The mechanism of anesthesia suggests such a comparison will
be more than mere metaphor.

STUART HAMEROFF, M.D. is Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology and
Psychology, University of Arizonan 1996. He is coeditor of Toward a
Science of Consciousness : The First Tucson Discussions and Debates
and Toward a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson
Discussions and Debates.
   _________________________________________________________________

Michael Nesmith:

After reading the various answers to the question, I'm going to sneak
through the door opened by Philip Anderson and nominate a discovery
instead of an invention. And it is the Copernican Theory. Generally it
was a counter-intuitive idea, and it ran opposite to the
interpretation of senses (not to mention the Church) I mean, one could
"see" the sun going across the sky. What could be more obvious than
that? A nice move. It took a lot of intellectual courage, and taught
us more than just what it said.

MICHAEL NESMITH is an artist, writer, and business man; former cast
member of "The Monkees".
   _________________________________________________________________

Clifford Pickover:

As usual you are a font of important, stimulating ideas and have
gathered together an awesome collection of minds for your latest
survey. Here is my response.

In 105 AD, Ts'ai Lun reported the invention of paper to the Chinese
Emperor. Ts'ai Lun was an official to the Chinese Imperial court, and
I consider his early form of paper to be humanity's most important
invention and progenitor of the Internet. Although recent
archaeological evidence places the actual invention of papermaking 200
years earlier, Ts'ai Lun played an important role in developing a
material that revolutionized his country. From China, papermaking
moved to Korea and Japan. Chinese papermakers also spread their
handiwork into Central Asia and Persia, from which traders introduced
paper to India. This is why Ts'ai Lun is one of the most influential
people in history.

Today's Internet evolved from the tiny seed planted by Ts'ai Lun. Both
paper and the Internet break the barriers of time and distance, and
permit unprecedented growth and opportunity. In the next decade,
communities formed by ideas will be as strong as those formed by
geography. The Internet will dissolve away nations as we know them
today. Humanity becomes a single hive mind, with a group intelligence,
as geography becomes putty in the hands of the Internet sculptor.

Chaos theory teaches us that even our smallest actions have amplified
effects. Now more than ever before this is apparent. Whenever I am
lonely at night, I look at a large map depicting 61,000 Internet
routers spread throughout the world. I imagine sending out a spark, an
idea, and a colleague from another country echoing that idea to his
colleges, over and over again, until the electronic chatter resembles
the chanting of monks. I agree with author Jane Roberts who once
wrote, "You are so part of the world that your slightest action
contributes to its reality. Your breath changes the atmosphere. Your
encounters with others alter the fabrics of their lives, and the lives
of those who come in contact with them."

CLIFFORD A. PICKOVER is a research staff member at the IBM T. J.
Watson Research Center. He is the author of over 20 books translated
in 10 languages on a broad range of topics in science and art. His
internet web site has attracted nearly 200,000 visitors.
   _________________________________________________________________

Margaret Wertheim:

Good question!

My immediate response (without even thinking) was the contraceptive
pill. My mother had six children in five and a half years and it was
only the invention of the pill that saved our family from becoming a
mini-nation-state in its own right. But since Colin Blakemore has
already described so well its immense importance, let me suggest
another "invention" -- electrification.

Why electrification? For a start, one of my most vivid childhood
memories is of my mother seemingly spending endless hours washing
nappies and clothes by hand. The electric washing machine and other
electric home gadgets (vacuum cleaners, fridges, food processors et
cetera) have freed billions of women from the endless drudgery of
heavy-duty housework. By bringing us light and heat and power on tap,
electricity has truly transformed life -- not just in the home, but in
almost every industry. Modern manufacturing would be impossible
without electricity. Ditto the modern office. The ability to literally
transport power is, I think, the most revolutionary technology to come
out of modern science. And of course, it is the ability to transport
electric power at the micro level that has made possible silicon
chips, and the attendant computer and information revolution. Far more
than Einstein and Bohr, Faraday and Maxwell are the true "heroes" of
the modern technological world.

MARGARET WERTHEIM is a science writer, and a research associate of the
American Museum of Natural History. She is the author of Pythagoras
Trousers a history of physics and religion.
   _________________________________________________________________

Richard Dawkins:

THE SPECTROSCOPE

The telescope resolves light from very far away. The spectroscope
analyses and diagnoses it. It is through spectroscopy that we know
what the stars are made of. The spectroscope shows us that the
universe is expanding and the galaxies receding; that time had a
beginning, and when; that other stars are like the sun in having
planets where life might evolve.

In 1835, Auguste Comte, the French philosopher and founder of
sociology, said of the stars:

"We shall never be able to study, by any method, their chemical
composition or their mineralogical structure . . . Our positive
knowledge of stars is necessarily limited to their geometric and
mechanical phenomena."

Even as he wrote, the Fraunhofer lines had been discovered: those
exquisitely fine barcodes precisely positioned across the spectrum;
those telltale fingerprints of the elements. The spectroscopic
barcodes enable us to do a chemical analysis of a distant star when,
paradoxically (because it is so much closer), we cannot do the same
for the moon -- its light is all reflected sunlight and its barcodes
those of the sun. The Hubble red shift, majestic signature of the
expanding universe and the hot birth of time, is calibrated by the
same Fraunhofer barcodes. Rhythmic recedings and approachings by
stars, which betray the presence of planets, are detected by the
spectroscope as oscillating red and blue shifts. The spectroscopic
discovery that other stars have planets makes it much more likely that
there is life elsewhere in the universe.

For me, the spectroscope has a poetic significance. Romantic poets saw
the rainbow as a symbol of pure beauty, which could only be spoiled by
scientific understanding. This thought famously prompted Keats in 1817
to toast "Newton's health and confusion to mathematics", and in 1820
inspired his well known lines:

"Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine --
Unweave a rainbow . . ."

Humanity's eyes have now been widened to see that the rainbow of
visible light is only an infinitesimal slice of the full
electromagnetic spectrum. Spectroscopy is unweaving the rainbow on a
grand scale. If Keats had known what Newton's unweaving would lead to
-- the expansion of our human vision, inspired by the expanding
universe -- he could not have drunk that toast.

RICHARD DAWKINS is an evolutionary biologist and the Charles Simonyi
Professor For The Understanding Of Science at Oxford University;
Fellow of New College; author of The Selfish Gene, The Extended
Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, River out of Eden (Science Masters
Series), Climbing Mount Improbable, and the recently published
Unweaving the Rainbow. See EDGE: "Science, Delusion, and the Appetite
for Wonder: A Talk by Richard Dawkins"; The Third Culture: Chapter 3.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Haig:

My suggestion for the most important invention of the last two
millennia is the computer because of the way it extends the capacities
of the human mind for accurately performing large numbers of
calculations and for keeping track of and accessing vast bodies of
data. As with any great invention, these enhanced abilities have a
light and a dark side. As a scientist I am now able to answer
questions that could not be answered prior to the computer. On the
dark side is the loss of privacy and the enhanced potential for social
control made possible by the ability to manipulate large databases of
personal information.

As another candidate, my mother has said that her all time favorite
invention is the telephone because of how it allows her to stay in
intimate and immediate contact with distant friends.

DAVID HAIG is an evolutionary biologist and a member of the Department
of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University.
   _________________________________________________________________

Christopher G. Langton:
Like others who have responded, I think the choice is obvious. The
remarkable thing is that "the obvious choice" is different for
everyone! To my mind, the most important inventions are those which
have forced the largest changes in our world-view. On the basis of
this criterion, I pick two (for reasons listed below): The telescope,
and the theory of evolution by natural selection.

I pick two because it seems to me that there are two major categories
of important inventions: a) complexity increasing, and b) complexity
decreasing.

By complexity increasing, I mean those inventions that open up vast
new realms of data, which can not be accounted for on the existing
world view, making the universe less understandable, and therefore
seemingly more complex.

By complexity decreasing, I mean those inventions that identify a
pattern or algorithm in vast realms of data, ridding that data of a
good deal of its apparent complication. These inventions force
alterations to our world view to account for previously unaccountable
data, or to account for it more directly and simply, making the
universe more understandable, and therefore seemingly less complex.

The former tend to take the form of instruments or devices -- physical
constructs -- while the latter tend to take the form of concepts,
theories, or hypotheses -- mental constructs. Both qualify as
inventions.*

(*To be careful, the former also involves a mental construct -- a
device alone is useless without the mental construct that points it in
the right direction.)

In the former category, nothing rivals the telescope.

No other device has initiated such a massive reconstruction of our
world view. It forced us to accept the Earth, and ourselves, as
"merely" a part of a larger cosmos. Of course, numerous theories
besides the earth-centered universe existed before its invention, but
the telescope opened the doors to the flood of data that would resolve
what were previously largely philosophical disputes. The microscope
-- a relative of the telescope -- also opened the door to a previously
unimagined universe, and runs a close second to the telescope on the
world-view shaking Richter scale.

In the latter category, there are many brilliant candidates, but I
think that Darwin's invention of the theory of evolution by natural
selection outshines them all. It is perhaps the only truly general
theory in Biology, a field much more complex than physics. If we
discover life elsewhere in the universe it is likely to be the only
biological theory that will carry over from our terrestrial biology.
Darwin's theory reduced tremendously the complication of zoological
data. Critically, as with the telescope, it has put tremendous
pressure on the previous world-view to accommodate man as "merely" a
part of a much larger nature. This pressure is still largely being
resisted, but the outcome is clear.

A close second would be the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Although the
Second Law has not, perhaps, posed such a profound challenge to our
collective world view, it has tremendously reduced the complexity of a
great body of data (and it profoundly affects the world view of anyone
who studies it in detail!)

I would have nominated the computer, but I think that, although it has
profoundly affected our daily routines, it has not yet profoundly
affected our world view. The computer is a kind of mathematical
telescope, revealing to us a vast new realm of data about what kinds
of dynamics follow from what sorts of rules -- we are constantly
discovering new galaxies of mathematical reality with computers.
However, it will be a while before these empirical discoveries force a
profound alteration of our world view.

CHRISTOPHER G. LANGTON a computer scientist, is internationally
recognized as the "founder" of the field of Artificial Life. He is
Chief Technology Officer at The Swarm Corporation, and editor of the
Artificial Life journal. See The Third Culture, Chapter 21.
   _________________________________________________________________

Eric J. Hall:

Quite a good question and some very interesting responses. However, I
take a more pragmatic view. For me, the steam engine was the most
important invention in the past two thousand years. The steam engine
freed man and beast from physical labor. No other invention had so
many different and versatile uses. Man could cut down entire forests
to feed sawmills to build cities, quarry stone, propel trains and
ships to make the world a smaller place, power factories, and generate
electricity. Agrarian society was over and industrialism reigned. Most
importantly, the steam engine created more leisure time for mankind.
No longer was leisure a pastime for the idle rich. The pursuit of
leisure and the changes it created in society far outstripped the
first 18 centuries. Without the steam engine, our society would be
radically different from today.

ERIC J. HALL is President of The Archer Group, a consulting firm
specializing in emerging technology companies. He has helped found
companies including Yahoo!, Women.com, and The ImagiNation Network.
   _________________________________________________________________

Clay Shirkey:

My vote for "The Most Important Invention In the Past Two Thousand
Years" is G?del's Incompleteness Theorem. This single piece of
mathematical jujitsu, proving unprovability, formally ended the strain
of Western thought begun by Socrates and first fully fleshed out by
Aristotle. The ancillary effects of that theory -- a rejection of
master narrative, an understanding that we will never know all the
answers, an acceptance of contradiction, and an embrace of complexity
-- are just now making themselves felt in the dawn of the post
complete world.

CLAY SHIRKEY is Professor, New Media Department of Film & Media,
Hunter College.
   _________________________________________________________________

Keith Devlin:

Of course, "What is the single most important invention of the past
two thousand years?" is one of those questions that does not really
have an answer, like "What is the best novel/symphony/movie?

But if I had to make a choice, it would be the Hindu-Arabic number
system, which reached essentially its present form in the sixth
century.

Without it, Galileo would have been unable to begin the
quantificational study of nature that we now call science. Today,
there is scarcely any aspect of life that does not depend on our
ability to handle numbers efficiently and accurately. True, we now use
computers to do much of our number crunching, but without the
Hindu-Arabic number system we would not have any computers.

Because of its linguistic structure, the Hindu-Arabic number system
allows humans who have an innate linguistic fluency but only a very
primitive number sense to use their ability with language in order to
handle numbers of virtually any useful magnitude with as much
precision as required.

In addition to its use in arithmetic and science, the Hindu-Arabic
number system is the only genuinely universal language on Earth, apart
perhaps for the Windows operating system, which has achieved the near
universal adoption of a conceptually and technologically poor product
by the sheer force of market dominance. (By contrast, the Hindu-Arabic
number system gained worldwide acceptance because it is far better
designed and much more efficient, for human usage, than any other
number system.)

KEITH DEVLIN, a mathematician, is the author of Goodbye, Descartes :
The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind; Life
by the Numbers; and The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible
Visible.
   _________________________________________________________________

Luyen Chou:

I would have to vote for philosophical skepticism as the most
important "invention" (if one thinks of invention as fabrication
rather than discovery, as it is more archaically meant) of the past
two thousand years. The notion that there is a "truth behind" things
and a "bottom" to the matter has instilled in all of us, whether
scientists, philosophers, theologians, or lay people, a maniacal
obsession with improving our explanatory capabilities. As such
skepticism can be seen as the driving force behind science and
technology, modern conceptions of faith, the soul, and the other. Of
course, one might argue that skepticism has been around for longer
than two thousand years; but its characterization as a fundamental
problem to be contended with before any constructive work can be done
seems to me a peculiarly modern invention, a defining feature of our
intensively self-conscious, post-Cartesian world.

LUYEN CHOU is President and CEO of Learn Technologies Interactive in
New York City, an interactive media developer and publisher. See EDGE:
"Engineering Formalism and Artistry: The Yin and Yang of Multimedia: A
Talk With Luyen Chou".
   _________________________________________________________________

Antonio R. Cabral, M.D.:

I propose that the most important invention in the past two thousand
years is: "Languages". If you take a look at the proposals you have
received (or will) so far: the contraceptive pill, the scientific
method (whatever that means), the quantum theory, and so on, they
could not have even been thought out, let alone conveyed, without the
aid of a language. I do not mean a language in particular, but all the
languages, dead or alive. Of course one tends to think that live
languages deserve the credit, but without the so-called "dead
languages", such as Latin, the live ones simply would not exist. If
one accepts that language is the most important invention in the past
2000 years, one has to concede that the "Human Brain" is the most
important inventor during the same period.

In my opinion, the printing press comes second to languages as the
most important invention in the past 20 centuries; this puts Johann
Gutenberg (c.1400-1468) as the second most important inventor of all,
since one can easily pinpoint him as the Father of the printed letter.
Without a (written) language, specially when it conveys concepts and
feelings, all cultures -- scientific, literary or otherwise -- would
be all but a conceptless matter. The Third Culture simply could not
breathe.

One can speculate ad nauseam about which language in the current state
of world affairs, including the Internet, is the most important one of
all. I have some ideas, to theorize about them, though, is beyond your
original question.

ANTONIO R. CABRAL, M.D. Is Associate Professor of Medicinem National
Autonomous University of Mexico.
   _________________________________________________________________

Hendrik Hertzberg:

Philip Anderson asks the right question: "Why has no one mentioned the
printing press yet?"

I mean, doesn't it seem kind of obvious that printing -- under which
would be subsumed all forms of large-scale reproduction of the written
word, from handmade wooden type to the computer and word-processing
program I'm using to write this -- was the most important invention of
the past two thousand years? Printing led directly to mass literacy,
democracy, the scientific revolution, cyberthis and cyberthat, and all
those other good things.

A more general observation. I notice that most of the responses you
included in the email suggest that the most important invention of the
past two thousand years, whatever it was, just happens to have
happened in the past hundred years. Doesn't this reflect a bad case of
chronocentrism, i.e., the irrational belief that one is lucky enough
to be living in history's most important era? Given that people have
been inventing things all along, isn't it unlikely that all the most
important inventions would have happened in one little century out of
twenty? Wouldn't it be more logical to expect them to be spaced out
randomly over all twenty? Even if the twentieth is a particularly
inventive century, isn't it a little myopic to imagine that the one we
just happen to be living in is twenty times more inventive than any of
the others? Maybe four or five times more inventive, but even that
would be a stretch.

HENDRIK HERTZBERG, executive editor of The New Yorker since 1992, is
the author of the book One Million and, with Martin Kalb, of
Candidates.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Berreby:

Interesting question. My candidate would be: The concept of
information as a commodity, a thing that can be bought and sold. It's
an ancient invention, dating back to the day of the fleet footed
messenger, but its enormous consequences had to wait for the
acceleration of information-carrying technologies like the telegraph
and the Internet. We're only now witnessing the cumulative impact, as
the buying and selling of information begins to outweigh the buying
and selling of stuff.

Why is this so important? Because humans who trade in information
behave like our hunter gathering ancestors. They are alert and
adaptable to an ever-changing environment. They work in small groups.
They are independent thinkers who dislike taking orders and are
fervently egalitarian. They place their faith in face to face
relationships, not authority or a title. For as long as humanity got
its living by agriculture or industry, such traits had to be
suppressed in favor of those more amenable to centralization,
authority, large-scale enterprises. This epoch is coming to an end. In
the post-industrial west we no longer value stability, steadfastness
and predictability over change, adaptability and flexibility. We are
no longer awed by political power, instead seeing those who hold it as
just like us. (When I was a kid people worried about the ``Imperial
Presidency'' becoming too awesome for a democracy to support. But
then, when I was a kid, an ex-wrestler could not get elected governor
of Minnesota.) Corporate types often remark that their 20-something
employees can't take orders and expect to be able to dress as they
please and bring their parrot to work.

All this is supposed to be a consequence of prosperity. But it seems
to me the shift is far more profound. After a 7000-year detour through
agriculture and industry, we are returning to the ways of our proud,
individualistic, headstrong, small-group-dwelling forebears, and that
will reshape the human community profoundly. And it's the move from a
thing-economy to an information-economy that's making it happen.

DAVID BERREBY'S writing about science and culture has appeared in The
New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, The Sciences and
many other publications. He is currently at work on a book about the
psychology of Us versus Them.
   _________________________________________________________________

Charles Simonyi:

In the spirit of completeness and risking chronocentrism big time, I
nominate Public Key Cryptosystems as something invented during the
last two thousand years and which will remain useful long after the
printing press will exist only in the (electronic) history books next
to the steam engine. PKC has three incredible properties: perfect
privacy, perfect authentication, and a reliable carrier of value and
contracts -- like gold used to be. All this in the digital environment
where information can be easily and perfectly stored and copied. At a
single stroke PKC transformed our vision of the asymptotic result of
information technology from the 1984-ish nightmare to a realistic and
ultimately attractive cyberspace where identity and privacy are not
lost, despite of our (and Orwell's) commonsense intuition to the
contrary.

CHARLES SIMONYI, Chief Architect, Microsoft Corporation, focuses on
Intentional Programming, an ecology for abstractions which strives for
maximal reuse of components by separating high level intentions from
implementation detail. See EDGE: Intentional Programming: A Talk with
Charles Simonyi" and EDGE: " CODE II -- Farmer & Simonyi: A Reality
Club Dialogue".
   _________________________________________________________________

Piet Hut:

Building autonomous tools is my candidate for the most important
invention.

Artificial complex adaptive systems, from robots to any type of
autonomous agent, will change our world view in a qualitative way,
comparable to the change brought by the use of thing-like tools.

Tinkering with tools has shaped our view of the world and of
ourselves. For example, the invention of the pump enabled us to
understand the mechanical role of the heart. Science was born when
laboratory apparatus was used to select among mathematical theories of
the physical world which one correspond most closely to reality. But
all those tools have been lifeless and soulless things, and it is no
wonder that our scientific world view has tended to objectify
everything. Grasping the proper role of the subject pole of
experience, through the invention of subject-like tools, may provide
the key to a far wider world view.

With the invention of perspective, in the late Middle Ages, we shifted
our collective Western experience one-sidedly into the object pole,
leaving the subject pole out of the picture. We started looking at the
world from behind a window, and a couple centuries later, in science,
we attempted to take a God's eye view of the world. By now, we are
coming around full-circle, with our science and technology providing
us the means of exploration of the role of the subject.

We have only set the first steps towards building artificial subjects.
Just as our current artificial objects are vastly more complex than
the first wheel or bow and arrow, our artificial subjects will grow
more complex, powerful, and interesting over the centuries. But
already we can see a glimmer of what lies ahead: our first attempts to
build autonomous agents has taught us new concepts. As a result, we
are now beginning to explore self-organizing ecological, economic, or
social systems; areas of study where thing-like metaphors hopelessly
fail.

PIET HUT is professor of astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced
Study, in Princeton. He is involved in the project of building GRAPEs,
the world's fastest special-purpose computers, at Tokyo University.
   _________________________________________________________________

Susan Blackmore:

Birth control (or if you need it to be more specific, the pill)

Why? Because freedom from constant childbearing means that women can
become meme-spreaders like men -- working for their memes rather than
their genes. This then means a change in the kinds of memes that
propagate effectively, including all the memes of other inventions as
well as the meme-spreading media, myths, science and the arts. In
other words, it is important because it changes the whole of culture.
Few single inventions have this effect on the whole meme pool.

SUSAN BLACKMORE, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of
the West of England, Bristol, columnist for the Independent, and
author of Dying To Live: Near-Death Experiences, and In Search of the
Light .
   _________________________________________________________________

James J. O'Donnell:

If you read through this growing list, you will see that people tend
to discover that the most important invention in the last 2000 years
is something they just happen to know a lot about. Well, I know a lot
about some important inventions -- like the codex book (and the
consequent idea that a book can be a manual for living -- that leads
us to the 19th century and its dead ends) and like the computer (which
gives us a model for ignoring the manual and just living by
experiment), but I think it is quite undeniable that there is
something far more important going on: effectual health care. Not just
antibiotics, not just birth control, not just anesthesia (to say
things mentioned here), but the underlying fundamental fact that we
have learned to cross the scientific method with care for human beings
and save lives. A thought experiment I like to have people play is
this: review your own life and imagine what it would have been like
without late 20th century health care. Would you still be alive today?
An astonishingly large number of people get serious looks on their
faces and admit they wouldn't: I wouldn't, that's for sure. It's
medical techniques, it's antibiotics, but it's also vitamin pills and
-- in some ways most wondrously cost-effective of all -- soap, as in
the soap doctors use to wash their hands.

JAMES J. O'DONNELL, Professor of Classical Studies and Vice Provost
for Information Systems and Computing at the University of
Pennsylvania, is the author of Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to
Cyberspace.
   _________________________________________________________________

Nicholas Humphrey:

The most important invention has been reading-glasses. They have
effectively doubled the active life of everyone who reads or does fine
work -- and prevented the world being ruled by people under forty.

NICHOLAS HUMPHREY is a theoretical psychologist; professor at the New
School for Social Research, New York; author of Consciousness
Regained, The Inner Eye, A History of the Mind, and Leaps of Faith:
Science, Miracles, and the Search for Supernatural Consolation . See
The Third Culture, Chapter 11.
   _________________________________________________________________

Jaron Lanier:

Joe Traub already nabbed the invention I would have chosen; empirical
method. So I'll stake out a different claim. For present purposes,
I'll claim that the most significant invention of the last 2000 years
was the human ego.

The ego I'm talking about is the self-concerned human that Harold
Bloom credits Shakespeare with having invented. It's the thing that
William Manchester finds definitively missing in the Medieval mind.
Jostein Gaarder, in his children's philosophy novel, Sophie's World,
blames St. Augustine for inventing it. It's what the fuss is about in
Nietzsche. It's what exists in existentialism.

In truth, I'm not entirely convinced that I don't find good evidence
of this creature in pre-Christian/Common-era texts. (Thomas Cahill
thinks it was a gift from the Jews.) But it does seem that the sense
of individual self, outfitted with moral responsibility, free will,
consciousness, and -- most importantly -- neurotic self-obsession, at
one time did not exist, and then did.

That same sense of self is now being challenged by AI-ish members of
the EDGE community. Perhaps it will disappear, just as it once
appeared. So it is reasonable to think of the ego as a natural
inhabitant of approximately the last 2000 years.

One could argue that the ego had to precede empirical method. The
shift from pure rationality to empiricism relied on an acknowledgement
of differing perspectives of observation (while pure rationality was
thought to be independent of personal perspective). So the self was
needed in order to have a starting point from which to pose theories
and to make measurements in order to test them. Only an ego can have
imperfect enough knowledge to make mere guesses about what's going on
in the universe, and the hubris to test and improve those guesses.

I personally hope the ego survives the computer.

JARON LANIER, a computer scientist and musician, is a pioneer of
virtual reality, and founder and former CEO of VPL. He is currently
the lead scientist for the National Tele-Immersion Initiative. See
Digerati, Chapter 17.
   _________________________________________________________________

Terrence Sejnowski:

Technological advances in communication from clay tablets, to
papyrus,to moveable type, to postscript have had a shaping influence
on society and these are accelerating. Almost overnight, the
accumulated knowledge of the world is crystallizing into a distributed
digital archive.
Images and music as well as text have merged into a universal currency
of information, the digital bit, which is my choice for the greatest
discovery of the last two millennia. Unlike other forms of archival
storage, bits are forever.

In the next millennium this digital archive will continue to expand,
in ways we cannot yet imagine, greatly enhancing what a single human
can accomplish in a lifetime, and what our culture can collectively
discover about the world and ourselves.

TERRENCE SEJNOWSKI, a pioneer in Computational Neurobiology, is
regarded by many as one of the world's most foremost theoretical brain
scientists. He is the director of the Computational Neurobiology Lab
at the Salk Institute and the coauthor of The Computational Brain.
   _________________________________________________________________

Ron Cooper:

I am surprised no one mentioned distillation, the great alchemical
invention of transformation in the search to understand the essence of
existence.

Alchemy appears to have started in Ancient Egypt (al-khem means the
art of Egypt in Arabic). Alchemy travelled with Islam as it spread
across Northern Africa and into mainland Europe with the Moorish
invasion of Andalucia in the tenth century.

Alchemy tries to make sense of the world by, among other things,
working with the elements to transform matter and attempt to strip
away the extraneous and capture its purest essence.

Some suggest Alchemy's founding father was the Egyptian god Thoth (in
Greek Hermes). Both are symbols of mystical knowledge, rebirth and
transformation.

To find the first evidence of distillation of spirits, you have to go
to fourth century China, where the alchemist Ko Hung wrote about the
transformation of cinnabar in mercury as being: "like wine that has
been fermented once. It cannot be compared with the pure clear wine
that has been fermented nine time". Is he talking about distillation?
It seems possible. How do you ferment a wine nine times unless you
distill it? By that time, the Alexandrian Greeks had discovered that
by boiling you could transform one object into another. Pliny writes
about distillation being used to extract turpentine from resin, while
Aristotle recounts how sea water could be turned into drinking water
in 4 AD.

Aside from being the basis of modern science and industry, the
transformation of human beings brought on by the imbibing of distilled
spirits is of great interest to me.

RON COOPER, painter and sculptor who is known as "the King of
Downtown," was one of the original artists in the Los Angeles downtown
loft scene. More recently, he is founder and president of Del Maguey,
Single Village Mezcal (TM).
   _________________________________________________________________

W. Daniel Hillis:

I agree that Science is the most important human development is the
last 2000 years, but it doesn't quite qualify as an invention. I
therefore propose the clock as the greatest invention, since it is an
instrument that enables Science in both a practice and temperament.

The clock is the embodiment of objectivity. It converted time from a
personal experience into a reality independent of perception. It gave
us a framework in which the laws of nature could be observed and
quantified. The mechanism of the clock gave us a metaphor for
self-governed operation of natural law. (The computer, with its
mechanistic playing out of predetermined rules, is the direct
descendant of the clock.) Once we were able to imagine the solar
system as a clockwork automaton, the generalization to other aspects
of nature was almost inevitable, and the process of Science began.

W. DANIEL HILLIS is a physicist and computer scientist; Vice president
of research and development at the Walt Disney Company and a Disney
Fellow; cofounder and chief scientist of Thinking Machines Corporation
where he built Connection Machines; co-chair of The Long Now
Foundation. He is author of The Connection Machine, The Pattern on the
Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work (Science Masters
Series), as well as numerous articles.See The Third Culture, Chapter
23; Digerati, Chapter 11.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Baez:

Here is my reply to your fiendish question:

How can we possibly pick the most important invention in the past two
thousand years? The real biggies -- language, fire, agriculture, art
-- came too soon. In the last two millennia our world has seen so many
inventions that it's hard to think of one that stands above all the
rest. The printing press? The computer? The A-bomb? After a bit of
this, one is tempted to give a smart-aleck reply and back it up with
the semblance of earnest reasoning: "Thousand Island dressing!"

But even this is boring. Somehow we have to break out of the box!
Well, if inventions are important, surely it's even more important to
invent the social structures that will guarantee a steady flow of new
inventions. I've heard it said that Edison was the first to turn
invention into a business. Every day he would walk into his lab and
say "Okay, what can we invent today?" But the groundwork was laid
earlier. Perhaps the invention of a patent office was the key step? Or
further back, Bacon's "New Atlantis", which envisioned the
techno-paradise we are now all so busy trying to build?

JOHN BAEZ is a mathematical physicist working on quantum gravity using
the techniques of "higher-dimensional algebra". A professor of
mathematics at the University of California, Riverside, he enjoys
answering physics questions on the usenet newsgroup
sci.physics.research, and also writes a regular column entitled "This
Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics".
   _________________________________________________________________

Viviana Guzman:

Why hasn't anyone mentioned television??!! Is it too obvious? I think
it's the single most powerful and manipulative tool ever invented.
It's today's most important source of information and serves as a
tremendous behavior patterning device. Since it's inception, crime has
risen, sex has increased and the attendance at live performances has
died.

VIVIANA GUZMAN is a flutist whose latest album is Planet Flute.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stephen Schneider:

My first association for the most (whatever that means) important
invention was the unconscious mind, because, I thought to myself, the
concept offers some explanation -- and thus hopefully later remedies
-- for the behaviors coming from the darker sides of our nature.

Armed with better understanding of the origins of such behavior,
hopefully we could fashion ways out of the irrational clamp that
fundamentalist religion, blind nationalism or deep ideology often puts
on our conscious awareness. But, one thought later was that I believe
the unconscious does indeed exist, so logically it is a discovery, not
an invention.

That (somewhat uneasily) suggests psychotherapy (again, whatever that
means given all its incarnations -- psychotherapy being but one of a
basket of techniques to make the unconscious more conscious) as my
invention. At least in principle -- and often in practice too I
believe -- it does offer us the opportunity to become more conscious,
therefore less inclined to absolute thinking and the subjugation
and/or violence absolutism often engenders in the minds of those who
don't harbor doubts.

In discussing the causes and possible solutions to global
environmental problems (e.g., global warming in particular), I note in
dialogues with junior high school students -- right on down to senate
committees -- that we can't easily fix problems we can't see. Thus,
solutions to long-term, global-scale systems threats require -- in a
democracy at least -- overcoming any collective denial that our "puny"
individual impacts can cause a major disruption at a planetary scale
or over timeframes longer than our lifetime.

Admittedly, I'm not going to seriously claim psychoanalysis is as
"important" an invention as the scientific method over the past 2000
years (as I recall one of your respondents proposed). What I see as a
key invention for the year 2000+, though, is an expanded systems
analysis that includes methods to build in an understanding of the
role of the unconscious of individuals which leads to lifestyles and
behaviors which "scale up" to create unanticipated collective
consequences.

Although not directly responsive to your question, the invention I
really like -- think we will really need -- is a fusion of systems
analysis with psychotherapy. But the new field of "systems therapy" is
yet to be invented!, leaving me dangling uneasily between systems --
and psycho-analysis. Perhaps, if armed with insights from tools that
integrated physical, biological, social and psychological drivers of
our behaviors across a range of scales, rather than always chugging
merrily along in business as usual mode, we'd be more aware of the
range of consequences of our unconsciousness. Then, if we continued to
damage the collective or put the future at risk, at least that would
be more of a choice and less of a surprise. With best wishes to all
for the holiday season.

STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER is a Professor in the Biological Sciences
Department at Stanford University, and the Former Department Director
and Head of Advanced Study Project at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research, Boulder; author of The Genesis Strategy; The
Coevolution Of Climate And Life; Global Warming: Are We Entering The
Greenhouse Century?; and Laboratory Earth (Science Masters Series).
   _________________________________________________________________

Philip Campbell:

Thanks for the reminder. Here's my shot. Perhaps the most
challengingly important inventions are those that open up new moral
dilemmas, and thus make some people question whether the invention
should have been allowed (or precursor discovery sought) in the first
place. This even applies to Howard Gardner's suggestion of classical
music: I would add Adorno's (I think) statement that, in contrast to
some composers, it is impossible to find evil that could have been
reinforced by any note written by Mozart. On the other hand, I believe
Wagner is still banned in Israel.

But my own suggestion is closer to my professional interests. As
delightfully examined in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel,
writing was at least one of the most important inventions of all time,
but Sumerian cuneiform is too old for me to offer it, by 3000 years.
So, in agreement with Philip Anderson's nudge, the printing press is
my response to the question. After all, even the World Wide Web is
just a printing press with electronic and photonic elaborations. But I
can't resist looking forward at an editorial fantasy, ignoring all
sober estimations of the difficulties involved: a cumulative invention
which, if fulfilled, would certainly have a capacity for good and
evil. To quote William Gibson's Neuromancer:

   ".. and still he dreamed of cyberspace...still he'd see the matrix
   in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across the
   colorless void..."

No keyboard, mouse or screen, just neural connections and a
many-dimensional space of, at least, information, to explore, organise
and communicate at will -- perhaps, dare I presumptuously suggest,
with occasional help from an editor. I fear it's too much for me to
expect, but my grandchildren could love it.

PHILIP CAMPBELL (whose oldest offspring is 13) was founding editor of
Physics World, and has been Editor of Nature since 1995.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Horgan:

Okay, I'll bite. Has anyone nominated free will yet? The concept is
more than 2,000 years old, but surely it deserves consideration as one
of our most important inventions ever. Almost as soon as philosophers
conceived of free will, they struggled to reconcile it with the
materialistic, deterministic views of nature advanced by science.
Epicurus insisted that there must be an element of randomness within
nature that allows free will to exist. Lucretius called this
randomness "the swerve." Modern free-willers find the swerve within
chaos theory or quantum mechanics. None of these arguments are very
convincing. Science has made it increasingly clear -- to me, anyway
-- that free will is an illusion. But more even than God, it is a
glorious, absolutely necessary illusion.

JOHN HORGAN, science writer; author of The End of Science : Facing the
Limits of Knowledge In The Twilight of the Scientific Age, has also
written freelance articles for The New York Times, The New Republic,
Slate, The London Times, Discover, The Sciences and other
publications. See EDGE: " Why I Think Science Is Ending: A Talk With
John Horgan" and EDGE: " The End of Horgan?" [thread unavalable].
   _________________________________________________________________

Raphael Kasper:

My immediate reaction to the question was to choose between the
printing press and any of a set of public health-related inventions
(antibiotics, sewage treatment, ...). And since it seems as though we
might never have had the public health advances without the printing
press, but did, in fact, have the printing press without the public
health advances, I'd have to choose the printing press.

Why? Because it opened the possibility that knowledge (information,
wisdom) could be disseminated beyond a small number of privileged
individuals, thus permitting larger numbers to share or debate
world-views and to build upon past and present ideas. Thus far, at
least, new electronic technologies (radio, movies, television,
computers) have been employed as extensions of this broadening of
access to knowledge, altering the medium of exchange but not the
concept. At some time in the future they may lead to more fundamental
changes in the human condition, but not yet, I'm afraid.

RAPHAEL KASPER, a physicist, is Associate Vice Provost for Research at
Columbia University and was Associate Director of the Superconducting
Super Collider Laboratory.
   _________________________________________________________________

Sherry Turkle:

My candidate would be the idea of the unconscious, the notion that
what we say and do and feel can spring from sources of which we are
not aware, that our choices and the qualities of our relationships are
deeply motivated by our histories. In recent years, the Freudian
contribution has tended be seen as historical...something we have
passed beyond...but I think that in large part this is because the
most fundamental ideas of psychodynamics have passed into popular
culture as a given. These ideas animate out understandings of who we
are with our families, with our friends and work. They add a dimension
to our understandings of what it is to be human that will become
increasingly important as we confront world in which artificial
intelligences are increasingly presented to us and our children as
candidates for dialogue and relationship (this year's Furbies are only
a beginning) -- and we are compelled to a new level of reflection
about what is special about being a person.

SHERRY TURKLE is a professor of the sociology of sciences at MIT. She
is the author of The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit;
Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution,
and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet.. See
Digerati, Chapter 31.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Myers:

Others in this science-minded group have appropriately mentioned the
scientific method. Speaking for my discipline let me sharpen this:
When it comes to thinking smart -- to sifting reality from wishful
thinking -- one of the great all-time inventions is the control group.
If we want to evaluate medical claims (from bloodletting to new drugs
to touch therapy), to assess social programs, or to isolate influences
on human behavior we construct a controlled reality. By random
assignment we form people into equivalent groups which either receive
some experience or not -- thereby isolating the factor of interest.
The power of the controlled experiment has meant the death of many
wild and wacky claims, but also the flourishing of critical thinking
and rationality.

DAVID MYERS, professor of psychology at Hope College, is the author of
The Pursuit of Happiness: Who Is Happy, and Why, as well several
textbooks which include Exploring Psychology, and Psychology .
   _________________________________________________________________

Don Goldsmith:

The most important invention has been a mental construct: the
realization that we on Earth form an integral part of a giant cosmos,
not a privileged form of existence in a special place. This invention,
once the province of a few intellectuals in an obscure corner of the
world, has now become widespread, though it remains a minority view
among the full population; its implications and successes lie all
around us.

DONALD GOLDSMITH is an astronomer and the author of over a dozen books
including The Astronomers, the companion volume to the PBS series of
the same title, and The Hunt for Life on Mars. In 1995, Dr. Goldsmith
was the recipient of the Annenberg Foundation Award for lifetime
achievement awarded by the American Astronomical Society. He has also
been awarded the Dorothea Klumpke-Robert prize for astronomy
popularization.
   _________________________________________________________________

Arnold Trehub :

The most important invention in the past two thousand years?

In my opinion it is the invention by Otto von Guericke in 1660 of a
machine which produced static electricity. This device was the
primitive tool which unlocked our understanding and application of
electricity. Modern power generation, communication, computation, and
almost all of our most important analytic devices stand on the
foundation of von Guericke's machine. A long line of basic
intellectual formulations from electromagnetism to the bioelectric
properties of brain mechanisms owe a debt to this invention. When we
discover how the human brain creates the covert models of its own
inventions, the structure and dynamics of the brain's own electrical
activity will undoubtedly be an essential aspect of the explanation.

ARNOLD TREHUB is adjunct professor of psychology, University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, and the author of The Cognitive Brain.
   _________________________________________________________________

Jay Ogilvy:

Okay, I'll weigh in with the invention of secularism -- getting out
from under the thumbs of the gods.

From all we can tell from historians and anthropologists, every
ancient society worshipped some god or other. Superstition ran
rampant. Human beings denied their own freedom and autonomy by
praising or blaming the gods for their fates. Not until some bold
minds like Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and
Sigmund Freud did it become thinkable, much less fashionable, to
preach atheism. These were inventors of a new order, one that allowed
human beings to make up our game as we go along, unfettered by
superstitions about the will of the gods or fear of their punishment.

For my part I am appalled at how slowly this invention has been
accepted. Over 60 percent of Americans still agree (somewhat, mostly,
or strongly) that, "The world was literally created in six days, as
the Bible says," (confirmed on three successive national probability
sample surveys by the Values and Lifestyles Program at SRI
International where I was director of research during the 1980s).
Islam claims over a billion devotees. And I find it remarkable the
number of highly educated, intelligent adults who still embrace a
childlike, wish-fulfilling belief in God.

Without kneeling down to positivism, or overestimating what is
knowable, or underestimating the mysteries that remain lurking in the
individual and social unconscious, let us nevertheless celebrate our
liberation from superstition, remain humble before forces that
transcend our individual egos, but accept the collective
responsibilities of human freedom, and sing, as my GBN partner,
Stewart Brand, did in the epigram for the Whole Earth Catalog: "We are
as gods so we might as well get good at it."

JAY OGILVY is a cofounder and Vice-President of Global Business
Network , responsible for training; headed "Values and Lifestyles"
research at SRI International; former professor of philosophy at Yale
and Williams College; author of Living Without a Goal and Many
Dimensional Man.
   _________________________________________________________________

Douglas Rushkoff:

The eraser. As well as the delete key, white-out, the Constitutional
amendment, and all the other tools that let us go back and fix our
mistakes.

Without our ability to go back, erase, and try again, we'd have no
scientific model, nor any way to evolve government, culture, or
ethics. The eraser is our confessor, our absolver, and our time
machine.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF is the author of Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the
Future, and the novel Ecstasy Club. His books have been translated
into 16 languages, and his weekly column is syndicated by The New York
Times. He writes and lectures about technology and culture, and
teaches at New York University.
   _________________________________________________________________

Mike Godwin:

The most important invention in the last 2000 years has to be the
moveable-type printing press. Cheap book production put the printed
language in the hands of the masses and led directly to the rise of
literacy. Once you have a large literate class, you see the democratic
impulse flourish -- even a moderately educated populace begins to make
judgments about its rulers and its mode of government. Cheap book
production also advances both scientific and historical knowledge by
ensuring that valuable source documents are duplicated and preserved
and (just as important, really) ensuring that those old documents are
readable. Cheap book duplication makes it possible to quickly build a
cadre of scientists and historians who've read the same works and thus
share a common body of knowledge. Finally, moveable type makes it
possible for the past to speak to the future en masse in a way that
the evanescent oral tradition never could.

It's helpful to look at the other inventions listed as the most
important in the last 2000 years and try to imagine how they might
have come about had there been no moveable-type printing press.

MIKE GODWIN, an attorney, is counsel for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, the San Francisco-based cyber-liberties organization, and
the author of Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age.
See Digerati, Chapter 12
   _________________________________________________________________

Duncan Steel:

Summary answer: The non-implemented 33-year English Protestant
Calendar.

Let me start my answer by making a few comments about the suggestions
made by other correspondents, and the general premise of the specific
answer I give myself.

At the time of writing many answers are already in, and so many good
ideas have been aired. I don't even need to refer to the list to guess
at some of them: the computer, the contraceptive pill, gunpowder, the
internal combustion engine, nuclear weapons. Wait! you say. What am I
suggesting, that nuclear explosions are good? Well, maybe not from the
perspective of how they may be used on Earth; but from another
perspective one could claim that they have been a major peacekeeping
influence over the past half-century, which has been comparatively war
less compared with what one might have expected given the other
technologies available: jet planes, napalm, guided missiles,... Note
that I wrote "one could claim" -- that does not mean that I am
claiming it, I am just posing an arguable position.

In the same way one could argue that the contraceptive pill, which has
indeed been nominated as one of the most important inventions, is
actually a bad thing. For example, we cannot know whether it has
robbed us of a 21st century Einstein who would have found the way to
unify the laws of physics whilst identifying a cure for cancer in her
spare time.

The impossibility of knowing how the world might have been post hoc
opens up various avenues of thought, like what if Hitler had never
lived? (a matter explored in certain ways by Stephen Fry in his novel
'Making History'). Obviously this has a wide variety of implications
with gross repercussions, especially for the Jews, Gypsies and other
races which were the target of such atrocities. But for my present
purposes let me sidestep such huge considerations, and instead look at
some trivial ones. Suppose that you are the President of the Boston
and Area Volkswagen Beetle Owners Club: you might adjudge the
hypothesized nonexistence of Hitler as being most important in your
life because the Beetle would never have been built.

One therefore has to think about what important means in the context
of different people's lives. Right now the most important thing to a
Denver Broncos fan (I write as they stand 13-0) is whether a perfect
season is in the offing. Excuse me but isn't that totally
insignificant to some starving child in Ethiopia; but it is the thing
foremost in the mind of that Broncos fan, perhaps fatally-so: he may
crash whilst driving to the next game at Mile High Stadium and lose
his life, never getting to see his team romp the Superbowl again.

The outcome of my own mental perambulations on this question of the
most important invention is that all the technological products, of
recent years and old, would not only have been invented
sooner-or-later anyway, but also they are mere applications of ideas.
An idea may be important, even though it does not directly lead to an
important invention with a physical reality. An idea itself I count as
being an invention in the current context.

Further, how we got to where we are now is the result of many
important ideas producing branching points in history. Now, one could
make a case for the more distant (in history) branching points being
more fundamental, because all following events depend upon them. If
Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and William the Conqueror had never
lived, then neither would Hitler. But that form of reasoning leads to
a reductio ad absurdum.

Rather, I choose to ask: "How did we get to where we are now?" The
first step needed there is to define where we are, and the answer to
that is: with the USA being the powerhouse of most of the rest of the
world. Thus the branching point I look to is that which made the USA a
reality. I do not mean the Declaration of Independence. I mean: what
made the English first go and settle the Atlantic seaboard of North
America?

The answer to that provides my answer to the "Most Important Invention
In The Past Two Thousand Years", but it is not original to me. The
thing I am going to describe was suggested to me by Simon Cassidy, a
British mathematician who lives in California.

Here is the story. When the Catholic Church (per Pope Gregory XIII)
brought in the reformed calendar in 1582, they decided to use a
second-best solution to the problem. Let me tell you, all Christian
calendar matters hinge on the question of the Easter computus. That
depends upon the time of the vernal equinox, which is ecclesiastically
defined to be March 21st, although astronomically-speaking the equinox
on the Gregorian calendar shifts over the 400-year leap-year cycle by
53 hours, between March 19 and 21. This follows from the long cycle
time.

By far preferable from a religious perspective would be a calendar
which keeps the equinox on one day, requiring a shorter cycle. Even so
far back as AD 1079, Omar Khayyam had shown that an eight leap-years
in 33-year cycle provides an excellent approximation to the year as
measured as the time between vernal equinoxes. The advisers of Gregory
XIII knew this but instead recommended the inferior 97/400 leap-year
system we use, perhaps in the belief that the Protestants did not know
of the better 8/33 concept.

But in England, they did. John Dee and others (Thomas Harriot and
Walter Raleigh amongst them) had secretly come up with a plan to
implement a 'Perfect Christian Calendar' using the 33-year cycle (the
traditional lifetime of Christ). In that span there are eight
four-year cycles leading to a time-of-day wander by the equinox of
just below 18 hours. The problem is the one five-year cycle in each
grand cycle, during which the equinox steps forward by just below six
hours in each of four jumps before the following leap year pulls it
back by 24 hours. The full amplitude of the movement is 23 hours and
16 minutes. To get the equinox to remain on one calendar day
throughout the 33-year cycle one has to use as a prime meridian for
time-keeping a longitude band which is just right, and quite narrow.
It happened (in the late sixteenth century but with movement east
since due to the slow-down of the Earth's spin) to be at 77 degrees
west, which Cassidy terms "God's Longitude".

If you look down that meridian you will find that in the 1580s the
settled areas (in the Caribbean, Peru, etc.) were under Spanish, hence
Catholic, control. To grab part of God's Longitude and found a New
Albion, enabling them to introduce a rival calendar -- that Perfect
Christian Calendar -- and convert the other Christian states to the
Protestant side, England mounted various expeditions which historians
have since misinterpreted. In 1584-90 the so-called Lost Colony was
sent to Roanoke Island, a bizarre place to attempt to start
colonization but an excellent site from which to make astronomical
observations to fix the longitude and thus decide how far inland New
Albion should be. Similarly in 1607 the choice of Jamestown Island
seems bizarre from the settlement perspective -- why not out on
Chesapeake Bay, and away from the attacks of the local Algonquians led
by Pocahontas' father Powhatan? -- but makes sense from the paramount
need to grab a piece of God's Longitude. From the foothold the English
managed to gain, Old Virginny grew and later other colonizers came to
New England, and New Amsterdam was bought from the Dutch. But later
utility/developments do not reflect the original purpose of the
English coming to Roanoke Island and Jamestown Island any more than
the Eiffel Tower was built to provide a mount for the many radio
antennas which now festoon its apex.

After the fact the English did not reveal their prime motivation for
Raleigh's American adventures and the investment in the ill-starred
Jamestown colonizers, and all of this is yet to be properly teased
out. But if the English had never invented their non-implemented
33-year Protestant Calendar, then the USA as it is would not exist,
and all of the scientific, technological and cultural development of
the world over the past couple of centuries would be quite different.
In view of this I nominate that calendar, due to John Dee, as the most
important invention of the past 2000 years.
DUNCAN STEEL conducts research on asteroids, comets and meteors and
their influence upon the terrestrial environment, is Director of
Spaceguard Australia, and the author of Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday
Comets.
   _________________________________________________________________

Tom Standage:
It all depends on how you define important, of course. But to my mind
the most important invention is telecommunications technology: the
telegraph, the telephone, and now things like the Internet. Until
about 150 years ago, it was impossible to communicate with someone in
real time unless they were in the same room. The only options were to
send a message (or go in person) by horse or ship.

The early optical telegraphs of the 1790s made long-distance
communication possible at hitherto impossible speeds, at least for the
governments that built them, but they were not available for general
use. Then in the 1840s, the electric telegraph enabled people to send
messages over great distances very quickly. This was a step change,
though its social consequences took a while to percolate. At first,
telegraph operators became the pioneers of a new frontier: they could
gather in what we would today call chat rooms, play games over the
wires, and so on. (There were several telegraphic romances and
weddings.) The general public, of course, was still excluded, and had
no direct access to the real-time nature of the technology. But the
invention of the telephone in the 1870s made real-time
telecommunications far more widely available.

Today, in the developed world at least, we think nothing of talking
with people on the other side of the world. During the course of a
normal working day, many people spend more time dealing with people
remotely than they do face-to-face. The ubiquity of telecommunications
technology has become deeply embedded in our culture. Of course, life
has sped up as a result. But we watch TV and use telephones, fax
machines and, increasingly, the Internet, almost unthinkingly. If the
mark of an advanced technology is that it is indistinguishable from
magic, then the mark of an important one is that it becomes invisible
-- that we fail to notice when we are using it. That makes the
significance of telecommunications technology very easy to overlook,
and underestimate.

TOM STANDAGE, Science Correspondent of The Economist and former deputy
editor of the Daily Telegraph's technology supplement, "Connected," is
the author of The Victorian Internet: A History of the 19th Century
Communications Revolution. He has written for many newspapers and
magazines including Wired, The Guardian, The Independent, and The
Daily Telegraph. He has also appeared as a technology and new media
pundit on BBC television and radio.
   _________________________________________________________________

Andy Clark:

DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS

A digital ecosystem is a kind of universe, realized in electronic
media, in which we observe incremental evolution and complex
interaction. The classic examples come from work in Artificial Life,
such as Tom Ray's Tierra project in which strings of code compete for
resources, such as CPU time, and in which cascades of strategies for
success develop, with later ones exploiting the weaknesses and
loopholes of their predecessors.

But the idea is much broader. The worldwide web and browser
technologies have combined to create a massive digital ecosystem
populated by ideas and product descriptions, whose true impact on the
human lifestyle is only just beginning to be felt. The human mind was
never contained in the head, and has always been a construct involving
head, artifacts (such as pen and paper), and webs of communication and
interaction. We make our worlds smart so that brains like ours can be
dumb in peace. But the development of web and internet technologies
may well signal the next great leap in the evolution of thought and
reason. For we now have a medium in which ideas can travel, mutate,
recombine and propagate with unprecedented ease and (increasingly)
across the old barriers of culture, language, geography and central
authority.

Moreover, and in a kind of golden loop, we can use our experience with
more restricted digital ecosystems to improve our grip on the
properties of the kind of large, distributed, self-organizing system
of which we are now a proper part. Understanding these properties is
important both for policy making (what kind of regulation creates and
maintains the optimal conditions for productive self-organization in a
complex and highly uncertain world?) and for moral and economic
reason. Human brains are bad at seeing the patterns that will result
from multiple, ongoing, bidirectional interactions: see, for example,
the simulations that show, to most peoples surprise, that if each
person in a group insists on having just 30% of their neighbors 'the
same' as them (picked out by race, gender, sexual inclination or
whatever you like), that over a short period of time what evolves is a
highly segregated ecology containing a great many 'all X'
neighborhoods. Perhaps if our children get to play with quite
large-scale digital ecosystems, in games such as Sim City or using new
educational resources such as such as Mitchell Resnick's Starlogo,
they may yet learn something of how to predict, understand, and
sometimes avoid, such emergent patterns.

Digital ecosystems thus both radically transform the space in which
human brains think and reason, and provide opportunities to help us
learn to reason better about the kind of complex system of which we
are now a part. The double-whammy gets my vote.

ANDY CLARK is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy/
Neuroscience/Psychology Program at Washington University in St Louis,
St Louis, MO, USA. He is the author of Microcognition, Associative
Engines and most recently Being There: Putting Brain, Body And World
Together Again.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stanislas Dehaene:

In my opinion, the most important human invention is not an artefact,
such as the pill or the electric shaver. It's an idea, the very idea
that made all these technical successes possible: the concept of
education.

Our brain is nothing but a collection of networks of neurons and
synapses that have been shaped by evolution to solve specific
problems. Yet through education and culture, we have found ways to
"recycle" those networks for other uses. With the invention of reading
and writing, we recycle our visual system to do word reading. With the
invention of mathematics, we apply our innate networks for number,
space, and time to all sorts of problems beyond their original domain
of relevance. Education is the key invention that enables all these
rewirings to take place at a time when our brains are still optimally
modifiable.

As David Premack likes to remind us, homo sapiens is the only primate
that has invented an active pedagogy. Without education, it would only
take one generation for all the inventions that other have mentioned
to vanish from the surface of the earth.

STANISLAS DEHAENE is a researcher at the Institut National de la Sant?
studies cognitive neuropsychology of language and number processing in
the human brain. He is author of The Number Sense: How Mathematical
Knowledge Is Embedded In Our Brains. See EDGE: "What Are Numbers,
Really? A Cerebral Basis For Number Sense" by Stanislas Dehaene."
   _________________________________________________________________

John Maddox:

I'm amazed that fellow beneficiaries of this site are making such
heavy weather of your pre-millennial assignment. Incidentally, surely
some have bent your rules in that assorted Sumarians, Assyrians and
Egyptians, not to mention Chinese, Greeks and Romans, were well into
the recording of history long before 2,000 years ago.

Ab-reacting a little, I was tempted to enter the central
locking-systems on modern motorcars (a.k.a. "automobiles") as the
greatest contribution to the convenience of modern life, but that's a
trivial invention (and should have been incorporated on the model-T).

In any case, there's no doubt in my mind that the invention of the
differential calculus by Newton and, independently, by Leibnitz, was
the outstanding invention of the past 2,000 years. The calculus made
the whole of modern science what it is. Moreover, this was not a
trivial invention. Newton know that velocity is the rate of change
(with time) of distance (from Galileo, for example) and that
acceleration is the rate of change of velocity (with time), but it was
far from self-evident that these quantities could be inferred from the
geometrical shapes of Kepler's orbits of the planets. Nowadays, of
course, mere schoolboys (and girls) can play Newton's game -- it's
just a matter of "changing the variables", as they say.

In the seventeenth century, it was far from obvious that the
differential calculus would turn out to be as influential as later
events have shown. Indeed, Daniel Bernoulli claimed (in 1672) that
Newton had deliberately hidden his "method of fluxions" in obscure
language so as to keep the secret to himself. But Leibnitz's technique
was hardly transparent; it fell to Bernoulli himself to interpret the
scheme, much as Freeman Dyson made Feynman's electrodynamics
intelligible in the 1940s.

Both Newton and Leibnitz appreciated that the inverse of
differentiation leads to a way of calculating the "area under a curve"
(on which Newton had earlier spent a great deal of energy), but it was
Liebnitz who invented the integral sign now scattered through the
mathematical literature. That these developments transformed
mathematics hardly needs assertion.

But the effect of the calculus on physics, and eventually on the rest
of science, was even more profound. Where would be field theories of
any kind (from Maxwell and Einstein to
Schrodinger/Feynman/Schwinger/Weinberg and the like) without the
calculus?

One can, of course, say much the same about the invention of
arithmetic, but that long predates 2,000 years ago. The calculus was
the next big leap forward.

JOHN MADDOX is Editor emeritus of Nature; physicist; author of
Revolution in Biology, The Doomsday Syndrome, Beyond the Energy
Crisis, and What Remains to be Discovered. See EDGE: "Complexity and
Catastrophe" A Talk With Sir John Maddox."
   _________________________________________________________________

Eberhard Zangger:

The tricky part of the question is not what the most important
invention is, but the qualifier "in the past two thousand years".
Technological innovations alter the frontier between humans and their
natural habitat. Because of the insuperable importance of the
environment, humans have always sought to maximize the advantage they
can take from the laws provided by nature. As a consequence, truly
fundamental innovations date back many thousand years ago. The most
outstanding innovation of all times was probably the domestication of
animals, followed by that of plants. Life in permanent homes, villages
and cities, the wheel, the sailing ship, engineering, script, as well
as conceptual achievements such as nations, democracy, religion, music
and songs, even taxes, interest and inflation all date back way before
the beginning of the common era. Several innovations suggested in this
forum were actually part of every day routines of Bronze Age people,
including, for instance, language, steel, paper, and reading glasses.
Scientific method must have also existed in some form, since 14th
century BC hydraulic installations in Greece perfectly meet the
parameters of the given environment. Even moveable type was known by
1500 BC, as the example of the Discos of Phaistos from Minoan Crete
shows. Finally, heliocentricity was first discovered by the astronomer
Aristarchos of Samos during the 3rd century BC -- but the concept
failed peer reviews and its acceptance was thus delayed by 1800 years.
Since the principle factors controlling people's lives today already
existed 2000 years ago, the skeptic in me would intuitively vote for:
nothing worth mentioning.

If we take a stroll through a Roman town 2000 years ago -- and ancient
Pompeii provides a good example of a city frozen in a moment of every
day life -- we would find a city containing factories (including one
for fish sauce), public baths, athletic stadiums, theaters, plastered
roads, proper sidewalks, pubs and, inevitably, brothels -- facilities
for people who were, for the most part, in better physical shape than
us. What distinguishes a modern city from its Roman predecessor? Two
things come to mind, the first belonging to the category of conceptual
realization: Christianity. The Roman dominion over the western world
lasted for about 1000 years -- and we might indeed still live in the
Roman era, if there would not have been a common denominator which
united the many tribes suppressed by the imperious control. This
unifying factor was Christianity. -- The second prominent innovation
which distinguishes a Roman from a modern city is electricity. Only
through the invention of electricity is it possible to operate laundry
machines and subnotebook computers; two inventions I personally
cherish the most, as well as many of the other items suggested in this
forum.

However, I recall enjoying a particularly Romantic evening in the
usually overcrowded, noisy Cretan tourist resort of Elounda. Some time
passed before I realized what made this evening so special -- a
general power shut down had knocked out all fluorescent lighting and
loudspeakers. Lanterns and kitchen stoves still worked -- with gas.
This brings me back to my original response to the question, what is
the most important invention of the past two thousand years. Nothing
worth mentioning.

EBERHARD ZANGGER is a geoarchaeologist and works as chief physical
scientist on many archaeological field projects in Mediterranean
countries. He is author of The Flood from Heaven: Deciphering the
Atlantis Legend and The Future of the Past: Archaeology in the 21st
Century.
   _________________________________________________________________

Leon Lederman:

If we suggest anything other than the Printing Press, Brockman will
cancel our Christmas bonuses and New Years Eve turkey. So: the
greatest invention in the past two thousand years is the printing
press. Next is the thermos bottle.

LEON LEDERMAN, the director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory, has received the Wolf Prize in Physics (1982), and the
Nobel Prize in Physics (1988). In 1993 he was awarded the Enrico Fermi
Prize by President Clinton. He is the author of several books,
including (with David Schramm) From Quarks to the Cosmos : Tools of
Discovery, and (with Dick Teresi) The God Particle: If the Universe Is
the Answer, What Is the Question?
   _________________________________________________________________

Marc D. Hauser:

I read through the list. Some good ones. I think it is interesting
that many found it so difficult to stick to the 2000 year cut off. Is
it really the case that all the big inventions happened so long ago?
This is surely an important and profound statement, if correct.

I have two suggestions, both within the cut-off period. First, the
electric light, born about 50 years before Joseph Swan put a patent on
the incandescent lamp in 1878, and then Edison in 1879. Having lived
in Africa, where one is often forced to read from fire light,
electricity is a god send. Moreover, having invented the incandescent
lamp, it didn't take too long to come up with the flashlight, another
handy device for those of us working in dark jungles. My second
suggestion for great inventions is the aspirin, invented, oddly enough
in 1853 in France. Clearly, other medicines have been around, many of
which serve comparable functions, but what a useful little pill. Among
the Maasai in Kenya, headaches are treated with goat feces, a mud
compact to the head. I prefer the aspirin personally.

MARC D. HAUSER, evolutionary psychologist, is Associate Professor at
Harvard University where he is a fellow of the Mind, Brain, and
Behavior Program; and author of The Evolution of Communication.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Buss:

In my view, questions of "importance" cannot be answered without first
specifying "criteria of importance," of "important with respect to
what."

Thus, I would give the following answer to your question:

"One criterion for "most important" is that which has most profoundly
altered patterns of human mating. Changes in mating can affect the
subsequent evolutionary course of the entire species, with cascading
consequences for virtually every aspect of human life. Although many
inventions have altered human mating over the past 2,000 years,
television must rank among the most important. Television has changed
status and prestige criteria, created instant celebrities, hastened
the downfall of leaders, increased the importance of physical
appearance, and accelerated the intensity of intrasexual mate
competition -- all of which have acutely transformed the nature of
sexuality and mating and perhaps forever altered the evolutionary
course of our species."

DAVID BUSS is Professor of Psychology at The University of Texas at
Austin; author of The Evolution of Desire : Strategies of Human
Mating.
   _________________________________________________________________

Leroy Hood:

I nominate the printing press as the most important invention in the
past 200 years.

LEROY HOOD, M.D., Ph.D., is the William Gates III Professor of
Biomedical Sciences and founding chair of the Department of Molecular
Biotechnology at University of Washington. He is principal
investigator of the Leroy Hood Laboratory and coeditor (with Daniel J.
Kevles) of Code of Codes : Scientific and Social Issues in the Human
Genome Project.
   _________________________________________________________________

Julian Barbour:

If it had not been invented over three thousand years ago, I should
have nominated the bell, but instead I choose the symphony orchestra.
This is because, like the bell, it establishes a dramatic link between
two seemingly disparate worlds -- the material world of science and
the world of the psyche and the arts. The symphony orchestra is surely
important because it made possible classical music, the nomination of
Howard Gardner. However, I choose it as a symbol for something that
may yet be to come, like space travel, the choice of Reuben Hersh.
What is more, I make my choice precisely because in just one point I
disagree with Howard Gardner -- classical music is crucially dependent
on physical inventions: musical instruments. I have long been
fascinated by one of the great conundrums of philosophy that was
clearly recognized by Newton's contempories: If there is only a
material world characterized by the so-called primary qualities such
as extension, motion, and mass, how are we to explain our awareness of
so many different secondary qualities such as colors, sounds, tastes,
and smells? The material world has no need of them and can never
explain them. Of course, we all know that science can now demonstrate
how specific sensations are correlated with physical phenomena, but a
correlation is not necessarily a cause -- for both correlates may have
a common cause -- and still less is it an explanation. How can the
vibrations of cat gut create in me the effect I experience when
listening to Beethoven's quartets? Perhaps I am na?ve, but I am a
committed scientist. I cannot be content to regard the secondary
qualities as epiphenomena. I think there could be a physics, far
richer than the one we presently know, in which the secondary
qualities are as real as electric charge. The bell and symphony
orchestra call us to ponder higher things and wider possibilities, the
domain where science is reconciled with the arts.

JULIAN BARBOUR is a theoretical physicist and the author of Absolute
or Relative Motion : A Study from a Machian Point of View of the
Discovery and the Structure of Dynamical Theories : The Discovery of
Dynami.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Henry Holland:

BOARD GAMES

Board games, more than any other invention, foretell the role of
science in understanding the universe through symbolic reasoning.
Their essence is a simple set of rules for generating a complex
network of possibilities by manipulating tokens on a reticulate board.

Board games are found as artifacts of the earliest Egyptian dynasties,
so they don't truly fall within the 2000 year limit, but they have
undergone a rapid "adaptive radiation" in the last millennium. Thales'
invention of logic (the manipulation of abstract tokens under fixed
rules) was likely influenced by a knowledge of board games, and board
games offered an early metaphoric guide for politics and war in both
the East (Go) and the West (Chess). These insights, in turn, had much
to do with transition from the belief that the world around us is
controlled by the whims and personalities of gods to the outlook that
the world can be described in lawlike fashion. In the 19th and 20th
centuries board games became the inspiration for models, simulations
and mathematics, ranging from genetics and evolution to markets and
social interaction. Board games also offer a simple example of the
recondite phenomenon called emergence -- "much coming from little"
-- as when a fertilized egg yields a complex organism consisting of
tens of billions of cells. And, via a mutation into video-games, board
games offer the next generation an entry into the world of long
horizons and rigorous thought -- both in short supply in the current
generation.

JOHN HENRY HOLLAND is Professor of Computer Science at the University
of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The recipient of a MacArthur genius award,
he is credited with the discovery of genetic algorithms -- lines of
computer code that simulate sexually reproducing organisms. A leading
expert on complexity theory at the Sante Fe Institute in New Mexico,
Dr. Holland is the author of Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds
Complexity and Emergence: From Chaos to Order.
   _________________________________________________________________

Gordon Gould:
Here is my $.02 on what is significant, in addition to all the
illustrious suggestions received so far:

Double Entry Accounting: While it is not all that sexy, it has been a
significant force in shaping the West and by the globalization of
market-driven economies, the world. Invented in 1494 by a Franciscan
monk named Luca Pacioli, double entry accounting was designed to help
the flourishing Venetian merchants manage their burgeoning economic
empires. Today, it remains the core methodology for most accounting
systems worldwide. It is the DOS of money.

Based on the principle of equilibrium (ie a balance sheet), double
entry accounting provides both control over the internal state of an
agent (in this case, an economic entity) and the necessary structures
required for individual organizations to cooperate/collaborate in the
emergent construction of modern market economies. In other words,
double entry accounting simultaneously enables organizations to
regulate themselves (through internal accounting and control
mechanisms) while also allowing the larger economy to assess the
relative health and worth of an enterprise using standardized
measures. If money is the blood and markets are the circulatory
systems of the global economy, then double entry accounting ledgers
are the nerve cells that both control and, in turn, respond to changes
in the flows of money.

GORDON GOULD is the President of Rising Tide Studios, parent company
of the Silicon Alley Reporter and the Digital Coast Reporter. Prior to
joining RTS, he was a principle at Thinking Pictures, an interactive
entertainment/database technologies company, and also oversaw the
Multimedia/Internet Group for Sony Worldwide Networks.

   _________________________________________________________________

Bob Rafelson:

Richard Gatling started with a cotton seed sowing machine and
graduated to a weapon that rotated 10 barrels of 0.45 in bullets at a
rate of 1000 rounds a minute. The Confederacy didn't purchase the
thing 'til after the Civil War. But in the next several decades it was
bought and used by powerful armies around the globe. Finally it proved
its battle merit in Africa where it mowed down thousands of
unsuspecting Zulus. The Gatling Gun was the first weapon of mass
destruction. Moreover, it spawned the ongoing, if clumsy, debate about
weapons being banned for the sake of mankind.

BOB RAFELSON is a film director and producer whose work includes Head,
Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens, The Postman Always Rings
Twice, Mountains of the Moon, and Blood and Wine.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Allen Paulos:

Thanks for your invitation (and for your project in general). I'd
respond more fully but the question seems too ill-defined to answer.
(I guess I still have something of the reductionistic, literal mindset
of a mathematician despite periodic forays into more nebulous realms.)
An invention or innovation that becomes essential has a tendency also
to become invisible as we, in a sense, "grow around" it. If I were
forced to name something, I guess I would go with Gutenberg's movable
type. And if I wanted to be puerilely self-referential, my choice for
most important invention might be the notion of a precise question.
(Nevertheless, I do see the value of vague ones as well.)

JOHN ALLEN PAULOS, professor of mathematics at Temple University in
Philadelphia, is the author of Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and
Its Consequences, Beyond Numeracy: Ruminations of a Numbers Man, A
Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, and Once Upon a Number: The Hidden
Mathematical Logic of Stories.
   _________________________________________________________________

Verena Huber-Dyson:
My first reaction to your question was The Zero, the next Infinity,
but my answer is The Infinitesimal Calculus.

Creating a bridge between the two archetypal fictions 0 and * it makes
sense of them. It has become a tool in just about every branch of
engineering and science. It provides a language for the formulation of
laws and a method for constructing explanations, solutions and
predictions. It is alive: its invention in the 17th century -- by
Leibniz and Newton independently -- articulated a concept that had
long been vaguely anticipated and applied implicitly, its development
is still in progress, leading to the resolution of old puzzles (e.g.,
Zeno's Paradox) while raising new ones (e.g., the continuum
hypothesis). Leibniz had been agonizing over what he called "the
labyrinth of the continuum" but the 19th century put the infinitesimal
calculus on a firm basis by analyzing the concepts of a limit and of
infinity from a variety of view points. Nowadays we are blessed with
new developments coming from the quarter of symbolic logic that arose
out of a digital (0,1) modeling of rational arguing: non standard
analysis vindicates Leibniz' use of "infinitely small" non-zero
quantities.

VERENA HUBER-DYSON, a mathematician, has published research in group
theory, and taught in various mathematics departments such as UC
Berkeley and University of Illinois at Chicago. She is now emeritus
professor at the philosophy department of the University of Calgary
where she taught logic and philosophy of the sciences and of
mathematics which led to a book on G?del's theorems published in 1991.
See EDGE: "On The Nature Of Mathematical Concepts: Why And How Do
Mathematicians Jump To Conclusions?" by Verena Huber-Dyson.
   _________________________________________________________________

Garniss Curtis:

My instantaneous response was: Gutenberg's printing press with movable
type. This knee-jerk response was followed by a pause and reflection.

What is meant by "invention"? So, to the dictionary! Essentially,
anything that did not exist previously, whether it be a mechanical
device or art,literature,or music, is an "invention". Sobered by this,
I reflected again.

The skulls of l0 skeletons found in Skhul Cave at the foot of Mt.
Carmel in Israel in the l930's are similar in size and shape to modern
Homo sapiens. These have been dated at 80,000 years. A similar skull
found in a cave at Qafzeh, Israel has been dated at 9l,000 years.
Having the same size brain capacity, of course, does not necessarily
mean they had our same intelligence, although they were capable of
making beautiful stone tools.

We jump now to the Chevaux cave in France, where wall paintings of
animals extant in Europe at that time are beautifully depicted and
have been dated at over 30,000 years. l5,000 years later in the caves
at Le Portel and Lascaux in France, our ancestors were making
magnificent polychrome paintings of animals. Their stone tools at that
time and for the previous 5,000 years are comparable in technique and
beauty to any made by Native Americans in the past few hundred years.

Can anyone doubt that these Cro-Magnons could have learned to read and
write, to philosophise, to do math at a high level, to learn chemistry
and physics if magically brought into our culture of today? (Let's
leave out some fundamentalists who still don't believe in evolution.)

We find that cuneiform writing began about 5,000 years ago and quickly
evolved. By 2,500 years ago, the Greeks were producing masterpieces of
plays, literature, art, architecture, and they were doing some
wonderful things in mathematics and elementary observational science.
The Romans carried on these traditions until their fall. Christianity
came in and destroyed as much as it could of this great heritage in
western Europe including the great library in Alexandria.

Thus began the "Dark Ages" in Europe. The gradual dissemination of
knowledge, other than ecumenical literature (which wasn't much
faster!) was extremely slow. So, in the mid fourteen hundreds along
comes Gutenberg with his printing press and its movable type. Of
course, almost the first thing he did was print a bible or two and
they sold like hot cakes. True, fixed or non movable type had been
around for a short time, but the process wasn't much faster than
printing books by hand and was very costly, so, the rapid
dissemination of knowledge through printed books began with Gutenberg.

While it is true that the Dark Ages began to end about the year l,000,
real progress wasn't made until the Renaissance and, particularly,
with the rapid dissemination of knowledge via Gutenberg-type presses.
As books were published, people became inspired to learn to read.
Reading led to thinking about what had been read and to further
publications and to communications between people. The first world
wide web had been started, Anyone with a grain of sense can see what
this has led to!

So, John, after my consideration outlined above, I still think the
Gutenberg press with movable type is the greatest invention of the
past 2,000 years or, perhaps of the last 5,000 years after cuneiform
writing was invented!

GARNISS CURTIS is Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Geology &
Geophysics at the University of California, Berkeley and Founder of
the Berkeley Geochronology Center. A colleague of Louis Leakey, he
determined the age (1.85 my) of the famous Zinjanthropus fossil which
rocked the anthropological world. His research continues that
endeavor: In 1994 with colleague Carl Swisher he re-dated Homo erectus
in Java at 1.8 my instead of the long-held .8 my.
   _________________________________________________________________

Milford H. Wolpoff:

Science, because it brings us explanations of our world we may act on,
is by far the most important invention of this time. The fact that the
explanations are usually wrong brings the partial illusion of
progress, as well as tenure, which is a consequence of the
publications debating the various wrongnesses.

At its best, science works in a sort of Darwinian frame, where
hypotheses are the source of variation (cleverness counts) and
disproofs are the extinctions.

Developments from hypotheses are the analogues of ontogeny, and there
are various other processes that parallel the biological world such as
the roles of randomness (first publications carry excess influence by
virtue of being first, just as Microsoft systems succeed by being most
common but not necessarily best), and punctuated equilibrium
(scientific revolutions are complete replacement events). There are
even biological-like terms like "memes" that may describe how
hypotheses are transmitted. All and all, ever since when well before
Neandertal times we hominids developed significantly complex culture,
that extrasomatic way of transmitting hierarchically structured
information, we have enjoyed (in the sense of the Chinese curse)
interesting times.

MILFORD WOLPOFF is a paleoanthropologist, Professor of Anthropology at
the University of Michigan, author of Paleoanthropology ; and coauthor
(with Rachel Caspari) of Race And Human Evolution.
   _________________________________________________________________

Mark Mirsky:

Last year, I held my tongue when it came to questions. No one however
asked directly as I recall what was most important to me. What is
going to happen to me after I die? This is only the prologue to other
questions that go to a root of human consciousness for me, is there
order or no order in the universe? If there is order does it represent
in my own life a pattern that is supposed to mean something for me.
What meaning does my life have? Is there order or simply random event
in my life? Does what I do effect the order of the universe in any
important way, in any way that effects its order?

According to the scholar of religious philosophy Harry Wolfson,
Spinoza believed that memory would survive, though he had no logical
proof for this belief. Human actions would therefore matter because
they would be bound up with memory. Evolution and DNA in part confirm
that at least in limited spans of time this is true. What will survive
me? What is most important in the last two thousand years, I feel is
the human capacity to enact symbols, to identify reality with them.

A friend who is both a distinguished mathematician and a rabbi, likes
to quote Maimonides to the effect that only original thoughts will
survive in the after life. This is after all, a consoling thought to a
mathematician, since "original thoughts" are the m?tier of the
sciences. And it is with "fear and trembling" that I tread through the
gates of EDGE site on the sacred ground of scientists.

As a novelist however, I beg to differ with the particulars of this
hope, for originality is not necessarily important in the world of
fantasy or rather what is compelling is not necessarily what is most
original. The very word "invention" has in some of the early
responses, a scientific, or pseudoscientific interpretation. I believe
(as someone who has seen briefly -- though in a state of such high
anxiety I can readily admit -- they may have been hallucinations --
ghosts), that the act of symbolic enactment is a key to the riddle of
consciousness and the most important of human "inventions." Nor do I
think such "enactment" or symbol drama is entirely a "human"
invention. For I believe I derives from play, though in human beings
it has come to combine play with the self reference of thought about
existence. The latter drama of symbols I think it is part of the
uncanny tension between the weight of the Unknown (which I choose to
personify with a Capital) and consciousness.

The story that has historically "galvanized" Jewish thought and then
Christian thought is the Biblical saga of the sacrifice of Isaac,
where a family or tribe obviously familiar with human sacrifice,
passed to its symbolic enactment. In the Sinai desert, years ago, a
German sociologist, Gunnar Heinneson, told me that the Jews were the
first people to do away with the exposure of unwanted infants. You can
speak volumes about human values, but without ceremonies that address
terror of the Unknown, the human majority falls prey to the
overwhelming anxiety of death and its handmaiden, survival.

I am not enough of a historian or anthropologist, to insist on what
Gunnar spoke of as fact. Symbolic enactment obviously goes much
further back in human history than the Biblical world in which we have
idealized patriarchs and matriarchs. It probably derives from the play
that we can observe among animals. It is however, a process that is
constantly being refined. I can appreciate that the Sioux Indians when
they knocked an opponent on the head with a stick rather than killing
him, also invented something that civilization needs -- an extension
that the rage for national sports teams may well answer. We recognize,
I think, as a society that feels that peace with ourselves is
important, that exposing children who are actually delivered, on door
steps, brutalizes us as a people of shared customs.

Steven Rose speaks of inventions as concepts. It is in bringing
ourselves back, again and again, to the concept of invention and in
particular of the invention of symbol in the light of our fear, that I
think both the human body and mind find themselves in a balance that
allows them to experience that mysterious state that Plato called the
"good" and the Bible referred to as "completed" or "perfect": or
"quiet within oneself."

I would challenge Colin Blakemore's assertion that control of human
destiny has shifted from the body to the mind. The mind after all is
finally subject within the human span to the body, just as the latter
has no conscious existence without the mind. We have to reinvent a
form of the Shamanism that seeks to bridge this division within
contemporary religion or suffer a terror that will devastate most of
us in mind and body. When we seek overwhelming joy, in sex, art,
music, even the pursuit of knowledge, or understanding, some of us are
asking to be just that, overwhelmed through the mind but throughout
the body and that has to be part of my "greater good" or "balance." At
Thanksgiving dinner, two prominent friends in the lofty upper spheres
of the university were mocking the blessing of human organs as they
passed to the recipient. I felt the opposite, that in the bleak sphere
of the hospital, it might be important to a system in shock. The
symbol dramatized recalls inspired pages of Milosz on the dance and
the way movement locates us in the universe.

Space grows bleak without a sense of this location and dangerous in
its suggestion of no meaning. I think we need a more powerful sense of
symbol if we are to avoid the fear that our very mastery of
technological invention spurs. If human sacrifice was found to be
unnecessary, so could heroic distinction based on war, national
identity based on exclusion, social identity based on wealth, even the
more exaggerated rewards of entrepreneurship, great wealth. Some years
ago I suggested (in the "Village Voice") that the Israelis and
Palestinians could find a lasting peace if they both acknowledged
large parts of what is called "Israel," what is called "the West
Bank," even what is called "Jordan," in other words, Biblical Canaan,
as sacred space and turned what was still empty into religious park.
Tragically, their statesmen can not invent such a symbolic space.

To answer Colin Blakemore, I certainly found the contraceptive pill a
liberation, at first. Soon, however, it seemed to confuse some of the
deepest impulses of sexual joy. I am not sure that the puritanical
strategies of the 19th century in which eroticism was buried in
passionate friendship were not more effective as symbolic of the
desire to be one with another than sex in which no children were
intended or hoped for. I would never want to go back to a world
without the pill or effective contraceptives, but I am not sure we
have mastered its implications for the body or the mind in that body.
For the pill has no ceremony, no weight of ritual behind it and the
meaning of its communion still awaits definition.

MARK MIRSKY is the author of many novels including Thou Worm Jacob,
Blue Hill Avenue, My Search for the Messiah, and The Red Adam. He is
editor of the recently published Diaries : Robert Musil 1899-1942 . He
is editor of "Fiction" and a professor of English at CCNY.
   _________________________________________________________________

Dan Sperber:

I am afraid the answer I find compelling is a rather trivial one. The
two most important inventions in the past two thousand years are the
computer and the atomic bomb. The computer will bring about the
greatest change to human life since the neolithic revolution, unless
the bomb destroys human life altogether.

DAN SPERBER is a researcher at the CREA in Paris. He is the author of
Rethinking Symbolism, On Anthropological Knowledge, Relevance:
Communication and Cognitions (with Deirdre Wilson), and Explaining
Culture: A Naturalistic Approach.
   _________________________________________________________________

Lew Tucker:

I would have to agree that Gutenberg's printing press is the most
important invention in the past two thousand years because it changed
forever the cost of knowledge distribution. What other inventions
wouldn't have happened if the inventor didn't have access to books? In
a sense I think we can trace many aspects of our information society
back to this single invention. In it's electronic form on the web we
see movable type and a yearning for information to be accessible and
free. The web is taking the cost of distributing information down near
zero. Gutenberg would be pleased to see where his invention has taken
us.

LEW TUCKER is a Java evangelist and director of developer relations at
Sun Microsystems. He has worked in the areas of artificial
intelligence and parallel computers at Thinking Machines and is now
building an online community of software developers. See Digerati,
Chapter 30.
   _________________________________________________________________

Tor N?rretranders:

THE MIRROR

The most influential invention in the past 2000 years has been the
mirror: It has shown to each person how she or he appears to other
persons on the planet. Before the widespread production and use of
mirrors that came about in the Renaissance, humans could mirror
themselves in lakes and metallic surfaces. But only with the
installation of mirrors in everyday life did viewing oneself from the
outside become a daily habit. This coincided with the advent of
manners for eating, clothing and behaving. This again made possible
the modern version of self-consciousness: Viewing oneself through the
eyes of others, rather than just from the inside or through the eyes
of God.
Hence, consciousness as we know it is an effect of an advanced mental
task: To acknowledge the person experienced out there in the mirror as
the same as the one being simultaneously experienced from within. To
know that the person out there in the mirror is controlled by me in
here. The invention of the mirror is closely related to the problem of
free will and to the invention of the modern human ego as described in
this poll by Jaron Lanier.

The problem with overemphasis of conscious control is thus the problem
of supervising oneself through the eyes of others, rather than just
acting out. Many malaises of modern life stems from the fact that one
tends to consider the mirror-image of oneself as more real than the
view from within.

This new loop of the-outside-person-viewed-by-the-inside-person
recently got a parallel with the first images of the Earth seen on the
sky of the Moon: No longer just the planet we can touch and live on,
the Earth became a heavenly body comparable to other celestial
objects.

TOR N?RRETRANDERS is a science writer and communicator based in
Copenhagen, Denmark and the author of The User Illusion: Cutting
Consciousness Down to Size.
   _________________________________________________________________

Richard Potts:

Over 4.6 billion years, the most important evolutionary inventions
have been those that code, store, and use information in new ways.
DNA; nervous systems; organic devices enabling cultural transmission
of information. In large perspective, the most important invention
over the past 2 thousand years will likely be something related to
computers, electronic information coded and handled outside of living
bodies. Its importance, however, has not yet been fully realized. I'm
going with something whose impact so far is more apparent. The
paleontologist in me wants to say something like the discovery of time
-- from inventions that have led to an intense sense of personal time
to others that have found out the age of the universe or the human
species. These inventions are perception-altering. But there's another
invention with greater impact. My vote is for flying machines.

Before 2 thousand years ago, sea craft allowed the overcoming of
water; the wheel, the conquest of earth. And now flying machines, the
conquest of air -- an invention that taps into the center of our
mythologies.

Many inventions change our lives but stay in the predictable range of
human nature. Firearms, for example, have had their impact mainly by
extending existing tendencies to bluff, subjugate, or kill in
immediate, face-to-face situations. Air craft have altered our
perceptions in ways that were evolutionarily unpredictable. They
changed the delivery of weapons, vastly destructive weapons, to a
inter-continental scale -- a wholly new scale, unprecedented in
evolutionary history. A flu virus that mutates in Kennedy Airport is
spread around the world within a day or two. And so the history of
disease has been altered by moving the month- or year-long dispersal
of disease to a time scale of hours.

We now meet other people en masse anywhere in the world in less than a
day's travel. Thus things foreign and strange have become familiar.
Ancient phobias and bias toward hatred and exclusion have been altered
widely. The CNN culture (instantaneous worldwide information) is an
extension of this; in my view, the actual intermingling of people from
one place to another has been the more important, precedent-shattering
development. Despite international information media, civil strife
remains the worst where cultural and physical insularity reigns.

Finally, flying machines have meant a global altering of how societies
approach food and other resources, tying humanity together in a
worldwide economy (resource exchange) driven by our interdependence.
Two million years ago, the movement of resources (like food and stone
tools) had become a development with extraordinary implications for
human evolution. But even 2 thousand years ago, no one could have
foreseen just how far this process of resource exchange has gone today
-- largely due to flying machines.

RICHARD POTTS is Director of the Human Origins Program, Dept. of
Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian
Institution in Washington. He is the author of Early Hominid
Activities at Olduvai and Humanity's Descent: The Consequences of
Ecological Instability, and co-author of Terrestrial Ecosystems
through Time.
   _________________________________________________________________

Lawrence M. Krauss:

If I take the word "important" to suggest an invention that will have
"the greatest impact on the next 2000 years" (after all, it is the
future that counts, not the pa st!),then the invention of the
programmable computer seems to me to be the most important invention
of the last 2000 years. ( I am not including in my list of
possibilities here ideas and concepts, since I don't think they
qualify as inventions, and I suspect that the intent of the question
is to explore technology, not ideas...). While the printing press
certainly revolutionized the world in its time, computers will govern
everything we do in the next 20 centuries. The development of
artificial intelligence will be profound, quantum computers may
actually be built, and I am sympathetic to the idea I first heard
expressed by my friend Frank Wilczek, that computers are the next
phase of human evolution. Once self-aware, self-programmable computers
become a reality, then I have a hard time seeing how humans can keep
up without in some way integrating them into their own development.
The only other invention that may come close is perhaps DNA
sequencing, since it will undoubtedly lead to a new understanding and
control of genetic and biology in a way which will alter what we mean
by life.

LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS, Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, Professor of
Astronomy, and Chair, Physics Department, Case Western Reserve
University, is the author of The Fifth Essence; Fear of Physics; The
Physics of Star Trek; Beyond Star Trek.
   _________________________________________________________________

John McCarthy:

The most important invention is the idea of continued scientific and
technological progress. The individual who deserves the most credit
for this is Francis Bacon. Before Bacon progress occurred but was
sporadic, and most people did not expect to see new inventions in
their lifetimes. The idea of continued scientific progress became
institutionalized in the Academei dei Lincei, the Royal Society and
other scientific academies. the idea of continued invention was
institutionalized with the patent laws.

JOHN McCARTHY, a computer scientist and one of the first-generation
pioneers in AI, is at the Computer Science Department of Stanford
University.
   _________________________________________________________________

Karl Sabbagh:

Clearly, none of us is playing by the rules in this game, otherwise we
would all concentrate on a few key inventions that are obviously the
most important -- the Indo-Arabic number system including zero,
computers, the contraceptive pill. Instead we are all reading the
suggestions so far and then trying to select something different.
Because I've come in late my friend Nicholas Humphrey has bagged my
first thought -- reading glasses, so I'll break the rules in two ways
by choosing something which was invented more than two thousand years
ago but refined over the last two thousand years.

In fact I'll break the rules a third time by choosing two things --
chairs and stairs. Apart from the fact that they rhyme, they also
represent an imaginative leap by seeing the value to the human anatomy
of an idealised platform in space at a certain height. A platform of,
say, 7 inches would enable a person to raise himself towards some
higher objective without undue effort, but that's as far as it goes.

But if, from that new starting point, a further platform of the same
height could be constructed, the objective could be more closely
approached. The refinements have all been to do with the fact that the
greater the height you want to reach the larger the floor area that
has to be taken up by the staircase. But landings and 180 degree turns
helped to solve that problem, along with the even later improvement of
a spiral structure.

The consequences of stairs have obviously included greater density of
occupation of site areas, but they have also included the propagation
of the Muslim religion by allowing muezzins to call the faithful to
prayer from minarets. As far as chairs are concerned, the same thought
process was involved -- seeing the value of a platform at just above
knee height and then constructing it.

Portability came in at some stage as well so that instead of finding
somewhere -- a wall, a rock, etc -- of the right height you carry
around with you, or position where you liked, the place to park your
butt. Somehow, the height was chosen, or evolved, so that we can stay
for the maximum time in a fixed position with eyes,hands and arms free
to do what eyes, hands and arms are good at. Lying down, standing up,
and squatting all get uncomfortable after a while, particularly for
reading or writing (although we have to accept that medieval monks
seemed to manage O.K, transcribing manuscripts standing up.)

KARL SABBAGH is a writer and television producer. His programs for the
BBC and PBS have encompassed physics, medicine, psychology,
philosophy, technology, and anthropology. Three of his television
projects have been accompanied by books: The Living Body, Skyscraper,
and 21St Century Jet: The Making And Marketing Of The Boeing 777.
   _________________________________________________________________

Ellen Winner:

I will cast my vote for anaesthesia. While this invention may not have
changed the world for all, it has certainly altered the lives of many
for the good. Imagine a world without anaesthesia. It makes me
shudder.

Howard Gardner and I are probably one of the few couples who replied
to your request. Last night we were at a party and we mentioned this
project. I said that Howard's and my choices (Western classical music,
Howard; vs. anaesthesia, Ellen) showed how different we were, Howard
the optimist, I the one who thinks of the grim side of life. At the
party was Yo Yo Ma, who listened with interest and said, without
skipping a beat, that our two choices were not so different, because
"One is a form of the other." (Interpret that as you will I take it to
mean that music is the ultimate escape from pain, but also perhaps
that anaesthesia [when needed] is as pleasurable as music).

ELLEN WINNER is Professor of Psychology at Boston College, and Senior
Research Associate at Harvard Project Zero. She is the author of
Invented Worlds: The Psychology of the Arts ; and Gifted Children:
Myths and Realities.
   _________________________________________________________________

George Johnson:

Surely one of the most powerful earthly inventions has been the
ability to represent any phenomenon with numbers -- either analogue or
digital -- and then use this representation to predict outcomes in the
real world. This information revolution actually began before the year
zero with the Pythagoreans and has advanced through stages that
include the invention of calculus and, most recently, boolean algebra
and all the advantages of digital modeling.

And just as important has been the recent humbling realization that
there are limits to this scientific cartography; that, tempting as it
is, the map can never be mistaken for the real thing.

GEORGE JOHNSON is a writer for The New York Times, working on contract
from Santa Fe. His books include Fire In The Mind: Science, Faith, And
The Search For Order; In The Palaces Of Memory: How We Build The
Worlds Inside Our Heads; and Machinery Of The Mind: Inside The New
Science Of Artificial Intelligence .
   _________________________________________________________________

Rodney Brooks:

The electric motor, in all its guises where electricty produces
mechanical motion. The industrial revolution was restricted to places
of work and shared production until the relatively small and clean
electric motor enabled the adoption of its bounty into the home; for
instance, refrigeration, automated cleaning, cooling, better heating,
entertainment, mass data storage, home medical care, and more
comfortable personal transportation.

True, many of these aspects were present in the home with simpler
technologies (e.g., gravity driven water flow, convective air flow),
but it was the electric motor which made them pervasive.

The change in our western lifestyle has been profound and has
completely changed our expectations of how our bodies should fit with
our surroundings.

A question: what will it take for the computer revolution to truly
enter our lives in the way that the electric motor has enabled the
industrial revolution to do so?

RODNEY BROOKS, a computer scientist, is director of MIT's AI Lab.See
EDGE: "The Deep Question," A Talk With Rodney Brooks.
   _________________________________________________________________

John R. Searle:

If by invention we mean actual technological advances -- as opposed to
ideas, theories and concepts -- then there have been some good ones.
One thinks of the printing press and the clock, for example. It is too
early to say for sure but my choice for the most important invention
of the past 2000 years would be the invention of the set of
agricultural techniques known collectively as "The Green Revolution".
This invention began in the 1960's and continues into the nineties,
indeed, it is now being extended into something that may well come to
be called "The Green-Blue Revolution", which would extend new
agricultural techniques to the oceans.

The most important invention of all time is the Neolithic Revolution.
With the Neolithic Revolution, humanity found ways to grow crops
systematically, and thus overcame both the instability and the
fragility of life itself that went with hunter-gatherer ways of
survival. Hunter-gatherers could neither stay in one place long enough
to develop a stable civilization, nor could they count on being able
to survive periods of drought and other forms of natural catastrophe.
With the Neolithic revolution, both of these problems were solved, and
civilization became a real possibility.

However the Neolithic Revolution brought problems of its own. In
particular, the Malthusian problem, because the growth of population
was constantly threatening to outrun the growth of food supply. For
the foreseeable future, at least, this problem has been solved by the
Green Revolution. The food supply has vastly outrun the increase in
population. At this time, if you read that there is a famine going on
in some part of Africa or Asia, you know that it is deliberately
politically created. There is no international shortage of food. There
is plenty of food to go around, and because of the Green Revolution,
there will be food to go around for the foreseeable future.

JOHN R. SEARLE is the Mills Professor of Philosophy of Mind at the
University of California, Berkeley and author of The Rediscovery of
the Mind, Minds, Brains and Science: The 1984 Reith Lectures,
Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, The Construction
of Social Reality, and Mind, Language & Society: Doing Philosophy in
the Real World (A MasterMinds Book).
   _________________________________________________________________

Lee Smolin:

The most important invention, I believe, was a mathematical idea,
which is the notion of representation: that one system of
relationships, whether mathematical or physical, can be captured
faithfully by another.

The first full use of the idea of a representation was the analytic
geometry of Descartes, which is based on the discovery of a precise
relationship between two different kinds of mathematical objects, in
this case, numbers and geometry. This correspondence made it possible
to formulate general questions about geometrical figures in terms of
numbers and functions, and when people had learned to answer these
questions they had invented the calculus. By now we have understood
that it is nothing other than the existence of such relationships
between systems of relations that gives mathematics its real power.
Many of the most important mathematical developments of the present
century, such as algebraic topology, differential geometry,
representation theory and algebraic geometry come from the discovery
of such relationships, of which Descartes analytic geometry was only
the first example. The most profound developments in present
mathematics and theoretical physics are all based on the notion of a
representation, which is the general term we use for a way to code one
set of mathematical relationships in terms of another. There is even a
branch of mathematics whose subject is the study of correspondences
between different mathematical systems, which is called category
theory. According to some of its developers, mathematics is at its
root nothing but the study of such relationships, and for many working
mathematics, category theory has replaced set theory as the
foundational language within which all mathematics is expressed.

Moreover, once it was understood that one mathematical system can
represent another, the door was open to wondering if a mathematical
system could represent a physical system, or vise versa. It was Kepler
who first understood that the paths of the planets in the sky might
form closed orbits, when looked at from the right reference point.
This discovery of a correspondence between motion and geometry was far
more profound than the Ptolemaic notion that the orbits were formed by
the motion of circles on circles. Before Kepler, geometry may have
played a role in the generation of motion, but only with Kepler do we
have an attempt to represent the orbits themselves as geometrical
figures. At the same time Galileo, by slowing motion down through the
use of devices such as the pendulum and the inclined plane, realized
that the motions of ordinary bodies could be represented by geometry.
When combined with Descartes correspondence between geometry and
number this made possible the spatialization of time, that is the
representation of time and motion purely in terms of geometry. This
not only made Newtonian physics possible, it is of course what we do
every time we graph the motion of a body or the change of some
quantity in time. It also made it possible, for the first time, to
build clocks accurate enough to capture the motion of terrestrial,
rather than celestial, bodies.

The next step in the discovery of correspondences between mathematical
and physical systems of relations came with devices for representing
logical operations in terms of physical motions. This idea was
realized early in mechanical calculators and logic engines, but of
course came into its own with the invention of the modern computer.

But the final step in the process began by Descartes analytic geometry
was the discovery that if a physical system could represent a
mathematical system, then one physical system might represent another.
Thus, sequences of electrical pulses can represent sound waves, or
pictures, and all of these can be represented by electromagnetic
waves. Thus we have telecommunications, certainly among the most
important inventions in its own right, which cannot even be conceived
of without some notion of the representation of one system by another.

Telecommunications also gave rise to a question, which is what is it
that remains the same when a signal is translated from sound waves to
electrical impulses or electromagnetic waves. We have a name for the
answer, it is information, but I do not have the impression that we
really understand its implications. For example, using this concept
some people are claiming that not only is it the case that some
physical or mathematical systems can be represented in terms of
another but that, there is some coding that would permit every
sufficiently complicated physical or mathematical system to be
represented in terms of any other. This of course, brings us back to
Descartes, who wanted to understand the relationship between the mind
and the brain. Certainly the concept of information is not the whole
answer, but it does gives us a language in which to ask the question
that was not available to Descartes. Nevertheless, without his first
discovery of a correspondence between two systems of relations, we
would not only lack the possibility of talking about information, we
would not have most of mathematics, we would not have
telecommunications and we would not have the computer. This the notion
of a representation is not only the most important mathematical
invention, it is the idea that made it possible to conceive of many of
the other important inventions of the last few centuries.

LEE SMOLIN is a theoretical physicist; Professor of Physics at the
Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at Pennsylvania State
University; author ofThe Life of The Cosmos. See EDGE:" A Possible
Solution For The Problem Of Time In Quantum Cosmology" By Stuart
Kauffman and Lee Smolin. See The Third Culture, Chapter 17.
   _________________________________________________________________

Paul W. Ewald:
My nominee is the concept of evolution by selection (which encompasses
natural selection, sexual selection, and the selective processes that
generate cultural evolution). It offers the best explanation for what
we are, where we came from, and the nature of life in the rest of the
universe. It also explains why we invent and why we believe the
inventions described in this list are important. It is the invention
that explains invention.

PAUL W. EWALD is an Evolutionary biologist; Professor of Biology at
Amherst College; author of Evolution Of Infectious Disease.
   _________________________________________________________________

Carl Zimmer:

I nominate waterworks -- the system of plumbing and sewers that gets
clean water to us and dirty water away from us. I'm hard pressed to
think of any other single invention that has stopped so much disease
and death. It may not inspire quite the intellectual awe as something
like a quantum computer, but the sheer heft of the benefits it brings
about so simply makes it all the more impressive. John Snow didn't
need to sequence the Vibrio cholerae genome to stop people from dying
in London in 1854 -- he didn't even know what V. cholerae was -- but a
pattern of deaths showed him that to stop a cholera outbreak all he
needed to do was shut down a fouled well. Without waterworks, the
crowded conditions of the modern world would be utterly insupportable
-- and you only have to go to a poor city without clean water to see
this. Another sign of the importance of an invention is the havoc it
can wreak, and waterworks score here again--by cutting down infant
mortality they help fuel the population explosion, and they also let
places like Las Vegas suck the surrounding land dry.

I'd even go so far as to put the importance of the invention of
waterworks on an evolutionary scale with things such as language. For
hundreds of millions of years, life on land has been crafting new ways
to extract and hold onto water. With plumbing, however, you don't go
to the water -- the water comes to you.

CARL ZIMMER is a senior editor at Discover and author of At the
Water's Edge: Macroevolution and the Transformation of Life.
   _________________________________________________________________

Robert Shapiro:
Most of the inventions mentioned thus far have affected, as one
contributor put it, the boundary between we humans and the natural
world that surrounds us. But the operations of the human body, and the
brain which it contains, support all of the experiences that make up
our existence. Discoveries that will permit us ultimately to take
charge of these functions, and shape them to our desires, surely
deserve nomination as the most important of the last two millennia.
These insights have flowed broadly from the entire area of science
that is now called molecular biology, but if I had to single out the
most important invention that made the entire process possible, then I
would select genetic sequencing for the honor. The new techniques
developed by Fred Sanger in Cambridge and Walter Gilbert at Harvard in
the mid-1970's allowed us to read out rapidly the specific information
stored in our genes and those of all other living creatures on Earth.

The new methods stimulated a burst of scientific energy that will
culminate in the next decade, when the sequence of about 3 billion
characters of DNA that encodes a typical human being will be fully
deciphered by the Human Genome Project. In subsequent explorations, we
shall how individuals differ in their heredity, and how this
information is expressed to produce the human body.

Thus far the effects of sequencing have largely impacted us through
such media worthy events as the identification of the stain on Monica
Lewinsky's dress, validation of the identity of the Romanov bones,
refutation of the claim of Anna Anderson to be Anastasia and
confirmation of Thomas Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemings. Much,
much more is yet to come.

The completion of the Human Genome Project will provide us with an
understanding, at the molecular level, of human hereditary disease
(much has already been learned about Huntington's disease, cystic
fibrosis and others). Further, by the application of other tools from
modern molecular biology, we shall be able to do something about these
afflictions in the near future.They will be treated and, if society
permits it, corrected at the genetic level. Beyond that, we shall come
to understand, and perhaps control, many unfortunate aspects of the
human condition that have until now been taken for granted, from
baldness to aging. Ultimately, we may elect to rewrite our genetic
text, changing ourselves and the way in which we experience the
universe.

Much more has been written on these subjects, but I hope that the
above brief treatment should be enough to qualify genetic sequencing
for the short list of finalists in this contest. I will also suggest
that any poll taken now would not do justice to this invention, as
most of its consequences still lie ahead of us. Perhaps we should
schedule another poll for the year 3998, to determine the best
invention in the period AD 1-2000?

ROBERT SHAPIRO, Professor of Chemistry at New York University, has
written three books: Life Beyond Earth (co-author), Origins: A
Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth, The Human Blueprint.
   _________________________________________________________________

James Bailey:

Terrence Sejnowski said it beautifully: the most important discovery
of the past 2000 years is the bit.

Not the bit used 8-by-8 to redisplay the old sequential sentences and
equations that carry too much of our culture today, but rather the bit
which, used in parallel profusion, can embody living realities far
beyond the expressive power of static text. Images and music are just
the beginning of it.

We are only now awakening to how much the printing press narrowed
western culture by driving it into text and sequentialism for the past
500 years. Is it true, as the recent da Vinci museum exhibit haughtily
claimed, that Leonardo was not a true scientist at all because, unlike
Galileo, he did not publish? Of course not. It was merely the fact
that his highly parallel, and hence visual, way of doing science was
hopelessly incompatible with the printing press. (He probably wouldn't
even have participated in this exercise, where we are all limiting our
responses to those which can be expressed in text even though we are
no longer forced by technology to do so.) Imagine, just for a moment,
that Gutenberg had invented the worldwide web instead of movable type.
It would have been Leonardo's science, with its focus on the living
and the parallel, that would have been ubiquitous. Galileo's endless
dialogs might have been lucky to get percussio per diem una.

In general, the equations of the book era have been superb at
describing the parts of reality that are dead and hence universal.
Bits seem much more capable of describing the other 99%. I have the
sense that biology is already moving into the post-book era. To
understand what biologists are doing, it is not enough to read the
sentences they write. Increasingly, one must run the programs they run
and get at the bits themselves.

JAMES BAILEY is a former computer company executive at Thinking
Machines; author, After Thought: The Computer Challenge to Human
Intelligence.
   _________________________________________________________________

John C. Dvorak:

Let's ignore discoveries (germs) and technique (scientific method) for
starters before determining the greatest invention. I also think that
the printing press, a device invented to rip-off the bible buying
public, should be relegated to its rightful place as number two to a
newer invention: computer networks. While it is quaint to romanticize
the past by citing the printing press, steam engines or 18th century
lug nuts, we ignore the fact that our inventiveness as a civilization
is increasing not decreasing and newer inventions might be the most
important inventions. And let's choose an invention in and of itself
and not argue about derivatives. Right now the invention that is
revolutionizing the world (more than TV, for sure) is the computer
network -- the Internet in particular. And, for what it's worth,
arguing that none of this would be possible if man hadn't learned to
grunt first, therefore grunting in the most important invention is
nonsense.

More interesting in this artificial discussion is how most of the
participants, including myself, have chosen an invention from their
particular specialty. Perhaps we should ask the question: what is the
most insidious invention of the past 2000 years? How about
specialization? Look at how insidious it is in this discussion. So
much so that it's frightening. Change the topic! Discussing the most
insidious inventions would be more fun than talking about the
importance of hay, the concept of infinity or Goedel! Just think of
the possibilities. We can nominate plastic, the stock market, roller
pens, the vibrating dildo, sitcoms, the literary agent, Microsoft
Visual BASIC, the animated cartoon, CNN, the wrist watch, roller
blades, the spinach souffle. The possibilities are endless. Let's
start over.

JOHN C. DVORAK is a columnist at PC Magazine, PC/Computing, Computer
Shopper, PC-UK, Info (Brazil), Boardwatch, Barrons Online, host of
Public Radio's Real Computing and host of Silicon Spin on ZDTV. He's
written 14 books, all out of print. Co-founder of the Oswald Spengler
Society. See Digerati, Chapter 8.
   _________________________________________________________________

Kenneth Ford:

Well, this isn't very imaginative, but my choice-like that of several
other contributors-is the pill. Here's my reasoning. The greatest
invention of the last 2000 years is the one that is most likely to
help avert the collapse of civilization in the next 2000. Electricity
as a means of information and energy transport is a candidate. Modern
medicine is a candidate. But what drives or exacerbates every major
global problem is, ultimately, population growth. So whatever most
effectively limits population growth is the greatest invention-and
that's the pill, or contraception more generally.

KENNETH FORD is Director of Science Programs at the David and Lucile
Packard Foundation, former director of the American Institute of
Physics, and, with John Archibald Wheeler, the recent co-author of
Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life In Physics.
   _________________________________________________________________

Philip Brockman:

As a researcher I believe that my most important contributions are
inherent in the younger people I have worked with and in the increase
of the universal knowledge that has resulted from the work that I have
done and have sponsored among universities and companies.

Stephen Budiansky points to importance of "the domestication of the
horse as a mount." The amazing fact is that mankind can learn new
technology at an amazing pace. Thus, in a relatively short time after
the introduction of the horse to America, the Apache were a great
light cavalry. I would also agree with David Shaw re: "the steady
accrual of both knowledge and technology that has accompanied the
rigorous application of the scientific method over a surprisingly
small number of human generations "; and with Stanislas Dehaene on the
"concept of education."

So I guess my invention violates the 2000 year (very Christian limit).
It is the intergenerational passing of information.

PHILIP BROCKMAN , a physicist, has been at NASA LaRC (Langley Field,
Virginia) since 1959 and is a recipient of NASA's Exceptional Service
Medal (ESM). His research includes: Shock tubes; Plasma propulsion;
Diode laser spectroscopy; Heterodyne remote sensing; Laser research;
Laser injection seeding; Remote sensing of atmospheric species, winds,
windshear and vortices. He is currently supporting all solid state
laser development for aircraft and spaceborne remote sensing of
species and winds and developing coherent lidars to measure wake
vortices in airport terminal areas.
   _________________________________________________________________

Howard Rheingold:

The kind of thinking that makes it possible for all these people to
expound upon "the single most important invention of the last two
thousand years" is the most important invention of the past two
thousand years. There is no such thing as the single most important
invention of the last two thousand years. The evolution of technology
doesn't work like that. It's a web of ideas, not a zero-sum game.

Knowing how to turn knowledge into power is the most powerful form of
knowledge. The mindsets, mindtools, and institutions that make massive
technological progress possible are all part of an invisible cultural
system -- it is learned, not inherent, it was invented, not evolved,
it hypnotizes you to see the world in a certain way.

What we know as "technology" the visible stuff that hums and glows --
is only the physical manifestation of a specific kind of social
system. That invisible system, which emerged over the past three
centuries -- what Jacques Ellul called "la technique" and Lewis
Mumford called "technics" -- is more important than all the inventions
it engendered.

Do we lack one important invention at a crucial time when our
inventions are becoming our only evolutionary competitor? We haven't
formulated and agreed upon a way of making good decisions about the
powerful technologies we're so good at creating. We have a lot of the
knowledge that turns knowledge into power. We need more of the wisdom
that knows what we ought to do with the power of invention.

HOWARD RHEINGOLD, founder of Electric Minds, is the author of Tools
For Thought; Virtual Reality, and Virtual Communities.

   _________________________________________________________________

George Lakoff:

As a cognitive linguist whose job is to study conceptual systems, both
conscious and unconscious, I was struck by what was meant by
"invention."

   o The most concrete "inventions" proposed have been gadgets,
   mechanical or biological -- the printing press, the computer, the
   birth control pill.

   o A step way from the concrete specific technical innovations are
   specific technical inventions of a mental character: G?del's
   Theorem, Arabic numbers, the nongeocentric universe, the theory of
   evolution, the theory of computation.

   o A step away from those are the general innovations of a mental
   character in specific domains like science and politics, e.g., the
   scientific method and democracy. I would like to go a step further
   and talk about the invention that was causally necessary for all of
   the above:

   o  The most basic fully general invention of a mental character is
   The Idea of an Idea.

THE IDEA OF AN IDEA

It's a bit more than 2,000, more like 2,500 years, at least in the
West. It is an 'invention" in the sense that human beings actively and
consciously thought it up: to my knowledge, it is not the case that
every indigenous culture around the world objectifies the notion of an
idea, making it a thing that can be consciously constructed.

What is required for all other human inventions is the notion that one
can actively, consciously construct new ideas. We take this for
granted, but it is not a "natural" development. Three-year-old
children have lots of ideas and even make up new ideas. But they do
not have the Idea of an Idea that they can construct anew; they do not
naturally arrive at the idea that making up new ideas is something
people do. The Idea of an Idea is a cultural creation that children
have to learn.

It is only with the Idea of an Idea that we get conscious specific
intellectual constructions like democracy, science, the number system,
the computer, the birth control pill, and so on. The Idea of an Idea
is the generative notion behind the very notion of an invention and is
causally necessary for all specific inventions.

GEORGE LAKOFF is Professor of Linguistics at the University of
California at Berkeley, where he is on the faculty of the Institute of
Cognitive Studies.He is the author of Metaphors We Live By (with Mark
Johnson), Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal
About the Mind, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic
Metaphor (with Mark Turner), Moral Politics, and Philosophy in the
Flesh (with Mark Johnson).
   _________________________________________________________________

Robert Provine:

Discovery of Childhood and Invention of Universal Schooling

Instead of suggesting a device, I nominate the educational process
essential for a high velocity of inventiveness, the evolution of a
technological society, and the spread of culture. While schools for
the elite have existed since antiquity, the recognition of childhood
as a unique time of life with special schooling, social, and emotional
needs, and different standards of justice, is relatively recent and
associated with Rousseau, Freud, Piaget, and their forbearers.

The discovery that children are not "miniature adults" led to a more
humane society and was essential to tailoring educational programs to
the developmental stage of the student. Universal schooling (and even
the modern university) were born both of this increased appreciation
of the special needs of children and necessity -- the industrial
revolution needed a cadre of trained workers, scientists and
engineers. The complexity of modern technology and the associated
acceleration of innovation demand a critical mass of creative minds
and hands that cannot be provided by occasional virtuosi toiling in
solitude.

ROBERT R. PROVINE is Professor of Neurobiology and Psychology at the
University of Maryland.
   _________________________________________________________________

Peter Cochrane:

The Thermionic Valve by DeForest in 1915 really was the birth of the
electronic age. Without this invention most of us would never have
been born. Without electronics this planet would not be supporting the
massive numbers of people now living in the West. We would not be able
to communicate, compute, manufacture and distribute atoms on the scale
we now enjoy. There would be no radio, TV, computers, Internet, modern
medicine -- engineering, international travel of any scale, atomic
power and almost everything we currently take for granted. In fact our
species and our civilisation would have stalled without this
invention.

This Thermionic Valve is very closely followed by the Transistor in
1945 with Bardeen and Shockley creating the foundation for what you
are reading this on -- the PC.

PETER COCHRANE is Head of Research, BT Laboratories, UK and the author
of Tips for Time Travelers.
   _________________________________________________________________

Samuel Barondes:

The great invention of the modern era is the invention of organized
science -- scientific societies and journals that foster the
accumulation and dissemination of knowledge based on evidence rather
than on authority or revelation. Before the invention of these
organizations the accumulation of scientific knowledge was slow,
because there were no established venues for criticism and education
-- essential social interactions at the heart of science. Now that
these organizations (in the developed world) have become very large
(necessitating the proliferation of many subdivisions, to allow for
personal interactions on a human scale) they facilitate the
unprecedented opportunities for collective knowledge and self
knowledge that so many of us enjoy.

SAMUEL H. BARONDES, M.D. is the Jeanne and Sanford Robertson Professor
of Neurobiology and Psychiatry at the University of California at San
Francisco, President of the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience,
and the author of Molecules and Mental Illness and Mood Genes: Hunting
for Origins of Mania and Depression.
   _________________________________________________________________

Christopher Westbury:

My nomination for the most important invention of the past 2000 years
is probability theory, which was mainly put together in a series of
steps between 1654, when Blaise Pascal proposed a solution for
splitting the pot in an unfinished game of chance, and 1843, when
Antoine Cournot offered a definition of chance as the crossing of two
independent streams of events. I don't nominate it simply because
probability theory laid the foundation for statistical analysis, which
provided us with a vocabulary without which most scientific
discoveries made in the last century would have been (literally)
unthinkable.

Nor do I nominate probability theory because it gave us for the first
time a trustworthy tool for deciding how to apportion belief to
multiple sources of evidence. Probability theory had even more
fundamental epistemological implications whose importance is
under-appreciated in our time because those implications are so
seamlessly integrated into the foundations of our modern world view.
Until the nineteenth century, the idea that there could exist deep
regularities underlain by pure chance -- regularities arising from
distributions of events which were themselves the result of
multifarious unmeasurable causes -- was not only almost unknown
(Aristotle had hinted at it, as he seems to have hinted at
everything), but actually philosophically repugnant. It required the
invention of probability theory to make this idea thinkable.

In making it possible to think about such abstract regularities,
probability theory rescued us from two philosophical shackles which
had held us back from the beginning of history: that of needing to
postulate a centralized controller that made everything come out
right, and that of assuming that "what you see is what you get" --
i.e. that the proper objects of scientific study are roughly identical
to the direct objects of the senses. Though perhaps they have still
not been totally removed, those philosophical shackles needed to be at
least loosened in order for science to get moving.

A whole new world of law-obeying objects to be studied was opened up
by probability theory. Neither Darwin's theory of natural selection,
nor Maxwell's theory of statistical mechanics (both published in the
same year, only 140 years ago) would have been thinkable before
probability theory was thinkable. Without probability theory, human
kind would be (and was) unable to even conceive of the explanations
for many -- probably most -- of the phenomena which we have ever
explained.

CHRISTOPHER WESTBURY is a post-doctoral fellow at the University Of
Alberta.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Rennie:

Earlier contributors have already staked out the intellectual high
road of mental constructs like scientific method and the calculus, so
I'll retreat to the most prosaic, literal reading of your question:
What is the one device invented by one person at one moment during the
past 2,000 years that has had the most influence to date?

I'd be a traitor to my inky profession if I didn't at least echo the
nominations for Johann Gutenberg's movable-type printing press. But in
the spirit of the game, let me throw support behind something else:
Alessandro Volta's electric battery of 1800.

Static electricity was known since at least the time of the Greeks,
but study of it had largely stalled. When Pieter van Musschenbroek
built and discharged the first Leiden jar in 1745, nearly killing
himself in the process, he also jolted the study of electricity back
to life. But it was Volta's invention of a steady source of current,
inspired by the electrochemical observations of Galvani, that
revolutionized technology and physics. Without it, Oersted could not
have proved that electricity and magnetism were different faces of the
same force, electromagnetism. Electrochemistry itself offered clues to
the underlying electrical nature of all matter. And of course, Volta's
battery was the forerunner of all the electrical devices that have
transformed the world over the past two centuries.

What I find so appealing about Volta's creation is that it had immense
practical significance but also opened to us a world of physical
phenomena that in themselves changed our understanding of the
universe. Yet it was not a bolt-from-the blue inspiration; it pulled
together other threads of discoveries by Volta's contemporaries.
There's a lesson about greatness in there somewhere.

JOHN RENNIE is the editor in chief of Scientific American magazine.
   _________________________________________________________________

Randolph Nesse:

Text is Special

It seems to me, as it will no doubt to many others, that the printing
press has changed the world more than any other invention in the past
two millennia. But why has such a simple technology had such a huge
influence? And why, after 500 years, has no one invented a superior
replacement?

I suspect it is because text has a special relationship to the human
mind. Printing is the third wave of the biggest innovation, the one
that started with the co-evolution of language, thought and speech.
Speech makes it possible to share and compare internal models of the
external world, a capacity that gives huge selective advantages. But
acoustic vibrations are ephemeral, fading in moments into questions
about who said what, when.

Writing, the second wave, is like a blast of super-cooled air that
freezes words in mid-flight and smacks them onto a page where they can
be examined by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Writing makes possible law,
contracts, history, narratives, and poetry, to say nothing of sacred
texts with their overwhelming influence. Printing transformed writing
into the first mass medium, and the world has never been the same
since. In the half-century that followed Gutenberg's 1446 Bible, over
a thousand publishers printed over a million books. Suddenly it was
worthwhile, and soon essential, for even ordinary people to learn to
read. Now, people whose brains have trouble with this trick are at a
severe disadvantage, while some with particular verbal felicity can
make a living just by arranging words on paper.

Is text merely a temporary expedient, necessitated by the previous
inability to record and transmit speech and images? We will soon see.
In just a few years, sensors, storage and bandwidth will be so
inexpensive that many people will be unconstrained by technical
limitations. This affords a fine opportunity to make bold predictions
that can be completely and embarrassingly wrong, as wrong as the
predictions that said that e-mail would never catch on. In that
spirit, I predict that voice and video attachments to e-mail, "v-mail"
and "vid-mail," will be the next big thing, and they will create all
manner of consternation. At first they will be hailed as more personal
and more natural, thanks to the increased content carried by
intonation and exclamations. But soon, I predict, the usual human
strivings will give rise to problems.

Many people who previously were forgiven as "liking to hear themselves
talk" will be revealed as actually wanting to hear others listen to
them talk. Some, especially bosses, will send long soliloquies to
hundreds of other people in the expectation that they will be listened
to in full. The wonderful veil of privacy in which a reader considers
a text will be rent. You won't be able to jump around and skip whole
paragraphs in v-mail and vid-mail, as you can in e-mail. Time and
attention will be revealed as the valuable resources they are. Many
people will post electronic notices equivalent to the one a friend has
on his answering machine, "Leave a message, but please KEEP IT BRIEF."

To solve this we will, of course, turn to still more technology.
V-mail will be transformed automatically into text so we will have a
choice of mediums. What will we choose? It will depend. For emotional
endearments, and many narratives, v-mail and vid-mail. For simple
facts, and subtle ideas, however, I think will we choose text, at
least, that is, until our brains are changed by the selective forces
unleashed by these technologies.

RANDOLPH NESSE, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry, Director, ISR
Evolution and Human Adaptation Program, The University of Michigan and
coauthor (with George C. Williams) of Why We Get Sick: The New Science
of Darwinian Medicine.
   _________________________________________________________________

Brian Greene:

My initial thought of how to define the importance of an invention was
to imagine the impact which would be caused by its absence. But having
just sat through yet another viewing of "Its A Wonderful Life," I am
inspired to leave contemplation of the contingencies of history to
others better suited to the task. And so, I will vote for my
"knee-jerk" response: The Telescope.

The invention of the telescope and its subsequent refinement and use
by Galileo marked the birth of the modern scientific method and set
the stage for a dramatic reassessment of our place in the cosmos. A
technological device revealed conclusively that there is so much more
to the universe than is available to our unaided senses. And these
revelations, in time, have established the unforeseen vastness of our
dynamic, expanding universe, shown that our galaxy is but one among
countless others, and introduced us to a wealth of exotic
astrophysical structures.

BRIAN GREENE is a professor of physics and of mathematics at Columbia
University, and author of The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden
Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory.
   _________________________________________________________________

Esther Dyson:

I'd say the notion that people can govern themselves, rather than
being governed by someone who claims divine right. (I'm wrestling with
that one myself right now, on the Internet.)

ESTHER DYSON is president of EDventure Holdings and editor of Release
1.0. Her PC Forum conference is an annual industry event. She is the
author of Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age. Release
2.1, the paperback upgrade, is now available. Dyson is also active in
industry affairs; she is the interim chairman of ICANN, the Internet
Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers; a member of the board of
the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is a member of the President's
Export Council Subcommittee on Encryption. See Digerati, Chapter 9.
   _________________________________________________________________

Steven Johnson:

Given the amount of self-reference in the answers so far, I'm tempted
to nominate this very discussion list as the greatest invention of the
past two thousand years, and hopefully out-meta all the other
contenders.

I think part of the problem here is the fact that inventions by nature
are cumulative, and so when asked to pick out the single most
important one, you're inevitably faced with a kind of infinite
regress: if the automobile is the most important invention, then why
not the combustible engine? (And so on&#138;) In that spirit -- and in
the spirit of nominating things you happen to be working on
professionally -- I'd nominate the ultimate cumulative invention: the
city. Or at least the modern city's role as an information storage and
retrieval device. Before there were webs and telegraphs making
information faster, there were cities bringing information physically
closer together, and organizing it in intelligible ways. It's not a
stretch to think of the original urban guilds as file directories on
the storage device of the collective mind, combining disparate skills
and knowledge bases and placing them into the appropriate slots.
(Manuel De Landa has a wonderful riff on this in the first section of
his new book, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History.)

But of course, the city isn't an invention proper, at least in the
conventional way that we talk about inventions. It's the sum total of
multiple inventions, without each of which the modern city as we know
it might not exist.

I think what this discussion makes clear is that we need a better
definition of "invention"!

STEVEN JOHNSON is the author of Interface Culture: How New Technology
Transforms The Way We Create And Communicate, and the editor-in-chief
of FEED Magazine. He is working on a new book about cities and
emergent behavior.
   _________________________________________________________________

Delta Willis:

Had you asked two years ago I would have nominated the airplane, for
it symbolizes the essence of invention by being composed of other
inventions: the wheel, the bicycle, a glider, a prop, and a 12 horse
power engine. The airplane is important because it diminishes our
parochial view, it too changed the manner of warfare (Hey, nice
bomber) and one can argue that it was an early form of the space
shuttle. But if by important you mean sweeping, the utility of
electricity is pivotal to so many things mundane and great, especially
the broadcast of information, the A train, the monitors that tell me
if my flight is delayed, this modern version of Gutenberg's press, and
Les Paul's guitar. Thomas Edison received 389 patents for electric
light and power, and Nikola Tesla patented his Apparatus for
Transmitting Electrical Energy. Of course humans no more invented
electricity than we invented flight, but utility is key. As I write I
am preparing to go out for New Year's Eve, and packing a flashlight,
just in case an old programming shut down code of 99 introduces us to
the Y2K bug a year early. Should such a power failure occur then, the
impact of electrical utility will be known.

DELTA WILLIS wrote The Hominid Gang: Behind the Scenes in the Search
for Human Origins, and The Sand Dollar and The Slide Rule, Drawing
Blueprints from Nature.
   _________________________________________________________________

Joseph LeDoux:

Inventions. My top runners in the area of physical inventions would
have to be ways of harnessing energy, ways of moving around the world,
and ways of communicating. And since the latter two depend on the
first, I'd have to put my money on energy control and use.

But we've got lots of psychological and social inventions as well. I'd
put the idea that all people are equal at the top of the list. This is
an invention that we could make better use of.

JOSEPH LEDOUX is a Professor at the Center for Neural Science, New
York University. He is the author of the recently published The
Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life,
coauthor (with Michael Gazzaniga) of The Integrated Mind, and editor
with W. Hirst of Mind and Brain: Dialogues in Cognitive Neuroscience.
See EDGE: "Parallel Memories: Putting Emotions Back Into The Brain"
-- A Talk With Joseph LeDoux.
   _________________________________________________________________

Maria Lepowsky:

I've been pondering your millennial/bimillennial question, and I'd
like to cheat a bit by giving several answers.

I too offer a vote for the oral contraceptive pill. It is
revolutionary for two reasons. First, it makes a quantum leap in the
effectiveness of technologies for the control of human fertility --
which are found in every known culture and likely date back more than
a hundred millennia. The pill and subsequent devices have the
potential for a revolutionary impact on the lives of women from
puberty to menopause everywhere in the world, allowing women to
control their own fertility and thus enabling members of half the
human species to control their own adult lives.

In addition, these devices have the potential to save the planet Earth
from the ongoing disaster of human overpopulation, with its present
and future dire consequences globally of mass poverty, pandemics,
warfare and violent confrontations over scarce resources,
environmental degradation, and wholesale species extinctions.

My next vote for most important technology of the last two thousand
years goes to the gun, or more precisely to a series of European
inventions of more efficient killing technologies. The ship-mounted
cannon, the Spanish trabuco and the British Snider rifle -- to mention
just a few weapons from recent centuries -- in the hands of members of
authoritarian societies (whose populations had exceeded the carrying
capacities of their homelands given contemporary agricultural
technologies), bent on acquiring new territories, propelled across the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by ships built according to the most
advanced maritime technologies of their eras, effected the European
conquest of large portions of the planet's landmass, resources, and
human populations. The momentous consequences of the European conquest
will continue to play themselves out in every sphere of human life
around the globe over the next millennium.

My final vote goes to the revolutionary improvements in hydraulic
engineering made beginning in the late nineteenth century that have
solved what has for millennia been the single greatest problem of
urban life: how to bring clean water in and human waste out of a large
nucleated settlement. While the Roman waterworks were brilliantly
designed (and their epoch crosses the bimillennial cut-off point of
this exercise), improvements in sanitation made only a century or so
from the present led, in industrial societies like Britain and the
United States, to a revolutionary drop in the death rate from
infectious diseases transmitted by fecal contamination of drinking
water. These advances in hydraulic engineering have extended human
life spans even more than the subsequent discovery of antibiotics.

This technology has diffused only slowly around the globe as it
encounters barriers created by unequal distributions of wealth and
power. Even so, ironically, our resulting increased longevity, and the
increases in population fertility that declines in mortality rates
confer when they are unchecked by other variables, contribute
dramatically to the ongoing crisis of human overpopulation. This makes
the wide availability of advanced contraceptive technology, invented
two generations later, all the more critical for the survival and
well-being of our species and of the entire planet.

MARIA LEPOWSKY is Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of
Wisconsin, and author of Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an
Egalitarian Society.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Barrow:

John, The most important invention is the Indo-Arab counting system
with 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 with its positional information content (so
111 means one hundred plus one ten plus one unit), zero symbol, and
operator property that by adding a zero to the righthand end of a
string multiplies the number by the base value of 10. This system of
counting and enumeration is completely universal and lies at the
foundation of all quantitative science, economics, and mathematics.

JOHN BARROW is is Professor of Astronomy at the University of Sussex,
England. He is the author of The World Within the World, Pi in the
Sky, Theories of Everything, The Origins of the Universe (Science
Masters Series),The Left Hand of Creation, The Artful Universe, and
Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits.
   _________________________________________________________________

Todd Siler:

To avoid incurring the wrath of some scholars, I wanted to add this
parenthetical note (see asterisk below) to my statement about
language. Hopefully, it clarifies my point a little; or, at least,
focuses it.

My first candidate is "language"; specifically, our initial
realization* of its creative potential, building on the intuitions of
the ancient Greeks and Romans. Language is the life-force and body of
communica- tion. It comprises all forms of symbolic creations,
expressions and systems which we use to communicate: from the
mathematical to the vernacular. Without language, every other
invention and innovation may never have existed -- including humor!

My close-second candidate is E = mc2. When we learn to tap the full
meaning of that piece of symbolic language, we'll create more than a
Nuclear Age. "Matter is frozen energy," Einstein said, relating the
essence of his insight into the mass-energy relationship. Similarly,
language is frozen meaning. When we discover how to unleash the
enormous energy in meaning by continually transforming information
(data, ideas, knowledge, experience) in new contexts, we'll make a
quantum leap in applying the power of language to achieve our boldest
dreams.

* Note: Some people may choose to date our first deep realization of
language's potential around the late 1700's. That's when the first
scientific study of the nature and origins of language began to unfold
through the systematic, comparative studies of the German scholars
Friedrich Schlegel, Jakob Grimm, and Franz Bopp. Others may focus on
the work of Ferdinand de Saussure whose general, descriptive method
led to some basic laws that relate to all languages (about 3,000 or
more now). My broad statement is meant to embrace the "makeup" of
language: its symbolic nature, structures, semantics, and boundless
usages. I'm not simply referring to the inventive act of classifying
spoken and written languages into families, or categorizing the growth
patterns of language, or charting the evolution of grammar.

TODD SILER is the founder and director of Psi-Phi Communications, a
company that provides catalysts for breakthroughs & innovation in
business and education. He is the author of Breaking the Mind Barrier
and Think Like A Genius.
   _________________________________________________________________

Peter Tallack:

The horse collar as the most important high-tech invention.

Developed around 1000 AD in northern Europe, it allowed the region to
be farmed efficiently and so, it could be argued, was responsible for
the rise of civilization there. It also gave its possessors great
war-making potential -- think of knights in armour, for example.
PETER TALLACK, former book editor of Nature, is science editor of
Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London.
   _________________________________________________________________

Brian Goodwin:

The most important invention in the past two thousand years is the
printing press. When William Caxton published 'The Canterbury Tales'
in the 15th Century with his newly invented printing machine, he
dramatically accelerated the separation of human culture from nature,
eclipsing the direct experience of natural processes that continues in
the oral tradition and replacing it by words on a page. This cut in
two directions. (1) The power of nature diminished so that science and
technology could start the systematic program of gaining knowledge for
control of nature, liberating people from drudgery and freeing the
imagination. (2) At the same time, nature was degraded to a set of
mechanisms that humans could manipulate for their own purposes, and
the 'rape of nature' began in earnest. We are now reaping twin
harvests: vastly expanded potential for written communication through
the internet, as in this exchange of views at the Edge web site; and a
vastly degraded planet that won't support us much longer, as things
are going. Can we use one to save us from the other? We can now
connect with each other as never before; but what about nature?

BRIAN GOODWIN Brian Goodwin is a professor of biology at the
Schumacher College, Milton Keynes, and the author of Temporal
Organization in Cells and Analytical Physiology, How The Leopard
Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity, and (with Gerry
Webster) Form and Transformation: Generative and Relational Principles
in Biology. Dr. Goodwin is a member of the Board of Directors of the
Sante Fe Institute. See EDGE: A New Science of Qualities; The Third
Culture, Chapter 4.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Brockman:

DNI: DISTRIBUTED NETWORKED INTELLIGENCE

In their classic book The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Claude
Shannon and Warren Weaver stated: "The word communication will be used
here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which
one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only
written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the
theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior."

Marshall McLuhan pointed out that by inventing electric technology, we
had externalized our central nervous systems; that is, our minds. We
had gone beyond Freud's invention of the unconscious, and, for the
first time, had rendered visible the conscious.

Composer John Cage went further to say that we now had to presume that
"there's only one mind, the one we all share." Cage pointed out that
we had to go beyond private and personal mind-sets and understand how
radically things had changed. Mind had become socialized. "We can't
change our minds without changing the world," he said. Mind as an
extension became our environment, which he characterized as "the
collective consciousness," which we could tap into by creating "a
global utilities network."

We create tools and then mold ourselves in their image.
Seventeenth-century clockworks inspired mechanistic metaphors ("the
heart is a pump") just as mid-twentieth-century developments in
self-regulating engineering devices resulted in the cybernetic image
("the brain is computer").

Although you don't hear much about cybernetics today in the scientific
arena, its impact is profound. "The cybernetic idea" stated
anthropologist Gregory Bateson, "is the most important abstraction
since the invention of Jesus Christ." He went on to note that we were
now living in " a world of pattern, of order, of resonances in which
the individual mind is a subsystem of a larger order. Mind is
intrinsic to the messages carried by the pathways within the larger
system and intrinsic also in the pathways themselves."

In this new epistemology Ockham's Razor meets G?del's Proof and the
fabric of our habitual thinking is torn apart. Subject and object
fuse. The individual self decreates. (See By The Late John Brockman).
Reality passes into description and thus becomes invention. Such
ideas, which appear destructive, liberate, allowing us to lay waste to
the generalizations of previous epochs which we decreate by getting
through the history of our words. As Wallace Stevens wrote: "The words
of the world are the life of the world. It is the speech of truth in
its true solitude: a nature that is created in what it says."*

Key to this radical rebooting of our mindsets is the term information,
which, in this scheme, refers to regulation and control and has
nothing to do with meaning, ideas, or data. Bateson pointed out that
"information is a difference that makes a difference." The raindrop
that hits the ground behind you contains no information. The raindrop
that hits you on the nose has information. Information is a measure of
effect. Systems of control utilize information if and when they react
to change to maintain continuity.
If Newtonian physics taught us that it is the parts that matter, we
now inhabit a universe that interacts infinitely with itself, where
importance lies in the patterns that connect the parts. This becomes
problematic because how can a system describe itself without
generating a spiralling ladder of recursive mirrors?

The answer?

Nobody knows, and you can't find out.

The description of the plane of language is the plane that holds our
descriptions. Language becomes a commission, a dance, a play, a song.

With the Internet we are creating a new extension of ourselves in much
the same way as Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein pieced together his
creation. Only this creation is not an anthropomorphic being that
moves through accretive portions of space in time. It is instead, an
emergent electronic beast of such proportions that we can only imagine
its qualities, its dimensions.

Can it be ourselves?

I propose as the most important invention of the past two thousand
years: Distributed Networked Intelligence (DNI). DNI is the collective
externalized mind, the mind we all share, the infinite oscillation of
our collective consciousness interacting with itself, adding a fuller,
richer dimension to what it means to be human.

JOHN BROCKMAN is the author/editor of nineteen books, including By The
Late John Brockman, The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific
Revolution, Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite and (with
Katinka Matson) How Things Are: A Science Took-Kit for the Mind. He is
founder of Brockman, Inc., a literary and software agency, President
of Edge Foundation, Inc., founder of The Reality Club, and editor and
publisher of EDGE, a Website presenting The Third Culture in action.

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 10 14:18:03 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 09:18:03 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Luxury: Inconspicuous consumption
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312155260.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Luxury: Inconspicuous consumption
http://www.economist.com/business/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5323772

    Dec 20th 2005 | LONDON, NEW YORK AND PARIS

    Now that luxury has gone mass market, how are the super-rich to flaunt
    their wealth?

    THE recently reopened Louis Vuitton store on the Champs Elys?es is a
    deliberate exercise in democratic luxury. On its new, opulent art deco
    terraces, elegant French ladies of a certain age--the epitome of the
    traditional consumer of luxury fashion--rub padded shoulders with
    jeans-and-tee-shirt sporting younger women who could be their
    daughters, or, just as easily, rap singers or a gaggle of British
    working-class hen-weekenders.

    What traditional buyers of luxury make of their nouveau co-consumers
    they are, of course, too civilised to say. But it seems unlikely that
    they consider Louis Vuitton's still-exquisite handbags, shoes and
    other indulgences to be quite as exclusive as before. If they continue
    to shop there--and the store's owner, LVMH Mo?t Hennessy Louis
    Vuitton, thinks it can extend its brand to a broader market without
    losing its existing customers--it may no longer be because its
    products are a signal of exalted social status.

    In this respect, LVMH's goods are by no means unique. Products and
    services that were once the preserve of a very wealthy few--from
    designer handbags to fast cars, bespoke tailoring and domestic
    servants--are increasingly becoming accessible, if not to everyone,
    then certainly to millions of people around the world. This may appall
    killjoy economists such as Robert Frank, the author a few years ago of
    a book condemning "Luxury Fever" in this new "era of excess". But it
    is arguably even more upsetting to those super-rich folk who have long
    been able to afford luxury, and may in one crucial respect even regard
    it as a necessity.

    As Thorstein Veblen noted over a century ago in "The Theory of the
    Leisure Class"--the book in which he coined the phrase "conspicuous
    consumption"--spending lavishly on expensive but essentially wasteful
    goods and services is "evidence of wealth" and the "failure to consume
    in due quantity and quality becomes a mark of inferiority and
    demerit." But in the 21st century, "being a conspicuous consumer is
    getting harder and harder", says James Lawson of Ledbury Research, a
    firm that advises luxury businesses on market trends. What does a
    billionaire have to do to get noticed nowadays?

    Luxury for the people

    A stone's throw from the Louis Vuitton store, the classical grandeur
    of the five-star Four Seasons George V hotel was the perfect Old World
    venue for the World Luxury Congress in October. But all the talk at
    the gathering was of the potentially lucrative opportunities presented
    by new consumers of luxury, in rich and emerging economies alike.

    Being a millionaire, for instance, is becoming commonplace. In 2004
    there were 8.3m households worldwide with assets of at least $1m, up
    by 7% on a year earlier, according to the latest annual survey by
    Merrill Lynch and Capgemini. The newly wealthy are often desperate to
    affirm their status by conspicuously consuming the favoured brands of
    the already rich. In developed countries this can be seen, in its
    extreme form, in the rise of "Bling"--jewellery, diamonds and other
    luxuries sported initially by rappers--and Britain's unsophisticated
    Burberry-loving "chavs". (Burberry is considered unusually successful
    at tapping a broader market. But even it now understands that not
    every new customer is desirable: in January it withdrew its
    distinctive checked baseball caps because of their popularity with
    chavs.)

    The number of luxury buyers in the developed world is also being
    swelled by two other trends. First, consumers are increasingly
    adopting a "trading up, trading down" shopping strategy. Many
    traditional mid-market shoppers are abandoning middle-of-the-range
    products for a mix of lots of extremely cheap goods and a few genuine
    luxuries that they would once have thought out of their price league.

    Alongside this "selective extravagance" is the growth of "fractional
    ownership": time-shares in luxury goods and services formerly
    available only to those paying full price. Fractional ownership first
    got noticed when firms such as NetJets started selling access to
    private jets. It has since spread to luxury resorts, fast cars and
    much more. In America, From Bags to Riches--"better bags, better
    value"--lets less-well-off people rent designer handbags. In Britain,
    Damon Hill, a former racing driver, has launched P1 International. A
    ?2,500 ($4,300) joining fee, plus annual membership of ?13,750, buys
    around 50-70 driving days a year in cars ranging from a Range Rover
    Sport to a Bentley or a Ferrari.

    As a result, "the price of entry for much of what traditionally was
    available to the top 0.001% is now far lower", says Mr Lawson, who
    notes the sorry implications for a would-be conspicuous consumer: "How
    do I know if the guy who drives past me in a Ferrari owns it or is
    just renting it for the weekend?"

    Demand for luxury is also soaring from emerging economies such as
    Russia, India, Brazil and China. Antoine Colonna, an analyst at
    Merrill Lynch, estimates that last year Chinese consumers already
    accounted for 11% of the worldwide revenues of luxury-goods firms,
    with most of their buying done outside mainland China. He forecasts
    that by 2014, they will have overtaken both American and Japanese
    consumers, becoming the world's leading luxury shoppers, yielding 24%
    of global revenues.

    These emerging consumers have a big appetite for the top luxury
    brands--and the owners of those brands are increasingly keen to
    oblige. Russia is producing today's most determinedly conspicuous
    consumers. Roman Abramovich, the best-known oligarch not in jail, has
    conspicuously set new standards in buying mansions, ski resorts and
    soccer teams.

    Veblen revisited

    For the already rich, strategies such as splashing out on ever bigger
    houses, longer yachts or getting special treatment from luxury-goods
    firms does not contribute much marginal conspicuousness. Meanwhile,
    the list of new ways to get noticed by the masses is shrinking fast.
    Even space tourism--impressive in 2001, when Dennis Tito paid Russia
    $20m to visit the International Space Station--will soon be humdrum.

    As it gets ever harder to consume conspicuously, are some traditional
    luxury consumers giving up trying? According to Virginia Postrel,
    author of "The Substance of Style", conspicuous consumption is much
    more important when people are not far from being poor, as in today's
    emerging economies. In developed countries, in particular, "status is
    always there, but the shift in the balance is towards enjoyment". For
    instance, the first thing the newly super-rich tend to buy is a
    private plane. But that, she says, is "not so much about
    distinguishing themselves from the masses as not being stuck with them
    in a security line".

    In his new book, "Hypermodern Times", Gilles Lipovetsky, the favourite
    philosopher of LVMH's boss, Bernard Arnaud, has coined the term
    "hyperconsumption". This is consumption which pervades ever more
    spheres of life and which encourages people to consume for their own
    pleasure rather than to enhance their social status. H.L. Mencken made
    the same point more crisply in a critique of Veblen in 1919: "Do I
    prefer kissing a pretty girl to kissing a charwoman because even a
    janitor may kiss a charwoman--or because the pretty girl looks better,
    smells better and kisses better?"

    Yet rather than abandoning status anxiety, the way the rich seek to
    display status may simply be getting more complex. As inequality grows
    again in rich countries, some of the very rich worry about consumption
    that is so conspicuous to the masses that it provokes them to try to
    take their wealth away. Some car-industry experts blame weak sales of
    the latest luxury limousines on this fear.

    As well as traditional conspicuous consumption and "self-treating",
    Ledbury Research identifies two other motives that are driving buying
    by the rich: connoisseurship and being an "early adopter". Both are
    arguably consumption that is conspicuous only to those you really want
    to impress. Connoisseurs are people whom their friends respect for
    their deep knowledge of, say, fine wine or handmade Swiss watches.
    Early adopters are those who are first with a new technology. Silicon
    Valley millionaires currently impress their friends by buying an
    amphibian vehicle to avoid the commuter traffic on the Bay Bridge.
    Several millionaires have already paid $50,000 a go to clone their pet
    cat.

    In America, at least, says Marian Salzman, a leading trendspotter, the
    focus of conspicuous consumption is increasingly on getting your
    children into the best schools and universities. Harvard may be
    today's ultimate luxury good. Getting into the right clubs is also as
    important a social statement as ever. America's young wealthy may
    currently be seen at the Core Club in New York: membership is by
    invitation only, with a joining fee of $55,000 plus annual dues of
    $12,000.

    But perhaps the true symbol of exalted status in the era of mass
    luxury is conspicuous non-consumption. This is not just the growing
    tendency of the very rich to dress scruffily and drive beaten-up cars,
    as described by David Brooks in "Bobos in Paradise". It is showing
    that you have more money than you know how to spend. So, for example,
    philanthropy is increasingly fashionable, and multi-billion-dollar
    endowments such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are certainly
    conspicuous. However, since the new philanthropists are keen to
    demonstrate that their giving produces results, this does not quite
    meet Veblen's threshold of being a complete waste of money. So the
    laurels surely go to those who are so wealthy that they are willing to
    buy adverts encouraging the state to tax them. Kudos, then, to those
    conspicuously non-consuming wealthy American opponents of recent
    efforts to abolish estate taxes: George Soros, Bill Gates senior (the
    father of the world's richest man) and Warren Buffett.

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 10 14:18:21 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 09:18:21 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: China: Catching up
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312155590.28612@panix3.panix.com>

China: Catching up
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5327842

    Dec 20th 2005 | BEIJING

    China's economy is overtaking Britain's

    "SURPASS Britain and catch up with America": Mao Zedong's slogan is
    still widely remembered in China. Though his reckless idealism is now
    officially discredited, there has been satisfaction this week at the
    results of a reassessment of the country's GDP data. China's economy,
    the new figures show, is on the verge of overtaking Britain's.

    The revision of China's GDP figures was of an order reminiscent of
    Mao's liberal adjustment of statistics to show his campaign was on
    target. Now, however, it is the higher figure that is the more
    credible one. Economists have long believed that China's GDP has been
    considerably understated thanks mainly to poor measuring of privately
    run services. The country's first economic census, launched in
    January, showed that in 2004 it was some 16.8% bigger than the
    previously announced figure of 13.7 trillion yuan ($1.7 trillion).

    In dollar terms at official exchange rates, this means that China
    replaced Italy as the world's sixth-biggest economy last year. In
    2005, it almost certainly surpassed France, and probably squeaked past
    Britain too. It adds some $284 billion to China's GDP for last year, a
    figure almost the size of Taiwan's total.

    The survey also confirms some long-held suspicions about China's
    economic make-up: that its service sector is bigger than the one-third
    of GDP suggested by the old figures (the new data show more than 40%),
    that consumption is also higher and that investment and savings as a
    proportion of GDP are lower. This lot of figures look more sustainable
    than the old lot. But they are still only a best guess at the truth.
    And, at a sixth the size of America's, China's economy still has a bit
    of catching-up to do.


From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 10 14:19:11 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 09:19:11 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] CATO: Peace on Earth? Try Free Trade among Men
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312157050.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Peace on Earth? Try Free Trade among Men
http://cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5344&print=Y
December 28, 2005

[I agree with this completely, even though I have only scanned it. I know 
where the article is coming from, that's all. I should ask, though, 
whether the free movement of goods will entail irresistable pressure for 
the free movement of people. It's the people that generate externalities, 
some positive but (in the United States) mostly negative. There is a 
debate among libertarians whether to keep the ideal of the free movement 
of people at bay until such time as immigrants will stop using their votes 
to enrich themselves and limit liberty. (Dumbing down the population is 
apparently not on their radar screen.)

[The pressure is not irresistable in Japan and Israel, but the Japanese 
think they are utterly and biologically unique among the world's people 
and the Jews have intense ingroup solidarity.

[I also add that the Internet is another powerful force for peace. Those 
that communicate with one another will resist fighting, just as those who 
want to keep trade moving.

[The old days where socialists were convinced that "capitalism" causes war 
by enriching arms manufacturers are not gone. They have been replaced with 
oil companies. How oil imports, which amount to less than one percent of 
GDP can exert this much pressure is not clear to me.

[The author is only mildly right about capitalism being a force for 
expanding "democracy," very much like sociologists are only mildly right 
about modernization bringing secularization. The Chinese, so far, are 
proving to be a counter-example.]

by Daniel T. Griswold

Daniel Griswold is director of the Cato Institute Center for Trade
Policy Studies.

Buried beneath the daily stories about car bombs and insurgents is an
underappreciated but comforting fact during this Christmas season: The
world has somehow become a more peaceful place.

As one little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story recently
reported, "War declining worldwide, studies say." According to the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the number of armed
conflicts around the world has been in decline for the past
half-century. In just the past 15 years, ongoing conflicts have
dropped from 33 to 18, with all of them now civil conflicts within
countries. As 2005 draws to an end, no two nations in the world are at
war with each other.

The death toll from war has also been falling. According to the AP
story, "The number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in
the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one
measure. Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number."
Those estimates are down sharply from annual tolls ranging from 40,000
to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during the
Korean War.

Many causes lie behind the good news -- the end of the Cold War and
the spread of democracy, among them -- but expanding trade and
globalization appear to be playing a major role. Far from stoking a
"World on Fire," as one misguided American author has argued, growing
commercial ties between nations have had a dampening effect on armed
conflict and war, for three main reasons.

First, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend toward
democracy, and democracies don't pick fights with each other. Freedom
to trade nurtures democracy by expanding the middle class in
globalizing countries and equipping people with tools of communication
such as cell phones, satellite TV, and the Internet. With trade comes
more travel, more contact with people in other countries, and more
exposure to new ideas. Thanks in part to globalization, almost two
thirds of the world's countries today are democracies -- a record
high.

Second, as national economies become more integrated with each other,
those nations have more to lose should war break out. War in a
globalized world not only means human casualties and bigger
government, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that impose
lasting damage on the economy. In short, globalization has
dramatically raised the economic cost of war.

Third, globalization allows nations to acquire wealth through
production and trade rather than conquest of territory and resources.
Increasingly, wealth is measured in terms of intellectual property,
financial assets, and human capital. Those are assets that cannot be
seized by armies. If people need resources outside their national
borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire them
peacefully by trading away what they can produce best at home.

Of course, free trade and globalization do not guarantee peace.
Hot-blooded nationalism and ideological fervor can overwhelm cold
economic calculations. But deep trade and investment ties among
nations make war less attractive.

Trade wars in the 1930s deepened the economic depression, exacerbated
global tensions, and helped to usher in a world war. Out of the ashes
of that experience, the United States urged Germany, France, and other
Western European nations to form a common market that has become the
European Union. In large part because of their intertwined economies,
a general war in Europe is now unthinkable.

In East Asia, the extensive and growing economic ties among Mainland
China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan is helping to keep the peace.
China's Communist rulers may yet decide to go to war over its
"renegade province," but the economic cost to their economy would be
staggering and could provoke a backlash among Chinese citizens. In
contrast, poor and isolated North Korea is all the more dangerous
because it has nothing to lose economically should it provoke a war.

In Central America, countries that were racked by guerrilla wars and
death squads two decades ago have turned not only to democracy but to
expanding trade, culminating in the Central American Free Trade
Agreement with the United States. As the Stockholm institute reports
in its 2005 Yearbook, "Since the 1980s, the introduction of a more
open economic model in most states of the Latin American and Caribbean
region has been accompanied by the growth of new regional structures,
the dying out of interstate conflicts and a reduction in intra-state
conflicts."

Much of the political violence that remains in the world today is
concentrated in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa -- the two
regions of the world that are the least integrated into the global
economy. Efforts to bring peace to those regions must include lowering
their high barriers to trade, foreign investment, and domestic
entrepreneurship.

Advocates of free trade and globalization have long argued that trade
expansion means more efficiency, higher incomes, and reduced poverty.
The welcome decline of armed conflicts in the past few decades
indicates that free trade also comes with its own peace dividend.


From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 10 14:22:12 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 09:22:12 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Hermenaut: Whatever Works, Sucks
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312157160.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Whatever Works, Sucks
http://www.hermenaut.com/a51.shtml

Rational Exuberance: The Influence of Generation X on the New Economy by
Meredith Bagby (Dutton, 1998)

If, as A.S. Hamrah and Chris Fujiwara claim in their online Club
Havana film review series, "Things That Don't Suck" is the new
aesthetic category of the '90s--they explain that "the advertising and
publicist types who employ this as a category of worth want you to
believe that just because whatever it is they're offering isn't 100
percent offensive or repellent means it's somehow great" --then
"Whatever Works" is the corresponding ethical category of the era.
These are the debased formulae of people who not only don't have any
standards of truth, beauty, or morality, but to whom the whole concept
of standards is suspect. Of course we should be skeptical of received
notions of truth, beauty, and morality, but skepticism isn't cynicism
and even cynicism isn't as grass-eatingly low as the kind of slickly
hip will-to-power-passing-as-pragmatism expressed in these phrases.
Yet, now that the End of Ideology and What is Art? debates have
finally trickled down (up?) from the academy to the street, these
aggressively anti-standard standards have become cant in the mouths of
would-be Gen X (no room to go into, for the nth time, how misleading
and pointless this term is) spokespeople who should know better.
Meredith Bagby is one of these--she's of the "Whatever Works"
school--and this review is of her recently-published and
highly-praised book Rational Exuberance: The Influence of Generation X
on the New American Economy.

Rational Exuberance was, I imagine, sold to Dutton as a happy-smiley
slap in the face to all those whiny twentysomethings still bitching
about how they couldn't afford to go to college and have to live with
their parents. As such, it contains a bewildering onslaught of
sidebars profiling "key Gen X players": fund managers, speechwriters,
political activists, entrepreneurs, hacks at such Gen X media ghettoes
as Swing magazine (which, ironically, just bit the dust) and CNN's
Financial Network: experts all, one is led to believe, in the science
of Gen X-ology. "We" anti-slackers, it seems, are "taking on the
economic challenges inherited from older generations" and influencing
the American economy through "greater savings plans, successful
entrepreneurship, education reform, and bottom-line politics" --I
quote from the press release. But as annoying a book as that in itself
would have been, Rational Exuberance is worse than that, much worse.

Americans born after 1964, "economist [and] renowned Gen X'er Bagby"
(press release again) suggests in her introduction, have been unfairly
characterized as depressed, directionless losers. But in fact, she
counters, what look to "our" (I can't go on putting "we" and "our" in
quotes, so I'll just stop here) elders like weaknesses--our deep
suspicion regarding the idea of a "steady job," our inborn mistrust of
Republicans and Democrats alike, our "No Future" certainty that Social
Security will be bankrupt by the time we're 65, even though we're
paying into it now--are actually strengths. Scorning the idea of
climbing the corporate ladder, we're a generation of risk-taking
entrepreneurs! The non-voting apathy of our older brothers and sisters
has obscured our own grassroots activism! And as for the Social
Security thing, well, some of us are lobbying for entitlement reform,
while others re-learn the lost art of planning for the future!
"Compound interest" sound familiar? But I don't really have a problem
with any of this. (OK, I do have a problem with the idea that any
intelligent person could possibly imagine that what the Sex Pistols
were talking about in "No Future" had anything to do with vanishing
welfare for the elderly.) What bugs me is the whole "Whatever Works"
thing.

According to Bagby, who brandishes charts, graphs, and public opinion
polls (the first profile she offers is of a hip Republican pollster,
already proving her book is a work of fiction) to prove her various
points, "We [Gen X'ers] are not worried about staying within the
guidelines of any particular [moral, political, philosophical] system;
rather, we seek the avenue that produces the greatest results. We
adjust, maneuver, manipulate our choices around what seems to work in
today's complex world." "Results" is the red flag here: The holy grail
of a certain kind of economist, results by definition justify the
means used to achieve them. In fact, Bagby takes great pains to
dismiss those dangerously idealistic types (she includes lawyers!) for
whom means cannot be separated from ends.

In Chapter 2, "A New Moral Order: The Age of Economics," Bagby
forcefully insists that religious, philosophical, aesthetic, and even
political lenses for viewing social issues may have been fine for past
generations, but they just don't make the cut today. On the abortion
question, she scoffs, "a philosopher might begin the debate with
questions" (a word I imagine her saying with a sour expression on her
face) about when life begins, moral responsibility and choice, and so
forth; and a lawyer would waste everybody's time mucking around with
issues of legal precedent. An economist, however, would cut through
all the mumbo-jumbo by seeking "what is common among differing
factions and build[ing] a solution." Moralists and politicians take
their lumps, too, for being so wishy-washy over the death penalty.
When it comes down to a choice between execution and life
imprisonment, Bagby airily concludes, whichever one costs society less
money is the right answer.

Economists like herself, Bagby boasts, seek results, results, results.
Unlike those querulous old fogies who'd hold us all to one universal
ideal or another, economics is about the greatest benefit for the
greatest number, and it's not afraid to write everyone who isn't part
of the greatest number off as a loss. To Bagby, this is what the world
needs now. With the end of the Cold War, she suggests, came the
long-heralded End of Ideology. Democracy and capitalism have won, and
the only challenge that remains is making the system work, dammit.
"Our role in American history seems clear: If our parents' generation
was about dismantling the status quo, our generation will be about
building new institutions, moral codes, families, churches,
corporations If our parents were the revolutionaries, then let us be
the rebuilders." To this exalted end, Bagby (or should that be
Carpetbagby?) offers pat, sketchy advice on everything from rebuilding
our schools to rebuilding our communities, our families, and the
economy. Of course, much of what passes for advice--on, for example,
not being manipulated in the workplace, or by wily advertisers--is
actually how-to advice for the book's real audience: those seeking
advice on exploiting and manipulating Gen X'ers. But that's obvious,
right?

I could go on and on (and on) about what's wrong with the methods and
conclusions of Rational Exuberance. All I want to accomplish here is a
criticism of this "Whatever Works" shit, but it's hard not to get
sidetracked. So let's take a leaf from Bagby's book and compromise:
I'll complain about something off-topic just one more time, and then
get back to criticizing her philosophy. Not happy with this solution?
Apparently, in the new
roll-up-your-shirtsleeves-and-lose-those-pesky-opinions age, we'd all
better get used to feeling that way.

"Fact: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, people aged 24 to 35 work
4.6 percent longer each week than the national average." This
context-free statistic is a typical example of Bagby's misuse of the
tools of social science to make a seemingly objective point. This
particular nugget of data is supposed to disprove the media myth that
all Gen X'ers are slackers. I question whether this statistic actually
means "we" (sorry, couldn't resist) are hard workers: Doesn't it most
likely mean, instead, that twentysomething temp-slave types are more
exploited than your average non-Gen X worker? And, while we're on the
subject, what's wrong with not wanting to work hard? Is there no
middle ground between couch potato and millionaire-in-the-making?
("The 'X' in Generation X is the symbol for multiplication," Bagby
sound-bites. "For us the symbol strikes a chord because the most
successful entrepreneurs don't win by adding dollars--they win by
multiplying dollars.")

Unafraid to contradict herself, Bagby goes on to pay lip service to
the idea that Gen X'ers just seem lazy because we refuse to sacrifice
our "lifestyles" to our careers, that in fact we work less than our
elders. As anyone who has worked for the kind of hotshot entrepreneur
Bagby admiringly profiles knows, however, pulling insanely long work
days is a lifestyle for them and that goes for everyone at their
companies, like it or not. (I should confess here that I have worked
for one of the entrepreneurs Bagby profiles!) This irresolvable
contradiction hints at the special problem Bagby faced in assembling
this book: Her real audience and her pretend audience want to hear
different things, and while the latter will just get pissed at her,
the former is the one buying the book. OK, let's move on.

All social problems-- "the overextension of our government, growing
economic inequality, increasing ethnic rumblings, deteriorating
education systems, apathy from our citizenry [this kind of phrasing
makes me worry that the author is planning to run for office], and an
oversimplification of our problems by media and politicians" --can be
solved by applying the economist's way of thinking, according to
Bagby. "We have entered upon a new era of logic and numbers," she
trumpets: "To give us the answers, we have elevated a new breed of
experts. Other ages had prophets, witch doctors, soothsayers, and
voodoo gods [you might know them as social scientists, political
analysts, philosophers]. We have economists." Quoting Francis
Fukuyama, Bagby argues that with the worldwide triumph of liberal
democracy and free-market capitalism, we have arrived at not just the
end of ideology, but the much-anticipated end of history--so the Big
Questions of the past (freedom of speech, liberty, equality) just
don't matter any more. Americans want "a government that W-O-R-K-S,"
Bagby argues, and Gen X is the generation that's uniquely qualified,
precisely because it lacks any faith in ideals or standards, to give
these Americans the government they deserve. "It is not about
ideology. It is about practicality."

In 1933, a twentysomething Marxist sympathizer named Simone Weil
shocked her comrades by announcing her fear that the actual outcome of
the much-anticipated proletarian revolution would not be the
replacement of capitalism by socialism, but something much worse: the
replacement of capitalism and socialism alike with a post-ideological
society run by "technicians" [i.e. experts for whom the ends justify
the means], particularly economists. After all, Weil pointed out, the
only thing worse than oppression exercised in the name of some
philosophical or religious or even political ideal is "oppression
exercised in the name of function." Bagby's central obsession,
entitlement reform--that political tar baby which at least serves as a
sort of flypaper for annoying trust-funders like the ones who started
the "twentysomething think-tank" Third Millennium--is precisely the
kind of technocratic "issue" guaranteed to alienate and depress anyone
still possessing a shred of political passion.

Although Weil was deeply suspicious of all ideologies, she was an
unapologetic idealist. If Weil's vision of a society without
oppression has yet to materialize, her writing at least continues to
inspire; it's hard to imagine anyone re-reading Bagby in, say, 1999.
In fact, Weil's self-imposed alienation from all causes and
communities is precisely what the original prophet of the End of
Ideology, sociologist Daniel Bell, advocated: Detachment and idealism
are not, after all, mutually exclusive. Bagby's "Whatever Works," on
the other hand, though surrounded by weakly worded expressions of
idealism, is in fact subversive of same. And whenever someone starts
subverting idealism, we need to ask: To whose profit? The answer, I
think, was expressed by Lewis Mumford, one of those "witch doctors" or
"soothsayers" of a past generation, when he wrote (in Technics and
Civilization) that "the idea that values could be dispensed with and
replaced by mechanical or mathematical solutions is just another
ideology" --a utilitarian one, whose only truly hoped-for result is
the "clean victory" of capitalism over previous traditions, loyalties,
and sentiments.

Like every single carpetbagger who's ever descended upon a war-torn
landscape, preaching about new brooms sweeping clean, Bagby is not to
be trusted. Whenever she starts spelling W-O-R-K-S, she means
M-O-N-E-Y. Beneath her shopworn Gen X insouciance lies an age-old
cynical utilitarianism which knows the price of everything and the
value of nothing--and that really sucks.


From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 10 14:23:16 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 09:23:16 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Leland B. Yeager: Monarchy: Friend of Liberty
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312157240.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Leland B. Yeager: Monarchy: Friend of Liberty
http://www.angelfire.com/in3/theodore/opinion/articles/yeager.html

[I audited a course under Mr. Yeager in my last undergraduate year at UVa. 
I was to switch to economics there in graduate school. Mr. Yeager made me 
write a paper like everyone else in the class. In graduate school, he was 
on sabbatical somewhere else when I would have taken his famed course in 
macroeconomics. As it happened, his substitute was the worst teacher I 
ever had, tied with another one who taught econometrics. No one in my 
class got an excellent on the Ph.D. candidacy examinations, as a result. I 
got a satisfactory minus, minus, since I flat out flunked the 
macroeconomics part. I just could not handle patently arbitrary, if not 
absurd, assumptions that are built into macroeconomics, even though I was 
extremely gifted in math, having taken most of the graduate math courses 
UVa offered when I was an undergraduate. I simply had a severe mental 
block to the whole thing, though perhaps today I'd just play the game.

[I know THANK those bad professors. Both macroeconomics and econometrics 
are bottomless pits, and I am grateful that I did not waste what might 
have been a hugely successful career, which (I *am* or rather was, that 
talented in math) might have gotten me a Nobel Prize in macroeconomics, 
provided I would have dedicated myself as a calling from the Lord to do 
the steady and persistent day in and day out work that is required. Such a 
dedication is not part of my make up by a very long shot, so the matter is 
moot. I'm more a specialist in looking across disciplines, as I think my 
notes to these forwardings amply demonstrates, but I keep resolving to 
narrow my reading and have said so over and over again, only to lapse back 
into wide reading again and again.]

A LIBERTARIAN CASE FOR MONARCHY
Democracy and Other Good Things

Clear thought and discussion suffer when all sorts of good things,
like liberty, equality, fraternity, rights, majority rule, and
general welfaresome in tension with othersare marketed together
under the portmanteau label democracy. Democracys core meaning is a
particular method of choosing, replacing, and influencing
government officials (Schumpeter 1950/1962). It is not a doctrine
of what government should and should not do. Nor is it the same
thing as personal freedom or a free society or an egalitarian
social ethos. True enough, some classical liberals, like Thomas
Paine (1791-1792/1989) and Ludwig von Mises (1919/1983), did scorn
hereditary monarchy and did express touching faith that
representative democracy would choose excellent leaders and adopt
policies truly serving the common interest. Experience has taught
us better, as the American Founders already knew when constructing
a government of separated and limited powers and of only filtered
democracy.

As an exercise, and without claiming that my arguments are
decisive, Ill contend that constitutional monarchy can better
preserve peoples freedom and opportunities than democracy as it has
turned out in practice.^1 My case holds only for countries where
maintaining or restoring (or conceivably installing) monarchy is a
live option.^2 We Americans have sounder hope of reviving respect
for the philosophy of our Founders. Our traditions could serve some
of the functions of monarchy in other countries.

An unelected absolute ruler could conceivably be a thoroughgoing
classical liberal. Although a wise, benevolent, and liberal-minded
dictatorship would not be a contradiction in terms, no way is
actually available to assure such a regime and its continuity,
including frictionless succession.

Some element of democracy is therefore necessary; totally replacing
it would be dangerous. Democracy allows people some influence on
who their rulers are and what policies they pursue. Elections, if
not subverted, can oust bad rulers peacefully. Citizens who care
about such things can enjoy a sense of participation in public
affairs.

Anyone who believes in limiting government power for the sake of
personal freedom should value also having some nondemocratic
element of government besides courts respectful of their own narrow
authority. While some monarchists are reactionaries or mystics,
others (like Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn and Sean Gabb, cited below)
do come across as a genuine classical liberals.

Shortcomings of Democracy

Democracy has glaring defects.^3 As various paradoxes of voting
illustrate, there is no such thing as any coherent will of the
people. Government itself is more likely to supply the content of
any supposed general will (Constant 1814-15/1988, p. 179). Winston
Churchill reputedly said: The best argument against democracy is a
five-minute conversation with the average voter (BrainyQuote and
several similar sources on the Internet). The ordinary voter knows
that his vote will not be decisive and has little reason to waste
time and effort becoming well informed anyway.

This rational ignorance, so called in the public-choice literature,
leaves corresponding influence to other-than-ordinary voters
(Campbell 1999). Politics becomes a squabble among rival special
interests. Coalitions form to gain special privileges. Legislators
engage in logrolling and enact omnibus spending bills. Politics
itself becomes the chief weapon in a Hobbesian war of all against
all (Gray 1993, pp. 211-212). The diffusion of costs while benefits
are concentrated reinforces apathy among ordinary voters.

Politicians themselves count among the special-interest groups.
People who drift into politics tend to have relatively slighter
qualifications for other work. They are entrepreneurs pursuing the
advantages of office. These are not material advantages alone, for
some politicians seek power to do good as they understand it.
Gratifying their need to act and to feel important, legislators
multiply laws to deal with discovered or contrived problemsand
fears. Being able to raise vast sums by taxes and borrowing
enhances their sense of power, and moral responsibility wanes (as
Benjamin Constant, pp. 194-196, 271-272, already recognized almost
two centuries ago).

Democratic politicians have notoriously short time horizons. (Hoppe
(2001) blames not just politicians in particular but democracy in
general for high time preferenceindifference to the long runwhich
contributes to crime, wasted lives, and a general decline of
morality and culture.) Why worry if popular policies will cause
crises only when one is no longer running for reelection? Evidence
of fiscal irresponsibility in the United States includes chronic
budget deficits, the explicit national debt, and the still huger
excesses of future liabilities over future revenues on account of
Medicare and Social Security. Yet politicians continue offering new
plums. Conflict of interest like this far overshadows the petty
kinds that nevertheless arouse more outrage.

Responsibility is diffused in democracy not only over time but also
among participants. Voters can think that they are only exercising
their right to mark their ballots, politicians that they are only
responding to the wishes of their constituents. The individual
legislator bears only a small share of responsibility fragmented
among his colleagues and other government officials.

Democracy and liberty coexist in tension. Nowadays the United
States government restricts political speech. The professed purpose
of campaign-finance reform is to limit the power of interest groups
and of money in politics, but increased influence of the mass media
and increased security of incumbent politicians are likelier
results. A broader kind of tension is that popular majorities can
lend an air of legitimacy to highly illiberal measures. Bv the
sheer weight of numbers and by its ubiquity the rule of 99 per cent
is more hermetic and more oppressive than the rule of 1 per cent
(Kuehnelt-Leddihn 1952, p. 88). When majority rule is thought good
in its own right and the fiction prevails that weordinary citizens
are the government, an elected legislature and executive can get
away with impositions that monarchs of the past would scarcely have
ventured. Louis XIV of France, autocrat though he was, would hardly
have dared prohibit alcoholic beverages, conscript soldiers, and
levy an income tax (Kuehnelt-Leddihn, pp. 280-281)or, we might add,
wage war on drugs. Not only constitutional limitations on a kings
powers but also his^4 not having an electoral mandate is a
restraint.

At its worst, the democratic dogma can abet totalitarianism.
History records totalitarian democracies or democratically
supported dictatorships. Countries oppressed by communist regimes
included words like democratic or popular in their official names.
Totalitarian parties have portrayed their leaders as personifying
the common man and the whole nation. German National Socialism, as
Kuehnelt-Leddihn reminds us, was neither a conservative nor a
reactionary movement but a synthesis of revolutionary ideas tracing
to before 1789 (pp. 131, 246-247, 268). He suggests that
antimonarchical sentiments in the background of the French
Revolution, the Spanish republic of 1931, and Germanys Weimar
Republic paved the way for Robespierre and Napoleon, for Negrin and
Franco, and for Hitler (p. 90). Winston Churchill reportedly judged
that had the Kaiser remained German Head of State, Hitler could not
have gained power, or at least not have kept it (International
Monarchist League). [M]onarchists, conservatives, clerics and other
reactionaries were always in bad grace with the Nazis
(Kuehnelt-Leddihn, p. 248).

   Separation of Powers

A nonelected part of government contributes to the separation of
powers. By retaining certain constitutional powers or denying them
to others, it can be a safeguard against abuses.^5 This is perhaps
the main modern justification of hereditary monarchy: to put some
restraint on politicians rather than let them pursue their own
special interests complacent in the thought that their winning
elections demonstrates popular approval. When former president
Theodore Roosevelt visited Emperor Franz Joseph in 1910 and asked
him what he thought the role of monarchy was in the twentieth
century, the emperor reportedly replied: To protect my peoples from
their governments (quoted in both Thesen and Purcell 2003).
Similarly, Lord Bernard Weatherill, former speaker of the House of
Commons, said that the British monarchy exists not to exercise
power but to keep other people from having the power; it is a great
protection for our democracy (interview with Brian Lamb on C-Span,
26 November 1999).

The history of England shows progressive limitation of royal power
in favor of parliament; but, in my view, a welcome trend went too
far. Almost all power, limited only by traditions fortunately
continuing as an unwritten constitution, came to be concentrated
not only in parliament but even in the leader of the parliamentary
majority. Democratization went rather too far, in my opinion, in
the Continental monarchies also.

  Continuity

A monarch, not dependent on being elected and reelected, embodies
continuity, as does the dynasty and the biological process.
Constitutional monarchy offers us ... that neutral power so
indispensable for all regular liberty. In a free country the king
is a being apart, superior to differences of opinion, having no
other interest than the maintenance of order and liberty. He can
never return to the common condition, and is consequently
inaccessible to all the passions that such a condition generates,
and to all those that the perspective of finding oneself once again
within it, necessarily creates in those agents who are invested
with temporary power. It is a master stroke to create a neutral
power that can terminate some political danger by constitutional
means (Constant, pp. 186-187). In a settled monarchybut no regime
whatever can be guaranteed perpetual existencethe king need not
worry about clinging to power. In a republic, The very head of the
state, having no title to his office save that which lies in the
popular will, is forced to haggle and bargain like the lowliest
office-seeker (Mencken 1926, p. 181).

Dynastic continuity parallels the rule of law. The king symbolizes
a state of affairs in which profound political change, though
eventually possible, cannot occur without ample time for
considering it. The king stands in contrast with legislators and
bureaucrats, who are inclined to think, by the very nature of their
jobs, that diligent performance means multiplying laws and
regulations. Continuity in the constitutional and legal regime
provides a stable framework favorable to personal and business
planning and investment and to innovation in science, technology,
enterprise, and culture. Continuity is neither rigidity nor
conservatism.

The heir to the throne typically has many years of preparation and
is not dazzled by personal advancement when he finally inherits the
office. Before and while holding office he accumulates a fund of
experience both different from and greater than what politicians,
who come and go, can ordinarily acquire. Even when the king comes
to the throne as a youth or, at the other extreme, as an old man
with only a few active years remaining, he has the counsel of
experienced family members and advisors. If the king is very young
(Louis XV, Alfonso XIII) or insane (the elderly George III, Otto of
Bavaria), a close relative serves as regent.^6 The regent will have
had some of the opportunities to perform ceremonial functions and
to accumulate experience that an heir or reigning monarch has.

Objections and Rebuttals

Some arguments occasionally employed for monarchy are questionable.
If the monarch or his heir may marry only a member of a princely
family (as Kuehnelt-Leddihn seems to recommend), chances are that
he or she will marry a foreigner, providing international
connections and a cosmopolitan way of thinking. Another dubious
argument (also used by Kuehnelt-Leddihn) is that the monarch will
have the blessing of and perhaps be the head of the state religion.
Some arguments are downright absurd, for example: Monarchy fosters
art and culture. Austria was culturally much richer around 1780
than today! Just think of Mozart! (Thesen).

But neither all arguments for nor all objections to monarchy are
fallacious. The same is true of democracy. In the choice of
political institutions, as in many decisions of life, all one can
do is weigh the pros and cons of the options and choose what seems
best or least bad on balance.

Some objections to monarchy apply to democracy also or otherwise
invite comments that, while not actual refutations, do strengthen
the case in its favor. Monarchy is charged with being
government-from-above (Kuehnelt-Leddihn, p. 276). But all
governments, even popularly elected ones, except perhaps small
direct democracies like ancient Athens, are rule by a minority.
(Robert Michels and others recognized an iron law of oligarchy;
Jenkin 1968, p. 282.) Although democracy allows the people some
influence over the government, they do not and cannot actually run
it. Constitutional monarchy combines some strengths of democracy
and authoritarian monarchy while partially neutralizing the defects
of those polar options.

Another objection condemns monarchy as a divisive symbol of
inequality; it bars an ideal society in which everyone will be
equal in status, and in which everyone will have the right, if not
the ability, to rise to the highest position (Gabb 2002, who
replies that attempts to create such a society have usually ended
in attacks on the wealthy and even the well-off). Michael Prowse
(2001), calling for periodic referendums on whether to keep the
British monarchy, invokes what he considers the core idea of
democracy: all persons equally deserve respect and consideration,
and no one deserves to dominate others. The royal family and the
aristocracy, with their titles, demeanor, and self-perpetuation,
violate this democratic spirit. In a republican Britain, every
child might aspire to every public position, even head of state.

So arguing, Prowse stretches the meaning of democracy from a
particular method of choosing and influencing rulers to include an
egalitarian social ethos. But monarchy need not obstruct easy
relations among persons of different occupations and backgrounds; a
suspicious egalitarianism is likelier to do that. In no society can
all persons have the same status. A more realistic goal is that
everyone have a chance to achieve distinction in some narrow niche
important to him. Even in a republic, most people by far cannot
realistically aspire to the highest position. No one need feel
humbled or ashamed at not ascending to an office that simply was
not available. A hereditary monarch can be like the Alps(Thesen),
something just there. Perhaps it is the kings good luck, perhaps
his bad luck, to have inherited the privileges but also the
limitations of his office; but any question of unfairness pales in
comparison with advantages for the country.

Prowse complains of divisiveness. But what about an election? It
produces losers as well as winners, disappointed voters as well as
happy ones. A king, however, cannot symbolize defeat to supporters
of other candidates, for there were none. A monarch mounting the
throne of his ancestors follows a path on which he has not embarked
of his own will. Unlike a usurper, he need not justify his
elevation (Constant, p. 88). He has no further political
opportunities or ambitions except to do his job well and maintain
the good name of his dynasty. Standing neutral above party
politics, he has a better chance than an elected leader of becoming
the personified symbol of his country, a focus of patriotism and
even of affection.

The monarch and his family can assume ceremonial functions that
elected rulers would otherwise perform as time permitted.
Separating ceremonial functions from campaigning and policymaking
siphons off glamor or adulation that would otherwise accrue to
politicians and especially to demagogues. The occasional Hitler
does arouse popular enthusiasm, and his opponents must prudently
keep a low profile. A monarch, whose power is preservative rather
than active (Constant, pp. 191-192), is safer for peoples freedom.

Prowse is irritated rather than impressed by the pomp and opulence
surrounding the Queen. Clinging to outmoded forms and ascribing
importance to unimportant things reeks of collective bad faith and
corrosive hypocrisy. Yet a monarchy need not rest on pretense. On
the contrary, my case for monarchy is a utilitarian one, not
appealing to divine right or any such fiction. Not all ritual is to
be scorned. Even republics have Fourth of July parades and their
counterparts. Ceremonial trappings that may have become
functionless or comical can evolve or be reformed. Not all
monarchies, as Prowse recognizes, share with the British the
particular trappings that irritate him.

A case, admittedly inconclusive, can be made for titles of nobility
(especially for close royal relatives) and for an upper house of
parliament of limited powers whose members, or some of them, hold
their seats by inheritance or royal appointment (e.g., Constant,
pp. 198-200). The glory of a legitimate monarch is enhanced by the
glory of those around him. ... He has no competition to fear. ...
But where the monarch sees supporters, the usurper sees enemies.
(Constant, p. 91; on the precarious position of a nonhereditary
autocrat, compare Tullock 1987). As long as the nobles are not
exempt from the laws, they can serve as a kind of framework of the
monarchy. They can be a further element of diversity in the social
structure. They can provide an alternative to sheer wealth or
notoriety as a source of distinction and so dilute the fawning over
celebrities characteristic of modern democracies. Ordinary persons
need no more feel humiliated by not being born into the nobility
than by not being born heir to the throne. On balance, though, I am
ambivalent about a nobility.

   A Kings Powers

Michael Prowses complaint about the pretended importance of
unimportant things suggests a further reason why the monarchs role
should go beyond the purely symbolic and ceremonial. The king
should not be required (as the Queen of England is required at the
opening of parliament) merely to read words written by the cabinet.
At least he should have the three rights that Walter Bagehot
identified in the British monarchy: the right to be consulted, the
right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense
and sagacity would want no others. He would find that his having no
others would enable him to use these with singular effect (Bagehot
(1867/1872/1966, p. 111).

When Bagehot wrote, the Prime Minister was bound to keep the Queen
well informed about the passing politics of the nation. She has by
rigid usage a right to complain if she does not know of every great
act of her Ministry, not only before it is done, but while there is
yet time to consider it while it is still possible that it may not
be done.

A sagacious king could warn his prime minister with possibly great
effect. He might not always turn his course, but he would always
trouble his mind. During a long reign he would acquire experience
that few of his ministers could match. He could remind the prime
minister of bad results some years earlier of a policy like one
currently proposed. The king would indeed have the advantage which
a permanent under-secretary has over his superior the Parliamentary
secretary that of having shared in the proceedings of the previous
Parliamentary secretaries. ... A pompous man easily sweeps away the
suggestions of those beneath him. But though a minister may so deal
with his subordinate, he cannot so deal with his king (Bagehot, pp.
111-112). A prime minister would be disciplined, in short, by
having to explain the objective (not merely the political) merits
of his policies to a neutral authority.

The three rights that Bagehot listed should be interpreted broadly,
in my view, or extended. Constant (p. 301) recommends the right to
grant pardons as a final protection of the innocent. The king
should also have power: to make some appointments, especially of
his own staff, not subject to veto by politicians; to consult with
politicians of all parties to resolve an impasse over who might
obtain the support or acquiescence of a parliamentary majority; and
to dismiss and temporarily replace the cabinet or prime minister in
extreme cases. (I assume a parliamentary system, which usually does
accompany modern monarchy; but the executive could be elected
separately from the legislators and even subject to recall by
special election.) Even dissolving parliament and calling new
elections in an exceptional case is no insult to the rights of the
people. On the contrary, when elections are free, it is an appeal
made to their rights in favor of their interests (Constant, p.197).
The king should try to rally national support in a constitutional
crisis (as when King Juan Carlos intervened to foil an attempted
military coup in 1981).

   Kings and Politicians

What if the hereditary monarch is a child or is incompetent? Then,
as already mentioned, a regency is available. What if the royal
family, like some of the Windsors, flaunts unedifying personal
behavior? Both dangers are just as real in a modern republic.
Politicians have a systematic tendency to be incompetent or
worse.^7 For a democratic politician, understanding economics is a
handicap.^8 He either must take unpopular (because misunderstood)
stands on issues or else speak and act dishonestly. The
economically ignorant politician has the advantage of being able to
take vote-catching stands with a more nearly clear conscience.
Particularly in these days of television and of fascination with
celebrities, the personal characteristics necessary to win
elections are quite different from those of a public-spirited
statesman. History does record great statesmen in less democratized
parliamentary regimes of the past. Nowadays a Greshams Law
operates: the inferior human currency drives the better one out of
circulation (Kuehnelt-Leddihn, pp.115, 120). Ideal democratic
government simply is not an available option. Our best hope is to
limit the activities of government, a purpose to which monarchy can
contribute.

Although some contemporary politicians are honorable and
economically literate, even simple honesty can worsens ones
electoral chances. H. L. Mencken wrote acidly and with
characteristic exaggeration: No educated man, stating plainly the
elementary notions that every educated man holds about the matters
that principally concern government, could be elected to office in
a democratic state, save perhaps by a miracle. ... it has become a
psychic impossibility for a gentleman to hold office under the
Federal Union, save by a combination of miracles that must tax the
resourcefulness even of God. ... the man of native integrity is
either barred from the public service altogether, or subjected to
almost irresistible temptations after he gets in (Mencken 1926, pp.
103, 106, 110). Under monarchy, the courtier need not abase himself
before swine, pretend that he is a worse man than he really is. His
sovereign has a certain respect for honor. The courtiers sovereign
... is apt to be a man of honour himself (Mencken, p. 118,
mentioning that the King of Prussia refused the German imperial
crown offered him in 1849 by a mere popular parliament rather than
by his fellow sovereign princes).

Mencken conceded that democracy has its charms: The fraud of
democracy ... is more amusing than any othermore amusing even, and
by miles, than the fraud of religion. ... [The farce] greatly
delights me. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably
idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing (pp. 209, 211). Conclusion

One argument against institutions with a venerable history is a
mindless slogan betraying temporal provincialism, as if newer
necessarily meant better: Dont turn back the clock. Sounder advice
is not to overthrow what exists because of abstract notions of what
might seem logically or ideologically neater. In the vernacular, If
it aint broke, dont fix it. It is progress to learn from
experience, including experience with inadequately filtered
democracy. Where a monarchical element in government works well
enough, the burden of proof lies against the republicans (cf.
Gabb). Kuehnelt-Leddihn, writing in 1952 (p. 104), noted that the
royal, non-democratic alloy has supported the relative success of
several representative governments in Europe. Only a few
nontotalitarian republics there and overseas have exhibited a
record of stability, notably Switzerland, Finland, and the United
States.^9

Constitutional monarchy cannot solve all problems of government;
nothing can. But it can help. Besides lesser arguments, two main
ones recommend it. First, its very existence is a reminder that
democracy is not the sort of thing of which more is necessarily
better; it can help promote balanced thinking. Second, by
contributing continuity, diluting democracy while supporting a
healthy element of it, and furthering the separation of government
powers, monarchy can help protect personal liberty.

Notes
References
"Monarchy: Friend of Liberty", Liberty 18, January 2004, pp. 37-42


From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 10 14:24:07 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 09:24:07 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Neese and Williams: On Darwinian Medicine
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312158000.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Neese and Williams: On Darwinian Medicine
http://www-instruct.nmu.edu/biology/ALindsay/Evolution/Nesse_1999.pdf

Life Science Research
Published in China

Vol. 3, No 1, 1999 pp. 1-17 and
Vol. 3, No 2, 1999, pp. 79-91

On Darwinian Medicine
Randolph M. Nesse
George C. Williams

Address correspondence to:
Randolph Nesse, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry,
The University of Michigan
Room 5057, Institute for Social Research
426 Thompson Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248 USA
nesse at umich.edu

It would appear, at first glance, that natural selection would have little 
to say about why work better, and decreases the frequency of genes that 
harm organisms, so it would seem that evolutionary theory would be able to 
explain adaptations, but not their failures. This illusion has been so 
strong that even now, over a century since Darwin showed how organisms are 
shaped by natural selection, evolutionary biology is just beginning to be 
applied to the problems of medicine. (1, 1991, 2, 3, Trevathan, In press 
#1220) We are just beginning to learn why we are vulnerable to so many 
diseases. Why do we have an appendix? Wouldn't we be better off without 
wisdom teeth? Why does the human fetus have to squeeze through the tiny 
pelvic opening? Why, after millions of years of natural selection, are we 
still susceptible to infection by the streptococcus organism? Why do we 
get fevers so high they cause seizures? And why do our own immune systems 
sometimes attack us, causing rheumatic fever, rheumatoid arthritis, and 
multiple sclerosis? Why is depression so common, and why is life, in 
general, so full of suffering? Why is pain so often excessive? And why is 
it so hard for so many people to find restful sleep, to say nothing of 
love and sexual satisfaction?

All these questions are about the design of the organism. More 
specifically, they are about why our bodies aren't better designed. In 
many cases, such as the appendix, it would seem to be child's play to 
improve the design. Were we able to change the body as we see fit, we 
could banish much disease. Or, could we? If the problem is just that 
natural selection is just not strong enough to improve the design of the 
body, then we certainly could do better. Selection operates on random 
mutations that constantly slip in, so perhaps the design flaws simply 
result from chance. Some certainly do. The vast majority of designs that 
go bad, are, however, not random mistakes, but products of natural 
selection. This poses a central mystery. If naturalselection is so 
powerful that it can shape bodies so perfect in so many respects, then why 
are our bodies also full of so many flaws and design oversights that leave 
us vulnerable to thousands of diseases?

There are only a few possible kinds of evolutionary explanations for such 
vulnerabilities. First, as already mentioned, there are random 
events--environmental mishaps that are too rare to be seen by natural 
selection and genetic changes that are outside the reach of natural 
selection. Second, there are problems that arise because our bodies were 
not designed from scratch, but from an unbroken lineage that goes all the 
way back to the simplest single-celled organisms. Path dependence--the 
result of this continuous lineage--means that many structure designs are 
actually maladaptive. Third, there is competition between living 
organisms. Natural selection shapes predators, bacteria and viruses, and 
other humans, all of whom may benefit from harming us. To protect 
ourselves from these dangers, natural selection has shaped a wide variety 
of protective defenses such as pain, fever, nausea, and anxiety. These are 
not causes of disease, but the body's ways of preventing damage, yet 
because they are painful and associated with problems, we often confuse 
them with diseases themselves. Fourth, there are trade-offs--every trait 
in the body could be improved to some degree if, that is, we were willing 
to accept the resulting compromises in other traits. Fifth, we were not 
designed by natural selection for our present environment and lifestyles, 
and much disease results because natural selection is not had time to 
transform us for living in the modern environment. Finally, there are 
genetic "quirks", variations that were of no consequence in the ancestral 
environment, but that now cause disease.

Natural selection is an extremely simple principle, but its elaborations 
are extremely subtle and this leads to much misunderstanding. Darwin, of 
course, did not know about genes--all he had to go on was the traits of 
organisms. As a result, he had to develop his ideas based on observations 
of how traits change in response to breeding, with only a vague notion 
about how the information that coded for an organism's traits was passed 
along. Now we know that the information code for organisms is stored in 
DNA, specifically, in approximately 100,000 protein coding sequences 
called genes. While much of this code is identical between two different 
human individuals, and, for that matter, between any two living organisms, 
there are also variations. If individuals with gene A, on the average in 
this environment have more offspring and grand-offspring than individuals 
with gene B, then the A gene will gradually become more common and B will, 
over the generations, become rare. Naturalselection consists of nothing 
more or less than 1) variation in the information code that results in 
variations in phenotypes, 2) differential reproductive success of those 
phenotypes, with the inevitable result of, 3) changes in the information 
code across the generations. (4) This logic is so straightforward that it 
is best described not as a theory, but as a principle. When variation in 
an information code leads to differential reproductive success, the 
information code changes to whatever works best at getting copies of 
itself in future generations.

Despite the simplicity of the principle of natural selection, it remains 
the focus of many misunderstandings. (5) In particular, contrary to the 
beliefs of many, the path of natural selection has no goal, no direction, 
and follows no plan. Yes, it is true that the first organisms were small 
unicellular creatures and the earth now has many large multi-cellular 
organisms with much greater complexity. This is not, however, because of 
any preexisting plan or magical force, it is simply because the first 
organisms were necessarily small and simple, so there was only one 
direction for variations to go. Organisms can evolve to simpler as well as 
more complex forms, as illustrated by the helminths that inhabit mammalian 
guts. Also, while humans are quite wonderful creatures with some unique 
abilities, there is no reason to think that we are a peak or a goal of 
this process. In fact, it appears more and more that our species is, at 
least in terms of the ecosystem it is ravaging, a malignantly successful 
replicator that is accidentally but systematically destroying most other 
organisms on Earth.

The key to understanding natural selection is recognizing that it changes, 
not organisms, but the information code that makes organisms. (4) Whatever 
information creates individuals who maximize copies of that information in 
future generations will become more common. This depends, of course, on 
the environment. There is no such thing as an adaptation in the abstract-- 
traits are adaptive only in reference to a particular environment. (6)

Another common misunderstanding arises from the understandable tendency to 
see individuals and groups as a product of natural selection, instead of 
genes. Different genes cooperate to do things that benefit the individual, 
so intuitively, it seems sensible that individuals should make sacrifices 
for the benefit of the species. There is a huge difference, however, 
between these levels. (7) The genes in each cell of an individual are 
identical. Even if they were not identical, the genes in somatic cells 
cannot be passed on, so they get no benefit whatsoever from doing anything 
except helping the individual. Different individuals, however, have 
different genes.

These genes inevitably induce behaviors that are in their own interests at 
the expense of other individuals. The only exceptions are in the case of 
identical twins or genetically identical individuals in species that can 
reproduce by nonsexual means.

This brings up an immediate, large, good, and unanswered question; why is 
reproduction sexual? Compared to simply budding, sex is expensive, 
troublesome, shuffles the genetic code in ways that cause unfortunate 
genetic combinations and, worst of all, results in related individuals 
with different interests who therefore are shaped to compete against one 
another. The very existence of sex is, from an evolutionary point of view, 
a mystery. (8) One plausible explanation is that the genetic code must be 
constantly varied, otherwise viruses and bacteria would be able to crack 
the code and make short work out every one of us. (9) Another idea is 
based on the best strategy for winning a lottery. (10) In most organisms, 
the vast majority of offspring never ever get to sexual maturity. Each one 
is much like a lottery ticket that probably will be worthless, but may 
have a big payoff. In this situation, the best strategy is obviously not 
to buy many lottery tickets that are identical, but to spread your bets 
among a wide variety of different tickets in hopes that one of them will 
payoff. The important point here is that while it is hard to explain why 
sex exists, it does, and the resulting genetic variation necessarily means 
that individuals within a species will compete, and will cooperate only in 
the service of that competition. We do, however, see individuals sacrifice 
for the good of the group on many occasions, a phenomenon that is the 
deserving focus of much current work (11). It is tempting to try to 
explain such phenomena as a result of selection acting for the benefit of 
the group by selecting for traits that benefit the group even though the 
harm the individual. Except possibly in some very special circumstances, 
however, this simply does not work. The force of selection at the 
individual level is so much more powerful than that at the group level, 
that group selection can explain only traits that are of very small cost 
to the individual and enormous benefit to the group.

One level further down the hierarchy is a parallel issue with important 
consequences for human health. We have already mentioned that genetic 
differences in somatic human cells cannot get into the genome and so act 
only in the interests of the individual. But are there circumstances in 
which genes can have effects that promote their interests in getting into 
the next generation even at the expense of the individual's health? Yes, 
indeed. In fact, such examples are common causes of much human illness and 
suffering. The most dramatic example is the longevity difference between 
the sexes. Males on the average live approximately seven years less than 
females. This is not true only for humans, but for essentially every 
species where males compete vigorously for mates. This phenomenon can be 
explained at one level, the proximate level, by reference to the effects 
of testosterone on tissues, and the effects of male aggression and 
fighting on accident rates. An entirely separate explanation, an 
evolutionary explanation, is necessary to reveal why testosterone has 
deleterious effects on tissues, and why men do aggressive and dangerous 
things. This explanation is based, like all evolutionary explanations, on 
how genes shape traits that influence reproductive success. Females invest 
more in each offspring, therefore the range of their range reproductive 
success is narrowed compared to men. Most women have from 1 to perhaps as 
many as 10 children. Some men, however, will have no offspring whatsoever, 
while some will have far more. Some men have had hundreds of children. 
(12) Thus, the competition between men for mates is extreme, while women 
tend to be choosy. (13) A man whose physiology is set to put increased 
effort into this competition by sacrificing tissue protection, tissue 
healing, immune function, and physical safety, will have a reproductive 
advantage over men who live safer, healthier, longer lives. For women, 
this is not true, at least to the same extent, so they live longer. This 
principle leads to other observable effects even in a modern civilization. 
People do things that are not particularly in their best interests, but 
are in the interests of their genes. For instance, many men will seek out 
additional sexual partners, despite knowing the risks of disease, jealous 
husbands and their own wife's wrath (14). Often they know ahead of time 
exactly what lies in store for them, but they go ahead, almost as if they 
cannot help acting in ways that benefit their genes, even when they know 
it will lead to their harm and ultimate unhappiness.

Still another example of genes taking advantage of individuals occurs in 
the process of meiosis. A gene that can somehow distort the process to get 
increased copies of itself into the egg or sperm will have a huge 
selective advantage so such genes can increase in frequency even if they 
do severe harm to the individual. No examples are known in humans, but the 
T-locus in mice and segregation-distorter locus in Drosophlia, document 
the existence of this phenomenon (15). Our purpose here is not to describe 
such phenomena in any detail, but simply to use them as examples that 
illustrate the crucial principle that natural selection is a mindless 
process that increases the frequency of any bits of information in the DNA 
code that, by whatever means, are especially successful at getting 
themselves into the next generation, even if that harms the individual.

Still another example illustrates the idea of pleiotropy. A gene that 
increase the rate of implantation of a zygote on the uterine wall from the 
usual 25% to, say 35%, will have such a huge selective advantage that it 
can rapidly increase in frequency even if it causes severe problems later 
in life. An example may exist in the DR3 allele on the HLA system, an 
allele that greatly increases the risk of childhood diabetes. (16) 
Phenylketoneuria also may be maintained by the same mechanism, as 
indicated by the presence of this recessive disease in more that the 
expected 50% of a couple's offspring. (17) Competition with other 
organisms

A large proportion of human disease results from competition with other 
organisms. This is most obvious in our competition with viruses and 
bacteria, but disease also arises from competition with predators and 
other humans. In all cases, natural selection is constantly improving our 
ability to cope with these threats, but because these organisms themselves 
are constantly changing products of natural selection who are in a race to 
escape our defenses, there is no end to the process, and much disease 
results. (18, 19) To simplify, consider rabbits and foxes. If a mutation 
makes some foxes a bit faster than others, they will catch more rabbits, 
and this mutation will soon become more common in future generations. This 
has an obvious effect on the rabbits.

Those who previously could handily escape foxes now are vulnerable. Only 
the very fastest rabbits can escape, so selection increases frequency of 
genes that make rabbits still faster, even when those genes may have other 
negative effects. This is a classic instance of a trade-off. A change in 
an organism that is all for the good with no new costs, is extremely rare. 
At the very least, rabbits that run faster are likely to be lighter, and 
therefore less likely to survive a period of food shortage. Or perhaps, 
the changes that make rabbits faster are also increase the speed with 
which energy is metabolized, perhaps with tissue-damaging side effects. As 
must be obvious, this competition between the rabbits and the foxes will 
shape both species in an escalating arms race. Such arms races result in 
much disease. Both foxes and rabbits could be heavier and better able to 
get through a harsh winter if they could just relax and cooperate. But, 
they can't. Similar arms races are even more obvious in the all-out 
competitions between pathogens and hosts (20). Streptococcal bacteria, for 
instance, must somehow escape surveillance by our immune systems. One of 
their strategies seems to be to imitate our own cells so our antibodies 
against them sometimes attack our own tissues. This is obviously a tricky 
business, but we must do it to it escape their infections. So, some people 
and up get rheumatic fever that damages the joints and heart valves, or 
obsessive compulsive disorder from damage to the basal ganglia, or scarlet 
fever from damage to the skin. The layer on layer of intrigue and 
counter-intrigue in these competitions is breathtaking in its complexity, 
and tragic in its results (21). Consider the organism that causes sleeping 
sickness, the trypanosome. Its antigen coat stimulates a healthy immune 
response, but just at the time when antibodies are being made in quantity, 
the organism exposes a completely different antigen coat, thus eluding its 
pursuers as effectively as a spy who completely changes his disguise. (22)

Such arms races seem to be responsible for considerable genetic variation, 
some of which causes disease. The sickle cell trait is a well-known 
example. Individuals with a single sickle cell allele are protected 
against malaria but do not get sickle cell disease, while those with 2 
sickle cell alleles die young from sickle cell disease, and those who have 
no sickle cell alleles are vulnerable to malaria. This example has been 
widely discussed, but it is somewhat peculiar because it results from a 
single nucleotide substitution that apparently occurred in the 
neighborhood of ten thousand years ago, and, is found only in Africa and 
areas of the Mediterranean were malaria has been prevalent. (23) The 
alpha+-thalassaemias are of particular interest because they are the 
commonest known human genetic disorders. They have been thought to protect 
from malaria, but recent evidence suggests that they are associated with a 
higher incidence of malaria. The explanation seems to be that by 
increasing susceptibility to the more mild Plasmodium vivax they result in 
immunity that protects against the more severe P. falciparum malaria (24). 
G6PD deficiency also apparently protects against malaria and has increased 
in frequency in the times since humans began agriculture (25). There has 
been wide speculation that some of the genetic diseases characteristic of 
the Askanazi Jews, such as Tay Sachs and other sphingolipidoses, may 
protect against tuberculosis. (26)

These genetic variations are present only in small groups, but others may 
have become universal genetic characteristics that protect us against 
other pathogens despite causing us harm. Despite the difficulty of 
distinguishing harmful from useful genes, (27), it is important to 
recognize this mechanism as a source of vulnerability to disease, 
especially as we begin to unravel the entire genome. Some genes will, no 
doubt, appear to have wholly pathologicaleffects. Before we tamper with 
them, we should consider the possibility that they may have unsuspected 
benefits. What is the optimum level of virulence for a pathogen? On the 
surface it would seem senseless for a pathogen to kill its host. Why not 
simply coexist with a host so that the host lives longer and the pathogen 
can also? But this is not how natural selection works. Whatever 
information code in pathogens results in the most copies in future 
generations will become more common.

For some pathogens, such as those that cause minor upper respiratory 
infections, a low-level of virulence will facilitate spread. People who 
are too sick to leave bed will not be up and about coughing, sneezing, and 
touching other people. On the other hand, when a pathogen is spread by 
vector such as mosquitoes or dirty water, selection may favor increased 
virulence. Malaria may spread even better if the host is unable to slap at 
mosquitoes. In an environment where raw sewage may reach others, cholera 
may spread proportionate to the amount of diarrhea it produces. When the 
host is infected with a fatal pathogen, restraint by another pathogen is 
of no benefit.

Paul Ewald has investigated such situations in detail, and predicted and 
demonstrated that virulence should decrease when changed sanitary 
conditions shift the advantage to strains of an organism that allow the 
victim to be up and about. (20) Indeed, when public sanitation is 
successful, the more virulent type of cholera is displaced by the less 
virulent. Likewise with Shigella - when public sanitation is instituted, 
natural selection shifts the advantage to less virulent subtype. This 
principle has profound implications for modern hospitals as well, since 
doctor's and nurse's hands serve the same function as mosquitoes, 
transferring pathogens from and to passive victims in a cycle that selects 
for the more aggressive organisms.

Finally, we note the lengths to which pathogens go to insure their 
transmission. They can even take over the behavioral control machinery of 
the host to their own advantage. (28) Ants who are infected with a 
particular kind of fluke will, in the late stages of infection, climb to 
the top of a blade of grass and grab on in a spasm that will not let go. 
Why? The next phase of the life-cycle for this fluke is in sheep, so ants 
clasping the tip of a blade of grass are helpless prisoners doing the 
bidding of their internal masters. Similar pathogens induced snails to 
crawl up on the shore where they are exposed to sea gulls, the next stage 
in their life-cycle. A more common and gruesome example that affects 
humans, is offered by rabies. After it enters the skin, the rabies virus 
enters the nerves and arranges for its own transport directly to the 
central nervous system. There, it concentrates in the amygdala, a site 
that controls aggression, and in the brain locus that controls swallowing, 
so that the mouth fills with saliva, and in the salivary glands. Thus, the 
rabies virus essentially takes over the individual and turns it into a 
device for transmitting itself.

Defenses

Many manifestations of disease are caused directly by a pathogen or by 
some defect in the body. Paralysis, jaundice, and seizures, are examples. 
Other manifestations of disease are not themselves defects, but are 
defenses that have been shaped by natural selection to protect us in the 
face of certain dangers. Examples include pain, nausea, vomiting, 
diarrhea, fatigue and anxiety. It is very easy to mistakenly interpret 
such symptoms as pathological, when, in fact they are protections against 
pathology. Cough is the most obviously useful defense. The basic benefit 
of cough is clearing foreign from the respiratory tract. People who are 
unable to cough cannot clear secretions from their lungs and are likely to 
die from pneumonia. A variety of other mechanisms do the same thing for 
other passageways. Vomiting clears toxins and pathogens from the upper GI 
tract while diarrhea clears them from the lower GI tract. Coughing, 
sneezing and nasal secretions clear the respiratory passages. Inflammation 
leading to pus formation and extrusion on the surface of the body serves 
the same function for infections that have penetrated the tissue of the 
body.

Much of general medical practice consists in blocking the discomfort 
associated with these symptoms. We use these medication to block cough, 
relieve pain, stop vomiting and decrease diarrhea. Is this wise? Not 
always. In a clear demonstration of the value of diarrhea, Du Pont and 
Hornick compared the outcomes in people with Shigella infections who took 
medications to decrease diarrhea and those who did not. (29) Those who are 
left alone recovered faster, while those who took medication had extended 
illness, more complications, and were more likely to become carriers. 
Giving cough suppressants to patients shortly after surgery is well-known 
to cause pneumonia, so physicians therefore avoid this. Nonetheless, in 
many other situations we are able to use medications to block cough, 
diarrhea, and vomiting with no particular apparent ill- effects. How is 
this possible? Consider how natural selection shaped the mechanisms to 
regulate these defenses. Essentially natural selection acts on the outcome 
of a signal detection analysis.

Just as electrical engineer must set a system to decide correctly whether 
given click coming across a line is a signal or just noise, the body's 
regulation mechanisms must set the system for, say, vomiting, to expel the 
contents of the stomach only when that is worthwhile. But such signals are 
somewhat difficult to interpret. The only way to insure that no toxin is 
ever ingested, is not to eat all. This would not be good strategy. 
Conversely, to avoid wasting calories, it would be best never ever to 
vomit. This would not be wise either. The optimal regulation strategy 
depends on how likely it is that a toxin really is present, how costly it 
will be to mount a defensive response of vomiting, and how costly it would 
be to fail to mount such response if the toxin is actually present. In 
many instances the parameters of the system favor an apparently 
overly-sensitive defense responses. The cost of many defenses is 
relatively small--in the case of vomiting, only a few hundred calories. 
The cost of not responding could be death. As a result, natural selection 
has shaped the normal system to respond in many instances where a response 
is not actually necessary in order to ensure that the system will always 
respond when response is necessary. We call this the "smoke detector 
principle" because it also guides the design of smoke detectors. (2) We 
could design a smoke detector that would sound a warning only when the 
house was definitely on fire and never when the toast is burning. Such a 
system would, however, on occasion fail to sound off in when there was a 
real fire. Thus, we want our smoke detectors designed to sound some false 
alarms because that is what it takes to ensure that they will always warn 
us of a real fire.

This "smoke detector principle" also helps to explain how is possible to 
use medications to block defenses without necessarily causing harm. Nine 
times out of ten vomiting may not be necessary, so in most instances, 
medications to block it will cause little harm. Then again, there is that 
additional instance when it really is necessary. The same principle 
applies to many other defenses. Consider pain. Pain is a useful adaptation 
- people who lack the capacity for pain are usually dead by their early 
20s or 30s. (30) Overall, however, it seems that most of the pain that we 
experience in life, at least in the modern environment, is excessive and 
prolonged. Medical advances to block pain have been a great boon for 
humans. Furthermore, we now recognize disorders in which the pain system 
itself is dysregulated causing chronic pain. Defensive mechanisms, like 
any other real-world mechanisms, can malfunction.

Anxiety offers another instructive example. We often imagine that we would 
prefer life without the experience of anxiety, but people who lack anxiety 
entirely likely do as poorly in life as people who lack the capacity for 
pain. They do not come to psychiatrist's offices complaining of 
insufficient anxiety, but the defect is just as serious it as if their 
immune systems were hypofunctional. (31, 32) Therefore, while a few people 
may have anxiety deficiencies, the vast majority of us tend to have more 
anxiety that we need. Blocking this anxiety with medications only rarely 
leads to reckless behavior, although in case of driving automobiles, this 
certainly can cause accidents.

We have additional defenses that are specific against infection, including 
fever, inflammation and the immune response. Fever is not a simple 
increase in the rate of metabolism, but is a systematic and coordinated 
response to the presence of cues that indicate the presence of infection. 
(33) During a fever, the body will defend the new set point by increasing 
the temperature if attempts are made to reduce it and also by decreasing 
the temperature if attempts are made to increase it further . Pathogens 
are more susceptible to our defenses at the higher body temperature. Even 
cold-blooded animals raise their body temperature in the face of infection 
by moving to warmer places until the infection is controlled. All this 
leads to an obvious question--is it indeed wise to block fever during 
infection? Surprisingly, adequate studies have still not been done on this 
most routine medical question. Certainly in many individual instances the 
smoke detector principle applies, and we can block fever and rely on the 
body's other defense mechanisms to protect us. However, there may be 
situations in which we would get better faster if we did not block fever.

Also, in cold climates people have repeatedly discovered the sauna bath or 
other ways to raise body temperature, perhaps because this helps to 
improve health. In the case of chicken pox, there is some evidence that 
antipyretics slightly prolong the cause of illness. For influenza, would 
people get better faster if they did not take medications block fever? We 
don't know. None of these defenses are diseases themselves, but it is easy 
to fall into the illusion that they are problems, instead of parts of 
solutions. This illusion is fostered because they are constantly 
associated with pathology and because they can so often be blocked without 
untoward effects.

The illusion is still further fostered by the psychological and physical 
discomfort we experience in association with the expression of defenses. 
We don't like fever, we obviously don't want pain, vomiting, diarrhea and 
coughing are extremely unpleasant, and it's perfectly understandable that 
we should want to minimize them. This brings us to the next question, why 
do humans have capacities for suffering at all?

The capacities for suffering

The capacities for suffering are products of natural selection. If pain 
was not useful, we would not have the capacity for pain. If anxiety was 
not useful, we would not have anxiety. Anxiety and pain, perhaps in 
concert with the awful feelings we get when we lose someone we love, are 
close to purely negative experiences, their aversiveness almost certainly 
being central to their utility. People who didn't mind tissue damage, 
threats, and losses, have not passed on as many of their genes as people 
who did everything in their power to avoid these circumstances. The 
reaction of people to narcotic pain-killers is of great interest. Many 
report that they can still experience the pain but "it no longer bothers 
me." In essence, they report the perception is intact, but the affective 
representation of the experience has been reduced or eliminated. Much of 
the mission of medicine is, of course, to relieve suffering. This is best 
accomplished by eliminating the cause that has aroused the negative 
feeling, but very often we can safely and effectively use medications to 
directly block the brain mechanisms that gave give rise to negative 
feeling.

Many bodily defects, such as cancer or atherosclerosis are imperceptible 
for years, but almost every bodily defense is associated with discomfort. 
Nausea precedes vomiting and inhibits eating, thus preventing further 
intake of toxins. Diarrhea and cough are quite annoying. The physical 
fatigue that follows over-exertion is unpleasant enough to motivate 
avoidance of the situations that gave rise to it. The malaise that 
accompanies infection often seems excessive, and when we take medications 
that block this feeling we can often go about our business much more 
comfortably. In the ancestral environment, however, when predators were 
problem, this might not have been so wise. In that circumstance, to wander 
far from camp when unable to run fast might have been unwise indeed. 
Furthermore, simply resting during infection may allow the body's full 
resources to be commandeered for the fight.

Many forms of human suffering are not so physical. We also experience 
depression, anger, jealousy, anger, embarrassment, and many other 
unpleasant emotions. By extension, it seems likely that the very 
unpleasantness of these emotions is also a product of natural selection.

Indeed, most of them are aroused by situations that are not good for our 
health, status, or reproductive success. (34) Work to understand the 
emotions in this light is just beginning, but it is needed urgently if we 
are to cope wisely with the development of new psychopharmacologic agents. 
We already have effective anti-anxiety drugs, although they all have 
side-effects or cause dependency. We have increasingly good drugs to block 
depression, although they take weeks to work and also have side effects. 
It seems entirely likely, however, that the combination of brain science, 
the genome project, and improvements in chemistry will lead to agents that 
are far more specific with far fewer side-effects. We are ill-prepared to 
decide how to use such substances. If, for instance, a pill was developed 
that could eliminate jealousy, how would we use it? Certainly this could 
prevent much suffering, and even violence, but it would also undermine 
some deep human impulses that are responsible, in a considerable measure, 
for the fundamental structure of the family and society. Or, how would we 
use agents that block the experiences of greed and envy? On the surface it 
would seem fine to eliminate these nasty emotions, but we might find that 
we simultaneously eliminate the motives for much human effort and 
entrepreneurship that makes societies successful in competition with other 
societies. We expect that conflicts between individuals and their 
societies will arise over the use of such drugs. Perhaps the current war 
on drugs is already an example. (35)

Trade-offs

Every aspect of the body could be designed to be more resistant to 
disease, but only at a cost. Why for instance are our arms not stronger 
and less prone to fractures? Arm bones could be made thicker and less 
likely to break when we fall. Because of the design of these bones, 
however, making them thicker would drastically decrease our dexterity and 
make it impossible to rotate the wrist the way we can now. We could be 
even better protected from infection if our immune systems were more 
aggressive. Then, however, the untoward effects of the system, including 
tissue damage and rapid senescence , would become even more prominent and 
we might also experience more auto-immune disease. Our vision could be 
still more acute, like a hawk able to see a mouse from a kilometer way. 
The trade-offs, however, would be a drastic loss of peripheral vision, 
color vision and the ability to see complex shapes all at once. Our 
upright posture is still another trade-off. Many explanations have been 
proposed to explain why we walk on two feet, from the benefits of using 
tools and weapons, to the need to carry infants. Whatever the benefit is, 
we can be sure was a substantial one, because standing upright has so many 
costs. The most obvious one comes from the design of our spine which is 
optimized for a creature the goes about on all fours. On standing upright, 
however, enormous pressure is put on the lower spinal discs, causing pain 
and disability that is perhaps more common than any other medical 
disorder. On the much more mundane level it appears that hemorrhoids 
result from the changes in circulation that result from upright posture. 
The tendency to faint is greatly increased by standing upright. The 
tendency to lose one's balance and the need for extraordinarily complex 
brain mechanisms to regulate bodily position and balance are all secondary 
to standing upright. Even the design of the system that supplies blood to 
our bowel is very poorly designed for an upright posture. In an animal 
that goes about on all fours the omentum hangs like a curtain, supporting 
the bowel and providing easy access for vessels. But when we stand up, 
however, it is as if someone took the curtain rod and stood it upright, 
whereupon the folds tangle in on one another, giving rise to the 
possibility of bowel obstruction and arterial compromise. It's worth 
noting that these trade-offs can also be interpreted as novelties, in that 
there simply has not been enough time for natural selection to shape 
reliable mechanisms to protect us against of these ills. Perhaps in 
another million years back pain will be far less frequent. In the 
meantime, however, we will suffer.

Another trait that seems to be maladaptive, is our lack of hair. There is 
much disagreement about the evolutionary explanation for our nakedness, 
with proposals ranging from increased ability to sweat, to speculation 
that we spent much time in the water in our evolutionary past. Whatever 
the explanation, there are some obvious penalties, especially for paler 
individuals, including sunburn, and a risk of dying from malignant 
melanoma. Everything is a trade-off. It is foolish to describe a trait as 
perfect and there are few traits that are simply pathological. All have 
costs and benefits. All are trade-offs.

Such trade-offs also exist at the level of the gene. All genetic changes 
begin as new mutations, and it would be rare indeed for a mutation to have 
only benefits and no costs. Given the interaction effects among 100,000 
genes, acting in environments that vary from year to year and generation 
to generation, a detailed accounting of such costs and benefits is beyond 
our current understanding . What we do know, however, is that a gene that 
gives a net selective advantage will likely be selected for, even if it 
causes disease in some people, or disability or decreased function in all 
of us. It is extremely hard to recognize genes that cause disadvantages in 
all of us, because we have nothing to compare them to. What we do have are 
a few examples of genes that have obvious benefits that explain their 
selection despite their tendency to cause disease. Sickle cell disease has 
already been mentioned. It is the only solidly documented example. In our 
book, we described our expectation that the allele that causes cystic 
fibrosis would be found have some benefit, because it was so common and so 
reliably fatal. This speculation has since been supported by epidemiology 
(23) and by genetic studies of mice with a single cystic fibrosis allele . 
In more recent work, it has been discovered that this allele also inhibits 
Salmonella typhi, the cause of typhoid fever, from entering the cells in 
our gut. (36)

A further illustration may soon be available in the case of manic 
depressive illness. This illness is overwhelmingly genetic in its origins, 
affects approximately one percent of people worldwide with devastating 
consequences including a 20 percent risk of suicide and a 20 percent risk 
of early death from other causes. (37) The selection force acting against 
the genes that cause manic depression is so enormous that there is very 
likely some selective advantage unless a large number of genes are 
involved. What could the advantage be? For centuries, people have noted 
the increased creativity of people who have manic depressive tendencies 
and recent scientific evidence confirms this finding. (38) Perhaps this 
creativity somehow leads to selection for the manic depression genes. 
There's no need, however, for the benefit to accrue to people with manic 
depressive illness. In fact, it's more likely that their unaffected kin 
would experience a benefit, while those with the disease would experience 
mainly the costs. This general mechanism may apply to many genes, with 
some individuals suffering from a disease, while fitness benefits accrue 
to relatives who carry the same genes in combination with other different 
genes. The definitive test would be to look at the reproductive success, 
in the ancestral environment, of relatives of individuals with manic 
depressive illness. Such a study would be nearly impossible to do. We will 
likely sooner identify the specific genes. Once we have them, we will look 
at people who have these genes to see how they differ from other 
individuals. Perhaps they are more creative and perhaps this creativity 
does give them increased reproductive success or other advantages. Or 
perhaps the genes protect them from some infection. The question will be 
difficult to answer but important as we approach a time when genes can be 
manipulated.

This example has important implications for those who would try to improve 
the human species by controlling reproduction. A long-standing dream of 
progressives has been to eliminate defective genes and thus improve the 
health of the population, presumably making the world better place. While 
this idea recurs often throughout history, it was the subject of early 
public policies in the United States at the very start of the 
20th-century. As everyone knows, a grander and more deadly version was 
practiced by the Nazis, leaving a lingering repugnance for eugenics that 
makes it almost impossible even to talk about the issue. (39) We will 
address the issue of human rights here only by saying that in our vision, 
Darwinian medicine is a field that benefits individuals, not nations or 
the species. The other issue is the scientific basis for eugenics. Much 
has already been said about the lack of scientific foundation for such 
efforts as conducted in the past. Many supposedly genetic diseases, such 
as cretinism, turned out to be caused by environmental factors, and others 
resulted from many genes or rare recessive genes so that eugenic efforts, 
and the associated restrictions of individual reproductive rights, were in 
vain. An evolutionary view of disease helps to reveal the complexity of 
these matters. Population geneticists have worked out the details of how 
certain rare recessive genes persist in the population irrespective of 
their possible selective costs, and these principles show the 
extraordinary practical difficulties faced by anyone who would try to 
reduce the frequency of such genes through selective breeding. An even 
more important factor is that many genetic diseases involve many genes, 
often in complex interactions with environmental factors. Even specific 
harmful genes may give rise to disease in only a small proportion of 
individuals, so restricting reproductive opportunities on the basis of 
manifest disease will have little impact on the frequency of most diseases 
even if eugenic policies were pursued rigidly for many generations.

The case of manic depressive illness, is instructive because the 
responsible genes may well be helpful as well as harmful. This case is 
peculiarly appropriate to consider for public policy because while the 
individual may suffer with manic depressive illness, the society may 
benefit from creations by the ill individual or his or her relatives. To 
eliminate the genes that cause manic depressive illness without careful 
thought could, therefore, be a catastrophic mistake. Furthermore, other 
genes that appear superficially to be simple defects, will likely turn out 
to have unanticipated adaptive benefits, although it is still very 
difficult to distinguish these from others. (40) We know enough now to 
suggest that it would be safe to do away with genes that cause cystic 
fibrosis, but it will be more difficult to discover if and what benefits 
accrue from other genes that cause disease. Finally, it is by no means 
certain that the future human environment will be the environment that we 
live and now, so eliminating disease causing genes that protect us against 
infections that are now rare may seem wise, but at some future date cause 
new suffering.

All of this is, of course, about to be changed by the unraveling of the 
human genome. On one hand we will finally have accurate information about 
individual genotypes, and will no longer have to rely on phenotypic 
expression of disease. On the other hand, it's likely that medical 
advances arising from the human genome project will make it possible to 
control vastly more diseases, including genetic diseases, that has ever 
before been possible. This will, no doubt, give rise to new calls for 
restricting reproduction among certain individuals with specific known 
pathological genotypes. While this argument goes on, further progress will 
be made in discovering ways to minimize the effects of these genetic 
defects or to allow people with such defects to have offspring in which 
manipulation of a single bit of DNA can prevent the problem. Of course, 
human tendencies will use these technologies to give rise to entirely new 
problems.

People will want to have offspring with the best possible genotype. We 
predict that a market will soon arise in which rich people will try to 
control the genotype of their offspring. Such a phenomenon of would likely 
lead to an arms race for genetic information between countries that are 
fearful that their populations would be left behind by genetically 
superior generations in other countries. This prospect seems both 
frightening and likely to us. While it would be easy simply to advocate 
for restrictions on such practices, they would both prove extremely 
difficult to enforce and, perhaps not in the interests of elites to 
enforce in their own country. What does seem likely is that the human 
species will, in a few hundred years, be different than it is now. No 
doubt it will in some ways be better, but much conflict and many mistakes 
lie along that road.

Novelty

The environment in which we live is considerably different from the 
environment in which we were designed to live. While much disease arises 
from environmental changes in the past 100 years, much disease also arises 
from changes since the advent of agriculture about 40,000 years ago (41). 
Prior to that, humans lived in small hunting and foraging groups of 20 to 
50 people who lived largely on fruits, tubers, grains, and meat. In most 
locations, salt was in short supply, sugar was available mainly in the 
form of ripe fruits or occasionally as honey, and high levels of fat were 
almost always unavailable. We are living in an unnatural environment.

It is easy to over-generalize this principle. The idea of the environment 
of evolutionary adaptedness (the EEA), proposed by John Bowlby, (42) has 
been extremely useful in reminding us about the differences between then 
and now. As pointed out by recent scholarship, however, there was no 
single environment of evolutionary adaptedness, but a constellation of 
situations in which our ancestors lived. (43) While these environments had 
much in common, they also differed. When humans moved out of Africa, 
perhaps one million years ago, their particular ability to adapt to new 
environments quickly lead to spread across the Eur-Asian land mass. As 
they moved to new environments, new selective forces began to act. In 
colder climates individuals with shorter arms and legs lost heat less 
quickly and had a selective advantage. In environments where lack of 
sunshine and wearing clothes lead to light deprivation on the skin causing 
vitamin D depletion and rickets, there was selection for decreased skin 
pigmentation. (44) In settings where humans raised animals and subsisted 
on milk, there was selection for maintenance of lactose activity into 
adult life. (45)

The big environmental changes however, have been those of our own making. 
The giant one was the invention of agriculture. By growing their own food, 
people were able to insure a much more consistent supply of calories at 
less effort. The price, however, was immediate increase in certain 
diseases. Studies of Native Americans give particularly clear evidence of 
the rise in disease after cultivation of maize and sorgum became common. 
The stature of adults declined, and arthritis and tooth decay suddenly 
emerged because the agricultural diet provided more sugar, and far fewer 
and more limited phytochemicals than the diet consumed by hunter 
gatherers. The diets of these early Native Americans were probably also 
deficient in protein and certain essential amino acids.

Cultural traits can do much to compensate for such problems. For instance, 
many native groups in the Americas soak their maize in alkali before 
cooking--a process that frees the niacin, an essential vitamin that is 
otherwise deficient in a maize based diet. (46) and may increase lysine, 
an amino acid deficient in a maize diet. Other deficiencies are not so 
easy to remedy. When eating natural fruits and vegetables, humans get 
plenty of vitamin C, a chemical they cannot synthesized friends (in 
contrast to other primates, most of which can). Because vitamin C is a 
necessary substance for us, we can be confident that it was in abundant 
supply as a routine part of our diets for long enough to allow the 
synthetic mechanism to be lost over the course or evolution. When sailors 
began to take voyages lasting months, subsisting only on hardtack and 
dried meat, scurvy quickly became a major problem. When Lind discovered 
that giving out rations of limes prevented scurvy, the way was paved for 
the discovery vitamin C. In Iceland, the same problem had long been 
recognized and prevented by storing blueberries especially for the time in 
late winter when scurry became a problem

We are vastly more healthy on the average now that we were even a few 
hundred years ago. In most locations infection is less likely and more 
curable, accidents are less common and more treatable, and general health 
has improved thanks to more adequate food supplies and sanitation. A 
Darwinian approach to medicine in no way advocates reverting to some 
imagined ancestral time of perfect health. On the other hand, it remains 
true that the majority of problems we see in medical clinics today arise 
from novel aspects of our modern environment to which our "thrifty 
genotype" not yet adapted. (47) The most common and devastating of these 
diseases arise from our abnormal diets, and the resulting triad of 
hypertension, obesity, and atherosclerosis. (48) Compared to our 
ancestors, are diets include vastly more fat, salt, and sugar and 
substantially less phytochemicals and fiber. (49) The result is the 
current epidemic of heart disease and stroke caused largely by 
atherosclerosis. Such diseases claim half of individuals in most modern 
countries. The defect in design, however, is not simply in our metabolism 
and our arteries, it is also in our brains. A hunter-gatherer who did not 
have a taste for sugar and fat would be at a disadvantage. One could 
hardly ever get enough of those substances in the ancestral environment. 
Today, we have the same preferences as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but 
the world is different. The difference, of course, is that the 
hunter-gatherer had to work long hours to get even occasional taste of a 
high-fat high-salt, high sugar food, if it was possible at all. Nowadays, 
we can go to the grocery store and glut ourselves on a wide variety of 
snack foods that satisfy these cravings instantly. In United States more 
than half of individuals are now overweight and a third are clinically 
obese, conditions that contribute to much disease.

Individuals try to diet, but rarely succeed. They know what they should 
eat, but they eat fat and sugar instead. They know they should exercise, 
but they don't. The fault is not with their will- power, but with the very 
design of the brain mechanisms that regulate their exercise and diet, a 
design that is optimized for an entirely different environment. As the 
diets typical in technological societies spread to developing countries, 
the epidemic is predicted to be the single greatest cause of human 
disease. (50)

Eating disorders are problems that seem to have arisen mainly in the last 
generation. The ability to live with very little caloric expenditure, and 
eat whatever one chooses whenever one chooses, interacts with evolved 
preferences for mates with a particular shape with unfortunate results. It 
appears to be a cross-cultural universal that men prefer women with a 
waist/hip ratio of about 0.7. (51) This has been proposed to identify 
women who have recently become sexually mature but who have not yet borne 
many children, thus making them optimal reproductive partners. Heavy women 
obviously do not have this conformation. Furthermore, the human tendency 
to attend to caricatures interacts with mass media to create images of 
women that are exaggerations of this ideal. In the arms race that arises 
from sexual competition, women try to live up to these ideals, often with 
tragic consequences. Attempting to diet sets off protective mechanisms 
that were designed to protect a person from famine. When food is in short 
supply, these mechanisms induce preoccupation with food and a tendency to 
quickly gulp down large amounts of high calorie food. Such impulses to 
gorge make a woman on a calorie-restricted diet even more fearful that she 
will be unable to control her energy intake, so she tries even harder to 
diet. This sets off a vicious cycle in which the impulses to eat become 
still stronger, causing more loss of control, thus making her feel still 
worse, until a serious eating disorder is established. For most women, 
(with eating disorders) the cycle becomes one of the bulimia, eating large 
amounts of food and then vomiting. For those few women with extraordinary 
will-power, it is possible to restrict intake entirely causing anorexia 
nervosa, a disease that is sometimes fatal. Eating disorders are a product 
of the novel environment in which we live. They can be explained by the 
food intake regulation mechanisms that evolved in an entirely different 
environment and their interactions with innate sexual preferences that are 
exaggerated by modern media. Such problems will become much more common as 
technology and easy access to variable foods spreads across the world.

On a much more mundane level, millions of people suffer from pain at the 
inside edge of the heel. This is sometimes called "heel spurs", because a 
tiny bit of calcification is visible on x-rays, but the technical name is 
plantar faschitis. The plantar faschia is a band of tough tissue that 
stretches from the ball of the foot to the heel--essentially it is the bow 
string that holds arch of the foot taunt. When walking miles each day and 
sitting without chairs by squatting on the ground, this faschia is 
constantly stretched and exercised. When, however, people sit for long 
hours in chairs, this tissue is not stretched and contracts. When the 
contracted tissue is suddenly stretched by jogging or a long walk, it is 
vulnerable to ripping off from the heel--an injury that causes pain at the 
site of the injury. Certainly there are peculiarities of anatomy and 
walking posture that increase the vulnerability of some individuals to 
this problem, but the fundamental difficulty is the design of the organism 
and the mismatch with how we live our lives today. We are designed to seek 
comfort and minimize caloric expenditure. Plantar faschiitis is one of the 
several costs for following our evolved inclinations when they are no 
longer adaptive. The invention of reliable birth control has been enormous 
boon, not only for individuals, but also for populations, that at last 
have some hope of restraining their numbers without relying on disease, 
war, and starvation to control populations. The availability of birth 
control is, however, a completely novel aspect of the environment that 
causes many complications. In the ancestral environment, a woman would 
typically reached sexual maturity at about age 17, would become pregnant 
within a year or two, following which she would nurse or baby for two to 
three years and quickly become pregnant once again. The total number of 
menstrual cycles in a lifetime averaged around a hundred. (52) Nowadays, 
women reached sexual maturity much younger, probably because of a superior 
diet and increased fat stores earlier life. They may wait until age 30 to 
have children or may never become pregnant. After giving birth, a woman 
may feed the baby with a bottle, thus making it possible to become 
pregnant again in a matter of months, instead of the several years of 
infertility associated with breast feeding. The most common complication 
of this modern pattern is certainly iron deficiency anemia. The disorder 
is far more common in women than men because of loss of blood with each 
menstrual cycle. The system was never designed for as many menstrual 
cycles as now take place. High rates of breast cancer in modern societies 
may also be partly attributed to the use of birth control. (53) The cells 
in the breast that are most vulnerable to becoming cancerous begin 
dividing at menarche and stop dividing only with the first pregnancy. In 
the ancestral environment this interval lasted months to a year, but now 
it often lasts for decades. Studies are now being done to see if the use 
of pregnancy mimicking hormones for some years after menarche can prevent 
breast cancer in some young women whose family histories suggest a high 
risk.

The discovery of psychoactive drugs has also been a great boon for 
humankind, but like all other advances, it has brought complications, in 
this case drug abuse. While some individuals clearly are far more 
susceptible to addiction than others, and while social factors certainly 
help to account for why some people become addicted and others do not, an 
evolutionary approach to the problem highlights the universal capacity for 
humans to become addicted to drugs that act directly on motivational 
systems. (35) The ascending dopaminergic tracts that are stimulated by 
most drugs of abuse are intimately involved with reward mechanisms 
designed to control behavior. (54) Actions that led to success (as 
indicated by cues such as eating tasty food) are reinforced and become 
more common. When, however, these mechanisms are stimulated by direct 
action of drugs, they have no way of interpreting what is happening and 
they respond as if some huge bonanza of resources had just been gained. 
This gives a subjective enormous pleasure, the likes of which is hard to 
find in real life. It also entrains behavior to repeat, over and over 
again, whatever action brought such enormous pleasure. The great irony is 
that after continued drug use, the drug addict may get very little 
pleasure. Apparently the mechanisms that regulate subjective experience 
damp out after repeated exposure to the drug. The mechanisms that control 
behavior, however, tend to persist. Thus, the common picture of the 
drug-addicted individual who desperately wants to quit, who gets little 
pleasure from his habit, and yet who feels helplessly compelled to spend 
his life seeking out drugs of abuse. (55) We were simply never designed to 
live in an environment where drugs of abuse are readily available. It 
seems as if there should be some solution to the problem drug abuse, 
either by prevention, treatment or legalization of drugs. A Darwinian 
approach suggests, however, that this problem may not have any 
straightforward solution but may arise from an intrinsic vulnerability of 
organisms that reach an advanced enough state of technology if their 
motivational systems are chemically controlled, as ours are. In fact, we 
predict that when we make contact with intelligent organisms on other 
planets, we will discover that they either are continuing to cope with a 
chronic problem drug abuse or at least passed through that stage at great 
cost and suffering.

The amount of anxiety we experience nowadays is greatly excessive for the 
dangers we encounter. (31) Most of us would be better off cutting down our 
anxiety level by several notches. In this sense, anxiety can be seen as 
excessive, given that we live in novel environment. It also seems 
possible, however, that the anxiety system was fine-tuned during a 
life-time in ancestral environments by exposure to things that actually 
were dangerous. A modern person may see snakes only in zoos and so fear of 
snakes can become quite generalized and lead to a tendency to avoid any 
place a snake might conceivably be seen. If that same person had been 
living in an ancestral environment, however, there would be great pressure 
to keep going to places were snakes would be seen despite the fear, a 
process that which soon extinguish unwarranted fear. Furthermore, exposure 
to different kinds of snakes would soon lead to stimulus discrimination 
between snakes that are harmful and those that are harmless. Many modern 
phobias may, paradoxically, result from lack of exposure to different 
kinds of dangerous objects.

Genetic quirks

We have emphasized diseases that arise from novel aspects of the 
environment and diseases that arise from genes that may have benefits as 
well as costs. Much modern disease arises, however, from interactions 
between genetic variation and environmental novelty. Genes that had no ill 
effects in our ancestral environment now reliably cause disease. Myopia is 
an excellent example. Nearsightedness is a genetic disorder. If your 
parents have it, you almost certainly will as well. This prevalence is 
approximately 25 percent in all modern populations. How could such a 
serious defect be maintained despite the force of natural selection? The 
answer comes from recognizing that this is not purely a genetic defect, 
but a genetic variation that was harmless until people began doing close 
work, such as reading at an early age. Such early reading, in people who 
have the genes, reliably cause is myopia. People who do not have the 
genes, or do not do close work, never get nearsighted. Attempts to decide 
if it is a genetic or an environmental disease are confused. Like many 
other diseases, it is both.

Much atherosclerosis is probably the same. The genes that increase 
vulnerability to heart disease probably were not harmful in an environment 
where no one had high cholesterol. To call these genes defects is vastly 
simplistic. These variations were of minor consequence in the environment 
we were designed to live in. Genes that make some individuals especially 
susceptible to drug abuse, are still another example of "quirks" that 
caused no harm in the natural environment.

Path dependence

We have emphasized design features of the human body that offer some 
advantages as well as disadvantages. Other features are, however, simply 
mistakes. The eye, for instance, that wonder of wonders, is inside out. 
The vessels and nerves enter at the back of the eye ball causing a blind 
spot, and they spread out of the inside of the retina casting shadows. The 
eye of an octopus is, in contrast, much better designed. The nerves and 
vessels run along the outside of the eyeball, penetrating were they are 
needed. This octopus has no difficulty with a blind spot, no shadows cast 
by the retina, and is protected against detachment of the retina. In this 
respect, the design of the octopus eye is extremely sensible, ours is a 
mistake. Why doesn't natural selection fix it?

Because the process of evolution is not based on planned design, but on 
continual tiny modifications in which each generation must survive and 
prosper. Once some semblance of a working eye gave a selective advantages 
to our ancestors, the process moved forward steadily until our eyes were 
as good as they could be, despite the gross disadvantages of having 
vessels on the inside. As Jacob Monod has put it so clearly, "Nature is a 
tinkerer, not an engineer."

Many other examples illustrate other anatomical difficulties that arise 
from path dependence. (56) The vas deferens, for instance, instead of 
going directly from the testicles to the penis, makes a long detour into 
the pelvis, looping around the inguinal arteries, and only then returning 
to the urethra. This path makes it vulnerable to damage, at least in 
surgery. But, because the original routing of the vas deferens and the 
iliac vessels was the it was, there is no going back. The recurrent 
laryngeal nerve offers another example. This nerve controls some motions 
of the vocal cords and muscular contraction of the upper eyelid and the 
pupil. It descends from the brain down into the neck and proceeds 
immediately behind the thyroid gland on the surface of the trachea. From 
there, it does its work at the vocal cords and goes back up to the eye. 
All along this long course it is subject to injury, especially at the 
hands of surgeons working on the thyroid gland. It is a faulty design that 
cannot be changed.

Choking is the cause of death for many people worldwide each day and it 
too is simply a design defect resulting from path dependence. It would be 
ever so much better if the trachea and the esophagus were completely 
separate, however, some of our amphibian ancestors seem to have swum at 
the very surface of the water so their nostrils could take air into a 
common passage way shared by the food and air. That common cavity has 
never been eliminated, thus there is always the possibility of aspirating 
food that will clog the wind pipe and cause death.

Finally there's a matter of the appendix. A very thin blind loop of gut, 
it extends from the large bowel and seems for all the world as if it is 
there just to cause problems. In our ancestors it may have been a larger 
cavity that which useful in digestion, but for us, it appears to be 
nothing but a potentially fatal nuisance. Its tendency to cause problems 
is directly proportional to its narrowness. Any minor bit of inflammation 
can compress the artery that supplies it with blood and this lack of blood 
supply that opens the way to further bacterial invasion unencumbered by 
protective defenses. Such infection further compresses the blood supply, 
at which point bacteria can grow completely unhindered until the appendix 
bursts, whereupon the patient very often dies. Has natural selection 
simply not had enough time to eliminate this troublesome organ? It 
certainly does not seem to give any selective advantage. Paradoxically, 
however, the appendix may be maintained by natural selection precisely 
because it causes appendicitis. People who have an appendix that is 
somewhat larger are less likely to get appendicitis, while people who have 
a long thin appendix, are more likely to die. This is perhaps the ultimate 
example of a "blind loop" in the process of natural selection, an organ 
that is wholly useless for any task, but is nonetheless maintained by 
natural selection because as it gets smaller, it increased the risk of 
death. Such examples suggest that the very idea of a normal, perfect body 
is probably incorrect.

The body is a bundle of trade-offs and problematic arrangements 
jury-rigged into a miraculous machine.

Random events

We began by emphasizing the randomness of natural selection and we return 
to this theme here at the end. There are many accidents and diseases for 
which natural selection can offer no protection. If an asteroid hits our 
neighborhood, there's nothing natural selection can do to protect us. If 
we are exposed to high levels of radioactivity, we have no way of 
detecting the danger, so would likely go about our business with possibly 
fatal results. Many toxins, especially novel toxins, are colorless and 
tasteless, thus making it difficult for us to protect ourselves. Events 
that are very rare, or that we cannot detect, do not shape protection and 
simply must be chalked up to the unfortunate randomness and 
uncontrollability of life.

Likewise, the genetic code can never be perfect. Mutations are always 
creeping in, at the rate of approximately one per individual per 
reproductive episode. Selection will gradually eliminate some of these, 
but some, even some that cause decreases in reproductive success, will 
become more common or even widespread by the mere process of genetic drift 
and there is no rhyme our reason or controlling such mutations, they are 
simply random events that happen.

At the next stage, selection, there is further randomness. Some genes that 
cause harm will drift to a higher frequency despite the harm they cause. 
Some genes that would protect us or otherwise be beneficial may 
nonetheless be eliminated from gene pool by simple stochastic accident. 
Such random factors are real and important, but they are not as 
all-important as they have sometimes been portrayed. Many of the body's 
vulnerabilities are, by contrast, direct products of natural selection. 
There is no such thing as one universal normal genome, there is no such 
thing as a perfect body, there is no such thing as a perfectly safe diet, 
and there is no such thing as life without senescence, but there are a 
remarkable number of humans who have miraculously healthy periods in their 
life. Given the myriad vulnerabilities and the number of things that can 
go wrong, this is astounding indeed.

Senescence

Perhaps the most serious trade-off at the level of a trait is that of 
aging. More specifically, there is the mystery of senescence. Why should 
individuals age and inevitably die? It is perfectly possible for organism 
to recreate body parts that have been lost, so why isn't it possible to 
systematically and steadily replace every body part as it ages so that the 
individual can be eternal?

The explanation here is very similar to the explanation offered earlier 
for why men die younger than women. While it might be possible to design a 
body that would be eternal, this individual would not be as effective a 
replicator as an individual that put more resources into competition and 
less into preservation of the body. (57)

Actually, genes that cause aging can be assigned globally to just two 
categories. Some have simply never been exposed to the force of natural 
selection because they cause disorders that are too rare and too late in 
life for selection to have had much of any effect in the natural 
environment. Certain diseases that become extremely common for people in 
their 90s, for instance, would have had only a minuscule effect on natural 
selection in the natural environment and so it's not surprising that we 
remain vulnerable. The same is observed in laboratory animals who are fed 
and protected so they can grow to ages that they would never reach in the 
wild. On the other hand, the effects of aging may well influence fitness 
in the wild for some species. Alex Comfort, going along with ecologists of 
previous generations, believed that there was no evidence for aging in 
wild animals because he had never seen a decrepit animal in the wild. 
However, most animals in the wild are prey for other animals. Long before 
they become decrepit, they become a meal for some other predator. Thus, 
just because we do not see feeble old rabbits, does not mean there is no 
senescence for wild rabbits The other explanation for the continued 
presence of genes that cause aging is that they give some pleiotropic 
benefit. (58) By this we mean that the very same gene that offers a 
benefit, for instance, strengthening bones during childhood and early 
adulthood, may also cause some disadvantage that causes disease or even 
death later in life, for instance, calcification of the arteries. While no 
such specific gene has yet been identified in animals, the likelihood of 
such genes has been demonstrated in fruit flies and other insects. (59) 
Before we began to tamper with genes that appear to be causes of aging, we 
should look carefully to see if they perhaps have been maintained because 
of some pleiotropic benefit.

An evolutionary view gives a somewhat pessimistic outlook on the 
possibility of eliminating senescence. If genes cause disadvantages in 
midlife this will select for other modifier genes that postpone the 
expression of the deleterious effects to later in life. At some point, the 
expression of many of these genes will be seem to be coordinated in later 
life because the force of selection will fall quite rapidly at the age 
when they are expressed. One can thus imagine their manifestations as 
grains of sand that have been swept to later in the life-span by other 
modifier genes so that they now form something of a hill beyond which it 
is impossible to go.

This is not to say that much may not be accomplished by gerontologic 
research and by slowing some aspects of aging. For instance, taking a 
small those of aspirin each day decreases risk of dying for heart attack. 
Does this have disadvantages is well? Yes, it thins the blood somewhat and 
that makes death from bleeding more likely. However, injuries are less 
likely now, and medical care is available, so on the whole we benefit by 
having blood that is a bit thinner than that designed for the natural 
environment. These circumstances offer an example where taking medications 
regularly may improve our adaptation to the current environment. Likewise, 
a tendency for rapid oxidation may be essential to destroy certain 
bacteria but toning down this capacity may currently not harm us much at 
all, but may protect our tissues from aging. In fact, it appears that this 
may be the explanation for gout. Gout occurs when crystals of uric acid 
precipitate in the joint fluid, causing excruciating pain. So why don't 
humans have lower levels of uric acid, like other primates do? A 
cross-species comparison shows a very strong linear relationship between 
plasma uric acid levels and longevity in different species. Uric acid 
turns out to be a potent antioxidant, and may well have been selected for 
to help make our long life spans possible. A few people, the unfortunate 
ones, get gout.

Implications

Natural selection and our evolutionary history has been well understood 
for nearly a hundred years now. Why is it only now being applied to the 
problems of medicine? In part, the explanation probably depends on the 
illusion that we referred to at the beginning of this article. Natural 
selection shapes things that work, so it is a bit hard to see on first 
glance how can also help explain why things don't work. There also more 
practical reasons, however, why it is only now that evolutionary biology 
is being recognized as a basic science for medicine. Medicine is a 
practical endeavor. Doctors treat individual patients with individual 
diseases and are usually far more interested in why this patient is sick 
now and what to do about it, than they are about why all members of the 
species are vulnerable to a particular problem. The patient comes in with 
a painful gouty big toe and the physician wants to help that individual 
immediately. The possibility that high levels of uric acid protect all of 
us from aging is not especially relevant at that moment.

Nonetheless, an evolutionary approach to medicine can be profoundly 
relevant. For instance, some well-meaning genetic engineer might well 
decide to adjust things so that we all have lower levels of uric acid in 
order to protect us from gout. This would be fine, except for the 
possibility that we would probably all begin aging more quickly. Natural 
selection creates many designs that are substandard, but when it has a 
chance to act on some variable parameter, that shows continuous variation, 
such as the circulating level of uric acid, it will usually approach an 
optimum, given trade-offs, and given the specific environment in which the 
trait was shaped.

Even in everyday practice, however, there is much that is immediately 
useful from an evolutionary approach to medicine. Recognition that 
diarrhea, fever, pain, nausea, vomiting and anxiety are useful defenses 
allows us to treat them in a far more sophisticated way. On the one hand, 
it helps us to hesitate and think carefully about the normal function of 
the defense before we block it. It also may allow us to feel comfortable 
that in this particular instance, blocking the defense is of no 
consequence to the person's health so we can act aggressively to make the 
person feel better more quickly. This is especially common in the case of 
pain.

In the area of public health, an evolutionary approach is of great 
importance in assessing environmental changes that might influence changes 
in virulence. In particular, settings in which vectors can transmit 
pathogens between passive hosts are recognized as particularly dangerous 
for shaping more virulent organisms, whether the vector is a mosquito or a 
doctor's hands. The use of condoms not only prevents transmission of 
sexual diseases, it also can decrease their virulence.

A sexually transmitted disease that causes quick death or incapacitation 
will tend to increase in virulence if the person is having many sexual 
partners, but if the person uses protective devices or abstains from 
dangerous sexual practices, this will tend to select for strains of the 
pathogens that are less virulent. Similar principles may also be useful 
for vaccine design.

We could go on at great length about other potential benefits from an 
evolutionary approach to medicine but we wish to emphasize that most of 
the relevant research has not yet been done. Evolutionary questions have 
not been asked systematically about disease, and the methods for testing 
them are still being developed. What is needed now is not to jump quickly 
to a new theory of medical practice based on evolutionary biology, but to 
begin to educate physicians and patients about the evolutionary nature of 
the body and its vulnerabilities to disease. This will, we believe, 
quickly lead to specific advances in the treatment of individual diseases 
that will benefit individual patients. Even before that, however, it will 
help us all to a deeper understanding of the nature of the organism, and 
the nature of its vulnerabilities to disease. From this viewpoint, the 
body is not a Platonic ideal, and the genetic code is not correct in any 
one particular version. Instead, genes, with considerable variation, makes 
phenotypes, that interact with environments and other individuals, to 
result in more or fewer offspring depending on the genes, the environment, 
their interactions, and chance factors. An extraordinary number of people 
are blessed with years and even decades a good health, and sometimes even 
happiness. Despite all our knowledge about how this is possible, it still 
seems nothing short of miraculous, even though no miracle is needed to 
explain.

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From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan 11 16:11:07 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 11:11:07 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Nearly 100,
	LSD's Father Ponders His 'Problem Child'
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601111107540.24808@panix1.panix.com>

Nearly 100, LSD's Father Ponders His 'Problem Child'
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/international/europe/07hoffman.html
[The article is from Saturday, and he did indeed make it to his 100th 
earlier today. Because of this centennial, I'm not sending out a single 
long article today, but rather a few shorter ones. I am nearly finished 
reading Joel Garreau's _Radical Evolution_.]

    The Saturday Profile
    By CRAIG S. SMITH
    BURG, Switzerland

    ALBERT Hofmann, the father of LSD, walked slowly across the small
    corner office of his modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop here,
    hoping to show a visitor the vista that sweeps before him on clear
    days. But outside there was only a white blanket of fog hanging just
    beyond the crest of the hill. He picked up a photograph of the view on
    his desk instead, left there perhaps to convince visitors of what
    really lies beyond the windowpane.

    Mr. Hofmann will turn 100 on Wednesday, a milestone to be marked by a
    symposium in nearby Basel on the chemical compound that he discovered
    and that famously unlocked the Blakean doors of perception, altering
    consciousnesses around the world. As the years accumulate behind him,
    Mr. Hofmann's conversation turns ever more insistently around one
    theme: man's oneness with nature and the dangers of an increasing
    inattention to that fact.

    "It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature," he
    said, listing to the right in a green armchair that looked out over
    frost-dusted fields and snow-laced trees. A glass pitcher held a
    bouquet of roses on the coffee table before him. "In the big cities,
    there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are
    products of humans," he said. "The bigger the town, the less they see
    and understand nature." And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his
    "problem child," could help reconnect people to the universe.

    Rounding a century, Mr. Hofmann is physically reduced but mentally
    clear. He is prone to digressions, ambling with pleasure through
    memories of his boyhood, but his bright eyes flash with the
    recollection of a mystical experience he had on a forest path more
    than 90 years ago in the hills above Baden, Switzerland. The
    experience left him longing for a similar glimpse of what he calls "a
    miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality."

    "I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature," he said, laying
    a slightly gnarled finger alongside his nose, his longish white hair
    swept back from his temples and the crown of his head. He said any
    natural scientist who was not a mystic was not a real natural
    scientist. "Outside is pure energy and colorless substance," he said.
    "All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes
    see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to
    make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings."

    He became particularly fascinated by the mechanisms through which
    plants turn sunlight into the building blocks for our own bodies.
    "Everything comes from the sun via the plant kingdom," he said.

    MR. HOFMANN studied chemistry and took a job with the Swiss
    pharmaceutical company Sandoz Laboratories, because it had started a
    program to identify and synthesize the active compounds of medically
    important plants. He soon began work on the poisonous ergot fungus
    that grows in grains of rye. Midwives had used it for centuries to
    precipitate childbirths, but chemists had never succeeded in isolating
    the chemical that produced the pharmacological effect. Finally,
    chemists in the United States identified the active component as
    lysergic acid, and Mr. Hofmann began combining other molecules with
    the unstable chemical in search of pharmacologically useful compounds.

    His work on ergot produced several important drugs, including a
    compound still in use to prevent hemorrhaging after childbirth. But it
    was the 25th compound that he synthesized, lysergic acid diethylamide,
    that was to have the greatest impact. When he first created it in
    1938, the drug yielded no significant pharmacological results. But
    when his work on ergot was completed, he decided to go back to LSD-25,
    hoping that improved tests could detect the stimulating effect on the
    body's circulatory system that he had expected from it. It was as he
    was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he
    first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it
    became famous. "Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I
    had had as a child," he said. "I didn't know what caused it, but I
    knew that it was important."

    When he returned to his lab the next Monday, he tried to identify the
    source of his experience, believing first that it had come from the
    fumes of a chloroform-like solvent he had been using. Inhaling the
    fumes produced no effect, though, and he realized he must have somehow
    ingested a trace of LSD. "LSD spoke to me," Mr. Hofmann said with an
    amused, animated smile. "He came to me and said, 'You must find me.'
    He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find
    anything.' "

    HE experimented with the drug, taking a dose so small that even the
    most active toxin known at that time would have had little or no
    effect. The result with LSD, however, was a powerful experience,
    during which he rode his bicycle home, accompanied by an assistant.
    That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as
    "bicycle day."

    Mr. Hofmann participated in tests in a Sandoz laboratory, but found
    the experience frightening and realized that the drug should be used
    only under carefully controlled circumstances. In 1951, he wrote to
    the German novelist Ernst Junger, who had experimented with mescaline,
    and proposed that they take LSD together. They each took 0.05
    milligrams of pure LSD at Mr. Hofmann's home accompanied by roses,
    music by Mozart and burning Japanese incense. "That was the first
    planned psychedelic test," Mr. Hofmann said.

    He took the drug dozens of times after that, he said, and once
    experienced what he called a "horror trip" when he was tired and Mr.
    Junger gave him amphetamines first. But his hallucinogenic days are
    long behind him.

    "I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore," Mr. Hofmann said.
    "Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley," who asked his wife for an
    injection of LSD to help him through the final painful throes of his
    fatal throat [3]cancer.

    But Mr. Hofmann calls LSD "medicine for the soul" and is frustrated by
    the worldwide prohibition that has pushed it underground. "It was used
    very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis," he said, adding
    that the drug was hijacked by the youth movement of the 1960's and
    then demonized by the establishment that the movement opposed. He said
    LSD could be dangerous and called its distribution by Timothy Leary
    and others "a crime."

    "It should be a controlled substance with the same status as
    morphine," he said.

    Mr. Hofmann lives with his wife in the house they built 38 years ago.
    He raised four children and watched one son struggle with alcoholism
    before dying at 53. He has eight grandchildren and six
    great-grandchildren. As far as he knows, no one in his family besides
    his wife has tried LSD.

    Mr. Hofmann rose, slightly stooped and now barely reaching five feet,
    and walked through his house with his arm-support cane. When asked if
    the drug had deepened his understanding of death, he appeared mildly
    startled and said no. "I go back to where I came from, to where I was
    before I was born, that's all," he said.


From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan 11 16:13:31 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 11:13:31 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Mitchell Consulting: India and China may not have so
	many engineers
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601110926130.24808@panix1.panix.com>

India and China may not have so many engineers 
http://mitchellconsulting.net/commonsense/?cat=17
Common Sense Technology
Common sense views on technology and related subjects
Read in 152 countries since 1995
January 10, 2006
[Referenced articles to the second degree appended.]

[Add the creativity gap to the IQ gap. When trying to reform their 
education systems, Asians are not so concerned about instilling basic 
literacy and numeracy (as Africans, Middle Easterners, and Latin Americans 
are doing) as they are about getting their students to think for 
themselves.

[As GRIN technologies continue, fostering creativity is going to become 
more and more critical, as well as higher paying.

[The article supplies a much needed corrective about overcounting 
engineers in India and China. I should add that lawyers are undercounted 
there, as much of the work that lawyers handle in the United States are 
handled by those without law degrees, at least in Japan, where conflict 
resolution is also handled at a lower level. It's not that there is less 
conflict so much at that it is handled differently, as far as the 
statistics go. So when you hear that Americans produce ten times as many 
lawyers as engineers, while Japan does the opposite, question it.

[Of course, there is lots of Central Planning rhetoric throughout these 
articles, as though some bureaucrat, or even pundit, can say how many 
engineers (or even lawyers) "we" will "need." If there's a market 
failure, I want to hear about it, and if the prospective government cure 
will have a government failure less onerous than the market failure, I 
really want to hear about it.

[As far as getting an MBA goes, I certainly can't tell Vivek Wadhwa, the 
author of most of the articles below, that he would have done as well by 
learning on the job, gaining more job experience, not having had to pay 
tuition, and not having his salary reduced while he got the MBA than by 
doing what he did. But those that wasted their time in business school 
usually don't write about it. All studies I've seen (none of them very 
good) show that the private rates of return to post-baccalaureate 
education is less than that for college (and college is less than high 
school and high school less than K-8). All these studies give exaggerated 
rates of return, since most leave out innate ability (heredity) and all 
leave out effort (free will), but the sheer consistency of lower rates of 
return as one goes up the education ladder is very strong evidence that it 
does.

[While I'm at it, there are also studies of the public rate of return to
education, meaning here how GDP goes up. If the public rate exceeds the 
private rate then there is a case, hardly conclusive, for subsidizing 
education. Alas, these studies have different kinds of flaws from those 
estimating the private rate of return but similarly exaggerate it. The 
estimates from both of these kinds of studies vary enormously, with no 
showing at all that the public rate of return is greater than the private 
rate. One reason--I've just thought of this--is that, since Big Ed has 
managed to get every other form of job qualification besides educational 
credentials banned for being "discriminatory," educational credentials have 
become a costly surrogate for IQ tests (and aren't as reliable, as we 
learned from the analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth in 
_The B*ll C**ve_) and have value as positioning. Not as irrelevant as the 
examinations in ancient China to get into the bureaucracy, it is not at 
all clear that what gets learned by sitting behind desks listening to 
professors drone on for all those extra years is actually good for.

[Here are two paragraphs from an article below, which draws the 
distinction between "dynamic" and "transactional" engineers:

  DYNAMIC RANGE.  Dynamic engineers are individuals capable of abstract
  thinking and high-level problem-solving. These engineers thrive in teams,
  work well across international borders, have strong interpersonal skills,
  and lead innovation. Transactional engineers may possess engineering
  fundamentals, but not the experience or expertise to apply this knowledge
  to larger problems. These individuals are typically responsible for rote
  and repetitive tasks in the workforce.

  What differentiates the two types of engineers is their education. The
  capstone design course that dynamic engineers study in their senior year
  enables them to integrate knowledge gained from fundamental coursework in
  the applied sciences and engineering.

[Somehow I doubt that how the senior year in engineering school is spent 
makes much difference. I would think that heredity dominates, but even 
still this senior year (hey, why not all one's years in school!) could be 
thought out much better than it has been and those who have the capacity 
and temperament to become dynamic engineers could be helped become so.

[We will be hearing much more about the creativity gap in the future, so 
stay tuned.]

------------------

Amidst reports that India and China are graduating more "engineers"
than the U.S. comes some more actual data that notes we are not
comparing the same skill sets when we compare most engineers in India
or China to U.S. engineers. See [7]Filling the Engineering Gap
Interesting quote:

   Contrary to the popular view that India and China have an abundance
   of engineers, recent studies show that both countries may actually
   face severe shortages of dynamic engineers. The vast majority of
   graduates from these counties have the qualities of transactional
   engineers.

This reminds me of a number of years ago when I was doing on campus
recruiting of software and computer engineers. At one university
campus, the majority of the students we interviewed were international
students, studying in the U.S., and most from one or two countries.
This report echoes our observations - we talked with many smart
engineering students. They all would do great work if told rather
specifically what to do. But we were looking for a willingness to
think outside the box, to be creative, to lead, to fight for radical
ideas - all traits we were not finding in this bunch of students. That
does not mean these international students were ineffective - but it
is clear that many U.S. firms prefer dynamic engineers versus
transaction engineers as described in this article. [snip rest]

Filling the Engineering Gap
http://www.businessweek.com/print/smallbiz/content/jan2006/sb20060109_693001.htm
JANUARY 10, 2006
Viewpoint
By Vivek Wadhwa

The U.S. doesn't need to simply graduate more engineers. It needs more of the
right kind of engineers. And more research into the problem sure would help

  The stakes are very high in the global economic race. As India and China
  strive to catch up, the debate continues about what the U.S. needs to do to
  maintain its lead. While it seems inevitable that other economies will
  grow, the issue here is whether their success will lead to greater
  prosperity for Americans or threaten our way of life.

  One of the few things on which both sides agree is that the U.S. needs to
  increase spending on education and research. Both the Democratic Party and
  the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced policy initiatives last month
  prescribing an increase in the number of engineering graduates. They cited
  statistics that show the U.S. graduates about 70,000 engineers a year,
  while India and China graduate five and eight times that number,
  respectively.

  APPLES TO LITCHIS.  While the remedy sounds good, the problem they're
  trying to solve isn't what it seems. The statistics that are being cited
  are inaccurate (see BW Online, 12/27/05, [3]"Engineering: Is the U.S.
  Really Falling?"). And simply mandating that the country should graduate
  more engineers may lead to a situation in which we graduate the wrong types
  of engineers and discourage future generations from studying engineering.
  As reader feedback shows, this debate is based more on emotion than fact. A
  lot more research is needed, and we need to differentiate between
  engineers.

  As I wrote in my last column, (see BW Online, 12/13/05, [4]"About the
  Engineering Gap"), our study at [5]Duke University revealed that the
  engineering graduation numbers commonly cited in this debate are
  inaccurate. In an apples-to-apples comparison, the U.S. actually graduated
  more engineers than India last year, and the Chinese numbers aren't
  comparable. It's not that the U.S. graduation numbers are wrong. as Salil
  Tripathi from The Wall Street Journal reported, the comparison was false:
  Washington apples were being compared to Alphonso mangoes and Chinese
  litchis.

  Reader feedback to my column shows the diverging views and opinions on this
  topic. Some claimed that our numbers are absurd and that we were painting
  an unduly rosy picture of America. Others suggest that this was a
  misinformation campaign against India. Some thanked us for setting the
  record straight. Others felt that by saying America was strong, we had done
  a disservice to the country. Many who lauded our study suggested that
  previous inaccurate data was being used to disadvantage American workers.
  Some experts attacked our motives.

  HEATED DEBATE.  Most surprising were comments from two journalists who
  interviewed me about the study. A reporter from a top Indian newspaper said
  this story would hurt India's "national ego" and chided me for being
  disloyal to the country of my origin. And the editor of a U.S. tech weekly
  demanded to know my nationality and asked if the Indian government had
  funded our project.

  On the other hand, Gail Pesyna, program director at the prestigious Alfred
  P. Sloan Foundation, said our report had generated a lot of excitement not
  only in the larger world, but also inside the Sloan Foundation. She thanked
  us for taking the debate up one notch.

  The most perceptive feedback we received was from Professor Jesse Ausubel
  of Rockefeller University. He was impressed that a team of students was
  quickly able to make a contribution to the factual aspects of the debate.
  He wrote, "I have never believed all the moaning and groaning about how
  hard it is to figure out the numbers.... I learned the main problem was
  that no one chose to break a sweat doing the research.... 'Facts' are few
  because few people work on ascertaining them, and many of those who want to
  use the 'facts' are happy to use a misleading selection that serves their
  interests."

  UNDERSTANDING OUTSOURCING.  With facts being in short supply, both sides of
  the debate use available statistics to justify their positions. Many have
  lobbied to raise immigration barriers based on the threat from abroad. Yet
  in its State of American Business 2006 report, the Chamber of Commerce uses
  the incorrect engineering graduate numbers to argue that we should allow
  more immigration.

  So what should be done? Further research is needed on a subject of such
  critical national importance. The Duke study was a small step toward
  establishing certain baseline facts and reliable statistics. As Professor
  Ausubel notes, if a team of engineering students can accomplish so much
  within a semester, why not the experts and analysts?

  The Duke study tried to differentiate between the skill and education level
  of engineers and suggested that those with higher-quality education would
  always stay in demand. Study contributor Dr. Richard Schroth of Katzenbach
  Partners, who coined the terms "dynamic engineers" and "transactional
  engineers," argues that this is the best way of understanding the
  outsourcing threat.

  DYNAMIC RANGE.  Dynamic engineers are individuals capable of abstract
  thinking and high-level problem-solving. These engineers thrive in teams,
  work well across international borders, have strong interpersonal skills,
  and lead innovation. Transactional engineers may possess engineering
  fundamentals, but not the experience or expertise to apply this knowledge
  to larger problems. These individuals are typically responsible for rote
  and repetitive tasks in the workforce.

  What differentiates the two types of engineers is their education. The
  capstone design course that dynamic engineers study in their senior year
  enables them to integrate knowledge gained from fundamental coursework in
  the applied sciences and engineering.

  Contrary to the popular view that India and China have an abundance of
  engineers, recent studies show that both countries may actually face severe
  shortages of dynamic engineers. The vast majority of graduates from these
  counties have the qualities of transactional engineers.

  BEYOND THE NUMBERS.  Dynamic engineers develop renewable energy sources,
  solutions for purifying water, sustaining the environment, providing
  low-cost health care, and vaccines for infectious diseases. They also
  manage projects and lead innovation. Talk to any CEO, CIO, or engineering
  manager, and they'll likely tell you that they're always looking for such
  people.

  With all the problems that need solving in the world, we probably need many
  more dynamic engineers. India and China need them as badly as the U.S.
  does. But by simply focusing on the numbers and racing to graduate more,
  we're going to end up with more transactional engineers -- and their jobs
  will likely get outsourced.
   _________________________________________________________________

  [6]Wadhwa, the founder of two software companies, is an
  Executive-in-Residence/Adjunct Professor at Duke University. He is also the
  co-founder of TiE Carolinas, a networking and mentoring group.

References

3. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2005/nf20051223_7594_db039.htm
4. http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2005/sb20051212_623922.htm
5. http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/outsourcing/
6. mailto:vivek at wadhwa.com

Engineering: Is the U.S. Really Falling?
http://www.businessweek.com/print/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2005/nf20051223_7594_db039.htm?chan=db
DECEMBER 27, 2005
NEWS ANALYSIS
By Pete Engardio

Numbers cited to prove that graduation rates in India and China dwarf those
in the U.S. may be flawed. But the fear is all too real

Is America losing its competitive edge in engineering? Top Silicon
Valley executives, U.S. think-tanks, industry associations, and
university deans have all pointed out dropping enrollment in American
science and tech programs and warn of a brewing problem. And in a
November survey of 4,000 U.S. engineers, 64% said outsourcing makes
them worry about the profession's future, while less than 10% feel
sure America will maintain its leadership in technology.

Such gloom is reinforced by a raft of oft-cited statistics: the U.S.
graduates only 70,000 engineers a year, and enrollment in engineering
schools is declining fast. India, meanwhile, turns out 350,000
engineers annually, while Chinese universities produce 600,000, by
some estimates. Indeed, with Asian techies earning anywhere from a
quarter to a tenth of what their Western counterparts do, doomsayers
might ask why any intelligent young American would pursue engineering.

FUZZY DEFINITIONS.  But how accurate are such numbers? And how does
the theory of American decline square with the reality that graduates
of good U.S. engineering schools seem to have little problem finding
jobs? Vivek Wadhwa, a founder of several tech startups and an
occasional contributor to BusinessWeek Online who's now an executive
in residence at Duke University says he got so disturbed by the
anxieties of bright engineering students that he helped supervise a
study released in December to get to the bottom of such questions.

The conclusion: Because of fuzzy definitions of "engineering
graduate," estimates of Indian and Chinese numbers can be wildly
exaggerated, while America's are understated.

Just look at the numbers using consistent criteria. If one counts
people who study computer science and information technology as
engineers -- as India does -- then the U.S. grants 134,000 four-year
engineering degrees annually. Indeed, the U.S. is producing far more
engineers per capita than either of Asia's emerging superpowers.
Indian schools grants only 122,000 four-year engineering degrees (and
almost as many three-year degrees), while China generates 351,000.

"SPREADING PROPAGANDA."  But China's statistics may still be inflated
because the definition of an engineer can vary widely from province to
province. In some cases, auto mechanics are included. "The numbers
seem to include anybody who has studied anything technical," Wadhwa
says.

The bottom line is that America's engineering crisis is a myth, Wadhwa
argues. Both sides in the globalization debate are "spreading
propaganda," he contends. India and China are using inflated
engineering numbers because they want to draw more foreign investment,
while fearmongers in the U.S. use dubious data either to support their
case for protectionism, to lobby for greater government spending on
higher education and research, or to justify their offshore
investments.

The study, though, is already coming under fire. Wadhwa says he's
getting notes from researchers who challenge its soothing conclusions,
and some U.S. engineers say it doesn't match the grim reality they're
witnessing in downsized American R&D labs. And other studies point to
different signs of ebbing American dominance in science and
technology: The U.S. share of scientific papers is declining. Federal
funding for research is falling. And even though American engineering
schools may be producing more grads than some data might indicate,
many of their students come from overseas.

"ARE YOU KIDDING?"  The debate raises an intriguing question: Does
hype about the rise of India and China unnecessarily demoralize
American engineers and scare U.S. students away from technical
careers? Most surveys of U.S. corporate executives, after all,
conclude that America is already facing a shortage of engineers in
everything from software and chemicals to life sciences, and these
shortfalls will worsen in coming years. Even the November survey of
4,000 engineers, by public relations firm McClenahan Bruer
Communications and CMP publishing group, found that 56% said their own
companies currently have a shortage of engineers.

The survey confirms that the psychological impact of U.S. offshoring
may be just as big as the reality. In focus groups, engineers
overwhelmingly said they believe their work is important to society.
"But when we asked whether they think society appreciates what they
do, they looked at us with blank faces and said, 'Are you kidding?'"
says Kerry McClenahan, who runs the PR company behind the survey.

Another problem is that many of the U.S. engineers who are getting
displaced lack the more demanding skills required by American tech
companies today. Because routine tasks can be done more cheaply
offshore, many executives say, they need U.S. engineers who can
rapidly move on to next-generation technologies, work well with
customers, and manage R&D teams.

COUNTERARGUMENTS COMING.  Wadhwa describes it as a gap between
"transactional" engineers and "dynamic" ones. The former are good at
fundamentals but have a hard time applying their knowledge to broader
problems. Dynamic engineers are more capable of abstract thinking,
work well in teams, and can lead innovation. India and China have
dynamic engineers, too, but U.S. companies still need many of them on
staff at home. "What I'm seeing is that transactional engineers in the
U.S. are being replaced by dynamic engineers offshore."

The contention that only engineers with routine skills are put at risk
by offshoring will surely provoke counterarguments. But at very least,
the Duke study has helped take the debate over declining U.S.
competitiveness up a notch.

[4]Engardio is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York

References

4. mailto:pete_engardio at businessweek.com

About That Engineering Gap...
http://www.businessweek.com/print/smallbiz/content/dec2005/sb20051212_623922.htm
DECEMBER 13, 2005
Viewpoint
By Vivek Wadhwa

Is the U.S. really falling behind China and India in education? Not really.
Take a closer look at the data

  There are few topics that generate as much heated debate as outsourcing.
  One side argues that globalization will lead to greater innovation and
  prosperity, the other says we are increasing unemployment and misery.
  Everyone agrees that what's at stake is America's standard of living and
  world economic leadership.

  One would expect that the numbers used in such debate would be defensible
  and grounded. Yet researchers at Duke University have determined that some
  of the most cited statistics on engineering graduates are inaccurate.
  Statistics that say the U.S. is producing 70,000 engineers a year vs.
  350,000 from India and 600,000 from China aren't valid, the Duke team says.
  We're actually graduating more engineers than India, and the Chinese
  numbers aren't quite what they seem. In short, America is far ahead by
  almost any measure, and we're a long way from losing our edge.

  Unfortunately, the message students are getting is that many engineering
  jobs will be outsourced and U.S. engineers have a bleak future of higher
  unemployment and lower remuneration. This could result in a self-fulfilling
  prophecy, as fearful young scholars stick to supposedly "outsourcing-proof"
  professions. In other words, we have more to fear from fear itself.

  RESEARCH FELLOWS.  Having been a tech exec and co-producer of a Bollywood
  film, I've long been at the center of the outsourcing debate. I wrote about
  how my own son called me unpatriotic and argued that I was doing wrong for
  America (see, BW Online, 3/12/04, [3]"My Son, It's Time to Talk of
  Outsourcing..."). Yet, in my new life in academia, I couldn't answer the
  first question my engineering students asked (see BW Online, 9/14/05,
  [4]"Degrees of Achievement"). They wondered what courses would lead to the
  best job prospects and what jobs were "outsourcing proof."

  I knew that with a master's of engineering management from Duke, these
  students were destined to be leaders, and that leadership can never be
  outsourced. Yet I was no expert on engineering majors across the world.
  Dean Kristina Johnson of Duke's Pratt School of Engineering suggested we
  research the topic.

  I enlisted the help of Professor Gary Gereffi, a world renowned sociologist
  and Duke outsourcing expert, and we picked a team of our brightest
  students. We set out to compare international engineering degrees and
  analyze employment opportunities. As you do in any study, we started by
  assessing the facts. The problem was that facts were in short supply.

  BIPARTISAN CONSENSUS.  In recent years, the worldwide media has cited
  graduation numbers that show a huge imbalance of engineering graduates
  coming out of Chinese and Indian schools. One commonly cited set of figures
  is 600,000 engineers graduated annually from institutions of higher
  education in China, 350,000 from India, and 70,000 from the U.S.

  Top business publications have repeated these numbers. So have political
  leaders across the spectrum -- from [5]Ted Kennedy to [6]Newt Gingrich. The
  Congressional Record references these numbers. Even the prestigious
  National Academies issued [7]a press release asking federal support to
  bolster U.S. competitiveness, citing these numbers as part of its argument.
  The U.S. numbers were easy to verify. The National Center for Education and
  the American Society of Engineering Education provided useful data.
  However, international numbers were a different story.

  LOST IN TRANSLATION.  Several reports cited the Ministry of Education in
  China and the National Association of Software & Service Companies
  (NASSCOM) in India. Yet none of the reports issued by these authorities
  that we read matched the numbers being reported.

  So we called registrars of the largest universities in India and China.
  Chinese universities readily provided high-level data, but not enough
  detail. Some Indian registrars were helpful and shared comprehensive
  spreadsheets. Others claimed not to know how many engineering colleges were
  affiliated with their schools or they lacked detail on graduation rates by
  major.

  We eventually found our way to knowledgeable employees of the Chinese
  Education Ministry, and the research head of NASSCOM, Sunil Mehta. After
  extensive discussions and reviews of more reports and data, we learned that
  no one was comparing apples to apples.

  The word "engineer" didn't translate well into different Chinese dialects
  and had no standard definition. We were told that reports received by the
  ministry from Chinese provinces didn't count degrees in a consistent way. A
  motor mechanic or a technician could be considered an engineer, for
  example. Also, the numbers included all degrees related to information
  technology and specialized fields such as shipbuilding.

  DATA BANK.  There were also "short-cycle" degrees, which were typically
  completed in 2 or 3 years. These are equivalent to associate degrees in the
  U.S. Nearly half of China's reported degrees fell into this category.
  NASSCOM maintains extensive engineering graduation data. They gather data
  from diverse sources and create and validate projections and estimates. We
  couldn't get the data to perform accurate comparisons with China, so we
  matched the NASSCOM definition of engineer to U.S. numbers.

  We found that the U.S. was graduating 222,335 engineers, vs. 215,000 from
  India. The closest comparable number reported by China is 644,106, but it
  includes additional majors. Looking strictly at four-year degrees and
  without considering accreditation or quality, the U.S. graduated 137,437
  engineers, vs. 112,000 from India. China reported 351,537 under a broader
  category. All of these numbers include information technology and related
  majors ([8]click here to read the full Duke report).

  WORLD OF DOUBT.  What's the point? We hear repeatedly that America is in
  trouble and that the root cause lies with our education system. There's no
  doubt that K-12 science and math could be improved, and few will dispute
  that America needs to invest more in education and research.

  However, our higher education system isn't in trouble -- in fact, it's
  still the world's best. We spend the most on research, produce the most
  patents, have the most innovative curriculum, and educate many of the
  world's leaders. Take Duke University. It spends $50 million a year just on
  engineering research, and members of its faculty are world renowned.
  The message that our engineering graduates compete with 1 million graduates
  from India and China has created a sense of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

  Why would a smart student enter a field where their job might soon be
  outsourced? Rather than encouraging our children to study more math and
  science and become engineers, we're turning them into lawyers.
  When the world hears that the U.S. education system is in decline, we scare
  away those who would otherwise come here to study. To keep America
  competitive, we must keep attracting the world's best and brightest.
  America needs to do all it can to fuel innovation and maintain its lead in
  science and technology. By repeatedly sending the message that we're weak,
  we in fact become weak.
   _________________________________________________________________

  [9]Wadhwa, the founder of two software companies, is an
  Executive-in-Residence/Adjunct Professor at Duke University. He is also the
  co-founder of TiE Carolinas, a networking and mentoring group.

References

3. http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/mar2004/sb20040312_5086.htm
4. http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2005/sb20050914_959737.htm
5. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=109-s20051025-16
6. http://www.newt.org/index.php?src=news&prid=1191&category=Speeches
7. http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309100399?OpenDocument
8. http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/outsourcing
9. mailto:vivek at wadhwa.com

Download Duke Outsourcing Report
http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/outsourcing/

   Download: [1]Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate: Placing the United
   States on a Level Playing Field with China and India

   Download: [2]Appendix

This report is part of an ongoing study to compare the number of U.S.
engineering graduates to those in developing nations, particularly
India and China. This is a complex issue and requires further study
but this preliminary report raises several questions about the numbers
quoted in the popular press. This report was developed by graduate
students of Duke University's [4]Master of Engineering Management
Program in the [5]Pratt School of Engineering under the guidance of
[6]Dr. Gary Gereffi, and [7]Vivek Wadhwa with consulting assistance
from Katzenbach Partners LLC.

References

1. http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/downloads/duke_outsourcing_2005.pdf
2. http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/downloads/duke_outsourcing_2005_appendix.pdf
3. http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/downloads/duke_outsourcing_2005.pdf
4. http://memp.duke.edu/
5. http://pratt.duke.edu/
6. http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/Sociology/faculty/ggere
7. http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/people/staff.php

My Son, It's Time to Talk of Outsourcing...
http://www.businessweek.com/print/smallbiz/content/mar2004/sb20040312_5086.htm?chan=sb
MARCH 12, 2004
BOLLYWOOD POSTCARD
By Vivek Wadhwa

...and how, without those Russian programmers I hired, neither my U.S.
startup nor the jobs it created would ever have existed

When I got involved with a venture to produce a Hollywood movie in
Bollywood, I was very excited about helping educate Americans on India
and its culture, thinking we could make the world a better place by
entertaining audiences for two hours. We were creating some jobs in
the US, many more in India, and providing huge financial upside to
American investors.

True, we were going to film the movie in India to save money. But we
were also planning to spend about half our budget in the U.S. And if
we couldn't film in India at a lower cost the movie might not happen.
So I figured some money spent in the U.S. economy is better than no
money spent in the U.S. or India. In that sense, we were doing plenty
to help the U.S. economy.

FAMILY FEUD.  I didn't imagine that anyone could call this unpatriotic
or wrong. Not only was I mistaken, but my own 16-year-old son, Tarun,
was the one who objected and called me unpatriotic. He said it was
wrong to ship more jobs to India. The debate about outsourcing has
become so heated and emotional in this election year that it is
difficult to have a rational discussion about it, even at home.

This isn't the first time I have had to deal with the issue of
outsourcing. In the late 1980s, I was a vice-president at a major Wall
Street financial institution, in charge of building technology to help
improve the way the investment banking arm of the outfit did its
business. Eventually, we spent about $150 million to modernize the
computer systems, and the company was happy with the results. That
success in 1990 led to a joint venture with IBM to market the
technology we had created.

There was one technical problem we were never able to solve even after
spending $150 million. That solution could have cut the cost of the
project in half. We needed an automated way of translating old IBM
mainframe code to modern computer languages that run on the latest
computer platforms. To solve this problem, we needed computer
programmers who excelled in both mathematics and computer science, and
we simply couldn't find the right people for this task. We spent
millions of dollars trying, however.

HOMEGROWN JOBS.  As fate would have it, I visited Russia, in 1992,
just after the break-up of the Soviet Union, and hired a team of 30
brilliant and hungry computer programmers who boasted just the right
skills. They were grateful to work for a small fraction of American
wages, and labored for years to solve this complex problem.

Eventually, this technology led me to start my own company, Relativity
Technologies. That company would not have existed, or saved its
customers many millions of dollars if we hadn't outsourced development
to Russia.

Relativity Technologies employed nearly 100 people in the U.S., paying
many of them close to $100,000 per year -- jobs that would not have
existed without help from our 50 Russian programmers. Despite this
fact, I often received angry e-mails from people who learned about my
company from news articles describing our venture. They accused me of
"taking jobs away from the U.S." Some of the messages asked if I was
ashamed of myself, and challenged my patriotism.

Now, this was all before outsourcing became an election issue. I have
always done everything possible to give back to the community in which
I live. I have been loyal to America, the country which readily
accepted me as a citizen, and have helped to create jobs. So I thought
my logic was beyond reproach. But I must admit that the recent debate
with my son really shook me up.

A WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES.  My current project is to help produce a
feature film in India. We have American producers. The script was
written by Americans. We will have an American director working side
by side with an Indian director. The lead actor will be British, but
we will also have many Indian actors. We will shoot the movie in
Mumbai using local talent, but expect to do the final production and
editing in Los Angeles. We expect to spend $300K on marketing in the
US. The budget of this film is less than $1M. I hope that it will
gross many times that sum and deliver magnificent returns for its
American investors, who will turn around and hand that money to money
managers and accountants and car dealerships -- maybe even donate some
of it to charity.

And if the movie turns out the way I hope, it will educate both
Americans and Indians about their respective cultures. Maybe those
Indian directors will collaborate on more projects with American
directors, perhaps and start their own studio with offices in Mumbai
and Hollywood. They will employ actors, writers, directors,
electricians, and computer wizards in California, where they will do
the special effects. Films that could not be made before because of
the cost or risk might now become feasible.

The point of all this is that the current view of outsourcing and
resulting job loss is simplistic and binary. The economies of the
world are now interlinked more tightly than ever before. Witness my
film and my story. A child of India, immigrates to America from
Australia, where he has been educated, starts a technology company and
invests his own money to employ Americans. When I was growing up in
Canberra, the Australian capital, such a trajectory would have been
nearly unimaginable. Foreigners didn't start technology companies in
the U.S. Today, it's an old story. In fact, the story today is that I
am involved in making a movie in India. And the technology company
that I started is now expanding rapidly and is looking for more
employees in the US.

GRUDGING CONVERSION.  Back to my 16-year-old son. I am always grateful
when my American-born teenager has time to talk to me. Between all
those instant messages and cell phone calls, teenage life is really
busy. I was delighted that he wanted to talk to me, but the fact that
the discussion was about outsourcing really surprised me. His views
were even more unexpected. His concern was that, with so much
unemployment and poverty in America, we needed to create jobs locally.

Why was my company employing all those people in Russia, and why was I
now working on creating jobs in India? He lectured me about the need
to give back to the local community before we gave back to the world.
Fortunately, it is easier to convince a teenager than a politician in
an election year. After a discussion lasting hours, and walking him
through some of the details, and showing him that we were making the
pie bigger for everyone, he said that maybe what I was doing was okay,
after all. He still believed that outsourcing was bad, but maybe we
could do things in a way that everyone wins.
   _________________________________________________________________

[3]Vivek Wadhwa has co-founded two technology companies, and is
currently chairman of Relativity Technologies in Raleigh, N.C. When
not producing movies or battling venture capitalists, Wadhwa mentors
fledgling entrepreneurs.
Edited by Alex Salkever

Degrees of Achievement
http://www.businessweek.com/print/smallbiz/content/sep2005/sb20050914_959737.htm
SEPTEMBER 14, 2005
Viewpoint
By Vivek Wadhwa

Much of what I learned at B-school seemed irrelevant -- until it boosted my
earnings, launched a new career, and ushered me into academia

  Early in their careers, entrepreneurs have to make difficult decisions
  about the level of education to pursue. Business school is costly and takes
  years to complete -- and even longer to pay dividends.

  If you're a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, schooling clearly won't make or break
  your career. However, for me, education probably made the difference
  between success and mediocrity. I've gained so much from my education that
  I've decided to give back to the system.

  TUITION BURDEN.  Long ago, I had to make some very tough choices. With a
  bachelor's degree in computing, I was well set in my technical career. I
  took great pride in being a geek and would boast about my coding exploits
  at cocktail parties. Yet I knew that my understanding of the business world
  lacked depth, and I harbored a deep-rooted desire to get the best education
  possible.

  I signed up for an MBA at [3]New York University, but this was no easy
  decision. My wife and I had to choose between tuition and the down payment
  on a new house. Having a child on the way made it even more difficult. We
  ended up having to manage with a tiny, one-bedroom apartment in North
  Bergen, N.J., while I went to school.

  After starting the program, I wasn't so sure why my study included topics
  like economics, accounting, marketing, and operations management. These
  seemed so far from my technical world that I wondered if they would ever
  help me.

  About the time I completed my degree, I received an offer from
  investment-banking powerhouse Credit Suisse First Boston ([4]CTNX ) to join
  its programming staff. I'm still not sure if my MBA helped me land this
  job, but it didn't hurt.

  SELF-ESTEEM BUILDER.  For the first couple of years, my business degree
  seemed totally irrelevant. Knowing about how the capital markets worked or
  understanding operations management didn't help me write better code. So I
  used to wonder if I had made the right choice.

  Over time, I realized that I had a much better understanding of how the
  business worked than some of my peers. And I felt confident in my dealings
  with the bank's managing directors as well as with user departments. I
  could present business proposals and participate in technology design
  meetings. I was able to persuade the company to invest in technology I had
  designed.

  When my team's success led to IBM's ([5]IBM ) funding of a spin-off
  company, I was offered the chief technology officer post. That's when my
  education really began to pay big dividends.

  A FEW ODDBALLS.  In the startup world, it's simply survival of the fittest.
  You have to involve yourself with almost every aspect of the business --
  and leverage all skills. I would find myself having to develop and manage
  budgets, help market and sell, hire, and motivate employees, assist in
  setting corporate strategy, and review legal contracts. Plus, I still had
  to develop technology and deal with all the uncertainties and failures that
  come with a startup.

  My MBA classes seemed to fit our business needs like the pieces of a jigsaw
  puzzle. Even obscure topics like corporate finance came in handy in IPO
  discussions with investment bankers and when I later raised capital for my
  own company.

  To be fair, there were some jigsaw pieces that I'll never use and others
  that didn't fit well. I can't imagine when I'm ever going to price an
  option with the Black-Scholes Model, for example. I wished that the program
  had had classes on selling and given us more interaction with the real
  world.

  HIGHER GOAL.  In previous columns I've written about my adventures with
  India's Bollywood (see BW Online, 1/24/04, [6]"Bollywood, Here I Come!").
  To my surprise, my education even helped in that universe. The principles
  of marketing, management, and accounting all have the same applications, no
  matter what the industry.

  With My Bollywood Bride nearing theatrical release and my having become
  disenchanted with this world of glamour, I began to wonder where I'd find
  the next mountain worth climbing.

  A chance meeting with Kristina Johnson, dean of the Pratt School of
  Engineering at Duke University, presented the opportunity I was looking
  for. With a PhD in Electrical Engineering, 44 patents to her name, and her
  involvement in many startup technology companies, Kristina is no ordinary
  academic. And she has a mission.

  GLOBAL EDGE.  Kristina worries that the U.S. is losing its competitive edge
  as the graduation rate of engineers and scientists declines. To hold on to
  quality of life, we have to maintain our competency and leadership in
  engineering, science, and technology. She also feels that graduating
  engineers and technicians generally lack business skills.
  She introduced me to Dr. Jeff Glass, who heads the Pratt Master's of
  Engineering Management (MEM) program, which had put together a very
  innovative one-year course of study.

  The program seeks to prepare engineering graduates to go beyond their
  technical roots when they enter the workforce. By teaching topics such as
  marketing, management, and law, the MEM Program gives students a head start
  in the corporate world.

  And MEM graduates can better compete in the global economy, where
  lower-level technical functions are rapidly relocating to countries like
  India and China.

  HONORIFIC GETTER.  Jeff wanted to bring the program closer to the business
  world, to set up an advisory board that comprised business and academic
  leaders to guide the school. He wanted assistance in mentoring students and
  his faculty. Kristina wanted help in commercializing some of the
  revolutionary technologies her school was researching. And she wanted to
  create ties to universities in other countries.

  When Kristina asked me to join the university as executive-in-residence, I
  said yes immediately. I was looking for a way to give back to the education
  system that had given so much to me, and this seemed like the perfect role.
  Plus, it would allow me to add a title that I have respected since
  childhood.

  So, Professor Wadhwa it is.
   _________________________________________________________________

  [7]Wadhwa, the founder of two software companies, is an
  Executive-in-Residence/Adjunct Professor at Duke University. He is also the
  co-founder of TiE Carolinas, a networking and mentoring group.
  Edited by Rod Kurtz

References

3. http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/04/full_time_profiles/stern.htm
4. javascript: void showTicker('CTNX')
5. javascript: void showTicker('IBM')
6. http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jan2004/sb20040121_6183.htm
7. mailto:vivek at wadhwa.com

Bollywood, Here I Come!
http://www.businessweek.com/print/smallbiz/content/jan2004/sb20040121_6183.htm?chan=sb
JANUARY 21, 2004
BOLLYWOOD POSTCARD
By Vivek Wadhwa

Meet our latest columnist, a U.S. entrepreneur-turned-film producer, who
will be reporting on his new business in the world's busiest movie mecca

After 25 years as a geek, hacker, programmer, project manager, chief
technology officer, and finally, chief executive officer of a
technology company, I have added a new title to my resum?: Bollywood
film producer. And I owe it all to a heart attack, venture
capitalists, and my son. My story is a simple one. I spent five years
running at top speed to build a software outfit called Relativity
Technologies, which helps modernize their legacy computer systems.

Relativity received worldwide recognition and in 2001, a top business
magazine named it one of the world's 25 "coolest" companies.
Like all other tech players, the dot-com crash hit us hard. To make
ends meet, we had to lay off good employees and raise more money. We
believed so much in our company that my management team and I
personally invested the first $1 million in a $5 million round of
financing. After we succeeded in getting back to solid growth and
profits, I decided to take a much needed vacation.

HEART OF THE MATTER.  It must have been the lack of Internet access on
my Caribbean cruise that led to a massive heart attack. I woke up in
the hospital glad to be alive. While still in the Critical Care Unit,
I received a phone call saying that my investors felt the need to
renegotiate the terms of the current financing. Two days later and
still bandaged, I left the hospital and walked, uninvited, into a
closed-door meeting, where investors were trying to convince my
executive team to accept more money for a revised agreement that would
give them majority ownership. I flatly refused, and ended the meeting.

My friends sent me lots of "get well" flowers. My investors sent me a
letter demanding that I step aside and allow the younger brother of a
partner in one of their firms to take over -- the company I had
founded, built with most of my life savings, and paid for with a
cardiac arrest. For the next few months, I spent what little energy I
had fighting people I formerly held in high regard.

Fortunately, that chapter of my life story had a happy ending. I won
critical battles, kept control of Relativity, and eventually recruited
a new CEO to take over from me. I also took my doctors' advice to do
something less stressful than fight venture capitalists for a living,
and regained my health. I kept my role as chairman of the board, but
decided that my chief priority was to make up for lost time with my
family.

A FATHER'S DUTY.  That led me to India, where my eldest son, Vineet,
was taking his semester abroad in New Delhi. He is as American as can
be, but Vineet had not only discovered his Indian roots, he also had
acquired the Indian addiction to Bollywood movies. An Indian
specialty, these films tend to be spicy, dramatic, and romantic
musical extravaganzas, and should never be watched without a ready
handkerchief. Think Moulin Rouge or Chicago with family-values morals,
but even more over-the-top musical numbers and costumes. In India,
Bollywood's stars are practically worshipped by the masses.

When I told Vineet that I was taking a month off to spend with him, I
don't think he believed me. I asked him where in India he would like
to travel. His immediate answer? Bollywood, in the city of Mumbai --
formerly known as Bombay -- home of the world's largest film industry.
And he asked for a rare favor: Could we meet some movie stars while we
were there? His dad was famous and knew everyone, right?

Of course I didn't know any movie stars -- I was just a techie who
started a software company. However, I couldn't admit this to him. To
make things worse, I didn't think I knew anyone who knew any movie
stars, since most of my friends were like me. Yet I couldn't let my
son down.

After exhausting my list of Indian contacts, I recalled corresponding
with an investment banker, Brad Listermann, who was raising money for
a telecommunications outfit. When I talked to him a couple of weeks
earlier, he had mentioned something about Bollywood. Grasping at
straws, I sent him an urgent e-mail asking him for more information.

LIMO TO LUXURY.  What luck. As it turned out, he was married to former
beauty queen and Bollywood star, Kashmira Shah. He had met her on the
Internet, and after months of romancing via e-mail, they got together,
fell in love, and married.

Unfortunately, she was scheduled to be in Hollywood for a film that
was shooting the week we were to be in Mumbai. Brad offered to
introduce us to Feroz Khan instead. In most of South Asia and the
Middle East, Feroz Khan is as well known as Clint Eastwood or Robert
Redford. I gladly took Brad up on his offer. Believe me, we would have
traveled anywhere to shake hands with Feroz.

Still, we were taking all this with a grain of salt. I mean, who gets
to meet Robert Redford after a couple of e-mails? We were surprised to
get a phone call from Feroz when we landed in Mumbai, but even more
surprised to get an invitation to his house for dinner. Would it
really be Khan, Vineet asked, or a practical joke? Our doubts were
dispelled when his Mercedes showed up at our hotel and drove us to his
beachside mansion in Mumbai's prestigious Juhu Beach neighborhood. On
the ride over, Vineet's only question was: What would we talk to Feroz
about?

Feroz greeted us at the door and showed us around his palace. The
house boasted beautiful artwork and sculptures, massive crystal
chandeliers, a film production studio, a gymnasium, and an indoor
pool. Between the butler, servants, chauffeur, and security guards,
there were at least 11 employees on duty that evening.

STAR POWER.  Feroz apologized that his son, Fardeen, was delayed in
New Delhi. Fardeen is akin to the Tom Cruise of Bollywood. Instead,
Feroz had invited Celina Jaitley, Miss India 2001, who has since
become a popular Bollywood actress. My son and I looked at each other
in utter disbelief when she walked in the door a few minutes later.

Vineet almost fell off his chair. Clearly, that night we were visiting
a different universe than the one we inhabited back in North Carolina.
It was an enchanting evening. They told us stories about the
production of their upcoming film, gossiped about their fellow
Bollywood stars, and discussed the inner workings of beauty pageants.
Feroz also gave me an interesting lesson on the dynamics and economics
of the entertainment industry, and took me to his production studio,
where he showed clips of his upcoming movie, Janasheen.

I learned a lot in those four hours, later calling Brad Listermann to
thank him and to ask how I could possibly return the huge favor of
making me look like a superhero in the eyes of my son. He hesitated,
then wondered if I could spend some time to review a business plan,
and possibly introduce him to any members of the Indian tech community
who might be interested in funding it.

He had developed this plan with the help of his mentor, Duncan Clark,
the ex-President of Columbia Tri-star's International Theatrical
Division, who was fascinated by Bollywood's potential. The plan was to
produce quality Hollywood movies in Bollywood, and to do so for one
tenth what a comparable independent production would cost elsewhere.

OLD SKILLS, NEW PLOT .  Brad had also written a lovely story about an
American who falls in love with an Indian movie star, and follows her
back to Bollywood (sound familiar?). It showed India through the eyes
of a bewildered Westerner. This script provided an opportunity to test
Brad's theory about producing quality movies in Bollywood at a low
cost. What excited me the most was that it would help build on the
momentum of independent cross-over movies such as Bend It Like Beckham
and Monsoon Wedding -- box-office successes that have done a great job
of educating Americans about Indian culture, and have helped change
old, hurtful stereotypes.

Brad wanted to produce this movie called "My Bollywood Bride". Duncan
Clark had agreed to take the role of executive producer and oversee
the production and distribution of this film. He wanted me to take a
similar role and help with funding, review budgets and project plans,
and assist with positioning, marketing, and promotion -- all things I
did for a living as a tech executive.

I didn't take much time to think about this, and readily agreed. I had
already caught the "Bollywood bug."
   _________________________________________________________________

[3]Vivek Wadhwa has co-founded two technology companies, and is
currently chairman of Relativity Technologies in Raleigh, N.C. When
not producing movies or battling venture capitalists, Wadhwa mentors
fledgling entrepreneurs.
Edited by Alex Salkever

References
3. mailto:vivek at relativity.com

From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan 11 16:16:07 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 11:16:07 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Cute Factor
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601111115240.24808@panix1.panix.com>

The Cute Factor
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/science/03cute.html

    By NATALIE ANGIER

    WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 - If the mere sight of Tai Shan, the roly-poly,
    goofily gamboling masked bandit of a panda cub now on view at the
    National Zoo isn't enough to make you melt, then maybe the crush of
    his human onlookers, the furious flashing of their cameras and the
    heated gasps of their mass rapture will do the trick.

    "Omigosh, look at him! He is too cute!"

    "How adorable! I wish I could just reach in there and give him a big
    squeeze!"

    "He's so fuzzy! I've never seen anything so cute in my life!"

    A guard's sonorous voice rises above the burble. "OK, folks, five oohs
    and aahs per person, then it's time to let someone else step up
    front."

    The 6-month-old, 25-pound Tai Shan - whose name is pronounced tie-SHON
    and means, for no obvious reason, "peaceful mountain" - is the first
    surviving giant panda cub ever born at the Smithsonian's zoo. And
    though the zoo's adult pandas have long been among Washington's top
    tourist attractions, the public debut of the baby in December has
    unleashed an almost bestial frenzy here. Some 13,000 timed tickets to
    see the cub were snapped up within two hours of being released, and
    almost immediately began trading on eBay for up to $200 a pair.

    Panda mania is not the only reason that 2005 proved an exceptionally
    cute year. Last summer, a movie about another black-and-white charmer,
    the emperor penguin, became one of the highest-grossing documentaries
    of all time. Sales of petite, willfully cute cars like the Toyota
    Prius and the Mini Cooper soared, while those of noncute sport utility
    vehicles tanked.

    Women's fashions opted for the cute over the sensible or glamorous,
    with low-slung slacks and skirts and abbreviated blouses contriving to
    present a customer's midriff as an adorable preschool bulge. Even the
    too big could be too cute. King Kong's newly reissued face has a
    squashed baby-doll appeal, and his passion for Naomi Watts ultimately
    feels like a serious case of puppy love - hopeless, heartbreaking,
    cute.

    Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified
    a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that
    make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big
    round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side,
    teeter-totter gait, among many others.

    Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability,
    harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely
    makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so
    pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without
    adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and
    gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

    The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers
    said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely
    resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including
    the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds
    like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a
    big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a
    close parenthesis typed in succession.

    The greater the number of cute cues that an animal or object happens
    to possess, or the more exaggerated the signals may be, the louder and
    more italicized are the squeals provoked.

    Cuteness is distinct from beauty, researchers say, emphasizing rounded
    over sculptured, soft over refined, clumsy over quick. Beauty attracts
    admiration and demands a pedestal; cuteness attracts affection and
    demands a lap. Beauty is rare and brutal, despoiled by a single
    pimple. Cuteness is commonplace and generous, content on occasion to
    cosegregate with homeliness.

    Observing that many Floridians have an enormous affection for the
    manatee, which looks like an overfertilized potato with a sock
    puppet's face, Roger L. Reep of the University of Florida said it
    shone by grace of contrast. "People live hectic lives, and they may be
    feeling overwhelmed, but then they watch this soft and slow-moving
    animal, this gentle giant, and they see it turn on its back to get its
    belly scratched," said Dr. Reep, author with Robert K. Bonde of "The
    Florida Manatee: Biology and Conservation."

    "That's very endearing," said Dr. Reep. "So even though a manatee is 3
    times your size and 20 times your weight, you want to get into the
    water beside it."

    Even as they say a cute tooth has rational roots, scientists admit
    they are just beginning to map its subtleties and source. New studies
    suggest that cute images stimulate the same pleasure centers of the
    brain aroused by sex, a good meal or psychoactive drugs like cocaine,
    which could explain why everybody in the panda house wore a big grin.

    At the same time, said Denis Dutton, a philosopher of art at the
    University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the rapidity and promiscuity
    of the cute response makes the impulse suspect, readily overridden by
    the angry sense that one is being exploited or deceived.

    "Cute cuts through all layers of meaning and says, Let's not worry
    about complexities, just love me," said Dr. Dutton, who is writing a
    book about Darwinian aesthetics. "That's where the sense of cheapness
    can come from, and the feeling of being manipulated or taken for a
    sucker that leads many to reject cuteness as low or shallow."

    Quick and cheap make cute appealing to those who want to catch the eye
    and please the crowd. Advertisers and product designers are forever
    toying with cute cues to lend their merchandise instant appeal, mixing
    and monkeying with the vocabulary of cute to keep the message fresh
    and fetching.

    That market-driven exercise in cultural evolution can yield bizarre if
    endearing results, like the blatantly ugly Cabbage Patch dolls,
    Furbies, the figgy face of E.T., the froggy one of Yoda. As though the
    original Volkswagen Beetle wasn't considered cute enough, the updated
    edition was made rounder and shinier still.

    "The new Beetle looks like a smiley face," said Miles Orvell,
    professor of American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia.
    "By this point its origins in Hitler's regime, and its intended
    resemblance to a German helmet, is totally forgotten."

    Whatever needs pitching, cute can help. A recent study at the Veterans
    Affairs Medical Center at the University of Michigan showed that high
    school students were far more likely to believe antismoking messages
    accompanied by cute cartoon characters like a penguin in a red jacket
    or a smirking polar bear than when the warnings were delivered
    unadorned.

    "It made a huge difference," said Sonia A. Duffy, the lead author of
    the report, which was published in The Archives of Pediatrics and
    Adolescent Medicine. "The kids expressed more confidence in the
    cartoons than in the warnings themselves."

    Primal and widespread though the taste for cute may be, researchers
    say it varies in strength and significance across cultures and eras.
    They compare the cute response to the love of sugar: everybody has
    sweetness receptors on the tongue, but some people, and some
    countries, eat a lot more candy than others.

    Experts point out that the cuteness craze is particularly acute in
    Japan, where it goes by the name "kawaii" and has infiltrated the most
    masculine of redoubts. Truck drivers display Hello Kitty-style
    figurines on their dashboards. The police enliven safety billboards
    and wanted posters with two perky mouselike mascots, Pipo kun and Pipo
    chan.

    Behind the kawaii phenomenon, according to Brian J. McVeigh, a scholar
    of East Asian studies at the University of Arizona, is the strongly
    hierarchical nature of Japanese culture. "Cuteness is used to soften
    up the vertical society," he said, "to soften power relations and
    present authority without being threatening."

    In this country, the use of cute imagery is geared less toward
    blurring the line of command than toward celebrating America's
    favorite demographic: the young. Dr. Orvell traces contemporary cute
    chic to the 1960's, with its celebration of a perennial childhood, a
    refusal to dress in adult clothes, an inversion of adult values, a
    love of bright colors and bloopy, cartoony patterns, the Lava Lamp.

    Today, it's not enough for a company to use cute graphics in its
    advertisements. It must have a really cute name as well. "Companies
    like Google and Yahoo leave no question in your mind about the
    youthfulness of their founders," said Dr. Orvell.

    Madison Avenue may adapt its strategies for maximal tweaking of our
    inherent baby radar, but babies themselves, evolutionary scientists
    say, did not really evolve to be cute. Instead, most of their salient
    qualities stem from the demands of human anatomy and the human brain,
    and became appealing to a potential caretaker's eye only because
    infants wouldn't survive otherwise.

    Human babies have unusually large heads because humans have unusually
    large brains. Their heads are round because their brains continue to
    grow throughout the first months of life, and the plates of the skull
    stay flexible and unfused to accommodate the development. Baby eyes
    and ears are situated comparatively far down the face and skull, and
    only later migrate upward in proportion to the development of bones in
    the cheek and jaw areas.

    Baby eyes are also notably forward-facing, the binocular vision a
    likely legacy of our tree-dwelling ancestry, and all our favorite
    Disney characters also sport forward-facing eyes, including the ducks
    and mice, species that in reality have eyes on the sides of their
    heads.

    The cartilage tissue in an infant's nose is comparatively soft and
    undeveloped, which is why most babies have button noses. Baby skin
    sits relatively loose on the body, rather than being taut, the better
    to stretch for growth spurts to come, said Paul H. Morris, an
    evolutionary scientist at the University of Portsmouth in England;
    that lax packaging accentuates the overall roundness of form.

    Baby movements are notably clumsy, an amusing combination of jerky and
    delayed, because learning to coordinate the body's many bilateral sets
    of large and fine muscle groups requires years of practice. On
    starting to walk, toddlers struggle continuously to balance themselves
    between left foot and right, and so the toddler gait consists as much
    of lateral movement as of any forward momentum.

    Researchers who study animals beloved by the public appreciate the
    human impulse to nurture anything even remotely babylike, though they
    are at times taken aback by people's efforts to identify with their
    preferred species.

    Take penguins as an example. Some people are so wild for the
    creatures, said Michel Gauthier-Clerc, a penguin researcher in Arles,
    France, "they think penguins are mammals and not birds." They love the
    penguin's upright posture, its funny little tuxedo, the way it waddles
    as it walks. How like a child playing dress-up!

    Endearing as it is, Dr. Gauthier-Clerc explained that the apparent
    awkwardness of the penguin's march had nothing to do with clumsiness
    or uncertain balance. Instead, he said, penguins waddle to save
    energy. A side-to-side walk burns fewer calories than a
    straightforward stride, and for birds that fast for months and live in
    a frigid climate, every calorie counts.

    As for the penguin's maestro garb, the white front and black jacket
    suits its aquatic way of life. While submerged in water, the penguin's
    dark backside is difficult to see from above, camouflaging the penguin
    from potential predators of air or land. The white chest, by contrast,
    obscures it from below, protecting it against carnivores and allowing
    it to better sneak up on fish prey.

    The giant panda offers another case study in accidental cuteness.
    Although it is a member of the bear family, a highly carnivorous clan,
    the giant panda specializes in eating bamboo.

    As it happens, many of the adaptations that allow it to get by on such
    a tough diet contribute to the panda's cute form, even in adulthood.
    Inside the bear's large, rounded head, said Lisa Stevens, assistant
    panda curator at the National Zoo, are the highly developed jaw
    muscles and the set of broad, grinding molars it needs to crush its
    way through some 40 pounds of fibrous bamboo plant a day.

    When it sits up against a tree and starts picking apart a bamboo stalk
    with its distinguishing pseudo-thumb, a panda looks like nothing so
    much like Huckleberry Finn shucking corn. Yet the humanesque posture
    and paws again are adaptations to its menu. The bear must have its
    "hands" free and able to shred the bamboo leaves from their stalks.

    The panda's distinctive markings further add to its appeal: the black
    patches around the eyes make them seem winsomely low on its face,
    while the black ears pop out cutely against the white fur of its
    temples.

    As with the penguin's tuxedo, the panda's two-toned coat very likely
    serves a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it helps a feeding bear
    blend peacefully into the dappled backdrop of bamboo. On the other,
    the sharp contrast between light and dark may serve as a social
    signal, helping the solitary bears locate each other when the time has
    come to find the perfect, too-cute mate.


From guavaberry at earthlink.net  Wed Jan 11 19:58:15 2006
From: guavaberry at earthlink.net (K.E.)
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:58:15 -0500
Subject: [Paleopsych] The failure to calculate the costs of war
Message-ID: <7.0.0.16.0.20060111145653.0324f598@edu-cyberpg.com>


With these costs taken into account, the total macroeconomic costs may
add up to $750bn and total costs to $1,850bn.

"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."
-Dwight David Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)




Martin Wolf is a respectable economist and chief
economics commentator at the Financial Times

Martin Wolf: The failure to calculate the costs of war
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/48ad9c0a-820f-11da-aea0-0000779e2340.html

     Before the Iraq war began, Lawrence Lindsey, then president George
W.???Bush's economic adviser, suggested that the costs might reach
$200bn. The White House promptly fired him. Mr Lindsey was indeed
wrong. But his error lay in grossly underestimating the costs. The
administration's estimates of a cost of some $50-$60bn were a fantasy,
as were Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and much else.

<snip>

So far the government has spent $251bn in hard cash. But the costs
continue. If the US begins to withdraw troops this year, but maintains
a diminishing presence for the next five years, the additional cost
will be at least $200bn, under what Profs Bilmes and Stiglitz call
their "conservative" option. Under their "moderate" one, the cost
reaches $271bn, because troops remain until 2015.

<snip>

With these costs taken into account, the total macroeconomic costs may
add up to $750bn and total costs to $1,850bn.

<snip>

It is possible to argue that the benefits for Iraq, the Middle East
and the world will outweigh all these costs. But that depends on the
emergence, in Iraq, of a stable and peaceful democratic order. That
has not yet been achieved.

Even those who supported the war must draw two lessons. First, the
exercise of military power is far more expensive than many fondly
hoped. Second, such policy decisions require a halfway decent analysis
of the costs and possible consequences. The administration's failure
to do so was a blunder that will harm the US and the world for years
to come.

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http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/

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http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/NCFR/

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From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan 11 21:29:20 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 16:29:20 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Cells That Read Minds
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601111626270.12486@panix1.panix.com>

Cells That Read Minds
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/science/10mirr.html

[This is a particularly important article, for it connects social learning 
with the brain. File it under the G in GRIN: genetics, robotics, 
information, nanotech.]

    By SANDRA BLAKESLEE

    On a hot summer day 15 years ago in Parma, Italy, a monkey sat in a
    special laboratory chair waiting for researchers to return from lunch.
    Thin wires had been implanted in the region of its brain involved in
    planning and carrying out movements.

    Every time the monkey grasped and moved an object, some cells in that
    brain region would fire, and a monitor would register a sound:
    brrrrrip, brrrrrip, brrrrrip.

    A graduate student entered the lab with an ice cream cone in his hand.
    The monkey stared at him. Then, something amazing happened: when the
    student raised the cone to his lips, the monitor sounded - brrrrrip,
    brrrrrip, brrrrrip - even though the monkey had not moved but had
    simply observed the student grasping the cone and moving it to his
    mouth.

    The researchers, led by Giacomo Rizzolatti, a neuroscientist at the
    University of Parma, had earlier noticed the same strange phenomenon
    with peanuts. The same brain cells fired when the monkey watched
    humans or other monkeys bring peanuts to their mouths as when the
    monkey itself brought a peanut to its mouth.

    Later, the scientists found cells that fired when the monkey broke
    open a peanut or heard someone break a peanut. The same thing happened
    with bananas, raisins and all kinds of other objects.

    "It took us several years to believe what we were seeing," Dr.
    Rizzolatti said in a recent interview. The monkey brain contains a
    special class of cells, called mirror neurons, that fire when the
    animal sees or hears an action and when the animal carries out the
    same action on its own.

    But if the findings, published in 1996, surprised most scientists,
    recent research has left them flabbergasted. Humans, it turns out,
    have mirror neurons that are far smarter, more flexible and more
    highly evolved than any of those found in monkeys, a fact that
    scientists say reflects the evolution of humans' sophisticated social
    abilities.

    The human brain has multiple mirror neuron systems that specialize in
    carrying out and understanding not just the actions of others but
    their intentions, the social meaning of their behavior and their
    emotions.

    "We are exquisitely social creatures," Dr. Rizzolatti said. "Our
    survival depends on understanding the actions, intentions and emotions
    of others."

    He continued, "Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others
    not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation. By
    feeling, not by thinking."

    The discovery is shaking up numerous scientific disciplines, shifting
    the understanding of culture, empathy, philosophy, language,
    imitation, autism and psychotherapy.

    Everyday experiences are also being viewed in a new light. Mirror
    neurons reveal how children learn, why people respond to certain types
    of sports, dance, music and art, why watching media violence may be
    harmful and why many men like pornography.

    How can a single mirror neuron or system of mirror neurons be so
    incredibly smart?

    Most nerve cells in the brain are comparatively pedestrian. Many
    specialize in detecting ordinary features of the outside world. Some
    fire when they encounter a horizontal line while others are dedicated
    to vertical lines. Others detect a single frequency of sound or a
    direction of movement.

    Moving to higher levels of the brain, scientists find groups of
    neurons that detect far more complex features like faces, hands or
    expressive body language. Still other neurons help the body plan
    movements and assume complex postures.

    Mirror neurons make these complex cells look like numbskulls. Found in
    several areas of the brain - including the premotor cortex, the
    posterior parietal lobe, the superior temporal sulcus and the insula -
    they fire in response to chains of actions linked to intentions.

    Studies show that some mirror neurons fire when a person reaches for a
    glass or watches someone else reach for a glass; others fire when the
    person puts the glass down and still others fire when the person
    reaches for a toothbrush and so on. They respond when someone kicks a
    ball, sees a ball being kicked, hears a ball being kicked and says or
    hears the word "kick."

    "When you see me perform an action - such as picking up a baseball -
    you automatically simulate the action in your own brain," said Dr.
    Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los
    Angeles, who studies mirror neurons. "Circuits in your brain, which we
    do not yet entirely understand, inhibit you from moving while you
    simulate," he said. "But you understand my action because you have in
    your brain a template for that action based on your own movements.

    "When you see me pull my arm back, as if to throw the ball, you also
    have in your brain a copy of what I am doing and it helps you
    understand my goal. Because of mirror neurons, you can read my
    intentions. You know what I am going to do next."

    He continued: "And if you see me choke up, in emotional distress from
    striking out at home plate, mirror neurons in your brain simulate my
    distress. You automatically have empathy for me. You know how I feel
    because you literally feel what I am feeling."

    Mirror neurons seem to analyzed scenes and to read minds. If you see
    someone reach toward a bookshelf and his hand is out of sight, you
    have little doubt that he is going to pick up a book because your
    mirror neurons tell you so.

    In a study published in March 2005 in Public Library of Science, Dr.
    Iacoboni and his colleagues reported that mirror neurons could discern
    if another person who was picking up a cup of tea planned to drink
    from it or clear it from the table. "Mirror neurons provide a powerful
    biological foundation for the evolution of culture," said Patricia
    Greenfield, a psychologist at the U.C.L.A. who studies human
    development.

    Until now, scholars have treated culture as fundamentally separate
    from biology, she said. "But now we see that mirror neurons absorb
    culture directly, with each generation teaching the next by social
    sharing, imitation and observation."

    Other animals - monkeys, probably apes and possibly elephants,
    dolphins and dogs - have rudimentary mirror neurons, several mirror
    neuron experts said. But humans, with their huge working memory, carry
    out far more sophisticated imitations.

    Language is based on mirror neurons, according to Michael Arbib, a
    neuroscientist at the University of Southern California. One such
    system, found in the front of the brain, contains overlapping
    circuitry for spoken language and sign language.

    In an article published in Trends in Neuroscience in March 1998, Dr.
    Arbib described how complex hand gestures and the complex tongue and
    lip movements used in making sentences use the same machinery. Autism,
    some researchers believe, may involve broken mirror neurons. A study
    published in the Jan. 6 issue of Nature Neuroscience by Mirella
    Dapretto, a neuroscientist at U.C.L.A., found that while many people
    with autism can identify an emotional expression, like sadness, on
    another person's face, or imitate sad looks with their own faces, they
    do not feel the emotional significance of the imitated emotion. From
    observing other people, they do not know what it feels like to be sad,
    angry, disgusted or surprised.

    Mirror neurons provide clues to how children learn: they kick in at
    birth. Dr. Andrew Meltzoff at the University of Washington has
    published studies showing that infants a few minutes old will stick
    out their tongues at adults doing the same thing. More than other
    primates, human children are hard-wired for imitation, he said, their
    mirror neurons involved in observing what others do and practicing
    doing the same things.

    Still, there is one caveat, Dr. Iacoboni said. Mirror neurons work
    best in real life, when people are face to face. Virtual reality and
    videos are shadowy substitutes.

    Nevertheless, a study in the January 2006 issue of Media Psychology
    found that when children watched violent television programs, mirror
    neurons, as well as several brain regions involved in aggression were
    activated, increasing the probability that the children would behave
    violently.

    The ability to share the emotions of others appears to be intimately
    linked to the functioning of mirror neurons, said Dr. Christian
    Keysers, who studies the neural basis of empathy at the University of
    Groningen in the Netherlands and who has published several recent
    articles on the topic in Neuron.

    When you see someone touched in a painful way, your own pain areas are
    activated, he said. When you see a spider crawl up someone's leg, you
    feel a creepy sensation because your mirror neurons are firing.

    People who rank high on a scale measuring empathy have particularly
    active mirror neurons systems, Dr. Keysers said.

    Social emotions like guilt, shame, pride, embarrassment, disgust and
    lust are based on a uniquely human mirror neuron system found in a
    part of the brain called the insula, Dr. Keysers said. In a study not
    yet published, he found that when people watched a hand go forward to
    caress someone and then saw another hand push it away rudely, the
    insula registered the social pain of rejection. Humiliation appears to
    be mapped in the brain by the same mechanisms that encode real
    physical pain, he said.

    Psychotherapists are understandably enthralled by the discovery of
    mirror neurons, said Dr. Daniel Siegel, the director of the Center for
    Human Development in Los Angeles and the author of "Parenting From the
    Inside Out," because they provide a possible neurobiological basis for
    the psychological mechanisms known as transference and
    countertransference.

    In transference, clients "transfer" feelings about important figures
    in their lives onto a therapist. Similarly, in countertransference, a
    therapist's reactions to a client are shaped by the therapist's own
    earlier relationships.

    Therapists can use their own mirror system to understand a client's
    problems and to generate empathy, he said. And they can help clients
    understand that many of their experiences stem from what other people
    have said or done to them in the past.

    Art exploits mirror neurons, said Dr. Vittorio Gallese, a
    neuroscientist at Parma University. When you see the Baroque sculptor
    Gian Lorenzo Bernini's hand of divinity grasping marble, you see the
    hand as if it were grasping flesh, he said. Experiments show that when
    you read a novel, you memorize positions of objects from the
    narrator's point of view.

    Professional athletes and coaches, who often use mental practice and
    imagery, have long exploited the brain's mirror properties perhaps
    without knowing their biological basis, Dr. Iacoboni said. Observation
    directly improves muscle performance via mirror neurons.

    Similarly, millions of fans who watch their favorite sports on
    television are hooked by mirror neuron activation. In someone who has
    never played a sport - say tennis - the mirror neurons involved in
    running, swaying and swinging the arms will be activated, Dr. Iacoboni
    said.

    But in someone who plays tennis, the mirror systems will be highly
    activated when an overhead smash is observed. Watching a game, that
    person will be better able to predict what will happen next, he said.

    In yet another realm, mirror neurons are powerfully activated by
    pornography, several scientists said. For example, when a man watches
    another man have sexual intercourse with a woman, the observer's
    mirror neurons spring into action. The vicarious thrill of watching
    sex, it turns out, is not so vicarious after all.


From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan 11 21:49:17 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 16:49:17 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Life, Death, and Biocultural Literacy
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601111630040.12486@panix1.panix.com>

Life, Death, and Biocultural Literacy
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6.1.6
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i18/18b00901.htm

[Read this one carefully. I often tend to corner solutions rather than 
compromises myself, though. I'd rather that public monies be spent on 
people who do not generate positive externalities. In other cases, I'd 
make a legal presumption toward death: unless someone has expressly 
declared that he wants his body to be kept alive as long as possible AND 
has forked over the money to provide for it, the law should presume that 
those in terminal pain and those who have gone senile do not want such 
support.

[I would not pull the plug on my own mother, any more than Peter Singer 
did on his. I am not an early adaptor of an irreverence toward mere life 
that I'd like to see adopted, which it will be as the Baby Boomers do not 
go to the polls like the G.I. and self-styled "greatest" generation did, 
and won't therefore be so nearly successful rent-seekers. And the upcoming 
labor force to provide these rents will be far less capable, due to 
demographic shifts. The way out is to change ethical attitudes toward the 
prolongation of life.

[By the way, health care is NOT getting more expensive. It is in fact 
getting much cheaper. Health care spending is, of course, going up, but 
this spending purchases the latest and highest-tech care and is largely 
demand driven. A 1985 level of health care is cheaper now than it was 
1985. I wish I had some actual figures here. I also wish I could establish 
my estimate that life expectancy under 1985 levels of spending would mean 
one year less of life expectancy. Life expectancy went up five years in 
the last twenty years (a trend going back over a hundred years). My guess 
is that a fifth of it is due to spending.

[Read the article carefully, to learn about the inconsistencies in various 
"conservative" and "liberal" positions. Then wait for the next article, 
which will throw cold water on whole thing. Pause first, though, to try to 
Check its major Premise.]

    By LENNARD J. DAVIS

    It is a literary convention that at the moment of death, one may
    finally come to know oneself. In many of Dickens's novels, for
    example, you'll find a touching deathbed scene. As the dying character
    fades away, he or she utters a few summarizing words -- or, in the
    case of Shakespeare, a great deal of them -- and those around can wipe
    away a tear and find some significance in the person's demise. In
    literature, one's identity, paradoxically, often comes to fruition at
    the moment of death.

    But while Dickens had metaphorical harps and angels to enhance
    self-revelation at the time of death, we have ventilators, feeding
    tubes, and defibrillators. Death for us isn't so much a final
    revelation of identity as a series of decisions preceding a finality.
    Our sense of identity is much less clear than it was for people in the
    past. For Dickens and his compeers, the division between life and
    death was fairly knowable. But now, at every step through our life and
    death, we have to take into account technological innovations that
    newly define what it means to be human.

    As a result of the publicity surrounding the Terri Schiavo case -- a
    legal brawl between her husband and other family members about whether
    her feeding tube should be removed after she had been in what some
    doctors had diagnosed as a "persistent vegetative state" for 15
    yearsmany of us are writing living wills. In so doing, we have to
    think about not only what it means to be a human, but also at what
    point people cease to have identities.

    Liberals might argue that one's identity ceases to exist with the loss
    of a certain level of consciousness, accompanied by the necessity of
    mechanical life support, such as a feeding tube and ventilator. The
    religious right contends that one has an identity as long as one's
    heart is beating, regardless of one's cognitive function or the need
    for external life support. Some people see being a "vegetable" as an
    insult to existence, while others see it as a variety of life. In
    writing our own living wills, we must attempt to define our identity
    and to project what our identity would and should be if we were
    comatosethat is, permanently unconscious and unresponsive; in a
    persistent vegetative statethat is, awake but unaware; minimally
    conscious; or severely disabled. By doing that, each of us is
    wrestling in our small corner of existence with very large questions
    concerning the point at which identity meets biotechnology.

    The problem is that most of us are ill equipped to make those choices
    because we know so little about the facts of life and death. That is
    probably one reason why at least a third of people who make advance
    directives change their opinions within two years, according to a 2004
    Hastings Center report, "The Failure of the Living Will," by Angela
    Fagerlin, a medical researcher, and Carl E. Schneider, a law
    professor, both at the University of Michigan. Our college educations
    provide us with almost no way to sort through such end-of-life
    decisions. Most of us know very little about biology, don't keep up on
    recent developments in neurology, and barely know the difference
    between a coma and persistent vegetative state. We rely on our
    physicians to tell us about the complexities of medicine, and some of
    us search the Internet to find out what our doctors won't say. In
    short, we have to make up and cobble together what we didn't learn in
    school. There are few if any college-preparatory courses or a single
    discipline that prepares us to grapple with the questions that are
    emerging in the postmillennial public sphere.

    So when it comes to understanding what makes us human, what defines
    consciousness and personhood, when life begins and ends, we often have
    to shoot from the hip. And that can mean we end up shooting ourselves
    in the foot. When we as a culture have to address issues of life and
    death -- such as whether we should allow stem-cell research or
    third-trimester abortions, whether we should cause people like Terri
    Schiavo to die, whether people in Oregon are right to allow
    physician-assisted suicide -- we are often at a loss and inconsistent
    in our positions.

    The public historically has turned to scholars and researchers to
    inform difficult public debates. But it isn't really clear what part
    of the academy should be the go-to profession or department. Certainly
    bioethics seems a logical area of study to resolve contemporary
    questions of life and death, but few undergraduates are expected to
    take a required course on those issues, and the field of bioethics
    itself tends to be fairly specific, dealing mostly with medicine, too
    often without connecting the ethical issues to a broader vision that
    includes history and culture.

    Philosophy and political theory are rich areas of study for dealing
    with life-and-death issues, and the writings of John Rawls, Richard
    Rorty, and John Stuart Mill can help us understand citizens' rights
    and liberal thought. But we then would have to graft those discussions
    onto situations that require some medical and scientific knowledge.
    While a few university programs engage in that kind of synthesis, most
    of us are doing this work on our own, without a substantial commitment
    from academe to help us out.

    Disability studies is one field thatis beginning to pull together
    several disciplines to address the philosophical, moral, legal,
    medical, and cultural questions emerging from the intersection of
    biotechnology and identity. Students of disability studies will be
    prepared to discuss medical interventions, the use of technology in
    medicine, the way in which society thinks about the body, and so on.
    But the problem is that most citizens, because they don't think of
    themselves as disabled, will not turn to disability experts to help
    them understand the complex issues highlighted by the Schiavo muddle.

    Therefore, that case, which dealt with a severely disabled woman, came
    down in the popular press to a debate between members of the religious
    right and the liberal left. But neither side was particularly
    knowledgeable about the nature of a persistent vegetative state and
    whether a feeding tube should be considered a medical intervention (in
    which case, by a Supreme Court ruling, it could be removed) or simply
    a form of providing nutrition (in which case it couldn't). Most of the
    people I talked with thought Schiavo was "brain dead" -- an inaccurate
    term, since her brain was working well enough to keep her alive.
    Bioethicists were used freely by both sides, but, aside from the
    openly religious ethicists, the majority followed the bioethics party
    line that has fostered and encouraged a rather strict notion of
    autonomy based on the patient's informed consent.

    When bioethics began as an academic profession, its goal was to
    promote a notion of patient autonomy as opposed to the previously
    unchallenged authority of the medical profession. Therefore most of
    the bioethicists consulted in the case were in favor of removing
    Schiavo's feeding tube, since, they maintained, that was the course of
    action she had wanted, according to her legal guardian.

    Bioethicists fear that interventions by religious groups or the
    government will muck up the principle of patient autonomy. But
    autonomy is a somewhat limiting principle, despite its obvious
    utility, if you think of the issue not as what a legal guardian wants,
    or says a patient wants, but as what or how a society defines "a life
    worth living." That is, if you thought of Schiavo as a "vegetable,"
    your notion of her autonomy would have pointed to removal of the
    feeding tube. But if you thought of her as a severely disabled woman,
    the notion of autonomy would have become more ambiguous. That is the
    position that most people in disability studies took, and so they
    supported leaving the feeding tube in place.

    The brouhaha raised the question of how we understand identity in an
    age that is increasingly "biocultural," to use a term emerging
    recently. A biocultural approach combines the disciplines of science,
    technology, medicine, and the humanities. This nascent discipline --
    which I have been calling "biocultures" -- is often practiced by
    graduate students or professors in departments of history, gender and
    women's studies, criminal justice, medical education, history, science
    studies, anthropology, literature, and cultural studies. Programs such
    as those at the University of California at Berkeley, Duke, Harvard,
    the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Michigan, and
    Pennsylvania State University bring together issues concerning the
    body, identity, history, and culture. The trend is important because
    it is crucial not just for scholars in the humanities to know the
    impact that science has on culture and the body, but also for
    scientists, limited by funds earmarked for increasingly narrow
    research topics, to think more broadly about the political, cultural,
    and social implications of what they do.

    Take the prickly subject of abortion. Most people have strong feelings
    about it, but few have the biocultural literacy necessary to
    understand the complexity of the factors involved. And those with the
    technical knowledge often lack understanding of the cultural and
    historical contexts in which abortion needs to be considered. A
    biocultural approach to questions surrounding abortion would encompass
    the latest scientific facts about reproduction, conception,
    implantation, pregnancy, and so on. But it would also consider the
    cultural, moral, and religious contexts that surround the medical
    issues. Further, a biocultural approach would take into account the
    social and political history of the debates themselves, as well as
    related ethical and philosophical issues, such as infanticide,
    prenatal testing, developing-world uses of abortion, animal rights,
    and the death penalty. In other words, just as you can't fully discuss
    Shakespeare without having a certain level of cultural literacy, you
    can't fully discuss issues like abortion without biocultural literacy.

    A biocultural approach to Terri Schiavo -- and, by extension, the
    10,000 or more people in persistent vegetative states throughout the
    country -- would have included a discussion of whether she, even in
    her attenuated state, had an identity. Was she a human being? A
    disabled woman? A homo sacer (the philosopher Giorgio Agamben's notion
    of someone who is alive but can be killed without fear of punishment,
    like Holocaust victims or ostracized ancient Greeks)? What exactly is
    the status of people who are connected to life-support machinery,
    newborns with hopeless fatal illnesses, fetuses, fertilized embryos,
    stem cells, patients in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease, and
    those dying of cancer or ALS?

    These are perhaps the most crucial identities of our times -- what the
    science historian and disability-studies scholar Susan Squier calls
    "liminal lives": those that test our ability to define identity and
    life itself. We will be seeing a huge public debate in forthcoming
    months as the Supreme Court considers Gonzales v. Oregon, deciding if
    terminal patients in Oregon can have physicians assist them with
    suicide. Do dying people have an identity that is different from that
    of ordinary citizens who cannot ask physicians for lethal drugs?
    Stem-cell research and cloning will continue to be enormous issues.
    And, of course, abortion remains one of the major splitting points
    between Democrats and Republicans.

    How can colleges, universities, and the disciplines inform the public
    about cutting-edge biocultural issues? How can our students and
    faculty members be educated so that they can think consistently and
    logically about these questions, so that their feelings can be
    supported with facts? The academy needs a major initiative to provide
    education on these issues that communicates the complexities and
    nuances involved. But if we are not careful, confusion rather than
    clarity will result.

    First, it is imperative that we communicate facts rather than
    opinions. When we talk about abortion, for example, we need to know
    when implantation takes place, when the embryo's nervous system
    develops and begins to feel pain, and in what week viability occurs
    (when the fetus can survive outside the womb). When we discuss the
    history of religious attitudes toward abortion, we need to know, for
    example, when the Roman Catholic Church changed its definition of the
    beginning of life from the "quickening" of the fetus to the moment of
    conception.

    Second, we must be consistent about definitions and willing to
    challenge inconsistent positions. For example, the right historically
    has supported individual and state autonomy and therefore has
    generally opposed federal intervention in individual or states'
    rights. But in recent years the right, particularly the religious
    right, has sought federal intervention against individual autonomy in
    issues concerning the right to life and personal choice -- for
    example, abortion and gay marriage. For the right in general and the
    religious right in particular, one's identity is based on the sanctity
    of life, extending to patients in comas or vegetative states, fetuses
    in the womb, and byproducts of fertilization such as stem cells and
    unused embryos. But any logician could inform the debate by pointing
    out the inconsistency between those positions and support for the
    death penalty, war, and even the eating of animals.

    The left favors autonomy in regard to the body, resisting the idea
    that the state should dictate how and what we do with our bodies. So
    it favors abortion, gay marriage, and freedom of sexual choice between
    consenting adults. It hits a wall, though, in the area of liminal
    lives. Here it is quick to say that people in vegetative states don't
    really have identities and therefore are not autonomous. While the
    left's support of removing Schiavo's feeding tube appeared to support
    her autonomy (by assuming that she would not have wanted to be a
    vegetable), it actually was saying that we should assume that people
    who are disabled enough to be unconscious no longer have identities.
    According to that view, those people -- paradoxically -- no longer
    have the ability to have chosen to stay alive. The left's position on
    abortion supports the right of parents to abort fetuses with
    disabilities, while it objects to the abortion of female fetuses in
    other countries. In addition, the left supports late-term abortions --
    although presumably it opposes infanticide -- even though, because of
    biotechnical advances, the line between inside the womb and outside
    the womb has become somewhat arbitrary and largely a matter of
    conjecture. Now that a third-term fetus can easily be removed from the
    womb and survive, its existence inside or outside the womb is mostly
    determined by medical practice or even parental choice.

    Finally, in thinking about these issues, academics must be leery of
    the pull of identity politics, which condition many of our responses
    in the university. Those on the right think they know the answers to
    questions about identity; those on the left think they do as well,
    even if neither position is internally coherent. Another way of saying
    this is that we have to state openly where our theories begin to fall
    down, where we become incoherent, where our personal biases and
    identity politics muddy the waters.

    One example, which no doubt will upset many of my disability-studies
    colleagues, illustrates my point. Disability studies is fundamentally
    based on, among other things, the idea that people with disabilities
    should have autonomy over their own lives. The independent-living
    movement and much disability legislation stress that barriers to
    active participation and self-determination should be removed. Better
    to live at home with personal assistants, to work without
    discrimination, to navigate the streets without barriers, to
    communicate by all means, and to use adapted media and technology to
    function as fully as possible than to be cared for in facilities, be
    confined to a home, and be limited by "ableist" environments without
    ramps or curb cuts, accessible Web sites, or classrooms with real-time
    captioning. Yet disability scholars and activists also believe that
    autonomous identity is tempered by recognition that we are all
    interdependent, that the model of the free and autonomous individual
    is a bit of a myth, and that the demand that we all be "normal" is a
    burdensome and limiting ideal.

    But in the Schiavo case and in the Supreme Court hearing of challenges
    to the Oregon law permitting physician-assisted suicide, many
    disability scholars have found themselves on the same side as the
    right-to-life movement in opposing the removal of Schiavo's feeding
    tube and physician-assisted suicide. It is striking that a movement
    with roots in liberal-to-left feminism, the fight for civil rights,
    and the demand by progressive, disabled Vietnam veterans for proper
    treatment now appears to the public to be aligned with the religious
    right and social conservatives on those issues.

    Those who support physician-assisted suicide argue that individuals
    with all their mental capacities have the right to end their lives
    before they become incapacitated. It is their right as autonomous
    individuals. Many disability advocates, on the other hand, claim that
    all people who are dying are, in fact, disabled, and that their
    identity as disabled individuals trumps their identity as autonomous
    beings. The faulty syllogism goes that dying people are disabled, and
    in an ableist society they naturally will be pressured to kill
    themselves; ergo disabled people are being put to death through
    physician-assisted suicide. Further, dying people (read "newly
    disabled") will ask for physician-assisted suicide specifically
    because they do not wish to be disabled -- to lose their sight,
    hearing, voice, mobility, and so on.

    There are at least two flaws in that argument. First, it is hard to
    shoehorn someone dying of cancer, for example, into the category of
    chronic disability. The aim of making it possible for disabled people
    to live full lives with their impairments and of ensuring a free and
    accessible society has little to do with someone who will be dead in
    six months (the requirement for receiving physician-assisted suicide
    in Oregon). Why should people have to accept disability status when
    they will be dead within a few months? Second, according to statistics
    provided by Oregon, most people seeking physician-assisted suicide are
    end-stage cancer patients who, by and large, are educated, middle
    class, and informed. While it is true that many seek
    physician-assisted suicide because they fear losing their abilities
    and their autonomy, they no doubt have the independent judgment to
    make that decision.

    It seems illogical for some disability advocates to try to prevent
    dying people from choosing a humane way of ending their lives (as
    opposed to shooting themselves or wrapping a plastic bag around their
    heads) because those advocates see suicide as a critique of the
    disability perspective.

    The activist origin of the disability movement laid down certain
    positions -- notably opposition to euthanasia and physician-assisted
    suicide -- that have become the rule and therefore difficult to
    challenge. Indeed, a long history of abuse against people with
    disabilities, culminating in eugenics and discrimination, supports
    those positions. But there are important distinctions between
    physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia: The former allows patients
    to take by themselves a lethal overdose of a drug prescribed by a
    physician for that purpose; the latter requires that someone else, a
    physician, be the murderer. One could logically support suicide as a
    self-determining act while opposing murder. Yet the religious right
    lumps physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, and abortion together,
    and so do many in the disability community. A more nuanced approach, a
    biocultural one, would make distinctions.

    In the end, we are all poorly served by an academic community that
    does not promote biocultural literacy. As this century moves on, many
    issues the public needs to discuss will increasingly be tied to
    biotechnological advances that challenge our definitions of what it
    means to be human. We will need all the resources that we can command
    to come up with consistent, logical, and culturally relevant ways of
    conceiving of and bidding farewell to our bodies, ourselves.

    Lennard J. Davis is a professor of English, disability and human
    development, and medical education, and director of Project
    Biocultures, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the
    author, most recently, of Bending Over Backwards: Disability,
    Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions (New York University
    Press, 2002).


From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan 11 22:00:43 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 17:00:43 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: A Very Long Disengagement
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601111649260.12486@panix1.panix.com>

A Very Long Disengagement
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6.1.6
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i18/18b00601.htm

[Now did you read the past article on life, death, and biocultural 
literacy? Here's cold water to throw on it, namely that all kinds of 
literacy are going down. I don't know if this apparently deep culture 
change means that much or just that learning styles are moving from the 
sort of didactic, linear, foundational approach that guided Christian and 
Newtonian civilization to the hyperlinking becoming more and 
more characteristic of Darwinian civilization.

[Remember that what we take as natural is so often second-natural, what we 
are brought up with, that in fact most of the world's civilizations held 
together without the didactic, foundational, linear (I must add 
experimental scientific!) thinking that we take for granted. Also, 
understanding the world and moving along in the world is not all that 
dependent on the sort of reductionist promise to carry everything back to 
first principles that we so often hold up as ideal. There is only one case 
of full theoretical reduction, heat to the motion of molecules, and that 
holds only for an ideal case. Even our scientific knowledge is quite 
splotchy. This means that hyperlinking is not so bad as those raised in 
the old ways fear. And I say this, being very much a foundations man 
myself.

[Help me develop these ideas!]

    By MARK BAUERLEIN

    Last spring Nielsen Media Research reported that the average college
    student watches 3 hours 41 minutes of television each day. "It was a
    little more than I expected," a Nielsen executive told a reporter, and
    a little more than professors care to see. But the networks have
    complained for years that young-adult programs attract more viewers
    than the ratings have previously indicated. Nielsen traditionally
    bases its count on household viewing, but many students watch TV shows
    in a different way, and the trend is growing.

    The Wall Street Journal described one example: "Every Thursday night
    at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Theta Xi fraternity brothers
    and their friends cram into a common room for their favorite
    television show. It can be a tight squeeze, with as many as 40 people
    watching at a time.

    "The big attraction is 'The O.C.,' Fox's soapy drama about the lives
    of teens in upscale Orange County, Calif."

    The ritual is a common one on campuses today, and it has precursors. I
    remember it back in college in 1980, when the Luke and Laura affair on
    General Hospital caught on, and in the 90s when Friends lured into the
    lounges undergrads and, surprisingly, grads, too. Now, female students
    gather for airings of Friends spinoff Joey, while ESPN's SportsCenter
    pulls in massive numbers of twentysomething men.

    That is far from the customary image of a loner freshman zoning out in
    front of the screen in his dorm room. Ever since Ray Bradbury's
    Fahrenheit 451 (1953), media critics have believed that watching the
    boob tube "atomizes" individuals, so that even when viewing the news
    they have no real social engagement. The college ritual of The O.C.,
    March Madness, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and other favorites
    reverses the process, and television watching isn't the only leisure
    habit shifting from "isolationist" to collective.

    Teenagers used to keep diaries under lock and key in their bedrooms,
    recording hopes and humiliations for the authors' eyes only. Today's
    teens have a different approach. This past spring the Perseus
    Development Corporation, a company that designs software for online
    surveys, counted 31.6 million blogs, and 58 percent of them were kept
    by 13-to-19-year-olds. Instead of opening a monogrammed notebook in
    the late hours to cogitate alone, such "juvenile Marcel Prousts gone
    wild" (as a story in The New York Times Magazine labeled them) arrive
    home from school, log on, and let go. They compose an entry on the
    day's happenings, respond to comments on yesterday's entry, search
    other blogs on which to comment, and then return to their own site for
    updates.

    As with everything adolescent, the observations range from the
    poignantly self-effacing to the tiresomely self-involved. A student
    told me how his 17-year-old brother is obsessed with his own blog,
    where intemperate chatter vies with awkward confession. He doesn't do
    homework or his chores, and he doesn't exercise or volunteer. The
    thrill of a peer's reaction to his own adagios holds him in his room
    for five hours a day.

    I don't know if such habits signal a widespread or long-term trend,
    but here and there one sees an odd paradox at work. Students don't
    gather often in one place to hang out and tell stories unless an
    outside focus -- like a television show -- demands it. They make
    contact with a few clicks, and their exchanges can take place with
    strangers as often as with friends.

    As soon as students leave class, they flip open the cellphone to check
    for messages. One of my colleagues talks about how his son carries on
    six conversations at a time through instant messaging, with dialogue
    boxes from his "buddy list" cluttering the screen. Walk through any
    university library, and at each computer station you will see a cheery
    or intent sophomore pounding out e-mail messages at a rat-a-tat pace.
    Head up to the stacks, and the aisles are as quiet as a morgue. The
    students at the screen or on the cell appear just as solitary as a
    person reading a book, but, in fact, they are intensifying their
    connections, solidifying their identity among peers.

    Such contacts form largely through campus resources, but they are
    completely independent of the professors and the curriculum. It is a
    young people's universe of social intercourse, a group behavior
    unaffected by studies. Indeed, there is no evidence that the
    intellectual life of the college influences their connectedness at
    all.

    Surveys of undergraduates like "Your First College Year," conducted by
    the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of
    California at Los Angeles and the Policy Center on the First Year of
    College at Brevard College, show troublingly high levels of "academic
    disengagement." Students say that they feel bored in class, submit
    assignments that underexercise their talents, and do minimal homework.
    Last year the National Survey of Student Engagement found that 44
    percent of first-year students never discuss ideas from their readings
    or classes with their professors outside of class. And Indiana
    University at Bloomington's 2005 "High School Survey of Student
    Engagement" found that as many as half of all students spend only four
    hours or less per week preparing for class.

    The trends are not unrelated. The more young people gather to watch TV
    shows, transmit e-mail and text messages, and blog and chat and surf
    and download, the less they attend to their regular studies. What
    develops is an acute peer consciousness, a sense of themselves as a
    distinct group.

    To be sure, the current crop of students is the most educated and
    affluent ever. Their enrollment rates in college surpass those of
    their baby-boomer parents and Generation X, and their purchasing power
    is so strong that it dominates the retail and entertainment sectors.
    Credit-card debt for 18-to-24-year-olds doubled from $1,500 in 1992 to
    $3,000 in 2001, much of it due to the new array of tools, such as
    BlackBerries, that keep them up to date with contemporaries and youth
    culture. Students have grown up in a society of increasing prosperity
    and education levels, and technology outfits them with instant access
    to news, music, sports, fashion, and one another. Their parents'
    experience -- LP records, typewriters, the cold war -- seems a
    far-gone reality. As drivers of consumer culture, mirrored constantly
    by mass entertainment, young adults understandably heed one another
    and ignore their seniors -- including professors.

    But what do they know? What have they learned from their classes and
    their privilege?

    We can be certain that they have mastered the fare that fills their
    five hours per day with screens -- TV, DVD, video games, computers for
    fun -- leaving young adults with extraordinarily precise knowledge of
    popular music, celebrities, sports, and fashion. But when it comes to
    the traditional subjects of liberal education, the young mind goes
    nearly blank. In the last few years, an accumulation of survey
    research on civics, history, literature, the fine arts, geography, and
    politics reveals one dismal finding after another. The surveys vary in
    sample size and question design, and they tend to focus on basic
    facts, but they consistently draw the same general inference: Young
    people are cut off from the worlds beyond their social circuit. While
    the wealth and education of young Americans has increased, their
    knowledge levels have either dropped or remained flat in the following
    important areas:

    History. Students entering college have passed through several years
    of social studies and history classes, but few of those students
    remember the significant events, figures, and texts. On the 2001
    National Assessment of Educational Progress history exam, the majority
    of high-school seniors, or 57 percent, scored "below basic," and only
    about one in nine reached "proficient" or better. Diane Ravitch, a
    professor of education at New York University and a member of the
    National Assessment Governing Board, called the results "truly
    abysmal," and worried about a new voting bloc coming of age with such
    a meager awareness of American history.

    People who believe that college can remedy the history deficit should
    be dismayed at the findings of another study, commissioned by the
    American Council of Trustees and Alumni, of the historical knowledge
    of seniors at the top 55 colleges in the country. Many of the
    questions were drawn from the NAEP high-school exam, and the results
    were astonishing. Only 19 percent of the subjects scored a grade of C
    or higher. According to the 2000 report, titled "Losing America's
    Memory," only 29 percent knew what "Reconstruction" refers to, only
    one-third recognized the American general at Yorktown, and less than
    one-fourth identified James Madison as the "father of the
    Constitution."

    The consequences are dire. As Leslie Lenkowsky, the former head of the
    Corporation of National and Community Service, observed in response to
    the NAEP results, "If young people cannot construct a meaningful
    narrative of American history, then there is little hope that the
    nation can live up to the highest task of a pluralistic liberal
    democracy."

    Civics. In 1999 the Center for Information and Research on Civic
    Learning and Engagement reported that more than two-thirds of ninth
    graders study the Constitution, Congress, or the presidency.
    Unfortunately, their course work hasn't sunk in. In a 2003 survey on
    the First Amendment commissioned by the Foundation for Individual
    Rights in Education, only one in 50 college students named the first
    right guaranteed in the amendment, and one out of four did not know
    any freedom protected by it.

    In 2003 a project led by the National Conference of State Legislatures
    examined the civic awareness of young people age 15 to 26 compared
    with older Americans. Barely half of those surveyed said that "paying
    attention to government and politics" is important to good
    citizenship. While 64 percent knew the name of the latest "American
    Idol," only 10 percent could identify the speaker of the U.S. House of
    Representatives. The researchers concluded "that young people do not
    understand the ideals of citizenship, they are disengaged from the
    political process, [and] they lack the knowledge necessary for
    effective self-government."

    High-school and college students shine in one area of civics:
    volunteerism. A recent study by the Center for Information and
    Research on Civic Learning and Engagement titled "The Civic and
    Political Health of the Nation" found that young people "trail their
    elders in attentiveness to public affairs and in electoral
    participation, but hold their own in community-related and volunteer
    activities." But the habit is a superficial one, most likely fueled by
    the emphasis that college admissions offices place on volunteer work.
    A study in April 2005 sponsored by the Higher Education Research
    Institute at UCLA reported that "engagement with the community
    declines sharply during the years immediately after students graduate
    from college," and the drop begins during the college years.

    Literature and the arts. In 2004 the National Endowment for the Arts
    released two reports, the "2002 Survey of Public Participation in the
    Arts" and "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America."
    (I was the project director of the latter.) The surveys measured rates
    of involvement in different art forms -- like attending, listening,
    and performing -- and compared them with previous findings. In the
    performing arts, the involvement rates of 18-to-24-year-olds fell
    significantly in most activities from 1992 to 2002. For example, the
    numbers of students who listened to jazz and classical music fell from
    37 percent to 22 percent, while those who visited a museum or attended
    a performing-arts event dropped from 29 percent to 24 percent and 33
    percent to 26 percent, respectively. The literary reading rates
    plummeted as well. From 1992 to 2002 the portion of young people
    reading at least one poem, play, or work of fiction for pleasure in
    the preceding 12 months fell from 53 to 43 percent.

    Meanwhile, it should be noted, young people have enjoyed greater
    access to literature and the arts than ever before. The Economic
    Census counted 9,353 performing-arts companies in 2002, up from 5,883
    in 1997. During the same period the number of museums jumped from
    3,860 to 4,535. From 2000 to 2002 the number of fiction titles
    published rose from 14,615 to 15,133. And yet, from 1998 to 2003, the
    portion of all books sold that were purchased by people under 25 years
    old declined from 5 percent to 3.9 percent.

    The fact that involvement fell while access rose signals a new stance
    toward literature and the arts among the young. I don't know of any
    research that formally examines the trend, but a snippet of
    conversation that occurred during a National Public Radio interview
    with me last year illustrates the attitude that I'm describing:

      Caller: "I'm a high-school student, and I don't read and my friends
      don't read because of all the boring stuff the teachers assign."

      Host: "Such as?"

      Caller: "Uh ... that book about the guy. You know, that guy who was
      great."

      Host: "Huh?"

      Caller: "The great guy."

      Host: "The Great Gatsby?"

      Caller: "Yeah. Who wants to read about him?"

    Geography. In 2002 the National Geographic Society issued the results
    of the Global Geographic Literacy Survey. Thirty-nine percent of
    American 18-to-24-year-olds surveyed failed the test, and in
    international comparisons Americans came in second to last out of nine
    nations tested. Only 13 percent of our country's participants could
    pinpoint Iraq, only 12 percent could identify Afghanistan. The rate
    rose to just 51 percent for those who could locate New York State.
    Moreover, the young American adults surveyed could identify an average
    of only 2.5 countries in Europe. Around 30 percent believed that this
    nation has one billion to two billion residents (young people in other
    countries scored higher in estimating U.S. population), and only 19
    percent could name four nations that acknowledge having nuclear
    weapons. Remarkably, 29 percent could not identify the Pacific Ocean.

    Politics. In the past few decades, higher education has undergone a
    revolution in curriculum, what conservatives have called "the
    politicization of the humanities." But while the curriculum has
    changed, the shift hasn't affected the students. Political interest
    among them couldn't be much lower.

    The geography survey found that, despite the high Internet usage among
    young adults, only 11 percent of the respondents said they use the
    Internet to follow the news. Eighty-two percent stated that they keep
    up with events by watching television, but a growing proportion tune
    in to programs of dubious informational value. A January 2004 study by
    the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that comedy
    shows like Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
    "are now mentioned almost as frequently as newspapers and evening
    network news programs as regular sources for election news." A story
    on the report in The Hollywood Reporter began, "To a young generation
    of Americans, Jon Stewart may as well be Walter Cronkite."

    Indeed, newspaper circulation is down, in part because while 46
    percent of people in their 20s read a newspaper every day in 1972, the
    rate now stands around the low 20s. The Higher Education Research
    Institute at UCLA's 2004 survey "The American Freshman" tabulated only
    34 percent of new students thinking that it was "very important" to
    keep up with politics, a drastic slide from the 60 percent who thought
    so in 1966.

    The lack of curiosity among college students is reflected in their
    knowledge. In the 2004 National Election Study, a mere 28 percent of
    18-to-24-year-olds correctly identified William H. Rehnquist as the
    chief justice of the United States. Only 39 percent knew which party
    had the most members in Congress, and one-quarter of them could not
    identify Dick Cheney as vice president.

    Educators usually denigrate such surveys as ideologically slanted and
    narrowly conceived. They test "rote learning" and "mere facts," the
    argument goes. In 2004 the president of the Organization of American
    Historians stated, "Using such surveys as a starting point for debate
    diverts us from the real challenge at hand: how to use what students
    do know -- the ideas and identities they glean from family stories,
    museums, historic sites, films, television, and the like -- to engage
    them in the life-changing process of learning to think historically."

    In spite of the na?vet? of that parenthesis, we see the operative
    contrast: a knowledge of historical data versus thinking historically.
    The one amounts to a storage of facts, the other to a mode of
    reflection. But do we have any evidence that the latter is possible
    without a fair measure of the former? "Thinking historically" is one
    of those higher-order critical-thinking skills that educators favor,
    but how one can achieve it without first delving into the details of
    another time and place is a mystery. The facts are not an end in
    themselves, of course, but are a starting point for deeper
    understanding, and the ignorance of them is a fair gauge of deeper
    deficiencies.

    Moreover, if critics of such surveys consider them ideologically
    slanted -- because the knowledge they test is ideologically slanted --
    they should develop knowledge measures in other, less partisan areas.
    But it seems that they don't like any kind of metric, that measurable
    knowledge is itself a problem. If students pick up that attitude, they
    are primed for ignorance and failure.

    Reading through those reports, and given the advantages that college
    students enjoy today, one recalls the professor in Philip Roth's The
    Human Stain, who declares: "Our students are abysmally ignorant ...
    far and away the dumbest generation in American history." They aren't
    less intelligent than their precursors -- as IQ scores show -- and
    earlier generations, too, struggled with traditional subjects. But
    they've taken more courses than previous cohorts, and they have more
    money and access than ever before. Why hasn't their knowledge level
    kept pace?

    In part, because of the new leisure habits of teens and young adults.
    To repeat, the more time young adults devote to activities like
    sending e-mail messages, the less time they devote to books, the arts,
    politics, and their studies. Time has proved the formula. In the 1990s
    the gurus and cheerleaders of technology promised that the horizon of
    users would expand to take in a global village, and that a digital era
    would herald a more active, engaged, and knowledgeable citizenry, with
    young adults leading the way. It hasn't happened. Instead, youth
    discourse has intensified, its grip on adolescence becoming ever
    tighter, and the walls between young adults and larger realities have
    grown higher and thicker.

    College professors complain about the result, noting the disaffection
    of students from their course work and the puny reserves of knowledge
    they bring into the classroom. But they hesitate to take a stand
    against mass culture and youth culture, fearful of the "dinosaur" or
    "conservative" tag. The disengagement of students from the
    liberal-arts curriculum is reaching a critical point, however. And the
    popular strategy of trying to bridge youth culture and serious
    study -- of, say, using hip-hop to help students understand literary
    classics, as described in a June 19 article in the Los Angeles
    Times -- hasn't worked. All too often, the outcome is that important
    works are dumbed down to trivia, and the leap into serious study never
    happens. The middle ground between adolescent life and intellectual
    life is disappearing, leaving professors with ever more stark options.

    One can accept the decline, and respond as a distinguished professor
    of literature did at a regional Modern Language Association panel last
    year after I presented the findings of "Reading at Risk." "Look, I
    don't care if everybody stops reading literature," she blurted. "Yeah,
    it's my bread and butter, but cultures change. People do different
    things."

    Or one can accept the political philosopher Leo Strauss's formula that
    "liberal education is the counter-poison to mass culture," and stand
    forthrightly against the tide. TV shows, blogs, hand-helds, wireless
    ... they emit a blooming, buzzing confusion of adolescent stimuli. All
    too eagerly, colleges augment the trend, handing out iPods and
    dignifying video games like Grand Theft Auto as worthy of study.

    That is not a benign appeal for relevance. It is cooperation in the
    prolonged immaturity of our students, and if it continues, the
    alienation of student from teacher will only get worse.

    Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University.

From shovland at mindspring.com  Thu Jan 12 14:28:18 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 06:28:18 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] The failure to calculate the costs of war
In-Reply-To: <7.0.0.16.0.20060111145653.0324f598@edu-cyberpg.com>
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHEEIDCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

Laws of Victory

Do your homework thoroughly.  Any corner you cut will come back to haunt
you.

Don?t start a war you can?t win.

Assume it will be a lot harder than you expect.

Get a bunch of big guys to join you.  If your team 	is big enough, your
enemy may surrender 	without a fight.  If they choose to fight, they will
quickly lose.

Make the enemy come to you.  Soldiers defending their homes are more
motivated than attackers and supply lines are shorter.

Don?t start until your troops are properly equipped.

Don?t gloat over early successes.

Positive thinking is not a substitute for raw power.

Resist the temptation to engage in wishful thinking.

Don?t be too proud to cut your losses when things are going badly.

It?s OK to lie to the enemy, but you must always tell your own people the
truth.



-----Original Message-----
From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org
[mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org]On Behalf Of K.E.
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 11:58 AM
To: checker at panix.com; paleopsych at paleopsych.org
Subject: [Paleopsych] The failure to calculate the costs of war



With these costs taken into account, the total macroeconomic costs may
add up to $750bn and total costs to $1,850bn.

"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."
-Dwight David Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)




Martin Wolf is a respectable economist and chief
economics commentator at the Financial Times

Martin Wolf: The failure to calculate the costs of war
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/48ad9c0a-820f-11da-aea0-0000779e2340.html

     Before the Iraq war began, Lawrence Lindsey, then president George
W.???Bush's economic adviser, suggested that the costs might reach
$200bn. The White House promptly fired him. Mr Lindsey was indeed
wrong. But his error lay in grossly underestimating the costs. The
administration's estimates of a cost of some $50-$60bn were a fantasy,
as were Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and much else.

<snip>

So far the government has spent $251bn in hard cash. But the costs
continue. If the US begins to withdraw troops this year, but maintains
a diminishing presence for the next five years, the additional cost
will be at least $200bn, under what Profs Bilmes and Stiglitz call
their "conservative" option. Under their "moderate" one, the cost
reaches $271bn, because troops remain until 2015.

<snip>

With these costs taken into account, the total macroeconomic costs may
add up to $750bn and total costs to $1,850bn.

<snip>

It is possible to argue that the benefits for Iraq, the Middle East
and the world will outweigh all these costs. But that depends on the
emergence, in Iraq, of a stable and peaceful democratic order. That
has not yet been achieved.

Even those who supported the war must draw two lessons. First, the
exercise of military power is far more expensive than many fondly
hoped. Second, such policy decisions require a halfway decent analysis
of the costs and possible consequences. The administration's failure
to do so was a blunder that will harm the US and the world for years
to come.

<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>
The Educational CyberPlayGround
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/

National Children's Folksong Repository
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/NCFR/

Hot List of Schools Online and
Net Happenings, K12 Newsletters, Network Newsletters
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Community/

7 Hot Site Awards
New York Times, USA Today , MSNBC, Earthlink,
USA Today Best Bets For Educators, Macworld Top Fifty
<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>

_______________________________________________
paleopsych mailing list
paleopsych at paleopsych.org
http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych



From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 12 15:53:15 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 10:53:15 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: The failure to calculate the costs of war
In-Reply-To: <7.0.0.16.0.20060111145653.0324f598@edu-cyberpg.com>,
	<7.0.0.16.0.20060111145513.03518590@earthlink.net>
References: <7.0.0.16.0.20060111145653.0324f598@edu-cyberpg.com>,
	<7.0.0.16.0.20060111145513.03518590@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601121046510.27847@panix2.panix.com>

I wonder what wars have ever been profitable. The Allies could have 
purchased all real estate, buildings, etc., from the Axis countries in 
World War II and have saved money. I once calculated that the U.S. could 
have bought Vietnam for what it was spending each month on fighting the 
war.

The people don't benefit by having new tax collectors, but the glory of 
kings is enhanced.

Maybe wars were profitable to the looters for a while. Eventually these 
bandits noted that they lands they raided had less to offer the second 
time around and so became what the late Mancur Olson called "stationary 
bandits" and saw to it that they could engage in repeated extraction. They 
would also provide protection from rival bandits. Olson said this was the 
greatest breakthrough in history.

See John V. Denson, _Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories_ for an Old 
Right perspective, which I share, though I concluded a few weeks after 
9/11 that empire is here to stay.

Frank

On 2006-01-11, K.E. opined [message unchanged below]:

> Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:58:15 -0500
> From: K.E. <guavaberry at earthlink.net>
> To: checker at panix.com, paleopsych at paleopsych.org
> Subject: The failure to calculate the costs of war
> 
>
> With these costs taken into account, the total macroeconomic costs may
> add up to $750bn and total costs to $1,850bn.
>
> "We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."
> -Dwight David Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)
>
>
>
>
> Martin Wolf is a respectable economist and chief
> economics commentator at the Financial Times
>
> Martin Wolf: The failure to calculate the costs of war
> http://news.ft.com/cms/s/48ad9c0a-820f-11da-aea0-0000779e2340.html
>
>    Before the Iraq war began, Lawrence Lindsey, then president George
> W.???Bush's economic adviser, suggested that the costs might reach
> $200bn. The White House promptly fired him. Mr Lindsey was indeed
> wrong. But his error lay in grossly underestimating the costs. The
> administration's estimates of a cost of some $50-$60bn were a fantasy,
> as were Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and much else.
>
> <snip>
>
> So far the government has spent $251bn in hard cash. But the costs
> continue. If the US begins to withdraw troops this year, but maintains
> a diminishing presence for the next five years, the additional cost
> will be at least $200bn, under what Profs Bilmes and Stiglitz call
> their "conservative" option. Under their "moderate" one, the cost
> reaches $271bn, because troops remain until 2015.
>
> <snip>
>
> With these costs taken into account, the total macroeconomic costs may
> add up to $750bn and total costs to $1,850bn.
>
> <snip>
>
> It is possible to argue that the benefits for Iraq, the Middle East
> and the world will outweigh all these costs. But that depends on the
> emergence, in Iraq, of a stable and peaceful democratic order. That
> has not yet been achieved.
>
> Even those who supported the war must draw two lessons. First, the
> exercise of military power is far more expensive than many fondly
> hoped. Second, such policy decisions require a halfway decent analysis
> of the costs and possible consequences. The administration's failure
> to do so was a blunder that will harm the US and the world for years
> to come.
>
> <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>
> The Educational CyberPlayGround
> http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/
>
> National Children's Folksong Repository
> http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/NCFR/
>
> Hot List of Schools Online and
> Net Happenings, K12 Newsletters, Network Newsletters
> http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Community/
>
> 7 Hot Site Awards
> New York Times, USA Today , MSNBC, Earthlink,
> USA Today Best Bets For Educators, Macworld Top Fifty
> <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> 
>

From shovland at mindspring.com  Thu Jan 12 18:01:14 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (shovland at mindspring.com)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 10:01:14 -0800 (GMT-08:00)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: The failure to calculate the costs of war
Message-ID: <28257337.1137088875362.JavaMail.root@mswamui-bichon.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

After the war in Iraq the US will no longer be a super power.

This one will break the bank.  It already has.

I think most of the world is sitting back waiting for us to fall.

-----Original Message-----
>From: Premise Checker <checker at panix.com>
>Sent: Jan 12, 2006 7:53 AM
>To: 
>Cc: paleopsych at paleopsych.org
>Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: The failure to calculate the costs of war
>
>I wonder what wars have ever been profitable. The Allies could have 
>purchased all real estate, buildings, etc., from the Axis countries in 
>World War II and have saved money. I once calculated that the U.S. could 
>have bought Vietnam for what it was spending each month on fighting the 
>war.
>
>The people don't benefit by having new tax collectors, but the glory of 
>kings is enhanced.
>
>Maybe wars were profitable to the looters for a while. Eventually these 
>bandits noted that they lands they raided had less to offer the second 
>time around and so became what the late Mancur Olson called "stationary 
>bandits" and saw to it that they could engage in repeated extraction. They 
>would also provide protection from rival bandits. Olson said this was the 
>greatest breakthrough in history.
>
>See John V. Denson, _Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories_ for an Old 
>Right perspective, which I share, though I concluded a few weeks after 
>9/11 that empire is here to stay.
>
>Frank
>
>On 2006-01-11, K.E. opined [message unchanged below]:
>
>> Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:58:15 -0500
>> From: K.E. <guavaberry at earthlink.net>
>> To: checker at panix.com, paleopsych at paleopsych.org
>> Subject: The failure to calculate the costs of war
>> 
>>
>> With these costs taken into account, the total macroeconomic costs may
>> add up to $750bn and total costs to $1,850bn.
>>
>> "We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."
>> -Dwight David Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Martin Wolf is a respectable economist and chief
>> economics commentator at the Financial Times
>>
>> Martin Wolf: The failure to calculate the costs of war
>> http://news.ft.com/cms/s/48ad9c0a-820f-11da-aea0-0000779e2340.html
>>
>>    Before the Iraq war began, Lawrence Lindsey, then president George
>> W.???Bush's economic adviser, suggested that the costs might reach
>> $200bn. The White House promptly fired him. Mr Lindsey was indeed
>> wrong. But his error lay in grossly underestimating the costs. The
>> administration's estimates of a cost of some $50-$60bn were a fantasy,
>> as were Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and much else.
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> So far the government has spent $251bn in hard cash. But the costs
>> continue. If the US begins to withdraw troops this year, but maintains
>> a diminishing presence for the next five years, the additional cost
>> will be at least $200bn, under what Profs Bilmes and Stiglitz call
>> their "conservative" option. Under their "moderate" one, the cost
>> reaches $271bn, because troops remain until 2015.
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> With these costs taken into account, the total macroeconomic costs may
>> add up to $750bn and total costs to $1,850bn.
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> It is possible to argue that the benefits for Iraq, the Middle East
>> and the world will outweigh all these costs. But that depends on the
>> emergence, in Iraq, of a stable and peaceful democratic order. That
>> has not yet been achieved.
>>
>> Even those who supported the war must draw two lessons. First, the
>> exercise of military power is far more expensive than many fondly
>> hoped. Second, such policy decisions require a halfway decent analysis
>> of the costs and possible consequences. The administration's failure
>> to do so was a blunder that will harm the US and the world for years
>> to come.
>>
>> <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>
>> The Educational CyberPlayGround
>> http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/
>>
>> National Children's Folksong Repository
>> http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/NCFR/
>>
>> Hot List of Schools Online and
>> Net Happenings, K12 Newsletters, Network Newsletters
>> http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Community/
>>
>> 7 Hot Site Awards
>> New York Times, USA Today , MSNBC, Earthlink,
>> USA Today Best Bets For Educators, Macworld Top Fifty
>> <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> 
>>



From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 12 18:38:26 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:38:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge Annual Question 2000: What Is Today's Most
	Underreported Story?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601121248450.12486@panix1.panix.com>

Edge Annual Question 2000: What Is Today's Most Underreported Story?
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/story/contributions.html (Links omitted)

[These are worth reviewing, six years later. Lots of transhumanist themes 
here. And lots of continued underreporting. Most of these are long-term 
trends, not stories.

[The biggest underreported story of 2005 was the collapse of the Standard 
Social Science ("blank-slate") Model. Over the last six years, the most 
underreported story was the demographic decline of Europe, but that is now 
rapidly changing, perhaps due to the collapse of the SSSM.

[The second most underreported is the continuing shift from equality to 
pluralism as the major preoccupation of the political "left." Is the 
"right" unifying around universalism? Look for defections from the right 
on the part of free-marketeers, leaving the theocrats and empire builders 
together on the "right."]

------------------

"Don't assume for a second that Ted Koppel, Charlie Rose and the
editorial high command at the New York Times have a handle on all the
pressing issues of the day....when Brockman asked 100 of the world's
top thinkers to come up with pressing matters overlooked by the media,
they generated a lengthy list of profound, esoteric and outright
entertaining responses."

-- "Web Site for Intellectuals Inspires Serious Thinking" by Elsa
Arnett, San Jose Mercury News
   _________________________________________________________________

  The World Question Center:

  "WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?"
   _________________________________________________________________

102 contributions to Date (71,200 words):
William Calvin, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Pattie Maes, George Dyson,
Douglas Rushkoff , Howard Gardner, Roger Schank, Lee Smolin, Judith
Rich Harris, Stewart Brand, John McWhorter, Paul Davies, Rodney
Brooks, Sally M. Gall, John Gilmore, Eric J. Hall, Stephen R. Kellert,
Thomas Petzinger, Jr, Sylvia Paull, James J. O'Donnell, Philip W.
Anderson, Stephen Grossberg, Brian Goodwin, Arnold Trehub, Ivan Amato,
Howard Rheingold , Clifford A. Pickover, Hans Weise, John Horgan,
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Lance Knobel, Jeff Jacobs, Piet Hut, Freeman
Dyson, Kevin Kelly, Marc D. Hauser, Daniel Goleman, Philip Brockman,
Terrence J. Sejnowski, Bart Kosko, Dean Ornish, Keith Devlin, Andy
Clark, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Eberhard Zangger, Peter Cochrane, Hans
Ulrich Obrist, Ellis Rubinstein, Stuart Hameroff, David Lykken, Mehmet
C. Oz, M.D., Eduard Punset, Stephen H. Schneider, David G. Myers, Todd
Siler, Joseph Ledoux, Verena Huber-Dyson, Julian Barbour, Henry
Warwick, James Bailey. Robert R. Provine, Steven Quartz, Jaron Lanier,
Robert Hormats, Daniel Pink, Timothy Taylor, Carlo Rovelli, Peter
Schwartz, Leon M. Lederman, Phil Leggiere, Denise Caruso, Tor
Norretranders, Delta Willis, , Charles Arthur, David M. Buss, Denis
Dutton, Tom de Zengotita, Rupert Sheldrake, Marney Morris, Raphael
Kasper, Jason McCabe Calacanis, Steven Pinker, Philip Campbell, Ernst
Poppel, David Braunschvig, Geoffrey Miller, Nancy Etcoff, Kenneth W.
Ford, Richard Potts, Robert Aunger, Colin Tudge, Paul W. Ewald, David
Bunnell, W. Brian Arthur, Margaret Wertheim, Thomas A. Bass, Rafael
Nunez, Margaret Wertheim, Randolph M. Nesse, M.D., Sherry Turkle,
Joseph Vardi
   _________________________________________________________________

Joseph Vardi
How Kids Replaced the Generals

The most important untold story according my opinion is how kids
replaced the generals as the major source of defining the innovation
agenda of the world; how the biblical prophecy "thou shell turn your
swords into Sony Playstation 2" is being fulfilled; how the underlying
power sending satellites to the skies, creating fabs for 128 bit
machines, pushing for broadband, is not any longer based on the
defense needs of the big powers ,but on the imagination and the
passion of kids (and adults) to play games, see 1000 channels of
television, and listen to music!!

This is just amazing, and beautiful. Never in the history of mankind
have kids had such a profound influence on the creativity and
innovation agenda. It is a very democratic process as well as the
decision-making power is distributed widely.


DR. JOSEPH VARDI is the Principal of International Technologies
Ventures, a private venture capital enterprise, investing principally
for its own account, which has initiated, negotiated, structured and
arranged financing for the acquisition of operating companies; and
created and funded several high-tech companies in the fields of
Internet, software, telecommunications, electro-optics, energy,
environment and other areas.

Dr Vardi is the founding investor and the former chairman of Mirabilis
Ltd, the creator of the extremely popular Internet communication
program ICQ which took the web by storm, making it one of the most
successful Internet products of all times, with currently over 65
million users. The company was acquired by AOL.

LINK: Joseph Vardi's bio page on Edge
   _________________________________________________________________

Sherry Turkle

I. A new kind of object: From Rorschach to Relationship

I have studied the effects of computational objects on human
developmental psychology for over twenty years, documenting the ways
that computation and its metaphors have influenced our thinking about
such matters as how the mind works, what it means to be intelligent,
and what is special about being human. Now, I believe that a new kind
of computational object -- the relational artifact -- is provoking
striking new changes in the narrative of human development, especially
in the way people think about life, and about what kind of
relationships it is appropriate to have with a machine. Relational
artifacts are computational objects designed to recognize and respond
to the affective states of human beings-and indeed, to present
themselves as having "affective" states of their own. They include
children's playthings (such as Furbies and Tamagotchis), digital dolls
that double as health monitoring systems for the homebound elderly
(Matsushita's forthcoming Tama), sentient robots whose knowledge and
personalities change through their interactions with humans, as well
as software that responds to its users' emotional states and responds
with "emotional states" of their own.

Over the past twenty years, I have often used the metaphor of
"computer as Rorschach" to describe the relationship between people
and their machines. I found computers used as a projective screen for
other concerns, a mirror of mind and self. But today's relational
artifacts make the Rorschach metaphor far less useful than before.
These artifacts do not so much invite projection as they demand
engagement. The computational object is no longer affectively
"neutral." People are learning to interact with computers through
conversation and gesture, people are learning that to relate
successfully to a computer you do not have to know how it works, but
to take it "at interface value," that is to assess its emotional
"state," much as you would if you were relating to another person.
Through their experiences with virtual pets and digital dolls
(Tamagotchi, Furby, Amazing Ally), a generation of children are
learning that some objects require (and promise) emotional nurturance.
Adults, too, are encountering technology that attempts to meet their
desire for personalized advice, care and companionship (help wizards,
intelligent agents, AIBO, Matsushita's forthcoming Tama).

These are only the earliest, crude examples of the relational
technologies that will become part of our everyday lives in the next
century. There is every indication that the future of computational
technology will include ubiquitous relational artifacts that have
feelings, life cycles, moods, that reminisce, and have a sense of
humor, which say they love us, and expect us to love them back. What
will it mean to a person when their primary daily companion comes is a
robotic dog? Or their health care "worker" is a robot cat? Or their
software program attends to their emotional states and, in turn, has
its own?. We need to know how these new artifacts affect people's way
of thinking about themselves, human identity, and what makes people
special. These artifacts also raise significant new questions about
how children apporach the question of `What is alive?" In the proposed
research the question is not what the computer will be like in the
future, but what will we be like, what kind of people are we becoming?

Relational artifacts are changing the narrative of human development,
including how we understand such "human" qualities as emotion, love,
and care. The dynamic between a person and an emotionally interactive,
evolving, caring machine object is not the same as the relationship
one might have with another person, or a pet, or a cherished inanimate
object.

We have spent a large amount of social resources trying to build these
artifacts; now it is time to study what is happening to all of us as
we go forth into a world "peopled" with a kind of object we have never
experienced before. We need to more deeply understand the nature and
implications of this new sort of relationship -- and its potential to
fundamentally change our understanding of what it means to be human.

We need to be asking several kinds of new questions:

   o How are we to conceptualize the nature of our attachments to
   interactive robots, affective computers, and digital pets?

   o How does interacting with relational artifacts affect people's
   way of thinking about themselves and others, their sense of human
   identity and relationships? How do the models of development and
   values embedded in the design of relational artifacts both reflect
   and influence our ways of thinking about people?

   o What roles -- both productive and problematic -- can relational
   artifacts play in fulfilling a basic human need for relationship?
   Their first generation is being predominantly marketed to children
   and the elderly. What does this reflect about our cultural values
   about these groups? How will these objects influence their
   understanding of who they are as individuals and in the world? Are
   we reinforcing their marginality? Are we tacitly acknowledging that
   we do not have enough "human" time to spend with them?

II.

In the 1960s through the 1980s, researchers in artificial intelligence
took part in what we might call the classical "great AI debates" where
the central question was whether machines could be "really"
intelligent. This classical debate was essentialist; the new
relational objects tend to enable researchers and their public to
sidestep such arguments about what is inherent in the computer.
Instead, the new objects depend on what people attribute to them; they
shift the focus to what the objects evoke in us. When we are asked to
care for an object (the robot Kismet, the plaything Furby), when the
cared-for object thrives and offers us its attention and concern,
people are moved to experience that object as intelligent. Beyond
this, they feel a connection to it. So the question here is not to
enter a debate about whether relational objects "really" have
emotions, but to reflect on a series of issues having to do with what
relational artifacts evoke in the user.

In my preliminary research on children and Furbies, I have found that
children describe these new toys as "sort of alive" because of the
quality of their emotional attachments to the Furbies and because of
their fantasies about the idea that the Furby might be emotionally
attached to them. So, for example, when I ask the question, "Do you
think the Furby is alive?" children answer not in terms of what the
Furby can do, but how they feel about the Furby and how the Furby
might feel about them.

Ron (6): Well, the Furby is alive for a Furby. And you know, something
  this smart should have arms. It might want to pick up something or
  to hug me.
  Katherine (5): Is it alive? Well, I love it. It's more alive than
  a Tamagotchi because it sleeps with me. It likes to sleep with me.

Here, the computational object functions not only as an evocative
model of mind, but as a kindred other. With these new objects,
children (and adults) not only reflect on how their own mental and
physical processes are analogous to the machine's, but perceive and
relate to the machine as an autonomous and "almost alive" self.

My work with children and computational objects has evolved into a
decades-long narrative about the way computation has affected the way
we make sense of the world. In many ways, the behaviors and comments
of children have foreshadowed the reactions of adults. In the first
generation of computer culture I studied, the children of the late
1970s and early 1980s tended to resolve metaphysical conflicts about
machine "aliveness" by developing a concept of "the psychological
machine"-concluding that psychology and a kind of consciousness were
possible in objects they knew were not alive. This way of coping with
the conundrums posed by computational objects was pioneered by
children, and later adopted by adults. Later cohorts of children's
responses to computational objects that were more complex and
problematic in new ways again reliably foreshadowed the conclusions
the culture at large would soon reach. First, they explained that
although machines might be psychological in the cognitive sense (they
might be intelligent, they might have intentionality), they were not
psychological in the emotional sense, because they did not know pain,
or love, they were not mortal, and they did not have souls. Soon
after, the children I interviewed began consistently citing biology
and embodiment as the crucial criteria that separated people from
machines; they insisted that qualities like breathing, having blood,
being born, and, as one put it, "having real skin," were the true
signs of life. Now, I have begun to see a new pattern - children
describe relational artifacts not as "alive" or "not alive", but as
"sort-of-alive." Categories such as "aliveness" and "emotion" seem
poised to split in the same way that the categories of "psychological"
and "intelligent" did twenty years ago.

Children's reactions to the presence of "smart machines" have fallen
into discernable patterns over the past twenty years. Adults'
reactions, too, have been changing over time, often closely following
those of the children. To a certain extent, we can look to children to
see what we are starting to think ourselves. However, in the case of
relational artifacts, there is more to the choice of children as
subjects than a simple desire to stay ahead of the curve in
anticipating changes in computer culture. By accepting a new category
of relationship, with entities that they recognize as "sort-of-alive",
or "alive in a different, but legitimate way," today's children will
redefine the scope and shape of the playing field for social relations
in the future. Because they are the first generation to grow up with
this new paradigm, it is essential that we observe and document their
experiences.

SHERRY TURKLE is a professor of the sociology of sciences at MIT. She
is the author of The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit;
Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freuds French Revolution,
and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet..

LINKS: Sherry Turkle's Home Page; See "The Cyberanalyst", Chapter 31
in Digerati


Randolph M. Nesse, M.D.
Is the Market on Prozac?

The press has been preoccupied with possible explanations for the
current extraordinary boom. Many articles say, as they always do while
a bubble grows, that this market is "different." Some attribute the
difference to new information technology. Others credit changes in
foreign trade, or the baby boomer's lack of experience with a real
economic depression. But you never see a serious story about the
possibility that this market is different because investor's brains
are different. There is good reason to suspect that they are.

Prescriptions for psychoactive drugs have increased from 131 million
in 1988 to 233 million in 1998, with nearly 10 million prescriptions
filled last year for Prozac alone. The market for antidepressants in
the USA is now $6.3 billion per year. Additional huge numbers of
people use herbs to influence their moods. I cannot find solid data on
how many people in the USA take antidepressants, but a calculation
based on sales suggests a rough estimate of 20 million.

What percent of brokers, dealers, and investors are taking
antidepressant drugs? Wealthy, stressed urbanites are especially
likely to use them. I would not be surprised to learn that one in four
large investors has used some kind of mood-altering drug. What effects
do these drugs have on investment behavior? We don't know. A 1998
study by Brian Knutson and colleagues found that the serotonin
specific antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil) did not cause euphoria in
normal people, but did block negative affects like fear and sadness.
From seeing many patients who take such agents, I know that some
experience only improved mood, often a miraculous and even life-saving
change. Others, however, report that they become far less cautious
than they were before, worrying too little about real dangers. This is
exactly the mind-set of many current investors.

Human nature has always given rise to booms and bubbles, followed by
crashes and depressions. But if investor caution is being inhibited by
psychotropic drugs, bubbles could grow larger than usual before they
pop, with potentially catastrophic economic and political
consequences. If chemicals are inhibiting normal caution in any
substantial fraction of investors, we need to know about it. A more
positive interpretation is also easy to envision. If 20 million
workers are more engaged and effective, to say nothing of showing up
for work more regularly, that is a dramatic tonic for the economy.
There is every reason to think that many workers and their employers
are gaining such benefits. Whether the overall mental health of the
populace is improving remains an open question, however. Overall rates
of depression seem stable or increasing in most technological
countries, and the suicide rate is stubbornly unchanged despite all
the new efforts to recognize and treat depression.

The social effects of psychotropic medications is the unreported story
of our time. These effects may be small, but they may be large, with
the potential for social catastrophe or positive transformation. I
make no claim to know which position is correct, but I do know that
the question is important, unstudied, and in need of careful research.
What government agency is responsible for ensuring that such
investigations get carried out? The National Institute of Mental
Health? The Securities and Exchange Commission? Thoughtful
investigative reporting can give us preliminary answers that should
help to focus attention on the social effects of psychotropic
medications.

Randoph M. Nesse, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry, Director, ISR
Evolution and Human Adaptation Program, The University of Michigan and
coauthor (with George C. Williams) of Why We Get Sick: The New Science
of Darwinian Medicine. 
LINK: Randolph Nesse's Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Margaret Wertheim
Response to Paul Davies

I appreciate Paul Davies' response to my question "What is science,
and do indigenous kniowledge systems also contain a genuine scientific
understanding of the world?" My point in raising this question is not
to suggest that Western science is not universal - clearly the same
law of gravity operates in the deserts of central Australia as
operates in the labs of Caltech. In that sense Western science is
indeed something that every culture can share and benefit from, if
they so choose. At issue here is really the reverse question: Might
there also be discoveries about the way the world works that have been
made by other cultures, that we in the West have not yet come to -
knowledge that we in turn might benefit from?

One example here is the Aboriginal tradition of fire burning. It is
now known that Aboriginal people traditionally managed the land and
its native flora and fauna by complex patterns of burning. Given the
huge risk of out-of-control bush-fires in Australia, there is now
interest among some ecologists and park mamagers re understanding this
tradional knowledge. Another example is accupuncture. Some years ago I
had a serious case of hepatitis, for which Western medicine could do
nothing whatever. Eventually after months of illness, I started to see
an accupuncturist because Chinese medicine claims to have ways of
treating liver disease. Eventually I recovered. It is possible, of
course, that I might have recovered without the accupuncture, but many
many people (including billions of Chinese) have had therapeutic
experiences with accupuncture. I do not claim to know how accupuntcure
works, but it seems fair to at least keep an open mind that there
really is some deep understanding here of bodily function - some
knoweldge that we might truly benefit from.

The hard part of the question is does such knowledge constitute a
genuine "science"? Paul suggests not, but I think this option should
not be ruled out. In practical terms, accupuncturists operate much the
same way that Western doctors operate: you go for a diagnosis, they
check for various symptoms, then they prescribe certain treatments.
All this involves rational analysis based on a complex underlying
theory of how the body works. That theoretical foundation might well
sound odd to Western minds (it obvioulsy does to Paul, as it does to
me), but if billions of people get well it seems hard to dismiss it
completely. We should not forget that our own medical science today
now incorporates theoretical ideas (jumping genes for example) that
were scofffed at by most scientists just a few decades ago. There are
no doubt many more "true" ideas that we have not yet come to about the
human body - things that might seem crazy today. Numbers of
double-blind trials have shown that accupuncture can be very effective
- so even by Western standards it seems to pass the test. One could
still argue that its not a "true science", but just a complex set of
heuristics that happens to work in lots of cases, but is this any less
so of much of our own medical science?

As "shining emblems of true science" Paul suggests, "radio waves,
nuclear power, the computer and genetic engineering." The first three
examples all come out of physics, which because of its mathematical
foundation is somewhat different to most of the other sciences. As
philosphers of science have been saying for some time, it is
problematic to judge all sciences according to the methodologies of
phsyics. If that is the criteria for a "true science" then much of
modern biology would not count either. Paul's final example, genetic
engineering, is from the biological area, but it is the most
"atomized" part of biology. Historically the whole area of gene
science (from Max Delbruck on) has been heavily influenced by a
physics mentality, and contemporary genetic engieering is indeed a
testimony to what can been achieved by applying a physics paradigm to
biology. But again, if this is our only criteria for "true science"
then what is the status of other biological sciences such as ecology,
zoology, and indeed Darwin's theory of evolution? None of these would
seem to me to pass Paul's criteria.

Thus we come back top the question: What really is science? This is a
question of immense debate among philosophers of science, and among
many scientists. I don't claim to have a simple answer - but I would
like to argue for a fairly expansive definition. Although I trained as
a physicist myself, and physics remains my personal favorite science,
I do not think it can or should be our only model for a "true
science."

By suggesting that indigenous knowledge systems contain genuine
scientific understandings of the world, I do not mean to imply that
Western science becomes less universal, only that there may well be
other truths that our science has yet to discover. The point is not to
diminish our own science, or our understanding of what sicence is, but
to enrich both.

MARGARET WERTHEIM is the author of Pythagoras Trousers, a cultural
history of physics, and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of
Space from Dante to the Internet. She writes regularly about science
for Salon, L.A. Weekly, The Sciences, Guardian, TLS and New Scientist.
She is the senior science reviewer for the Australian's Review of
Books.
   _________________________________________________________________

Paul Davies 
Response to Margaret Wertheim

Margaret Wertheim asks what is meant by "science." I have an answer.
It must involve more than merely cataloguing facts, and discovering
successful procedures by trial and error. Crucially, true science
involves uncovering the principles that underpin and link natural
phenomena. Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with Margaret that we should
respect the world view of indigineous non-European peoples, I do not
believe the examples she cites -- Mayan astronomy, Chinese
acupuncture, etc. -- meet my definition. The Ptolemaic system of
epicycles achieved reasonable accuracy in describing the motion of
heavenly bodies, but there was no proper physical theory underlying
it. Newtonian mechanics, by contrast, not only described planetary
motions more simply, it connected the movement of the moon with the
fall of the apple. That is real science, because it uncovers things we
cannot know any other way. Has Mayan astronomy or Chinese acupuncture
ever led to a successful nontrivial prediction producing new knowledge
about the world? Many people have stumbled on the fact that certain
things work, but true science is knowing why things work. I am
open-minded about acupuncture, but if it does work, I would rather put
my faith in an explanation based on nerve impulses than mysterious
energy flows that have never been demonstrated to have physical
reality.

Why did science take root in Europe? At the time of Galileo and
Newton, China was far more advanced technologically. However, Chinese
technology (like that of the Australian Aborigines) was achieved by
trial and error refined over many generations. The boomerang was not
invented by first understanding the principles of hydrodynamics and
then designing a tool. The compass (discovered by the Chinese) did not
involve formulating the principles of electromagnetism. These latter
developments emerged from the (true, by my definition) scientific
culture of Europe. Of course, historically, some science also sprang
from accidental discoveries only later understood. But the shining
emblems of true science -- such as radio waves, nuclear power, the
computer, genetic engineering - all emerged from the application of a
deep theoretical understanding that was in place before -- sometimes
long before -- the sought-after technology.

The reasons for Europe being the birthplace of true science are
complex, but they certainly have a lot to do with Greek philosophy,
with its notion that humans could come to understand how the world
works through rational reasoning, and the three monothesitic religions
-- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- with their notion of a real,
lawlike, created order in nature, imposed by a Grand Architect.
Although science began in Europe, it is universal and now available to
all cultures. We can continue to cherish the belief systems of other
cultures, whilst recognizing that scientific knowledge is something
special that tanscends cultures.

Paul Davies is an internationally acclaimed physicist, writer and
broadcaster, now based in South Australia. Professor Davies is the
author of some twenty books, including Other Worlds, God and the New
Physics, The Edge of Infinity, The Mind of God, The Cosmic Blueprint,
Are We Alone? and About Time.

LINK: "The Synthetic Path" -- Ch. 18 in The Third Culture
   _________________________________________________________________

Rafael Nunez
The Death of Nations

For centuries societies have organized themselves in terms of
kingdoms, countries, and states. Towards the second half of the
recently past 20th Century these geographical, cultural, and political
"units" acquired a more precise meaning through the establishment of
modern "nations". The process was consolidated, among others, through
the creation of the so called United Nations, and the independence of
most colonial territories in Africa during the 60's. Today, we
naturally see the world as organized in clear-cut and well-defined
units: the world's nations (just check the colors of a political
atlas). Nations have their own citizens, well established territories,
capital cities, flags, currencies, stamps and postal systems, military
forces, embassies, national anthems, and even their own sport teams
competing in the various planet-scale events. This widespread view not
only has been taken for granted by most sectors of the public opinion,
but also it has served as the foundation of the highest form of
international organization -- the United Nations. The most serious
world affairs have been approached with this nation-oriented paradigm.
But the reality of our contemporary global society (which goes far
beyond pure global technology) is gradually showing that the world is
not a large collection of nations. Nations, as we know them, are not
anymore the appropriate "unit of analysis" to run the world, and to
deal with its problems. Here is why.

   o Environmental problems: Purely national/inter-national efforts to
   avoid the pollution of rivers, to protect the ozone layer, to
   manage (and avoid) environmental disasters, and to protect
   endangered species and biological diversity, have not given good
   results. New forms of global organizations, such as WWF and
   Greenpeace, have emerged to deal with these problems in a more
   efficient manner.

   o Natural resources: The management of the world's forests, the
   Antarctic ice, and fishing resources, has shown that they don't
   belong to the national/inter-national realm. Again, new and more
   efficient forms of global organizations have emmerged for
   addressing these problems.

   o Sovereignty: The relatively recent arrest in London of the
   ex-chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (facing a potential
   extradition to Spain), has raised unprecedented and deep issues
   about the sovereignty of nations. The Chilean government claims
   that Pinochet should be judged in Chile, but international laws
   seem to be gradually evolving towards a form of jurisdiction that
   is above the sovereignty of nations. The role of supra national
   organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
   is becoming extremely prominent in redefining these issues.

   o Neutrality: The complexity of contemporary world organization is
   leaving almost no room for neutrality. Contemporary Swiss society,
   for instance, is experiencing an important identity crisis, since
   their traditional neutrality is no longer tenable in the new
   european and international contexts. One of their essential aspects
   of national identity -- neutrality - is collapsing. A simple fact
   illustrates this crisis. In 1992, during the World Expo in Seville,
   the official Swiss stand exhibited the following motto:
   "Switzerland does not exist".
   o Ethnic groups representation: Many ethnic groups around the world
   whose territories extend over several nations, such as Kurds (who
   live mainly in Eastern Turkey, Westren Iran, and Northern Iraq) or
   Aymaras (who live in Eastern Bolivia, Southern Peru, and Northern
   Chile), have had almost no representation in international
   organizations. Their problems haven't been heard in a world
   organized under the nation-paradigm. These groups, however, have
   been in the news on the last decade bringing their issues more to
   the foreground, thus relegating the traditional nations to a less
   prominent role.
   o Epidemics: Serious epidemics such as AIDS and new forms of
   tuberculosis, are spreading at alarming rates in some areas of the
   world. The cure, the study, and the control of these epidemics
   demand organizational efforts that go well beyond
   national/inter-national schemas. The emergence of many NGO's
   dealing with health issues is an attempt to provide more
   appropriate answers to these devastating situations.
   o Civil wars and ethnic cleansing: The stopping and control of
   ethnic massacres such as the ones observed in the former
   Yugoslavian regions, and those between Tutsis and Hutus in Africa,
   demand quick intervention and serious negotiation. A heavy
   nation-oriented apparatus is usually extremely slow and
   innefficient in dealing with this kind of situations. It can't
   capture the subtleties of cultural dynamics.
   o Ongoing separatism and proliferation of nations: The world has
   more and more nations. Only a few dozen nations founded the United
   Nations half a century ago. Today the UN has around two hundred
   members (The International Olympic Committee and FIFA, the World's
   Football Federation, have even more!). And it is not over. Former
   Soviet republics, Slovenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and
   so on, already created new nations. Many others, such as the Basque
   country, Quebec, and Chechnya, are still looking for their
   independence. An ever increasing number of nations will eventually
   collapse.
   o Loss of national property and national icons: The openness and
   dynamism of international markets, as well as the globalization of
   foreign investment have altered at unprecedented levels the sense
   of what is "national". For instance, many airlines (to take a very
   simple example) usually seen as "national" airlines, today belong
   in fact to extra-national companies. Such is the case of Aerolineas
   Argentinas, LOT Polish Airlines, TAP Portugal, and LAN Peru, to
   mention only a few. National airlines, which in many countries have
   been seen as national icons, are simply not national anymore. Of
   course, the same applies to fishing waters, mines, forests,
   shopping malls, vineyards, and so on.

These are only a few examples. There are many others. Very serious
ones, such as the primacy of watersheds over national borders in
solving serious problems of water distribution. And less serious ones,
such as the potential collapse of one of the Canadian national sports
(ice-hockey), if their franchises continue to move to more profitable
lands in the United States. All these aspects of our contemporary
societies challenge the very notion of "nation", and reveal the
primacy of other factores which are not captured by nation-oriented
institutions. The world is now gradually adjusting to these changes,
and is coming up with new forms of organization, where nations, as
such, play a far less important role. Such is the case of the
formation of the European Community (which allows for free circulation
of people and merchandises), the establishment of a "European
passport", and the creation of the Euro as common currency. After all,
many national borders are, like those straight lines one sees in the
maps of Africa and North America, extremely arbitrary. It shouldn't
then be a surprise that the world divided into nations is becoming an
anachronism from the days when the world was ruled by a few powerful
kingdoms, that ignored, fundamental aspects of ethnic, cultural,
biological, and environmental dynamics. We are now witnessing the
death of nations as we know them.

RAFAEL NUNEZ is Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science at the
University of Freiburg, and a Research Associate at the University of
California, Berkeley. He is co-editor (with Walter J. Freeman) of
Reclaiming Cognition: The Primacy of Action, Intention, and Emotion.


Thomas A. Bass 
Shifting Empires and Power

I'm currently thinking about Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus and the
Book of Exodus, which is inclining me to the opinion that today's
unreported stories are similar to yesterday's: shifting empires and
power as the powerless struggle for sanctuary and their own form of
salvation.

THOMAS A. BASS is the author of The Predictors, Back to Vietnamerica,
Reinventing the Future, Camping with the Prince and Other Tales of
Science in Africa , and The Eudaemonic Pie. A frequent contributor to
Smithsonian, Audubon, Discover, The New York Times, and other
publications, he is Contributing Writer for Wired magazine and
Scholar-in-Residence at Hamilton College.

LINK: Thomas A. Bass Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Margaret Wertheim
Indigenous Science

Over the last century we in the western world have gradually come to
take seriously other culture's religions, social systems, aesthetics,
and philosophies. Unlike our eighteenth century forebears we no longer
think of indigenous peoples of the non-white world as "savages", but
have come to understand that many of these cultures are as complex and
sophisticated as ours. The one area where we have continued to
proclaim our own specialness - and by extension our own superiority -
is science. "True Science" - that is a "truely empirical"
understanding of the world - is often said to be a uniquely western
pursuit, the one thing we alone have achieved. Against this view, a
small but growing body of scholars are beginning to claim that many
indigenous cultures also have a genuine scientific understanding of
the world - their claim is that science is not a uniquely western
endeavour. These "other" sciences are sometimes referred to as
"ethnosciences" - examples include (most famously) Mayan astronomy and
Chinese medicine, both of which are highly accurate, though wildly
different to their western equivalents. Less well known is the
logic-obsessed knowledge system of the Yolgnu Aborigines of Arnhemland
in northern Australia, and the complex navigational techniques of the
Polynesians.

The claim that other cultures have genuine sciences (and sometimes
also complex logics) embedded in their knowledge systems, raises again
the whole philosophical issue of what exactly does the word "science"
mean. Helen Verran, an Australian philosopher of science who is one of
the leaders of the ethnoscience movement, has made the point that
having the chance to study other sciences gives us a unique
opportunity to reflect back on our own science. Her work on the Yolgnu
provides a important window from which to see our own scientific
insights in a new light.

Sadly, some scientists seem inherently opposed to the very idea of
"other sciences". But studying these other ways of knowing may enhance
our own understanding of the world in ways we cannot yet imagine. The
example of accupuncture must surely give any skeptic at least some
pause for thought - the Chinese have performed operations using
accupucture needles instead of anesthetic drugs. Likewise Mayan
astronomy, though based on the cycles of Venus, was as empirically
accurate as anything in the West before the advent of the telescope.

Two hundred years ago the idea that indigenous "savages" might be
genuine philsophers would have struck most Europeans as preposterous.
Today we have accepted this "preposterous" proposition, but a similar
view prevails about science. Learning about, and taking seriously,
these other ways of knowing the world seems to me one of the greatest
tasks for the next century - before (as Steven Pinker has rightly
noted) this immense wealth of human understanding disappears from our
planet.

MARGARET WERTHEIM is the author of Pythagoras Trousers, a cultural
history of physics, and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of
Space from Dante to the Internet. She writes regularly about science
for Salon, L.A. Weekly, The Sciences, Guardian, TLS and New Scientist.
She is the senior science reviewer for the Australian's Review of
Books.
   _________________________________________________________________

W. Brian Arthur
The last word on Y2K: The Y1K Problem

Just before the year 1000, a rumor arose in a certain town in Germany,
Hamelin I believe, that the coming of the new time would bring rats to
the public buildings. Some had been spotted in the basement of the
town hall, some in the local stables. Rat preventers were hired at
great price, and indeed when the century turned no rats were to be
seen.

The city fathers felt shamed by the scare and called the preventers
before them. You have spent a great deal of money on these rats ? but
there were no rats, they said.

Ah, city fathers, said the preventers. That's because we prevented
them.

W. BRIAN ARTHUR is Citibank Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. From
1982 to 1996 he held the Morrison Chair in Economics and Population
Studies at Stanford University. Arthur pioneered the study of positive
feedbacks or increasing returns in the economy ? in particular their
role in magnifying small, random events in the economy.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Bunnell 
New York Times Sells Out!

Sources from deep inside The New York Times Company, owner of The New
York Times, Boston Globe, numerous TV stations, regional newspapers,
and various digital properties, and from The Onion, a web based
satirical newspaper (www.theonion.com) have verified the rumors. It's
true, The Onion, Inc. company headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin has
made a offer to buy The New York Times, Inc., company for stock.

This is a serious offer and word is that NYT Chairman and Publisher
Arthur Sulzberger sees it as a way instantly transform his family's
company into a major Internet content provider and thereby pump up the
company's stock creating instant wealth for many long time
shareholders.

According to people close to the talks, Sulzberger and other New York
Times executives were recently seen in Madison Wisconsin where they
reportedly attended a Friday afternoon beer bash at The Onion
headquarters. Apparently, the executives of both companies really hit
it off and have even gone on camping trips together. Executive Editor
Joseph Lelyveld of The New York Times and Onion's Editor-in-Chief
Robert Siegel have formed a "mutual admiration club" and are seriously
considering swapping jobs once the merger is finalized.

"Some of the ideas these two groups discuss once they've had a few
beers is phenomenal, particularly when you get Mr. Sulzberger into
it," reported one of the Onion editors. The New York Times group is
particularly intrigued with the success that The Onion has had by
using invented names in all its stories except for public figures. By
employing an Internet journalistic standard to an old media newspaper
like The Times, it is felt that editorial costs can be reduced by a
whopping 80%!

Cultural differences between the two companies and differing standards
of journalism aren't seen as major stumbling blocks to getting the
deal done. The biggest challenge will be to get the two sides to agree
to a valuation that gives shareholders of both companies plenty to
cheer for. This is complicated because The Onion has a market cap that
is several hundred billion dollars higher than the New York Times
Company. The expectation, though is this will be worked out to be
similar to AOL's purchase of Time Warner, with The Onion shareholders
getting about 55 to 60 percent of the merger company. Thus, The New
Times Shareholder will see an instant up tick in their stock which
should compensate them more than adequately for losing control of the
company.

Onion Publisher & President Peter K. Haise will reportedly give up his
position to become Chairman of the combined company and move to New
York. Arthur Sulzberger will more to Wisconsin, to run The Onion which
will be the new flag ship of the what will be called "Onion New York
Times Media Giant Company." Haise and Sulzberger have also agreed to
swap houses and families as part of the deal, which will facilitate
their need to move quickly.

The resulting "Onion New York Times Media Giant Company" will be one
of the world's largest media companies in terms of market cap, though
only half as big as AOL/ Time-Warner. The year 2000 is already being
seen as the year that old media surrendered to new media and there are
some more surprises to come. The biggest merger yet could happen this
summer when Wired Digital spins out Suck.com which will in turn make a
bid to buy The Walt Disney Corporation. Stay tuned dear readers,
Suck!Disney could become the biggest acquistion of all time.

DAVID BUNNELL is founder of PC Magazine, PC World, MacWorld, Personal
Computing, and New Media. He is CEO and Editor of Upside.

LINKS: Upside; David Bunnell in Upside

Further reading on Edge:

Chapter 4 - "The Seer" -- in Digerati; "PC MEMORIES, HOW I CREATED THE
PC" by David Bunnell
   _________________________________________________________________

Paul W. Ewald

Infection Is Much Bigger Than We Thought, Bigger Than We Think, And
Perhaps Bigger Than We Can Think

I am confident that I don't know "today's most important unreported
story" because it hasn't been reported to me yet. But I'll take a stab
at one of today's most important under-reported stories: Infection is
much bigger than we thought, bigger than we think, and perhaps bigger
than we can think. With apologies to J.B.S. Haldane, let me offer a
less grandiose, but more tangible and testable (and ponderous)
version: The infectious diseases that are already here but not yet
generally recognized as infectious diseases will prove to be vastly
more important than the infectious diseases that newly arise in the
human population from some exotic source (such as the jungles of
Africa) or genetic diseases that will be newly discovered by the human
genome project. By "important" I mean both the amount of disease that
can be accounted for and the amount that can be ameliorated, but I
also mean how much of what we value as well as what we fear.

A judgment on this pronouncement can be assessed incrementally decade
by decade over the next half-century. What are the diseases to keep an
eye on? Heart disease and stroke; Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other
neurodegenerative diseases; impotence, polycystic ovary disease,
cancers of the breast and ovaries, the penis and prostate;
schizophrenia and the other major mental illnesses. The list goes on.

But is the scope really "bigger than we can think"? Who can say? We
can speculate that the scope of infection may extend far beyond what
many in the year 2000 would be willing to take seriously. If
schizophrenia and manic depression are caused largely by infection,
then perhaps the artistic breakthroughs in our society, the
groundbreaking work of van Gogh, for example, can also be attributed
to infection. How much of what we prize in society would not be here
were it not for our constant companions? Rather than pass judgment
now, I suggest that we return in 2010 to this offering and each of the
other contributions to see how each is faring as the fuzziness of the
present gives way to the acuity of hindsight.

PAUL W. EWALD is a professor of biology at Amherst College. He was the
first recipient of the George E. Burch Fellowship in Theoretic
Medicine and Affiliated Sciences, and he conceived a new discipline,
evolutionary medicine. He is the author of Evolution of Infectious
Disease which is widely acknowledged as the watershed event for the
emergence of this discipline.
   _________________________________________________________________

Robert Aunger 
The End of the Nation-State

One of the Big Stories of the last century was globalization ? the
rise of plodding great dinosaur-like institutions promoting the
interests of the Fortune 500. Of course, merger-mania continues to
capture headlines, creating ever-larger multinational firms,
centralizing information and money ? and hence power ? in the hands of
a few old White guys. This is Goliath, and Goliath at a scale above
the State. On David's side of the battle for our hearts and souls, we
have the Internet, the weapon of Everyman. The Internet is the
newfound instrument of the little people, bringing us all within a few
clicks of each other (the so-called "small world" phenomenon). It is
no accident that the first to flock to this medium were minorities of
all kinds ? poodle-lovers, UFO-watchers and other fringe-dwellers.
Here, through this network, they found a way to broadcast their
message across the world at virtually no cost through an avenue not
controlled by Walmart or Banque Credit Suisse.

What is getting squeezed out in this picture is the institution in the
middle, the nation-state. It is easy for the media to focus on the
President as he waves to them while boarding Air Force One ? indeed,
they fawn on these "photo-ops." The existence of standardized
channels, like the press advisor, for disseminating "important
messages" makes their job easy. Thus, the media haven't noticed that
the institution the President represents is increasingly irrelevant to
the course of events. Why? Let's look at the sources of State power,
and how they are being eroded.

First, money is no longer tied to any material token (see Thomas
Petzinger, Jr., this Forum). Once the link to cowrie shells or gold
bullion is severed, the exchange of value becomes a matter of trust.
And this trust is increasingly being placed in computers ? the
Internet again. Greenspan can control greenbacks, but not e-money. Any
zit-faced teenager can become an instant millionaire by flipping a
digit on a strategic computer account. This is digital
democratization, of a sort. So one of the vital sources of centralized
governmental power ? control over the money supply ? is increasingly
no longer in the hands of the State.

What about the distribution of wealth? It used to be that those close
to the political decision-making machinery could write the rules for
moneymaking and thus guarantee themselves advantages: policies
informed incentives. But the globalization of capital markets has
reversed that causal ordering: money now flows as if national
boundaries were invisible, slipping right'round local rules and
regulations. The policy-makers are always a step behind. So the State
no longer finds it easy to ply favorites with favors.

The ultimate source of control, of course, is access to information.
What you don't know you can't act on. Governments have long recognized
how important this is. Can States nowadays control public opinion? Are
the media operated by people the State can coopt? Well, sometimes. But
the Fall of the Wall suggests control is never perfect. So you can
tell some of the people what to do some of the time, but not whole
populations what to think for very long. It just costs too much. And
(as Phil Leggiere points out elsewhere in this Forum), the Internet is
now a powerful means for protest against State interests. No wonder
States are trying hard to control this organically-grown monster.

States of course use various means to attract allegiance beside the
media. For example, they stir up patriotism by the tried-and-true
method of demonizing outsiders. However, of late, it has become harder
to direct aggression "outside," as made obvious by the proliferation
of aggressive conflicts along ethnic lines within States (Jaron
Lanier's non-Clausewitzian wars, in this Forum). The other
possibility, of course, is that some splinter group will get hold of ?
or make ? a nuclear warhead, and hold a government ransom. So the
ability to incite war ? another source of State power ? seems to be
coming from other quarters. This constitutes additional evidence of
the soon-to-be demise of States.

What people really care about, the social psychologists tell us, is
the group they identify with. You don't identify with Uncle Sam (a
clever anthropomorphizing gimmick that only works during war); you
identify with Uncle Fred and the other kin who share your name. So
it's difficult for people to identify with a country. It's too big ?
just a jerry-rigged bit of color on a map in many cases. How can you
care when your vote has no influence over outcomes? "Representative"
government is farcical when a population is counted in millions. Of
course, if you're rich, you can buy influence, but the ante is always
being upped as some other special interest vies for control over your
Man in Washington. Besides, those guys always logroll anyway. When
your self-concept, wealth and well-being derive from participation in
other kinds of community, the State becomes an anachronism.

The result of all this will not be the arrival of the Libertarian
heaven, a State-less society. It is just that mid-level governance
will be replaced by larger- and smaller-scale institutions. We won't
have monolithic Big Brother looking over our shoulders in the next
century. Instead, we will become a network of tightly linked
individuals, empowered by technologies for maintaining personal
relationships across space and time. We will all choose to be cyborgs
(Rodney A. Brooks), with implants that permanently jack us into the
global brain (Ivan Amato), because of the power we derive from our
environmentally augmented intelligence (Andy Clark, with apologies to
Edwin Hutchins and Merlin Donald). We will all come to live in what
Manuel Castells calls a Network Society, and begin, literally, to
"think globally and act locally."

ROBERT AUNGER works on cultural evolution at the Department of
Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge, and is editor of
Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science.

LINK: Robert Aunger Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Richard Potts 
Emergence of an Integrated Human-Earth Organism

Several under-reported stories come to mind. Almost all powerful
stories concern human beings in some way or another, metaphorically or
directly. One result of globalization, let's call it cultural unity,
is a story of such power. I'll mention only one facet of this story.
Over the past 50,000 years, the vast diversification of human culture
? the creation of quasi distinct cultures, the plural ? stands as a
peculiarity of Homo sapiens (relative to earlier humans and other
organisms). Human life has divided into diverse languages and ways of
organizing kin, technologies, economies, even mating and demographic
systems. It's a process that reflects our ken for doing things
differently from the people in the next valley.

Globalization may mean the dissolving (all too gradually) of tribal
mentality. But there's more to it. The related extinction of
languages, loss of local cultural information, and decay of cultural
barriers, all point toward an eventual homogenization of behavior that
hasn't existed at such a scale (across all humans) since the
Paleolithic prior to 50,000 years ago, or even much earlier. The
result: the loss of alternative adaptive strategies and behavioral
options, which have been rather important in the history of human
adaptability.

That's pretty big.

In seeking a truly unreported story, though, it's wise to think a
little further out, to make an unexpected prediction. How can that be
done? "Unexpected prediction" seems contradictory. Well, the history
of life is full of curious experiments, and careful study lets one
fathom its rash opportunism and rises and erasures of biotic
complexity. The history offers hints. An intriguing case is the
evolution of the complex cell, the basis of all eukaryotic life,
including multicellular organisms. The cell, with its nucleus,
mitochrondria, centrioles, and other components, represents an
ecosystem of earlier organisms. The cell emerged evidently by
symbiosis of a few early organisms brought together in a single,
coordinated system. It's complex internally, but it evolved by
simplifying, by gleaning from the surrounding ecosystem. Each of us
carries around about a hundred trillion of these simplified early
ecosystems, which are coordinated at even higher levels of
organization ? tissues, organ systems, the individual.

The big unreported story that I fancy is a latter-day parallel to this
fateful development in life's history. Human alteration of ecosystems
presents the parallel ? a sweeping simplification of a previously
diverse biotic system. Homo sapiens has slashed, culled, and gleaned.
It has forged symbiotic relationships with a few other species
(domesticates) that help fuel its metabolism (economic functions) as
humans enhance the replication of those few at other species' expense.

While these observations are somewhat familiar, the unreported part is
this: The global reach of this process threatens/promises to create a
single extended organism. The superorganism continues to alter the
planet and promises to touch virtually every place on the third rock
from the sun. Will this strange organism eventually harness the
intricate linkages of ocean, atmosphere, land, and deep Earth? Will it
seize control over the circulation of heat, moisture, energy, and
materials ? that is, the core operations of the planet? Hard to say
without a crystal ball. At its current trajectory, the process seems
destined to turn the planet into a cell, highly complex in its own
right but evolved by vast simplification of its original setting.
Certainly a different Gaia than is usually envisioned. If this story
has any validity, it's interesting that the initial loss of cultural
alternatives due to globalization roughly coincides with the emergence
of this incipient planetary organism.

What I suggest here is the onset of a Bizarre New World, not an
especially brave one. It might take more bravery to conserve Earth's
biological diversity and diverse ways of being human, salvaging
species and cultures from oblivion in a globalized world. Then
again...this may already be old fashioned sentiment.

Any important story, even as complicated as this one, needs a
headline:

Human-Earth Organism Evolves

Will It Survive? What Will It Become?

RICHARD POTTS is Director of The Human Origins Program, Department of
Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian
Institution. The program focuses on the long history of ecosystem
responses to human pressures and vice versa. Museum researchers are
piecing together the climatic and ecological conditions that allowed
humans to evolve.

He is the author of Humanity's Descent : The Consequences of
Ecological Instability and a presenter, with Stephen Jay Gould, of a
videotape, Tales of the Human Dawn.
   _________________________________________________________________

Kenneth W. Ford
The Swiftness of the Societal Changes That Occurred Two-thirds of the
Way Through the Century

No end of changes in our world are cited as we look back on the
twentieth century: population growth, scientific and medical advances,
communications technology, transportation, child rearing and family
structure, depletion of energy and mineral resources, and human impact
on the environment, to name a few. In general we analyze these changes
over the whole sweep of the century although some, to be sure, because
of their exponential character, have made their mark mainly toward the
end of the century.

What has gone largely unreported, it seems to me, is the suddenness
with which a set of societal changes occurred in less than a decade
between 1965 and 1975 (a step function to a mathematician, a seismic
shift to a journalist). In that period, we saw revolutionary change in
the way people dress, groom, and behave; in the entertainment that
grips them; in equity for minorities, women, and the variously
disabled; in higher education; and in the structure of organizations.

The unpopular Vietnam war can account for some of these changes, but
surely not all. The changes were too numerous and extended into too
many facets of our lives to be explained solely by antiwar fervor.
Moreover, what happened was not a blip that ended when the war ended.
The changes were permanent. With remarkable speed, as if a switch had
been thrown, we altered the way we deal with one another, the way we
see our individual relation to society, and the way we structure our
organizations to deal with people.

I lived through the period on a university campus, and saw rapid
changes in higher education, not to mention dress and behavior, that
are with us still. My own professional society, the American Physical
Society, transformed itself between the late 1960s and the early 1970s
from an organization that held meeting and published papers to an
organization that, in addition, promotes equity, highlights links
between science and society, seeks to influence policy, and cares for
the welfare of its individual members. Why did so much with lasting
impact -- happen so quickly?

KENNETH W. FORD is the retired director of the American Institute of
Physics. He recently taught high-school physics and served as science
director of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. His most recent
book, written with John A. Wheeler, is Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum
Foam: A Life in Physics, which won the 1999 American Institute of
Physics Science Writing Prize.
   _________________________________________________________________

Nancy Etcoff 
Good News

Four of five stories on trends in American life that appear on
national television news describe negative, frightful trends rather
than hopeful ones. Crime stories are the top category of local news,
outnumbering segments on health, business, and government combined.

Perhaps we require the media to be our sentinel. But we also seek a
spark.

The popularity and prestige of science has never been higher because
science is forward looking. Science has become the bearer of hope, a
source of the sublime.

NANCY ETCOFF, a faculty member at Harvard Medical school and a
practicing psychologist and neuropsychologist in the Departments of
Psychiatry and Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, has
been researching the perception of human faces for the past ten years.
Her work and ideas have been reported in The New York Times, Newsweek,
Rolling Stone, U.S. News and World Report, Discover, Fortune, and
Mademoiselle. She has been a featured guest on Dateline, NPR, The
Discover Channel, and Day One. She is the author of Survival of the
Prettiest: The Science of Beauty.
   _________________________________________________________________

Geoffrey Miller 
Social Policy Implications of the New Happiness Research

In the last ten years, psychology has finally started to deliver the
goods -- hard facts about what causes human happiness. The results
have been astonishing, but their social implications have not sparked
any serious public debate:

(1) Almost all humans are surprisingly happy almost all the time. 90%
of Americans report themselves to be "very happy" or "fairly happy".
Also, almost everyone thinks that they are happier than the average
person. To a first approximation, almost everyone is near the maximum
on the happiness dimension, and this has been true throughout history
as far back as we have reliable records. (This may be because our
ancestors preferred happy people as sexual partners, driving happiness
upwards in both sexes through sexual selection).

(2) Individuals still differ somewhat in their happiness, but these
differences are extremely stable across the lifespan, and are almost
entirely the result of heritable genetic differences (as shown by
David Lykken's and Auke Tellegen's studies of identical twins reared
apart.)

(3) Major life events that we would expect to affect happiness over
the long term (e.g. winning the lottery, death of a spouse) only
affect it for six months or a year. Each person appears to hover
around a happiness "set-point" that is extremely resistant to change.

(4) The "usual suspects" in explaining individual differences in
happiness have almost no effect. A person's age, sex, race, income,
geographic location, nationality, and education level have only
trivial correlations with happiness, typically explaining less than 2%
of the variance. An important exception is that hungry, diseased,
oppressed people in developing nations tend to be slightly less happy
-- but once they reach a certain minimum standard of calorie intake
and physical security, further increases in material affluence do not
increase their happiness very much.

(5) For those who suffer from very low levels of subjective well-being
(e.g. major depression), the most potent anti-depressants are
pharmaceutical, not social or economic. Six months on Prozac(TM),
Wellbutrin(TM), Serzone(TM), or Effexor(TM) will usually put a
depressed person back near a normal happiness set-point (apparently by
increasing serotonin's effects in the left prefrontal cortex). The
effects of such drugs are much stronger than any increase in wealth or
status, or any other attempt to change the external conditions of
life.

The dramatic, counter-intuitive results of happiness research have
received a fair amount of media attention. The leading researchers,
such as Ed Diener, David Myers, David Lykken, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Norbert Schwarz, and Daniel Kahneman, are regularly interviewed in the
popular press. Yet the message has influenced mostly the self-help
genre of popular psychology books (which is odd, given that the whole
concept of self-help depends on ignoring the heritability and
stability of the happiness set-point). The research has not produced
the social, economic, and political revolution that one might have
expected. Journalists have not had the guts to rock our ideological
boats by asking serious questions about the broader social
implications of the research.

Popular culture is dominated by advertisements that offer the
following promise: buy our good or service, and your subjective
well-being will increase. The happiness research demonstrates that
most such promises are empty. Perhaps all advertisements for
non-essential goods should be required to carry the warning: "Caution:
scientific research demonstrates that this product will increase your
subjective well-being only in the short term, if at all, and will not
increase your happiness set-point". Of course, luxury goods may work
very well to signal our wealth and taste to potential sexual partners
and social rivals, through the principles of conspicuous consumption
that Thorstein Veblen identified. However, the happiness research
shows that increases in numbers of sexual partners and social status
do not boost overall long-term happiness. There are good evolutionary
reasons why we pursue sex and status, but those pursuits are
apparently neither causes nor consequences of our happiness level.
Some journalists may have realized that the happiness research
challenges the consumerist dream-world upon which their advertising
revenues depend -- their failure to report on the implications of the
research for consumerism is probably no accident. They are in the
business of selling readers to advertisers, not telling readers that
advertising is irrelevant to their subjective well-being.

Also, if we take the happiness research seriously, most of the
standard rationales for economic growth, technological progress, and
improved social policy simply evaporate. In economics for example,
people are modelled as agents who try to maximize their "subjective
expected utility'. At the scientific level, this assumption is very
useful in understanding consumer behavior and markets. But at the
ideological level of political economy, the happiness literature shows
that "utility" cannot be equated with happiness. That is, people may
act as if they are trying to increase their happiness by buying
products, but they are not actually achieving that aim. Moreover,
increasing GNP per capita, which is a major goal of most governments
in the world, will not have any of the promised effects on subjective
well-being, once a certain minimum standard of living is in place.
None of the standard "social indicators" of economic, political, and
social progress are very good at tracking human happiness.

When hot-headed socialists were making this claim 150 years ago, it
could be dismissed as contentious rhetoric. Equally, claims by the
rich that "money doesn't buy happiness" could be laughed off as
self-serving nonsense that perpetuated the oppression of the poor by
creating a sort of envy-free pseudo-contentment. But modern science
shows both were right: affluence produces rapidly diminishing returns
on happiness. This in turn has a stark and uncomfortable message for
those of us in the developed world who wallow in material luxuries:
every hundred dollars that we spend on ourselves will have no
detectable effect on our happiness; but the same money, if given to
hungry, ill, oppressed developing-world people, would dramatically
increase their happiness. In other words, effective charity donations
have a powerful hedonic rationale (if one takes an objective view of
the world), whereas runaway consumerism does not. Tor Norretranders
(in this Edge Forum) has pointed out that 50 billion dollars a year --
one dollar a week from each first world person -- could end world
hunger, helping each of the 6 billion people in the world to reach
their happiness set-point. The utilitarian argument for the rich
giving more of their money to the poor is now scientifically
irrefutable, but few journalists have recognized that revolutionary
implication. (Of course, equally modest contributions to the welfare
of other animals capable of subjective experience would also have a
dramatic positive effect on overall mammalian, avian, and reptilian
happiness.)

Other contributors to this Edge Forum have also alluded to the social
implications of happiness research. David Myers pointed out the lack
of correlation between wealth and happiness: "it's not the economy,
stupid'. Douglas Rushkoff and Denise Caruso bemoaned America's descent
into mindless, impulsive consumerism and media addiction, neither of
which deliver the promised hedonic pay-offs. Daniel Goleman identified
the hidden social effects of our daily consumption habits -- they not
only fail to make us happier, but they impose high environmental costs
on everyone else. Others have suggested that some external substitute
for consumerism might be more hedonically effective. David Pink
championed a switch from accumulating money to searching for meaning.
John Horgan was excited about the quiet proliferation of better
psychedelic drugs. Howard Rheingold thinks more electronic democracy
will help. They may be right that spiritualism, LSD, and online voting
will increase our happiness, but the scientific evidence makes me
skeptical. If these advances don't change our genes or our serotonin
levels in left prefrontal cortex, I doubt they'll make us happier.
There may be other rationales for these improvements in the quality of
life, but, ironically, our subjective quality of life is not one of
them.

Perhaps the most important implication of the happiness literature
concerns population policy. For a na?ve utilitarian like me who
believes in the greatest happiness for the greatest number, the
happiness research makes everything much simpler. To a first
approximation, every human is pretty happy. From an extra-terrestrial
utilitarian's viewpoint, human happiness could be treated as a
constant. It drops out of the utilitarian equation. That leaves just
one variable: the total human population size. The major way to
maximize aggregate human happiness is simply to maximize the number of
humans who have the privilege of living, before our species goes
extinct.

Obviously, there may be some trade-offs between current population
size and long-term population sustainability. However, most of the
sustainability damage is due not to our large populations per se, but
to runaway consumerism in North America and Europe, and catastrophic
environmental policies everywhere else. Peter Schwartz (in this Edge
Forum) mentioned the declining growth rate of the world's population
as if it were unreported good news. I take a different view: the good
news for a utilitarian who appreciates the happiness research would be
a reduction in America's pointless resource-wastage and Brazil's
deforestation rate, accompanied by a luxuriantly fertile boom in world
population. Given modest technological advances, I see no reason why
our planet could not sustain a population of 20 billion people for
several hundred thousand generations. This would result in a
utilitarian aggregate of 10 quadrillion happy people during the
life-span of our species -- not bad for such a weird, self-deluded
sort of primate.
GEOFFREY MILLER is an evolutionary psychologist at University College
London, and author of The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped Human
Nature. He is currently researching the implications of evolutionary
psychology for consumer behavior and marketing.

LINKS: Geoffrey Miller Home Page

Further Reading on Edge: "Sexual Selection and the Mind": A Talk with
Geoffrey Miller
   _________________________________________________________________

David Braunschvig 
The Non-US Uniform Mobile Standard

The current American monopoly on Internet innovation is not etched in
stone.

With about two thirds of the worldwide internet user base in North
America, US based companies generate over 80% of global revenue and
these represent about 95% of the sector's overall market
capitalization of about a trillion US dollars (as of January 2000).
This is indeed a paradox for a medium that was designed to be open and
global.

Quite understandable, though, when you consider that US entrepreneurs
benefit from: abundant venture capital, more efficient equity markets,
flexible employment, higher PC penetration, efficient infrastructures
and earlier deregulation leading to lower communications costs to
consumers, better business academia linkages and a large, homogeneous
domestic market.

Of course, the rest of the world is catching up, as is increasingly
reported in the news. In Europe alone, the aggregate market value of
internet companies has shot up by a factor of 30 in the past year,
admittedly from a low base of $ 2 billion early 1999  to be contrasted
with "only" a four-fold increase for internet companies quoted in US
markets. Thus, observers generally agree that the disproportionately
low aggregate capitalization of the non-US internet companies is a
temporary fact.

However, the media here often views the primacy of US innovation in
the internet  which is of course the premise of its leadership  as
something like an American birth right. During the past "American
century" this has been a conventional wisdom for other equally
significant sectors. In the late 1960s, a major unreported story was
that Boeing's leadership in civil aircraft construction was more
fragile than one would expect; yet, Airbus's orders surpassed Boeing's
last year. Ten years ago, US dominance in cellular telecommunications
technology seemed equally impregnable. Since then, the European GSM
consortium has spawned a technology which is now widely accepted as a
global standard for digital mobile telephony. Likewise, could new
internet concepts and user experiences emerge outside of the US, with
global relevance and reach ?

A remarkably underreported story is that the existence of a uniform
mobile standard outside of the US is poised to be the foundation of a
new generation of internet-enabled applications, which can be an
extremely significant innovation. If portable devices and
internet-enabled mobility are to be at the center of the current
information revolution, Europe seems at an advantage to seed the
landscape with new concepts, technologies and companies leveraging
their consistent mobile infrastructure.

In Europe, location-sensitive services are being tested as we speak,
enabling merchants to reach pedestrians and motorists with information
and opportunities. Thus, rather than competing online with pure-play
e-commerce companies, established bricks-and-mortar businesses could
find their revenge in the high streets, thanks to these devices. The
best technologies enabling these experiences might well come from all
over the world  but the first movers are likely to find a privileged
ground in Europe: a caveat for the complacent in the US !

DAVID BRAUNSCHVIG is a managing director of Lazard Fr?res & Co. LLC in
New York, where he advises governments and corporations on
transactions and technology. In addition to his ongoing work as an
advisor in the fields of information technology, Internet services,
and "new media," he has advised the Mexican government on the
privatization of its national satellite system.

LINK: Lazard Fr?res & Co. LLC
   _________________________________________________________________

Ernst Poppel
My Own Story

Today's most important unreported story is of course my own story.
This must be true for everybody. But who else would be interested?

ERNST POPPEL is a brain researcher. Chair of the Board of Directors at
the Center for Human Sciences and Director of the Institute for
Medical Psychology, University of Munich.
   _________________________________________________________________

Philip Campbell 
"Chemistry for non-chemists"; Entrepreneurism

I found your demand for "most" important a bit of a distraction, so
forgive me for ignoring it.

My first thought was "chemistry for non-chemists". Few people write
about chemistry for the public, few stories appear in the press. It's
intrinsically difficult and, anyway, biology is, for the foreseeable
future, just too sensational (in both good and questionable senses)
and fast-moving for all but the sexiest of the rest of science to get
much of a chance to compete for space in the media. But there is room
for unusual science writers who know how to hit a nerve with a neat
association between interesting chemistry and the everyday world -
there just seem to be too few in existence and/or too little demand.
(I'd mention John Emslie and my colleague Philip Ball as two
honourable examples.)

The second thought was entrepreneurism. Because of inevitable business
secrecy, entrepreneurism too rarely gets adequately opened up to
scrutiny and public awareness. That's not to imply a hostile intent -
entrepreneurism can provide the basis of riveting tales in a positive
as well as negative senses. But, in Europe especially, chief
executives of high-technology companies who bemoan the lack of an
entrepreneurial culture unsurprisingly resist suggestions that a
well-proven journalist be given the chance to roam around their
company and write about what they find. Partly as a result of such
inevitable caution, and partly because of the way the media approaches
business, the public tends to get basic news and oceans of speculation
about share prices and profits, gee-whiz accounts of technology,
misrepresentation from lobby groups on both sides of a divide,
lectures on management, partial autobiographies of successful business
people, but, unless a company collapses, nothing like the whole truth.
More could surely be done, though the obstacles are daunting.

PHILIP CAMPBELL is the Editor-in-Chief of Nature.

LINK: Nature
   _________________________________________________________________

Steven Pinker 
The Loss of our Species' Biography

Just as we are beginning to appreciate the importance of our
prehistoric and evolutionary roots to understanding the human
condition, precious and irreplaceable information about them is in
danger of being lost forever:

1. Languages. The 6,000 languages spoken on the planet hold
information about prehistoric expansions and migrations, about
universal constraints and learnable variation in the human language
faculty, and about the art, social system, and knowledge of the people
who speak it. Between 50% and 90% of those languages are expected to
vanish in this century (because of cultural assimilation), most before
they have been systematically studied.

2. Hunter-gatherers. Large-scale agriculture, cities, and other
aspects of what we call "civilization" are recent inventions (< 10,000
years old), too young to have exerted significant evolutionary change
on the human genome, and have led to cataclysmic changes in the human
lifestyle. The best information about the ecological and social
lifestyle to which our minds and bodies are biologically adapted lies
in the few remaining foraging or hunting and gathering peoples. These
peoples are now assimilating, being absorbed, being pushed off their
lands, or dying of disease.

3. Genome diversity. The past decade has provided an unprecedented
glimpse of recent human evolutionary history from analyses of
diversity in mitochondrial and genomic DNA across aboriginal peoples.
As aboriginal people increasingly intermarry with larger groups, this
information is being lost (especially with the recent discovery that
mitochondrial DNA, long thought to be inherited only along the female
line, in fact shows signs of recombination).

4. Fossils. Vast stretches of human prehistory must be inferred from a
small number of precious hominid fossils. The fossils aren't going
anywhere, but political instability in east Africa closes down crucial
areas of exploration, and because of a lack of resources existing
sites are sometimes inadequately protected from erosion and vandalism.

5. Great apes in the wild. Information about the behavior of our
closest living relatives, the bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and
orangutans, requires many years of intensive observation in
inaccessible locations, but these animals and their habitats are
rapidly being destroyed.

What these five areas of research have in common, aside from being
precious and endangered, is that they require enormous dedication from
individual researchers, they are underfunded (often running on a
shoestring from private foundations), and have low prestige within
their respective fields. A relatively small reallocation of priorities
(either by expanding the pie or by diverting resources from
juggernauts such as neuroscience and molecular biology, whose subject
matter will still be around in ten years) could have an immeasurable
payoff in our understanding of ourselves. How will we explain to
students in 2020 that we permanently frittered away the opportunity to
write our species' biography?

STEVEN PINKER is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Brain
and Cognitive Sciences, and author of Language Learnability and
Language Development, Learnability and Cognition, The Language
Instinct, How the Mind Works, and Words and Rules.

LINKS: The Official Steven Pinker Web Page; The Unofficial Web Page
about Steven Pinker
   _________________________________________________________________

Jason McCabe Calacanis
The Farce of the Slacker Generation (Or What the Hell Happened to
Generation X)?

In the early nineties, when I graduated from college, the media was
obsessed with a generation of indifferent teenagers and
twenty-somethings who couldn' t be bothered with social causes,
careers, or the general state of humanity. Ironically, the same media
structure which had previously been upset with the 60s generation for
being too rebellious was now upset the kids born in the 70s and the
80s for not being rebellious enough. They branded us slackers and they
called us generation X, ho-hum.

Fast forward five short years. The same media covering the same
generation, but instead of dismissing them as slackers they anoint
them business titans and revolutionaries controlling the future of
business, media and culture. With technology as their ally they will
not rest until they've disintermediated anyone or anything
inefficient. This group of rebels are on a mission, and their drive is
matched only by their insane work ethic. Never a mention of slackers
or generation X.

The story that isn't being told in all of this is why a generation of
slackers would suddenly create and drive one of the biggest paradigm
shifts in the history of industry. Clearly part of this is a matter of
perspective. The media givieth and the media takieth away, all in
their desire to create sexy stories through polarization,
generalization and, of course, exaggeration. However, looking deeper
into the issue, is the fact that a generation of young adults, having
stumbled onto a new medium (the Internet), was smart enough to seize
the opportunity, taking their own piece of the pie and leaving the
dead to bury the dead (think: old media).

What did we, as generation X inherit in the early 90s? The remnants of
a five-yea r, cocaine-infused, party on Wall Street that ended in
tears and a recession. Our generation wasn't filled with slackers, it
was filled with such media savvy, and saturated, individuals that we
knew that participating in the existing paradigm would only result in
low pay and long hours for some old-school company. Is it is a
coincidence that this same group of people are the ones who owned the
media that obsessed over the slacker generation? Perhaps they hoped to
guilt us to getting into line?

Equity is the revolution of our generation, as in having equity in the
company you work for. This equity, in the form of stock options, is
not on the same level as the equality that the 60s generation fought
for, but it is certainly an evolution of that same movement. Don't
believe the hype.

JASON MCCABE CALACANIS is Editor and Publisher of Silicon Alley Daily;
The Digital Coast Weekly, Silicon Alley Reporter and Chairman CEO,
Rising Tide Studios.

LINKS: Silicon Alley Daily; The Digital Coast Weekly, Silicon Alley
Reporter
   _________________________________________________________________

Raphael Kasper 
The Fact That There Are No Longer ANY Unreported Stories

"Today's most important unreported story" may be the fact that there
are no longer ANY unreported stories. To be sure, there are stories
that are given less attention than some might think appropriate, and
others that are inaccurate or misleading. But the proliferation of
sources of information -- the Internet, myriad cable television
stations, niche magazines, alternative newspapers -- makes it
virtually certain that no occurrence can remain secret or unmentioned.

The dilemma that faces all of us is not one of ferreting out
information that is hidden but of making sense of the information that
is readily available. How much of what we read and see is reliable?
And how can we tell? In the not-so-distant past, we could rely, to an
extent, on the brand name of the information provider. We all applied
our own measures of credence to stories we read in the York Times or
in the National Enquirer. But who knows anything about the authors of
what we read at www.whatever.com?

Everything -- all that has happened and much that has not -- is
reported.

RAPHAEL KASPER, a physicist, is Associate Vice Provost for Research at
Columbia University and was Associate Director of the Superconducting
Super Collider Laboratory.

LINK: Columbia University Record
   _________________________________________________________________

Marney Morris
The Consequences of Choices Made About The Internet Today

"America, where are you going in your automobile?" Allen Ginsberg

The years of 1939 and 1999 were snapshots in time  revealing the world
as it was and as it would be. At the 1939 New York World's Fair,
General Motors' "Futurama" and Ford's "Road of Tomorrow" showcased
freeways and spiral ramps scrolling around urban towers. The future
was clear. American would rebuild its cities and highways to sing a
song of prosperity and personal freedom.

In 1999, a snapshot of the Internet revealed what was and what will
be. Wires are still being strung. The Ecommerce structure is still
being built. And content is still incunabulum.

What is today's most important unreported story? That the choices made
about the Internet today will have great consequences in the next
century. Like the automotive age, exuberant times make it easy to
forget that a bit of thoughtful design will profoundly influence the
fabric of our future society.

What's the issue? Access. Half the people in the US don't have
computers, but 98% have TVs and 97% have phones. Why do they say they
don't have computers? "Too complicated."

Using a computer should be as easy as turning on a TV. And it could
be.

Computers interfaces should be self explanatory. And simple. And they
could be.

The quality of information design in the US is declining. Good
information design should reveal relationships about the information.
It should make you smarter. Learning disorders are on the rise. It's
not because we are getting better at diagnosing them. It's because we
are creating them. All too often our textbooks are confusing or
misleading. And that same lack of thoughtful design pervades the
personal computer, and the Internet. Information design is a science
that needs to underpin our society if we are going to remain
democratic and vital.

The biggest difference between 1939 and 1999? The automobile was
simple at the outset. It took years to make it complicated and
inaccessible. Computers have been unnecessarily complicated since they
began. It is hard to make things simple. But they could be.

MARNEY MORRIS teaches interaction design in the Engineering department
at Stanford University and is the founder of Animatrix, a design
studio that has built over 300 interactive projects since 1984.
Animatrix is currently creating Sprocketworks.com.

LINKS: Animatrix; Sprocketworks.com
   _________________________________________________________________

Rupert Sheldrake
The Rise of Organic Farming in Europe

Once seen as a marginal enterprise of interest only to health food
fanatics, organic farming is booming in Europe. Over the last 10
years, the acreage under organic management has been growing by 25 per
cent per year. At present growth rates, 10 per cent of Western
European agriculture would be organic by 2005, and 30 per cent by
2010. But in some parts of Europe the growth rates are even higher. In
Britain, within the last 12 months the acreage more than doubled, but
even so the surge in demand for organic food greatly outstrips the
supply, and 70 per cent has to be imported. Most supermarket chains in
the UK now carry a range of organic products, and the market is
growing at 40 per cent per year. By the end of this year, nearly half
the baby food sold in Britain will be organic.

Why is this happening? It reflects a major shift in public attitudes,
which are probably changing more rapidly in Britain than in other
countrides.

First there was the trauma of mad cow disease and the emergence of
CJD, its human form, contracted through eating beef. No one knows
whether the death toll will rise to thousands or even millions; the
incubation time can be many years. Then in 1999 there was the
remarkable public rejection of genetically modifie foods, much to the
surprise of Monsanto and their government supporters.

Recent surveys have shown the third of the public who now buy organic
food do so primarily because they perceive it as healthier, but many
also want to support organic farming because they think it is better
for the environment and for animal welfare.

The rise in organic farming together with the continuing growth of
alternative medicine are symptoms of a mass change in world view.

Governments and scientific institutions are not at the leading edge of
this change, they are at the trailing edge. A major paradigm shift is
being propelled by the media, consumers' choices and market forces. A
change of emphasis in the educational system and in the funding of
scientific and medical research is bound to follow, sooner or later.

RUPERT SHELDRAKE is a biologist and author of Dogs That Know When
Their Owners Are Coming Home, And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals,
The Rebirth of Nature and Seven Experiments That Could Change the
World, as well as many technical papers in scientific journals. He was
formerly a Research Fellow of the Royal Society, and is currently a
Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He lives in London.

LINK: Rupert Sheldake Online
   _________________________________________________________________

Tom de Zengotita
Linda Tripp's Makeover

It's being covered as a publicity ploy by a Lewinsky scandal leftover
-- that is, not much and certainly not seriously. But check out the
pictures. This is a MAJOR makeover. It represents the culmination of a
process we have been tracking for awhile -- but in two different
arenas of celebrity, the real and the Hollywood.

Remember the new Nixon? Distant ancestor of Al Gore remakes and of
McCain and Bradley, the "story" candidates, and every prominent real
life figure today who is now obliged to play some version of
themselves. On the other front, we have cases of performer
resurrections in new guises going back to the straightforward
comebacks of Frank Sinatra and John Travolta to Madonna and Michael
Jackson makeovers to Garth Brooks effort to recreate himself as a
fictional celebrity whose name escapes me at the moment.

Linda Tripp's makeover represents a consolidation, a fusion of these
trends. This marks a moment when the possibility of making and
remaking one's image collapses into the possibility of making and
remaking oneself literally.

And it's just the beginning...

TOM DE ZENGOTITA, anthropologist, teaches philosophy and anthropology
at The Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at York
University.
   _________________________________________________________________

Denis Dutton 
The Gradual The Growth of a Prosperous Middle Class in China and in
India

Few large-scale, gradual demographic changes can be expected to
generate headlines. The exceptions are those which point toward
catastrophe, such as the widespread belief a generation ago that the
population bomb would doom millions in the third world.

In fact, the most significant unreported story of our time does deal
with the so called third world, and it is the obverse of the panic
about overpopulation. It is the story of the gradual growth of a
prosperous middle class in China and in India.

The story is truly dull: yes, millions of Indians can now shop in
malls, talk to each other on cell phones, and eat mutton burgers and
vegetarian fare at Mcdonald's. Such news goes against the main reason
for wanting to cover Indian cultural stories in the first place, which
has traditionally been to stress cultural differences from the West.
That millions of people increasingly have a level of wealth that is
approaching the middle classes of the West (in buying power, if not in
exact cash equivalence) is not really newsworthy.

Nevertheless, this development is of staggering importance. Middle
class peoples worldwide, particularly in a world dependent on global
trade, have important values in common. They share the values they
place on material comfort. They borrow in living styles from one
another. They appreciate to an increasing extent each others' cultures
and entertainments. And they place an important value on social
stability. Countries with prosperous middle classes are less likely to
declare war on one another: they have too much to lose. In the modern
world, war is a pastime for losers and ideologues; the middle classes
tend to be neither.

When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in India in the 1960s, I accepted
the conventional belief that south Asia would experience widespread
famine by the 1980s. My first surprise was returning to India in 1988
and finding that far from moving closer to famine, India was richer
than ever.

Now in the computer age, and having abandoned the Fabianism of Nehru,
India is showing its extraordinary capacity to engage productively
with the knowledge economies of the world. China too is will
contribute enormously to the world economy of the 21st century.

The story does not square with many old prejudices about the backward
Orient, nor does it appeal to our sense of exoticism. But the emerging
middle class of Asia will change the human face of the world.

DENIS DUTTON teaches the philosophy of art at the University of
Canterbury, New Zealand. He writes widely on aesthetics and is editor
of the journal Philosophy and Literature, published by the Johns
Hopkins University Press. He is also editor of the Web page, Arts &
Letters Daily. Prof. Dutton is a director of Radio New Zealand, Inc.
LINK: Arts & Letters Daily
   _________________________________________________________________

David M. Buss
Discrimination in the Mating Market

Hundreds of stories are reported every year about discrimination,
bias, and prejudice against women, minorities, and those who are
different. But there's a more pervasive, universal, and possibly more
insidious form of discrimination that goes on every day, yet lacks a
name or an organized constituency-discrimination on the mating market.
Although there are important individual differences in what people
want (e.g., some like blondes, some like brunettes), people worldwide
show remarkable consensus in their mating desires. Nearly everyone,
for example, wants a partner who is kind, understanding, intelligent,
healthy, attractive, dependable, resourceful, emotionally stable, and
who has an interesting personality and a good sense of humor. No one
desires those who are mean, stupid, ugly, or riddled with parasites.
To the degree that there exists consensus about the qualities people
desire in mating partners, a mating hierarchy is inevitably
established. Some people are high in mate market value; others are
low. Those at the top, the "9's" and "10's" are highly sought and in
great demand; those near the bottom, the "1's" and the "2's," are
invisible, ignored, or shunned.

Being shunned on the mating market relegates some individuals to a
loveless life that may cause bitterness and resentment. As the rock
star Jim Morrison noted, "women seem wicked when you're unwanted."
Discrimination on the mating market, of course, cuts across sex, race,
and other groups that have names and organized advocates. Neither men
nor women are exempt. For those who suffer discrimination on the
mating market, there exists no judicial body to rectify the injustice,
no court of appeals. It's not against the law to have preferences in
mating, and no set of social customs declares that all potential mates
must be treated equally or given a fair chance to compete.

But it's not just the rock bottom losers on the mating market that
suffer. A "4" might aspire to mate with a "6," or "7" might aspire to
mate with a "9." Indeed, it's likely that sexual selection has forged
in us desires for mates who may be just beyond our reach. The "7" who
is rejected by the "9" may suffer as much as the "4" who is rejected
by the "6."

People bridle at attaching numbers to human beings and making the
hierarchy of mate value so explicit. We live in a democracy, where
everyone is presumed to be created equal. Attaching a different value
to different human beings violates our sensibilities, so we tend not
to speak in civilized company of this hidden form of discrimination
that has no name. But it exists nonetheless, pervasive and insidious,
touching the lives of everyone save those few who opt out of the
mating market entirely.

DAVID M. BUSS is s Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas
at Austin where he teaches courses in evolutionary psychology and the
psychology of human mating. He is the author of The Dangerous Passion:
Why Jealousy is as Necessary as Love and Sex; The Evolution Of Desire:
Strategies Of Human Mating; and Evolutionary Psychology: The New
Science Of The Mind.
   _________________________________________________________________

Charles Arthur 
The Peculiar Feedback Loops - Both Negative and Positive - That Drive
Media Reporting of Technological and Science Issues

The most important unreported story, and perhaps one that is
impossible to report, is about the peculiar feedback loops-- both
negative and positive -- that drive media reporting of technological
and science issues.

In Britain, the science repoting agenda in the past year has been
dominated by stories about genetically modified food and crops.
Britons have rejected them, crops in experiments have been torn up
(thus preventing the results of the experiments, which could show
whether or not the crops had harmful effects, being produced).
Supermarkets vie with each other to find some way in which they don't
use genetically modified ingredients or crops. Newspapers run
"campaigns" against genetically modified ingredients.

There is an incredible positive feedback loop operating there, driving
ever wilder hysteria -- at least amongst the media. Whether the public
really cares is hard to ascertain.

Meanwhile climate change, that oft-repeated phrase, is almost accepted
as being right here, right now; to the extent that my news editor's
eyes glaze over at the mention of more global warming data, more
melting ice shelves (apart from "Are there good pictures?" A calving
ice shelf can do it.) There is clearly a negative feedback loop
running there. The only way to garner interest is to present someone
or some paper which says it isn't happening. Which seems to me
pointless, before Stephen Schneider jumps on me.

But what is making those loops run in the way they do? Why doesn't
genetically modified food get a negative loop, and climate change a
positive one? What are the factors that make these loops run with a +
or - on the input multiplier?

Damned if I know how it all . But I'll read about it with fascination.
As we are more and more media-saturated, understanding how all this
works looks increasingly important, yet increasingly hard to do.

CHARLES ARTHUR is technology editor at The Independent newspaper.
   _________________________________________________________________

Delta Willis
Weird Ape Fouls Planet

In the spirit of tabloid headlines (Ted No Longer Fonda Jane) my
Exclusive, Untold Story would be headed Weird Ape Fouls Planet.

Granted Bill McKibben got very close with his book The End of Nature,
but there continues a pervasive denial that stops this story from
honest resolution.

First, of course, we'd rather not hear about it. At the Jackson Hole
Wildlife Film Festival we discussed the dilemma of presenting the
dreadful conservation stories without depressing the audience, which
is another way of asking, Shall we not hit this nail on the head
again? So beyond the various lobbies and doubts that obscure issues
such as global warming, the media hesitate to offend, or to be
redundant.

Secondly, it's a story I'd rather not research and write because it is
a bummer. The first half I did attempt; I truly do think humans are
quite a wonderfully weird, unique species and the story of our place
within the evolution of life on earth is fantastic (and for many,
still unbelievable.) But when it comes to our impact on the earth, the
already palpable effects of over-population, I get bogged down in the
details, or distracted by Untold Story Number Two (Equal Rights
Amendment Never Passed U.S. Senate).

For example: there was a rush by health insurers to provide for
coverage of Viagra use, but not of contraception pills for women.
Enormous pressures remain for reproduction, from social and religious
ones (the Vatican Rag) to the biological cues that inspired John
Updike (The Witches of Eastwick) to put these words in the mouth of
Jack Nicholson: What a Bait They Set Up. In a roundabout way the
fallibilities of being human were covered ad nausea (Leader of Free
World Impeached for Thong Thing) and maybe the reason that too will
pass is because we would prefer to deny the power of these urges, on
par with drugs and greed, plus ego, i.e. parking one's off road 4-WD
Range Rover in front of the Hard Rock Caf?.

So I'm with Bugs Bunny, who said, people are the strangest animals
because we have this ability to reason and yet that base stem of the
brain, wherever it is located on your anatomy, tends to rule the day.
Hollywood might be the only medium that can rattle our cage on such
issues of perspective, truly seeing ourselves in context; journalism
no longer seems capable of delivering profound, incisive news, unless
you dare to have canines as sharp as those of Maureen Dowd.

DELTA WILLIS is the author of The Hominid Gang, Behind the Scenes in
the Search for Human Origins; The Leakey Family: Makers of Modern
Science; and The Sand Dollar & The Slide Rule: Drawing Blueprints from
Nature.
   _________________________________________________________________

Tor Norretranders
A Dollar a Week Will End World Hunger

It's now a billion to a billion: Of the six billion human beings
currently alive on this planet, one billion live with a daily agenda
of malnutrition, hunger and polluted drinking water, while another one
billion -- including you and me -- live lives where hunger is never
really an issue.

The number of really rich and really poor people on the planet now
match. That makes the following piece of arithmetics very simple
indeed:

If all of us who are rich (in the sense that starvation is out of the
question and has always been) want to provide the economic resources
necessary to end hunger, how much should we pay? We assume that all
existing government and NGO aid programs continue, but will be
supplemented by a world-wide campaign for private donations to end
hunger (feed your antipode).

The cost of providing one billion people with 250 kilograms of grain
every year is approximately $40 billion dollars a year. That would
seem to be a lot of money, but with one billion people to pay, it is
no big deal: $40 a year! An even more moderate estimate is provided by
the organization Netaid: Just $13 billion dollars a year and the basic
health and food needs of the world's poorest people could be met.

With $50 billion a year as an estimated cost of ending world hunger,
the expense for each well-off person is one dollar a week. It is the
growth in the number of rich people on the planet, while the number of
poor has not grown, that results in this favorable situation,
unprecedented in human history.

The advent of the Internet makes this proposal practical and
conceptually clear:

Living in a global village makes it meaningful to help end global
hunger, just like the populations of most industrialized countries
have already done on a national scale.

The Internet provides a simple way of collecting the money (this
writer broke the embargo on his own unreported story and sent $100 to
www.netaid.org to pay the global tax to end hunger for himself and one
child). The money flowing through organizations such as netaid.org and
hungersite.org will attract public attention and scrutiny of their
efficiency in turning money into food for the hungry.

Also, the Internet makes it perfectly clear who should consider
her/himself as part of the rich billion on the planet and hence pay a
dollar a week: Every user of the Internet. In few years time the
number of users will be one billion and we could see the end of hunger
on this planet.

Obviously, once the money to end hunger is available, all sorts of
obstructions will appear before those in need are fed: bureaucracies,
mafias, corruption, waste. But is it not then time that we deal with
them? A very important effect of annual donations from a billion
people is the resulting global awareness of the embarrassment involved
in the present unnecessary situation.

TOR NORRETRANDERS is a Danish science writer, lecturer and consultant
based in Copenhagen. He is the author of The User Illusion. Cutting
Consciousness Down to Size. His latest book, in Danish, is Frem i
Tiden.
   _________________________________________________________________

Denise Caruso 
Maybe Media Is the Real Opiate of the People

One of today's great untold stories -- or, I should say, it keeps
trying to get itself told and is usually mercilessly thrashed or
ignored entirely -- is the degree to which our behavior is manipulated
and conditioned by media.

Most everyone has heard about the studies (more than 200 at last
count) that show a direct correlation between increased aggression and
exposure to violence portrayed in media. The most compelling of this
research suggests that the visual media in particular -- television,
movies and even video games -- employ psychological techniques such as
desensitization and Pavlovian conditioning which change how we think
about and react to violent behavior.

Of course, the entertainment and advertising industries dismiss these
studies, saying it's impossible that their little ol' movie or TV show
or 30-second ad or point-and-shooter could actually influence anyone's
behavior.

That's what they say to Congress, anyhow, when they get called on the
carpet for irresponsible programming.

But how do their protestations square with the gazillion-dollar
business of TV advertising, in particular? This is an industry which
is based entirely on the proposition that it can and does, in fact,
impel people to buy a new car or a new pair of shoes, to drink more
beer or get online -- to do something different than they've been
doing, in some shape or form.

So one of those statements has to be a lie, and if you follow the
money, you can make a pretty good guess which one.

Once you are willing to consider this premise (and if you've read the
studies and/or are willing to honestly observe your own behavior, it's
pretty hard not to), it becomes apparent that a whole lot more than
our attitudes toward violence may be influenced by visual media.

Not long ago, for example, it occurred to me that the rising obesity
rate of our TV-addicted population might actually have something to do
with the fact that any given hour of programming will yield an
infinity of food porn -- sexy, slender women shoving two-pound
dripping hamburgers into lipsticked mouths, or normal-sized families
cheerily gorging themselves at tables piled with giant lobsters and
steaks and all manner of things oozing fat and sugar.

I mentioned this theory of mine to a colleague last November and,
remarkably, the very next day, a blurb in The New York Times' science
section announced that a Stanford University study had correlated
children's obesity with television watching, and that the American
Institute for Cancer Research found that most Americans overestimated
a normal-sized portion of food by about 25 percent.

Neither of these two studies directly linked TV's food bonanza with
overeating, but they do suggest a connection between what our eyes see
and what our brains subsequently do with that information.

It's then no giant leap to wonder whether the constant barrage of TV
"news" and political programming -- from the Clinton-Lewinsky
extravaganza to Sunday morning's meet-the-pundits ritual to the
"coverage" of the latest batch of presidential hopefuls -- is another
case of media desensitization in action.

Could TV itself, the place where most Americans get their daily fix of
news, actually be causing America's vast political ennui and depressed
voter turnout? Have we become so anesthetized by what we watch that we
require the specter of Jesse Ventura or Donald Trump as president to
engage, even superficially, in the political process?

The studies that correlate media exposure with a flattened cultural
affect about violence would support that general premise.

But as we know, correlation does not prove causation. To prove that TV
"causes" violence, for example, you'd have to conduct a controlled,
double-blind experiment which, if successful, would result in someone
committing a violent act.

The human subjects committee at any responsible research lab or
university would never approve such an experiment, and for good
reason.

But it must be possible to set up a sufficiently rigorous,
violence-free experiment to measure the actual neurological and
behavioral effects of visual media. Wouldn't we all like to know what
really happens -- what happens in our brains, what humans can be
impelled to do -- as a result of spending so many hours in front of
TVs and computers and movie screens?

Considering the massive amount of visual stimuli that is pumped into
our brains every day -- and the astronomical profits made by the
industries who keep the flow going -- this seems like a story
eminently worth reporting.

DENISE CARUSO is Digital Commerce/Technology Columnist, The New York
Times

LINK: "Digital Commerce" Column Archive
   _________________________________________________________________

Phil Leggiere 
Appropriation of the Internet as an Effective and Powerful Tool of
Large Scale Global Social Protest

Buried beneath the blitz of news coverage of the rise of e-commerce
and the emergence of the World Wide Web as a new focal point of
consumerism ( the most ubiquitous stories of the moment) is a
potentially just as significant, still unreported, story: the
appropriation of the Internet as an effective and powerful tool of
large scale global social protest.

Most major mainstream broadcast and cable news coverage and commentary
rather jadedly treated the WTO protests in Seattle last month as a
fluke, a nostalgic hippie flashback. Their cynicism reflects not only
the binders of their Beltway mindsets, but the bias of their own, now
challenged, media formats.

For most of the past forty years, since broadcast television emerged
in about 1960 as the primary deliverer ( and definer) of news,
political activism evolved in a kind of dependent relationship (which
superficially some took to be a symbiotic one) to television.
Intuitively, sometimes by instinct, sometimes, as students of McLuhan,
quite consciously, activists of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War
movements, attuned to the persuasive power of the mediated image,
learned to cast and craft their political protests at least in part as
media politics. Grass roots organizing remained, as always, the
essential underpinning of a viable social movement, but angling for a
dramatic visually intense slot on the nightly news ( what Abbie
Hoffman called "Becoming an Advertisement for the Revolution" or
"Media Freaking") became a primary tactic, if not full fledged
strategy.

The power relationship, however, was always ultimately one-sided.
Those who lived by the televised image, could be easily squashed by
the image gatekeepers, cancelled like a burnt-out sit-com or
cops-and-robbers show once their novelty effect ebbed. And when "The
Whole World" was no longer watching, communication was pretty easily
squelched.

What the WTO protests represent, far from Luddite know-nothing-ism
(despite the handful of brick throwing John Zerzan/Theodore Kaczynski
"anarcho-primitivists" whom broadcast TV reflexively and inevitably
locked-in on as the TV stars of the event) is the first social protest
movement created largely through and communicating largely via the
Web. Which is to say the first, potentially at least, able to by-pass
the gatekeepers of mainstream media while reaching hundreds of
thousands, perhaps millions, of participants/observers/ sympathizers
and others, globally on an ongoing basis.

This suggests that the populist cyber-punk roots of Net BBS's are
surviving and even flourishing alongside the corporate branding the
Web is undergoing. With due apologies to the great writer Bruce
Sterling (who advises us to retire cyber prefixes once and for all), I
can't help thinking that, despite the apparent easy triumph of
cyber-commercialization (the Web as global strip-mall), the next few
years may also witness the blossoming of the first era of mass global
populist cyber-protest.

PHIL LEGGIERE is a free-lance journalist and book reviewer for Upside
Magazine and several other publications.
   _________________________________________________________________

Leon M. Lederman 
Survival Depends on the Race Between Education and Catastrophe

A greatly underrated crisis looming over us was predicted by the
futurist H. G. Wells. In about 1922 he commented that survival would
depend on the race between education and catastrophe. The
justification for this profound foresight can be seen in the
incredible violence of this century we have survived, and the newfound
capacity of mankind to obliterate the planet. Today, although
political rhetoric extols education, the educational system we have
cleverly devised and which is in part a product of the wisdom of our
founding fathers defies reform. It is a system incapable of learning
from either our successes or our failures.

How many parents and policy makers know that the system for teaching
science in 99% of our high schools was installed over 100 years ago?

A National Committee of Ten in 1893 chaired by a Harvard President
recommended that high school children be instructed in science in the
sequence Biology, then Chemistry, and then Physics. The logic was not
wholly alphabetical since Physics was thought to require a more
thorough grounding in mathematics.

Then came the 20^th century, the most scientifically productive
century in the history of mankind. Revolutions in all these and other
disciplines have changed the fundamental concepts and have created a
kind of hierarchy of sciences; the discovery of the atom, quantum
mechanics, nuclear sciences, molecular structures, quantum chemistry,
earth sciences and astrophysics, cellular structures and DNA. To all
of this, the high school system was unmoved.

These events and pleas to high school authorities from scientists and
knowledgeable teachers went unheeded. The system defies change. We
still teach the disciplines as unconnected subjects with ninth grade
biology as a chore of memorizing more new words than 9^th and 10^th
grade French together!

This is only one dramatic example of the resistance of the system to
change. Our well-documented failure in science education is matched by
failures in geography, history, literature and so forth.

"So what?" critics say. "Look at our booming economy. If we can do so
well economically, our educational system can't be all that
important."

Here is where appeal to H. G. Wells' insightful vision enters. The
trend lines of our work force are ominous. Increasing numbers of our
citizens are cut-off from access to technological components of
society, are alienated and are condemned to scientific and
technological illiteracy. We have by the process, solidified and
increased the gap between the two classes of our culture. And the
formative elements of culture outside of school: TV, cinema, and radio
. . . strongly encourage this partition. Look at the social (as well
as economic) status of teachers. Most parents want the best teachers
for their children, but would bridle at the suggestion that their
children become teachers.

The penalties of continuing to graduate cultural illiterates (in
science and the humanities) may not be evident in year 2000 Wall
Street, but it is troubling the leaders of our economic success, the
CEO's of major corporations who see a grim future in our workforce.
Can we continue to import educated workers? As the low-level service
jobs continue to give way to robots and computers, the needs are
increasingly for workers who have high level reasoning skills, which a
proper education can supply to the vast majority of students.

But what is it that threatens "catastrophe" in the 21^st century?
Aside from the dark implication of a hardening two-class system, there
is a world around us that provides global challenges to society and
solutions require large popular consensus. Global climate change,
population stabilization, the need for research to understand
ourselves and our world, the need for extensive educational reform,
support for the arts, preservation of natural resources, clean air and
water, clean streets and city beautification, preservation of our
wilderness areas and our biodiversity-these and other elements make
life worth living, and cannot sensibly be confined to enclaves of the
rich.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to construct catastrophes out
of a failed educational system.

LEON M. LEDERMAN , the director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory, has received the Wolf Prize in Physics (1982), and the
Nobel Prize in Physics (1988). In 1993 he was awarded the Enrico Fermi
Prize by President Clinton. He is the author of several books,
including (with David Schramm) From Quarks to the Cosmos : Tools of
Discovery, and (with Dick Teresi) The God Particle: If the Universe Is
the Answer, What Is the Question?

LINKS: The Story of Leon; Leon M. Lederman Science Information Center
   _________________________________________________________________

Peter Schwartz 
The Dramatic Fall in the Rate of Growth in Global Population

My candidate for most important unreported story is the dramatic fall
in the rate of growth in global population. Instead of hitting 20, 20
or even 50 billion as was feared only a few years ago, with all the
associated horror, it is likely to reach between ten and eleven
billion by mid century. The implications for the carrying capacity of
the planet are profound.

PETER SCHWARTZ is an internationally renowned futurist and business
strategist. He is cofounder and chairman of Global Business Network, a
unique membership organization and worldwide network of strategists,
business executives, scientists, and artists based in Emeryville,
California. He is the author of The Art of the Long View : Planning
for the Future in an Uncertain World and coauthor (with Peter Leyden &
Joel Hyatt) of The Long Boom.

LINK: Global Business Network; The Long Boom Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Carlo Rovelli 
The End of the Dream of a More Gentle World

This unreported story is not much up to date. It is perhaps not even
unreported (everything is reported -- does anything exist if it isn't
reported?). And I do not know how "important" it is. Importance is
determined by what is perceived to be important, and what is perceived
important is reported. What remains is what will be viewed as
important by our descendants -- but let us leave them the burden of
the choice -- , and what is perceived important by singles or groups.

I have been reading the other "most important unreported stories" in
this fascinating collection of answers, and I have been surprised how
much the perspective of importance matches the specific of the
interests, or of the personal history, of the writer. So, I shall
allow myself to be absorbed by the same soft self-indulgence...

The most important under-reported story I want to talk about is the
old story of the great dream of a more gentle world. A more just
world, not based on the competition of everybody against everybody,
but based on sharing, the world as a collective adventure.

The dream is dead.

Killed by the simple fact that most of the times -- and this one is no
exception -- the stronger and aggressive wins and the gentle one
looses. Killed by the fears it generated in the privileged. Killed by
its own naivete, by horrors its unrealism generated, by its incapacity
to defend itself from the thirst of power hidden inside. And killed by
the thousand of reported and over-reported stories of its sins.

The new century raises over a dreamless new world, with richer riches
and with desperates by the millions. This is reality and we go with
it, its imperfections and its promises, which are no small.

But the dream is dead. It has moved generations, it has inspired
peoples, made countries, it has filled with light the youth of so many
of us, from Prague to San Francisco, from Paris to Beijin, from Mexico
City to Bologna. It has lead some to the country, some to take arms,
some to let their minds fly, some to Africa, some to join the party,
some to fight the party. But it was for the humanity, for a better
future for everybody, it was pure, beautiful and generous. And real.

Stories do not get unreported because they are kept hidden. But simply
because there are different perceptions of reality and of importance.
Perception of reality changes continuously. What was there and big,
may then vanish like a strange morning dream, leaving nothing but
confused undecoded traces and incomprehensible stories. A strong
ideology believes to be realist, and calls its reported stories
"reality". The old dreams are transformed in irrational monsters, then
they get unreported, then they have never existed.

CARLO ROVELLI is a theoretical physicist, working on quantum gravity
and on foundations of spacetime physics. He is professor of physics at
the University of Pittsburgh, PA, and at the Centre de Physique
Theorique in Marseille, France.

LINK: Carlo Rovelli Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Timothy Taylor 
The sexual abuse of children by women

While I was writing about libidinousness among female primates for my
book The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual
Culture, a friend told me that she had been sexually abused by her
mother. My research had helped her cut through the cultural myth that
only men could be sexually violent. Since then five more people have
told me that as children they were sexually abused by females (not all
by their own mother -- adult relatives and unrelated persons figure
too). A seventh person believes she may have been abused by a female,
but her memory is clouded by later abuse by a male. The seven come
from a range of social and ethnic backgrounds; three are men and four
are women. None of them has had any form of memory-tweaking therapy,
such as hypnotic regression. Indeed only two of the seven have
mentioned their abuse to a doctor or therapist (as compared with two
out of the three people I know who were abused by males).

Each abused child grew up in ignorance of others, in a culture in
which their kind of story was not told. As with abuse by males, the
psychological effects are profound and long-term. The ability to name
what happened is thus won with difficulty and has come only recently
to each of the victims I know: maturity and parenthood, supportive
friends, and the simple realization that it can actually happen, have
all played a part.

Whatever its biological and cultural antecedents -- poor parent-infant
bonding, the urge to control and dominate, repression, hidden
traditions of perversion, etc. -- the truth of abuse by males has only
recently been accepted, and the extent of it probably remains
underestimated. By contrast, abuse by females is almost totally
unreported outside specialist clinical literature. Successful criminal
prosecutions, rare enough for the former, are almost unheard of for
the latter except where they comprise part of more unusual
psychopathic crimes (such as the torture and murder of children). But
there is nothing inherently implausible about there being as many
female as male paedophiles in any given human community. That women
paedophiles have been a systemic part of recent social reality is, in
my view, today's most important unreported story.

TIMOTHY TAYLOR teaches in the Department of Archaeological Sciences,
University of Bradford, UK, and conducts research on the later
prehistoric societies of southeastern Europe. He is the author of The
Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture.
   _________________________________________________________________

Daniel Pink 
Maslow's America

Time's "Person of the Year" should have been Abraham Maslow.

The great psychologist is the key to understanding the biggest
economic story of our day ? a story that's been obscured by stock
tickers crawling across the bottom of every television screen, by
breathless magazine covers about dot-com fired insta-wealth, and by
the endless decoding of Alan Greenspan's every emission.

Deep into the middle class, Americans are enjoying a standard of
living unmatched in world history and unthinkable to our ancestors
just 100 years ago. This development goes well beyond today's high Dow
and low unemployment rate. (Insert startling factoid about VCRs,
longevity, car ownership, antibiotics, indoor plumbing, or computing
power here.) And demographics are only deepening the significance of
the moment. Roughly seven out of eight Americans were not alive during
the Great Depression ? and therefore have no conscious memory of
outright, widespread, hope-flattening economic privation. (Note: long
gas lines and short recessions don't qualify as life-altering
hardship.) As a result, the default assumption of middle class
American life has profoundly changed: the expectation of comfort has
replaced the fear of privation.

Enter Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. I imagine that at least a
majority of Americans have satisfied the physiological, safety, and
even social needs on the lower levels of Maslow's pyramid. And that
means that well over 100 million people are on the path toward
self-actualization, trying to fulfill what Maslow called "metaneeds."
This is one reason why work has become our secular religion ? and why
legions of people are abandoning traditional employment to venture out
on their own. (It's also why I guarantee that in the next twelve
months we'll see newsmagazine stories about despondent, unfulfilled
"What's It All About, Alfie?" Internet millionaires.)

What happens when life for many (though, of course, not all) Americans
? and ever more people in the developed world ? ceases being a
struggle for subsistence and instead becomes a search for meaning?

It could herald an era of truth, beauty, and justice. Or it could get
really weird.

DAN PINK, a contributing editor at Fast Company and former chief
speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore, is completing a book on the
free-agent economy.

LINK: Pink's Free Agent Nation Website
   _________________________________________________________________

Robert Hormats 
The Information Revolution Requires A Matching Education Revolution

Today's most important unreported story is that for many millions of
people in the industrialized and developing countries education and
training are not keeping up with the information technology
revolution. As the world enters the 21st century we need more robust
educational education and training, benchmarking to ensure that
educational systems provide the skills needed for this new era and
resource commitments that recognize that educational investments are
critical to economic prosperity and social stability in this new
century.

If the benefits of the information technology revolution are to be
broadly shared, and its economic potential fully realized, a far
greater effort is required during and after school years to enable
larger numbers of people to utilize and benefit from new information
technologies.

Failure to do this will widen the digital divide and the income gap
within and among nations, sowing seeds of social unrest and political
instability. It also will deprive our economies of the talents of many
people who could make enormous contributions to science, medicine,
business, the arts and many other fields of endeavor were they able to
realize their full educational and professional potential.

The goal of our societies should be not only to be sure schools and
homes are wired and online -- itself a critical infrastructure
challenge -- but to provide education and training programs so that
larger and larger numbers of people at all income levels can use these
new technologies to learn and create during their school years and
throughout their lives.

For the US, whose population is steadily aging, this means ensuring
that older citizens have greater training in the use of these new
technologies. And it means that younger Americans, especially
minorities who will become an increasingly significant portion of the
21st century workforce, have far greater education and training in the
use of information technologies than many do now. The better trained
they are the better position they will be in to contribute
productively to the US economy -- empowered by these new technologies.
In the emerging economies, IT education is an important part of their
evolution into dynamic participants in the global information economy,
attracting more and more investment based not only on low labor costs
or large domestic markets but also on their innovativeness and ability
to adapt to a world where more and more high quality jobs are
knowledge based. In much of Asia the financial crisis received so much
attention that much of the world paid little attention to the dynamic
changes in the information technology sector taking place in the
region; impressive as that is, it can be even more impressive as
greater investment in human capital expands the number of information
/ technology savvy citizens in these countries and thus broadens the
base of high-tech prosperity.

In the least developed economies, IT education should be a top
priority. It is greatly in the world's interest that they be able to
achieve their full economic potential. A substantial amount of
international support from the private sector and governments will be
needed. This can both prevent these nations from falling further
behind and unlock the innovative potential of their peoples.

An education revolution in industrialized, emerging and developing
nations is needed to keep up with and realize the full potential of
the information technology revolution. We should not become so
enamoured of technology that we ignore the human dimension that is so
critical to its success and to the social progress that these
technologies have the potential to accelerate.

ROBERT HORMATS is Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.

LINK: Goldman Sachs
   _________________________________________________________________

Jaron Lanier 
The End of Clausewitzian War

Prior to about twenty years ago, wars could almost always be
understood as depressingly rational events perceived by instigators as
being in their own self interests. Certain recent wars and other acts
of organized violence are astonishing in that they seem to break this
age old pattern. A striking example is the series of awful
confrontations in the former Yugoslavia.

If it was only an evil strongman, a Slobodan Milosevic, who instigated
the bloodshed, events would have kept true to the old established
pattern. Many a leader has instigated conflict, conjuring a demonized
foreign or domestic enemy to rouse support and gain power. But that is
not really what happened in this case of Yugoslavia. In the past, the
demons were accused of posing a material threat. Hitler claimed the
Jews had taken all the money, for example. Yes, he claimed they (we)
were morally degenerate, etc., but that alone would perhaps not have
roused a whole population to support war and genocide. The material
rationale seemed indispensable.

By contrast, in Yugoslavia a large number of both middle level leaders
and ordinary citizens, not limited to the Serbs or another single
group, rather suddenly decided to knowingly lower their immediate
standard of living, their material prospects for the foreseeable
future, their security, and their effective long term options and
freedoms in order to reinforce a sense of ethnic identity. This is
remarkably unusual. While ethnic, religious, and regional movements
have throughout history sought political independence, they have
almost never before resorted to large scale violence unless economic
or some other form of material degradation was a critical motivation.
Had the English Crown been more generous in the matter of taxation,
for instance, he might well have held on to the American Colonies.

It is often pointed out that the cultural context for conflict in the
Balkans is extraordinarily old and entrenched, but there are awful
psychic wounds in collective memory all over the world. There are
plenty of individuals who might under other circumstances be drawn
once again into conflict over the proper placement of the border
between Germany and Poland, for example, but there is absolutely no
material incentive at this time to make an issue of it, and every
material incentive to live with the situation as it is.

Similarly, if an uninformed, uneducated population had burst into
violent conflict on the basis of bizarre beliefs that the enemy posed
a serious threat of some kind, perhaps abducting children to drink
their blood, then that would have kept to the historical pattern as
well. Neither Von Clausewitz nor any other theorist of war has claimed
that war has always in fact been in the self interest of perpetrators,
only that it was perceived to be so. But Yugoslavia was a nation that
was relatively prosperous, well educated, and informed. Yugoslav
society was not closed or controlled to the extent of other
contemporary nations formed upon related ideologies. There were
relatively open borders and extensive commerce, tourism, and cultural
contact with the West.

And Yugoslavia was not Germany between the wars. Yugoslavs were not
humiliated or frustrated relative to other populations across their
borders. The material conditions were critically different. There was
no sense of hopeless economic disintegration, no reason to think,
"Even war would be better than this, or at least a risk worth taking."

Before Yugoslavia, war famously spared nations blessed with
Macdonald's hamburger franchises. The comforting common wisdom was
that economic interdependence reduced the threat of war. Economic
globalism was supposed to remove the material incentives from making
war, and it indeed it probably has done that.

In former Yugoslavia, an upwelling of need for absolute identity
trumped rational, material self interest. This phenomenon can also
perhaps be seen in some instances in the rise of Islamic militancy.
The recent rise of violent events perpetrated in the name of
"traditional" identities, values, and beliefs is startling. Once
again, such violence has always existed, but almost always before it
has been coupled with a component of material motivation. The Biblical
Israelites were enslaved and subjected economic abuse, for example.
The fundamentalists who attack abortion clinics seek no improved
material prospects. Neither do the Taliban. Or the bombers of the
Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

In all these cases, identity has become more important than wealth,
and that is new.

Another possible explanation that haunts me is that the human spirit
cannot cope with the changes technology makes to human identity. This
can be as simple as MTV blasting into the lives of children who
otherwise would never have known the meaning of spandex, piercing, or
whatever is in fashion on a particular day. Any thinking person,
though, must know that the changes to the human condition wrought by
such technologies as MTV, or even abortion and birth control, are mere
whispers compared to the roar of changes that will soon come to pass.

JARON LANIER , a computer scientist and musician, is a pioneer of
virtual reality, and founder and former CEO of VPL. He is currently
the lead scientist for the National Tele-Immersion Initiative.

Further reading on Edge: Chapter 17, "The Prodigy," in Digerati

LINKS: Jaron Lanier's Home Page; The National Tele-Immersion
Initiative
   _________________________________________________________________

Steve Quartz 
The Coming Transformation in Human Life and Society in the
Post-Genomic World

Although there hasn't been any shortage of stories on genes in the
press, public dialogue hasn't even begun to seriously consider how
radically genetic technologies will alter human life and society --
and probably all much sooner than we think. Forget cloning -- the pace
of the Human Genome Project combined with the emerging dominance of
market forces in dictating how spinoff technologies from gene therapy
to engineering novel genes will be utilized suggests that we'll soon
be able to retool human life (altering human traits from life history
-- aging, reproduction -- to intelligence and personality). We haven't
really begun to consider the enormous implications these will have for
the design of human society and social policy, from the family unit to
education and work. My bet is that feasible technologies to retool
human life will put us face to face with the basic dilemma of deciding
what it means to be human within two decades.

STEVEN QUARTZ is a professor in the division of Humanities and Social
Sciences and the Computation and Neural Systems Program at Caltech. He
is the author, with Terrence Sejnowski, of the forthcoming Who We Are:
How Today's Revolutionary Understanding of the Brain is Rewriting Our
Deepest Beliefs About Ourselves.
   _________________________________________________________________

Robert R. Provine
The Walkie-Talkie Theory: Bipedalism Was Necessary For Human Speech
Evolution

Speech is a byproduct of the respiratory adjustments associated with
walking upright on two legs. With bipedalism came a secondary and
unrecognized consequence, the respiratory plasticity necessary for
speech. Quadrupedal species must synchronize their locomotion and
respiratory cycles at a ratio of 1:1(strides per breath), a coupling
required by the shared, rhythmic use of the thoracic complex (sternum,
ribs, and associated musculature), and the need to endure impacts of
the forelimbs during running. Without such sychronization, running
quadrupeds would fall face first into the dust because their thorax
would be only a floppy air-filled bag that could not absorb the shock
of forelimb strikes. Human bipedal runners free of these mechanical
constraints on the thorax employ a wide variety of phase-locked
patterns (4:1, 3:1, 2:1 [most common], 1:1, 5:2, and 3:2), evidence of
a more plastic coupling between respiratory rhythm and gait. The
relative emancipation of breathing from locomotion permitted by
bipedality was necessary for the subsequent selection for the
virtuosic acts of vocalization we know as speech.

The contribution of bipedality to speech evolution has been neglected
because linguists typically focus on higher-order cognitive and
neurobehavioral events that occur from the neck up and overlook the
neuromuscular processes that produce the modified respiratory
movements known as speech.

ROBERT R. PROVINE is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the
University of Maryland Baltimore County where he studies the
development and evolution of the nervous system. The walkie-talkie
theory is presented in his forthcoming book Laughter: A Scientific
Approach.
   _________________________________________________________________

James Bailey 
The Spread of Universal Visual Literacy

Beneath Keith Devlin's "Death of the Paragraph" lies a deeper and even
less reported story: the spread of Universal Visual Literacy. Visual
Literacy is the ability not just to understand knowledge in visual
form but also to create it. Future generations of scientists (and
poets) are growing up with Photoshop in their fingertips. To them, a
conjunction is a video fade or wipe as much as a but or a yet. A
modifier is a texture on a 3D model as much as an adverb. With the
(under-reported) close of the Gutenberg Era, young scholars are no
longer constrained to old textual modes of communication. With the aid
of new electronic tools for expressing knowledge visually, they will
go back and forth with a facility unknown since Leonardo.

The reason this matters hugely is that visual modes of knowing can
accurately apprehend and communicate realities that are parallel,
whereas paragraphs and equations force us to pretend, with Descartes,
that life really happens in the single-step-at-a-time sequences that
the printing press demands. In the Gutenberg Era, the master
scientific concept was the equality of two strings of symbols on a
printed page. For young scientists growing up today, the master
scientific concept is the all-at-once docking of one molecular shape
onto the binding site of another on a computer screen.

Perhaps the most egregious example of using the old sequential
concepts of the Gutenberg Era to try to express parallel reality is
our current enthusiasm for the lame assertion that life is speeding
up. Here is a candidate for the most over-reported story of our time.
As a culture we are stringing together whole bookloads of paragraphs
trying to apply the centuries-old sequential concept of speed to
whatever is going on right now, because that is the best that text
seems to be able to do. Count on todays fourth-grader, with her iBook
and her Chime plug-in in her back pack, to do a whole lot better some
day. But by the time she finishes high school, she will still be able
to understand our old ways, because, along with her daily biology and
art classes, she will humor her physicist parents and take two days a
week of Algebra Appreciation.

JAMES BAILEY is an independent scholar focusing on the impact of
electronic computing on the overall history of ideas. He is the author
of After Thought: The Computer Challenge to Human Intelligence.
   _________________________________________________________________

Henry Warwick 
My friend, John Brockman, asked me, "What is the most important
unreported story of the year?"

Deprived of sleep and somewhat dulled by holiday festivities, I had no
reaction except a mumbled "Damned if I know..."

I immediately set out to understand this question (which soon
dominated My Every Waking Hour of my Holiday Vacation), and in order
to get my mind around the question and all it implied, I would need to
do some research beyond the most propitious mixture of rum and eggnog,
and how to cook a turkey dinner for nine...

I basically asked almost everyone I met, making a (typically) cheerful
nuisance of myself. The results were most interesting, and I quickly
found that the results of my research, like many of the previous
responses, was also conditioned by the world views that obtained given
the career choices and life objectives of the people I asked.

Most of people I asked, deprived of sleep and dulled by the holiday
festivities, shrugged and said "Damned if I know..." I found such
informal results less than satisfactory. Over more "eggnog" I came to
the conclusion I should ask people who might actually know. The next
day, I talked to people in the news trade, figuring, if they publish
the stories that do get reported, they would certainly know what
doesn't get reported.

I contacted a number of people in this regard, among them; an editor
of a major San Francisco weekly newspaper, a writer for a major San
Francisco daily newspaper, a photo editor for another daily, and a
writer for a weekly newspaper and the internet, located near Seattle.
Four people from completely different backgrounds- and they all said
(basically) the same thing- "How can it be that there is incredible
poverty amidst incomparable wealth, so often resulting in
homelessness? "

This threw me for a loop, because I didn't anticipate unanimity from
such a diverse lot. What also struck me was how I felt they were
wrong. While I do think poverty does deserve a greater examination,
and is certainly an important issue, I don't feel like it is
particularly "unreported" much less unknown. Anyone who lives in an
urban center in America (and many other countries for that matter)
knows about the reality that is poverty and homelessness.

I also felt I had to discount their answer, to a certain degree. For
one thing, they spend much of their time reporting on the headline
eating news- the acts, both dastardly and venal, of society's misfits,
madmen, and squalid criminals, both elected and otherwise. These
people are journalists, and journalists, especially American
journalists, have a tradition- bordering on an archetype- of being the
voice for the voiceless, the muckraker, the fourth estate, the ever
critical conscience of a secular society. This would make their odd
unanimity explainable, and, to a degree, underscore the value and
gravity of their choice.

But -- John didn't ask them, he asked me. And what do I know? Enough
to make me a worthy opponent at most trivia games. Enough that I'm not
homeless. Yet.

Are the growing ranks of the homeless and poor amidst our ever
deepening sense of prosperity and wealth the answer to Brockman's
question?

Or is it something broader and deeper? Ever since there have been
small privileged classes of the rich and/or powerful, there have been
the endless ranks of peasants and proles, microserfs and
burgerflippers, all of them struggling to feed their children, and
then there have been those who look up to peasants and proles,
microserfs and burgerflippers: the misfits, the madmen, and the
squalid criminals both elected and otherwise. Perhaps that's an
important untold story- the grand parade of the society's faceless
"losers", the peasants and refugees fleeing some obscene tyrant and
his witless army of cannon fodder dupes and cruel henchmen, and why on
earth do they all buy into this fiction we call "Civilisation"?

Or, is it less of a fiction as one might imagine, and simply the
natural product of a status conscious primate whose every activity is
amplified and processed by its symbolic language center? Does reason
in human relations only extend as far as the highly codified and
ritualistic systems of voting and criminal justice? Can the
objectivity of scie nce ever be used to develop social and economic
systems that will eliminate injustice and poverty? Or, I wondered, is
such a quest based in an outmoded socio political messianistic
teleology? Are we fated to forever step over the prone bodies of those
less fortunate or healthy? If the answer to "When will the horror ever
end?" is "Never", then the big unreported story of the year is the
true loss of "Utopia" and the evisceration of the humanist's hope by
the knives of history and a scientifically informed realism.

Should we then also apply the logical conclusions of the Copernican
revolution to our own human existence? With a decentered earth, sun,
galaxy, and now, if some theories are correct, a decentered Universe,
it is now logical that we should apply the lens of decentering to
ourselves, our civilisations and cultures, and to our actions both
collective and personal Perhaps that's the most important unreported
story of the year -- we're really not "The Story" any more, and what
we do is likely of little, if any, consequence. Are we, as persons and
a species, merely bit players in a peculiar performance? Improvising
before an empty house, and all of our preening culture and posturing
civilised rhetoric but a vain and oddly comical conceit? On this tiny
planet of water, trees, and concrete -- are we small participants in a
giant multiverse that is actually less moving material incidentals
expressing an equation of variables and constants, and more of a
growing, blooming, beautiful, if very slowly dying, flower?

A Flower?

HENRY WARWICK is an artist, composer, and scientist whose formal
education consists of a BFA from Rutgers University in visual systems
studies, a major of his own invention. He lives in San Francisco, and
his works can be appreciated at www. kether .com.
LINKS: Henry Warwick's Website: kether.com
   _________________________________________________________________

Julian Barbour 
a) The Extraordinary Proliferation of Jobs and Careers; b) James P.
Carse's Jewel of a Book, Finite and Infinite Games

The very notion of the "most important unreported story" makes it
inevitable that any answer will be highly subjective. For can anyone
honestly say they know for sure what is the most important thing in
life? One might say that the very essence of life is growth and
uncertainty about the direction in which it happens. I feel forced to
look for striking unreported stories whose ultimate importance is
inevitably unknown. Then I find that no story is completely
unreported, only underreported compared with the standards I would
apply.

In this line, I find that the existence of serious (though not
conclusive) scientific evidence for the complete nonexistence of time
has been strikingly underreported. But having just published a book on
the subject (and also undergone Edge edition No. 60) on this theme, I
do not feel like returning to it. I offer two substitutes.

Though certainly reported, there is a feature of modern life that I
feel should be given more prominence. It is the extraordinary
proliferation of jobs and careers that are now open to people, both
young and old, compared with my childhood over 50 years ago. I can
gauge this especially well because of a piece of research that is
worth mentioning on Edge. In the midst of the Second World War, but
when it was already clear that the Allies would win, the British war
cabinet decided that it should start thinking about how life should be
improved for both the urban and the rural population. Task forces were
set to work, researching the existing state. As it happened, the
village 20 miles north of Oxford where I grew up and still live (South
Newington) was chosen as the centre of an oblong region (measuring 4
by 6 miles on the Ordnance Survey map of Britain) that was to be
studied in detail as typical of rural Britain. Every village in it was
surveyed, and almost every person living in this region questioned
about their lifestyle and occupations.

The outcome was a book and a film called Twentyfour Square Miles, made
just after the war, when I was a boy of eight. Every few years, this
film is shown in the village. What is most striking is the subsequent
incredible mushrooming of career opportunities (and the large degree
of equalization of prospects between the sexes). Back in 1945, boys
could look forward to jobs in agricultural (quite a lot), as motor
mechanics (perhaps 20 such jobs in the entire region), working in the
aluminum factory in the nearby town of Banbury, and not much else. For
girls the options, apart from motherhood, were essentially limited to
domestic service, working as salespersons, and secretarial or other
clerking jobs. Probably only about one child in 20 would go on to
higher education. The transformation in 55 years has been amazing --
and it seems to me to be accelerating. In fact, any reasonably bright
young (or even relatively old) person in the region can now choose to
follow more or less any career.

There is some concern today that we are all becoming more and more
stereotyped. It seems to me that the mere fact that we now engage in
such a huge variety of occupations should largely offset any such
danger of stereotyping. Now to my second offering.

A highly original book not widely known must be an important
unreported story. (The President of Edge can hardly disagree!). It
turns out that the book I have in mind is actually quite widely known
(it has about half a million sales worldwide, as I learned recently on
the phone from its author) but seems to be almost completely unknown
in the UK. I am a sufficiently chauvinistic Brit to think that the UK
reading world is important, so here goes.

I learned about the book from Stewart Brand's The Clock of the Long
Now: It was a professor of religion, James P. Carse of New York
University, who came up with the idea of "the infinite game". His 1986
jewel of a book, Finite and Infinite Games, begins, "A finite game is
played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of
continuing the game."

This struck me as an extremely novel idea. I immediately ordered the
book and was not disappointed. A slim volume written in the addictive
aphoristic manner of Leibniz's Monadology and Wittgenstein's
Tractatus, with both of which it most certainly can be compared, I
think it is perhaps the most original perspective on life and the
world I have encountered. In fact, I was so delighted that I logged
onto amazon.co.uk and ordered 50 copies to send to friends as
Christmas and New Year presents (along with a copy of this entry to
serve as explanation for the said slim volume).

My order had a gratifying effect on the Amazon sales ranking of Finite
and Infinite Games. Before my order it stood at 25499. Two hours later
it was 4287. I mention this in the hope that some high Amazon
executive reads Edge and will ponder a somewhat less erratic way to
measure the rankings, which fluctuate so wildly as to be almost
useless. I think they need a Longer Now.

I am writing this on 31st December 1999 while listening to BBC Radio
3's monumental day-long 2000-year history of music called "The
Unfinished Symphony". The subtitle of Carse's book seems especially
apt in this connection --" A Vision of Life As Play and Possibility".
Perhaps the idea of life as an everlasting game or an ongoing symphony
is the most important unreported story.

On the subject of slim volumes, the British photographer David Parker,
who specializes in science studies and monumental landscapes with a
trace of the human element (Utah mainly), recently told me the
ultimate traveling-light story. Years ago he was trekking in Bolivia
with a friend who takes traveling light to the extreme. He therefore
allowed himself just one book, the Tractatus. To lighten even that
slim load, he would read one page each evening, tear it out and then
deposit it carefully wherever his bed happened to be: beneath a stone
if in the open or in the bedside table to rival the Gideon Bible if in
a hotel. One can hardly call the Tractatus an unreported story, but
the method of dissemination is worthy of Professor Emeritus James P.
Carse.

JULIAN BARBOUR , a theoretical physicist, has specialized in the study
of time and inertia. He is the is the author of Absolute or Relative
Motion? and The End of Time.

Further Reading on Edge: "Time In Quantum Cosmology"; Julian Barbour
comments in the Reality Club on "A Possible Solution For The Problem
Of Time In Quantum Cosmology" by Stuart Kauffman and Lee Smolin

LINK: Julian Barbour's Website
   _________________________________________________________________

Verena Huber-Dyson 
The Classification Theorem for Finite Simple Groups

It has been a great century for mathematical groups of all shapes and
sizes! They have been part and parcel of our daily lives for the last
couple of millennia or more. Apart from ruling our bureaucracy, groups
of transformations and symmetries are the keepers of law and order
among mathematical structures, the sciences and the arts -- as well as
the sources of beauty. Every finite group admits a decomposition into
a finite sequence of simple ones similar to the prime factorization of
integers. But it has proven spectacularly difficult to obtain a
systematic grasp of the set of all finite simple groups.

The first step was a 254 page proof in 1961 of a key conjecture dating
back to the last century. Then a team of over 50 group theorists
started snowballing under the leadership of Daniel Gorenstein who, in
1980, announced the result of their labors, recorded in some 15000
highly technical journal pages: every finite simple group belongs
either to one of two fairly well understood infinite families or to
one of 16 less tractable infinite lists or is one of the 26 so-called
sporadic groups-- a strange elusive lot whose discovery was a hunt
full of hunches, surprises and insights, reminiscent of the chase for
elementary particles. It was an extraordinarily fruitful proof. Within
2 years of its completion a conference was dedicated to applications
in nearly all branches of mathematics. But beyond merely establishing
truth a good proof must illuminate and explain. At first ascent
everybody is just glad to have scaled the peak.

Then comes the search for a more elegant, easier, snappier route. By
1985 that second stage of the project was well under way. The
"enormous proof" has set a new trend in mathematics. It is a True Tale
of a Tower of Babel with a Happy Ending! All those mathematicians
toiling side by side, if spread all over the globe, each with his own
outlook, language, bag of tricks: constructing geometries, permuting
objects, calculating characters, centralizing, fusing, signalizing and
inventing all sorts of new terms for situations that had been lying
there waiting to be recognized, named and used. They were not treading
on each other's toes but collaborating in a prolific way unprecedented
in the history of mathematics!

This wonderful happening did provoke lively professional discussions
but not much attention from the popular media. It is difficult to
advertise, unintelligible without technical explanations and lacking
in historical romance. Much of the friendliness of the sporadic
monster is lost on an audience gaping at its size, incapable of
appreciating its capricious charms. And there are no melodramatic side
shows; group theorists -- especially finite ones -- make up just about
the sanest and nicest species among mathematicians. Glitter and
glamour are not engendered by the laborious toil that went into the
quest for a classification of the finite simple groups. Finally, the
"second generation" has not yet completed its task, a good reason for
holding back the popular fanfares.

But it is a great story in progress to be carried over into the new
millennium!

VERENA HUBER-DYSON received her Ph.D. in mathematics at the University
of Zuerich with a thesis in finite group theory, then, in 1948, came
as a post doc. to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. After
a short but fruitful marriage she resumed her career, at UC Berkeley
in the early sixties, then at the U of Illinois' at Chicago Circle and
finally retired from the University of Calgary. Her research papers on
the interface between Logic and Algebra concern decision problems in
group theory. Her monograph Goedel's theorem: a workbook on
formalization (Teubner Texte, Leipzig 1991) is an attempt at a
self-contained interdisciplinary introduction to logic and the
foundations of mathematics.
   _________________________________________________________________

Joseph LeDoux 
Educational Inequities

As a nation we pay lip service to the idea that we're all created
equal. But the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting
poorer. Is this because the poor have bad brains that can't learn to
do better, or because their brains never get the opportunity to learn?
We know that even the best of brains needs input from the environment
to form and flourish. So why do we allow schools in poor
neighborhoods, as a rule, to be so much worse?

The difference is less about race than about class. Shouldn't
education be more standardized from neighborhood to neighborhood, city
to city, and state to state? Improvement of educational opportunities
wouldn't solve all the problems the poor face, but is an obvious place
to start. Critics of liberal social policy often claim that pouring
money into a situation doesn't help. I'm not suggesting that the poor
get anything extra, just that they get what others get. A decent
education is a right not a privilege.

JOSEPH LEDOUX, a Professor at the Center for Neural Science, New York
University. Joseph LeDoux, has written the most comprehensive
examination to date of how systems in the brain work in response to
emotions, particularly fear. Among his fascinating findings is the
work of amygdala structure within the brain. He is the author of the
recently published The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings
of Emotional Life, coauthor (with Michael Gazzaniga) of The Integrated
Mind, and editor with W. Hirst of Mind and Brain: Dialogues in
Cognitive Neuroscience.

Further Reading on Edge: "Parallel Memories: Putting Emotions Back
Into The Brain" -- A Talk With Joseph LeDoux on Edge

LINK: LeDoux Lab: Center for Neural Science Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Todd Siler 
Applying our Lessons from the Nuclear Age to this Age of Molecular
Biology and Genetic Engineering

The general public is wondering about the deep connection between
these two Ages in which we've glimpsed the power of atoms and are
beginning to glean the power of genes.

Welcome to the WISDOMillennium! There's no better time to tap our
collective wisdom as we welcome new opportunities to work together
toward advancing science, technology and society. In order to
responsibly and thoughtfully use our scientific insights into the
nature of molecules and genes, we need to hold in our conscious mind
(and conscience) the key learnings from our more freewheeling
experimental work on the atom which has lead to the development of
increasingly sophisticated nuclear weapons. With some concerted
effort, perhaps we can avoid repeating the mistake of mindlessly
innovating, constructing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
Clearly, our boldest insights into the basic building blocks of
biological matter can be abused in a similar manner, as we start to
scratch that big itch of curiosity -- designing, for example, evermore
exotic bioweapons with will-o'-the-wisp applications.

Anyone with a sense of wonder can't help but marvel at those
potentially mind-altering innovations in genetic engineering that keep
rolling out of the laboratories and into our lives. All this
excitement has a way of momentarily silencing our skepticism, as we
tend to overlook the impact these innovative works may be having on
the whole of human ecology. Somehow, we need to keep in the forefront
our wonderment "the thinking eye," as the Symbolist painter Paul Klee
referred to that most essential element of creativity: higher
awareness. We need to look ahead -- cautiously and with full vision --
reviewing the times our eyes were "wide shut" to wanton exploits of
scientific explorations.

Given our penchant for reaching for the impossible -- and,
occasionally, realizing "the unthinkable" (those worst case scenarios
and experiences involving serious human error) -- perhaps the science
community would be wise to do some collaborative, projective thinking
and moral forecasting about the more questionable applications of
experimental research in both Molecular Biology and Genetic
Engineering; hopefully, this collaboration will take place before the
world community is forced to face yet another flagrant act of poor
judgment. Surely, there must be a way of supporting basic scientific
research while safeguarding ourselves from what cynics gleefully call
"the inevitable": you know the story (it's always the same story):
some megalomaniac spearheads a group of clowns, or clones -- or cloned
clowns -- who proudly announce their spectacular creation, a lethal
new life-form. "Here, let us demonstrate how this new viral strain
works...Oops! Gosh, we had no idea this creature would be quite so
devastating." As the story goes -- some millions of deaths and
apologies later -- another group of renegade researchers will try
their hand at reengineering virtually every cell in our bodies, as
they blindly attempt to morph the human spirit to fit an inhumane
world. I mean, just imagine what would happen if we pushed aside
bioethics and other governors of conscience, while envisioning what we
want the human race to become as it "grows up"? Will we end up looking
like amoebas, but thinking like gods? Or will we look like gods, but
think like amoebas? "Inquiring minds want to know."

There's an anxious public just waiting to be informed about the whole
field of Molecular Biology and the prospects of The Genome Project.
Instead of reporting on this field and Project in a straightforward
manner -- treating the story as if it were merely another development
in the history of ideas -- it needs to be seen laterally, against the
backdrop and fallout of the Nuclear Age. Looking below the surface and
politics of The Cold War that initially drove this Age, we need to
drill down to see what lies at the core of human creativity in the
service of its aggressive tendencies. Maybe this report could address
one of the most perplexing aspects of human creative potential --
namely, how highly intelligent people can take good ideas and turn
them into bad ones real fast, bearing really grave consequences. But
what's a "good idea" anyway? I think The Genome Project is a great
idea because of its enormous medical benefits. However, I fear the
more radical possibilities of its broad applications -- particularly,
those that sway toward expanding the work on advanced weapon systems.
I suspect we'll always be dealing with this dilemma of deciding what's
a fair use of scientific knowledge, and what isn't; what's beneficial,
and what isn't; what improves the human condition, and what doesn't.
In responding to the public's escalating fears about our nuclear
future, R. Buckminster Fuller once remarked: "There are five billion
people on this planet and no one seems to know what to do."

Have you heard those haunting words of Albert Schweitzer rumbling in
the distant? "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall.
He will end by destroying the earth," said Dr. Schweitzer. I gather
from his pensive perspective, we're no longer opening Pandora's Box;
we're living in it. The question remains: Do we always have to live in
this Box? If so, what's the best way to live in it and flourish?

In order to make our way with some peace of mind in this new Age of
engineered atoms, molecules and genes, we need to quickly learn from
the past. That means figuring out how we're going to initiate policies
in bioethics while encouraging greater social responsibility. Jacob
Bronowski touched on this issue in his classic muse, Science and Human
Values -- prompting us to always consider the dimension of values in
science that should never vanish from our view. We must take the time
now -- in this fresh moment -- to envision ways of ensuring a healthy
collective future. One step towards this end is to transfer our
learnings from the Nuclear Age to this new Age, and then transform
them. I trust we won't find this act of connection-making an exercise
in futility.

There's a dark line in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Hocus Pocus that may
bleed into this new millennium -- permanently staining it. In one
sweeping definition, Vonnegut sums up the whole of 20^th century
thought as "the complicated futility of ignorance." He proceeds to
define high art as "making the most of futility." I'm wondering
whether many scientists see how this edgy definition applies to high
science, as well. Is it so futile to summon our leading scientists and
technological visionaries to strategize about the next steps for
growing and applying our knowledge of molecules and genes? (This
gathering might work if everyone checked one's ego at the door and
removed any Master of the Universe costume or attitude before "dancing
naked in the mind field" [to borrow Kary Mullis's lively expression].)

Finally, the following questions should be included in this unreported
story, adding to the bonfire of challenging world questions: Is there
one thing in particular that would help improve the state of the
world? What is it, and who's working on it?

TODD SILER, artist, author, inventor, is the Founder and Director of
Psi-Phi Communications, a company that provides creative catalysts and
communication tools for breakthroughs & innovation in Fortune 500
Companies and schools. He recently presented his latest book, Thinking
Like A Genius, at the World Economic Forum, in Davos. He is the author
of Breaking the Mind Barrier and co-author (with Patricia Ward
Biederman) of "Creativity and A Civil Society," a commissioned report
by the Institute for Civil Society.
   _________________________________________________________________

David G. Myers
The Disconnect Between Wealth and Well-Being: It's Not the Economy,
Stupid

Does money buy happiness? Few of us would agree. But would a little
more money make us a little happier? Many of us smirk and nod. There
is, we believe, some connection between fiscal fitness and emotional
fulfillment. Most of us tell Gallup that, yes, we would like to be
rich.
Three in four entering American collegians -- nearly double the 1970
proportion -- now consider it "very important" or "essential" that
they become "very well off financially." Money matters.

Think of it as today's American dream: life, liberty, and the purchase
of happiness. "Of course money buys happiness," writes Andrew Tobias.
Wouldn't anyone be happier with the indulgences promised by the
magazine sweepstakes: a 40 foot yacht, deluxe motor home, private
housekeeper? Anyone who has seen Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
knows as much. "Whoever said money can't buy happiness isn't spending
it right," proclaimed a Lexus ad.

Well, are rich people happier? Researchers have found that in poor
countries, such as Bangladesh, being relatively well off does make for
greater well-being. We need food, rest, shelter, social contact.

But -- the underreported story in our materialistic age -- in
countries where nearly everyone can afford life's necessities,
increasing affluence matters surprisingly little. The correlation
between income and happiness is "surprisingly weak," observed
University of Michigan researcher Ronald Inglehart in one 16 nation
study of 170,000 people. Once comfortable, more money provides
diminishing returns. The second piece of pie, or the second $100,000,
never tastes as good as the first.

Even lottery winners, those whose income is much higher than 10 years
ago, and the very rich people -- the Forbes' 100 wealthiest Americans
surveyed by University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener -- are only
slightly happier than the average American. Making it big brings
temporary joy. But in the long run wealth is like health: Its utter
absence can breed misery, but having doesn't guarantee happiness.
Happiness seems less a matter of getting what we want than of wanting
what we have.

Has our collective happiness floated upward with the rising economic
tide? In 1957, when economist John Galbraith was about to describe the
United States as the Affluent Society, Americans' per person income,
expressed in today's dollars, was $8700. Today it is $20,000. Compared
to 1957, we are now "the doubly affluent society" -- with double what
money buys. We have twice as many cars per person. We eat out two and
a half times as often. Compared to the late 1950s when few Americans
had dishwashers, clothes dryers, or air conditioning, most do today.
So, believing that it's very important to be very well off, are we now
happier ?

We are not. Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are "very
happy" has declined from 35 to 32 percent. Meanwhile, the divorce rate
has doubled, the teen suicide rate has nearly tripled, the violent
crime rate has nearly quadrupled (even after the recent decline), and
depression has mushroomed. These facts of life explode a bombshell
underneath our society's materialism: Economic growth has provided no
boost to human morale. When it comes to psychological well being, it
is not the economy, stupid.

We know it, sort of. Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow reports that
89 percent of people say "our society is much too materialistic."
Other people are too materialistic, that is. For 84 percent also
wished they had more money, and 78 percent said is was "very or fairly
important" to have "a beautiful home, a new car and other nice
things."

But one has to wonder, what's the point? "Why," wondered the prophet
Isaiah, "do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your
labor for that which does not satisfy?" What's the point of
accumulating stacks of unplayed CD's, closets full of seldom worn
clothes, garages with luxury cars -- all purchased in a vain quest for
an elusive joy? And what's the point of leaving significant inherited
wealth to one's heirs, as if it could buy them happiness, when that
wealth could do so much good in a hurting world?

DAVID G. MYERS is the John Dirk Werkman Professor of Psychology at
Hope College and, most recently, author of The American Paradox:
Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty.

Further Reading on Edge: "What Questions are on Psychologists' Minds
Today?" David G. Myers. 
LINK: David G. Myers Home Page.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stephen H. Schneider
The Way Stories About Complex Scientific Controversies Are Often
Unintentionally Mis-reported by the Mainstream Media.

And since policy making to deal with such controversies calls for
value judgments, and that in turn requires a scientifically literate
public to telegraph their value preferences to leaders,
miscommunication of the nature of scientific controversy has serious
implications for democracy in a world of exploding complexity.

In political reporting, it is both common and appropriate to "get the
other side": if the Democrat gives a speech, the Republican gets
comparable time/inches/prominence. This doctrine of "balance" -- which
is still taught proudly in journalism schools in the U.S. -- is
supposed to underlie the journalistic independence of the Fourth
Estate. [And let's not forget that conflict packaged in sound
bite-sized chunks garners higher ratings than more circumspect
reporting.]

But while journalists rightly defend the need for balance in truly
bipolar stories, how many scientific controversies are really
two-sided? More likely, there will be several competing paradigms and
a half a dozen marginal ideas kicking around scientific controversies.
And when the issues have high-stakes political winners and losers --
like the global warming topic I work in -- it is to be expected that
various special interests will compete for their spin. We've all seen
media filled with the views of environmental catastrophists,
technological cornucopians, ideological opponents of collective
controls on entrepreneurial activities, or denial from industrial
producers of products that pollute -- to name the usual prime players.
And each often has their hired or favored PhDs handy with ready
explanations and slick sound bites -- e.g., why carbon dioxide buildup
in the air will be either catastrophic or good for you.

Unfortunately, here is where a serious -- and largely unreported by
the very people who bring us this daily show -- disjuncture occurs.
For example, in the name of "balance", a 200-scientist,
two-years-in-the-making refereed scientific assessment gets comparable
space or airtime to a handful of "contrarian" scientists saying it
"ain't so". When I challenge this equal time reporting to my media
colleagues, they accuse me of being against "balance". This parade of
dueling scientists isn't remotely "balance" I respond, but rather,
utter distortion -- unless the journalist also reports the relative
credibility of each quoted position. I call the latter doctrine
"perspective" -- as opposed to the "balance" that journalists label.

In science all opinions are decidedly not equal, and we spend the bulk
of our effort winnowing the less from the more probable lines of
inquiry. Moreover, when we are assessors, we are obligated to report
whether our estimates of the likelihood of some set of hypothesized
outcomes are based on objective rather than subjective odds. I don't
have space to get into the "frequentist" versus "Bayesian" debate over
what is ever "objective", but awareness of the issue is also part of
what scientific literacy entails -- even for scientists.

Nevertheless, I do agree it would be irresponsible not to cover
minority opinions in media accounts of complex controversies. My
concern comes when contradictory scientific opinions are offered
without any attempt to report the relative credibility of these views.
Then, the public -- and political leaders too for the most part -- are
left to do that difficult assessment job themselves. More often than
not the "dueling scientists" get equal time in the story, confusion
sets in and outlier opinions win equal status at the bar of public
opinion with more widely accepted views. Of course, as Kuhn has taught
us, once in a while someone comes along to overthrow the mainstream
doctrine -- but we celebrate these paradigm busters primarily because
they are rare, not commonplace. One well-known editor argued with me
that to report scientific credibility "calls for a judgement on the
part of the journalist, and that most reporters lack specialized
qualifications to do that". "Without making judgments how can they
choose what to report and who to quote", I responded? "Why don't you
get someone from the Flat Earth Society to 'balance' every space shot
you cover -- isn't that a 'judgment' about their lack of credibility"?
Of course, they could hire such specialists, but only a few major
media outlets do -- and those reporters are decidedly not at the top
of the respect hierarchy in corporate media.

Science must always examine and test dissent, even if it takes a long
time to reduce some uncertainties. But science policy needs to know
where the mainstream is at the moment. My mantra to those seeking
scientific literacy in order to address the implications of the debate
is to remember to ask all competing claimants of scientific "truth"
three questions: 1), "What can happen?", 2), "What are the odds?", and
3) "How do you know?" And if you intend to ask the third question,
plan to have a pen and paper along and be willing to check references,
for question 3) isn't a sound bite-length inquiry.

In summary, most stories turn the doctrine of balance on its head by
applying it too literally to complex, multi-faceted scientific
debates. Then, the unreported story becomes that there actually are
different probabilities that belong to each of the various positions
covered, yet these conflicting positions appear in the story to be
equally likely.

Science must always examine and test dissent, even if it takes a long
time to reduce some uncertainties. But science policy needs to know
where the mainstream is at the moment. My mantra to those seeking
scientific literacy in order to address the implications of the debate
is to remember to ask all competing claimants of scientific "truth"
three questions: 1), "What can happen?", 2), "What are the odds?", and
3) "How do you know?" And if you intend to ask the third question,
plan to have a pen and paper along and be willing to check references,
for question 3) isn't a sound bite-length inquiry.

STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER is Professor in the Biological Sciences
Department at Stanford University and the Former Department Director
and Head of Advanced Study Project at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research Boulder. He is internationally recognized as one
of the world's leading experts in atmospheric research and its
implications for environment and society. Dr. Schneider's books
include The Genesis Strategy: Climate Change and Global Survival; The
Coevolution Of Climate and Life and Global Warming: Are We Entering
The Greenhouse Century?; and Laboratory Earth.
   _________________________________________________________________

Eduard Punset 
The End of the Brain

It is the best candidate to the major unreported event of the next
century. Only people in need really do need a brain. Plants don't, and
get along pretty well without it: photosynthesis alone largely fulfil
all their requirements. Actually, now that we know that we share, for
better or worse similar DNA, -- the instruction booklet that designs
living organisms robust enough to ensure survival, but flexible enough
to adapt to changing environments --, the missing brain is the only
difference between plants and us. And as we'll quickly learn during
the next century, it is nothing to be very proud of.

Although it seems harder to define the differences within the brainy
species themselves, including primates and other animals, it is,
however, rather surprising to find that -in the History of human
thought- there has hardly been a single intellectual who has not
condescended to share the collective and unending appraisal of the
substantial differences between men and the rest. In fact, this debate
has bored quite a few generations of learned hominids. Fortunately, it
is about to end thanks to, above all other scientists, Lynn Margulis.
Let me explain why.

It has taken quite some time and arguing to show that most animals do
indeed communicate and master reasonably evolved languages to that
end. There is nothing terribly creative about the capacity to learn a
language; as Steven Pinker pointed out it is genetic, and could not be
more damn simple, since it is digital. Men can do it; other mammals
too. The only surprising thing about it is the sheer impotence of
current scientific thought to unveil the basics of animal culture.

Despite the fact that we share the same genes, tool-making also helped
to substantiate the differences between hominids and chimps. Of
course, a few of those genes are different, but we still don't know
which of them actually makes the difference. The tool making
singularity, however, has not outlived the language exclusiveness. As
other people moved by curiosity, I have enjoyed looking at zoologist
Sabater's collection of chimp's sandals, hats, seed's catchers and
sticks for all sorts of widely different uses, such as beating, or
carving the sand searching for fresh water during the dry season,
instead of trying to drink in muddy soils.

The identification of consciousness -- since scientists assumed twenty
years ago that the scientific method could be extended to these
domains, up to then left to superstition --, looked like the final
argument. "We're conscious of ourselves. We know who we are. And they
don't". It was the most serious argument ever put forward in our
defense. It did not matter that chimps could also recognize themselves
in a mirror; somehow they would not show the precise awareness, nor
the same cognitive capacity to ruminate about one self. Unfortunately,
biologists like Lynn Margulis showed that bacteria -- as far back as
two billion years ago- could not manage their electric-like motors,
nor their magnetic navigation systems, without some realization of
what on earth they were building up those ultramodern transport
systems for. You just can't pretend any longer that bacteria are not
conscious too.

For those still interested in the old debate about the differences
between the brainy species, let me remind you that the most avant
garde argument now runs something like this: only the descendants of
the Australopitecus have developed the capacity to generate symbols.
Nobody can demonstrate neither when nor how it happened; I myself am
convinced that the whole thing started six thousand years ago when
people settled to labor the land, and women had to leave their babies
unattended shouting all day long.

But total allegiance to symbols like the San Francisco 49ers, the
Serbian motherland, or the Manchester United colors are undeniably
humane. No chimpanzee would risk his life for these or similar
symbols, nor for that matter would leave their newly born unattended.
Chimp's mothers love to carry them. There at last is something which
makes us really different from other animals. The capacity to generate
symbols and to blindly follow them, has indeed taken Homo Sapiens a
long way off from the brain's original purpose: to go in the right
direction, and to anticipate a few questions. A very lucid New York
physiologist attending last December a Neuroscience Congress at the
birthplace of Ramon y Cajal, actually told me he knows of a particular
specie who ends up eating its own brain once it settles in the right
place and knows the basic answers.

Could it not be that the brain has taken over a bunch of simple people
who were only in need of a few addresses and of guessing what on earth
was going to happen tomorrow? The World Health Organization is
predicting that life expectancy will reach one hundred and twenty five
years very shortly. Neuroscientists should start worrying about the
outcome of forty additional years with jammed brains immersed in the
process of deepening their symbolic capacity, leaving at long last an
unbridgeable and recognizable gap with plants and animals.

Yet despite this distinctive capacity to generate symbols, some 25% of
the population -- excluding criminals -- have serious brain
disfunctions, and most medical observers already agree that brain
disorders will be the most serious health threat in the twenty-first
century. The lucky 75% who will not be insane already know, according
to the latest statistics, that more patients die as a result of
practitioner's brains guessing wrongly about the nature and treatment
of real or invented illness, than people succumb on the roads and from
heart failure altogether.

Thankfully, building a collective brain through Internet should
alleviate the stress of saturated individual brains, and help manage
the lives of the great majority of people who have already been
overcome by too many choices regarding the path to follow and the
answers to non-formulated questions, even under current life
expectancy models. I'm afraid that quite a few of them will, however,
regret the placid and constructive life of brainless plants.

EDUARD PUNSET is Master of Science (Economics) by LSE, and Professor
of Economic Policy at the Chemical Institute of Ramon Llull University
in Barcelona. He was Chairman of the Bull Technological Institute,
Professor of Innovation and Technology at Madrid University, and IMF
Representative in the Caribean. He actively participated in the
Spanish political transition to democracy as Minister for Relations
with the European Union, and Member of the European Parliament. He is
currently Director and Producer of Networks, a weekly programme of
Spanish public television on Science. His latest book is A Field Guide
to Survive in the XXIst Century.
   _________________________________________________________________

Mehmet C. Oz, M.D.
The True Nature of Much of Human Illness Eludes Mankind.

We routinely tolerate concepts that challenge our perceived reality.
Electrons are allowed to spiral through the air transmitting
information and sprouting quarks, yet we insist of a very concrete,
biomedical understanding of our body.

The body is sacred and our provincial understanding of its workings in
imbued with cultural biases that are bred from birth and dominated by
guttural rather than cerebral influences. The resulting theology of
the medicine insists that all citizens having heart attacks must have
chest pain, or smoke, or have type A personalities, or have high
cholesterol, or be obese. The observation that half the victims of
mankind's largest killer do not fit this profile eludes the public.
And how do these risk factors explain why heart attacks are most
likely to occur on Monday mornings? We make the error of assuming that
medicine, which describes tendencies rather than certainty, is a
mathematical field rather than a statistical field. Even the act of
observing disease in the form of a patient-physician relationship can
alter the natural history of the illness, the medical equivalent of
the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics. This may explain the
well know placebo effect and its dark relative, the nocebo impact.

Religious and scientific explanations for disease crisscross
frequently in the brain. How about the eyesight you use to read a
sentence describing your grandmother's love for you. We can describe
how you can see the words on the page, and even how you know what the
words mean and how they fit together. We can understand the memory
processes that allow you to recall you grandmother's face, but how do
you know that the image you are seeing is your grandmother? Do you
have an individual brain cell reserved for each object you ever see
with one being reserved a young grandmother and another for a more
mature memory? At some point we push our scientific understanding into
the abyss of art and become surrounded by the seeming darkness of
theology. What makes this experience particularly frightening is the
associated realization that we, as individuals, are so unique that
cookie cutter answers offered to humanity on losing weight or avoiding
heart disease are unlikely to work. We each have to shoulder our own
burden in seeking these answers on our journey through life.

MEHMET C. OZ, M.D., is Irving Assistant Professor, Department of
Surgery, Columbia-Presbyterian, and a leading cardiac surgeon who has
pioneered both high-technology approaches (he was involved in the
invention of the cardiac assist device) and the use of complementary
medicine in surgery. He is author of Healing from the Heart.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Lykken 
The Reduction Since 1993 In American Crime Is An Illusion

The much-touted reduction since 1993 in American crime is an illusion.
The U.S. rate of violent crime today is still nearly four times what
it was in 1960. The recent dip in crime is the predictable result of
our segregating in our prisons more than six times the number who were
inmates as recently as 1975. A few of these inmates are psychopaths,
persons whose genetic temperaments made them too difficult for the
average parents to successfully socialize. A few others are mentally
ill or retarded or sheer victims of circumstance. But most are
sociopaths, persons broadly normal in genetic endowment who matured
unsocialized due to parental mis-, mal-, or non-feasance. Like our
language talent, humans evolved an ability to acquire a conscience, to
feel empathy and altruism, to accept the responsibilities of a member
of the social group. But, like the language talent, this proclivity
for socialization requires to be elicited, shaped, and reinforced
during childhood. The epidemic of crime that began in the 1960s is due
largely to the fact that, of males aged 15 to 24, the group
responsible for at least half our violent crime, the proportion who
were reared without fathers is now four times what it was in 1960.

More than two-thirds of -- abused children, juvenile delinquents,
school dropouts, pregnant teen-agers, homeless persons, adult
criminals -- were reared without the participation of their biological
fathers. Calculated separately for white and black youngsters, it can
be shown that a fatherless boy is seven times more likely to become
incarcerated as delinquent than a boy raised by both biological
parents. Judith Rich Harris argues that parents are fungible, that
children are shaped mainly by their genes and their peers. I think she
is 80% correct but I think that there are a few super-parents who
effectively nurture and cultivate their children (and largely
determine their choice of peers). And I am certain that the bottom 10%
of parents are truly malignant -- immature, or overburdened, or
indifferent, or sociopathic themselves -- so that their children are
almost certain to be robbed of their rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.

Suppose we were to require those who wish to have -- and keep -- a
baby must be mature, married, self-supporting, and never convicted of
a crime of violence. If the parents of the 1.3 million Americans
currently in prison had met such simple licensure requirements, I
believe that at least a million of those inmates would instead be
tax-paying citizens and neighbors. Interfering with parental rights,
even as modestly as this, is rather frightening because the instinct
to procreate is as strong in us as it is in all the birds and beasts.
But homo sapiens should be able to agree that the rights of the
children outweigh those of parents who are unable or unwilling to grow
up, get married, and get a job.

DAVID LYKKEN is a behavioral geneticist at the University of Minnesota
who recently published the results of a study of 1500 pairs of twins
in the May issue of Psychological Science. He is the proponent of a
set-point theory of happiness, the idea that one's sense of well-being
is half determined by genetics and half determined by circumstances.
His research illustrates that a person's baseline levels of
cheerfulness, contentment, and psychological satisfaction are largely
a matter of heredity. He is the author of Happiness: What Studies on
Twins Show Us about Nature, Nurture, and the Happiness Set Point.

Further Reading on Edge: "How Can Educated People Continue to be
Radical Environmentalists?" A Talk by David Lykken.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stuart Hameroff
The Imminent Paradigm Shift In Understanding The Conscious Mind

Today's most important unreported story is an imminent paradigm shift
in understanding consciousness. Quantum computation will soon replace
our familiar classical computation as primary metaphor for the
brain/mind. The purported brain=mind=computer analogy promising
robot/computer superiority and human/machine hybridization from
near-future classical computers is a myth promulgated by the
"silicon-industrial complex. "

Quantum computation was proposed in the 1980's by Feynmann, Benioff,
Deutsch and others to take advantage of the mysterious but well
documented quantum phenomen?a of 1) superposition (particles existing
in multiple states or locations simultaneously) and 2) entanglement
(instantaneous, non-local communication among quantum states). Whereas
classical computers represent information digitally as "bits" of
either 1 OR 0, quantum computation utilizes "qubits" in which
information exists in quantum superposition of both 1 AND 0. While in
superposition, multiple entangled qubits may interact nonlocally,
resulting in computation of near-infinite massive parallelism.

In 1994 Peter Shor of Bell Labs proved that quantum computers (if they
are able to be built) could factor large numbers into their primes
(the key to modern cryptography, banking codes etc) with unprecedented
efficiency, rendering conventional systems obsolete. Shor's work
sparked major funding in the general area of quantum information
(quantum computation, quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation). An
apparent roadblock to quantum computation -- the problem of
decoherence by environmental interactions -- was potentially solved in
the mid 1990's by groups who developed quantum error correction codes
which can detect and repair decoherence before quantum computation is
destroyed.

In the past several years numerous quantum computational prototypes
have been developed, and various technologies for full blown, large
scale quantum computers are being explored. It seems almost inevitable
that quantum computation will have an enormous impact on information
technology.

The brain/mind has traditionally been compared to contemporary
vanguards of information processing (dating from the Greeks' "seal
ring in wax" as a metaphor for memory, to the telephone switching
circuit, to the hologram, to the modern day classical computer in
which consciousness "emerges" from complex computation among simple
neurons). As quantum computation comes to the forefront of technology,
human nature (and ego) will surely resist the notion that technology
bears superior intellect, and search for quantum computation in the
brain.

There are cogent reasons for believing that quantum computation does
indeed operate in the brain, and such suggestions have been made by
theorists including Sir John Eccles and Sir Roger Penrose. However
critics quickly point out that the warm, wet, noisy brain must be
inhospitable to delicate quantum effects which (in the case of
superconductors, Bose-Einstein condensates etc) seem to require
complete isolation and temperatures near absolute zero to prevent
decoherence.

On the other hand "quantum-mind" advocates suggest that biological
quantum coherence is metabolically "pumped", point to several lines of
evidence suggesting that biological evolution has solved the
decoherence problem, observe that only quantum computation can solve
the enigmatic features of consciousness, and propose testable
predictions of quantum-mind theories (on the contrary, experimental
predictions regarding classical computational emergence of
consciousness have not been put forth). The implication, and potential
theme for the next century, is that we are not strictly emergent
products of higher order complexity, but creatures connected to the
basic level of the universe.

STUART HAMEROFF. M.D. Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology
Associate Director, Center for Consciousness Studies The University of
Arizona Tucson, Arizona.

LINK: Stuart Hameroff Home Page.
   _________________________________________________________________

Ellis Rubinstein
The Erosion of Traditional "Divides"

I believe the world to be experiencing an unprecedented erosion of
traditional "divides". Yes, we can all point to examples of horrific
ideological conflict, but such tribalism surely seems anachronistic to
most of us. And that is because many of us have grown accustomed in
the latter decades of the 20th century to a kind of social
enlightenment that stems from urbanization, globalization, and the
sharing of common information disseminated by our extraordinary new
communication tools.

Now, it may seem obvious that nationalism and political and religious
ideologies are having an increasingly hard time remaining "pure" in
the face of increased face-to-face contact with those who see things
differently from us. Moreover, we cannot easily cling to our most
formative views when we increasingly find ourselves in conversation
via phone and e-mail with others who see the world differently from
us. And, finally, it must be ever more difficult to remain isolated in
our views of others when we are surrounded by images of them -- often
touching images -- on film and television.

Still, all this may have been discussed somewhat in various media.
What especially intrigues me is the apparent erosion among relatively
educated families of a different "cultural divide": the generational
divide. What are the drivers of this shift? And what are its effects?

In my necessarily limited experience, I have observed that parents and
children are increasingly "friends". It has been much noted that the
Baby Boom generation and their children share many of the same
interests in music. At formal events -- I think of my recent
experience in Sweden attending the Nobel festivities -- teenagers and
20-somethings happily mingled with their elders who, if they were
male, were dressed in cut-aways. Indeed, some of the young people were
wearing special costumes in order to play roles in this highly
traditional event. In my time, we would have seriously considered
committing suicide before putting on costumes provided by our elders,
then attending hours of events populated largely by our parents and
grandparents, and finally dancing to "retro" music in the closest
imaginable proximity to our parents and even grandparents.

I conclude from this and similar experiences that as this new
millennium begins, a sort of truce has taken place between
generations, with parents and children attempting to bridge divides
that, in my view, ought naturally to exist between them. If I am
correct about this, then surely there are major ramifications on our
culture...and I'm not at all sure they would only be for the good. I
worry, for example, that some needed element of rebelliousness is
being "bred out" of the system of growing up. I worry that this may
have an effect on creative thought. And I worry that the potential
lack of tension between generations might lead to a kind of stagnation
in the arts, humanities and sciences.

Am I alone in this concern? I personally haven't seen this topic
addressed in the all-too-limited spectrum of publications I can
personally scan. So maybe others have publicly shared this concern. If
not, however, I vote for this as one of the most important
underreported stories of our time.

ELLIS RUBINSTEIN is Editor of Science

LINKS: Science Magazine; Ellis Rubinstein's Science Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Hans Ulrich Obrist
The Roads Not Taken

I see unrealized projects as the most important unreported stories. As
Bergson showed, realization is only one case of the possible. There
are many amazing unrealized projects out there, forgotten projects,
misunderstood projects, lost projects, realizable projects,
poetic-utopian dream constructs, unrealizable projects, partially
realized projects, censored projects and so on. The beginning of a new
millennium seems like a good moment to remember certain roads not
taken in an active and dynamic and not nostalgic way.

HANS ULRICH OBRIST has curated exhibitions at Musee d'Art Moderne de
la Ville de Paris, unsthalle, Wien and Deichtor-Hallen,Hamburg, and
Serpentine Gallery in London, among other institutions. He currently
divides his time between France, Switzerland and Austria. After an
initial training in economics and politics, he switched to
contemporary art and has organized a variety of exhibitions in such
unlikely venues as his own house, a monastery library, an airplane and
an hotel.
   _________________________________________________________________

Peter Cochrane 
Decoding the Human Genome is a Long Term Project

We are currently being fed a series of snippets detailing the
unraveling of the human blueprint -- our genome. If every isolated and
obscure report were strung end to end, and edited thoroughly into a
coherent whole, we might just have a comprehensible story -- and one
of the most important to be told. But let me jump to the end point and
make an educated guess! I suspect that when we decide that tweaking
the odd gene or two seems like a good idea to cure this or that
disease or shortcoming, or to get this or that eye color etc, we will
get a heck of a surprise. It seems to me that the likelihood that
individual genes are singularly responsible for any one trait is
pretty slim. So I am putting my money on a reasonably strong
interdependency, that is -- we will have to attend to complex
combinations of genes to achieve some desired effect. Realizing an
adequate level of understanding of the complexity of the genome code
book may well take considerably more effort than the initial mapping
of all the raw elements. Like Morse Code and the German Enigma
machines of W.W.II, we will almost certainly require some hefty
computing power to do the job. Now this really will be worth
reporting!

PETER COCHRANE, Chief Technologist BT, Collier Chair for The Public
Understanding of Science & Technology, @Bristol, and the author of
Tips for Time Travelers.

LINKS: Peter Cochrane's Home Page; C2G: Communications Consultants
Group, @ BT Adastral lPark
   _________________________________________________________________

Eberhard Zangger
A Lost Civilization

Beyk?y is a hamlet sitting on the lonely edge of the world -- in the
highlands of Phrygia in western Turkey, hundreds of kilometers away
from either city or coast. In 1876, a local peasant made a remarkable
discovery in these forsaken backwoods -- one that ranks today as the
world's most important unreported story.

This farmer's pasture extended along the foot of a low but extensive
mound, believed to hold the remains of an ancient city. While working
his ox and plow along the base of the hill, the farmer struck some
objects in the furrow which gave off a metallic noise. After picking
up and scrutinizing the large pieces of metal which he had
accidentally unearthed, the peasant noticed they were covered with
script.

Several years later, the American scholar William M. Ramsay passed
through the village. Speaking with some local people, Ramsay inquired
if they possessed any coins and artifacts picked up off the ground,
with the intention of finding a bargain. Among the pieces offered to
him was a tiny fragment containing a short inscription. Wondering
aloud about its original location, the locals pointed towards the
knoll. After further inquiry, Ramsay found out about the series of
spectacular bronze tablets which had also been found there.
Unfortunately, they were gone and nobody was able to say where.

As it turned out, the Beyk?y bronze tablets had made their way into
the archives of the Ottoman empire. Recognizing their possible
significance, the curator in charge did not hesitate in contacting the
world's foremost authority, German-born Anatolia expert Albrecht
Goetze, in order to publish the finds. In the late 1950's, this
professor of Yale University began to investigate the texts. For over
ten years, he examined, translated and interpreted them. Then, he
informed another colleague of their existence. Goetze completed his
investigations and manuscript shortly before he died in 1971. Owing to
the subsequent death of his editor, the monograph, however, has never
been published and the Beyk?y tablets remain completely unknown.
Goetze had found that they contained lists of Anatolian states, kings,
and military actions from as early as the fourth millennium BC up
until the eighth century BC. These texts proved conclusively that
today's Turkey was once the home of a civilization older and more
important to European history than Pharaonic Egypt. Yet, this
civilization has remained virtually uninvestigated to the present
today.

Now, why should the discovery of the Beyk?y tablets be considered the
world's most important unreported story? After all, archaeological
discoveries -- like that of the man in the ice -- have often surprised
the general public and upset established scholarship. The discovery of
the Beyk?y tablets, however, is of a different order of magnitude. It
shows that the center of European history is to be found way outside
the frontiers of the hitherto Old -- and accepted -- World. Therefore,
its impact equals a scientific revolution similar to those caused by
Nicolas Copernicus, Charles Darwin and Siegmund Freud. Copernicus'
work generated an upheaval, since it demonstrated that humankind is
not at the center of the universe. Darwin's research demonstrated that
humans do not stand at the ultimate zenith of Creation; instead they
are more or less an accidental product of a million years-long
evolutionary process. And Freud showed that we are not even in full
command of our own mind, our inner selves.
The publication of the Beyk?y tablets will take this sequence of
upheavals in western thought one step further. It will demonstrate --
once and for all -- that "western culture" is an arbitrary, abstract
concept resting upon the wishful thinking of certain eighteenth
century members of the educated class. Old world civilizations,
especially that of ancient Greece, evolved from frontier outposts of
much older Asian civilizations in the adjacent Orient. The practices
characterizing western civilization -- domestication of animals and
plants, agriculture, husbandry, permanent homes, life in village
communities, metallurgy, politics and cosmology -- all clearly
originated in Asia.

After this paradigm shift, only one even greater upheaval remains --
proving that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe.

EBERHARD ZANGGER is an exploder of myths and the discoverer of the
lost continent of Atlantis, which was never lost in the first place.
His five books on ancient civilizations have been published
internationally -- with more to come. Feeling a bit estranged from the
great thinkers of the planet, he is impatiently waiting for the fourth
culture to begin.
   _________________________________________________________________

Anne Fausto-Sterling
The End of Gene Control

As the 20th century draws to a close, biologists triumphantly announce
the beginning of the end of the project to sequence the human genome.
Metaphoric hyperbole runs rampant as we speak of "reading the book of
life" and of "unraveling the essence of what it means to be human".
But less noticed is the fact that developmental biologists who study
the role of genes in development are busily dethroning the gene.

When I was a young embryologist I lectured about genes in development.
Following the dogma of the time, I told my students that there were
two groups of genes. First, there were housekeeping genes -- those
responsible for the mundane daily functions of the cell -- the
feminine duties of maintenance. These genes supposedly kept the
machinery running smoothly -- respiration and waste disposal went on
quietly and demurely. But the really important genes were the
development genes -- those masculine entities that pioneered new
territory and wrought new form from undifferentiated plasm. The goal
of any self-respecting developmental geneticist was to find those
special genes for development and thus unravel the mystery of how
genes control the formation of new organisms.

The successes have been many and profound. Developmental biologists
have uncovered myriad genes involved in embryo formation. They have
found an amazing continuity of genetic structure and function across
the phyla. We now understand in fabulous detail the function of many
genes in development. But something funny happened on the way to the
genetic forum. The distinction between housekeeping genes and
development genes has become increasingly hard to maintain. Some
development genes fall into the category of transcription regulators,
as might be expected for genes that control genetic expression. But
many turn out to be involved in cell communication and signaling. What
is more these genes don't control development. In a real sense
development controls the genes. The same genetic read-out can have a
vastly different outcome depending upon when during development and in
which cell the protein is produced. Indeed, most development genes
seem to act at multiple times during development and in many tissue
and cell types. The same gene can play a key role in quite a variety
of developmental events.

The important story is that the search for genes that control
development has shown us that our initial idea that genes control
processes within an organism is wrong. Instead genes are one set of
actors within a developmental system. The system itself contains all
of the pre-existing contents of the cell, organ or organism. These
include thousands of gene products, other chemicals such as ions,
lipids, carbohydrates and more, all organized and compartmentalized in
a highly-stru ctured physical setting (the cell and its substructures,
the organ and its tissues, the organism and its organ systems). From
before the turn of the century embryologists debated whether the
cytoplasm controlled the nucleus or vice versa. What the last decade
of research on genes in development reveals is that both things are
simultaneously true -- the system and its history control development.
Genes are but one of many crucial components of the process.

ANNE FAUSTO-STERLING is Professor of Biology and Women's Studies at
Brown University. She is the author of Myths of Gender: Biological
differences between women and men.

LINK: Anne Fausto-Sterling Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Andy Clark
That the Human Mind is Less and Less In the Head

Human brains are making the human world smarter and smarter, so that
they (the brains) can be dumb in peace. Or rather, we are
progressively altering our environment so that our brains, which are
good at pattern-matching, at sensory recognition, and at the
manipulation of objects in the world, can support intelligent choice
and action by their participation in much larger networks. Human
development is a process in which the brain becomes deeply tuned to
the available environmental surround, be it pen, paper and sketchpad,
or PC, Palm Pilot and designer software. As the century closes, and
our typical, reliable environmental props and supports become ever
more sophisticated and interlinked, so the mental machinery that makes
us who we are is becoming ever more extended, interanimated and
networked. In the near future, software agents whose profiles have
evolved alongside those of a specific individual will count as part of
the individual person. To say that I use those software agents will be
strictly false. Instead, my brain and the various personalized
manifestations of new technology will constitute integrated thinking
things. I will no more be the user of these close-knit technologies
than I am the user of the various sub- systems already existing within
my biological brain. Instead, better to see both those sub-systems and
these close-knit external technologies, as together constituting a
spatially extended kind of user or person. The next step may be, as
Rodney Brooks suggests, to put as much of that technology back inside
the biological membrane as possible. This buys easier portability
without changing the real state of affairs. We are already (mental)
cyborgs.

ANDY CLARK is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy /
Neuroscience / Psychology Program at Washington University in St
Louis. He has written extensively on Artificial Neural Networks,
Robotics and Artificial Life. His latest book is Being There: Putting
Brain, Body and World Together Again.

LINK: Andy Clark's Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Keith Devlin 
The Death of the Paragraph

The most significant unreported story? The mathematician in me screams
that this is a paradox. The moment I write about it, it ceases to be
unreported. That aside, there are so many reporters chasing stories
today, it would be hard to point to something that has the status of
being a "story" but has not yet been reported. On the other hand, as
Noam Chomsky is fond of reminding us, there's a difference between
being reported somewhere, by somebody, and being covered by the major
news organizations.

I'll settle for a trend. I'm not sure if it will turn out to be a
story, but if it does it will be big. It's the death of the paragraph.

We may be moving toward a generation that is cognitively unable to
acquire information efficiently by reading a paragraph. They can read
words and sentences -- such as the bits of text you find on a
graphical display on a web page -- but they are not equipped to
assimilate structured information that requires a paragraph to get
across.

To give just one example, a recent study of 10,000 community college
students in California found that, in the 18-25-year age group, just
17% of the men could acquire information efficiently through reading
text. For the remaining 83%, the standard college textbook is little
more than dead weight to carry around in their bag! The figure for
women in the same age group is a bit higher: just under 35% can learn
well from textually presented information.

These figures contrast with those for students aged 35 or over: 27% of
males and over 42% of females find it natural to learn from reading.
Of course, that's still less than half the student population, so any
ideas we might fondly harbor of a highly literate older generation are
erroneous. But if the difference between the figures for the two
generations indicates the start of a steady decline in the ability to
read text of paragraph length, then a great deal of our scientific and
cultural heritage is likely to become highly marginalized.

Half a century after the dawn of the television age, and a decade into
the Internet, it's perhaps not surprising that the medium for
acquiring information that both age groups find most natural is visual
nonverbal: pictures, video, illustrations, and diagrams. According to
the same college survey, among the 18-25 age-group, 48% of males and
36% of females favor this method of acquiring information. The figures
for the over-35s are almost identical: 46% and 39%.

If these figures reflect the start of a story that has not been
reported, then by the time somebody does write it, there may not be
many people around able to read it. The social, cultural, scientific,
and political consequences of that are likely to be major.

KEITH DEVLIN, mathematician, is a Senior Researcher at Stanford
University, and the Dean of Science at Saint Mary's College of
California. He is the author of Goodbye, Descartes : The End of Logic
and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind; Life by the Numbers;
and The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible.
Link: Keith Devlin Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Dean Ornish 
The Globalization of Illness

Many developing countries are copying the Western way of living, and
they are now copying the Western way of dying.

Illnesses like coronary heart disease that used to be very rare in
countries such as Japan and other Asian countries are becoming
epidemics, causing huge drains on their economies as well as enormous
personal suffering -- much of which could be avoided. The same is true
for prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, diabetes,
hypertension, obesity, arthritis, and so on. Trillions of dollars in
direct and indirect expenditures could be avoided, along with untold
suffering.

DEAN ORNISH, has 22 years experience directing clinical research
demonstrating, for the first time, that comprehensive lifestyle
changes may reverse even severe coronary heart disease without drugs
or surgery. Founder, President, and Director, non-profit Preventive
Medicine Research Institute. Clinical Professor of Medicine,
University of California, San Francisco. Physician consultant to
President Clinton and several members of the U.S. Congress. He is the
author of five best-selling books, including New York Times'
bestsellers Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease; Eat
More, Weigh Less; and Love & Survival: The Scientific Basis for the
Healing Power of Intimacy.

LINK: Dean Ornish, M.D. -- "Healthy Living"
   _________________________________________________________________

Bart Kosko

The most important unreported story at the dawn of the Information Age
has two parts: (1) The last Sunday of the 20th century passed and the
United States Government still continued to outlaw first-class mail on
Sunday and (2) no one complained.

BART KOSKO is Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, University
of Southern California, and author of Fuzzy Thinking; Nanotime; and
The Fuzzy Future: From Society and Science to Heaven in a Chip.

LINK: Bart Kosko Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Terrence J. Sejnowski
Exercise Can Make you Smarter

A revolution recently occurred in neuroscience that has far reaching
implications for our future.

According to all the textbooks in neuroscience, we are born with a
full complement of around 100 billion neurons and that it is all
downhill from there. This was a discouraging "fact".

Fred Gage, a colleague of mine at the Salk Institute, has discovered
that new neurons are born every day in the hippocampus, an important
part of the brain for long-term memory of facts and events, even in
adults. This was first found in rats, but has now been shown in
monkeys and humans, and not just in the hippocampus, but also in the
cerebral cortex, the storehouse of our experience and the fountainhead
of our creativity. This was widely reported, but what has emerged
since then is even more encouraging.

First, the new neurons in the hippocampus don't survive unless the
animal exercises; a running wheel in an otherwise standard lab cage is
enough to keep new neurons alive and well in mice. Second, the
increase in the strengths of connections between neurons in the
hippocampus that occurs when they are strongly activated, called
long-term potentiation, is twice as strong in mice that had access to
a running wheel. Finally, the mice with exercise were smarter at
memory tasks. We still do not know how all this happens, but the
bottom line is that something as basic as exercise can make you
smarter. Recess in schools and executive gyms help not only the body,
but can also make the mind sharper.

These results have implications for graceful aging.

Until recently, the dominant view of how the brain develops made the
assumption that experience selects neurons and connections from a
fixed, pre-existing repertoire. This view had some plausibility when
it was thought that all of the neurons you will ever have are present
at birth, coupled with evidence of neuron death and pruning of
connections during childhood. However, if the brain makes new neurons
in adults then this cannot be the whole story, since the growth of new
connections must also be occurring, and doing so in an
experience-dependent way.

This discovery, coupled with increasing evidence that new connections
can grow even between old neurons as a consequence of an enriched
environment, means that an active mind along with an active body
predisposes us for a lifetime of learning. This is good news for the
baby boomers who have embraced health clubs and challenging new
experiences, but bad news for couch potatoes who are exercise phobic.

In short, "Use it or lose it".

An active lifestyle and a rich social life are the best insurance
against premature senility. We will learn much more about the how the
brain renews itself in the next century as neuroscientists reveal more
about the mechanisms and circumstances that make new neurons survive
and grow stronger connections. Ultimately, this will lead to greater
productivity from the elderly, the fastest growing segment in western
societies.

TERRENCE J.SEJNOWSKI, a pioneer in Computational Neurobiology, is
regarded by many as one of the world's most foremost theoretical brain
scientists. In 1988, he moved from Johns Hopkins University to the
Salk Institute, where he is a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and
the director of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory. In addition
to co-authoring The Computational Brain, he has published over 250
scientific articles.

LINKS: Terrence Sejnowksi Home Page; Compututional Neurobiology Lab
(CNL)
   _________________________________________________________________

Philip Brockman
How Great the Kids Are Today.

The young people I work with at NASA's Langley Research Center are
sharp and hard working. We get some of the best, but they are almost
all great. And what is rarely understood, nevermind reported, is that
they have to process about twice the information that I had to deal
with starting out in research in 1959.

Of course, the biggest untrue story told, one probably found in the
first cave writings, is that "the younger generation is going to
hell."

PHILIP BROCKMAN, a physicist, has been at NASA LaRC (Langley Field,
Virginia) since 1959. His research includes: Shock tubes; Plasma
propulsion; Diode laser spectroscopy; Heterodyne remote sensing; Laser
research; Laser injection seeding; Remote sensing of atmospheric
species, winds, windshear and vortices. He is currently supporting all
solid state laser development for aircraft and spaceborne remote
sensing of species and winds and developing coherent lidars to measure
wake vortices in airport terminal areas.

He is a recipient of NASA's Exceptional Service Medal (ESM).

LINK: Philip Brockman's NASA Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Daniel Goleman 
Hidden Consequences of Our Daily Choices as Consumers of Products and
Services

What is the biggest unreported story?

The hidden consequences for our health and the environment, and for
social and economic justice, of our daily choices as consumers of
products and services.

Our individual habits of consumption, when multiplied by our vast
numbers, have devastating impacts -- but we are blind to the chain
that links our individual choices with their vaster consequences. I'd
like to know what these links are -- but they lack transparency. We
need something akin to the labels of nutritional value on foods that
would surface these hidden consequences of our own actions.

A case in point: what is the environmental cost of choosing to buy a
hamburger? How many acres for cattle to graze, how much erosion or
degrading of land as a consequence, how much more greenhouse gases
added to the atmosphere, how much water used for this purpose rather
than other things? How does a burger made from beef compare in this
regard to, say, one made from turkey, or from soybeans?

Another case in point: since childhood, I've suffered from asthma.
Asthma is becoming epidemic among children, especially in urban
neighborhoods. One clear reason for the upsurge is the increase in
airborne particulates that irritate and inflame respiratory passages.
I live in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts, which,
because of prevailing winds, receives a large portion of its
particulates from the pollution in the metro New York City area, as
well as from the industrial Midwest states. One coal-powered
electrical plant in Ohio, a notoriously bad offender, contributes
almost half the airborne particulates that reach my area from the
Midwest. Who are the largest industrial customers of that electrical
plant? What products that I'm now buying are built using power from
that plant? I might boycott them if I knew.

Individually, the consequences of my choices are admittedly
negligible. But if summated across millions of consumers making the
similarly informed choices, the impact could be quite great. We could
'vote' for more benign consequences if we had this missing
information.

I applaud, for instance, the mutual funds and other corporate citizens
who are offering shareholders the option to get their reports via the
internet, rather than wasting resources -- trees, power, etc. --
mailing thousands of hard copies. One fund informs me, for instance,
that if all members sign up for internet reports, the savings in pulp
amounts to more than three hundred trees per year.

I want more choices like that.

So how about a new investigative beat for journalism: hidden
consequences.
DANIEL GOLEMAN is the author of the international bestsellers,
Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence. For
twelve years he covered the behavioral and brain sciences for the New
York Times, and has also taught at Harvard. His previous books include
Vital Lies, Simple Truths; The Meditative Mind; and, as coauthor, The
Creative Spirit. Dr. Goleman is CEO of Emotional Intelligence
Services.

LINK: Emotional Intelligence Services (EI)
   _________________________________________________________________

Marc D. Hauser
(1) The Health Crisis in Africa and (2) The Poor Level of Educational
Distribution.

Having lived for several years in East Africa, I am struck by two
observations which seem to me to have escaped sufficient reporting.
The first concerns the health crisis on the continent. Unlike anywhere
that I have ever lived, and especially over the past 5-10 years, I am
overwhelmed by the illnesses. When one walks among villages in Uganda,
or on the streets of cities such as Nairobi and Kamapal, one sees
AIDS. There is no need to go to the local newspapers and read the
latest counts. It is right in front of ones eyes. Perhaps more
depressing than the AIDS crisis is the problem with malaria. Unlike
AIDS, for which we have only the weakest medicines, we certainly do
have the medical technology to eradicate most of the problems with
malaria. Cracking this problem will not, however, require medical
expertise alone. Rather, it will require a creative team of doctors,
anthropologists, sociologists, and economists working hand in hand,
trying to understand the local mores, the local economy, and the
struggles of daily life. It will also have to crack the problem of
medical distribution, still a problem in much of Africa.

A second problem comes from my experience teaching in Uganda. I had
the great pleasure, and honor of teaching students in Uganda. I have
never seen such a thirst to learn. And yet, much of the educational
system is lacking in basic supplies and materials that would transfer
these students into highly educated scholars. Like the poor
distribution of medicinal supplies, there is an equally poor level of
educational distribution. The inequities here are dramatic. Those of
us who write for the Edge, should put our heads together to think of
some way to help, to lend our minds to theirs. Any takers?

MARC D. HAUSER is an evolutionary psychologist, and a professor at
Harvard University where he is a fellow of the Mind, Brain, and
Behavior Program. He is a professor in the departments of Anthropology
and Psychology, as well as the Program in Neurosciences. He is the
author of The Evolution of Communication

LINKS: Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Marc Hauser Home
Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Kevin Kelly
The Population Fizzle

While the absolute numbers of humans on Earth will continue to rise
for another generation at least, birth rates around the world are
sinking, particularly in the developed countries. In the coming
decades many emerging countries -- currently boosting the rise in
absolute population numbers -- will themselves make the transition to
lower birth rates. While most estimates see the global population of
Earth peaking around 2040-50, what none of them show is what happens
afterward. Unless some unknown counterforce arises, what happens after
the peak is that the world's birth rate steadily sinks below
replacement level. Increasing people's longevity can only slightly
postpone this population fizzle.

The main reason this is unreported is that it will be decades before
it will happen and until it does, the population boomers are correct:
our numbers swell exponentially. But the story is worth reporting for
three reasons:

1) Long before the world's population fizzles, it will age. As it
already is. The average age of a human on earth has been increasing
since 1972. The developing countries are aimed to be Geezer Countries
in another twenty years or less. This will affect culture, politics,
and business.

2) There is currently no cultural force in the modern societies to
maintain human population levels over the long term. Population
robustness these days comes primarily from undeveloped countries, and
from cultural practices that are disappearing in developed countries.
Once the developing countries become developed, there will be little
at work to maintain an average of one offspring per person, with
millions have more to balance the millions with few or no children.
How many future readers will be willing to have three or more kids?

3) There is no evidence in history of declining population and
increasing prosperity. In the past rising prosperity has always
accompanied rising populations. Prosperity riding upon of declining
population *may* be possible through some wisdom or technology that we
don't possess now, but it would require developing an entirely new
skill set for society.

This story could be reported by asking the non-obvious questions of
the usual population pundits: what happens afterwards? What happens in
China with a continually declining birth rate? What would happen to
the US without immigration? Who is going to work in Europe?

KEVIN KELLY is a founding editor of Wired magazine. In 1993 and 1996,
under his co-authorship, Wired won it's industry's Oscar -- The
National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Prior to the launch of
Wired , Kelly was editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Review, a
journal of unorthodox technical and cultural news. He is the author of
New Rules for the New Economy; and Out of Control: The New Biology of
Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World.

LINK: Kevin Kelly Bio Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Freeman Dyson
The Enduring Vitality of the More Moderate Kinds of Religions

Here is my not very original answer to this year's question: what is
today's most important unreported story?

The enduring vitality of the more moderate kinds of religion. Although
the fanatical and fundamentalist versions of religion receive heavy
attention from the media, the moderate versions of religion do not.
The majority of religious people are neither fanatical nor
fundamentalist. This is true of Christians, Jews and Moslems alike. In
the modern world, with inequalities between rich and poor growing
sharper, governments are increasingly incapable or unwilling to take
care of the poor. Organized religions increasingly provide the glue
that holds societies together, giving equal respect to those who
profit from economic prosperity and those who are left behind. This is
true even in such a prosperous and technologically advanced community
as Princeton, New Jersey, where I live. Princeton has more than twenty
churches, all trying in their different ways to reach out to people in
need, all bridging the gap between young and old as well as the gap
between rich and poor. Religion plays this same role, holding
communities together with bonds of fellowship, among the Arabs of the
West Bank, the Jews of Brooklyn, and the African-Americans of Trenton,
New Jersey. Religions that have endured for a thousand years and
helped generations of oppressed people to survive are not about to
disappear.

FREEMAN DYSON is professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced
Study, in Princeton. His professional interests are in mathematics and
astronomy. Among his many books are Disturbing the Universe, Infinite
in All Directions Origins of Life, From Eros to Gaia, Imagined Worlds,
and The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet.
   _________________________________________________________________

Piet Hut 
There Are No Things.

That's right. No thing exists, there are only actions. We live in a
world of verbs, and nouns are only shorthand for those verbs whose
actions are sufficiently stationary to show some thing-like behavior.
These statements may seem like philosophy or poetry, but in fact they
are an accurate description of the material world, when we take into
account the quantum nature of reality.

Future historians will be puzzled by the fact that this interpretation
has not been generally accepted, 75 years after the discovery of
quantum mechanics. Most physics text books still describe the quantum
world in largely classical terms. Consequently anything quantum seems
riddled with paradoxes and weird behavior. One generally talks about
the "state" of a particle, such as an electron, as if it really had an
independent thing-like existence, as in classical mechanics. For
example, the term `state vector' is used, even though its operational
properties belie almost anything we normally associate with a state.

Two voices have recently stressed this verb-like character of reality,
those of David Finkelstein, in his book Quantum Relativity, and of
David Mermin, in his article "What is quantum mechanics trying to tell
us" [1998, Amer. J. of Phys. 66, 753]. In the words of the second
David: `"Correlations have physical reality; that which they correlate
does not.'" In other words, matter acts, but there are no actors
behind the actions; the verbs are verbing all by themselves without a
need to introduce nouns. Actions act upon other actions. The ontology
of the world thus becomes remarkably simple, with no duality between
the existence of a thing and its properties: properties are all there
is. Indeed: there are no things.

Two hundred years ago, William Blake scolded the physicists for their
cold and limited view of the world, in terms of a clockwork mechanism,
in which there was no room for spontaneity and wonder. Fortunately,
physicists did not listen to the poet, and pushed on with their
program. But to their own utter surprise, they realized with the
discovery of quantum mechanics that nature exhibits a deeply
fundamental form of spontaneity, undreamt of in classical physics. An
understanding of matter as dissolving into a play of interactions,
partly spontaneous, would certainly have pleased Blake.

What will be next? While physics may still seem to lack a fundamental
way of touching upon meaning and wonder, who is to say that those will
remain forever outside the domain of physics? We simply do not know
and cannot know what physics will look like, a mere few hundred years
from now.

There is an analogy with computer languages. Physicists have a
traditional aversion to learning any other language than Fortran, with
which they grow up, no matter how useful the other languages may be.
But without ever parting from their beloved Fortran, it was Fortran
that changed out from under them, incorporating many of the features
that the other languages had pioneered. So, when asked how future
physicists will program, a good answer is: we have not the foggiest
idea, but whatever it is, it will still be called Fortran.

Similarly, our understanding of the material world, including the very
notion of what matter and existence is, is likely to keep changing
radically over the next few hundred years. In what direction, we have
no idea. The only thing we can safely predict is that the study of
those wonderful new aspects of reality will still be called physics.

PIET HUT is professor of astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced
Study, in Princeton. He is involved in the project of building GRAPEs,
the world's fastest special-purpose computers, at Tokyo University,
and he is also a founding member of the Kira Institute.

LINKS: Piet Hut's Home Page, GRAPEs; and Kira Institute.
   _________________________________________________________________

Jeff Jacobs 
The Lack of Services to Heal Abused Children

The emotional, physical, sexual abuse of children in our society and
the lack of services to heal them.

JEFF JACOBS is the Founder of Civitas Initiative, and President of
Harpo Entertainment Group.
LINK: Civitas Initiative
   _________________________________________________________________

Lance Knobel
Two Stories, One Encouraging, the Other Worrying

First is the incredible dynamism, energy and economic hope found in
the great cities of the developing world. Most coverage of developing
world cities concentrates on the problems: environment, overcrowding,
shanty towns. But these cities represent the best hope of the world's
poor nations. Modern myth has it that these cities are growing at
unprecedented rates in an increasingly urbanized world. In fact the
cities of the north grew at even greater rates in the 19th century.
Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Calcutta, Buenos Aires and Rio all had more
people moving out than moving in over the decade of the '80s. More
than two-thirds of the world's cities with populations of more than 1
million were important cities 200 years ago. Miami and Phoenix grew
more rapidly than Nairobi in the 20th century; Los Angeles more
rapidly than Calcutta. Urban growth is generally good: rising levels
of urbanization are strongly associated with growing and diversifying
economies, and most of the nations in the south whose economic
performance over the last 10 to 15 years is so envied by others are
also the nations with the most rapid increase in their levels of
urbanization. The developing worlds cities need to be celebrated and
not lamented.

Less encouraging is the largely ignored story of climate change. All
media have great difficulty in covering stories that develop over
generations. Who in 1900 would have written about the changing role of
women or the spread of democracy, two of the extraordinary shifts of
the last century. The failure of the Kyoto conference on climate
change to get significant action by the advanced, industrialized
countries on climate change means that the problems will get far worse
before there is any chance of them getting better.

LANCE KNOBEL is editor-in-chief of World Link, the magazine of the
World Economic Forum, and is responsible for the program of the
Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. He also publishes their
nascent Weblog.

LINKS: The World Economic Forum, Worldlink: The Online Magazine of the
World Economic Forum, and Weblog
   _________________________________________________________________

Philip Elmer-Dewitt
O.J.'s Search for the Real Killer.

PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT is Science and technology Editor, Time Magazine.
He has been writing about science and technology for Time since he
reported a cover story on computer "Whiz Kids" in 1982. He became a
staff writer in 1983, a senior writer in 1993, a senior editor in 1994
and science editor in 1995. He started two new sections in the
magazine -- Computers (1982) and Technology (1987) -- and in 1994
helped launch Time Online, America's first interactive newsmagazine.
LINK: Philip Elmer-DeWitt's Home Page.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Horgan
The Quiet Resurgence of Psychedelic Compounds as Instruments of Both
Spiritual and Scientific Exploration

The story that has gripped me lately is the quiet resurgence of
psychedelic compounds as instruments of both spiritual and scientific
exploration. This trend is unfolding worldwide. I just attended a
conference in Switzerland at which scholars presented findings on the
physiological and psychological effects of drugs such as psilocybin,
LSD and MDMA (Ecstacy). At the meeting, I met an American chemist who
had synthesized a new compound that seems to induce transcendent
experiences as reliably as LSD does but with a greatly reduced risk of
bad trips; a Russian psychiatrist who for more than 15 years has
successfully treated alcoholics with the hallucinogen ketamine; and a
German anthropologist who touts the spiritual benefits of a potent
Amazonian brew called ayahuasca. Long a staple of Indian shamans,
ayahuasca now serves as a sacrament for two fast-growing churches in
Brazil. Offshoots of these churches are springing up in the U.S. and
Europe.

Several non-profit groups in the U.S. are attempting to rehabilitate
the image of psychedelic drugs through public education and by
supporting research on the drugs' clinical and therapeutic potential.
They include the Heffter Institute, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico and
the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. MAPS, based
in Florida. The question is, will this new psychedelic movement
founder, as its predecessor did in the 1960's? Or will it bring about
the profound spiritual and social changes that advocates envision?

JOHN HORGAN is a freelance writer and author of The End of Science and
The Undiscovered Mind. A senior writer at Scientific American from
1986 to 1997, he has also written for the New York Times, Washington
Post, New Republic, Slate, London Times, Times Literary Supplement and
other publications. He is now writing a book on mysticism.

Further Reading on Edge: "Why I Think Science Is Ending" A Talk With
John Horgan; "The End of Horgan?"
   _________________________________________________________________

Hans Weise
That There Are So Many Important Unreported Stories.

Given the number of media outlets for independent voices to tell good
stories, the vanilla quality of mainstream reporting is like the
proverbial frog in a pot of water who doesn't notice the slow
temperature increase and boils cozily. In a consumer-oriented culture
under a booming economy, critical voices are marginalized and the
questions "we" ask ourselves lose color and substance and become
sensational and picayune. A news magazine won't tell you about
record-setting U.S. arms sales, for instance, but they will tell you
that Ricky Martin is the sexiest man alive.

Consumers don't like to hear that things aren't what they seem, so
advertisers won't support those who publish such nonsense. The same
goes for education -- people are still uncomfortable with the idea
that we've descended from apes and so, in the case of Kansas at least,
students needn't be burdened with that knowledge.

HANS WEISE is a filmmaker, writer, and Web developer living in
Alexandria, VA. He was a home-schooled auto-didact who majored in
cinema studies at NYU and then studied archaeology and astronomy via
Harvard extension.
   _________________________________________________________________

Clifford A. Pickover
The Immortalization of Humanity

The most unreported story deals with evolution of human lifespans and
intelligence. Although we hear news reports about how humans will live
longer in the future, we rarely hear reports that our children or
grandchildren will be immortal by the end of the next century. Given
the tremendous advances in molecular biochemistry that will take place
by 2100, we will certainly uncover the molecular and cellular
mysteries of aging, and therefore many humans will live forever,
assuming they don't suffer a fatal accident. I am amazed that this
obvious concept is not discussed more often or taken more seriously.
Of course, the ecological, economic, political, social, and religious
implications will be extreme. Imagine an immortal Pope discussing the
afterlife with his followers -- or the growth of two social classes,
those that can afford immortality and those too poor to gain access to
the required anti-aging "treatment."

Similarly, most scientists and lay people seem to think that there is
intelligent, space-faring life elsewhere in the universe. A related
unreported story is just how special human intelligence is. Despite
what we see in Star Wars and Star Trek, I don't expect intelligence to
be an inevitable result of evolution on other worlds. Since the
beginning of life on Earth, as many as 50 billion species have arisen,
and only one of them has acquired technology. If intelligence has such
has high survival value, why are so few creatures intelligent? Mammals
are not the most successful or plentiful of animals. Ninety-five
percent of all animal species are invertebrates. Most of the worm
species on our planet have not even been discovered yet, and there are
a billion insects wandering the Earth.

If humankind were destroyed in some great cataclysm, in my opinion
there is very little possibility that our level of intelligence would
ever be achieved on Earth again. If human intelligence is an
evolutionary accident, and mathematical, linguistic, artistic, and
technological abilities a very improbable bonus, then there is little
reason to expect that life on other worlds will ever develop
intelligence that allows them to explore the stars. Both intelligence
and mechanical dexterity appear to be necessary to make radio
transmitting devices for communication between the stars. How likely
is it that we will find a race having both traits? Very few Earth
organisms have much of either. As evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond
has suggested, those that have acquired a little of one (smart
dolphins, dexterous spiders) have acquired none of the other, and the
only species to acquire a little of both (chimpanzees) has been rather
unsuccessful. The most successful creatures on Earth are the dumb and
clumsy rats and beetles, which both found better routes to their
current dominance. If we do receive a message from the stars, it will
undermine much of our current thinking about evolutionary mechanisms.

Despite the improbabilities, we must continue to scan the stars for
signs of intelligence. I agree with the ancient Persian proverb, "The
seeker is a finder," which suggests we must always search in order to
understand our place in our universe.

CLIFFORD A. PICKOVER is a research staff member at the IBM Watson
Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. He received his Ph.D.
from Yale University and is the author of over twenty books on such
topics as computers and creativity, art, mathematics, black holes,
human behavior and intelligence, time travel, and alien life. His web
site, www.pickover.com, has received over 200,000 visits, and his
latest book is Surfing Through Hyperspace: Understanding Higher
Universes in Six Easy Lessons.

LINK: Clifford A. Pickover's Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Howard Rheingold
How Will The Internet Influence Democracy?

The way we learn to use the Internet in the next few years (or fail to
learn) will influence the way our grandchildren govern themselves. Yet
only a tiny fraction of the news stories about the impact of the Net
focus attention on the ways many to-many communication technology
might be changing democracy -- and those few stories that are
published center on how traditional political parties are using the
Web, not on how grassroots movements might be finding a voice.

Democracy is not just about voting for our leaders. Democracy is about
citizens who have the information and freedom of communication the
need to govern themselves. Although it would be illogical to say that
the printing press created modern democratic nation-states, it would
have been impossible to conceive, foment, or implement self-government
without the widespread literacy made possible by printing technology.
The more we know about the kind of literacy citizens are granted by
the Internet, the better our chances of using that literacy to
strengthen democracy. And what could be more important? What good is
health and wealth and great personal home entertainment media without
liberty?

Every communication technology alters governance and political
processes. Candidates and issues are packaged and sold on television
by the very same professionals who package and sell other commodities.
In the age of mass media, the amount of money a candidate can spend on
television advertising is the single most important influence on the
electoral success. Now that the Internet has transformed every desktop
into a printing press, broadcasting station, and place of assembly,
will enough people learn to make use of this potential? Or will our
lack of news, information, and understanding of the Net as a political
tool prove insufficient against the centralization of capital, power,
and knowledge that modern media also make possible?

The same tool that affords tremendous power to the grassroots, the
broad citizenry, the cacaphony of competing "factions" necessary for
healthy democracy, also affords tremendous power to the elites who
already have wealth and power. Guess who can best afford to apply the
tool to further their ends? What's in it for big media interests to
inform us about how we can compete with big media interests?

The political power afforded to citizens by the Web is not a
technology issue. Technology makes a great democratization of
publishing, journalism, public discourse possible, but does not
determine whether or not that potential will be realized. Every
computer connected to the Net can publish a manifesto, broadcast audio
and video eyewitness reports of events in real time, host a virtual
community where people argue about those manifestos and broadcasts.
Will only the cranks, the enthusiasts, the fringe groups take
advantage of this communication platform? Or will many-to-many
communication skills become a broader literacy, the way knowing and
arguing about the issues of the day in print was the literacy
necessary for the American revolution?

The "public sphere" is what the German political philosopher Habermas
called that part of public life where ordinary people exchange
information and opinions regarding potholes on main street and
national elections, school bonds and foreign policy. Habermas claimed
that the democratic revolutions of the 18th century were incubated in
the coffee houses and committees of correspondence, informed by the
pamphlets and newspaper debates where citizens argued about how to
govern themselves without a King. Public governance could only emerge
from public opinion. Habermas wrote: "By "public sphere," we mean
first of all a domain in our social life in which such a thing as
public opinion can be formed." The public sphere is the reason why the
modern coup d'etat requires paratroopers to capture television
broadcast stations -- because those are the places where the power to
influence public opinion is concentrated.

The problem with the public sphere during the past sixty years of
broadcast communications has been that a small number of people have
wielded communication technology to mold the public opinion of entire
populations. The means of creating and distributing the kind of media
content that could influence public opinion -- magazines, newspapers,
radio and television stations -- were too expensive for any but a few.
Just as books were once too expensive for any but a few. The PC and
the Internet changed that. Desktop video, desktop radio, desktop
debates, digicam journalism, drastically reduced the barriers to
publishing and broadcasting. These technological capabilities have
emerged only recently, and are evolving rapidly. While much attention
is focused on how many-to-many audio technology is threatening the
existing music industry, little attention is focused on political
portals. While all eyes are on e-commerce, relatively few know about
public opinion BBSs, cause-related marketing, web-accessible voting
and finance data.

Look at VoxCap, and the Minnesota E-Democracy Project, project, the
California Voter's foundation, and scores of other unreported
experiments. Imagine what might happen if more people were told that
the Web could help them remain free, as well as enhance their shopping
experience?

HOWARD RHEINGOLD is the author of Virtual Reality, and The Virtual
Community, and was the editor of Whole Earth Review and the Millennium
Whole Earth Catalog .

Further reading on Edge: Chapter 24, "The Citizen" in Digerati.

LINK: rheingold's brainstorms.
   _________________________________________________________________

Ivan Amato
The Planet Itself Is Becoming Self Aware

Living flesh is innervated with all kinds of sensors like taste buds,
pressure sensors, photoreceptors and position sensors in muscle
fibers, which monitor internal and external conditions. Brains analyze
signals from these sensors using built-in and ever-evolving models of
the world (that include the owners of the brains) and then use these
analyses to formulate plans of action.

One of the most important un(der)reported stories today is the way the
inanimate world built by humanity is becoming ever more innervated
with sensors (cameras, microphones, strain gauges, magnetic sensors,
GPS receivers, transponders, infrared sensors, satellite surveillance,
etc.) as well as communications systems linking these sensors to
computers that can store, analyze and act on those signals just like
biological brains. What's more, all of these sensors are likely to
ultimately link into a next-generation Internet via
ultra-miniaturized, on-board, wireless connections (one of the main
R&D thrusts of the microelectromechanical systems community). Millions
of millions of thermometers, barometers, GPs transponders in vehicles,
seismic monitors, radiation monitors, department store surveillance
cameras, and thousands of other gadgets watching the world will all
feed data into the system. This will amount to a global-scale,
sensitive infrastructure a planet-sized body, that is -- whereby
myriad sensory signals will constantly feed into a global-scale
cyberspace coursing with sophisticated pattern-recognition abilities,
knowledge-discovery (data-mining) systems, and other artificial
cognition tools. One consequence will be that Earth will have a new
kind of planetary self-awareness akin the bodily awareness living
creatures have due to their sensory tissue. Debate about personal
privacy will become almost moot since the entire world will constitute
a glass house. On the up side, the complexity of this worldwide
awareness -- and the new categories of data about the world will
become available -- is likely to lead to emergent phenomena as
surprising as the way life emerges from molecules and consciousness
from life.

IVAN AMATO, freelance print and radio writer; editor of the Pathways
of Discovery essay series for Science Magazine; author of Stuff: The
Materials The World Is Made Of and Pushing the Horizon, which is an
institutional history of the Naval Research Laboratory.
   _________________________________________________________________

Arnold Trehub
How The Human Brain Models The World

A plausible explanation of how the brain can create internal models of
veridical and hypothetical worlds has long eluded theorists. But
recently there has been significant progress in the theoretical
understanding of this defining aspect of human cognition, and it has
scarcely been reported. About a decade ago, I wrote in The Cognitive
Brain that the capability for invention is arguably the most
consequential characteristic that distinguishes humans from all other
creatures. Our cognitive brain is especially endowed with neuronal
mechanisms that can model within their biological structures all
conceivable worlds, as well as the world we directly perceive or know
to exist. External expressions of an unbounded diversity of
brain-created models constitute the arts and sciences and all the
artifacts and enterprises of human society.

The newsworthy story is that we now have, for the first time, a
biologically credible large-scale neuronal model that can explain in
essential structural and dynamic detail how the human brain is able to
create internal models of its intimate world and invent models of a
wider universe.

ARNOLD TREHUB is adjunct professor of psychology at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst. He has been the director of a laboratory
devoted to psychological and neurophysiological research and is the
author of The Cognitive Brain.
   _________________________________________________________________

Brian Goodwin
Quality Pigs

My story is about pigs! How could anything connected with pigs
possibly have significant cultural consequences? It comes from
research that entails a fundamental change in the scope of scientific
inquiry. To appreciate what is at stake, we need to recall a basic
assumption in the practice of western science: reliable knowledge
about nature depends upon measurement. We can be sure of the
wavelength of light rays from the setting sun, but there's no way we
can determine the beauty of a sunset. Or we can find out the weight of
a pig, but we can never know if a pig is happy or sad. Western science
is about quantities, which are regarded as 'objective' properties of
the world that everyone using the same method of measurement can agree
on. It is not about qualities such as pleasure, pain, honesty,
happiness or grief, which are regarded as subjective states that are
not objectively real, however important they may seem to us.

But what if it could be shown that qualities can be evaluated just as
reliably and consistently as quantities? And by essentially the same
scientific procedures? This is what has been shown in studies by a
research team working in Edinburgh. People were shown videos of
individual pigs interacting in a standard pen with the team leader,
Francoise Wemelsfelder. They were asked to write down for each pig any
set of terms that they felt described the quality of its behavior.
These included words such as bold, aggressive, playful for one animal;
timid, shy, nervous for another; indifferent, independent,
self-absorbed for a third, and so on. There was no limit to the number
of descriptors that could be used for any pig. A routine procedure was
then followed in which each pig was evaluated again by each observer
using all their chosen pig-descriptive terms and the results compared
over the whole group of observers to see if there was consistency of
evaluation. This type of procedure is regularly used in evaluation of
food quality and flavour, but it has never before been used to see if
people agree about an animal's 'subjective' state in terms of its
behavior.

The results were startling: there was a high level of consensus among
people about the quality of behavior shown by different pigs. Their
assessments were not arbitrary, personally idiosyncratic descriptions,
but evaluations with a high degree of intersubjective consistency.
This is precisely the basis of scientific 'objectivity': agreement
between different observers using an agreed method of observation.
This opens the door to a science of qualities with startling
implications.

The most important aspects of our lives are connected with qualities:
quality of relationships, quality of education, quality of our
environment, quality of life generally. We spend a great deal of time
evaluating the behavior of those on whom we depend and trying to sort
out whether they are happy, angry, depressed, reliable, and so on;
i.e., we get a lot of practice at evaluating others' internal states
by reading their behavior. And on the whole we are pretty good at it,
despite dramatic errors of judgement to which we are prone. So it
isn't all that surprising that people with no familiarity with pigs
should nevertheless be very consistent at evaluating the quality of
their behavior. But what is most dramatically lacking in the lives of
people in 'developed' countries at the moment is, by general
consensus, quality of life. Quantities we have in abundance - of food,
technological gadgets of all kinds, cars, aircraft, information, and
so on; the things that our science of measurement and quantities has
been so successful at providing. But that science has degraded
qualities such as beauty, love, joy, grief, and creativity to mere
epiphenomal subjectivity, regarding them as ephemeral shadows with no
objective reality. We intuitively know better. But now we can actually
explore this territory systematically, scientifically, and reinvest
our world with the qualities that are essential for living full lives;
not just for humans but also for pigs and cows and trees and cities
and landscapes and watersheds and cultures and the biosphere. With a
science of qualities we can start to recover the wisdom we lost when
we restricted our search for reliable knowledge to measurable
quantities and cut ourselves off from the qualitative half of the
world without which we and all else must perish.

BRIAN GOODWIN is a professor of biology at the Schumacher College,
Milton Keynes, and the author of Temporal Organization in Cells and
Analytical Physiology, How The Leopard Changed Its Spots: The
Evolution of Complexity, and (with Gerry Webster) Form and
Transformation: Generative and Relational Principles in Biology. Dr.
Goodwin is a member of the Board of Directors of the Sante Fe
Institute.

Further reading on Edge: Chapter 4, The Third Culture; "A New Science
of Qualities:" A Talk With Brian Brian Goodwin
   _________________________________________________________________

Stephen Grossberg
How does a brain give rise to a mind?

When we think about our conscious experiences of the world, we are
aware of vivid colors, sounds, and feelings. These seem to occur in a
world of three spatial dimensions evolving through time. When we look
at a typical brain, we see an unbelievably intricate web of networks
energized by electrical and chemical processes. These networks often
have incredibly large numbers of components. Given such different
levels of description, it has been difficult to comprehend how a brain
can give rise to a mind.

During the past decade, theorists of mind and brain have finally been
able to model the detailed temporal dynamics of known brain cells and
circuits...AND the observable behaviors that they control, using the
same model. Thus, for the first time in history, there are theories
powerful enough to begin to explicitly show how our minds arise from
our brains.

The exciting thing about this progress is that, in every case, it
depends upon qualitatively new concepts and theories about how our
brains adapt on their own, moment - by - moment, to a rapidly changing
world. Many outstanding problems in technology also require that an
intelligent agent adapt on its own, moment-by-mo ment, to a rapidly
changing world. These new concepts and theories have therefore begun
to find their way into new technological applications.

Thus the new progress about how our brains work promises to provide a
more human technology. The story has not been adequately reported
because the new concepts are qualitatively new -- for the same reason
that brains seem to be so different from minds -- and many reporters
have not taken the time to understand them.

STEPHEN GROSSBERG is one of the principal founders of the fields of
computational neuroscience, connectionist cognitive science, and
artificial neural network research. He is Wang Professor of Cognitive
and Neural Systems and Professor of Mathematics, Psychology, and
Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief
of the journal Neural Networks, which is the official journal of the
three major neural modeling societies in the world.

LINK: Stephen Grossberg Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Philip W. Anderson
(1) The closing of the High Flux Beam Reactor at Brookhaven National
Lab; (2) Eppawala

I have two answers, which will certainly qualify because you may well
never have heard of either.

The first, and my primary answer because it is a local matter that the
Third Culture can hope to affect, is the closing of the High Flux Beam
Reactor at Brookhaven National Lab.

Many high profile media scientists proclaimed the Supercollider
decision as the point at which the US definitively turned away from
science. But it was nothing of the sort. It was a badly managed and
unwisely promulgated project, immensely expensive and disconnected
with the rest of science, about which many perfectly reasonable
scientists had serious doubts -- not just me, though I seem to have
taken the brunt of the blame.

My nominee for this turning point is the HFBR. A coalition of
pseudo-environmentalists and trendy New Agers, useful and wellheeled
Clinton friends and campaign contributors with Long Island real
estate, blew up a leakage which amounted to the amount of tritium in
the exit signs of your local movie theatre into a major issue, and
Bill Richardson, the Secretary of Energy, caved without listening to
the scientists involved. It is reported that the coalition arranged an
interview for the Secretary with a supermodel on the afternoon the
scientists had asked for a last appeal.

In any case the loss of the HFBR closes one of the world's most
productive scientific instruments and sends the entire community off
to our friendly competitors in Europe and Japan. Neutron scattering
and diffraction is central to much of condensed matter physics and
useful in biology, chemistry and several branches of technology.
Approximately 300 experiments were run the last year the HFBR was up.
There was no conceivable economic reason for shutting it down -- it
was a very inexpensive instrument relative to the projects which are
replacing it. Its real problem is the anti-intellectual bias of the
majority culture. If only we had been able to label it "organic"
rather than "nuclear" it would have survived.

I will be brief about the other.

You will never have heard the name "Eppawala". This is a project of a
US-Japan consortium to mine phosphate in gigantic quantities from a
mountain in Sri Lanka, destroying a thousand-year-old irrigation
system, numerous antiquities, and many villages and compensating the
locals on a typical Third World scale with a minute fraction of the
profits -- profits which hardly exist if one were to count the true
cost of the project. It is a staggering example of the misuse of
economic reasoning which characterizes third world "development"
projects. Not just third world, in my opinion!

PHILIP W. ANDERSON is a Nobel laureate physicist at Princeton and one
of the leading theorists on superconductivity. He is the author of A
Career in Theoretical Physics, and Economy as a Complex Evolving
System.

LINK: Philip W. Anderson Home Page.
   _________________________________________________________________

James J. O'Donnell
The Remaking Of Personality As Seen In Language.

Until a few years ago, tracking the evolution of language was only
possible for idle gentlemen: university scholars, amateur dilettantes
(whence arose the Oxford English Dictionary), or pompous columnists
(only one of whom has a weekly piece in the New York Times Magazine).
It was carried on from an elite gentleman's club perspective and
consisted of deploring decline and patronizing neologism.

But now we have the tools to do a vastly better job of paying
attention to what *we* are saying. Huge quantities of "real" language
as it is spoken and written can be collected easily and subjected to
sophisticated tracking analysis. Gender, class, nationality: all can
be revealed and studied as never before. The ethical and political
bases of society as it is (not as it imagines itself to be) can be
displayed and analyzed.

Why is this important? Because the way we talk about ourselves and
others is the way we create ourselves and our society. The ethical and
social revolutions of the last half century have been far reaching,
but it is still possible for those who prefer nostalgia to justice to
wish those revolutions away. The emergence of a serious journalism of
language, supported by good science, would document the way in which
all classes and social groups have changed and continue to change. It
would tell us things about ourselves that we know in our hearts but
have not had the self aware and the wisdom and the courage to say to
ourselves aloud. I believe we would all be happier if we knew how far
we have come, and I can think of no better way of measuring and
showing it.

JAMES J. O'DONNELL, Professor of Classical Studies and Vice Provost
for Information Systems and Computing at the University of
Pennsylvania, is the author of Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to
Cyberspace.

LINK: The James J. O'Donnell Website.
   _________________________________________________________________


Sylvia Paull
Women Are Still Considered Inferior To Men

After two thousand years of "civilization," women are still considered
inferior to men by most cultures, whether in developed, developing, or
undeveloped nations.

Although the media reports on glass ceilings in the job place, they do
not penetrate beyond the economic discrimination women face into the
culture itself: What is it that makes most men think they are superior
to women?

Why is the thought of electing a woman president of the United States
so unthinkable to most of the population? Why is it surprising that
most Fortune 1000 companies still lack a woman on their board of
directors? Why do women athletes still lack funding and popular
support on a scale that their male counterparts garner?

Because after 2,000 years of recorded history, and 20,000 years of
artifact-preserved history, women have generally been relegated as
breeders not leaders. And even though technological and economic
advances have allowed women to have children as well as professional
careers, their multimillenial image as background breeders persists.

This pervasive fallacy continues to limit the creative potential of
half of the world's population. The underlying belief in women's
inferiority seems to be so ingrained in our collective psyches that
even the media doesn't seem motivated to investigate -- let alone
challenge -- its roots.

SYLVIA PAULL is founder of Gracenet , a group of women who work in
computing, high-tech journalism, and related fields and who support
the advancement of women in these fields.

LINK: Gracenet
   _________________________________________________________________

Thomas Petzinger, Jr.
The End Of Money

No one, least of all in the press -- least of all in the business
press -- has seen the beginnings of what may be the greatest
revolution in the history of commerce: the end of money, and with it
the concept of the customer.

Until there was money, there was no such thing as a customer. It
wasn't swapping tools for fish that turned a Polynesian islander from
a trader into a customer. That's simply barter. The idea of "buyer"
and "seller" emerged only when one party swapped something with a
fixed use for something fungible. Often, the money received by the
seller had a modest utilitarian purpose; gold, for instance, could be
hammered into nose rings, false teeth or satellite solar arrays. But
money became the foundation of economic life precisely because it had
symbolic more than practical value.

Then God gave us lawyers and accountants to prevent underweighing and
overcharging, to make sure that every exchange of tangible things for
intangible money was perfectly balanced, perfectly reciprocal. But
this is a conceit of economists, accountants and lawyers, as everyday
commercial life reveals. Because it can be turned into anything, money
represents dreams unfulfilled, and unrequited dreams, at any price,
are worth more than dreams realized. We all realize this intuitively.
A buyer asks a seller to give up a mere thing; a seller asks a buyer
to give up hopes and possibilities. For the same reason, it's more
costly for sellers to recruit buyers than for buyers to recruit
sellers: Sellers can exchange their stuff for only one thing (money),
while buyers can exchange their money for anything. That's why, in the
real world of purportedly balanced transactions, sellers invariably
defer to buyers -- why we say "the customer is king" and "The customer
is always right."

But let's say it's 2000 and you're Time Inc. You own some of the
best-known media properties in the world: Sports Illustrated, People
magazine, etc. You want to leverage those properties. So you approach
Yahoo!, say, or American Online. You propose to provide content to
them. They propose to promote your brand. And as you sit down to the
bargaining table to sort out the economics of all this, you throw up
your hands and ask, "Are we paying you or are you paying us?" That's
how these negotiations actually go.

"Who's paying whom?" Asking a question like that signals that maybe
nobody needs to pay anything to anybody. Lots of value is created, but
"nobody's paying for it". It just happens because two (or more)
business partners create something together. In these situations firms
can't begin to account for the nickels and dimes in the deal and may
not even bother trying. In these situations, relationships triumph
over transactions. Money drastically diminishes as a factor in the
deal. And the identity of the customer -- Are we paying you or are you
paying us? -- becomes fuzzy. The very concept of the customer begins
to disappear.

Look at Silicon Valley. Every major firm there is a node in a complex
network in which a huge fraction of the value creation could never be
accounted for in monetary terms. Should Intel pay for Microsoft to
optimize operating systems in a way that makes Intel chips ubiquitous?
Or should Microsoft pay Intel to design chips that make Microsoft
operating systems ubiquitous?

The press and the pundits are clueless about the effects of these
de-monetized value-added dealings. No wonder, because all their
measurements are expressed as units of money. Unless some dough
changes hands, even the biggest commercial developments are as unheard
as trees falling in the distant forest. The data mavens at Commerce
are blind to the value created when Yahoo! adds a new Web site listing
or when Mapquest shaves 0.6 miles off my trip. When the Labor
Department calculates the Consumer Price Index it has no idea that its
own Web pages are being dished out on free Linux source code or that a
building contractor in Bowie, Md., decided to eat a change order
because he wanted to preserve the goodwill of his client -- and that
more and more of the economy is being transacted on such a basis. When
Dr. Greenspan and the poo-bahs at the Fed deliberate over the
"irrational exuberance" of the stock market, how much weight do you
suppose they're giving to the fact that the marginal cost of a
transaction in a world of e-commerce has essentially dropped to zero?
More de-monetization.

Today most of the money in the world isn't even made of paper, much
less metal. It exists as binary digits. No wonder the central banks of
the world are heaving their gold reserves into a collapsing market.
Who needs gold when money sheds the slightest pretense of being
anything but data? Say good-bye to gold. Gold is history. If you want
currency backed by something tangible, sign up for 5,000 frequent
flier miles on a new Visa card.

THOMAS PETZINGER, JR., has spent 21 years as an editor, reporter and
weekly columnist at The Wall Street Journal, where he served most
recently as Millennium Editor. His latest book is The New Pioneers:
The Men and Women Who Are Transforming the Workplace and Marketplace

LINK: Thomas Petzinger, Jr. Home Page
   _________________________________________________________________

Stephen Kellert
The Concept Of Ecology

As Aldo Leopold once suggested, the greatest invention of the 20th
century might be the concept of ecology. It reminds us of the illusory
nature of the concept of the autonomous, unitary, individual being. We
are all -- ourselves as persons, the human animal, all species, in all
likelihood, the universe -- a constant product of relational and
transactional processes.

STEPHEN R. KELLERT, a social ecologist at Yale and E.O. Wilson's
collaborator, is recognized as the world's foremost authority on human
relationships to animals. The New York Times has featured his work in
various articles and his work has been recognized by a number of
awards including the Distinguished Individual Achievement Award of the
Society for Conservation Biology. Kellert is coeditor with E.O. Wilson
of The Biophilia Hypothesis and author of Kinship to Mastery, The
Value of Life.
   _________________________________________________________________

Eric J. Hall
The World Is Losing Potable Water At A Rate That Is Unprecedented.
Quite an interesting question and one that required both research and
introspection. I finally had to rely on what I have experienced in
travelling to 6 of the earth's continents.

The world is losing potable water at a rate that is unprecedented.
Saharan and sub-saharan Africa water supplies are contaminated with
bilharzia, schistosomiasis (sic), giardia, and other water-born
parasites and diseases. Russia has seen the Caspian Sea and other
land-locked lakes decline rapidly over the past 25 years due to
evaporation from a warmer climate and drainage to irrigate arid lands.
Populations are expanding into areas where water is scarce and
aquifers will be drained in less than 100 years at current consumption
rates. Even my favorite Sierra streams are polluted with giardia and
require treatment before you can drink the water. China, India, Asia,
and South America are also faced with the same problems of water-born
diseases and decreasing supplies.

In the 19th century we saw battles fought over water rights in New
Mexico. What will happen in the next century when nations are faced
with hydro projects in a neighboring country decrease the flow of
water to another country. This is already happening in Turkey where a
massive hydro project threatens Iraq's water supply. Will this be
Saddam's next war?

Scientists still do not understand what the impact of desalinization
of sea water will have on the balance of the global ecosystem. The
salt removed has to go somewhere, usually back into the water. Will
increased salinity impact polar ice caps or the temperature of the
earth's oceans? We have already seen an increase in the salinity of
water in Russia, the Middle East, and even in areas in the USA.

In terms of consumption, we waste a tremendous amount of water as
individuals. More water goes down the drain or the gutter as we
continue to plant water-intensive lawns or keep the tap running while
we brush our teeth. Recent draughts in California have highlighted how
much water can be saved on a daily basis. On the converse, in many
third-world countries more time is spent each day bringing the
necessary water to the home as wells dry up. You can't be productive
if you're always fetching water.

The next global war will be fought over water, not imperialism or
political ideology. Man can live without a lot of things, but not
water. Mainstream media in all countries have been absent in their
reporting as well as conservation groups like the Sierra Club. What
will the world do when there's not enough rain to go around?.

ERIC J. HALL is President of The Archer Group, a consulting firm
specializing in emerging technology companies. He has helped found
companies including Yahoo!, Women.com, The ImagiNation Network, and
rightscenter.com, Inc.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Gilmore
The World Isn't Going to Hell

Media sells your attention to advertisers using bad news. This makes
people think the bad news is the real state of the world. Pollution is
making the world a worse place, raw materials are being used up,
bigger populations are overconsuming us into wretchedness, etc. They
even want all of us to waste our time sorting garbage for fear that
we'll run out of barren land to put it on!

The real story is that human life has gotten better and better and
better over the centuries. The world used to be a very polluted place
-- if you count deadly infectious bacteria in the environment.
Centuries of focus on clean drinking water, separating sewers from
food and water supplies, medicine, and nutrition have resulted in
human life span being literally doubled and tripled, first in
"civilized" countries and then in "developing" countries. China has
doubled life-span in this century. Everyone grows up taller and
stronger than hundreds of years ago. There is much less pollution in
London today than in any recorded century. There is much less
pollution in the US today than in any recorded decade. There are more
proven oil reserves than ever before, and in fifty years when those
have been used, another fifty or sixty years' worth will have been
worth locating. There are more acres of forest in North America than a
hundred years ago. (There's a market for growing trees now, and they
can be transported to where people want to buy the wood! Two hundred
years ago it was more work to move wood twenty miles in carts on mud
roads, than it was to take it across the Atlantic!) Resources of all
types are getting cheaper and cheaper, as measured in decades and
centuries. There is no reason to believe that these trends will
change. (Remember the people like Paul Erlich who predicted world
famine by 2000? They are still making predictions, but you shouldn't
believe 'em any more, because it's 2000 and the starving hordes aren't
here.)

Prof. Julian Simon was a "liberal who got mugged" -- by the facts. He
started off trying to prove the environment was getting worse, but
whenever he found actual historical data, it contradicted that thesis.
Eventually he changed his mind and started writing books about it.

Ultimate Resource 2 is his updated book about how all the resources
except one of-a-kind objects are becoming less scarce, except humans.
(Human attention commands higher and higher prices over the decades, a
trend easily visible in the price of labor, despite there being more
humans around.)

The State of Humanity is a very well documented (footnoted) survey of
human life, health, and the environment. It points you to actual
historical data showing the real long-term trends in human longevity,
health, welfare, prices of materials, acres of forest, number of
species known, pollution, smoke, you name it he's got it.

Knee-jerk liberals beware! These are the kinds of books that you won't
like to read. The interior feeling of a mind stretching is
uncomfortable, though the result is well worth it.

JOHN GILMORE is an entrepreneur disguised as a philanthropist. Or
perhaps vice verse. He co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
the "alt" newsgroups, the Cypherpunks, and 1989 open source company
Cygnus Solutions. He's been pushing encryption technology out of
government spy agency control for 15 years. He's a big believer in
civil rights, even for Internet users and those who like drugs. He
thinks nation-states have killed more people than any other single
force in history, and wishes to see them wither to a tiny fraction of
their current size and power over their citizens. And he refuses to
"recycle" his trash -- if it's worth it to you, you can recycle it.
   _________________________________________________________________

Sally M. Gall
The Potentially Glorious, or Dangerous, Massive Cultural Impact of
Mitochondrial DNA Studies.

The increasing use of mitochondrial DNA in determining genetic
relationships among human beings opens up the extraordinary
possibility of a global registry in which every individual knows his
or her antecedents and degree of genetic closeness to all other living
human beings.

What would be the result of such knowledge? A delight in finding out
that we are all more or less brothers and sisters under the skin,
leading -- one hopes -- to a decrease in hostilities between
antagonistic groups? Or would a new clannishness emerge in which
anyone who is more, say, than six degrees of genetic separation from
oneself is identified as a natural enemy?

SALLY M. GALL, holds degrees from Harvard / Radcliffe and NYU. A
librettist, poet, critic, and scholar, she now specializes in writing
texts for a broad range of music drama.
   _________________________________________________________________

Rodney A. Brooks 
People are Morphing into Machines.

Since I work in building autonomous humanoid robots reporters always
ask me what will happen when the robots get really smart. Will they
decide that we (us, people) are useless and stupid and take over the
world from us? I have recently come to realize that this will never
happen. Because there won't be any us (people) for them (pure robots)
to take over from.

Barring an asteroid size thwack that knocks humans back into
pre-technological society, humankind has embarked on a journey of
technological manipulation of our bodies. The first few decades of the
new millennium will be a moral battleground as we question, reject,
and accept these innovations. Different cultures will accept them at
different rates (e.g., organ transplantation is currently routine in
the United States, but unacceptable in Japan), but our ultimate nature
will lead to wide spread adoption.

And just what are these technologies? Already there are thousands of
people walking around with cochlea implants, enabling the formerly
deaf to hear again -- these implants include direct electronic to
neural connections. Human trials have started with retina chips being
inserted in blind people's eyes (for certain classes of blindness,
such as macular degeneration), enabling simple perceptions. Recently I
was confronted with a researcher in our lab, a double leg amputee,
stepping off the elevator that I was waiting for -- from the knees up
he was all human, from the knees down he was robot, and prototype
robot at that -- metal shafts, joints full of magneto-restrictive
fluids, single board computers, batteries, connectors, and wire
harnesses flopping everywhere; not a hint of antiseptic packaging --
it was all hanging out for all to see. Many other researchers are
placing chips in animal, and sometimes human, flesh and letting
neurons grow and connect to them. The direct neural interface between
man and machine is starting to happen. At the same time surgery is
becoming more acceptable for all sorts of body modifications -- I
worry that I am missing the boat carrying these heavy glasses around
on my nose when everyone else is going down to the mall and having
direct laser surgery on their eyes to correct their vision. And at the
same time cellular level manipulation of our bodies is becoming real
through genetic therapies.

Right now we ban Olympic athletes who have used steroids. Fairly soon
we may have to start banning kids with neural Internet connection
implants from having them switched on while taking the SATs. Not long
after that it may be virtually mandatory to have one in order to have
a chance taking the new ISATs (Internet SATs).

We will become a merger between flesh and machines, and we (the
robot-people) will be a step ahead of them (the pure robots). We won't
have to worry about them taking over.

RODNEY A. BROOKS is Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, and Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science. He is also
Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of IS Robotics, an 85 person
robotics company. Dr. Brooks also appeared as one of the four
principals in the Errol Morris movie "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control"
(named after one of his papers in the Journal of the British
Interplanetary Society) in 1997 (one of Roger Ebert's 10 best films of
the year).

Further reading on Edge:"The Deep Question" A Talk With Rodney Brooks.

LINKS: Rodney A. Brooks Home Page; and Cog: A Humanoid Robot.
   _________________________________________________________________

John McWhorter 
The Transformation Of The American Musical Ear

There are now two generations of Americans who have grown up after the
rock revolution of the late 1960s, for whom classical music and the
old style Broadway/Hollywood songs are largely marginal. As a result,
today's typical American ear is attuned more to rhythm and vocal
emotion -- the strengths of rock and rap -- than to melody and
harmony, the strengths of classical music and Golden Age pop. This is
true not just of teenagers but of people roughly fifty and under, and
has been the most seismic shift in musical sensibility since the
advent of ragtime introduced the American ear to syncopation a century
ago.

A catchy beat is not just one element, but the sine qua non in most
pop today, opening most songs instead of the instrumental prelude of
the old days. The increasing popularity of rhythm-centered Third World
pop (pointedly called "World Beat") underscores this change in taste.
Certainly folks liked a good beat before Elvis, but much of even the
most crassly commercial dance music before the 1950s was couched in
melody and harmony to a degree largely unknown in today's pop. Our
expectations have so shifted that the rock music that critics today
call "melodic" would sound like Gregorian chants to members of even
the cheesiest little high school dance band in 1930.

Yet what pop has lost in craft it has gained in psychological
sophistication, and the focus on vocal emotion is part of this. In the
old days, singers made their marks as individuals, no doubt, but, for
example, Sinatra's artistry was in being able to suggest a range of
emotions within the context of rather homogenous lyrics. Modern pop
singers like Alanis Morrisette are freed from these constraints, and
the variety and individuality of many modern pop lyrics have made them
America's true poetry; indeed, many listeners relate to the lyrics of
their favorite rock singers with an intensity our grandparents were
more likely to devote to the likes of Robert Frost.

Yet the fact remains that for the typical American of the future,
melody and harmony will be as aesthetically marginal as they are to
the African musician whose music is based on marvelously complex
rhythms, with a vocal line serving largely rhythmic and/or decorative
ends (notably, World Beat listeners are little concerned with not
understanding most of the lyrics; it's the vocal texture that
matters). Lyrics will continue to count, but their intimate linkage to
musical line will be of no more concern than individual expression or
complex rhythm was to pop listeners sixty years ago. I once attended a
screening of a concert video from the mid-1960s in which Sammy Davis,
Jr., who occupied the transitional point between the old and the
current sensibility, sang Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin"
first "straight", and then without accompaniment, eventually moving
into scatting and riffing rhythmically to the merest suggestion of the
written vocal line for a good few minutes, in a vein we would today
call "performance art". Young hipsters behind me whispered "This is
rad!"; a few seconds later I heard an elderly woman in the front row
mumble "Enough of this is enough!" She would have been happy to hear
Davis simply sing it through once with the orchestra; the hipsters
wouldn't have minded Davis walking out and doing only the vocal riffs
-- and they are the American musical ear of today and tomorrow.

JOHN H. MCWHORTER is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the
University of California at Berkeley. He taught at Cornell University
before entering his current position at Berkeley. He specializes in
pidgin and creole languages, particularly of the Caribbean, and is the
author of Toward a New Model of Creole Genesis and The Word on the
Street : Fact and Fable About American English. He also teaches black
musical theater history at Berkeley and is currently writing a musical
biography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Further reading on Edge: "The Demise of Affirmative Action at
Berkeley": An Essay by John McWhorter.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stewart Brand 
The Peace Dividend

Whatever happened to looking for the Peace Dividend? What if the
rampant prosperity in America these years is it? Money not spent on
Defense gets spent on something. Research not sequestered into Defense
applications gets loose into the world faster, and in pace with other
events in technology and science. Policies not organized around
paranoia can be organized around judicious optimism. The more former
enemies there are, the more new customers and suppliers.

(Are Democrats getting credit for something that Republicans did? --
-win and end the Cold War. But maybe Democrats are exactly who you
want running things when a long debilitating war ends.)

Question: if the Peace Dividend is prosperity, is it a blip good for
only a couple years, or is it a virtuous circle that goes on and on?

STEWART BRAND is founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder of The
Well, cofounder of Global Business Network, cofounder and president of
The Long Now Foundation. He is the original editor of The Whole Earth
Catalog, author of The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT , How
Buildings Learn), and The Clock of the Long Now: Time and
Responsibility (MasterMinds Series).

Further reading on Edge: "The Clock of the Long Now" A Talk by Stewart
Brand; and Chapter 3, "The Scout" in Digerati.

LINKS: Global Business Network; and The Long Now Foundation.
   _________________________________________________________________

Judith Rich Harris
Parenting Styles Have Changed But Children Have Not

What stories are most likely to go unreported? Those that have to do
with things that happen so gradually that they aren't noticed, or
happen so commonly that they aren't news, and those that have
politically incorrect implications.

A story that has gone unreported for all three reasons is the gradual
and pervasive change in parenting styles that has occurred in this
country since the 1940s, and the consequences (or lack of
consequences) of that change.

In the early part of this century, parents didn't worry about shoring
up their children's self-esteem or sense of autonomy, and they didn't
feel called upon to provide them with "unconditional love." They
worried that their children might become spoiled, self-centered, or
disobedient. In those days, spankings were administered routinely,
often with a weapon such as a belt or a ruler. Kisses were exchanged
once a day, at bedtime. Declarations of parental love were made once a
lifetime, from the deathbed.

The gradual but dramatic change in parenting styles over the past 50
years occurred mainly because more and more parents were listening to
the advice of the "experts," and the experts' advice gradually
changed. Nowadays parents are told that spankings will make their
children more aggressive, that criticism will destroy their
self-esteem, and that children who feel loved will be kinder and more
loving to others. As a result of this advice, most parents today are
administering far fewer spankings and reprimands, and far more
physical affection and praise, than their grandparents did.

But that's only half the story. The other half is the results, or lack
of results, of this change in parenting styles. Are today's children
less aggressive, kinder, more self-confident, or happier than the
children of two generations ago? If anything, the opposite is true.
Rates of childhood depression and suicide, for example, have gone up,
not down. And certainly there has been no decline in aggressiveness.

The implications, whatever they are, are bound to be politically
incorrect. Perhaps the "experts" don't know what they're talking
about. Perhaps parenting styles are less important than people have
been led to believe. Perhaps human nature is more robust than most
people give it credit for -- perhaps children are designed to resist
whatever their parents do to them. It's possible that being hit by a
parent doesn't make children want to go right out and hit their
playmates, any more than being kissed by a parent makes them want to
go right out and kiss their playmates. It's even possible (dare I
suggest it?) that those parents who are still doling out a lot of
punishment have aggressive kids because aggressiveness is, in part,
passed on genetically.

But now I'm getting into a story that HAS been reported.

JUDITH RICH HARRIS is a writer and developmental psychologist;
co-author of The Child: A Contemporary View Of Development; winner of
the 1997 George A. Miller Award for an outstanding article in general
psychology, and author of The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn
Out The Way They Do.

Further reading on Edge: "Children Don't Do Things Halfway". A Talk
with Judith Rich Harris; Judith Rich Harris Comments on Frank J.
Sulloway's Talk "How Is Personality Formed?".

LINK: The Nurture Assumption Web Site.
   _________________________________________________________________

Lee Smolin 
The Internationalization of the Third Culture

The internationalization of the third culture, by which I mean the
growth of a class of people who do creative work of some kind
(science, arts, media, business, technology, finance, fashion...) who
live and work in a country other than their own, are married to such a
person, or both. This is not a new situation, but what is new is the
extent to which the combination of inexpensive air travel, telephone
the Internet and computer technologies makes living and working
outside of ones native country not only easy but increasingly
attractive for a growing proportion of people in these professions.
This is a natural consequence of the internationalization of these
areas, which has made frequent international travel, and periods of
studying and working abroad the norm rather than the exception. It is
made possible by the ascendancy of English as a global language and
the long period in which the developed world has been more or less at
peace. With the end of the cold war, the growth of democracies in
Latin America and the Far East and the unification of Europe there
remain few significant political obstructions to the growth in size
and influence of a denationalized community of people who work in
exactly those areas which are most critical for shaping the human
future.

This class of people shares not only a common language and a common
set of tastes in food, clothing, coffee, furniture, housing,
entertainment, etc, but are increasingly coming to share a common
political outlook, which is far more international than those from the
old literary cultures, based as they are each on a national language
and history. It is perhaps too early to characterize this outlook, but
it involves a mix of traditional social democratic and environmental
concerns with an interest (or perhaps self-interest) in the links
between creative work, international exchange of ideas and
technologies and economic growth. Moreover, they share an interest in
the conditions which make their lives possible, which are peace,
stability, democracy and economic prosperity, and these are more
important to them than the nationalist concerns of their native
countries. It is not surprising that the daily experience of juggling
different languages, identities and cultures gives these people a much
more optimistic outlook concerning issues such as pluralism and
multiculturalism than those from the literary cultures. Most of them
feel an attachment and identification to their native culture, but
they also feel alienated from the party politics and petty
nationalisms of their home countries. When they move to a new country
they do not immigrate in the traditional sense, rather they enter a
denationalized zone in which their colleagues and neighbors come from
an array of countries and the place where they happen to be is less
important than the work they do.

How they and their children will resolve these different loyalties is
far from clear. One can meet young people whose parents each speak a
different language, who grew up in a third country, did a university
education in a fourth, and now work in a fifth. What the political
loyalties of such people will be is impossible to predict, but it
seems not impossible that the growing concentrations of such people in
the areas of work that most influence public taste and economic growth
may catalyze the evolution of nation states into local governments and
the invention of a global political system.

LEE SMOLIN is a theoretical physicist; professor of physics and member
of the Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at Pennsylvania
State University; author of The Life of The Cosmos.

Further Reading on Edge: "A Theory of the Whole Universe" in The Third
Culture; "A Possible Solution For The Problem Of Time In Quantum
Cosmology" by Stuart Kauffman and Lee Smolin.
   _________________________________________________________________

Roger Schank 
The Politicians Who Are Running On Education Platforms Don't Actually
Care About Education

As each presidential candidate makes education the big issue for his
campaign we need to understand that none of them actually wants change
in education. There are two main reasons for this. The first are
vested interests. Those who oppose real change in our schools include
teachers unions who lobby heavily for the status quo, book publishers
who are afraid of losing the textbook investments they have made,
testing services and test preparation services who have a significant
investment in keeping things as they are and parents who really would
be quite frightened if the schools changed in a way that made their
own educations seem irrelevant. No politician wants to challenge a
group like this so no politician wants to do any more than pay lip
service to the issue. The second reason is more insidious. When real
reformers propose that everyone should be equally educated there are
gasps from the elitists who run our government. Their concern? If
everyone were educated, who would do the menial jobs? Hard as it may
be to believe this issue is raised quite often in Washington.

ROGER SCHANK, is the Chairman and Chief Technology Officer for
Cognitive Arts and has been the Director of the Institute for the
Learning Sciences at Northwestern University since its founding in
1989. He holds three faculty appointments at Northwestern University
as John Evans Professor of Computer Science, Education, and
Psychology. His books include: Dynamic Memory: A Theory of Learning in
Computers and People , Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and
Artificial Memory, The Connoisseur's Guide to the Mind, and Engines
for Education, and Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to
Building a Highly Skilled Workforce.
Further reading on Edge: "Information is Surprises" -- Roger Schank in
The Third Culture; and "The Disrespected Student -- or -- The Need for
the Virtual University": A Talk with Roger Schank.

LINKS: Cognitive Arts; and Institute for the Learning Sciences.
   _________________________________________________________________

Howard Gardner
(1) African Civil Wars; (2) Evolutionary Theory Is Not Intuitive;
Creationism Is

Two stories, one of global importance, the other of importance in the
areas in which I work:

Global: At any one time in recent years, there have been civil wars
raging in several countries in Africa. Thousands of individuals die
each year. Last year, according to one authority, 1/3 of the African
countries were at war. Yet because the political aspects of these
conflicts are no longer of interest to Americans (because the Cold War
is over), the economic stakes have no global importance, and African
populations do not capture the attention of well-off Westerners, one
needs to be a specialist to find out the details of these conflicts.
The contrast with the attention paid to the death of an American
youth, particularly one from a middle-class family, is shocking and
hard to justify sub species aeternitas. Of course, mere knowledge of
these conflicts does not in itself solve anything; but it is a
necessary step if we are to consider what might be done to halt this
carnage.

Local: In my own areas of psychology and education, there is plenty of
interest nowadays in student achievement in schools. Yet the coverage
of these matters in the press almost entirely leaves out knowledge
which enjoys wide consensus among researchers. In the area of human
development, it is recognized that youngsters pass through stages or
phases, and it makes no sense to treat a four year old as if he or she
were simply a "slower" or less informed middle school student or
adult. In the area of cognitive studies, it is recognized that
youngsters "construct" their own theories by which they attempt to
make sense of the world; and that these intuitive theories often fly
directly in the face of the theories and disciplines which we hope
that they will ultimately master.

Because these points are not well understood by journalists,
policymakers, and the general public, we keep implementing policies
that are doomed to fail. Efforts to teach certain materials in certain
ways to youngsters who aren't ready to assimilate them will not only
be ineffective but they are likely to cause children to come to
dislike formal education. And efforts to instruct that fail to take
into account -- and challenge -- the often erroneous theories that
youngsters have already developed will delude us into thinking that
the students are actually understanding materials that remain opaque
to them.

I think that this happens because as humans we are predisposed to come
up with this theory of learning: Our minds are initially empty and the
job of education is to fill those vessels with information. It is very
difficult for humans to appreciate that the actual situation is quite
different: in our early years, we construct all kinds of explanations
for things. Our scholarly disciplines can only be mastered if we get
rid of these faulty explanations and construct, often slowly and
painfully, better kinds of explanations. Put sharply, evolutionary
theory is not intuitive; creationism is. And that is why eight year
olds are invariable creationists, whether their parents are
fundamentalists or atheists.

HOWARD GARDNER, the major proponent of the theory of multiple
intelligences, is Professor of Education at Harvard University and
holds research appointments at the Boston Veteran's Administration
Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine. His numerous
books include Leading Minds, Frames of Mind, The Mind's New Science: A
History of the Cognitive Revolution, To Open Minds, Multiple
Intelligences, and Extraordinary Minds: Portraits of Four Exceptional
Individuals. He has received both a MacArthur Prize Fellowship and the
Louisville Grawemeyer Award.
Further Reading on Edge: "Truth, Beauty, and Goodness: Education for
All Human Beings.
   _________________________________________________________________

Douglas Rushkoff 
America's Descent Into Computer-Aided Unconsciousness And Consumer
Fascism

We have taught our machines to conduct propaganda. Web sites and other
media are designed to be "sticky," using any means necessary to
maintain our attention. Computers are programmed to stimulate
Pavlovian responses from human beings, using techniques like
one-to-one marketing, collaborative filtering, and hypnotic
information architecture.

Computers then record our responses in order to refine these
techniques, automatically and without the need for human intervention.
The only metrics used to measure the success of banner ads and web
sites is the amount of economic activity - consumption and production
- they are able to stimulate in their human user/subjects. As a
result, the future content and structure of media will be designed by
machines with no priority other than to induce spending.

It amounts to a closed feedback loop between us and our computers,
where - after their initial programming - the machines take the active
role and human beings behave automatically. Programs adjust themselves
in real time, based on their moment to moment success in generating
the proper, mindless responses from us. In fact, computers and
software are already charged with the design of their own successors.
They are encouraged to evolve, while we are encouraged to devolve into
impulsive, thoughtless passivity.

Those who stand a chance of resisting - people who actually think -
are rewarded handsomely for their compliance, and awarded favorable
media representations such as "geek chic." These monikers are reserved
for intelligent people who surrender their neural power to the
enhancement of the machine, by becoming vested web programmers, for
example. Those who refuse to suspend active thought are labeled
communist, liberal, or simply "unfashionably pessimistic." Worse, they
are unfaithful enemies of NASDAQ, and the divinely ordained expansion
of the US economy.

Ultimately, if such a story were actually reported, it would have to
dress itself in irony, or appear as the result of an abstract
intellectual exercise, so as not to alert too much attention.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, a Professor of Media Culture at New York
University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, is an author,
lecturer, and social theorist. His books include Free Rides, Cyberia:
Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace, The GenX Reader (editor), Media
Virus! Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture, Ecstasy Club (a novel),
Playing the Future, and Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say . 
Further reading on Edge: "The Think That I Call Doug: A Talk with
Douglas Rushkoff".

LINK: Doug Rushkoff Home Page.
   _________________________________________________________________


George B. Dyson

The Size Of The Digital Universe

Cosmologists have measured the real universe with greater precision
than any reportable metric encompassing the extent of the digital
universe -- even though much of it is sitting on our desks.

Sales figures of all kinds are readily available, whereas absolute
numbers (of processors, CPU cycles, addressable memory, disk space,
total lines of code) are scarce. We are left to make rough
approximations (skewed by volatility in prices) where there could and
should be a precise, ongoing count.

Have we reached Avogadro's number yet?

GEORGE DYSON is a leading authority in the field of Russian Aleut
kayaks --the subject of his book Baidarka, numerous articles, and a
segment of the PBS television show Scientific American Frontiers. His
early life and work was portrayed in 1978 by Kenneth Brower in his
classic dual biography, The Starship and the Canoe. Now ranging more
widely as a historian of technology, Dyson's most recent book is
Darwin Among the Machines.
Further reading on Edge: "Darwin Among the Machines; or, The Origins
of Artificial Life"; and "CODE - George Dyson & John Brockman: A
Dialogue."
   _________________________________________________________________

Pattie Maes

What Scientific Research Is Really Like

The public still thinks of research as a very serious and lonely
activity. The picture of a scientist that typically comes to mind is
that of a person in labcoat hunched over heavy books, locked up in
their ivory tower. The truth is that scientists are more like a group
of uninhibited, curious kids at play. Maybe teenagers would be more
into science if they had a more accurate picture of what research is
like and realized that one way to avoid growing up is to become a
scientist.

PATTIE MAES is an Associate Professor at MIT's Media Laboratory, where
she founded and directs the Software Agents Group, and is principal
investigator of the e-markets Special Interest Group. She currently
holds the Sony Corporation Career Development Chair.

Further reading on Edge: Intelligence Augmentation -- A Talk With
Pattie Maes.

LINK: Pattie Maes' Home Page.
   _________________________________________________________________


Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Reasons For Right-Wing Extremism In Europe And The U.S.

Today (but I hope not tomorrow) I think the most important unreported
story concerns the reasons for a return of right-wing extremism in
Europe, and for the first time in the U.S. Since I am not a journalist
I would not report such a story, but I would first find out if it is
really true, and if true then study what its causes are. Is it that
people are running out of hope and meaning? Have the Western
democracies run out of believable goals? What conditions favor fascism
and what can we do to prevent them from spreading?

MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI (pronounced "chick-SENT-me high"), a
Hungarian-born polymath and the Davidson Professor of Management at
the Claremont Graduate University, in Claremont, California has been
thinking about the meaning of happiness since a child in wartime
Europe. He is author of Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience;
The Evolving Self: A Psychology For The Third Millennium; Creativity;
and Finding Flow.

LINK: FlowNet.
   _________________________________________________________________

William H. Calvin

Abrupt Climate Change

That's easy: abrupt climate change, the sort of thing where most of
the earth returns to ice-age temperatures in just a decade or two,
accompanied by a major worldwide drought. Then, centuries later, it
flips back just as quickly. This has happened hundreds of times in the
past.

The earth's climate has at least two modes of operation that it flips
between, just as your window air-conditioner cycles between fan and
cool with a shudder. And it doesn't just settle down into the
alternate mode: the transition often has a flicker like an aging
fluorescent light bulb. There are sometimes a half-dozen whiplash
cycles between warm-and-wet and cool-and-dusty, all within one
madhouse century. On a scale far larger than we saw in the El Nino
several years ago, major forest fires denude much of the human
habitat.

To the extent the geophysicists understand the mechanism, it's due to
a rearrangement in the northern extension of the Gulf Stream. A number
of computer simulations, dating back to 1987, of the winds and ocean
currents have shown that gradual global warming can trigger such a
mode switch within several centuries, mostly due to the increased
rainfall into the northern North Atlantic Ocean (if the cold salty
surface waters are diluted by fresh water, they won't flush in the
usual manner that allows more warm water to flow north and lose its
heat). Meltwater floods from Iceland and Greenland will do the job if
tropical-warming-enhanced rainfall doesn't.

This has been the major story in the geophysical sciences of the last
decade. I've been puzzled since 1987 about why this story hasn't been
widely reported. A few newspapers finally started reporting the story
in some detail two years ago but still almost no one knows about it,
probably because editors and readers confuse it with gradual climate
change via greenhouse gases. This longstanding gradual warming story
seems to cause the abrupt story to be sidetracked, even though another
abrupt cooling is easily the most catastrophic outcome of gradual
warming, far worse than the usual economic and ecological burden
envisaged.

How would I report it? Start with the three million year history of
abrupt coolings and how they have likely affected prehuman evolution.
Our ancestors lived through a lot of these abrupt climate changes, and
some humans will survive the next one. It's our civilization that
likely won't, just because the whiplashes happen so quickly that
warfare over plummeting resources leaves a downsized world where
everyone hates their neighbors for good reason. Fortunately, if we get
our act together, there are few things we might do to stabilize the
patient, buying some extra time in the same manner as preventive
medicine has extended the human lifespan.

WILLIAM H. CALVIN is a theoretical neurophysiologist on the faculty of
the University of Washington who writes about the brain and evolution.
Among his many books are How Brains Think, The Cerebral Code, and
Lingua ex Machina. He is the author of a cover story for The Atlantic
Monthly, "The Great Climate Flip-flop," January 1998, and a
forthcoming book, Cool, Crash and Burn: The Once and Future Climate of
Human Evolution.

Further reading on Edge: "Competing for Consciousness: How
Subconscious Thoughts Cook on the Backburner: A Talk by William H.
Calvin"

LINK: William Calvin Home Page.
   _________________________________________________________________

  Add your own suggestions for Today's Most Important Unreported Story
  at the Edge discussion forum at
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From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 12 18:47:49 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:47:49 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Obesity in France: Gross national product
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312156140.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Obesity in France: Gross national product
http://www.economist.com/World/europe/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5328398

    Dec 20th 2005 | PARIS

    Contrary to popular myth, French people do get fat

    AS THE French sit down to their traditional Christmas eve feast of
    foie gras, oysters and dinde farcie aux marrons, they can do so with a
    clear conscience. For, as everybody knows, the famously svelte French
    somehow manage to combine gluttony with gastronomy--and still stay
    slim. Or do they?

    In fact, the rate of obesity in France has started to swell, rising
    from 8% of the adult population in 1997 to 11% by 2003. Over 40% of
    the French are now considered overweight. According to a recent Senate
    report, France has the same share of fat people today as America did
    in 1991--and an upward trend to match. And these numbers may
    understate the problem. The 2005 OECD health study says that obesity
    rates in Britain, at 23%, and America, at 31%, are higher. But it
    points out that the French figures, unlike British and American ones,
    are based on polls asking people if they are fat. Unsurprisingly,
    denial intrudes; self-reporting produces underestimates.

    Either way, France's politicians have started to notice. In October, a
    parliamentary report called for a public-health campaign. And a law
    has been passed to impose a 1.5% tax on the advertising budgets of
    food companies if they do not encourage healthy eating.

    What has happened to the French waistline? The short answer is that
    France has latched on to the fast-food culture. France is one of the
    biggest and most profitable European markets for McDonald's. Now KFC
    fast-food joints are spreading across the country. Frozen pizzas and
    fizzy drinks are also nibbling away at the traditional family meal,
    particularly in poorer households.

    There may be something else going on. Mireille Guiliano, a Frenchwoman
    based in America, caused a stir there with a book entitled "French
    Women Don't Get Fat". But in France, her fellow-citizens seem not only
    to be doing just that--but to have few hang-ups about it. Last
    weekend, 11.4m viewers watched Magalie, a singer with a voice as big
    as her build, being voted the winner of this year's Star Academy
    television talent show. Her voluptuous curves were all over the papers
    the next day. "It's the first time that a plump girl has won Star Ac,"
    she told Le Parisien, a newspaper. "It's proof that, in order to
    succeed, physique no longer counts."


From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 12 18:48:04 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:48:04 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Foreign Affairs: Robert M. Sapolsky: A Natural History
	of Peace 
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312157480.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Robert M. Sapolsky: A Natural History of Peace
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060101faessay85110/robert-m-sapolsky/a-natural-history-of-peace.html

    From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2006
      _________________________________________________________________

    Summary: Humans like to think that they are unique, but the study of
    other primates has called into question the exceptionalism of our
    species. So what does primatology have to say about war and peace?
    Contrary to what was believed just a few decades ago, humans are not
    "killer apes" destined for violent conflict, but can make their own
    history.

    Robert M. Sapolsky is John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of
    Biological Sciences and Professor of Neurology and Neurological
    Sciences at Stanford University. His most recent book is "Monkeyluv:
    And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals."

    THE NAKED APE

    The evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky once said, "All
    species are unique, but humans are uniquest." Humans have long taken
    pride in their specialness. But the study of other primates is
    rendering the concept of such human exceptionalism increasingly
    suspect.

    Some of the retrenchment has been relatively palatable, such as with
    the workings of our bodies. Thus we now know that a baboon heart can
    be transplanted into a human body and work for a few weeks, and human
    blood types are coded in Rh factors named after the rhesus monkeys
    that possess similar blood variability.

    More discomfiting is the continuum that has been demonstrated in the
    realm of cognition. We now know, for example, that other species
    invent tools and use them with dexterity and local cultural variation.
    Other primates display "semanticity" (the use of symbols to refer to
    objects and actions) in their communication in ways that would impress
    any linguist. And experiments have shown other primates to possess a
    "theory of mind," that is, the ability to recognize that different
    individuals can have different thoughts and knowledge.

    Our purported uniqueness has been challenged most, however, with
    regard to our social life. Like the occasional human hermit, there are
    a few primates that are typically asocial (such as the orangutan).
    Apart from those, however, it turns out that one cannot understand a
    primate in isolation from its social group. Across the 150 or so
    species of primates, the larger the average social group, the larger
    the cortex relative to the rest of the brain. The fanciest part of the
    primate brain, in other words, seems to have been sculpted by
    evolution to enable us to gossip and groom, cooperate and cheat, and
    obsess about who is mating with whom. Humans, in short, are yet
    another primate with an intense and rich social life -- a fact that
    raises the question of whether primatology can teach us something
    about a rather important part of human sociality, war and peace.

    It used to be thought that humans were the only savagely violent
    primate. "We are the only species that kills its own," one might have
    heard intoned portentously at the end of nature films several decades
    ago. That view fell by the wayside in the 1960s as it became clear
    that some other primates kill their fellows aplenty. Males kill;
    females kill. Some kill one another's infants with cold-blooded
    stratagems worthy of Richard III. Some use their toolmaking skills to
    fashion bigger and better cudgels. Some other primates even engage in
    what can only be called warfare -- organized, proactive group violence
    directed at other populations.

    As field studies of primates expanded, what became most striking was
    the variation in social practices across species. Yes, some primate
    species have lives filled with violence, frequent and varied. But life
    among others is filled with communitarianism, egalitarianism, and
    cooperative child rearing.

    Patterns emerged. In less aggressive species, such as gibbons or
    marmosets, groups tend to live in lush rain forests where food is
    plentiful and life is easy. Females and males tend to be the same
    size, and the males lack secondary sexual markers such as long, sharp
    canines or garish coloring. Couples mate for life, and males help
    substantially with child care. In violent species, on the other hand,
    such as baboons and rhesus monkeys, the opposite conditions prevail.

    The most disquieting fact about the violent species was the apparent
    inevitability of their behavior. Certain species seemed simply to be
    the way they were, fixed products of the interplay of evolution and
    ecology, and that was that. And although human males might not be
    inflexibly polygamous or come with bright red butts and six-inch
    canines designed for tooth-to-tooth combat, it was clear that our
    species had at least as much in common with the violent primates as
    with the gentle ones. "In their nature" thus became "in our nature."
    This was the humans-as-killer-apes theory popularized by the writer
    Robert Ardrey, according to which humans have as much chance of
    becoming intrinsically peaceful as they have of growing prehensile
    tails.

    That view always had little more scientific rigor than a Planet of the
    Apes movie, but it took a great deal of field research to figure out
    just what should supplant it. After decades' more work, the picture
    has become quite interesting. Some primate species, it turns out, are
    indeed simply violent or peaceful, with their behavior driven by their
    social structures and ecological settings. More important, however,
    some primate species can make peace despite violent traits that seem
    built into their natures. The challenge now is to figure out under
    what conditions that can happen, and whether humans can manage the
    trick themselves.

    PAX BONOBO

    Primatology has long been dominated by studies of the chimpanzee, due
    in large part to the phenomenally influential research of Jane
    Goodall, whose findings from her decades of observations in the wild
    have been widely disseminated. National Geographic specials based on
    Goodall's work would always include the reminder that chimps are our
    closest relatives, a notion underlined by the fact that we share an
    astonishing 98 percent of our DNA with them. And Goodall and other
    chimp researchers have carefully documented an endless stream of
    murders, cannibalism, and organized group violence among their
    subjects. Humans' evolutionary fate thus seemed sealed, smeared by the
    excesses of these first cousins.

    But all along there has been another chimp species, one traditionally
    ignored because of its small numbers; its habitat in remote,
    impenetrable rain forests; and the fact that its early chroniclers
    published in Japanese. These skinny little creatures were originally
    called "pygmy chimps" and were thought of as uninteresting, some sort
    of regressed subspecies of the real thing. Now known as bonobos, they
    are today recognized as a separate and distinct species that
    taxonomically and genetically is just as closely related to humans as
    the standard chimp. And boy, is this ever a different ape.

    Male bonobos are not particularly aggressive and lack the massive
    musculature typical of species that engage in a lot of fighting (such
    as the standard chimp). Moreover, the bonobo social system is female
    dominated, food is often shared, and there are well-developed means
    for reconciling social tensions. And then there is the sex.

    Bonobo sex is the prurient highlight of primatology conferences, and
    leads parents to shield their children's eyes when watching nature
    films. Bonobos have sex in every conceivable position and some
    seemingly inconceivable ones, in pairs and groups, between genders and
    within genders, to greet each other and to resolve conflicts, to work
    off steam after a predator scare, to celebrate finding food or to
    cajole its sharing, or just because. As the sound bite has it, chimps
    are from Mars and bonobos are from Venus.

    All is not perfect in the bonobo commune, and they still have
    hierarchies and conflict (why else invent conflict resolution?).
    Nonetheless, they are currently among the trendiest of species to
    analyze, a wonderful antidote to their hard-boiled relatives. The
    trouble is, while we have a pretty good sense of what bonobos are
    like, we have little insight into how they got that way. Furthermore,
    this is basically what all bonobos seem to be like -- a classic case
    of in-their-nature-ness. There is even recent evidence for a genetic
    component to the phenomenon, in that bonobos (but not chimps) possess
    a version of a gene that makes affiliative behavior (behavior that
    promotes group cohesion) more pleasurable to males. So -- a wondrous
    species (and one, predictably, teetering on the edge of extinction).
    But besides being useful for taking the wind out of we-be-chimps
    fatalists, the bonobo has little to say to us. We are not bonobos, and
    never can be.

    WARRIORS, COME OUT TO PLAY

    In contrast to the social life of bonobos, the social life of chimps
    is not pretty. Nor is that of rhesus monkeys, nor savanna baboons -- a
    species found in groups of 50 to 100 in the African grasslands and one
    I have studied for close to 30 years. Hierarchies among baboons are
    strict, as are their consequences. Among males, high rank is typically
    achieved by a series of successful violent challenges. Spoils, such as
    meat, are unevenly divided. Most males die of the consequences of
    violence, and roughly half of their aggression is directed at third
    parties (some high-ranking male in a bad mood takes it out on an
    innocent bystander, such as a female or a subordinate male).

    Male baboons, moreover, can fight amazingly dirty. I saw this happen a
    few years ago in one of the troops I study: Two males had fought, and
    one, having been badly trounced, assumed a crouching stance, with his
    rear end up in the air. This is universally recognized among savanna
    baboons as an abject gesture of subordination, signaling an end to the
    conflict, and the conventional response on the part of the victorious
    male is to subject the other to a ritualized gesture of dominance
    (such as mounting him). In this instance, however, the winner,
    approaching the loser as if to mount him, instead abruptly gave him a
    deep slash with his canines.

    A baboon group, in short, is an unlikely breeding ground for
    pacifists. Nevertheless, there are some interesting exceptions. In
    recent years, for example, it has been recognized that a certain
    traditional style of chest-thumping evolutionary thinking is wrong.
    According to the standard logic, males compete with one another
    aggressively in order to achieve and maintain a high rank, which will
    in turn enable them to dominate reproduction and thus maximize the
    number of copies of their genes that are passed on to the next
    generation. But although aggression among baboons does indeed have
    something to do with attaining a high rank, it turns out to have
    virtually nothing to do with maintaining it. Dominant males rarely are
    particularly aggressive, and those that are typically are on their way
    out: the ones that need to use it are often about to lose it. Instead,
    maintaining dominance requires social intelligence and impulse control
    -- the ability to form prudent coalitions, show some tolerance of
    subordinates, and ignore most provocations.

    Recent work, moreover, has demonstrated that females have something to
    say about which males get to pass on their genes. The traditional view
    was based on a "linear access" model of reproduction: if one female is
    in heat, the alpha male gets to mate with her; if two are in heat, the
    alpha male and the second-ranking male get their opportunity; and so
    on. Yet we now know that female baboons are pretty good at getting
    away from even champions of male-male competition if they want to and
    can sneak off instead with another male they actually desire. And who
    would that be? Typically, it is a male that has followed a different
    strategy of building affiliative relations with the female -- grooming
    her a lot, helping to take care of her kids, not beating her up. These
    nice-guy males seem to pass on at least as many copies of their genes
    as their more aggressive peers, not least because they can go like
    this for years, without the life-shortening burnout and injuries of
    the gladiators.

    And so the crude picture of combat as the sole path to evolutionary
    success is wrong. The average male baboon does opt for the combative
    route, but there are important phases of his life when aggression is
    less important than social intelligence and restraint, and there are
    evolutionarily fruitful alternative courses of action.

    Even within the bare-knuckle world of male-male aggression, we are now
    recognizing some surprising outposts of primate civility. For one
    thing, primates can make up after a fight. Such reconciliation was
    first described by Frans de Waal, of Emory University, in the early
    1980s; it has now been observed in some 27 different species of
    primates, including male chimps, and it works as it is supposed to,
    reducing the odds of further aggression between the two ex-combatants.
    And various primates, including male baboons, will sometimes
    cooperate, for example by supporting one another in a fight.
    Coalitions can involve reciprocity and even induce what appears to be
    a sense of justice or fairness. In a remarkable study by de Waal and
    one of his students, capuchin monkeys were housed in adjacent cages. A
    monkey could obtain food on its own (by pulling a tray of food toward
    its cage) or with help from a neighbor (by pulling a heavier tray
    together); in the latter case, only one of the monkeys was given
    access to the food in question. The monkeys that collaborated proved
    more likely to share it with their neighbor.

    Even more striking are lifelong patterns of cooperation among some
    male chimps, such as those that form bands of brothers. Among certain
    primate species, all the members of one gender will leave their home
    troop around puberty, thus avoiding the possibility of genetically
    deleterious inbreeding. Among chimps, the females leave home, and as a
    result, male chimps typically spend their lives in the company of
    close male relatives. Animal behaviorists steeped in game theory spend
    careers trying to figure out how reciprocal cooperation gets started
    among nonrelatives, but it is clear that stable reciprocity among
    relatives emerges readily.

    Thus, even the violent primates engage in reconciliation and
    cooperation -- but only up to a point. For starters, as noted in
    regard to the bonobo, there would be nothing to reconcile without
    violence and conflict in the first place. Furthermore, reconciliation
    is not universal: female savanna baboons are good at it, for example,
    but males are not. Most important, even among species and genders that
    do reconcile, it is not an indiscriminate phenomenon: individuals are
    more likely to reconcile with those who can be useful to them. This
    was demonstrated in a brilliant study by Marina Cords, of Columbia
    University, in which the value of some relationships among a type of
    macaque monkey was artificially raised. Animals were again caged next
    to each other under conditions in which they could obtain food by
    themselves or through cooperation, and those pairs that developed the
    capacity for cooperation were three times as likely to reconcile after
    induced aggression as noncooperators. Tension-reducing reconciliation,
    in other words, is most likely to occur among animals who already are
    in the habit of cooperating and have an incentive to keep doing so.

    Some deflating points emerge from the studies of cooperation as well,
    such as the fact that coalitions are notoriously unstable. In one
    troop of baboons I studied in the early 1980s, male-male coalitions
    lasted less than two days on average before collapsing, and most cases
    of such collapse involved one partner failing to reciprocate or, even
    more dramatically, defecting to the other side during a fight.
    finally, and most discouraging, is the use to which most coalitions
    are put. In theory, cooperation could trump individualism in order to,
    say, improve food gathering or defend against predators. In practice,
    two baboons that cooperate typically do so in order to make a third
    miserable.

    Goodall was the first to report the profoundly disquieting fact that
    bands of related male chimps carry out cooperative "border patrols" --
    searching along the geographic boundary separating their group from
    another and attacking neighboring males they encounter, even to the
    point of killing other groups off entirely. In-group cooperation can
    thus usher in not peace and tranquility, but rather more efficient
    extermination.

    So primate species with some of the most aggressive and stratified
    social systems have been seen to cooperate and resolve conflicts --
    but not consistently, not necessarily for benign purposes, and not in
    a cumulative way that could lead to some fundamentally non-Hobbesian
    social outcomes. The lesson appears to be not that violent primates
    can transcend their natures, but merely that the natures of these
    species are subtler and more multifaceted than previously thought. At
    least that was the lesson until quite recently.

    OLD PRIMATES AND NEW TRICKS

    To some extent, the age-old "nature versus nurture" debate is silly.
    The action of genes is completely intertwined with the environment in
    which they function; in a sense, it is pointless to even discuss what
    gene X does, and we should consider instead only what gene X does in
    environment Y. Nonetheless, if one had to predict the behavior of some
    organism on the basis of only one fact, one might still want to know
    whether the most useful fact would be about genetics or about the
    environment.

    The first two studies to show that primates were somewhat independent
    from their "natures" involved a classic technique in behavioral
    genetics called cross-fostering. Suppose some animal has engaged in a
    particular behavior for generations -- call it behavior A. We want to
    know if that behavior is due to shared genes or to a
    multigenerationally shared environment. Researchers try to answer the
    question by cross-fostering the animal, that is, switching the
    animal's mother at birth so that she is raised by one with behavior B,
    and then watching to see which behavior the animal displays when she
    grows up. One problem with this approach is that an animal's
    environment does not begin at birth -- a fetus shares a very intimate
    environment with its mother, namely the body's circulation, chock-full
    of hormones and nutrients that can cause lifelong changes in brain
    function and behavior. Therefore, the approach can be applied only
    asymmetrically: if a behavior persists in a new environment, one
    cannot conclude that genes are the cause, but if a behavior changes in
    a new environment, then one can conclude that genes are not the cause.
    This is where the two studies come in.

    In the early 1970s, a highly respected primatologist named Hans Kummer
    was working in Ethiopia, in a region containing two species of baboons
    with markedly different social systems. Savanna baboons live in large
    troops, with plenty of adult females and males. Hamadryas baboons, in
    contrast, have a more complex, multilevel society. Because they live
    in a much harsher, drier region, hamadryas have a distinctive
    ecological problem. Some resources are singular and scarce -- like a
    rare watering hole or a good cliff face to sleep on at night in order
    to evade predators -- and large numbers of animals are likely to want
    to share them. Other resources, such as the vegetation they eat, are
    sparse and widely dispersed, requiring animals to function in small,
    separate groups. As a result, hamadryas have evolved a "harem"
    structure -- a single adult male surrounded by a handful of adult
    females and their children -- with large numbers of discrete harems
    converging, peacefully, for short periods at the occasional desirable
    watering hole or cliff face.

    Kummer conducted a simple experiment, trapping an adult female savanna
    baboon and releasing her into a hamadryas troop and trapping an adult
    female hamadryas and releasing her into a savanna troop. Among
    hamadryas, if a male threatens a female, it is almost certainly this
    brute who dominates the harem, and the only way for the female to
    avoid injury is to approach him -- i.e., return to the fold. But among
    savanna baboons, if a male threatens a female, the way for her to
    avoid injury is to run away. In Kummer's experiment, the females who
    were dropped in among a different species initially carried out their
    species-typical behavior, a major faux pas in the new neighborhood.
    But gradually, they assimilated the new rules. How long did this
    learning take? About an hour. In other words, millennia of genetic
    differences separating the two species, a lifetime of experience with
    a crucial social rule for each female, and a miniscule amount of time
    to reverse course completely.

    The second experiment was set up by de Waal and his student Denise
    Johanowicz in the early 1990s, working with two macaque monkey
    species. By any human standards, male rhesus macaques are unappealing
    animals. Their hierarchies are rigid, those at the top seize a
    disproportionate share of the spoils, they enforce this inequity with
    ferocious aggression, and they rarely reconcile after fights. Male
    stump tail macaques, in contrast, which share almost all of their
    genes with their rhesus macaque cousins, display much less aggression,
    more affiliative behaviors, looser hierarchies, and more
    egalitarianism.

    Working with captive primates, de Waal and Johanowicz created a
    mixed-sex social group of juvenile macaques, combining rhesus and
    stump tails together. Remarkably, instead of the rhesus macaques
    bullying the stump tails, over the course of a few months, the rhesus
    males adopted the stump tails' social style, eventually even matching
    the stump tails' high rates of reconciliatory behavior. It so happens,
    moreover, that stump tails and rhesus macaques use different gestures
    when reconciling. The rhesus macaques in the study did not start using
    the stump tails' reconciliatory gestures, but rather increased the
    incidence of their own species-typical gestures. In other words, they
    were not merely imitating the stump tails' behavior; they were
    incorporating the concept of frequent reconciliation into their own
    social practices. When the newly warm-and-fuzzy rhesus macaques were
    returned to a larger, all-rhesus group, finally, their new behavioral
    style persisted.

    This is nothing short of extraordinary. But it brings up one last
    question: When those rhesus macaques were transferred back into the
    all-rhesus world, did they spread their insights and behaviors to the
    others? Alas, they did not. For that, we need to move on to our final
    case.

    LEFT BEHIND

    In the early 1980s, "Forest Troop," a group of savanna baboons I had
    been studying -- virtually living with -- for years, was going about
    its business in a national park in Kenya when a neighboring baboon
    group had a stroke of luck: its territory encompassed a tourist lodge
    that expanded its operations and consequently the amount of food
    tossed into its garbage dump. Baboons are omnivorous, and "Garbage
    Dump Troop" was delighted to feast on leftover drumsticks, half-eaten
    hamburgers, remnants of chocolate cake, and anything else that wound
    up there. Soon they had shifted to sleeping in the trees immediately
    above the pit, descending each morning just in time for the day's
    dumping of garbage. (They soon got quite obese from the rich diet and
    lack of exercise, but that is another story.)

    The development produced nearly as dramatic a shift in the social
    behavior of Forest Troop. Each morning, approximately half of its
    adult males would infiltrate Garbage Dump Troop's territory,
    descending on the pit in time for the day's dumping and battling the
    resident males for access to the garbage. The Forest Troop males that
    did this shared two traits: they were particularly combative (which
    was necessary to get the food away from the other baboons), and they
    were not very interested in socializing (the raids took place early in
    the morning, during the hours when the bulk of a savanna baboon's
    daily communal grooming occurs).

    Soon afterward, tuberculosis, a disease that moves with devastating
    speed and severity in nonhuman primates, broke out in Garbage Dump
    Troop. Over the next year, most of its members died, as did all of the
    males from Forest Troop who had foraged at the dump.[See Footnote #1]
    The results were that Forest Troop was left with males who were less
    aggressive and more social than average and the troop now had double
    its previous female-to-male ratio.

    The social consequences of these changes were dramatic. There remained
    a hierarchy among the Forest Troop males, but it was far looser than
    before: compared with other, more typical savanna baboon groups,
    high-ranking males rarely harassed subordinates and occasionally even
    relinquished contested resources to them. Aggression was less
    frequent, particularly against third parties. And rates of affiliative
    behaviors, such as males and females grooming each other or sitting
    together, soared. There were even instances, now and then, of adult
    males grooming each other -- a behavior nearly as unprecedented as
    baboons sprouting wings.

    This unique social milieu did not arise merely as a function of the
    skewed sex ratio; other primatologists have occasionally reported on
    troops with similar ratios but without a comparable social atmosphere.
    What was key was not just the predominance of females, but the type of
    male that remained. The demographic disaster -- what evolutionary
    biologists term a "selective bottleneck" -- had produced a savanna
    baboon troop quite different from what most experts would have
    anticipated.

    But the largest surprise did not come until some years later. Female
    savanna baboons spend their lives in the troop into which they are
    born, whereas males leave their birth troop around puberty; a troop's
    adult males have thus all grown up elsewhere and immigrated as
    adolescents. By the early 1990s, none of the original low
    aggression/high affiliation males of Forest Troop's tuberculosis
    period was still alive; all of the group's adult males had joined
    after the epidemic. Despite this, the troop's unique social milieu
    persisted -- as it does to this day, some 20 years after the selective
    bottleneck.In other words, adolescent males that enter Forest Troop
    after having grown up elsewhere wind up adopting the unique behavioral
    style of the resident males. As defined by both anthropologists and
    animal behaviorists, "culture" consists of local behavioral
    variations, occurring for nongenetic and nonecological reasons, that
    last beyond the time of their originators. Forest Troop's low
    aggression/high affiliation society constitutes nothing less than a
    multigenerational benign culture.

    Continuous study of the troop has yielded some insights into how its
    culture is transmitted to newcomers. Genetics obviously plays no role,
    nor apparently does self-selection: adolescent males that transfer
    into the troop are no different from those that transfer into other
    troops, displaying on arrival similarly high rates of aggression and
    low rates of affiliation. Nor is there evidence that new males are
    taught to act in benign ways by the residents. One cannot rule out the
    possibility that some observational learning is occurring, but it is
    difficult to detect given that the distinctive feature of this culture
    is not the performance of a unique behavior but the performance of
    typical behaviors at atypically extreme rates.

    To date, the most interesting hint about the mechanism of transmission
    is the way recently transferred males are treated by Forest Troop's
    resident females. In a typical savanna baboon troop, newly transferred
    adolescent males spend years slowly working their way into the social
    fabric; they are extremely low ranking -- ignored by females and noted
    by adult males only as convenient targets for aggression. In Forest
    Troop, by contrast, new male transfers are inundated with female
    attention soon after their arrival. Resident females first present
    themselves sexually to new males an average of 18 days after the males
    arrive, and they first groom the new males an average of 20 days after
    they arrive (normal savanna baboons introduce such behaviors after 63
    and 78 days, respectively). Furthermore, these welcoming gestures
    occur more frequently in Forest Troop during the early post-transfer
    period, and there is four times as much grooming of males by females
    in Forest Troop as elsewhere. From almost the moment they arrive, in
    other words, new males find out that in Forest Troop, things are done
    differently.

    At present, I think the most plausible explanation is that this
    troop's special culture is not passed on actively but simply emerges,
    facilitated by the actions of the resident members. Living in a group
    with half the typical number of males, and with the males being nice
    guys to boot, Forest Troop's females become more relaxed and less
    wary. As a result, they are more willing to take a chance and reach
    out socially to new arrivals, even if the new guys are typical jerky
    adolescents at first. The new males, in turn, finding themselves
    treated so well, eventually relax and adopt the behaviors of the
    troop's distinctive social milieu.

    NATURAL BORN KILLERS?

    Are there any lessons to be learned here that can be applied to
    human-on-human violence -- apart, that is, from the possible
    desirability of giving fatal cases of tuberculosis to aggressive
    people?

    Any biological anthropologist opining about human behavior is required
    by long-established tradition to note that for 99 percent of human
    history, humans lived in small, stable bands of related
    hunter-gatherers. Game theorists have shown that a small, cohesive
    group is the perfect setting for the emergence of cooperation: the
    identities of the other participants are known, there are
    opportunities for multiple iterations of games (and thus the ability
    to punish cheaters), and there is open-book play (players can acquire
    reputations). And so, those hunter-gatherer bands were highly
    egalitarian. Empirical and experimental data have also shown the
    cooperative advantages of small groups at the opposite human extreme,
    namely in the corporate world.

    But the lack of violence within small groups can come at a heavy
    price. Small homogenous groups with shared values can be a nightmare
    of conformity. They can also be dangerous for outsiders. Unconsciously
    emulating the murderous border patrols of closely related male chimps,
    militaries throughout history have sought to form small, stable units;
    inculcate them with rituals of pseudokinship; and thereby produce
    efficient, cooperative killing machines.

    Is it possible to achieve the cooperative advantages of a small group
    without having the group reflexively view outsiders as the Other? One
    way is through trade. Voluntary economic exchanges not only produce
    profits; they can also reduce social friction -- as the macaques
    demonstrated by being more likely to reconcile with a valued partner
    in food acquisition.

    Another way is through a fission-fusion social structure, in which the
    boundaries between groups are not absolute and impermeable. The model
    here is not the multilevel society of the hamadryas baboons, both
    because their basic social unit of the harem is despotic and because
    their fusion consists of nothing more than lots of animals
    occasionally coming together to utilize a resource peacefully. Human
    hunter-gatherers are a better example to follow, in that their small
    bands often merge, split, or exchange members for a while, with such
    fluidity helping to solve not only environmental resource problems but
    social problems as well. The result is that instead of the
    all-or-nothing world of male chimps, in which there is only one's own
    group and the enemy, hunter-gatherers can enjoy gradations of
    familiarity and cooperation stretching over large areas.

    The interactions among hunter-gatherers resemble those of other
    networks, where there are individual nodes (in this case, small
    groups) and where the majority of interactions between the nodes are
    local ones, with the frequency of interactions dropping off as a
    function of distance. Mathematicians have shown that when the ratios
    among short-, middle-, and long-distance interactions are optimal,
    networks are robust: they are dominated by highly cooperative clusters
    of local interactions, but they also retain the potential for less
    frequent, long-distance communication and coordination.

    Optimizing the fission-fusion interactions of hunter-gatherer networks
    is easy: cooperate within the band; schedule frequent joint hunts with
    the next band over; have occasional hunts with bands somewhat farther
    out; have a legend of a single shared hunt with a mythic band at the
    end of the earth. Optimizing the fission-fusion interactions in
    contemporary human networks is vastly harder, but the principles are
    the same.

    In exploring these subjects, one often encounters a pessimism built
    around the notion that humans, as primates, are hard-wired for
    xenophobia. Some brain-imaging studies have appeared to support this
    view in a particularly discouraging way. There is a structure deep
    inside the brain called the amygdala, which plays a key role in fear
    and aggression, and experiments have shown that when subjects are
    presented with a face of someone from a different race, the amygdala
    gets metabolically active -- aroused, alert, ready for action. This
    happens even when the face is presented "subliminally," which is to
    say, so rapidly that the subject does not consciously see it.

    More recent studies, however, should mitigate this pessimism. Test a
    person who has a lot of experience with people of different races, and
    the amygdala does not activate. Or, as in a wonderful experiment by
    Susan Fiske, of Princeton University, subtly bias the subject
    beforehand to think of people as individuals rather than as members of
    a group, and the amygdala does not budge. Humans may be hard-wired to
    get edgy around the Other, but our views on who falls into that
    category are decidedly malleable.

    In the early 1960s, a rising star of primatology, Irven DeVore, of
    Harvard University, published the first general overview of the
    subject. Discussing his own specialty, savanna baboons, he wrote that
    they "have acquired an aggressive temperament as a defense against
    predators, and aggressiveness cannot be turned on and off like a
    faucet. It is an integral part of the monkeys' personalities, so
    deeply rooted that it makes them potential aggressors in every
    situation." Thus the savanna baboon became, literally, a textbook
    example of life in an aggressive, highly stratified, male-dominated
    society. Yet within a few years, members of the species demonstrated
    enough behavioral plasticity to transform a society of theirs into a
    baboon utopia.

    The first half of the twentieth century was drenched in the blood
    spilled by German and Japanese aggression, yet only a few decades
    later it is hard to think of two countries more pacific. Sweden spent
    the seventeenth century rampaging through Europe, yet it is now an
    icon of nurturing tranquility. Humans have invented the small nomadic
    band and the continental megastate, and have demonstrated a
    flexibility whereby uprooted descendants of the former can function
    effectively in the latter. We lack the type of physiology or anatomy
    that in other mammals determine their mating system, and have come up
    with societies based on monogamy, polygyny, and polyandry. And we have
    fashioned some religions in which violent acts are the entr?e to
    paradise and other religions in which the same acts consign one to
    hell. Is a world of peacefully coexisting human Forest Troops
    possible? Anyone who says, "No, it is beyond our nature," knows too
    little about primates, including ourselves.

    [Footnote #1] Considerable sleuthing ultimately revealed that the
    disease had come from tainted meat in the garbage dump, which had been
    sold to the tourist lodge thanks to a corrupt meat inspector. The
    studies were the first of this kind of outbreak in a wild primate
    population and showed that, in contrast to what happens with humans
    and captive primates, there was little animal-to-animal transmission
    of the tuberculosis, and so the disease did not spread in Forest Troop
    beyond the garbage eaters.

From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 12 18:48:18 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:48:18 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Live Science: Link Between Dancing Ability and Mating
	Quality
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312157550.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Science: Link Between Dancing Ability and Mating Quality
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/051221_dance_symmetry.html
Symmetrical People Make Better Dancers
By Ker Than
posted: 21 December 2005

[Joel Garreau's new book, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of 
Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies--and What It Means to be Human_ (NY: Doubleday, 
2005) has just arrived. I am signed up to review it for _The Journal of 
Evolution and Technology_ and commenced reading it at once. Accordingly, I have 
stopped grabbing articles to forward until I have written my review *and* have 
caught up on my reading, this last going on for how many ever weeks it takes. I 
have a backlog of articles to send and will exhaust them by the end of the 
year. After that, I have a big batch of journal articles I downloaded on my 
annual visit to the University of Virginia and will dole our conversions from 
PDF to TXT at the rate of one a day. I'll also participate in discussions and 
do up and occasional meme. But you'll be on your own in analyzing the news. I 
hope I have given you some of the tools to do so.]

Many people are attracted to hot dancers, and a new study suggests part of the 
reason is because their bodies are more symmetrical than those of the less 
coordinated.

The researchers found that men judged to be better dancers tended to have a 
higher degree of body symmetry, a factor that has been linked to overall 
attractiveness and health in other research .

The new study involved 183 Jamaican teenagers, ranging between 14-19 years old, 
who danced while their movements were captured using motion-capture cameras 
similar to those used in video games and movies to give computer-generated 
characters fluid movements.

Women watching the recordings preferred the dances of men who were more 
symmetrical, while men were more impressed by the dances of more symmetric 
females.

Women are pickier

Interestingly, the male preference for symmetric females was not as strong as 
that of the female preference for symmetric males. This seems to confirm the 
theory that women are pickier when selecting a mate, since they bear most of 
the burden of raising a child, the researchers say.

According to the researchers, their study is the first of its type.

Regular videotape or film can't separate the dance from what the people look 
like, said study member Lee Cronk, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in 
New Jersey. "With motion capture, we can do that and get just pure dance 
movements."

All of us have asymmetries in our bodies. The index finger on one hand might be 
longer than the other, for example, or the left foot may be slightly larger 
than the right. Researchers call these fluctuating asymmetries, or FA.

According to one hypothesis, FA is an indicator of an individual's ability to 
cope with the stresses and pressures associated with body development.

"As you're developing, all sorts of things come at you, like diseases and 
injury," Cronk told LiveScience. "If you're able to develop symmetry despite 
all of that, then that would indicate to others that you have what it takes to 
make a go of it in that environment."

Body advertising

A high degree of body symmetry serves as a subtle advertisement of genetic 
quality and health, the thinking goes.

While most people don't go around measuring and comparing body parts of 
potential mates, it's thought that we pick up on these cues subconsciously. The 
idea that there is an association between body symmetry and health comes from 
various animal and human studies. Peahens and barn swallows prefer males with 
more symmetrical tails. One study found that women experience more orgasms 
during sex with male partners whose features are more symmetrical, regardless 
of the level of romantic attachment or the sexual experience of the guy.

What's any of this got to do with dancing?

The researchers speculate that higher body symmetry might also indicate better 
neuromuscular coordination. This may influence dance ability since attractive 
dances can be more rhythmic and more difficult to perform.

The study, led by William Brown of Rutgers, was detailed in the Dec. 22 issue 
of the journal Nature.


From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 12 18:48:30 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:48:30 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Live Science: Scientists Predict What You'll Think of
	Next
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312158050.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Scientists Predict What You'll Think of Next
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/051222_mental_brain.html
By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 22 December 2005
02:00 pm ET

[Joel Garreau's new book, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of 
Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies--and What It Means to be Human_ (NY: Doubleday, 
2005) has just arrived. I am signed up to review it for _The Journal of 
Evolution and Technology_ and commenced reading it at once. Accordingly, I have 
stopped grabbing articles to forward until I have written my review *and* have 
caught up on my reading, this last going on for how many ever weeks it takes. I 
have a backlog of articles to send and will exhaust them by the end of the 
year. After that, I have a big batch of journal articles I downloaded on my 
annual visit to the University of Virginia and will dole our conversions from 
PDF to TXT at the rate of one a day. I'll also participate in discussions and 
do up and occasional meme. But you'll be on your own in analyzing the news. I 
hope I have given you some of the tools to do so.]

To recall memories, your brain travels back in time via the ultimate Google 
search, according to a new study in which scientists found they can monitor the 
activity and actually predict what you'll think of next.

The work bolsters the validity of a longstanding hypothesis that the human 
brain takes itself back to the state it was in when a memory was first formed.

The psychologist Endel Tulving dubbed this process "mental time travel."

How it works

Researchers analyzed brain scans of people as the test subjects watched 
pictures on a computer screen. The images were divided into three categories: 
celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Halle Berry, places like the Taj Mahal and 
the Grand Canyon, and everyday objects like tweezers and a pocket mirror.

To make sure the subjects were paying attention, they were asked a question 
about each image as it came up, like whether they liked a certain celebrity, 
how much they wanted to visit a certain place or how often they used a certain 
object.

Later, without any images and while their brains were still being scanned, the 
subjects were asked to recall as many of the images as they could.

The researchers found that the patterns of brain activity associated with each 
picture "reinstated" themselves seconds before the people could verbally recall 
the memories. On average, the time between beginning brain activity associated 
with the memory and the subjects verbally stating the memory was about 5.4 
seconds.

"When you have an experience, that experience is represented as a pattern of 
cortical activity," explained Sean Polyn, a postdoctoral researcher at the 
University of Pennsylvania and leader of the study. "The memory system, which 
we think lives in the hippocampus, forms a sort of summary representation of 
everything that's going on in your cortex."

Googling your brain

The process can be compared to the way web crawlers work to browse and 
catalogue web pages on the Internet. Web crawlers are automated programs that 
create copies of all visited pages. Search engines like Google then tag and 
index the pages.

In the same way, as we're trying to remember something, our brains dredge up 
the memory by first recalling a piece of it, scientists say.

When trying to remember a face you saw recently, for example, you might first 
think broadly about faces and then narrow your search from there, enlisting new 
details as you go, Polyn explained. It's like adding more and more specific 
keywords to a Google search, until finally you find what you want.

Scientists call this process "contextual reinstatement."

"The memories that came up would be hits and the ones that most match your 
queries would be the ones that came up first," Polyn told LiveScience.

Reading your mind

The researchers were even able to do a little mind-reading by watching the 
search in progress.

By comparing the brain scans of the subjects while they tried to remember the 
images they'd seen with those collected when they first viewed the images, the 
researchers were able to correctly conclude whether the people were going to 
remember a celebrity, place or object.

"We can see some evidence of what category the subject is trying to recall 
before they even say anything, so we think we're visualizing the search process 
itself," Polyn said.

A similar mind-reading effort was announced earlier this year, when researchers 
found they could predict where a patient would move his hand based on brain 
activity the instant prior.

Scientists think that contextual reinstatement is unique to memories that 
involve personal experiences, so-called "episodic" memories, but that similar 
processes might be at work in other forms of memory.

The study was detailed in the Dec. 23 issue of the journal Science.


From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 12 19:23:21 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 14:23:21 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Atlas Sphere: Indict the New York Times
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601121354420.4814@panix1.panix.com>

Indict the New York Times
http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/printer_050111-holzer-indict-nytimes.php

[Go ahead and critique, folks. I'll send out your thoughts, unless you 
specifically ask me not to. It's not clear to me how our "national 
security" was compromised. Aren't the citizens part of this "nation," 
and didn't Amendment IV speak of the "right of the people to be SECURE in 
their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable 
searches and seizures"? Or does the "nation's" security extend only to our 
rulers?

[So it is unclear whether the Espionage Act violates the Bill of Rights, 
even if past Supreme Courts have allowed certain somewhat similar powers. 
And did Congress intend the Bush administration to do what it did? Or is 
the intention of Congress something the Executive Branch can determine for 
itself at will? Is the United States a nation of laws (Congress) or of 
Presidential decrees? It is also unclear to me whether the Bush 
administration violated the laws governing the NSA.

[Share with me your other objections. Basically, domestic spying is open 
to serious abuses and it must be checked. I have not been following the 
details and so don't know just how various members of Congress have
reacted, but it's had not been one of ringing endorsement.

[Mr. Jefferson said if he had to choose between newspapers and no 
government or government and no newspapers, he would unhesitatingly choose 
the latter.

[I don't know what restrictions on the press I would allow in the unlikely 
event that the United States got into a war justifiably. Help!]

[And just how did Hanoi Jane jeopardize our national security? Did it mean 
that North Vietnam was more likely to invade the United States? She was 
hardly the only critic of our foreign policy.]

Opinion Editorial
Indict the New York Times
By Henry Mark Holzer
Jan 10, 2006

It is an article of faith on the Left and among its fellow
travelers that the Bush administration stole two elections, made
war on Iraq for venal reasons, tortured hapless foreigners, and
conducted illegal surveillance of innocent Americans.

A corollary of this mindset is that the press, primarily the
Washington Post and The New York Times, has a right, indeed a duty,
to print whatever they want about the administration even if the
information compromises national security.

Not true. The press is not exempt from laws that apply to everyone
else. The press is not exempt from laws protecting our national
security. The New York Times is not exempt from the Espionage Act,
as we shall see in a moment.

But first, its necessary to understand what an indictment of the
Times does not involve.

First, an Espionage Act indictment of The New York Times would not
even remotely constitute an attack on a free press. As Justice
White wrote in Branzburg v. Hayes, [i]t would be frivolous to
assert ... that the First Amendment, in the interest of securing
news or otherwise, confers a license on either the reporter or his
news sources to violate valid criminal laws.

Nor would an indictment of the Times constitute an attempt to
restrain it from publishing news. The anti-anti-terrorists who seek
to justify the Times revealing the NSAs domestic surveillance
program and thus prevent their flagship paper from being indicted,
rely on a Supreme Court decision entitled New York Times Company v.
United States, better known as the Pentagon Papers Case. Their
reliance is misplaced.

In 1971 a disgruntled anti-war activist delivered a classified
study History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Viet Nam Policy to
The New York Times and the Washington Post. The government sued to
enjoin publication seeking to impose a prior restraint.

If there are any fundamental principles in modern First Amendment
law, one is that the burden on government to restrain publication
(as compared, for example, with later punishing its publication) is
extremely heavy. Accordingly, in a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled
for the newspapers, and the publication of the embarrassing
Pentagon Papers went ahead.

Thus, New York Times Company v. United States, where the Court
rejected a government-sought prior restraint on publication, would
have no precedential value in a case where, after publication, the
government sought to punish the Times for violating the Espionage
Act.

Third, not only was there no legal impediment to the NSAs domestic
surveillance program, there was abundant authority for it. The
President possesses broad powers as chief executive and Commander
in Chief under Article II of the Constitution. Congress has
repeatedly delegated to all presidents considerable war-related
powers, and especially post-9/11 to President Bush.

It was Congress that created and empowered the National Security
Agency. The Executive Branchs NSA domestic surveillance program,
aimed at obtaining intelligence about the foreign-based terrorist
war on the United States, was/is an integral element of our
national security policy and its implementation. No Supreme Court
decision has ever held that the
Presidential/Congressionally-sanctioned acquisition of that kind of
intelligence was constitutionally or otherwise prohibited.

Accordingly, it is pointless to consider whether the NSAs domestic
surveillance program was legal. It was! If a case involving that
program ever reaches the Supreme Court, thats what its ruling will
be.

Fourth, the interesting history of the Espionage Act is irrelevant
to whether the Times may have violated it.

Finally, it is a waste of time to consider whether the Act is
constitutional. It has been expressly and impliedly held
constitutional more than once.

This brings us to whether The New York Times is indictable (and
ultimately convictable) for violating the Espionage Act.

The facts are clear. The NSA was engaged in highly classified
warrantless wiretaps of domestic subjects in connection with the
War on Terror, and the Times, a private newspaper, made that
information public.

It is to those facts that the Espionage Act either applies, or does
not apply.

Title 18, Section 793 of the United States Code, provides that (e)
Whoever having unauthorized possession of ... any document ... or
information relating to the national defense which information the
possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the
United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully
communicates ... the same to any person not entitled to receive it
... (f) ... [s]hall be fined under this title or imprisoned not
more than ten years, or both. (g) If two or more persons conspire
to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one
or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the
conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject
to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of
such conspiracy. (Section 794 is inapplicable. It deals with
gathering or delivering defense information to aid [a] foreign
government.)

It is, said the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit in assessing Section 793 (e) in United States v. Morison,
difficult to conceive of any language more definite and clear.
Lets break down the statute into its component parts.

Whoever: this would mean the New York Times company, publisher
Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., editor Bill Keller, and anyone else privy
to the information upon which the story was based.

Having unauthorized possession: the information was classified, and
the Times was not authorized to have it.

Of any document ... or information: certainly the Times had
information, because it published it; it is inconceivable that the
newspaper did not have documents of some kind, because the
newspaper would never have gone that far out on a limb without at
least some corroboration beyond an oral report(s).

Relating to the national defense: no comment is necessary; indeed,
the Times has conceded that targets of the warrantless wiretaps
were persons who may have had some connection to terrorists.

Which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used
to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any
foreign nation: obviously the Times had reason to believe, because
it withheld the story for a year.

Willfully communicates ... the same: no comment is necessary; the
story was front-page news.

To any person not entitled to receive it: even the Times cant argue
that subway straphangers, or any other member of the public, was
entitled to receive information about the classified operations
about one of this countrys most secret and highly protected
agencies.

Several years ago Erika Holzer and I wrote a book entitled [1]Aid
and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, which proved that her
conduct in Hanoi made her indictable for, and convictable of,
treason. We discovered that she was not indicted because of a
political failure of will by the Nixon administration.

To summarize a chapter of our book, suffice to say that the
government was afraid to indict a popular anti-war actress who had
the support of the radical left. Even today, three decades after
Fondas trip to North Vietnam and three years after the publication
of our book, we receive countless letters lamenting that Hanoi Jane
was never punished for her conduct.

We tell them that its too late, that any possibility of seeing
justice done for Fondas traitorous conduct is long gone. That is
all the more reason why those of us who remember the Fonda episode,
and who understand the nature and importance of todays War on
Terror, should not rest until the government calls to account The
New York Times in a court of law, with an indictment and hopefully
a conviction, under the Espionage Act.

[2]Henry Mark Holzer is a professor emeritus at Brooklyn Law School
and a constitutional and appellate lawyer. He provided legal
representation to Ayn Rand on a variety of matters in the 1960s.
His latest book, Keeper of the Flame: The Supreme Court
Jurisprudence of Justice Clarence Thomas, will be published later
this year.
? Copyright 2004-5 by The Atlasphere LLC

References

1. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=theatlasphere-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F078641247X
2. http://www.theatlasphere.com/directory/profile.php?id=12095

From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 12 19:24:21 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 14:24:21 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] BBS: (Mealey) The Sociobiology of Sociopathy
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312152570.28612@panix3.panix.com>

The Sociobiology of Sociopathy
http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/05/20/bbs00000520-00/bbs.mealey.html

Below is the unedited preprint (not a quotable final draft) of:
Mealey, L. (1995). The sociobiology of sociopathy: An integrated
evolutionary model. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (3): 523-599.
The final published draft of the target article, commentaries and
Author's Response are currently available only in paper.

  Linda Mealey
  Department of Psychology
  College of St. Benedict
  St. Joseph, MN 56374

Keywords

sociobiology, sociopathy, psychopathy, antisocial personality,
evolution, criminal behavior, game theory, emotion, moral development,
facultative strategies

Abstract

Sociopaths are "outstanding" members of society in two senses:
politically, they command attention because of the inordinate amount
of crime they commit, and psychologically, they elicit fascination
because most of us cannot fathom the cold, detached way they
repeatedly harm and manipulate others. Proximate explanations from
behavior genetics, child development, personality theory, learning
theory, and social psychology describe a complex interaction of
genetic and physiological risk factors with demographic and
micro-environmental variables that predispose a portion of the
population to chronic antisocial behavior. Recent evolutionary and
game theoretic models have tried to present an ultimate explanation of
sociopathy as the expression of a frequency-dependent life history
strategy which is selected, in dynamic equilibrium, in response to
certain varying environmental circumstances. This target article tries
to integrate the proximate, developmental models with the ultimate,
evolutionary ones. Two developmentally different etiologies of
sociopathy emerge from two different evolutionary mechanisms. Social
strategies for minimizing the incidence of sociopathic behavior in
modern society should consider the two different etiologies and the
factors which contribute to them.
   _________________________________________________________________

Sociopaths, who comprise only 3-4% of the male population and less
than 1% of the female population (Strauss & Lahey 1984, Davison and
Neale 1994, Robins, Tipp & Przybeck 1991), are thought to account for
approximately 20% of the United States' prison population (Hare 1993)
and between 33% and 80% of the population of chronic criminal
offenders (Mednick, Kirkegaard-Sorensen, Hutchings, Knop, Rosenberg &
Schulsinger 1977, Hare 1980, Harpending & Sobus 1987). Furthermore,
whereas the "typical" U.S. burglar is estimated to have committed a
median five crimes per year before being apprehended, chronic
offenders- those most likely to be sociopaths- report committing
upward of fifty crimes per annum and sometimes as many as two or three
hundred (Blumstein & Cohen 1987). Collectively, these individuals are
thought to account for over 50% of all crimes in the U.S. (Loeber
1982; Mednick, Gabrielli & Hutchings 1987, Hare 1993).

Whether criminal or not, sociopaths typically exhibit what is generally 
considered to be irresponsible and unreliable behavior; their attributes 
include egocentrism, an inability to form lasting personal commitments and 
a marked degree of impulsivity. Underlying a superficial veneer of 
sociability and charm, sociopaths are characterized by a deficit of the 
social emotions (love, shame, guilt, empathy, and remorse). On the other 
hand, they are not intellectually handicapped, and are often able to 
deceive and manipulate others through elaborate scams and ruses including 
fraud, bigamy, embezzlement, and other crimes which rely on the trust and 
cooperation of others. The sociopath is "aware of the discrepancy between 
his behavior and societal expectations, but he seems to be neither guided 
by the possibility of such a discrepancy, nor disturbed by its occurrence" 
(Widom 1976a, p 614). This cold- hearted and selfish approach to human 
interaction at one time garnered for sociopathy the moniker "moral 
insanity" (McCord 1983, Davison & Neale 1990).

Sociopaths are also sometimes known as psychopaths or antisocial 
personalities. Unfortunately, the literature reflects varied uses of these 
three terms (Hare 1970, Feldman 1977, McCord 1983, Wolf 1987, Eysenck 
1987). Some authors use one or another term as a categorical label, as in 
psychiatric diagnosis or in defining distinct personality "types"; an 
example is the "antisocial personality" disorder described in the 
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association 
(1987). Other authors use the terms to refer to individuals who exhibit, 
to a large degree, a set of behaviors or personality attributes which are 
found in a continuous, normal distribution among the population at large; 
an example of such usage is "sociopathy" as defined by high scores on all 
three scales of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire- extraversion, 
neuroticism, and psychoticism (Eysenck 1977, 1987).

Other authors make a distinction between "simple" and "hostile" (Allen, 
Lindner, Goldman & Dinitz 1971), or "primary" and "secondary" psychopaths 
or sociopaths (Fagan & Lira 1980), reserving the term "simple" or 
"primary" for those individuals characterized by a complete lack of the 
social emotions; individuals who exhibit antisocial behavior in the 
absence of this emotional deficit are called "hostile" or "secondary" 
psychopaths or sociopaths, or even "pseudopsychopaths" (McCord 1983). 
Other authors also make a typological distinction, using the term 
"psychopath" to refer to anti-social individuals who are of relatively 
high intelligence and middle to upper socio-economic status and who 
express their aberrant behavior in impressive and sometimes socially 
skilled behavior which may or may not be criminal, such as insider trading 
on the stock market (e.g. Bartol 1984). These authors reserve the term 
"sociopath" for those antisocial persons who have relatively low 
intelligence and social skills or who come from the lower socio- economic 
stratum and express their antisocial nature in the repeated commission of 
violent crime or crimes of property.

I will begin by using the single term "sociopath" inclusively. However, by 
the end of the paper I hope to convince the reader that the distinction 
between primary and secondary sociopaths is an important one because there 
are two different etiological paths to sociopathy, with differing 
implications for prevention and treatment.

My basic premise is that sociopaths are designed for the successful
execution of social deception and that they are the product of
evolutionary pressures which, through a complex interaction of
environmental and genetic factors, lead some individuals to pursue a
life history strategy of manipulative and predatory social
interactions. On the basis of game theoretic models this strategy is
to be expected in the population at relatively low frequencies in a
demographic pattern consistent with what we see in contemporary
societies. It is also expected to appear preferentially under certain
social, environmental, and developmental circumstances which I hope to
delineate.

In an effort to present an integrated model, I will use a variety of
arguments and data from the literature in sociobiology, game theory,
behavior genetics, child psychology, personality theory, learning
theory, and social psychology. I will argue that: (1) there is a
genetic predisposition underlying sociopathy which is normally
distributed in the population; (2) as the result of selection to fill
a small, frequency-dependent, evolutionary niche, a small, fixed
percentage of individuals- those at the extreme of this continuum-
will be deemed "morally insane" in any culture; (3) a variable
percentage of individuals who are less extreme on the continuum will
sometimes, in response to environmental conditions during their early
development, pursue a life-history strategy that is similar to that of
their "morally insane" colleagues; and (4) a subclinical manifestation
of this underlying genetic continuum is evident in many of us,
becoming apparent only at those times when immediate environmental
circumstances make an antisocial strategy more profitable than a
prosocial one.

1. The Model:

1.1 The evolutionary role of emotion

As the presenting, almost defining characteristic of sociopaths is
their apparent lack of sincere social emotions in the absence of any
other deficit such as mental retardation or autism (Hare 1980), it
seems appropriate to begin with an examination of some current models
of emotion.

Plutchik (1980) put forth an evolutionary model of emotion in which he
posits eight basic or "primary" emotions (such as fear, anger and
disgust) which predate human evolution and are clearly related to
survival (1). According to the model, everyone (including sociopaths)
experiences these primary emotions, which are cross- cultural and
instinctively programmed. "Secondary" and "tertiary" emotions, on the
other hand, are more complex, specifically human, cognitive
interpretations of varying combinations and intensities of the primary
emotions (2). Because they are partly dependent upon learning and
socialization, secondary emotions, unlike primary emotions, can vary
across individuals and cultures. Thus, the social emotions (such as
shame, guilt, sympathy, and love), which are secondary emotions, can
be expected to exhibit greater variability.

Griffiths (1990) points out that most of the important features of
emotion argue for an evolutionary design: emotions are generally
involuntary, and are often "intrusive" (p 176); they cause rapid,
coordinated changes in the skeletal/muscular system, facial
expression, vocalization, and the autonomic nervous system; they are
to a large extent innate, or at least "prepared" (see Seligman 1971);
and they do not seem as responsive to new information about the
environment as do beliefs. Griffiths argues that emotional responses
to stimuli (he calls them "affect-programs" after Ekman 1971) are
informationally-encapsulated, complex, organized reflexes, which are
"adaptive responses to events that have a particular ecological
significance for the organism" (p 183). That is, they are likely to be
highly specialized reflexive responses elicited spontaneously by the
presence of certain critical stimuli, regardless of the presence of
possible mediating contextual cues or cognitive assessments.

Nesse (1990) likewise posits an evolutionary model in which emotions
are: "specialized modes of operation, shaped by natural selection, to
adjust the physiological, psychological, and behavioral parameters of
the organism in ways that increase its capacity and tendency to
respond to the threats and opportunities characteristic of specific
kinds of situations" (p 268). He attributes a particular role to the
social emotions, a role he couches in the language of reciprocity and
game theory. Presenting a classic Prisoner's Dilemma matrix, he notes
which emotions would be likely to be associated with the outcomes of
each of the four cells: when both players cooperate, they experience
friendship, love, obligation, or pride; when both cheat or defect,
they feel rejection and hatred; when one player cooperates and the
other defects, the cooperator feels anger while the defector feels
anxiety and guilt.

Given that these emotions are experienced AFTER a behavioral choice is
made, how could they possibly be adaptive? Nesse's explanation is
based on the models of Frank (1988) and Hirshleifer (1987), which
posit that ex post facto feelings lead to behavioral expressions which
are read by others and can be used to judge a person's likely future
behavior. To the extent that the phenomenological experience of
emotion serves to direct a person's future behavior (positive emotions
reinforce the preceding behavior while negative emotions punish and,
therefore, discourage repetition of the behavior), the outward
expression of emotion will serve as a reliable indicator to others as
to how a person is likely to behave in the future. Indeed, that there
exist reliable, uncontrollable outward expressions of these inner
experiences at all suggests that the expressions must be serving a
communicative function (Dimberg 1988).

But if, as in the case of the Prisoner's Dilemma, the most rational
strategy is to be selfish and defect, why should the positive
(reinforcing) emotions follow mutual cooperation rather than the
seemingly more adaptive behavior of defection? Here lies the role of
reputation. If a player is known, through direct experience or social
reputation, always to play the "rational" move and defect, then in a
group where repeated interactions occur and individuals are free to
form their own associations, no rational player will choose to play
with the known defector, who will thus no longer be provided the
opportunity for any kind of gain-- cooperative or exploitative. To
avoid this social "shunning" based on reputation (3) and hence, to be
able to profit at all from long-term social interaction, players must
be able to build a reputation for cooperation. To do so, most of them
must in fact, reliably cooperate, despite the fact that cooperation is
not the "rational" choice for the short-term. Frank and Hirshleifer
suggest that the social emotions have thus evolved as "commitment
devices" (Frank) or "guarantors of threats and promises"
(Hirshleifer)- they cause positive or negative feelings that act as
reinforces or punishers, molding our behavior in a way that is not
economically rational for the short-term but profitable and adaptive
in situations where encounters are frequent and reputation is
important.

Frank presents data from a variety of studies suggesting that people
do often behave irrationally (emotionally) in many dyadic and triadic
interactions- sometimes even when it is clear that there will be no
future opportunity to interact again with the same partner. These
studies support the suggestion that in social situations, one's
emotional response will often prevail over logic, and that the reason
is that such behavior is, in the long-term, adaptive under conditions
when one's reputation can follow or precede one. (See also Farrington
1982, Caldwell 1986, Anawalt 1986, Axelrod 1986, Alexander 1987, Irons
1991, Dugatkin 1992, and Frank, Gilovich & Regan 1993 for more on the
role of reputation.)

According to these models, emotion serves both as a motivator of
adaptive behavior and as a type of communication: the phenomenological
and physiological experience of emotion rewards, punishes, and
motivates the individual toward or away from certain types of stimuli
and social interactions, while the outward manifestations of emotion
communicate probable intentions to others.

Once such reliable communicative mechanisms have evolved, however,
when communication of intent precedes interaction, or when one's
reputation precedes one, the conditions of interaction become
vulnerable to deception through false signalling or advance deployment
of enhanced reputation (e.g. Caldwell 1986). Those who use a deceptive
strategy and defect after signalling cooperation are usually referred
to as "cheaters" and, as many authors have pointed out (e.g. Trivers
1971, Alexander 1987, Dennett 1988, Quiatt 1988), the presence of
cheaters can lead to a coevolutionary "arms race" in which potential
interactors evolve finely tuned sensitivities to likely evidence or
cues of deception, while potential cheaters evolve equally fine-tuned
abilities to hide those cues (4).

As long as evolutionary pressures for emotions to be reliable
communication and commitment devices leading to long-term, cooperative
strategies coexist with counter-pressures for cheating, deception, and
"rational" short-term selfishness, a mixture of phenotypes will
result, such that some sort of statistical equilibrium will be
approached. Cheating should thus be expected to be maintained as a
low-level, frequency-dependent strategy, in dynamic equilibrium with
changes in the environment which exist as counter-pressures against
its success. This type of dynamic process has been modelled
extensively by evolutionary biologists who use game theory- the topic
I turn to next.

1.2 Game theory and evolutionarily stable strategies

Game theory was first introduced into the literature of evolutionary
biology by Richard Lewontin (1961), who applied it to the analysis of
speciation and extinction events. It was later taken up in earnest by
John Maynard Smith and colleagues (eg. Maynard Smith & Price 1973,
Maynard Smith 1974, Maynard Smith 1978) who used it to model contests
between individuals. Maynard Smith showed that the "evolutionarily
stable strategies" (ESSs) that could emerge in such contests included
individuals' use of mixed, as well as fixed, strategies. Alexander
(1986) writes "It would be the worst of all strategies to enter the
competition and cooperativeness of social life, in which others are
prepared to alter their responses, with only preprogrammed behaviors"
(p 171).

The maintenance of mixed ESSs in a population can theoretically be
accomplished in at least four ways (after Buss 1991): (1) through
genetically based, individual differences in the use of single
strategies (such that each individual, in direct relation to genotype,
consistently uses the same strategy in every situation); (2) through
statistical use by all individuals of a species-wide, genetically
fixed, optimum mix of strategies (whereby every individual uses the
same statistical mix of strategies, but does so randomly and
unpredictably in relation to the situation); (3) through species-wide
use by all individuals of a mix of environmentally-contingent
strategies (such that every individual uses every strategy, but
predictably uses each according to circumstances); (4) through the
developmentally-contingent use of single strategies by individuals
(such that each individual has an initial potential to utilize every
type of strategy, but, after exposure to certain environmental stimuli
in the course of development, is phenotypically canalized from that
point on, to use only a fraction of the possible strategies). To
Buss's fourth mechanism can be added a differential effect of genotype
on developmental response to the environment, thus adding another
mechanism: (5) genetically based individual differences in response to
the environment, resulting in differential use by individuals of
environmentally-contingent strategies (such that individuals of
differing genotypes respond differently to environmental stimuli in
the course of development and are thus canalized to produce a
different set of limited strategies given the same, later conditions).

Following the leads of Kenrick, Dantchik, & MacFarlane (1983),
MacMillan & Kofoed (1984), Kofoed & MacMillan (1986), Harpending &
Sobus (1987), and Cohen & Machalek (1988), I would like to suggest an
evolutionary model in which sociopaths are a type of cheater- defector
in our society of mixed-strategy interactionists. I will be arguing
that sociopathy appears in two forms, according to mechanisms 1 and 5
(above), one version that is the outcome of frequency-dependent,
genetically based individual differences in use of a single
(antisocial) strategy (which I will refer to as "primary sociopathy")
and another that is the outcome of individual differences in
developmental response to the environment, resulting in the
differential use of cooperative or deceptive social strategies (which
I will refer to as "secondary sociopathy"). To support this model, I
will provide evidence that there are predictable differences in the
use of cheating strategies across individuals, across environments,
and within individuals across environments; this evidence will
integrate findings from the fields of behavior genetics, child
psychology, personality theory, learning theory, and social
psychology.

2. The Evidence:

2.1 Behavior genetics

For decades, evidence has been accumulating that both criminality and
sociopathy have a substantial heritable component, and that this
heritable component is to a large extent overlapping; that is, the
heritable attributes that contribute to criminal behavior seem to be
the same as those which contribute to sociopathy. While there is no
one-to-one correspondence between those individuals identified as
criminals and those identified as sociopaths, (indeed, the definitions
of both vary from study to study), it is clear that these two sets of
individuals share a variety of characteristics and that a subset of
individuals share both labels (Moffitt 1987, Ellis 1990b, Robins, Tipp
& Przybeck 1991, Gottesman & Goldsmith 1993).

2.1.1 Studies of criminal behavior

The behavior-genetic literature on criminal behavior suggests a
substantial effect of heredity across several cultures (5).
Christiansen (1977a&b), Wilson & Hernnstein (1985), Cloninger &
Gottesman (1987), Eysenck & Gudjonsson (1989), and Raine (1993) review
studies of twins which, taken as a whole, suggest a heritability of
approximately .60 for repeated commission of crimes of property.
[Heritability is a measure of the proportion of variance of a trait,
within a population, that can be explained by genetic variability
within that population; it thus, ranges theoretically from 0.00 to
1.00, with the remaining population variance explained by variance in
individuals' environment.] Adoption studies (reviewed in Hutchings &
Mednick 1977, Mednick & Finello 1983, Wilson & Hernnstein 1985,
Cloninger & Gottesman 1987, Mednick, Gabrielli & Hutchings, 1987,
Eysenck & Gudjonsson 1989, and Raine 1993) arrive at a similar
conclusion (but see footnote 6).

Several adoption studies were also able to demonstrate significant
interactive effects not discriminable using the twin methodology.
Crowe (1972, 1974), Cadoret, Cain & Crowe (1983), Mednick & Finello
(1983), and Mednick, Gabrielli & Hutchings (1984) report significant
gene-environment interactions, such that adoptive children with both a
genetic risk (criminal biological parent) and an environmental risk
(criminality, psychiatric illness, or other severe behavioral
disturbance in an adoptive parent), have a far greater risk of
expressing criminal behavior than do adoptees with no such risk or
only one risk factor, and that increased risk is more than simply an
additive effect of both risk factors. In addition, Baker, Mack,
Moffitt & Mednick (1989) report an interaction based on sex, in which
females are more likely to transmit a genetic risk to their offspring
than are males.

2.1.2 Studies of sociopathy

The literature on sociopathy suggests a pattern similar to that on
criminality: Schulsinger (1972/77), Cadoret (1978), Crowe (1974),
Cadoret & Cain (1980), Cadoret, Troughton & O'Gorman (1987), and
Cadoret & Stewart (1991) demonstrate a substantial heritability to
sociopathy; Cadoret, Troughton, Bagford & Woodworth (1990) found a
gene-environment interaction similar to the one found for criminal
behavior; and Cadoret & Cain (1980, 1981) found an interaction
involving sex, such that male adoptees were more sensitive to the
influence of environmental risk factors than were female adoptees.

The similarity of the patterns described in these two domains is to
some extent due to the fact that the diagnosis of sociopathy is often
based in part upon the existence of criminal activity in a subject's
life history. On the other hand, consider the following: (1) criminal
behavior and other aspects of sociopathy are correlated (Eysenck 1977,
Morrison & Stewart 1971, Cadoret, Cain & Crowe 1983, Wolf 1987,
Cloninger & Gottesman 1987, Patterson, DeBaryshe & Ramsey 1989); (2)
criminal activity is found with increased frequency among the
adopted-away children of sociopaths (Moffitt 1987); and (3) sociopathy
is found with increased frequency among the adopted-away children of
criminals (Cadoret & Stewart 1991, Cadoret, Troughton, Bagford &
Woodworth 1990). This all suggests that the criminality and sociopathy
may share some common heritable factors. For this reason, early
researchers and clinicians (e.g. Schulsinger 1972/77 and Cadoret 1978)
suggested using the term "antisocial spectrum" to incorporate a
variety of phenotypes that are considered likely to be manifestations
of closely related genotypes (7). The existence of this spectrum
suggests a multifactorial, probably polygenic, basis for sociopathy
and its related phenotypes. Using an analogy to "g", which is often
used to refer to the common factor underlying the positive
correlations between various aptitude measures, Rowe (1986) and Rowe
and Rodgers (1989) use "d" to refer to the common factor underlying
the various expressions of social deviance.

2.1.3 Sex differences and the "two-threshold" model

Cloninger put forth a "two threshold" polygenic model to account for
both the sex difference in sociopathy and its spectral nature
(Cloninger, Reich & Guze 1975; Cloninger, Christiansen, Reich &
Gottesman 1978). According to the model, sociopaths are individuals on
the extreme end of a normal distribution whose genetic component is
(1) polygenic and (2) to a large degree, sex-limited. [Sex- limited
genes, not to be confused with sex-linked genes, are those which are
located on the autosomes of both sexes but which are triggered into
expression only within the chemical/hormonal microenvironment of one
sex or the other. Common examples include beard and mustache growth in
men, and breast and hip development in women.] If a large number of
the many genes underlying sociopathy are triggered by testosterone or
some other androgen, many more men than women will pass the threshold
of the required number of active genes necessary for its outward
expression.

According to the two-threshold model, those females who do express the
trait must have a greater overall "dose" or "genetic load" (i.e, they
are further out in the extreme of the normal distribution of
genotypes) than most of the males who express the trait. This
proposition has been supported by data showing that in addition to the
greater overall risk for males as opposed to females, there is a also
greater risk for the offspring (and other relatives) of female
sociopaths as compared to the offspring (and other relatives) of male
sociopaths. This phenomenon cannot be accounted for either by
sex-linkage or by the differential experiences of the sexes.

Besides providing a proximate explanation for the greater incidence of
male sociopathy and crime, the two-threshold model also explains on a
proximate level the finding that males are more susceptible to
environmental influences than females. Somewhat paradoxically, while a
male will express sociopathy at a lower "genetic dose" than is
required for expression in a female, the heritability of the trait is
greater for females, meaning that the environmental component of the
variance is greater for males (8).

The two-threshold model thus explains in a proximate sense what
sociobiologists would predict from a more ultimate perspective. The
fact that males are more susceptible than females to the environmental
conditions of their early years fits well with sociobiological theory,
in that the greater variance in male reproductive capacity makes their
"choice" of life strategy somewhat more risky and therefore more
subject to selective pressures (Symons 1979, Buss 1988, Mealey & Segal
1993). Sociobiological reasoning thus leads to the postulate that
males should be more sensitive to environmental cues that (1) trigger
environmentally-contingent or developmentally-canalized life history
strategies or (2) are stimuli for which genetically based individual
differences in response thresholds have evolved. (Recall mechanisms 3,
4 & 5 for the maintenance of mixed-strategy ESSs in a population.)

If the evolutionary models apply then when, specifically, would
sociopathy be the best available strategy? and what would be the
environmental cues which, especially for boys, would trigger its
development? To answer these questions, I turn to the child psychology
literature, with a special focus on studies of life history
strategies, delinquency, and moral development.

2.2 Child psychology

2.2.1 Life history strategies

Beginning with Draper and Harpending's now-classic 1982 paper on the
relationship between father absence and reproductive strategy in
adolescents, there has been an increasing effort to view development
as the unfolding of a particular life history strategy in response to
evolutionarily relevant environmental cues (Draper & Harpending 1982,
Surbey 1987, MacDonald 1988, Crawford & Anderson 1989, Draper & Belsky
1990, Gangestad & Simpson 1990, Mealey 1990, Belsky, Steinberg &
Draper 1991, Moffitt, Caspi, Belsky & Silva 1992, Mealey & Segal
1993). These models are based either implicitly or explicitly on the
assumption that there are multiple evolutionarily adaptive strategies
and that the optimal strategy for particular individuals will depend
both upon their genotype and their local environment. To date, most
developmental life history models address variance in reproductive
strategies (for example, age at menarche or first sexual activity,
number of mating partners, and amount of parental investment), but
this type of modeling can also be applied to the adoption of social
strategies such as cheating versus cooperation.

Perhaps the most oft-mentioned factor suggested as being relevant to
the development of a cheating strategy, especially in males, is being
competitively disadvantaged with respect to the ability to obtain
resources and mating opportunities. Theoretically, those individuals
who are the least likely to outcompete other males in a status
hierarchy, or to achieve mates through female choice, are the ones
most likely to adopt a cheating strategy. (See eg. Thornhill & Alcock
1983, Daly & Wilson 1983 and Gould & Gould 1989 re: non-human animals,
and Symons 1979, Kenrick et al 1983, MacMillan & Kofoed 1984, Kofoed &
MacMillan 1986, Cohen & Machalek 1988, Tooke & Camire 1991 and
Thornhill & Thornhill 1992 re: humans). In humans, competitive
disadvantage could be related to a variety of factors, including age,
health, physical attractiveness, intelligence, socioeconomic status,
and social skills.

Criminal behavior, one kind of cheating strategy, is clearly related
to these factors. Of the seven cross-cultural correlates of crime
reported by Ellis (1988), three -large number of siblings, low
socio-economic status, and urban residency- seem directly related to
resource competition; the four others -youth, maleness, being of black
racial heritage, and coming from a single parent (or otherwise
disrupted) family background- can be plausibly argued to be related to
competition as well (see eg., Kenrick et al 1983, Wilson & Hernnstein
1985, Ellis 1988, and Cohen & Machalek 1988). Empirical data suggest
that deficits in competitive ability due to psychosis (Hodgins 1992),
intellectual handicap (Moffitt & Silva 1988, Quay 1990a, Stattin &
Magnusson 1991, Hodgins 1992), or poor social skills (Hogan & Jones
1983, Simonian, Tarnowski & Gibbs 1991, Garmezy 1991, Dishion,
Patterson, Stoolmiller & Skinner 1991) are also associated with
criminal behavior. Likewise, the competitive advantages conferred by
high intelligence (Hirschi & Hindenlang 1977, Wilson & Herrnstein
1985, Silverton 1988, Kandel, Mednick, Kirkegaard-Sorensen, Hutchings,
Knop, Rosenberg, & Schulsinger 1988, White, Moffitt & Silva 1989) or
consistent external support (Garmezy 1991), can mitigate the
development of criminal or delinquent behavior in those who are
otherwise at high risk.

Rape and spouse abuse, other forms of cheating strategy, appear to be
related to the same life history factors as crime (Ellis 1989 & 1991a,
Malamuth, Sockloskie, Koss & Tanaka 1991, Thornhill & Thornhill 1992).
In fact, Huesmann, Eron, Lefkowitz & Walder (1984), Rowe and Rodgers
(1989) and Rowe, Rodgers, Meseck-Bushey & St. John (1989) present
evidence that there is a common genetic component to the expression of
sexual and nonsexual antisocial behavior. Given the overlaps between
rape, battering, and criminality in terms of life history
circumstances, genetics, and apparent inability to empathize with
one's victim, it would be parsimonious to postulate that they might be
expressions of a single sociopathy spectrum. As such, these antisocial
behaviors could be considered to be genetically influenced,
developmentally- and environmentally-contingent cheating strategies,
utilized when a male finds himself at a competitive disadvantage (see
also Figueredo & McCloskey nd).

Along these lines, MacMillan and Kofoed (1984) presented a model of
male sociopathy based on the premise that sexual opportunism and
manipulation are the key features driving both the individual
sociopath and the evolution of sociopathy. Harpending and Sobus (1987)
posited a similar basis for the evolution and behavioral
manifestations of Briquet's Hysteria in women, suggesting that this
syndrome of promiscuity, fatalistic dependency, and attention-
getting, is the female analogue, and homologue, of male sociopathy.

2.2.2 Delinquency

Childhood delinquency is a common precursor of adolescent delinquency
and adult criminal and sociopathic behavior (Robins & Wish 1977,
Loeber 1982, Loeber & Dishion 1983, Loeber & Stouthamer- Loeber 1987,
Patterson et al 1989); in fact, childhood conduct disorder is a
prerequisite finding in order to diagnose adult antisocial personality
(APA 1987). Importantly, just as in the literature on adults, a
distinction is frequently made between two subtypes of conduct
disorder in children: Lytton (1990), for example, distinguishes
between "solitary aggressive type" and "group type"; Loeber (1990)
distinguishes between "versatiles" and "property offenders"; and
Strauss & Lahey (1984) distinguish between "unsocialized" and
"socialized". I will argue that these subtypes are precursors of two
types of adulthood antisociality (with "solitary aggressive",
"versatile", or "unsocialized" types leading to primary sociopathy and
"group", "property offender", or "socialized" types presaging
secondary sociopathy). I will also argue that the differing life
history patterns of these two types of delinquents are reflections of
two different evolutionary mechanisms for maintaining ESSs in a
population- mechanism 1 and mechanism 5, respectively (see Section
1.2).

Although more than half of juvenile delinquents outgrow their behavior
(Lytton 1990, Robins, Tipp & Przybeck 1991, Gottesman & Goldsmith
1993), the frequency of juvenile antisocial behaviors is still the
best predictor of adult antisocial behavior, and the earlier such
behavior appears, the more likely it is to be persistent (Farrington
1986, Loeber & Stouthamer-Loeber 1987, Lytton 1990, Stattin &
Magnusson 1991, White, Moffitt, Earls, Robins & 2Silva 1990, and
Robins, Tipp & Przybeck 1991). The mean age at which adult sociopaths
exhibited their first significant symptom is between eight and nine
years; 80% of all sociopaths exhibited their first symptom by age
eleven (Robins, Tipp & Przybeck 1991); over two-thirds of eventual
chronic offenders are already distinuishable from other children by
kindergarten (Loeber & Stouthamer-Loeber 1987). Thus, by evaluating
the environments of juvenile delinquents, we can fairly reliably
reconstruct the childhood environments of adult sociopaths.

Studies of this sort consistently implicate several relevant
environmental factors correlated with boyhood antisocial behavior:
inconsistent discipline, parental use of punishment as opposed to
rewards, disrupted family life (especially father absence, family
violence, alcoholic parent, or mentally ill parent), and low
socioeconomic status (Cadoret 1982, Loeber & Dishion 1983, van Dusen,
Mednick, Gabrielli & Hutchings 1983, Wilson & Hernnstein 1985,
Farrington 1986 & 1989, McCord 1986, Silverton 1988, & Patterson et al
1989, Lytton 1990, Offord, Boyle & Racine 1991). Besides the fact that
all of these variables are more likely to exist when one or the other
parent is sociopathic, and the child hence, genetically predisposed to
sociopathy, behaviorist and social learning models of the dynamics of
early parent-child interactions (to be described in Section 2.4.2)
have been fairly convincing in explaining how antisocial behaviors can
be reinforced under such living conditions.

Interestingly, in line with the postulate that cheating strategies
would be most likely to be used by individuals who are at a
competitive disadvantage, McGarvey, Gabrielli, Bentler & Mednick
(1981), Loeber & Dishion (1983), Hogan & Jones (1983), Magid &
McKelvie (1987), Kandel et al (1988), Hartup (1989), and Patterson et
al (1989) all suggest that the common way in which high risk familial
and environmental factors contribute to delinquency, is by
handicapping children with respect to their peers, in terms of social
skills, academic ability, and self-esteem. This noncompetitiveness
then leads disadvantaged youths to seek alternative peer groups and
social environments in which they can effectively compete (Dishion et
al 1991). If they are successful in the estimation of their new peer
group, adopting this strategy may lead to "local prestige" (Rowe,
personal communication) sufficient to commandeer resources, deter
rivals, or gain sexual opportunities within the new referent group
(see also Moffitt 1993). In other words, competitively disadvantaged
youth may be trying to "make the best of a bad job" (Dawkins 1980,
Cohen & Machalek 1988), by seeking a social environment in which they
may be less handicapped or even superior.

The correlates of delinquency in girls are essentially the same as
those for boys, although delinquency is less common in girls (Robins
1986, Lytton 1990, White, Moffitt, Earls, Robins & Silva 1990). Caspi,
Lynam, Moffitt & Silva (1993) found that delinquency in girls, as in
boys, is arrived at via two different developmental trajectories. One
pattern includes a history of antisocial behavior throughout childhood
and a tendency to seek out delinquent peers; based on previous
research (White, Moffitt, Earls, Robins & Silva 1990), this life
history trajectory is thought to lead to persisten antisocial behavior
in adulthood. The second pattern is exhibited by girls who have few
behavior problems in childhood, but who, upon reaching menarche,
exhibit more and more frequent antisocial behaviors. The antisocial
behavior of girls who show this latter pattern is thought to be more a
product of environmental influence than that of girls who follow the
first trajectory, as this pattern is selectively exhibited by girls
who (a) have an early age of menarche and (b) are in coeducational
school settings. These girls, upon reaching early sexual maturity,
start associating with older male peers and exhibiting some of the
antisocial behaviors that are more often displayed by older boys than
their younger female peers (see Maccoby 1986); girls who follow this
trajectory are expected to "outgrow" their antisocial activites.
Although the two subsets of delinquent girls would be difficult to
differentiate using a cross- sectional methodology, in accordance with
the model presented here, Caspi et al. consider their differing
developmental histories to be of theoretical importance for
longitudinal studies and of practical importance for early
intervention. (See Moffitt 1993 for a similar scenario regarding
boys.)

2.2.3 Moral development

Like the tendency to engage in antisocial behavior, an individual's
tendency to engage in prosocial behavior seems to be fairly stable
from an early age (Rushton 1982). Yet the development of individual
differences in behavior has not been as well studied as the presumably
universal stages of cognition that underlie changes in moral
reasoning. Kohlberg's (1964) stage model of moral development, for
example, ties advances in moral thinking to advances in reasoning
ability and attributes individual differences largely to differences
in cognitive ability. While it is clear that both moral reasoning and
moral behavior covary with age (Rushton 1982) and may do so in a
manner consistent with some evolutionists' thinking (e.g. Alexander
1987), cognitive models alone cannot explain the absence of moral
behavior in sociopaths, who are not intellectually handicapped with
respect to the normal population.

Other developmental models posit the emergence of empathy and the
other social emotions as prerequisites for moral behavior (see Zahn-
Waxler & Kochanska 1988 for a review). Even very young children, it
seems, are in a sense biologically prepared to learn moral behavior,
in that they are selectively attentive to emotions- especially
distress-

in others (Hoffman 1978, Zahn-Waxler & Radke-Yarrow 1982, Radke-
Yarrow & Zahn-Waxler 1986). Hoffman (1975, 1977, 1982), for example,
suggests that the observation of distress in others triggers an innate
"empathic distress" response in the child, even before the child has
the cognitive capacity to differentiate "other" from "self".
Accordingly, any instrumental behavior which serves to reduce the
distress of the other also serves to relieve the vicarious distress of
the child. Thus, very young children might learn to exhibit prosocial
behavior long before they are able to conceptualize its effect on
others.

In Hoffman's model, the motivation behind early prosocial behavior is
the (egocentric) need to reduce one's own aversive feelings of arousal
and distress. As the child ages, the range of cues and stimuli which
can trigger the vicarious distress increase through both classical and
operant conditioning. Eventually, when the child develops the
cognitive ability to "role play" or take on another's perspective,
empathic distress turns to "sympathetic distress", which motivates
prosocial behavior that is more likely to be interpreted as
intentional, altruistic, and moral. Hoffman's model of prosocial
behavior dovetails nicely with Hirshleifer's (1987) "Guarantor" and
Frank's (1988) "Commitment" model of emotion (see section I.A.): the
reduction in anxiety which follows cooperative or prosocial behavior
reinforces such behavior, while the increase in anxiety which, through
stimulus generalization, follows acts or thoughts of antisocial
behavior will punish and therefore reduce those acts and thoughts.

Dienstbier (1984) reported an interesting series of studies testing
the role of anxiety and emotional arousal on cheating. As expected,
high arousal levels were associated with low cheating levels (and vice
versa), but the subjects' attribution of the cause of high arousal was
also important. When subjects were able to attribute their arousal to
a cause other than the temptation to cheat, they found it much easier
to cheat than when they had no other explanation for their arousal
level. Subjects were also less willing to work to avoid punishment
when they were able to attribute their arousal to an external cause
rather than to an internal source of anxiety associated with the
threat of punishment. Dienstbier concluded that when a situation is
perceived to be "detection-free", one's temptation to cheat is either
resisted or not, depending on the levels of anxiety perceived to be
associated with the temptation.

The ability to act intentionally in either a prosocial or antisocial
manner (or in terms of game theory, cooperatively or deceptively),
depends upon having reached a certain level of cognitive development
at which it is possible to distinguish emotions of the self from
emotions of others, i.e., the child must pass from empathic responses
to sympathetic responses (Dunn 1982, Hoffman 1975, 1977, 1984,
Mitchell 1986, Vasek 1986). This transition begins to occur some time
during the second year (Hoffman 1975, 1982, Leslie 1987, Dunn 1987,
1988, and Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla & Youngblade 1991) when the
child is beginning to develop what has come to be called a "theory of
mind" (Premack & Woodruff 1978).

Having a theory of mind allows one to impute mental states (thoughts,
perceptions, and feelings) not only to oneself, but also to other
individuals. Humphrey (1976, 1983) suggests that this kind of
awareness evolved in humans because it was a successful tool for
predicting the behavior of others. Humphrey claims that the best
strategists in the human social game would be those who could use a
theory of mind to empathize accurately with others and thereby be able
to predict the most adaptive strategy or play in a social interaction.
(Byrne & Whiten 1988 call this aptitude "Machiavellian intelligence".)
Humphrey's model is something of a cognitive equivalent of the
evolutionary models of emotion discussed in section 1.1; they can
probably be considered complementary and mutually reinforcing. With
regard to sociopathy, the question is whether a strategist can be
successful using only the cognitive tool of a theory of mind, without
access to emotional, empathic information which, presumably,
sociopaths lack (Mealey 1992). In the next section I will argue that
this is exactly what a sociopath does.

2.3 Personality theory

The models of normative moral development presented above are helpful
but clearly insufficient to explain sociopathy. Although some adoption
studies and most longitudinal studies report significant effects of
social and environmental risk factors on delinquency and criminality,
the magnitude of that risk as a simple main effect is rather small.
Despite repeated exposure to inconsistent and confusing reinforcement
and punishment, most children who grow up with these risk factors do
not turn out to be sociopathic, whereas some children who do not
experience such risk factors, do. Studies have repeatedly shown that
the effect of the environment is much more powerful for children at
biological risk than for others. What is it that makes "high risk"
environmental features particularly salient for those individuals who
have a certain predisposing genotype?

2.3.1 The role of gene-environment interactions

Stimulated by the work of Rowe and Plomin (Rowe & Plomin 1981, Rowe
1983a&b, 1990a&b; Plomin & Daniels 1987, Dunn & Plomin 1990), evidence
is accumulating that, unlike what has been traditionally assumed, the
most important environmental features and events that influence
personal development are not those that are shared by siblings within
a family (such as parenting style, socioeconomic status, and
schooling), but rather, are idiosyncratic events and relationships
which are difficult to study systematically with traditional methods.
Despite a shared home, individual children will encounter different
microenvironments: their individual relationships with their parents
will differ, and their experiences on a day to day, minute by minute
basis will not overlap significantly. In addition, there will be some
environmental differences which are due to genetic differences;
children with different personalities, aptitudes, and body types, will
not only seek out different experiences (Scarr & McCartney 1983,
Caspi, Elder & Bem 1987, Rowe 1990a), but will also attribute
different phenomenological interpretations to the same experiences
(Rowe 1983a & 1990b, Dunn 1992). For these reasons, any two children
will experience an (objectively) identical environment in different
ways; there is, in some sense, no real validity to some of the
operational measures we currently use to describe a child's
environment (Rowe & Plomin 1981, Plomin & Daniels 1987, Wachs 1992).

Although this may sound discouraging for those who seek to apply
psychological research to the prevention of crime and delinquency -
and most such efforts have, in fact, been fairly unsuccessful (Feldman
1977, Gottschalk, Davidson, Gensheimer & Mayer 1987, Borowiak 1989 and
Patterson et al 1989)- there are reasons for optimism. Palmer (1983)
suggests that the "nothing works" conclusion is valid only in the
sense that no single intervention technique will be successful across
the board, and that targeting different strategies to different
individuals should prove more successful. More and more studies are
suggesting that there are at least two developmental pathways to
delinquency and sociopathy and that we need to address them separately
(Quay 1990b, Lytton 1990, White et al 1990, Caspi et al 1993, Moffitt
1993, Dishion & Poe 1993, Patterson 1993, McCord 1993, Simons 1993).
The evolutionary model presented here makes specific predictions about
the likely differential success of different intervention and
prevention strategies for individuals arriving at their anti-social
behavior via different paths: while individuals of differing genotypes
may end up with similar phenotypes, different environmental elements
and experiences may be particularly salient for them. (This is a
corollary of mechanism 5 for the maintenance of ESSs presented in
Section 1.2).

As will be argued below, primary and secondary sociopathy seem to
provide an excellent illustration of the development of similar
phenotypes from different genotype-environment interactions. To the
extent that we understand it now, primary sociopaths come from one
extreme of a polygenic genetic distribution and seem to have a
genotype that disposes them "to acquire and be reinforced for
displaying antisociality" (Rowe 1990a, p 122). That genotype results
in a certain inborn temperament or personality, coupled with a
particular pattern of autonomic arousal, that, together, seem to
design the individual (1) to be selectively unresponsive to those
environmental cues which are necessary for normal socialization and
moral development and (2) to actively seek the more deviant and
arousing stimuli within the environment. Secondary sociopaths, on the
other hand, are not as genetically predisposed to their behavior;
rather, they, are more responsive to environmental cues and risk
factors, becoming sociopathic "phenocopies" (after Raine 1993) or
"mimics" (after Moffitt 1993) when the carrying capacity of the
"cheater" niche grows. What are the predisposing constitutional
factors that place some individuals at high risk?

2.3.2 The role of temperament

In a twin study, Rushton, Fulker, Neale, Nias & Eysenck (1986) found
evidence of substantial heritability of self-reported measures of
altruism, nurturance, aggressiveness, and empathy. Across twin pairs,
altruism, nurturance, and empathy increased with age, while
aggressiveness decreased; sex differences (in the expected direction)
were found for nurturance, empathy, and aggression; for all measures,
the environmental contributions were determined to be individual
rather than familial. Methodological considerations do not allow full
confidence in the numerical heritability estimates of this study, but
Eisenberg, Fabes & Miller (1990) conclude that it reports true
individual differences which are likely to be a result of genetic
differences in temperament, specifically sociability and emotionality.

More recently, two additional twin studies have confirmed the findings
of Rushton et al. Emde, Plomin, Robinson, Corley, DeFries, Fulker,
Reznick, Campos, Kagan & Zahn-Waxler (1992) reported significant
heritabilities for empathy, behavioral inhibition, and expressions of
negative affect, while Ghodsian-Carpey & Baker (1987) found
significant heritabilities on four measures of aggressiveness in
children. Like the Rushton et al study, both of these studies also
reported sex differences, and both confirmed the relative importance
of nonshared, as opposed to shared, environmental influences.

A fourth twin study (Rowe 1986) used a different set of personality
indices but went a step further in establishing the link between
temperament and antisocial behavior. Rowe's analysis suggests that,
especially for males, the inherited factors correlated with one's
genetic risk of delinquency are the same as those that lead to the
temperamental attributes of anger, impulsivity, and deceitfulness
("self-serving dishonesty with people with whom a person ordinarily
has affectional bonds" p 528). Interestingly, while Rowe found that
common genetic factors related temperament and delinquency, it was
environmental factors which related academic nonachievement with
delinquency. These findings provide evidence for the two-pathway model
presented in Section 1.2, in that such a gene-environment interaction
(1) would create at least two possible routes to sociopathy or
criminality, one primarily heritable and one less so, and (2) in terms
of the latter, less heritable pathway, would set the stage for
developmentally- and environmentally-contingent individual differences
in antisocial behavior. In addition, in line with previously mentioned
studies and the proposed model, the environmental factors Rowe found
to be statistically significant varied within families and were more
significant for males than for females.

Most of the research into the relationship between temperament,
personality and sociopathy has been based on the extensive work of
Hans Eysenck (summarized in Eysenck 1977 & 1983, Eysenck & Gudjohnsson
1989, and Zuckerman 1989). Eysenck first postulated and then
convincingly documented that sociopathy in particular and antisocial
behavior in general are correlated with high scores on all three of
the major personality dimensions of the Eysenck Personality
Questionnaire: 'extraversion' (contra introversion), 'neuroticism'
(contra emotional stability), and 'psychoticism' (contra fluid and
efficient superego functioning- not synonymous with psychotic mental
illness; Zuckerman (1989) suggests that this scale would be better
called 'psychopathy'). All three of these dimensions exhibit
substantial heritability, and since psychoticism is typically much
higher in males than females, it is a likely candidate for one of the
relevant sex-limited traits which fits Cloninger's two-threshold risk
model explaining the sex difference in expression of sociopathy.

In trying to explain the proximate connections between temperament,
delinquency, sociopathy, and criminal behavior, Eysenck and colleagues
devised the "General Arousal Theory of Criminality" (summarized in
Eysenck & Gudjohnsson 1989), according to which the common biological
condition underlying all of these behavioral predispositions is the
inheritance of a nervous system which is relatively insensitive to low
levels of stimulation. Individuals with such a physiotype, it is
argued, will be extraverted, impulsive, and sensation-seeking, because
under conditions of relatively low stimulation they find themselves at
a suboptimal level of arousal; to increase their arousal, many will
participate in high-risk activities such as crime (see also Farley
1986 and Gove & Wilmoth 1990). In general support of this model, Ellis
(1987) performed a meta-analysis which found that both criminality and
sociopathy were associated with a variety of indicators of suboptimal
arousal, including childhood hyperactivity, recreational drug use,
risk-taking, failure to persist on tasks, and preference for
wide-ranging sexual activity.

Additional confirmation of the arousal model comes from Zuckerman, who
found a similar pattern of behaviors associated with his measure of
sensation-seeking. (The following summary is derived from Zuckerman
1979, Zuckerman, Buschbaum & Murphy 1980, Daitzman & Zuckerman 1980,
and Zuckerman 1983, 1984, 1985, 1990 & 1991). In addition to seeking
thrill and novelty, sensation-seekers describe "a hedonistic pursuit
of pleasure through extraverted activities including social drinking,
parties, sex, and gambling", "an aversion to routine activities or
work and to dull and boring people", and "a restlessness in an
unchanging environment" (Zuckerman et al 1980, p 189). In college
students, sensation-seeking is correlated with the Pd (Psychopathic
Deviate) scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and
among prisoners it can be used to distinguish primary psychopaths from
secondary psychopaths and non- psychopathic criminals (see also Fagan
& Lira 1980). Zuckerman also shows that sensation-seeking as a
temperament appears at an early age (3-4 years), exhibits a high
degree of heritability, correlates negatively with age in adults, and
exhibits sex differences, with higher scores more often in males.
Because it shows a relationship with both sex and age,
sensation-seeking (and its presumed underlying hypoarousal) may also
be a good candidate for a trait which can explain the distribution and
expression of sociopathy (see also Baldwin 1990).

Gray (1982, 1987), and Cloninger (Cloninger 1987a, Cloninger, Svrakic
& Przybeck 1993) have proposed updated versions of the Eysenck model
in which the three personality factors are rotated and renamed so as
to more clearly correspond to known neural circuitry. Gray names the
three systems: the approach, or, behavioral activation system, the
behavioral inhibition system, and the fight/flight system; Cloninger
names them "novelty-seeking", "harm- avoidance", and
"reward-dependence". The three factors explain the same variance in
personality as Eysenck's original factors and have been shown to be
independent and highly heritable (Cloninger 1987). In addition to
mapping more closely to known neural systems, these three factors are
also proposed to correspond to differential activity of three
neurochemicals: dopamine for behavioral activation (or
novelty-seeking), serotonin for behavioral inhibition (or harm
avoidance), and norepinephrine for fight/flight (or reward
dependence); see Depue & Spoont 1986, Cloninger 1987, Charney, Woods,
Krystal & Heninger 1990, Eysenck 1990, and Raine 1993 for partial
reviews.

2.3.3 The role of physiology

Using Cloninger's terminology, sociopaths are individuals who are high
on novelty-seeking, low on harm-avoidance, and low on reward-
dependence. Thus, we should expect them to be high on measures of
dopamine activity, low on measures of serotonin activity, and low on
measures of norepinephrine activity; data suggest that they are.

Zuckerman (1989) reports that sensation-seeking is negatively
correlated with levels of dopamine-beta-hydroxylase (DBH), the enzyme
which breaks down dopamine, and that extremely low levels of DBH are
associated with undersocialized conduct disorder and psychopathy.
Importantly, with respect to the two-pathway model, boys with
socialized conduct disorder (those with fewer, later- appearing
symptoms, and who are posited to be at risk for secondary, as opposed
to primary sociopathy), had high levels of DBH.

In addition, extraverts and delinquents are reported to have lower
than average levels of adrenaline (epinephrine) and norepinephrine
under baseline circumstances; Magnusson (1985 as cited by Zuckerman
1989) reports that urinary epinephrine measures of boys at age 13
significantly predicted criminality at ages 18-25. High sensation-
seekers, criminals, and other individuals scoring high on measures of
impulsivity and aggression also have significantly lower levels than
others of the serotonin metabolite, 5-HIAA (Brown, Goodwin, Ballenger,
Goyer & Major 1979, Brown, Ebert, Goyer, Jimerson, Klein, Bunney &
Goodwin 1982, Muhlbauer 1985, Depue & Spoont 1986, Zuckerman 1989,
1990, Kruesi, Hibbs, Zahn, Keysor, Hamburger, Bartko & Rapoport 1992,
and Raine 1993). These are not small effects: Raine (1993) reports an
average effect size (the difference between groups divided by the
standard deviation) for serotonin of .75, and for norepinephrine of
.41; Brown et al (1979) reported that 80% of the variance in
aggression scores of their sample was explained by levels of 5-HIAA
alone; and Kruesi et al reported that knowing 5- HIAA levels increased
the explained variance of aggression at a two- year follow-up from 65%
(using clinical measures only) to 91% (clinical measures plus 5-HIAA
measures).

Levels of monoamine oxidase (MAO)- an enzyme which breaks down the
neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, and
norepinephrine-

are also low in antisocial and sensation-seeking individuals
(Zuckerman 1989, 1990, Ellis 1991b). Individual differences in
platelet MAO appear shortly after birth and are stable (Zuckerman
1989, 1990 and Raine 1993); Zuckerman reports an estimated
heritability of .86. Recently, a mutant version of the gene coding for
MAO-A, the version of MAO specific to serotonin, has been identified
in an extended family in which the males show a history of repeated,
unexplained outbursts of aggressive behavior (Brunner, Nelen,
Breakefield, Ropers & van Oost 1993, Morrell 1993); urinalysis
indicated that the MAO-A is not functioning normally in the affected
men.

Results of psychophysiological studies also report significant
differences between sociopaths and others. [Reviews of this literature
can be found in Mednick, Moffitt & Stack (1987), Trasler (1987), Raine
(1989), Eysenck & Gudjohnsson (1989), Raine & Dunkin (1990), Zuckerman
(1990), and Raine (1993).] Among the findings are that: high
sensation-seekers and sociopaths are more likely than lows and normals
to show orienting responses to novel stimuli of moderate intensity,
whereas lows and normals are more likely to show defensive or startle
responses; criminals and delinquents tend to exhibit a slower alpha
(resting) frequency in their electroencephalogram (EEG) than
age-matched controls; high sensation-seekers and delinquents differ
from lows and nondelinquents in the amplitude and shape of cortical
evoked potentials; extraverts and sociopaths show less physiological
arousal than introverts and normals in response to threats of pain or
punishment and more tolerance of actual pain or punishment; and
delinquents (though not necessarily adult criminals) tend to have
lower baseline heart rate than nondelinquents.

The importance of the role of these psychophysiological factors as
significant causes, not just correlates, of sociopathy, is
strengthened by evidence that (a) these measures of autonomic
reactivity are just as heritable as the temperament they are
associated with (Zuckerman 1989, Gabbay 1992), and that (b) the same
physiological variables which differentiate identified sociopaths,
delinquents, and criminals from others can also significantly predict
later levels of antisocial behavior in unselected individuals (Loeb &
Mednick 1977 using skin conductance; Volavka, Mednick, Gabrielli,
Matousek & Pollock 1984 using EEG; Satterfield 1987 using EEG; Raine,
Venable & Williams 1990a using EEG, heart rate, and skin conductance;
and Raine, Venables & Williams 1990b using evoked potentials). As for
the reports on neurochemistry, these are effects are not small; Raine
(1993) reports that for heart rate, the average effect size across ten
studies was .84.

Another important physiological variable in the distribution of
sociopathic behavior is testosterone. Testosterone (or one of its
derivatives) is a likely candidate for the role of trigger of the
sex-limited activation of genes required by the two-threshold model
presented earlier. The mechanism of action of steroid hormones is to
enter the nucleus of the cell and interact with the chromosomes,
regulating gene expression. This differential activity of the genes
leads to some of the individual, age, and sex differences we see in
temperament, specifically, psychoticism, aggression, impulsivity,
sensation-seeking, nurturance, and empathy (Zuckerman et al 1980,
Zuckerman 1984, 1985, 1991 and Ellis 1991b). Variation in testosterone
levels also parallels the age variation in the expression of
sociopathic behavior and is correlated with such behavior in
adolescent and adult males (Daitzman & Zuckerman 1980, Zuckerman 1985,
Rubin 1987, Olweus 1986, 1987, Schalling 1987, Susman, Inoff-Germain,
Nottelman, Loriaux, Cutler & Chrousos 1987, Ellis & Coontz 1990, Udry
1990, Dabbs & Morris 1990, Gladue 1991 and Archer 1991). Testosterone
is thus likely to play a dual role in the development of sociopathy,
just as it does in the development of other sex differences: one as an
organizer (affecting traits) and one as an activator (affecting
states).

Udry (Drigotas & Udry 1993, Halpern, Udry, Campbell & Suchindran
1993), unable to replicate his own 1990 study suggesting an activating
effect of testosterone, has suggested that the correlation between
testosterone and aggression might be due to a physiosocial feedback
loop; he posits that boys with high, early levels of testosterone
mature faster, and, being bigger, are more likely to get in fights.
Since levels of testosterone, adrenaline, and serotonin have been
shown to fluctuate in response to social conditions (McGuire, Raleigh
& Johnson 1983, Raleigh, McGuire, Brammer & Yuwiler 1984, Schalling
1987, Olweus 1987, Raleigh, McGuire, Brammer, Pollack & Yuwiler 1991,
Archer 1991, Kalat 1992), this sociophysiological interaction creates
a positive feedback loop: those who start out with high levels of
testosterone and sensation seeking (and low levels of adrenaline,
serotonin, and MAO) are (1) more likely than others to initiate
aggressive behavior, and (2) more likely to experience success in
dominance interactions, leading to (3) an increased probability of
experiencing further increases in testosterone, which (4) further
increases the likelihood of continued aggressive behavior.

Another example of a sociophysiological feedback loop comes from Dabbs
and Morris (1990), who found significant correlations between
testosterone levels and antisocial behavior in lower class men but not
in upper class men. They explained this by positing that upper class
men are more likely, because of differential socialization, to avoid
individual confrontations. If this is true, it would mean that upper
class men are, because of their socialization, specifically avoiding
those types of social encounters which might raise their testosterone
(and in turn, their antisocial behavior). This interpretation is
supported by the finding (in the same study) that significantly fewer
upper class than lower class men had high testosterone levels. Thus,
it is possible that upper class socialization may mitigate the
influence of testosterone. An alternative explanation- that the
aggressive behavior associated with higher testosterone levels leads
to downward social mobility- also suggests a recursive
sociophysiological interaction.

Raine (1988) has argued that since upper class children are less
likely than lower class children to suffer the environmental risks
predisposing one toward sociopathic behavior, when such behavior is
seen in upper class individuals, it is likely to be the result of a
particularly strong genetic predisposition. Evidence supporting this
has been reported by three independent studies. Wadsworth (1976) found
physiological indicators of hypoarousal amongst upper- class, but not
lower-class, boys who subsequently became delinquent. Raine (Raine &
Venables 1981, 1984; also reported in Raine 1988 and Raine & Dunkin
1990) found indicators of hypoarousal in his upper- class antisocial
subjects, but the reverse in his lower-class subjects. Satterfeld
(1987) found that of his lower-class subjects, those in a biological
high-risk group were seven times more likely to have been arrested
than those in his control group, whereas among his middle- and
upper-class subjects, the rate was 25 and 28 times, respectively. This
outcome was a result of lower rates of criminal activity in the
control groups of the middle- and upper-class subjects as compared to
the lower-class controls; i.e., almost all of those who had been
arrested from the middle- and upper-class were biologically at high
risk, but this was not true for the lower class subjects. The
implications of these findings are of tremendous import, as they
suggest that (1) the effect of the social environment might be
considerably larger than suggested by adoption studies, and (2) there
might be different etiological pathways to sociopathy, and therefore
different optimal strategies for its prevention or remediation,
depending upon what kind of social and environmental background the
person has experienced.

2.4 Learning Theory

Adoption studies show that the environment clearly plays an important
role in the etiology of sociopathy, but that its effects are different
for individuals of different genotype. As mentioned in section 2.3.1,
some of this difference is likely to be a result of gene-environment
correlations, in that different environments are sought by individuals
of different genotypes; some will be a result of differences in
interpretation of the same environment by individuals of different
genotypes; and some will be a result of differences in environment
impinging upon people because of differences in their genotype (e.g.
discriminating parental treatment of two children differing in
temperament). In nonadoptive families, gene-environment correlations
will be even stronger because parents with certain personality types
will provide certain environments for their children. These
differential effects of environment on individuals of varying genetic
risk for sociopathy become readily apparent when we examine the effect
of the interaction between physiotype and conditioning on the process
of socialization.

1. Conditioning

There is evidence that individuals with a hypoaroused nervous system
are less sensitive than most people to the emotional expression of
other individuals, and to social influences in general (Eliasz &
Reykowski 1986, Eysenck 1967 as cited in Patterson and Newman 1993).
They are also less responsive to levels and types of stimuli that are
normally used for reinforcement and punishment (Eliasz 1987); as a
result, they are handicapped in learning through autonomic
conditioning although they exhibit no general intellectual deficit
(e.g. Hare & Quinn 1971, Eysenck 1977, Mednick 1977, Ziskind, Syndulko
& Maltzman 1978, Gorenstein & Newman 1980, Newman, Widom & Nathan
1985, Raine 1988, Lytton 1990, Zuckerman 1991).

One of the posited consequences of this learning deficit is a reduced
ability to be socialized by the standard techniques of reward and
punishment that are used (especially in the lower classes and by
uneducated parents) on young children. In particular, hypoaroused
individuals have difficulty inhibiting their behavior when both reward
and punishment are possible outcomes (Newman, Widom & Nathan 1985,
Newman & Kosson 1986, Newman 1987, Zuckerman 1991, Patterson & Newman
1993); in situations when most people would experience an
approach-avoidance conflict, sociopaths and extraverts are more likely
to approach; (see also Dienstbier 1984). Because of their high levels
of sensation-seeking, children with a hypoaroused nervous system will
be more likely than other children to get into trouble, and when they
do, will be less likely to be affected by, and learn from, the
consequences whether those consequences are a direct result of their
behavior or an indirect result such as parental punishment.

Despite continuing problems with operational definitions, recent
research suggests that there might be distinguishable differences in
learning between primary and secondary sociopaths, or children with
unsocialized versus socialized conduct disorder (Newman et al 1985,
Gray 1987, Quay 1990b, Newman, Kosson & Patterson 1992). Primary
sociopaths, with their inability to experience the social emotions,
exhibit deficits on tasks which typically induce anxiety in others,
specifically, passive avoidance tasks, approach-avoidance tasks, and
tasks involving punishment, but they can learn well under other
conditions (Raine, Venables & Williams 1990b, Newman et al 1992,
Patterson & Newman 1993, Raine 1993). Secondary sociopaths and
extraverts, on the other hand, have normal levels of anxiety and
responses to punishment, but they may be especially driven by high
reward conditions (Boddy, Carver & Rowley 1986, Derryberry 1987,
Newman, Patterson, Howland & Nichols 1990).

Primary sociopaths, with diminished ability to experience anxiety and
to form conditioned associations between antisocial behavior and the
consequent punishment, will be unable to progress through the normal
stages of moral development. Unlike most children who are biologically
prepared to learn empathy, they are contraprepared to do so, and will
remain egoistic- unable to acquire the social emotions of empathy,
shame, guilt, and love. They present at an early age with
"unsocialized" conduct disorder. Secondary sociopaths, with normal
emotional capacities, will present, generally at a later age, with
"socialized" conduct disorder (Loeber 1993, Patterson 1993, Simons
1993). What socialization processes contribute to their development?

2.4.2 Social learning

In Section 2.2.1, it was noted that a cheating strategy is predicted
to develop when a male (especially) is competitively disadvantaged,
and that criminal behavior (especially in males) is clearly related to
factors associated with disadvantage. These are: large numbers of
siblings, low socio-economic status, urban residency, low
intelligence, and poor social skills. How, in a proximate sense, do
these variables contribute to the development of secondary sociopathy?
Path models suggest a two-stage process involving a variety of
cumulative risk factors (McGarvey et al 1981, Snyder, Dishion &
Patterson 1986, Snyder & Patterson 1990, Patterson, Capaldi & Bank
1991, Dishion et al 1991, Loeber 1993, Simons 1993, Tremblay 1993,
Moffitt 1993) (9).

In the first stage, disrupted family life, associated with parental
neglect, abuse, inconsistent discipline, and the use of punishment as
opposed to rewards, are critical (Feldman 1977, Wilson & Hernnstein
1985, Snyder et al 1986, McCord 1986, Patterson et al 1989, Luntz &
Widom 1993, Conger 1993, Simons 1993). Poor parenting provides the
child with inconsistent feedback and poor models of prosocial
behavior, handicapping the child in the development of appropriate
social, emotional, and problem-solving skills. This pattern is found
most frequently in parents who are themselves criminal, mentally
disturbed, undereducated, of low intelligence, or socioeconomically
deprived (McGarvey et al 1981, McCord 1986, Farrington 1986), leading
to a cross-generational cycle of increasing family dysfunction (eg.
Jaffe, Suderman & Reitzel 1992, Luntz & Widom 1993).

In the second stage, children with poor social skills find themselves
at a disadvantage in interactions with age-mates; rejected by the
popular children, they consort with one another (Loeber & Dishion
1983, Snyder et al 1986, Kandel et al 1988, Hartup 1989, and Patterson
et al 1989, Dishion et al 1991). In these socially unskilled peer
groups, which will also include primary sociopathic, or, unsocialized
conduct disorder children, delinquent, antisocial behavior is
reinforced and new (antisocial) skills are learned (Maccoby 1986,
Moffitt 1993). Antisocial behavior may then escalate in response to,
or as prerequisite for, social rewards provided by the group, or as an
attempt to obtain the perceived social (and tangible) rewards which
often accompany such behavior (Moffitt 1993). As the focus of the
socialization process moves outside the home, parental monitoring
becomes more important (Snyder et al 1986, Snyder & Patterson 1990,
Forgatch 1991, Dishion et al 1991, Conger 1993, Forgatch, Stoolmiller
& Patterson 1993, Simons 1993), as does the availability of prosocial
alternatives for the socially unskilled adolescent (Farrington 1986,
Apter 1992, Moffitt 1993).

The development of secondary sociopathy appears to depend much more
upon environmental contributions than does primary sociopathy. Since
it is secondary sociopathy which, presumably, has increased so
rapidly, so recently in our culture, what can social psychologists
contribute to our understanding of the sociocultural factors involved
in its development?

2.5 Social Psychology

2.5.1 Machiavellianism

First, the use of antisocial strategies is not restricted to
sociopaths. The majority of people who are arrested are not
sociopathic, and many people exhibit antisocial behavior that is
infrequent enough or inoffensive enough to preclude arrest. Some
antisocial behavior is even considered acceptable if it is expressed
in socially approved circumstances. Person (1986), for example,
relates entrepreneurism to psychopathy, while Christie (1970) notes
that people who seek to control and manipulate others often become
lawyers, psychiatrists, or behavioral scientists; Jenner (1980), too,
claims that "subtle, cynical selfishness with a veneer of social
skills is common among scientists" (p 128).

Christie (see Christie & Geis 1970) developed a scale for measuring
this subclinical variation in antisocial personality; he called it the
"Machiavellianism" or "Mach" scale. One's Mach score is calculated by
compiling answers to Likert-format queries of agreement or
disagreement with statements like "Humility not only is of no service
but is actually harmful," "Nature has so created men that they desire
everything but are unable to attain it," and "The most important thing
in life is winning". Adults who score high on the Mach scale express
"a relative lack of affect in interpersonal relationships," "a lack of
concern with conventional morality," "a lack of gross
psychopathology," and "low ideological commitment" (Christie & Geis, p
3-4); children who score high on Machiavellianism have lower levels of
empathy than age-mates (Barnett & Thompson 1984).

High Machs have an "instrumental cognitive attitude toward others"
(Christie & Geis, p 277), and, because they are goal-oriented as
opposed to person-oriented, they are more successful in face-to-face
bargaining situations than low Machs. High Machs "are especially able
communicators, regardless of the veracity of their message" (Kraut &
Price 1976). In a related vein, high Machs, like sociopaths, are more
resistant to confession after cheating than are low Machs, and they
are rated as being more plausible liars (Christie & Geis 1970, Bradley
& Klohn 1987); like sociopaths, high Machs are often referred to as
"cool". According to Christie, "If Machiavellianism has any behavioral
definition ...self-initiated manipulation of others should be at its
core" (p 76). One can thus easily think of Machiavellianism as a
low-level manifestation of sociopathy. It even shows a sex difference
consistent with the two- threshold model (Christie & Geis 1970), an
age pattern consistent with age variation in testosterone levels
(Christie & Geis 1970), significant positive correlations with
Eysenck's psychoticism and neuroticism scales (Allsopp, Eysenck &
Eysenck 1991), and a correlation with serotonin levels (Madsen 1985).

In one study, Geis & Levy (1970) found that high Machs (who were
thought to use an "impersonal, cognitive, rational, cool" approach
with others), were much more accurate than low Machs (who were thought
to use a "more personal, empathizing" approach), at assessing how
other "target" individuals answered a Machiavellian attitudes
questionnaire. Even more interesting is the result (from the same
study) that the high Machs achieved their accuracy by using a
nomothetic or actuarial strategy: they guessed that everyone was at
about the average level, without discriminating between individuals
based on differences they had had an opportunity to observe during a
previous experimental session. In addition, their errors tended to be
random, which would fit with reports by Eliasz & Reykowski (1986) and
Damasio, Tranel & Damasio (1990) that hypoaroused and antisocial
individuals are less attentive to social and emotional cues than
others. Low Machs, on the other hand, used an idiographic approach,
and although they successfully differentiated between high scorers and
low scorers, they grossly underestimated the scores of both, guessing
at a level that was more reflective of their own scores than those of
the population at large.

This study suggests two things: (1) that basing one's playing
strategies on an "impersonal, cognitive, rational, cool" approach to
others might be more accurate in the long run than using a "personal,
empathizing" approach (at least in those situations where cooperative
long-term partnerships are not possible); and (2) the errors made by
those who use the personal, empathizing approach, are of the kind more
likely to result in playing the cooperation strategy when the cheating
strategy would be more appropriate (rather than vice versa). Thus, the
personal, empathizing approach is likely to make one susceptible to
being exploited by others who use the impersonal cognitive approach;
indeed, high Machs outcompete low Machs in most experimental
competitive situations (Terhune 1970, Christie & Geis 1970).

As I have argued elsewhere (Mealey 1992), the common assumption that
an empathy-based approach to predicting the behavior of others is
better than a statistical approach is not necessarily correct; this
belief may itself be an emotion-based cognitive bias. To have such a
bias may be beneficial, however, for the same reason that emotional
commitment biases are beneficial: in situations where voluntary,
long-term coalitions can be formed, the personal, empathizing (and
idealistic) low Machs might outperform the more impersonal, cognitive
(and realistic) high Machs, since low Machs would be more successful
than high Machs in selecting a cooperator as a partner.

Although two studies (Hare & Craigen 1974 and Widom 1976a) report on
the strategy of sociopaths in Prisoner's Dilemma-type settings, in
both studies the sociopaths were paired with one another; thus, we do
not have a measure of the strategy sociopaths use against partners of
their own choosing or in situations with random, rotating partners
(10). I would predict that in such settings, sociopaths, (like Geis &
Levy's high Mach subjects), would be less proficient than others in
distinguishing between high and low Mach partners, and would thus be
at a disadvantage in iterated games with a chosen partner; on the
other hand (again like high Mach subjects), they should perform at
better than average levels when playing with randomly assigned,
rotating partners. Widom (1976b) found that when asked to guess how
"people in general" would feel about different social situations
sociopaths guessed that others would feel essentially the same way
that they do, whereas control subjects guessed that others would feel
differently. As in the Geis & Levy study, both groups were wrong, but
in different ways: the sociopaths underestimated their differences
from others, while the control subjects substantially over-estimated
their differences from others, suggesting that sociopaths (like high
Machs) were using a nomothetic approach to prediction, while controls
(like low Machs) were using an idiographic approach.

Machiavellianism and the related propensity to use others in social
encounters has generally been looked upon as a trait. An alternative
perspective, however, acknowledges both the underlying variation in
personality and the situational factors that are relevant to an
individual's behavior at any given moment (eg. Barber 1992). In line
with mechanism 5 for maintaining ESSs (presented in Section I.B.),
Terhune (1970) says "actors bring to the situation propensities to act
in a certain general way, and within the situation their propensities
interact with situational characteristics to determine their specific
behavior" (p 229) (11). This brings us to the last question: Beyond
the constitutional and environmental variables that contribute to the
development of individual differences in personality and antisocial
behavior, what can social psychology tell us about the
within-individual situational factors which encourage or discourage
cheating strategies, and how can these be explained?

2.5.2 The role of mood

Although mood and emotion are not identical concepts, they are clearly
related (12). Mood might be thought of as a relative of emotion which
clearly varies within individuals but is perhaps less an immediate
response to concrete events and stimuli and more a generalized, short-
to mid-term response to the environment. As such, the role of mood
must be addressed by any model that relies so heavily on the concepts
of emotion, emotionality, and emotionlessness, as determinants of
behavior.

Positive mood and feelings of success have been demonstrated to
enhance cooperative behavior (Mussen & Eisenberg-Berg 1977, Cialdini,
Kenrick & Baumann 1982, Farrington 1982). If, as Nesse (1991) has
argued, positive mood is a reflection not only of past success, but
also of anticipation of future success, the facilitation of
cooperation by positive mood could be seen as part of a long-term
strategy by individuals who feel they can afford to pass up possible
short-term gains for the sake of establishing a cooperative
reputation.

Sad affect and feelings of failure can also affect strategy in social
interactions. To the extent that sadness and feelings of failure
follow losses of various sorts, individuals in these circumstances
should be expected to be egoistic and selfish. In children, this is
typically what is found (Mussen & Eisenberg-Berg 1977, Baumann,
Cialdini & Kenrick 1981). In some children, and more consistently in
adults, on the other hand, sadness and feelings of failure can
facilitate prosocial behavior. Mussen & Eisenberg-Berg (1977) suggest
that this is a result of a deliberate effort to enhance one's
(diminished) reputation among others; Baumann et al (1981) and
Cialdini et al (1982) suggest that it is a result of a deliberate
effort to relieve negative affect based on prior experience that
prosocial behavior often has a positive, self- gratifying effect.

If sadness is profound, i.e., one is is depressed and experiencing the
cognitive biases and selective attention associated with depression
(Nesse 1991, Sloman 1992, Mineka & Sutton 1992), one would be expected
to desist from all social interaction, being neither antisocial nor
prosocial, but asocial (Nesse 1991, Sloman 1992). In this view, the
lethargy and anhedonia associated with depression could be considered
to be facultative lapses in the emotions or moods which typically
motivate a person toward social interaction.

Hostility can also lead to cognitive biases and selective attention to
relevant social stimuli. Dodge and Newman (1981) showed that
aggressiveness in boys is associated with the over-attribution of
hostile intent to others. The authors concluded that such attributions
lead to increased "retaliatory" aggression by the hostile individuals,
fueling a cycle of true hostility and retaliation by all parties. It
is also abundantly clear that anger and hostility, once expressed, do
not lead to catharsis, but to amplified feelings and outward
expressions of that anger (Tavris 1982).

Guilt, which often follows selfish behavior, typically results in an
increase in subsequent prosocial behavior (Hoffman 1982, Cialdini et
al 1982); Hoffman calls this "reparative altruism". Guilt can easily
be seen as one of Hirshleifer's (1987) or Frank's (1988) emotional
commitment devices, compelling one to perform prosocial behavior as a
means of reestablishing one's tarnished reputation.

Interestingly, Cialdini et al (1982) also report that prosocial
behavior increases after observing another's transgression. They
explain this phenomenon within the context of what they call the
"Negative Relief" model: prosocial behavior is performed as a means of
alleviating negative feelings in general (including direct or
vicarious guilt, sympathy, distress, anxiety, or depression). Like
Hoffman's, this model postulates that the reinforcing power of (relief
provided by) prosocial behavior is learned during childhood.

Since guilt, anxiety and sympathy are social emotions that primary
sociopaths rarely, if ever, experience, there is no reason to expect
that they might moderate their behavior so as to avoid them. On the
other hand, there is no reason to expect that sociopaths don't
experience fluctuations in mood (such as depression, optimism, or
anger) in response to their changing evaluation of their prospects of
success and failure. To the extent that we can manipulate the
sociopath's mood, therefore, we might be able to influence his
behavior.

2.5.3 Cultural variables

Competition, in addition to being one of the most important variables
in determining long-term life strategy choices, is also one of the
more important situational variables influencing the choice of
immediate strategy. Competition increases the use of antisocial and
Machiavellian strategies (Christie & Geis 1970) and can counteract the
increase in prosocial behavior that generally results from feelings of
success (Mussen & Eisenberg-Berg 1977). Some cultures encourage
competitiveness more than others (Mussen & Eisenberg-Berg 1977,
Shweder, Mahapatra & Miller 1987) and these differences in social
values vary both temporally and crossculturally. Across both
dimensions, high levels of competitiveness are associated with high
crime rates (Wilson & Herrnstein 1985, see also Farley 1986) and
Machiavellianism (Christie & Geis 1970).

High population density, an indirect form of competition, is also
associated with reduced prosocial behavior (Farrington 1982) and
increased antisocial behavior (Wilson & Hernnstein 1985, Ellis 1988,
Robins, Tipp & Przyeck 1991, U.S. Department of Justice 1992)-
especially in males (Wachs 1992; see Section 3.2.1 and references
therein for ultimate, game theoretic explanations why this might
occur; see Draper 1978, Siegel 1986, Gold 1987, Foster 1991, and
Wilson & Daly 1993 for a variety of proximate explanations). Fry
(1988) reports large differences in the frequency of prosocial and
antisocial behaviors in two Zapotec settlements equated for a variety
of socio-ecological variables; the one major difference- thought
possibly to be causal- was in land holdings per capita, with the
higher levels of aggression found in the community with the smaller
per capita land holdings.

Last, but not least, is the relatedness or similarity of the
actors/strategists to their partners in an interaction. Based on
models of kin selection and inclusive fitness, individuals should be
more cooperative and less deceptive when interacting with relatives
who share their genes, or relatives who share investment in common
descendents. Segal (1991) reported that identical twins cooperated
more than fraternal twins playing the Prisoner's Dilemma. Barber
(1992) reported that responses on an altruism questionnaire were more
altruistic when the questions were phrased so as to refer to relatives
(as opposed to "people" in general), and that Machiavellian responses
were thereby reduced. Rushton (Rushton, Russell and Wells 1984,
Rushton 1989) presents evidence that people also cooperate more with
others who are similar to them even though not genetically related.
There are a variety of plausible evolutionary explanations for this
behavior (see Pulliam 1982, Mealey 1984, and BBS commentary on Rushton
1989).

3. Integration, Implications, and Conclusions:

3.1 Integration: Sociopathy as an ESS leads to two types of sociopaths

3.1.1 Primary sociopathy

I have thus far argued that some individuals seem to have a genotype
that disposes them "to acquire and be reinforced for displaying
antisociality" (Rowe 1990a, p 122). That genotype results in a certain
inborn temperament or personality, coupled with a particular pattern
of autonomic hypoarousal that, together, design the child to be
selectively unresponsive to cues necessary for normal socialization
and moral development. This scenario is descriptive of mechanism 1
(Section 1.2) of maintaining ESSs in the population; it describes the
existence of frequency-dependent, genetically based individual
differences in employment of life history strategies. I suggest
accordingly, that there will always be a small, cross- culturally
similar, and unchanging baseline frequency of sociopaths: a certain
percentage of sociopaths- those individuals to whom I have referred as
primary sociopaths- will always appear in every culture, no matter
what the socio-cultural conditions. Those individuals will display
chronic, pathologically emotionless antisocial behavior throughout
most of their lifespan and across a variety of situations, a phenotype
which is recognized (according to Robins, Tipp & Przybeck 1991) "by
every society, no matter what its economic system, and in all eras"
(13). Since it is a genetically determined strategy, primary
sociopaths should be equally likely to come from all kinds of
socio-economic backgrounds; on the other hand, since they constitute
that small group of individuals whose physiotype makes them
essentially impervious to the social environment almost all sociopaths
from the upper-classes will be primary sociopaths (14).

Of course, because they are not intellectually handicapped, these
individuals will progress normally in terms of cognitive development
and will acquire a theory of mind. Their's however, will be formulated
purely in instrumental terms, without access to the empathic
understanding that most of us rely on so much of the time. They may
become excellent predictors of others' behavior, unhandicapped by the
vagaries and "intrusiveness" of emotion, acting, as do professional
gamblers, solely on nomothetic laws and actuarial data rather than on
hunches and feelings. In determining how to "play" in the social
encounters of everyday life, they will use a pure cost-benefit
approach based on immediate personal outcomes, with no "accounting"
for the emotional reactions of the others with whom they are dealing.
Without love to "commit" them to cooperation, anxiety to prevent
"defection", or guilt to inspire repentance, they will remain free to
continually play for the short- term benefit in the Prisoner's
Dilemma.

3.1.2 Secondary sociopathy

At the same time, because changes in gene-frequencies in the
population would not be able to keep pace with the fast-changing
parameters of social interactions, an additional, fluctuating
proportion of sociopathy should be a result of mechanism 5 for
maintaining ESSs, which allows for more flexibility in the ability of
the population to track the frequency-dependent nature of the success
of the cheating strategy. Mechanism 5 (genetically based individual
differences in response to the environment, resulting in differential
use by individuals of environmentally-contingent strategies) would
explain the development and distribution of what I have referred to as
secondary sociopathy. Secondary sociopathy is expressed by individuals
who are not extreme on the genetic sociopathy spectrum, but who,
because of exposure to environmental risk factors, pursue a life
history strategy that involves frequent, but not necessarily
emotionless cheating. Unlike primary sociopaths, secondary sociopaths
will not necessarily exhibit chronic antisocial behavior, because
their strategy choices will be more closely tied to age, fluctuation
in hormone levels, their competitive status within their referent
group, and changing environmental contingencies. Since secondary
sociopathy is more closely tied to environmental factors than to
genetic factors, secondary sociopaths will almost always come from
lower class backgrounds and their numbers could vary substantially
across cultures and time, tracking environmental conditions favoring
or disfavoring the use of cheating strategies.

The existence of this second etiological pathway to sociopathy
explains the fact that cultural differences are correlated with
differences in the overall incidence of antisocial behavior (Wilson &
Hernnstein 1985, Farley 1986, Gold 1987, Ellis 1988, Robins, Tipp &
Przybeck 1991). It also explains why, as the overall incidence of
sociopathy increases, the discrepancy in the ratio of male to female
sociopaths decreases (Robins, Tipp & Przybeck, 1991): since secondary
sociopathy is less heritable than primary sociopathy (according to
this model), the effect of sex-limited genes (like that of all the
genes contributing to the spectrum) should be less important for the
development of secondary sociopathy, resulting in less of a sex
difference. Based on this model, I would predict that, unlike what we
find for primary sociopathy (see Section 2.1.3), we should find no
differential heritability between the sexes for secondary sociopathy
(even though there will still be a sex difference in prevalence).

3.2 Implications of the two-pathways model

Terhune (1970) suggests that choice of strategy in experimental game
situations (and, presumably, real-life settings as well) depends upon
two things: (1) cognitive expectations regarding others (i.e., a
theory of mind), and (2) motivational/emotional elements such as hopes
and fears. Since primary sociopaths have a deficit in the realm of
emotional motivation, they presumably act primarily upon their
cognitive expectations of others; to the extent that they do act upon
emotions, it is most likely to be upon mood and the primary emotions
(like anger and fear) rather than upon the social and secondary
emotions (like love and anxiety). Thus, the extent to which a society
will be able to diminish the antisocial behavior of primary sociopaths
will depend upon two things: (1) its influence on the sociopath's
cognitive evaluation of its own reputation as a player in the
Prisoner's Dilemma, and (2) the primary emotion- or mood-inducing
capacity of the stimuli it utilizes in establishing the costs and
benefits of prosocial versus antisocial behavior.

Manipulations of these two variables will also influence the numbers
of secondary sociopaths by changing the size of the adaptive niche
associated with antisocial behavior. In addition, since the
development of secondary sociopathy is more influenced by the social
environment than is the development of primary sociopathy, and since
secondary sociopaths are not devoid of social emotions, changing
patterns in the nurturing and socialization of children and in the
socialization and rehabilitation of delinquents and adult criminals is
an additional, viable possibility for reducing the overall prevalence
of antisocial behavior.

3.2.1 Minimizing the impact of primary sociopaths: society as a player
in the Prisoner's Dilemma

Sociopaths' immediate decisions are based partly on their ability to
form a theory of mind, and to use those expectations of others'
behavior in a cost-benefit analysis to assess what actions are likely
to be in their own self-interest. (This is true for both primary and
secondary sociopaths.) The outcome of such analyses is therefore
partially dependent on the sociopath's expectations of the behavior of
other players in the game. I would argue that an entire society can be
seen as a player, and that the past behavior of that society will be
used by the sociopath in forming the equivalent of a theory of mind,
to predict the future behavior of that society.

Like an individual player, a society will have a certain probability
of detecting deception, a more-or-less accurate memory of who has
cheated in the past, and a certain proclivity to retaliate or not,
based upon a cheater's past reputation and current behavior. Since the
sociopath is using a rational and actuarial approach to assess the
costs and benefits of different behaviors, it is the actual past
behavior of the society which will go into his calculations, rather
than risk assessments inflated from the exaggerated fears or anxieties
that most people feel in anticipation of being caught or punished.
Thus, to reduce antisocial behavior, a society must establish and
enforce a reputation for high rates of detection of deception and
identification of cheaters, and a willingness to retaliate. In other
words, it must establish a successful strategy of deterrence.

Game theory models by Axelrod and others have shown that the
emergence, frequency, and stability of social cooperation is subject
to an abundance of potential deterrent factors (Axelrod & Hamilton
1981, Axelrod 1984, Feldman & Thomas 1987, Axelrod & Dion 1988,
Heckathorn 1988, Hirshleifer & Coll 1988, Boyd 1988, Dugatkin & Wilson
1991, Boyd & Richerson 1992, Nowak & Sigmund 1993 and Vila & Cohen
1993). Among these are: group size (as it decreases, cooperation
increases); nonrandom association of individuals within the population
(as it increases, cooperation increases); the probability of error in
memory or recognition of an individual (as it decreases, cooperation
increases); the effect of a loss on a cooperator (as it decreases,
cooperation increases); the effect of a gain on a defector (as it
decreases, cooperation increases); the frequency of punishment against
defectors (as it increases, cooperation increases); the cost of
punishment for the punished (as it increases, cooperation increases);
and the cost of punishment for the punishers (as it decreases,
cooperation increases) (15).

Recent game-theoretic models are coming closer and closer to the
complexity of real-world, human social interactions on a large scale
by examining the role of culture and technology in: expanding
society's collective memory of individual players' past behavior;
broadcasting the costs and benefits of cooperation and defection, and;
the development and application of new socialization,
deception-detection, and punishment techniques (see esp. Hirshleifer &
Rasmusen 1989, Machalek & Cohen 1991, Dugatkin 1992). These models
begin to provide useful strategies for the real-world prediction and
reduction of cheating strategies and antisocial behavior. (See also
Feldman 1977, Farrington 1979, Bartol 1984, Wilson & Herrnstein 1985,
Axelrod 1986, Eysenck & Gudjonsson 1989, Ellis 1990a, and Machalek &
Cohen 1991 for some nonquantitative models and tests which incorporate
some of these variables in their explanation of the socialization,
punishment, and deterrence of crime.)

Since neither secondary nor primary sociopaths have a deficit in the
ability to perform accurate cost-benefit analyses, increasing the
probabilities of criminal detection, identification, and punishment,
can also reduce crime; a society must therefore establish a reputation
for willingness to retaliate. [The National Research Council (1993)
reports that a 50% increase in the probability of incarceration for
any single crime reduces subsequent crime twice as much as does
doubling incarceration duration (p 294).] Harsher penalties can also
be deterring, but only if they are reliably meted out.

Another key is in making the costs of cheating salient. Generally
speaking, antisocial and uncooperative behaviors increase as the costs
become more diffuse or removed in time, and prosocial and cooperative
behaviors decrease as the benefits become more diffuse or removed in
time (Bartol 1984, Ostrom 1990, Low 1993). For primary sociopaths,
this is even moreso, since their sensation- seeking physiotype makes
them particularly unable to make decisions based on nonimmediate
consequences. Although able to focus attention on interesting tasks
for short periods, the sociopath cannot perform well under conditions
of delayed gratification (Pulkkinen 1986) and is more motivated avoid
immediate costs than by threats or avoidance of future punishments
(Christie & Geis 1970, McCord 1983, Raine 1988, 1989, Forth & Hare
1989). Costs associated with social retaliation must therefore not
only be predictable, but be swift- and the swiftness itself, must also
be predictable.

Another factor the sociopath will use to "compute" the potential value
of an antisocial action is the cost-benefit ratio of the alternatives
(Piliavin, Thornton, Gartner & Matsueda (1986). For the sociopath,
money and other immediate tangible rewards are more motivating than
social reinforcers (such as praise) or promises of future payoff, and
visual stimuli are more salient than auditory stimuli (Chesno &
Kilmann 1975, Raine & Venables 1987, Forth & Hare 1989, Raine 1989,
Raine et al 1990b, Zuckerman 1990). Thus, alternatives to crime must
be stimulating enough and rewarding enough to preferentially engage
the chronically hypoaroused sensation-seeker. This will be a difficult
task to achieve, but it will be more successful if we can effectively
distinguish primary from secondary sociopaths. Primary sociopaths,
with their emotional, but not intellectual deficit, will be competent
on some tasks on which secondary sociopaths, with deficits in social
skills, emotion-regulation and problem-solving, will not.
Possibilities might include: novelist, screen play writer, stunt man,
talk show host, disk jockey, explorer, race car driver, or skydiving
exhibitionist. Given that primary sociopaths will always be with us in
low numbers, it would be a wise social investment to create- even on
an individual basis, if necessary- a number of exciting, high- payoff
alternatives for them, in order to minimize the number who may
otherwise cause pain and destruction.

Distinguishing between primary and secondary sociopaths is also
critical for decisions about confinement and rehabilitation. Quinsey &
Walker (1992) cite examples where recidivism rates went up for
psychopaths, but down for nonpsychopaths, after they were exposed to
the same kind of "treatment". Recidivism is much greater in primary
sociopaths than in secondary sociopaths (Hare, Forth & Strachan 1992),
and sometimes the only response is prolongued incapacitation (until
they literally "grow out of it"). A recent international meeting of
experts concluded that "treatment" programs dealing with primary
sociopaths should be "less concerned with attempts to develop empathy
or conscience than with intensive efforts to convince them that their
current attitudes and behavior (simply) are not in their own
self-interest" (Hare 1993, p 204).

3.2.2 Minimizing the prevalence of secondary sociopathy: society as a
socializing agent and mood setter

Given that secondary sociopaths have a different life history and are
more responsive to environmental influences than primary sociopaths,
social changes can be designed to minimize not only their impact, but
their incidence. Loeber (1990) argues that each generation in our
society is being raised with an increasing number of environmental
risk factors, leading to increasing generation-wide deficits in
impulse control. He makes specific suggestions to screen for high-risk
children and institute early intervention, noting that different
interventions are likely to be more or less effective given different
risk factors in the child's or adolescent's life history. (See also
U.S. Department of Justice 1993.)

One possible intervention is parent training (see Magid & McKelvie,
1987 and Dumas, Blechman & Prinz 1992, for reviews and programmatic
suggestions). Laboratory experiments show that antisocial behaviors
can be reduced and prosocial behaviors reinforced by appropriate use
of modelling, induction, and behavioral modification techniques
(Feldman 1977, Mussen & Eisenberg-Berg 1977, Grusec 1982, Rushton
1982, Gelfand & Hartmann 1982, Radke-Yarrow & Zahn-Waxler 1986,
Kochanska 1992 & 1993). Recent longitudinal studies in natural
settings suggest that the positive effects of good parenting,
especially parental warmth and predictability, may be long-lasting
(McCord 1986, Kochanska 1992 & 1993, Kochanska & Murray 1992).

The cause and effect relationship between parental behavior and child
behavior, however, is not likely to be one-way. Children of different
gender, temperaments, and even social classes, respond differentially
to different socialization techniques (Dienstbier 1984, Radke-Yarrow &
Zahn-Waxler 1986, Lytton 1990, Kochanska 1991 & 1993, Kochanska &
Murray 1992, McCord 1993), and to some extent, difficult children
elicit poor parenting (Buss 1981, Lee & Bates 1985, Bell & Chapman
1986, Snyder & Patterson 1987, Lytton 1990, Eron, Huesmann & Zelli
1991). It is easy for parents of difficult children to lose heart, and
in so doing, become even less effective (Patterson 1992). For example,
studies cited in Landy & Peters (1992) found that mothers of
aggressive children, like other mothers with a low sense of personal
power, tend to give weak, ineffectual commands to their children.

This lack of "goodness of fit" between parental style and the needs of
the child is probably an important factor in the exacerbation of
conduct disorder (Lee & Bates 1985, Landy & Peters 1992, Wachs 1992,
Moffitt 1993). Parents need help in identifying high-risk children and
they need instruction in how to take a practical, assertive approach
with them (see Magid & McKelvie 1987, Garmezy 1991), while using a
more inductive, empathic approach with their other children (see
Kochanska 1991, Kochanska & Murray 1992, and Kochanska 1993).

Social workers, health care providers, and employees of the criminal
justice system also need to be able to distinguish between children
with different risk factors and life histories and to respond
accordingly. Palmer (1983) argues that agents should be individually
matched with each client/offender based on style and personality
characteristics, to prevent high Mach and sociopathic offenders from
taking advantage of low Mach employees.

At a broader level, many sociocultural aspects of modern society seem
to contribute to antisocial behaviors and attitudes (National Research
Council 1993, Moffitt 1993). As a society gets larger and more
competitive, both theoretical models (Section 3.2.1) and empirical
research (Section 2.4.2) show that individuals become more anonymous
and more Machiavellian, leading to reductions in altruism and
increases in crime. Social stratification and segregation can also
lead to feelings of inferiority, pessimism, and depression among the
less privileged, which can in turn promote the use of alternative
competitive strategies, including antisocial behavior (Sanchez 1986,
Magid & McKelvey 1987, Wilson & Daly 1993).

Crime may be one response to the acquisition of an external locus of
control (Raine, Roger & Venables 1982) or learned helplessness.
Learned helplessness and other forms of depression have been
associated with reduced levels of serotonin (Traskman, Asberg,
Bertilsson & Sjostrand 1981); since reduced levels of serotonin have
also been shown to be related to increased aggression, it is likely
that physiological changes mediate these psychological and behavioral
changes. The neurochemical pathway involved in learned helplessness
(identified by Petty & Arnold 1982) appears to be the same one
identified by Gray (1982, 1987) and Cloninger (1987a) with mediation
of behavioral inhibition/harm avoidance, and by Charney et al (1990)
with anxiety-mediated inhibition.

Crime may also function to obtain desirable resources, increase an
individual's status in a local referent group, or provide the
stimulation that the more privileged find in more socially acceptable
physical and intellectual challenges (eg. Farrington 1986, Farley
1986, Lyng 1990, Apter 1992, Moffitt 1993). According to Apter, "the
vandal is a failed creative artist," a bored and frustrated
sensation-seeker who "does not have the intellectual or other skills
and capacities to amuse or occupy himself" (1992, p 198). Thus, in
addition to making the costs of antisocial behavior greater, strong
arguments can be made for providing early social support for those at
risk, and for developing alternative, nonexploitative,
sensation-seeking ventures that can meet the psychological needs of
disadvantaged and low-skill individuals.

3.3 Conclusions

A review of the literature in several areas supports the concept of
two pathways to sociopathy:

(1) "Primary sociopaths" are individuals of a certain genotype,
physiotype, and personality who are incapable of experiencing the
secondary, "social" emotions that normally contribute to behavioral
motivation and inhibition; they fill the ecological niche described by
game theorists as the "cheater strategy" and, as the result of
frequency-dependent selection, will be found in low frequency in every
society.

(1b) To minimize the damage caused by primary sociopaths, the
appropriate social response is to modify the criminal justice system
in ways that obviously reduce the benefits and increase the costs of
antisocial behavior, while simultaneously creating alternatives to
crime which could satisfy the psychophysiological arousal needs of the
sociopath.

(2) "Secondary sociopaths" are individuals who use an
environmentally-contingent, facultative cheating strategy not as
clearly tied to genotype; this strategy develops in response to social
and environmental conditions related to disadvantage in social
competition and will thus covary (across cultures, generations, and
even within an individual lifetime) with variation in immediate social
circumstances.

(2b) To reduce the frequency of secondary sociopathy, the appropriate
social response is to implement programs which reduce social
stratification, anonymity, and competition, intervene in high-risk
settings with specialized parent education and support; and increase
the availability of rewarding, prosocial opportunities for at-risk
youth.

Since the genetics and life histories of primary and secondary
sociopaths are so different, successful intervention will require
differential treatment of different cases; we thus need to encourage
the widespread adoption of common terminology and diagnostic criteria.
FOOTNOTES

1. Plutchik's eight primary emotions are: anger, fear, sadness,
disgust, surprise, joy, acceptance, and anticipation. Others posit a
few more (Izard 1977, 1991) or fewer (Ekman 1971, Panskepp 1982) but
what is basically agreed is that primary emotions are those which can
be found in other mammals, are hard-wired in the brain, are
reflexively produced in response to certain stimuli, are associated
with certain, sometimes species-specific, physiological responses
(e.g., piloerection, changes in heart rate, facial expressions), and,
in humans, are found cross-culturally and at an early age. (See Ortony
& Turner 1990 for a dissenting opinion.)

Note that the "social emotions", including love, guilt, shame, and
remorse, do not meet the above criteria, and are not considered to be
primary emotions by most authors (see Izard 1991 for another
perspective). Although distinctly human, the social emotions seem to
involve a critical element of learning, and, central to the argument I
will be making, are not panhuman.

2. According to Plutchik, cognitive processes themselves evolved "in
the service of emotions... in order to make the evaluations of
stimulus events more correct and the predictions more precise so that
the emotional behavior that finally resulted would be adaptively
related to the stimulus event" (p 303). This model of the relationship
between emotion and cognition is somewhat similar to Bigelow's (1972),
which postulates that intelligence evolved as a result of the need to
control the emotions (especially the aggressive emotions), in the
service of sociality, and Humphrey's (1976, 1983), which claims that
self-awareness evolved because it was a successful tool for predicting
the behavior of others.

3. See Draper (1978) and the 1986 special issue of Ethology and
Sociobiology (vol. 7 #3/4) on ostracism for further discussion of the
role of shunning with specific reference to human societies; see
Hirshleifer & Rasmusen (1989) for a game theoretic model of shunning;
and see Nathanson (1992) for the importance of the social emotion,
shame.

4. The wealth of literature on strategies that people use to detect
deception in interpersonal interactions, as well as the technologies
that have been developed in order to further enhance that ability in
less-personal social interactions, are indicators of the importance we
bestow on such ability. (See Zuckerman, DePaulo & Rosenthal 1981,
Mitchell & Thompson 1986, and especially, Ekman 1992.)

5. Although the data are overwhelming, the particular articles cited
in this section should not be considered to be independent reports,
since most of the reviews cited overlap substantially in their
coverage, and many authors or teams report their findings more than
once in a series of updates. While interested readers should direct
themselves to the most recent publications, older publications do
contain some information not presented in the updates, and thus are
included for thoroughness and ease of reference.

6. Twin study methods yield estimates of what is termed "broad
heritability", which includes both "additive" genetic factors (i.e.,
the summed effect of individual genes on the phenotype) and "non-
additive" genetic factors (i.e., the phenotypic effects of dominance
interactions between homologous alleles on paired chromosomes, and the
epistatic interactions between non-homologous genes throughout the
genome). Adoption study methods, on the other hand, yield estimates of
what is termed "narrow heritability" which is only the additive
genetic component. The additive component is that which can be
selected for (or against) as it is transmitted from generation to
generation, while the nonadditive effect is unique to each individual
genotype and is broken and reshuffled with every episode of sexual
recombination. Because of this difference, twin studies typically
yield higher heritability estimates than adoption studies.

Another difference between the twin methodology and the adoption
methodology, is that twin studies generally provide heritability
coefficients which estimate the proportion of the total explained
variance accounted for by genetic factors, whereas adoption studies
provide heritability coefficients which estimate the proportion of the
total variance (including measurement error) that is accounted for by
additive genetic factors. Since measurement error is so large when
assessing criminality, adoption studies tend to yield both smaller and
more varied heritability estimates than do twin studies.

A third difference is that twin studies yield heritability estimates
for members of a particular generational cohort, usually tested at the
same age, whereas adoption studies necessarily regress measures from
one generation to another. This leads to two problems in interpreting
of heritability estimates derived from adoption studies which are not
germane to twin studies. The first is that heritability can change
across generations- even in the absence of genetic change- due to
changes in the environment; this effect cannot be assessed in either
twin or adoption studies, but is only a limitation of generalizability
for the former, whereas it is conflated in the latter. The second is
that heritability can also be different at different ages. Huesmann et
al (1984), for example, report that the correlation between children's
aggression level and their parents' aggression level when measured at
the same age, is greater than the correlation between the child's own
aggression level at one age and at a later age. This phenomenon, too,
results simply in limited generalizability of heritability estimates
derived from twin studies, but yields conflated estimates from
adoption studies.

The heritability of .6 reported herein is an estimate of broad
heritability as derived directly from twin studies; similar estimates
can also be calculated indirectly from adoption study data after
accounting for measurement error, but cohort effects cannot be
separated out. See Loehlin (1992) for a general discussion of twin and
adoption methodologies and Emde et al (1992) and Raine (1993) for
further discussions of the relevance of methodological considerations
as they pertain to interpretation of the specific studies summarized
herein.

7. There is also evidence that at least one form of alcoholism belongs
to the sociopathy spectrum: Type II alcoholism, which is also much
more prevalent in men than women and seems to be transmitted in the
same way (Cloninger, Christiansen, Reich & Gottesman 1978, Bohman,
Sigvardsson & Cloninger 1981, Cloninger, Bohman & Sigvardsson 1981,
Stabenau 1985, Cadoret 1986, Zucker & Gomberg 1986, and McGue, Pickens
& Svikis 1992). Type II alcoholism is characterized by early onset,
frequent violent outbursts, EEG abnormalities, and several of the
personality attributes that are often seen in sociopathy- impulsivity,
extraversion, sensation- seeking, aggressiveness, and lack of concern
for others (Cloninger 1987b, Tarter 1988).

8. The interesting phenomenon of differential heritability of traits
across the sexes can occur, as in this case, as a result of
differential (sex-limited) expression of the same genes, or, as it
does with Type I alcoholism (a milder, nonviolent form), as a result
of differential environmental experiences of the sexes (Cloninger,
Christiansen, Reich & Gottesman 1978). Since heritability is measured
as a proportion, the value of a heritability estimate can be changed
by changes in either the numerator (variance in a trait due to genetic
variance) or the denominator (total variance in the trait). Since the
denominator (total variance) is composed of both genetic and
environmental variance, changes in either will change the
heritability. This method of defining heritability also explains some
other apparent paradoxes, such as how two populations (eg., racial
groups or two successive generations of a single group) could have
exactly the same genotypic variation with respect to a trait, but
because of differences in their environments, exhibit differential
phenotypes and differential heritability of the trait.

9. Like the behavior genetic studies cited in Section 2.1, these
studies provide overwhelming data, but should not be considered as
independent reports, because many overlap or update earlier work.
Methodologically, while path models and the longitudinal studies from
which they are derived have excellent ecological validity, they are
correlational, and while they improve upon cross-sectional designs by
noting which factors precede others developmentally, they cannot
completely sort out cause and effect- especially in the earliest
stages of parent-child interactions.

10. The strategy of sociopaths against one another, although not a
test of the current model, is still interesting in its own right. In
the Hare & Craigen (1974) modified Prisoner's Dilemma, the majority of
sociopaths, on their turn, chose from amongst five "plays", that
choice which minimized their own pain (an electric shock) for that
trial, but which maximized their partner's. Since partners took turns
in selecting from the same five "plays", this strategy actually
maximized pain over the long-run. The alternative, pain-minimizing
strategy, involved giving both oneself and one's partner a small
shock- a choice that most subjects declined to use. This result seems
to confirm the sociopath's inability to consider anything other than
the immediate consequences of an act, as well as the ineffectiveness
of delayed punishment or threat of punishment as a deterrent. In the
Widom (1976a) study, sociopaths did not, in general, "defect" more
often than the controls, but in the condition when subjects were
informed of their partner's move on the previous trial, sociopaths
were much more likely than controls to "defect" after a mutual
cooperation. On this measure, at least, the sociopaths seemed to
demonstrate an inability to "commit" to an ongoing cooperative
relationship.

11. Terhune reports that personality is the most important factor for
strategy choice within the setting of single-trial Prisoner's Dilemma
interactions. In multiple-trial interactions, however, when players
have the opportunity to learn one another's dispositions, situational
factors are more important for determining play (see Frank, Gilovich &
Regan 1993). This is consistent with the idea that the establishment
of reputation is a key goal, even for players who on a single trial
would choose not to cooperate. For more on the idea that establishing
a certain reputation within one's referent group is a conscious goal,
and how that might play a role in the development of antisocial
behavior, see Hogan & Jones (1983) and Irons (1991).

12. For some of the debate on this issue see the series of comments
and replies following Nesse (1991) in the electronic journal
Psycoloquy. The comments specifically addressing the relationship
between mood and emotion are: Morris (1992), Nesse (1992a), Plutchik
(1992), and Nesse (1992b).

13. While searching for data to test this prediction, I came across
only the Robins et al (1991) reference in support of it, and one
reference in an introductory psychology text (Wade & Tavris 1993)
against it. The latter stated that antisocial personality disorder "is
rare or unknown in small, tight-knit, cooperative communities, such as
the Inuit, religious Hutterites, and Israelis raised on the communal
plan of the kibbutz" (p 584). Contact with Dr. Tavris allowed me to
follow up on the sources from which the latter statement was derived
(Eaton & Weil 1953, Montagu 1978, and Altrocchi 1980). My conclusion,
(which is shared by Dr. Tavris in a personal communication), is that
the absence or rarity of sociopathy in these small, tightly knit
societies, is not a result of the creation of a social system in which
sociopaths never develop; rather, it is that secondary sociopaths do
not develop (keeping total numbers at the low baseline), and that
primary sociopaths emigrate.

Small, closely knit societies have all the properties that game
theoretic models indicate will reduce (but not eliminate) the
incidence of the cheater strategy (see Section 3.2.1). One of the most
important of these features is size per se; the cheater strategy
cannot be used repeatedly against the same interactionists and remain
successful (see section 1.2). Thus, in small societies, sociopaths are
likely to do their damage, acquire a reputation, and leave- to avoid
punishment and move on to greener pastures. This "roving strategist"
model (Harpending & Sobus 1987, Dugatkin & Wilson 1991, Dugatkin 1992)
allows for both the evolution and the maintenance of a low baseline of
successful sociopaths even in small groups (like those in which we
presumably evolved).

14. Despite being a genetically based strategy, because primary
sociopathy is the end product of the additive and interactive effects
of many genes, we will not be able to predict or identify individual
sociopaths by knowledge of their genotype. We will, however, be able
to predict which children will be at risk, given their genetic
background, the same way we predict which children will be at risk
given their familial and sociocultural background. We will also be
alerted to differentiate between diagnoses of primary sociopathy and
secondary sociopathy (and our consequent approaches to them) based
upon knowledge of an already identified sociopath's genetic and
environmental background.

15. Axelrod (1986) and Boyd and Richerson (1992) also consider the
extension of punishment not only to cheaters, but to those cooperators
who do not, themselves, punish cheaters. The presence of this strategy
can lead to an ESS of practically any behavior, regardless of whether
there is any group benefit derived from such cooperation. Clearly this
extension of the model has some analogues with totalitarian regimes
and in-groups of a variety of sorts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Mr. Rainer Link, who helped me get started on
this project, and who collaborated with me on the first version and
first public presentation of the model (Link & Mealey 1992). I would
also like to extend thanks to the many individuals who provided useful
comments during the revision process: J.D. Baldwin, David Buss,
Patricia Draper, Lee Dugatkin, Lee Ellis, Hans Eysenck, David
Farrington, Hill Goldsmith, Henry Harpending, James Kalat, John
Loehlin, Michael McGuire, Randy Nesse, Jaak Panskepp, David Rowe,
Sandra Scarr, Nancy Segal, Chuck Watson, David S. Wilson, and four
anonymous BBS reviewers.

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From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com  Fri Jan 13 01:49:27 2006
From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 18:49:27 -0700
Subject: [Paleopsych] Atlas Sphere: Indict the New York Times
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601121354420.4814@panix1.panix.com>
References: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601121354420.4814@panix1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <43C70727.1090104@solution-consulting.com>

Frank,
Regarding the question of spying on ourselves: Let me provide a 
counter-intuitive argument, only partly tongue in cheek. Perhaps the 
left-wing fear that government spies on us is actually salutory. It 
encourages us to reflect on the current confirmation hearings for Alito: 
Everything you have ever said will someday be scrutinized. So live life 
with that clear understanding.

Privacy is over-rated as a freedom. Knowledge about others is 
interesting. (I love gossip!) It is the contraints on behavior that we 
cannot tolerate. Recall that  SCOTUS invented a right to privacy so 
people in Connecticut could buy birth control Privacy was not the real 
issue. The issue was that govenment was trying to control things it 
shouldn't. To get a decision, the Supremes had to invent a new right.

In the early 1970s, my father was puzzled about people objecting to 
Nixon's wiretaps. "Why does anyone object?" he asked. "You shouldn't 
oughta be sayin' things on the telephone that you are ashamed of 
anyway." Dad lived his life with that notion, that he had nothing to 
hide. It is a wonderfully freeing life.

I think things like Holzer proposes are actually good for democracy, 
since it helps the democracy have an open dialog about important issues 
including the role of secrecy vs. openness. As David Horowitz says, 
dialog between disparate entities invigorates democracy. Such a 
prosecution would be exciting to watch.
Lynn

Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.
Solutions Consulting Group
166 East 5900 South, Ste. B-108
Salt Lake City, UT 84107

Tel: (801) 261-1412; Fax: (801) 288-2269

Check out our webpage: www.solution-consulting.com

Feeling upset? Order Get On The Peace Train, my new solution-oriented book on negative emotions.



Premise Checker wrote:

> Indict the New York Times
> http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/printer_050111-holzer-indict-nytimes.php 
>
>
> [Go ahead and critique, folks. I'll send out your thoughts, unless you 
> specifically ask me not to. It's not clear to me how our "national 
> security" was compromised. Aren't the citizens part of this "nation," 
> and didn't Amendment IV speak of the "right of the people to be SECURE 
> in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable 
> searches and seizures"? Or does the "nation's" security extend only to 
> our rulers?
>
> [So it is unclear whether the Espionage Act violates the Bill of 
> Rights, even if past Supreme Courts have allowed certain somewhat 
> similar powers. And did Congress intend the Bush administration to do 
> what it did? Or is the intention of Congress something the Executive 
> Branch can determine for itself at will? Is the United States a nation 
> of laws (Congress) or of Presidential decrees? It is also unclear to 
> me whether the Bush administration violated the laws governing the NSA.
>
> [Share with me your other objections. Basically, domestic spying is 
> open to serious abuses and it must be checked. I have not been 
> following the details and so don't know just how various members of 
> Congress have
> reacted, but it's had not been one of ringing endorsement.
>
> [Mr. Jefferson said if he had to choose between newspapers and no 
> government or government and no newspapers, he would unhesitatingly 
> choose the latter.
>
> [I don't know what restrictions on the press I would allow in the 
> unlikely event that the United States got into a war justifiably. Help!]
>
> [And just how did Hanoi Jane jeopardize our national security? Did it 
> mean that North Vietnam was more likely to invade the United States? 
> She was hardly the only critic of our foreign policy.]
>
> Opinion Editorial
> Indict the New York Times
> By Henry Mark Holzer
> Jan 10, 2006
>
> It is an article of faith on the Left and among its fellow
> travelers that the Bush administration stole two elections, made
> war on Iraq for venal reasons, tortured hapless foreigners, and
> conducted illegal surveillance of innocent Americans.
>
> A corollary of this mindset is that the press, primarily the
> Washington Post and The New York Times, has a right, indeed a duty,
> to print whatever they want about the administration even if the
> information compromises national security.
>
> Not true. The press is not exempt from laws that apply to everyone
> else. The press is not exempt from laws protecting our national
> security. The New York Times is not exempt from the Espionage Act,
> as we shall see in a moment.
>
> But first, its necessary to understand what an indictment of the
> Times does not involve.
>
> First, an Espionage Act indictment of The New York Times would not
> even remotely constitute an attack on a free press. As Justice
> White wrote in Branzburg v. Hayes, [i]t would be frivolous to
> assert ... that the First Amendment, in the interest of securing
> news or otherwise, confers a license on either the reporter or his
> news sources to violate valid criminal laws.
>
> Nor would an indictment of the Times constitute an attempt to
> restrain it from publishing news. The anti-anti-terrorists who seek
> to justify the Times revealing the NSAs domestic surveillance
> program and thus prevent their flagship paper from being indicted,
> rely on a Supreme Court decision entitled New York Times Company v.
> United States, better known as the Pentagon Papers Case. Their
> reliance is misplaced.
>
> In 1971 a disgruntled anti-war activist delivered a classified
> study History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Viet Nam Policy to
> The New York Times and the Washington Post. The government sued to
> enjoin publication seeking to impose a prior restraint.
>
> If there are any fundamental principles in modern First Amendment
> law, one is that the burden on government to restrain publication
> (as compared, for example, with later punishing its publication) is
> extremely heavy. Accordingly, in a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled
> for the newspapers, and the publication of the embarrassing
> Pentagon Papers went ahead.
>
> Thus, New York Times Company v. United States, where the Court
> rejected a government-sought prior restraint on publication, would
> have no precedential value in a case where, after publication, the
> government sought to punish the Times for violating the Espionage
> Act.
>
> Third, not only was there no legal impediment to the NSAs domestic
> surveillance program, there was abundant authority for it. The
> President possesses broad powers as chief executive and Commander
> in Chief under Article II of the Constitution. Congress has
> repeatedly delegated to all presidents considerable war-related
> powers, and especially post-9/11 to President Bush.
>
> It was Congress that created and empowered the National Security
> Agency. The Executive Branchs NSA domestic surveillance program,
> aimed at obtaining intelligence about the foreign-based terrorist
> war on the United States, was/is an integral element of our
> national security policy and its implementation. No Supreme Court
> decision has ever held that the
> Presidential/Congressionally-sanctioned acquisition of that kind of
> intelligence was constitutionally or otherwise prohibited.
>
> Accordingly, it is pointless to consider whether the NSAs domestic
> surveillance program was legal. It was! If a case involving that
> program ever reaches the Supreme Court, thats what its ruling will
> be.
>
> Fourth, the interesting history of the Espionage Act is irrelevant
> to whether the Times may have violated it.
>
> Finally, it is a waste of time to consider whether the Act is
> constitutional. It has been expressly and impliedly held
> constitutional more than once.
>
> This brings us to whether The New York Times is indictable (and
> ultimately convictable) for violating the Espionage Act.
>
> The facts are clear. The NSA was engaged in highly classified
> warrantless wiretaps of domestic subjects in connection with the
> War on Terror, and the Times, a private newspaper, made that
> information public.
>
> It is to those facts that the Espionage Act either applies, or does
> not apply.
>
> Title 18, Section 793 of the United States Code, provides that (e)
> Whoever having unauthorized possession of ... any document ... or
> information relating to the national defense which information the
> possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the
> United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully
> communicates ... the same to any person not entitled to receive it
> ... (f) ... [s]hall be fined under this title or imprisoned not
> more than ten years, or both. (g) If two or more persons conspire
> to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one
> or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the
> conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject
> to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of
> such conspiracy. (Section 794 is inapplicable. It deals with
> gathering or delivering defense information to aid [a] foreign
> government.)
>
> It is, said the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth
> Circuit in assessing Section 793 (e) in United States v. Morison,
> difficult to conceive of any language more definite and clear.
> Lets break down the statute into its component parts.
>
> Whoever: this would mean the New York Times company, publisher
> Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., editor Bill Keller, and anyone else privy
> to the information upon which the story was based.
>
> Having unauthorized possession: the information was classified, and
> the Times was not authorized to have it.
>
> Of any document ... or information: certainly the Times had
> information, because it published it; it is inconceivable that the
> newspaper did not have documents of some kind, because the
> newspaper would never have gone that far out on a limb without at
> least some corroboration beyond an oral report(s).
>
> Relating to the national defense: no comment is necessary; indeed,
> the Times has conceded that targets of the warrantless wiretaps
> were persons who may have had some connection to terrorists.
>
> Which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used
> to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any
> foreign nation: obviously the Times had reason to believe, because
> it withheld the story for a year.
>
> Willfully communicates ... the same: no comment is necessary; the
> story was front-page news.
>
> To any person not entitled to receive it: even the Times cant argue
> that subway straphangers, or any other member of the public, was
> entitled to receive information about the classified operations
> about one of this countrys most secret and highly protected
> agencies.
>
> Several years ago Erika Holzer and I wrote a book entitled [1]Aid
> and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, which proved that her
> conduct in Hanoi made her indictable for, and convictable of,
> treason. We discovered that she was not indicted because of a
> political failure of will by the Nixon administration.
>
> To summarize a chapter of our book, suffice to say that the
> government was afraid to indict a popular anti-war actress who had
> the support of the radical left. Even today, three decades after
> Fondas trip to North Vietnam and three years after the publication
> of our book, we receive countless letters lamenting that Hanoi Jane
> was never punished for her conduct.
>
> We tell them that its too late, that any possibility of seeing
> justice done for Fondas traitorous conduct is long gone. That is
> all the more reason why those of us who remember the Fonda episode,
> and who understand the nature and importance of todays War on
> Terror, should not rest until the government calls to account The
> New York Times in a court of law, with an indictment and hopefully
> a conviction, under the Espionage Act.
>
> [2]Henry Mark Holzer is a professor emeritus at Brooklyn Law School
> and a constitutional and appellate lawyer. He provided legal
> representation to Ayn Rand on a variety of matters in the 1960s.
> His latest book, Keeper of the Flame: The Supreme Court
> Jurisprudence of Justice Clarence Thomas, will be published later
> this year.
> ? Copyright 2004-5 by The Atlasphere LLC
>
> References
>
> 1. 
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=theatlasphere-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F078641247X 
>
> 2. http://www.theatlasphere.com/directory/profile.php?id=12095
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>paleopsych mailing list
>paleopsych at paleopsych.org
>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych
>  
>
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From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan 13 16:28:48 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:28:48 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Meme 056: Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601130617120.23373@panix3.panix.com>

Meme 056: Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and 
None (1883-5)
sent 6.1.13

Translated by Thomas Common
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/spzar10.txt

[Nietzsche is the founder of transhumanism.

[I detect seven translations of Also Sprach Zarathusta. I give the 
earliest publications I can find:

Alexander Tille, London: H. Henry & Co., 1896.

Thomas Common. Edinburgh and London: T.N. Foulis, 1907. Volume 11 of the 
"complete" works, prepared by Oscar Levy and put out between 1906 and 
1927.

Walter Kaufmann, by 1948.

R.J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth: Penquin, 1961.

Thomas Wayne. NY: Algora Press, 2003.

Stanley Applebaum (selections, with facing German). Dover, 2004.

Clancy Martin. Barnes and Noble, 2005.

Graham Parks. Oxford UP, 2005.

Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge UP later in 2006.

[I haven't seen the Tille translation, but the one below is admirable, in 
that it uses a thundering [King James] Biblical-like style. Kaufmann, in 
the introduction to his own translation, finds lots of objections to 
Common's translation, and it does read more smoothly. But smoothness is 
not the point. Kaufmann, reeling from the use of Nietzsche by the National 
Socialists, translates ?bermensch as "overman" not "superman," trying to 
rescue Nietzsche from charges of antisemitism. In fact, _The Antichrist_ 
is the second most antisemitic book ever written. They founded the 
Sklavenmoral, and the Christians merely augmented it. The most antisemitic 
book is, of course, the Bible, both Testaments of which excoriate the 
Jews relentlessly, though occasionally intermixed with praise.]

CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION BY MRS FORSTER-NIETZSCHE [1905, moved to after the text]

THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.
FIRST PART.

Zarathustra's Prologue.
Zarathustra' Discourses.
I.  The Three Metamorphoses.
II.  The Academic Chairs of Virtue.
III.  Backworldsmen.
IV.  The Despisers of the Body.
V.  Joys and Passions.
VI.  The Pale Criminal.
VII.  Reading and Writing.
VIII.  The Tree on the Hill.
IX.  The Preachers of Death.
X.  War and Warriors.
XI.  The New Idol.
XII.  The Flies in the Market-place.
XIII.  Chastity.
XIV.  The Friend.
XV.  The Thousand and One Goals.
XVI.  Neighbour-Love.
XVII.  The Way of the Creating One.
XVIII.  Old and Young Women.
XIX.  The Bite of the Adder.
XX.  Child and Marriage.
XXI.  Voluntary Death.
XXII.  The Bestowing Virtue.

SECOND PART.
XXIII.  The Child with the Mirror.
XXIV.  In the Happy Isles.
XXV.  The Pitiful.
XXVI.  The Priests.
XXVII.  The Virtuous.
XXVIII.  The Rabble.
XXIX.  The Tarantulas.
XXX.  The Famous Wise Ones.
XXXI.  The Night-Song.
XXXII.  The Dance-Song.
XXXIII.  The Grave-Song.
XXXIV.  Self-Surpassing.
XXXV.  The Sublime Ones.
XXXVI.  The Land of Culture.
XXXVII.  Immaculate Perception.
XXXVIII.  Scholars.
XXXIX.  Poets.
XL.  Great Events.
XLI.  The Soothsayer.
XLII.  Redemption.
XLIII.  Manly Prudence.
XLIV.  The Stillest Hour.

THIRD PART.
XLV.  The Wanderer.
XLVI.  The Vision and the Enigma.
XLVII.  Involuntary Bliss.
XLVIII.  Before Sunrise.
XLIX.  The Bedwarfing Virtue.
L.  On the Olive-Mount.
LI.  On Passing-by.
LII.  The Apostates.
LIII.  The Return Home.
LIV.  The Three Evil Things.
LV.  The Spirit of Gravity.
LVI.  Old and New Tables.
LVII.  The Convalescent.
LVIII.  The Great Longing.
LIX.  The Second Dance-Song.
LX.  The Seven Seals.

FOURTH AND LAST PART.
LXI.  The Honey Sacrifice.
LXII.  The Cry of Distress.
LXIII.  Talk with the Kings.
LXIV.  The Leech.
LXV.  The Magician.
LXVI.  Out of Service.
LXVII.  The Ugliest Man.
LXVIII.  The Voluntary Beggar.
LXIX.  The Shadow.
LXX.  Noon-Tide.
LXXI.  The Greeting.
LXXII.  The Supper.
LXIII.  The Higher Man.
LXXIV.  The Song of Melancholy.
LXXV.  Science.
LXXVI.  Among Daughters of the Desert.
LXXVII.  The Awakening.
LXXVIII.  The Ass-Festival.
LXXIX.  The Drunken Song.
LXXX.  The Sign.

APPENDIX.
Notes on "Thus Spake Zarathustra" by Anthony M. Ludovici (1909)

THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.
FIRST PART.
ZARATHUSTRA'S DISCOURSES.
ZARATHUSTRA'S PROLOGUE.

1.

When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of 
his home, and went into the mountains.  There he enjoyed his spirit and 
solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it.  But at last his heart 
changed,--and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the 
sun, and spake thus unto it:

Thou great star!  What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for 
whom thou shinest!

For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave:  thou wouldst have
wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not been for me, mine
eagle, and my serpent.

But we awaited thee every morning, took from thee thine overflow
and blessed thee for it.

Lo!  I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much
honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.

I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more become
joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.

Therefore must I descend into the deep:  as thou doest in the evening,
when thou goest behind the sea, and givest light also to the nether-world,
thou exuberant star!

Like thee must I GO DOWN, as men say, to whom I shall descend.

Bless me, then, thou tranquil eye, that canst behold even the greatest
happiness without envy!

Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden out
of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of thy bliss!

Lo!  This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again
going to be a man.

Thus began Zarathustra's down-going.

2.

Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, no one meeting him.  When he
entered the forest, however, there suddenly stood before him an old man,
who had left his holy cot to seek roots.  And thus spake the old man to
Zarathustra:

"No stranger to me is this wanderer:  many years ago passed he by.
Zarathustra he was called; but he hath altered.

Then thou carriedst thine ashes into the mountains:  wilt thou now carry
thy fire into the valleys?  Fearest thou not the incendiary's doom?

Yea, I recognise Zarathustra.  Pure is his eye, and no loathing lurketh
about his mouth.  Goeth he not along like a dancer?

Altered is Zarathustra; a child hath Zarathustra become; an awakened one is
Zarathustra:  what wilt thou do in the land of the sleepers?

As in the sea hast thou lived in solitude, and it hath borne thee up.
Alas, wilt thou now go ashore?  Alas, wilt thou again drag thy body
thyself?"

Zarathustra answered:  "I love mankind."

"Why," said the saint, "did I go into the forest and the desert?  Was it
not because I loved men far too well?

Now I love God:  men, I do not love.  Man is a thing too imperfect for me.
Love to man would be fatal to me."

Zarathustra answered:  "What spake I of love!  I am bringing gifts unto
men."

"Give them nothing," said the saint.  "Take rather part of their load, and
carry it along with them--that will be most agreeable unto them:  if only
it be agreeable unto thee!

If, however, thou wilt give unto them, give them no more than an alms, and
let them also beg for it!"

"No," replied Zarathustra, "I give no alms.  I am not poor enough for
that."

The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spake thus:  "Then see to it that
they accept thy treasures!  They are distrustful of anchorites, and do not
believe that we come with gifts.

The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their streets.  And
just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before
sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us:  Where goeth the thief?

Go not to men, but stay in the forest!  Go rather to the animals!  Why not
be like me--a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?"

"And what doeth the saint in the forest?" asked Zarathustra.

The saint answered:  "I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns
I laugh and weep and mumble:  thus do I praise God.

With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my
God.  But what dost thou bring us as a gift?"

When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said:
"What should I have to give thee!  Let me rather hurry hence lest I take
aught away from thee!"--And thus they parted from one another, the old man
and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys.

When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart:  "Could it be
possible!  This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD
IS DEAD!"

3.

When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoineth the forest, he
found many people assembled in the market-place; for it had been announced
that a rope-dancer would give a performance.  And Zarathustra spake thus
unto the people:

I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN.  Man is something that is to be surpassed.  What
have ye done to surpass man?

All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves:  and ye want
to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast
than surpass man?

What is the ape to man?  A laughing-stock, a thing of shame.  And just the
same shall man be to the Superman:  a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.

Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still
worm.  Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of
the apes.

Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and
phantom.  But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?

Lo, I teach you the Superman!

The Superman is the meaning of the earth.  Let your will say:  The Superman
SHALL BE the meaning of the earth!

I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those
who speak unto you of superearthly hopes!  Poisoners are they, whether they
know it or not.

Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of
whom the earth is weary:  so away with them!

Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and
therewith also those blasphemers.  To blaspheme the earth is now the
dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the
meaning of the earth!

Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was
the supreme thing:--the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished.
Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth.

Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the
delight of that soul!

But ye, also, my brethren, tell me:  What doth your body say about your
soul?  Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-
complacency?

Verily, a polluted stream is man.  One must be a sea, to receive a polluted
stream without becoming impure.

Lo, I teach you the Superman:  he is that sea; in him can your great
contempt be submerged.

What is the greatest thing ye can experience?  It is the hour of great
contempt.  The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto
you, and so also your reason and virtue.

The hour when ye say:  "What good is my happiness!  It is poverty and
pollution and wretched self-complacency.  But my happiness should justify
existence itself!"

The hour when ye say:  "What good is my reason!  Doth it long for knowledge
as the lion for his food?  It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-
complacency!"

The hour when ye say:  "What good is my virtue!  As yet it hath not made me
passionate.  How weary I am of my good and my bad!  It is all poverty and
pollution and wretched self-complacency!"

The hour when ye say:  "What good is my justice!  I do not see that I am
fervour and fuel.  The just, however, are fervour and fuel!"

The hour when we say:  "What good is my pity!  Is not pity the cross on
which he is nailed who loveth man?  But my pity is not a crucifixion."

Have ye ever spoken thus?  Have ye ever cried thus?  Ah! would that I had
heard you crying thus!

It is not your sin--it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven;
your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue?  Where is the frenzy
with which ye should be inoculated?

Lo, I teach you the Superman:  he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!--

When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the people called out:  "We have
now heard enough of the rope-dancer; it is time now for us to see him!"
And all the people laughed at Zarathustra.  But the rope-dancer, who
thought the words applied to him, began his performance.

4.

Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered.  Then he spake
thus:

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman--a rope over an
abyss.

A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a
dangerous trembling and halting.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal:  what is
lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.

I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are
the over-goers.

I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows
of longing for the other shore.

I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down
and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth
of the Superman may hereafter arrive.

I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that
the Superman may hereafter live.  Thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the
Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant:  for thus seeketh
he his own down-going.

I love him who loveth his virtue:  for virtue is the will to down-going,
and an arrow of longing.

I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be
wholly the spirit of his virtue:  thus walketh he as spirit over the
bridge.

I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny:  thus, for
the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more.

I love him who desireth not too many virtues.  One virtue is more of a
virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling
to.

I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give
back:  for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.

I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then
asketh:  "Am I a dishonest player?"--for he is willing to succumb.

I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always
doeth more than he promiseth:  for he seeketh his own down-going.

I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones:
for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.

I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God:  for he must
succumb through the wrath of his God.

I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through
a small matter:  thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.

I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all
things are in him:  thus all things become his down-going.

I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart:  thus is his head only
the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.

I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark
cloud that lowereth over man:  they herald the coming of the lightning, and
succumb as heralds.

Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud:  the
lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.--

5.

When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he again looked at the people, and
was silent.  "There they stand," said he to his heart; "there they laugh:
they understand me not; I am not the mouth for these ears.

Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their
eyes?  Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers?  Or do
they only believe the stammerer?

They have something whereof they are proud.  What do they call it, that
which maketh them proud?  Culture, they call it; it distinguisheth them
from the goatherds.

They dislike, therefore, to hear of 'contempt' of themselves.  So I will
appeal to their pride.

I will speak unto them of the most contemptible thing:  that, however, is
THE LAST MAN!"

And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people:

It is time for man to fix his goal.  It is time for man to plant the germ
of his highest hope.

Still is his soil rich enough for it.  But that soil will one day be poor
and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.

Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his
longing beyond man--and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!

I tell you:  one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing
star.  I tell you:  ye have still chaos in you.

Alas!  There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any
star.  Alas!  There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no
longer despise himself.

Lo!  I show you THE LAST MAN.

"What is love?  What is creation?  What is longing?  What is a star?"--so
asketh the last man and blinketh.

The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who
maketh everything small.  His species is ineradicable like that of the
ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.

"We have discovered happiness"--say the last men, and blink thereby.

They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth.
One still loveth one's neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth
warmth.

Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful:  they walk warily.
He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!

A little poison now and then:  that maketh pleasant dreams.  And much
poison at last for a pleasant death.

One still worketh, for work is a pastime.  But one is careful lest the
pastime should hurt one.

One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome.  Who still
wanteth to rule?  Who still wanteth to obey?  Both are too burdensome.

No shepherd, and one herd!  Every one wanteth the same; every one is equal:
he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.

"Formerly all the world was insane,"--say the subtlest of them, and blink
thereby.

They are clever and know all that hath happened:  so there is no end to
their raillery.  People still fall out, but are soon reconciled--otherwise
it spoileth their stomachs.

They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures
for the night, but they have a regard for health.

"We have discovered happiness,"--say the last men, and blink thereby.--

And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is also called
"The Prologue":  for at this point the shouting and mirth of the multitude
interrupted him.  "Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,"--they called out-
-"make us into these last men!  Then will we make thee a present of the
Superman!"  And all the people exulted and smacked their lips.
Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart:

"They understand me not:  I am not the mouth for these ears.

Too long, perhaps, have I lived in the mountains; too much have I hearkened
unto the brooks and trees:  now do I speak unto them as unto the goatherds.

Calm is my soul, and clear, like the mountains in the morning.  But they
think me cold, and a mocker with terrible jests.

And now do they look at me and laugh:  and while they laugh they hate me
too.  There is ice in their laughter."

6.

Then, however, something happened which made every mouth mute and every eye
fixed.  In the meantime, of course, the rope-dancer had commenced his
performance:  he had come out at a little door, and was going along the
rope which was stretched between two towers, so that it hung above the
market-place and the people.  When he was just midway across, the little
door opened once more, and a gaudily-dressed fellow like a buffoon sprang
out, and went rapidly after the first one.  "Go on, halt-foot," cried his
frightful voice, "go on, lazy-bones, interloper, sallow-face!--lest I
tickle thee with my heel!  What dost thou here between the towers?  In the
tower is the place for thee, thou shouldst be locked up; to one better than
thyself thou blockest the way!"--And with every word he came nearer and
nearer the first one.  When, however, he was but a step behind, there
happened the frightful thing which made every mouth mute and every eye
fixed--he uttered a yell like a devil, and jumped over the other who was in
his way.  The latter, however, when he thus saw his rival triumph, lost at
the same time his head and his footing on the rope; he threw his pole away,
and shot downwards faster than it, like an eddy of arms and legs, into the
depth.  The market-place and the people were like the sea when the storm
cometh on:  they all flew apart and in disorder, especially where the body
was about to fall.

Zarathustra, however, remained standing, and just beside him fell the body,
badly injured and disfigured, but not yet dead.  After a while
consciousness returned to the shattered man, and he saw Zarathustra
kneeling beside him.  "What art thou doing there?" said he at last, "I knew
long ago that the devil would trip me up.  Now he draggeth me to hell:
wilt thou prevent him?"

"On mine honour, my friend," answered Zarathustra, "there is nothing of all
that whereof thou speakest:  there is no devil and no hell.  Thy soul will
be dead even sooner than thy body:  fear, therefore, nothing any more!"

The man looked up distrustfully.  "If thou speakest the truth," said he, "I
lose nothing when I lose my life.  I am not much more than an animal which
hath been taught to dance by blows and scanty fare."

"Not at all," said Zarathustra, "thou hast made danger thy calling; therein
there is nothing contemptible.  Now thou perishest by thy calling:
therefore will I bury thee with mine own hands."

When Zarathustra had said this the dying one did not reply further; but he
moved his hand as if he sought the hand of Zarathustra in gratitude.

7.

Meanwhile the evening came on, and the market-place veiled itself in gloom.
Then the people dispersed, for even curiosity and terror become fatigued.
Zarathustra, however, still sat beside the dead man on the ground, absorbed
in thought:  so he forgot the time.  But at last it became night, and a
cold wind blew upon the lonely one.  Then arose Zarathustra and said to his
heart:

Verily, a fine catch of fish hath Zarathustra made to-day!  It is not a man
he hath caught, but a corpse.

Sombre is human life, and as yet without meaning:  a buffoon may be fateful
to it.

I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman,
the lightning out of the dark cloud--man.

But still am I far from them, and my sense speaketh not unto their sense.
To men I am still something between a fool and a corpse.

Gloomy is the night, gloomy are the ways of Zarathustra.  Come, thou cold
and stiff companion!  I carry thee to the place where I shall bury thee
with mine own hands.

8.

When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he put the corpse upon his
shoulders and set out on his way.  Yet had he not gone a hundred steps,
when there stole a man up to him and whispered in his ear--and lo! he that
spake was the buffoon from the tower.  "Leave this town, O Zarathustra,"
said he, "there are too many here who hate thee.  The good and just hate
thee, and call thee their enemy and despiser; the believers in the orthodox
belief hate thee, and call thee a danger to the multitude.  It was thy good
fortune to be laughed at:  and verily thou spakest like a buffoon.  It was
thy good fortune to associate with the dead dog; by so humiliating thyself
thou hast saved thy life to-day.  Depart, however, from this town,--or
tomorrow I shall jump over thee, a living man over a dead one."  And when
he had said this, the buffoon vanished; Zarathustra, however, went on
through the dark streets.

At the gate of the town the grave-diggers met him:  they shone their torch
on his face, and, recognising Zarathustra, they sorely derided him.
"Zarathustra is carrying away the dead dog:  a fine thing that Zarathustra
hath turned a grave-digger!  For our hands are too cleanly for that roast.
Will Zarathustra steal the bite from the devil?  Well then, good luck to
the repast!  If only the devil is not a better thief than Zarathustra!--he
will steal them both, he will eat them both!"  And they laughed among
themselves, and put their heads together.

Zarathustra made no answer thereto, but went on his way.  When he had gone
on for two hours, past forests and swamps, he had heard too much of the
hungry howling of the wolves, and he himself became a-hungry.  So he halted
at a lonely house in which a light was burning.

"Hunger attacketh me," said Zarathustra, "like a robber.  Among forests and
swamps my hunger attacketh me, and late in the night.

"Strange humours hath my hunger.  Often it cometh to me only after a
repast, and all day it hath failed to come:  where hath it been?"

And thereupon Zarathustra knocked at the door of the house.  An old man
appeared, who carried a light, and asked:  "Who cometh unto me and my bad
sleep?"

"A living man and a dead one," said Zarathustra.  "Give me something to eat
and drink, I forgot it during the day.  He that feedeth the hungry
refresheth his own soul, saith wisdom."

The old man withdrew, but came back immediately and offered Zarathustra
bread and wine.  "A bad country for the hungry," said he; "that is why I
live here.  Animal and man come unto me, the anchorite.  But bid thy
companion eat and drink also, he is wearier than thou."  Zarathustra
answered:  "My companion is dead; I shall hardly be able to persuade him to
eat."  "That doth not concern me," said the old man sullenly; "he that
knocketh at my door must take what I offer him.  Eat, and fare ye well!"--

Thereafter Zarathustra again went on for two hours, trusting to the path
and the light of the stars:  for he was an experienced night-walker, and
liked to look into the face of all that slept.  When the morning dawned,
however, Zarathustra found himself in a thick forest, and no path was any
longer visible.  He then put the dead man in a hollow tree at his head--for
he wanted to protect him from the wolves--and laid himself down on the
ground and moss.  And immediately he fell asleep, tired in body, but with a
tranquil soul.

9.

Long slept Zarathustra; and not only the rosy dawn passed over his
head, but also the morning.  At last, however, his eyes opened, and
amazedly he gazed into the forest and the stillness, amazedly he gazed
into himself.  Then he arose quickly, like a seafarer who all at once
seeth the land; and he shouted for joy:  for he saw a new truth.  And he
spake thus to his heart:

A light hath dawned upon me:  I need companions--living ones; not
dead companions and corpses, which I carry with me where I will.

But I need living companions, who will follow me because they want
to follow themselves--and to the place where I will.

A light hath dawned upon me.  Not to the people is Zarathustra to speak,
but to companions!  Zarathustra shall not be the herd's herdsman and hound!

To allure many from the herd--for that purpose have I come.  The people and
the herd must be angry with me:  a robber shall Zarathustra be called by
the herdsmen.

Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the good and just.  Herdsmen, I
say, but they call themselves the believers in the orthodox belief.

Behold the good and just!  Whom do they hate most?  Him who breaketh up
their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker:--he, however, is the
creator.

Behold the believers of all beliefs!  Whom do they hate most?  Him who
breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker--he,
however, is the creator.

Companions, the creator seeketh, not corpses--and not herds or believers
either.  Fellow-creators the creator seeketh--those who grave new values on
new tables.

Companions, the creator seeketh, and fellow-reapers:  for everything is
ripe for the harvest with him.  But he lacketh the hundred sickles:  so he
plucketh the ears of corn and is vexed.

Companions, the creator seeketh, and such as know how to whet their
sickles.  Destroyers, will they be called, and despisers of good and evil.
But they are the reapers and rejoicers.

Fellow-creators, Zarathustra seeketh; fellow-reapers and fellow-rejoicers,
Zarathustra seeketh:  what hath he to do with herds and herdsmen and
corpses!

And thou, my first companion, rest in peace!  Well have I buried thee in
thy hollow tree; well have I hid thee from the wolves.

But I part from thee; the time hath arrived.  'Twixt rosy dawn and rosy
dawn there came unto me a new truth.

I am not to be a herdsman, I am not to be a grave-digger.  Not any more
will I discourse unto the people; for the last time have I spoken unto the
dead.

With the creators, the reapers, and the rejoicers will I associate:  the
rainbow will I show them, and all the stairs to the Superman.

To the lone-dwellers will I sing my song, and to the twain-dwellers; and
unto him who hath still ears for the unheard, will I make the heart heavy
with my happiness.

I make for my goal, I follow my course; over the loitering and tardy will I
leap.  Thus let my on-going be their down-going!

10.

This had Zarathustra said to his heart when the sun stood at noon-tide.
Then he looked inquiringly aloft,--for he heard above him the sharp call of
a bird.  And behold!  An eagle swept through the air in wide circles, and
on it hung a serpent, not like a prey, but like a friend:  for it kept
itself coiled round the eagle's neck.

"They are mine animals," said Zarathustra, and rejoiced in his heart.

"The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the sun,--
they have come out to reconnoitre.

They want to know whether Zarathustra still liveth.  Verily, do I still
live?

More dangerous have I found it among men than among animals; in dangerous
paths goeth Zarathustra.  Let mine animals lead me!

When Zarathustra had said this, he remembered the words of the saint in the
forest.  Then he sighed and spake thus to his heart:

"Would that I were wiser!  Would that I were wise from the very heart, like
my serpent!

But I am asking the impossible.  Therefore do I ask my pride to go always
with my wisdom!

And if my wisdom should some day forsake me:--alas! it loveth to fly away!-
-may my pride then fly with my folly!"

Thus began Zarathustra's down-going.


ZARATHUSTRA' DISCOURSES.

I.  THE THREE METAMORPHOSES.

Three metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you:  how the spirit
becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.

Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit
in which reverence dwelleth:  for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its
strength.

What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down
like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden.

What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, that
I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.

Is it not this:  To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one's pride?  To
exhibit one's folly in order to mock at one's wisdom?

Or is it this:  To desert our cause when it celebrateth its triumph?  To
ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter?

Or is it this:  To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the
sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul?

Or is it this:  To be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of the
deaf, who never hear thy requests?

Or is it this:  To go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and
not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads?

Or is it this:  To love those who despise us, and give one's hand to the
phantom when it is going to frighten us?

All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself:  and
like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so
hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness.

But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis:  here
the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its
own wilderness.

Its last Lord it here seeketh:  hostile will it be to him, and to its last
God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon.

What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call
Lord and God?  "Thou-shalt," is the great dragon called.  But the spirit of
the lion saith, "I will."

"Thou-shalt," lieth in its path, sparkling with gold--a scale-covered
beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, "Thou shalt!"

The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaketh
the mightiest of all dragons:  "All the values of things--glitter on me.

All values have already been created, and all created values--do I
represent.  Verily, there shall be no 'I will' any more.  Thus speaketh the
dragon.

My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit?  Why
sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent?

To create new values--that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish:  but to
create itself freedom for new creating--that can the might of the lion do.

To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty:  for that, my
brethren, there is need of the lion.

To assume the right to new values--that is the most formidable assumption
for a load-bearing and reverent spirit.  Verily, unto such a spirit it is
preying, and the work of a beast of prey.

As its holiest, it once loved "Thou-shalt":  now is it forced to find
illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture
freedom from its love:  the lion is needed for this capture.

But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could
not do?  Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?

Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-
rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.

Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto
life:  ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth the
world's outcast.

Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you:  how the spirit
became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.  And at that time he abode in the town which is
called The Pied Cow.


II.  THE ACADEMIC CHAIRS OF VIRTUE.

People commended unto Zarathustra a wise man, as one who could discourse
well about sleep and virtue:  greatly was he honoured and rewarded for it,
and all the youths sat before his chair.  To him went Zarathustra, and sat
among the youths before his chair.  And thus spake the wise man:

Respect and modesty in presence of sleep!  That is the first thing!  And to
go out of the way of all who sleep badly and keep awake at night!

Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep:  he always stealeth softly
through the night.  Immodest, however, is the night-watchman; immodestly he
carrieth his horn.

No small art is it to sleep:  it is necessary for that purpose to keep
awake all day.

Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself:  that causeth wholesome
weariness, and is poppy to the soul.

Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is
bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.

Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth
during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry.

Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy
stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.

Few people know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep
well.  Shall I bear false witness?  Shall I commit adultery?

Shall I covet my neighbour's maidservant?  All that would ill accord with
good sleep.

And even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing needful:  to
send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time.

That they may not quarrel with one another, the good females!  And about
thee, thou unhappy one!

Peace with God and thy neighbour:  so desireth good sleep.  And peace also
with thy neighbour's devil!  Otherwise it will haunt thee in the night.

Honour to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked
government!  So desireth good sleep.  How can I help it, if power like to
walk on crooked legs?

He who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me
the best shepherd:  so doth it accord with good sleep.

Many honours I want not, nor great treasures:  they excite the spleen.  But
it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure.

A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one:  but they must come
and go at the right time.  So doth it accord with good sleep.

Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me:  they promote sleep.  Blessed
are they, especially if one always give in to them.

Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous.  When night cometh, then take I
good care not to summon sleep.  It disliketh to be summoned--sleep, the
lord of the virtues!

But I think of what I have done and thought during the day.  Thus
ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself:  What were thy ten overcomings?

And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten
laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself?

Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at
once--sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.

Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy.  Sleep toucheth my mouth,
and it remaineth open.

Verily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and
stealeth from me my thoughts:  stupid do I then stand, like this academic
chair.

But not much longer do I then stand:  I already lie.--

When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart:
for thereby had a light dawned upon him.  And thus spake he to his heart:

A fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts:  but I believe he
knoweth well how to sleep.

Happy even is he who liveth near this wise man!  Such sleep is contagious--
even through a thick wall it is contagious.

A magic resideth even in his academic chair.  And not in vain did the
youths sit before the preacher of virtue.

His wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well.  And verily, if life
had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this would be the desirablest
nonsense for me also.

Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought
teachers of virtue.  Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head
virtues to promote it!

To all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep
without dreams:  they knew no higher significance of life.

Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue,
and not always so honourable:  but their time is past.  And not much longer
do they stand:  there they already lie.

Blessed are those drowsy ones:  for they shall soon nod to sleep.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


III.  BACKWORLDSMEN.

Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all
backworldsmen.  The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world
then seem to me.

The dream--and diction--of a God, did the world then seem to me; coloured
vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.

Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou--coloured vapours did they
seem to me before creative eyes.  The creator wished to look away from
himself,--thereupon he created the world.

Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and
forget himself.  Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world once
seem to me.

This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction's image and
imperfect image--an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:--thus did
the world once seem to me.

Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all
backworldsmen.  Beyond man, forsooth?

Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness,
like all the Gods!

A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego.  Out of mine own
ashes and glow it came unto me, that phantom.  And verily, it came not unto
me from the beyond!

What happened, my brethren?  I surpassed myself, the suffering one; I
carried mine own ashes to the mountain; a brighter flame I contrived for
myself.  And lo!  Thereupon the phantom WITHDREW from me!

To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe in
such phantoms:  suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation.  Thus
speak I to backworldsmen.

Suffering was it, and impotence--that created all backworlds; and the short
madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth.

Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a
death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer:
that created all Gods and backworlds.

Believe me, my brethren!  It was the body which despaired of the body--it
groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls.

Believe me, my brethren!  It was the body which despaired of the earth--it
heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it.

And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head--and not
with its head only--into "the other world."

But that "other world" is well concealed from man, that dehumanised,
inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence do
not speak unto man, except as man.

Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak.
Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things best proved?

Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most
uprightly of its being--this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is the
measure and value of things.

And this most upright existence, the ego--it speaketh of the body, and
still implieth the body, even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth with
broken wings.

Always more uprightly learneth it to speak, the ego; and the more it
learneth, the more doth it find titles and honours for the body and the
earth.

A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men:  no longer to
thrust one's head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it
freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!

A new will teach I unto men:  to choose that path which man hath followed
blindly, and to approve of it--and no longer to slink aside from it, like
the sick and perishing!

The sick and perishing--it was they who despised the body and the earth,
and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even
those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth!

From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too remote for
them.  Then they sighed:  "O that there were heavenly paths by which to
steal into another existence and into happiness!"  Then they contrived for
themselves their by-paths and bloody draughts!

Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied themselves
transported, these ungrateful ones.  But to what did they owe the
convulsion and rapture of their transport?  To their body and this earth.

Gentle is Zarathustra to the sickly.  Verily, he is not indignant at their
modes of consolation and ingratitude.  May they become convalescents and
overcomers, and create higher bodies for themselves!

Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looketh tenderly on
his delusions, and at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God; but
sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears.

Many sickly ones have there always been among those who muse, and languish
for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the latest of
virtues, which is uprightness.

Backward they always gaze toward dark ages:  then, indeed, were delusion
and faith something different.  Raving of the reason was likeness to God,
and doubt was sin.

Too well do I know those godlike ones:  they insist on being believed in,
and that doubt is sin.  Too well, also, do I know what they themselves most
believe in.

Verily, not in backworlds and redeeming blood-drops:  but in the body do
they also believe most; and their own body is for them the thing-in-itself.

But it is a sickly thing to them, and gladly would they get out of their
skin.  Therefore hearken they to the preachers of death, and themselves
preach backworlds.

Hearken rather, my brethren, to the voice of the healthy body; it is a more
upright and pure voice.

More uprightly and purely speaketh the healthy body, perfect and square-
built; and it speaketh of the meaning of the earth.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


IV.  THE DESPISERS OF THE BODY.

To the despisers of the body will I speak my word.  I wish them neither to
learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid farewell to their own
bodies,--and thus be dumb.

"Body am I, and soul"--so saith the child.  And why should one not speak
like children?

But the awakened one, the knowing one, saith:  "Body am I entirely, and
nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body."

The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace,
a flock and a shepherd.

An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which
thou callest "spirit"--a little instrument and plaything of thy big
sagacity.

"Ego," sayest thou, and art proud of that word.  But the greater thing--in
which thou art unwilling to believe--is thy body with its big sagacity; it
saith not "ego," but doeth it.

What the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath never its end in
itself.  But sense and spirit would fain persuade thee that they are the
end of all things:  so vain are they.

Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit:  behind them there is
still the Self.  The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it
hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.

Ever hearkeneth the Self, and seeketh; it compareth, mastereth, conquereth,
and destroyeth.  It ruleth, and is also the ego's ruler.

Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an
unknown sage--it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body.

There is more sagacity in thy body than in thy best wisdom.  And who then
knoweth why thy body requireth just thy best wisdom?

Thy Self laugheth at thine ego, and its proud prancings.  "What are these
prancings and flights of thought unto me?" it saith to itself.  "A by-way
to my purpose.  I am the leading-string of the ego, and the prompter of its
notions."

The Self saith unto the ego:  "Feel pain!"  And thereupon it suffereth, and
thinketh how it may put an end thereto--and for that very purpose it IS
MEANT to think.

The Self saith unto the ego:  "Feel pleasure!"  Thereupon it rejoiceth, and
thinketh how it may ofttimes rejoice--and for that very purpose it IS MEANT
to think.

To the despisers of the body will I speak a word.  That they despise is
caused by their esteem.  What is it that created esteeming and despising
and worth and will?

The creating Self created for itself esteeming and despising, it created
for itself joy and woe.  The creating body created for itself spirit, as a
hand to its will.

Even in your folly and despising ye each serve your Self, ye despisers of
the body.  I tell you, your very Self wanteth to die, and turneth away from
life.

No longer can your Self do that which it desireth most:--create beyond
itself.  That is what it desireth most; that is all its fervour.

But it is now too late to do so:--so your Self wisheth to succumb, ye
despisers of the body.

To succumb--so wisheth your Self; and therefore have ye become despisers of
the body.  For ye can no longer create beyond yourselves.

And therefore are ye now angry with life and with the earth.  And
unconscious envy is in the sidelong look of your contempt.

I go not your way, ye despisers of the body!  Ye are no bridges for me to
the Superman!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


V.  JOYS AND PASSIONS.

My brother, when thou hast a virtue, and it is thine own virtue, thou hast
it in common with no one.

To be sure, thou wouldst call it by name and caress it; thou wouldst pull
its ears and amuse thyself with it.

And lo!  Then hast thou its name in common with the people, and hast become
one of the people and the herd with thy virtue!

Better for thee to say:  "Ineffable is it, and nameless, that which is pain
and sweetness to my soul, and also the hunger of my bowels."

Let thy virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if thou must
speak of it, be not ashamed to stammer about it.

Thus speak and stammer:  "That is MY good, that do I love, thus doth it
please me entirely, thus only do _I_ desire the good.

Not as the law of a God do I desire it, not as a human law or a human need
do I desire it; it is not to be a guide-post for me to superearths and
paradises.

An earthly virtue is it which I love:  little prudence is therein, and the
least everyday wisdom.

But that bird built its nest beside me:  therefore, I love and cherish it--
now sitteth it beside me on its golden eggs."

Thus shouldst thou stammer, and praise thy virtue.

Once hadst thou passions and calledst them evil.  But now hast thou only
thy virtues:  they grew out of thy passions.

Thou implantedst thy highest aim into the heart of those passions:  then
became they thy virtues and joys.

And though thou wert of the race of the hot-tempered, or of the voluptuous,
or of the fanatical, or the vindictive;

All thy passions in the end became virtues, and all thy devils angels.

Once hadst thou wild dogs in thy cellar:  but they changed at last into
birds and charming songstresses.

Out of thy poisons brewedst thou balsam for thyself; thy cow, affliction,
milkedst thou--now drinketh thou the sweet milk of her udder.

And nothing evil groweth in thee any longer, unless it be the evil that
groweth out of the conflict of thy virtues.

My brother, if thou be fortunate, then wilt thou have one virtue and no
more:  thus goest thou easier over the bridge.

Illustrious is it to have many virtues, but a hard lot; and many a one hath
gone into the wilderness and killed himself, because he was weary of being
the battle and battlefield of virtues.

My brother, are war and battle evil?  Necessary, however, is the evil;
necessary are the envy and the distrust and the back-biting among the
virtues.

Lo! how each of thy virtues is covetous of the highest place; it wanteth
thy whole spirit to be ITS herald, it wanteth thy whole power, in wrath,
hatred, and love.

Jealous is every virtue of the others, and a dreadful thing is jealousy.
Even virtues may succumb by jealousy.

He whom the flame of jealousy encompasseth, turneth at last, like the
scorpion, the poisoned sting against himself.

Ah! my brother, hast thou never seen a virtue backbite and stab itself?

Man is something that hath to be surpassed:  and therefore shalt thou love
thy virtues,--for thou wilt succumb by them.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


VI.  THE PALE CRIMINAL.

Ye do not mean to slay, ye judges and sacrificers, until the animal hath
bowed its head?  Lo! the pale criminal hath bowed his head:  out of his eye
speaketh the great contempt.

"Mine ego is something which is to be surpassed:  mine ego is to me the
great contempt of man":  so speaketh it out of that eye.

When he judged himself--that was his supreme moment; let not the exalted
one relapse again into his low estate!

There is no salvation for him who thus suffereth from himself, unless it be
speedy death.

Your slaying, ye judges, shall be pity, and not revenge; and in that ye
slay, see to it that ye yourselves justify life!

It is not enough that ye should reconcile with him whom ye slay.  Let your
sorrow be love to the Superman:  thus will ye justify your own survival!

"Enemy" shall ye say but not "villain," "invalid" shall ye say but not
"wretch," "fool" shall ye say but not "sinner."

And thou, red judge, if thou would say audibly all thou hast done in
thought, then would every one cry:  "Away with the nastiness and the
virulent reptile!"

But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing
is the idea of the deed.  The wheel of causality doth not roll between
them.

An idea made this pale man pale.  Adequate was he for his deed when he did
it, but the idea of it, he could not endure when it was done.

Evermore did he now see himself as the doer of one deed.  Madness, I call
this:  the exception reversed itself to the rule in him.

The streak of chalk bewitcheth the hen; the stroke he struck bewitched his
weak reason.  Madness AFTER the deed, I call this.

Hearken, ye judges!  There is another madness besides, and it is BEFORE the
deed.  Ah! ye have not gone deep enough into this soul!

Thus speaketh the red judge:  "Why did this criminal commit murder?  He
meant to rob."  I tell you, however, that his soul wanted blood, not booty:
he thirsted for the happiness of the knife!

But his weak reason understood not this madness, and it persuaded him.
"What matter about blood!" it said; "wishest thou not, at least, to make
booty thereby?  Or take revenge?"

And he hearkened unto his weak reason:  like lead lay its words upon him--
thereupon he robbed when he murdered.  He did not mean to be ashamed of his
madness.

And now once more lieth the lead of his guilt upon him, and once more is
his weak reason so benumbed, so paralysed, and so dull.

Could he only shake his head, then would his burden roll off; but who
shaketh that head?

What is this man?  A mass of diseases that reach out into the world through
the spirit; there they want to get their prey.

What is this man?  A coil of wild serpents that are seldom at peace among
themselves--so they go forth apart and seek prey in the world.

Look at that poor body!  What it suffered and craved, the poor soul
interpreted to itself--it interpreted it as murderous desire, and eagerness
for the happiness of the knife.

Him who now turneth sick, the evil overtaketh which is now the evil:  he
seeketh to cause pain with that which causeth him pain.  But there have
been other ages, and another evil and good.

Once was doubt evil, and the will to Self.  Then the invalid became a
heretic or sorcerer; as heretic or sorcerer he suffered, and sought to
cause suffering.

But this will not enter your ears; it hurteth your good people, ye tell me.
But what doth it matter to me about your good people!

Many things in your good people cause me disgust, and verily, not their
evil.  I would that they had a madness by which they succumbed, like this
pale criminal!

Verily, I would that their madness were called truth, or fidelity, or
justice:  but they have their virtue in order to live long, and in wretched
self-complacency.

I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me may grasp
me!  Your crutch, however, I am not.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


VII.  READING AND WRITING.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his
blood.  Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.

It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading
idlers.

He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader.  Another
century of readers--and spirit itself will stink.

Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only
writing but also thinking.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh populace.

He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt
by heart.

In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route
thou must have long legs.  Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to
should be big and tall.

The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a joyful
wickedness:  thus are things well matched.

I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous.  The courage which
scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins--it wanteth to laugh.

I no longer feel in common with you; the very cloud which I see beneath me,
the blackness and heaviness at which I laugh--that is your thunder-cloud.

Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation; and I look downward because I am
exalted.

Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted?

He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and
tragic realities.

Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive--so wisdom wisheth us; she is a
woman, and ever loveth only a warrior.

Ye tell me, "Life is hard to bear."  But for what purpose should ye have
your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?

Life is hard to bear:  but do not affect to be so delicate!  We are all of
us fine sumpter asses and assesses.

What have we in common with the rose-bud, which trembleth because a drop of
dew hath formed upon it?

It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we
are wont to love.

There is always some madness in love.  But there is always, also, some
method in madness.

And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and
whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness.

To see these light, foolish, pretty, lively little sprites flit about--that
moveth Zarathustra to tears and songs.

I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.

And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn:
he was the spirit of gravity--through him all things fall.

Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay.  Come, let us slay the spirit of
gravity!

I learned to walk; since then have I let myself run.  I learned to fly;
since then I do not need pushing in order to move from a spot.

Now am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under myself.  Now there
danceth a God in me.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


VIII.  THE TREE ON THE HILL.

Zarathustra's eye had perceived that a certain youth avoided him.  And as
he walked alone one evening over the hills surrounding the town called "The
Pied Cow," behold, there found he the youth sitting leaning against a tree,
and gazing with wearied look into the valley.  Zarathustra thereupon laid
hold of the tree beside which the youth sat, and spake thus:

"If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to do
so.

But the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it as it listeth.  We
are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands."

Thereupon the youth arose disconcerted, and said:  "I hear Zarathustra, and
just now was I thinking of him!"  Zarathustra answered:

"Why art thou frightened on that account?--But it is the same with man as
with the tree.

The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously
do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep--into the
evil."

"Yea, into the evil!" cried the youth.  "How is it possible that thou hast
discovered my soul?"

Zarathustra smiled, and said:  "Many a soul one will never discover, unless
one first invent it."

"Yea, into the evil!" cried the youth once more.

"Thou saidst the truth, Zarathustra.  I trust myself no longer since I
sought to rise into the height, and nobody trusteth me any longer; how doth
that happen?

I change too quickly:  my to-day refuteth my yesterday.  I often overleap
the steps when I clamber; for so doing, none of the steps pardons me.

When aloft, I find myself always alone.  No one speaketh unto me; the frost
of solitude maketh me tremble.  What do I seek on the height?

My contempt and my longing increase together; the higher I clamber, the
more do I despise him who clambereth.  What doth he seek on the height?

How ashamed I am of my clambering and stumbling!  How I mock at my violent
panting!  How I hate him who flieth!  How tired I am on the height!"

Here the youth was silent.  And Zarathustra contemplated the tree beside
which they stood, and spake thus:

"This tree standeth lonely here on the hills; it hath grown up high above
man and beast.

And if it wanted to speak, it would have none who could understand it:  so
high hath it grown.

Now it waiteth and waiteth,--for what doth it wait?  It dwelleth too close
to the seat of the clouds; it waiteth perhaps for the first lightning?"

When Zarathustra had said this, the youth called out with violent gestures:
"Yea, Zarathustra, thou speakest the truth.  My destruction I longed for,
when I desired to be on the height, and thou art the lightning for which I
waited!  Lo! what have I been since thou hast appeared amongst us?  It is
mine envy of thee that hath destroyed me!"--Thus spake the youth, and wept
bitterly.  Zarathustra, however, put his arm about him, and led the youth
away with him.

And when they had walked a while together, Zarathustra began to speak thus:

It rendeth my heart.  Better than thy words express it, thine eyes tell me
all thy danger.

As yet thou art not free; thou still SEEKEST freedom.  Too unslept hath thy
seeking made thee, and too wakeful.

On the open height wouldst thou be; for the stars thirsteth thy soul.  But
thy bad impulses also thirst for freedom.

Thy wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar when thy
spirit endeavoureth to open all prison doors.

Still art thou a prisoner--it seemeth to me--who deviseth liberty for
himself:  ah! sharp becometh the soul of such prisoners, but also deceitful
and wicked.

To purify himself, is still necessary for the freedman of the spirit.  Much
of the prison and the mould still remaineth in him:  pure hath his eye
still to become.

Yea, I know thy danger.  But by my love and hope I conjure thee:  cast not
thy love and hope away!

Noble thou feelest thyself still, and noble others also feel thee still,
though they bear thee a grudge and cast evil looks.  Know this, that to
everybody a noble one standeth in the way.

Also to the good, a noble one standeth in the way:  and even when they call
him a good man, they want thereby to put him aside.

The new, would the noble man create, and a new virtue.  The old, wanteth
the good man, and that the old should be conserved.

But it is not the danger of the noble man to turn a good man, but lest he
should become a blusterer, a scoffer, or a destroyer.

Ah!  I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope.  And then they
disparaged all high hopes.

Then lived they shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and beyond the day had
hardly an aim.

"Spirit is also voluptuousness,"--said they.  Then broke the wings of their
spirit; and now it creepeth about, and defileth where it gnaweth.

Once they thought of becoming heroes; but sensualists are they now.  A
trouble and a terror is the hero to them.

But by my love and hope I conjure thee:  cast not away the hero in thy
soul!  Maintain holy thy highest hope!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


IX.  THE PREACHERS OF DEATH.

There are preachers of death:  and the earth is full of those to whom
desistance from life must be preached.

Full is the earth of the superfluous; marred is life by the many-too-many.
May they be decoyed out of this life by the "life eternal"!

"The yellow ones":  so are called the preachers of death, or "the black
ones."  But I will show them unto you in other colours besides.

There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of
prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration.  And even their
lusts are self-laceration.

They have not yet become men, those terrible ones:  may they preach
desistance from life, and pass away themselves!

There are the spiritually consumptive ones:  hardly are they born when they
begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation.

They would fain be dead, and we should approve of their wish!  Let us
beware of awakening those dead ones, and of damaging those living coffins!

They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse--and immediately they say:
"Life is refuted!"

But they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only one aspect of
existence.

Shrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little casualties that
bring death:  thus do they wait, and clench their teeth.

Or else, they grasp at sweetmeats, and mock at their childishness thereby:
they cling to their straw of life, and mock at their still clinging to it.

Their wisdom speaketh thus:  "A fool, he who remaineth alive; but so far
are we fools!  And that is the foolishest thing in life!"

"Life is only suffering":  so say others, and lie not.  Then see to it that
YE cease!  See to it that the life ceaseth which is only suffering!

And let this be the teaching of your virtue:  "Thou shalt slay thyself!
Thou shalt steal away from thyself!"--

"Lust is sin,"--so say some who preach death--"let us go apart and beget no
children!"

"Giving birth is troublesome,"--say others--"why still give birth?  One
beareth only the unfortunate!"  And they also are preachers of death.

"Pity is necessary,"--so saith a third party.  "Take what I have!  Take
what I am!  So much less doth life bind me!"

Were they consistently pitiful, then would they make their neighbours sick
of life.  To be wicked--that would be their true goodness.

But they want to be rid of life; what care they if they bind others still
faster with their chains and gifts!--

And ye also, to whom life is rough labour and disquiet, are ye not very
tired of life?  Are ye not very ripe for the sermon of death?

All ye to whom rough labour is dear, and the rapid, new, and strange--ye
put up with yourselves badly; your diligence is flight, and the will to
self-forgetfulness.

If ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves less to the
momentary.  But for waiting, ye have not enough of capacity in you--nor
even for idling!

Everywhere resoundeth the voices of those who preach death; and the earth
is full of those to whom death hath to be preached.

Or "life eternal"; it is all the same to me--if only they pass away
quickly!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


X.  WAR AND WARRIORS.

By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom
we love from the very heart.  So let me tell you the truth!

My brethren in war!  I love you from the very heart.  I am, and was ever,
your counterpart.  And I am also your best enemy.  So let me tell you the
truth!

I know the hatred and envy of your hearts.  Ye are not great enough not to
know of hatred and envy.  Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them!

And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least its
warriors.  They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship.

I see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors!  "Uniform" one calleth
what they wear; may it not be uniform what they therewith hide!

Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy--for YOUR enemy.  And
with some of you there is hatred at first sight.

Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your
thoughts!  And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall still shout
triumph thereby!

Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars--and the short peace more than
the long.

You I advise not to work, but to fight.  You I advise not to peace, but to
victory.  Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory!

One can only be silent and sit peacefully when one hath arrow and bow;
otherwise one prateth and quarrelleth.  Let your peace be a victory!

Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war?  I say unto you:  it
is the good war which halloweth every cause.

War and courage have done more great things than charity.  Not your
sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the victims.

"What is good?" ye ask.  To be brave is good.  Let the little girls say:
"To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching."

They call you heartless:  but your heart is true, and I love the
bashfulness of your goodwill.  Ye are ashamed of your flow, and others are
ashamed of their ebb.

Ye are ugly?  Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about you, the
mantle of the ugly!

And when your soul becometh great, then doth it become haughty, and in your
sublimity there is wickedness.  I know you.

In wickedness the haughty man and the weakling meet.  But they
misunderstand one another.  I know you.

Ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised.  Ye
must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies are also
your successes.

Resistance--that is the distinction of the slave.  Let your distinction be
obedience.  Let your commanding itself be obeying!

To the good warrior soundeth "thou shalt" pleasanter than "I will."  And
all that is dear unto you, ye shall first have it commanded unto you.

Let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest
hope be the highest thought of life!

Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by me--
and it is this:  man is something that is to be surpassed.

So live your life of obedience and of war!  What matter about long life!
What warrior wisheth to be spared!

I spare you not, I love you from my very heart, my brethren in war!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XI.  THE NEW IDOL.

Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren:
here there are states.

A state?  What is that?  Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I
say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples.

A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters.  Coldly lieth it also;
and this lie creepeth from its mouth:  "I, the state, am the people."

It is a lie!  Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and
a love over them:  thus they served life.

Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state:  they
hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.

Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated
as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.

This sign I give unto you:  every people speaketh its language of good and
evil:  this its neighbour understandeth not.  Its language hath it devised
for itself in laws and customs.

But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it
saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen.

False is everything in it; with stolen teeth it biteth, the biting one.
False are even its bowels.

Confusion of language of good and evil; this sign I give unto you as the
sign of the state.  Verily, the will to death, indicateth this sign!
Verily, it beckoneth unto the preachers of death!

Many too many are born:  for the superfluous ones was the state devised!

See just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too-many!  How it swalloweth
and cheweth and recheweth them!

"On earth there is nothing greater than I:  it is I who am the regulating
finger of God"--thus roareth the monster.  And not only the long-eared and
short-sighted fall upon their knees!

Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies!  Ah!
it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves!

Yea, it findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God!  Weary ye became
of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol!

Heroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new idol!
Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences,--the cold monster!

Everything will it give YOU, if YE worship it, the new idol:  thus it
purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes.

It seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many!  Yea, a hellish
artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the trappings
of divine honours!

Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as
life:  verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!

The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad:
the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad:  the state,
where the slow suicide of all--is called "life."

Just see these superfluous ones!  They steal the works of the inventors and
the treasures of the wise.  Culture, they call their theft--and everything
becometh sickness and trouble unto them!

Just see these superfluous ones!  Sick are they always; they vomit their
bile and call it a newspaper.  They devour one another, and cannot even
digest themselves.

Just see these superfluous ones!  Wealth they acquire and become poorer
thereby.  Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much
money--these impotent ones!

See them clamber, these nimble apes!  They clamber over one another, and
thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss.

Towards the throne they all strive:  it is their madness--as if happiness
sat on the throne!  Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne.--and ofttimes
also the throne on filth.

Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager.  Badly
smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster:  badly they all smell to me,
these idolaters.

My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites!
Better break the windows and jump into the open air!

Do go out of the way of the bad odour!  Withdraw from the idolatry of the
superfluous!

Do go out of the way of the bad odour!  Withdraw from the steam of these
human sacrifices!

Open still remaineth the earth for great souls.  Empty are still many sites
for lone ones and twain ones, around which floateth the odour of tranquil
seas.

Open still remaineth a free life for great souls.  Verily, he who
possesseth little is so much the less possessed:  blessed be moderate
poverty!

There, where the state ceaseth--there only commenceth the man who is not
superfluous:  there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single
and irreplaceable melody.

There, where the state CEASETH--pray look thither, my brethren!  Do ye not
see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XII.  THE FLIES IN THE MARKET-PLACE.

Flee, my friend, into thy solitude!  I see thee deafened with the noise of
the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones.

Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with thee.  Resemble
again the tree which thou lovest, the broad-branched one--silently and
attentively it o'erhangeth the sea.

Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the
market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors,
and the buzzing of the poison-flies.

In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent
them:  those representers, the people call great men.

Little do the people understand what is great--that is to say, the creating
agency.  But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great
things.

Around the devisers of new values revolveth the world:--invisibly it
revolveth.  But around the actors revolve the people and the glory:  such
is the course of things.

Spirit, hath the actor, but little conscience of the spirit.  He believeth
always in that wherewith he maketh believe most strongly--in HIMSELF!

Tomorrow he hath a new belief, and the day after, one still newer.  Sharp
perceptions hath he, like the people, and changeable humours.

To upset--that meaneth with him to prove.  To drive mad--that meaneth with
him to convince.  And blood is counted by him as the best of all arguments.

A truth which only glideth into fine ears, he calleth falsehood and
trumpery.  Verily, he believeth only in Gods that make a great noise in the
world!

Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place,--and the people glory in
their great men!  These are for them the masters of the hour.

But the hour presseth them; so they press thee.  And also from thee they
want Yea or Nay.  Alas! thou wouldst set thy chair betwixt For and Against?

On account of those absolute and impatient ones, be not jealous, thou lover
of truth!  Never yet did truth cling to the arm of an absolute one.

On account of those abrupt ones, return into thy security:  only in the
market-place is one assailed by Yea? or Nay?

Slow is the experience of all deep fountains:  long have they to wait until
they know WHAT hath fallen into their depths.

Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great:
away from the market-Place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of
new values.

Flee, my friend, into thy solitude:  I see thee stung all over by the
poisonous flies.  Flee thither, where a rough, strong breeze bloweth!

Flee into thy solitude!  Thou hast lived too closely to the small and the
pitiable.  Flee from their invisible vengeance!  Towards thee they have
nothing but vengeance.

Raise no longer an arm against them!  Innumerable are they, and it is not
thy lot to be a fly-flap.

Innumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a proud structure,
rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin.

Thou art not stone; but already hast thou become hollow by the numerous
drops.  Thou wilt yet break and burst by the numerous drops.

Exhausted I see thee, by poisonous flies; bleeding I see thee, and torn at
a hundred spots; and thy pride will not even upbraid.

Blood they would have from thee in all innocence; blood their bloodless
souls crave for--and they sting, therefore, in all innocence.

But thou, profound one, thou sufferest too profoundly even from small
wounds; and ere thou hadst recovered, the same poison-worm crawled over thy
hand.

Too proud art thou to kill these sweet-tooths.  But take care lest it be
thy fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice!

They buzz around thee also with their praise:  obtrusiveness, is their
praise.  They want to be close to thy skin and thy blood.

They flatter thee, as one flattereth a God or devil; they whimper before
thee, as before a God or devil.  What doth it come to!  Flatterers are
they, and whimperers, and nothing more.

Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones.  But that
hath ever been the prudence of the cowardly.  Yea! the cowardly are wise!

They think much about thee with their circumscribed souls--thou art always
suspected by them!  Whatever is much thought about is at last thought
suspicious.

They punish thee for all thy virtues.  They pardon thee in their inmost
hearts only--for thine errors.

Because thou art gentle and of upright character, thou sayest:  "Blameless
are they for their small existence."  But their circumscribed souls think:
"Blamable is all great existence."

Even when thou art gentle towards them, they still feel themselves despised
by thee; and they repay thy beneficence with secret maleficence.

Thy silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once
thou be humble enough to be frivolous.

What we recognise in a man, we also irritate in him.  Therefore be on your
guard against the small ones!

In thy presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleameth and
gloweth against thee in invisible vengeance.

Sawest thou not how often they became dumb when thou approachedst them, and
how their energy left them like the smoke of an extinguishing fire?

Yea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neighbours; for they are
unworthy of thee.  Therefore they hate thee, and would fain suck thy blood.

Thy neighbours will always be poisonous flies; what is great in thee--that
itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like.

Flee, my friend, into thy solitude--and thither, where a rough strong
breeze bloweth.  It is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XIII.  CHASTITY.

I love the forest.  It is bad to live in cities:  there, there are too many
of the lustful.

Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the dreams
of a lustful woman?

And just look at these men:  their eye saith it--they know nothing better
on earth than to lie with a woman.

Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth hath still
spirit in it!

Would that ye were perfect--at least as animals!  But to animals belongeth
innocence.

Do I counsel you to slay your instincts?  I counsel you to innocence in
your instincts.

Do I counsel you to chastity?  Chastity is a virtue with some, but with
many almost a vice.

These are continent, to be sure:  but doggish lust looketh enviously out of
all that they do.

Even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit doth this
creature follow them, with its discord.

And how nicely can doggish lust beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of
flesh is denied it!

Ye love tragedies and all that breaketh the heart?  But I am distrustful of
your doggish lust.

Ye have too cruel eyes, and ye look wantonly towards the sufferers.  Hath
not your lust just disguised itself and taken the name of fellow-suffering?

And also this parable give I unto you:  Not a few who meant to cast out
their devil, went thereby into the swine themselves.

To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded:  lest it become the
road to hell--to filth and lust of soul.

Do I speak of filthy things?  That is not the worst thing for me to do.

Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, doth the discerning
one go unwillingly into its waters.

Verily, there are chaste ones from their very nature; they are gentler of
heart, and laugh better and oftener than you.

They laugh also at chastity, and ask:  "What is chastity?

Is chastity not folly?  But the folly came unto us, and not we unto it.

We offered that guest harbour and heart:  now it dwelleth with us--let it
stay as long as it will!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XIV.  THE FRIEND.

"One, is always too many about me"--thinketh the anchorite.  "Always once
one--that maketh two in the long run!"

I and me are always too earnestly in conversation:  how could it be
endured, if there were not a friend?

The friend of the anchorite is always the third one:  the third one is the
cork which preventeth the conversation of the two sinking into the depth.

Ah! there are too many depths for all anchorites.  Therefore, do they long
so much for a friend, and for his elevation.

Our faith in others betrayeth wherein we would fain have faith in
ourselves.  Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.

And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy.  And often we
attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.

"Be at least mine enemy!"--thus speaketh the true reverence, which doth not
venture to solicit friendship.

If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war for
him:  and in order to wage war, one must be CAPABLE of being an enemy.

One ought still to honour the enemy in one's friend.  Canst thou go nigh
unto thy friend, and not go over to him?

In one's friend one shall have one's best enemy.  Thou shalt be closest
unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him.

Thou wouldst wear no raiment before thy friend?  It is in honour of thy
friend that thou showest thyself to him as thou art?  But he wisheth thee
to the devil on that account!

He who maketh no secret of himself shocketh:  so much reason have ye to
fear nakedness!  Aye, if ye were Gods, ye could then be ashamed of
clothing!

Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt be
unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.

Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep--to know how he looketh?  What is
usually the countenance of thy friend?  It is thine own countenance, in a
coarse and imperfect mirror.

Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep?  Wert thou not dismayed at thy friend
looking so?  O my friend, man is something that hath to be surpassed.

In divining and keeping silence shall the friend be a master:  not
everything must thou wish to see.  Thy dream shall disclose unto thee what
thy friend doeth when awake.

Let thy pity be a divining:  to know first if thy friend wanteth pity.
Perhaps he loveth in thee the unmoved eye, and the look of eternity.

Let thy pity for thy friend be hid under a hard shell; thou shalt bite out
a tooth upon it.  Thus will it have delicacy and sweetness.

Art thou pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to thy friend?  Many
a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend's
emancipator.

Art thou a slave?  Then thou canst not be a friend.  Art thou a tyrant?
Then thou canst not have friends.

Far too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman.  On
that account woman is not yet capable of friendship:  she knoweth only
love.

In woman's love there is injustice and blindness to all she doth not love.
And even in woman's conscious love, there is still always surprise and
lightning and night, along with the light.

As yet woman is not capable of friendship:  women are still cats, and
birds.  Or at the best, cows.

As yet woman is not capable of friendship.  But tell me, ye men, who of you
are capable of friendship?

Oh! your poverty, ye men, and your sordidness of soul!  As much as ye give
to your friend, will I give even to my foe, and will not have become poorer
thereby.

There is comradeship:  may there be friendship!

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XV.  THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS.

Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples:  thus he discovered the good
and bad of many peoples.  No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth
than good and bad.

No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain
itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth.

Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and
contempt by another:  thus I found it.  Much found I here called bad, which
was there decked with purple honours.

Never did the one neighbour understand the other:  ever did his soul marvel
at his neighbour's delusion and wickedness.

A table of excellencies hangeth over every people.  Lo! it is the table of
their triumphs; lo! it is the voice of their Will to Power.

It is laudable, what they think hard; what is indispensable and hard they
call good; and what relieveth in the direst distress, the unique and
hardest of all,--they extol as holy.

Whatever maketh them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy of
their neighbours, they regard as the high and foremost thing, the test and
the meaning of all else.

Verily, my brother, if thou knewest but a people's need, its land, its sky,
and its neighbour, then wouldst thou divine the law of its surmountings,
and why it climbeth up that ladder to its hope.

"Always shalt thou be the foremost and prominent above others:  no one
shall thy jealous soul love, except a friend"--that made the soul of a
Greek thrill:  thereby went he his way to greatness.

"To speak truth, and be skilful with bow and arrow"--so seemed it alike
pleasing and hard to the people from whom cometh my name--the name which is
alike pleasing and hard to me.

"To honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their
will"--this table of surmounting hung another people over them, and became
powerful and permanent thereby.

"To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour and blood,
even in evil and dangerous courses"--teaching itself so, another people
mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and heavy with
great hopes.

Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad.  Verily,
they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from
heaven.

Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself--he
created only the significance of things, a human significance!  Therefore,
calleth he himself "man," that is, the valuator.

Valuing is creating:  hear it, ye creating ones!  Valuation itself is the
treasure and jewel of the valued things.

Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of
existence would be hollow.  Hear it, ye creating ones!

Change of values--that is, change of the creating ones.  Always doth he
destroy who hath to be a creator.

Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times
individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation.

Peoples once hung over them tables of the good.  Love which would rule and
love which would obey, created for themselves such tables.

Older is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the ego:  and as
long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad conscience only saith:
ego.

Verily, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeketh its advantage in the
advantage of many--it is not the origin of the herd, but its ruin.

Loving ones, was it always, and creating ones, that created good and bad.
Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath.

Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples:  no greater power did
Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones--"good" and
"bad" are they called.

Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming.  Tell me, ye
brethren, who will master it for me?  Who will put a fetter upon the
thousand necks of this animal?

A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have
there been.  Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there
is lacking the one goal.  As yet humanity hath not a goal.

But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is
there not also still lacking--humanity itself?--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XVI.  NEIGHBOUR-LOVE.

Ye crowd around your neighbour, and have fine words for it.  But I say unto
you:  your neighbour-love is your bad love of yourselves.

Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a virtue
thereof:  but I fathom your "unselfishness."

The THOU is older than the _I_; the THOU hath been consecrated, but not yet
the _I_:  so man presseth nigh unto his neighbour.

Do I advise you to neighbour-love?  Rather do I advise you to neighbour-
flight and to furthest love!

Higher than love to your neighbour is love to the furthest and future ones;
higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.

The phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is fairer than thou;
why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones?  But thou fearest,
and runnest unto thy neighbour.

Ye cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love yourselves
sufficiently:  so ye seek to mislead your neighbour into love, and would
fain gild yourselves with his error.

Would that ye could not endure it with any kind of near ones, or their
neighbours; then would ye have to create your friend and his overflowing
heart out of yourselves.

Ye call in a witness when ye want to speak well of yourselves; and when ye
have misled him to think well of you, ye also think well of yourselves.

Not only doth he lie, who speaketh contrary to his knowledge, but more so,
he who speaketh contrary to his ignorance.  And thus speak ye of yourselves
in your intercourse, and belie your neighbour with yourselves.

Thus saith the fool:  "Association with men spoileth the character,
especially when one hath none."

The one goeth to his neighbour because he seeketh himself, and the other
because he would fain lose himself.  Your bad love to yourselves maketh
solitude a prison to you.

The furthest ones are they who pay for your love to the near ones; and when
there are but five of you together, a sixth must always die.

I love not your festivals either:  too many actors found I there, and even
the spectators often behaved like actors.

Not the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend.  Let the friend be the
festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman.

I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart.  But one must know how to
be a sponge, if one would be loved by overflowing hearts.

I teach you the friend in whom the world standeth complete, a capsule of
the good,--the creating friend, who hath always a complete world to bestow.

And as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolleth it together again for
him in rings, as the growth of good through evil, as the growth of purpose
out of chance.

Let the future and the furthest be the motive of thy to-day; in thy friend
shalt thou love the Superman as thy motive.

My brethren, I advise you not to neighbour-love--I advise you to furthest
love!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XVII.  THE WAY OF THE CREATING ONE.

Wouldst thou go into isolation, my brother?  Wouldst thou seek the way unto
thyself?  Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me.

"He who seeketh may easily get lost himself.  All isolation is wrong":  so
say the herd.  And long didst thou belong to the herd.

The voice of the herd will still echo in thee.  And when thou sayest, "I
have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a plaint
and a pain.

Lo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam of
that conscience still gloweth on thine affliction.

But thou wouldst go the way of thine affliction, which is the way unto
thyself?  Then show me thine authority and thy strength to do so!

Art thou a new strength and a new authority?  A first motion?  A self-
rolling wheel?  Canst thou also compel stars to revolve around thee?

Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness!  There are so many
convulsions of the ambitions!  Show me that thou art not a lusting and
ambitious one!

Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the
bellows:  they inflate, and make emptier than ever.

Free, dost thou call thyself?  Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not
that thou hast escaped from a yoke.

Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke?  Many a one hath cast away his
final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.

Free from what?  What doth that matter to Zarathustra!  Clearly, however,
shall thine eye show unto me:  free FOR WHAT?

Canst thou give unto thyself thy bad and thy good, and set up thy will as a
law over thee?  Canst thou be judge for thyself, and avenger of thy law?

Terrible is aloneness with the judge and avenger of one's own law.  Thus is
a star projected into desert space, and into the icy breath of aloneness.

To-day sufferest thou still from the multitude, thou individual; to-day
hast thou still thy courage unabated, and thy hopes.

But one day will the solitude weary thee; one day will thy pride yield, and
thy courage quail.  Thou wilt one day cry:  "I am alone!"

One day wilt thou see no longer thy loftiness, and see too closely thy
lowliness; thy sublimity itself will frighten thee as a phantom.  Thou wilt
one day cry:  "All is false!"

There are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if they do not
succeed, then must they themselves die!  But art thou capable of it--to be
a murderer?

Hast thou ever known, my brother, the word "disdain"?  And the anguish of
thy justice in being just to those that disdain thee?

Thou forcest many to think differently about thee; that, charge they
heavily to thine account.  Thou camest nigh unto them, and yet wentest
past:  for that they never forgive thee.

Thou goest beyond them:  but the higher thou risest, the smaller doth the
eye of envy see thee.  Most of all, however, is the flying one hated.

"How could ye be just unto me!"--must thou say--"I choose your injustice as
my allotted portion."

Injustice and filth cast they at the lonesome one:  but, my brother, if
thou wouldst be a star, thou must shine for them none the less on that
account!

And be on thy guard against the good and just!  They would fain crucify
those who devise their own virtue--they hate the lonesome ones.

Be on thy guard, also, against holy simplicity!  All is unholy to it that
is not simple; fain, likewise, would it play with the fire--of the fagot
and stake.

And be on thy guard, also, against the assaults of thy love!  Too readily
doth the recluse reach his hand to any one who meeteth him.

To many a one mayest thou not give thy hand, but only thy paw; and I wish
thy paw also to have claws.

But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; thou
waylayest thyself in caverns and forests.

Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself!  And past thyself and thy
seven devils leadeth thy way!

A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a sooth-sayer, and a
fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.

Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou
become new if thou have not first become ashes!

Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the creating one:  a God wilt thou
create for thyself out of thy seven devils!

Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the loving one:  thou lovest
thyself, and on that account despisest thou thyself, as only the loving
ones despise.

To create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth!  What knoweth he
of love who hath not been obliged to despise just what he loved!

With thy love, go into thine isolation, my brother, and with thy creating;
and late only will justice limp after thee.

With my tears, go into thine isolation, my brother.  I love him who seeketh
to create beyond himself, and thus succumbeth.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XVIII.  OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN.

"Why stealest thou along so furtively in the twilight, Zarathustra?  And
what hidest thou so carefully under thy mantle?

Is it a treasure that hath been given thee?  Or a child that hath been born
thee?  Or goest thou thyself on a thief's errand, thou friend of the
evil?"--

Verily, my brother, said Zarathustra, it is a treasure that hath been given
me:  it is a little truth which I carry.

But it is naughty, like a young child; and if I hold not its mouth, it
screameth too loudly.

As I went on my way alone to-day, at the hour when the sun declineth, there
met me an old woman, and she spake thus unto my soul:

"Much hath Zarathustra spoken also to us women, but never spake he unto us
concerning woman."

And I answered her:  "Concerning woman, one should only talk unto men."

"Talk also unto me of woman," said she; "I am old enough to forget it
presently."

And I obliged the old woman and spake thus unto her:

Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one solution
--it is called pregnancy.

Man is for woman a means:  the purpose is always the child.  But what is
woman for man?

Two different things wanteth the true man:  danger and diversion.
Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior:
all else is folly.

Too sweet fruits--these the warrior liketh not.  Therefore liketh he
woman;--bitter is even the sweetest woman.

Better than man doth woman understand children, but man is more childish
than woman.

In the true man there is a child hidden:  it wanteth to play.  Up then, ye
women, and discover the child in man!

A plaything let woman be, pure and fine like the precious stone, illumined
with the virtues of a world not yet come.

Let the beam of a star shine in your love!  Let your hope say:  "May I bear
the Superman!"

In your love let there be valour!  With your love shall ye assail him who
inspireth you with fear!

In your love be your honour!  Little doth woman understand otherwise about
honour.  But let this be your honour:  always to love more than ye are
loved, and never be the second.

Let man fear woman when she loveth:  then maketh she every sacrifice, and
everything else she regardeth as worthless.

Let man fear woman when she hateth:  for man in his innermost soul is
merely evil; woman, however, is mean.

Whom hateth woman most?--Thus spake the iron to the loadstone:  "I hate
thee most, because thou attractest, but art too weak to draw unto thee."

The happiness of man is, "I will."  The happiness of woman is, "He will."

"Lo! now hath the world become perfect!"--thus thinketh every woman when
she obeyeth with all her love.

Obey, must the woman, and find a depth for her surface.  Surface, is
woman's soul, a mobile, stormy film on shallow water.

Man's soul, however, is deep, its current gusheth in subterranean caverns:
woman surmiseth its force, but comprehendeth it not.--

Then answered me the old woman:  "Many fine things hath Zarathustra said,
especially for those who are young enough for them.

Strange!  Zarathustra knoweth little about woman, and yet he is right about
them!  Doth this happen, because with women nothing is impossible?

And now accept a little truth by way of thanks!  I am old enough for it!

Swaddle it up and hold its mouth:  otherwise it will scream too loudly, the
little truth."

"Give me, woman, thy little truth!" said I.  And thus spake the old woman:

"Thou goest to women?  Do not forget thy whip!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XIX.  THE BITE OF THE ADDER.

One day had Zarathustra fallen asleep under a fig-tree, owing to the heat,
with his arms over his face.  And there came an adder and bit him in the
neck, so that Zarathustra screamed with pain.  When he had taken his arm
from his face he looked at the serpent; and then did it recognise the eyes
of Zarathustra, wriggled awkwardly, and tried to get away.  "Not at all,"
said Zarathustra, "as yet hast thou not received my thanks!  Thou hast
awakened me in time; my journey is yet long."  "Thy journey is short," said
the adder sadly; "my poison is fatal."  Zarathustra smiled.  "When did ever
a dragon die of a serpent's poison?"--said he.  "But take thy poison back!
Thou art not rich enough to present it to me."  Then fell the adder again
on his neck, and licked his wound.

When Zarathustra once told this to his disciples they asked him:  "And
what, O Zarathustra, is the moral of thy story?" And Zarathustra answered
them thus:

The destroyer of morality, the good and just call me:  my story is immoral.

When, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil:  for
that would abash him.  But prove that he hath done something good to you.

And rather be angry than abash any one!  And when ye are cursed, it
pleaseth me not that ye should then desire to bless.  Rather curse a little
also!

And should a great injustice befall you, then do quickly five small ones
besides.  Hideous to behold is he on whom injustice presseth alone.

Did ye ever know this?  Shared injustice is half justice.  And he who can
bear it, shall take the injustice upon himself!

A small revenge is humaner than no revenge at all.  And if the punishment
be not also a right and an honour to the transgressor, I do not like your
punishing.

Nobler is it to own oneself in the wrong than to establish one's right,
especially if one be in the right.  Only, one must be rich enough to do so.

I do not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always
glanceth the executioner and his cold steel.

Tell me:  where find we justice, which is love with seeing eyes?

Devise me, then, the love which not only beareth all punishment, but also
all guilt!

Devise me, then, the justice which acquitteth every one except the judge!

And would ye hear this likewise?  To him who seeketh to be just from the
heart, even the lie becometh philanthropy.

But how could I be just from the heart!  How can I give every one his own!
Let this be enough for me:  I give unto every one mine own.

Finally, my brethren, guard against doing wrong to any anchorite.  How
could an anchorite forget!  How could he requite!

Like a deep well is an anchorite.  Easy is it to throw in a stone:  if it
should sink to the bottom, however, tell me, who will bring it out again?

Guard against injuring the anchorite!  If ye have done so, however, well
then, kill him also!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XX.  CHILD AND MARRIAGE.

I have a question for thee alone, my brother:  like a sounding-lead, cast I
this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth.

Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage.  But I ask thee:  Art thou
a man ENTITLED to desire a child?

Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy passions,
the master of thy virtues?  Thus do I ask thee.

Or doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity?  Or isolation?  Or
discord in thee?

I would have thy victory and freedom long for a child.  Living monuments
shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation.

Beyond thyself shalt thou build.  But first of all must thou be built
thyself, rectangular in body and soul.

Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward!  For that purpose
may the garden of marriage help thee!

A higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spontaneously rolling
wheel--a creating one shalt thou create.

Marriage:  so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more
than those who created it.  The reverence for one another, as those
exercising such a will, call I marriage.

Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage.  But that which
the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones--ah, what shall I
call it?

Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain!  Ah, the filth of soul in the twain!
Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain!

Marriage they call it all; and they say their marriages are made in heaven.

Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous!  No, I do not like
them, those animals tangled in the heavenly toils!

Far from me also be the God who limpeth thither to bless what he hath not
matched!

Laugh not at such marriages!  What child hath not had reason to weep over
its parents?

Worthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of the earth:  but when
I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps.

Yea, I would that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose
mate with one another.

This one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for
himself a small decked-up lie:  his marriage he calleth it.

That one was reserved in intercourse and chose choicely.  But one time he
spoilt his company for all time:  his marriage he calleth it.

Another sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel.  But all at once he
became the handmaid of a woman, and now would he need also to become an
angel.

Careful, have I found all buyers, and all of them have astute eyes.  But
even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack.

Many short follies--that is called love by you.  And your marriage putteth
an end to many short follies, with one long stupidity.

Your love to woman, and woman's love to man--ah, would that it were
sympathy for suffering and veiled deities!  But generally two animals
alight on one another.

But even your best love is only an enraptured simile and a painful ardour.
It is a torch to light you to loftier paths.

Beyond yourselves shall ye love some day!  Then LEARN first of all to love.
And on that account ye had to drink the bitter cup of your love.

Bitterness is in the cup even of the best love:  thus doth it cause longing
for the Superman; thus doth it cause thirst in thee, the creating one!

Thirst in the creating one, arrow and longing for the Superman:  tell me,
my brother, is this thy will to marriage?

Holy call I such a will, and such a marriage.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXI.  VOLUNTARY DEATH.

Many die too late, and some die too early.  Yet strange soundeth the
precept:  "Die at the right time!

Die at the right time:  so teacheth Zarathustra.

To be sure, he who never liveth at the right time, how could he ever die at
the right time?  Would that he might never be born!--Thus do I advise the
superfluous ones.

But even the superfluous ones make much ado about their death, and even the
hollowest nut wanteth to be cracked.

Every one regardeth dying as a great matter:  but as yet death is not a
festival.  Not yet have people learned to inaugurate the finest festivals.

The consummating death I show unto you, which becometh a stimulus and
promise to the living.

His death, dieth the consummating one triumphantly, surrounded by hoping
and promising ones.

Thus should one learn to die; and there should be no festival at which such
a dying one doth not consecrate the oaths of the living!

Thus to die is best; the next best, however, is to die in battle, and
sacrifice a great soul.

But to the fighter equally hateful as to the victor, is your grinning death
which stealeth nigh like a thief,--and yet cometh as master.

My death, praise I unto you, the voluntary death, which cometh unto me
because _I_ want it.

And when shall I want it?--He that hath a goal and an heir, wanteth death
at the right time for the goal and the heir.

And out of reverence for the goal and the heir, he will hang up no more
withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.

Verily, not the rope-makers will I resemble:  they lengthen out their cord,
and thereby go ever backward.

Many a one, also, waxeth too old for his truths and triumphs; a toothless
mouth hath no longer the right to every truth.

And whoever wanteth to have fame, must take leave of honour betimes, and
practise the difficult art of--going at the right time.

One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best:  that is
known by those who want to be long loved.

Sour apples are there, no doubt, whose lot is to wait until the last day of
autumn:  and at the same time they become ripe, yellow, and shrivelled.

In some ageth the heart first, and in others the spirit.  And some are
hoary in youth, but the late young keep long young.

To many men life is a failure; a poison-worm gnaweth at their heart.  Then
let them see to it that their dying is all the more a success.

Many never become sweet; they rot even in the summer.  It is cowardice that
holdeth them fast to their branches.

Far too many live, and far too long hang they on their branches.  Would
that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from the
tree!

Would that there came preachers of SPEEDY death!  Those would be the
appropriate storms and agitators of the trees of life!  But I hear only
slow death preached, and patience with all that is "earthly."

Ah! ye preach patience with what is earthly?  This earthly is it that hath
too much patience with you, ye blasphemers!

Verily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honour:
and to many hath it proved a calamity that he died too early.

As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together
with the hatred of the good and just--the Hebrew Jesus:  then was he seized
with the longing for death.

Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just!
Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live, and love the earth--and
laughter also!

Believe it, my brethren!  He died too early; he himself would have
disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age!  Noble enough was he to
disavow!

But he was still immature.  Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely
also hateth he man and earth.  Confined and awkward are still his soul and
the wings of his spirit.

But in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less of
melancholy:  better understandeth he about life and death.

Free for death, and free in death; a holy Naysayer, when there is no longer
time for Yea:  thus understandeth he about death and life.

That your dying may not be a reproach to man and the earth, my friends:
that do I solicit from the honey of your soul.

In your dying shall your spirit and your virtue still shine like an evening
after-glow around the earth:  otherwise your dying hath been
unsatisfactory.

Thus will I die myself, that ye friends may love the earth more for my
sake; and earth will I again become, to have rest in her that bore me.

Verily, a goal had Zarathustra; he threw his ball.  Now be ye friends the
heirs of my goal; to you throw I the golden ball.

Best of all, do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball!  And so tarry
I still a little while on the earth--pardon me for it!

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXII.  THE BESTOWING VIRTUE.

1.

When Zarathustra had taken leave of the town to which his heart was
attached, the name of which is "The Pied Cow," there followed him many
people who called themselves his disciples, and kept him company.  Thus
came they to a crossroad.  Then Zarathustra told them that he now wanted to
go alone; for he was fond of going alone.  His disciples, however,
presented him at his departure with a staff, on the golden handle of which
a serpent twined round the sun.  Zarathustra rejoiced on account of the
staff, and supported himself thereon; then spake he thus to his disciples:

Tell me, pray:  how came gold to the highest value?  Because it is
uncommon, and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always
bestoweth itself.

Only as image of the highest virtue came gold to the highest value.
Goldlike, beameth the glance of the bestower.  Gold-lustre maketh peace
between moon and sun.

Uncommon is the highest virtue, and unprofiting, beaming is it, and soft of
lustre:  a bestowing virtue is the highest virtue.

Verily, I divine you well, my disciples:  ye strive like me for the
bestowing virtue.  What should ye have in common with cats and wolves?

It is your thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves:  and therefore
have ye the thirst to accumulate all riches in your soul.

Insatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, because your virtue
is insatiable in desiring to bestow.

Ye constrain all things to flow towards you and into you, so that they
shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of your love.

Verily, an appropriator of all values must such bestowing love become; but
healthy and holy, call I this selfishness.--

Another selfishness is there, an all-too-poor and hungry kind, which would
always steal--the selfishness of the sick, the sickly selfishness.

With the eye of the thief it looketh upon all that is lustrous; with the
craving of hunger it measureth him who hath abundance; and ever doth it
prowl round the tables of bestowers.

Sickness speaketh in such craving, and invisible degeneration; of a sickly
body, speaketh the larcenous craving of this selfishness.

Tell me, my brother, what do we think bad, and worst of all?  Is it not
DEGENERATION?--And we always suspect degeneration when the bestowing soul
is lacking.

Upward goeth our course from genera on to super-genera.  But a horror to us
is the degenerating sense, which saith:  "All for myself."

Upward soareth our sense:  thus is it a simile of our body, a simile of an
elevation.  Such similes of elevations are the names of the virtues.

Thus goeth the body through history, a becomer and fighter.  And the
spirit--what is it to the body?  Its fights' and victories' herald, its
companion and echo.

Similes, are all names of good and evil; they do not speak out, they only
hint.  A fool who seeketh knowledge from them!

Give heed, my brethren, to every hour when your spirit would speak in
similes:  there is the origin of your virtue.

Elevated is then your body, and raised up; with its delight, enraptureth it
the spirit; so that it becometh creator, and valuer, and lover, and
everything's benefactor.

When your heart overfloweth broad and full like the river, a blessing and a
danger to the lowlanders:  there is the origin of your virtue.

When ye are exalted above praise and blame, and your will would command all
things, as a loving one's will:  there is the origin of your virtue.

When ye despise pleasant things, and the effeminate couch, and cannot couch
far enough from the effeminate:  there is the origin of your virtue.

When ye are willers of one will, and when that change of every need is
needful to you:  there is the origin of your virtue.

Verily, a new good and evil is it!  Verily, a new deep murmuring, and the
voice of a new fountain!

Power is it, this new virtue; a ruling thought is it, and around it a
subtle soul:  a golden sun, with the serpent of knowledge around it.

2.

Here paused Zarathustra awhile, and looked lovingly on his disciples.  Then
he continued to speak thus--and his voice had changed:

Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue!  Let
your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning of the
earth!  Thus do I pray and conjure you.

Let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with
its wings!  Ah, there hath always been so much flown-away virtue!

Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth--yea, back to body
and life:  that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning!

A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue flown away and
blundered.  Alas! in our body dwelleth still all this delusion and
blundering:  body and will hath it there become.

A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue attempted and erred.
Yea, an attempt hath man been.  Alas, much ignorance and error hath become
embodied in us!

Not only the rationality of millenniums--also their madness, breaketh out
in us.  Dangerous is it to be an heir.

Still fight we step by step with the giant Chance, and over all mankind
hath hitherto ruled nonsense, the lack-of-sense.

Let your spirit and your virtue be devoted to the sense of the earth, my
brethren:  let the value of everything be determined anew by you!
Therefore shall ye be fighters!  Therefore shall ye be creators!

Intelligently doth the body purify itself; attempting with intelligence it
exalteth itself; to the discerners all impulses sanctify themselves; to the
exalted the soul becometh joyful.

Physician, heal thyself:  then wilt thou also heal thy patient.  Let it be
his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole.

A thousand paths are there which have never yet been trodden; a thousand
salubrities and hidden islands of life.  Unexhausted and undiscovered is
still man and man's world.

Awake and hearken, ye lonesome ones!  From the future come winds with
stealthy pinions, and to fine ears good tidings are proclaimed.

Ye lonesome ones of to-day, ye seceding ones, ye shall one day be a people:
out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people arise:--and
out of it the Superman.

Verily, a place of healing shall the earth become!  And already is a new
odour diffused around it, a salvation-bringing odour--and a new hope!

3.

When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he paused, like one who had not
said his last word; and long did he balance the staff doubtfully in his
hand.  At last he spake thus--and his voice had changed:

I now go alone, my disciples!  Ye also now go away, and alone!  So will I
have it.

Verily, I advise you:  depart from me, and guard yourselves against
Zarathustra!  And better still:  be ashamed of him!  Perhaps he hath
deceived you.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to
hate his friends.

One requiteth a teacher badly if one remain merely a scholar.  And why will
ye not pluck at my wreath?

Ye venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse?  Take
heed lest a statue crush you!

Ye say, ye believe in Zarathustra?  But of what account is Zarathustra!  Ye
are my believers:  but of what account are all believers!

Ye had not yet sought yourselves:  then did ye find me.  So do all
believers; therefore all belief is of so little account.

Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all
denied me, will I return unto you.

Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones; with
another love shall I then love you.

And once again shall ye have become friends unto me, and children of one
hope:  then will I be with you for the third time, to celebrate the great
noontide with you.

And it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course
between animal and Superman, and celebrateth his advance to the evening as
his highest hope:  for it is the advance to a new morning.

At such time will the down-goer bless himself, that he should be an over-
goer; and the sun of his knowledge will be at noontide.

"DEAD ARE ALL THE GODS:  NOW DO WE DESIRE THE SUPERMAN TO LIVE."--Let this
be our final will at the great noontide!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

SECOND PART.

"-and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you.

Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones; with
another love shall I then love you."--ZARATHUSTRA, I., "The Bestowing
Virtue."


XXIII.  THE CHILD WITH THE MIRROR.

After this Zarathustra returned again into the mountains to the solitude of
his cave, and withdrew himself from men, waiting like a sower who hath
scattered his seed.  His soul, however, became impatient and full of
longing for those whom he loved:  because he had still much to give them.
For this is hardest of all:  to close the open hand out of love, and keep
modest as a giver.

Thus passed with the lonesome one months and years; his wisdom meanwhile
increased, and caused him pain by its abundance.

One morning, however, he awoke ere the rosy dawn, and having meditated long
on his couch, at last spake thus to his heart:

Why did I startle in my dream, so that I awoke?  Did not a child come to
me, carrying a mirror?

"O Zarathustra"--said the child unto me--"look at thyself in the mirror!"

But when I looked into the mirror, I shrieked, and my heart throbbed:  for
not myself did I see therein, but a devil's grimace and derision.

Verily, all too well do I understand the dream's portent and monition:  my
DOCTRINE is in danger; tares want to be called wheat!

Mine enemies have grown powerful and have disfigured the likeness of my
doctrine, so that my dearest ones have to blush for the gifts that I gave
them.

Lost are my friends; the hour hath come for me to seek my lost ones!--

With these words Zarathustra started up, not however like a person in
anguish seeking relief, but rather like a seer and a singer whom the spirit
inspireth.  With amazement did his eagle and serpent gaze upon him:  for a
coming bliss overspread his countenance like the rosy dawn.

What hath happened unto me, mine animals?--said Zarathustra.  Am I not
transformed?  Hath not bliss come unto me like a whirlwind?

Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak:  it is still too
young--so have patience with it!

Wounded am I by my happiness:  all sufferers shall be physicians unto me!

To my friends can I again go down, and also to mine enemies!  Zarathustra
can again speak and bestow, and show his best love to his loved ones!

My impatient love overfloweth in streams,--down towards sunrise and sunset.
Out of silent mountains and storms of affliction, rusheth my soul into the
valleys.

Too long have I longed and looked into the distance.  Too long hath
solitude possessed me:  thus have I unlearned to keep silence.

Utterance have I become altogether, and the brawling of a brook from high
rocks:  downward into the valleys will I hurl my speech.

And let the stream of my love sweep into unfrequented channels!  How should
a stream not finally find its way to the sea!

Forsooth, there is a lake in me, sequestered and self-sufficing; but the
stream of my love beareth this along with it, down--to the sea!

New paths do I tread, a new speech cometh unto me; tired have I become--
like all creators--of the old tongues.  No longer will my spirit walk on
worn-out soles.

Too slowly runneth all speaking for me:--into thy chariot, O storm, do I
leap!  And even thee will I whip with my spite!

Like a cry and an huzza will I traverse wide seas, till I find the Happy
Isles where my friends sojourn;-

And mine enemies amongst them!  How I now love every one unto whom I may
but speak!  Even mine enemies pertain to my bliss.

And when I want to mount my wildest horse, then doth my spear always help
me up best:  it is my foot's ever ready servant:--

The spear which I hurl at mine enemies!  How grateful am I to mine enemies
that I may at last hurl it!

Too great hath been the tension of my cloud:  'twixt laughters of
lightnings will I cast hail-showers into the depths.

Violently will my breast then heave; violently will it blow its storm over
the mountains:  thus cometh its assuagement.

Verily, like a storm cometh my happiness, and my freedom!  But mine enemies
shall think that THE EVIL ONE roareth over their heads.

Yea, ye also, my friends, will be alarmed by my wild wisdom; and perhaps ye
will flee therefrom, along with mine enemies.

Ah, that I knew how to lure you back with shepherds' flutes!  Ah, that my
lioness wisdom would learn to roar softly!  And much have we already
learned with one another!

My wild wisdom became pregnant on the lonesome mountains; on the rough
stones did she bear the youngest of her young.

Now runneth she foolishly in the arid wilderness, and seeketh and seeketh
the soft sward--mine old, wild wisdom!

On the soft sward of your hearts, my friends!--on your love, would she fain
couch her dearest one!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXIV.  IN THE HAPPY ISLES.

The figs fall from the trees, they are good and sweet; and in falling the
red skins of them break.  A north wind am I to ripe figs.

Thus, like figs, do these doctrines fall for you, my friends:  imbibe now
their juice and their sweet substance!  It is autumn all around, and clear
sky, and afternoon.

Lo, what fullness is around us!  And out of the midst of superabundance, it
is delightful to look out upon distant seas.

Once did people say God, when they looked out upon distant seas; now,
however, have I taught you to say, Superman.

God is a conjecture:  but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond
your creating will.

Could ye CREATE a God?--Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods!  But ye
could well create the Superman.

Not perhaps ye yourselves, my brethren!  But into fathers and forefathers
of the Superman could ye transform yourselves:  and let that be your best
creating!--

God is a conjecture:  but I should like your conjecturing restricted to the
conceivable.

Could ye CONCEIVE a God?--But let this mean Will to Truth unto you, that
everything be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly
visible, the humanly sensible!  Your own discernment shall ye follow out to
the end!

And what ye have called the world shall but be created by you:  your
reason, your likeness, your will, your love, shall it itself become!  And
verily, for your bliss, ye discerning ones!

And how would ye endure life without that hope, ye discerning ones?
Neither in the inconceivable could ye have been born, nor in the
irrational.

But that I may reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends:  IF there
were gods, how could I endure it to be no God!  THEREFORE there are no
Gods.

Yea, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, doth it draw me.--

God is a conjecture:  but who could drink all the bitterness of this
conjecture without dying?  Shall his faith be taken from the creating one,
and from the eagle his flights into eagle-heights?

God is a thought--it maketh all the straight crooked, and all that standeth
reel.  What?  Time would be gone, and all the perishable would be but a
lie?

To think this is giddiness and vertigo to human limbs, and even vomiting to
the stomach:  verily, the reeling sickness do I call it, to conjecture such
a thing.

Evil do I call it and misanthropic:  all that teaching about the one, and
the plenum, and the unmoved, and the sufficient, and the imperishable!

All the imperishable--that's but a simile, and the poets lie too much.--

But of time and of becoming shall the best similes speak:  a praise shall
they be, and a justification of all perishableness!

Creating--that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's
alleviation.  But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed,
and much transformation.

Yea, much bitter dying must there be in your life, ye creators!  Thus are
ye advocates and justifiers of all perishableness.

For the creator himself to be the new-born child, he must also be willing
to be the child-bearer, and endure the pangs of the child-bearer.

Verily, through a hundred souls went I my way, and through a hundred
cradles and birth-throes.  Many a farewell have I taken; I know the heart-
breaking last hours.

But so willeth it my creating Will, my fate.  Or, to tell you it more
candidly:  just such a fate--willeth my Will.

All FEELING suffereth in me, and is in prison:  but my WILLING ever cometh
to me as mine emancipator and comforter.

Willing emancipateth:  that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation--
so teacheth you Zarathustra.

No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating!  Ah, that
that great debility may ever be far from me!

And also in discerning do I feel only my will's procreating and evolving
delight; and if there be innocence in my knowledge, it is because there is
will to procreation in it.

Away from God and Gods did this will allure me; what would there be to
create if there were--Gods!

But to man doth it ever impel me anew, my fervent creative will; thus
impelleth it the hammer to the stone.

Ah, ye men, within the stone slumbereth an image for me, the image of my
visions!  Ah, that it should slumber in the hardest, ugliest stone!

Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prison.  From the stone fly the
fragments:  what's that to me?

I will complete it:  for a shadow came unto me--the stillest and lightest
of all things once came unto me!

The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow.  Ah, my brethren!  Of
what account now are--the Gods to me!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXV.  THE PITIFUL.

My friends, there hath arisen a satire on your friend:  "Behold
Zarathustra!  Walketh he not amongst us as if amongst animals?"

But it is better said in this wise:  "The discerning one walketh amongst
men AS amongst animals."

Man himself is to the discerning one:  the animal with red cheeks.

How hath that happened unto him?  Is it not because he hath had to be
ashamed too oft?

O my friends!  Thus speaketh the discerning one:  shame, shame, shame--that
is the history of man!

And on that account doth the noble one enjoin upon himself not to abash:
bashfulness doth he enjoin on himself in presence of all sufferers.

Verily, I like them not, the merciful ones, whose bliss is in their pity:
too destitute are they of bashfulness.

If I must be pitiful, I dislike to be called so; and if I be so, it is
preferably at a distance.

Preferably also do I shroud my head, and flee, before being recognised:
and thus do I bid you do, my friends!

May my destiny ever lead unafflicted ones like you across my path, and
those with whom I MAY have hope and repast and honey in common!

Verily, I have done this and that for the afflicted:  but something better
did I always seem to do when I had learned to enjoy myself better.

Since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little:  that
alone, my brethren, is our original sin!

And when we learn better to enjoy ourselves, then do we unlearn best to
give pain unto others, and to contrive pain.

Therefore do I wash the hand that hath helped the sufferer; therefore do I
wipe also my soul.

For in seeing the sufferer suffering--thereof was I ashamed on account of
his shame; and in helping him, sorely did I wound his pride.

Great obligations do not make grateful, but revengeful; and when a small
kindness is not forgotten, it becometh a gnawing worm.

"Be shy in accepting!  Distinguish by accepting!"--thus do I advise those
who have naught to bestow.

I, however, am a bestower:  willingly do I bestow as friend to friends.
Strangers, however, and the poor, may pluck for themselves the fruit from
my tree:  thus doth it cause less shame.

Beggars, however, one should entirely do away with!  Verily, it annoyeth
one to give unto them, and it annoyeth one not to give unto them.

And likewise sinners and bad consciences!  Believe me, my friends:  the
sting of conscience teacheth one to sting.

The worst things, however, are the petty thoughts.  Verily, better to have
done evilly than to have thought pettily!

To be sure, ye say:  "The delight in petty evils spareth one many a great
evil deed."  But here one should not wish to be sparing.

Like a boil is the evil deed:  it itcheth and irritateth and breaketh
forth--it speaketh honourably.

"Behold, I am disease," saith the evil deed:  that is its honourableness.

But like infection is the petty thought:  it creepeth and hideth, and
wanteth to be nowhere--until the whole body is decayed and withered by the
petty infection.

To him however, who is possessed of a devil, I would whisper this word in
the ear:  "Better for thee to rear up thy devil!  Even for thee there is
still a path to greatness!"--

Ah, my brethren!  One knoweth a little too much about every one!  And many
a one becometh transparent to us, but still we can by no means penetrate
him.

It is difficult to live among men because silence is so difficult.

And not to him who is offensive to us are we most unfair, but to him who
doth not concern us at all.

If, however, thou hast a suffering friend, then be a resting-place for his
suffering; like a hard bed, however, a camp-bed:  thus wilt thou serve him
best.

And if a friend doeth thee wrong, then say:  "I forgive thee what thou hast
done unto me; that thou hast done it unto THYSELF, however--how could I
forgive that!"

Thus speaketh all great love:  it surpasseth even forgiveness and pity.

One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly
doth one's head run away!

Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the
pitiful?  And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies
of the pitiful?

Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their
pity!

Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time:  "Even God hath his hell:  it
is his love for man."

And lately, did I hear him say these words:  "God is dead:  of his pity for
man hath God died."--

So be ye warned against pity:  FROM THENCE there yet cometh unto men a
heavy cloud!  Verily, I understand weather-signs!

But attend also to this word:  All great love is above all its pity:  for
it seeketh--to create what is loved!

"Myself do I offer unto my love, AND MY NEIGHBOUR AS MYSELF"--such is the
language of all creators.

All creators, however, are hard.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXVI.  THE PRIESTS.

And one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples, and spake these words
unto them:

"Here are priests:  but although they are mine enemies, pass them quietly
and with sleeping swords!

Even among them there are heroes; many of them have suffered too much--:
so they want to make others suffer.

Bad enemies are they:  nothing is more revengeful than their meekness.  And
readily doth he soil himself who toucheth them.

But my blood is related to theirs; and I want withal to see my blood
honoured in theirs."--

And when they had passed, a pain attacked Zarathustra; but not long had he
struggled with the pain, when he began to speak thus:

It moveth my heart for those priests.  They also go against my taste; but
that is the smallest matter unto me, since I am among men.

But I suffer and have suffered with them:  prisoners are they unto me, and
stigmatised ones.  He whom they call Saviour put them in fetters:--

In fetters of false values and fatuous words!  Oh, that some one would save
them from their Saviour!

On an isle they once thought they had landed, when the sea tossed them
about; but behold, it was a slumbering monster!

False values and fatuous words:  these are the worst monsters for mortals--
long slumbereth and waiteth the fate that is in them.

But at last it cometh and awaketh and devoureth and engulfeth whatever hath
built tabernacles upon it.

Oh, just look at those tabernacles which those priests have built
themselves!  Churches, they call their sweet-smelling caves!

Oh, that falsified light, that mustified air!  Where the soul--may not fly
aloft to its height!

But so enjoineth their belief:  "On your knees, up the stair, ye sinners!"

Verily, rather would I see a shameless one than the distorted eyes of their
shame and devotion!

Who created for themselves such caves and penitence-stairs?  Was it not
those who sought to conceal themselves, and were ashamed under the clear
sky?

And only when the clear sky looketh again through ruined roofs, and down
upon grass and red poppies on ruined walls--will I again turn my heart to
the seats of this God.

They called God that which opposed and afflicted them:  and verily, there
was much hero-spirit in their worship!

And they knew not how to love their God otherwise than by nailing men to
the cross!

As corpses they thought to live; in black draped they their corpses; even
in their talk do I still feel the evil flavour of charnel-houses.

And he who liveth nigh unto them liveth nigh unto black pools, wherein the
toad singeth his song with sweet gravity.

Better songs would they have to sing, for me to believe in their Saviour:
more like saved ones would his disciples have to appear unto me!

Naked, would I like to see them:  for beauty alone should preach penitence.
But whom would that disguised affliction convince!

Verily, their Saviours themselves came not from freedom and freedom's
seventh heaven!  Verily, they themselves never trod the carpets of
knowledge!

Of defects did the spirit of those Saviours consist; but into every defect
had they put their illusion, their stop-gap, which they called God.

In their pity was their spirit drowned; and when they swelled and
o'erswelled with pity, there always floated to the surface a great folly.

Eagerly and with shouts drove they their flock over their foot-bridge; as
if there were but one foot-bridge to the future!  Verily, those shepherds
also were still of the flock!

Small spirits and spacious souls had those shepherds:  but, my brethren,
what small domains have even the most spacious souls hitherto been!

Characters of blood did they write on the way they went, and their folly
taught that truth is proved by blood.

But blood is the very worst witness to truth; blood tainteth the purest
teaching, and turneth it into delusion and hatred of heart.

And when a person goeth through fire for his teaching--what doth that
prove!  It is more, verily, when out of one's own burning cometh one's own
teaching!

Sultry heart and cold head; where these meet, there ariseth the blusterer,
the "Saviour."

Greater ones, verily, have there been, and higher-born ones, than those
whom the people call Saviours, those rapturous blusterers!

And by still greater ones than any of the Saviours must ye be saved, my
brethren, if ye would find the way to freedom!

Never yet hath there been a Superman.  Naked have I seen both of them, the
greatest man and the smallest man:--

All-too-similar are they still to each other.  Verily, even the greatest
found I--all-too-human!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXVII.  THE VIRTUOUS.

With thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to indolent and
somnolent senses.

But beauty's voice speaketh gently:  it appealeth only to the most awakened
souls.

Gently vibrated and laughed unto me to-day my buckler; it was beauty's holy
laughing and thrilling.

At you, ye virtuous ones, laughed my beauty to-day.  And thus came its
voice unto me:  "They want--to be paid besides!"

Ye want to be paid besides, ye virtuous ones!  Ye want reward for virtue,
and heaven for earth, and eternity for your to-day?

And now ye upbraid me for teaching that there is no reward-giver, nor
paymaster?  And verily, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward.

Ah! this is my sorrow:  into the basis of things have reward and punishment
been insinuated--and now even into the basis of your souls, ye virtuous
ones!

But like the snout of the boar shall my word grub up the basis of your
souls; a ploughshare will I be called by you.

All the secrets of your heart shall be brought to light; and when ye lie in
the sun, grubbed up and broken, then will also your falsehood be separated
from your truth.

For this is your truth:  ye are TOO PURE for the filth of the words:
vengeance, punishment, recompense, retribution.

Ye love your virtue as a mother loveth her child; but when did one hear of
a mother wanting to be paid for her love?

It is your dearest Self, your virtue.  The ring's thirst is in you:  to
reach itself again struggleth every ring, and turneth itself.

And like the star that goeth out, so is every work of your virtue:  ever is
its light on its way and travelling--and when will it cease to be on its
way?

Thus is the light of your virtue still on its way, even when its work is
done.  Be it forgotten and dead, still its ray of light liveth and
travelleth.

That your virtue is your Self, and not an outward thing, a skin, or a
cloak:  that is the truth from the basis of your souls, ye virtuous ones!--

But sure enough there are those to whom virtue meaneth writhing under the
lash:  and ye have hearkened too much unto their crying!

And others are there who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices; and
when once their hatred and jealousy relax the limbs, their "justice"
becometh lively and rubbeth its sleepy eyes.

And others are there who are drawn downwards:  their devils draw them.  But
the more they sink, the more ardently gloweth their eye, and the longing
for their God.

Ah! their crying also hath reached your ears, ye virtuous ones:  "What I am
NOT, that, that is God to me, and virtue!"

And others are there who go along heavily and creakingly, like carts taking
stones downhill:  they talk much of dignity and virtue--their drag they
call virtue!

And others are there who are like eight-day clocks when wound up; they
tick, and want people to call ticking--virtue.

Verily, in those have I mine amusement:  wherever I find such clocks I
shall wind them up with my mockery, and they shall even whirr thereby!

And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of
it do violence to all things:  so that the world is drowned in their
unrighteousness.

Ah! how ineptly cometh the word "virtue" out of their mouth!  And when they
say:  "I am just," it always soundeth like:  "I am just--revenged!"

With their virtues they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies; and
they elevate themselves only that they may lower others.

And again there are those who sit in their swamp, and speak thus from among
the bulrushes:  "Virtue--that is to sit quietly in the swamp.

We bite no one, and go out of the way of him who would bite; and in all
matters we have the opinion that is given us."

And again there are those who love attitudes, and think that virtue is a
sort of attitude.

Their knees continually adore, and their hands are eulogies of virtue, but
their heart knoweth naught thereof.

And again there are those who regard it as virtue to say:  "Virtue is
necessary"; but after all they believe only that policemen are necessary.

And many a one who cannot see men's loftiness, calleth it virtue to see
their baseness far too well:  thus calleth he his evil eye virtue.--

And some want to be edified and raised up, and call it virtue:  and others
want to be cast down,--and likewise call it virtue.

And thus do almost all think that they participate in virtue; and at least
every one claimeth to be an authority on "good" and "evil."

But Zarathustra came not to say unto all those liars and fools:  "What do
YE know of virtue!  What COULD ye know of virtue!"--

But that ye, my friends, might become weary of the old words which ye have
learned from the fools and liars:

That ye might become weary of the words "reward," "retribution,"
"punishment," "righteous vengeance."--

That ye might become weary of saying:  "That an action is good is because
it is unselfish."

Ah! my friends!  That YOUR very Self be in your action, as the mother is in
the child:  let that be YOUR formula of virtue!

Verily, I have taken from you a hundred formulae and your virtue's
favourite playthings; and now ye upbraid me, as children upbraid.

They played by the sea--then came there a wave and swept their playthings
into the deep:  and now do they cry.

But the same wave shall bring them new playthings, and spread before them
new speckled shells!

Thus will they be comforted; and like them shall ye also, my friends, have
your comforting--and new speckled shells!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXVIII.  THE RABBLE.

Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all
fountains are poisoned.

To everything cleanly am I well disposed; but I hate to see the grinning
mouths and the thirst of the unclean.

They cast their eye down into the fountain:  and now glanceth up to me
their odious smile out of the fountain.

The holy water have they poisoned with their lustfulness; and when they
called their filthy dreams delight, then poisoned they also the words.

Indignant becometh the flame when they put their damp hearts to the fire;
the spirit itself bubbleth and smoketh when the rabble approach the fire.

Mawkish and over-mellow becometh the fruit in their hands:  unsteady, and
withered at the top, doth their look make the fruit-tree.

And many a one who hath turned away from life, hath only turned away from
the rabble:  he hated to share with them fountain, flame, and fruit.

And many a one who hath gone into the wilderness and suffered thirst with
beasts of prey, disliked only to sit at the cistern with filthy camel-
drivers.

And many a one who hath come along as a destroyer, and as a hailstorm to
all cornfields, wanted merely to put his foot into the jaws of the rabble,
and thus stop their throat.

And it is not the mouthful which hath most choked me, to know that life
itself requireth enmity and death and torture-crosses:--

But I asked once, and suffocated almost with my question:  What? is the
rabble also NECESSARY for life?

Are poisoned fountains necessary, and stinking fires, and filthy dreams,
and maggots in the bread of life?

Not my hatred, but my loathing, gnawed hungrily at my life!  Ah, ofttimes
became I weary of spirit, when I found even the rabble spiritual!

And on the rulers turned I my back, when I saw what they now call ruling:
to traffic and bargain for power--with the rabble!

Amongst peoples of a strange language did I dwell, with stopped ears:  so
that the language of their trafficking might remain strange unto me, and
their bargaining for power.

And holding my nose, I went morosely through all yesterdays and to-days:
verily, badly smell all yesterdays and to-days of the scribbling rabble!

Like a cripple become deaf, and blind, and dumb--thus have I lived long;
that I might not live with the power-rabble, the scribe-rabble, and the
pleasure-rabble.

Toilsomely did my spirit mount stairs, and cautiously; alms of delight were
its refreshment; on the staff did life creep along with the blind one.

What hath happened unto me?  How have I freed myself from loathing?  Who
hath rejuvenated mine eye?  How have I flown to the height where no rabble
any longer sit at the wells?

Did my loathing itself create for me wings and fountain-divining powers?
Verily, to the loftiest height had I to fly, to find again the well of
delight!

Oh, I have found it, my brethren!  Here on the loftiest height bubbleth up
for me the well of delight!  And there is a life at whose waters none of
the rabble drink with me!

Almost too violently dost thou flow for me, thou fountain of delight!  And
often emptiest thou the goblet again, in wanting to fill it!

And yet must I learn to approach thee more modestly:  far too violently
doth my heart still flow towards thee:--

My heart on which my summer burneth, my short, hot, melancholy, over-happy
summer:  how my summer heart longeth for thy coolness!

Past, the lingering distress of my spring!  Past, the wickedness of my
snowflakes in June!  Summer have I become entirely, and summer-noontide!

A summer on the loftiest height, with cold fountains and blissful
stillness:  oh, come, my friends, that the stillness may become more
blissful!

For this is OUR height and our home:  too high and steep do we here dwell
for all uncleanly ones and their thirst.

Cast but your pure eyes into the well of my delight, my friends!  How could
it become turbid thereby!  It shall laugh back to you with ITS purity.

On the tree of the future build we our nest; eagles shall bring us lone
ones food in their beaks!

Verily, no food of which the impure could be fellow-partakers!  Fire, would
they think they devoured, and burn their mouths!

Verily, no abodes do we here keep ready for the impure!  An ice-cave to
their bodies would our happiness be, and to their spirits!

And as strong winds will we live above them, neighbours to the eagles,
neighbours to the snow, neighbours to the sun:  thus live the strong winds.

And like a wind will I one day blow amongst them, and with my spirit, take
the breath from their spirit:  thus willeth my future.

Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low places; and this counsel
counselleth he to his enemies, and to whatever spitteth and speweth:  "Take
care not to spit AGAINST the wind!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXIX.  THE TARANTULAS.

Lo, this is the tarantula's den!  Would'st thou see the tarantula itself?
Here hangeth its web:  touch this, so that it may tremble.

There cometh the tarantula willingly:  Welcome, tarantula!  Black on thy
back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul.

Revenge is in thy soul:  wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab;
with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy!

Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye
preachers of EQUALITY!  Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful
ones!

But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light:  therefore do I
laugh in your face my laughter of the height.

Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your
den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word
"justice."

Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE--that is for me the bridge to
the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.

Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it.  "Let it be very justice
for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance"--thus do they
talk to one another.

"Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us"--thus
do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.

"And 'Will to Equality'--that itself shall henceforth be the name of
virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!"

Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you
for "equality":  your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus
in virtue-words!

Fretted conceit and suppressed envy--perhaps your fathers' conceit and
envy:  in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance.

What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in the
son the father's revealed secret.

Inspired ones they resemble:  but it is not the heart that inspireth them--
but vengeance.  And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but
envy, that maketh them so.

Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers' paths; and this is the sign
of their jealousy--they always go too far:  so that their fatigue hath at
last to go to sleep on the snow.

In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is
maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends:  distrust all in whom the impulse to
punish is powerful!

They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the
hangman and the sleuth-hound.

Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!  Verily, in their souls
not only honey is lacking.

And when they call themselves "the good and just," forget not, that for
them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but--power!

My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others.

There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time
preachers of equality, and tarantulas.

That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these
poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life--is because they would thereby do
injury.

To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present:  for with
those the preaching of death is still most at home.

Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise:  and they
themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.

With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded.
For thus speaketh justice UNTO ME:  "Men are not equal."

And neither shall they become so!  What would be my love to the Superman,
if I spake otherwise?

On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and always
shall there be more war and inequality among them:  thus doth my great love
make me speak!

Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; and
with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other the
supreme fight!

Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of
values:  weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again
and again surpass itself!

Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs--life itself:  into
remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties--
THEREFORE doth it require elevation!

And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and
variance of steps and climbers!  To rise striveth life, and in rising to
surpass itself.

And just behold, my friends!  Here where the tarantula's den is, riseth
aloft an ancient temple's ruins--just behold it with enlightened eyes!

Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as
the wisest ones about the secret of life!

That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and
supremacy:  that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.

How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle:  how with
light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving
ones.--

Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends!
Divinely will we strive AGAINST one another!--

Alas!  There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy!  Divinely
steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on the finger!

"Punishment must there be, and justice"--so thinketh it:  "not gratuitously
shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!"

Yea, it hath revenged itself!  And alas! now will it make my soul also
dizzy with revenge!

That I may NOT turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this
pillar!  Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a whirl of vengeance!

Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra:  and if he be a dancer, he
is not at all a tarantula-dancer!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXX.  THE FAMOUS WISE ONES.

The people have ye served and the people's superstition--NOT the truth!--
all ye famous wise ones!  And just on that account did they pay you
reverence.

And on that account also did they tolerate your unbelief, because it was a
pleasantry and a by-path for the people.  Thus doth the master give free
scope to his slaves, and even enjoyeth their presumptuousness.

But he who is hated by the people, as the wolf by the dogs--is the free
spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-adorer, the dweller in the woods.

To hunt him out of his lair--that was always called "sense of right" by the
people:  on him do they still hound their sharpest-toothed dogs.

"For there the truth is, where the people are!  Woe, woe to the seeking
ones!"--thus hath it echoed through all time.

Your people would ye justify in their reverence:  that called ye "Will to
Truth," ye famous wise ones!

And your heart hath always said to itself:  "From the people have I come:
from thence came to me also the voice of God."

Stiff-necked and artful, like the ass, have ye always been, as the
advocates of the people.

And many a powerful one who wanted to run well with the people, hath
harnessed in front of his horses--a donkey, a famous wise man.

And now, ye famous wise ones, I would have you finally throw off entirely
the skin of the lion!

The skin of the beast of prey, the speckled skin, and the dishevelled locks
of the investigator, the searcher, and the conqueror!

Ah! for me to learn to believe in your "conscientiousness," ye would first
have to break your venerating will.

Conscientious--so call I him who goeth into God-forsaken wildernesses, and
hath broken his venerating heart.

In the yellow sands and burnt by the sun, he doubtless peereth thirstily at
the isles rich in fountains, where life reposeth under shady trees.

But his thirst doth not persuade him to become like those comfortable ones:
for where there are oases, there are also idols.

Hungry, fierce, lonesome, God-forsaken:  so doth the lion-will wish itself.

Free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from Deities and adorations,
fearless and fear-inspiring, grand and lonesome:  so is the will of the
conscientious.

In the wilderness have ever dwelt the conscientious, the free spirits, as
lords of the wilderness; but in the cities dwell the well-foddered, famous
wise ones--the draught-beasts.

For, always, do they draw, as asses--the PEOPLE'S carts!

Not that I on that account upbraid them:  but serving ones do they remain,
and harnessed ones, even though they glitter in golden harness.

And often have they been good servants and worthy of their hire.  For thus
saith virtue:  "If thou must be a servant, seek him unto whom thy service
is most useful!

The spirit and virtue of thy master shall advance by thou being his
servant:  thus wilt thou thyself advance with his spirit and virtue!"

And verily, ye famous wise ones, ye servants of the people!  Ye yourselves
have advanced with the people's spirit and virtue--and the people by you!
To your honour do I say it!

But the people ye remain for me, even with your virtues, the people with
purblind eyes--the people who know not what SPIRIT is!

Spirit is life which itself cutteth into life:  by its own torture doth it
increase its own knowledge,--did ye know that before?

And the spirit's happiness is this:  to be anointed and consecrated with
tears as a sacrificial victim,--did ye know that before?

And the blindness of the blind one, and his seeking and groping, shall yet
testify to the power of the sun into which he hath gazed,--did ye know that
before?

And with mountains shall the discerning one learn to BUILD!  It is a small
thing for the spirit to remove mountains,--did ye know that before?

Ye know only the sparks of the spirit:  but ye do not see the anvil which
it is, and the cruelty of its hammer!

Verily, ye know not the spirit's pride!  But still less could ye endure the
spirit's humility, should it ever want to speak!

And never yet could ye cast your spirit into a pit of snow:  ye are not hot
enough for that!  Thus are ye unaware, also, of the delight of its
coldness.

In all respects, however, ye make too familiar with the spirit; and out of
wisdom have ye often made an almshouse and a hospital for bad poets.

Ye are not eagles:  thus have ye never experienced the happiness of the
alarm of the spirit.  And he who is not a bird should not camp above
abysses.

Ye seem to me lukewarm ones:  but coldly floweth all deep knowledge.  Ice-
cold are the innermost wells of the spirit:  a refreshment to hot hands and
handlers.

Respectable do ye there stand, and stiff, and with straight backs, ye
famous wise ones!--no strong wind or will impelleth you.

Have ye ne'er seen a sail crossing the sea, rounded and inflated, and
trembling with the violence of the wind?

Like the sail trembling with the violence of the spirit, doth my wisdom
cross the sea--my wild wisdom!

But ye servants of the people, ye famous wise ones--how COULD ye go with
me!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXXI.  THE NIGHT-SONG.

'Tis night:  now do all gushing fountains speak louder.  And my soul also
is a gushing fountain.

'Tis night:  now only do all songs of the loving ones awake.  And my soul
also is the song of a loving one.

Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me; it longeth to find
expression.  A craving for love is within me, which speaketh itself the
language of love.

Light am I:  ah, that I were night!  But it is my lonesomeness to be begirt
with light!

Ah, that I were dark and nightly!  How would I suck at the breasts of
light!

And you yourselves would I bless, ye twinkling starlets and glow-worms
aloft!--and would rejoice in the gifts of your light.

But I live in mine own light, I drink again into myself the flames that
break forth from me.

I know not the happiness of the receiver; and oft have I dreamt that
stealing must be more blessed than receiving.

It is my poverty that my hand never ceaseth bestowing; it is mine envy that
I see waiting eyes and the brightened nights of longing.

Oh, the misery of all bestowers!  Oh, the darkening of my sun!  Oh, the
craving to crave!  Oh, the violent hunger in satiety!

They take from me:  but do I yet touch their soul?  There is a gap 'twixt
giving and receiving; and the smallest gap hath finally to be bridged over.

A hunger ariseth out of my beauty:  I should like to injure those I
illumine; I should like to rob those I have gifted:--thus do I hunger for
wickedness.

Withdrawing my hand when another hand already stretcheth out to it;
hesitating like the cascade, which hesitateth even in its leap:--thus do I
hunger for wickedness!

Such revenge doth mine abundance think of:  such mischief welleth out of my
lonesomeness.

My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing; my virtue became weary of
itself by its abundance!

He who ever bestoweth is in danger of losing his shame; to him who ever
dispenseth, the hand and heart become callous by very dispensing.

Mine eye no longer overfloweth for the shame of suppliants; my hand hath
become too hard for the trembling of filled hands.

Whence have gone the tears of mine eye, and the down of my heart?  Oh, the
lonesomeness of all bestowers!  Oh, the silence of all shining ones!

Many suns circle in desert space:  to all that is dark do they speak with
their light--but to me they are silent.

Oh, this is the hostility of light to the shining one:  unpityingly doth it
pursue its course.

Unfair to the shining one in its innermost heart, cold to the suns:--thus
travelleth every sun.

Like a storm do the suns pursue their courses:  that is their travelling.
Their inexorable will do they follow:  that is their coldness.

Oh, ye only is it, ye dark, nightly ones, that extract warmth from the
shining ones!  Oh, ye only drink milk and refreshment from the light's
udders!

Ah, there is ice around me; my hand burneth with the iciness!  Ah, there is
thirst in me; it panteth after your thirst!

'Tis night:  alas, that I have to be light!  And thirst for the nightly!
And lonesomeness!

'Tis night:  now doth my longing break forth in me as a fountain,--for
speech do I long.

'Tis night:  now do all gushing fountains speak louder.  And my soul also
is a gushing fountain.

'Tis night:  now do all songs of loving ones awake.  And my soul also is
the song of a loving one.--

Thus sang Zarathustra.


XXXII.  THE DANCE-SONG.

One evening went Zarathustra and his disciples through the forest; and when
he sought for a well, lo, he lighted upon a green meadow peacefully
surrounded with trees and bushes, where maidens were dancing together.  As
soon as the maidens recognised Zarathustra, they ceased dancing;
Zarathustra, however, approached them with friendly mein and spake these
words:

Cease not your dancing, ye lovely maidens!  No game-spoiler hath come to
you with evil eye, no enemy of maidens.

God's advocate am I with the devil:  he, however, is the spirit of gravity.
How could I, ye light-footed ones, be hostile to divine dances?  Or to
maidens' feet with fine ankles?

To be sure, I am a forest, and a night of dark trees:  but he who is not
afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

And even the little God may he find, who is dearest to maidens:  beside the
well lieth he quietly, with closed eyes.

Verily, in broad daylight did he fall asleep, the sluggard!  Had he perhaps
chased butterflies too much?

Upbraid me not, ye beautiful dancers, when I chasten the little God
somewhat!  He will cry, certainly, and weep--but he is laughable even when
weeping!

And with tears in his eyes shall he ask you for a dance; and I myself will
sing a song to his dance:

A dance-song and satire on the spirit of gravity my supremest, powerfulest
devil, who is said to be "lord of the world."--

And this is the song that Zarathustra sang when Cupid and the maidens
danced together:

Of late did I gaze into thine eye, O Life!  And into the unfathomable did I
there seem to sink.

But thou pulledst me out with a golden angle; derisively didst thou laugh
when I called thee unfathomable.

"Such is the language of all fish," saidst thou; "what THEY do not fathom
is unfathomable.

But changeable am I only, and wild, and altogether a woman, and no virtuous
one:

Though I be called by you men the 'profound one,' or the 'faithful one,'
'the eternal one,' 'the mysterious one.'

But ye men endow us always with your own virtues--alas, ye virtuous ones!"

Thus did she laugh, the unbelievable one; but never do I believe her and
her laughter, when she speaketh evil of herself.

And when I talked face to face with my wild Wisdom, she said to me angrily:
"Thou willest, thou cravest, thou lovest; on that account alone dost thou
PRAISE Life!"

Then had I almost answered indignantly and told the truth to the angry one;
and one cannot answer more indignantly than when one "telleth the truth" to
one's Wisdom.

For thus do things stand with us three.  In my heart do I love only Life--
and verily, most when I hate her!

But that I am fond of Wisdom, and often too fond, is because she remindeth
me very strongly of Life!

She hath her eye, her laugh, and even her golden angle-rod:  am I
responsible for it that both are so alike?

And when once Life asked me:  "Who is she then, this Wisdom?"--then said I
eagerly:  "Ah, yes!  Wisdom!

One thirsteth for her and is not satisfied, one looketh through veils, one
graspeth through nets.

Is she beautiful?  What do I know!  But the oldest carps are still lured by
her.

Changeable is she, and wayward; often have I seen her bite her lip, and
pass the comb against the grain of her hair.

Perhaps she is wicked and false, and altogether a woman; but when she
speaketh ill of herself, just then doth she seduce most."

When I had said this unto Life, then laughed she maliciously, and shut her
eyes.  "Of whom dost thou speak?" said she.  "Perhaps of me?

And if thou wert right--is it proper to say THAT in such wise to my face!
But now, pray, speak also of thy Wisdom!"

Ah, and now hast thou again opened thine eyes, O beloved Life!  And into
the unfathomable have I again seemed to sink.--

Thus sang Zarathustra.  But when the dance was over and the maidens had
departed, he became sad.

"The sun hath been long set," said he at last, "the meadow is damp, and
from the forest cometh coolness.

An unknown presence is about me, and gazeth thoughtfully.  What!  Thou
livest still, Zarathustra?

Why?  Wherefore?  Whereby?  Whither?  Where?  How?  Is it not folly still
to live?--

Ah, my friends; the evening is it which thus interrogateth in me.  Forgive
me my sadness!

Evening hath come on:  forgive me that evening hath come on!"

Thus sang Zarathustra.


XXXIII.  THE GRAVE-SONG.

"Yonder is the grave-island, the silent isle; yonder also are the graves of
my youth.  Thither will I carry an evergreen wreath of life."

Resolving thus in my heart, did I sail o'er the sea.--

Oh, ye sights and scenes of my youth!  Oh, all ye gleams of love, ye divine
fleeting gleams!  How could ye perish so soon for me!  I think of you to-
day as my dead ones.

From you, my dearest dead ones, cometh unto me a sweet savour, heart-
opening and melting.  Verily, it convulseth and openeth the heart of the
lone seafarer.

Still am I the richest and most to be envied--I, the lonesomest one!  For I
HAVE POSSESSED you, and ye possess me still.  Tell me:  to whom hath there
ever fallen such rosy apples from the tree as have fallen unto me?

Still am I your love's heir and heritage, blooming to your memory with
many-hued, wild-growing virtues, O ye dearest ones!

Ah, we were made to remain nigh unto each other, ye kindly strange marvels;
and not like timid birds did ye come to me and my longing--nay, but as
trusting ones to a trusting one!

Yea, made for faithfulness, like me, and for fond eternities, must I now
name you by your faithlessness, ye divine glances and fleeting gleams:  no
other name have I yet learnt.

Verily, too early did ye die for me, ye fugitives.  Yet did ye not flee
from me, nor did I flee from you:  innocent are we to each other in our
faithlessness.

To kill ME, did they strangle you, ye singing birds of my hopes!  Yea, at
you, ye dearest ones, did malice ever shoot its arrows--to hit my heart!

And they hit it!  Because ye were always my dearest, my possession and my
possessedness:  ON THAT ACCOUNT had ye to die young, and far too early!

At my most vulnerable point did they shoot the arrow--namely, at you, whose
skin is like down--or more like the smile that dieth at a glance!

But this word will I say unto mine enemies:  What is all manslaughter in
comparison with what ye have done unto me!

Worse evil did ye do unto me than all manslaughter; the irretrievable did
ye take from me:--thus do I speak unto you, mine enemies!

Slew ye not my youth's visions and dearest marvels!  My playmates took ye
from me, the blessed spirits!  To their memory do I deposit this wreath and
this curse.

This curse upon you, mine enemies!  Have ye not made mine eternal short, as
a tone dieth away in a cold night!  Scarcely, as the twinkle of divine
eyes, did it come to me--as a fleeting gleam!

Thus spake once in a happy hour my purity:  "Divine shall everything be
unto me."

Then did ye haunt me with foul phantoms; ah, whither hath that happy hour
now fled!

"All days shall be holy unto me"--so spake once the wisdom of my youth:
verily, the language of a joyous wisdom!

But then did ye enemies steal my nights, and sold them to sleepless
torture:  ah, whither hath that joyous wisdom now fled?

Once did I long for happy auspices:  then did ye lead an owl-monster across
my path, an adverse sign.  Ah, whither did my tender longing then flee?

All loathing did I once vow to renounce:  then did ye change my nigh ones
and nearest ones into ulcerations.  Ah, whither did my noblest vow then
flee?

As a blind one did I once walk in blessed ways:  then did ye cast filth on
the blind one's course:  and now is he disgusted with the old footpath.

And when I performed my hardest task, and celebrated the triumph of my
victories, then did ye make those who loved me call out that I then grieved
them most.

Verily, it was always your doing:  ye embittered to me my best honey, and
the diligence of my best bees.

To my charity have ye ever sent the most impudent beggars; around my
sympathy have ye ever crowded the incurably shameless.  Thus have ye
wounded the faith of my virtue.

And when I offered my holiest as a sacrifice, immediately did your "piety"
put its fatter gifts beside it:  so that my holiest suffocated in the fumes
of your fat.

And once did I want to dance as I had never yet danced:  beyond all heavens
did I want to dance.  Then did ye seduce my favourite minstrel.

And now hath he struck up an awful, melancholy air; alas, he tooted as a
mournful horn to mine ear!

Murderous minstrel, instrument of evil, most innocent instrument!  Already
did I stand prepared for the best dance:  then didst thou slay my rapture
with thy tones!

Only in the dance do I know how to speak the parable of the highest
things:--and now hath my grandest parable remained unspoken in my limbs!

Unspoken and unrealised hath my highest hope remained!  And there have
perished for me all the visions and consolations of my youth!

How did I ever bear it?  How did I survive and surmount such wounds?  How
did my soul rise again out of those sepulchres?

Yea, something invulnerable, unburiable is with me, something that would
rend rocks asunder:  it is called MY WILL.  Silently doth it proceed, and
unchanged throughout the years.

Its course will it go upon my feet, mine old Will; hard of heart is its
nature and invulnerable.

Invulnerable am I only in my heel.  Ever livest thou there, and art like
thyself, thou most patient one!  Ever hast thou burst all shackles of the
tomb!

In thee still liveth also the unrealisedness of my youth; and as life and
youth sittest thou here hopeful on the yellow ruins of graves.

Yea, thou art still for me the demolisher of all graves:  Hail to thee, my
Will!  And only where there are graves are there resurrections.--

Thus sang Zarathustra.


XXXIV.  SELF-SURPASSING.

"Will to Truth" do ye call it, ye wisest ones, that which impelleth you and
maketh you ardent?

Will for the thinkableness of all being:  thus do _I_ call your will!

All being would ye MAKE thinkable:  for ye doubt with good reason whether
it be already thinkable.

But it shall accommodate and bend itself to you!  So willeth your will.
Smooth shall it become and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and
reflection.

That is your entire will, ye wisest ones, as a Will to Power; and even when
ye speak of good and evil, and of estimates of value.

Ye would still create a world before which ye can bow the knee:  such is
your ultimate hope and ecstasy.

The ignorant, to be sure, the people--they are like a river on which a boat
floateth along:  and in the boat sit the estimates of value, solemn and
disguised.

Your will and your valuations have ye put on the river of becoming; it
betrayeth unto me an old Will to Power, what is believed by the people as
good and evil.

It was ye, ye wisest ones, who put such guests in this boat, and gave them
pomp and proud names--ye and your ruling Will!

Onward the river now carrieth your boat:  it MUST carry it.  A small matter
if the rough wave foameth and angrily resisteth its keel!

It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and evil,
ye wisest ones:  but that Will itself, the Will to Power--the unexhausted,
procreating life-will.

But that ye may understand my gospel of good and evil, for that purpose
will I tell you my gospel of life, and of the nature of all living things.

The living thing did I follow; I walked in the broadest and narrowest paths
to learn its nature.

With a hundred-faced mirror did I catch its glance when its mouth was shut,
so that its eye might speak unto me.  And its eye spake unto me.

But wherever I found living things, there heard I also the language of
obedience.  All living things are obeying things.

And this heard I secondly:  Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded.
Such is the nature of living things.

This, however, is the third thing which I heard--namely, that commanding is
more difficult than obeying.  And not only because the commander beareth
the burden of all obeyers, and because this burden readily crusheth him:--

An attempt and a risk seemed all commanding unto me; and whenever it
commandeth, the living thing risketh itself thereby.

Yea, even when it commandeth itself, then also must it atone for its
commanding.  Of its own law must it become the judge and avenger and
victim.

How doth this happen! so did I ask myself.  What persuadeth the living
thing to obey, and command, and even be obedient in commanding?

Hearken now unto my word, ye wisest ones!  Test it seriously, whether I
have crept into the heart of life itself, and into the roots of its heart!

Wherever I found a living thing, there found I Will to Power; and even in
the will of the servant found I the will to be master.

That to the stronger the weaker shall serve--thereto persuadeth he his will
who would be master over a still weaker one.  That delight alone he is
unwilling to forego.

And as the lesser surrendereth himself to the greater that he may have
delight and power over the least of all, so doth even the greatest
surrender himself, and staketh--life, for the sake of power.

It is the surrender of the greatest to run risk and danger, and play dice
for death.

And where there is sacrifice and service and love-glances, there also is
the will to be master.  By by-ways doth the weaker then slink into the
fortress, and into the heart of the mightier one--and there stealeth power.

And this secret spake Life herself unto me.  "Behold," said she, "I am that
WHICH MUST EVER SURPASS ITSELF.

To be sure, ye call it will to procreation, or impulse towards a goal,
towards the higher, remoter, more manifold:  but all that is one and the
same secret.

Rather would I succumb than disown this one thing; and verily, where there
is succumbing and leaf-falling, lo, there doth Life sacrifice itself--for
power!

That I have to be struggle, and becoming, and purpose, and cross-purpose--
ah, he who divineth my will, divineth well also on what CROOKED paths it
hath to tread!

Whatever I create, and however much I love it,--soon must I be adverse to
it, and to my love:  so willeth my will.

And even thou, discerning one, art only a path and footstep of my will:
verily, my Will to Power walketh even on the feet of thy Will to Truth!

He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the formula:  'Will to
existence':  that will--doth not exist!

For what is not, cannot will; that, however, which is in existence--how
could it still strive for existence!

Only where there is life, is there also will:  not, however, Will to Life,
but--so teach I thee--Will to Power!

Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the living one; but out of the
very reckoning speaketh--the Will to Power!"--

Thus did Life once teach me:  and thereby, ye wisest ones, do I solve you
the riddle of your hearts.

Verily, I say unto you:  good and evil which would be everlasting--it doth
not exist!  Of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew.

With your values and formulae of good and evil, ye exercise power, ye
valuing ones:  and that is your secret love, and the sparkling, trembling,
and overflowing of your souls.

But a stronger power groweth out of your values, and a new surpassing:  by
it breaketh egg and egg-shell.

And he who hath to be a creator in good and evil--verily, he hath first to
be a destroyer, and break values in pieces.

Thus doth the greatest evil pertain to the greatest good:  that, however,
is the creating good.--

Let us SPEAK thereof, ye wisest ones, even though it be bad.  To be silent
is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous.

And let everything break up which--can break up by our truths!  Many a
house is still to be built!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXXV.  THE SUBLIME ONES.

Calm is the bottom of my sea:  who would guess that it hideth droll
monsters!

Unmoved is my depth:  but it sparkleth with swimming enigmas and laughters.

A sublime one saw I to-day, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit:  Oh,
how my soul laughed at his ugliness!

With upraised breast, and like those who draw in their breath:  thus did he
stand, the sublime one, and in silence:

O'erhung with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting, and rich in torn
raiment; many thorns also hung on him--but I saw no rose.

Not yet had he learned laughing and beauty.  Gloomy did this hunter return
from the forest of knowledge.

From the fight with wild beasts returned he home:  but even yet a wild
beast gazeth out of his seriousness--an unconquered wild beast!

As a tiger doth he ever stand, on the point of springing; but I do not like
those strained souls; ungracious is my taste towards all those self-
engrossed ones.

And ye tell me, friends, that there is to be no dispute about taste and
tasting?  But all life is a dispute about taste and tasting!

Taste:  that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and alas
for every living thing that would live without dispute about weight and
scales and weigher!

Should he become weary of his sublimeness, this sublime one, then only will
his beauty begin--and then only will I taste him and find him savoury.

And only when he turneth away from himself will he o'erleap his own shadow
--and verily! into HIS sun.

Far too long did he sit in the shade; the cheeks of the penitent of the
spirit became pale; he almost starved on his expectations.

Contempt is still in his eye, and loathing hideth in his mouth.  To be
sure, he now resteth, but he hath not yet taken rest in the sunshine.

As the ox ought he to do; and his happiness should smell of the earth, and
not of contempt for the earth.

As a white ox would I like to see him, which, snorting and lowing, walketh
before the plough-share:  and his lowing should also laud all that is
earthly!

Dark is still his countenance; the shadow of his hand danceth upon it.
O'ershadowed is still the sense of his eye.

His deed itself is still the shadow upon him:  his doing obscureth the
doer.  Not yet hath he overcome his deed.

To be sure, I love in him the shoulders of the ox:  but now do I want to
see also the eye of the angel.

Also his hero-will hath he still to unlearn:  an exalted one shall he be,
and not only a sublime one:--the ether itself should raise him, the will-
less one!

He hath subdued monsters, he hath solved enigmas.  But he should also
redeem his monsters and enigmas; into heavenly children should he transform
them.

As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without jealousy;
as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty.

Verily, not in satiety shall his longing cease and disappear, but in
beauty!  Gracefulness belongeth to the munificence of the magnanimous.

His arm across his head:  thus should the hero repose; thus should he also
surmount his repose.

But precisely to the hero is BEAUTY the hardest thing of all.  Unattainable
is beauty by all ardent wills.

A little more, a little less:  precisely this is much here, it is the most
here.

To stand with relaxed muscles and with unharnessed will:  that is the
hardest for all of you, ye sublime ones!

When power becometh gracious and descendeth into the visible--I call such
condescension, beauty.

And from no one do I want beauty so much as from thee, thou powerful one:
let thy goodness be thy last self-conquest.

All evil do I accredit to thee:  therefore do I desire of thee the good.

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good
because they have crippled paws!

The virtue of the pillar shalt thou strive after:  more beautiful doth it
ever become, and more graceful--but internally harder and more sustaining--
the higher it riseth.

Yea, thou sublime one, one day shalt thou also be beautiful, and hold up
the mirror to thine own beauty.

Then will thy soul thrill with divine desires; and there will be adoration
even in thy vanity!

For this is the secret of the soul:  when the hero hath abandoned it, then
only approacheth it in dreams--the superhero.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXXVI.  THE LAND OF CULTURE.

Too far did I fly into the future:  a horror seized upon me.

And when I looked around me, lo! there time was my sole contemporary.

Then did I fly backwards, homewards--and always faster.  Thus did I come
unto you, ye present-day men, and into the land of culture.

For the first time brought I an eye to see you, and good desire:  verily,
with longing in my heart did I come.

But how did it turn out with me?  Although so alarmed--I had yet to laugh!
Never did mine eye see anything so motley-coloured!

I laughed and laughed, while my foot still trembled, and my heart as well.
"Here forsooth, is the home of all the paintpots,"--said I.

With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs--so sat ye there to mine
astonishment, ye present-day men!

And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colours,
and repeated it!

Verily, ye could wear no better masks, ye present-day men, than your own
faces!  Who could--RECOGNISE you!

Written all over with the characters of the past, and these characters also
pencilled over with new characters--thus have ye concealed yourselves well
from all decipherers!

And though one be a trier of the reins, who still believeth that ye have
reins!  Out of colours ye seem to be baked, and out of glued scraps.

All times and peoples gaze divers-coloured out of your veils; all customs
and beliefs speak divers-coloured out of your gestures.

He who would strip you of veils and wrappers, and paints and gestures,
would just have enough left to scare the crows.

Verily, I myself am the scared crow that once saw you naked, and without
paint; and I flew away when the skeleton ogled at me.

Rather would I be a day-labourer in the nether-world, and among the shades
of the by-gone!--Fatter and fuller than ye, are forsooth the nether-
worldlings!

This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure you
naked nor clothed, ye present-day men!

All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh strayed birds
shiver, is verily more homelike and familiar than your "reality."

For thus speak ye:  "Real are we wholly, and without faith and
superstition":  thus do ye plume yourselves--alas! even without plumes!

Indeed, how would ye be ABLE to believe, ye divers-coloured ones!--ye who
are pictures of all that hath ever been believed!

Perambulating refutations are ye, of belief itself, and a dislocation of
all thought.  UNTRUSTWORTHY ONES:  thus do _I_ call you, ye real ones!

All periods prate against one another in your spirits; and the dreams and
pratings of all periods were even realer than your awakeness!

Unfruitful are ye:  THEREFORE do ye lack belief.  But he who had to create,
had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions--and believed in
believing!--

Half-open doors are ye, at which grave-diggers wait.  And this is YOUR
reality:  "Everything deserveth to perish."

Alas, how ye stand there before me, ye unfruitful ones; how lean your ribs!
And many of you surely have had knowledge thereof.

Many a one hath said:  "There hath surely a God filched something from me
secretly whilst I slept?  Verily, enough to make a girl for himself
therefrom!

"Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!" thus hath spoken many a present-day
man.

Yea, ye are laughable unto me, ye present-day men!  And especially when ye
marvel at yourselves!

And woe unto me if I could not laugh at your marvelling, and had to swallow
all that is repugnant in your platters!

As it is, however, I will make lighter of you, since I have to carry what
is heavy; and what matter if beetles and May-bugs also alight on my load!

Verily, it shall not on that account become heavier to me!  And not from
you, ye present-day men, shall my great weariness arise.--

Ah, whither shall I now ascend with my longing!  From all mountains do I
look out for fatherlands and motherlands.

But a home have I found nowhere:  unsettled am I in all cities, and
decamping at all gates.

Alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men, to whom of late my
heart impelled me; and exiled am I from fatherlands and motherlands.

Thus do I love only my CHILDREN'S LAND, the undiscovered in the remotest
sea:  for it do I bid my sails search and search.

Unto my children will I make amends for being the child of my fathers:  and
unto all the future--for THIS present-day!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXXVII.  IMMACULATE PERCEPTION.

When yester-eve the moon arose, then did I fancy it about to bear a sun:
so broad and teeming did it lie on the horizon.

But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and sooner will I believe in the man
in the moon than in the woman.

To be sure, little of a man is he also, that timid night-reveller.  Verily,
with a bad conscience doth he stalk over the roofs.

For he is covetous and jealous, the monk in the moon; covetous of the
earth, and all the joys of lovers.

Nay, I like him not, that tom-cat on the roofs!  Hateful unto me are all
that slink around half-closed windows!

Piously and silently doth he stalk along on the star-carpets:--but I like
no light-treading human feet, on which not even a spur jingleth.

Every honest one's step speaketh; the cat however, stealeth along over the
ground.  Lo! cat-like doth the moon come along, and dishonestly.--

This parable speak I unto you sentimental dissemblers, unto you, the "pure
discerners!"  You do _I_ call--covetous ones!

Also ye love the earth, and the earthly:  I have divined you well!--but
shame is in your love, and a bad conscience--ye are like the moon!

To despise the earthly hath your spirit been persuaded, but not your
bowels:  these, however, are the strongest in you!

And now is your spirit ashamed to be at the service of your bowels, and
goeth by-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame.

"That would be the highest thing for me"--so saith your lying spirit unto
itself--"to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog, with
hanging-out tongue:

To be happy in gazing:  with dead will, free from the grip and greed of
selfishness--cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated moon-eyes!

That would be the dearest thing to me"--thus doth the seduced one seduce
himself,--"to love the earth as the moon loveth it, and with the eye only
to feel its beauty.

And this do I call IMMACULATE perception of all things:  to want nothing
else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a
hundred facets."--

Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones!  Ye lack innocence in
your desire:  and now do ye defame desiring on that account!

Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye love the
earth!

Where is innocence?  Where there is will to procreation.  And he who
seeketh to create beyond himself, hath for me the purest will.

Where is beauty?  Where I MUST WILL with my whole Will; where I will love
and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image.

Loving and perishing:  these have rhymed from eternity.  Will to love:
that is to be ready also for death.  Thus do I speak unto you cowards!

But now doth your emasculated ogling profess to be "contemplation!"  And
that which can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be christened
"beautiful!"  Oh, ye violators of noble names!

But it shall be your curse, ye immaculate ones, ye pure discerners, that ye
shall never bring forth, even though ye lie broad and teeming on the
horizon!

Verily, ye fill your mouth with noble words:  and we are to believe that
your heart overfloweth, ye cozeners?

But MY words are poor, contemptible, stammering words:  gladly do I pick up
what falleth from the table at your repasts.

Yet still can I say therewith the truth--to dissemblers!  Yea, my fish-
bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall--tickle the noses of dissemblers!

Bad air is always about you and your repasts:  your lascivious thoughts,
your lies, and secrets are indeed in the air!

Dare only to believe in yourselves--in yourselves and in your inward parts!
He who doth not believe in himself always lieth.

A God's mask have ye hung in front of you, ye "pure ones":  into a God's
mask hath your execrable coiling snake crawled.

Verily ye deceive, ye "contemplative ones!"  Even Zarathustra was once the
dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not divine the serpent's coil with
which it was stuffed.

A God's soul, I once thought I saw playing in your games, ye pure
discerners!  No better arts did I once dream of than your arts!

Serpents' filth and evil odour, the distance concealed from me:  and that a
lizard's craft prowled thereabouts lasciviously.

But I came NIGH unto you:  then came to me the day,--and now cometh it to
you,--at an end is the moon's love affair!

See there!  Surprised and pale doth it stand--before the rosy dawn!

For already she cometh, the glowing one,--HER love to the earth cometh!
Innocence and creative desire, is all solar love!

See there, how she cometh impatiently over the sea!  Do ye not feel the
thirst and the hot breath of her love?

At the sea would she suck, and drink its depths to her height:  now riseth
the desire of the sea with its thousand breasts.

Kissed and sucked WOULD it be by the thirst of the sun; vapour WOULD it
become, and height, and path of light, and light itself!

Verily, like the sun do I love life, and all deep seas.

And this meaneth TO ME knowledge:  all that is deep shall ascend--to my
height!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXXVIII.  SCHOLARS.

When I lay asleep, then did a sheep eat at the ivy-wreath on my head,--it
ate, and said thereby:  "Zarathustra is no longer a scholar."

It said this, and went away clumsily and proudly.  A child told it to me.

I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall, among
thistles and red poppies.

A scholar am I still to the children, and also to the thistles and red
poppies.  Innocent are they, even in their wickedness.

But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar:  so willeth my lot--blessings
upon it!

For this is the truth:  I have departed from the house of the scholars, and
the door have I also slammed behind me.

Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table:  not like them have I got
the knack of investigating, as the knack of nut-cracking.

Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would I sleep on ox-
skins than on their honours and dignities.

I am too hot and scorched with mine own thought:  often is it ready to take
away my breath.  Then have I to go into the open air, and away from all
dusty rooms.

But they sit cool in the cool shade:  they want in everything to be merely
spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun burneth on the steps.

Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by:  thus do
they also wait, and gape at the thoughts which others have thought.

Should one lay hold of them, then do they raise a dust like flour-sacks,
and involuntarily:  but who would divine that their dust came from corn,
and from the yellow delight of the summer fields?

When they give themselves out as wise, then do their petty sayings and
truths chill me:  in their wisdom there is often an odour as if it came
from the swamp; and verily, I have even heard the frog croak in it!

Clever are they--they have dexterous fingers:  what doth MY simplicity
pretend to beside their multiplicity!  All threading and knitting and
weaving do their fingers understand:  thus do they make the hose of the
spirit!

Good clockworks are they:  only be careful to wind them up properly!  Then
do they indicate the hour without mistake, and make a modest noise thereby.

Like millstones do they work, and like pestles:  throw only seed-corn unto
them!--they know well how to grind corn small, and make white dust out of
it.

They keep a sharp eye on one another, and do not trust each other the best.
Ingenious in little artifices, they wait for those whose knowledge walketh
on lame feet,--like spiders do they wait.

I saw them always prepare their poison with precaution; and always did they
put glass gloves on their fingers in doing so.

They also know how to play with false dice; and so eagerly did I find them
playing, that they perspired thereby.

We are alien to each other, and their virtues are even more repugnant to my
taste than their falsehoods and false dice.

And when I lived with them, then did I live above them.  Therefore did they
take a dislike to me.

They want to hear nothing of any one walking above their heads; and so they
put wood and earth and rubbish betwixt me and their heads.

Thus did they deafen the sound of my tread:  and least have I hitherto been
heard by the most learned.

All mankind's faults and weaknesses did they put betwixt themselves and
me:--they call it "false ceiling" in their houses.

But nevertheless I walk with my thoughts ABOVE their heads; and even should
I walk on mine own errors, still would I be above them and their heads.

For men are NOT equal:  so speaketh justice.  And what I will, THEY may not
will!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XXXIX.  POETS.

"Since I have known the body better"--said Zarathustra to one of his
disciples--"the spirit hath only been to me symbolically spirit; and all
the 'imperishable'--that is also but a simile."

"So have I heard thee say once before," answered the disciple, "and then
thou addedst:  'But the poets lie too much.'  Why didst thou say that the
poets lie too much?"

"Why?" said Zarathustra.  "Thou askest why?  I do not belong to those who
may be asked after their Why.

Is my experience but of yesterday?  It is long ago that I experienced the
reasons for mine opinions.

Should I not have to be a cask of memory, if I also wanted to have my
reasons with me?

It is already too much for me even to retain mine opinions; and many a bird
flieth away.

And sometimes, also, do I find a fugitive creature in my dovecote, which is
alien to me, and trembleth when I lay my hand upon it.

But what did Zarathustra once say unto thee?  That the poets lie too much?
--But Zarathustra also is a poet.

Believest thou that he there spake the truth?  Why dost thou believe it?"

The disciple answered:  "I believe in Zarathustra."  But Zarathustra shook
his head and smiled.--

Belief doth not sanctify me, said he, least of all the belief in myself.

But granting that some one did say in all seriousness that the poets lie
too much:  he was right--WE do lie too much.

We also know too little, and are bad learners:  so we are obliged to lie.

And which of us poets hath not adulterated his wine?  Many a poisonous
hotchpotch hath evolved in our cellars:  many an indescribable thing hath
there been done.

And because we know little, therefore are we pleased from the heart with
the poor in spirit, especially when they are young women!

And even of those things are we desirous, which old women tell one another
in the evening.  This do we call the eternally feminine in us.

And as if there were a special secret access to knowledge, which CHOKETH UP
for those who learn anything, so do we believe in the people and in their
"wisdom."

This, however, do all poets believe:  that whoever pricketh up his ears
when lying in the grass or on lonely slopes, learneth something of the
things that are betwixt heaven and earth.

And if there come unto them tender emotions, then do the poets always think
that nature herself is in love with them:

And that she stealeth to their ear to whisper secrets into it, and amorous
flatteries:  of this do they plume and pride themselves, before all
mortals!

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the
poets have dreamed!

And especially ABOVE the heavens:  for all Gods are poet-symbolisations,
poet-sophistications!

Verily, ever are we drawn aloft--that is, to the realm of the clouds:  on
these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call them Gods and Supermen:--

Are not they light enough for those chairs!--all these Gods and Supermen?--

Ah, how I am weary of all the inadequate that is insisted on as actual!
Ah, how I am weary of the poets!

When Zarathustra so spake, his disciple resented it, but was silent.  And
Zarathustra also was silent; and his eye directed itself inwardly, as if it
gazed into the far distance.  At last he sighed and drew breath.--

I am of to-day and heretofore, said he thereupon; but something is in me
that is of the morrow, and the day following, and the hereafter.

I became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new:  superficial are
they all unto me, and shallow seas.

They did not think sufficiently into the depth; therefore their feeling did
not reach to the bottom.

Some sensation of voluptuousness and some sensation of tedium:  these have
as yet been their best contemplation.

Ghost-breathing and ghost-whisking, seemeth to me all the jingle-jangling
of their harps; what have they known hitherto of the fervour of tones!--

They are also not pure enough for me:  they all muddle their water that it
may seem deep.

And fain would they thereby prove themselves reconcilers:  but mediaries
and mixers are they unto me, and half-and-half, and impure!--

Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish; but
always did I draw up the head of some ancient God.

Thus did the sea give a stone to the hungry one.  And they themselves may
well originate from the sea.

Certainly, one findeth pearls in them:  thereby they are the more like hard
molluscs.  And instead of a soul, I have often found in them salt slime.

They have learned from the sea also its vanity:  is not the sea the peacock
of peacocks?

Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes doth it spread out its tail; never
doth it tire of its lace-fan of silver and silk.

Disdainfully doth the buffalo glance thereat, nigh to the sand with its
soul, nigher still to the thicket, nighest, however, to the swamp.

What is beauty and sea and peacock-splendour to it!  This parable I speak
unto the poets.

Verily, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks, and a sea of
vanity!

Spectators, seeketh the spirit of the poet--should they even be
buffaloes!--

But of this spirit became I weary; and I see the time coming when it will
become weary of itself.

Yea, changed have I seen the poets, and their glance turned towards
themselves.

Penitents of the spirit have I seen appearing; they grew out of the
poets.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XL.  GREAT EVENTS.

There is an isle in the sea--not far from the Happy Isles of Zarathustra--
on which a volcano ever smoketh; of which isle the people, and especially
the old women amongst them, say that it is placed as a rock before the gate
of the nether-world; but that through the volcano itself the narrow way
leadeth downwards which conducteth to this gate.

Now about the time that Zarathustra sojourned on the Happy Isles, it
happened that a ship anchored at the isle on which standeth the smoking
mountain, and the crew went ashore to shoot rabbits.  About the noontide
hour, however, when the captain and his men were together again, they saw
suddenly a man coming towards them through the air, and a voice said
distinctly:  "It is time!  It is the highest time!"  But when the figure
was nearest to them (it flew past quickly, however, like a shadow, in the
direction of the volcano), then did they recognise with the greatest
surprise that it was Zarathustra; for they had all seen him before except
the captain himself, and they loved him as the people love:  in such wise
that love and awe were combined in equal degree.

"Behold!" said the old helmsman, "there goeth Zarathustra to hell!"

About the same time that these sailors landed on the fire-isle, there was a
rumour that Zarathustra had disappeared; and when his friends were asked
about it, they said that he had gone on board a ship by night, without
saying whither he was going.

Thus there arose some uneasiness.  After three days, however, there came
the story of the ship's crew in addition to this uneasiness--and then did
all the people say that the devil had taken Zarathustra.  His disciples
laughed, sure enough, at this talk; and one of them said even:  "Sooner
would I believe that Zarathustra hath taken the devil."  But at the bottom
of their hearts they were all full of anxiety and longing:  so their joy
was great when on the fifth day Zarathustra appeared amongst them.

And this is the account of Zarathustra's interview with the fire-dog:

The earth, said he, hath a skin; and this skin hath diseases.  One of these
diseases, for example, is called "man."

And another of these diseases is called "the fire-dog":  concerning HIM men
have greatly deceived themselves, and let themselves be deceived.

To fathom this mystery did I go o'er the sea; and I have seen the truth
naked, verily! barefooted up to the neck.

Now do I know how it is concerning the fire-dog; and likewise concerning
all the spouting and subversive devils, of which not only old women are
afraid.

"Up with thee, fire-dog, out of thy depth!" cried I, "and confess how deep
that depth is!  Whence cometh that which thou snortest up?

Thou drinkest copiously at the sea:  that doth thine embittered eloquence
betray!  In sooth, for a dog of the depth, thou takest thy nourishment too
much from the surface!

At the most, I regard thee as the ventriloquist of the earth:  and ever,
when I have heard subversive and spouting devils speak, I have found them
like thee:  embittered, mendacious, and shallow.

Ye understand how to roar and obscure with ashes!  Ye are the best
braggarts, and have sufficiently learned the art of making dregs boil.

Where ye are, there must always be dregs at hand, and much that is spongy,
hollow, and compressed:  it wanteth to have freedom.

'Freedom' ye all roar most eagerly:  but I have unlearned the belief in
'great events,' when there is much roaring and smoke about them.

And believe me, friend Hullabaloo!  The greatest events--are not our
noisiest, but our stillest hours.

Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new
values, doth the world revolve; INAUDIBLY it revolveth.

And just own to it!  Little had ever taken place when thy noise and smoke
passed away.  What, if a city did become a mummy, and a statue lay in the
mud!

And this do I say also to the o'erthrowers of statues:  It is certainly the
greatest folly to throw salt into the sea, and statues into the mud.

In the mud of your contempt lay the statue:  but it is just its law, that
out of contempt, its life and living beauty grow again!

With diviner features doth it now arise, seducing by its suffering; and
verily! it will yet thank you for o'erthrowing it, ye subverters!

This counsel, however, do I counsel to kings and churches, and to all that
is weak with age or virtue--let yourselves be o'erthrown!  That ye may
again come to life, and that virtue--may come to you!--"

Thus spake I before the fire-dog:  then did he interrupt me sullenly, and
asked:  "Church?  What is that?"

"Church?" answered I, "that is a kind of state, and indeed the most
mendacious.  But remain quiet, thou dissembling dog!  Thou surely knowest
thine own species best!

Like thyself the state is a dissembling dog; like thee doth it like to
speak with smoke and roaring--to make believe, like thee, that it speaketh
out of the heart of things.

For it seeketh by all means to be the most important creature on earth, the
state; and people think it so."

When I had said this, the fire-dog acted as if mad with envy.  "What!"
cried he, "the most important creature on earth?  And people think it so?"
And so much vapour and terrible voices came out of his throat, that I
thought he would choke with vexation and envy.

At last he became calmer and his panting subsided; as soon, however, as he
was quiet, I said laughingly:

"Thou art angry, fire-dog:  so I am in the right about thee!

And that I may also maintain the right, hear the story of another fire-dog;
he speaketh actually out of the heart of the earth.

Gold doth his breath exhale, and golden rain:  so doth his heart desire.
What are ashes and smoke and hot dregs to him!

Laughter flitteth from him like a variegated cloud; adverse is he to thy
gargling and spewing and grips in the bowels!

The gold, however, and the laughter--these doth he take out of the heart of
the earth:  for, that thou mayst know it,--THE HEART OF THE EARTH IS OF
GOLD."

When the fire-dog heard this, he could no longer endure to listen to me.
Abashed did he draw in his tail, said "bow-wow!" in a cowed voice, and
crept down into his cave.--

Thus told Zarathustra.  His disciples, however, hardly listened to him:  so
great was their eagerness to tell him about the sailors, the rabbits, and
the flying man.

"What am I to think of it!" said Zarathustra.  "Am I indeed a ghost?

But it may have been my shadow.  Ye have surely heard something of the
Wanderer and his Shadow?

One thing, however, is certain:  I must keep a tighter hold of it;
otherwise it will spoil my reputation."

And once more Zarathustra shook his head and wondered.  "What am I to think
of it!" said he once more.

"Why did the ghost cry:  'It is time!  It is the highest time!'

For WHAT is it then--the highest time?"--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XLI.  THE SOOTHSAYER.

"-And I saw a great sadness come over mankind.  The best turned weary of
their works.

A doctrine appeared, a faith ran beside it:  'All is empty, all is alike,
all hath been!'

And from all hills there re-echoed:  'All is empty, all is alike, all hath
been!'

To be sure we have harvested:  but why have all our fruits become rotten
and brown?  What was it fell last night from the evil moon?

In vain was all our labour, poison hath our wine become, the evil eye hath
singed yellow our fields and hearts.

Arid have we all become; and fire falling upon us, then do we turn dust
like ashes:--yea, the fire itself have we made aweary.

All our fountains have dried up, even the sea hath receded.  All the ground
trieth to gape, but the depth will not swallow!

'Alas! where is there still a sea in which one could be drowned?' so
soundeth our plaint--across shallow swamps.

Verily, even for dying have we become too weary; now do we keep awake and
live on--in sepulchres."

Thus did Zarathustra hear a soothsayer speak; and the foreboding touched
his heart and transformed him.  Sorrowfully did he go about and wearily;
and he became like unto those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.--

Verily, said he unto his disciples, a little while, and there cometh the
long twilight.  Alas, how shall I preserve my light through it!

That it may not smother in this sorrowfulness!  To remoter worlds shall it
be a light, and also to remotest nights!

Thus did Zarathustra go about grieved in his heart, and for three days he
did not take any meat or drink:  he had no rest, and lost his speech.  At
last it came to pass that he fell into a deep sleep.  His disciples,
however, sat around him in long night-watches, and waited anxiously to see
if he would awake, and speak again, and recover from his affliction.

And this is the discourse that Zarathustra spake when he awoke; his voice,
however, came unto his disciples as from afar:

Hear, I pray you, the dream that I dreamed, my friends, and help me to
divine its meaning!

A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it and
encaged, and doth not yet fly above it on free pinions.

All life had I renounced, so I dreamed.  Night-watchman and grave-guardian
had I become, aloft, in the lone mountain-fortress of Death.

There did I guard his coffins:  full stood the musty vaults of those
trophies of victory.  Out of glass coffins did vanquished life gaze upon
me.

The odour of dust-covered eternities did I breathe:  sultry and dust-
covered lay my soul.  And who could have aired his soul there!

Brightness of midnight was ever around me; lonesomeness cowered beside her;
and as a third, death-rattle stillness, the worst of my female friends.

Keys did I carry, the rustiest of all keys; and I knew how to open with
them the most creaking of all gates.

Like a bitterly angry croaking ran the sound through the long corridors
when the leaves of the gate opened:  ungraciously did this bird cry,
unwillingly was it awakened.

But more frightful even, and more heart-strangling was it, when it again
became silent and still all around, and I alone sat in that malignant
silence.

Thus did time pass with me, and slip by, if time there still was:  what do
I know thereof!  But at last there happened that which awoke me.

Thrice did there peal peals at the gate like thunders, thrice did the
vaults resound and howl again:  then did I go to the gate.

Alpa! cried I, who carrieth his ashes unto the mountain?  Alpa!  Alpa! who
carrieth his ashes unto the mountain?

And I pressed the key, and pulled at the gate, and exerted myself.  But not
a finger's-breadth was it yet open:

Then did a roaring wind tear the folds apart:  whistling, whizzing, and
piercing, it threw unto me a black coffin.

And in the roaring, and whistling, and whizzing the coffin burst up, and
spouted out a thousand peals of laughter.

And a thousand caricatures of children, angels, owls, fools, and child-
sized butterflies laughed and mocked, and roared at me.

Fearfully was I terrified thereby:  it prostrated me.  And I cried with
horror as I ne'er cried before.

But mine own crying awoke me:--and I came to myself.--

Thus did Zarathustra relate his dream, and then was silent:  for as yet he
knew not the interpretation thereof.  But the disciple whom he loved most
arose quickly, seized Zarathustra's hand, and said:

"Thy life itself interpreteth unto us this dream, O Zarathustra!

Art thou not thyself the wind with shrill whistling, which bursteth open
the gates of the fortress of Death?

Art thou not thyself the coffin full of many-hued malices and angel-
caricatures of life?

Verily, like a thousand peals of children's laughter cometh Zarathustra
into all sepulchres, laughing at those night-watchmen and grave-guardians,
and whoever else rattleth with sinister keys.

With thy laughter wilt thou frighten and prostrate them:  fainting and
recovering will demonstrate thy power over them.

And when the long twilight cometh and the mortal weariness, even then wilt
thou not disappear from our firmament, thou advocate of life!

New stars hast thou made us see, and new nocturnal glories:  verily,
laughter itself hast thou spread out over us like a many-hued canopy.

Now will children's laughter ever from coffins flow; now will a strong wind
ever come victoriously unto all mortal weariness:  of this thou art thyself
the pledge and the prophet!

Verily, THEY THEMSELVES DIDST THOU DREAM, thine enemies:  that was thy
sorest dream.

But as thou awokest from them and camest to thyself, so shall they awaken
from themselves--and come unto thee!"

Thus spake the disciple; and all the others then thronged around
Zarathustra, grasped him by the hands, and tried to persuade him to leave
his bed and his sadness, and return unto them.  Zarathustra, however, sat
upright on his couch, with an absent look.  Like one returning from long
foreign sojourn did he look on his disciples, and examined their features;
but still he knew them not.  When, however, they raised him, and set him
upon his feet, behold, all on a sudden his eye changed; he understood
everything that had happened, stroked his beard, and said with a strong
voice:

"Well! this hath just its time; but see to it, my disciples, that we have a
good repast; and without delay!  Thus do I mean to make amends for bad
dreams!

The soothsayer, however, shall eat and drink at my side:  and verily, I
will yet show him a sea in which he can drown himself!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra.  Then did he gaze long into the face of the
disciple who had been the dream-interpreter, and shook his head.--


XLII.  REDEMPTION.

When Zarathustra went one day over the great bridge, then did the cripples
and beggars surround him, and a hunchback spake thus unto him:

"Behold, Zarathustra!  Even the people learn from thee, and acquire faith
in thy teaching:  but for them to believe fully in thee, one thing is still
needful--thou must first of all convince us cripples!  Here hast thou now a
fine selection, and verily, an opportunity with more than one forelock!
The blind canst thou heal, and make the lame run; and from him who hath too
much behind, couldst thou well, also, take away a little;--that, I think,
would be the right method to make the cripples believe in Zarathustra!"

Zarathustra, however, answered thus unto him who so spake:  When one taketh
his hump from the hunchback, then doth one take from him his spirit--so do
the people teach.  And when one giveth the blind man eyes, then doth he see
too many bad things on the earth:  so that he curseth him who healed him.
He, however, who maketh the lame man run, inflicteth upon him the greatest
injury; for hardly can he run, when his vices run away with him--so do the
people teach concerning cripples.  And why should not Zarathustra also
learn from the people, when the people learn from Zarathustra?

It is, however, the smallest thing unto me since I have been amongst men,
to see one person lacking an eye, another an ear, and a third a leg, and
that others have lost the tongue, or the nose, or the head.

I see and have seen worse things, and divers things so hideous, that I
should neither like to speak of all matters, nor even keep silent about
some of them:  namely, men who lack everything, except that they have too
much of one thing--men who are nothing more than a big eye, or a big mouth,
or a big belly, or something else big,--reversed cripples, I call such men.

And when I came out of my solitude, and for the first time passed over this
bridge, then I could not trust mine eyes, but looked again and again, and
said at last:  "That is an ear!  An ear as big as a man!"  I looked still
more attentively--and actually there did move under the ear something that
was pitiably small and poor and slim.  And in truth this immense ear was
perched on a small thin stalk--the stalk, however, was a man!  A person
putting a glass to his eyes, could even recognise further a small envious
countenance, and also that a bloated soullet dangled at the stalk.  The
people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a man, but a great
man, a genius.  But I never believed in the people when they spake of great
men--and I hold to my belief that it was a reversed cripple, who had too
little of everything, and too much of one thing.

When Zarathustra had spoken thus unto the hunchback, and unto those of whom
the hunchback was the mouthpiece and advocate, then did he turn to his
disciples in profound dejection, and said:

Verily, my friends, I walk amongst men as amongst the fragments and limbs
of human beings!

This is the terrible thing to mine eye, that I find man broken up, and
scattered about, as on a battle- and butcher-ground.

And when mine eye fleeth from the present to the bygone, it findeth ever
the same:  fragments and limbs and fearful chances--but no men!

The present and the bygone upon earth--ah! my friends--that is MY most
unbearable trouble; and I should not know how to live, if I were not a seer
of what is to come.

A seer, a purposer, a creator, a future itself, and a bridge to the future
--and alas! also as it were a cripple on this bridge:  all that is
Zarathustra.

And ye also asked yourselves often:  "Who is Zarathustra to us?  What shall
he be called by us?"  And like me, did ye give yourselves questions for
answers.

Is he a promiser?  Or a fulfiller?  A conqueror?  Or an inheritor?  A
harvest?  Or a ploughshare?  A physician?  Or a healed one?

Is he a poet?  Or a genuine one?  An emancipator?  Or a subjugator?  A good
one?  Or an evil one?

I walk amongst men as the fragments of the future:  that future which I
contemplate.

And it is all my poetisation and aspiration to compose and collect into
unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance.

And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer, and
riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance!

To redeem what is past, and to transform every "It was" into "Thus would I
have it!"--that only do I call redemption!

Will--so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called:  thus have I taught
you, my friends!  But now learn this likewise:  the Will itself is still a
prisoner.

Willing emancipateth:  but what is that called which still putteth the
emancipator in chains?

"It was":  thus is the Will's teeth-gnashing and lonesomest tribulation
called.  Impotent towards what hath been done--it is a malicious spectator
of all that is past.

Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time's
desire--that is the Will's lonesomest tribulation.

Willing emancipateth:  what doth Willing itself devise in order to get free
from its tribulation and mock at its prison?

Ah, a fool becometh every prisoner!  Foolishly delivereth itself also the
imprisoned Will.

That time doth not run backward--that is its animosity:  "That which was":
so is the stone which it cannot roll called.

And thus doth it roll stones out of animosity and ill-humour, and taketh
revenge on whatever doth not, like it, feel rage and ill-humour.

Thus did the Will, the emancipator, become a torturer; and on all that is
capable of suffering it taketh revenge, because it cannot go backward.

This, yea, this alone is REVENGE itself:  the Will's antipathy to time, and
its "It was."

Verily, a great folly dwelleth in our Will; and it became a curse unto all
humanity, that this folly acquired spirit!

THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE:  my friends, that hath hitherto been man's best
contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was
always penalty.

"Penalty," so calleth itself revenge.  With a lying word it feigneth a good
conscience.

And because in the willer himself there is suffering, because he cannot
will backwards--thus was Willing itself, and all life, claimed--to be
penalty!

And then did cloud after cloud roll over the spirit, until at last madness
preached:  "Everything perisheth, therefore everything deserveth to
perish!"

"And this itself is justice, the law of time--that he must devour his
children:"  thus did madness preach.

"Morally are things ordered according to justice and penalty.  Oh, where is
there deliverance from the flux of things and from the 'existence' of
penalty?"  Thus did madness preach.

"Can there be deliverance when there is eternal justice?  Alas, unrollable
is the stone, 'It was':  eternal must also be all penalties!"  Thus did
madness preach.

"No deed can be annihilated:  how could it be undone by the penalty!  This,
this is what is eternal in the 'existence' of penalty, that existence also
must be eternally recurring deed and guilt!

Unless the Will should at last deliver itself, and Willing become non-
Willing--:"  but ye know, my brethren, this fabulous song of madness!

Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I taught you:  "The Will
is a creator."

All "It was" is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance--until the creating
Will saith thereto:  "But thus would I have it."--

Until the creating Will saith thereto:  "But thus do I will it!  Thus shall
I will it!"

But did it ever speak thus?  And when doth this take place?  Hath the Will
been unharnessed from its own folly?

Hath the Will become its own deliverer and joy-bringer?  Hath it unlearned
the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing?

And who hath taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than
all reconciliation?

Something higher than all reconciliation must the Will will which is the
Will to Power--:  but how doth that take place?  Who hath taught it also to
will backwards?

--But at this point in his discourse it chanced that Zarathustra suddenly
paused, and looked like a person in the greatest alarm.  With terror in his
eyes did he gaze on his disciples; his glances pierced as with arrows their
thoughts and arrear-thoughts.  But after a brief space he again laughed,
and said soothedly:

"It is difficult to live amongst men, because silence is so difficult--
especially for a babbler."--

Thus spake Zarathustra.  The hunchback, however, had listened to the
conversation and had covered his face during the time; but when he heard
Zarathustra laugh, he looked up with curiosity, and said slowly:

"But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto us than unto his disciples?"

Zarathustra answered:  "What is there to be wondered at!  With hunchbacks
one may well speak in a hunchbacked way!"

"Very good," said the hunchback; "and with pupils one may well tell tales
out of school.

But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto his pupils--than unto
himself?"--


XLIII.  MANLY PRUDENCE.

Not the height, it is the declivity that is terrible!

The declivity, where the gaze shooteth DOWNWARDS, and the hand graspeth
UPWARDS.  There doth the heart become giddy through its double will.

Ah, friends, do ye divine also my heart's double will?

This, this is MY declivity and my danger, that my gaze shooteth towards the
summit, and my hand would fain clutch and lean--on the depth!

To man clingeth my will; with chains do I bind myself to man, because I am
pulled upwards to the Superman:  for thither doth mine other will tend.

And THEREFORE do I live blindly among men, as if I knew them not:  that my
hand may not entirely lose belief in firmness.

I know not you men:  this gloom and consolation is often spread around me.

I sit at the gateway for every rogue, and ask:  Who wisheth to deceive me?

This is my first manly prudence, that I allow myself to be deceived, so as
not to be on my guard against deceivers.

Ah, if I were on my guard against man, how could man be an anchor to my
ball!  Too easily would I be pulled upwards and away!

This providence is over my fate, that I have to be without foresight.

And he who would not languish amongst men, must learn to drink out of all
glasses; and he who would keep clean amongst men, must know how to wash
himself even with dirty water.

And thus spake I often to myself for consolation:  "Courage!  Cheer up! old
heart!  An unhappiness hath failed to befall thee:  enjoy that as thy--
happiness!"

This, however, is mine other manly prudence:  I am more forbearing to the
VAIN than to the proud.

Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies?  Where, however, pride
is wounded, there there groweth up something better than pride.

That life may be fair to behold, its game must be well played; for that
purpose, however, it needeth good actors.

Good actors have I found all the vain ones:  they play, and wish people to
be fond of beholding them--all their spirit is in this wish.

They represent themselves, they invent themselves; in their neighbourhood I
like to look upon life--it cureth of melancholy.

Therefore am I forbearing to the vain, because they are the physicians of
my melancholy, and keep me attached to man as to a drama.

And further, who conceiveth the full depth of the modesty of the vain man!
I am favourable to him, and sympathetic on account of his modesty.

From you would he learn his belief in himself; he feedeth upon your
glances, he eateth praise out of your hands.

Your lies doth he even believe when you lie favourably about him:  for in
its depths sigheth his heart:  "What am _I_?"

And if that be the true virtue which is unconscious of itself--well, the
vain man is unconscious of his modesty!--

This is, however, my third manly prudence:  I am not put out of conceit
with the WICKED by your timorousness.

I am happy to see the marvels the warm sun hatcheth:  tigers and palms and
rattle-snakes.

Also amongst men there is a beautiful brood of the warm sun, and much that
is marvellous in the wicked.

In truth, as your wisest did not seem to me so very wise, so found I also
human wickedness below the fame of it.

And oft did I ask with a shake of the head:  Why still rattle, ye rattle-
snakes?

Verily, there is still a future even for evil!  And the warmest south is
still undiscovered by man.

How many things are now called the worst wickedness, which are only twelve
feet broad and three months long!  Some day, however, will greater dragons
come into the world.

For that the Superman may not lack his dragon, the superdragon that is
worthy of him, there must still much warm sun glow on moist virgin forests!

Out of your wild cats must tigers have evolved, and out of your poison-
toads, crocodiles:  for the good hunter shall have a good hunt!

And verily, ye good and just!  In you there is much to be laughed at, and
especially your fear of what hath hitherto been called "the devil!"

So alien are ye in your souls to what is great, that to you the Superman
would be FRIGHTFUL in his goodness!

And ye wise and knowing ones, ye would flee from the solar-glow of the
wisdom in which the Superman joyfully batheth his nakedness!

Ye highest men who have come within my ken! this is my doubt of you, and my
secret laughter:  I suspect ye would call my Superman--a devil!

Ah, I became tired of those highest and best ones:  from their "height" did
I long to be up, out, and away to the Superman!

A horror came over me when I saw those best ones naked:  then there grew
for me the pinions to soar away into distant futures.

Into more distant futures, into more southern souths than ever artist
dreamed of:  thither, where Gods are ashamed of all clothes!

But disguised do I want to see YOU, ye neighbours and fellowmen, and well-
attired and vain and estimable, as "the good and just;"--

And disguised will I myself sit amongst you--that I may MISTAKE you and
myself:  for that is my last manly prudence.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XLIV.  THE STILLEST HOUR.

What hath happened unto me, my friends?  Ye see me troubled, driven forth,
unwillingly obedient, ready to go--alas, to go away from YOU!

Yea, once more must Zarathustra retire to his solitude:  but unjoyously
this time doth the bear go back to his cave!

What hath happened unto me?  Who ordereth this?--Ah, mine angry mistress
wisheth it so; she spake unto me.  Have I ever named her name to you?

Yesterday towards evening there spake unto me MY STILLEST HOUR:  that is
the name of my terrible mistress.

And thus did it happen--for everything must I tell you, that your heart may
not harden against the suddenly departing one!

Do ye know the terror of him who falleth asleep?--

To the very toes he is terrified, because the ground giveth way under him,
and the dream beginneth.

This do I speak unto you in parable.  Yesterday at the stillest hour did
the ground give way under me:  the dream began.

The hour-hand moved on, the timepiece of my life drew breath--never did I
hear such stillness around me, so that my heart was terrified.

Then was there spoken unto me without voice:  "THOU KNOWEST IT,
ZARATHUSTRA?"--

And I cried in terror at this whispering, and the blood left my face:  but
I was silent.

Then was there once more spoken unto me without voice:  "Thou knowest it,
Zarathustra, but thou dost not speak it!"--

And at last I answered, like one defiant:  "Yea, I know it, but I will not
speak it!"

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice:  "Thou WILT not,
Zarathustra?  Is this true?  Conceal thyself not behind thy defiance!"--

And I wept and trembled like a child, and said:  "Ah, I would indeed, but
how can I do it!  Exempt me only from this!  It is beyond my power!"

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice:  "What matter about
thyself, Zarathustra!  Speak thy word, and succumb!"

And I answered:  "Ah, is it MY word?  Who am _I_?  I await the worthier
one; I am not worthy even to succumb by it."

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice:  "What matter about
thyself?  Thou art not yet humble enough for me.  Humility hath the hardest
skin."--

And I answered:  "What hath not the skin of my humility endured!  At the
foot of my height do I dwell:  how high are my summits, no one hath yet
told me.  But well do I know my valleys."

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice:  "O Zarathustra, he who
hath to remove mountains removeth also valleys and plains."--

And I answered:  "As yet hath my word not removed mountains, and what I
have spoken hath not reached man.  I went, indeed, unto men, but not yet
have I attained unto them."

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice:  "What knowest thou
THEREOF!  The dew falleth on the grass when the night is most silent."--

And I answered:  "They mocked me when I found and walked in mine own path;
and certainly did my feet then tremble.

And thus did they speak unto me:  Thou forgottest the path before, now dost
thou also forget how to walk!"

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice:  "What matter about
their mockery!  Thou art one who hast unlearned to obey:  now shalt thou
command!

Knowest thou not who is most needed by all?  He who commandeth great
things.

To execute great things is difficult:  but the more difficult task is to
command great things.

This is thy most unpardonable obstinacy:  thou hast the power, and thou
wilt not rule."--

And I answered:  "I lack the lion's voice for all commanding."

Then was there again spoken unto me as a whispering:  "It is the stillest
words which bring the storm.  Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps
guide the world.

O Zarathustra, thou shalt go as a shadow of that which is to come:  thus
wilt thou command, and in commanding go foremost."--

And I answered:  "I am ashamed."

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice:  "Thou must yet become a
child, and be without shame.

The pride of youth is still upon thee; late hast thou become young:  but he
who would become a child must surmount even his youth."--

And I considered a long while, and trembled.  At last, however, did I say
what I had said at first.  "I will not."

Then did a laughing take place all around me.  Alas, how that laughing
lacerated my bowels and cut into my heart!

And there was spoken unto me for the last time:  "O Zarathustra, thy fruits
are ripe, but thou art not ripe for thy fruits!

So must thou go again into solitude:  for thou shalt yet become mellow."--

And again was there a laughing, and it fled:  then did it become still
around me, as with a double stillness.  I lay, however, on the ground, and
the sweat flowed from my limbs.

--Now have ye heard all, and why I have to return into my solitude.
Nothing have I kept hidden from you, my friends.

But even this have ye heard from me, WHO is still the most reserved of men
--and will be so!

Ah, my friends!  I should have something more to say unto you!  I should
have something more to give unto you!  Why do I not give it?  Am I then a
niggard?--

When, however, Zarathustra had spoken these words, the violence of his
pain, and a sense of the nearness of his departure from his friends came
over him, so that he wept aloud; and no one knew how to console him.  In
the night, however, he went away alone and left his friends.



THIRD PART.

"Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation, and I look downward because I
am exalted.

"Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted?

"He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and
tragic realities."--ZARATHUSTRA, I., "Reading and Writing."


XLV.  THE WANDERER.

Then, when it was about midnight, Zarathustra went his way over the ridge
of the isle, that he might arrive early in the morning at the other coast;
because there he meant to embark.  For there was a good roadstead there, in
which foreign ships also liked to anchor:  those ships took many people
with them, who wished to cross over from the Happy Isles.  So when
Zarathustra thus ascended the mountain, he thought on the way of his many
solitary wanderings from youth onwards, and how many mountains and ridges
and summits he had already climbed.

I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the
plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.

And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience--a wandering will
be therein, and a mountain-climbing:  in the end one experienceth only
oneself.

The time is now past when accidents could befall me; and what COULD now
fall to my lot which would not already be mine own!

It returneth only, it cometh home to me at last--mine own Self, and such of
it as hath been long abroad, and scattered among things and accidents.

And one thing more do I know:  I stand now before my last summit, and
before that which hath been longest reserved for me.  Ah, my hardest path
must I ascend!  Ah, I have begun my lonesomest wandering!

He, however, who is of my nature doth not avoid such an hour:  the hour
that saith unto him:  Now only dost thou go the way to thy greatness!
Summit and abyss--these are now comprised together!

Thou goest the way to thy greatness:  now hath it become thy last refuge,
what was hitherto thy last danger!

Thou goest the way to thy greatness:  it must now be thy best courage that
there is no longer any path behind thee!

Thou goest the way to thy greatness:  here shall no one steal after thee!
Thy foot itself hath effaced the path behind thee, and over it standeth
written:  Impossibility.

And if all ladders henceforth fail thee, then must thou learn to mount upon
thine own head:  how couldst thou mount upward otherwise?

Upon thine own head, and beyond thine own heart!  Now must the gentlest in
thee become the hardest.

He who hath always much-indulged himself, sickeneth at last by his much-
indulgence.  Praises on what maketh hardy!  I do not praise the land where
butter and honey--flow!

To learn TO LOOK AWAY FROM oneself, is necessary in order to see MANY
THINGS:--this hardiness is needed by every mountain-climber.

He, however, who is obtrusive with his eyes as a discerner, how can he ever
see more of anything than its foreground!

But thou, O Zarathustra, wouldst view the ground of everything, and its
background:  thus must thou mount even above thyself--up, upwards, until
thou hast even thy stars UNDER thee!

Yea!  To look down upon myself, and even upon my stars:  that only would I
call my SUMMIT, that hath remained for me as my LAST summit!--

Thus spake Zarathustra to himself while ascending, comforting his heart
with harsh maxims:  for he was sore at heart as he had never been before.
And when he had reached the top of the mountain-ridge, behold, there lay
the other sea spread out before him:  and he stood still and was long
silent.  The night, however, was cold at this height, and clear and starry.

I recognise my destiny, said he at last, sadly.  Well!  I am ready.  Now
hath my last lonesomeness begun.

Ah, this sombre, sad sea, below me!  Ah, this sombre nocturnal vexation!
Ah, fate and sea!  To you must I now GO DOWN!

Before my highest mountain do I stand, and before my longest wandering:
therefore must I first go deeper down than I ever ascended:

--Deeper down into pain than I ever ascended, even into its darkest flood!
So willeth my fate.  Well!  I am ready.

Whence come the highest mountains?  so did I once ask.  Then did I learn
that they come out of the sea.

That testimony is inscribed on their stones, and on the walls of their
summits.  Out of the deepest must the highest come to its height.--

Thus spake Zarathustra on the ridge of the mountain where it was cold:
when, however, he came into the vicinity of the sea, and at last stood
alone amongst the cliffs, then had he become weary on his way, and eagerer
than ever before.

Everything as yet sleepeth, said he; even the sea sleepeth.  Drowsily and
strangely doth its eye gaze upon me.

But it breatheth warmly--I feel it.  And I feel also that it dreameth.  It
tosseth about dreamily on hard pillows.

Hark!  Hark!  How it groaneth with evil recollections!  Or evil
expectations?

Ah, I am sad along with thee, thou dusky monster, and angry with myself
even for thy sake.

Ah, that my hand hath not strength enough!  Gladly, indeed, would I free
thee from evil dreams!--

And while Zarathustra thus spake, he laughed at himself with melancholy and
bitterness.  What! Zarathustra, said he, wilt thou even sing consolation to
the sea?

Ah, thou amiable fool, Zarathustra, thou too-blindly confiding one!  But
thus hast thou ever been:  ever hast thou approached confidently all that
is terrible.

Every monster wouldst thou caress.  A whiff of warm breath, a little soft
tuft on its paw--:  and immediately wert thou ready to love and lure it.

LOVE is the danger of the lonesomest one, love to anything, IF IT ONLY
LIVE!  Laughable, verily, is my folly and my modesty in love!--

Thus spake Zarathustra, and laughed thereby a second time.  Then, however,
he thought of his abandoned friends--and as if he had done them a wrong
with his thoughts, he upbraided himself because of his thoughts.  And
forthwith it came to pass that the laugher wept--with anger and longing
wept Zarathustra bitterly.


XLVI.  THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA.

1.

When it got abroad among the sailors that Zarathustra was on board the
ship--for a man who came from the Happy Isles had gone on board along with
him,--there was great curiosity and expectation.  But Zarathustra kept
silent for two days, and was cold and deaf with sadness; so that he neither
answered looks nor questions.  On the evening of the second day, however,
he again opened his ears, though he still kept silent:  for there were many
curious and dangerous things to be heard on board the ship, which came from
afar, and was to go still further.  Zarathustra, however, was fond of all
those who make distant voyages, and dislike to live without danger.  And
behold! when listening, his own tongue was at last loosened, and the ice of
his heart broke.  Then did he begin to speak thus:

To you, the daring venturers and adventurers, and whoever hath embarked
with cunning sails upon frightful seas,--

To you the enigma-intoxicated, the twilight-enjoyers, whose souls are
allured by flutes to every treacherous gulf:

--For ye dislike to grope at a thread with cowardly hand; and where ye can
DIVINE, there do ye hate to CALCULATE--

To you only do I tell the enigma that I SAW--the vision of the lonesomest
one.--

Gloomily walked I lately in corpse-coloured twilight--gloomily and sternly,
with compressed lips.  Not only one sun had set for me.

A path which ascended daringly among boulders, an evil, lonesome path,
which neither herb nor shrub any longer cheered, a mountain-path, crunched
under the daring of my foot.

Mutely marching over the scornful clinking of pebbles, trampling the stone
that let it slip:  thus did my foot force its way upwards.

Upwards:--in spite of the spirit that drew it downwards, towards the abyss,
the spirit of gravity, my devil and arch-enemy.

Upwards:--although it sat upon me, half-dwarf, half-mole; paralysed,
paralysing; dripping lead in mine ear, and thoughts like drops of lead into
my brain.

"O Zarathustra," it whispered scornfully, syllable by syllable, "thou stone
of wisdom!  Thou threwest thyself high, but every thrown stone must--fall!

O Zarathustra, thou stone of wisdom, thou sling-stone, thou star-destroyer!
Thyself threwest thou so high,--but every thrown stone--must fall!

Condemned of thyself, and to thine own stoning:  O Zarathustra, far indeed
threwest thou thy stone--but upon THYSELF will it recoil!"

Then was the dwarf silent; and it lasted long.  The silence, however,
oppressed me; and to be thus in pairs, one is verily lonesomer than when
alone!

I ascended, I ascended, I dreamt, I thought,--but everything oppressed me.
A sick one did I resemble, whom bad torture wearieth, and a worse dream
reawakeneth out of his first sleep.--

But there is something in me which I call courage:  it hath hitherto slain
for me every dejection.  This courage at last bade me stand still and say:
"Dwarf!  Thou!  Or I!"--

For courage is the best slayer,--courage which ATTACKETH:  for in every
attack there is sound of triumph.

Man, however, is the most courageous animal:  thereby hath he overcome
every animal.  With sound of triumph hath he overcome every pain; human
pain, however, is the sorest pain.

Courage slayeth also giddiness at abysses:  and where doth man not stand at
abysses!  Is not seeing itself--seeing abysses?

Courage is the best slayer:  courage slayeth also fellow-suffering.
Fellow-suffering, however, is the deepest abyss:  as deeply as man looketh
into life, so deeply also doth he look into suffering.

Courage, however, is the best slayer, courage which attacketh:  it slayeth
even death itself; for it saith:  "WAS THAT life?  Well!  Once more!"

In such speech, however, there is much sound of triumph.  He who hath ears
to hear, let him hear.--

2.

"Halt, dwarf!" said I.  "Either I--or thou!  I, however, am the stronger of
the two:--thou knowest not mine abysmal thought!  IT--couldst thou not
endure!"

Then happened that which made me lighter:  for the dwarf sprang from my
shoulder, the prying sprite!  And it squatted on a stone in front of me.
There was however a gateway just where we halted.

"Look at this gateway!  Dwarf!" I continued, "it hath two faces.  Two roads
come together here:  these hath no one yet gone to the end of.

This long lane backwards:  it continueth for an eternity.  And that long
lane forward--that is another eternity.

They are antithetical to one another, these roads; they directly abut on
one another:--and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together.
The name of the gateway is inscribed above:  'This Moment.'

But should one follow them further--and ever further and further on,
thinkest thou, dwarf, that these roads would be eternally antithetical?"--

"Everything straight lieth," murmured the dwarf, contemptuously.  "All
truth is crooked; time itself is a circle."

"Thou spirit of gravity!" said I wrathfully, "do not take it too lightly!
Or I shall let thee squat where thou squattest, Haltfoot,--and I carried
thee HIGH!"

"Observe," continued I, "This Moment!  From the gateway, This Moment, there
runneth a long eternal lane BACKWARDS:  behind us lieth an eternity.

Must not whatever CAN run its course of all things, have already run along
that lane?  Must not whatever CAN happen of all things have already
happened, resulted, and gone by?

And if everything have already existed, what thinkest thou, dwarf, of This
Moment?  Must not this gateway also--have already existed?

And are not all things closely bound together in such wise that This Moment
draweth all coming things after it?  CONSEQUENTLY--itself also?

For whatever CAN run its course of all things, also in this long lane
OUTWARD--MUST it once more run!--

And this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight, and this moonlight
itself, and thou and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering of
eternal things--must we not all have already existed?

--And must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that
long weird lane--must we not eternally return?"--

Thus did I speak, and always more softly:  for I was afraid of mine own
thoughts, and arrear-thoughts.  Then, suddenly did I hear a dog HOWL near
me.

Had I ever heard a dog howl thus?  My thoughts ran back.  Yes!  When I was
a child, in my most distant childhood:

--Then did I hear a dog howl thus.  And saw it also, with hair bristling,
its head upwards, trembling in the stillest midnight, when even dogs
believe in ghosts:

--So that it excited my commiseration.  For just then went the full moon,
silent as death, over the house; just then did it stand still, a glowing
globe--at rest on the flat roof, as if on some one's property:--

Thereby had the dog been terrified:  for dogs believe in thieves and
ghosts.  And when I again heard such howling, then did it excite my
commiseration once more.

Where was now the dwarf?  And the gateway?  And the spider?  And all the
whispering?  Had I dreamt?  Had I awakened?  'Twixt rugged rocks did I
suddenly stand alone, dreary in the dreariest moonlight.

BUT THERE LAY A MAN!  And there!  The dog leaping, bristling, whining--now
did it see me coming--then did it howl again, then did it CRY:--had I ever
heard a dog cry so for help?

And verily, what I saw, the like had I never seen.  A young shepherd did I
see, writhing, choking, quivering, with distorted countenance, and with a
heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth.

Had I ever seen so much loathing and pale horror on one countenance?  He
had perhaps gone to sleep?  Then had the serpent crawled into his throat--
there had it bitten itself fast.

My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled:--in vain!  I failed to pull the
serpent out of his throat.  Then there cried out of me:  "Bite!  Bite!

Its head off!  Bite!"--so cried it out of me; my horror, my hatred, my
loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried with one voice out of me.--

Ye daring ones around me!  Ye venturers and adventurers, and whoever of you
have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas!  Ye enigma-enjoyers!

Solve unto me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret unto me the vision
of the lonesomest one!

For it was a vision and a foresight:--WHAT did I then behold in parable?
And WHO is it that must come some day?

WHO is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled?  WHO is the
man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest will thus crawl?

--The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished him; he bit with a
strong bite!  Far away did he spit the head of the serpent--:  and sprang
up.--

No longer shepherd, no longer man--a transfigured being, a light-surrounded
being, that LAUGHED!  Never on earth laughed a man as HE laughed!

O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,--and now
gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed.

My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me:  oh, how can I still endure to
live!  And how could I endure to die at present!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XLVII.  INVOLUNTARY BLISS.

With such enigmas and bitterness in his heart did Zarathustra sail o'er the
sea.  When, however, he was four day-journeys from the Happy Isles and from
his friends, then had he surmounted all his pain--:  triumphantly and with
firm foot did he again accept his fate.  And then talked Zarathustra in
this wise to his exulting conscience:

Alone am I again, and like to be so, alone with the pure heaven, and the
open sea; and again is the afternoon around me.

On an afternoon did I find my friends for the first time; on an afternoon,
also, did I find them a second time:--at the hour when all light becometh
stiller.

For whatever happiness is still on its way 'twixt heaven and earth, now
seeketh for lodging a luminous soul:  WITH HAPPINESS hath all light now
become stiller.

O afternoon of my life!  Once did my happiness also descend to the valley
that it might seek a lodging:  then did it find those open hospitable
souls.

O afternoon of my life!  What did I not surrender that I might have one
thing:  this living plantation of my thoughts, and this dawn of my highest
hope!

Companions did the creating one once seek, and children of HIS hope:  and
lo, it turned out that he could not find them, except he himself should
first create them.

Thus am I in the midst of my work, to my children going, and from them
returning:  for the sake of his children must Zarathustra perfect himself.

For in one's heart one loveth only one's child and one's work; and where
there is great love to oneself, then is it the sign of pregnancy:  so have
I found it.

Still are my children verdant in their first spring, standing nigh one
another, and shaken in common by the winds, the trees of my garden and of
my best soil.

And verily, where such trees stand beside one another, there ARE Happy
Isles!

But one day will I take them up, and put each by itself alone:  that it may
learn lonesomeness and defiance and prudence.

Gnarled and crooked and with flexible hardness shall it then stand by the
sea, a living lighthouse of unconquerable life.

Yonder where the storms rush down into the sea, and the snout of the
mountain drinketh water, shall each on a time have his day and night
watches, for HIS testing and recognition.

Recognised and tested shall each be, to see if he be of my type and
lineage:--if he be master of a long will, silent even when he speaketh, and
giving in such wise that he TAKETH in giving:--

--So that he may one day become my companion, a fellow-creator and fellow-
enjoyer with Zarathustra:--such a one as writeth my will on my tables, for
the fuller perfection of all things.

And for his sake and for those like him, must I perfect MYSELF:  therefore
do I now avoid my happiness, and present myself to every misfortune--for MY
final testing and recognition.

And verily, it were time that I went away; and the wanderer's shadow and
the longest tedium and the stillest hour--have all said unto me:  "It is
the highest time!"

The word blew to me through the keyhole and said "Come!"  The door sprang
subtlely open unto me, and said "Go!"

But I lay enchained to my love for my children:  desire spread this snare
for me--the desire for love--that I should become the prey of my children,
and lose myself in them.

Desiring--that is now for me to have lost myself.  I POSSESS YOU, MY
CHILDREN!  In this possessing shall everything be assurance and nothing
desire.

But brooding lay the sun of my love upon me, in his own juice stewed
Zarathustra,--then did shadows and doubts fly past me.

For frost and winter I now longed:  "Oh, that frost and winter would again
make me crack and crunch!" sighed I:--then arose icy mist out of me.

My past burst its tomb, many pains buried alive woke up--:  fully slept had
they merely, concealed in corpse-clothes.

So called everything unto me in signs:  "It is time!"  But I--heard not,
until at last mine abyss moved, and my thought bit me.

Ah, abysmal thought, which art MY thought!  When shall I find strength to
hear thee burrowing, and no longer tremble?

To my very throat throbbeth my heart when I hear thee burrowing!  Thy
muteness even is like to strangle me, thou abysmal mute one!

As yet have I never ventured to call thee UP; it hath been enough that I--
have carried thee about with me!  As yet have I not been strong enough for
my final lion-wantonness and playfulness.

Sufficiently formidable unto me hath thy weight ever been:  but one day
shall I yet find the strength and the lion's voice which will call thee up!

When I shall have surmounted myself therein, then will I surmount myself
also in that which is greater; and a VICTORY shall be the seal of my
perfection!--

Meanwhile do I sail along on uncertain seas; chance flattereth me, smooth-
tongued chance; forward and backward do I gaze--, still see I no end.

As yet hath the hour of my final struggle not come to me--or doth it come
to me perhaps just now?  Verily, with insidious beauty do sea and life gaze
upon me round about:

O afternoon of my life!  O happiness before eventide!  O haven upon high
seas!  O peace in uncertainty!  How I distrust all of you!

Verily, distrustful am I of your insidious beauty!  Like the lover am I,
who distrusteth too sleek smiling.

As he pusheth the best-beloved before him--tender even in severity, the
jealous one--, so do I push this blissful hour before me.

Away with thee, thou blissful hour!  With thee hath there come to me an
involuntary bliss!  Ready for my severest pain do I here stand:--at the
wrong time hast thou come!

Away with thee, thou blissful hour!  Rather harbour there--with my
children!  Hasten! and bless them before eventide with MY happiness!

There, already approacheth eventide:  the sun sinketh.  Away--my
happiness!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.  And he waited for his misfortune the whole night;
but he waited in vain.  The night remained clear and calm, and happiness
itself came nigher and nigher unto him.  Towards morning, however,
Zarathustra laughed to his heart, and said mockingly:  "Happiness runneth
after me.  That is because I do not run after women.  Happiness, however,
is a woman."


XLVIII.  BEFORE SUNRISE.

O heaven above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven!  Thou abyss of light!
Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires.

Up to thy height to toss myself--that is MY depth!  In thy purity to hide
myself--that is MINE innocence!

The God veileth his beauty:  thus hidest thou thy stars.  Thou speakest
not:  THUS proclaimest thou thy wisdom unto me.

Mute o'er the raging sea hast thou risen for me to-day; thy love and thy
modesty make a revelation unto my raging soul.

In that thou camest unto me beautiful, veiled in thy beauty, in that thou
spakest unto me mutely, obvious in thy wisdom:

Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of thy soul!  BEFORE the sun
didst thou come unto me--the lonesomest one.

We have been friends from the beginning:  to us are grief, gruesomeness,
and ground common; even the sun is common to us.

We do not speak to each other, because we know too much--:  we keep silent
to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.

Art thou not the light of my fire?  Hast thou not the sister-soul of mine
insight?

Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to ascend beyond
ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly:--

--Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of
distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt steam like rain.

And wandered I alone, for WHAT did my soul hunger by night and in
labyrinthine paths?  And climbed I mountains, WHOM did I ever seek, if not
thee, upon mountains?

And all my wandering and mountain-climbing:  a necessity was it merely, and
a makeshift of the unhandy one:--to FLY only, wanteth mine entire will, to
fly into THEE!

And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth thee?
And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee!

The passing clouds I detest--those stealthy cats of prey:  they take from
thee and me what is common to us--the vast unbounded Yea- and Amen-saying.

These mediators and mixers we detest--the passing clouds:  those half-and-
half ones, that have neither learned to bless nor to curse from the heart.

Rather will I sit in a tub under a closed heaven, rather will I sit in the
abyss without heaven, than see thee, thou luminous heaven, tainted with
passing clouds!

And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged gold-wires of
lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their kettle-
bellies:--

--An angry drummer, because they rob me of thy Yea and Amen!--thou heaven
above me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven!  Thou abyss of light!--because
they rob thee of MY Yea and Amen.

For rather will I have noise and thunders and tempest-blasts, than this
discreet, doubting cat-repose; and also amongst men do I hate most of all
the soft-treaders, and half-and-half ones, and the doubting, hesitating,
passing clouds.

And "he who cannot bless shall LEARN to curse!"--this clear teaching dropt
unto me from the clear heaven; this star standeth in my heaven even in dark
nights.

I, however, am a blesser and a Yea-sayer, if thou be but around me, thou
pure, thou luminous heaven!  Thou abyss of light!--into all abysses do I
then carry my beneficent Yea-saying.

A blesser have I become and a Yea-sayer:  and therefore strove I long and
was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing.

This, however, is my blessing:  to stand above everything as its own
heaven, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security:  and blessed
is he who thus blesseth!

For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and
evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp
afflictions and passing clouds.

Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that "above all
things there standeth the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the
heaven of hazard, the heaven of wantonness."

"Of Hazard"--that is the oldest nobility in the world; that gave I back to
all things; I emancipated them from bondage under purpose.

This freedom and celestial serenity did I put like an azure bell above all
things, when I taught that over them and through them, no "eternal Will"--
willeth.

This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will, when I taught
that "In everything there is one thing impossible--rationality!"

A LITTLE reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from star to star--
this leaven is mixed in all things:  for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed
in all things!

A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I found
in all things, that they prefer--to DANCE on the feet of chance.

O heaven above me! thou pure, thou lofty heaven!  This is now thy purity
unto me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and reason-cobweb:--

--That thou art to me a dancing-floor for divine chances, that thou art to
me a table of the Gods, for divine dice and dice-players!--

But thou blushest?  Have I spoken unspeakable things?  Have I abused, when
I meant to bless thee?

Or is it the shame of being two of us that maketh thee blush!--Dost thou
bid me go and be silent, because now--DAY cometh?

The world is deep:--and deeper than e'er the day could read.  Not
everything may be uttered in presence of day.  But day cometh:  so let us
part!

O heaven above me, thou modest one! thou glowing one!  O thou, my happiness
before sunrise!  The day cometh:  so let us part!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


XLIX.  THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE.

1.

When Zarathustra was again on the continent, he did not go straightway to
his mountains and his cave, but made many wanderings and questionings, and
ascertained this and that; so that he said of himself jestingly:  "Lo, a
river that floweth back unto its source in many windings!"  For he wanted
to learn what had taken place AMONG MEN during the interval:  whether they
had become greater or smaller.  And once, when he saw a row of new houses,
he marvelled, and said:

"What do these houses mean?  Verily, no great soul put them up as its
simile!

Did perhaps a silly child take them out of its toy-box?  Would that another
child put them again into the box!

And these rooms and chambers--can MEN go out and in there?  They seem to be
made for silk dolls; or for dainty-eaters, who perhaps let others eat with
them."

And Zarathustra stood still and meditated.  At last he said sorrowfully:
"There hath EVERYTHING become smaller!

Everywhere do I see lower doorways:  he who is of MY type can still go
therethrough, but--he must stoop!

Oh, when shall I arrive again at my home, where I shall no longer have to
stoop--shall no longer have to stoop BEFORE THE SMALL ONES!"--And
Zarathustra sighed, and gazed into the distance.--

The same day, however, he gave his discourse on the bedwarfing virtue.

2.

I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open:  they do not forgive me
for not envying their virtues.

They bite at me, because I say unto them that for small people, small
virtues are necessary--and because it is hard for me to understand that
small people are NECESSARY!

Here am I still like a cock in a strange farm-yard, at which even the hens
peck:  but on that account I am not unfriendly to the hens.

I am courteous towards them, as towards all small annoyances; to be prickly
towards what is small, seemeth to me wisdom for hedgehogs.

They all speak of me when they sit around their fire in the evening--they
speak of me, but no one thinketh--of me!

This is the new stillness which I have experienced:  their noise around me
spreadeth a mantle over my thoughts.

They shout to one another:  "What is this gloomy cloud about to do to us?
Let us see that it doth not bring a plague upon us!"

And recently did a woman seize upon her child that was coming unto me:
"Take the children away," cried she, "such eyes scorch children's souls."

They cough when I speak:  they think coughing an objection to strong winds
--they divine nothing of the boisterousness of my happiness!

"We have not yet time for Zarathustra"--so they object; but what matter
about a time that "hath no time" for Zarathustra?

And if they should altogether praise me, how could I go to sleep on THEIR
praise?  A girdle of spines is their praise unto me:  it scratcheth me even
when I take it off.

And this also did I learn among them:  the praiser doeth as if he gave
back; in truth, however, he wanteth more to be given him!

Ask my foot if their lauding and luring strains please it!  Verily, to such
measure and ticktack, it liketh neither to dance nor to stand still.

To small virtues would they fain lure and laud me; to the ticktack of small
happiness would they fain persuade my foot.

I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open; they have become
SMALLER, and ever become smaller:--THE REASON THEREOF IS THEIR DOCTRINE OF
HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE.

For they are moderate also in virtue,--because they want comfort.  With
comfort, however, moderate virtue only is compatible.

To be sure, they also learn in their way to stride on and stride forward:
that, I call their HOBBLING.--Thereby they become a hindrance to all who
are in haste.

And many of them go forward, and look backwards thereby, with stiffened
necks:  those do I like to run up against.

Foot and eye shall not lie, nor give the lie to each other.  But there is
much lying among small people.

Some of them WILL, but most of them are WILLED.  Some of them are genuine,
but most of them are bad actors.

There are actors without knowing it amongst them, and actors without
intending it--, the genuine ones are always rare, especially the genuine
actors.

Of man there is little here:  therefore do their women masculinise
themselves.  For only he who is man enough, will--SAVE THE WOMAN in woman.

And this hypocrisy found I worst amongst them, that even those who command
feign the virtues of those who serve.

"I serve, thou servest, we serve"--so chanteth here even the hypocrisy of
the rulers--and alas! if the first lord be ONLY the first servant!

Ah, even upon their hypocrisy did mine eyes' curiosity alight; and well did
I divine all their fly-happiness, and their buzzing around sunny window-
panes.

So much kindness, so much weakness do I see.  So much justice and pity, so
much weakness.

Round, fair, and considerate are they to one another, as grains of sand are
round, fair, and considerate to grains of sand.

Modestly to embrace a small happiness--that do they call "submission"! and
at the same time they peer modestly after a new small happiness.

In their hearts they want simply one thing most of all:  that no one hurt
them.  Thus do they anticipate every one's wishes and do well unto every
one.

That, however, is COWARDICE, though it be called "virtue."--

And when they chance to speak harshly, those small people, then do _I_ hear
therein only their hoarseness--every draught of air maketh them hoarse.

Shrewd indeed are they, their virtues have shrewd fingers.  But they lack
fists:  their fingers do not know how to creep behind fists.

Virtue for them is what maketh modest and tame:  therewith have they made
the wolf a dog, and man himself man's best domestic animal.

"We set our chair in the MIDST"--so saith their smirking unto me--"and as
far from dying gladiators as from satisfied swine."

That, however, is--MEDIOCRITY, though it be called moderation.--

3.

I pass through this people and let fall many words:  but they know neither
how to take nor how to retain them.

They wonder why I came not to revile venery and vice; and verily, I came
not to warn against pickpockets either!

They wonder why I am not ready to abet and whet their wisdom:  as if they
had not yet enough of wiseacres, whose voices grate on mine ear like slate-
pencils!

And when I call out:  "Curse all the cowardly devils in you, that would
fain whimper and fold the hands and adore"--then do they shout:
"Zarathustra is godless."

And especially do their teachers of submission shout this;--but precisely
in their ears do I love to cry:  "Yea!  I AM Zarathustra, the godless!"

Those teachers of submission!  Wherever there is aught puny, or sickly, or
scabby, there do they creep like lice; and only my disgust preventeth me
from cracking them.

Well!  This is my sermon for THEIR ears:  I am Zarathustra the godless, who
saith:  "Who is more godless than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?"

I am Zarathustra the godless:  where do I find mine equal?  And all those
are mine equals who give unto themselves their Will, and divest themselves
of all submission.

I am Zarathustra the godless!  I cook every chance in MY pot.  And only
when it hath been quite cooked do I welcome it as MY food.

And verily, many a chance came imperiously unto me:  but still more
imperiously did my WILL speak unto it,--then did it lie imploringly upon
its knees--

--Imploring that it might find home and heart with me, and saying
flatteringly:  "See, O Zarathustra, how friend only cometh unto friend!"--

But why talk I, when no one hath MINE ears!  And so will I shout it out
unto all the winds:

Ye ever become smaller, ye small people!  Ye crumble away, ye comfortable
ones!  Ye will yet perish--

--By your many small virtues, by your many small omissions, and by your
many small submissions!

Too tender, too yielding:  so is your soil!  But for a tree to become
GREAT, it seeketh to twine hard roots around hard rocks!

Also what ye omit weaveth at the web of all the human future; even your
naught is a cobweb, and a spider that liveth on the blood of the future.

And when ye take, then is it like stealing, ye small virtuous ones; but
even among knaves HONOUR saith that "one shall only steal when one cannot
rob."

"It giveth itself"--that is also a doctrine of submission.  But I say unto
you, ye comfortable ones, that IT TAKETH TO ITSELF, and will ever take more
and more from you!

Ah, that ye would renounce all HALF-willing, and would decide for idleness
as ye decide for action!

Ah, that ye understood my word:  "Do ever what ye will--but first be such
as CAN WILL.

Love ever your neighbour as yourselves--but first be such as LOVE
THEMSELVES--

--Such as love with great love, such as love with great contempt!"  Thus
speaketh Zarathustra the godless.--

But why talk I, when no one hath MINE ears!  It is still an hour too early
for me here.

Mine own forerunner am I among this people, mine own cockcrow in dark
lanes.

But THEIR hour cometh!  And there cometh also mine!  Hourly do they become
smaller, poorer, unfruitfuller,--poor herbs! poor earth!

And SOON shall they stand before me like dry grass and prairie, and verily,
weary of themselves--and panting for FIRE, more than for water!

O blessed hour of the lightning!  O mystery before noontide!--Running fires
will I one day make of them, and heralds with flaming tongues:--

--Herald shall they one day with flaming tongues:  It cometh, it is nigh,
THE GREAT NOONTIDE!

Thus spake Zarathustra.


L.  ON THE OLIVE-MOUNT.

Winter, a bad guest, sitteth with me at home; blue are my hands with his
friendly hand-shaking.

I honour him, that bad guest, but gladly leave him alone.  Gladly do I run
away from him; and when one runneth WELL, then one escapeth him!

With warm feet and warm thoughts do I run where the wind is calm--to the
sunny corner of mine olive-mount.

There do I laugh at my stern guest, and am still fond of him; because he
cleareth my house of flies, and quieteth many little noises.

For he suffereth it not if a gnat wanteth to buzz, or even two of them;
also the lanes maketh he lonesome, so that the moonlight is afraid there at
night.

A hard guest is he,--but I honour him, and do not worship, like the
tenderlings, the pot-bellied fire-idol.

Better even a little teeth-chattering than idol-adoration!--so willeth my
nature.  And especially have I a grudge against all ardent, steaming,
steamy fire-idols.

Him whom I love, I love better in winter than in summer; better do I now
mock at mine enemies, and more heartily, when winter sitteth in my house.

Heartily, verily, even when I CREEP into bed--:  there, still laugheth and
wantoneth my hidden happiness; even my deceptive dream laugheth.

I, a--creeper?  Never in my life did I creep before the powerful; and if
ever I lied, then did I lie out of love.  Therefore am I glad even in my
winter-bed.

A poor bed warmeth me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my poverty.
And in winter she is most faithful unto me.

With a wickedness do I begin every day:  I mock at the winter with a cold
bath:  on that account grumbleth my stern house-mate.

Also do I like to tickle him with a wax-taper, that he may finally let the
heavens emerge from ashy-grey twilight.

For especially wicked am I in the morning:  at the early hour when the pail
rattleth at the well, and horses neigh warmly in grey lanes:--

Impatiently do I then wait, that the clear sky may finally dawn for me, the
snow-bearded winter-sky, the hoary one, the white-head,--

--The winter-sky, the silent winter-sky, which often stifleth even its sun!

Did I perhaps learn from it the long clear silence?  Or did it learn it
from me?  Or hath each of us devised it himself?

Of all good things the origin is a thousandfold,--all good roguish things
spring into existence for joy:  how could they always do so--for once only!

A good roguish thing is also the long silence, and to look, like the
winter-sky, out of a clear, round-eyed countenance:--

--Like it to stifle one's sun, and one's inflexible solar will:  verily,
this art and this winter-roguishness have I learnt WELL!

My best-loved wickedness and art is it, that my silence hath learned not to
betray itself by silence.

Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants:  all
those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude.

That no one might see down into my depth and into mine ultimate will--for
that purpose did I devise the long clear silence.

Many a shrewd one did I find:  he veiled his countenance and made his water
muddy, that no one might see therethrough and thereunder.

But precisely unto him came the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers:
precisely from him did they fish his best-concealed fish!

But the clear, the honest, the transparent--these are for me the wisest
silent ones:  in them, so PROFOUND is the depth that even the clearest
water doth not--betray it.--

Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed whitehead above me!
Oh, thou heavenly simile of my soul and its wantonness!

And MUST I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed gold--lest my
soul should be ripped up?

MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs--all those
enviers and injurers around me?

Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls--how
COULD their envy endure my happiness!

Thus do I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks--and NOT that my
mountain windeth all the solar girdles around it!

They hear only the whistling of my winter-storms:  and know NOT that I also
travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south-winds.

They commiserate also my accidents and chances:--but MY word saith:
"Suffer the chance to come unto me:  innocent is it as a little child!"

How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it accidents,
and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and enmantling snowflakes!

--If I did not myself commiserate their PITY, the pity of those enviers and
injurers!

--If I did not myself sigh before them, and chatter with cold, and
patiently LET myself be swathed in their pity!

This is the wise waggish-will and good-will of my soul, that it CONCEALETH
NOT its winters and glacial storms; it concealeth not its chilblains
either.

To one man, lonesomeness is the flight of the sick one; to another, it is
the flight FROM the sick ones.

Let them HEAR me chattering and sighing with winter-cold, all those poor
squinting knaves around me!  With such sighing and chattering do I flee
from their heated rooms.

Let them sympathise with me and sigh with me on account of my chilblains:
"At the ice of knowledge will he yet FREEZE TO DEATH!"--so they mourn.

Meanwhile do I run with warm feet hither and thither on mine olive-mount:
in the sunny corner of mine olive-mount do I sing, and mock at all pity.--

Thus sang Zarathustra.


LI.  ON PASSING-BY.

Thus slowly wandering through many peoples and divers cities, did
Zarathustra return by round-about roads to his mountains and his cave.  And
behold, thereby came he unawares also to the gate of the GREAT CITY.  Here,
however, a foaming fool, with extended hands, sprang forward to him and
stood in his way.  It was the same fool whom the people called "the ape of
Zarathustra:"  for he had learned from him something of the expression and
modulation of language, and perhaps liked also to borrow from the store of
his wisdom.  And the fool talked thus to Zarathustra:

O Zarathustra, here is the great city:  here hast thou nothing to seek and
everything to lose.

Why wouldst thou wade through this mire?  Have pity upon thy foot!  Spit
rather on the gate of the city, and--turn back!

Here is the hell for anchorites' thoughts:  here are great thoughts seethed
alive and boiled small.

Here do all great sentiments decay:  here may only rattle-boned sensations
rattle!

Smellest thou not already the shambles and cookshops of the spirit?
Steameth not this city with the fumes of slaughtered spirit?

Seest thou not the souls hanging like limp dirty rags?--And they make
newspapers also out of these rags!

Hearest thou not how spirit hath here become a verbal game?  Loathsome
verbal swill doth it vomit forth!--And they make newspapers also out of
this verbal swill.

They hound one another, and know not whither!  They inflame one another,
and know not why!  They tinkle with their pinchbeck, they jingle with their
gold.

They are cold, and seek warmth from distilled waters:  they are inflamed,
and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are all sick and sore through
public opinion.

All lusts and vices are here at home; but here there are also the virtuous;
there is much appointable appointed virtue:--

Much appointable virtue with scribe-fingers, and hardy sitting-flesh and
waiting-flesh, blessed with small breast-stars, and padded, haunchless
daughters.

There is here also much piety, and much faithful spittle-licking and
spittle-backing, before the God of Hosts.

"From on high," drippeth the star, and the gracious spittle; for the high,
longeth every starless bosom.

The moon hath its court, and the court hath its moon-calves:  unto all,
however, that cometh from the court do the mendicant people pray, and all
appointable mendicant virtues.

"I serve, thou servest, we serve"--so prayeth all appointable virtue to the
prince:  that the merited star may at last stick on the slender breast!

But the moon still revolveth around all that is earthly:  so revolveth also
the prince around what is earthliest of all--that, however, is the gold of
the shopman.

The God of the Hosts of war is not the God of the golden bar; the prince
proposeth, but the shopman--disposeth!

By all that is luminous and strong and good in thee, O Zarathustra!  Spit
on this city of shopmen and return back!

Here floweth all blood putridly and tepidly and frothily through all veins:
spit on the great city, which is the great slum where all the scum frotheth
together!

Spit on the city of compressed souls and slender breasts, of pointed eyes
and sticky fingers--

--On the city of the obtrusive, the brazen-faced, the pen-demagogues and
tongue-demagogues, the overheated ambitious:--

Where everything maimed, ill-famed, lustful, untrustful, over-mellow,
sickly-yellow and seditious, festereth pernicious:--

--Spit on the great city and turn back!--

Here, however, did Zarathustra interrupt the foaming fool, and shut his
mouth.--

Stop this at once! called out Zarathustra, long have thy speech and thy
species disgusted me!

Why didst thou live so long by the swamp, that thou thyself hadst to become
a frog and a toad?

Floweth there not a tainted, frothy, swamp-blood in thine own veins, when
thou hast thus learned to croak and revile?

Why wentest thou not into the forest?  Or why didst thou not till the
ground?  Is the sea not full of green islands?

I despise thy contempt; and when thou warnedst me--why didst thou not warn
thyself?

Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but not
out of the swamp!--

They call thee mine ape, thou foaming fool:  but I call thee my grunting-
pig,--by thy grunting, thou spoilest even my praise of folly.

What was it that first made thee grunt?  Because no one sufficiently
FLATTERED thee:--therefore didst thou seat thyself beside this filth, that
thou mightest have cause for much grunting,--

--That thou mightest have cause for much VENGEANCE!  For vengeance, thou
vain fool, is all thy foaming; I have divined thee well!

But thy fools'-word injureth ME, even when thou art right!  And even if
Zarathustra's word WERE a hundred times justified, thou wouldst ever--DO
wrong with my word!

Thus spake Zarathustra.  Then did he look on the great city and sighed, and
was long silent.  At last he spake thus:

I loathe also this great city, and not only this fool.  Here and there--
there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen.

Woe to this great city!--And I would that I already saw the pillar of fire
in which it will be consumed!

For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide.  But this hath
its time and its own fate.--

This precept, however, give I unto thee, in parting, thou fool:  Where one
can no longer love, there should one--PASS BY!--

Thus spake Zarathustra, and passed by the fool and the great city.


LII.  THE APOSTATES.

1.

Ah, lieth everything already withered and grey which but lately stood green
and many-hued on this meadow!  And how much honey of hope did I carry hence
into my beehives!

Those young hearts have already all become old--and not old even! only
weary, ordinary, comfortable:--they declare it:  "We have again become
pious."

Of late did I see them run forth at early morn with valorous steps:  but
the feet of their knowledge became weary, and now do they malign even their
morning valour!

Verily, many of them once lifted their legs like the dancer; to them winked
the laughter of my wisdom:--then did they bethink themselves.  Just now
have I seen them bent down--to creep to the cross.

Around light and liberty did they once flutter like gnats and young poets.
A little older, a little colder:  and already are they mystifiers, and
mumblers and mollycoddles.

Did perhaps their hearts despond, because lonesomeness had swallowed me
like a whale?  Did their ear perhaps hearken yearningly-long for me IN
VAIN, and for my trumpet-notes and herald-calls?

--Ah!  Ever are there but few of those whose hearts have persistent courage
and exuberance; and in such remaineth also the spirit patient.  The rest,
however, are COWARDLY.

The rest:  these are always the great majority, the common-place, the
superfluous, the far-too many--those all are cowardly!--

Him who is of my type, will also the experiences of my type meet on the
way:  so that his first companions must be corpses and buffoons.

His second companions, however--they will call themselves his BELIEVERS,--
will be a living host, with much love, much folly, much unbearded
veneration.

To those believers shall he who is of my type among men not bind his heart;
in those spring-times and many-hued meadows shall he not believe, who
knoweth the fickly faint-hearted human species!

COULD they do otherwise, then would they also WILL otherwise.  The half-
and-half spoil every whole.  That leaves become withered,--what is there to
lament about that!

Let them go and fall away, O Zarathustra, and do not lament!  Better even
to blow amongst them with rustling winds,--

--Blow amongst those leaves, O Zarathustra, that everything WITHERED may
run away from thee the faster!--

2.

"We have again become pious"--so do those apostates confess; and some of
them are still too pusillanimous thus to confess.

Unto them I look into the eye,--before them I say it unto their face and
unto the blush on their cheeks:  Ye are those who again PRAY!

It is however a shame to pray!  Not for all, but for thee, and me, and
whoever hath his conscience in his head.  For THEE it is a shame to pray!

Thou knowest it well:  the faint-hearted devil in thee, which would fain
fold its arms, and place its hands in its bosom, and take it easier:--this
faint-hearted devil persuadeth thee that "there IS a God!"

THEREBY, however, dost thou belong to the light-dreading type, to whom
light never permitteth repose:  now must thou daily thrust thy head deeper
into obscurity and vapour!

And verily, thou choosest the hour well:  for just now do the nocturnal
birds again fly abroad.  The hour hath come for all light-dreading people,
the vesper hour and leisure hour, when they do not--"take leisure."

I hear it and smell it:  it hath come--their hour for hunt and procession,
not indeed for a wild hunt, but for a tame, lame, snuffling, soft-
treaders', soft-prayers' hunt,--

--For a hunt after susceptible simpletons:  all mouse-traps for the heart
have again been set!  And whenever I lift a curtain, a night-moth rusheth
out of it.

Did it perhaps squat there along with another night-moth?  For everywhere
do I smell small concealed communities; and wherever there are closets
there are new devotees therein, and the atmosphere of devotees.

They sit for long evenings beside one another, and say:  "Let us again
become like little children and say, 'good God!'"--ruined in mouths and
stomachs by the pious confectioners.

Or they look for long evenings at a crafty, lurking cross-spider, that
preacheth prudence to the spiders themselves, and teacheth that "under
crosses it is good for cobweb-spinning!"

Or they sit all day at swamps with angle-rods, and on that account think
themselves PROFOUND; but whoever fisheth where there are no fish, I do not
even call him superficial!

Or they learn in godly-gay style to play the harp with a hymn-poet, who
would fain harp himself into the heart of young girls:--for he hath tired
of old girls and their praises.

Or they learn to shudder with a learned semi-madcap, who waiteth in
darkened rooms for spirits to come to him--and the spirit runneth away
entirely!

Or they listen to an old roving howl--and growl-piper, who hath learnt from
the sad winds the sadness of sounds; now pipeth he as the wind, and
preacheth sadness in sad strains.

And some of them have even become night-watchmen:  they know now how to
blow horns, and go about at night and awaken old things which have long
fallen asleep.

Five words about old things did I hear yester-night at the garden-wall:
they came from such old, sorrowful, arid night-watchmen.

"For a father he careth not sufficiently for his children:  human fathers
do this better!"--

"He is too old!  He now careth no more for his children,"--answered the
other night-watchman.

"HATH he then children?  No one can prove it unless he himself prove it!  I
have long wished that he would for once prove it thoroughly."

"Prove?  As if HE had ever proved anything!  Proving is difficult to him;
he layeth great stress on one's BELIEVING him."

"Ay!  Ay!  Belief saveth him; belief in him.  That is the way with old
people!  So it is with us also!"--

--Thus spake to each other the two old night-watchmen and light-scarers,
and tooted thereupon sorrowfully on their horns:  so did it happen yester-
night at the garden-wall.

To me, however, did the heart writhe with laughter, and was like to break;
it knew not where to go, and sunk into the midriff.

Verily, it will be my death yet--to choke with laughter when I see asses
drunken, and hear night-watchmen thus doubt about God.

Hath the time not LONG since passed for all such doubts?  Who may nowadays
awaken such old slumbering, light-shunning things!

With the old Deities hath it long since come to an end:--and verily, a good
joyful Deity-end had they!

They did not "begloom" themselves to death--that do people fabricate!  On
the contrary, they--LAUGHED themselves to death once on a time!

That took place when the unGodliest utterance came from a God himself--the
utterance:  "There is but one God!  Thou shalt have no other Gods before
me!"--

--An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot himself in such wise:--

And all the Gods then laughed, and shook upon their thrones, and exclaimed:
"Is it not just divinity that there are Gods, but no God?"

He that hath an ear let him hear.--

Thus talked Zarathustra in the city he loved, which is surnamed "The Pied
Cow."  For from here he had but two days to travel to reach once more his
cave and his animals; his soul, however, rejoiced unceasingly on account of
the nighness of his return home.


LIII.  THE RETURN HOME.

O lonesomeness!  My HOME, lonesomeness!  Too long have I lived wildly in
wild remoteness, to return to thee without tears!

Now threaten me with the finger as mothers threaten; now smile upon me as
mothers smile; now say just:  "Who was it that like a whirlwind once rushed
away from me?--

--Who when departing called out:  'Too long have I sat with lonesomeness;
there have I unlearned silence!'  THAT hast thou learned now--surely?

O Zarathustra, everything do I know; and that thou wert MORE FORSAKEN
amongst the many, thou unique one, than thou ever wert with me!

One thing is forsakenness, another matter is lonesomeness:  THAT hast thou
now learned!  And that amongst men thou wilt ever be wild and strange:

--Wild and strange even when they love thee:  for above all they want to be
TREATED INDULGENTLY!

Here, however, art thou at home and house with thyself; here canst thou
utter everything, and unbosom all motives; nothing is here ashamed of
concealed, congealed feelings.

Here do all things come caressingly to thy talk and flatter thee:  for they
want to ride upon thy back.  On every simile dost thou here ride to every
truth.

Uprightly and openly mayest thou here talk to all things:  and verily, it
soundeth as praise in their ears, for one to talk to all things--directly!

Another matter, however, is forsakenness.  For, dost thou remember, O
Zarathustra?  When thy bird screamed overhead, when thou stoodest in the
forest, irresolute, ignorant where to go, beside a corpse:--

--When thou spakest:  'Let mine animals lead me!  More dangerous have I
found it among men than among animals:'--THAT was forsakenness!

And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra?  When thou sattest in thine isle, a
well of wine giving and granting amongst empty buckets, bestowing and
distributing amongst the thirsty:

--Until at last thou alone sattest thirsty amongst the drunken ones, and
wailedst nightly:  'Is taking not more blessed than giving?  And stealing
yet more blessed than taking?'--THAT was forsakenness!

And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra?  When thy stillest hour came and
drove thee forth from thyself, when with wicked whispering it said:  'Speak
and succumb!'-

--When it disgusted thee with all thy waiting and silence, and discouraged
thy humble courage:  THAT was forsakenness!"--

O lonesomeness!  My home, lonesomeness!  How blessedly and tenderly
speaketh thy voice unto me!

We do not question each other, we do not complain to each other; we go
together openly through open doors.

For all is open with thee and clear; and even the hours run here on lighter
feet.  For in the dark, time weigheth heavier upon one than in the light.

Here fly open unto me all being's words and word-cabinets:  here all being
wanteth to become words, here all becoming wanteth to learn of me how to
talk.

Down there, however--all talking is in vain!  There, forgetting and
passing-by are the best wisdom:  THAT have I learned now!

He who would understand everything in man must handle everything.  But for
that I have too clean hands.

I do not like even to inhale their breath; alas! that I have lived so long
among their noise and bad breaths!

O blessed stillness around me!  O pure odours around me!  How from a deep
breast this stillness fetcheth pure breath!  How it hearkeneth, this
blessed stillness!

But down there--there speaketh everything, there is everything misheard.
If one announce one's wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the market-place
will out-jingle it with pennies!

Everything among them talketh; no one knoweth any longer how to understand.
Everything falleth into the water; nothing falleth any longer into deep
wells.

Everything among them talketh, nothing succeedeth any longer and
accomplisheth itself.  Everything cackleth, but who will still sit quietly
on the nest and hatch eggs?

Everything among them talketh, everything is out-talked.  And that which
yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its tooth, hangeth to-day,
outchamped and outchewed, from the mouths of the men of to-day.

Everything among them talketh, everything is betrayed.  And what was once
called the secret and secrecy of profound souls, belongeth to-day to the
street-trumpeters and other butterflies.

O human hubbub, thou wonderful thing!  Thou noise in dark streets!  Now art
thou again behind me:--my greatest danger lieth behind me!

In indulging and pitying lay ever my greatest danger; and all human hubbub
wisheth to be indulged and tolerated.

With suppressed truths, with fool's hand and befooled heart, and rich in
petty lies of pity:--thus have I ever lived among men.

Disguised did I sit amongst them, ready to misjudge MYSELF that I might
endure THEM, and willingly saying to myself:  "Thou fool, thou dost not
know men!"

One unlearneth men when one liveth amongst them:  there is too much
foreground in all men--what can far-seeing, far-longing eyes do THERE!

And, fool that I was, when they misjudged me, I indulged them on that
account more than myself, being habitually hard on myself, and often even
taking revenge on myself for the indulgence.

Stung all over by poisonous flies, and hollowed like the stone by many
drops of wickedness:  thus did I sit among them, and still said to myself:
"Innocent is everything petty of its pettiness!"

Especially did I find those who call themselves "the good," the most
poisonous flies; they sting in all innocence, they lie in all innocence;
how COULD they--be just towards me!

He who liveth amongst the good--pity teacheth him to lie.  Pity maketh
stifling air for all free souls.  For the stupidity of the good is
unfathomable.

To conceal myself and my riches--THAT did I learn down there:  for every
one did I still find poor in spirit.  It was the lie of my pity, that I
knew in every one,

--That I saw and scented in every one, what was ENOUGH of spirit for him,
and what was TOO MUCH!

Their stiff wise men:  I call them wise, not stiff--thus did I learn to
slur over words.

The grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases.  Under old rubbish rest bad
vapours.  One should not stir up the marsh.  One should live on mountains.

With blessed nostrils do I again breathe mountain-freedom.  Freed at last
is my nose from the smell of all human hubbub!

With sharp breezes tickled, as with sparkling wine, SNEEZETH my soul--
sneezeth, and shouteth self-congratulatingly:  "Health to thee!"

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LIV.  THE THREE EVIL THINGS.

1.

In my dream, in my last morning-dream, I stood to-day on a promontory--
beyond the world; I held a pair of scales, and WEIGHED the world.

Alas, that the rosy dawn came too early to me:  she glowed me awake, the
jealous one!  Jealous is she always of the glows of my morning-dream.

Measurable by him who hath time, weighable by a good weigher, attainable by
strong pinions, divinable by divine nut-crackers:  thus did my dream find
the world:--

My dream, a bold sailor, half-ship, half-hurricane, silent as the
butterfly, impatient as the falcon:  how had it the patience and leisure
to-day for world-weighing!

Did my wisdom perhaps speak secretly to it, my laughing, wide-awake day-
wisdom, which mocketh at all "infinite worlds"?  For it saith:  "Where
force is, there becometh NUMBER the master:  it hath more force."

How confidently did my dream contemplate this finite world, not new-
fangledly, not old-fangledly, not timidly, not entreatingly:--

--As if a big round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe golden apple,
with a coolly-soft, velvety skin:--thus did the world present itself unto
me:--

--As if a tree nodded unto me, a broad-branched, strong-willed tree, curved
as a recline and a foot-stool for weary travellers:  thus did the world
stand on my promontory:--

--As if delicate hands carried a casket towards me--a casket open for the
delectation of modest adoring eyes:  thus did the world present itself
before me to-day:--

--Not riddle enough to scare human love from it, not solution enough to put
to sleep human wisdom:--a humanly good thing was the world to me to-day, of
which such bad things are said!

How I thank my morning-dream that I thus at to-day's dawn, weighed the
world!  As a humanly good thing did it come unto me, this dream and heart-
comforter!

And that I may do the like by day, and imitate and copy its best, now will
I put the three worst things on the scales, and weigh them humanly well.--

He who taught to bless taught also to curse:  what are the three best
cursed things in the world?  These will I put on the scales.

VOLUPTUOUSNESS, PASSION FOR POWER, and SELFISHNESS:  these three things
have hitherto been best cursed, and have been in worst and falsest repute--
these three things will I weigh humanly well.

Well!  Here is my promontory, and there is the sea--IT rolleth hither unto
me, shaggily and fawningly, the old, faithful, hundred-headed dog-monster
that I love!--

Well!  Here will I hold the scales over the weltering sea:  and also a
witness do I choose to look on--thee, the anchorite-tree, thee, the strong-
odoured, broad-arched tree that I love!--

On what bridge goeth the now to the hereafter?  By what constraint doth the
high stoop to the low?  And what enjoineth even the highest still--to grow
upwards?--

Now stand the scales poised and at rest:  three heavy questions have I
thrown in; three heavy answers carrieth the other scale.

2.

Voluptuousness:  unto all hair-shirted despisers of the body, a sting and
stake; and, cursed as "the world," by all backworldsmen:  for it mocketh
and befooleth all erring, misinferring teachers.

Voluptuousness:  to the rabble, the slow fire at which it is burnt; to all
wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared heat and stew furnace.

Voluptuousness:  to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the garden-
happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks-overflow to the present.

Voluptuousness:  only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion-willed,
however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines.

Voluptuousness:  the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and
highest hope.  For to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage,--

--To many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman:--and who
hath fully understood HOW UNKNOWN to each other are man and woman!

Voluptuousness:--but I will have hedges around my thoughts, and even around
my words, lest swine and libertine should break into my gardens!--

Passion for power:  the glowing scourge of the hardest of the heart-hard;
the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest themselves; the gloomy flame
of living pyres.

Passion for power:  the wicked gadfly which is mounted on the vainest
peoples; the scorner of all uncertain virtue; which rideth on every horse
and on every pride.

Passion for power:  the earthquake which breaketh and upbreaketh all that
is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punitive demolisher of whited
sepulchres; the flashing interrogative-sign beside premature answers.

Passion for power:  before whose glance man creepeth and croucheth and
drudgeth, and becometh lower than the serpent and the swine:--until at last
great contempt crieth out of him--,

Passion for power:  the terrible teacher of great contempt, which preacheth
to their face to cities and empires:  "Away with thee!"--until a voice
crieth out of themselves:  "Away with ME!"

Passion for power:  which, however, mounteth alluringly even to the pure
and lonesome, and up to self-satisfied elevations, glowing like a love that
painteth purple felicities alluringly on earthly heavens.

Passion for power:  but who would call it PASSION, when the height longeth
to stoop for power!  Verily, nothing sick or diseased is there in such
longing and descending!

That the lonesome height may not for ever remain lonesome and self-
sufficing; that the mountains may come to the valleys and the winds of the
heights to the plains:--

Oh, who could find the right prenomen and honouring name for such longing!
"Bestowing virtue"--thus did Zarathustra once name the unnamable.

And then it happened also,--and verily, it happened for the first time!--
that his word blessed SELFISHNESS, the wholesome, healthy selfishness, that
springeth from the powerful soul:--

--From the powerful soul, to which the high body appertaineth, the
handsome, triumphing, refreshing body, around which everything becometh a
mirror:

--The pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome is the
self-enjoying soul.  Of such bodies and souls the self-enjoyment calleth
itself "virtue."

With its words of good and bad doth such self-enjoyment shelter itself as
with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness doth it banish from
itself everything contemptible.

Away from itself doth it banish everything cowardly; it saith:  "Bad--THAT
IS cowardly!"  Contemptible seem to it the ever-solicitous, the sighing,
the complaining, and whoever pick up the most trifling advantage.

It despiseth also all bitter-sweet wisdom:  for verily, there is also
wisdom that bloometh in the dark, a night-shade wisdom, which ever sigheth:
"All is vain!"

Shy distrust is regarded by it as base, and every one who wanteth oaths
instead of looks and hands:  also all over-distrustful wisdom,--for such is
the mode of cowardly souls.

Baser still it regardeth the obsequious, doggish one, who immediately lieth
on his back, the submissive one; and there is also wisdom that is
submissive, and doggish, and pious, and obsequious.

Hateful to it altogether, and a loathing, is he who will never defend
himself, he who swalloweth down poisonous spittle and bad looks, the all-
too-patient one, the all-endurer, the all-satisfied one:  for that is the
mode of slaves.

Whether they be servile before Gods and divine spurnings, or before men and
stupid human opinions:  at ALL kinds of slaves doth it spit, this blessed
selfishness!

Bad:  thus doth it call all that is spirit-broken, and sordidly-servile--
constrained, blinking eyes, depressed hearts, and the false submissive
style, which kisseth with broad cowardly lips.

And spurious wisdom:  so doth it call all the wit that slaves, and hoary-
headed and weary ones affect; and especially all the cunning, spurious-
witted, curious-witted foolishness of priests!

The spurious wise, however, all the priests, the world-weary, and those
whose souls are of feminine and servile nature--oh, how hath their game all
along abused selfishness!

And precisely THAT was to be virtue and was to be called virtue--to abuse
selfishness!  And "selfless"--so did they wish themselves with good reason,
all those world-weary cowards and cross-spiders!

But to all those cometh now the day, the change, the sword of judgment, THE
GREAT NOONTIDE:  then shall many things be revealed!

And he who proclaimeth the EGO wholesome and holy, and selfishness blessed,
verily, he, the prognosticator, speaketh also what he knoweth:  "BEHOLD, IT
COMETH, IT IS NIGH, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!"

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LV.  THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY.

1.

My mouthpiece--is of the people:  too coarsely and cordially do I talk for
Angora rabbits.  And still stranger soundeth my word unto all ink-fish and
pen-foxes.

My hand--is a fool's hand:  woe unto all tables and walls, and whatever
hath room for fool's sketching, fool's scrawling!

My foot--is a horse-foot; therewith do I trample and trot over stick and
stone, in the fields up and down, and am bedevilled with delight in all
fast racing.

My stomach--is surely an eagle's stomach?  For it preferreth lamb's flesh.
Certainly it is a bird's stomach.

Nourished with innocent things, and with few, ready and impatient to fly,
to fly away--that is now my nature:  why should there not be something of
bird-nature therein!

And especially that I am hostile to the spirit of gravity, that is bird-
nature:--verily, deadly hostile, supremely hostile, originally hostile!
Oh, whither hath my hostility not flown and misflown!

Thereof could I sing a song--and WILL sing it:  though I be alone in an
empty house, and must sing it to mine own ears.

Other singers are there, to be sure, to whom only the full house maketh the
voice soft, the hand eloquent, the eye expressive, the heart wakeful:--
those do I not resemble.--

2.

He who one day teacheth men to fly will have shifted all landmarks; to him
will all landmarks themselves fly into the air; the earth will he christen
anew--as "the light body."

The ostrich runneth faster than the fastest horse, but it also thrusteth
its head heavily into the heavy earth:  thus is it with the man who cannot
yet fly.

Heavy unto him are earth and life, and so WILLETH the spirit of gravity!
But he who would become light, and be a bird, must love himself:--thus do
_I_ teach.

Not, to be sure, with the love of the sick and infected, for with them
stinketh even self-love!

One must learn to love oneself--thus do I teach--with a wholesome and
healthy love:  that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving
about.

Such roving about christeneth itself "brotherly love"; with these words
hath there hitherto been the best lying and dissembling, and especially by
those who have been burdensome to every one.

And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and to-morrow to LEARN to love
oneself.  Rather is it of all arts the finest, subtlest, last and
patientest.

For to its possessor is all possession well concealed, and of all treasure-
pits one's own is last excavated--so causeth the spirit of gravity.

Almost in the cradle are we apportioned with heavy words and worths:
"good" and "evil"--so calleth itself this dowry.  For the sake of it we are
forgiven for living.

And therefore suffereth one little children to come unto one, to forbid
them betimes to love themselves--so causeth the spirit of gravity.

And we--we bear loyally what is apportioned unto us, on hard shoulders,
over rugged mountains!  And when we sweat, then do people say to us:  "Yea,
life is hard to bear!"

But man himself only is hard to bear!  The reason thereof is that he
carrieth too many extraneous things on his shoulders.  Like the camel
kneeleth he down, and letteth himself be well laden.

Especially the strong load-bearing man in whom reverence resideth.  Too
many EXTRANEOUS heavy words and worths loadeth he upon himself--then
seemeth life to him a desert!

And verily!  Many a thing also that is OUR OWN is hard to bear!  And many
internal things in man are like the oyster--repulsive and slippery and hard
to grasp;-

So that an elegant shell, with elegant adornment, must plead for them.  But
this art also must one learn:  to HAVE a shell, and a fine appearance, and
sagacious blindness!

Again, it deceiveth about many things in man, that many a shell is poor and
pitiable, and too much of a shell.  Much concealed goodness and power is
never dreamt of; the choicest dainties find no tasters!

Women know that, the choicest of them:  a little fatter a little leaner--
oh, how much fate is in so little!

Man is difficult to discover, and unto himself most difficult of all; often
lieth the spirit concerning the soul.  So causeth the spirit of gravity.

He, however, hath discovered himself who saith:  This is MY good and evil:
therewith hath he silenced the mole and the dwarf, who say:  "Good for all,
evil for all."

Verily, neither do I like those who call everything good, and this world
the best of all.  Those do I call the all-satisfied.

All-satisfiedness, which knoweth how to taste everything,--that is not the
best taste!  I honour the refractory, fastidious tongues and stomachs,
which have learned to say "I" and "Yea" and "Nay."

To chew and digest everything, however--that is the genuine swine-nature!
Ever to say YE-A--that hath only the ass learnt, and those like it!--

Deep yellow and hot red--so wanteth MY taste--it mixeth blood with all
colours.  He, however, who whitewasheth his house, betrayeth unto me a
whitewashed soul.

With mummies, some fall in love; others with phantoms:  both alike hostile
to all flesh and blood--oh, how repugnant are both to my taste!  For I love
blood.

And there will I not reside and abide where every one spitteth and speweth:
that is now MY taste,--rather would I live amongst thieves and perjurers.
Nobody carrieth gold in his mouth.

Still more repugnant unto me, however, are all lickspittles; and the most
repugnant animal of man that I found, did I christen "parasite":  it would
not love, and would yet live by love.

Unhappy do I call all those who have only one choice:  either to become
evil beasts, or evil beast-tamers.  Amongst such would I not build my
tabernacle.

Unhappy do I also call those who have ever to WAIT,--they are repugnant to
my taste--all the toll-gatherers and traders, and kings, and other
landkeepers and shopkeepers.

Verily, I learned waiting also, and thoroughly so,--but only waiting for
MYSELF.  And above all did I learn standing and walking and running and
leaping and climbing and dancing.

This however is my teaching:  he who wisheth one day to fly, must first
learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing:--one doth
not fly into flying!

With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I
climb high masts:  to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small
bliss;--

--To flicker like small flames on high masts:  a small light, certainly,
but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and ship-wrecked ones!

By divers ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder did
I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness.

And unwillingly only did I ask my way--that was always counter to my taste!
Rather did I question and test the ways themselves.

A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling:--and verily, one
must also LEARN to answer such questioning!  That, however,--is my taste:

--Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no longer
either shame or secrecy.

"This--is now MY way,--where is yours?"  Thus did I answer those who asked
me "the way."  For THE way--it doth not exist!

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LVI.  OLD AND NEW TABLES.

1.

Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new half-
written tables.  When cometh mine hour?

--The hour of my descent, of my down-going:  for once more will I go unto
men.

For that hour do I now wait:  for first must the signs come unto me that it
is MINE hour--namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.

Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time.  No one telleth me
anything new, so I tell myself mine own story.

2.

When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation:  all
of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men.

An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and he
who wished to sleep well spake of "good" and "bad" ere retiring to rest.

This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what is
good and bad:--unless it be the creating one!

--It is he, however, who createth man's goal, and giveth to the earth its
meaning and its future:  he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or bad.

And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old
infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists, their
saints, their poets, and their Saviours.

At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing
as a black scarecrow on the tree of life.

On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion
and vultures--and I laughed at all their bygone and its mellow decaying
glory.

Verily, like penitential preachers and fools did I cry wrath and shame on
all their greatness and smallness.  Oh, that their best is so very small!
Oh, that their worst is so very small!  Thus did I laugh.

Thus did my wise longing, born in the mountains, cry and laugh in me; a
wild wisdom, verily!--my great pinion-rustling longing.

And oft did it carry me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter;
then flew I quivering like an arrow with sun-intoxicated rapture:

--Out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into warmer
souths than ever sculptor conceived,--where gods in their dancing are
ashamed of all clothes:

(That I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets:  and
verily I am ashamed that I have still to be a poet!)

Where all becoming seemed to me dancing of Gods, and wantoning of Gods, and
the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:--

--As an eternal self-fleeing and re-seeking of one another of many Gods, as
the blessed self-contradicting, recommuning, and refraternising with one
another of many Gods:--

Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where necessity
was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom:--

Where I also found again mine old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit of
gravity, and all that it created:  constraint, law, necessity and
consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:--

For must there not be that which is danced OVER, danced beyond?  Must there
not, for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest,--be moles and clumsy
dwarfs?--

3.

There was it also where I picked up from the path the word "Superman," and
that man is something that must be surpassed.

--That man is a bridge and not a goal--rejoicing over his noontides and
evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns:

--The Zarathustra word of the great noontide, and whatever else I have hung
up over men like purple evening-afterglows.

Verily, also new stars did I make them see, along with new nights; and over
cloud and day and night, did I spread out laughter like a gay-coloured
canopy.

I taught them all MY poetisation and aspiration:  to compose and collect
into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle and fearful chance;--

--As composer, riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance, did I teach them to
create the future, and all that HATH BEEN--to redeem by creating.

The past of man to redeem, and every "It was" to transform, until the Will
saith:  "But so did I will it!  So shall I will it--"

--This did I call redemption; this alone taught I them to call
redemption.--

Now do I await MY redemption--that I may go unto them for the last time.

For once more will I go unto men:  AMONGST them will my sun set; in dying
will I give them my choicest gift!

From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one:  gold
doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches,--

--So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with GOLDEN oars!  For this did
I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it.--

Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down:  now sitteth he here and
waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables--half-written.

4.

Behold, here is a new table; but where are my brethren who will carry it
with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?--

Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest ones:  BE NOT CONSIDERATE OF
THY NEIGHBOUR!  Man is something that must be surpassed.

There are many divers ways and modes of surpassing:  see THOU thereto!  But
only a buffoon thinketh:  "man can also be OVERLEAPT."

Surpass thyself even in thy neighbour:  and a right which thou canst seize
upon, shalt thou not allow to be given thee!

What thou doest can no one do to thee again.  Lo, there is no requital.

He who cannot command himself shall obey.  And many a one CAN command
himself, but still sorely lacketh self-obedience!

5.

Thus wisheth the type of noble souls:  they desire to have nothing
GRATUITOUSLY, least of all, life.

He who is of the populace wisheth to live gratuitously; we others, however,
to whom life hath given itself--we are ever considering WHAT we can best
give IN RETURN!

And verily, it is a noble dictum which saith:  "What life promiseth US,
that promise will WE keep--to life!"

One should not wish to enjoy where one doth not contribute to the
enjoyment.  And one should not WISH to enjoy!

For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things.  Neither like to
be sought for.  One should HAVE them,--but one should rather SEEK for guilt
and pain!--

6.

O my brethren, he who is a firstling is ever sacrificed.  Now, however, are
we firstlings!

We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars, we all burn and broil in honour
of ancient idols.

Our best is still young:  this exciteth old palates.  Our flesh is tender,
our skin is only lambs' skin:--how could we not excite old idol-priests!

IN OURSELVES dwelleth he still, the old idol-priest, who broileth our best
for his banquet.  Ah, my brethren, how could firstlings fail to be
sacrifices!

But so wisheth our type; and I love those who do not wish to preserve
themselves, the down-going ones do I love with mine entire love:  for they
go beyond.--

7.

To be true--that CAN few be!  And he who can, will not!  Least of all,
however, can the good be true.

Oh, those good ones!  GOOD MEN NEVER SPEAK THE TRUTH.  For the spirit, thus
to be good, is a malady.

They yield, those good ones, they submit themselves; their heart repeateth,
their soul obeyeth:  HE, however, who obeyeth, DOTH NOT LISTEN TO HIMSELF!

All that is called evil by the good, must come together in order that one
truth may be born.  O my brethren, are ye also evil enough for THIS truth?

The daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel Nay, the tedium, the
cutting-into-the-quick--how seldom do THESE come together!  Out of such
seed, however--is truth produced!

BESIDE the bad conscience hath hitherto grown all KNOWLEDGE!  Break up,
break up, ye discerning ones, the old tables!

8.

When the water hath planks, when gangways and railings o'erspan the stream,
verily, he is not believed who then saith:  "All is in flux."

But even the simpletons contradict him.  "What?" say the simpletons, "all
in flux?  Planks and railings are still OVER the stream!

"OVER the stream all is stable, all the values of things, the bridges and
bearings, all 'good' and 'evil':  these are all STABLE!"--

Cometh, however, the hard winter, the stream-tamer, then learn even the
wittiest distrust, and verily, not only the simpletons then say:  "Should
not everything--STAND STILL?"

"Fundamentally standeth everything still"--that is an appropriate winter
doctrine, good cheer for an unproductive period, a great comfort for
winter-sleepers and fireside-loungers.

"Fundamentally standeth everything still"--:  but CONTRARY thereto,
preacheth the thawing wind!

The thawing wind, a bullock, which is no ploughing bullock--a furious
bullock, a destroyer, which with angry horns breaketh the ice!  The ice
however--BREAKETH GANGWAYS!

O my brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX?  Have not all railings
and gangways fallen into the water?  Who would still HOLD ON to "good" and
"evil"?

"Woe to us!  Hail to us!  The thawing wind bloweth!"--Thus preach, my
brethren, through all the streets!

9.

There is an old illusion--it is called good and evil.  Around soothsayers
and astrologers hath hitherto revolved the orbit of this illusion.

Once did one BELIEVE in soothsayers and astrologers; and THEREFORE did one
believe, "Everything is fate:  thou shalt, for thou must!"

Then again did one distrust all soothsayers and astrologers; and THEREFORE
did one believe, "Everything is freedom:  thou canst, for thou willest!"

O my brethren, concerning the stars and the future there hath hitherto been
only illusion, and not knowledge; and THEREFORE concerning good and evil
there hath hitherto been only illusion and not knowledge!

10.

"Thou shalt not rob!  Thou shalt not slay!"--such precepts were once called
holy; before them did one bow the knee and the head, and take off one's
shoes.

But I ask you:  Where have there ever been better robbers and slayers in
the world than such holy precepts?

Is there not even in all life--robbing and slaying?  And for such precepts
to be called holy, was not TRUTH itself thereby--slain?

--Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and
dissuaded from life?--O my brethren, break up, break up for me the old
tables!

11.

It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned,--

--Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of every generation
that cometh, and reinterpreteth all that hath been as its bridge!

A great potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and
disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for
him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, and a cock-crowing.

This however is the other danger, and mine other sympathy:--he who is of
the populace, his thoughts go back to his grandfather,--with his
grandfather, however, doth time cease.

Thus is all the past abandoned:  for it might some day happen for the
populace to become master, and drown all time in shallow waters.

Therefore, O my brethren, a NEW NOBILITY is needed, which shall be the
adversary of all populace and potentate rule, and shall inscribe anew the
word "noble" on new tables.

For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble ones, FOR A NEW
NOBILITY!  Or, as I once said in parable:  "That is just divinity, that
there are Gods, but no God!"

12.

O my brethren, I consecrate you and point you to a new nobility:  ye shall
become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future;--

--Verily, not to a nobility which ye could purchase like traders with
traders' gold; for little worth is all that hath its price.

Let it not be your honour henceforth whence ye come, but whither ye go!
Your Will and your feet which seek to surpass you--let these be your new
honour!

Verily, not that ye have served a prince--of what account are princes now!
--nor that ye have become a bulwark to that which standeth, that it may
stand more firmly.

Not that your family have become courtly at courts, and that ye have
learned--gay-coloured, like the flamingo--to stand long hours in shallow
pools:

(For ABILITY-to-stand is a merit in courtiers; and all courtiers believe
that unto blessedness after death pertaineth--PERMISSION-to-sit!)

Nor even that a Spirit called Holy, led your forefathers into promised
lands, which I do not praise:  for where the worst of all trees grew--the
cross,--in that land there is nothing to praise!--

--And verily, wherever this "Holy Spirit" led its knights, always in such
campaigns did--goats and geese, and wryheads and guyheads run FOREMOST!--

O my brethren, not backward shall your nobility gaze, but OUTWARD!  Exiles
shall ye be from all fatherlands and forefather-lands!

Your CHILDREN'S LAND shall ye love:  let this love be your new nobility,--
the undiscovered in the remotest seas!  For it do I bid your sails search
and search!

Unto your children shall ye MAKE AMENDS for being the children of your
fathers:  all the past shall ye THUS redeem!  This new table do I place
over you!

13.

"Why should one live?  All is vain!  To live--that is to thrash straw; to
live--that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.--

Such ancient babbling still passeth for "wisdom"; because it is old,
however, and smelleth mustily, THEREFORE is it the more honoured.  Even
mould ennobleth.--

Children might thus speak:  they SHUN the fire because it hath burnt them!
There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.

And he who ever "thrasheth straw," why should he be allowed to rail at
thrashing!  Such a fool one would have to muzzle!

Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with them, not even
good hunger:--and then do they rail:  "All is vain!"

But to eat and drink well, my brethren, is verily no vain art!  Break up,
break up for me the tables of the never-joyous ones!

14.

"To the clean are all things clean"--thus say the people.  I, however, say
unto you:  To the swine all things become swinish!

Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose hearts are also
bowed down):  "The world itself is a filthy monster."

For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however, who have no
peace or rest, unless they see the world FROM THE BACKSIDE--the
backworldsmen!

TO THOSE do I say it to the face, although it sound unpleasantly:  the
world resembleth man, in that it hath a backside,--SO MUCH is true!

There is in the world much filth:  SO MUCH is true!  But the world itself
is not therefore a filthy monster!

There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smelleth badly:
loathing itself createth wings, and fountain-divining powers!

In the best there is still something to loathe; and the best is still
something that must be surpassed!--

O my brethren, there is much wisdom in the fact that much filth is in the
world!--

15.

Such sayings did I hear pious backworldsmen speak to their consciences, and
verily without wickedness or guile,--although there is nothing more
guileful in the world, or more wicked.

"Let the world be as it is!  Raise not a finger against it!"

"Let whoever will choke and stab and skin and scrape the people:  raise not
a finger against it!  Thereby will they learn to renounce the world."

"And thine own reason--this shalt thou thyself stifle and choke; for it is
a reason of this world,--thereby wilt thou learn thyself to renounce the
world."--

--Shatter, shatter, O my brethren, those old tables of the pious!  Tatter
the maxims of the world-maligners!--

16.

"He who learneth much unlearneth all violent cravings"--that do people now
whisper to one another in all the dark lanes.

"Wisdom wearieth, nothing is worth while; thou shalt not crave!"--this new
table found I hanging even in the public markets.

Break up for me, O my brethren, break up also that NEW table!  The weary-
o'-the-world put it up, and the preachers of death and the jailer:  for lo,
it is also a sermon for slavery:--

Because they learned badly and not the best, and everything too early and
everything too fast; because they ATE badly:  from thence hath resulted
their ruined stomach;--

--For a ruined stomach, is their spirit:  IT persuadeth to death!  For
verily, my brethren, the spirit IS a stomach!

Life is a well of delight, but to him in whom the ruined stomach speaketh,
the father of affliction, all fountains are poisoned.

To discern:  that is DELIGHT to the lion-willed!  But he who hath become
weary, is himself merely "willed"; with him play all the waves.

And such is always the nature of weak men:  they lose themselves on their
way.  And at last asketh their weariness:  "Why did we ever go on the way?
All is indifferent!"

TO THEM soundeth it pleasant to have preached in their ears:  "Nothing is
worth while!  Ye shall not will!"  That, however, is a sermon for slavery.

O my brethren, a fresh blustering wind cometh Zarathustra unto all way-
weary ones; many noses will he yet make sneeze!

Even through walls bloweth my free breath, and in into prisons and
imprisoned spirits!

Willing emancipateth:  for willing is creating:  so do I teach.  And ONLY
for creating shall ye learn!

And also the learning shall ye LEARN only from me, the learning well!--He
who hath ears let him hear!

17.

There standeth the boat--thither goeth it over, perhaps into vast
nothingness--but who willeth to enter into this "Perhaps"?

None of you want to enter into the death-boat!  How should ye then be
WORLD-WEARY ones!

World-weary ones!  And have not even withdrawn from the earth!  Eager did I
ever find you for the earth, amorous still of your own earth-weariness!

Not in vain doth your lip hang down:--a small worldly wish still sitteth
thereon!  And in your eye--floateth there not a cloudlet of unforgotten
earthly bliss?

There are on the earth many good inventions, some useful, some pleasant:
for their sake is the earth to be loved.

And many such good inventions are there, that they are like woman's
breasts:  useful at the same time, and pleasant.

Ye world-weary ones, however!  Ye earth-idlers!  You, shall one beat with
stripes!  With stripes shall one again make you sprightly limbs.

For if ye be not invalids, or decrepit creatures, of whom the earth is
weary, then are ye sly sloths, or dainty, sneaking pleasure-cats.  And if
ye will not again RUN gaily, then shall ye--pass away!

To the incurable shall one not seek to be a physician:  thus teacheth
Zarathustra:--so shall ye pass away!

But more COURAGE is needed to make an end than to make a new verse:  that
do all physicians and poets know well.--

18.

O my brethren, there are tables which weariness framed, and tables which
slothfulness framed, corrupt slothfulness:  although they speak similarly,
they want to be heard differently.--

See this languishing one!  Only a span-breadth is he from his goal; but
from weariness hath he lain down obstinately in the dust, this brave one!

From weariness yawneth he at the path, at the earth, at the goal, and at
himself:  not a step further will he go,--this brave one!

Now gloweth the sun upon him, and the dogs lick at his sweat:  but he lieth
there in his obstinacy and preferreth to languish:--

--A span-breadth from his goal, to languish!  Verily, ye will have to drag
him into his heaven by the hair of his head--this hero!

Better still that ye let him lie where he hath lain down, that sleep may
come unto him, the comforter, with cooling patter-rain.

Let him lie, until of his own accord he awakeneth,--until of his own accord
he repudiateth all weariness, and what weariness hath taught through him!

Only, my brethren, see that ye scare the dogs away from him, the idle
skulkers, and all the swarming vermin:--

--All the swarming vermin of the "cultured," that--feast on the sweat of
every hero!--

19.

I form circles around me and holy boundaries; ever fewer ascend with me
ever higher mountains:  I build a mountain-range out of ever holier
mountains.--

But wherever ye would ascend with me, O my brethren, take care lest a
PARASITE ascend with you!

A parasite:  that is a reptile, a creeping, cringing reptile, that trieth
to fatten on your infirm and sore places.

And THIS is its art:  it divineth where ascending souls are weary, in your
trouble and dejection, in your sensitive modesty, doth it build its
loathsome nest.

Where the strong are weak, where the noble are all-too-gentle--there
buildeth it its loathsome nest; the parasite liveth where the great have
small sore-places.

What is the highest of all species of being, and what is the lowest?  The
parasite is the lowest species; he, however, who is of the highest species
feedeth most parasites.

For the soul which hath the longest ladder, and can go deepest down:  how
could there fail to be most parasites upon it?--

--The most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and rove furthest in
itself; the most necessary soul, which out of joy flingeth itself into
chance:--

--The soul in Being, which plungeth into Becoming; the possessing soul,
which SEEKETH to attain desire and longing:--

--The soul fleeing from itself, which overtaketh itself in the widest
circuit; the wisest soul, unto which folly speaketh most sweetly:--

--The soul most self-loving, in which all things have their current and
counter-current, their ebb and their flow:--oh, how could THE LOFTIEST SOUL
fail to have the worst parasites?

20.

O my brethren, am I then cruel?  But I say:  What falleth, that shall one
also push!

Everything of to-day--it falleth, it decayeth; who would preserve it!  But
I--I wish also to push it!

Know ye the delight which rolleth stones into precipitous depths?--Those
men of to-day, see just how they roll into my depths!

A prelude am I to better players, O my brethren!  An example!  DO according
to mine example!

And him whom ye do not teach to fly, teach I pray you--TO FALL FASTER!--

21.

I love the brave:  but it is not enough to be a swordsman,--one must also
know WHEREON to use swordsmanship!

And often is it greater bravery to keep quiet and pass by, that THEREBY one
may reserve oneself for a worthier foe!

Ye shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be despised:  ye must
be proud of your foes.  Thus have I already taught.

For the worthier foe, O my brethren, shall ye reserve yourselves:
therefore must ye pass by many a one,--

--Especially many of the rabble, who din your ears with noise about people
and peoples.

Keep your eye clear of their For and Against!  There is there much right,
much wrong:  he who looketh on becometh wroth.

Therein viewing, therein hewing--they are the same thing:  therefore depart
into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!

Go YOUR ways! and let the people and peoples go theirs!--gloomy ways,
verily, on which not a single hope glinteth any more!

Let there the trader rule, where all that still glittereth is--traders'
gold.  It is the time of kings no longer:  that which now calleth itself
the people is unworthy of kings.

See how these peoples themselves now do just like the traders:  they pick
up the smallest advantage out of all kinds of rubbish!

They lay lures for one another, they lure things out of one another,--that
they call "good neighbourliness."  O blessed remote period when a people
said to itself:  "I will be--MASTER over peoples!"

For, my brethren, the best shall rule, the best also WILLETH to rule!  And
where the teaching is different, there--the best is LACKING.

22.

If THEY had--bread for nothing, alas! for what would THEY cry!  Their
maintainment--that is their true entertainment; and they shall have it
hard!

Beasts of prey, are they:  in their "working"--there is even plundering, in
their "earning"--there is even overreaching!  Therefore shall they have it
hard!

Better beasts of prey shall they thus become, subtler, cleverer, MORE MAN-
LIKE:  for man is the best beast of prey.

All the animals hath man already robbed of their virtues:  that is why of
all animals it hath been hardest for man.

Only the birds are still beyond him.  And if man should yet learn to fly,
alas! TO WHAT HEIGHT--would his rapacity fly!

23.

Thus would I have man and woman:  fit for war, the one; fit for maternity,
the other; both, however, fit for dancing with head and legs.

And lost be the day to us in which a measure hath not been danced.  And
false be every truth which hath not had laughter along with it!

24.

Your marriage-arranging:  see that it be not a bad ARRANGING!  Ye have
arranged too hastily:  so there FOLLOWETH therefrom--marriage-breaking!

And better marriage-breaking than marriage-bending, marriage-lying!--Thus
spake a woman unto me:  "Indeed, I broke the marriage, but first did the
marriage break--me!

The badly paired found I ever the most revengeful:  they make every one
suffer for it that they no longer run singly.

On that account want I the honest ones to say to one another:  "We love
each other:  let us SEE TO IT that we maintain our love!  Or shall our
pledging be blundering?"

--"Give us a set term and a small marriage, that we may see if we are fit
for the great marriage!  It is a great matter always to be twain."

Thus do I counsel all honest ones; and what would be my love to the
Superman, and to all that is to come, if I should counsel and speak
otherwise!

Not only to propagate yourselves onwards but UPWARDS--thereto, O my
brethren, may the garden of marriage help you!

25.

He who hath grown wise concerning old origins, lo, he will at last seek
after the fountains of the future and new origins.--

O my brethren, not long will it be until NEW PEOPLES shall arise and new
fountains shall rush down into new depths.

For the earthquake--it choketh up many wells, it causeth much languishing:
but it bringeth also to light inner powers and secrets.

The earthquake discloseth new fountains.  In the earthquake of old peoples
new fountains burst forth.

And whoever calleth out:  "Lo, here is a well for many thirsty ones, one
heart for many longing ones, one will for many instruments":--around him
collecteth a PEOPLE, that is to say, many attempting ones.

Who can command, who must obey--THAT IS THERE ATTEMPTED!  Ah, with what
long seeking and solving and failing and learning and re-attempting!

Human society:  it is an attempt--so I teach--a long seeking:  it seeketh
however the ruler!--

--An attempt, my brethren!  And NO "contract"!  Destroy, I pray you,
destroy that word of the soft-hearted and half-and-half!

26.

O my brethren!  With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human
future?  Is it not with the good and just?--

--As those who say and feel in their hearts:  "We already know what is good
and just, we possess it also; woe to those who still seek thereafter!

And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm of the good is the harmfulest
harm!

And whatever harm the world-maligners may do, the harm of the good is the
harmfulest harm!

O my brethren, into the hearts of the good and just looked some one once on
a time, who said:  "They are the Pharisees."  But people did not understand
him.

The good and just themselves were not free to understand him; their spirit
was imprisoned in their good conscience.  The stupidity of the good is
unfathomably wise.

It is the truth, however, that the good MUST be Pharisees--they have no
choice!

The good MUST crucify him who deviseth his own virtue!  That IS the truth!

The second one, however, who discovered their country--the country, heart
and soil of the good and just,--it was he who asked:  "Whom do they hate
most?"

The CREATOR, hate they most, him who breaketh the tables and old values,
the breaker,--him they call the law-breaker.

For the good--they CANNOT create; they are always the beginning of the
end:--

--They crucify him who writeth new values on new tables, they sacrifice
UNTO THEMSELVES the future--they crucify the whole human future!

The good--they have always been the beginning of the end.--

27.

O my brethren, have ye also understood this word?  And what I once said of
the "last man"?--

With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future?  Is it not
with the good and just?

BREAK UP, BREAK UP, I PRAY YOU, THE GOOD AND JUST!--O my brethren, have ye
understood also this word?

28.

Ye flee from me?  Ye are frightened?  Ye tremble at this word?

O my brethren, when I enjoined you to break up the good, and the tables of
the good, then only did I embark man on his high seas.

And now only cometh unto him the great terror, the great outlook, the great
sickness, the great nausea, the great sea-sickness.

False shores and false securities did the good teach you; in the lies of
the good were ye born and bred.  Everything hath been radically contorted
and distorted by the good.

But he who discovered the country of "man," discovered also the country of
"man's future."  Now shall ye be sailors for me, brave, patient!

Keep yourselves up betimes, my brethren, learn to keep yourselves up!  The
sea stormeth:  many seek to raise themselves again by you.

The sea stormeth:  all is in the sea.  Well!  Cheer up!  Ye old seaman-
hearts!

What of fatherland!  THITHER striveth our helm where our CHILDREN'S LAND
is!  Thitherwards, stormier than the sea, stormeth our great longing!--

29.

"Why so hard!"--said to the diamond one day the charcoal; "are we then not
near relatives?"--

Why so soft?  O my brethren; thus do _I_ ask you:  are ye then not--my
brethren?

Why so soft, so submissive and yielding?  Why is there so much negation and
abnegation in your hearts?  Why is there so little fate in your looks?

And if ye will not be fates and inexorable ones, how can ye one day--
conquer with me?

And if your hardness will not glance and cut and chip to pieces, how can ye
one day--create with me?

For the creators are hard.  And blessedness must it seem to you to press
your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,--

--Blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums as upon brass,--harder
than brass, nobler than brass.  Entirely hard is only the noblest.

This new table, O my brethren, put I up over you:  BECOME HARD!--

30.

O thou, my Will!  Thou change of every need, MY needfulness!  Preserve me
from all small victories!

Thou fatedness of my soul, which I call fate!  Thou In-me!  Over-me!
Preserve and spare me for one great fate!

And thy last greatness, my Will, spare it for thy last--that thou mayest be
inexorable IN thy victory!  Ah, who hath not succumbed to his victory!

Ah, whose eye hath not bedimmed in this intoxicated twilight!  Ah, whose
foot hath not faltered and forgotten in victory--how to stand!--

--That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noontide:  ready and
ripe like the glowing ore, the lightning-bearing cloud, and the swelling
milk-udder:--

--Ready for myself and for my most hidden Will:  a bow eager for its arrow,
an arrow eager for its star:--

--A star, ready and ripe in its noontide, glowing, pierced, blessed, by
annihilating sun-arrows:--

--A sun itself, and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilation in
victory!

O Will, thou change of every need, MY needfulness!  Spare me for one great
victory!---

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LVII.  THE CONVALESCENT.

1.

One morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra sprang up
from his couch like a madman, crying with a frightful voice, and acting as
if some one still lay on the couch who did not wish to rise.  Zarathustra's
voice also resounded in such a manner that his animals came to him
frightened, and out of all the neighbouring caves and lurking-places all
the creatures slipped away--flying, fluttering, creeping or leaping,
according to their variety of foot or wing.  Zarathustra, however, spake
these words:

Up, abysmal thought out of my depth!  I am thy cock and morning dawn, thou
overslept reptile:  Up!  Up!  My voice shall soon crow thee awake!

Unbind the fetters of thine ears:  listen!  For I wish to hear thee!  Up!
Up!  There is thunder enough to make the very graves listen!

And rub the sleep and all the dimness and blindness out of thine eyes!
Hear me also with thine eyes:  my voice is a medicine even for those born
blind.

And once thou art awake, then shalt thou ever remain awake.  It is not MY
custom to awake great-grandmothers out of their sleep that I may bid them--
sleep on!

Thou stirrest, stretchest thyself, wheezest?  Up!  Up!  Not wheeze, shalt
thou,--but speak unto me!  Zarathustra calleth thee, Zarathustra the
godless!

I, Zarathustra, the advocate of living, the advocate of suffering, the
advocate of the circuit--thee do I call, my most abysmal thought!

Joy to me!  Thou comest,--I hear thee!  Mine abyss SPEAKETH, my lowest
depth have I turned over into the light!

Joy to me!  Come hither!  Give me thy hand--ha! let be! aha!--Disgust,
disgust, disgust--alas to me!

2.

Hardly, however, had Zarathustra spoken these words, when he fell down as
one dead, and remained long as one dead.  When however he again came to
himself, then was he pale and trembling, and remained lying; and for long
he would neither eat nor drink.  This condition continued for seven days;
his animals, however, did not leave him day nor night, except that the
eagle flew forth to fetch food.  And what it fetched and foraged, it laid
on Zarathustra's couch:  so that Zarathustra at last lay among yellow and
red berries, grapes, rosy apples, sweet-smelling herbage, and pine-cones.
At his feet, however, two lambs were stretched, which the eagle had with
difficulty carried off from their shepherds.

At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself upon his couch, took
a rosy apple in his hand, smelt it and found its smell pleasant.  Then did
his animals think the time had come to speak unto him.

"O Zarathustra," said they, "now hast thou lain thus for seven days with
heavy eyes:  wilt thou not set thyself again upon thy feet?

Step out of thy cave:  the world waiteth for thee as a garden.  The wind
playeth with heavy fragrance which seeketh for thee; and all brooks would
like to run after thee.

All things long for thee, since thou hast remained alone for seven days--
step forth out of thy cave!  All things want to be thy physicians!

Did perhaps a new knowledge come to thee, a bitter, grievous knowledge?
Like leavened dough layest thou, thy soul arose and swelled beyond all its
bounds.--"

--O mine animals, answered Zarathustra, talk on thus and let me listen!  It
refresheth me so to hear your talk:  where there is talk, there is the
world as a garden unto me.

How charming it is that there are words and tones; are not words and tones
rainbows and seeming bridges 'twixt the eternally separated?

To each soul belongeth another world; to each soul is every other soul a
back-world.

Among the most alike doth semblance deceive most delightfully:  for the
smallest gap is most difficult to bridge over.

For me--how could there be an outside-of-me?  There is no outside!  But
this we forget on hearing tones; how delightful it is that we forget!

Have not names and tones been given unto things that man may refresh
himself with them?  It is a beautiful folly, speaking; therewith danceth
man over everything.

How lovely is all speech and all falsehoods of tones!  With tones danceth
our love on variegated rainbows.--

--"O Zarathustra," said then his animals, "to those who think like us,
things all dance themselves:  they come and hold out the hand and laugh and
flee--and return.

Everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth the wheel of
existence.  Everything dieth, everything blossometh forth again; eternally
runneth on the year of existence.

Everything breaketh, everything is integrated anew; eternally buildeth
itself the same house of existence.  All things separate, all things again
greet one another; eternally true to itself remaineth the ring of
existence.

Every moment beginneth existence, around every 'Here' rolleth the ball
'There.'  The middle is everywhere.  Crooked is the path of eternity."--

--O ye wags and barrel-organs! answered Zarathustra, and smiled once more,
how well do ye know what had to be fulfilled in seven days:--

--And how that monster crept into my throat and choked me!  But I bit off
its head and spat it away from me.

And ye--ye have made a lyre-lay out of it?  Now, however, do I lie here,
still exhausted with that biting and spitting-away, still sick with mine
own salvation.

AND YE LOOKED ON AT IT ALL?  O mine animals, are ye also cruel?  Did ye
like to look at my great pain as men do?  For man is the cruellest animal.

At tragedies, bull-fights, and crucifixions hath he hitherto been happiest
on earth; and when he invented his hell, behold, that was his heaven on
earth.

When the great man crieth--:  immediately runneth the little man thither,
and his tongue hangeth out of his mouth for very lusting.  He, however,
calleth it his "pity."

The little man, especially the poet--how passionately doth he accuse life
in words!  Hearken to him, but do not fail to hear the delight which is in
all accusation!

Such accusers of life--them life overcometh with a glance of the eye.
"Thou lovest me?" saith the insolent one; "wait a little, as yet have I no
time for thee."

Towards himself man is the cruellest animal; and in all who call themselves
"sinners" and "bearers of the cross" and "penitents," do not overlook the
voluptuousness in their plaints and accusations!

And I myself--do I thereby want to be man's accuser?  Ah, mine animals,
this only have I learned hitherto, that for man his baddest is necessary
for his best,--

--That all that is baddest is the best POWER, and the hardest stone for the
highest creator; and that man must become better AND badder:--

Not to THIS torture-stake was I tied, that I know man is bad,--but I cried,
as no one hath yet cried:

"Ah, that his baddest is so very small!  Ah, that his best is so very
small!"

The great disgust at man--IT strangled me and had crept into my throat:
and what the soothsayer had presaged:  "All is alike, nothing is worth
while, knowledge strangleth."

A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally weary, fatally intoxicated
sadness, which spake with yawning mouth.

"Eternally he returneth, the man of whom thou art weary, the small man"--so
yawned my sadness, and dragged its foot and could not go to sleep.

A cavern, became the human earth to me; its breast caved in; everything
living became to me human dust and bones and mouldering past.

My sighing sat on all human graves, and could no longer arise:  my sighing
and questioning croaked and choked, and gnawed and nagged day and night:

--"Ah, man returneth eternally!  The small man returneth eternally!"

Naked had I once seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest man:
all too like one another--all too human, even the greatest man!

All too small, even the greatest man!--that was my disgust at man!  And the
eternal return also of the smallest man!--that was my disgust at all
existence!

Ah, Disgust!  Disgust!  Disgust!--Thus spake Zarathustra, and sighed and
shuddered; for he remembered his sickness.  Then did his animals prevent
him from speaking further.

"Do not speak further, thou convalescent!"--so answered his animals, "but
go out where the world waiteth for thee like a garden.

Go out unto the roses, the bees, and the flocks of doves!  Especially,
however, unto the singing-birds, to learn SINGING from them!

For singing is for the convalescent; the sound ones may talk.  And when the
sound also want songs, then want they other songs than the convalescent."

--"O ye wags and barrel-organs, do be silent!" answered Zarathustra, and
smiled at his animals.  "How well ye know what consolation I devised for
myself in seven days!

That I have to sing once more--THAT consolation did I devise for myself,
and THIS convalescence:  would ye also make another lyre-lay thereof?"

--"Do not talk further," answered his animals once more; "rather, thou
convalescent, prepare for thyself first a lyre, a new lyre!

For behold, O Zarathustra!  For thy new lays there are needed new lyres.

Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal thy soul with new lays:  that
thou mayest bear thy great fate, which hath not yet been any one's fate!

For thine animals know it well, O Zarathustra, who thou art and must
become:  behold, THOU ART THE TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RETURN,--that is now
THY fate!

That thou must be the first to teach this teaching--how could this great
fate not be thy greatest danger and infirmity!

Behold, we know what thou teachest:  that all things eternally return, and
ourselves with them, and that we have already existed times without number,
and all things with us.

Thou teachest that there is a great year of Becoming, a prodigy of a great
year; it must, like a sand-glass, ever turn up anew, that it may anew run
down and run out:--

--So that all those years are like one another in the greatest and also in
the smallest, so that we ourselves, in every great year, are like ourselves
in the greatest and also in the smallest.

And if thou wouldst now die, O Zarathustra, behold, we know also how thou
wouldst then speak to thyself:--but thine animals beseech thee not to die
yet!

Thou wouldst speak, and without trembling, buoyant rather with bliss, for a
great weight and worry would be taken from thee, thou patientest one!--

'Now do I die and disappear,' wouldst thou say, 'and in a moment I am
nothing.  Souls are as mortal as bodies.

But the plexus of causes returneth in which I am intertwined,--it will
again create me!  I myself pertain to the causes of the eternal return.

I come again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this
serpent--NOT to a new life, or a better life, or a similar life:

--I come again eternally to this identical and selfsame life, in its
greatest and its smallest, to teach again the eternal return of all
things,--

--To speak again the word of the great noontide of earth and man, to
announce again to man the Superman.

I have spoken my word.  I break down by my word:  so willeth mine eternal
fate--as announcer do I succumb!

The hour hath now come for the down-goer to bless himself.  Thus--ENDETH
Zarathustra's down-going.'"--

When the animals had spoken these words they were silent and waited, so
that Zarathustra might say something to them:  but Zarathustra did not hear
that they were silent.  On the contrary, he lay quietly with closed eyes
like a person sleeping, although he did not sleep; for he communed just
then with his soul.  The serpent, however, and the eagle, when they found
him silent in such wise, respected the great stillness around him, and
prudently retired.


LVIII.  THE GREAT LONGING.

O my soul, I have taught thee to say "to-day" as "once on a time" and
"formerly," and to dance thy measure over every Here and There and Yonder.

O my soul, I delivered thee from all by-places, I brushed down from thee
dust and spiders and twilight.

O my soul, I washed the petty shame and the by-place virtue from thee, and
persuaded thee to stand naked before the eyes of the sun.

With the storm that is called "spirit" did I blow over thy surging sea; all
clouds did I blow away from it; I strangled even the strangler called
"sin."

O my soul, I gave thee the right to say Nay like the storm, and to say Yea
as the open heaven saith Yea:  calm as the light remainest thou, and now
walkest through denying storms.

O my soul, I restored to thee liberty over the created and the uncreated;
and who knoweth, as thou knowest, the voluptuousness of the future?

O my soul, I taught thee the contempt which doth not come like worm-eating,
the great, the loving contempt, which loveth most where it contemneth most.

O my soul, I taught thee so to persuade that thou persuadest even the
grounds themselves to thee:  like the sun, which persuadeth even the sea to
its height.

O my soul, I have taken from thee all obeying and knee-bending and homage-
paying; I have myself given thee the names, "Change of need" and "Fate."

O my soul, I have given thee new names and gay-coloured playthings, I have
called thee "Fate" and "the Circuit of circuits" and "the Navel-string of
time" and "the Azure bell."

O my soul, to thy domain gave I all wisdom to drink, all new wines, and
also all immemorially old strong wines of wisdom.

O my soul, every sun shed I upon thee, and every night and every silence
and every longing:--then grewest thou up for me as a vine.

O my soul, exuberant and heavy dost thou now stand forth, a vine with
swelling udders and full clusters of brown golden grapes:--

--Filled and weighted by thy happiness, waiting from superabundance, and
yet ashamed of thy waiting.

O my soul, there is nowhere a soul which could be more loving and more
comprehensive and more extensive!  Where could future and past be closer
together than with thee?

O my soul, I have given thee everything, and all my hands have become empty
by thee:--and now!  Now sayest thou to me, smiling and full of melancholy:
"Which of us oweth thanks?--

--Doth the giver not owe thanks because the receiver received?  Is
bestowing not a necessity?  Is receiving not--pitying?"--

O my soul, I understand the smiling of thy melancholy:  thine over-
abundance itself now stretcheth out longing hands!

Thy fulness looketh forth over raging seas, and seeketh and waiteth:  the
longing of over-fulness looketh forth from the smiling heaven of thine
eyes!

And verily, O my soul!  Who could see thy smiling and not melt into tears?
The angels themselves melt into tears through the over-graciousness of thy
smiling.

Thy graciousness and over-graciousness, is it which will not complain and
weep:  and yet, O my soul, longeth thy smiling for tears, and thy trembling
mouth for sobs.

"Is not all weeping complaining?  And all complaining, accusing?"  Thus
speakest thou to thyself; and therefore, O my soul, wilt thou rather smile
than pour forth thy grief--

--Than in gushing tears pour forth all thy grief concerning thy fulness,
and concerning the craving of the vine for the vintager and vintage-knife!

But wilt thou not weep, wilt thou not weep forth thy purple melancholy,
then wilt thou have to SING, O my soul!--Behold, I smile myself, who
foretell thee this:

--Thou wilt have to sing with passionate song, until all seas turn calm to
hearken unto thy longing,--

--Until over calm longing seas the bark glideth, the golden marvel, around
the gold of which all good, bad, and marvellous things frisk:--

--Also many large and small animals, and everything that hath light
marvellous feet, so that it can run on violet-blue paths,--

--Towards the golden marvel, the spontaneous bark, and its master:  he,
however, is the vintager who waiteth with the diamond vintage-knife,--

--Thy great deliverer, O my soul, the nameless one--for whom future songs
only will find names!  And verily, already hath thy breath the fragrance of
future songs,--

--Already glowest thou and dreamest, already drinkest thou thirstily at all
deep echoing wells of consolation, already reposeth thy melancholy in the
bliss of future songs!--

O my soul, now have I given thee all, and even my last possession, and all
my hands have become empty by thee:--THAT I BADE THEE SING, behold, that
was my last thing to give!

That I bade thee sing,--say now, say:  WHICH of us now--oweth thanks?--
Better still, however:  sing unto me, sing, O my soul!  And let me thank
thee!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LIX.  THE SECOND DANCE-SONG.

1.

"Into thine eyes gazed I lately, O Life:  gold saw I gleam in thy night-
eyes,--my heart stood still with delight:

--A golden bark saw I gleam on darkened waters, a sinking, drinking,
reblinking, golden swing-bark!

At my dance-frantic foot, dost thou cast a glance, a laughing, questioning,
melting, thrown glance:

Twice only movedst thou thy rattle with thy little hands--then did my feet
swing with dance-fury.--

My heels reared aloft, my toes they hearkened,--thee they would know:  hath
not the dancer his ear--in his toe!

Unto thee did I spring:  then fledst thou back from my bound; and towards
me waved thy fleeing, flying tresses round!

Away from thee did I spring, and from thy snaky tresses:  then stoodst thou
there half-turned, and in thine eye caresses.

With crooked glances--dost thou teach me crooked courses; on crooked
courses learn my feet--crafty fancies!

I fear thee near, I love thee far; thy flight allureth me, thy seeking
secureth me:--I suffer, but for thee, what would I not gladly bear!

For thee, whose coldness inflameth, whose hatred misleadeth, whose flight
enchaineth, whose mockery--pleadeth:

--Who would not hate thee, thou great bindress, inwindress, temptress,
seekress, findress!  Who would not love thee, thou innocent, impatient,
wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!

Whither pullest thou me now, thou paragon and tomboy?  And now foolest thou
me fleeing; thou sweet romp dost annoy!

I dance after thee, I follow even faint traces lonely.  Where art thou?
Give me thy hand!  Or thy finger only!

Here are caves and thickets:  we shall go astray!--Halt!  Stand still!
Seest thou not owls and bats in fluttering fray?

Thou bat!  Thou owl!  Thou wouldst play me foul?  Where are we?  From the
dogs hast thou learned thus to bark and howl.

Thou gnashest on me sweetly with little white teeth; thine evil eyes shoot
out upon me, thy curly little mane from underneath!

This is a dance over stock and stone:  I am the hunter,--wilt thou be my
hound, or my chamois anon?

Now beside me!  And quickly, wickedly springing!  Now up!  And over!--Alas!
I have fallen myself overswinging!

Oh, see me lying, thou arrogant one, and imploring grace!  Gladly would I
walk with thee--in some lovelier place!

--In the paths of love, through bushes variegated, quiet, trim!  Or there
along the lake, where gold-fishes dance and swim!

Thou art now a-weary?  There above are sheep and sun-set stripes:  is it
not sweet to sleep--the shepherd pipes?

Thou art so very weary?  I carry thee thither; let just thine arm sink!
And art thou thirsty--I should have something; but thy mouth would not like
it to drink!--

--Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-witch!  Where art
thou gone?  But in my face do I feel through thy hand, two spots and red
blotches itch!

I am verily weary of it, ever thy sheepish shepherd to be.  Thou witch, if
I have hitherto sung unto thee, now shalt THOU--cry unto me!

To the rhythm of my whip shalt thou dance and cry!  I forget not my whip?--
Not I!"--

2.

Then did Life answer me thus, and kept thereby her fine ears closed:

"O Zarathustra!  Crack not so terribly with thy whip!  Thou knowest surely
that noise killeth thought,--and just now there came to me such delicate
thoughts.

We are both of us genuine ne'er-do-wells and ne'er-do-ills.  Beyond good
and evil found we our island and our green meadow--we two alone!  Therefore
must we be friendly to each other!

And even should we not love each other from the bottom of our hearts,--must
we then have a grudge against each other if we do not love each other
perfectly?

And that I am friendly to thee, and often too friendly, that knowest thou:
and the reason is that I am envious of thy Wisdom.  Ah, this mad old fool,
Wisdom!

If thy Wisdom should one day run away from thee, ah! then would also my
love run away from thee quickly."--

Thereupon did Life look thoughtfully behind and around, and said softly:
"O Zarathustra, thou art not faithful enough to me!

Thou lovest me not nearly so much as thou sayest; I know thou thinkest of
soon leaving me.

There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock:  it boometh by night up to thy
cave:--

--When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at midnight, then thinkest
thou between one and twelve thereon--

--Thou thinkest thereon, O Zarathustra, I know it--of soon leaving me!"--

"Yea," answered I, hesitatingly, "but thou knowest it also"--And I said
something into her ear, in amongst her confused, yellow, foolish tresses.

"Thou KNOWEST that, O Zarathustra?  That knoweth no one--"

And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green meadow o'er which the
cool evening was just passing, and we wept together.--Then, however, was
Life dearer unto me than all my Wisdom had ever been.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.

3.

One!

O man!  Take heed!

Two!

What saith deep midnight's voice indeed?

Three!

"I slept my sleep--

Four!

"From deepest dream I've woke and plead:--

Five!

"The world is deep,

Six!

"And deeper than the day could read.

Seven!

"Deep is its woe--

Eight!

"Joy--deeper still than grief can be:

Nine!

"Woe saith:  Hence!  Go!

Ten!

"But joys all want eternity--

Eleven!

"Want deep profound eternity!"

Twelve!


LX.  THE SEVEN SEALS.

(OR THE YEA AND AMEN LAY.)

1.

If I be a diviner and full of the divining spirit which wandereth on high
mountain-ridges, 'twixt two seas,--

Wandereth 'twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud--hostile to
sultry plains, and to all that is weary and can neither die nor live:

Ready for lightning in its dark bosom, and for the redeeming flash of
light, charged with lightnings which say Yea! which laugh Yea! ready for
divining flashes of lightning:--

--Blessed, however, is he who is thus charged!  And verily, long must he
hang like a heavy tempest on the mountain, who shall one day kindle the
light of the future!--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love:  for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

2.

If ever my wrath hath burst graves, shifted landmarks, or rolled old
shattered tables into precipitous depths:

If ever my scorn hath scattered mouldered words to the winds, and if I have
come like a besom to cross-spiders, and as a cleansing wind to old charnel-
houses:

If ever I have sat rejoicing where old Gods lie buried, world-blessing,
world-loving, beside the monuments of old world-maligners:--

--For even churches and Gods'-graves do I love, if only heaven looketh
through their ruined roofs with pure eyes; gladly do I sit like grass and
red poppies on ruined churches--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love:  for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

3.

If ever a breath hath come to me of the creative breath, and of the
heavenly necessity which compelleth even chances to dance star-dances:

If ever I have laughed with the laughter of the creative lightning, to
which the long thunder of the deed followeth, grumblingly, but obediently:

If ever I have played dice with the Gods at the divine table of the earth,
so that the earth quaked and ruptured, and snorted forth fire-streams:--

--For a divine table is the earth, and trembling with new creative dictums
and dice-casts of the Gods:

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love:  for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

4.

If ever I have drunk a full draught of the foaming spice- and confection-
bowl in which all things are well mixed:

If ever my hand hath mingled the furthest with the nearest, fire with
spirit, joy with sorrow, and the harshest with the kindest:

If I myself am a grain of the saving salt which maketh everything in the
confection-bowl mix well:--

--For there is a salt which uniteth good with evil; and even the evilest is
worthy, as spicing and as final over-foaming:--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love:  for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

5.

If I be fond of the sea, and all that is sealike, and fondest of it when it
angrily contradicteth me:

If the exploring delight be in me, which impelleth sails to the
undiscovered, if the seafarer's delight be in my delight:

If ever my rejoicing hath called out:  "The shore hath vanished,--now hath
fallen from me the last chain--

The boundless roareth around me, far away sparkle for me space and time,--
well! cheer up! old heart!"--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love:  for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

6.

If my virtue be a dancer's virtue, and if I have often sprung with both
feet into golden-emerald rapture:

If my wickedness be a laughing wickedness, at home among rose-banks and
hedges of lilies:

--For in laughter is all evil present, but it is sanctified and absolved by
its own bliss:--

And if it be my Alpha and Omega that everything heavy shall become light,
every body a dancer, and every spirit a bird:  and verily, that is my Alpha
and Omega!--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love:  for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

7.

If ever I have spread out a tranquil heaven above me, and have flown into
mine own heaven with mine own pinions:

If I have swum playfully in profound luminous distances, and if my
freedom's avian wisdom hath come to me:--

--Thus however speaketh avian wisdom:--"Lo, there is no above and no below!
Throw thyself about,--outward, backward, thou light one!  Sing! speak no
more!

--Are not all words made for the heavy?  Do not all words lie to the light
ones?  Sing! speak no more!"--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love:  for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!


FOURTH AND LAST PART.

Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the
pitiful?  And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies
of the pitiful?

Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their
pity!

Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time:  "Ever God hath his hell:  it
is his love for man."

And lately did I hear him say these words:  "God is dead:  of his pity for
man hath God died."--ZARATHUSTRA, II., "The Pitiful."


LXI.  THE HONEY SACRIFICE.

--And again passed moons and years over Zarathustra's soul, and he heeded
it not; his hair, however, became white.  One day when he sat on a stone in
front of his cave, and gazed calmly into the distance--one there gazeth out
on the sea, and away beyond sinuous abysses,--then went his animals
thoughtfully round about him, and at last set themselves in front of him.

"O Zarathustra," said they, "gazest thou out perhaps for thy happiness?"--
"Of what account is my happiness!" answered he, "I have long ceased to
strive any more for happiness, I strive for my work."--"O Zarathustra,"
said the animals once more, "that sayest thou as one who hath overmuch of
good things.  Liest thou not in a sky-blue lake of happiness?"--"Ye wags,"
answered Zarathustra, and smiled, "how well did ye choose the simile!  But
ye know also that my happiness is heavy, and not like a fluid wave of
water:  it presseth me and will not leave me, and is like molten pitch."--

Then went his animals again thoughtfully around him, and placed themselves
once more in front of him.  "O Zarathustra," said they, "it is consequently
FOR THAT REASON that thou thyself always becometh yellower and darker,
although thy hair looketh white and flaxen?  Lo, thou sittest in thy
pitch!"--"What do ye say, mine animals?" said Zarathustra, laughing;
"verily I reviled when I spake of pitch.  As it happeneth with me, so is it
with all fruits that turn ripe.  It is the HONEY in my veins that maketh my
blood thicker, and also my soul stiller."--"So will it be, O Zarathustra,"
answered his animals, and pressed up to him; "but wilt thou not to-day
ascend a high mountain?  The air is pure, and to-day one seeth more of the
world than ever."--"Yea, mine animals," answered he, "ye counsel admirably
and according to my heart:  I will to-day ascend a high mountain!  But see
that honey is there ready to hand, yellow, white, good, ice-cool, golden-
comb-honey.  For know that when aloft I will make the honey-sacrifice."--

When Zarathustra, however, was aloft on the summit, he sent his animals
home that had accompanied him, and found that he was now alone:--then he
laughed from the bottom of his heart, looked around him, and spake thus:

That I spake of sacrifices and honey-sacrifices, it was merely a ruse in
talking and verily, a useful folly!  Here aloft can I now speak freer than
in front of mountain-caves and anchorites' domestic animals.

What to sacrifice!  I squander what is given me, a squanderer with a
thousand hands:  how could I call that--sacrificing?

And when I desired honey I only desired bait, and sweet mucus and mucilage,
for which even the mouths of growling bears, and strange, sulky, evil
birds, water:

--The best bait, as huntsmen and fishermen require it.  For if the world be
as a gloomy forest of animals, and a pleasure-ground for all wild huntsmen,
it seemeth to me rather--and preferably--a fathomless, rich sea;

--A sea full of many-hued fishes and crabs, for which even the Gods might
long, and might be tempted to become fishers in it, and casters of nets,--
so rich is the world in wonderful things, great and small!

Especially the human world, the human sea:--towards IT do I now throw out
my golden angle-rod and say:  Open up, thou human abyss!

Open up, and throw unto me thy fish and shining crabs!  With my best bait
shall I allure to myself to-day the strangest human fish!

--My happiness itself do I throw out into all places far and wide 'twixt
orient, noontide, and occident, to see if many human fish will not learn to
hug and tug at my happiness;--

Until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they have to come up unto MY
height, the motleyest abyss-groundlings, to the wickedest of all fishers of
men.

For THIS am I from the heart and from the beginning--drawing, hither-
drawing, upward-drawing, upbringing; a drawer, a trainer, a training-
master, who not in vain counselled himself once on a time:  "Become what
thou art!"

Thus may men now come UP to me; for as yet do I await the signs that it is
time for my down-going; as yet do I not myself go down, as I must do,
amongst men.

Therefore do I here wait, crafty and scornful upon high mountains, no
impatient one, no patient one; rather one who hath even unlearnt patience,
--because he no longer "suffereth."

For my fate giveth me time:  it hath forgotten me perhaps?  Or doth it sit
behind a big stone and catch flies?

And verily, I am well-disposed to mine eternal fate, because it doth not
hound and hurry me, but leaveth me time for merriment and mischief; so that
I have to-day ascended this high mountain to catch fish.

Did ever any one catch fish upon high mountains?  And though it be a folly
what I here seek and do, it is better so than that down below I should
become solemn with waiting, and green and yellow--

--A posturing wrath-snorter with waiting, a holy howl-storm from the
mountains, an impatient one that shouteth down into the valleys:  "Hearken,
else I will scourge you with the scourge of God!"

Not that I would have a grudge against such wrathful ones on that account:
they are well enough for laughter to me!  Impatient must they now be, those
big alarm-drums, which find a voice now or never!

Myself, however, and my fate--we do not talk to the Present, neither do we
talk to the Never:  for talking we have patience and time and more than
time.  For one day must it yet come, and may not pass by.

What must one day come and may not pass by?  Our great Hazar, that is to
say, our great, remote human-kingdom, the Zarathustra-kingdom of a thousand
years--

How remote may such "remoteness" be?  What doth it concern me?  But on that
account it is none the less sure unto me--, with both feet stand I secure
on this ground;

--On an eternal ground, on hard primary rock, on this highest, hardest,
primary mountain-ridge, unto which all winds come, as unto the storm-
parting, asking Where? and Whence? and Whither?

Here laugh, laugh, my hearty, healthy wickedness!  From high mountains cast
down thy glittering scorn-laughter!  Allure for me with thy glittering the
finest human fish!

And whatever belongeth unto ME in all seas, my in-and-for-me in all things
--fish THAT out for me, bring THAT up to me:  for that do I wait, the
wickedest of all fish-catchers.

Out! out! my fishing-hook!  In and down, thou bait of my happiness!  Drip
thy sweetest dew, thou honey of my heart!  Bite, my fishing-hook, into the
belly of all black affliction!

Look out, look out, mine eye!  Oh, how many seas round about me, what
dawning human futures!  And above me--what rosy red stillness!  What
unclouded silence!


LXII.  THE CRY OF DISTRESS.

The next day sat Zarathustra again on the stone in front of his cave,
whilst his animals roved about in the world outside to bring home new
food,--also new honey:  for Zarathustra had spent and wasted the old honey
to the very last particle.  When he thus sat, however, with a stick in his
hand, tracing the shadow of his figure on the earth, and reflecting--
verily! not upon himself and his shadow,--all at once he startled and
shrank back:  for he saw another shadow beside his own.  And when he
hastily looked around and stood up, behold, there stood the soothsayer
beside him, the same whom he had once given to eat and drink at his table,
the proclaimer of the great weariness, who taught:  "All is alike, nothing
is worth while, the world is without meaning, knowledge strangleth."  But
his face had changed since then; and when Zarathustra looked into his eyes,
his heart was startled once more:  so much evil announcement and ashy-grey
lightnings passed over that countenance.

The soothsayer, who had perceived what went on in Zarathustra's soul, wiped
his face with his hand, as if he would wipe out the impression; the same
did also Zarathustra.  And when both of them had thus silently composed and
strengthened themselves, they gave each other the hand, as a token that
they wanted once more to recognise each other.

"Welcome hither," said Zarathustra, "thou soothsayer of the great
weariness, not in vain shalt thou once have been my messmate and guest.
Eat and drink also with me to-day, and forgive it that a cheerful old man
sitteth with thee at table!"--"A cheerful old man?" answered the
soothsayer, shaking his head, "but whoever thou art, or wouldst be, O
Zarathustra, thou hast been here aloft the longest time,--in a little while
thy bark shall no longer rest on dry land!"--"Do I then rest on dry land?"
--asked Zarathustra, laughing.--"The waves around thy mountain," answered
the soothsayer, "rise and rise, the waves of great distress and affliction:
they will soon raise thy bark also and carry thee away."--Thereupon was
Zarathustra silent and wondered.--"Dost thou still hear nothing?" continued
the soothsayer:  "doth it not rush and roar out of the depth?"--Zarathustra
was silent once more and listened:  then heard he a long, long cry, which
the abysses threw to one another and passed on; for none of them wished to
retain it:  so evil did it sound.

"Thou ill announcer," said Zarathustra at last, "that is a cry of distress,
and the cry of a man; it may come perhaps out of a black sea.  But what
doth human distress matter to me!  My last sin which hath been reserved for
me,--knowest thou what it is called?"

--"PITY!" answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, and raised
both his hands aloft--"O Zarathustra, I have come that I may seduce thee to
thy last sin!"--

And hardly had those words been uttered when there sounded the cry once
more, and longer and more alarming than before--also much nearer.  "Hearest
thou?  Hearest thou, O Zarathustra?" called out the soothsayer, "the cry
concerneth thee, it calleth thee:  Come, come, come; it is time, it is the
highest time!"--

Zarathustra was silent thereupon, confused and staggered; at last he asked,
like one who hesitateth in himself:  "And who is it that there calleth me?"

"But thou knowest it, certainly," answered the soothsayer warmly, "why dost
thou conceal thyself?  It is THE HIGHER MAN that crieth for thee!"

"The higher man?" cried Zarathustra, horror-stricken:  "what wanteth HE?
What wanteth HE?  The higher man!  What wanteth he here?"--and his skin
covered with perspiration.

The soothsayer, however, did not heed Zarathustra's alarm, but listened and
listened in the downward direction.  When, however, it had been still there
for a long while, he looked behind, and saw Zarathustra standing trembling.

"O Zarathustra," he began, with sorrowful voice, "thou dost not stand there
like one whose happiness maketh him giddy:  thou wilt have to dance lest
thou tumble down!

But although thou shouldst dance before me, and leap all thy side-leaps, no
one may say unto me:  'Behold, here danceth the last joyous man!'

In vain would any one come to this height who sought HIM here:  caves would
he find, indeed, and back-caves, hiding-places for hidden ones; but not
lucky mines, nor treasure-chambers, nor new gold-veins of happiness.

Happiness--how indeed could one find happiness among such buried-alive and
solitary ones!  Must I yet seek the last happiness on the Happy Isles, and
far away among forgotten seas?

But all is alike, nothing is worth while, no seeking is of service, there
are no longer any Happy Isles!"--

Thus sighed the soothsayer; with his last sigh, however, Zarathustra again
became serene and assured, like one who hath come out of a deep chasm into
the light.  "Nay!  Nay!  Three times Nay!" exclaimed he with a strong
voice, and stroked his beard--"THAT do I know better!  There are still
Happy Isles!  Silence THEREON, thou sighing sorrow-sack!

Cease to splash THEREON, thou rain-cloud of the forenoon!  Do I not already
stand here wet with thy misery, and drenched like a dog?

Now do I shake myself and run away from thee, that I may again become dry:
thereat mayest thou not wonder!  Do I seem to thee discourteous?  Here
however is MY court.

But as regards the higher man:  well!  I shall seek him at once in those
forests:  FROM THENCE came his cry.  Perhaps he is there hard beset by an
evil beast.

He is in MY domain:  therein shall he receive no scath!  And verily, there
are many evil beasts about me."--

With those words Zarathustra turned around to depart.  Then said the
soothsayer:  "O Zarathustra, thou art a rogue!

I know it well:  thou wouldst fain be rid of me!  Rather wouldst thou run
into the forest and lay snares for evil beasts!

But what good will it do thee?  In the evening wilt thou have me again:  in
thine own cave will I sit, patient and heavy like a block--and wait for
thee!"

"So be it!" shouted back Zarathustra, as he went away:  "and what is mine
in my cave belongeth also unto thee, my guest!

Shouldst thou however find honey therein, well! just lick it up, thou
growling bear, and sweeten thy soul!  For in the evening we want both to be
in good spirits;

--In good spirits and joyful, because this day hath come to an end!  And
thou thyself shalt dance to my lays, as my dancing-bear.

Thou dost not believe this?  Thou shakest thy head?  Well!  Cheer up, old
bear!  But I also--am a soothsayer."

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LXIII.  TALK WITH THE KINGS.

1.

Ere Zarathustra had been an hour on his way in the mountains and forests,
he saw all at once a strange procession.  Right on the path which he was
about to descend came two kings walking, bedecked with crowns and purple
girdles, and variegated like flamingoes:  they drove before them a laden
ass.  "What do these kings want in my domain?" said Zarathustra in
astonishment to his heart, and hid himself hastily behind a thicket.  When
however the kings approached to him, he said half-aloud, like one speaking
only to himself:  "Strange!  Strange!  How doth this harmonise?  Two kings
do I see--and only one ass!"

Thereupon the two kings made a halt; they smiled and looked towards the
spot whence the voice proceeded, and afterwards looked into each other's
faces.  "Such things do we also think among ourselves," said the king on
the right, "but we do not utter them."

The king on the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and answered:  "That
may perhaps be a goat-herd.  Or an anchorite who hath lived too long among
rocks and trees.  For no society at all spoileth also good manners."

"Good manners?" replied angrily and bitterly the other king:  "what then do
we run out of the way of?  Is it not 'good manners'?  Our 'good society'?

Better, verily, to live among anchorites and goat-herds, than with our
gilded, false, over-rouged populace--though it call itself 'good society.'

--Though it call itself 'nobility.' But there all is false and foul, above
all the blood--thanks to old evil diseases and worse curers.

The best and dearest to me at present is still a sound peasant, coarse,
artful, obstinate and enduring:  that is at present the noblest type.

The peasant is at present the best; and the peasant type should be master!
But it is the kingdom of the populace--I no longer allow anything to be
imposed upon me.  The populace, however--that meaneth, hodgepodge.

Populace-hodgepodge:  therein is everything mixed with everything, saint
and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every beast out of Noah's ark.

Good manners!  Everything is false and foul with us.  No one knoweth any
longer how to reverence:  it is THAT precisely that we run away from.  They
are fulsome obtrusive dogs; they gild palm-leaves.

This loathing choketh me, that we kings ourselves have become false, draped
and disguised with the old faded pomp of our ancestors, show-pieces for the
stupidest, the craftiest, and whosoever at present trafficketh for power.

We ARE NOT the first men--and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them:  of this
imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted.

From the rabble have we gone out of the way, from all those bawlers and
scribe-blowflies, from the trader-stench, the ambition-fidgeting, the bad
breath--:  fie, to live among the rabble;

--Fie, to stand for the first men among the rabble!  Ah, loathing!
Loathing!  Loathing!  What doth it now matter about us kings!"--

"Thine old sickness seizeth thee," said here the king on the left, "thy
loathing seizeth thee, my poor brother.  Thou knowest, however, that some
one heareth us."

Immediately thereupon, Zarathustra, who had opened ears and eyes to this
talk, rose from his hiding-place, advanced towards the kings, and thus
began:

"He who hearkeneth unto you, he who gladly hearkeneth unto you, is called
Zarathustra.

I am Zarathustra who once said:  'What doth it now matter about kings!'
Forgive me; I rejoiced when ye said to each other:  'What doth it matter
about us kings!'

Here, however, is MY domain and jurisdiction:  what may ye be seeking in my
domain?  Perhaps, however, ye have FOUND on your way what _I_ seek:
namely, the higher man."

When the kings heard this, they beat upon their breasts and said with one
voice:  "We are recognised!

With the sword of thine utterance severest thou the thickest darkness of
our hearts.  Thou hast discovered our distress; for lo! we are on our way
to find the higher man--

--The man that is higher than we, although we are kings.  To him do we
convey this ass.  For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on
earth.

There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the mighty of
the earth are not also the first men.  Then everything becometh false and
distorted and monstrous.

And when they are even the last men, and more beast than man, then riseth
and riseth the populace in honour, and at last saith even the populace-
virtue:  'Lo, I alone am virtue!'"--

What have I just heard? answered Zarathustra.  What wisdom in kings!  I am
enchanted, and verily, I have already promptings to make a rhyme thereon:--

--Even if it should happen to be a rhyme not suited for every one's ears.
I unlearned long ago to have consideration for long ears.  Well then!  Well
now!

(Here, however, it happened that the ass also found utterance:  it said
distinctly and with malevolence, Y-E-A.)

'Twas once--methinks year one of our blessed Lord,--
Drunk without wine, the Sybil thus deplored:--
"How ill things go!
Decline!  Decline!  Ne'er sank the world so low!
Rome now hath turned harlot and harlot-stew,
Rome's Caesar a beast, and God--hath turned Jew!

2.

With those rhymes of Zarathustra the kings were delighted; the king on the
right, however, said:  "O Zarathustra, how well it was that we set out to
see thee!

For thine enemies showed us thy likeness in their mirror:  there lookedst
thou with the grimace of a devil, and sneeringly:  so that we were afraid
of thee.

But what good did it do!  Always didst thou prick us anew in heart and ear
with thy sayings.  Then did we say at last:  What doth it matter how he
look!

We must HEAR him; him who teacheth:  'Ye shall love peace as a means to new
wars, and the short peace more than the long!'

No one ever spake such warlike words:  'What is good?  To be brave is good.
It is the good war that halloweth every cause.'

O Zarathustra, our fathers' blood stirred in our veins at such words:  it
was like the voice of spring to old wine-casks.

When the swords ran among one another like red-spotted serpents, then did
our fathers become fond of life; the sun of every peace seemed to them
languid and lukewarm, the long peace, however, made them ashamed.

How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw on the wall brightly furbished,
dried-up swords!  Like those they thirsted for war.  For a sword thirsteth
to drink blood, and sparkleth with desire."--

--When the kings thus discoursed and talked eagerly of the happiness of
their fathers, there came upon Zarathustra no little desire to mock at
their eagerness:  for evidently they were very peaceable kings whom he saw
before him, kings with old and refined features.  But he restrained
himself.  "Well!" said he, "thither leadeth the way, there lieth the cave
of Zarathustra; and this day is to have a long evening!  At present,
however, a cry of distress calleth me hastily away from you.

It will honour my cave if kings want to sit and wait in it:  but, to be
sure, ye will have to wait long!

Well!  What of that!  Where doth one at present learn better to wait than
at courts?  And the whole virtue of kings that hath remained unto them--is
it not called to-day:  ABILITY to wait?"

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LXIV.  THE LEECH.

And Zarathustra went thoughtfully on, further and lower down, through
forests and past moory bottoms; as it happeneth, however, to every one who
meditateth upon hard matters, he trod thereby unawares upon a man.  And lo,
there spurted into his face all at once a cry of pain, and two curses and
twenty bad invectives, so that in his fright he raised his stick and also
struck the trodden one.  Immediately afterwards, however, he regained his
composure, and his heart laughed at the folly he had just committed.

"Pardon me," said he to the trodden one, who had got up enraged, and had
seated himself, "pardon me, and hear first of all a parable.

As a wanderer who dreameth of remote things on a lonesome highway, runneth
unawares against a sleeping dog, a dog which lieth in the sun:

--As both of them then start up and snap at each other, like deadly
enemies, those two beings mortally frightened--so did it happen unto us.

And yet!  And yet--how little was lacking for them to caress each other,
that dog and that lonesome one!  Are they not both--lonesome ones!"

--"Whoever thou art," said the trodden one, still enraged, "thou treadest
also too nigh me with thy parable, and not only with thy foot!

Lo! am I then a dog?"--And thereupon the sitting one got up, and  pulled
his naked arm out of the swamp.  For at first he had lain outstretched on
the ground, hidden and indiscernible, like those who lie in wait for swamp-
game.

"But whatever art thou about!" called out Zarathustra in alarm, for he saw
a deal of blood streaming over the naked arm,--"what hath hurt thee?  Hath
an evil beast bit thee, thou unfortunate one?"

The bleeding one laughed, still angry, "What matter is it to thee!" said
he, and was about to go on.  "Here am I at home and in my province.  Let
him question me whoever will:  to a dolt, however, I shall hardly answer."

"Thou art mistaken," said Zarathustra sympathetically, and held him fast;
"thou art mistaken.  Here thou art not at home, but in my domain, and
therein shall no one receive any hurt.

Call me however what thou wilt--I am who I must be.  I call myself
Zarathustra.

Well!  Up thither is the way to Zarathustra's cave:  it is not far,--wilt
thou not attend to thy wounds at my home?

It hath gone badly with thee, thou unfortunate one, in this life:  first a
beast bit thee, and then--a man trod upon thee!"--

When however the trodden one had heard the name of Zarathustra he was
transformed.  "What happeneth unto me!" he exclaimed, "WHO preoccupieth me
so much in this life as this one man, namely Zarathustra, and that one
animal that liveth on blood, the leech?

For the sake of the leech did I lie here by this swamp, like a fisher, and
already had mine outstretched arm been bitten ten times, when there biteth
a still finer leech at my blood, Zarathustra himself!

O happiness!  O miracle!  Praised be this day which enticed me into the
swamp!  Praised be the best, the livest cupping-glass, that at present
liveth; praised be the great conscience-leech Zarathustra!"--

Thus spake the trodden one, and Zarathustra rejoiced at his words and their
refined reverential style.  "Who art thou?" asked he, and gave him his
hand, "there is much to clear up and elucidate between us, but already
methinketh pure clear day is dawning."

"I am THE SPIRITUALLY CONSCIENTIOUS ONE," answered he who was asked, "and
in matters of the spirit it is difficult for any one to take it more
rigorously, more restrictedly, and more severely than I, except him from
whom I learnt it, Zarathustra himself.

Better know nothing than half-know many things!  Better be a fool on one's
own account, than a sage on other people's approbation!  I--go to the
basis:

--What matter if it be great or small?  If it be called swamp or sky?  A
handbreadth of basis is enough for me, if it be actually basis and ground!

--A handbreadth of basis:  thereon can one stand.  In the true knowing-
knowledge there is nothing great and nothing small."

"Then thou art perhaps an expert on the leech?" asked Zarathustra; "and
thou investigatest the leech to its ultimate basis, thou conscientious
one?"

"O Zarathustra," answered the trodden one, "that would be something
immense; how could I presume to do so!

That, however, of which I am master and knower, is the BRAIN of the leech:
--that is MY world!

And it is also a world!  Forgive it, however, that my pride here findeth
expression, for here I have not mine equal.  Therefore said I:  'here am I
at home.'

How long have I investigated this one thing, the brain of the leech, so
that here the slippery truth might no longer slip from me!  Here is MY
domain!

--For the sake of this did I cast everything else aside, for the sake of
this did everything else become indifferent to me; and close beside my
knowledge lieth my black ignorance.

My spiritual conscience requireth from me that it should be so--that I
should know one thing, and not know all else:  they are a loathing unto me,
all the semi-spiritual, all the hazy, hovering, and visionary.

Where mine honesty ceaseth, there am I blind, and want also to be blind.
Where I want to know, however, there want I also to be honest--namely,
severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel and inexorable.

Because THOU once saidest, O Zarathustra:  'Spirit is life which itself
cutteth into life';--that led and allured me to thy doctrine.  And verily,
with mine own blood have I increased mine own knowledge!"

--"As the evidence indicateth," broke in Zarathustra; for still was the
blood flowing down on the naked arm of the conscientious one.  For there
had ten leeches bitten into it.

"O thou strange fellow, how much doth this very evidence teach me--namely,
thou thyself!  And not all, perhaps, might I pour into thy rigorous ear!

Well then!  We part here!  But I would fain find thee again.  Up thither is
the way to my cave:  to-night shalt thou there by my welcome guest!

Fain would I also make amends to thy body for Zarathustra treading upon
thee with his feet:  I think about that.  Just now, however, a cry of
distress calleth me hastily away from thee."

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LXV.  THE MAGICIAN.

1.

When however Zarathustra had gone round a rock, then saw he on the same
path, not far below him, a man who threw his limbs about like a maniac, and
at last tumbled to the ground on his belly.  "Halt!" said then Zarathustra
to his heart, "he there must surely be the higher man, from him came that
dreadful cry of distress,--I will see if I can help him."  When, however,
he ran to the spot where the man lay on the ground, he found a trembling
old man, with fixed eyes; and in spite of all Zarathustra's efforts to lift
him and set him again on his feet, it was all in vain.  The unfortunate
one, also, did not seem to notice that some one was beside him; on the
contrary, he continually looked around with moving gestures, like one
forsaken and isolated from all the world.  At last, however, after much
trembling, and convulsion, and curling-himself-up, he began to lament thus:

Who warm'th me, who lov'th me still?
Give ardent fingers!
Give heartening charcoal-warmers!
Prone, outstretched, trembling,
Like him, half dead and cold, whose feet one warm'th--
And shaken, ah! by unfamiliar fevers,
Shivering with sharpened, icy-cold frost-arrows,
By thee pursued, my fancy!
Ineffable!  Recondite!  Sore-frightening!
Thou huntsman 'hind the cloud-banks!
Now lightning-struck by thee,
Thou mocking eye that me in darkness watcheth:
--Thus do I lie,
Bend myself, twist myself, convulsed
With all eternal torture,
And smitten
By thee, cruellest huntsman,
Thou unfamiliar--GOD...

Smite deeper!
Smite yet once more!
Pierce through and rend my heart!
What mean'th this torture
With dull, indented arrows?
Why look'st thou hither,
Of human pain not weary,
With mischief-loving, godly flash-glances?
Not murder wilt thou,
But torture, torture?
For why--ME torture,
Thou mischief-loving, unfamiliar God?--

Ha!  Ha!
Thou stealest nigh
In midnight's gloomy hour?...
What wilt thou?
Speak!
Thou crowdst me, pressest--
Ha! now far too closely!
Thou hearst me breathing,
Thou o'erhearst my heart,
Thou ever jealous one!
--Of what, pray, ever jealous?
Off!  Off!
For why the ladder?
Wouldst thou GET IN?
To heart in-clamber?
To mine own secretest
Conceptions in-clamber?
Shameless one!  Thou unknown one!--Thief!
What seekst thou by thy stealing?
What seekst thou by thy hearkening?
What seekst thou by thy torturing?
Thou torturer!
Thou--hangman-God!
Or shall I, as the mastiffs do,
Roll me before thee?
And cringing, enraptured, frantical,
My tail friendly--waggle!

In vain!
Goad further!
Cruellest goader!
No dog--thy game just am I,
Cruellest huntsman!
Thy proudest of captives,
Thou robber 'hind the cloud-banks...
Speak finally!
Thou lightning-veiled one!  Thou unknown one!  Speak!
What wilt thou, highway-ambusher, from--ME?
What WILT thou, unfamiliar--God?
What?
Ransom-gold?
How much of ransom-gold?
Solicit much--that bid'th my pride!
And be concise--that bid'th mine other pride!

Ha!  Ha!
ME--wantst thou?  me?
--Entire?...

Ha!  Ha!
And torturest me, fool that thou art,
Dead-torturest quite my pride?
Give LOVE to me--who warm'th me still?
Who lov'th me still?-
Give ardent fingers
Give heartening charcoal-warmers,
Give me, the lonesomest,
The ice (ah! seven-fold frozen ice
For very enemies,
For foes, doth make one thirst).
Give, yield to me,
Cruellest foe,
--THYSELF!--

Away!
There fled he surely,
My final, only comrade,
My greatest foe,
Mine unfamiliar--
My hangman-God!...

--Nay!
Come thou back!
WITH all of thy great tortures!
To me the last of lonesome ones,
Oh, come thou back!
All my hot tears in streamlets trickle
Their course to thee!
And all my final hearty fervour--
Up-glow'th to THEE!
Oh, come thou back,
Mine unfamiliar God! my PAIN!
My final bliss!

2.

--Here, however, Zarathustra could no longer restrain himself; he took his
staff and struck the wailer with all his might.  "Stop this," cried he to
him with wrathful laughter, "stop this, thou stage-player!  Thou false
coiner!  Thou liar from the very heart!  I know thee well!

I will soon make warm legs to thee, thou evil magician:  I know well how--
to make it hot for such as thou!"

--"Leave off," said the old man, and sprang up from the ground, "strike me
no more, O Zarathustra!  I did it only for amusement!

That kind of thing belongeth to mine art.  Thee thyself, I wanted to put to
the proof when I gave this performance.  And verily, thou hast well
detected me!

But thou thyself--hast given me no small proof of thyself:  thou art HARD,
thou wise Zarathustra!  Hard strikest thou with thy 'truths,' thy cudgel
forceth from me--THIS truth!"

--"Flatter not," answered Zarathustra, still excited and frowning, "thou
stage-player from the heart!  Thou art false:  why speakest thou--of truth!

Thou peacock of peacocks, thou sea of vanity; WHAT didst thou represent
before me, thou evil magician; WHOM was I meant to believe in when thou
wailedst in such wise?"

"THE PENITENT IN SPIRIT," said the old man, "it was him--I represented;
thou thyself once devisedst this expression--

--The poet and magician who at last turneth his spirit against himself, the
transformed one who freezeth to death by his bad science and conscience.

And just acknowledge it:  it was long, O Zarathustra, before thou
discoveredst my trick and lie!  Thou BELIEVEDST in my distress when thou
heldest my head with both thy hands,--

--I heard thee lament 'we have loved him too little, loved him too little!'
Because I so far deceived thee, my wickedness rejoiced in me."

"Thou mayest have deceived subtler ones than I," said Zarathustra sternly.
"I am not on my guard against deceivers; I HAVE TO BE without precaution:
so willeth my lot.

Thou, however,--MUST deceive:  so far do I know thee!  Thou must ever be
equivocal, trivocal, quadrivocal, and quinquivocal!  Even what thou hast
now confessed, is not nearly true enough nor false enough for me!

Thou bad false coiner, how couldst thou do otherwise!  Thy very malady
wouldst thou whitewash if thou showed thyself naked to thy physician.

Thus didst thou whitewash thy lie before me when thou saidst:  'I did so
ONLY for amusement!'  There was also SERIOUSNESS therein, thou ART
something of a penitent-in-spirit!

I divine thee well:  thou hast become the enchanter of all the world; but
for thyself thou hast no lie or artifice left,--thou art disenchanted to
thyself!

Thou hast reaped disgust as thy one truth.  No word in thee is any longer
genuine, but thy mouth is so:  that is to say, the disgust that cleaveth
unto thy mouth."--

--"Who art thou at all!" cried here the old magician with defiant voice,
"who dareth to speak thus unto ME, the greatest man now living?"--and a
green flash shot from his eye at Zarathustra.  But immediately after he
changed, and said sadly:

"O Zarathustra, I am weary of it, I am disgusted with mine arts, I am not
GREAT, why do I dissemble!  But thou knowest it well--I sought for
greatness!

A great man I wanted to appear, and persuaded many; but the lie hath been
beyond my power.  On it do I collapse.

O Zarathustra, everything is a lie in me; but that I collapse--this my
collapsing is GENUINE!"--

"It honoureth thee," said Zarathustra gloomily, looking down with sidelong
glance, "it honoureth thee that thou soughtest for greatness, but it
betrayeth thee also.  Thou art not great.

Thou bad old magician, THAT is the best and the honestest thing I honour in
thee, that thou hast become weary of thyself, and hast expressed it:  'I am
not great.'

THEREIN do I honour thee as a penitent-in-spirit, and although only for the
twinkling of an eye, in that one moment wast thou--genuine.

But tell me, what seekest thou here in MY forests and rocks?  And if thou
hast put thyself in MY way, what proof of me wouldst thou have?--

--Wherein didst thou put ME to the test?"

Thus spake Zarathustra, and his eyes sparkled.  But the old magician kept
silence for a while; then said he:  "Did I put thee to the test?  I--seek
only.

O Zarathustra, I seek a genuine one, a right one, a simple one, an
unequivocal one, a man of perfect honesty, a vessel of wisdom, a saint of
knowledge, a great man!

Knowest thou it not, O Zarathustra?  I SEEK ZARATHUSTRA."

--And here there arose a long silence between them:  Zarathustra, however,
became profoundly absorbed in thought, so that he shut his eyes.  But
afterwards coming back to the situation, he grasped the hand of the
magician, and said, full of politeness and policy:

"Well!  Up thither leadeth the way, there is the cave of Zarathustra.  In
it mayest thou seek him whom thou wouldst fain find.

And ask counsel of mine animals, mine eagle and my serpent:  they shall
help thee to seek.  My cave however is large.

I myself, to be sure--I have as yet seen no great man.  That which is
great, the acutest eye is at present insensible to it.  It is the kingdom
of the populace.

Many a one have I found who stretched and inflated himself, and the people
cried:  'Behold; a great man!'  But what good do all bellows do!  The wind
cometh out at last.

At last bursteth the frog which hath inflated itself too long:  then cometh
out the wind.  To prick a swollen one in the belly, I call good pastime.
Hear that, ye boys!

Our to-day is of the populace:  who still KNOWETH what is great and what is
small!  Who could there seek successfully for greatness!  A fool only:  it
succeedeth with fools.

Thou seekest for great men, thou strange fool?  Who TAUGHT that to thee?
Is to-day the time for it?  Oh, thou bad seeker, why dost thou--tempt
me?"--

Thus spake Zarathustra, comforted in his heart, and went laughing on his
way.


LXVI.  OUT OF SERVICE.

Not long, however, after Zarathustra had freed himself from the magician,
he again saw a person sitting beside the path which he followed, namely a
tall, black man, with a haggard, pale countenance:  THIS MAN grieved him
exceedingly.  "Alas," said he to his heart, "there sitteth disguised
affliction; methinketh he is of the type of the priests:  what do THEY want
in my domain?

What!  Hardly have I escaped from that magician, and must another
necromancer again run across my path,--

--Some sorcerer with laying-on-of-hands, some sombre wonder-worker by the
grace of God, some anointed world-maligner, whom, may the devil take!

But the devil is never at the place which would be his right place:  he
always cometh too late, that cursed dwarf and club-foot!"--

Thus cursed Zarathustra impatiently in his heart, and considered how with
averted look he might slip past the black man.  But behold, it came about
otherwise.  For at the same moment had the sitting one already perceived
him; and not unlike one whom an unexpected happiness overtaketh, he sprang
to his feet, and went straight towards Zarathustra.

"Whoever thou art, thou traveller," said he, "help a strayed one, a seeker,
an old man, who may here easily come to grief!

The world here is strange to me, and remote; wild beasts also did I hear
howling; and he who could have given me protection--he is himself no more.

I was seeking the pious man, a saint and an anchorite, who, alone in his
forest, had not yet heard of what all the world knoweth at present."

"WHAT doth all the world know at present?" asked Zarathustra.  "Perhaps
that the old God no longer liveth, in whom all the world once believed?"

"Thou sayest it," answered the old man sorrowfully.  "And I served that old
God until his last hour.

Now, however, am I out of service, without master, and yet not free;
likewise am I no longer merry even for an hour, except it be in
recollections.

Therefore did I ascend into these mountains, that I might finally have a
festival for myself once more, as becometh an old pope and church-father:
for know it, that I am the last pope!--a festival of pious recollections
and divine services.

Now, however, is he himself dead, the most pious of men, the saint in the
forest, who praised his God constantly with singing and mumbling.

He himself found I no longer when I found his cot--but two wolves found I
therein, which howled on account of his death,--for all animals loved him.
Then did I haste away.

Had I thus come in vain into these forests and mountains?  Then did my
heart determine that I should seek another, the most pious of all those who
believe not in God--, my heart determined that I should seek Zarathustra!"

Thus spake the hoary man, and gazed with keen eyes at him who stood before
him.  Zarathustra however seized the hand of the old pope and regarded it a
long while with admiration.

"Lo! thou venerable one," said he then, "what a fine and long hand!  That
is the hand of one who hath ever dispensed blessings.  Now, however, doth
it hold fast him whom thou seekest, me, Zarathustra.

It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who saith:  'Who is ungodlier than I,
that I may enjoy his teaching?'"-

Thus spake Zarathustra, and penetrated with his glances the thoughts and
arrear-thoughts of the old pope.  At last the latter began:

"He who most loved and possessed him hath now also lost him most--:

--Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present?  But who could
rejoice at that!"--

--"Thou servedst him to the last?" asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after a
deep silence, "thou knowest HOW he died?  Is it true what they say, that
sympathy choked him;

--That he saw how MAN hung on the cross, and could not endure it;--that his
love to man became his hell, and at last his death?"--

The old pope however did not answer, but looked aside timidly, with a
painful and gloomy expression.

"Let him go," said Zarathustra, after prolonged meditation, still looking
the old man straight in the eye.

"Let him go, he is gone.  And though it honoureth thee that thou speakest
only in praise of this dead one, yet thou knowest as well as I WHO he was,
and that he went curious ways."

"To speak before three eyes," said the old pope cheerfully (he was blind of
one eye), "in divine matters I am more enlightened than Zarathustra
himself--and may well be so.

My love served him long years, my will followed all his will.  A good
servant, however, knoweth everything, and many a thing even which a master
hideth from himself.

He was a hidden God, full of secrecy.  Verily, he did not come by his son
otherwise than by secret ways.  At the door of his faith standeth adultery.

Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of
love itself.  Did not that God want also to be judge?  But the loving one
loveth irrespective of reward and requital.

When he was young, that God out of the Orient, then was he harsh and
revengeful, and built himself a hell for the delight of his favourites.

At last, however, he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful, more like
a grandfather than a father, but most like a tottering old grandmother.

There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney-corner, fretting on account of
his weak legs, world-weary, will-weary, and one day he suffocated of his
all-too-great pity."--

"Thou old pope," said here Zarathustra interposing, "hast thou seen THAT
with thine eyes?  It could well have happened in that way:  in that way,
AND also otherwise.  When Gods die they always die many kinds of death.

Well!  At all events, one way or other--he is gone!  He was counter to the
taste of mine ears and eyes; worse than that I should not like to say
against him.

I love everything that looketh bright and speaketh honestly.  But he--thou
knowest it, forsooth, thou old priest, there was something of thy type in
him, the priest-type--he was equivocal.

He was also indistinct.  How he raged at us, this wrath-snorter, because we
understood him badly!  But why did he not speak more clearly?

And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him
badly?  If there was dirt in our ears, well! who put it in them?

Too much miscarried with him, this potter who had not learned thoroughly!
That he took revenge on his pots and creations, however, because they
turned out badly--that was a sin against GOOD TASTE.

There is also good taste in piety:  THIS at last said:  'Away with SUCH a
God!  Better to have no God, better to set up destiny on one's own account,
better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!'"

--"What do I hear!" said then the old pope, with intent ears; "O
Zarathustra, thou art more pious than thou believest, with such an
unbelief!  Some God in thee hath converted thee to thine ungodliness.

Is it not thy piety itself which no longer letteth thee believe in a God?
And thine over-great honesty will yet lead thee even beyond good and evil!

Behold, what hath been reserved for thee?  Thou hast eyes and hands and
mouth, which have been predestined for blessing from eternity.  One doth
not bless with the hand alone.

Nigh unto thee, though thou professest to be the ungodliest one, I feel a
hale and holy odour of long benedictions:  I feel glad and grieved thereby.

Let me be thy guest, O Zarathustra, for a single night!  Nowhere on earth
shall I now feel better than with thee!"--

"Amen!  So shall it be!" said Zarathustra, with great astonishment; "up
thither leadeth the way, there lieth the cave of Zarathustra.

Gladly, forsooth, would I conduct thee thither myself, thou venerable one;
for I love all pious men.  But now a cry of distress calleth me hastily
away from thee.

In my domain shall no one come to grief; my cave is a good haven.  And best
of all would I like to put every sorrowful one again on firm land and firm
legs.

Who, however, could take THY melancholy off thy shoulders?  For that I am
too weak.  Long, verily, should we have to wait until some one re-awoke thy
God for thee.

For that old God liveth no more:  he is indeed dead."--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LXVII.  THE UGLIEST MAN.

--And again did Zarathustra's feet run through mountains and forests, and
his eyes sought and sought, but nowhere was he to be seen whom they wanted
to see--the sorely distressed sufferer and crier.  On the whole way,
however, he rejoiced in his heart and was full of gratitude.  "What good
things," said he, "hath this day given me, as amends for its bad beginning!
What strange interlocutors have I found!

At their words will I now chew a long while as at good corn; small shall my
teeth grind and crush them, until they flow like milk into my soul!"--

When, however, the path again curved round a rock, all at once the
landscape changed, and Zarathustra entered into a realm of death.  Here
bristled aloft black and red cliffs, without any grass, tree, or bird's
voice.  For it was a valley which all animals avoided, even the beasts of
prey, except that a species of ugly, thick, green serpent came here to die
when they became old.  Therefore the shepherds called this valley:
"Serpent-death."

Zarathustra, however, became absorbed in dark recollections, for it seemed
to him as if he had once before stood in this valley.  And much heaviness
settled on his mind, so that he walked slowly and always more slowly, and
at last stood still.  Then, however, when he opened his eyes, he saw
something sitting by the wayside shaped like a man, and hardly like a man,
something nondescript.  And all at once there came over Zarathustra a great
shame, because he had gazed on such a thing.  Blushing up to the very roots
of his white hair, he turned aside his glance, and raised his foot that he
might leave this ill-starred place.  Then, however, became the dead
wilderness vocal:  for from the ground a noise welled up, gurgling and
rattling, as water gurgleth and rattleth at night through stopped-up water-
pipes; and at last it turned into human voice and human speech:--it sounded
thus:

"Zarathustra!  Zarathustra!  Read my riddle!  Say, say!  WHAT IS THE
REVENGE ON THE WITNESS?

I entice thee back; here is smooth ice!  See to it, see to it, that thy
pride do not here break its legs!

Thou thinkest thyself wise, thou proud Zarathustra!  Read then the riddle,
thou hard nut-cracker,--the riddle that I am!  Say then:  who am _I_!"

--When however Zarathustra had heard these words,--what think ye then took
place in his soul?  PITY OVERCAME HIM; and he sank down all at once, like
an oak that hath long withstood many tree-fellers,--heavily, suddenly, to
the terror even of those who meant to fell it.  But immediately he got up
again from the ground, and his countenance became stern.

"I know thee well," said he, with a brazen voice, "THOU ART THE MURDERER OF
GOD!  Let me go.

Thou couldst not ENDURE him who beheld THEE,--who ever beheld thee through
and through, thou ugliest man.  Thou tookest revenge on this witness!"

Thus spake Zarathustra and was about to go; but the nondescript grasped at
a corner of his garment and began anew to gurgle and seek for words.
"Stay," said he at last--

--"Stay!  Do not pass by!  I have divined what axe it was that struck thee
to the ground:  hail to thee, O Zarathustra, that thou art again upon thy
feet!

Thou hast divined, I know it well, how the man feeleth who killed him,--the
murderer of God.  Stay!  Sit down here beside me; it is not to no purpose.

To whom would I go but unto thee?  Stay, sit down!  Do not however look at
me!  Honour thus--mine ugliness!

They persecute me:  now art THOU my last refuge.  NOT with their hatred,
NOT with their bailiffs;--Oh, such persecution would I mock at, and be
proud and cheerful!

Hath not all success hitherto been with the well-persecuted ones?  And he
who persecuteth well learneth readily to be OBSEQUENT--when once he is--put
behind!  But it is their PITY--

--Their pity is it from which I flee away and flee to thee.  O Zarathustra,
protect me, thou, my last refuge, thou sole one who divinedst me:

--Thou hast divined how the man feeleth who killed HIM.  Stay!  And if thou
wilt go, thou impatient one, go not the way that I came.  THAT way is bad.

Art thou angry with me because I have already racked language too long?
Because I have already counselled thee?  But know that it is I, the ugliest
man,

--Who have also the largest, heaviest feet.  Where _I_ have gone, the way
is bad.  I tread all paths to death and destruction.

But that thou passedst me by in silence, that thou blushedst--I saw it
well:  thereby did I know thee as Zarathustra.

Every one else would have thrown to me his alms, his pity, in look and
speech.  But for that--I am not beggar enough:  that didst thou divine.

For that I am too RICH, rich in what is great, frightful, ugliest, most
unutterable!  Thy shame, O Zarathustra, HONOURED me!

With difficulty did I get out of the crowd of the pitiful,--that I might
find the only one who at present teacheth that 'pity is obtrusive'--
thyself, O Zarathustra!

--Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human pity, it is
offensive to modesty.  And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the
virtue that rusheth to do so.

THAT however--namely, pity--is called virtue itself at present by all petty
people:--they have no reverence for great misfortune, great ugliness, great
failure.

Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looketh over the backs of thronging
flocks of sheep.  They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people.

As the heron looketh contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent
head, so do I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and souls.

Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those petty people:  SO we
have at last given them power as well;--and now do they teach that 'good is
only what petty people call good.'

And 'truth' is at present what the preacher spake who himself sprang from
them, that singular saint and advocate of the petty people, who testified
of himself:  'I--am the truth.'

That immodest one hath long made the petty people greatly puffed up,--he
who taught no small error when he taught:  'I--am the truth.'

Hath an immodest one ever been answered more courteously?--Thou, however, O
Zarathustra, passedst him by, and saidst:  'Nay!  Nay!  Three times Nay!'

Thou warnedst against his error; thou warnedst--the first to do so--against
pity:--not every one, not none, but thyself and thy type.

Thou art ashamed of the shame of the great sufferer; and verily when thou
sayest:  'From pity there cometh a heavy cloud; take heed, ye men!'

--When thou teachest:  'All creators are hard, all great love is beyond
their pity:'  O Zarathustra, how well versed dost thou seem to me in
weather-signs!

Thou thyself, however,--warn thyself also against THY pity!  For many are
on their way to thee, many suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning,
freezing ones--

I warn thee also against myself.  Thou hast read my best, my worst riddle,
myself, and what I have done.  I know the axe that felleth thee.

But he--HAD TO die:  he looked with eyes which beheld EVERYTHING,--he
beheld men's depths and dregs, all his hidden ignominy and ugliness.

His pity knew no modesty:  he crept into my dirtiest corners.  This most
prying, over-intrusive, over-pitiful one had to die.

He ever beheld ME:  on such a witness I would have revenge--or not live
myself.

The God who beheld everything, AND ALSO MAN:  that God had to die!  Man
cannot ENDURE it that such a witness should live."

Thus spake the ugliest man.  Zarathustra however got up, and prepared to go
on:  for he felt frozen to the very bowels.

"Thou nondescript," said he, "thou warnedst me against thy path.  As thanks
for it I praise mine to thee.  Behold, up thither is the cave of
Zarathustra.

My cave is large and deep and hath many corners; there findeth he that is
most hidden his hiding-place.  And close beside it, there are a hundred
lurking-places and by-places for creeping, fluttering, and hopping
creatures.

Thou outcast, who hast cast thyself out, thou wilt not live amongst men and
men's pity?  Well then, do like me!  Thus wilt thou learn also from me;
only the doer learneth.

And talk first and foremost to mine animals!  The proudest animal and the
wisest animal--they might well be the right counsellors for us both!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra and went his way, more thoughtfully and slowly even
than before:  for he asked himself many things, and hardly knew what to
answer.

"How poor indeed is man," thought he in his heart, "how ugly, how wheezy,
how full of hidden shame!

They tell me that man loveth himself.  Ah, how great must that self-love
be!  How much contempt is opposed to it!

Even this man hath loved himself, as he hath despised himself,--a great
lover methinketh he is, and a great despiser.

No one have I yet found who more thoroughly despised himself:  even THAT is
elevation.  Alas, was THIS perhaps the higher man whose cry I heard?

I love the great despisers.  Man is something that hath to be surpassed."--


LXVIII.  THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR.

When Zarathustra had left the ugliest man, he was chilled and felt
lonesome:  for much coldness and lonesomeness came over his spirit, so that
even his limbs became colder thereby.  When, however, he wandered on and
on, uphill and down, at times past green meadows, though also sometimes
over wild stony couches where formerly perhaps an impatient brook had made
its bed, then he turned all at once warmer and heartier again.

"What hath happened unto me?" he asked himself, "something warm and living
quickeneth me; it must be in the neighbourhood.

Already am I less alone; unconscious companions and brethren rove around
me; their warm breath toucheth my soul."

When, however, he spied about and sought for the comforters of his
lonesomeness, behold, there were kine there standing together on an
eminence, whose proximity and smell had warmed his heart.  The kine,
however, seemed to listen eagerly to a speaker, and took no heed of him who
approached.  When, however, Zarathustra was quite nigh unto them, then did
he hear plainly that a human voice spake in the midst of the kine, and
apparently all of them had turned their heads towards the speaker.

Then ran Zarathustra up speedily and drove the animals aside; for he feared
that some one had here met with harm, which the pity of the kine would
hardly be able to relieve.  But in this he was deceived; for behold, there
sat a man on the ground who seemed to be persuading the animals to have no
fear of him, a peaceable man and Preacher-on-the-Mount, out of whose eyes
kindness itself preached.  "What dost thou seek here?" called out
Zarathustra in astonishment.

"What do I here seek?" answered he:  "the same that thou seekest, thou
mischief-maker; that is to say, happiness upon earth.

To that end, however, I would fain learn of these kine.  For I tell thee
that I have already talked half a morning unto them, and just now were they
about to give me their answer.  Why dost thou disturb them?

Except we be converted and become as kine, we shall in no wise enter into
the kingdom of heaven.  For we ought to learn from them one thing:
ruminating.

And verily, although a man should gain the whole world, and yet not learn
one thing, ruminating, what would it profit him!  He would not be rid of
his affliction,

--His great affliction:  that, however, is at present called DISGUST.  Who
hath not at present his heart, his mouth and his eyes full of disgust?
Thou also!  Thou also!  But behold these kine!"--

Thus spake the Preacher-on-the-Mount, and turned then his own look towards
Zarathustra--for hitherto it had rested lovingly on the kine--:  then,
however, he put on a different expression.  "Who is this with whom I talk?"
he exclaimed frightened, and sprang up from the ground.

"This is the man without disgust, this is Zarathustra himself, the
surmounter of the great disgust, this is the eye, this is the mouth, this
is the heart of Zarathustra himself."

And whilst he thus spake he kissed with o'erflowing eyes the hands of him
with whom he spake, and behaved altogether like one to whom a precious gift
and jewel hath fallen unawares from heaven.  The kine, however, gazed at it
all and wondered.

"Speak not of me, thou strange one; thou amiable one!" said Zarathustra,
and restrained his affection, "speak to me firstly of thyself!  Art thou
not the voluntary beggar who once cast away great riches,--

--Who was ashamed of his riches and of the rich, and fled to the poorest to
bestow upon them his abundance and his heart?  But they received him not."

"But they received me not," said the voluntary beggar, "thou knowest it,
forsooth.  So I went at last to the animals and to those kine."

"Then learnedst thou," interrupted Zarathustra, "how much harder it is to
give properly than to take properly, and that bestowing well is an ART--the
last, subtlest master-art of kindness."

"Especially nowadays," answered the voluntary beggar:  "at present, that is
to say, when everything low hath become rebellious and exclusive and
haughty in its manner--in the manner of the populace.

For the hour hath come, thou knowest it forsooth, for the great, evil,
long, slow mob-and-slave-insurrection:  it extendeth and extendeth!

Now doth it provoke the lower classes, all benevolence and petty giving;
and the overrich may be on their guard!

Whoever at present drip, like bulgy bottles out of all-too-small necks:--of
such bottles at present one willingly breaketh the necks.

Wanton avidity, bilious envy, careworn revenge, populace-pride:  all these
struck mine eye.  It is no longer true that the poor are blessed.  The
kingdom of heaven, however, is with the kine."

"And why is it not with the rich?" asked Zarathustra temptingly, while he
kept back the kine which sniffed familiarly at the peaceful one.

"Why dost thou tempt me?" answered the other.  "Thou knowest it thyself
better even than I.  What was it drove me to the poorest, O Zarathustra?
Was it not my disgust at the richest?

--At the culprits of riches, with cold eyes and rank thoughts, who pick up
profit out of all kinds of rubbish--at this rabble that stinketh to heaven,

--At this gilded, falsified populace, whose fathers were pickpockets, or
carrion-crows, or rag-pickers, with wives compliant, lewd and forgetful:--
for they are all of them not far different from harlots--

Populace above, populace below!  What are 'poor' and 'rich' at present!
That distinction did I unlearn,--then did I flee away further and ever
further, until I came to those kine."

Thus spake the peaceful one, and puffed himself and perspired with his
words:  so that the kine wondered anew.  Zarathustra, however, kept looking
into his face with a smile, all the time the man talked so severely--and
shook silently his head.

"Thou doest violence to thyself, thou Preacher-on-the-Mount, when thou
usest such severe words.  For such severity neither thy mouth nor thine eye
have been given thee.

Nor, methinketh, hath thy stomach either:  unto IT all such rage and hatred
and foaming-over is repugnant.  Thy stomach wanteth softer things:  thou
art not a butcher.

Rather seemest thou to me a plant-eater and a root-man.  Perhaps thou
grindest corn.  Certainly, however, thou art averse to fleshly joys, and
thou lovest honey."

"Thou hast divined me well," answered the voluntary beggar, with lightened
heart.  "I love honey, I also grind corn; for I have sought out what
tasteth sweetly and maketh pure breath:

--Also what requireth a long time, a day's-work and a mouth's-work for
gentle idlers and sluggards.

Furthest, to be sure, have those kine carried it:  they have devised
ruminating and lying in the sun.  They also abstain from all heavy thoughts
which inflate the heart."

--"Well!" said Zarathustra, "thou shouldst also see MINE animals, mine
eagle and my serpent,--their like do not at present exist on earth.

Behold, thither leadeth the way to my cave:  be to-night its guest.  And
talk to mine animals of the happiness of animals,--

--Until I myself come home.  For now a cry of distress calleth me hastily
away from thee.  Also, shouldst thou find new honey with me, ice-cold,
golden-comb-honey, eat it!

Now, however, take leave at once of thy kine, thou strange one! thou
amiable one! though it be hard for thee.  For they are thy warmest friends
and preceptors!"--

--"One excepted, whom I hold still dearer," answered the voluntary beggar.
"Thou thyself art good, O Zarathustra, and better even than a cow!"

"Away, away with thee! thou evil flatterer!" cried Zarathustra
mischievously, "why dost thou spoil me with such praise and flattery-honey?

"Away, away from me!" cried he once more, and heaved his stick at the fond
beggar, who, however, ran nimbly away.


LXIX.  THE SHADOW.

Scarcely however was the voluntary beggar gone in haste, and Zarathustra
again alone, when he heard behind him a new voice which called out:  "Stay!
Zarathustra!  Do wait!  It is myself, forsooth, O Zarathustra, myself, thy
shadow!"  But Zarathustra did not wait; for a sudden irritation came over
him on account of the crowd and the crowding in his mountains.  "Whither
hath my lonesomeness gone?" spake he.

"It is verily becoming too much for me; these mountains swarm; my kingdom
is no longer of THIS world; I require new mountains.

My shadow calleth me?  What matter about my shadow!  Let it run after me!
I--run away from it."

Thus spake Zarathustra to his heart and ran away.  But the one behind
followed after him, so that immediately there were three runners, one after
the other--namely, foremost the voluntary beggar, then Zarathustra, and
thirdly, and hindmost, his shadow.  But not long had they run thus when
Zarathustra became conscious of his folly, and shook off with one jerk all
his irritation and detestation.

"What!" said he, "have not the most ludicrous things always happened to us
old anchorites and saints?

Verily, my folly hath grown big in the mountains!  Now do I hear six old
fools' legs rattling behind one another!

But doth Zarathustra need to be frightened by his shadow?  Also, methinketh
that after all it hath longer legs thin mine."

Thus spake Zarathustra, and, laughing with eyes and entrails, he stood
still and turned round quickly--and behold, he almost thereby threw his
shadow and follower to the ground, so closely had the latter followed at
his heels, and so weak was he.  For when Zarathustra scrutinised him with
his glance he was frightened as by a sudden apparition, so slender,
swarthy, hollow and worn-out did this follower appear.

"Who art thou?" asked Zarathustra vehemently, "what doest thou here?  And
why callest thou thyself my shadow?  Thou art not pleasing unto me."

"Forgive me," answered the shadow, "that it is I; and if I please thee not
--well, O Zarathustra! therein do I admire thee and thy good taste.

A wanderer am I, who have walked long at thy heels; always on the way, but
without a goal, also without a home:  so that verily, I lack little of
being the eternally Wandering Jew, except that I am not eternal and not a
Jew.

What?  Must I ever be on the way?  Whirled by every wind, unsettled, driven
about?  O earth, thou hast become too round for me!

On every surface have I already sat, like tired dust have I fallen asleep
on mirrors and window-panes:  everything taketh from me, nothing giveth; I
become thin--I am almost equal to a shadow.

After thee, however, O Zarathustra, did I fly and hie longest; and though I
hid myself from thee, I was nevertheless thy best shadow:  wherever thou
hast sat, there sat I also.

With thee have I wandered about in the remotest, coldest worlds, like a
phantom that voluntarily haunteth winter roofs and snows.

With thee have I pushed into all the forbidden, all the worst and the
furthest:  and if there be anything of virtue in me, it is that I have had
no fear of any prohibition.

With thee have I broken up whatever my heart revered; all boundary-stones
and statues have I o'erthrown; the most dangerous wishes did I pursue,--
verily, beyond every crime did I once go.

With thee did I unlearn the belief in words and worths and in great names.
When the devil casteth his skin, doth not his name also fall away?  It is
also skin.  The devil himself is perhaps--skin.

'Nothing is true, all is permitted':  so said I to myself.  Into the
coldest water did I plunge with head and heart.  Ah, how oft did I stand
there naked on that account, like a red crab!

Ah, where have gone all my goodness and all my shame and all my belief in
the good!  Ah, where is the lying innocence which I once possessed, the
innocence of the good and of their noble lies!

Too oft, verily, did I follow close to the heels of truth:  then did it
kick me on the face.  Sometimes I meant to lie, and behold! then only did I
hit--the truth.

Too much hath become clear unto me:  now it doth not concern me any more.
Nothing liveth any longer that I love,--how should I still love myself?

'To live as I incline, or not to live at all':  so do I wish; so wisheth
also the holiest.  But alas! how have _I_ still--inclination?

Have _I_--still a goal?  A haven towards which MY sail is set?

A good wind?  Ah, he only who knoweth WHITHER he saileth, knoweth what wind
is good, and a fair wind for him.

What still remaineth to me?  A heart weary and flippant; an unstable will;
fluttering wings; a broken backbone.

This seeking for MY home:  O Zarathustra, dost thou know that this seeking
hath been MY home-sickening; it eateth me up.

'WHERE is--MY home?'  For it do I ask and seek, and have sought, but have
not found it.  O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O eternal--in-
vain!"

Thus spake the shadow, and Zarathustra's countenance lengthened at his
words.  "Thou art my shadow!" said he at last sadly.

"Thy danger is not small, thou free spirit and wanderer!  Thou hast had a
bad day:  see that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee!

To such unsettled ones as thou, seemeth at last even a prisoner blessed.
Didst thou ever see how captured criminals sleep?  They sleep quietly, they
enjoy their new security.

Beware lest in the end a narrow faith capture thee, a hard, rigorous
delusion!  For now everything that is narrow and fixed seduceth and
tempteth thee.

Thou hast lost thy goal.  Alas, how wilt thou forego and forget that loss?
Thereby--hast thou also lost thy way!

Thou poor rover and rambler, thou tired butterfly! wilt thou have a rest
and a home this evening?  Then go up to my cave!

Thither leadeth the way to my cave.  And now will I run quickly away from
thee again.  Already lieth as it were a shadow upon me.

I will run alone, so that it may again become bright around me.  Therefore
must I still be a long time merrily upon my legs.  In the evening, however,
there will be--dancing with me!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LXX.  NOONTIDE.

--And Zarathustra ran and ran, but he found no one else, and was alone and
ever found himself again; he enjoyed and quaffed his solitude, and thought
of good things--for hours.  About the hour of noontide, however, when the
sun stood exactly over Zarathustra's head, he passed an old, bent and
gnarled tree, which was encircled round by the ardent love of a vine, and
hidden from itself; from this there hung yellow grapes in abundance,
confronting the wanderer.  Then he felt inclined to quench a little thirst,
and to break off for himself a cluster of grapes.  When, however, he had
already his arm out-stretched for that purpose, he felt still more inclined
for something else--namely, to lie down beside the tree at the hour of
perfect noontide and sleep.

This Zarathustra did; and no sooner had he laid himself on the ground in
the stillness and secrecy of the variegated grass, than he had forgotten
his little thirst, and fell asleep.  For as the proverb of Zarathustra
saith:  "One thing is more necessary than the other."  Only that his eyes
remained open:--for they never grew weary of viewing and admiring the tree
and the love of the vine.  In falling asleep, however, Zarathustra spake
thus to his heart:

"Hush!  Hush!  Hath not the world now become perfect?  What hath happened
unto me?

As a delicate wind danceth invisibly upon parqueted seas, light, feather-
light, so--danceth sleep upon me.

No eye doth it close to me, it leaveth my soul awake.  Light is it, verily,
feather-light.

It persuadeth me, I know not how, it toucheth me inwardly with a caressing
hand, it constraineth me.  Yea, it constraineth me, so that my soul
stretcheth itself out:--

--How long and weary it becometh, my strange soul!  Hath a seventh-day
evening come to it precisely at noontide?  Hath it already wandered too
long, blissfully, among good and ripe things?

It stretcheth itself out, long--longer! it lieth still, my strange soul.
Too many good things hath it already tasted; this golden sadness oppresseth
it, it distorteth its mouth.

--As a ship that putteth into the calmest cove:--it now draweth up to the
land, weary of long voyages and uncertain seas.  Is not the land more
faithful?

As such a ship huggeth the shore, tuggeth the shore:--then it sufficeth for
a spider to spin its thread from the ship to the land.  No stronger ropes
are required there.

As such a weary ship in the calmest cove, so do I also now repose, nigh to
the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest
threads.

O happiness!  O happiness!  Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul?  Thou liest
in the grass.  But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd
playeth his pipe.

Take care!  Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields.  Do not sing!  Hush!  The
world is perfect.

Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul!  Do not even whisper!  Lo--hush!
The old noontide sleepeth, it moveth its mouth:  doth it not just now drink
a drop of happiness--

--An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine?  Something whisketh
over it, its happiness laugheth.  Thus--laugheth a God.  Hush!--

--'For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!'  Thus spake I once
and thought myself wise.  But it was a blasphemy:  THAT have I now learned.
Wise fools speak better.

The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a
lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance--LITTLE maketh up the
BEST happiness.  Hush!

--What hath befallen me:  Hark!  Hath time flown away?  Do I not fall?
Have I not fallen--hark! into the well of eternity?

--What happeneth to me?  Hush!  It stingeth me--alas--to the heart?  To the
heart!  Oh, break up, break up, my heart, after such happiness, after such
a sting!

--What?  Hath not the world just now become perfect?  Round and ripe?  Oh,
for the golden round ring--whither doth it fly?  Let me run after it!
Quick!

Hush--" (and here Zarathustra stretched himself, and felt that he was
asleep.)

"Up!" said he to himself, "thou sleeper!  Thou noontide sleeper!  Well
then, up, ye old legs!  It is time and more than time; many a good stretch
of road is still awaiting you--

Now have ye slept your fill; for how long a time?  A half-eternity!  Well
then, up now, mine old heart!  For how long after such a sleep mayest thou
--remain awake?"

(But then did he fall asleep anew, and his soul spake against him and
defended itself, and lay down again)--"Leave me alone!  Hush!  Hath not the
world just now become perfect?  Oh, for the golden round ball!--

"Get up," said Zarathustra, "thou little thief, thou sluggard!  What!
Still stretching thyself, yawning, sighing, failing into deep wells?

Who art thou then, O my soul!" (and here he became frightened, for a
sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.)

"O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright, "thou gazest at me?
Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?

When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly
things,--when wilt thou drink this strange soul--

--When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when
wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?"

Thus spake Zarathustra, and rose from his couch beside the tree, as if
awakening from a strange drunkenness:  and behold! there stood the sun
still exactly above his head.  One might, however, rightly infer therefrom
that Zarathustra had not then slept long.


LXXI.  THE GREETING.

It was late in the afternoon only when Zarathustra, after long useless
searching and strolling about, again came home to his cave.  When, however,
he stood over against it, not more than twenty paces therefrom, the thing
happened which he now least of all expected:  he heard anew the great CRY
OF DISTRESS.  And extraordinary! this time the cry came out of his own
cave.  It was a long, manifold, peculiar cry, and Zarathustra plainly
distinguished that it was composed of many voices:  although heard at a
distance it might sound like the cry out of a single mouth.

Thereupon Zarathustra rushed forward to his cave, and behold! what a
spectacle awaited him after that concert!  For there did they all sit
together whom he had passed during the day:  the king on the right and the
king on the left, the old magician, the pope, the voluntary beggar, the
shadow, the intellectually conscientious one, the sorrowful soothsayer, and
the ass; the ugliest man, however, had set a crown on his head, and had put
round him two purple girdles,--for he liked, like all ugly ones, to
disguise himself and play the handsome person.  In the midst, however, of
that sorrowful company stood Zarathustra's eagle, ruffled and disquieted,
for it had been called upon to answer too much for which its pride had not
any answer; the wise serpent however hung round its neck.

All this did Zarathustra behold with great astonishment; then however he
scrutinised each individual guest with courteous curiosity, read their
souls and wondered anew.  In the meantime the assembled ones had risen from
their seats, and waited with reverence for Zarathustra to speak.
Zarathustra however spake thus:

"Ye despairing ones!  Ye strange ones!  So it was YOUR cry of distress that
I heard?  And now do I know also where he is to be sought, whom I have
sought for in vain to-day:  THE HIGHER MAN--:

--In mine own cave sitteth he, the higher man!  But why do I wonder!  Have
not I myself allured him to me by honey-offerings and artful lure-calls of
my happiness?

But it seemeth to me that ye are badly adapted for company:  ye make one
another's hearts fretful, ye that cry for help, when ye sit here together?
There is one that must first come,

--One who will make you laugh once more, a good jovial buffoon, a dancer, a
wind, a wild romp, some old fool:--what think ye?

Forgive me, however, ye despairing ones, for speaking such trivial words
before you, unworthy, verily, of such guests!  But ye do not divine WHAT
maketh my heart wanton:--

--Ye yourselves do it, and your aspect, forgive it me!  For every one
becometh courageous who beholdeth a despairing one.  To encourage a
despairing one--every one thinketh himself strong enough to do so.

To myself have ye given this power,--a good gift, mine honourable guests!
An excellent guest's-present!  Well, do not then upbraid when I also offer
you something of mine.

This is mine empire and my dominion:  that which is mine, however, shall
this evening and tonight be yours.  Mine animals shall serve you:  let my
cave be your resting-place!

At house and home with me shall no one despair:  in my purlieus do I
protect every one from his wild beasts.  And that is the first thing which
I offer you:  security!

The second thing, however, is my little finger.  And when ye have THAT,
then take the whole hand also, yea, and the heart with it!  Welcome here,
welcome to you, my guests!"

Thus spake Zarathustra, and laughed with love and mischief.  After this
greeting his guests bowed once more and were reverentially silent; the king
on the right, however, answered him in their name.

"O Zarathustra, by the way in which thou hast given us thy hand and thy
greeting, we recognise thee as Zarathustra.  Thou hast humbled thyself
before us; almost hast thou hurt our reverence--:

--Who however could have humbled himself as thou hast done, with such
pride?  THAT uplifteth us ourselves; a refreshment is it, to our eyes and
hearts.

To behold this, merely, gladly would we ascend higher mountains than this.
For as eager beholders have we come; we wanted to see what brighteneth dim
eyes.

And lo! now is it all over with our cries of distress.  Now are our minds
and hearts open and enraptured.  Little is lacking for our spirits to
become wanton.

There is nothing, O Zarathustra, that groweth more pleasingly on earth than
a lofty, strong will:  it is the finest growth.  An entire landscape
refresheth itself at one such tree.

To the pine do I compare him, O Zarathustra, which groweth up like thee--
tall, silent, hardy, solitary, of the best, supplest wood, stately,--

--In the end, however, grasping out for ITS dominion with strong, green
branches, asking weighty questions of the wind, the storm, and whatever is
at home on high places;

--Answering more weightily, a commander, a victor!  Oh! who should not
ascend high mountains to behold such growths?

At thy tree, O Zarathustra, the gloomy and ill-constituted also refresh
themselves; at thy look even the wavering become steady and heal their
hearts.

And verily, towards thy mountain and thy tree do many eyes turn to-day; a
great longing hath arisen, and many have learned to ask:  'Who is
Zarathustra?'

And those into whose ears thou hast at any time dripped thy song and thy
honey:  all the hidden ones, the lone-dwellers and the twain-dwellers, have
simultaneously said to their hearts:

'Doth Zarathustra still live?  It is no longer worth while to live,
everything is indifferent, everything is useless:  or else--we must live
with Zarathustra!'

'Why doth he not come who hath so long announced himself?' thus do many
people ask; 'hath solitude swallowed him up?  Or should we perhaps go to
him?'

Now doth it come to pass that solitude itself becometh fragile and breaketh
open, like a grave that breaketh open and can no longer hold its dead.
Everywhere one seeth resurrected ones.

Now do the waves rise and rise around thy mountain, O Zarathustra.  And
however high be thy height, many of them must rise up to thee:  thy boat
shall not rest much longer on dry ground.

And that we despairing ones have now come into thy cave, and already no
longer despair:--it is but a prognostic and a presage that better ones are
on the way to thee,--

--For they themselves are on the way to thee, the last remnant of God among
men--that is to say, all the men of great longing, of great loathing, of
great satiety,

--All who do not want to live unless they learn again to HOPE--unless they
learn from thee, O Zarathustra, the GREAT hope!"

Thus spake the king on the right, and seized the hand of Zarathustra in
order to kiss it; but Zarathustra checked his veneration, and stepped back
frightened, fleeing as it were, silently and suddenly into the far
distance.  After a little while, however, he was again at home with his
guests, looked at them with clear scrutinising eyes, and said:

"My guests, ye higher men, I will speak plain language and plainly with
you.  It is not for YOU that I have waited here in these mountains."

("'Plain language and plainly?'  Good God!" said here the king on the left
to himself; "one seeth he doth not know the good Occidentals, this sage out
of the Orient!

But he meaneth 'blunt language and bluntly'--well!  That is not the worst
taste in these days!")

"Ye may, verily, all of you be higher men," continued Zarathustra; "but for
me--ye are neither high enough, nor strong enough.

For me, that is to say, for the inexorable which is now silent in me, but
will not always be silent.  And if ye appertain to me, still it is not as
my right arm.

For he who himself standeth, like you, on sickly and tender legs, wisheth
above all to be TREATED INDULGENTLY, whether he be conscious of it or hide
it from himself.

My arms and my legs, however, I do not treat indulgently, I DO NOT TREAT MY
WARRIORS INDULGENTLY:  how then could ye be fit for MY warfare?

With you I should spoil all my victories.  And many of you would tumble
over if ye but heard the loud beating of my drums.

Moreover, ye are not sufficiently beautiful and well-born for me.  I
require pure, smooth mirrors for my doctrines; on your surface even mine
own likeness is distorted.

On your shoulders presseth many a burden, many a recollection; many a
mischievous dwarf squatteth in your corners.  There is concealed populace
also in you.

And though ye be high and of a higher type, much in you is crooked and
misshapen.  There is no smith in the world that could hammer you right and
straight for me.

Ye are only bridges:  may higher ones pass over upon you!  Ye signify
steps:  so do not upbraid him who ascendeth beyond you into HIS height!

Out of your seed there may one day arise for me a genuine son and perfect
heir:  but that time is distant.  Ye yourselves are not those unto whom my
heritage and name belong.

Not for you do I wait here in these mountains; not with you may I descend
for the last time.  Ye have come unto me only as a presage that higher ones
are on the way to me,--

--NOT the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great satiety, and
that which ye call the remnant of God;

--Nay!  Nay!  Three times Nay!  For OTHERS do I wait here in these
mountains, and will not lift my foot from thence without them;

--For higher ones, stronger ones, triumphanter ones, merrier ones, for such
as are built squarely in body and soul:  LAUGHING LIONS must come!

O my guests, ye strange ones--have ye yet heard nothing of my children?
And that they are on the way to me?

Do speak unto me of my gardens, of my Happy Isles, of my new beautiful
race--why do ye not speak unto me thereof?

This guests'-present do I solicit of your love, that ye speak unto me of my
children.  For them am I rich, for them I became poor:  what have I not
surrendered,

--What would I not surrender that I might have one thing:  THESE children,
THIS living plantation, THESE life-trees of my will and of my highest
hope!"

Thus spake Zarathustra, and stopped suddenly in his discourse:  for his
longing came over him, and he closed his eyes and his mouth, because of the
agitation of his heart.  And all his guests also were silent, and stood
still and confounded:  except only that the old soothsayer made signs with
his hands and his gestures.


LXXII.  THE SUPPER.

For at this point the soothsayer interrupted the greeting of Zarathustra
and his guests:  he pressed forward as one who had no time to lose, seized
Zarathustra's hand and exclaimed:  "But Zarathustra!

One thing is more necessary than the other, so sayest thou thyself:  well,
one thing is now more necessary UNTO ME than all others.

A word at the right time:  didst thou not invite me to TABLE?  And here are
many who have made long journeys.  Thou dost not mean to feed us merely
with discourses?

Besides, all of you have thought too much about freezing, drowning,
suffocating, and other bodily dangers:  none of you, however, have thought
of MY danger, namely, perishing of hunger-"

(Thus spake the soothsayer.  When Zarathustra's animals, however, heard
these words, they ran away in terror.  For they saw that all they had
brought home during the day would not be enough to fill the one
soothsayer.)

"Likewise perishing of thirst," continued the soothsayer.  "And although I
hear water splashing here like words of wisdom--that is to say, plenteously
and unweariedly, I--want WINE!

Not every one is a born water-drinker like Zarathustra.  Neither doth water
suit weary and withered ones:  WE deserve wine--IT alone giveth immediate
vigour and improvised health!"

On this occasion, when the soothsayer was longing for wine, it happened
that the king on the left, the silent one, also found expression for once.
"WE took care," said he, "about wine, I, along with my brother the king on
the right:  we have enough of wine,--a whole ass-load of it.  So there is
nothing lacking but bread."

"Bread," replied Zarathustra, laughing when he spake, "it is precisely
bread that anchorites have not.  But man doth not live by bread alone, but
also by the flesh of good lambs, of which I have two:

--THESE shall we slaughter quickly, and cook spicily with sage:  it is so
that I like them.  And there is also no lack of roots and fruits, good
enough even for the fastidious and dainty,--nor of nuts and other riddles
for cracking.

Thus will we have a good repast in a little while.  But whoever wish to eat
with us must also give a hand to the work, even the kings.  For with
Zarathustra even a king may be a cook."

This proposal appealed to the hearts of all of them, save that the
voluntary beggar objected to the flesh and wine and spices.

"Just hear this glutton Zarathustra!" said he jokingly:  "doth one go into
caves and high mountains to make such repasts?

Now indeed do I understand what he once taught us:  Blessed be moderate
poverty!'  And why he wisheth to do away with beggars."

"Be of good cheer," replied Zarathustra, "as I am.  Abide by thy customs,
thou excellent one:  grind thy corn, drink thy water, praise thy cooking,--
if only it make thee glad!

I am a law only for mine own; I am not a law for all.  He, however, who
belongeth unto me must be strong of bone and light of foot,--

--Joyous in fight and feast, no sulker, no John o' Dreams, ready for the
hardest task as for the feast, healthy and hale.

The best belongeth unto mine and me; and if it be not given us, then do we
take it:--the best food, the purest sky, the strongest thoughts, the
fairest women!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra; the king on the right however answered and said:
"Strange!  Did one ever hear such sensible things out of the mouth of a
wise man?

And verily, it is the strangest thing in a wise man, if over and above, he
be still sensible, and not an ass."

Thus spake the king on the right and wondered; the ass however, with ill-
will, said YE-A to his remark.  This however was the beginning of that long
repast which is called "The Supper" in the history-books.  At this there
was nothing else spoken of but THE HIGHER MAN.


LXXIII.  THE HIGHER MAN.

1.

When I came unto men for the first time, then did I commit the anchorite
folly, the great folly:  I appeared on the market-place.

And when I spake unto all, I spake unto none.  In the evening, however,
rope-dancers were my companions, and corpses; and I myself almost a corpse.

With the new morning, however, there came unto me a new truth:  then did I
learn to say:  "Of what account to me are market-place and populace and
populace-noise and long populace-ears!"

Ye higher men, learn THIS from me:  On the market-place no one believeth in
higher men.  But if ye will speak there, very well!  The populace, however,
blinketh:  "We are all equal."

"Ye higher men,"--so blinketh the populace--"there are no higher men, we
are all equal; man is man, before God--we are all equal!"

Before God!--Now, however, this God hath died.  Before the populace,
however, we will not be equal.  Ye higher men, away from the market-place!

2.

Before God!--Now however this God hath died!  Ye higher men, this God was
your greatest danger.

Only since he lay in the grave have ye again arisen.  Now only cometh the
great noontide, now only doth the higher man become--master!

Have ye understood this word, O my brethren?  Ye are frightened:  do your
hearts turn giddy?  Doth the abyss here yawn for you?  Doth the hell-hound
here yelp at you?

Well!  Take heart! ye higher men!  Now only travaileth the mountain of the
human future.  God hath died:  now do WE desire--the Superman to live.

3.

The most careful ask to-day:  "How is man to be maintained?"  Zarathustra
however asketh, as the first and only one:  "How is man to be SURPASSED?"

The Superman, I have at heart; THAT is the first and only thing to me--and
NOT man:  not the neighbour, not the poorest, not the sorriest, not the
best.--

O my brethren, what I can love in man is that he is an over-going and a
down-going.  And also in you there is much that maketh me love and hope.

In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me hope.  For the
great despisers are the great reverers.

In that ye have despaired, there is much to honour.  For ye have not
learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned petty policy.

For to-day have the petty people become master:  they all preach submission
and humility and policy and diligence and consideration and the long et
cetera of petty virtues.

Whatever is of the effeminate type, whatever originateth from the servile
type, and especially the populace-mishmash:--THAT wisheth now to be master
of all human destiny--O disgust!  Disgust!  Disgust!

THAT asketh and asketh and never tireth:  "How is man to maintain himself
best, longest, most pleasantly?" Thereby--are they the masters of to-day.

These masters of to-day--surpass them, O my brethren--these petty people:
THEY are the Superman's greatest danger!

Surpass, ye higher men, the petty virtues, the petty policy, the sand-grain
considerateness, the ant-hill trumpery, the pitiable comfortableness, the
"happiness of the greatest number"--!

And rather despair than submit yourselves.  And verily, I love you, because
ye know not to-day how to live, ye higher men!  For thus do YE live--best!

4.

Have ye courage, O my brethren?  Are ye stout-hearted?  NOT the courage
before witnesses, but anchorite and eagle courage, which not even a God any
longer beholdeth?

Cold souls, mules, the blind and the drunken, I do not call stout-hearted.
He hath heart who knoweth fear, but VANQUISHETH it; who seeth the abyss,
but with PRIDE.

He who seeth the abyss, but with eagle's eyes,--he who with eagle's talons
GRASPETH the abyss:  he hath courage.--

5.

"Man is evil"--so said to me for consolation, all the wisest ones.  Ah, if
only it be still true to-day!  For the evil is man's best force.

"Man must become better and eviler"--so do _I_ teach.  The evilest is
necessary for the Superman's best.

It may have been well for the preacher of the petty people to suffer and be
burdened by men's sin.  I, however, rejoice in great sin as my great
CONSOLATION.--

Such things, however, are not said for long ears.  Every word, also, is not
suited for every mouth.  These are fine far-away things:  at them sheep's
claws shall not grasp!

6.

Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put wrong?

Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you sufferers?  Or
show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones, new and easier
footpaths?

Nay!  Nay!  Three times Nay!  Always more, always better ones of your type
shall succumb,--for ye shall always have it worse and harder.  Thus only--

--Thus only groweth man aloft to the height where the lightning striketh
and shattereth him:  high enough for the lightning!

Towards the few, the long, the remote go forth my soul and my seeking:  of
what account to me are your many little, short miseries!

Ye do not yet suffer enough for me!  For ye suffer from yourselves, ye have
not yet suffered FROM MAN.  Ye would lie if ye spake otherwise!  None of
you suffereth from what _I_ have suffered.--

7.

It is not enough for me that the lightning no longer doeth harm.  I do not
wish to conduct it away:  it shall learn--to work for ME.--

My wisdom hath accumulated long like a cloud, it becometh stiller and
darker.  So doeth all wisdom which shall one day bear LIGHTNINGS.--

Unto these men of to-day will I not be LIGHT, nor be called light.  THEM--
will I blind:  lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes!

8.

Do not will anything beyond your power:  there is a bad falseness in those
who will beyond their power.

Especially when they will great things!  For they awaken distrust in great
things, these subtle false-coiners and stage-players:--

--Until at last they are false towards themselves, squint-eyed, whited
cankers, glossed over with strong words, parade virtues and brilliant false
deeds.

Take good care there, ye higher men!  For nothing is more precious to me,
and rarer, than honesty.

Is this to-day not that of the populace?  The populace however knoweth not
what is great and what is small, what is straight and what is honest:  it
is innocently crooked, it ever lieth.

9.

Have a good distrust to-day ye, higher men, ye enheartened ones!  Ye open-
hearted ones!  And keep your reasons secret!  For this to-day is that of
the populace.

What the populace once learned to believe without reasons, who could--
refute it to them by means of reasons?

And on the market-place one convinceth with gestures.  But reasons make the
populace distrustful.

And when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask yourselves with good
distrust:  "What strong error hath fought for it?"

Be on your guard also against the learned!  They hate you, because they are
unproductive!  They have cold, withered eyes before which every bird is
unplumed.

Such persons vaunt about not lying:  but inability to lie is still far from
being love to truth.  Be on your guard!

Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge!  Refrigerated spirits
I do not believe in.  He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.

10.

If ye would go up high, then use your own legs!  Do not get yourselves
CARRIED aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads!

Thou hast mounted, however, on horseback?  Thou now ridest briskly up to
thy goal?  Well, my friend!  But thy lame foot is also with thee on
horseback!

When thou reachest thy goal, when thou alightest from thy horse:  precisely
on thy HEIGHT, thou higher man,--then wilt thou stumble!

11.

Ye creating ones, ye higher men!  One is only pregnant with one's own
child.

Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon!  Who then is YOUR
neighbour?  Even if ye act "for your neighbour"--ye still do not create for
him!

Unlearn, I pray you, this "for," ye creating ones:  your very virtue
wisheth you to have naught to do with "for" and "on account of" and
"because."  Against these false little words shall ye stop your ears.

"For one's neighbour," is the virtue only of the petty people:  there it is
said "like and like," and "hand washeth hand":--they have neither the right
nor the power for YOUR self-seeking!

In your self-seeking, ye creating ones, there is the foresight and
foreseeing of the pregnant!  What no one's eye hath yet seen, namely, the
fruit--this, sheltereth and saveth and nourisheth your entire love.

Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is also your
entire virtue!  Your work, your will is YOUR "neighbour":  let no false
values impose upon you!

12.

Ye creating ones, ye higher men!  Whoever hath to give birth is sick;
whoever hath given birth, however, is unclean.

Ask women:  one giveth birth, not because it giveth pleasure.  The pain
maketh hens and poets cackle.

Ye creating ones, in you there is much uncleanliness.  That is because ye
have had to be mothers.

A new child:  oh, how much new filth hath also come into the world!  Go
apart!  He who hath given birth shall wash his soul!

13.

Be not virtuous beyond your powers!  And seek nothing from yourselves
opposed to probability!

Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers' virtue hath already walked!
How would ye rise high, if your fathers' will should not rise with you?

He, however, who would be a firstling, let him take care lest he also
become a lastling!  And where the vices of your fathers are, there should
ye not set up as saints!

He whose fathers were inclined for women, and for strong wine and flesh of
wildboar swine; what would it be if he demanded chastity of himself?

A folly would it be!  Much, verily, doth it seem to me for such a one, if
he should be the husband of one or of two or of three women.

And if he founded monasteries, and inscribed over their portals:  "The way
to holiness,"--I should still say:  What good is it! it is a new folly!

He hath founded for himself a penance-house and refuge-house:  much good
may it do!  But I do not believe in it.

In solitude there groweth what any one bringeth into it--also the brute in
one's nature.  Thus is solitude inadvisable unto many.

Hath there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints of the
wilderness?  AROUND THEM was not only the devil loose--but also the swine.

14.

Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger whose spring hath failed--thus, ye
higher men, have I often seen you slink aside.  A CAST which ye made had
failed.

But what doth it matter, ye dice-players!  Ye had not learned to play and
mock, as one must play and mock!  Do we not ever sit at a great table of
mocking and playing?

And if great things have been a failure with you, have ye yourselves
therefore--been a failure?  And if ye yourselves have been a failure, hath
man therefore--been a failure?  If man, however, hath been a failure:  well
then! never mind!

15.

The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed.  Ye higher
men here, have ye not all--been failures?

Be of good cheer; what doth it matter?  How much is still possible!  Learn
to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh!

What wonder even that ye have failed and only half-succeeded, ye half-
shattered ones!  Doth not--man's FUTURE strive and struggle in you?

Man's furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious powers--do
not all these foam through one another in your vessel?

What wonder that many a vessel shattereth!  Learn to laugh at yourselves,
as ye ought to laugh!  Ye higher men, Oh, how much is still possible!

And verily, how much hath already succeeded!  How rich is this earth in
small, good, perfect things, in well-constituted things!

Set around you small, good, perfect things, ye higher men.  Their golden
maturity healeth the heart.  The perfect teacheth one to hope.

16.

What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth?  Was it not the
word of him who said:  "Woe unto them that laugh now!"

Did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth?  Then he sought
badly.  A child even findeth cause for it.

He--did not love sufficiently:  otherwise would he also have loved us, the
laughing ones!  But he hated and hooted us; wailing and teeth-gnashing did
he promise us.

Must one then curse immediately, when one doth not love?  That--seemeth to
me bad taste.  Thus did he, however, this absolute one.  He sprang from the
populace.

And he himself just did not love sufficiently; otherwise would he have
raged less because people did not love him.  All great love doth not SEEK
love:--it seeketh more.

Go out of the way of all such absolute ones!  They are a poor sickly type,
a populace-type:  they look at this life with ill-will, they have an evil
eye for this earth.

Go out of the way of all such absolute ones!  They have heavy feet and
sultry hearts:--they do not know how to dance.  How could the earth be
light to such ones!

17.

Tortuously do all good things come nigh to their goal.  Like cats they
curve their backs, they purr inwardly with their approaching happiness,--
all good things laugh.

His step betrayeth whether a person already walketh on HIS OWN path:  just
see me walk!  He, however, who cometh nigh to his goal, danceth.

And verily, a statue have I not become, not yet do I stand there stiff,
stupid and stony, like a pillar; I love fast racing.

And though there be on earth fens and dense afflictions, he who hath light
feet runneth even across the mud, and danceth, as upon well-swept ice.

Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher!  And do not forget your
legs!  Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better
still, if ye stand upon your heads!

18.

This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown:  I myself have put on
this crown, I myself have consecrated my laughter.  No one else have I
found to-day potent enough for this.

Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beckoneth with his
pinions, one ready for flight, beckoning unto all birds, ready and
prepared, a blissfully light-spirited one:--

Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient
one, no absolute one, one who loveth leaps and side-leaps; I myself have
put on this crown!

19.

Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher!  And do not forget your
legs!  Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better still if ye
stand upon your heads!

There are also heavy animals in a state of happiness, there are club-footed
ones from the beginning.  Curiously do they exert themselves, like an
elephant which endeavoureth to stand upon its head.

Better, however, to be foolish with happiness than foolish with misfortune,
better to dance awkwardly than walk lamely.  So learn, I pray you, my
wisdom, ye higher men:  even the worst thing hath two good reverse sides,--

--Even the worst thing hath good dancing-legs:  so learn, I pray you, ye
higher men, to put yourselves on your proper legs!

So unlearn, I pray you, the sorrow-sighing, and all the populace-sadness!
Oh, how sad the buffoons of the populace seem to me to-day!  This to-day,
however, is that of the populace.

20.

Do like unto the wind when it rusheth forth from its mountain-caves:  unto
its own piping will it dance; the seas tremble and leap under its
footsteps.

That which giveth wings to asses, that which milketh the lionesses:--
praised be that good, unruly spirit, which cometh like a hurricane unto all
the present and unto all the populace,--

--Which is hostile to thistle-heads and puzzle-heads, and to all withered
leaves and weeds:--praised be this wild, good, free spirit of the storm,
which danceth upon fens and afflictions, as upon meadows!

Which hateth the consumptive populace-dogs, and all the ill-constituted,
sullen brood:--praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing
storm, which bloweth dust into the eyes of all the melanopic and
melancholic!

Ye higher men, the worst thing in you is that ye have none of you learned
to dance as ye ought to dance--to dance beyond yourselves!  What doth it
matter that ye have failed!

How many things are still possible!  So LEARN to laugh beyond yourselves!
Lift up your hearts, ye good dancers, high! higher!  And do not forget the
good laughter!

This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown:  to you my brethren do
I cast this crown!  Laughing have I consecrated; ye higher men, LEARN, I
pray you--to laugh!


LXXIV.  THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY.

1.

When Zarathustra spake these sayings, he stood nigh to the entrance of his
cave; with the last words, however, he slipped away from his guests, and
fled for a little while into the open air.

"O pure odours around me," cried he, "O blessed stillness around me!  But
where are mine animals?  Hither, hither, mine eagle and my serpent!

Tell me, mine animals:  these higher men, all of them--do they perhaps not
SMELL well?  O pure odours around me!  Now only do I know and feel how I
love you, mine animals."

--And Zarathustra said once more:  "I love you, mine animals!"  The eagle,
however, and the serpent pressed close to him when he spake these words,
and looked up to him.  In this attitude were they all three silent
together, and sniffed and sipped the good air with one another.  For the
air here outside was better than with the higher men.

2.

Hardly, however, had Zarathustra left the cave when the old magician got
up, looked cunningly about him, and said:  "He is gone!

And already, ye higher men--let me tickle you with this complimentary and
flattering name, as he himself doeth--already doth mine evil spirit of
deceit and magic attack me, my melancholy devil,

--Which is an adversary to this Zarathustra from the very heart:  forgive
it for this!  Now doth it wish to conjure before you, it hath just ITS
hour; in vain do I struggle with this evil spirit.

Unto all of you, whatever honours ye like to assume in your names, whether
ye call yourselves 'the free spirits' or 'the conscientious,' or 'the
penitents of the spirit,' or 'the unfettered,' or 'the great longers,'--

--Unto all of you, who like me suffer FROM THE GREAT LOATHING, to whom the
old God hath died, and as yet no new God lieth in cradles and swaddling
clothes--unto all of you is mine evil spirit and magic-devil favourable.

I know you, ye higher men, I know him,--I know also this fiend whom I love
in spite of me, this Zarathustra:  he himself often seemeth to me like the
beautiful mask of a saint,

--Like a new strange mummery in which mine evil spirit, the melancholy
devil, delighteth:--I love Zarathustra, so doth it often seem to me, for
the sake of mine evil spirit.--

But already doth IT attack me and constrain me, this spirit of melancholy,
this evening-twilight devil:  and verily, ye higher men, it hath a
longing--

--Open your eyes!--it hath a longing to come NAKED, whether male or female,
I do not yet know:  but it cometh, it constraineth me, alas! open your
wits!

The day dieth out, unto all things cometh now the evening, also unto the
best things; hear now, and see, ye higher men, what devil--man or woman--
this spirit of evening-melancholy is!"

Thus spake the old magician, looked cunningly about him, and then seized
his harp.

3.

In evening's limpid air,
What time the dew's soothings
Unto the earth downpour,
Invisibly and unheard--
For tender shoe-gear wear
The soothing dews, like all that's kind-gentle--:
Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart,
How once thou thirstedest
For heaven's kindly teardrops and dew's down-droppings,
All singed and weary thirstedest,
What time on yellow grass-pathways
Wicked, occidental sunny glances
Through sombre trees about thee sported,
Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting?

"Of TRUTH the wooer?  Thou?"--so taunted they-
"Nay!  Merely poet!
A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling,
That aye must lie,
That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie:
For booty lusting,
Motley masked,
Self-hidden, shrouded,
Himself his booty-
HE--of truth the wooer?
Nay!  Mere fool!  Mere poet!
Just motley speaking,
From mask of fool confusedly shouting,
Circumambling on fabricated word-bridges,
On motley rainbow-arches,
'Twixt the spurious heavenly,
And spurious earthly,
Round us roving, round us soaring,--
MERE FOOL!  MERE POET!

HE--of truth the wooer?
Not still, stiff, smooth and cold,
Become an image,
A godlike statue,
Set up in front of temples,
As a God's own door-guard:
Nay! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues,
In every desert homelier than at temples,
With cattish wantonness,
Through every window leaping
Quickly into chances,
Every wild forest a-sniffing,
Greedily-longingly, sniffing,
That thou, in wild forests,
'Mong the motley-speckled fierce creatures,
Shouldest rove, sinful-sound and fine-coloured,
With longing lips smacking,
Blessedly mocking, blessedly hellish, blessedly bloodthirsty,
Robbing, skulking, lying--roving:--

Or unto eagles like which fixedly,
Long adown the precipice look,
Adown THEIR precipice:--
Oh, how they whirl down now,
Thereunder, therein,
To ever deeper profoundness whirling!--
Then,
Sudden,
With aim aright,
With quivering flight,
On LAMBKINS pouncing,
Headlong down, sore-hungry,
For lambkins longing,
Fierce 'gainst all lamb-spirits,
Furious-fierce all that look
Sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp-woolly,
--Grey, with lambsheep kindliness!

Even thus,
Eaglelike, pantherlike,
Are the poet's desires,
Are THINE OWN desires 'neath a thousand guises,
Thou fool!  Thou poet!
Thou who all mankind viewedst--
So God, as sheep--:
The God TO REND within mankind,
As the sheep in mankind,
And in rending LAUGHING--

THAT, THAT is thine own blessedness!
Of a panther and eagle--blessedness!
Of a poet and fool--the blessedness!--

In evening's limpid air,
What time the moon's sickle,
Green, 'twixt the purple-glowings,
And jealous, steal'th forth:
--Of day the foe,
With every step in secret,
The rosy garland-hammocks
Downsickling, till they've sunken
Down nightwards, faded, downsunken:--

Thus had I sunken one day
From mine own truth-insanity,
From mine own fervid day-longings,
Of day aweary, sick of sunshine,
--Sunk downwards, evenwards, shadowwards:
By one sole trueness
All scorched and thirsty:
--Bethinkst thou still, bethinkst thou, burning heart,
How then thou thirstedest?-
THAT I SHOULD BANNED BE
FROM ALL THE TRUENESS!
MERE FOOL!  MERE POET!


LXXV.  SCIENCE.

Thus sang the magician; and all who were present went like birds unawares
into the net of his artful and melancholy voluptuousness.  Only the
spiritually conscientious one had not been caught:  he at once snatched the
harp from the magician and called out:  "Air!  Let in good air!  Let in
Zarathustra!  Thou makest this cave sultry and poisonous, thou bad old
magician!

Thou seducest, thou false one, thou subtle one, to unknown desires and
deserts.  And alas, that such as thou should talk and make ado about the
TRUTH!

Alas, to all free spirits who are not on their guard against SUCH
magicians!  It is all over with their freedom:  thou teachest and temptest
back into prisons,--

--Thou old melancholy devil, out of thy lament soundeth a lurement:  thou
resemblest those who with their praise of chastity secretly invite to
voluptuousness!"

Thus spake the conscientious one; the old magician, however, looked about
him, enjoying his triumph, and on that account put up with the annoyance
which the conscientious one caused him.  "Be still!" said he with modest
voice, "good songs want to re-echo well; after good songs one should be
long silent.

Thus do all those present, the higher men.  Thou, however, hast perhaps
understood but little of my song?  In thee there is little of the magic
spirit.

"Thou praisest me," replied the conscientious one, "in that thou separatest
me from thyself; very well!  But, ye others, what do I see?  Ye still sit
there, all of you, with lusting eyes--:

Ye free spirits, whither hath your freedom gone!  Ye almost seem to me to
resemble those who have long looked at bad girls dancing naked:  your souls
themselves dance!

In you, ye higher men, there must be more of that which the magician
calleth his evil spirit of magic and deceit:--we must indeed be different.

And verily, we spake and thought long enough together ere Zarathustra came
home to his cave, for me not to be unaware that we ARE different.

We SEEK different things even here aloft, ye and I.  For I seek more
SECURITY; on that account have I come to Zarathustra.  For he is still the
most steadfast tower and will--

--To-day, when everything tottereth, when all the earth quaketh.  Ye,
however, when I see what eyes ye make, it almost seemeth to me that ye seek
MORE INSECURITY,

--More horror, more danger, more earthquake.  Ye long (it almost seemeth so
to me--forgive my presumption, ye higher men)--

--Ye long for the worst and dangerousest life, which frighteneth ME most,--
for the life of wild beasts, for forests, caves, steep mountains and
labyrinthine gorges.

And it is not those who lead OUT OF danger that please you best, but those
who lead you away from all paths, the misleaders.  But if such longing in
you be ACTUAL, it seemeth to me nevertheless to be IMPOSSIBLE.

For fear--that is man's original and fundamental feeling; through fear
everything is explained, original sin and original virtue.  Through fear
there grew also MY virtue, that is to say:  Science.

For fear of wild animals--that hath been longest fostered in man, inclusive
of the animal which he concealeth and feareth in himself:--Zarathustra
calleth it 'the beast inside.'

Such prolonged ancient fear, at last become subtle, spiritual and
intellectual--at present, me thinketh, it is called SCIENCE."--

Thus spake the conscientious one; but Zarathustra, who had just come back
into his cave and had heard and divined the last discourse, threw a handful
of roses to the conscientious one, and laughed on account of his "truths."
"Why!" he exclaimed, "what did I hear just now?  Verily, it seemeth to me,
thou art a fool, or else I myself am one:  and quietly and quickly will I
Put thy 'truth' upside down.

For FEAR--is an exception with us.  Courage, however, and adventure, and
delight in the uncertain, in the unattempted--COURAGE seemeth to me the
entire primitive history of man.

The wildest and most courageous animals hath he envied and robbed of all
their virtues:  thus only did he become--man.

THIS courage, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellectual, this human
courage, with eagle's pinions and serpent's wisdom:  THIS, it seemeth to
me, is called at present--"

"ZARATHUSTRA!" cried all of them there assembled, as if with one voice, and
burst out at the same time into a great laughter; there arose, however,
from them as it were a heavy cloud.  Even the magician laughed, and said
wisely:  "Well!  It is gone, mine evil spirit!

And did I not myself warn you against it when I said that it was a
deceiver, a lying and deceiving spirit?

Especially when it showeth itself naked.  But what can _I_ do with regard
to its tricks!  Have _I_ created it and the world?

Well!  Let us be good again, and of good cheer!  And although Zarathustra
looketh with evil eye--just see him! he disliketh me--:

--Ere night cometh will he again learn to love and laud me; he cannot live
long without committing such follies.

HE--loveth his enemies:  this art knoweth he better than any one I have
seen.  But he taketh revenge for it--on his friends!"

Thus spake the old magician, and the higher men applauded him; so that
Zarathustra went round, and mischievously and lovingly shook hands with his
friends,--like one who hath to make amends and apologise to every one for
something.  When however he had thereby come to the door of his cave, lo,
then had he again a longing for the good air outside, and for his animals,
--and wished to steal out.


LXXVI.  AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT.

1.

"Go not away!" said then the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra's
shadow, "abide with us--otherwise the old gloomy affliction might again
fall upon us.

Now hath that old magician given us of his worst for our good, and lo! the
good, pious pope there hath tears in his eyes, and hath quite embarked
again upon the sea of melancholy.

Those kings may well put on a good air before us still:  for that have THEY
learned best of us all at present!  Had they however no one to see them, I
wager that with them also the bad game would again commence,--

--The bad game of drifting clouds, of damp melancholy, of curtained
heavens, of stolen suns, of howling autumn-winds,

--The bad game of our howling and crying for help!  Abide with us, O
Zarathustra!  Here there is much concealed misery that wisheth to speak,
much evening, much cloud, much damp air!

Thou hast nourished us with strong food for men, and powerful proverbs:  do
not let the weakly, womanly spirits attack us anew at dessert!

Thou alone makest the air around thee strong and clear!  Did I ever find
anywhere on earth such good air as with thee in thy cave?

Many lands have I seen, my nose hath learned to test and estimate many
kinds of air:  but with thee do my nostrils taste their greatest delight!

Unless it be,--unless it be--, do forgive an old recollection!  Forgive me
an old after-dinner song, which I once composed amongst daughters of the
desert:--

For with them was there equally good, clear, Oriental air; there was I
furthest from cloudy, damp, melancholy Old-Europe!

Then did I love such Oriental maidens and other blue kingdoms of heaven,
over which hang no clouds and no thoughts.

Ye would not believe how charmingly they sat there, when they did not
dance, profound, but without thoughts, like little secrets, like beribboned
riddles, like dessert-nuts--

Many-hued and foreign, forsooth! but without clouds:  riddles which can be
guessed:  to please such maidens I then composed an after-dinner psalm."

Thus spake the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra's shadow; and before
any one answered him, he had seized the harp of the old magician, crossed
his legs, and looked calmly and sagely around him:--with his nostrils,
however, he inhaled the air slowly and questioningly, like one who in new
countries tasteth new foreign air.  Afterward he began to sing with a kind
of roaring.

2.

THE DESERTS GROW:  WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE!

--Ha!
Solemnly!
In effect solemnly!
A worthy beginning!
Afric manner, solemnly!
Of a lion worthy,
Or perhaps of a virtuous howl-monkey--
--But it's naught to you,
Ye friendly damsels dearly loved,
At whose own feet to me,
The first occasion,
To a European under palm-trees,
A seat is now granted.  Selah.

Wonderful, truly!
Here do I sit now,
The desert nigh, and yet I am
So far still from the desert,
Even in naught yet deserted:
That is, I'm swallowed down
By this the smallest oasis--:
--It opened up just yawning,
Its loveliest mouth agape,
Most sweet-odoured of all mouthlets:
Then fell I right in,
Right down, right through--in 'mong you,
Ye friendly damsels dearly loved!  Selah.

Hail! hail! to that whale, fishlike,
If it thus for its guest's convenience
Made things nice!--(ye well know,
Surely, my learned allusion?)
Hail to its belly,
If it had e'er
A such loveliest oasis-belly
As this is:  though however I doubt about it,
--With this come I out of Old-Europe,
That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any
Elderly married woman.
May the Lord improve it!
Amen!

Here do I sit now,
In this the smallest oasis,
Like a date indeed,
Brown, quite sweet, gold-suppurating,
For rounded mouth of maiden longing,
But yet still more for youthful, maidlike,
Ice-cold and snow-white and incisory
Front teeth:  and for such assuredly,
Pine the hearts all of ardent date-fruits.  Selah.

To the there-named south-fruits now,
Similar, all-too-similar,
Do I lie here; by little
Flying insects
Round-sniffled and round-played,
And also by yet littler,
Foolisher, and peccabler
Wishes and phantasies,--
Environed by you,
Ye silent, presentientest
Maiden-kittens,
Dudu and Suleika,
--ROUNDSPHINXED, that into one word
I may crowd much feeling:
(Forgive me, O God,
All such speech-sinning!)
--Sit I here the best of air sniffling,
Paradisal air, truly,
Bright and buoyant air, golden-mottled,
As goodly air as ever
From lunar orb downfell--
Be it by hazard,
Or supervened it by arrogancy?
As the ancient poets relate it.
But doubter, I'm now calling it
In question:  with this do I come indeed
Out of Europe,
That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any
Elderly married woman.
May the Lord improve it!
Amen.

This the finest air drinking,
With nostrils out-swelled like goblets,
Lacking future, lacking remembrances
Thus do I sit here, ye
Friendly damsels dearly loved,
And look at the palm-tree there,
How it, to a dance-girl, like,
Doth bow and bend and on its haunches bob,
--One doth it too, when one view'th it long!--
To a dance-girl like, who as it seem'th to me,
Too long, and dangerously persistent,
Always, always, just on SINGLE leg hath stood?
--Then forgot she thereby, as it seem'th to me,
The OTHER leg?
For vainly I, at least,
Did search for the amissing
Fellow-jewel
--Namely, the other leg--
In the sanctified precincts,
Nigh her very dearest, very tenderest,
Flapping and fluttering and flickering skirting.
Yea, if ye should, ye beauteous friendly ones,
Quite take my word:
She hath, alas! LOST it!
Hu!  Hu!  Hu!  Hu!  Hu!
It is away!
For ever away!
The other leg!
Oh, pity for that loveliest other leg!
Where may it now tarry, all-forsaken weeping?
The lonesomest leg?
In fear perhaps before a
Furious, yellow, blond and curled
Leonine monster?  Or perhaps even
Gnawed away, nibbled badly--
Most wretched, woeful! woeful! nibbled badly!  Selah.

Oh, weep ye not,
Gentle spirits!
Weep ye not, ye
Date-fruit spirits!  Milk-bosoms!
Ye sweetwood-heart
Purselets!
Weep ye no more,
Pallid Dudu!
Be a man, Suleika!  Bold!  Bold!
--Or else should there perhaps
Something strengthening, heart-strengthening,
Here most proper be?
Some inspiring text?
Some solemn exhortation?--
Ha!  Up now! honour!
Moral honour!  European honour!
Blow again, continue,
Bellows-box of virtue!
Ha!
Once more thy roaring,
Thy moral roaring!
As a virtuous lion
Nigh the daughters of deserts roaring!
--For virtue's out-howl,
Ye very dearest maidens,
Is more than every
European fervour, European hot-hunger!
And now do I stand here,
As European,
I can't be different, God's help to me!
Amen!

THE DESERTS GROW:  WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE!


LXXVII.  THE AWAKENING.

1.

After the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave became all at once full
of noise and laughter:  and since the assembled guests all spake
simultaneously, and even the ass, encouraged thereby, no longer remained
silent, a little aversion and scorn for his visitors came over Zarathustra,
although he rejoiced at their gladness.  For it seemed to him a sign of
convalescence.  So he slipped out into the open air and spake to his
animals.

"Whither hath their distress now gone?" said he, and already did he himself
feel relieved of his petty disgust--"with me, it seemeth that they have
unlearned their cries of distress!

--Though, alas! not yet their crying."  And Zarathustra stopped his ears,
for just then did the YE-A of the ass mix strangely with the noisy
jubilation of those higher men.

"They are merry," he began again, "and who knoweth? perhaps at their host's
expense; and if they have learned of me to laugh, still it is not MY
laughter they have learned.

But what matter about that!  They are old people:  they recover in their
own way, they laugh in their own way; mine ears have already endured worse
and have not become peevish.

This day is a victory:  he already yieldeth, he fleeth, THE SPIRIT OF
GRAVITY, mine old arch-enemy!  How well this day is about to end, which
began so badly and gloomily!

And it is ABOUT TO end.  Already cometh the evening:  over the sea rideth
it hither, the good rider!  How it bobbeth, the blessed one, the home-
returning one, in its purple saddles!

The sky gazeth brightly thereon, the world lieth deep.  Oh, all ye strange
ones who have come to me, it is already worth while to have lived with me!"

Thus spake Zarathustra.  And again came the cries and laughter of the
higher men out of the cave:  then began he anew:

"They bite at it, my bait taketh, there departeth also from them their
enemy, the spirit of gravity.  Now do they learn to laugh at themselves:
do I hear rightly?

My virile food taketh effect, my strong and savoury sayings:  and verily, I
did not nourish them with flatulent vegetables!  But with warrior-food,
with conqueror-food:  new desires did I awaken.

New hopes are in their arms and legs, their hearts expand.  They find new
words, soon will their spirits breathe wantonness.

Such food may sure enough not be proper for children, nor even for longing
girls old and young.  One persuadeth their bowels otherwise; I am not their
physician and teacher.

The DISGUST departeth from these higher men; well! that is my victory.  In
my domain they become assured; all stupid shame fleeth away; they empty
themselves.

They empty their hearts, good times return unto them, they keep holiday and
ruminate,--they become THANKFUL.

THAT do I take as the best sign:  they become thankful.  Not long will it
be ere they devise festivals, and put up memorials to their old joys.

They are CONVALESCENTS!"  Thus spake Zarathustra joyfully to his heart and
gazed outward; his animals, however, pressed up to him, and honoured his
happiness and his silence.

2.

All on a sudden however, Zarathustra's ear was frightened:  for the cave
which had hitherto been full of noise and laughter, became all at once
still as death;--his nose, however, smelt a sweet-scented vapour and
incense-odour, as if from burning pine-cones.

"What happeneth?  What are they about?" he asked himself, and stole up to
the entrance, that he might be able unobserved to see his guests.  But
wonder upon wonder! what was he then obliged to behold with his own eyes!

"They have all of them become PIOUS again, they PRAY, they are mad!"--said
he, and was astonished beyond measure.  And forsooth! all these higher men,
the two kings, the pope out of service, the evil magician, the voluntary
beggar, the wanderer and shadow, the old soothsayer, the spiritually
conscientious one, and the ugliest man--they all lay on their knees like
children and credulous old women, and worshipped the ass.  And just then
began the ugliest man to gurgle and snort, as if something unutterable in
him tried to find expression; when, however, he had actually found words,
behold! it was a pious, strange litany in praise of the adored and censed
ass.  And the litany sounded thus:

Amen!  And glory and honour and wisdom and thanks and praise and strength
be to our God, from everlasting to everlasting!

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

He carrieth our burdens, he hath taken upon him the form of a servant, he
is patient of heart and never saith Nay; and he who loveth his God
chastiseth him.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

He speaketh not:  except that he ever saith Yea to the world which he
created:  thus doth he extol his world.  It is his artfulness that speaketh
not:  thus is he rarely found wrong.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

Uncomely goeth he through the world.  Grey is the favourite colour in which
he wrappeth his virtue.  Hath he spirit, then doth he conceal it; every
one, however, believeth in his long ears.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

What hidden wisdom it is to wear long ears, and only to say Yea and never
Nay!  Hath he not created the world in his own image, namely, as stupid as
possible?

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

Thou goest straight and crooked ways; it concerneth thee little what
seemeth straight or crooked unto us men.  Beyond good and evil is thy
domain.  It is thine innocence not to know what innocence is.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

Lo! how thou spurnest none from thee, neither beggars nor kings.  Thou
sufferest little children to come unto thee, and when the bad boys decoy
thee, then sayest thou simply, YE-A.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

Thou lovest she-asses and fresh figs, thou art no food-despiser.  A thistle
tickleth thy heart when thou chancest to be hungry.  There is the wisdom of
a God therein.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.


LXXVIII.  THE ASS-FESTIVAL.

1.

At this place in the litany, however, Zarathustra could no longer control
himself; he himself cried out YE-A, louder even than the ass, and sprang
into the midst of his maddened guests.  "Whatever are you about, ye grown-
up children?" he exclaimed, pulling up the praying ones from the ground.
"Alas, if any one else, except Zarathustra, had seen you:

Every one would think you the worst blasphemers, or the very foolishest old
women, with your new belief!

And thou thyself, thou old pope, how is it in accordance with thee, to
adore an ass in such a manner as God?"--

"O Zarathustra," answered the pope, "forgive me, but in divine matters I am
more enlightened even than thou.  And it is right that it should be so.

Better to adore God so, in this form, than in no form at all!  Think over
this saying, mine exalted friend:  thou wilt readily divine that in such a
saying there is wisdom.

He who said 'God is a Spirit'--made the greatest stride and slide hitherto
made on earth towards unbelief:  such a dictum is not easily amended again
on earth!

Mine old heart leapeth and boundeth because there is still something to
adore on earth.  Forgive it, O Zarathustra, to an old, pious pontiff-
heart!--"

--"And thou," said Zarathustra to the wanderer and shadow, "thou callest
and thinkest thyself a free spirit?  And thou here practisest such idolatry
and hierolatry?

Worse verily, doest thou here than with thy bad brown girls, thou bad, new
believer!"

"It is sad enough," answered the wanderer and shadow, "thou art right:  but
how can I help it!  The old God liveth again, O Zarathustra, thou mayst say
what thou wilt.

The ugliest man is to blame for it all:  he hath reawakened him.  And if he
say that he once killed him, with Gods DEATH is always just a prejudice."

--"And thou," said Zarathustra, "thou bad old magician, what didst thou do!
Who ought to believe any longer in thee in this free age, when THOU
believest in such divine donkeyism?

It was a stupid thing that thou didst; how couldst thou, a shrewd man, do
such a stupid thing!"

"O Zarathustra," answered the shrewd magician, "thou art right, it was a
stupid thing,--it was also repugnant to me."

--"And thou even," said Zarathustra to the spiritually conscientious one,
"consider, and put thy finger to thy nose!  Doth nothing go against thy
conscience here?  Is thy spirit not too cleanly for this praying and the
fumes of those devotees?"

"There is something therein," said the spiritually conscientious one, and
put his finger to his nose, "there is something in this spectacle which
even doeth good to my conscience.

Perhaps I dare not believe in God:  certain it is however, that God seemeth
to me most worthy of belief in this form.

God is said to be eternal, according to the testimony of the most pious:
he who hath so much time taketh his time.  As slow and as stupid as
possible:  THEREBY can such a one nevertheless go very far.

And he who hath too much spirit might well become infatuated with stupidity
and folly.  Think of thyself, O Zarathustra!

Thou thyself--verily! even thou couldst well become an ass through
superabundance of wisdom.

Doth not the true sage willingly walk on the crookedest paths?  The
evidence teacheth it, O Zarathustra,--THINE OWN evidence!"

--"And thou thyself, finally," said Zarathustra, and turned towards the
ugliest man, who still lay on the ground stretching up his arm to the ass
(for he gave it wine to drink).  "Say, thou nondescript, what hast thou
been about!

Thou seemest to me transformed, thine eyes glow, the mantle of the sublime
covereth thine ugliness:  WHAT didst thou do?

Is it then true what they say, that thou hast again awakened him?  And why?
Was he not for good reasons killed and made away with?

Thou thyself seemest to me awakened:  what didst thou do? why didst THOU
turn round?  Why didst THOU get converted?  Speak, thou nondescript!"

"O Zarathustra," answered the ugliest man, "thou art a rogue!

Whether HE yet liveth, or again liveth, or is thoroughly dead--which of us
both knoweth that best?  I ask thee.

One thing however do I know,--from thyself did I learn it once, O
Zarathustra:  he who wanteth to kill most thoroughly, LAUGHETH.

'Not by wrath but by laughter doth one kill'--thus spakest thou once, O
Zarathustra, thou hidden one, thou destroyer without wrath, thou dangerous
saint,--thou art a rogue!"

2.

Then, however, did it come to pass that Zarathustra, astonished at such
merely roguish answers, jumped back to the door of his cave, and turning
towards all his guests, cried out with a strong voice:

"O ye wags, all of you, ye buffoons!  Why do ye dissemble and disguise
yourselves before me!

How the hearts of all of you convulsed with delight and wickedness, because
ye had at last become again like little children--namely, pious,--

--Because ye at last did again as children do--namely, prayed, folded your
hands and said 'good God'!

But now leave, I pray you, THIS nursery, mine own cave, where to-day all
childishness is carried on.  Cool down, here outside, your hot child-
wantonness and heart-tumult!

To be sure:  except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into
THAT kingdom of heaven."  (And Zarathustra pointed aloft with his hands.)

"But we do not at all want to enter into the kingdom of heaven:  we have
become men,--SO WE WANT THE KINGDOM OF EARTH."

3.

And once more began Zarathustra to speak.  "O my new friends," said he,--
"ye strange ones, ye higher men, how well do ye now please me,--

--Since ye have again become joyful!  Ye have, verily, all blossomed forth:
it seemeth to me that for such flowers as you, NEW FESTIVALS are required.

--A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some old
joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow your souls bright.

Forget not this night and this ass-festival, ye higher men!  THAT did ye
devise when with me, that do I take as a good omen,--such things only the
convalescents devise!

And should ye celebrate it again, this ass-festival, do it from love to
yourselves, do it also from love to me!  And in remembrance of me!"

Thus spake Zarathustra.


LXXIX.  THE DRUNKEN SONG.

1.

Meanwhile one after another had gone out into the open air, and into the
cool, thoughtful night; Zarathustra himself, however, led the ugliest man
by the hand, that he might show him his night-world, and the great round
moon, and the silvery water-falls near his cave.  There they at last stood
still beside one another; all of them old people, but with comforted, brave
hearts, and astonished in themselves that it was so well with them on
earth; the mystery of the night, however, came nigher and nigher to their
hearts.  And anew Zarathustra thought to himself:  "Oh, how well do they
now please me, these higher men!"--but he did not say it aloud, for he
respected their happiness and their silence.--

Then, however, there happened that which in this astonishing long day was
most astonishing:  the ugliest man began once more and for the last time to
gurgle and snort, and when he had at length found expression, behold! there
sprang a question plump and plain out of his mouth, a good, deep, clear
question, which moved the hearts of all who listened to him.

"My friends, all of you," said the ugliest man, "what think ye?  For the
sake of this day--_I_ am for the first time content to have lived mine
entire life.

And that I testify so much is still not enough for me.  It is worth while
living on the earth:  one day, one festival with Zarathustra, hath taught
me to love the earth.

'Was THAT--life?' will I say unto death.  'Well!  Once more!'

My friends, what think ye?  Will ye not, like me, say unto death:  'Was
THAT--life?  For the sake of Zarathustra, well!  Once more!'"--

Thus spake the ugliest man; it was not, however, far from midnight.  And
what took place then, think ye?  As soon as the higher men heard his
question, they became all at once conscious of their transformation and
convalescence, and of him who was the cause thereof:  then did they rush up
to Zarathustra, thanking, honouring, caressing him, and kissing his hands,
each in his own peculiar way; so that some laughed and some wept.  The old
soothsayer, however, danced with delight; and though he was then, as some
narrators suppose, full of sweet wine, he was certainly still fuller of
sweet life, and had renounced all weariness.  There are even those who
narrate that the ass then danced:  for not in vain had the ugliest man
previously given it wine to drink.  That may be the case, or it may be
otherwise; and if in truth the ass did not dance that evening, there
nevertheless happened then greater and rarer wonders than the dancing of an
ass would have been.  In short, as the proverb of Zarathustra saith:  "What
doth it matter!"

2.

When, however, this took place with the ugliest man, Zarathustra stood
there like one drunken:  his glance dulled, his tongue faltered and his
feet staggered.  And who could divine what thoughts then passed through
Zarathustra's soul?  Apparently, however, his spirit retreated and fled in
advance and was in remote distances, and as it were "wandering on high
mountain-ridges," as it standeth written, "'twixt two seas,

--Wandering 'twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud."  Gradually,
however, while the higher men held him in their arms, he came back to
himself a little, and resisted with his hands the crowd of the honouring
and caring ones; but he did not speak.  All at once, however, he turned his
head quickly, for he seemed to hear something:  then laid he his finger on
his mouth and said:  "COME!"

And immediately it became still and mysterious round about; from the depth
however there came up slowly the sound of a clock-bell.  Zarathustra
listened thereto, like the higher men; then, however, laid he his finger on
his mouth the second time, and said again:  "COME!  COME!  IT IS GETTING ON
TO MIDNIGHT!"--and his voice had changed.  But still he had not moved from
the spot.  Then it became yet stiller and more mysterious, and everything
hearkened, even the ass, and Zarathustra's noble animals, the eagle and the
serpent,--likewise the cave of Zarathustra and the big cool moon, and the
night itself.  Zarathustra, however, laid his hand upon his mouth for the
third time, and said:

COME!  COME!  COME!  LET US NOW WANDER!  IT IS THE HOUR:  LET US WANDER
INTO THE NIGHT!

3.

Ye higher men, it is getting on to midnight:  then will I say something
into your ears, as that old clock-bell saith it into mine ear,--

--As mysteriously, as frightfully, and as cordially as that midnight clock-
bell speaketh it to me, which hath experienced more than one man:

--Which hath already counted the smarting throbbings of your fathers'
hearts--ah! ah! how it sigheth! how it laugheth in its dream! the old,
deep, deep midnight!

Hush!  Hush!  Then is there many a thing heard which may not be heard by
day; now however, in the cool air, when even all the tumult of your hearts
hath become still,--

--Now doth it speak, now is it heard, now doth it steal into overwakeful,
nocturnal souls:  ah! ah! how the midnight sigheth! how it laugheth in its
dream!

--Hearest thou not how it mysteriously, frightfully, and cordially speaketh
unto THEE, the old deep, deep midnight?

O MAN, TAKE HEED!

4.

Woe to me!  Whither hath time gone?  Have I not sunk into deep wells?  The
world sleepeth--

Ah!  Ah!  The dog howleth, the moon shineth.  Rather will I die, rather
will I die, than say unto you what my midnight-heart now thinketh.

Already have I died.  It is all over.  Spider, why spinnest thou around me?
Wilt thou have blood?  Ah!  Ah!  The dew falleth, the hour cometh--

--The hour in which I frost and freeze, which asketh and asketh and asketh:
"Who hath sufficient courage for it?

--Who is to be master of the world?  Who is going to say:  THUS shall ye
flow, ye great and small streams!"

--The hour approacheth:  O man, thou higher man, take heed! this talk is
for fine ears, for thine ears--WHAT SAITH DEEP MIDNIGHT'S VOICE INDEED?

5.

It carrieth me away, my soul danceth.  Day's-work!  Day's-work!  Who is to
be master of the world?

The moon is cool, the wind is still.  Ah!  Ah!  Have ye already flown high
enough?  Ye have danced:  a leg, nevertheless, is not a wing.

Ye good dancers, now is all delight over:  wine hath become lees, every cup
hath become brittle, the sepulchres mutter.

Ye have not flown high enough:  now do the sepulchres mutter:  "Free the
dead!  Why is it so long night?  Doth not the moon make us drunken?"

Ye higher men, free the sepulchres, awaken the corpses!  Ah, why doth the
worm still burrow?  There approacheth, there approacheth, the hour,--

--There boometh the clock-bell, there thrilleth still the heart, there
burroweth still the wood-worm, the heart-worm.  Ah!  Ah!  THE WORLD IS
DEEP!

6.

Sweet lyre!  Sweet lyre!  I love thy tone, thy drunken, ranunculine tone!--
how long, how far hath come unto me thy tone, from the distance, from the
ponds of love!

Thou old clock-bell, thou sweet lyre!  Every pain hath torn thy heart,
father-pain, fathers'-pain, forefathers'-pain; thy speech hath become
ripe,--

--Ripe like the golden autumn and the afternoon, like mine anchorite heart
--now sayest thou:  The world itself hath become ripe, the grape turneth
brown,

--Now doth it wish to die, to die of happiness.  Ye higher men, do ye not
feel it?  There welleth up mysteriously an odour,

--A perfume and odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, brown, gold-wine-odour
of old happiness,

--Of drunken midnight-death happiness, which singeth:  the world is deep,
AND DEEPER THAN THE DAY COULD READ!

7.

Leave me alone!  Leave me alone!  I am too pure for thee.  Touch me not!
Hath not my world just now become perfect?

My skin is too pure for thy hands.  Leave me alone, thou dull, doltish,
stupid day!  Is not the midnight brighter?

The purest are to be masters of the world, the least known, the strongest,
the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper than any day.

O day, thou gropest for me?  Thou feelest for my happiness?  For thee am I
rich, lonesome, a treasure-pit, a gold chamber?

O world, thou wantest ME?  Am I worldly for thee?  Am I spiritual for thee?
Am I divine for thee?  But day and world, ye are too coarse,--

--Have cleverer hands, grasp after deeper happiness, after deeper
unhappiness, grasp after some God; grasp not after me:

--Mine unhappiness, my happiness is deep, thou strange day, but yet am I no
God, no God's-hell:  DEEP IS ITS WOE.

8.

God's woe is deeper, thou strange world!  Grasp at God's woe, not at me!
What am I!  A drunken sweet lyre,--

--A midnight-lyre, a bell-frog, which no one understandeth, but which MUST
speak before deaf ones, ye higher men!  For ye do not understand me!

Gone!  Gone!  O youth!  O noontide!  O afternoon!  Now have come evening
and night and midnight,--the dog howleth, the wind:

--Is the wind not a dog?  It whineth, it barketh, it howleth.  Ah!  Ah! how
she sigheth! how she laugheth, how she wheezeth and panteth, the midnight!

How she just now speaketh soberly, this drunken poetess! hath she perhaps
overdrunk her drunkenness?  hath she become overawake?  doth she ruminate?

--Her woe doth she ruminate over, in a dream, the old, deep midnight--and
still more her joy.  For joy, although woe be deep, JOY IS DEEPER STILL
THAN GRIEF CAN BE.

9.

Thou grape-vine!  Why dost thou praise me?  Have I not cut thee!  I am
cruel, thou bleedest--:  what meaneth thy praise of my drunken cruelty?

"Whatever hath become perfect, everything mature--wanteth to die!" so
sayest thou.  Blessed, blessed be the vintner's knife!  But everything
immature wanteth to live:  alas!

Woe saith:  "Hence!  Go!  Away, thou woe!"  But everything that suffereth
wanteth to live, that it may become mature and lively and longing,

--Longing for the further, the higher, the brighter.  "I want heirs," so
saith everything that suffereth, "I want children, I do not want MYSELF,"--

Joy, however, doth not want heirs, it doth not want children,--joy wanteth
itself, it wanteth eternity, it wanteth recurrence, it wanteth everything
eternally-like-itself.

Woe saith:  "Break, bleed, thou heart!  Wander, thou leg!  Thou wing, fly!
Onward! upward! thou pain!"  Well!  Cheer up!  O mine old heart:  WOE
SAITH:  "HENCE!  GO!"

10.

Ye higher men, what think ye?  Am I a soothsayer?  Or a dreamer?  Or a
drunkard?  Or a dream-reader?  Or a midnight-bell?

Or a drop of dew?  Or a fume and fragrance of eternity?  Hear ye it not?
Smell ye it not?  Just now hath my world become perfect, midnight is also
mid-day,--

Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun,--go
away! or ye will learn that a sage is also a fool.

Said ye ever Yea to one joy?  O my friends, then said ye Yea also unto ALL
woe.  All things are enlinked, enlaced and enamoured,--

--Wanted ye ever once to come twice; said ye ever:  "Thou pleasest me,
happiness!  Instant!  Moment!" then wanted ye ALL to come back again!

--All anew, all eternal, all enlinked, enlaced and enamoured, Oh, then did
ye LOVE the world,--

--Ye eternal ones, ye love it eternally and for all time:  and also unto
woe do ye say:  Hence!  Go! but come back!  FOR JOYS ALL WANT--ETERNITY!

11.

All joy wanteth the eternity of all things, it wanteth honey, it wanteth
lees, it wanteth drunken midnight, it wanteth graves, it wanteth grave-
tears' consolation, it wanteth gilded evening-red--

--WHAT doth not joy want! it is thirstier, heartier, hungrier, more
frightful, more mysterious, than all woe:  it wanteth ITSELF, it biteth
into ITSELF, the ring's will writheth in it,--

--It wanteth love, it wanteth hate, it is over-rich, it bestoweth, it
throweth away, it beggeth for some one to take from it, it thanketh the
taker, it would fain be hated,--

--So rich is joy that it thirsteth for woe, for hell, for hate, for shame,
for the lame, for the WORLD,--for this world, Oh, ye know it indeed!

Ye higher men, for you doth it long, this joy, this irrepressible, blessed
joy--for your woe, ye failures!  For failures, longeth all eternal joy.

For joys all want themselves, therefore do they also want grief!  O
happiness, O pain!  Oh break, thou heart!  Ye higher men, do learn it, that
joys want eternity.

--Joys want the eternity of ALL things, they WANT DEEP, PROFOUND ETERNITY!

12.

Have ye now learned my song?  Have ye divined what it would say?  Well!
Cheer up!  Ye higher men, sing now my roundelay!

Sing now yourselves the song, the name of which is "Once more," the
signification of which is "Unto all eternity!"--sing, ye higher men,
Zarathustra's roundelay!

O man!  Take heed!
What saith deep midnight's voice indeed?
"I slept my sleep--,
"From deepest dream I've woke, and plead:--
"The world is deep,
"And deeper than the day could read.
"Deep is its woe--,
"Joy--deeper still than grief can be:
"Woe saith:  Hence!  Go!
"But joys all want eternity-,
"-Want deep, profound eternity!"


LXXX.  THE SIGN.

In the morning, however, after this night, Zarathustra jumped up from his
couch, and, having girded his loins, he came out of his cave glowing and
strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains.

"Thou great star," spake he, as he had spoken once before, "thou deep eye
of happiness, what would be all thy happiness if thou hadst not THOSE for
whom thou shinest!

And if they remained in their chambers whilst thou art already awake, and
comest and bestowest and distributest, how would thy proud modesty upbraid
for it!

Well! they still sleep, these higher men, whilst _I_ am awake:  THEY are
not my proper companions!  Not for them do I wait here in my mountains.

At my work I want to be, at my day:  but they understand not what are the
signs of my morning, my step--is not for them the awakening-call.

They still sleep in my cave; their dream still drinketh at my drunken
songs.  The audient ear for ME--the OBEDIENT ear, is yet lacking in their
limbs."

--This had Zarathustra spoken to his heart when the sun arose:  then looked
he inquiringly aloft, for he heard above him the sharp call of his eagle.
"Well!" called he upwards, "thus is it pleasing and proper to me.  Mine
animals are awake, for I am awake.

Mine eagle is awake, and like me honoureth the sun.  With eagle-talons doth
it grasp at the new light.  Ye are my proper animals; I love you.

But still do I lack my proper men!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra; then, however, it happened that all on a sudden he
became aware that he was flocked around and fluttered around, as if by
innumerable birds,--the whizzing of so many wings, however, and the
crowding around his head was so great that he shut his eyes.  And verily,
there came down upon him as it were a cloud, like a cloud of arrows which
poureth upon a new enemy.  But behold, here it was a cloud of love, and
showered upon a new friend.

"What happeneth unto me?" thought Zarathustra in his astonished heart, and
slowly seated himself on the big stone which lay close to the exit from his
cave.  But while he grasped about with his hands, around him, above him and
below him, and repelled the tender birds, behold, there then happened to
him something still stranger:  for he grasped thereby unawares into a mass
of thick, warm, shaggy hair; at the same time, however, there sounded
before him a roar,--a long, soft lion-roar.

"THE SIGN COMETH," said Zarathustra, and a change came over his heart.  And
in truth, when it turned clear before him, there lay a yellow, powerful
animal at his feet, resting its head on his knee,--unwilling to leave him
out of love, and doing like a dog which again findeth its old master.  The
doves, however, were no less eager with their love than the lion; and
whenever a dove whisked over its nose, the lion shook its head and wondered
and laughed.

When all this went on Zarathustra spake only a word:  "MY CHILDREN ARE
NIGH, MY CHILDREN"--, then he became quite mute.  His heart, however, was
loosed, and from his eyes there dropped down tears and fell upon his hands.
And he took no further notice of anything, but sat there motionless,
without repelling the animals further.  Then flew the doves to and fro, and
perched on his shoulder, and caressed his white hair, and did not tire of
their tenderness and joyousness.  The strong lion, however, licked always
the tears that fell on Zarathustra's hands, and roared and growled shyly.
Thus did these animals do.--

All this went on for a long time, or a short time:  for properly speaking,
there is NO time on earth for such things--.  Meanwhile, however, the
higher men had awakened in Zarathustra's cave, and marshalled themselves
for a procession to go to meet Zarathustra, and give him their morning
greeting:  for they had found when they awakened that he no longer tarried
with them.  When, however, they reached the door of the cave and the noise
of their steps had preceded them, the lion started violently; it turned
away all at once from Zarathustra, and roaring wildly, sprang towards the
cave.  The higher men, however, when they heard the lion roaring, cried all
aloud as with one voice, fled back and vanished in an instant.

Zarathustra himself, however, stunned and strange, rose from his seat,
looked around him, stood there astonished, inquired of his heart, bethought
himself, and remained alone.  "What did I hear?" said he at last, slowly,
"what happened unto me just now?"

But soon there came to him his recollection, and he took in at a glance all
that had taken place between yesterday and to-day.  "Here is indeed the
stone," said he, and stroked his beard, "on IT sat I yester-morn; and here
came the soothsayer unto me, and here heard I first the cry which I heard
just now, the great cry of distress.

O ye higher men, YOUR distress was it that the old soothsayer foretold to
me yester-morn,--

--Unto your distress did he want to seduce and tempt me:  'O Zarathustra,'
said he to me, 'I come to seduce thee to thy last sin.'

To my last sin?" cried Zarathustra, and laughed angrily at his own words:
"WHAT hath been reserved for me as my last sin?"

--And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself, and sat down again
on the big stone and meditated.  Suddenly he sprang up,--

"FELLOW-SUFFERING!  FELLOW-SUFFERING WITH THE HIGHER MEN!" he cried out,
and his countenance changed into brass.  "Well!  THAT--hath had its time!

My suffering and my fellow-suffering--what matter about them!  Do I then
strive after HAPPINESS?  I strive after my WORK!

Well!  The lion hath come, my children are nigh, Zarathustra hath grown
ripe, mine hour hath come:--

This is MY morning, MY day beginneth:  ARISE NOW, ARISE, THOU GREAT
NOONTIDE!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a
morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains.

----------------

INTRODUCTION BY MRS FORSTER-NIETZSCHE.

HOW ZARATHUSTRA CAME INTO BEING.

"Zarathustra" is my brother's most personal work; it is the history of his
most individual experiences, of his friendships, ideals, raptures,
bitterest disappointments and sorrows.  Above it all, however, there soars,
transfiguring it, the image of his greatest hopes and remotest aims.  My
brother had the figure of Zarathustra in his mind from his very earliest
youth:  he once told me that even as a child he had dreamt of him.  At
different periods in his life, he would call this haunter of his dreams by
different names; "but in the end," he declares in a note on the subject, "I
had to do a PERSIAN the honour of identifying him with this creature of my
fancy.  Persians were the first to take a broad and comprehensive view of
history.  Every series of evolutions, according to them, was presided over
by a prophet; and every prophet had his 'Hazar,'--his dynasty of a thousand
years."

All Zarathustra's views, as also his personality, were early conceptions of
my brother's mind.  Whoever reads his posthumously published writings for
the years 1869-82 with care, will constantly meet with passages suggestive
of Zarathustra's thoughts and doctrines.  For instance, the ideal of the
Superman is put forth quite clearly in all his writings during the years
1873-75; and in "We Philologists", the following remarkable observations
occur:--

"How can one praise and glorify a nation as a whole?--Even among the
Greeks, it was the INDIVIDUALS that counted."

"The Greeks are interesting and extremely important because they reared
such a vast number of great individuals.  How was this possible?  The
question is one which ought to be studied.

"I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the
individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually
favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to
the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil
instincts.

"WITH THE HELP OF FAVOURABLE MEASURES GREAT INDIVIDUALS MIGHT BE REARED WHO
WOULD BE BOTH DIFFERENT FROM AND HIGHER THAN THOSE WHO HERETOFORE HAVE OWED
THEIR EXISTENCE TO MERE CHANCE.  Here we may still be hopeful:  in the
rearing of exceptional men."

The notion of rearing the Superman is only a new form of an ideal Nietzsche
already had in his youth, that "THE OBJECT OF MANKIND SHOULD LIE IN ITS
HIGHEST INDIVIDUALS" (or, as he writes in "Schopenhauer as Educator":
"Mankind ought constantly to be striving to produce great men--this and
nothing else is its duty.")  But the ideals he most revered in those days
are no longer held to be the highest types of men.  No, around this future
ideal of a coming humanity--the Superman--the poet spread the veil of
becoming.  Who can tell to what glorious heights man can still ascend?
That is why, after having tested the worth of our noblest ideal--that of
the Saviour, in the light of the new valuations, the poet cries with
passionate emphasis in "Zarathustra":

"Never yet hath there been a Superman.  Naked have I seen both of them, the
greatest and the smallest man:--

All-too-similar are they still to each other.  Verily even the greatest
found I--all-too-human!"--

The phrase "the rearing of the Superman," has very often been
misunderstood.  By the word "rearing," in this case, is meant the act of
modifying by means of new and higher values--values which, as laws and
guides of conduct and opinion, are now to rule over mankind.  In general
the doctrine of the Superman can only be understood correctly in
conjunction with other ideas of the author's, such as:--the Order of Rank,
the Will to Power, and the Transvaluation of all Values.  He assumes that
Christianity, as a product of the resentment of the botched and the weak,
has put in ban all that is beautiful, strong, proud, and powerful, in fact
all the qualities resulting from strength, and that, in consequence, all
forces which tend to promote or elevate life have been seriously
undermined.  Now, however, a new table of valuations must be placed over
mankind--namely, that of the strong, mighty, and magnificent man,
overflowing with life and elevated to his zenith--the Superman, who is now
put before us with overpowering passion as the aim of our life, hope, and
will.  And just as the old system of valuing, which only extolled the
qualities favourable to the weak, the suffering, and the oppressed, has
succeeded in producing a weak, suffering, and "modern" race, so this new
and reversed system of valuing ought to rear a healthy, strong, lively, and
courageous type, which would be a glory to life itself.  Stated briefly,
the leading principle of this new system of valuing would be:  "All that
proceeds from power is good, all that springs from weakness is bad."

This type must not be regarded as a fanciful figure:  it is not a nebulous
hope which is to be realised at some indefinitely remote period, thousands
of years hence; nor is it a new species (in the Darwinian sense) of which
we can know nothing, and which it would therefore be somewhat absurd to
strive after.  But it is meant to be a possibility which men of the present
could realise with all their spiritual and physical energies, provided they
adopted the new values.

The author of "Zarathustra" never lost sight of that egregious example of a
transvaluation of all values through Christianity, whereby the whole of the
deified mode of life and thought of the Greeks, as well as strong Romedom,
was almost annihilated or transvalued in a comparatively short time.  Could
not a rejuvenated Graeco-Roman system of valuing (once it had been refined
and made more profound by the schooling which two thousand years of
Christianity had provided) effect another such revolution within a
calculable period of time, until that glorious type of manhood shall
finally appear which is to be our new faith and hope, and in the creation
of which Zarathustra exhorts us to participate?

In his private notes on the subject the author uses the expression
"Superman" (always in the singular, by-the-bye), as signifying "the most
thoroughly well-constituted type," as opposed to "modern man"; above all,
however, he designates Zarathustra himself as an example of the Superman.
In "Ecco Homo" he is careful to enlighten us concerning the precursors and
prerequisites to the advent of this highest type, in referring to a certain
passage in the "Gay Science":--

"In order to understand this type, we must first be quite clear in regard
to the leading physiological condition on which it depends:  this condition
is what I call GREAT HEALTHINESS.  I know not how to express my meaning
more plainly or more personally than I have done already in one of the last
chapters (Aphorism 382) of the fifth book of the 'Gaya Scienza'."

"We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand,"--it says there,--"we
firstlings of a yet untried future--we require for a new end also a new
means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder and
merrier than all healthiness hitherto.  He whose soul longeth to experience
the whole range of hitherto recognised values and desirabilities, and to
circumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal 'Mediterranean Sea', who, from
the adventures of his most personal experience, wants to know how it feels
to be a conqueror, and discoverer of the ideal--as likewise how it is with
the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the devotee,
the prophet, and the godly non-conformist of the old style:--requires one
thing above all for that purpose, GREAT HEALTHINESS--such healthiness as
one not only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire,
because one unceasingly sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it!--And
now, after having been long on the way in this fashion, we Argonauts of the
ideal, more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often enough shipwrecked
and brought to grief, nevertheless dangerously healthy, always healthy
again,--it would seem as if, in recompense for it all, that we have a still
undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has yet
seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known hitherto, a
world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the
frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst for
possession thereof, have got out of hand--alas! that nothing will now any
longer satisfy us!--

"How could we still be content with THE MAN OF THE PRESENT DAY after such
outlooks, and with such a craving in our conscience and consciousness?  Sad
enough; but it is unavoidable that we should look on the worthiest aims and
hopes of the man of the present day with ill-concealed amusement, and
perhaps should no longer look at them.  Another ideal runs on before us, a
strange, tempting ideal full of danger, to which we should not like to
persuade any one, because we do not so readily acknowledge any one's RIGHT
THERETO:  the ideal of a spirit who plays naively (that is to say
involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and power) with everything
that has hitherto been called holy, good, intangible, or divine; to whom
the loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made their measure
of value, would already practically imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at
least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal of
a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which will often enough
appear INHUMAN, for example, when put alongside of all past seriousness on
earth, and alongside of all past solemnities in bearing, word, tone, look,
morality, and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody--and WITH which,
nevertheless, perhaps THE GREAT SERIOUSNESS only commences, when the proper
interrogative mark is set up, the fate of the soul changes, the hour-hand
moves, and tragedy begins..."

Although the figure of Zarathustra and a large number of the leading
thoughts in this work had appeared much earlier in the dreams and writings
of the author, "Thus Spake Zarathustra" did not actually come into being
until the month of August 1881 in Sils Maria; and it was the idea of the
Eternal Recurrence of all things which finally induced my brother to set
forth his new views in poetic language.  In regard to his first conception
of this idea, his autobiographical sketch, "Ecce Homo", written in the
autumn of 1888, contains the following passage:--

"The fundamental idea of my work--namely, the Eternal Recurrence of all
things--this highest of all possible formulae of a Yea-saying philosophy,
first occurred to me in August 1881.  I made a note of the thought on a
sheet of paper, with the postscript:  6,000 feet beyond men and time!  That
day I happened to be wandering through the woods alongside of the lake of
Silvaplana, and I halted beside a huge, pyramidal and towering rock not far
from Surlei.  It was then that the thought struck me.  Looking back now, I
find that exactly two months previous to this inspiration, I had had an
omen of its coming in the form of a sudden and decisive alteration in my
tastes--more particularly in music.  It would even be possible to consider
all 'Zarathustra' as a musical composition.  At all events, a very
necessary condition in its production was a renaissance in myself of the
art of hearing.  In a small mountain resort (Recoaro) near Vicenza, where I
spent the spring of 1881, I and my friend and Maestro, Peter Gast--also one
who had been born again--discovered that the phoenix music that hovered
over us, wore lighter and brighter plumes than it had done theretofore."

During the month of August 1881 my brother resolved to reveal the teaching
of the Eternal Recurrence, in dithyrambic and psalmodic form, through the
mouth of Zarathustra.  Among the notes of this period, we found a page on
which is written the first definite plan of "Thus Spake Zarathustra":--

"MIDDAY AND ETERNITY."

"GUIDE-POSTS TO A NEW WAY OF LIVING."

Beneath this is written:--

"Zarathustra born on lake Urmi; left his home in his thirtieth year,
went into the province of Aria, and, during ten years of solitude in
the mountains, composed the Zend-Avesta."

"The sun of knowledge stands once more at midday; and the serpent of
eternity lies coiled in its light--:  It is YOUR time, ye midday brethren."

In that summer of 1881, my brother, after many years of steadily declining
health, began at last to rally, and it is to this first gush of the
recovery of his once splendid bodily condition that we owe not only "The
Gay Science", which in its mood may be regarded as a prelude to
"Zarathustra", but also "Zarathustra" itself.  Just as he was beginning to
recuperate his health, however, an unkind destiny brought him a number of
most painful personal experiences.  His friends caused him many
disappointments, which were the more bitter to him, inasmuch as he regarded
friendship as such a sacred institution; and for the first time in his life
he realised the whole horror of that loneliness to which, perhaps, all
greatness is condemned.  But to be forsaken is something very different
from deliberately choosing blessed loneliness.  How he longed, in those
days, for the ideal friend who would thoroughly understand him, to whom he
would be able to say all, and whom he imagined he had found at various
periods in his life from his earliest youth onwards.  Now, however, that
the way he had chosen grew ever more perilous and steep, he found nobody
who could follow him:  he therefore created a perfect friend for himself in
the ideal form of a majestic philosopher, and made this creation the
preacher of his gospel to the world.

Whether my brother would ever have written "Thus Spake Zarathustra"
according to the first plan sketched in the summer of 1881, if he had not
had the disappointments already referred to, is now an idle question; but
perhaps where "Zarathustra" is concerned, we may also say with Master
Eckhardt:  "The fleetest beast to bear you to perfection is suffering."

My brother writes as follows about the origin of the first part of
"Zarathustra":--"In the winter of 1882-83, I was living on the charming
little Gulf of Rapallo, not far from Genoa, and between Chiavari and Cape
Porto Fino.  My health was not very good; the winter was cold and
exceptionally rainy; and the small inn in which I lived was so close to the
water that at night my sleep would be disturbed if the sea were high.
These circumstances were surely the very reverse of favourable; and yet in
spite of it all, and as if in demonstration of my belief that everything
decisive comes to life in spite of every obstacle, it was precisely during
this winter and in the midst of these unfavourable circumstances that my
'Zarathustra' originated.  In the morning I used to start out in a
southerly direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which rises aloft
through a forest of pines and gives one a view far out into the sea.  In
the afternoon, as often as my health permitted, I walked round the whole
bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino.  This spot was all the more
interesting to me, inasmuch as it was so dearly loved by the Emperor
Frederick III.  In the autumn of 1886 I chanced to be there again when he
was revisiting this small, forgotten world of happiness for the last time.
It was on these two roads that all 'Zarathustra' came to me, above all
Zarathustra himself as a type;--I ought rather to say that it was on these
walks that these ideas waylaid me."

The first part of "Zarathustra" was written in about ten days--that is to
say, from the beginning to about the middle of February 1883.  "The last
lines were written precisely in the hallowed hour when Richard Wagner gave
up the ghost in Venice."

With the exception of the ten days occupied in composing the first part of
this book, my brother often referred to this winter as the hardest and
sickliest he had ever experienced.  He did not, however, mean thereby that
his former disorders were troubling him, but that he was suffering from a
severe attack of influenza which he had caught in Santa Margherita, and
which tormented him for several weeks after his arrival in Genoa.  As a
matter of fact, however, what he complained of most was his spiritual
condition--that indescribable forsakenness--to which he gives such
heartrending expression in "Zarathustra".  Even the reception which the
first part met with at the hands of friends and acquaintances was extremely
disheartening:  for almost all those to whom he presented copies of the
work misunderstood it.  "I found no one ripe for many of my thoughts; the
case of 'Zarathustra' proves that one can speak with the utmost clearness,
and yet not be heard by any one."  My brother was very much discouraged by
the feebleness of the response he was given, and as he was striving just
then to give up the practice of taking hydrate of chloral--a drug he had
begun to take while ill with influenza,--the following spring, spent in
Rome, was a somewhat gloomy one for him.  He writes about it as follows:--
"I spent a melancholy spring in Rome, where I only just managed to live,--
and this was no easy matter.  This city, which is absolutely unsuited to
the poet-author of 'Zarathustra', and for the choice of which I was not
responsible, made me inordinately miserable.  I tried to leave it.  I
wanted to go to Aquila--the opposite of Rome in every respect, and actually
founded in a spirit of enmity towards that city (just as I also shall found
a city some day), as a memento of an atheist and genuine enemy of the
Church--a person very closely related to me,--the great Hohenstaufen, the
Emperor Frederick II.  But Fate lay behind it all:  I had to return again
to Rome.  In the end I was obliged to be satisfied with the Piazza
Barberini, after I had exerted myself in vain to find an anti-Christian
quarter.  I fear that on one occasion, to avoid bad smells as much as
possible, I actually inquired at the Palazzo del Quirinale whether they
could not provide a quiet room for a philosopher.  In a chamber high above
the Piazza just mentioned, from which one obtained a general view of Rome
and could hear the fountains plashing far below, the loneliest of all songs
was composed--'The Night-Song'.  About this time I was obsessed by an
unspeakably sad melody, the refrain of which I recognised in the words,
'dead through immortality.'"

We remained somewhat too long in Rome that spring, and what with the effect
of the increasing heat and the discouraging circumstances already
described, my brother resolved not to write any more, or in any case, not
to proceed with "Zarathustra", although I offered to relieve him of all
trouble in connection with the proofs and the publisher.  When, however, we
returned to Switzerland towards the end of June, and he found himself once
more in the familiar and exhilarating air of the mountains, all his joyous
creative powers revived, and in a note to me announcing the dispatch of
some manuscript, he wrote as follows:  "I have engaged a place here for
three months:  forsooth, I am the greatest fool to allow my courage to be
sapped from me by the climate of Italy.  Now and again I am troubled by the
thought:  WHAT NEXT?  My 'future' is the darkest thing in the world to me,
but as there still remains a great deal for me to do, I suppose I ought
rather to think of doing this than of my future, and leave the rest to THEE
and the gods."

The second part of "Zarathustra" was written between the 26th of June and
the 6th July.  "This summer, finding myself once more in the sacred place
where the first thought of 'Zarathustra' flashed across my mind, I
conceived the second part.  Ten days sufficed.  Neither for the second, the
first, nor the third part, have I required a day longer."

He often used to speak of the ecstatic mood in which he wrote
"Zarathustra"; how in his walks over hill and dale the ideas would crowd
into his mind, and how he would note them down hastily in a note-book from
which he would transcribe them on his return, sometimes working till
midnight.  He says in a letter to me:  "You can have no idea of the
vehemence of such composition," and in "Ecce Homo" (autumn 1888) he
describes as follows with passionate enthusiasm the incomparable mood in
which he created Zarathustra:--

"--Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of
what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration?  If not, I
will describe it.  If one had the smallest vestige of superstition in one,
it would hardly be possible to set aside completely the idea that one is
the mere incarnation, mouthpiece or medium of an almighty power.  The idea
of revelation in the sense that something becomes suddenly visible and
audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy, which profoundly
convulses and upsets one--describes simply the matter of fact.  One hears--
one does not seek; one takes--one does not ask who gives:  a thought
suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with necessity,
unhesitatingly--I have never had any choice in the matter.  There is an
ecstasy such that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood
of tears, along with which one's steps either rush or involuntarily lag,
alternately.  There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with
the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and
quiverings to the very toes;--there is a depth of happiness in which the
painfullest and gloomiest do not operate as antitheses, but as conditioned,
as demanded in the sense of necessary shades of colour in such an overflow
of light.  There is an instinct for rhythmic relations which embraces wide
areas of forms (length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the
measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its
pressure and tension).  Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a
tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity.
The involuntariness of the figures and similes is the most remarkable
thing; one loses all perception of what constitutes the figure and what
constitutes the simile; everything seems to present itself as the readiest,
the correctest and the simplest means of expression.  It actually seems, to
use one of Zarathustra's own phrases, as if all things came unto one, and
would fain be similes:  'Here do all things come caressingly to thy talk
and flatter thee, for they want to ride upon thy back.  On every simile
dost thou here ride to every truth.  Here fly open unto thee all being's
words and word-cabinets; here all being wanteth to become words, here all
becoming wanteth to learn of thee how to talk.'  This is MY experience of
inspiration.  I do not doubt but that one would have to go back thousands
of years in order to find some one who could say to me:  It is mine
also!--"

In the autumn of 1883 my brother left the Engadine for Germany and stayed
there a few weeks.  In the following winter, after wandering somewhat
erratically through Stresa, Genoa, and Spezia, he landed in Nice, where the
climate so happily promoted his creative powers that he wrote the third
part of "Zarathustra".  "In the winter, beneath the halcyon sky of Nice,
which then looked down upon me for the first time in my life, I found the
third 'Zarathustra'--and came to the end of my task; the whole having
occupied me scarcely a year.  Many hidden corners and heights in the
landscapes round about Nice are hallowed to me by unforgettable moments.
That decisive chapter entitled 'Old and New Tables' was composed in the
very difficult ascent from the station to Eza--that wonderful Moorish
village in the rocks.  My most creative moments were always accompanied by
unusual muscular activity.  The body is inspired:  let us waive the
question of the 'soul.'  I might often have been seen dancing in those
days.  Without a suggestion of fatigue I could then walk for seven or eight
hours on end among the hills.  I slept well and laughed well--I was
perfectly robust and patient."

As we have seen, each of the three parts of "Zarathustra" was written,
after a more or less short period of preparation, in about ten days.  The
composition of the fourth part alone was broken by occasional
interruptions.  The first notes relating to this part were written while he
and I were staying together in Zurich in September 1884.  In the following
November, while staying at Mentone, he began to elaborate these notes, and
after a long pause, finished the manuscript at Nice between the end of
January and the middle of February 1885.  My brother then called this part
the fourth and last; but even before, and shortly after it had been
privately printed, he wrote to me saying that he still intended writing a
fifth and sixth part, and notes relating to these parts are now in my
possession.  This fourth part (the original MS. of which contains this
note:  "Only for my friends, not for the public") is written in a
particularly personal spirit, and those few to whom he presented a copy of
it, he pledged to the strictest secrecy concerning its contents.  He often
thought of making this fourth part public also, but doubted whether he
would ever be able to do so without considerably altering certain portions
of it.  At all events he resolved to distribute this manuscript production,
of which only forty copies were printed, only among those who had proved
themselves worthy of it, and it speaks eloquently of his utter loneliness
and need of sympathy in those days, that he had occasion to present only
seven copies of his book according to this resolution.

Already at the beginning of this history I hinted at the reasons which led
my brother to select a Persian as the incarnation of his ideal of the
majestic philosopher.  His reasons, however, for choosing Zarathustra of
all others to be his mouthpiece, he gives us in the following words:--
"People have never asked me, as they should have done, what the name
Zarathustra precisely means in my mouth, in the mouth of the first
Immoralist; for what distinguishes that philosopher from all others in the
past is the very fact that he was exactly the reverse of an immoralist.
Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the
essential wheel in the working of things.  The translation of morality into
the metaphysical, as force, cause, end in itself, was HIS work.  But the
very question suggests its own answer.  Zarathustra CREATED the most
portentous error, MORALITY, consequently he should also be the first to
PERCEIVE that error, not only because he has had longer and greater
experience of the subject than any other thinker--all history is the
experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of
things:--the more important point is that Zarathustra was more truthful
than any other thinker.  In his teaching alone do we meet with truthfulness
upheld as the highest virtue--i.e.:  the reverse of the COWARDICE of the
'idealist' who flees from reality.  Zarathustra had more courage in his
body than any other thinker before or after him.  To tell the truth and TO
AIM STRAIGHT:  that is the first Persian virtue.  Am I understood?...The
overcoming of morality through itself--through truthfulness, the overcoming
of the moralist through his opposite--THROUGH ME--:  that is what the name
Zarathustra means in my mouth."

ELIZABETH FORSTER-NIETZSCHE.

Nietzsche Archives,
Weimar, December 1905.

-------------

APPENDIX.

NOTES ON "THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA" BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.

I have had some opportunities of studying the conditions under which
Nietzsche is read in Germany, France, and England, and I have found that,
in each of these countries, students of his philosophy, as if actuated by
precisely similar motives and desires, and misled by the same mistaken
tactics on the part of most publishers, all proceed in the same happy-go-
lucky style when "taking him up."  They have had it said to them that he
wrote without any system, and they very naturally conclude that it does not
matter in the least whether they begin with his first, third, or last book,
provided they can obtain a few vague ideas as to what his leading and most
sensational principles were.

Now, it is clear that the book with the most mysterious, startling, or
suggestive title, will always stand the best chance of being purchased by
those who have no other criteria to guide them in their choice than the
aspect of a title-page; and this explains why "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is
almost always the first and often the only one of Nietzsche's books that
falls into the hands of the uninitiated.

The title suggests all kinds of mysteries; a glance at the chapter-headings
quickly confirms the suspicions already aroused, and the sub-title:  "A
Book for All and None", generally succeeds in dissipating the last doubts
the prospective purchaser may entertain concerning his fitness for the book
or its fitness for him.  And what happens?

"Thus Spake Zarathustra" is taken home; the reader, who perchance may know
no more concerning Nietzsche than a magazine article has told him, tries to
read it and, understanding less than half he reads, probably never gets
further than the second or third part,--and then only to feel convinced
that Nietzsche himself was "rather hazy" as to what he was talking about.
Such chapters as "The Child with the Mirror", "In the Happy Isles", "The
Grave-Song," "Immaculate Perception," "The Stillest Hour", "The Seven
Seals", and many others, are almost utterly devoid of meaning to all those
who do not know something of Nietzsche's life, his aims and his
friendships.

As a matter of fact, "Thus Spake Zarathustra", though it is unquestionably
Nietzsche's opus magnum, is by no means the first of Nietzsche's works that
the beginner ought to undertake to read.  The author himself refers to it
as the deepest work ever offered to the German public, and elsewhere speaks
of his other writings as being necessary for the understanding of it.  But
when it is remembered that in Zarathustra we not only have the history of
his most intimate experiences, friendships, feuds, disappointments,
triumphs and the like, but that the very form in which they are narrated is
one which tends rather to obscure than to throw light upon them, the
difficulties which meet the reader who starts quite unprepared will be seen
to be really formidable.

Zarathustra, then,--this shadowy, allegorical personality, speaking in
allegories and parables, and at times not even refraining from relating his
own dreams--is a figure we can understand but very imperfectly if we have
no knowledge of his creator and counterpart, Friedrich Nietzsche; and it
were therefore well, previous to our study of the more abstruse parts of
this book, if we were to turn to some authoritative book on Nietzsche's
life and works and to read all that is there said on the subject.  Those
who can read German will find an excellent guide, in this respect, in Frau
Foerster-Nietzsche's exhaustive and highly interesting biography of her
brother:  "Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's" (published by Naumann); while
the works of Deussen, Raoul Richter, and Baroness Isabelle von Unger-
Sternberg, will be found to throw useful and necessary light upon many
questions which it would be difficult for a sister to touch upon.

In regard to the actual philosophical views expounded in this work, there
is an excellent way of clearing up any difficulties they may present, and
that is by an appeal to Nietzsche's other works.  Again and again, of
course, he will be found to express himself so clearly that all reference
to his other writings may be dispensed with; but where this is not the
case, the advice he himself gives is after all the best to be followed
here, viz.:--to regard such works as:  "Joyful Science", "Beyond Good and
Evil", "The Genealogy of Morals", "The Twilight of the Idols", "The
Antichrist", "The Will to Power", etc., etc., as the necessary preparation
for "Thus Spake Zarathustra".

These directions, though they are by no means simple to carry out, seem at
least to possess the quality of definiteness and straightforwardness.
"Follow them and all will be clear," I seem to imply.  But I regret to say
that this is not really the case.  For my experience tells me that even
after the above directions have been followed with the greatest possible
zeal, the student will still halt in perplexity before certain passages in
the book before us, and wonder what they mean.  Now, it is with the view of
giving a little additional help to all those who find themselves in this
position that I proceed to put forth my own personal interpretation of the
more abstruse passages in this work.

In offering this little commentary to the Nietzsche student, I should like
it to be understood that I make no claim as to its infallibility or
indispensability.  It represents but an attempt on my part--a very feeble
one perhaps--to give the reader what little help I can in surmounting
difficulties which a long study of Nietzsche's life and works has enabled
me, partially I hope, to overcome.

...

Perhaps it would be as well to start out with a broad and rapid sketch of
Nietzsche as a writer on Morals, Evolution, and Sociology, so that the
reader may be prepared to pick out for himself, so to speak, all passages
in this work bearing in any way upon Nietzsche's views in those three
important branches of knowledge.

(A.)  Nietzsche and Morality.

In morality, Nietzsche starts out by adopting the position of the
relativist.  He says there are no absolute values "good" and "evil"; these
are mere means adopted by all in order to acquire power to maintain their
place in the world, or to become supreme.  It is the lion's good to devour
an antelope.  It is the dead-leaf butterfly's good to tell a foe a
falsehood.  For when the dead-leaf butterfly is in danger, it clings to the
side of a twig, and what it says to its foe is practically this:  "I am not
a butterfly, I am a dead leaf, and can be of no use to thee."  This is a
lie which is good to the butterfly, for it preserves it.  In nature every
species of organic being instinctively adopts and practises those acts
which most conduce to the prevalence or supremacy of its kind.  Once the
most favourable order of conduct is found, proved efficient and
established, it becomes the ruling morality of the species that adopts it
and bears them along to victory.  All species must not and cannot value
alike, for what is the lion's good is the antelope's evil and vice versa.

Concepts of good and evil are therefore, in their origin, merely a means to
an end, they are expedients for acquiring power.

Applying this principle to mankind, Nietzsche attacked Christian moral
values.  He declared them to be, like all other morals, merely an expedient
for protecting a certain type of man.  In the case of Christianity this
type was, according to Nietzsche, a low one.

Conflicting moral codes have been no more than the conflicting weapons of
different classes of men; for in mankind there is a continual war between
the powerful, the noble, the strong, and the well-constituted on the one
side, and the impotent, the mean, the weak, and the ill-constituted on the
other.  The war is a war of moral principles.  The morality of the powerful
class, Nietzsche calls NOBLE- or MASTER-MORALITY; that of the weak and
subordinate class he calls SLAVE-MORALITY.  In the first morality it is the
eagle which, looking down upon a browsing lamb, contends that "eating lamb
is good."  In the second, the slave-morality, it is the lamb which, looking
up from the sward, bleats dissentingly:  "Eating lamb is evil."

(B.)  The Master- and Slave-Morality Compared.

The first morality is active, creative, Dionysian.  The second is passive,
defensive,--to it belongs the "struggle for existence."

Where attempts have not been made to reconcile the two moralities, they may
be described as follows:--All is GOOD in the noble morality which proceeds
from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness, and
awfulness; for, the motive force behind the people practising it is "the
struggle for power."  The antithesis "good and bad" to this first class
means the same as "noble" and "despicable."  "Bad" in the master-morality
must be applied to the coward, to all acts that spring from weakness, to
the man with "an eye to the main chance," who would forsake everything in
order to live.

With the second, the slave-morality, the case is different.  There,
inasmuch as the community is an oppressed, suffering, unemancipated, and
weary one, all THAT will be held to be good which alleviates the state of
suffering.  Pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry,
and humility--these are unquestionably the qualities we shall here find
flooded with the light of approval and admiration; because they are the
most USEFUL qualities--; they make life endurable, they are of assistance
in the "struggle for existence" which is the motive force behind the people
practising this morality.  To this class, all that is AWFUL is bad, in fact
it is THE evil par excellence.  Strength, health, superabundance of animal
spirits and power, are regarded with hate, suspicion, and fear by the
subordinate class.

Now Nietzsche believed that the first or the noble-morality conduced to an
ascent in the line of life; because it was creative and active.  On the
other hand, he believed that the second or slave-morality, where it became
paramount, led to degeneration, because it was passive and defensive,
wanting merely to keep those who practised it alive.  Hence his earnest
advocacy of noble-morality.

(C.)  Nietzsche and Evolution.

Nietzsche as an evolutionist I shall have occasion to define and discuss in
the course of these notes (see Notes on Chapter LVI., par.10, and on
Chapter LVII.).  For the present let it suffice for us to know that he
accepted the "Development Hypothesis" as an explanation of the origin of
species:  but he did not halt where most naturalists have halted.  He by no
means regarded man as the highest possible being which evolution could
arrive at; for though his physical development may have reached its limit,
this is not the case with his mental or spiritual attributes.  If the
process be a fact; if things have BECOME what they are, then, he contends,
we may describe no limit to man's aspirations.  If he struggled up from
barbarism, and still more remotely from the lower Primates, his ideal
should be to surpass man himself and reach Superman (see especially the
Prologue).

(D.)  Nietzsche and Sociology.

Nietzsche as a sociologist aims at an aristocratic arrangement of society.
He would have us rear an ideal race.  Honest and truthful in intellectual
matters, he could not even think that men are equal.  "With these preachers
of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded.  For thus speaketh
justice unto ME:  'Men are not equal.'"  He sees precisely in this
inequality a purpose to be served, a condition to be exploited.  "Every
elevation of the type 'man,'" he writes in "Beyond Good and Evil", "has
hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society--and so will it always
be--a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and
differences of worth among human beings."

Those who are sufficiently interested to desire to read his own detailed
account of the society he would fain establish, will find an excellent
passage in Aphorism 57 of "The Antichrist".

...

PART I.  THE PROLOGUE.

In Part I. including the Prologue, no very great difficulties will appear.
Zarathustra's habit of designating a whole class of men or a whole school
of thought by a single fitting nickname may perhaps lead to a little
confusion at first; but, as a rule, when the general drift of his arguments
is grasped, it requires but a slight effort of the imagination to discover
whom he is referring to.  In the ninth paragraph of the Prologue, for
instance, it is quite obvious that "Herdsmen" in the verse "Herdsmen, I
say, etc., etc.," stands for all those to-day who are the advocates of
gregariousness--of the ant-hill.  And when our author says:  "A robber
shall Zarathustra be called by the herdsmen," it is clear that these words
may be taken almost literally from one whose ideal was the rearing of a
higher aristocracy.  Again, "the good and just," throughout the book, is
the expression used in referring to the self-righteous of modern times,--
those who are quite sure that they know all that is to be known concerning
good and evil, and are satisfied that the values their little world of
tradition has handed down to them, are destined to rule mankind as long as
it lasts.

In the last paragraph of the Prologue, verse 7, Zarathustra gives us a
foretaste of his teaching concerning the big and the little sagacities,
expounded subsequently.  He says he would he were as wise as his serpent;
this desire will be found explained in the discourse entitled "The
Despisers of the Body", which I shall have occasion to refer to later.

...

THE DISCOURSES.

Chapter I.  The Three Metamorphoses.

This opening discourse is a parable in which Zarathustra discloses the
mental development of all creators of new values.  It is the story of a
life which reaches its consummation in attaining to a second ingenuousness
or in returning to childhood.  Nietzsche, the supposed anarchist, here
plainly disclaims all relationship whatever to anarchy, for he shows us
that only by bearing the burdens of the existing law and submitting to it
patiently, as the camel submits to being laden, does the free spirit
acquire that ascendancy over tradition which enables him to meet and master
the dragon "Thou shalt,"--the dragon with the values of a thousand years
glittering on its scales.  There are two lessons in this discourse:  first,
that in order to create one must be as a little child; secondly, that it is
only through existing law and order that one attains to that height from
which new law and new order may be promulgated.

Chapter II.  The Academic Chairs of Virtue.

Almost the whole of this is quite comprehensible.  It is a discourse
against all those who confound virtue with tameness and smug ease, and who
regard as virtuous only that which promotes security and tends to deepen
sleep.

Chapter IV.  The Despisers of the Body.

Here Zarathustra gives names to the intellect and the instincts; he calls
the one "the little sagacity" and the latter "the big sagacity."
Schopenhauer's teaching concerning the intellect is fully endorsed here.
"An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which
thou callest 'spirit,'" says Zarathustra.  From beginning to end it is a
warning to those who would think too lightly of the instincts and unduly
exalt the intellect and its derivatives:  Reason and Understanding.

Chapter IX.  The Preachers of Death.

This is an analysis of the psychology of all those who have the "evil eye"
and are pessimists by virtue of their constitutions.

Chapter XV.  The Thousand and One Goals.

In this discourse Zarathustra opens his exposition of the doctrine of
relativity in morality, and declares all morality to be a mere means to
power.  Needless to say that verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the Greeks,
the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans respectively.  In the penultimate
verse he makes known his discovery concerning the root of modern Nihilism
and indifference,--i.e., that modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals
(see Note A).

Chapter XVIII.  Old and Young Women.

Nietzsche's views on women have either to be loved at first sight or they
become perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of those who otherwise
would be inclined to accept his philosophy.  Women especially, of course,
have been taught to dislike them, because it has been rumoured that his
views are unfriendly to themselves.  Now, to my mind, all this is pure
misunderstanding and error.

German philosophers, thanks to Schopenhauer, have earned rather a bad name
for their views on women.  It is almost impossible for one of them to write
a line on the subject, however kindly he may do so, without being suspected
of wishing to open a crusade against the fair sex.  Despite the fact,
therefore, that all Nietzsche's views in this respect were dictated to him
by the profoundest love; despite Zarathustra's reservation in this
discourse, that "with women nothing (that can be said) is impossible," and
in the face of other overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Nietzsche is
universally reported to have mis son pied dans le plat, where the female
sex is concerned.  And what is the fundamental doctrine which has given
rise to so much bitterness and aversion?--Merely this:  that the sexes are
at bottom ANTAGONISTIC--that is to say, as different as blue is from
yellow, and that the best possible means of rearing anything approaching a
desirable race is to preserve and to foster this profound hostility.  What
Nietzsche strives to combat and to overthrow is the modern democratic
tendency which is slowly labouring to level all things--even the sexes.
His quarrel is not with women--what indeed could be more undignified?--it
is with those who would destroy the natural relationship between the sexes,
by modifying either the one or the other with a view to making them more
alike.  The human world is just as dependent upon women's powers as upon
men's.  It is women's strongest and most valuable instincts which help to
determine who are to be the fathers of the next generation.  By destroying
these particular instincts, that is to say by attempting to masculinise
woman, and to feminise men, we jeopardise the future of our people.  The
general democratic movement of modern times, in its frantic struggle to
mitigate all differences, is now invading even the world of sex.  It is
against this movement that Nietzsche raises his voice; he would have woman
become ever more woman and man become ever more man.  Only thus, and he is
undoubtedly right, can their combined instincts lead to the excellence of
humanity.  Regarded in this light, all his views on woman appear not only
necessary but just (see Note on Chapter LVI., par. 21.)

It is interesting to observe that the last line of the discourse, which has
so frequently been used by women as a weapon against Nietzsche's views
concerning them, was suggested to Nietzsche by a woman (see "Das Leben F.
Nietzsche's").

Chapter XXI.  Voluntary Death.

In regard to this discourse, I should only like to point out that Nietzsche
had a particular aversion to the word "suicide"--self-murder.  He disliked
the evil it suggested, and in rechristening the act Voluntary Death, i.e.,
the death that comes from no other hand than one's own, he was desirous of
elevating it to the position it held in classical antiquity (see Aphorism
36 in "The Twilight of the Idols").

Chapter XXII.  The Bestowing Virtue.

An important aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy is brought to light in this
discourse.  His teaching, as is well known, places the Aristotelian man of
spirit, above all others in the natural divisions of man.  The man with
overflowing strength, both of mind and body, who must discharge this
strength or perish, is the Nietzschean ideal.  To such a man, giving from
his overflow becomes a necessity; bestowing develops into a means of
existence, and this is the only giving, the only charity, that Nietzsche
recognises.  In paragraph 3 of the discourse, we read Zarathustra's healthy
exhortation to his disciples to become independent thinkers and to find
themselves before they learn any more from him (see Notes on Chapters LVI.,
par. 5, and LXXIII., pars. 10, 11).

...

PART II.

Chapter XXIII.  The Child with the Mirror.

Nietzsche tells us here, in a poetical form, how deeply grieved he was by
the manifold misinterpretations and misunderstandings which were becoming
rife concerning his publications.  He does not recognise himself in the
mirror of public opinion, and recoils terrified from the distorted
reflection of his features.  In verse 20 he gives us a hint which it were
well not to pass over too lightly; for, in the introduction to "The
Genealogy of Morals" (written in 1887) he finds it necessary to refer to
the matter again and with greater precision.  The point is this, that a
creator of new values meets with his surest and strongest obstacles in the
very spirit of the language which is at his disposal.  Words, like all
other manifestations of an evolving race, are stamped with the values that
have long been paramount in that race.  Now, the original thinker who finds
himself compelled to use the current speech of his country in order to
impart new and hitherto untried views to his fellows, imposes a task upon
the natural means of communication which it is totally unfitted to
perform,--hence the obscurities and prolixities which are so frequently met
with in the writings of original thinkers.  In the "Dawn of Day", Nietzsche
actually cautions young writers against THE DANGER OF ALLOWING THEIR
THOUGHTS TO BE MOULDED BY THE WORDS AT THEIR DISPOSAL.

Chapter XXIV.  In the Happy Isles.

While writing this, Nietzsche is supposed to have been thinking of the
island of Ischia which was ultimately destroyed by an earthquake.  His
teaching here is quite clear.  He was among the first thinkers of Europe to
overcome the pessimism which godlessness generally brings in its wake.  He
points to creating as the surest salvation from the suffering which is a
concomitant of all higher life.  "What would there be to create," he asks,
"if there were--Gods?"  His ideal, the Superman, lends him the cheerfulness
necessary to the overcoming of that despair usually attendant upon
godlessness and upon the apparent aimlessness of a world without a god.

Chapter XXIX.  The Tarantulas.

The tarantulas are the Socialists and Democrats.  This discourse offers us
an analysis of their mental attitude.  Nietzsche refuses to be confounded
with those resentful and revengeful ones who condemn society FROM BELOW,
and whose criticism is only suppressed envy.  "There are those who preach
my doctrine of life," he says of the Nietzschean Socialists, "and are at
the same time preachers of equality and tarantulas" (see Notes on Chapter
XL. and Chapter LI.).

Chapter XXX.  The Famous Wise Ones.

This refers to all those philosophers hitherto, who have run in the harness
of established values and have not risked their reputation with the people
in pursuit of truth.  The philosopher, however, as Nietzsche understood
him, is a man who creates new values, and thus leads mankind in a new
direction.

Chapter XXXIII.  The Grave-Song.

Here Zarathustra sings about the ideals and friendships of his youth.
Verses 27 to 31 undoubtedly refer to Richard Wagner (see Note on Chapter
LXV.).

Chapter XXXIV.  Self-Surpassing.

In this discourse we get the best exposition in the whole book of
Nietzsche's doctrine of the Will to Power.  I go into this question
thoroughly in the Note on Chapter LVII.

Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from choice.  Those who hastily class him
with the anarchists (or the Progressivists of the last century) fail to
understand the high esteem in which he always held both law and discipline.
In verse 41 of this most decisive discourse he truly explains his position
when he says:  "...he who hath to be a creator in good and evil--verily he
hath first to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces."  This teaching
in regard to self-control is evidence enough of his reverence for law.

Chapter XXXV.  The Sublime Ones.

These belong to a type which Nietzsche did not altogether dislike, but
which he would fain have rendered more subtle and plastic.  It is the type
that takes life and itself too seriously, that never surmounts the camel-
stage mentioned in the first discourse, and that is obdurately sublime and
earnest.  To be able to smile while speaking of lofty things and NOT TO BE
OPPRESSED by them, is the secret of real greatness.  He whose hand trembles
when it lays hold of a beautiful thing, has the quality of reverence,
without the artist's unembarrassed friendship with the beautiful.  Hence
the mistakes which have arisen in regard to confounding Nietzsche with his
extreme opposites the anarchists and agitators.  For what they dare to
touch and break with the impudence and irreverence of the unappreciative,
he seems likewise to touch and break,--but with other fingers--with the
fingers of the loving and unembarrassed artist who is on good terms with
the beautiful and who feels able to create it and to enhance it with his
touch.  The question of taste plays an important part in Nietzsche's
philosophy, and verses 9, 10 of this discourse exactly state Nietzsche's
ultimate views on the subject.  In the "Spirit of Gravity", he actually
cries:--"Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no
longer either shame or secrecy."

Chapter XXXVI.  The Land of Culture.

This is a poetical epitome of some of the scathing criticism of scholars
which appears in the first of the "Thoughts out of Season"--the polemical
pamphlet (written in 1873) against David Strauss and his school.  He
reproaches his former colleagues with being sterile and shows them that
their sterility is the result of their not believing in anything.  "He who
had to create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions--and
believed in believing!"  (See Note on Chapter LXXVII.)  In the last two
verses he reveals the nature of his altruism.  How far it differs from that
of Christianity we have already read in the discourse "Neighbour-Love", but
here he tells us definitely the nature of his love to mankind; he explains
why he was compelled to assail the Christian values of pity and excessive
love of the neighbour, not only because they are slave-values and therefore
tend to promote degeneration (see Note B.), but because he could only love
his children's land, the undiscovered land in a remote sea; because he
would fain retrieve the errors of his fathers in his children.

Chapter XXXVII.  Immaculate Perception.

An important feature of Nietzsche's interpretation of Life is disclosed in
this discourse.  As Buckle suggests in his "Influence of Women on the
Progress of Knowledge", the scientific spirit of the investigator is both
helped and supplemented by the latter's emotions and personality, and the
divorce of all emotionalism and individual temperament from science is a
fatal step towards sterility.  Zarathustra abjures all those who would fain
turn an IMPERSONAL eye upon nature and contemplate her phenomena with that
pure objectivity to which the scientific idealists of to-day would so much
like to attain.  He accuses such idealists of hypocrisy and guile; he says
they lack innocence in their desires and therefore slander all desiring.

Chapter XXXVIII.  Scholars.

This is a record of Nietzsche's final breach with his former colleagues--
the scholars of Germany.  Already after the publication of the "Birth of
Tragedy", numbers of German philologists and professional philosophers had
denounced him as one who had strayed too far from their flock, and his
lectures at the University of Bale were deserted in consequence; but it was
not until 1879, when he finally severed all connection with University
work, that he may be said to have attained to the freedom and independence
which stamp this discourse.

Chapter XXXIX.  Poets.

People have sometimes said that Nietzsche had no sense of humour.  I have
no intention of defending him here against such foolish critics; I should
only like to point out to the reader that we have him here at his best,
poking fun at himself, and at his fellow-poets (see Note on Chapter LXIII.,
pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20).

Chapter XL.  Great Events.

Here we seem to have a puzzle.  Zarathustra himself, while relating his
experience with the fire-dog to his disciples, fails to get them interested
in his narrative, and we also may be only too ready to turn over these
pages under the impression that they are little more than a mere phantasy
or poetical flight.  Zarathustra's interview with the fire-dog is, however,
of great importance.  In it we find Nietzsche face to face with the
creature he most sincerely loathes--the spirit of revolution, and we obtain
fresh hints concerning his hatred of the anarchist and rebel.  "'Freedom'
ye all roar most eagerly," he says to the fire-dog, "but I have unlearned
the belief in 'Great Events' when there is much roaring and smoke about
them.  Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of
new values, doth the world revolve; INAUDIBLY it revolveth."

Chapter XLI.  The Soothsayer.

This refers, of course, to Schopenhauer.  Nietzsche, as is well known, was
at one time an ardent follower of Schopenhauer.  He overcame Pessimism by
discovering an object in existence; he saw the possibility of raising
society to a higher level and preached the profoundest Optimism in
consequence.

Chapter XLII.  Redemption.

Zarathustra here addresses cripples.  He tells them of other cripples--the
GREAT MEN in this world who have one organ or faculty inordinately
developed at the cost of their other faculties.  This is doubtless a
reference to a fact which is too often noticeable in the case of so many of
the world's giants in art, science, or religion.  In verse 19 we are told
what Nietzsche called Redemption--that is to say, the ability to say of all
that is past:  "Thus would I have it."  The in ability to say this, and the
resentment which results therefrom, he regards as the source of all our
feelings of revenge, and all our desires to punish--punishment meaning to
him merely a euphemism for the word revenge, invented in order to still our
consciences.  He who can be proud of his enemies, who can be grateful to
them for the obstacles they have put in his way; he who can regard his
worst calamity as but the extra strain on the bow of his life, which is to
send the arrow of his longing even further than he could have hoped;--this
man knows no revenge, neither does he know despair, he truly has found
redemption and can turn on the worst in his life and even in himself, and
call it his best (see Notes on Chapter LVII.).

Chapter XLIII.  Manly Prudence.

This discourse is very important.  In "Beyond Good and Evil" we hear often
enough that the select and superior man must wear a mask, and here we find
this injunction explained.  "And he who would not languish amongst men,
must learn to drink out of all glasses:  and he who would keep clean
amongst men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water."  This, I
venture to suggest, requires some explanation.  At a time when
individuality is supposed to be shown most tellingly by putting boots on
one's hands and gloves on one's feet, it is somewhat refreshing to come
across a true individualist who feels the chasm between himself and others
so deeply, that he must perforce adapt himself to them outwardly, at least,
in all respects, so that the inner difference should be overlooked.
Nietzsche practically tells us here that it is not he who intentionally
wears eccentric clothes or does eccentric things who is truly the
individualist.  The profound man, who is by nature differentiated from his
fellows, feels this difference too keenly to call attention to it by any
outward show.  He is shamefast and bashful with those who surround him and
wishes not to be discovered by them, just as one instinctively avoids all
lavish display of comfort or wealth in the presence of a poor friend.

Chapter XLIV.  The Stillest Hour.

This seems to me to give an account of the great struggle which must have
taken place in Nietzsche's soul before he finally resolved to make known
the more esoteric portions of his teaching.  Our deepest feelings crave
silence.  There is a certain self-respect in the serious man which makes
him hold his profoundest feelings sacred.  Before they are uttered they are
full of the modesty of a virgin, and often the oldest sage will blush like
a girl when this virginity is violated by an indiscretion which forces him
to reveal his deepest thoughts.

...

PART III.

This is perhaps the most important of all the four parts.  If it contained
only "The Vision and the Enigma" and "The Old and New Tables" I should
still be of this opinion; for in the former of these discourses we meet
with what Nietzsche regarded as the crowning doctrine of his philosophy and
in "The Old and New Tables" we have a valuable epitome of practically all
his leading principles.

Chapter XLVI.  The Vision and the Enigma.

"The Vision and the Enigma" is perhaps an example of Nietzsche in his most
obscure vein.  We must know how persistently he inveighed against the
oppressing and depressing influence of man's sense of guilt and
consciousness of sin in order fully to grasp the significance of this
discourse.  Slowly but surely, he thought the values of Christianity and
Judaic traditions had done their work in the minds of men.  What were once
but expedients devised for the discipline of a certain portion of humanity,
had now passed into man's blood and had become instincts.  This oppressive
and paralysing sense of guilt and of sin is what Nietzsche refers to when
he speaks of "the spirit of gravity."  This creature half-dwarf, half-mole,
whom he bears with him a certain distance on his climb and finally defies,
and whom he calls his devil and arch-enemy, is nothing more than the heavy
millstone "guilty conscience," together with the concept of sin which at
present hangs round the neck of men.  To rise above it--to soar--is the
most difficult of all things to-day.  Nietzsche is able to think cheerfully
and optimistically of the possibility of life in this world recurring again
and again, when he has once cast the dwarf from his shoulders, and he
announces his doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of all things great and
small to his arch-enemy and in defiance of him.

That there is much to be said for Nietzsche's hypothesis of the Eternal
Recurrence of all things great and small, nobody who has read the
literature on the subject will doubt for an instant; but it remains a very
daring conjecture notwithstanding and even in its ultimate effect, as a
dogma, on the minds of men, I venture to doubt whether Nietzsche ever
properly estimated its worth (see Note on Chapter LVII.).

What follows is clear enough.  Zarathustra sees a young shepherd struggling
on the ground with a snake holding fast to the back of his throat.  The
sage, assuming that the snake must have crawled into the young man's mouth
while he lay sleeping, runs to his help and pulls at the loathsome reptile
with all his might, but in vain.  At last, in despair, Zarathustra appeals
to the young man's will.  Knowing full well what a ghastly operation he is
recommending, he nevertheless cries, "Bite!  Bite!  Its head off!  Bite!"
as the only possible solution of the difficulty.  The young shepherd bites,
and far away he spits the snake's head, whereupon he rises, "No longer
shepherd, no longer man--a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being,
that LAUGHED!  Never on earth laughed a man as he laughed!"

In this parable the young shepherd is obviously the man of to-day; the
snake that chokes him represents the stultifying and paralysing social
values that threaten to shatter humanity, and the advice "Bite!  Bite!" is
but Nietzsche's exasperated cry to mankind to alter their values before it
is too late.

Chapter XLVII.  Involuntary Bliss.

This, like "The Wanderer", is one of the many introspective passages in the
work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to the Nietzschean outlook on
life.

Chapter XLVIII.  Before Sunrise.

Here we have a record of Zarathustra's avowal of optimism, as also the
important statement concerning "Chance" or "Accident" (verse 27).  Those
who are familiar with Nietzsche's philosophy will not require to be told
what an important role his doctrine of chance plays in his teaching.  The
Giant Chance has hitherto played with the puppet "man,"--this is the fact
he cannot contemplate with equanimity.  Man shall now exploit chance, he
says again and again, and make it fall on its knees before him!  (See verse
33 in "On the Olive Mount", and verses 9-10 in "The Bedwarfing Virtue").

Chapter XLIX.  The Bedwarfing Virtue.

This requires scarcely any comment.  It is a satire on modern man and his
belittling virtues.  In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the
discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche's powerful indictment of the great
of to-day, in the Antichrist (Aphorism 43):--"At present nobody has any
longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of domination, for a
feeling of reverence for himself and his equals,--FOR PATHOS OF
DISTANCE...Our politics are MORBID from this want of courage!--The
aristocracy of character has been undermined most craftily by the lie of
the equality of souls; and if the belief in the 'privilege of the many,'
makes revolutions and WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE them, it is Christianity, let
us not doubt it, it is CHRISTIAN valuations, which translate every
revolution merely into blood and crime!" (see also "Beyond Good and Evil",
pages 120, 121).  Nietzsche thought it was a bad sign of the times that
even rulers have lost the courage of their positions, and that a man of
Frederick the Great's power and distinguished gifts should have been able
to say:  "Ich bin der erste Diener des Staates" (I am the first servant of
the State.)  To this utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly
refers.  "Cowardice" and "Mediocrity," are the names with which he labels
modern notions of virtue and moderation.

In Part III., we get the sentiments of the discourse "In the Happy Isles",
but perhaps in stronger terms.  Once again we find Nietzsche thoroughly at
ease, if not cheerful, as an atheist, and speaking with vertiginous daring
of making chance go on its knees to him.  In verse 20, Zarathustra makes
yet another attempt at defining his entirely anti-anarchical attitude, and
unless such passages have been completely overlooked or deliberately
ignored hitherto by those who will persist in laying anarchy at his door,
it is impossible to understand how he ever became associated with that foul
political party.

The last verse introduces the expression, "THE GREAT NOONTIDE!"  In the
poem to be found at the end of "Beyond Good and Evil", we meet with the
expression again, and we shall find it occurring time and again in
Nietzsche's works.  It will be found fully elucidated in the fifth part of
"The Twilight of the Idols"; but for those who cannot refer to this book,
it were well to point out that Nietzsche called the present period--our
period--the noon of man's history.  Dawn is behind us.  The childhood of
mankind is over.  Now we KNOW; there is now no longer any excuse for
mistakes which will tend to botch and disfigure the type man.  "With
respect to what is past," he says, "I have, like all discerning ones, great
toleration, that is to say, GENEROUS self-control...But my feeling changes
suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I enter the modern period, OUR period.
Our age KNOWS..." (See Note on Chapter LXX.).

Chapter LI.  On Passing-by.

Here we find Nietzsche confronted with his extreme opposite, with him
therefore for whom he is most frequently mistaken by the unwary.
"Zarathustra's ape" he is called in the discourse.  He is one of those at
whose hands Nietzsche had to suffer most during his life-time, and at whose
hands his philosophy has suffered most since his death.  In this respect it
may seem a little trivial to speak of extremes meeting; but it is
wonderfully apt.  Many have adopted Nietzsche's mannerisms and word-
coinages, who had nothing in common with him beyond the ideas and
"business" they plagiarised; but the superficial observer and a large
portion of the public, not knowing of these things,--not knowing perhaps
that there are iconoclasts who destroy out of love and are therefore
creators, and that there are others who destroy out of resentment and
revengefulness and who are therefore revolutionists and anarchists,--are
prone to confound the two, to the detriment of the nobler type.

If we now read what the fool says to Zarathustra, and note the tricks of
speech he has borrowed from him:  if we carefully follow the attitude he
assumes, we shall understand why Zarathustra finally interrupts him.  "Stop
this at once," Zarathustra cries, "long have thy speech and thy species
disgusted me...Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take
wing; BUT NOT OUT OF THE SWAMP!"  It were well if this discourse were taken
to heart by all those who are too ready to associate Nietzsche with lesser
and noiser men,--with mountebanks and mummers.

Chapter LII.  The Apostates.

It is clear that this applies to all those breathless and hasty "tasters of
everything," who plunge too rashly into the sea of independent thought and
"heresy," and who, having miscalculated their strength, find it impossible
to keep their head above water.  "A little older, a little colder," says
Nietzsche.  They soon clamber back to the conventions of the age they
intended reforming.  The French then say "le diable se fait hermite," but
these men, as a rule, have never been devils, neither do they become
angels; for, in order to be really good or evil, some strength and deep
breathing is required.  Those who are more interested in supporting
orthodoxy than in being over nice concerning the kind of support they give
it, often refer to these people as evidence in favour of the true faith.

Chapter LIII.  The Return Home.

This is an example of a class of writing which may be passed over too
lightly by those whom poetasters have made distrustful of poetry.  From
first to last it is extremely valuable as an autobiographical note.  The
inevitable superficiality of the rabble is contrasted with the peaceful and
profound depths of the anchorite.  Here we first get a direct hint
concerning Nietzsche's fundamental passion--the main force behind all his
new values and scathing criticism of existing values.  In verse 30 we are
told that pity was his greatest danger.  The broad altruism of the law-
giver, thinking over vast eras of time, was continually being pitted by
Nietzsche, in himself, against that transient and meaner sympathy for the
neighbour which he more perhaps than any of his contemporaries had suffered
from, but which he was certain involved enormous dangers not only for
himself but also to the next and subsequent generations (see Note B., where
"pity" is mentioned among the degenerate virtues).  Later in the book we
shall see how his profound compassion leads him into temptation, and how
frantically he struggles against it.  In verses 31 and 32, he tells us to
what extent he had to modify himself in order to be endured by his fellows
whom he loved (see also verse 12 in "Manly Prudence").  Nietzsche's great
love for his fellows, which he confesses in the Prologue, and which is at
the root of all his teaching, seems rather to elude the discerning powers
of the average philanthropist and modern man.  He cannot see the wood for
the trees.  A philanthropy that sacrifices the minority of the present-day
for the majority constituting posterity, completely evades his mental
grasp, and Nietzsche's philosophy, because it declares Christian values to
be a danger to the future of our kind, is therefore shelved as brutal,
cold, and hard (see Note on Chapter XXXVI.).  Nietzsche tried to be all
things to all men; he was sufficiently fond of his fellows for that:  in
the Return Home he describes how he ultimately returns to loneliness in
order to recover from the effects of his experiment.

Chapter LIV.  The Three Evil Things.

Nietzsche is here completely in his element.  Three things hitherto best-
cursed and most calumniated on earth, are brought forward to be weighed.
Voluptuousness, thirst of power, and selfishness,--the three forces in
humanity which Christianity has done most to garble and besmirch,--
Nietzsche endeavours to reinstate in their former places of honour.
Voluptuousness, or sensual pleasure, is a dangerous thing to discuss
nowadays.  If we mention it with favour we may be regarded, however
unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure sensuality.  If we
condemn it, we either go over to the Puritans or we join those who are wont
to come to table with no edge to their appetites and who therefore grumble
at all good fare.  There can be no doubt that the value of healthy innocent
voluptuousness, like the value of health itself, must have been greatly
discounted by all those who, resenting their inability to partake of this
world's goods, cried like St Paul:  "I would that all men were even as I
myself."  Now Nietzsche's philosophy might be called an attempt at giving
back to healthy and normal men innocence and a clean conscience in their
desires--NOT to applaud the vulgar sensualists who respond to every
stimulus and whose passions are out of hand; not to tell the mean, selfish
individual, whose selfishness is a pollution (see Aphorism 33, "Twilight of
the Idols"), that he is right, nor to assure the weak, the sick, and the
crippled, that the thirst of power, which they gratify by exploiting the
happier and healthier individuals, is justified;--but to save the clean
healthy man from the values of those around him, who look at everything
through the mud that is in their own bodies,--to give him, and him alone, a
clean conscience in his manhood and the desires of his manhood.  "Do I
counsel you to slay your instincts?  I counsel to innocence in your
instincts."  In verse 7 of the second paragraph (as in verse I of paragraph
19 in "The Old and New Tables") Nietzsche gives us a reason for his
occasional obscurity (see also verses 3 to 7 of "Poets").  As I have
already pointed out, his philosophy is quite esoteric.  It can serve no
purpose with the ordinary, mediocre type of man.  I, personally, can no
longer have any doubt that Nietzsche's only object, in that part of his
philosophy where he bids his friends stand "Beyond Good and Evil" with him,
was to save higher men, whose growth and scope might be limited by the too
strict observance of modern values from foundering on the rocks of a
"Compromise" between their own genius and traditional conventions.  The
only possible way in which the great man can achieve greatness is by means
of exceptional freedom--the freedom which assists him in experiencing
HIMSELF.  Verses 20 to 30 afford an excellent supplement to Nietzsche's
description of the attitude of the noble type towards the slaves in
Aphorism 260 of the work "Beyond Good and Evil" (see also Note B.)

Chapter LV.  The Spirit of Gravity.

(See Note on Chapter XLVI.)  In Part II. of this discourse we meet with a
doctrine not touched upon hitherto, save indirectly;--I refer to the
doctrine of self-love.  We should try to understand this perfectly before
proceeding; for it is precisely views of this sort which, after having been
cut out of the original context, are repeated far and wide as internal
evidence proving the general unsoundness of Nietzsche's philosophy.
Already in the last of the "Thoughts out of Season" Nietzsche speaks as
follows about modern men:  "...these modern creatures wish rather to be
hunted down, wounded and torn to shreds, than to live alone with themselves
in solitary calm.  Alone with oneself!--this thought terrifies the modern
soul; it is his one anxiety, his one ghastly fear" (English Edition, page
141).  In his feverish scurry to find entertainment and diversion, whether
in a novel, a newspaper, or a play, the modern man condemns his own age
utterly; for he shows that in his heart of hearts he despises himself.  One
cannot change a condition of this sort in a day; to become endurable to
oneself an inner transformation is necessary.  Too long have we lost
ourselves in our friends and entertainments to be able to find ourselves so
soon at another's bidding.  "And verily, it is no commandment for to-day
and to-morrow to LEARN to love oneself.  Rather is it of all arts the
finest, subtlest, last, and patientest."

In the last verse Nietzsche challenges us to show that our way is the right
way.  In his teaching he does not coerce us, nor does he overpersuade; he
simply says:  "I am a law only for mine own, I am not a law for all.  This
--is now MY way,--where is yours?"

Chapter LVI.  Old and New Tables.  Par. 2.

Nietzsche himself declares this to be the most decisive portion of the
whole of "Thus Spake Zarathustra".  It is a sort of epitome of his leading
doctrines.  In verse 12 of the second paragraph, we learn how he himself
would fain have abandoned the poetical method of expression had he not
known only too well that the only chance a new doctrine has of surviving,
nowadays, depends upon its being given to the world in some kind of art-
form.  Just as prophets, centuries ago, often had to have recourse to the
mask of madness in order to mitigate the hatred of those who did not and
could not see as they did; so, to-day, the struggle for existence among
opinions and values is so great, that an art-form is practically the only
garb in which a new philosophy can dare to introduce itself to us.

Pars. 3 and 4.

Many of the paragraphs will be found to be merely reminiscent of former
discourses.  For instance, par. 3 recalls "Redemption".  The last verse of
par. 4 is important.  Freedom which, as I have pointed out before,
Nietzsche considered a dangerous acquisition in inexperienced or unworthy
hands, here receives its death-blow as a general desideratum.  In the first
Part we read under "The Way of the Creating One", that freedom as an end in
itself does not concern Zarathustra at all.  He says there:  "Free from
what?  What doth that matter to Zarathustra?  Clearly, however, shall thine
eye answer me:  free FOR WHAT?"  And in "The Bedwarfing Virtue":  "Ah that
ye understood my word:  'Do ever what ye will--but first be such as CAN
WILL.'"

Par. 5.

Here we have a description of the kind of altruism Nietzsche exacted from
higher men.  It is really a comment upon "The Bestowing Virtue" (see Note
on Chapter XXII.).

Par. 6.

This refers, of course, to the reception pioneers of Nietzsche's stamp meet
with at the hands of their contemporaries.

Par. 8.

Nietzsche teaches that nothing is stable,--not even values,--not even the
concepts good and evil.  He likens life unto a stream.  But foot-bridges
and railings span the stream, and they seem to stand firm.  Many will be
reminded of good and evil when they look upon these structures; for thus
these same values stand over the stream of life, and life flows on beneath
them and leaves them standing.  When, however, winter comes and the stream
gets frozen, many inquire:  "Should not everything--STAND STILL?
Fundamentally everything standeth still."  But soon the spring cometh and
with it the thaw-wind.  It breaks the ice, and the ice breaks down the
foot-bridges and railings, whereupon everything is swept away.  This state
of affairs, according to Nietzsche, has now been reached.  "Oh, my
brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX?  Have not all railings and
foot-bridges fallen into the water?  Who would still HOLD ON to 'good' and
'evil'?"

Par. 9.

This is complementary to the first three verses of par. 2.

Par. 10.

So far, this is perhaps the most important paragraph.  It is a protest
against reading a moral order of things in life.  "Life is something
essentially immoral!" Nietzsche tells us in the introduction to the "Birth
of Tragedy".  Even to call life "activity," or to define it further as "the
continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations," as
Spencer has it, Nietzsche characterises as a "democratic idiosyncracy."  He
says to define it in this way, "is to mistake the true nature and function
of life, which is Will to Power...Life is ESSENTIALLY appropriation,
injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion
of its own forms, incorporation and at least, putting it mildest,
exploitation."  Adaptation is merely a secondary activity, a mere re-
activity (see Note on Chapter LVII.).

Pars. 11, 12.

These deal with Nietzsche's principle of the desirability of rearing a
select race.  The biological and historical grounds for his insistence upon
this principle are, of course, manifold.  Gobineau in his great work,
"L'Inegalite des Races Humaines", lays strong emphasis upon the evils which
arise from promiscuous and inter-social marriages.  He alone would suffice
to carry Nietzsche's point against all those who are opposed to the other
conditions, to the conditions which would have saved Rome, which have
maintained the strength of the Jewish race, and which are strictly
maintained by every breeder of animals throughout the world.  Darwin in his
remarks relative to the degeneration of CULTIVATED types of animals through
the action of promiscuous breeding, brings Gobineau support from the realm
of biology.

The last two verses of par. 12 were discussed in the Notes on Chapters
XXXVI. and LIII.

Par. 13.

This, like the first part of "The Soothsayer", is obviously a reference to
the Schopenhauerian Pessimism.

Pars. 14, 15, 16, 17.

These are supplementary to the discourse "Backworld's-men".

Par. 18.

We must be careful to separate this paragraph, in sense, from the previous
four paragraphs.  Nietzsche is still dealing with Pessimism here; but it is
the pessimism of the hero--the man most susceptible of all to desperate
views of life, owing to the obstacles that are arrayed against him in a
world where men of his kind are very rare and are continually being
sacrificed.  It was to save this man that Nietzsche wrote.  Heroism foiled,
thwarted, and wrecked, hoping and fighting until the last, is at length
overtaken by despair, and renounces all struggle for sleep.  This is not
the natural or constitutional pessimism which proceeds from an unhealthy
body--the dyspeptic's lack of appetite; it is rather the desperation of the
netted lion that ultimately stops all movement, because the more it moves
the more involved it becomes.

Par. 20.

"All that increases power is good, all that springs from weakness is bad.
The weak and ill-constituted shall perish:  first principle of our charity.
And one shall also help them thereto."  Nietzsche partly divined the kind
of reception moral values of this stamp would meet with at the hands of the
effeminate manhood of Europe.  Here we see that he had anticipated the most
likely form their criticism would take (see also the last two verses of
par. 17).

Par. 21.

The first ten verses, here, are reminiscent of "War and Warriors" and of
"The Flies in the Market-Place."  Verses 11 and 12, however, are
particularly important.  There is a strong argument in favour of the sharp
differentiation of castes and of races (and even of sexes; see Note on
Chapter XVIII.) running all through Nietzsche's writings.  But sharp
differentiation also implies antagonism in some form or other--hence
Nietzsche's fears for modern men.  What modern men desire above all, is
peace and the cessation of pain.  But neither great races nor great castes
have ever been built up in this way.  "Who still wanteth to rule?"
Zarathustra asks in the "Prologue".  "Who still wanteth to obey?  Both are
too burdensome."  This is rapidly becoming everybody's attitude to-day.
The tame moral reading of the face of nature, together with such democratic
interpretations of life as those suggested by Herbert Spencer, are signs of
a physiological condition which is the reverse of that bounding and
irresponsible healthiness in which harder and more tragic values rule.

Par. 24.

This should be read in conjunction with "Child and Marriage".  In the fifth
verse we shall recognise our old friend "Marriage on the ten-years system,"
which George Meredith suggested some years ago.  This, however, must not be
taken too literally.  I do not think Nietzsche's profoundest views on
marriage were ever intended to be given over to the public at all, at least
not for the present.  They appear in the biography by his sister, and
although their wisdom is unquestionable, the nature of the reforms he
suggests render it impossible for them to become popular just now.

Pars. 26, 27.

See Note on "The Prologue".

Par. 28.

Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from predilection.  No bitterness or empty
hate dictated his vituperations against existing values and against the
dogmas of his parents and forefathers.  He knew too well what these things
meant to the millions who profess them, to approach the task of uprooting
them with levity or even with haste.  He saw what modern anarchists and
revolutionists do NOT see--namely, that man is in danger of actual
destruction when his customs and values are broken.  I need hardly point
out, therefore, how deeply he was conscious of the responsibility he threw
upon our shoulders when he invited us to reconsider our position.  The
lines in this paragraph are evidence enough of his earnestness.

Chapter LVII.  The Convalescent.

We meet with several puzzles here.  Zarathustra calls himself the advocate
of the circle (the Eternal Recurrence of all things), and he calls this
doctrine his abysmal thought.  In the last verse of the first paragraph,
however, after hailing his deepest thought, he cries:  "Disgust, disgust,
disgust!"  We know Nietzsche's ideal man was that "world-approving,
exuberant, and vivacious creature, who has not only learnt to compromise
and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again, AS IT
WAS AND IS, for all eternity insatiably calling out da capo, not only to
himself, but to the whole piece and play" (see Note on Chapter XLII.).  But
if one ask oneself what the conditions to such an attitude are, one will
realise immediately how utterly different Nietzsche was from his ideal.
The man who insatiably cries da capo to himself and to the whole of his
mise-en-scene, must be in a position to desire every incident in his life
to be repeated, not once, but again and again eternally.  Now, Nietzsche's
life had been too full of disappointments, illness, unsuccessful struggles,
and snubs, to allow of his thinking of the Eternal Recurrence without
loathing--hence probably the words of the last verse.

In verses 15 and 16, we have Nietzsche declaring himself an evolutionist in
the broadest sense--that is to say, that he believes in the Development
Hypothesis as the description of the process by which species have
originated.  Now, to understand his position correctly we must show his
relationship to the two greatest of modern evolutionists--Darwin and
Spencer.  As a philosopher, however, Nietzsche does not stand or fall by
his objections to the Darwinian or Spencerian cosmogony.  He never laid
claim to a very profound knowledge of biology, and his criticism is far
more valuable as the attitude of a fresh mind than as that of a specialist
towards the question.  Moreover, in his objections many difficulties are
raised which are not settled by an appeal to either of the men above
mentioned.  We have given Nietzsche's definition of life in the Note on
Chapter LVI., par. 10.  Still, there remains a hope that Darwin and
Nietzsche may some day become reconciled by a new description of the
processes by which varieties occur.  The appearance of varieties among
animals and of "sporting plants" in the vegetable kingdom, is still
shrouded in mystery, and the question whether this is not precisely the
ground on which Darwin and Nietzsche will meet, is an interesting one.  The
former says in his "Origin of Species", concerning the causes of
variability:  "...there are two factors, namely, the nature of the
organism, and the nature of the conditions.  THE FORMER SEEMS TO BE MUCH
THE MORE IMPORTANT (The italics are mine.), for nearly similar variations
sometimes arise under, as far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and
on the other hand, dissimilar variations arise under conditions which
appear to be nearly uniform."  Nietzsche, recognising this same truth,
would ascribe practically all the importance to the "highest functionaries
in the organism, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative
principle," and except in certain cases (where passive organisms alone are
concerned) would not give such a prominent place to the influence of
environment.  Adaptation, according to him, is merely a secondary activity,
a mere re-activity, and he is therefore quite opposed to Spencer's
definition:  "Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to
external relations."  Again in the motive force behind animal and plant
life, Nietzsche disagrees with Darwin.  He transforms the "Struggle for
Existence"--the passive and involuntary condition--into the "Struggle for
Power," which is active and creative, and much more in harmony with
Darwin's own view, given above, concerning the importance of the organism
itself.  The change is one of such far-reaching importance that we cannot
dispose of it in a breath, as a mere play upon words.  "Much is reckoned
higher than life itself by the living one."  Nietzsche says that to speak
of the activity of life as a "struggle for existence," is to state the case
inadequately.  He warns us not to confound Malthus with nature.  There is
something more than this struggle between the organic beings on this earth;
want, which is supposed to bring this struggle about, is not so common as
is supposed; some other force must be operative.  The Will to Power is this
force, "the instinct of self-preservation is only one of the indirect and
most frequent results thereof."  A certain lack of acumen in psychological
questions and the condition of affairs in England at the time Darwin wrote,
may both, according to Nietzsche, have induced the renowned naturalist to
describe the forces of nature as he did in his "Origin of Species".

In verses 28, 29, and 30 of the second portion of this discourse we meet
with a doctrine which, at first sight, seems to be merely "le manoir a
l'envers," indeed one English critic has actually said of Nietzsche, that
"Thus Spake Zarathustra" is no more than a compendium of modern views and
maxims turned upside down.  Examining these heterodox pronouncements a
little more closely, however, we may possibly perceive their truth.
Regarding good and evil as purely relative values, it stands to reason that
what may be bad or evil in a given man, relative to a certain environment,
may actually be good if not highly virtuous in him relative to a certain
other environment.  If this hypothetical man represent the ascending line
of life--that is to say, if he promise all that which is highest in a
Graeco-Roman sense, then it is likely that he will be condemned as wicked
if introduced into the society of men representing the opposite and
descending line of life.

By depriving a man of his wickedness--more particularly nowadays--
therefore, one may unwittingly be doing violence to the greatest in him.
It may be an outrage against his wholeness, just as the lopping-off of a
leg would be.  Fortunately, the natural so-called "wickedness" of higher
men has in a certain measure been able to resist this lopping process which
successive slave-moralities have practised; but signs are not wanting which
show that the noblest wickedness is fast vanishing from society--the
wickedness of courage and determination--and that Nietzsche had good
reasons for crying:  "Ah, that (man's) baddest is so very small!  Ah, that
his best is so very small.  What is good?  To be brave is good!  It is the
good war which halloweth every cause!" (see also par. 5, "Higher Man").

Chapter LX.  The Seven Seals.

This is a final paean which Zarathustra sings to Eternity and the marriage-
ring of rings, the ring of the Eternal Recurrence.

...

PART IV.

In my opinion this part is Nietzsche's open avowal that all his philosophy,
together with all his hopes, enthusiastic outbursts, blasphemies,
prolixities, and obscurities, were merely so many gifts laid at the feet of
higher men.  He had no desire to save the world.  What he wished to
determine was:  Who is to be master of the world?  This is a very different
thing.  He came to save higher men;--to give them that freedom by which,
alone, they can develop and reach their zenith (see Note on Chapter LIV.,
end).  It has been argued, and with considerable force, that no such
philosophy is required by higher men, that, as a matter of fact, higher
men, by virtue of their constitutions always, do stand Beyond Good and
Evil, and never allow anything to stand in the way of their complete
growth.  Nietzsche, however, was evidently not so confident about this.  He
would probably have argued that we only see the successful cases.  Being a
great man himself, he was well aware of the dangers threatening greatness
in our age.  In "Beyond Good and Evil" he writes:  "There are few pains so
grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man
has missed his way and deteriorated..."  He knew "from his painfullest
recollections on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the
highest rank have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and
become contemptible."  Now in Part IV. we shall find that his strongest
temptation to descend to the feeling of "pity" for his contemporaries, is
the "cry for help" which he hears from the lips of the higher men exposed
to the dreadful danger of their modern environment.

Chapter LXI.  The Honey Sacrifice.

In the fourteenth verse of this discourse Nietzsche defines the solemn duty
he imposed upon himself:  "Become what thou art."  Surely the criticism
which has been directed against this maxim must all fall to the ground when
it is remembered, once and for all, that Nietzsche's teaching was never
intended to be other than an esoteric one.  "I am a law only for mine own,"
he says emphatically, "I am not a law for all."  It is of the greatest
importance to humanity that its highest individuals should be allowed to
attain to their full development; for, only by means of its heroes can the
human race be led forward step by step to higher and yet higher levels.
"Become what thou art" applied to all, of course, becomes a vicious maxim;
it is to be hoped, however, that we may learn in time that the same action
performed by a given number of men, loses its identity precisely that same
number of times.--"Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi."

At the last eight verses many readers may be tempted to laugh.  In England
we almost always laugh when a man takes himself seriously at anything save
sport.  And there is of course no reason why the reader should not be
hilarious.--A certain greatness is requisite, both in order to be sublime
and to have reverence for the sublime.  Nietzsche earnestly believed that
the Zarathustra-kingdom--his dynasty of a thousand years--would one day
come; if he had not believed it so earnestly, if every artist in fact had
not believed so earnestly in his Hazar, whether of ten, fifteen, a hundred,
or a thousand years, we should have lost all our higher men; they would
have become pessimists, suicides, or merchants.  If the minor poet and
philosopher has made us shy of the prophetic seriousness which
characterized an Isaiah or a Jeremiah, it is surely our loss and the minor
poet's gain.

Chapter LXII.  The Cry of Distress.

We now meet with Zarathustra in extraordinary circumstances.  He is
confronted with Schopenhauer and tempted by the old Soothsayer to commit
the sin of pity.  "I have come that I may seduce thee to thy last sin!"
says the Soothsayer to Zarathustra.  It will be remembered that in
Schopenhauer's ethics, pity is elevated to the highest place among the
virtues, and very consistently too, seeing that the Weltanschauung is a
pessimistic one.  Schopenhauer appeals to Nietzsche's deepest and strongest
sentiment--his sympathy for higher men.  "Why dost thou conceal thyself?"
he cries.  "It is THE HIGHER MAN that calleth for thee!"  Zarathustra is
almost overcome by the Soothsayer's pleading, as he had been once already
in the past, but he resists him step by step.  At length he can withstand
him no longer, and, on the plea that the higher man is on his ground and
therefore under his protection, Zarathustra departs in search of him,
leaving Schopenhauer--a higher man in Nietzsche's opinion--in the cave as a
guest.

Chapter LXIII.  Talk with the Kings.

On his way Zarathustra meets two more higher men of his time; two kings
cross his path.  They are above the average modern type; for their
instincts tell them what real ruling is, and they despise the mockery which
they have been taught to call "Reigning."  "We ARE NOT the first men," they
say, "and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them:  of this imposture have we
at last become weary and disgusted."  It is the kings who tell Zarathustra:
"There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny than when the mighty of
the earth are not also the first men.  There everything becometh false and
distorted and monstrous."  The kings are also asked by Zarathustra to
accept the shelter of his cave, whereupon he proceeds on his way.

Chapter LXIV.  The Leech.

Among the higher men whom Zarathustra wishes to save, is also the
scientific specialist--the man who honestly and scrupulously pursues his
investigations, as Darwin did, in one department of knowledge.  "I love him
who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman
may hereafter live.  Thus seeketh he his own down-going."  "The spiritually
conscientious one," he is called in this discourse.  Zarathustra steps on
him unawares, and the slave of science, bleeding from the violence he has
done to himself by his self-imposed task, speaks proudly of his little
sphere of knowledge--his little hand's breadth of ground on Zarathustra's
territory, philosophy.  "Where mine honesty ceaseth," says the true
scientific specialist, "there am I blind and want also to be blind.  Where
I want to know, however, there want I also to be honest--namely, severe,
rigorous, restricted, cruel, and inexorable."  Zarathustra greatly
respecting this man, invites him too to the cave, and then vanishes in
answer to another cry for help.

Chapter LXV.  The Magician.

The Magician is of course an artist, and Nietzsche's intimate knowledge of
perhaps the greatest artist of his age rendered the selection of Wagner, as
the type in this discourse, almost inevitable.  Most readers will be
acquainted with the facts relating to Nietzsche's and Wagner's friendship
and ultimate separation.  As a boy and a youth Nietzsche had shown such a
remarkable gift for music that it had been a question at one time whether
he should not perhaps give up everything else in order to develop this
gift, but he became a scholar notwithstanding, although he never entirely
gave up composing, and playing the piano.  While still in his teens, he
became acquainted with Wagner's music and grew passionately fond of it.
Long before he met Wagner he must have idealised him in his mind to an
extent which only a profoundly artistic nature could have been capable of.
Nietzsche always had high ideals for humanity.  If one were asked whether,
throughout his many changes, there was yet one aim, one direction, and one
hope to which he held fast, one would be forced to reply in the affirmative
and declare that aim, direction, and hope to have been "the elevation of
the type man."  Now, when Nietzsche met Wagner he was actually casting
about for an incarnation of his dreams for the German people, and we have
only to remember his youth (he was twenty-one when he was introduced to
Wagner), his love of Wagner's music, and the undoubted power of the great
musician's personality, in order to realise how very uncritical his
attitude must have been in the first flood of his enthusiasm.  Again, when
the friendship ripened, we cannot well imagine Nietzsche, the younger man,
being anything less than intoxicated by his senior's attention and love,
and we are therefore not surprised to find him pressing Wagner forward as
the great Reformer and Saviour of mankind.  "Wagner in Bayreuth" (English
Edition, 1909) gives us the best proof of Nietzsche's infatuation, and
although signs are not wanting in this essay which show how clearly and
even cruelly he was sub-consciously "taking stock" of his friend--even
then, the work is a record of what great love and admiration can do in the
way of endowing the object of one's affection with all the qualities and
ideals that a fertile imagination can conceive.

When the blow came it was therefore all the more severe.  Nietzsche at
length realised that the friend of his fancy and the real Richard Wagner--
the composer of Parsifal--were not one; the fact dawned upon him slowly;
disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after revelation, ultimately
brought it home to him, and though his best instincts were naturally
opposed to it at first, the revulsion of feeling at last became too strong
to be ignored, and Nietzsche was plunged into the blackest despair.  Years
after his break with Wagner, he wrote "The Case of Wagner", and "Nietzsche
contra Wagner", and these works are with us to prove the sincerity and
depth of his views on the man who was the greatest event of his life.

The poem in this discourse is, of course, reminiscent of Wagner's own
poetical manner, and it must be remembered that the whole was written
subsequent to Nietzsche's final break with his friend.  The dialogue
between Zarathustra and the Magician reveals pretty fully what it was that
Nietzsche grew to loathe so intensely in Wagner,--viz., his pronounced
histrionic tendencies, his dissembling powers, his inordinate vanity, his
equivocalness, his falseness.  "It honoureth thee," says Zarathustra, "that
thou soughtest for greatness, but it betrayeth thee also.  Thou art not
great."  The Magician is nevertheless sent as a guest to Zarathustra's
cave; for, in his heart, Zarathustra believed until the end that the
Magician was a higher man broken by modern values.

Chapter LXVI.  Out of Service.

Zarathustra now meets the last pope, and, in a poetical form, we get
Nietzsche's description of the course Judaism and Christianity pursued
before they reached their final break-up in Atheism, Agnosticism, and the
like.  The God of a strong, warlike race--the God of Israel--is a jealous,
revengeful God.  He is a power that can be pictured and endured only by a
hardy and courageous race, a race rich enough to sacrifice and to lose in
sacrifice.  The image of this God degenerates with the people that
appropriate it, and gradually He becomes a God of love--"soft and mellow,"
a lower middle-class deity, who is "pitiful."  He can no longer be a God
who requires sacrifice, for we ourselves are no longer rich enough for
that.  The tables are therefore turned upon Him; HE must sacrifice to us.
His pity becomes so great that he actually does sacrifice something to us--
His only begotten Son.  Such a process carried to its logical conclusions
must ultimately end in His own destruction, and thus we find the pope
declaring that God was one day suffocated by His all-too-great pity.  What
follows is clear enough.  Zarathustra recognises another higher man in the
ex-pope and sends him too as a guest to the cave.

Chapter LXVII.  The Ugliest Man.

This discourse contains perhaps the boldest of Nietzsche's suggestions
concerning Atheism, as well as some extremely penetrating remarks upon the
sentiment of pity.  Zarathustra comes across the repulsive creature sitting
on the wayside, and what does he do?  He manifests the only correct
feelings that can be manifested in the presence of any great misery--that
is to say, shame, reverence, embarrassment.  Nietzsche detested the
obtrusive and gushing pity that goes up to misery without a blush either on
its cheek or in its heart--the pity which is only another form of self-
glorification.  "Thank God that I am not like thee!"--only this self-
glorifying sentiment can lend a well-constituted man the impudence to SHOW
his pity for the cripple and the ill-constituted.  In the presence of the
ugliest man Nietzsche blushes,--he blushes for his race; his own particular
kind of altruism--the altruism that might have prevented the existence of
this man--strikes him with all its force.  He will have the world
otherwise.  He will have a world where one need not blush for one's
fellows--hence his appeal to us to love only our children's land, the land
undiscovered in the remotest sea.

Zarathustra calls the ugliest man the murderer of God!  Certainly, this is
one aspect of a certain kind of Atheism--the Atheism of the man who reveres
beauty to such an extent that his own ugliness, which outrages him, must be
concealed from every eye lest it should not be respected as Zarathustra
respected it.  If there be a God, He too must be evaded.  His pity must be
foiled.  But God is ubiquitous and omniscient.  Therefore, for the really
GREAT ugly man, He must not exist.  "Their pity IS it from which I flee
away," he says--that is to say:  "It is from their want of reverence and
lack of shame in presence of my great misery!"  The ugliest man despises
himself; but Zarathustra said in his Prologue:  "I love the great despisers
because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other
shore."  He therefore honours the ugliest man:  sees height in his self-
contempt, and invites him to join the other higher men in the cave.

Chapter LXVIII.  The Voluntary Beggar.

In this discourse, we undoubtedly have the ideal Buddhist, if not Gautama
Buddha himself.  Nietzsche had the greatest respect for Buddhism, and
almost wherever he refers to it in his works, it is in terms of praise.  He
recognised that though Buddhism is undoubtedly a religion for decadents,
its decadent values emanate from the higher and not, as in Christianity,
from the lower grades of society.  In Aphorism 20 of "The Antichrist", he
compares it exhaustively with Christianity, and the result of his
investigation is very much in favour of the older religion.  Still, he
recognised a most decided Buddhistic influence in Christ's teaching, and
the words in verses 29, 30, and 31 are very reminiscent of his views in
regard to the Christian Savior.

The figure of Christ has been introduced often enough into fiction, and
many scholars have undertaken to write His life according to their own
lights, but few perhaps have ever attempted to present Him to us bereft of
all those characteristics which a lack of the sense of harmony has attached
to His person through the ages in which His doctrines have been taught.
Now Nietzsche disagreed entirely with Renan's view, that Christ was "le
grand maitre en ironie"; in Aphorism 31 of "The Antichrist", he says that
he (Nietzsche) always purged his picture of the Humble Nazarene of all
those bitter and spiteful outbursts which, in view of the struggle the
first Christians went through, may very well have been added to the
original character by Apologists and Sectarians who, at that time, could
ill afford to consider nice psychological points, seeing that what they
needed, above all, was a wrangling and abusive deity.  These two
conflicting halves in the character of the Christ of the Gospels, which no
sound psychology can ever reconcile, Nietzsche always kept distinct in his
own mind; he could not credit the same man with sentiments sometimes so
noble and at other times so vulgar, and in presenting us with this new
portrait of the Saviour, purged of all impurities, Nietzsche rendered
military honours to a foe, which far exceed in worth all that His most
ardent disciples have ever claimed for Him.  In verse 26 we are vividly
reminded of Herbert Spencer's words "'Le mariage de convenance' is
legalised prostitution."

Chapter LXIX.  The Shadow.

Here we have a description of that courageous and wayward spirit that
literally haunts the footsteps of every great thinker and every great
leader; sometimes with the result that it loses all aims, all hopes, and
all trust in a definite goal.  It is the case of the bravest and most
broad-minded men of to-day.  These literally shadow the most daring
movements in the science and art of their generation; they completely lose
their bearings and actually find themselves, in the end, without a way, a
goal, or a home.  "On every surface have I already sat!...I become thin, I
am almost equal to a shadow!"  At last, in despair, such men do indeed cry
out:  "Nothing is true; all is permitted," and then they become mere
wreckage.  "Too much hath become clear unto me:  now nothing mattereth to
me any more.  Nothing liveth any longer that I love,--how should I still
love myself!  Have I still a goal?  Where is MY home?"  Zarathustra
realises the danger threatening such a man.  "Thy danger is not small, thou
free spirit and wanderer," he says.  "Thou hast had a bad day.  See that a
still worse evening doth not overtake thee!"  The danger Zarathustra refers
to is precisely this, that even a prison may seem a blessing to such a man.
At least the bars keep him in a place of rest; a place of confinement, at
its worst, is real.  "Beware lest in the end a narrow faith capture thee,"
says Zarathustra, "for now everything that is narrow and fixed seduceth and
tempteth thee."

Chapter LXX.  Noontide.

At the noon of life Nietzsche said he entered the world; with him man came
of age.  We are now held responsible for our actions; our old guardians,
the gods and demi-gods of our youth, the superstitions and fears of our
childhood, withdraw; the field lies open before us; we lived through our
morning with but one master--chance--; let us see to it that we MAKE our
afternoon our own (see Note XLIX., Part III.).

Chapter LXXI.  The Greeting.

Here I think I may claim that my contention in regard to the purpose and
aim of the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy (as stated at the beginning of
my Notes on Part IV.) is completely upheld.  He fought for "all who do not
want to live, unless they learn again to HOPE--unless THEY learn (from him)
the GREAT hope!"  Zarathustra's address to his guests shows clearly enough
how he wished to help them:  "I DO NOT TREAT MY WARRIORS INDULGENTLY," he
says:  "how then could ye be fit for MY warfare?"  He rebukes and spurns
them, no word of love comes from his lips.  Elsewhere he says a man should
be a hard bed to his friend, thus alone can he be of use to him.  Nietzsche
would be a hard bed to higher men.  He would make them harder; for, in
order to be a law unto himself, man must possess the requisite hardness.
"I wait for higher ones, stronger ones, more triumphant ones, merrier ones,
for such as are built squarely in body and soul."  He says in par. 6 of
"Higher Man":--

"Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put
wrong?  Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you
sufferers?  Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones new and
easier footpaths?"

"Nay!  Nay!  Three times nay!  Always more, always better ones of your type
shall succumb--for ye shall always have it worse and harder."

Chapter LXXII.  The Supper.

In the first seven verses of this discourse, I cannot help seeing a gentle
allusion to Schopenhauer's habits as a bon-vivant.  For a pessimist, be it
remembered, Schopenhauer led quite an extraordinary life.  He ate well,
loved well, played the flute well, and I believe he smoked the best cigars.
What follows is clear enough.

Chapter LXXIII.  The Higher Man.  Par. 1.

Nietzsche admits, here, that at one time he had thought of appealing to the
people, to the crowd in the market-place, but that he had ultimately to
abandon the task.  He bids higher men depart from the market-place.

Par. 3.

Here we are told quite plainly what class of men actually owe all their
impulses and desires to the instinct of self-preservation.  The struggle
for existence is indeed the only spur in the case of such people.  To them
it matters not in what shape or condition man be preserved, provided only
he survive.  The transcendental maxim that "Life per se is precious" is the
ruling maxim here.

Par. 4.

In the Note on Chapter LVII. (end) I speak of Nietzsche's elevation of the
virtue, Courage, to the highest place among the virtues.  Here he tells
higher men the class of courage he expects from them.

Pars. 5, 6.

These have already been referred to in the Notes on Chapters LVII. (end)
and LXXI.

Par. 7.

I suggest that the last verse in this paragraph strongly confirms the view
that Nietzsche's teaching was always meant by him to be esoteric and for
higher man alone.

Par. 9.

In the last verse, here, another shaft of light is thrown upon the
Immaculate Perception or so-called "pure objectivity" of the scientific
mind.  "Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge."  Where a
man's emotions cease to accompany him in his investigations, he is not
necessarily nearer the truth.  Says Spencer, in the Preface to his
Autobiography:--"In the genesis of a system of thought, the emotional
nature is a large factor:  perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual
nature" (see pages 134, 141 of Vol. I., "Thoughts out of Season").

Pars. 10, 11.

When we approach Nietzsche's philosophy we must be prepared to be
independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is perhaps
the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one of thinking
alone, of scoring off one's own bat, and of shifting intellectually for
oneself.

Par. 13.

"I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me, may
grasp me!  Your crutch, however, I am not."  These two paragraphs are an
exhortation to higher men to become independent.

Par. 15.

Here Nietzsche perhaps exaggerates the importance of heredity.  As,
however, the question is by no means one on which we are all agreed, what
he says is not without value.

A very important principle in Nietzsche's philosophy is enunciated in the
first verse of this paragraph.  "The higher its type, always the seldomer
doth a thing succeed" (see page 82 of "Beyond Good and Evil").  Those who,
like some political economists, talk in a business-like way about the
terrific waste of human life and energy, deliberately overlook the fact
that the waste most to be deplored usually occurs among higher individuals.
Economy was never precisely one of nature's leading principles.  All this
sentimental wailing over the larger proportion of failures than successes
in human life, does not seem to take into account the fact that it is the
rarest thing on earth for a highly organised being to attain to the fullest
development and activity of all its functions, simply because it is so
highly organised.  The blind Will to Power in nature therefore stands in
urgent need of direction by man.

Pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

These paragraphs deal with Nietzsche's protest against the democratic
seriousness (Pobelernst) of modern times.  "All good things laugh," he
says, and his final command to the higher men is, "LEARN, I pray you--to
laugh."  All that is GOOD, in Nietzsche's sense, is cheerful.  To be able
to crack a joke about one's deepest feelings is the greatest test of their
value.  The man who does not laugh, like the man who does not make faces,
is already a buffoon at heart.

"What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth?  Was it not the
word of him who said:  'Woe unto them that laugh now!'  Did he himself find
no cause for laughter on the earth?  Then he sought badly.  A child even
findeth cause for it."

Chapter LXXIV.  The Song of Melancholy.

After his address to the higher men, Zarathustra goes out into the open to
recover himself.  Meanwhile the magician (Wagner), seizing the opportunity
in order to draw them all into his net once more, sings the Song of
Melancholy.

Chapter LXXV.  Science.

The only one to resist the "melancholy voluptuousness" of his art, is the
spiritually conscientious one--the scientific specialist of whom we read in
the discourse entitled "The Leech".  He takes the harp from the magician
and cries for air, while reproving the musician in the style of "The Case
of Wagner".  When the magician retaliates by saying that the spiritually
conscientious one could have understood little of his song, the latter
replies:  "Thou praisest me in that thou separatest me from thyself."  The
speech of the scientific man to his fellow higher men is well worth
studying.  By means of it, Nietzsche pays a high tribute to the honesty of
the true specialist, while, in representing him as the only one who can
resist the demoniacal influence of the magician's music, he elevates him at
a stroke, above all those present.  Zarathustra and the spiritually
conscientious one join issue at the end on the question of the proper place
of "fear" in man's history, and Nietzsche avails himself of the opportunity
in order to restate his views concerning the relation of courage to
humanity.  It is precisely because courage has played the most important
part in our development that he would not see it vanish from among our
virtues to-day.  "...courage seemeth to me the entire primitive history of
man."

Chapter LXXVI.  Among the Daughters of the Desert.

This tells its own tale.

Chapter LXXVII.  The Awakening.

In this discourse, Nietzsche wishes to give his followers a warning.  He
thinks he has so far helped them that they have become convalescent, that
new desires are awakened in them and that new hopes are in their arms and
legs.  But he mistakes the nature of the change.  True, he has helped them,
he has given them back what they most need, i.e., belief in believing--the
confidence in having confidence in something, but how do they use it?  This
belief in faith, if one can so express it without seeming tautological, has
certainly been restored to them, and in the first flood of their enthusiasm
they use it by bowing down and worshipping an ass!  When writing this
passage, Nietzsche was obviously thinking of the accusations which were
levelled at the early Christians by their pagan contemporaries.  It is well
known that they were supposed not only to be eaters of human flesh but also
ass-worshippers, and among the Roman graffiti, the most famous is the one
found on the Palatino, showing a man worshipping a cross on which is
suspended a figure with the head of an ass (see Minucius Felix, "Octavius"
IX.; Tacitus, "Historiae" v. 3; Tertullian, "Apologia", etc.).  Nietzsche's
obvious moral, however, is that great scientists and thinkers, once they
have reached the wall encircling scepticism and have thereby learned to
recover their confidence in the act of believing, as such, usually manifest
the change in their outlook by falling victims to the narrowest and most
superstitious of creeds.  So much for the introduction of the ass as an
object of worship.

Now, with regard to the actual service and Ass-Festival, no reader who
happens to be acquainted with the religious history of the Middle Ages will
fail to see the allusion here to the asinaria festa which were by no means
uncommon in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe during the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.

Chapter LXXVIII.  The Ass-Festival.

At length, in the middle of their feast, Zarathustra bursts in upon them
and rebukes them soundly.  But he does not do so long; in the Ass-Festival,
it suddenly occurs to him, that he is concerned with a ceremony that may
not be without its purpose, as something foolish but necessary--a
recreation for wise men.  He is therefore highly pleased that the higher
men have all blossomed forth; they therefore require new festivals,--"A
little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some old
joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow their souls bright."

He tells them not to forget that night and the ass-festival, for "such
things only the convalescent devise!  And should ye celebrate it again," he
concludes, "do it from love to yourselves, do it also from love to me!  And
in remembrance of ME!"

Chapter LXXIX.  The Drunken Song.

It were the height of presumption to attempt to fix any particular
interpretation of my own to the words of this song.  With what has gone
before, the reader, while reading it as poetry, should be able to seek and
find his own meaning in it.  The doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence appears
for the last time here, in an art-form.  Nietzsche lays stress upon the
fact that all happiness, all delight, longs for repetitions, and just as a
child cries "Again!  Again!" to the adult who happens to be amusing him; so
the man who sees a meaning, and a joyful meaning, in existence must also
cry "Again!" and yet "Again!" to all his life.

Chapter LXXX.  The Sign.

In this discourse, Nietzsche disassociates himself finally from the higher
men, and by the symbol of the lion, wishes to convey to us that he has won
over and mastered the best and the most terrible in nature.  That great
power and tenderness are kin, was already his belief in 1875--eight years
before he wrote this speech, and when the birds and the lion come to him,
it is because he is the embodiment of the two qualities.  All that is
terrible and great in nature, the higher men are not yet prepared for; for
they retreat horror-stricken into the cave when the lion springs at them;
but Zarathustra makes not a move towards them.  He was tempted to them on
the previous day, he says, but "That hath had its time!  My suffering and
my fellow suffering,--what matter about them!  Do I then strive after
HAPPINESS?  I strive after my work!  Well! the lion hath come, my children
are nigh.  Zarathustra hath grown ripe.  MY day beginneth:  ARISE NOW,
ARISE, THOU GREAT NOONDAY!"

...

The above I know to be open to much criticism.  I shall be grateful to all
those who will be kind enough to show me where and how I have gone wrong;
but I should like to point out that, as they stand, I have not given to
these Notes by any means their final form.

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
London, February 1909.

From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan 13 16:53:04 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:53:04 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Thomas Jansen, ed.: Reflections on European Identity
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Reflections on European Identity
Edited by Thomas Jansen

EUROPEAN COMMISSION FORWARD STUDIES UNIT
WORKING PAPER, 1999

The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the opinion or 
position of the European Commission.

Table of contents

Preface.... 5 by Jean-Claude Th?bault

The dimensions of the historical and cultural core of a European identity .... 
7 by Heinrich Schneider

Consciousness of European identity after 1945.... 21 by Gilbert Trausch

European Identity and /or the Identity of the European Union.... 27 by Thomas 
Jansen

A contribution from political psychology.... 37 by Tom Bryder

What is it ? Why do we need it ? Where do we find it ? .... 51 by Korthals 
Altes

European identity and political experience....57 by Mario Soares

How to define the European identity today and in the future? .... 63 by Ingmar 
Karlsson

European identity - A perspective from a Norwegian European, or a European 
Norwegian....73 by Truls Frogner

European identity - an anthropoligical approach.... 77 by Maryon McDonald

European identity and citizenship .... 81 by Massimo La Torre

From poetic citizenship to European citizenship .... 89 by Claire Lejeune

L'identit? europ?enne comme engagement transnational dans la soci?t?.... 99 by 
R?diger Stephan

Security and a common area.... 103 by Adriano Moreira

Neither Reich nor Nation - another future for the European Union.... 107 by 
Roger De Weck

What does it mean to be a European ? Preliminary conclusions .... 111 by J?r?me 
Vignon

Annex:....115 A dialogue on unemployment between Truls Frogner and his 
Neighbour

List of contributors....119


Preface

The texts that have been gathered in the following pages were written or 
pronounced during the ?Carrefour Europ?en des sciences et de la culture? which 
was held in 1996 in Coimbra. This event had been organised by the Forward 
Studies Unit in cooperation with the ancient University of Coimbra whose 
academic excellence made this small Portuguese town so famous.

The Carrefours Europ?ens aim to provide a forum where personalities coming from 
the world of science or culture can discuss and exchange their views with 
Commission officials. Participants come from different European countries to 
propound ideas on issues that are particularly important for the future of our 
continent. Each of them brings different experience and sensibilities and thus 
contributes to the openness and the richness of the reflection.

The debates that took place in Coimbra focused on understanding how the 
European identity expresses itself. Their richness is reflected in the 
following texts that are at long last submitted to our readers with the deep 
conviction that neither their relevance nor their actuality has been lost.

A characteristic of European identity is that it facilitates, fosters and 
stimulates variety in modes of expression, form, content and approach. And it 
is clear that this same principle can be applied to the definition of this 
identity itself: several paths may lead to the recognition and the assertion of 
an European identity which in itself is made of a plurality of ethnic, 
religious, cultural, national, or local identities.

Each of the discussions that took place in Coimbra have, in their own way, 
reflected this approach. Both the University's rector and Marcelino Oreja 
Aguirre (the Commissioner in charge of communication, information, culture and 
institutional questions at that time (1995-1999)) highlighted three constituent 
poles of European identity. First, Europe is steeped in humanism and all the 
values that make up its heritage today. The second is European diversity: even 
if the construction of the Community seems to be a harmonisation process, this 
harmonisation is just a necessary step towards the realisation of a European 
market-place which should allow underlying diversitiy to flourish. Diversity is 
truly Europe's richness. Finally, universalism is a European value and an 
obligation. At a time when Europe is sometimes tempted by the idea of becoming 
a "fortress Europe", this founding principle has to be constantly remembered 
and revived.

The debates gave further opportunities to put forward some key issues linked to 
identity, memory or nation. Thus, identity appears as two-sided: on the one 
hand memory, and heritage, and on the other hand voluntarism and a project to 
be achieved. Contrary to what is usually thought, identity seems to be 
constantly evolving and changeable. All these reflections ended in a discussion 
on the theme of "Europe and its role in the World", and of its contribution to 
the promotion of peace and progress.

Marcelino Oreja had expressed the initial interest in a meeting such as this 
and had encouraged the Forward Studies Unit to organise it. The Commissioner's 
active participation highly contributed to the intellectual and human success 
of the event.

We now offer our readers these collected thoughts, for which we most warmly 
thank the participants with the wish that they will cast light on a question 
that reaches right to the heart of the European political project.

Jean-Claude Thebault Forward Studies Unit Director

-----------------

The dimensions of the historical and cultural core of a european identity

Heinrich Schneider

Preliminary remarks

The topic "dimensions of the historical and cultural core of a European 
identity" may appear to be a historical and theoretical one. However, it is 
political in its nature. It stands in the context of a political discussion. 
Obviously, it is a contribution to the assessment of new political projects of 
the European Community : On the one hand, a discussion of the role of the 
cultural heritage, the historical traditions of Europe in the formation of a 
political identity which will and should]d necessarily arise if the projects of 
"deepening" are to be successful ; and, on the other hand, a discussion about 
the question : what is the significance of the common cultural and historical 
roots of those nations which belong to Europe, in view of the "widening" of the 
Community. Historical reflections, theoretical reasoning, and scholars' 
analyses can help with the orientation of opinion and decision-making 
processes, but they cannot replace decisions about political goals. What we are 
really dealing with is the political identity of a European Union. What it 
should be has to be decided politically.

Problems of clarifying the terms o what is constituting identity ?

Every now and then, politicians have talked about "European Identity, but 
mostly without ever trying to explain its meaning1 ! The term "identity" is 
used in the context of discussions on European identity as psychologists, 
sociologists, and students of civilisation apply it o not in the sense 
philosophers deal with the concept "identity" in logics or metaphysics. 
Primarily, one talks about the identity, or the formation of identity, or an 
individual. Can we construct a concept of collective identity just as well ? 
Perhaps as an analogy. But we must be careful in doing so. For all that : one 
does speak of the identity of social groups, and there is also the concept of 
the identity of larger social or historical units, for instance nations. 
However, we cannot possibly construct the concept of "European identity" in the 
same fashion as we perceive group identity of Boy Scouts or national identity. 
These models are not adequate and thus we have to search for a more general 
definition.

Anyone in search of her or his identity will pose the question : "Who am I" ?. 
With regard to collective identity the questions are : "Who are we ? Where do 
we come

Cf., for instance, the "Document on European Identity, adopted by the Ministers 
of Foreign Affairs of the member states of the European Community in 
Copenhagen, 14 December 1973

from ? Where do we go ? What do we expect ? What will expect us ?"2. But these 
questions really serve to clarify another, more fundamental one : Why and how 
can we (or must we) talk in the first person plural ? There are two common 
answers ; one of them sounds as follows : "Because we want it that way !. The 
other one refers to certain things that we have in common : a common history, 
common views about our present situation, common projects for our future and 
the tasks that are facing us there...

In the lingo of sociologists, this means : it is the common "definition of a 
situation" which serves as a mutual link and creates solidarity.3 Identity is 
thus founded on "spiritual ties", it can be grasped in a "core of shared 
meanings"4 in sharing consensually a common universe of symbols and 
relevancies.5 We do not only speak a common language ; we also agree about the 
things that must be talked about as well as the things that are important 
without words. This sharing of common values is not hanging somewhere in 
mid-air over our actual everyday life. Normally there are common societal 
conditions of life as well. Therefore, we also have to deal with the 
"sociological dimension" of European common cause.

Our common "world of meanings" ("knowing about life") is one thing that we need 
in order to find our collective identity. Another one is the delimitation as an 
element of identity. Knowing about myself also implies that I distinguish 
myself from others ; identity is always based on negations, as Niklas Luhmann 
shows.6 Collective identity as well needs the distinction between "Us" and 
"Them". Nothing leads more effectively to the formation of group identity than 
a common enemy, according to those who do research on small groups. An analysis 
of nationalism shows that national identity is mostly defined through relating 
to "counter identities".7

A third element is needed to constitute collective identity in the full sense 
of the word : the ability to act and to be responsible for one's action. 
Personal identity includes the capacity of independent action. Collective 
identity calls for, and implies, authorisation, which enables the collectivity 
to conduct collective action.8

2 This, by the way, is how Ernst Bloch begins his book "Des Prinzip Hoffnung", 
Vol. 1, Berlin 1954, p. 13.

3 In this context, the present situation has also a historical depth-dimension, 
and there is a perspective into the future

4 Cf. Talcott Parsons, Politics and Social Structure, New York 1969, p. 292ff. 
This concept of collective identity is in accordance to Parson's concept of 
individual identity being "the core system of meanings of an individual 
personality ; cf. Talcott Parsons, The Position of Identity in the General 
Theory of Action, in : Chad Gordon and Kenneth J. Gergen (eds.), The Self in 
Social Interaction, New York 1968, p. 14.

5 Cf. Peter L Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. A 
treatise in the sociology of knowledge, Garden City and New York : Doubreday 
1967

6 "Alle Identit?t konstituiert sich ?ber Negationen"; cf. Niklas Luhmann, Sinn 
als Grundbegriff der Soziologie, in : J?rgen Habermas and Nikias Luhmann, 
Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie, Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp 
1971, p. 60.

7 Cf. Orest Ranum, Counter-identities of Western European Nations in the 
Early-Modern Period. Definitions and Points of Departure, ~n : Peter Boerner 
(ed.).

8 Cf. Burkart Holzoer and Roland Robertson, Identity and Authority. A Problem 
Analysis of Processes of Identification and Authorisation, ~n : Roland 
Robertson and Burkart Holzner (eds.), Identity and Authority, Oxford : 
Blackwell 1980, pp. 5ff., 10f., 18f., 22ff.

Aristotle already knew that, by the way : The identity of a P?lis is primarily 
a constitutional identity, the "polite?a", through which a community becomes a 
political subject, so to speak. It is founded on the "koinon?a" of knowing 
about right and wrong (the "d?kaion") as well as about what is beneficial or 
not (the "s?mpheron"). It rests on the solidarity ("phil?a") of people, and its 
political manifestation is a general consensus, "hom?noia" as "phil?a 
politik?".9 Therefore, collective identity in the full sense of the concept 
implies a political dimension : Collective identity formation tends towards the 
establishment of a polity.

Only against the background of this differentiation between the requirements 
and dimensions of collective identity, it does make sense posing more exact and 
detailed questions to find out what European Identity is, what it can be, and 
what the possible impact of historical, cultural, and sociological components 
looks like. Some theses and problems have to be introduced and considerable 
aspects in our context are to be pointed out.

The primacy of politics

The first task we have to deal with is to find out whether "the European 
Community will be able to build up a 'European identity'"., namely, under the 
present "new circumstances, now that the 'old' historical frontiers of the 
continent are reappearing". This language sounds clear enough ; but the matter 
itself is rather complicated.

The "reappearance" of the "old historical frontiers of the continent".--do we 
know what we are talking about ? To quote Oskar K?hler "Neither in a 
geographical sense nor in a historical view, there is a static' definition of 
Europe".10 A lot has been said about the validity of that formula, "Europe goes 
from the Atlantic to the Urals". But Willem van Eekelen, the Secretary General 
of the Western European Union, has recently stated that "the whole of Europe 
..." ("Gesamteuropa") reaches "... from Vladivostok to San Francisco", and he 
is not the only one to say that.11 Statements of this kind do sound as if 
inspired by the experience of the CSCE process. But the most famous German 
XIXth century historiograph on European politics, Leopold von Ranke, has 
already pointed out that America belongs to Europe ; "indeed do New York and 
Lima concern us much more than Kiev and Smolensk''12 o and we must bear in mind 
that Ranke, of course, saw the Russian Empire as part of the European system. 
Other authors took the same attitude ; there is for example the definition of 
the European system of states as "the connection and interdependence of all 
European states and empires ... including the independent states that have 
arisen from the colonies of Europeans in America".13

9 Aristotle, Politics, book I chapter 2 and book III chap. 3.

10 This is the introductory sentence of Oskar K?hler's article "Europa", in : 
Josef Hofer and Karl Rahner (eds.), Lexikon f?r Theologie und Kirche, 2nd ed., 
2nd printing, Freiburg/Br. 1986, colt 1187.

11 Ambassador Henri Fromont Meurice did join him in sharing this opinion, cf. 
"Europa im Aufbruch. Auf dem Wege zu einer neuen Friedensordnung", Protokoll 
des 91. Bergedorfer Gespr?chskreises 199
 , p. 29 and p. 34.

12 Leopold von Ranke, Geschichte der germanischen und romanischen V?lker 
(1824), p. XXXIX, cf. Heinz Gollwitzer, Europabild und Europagedanke, M?nchen : 
Beck 1951, p. 279

13 Karl Heinrich P?litz, Die Staatswissenschaften im Lichte unserer Zeit (1824) 
cf. Gollwitzer, op. cit., p. 443


On the other hand, there are much narrower definitions. When Winston Churchill 
held his famous speech at the University of Zurich in 1946, in which he called 
for the creation of a kind of United States of Europe, he entertained no doubts 
that Great Britain must naturally be a friend and supporter of this new 
political entity, but of course not a member. And the author of a well-known 
book about "The limits and Divisions of European History stated that usually 
the eastern border of the European community today, both in earlier times and 
today has always been the Western frontier of Russia".14 This, of course, 
refers to modern times ; in the Middle Ages, Europe's eastern borderlines were 
located much further westward. Where do we find those "reappearing 'old' 
frontiers of the continent ?"

The controversy on how Europe is to be defined geographically is, nowadays, 
hardly touched by the question whether America ought to be included in the 
European identity ; however, there is dissent whether Europe coincides with the 
occidental part of the continent, that is, whether the border between Latin and 
Byzantine civilisation can serve to delimit it, or should do so.

Now we have a whole series of problems : It cannot be denied that the schism 
between "East" and "West Rome" appears to be a symbol for a cultural 
demarcation. In the West, there was the struggle for supremacy between 
political and religious authorities, and in the dead corner between both of 
them the freedoms of the estates and urban autonomy could be developed. As a 
consequence, the "civil society" had more of a chance to spread out than in the 
East, where church government was integrated in the Empire, thus perpetuating 
ecclesiastical rule in the political order, respectively Caesaropapism. This 
had further outcomes ; but there also had been other preconditions that did 
contribute to the different course of social and societal history, like 
small-scale geography and the harbourly-structured landscapes of many of the 
regions of Western Europe15, as against massive geographical structures of the 
East, and others.

v Surely, there was the great schism ; but there was also suffering that arose 
from a common consciousness of a fundamental unity--up to the Ecumenical 
Movement of our days.

v Even in the days of Peter the Great, Russians reached out for Europe. Were 
the East European Westerners of his days and of later times erring in their 
illusions ? Can we deny that cultural and political identities are open to 
historical change, and that there have been, already, processes of "widening" 
of the extent and range of European civilisation ?

v And, with respect to social and mental differences between different parts of 
what has been called our continent, is it not a constituent feature of the 
cultural uniqueness of Europe that opposites meet here, time and again, turning 
the task of ever-renewed conciliation into the principle of productive dynamic 
development ?

14 Quoted from the German edition : Oskar Halecki. Europa Grenzen und 
Gliederung seiner Geschichte, Darmstadt : Gentner 1957, p 79

15 Hans Georg Gadamer speaks of "einer einzigen gro?en Hafenlandschaft die f?r 
die Entdeckungsfahrten zu neuen Weiten f?rmlich aufgetan warn", cf. Hans Georg 
Gadamer, Das Erbe Europas, Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp 1989, p. 40.

I do not want to say that such "old frontiers" like those between the Latin and 
the Byzantine tradition are irrelevant. But how far Europe will reach tomorrow, 
or the day after tomorrow, or in the next century and later, cannot be looked 
up in a historical atlas of the Antique, the Middle Ages, of the XIXth century, 
or of the Cold War period in our century either.

Besides, the supreme representatives of the CSCE participating states have 
adopted in 1990, the Paris "Charter for a New Europe", and we can read in this 
charter that the new Europe extends as far as the reality of human rights and 
democracy, rule of law and pluralism, economic freedom, social justice, and the 
commitment for peace is reaching on European soil. We all know, and have only 
recently again become painfully aware, that there is that discrepancy between 
what is and what should be, what we want to do and what we achieve. But should 
it not be our common cause to realise and safeguard these principles of a 
European political order for all nations whose representatives have stood up 
for them ? Can we deny this solidarity to those who wish to subscribe to this 
common European order--wherever they may live in Europe ? And is it possible to 
denounce the declaration of thirty-four heads of state and government in favour 
of a new "united democratic Europe. as a mere emptiness, a proclamation that 
cannot be other than untrue o in view of the fact that even Albania has now 
joined these 34 ?

Certainly, there may be reasons for a narrower concept of uniting efforts that 
have to be carried on during the years ahead of us o such as political prudence 
may suggest. In Western Europe, governments and people might ask themselves 
whether the chances for organising European security within European borders 
may not be better if one denies responsibility for certain regions. It can be 
argued that the political and structural requirements for a certain kind of 
economic or political integration may indeed call for a restriction in certain 
areas, in order to be optimal. And there are much more such questions and 
considerations.

Just one of these questions is the one we are dealing with. What would be the 
most favourable historical and cultural conditions for including parts of 
Europe in the Union-to-be : soon, or later ? But, according to my opinion, it 
would be unjustifiable trying to avoid all these reflections, not to discuss 
their ramifications and to shun--or to disguise--political decisions by 
pointing out old historical and cultural borders. And indeed, if one were to 
stress that cleavage between ancient Latin and Byzantine culture, then the 
motherland of European political thought, Greece, ought not to have been 
accepted into the Community--and the definite stand the Community had recently 
taken in favour of Yugoslavian unity would have been absurd... Hence, the 
primacy of politics should not be denied.

Options of the European Community

When speaking about the "reappearance of old frontiers" in Europe, some other 
aspects come to mind. What is really new in the European situation, is the 
disappearance of "less old" frontiers. What allows the states of Central and 
Eastern Europe to "return to Europe"--as they call it--is in the first place 
the fact that the fatal barriers, the wall in Berlin, the barbed wire obstacles 
and iron curtains, are removed, and that people hayed been successful in 
overcoming totalitarian systems. But along with the end of East-West 
polarisation, with the termination of the

antagonisms of political organisation, some other "old frontiers" and 
controversies have reappeared. We face again the situation about which Karl 
Jaspers said, some decades ago, that Europe has got to make a choice between 
"Balkanisation" and "Helvetisation". "Balkanisation" means a tangle of 
conflicts and hostilities, whereas Helvetisation" points to the attainment of a 
political identity across a multitude of national heritages and languages. The 
beginnings of the formation of the European Community, restricted to the six 
founding nations of the Coal and Steel Community and later the EEC had been 
initiated as such a process of "Helvetisation"., as a first step towards a 
confederation with an identity of its own.

However, this policy was determined by some quite specific options. At first, 
things were started with a small community of states that intended integration 
; but it was clear that this community could not identify itself with "Europe". 
The Community of the "European Six" was regarded by that organisation which 
considered itself as maid-servant to a union of European states--i.e. the 
Council of Europe--as a case of establishing "specialised authorities" for 
specific functional areas. In Strasbourg they thought that all such endeavours 
should always take place "within the frame of the Council of Europe" and thus 
being securely bound to the "proper European policy"(as the Council had 
conceived it).

And yet this Council of Europe was in itself limited to only a part of the 
European states. As a representative of a European identity, it was some "pars 
pro toto", and the Community of the Six was some "pars partis". This changed in 
the course of time. In the Treaty of Rome, "the foundations of an ever closer 
union among the European peoples" (and not only those peoples that are directly 
involved) are mentioned. And in the Single European Act, the parliament of the 
Twelve is called the instrument of expression for the endeavours of "the 
European peoples" ; as simply as that. This implies that the political identity 
of the Community is to be further developed to become the political identity of 
Europe as a whole. If this is wanted, one cannot deny any European nation the 
right to participate in that political identity. Now, if today some 81 percent 
of the Hungarians, 79 percent of the citizens of the CSFR, and still 68 percent 
of the Poles have a positive attitude about the creation of the United States 
of Europe", and affirm that their own nation belongs to this future policy16, 
than the Community of the Twelve will have to reconsider what is to be done 
about the Community's own identity.

Another decision of the "founding fathers" has been quite important. What the 
Community was all about originally, was to form an administrative union to 
manage the common coal and steel production as well as the distribution, 
notwithstanding the idea to use this union as a lever to promote political 
integration by creating interdependence of interests. Later, a widening was 
achieved in more than one dimension : the Community was extended to nine at 
first and then step by step to twelve member states. And the area of functions 
and policy fields was expanded, comprising now the whole of national economies 
and more and more common tasks up to a common foreign and security policy. The 
reason for this widening of functions and interests lies in the interdependence 
of policy areas. There is hardly a problem area which is not to be treated on 
the EC level. On the other hand, the states have not given up their spheres of 
responsibility, and they are still thinking (or

16 Cf. "Mehrheit im Osten f?r Vereinigte Staaten von Europa", in : Die Presse 
(23 April 1991), p. 22.

dreaming) of their complete autonomy and "sovereignty". Thus, they try to keep 
under control what is happening. As a result, political processes on community, 
national and "mixed" levels intertwine. Complex procedures of mediation and 
grey zones of responsibility evolve. There was talk about "traps of policy 
tangles"17 and "Eurosklerosis".

The reforms initiated by Jacques Delors were aimed at breaking up these 
entanglements and the sclerosis of the Community. Since the EC is supposed to 
gain more freedom of action rather than simply retaining its status, this will 
hopefully end in a strengthening of its political identity. This becomes 
particularly clear in view of the goal to form a European Union of a federal 
character. Under this perspective, the Community can no longer be regarded as a 
system to co-ordinate just the problem management of its member states who so 
far try to push their own interests rather then bear jointly the common 
consequences of their interdependence. A federal union cannot be achieved 
without an established supranational authority to determine a common policy. 
And this does not only raise the problem of democratic legitimacy but also the 
question of political identity.

Thus, it is not surprising that the question of political identity of the 
Community, and in particular of the European-Union-to-be, is posed anew. In the 
first place the upheavals in Eastern Europe raise the problem how the Community 
intends to define its own purpose with regard to the identity of the whole of 
Europe--even more than for example the intentions of EFTA states to join the 
Community. Slogans like "centre of gravitation" or "anchor of stability" are no 
adequate answers to that. And secondly, "deepening", strengthening the polity 
character of the Community, transforming it into a "European Union" also 
implies the necessity to clarify identity problems.

In search of a definition of European identity

We have to find out what Europe has in common, historically and culturally, in 
order to define, to articulate and to strengthen its identity. If we are to do 
that, we should remember what the fundamental dimensions of a possible European 
identity are, according to the conceptual and theoretical explications I tried 
to give in the first part of this contribution :

-the "spiritual ties" as they are manifested in a common "world of meanings" (a 
"universe of symbols and relevancies"), as they allow to achieve a consensual 
"definition of the situation"., and including the three dimensions of a shared 
"today", "past", and "future" ;

-the "delimitation", knowing what is special about "our thing" as compared to 
other people's things ("nostra res agitur"--not some "res alienorum") ;

-the ability to act and bear responsibility through authorisation and, thus, 
institutionalisation (which means, in consequence, polity building).

17 Cf. Fritz W. Scharpf, Die Politikverflechtungs-Falle. Europ?ische 
Integration und deutscher F?deralismus im Vergleich. in : Politische 
Vierteljahresschrift, vol. 26 (1985), p. 323ff.

What is primarily called for, is obviously a "political identity in the concise 
sense of the term--a capacity which enables to institutionalise common action, 
and a quality which provides an adequately wide and massive basis of consensus 
and loyalty.

It may well be that remembering common historical and cultural roots, and 
activating consciousness of them, helps to strengthen this basis. Yet one 
wonders why this historical dimension must be shoved into the foreground when 
the real issue is what Aristotle calls "hom?nioa" and what in our context might 
be called "European spirit" or "consciousness of a European common cause".

To translate this into educational terms : Can we, should we, make our efforts 
to form European consciousness only by looking at the past, at our common 
history ? Would it not be equally important to recall what Europe means today 
and will mean in the future ?

Some hypothetical answer is at hand : the matter is seen in the same way as it 
was seen in the last century when national identify had to be formed. The 
formation of a national consciousness, however, came about under remarkably 
different circumstances.18 When the nation decided to take over the power of 
government--as in the typical case of France, the main thing was to create the 
political will and to keep it alive (in the "pl?biscite de tous les jours", to 
cite the famous formula Ernest Renan found). "Res publica" was to replace "res 
regis". The case was different if an ethnic or national group wanted to 
emancipate itself from a supra-national or foreign regime (as in the case of 
"secessionist nationalism"), or if people which were convinced that they belong 
together wanted to break up the barriers between constituent states (as in the 
case of "integrational nationalism). Whereas, in the first of the three typical 
cases, the state that shall be taken over by the nation does already exist, in 
both of the latter cases a state shall be created which does not yet exist. The 
representatives of the people's political will need a "metapolitical" 
justification. It must be explained that this state should exist. This 
explanation refers to the existence of a "cultural nation" that now wants and 
deserves to constitute itself politically. Usually, the "meta-political" 
justification is given with a reference to history : in the past we, or our 
ancestors, did descend from one family or tribe ; or we grew together as a 
spiritual community ; and we shared a common fate even in earlier times. Or 
even this : history has uncovered a common metaphysical substance which unites 
us in national identity o Herder's doctrine of "Volksgeist".

In political reality, this idea serves efforts of make-believe in the service 
of a political will.19 It derives from religious doctrines and concepts which 
are given a new interpretation by transferring into socio-political thinking. 
To give an outstanding example : the originally theological concept of the 
"corpus mysticum", that is the

18 The following remarks make reference to Theodor Schieder's triple typology 
of nation state building in Europe, namely (I) the process of assumption of 
power of an existing state by the "nation", (II) the process of secession or 
separation of a "nation"from a multinational empire or state, and (III) the 
unification of--up to then independent--states, whose peoples regard themselves 
being parts of one single "nation". This triadic typology, according to my 
opinion is more revealing than Friedrich Meinecke's famous distinction between 
"Staatsnation"and "Kulturnation"; but Schieder's idea is able to explain 
Meinecke's comparison. Cf. Theodor Schieder, Typologie und Erscheinungsformen 
des Nationalstaates in Europa, in : Historische Zeitschrift, vol. 202 (1966), 
p. 58ff.

19 Cf. Raymond Grew, The Constitution of National Identity, in : Boerner (ed.), 
op. cit., p. 31 ff. community of the faithful who find their identity in 
Christ's "pneuma", in which they eucharistically and spiritually participate, 
is transferred on the nation, whose members are spiritually bound together by 
their participation in some metaphysical substance, which Herder called 
"Volksgeist". It is only later that such notions lose their "mystical" (or 
mythological, or pseudo-theological) character, so that the nation then (and we 
might say, "only) becomes a "community by common culture and disposition 
through having shared a common fate.20

If today a political unification is to be attempted, for instance, a European 
Union, and if we all, perhaps without much reflection, still see the paradigm 
for the creation of a political identity in the way nation states were formed, 
then we must suspect that the idea of a "cultural Europe", which would have the 
same function as the idea of a "cultural nation", will here be conjured up. I 
do not want to say that one might dismiss the idea of a European cultural 
identity and the quest for its historical roots as nothing but ideology, as a 
mere construction to serve a political purpose, as, for example, Geoffrey 
Barraclough did.21 Indeed, there is a "fundamentum in re" : there is a European 
spiritual and cultural identity ; it would lead too far astray if I were to 
quote the witnesses for that--from Ernst Robert Curtius to Denis de Rougemont, 
Arnold Toynbee to Hendrik Brugmans.22 But reminding ourselves of the names of 
such authoritative scholars does not dispense us from the effort to identify at 
least some substantial contributions to what we might all "European spirit".

What is meant to be represented by these centres of experience and of thought ? 
And what has been further developed from the achievements those keywords refer 
to ? It is difficult to answer such questions, for several reasons. One of them 
is the fact that the "fundamentum in re" of European spiritual and cultural 
identity is characterised by an agreement to disagree, a "concordantia 
discors", as Jacob Burckhardt called it, a common cause with sometimes lots of 
antagonism. Yet there are achievements and experiences imprinted in a common 
memory that constitute common understandings and are in the background of such 
political declarations as the "Charter of Paris" conjuring so emphatically an 
identity of spirit and will.

There are problems both in principle and in method which have to be faced, if 
one tries to reconstruct and to explain them : that of the "hermeneutic circle" 
and of the inevitably subjective and specific perspective as well as that of 
the criteria for adequate selection of sources, etc. We cannot deal with these 
problems here in extenso. So we just turn to the "authorities", to the 
specialists of information. There is plenty of general agreement about the most 
important and significant issues-- maybe not perfect, but considerable 
consensus. After all, the historical and cultural identity of Europe has been 
an interesting topic for a long time, and many have taken part in this 
discussion. At least, there is an agreement about the most important historical 
eras, what their message is today and what should be kept alive in the

20 Otto Bauer regards the nation as a "Kultur- und Charaktergemeinschaft", 
based on common historical experiences ("Erleben und Erleiden des Schicksals") 
; cf. Otto Bauer, Die Nationalit?tenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie, Wien 1924.

21 Cf. Geoffrey Barraclough, Die Einheit Europas als Gedanke und Tat, G?ttingen 
: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1964.

22 See the contribution by Hendrik Brugmans in this volume. "collective memory" 
of Europeans. In this context phenomena, issues, and essentials like the 
following ones are named23 :

-Extra-European and "Pre-European" achievements that were significant 
stimulators of European culture, i.e. the impact of ancient Egypt on 
pre-classical and classical Antique, above all the tradition of the Old 
Testament.

-Classical Hellas : The Greek tradition of the "polis", the "civilisation" of 
social life and the Greek understanding of politics which had to have such a 
deep influence all over Europe ; the "discovery of the mind" ; the idea of 
"paideia" and thus humanness ; the evolution of philosophy--the beginnings of 
critical cognition of reality, that is, the Pre-Socratic thinkers, the 
classical philosophers Plato and Aristotle and the creation of the various 
genres of European literature.

Rome as Republic and Empire : The idea of the "res publica", Roman law, the 
"virtutes", the Roman answer to Greek philosophy (Cicero, for example).

Christendom as creative power in Europe : the surpassing of the reality through 
God's salvatory work ; the idea of the "corpus mysticum" ; the several types of 
Christian attitudes in the mundane world ; the relativity of secular power, the 
construction (or discovery) of the concept of "person" in christological 
thought and dispute the interrelation of religious orientation and secular 
order, of political power and church authority--with view on the different 
development in the Latin and Byzantine empires and its consequences for the 
forming of their societies--, and the importance of Christian social doctrine.

The laying of the foundations of "Occidental culture" after the 
"V?lkerwanderung", the role of Benedictine monkshood, the "Regnum Europae" of 
Charlemagne.

The "Second Awakening of Europe" (Albert Mirgeler) in the Middle Ages ; the 
controversy between "regnum" and "sacerdotium" ; the struggle for "Libertas 
Ecclesiae", the intellectual disputes over the recognition of authorities (the 
establishment of the "studium" as an institution. The rise of scholastic 
philosophy and of universities), and the rediscovery of the "inner mind" 
(mysticism). The inclusion of Middle and Eastern Europe in Western European 
culture.

The dawn of modern times : Schism, growth of towns and municipal self- 
government ; Renaissance and Reformation ; striving for religious freedom, the 
building-up of the territorial state, development of a bourgeois economy, the 
construction of a European state system and the growth of its dynamics of 
power, the expansion of Europe into other continents.

The Enlightenment, the emancipation of the middle classes, the great 
revolutions in England, America, France, and their intellectual foundations : 
human rights, basic freedoms, civil society, and representative government.

The political ideas and movements of the XIXth century : liberal and democratic 
progressism, conservatism, socialism, and imperialism ; idealistic and 
materialistic

23 The list of phenomena, issues and essentials is in particular influenced by 
the author's subjective view. But as it shall be nothing more than an impulse 
for discussion, it can be done without references o which had to be very 
extensive o to the corresponding literature.

philosophies as well as the new critics of civilisation, society, and the inner 
life (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud). Finally the movements for emancipation in the 
dynastic empires.

The age of world wars, totalitarianism, and the efforts to overcome it.

Once more, there are many questions with respect to such an outline. Do we 
recognise in this landscape summits of the first, second, and other order ? Are 
there essentials that are either continuously effective or slowly rising in an 
evolutionary process ? Maybe with regard to the concept of man (personality, 
the call to freedom and solidarity). Further on in view of the productive 
collision of involvement and distance, mundane responsibilities and 
transcendental calling, harmony and antagonism. And also in ranking individual 
before cause ; in the development of attitudes of "critical loyalty", broken 
affirmation, the combination of tolerance with firmness of conscience, and so 
on... But is it possible at all to present more than subjective opinions or 
convictions, as far as questions like such ones are concerned ?

Furthermore : Is it possible to draw a precise and adequate picture of the 
relations between transnational developments, structures and movements on the 
one hand, and of the particular contributions of nations, ethnic or religious 
groups, and regions on the other ? Does in this sense, a "historical image" 
exist, truly "European", reflecting indeed the contribution of all nations and 
groups that make up the Community of Europe, and will this image continue to be 
understood (at least by the more sensible contemporary minds) as a cultural 
common obligation ?

I think, nobody would be able to present a definite answer to such and similar 
questions. The meaning of the European heritage and of the living European 
spirit can only be actualised and made effective through a permanent effort of 
intellectual realisation of its components and elements. This effort must take 
place in form of a dialogue and discourse, through which we expose ourselves to 
the impacts of what we are affected by and called on, in order to widen and 
deepen our understanding and to activate motivational strength.

Integration : colonisation of the world we live in as subversion of identity ?

Posing once again the question of the meaning, of the function and of the 
importance of a "meta-political" identity of Europe today and tomorrow, we do 
this now in a different perspective. This is the case because matters might be 
taken too easily by simply identifying common heritages, leaving the business 
then to the mediators of a European consciousness, say teachers, classbook 
authors, or journalists. Is all that we have recalled perhaps only a heritage 
loosing its formative power, as some contemporary theoreticians want us to 
believe ?

J?rgen Habermas has asked whether "complex societies" can anyway form "a 
reasonable identity".24 He says that this is only possible in a process of

24 J?rgen Habermas, K?nnen komplexe Gesellschaften eine vern?nftige Identit?t 
ausbilden ?, in : J?rgen Habermas, Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen 
Materialismus, 3 ed., Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp 1982, p. 144ff.

communication taking place under conditions of an "ideal form of life", free of 
any domination. All other "knowledge" about identity would be unreasonable and 
could be only a mystification of conditions which one has not to identify with. 
Niklas Luhmann is disputing Habermas' question. The "intersubjectivity of 
cognition, experience, and action created by symbolic interpretation and value 
systems" is, in his opinion, not apt to integrate modern societies. It cannot 
satisfy the "requirements for the control of highly differentiated societal 
sub-systems".25 The idea that political order has to do anything with spiritual 
sharing, that politics receive meaning from the conception of a common cultural 
heritage is, in his eyes, a totally outmoded notion (a case of "false 
consciousness"). Habermas insists that a humane life must be governed by 
"communicative reason". But he diagnoses a fatal discrepancy between the demand 
for reasonable identity and such trends in modern development which he assumes 
are manifest especially in the process of European integration.

Along with the increasing rationalisation of social life, the integration of 
societies is more and more carried on "through the systemic interaction of 
specified functions".26 The control over social processes works through 
"speechless media of communication", through exchange mechanisms like money in 
the economy and through mechanisms of power in the sphere of politics. And 
while these control systems were embodied for a long time in a normative 
framework according to the "Old-European" tradition of a common weal where 
there was communication about necessary and appropriate actions in terms of 
common sense and philosophy, it then came to a "mediatisation" and, finally, 
the "colonisation of the life-world".27 Those spheres in which individual and 
collective identity may find themselves and may realise themselves are now 
occupied and exploited by the politico-economic control organisations using 
power and monetary incentives in order to get societal life going on. Morality 
and culture are being robbed of their substance and, thus, cultural identity 
becomes obsolete.

Seen through such glasses, European integration as it has been in process for 
the past forty years would appear as a gigantic and typical example for the 
deliberate promotion and acceleration of just such a development : the 
take-over of power by a rational functioning macro-organisation that combines 
governmental and economic interests to control interdependencies. Habermas 
would be able to formulate his diagnosis o primarily made about the modern 
state o more precisely with respect to the EC system : The utilisation and 
instrumentalisation of conceptions of cultural identity and public political 
discussion in order to legitimise that what will be done anyway through 
calculated interest and power bargaining ; the substitution of democratic 
decision-making through relations between welfare administrations and their 
clients ; transformation of rule of law into an instrument of organising 
interest- controlled systems of regulation ; and finally, "make-believe of 
communicative relations" in the form of rituals in which "the system is draped 
as the life-world".28

This might appear as a caricature, and Habermas has indeed met with decided 
protest. His thesis of the reduction of politics to systems control is shrewd, 
but is resting on

25 Niklas Luhmann, quoted by Habermas op. cit.

26 J?rgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, vol. II, Frankfurt am 
Main : Suhrkamp 1981, p. 175.

27 Ibid., p. 240, p. 470f.

28 Ibid., p. 472, p. 476, p. 536ff., p. 567.

rather fundamentalist premises. If it has been brought to attention here and 
now, then primarily because of the fact that our discussion may well need a 
thorn in the flesh so that we do not take things too easy on the subject of 
cultural identity and the building of a polity out of the EC system.

But there is still another reason for taking such theses and discussions into 
consideration. In spite of all exaggeration, a very senseful question arises, 
making our special topic particularly relevant : How is it possible to secure 
the political identity, through which the "meta-political" components and 
dimensions of identity only obtain their full significance as well as their 
motivational relevance, while the European Community is developing ?

It looks as if political actors or political scientists would have asked us to 
find the historical and cultural potential, so that we produce and promote 
European consciousness, because they expect some contribution to the progress 
of political community-building and polity-formation for the benefit of a 
European Union which shall be deepened and widened.

But a complementary perspective exists, too. In the framework of European 
integration, it is necessary to strengthen the structures and the processes for 
the articulation of a truly political self-understanding and for a process of 
conceiving and comprehending what the tasks which Europe is confronted with 
are. Only if these processes are going to take place, our spiritual and 
cultural properties" will play a significant role in our joint endeavours to 
solve problems and to meet the challenges of our time and of the days to come. 
Therefore, we need efforts to create a political identity of a uniting Europe. 
If not for other reasons--then at least in order to encounter trends which tend 
to make the content and the substance of our metapolitical traditions 
politically irrelevant. The reality of politics and policies is more than a 
complex system of functionalist management of socio-economic interdependencies 
and power relations. It is also a field of communication and interaction 
between human beings, groups, communises, regions, and nations, on what is 
important, what is meaningful, and what should be done and pursued. By this 
process of communication and interaction, a common identity is being formed. 
This is also true in the field of European co-operation and integration.

In the humanistic tradition of our European civilisation, it has been passed on 
from the philosophers of the Greek "polis" to the outstanding thinkers of our 
time that politics always means two things : to make possible what is necessary 
(Paul Valery), and to find agreement on what is real (Hugo von Hofmannsthal). 
Both of these will help to create, to keep alive, and to perform a European 
identity.

Consciousness of European identityafter 1945

Gilbert Trausch

The question of Europe's identity can be looked at from many angles within the 
perspective of this Forum o that of post-1945 Europe, and, even more 
specifically, that of the European Community. Sociologists, political 
scientists and philosophers have all made interesting contributions o highly 
theoretical, as can be expected, given the academic disciplines in which they 
work. A theoretical approach is particularly apt for the question of European 
identity, because, in the final analysis, Europe is a ?construction of the 
mind' (J. B. Duroselle).

However, we must not stifle the voice of history. This is a discipline that is 
kept in check by two rigorous parameters o time and space. What is true for one 
region is not necessarily true for another, and what is acceptable at one time 
is not always acceptable at another. I mention this because historians 
construct facts from documents of all kinds. The constant need to bear this in 
mind sometimes clips their wings and stops them getting carried away. Marc 
Bloch called them ?those nasty little facts which ruin the best hypotheses'. A 
historical approach to the European identity after 1945 inevitably brings us to 
the conditions in which the European Community was born.

No reasonable person would deny that the sense of a shared identity was and 
still is a major stimulus in the quest for a closer union. However, the 
disturbing fact remains that European integration only became a reality after 
1945, with the creation of the OEEC, the Council of Europe, the Brussels Treaty 
Organisation, and, above all, the European Communities (from 1950). Robert 
Schuman's appeal on 9 May 1950 in Paris was translated into action, while 
Aristide Briand's in Geneva on 7 September 1929 fell on deaf ears. Both were 
French Foreign Ministers and therefore influential men, and both addressed 
their appeals to German politicians at the highest level who were very open to 
Europe, Gustav Stresemann and Konrad Adenauer. So why did Europe take off in 
1950 and not in 1929?

The philosopher Jean-Marie Domenach hints at an answer when he says that the 
European Community was born not of Charlemagne but of European nihilism. He 
uses Charlemagne to symbolise Europe's identity. Many historians think that we 
can speak of Europe from the time of Charlemagne, who is referred to in certain 
documents of that time as ?Pater Europae'. But for Domenach, the jolt which 
finally induced the Europeans to unite more closely was the havoc wreaked by 
the two great totalitarian systems of the 20th century: Marxism-Leninism and 
National Socialism. The Gulag and Auschwitz were seen as the last warnings 
before the final catastrophe. The figures are clear and chilling. First World 
War: 10 million dead; Second World

War: 55 million dead (including 45 million Europeans). If this geometrical 
progression were to continue, the next step would be an apocalyptic Thirld 
World War. In other words, the European Community emerged in response to the 
challenge posed by two ideologies which were born in Europe from a shared 
cultural heritage.

How can Europeans be united? Basically, there are only two possible approaches: 
political and economic. And where should we start? This was a question that 
already exercised Aristide Briand. When, in 1929, he called for the creation of 
a United States of Europe, he proposed to start with economic unification. One 
year later, in a memorandum submitted to 26 European governments for their 
opinion, he shifted his stance and backed a political approach, the reason 
being the Wall Street Crash which had changed the situation. Briand thus played 
it by ear, without a precise idea of the path to be taken or the objective to 
be attained. In this he differed from Jean Monnet, who had clearer ideas on 
both the end and the means.

The same questions arose after 1945. Although it was clear that the two 
approaches should be separate, it was felt that there was no reason why 
progress should not be made on both fronts simultaneously. This is what the 
Europeans did in the years 1947-49 with the OEEC and the Council of Europe. The 
result was hardly encouraging, even though the two organisations did manage to 
group together almost all the states of Western Europe, because they were 
confined to the framework of simple cooperation between countries without any 
transfer of sovereignty. An attempt to move forward on the economic front o 
negotiations for an economic union between two countries (France and Italy) or 
five countries (with Benelux) under the name of Finebel o was to fail 
(1948-50).

In the spring of 1950, Jean Monnet realised that the political path was closed, 
because the European countries remained strongly attached to their political 
sovereignty. Having learnt his lesson from the failure of Finebel, and not 
impressed by Adenauer's proposal for a Franco-German economic union (23 March 
1950), Monnet opted for the economic approach, but on a smaller scale: a common 
market in coal and steel.

This option had a number of consequences. Jean Monnet expected that this first 
?pool' (coal and steel) would lead to others (agriculture, energy, transport) 
and hence, gradually, to a genuine common market. This prediction was to end up 
coming true, but only after forty years or so, which is probably longer than 
Monnet reckoned. Monnet also believed that this economic approach would 
eventually be followed by political unification. In this respect, events proved 
his hopes wrong. The attachment to national sovereignty in the world of 
politics (security and foreign policy) has turned out to be more tenacious than 
anticipated in 1950.

By launching the process of European integration through the economy, Jean 
Monnet o no doubt unwittingly o defined its identity over several decades. The 
European Community which, with its fifteen countries, is starting to represent 
Europe as a whole, is perceived essentially as an economic entity. However, men 
(and women), being creatures of flesh and blood, do not easily identify with 
economic indicators, quotas and compensatory amounts. The failure of all 
attempts to create a common foreign and security policy (European Defence 
Community and the planned European Political Community 1951-54, Fouchet Plan 
1961-62) and the less than binding nature of the Maastricht Treaty provisions 
explains why the European Union

continues to be perceived by ordinary people as an economic machine. It is 
difficult, in these circumstances, to see it as the expression of a common 
destiny.

Jean Monnet's proposal for a coal and steel community, put forward by Robert 
Schuman, was a response to a multi-faceted challenge. Like everyone else, he 
was aware that Europe could not continue to tear itself apart, or it would end 
up disappearing completely. Also, Europe's difficulties over the last hundred 
years had always started in the form of a Franco-German conflict, so it was 
here that action needed to be taken: to make war between France and Germany 
?not merely unthinkable but physically impossible' (declaration of 9 May 1950). 
This is why the French appeal of 9 May was addressed first and foremost to 
Germany. The two world wars were to some extent Franco-German wars, at least 
when they started, and can thus be seen from a similar angle to the 1870 war. 
This explains the determination of many Europeans to reconcile the French and 
Germans and bring them closer together. Jean Monnet understood more clearly 
than others that Europe's future depended on France and Germany.

Like it or not, the European Community has been built around France and 
Germany. If monetary union comes to fruition in the next few years, it will 
happen again around these two countries.

Jean Monnet's game plan o to make the Franco-German axis the motor of Europe o 
could not be achieved unless Germany played along too, in other words unless it 
aligned itself with the western political model for good. It had to be kept 
from the ?temptation to swing between West and East' (Jean Monnet, 16 September 
1950) and therefore had to be solidly attached to a host organisation. Neither 
the OEEC nor the Council of Europe, with their loose structures, could take on 
this role, but the ECSC fitted the bill. The European Community, along with 
other organisations such as NATO and the WEO, thus became a way of resolving 
the German question.

The effects of the Cold War

The appeal of 9 May 1950 was also a response to the challenge of the Cold War, 
which created a new situation in which Europe was not so much a player as an 
object manipulated by non-European players (the USA and the USSR).

Jean Monnet had no difficulty in accepting the Atlantic Alliance, which was 
essential in order to ensure Western Europe's security. However, he felt that 
it had helped to fossilise mindsets and create a ?rigidity of thought'. Thus 
?any proposal, any action is interpreted by public opinion as contributing to 
the Cold War' (note of 1 May 1950). Monnet believed that a Community as he 
conceived it could break out of the Cold War mould, which was not the case for 
the Atlantic Alliance. He thought that the ECSC could incorporate West Germany 
without raising the question of rearming it, which he still felt (beginning of 
May 1950) would provoke the Russians. The Korean War (25 June 1950) was 
responsible for overturning this kind of thinking. German rearmament was put on 
the agenda. Very rapidly, the ECSC became the model for a European Defence 
Community.

In fact, throughout the first phase of European integration, from the OEEC 
through the ECSC to the EEC, Western Europe was subjected to a whole set of 
Cold War- related pressures which had a direct impact on the integration 
process.

There was American pressure, which could be described as positive in that it 
encouraged the Europeans to unite. American diplomacy pushed the Europeans to 
come closer together economically and politically, though it was understood 
that a united Europe must remain open to American influences and products. The 
pressure was also positive in the sense that it did not impose any specific 
solution on the Europeans. In the case of the OEEC, for example, the United 
States would have preferred a more integrated solution than the one finally 
chosen on Britain's initiative. Similarly, the first British application to 
join the EEC (1961) owed a great deal to American encouragement.

The same cannot be said for pressure from the USSR. It felt it was not in its 
interest for the Europeans to unite opposite it. Its policy thus aimed to 
divide the Europeans and to separate Europe from the United States. Thanks to 
its impressive military apparatus, which its acquisition of atomic weapons in 
1949 rendered credible, it was able to put pressure on Europe o indeed 
virtually blackmail it. In the Cold War climate which set in from spring 1947, 
the Europeans lived in fear of the USSR, a fear which Paul-Henri Spaak gave 
full rein to in a famous speech. The Brussels Treaty, the Atlantic Alliance and 
the WEO, and also the ECSC and the EDC, were a response to the negative 
pressure from the USSR.

The process of European integration is inseparable from the climate created by 
the Cold War. Throughout its history, the European Community has been very 
sensitive to international developments. The Korean War had a positive effect 
on the ECSC negotiations and the beginnings of the EDC, but the death of Stalin 
and the ensuing d?tente affected the EDC negatively. In the autumn of 1956, the 
preparatory negotiations for the Treaties of Rome were heading for an impasse 
after wide-ranging last-minute demands made by France when they were finally 
saved by the events of Suez and Budapest reminding Europeans how weak they 
were.

In periods of tension, the Europeans close ranks, and in periods of d?tente 
they loosen their ties. Overall, the process of European integration has to be 
seen in the Cold War context. To push the image to its provocative extreme, one 
could say that the European Community is Stalin's baby. Only when they were 
forced to did the European countries agree to the surrender of sovereignty 
which characterises the Community. One can imagine only too clearly the 
consequences that the end of the Cold War may have on European integration.

The effects of the Cold War can also be seen in many other areas, particularly 
that of political institutions. Between the wars, democratic countries suffered 
a period of profound crisis, which explains the rise of fascist dictatorships 
and authoritarian regimes (central Europe and the Baltic and Balkan countries). 
Where democracies did survive, they were weakened and discredited by major 
scandals. After 1945, however, western-style democracy became the political 
system par excellence, fully adopted by the nations of Western Europe. The last 
bastions of authoritarian regimes o fascist or semi-fascist o fell one after 
the other (Greece, Spain, Portugal). The rule of law and respect for human 
rights which became established in Western Europe contrasted with the communist 
model. Confronted by a regime which claimed to have history on its

side and to be both politically and economically more successful, European 
democracy was obliged to furnish daily proof of its excellence and superiority. 
The example of the Federal Republic of Germany in its face-off with the other 
Germany illustrates this situation. The East German regime became a foil for 
the resounding success of the Bonn democracy.

The flourishing health of western democracy is not unconnected to the creation 
of the welfare state after 1945. The social insurance system goes back to the 
19th century, with considerable differences between the different countries. 
However, it is the English model, developed during the Second World War, which 
was to become the source of inspiration for the other countries of Western 
Europe. Within one generation it had become the norm, and the differences 
between the countries diminished, even though the extent of provision was not 
the same for all countries.

The welfare state model stopped at the iron curtain. Beyond it, social 
protection was certainly well-developed, but the philosophy underlying the 
system was different. The weakness of the command economy explains the 
mediocrity of the services provided. Basically, the welfare state is a 
characteristic of Western Europe, different from both the communist system and 
the American system.

The fact that this model is now under threat, and that some are arguing for the 
American model, has particular historical significance in view of Western 
Europe's identity as it has been constructed, in particular through the 
European Community, over the course of the last forty years.

The Carolingian image

In its quest to unify in the aftermath of the war, Western Europe was to take 
various forms based on different institutional approaches and different 
concepts. There would be the European Community, EFTA etc. Opposite, there was 
another Europe: the Europe of Comecon and the Warsaw Pact. However, it was the 
smallest of these configurations, the six countries which formed the ECSC, 
which was to dominate. Gradually, slowly but inexorably, the Community took on 
o or usurped, depending on the point of view o the name of Europe. It is easy 
to understand the irritation of some, such as the Scandinavians or the Swiss, 
on seeing the word ?Europe' increasingly applied to the Community during the 
1960s, a usage which successive enlargements have only reinforced.

The Community is thus at the root of one of the concepts of Europe. For 22 
years, until the first enlargement in 1972, it was this little Europe of six 
countries which incarnated Europe's identity. Right from the start one could 
see the historical imagination set in motion. Very quickly, potential 
commentators and journalists started talking about a Carolingian or 
Lotharingian Europe. It is true that the map of the six founding countries of 
Europe covered exactly the same area as Charlemagne's empire. In both cases, 
the Elbe formed a border, even a barrier, against the barbarian tribes o or the 
communist countries. Of course there was no causal link between the two 
constructions, separated by eleven centuries. This was a mythological 
projection, but one that was popular for a long time because the historical 
connection seemed so

irresistible. Clearly, calling it a Carolingian Europe stresses western 
Christianity's role in founding Europe. The force of the image led some people 
to speak of the Community as a Europe of the Vatican.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that the six countries which were the first 
to launch themselves into the European adventure are still seen as the 
spearhead or core of the European Union. They seem more committed than the 
others. And they are destined to be the heart of a future monetary union. It is 
all the more distressing, therefore, that one of them (Italy) has to stay on 
the sidelines, forced to by the Maastricht criteria.

This essay deliberately leaves aside the question of the European identity in 
terms of culture and civilisation. Few observers contest the fact that Europe 
has a cultural identity, formed over the centuries, encompassing the diversity 
of national cultures. But this identity may not be as clear-cut as some would 
see it, and it is blurred at the edges: Europe's borders have always been 
problematic.

Beyond this cultural identity, which the elites have recognised since the 
Middle Ages, but which has not stopped the Europeans constantly and mercilessly 
tearing each other apart, the period since 1945 has seen the emergence of 
several Europes, born of the convulsions of the First and Second World Wars. 
Only one of these Europes has managed to establish a public image - the 
European Community o and even that took four decades. The Community only really 
entered into public consciousness in the member countries with the Maastricht 
Treaty and the public controversy which it generated.

European Identity and /or the Identity of the European Union

Thomas Jansen

When speaking of "European identity" one needs to state what exactly is meant, 
as each of these words taken individually may be ambiguous and confusing. The 
"European" identity we are seeking to outline here is that of the European 
Union, the word "Identity" being understood to mean the spirit of this 
community, indeed, the very source of its cohesion. In so doing, we assume that 
both the European Union as an organisation and its tangible manifestations, 
policies and achievements are expressions of that identity. It is incumbent on 
the European Union as a political and democratic organisation to ensure that 
its citizens and peoples not only understand but actually espouse the spirit of 
the Union if they are ultimately to identify with it. Indeed, the Union's very 
ability to survive, grow, act and succeed in its endeavours depends on it.

The factors of european identity

Let me first recall the basic factors of European identity in a broader sense, 
which even a precise definition cannot dissociate from that of the European 
Union. For, even if since its inception the European Union has never embraced 
more than a part of Europe, its vocation still relates to Europe in its 
entirety. And the historical, cultural, social and political components and 
factors of European identity which bind the continent together, east, west, 
north and south, will certainly increase in importance as the Union grows 
larger.

Historical Factors

Ever since the early Middle Ages, all political processes in Europe have been 
interconnected. There gradually arose a complex system of relations between 
tribes and peoples, dynasties and classes, states and empires, which, in a 
context of constant change, became ever more intricate and refined. Systems of 
domination and counterbalance arose and collapsed as a result of recurrent wars 
only to be followed by fresh attempts to build empires or peace settlements.

Just as nations are defined as communities of destiny, it can also be said of 
Europe as a whole that a shared history over many centuries has given rise to a 
differentiated yet in many respects interconnected and mutually dependent 
community of destiny. Proximity and the shared nature of both individual and 
collective experience have fashioned a special relationship between the peoples 
of Europe which, whether consciously or unconsciously, has had the effect of 
forging an identity. Even in places where togetherness gave way to antagonism, 
where proximity resulted in demarcation or where coexistence deteriorated into 
rivalry and ultimately war, shared experience has left a deep imprint on 
Europeans. Likewise, the very causes of the

wars in this as in previous centuries sprang from intellectual currents 
simultaneously at work everywhere in Europe.

Cultural Factors

The shared historical experience is underpinned by a considerable degree of 
cultural unity of which, paradoxically, diversity has been a constituent part. 
This diversity has common roots, i.e. it is the outcome of a combination of the 
Mediterranean Greco- Roman culture, which contributed the sum experience of the 
ancient world as a conservative and stabilising element on the one hand, and 
the continental Germanic- Slavonic culture, which contributed the dynamic, 
youthful and forward-looking component on the other.

The decisive catalyst in this synthesis was Christianity. The European world 
which emerged from this process during the Middle Ages never lacked awareness 
of its unity. Likewise, in modern times and even very recently, this awareness 
has always survived despite the bloodiest of wars waged in the name of national 
differentiation or opposing nationalist or ideological aims.

Social Factors

Not least because of its cultural unity, in which any differences can be seen 
as so many aspects or individual expressions of a shared background, Europe 
developed into a single area also in social and economic terms. Despite all the 
typical differences between its diverse regions, a similar pattern of economic 
development served as the basis on which social life progressed along similar 
lines everywhere. A significant part was played here by a highly developed 
trading system involving large- scale exchange of goods, labour and know-how. 
It formed a large internal market which, despite the restrictions imposed by 
the upsurge of nationalism in the 19th century, flourished up until the First 
World War.

Symmetrical social development in the regions of Europe was matched by a 
simultaneity of social crisis and radical change and then in turn the formation 
of social groupings or classes predisposed towards transnational 
identification, thus creating the conditions in which the integration rooted in 
historical developments and a common culture could take hold. A radical break 
in this movement towards social integration occurred only with the division of 
Europe into two fundamentally different economic and social systems after the 
Second World War, a period from which Europe is only now beginning to recover.

Political Factors

History since the Second World War has shown that the intellectual and cultural 
strengths of the Old World are far from exhausted. The fact that the Europeans 
adopted a critical stance towards their history but at the same time opened up 
to stimuli from the new worlds of America, Asia and Africa and the fact that 
they ultimately responded to the challenge of Communism also impelled them to 
develop a new self-awareness. The European identity expressed in that new 
self-awareness is characterised by a marked drive for organised action which, 
now that the Central and

Eastern European nations in an act of self-liberation are reuniting with the 
nations of western Europe, is confronted with new challenges.

The open democratic societies did not succumb to the threats or enticements of 
Socialist revolution and its claims to march in step with history. On the 
contrary, they succeeded in maintaining and developing their attractiveness. 
They emerged strengthened from all economic, social and cultural crises. In the 
North Atlantic Alliance, they were able to jointly organise their security. 
Lastly, in the European Community, a significant group of democratic states 
created a model of peaceful cooperation, peaceful change and unity which exerts 
an extraordinary power of attraction throughout the world.

National unity of the states and political unity of Europes

The European Union is a young and still incomplete community composed 
nonetheless of old communities. Its Member States still possess a fairly strong 
identity. It is therefore only natural that, in seeking to define an 
appropriate way of expressing the European identity that appeals to the public, 
we should ask how the identity of the Member States expressed itself when (in 
the 19th century or before) they were still in their infancy.

The unity of the Member States as they came into existence was based mainly on 
:

o a common language and culture or common cultural and linguistic bases ;

o a common experience of history, which could even encompass the experience of 
mutual antagonism between different sections of what became now one nation ;

o one economic area with neighbourhood markets developing right across the 
region ;


o a shared need for security against external threats ; Similar factors go to 
explain the process of European integration and the emergence of a 
supranational European Union :

o the experience of history acquired by the peoples and states of Europe both 
in war and peaceful exchange ;

o common cultural bases even if their expression has been diverse ;

o economic necessity and shared practical interest within the market which 
transcend the national and continental framework ;

o the setting of limits in relation to an enemy power which poses a threat to 
freedom and integrity (the USSR with its aggressive ideology and totalitarian 
regime). Just as the factors referred to with regard to the formation of the 
nation state did not all affect all participants in equal measure, not all of 
the population feels equally inspired or convinced by the foregoing 
justifications with regard to the European Union. It will nonetheless be 
observed that it is these common factors which, now as then, influence the 
decisions of the political, social and intellectual elites. And now as then we 
see amid those same elites sizeable minorities and occasionally even majorities 
of Luddites who, unwilling to relinquish the past, reject any identification 
with new contexts and find arguments for their ideas which are heard and 
believed by a certain section of the population.

These are all socio-psychologically explainable transitional phenomena which 
arise in the definition of a new European identity (including the difficulty of 
expressing this identity in an appropriate fashion) or in the search for a 
European awareness which transcends the national awareness. To see them as 
problems specific to European unification would be to approach them from the 
wrong angle. For it is clear that changes in political and social circumstances 
do not always immediately result in a change in awareness. Only when new 
circumstances are perceived as realities do we adapt our thinking and planning 
accordingly. The time lapse between the appearance of the new and its 
perception is attributable to the fact that the old continues to coexist in 
parallel with the new for a while or even permanently. As a result, awareness 
continues to revolve around the old and therefore barely notices the new. The 
debate on the feasibility/non-feasibility of supranational/transnational 
statehood or democracy offers prime examples here.

The lack of identity for the young, new and constitutionally not yet 
established community known as the "European Union" is also accompanied by 
certain problems of legitimacy which its institutions in particular have in 
projecting and asserting themselves. However, if one compares these problems 
with similar problems of the Member States and their constitutional situation, 
they can be seen to be quite obviously commonplace phenomena with which all 
communities have to contend regardless of the level at which they are 
established. In this respect, the problems at the various levels may perhaps be 
connected :

o the weaker a nation's self-awareness, the less problematic is its European 
awareness ?

o the weaker the confidence in the system of the nation state, the greater the 
hope placed in the European institutions ?

The absence of a consensus on the constitution

This is a practical problem and one which confronts politicians with practical 
tasks. It manifests itself in the deficit of legitimacy with which the 
authorities have to contend every time they want to make innovations whose 
advantages are not always immediately apparent given the time it may well take 
for results to be produced, whereas the disadvantages, whether short-term or 
medium-term, real or imaginary, have to be taken into account. For any 
political project to gain acceptance it is therefore important, indeed 
indispensable, for its meaning to be clear, its components visible, and its 
effects foreseeable. If the European project is to succeed, then it is 
crucially important for it to be understood.

But what does the European project entail ? A Union organised on federal 
principles and endowed with a democratic political system which, through its 
institutions and laws, guarantees internal and external security and which 
takes on major tasks,

beyond the capabilities of individual Member States, in a manner accepted by 
the public as serving its interests.

However, in defining the project, we see at once that the project thus defined 
does not enjoy the support of all the participants. There are governments, 
parties, parliamentary factions and important social and cultural groupings 
which want to achieve a different project. Their European project is based on 
another idea. For example : Cooperation between a group of states which agree 
on institutions and procedures to perform jointly defined tasks, case by case, 
but without submitting to the discipline of a democratic and federal system.

In other words, there is no consensus on the "finalit? politique" of European 
integration and this makes it above all difficult to establish and give 
expression to the European identity. For the European Union remains the 
unfinished practical expression of an ultimately undefined project. It is 
therefore more process than project ; it is the blueprint for a product, the 
real shape of which remains undecided.

Equally undecided is the geography of the Union. Where does it place its 
borders ? There is no consensus here either. The dilatory treatment of Turkey's 
desire for Union membership is proof of this, as are the difficulties in 
agreeing an enlargement strategy with respect to Central and Eastern Europe.

And then there is the fact that we have become accustomed to seeing certain 
challenges as the most important motives for the unification of Europe : 
establishment of an enduring peace between the participant nations, 
reconstruction of a devastated continent, reacquisition of a role in 
international decision-making, defence of freedom against totalitarian 
Communism, the guaranteeing of a democratic future and greater and more 
widespread prosperity.

As European integration policy achieved results, so these motives gradually 
faded into the background ; and since the watershed year of 1989, it has become 
clear that the European Union needs new motivation.

This does not mean that all the original reasons and motives for the policy of 
European unification have become obsolete. They retain, albeit in a different 
context from before, a certain reality content. This is true even if it no 
longer carries the same weight as in the 1950s and up until the 1980s because :


o the process of rebuilding Europe from the ruins of the war has long been 
completed ;

o the peace between those nations of Europe which took part in the integration 
process is today guaranteed by the existing set of institutions ;

o the Soviet-Communist regime has collapsed ;

o democracy has established itself in all European countries and can be 
regarded as secure ;

o the aim of a more widespread prosperity has been achieved to an unparalleled 
degree ;

o Europe can regard itself once again as a leading player and partner on the 
world stage.

The question as to what makes it necessary to take integration further now that 
the most important goals have been achieved is therefore warranted ; it 
challenges us to define and explain the new objectives and motives in order 
thereby to give appropriate and perceptive expression also to the identity of 
the European Union.

The new tasks

The new challenges confronting Europeans now and in the future arise from 
various developments :

o the process of unification itself, which has generated a dynamic through 
which the responsibilities of the European Union have increased substantially 
and certain reforms of its political system have become indispensable since it 
will otherwise be incapable of performing the tasks entrusted to it ;

o the collapse of the Soviet Union and the accompanying end of a bipolar world 
order based on two mutually opposed superpowers ;

o the technological and industrial developments which are giving rise to new 
ways of living, working and operating all over the world. Many of the 
individual measures enacted in the decades since the Second World War can be 
seen as preludes and pointers to the changes of recent years. However, we are 
only now becoming gradually aware of their full implications. New situations 
are arising, which we are attempting to conceptualise when we talk for example 
of the "globalisation of the economy" or the "information society".

In coming to terms with the new situation, Europe will above all have to face 
up to the following challenges :

o the renewal of European society ;

o the development of a democratic and workable constitutional order ;

o the enlargement of the Union to include the countries of Central and Eastern 
Europe ;

o the creation of a new world order in line with technological, scientific and 
social change.

The European nation states cannot rely on their own discretion and devices to 
carry out these tasks alone. For the challenges involved are directed at the 
entire Union. They can therefore only be properly addressed through the 
combined effect of contributions by the individual states to the united action 
of the Union of European states and the added value of joint effort.

The Renewal of European Society

There are in Europe various competing models for the most effective and fairest 
social order. They are inspired by differing national concepts and traditions 
of social organisation and social life ; even regional characteristics can be 
discerned, finding expression for example in the differences between the 
Northern European (more Germanic Protestant) and Southern European (more Roman 
Catholic) societies. And neither must we ignore the influence which ideological 
and political convictions have exerted on societies in the individual European 
countries : Conservative and Liberal, Socialist and Christian-Social ideas have 
all left clear, distinguishable traces.

And yet, we can now ascertain that over the decades, thanks to a common 
cultural foundation, a broad consensus has formed on a model which corresponds 
more closely than others to the vital needs and circumstances of Europeans. The 
differences between this European model and that of American society are 
striking, not to mention the models which underlie the societies of certain 
East and Southeast Asian industrialised market economies.

What are the main features of this European model of society ? Its central 
feature is what in Germany is called the "Soziale Marktwirtschaft", i.e. a 
"social market economy" which allows market forces full scope whilst subjecting 
them to a framework of rules designed to prevent abuse, satisfy basic social 
needs and provide a minimum of social security. The consequent solidarity and 
stability also makes for greater freedom of the market ; the efficiency gained 
as a result makes it possible to supply the necessary resources for social 
welfare and security.

This model is being called into question and is now in jeopardy. More 
precisely, the excessive growth of the social security system over the years 
has disrupted the balance between individual responsibility for the whole and 
society's responsibility for the individual. On the other hand, the pressure of 
competition accompanying the globalisation of the economy and communication has 
meant that to safeguard jobs in "Enterprise Europe" substantial cutbacks have 
had to be made in the social security system together with radical reforms in 
the way they operate. Ultimately, this twofold threat to the European model 
represents a virulent attack on the philosophy which underlies it ; the motives 
behind the attack are partly ideological, partly conditioned by interests and 
its aim is to eliminate the social dimension.

The European Union would lose an essential component of its identity if it 
failed to withstand this attack. The agreement on social policy between the 
Member States (with the exception of the United Kingdom) appended to the 
Maastricht Treaty was a first important step. The Commission White Paper 
entitled "Growth, Competitiveness, Employment" endorsed by the Union in the 
autumn of 1994 contains a programme for the safeguarding and reshaping of the 
social and economic order of the Union.

The aims of this programme are likewise served by the proposal for an Economic 
and Monetary Union, in particular its establishment in stages and the 
definition of a sound financial situation as a preliminary requirement for the 
introduction of a single currency and the consolidation of the single market in 
the large frontier-free European economic area.

The reform programme which underlies the policy of the European Union is 
sustained moreover by the confidence that the peoples of the old world who have 
emerged from the tribulations of repeated fratricidal wars and the humiliation 
of totalitarian repression have lost neither their capacity for innovation and 
creativity nor their historical and cultural experience and therefore possess 
all the assets needed to remain competitive in the global context.

The Development of a workable constitutional order

The identity of a political community finds its noblest expression in its 
internal order,

i.e. in its constitution. However, it is precisely in this respect that the 
European Union is defective. The first item on the agenda for the years to come 
is therefore the revision of the treaties in which the institutions, procedures 
and rules of the Union are rooted. It is generally agreed that the 
Intergovernmental Conference entrusted with the reform (of the treaties or 
constitution) should serve to bring the European Union closer to the people by 
making it operate more efficiently and openly. The Union should raise its 
profile and its activities should become more understandable. It is clear that 
the expectations placed in the Intergovernmental Conference, which must be 
measured in terms of the major developments dependant upon its outcome 
(enlargement, monetary union, etc.), can only be fulfilled if the conference 
aims at the establishment of a federal and democratically legitimate structure.

Federation could give expression to what is inherent in the European Union : 
namely unity in diversity. At the same time, as a prerequisite for the 
definition of identity, this would answer the unresolved question of the 
"finalit? politique". Given the complex circumstances of the integration 
process in the Union, only a democratic order offers the possibility of 
tackling the pressing practical and political problems with any hope of success 
on the one hand, and of giving meaning to what we call Union citizenship on the 
other.

The Enlargement of the European Union

The historical watershed of 1989 confronted the European Union with a new task 
which will keep it occupied until well into the next millennium. After initial 
reticence, attributable to widespread unease about the new uncertainties as 
well as to misunderstandings and a resultant distrust between the partners, 
there is a now a general consensus on the fact that every effort must be made 
to incorporate the states and peoples of central and eastern Europe as Members 
of the Union as soon as possible. There are many justifications for this, 
historical, moral, social, and not least, the fact that this is the only way of 
ensuring lasting economic and political stability and peace in this region.

The Union already treats the states of Central and Eastern Europe as future 
members and more and more systematic efforts are being made to achieve what in 
previous decades has been no more than a dream : namely the unification of all 
of Europe in peace and freedom. Indeed, the establishment of the conditions for 
the enlargement of the Union is in full swing, : in the individual applicant 
countries as well as in the Union itself. A strategy of preparation for 
membership has been drawn up in cooperation with the governments concerned. 
Important stages on this road of standardisation and harmonisation are the 
association agreements with the Central and Eastern European countries which, 
through these agreements, have moved politically closer to the Union. The 
economic and trade provisions and the connected assistance arrangements afford 
them the material and practical wherewithal needed to prepare for membership.

If, however, the future members of the Union have to be capable of accession, 
then the Union itself must become capable of enlargement. Thus, if it is to 
remain open to all European nations which can claim a historical and cultural 
right to belong to it, it must also solve the problems connected with a major 
enlargement from 15 to foreseeably 27 and perhaps even 30 Member States : the 
political and institutional problems, the economic and social problems and also 
the financial problems, the solution of which will demand a substantial 
additional solidarity on the part of the Union's present Members.

A considerable leap in self-awareness could be made if this process of 
political deepening and geographical enlargement could be handled successfully, 
also because the name "European Community/Union" has always suggested the 
encompassing and representation of Europe in its entirety. The closer this 
ideal comes to being achieved, the easier it will be to bridge the credibility 
gap.

The Establishment of a New World Order

Lasting economic and social stability is also vitally important for the 
European Union from the point of view of the Mediterranean area. It is 
therefore in the Union's interest, indeed it is its duty, to help create the 
conditions for peaceful development in this region. The Mediterranean 
Conference of November 1995 provided the impetus for a new inter-relationship 
based on partnership which not only satisfies the present requirements but 
marks a fresh start compared with the centuries of cultural and religious 
conflict which have characterised relations between Europe and the 
Mediterranean region in the past.

The readiness of the European Union to face up to its responsibilities with 
regard to the Mediterranean area and Central and Eastern Europe (moreover in 
relation to Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States) is substantiated 
by large-scale development aid and development cooperation in the Third World. 
It indicates a growing role for the Union as an actor in the international 
order. It has the capacity to do this thanks to :


o its success in establishing its own order representing, historically and 
structurally, an international order pacified in a lasting manner by democracy 
and federalism ;

o the strength which it derives from the united action of its Members. More 
unity, and above all more unity deriving from democratic decision-making 
procedures, will lend the Union greater weight and greater credibility in this 
role ; to achieve such unity, further advances need to be made in the 
establishment of its internal order and the strengthening of its capacity for 
external action.

The establishment of the European Community nearly fifty years ago was also a 
contribution to the creation of a more just and peaceful world order. Its 
endowment

with democratic institutions and instruments for the common definition and 
implementation of policies in an increasing number of areas, but in particular 
its development into a European Union with a common foreign and security policy 
and a single currency, only becomes really meaningful if it is understood as a 
structural component of a "world federation", i.e. of a process which leads, 
via the organisation of large continental groups of states and a radical reform 
of the United Nations, to a world order based on subsidiarity.

That does not mean to say that the integration of the European states and 
societies is not in itself also a high-ranking objective for in the past it has 
led to the pacification and reshaping of Europe, increased economic prosperity 
and guaranteed social progress ; in the future, through the corresponding 
effects of enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe, it will also develop in 
those parts of Europe which have hitherto been unable to take part in this 
development. At the same time European integration remains the basis for the 
effective discharge of all the major cross-border tasks entrusted to Europe.

However, in the context of world history, the unification process in Europe is 
aiming further than the construction of a Union.. More precisely, the stability 
achieved through the process of building the Community, together with the 
instruments of peace devised in this process and the prosperity existing here, 
are all factors which oblige Europeans to assume responsibility in and for the 
world. This involves more than development aid and active concern for human 
rights or the protection of the global environment. It also involves the 
shaping of an institutional and legal framework for world progress, a worldwide 
economy, worldwide transport, worldwide communication, the ecology of the world 
and worldwide politics in its various branches.

The European Union will be in a privileged situation in being able to submit 
and implement proposals to this effect on the basis of its own experiences, if 
in the years to come it succeeds in giving expression to its identity by 
successfully defending its societal model through renewal, giving an effective 
form to its political system and at the same time finding optimum solutions for 
its geographical enlargement.

A contribution from political psychology

Tom Bryder

"Europeanisation", meaning the political unification or integration of Europe, 
as we have recently come to think of it, is a relatively new phenomenon. More 
precisely, it refers to attempts at creating a European federal union, a 
distinct entity in relation to its surroundings.

To the surroundings, such as people in the former colonies, or in the United 
States, "Europeanisation" has a different meaning from that revealed by the 
integration perspective. Edgar Morin (1990, p. 20) says that "Il est difficile 
de percevoir l'Europe depuis l'Europe." From the outside it is often associated 
with expansive tendencies such as "European cultural imperialism" (in the 
former colonies) or "Cultural snobbism" (in the United States), that is, a 
colonialisation of the minds of people outside Europe, both in Africa, Asia, 
and America.

Somewhat paradoxically, it is difficult to distinguish "Europeanisation" as 
such from what we, in Europe, sometimes call "Americanisation" or "American 
cultural imperialism." The difference for the political order, however, seems 
to be a matter of quantity and authenticity. Critics of "Europeanisation" so 
conceived, such as of the francophones and German visionary intellectuals like 
T.W. Adorno, search for a European identity free of such connotations.

Apart from this ingroup-outgroup aspect of "Europeanisation", we must deal with 
ongoing processes of how European identity evolves o if it exists, or whether 
it is emerging. How is it created, sustained, and dispersed ?

To which extent and in what respect can we characterise the formation of a 
European political identity as an outcome of learning, memorisation and 
information retrieval processes ?

To some people, particularly the contributors to the French intellectual debate 
on the future of Europe, the contradiction between technocracy and meritocracy 
on the one hand, and democracy on the other ("Eurocrats" versus "Europe des 
citoyens"), poses the major challenge to the process of a politically unified 
Europe.29 It is, for example, presented as the end of minority rule in general 
by Wolton, who says (1993, p. 95), "Le passage de l'Europe technocratique ? 
l'Europe d?mocratique signe la fin du r?gne de la minorit?." It is an 
expectation resembling the classless society expressed by Marxism.

Wolton (1993, p. 232) says that this debate is more widespread than claimed 
here : "Le th?me de la "technocratie europ?enne" est omnipr?sent dans tous les 
pays.

Conceptualisations and definitions

Let me first mention some definitional issues that might be helpful in a search 
for appropriate conceptualisations of identity. According to Webster's :

1a = sameness of essential or generic character in different instances, or

1b = sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing, or

2 = unity and persistence of personality, or

3 = the condition of being the same with something described or asserted.

Le Nouveau Petit Robert (1993, p. 1122) is somewhat more exhaustive :

1. Caract?re de deux objets de pens?e identiques, Identit? qualitative ou 
sp?cifique. ? similitude. L'identit? d'une chose avec une autre, d'une chose et 
d'une autre. Identit? de vue. ? communaut?.

2. Caract?re de ce qui est un. ? unit?.

3. PSYCHOL. Identit? personnelle, caract?re de ce qui demeure identique ? 
soi-m?me. Probl?me psychologique de l'identit? du moi. Crise d'identit?. o 
Identit? culturelle : ensemble de traits culturels propres ? un groupe ethnique 
(langue, religion, art, etc.) qui lui conf?rent son individualit? ; sentiment 
d'appartenance d'un individu ? ce groupe. ? acculturation, d?culturation. PAR 
EXT. ?sommier.

Psychologists and psychoanalysts say that identity equals "The sense of one's 
continued being an entity distinguishable from all others" (Rycroft, p. 68). As 
Rycroft also says (ibid.) :

The sense of identity is lost in fugues and perverted in schizophrenic 
delusions of identity in which, typically, an underlying sense of nonentity is 
compensated for by delusions of grandeur.

A fugue designates a process by which an individual loses her or his sense of 
destiny and location. In psychoanalysis, fugues are classified as instances of 
hysterical behaviour and cited as examples of dissociation of consciousness. 
They typically arise out of role confusion when an individual cannot 
cognitively handle the information she or he faces.

A transposition of psychoanalytical concepts to a figurative political 
language, I believe, may create some fruitful associations which can assist us 
when we try to explain, for example, disintegrative processes in central and 
south-eastern Europe, or integrative processes in Western Europe.

Taking a preliminary view of what identity is from the psychoanalytic 
description, we may consequently look at "identification" as :

The process by which a person either (a) extends his identity into someone 
else, (b) borrows his identity from someone else, or (c) fuses or confuses his 
identity with someone else. In analytical writings, it never means establishing 
the identity of oneself or someone else. (Rycroft p. 67)

The expression "to identify with" bridges an individual identity and a shared 
identity ("I", "me" and "we", "us"), that is, some kind of "social" or 
"political" identity.

The place of identity in modern political research

In modern political science (Cf. Lasswell, 1965) identity is usually treated as 
an element in a "political perspective," the other major components being 
"demands" and "expectations."

Probably influenced by sociological role theory (which is wider in scope than 
psychological identity theories, since it incorporates behaviour as well as 
thought and emotional process), some authors seek a solution to identity 
uncertainty in the concept of multiple identities. But who should determine 
what these identities should be like ? The concept of identity cannot be 
patented by any traditional political-sociological group. It is not part of the 
traditional ideological quest for a distinct political vocabulary, as 
revolutionary socialists tended to believe before World War I. As Wolton says 
(1993, p. 48) :

L'identit?, la nation, la tradition ne sont pas des valeurs de "droite", elles 
appartiennent ? toutes les familles politique et il y a un conformisme 
eurocratique ? diaboliser ces mots.

As a matter of fact, the dynamism of a pluralistic and democratic conception of 
political identity presupposes that multiple identity pragmatism need not be 
present at the individual level of analysis at all, but only at the social 
level in the form of choice options. (Wildawsky, 1987).

From a theoretical point of view, the lack of hierarchical priorities of 
identity objects may lead to the kind of psychological state called fugues, 
previously described. Mixed or uncertain political role conceptions are not the 
same as cultural pluralism and may eventually lead to hyper- vigilance 
(psychological distress), decision evasion and paralysis.

Territory, language, ideas, culture, and history may all serve as objects with 
which we wish to establish notions of political identity. But which objects are 
of primary, of secondary or of lesser importance to the citizens of Europe ? 
Which objects are necessary and which are sufficient for the establishment of a 
notion of European identity ?

In the French debate, the opposition between objects of identity is basically 
seen as a conflict between "modernism" and "voluntarism," not between social 
classes or party

alignments. Modernism is seen to be creating a link between identity and 
nationalism, and "voluntarism" is seen as creating a link between identity and 
history. Moreover, the construction of the new Europe, according to the French 
debate, does not simply mean a democratisation of the technocratic Europe which 
has been the foundation of previous attempts to integrate Europe politically, 
economically and culturally, but a radical break away from both the modernistic 
and the voluntaristic "paradigms" (Wolton, 1993, p. 67). The cardinal issue 
revolves around the opposition between democracy and totalitarianism. This 
issue re-emerged when the Communist menace disappeared around 1990.

Which, then, are the attitudes of the general public towards the European 
Common Market of yesterday, as it was usually referred to in the 1980s, and the 
European Union of today and tomorrow ? Should decision making in Europe be 
confined to the approximately 50.000 Eurocrats, or to the 343 million citizens 
? If the Eurocrats, as a caste, are indispensable in the process of European 
integration, how do we ensure that they are made accountable to democratic 
institutions and that they take considerate attitudes to the citizens of Europe 
? What should the role of national parliaments and the European parliament be 
in the future ? With the present tendency to transfer power from government(s) 
to markets, what will the scope, weight, and domain of political power in the 
political system of Europe be in the future ? Let us first take a look at the 
objects of identification, and see if they provide us with adequate criteria 
for choice and commitment.

Geographical criteria

What first comes to our minds when trying to outline what it means to be a 
European is, perhaps, Europe as a geographical unit. Political systems such the 
Italian political system, the French political system or the Danish political 
system all embrace a notion of territory. So important is this that Max Weber 
made territory a major component of his definition of what a state is.

But how do we establish where the boundaries of Europe are ? Should Greenland 
be included if we look at the map before it gained autonomy (Hjemmestyre) ? The 
Faeroe Islands ? Madeira ? The Canary Islands ? Cyprus ? Malta ? Uzbekistan ?

Linguistic criteria

In France it is sometimes maintained that (Wolton, 1993, p. 84), "Le 
fractionnement linguistique est... constitutif de l'identit? europ?enne." At 
the same time, the practical problems of the language barriers are realised 
(ibid.) : "Le principal probl?me de l'Europe est l'absence de langue commune 
avec d'insolubles probl?mes de communication, notamment ? Bruxelles et au 
Parlement. D'ailleurs sur 13.000 fonctionnaires ? la Commission, il y a 1.700 
traducteurs soit 2 traducteurs pour 13 fonctionnaires".

Many people see this lack of linguistic unity as an indication of how difficult 
it is to unify Europe :

L'Europe est aussi un carrefour de langues, puisque quarante-trois langues y 
sont parl?es, ? des degr?s divers. (Wolton, 1993, p. 17)

What about English ? Many people in most European countries, however defined, 
speak English. But so do many people in America and Australia, and as a native 
language of a European state, English is not spoken by as many people as is, 
for example, German. Moreover, French, Italian and Spanish are strong 
competitors within the European context. So language cannot easily be used as a 
common denominator for establishing a unified sense of European identity.

Still, as Edgar Morin points out, English may very well be used as a working 
language without the creation of an Anglo-Saxon cultural hegemony (1990, pp. 
23233):

L'Europe ne court aucun risque culturel ? ce que l'anglais y devienne langue 
principale de communication. N'a-t-il pas constitu? la langue de communication 
entre les diverses cultures et ethnies indiennes sans les corrompre, sans 
d?valuer les langues r?gionales, sans surimposer l'identit? anglaise sur 
l'identit? indienne ? L'utilisation de l'anglais, accompagn?e de la 
connaissance de deux autres langues europ?ennes, aurait en outre l'avantage de 
faciliter les communications avec le reste de la plan?te.30

Cultural-Ideational criteria

One can, of course, assume life styles, traditions and behavioural patterns 
within some European territory, more or less arbitrarily defined, constitute a 
"European culture." But even within nation states it is dubious to speak of 
specific political cultures, since other criteria such as class, urban versus 
rural, north versus south, and similar criteria tend to give more explanatory 
power to the notion of "political culture." The political culture of the 
British working class is definitely different from that of the middle class and 
the gentry, the political outlook of farmers in rural Holland definitely 
differs from that of city dwellers in The Hague, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and 
northern Italian conceptions of politics are very different from those held by 
the population of Sicily and Naples. And as the two World Wars in this century 
have shown, Marx was definitely wrong in believing that the working classes of 
the world had so much in common that they would prefer class to nation as a 
chief object of identification.

30 Others like Wolton (1993, p. 162) are more cautious and less optimistic : 
"L'identit? postnationale est le moyen de construire cette identit?, reposant 
sur l'adh?sion ? des cultures politiques d?mocratiques, communicationelles, qui 
attribuent une influence certaine ? l'?change et font notamment l'impasse sur 
le probl?me de la langue. Comment communiquer des exp?riences sans langage 
commun ?"

Analytical criteria

If a political perspective reflects aspects of political cultures, and if 
identity is a necessary element of a political perspective, then it follows 
that we must give further consideration to political culture. At a somewhat 
high level of analytical abstraction, Wolton argues that one can intuitively 
speak of culture in three senses. In the first place, as an opposition to 
nature, that is, as the results of human labour. In the second place, culture 
can be seen as that which unifies a people or ethnic groups and which allows us 
to distinguish cultures from each other. In the third place, finally, culture 
can be seen as "high culture," as implied when we speak of being cultivated, 
familiar with literary traditions and art, etc. In Europe, all three notions 
have always co-exited at the same time. (Wolton, 1993, p. 312). Yet there were 
dynamisms and developments as Laqueur has pointed out (1970, p. 344) :

With all its vitality, post-war European culture faced grave problems. The 
stultifying effects of mass culture, the standardisation of the mass media, the 
commercial production of cultural goods, constituted an insidious danger which 
in this form had never existed before. At the other extreme there were the 
futilities of an esoteric, precious, often sterile ?high culture', divorced 
from real life and from people, a dead-end rather than a narrow pass on the 
road to new cultural peaks. Culture had become less spontaneous and far more 
costly...

Trying to relate these common sense notions to the debate on European political 
culture, Wolton says that empirically there are three national approaches with 
ingredients borrowed from these notions :

v Le premier sens, "fran?ais" insiste sur l'id?e d'oeuvre, de cr?ation. Il 
suppose une identification de ce qui est consid?r? comme culturel, en terme de 
patrimoine et de cr?ation, de connaissance et de savoir.

v Le deuxi?me sens, "allemand", est proche de l'id?e de civilisation. C'est 
l'ensemble des oeuvres et des valeurs, des repr?sentations et des symboles, du 
patrimoine et de la m?moire tels qu'ils sont partag?s par une communaut?, ? un 
moment de son histoire.

v Le troisi?me sens, "anglo-saxon", est plus anthropologique au sens o? il 
insiste sur les modes de vie, les pratique quotidiennes, l'histoire au jour de 
jour, les styles et les savoirs quotidiens, les images et les mythes. (Wolton, 
1993, p. 312) Historical criteria

To the extent that we wish to speak of a common European historical destiny, we 
would find that there are more competition, rivalry, strife, war and other 
forms of nonco- operative behaviour than forms of co-operative behaviour. In an 
attempt to

summarise the results of a historical survey of Europe's origins, Morin (1990, 
pp. 2223) says that :

L'Europe se dissout d?s qu'on veut la penser de fa?on claire et distincte, elle 
se morcelle d?s qu'on veut reconna?tre son unit?. Lorsque nous voulons lui 
trouver une origine fondatrice ou une originalit? intransmissible, nous 
d?couvrons qu'il n'y a rien lui soit propre aux origines, et rien dont elle ait 
aujourd'hui l'exclusivit?.

In this sense, it seems inappropriate to speak of the long-term historical 
origins of a European identity, which o according to both Webster, Le Petit 
Robert and the psychoanalytical definition o would have to denote a form of 
sameness.

In the period before World War II, the term Europeanisation tended to express 
the effects on Australian, Asiatic, American and African cultures and 
civilisations of the peculiar civilisation that grew up in modern Europe o 
including what we today call Eastern and Central Europe o as a consequence of 
the Renaissance, the Calvinist and Lutheran Reformation and, later on, the 
industrial revolution.

As George Young wrote in the 1934 edition of The International Encyclopedia of 
the Social Sciences (1937, p. 623) :

Europeanisation may be expressed politically by imposing the idea of democracy, 
in the sense of parliamentary and party government, or of sovereignty, in the 
sense of suppression or subordination of all government organs to the sovereign 
state, or of nationality, by creating a semi-religious solidarity in support of 
that sovereignty. It may be expressed economically by imposing ideas of 
individualistic capitalism, competition and control on community enjoying more 
elaborate and equitable, but less productive and progressive, collectivistic or 
communal civilisations ; or industrially by substituting the factory and the 
foundry for the hand loom and home craft.

Subjective versus objective criteria

Should we satisfy ourselves with just noting that "European" is what one is, if 
one says so ? If we reason along this line, National Socialists and Arab 
Socialists would be "socialists," National Democrats (that is, Neo-Nazis of the 
1960s) and representatives of the former "People's Democracies" would be 
Democrats. If political science equals the creation of political clarity rather 
than confusion, a purely subjective approach seems inappropriate.

For reasons of expediency, I would suggest that we opt for something like a 
minimalist objective approach. For a person to be "European" she or he would at 
least have to :

o be a citizen of a state, located by stipulation, to be geographically within 
a geographical entity called Europe ;

o speak a language which is officially accepted as one of the official 
languages of that state ;

o share a historical destiny with other people, within that state, speaking the 
aforementioned language ;

o share a cultural pattern with other such people, where the cultural pattern 
is seen as consisting of similar cognitive, evaluative and emotional elements. 
Citizenship is a legal criterion. An Australian citizen would not qualify even 
if he had lived for a long time in a European state, neither would aspiring 
immigrants or refugees. Language is somewhat weaker as a criterion variable, as 
I have already mentioned. Shared history is also a weak criterion : What about 
people living in territories that historically have been contested such as 
South Tyrol, Alsace-Lorraine, Slesvig-Holstein, parts of the former Habsburg 
empire, or the former USSR ? What about the Basque separatists and Catalonian 
nationalists, not to forget the Balkan states ?

With respect to a notion of European identity, as opposed to the national 
identities of Europe's constituent states, peripheral territories will 
constitute problems since Europe is a peninsula, rather than a continent. Hence 
we have had problematic notions such as the old "cordon sanitaire" which was 
invented between the two World Wars to define a buffer zone between the Soviet 
"dictatorship of the proletariat" and the rest of Europe, and the "Partnership 
for Peace" within the new world security order.

Shared culture also seems insufficient when we wish to create a distinction 
between European and non-European identities and, besides, cultural criteria 
seem to overlap with the other criteria, as I have already mentioned. Since 
culture can be based on any of the three previously mentioned elements of a 
political perspective (identification, demands, and expectation), we run the 
risk of exposing ourselves to definitional circularity if we use that as an 
exclusive criterion.

Three kinds of motives

Some people tend to perceive themselves ("to identify") on the basis of what 
they think they are and have been, and draw their political conclusions on this 
basis : "I am a Danish farmer or Danish farmer's son, so I must vote for the 
agrarian party." They are characterised by their "because-of" motives. Other 
people tend to conceive of themselves in terms of what they want : "In order to 
promote a free society I will vote for the liberal party." These people are 
characterised by their "in-order-to" motives. Still others perceive themselves 
on the basis of what they expect : "Activism is required if I wish to gain what 
I want or preserve what must be preserved ; in order to live a good life." 
"Fatalism or free-riding will be better for me than activism." This third group 
can be characterised by their "optional-choice" motives.

The first requirement for a political identification to occur is the 
recognition of a "self" distinct from others, i.e. "them". This is 
"identification" proper. What is distinctive about being European today, if we 
compare it with being, say, Australian , Canadian, or Mexican ? What are the 
significant characteristics of being European today in comparison to being, 
say, European before and immediately after the Second World War ? The 
accumulated efforts of Schumann, Adenauer, de Gaulle, Monet, and Delors have 
all made a difference, but will it continue ?

In the second place, there must be a recognition that this "self," this 
"identification" is in opposition to "them." This is regrettable for those who 
advocate world federalism and continued responsibility toward the Third World. 
In order for an identity to thrive there must be a challenge, a recognised 
competitive edge or conflicts of interests. The political self-recognition and 
the recognition of opposition between the "self" and "others" tend to reinforce 
each other, as in Marxist theory which claims that the class in itself (Klasse 
an sich) becomes more distinct as it fights for its interests against other 
classes, so as to emerge as a class for itself (Klasse f?r sich). As the social 
psychologists Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills say in Character and Social 
Structure (1979, p. 288), "It is in controversies that symbol systems are 
tightened up".

Although we may recognise a competitive edge and a conflict of interest with 
"non- Europeans" with respect to, say, economic issues, Europe is still 
integrated in a wider global community through GATT, the United Nations and 
NATO, etc. So despite attempts by the European Union to create a separate 
identity for Europeans, not unlike the Marxist notion of a "Klasse f?r sich," 
there are other centripetal and centrifugal forces at work to create wider as 
well as more narrow political identities.

The third step in the establishment of a separate political identity involves a 
cognitive simplification of the world, where most events are interpreted in 
dual categories such as "European" versus "non-European." The cognitive 
simplification process has two explanations, each of which is equally valid. 
Man faces great and complex problems but has limited capabilities to process 
information. In order to focus attention and regain perceptual control, aspects 
have to be disregarded, otherwise chaos follows. Politically this is also 
necessary, because the audience of the politically active must be influenced by 
simplified images that reach down to everyone.

When it comes to speaking about the identification of Europeans, such a 
simplified "black-and-white" perspective is probably (and hopefully) not an 
enduring characteristic of the electorates of Europe. Black-and-white thinking 
and stereotyping tendencies seem to have more in common with the kind of 
totalitarianism propagated within the ranks of the German Republikaner, the 
French Front National, Vlaamse Blok in Belgium and a few more marginal groups o 
perhaps inadequately described as "totalitarian" o such as the Danish 
Fremskridtspartiet and the Ulster nationalists. Not even the neo-fascist 
Italian MSI (now calling itself "the National Alliance") and its 
sub-organisations can be accused of such xenophobia and single-mindedness as 
that which goes into simple cognitive dualisms.

Lowell Dittmer describes the process of identification when he says (1977, p. 
573) that, "The process of political identification involves generalisation 
from objective perception to subjective wish-fulfilment...".

However, Wolton (1993, p. 82) says that it is possible and even desirable to 
accept the old distinction of out-groups versus in-groups, but that it must be 
given a new content :

L'Europe se trouve donc aujourd'hui confront?e au m?me enjeu : retrouver une 
figure contre-identitaire, ou inventer un nouveau mode de structuration 
identitaire.

This new figure of contra-identification, according to the French 
intellectuals, should be anti-democratic political tendencies and sentiments.

The fourth and final requirement concerns expected and desired goals. Such 
goals can be elaborated as utopian systems or models, like the federalist and 
confederalist conceptions of a new European political, economic or security 
order, or as partial working solutions to pragmatically felt needs, such as 
those postulated by neofunctionalists.

There are at least six, more or less overlapping, contradictory and/or 
supportive models one can discern in the current debate on the integration of 
Europe and the development of a European political identity :

v The great Europe model o a confederal model, with an emphasis on external 
relations ;

v The united nations of Europe o a federal model, with an emphasis on internal 
relations ;

v The community model o a model for inventories of what has already been 
achieved as a result of so called neo-functionalist initiatives ;

v The Europe of the nations (de Gaulle) o a model which focuses on definitions 
of what should be included and excluded, and which would not necessarily 
include all European states in their geographical extensions ;

v The minimal Europe o a liberal model in which market forces are given 
priority, but in which political and monetary issues are played down ;

v The Europe of "espace publique" o a democratic model for Europe to be shaped, 
which ignores the traditional cultural cleavages and focuses on the democratic 
versus totalitarian modes of identity. Dominique Wolton says that these models 
have the quality of "ideal types" about them but that (p. 218) :

En fait, l'Europe n'est pour le moment, et sans doute pour longtemps encore, ni 
une Europe des r?gions, ni une Europe des nations, mais une mosa?que de mod?les 
et de responsabilit?s gouvernementales : supranationales, nationales, 
r?gionales, locales, municipales, o? la souverainet? est partag?e entre les 
diff?rents niveaux de gouvernement.

This is a reasonably pragmatic conclusion since it allows for the theoretical 
debate about European political identity to continue, and this debate is in 
itself a major source of political identification.

Conclusion and some practical proposals

It makes a difference whether we speak about plural identities or a plurality 
of choices when we look at the fears and hopes for a new Europe to be built. 
Plural identities are not necessarily "good" from the point of view of 
psychology, since they may cause distress, paralysis and confusion. The French 
intellectuals seem to believe that when using different criteria as identity 
objects, one should not focus exclusively on geographical units, since the 
national state is unlikely to be perishing anyway. When they advocate multiple 
perspectives they say that political criteria must be used, and that way the 
debate is being transformed into a debate about the future of European 
democracy, a debate with firm roots in European federalism.

Since the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community and the other 
European Union "pillars" there has been a change in the extent to which people 
regard themselves as European. This can be seen in the Eurobarometer surveys 
which show that the sense of being European is greater among citizens of Member 
States that have been members of the EEC from the beginning than among the 
"newcomers". But even if this is so, it may be misleading, because such 
"identification" may be based on parochial expectations of economic and other 
gains for the national unit to which one belongs, as for example in the case of 
Belgium, where European integration is demanded, but on the basis that the 
European politicians will further Belgian interests in the first place, rather 
than European common interests.

What, then, can be done to further the idea of a common European identity 
tomorrow if the pace up till now has been slow and uncertain ? The answer to 
this question will greatly affect the future of the European Union. Since it is 
impossible to mention all possible projects that may contribute to a greater 
inner strength of the European project, I will confine my attention to some 
rather basic ideas which are within the scope of practical realisation.

It is now more than half a century since the end of the Second World War, and 
we have now seen the downfall of totalitarian Communism. But we still have 
traces of totalitarianism among us everywhere in the form of racism, 
bureaucratic arrogance, and even leftover sentiments of Communism, Fascism and 
even National Socialism in Europe. We have concerns about a sustainable 
environmental development and corruption among politicians, irresponsible 
bankers, and remote representatives in the Europe to which we belong. These are 
just a few issues to which many young people

pay attention but it is far from all who actually pay attention. If we can 
support those young people who feel concerned, and give them reasons to be 
grateful for what the European Union does to combat totalitarianism, racism and 
economic fraud, we may win over the next generation for the European project 
and make them feel more European than the older generations have felt. As the 
President of the European Union, Jacques Santer pointed out in his speech at a 
previous carrefour arranged by the Cellule de Prospective at the University of 
Lund in 1995, the great change in attitudes towards Europe will come with the 
next generations, those who know foreign languages and those who have lived 
abroad.

This leads me to the practical conclusion that all of us who wish to strengthen 
European identity should promote travelling in all its forms all over Europe, 
especially by subsidising continued Inter-rail travelling among the young 
during the summer holidays and whenever else it is possible. Since the birth of 
the European Union, through the implementation of the Single European Act in 
the early 1990s, many airlines have shown their good-will and launched cheap 
travel programmes for both adults and young people. But more can be done in 
this area. For example, arrangements can be made with the youth hostel 
organisations in Europe so that travelling and accommodation will not be 
confined to only those who are well off, have employment, and have received 
grants from various study programmes. Efforts can be made to maintain and 
enlarge already existing exchange programmes of students and teachers that are 
already effective, and an effort can be made to establish summer camps, where 
young people from all over Europe can come together for three to four weeks to 
learn more and discuss problems of concern to them, including their immediate 
concerns about youth unemployment. If possible, they could even work directly 
in projects of common concern to us all, such as the rebuilding of roads and 
villages in the former Yugoslavia, when it is safe to do so again.

The positive role of such initiatives for the strengthening of a European 
identity will depend upon the role played by the European Union. This role need 
not be too directly linked with our European institutions as they are today, 
and the most important thing is not to pour a lot of money into such projects, 
but let the beneficiaries know where the support comes from.

I envisage that the European Union could play the role of the empowering agent 
to institutions which already exist. We could awaken an interest in a European 
youth hostel movement, in a European Interrail Travel System, and in European 
Summer Camps for young people. Such projects could send a positive signal to 
all European adolescents, employed or unemployed, students, trainees and 
working class youngsters, a signal which says : "If you wish to know more about 
life in other European countries and if you wish to participate in furthering 
the goals of the new Europe, we are there to support you." Through such 
measures we can not only strengthen and build a future European identity, we 
can also make sure that the achievements of the past are safeguarded.

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York : The Macmillan Company. pp. 623-635.


What is it ? Why do we need it ? Where do we find it ?

Edy Korthals Altes

Identity has to do with the individuality of a person or - in this case - of 
the European Union. What are the specific characteristics ? In what ways does 
the European Union discern itself from other international or national agents ? 
Identity in the sense of ?being yourself' is closely connected with the 
relation to others, ?seeing the other'. In this sense, Cardinal Lustiger could 
state that ; ?solidarity with those who die for lack of bread is an essential 
condition for Europe to stay alive'.31

The classic response to the question of European identity is : unity in 
diversity. Ethnic background, culture, religion and history are certainly 
important factors for the European identity.

Decisive at this stage of the European integration process is however the 
question : what do we want to do together ? The answer depends on the 
perception of the need for a common response to the challenges of today's 
world. This is not an academic question but a matter of survival !

Identity is subject to change. It is not something ?static', given for all 
time. It is something that grows or withers away. Just as with individuals 
there is a process of development ( circumstances, events, inner growth).

The present identity of the European Union is not robust but rather confusing. 
It resembles a Picasso portrait, conflicting lines, different levels not the 
unity of a human face. Or if we want to put it in diplomatic language : "the 
European Union is going through an identity crisis". It is still uncertain 
about its place in the surrounding world.

Internal and external aspects of European identity

Structure (decision making process : efficient /democratic/ transparent) ; 
Policies : (agricultural, regional, social ; just/unjust, greater inequality, 
exclusion) ; Economy : what are its objectives ? To serve man and society, to 
enable all people to live a decent existence. Or is it just the other way round 
: man and society sewing economics ? Accepting the tyranny of the iron laws of 
economics as an absolute, a given reality, something that cannot be changed. 
Economy as a goal in itself growth, maximisation of profits and power, etc.). 
Environment. Something to respect / to manage with great care and 
responsibility, or something to exploit whenever we feel like it.

Jean-Marie Lustiger, Nous avons rendez-vous avec l'Europe, 1991, Paris, Mame.

If we consider the economic aspects, the European Union looks quite impressive 
: large internal market, major trading partner on a world scale, strong 
industrial base, great financial power, among highest GNP per capita, good 
infrastructure, seat of multinationals, impressive number of cars and TVs, etc.

A realistic vision is however obscured because of the highly unreliable way of 
assessing what is really going on (inadequate measuring instruments, poor 
definition of GNP). Counting ourselves rich at the expense of well being. The 
European Union is one of the greatest polluters in the world, among the 
greatest consumers of energy and raw materials. About 20 million unemployed, 
many poor. An increasing commercialisation of society, progressive 
deterioration of social and medical care, a degradation of education and 
universities (result-oriented, relevant for economy but at the detriment of 
education).

The opinion Europeans have of their own identity does not necessarily 
correspond with the perception of non-Europeans. While we may be indulging in 
the ?civilising role' of Europe in a largely ?underdeveloped world', other 
nations, e.g. in the south of the Sahel or in the Pacific, may be inclined to 
curse the European Union (or some of its member states) for its selfishness 
(Common Agricultural Policy) or arrogance (nuclear tests).

For the perception of our identity, deeds (actions/policies) are more relevant 
than words (declarations). African cattle-growers and local food producers 
suffer more from the negative effects of dumping of the European Union's 
agricultural surpluses than they benefit from fine words about the vocation of 
the European Union in this world. The same applies to import restrictions, 
policies on debts etc.

And what about the striking contrast between the commitments made in Rio and 
Copenhagen and the slowness of action of the European Union ? It should be 
clear by now that a drastic revision of extravagant production - and 
consumption - levels in the highly industrialised nations is a prerequisite for 
a sustainable world society. There will be no hope for an effective control of 
the environmental crisis without far- reaching adjustments in the modern world. 
The position of the European Union is here of particular relevance.

A common foreign and security policy : Picasso's portraits provide a good 
illustration of the present chaotic state of affairs. The unity of a 
well-integrated external policy is still a long way off. Several Commissioners 
are responsible for different aspects. Efficient policy-making is not possible 
with the present set-up under which the hands of External Affairs are strictly 
tied by the Council members ! A common security policy is not just around the 
corner ! And what will a common defence policy ultimately look like ? Will the 
European Union adopt an offensive stance with a nuclear component and a large 
military establishment or will it be content with a police function preferably 
in the context of the UN ? In the latter case, much more emphasis than to be 
found in the preparatory notes for the Intergovernmental Conference should be 
given to conflict prevention also in the economic sphere. This would also lead 
to a strict limitation of the production of and trade in arms and ensure 
careful scrutiny of R&D activities in the military industry.

In search of the ?heart and soul' of Europe

Reflecting on the structure of the European Union, its capabilities and 
policies, is certainly very important as a preparation for practical 
propositions on how to express the European identity. But at this critical 
moment of a deep existential crisis both in our nations and in the world, it 
seems to me that serious attention should also be paid to the deepest 
motivation of our acting. In other words, we should tackle the fundamental 
spiritual crisis, so manifest in modern society. Jacques Delors' pertinent 
question as to the ?heart and soul' of Europe has to be answered.

Indeed, what are we doing with this huge Brussels machinery wielding so much 
power ? What are we heading for ? More power and material well being, 
especially for the stronger elements ? Or do we have a vision of a sustainable 
and just society ? A society in which all people, whatever background 
(religious/cultural/national), have a right and the possibility to lead a 
decent life ? A society in which people have respect for life in all its forms. 
A European Union with a balanced relation between the individual and the 
community, sustained by citizens who realise that each individual has a unique 
value that may never be reduced to an object for exploitation. Man, freed from 
the yoke of a one-sided fixation on economics, rediscovering that he is 
infinitely more than the homo economicus to which he is now being reduced by 
the apostles of greed in a materialistic culture.

Man, part of a greater whole, knowing that he does not live by bread alone ! 
Man, with a destiny, a meaning of life, sharing life and goods in a responsible 
way with human beings in a global world.

Of crucial importance for identity is the spirit providing the deepest 
motivation for action. One rightly stresses the importance of Christianity for 
Europe. But what is this spirit now ? If we look at today's reality, it will be 
difficult to maintain that we are living in a Christian Europe. Secularisation, 
materialism, hedonism and individualism are dominating modern culture. For many 
people, the sense for the transcendent has evaporated. (Many people have lost 
the sense for the transcendent ?) The ?horizontal' approach with its emphasis 
on a so-called autonomous "l " has taken its place.

This has far-reaching consequences for our relations with mankind (ourselves, 
fellow- beings, the other and future generations) towards things and towards 
nature.

In all three fields, man has lost his orientation, his bearings. Vacl?v Havel 
has made some relevant observations on this loss of the sense of the 
Transcendent (loss of spirituality ?) and the many problems of today as well as 
the incapacity of politicians to solve these (to come up with solutions).

Spiritually, the European Union is in a rather poor (desolate) state. 
Impressive technological and economic achievements abound, but a very meagre 
spiritual basis. Crisis of meaning is widespread, psychological problems, 
crime, drug abuse, lack of respect for life with an annual death toll of 50,000 
in road accidents, although (this number could be drastically reduced through 
the implementation of certain measures. Television programmes of a deplorable 
quality, etc.

We need a european identity

Only an effectively structured European Union (internally and externally) will 
be a relevant factor on the international scene, where the final real decisions 
affecting directly the life of all Europeans will be taken.

v No European State is any longer in a position to meet the challenges of the 
modern world (ecological crisis, unemployment, poverty, rise of world 
population, armed conflicts, the spectacular increase in the destructive power 
of modern arms).

v The dynamics of power relationships (nations as well as multinational 
companies). Affected are therefore not only countries like the USA, Japan, 
Russia, China, East- Russia, etc. but also the major international players in 
finance and business.

v The serious threat to a ?social market economy' caused by overwhelming global 
forces call for a common ? Answer.32 We cannot go on with our present rate of 
production / consumption/ destruction of the environment. If we want a 
sustainable and just society, we must make progress in the direction of ?enough 
is enough'. We need to accept an upper limit and pay much more attention to the 
unsustainability of the present economy.

We know that our planet cannot cope with a similar rate of economic expansion 
on the part of all other nations.

We know that 4/5 of mankind is in urgent need of development (aid ? ?) in order 
to enjoy a decent standard of living and to escape from hunger and starvation. 
We must therefore strive for a reduction of our impact on the environment if we 
are serious about a basic sense of humanity. This cannot be achieved by 
technological means, fiscal and other measures alone. A fundamental change in 
mentality, in basic orientation, is needed.

The obvious response to the global challenge should be a worldwide decision to 
set course towards a sustainable future. Heading off a collective disaster by 
managing the planet's scarce resources and environment in a responsible way. 
This will however take time - too much time. But why shouldn't the European 
Union - with its considerable economic leverage - take the initiative with a 
step-by-step approach, making it clear to the world that the one-sided emphasis 
of ?unlimited material growth' at the expense of real well-being is a fatal 
error ? Recognising that other areas may be in need for further economic 
development but that we have reached the stage of ?enough is enough'. That we 
are no longer victims of the false ideology that man has endless unlimited ? 
material needs which have to be satisfied. After all, it is from Europe that 
the industrial revolution and the expansion of our economic system started. A 
convincing European Union signal, illustrating a decisive turn in our economic 
approach might trigger off similar reactions in the US and Japan.

Politically speaking, this deliberate change of course will not be easy. It 
could be greatly furthered if the European Commission entered into a creative 
relationship with

32 Michel Albert, Capitalisme contre capitalisme, 1991, Paris, Seuil.

those egos that promote a similar course of action. There may be a greater 
concern among many people about the loss of ?qualify of life' than many 
politicians think.

One of the challenges is, as we have seen before, the rediscovery of the great 
spiritual resources that have been at the origin of the European civilisation. 
There will be no renewal of the European society without a fundamental 
reappraisal of man's place in the Universe. The relation with the Ultimate. As 
we live in a multireligious Europe, this is a shared responsibility not only 
for Christianity but also for other religions.

In the present situation of a morally disoriented Europe, a simple appeal for 
?norms and values' will not be enough. Much more is needed. Values without deep 
spiritual roots will not stand up in the present harsh reality.

For example : the threat to the social model. It would be an illusion to think 
that it will be possible to maintain the ?social market' - now under great 
pressure - without a strong spiritual basis.

Europe urgently needs a radical change from its one-sided materialistic - 
horizontal approach to an attitude towards life which opens up towards 
transcendence. Christians throughout the ages have discovered in the cross of 
Jesus Christ the ultimate symbol - and reality - for this meeting of the 
horizontal and vertical lines. Jews and Muslims have other ways of expressing 
the reality of the transcendental experience.

Where to find it ?

The great temptation is to look for ?identity' in the structure of the European 
Union, its institutions, regulations, acts and policies. And may be even among 
its declarations. Ultimately, the European Union identity depends on the 
political will of member states and the way the European Union uses its 
competencies. But political action of states is highly dependent on public 
support. Whether there will be sufficient understanding for necessary ?painful 
policies' depends on the motivation of citizens. It is thus a question of the 
spirit. What moves (activates ?) people nowadays ? The spiritual desert in 
which many people live is well illustrated by the statement of a Dutch cabinet 
minister (environment) that ?the car cannot be touched because it is an 
essential element of the identity of a person' ! I doubt whether the European 
Union could ever develop its identity on the basis of this narrow materialistic 
concept of human nature.

The European Union identity will not be found in wonderful words about our 
common history and common sources of inspiration. Not in digging up long 
forgotten treasures of the past but in acting together. On the basis of 
adequate policies, meeting the present challenges.

Just three examples of missed opportunities - all in areas on our doorstep :

1. The end of the Cold War and breakdown of the communist system provided a 
unique occasion for a visionary approach of the new reality : a large-scale 
well-integrated economic co-operation programme addressing the actual needs.

2. The handling of the crisis in ex-Yugoslavia. 3. The creation of an 
all-European security system in the spirit of the Paris Charter. On these 
historic occasions, action would have given a greater impulse to the 
development of a European Union identity than a thousand seminars and numerous 
solemn declarations of politicians.

Unless the European Union develops an adequate structure enabling it to deal 
effectively with the challenges of the modern world, we will not discover our 
common identity.

It is up to the member states to take a hard look at reality and decide to 
break the impasse of the present "Impossible Status Quo" !33

Some practical and some more fundamental suggestions

v Continue and expand the excellent initiative on the Carrefours d'Europe. If 
necessary even under more modest circumstances !

v Bring spiritual and cultural leaders together with politicians, managers, 
journalists etc. Strive for an equilibrium between bureaucrats of institutions 
and ?independent' Europeans.

v Consider the possibility of a substantial increase of inter-European exchange 
programmes for students and scholars.

v Bring forcefully to the attention of Council members and public opinion that 
the European Union has now really arrived at a crucial point which will be 
decisive for its future : whether it will develop an identity or become a 
non-entity. making clear that the latter option will inevitably also lead the 
proud member states on the same road towards oblivion.

v Deepening of the European Union should have an absolute priority over 
enlargement. The danger of further diluting the identity is great.

v Translating the recognition that the spiritual factor is crucial for the 
European identity in an active support of all those religious and cultural 
forces that can contribute to the spiritual revival in Europe.

A new spirituality will liberate us from the dominance of economics, breaking 
the spell of the golden calf ! This would pave the way for a humane and just 
society, offering the possibility to lead a full human life in which values 
such as love, beauty, truth and goodness together with human rights, solidarity 
and justice are guaranteed for us and coming generations !

33 Club de Florence, Europe: L'impossible Status Quo, 1996, Editions Stock.

European identity and political experience

Mario Soares

Let me make two points clear to start with. Firstly, Europe is not just the 
European Union ; secondly, I have no doubt that a European identity does exist.

When my country embarked on the process of joining the European Community it 
did so for very specific reasons, namely to consolidate our newfound freedoms. 
Portugal, like Spain, had just emerged from nearly half a century of 
dictatorship, and it was essential to consolidate our democracy to prevent any 
resurgence of military power. We could only counter this threat by turning to 
Europe.

This is not to say that we did not consider ourselves to be a European country 
before. Let me remind you that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to 
export the culture of our continent to the Indies, Japan and America. We were 
also the first to bring back to Europe the riches of the civilisations and 
cultures we discovered there, which were still completely unknown here. We have 
always regarded ourselves as Europeans, even if our country is on the periphery 
of the continent and faces the Atlantic and Africa.

I have mentioned the importance of sporting European colours to consolidate 
democratic institutions that were still in their infancy. But there was another 
reason for Portuguese membership : we were very late in embarking on 
decolonisation. Having been the first colonial empire in the world, Portugal 
was also the last. But once our colonial empire had finally disappeared, 
fifteen years later than those of our neighbours and in difficult 
circumstances, and we found ourselves face to face with new sovereign states 
such as Cape Verde, Guinea, Angola and Mozambique, we felt that integration in 
the European Community was the natural counterweight to this change.

We joined the European Community at the same time as Spain, in June 1985. At 
that point, it was not yet the European Union. Since then, we have seen the 
collapse of the Communist world and many profound changes. The European 
Community had two objectives : the most obvious, founded on Franco-German 
friendship, was to preserve peace on the continent. The second was to keep up 
with the United States and the Soviet bloc. With the end of bi-polarism, the 
Community found itself plunged into a completely new situation.

This was when Europe rediscovered its own values and escaped from the 
geographical and historical confines imposed by the Cold War. We realised that 
Europe was much larger and started to ask ourselves what we should do with the 
"rest" of the continent. We realised that we had a duty to reintegrate this 
"other Europe" into our Community onow a Union. But of course it is no easy 
matter : what will become of a Europe that was difficult enough to run with 
just 10 or 12 or 15 members when it expands to include 21 or 22 members in a 
few years' time ? This is

a problem for the European institutions but it also touches on the very future 
of the concept of the European Union.

Europe cannot just be the European Union within the frontiers as they stand 
today. Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, have the right to join our Community : their 
history and their contribution to the European identity fully entitle them to 
membership. They have contributed as much to the European ideal as we have. 
From these countries, I hear the same arguments that Spain and Portugal used 
for joining the European Community : we have freed ourselves from dictatorship, 
we have become a democratic country through our own efforts, without Europe's 
help.

We also had the right to democracy at the end of the Second World War, because 
Great Britain and France had defeated the dictatorships and Germany counted for 
nothing in the immediate post-war period. Who allowed the dictatorships to 
reemerge in our country, if not "democratic Europe" ?

Though it pains me as a socialist, I have to say that if there was one champion 
of the rehabilitation of the dictatorships at that time it was the British 
Foreign Secretary. Driven by fear of Soviet pressure and fear of Communism in 
Western Europe o in both France and Italy o the democratic states of Europe 
took the view that it was more sensible and served their own interests better 
to overlook the fact that there were two dictatorships on their doorsteps. From 
1945 to 1974, we continued to live under a dictatorship because of this sort of 
indulgence, because of the treachery of the democracies. They did everything to 
perpetuate the dictatorship in our country. It was the easier option : it was 
either that or risk letting Communism in through Spain or Portugal or somewhere 
else. This was the main consideration.

Once we had rid ourselves of these dictatorships, our first concern was to 
assert that we were democracies and that you bore a share of the responsibility 
for our period of fascist or authoritarian rule. This gave us every right to 
sit at the same table as you, particularly as our contribution to Europe has 
been every bit as important as yours in the past.

This is what we said to the European states. It is what our friends in Central 
Europe are saying to us today and it remains equally valid. They too can claim 
the right to sit at the Europeans' table. Economic reasons cannot stand in the 
way of this right. This is why it is our duty to find ways of dealing with the 
current situation and welcoming these states into the Union.

The question of greater Europe is not confined to Central Europe alone : Europe 
is also linked to the Mediterranean Sea and the Mediterranean basin. It is 
linked to what happens in Eastern Europe. Where does Europe end ? On the 
Russian steppes ? Is Turkey part of Europe ? I was in Turkey quite recently and 
found that those who want to modernise the country proclaim their Europeanness. 
And rightly so. They have reasons for doing so. Is the European Union to be a 
club reserved exclusively for Christian countries o Protestant, Catholic and 
Orthodox ? Are countries with a predominantly Muslim population not allowed to 
join ? Is there some sort of religious bar to membership ? I do not think so. 
But the problem of Turkey is a serious one for Europe.

How are we supposed to deal with an unprecedented situation like this on the 
institutional level ? On this point, my mind is made up : I agree with 
Chancellor Kohl that the construction of Europe is a vital matter for the next 
century, a matter of war and peace. Even if we had no problems of identity, if 
we fail to move towards a stronger European Union, if we fail to move rapidly 
along that road, Europe will find itself without a voice and will lose the 
importance it once had in the world. It is not just a matter of being heard 
throughout the world, but of having the strength to impose certain models which 
we believe encapsulate so many of the ideas which this ancient continent has 
produced over the years. The European model reflects serious humanist concerns 
based on fundamental human values : values of liberty and reason, solidarity 
and social justice. They are values without which the human race cannot 
successfully enter the XXIst century.

In other words, Europe's interests are not limited to Europe alone. It is not a 
matter of simply asserting Europe's position in the world, but of going further 
and making a contribution to the world as a whole. If we fail to make this 
contribution, something will be missing, and we will fail to explore the paths 
that are most rational and most conducive to human happiness.

This is how I see the situation and why I believe in Europe. I may sometimes 
criticise Europe with other pro-Europeans, but I do so because of my love for 
Europe. I do so because I am not afraid of the march of European progress, 
quite the contrary. I do not think there can be a solution which would unite 20 
or 30 European countries but leave these essential values as the individual 
concern of each State. They must be pooled and managed collectively o and this 
is true of security policy and foreign policy as much as anything else. But it 
cannot be done without supranational European institutions. It cannot be done 
unless we move towards a united Europe, towards a measure of European 
federalism. I know that this word makes some people uneasy. But I have no 
qualms about using it. Like the founding fathers of Europe, I favour a 
structure which does not have to be identical to the one that already exists. 
It should be a new and original design. Others have already said as much in 
this seminar. It should evolve towards a United States of Europe, along more or 
less federal lines, perhaps with its own original touches, but basically 
federal, with a certain common direction. This requires the sacrifice of 
certain elements of states' traditional sovereignty, the pooling of national 
sovereignties. Without this, we cannot build Europe.

There may come a moment when we have to say to those Member States that do not 
want to go all the way that they have no right to stop the others from going 
further. This path offers the best solution available in the short term.

When I speak of Europe in such glowing terms, it should be clear that I do not 
mean Europe to be simply Europe of the free market, the single market, economic 
and monetary union and the single currency. Of course I support this, but only 
if we build a genuinely political Europe as well. Because if it is to be only 
an economic and monetary Europe I will withdraw my support. That is not the 
sort of Europe I am interested in. I am in favour of an economic and monetary 
Europe if it goes hand in hand with a political Europe and coordinated foreign 
policy : a Europe which defines its own security collectively, a Europe that is 
also a social union, a Europe of the people, a Europe with popular 
participation. I want to talk about the participation of

Europe's regions, which is as important as that of the states. I want to talk 
about the participation of the cities, the people, the NGOs, the general 
public.

This pluralism, this diversity, is the key to achieving a multi-faceted Europe 
capable of fulfilling its role in the world. This role is essential for 
maintaining equilibrium in the world and creating a new international order, 
without which disaster beckons. We are concerned about human destiny, about the 
environment, drug abuse, unemployment, the problems that preoccupy the younger 
generation. These are very serious problems which also affect the United States 
and, even more acutely, Japan, to mention just two important countries. But 
when we look at the countries of Southeast Asia, it is clear that their 
prosperity is based quite simply on slave labour. I was in China a few months 
ago, where I had the opportunity to meet various leading Chinese figures. My 
impression is that China is heading for an explosion that will be completely 
out of control, an explosion even more dramatic than the one that tore apart 
the Soviet Union, because things cannot go on as they are. You cannot maintain 
such a level of capitalist exploitation ; you cannot have a city like Shanghai 
with a very high level of development and staggering wealth and at the same 
time have public officials earning a pittance. A street trader in Europe would 
not accept such a meagre salary. Such inequality can only be sustained by high 
levels of corruption or crazy distortions which I am convinced will lead to 
social upheaval.

As I see it, the world is completely deregulated at the moment. We are all well 
aware of this. The United States cannot run the world on their own, even if 
they want to. This is why it is important that Europe carries out its allotted 
task. It is a major challenge for Europe and for us Europeans. We must be ready 
to respond boldly. Unfortunately, we have not seen any great leaders stand up 
to defend this sort of point of view loudly and clearly. For electoral reasons, 
political leaders find themselves conditioned, tied by the rules of normal 
democracy, the rules of parliamentary democracy. They want to please and 
respond to the immediate present, with the result that they cannot rise to the 
responses they are called on to make. They cannot provide answers to a much 
more serious problem which touches on the deepest aspirations of the 
individuals and societies of today. This is why we sometimes find ourselves 
deadlocked.

We can see that concern is becoming widespread in Europe : there is 
disenchantment about Europe in the countries which joined the European Union 
most recently. It is clearest in Sweden, but is not limited to Sweden. The same 
disappointment is to be found in Germany, France, Spain and Portugal, not to 
mention Great Britain. What is the cause ? There is a mistaken idea that the 
European Union is a bureaucracy based in Brussels which concerns itself with 
the details and tries to regulate the life of the ordinary citizen instead of 
allowing him a voice and the chance to do something for himself. I believe this 
to be completely false, but this is how things are perceived. Matters are made 
worse by the fact that the situation for young people is very difficult : 
unemployment, delinquency, drugs, social exclusion, AIDS are all problems which 
particularly affect young people. The solutions proposed tend to have an 
economic or technocratic slant : they are not the answer to these human 
problems. This is what young people feel and this is why people are pessimistic 
and suspicious about Europe.

Europe has to be relaunched. The European identity has been described as a 
changing concept and this is true. It has to incorporate the great values and 
aspirations of the

different nations. If we could do that, if we had the courage to do it and to 
speak the truth when dealing with the big problems, if we were able to resolve 
these problems by taking steps towards closer European integration, Europe 
would begin to respond positively to the great challenges of the day.

These great challenges may be stated in very simple terms : either we are able 
to understand and create a true political, economic, social and cultural union, 
which, for all its diversity and pluralism, remains Union on a grand scale, or 
we are unable to do this and we take a step backwards into the outdated 
nationalism and disorder of the past. For me, this is one of the most worrying 
prospects, not only for Europe, but for humanity as a whole.

How to define the European identitytoday and in the future?

Ingmar Karlsson

The European identity is often described in a somewhat high-flown manner as 
having its foundations in antiquity ; free thought, individualism, humanism and 
democracy had their cradle in Athens and Rome. On the other hand, neither Greek 
nor Roman civilisations can be described as European. Both were Mediterranean 
cultures with centres of influence in Asia Minor, Africa and the Middle East. 
When Alexander the Great set out to conquer the civilised world of his time, 
Egypt, Persia and India, he had no idea that he was acting on behalf of Europe.

Christianity, with its roots in Judaism, was also a Mediterranean, non-European 
religion. Byzantium was a Christian power which marked the limit to Roman 
claims of sovereignty, as did a large part of post-Reformation Europe. The 
result of the schism between Rome and Byzantium was the development of another 
culture in Russia and south-eastern Europe. Following the Reformation, a large 
part of continental Europe was preoccupied for several centuries with religious 
wars and rivalry between Protestants and Catholics.

More recently, historians have played down our antique heritage. European 
ideals are traced back to the Renaissance instead and the concept of the 
individual as the smallest and inviolable element of society. The Enlightenment 
and the French Revolution contributed to the demand for freedom, equality, 
fraternity, democracy, self-determination, equal opportunities for all, clearly 
defined government powers, separation between the powers of church and state, 
freedom of the press and human rights.

The ideas that are triumphant in Europe today are those of market economy and 
democracy. By definition, this also includes the USA, Canada, New Zealand and 
Australia as European powers. However, Europe does not only represent modernity 
and tolerance but religious persecution, not only democracy but fascist 
dictatorship as well - Hitler was the first to use the idea of a European house 
- for the collectivist ideals of Communism, colonialism and racism disguised in 
scientific terms.

In other words, European identity cannot be defined on grounds of cultural 
heritage and history, and even less can it be used as the basis for European 
domestic and foreign policies. The explanation is as simple as it is obvious. 
Economic and political integration between European nation-states has not yet 
progressed so far that it is possible to speak of coincidental interests. It is 
possible that they have diminished somewhat with the collapse of communism and 
disappearance of a common threat.

Instead, there is a growing need for a national identity and sovereignty in 
proportion to the increased levelling of European politics and economy. The 
greater the sense of diversity being under threat and that standardisation is 
rising, the greater the antipathy

to projects that promote integration. The European Community is already a 
reality as far as production and consumption is concerned, but there is popular 
opposition to a culturally standardised community. The more blurred and 
controversial the future of a common Europe appears to the common man, the more 
the nations will mobilise themselves against Europe.

In the interests of not becoming counterproductive, a balance must be struck 
between enthusiasm for the European project and awareness that European Union 
legitimacy will be in short supply in the foreseeable future. This view need 
not paralyse efforts towards integration, however. The phrase "an ever closer 
union between the peoples of Europe" could instead be useful in its general 
vagueness.

There may also be some validity for European integration in Edmund Burke's wise 
words that political order cannot be created at a drawing board but has to 
emerge gradually. This, in turn, means that politicians and bureaucrats must 
concentrate on immediately essential and clear issues and on measures the 
consequences of which can be judged by citizens themselves.

Every new European competence must therefore be explained in concrete terms in 
order to achieve acceptance. Consequently, the issues should be carefully 
examined that require a European solution and which withstand centralised 
interference, particularly because an incorrect decision on, say, the 
agricultural policy, can have far-reaching consequences and undermine the 
credibility of Union projects.

A stable foundation of legitimacy for the European Union will only be achieved 
when Europeans perceive a European political identity. This does not imply that 
they would no longer feel themselves to be Swedes, Finns, Frenchmen or 
Portuguese, but that the sense of a European common destiny was added to these 
identities. Even after four decades of European integration, this development 
is still in its infancy.

Nation-states evolved after a long period, often filled with conflict. They are 
ideological constructions and a national identity is ultimately a political 
standpoint. A prerequisite for a strong national identity is that citizens have 
a sense of loyalty to the state because it redistributes social resources and 
provides education, infrastructure, a legal system etc.

The same prerequisites hold true for the creators of Europe as well. As in the 
process that led to the creation of European nation-states, the European Union 
will also be an elite project for the foreseeable future and the European 
identity an elite phenomenon. To be sure, the technocrats and bureaucrats in 
Brussels are a new European elite but are they representatives of European 
culture or merely an international "civil service" who, with the passing of 
time, increasingly alienate themselves from the people whose interests it is 
meant to serve ? Is there not a danger that institutional loyalty will become 
stronger than "European awareness" which may spread among the elite of member 
nations ?

The problem becomes more aggravated when these people arouse negative 
stereotype reactions among citizens. Eurocrats are not regarded as the first 
among Europeans, but as overpaid bureaucrats interfering in matters that do not 
concern them.

The creation of national symbols and myths and the rewriting of history were 
also part of the process by which European nations were formed. First came the 
state, followed by the formation of a national community within the territorial 
framework by means of gradual integration and cultural standardisation.

The architects of nations emerging in the XIXth century used such means as 
national conscription, compulsory education and the supra-regional spread of 
the growing mass media to create contact between the centre and periphery and 
seemingly natural boundaries on the basis of geography, language, ethnicity or 
religion. Above all, the arrival of national educational systems and mass media 
contributed to the sense of belonging to a national community, expanded 
cultural horizons and getting away from provincial narrow-mindedness.

Efforts to create a European identity

Brussels appears to have had this in mind when taking the decision in 1984 that 
the EC would improve contact with its citizens and, so to speak, create a 
European identity, centrally and from above.

At a summit meeting in Fontainebleau, the European Council found it "absolutely 
essential that the Community fulfil the expectations of the European people and 
take measures to strengthen and promote the identity and image of the Community 
vis-?vis its citizens and the rest of the world".

The Adonnino Committee was set up for this purpose, with the task of starting a 
campaign on the theme of "A people's Europe". This work would be based on a 
quotation from the preamble to the Rome Treaty on "an ever closer union among 
the peoples of Europe", and on the Tindemans Report of 1975 which recommended 
that Europe must be close to its citizens and that a European Union could only 
become reality if people supported the idea.

An outcome of the work of this committee was the decision that the EC should 
have its own flag. When the flag was raised for the first time at Berlaymont on 
29 May 1986, the EC hymn - the "Ode to Joy" from the fourth movement of 
Beethoven's ninth symphony was played for the first time. Thus, by means of a 
flag and European national hymn, the Union acquired the attributes of a 
nation-state. A European Day was also established. The choice fell on 9 May, 
the date on which Robert Schumann held a speech in 1950 that resulted in the 
first community, the European Coal and Steel Community.

Consequently, the Adonnino Committee appears to have assumed that a European 
identity could be created on the initiative of politicians and bureaucrats. In 
1988, the European Council decided to introduce a European dimension into 
school subjects such as literature, history, civics, geography, languages and 
music. Legitimacy for future integration would be created by invoking a common 
history and cultural heritage.

This has resulted in a book, "Europe - a history of its peoples", written by 
the French history professor, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, which, to quote the 
author, covers a period from 5.000 years ago to tomorrow's news.

The European Union is thus attempting to create a European identity from above. 
A common European frame of reference is being created by means of a 
standardised set of symbols and myths. A European driving licence already 
exists and an European Union passport, although it took ten years to agree on 
its colour and appearance. The Maastricht Treaty introduced the new concept of 
a citizen of the Union, although his/her rights and obligations have still to 
be defined. These activities are incompatible with the often-recurring theme 
that European integration must be a natural process and not imposed from above.

Every European people has its more or less genuine historical myths, 
experiences and view of history. There is no European equivalent to the 
Acad?mie Fran?aise, Bastille, Escorial, La Scala, Brandenburger Tor or the 
opening of Parliament at Westminster. There is no European Unknown Soldier. 
Jean Monnet rests at the Panth?on in Paris. The fame of Robert Schumann's 
resting place at Scy-Chazelles cannot compete with Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, 
where General de Gaulle lies buried.

Common history has been experienced by many as against and not with each other 
in the great European wars. The main task of the "Europe-makers" cannot 
therefore be to provide Europeans with a common identity originating in antique 
or medieval times but to develop political self-confidence and ability to act 
in line with the role of Europe in the XXIst century. This will not happen by 
elevating the European Union to a free trade zone in accordance with British 
ideas, or into some kind of American- style United States of Europe which is 
imposed on people against their will.

Basis for European patriotism and identity

Only long-term, patient growing together will provide the basis for a 
democratic Europe comprised of its citizens. For many decades, the EC was a 
practical community. We are only now en route towards a community of destiny 
and experience. If anything is be learnt from European history it is that 
Europe as an entity can only be completed in agreement with and not against the 
will of the nation- states and what they consider to be their legitimate 
interests.

At present, regionalism and nationalism undoubtedly have another strength than 
paneuropeanism. Perhaps Europe needs some ?multi-national shocks' in the form 
of an aggressive Russia, a new Chernobyl catastrophe or Gulf crisis to show our 
total dependency on the USA in conflicts that affect vital European interests.

Other problems will also arise that call for joint action and which in due 
course will aid the establishment of an identity, such as for example :


o the necessity to use our common strength to meet the technological challenge 
from Japan and the USA and, in the not too distant future, the "new tigers".

o common action to overcome environmental problems, pressure from immigration 
and to handle international organised crime. A successful European policy in 
these and other areas could help in the development of "constitutional European 
patriotism" in the same way that "loyalty to the Constitution" 
("Verfassungspatriotismus") became a reality in the Federal Republic of

Germany , replacing the nationalism that no German was able to feel after the 
terrors of the Hitler period.

An absolute precondition for developing a common political culture and 
constitutional patriotism in the European Union is that its citizens are 
informed about and participate in the super-national decision-making process. A 
European public opinion must emerge before there can be talk of a European 
citizenship.

As stated above, the European identity has no historical reference. European 
trade unions do not exist at present, nor other interest groups nor, above all, 
trans-boundary European parties and a European general public.

The Maastricht Treaty brought this deficiency into focus, negotiated as it was 
by experts in a European code incomprehensible to its citizens. As a result, 
the reputation of the European Union was further diminished. A prerequisite for 
a solid European identity is therefore the development of European parties, or 
at least a party network, and political debate on trans-boundary issues. When 
employer organisation and trade unions begin to meet at a European level to 
look after their members' common interests, we will have taken the first steps 
because politics will have reached beyond the national level.

The optimum we can achieve at the end of such a process would be a European 
"constitutional state" and European Union citizenship that is felt to be 
genuine and not an artificial construction.

The way is both difficult and long, however, and more likely to be curbed than 
speeded on by enlargement eastwards. It has proved difficult enough to bridge 
the cultural and linguistic differences between Catholics and Protestants, 
Latins, Germans, Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians in Europe. The task of 
integrating the Baltic, Slav and Orthodox Europeans will be infinitely more 
difficult. The larger and more heterogeneous membership becomes, the greater 
the need to differentiate between various member states and a Europe moving at 
different speeds and where the political union, monetary union, common security 
and defence policy and inner market will not extend over the same geographical 
areas. A union of up to 30 members at varying stages of economic development 
can only function if it is organised along multi-tracks and at different 
levels.

Efforts to create a Europe around the hard core of a monetary union with the 
Euro as a magnet could be counterproductive. Magnets work in two ways, either 
drawing particles towards them or pushing them away. There is a clear risk that 
a monetary union will not only have a magnetic effect but the reverse as well.

Cultural diversity o obstacle or prerequisite for a European identity ?

European political oratory often maintains that Europe can only be defined 
through its unique heritage of diversity and lack of conformity and that, 
paradoxically, its very diversity has been its unifying principle and strength.

However, European linguistic diversity is probably the greatest obstacle 
standing in the way of the emergence of a European political identity and thus 
the European democratic project. While multilingual European democracies 
certainly exist, the prime example is Switzerland, which has elected to remain 
outside the European Union.

A democracy is non-existent if most of its citizens cannot make themselves 
understood to each other. Rhetoric apart, not even leading European politicians 
are today able to socialise with each other without an interpreter, and very 
few can make themselves understood to a majority of European voters in their 
own language. Not one European newspaper exists, except elitist newspapers such 
as "The European". There is no European television programme apart from 
Eurosport, and most of its viewers watch matches between nations. In short, 
there is no public European debate, no European political discourse because the 
political process is still tied to language.

The question of language is basically one of democracy. Political discussion 
would be divided between A and B teams with many excluded because of their lack 
of linguistic knowledge if only English and French were the official European 
Union languages. At the same time, the problem of interpreting is becoming 
insurmountable. Over 40% of the European Union administrative budget is already 
spent on language services. Eleven languages make 132 combinations possible in 
the translator booths. The addition of another 10 Eastern and Central European 
languages brings this figure to 420 and 462 if Maltese is added. Some form of 
functional differentiation will therefore be necessary, making some languages 
more equal than others. although this would have a negative effect on European 
public opinion in the small member nations.

At present, an average 66% of European Union citizens are monolingual while 10% 
speak at least two foreign languages. Ireland is at one extreme with 80 and 3 % 
respectively, while only 1% of the population in Luxembourg is monolingual and 
no less than 80% speak at least two foreign languages. In order to function as 
Europeans and safeguard our interests, we Swedes must become tolerably fluent 
in at least one other major European language apart from English. Swedish 
remains the basis of our cultural heritage and domestic political discussions, 
but in order to play a constructive part in Europe we must develop into 
citizens of Luxembourg as far as language is concerned.

Consequently, Europe is neither a communication- nor an experience-based 
community, to use German expressions. Both factors are indispensable in the 
development of a collective political identity. This is created by sharing 
experience, myths and memories, often in contradiction to those held in other 
collective identities. They are, moreover, often strengthened by the comparison 
with those that are distinctly different. Not just Robert Schumann, Alcide de 
Gasper, Jean Monnet and Konrad Adenauer should be counted among the fathers of 
European integration, but Josef Stalin as well. The Cold War enabled a sense of 
unity to be mobilised among Western Europeans, but who can play the role of 
opposition now in order to provide Europeans with a common identity ? The USA 
is part of the same circle of culture. Japan is of course a homogeneous and 
different society but is too far away and does not constitute any political or 
military threat. And its economic strength is directed primarily at the USA.

There is an inherent danger that Europe will choose to define itself vis-?-vis 
its surrounding third world neighbours and that the Mediterranean will become 
the moat around the European fort. The creation of a pan-European identity 
risks being accompanied by a cultural exclusion mechanism. The search for a 
European identity could easily take the form of demarcation against "the 
others", a policy which leads to a racial cul-de-sac while at the same time the 
mixing of races continues to rise in Europe.

A European identity must therefore be distinctive and all embracing, 
differentiate and assimilate at the same time. It is a question of integrating 
the nations of Europe, with their deeply rooted national and, often, regional 
identities and to persuade citizens to feel part of a supra-national community 
and identity.

Can half a continent with 370 million citizens and 11 official languages really 
be provided with a democratic constitution ? In the ideal scenario for the 
emergence of a European political union, the European Parliament must first be 
"de-nationalised" and this assumes a European party system. Secondly, it must 
have the classic budgetary and legislative powers. The Council of Ministers 
must be turned into a second chamber and the Commission should be led by a 
"head of government" appointed by Parliament.

National parliaments would consequently lose their functions. They could be 
transformed into federal parliaments in smaller states, as in Germany, and 
would thus have the same position vis-?-vis Brussels that they have today. It 
is easier said than done to abolish the democratic deficit by giving greater 
powers to the parliament in Strasbourg, because the dilemma of representation 
versus effectiveness would immediately come to a head. If every parliamentarian 
represented about 25.000 citizens, as is the case in Sweden, the gathering at 
Strasbourg with about 15 member nations would have to be increased to 15.000. 
If in the name of effectiveness, the number was reduced to 500, with 
constituencies of more than a million citizens and everyone was guaranteed an 
equal European vote, Luxembourg would not be represented and Sweden would have 
a maximum 13 representatives in the European Parliament. It might be capable of 
functioning but could not by any means claim to represent a European 
electorate. The democratic deficit would continue.

Europe as an entity can only be achieved with the help of and not against the 
nations and their special characteristics. European integration will not be 
completed because of some natural necessity but only if enough political energy 
is brought to bear. The future of the European Union rests therefore in the 
common interests of member states and not on the political will of a European 
people for the simple reason that such a thing does not exist.

Regional and national identities will grow in importance in a world that is 
becoming every more difficult to oversee and which is ever more rapidly 
changing. Citizens will be living more and more in a state of tension between 
several loyalties, their home district, state, nation, Europe and the 
international community, increasingly required to think globally but act 
locally. New ancient regimes and new regions are emerging everywhere in Europe. 
By actively supporting the process of regionalisation, Brussels and individual 
capital cities can show that European Union is taking its institutions closer 
to its citizens and thereby creating greater scope for cultural and linguistic 
diversity than the nation-states have been capable of doing. By

contributing to a new vision - the Europe of diversity and regional government 
based on subsidiarity - the idea of Europe can be made more comprehensible and 
attractive.

In this way, the regional identity can strengthen the emergent European 
identity. Now that regions are increasingly turning to the European Union in 
their fight for resources for regional development and to attract investment, 
Brussels and the European Union will be seen as the friends of the regions 
rather than their national capitals.

The nation-state is thus being nibbled at from two directions. At the same 
time, we will experience a renaissance for nation-states and regions and their 
gradual merger in a transnational community. Those who support the region and 
nation must not necessarily reject Europe, but the traditional nation-state 
with community-based traditions, identity and loyalty will remain indispensable 
as a strength and source of political stability. Nation-states are therefore 
essential in order to legitimise a new European order but structural asymmetry, 
conflicting interests and unexpected courses of development will lead to 
relations between the nation-state and European integration that are difficult 
to manage and oversee. Europe will continue therefore even in the future to be 
squeezed between what the German philosopher Karl Jasper called "Balkan and 
Helvetian tendencies", i.e., between Yugoslav and Swiss development models.

Nations are not great once and for all, but are created. They are what Benedict 
Anderson called "imagined communities". The idea of a European community cannot 
arise from the German concept of "Blut und Boden", or from the idea of a 
European "Volk" or a European "cultural nation".

Nor can the European identity be created through central directives from 
Brussels or member nations' capital cities, or by being conjured forth at 
seminars and conferences but rather through the citizens of individual European 
states knowing that they personally have something to gain from integration and 
they hereby say yes to the European Union in their daily referendum.

As we have already experienced, a forced unifying process produces counter 
reactions in all the member countries. A European identity is possible only 
where there is a community of interests among the citizens. If this is missing 
or not felt to be sufficiently strong, the European Union will have a 
democratic deficit irrespective of what new competence is given to the European 
Parliament.

The single market will bring about trans-boundary mobility and thereby albeit 
slowly contribute to the emergence of a European identity but it will be one of 
many relativised by different national and regional identities (such as, for 
example, Benelux, Ibero-Europe, the Nordic countries). Immigration will 
strengthen the multicultural component that is indispensable for a new sense of 
identity. At the same time, it will nourish the social tensions and racist and 
nationalist comments, but can also lead to political mobilisation and the 
insight that these problems can only be solved at European level.

A European ?supra-nationality' will be accepted first in situations where there 
is no hierarchy of national, regional and supra-region identities but when 
every individual knows about them as self-evident and as part of their daily 
life. A policy for preserving diversity will thus be a precondition for 
creating a European identity that

neither should or would become a replacement for a national identity but which 
can create support and strength for political institutions that are neither 
national nor the framework of a European superstate.

Questions of cultural policy, education and a historically deep-rooted social 
system and values must therefore remain the concern of nation-states. It is 
thus a case of render unto the nation state that which belongs to it and to 
European Union that which is the European Union's ; a security and foreign 
policy structure, the single market, a common crime, asylum and immigration 
policy.

The hitherto clear links between state and nation will thus grow looser. 
European integration from this point of view will not mean that a new 
superstate will appear but that power is spread out. Cultural identities will 
remain rooted at national level but will spread further down to ever more 
distinctive regional identities. We will have neither a new European superstate 
or sovereign nation-states. Nations will not disappear but we will have nations 
with less state and national cultures with softer outer casings.

Relations between European and national identities could take the shape of a 
foreign and security policy in the wide sense as a fundament of a common 
European political identity, a "nation" to which one feels a sense of political 
belonging without the need to feel part of a European "Volk" or a European 
"cultural nation".

The German concept of a nation would endure at national level although in its 
original form as conceived by Johann Gottfried von Herder in which a nation 
need not necessarily express itself as a state. By standing on secure and solid 
cultural ground, every people with their own distinctive character and cultural 
capacity achievements can contribute to an international community.

Cultural nations will thus become divorced from a territory. People will have a 
sense of belonging to a special area and its cultural and political history but 
this area need not necessarily be linked to a nation-state with defined 
territorial boundaries. The European political identity could emerge in this 
way while at the same time leaving the cultural national or regional identity 
intact while European diversity will not only remain in place but grow as well. 
The democratic deficit can never be abolished unless this kind of development 
takes place, nor would the project of a European Union be realised.

European identity - A perspective from a Norwegian European, or a European 
Norwegian

Truls Frogner

Norway is a part of Europe, but not a member of the European Union. We are 
integrated in many ways, and for practical and economic purposes (EEA Treaty) 
we are close to membership. The road to full and political membership is to be 
found in our visions and roots, both part of our European identity. In this 
respect, the Norwegian challenge is similar to that of all other Europeans. 
Since Europe has many countries on its fringe, the approach towards European 
identity could start from one of them.

Even the opponents in Norway said before the referendum in 1994 ; "YES to 
Europe, but no to the Union"... Membership of the European Union can never be 
more than the means to achieve other and higher goals. Integration as an 
instrument of cooperation is necessary, yet not sufficient. Institutions should 
reflect the dreams and needs of the population, and transform them into 
practical solutions of which they can approve.

The forthcoming "Citizen First" campaign may succeed in reminding the people of 
Europe of what has already been achieved during the four decades since the Rome 
Treaty was signed. Still it seems to many people that politics on the European 
level is something different and remote from national politics at home. And 
worse, sometimes national voices blame "Brussels" for unpopular measures, 
without giving credit for the positive impact of European decisions. Does the 
European Union suffer from a scapegoat syndrome ?

There are at least two answers. It is necessary to normalise European politics. 
To work for European solutions is a part of a general struggle for values and 
visions on the individual, local, regional and global level. In this 
perspective Europe is not something special, but the bridge between near and 
far. Europe is the gate to the big unknown world and the port when coming back.

The second answer is to develop a consciousness of our own European identity 
and the common ground of European values and history. The point is not to 
cultivate something European which is different than national, local or global, 
but to compose some ideas, sentiments and values as a platform, as an 
inspiration, for taking part in facing common challenges. The Norwegian 
"naysayers" cleverly connected their opposition against the European Union with 
a combat for positive ideals. But the supporters also fight for higher values, 
a better society and a sustainable development, however not yet communicating 
this message with the same one-sided self-confidence and conviction. Maybe 
because real Europeans have ambiguous minds ?

Belonging to the European Community is often said to be the major reason why 
the supporters are in favour of membership. It has to do with a cultural and 
geographical identity, also shared by many Norwegians. (Remember that rejection 
may be an indirect affirmation ; as the 5-year-old boy asked his mother : "Do 
you think God knows we don't believe in him".) Identity is not free from 
contradictions. A lot of people are fond of their village or party without 
accepting all aspects. The alternative to a poor marriage is not necessarily 
divorce, but a better marriage. European identity does not exclude criticising 
the European Union. The next question is always : what is your proposal or 
alternative ? The dual critical and constructive approach represents the 
dialectical dynamism of European history o compromise after crises.

Safety is related to belonging. It is a positive feeling of security in itself 
and with others, in contrast to lacking individual faith and confidence in a 
greater community. The security in NATO, which almost all Norwegians rely on, 
is an example of a historical acknowledgement that no nation can or should 
stand alone to protect peace and prevent war. Only a binding international 
cooperation can offer the security of being treated equally in accordance with 
common rules, to avoid occasional infringements. Security in Europe is an idea 
which pervades our approach to political, economic, social, cultural, 
environmental and other issues.

Solidarity is, according to Andr? Malraux, an intelligent form of egoism. In a 
European context this means it is in our own interest that outside countries, 
groups, regions etc., should be helped to develop their human, social and 
economic resources. We should have learned that too deep differences create 
instability with the potential for upheaval, conflict and war. Solidarity in 
Europe is about taking care of each other across national borders, demonstrated 
in practice by supranational measures for cohesion. European solidarity 
includes the rest of the world. The next debate in Norway may illustrate a 
shift from the last campaign. A possible ?yes' to the European Union next time 
can not mean better prospects for economic benefits for a prosperous nation in 
a Europe enlarged with poorer countries. It would demand an obligation and 
commitment to higher values, a safer society and a sustainable development in a 
broad Europe.

Then, as part of European identity, we find the classical political values.

Democracy was invented and developed in Europe, further developed in America 
where the most democratic constitution at the time was established in 1776. 
Thereafter, new democratic reforms emerged and the idea of government by and 
for the people spread throughout the world and gradually, or after revolutions, 
unfolded in a variety of forms, within the framework of the nation-state. But 
democracy is still not fulfilled anywhere, due to the fact that the idea of 
democracy is a relative concept, a complex concept and a political concept.

The relative concept of democracy implies that it is related to something 
outside the reach of voters and their representatives. Those who oppose 
federal, supranational democratic initiatives are without proper answers to the 
challenges from transnational companies, international capital movements, 
cross-border pollution and abuse of national sovereignty, for instance nuclear 
tests, suppression of ethnic groups and aggression against neighbouring states. 
From this, we realise that identity is closer to interdependence than 
self-determination. Identity is more a social, less an individual,

phenomenon, but still both exist in Europe where the (im)balance between 
collective and personal responsibility has been a driving force in society.

National independence does not have the same importance and impact as before. 
Now and in the future, nation-states have to find democratic ways of 
cooperation which preserve the positive dimensions of independence and limit 
its negative elements. Paradoxically, the notion of supranationality was also 
accepted by major parts of the opponent movement in Norway, in spite of their 
exaggerated belief in national self-determination. They approved of 
supranational regulation of national independence linked to peace, defence and 
security matters in the UN and NATO, at the same time they refused 
supranational regulation of national independence with almost the same 
countries in the European Union on civilian and political issues !

The Union is not in opposition to the nation. Supranationality is the strife to 
unfold the potential of the nations which they are unable to fulfil within 
their borders. A strong Union can not depend on weak nations. A strong Union 
strengthens its parts. Identity is not only unity in itself, but also a unity 
of contradictions. A political Union is how to bridge contradictions and the 
arena where different forces can do so.

Identity and democracy are both complex concepts, and consist of an inner power 
balance between different components. Both include dynamic processes. Neither 
identity nor democracy can stand still. It is a question of live or die. For a 
European it is important that each political institution has limited power, and 
nevertheless is capable of achieving political goals, while simultaneously 
securing an appropriate balance among representatives from Member states and 
the people of Europe. Democratic cooperation among many countries, some hundred 
parties and 280 million voters is more complicated. However, democracy must not 
only be dependent on small-size communities to function. Large-scale democracy 
becomes increasingly important to avoid close political bodies becoming local 
theatre. On the other hand, distant democracy presupposes information and 
dialogue, transparency and control mechanisms in order to avoid the danger of 
living its own life.

Nothing is more fitted to stimulate attention to a distant political structure 
than conflicts stemming from disagreement on how to solve the real problems of 
today and the future. From this fact follows a need to abolish unanimity and 
expand QMV. This will not be in contradiction to the need for consensus and 
respect for vital national interests. A European Union has in place of final 
goals, some common visions of peace, prosperity, social cohesion and 
partnership with nature. The Union is nurtured by the struggle between, and 
from, various interest groups working for their visions.

Europe is indivisibly connected to its cultural, Christian, humanistic, 
scientific, social and professional values, o the identity of Europe in our 
heart and minds. Europe has a magnificent heritage of art and science, 
architecture and philosophy, and a abundance of ideas and religious schools 
within a system of tolerance and legal protection, which make our continent 
attractive, exciting and challenging. Without expelling the tragedies and 
catastrophes Europe has brought upon herself and other continents, it should be 
permitted to remember that the cultural and political ideas have conquered, and 
will continue to overcome, prejudices, xenophobia, racism and other 
discriminating and suppressing powers.

And without degrading anyone, it is also convenient not to forget that the 
Nordic and European model of cooperation and conflict solving in the labour 
market, is advanced from a global point of view. Of course, there will always 
be nuances between various interest groups concerning the balance between 
politics and market, labour and capital, public and private sector, tradition 
and modernisation, men and women etc. But nobody should claim their interests 
to be superior to those of others or to suppress fundamental democratic and 
human rights.

A European House should be built on pluralism and equality, as the European 
wants for him- or herself. And as we are changing and enlarging this house, we 
strive for the good life today and tomorrow. European identity must be found in 
something we already know. Identity is recognition. To be a European is coming 
home to my own house.

European identity an anthropological approach

Maryon McDonald

Questions about European identity and about the future symbolic and practical 
content of ?Europe' are questions about the meaning of Europe : what does 
Europe mean, and what could it mean, to those who are its citizens ?

Questions or worries of this kind were not paramount when the EEC began. 
Between the late 1960s and the present day, however, questions of ?legitimacy' 
and ?identity' have come increasingly to the fore.

Legitimacy

There have been two principal periods during which questions of legitimacy have 
been raised.

First of all, concerns were voiced in the late 1960s o a period when it was 
first noticed that the original, self-evident legitimacy of the Community, 
defined against a past of war, was losing relevance to a new generation. Amidst 
demographic changes, increased studentification, and the re-invention of the 
category of ?youth', a new ?generation' was self-consciously establishing 
itself in contra-distinction from its parents. Old certainties such as 
modernisation, progress, reason and positivism, many of which had informed the 
EEC project, were put in question. This was a time when cultural diversity was 
invented, a time of civil rights marches in the US, a time of decolonisation 
and counter-cultures, a time when the alternative worlds of regionalism, 
particularism and relativism appealed.

The world was de-naturalised, and the ?West' was re-invented as a category that 
the young might affect to despise. For this new generation. ?Europe', far from 
being the triumph of civilisation over irrationality, tyranny and violence, 
easily slipped into synonymy with this new ?West' to become another metaphor 
for post-imperial castigation and self-castigation, or one from which the 
authenticity and difference of alternative realities might be measured.

The response of the EEC at this time was to try to draw young people, against 
the prevailing current, back into the ?European' fold through youth programmes, 
largely exchange schemes, and then much later on through the active 
?conscientisation' programmes of the ?People's Europe' project. The structural 
funds also developed, partly in response to the economism of the EEC.

The second period, which launched new worries about legitimacy, has come about 
since the launch of the Internal Market. This unprecedented flurry of perceived 
?interference' from Brussels (however sound the original intention), with more 
directives in a shorter time than ever before, was bolstered and coloured by 
two other

sets of events. On the one hand, the Berlin Wall fell, and many old certainties 
fell afresh with it. On the other hand, the Maastricht Treaty was negotiated 
and seemed to threaten national identities in a context in which, with the 
Internal Market, Brussels ?interference' already appeared as established fact. 
Going beyond, nationalism had once seemed morally right in the years after the 
Second World War, but now this was widely perceived as a moral and political 
threat. Not surprisingly, referenda results sent any certainties still 
surviving in Brussels diving for cover.

Identity

The ?People's Europe' project of the 1980s enlisted the old package of XIXth 
century nationalism to try to re-create Europe and European Identity o to make 
people feel European. But this old package is heavy with problems :

Firstly, the package that nationalism used to invent nations, a package of 
language- culture-history-people-territory, is not available in all its 
elements to Europe. Europe cannot easily construct itself, or be imagined, 
through this package, therefore, and be convincing. It will also seem to be 
competing with nation-states.

Secondly, the time span for the construction of European identity has been 
relatively short (mere decades where some nations have had two hundred years) 
and the construction process highly visible. Where the nation may feel 
?natural', Europe is inevitably going to feel ?artificial'. And for those from 
national backgrounds which lack a historiography of self-conscious construction 
of the nation (such as Britain and Denmark, for example), some aspects of the 
self-conscious construction of Europe easily appear to be little more than 
propaganda.

Thirdly, the old package for identity construction was born of certainties that 
no longer pertain in a world of diversity and relativism. Europe is now often 
more easily identified with a capacity to question apparent certainties rather 
than with the old certainties themselves.

Fourthly, the old package assumes identity to be monolithic and culture to be a 
homogeneous, clearly bounded entity. However, identity is contextual and 
relational


o and self and other, or sameness and difference, are constructed relationally 
in the context of daily imaginings and encounters. And fifthly, it is easy to 
lapse back into the full racial force of this old package o with the boundaries 
of Europe unrelativised and read as the boundaries of ethnic flesh. The freedom 
of movement of ?persons' is then rightly confronted with more uneasy reflection 
on the definition of a ?person'.

History

History was an important element in the nationalism package, and many histories 
of Europe have been encouraged as part of the ?People's Europe' project o 
apparently in the hope of appropriating the tool of history for the creation of 
European identity. However, we might say that there could, within current 
models of historiography, be two main ways of writing the history of Europe.

Firstly, there would be the old, historicist model, in which Europe might be 
assumed to exist from Ancient Greece, say, up to contemporary European Union. 
This is the historiography that nationalism used and that the histories of 
Europe now tend to use also. All the ethnological bric-a-brac of the classical 
world become virtual flag- wavers before the Berlaymont, and contemporary 
ideals are read back into the classical world and onwards to the present day. 
This historicism, which worked for nationalism, is the style of the vast 
majority of officially sanctioned ?History of Europe' texts ( whether 
sanctioned by the Council of Europe or by EC funding). In this history, a 
continuous litany of features deemed to be inherent to Europe is paraded : this 
would include Christianity, democracy, citizens' rights and the rule of law, 
for example. This litany was especially important when it was first 
constructed, after the Second World War and then during the Cold War, in 
opposition to the East, but its appeal is not always self-evident now.

The second kind of history of Europe would involve a history of the category of 
Europe. If we were to trace the history of the category of ?Europe' from, say, 
Ancient Greece to the present, we would find ?Europe' travelling through 
different conceptual systems, finding new meanings, becoming a different 
reality as it did so. The geographical boundaries expand and contract, the 
salient conceptual relations change, the moral and political frontiers and 
content shift considerably, and Europe is invented and re-invented accordingly. 
This is the kind of historiography that postmodernism would readily encourage, 
and it is one in which o unlike in the historiography of nationalism o the 
simple clarity of being on the right side of history is ideally and 
deliberately lacking. Moreover, this historiography would not allow any simple 
continuity to be read back into the past o whether of territory, culture or 
ethnic flesh, for example.

The advent of postmodernism does not mean that we have to throw out the old 
history altogether. We can put certain key aspects of these two kinds of 
history together in a productive way. Elements from the old historiography 
which gave Europe its moral and political content o such as democracy, 
citizens' rights and the rule of law, for instance o can become important 
elements in a new understanding of both ?Europe' and identity as relative or 
relational. Without lapsing into any old historicism, such historical elements 
o or any one of them o can simply be drawn on or cited as the occasion or 
context demands. In other words, history becomes self-consciously part of the 
present, and the history of Europe is no longer historicist litany but part of 
our critical self-awareness. History is then an awareness of the changing and 
discontinuous contexts in which ?Europe' has been created in the past, and 
offers elements in the present that we might now choose to assume relationally 
in order to assert things ?European'.

Europe in action

If identity is constructed relationally, the clearest identity is in conceptual 
opposition. You know most clearly who you are through what you are not. It is 
relatively easy to feel ?European' when visiting Japan, for example.

External relations might seem the obvious area in which a European identity can 
be constructed and expressed. However, this is also an area in which national 
identities are deeply embedded. Nation-states have in many ways been defined by 
their

external relations, and Europe does not have the now dubious advantages of war 
and empire, or of clear external threat, to help to define itself. It is 
perhaps readily understood that international linking systems help to avoid old 
fault-lines reappearing, but steps towards some notion of European 
representation in this area, or of more fundamental institutional reform, have 
to carry with them the same critical self- awareness that there is no better 
way to re-create and re-invigorate national identities and differences 
internally than to be seen to impose decisions from outside (?Brussels').

For most purposes, we are now in a Europe that can, in an important sense, be 
more relaxed about its identity. The stuff of a European identity is available 
in the policies and issues which the EU (whether all of it or part of it) 
creates : in environmental questions, in equal opportunities, in the market 
(where it most obviously both follows and creates globalisation), in the social 
arena, in Trans-European networks, in food and health, and so on. Many of these 
areas have been re-thought (equal opportunities is no longer about the ?women's 
rights' of the 1970s, for instance, but about issues such as gender and the new 
family etc.) and others still await re-juggling and rethinking. Any one area of 
policy can, for better or worse, contextually enlist people to a ?European' 
self-consciousness (as we have seen recently in the BSE scare, with different 
sections of the British population suddenly calling for European compensation 
and solidarity). It is in its policies, in practice, that European 
identification comes alive.

No one is ?European' all the time, just as no one is Spanish, Portuguese, 
British or French, and so on, all the time. There are moments when being a 
father, being a businesswoman, being a tennis-player, or being from Coimbra 
(etc.) are the salient identifications, and these identities would normally 
occupy much of one's waking life. The overarching ambitions of an older 
European -identity-construction-kit do not take this into account. Just as the 
certainties once inherent in the symbolism and narratives of large political 
parties are having to change and even give way to single-issue politics, so a 
post-federal Europe has to look for recruitment through the contexts of issues 
and practice.

So, Europe exists. ?Europe' and ?European' exist as categories and people are 
contextually recruited into them, and there have been many successes of 
identification. Europe exists in action o in the contextual identification of 
people with specific policy-areas. Bargaining and compromise are acknowledged 
as the means to achieve desired policies internally, and the achievement of 
desired policies makes people feel better about being European, and more ready 
to compromise elsewhere. And so on. Europe, for many, is not a project, and the 
old narratives can be alienating. The future symbolic content of European 
identity resides in practice and action o requiring carefully re-thought 
policies, and the very European capacities for questioning and reflection, for 
self-criticism, and now the acceptance o without any naive federal model of a 
Europe des ethnies and without cultural fundamentalism o of diversity both at 
home and elsewhere.

European identity and citizenship

Massimo La Torre

I do not intend here to deal, even tangentially, with the questions of God, the 
meaning of human life, transcendence, or universalism. What we are concerned 
with o if I am not wrong o is not "identity" in metaphysical terms, or either 
in anthropological, or mere cultural terms. Nor o I must confess o do I think 
that Europe without further qualifications is a useful category for political 
thought. By the way, the question "what is European identity" is also a trifle 
too broad and vague to find an appropriate answer. I assume that what interests 
and intrigues us is that identity which is relevant and needed for the 
construction of a political community at the European level. The identity to 
which I shall refer will therefore be that which derives or which is equivalent 
to membership to a polity.

It has been said that an identity can be built either from above or from below. 
This is, I think, quite correct. But I have some problems if one starts 
identifying top-down procedures with whatever legal measure, with law, and 
democratic down-top mechanisms with historical processes. Now, I think that the 
opposite is often the case,

i.e. that history has an authoritarian character and law, a libertarian one. 
History, if seen as a collective process, something given by an intrinsic 
immanent "telos" of human events, excludes the reflective intervention of 
individuals on the direction of their social life. Destiny even if shared in a 
community is never democratic. On the other side, law is not necessarily a sum 
of authoritarian or repressive provisions. Law is conventional, whatever the 
legal doctrine says or affirms about it ; it is made by reflective and more or 
less explicit processes : as a matter of fact a custom becomes a legal practice 
only when it is contested and is reaffirmed either by collective majoritarian 
behaviour or by judicial decisions. Law should be contestable in order to 
direct human conduct. But if the law is made, the real question will be whether 
it is made by one, the few, or the many. We are then called to choose the 
system of law we prefer. If we are liberal-minded, we would certainly have to 
opt for the rule given by the many, in a way that the law will no longer be 
authoritarian, that is, elitist, the artefact of the one or of the few, but 
will become the solid pillar of a democratic polity. I therefore dare to 
suggest that there is no political identity from below without democratic law.

Once the question of identity is reformulated in terms of political identity, 
that is, in terms of membership to a European polity, the main problem for us 
will be that of a European citizenship. In fact, it is citizenship what marks 
the political belonging, the membership to a polity.

European citizenship and democracy

I would like to argue for a strong concept of European citizenship. This is 
fully justified from an internal legal point of view, since article B of the 
Treaty of

Maastricht holds as one of the main purposes of the Union "to strengthen the 
protection of the rights and interests of the nationals of its member States 
through the introduction of a citizenship of the Union". We may also recall a 
decision taken by the European Court of Justice in Commission v. Council (May 
30, 1989), confirming the full legality of the Erasmus Programme, which is then 
justified with reference to the "objectifs g?n?rant de la Communaut?, tels que 
la r?alisation d'une Europe des citoyens".

A strong concept of European citizenship, characterised by a wide and rich 
range of rights ascribed through it and with independence from national 
citizenships, could powerfully contribute to solve at least partly but 
nevertheless effectively the democratic deficiencies of the European Union. A 
democracy is not only a representative or parliamentary political regime, but 
also and above all an association of equal citizens who are defined as such 
directly, that is without referring to intermediate social and political groups 
; democracy is not only or even mainly given by the majority rule applied to 
political decisions, but eminently by the existence of a public domain of free 
discussion. But in order to have this, some requirements have to be satisfied : 
a feeling and a sphere of common concern, first of all.

One could and should decide on matters which can affect more or less directly 
one's own life. Autonomy, which is an ideal principle presupposed by democracy, 
and expanded by this into a collective practice, makes sense only if it is 
exercised within the individual's scope of interests and action. Beyond this 
scope there is no right of autonomy ; even worse autonomy, as individual 
decision and action, can be transformed into its opposite : heteronomy, 
disruption of others' private sphere and life plans. This holds a fortiori for 
an extension of the principle to collective entities, that is, for democracy. A 
democratic decision cannot go beyond the area of interests which are at stake 
within a specific scope of (collective) action, that is, beyond the area 
constituted by those individuals who are the holders of the right of democratic 
decision. Now, citizenship as membership to a body politic, even if conceived 
only in formal legal terms, can contribute to create the idea of a common 
concern, the concern which is common to persons who bear a same legal and 
political status.

To have a public sphere of discussion another requisite should be fulfilled : 
that of having procedures which allow a fair discussion. But in order to have a 
fair public discussion we need to assume that people when entering into that 
discussion share at least a few and "thin" principles : contra negantem 
principia non est disputandum.34 We need to assume that people recognise 
reciprocally the autonomy (the possibility of a rational and independent 
action, in this case discussion itself) and therefore, the sincerity and 
dignity of their opponents or fellow discussants. We should thus assume that in 
a public discussion discussants have equal rights.35 Citizenship (and European 
citizenship is no exception) is just the sum of rights which allow subjects to 
take part in a political deliberation and to discuss in order to arrive at a 
reasonable and well pondered decision.

34 See A. SCHOPENHAUER, Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten. In achtunddrei?ig 
Kunstgriffen dargestellt, ed. by F. Volpi, Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 
38. 35 See R. ALEXY, Theorie der juristischen Argumentation, 2nd ed., Suhrkamp, 
Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 238 ss.


This can mean that in order to promote democratic progress in a society, we can 
first create statuses granting common and equal rights among its members, and 
then proceed to find out a viable institutional device to render visible and 
effective the public discourse which has started with the ascription of those 
statuses. In the terms of the present political and institutional situation in 
the European Union we can therefore plausibly believe that we can have European 
democratic citizens even before having at the supranational level institutions 
endowed with effective powers of political direction governed by democratic 
procedures. If we have a European citizenship as an independent status granting 
rights such as political rights (rights to vote and to be elected) both at the 
supranational and infranational level (see articles 8b and 8c of the Treaty of 
the Union), or rights such as the right not to be discriminated as an alien 
against a national (see article 6 of Maastricht Treaty), or rights such as 
freedom of movement to and through any member State and freedom of residence in 
them (see article 8a), then, even if the European parliament is not a fully 
developed democratic institution (because of the limited range of its current 
powers), we shall have a society of democratic citizens which will represent a 
better condition for developing democratic decision making at the supranational 
level. Of course, to this purpose the rights which we have mentioned should be 
fully deployed in all their potentiality, and break the limitations which 
articles 8a-8c still impose upon them.

When democratic institutions are deficient, democracy can also be developed 
through democratic citizens. In particular, in the European Union whose member 
States actually are all democratic regimes what is fundamental is not to 
maintain a nationalist or ethnical view of democracy. We need a free sphere of 
public concern and the sense of participating in a fair cooperative scheme. A 
stronger and richer concept of European citizenship can be extremely helpful in 
this direction.

Citizenship and ?demos'

"Es gibt keine Demokratie ohne Demos" o says Josef Isensee, a well-known German 
constitutional lawyer36 o, whereby he means that democracy is built upon a 
collective subject pre-existing to it, endowed with a proper intense life, that 
is, a people seen as a homogeneous cultural and ethnical body. Moving from this 
premise the German lawyer then draws the conclusion that there is no possible 
legitimisation basis for a European democracy (that is, for the European 
Union), since there is no European "demos", that is, a European folk.

It may also be remembered that the same author has successfully fought against 
the introduction, in the Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, of an aliens' right to 
vote for the election of district councils, endowed of indeed poor 
competencies, with the argument that State officials and representative bodies 
(at whatever level and of whatever size) enjoy of democratic legitimisation 
only and only if they receive their mandate from

36 J. ISENSEE, Europa o die politische Erfindung eines Erdteils, in Europa als 
politische Idee und als rechtliche Form, ed. by J. Isensee, Duncker & Humblot, 
Berlin 1993, p. 133. For a more sophisticated but in its core quite similar 
view, cf. D. GRIMM, Does Europe Need a Constitution ?, in "European Law 
Journal", 1995, p. 295 : "Here, then, is the biggest obstacle to 
Europeanisation of the political substructure, on which the functioning of a 
democratic system and the performance of a parliament depends : language". 
According to Grimm the European Parliament, even reformed and fully empowered 
as a legislative assembly, could not be considered as a European popular 
representative body, "since there is as yet no European people"(ibid., p. 293).

the "People" in its entirety, that is, from the "German People". The German 
Federal Constitutional Court unfortunately accepted Isensee's argument,37 thus 
reformulating the concept of "people" mentioned in article 20 of Grundgesetz 
("Alle Staatsgewalt geht vom Volke aus") into that of German people38 and 
twisting this into an ethnically defined community of fate39 which has 
constitutional relevance even before the drafting of the constitution itself. 
Democracy o says the German Court o should not be seen as "freie 
Selbstbestimmung aller", free self-determination of all (as was formerly held 
by the Court itself)40 but as a power which derives from a unique and unitary 
entity whose individual members as such have no constitutional right of 
participation to collective political decisions ; they can exercise democratic 
self- determination only jointly, only if considered as indivisible group.41 
The idea that democracy means the right for the people (in the plural) 
concerned by the laws to contribute to their deliberation and enactment is 
dismissed.42 Now, this is indeed a peculiar concept of democracy. It is based 
on a romantic idea of "people" or "nation, which has represented a reaction 
against the originally liberal concept of democracy, based on two basic pillars 
: individuality and public reason.43

In the romantic protest against liberal democracy, the very concept of 
political representation is deeply modified : representation is no longer 
expression of the concrete will of concrete individuals, but is rather 
expression of the existence of a community. In this second acceptation of 
representation, connected with a people idealised as a compact, tight and 
uniform ethnical entity, which has been cherished by "democrats" such as Carl 
Schmitt,44 even a dictator can "represent" a community, and in the end even a 
dictatorship may be legitimately be considered a... democracy. If, to have 
democracy what is required is on the one side a folk and on the other a special 
existential (ethnical) link between the folk and its leaders (this being the 
proper Repr?sentation of the folk), then it is not at all contradictory to have 
an authoritarian and even a totalitarian leader and nevertheless "democracy".45

37 "Das Volk, welches das Grundgesetz als Legitimations- und Kreationssubjekt 
der verfa?ten Staatlichkeit bestimme, sei das deutsche Volk"(BVerfGE 83, 60 
[65].

38 See also BVerfGE 83, 37 : "Das Staatsvolk, von dem die Staatsgewalt in der 
Bundesrepublik Deutschland ausgeht, wird nach dem Grundgesetz von den 
Deutschen, also den deutschen Staatsangeh?rigen und den ihnen nach Art. 116 
ABS. 1 GG gleichgestellten Personen, gebildet".

39 Cf. BVerfGE 83, 37[40] : "Das Bild des Staatsvolkes, das dem 
Staatsangeh?rigkeitsrecht zugrunde liege, sei die politische 
Schicksalsgemeinschaft, in welche die einzelnen B?rger eingebunden seien. Ihre 
Solidarhaftung und ihre Verstrickung in das Schicksal ihres Heimatstaates, der 
sie nicht entrinnen k?nnten, seien auch Rechtfertigung daf?r, das Wahlrecht den 
Staatsangeh?rigen vorzubehalten"(italics mine).

40 See, for instance, BVerfGE 44, 125 [142].

41 "Das demokratische Prinzip l??t es nicht beliebig zu, anstelle des 
Gesamtstaatsvolkes jeweils einer durch ?rtlichen Bezug verbundenen, gesetzlich 
gebildeten kleineren Gesamtheit von Staatsb?rgern Legitimationskraft 
zuzuerkennen"(BVerfGE 83, 60).

42 See BVerfGE 83, 60 [72]. See also BVerfGE 83, 37[42].

43 Cf. D. GAUTHIER, Public Reason, in "Social Philosophy and Policy", 1995, pp. 
19 ff.

44 See C. SCHMITT, Verfassungslehre, 3rd ed., Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, 
p. 209 : "Repr?sentation ist kein normativer Vorgang, kein Verfahren und keine 
Prozedur, sondern etwas Existentielles. Repr?sentation hei?t, ein unsichtbares 
Sein durch ein ?ffentlich anwesendes Sein sichtbar machen und vergegenw?rtigen" 
(emphasis in original).

45 "According to this view, democracy and dictatorship are not essentially 
antagonistic ; rather, dictatorship is a kind of democracy if the dictator 
successfully claims to incarnate the identity of people" (U. K. PREUSS, 
Constitutional Powermaking for the New Polity : Some Deliberations on the 
Relations Between Constituent Power and the Constitution, in Constitutionalism, 
Identity, Difference,

Indeed, in a democracy the people is not given by a "authentic" demos, but by 
its citizens, that is, by those individuals who publicly share a common concern 
and adhere to the fundamental principles by which the democracy defines and 
builds itself. In a democratic perspective "people is rather only a summary 
formula for human beings".46 As a matter of fact, there is no "demos" without 
democracy, that is, without individuals who recognise each other rights and 
duties. A people in political and legal terms (a "demos") is a normative 
product : "populus dicitur a polis" o wrote Baldus de Ubaldis in the XIVth 
century ; it is not there to be found before one starts the difficult 
enterprise of building up a polity. A people in political and legal terms is 
the outcome of political and legal institutions : it christalises around them 
("civitas sibi faciat civem" o said Baldus' master, the great Bartolus de 
Sassoferrato). A people in democratic terms, a demos, the people of a 
democratic polity, makes thus itself in as far as it aggregates along the rules 
of democracy. We can recall a famous phrase of Kant where he defines a 
constitution as the act of general will whereby a multitude becomes a people 
("den Akt des allgemeinen Willens, wodurch die Menge ein Volk wird").47

The story going on between people and democracy is more or less the same as the 
one of the egg and the chicken. Which came first : the egg or the chicken, 
demos or democracy ? Now, as far as the latter pair is concerned, we can 
confidently solve the enigma : they were just born together ! In short, es gibt 
kein Demos ohne Demokratie.

This is another reason, and a fundamental one, why European citizenship is so 
important : because it is a stone, and a founding one, in the building of a 
European democracy. Democracy needs at least two poles : decision-making 
authorities and citizens towards whom those authorities are called to account 
for their decisions and the corresponding behaviour. If we have democratic 
citizens, persons endowed with a rich patrimony of rights, we should then have 
democratic political authorities. If we have democratic citizens, we already 
have a demos. And to have citizens in legal and political terms is only a 
question of common rights and duties.

In the organic view of democracy, we are confronted with a dangerous confusion 
of the notion of public opinion with that of ethnical and cultural homogeneity. 
This confusion unfortunately seems to be perpetuated in the "Maastricht Urteil" 
by the German Federal Constitutional Court. "Demokratie, soll sie nicht 
lediglich formales Zurechnungsprinzip bleiben, ist vom Vorhandensein bestimmter 
vorrechtlicher Voraussetzungen abh?ngig, wie einer st?ndigen freien 
Auseinandersetzung zwischen sich begegnenden sozialen Kr?ften, Interessen und 
Ideen, in der sich auch politische Ziele kl?ren und wandeln und aus der heraus 
eine ?ffentliche Meinung den politischen Willen verformt. Dazu geh?rt auch, da? 
die Entscheidungsverfahren der Hoheitsgewalt aus?benden Organe und die jeweils 
verfolgten politischen Zielvorstellungen allgemein sichtbar und verstehbar 
sind, und ebenso da? der and Legitimacy. Theoretical Perspectives, ed. by M. 
Rosenfeld, Duke University Press, Durham and London 1994, p. 155).

46 B.O. BRYDE, Die bundesrepublikanische Volksdemokratie als Irrweg der 
Demokratietheorie, in "Staatswissenschaften und Staatspraxis", 1994, p. 322.

47 I. KANT, Zum Ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf, in ID., Kleinere 
Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie, Ethik und Politik, ed. by K. Vorl?nder, 
Meiner, Hamburg 1959, p. 128.

wahlberechtigste B?rger mit der Hoheitsgewalt, der er unterworfen ist, in 
seiner Sprache kommunizieren kann".48

I find it correct to affirm that democracy, in the sense of majority rule, 
presupposes some fundamental pre-legal conditions as much as some fundamental 
normative (moral and political) principles, a vigorous and open public 
discussion and an influential public opinion. Democracy as a political 
institution needs, in other words, a civil society. But first, a civil society 
does not necessarily need to coincide with some Schicksalgemeinschaft, a 
homogeneous ethnical and linguistic community. (Suggestively enough when the 
German Court tries to establish a clear-cut separation between national 
citizenship and European citizenship does not find anything better than making 
recourse to their different level of existential tightness : "Mit der durch den 
Vertrag von Maastricht begr?ndeten Unionsb?rgerschaft wird zwischen den 
Staatsangeh?rigen der Mitgliedstaaten ein auf Dauer angelegtes rechtliches Band 
gekn?pft, das zwar nicht eine der gemeinsamen Zugeh?rigkeit zu einem Staat 
vergleichbare Dichte besitzt").49 And, second, a civil society becomes a 
"people", in the sense of the sum of a polity citizens, only by interacting 
with constitutional rules and institutions. This point is clearly expressed in 
the following statement by Ulrich Preuss : "Neither pre-political feelings of 
commonness o like descent, ethnicity, language, race o nor representative 
institutions as such are able to a create a polity, be it a nation-state, a 
multinational state or a supranational entity. Rather, what is required is a 
dynamic process in which the will to form a polity is shaped and supported 
through institutions which in their turn symbolise and foster the idea of such 
a polity".50

Sure, a common language among citizens and between civil society and political 
institutions is needed in order to have public discussion and thus public 
reason. However, a common language can be a conventional or an artificial one. 
To be citizens, individuals should be able to communicate with political 
authorities : they should be able to understand each other. But this does not 
imply at all that to this purpose individuals should use their own mother 
tongue. Any other language will do, provided it is common to the parties.

It may be the case that in the European Union, we do not still have such a 
common language. Nonetheless, such a language can be found. We can think of a 
lingua franca emerging in the ongoing process of European integration or of a 
net of various national or regional languages employed each at a different 
level and for a certain occasion but allowing a continuous flux of 
information.51 Moreover, the common language does not need to be in any 
occasion the same. We could perhaps apply a kind of subsidiarity principle to 
the use of the different languages, choosing the one or the other according to 
the context and the dimensions of the issue at stake and the

48 BVerfGE 89, 155 [185], italics mine. For a powerful criticism of the 
constitutional Weltanschauung of the German court as expressed in this 
decision, see J. H. H. WEILER, Does Europe Need a Constitution ? Reflections on 
Demos, Telos, and the German Maastricht Decision, in "European Law Journal", 
1995, pp. 219 ff.

49 BVerfGE 89, 155 [184]. Italics mine.

50 U.K. PREUSS, Problems of a Concept of European Citizenship, in "European Law 
Journal", 1995, pp. 277-278. Italics in the text.

51 See what J?rgen Habermas opposes to Dieter Grimm's defence of cultural 
homogeneity as legitimation for democracy (J. HABERMAS, Comment on the paper by 
Dieter Grimm : 'Does Europe Need a Constitution ?', in "European Law Journal", 
1995, pp. 303 ff.).


people (and the languages) concerned. "Zweitens o as was pointed out by Edmund 
Bernatzik, a leading public lawyer of Austria Felix o kann man ja eine fremde 
Sprache lernen".52 In any case successful European experiences such as for 
instance the Erasmus Programme or the European University Institute in Florence 
(a university is an institution for which communication is of utmost relevance) 
show that it is possible at least to have a European university even without a 
European folk.

Europe admittedly is not a nation, European citizens as such either. It is high 
time perhaps that the one (Europe) and the others (European citizens) combine 
their plans, leaving the nation to its old-fashioned nightmares of blood and 
soil.

Belonging to a European polity

I am not so much concerned about the sociological evidence supporting the 
romantic thesis according to which peoples and nations are homogeneous ethnical 
and cultural entities. My stance towards this thesis is quite radical. Should 
it be true, should nations be Volksgemeinschaften, that would not still be a 
legitimisation ground for a genuine democratic polity. Since democracy is based 
on intersubjective discourses and representation, any process which would work 
without an explicit reference to individual and interindividual will formation, 
would not be appropriate to offer any democratic legitimisation to a polity. 
The demos of democracy certainly is not ethnos.

Yet, in order to defeat the foolish resistance, we might recall a historical 
fact : that in most cases the so-called Schicksalgemeinschaft is the outcome, 
an artificial product, of the State or of other reflective political 
processes.53 This was recognised in 1933 by Hermann Heller, he himself a strong 
defendant of nations as Schicksalgemeinschaften (and therefore quoted in the 
"Maastricht Urteil"),54 when he is confronted with the rise of the Nazi regime. 
"Weder das Volk noch die Nation d?rfen als die gleichsam nat?rliche Einheit 
angesehen werden, die der staatlichen Einheit vorgegeben w?re und sie 
selbstt?tig konstituierte. Oft genug war es [...] umgekehrt die staatliche 
Einheit, welche die "nat?rliche" Einheit des Volkes und der Nation erst 
gez?chtet hat. Der Staat ist mit seinen Machtmitteln durchaus im Stande selbst 
aus sprachlich und anthropologisch verschiedenen V?lkern ein einziges zu 
machen."55 Peoples in the cultural sense, in some cases at least, are not prior 
but posterior to the State's (sometimes brutal) intervention. The "ethnical" 
homogeneity

52 E. BERNATZIK, Die Ausgestaltung des Nationalgef?hls im 19. Jahrhundert, in 
ID., Die Ausgestaltung des Nationalgef?hls im 19. Jahrhundert o Rechtsstaat und 
Kulturstaat. Zwei Vortr?ge gehalten in der Vereinigung f?r 
staatswissenschaftliche Fortbildung in K?ln im April 1912, Helwingsche 
Verlagsbuchhandlung, Hanover 1912, p. 27.

53 Cf. what is said by Oswald Spengler, an author certainly not to be suspected 
of any "abstract", "formal", "thin", universalist liberal political views : ? 
Die "Muttersprache" ist bereits ein Produkt dynastischer Geschichte. Ohne die 
Capetinger w?rde es keine franz?sische Sprache geben[...] ; die italienische 
Schriftsprache ist ein Verdienst der deutschen Kaiser, vor allem Friedrichs II. 
Die modernen Nationen sind zun?chst die Bev?lkerungen alter dynastischer 
Gebiete ? (O. SPENGLER, Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer 
Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, DTV, M?nchen 1986, p. 779).

54 See BVerfGE 89, 155 [186]. Cf. the sharp critical comments by Brun-Otto 
Bryde (B.O. BRYDE, op. cit., p. 326, note 37).

55 H. HELLER, Staatslehre, 6th, rev. ed., ed. by G. Niemeyer, Mohr, T?bingen 
1983, p. 186.

of Pale in Bosnia could never be claimed as the outcome of an organic process 
of communitarian growth.

On the other side, as far as a European "demos" is concerned, we might affirm 
that, in spite of the lack of one (and only one) common language, there is 
something like a common European cultural identity. A common history, common 
tragedies and sufferance, common values, common "myths"o if you like56o have 
made of the French, the Italian, the German, etc., a common "people". Though a 
Sicilian can manifest some perplexity in front of a guy dressed in leather 
pants and a feathery hat drinking litres of beer, she will still identify him 
as a European like her, with more things uniting than dividing them.

In a democracy to be a citizen, to develop a sense of belonging to a democratic 
polity, one should overcome one's own rooting in unreflective communities, and 
be for a moment naked, a mere human being. Moving from this nakedness, one can 
then freely decide whether and how one wishes to cooperate. Only from this 
nowhere will persons be able to build up fair terms of co-operation, since in 
that hypothetical condition there will be no room for discriminatory grounds. 
Democracy as a polity of equals, should presuppose a kind of "transcendental" 
nakedness : "Democracy is a system of government according to which every 
member of society is considered as a man, and nothing more".57

The European identity meant as membership to a European polity can only be the 
outcome of a reflective adhesion to an institutional body ruled by democratic 
rules and offering a rich comprehensive set of rights. Thus, the European 
identity we are in search for passes through the consolidation of a meaningful 
European citizenship.

56 Cf. F. CHABOD, Storia dell'idea d'Europa, Laterza, Bari 1995.

57 W. GODWIN, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Moral 
and Happiness, ed. by I. Kramnick, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1976, p. 486.

From poetic citizenshipto European citizenship

Claire Lejeune

If I dwell from the outset on the fact that is in this reflection a matter of 
motives peculiar to a woman, a poet moreover, it is precisely because the 
citizenship of women and that of poets has been, at the very least since Plato, 
an object of exclusion. This is to say that both have on European culture and 
identity, or simply on identity, the other view, a different discourse which 
has difficulty in making itself heard in public debates. And yet, without it, 
there is no possible democratic dialogue.

Should we not begin by calling into question the very sense of the word 
"culture" ? The globalisation of the market economy has made culture a 
commodity, an object of production and consumption. To revitalise it is to give 
it back its function of well- thought-out action. In the situation of rupture 
that we are living at the end of the XXth century, cultivating one's mind means 
not only enriching one's knowledge of the heritage (patrimony) to be able to 
enjoy it and be able to transmit enjoyment of it, but chiefly becoming capable 
of generating a societal project of giving birth to the future ; literally, 
delivering our mentality of the XXIst century that it bears so painfully but 
which it is, however, alone in bearing. I am not of those who believe that 
"History has more imagination than men" : to trust history to invent the future 
is necessarily to go in its direction, let oneself go from upstream to 
downstream, in other words, leave it to its fatality, its determinism, whereas 
any creation supposes that thought resists the force of the mainstream, that it 
climbs back against the tide of the course of History, that it thinks about 
itself from downstream to upstream, that it returns to the sources of 
patriarchal History, not nostalgically to re-immerse itself in it, to find in 
it the ideal original purity, but with the ethical intention of bringing to 
light the foundations of this fratricidal civilisation the endless agony of 
which we are living through.

A desire for Europe

All those, men and women, who are set asking about the future of the planet 
through the collapse of the socio-political systems, the sudden growth of 
fundamentalist and nationalistic perils, agree that it will not happen without 
our mentality and behaviour undergoing genuine transformations. We know that 
the only power capable of undermining and undoing o from the inside o the 
supreme reign of money can only be born from the intensive development of 
conscience lagging frightfully behind that of science and techniques, in other 
words making each citizen aware of his/her responsibilities. That said, what is 
left is to put this awareness in hand, create and organise this network of 
resistance to generalised mercantilism, which culture will necessarily have to 
be in the XXIst century.

European citizenship does not exist when it is legitimised by a Treaty only ; 
when it has no other body than the lifeless body of law. For it to become 
lively and active it must be desired, it must be rooted in memory's emotional 
depths where desire reigns.

Creative citizenship cannot do without the order that comes from law any more 
than without the energy that comes from desire : it becomes of our daily 
aptitude to embody dynamically the conflictual relationship that the logic of 
reason and that of passion keep alive in us. From the beginning of our 
reflection lucidity obliges us to recognise that if Europe does not lack a body 
that makes law, it generally lacks the desire that makes sense, in other words 
passion, the emotional motivation that it needs to build itself. Without 
wanting to psychoanalyse our relationship with Europe, we shall have, for it to 
come to life, to feel it, to think it out in terms of feeling, and this feeling 
will have to find the words to spread. Between the murderous hatred of Europe 
that nationalism and the platonic love which inspires its bigots testify to, it 
is a matter for qualifying, embodying, humanising this European citizenship 
which is yet only an indispensable fiction.

The question is that of the existence in us o real or virtual, latent or 
revealed o of a "desire for Europe" (I say "a desire for Europe" as one would 
say "a desire for a child") with which the legislator has hardly been concerned 
up to now. If this desire exists, what does it correspond to in our imagination 
? Does there exist between the strata of the individual unconscious a European 
unconscious as one says that there exists an African unconscious ? Does an 
initiation into European citizenship necessarily come through discovering the 
places of this unconscious, through a recalling of the European mythological 
sources (Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic) ? We know today that 
myths are, in the memory, where high human energy is focused, the complex and 
very real places of a violence capable of both destruction and creation. 
Knowing the deep psychic manipulations that fundamentalism and nationalism, 
religious and political totalitarianism operate through the unequivocal and 
dogmatic interpretation of myths and symbols, what work of searching and 
critical analysis must be undertake, to become aware of these occult sources of 
history ? What work of deciphering and enlightenment to turn them into sources 
of creative energy for a transnational, transpolitical, transcultural Europe ? 
How shall we go about it so that traditions cease to be the prisons of thought 
? How to open them ? What must we do for them to become the very sources of 
freedom, of the fertility of thought, i.e. of something truly new ?

Everything leads us to believe that it is to the deep level of myths and 
symbols that we must go back, with open eyes, to free European imagination o 
the entire imagination o from its historical conditioning, to put it in a 
position to desire both the diversity and community of its destiny, in other 
words to motivate conscience to invest its high energies into the construction 
of a decompartmentalized society. It is clear that if this work of 
deconditioning, of genuine secularisation of mentalities, is not done, 
planetary solidarity is doomed to remain a utopia. Humanisation is not 
self-evident : it is the fruit of working continually on oneself, in other 
words a culture in depth, in the most down-to-earth sense of the term. No doubt 
even, it could be said that one is not born human, but that one becomes so. It 
is of this work without respite of thought on the contents of memory that a 
society of persons with unlimited responsibility can become.

At the time when women allow themselves o how painfully o to speak on the scene 
of political disaster, one must know that this speech is new, that its forms of 
legitimacy are still to be invented. A woman's citizenship does not have to 
recreate a political- cultural space, but quite simply to create it for itself, 
for the first time, from the ruins of a History where she ever had only the 
right to speak in the name of the Father and of the Son, in the name of a sex 
which is not hers. What seems vital to me today is to rethink the very concept 
of identity, to understand that the identity principle is also the principle of 
third-party exclusion. The identity logic is that which invalidates any truth 
stemming from the crossing of the thought of I and that of the other. It is on 
the rejection of disturbing strangeness, of impurity, of all that is not white 
or black, masculine or feminine, dominating subject or dominated object, that 
the xenophobic History of Nation-States was based. To want to rebuild on the 
same foundations would be wholly irresponsible.

The human resources that the history to come can rely on are those which were 
inhibited, doomed, sacrificed by patriarchal History to ensure the stability of 
its Order. If life on the planet stands a chance of saving itself, of 
over-arising, it is in the repressed part of patriarchal History that it is 
buried. What twenty-first century thought is going to have to set off, i.e. 
cultivate to re-generate oneself, is precisely what Patriarcate has excluded, 
gagged, burnt to ensure the continuity of its domination. This treasure of the 
possible is buried in our memory. It is up to each of us (woman or man) to work 
on their own mental field, to cultivate it for it to become an oasis of true 
life, a space of creation o both of projection and reflection o in the 
pervading cultural wilderness.

To sex the question of identity

Faced with the ravages of the evil of exclusion, the most universally 
prescribed remedy in this fin de si?cle is, of course, communication between 
people, sexes, ethnic groups, and cultures. The term "communication" enjoys a 
theoretical fortune without precedent and, on the other hand, the technical 
means that are available to us to attempt to communicate are today fabulous. 
But never, no doubt, has the hiatus between the virtual and the actual of 
communication been more gaping than today. It is in the daily passage to the 
act of communicating that communication breakdowns are the most flagrant, that 
powerlessness is the most tangible, the most dramatic. But it is nevertheless 
there where we strongly experience the difficulty of communicating, where we 
suffer from it personally in our flesh and in our heart, that desire lies, i.e. 
the chance of delimiting and overcoming it.

If communication is overabundantly provided with theory and technology, we are 
obliged to note that its ordinary practice is still in its infancy, that its 
language is still to be invented. The logos of communication are not the 
mono-logos, they are the dialogos, i.e. the language that is conceived and 
developed from the interactive knowledge of I and of the other. Dialogue is the 
communicating language, the interacting language, that which foils the 
principle of exclusion towards the impure third party. Now, dialogue o the 
dia-logic of included third parties o forms the subject of no initiation, no 
learning at school. It is increasingly manifest that a male or female citizen's 
dialogic capacity o his/her capacity of opening to the other o is the b?te 
noire of all forms of religious and political fundamentalism since the latter 
can only reign through exclusion, through division, to begin with, between the 
sexes. To create spaces where this aptitude to opening, exchange, dialogue 
which is responsible citizenship is to create conditions indispensable to the 
advent of a real democracy.

It is no longer defensible today not to sex the identity question, to stay deaf 
to the nascent speech of the other subject who is the I of feminine gender. In 
the light of the recrudescent fundamentalism it becomes impossible to ignore 
that the very matrix of any xenophobia is gyno-phobia, and not the reverse. 
Now, gyno-phobia is not only the work of men. We have to note that women 
themselves can be the patriarcate's worst accomplices. The fear- alas 
understandable o that they have of being themselves, i.e. different ; to dare 
think, say and act otherwise than men is still far from overcome ! If the 
common stake is the advent of a society of persons with unlimited 
responsibility, this supposes that an end be put to the childish moral codes 
based on making one another guilty. An adult feminism can only be a matter of 
solidarity not only of women among themselves, but between lucid women and men, 
in search of a happy outcome from the patriarchal impasse.

It has not been well enough seen how much the health of the political depends 
on abolishing the rule of linguistic clich?s, in other words, on the male and 
female citizen's aptitude to form one body, sexed body with his/her language. 
Everyone agrees that the great remedy to the ravages of hatred and indifference 
is love. Yes, but how can love be reinvented ? How to free Eros from the 
murderous empire of Thanatos ? It must first be understood that the 
eroticisation of the social body necessarily passes through the eroticisation 
of the body of the language and that the eroticisation of the body of the 
language necessarily passes through its sexuation...

In the architecture of a construction there is always o more or less conscious 
o a logic at work : a logic of closing or a logic of opening. A socio-cultural 
space is built according to the identity principle (xenophobic exclusion of the 
impure third party) or according to the solidarity principle (logic of 
inclusion of the impure third party). According to "eliquishness" or "workshop 
spirit". This is to say that an effective democracy can only come from an 
alliance without precedent of consciences where the humanity of the solidarity 
principle has prevailed over the inhumanity of the identity logic. It is at the 
level of the founding principles that the true political cleavage lies. We 
shall come alive out of this societal crisis, which most agree to qualify as 
structural, only if thought of the political becomes deeper o not without 
vertigo o till it gets right to the bottom of its rational and irrational 
foundations. A cultural act, if ever there is one !

In the current debates on the European Union's political structure, attention 
is often focused around the word nation. How can we revive a form of nation 
which is not a people's defensive withdrawal into itself, which is not in 
advance undermined by the demon nationalism ? The rights and duties of the 
European Union citizen will not be those defined by the Nation-States 
patriarchal History. The idea of a European fatherland must be given up. Europe 
will be a brotherland or will not be. To pass from a closed nation to an open 
one, of the fatherland-nation to the brotherland-nation will only be done 
through recognising the effective existence of two equal and different human 
genders, irreducible to each other. We no longer ignore that we are all 
bisexual, all impure, all half-castes. A woman's femininity is not a man's as a 
man's virility is not a woman's, which means that in the relationship between a 
man and a woman, there are four sexes in continuous interaction. If women's 
thought proves other than men's it is due not only to the cultural memory 
difference (the

feminine has not crossed history as dominating subject but as dominated object) 
but also to the difference in body memory. While a man keeps indelible the 
physical and emotional memory of having had a mother, he is deprived of having 
been the belly required by the generation of the other, this place not only of 
conception and gestation, but of expulsion of another. The link to otherness 
fostered by feminine identity is undeniably different from that fostered by 
masculine identity. To recognise this difference in natural and cultural memory 
between men and women, find words and images to make it noticeable and 
intelligible instead of continuing to ignore it does not go without giving 
thought what it needs to regenerate itself.

A postscript

In deciding to develop as a postscript to my introductory text the words that I 
spoke during the "Carrefour" I want to testify to that wave which passed among 
the participants and which Marcelino Oreja called : "the Coimbra spirit". For 
the European that I am, clearly there will henceforth be a pre-Coimbra and a 
post- Coimbra.

In the reflection document that Thomas Jansen has drafted, we are reminded that 
determining the "political finality" of the European Union must be done on in 
the perspective of a project of "world federation". I feel my European 
citizenship as an interface, as the indispensable mediator between my awareness 
of belonging to a local, regional community and that of belonging to the world 
community. European identity can make sense for an individual who wonders about 
what it means only in relation to a project of planetary citizenship. Even then 
this individual must of course be motivated to do so, which first assumes that 
he is wondering about the meaning of his own existence, in other words that he 
has reached a certain degree of maturity.

The concrete forms of the we can only be implemented if desired, imagined, 
thought up and meant by a multiplicity of I. A pluralistic world can only be 
built by communities of responsible singulars. Real inter-nationality, and 
inter-culturality can only be conceived and expanded on the basis of a 
well-thought-out and theorised practice of intersubjectivity which would be at 
the very basis of education.

The mental revolution which can be expected to lead to the advent of a world 
democracy is occurring at this moment within the family, school and university. 
The numerous signs given by the current mutations are still being perceived and 
interpreted as negative signs of disarray, signs of the monological order of 
the patriarchate collapsing. The high psychic energies o repressed by history o 
which these mutations are delivering will be translated by acts of destructive 
violence as long as they do not have available the tools of thought which 
enable them to transmute into creative power, as long as they have not found 
the language that actualises the strangeness of each man and each woman (the 
real object of xenophobia) as the very essence of their universality. Over a 
century ago, Arthur Rimbaud wrote in : La Lettre du voyant : "to find a 
language ; o besides, every word being an idea, the time of a universal 
language will come ! /.../ This language will be soul for the soul, epitomising 
everything, scents, sounds, colours, thought catching thought and pulling. The 
poet would define the amount of unknown waking up in its time in the universal 
soul : he would give more o than the formula of his thought, than the 
annotation of his march to Progress ! Enormity becoming norm, absorbed by 
everyone, he would truly be a multiplier of Progress."

The first condition of the advent of an adult Europe, responsible both for her 
own future and that of the planet, is that she worries not only about informing 
but about forming her citizens, not only about their access to the multiplicity 
of knowledge, but about their initiation into the act of thinking for oneself. 
Finding a language to express the strangeness, the continual newness of this 
self-generating thought, necessarily passes through the capacity of imagining, 
the development of the resources of the personal field and the collective field 
of our imagination. One is not born a creator, one becomes one. Even then one 
must discover the logics, the dialogics of creation and communication, the 
tools of interactive thought and learn to use them. Only a culture of 
intersubjectity will enable us to overcome the spiritual and affective handicap 
of modern mentality distorted by the exclusive reign of scientific objectivity.

What the thought of our times most evidently lacks is neither faith nor reason, 
it is vision. But visionary speech is the fruit of that logic of creation o 
logic of the included third o which po?etics is (po?ein : to make).

To H?lderlin's question : "Why poets in times of distress?" I would answer 
first : because the poets who think the world pre-see how a utopia destroys 
itself, an "ideal City" which excludes them, and how a "real City" which 
integrates their turbulent presence can be built. "Poetry will be in front", 
and "the poet will be a citizen", writes Rimbaud when prophesying the real 
democracy he longs for.

Blind faith in a "lendemain qui chante", without that visionary lucidity of 
which Ren? Char tells us that it is "the wound closest to the sun", can never 
lead humanity to anything other than a utopia doomed sooner or later to 
collapse.

I hasten to say with Lautr?amont, another prophet of real democracy, that 
"poetry will be made by all", which means that everyone will have to awaken in 
themselves the poet that western civilisation has excluded to found its order.

There is only one vision of the future which can pull us out of the belly of 
the past, project us ahead of ourselves. We must be able to imagine the future 
; see it revealing itself (in the photographic sense of the word) on our inner 
screens ; we must be able to give birth to a picture of the common future which 
is specific to us, which is particular to us for it to mobilise our deepest 
energies.

Spiritual foundation

Re-enchanting the world at which a pedagogy of creation and communication aims 
o a pedagogy of the inter-and of the trans-passes through questioning thought 
about its tools.

What makes the difference between the logic of the divisional (of excluded 
third) and that of a visionary thought (of included third) is the coordinating 
conjunction of opposites. For the logic of knowledge and power I can be only I 
or the other (the inter is interdicted, i.e. unsaid) ; but when I enter the 
field of creation and communication, I

am both I and the other, co-existing in an analogical relation which underlies 
their dialogical link : I am to you as you are to me. According to the 
principle of pure reason, A is A and B is B : I cannot be another. Between 
identity and alterity, all impurity, all ambiguity, all common ownership o all 
strangeness o has to be deprived of active citizenship.

Europe, said Husserl, cannot forget her spiritual foundation which takes root 
on the Greek soil of philosophy. I believe that the very notion of "poetic 
citizenship" cannot be grasped and shared but by the double reference to Plato 
who excludes it and to Rimbaud who predicts its resurgence. Let us first 
remember that Plato, in the name of the principle of reason, sees it as his 
duty to put the poet out of his republic. Like women, children and lunatics, 
the poet is excluded from taking part in the business of the "ideal City" ; his 
(magical) thought is deprived of legitimacy, i.e. of citizenship. This is what 
Plato writes in The Republic :

That was, I went on to say, what I meant, returning to poetry, to justify 
myself for previously banning from our republic so frivolous an art : reason 
made it a duty for us to do so. Let us also say to it, so that it may not 
accuse us of harshness and rusticity, that the dispute between philosophy and 
poetry does not date from today. Notwithstanding, let us protest strongly that 
if imitative poetry which has pleasure as its object can prove for some reason 
that it must have its place in a well-ordered society, we will bring it back 
into it wholeheartedly.

As to Rimbaud, he predicts the return of the poet in that prophetic letter 
which was called la Lettre du voyant :

Eternal art would have its functions, as poets are citizens. Poetry will no 
longer punctuate action ; it will be ahead. These poets will be ! When the 
infinite bondage of woman is broken, when she lives by her and for her, man o 
so far abominable -, having given her the sack, she too will be a poet ! Woman 
will find things unknown ! Will her worlds of ideas differ from ours ? o She 
will find strange, unsoundable, repulsive, delicious things ; we will take 
them, we will understand them.

Cross-checking these two texts, twenty-three centuries apart from one another, 
the one the founder of our civilisation, the other predicting its end, is, in 
the current sociopolitical context, prodigiously enlightening.

That you invited me to speak among you, I, poet and woman, both delights me and 
makes me feel hugely responsible. I must find the images and words capable of 
expressing my own vision of the world being born, knowing that this risks 
disturbing yours, but at this cost only does it have a chance of acting, of 
inciting you to find whatever words and images will express yours and contest 
or meet mine. He who comes into the world to trouble nothing, says Ren? Char 
also, deserves neither consideration nor patience.

For a real dialogue, an effective democratic game, to occur there have to be at 
play two different speeches and two different listeners, who affect, respect, 
greet one another, who cease being indifferent to one another. A conflictual 
relation can start generating a trans-personal, trans-cultural, trans-national, 
trans-political thought only by means of this quadrivocal dialectic which 
prevents communication from getting bogged down in the rut of consensus, from 
being trapped in the homogenisation where what it is to-day agreed to call "la 
pens?e unique" thrives.

Perception of oneself (conceiving of oneself)

I attempted to make you see in my speeches how links between my poetic 
citizenship and my European citizenship are woven ; so, these speeches are of 
the order of the testimony.

Thirty-five years ago occurred in me the illumination o the poetic experience o 
where I was initiated into my own existence and into the vital need to find a 
language to express that disturbing strangeness which suddenly served me as 
identity in a basically xenophobic and misogynous society.

The instant before this literally apocalyptic instant (of revelation), I was 
present neither to myself nor to the world. The instant after my patriarchal 
imagination was in ruins, I had, on pain of death or madness, to build another 
one, a dynamic, self- generating imagination. Starting from the desire to 
become who I really am, I had to re-create for me a love imagination, a family 
imagination, and a social imagination. To put it in other words, I had, by 
means of visionary thought and of the work of writing, to save myself from 
chaos : no saviour would do it in my place. Let us say, briefly, that my 
spiritual dimension o verticality made up of height and depth o was born of 
this wild initiation into the genesis of consciousness. Conceiving oneself is 
experiencing the primeval consubstantiality of space and time, of I and the 
other, of both the woman and the man that I am ; it is reaching the lightning 
nucleus of SELF of which Andr? Breton said that it is : the POINT of the mind 
from where life and death, the real and the imaginary, past and future, what 
can and cannot be communicated, top and bottom, cease being perceived 
contradictorily. He added: the point in question is a fortiori the one where 
construction and destruction can no longer be brandished one against the other.

I understand that the Europe of today too is seeking to know herself, to know 
her soul, to become aware of who she really is in relation to the world and to 
put in a token appearance in it ; to express her project of post-modern future. 
In other words, Europe is more or less confusedly seeking to become an adult 
we, i.e. a community of persons and nations with full and entire 
responsibility.

It is indispensable for us to produce symbols, images, metaphors, said J?r?me 
Vignon. We must give tools of communication other than conceptual but which can 
be linked to the conceptual to revive it, to re-nature it, to re-humanise it. 
We must bring into the world o beyond the great hardships of History o a new 
understanding of the real.

Of this post-modern thought born of the reconciliation of poetry and 
philosophy, I like to say to myself that it is post-socratic, in the sense that 
it recalls that prodigious presocratic thought which was current before they 
split.

Thinking as a poet is being able to put oneself into the other's place, being 
SELF (consubstantially I and the other), but also being able at the same time 
to embody, from the smallest to the largest, all the circles of collectivity I 
belong to. What would

be the soul of a people other than the one their poets gave them ? If I think 
Europe as a poet, I identify with her, I espouse her cause, I form one body 
with her present, I lend her the strength of my visceral resistance to all 
forms of totalitarianism ; thus I commit myself personally in her quest for a 
non-fatal outcome to the unprecedented impasse where she is at the end of this 
century. Let us say that I see my own experience of emancipation as an 
illuminating metaphor of the trying search for herself which Europe is pursuing 
today. I draw from this analogy not only my motivation but the daily energy 
that is needed to provide this project of a transnational, trans-cultural 
Europe with a body of writing radically other than her "body of laws" which 
will never have anything but a set language ; that is to say, with a poetic 
existence without which it will stay a dead letter. Only the influence of an 
adult poetry o in the sense that it has freed itself from the condition of 
minor thought where western philosophy confined it -, irresistibly confident in 
its real power to change life, could truly re-enchant the world.

If, like Ariadne, I undertake to pursue the metaphor to better understand all 
that was exchanged thanks to the Coimbra forum, I say to myself that Europe 
will get out of her crisis of growth, will become a big adult woman only if she 
dares to call into question the dogma of economism which threatens any moment 
to "topple her over from the market economy to the market society" : a striking 
formula which Zaki La?di gave us of the peril which is threatening us. Put 
differently, Europe will not recover from her disaster unless she appropriates 
the freedom of self-determination, the freedom to choose the model of 
globalisation to which she wishes to belong. We heard Mario Soares tell us 
forcefully that he "does not want a Europe exclusively determined by economic 
and monetary demands but a political, social Europe, a Europe of citizens, a 
Europe of participation" ; not a Europe that we would have to suffer, but a 
Europe that we have to make happen. From the moment that the European Union 
knows not only what she does not want, but what she wants to be, she must 
change her history, i.e. her relational logic ; she must pass from the identity 
principle based on the exclusion of the third's strangeness which determined 
the building of xenophobic Europe, to an interactive dia-logic based on the 
integration of this strangeness, on the actualisation of all mediation between 
identity and alterity. Only the development of a such a citizenship in the 
process of building the Union can save Europe from the twofold peril which 
threatens her : homogenisation or atomisation.

It is urgent to understand that a democratic space can only be built from a 
mentality structured by the "solidarity principle", a principle of the 
interactivity of opposites. Subject A is to object B what subject B is to 
object A : I am to you what you are to me; logical translation of the principle 
of Christian charity : love (respect) the other as you love (respect) yourself 
: a universal formula of a laity to which any religion of love can rally 
without betraying itself.

The game of interactivity

As soon as we understand that there are really at play in any human 
relationship at least two subjectivities and two objectivities, two identities 
and two alterities, i.e. four elementary truths, the problem of thought is 
completely transformed. "Telling the truth" supposes from that moment that our 
four truths recognise one another, interfere, interact, that a dialogical 
language is invented able to translate not now the duplicity but the 
quadruplicity of the real. In this great dynamic game of interactivity, all 
horizontal, vertical, diagonal relations are authorised. What disappears in the 
dynamic structure of real democracy is the inevitability of exclusion. All 
aesthetic, ethical and political revival, all possible regeneration of the 
social body, will proceed from this metamorphosis of the structures of our 
relational imagination.

The identity of the European Union should appear as that of a societal model 
which not only succeeds in safeguarding entitlements, but in integrating the 
great historical, political, economic, technological and ethical upheavals. 
Which supposes the conception and the implementation of a logic of construction 
which is a logic of integration of differences.

The image that I have of the Europe to come is less that of a continent in 
search of an intellectual leadership able to face up to the rise of the 
(economic, political and religious) fundamentalisms than that of a living and 
thinking organism, capable of metabolising what has happened to it and what 
continues to happen to it for better of worse ; so as to be able to build for 
itself a great contagious health the influence of which works not only to 
relieve but to heal the extreme misery from which the world is suffering.

I see the European building site as the main, if not the only, chance our 
planet currently has of saving itself from the perils which threaten it, of 
building with new tools of thought its first "real City", its first adult 
democracy, its first trans-national phratry on the ruins of xenophobic 
patriarchate.

L'identit? europ?enne comme engagementtransnational dans la soci?t?

R?diger Stephan

European identity as a transnational commitment in society

A terminology debate is of no value in the face of the real challenge. The term 
"identity" is merely a starting point. Psychologists would say that it covers 
both continuous identification with oneself and permanent adherence to certain 
traits of character which are specific to a group. On the one hand, identity 
appears as a criterion for acts intended to provide a synthesis of the self, 
while on the other hand it signifies a feeling of solidarity with a group. 
Thus, there are two aspects :

o identity is linked to the individual, the person ;

o identity reflects a state of existence, an outcome, the end of a path.

On this basis, what is the answer to the original question, how can we express 
this identity which must take on a European dimension ? First of all, it is the 
individual, the European citizen, who must both give and receive the reply, in 
the context of his relationship with himself and his environment. The citizen 
should be able to express this identity, which in turn must be developed 
together with the citizen. Furthermore, if the identity of the individual is a 
fulfilment, the sum of a personal history, then European identity is made up of 
a huge and varied heritage. European identity appears here as being linked to 
the past, and the future is not a factor. To express European identity through 
heritage only, however rich this may be, would be to limit oneself to 
conservatism without a future.

Europe needs visions which relate to the future. The development of a European 
identity can play no part other than through a European consciousness, bringing 
in itself movement and evolution, a European consciousness which captures the 
national identities in their diversity and conceives them as having a common 
future. Expressing this identity o a forward-looking European consciousness o 
implies the abolition of antagonism between national and European identities. 
European identity- consciousness is founded on national identities, and finds 
its expression in cooperation and interaction. We need this European 
identity-consciousness in order to avoid wars among ourselves or with others, 
to pool our resources, and to join forces in the face of the challenges of our 
time, which transcend national and continental boundaries. We draw this 
identity-consciousness from a heritage which expresses what is common to us, or 
what we recognise as being common to us. We draw it from history, the common 
European traits of which we are rediscovering, after two centuries of 
nationalism and nationalist interpretation. We draw it from the memory of the 
past, our memory banks o what are our European memory banks ? We draw it from 
the symbols which we have succeeded in creating and which we shall be capable 
of creating in the future. We find it in the democratic institutions and rules 
which structure and define life within our societies, the relationships of the 
individual and society, and the rights and duties of the citizen.

The European Union has neither a political nor a social structure which would 
give it an "identity" and allow it to develop a citizen's European 
consciousness, or which would allow the citizen to develop a European 
consciousness. The Council of Ministers is not European, but 
inter-governmental. The European Commission acts as if it were 
inter-governmental. In order to have our voice heard, we must use the channels 
of the national representations or even national bodies. The European 
Parliament, the political representation of the citizen, is not truly 
recognised as such, because its powers, responsibilities and image do not 
correspond to what the European citizen, accustomed to the role of his national 
parliament, can or wants to expect from it. Nevertheless, it is the European 
institution with which the citizen can identify most easily, because it is 
supranational, or European, and because Parliament fights to give legitimacy to 
Europe, which also gives it symbolic value. However, there are forces within 
society which are not representative of national interests and are 
non-governmental, non-State and transnational by nature. First of all, there is 
the economic sector, or at least the bulk of it. Industrialists spend all day 
telling us that their vision is no longer national or even European, but 
global. The economy creates its own identities o corporate identities, which 
are neither national nor European. This is what is called the "IBM identity". 
The question remains as to whether, with the single currency, the economic 
sector can also help boost European identity.

There is, however, another sector of society which is developing rapidly. It is 
known as the "Third Sector", a term which is both vague (in that it takes in 
the most diverse forms of organisation) and precise (in the sense that it 
refers to non-governmental organisations). Civil society translates the will 
and aspirations of the citizen and quite naturally goes beyond the national 
context o in fact increasingly so. As every domain of society is affected by, 
or is open to, international pressures , these organisations nowadays all 
engage in activities which to a greater or lesser extent go beyond national 
confines.

This "Third Sector" o the expression has come to represent organisation, 
solidarity and community o represents the commitment of the citizen within 
society and through society. The Third Sector is not a third country, but a 
sector of present-day society which should become an increasingly important 
communication partner, a forum for proposals and for implementing new solutions 
needed to resolve the major problems facing us today. If we wish to develop 
European identity-consciousness, this movement towards more Europe, in and with 
the citizen, if we wish to organise participation and interaction, we must 
find, or in my view create, a way of organising relations between the Third 
Sector and the European institutions.

As the social and cultural organisations of the Third Sector reflect this 
commitment on the part of the citizen to non-State and non-public forms of 
organisation and institution, it is necessary to create a space in society 
giving the citizen a voice outside the national framework, a European space in 
which the citizen's commitment to society can be expressed. This societal space 
should be able to communicate regularly with the European Parliament, whose 
powers would have to be extended, and with the European Commission. 
Participation and interaction could be expressed and organised around major 
subjects of civilisation, such as work and integration into society, national 
and European memory banks, European citizenship training for the younger 
generation, and the development of a European language policy.

Security and a common area

Adriano Moreira

One way of analysing comparable transitions from unity among nations to a 
united Europe is to see it in peaceful terms as the setting of a boundary 
against a hostile power which threatens freedom and integrity.

Let us say that as a general rule the fact of being subjected to the same 
climate of aggression generates a common defence system and the emergence of an 
identity through the feeling of security experienced in relation to the threat. 
Although Toynbee regards the West as the present-day aggressors, identified as 
such from outside by the peoples of the former colonial territories, the fact 
of being surrounded by a common threat has more than once united Europe.

This was the situation in Western Europe for more than half of a century 
dominated by the military pacts (NATO and the Warsaw Pact), until it came to an 
end in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and yet Western Europe was 
involved in defending a plan to unite the area from the Atlantic to the Urals. 
It thus firmly refused to be "le petit cap au bout de l'Asie", as Val?ry used 
to put it.

A political era

Identity implies a common area which has a geographical form, but this will 
only have a border if, for unambiguous reasons of security, solidarity among 
the peoples involved and well-established sociological proximity, that identity 
is assumed. Article 0 of the Maastricht Treaty lays down that any European 
State may become a member, but it does not attempt to define a European State.

In fact the supposed common area is divided by various formal frontiers which 
do not coincide but were laid down for pragmatic reasons with a view to 
achieving the overriding objective. The European Union has 15 members since 
1995 (when Austria, Sweden and Finland joined) and is considering admitting 
another 12 at the beginning of the next century, which is nearly upon us. The 
Council of Europe has 39, including Russia since 1996, which should make us 
wonder whether the area is broadening out or joining up. Meanwhile the 
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has 54, which raises 
the very same question in a more complicated form.

The sea frontier is extremely long, from the North Sea down the Atlantic 
seaboard to the Mediterranean, a fact which raises the opposite question to the 
one about the Council of Europe, i.e. whether the European identity has the 
effect of fragmenting the Atlantic identity which is still best expressed 
through NATO.

This multiplicity of formal frontiers, outlining areas which do not coincide, 
points towards a definition of a political area demarcated by a series of 
common threats facing

it and a common determination to confront them. In Europe's experience, 
historical internal conflicts are identifiable as such and are not to be 
confused with external threats.

Title V of the Treaty of Maastricht defines as one pillar of the European Union 
a common foreign and security policy, leading eventually to a common defence 
policy, but does not make a distinction between the internal frontier formed by 
the threat of the recent past and the external panorama constituted by a world 
context in flux.

It should be remembered that the founding fathers of the new Europe, Jean 
Monnet, Adenauer and Schuman, had in mind to free Europe forever from the 
spectre of civil war, with Germany and France in the leading roles, and in the 
area of security it is WEU which reflects that rivalry most clearly : the 
United States came over to Europe to fight twice in the same generation because 
of that historical conflict, and the object of WEU was to define a restrictive 
arrangement for the entry of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO.

The external threat is a different issue, and that was reflected in the 
Atlantic Alliance for the half-century when the world was divided into two 
opposing camps.

Europe and the Atlantic Alliance

At the present time, when diplomacy conducted as a Nixon-style strategy, with 
the three pillars formed by the United States, Russia and China, seems once 
more to be to the fore, the question of a European identity in the political 
field of security and defence, which will be responsible for defining whatever 
geographical frontier is eventually adopted, seems to be couched in the 
following terms :


o a return by Russia to the historical nation-based strategic concept, with the 
idea of a "near-abroad" (the former satellite countries), and an attempt to 
reconstitute the geographical borders prior to 1989, in response to the 
creation by the Atlantic Alliance and Europe of "near friends" from the Baltic 
to the Mediterranean, a development made very clear by the Barcelona Conference 
this year ;

o the Western security organisation, to which the former Eastern European bloc 
is applying, and NATO, a group of countries which all aspire to be admitted to 
the European Union as well, thereby showing that they treat the two frontiers, 
the economic and political frontier on the one hand and the security frontier 
on the other, as autonomous ;

o in the Mediterranean region, NATO is also being pressed to provide a security 
frontier by the countries in the North African corridor, while it is from the 
EU that they also seek support for their political, economic and social 
development ;

o NATO is consequently being forced to give thought to adopting a new profile : 
-in addition to the collective defence objective, it now provides logistical 
and military support for the peace-keeping operations flowing from the UN's 
Agenda for Peace of 31 January 1992 ;

-it has laid bridges for cooperation with the East such as the North Atlantic 
Cooperation Council of 1991 and the Partnership for Peace of 1994 ;

-against this background, WEU has once again been brought into action as a 
point of reference for the Europeanisation of defence.

Here it seems that the ongoing overhaul of the United States' strategic concept 
and the process of formulating a European strategic concept which is now under 
way are bound to acknowledge that the European security frontier and the NATO 
security frontier are still tending to coincide. In that case, the common 
defence policy, or any common defence system for the European Union which 
emerges, is clearly first and foremost an internal question for the Atlantic 
Alliance, following half a century of solidarity.

Neither Reich nor Nation another future for the european union

Roger De Weck

What is it that keeps us Europeans together ? What is it that links the 
British, who so love to rage against the Continent, to the Poles or the 
Portuguese ? What do we have in common ? What are the differences, which not 
only divide but also unite us ? Is there a European identity ? The very fact 
that we raise the question of identity betrays the European in us.

The French philosopher, Edgar Morin, speaks of Europe's "manifold unity" or 
"unitas multiplex". For all the variety of North America, its binding forces 
are obvious to the observer. The most striking feature of our continent is its 
diversity.

Certainly, the whole of Europe shares the inheritance of Christianity ; indeed 
for centuries awareness of "Christendom" was much stronger than the notion of 
"Europe". But as Europeans desert the Christian churches in their droves, this 
last vestige of the Western heritage loses its relevance. Christianity no 
longer unites Europeans, but nor does it divide them.

As time goes by, our other great legacy o the Enlightenment o becomes less and 
less specifically European. Other regions of the world have long drawn on this 
inheritance (just as other continents have become more Christian than our own).

But more importantly, if the spirit of the Enlightenment forms part of European 
identity, then this particular part has been damaged since the Holocaust. The 
interplay of nationalism, imperialism and totalitarianism, which, sad to say, 
is all too European, brought disaster. Europe proved incapable of saving itself 
by its own efforts. We had to be liberated. Our fate hung on the United States, 
and that has undermined our self- confidence. In a century that has seen the 
most terrible of wars, the North Americans too have often gone astray. But they 
have always rejected totalitarianism. The United States is not only stronger as 
a result, but also more decisive. There was no American Voltaire, but nor was 
there an American Hitler.

What is not European

All of us in Europe have at least one identity, which we experience again and 
again and which can sometimes break right through to the surface o I'm talking 
here of a "negative identity". We may not know exactly what it is to be 
European, but we are quite sure of what is not European. We Europeans have 
never had hard and fast criteria for determining what counts as Europe. Our 
continent is ill defined both politically and culturally. Not even geography 
can help us o does our Eastern border really run along the Urals ?

During the Cold War, many Westerners forgot that the "far-off" countries of 
Central and Eastern Europe were utterly European in character. Despite all the 
anti-American feeling prevailing at that time, they felt much closer to America 
and still do. Even so, seldom do we feel as European as when we watch an 
American television series, which may explain why they are so successful. They 
are foreign to us and yet familiar.

According to one of the classic interpretative models used by psychologists, 
identity stems from negation. Europeans are hardly ever as united as in their 
determination to marginalize others. But there must be more to Europe than 
that, for in the long run negation is not enough : it offers a weak identity in 
which we protect our own egos by demonising others. For example, the British 
make a habit of "splendid isolation" and the Swiss nurture their "hedgehog" 
mentality. It is as if the Confederation would collapse were it not surrounded 
by enemies : the rabble-rousers on the Swiss right brand the EU as the "Fourth 
Reich" and one Green politician has waffled on about the "Empire of Evil".

Expressing a common sense of purpose

Europe is in fact made up of former enemies. When British Prime Minister John 
Major picks a fight with the European Union, his crisis team in London is 
immediately dubbed the "war cabinet", proving that the past is still close at 
hand. And yet wherever Europeans have finally come together, they now live in 
peace. New wars in Western Europe are virtually unthinkable and the Cold War is 
history. However, war and civil wars will remain a distinct possibility in 
Eastern Europe until its countries are able to join the European Union.

The German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was right when he observed that ultimately 
the European question is still a question of war and peace. And just as 
Switzerland sees itself as a nation created by an act of will, there is in 
Europe a growing identity, both in the literal and in the figurative sense, 
that is also based on an effort of will. The vast majority of Europeans share 
an "identical" and hence "identity-forming" will to establish a peaceful, 
united Europe. What is at work here is a positive identity : the twin concepts 
of will and reason are very much European. No doubt, the European Union will 
face many setbacks in future, but it will hardly sink to a point so low that 
disintegration could mean destabilisation and even lead to war.

This is because of the workings of what the French call "le sens de l'histoire" 
o in both senses of the term : Europe is moving in a certain "direction" and in 
so doing is giving itself a "purpose".

Individuals object to having an identity foisted on them. Identity cannot be 
decreed from above by nation states or by the European Union, for it is 
something organic, which develops from small beginnings and either thrives or 
withers away. The EU is simply a powerful expression of a common sense of 
purpose shared by many Europeans, who, after centuries of war, have finally 
become aware of their responsibility for their own continent. A Europe of the 
nations may be the rallying- cry for some, but Europe is first and foremost a 
warning against the hubris of these same nations.

"Verfassungspatriotismus" o or loyalty to the constitution o is a familiar 
concept in Germany. Underpinning the European idea is a kind of "loyalty to 
peace", which, however, is now fading away fifty years after the end of the 
Second World War. As time goes by, the younger generation which was spared 
those horrors has less and less sense of purpose and, in this respect, 
resembles the directionless and disoriented Swiss, since they too escaped the 
heavy toll in human lives.

The EU Member States were not far enough down the road to a common security 
policy to prevent the carnage following the break-up of Yugoslavia. If Europe 
had been up to the task, the question of identity would hardly be raised any 
more. Identity is also a matter of success.

Competition between world regions

Is success at all possible in an era of mass unemployment where the virus of 
social disintegration infects everything which is not already geared to 
out-and-out economic warfare ? Globalisation (internationalisation) threatens 
both national and European identities o as if one day the only remaining form 
of identification will be that of the worker with the mega-firm that employs 
him.

Yet the EU is not perceived as a force for order and moderation which is 
striving (for example through monetary union) to control the forces of 
globalisation and, logically, to steer in the opposite direction, something the 
nation states have long been incapable of. On the contrary, the EU is seen o 
albeit unjustifiably in many cases o as one of the mainsprings of the 
globalisation process which is oppressing countless individuals. This provokes 
national resentment. National politicians heighten the mistrust by claiming for 
themselves the credit for all political successes and laying the blame for 
failures at the EU's door.

However, Europe is not merely a scapegoat, but at the same time the exact 
opposite : the hopelessly overburdened standard-bearer of hope, which is bound 
to disappoint, because so many people would like it to disappoint. Europe acts 
as a blank screen on to which the Frenchman can project his yearning for 
"grandeur", the German his deep-seated need to belong, the Briton his 
uncompromising cries of "I want my money back", and the Eastern European his 
desire for stability and a guarantee of democracy, the rule of law and human 
rights.

While we are on the subject of human rights, in the vast globalisation process 
now under way, the old European claim to universal values is rebounding on 
Europe itself. Now that our continent is no longer at the centre of world 
events, Europeans must face up to the competition of values and identities. 
Just as the Swiss always feel the urge to retreat into their little corner, 
many Europeans also tend to withdraw into themselves in order to protect their 
own egos.

Yet if there is one single characteristic that defines Europe, it is that 
curious capacity for openness, which our continent displays time and again and 
has contributed to the "infinite richness in a little room" that so delighted 
Marlowe. Europe has left its mark over the whole globe, but it has also proved 
to have a voracious appetite itself, being perfectly capable of absorbing 
influences from all over the world and positively devouring foreign ideas, 
without surrendering any of its own identity.

However, globalisation unleashes the forces of homogenisation. It also throws 
open the question of the balance of power between continents. Must o indeed can 
o Europe summon up the will to compete as a united force against other regions 
of world ?

Since the passing of Charlemagne, the diversity of Europe has been ranged 
against the concept of a single European power. Our instinct is not to 
concentrate, but to divide, spread out and split up. Our logic is not that of a 
single centre, but of multiple centres. The concept of a "European nation", 
which is ultimately bound up with power politics, is a contradiction in terms. 
Balkanisation is the real danger. The European Union lies somewhere in between.

For far too long, Europe has swung between Scylla and Charybdis, between the 
Reich and the nation. The EU does not fit into this pattern ; it breaks the 
vicious circle. It is neither Reich nor nation and hence truly modern. Perhaps 
European identity is actually to be found in the new and lasting phenomenon of 
networks, which was first developed by the generation of '68 and took off with 
the electronic revolution. In many ways the European Union is o and is at its 
best as o a network. What the Swiss fail to understand, as outsiders with 
little first-hand experience, is that the EU has something more important than 
its institutions : the network of connections, the day- to-day working 
relationships remote from diplomatic channels, the exchanges. And these 
exchanges give rise to the "manifold unity", which according to Edgar Morin is 
the life-blood of Europe.

Identity is a process

Our generation has experienced both the integration of Western Europe and the 
disintegration of Eastern Europe. In the West the decades-long enthusiasm for 
the unification process o identification with the EU o has been somewhat 
dampened, particularly where closer union has degenerated into homogenisation. 
In the East, many people see Europe as providing an ersatz identity. This is 
just one of many examples that identity is not something static and does not 
always remain what it was.

Identity is more of a process, and processes have driving forces, restraining 
forces and opposing forces. Identity always springs from contradictions and 
never becomes fully


o and inhumanly o coherent. On the contrary, identity contains within it crisis 
in the original Greek sense of "krisis" o decision. That is one of the reasons 
why the European Union often cuts a poor figure, just as the Swiss 
Confederation presented an unflattering picture for most of the 550 years 
before the founding of the Federal State

o civil war, treachery, pacts with foreign powers, intrigue and ineffective 
parliaments.

It is actually growth which prompts the outbreak of identity crises. In a 
brilliant essay for the literary supplement of the "Weltwoche", Adolf Muschg 
recently asked ? How much identity does Switzerland need ? ?. Similar questions 
on the quantity and in particular the quality of identity could be asked about 
Europe. However, Muschg also went on to ask, ? What is it that Switzerland 
still has to protect from Europe ? ? Perhaps the difference is that Europe is 
looking for a new identity, while Switzerland is trying not to lose its old 
one.

What does it mean to be a European ? Preliminary conclusions J?r?me Vignon

From the very outset, at the preparatory meeting for the Coimbra Seminar, the 
historian Gilbert Trausch warned us that the task we faced was one fraught with 
difficulties and risks. "Though the search for a European identity is a classic 
exercise, indeed almost a commonplace for the social science disciplines, the 
quest for an identity specific to that very new arrival among the ranks of 
political animals, the European Union, is a much tougher proposition." In other 
words, to the historian's mind, the shaping of a collective identity is a long 
process, in contrast to the brief span of time occupied by the integration of 
Europe so far. Let there be no misunderstandings on that score.

With this caveat ringing in its ears, the Coimbra Seminar proceeded to 
business. Advancing in stages, it started with what it means to be European as 
a general concept, then moved on to the challenges raised by political 
unification of the European continent in the here and now. The discussion 
progressed by way of the idea of a "European project" which arose spontaneously 
as participants made their contributions. Alongside the centrality of the 
political necessity of 'the European project', four other main categories 
emerge : legitimacy, necessity, the project and interactivity.

Legitimacy

Was it proper, for the proponents of an integrated Europe, to seek to mobilise 
the many facets of a European identity o history, culture, values and so on o 
to their own advantage, so as to construct some kind of political legitimacy 
for themselves ? In so doing, were they not falling into a double trap ?

o A collective identity was the outcome of an approach which needed to be seen 
in context and in proportion. If it was supposed to appeal to "ordinary 
people", then it could only be from the standpoint of their particular 
perceptions and experiences where we stand now at the end of the XXth century.

o To seek to exploit the material traditionally used to forge national 
identities was to ignore the special qualities of openness and 
multiculturalism, which were the marks of a truly European identity.

Jose Vidal Beneyto disposed elegantly of these two posers. Reminding his 
listeners of the academic achievements chalked up by the sociology of 
knowledge, he stressed that there was no going back on what the experts now 
agreed on : "Like individual identities, collective identities exist de facto. 
It is not improper to refer to them,

provided we recognise that the European identity evolves in step with whatever 
age we live in : it is a moving thing, not a thing established once and for 
all. And it goes much further than that : a collective European identity is 
bound to encompass not just variations but o especially o contradictions, 
contradictions which must be managed, and that is the job of politics. The 
purpose of a 'project' is just that, to reconcile contradictions, at the same 
time using the lessons we have learnt from the past and from a shared culture."

Necessity

The bond between the identity of the European Union and a common project is not 
something which has come about in a void, simply through the inspiration of a 
few founding fathers, or a historical accident. It also owes its being to 
necessity, and to the will to which it gives rise.

Here, the Coimbra Seminar brought out a telling parallel between the 1950s and 
the 1990s.

We are, in a sense, entitled to say that there was more to the setting up of 
community of countries belonging to the Western European camp from the time of 
the Hague Conference onwards than a deliberate plan by the Fathers of Europe. 
This community of belonging also sprang up and developed under pressure from a 
political necessity, the necessity created by the East-West dispute. An 
economic integration process, one might say, was a way of responding to a 
geopolitical necessity, in which case the brainwave of the pioneers of European 
integration was to harness this economic vehicle up to a prior objective which 
went much deeper, a plan for solidarity and reconciliation which went beyond 
the immediate geopolitical challenges. This was the sense in which Filippo 
Pandolfi was able to say that "it was only after 1989 that the full scope of 
the European project could be seen, its raison d'?tre, if you like."

Marcelino Oreja reminded us that today, it was economic constraints, bringing 
with them the nagging challenges of competitiveness, which were the driving 
forces in integration. The progress made from 1985 to 1991 led to a political 
leap, the Economic and Monetary Union, which was itself reinforced by the 
geopolitical demands of enlargement. The Intergovernmental Conference now under 
way ought to graft a collective project adapted to meet the challenges of the 
present day.

To put it another way, in the 1990s as in the 1950s, pressure of necessity 
created an opportunity for a new collective departure. If there was a secret 
behind the identity of a Political Union, it was that it should be capable of 
giving a generally accepted sense to the sweeping changes occurring in the 
European continent, over and above the geopolitical momentum behind them.

The project

What should such a project consist of, "now and for the future", if that shared 
sense was to unfold ? What, in other words, was to be the telos, the ultimate 
objective ? Are we not entitled to expect an answer to this question from those 
responsible for European integration, from those who govern, but also from the 
intellectual elite ?

o Some speakers stressed the importance of overhauling the European social 
model, threatened as it now was by its inability to reconcile opening out to 
the world with maintaining social cohesion (Jos? Vidal Beneyto). Bonaventura 
Sousa Santos, in fact, proposed focusing our efforts back on restoring the 
State and the community once the other pillar of the European social model, the 
market, had outgrown itself.

o Others wanted to go still further along the path of reshaping the model. 
Defining their stance in relation to the global challenges of the environment 
and population growth, they saw a contemporary European identity as an 
awareness of the urgent need for changes in lifestyles and patterns of 
consumption. Edy Korthals Altes, for example, saw it as a moral awareness with 
the capacity to answer the questions about the meaning of life. The same global 
view of developments in Europe today would, in the eyes of Zaki La?di, seek to 
identify Europe with efforts to act as an effective mediator for the world. 
President Mario Soares went so far as to say that the world needed a Europe 
capable of translating the spirit of democracy which was the only foundation it 
had at the present time into acts of international solidarity.

o Those who identified the European Union with a way of giving a deeper 
dimension to democracy alluded to a project which was as much a cultural as a 
political exercise. In the words of Massimo La Torre, it was a matter of 
establishing, by law, a genuine European citizenship. Freed of any ties to the 
prior possession of a particular nationality, it would be the seedbed of an 
identity linked directly to democratic ideals, a sort of constitutional 
patriotism in the pure state. For Claire Lejeune, the Political Union should be 
one where the implicit subjection of men to women would have been overthrown.

While invoking the urgent need for the European project to have a telos, those 
attending the Seminar stressed that the demos must be involved in the work of 
putting such a project together. In other words, to give expression to a 
European identity today meant embarking on a process of exchange, of listening 
and of interaction.

Interactivity

Warnings against the risk of overintellectualising came from intellectuals 
themselves. Heinrich Schneider pointed to the risk of totalitarianism lurking 
behind the concept of an avant-garde, if it were one enlightened not by reason 
but by a moral consciousness. Truls Frogner spoke of what the most deprived 
groups in Europe really expected in terms of jobs and unemployment. Maryon 
McDonald insisted on what made sense to people. This brought the meeting back, 
when it came to what it meant to be a European, to the sphere of 
"communicating", to "how to share, listen and receive", to "how to inspire and 
deserve trust". This was the point in the Seminar at which speakers' 
contributions became more specific and closer to the work being done by the 
European institutions. Under the subject heading of an interactive identity, 
four aspects were discussed : the institutions in the strict sense of the word 
; communication ; new forms of mediation ; and, lastly, the need to foster 
interaction between the Member States and the Union.

1. Heinrich Schneider, a veteran of the battle for federalism, thought it was 
time to build something new out of the old federal mould. The institutions 
should be judged less against the yardstick of unity than on the basis of new 
criteria : whether the executive inspired confidence, whether joint action was 
effective, whether someone was visibly answerable for the exercise of power. It 
would have been hard to find a better definition of some of the challenges 
facing the IGC.

2. In the view of Elemer Hankiss, who was Head of Hungarian Television from 
1991 to 1992, what the European Commission needed to overhaul was not so much 
its messages (though these, he said, were still not getting across strongly 
enough in his country) as its methods. Opportunities for working out what 
European integration meant in the present day needed to be provided in the 
shape of hundreds of forums like the Coimbra Seminar, where intellectuals, 
people from cultural and scientific backgrounds and journalists would debate 
the underlying issue, the raison d'?tre which Filippo Pandolfi had referred to. 
One was reminded of Denis de Rougemont saying that the search for Europe was 
itself Europe.

3. Many participants felt that the Commission did not allow enough space for 
mediation by associations acting as relays to develop, meaning the many 
hundreds of NGOs already structured into European networks which were capable 
of expressing the European sense of an operation carried out at local level, 
not to mention acting as the expression of a moral consciousness. Edy Korthals 
Altes spoke for them when he spoke of the practice of dialogue between 
religions at the European and Mediterranean levels.

4. We should stop acting and talking as if the Union and the nations in it were 
in competition. Nations were part of what it meant to be European, Maryon 
McDonald maintained. Bearing in mind the immense symbolic challenges posed by a 
single currency, we should leave it up to the national apparatuses, with their 
huge capacity to influence and respond, to talk to European people about 
Europe. Nor should we forget that farmers, students, textile workers, bosses of 
small businesses, doctors and trade unionists, in the publishing business, 
experienced Europe in the first instance through their day-to-day occupations. 
When the debates were over, some self-criticism emerged. Perhaps our group had 
taken too much of a consensus view. Had it allowed enough space for the anti- 
Maastricht protest voice to be heard ? Did it reflect the doubts and 
bewilderment in the minds of some grassroots voters ? The unconscious 
temptation to preach to the converted was certainly there, and we should bear 
it in mind when later Seminars came up. But a Seminar on Science and Culture 
was not there to do the work of a parliament : what it aspired to do was to 
think matters through and go back over the experience of the past. In that 
sense, Coimbra was a great help to us.

Annex:

A dialogue on unemploymentbetween Truls Frogner and his Neighbour

You have not yet heard the trade union voice.

Some people think that trade unions are fading away. Well, in Europe we have 
the ETUC, the European Trade Union Confederation, with member organisations 
from 33 countries, after the enlargement eastwards last December. Now, some 55 
national organisations, representing more than 50 million members, come 
together in the ETUC to discuss and decide on common matters and then take care 
of our joint interests in the European Union and the European Economic Area 
(EEA).

Do you know any other and more representative non-governmental European 
organisation ?

In the European Union's search for its identity, a trade union has a relevant 
message. In my context, to be in a union means to take care of each other, 
knowing that acting together may give better results for all than acting 
individually.

Let me also add that in Norway, community has a more positive connotation than 
union, since my country, for many years, was the weaker part in unions with 
other countries. A union in Norway is also associated with foreign rule.

In our discussions today, I have heard that the magic words "European identity" 
contain the concepts of diversity, legitimacy and transcendence. My neighbour 
in Norway does not understand this and seldom speaks of identity. But he lost 
his job some months ago, and I can see this is doing something to his identity.

I told my neighbour last week that I was going to Coimbra to discuss the 
"European identity."

-What is that ?, he said.

-Well, we are supposed to find out, I replied.

-Do you have to go to Coimbra to find that out ? Why not here ?

-No, it is easier to see what you are from the outside. In Sweden, I feel 
Norwegian.

In Brussels, I feel Scandinavian and in Tokyo, I feel European. When I'm in a

pub in Boston, I'm still in Europe.

-I understand. As an unemployed person, I feel the importance of a job...

-So, my friend, what is the European identity to you ?

-Nothing ! Does it create jobs ?

-It depends...

-What do you mean ? Does it or does it not ?

-It creates peace. What kind of employment policy is possible in Bosnia ?

-Stop ! The European Union did not prevent war in ex-Yugoslavia.

-Agreed, but in the old days, local war spread through all of Europe. The 
European

Union, together with NATO, made this impossible.

-OK, peace is a natural thing now. War will not happen in Europe again.

-Are you sure ?

-To be honest, no. I'm not sure of anything. Without a job, I don't know where 
I

belong. How could I identify with the European Union if it does not create jobs 
?

-European Union made a report on "Growth, competitiveness and employment"...

-Reports are not reality. The European Union is a marketplace. Growth and 
competitiveness yes, jobs no !

-With 20 million unemployed in Europe, it seems you are right. On the other 
hand, the European Union may change its treaty and enshrine employment in it.

-Interesting, but paragraphs don't create jobs. Moreover, national governments 
don't follow up.

-Should the European Union be the scapegoat if national governments fail in 
their economic policy ?

-I admit you have a point. Moreover, unemployment is high outside the European 
Union, too. Except in Norway where it is 4% and the inflation rate is below 1%. 
But still, these positive figures don't help me.

-We take you seriously. Within a short time, you will be offered a job, a 
labour market (professional training ?) course or another active alternative. 
And this is not mainly thanks to oil and gas, but to our social model and 
cooperation for employment.

-Why can't the European Union do the same ? Isn't cooperation a part of what 
you call the European identity ?

-Good question. Maybe because... eh... maybe...

-Well, Truls, come on !

-I'm not really sure why the European Union has not used its potential.

-Can't you ask them in Coimbra ?

-I will.

-Do you know what I think ? I think the European Union pays too little 
attention to the social dimension and too much to economic matters, or they 
have too narrow a concept of economy.

-Yes and no. Where else in the world will you find such close relations between 
the social partners and politicians ?

-Now you're talking me around again. It doesn't help me if you, on the one 
hand, speak of a fine European social model in a global context, and on the 
other hand, you have welfare cutbacks and rising unemployment.

-It is a part of the European political identity to say one thing and do 
something else.

-Ah ! Now I know what the European identity is : contradiction over unity.

-It's true, but it could also be unity over contradiction.

-Please tell me, Truls, why should I o being unemployed o identify with the 
European Union ?

-The answer is both simple and complicated ; at one and the same time, the 
European Union identifies with you and with 20 million more people without 
jobs.

-In that case, I will wait and see.

-Oh no, this time I will challenge you. Why should you wait to see what the 
community can do for you ? Shouldn't you also ask yourself what you can do for 
the community ?

-Hmm... let's make a deal. I will, in spite of unemployment and a poor private 
economy, keep my trade union membership and join the European Movement. But you 
should take an initiative to strengthen the European Union with what is 
important to my identity o employment. In practice ! Not only in fine words.

-Agreed. You have a deal.

-Not quite. Only a temporary deal.

-Of course. Europe is not finished yet. Identity is something moving and 
invisible


o an Unidentified Flying Object !

List of contributors

Tom Bryder, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Political Science, University 
of Copenhagen

Truls Forgner, Director of Political Affairs, Federation of Professional 
Associations in Norway, Oslo

Thomas Jansen, Adviser, Forward Studies Unit, European Commission, Brussels

Ingmar Karlsson, Ambassador and Head of Policy Planning Unit, Swedish Ministry 
for Foreign Affais, Stockholm

Edy Korthals Altes, former Ambassador of the Netherlands; President, World 
Conference on Religion and Peace (WCPR), New York

Claire Lejeune, Poet; Secretary General of the Interdisciplinary Centre for 
Philosophical Studies at the University of Mons-Hainaut, Cl?phum, Belgique

Maryon McDonald, Appointed Senior Fellow, Department of Social Anthropology, 
Cambridge University, Cambridge.

Adriano Moreira, former Minister, Professor, Technical University of Lisbon 
Heinrich Schneider, Professor Emeritus, University of Vienna

Mario Soares, former President of Portugal R?diger Stephan, Secretary General 
of the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam

Massimo La Torre, Professor, Department of Law, European University Institute, 
Florence

Gilbert Trausch, Professor Emeritus, University of Li?ge

J?r?me Vignon, former Director of the Forward Studies Unit, European 
Commission,

Brussels (1989-1998). Director for the Strategy, D?l?gation ? l'Am?nagement du 
Territoire et ? l'Action R?gionale (DATAR), Paris

Roger de Weck, Editor of "Tages-Anzeiger", Z?rich

From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan 13 16:53:26 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:53:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Technology Review: The Internet Is Broken
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312158260.28612@panix3.panix.com>

The Internet Is Broken
http://www.technologyreview.com/infotech/wtr_16051,258,p1.html

[This is confusing. There are three parts to the article. First is part 1, 
which is fine. Then comes part 2, with some feedback that is not in the 
dead three version. Then part 3. But the dead-tree version had additional 
paragraphs. I typed in the URL above, changing it to p4. It consisted of 
yet more comments. Changing it to p5 results in the very same additional 
comments. I follow it all with an short article referenced in the main 
one, "Click, 'Oh Yeah?'"]

Monday, December 19, 2005

The Net's basic flaws cost firms billions, impede innovation, and threaten 
national security. It's time for a clean-slate approach, says MIT's David 
D. Clark.

By David Talbot

In his office within the gleaming-stainless-steel and orange-brick jumble 
of MIT's Stata Center, Internet elder statesman and onetime chief protocol 
architect David D. Clark prints out an old PowerPoint talk. Dated July 
1992, it ranges over technical issues like domain naming and scalability. 
But in one slide, Clark points to the Internet's dark side: its lack of 
built-in security.

In others, he observes that sometimes the worst disasters are caused not 
by sudden events but by slow, incremental processes -- and that humans are 
good at ignoring problems. "Things get worse slowly. People adjust," Clark 
noted in his presentation. "The problem is assigning the correct degree of 
fear to distant elephants."

[[37]Click here to view graphic representations of David D. Clark's four 
goals for a new Internet architecture.]

Today, Clark believes the elephants are upon us. Yes, the Internet has 
wrought wonders: e-commerce has flourished, and e-mail has become a 
ubiquitous means of communication. Almost one billion people now use the 
Internet, and critical industries like banking increasingly rely on it.

At the same time, the Internet's shortcomings have resulted in plunging 
security and a decreased ability to accommodate new technologies. "We are 
at an inflection point, a revolution point," Clark now argues. And he 
delivers a strikingly pessimistic assessment of where the Internet will 
end up without dramatic intervention. "We might just be at the point where 
the utility of the Internet stalls -- and perhaps turns downward."

Indeed, for the average user, the Internet these days all too often 
resembles New York's Times Square in the 1980s. It was exciting and 
vibrant, but you made sure to keep your head down, lest you be offered 
drugs, robbed, or harangued by the insane. Times Square has been cleaned 
up, but the Internet keeps getting worse, both at the user's level, and -- 
in the view of Clark and others -- deep within its architecture.

Over the years, as Internet applications proliferated -- wireless
devices, peer-to-peer file-sharing, telephony -- companies and network
engineers came up with ingenious and expedient patches, plugs, and
workarounds. The result is that the originally simple communications
technology has become a complex and convoluted affair. For all of the
Internet's wonders, it is also difficult to manage and more fragile
with each passing day.

That's why Clark argues that it's time to rethink the Internet's basic
architecture, to potentially start over with a fresh design -- and
equally important, with a plausible strategy for proving the design's
viability, so that it stands a chance of implementation. "It's not as
if there is some killer technology at the protocol or network level
that we somehow failed to include," says Clark. "We need to take all
the technologies we already know and fit them together so that we get
a different overall system. This is not about building a technology
innovation that changes the world but about architecture -- pulling
the pieces together in a different way to achieve high-level
objectives."

Just such an approach is now gaining momentum, spurred on by the
National Science Foundation. NSF managers are working to forge a
five-to-seven-year plan estimated to cost $200 million to $300 million
in research funding to develop clean-slate architectures that provide
security, accommodate new technologies, and are easier to manage.

They also hope to develop an infrastructure that can be used to prove
that the new system is really better than the current one. "If we
succeed in what we are trying to do, this is bigger than anything we,
as a research community, have done in computer science so far," says
Guru Parulkar, an NSF program manager involved with the effort. "In
terms of its mission and vision, it is a very big deal. But now we are
just at the beginning. It has the potential to change the game. It
could take it to the next level in realizing what the Internet could
be that has not been possible because of the challenges and problems."

References

   37. http://www.technologyreview.com/infotech/wtr_16051,258,p1.html

http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16051,258,p2.html
Continued from Page 1

By David Talbot

Firewall Nation
When AOL updates its software, the new version bears a number: 7.0,
8.0, 9.0. The most recent version is called AOL 9.0 Security Edition.
These days, improving the utility of the Internet is not so much about
delivering the latest cool application; it's about survival.

In August, IBM released a study reporting that "virus-laden e-mails
and criminal driven security attacks" leapt by 50 percent in the first
half of 2005, with government and the financial-services,
manufacturing, and health-care industries in the crosshairs. In July,
the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that 43 percent of
U.S. Internet users -- 59 million adults -- reported having spyware or
adware on their computers, thanks merely to visiting websites. (In
many cases, they learned this from the sudden proliferation of error
messages or freeze-ups.) Fully 91 percent had adopted some defensive
behavior -- avoiding certain kinds of websites, say, or not
downloading software. "Go to a neighborhood bar, and people are
talking about firewalls. That was just not true three years ago," says
Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew project.

Then there is spam. One leading online security company, Symantec,
says that between July 1 and December 31, 2004, spam surged 77 percent
at companies that Symantec monitored. The raw numbers are staggering:
weekly spam totals on average rose from 800 million to more than 1.2
billion messages, and 60 percent of all e-mail was spam, according to
Symantec.

But perhaps most menacing of all are "botnets" -- collections of
computers hijacked by hackers to do remote-control tasks like sending
spam or attacking websites. This kind of wholesale hijacking -- made
more potent by wide adoption of always-on broadband connections -- has
spawned hard-core crime: digital extortion. Hackers are threatening
destructive attacks against companies that don't meet their financial
demands. According to a study by a Carnegie Mellon University
researcher, 17 of 100 companies surveyed had been threatened with such
attacks.

Simply put, the Internet has no inherent security architecture --
nothing to stop viruses or spam or anything else. Protections like
firewalls and antispam software are add-ons, security patches in a
digital arms race.

The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, a group
stocked with a who's who of infotech CEOs and academic researchers,
says the situation is bad and getting worse. "Today, the threat
clearly is growing," the council wrote in a report issued in early
2005. "Most indicators and studies of the frequency, impact, scope,
and cost of cyber security incidents -- among both organizations and
individuals -- point to continuously increasing levels and varieties
of attacks."

And we haven't even seen a real act of cyberterror, the "digital Pearl
Harbor" memorably predicted by former White House counterterrorism
czar Richard Clarke in 2000 (see "[35]A Tangle of Wires"). Consider
the nation's electrical grid: it relies on continuous network-based
communications between power plants and grid managers to maintain a
balance between production and demand. A well-placed attack could
trigger a costly blackout that would cripple part of the country.

The conclusion of the advisory council's report could not have been
starker: "The IT infrastructure is highly vulnerable to premeditated
attacks with potentially catastrophic effects."

The system functions as well as it does only because of "the
forbearance of the virus authors themselves," says Jonathan Zittrain,
who cofounded the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
Law School and holds the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation
at the University of Oxford. "With one or two additional lines of
code...the viruses could wipe their hosts' hard drives clean or
quietly insinuate false data into spreadsheets or documents. Take any
of the top ten viruses and add a bit of poison to them, and most of
the world wakes up on a Tuesday morning unable to surf the Net -- or
finding much less there if it can."

Discuss

Hogwash by artMonster, 12/19/2005 11:43:06 AM
The internet is not broken, M.S. Windows is. The issue of unwanted
email (spam) warrants some changes
in the underlying structure, but the other problems are really OS
problems, and Windows bears the
brunt of responsiblity for this. Major structural changes to how the
internet works would be unwise,
and probably open up more control by either the government or
Microsoft. Neither are desireable or
beneficial for the end user. So who really benefits from this FUD
about the internet being broken?
Not too difficult to figure out...
Spam proliferation by Bellinghamster, 12/19/2005 4:52:05 PM
Despite my ISPs efforts to filter emailed spam, my inbasket is
typically less than one-quarter legitimate
message traffic. But purging spam isnt my greatest inefficiency. The
time I spend maintaining firewall,
virus and malware software is the truly significant inefficiency.
New protocols -- we dont use current ones! by Matej, 12/19/2005
9:11:11 PM
Hi,
when this article was mentioned on &quotThe World" (WGBH) they
mentioned that
NSF is planning to release $300M for &quotdevelopment of new protocols
which would make Internet
safe" (and another $300M later for implementation). Why in the world
we need another protocols
when we are not using the current ones? My Linux here has support for
IPv6, S/MIME, etc. etc. but
no-one in the world uses them, because the problem with unsafe
Internet is not in the technology,
but in the organization and social problems (like how to make
everybody identifiable over Internet,
when US public doesnt want to be identified in the first place)?
Matej
Great sales pitch by Mike, 12/20/2005 1:30:05 AM
Isnt one of the best ways to get someone to spend money to instill
fear? Some people would argue
thats how congress is duped into appropriating funds - How close is
Cambridge to DC? :-)
/>If they want to spend $200M, send it my way and Ill demonstrate a
cool solution to make it easier
to deploy new web-based services, to any device, saving major
corporations Billions in the process.
Cheers!
The Internet is in need of repair by Owen N. Martinez, 12/20/2005
5:47:24 AM
Like any system, the I. needs to be tuned-up or repaired as things get
out of control. Who is qualified
to determine what to do, and who should control the system? Preferably
the same entity or two very
close ones, that have the confidence of the majority the users. The US
government need not apply.
hogwash by Si, 12/20/2005 4:31:01 AM
Im a day late on this and notice that artMonster has hit it perfectly.
Big brother wants control.
I would hate to think what the internet would be like if they
redesigned it along the lines suggested.
Hogwash by Fergus Doyle, 12/20/2005 5:39:59 AM
I agree with the other two guys here the problems are down to MS
software - specifically that MS
cannot/will not keep up with changing circumstance, by releasing SW. I
have no spyware on my (Windows)
system and no viruses. eg use Firefox not Internet Explorer use
Thunderbird not Outlook Express
and most of your problems with Windows are solved. Use Linux and you
dont even have to worry this
much.
Its the infrastructure that needs changing by E Feustel, 12/20/2005
6:30:49 AM
Its the routers and the protocols that need changing to permit secure
higher speed operation including
authentication of the traffic on the net -- no more fake IP addresses
and if the packet says that
X sent it, then X did actually send it. No more DNS hacking -- if you
ask for Xs address, you get
Xs address, not Ys. And you get it with the minimum computation in a
reliable manner even with pieces
of the net going down.
Hogwash indeed. by mrxsmb, 12/28/2005 4:30:12 AM
Although hopefully grown ups dont need more alert than &quotpowerpoint
presentation" and "$400
million dollars reseach funding" in close proximity to know that.
The issues highlighted
with MS [the debilitating Operating System, not the debilitating
Physical Affliction] and its usability
over functionality approach are all valid, but other OSs and
applications have their own issues.
/>Of course business could actually pony up the money to build their
own networks and not use the
internet, but then how would that save them money? I believe some
already do, as do Governments and
sensibly so.
One bank in Australia has actually got with the program and realised
they should
issue their on-line banking customers with a swipe and pin security
system the same as on an ATM,
at each and every house. How much of the &quotproblems" discussed
would be solved by this simple
change in attitude?
future of the internet by p, 12/20/2005 8:31:26 AM
The network (as opposed to the endpoints) doesnt need major new
security features.
I admit
largeer TCP ISNs would be good, and SMTP should have a way to reject
mail per-user after the mail
server has read all of it.
Apart from that what you need is security in execution environmensts
(where some of those EEs are OSs and some are browsers etc.).
This is one of several similar
approaches - its no longer adequate to let a program do anything it
chooses. The programs cant be
rusted while handling suspect data. This is a different threat model
from most computer security
work historically.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=U&ampstart=5&ampq=http://www.cs.columbi
a.edu/~smb/papers/subos.pdf&ampe=42
/>
Extensions to existing OS s/w are effective at providing this kind of
security.
http://whitepapers.zdnet.co.uk/0,39025945,60150583p-39000584q,00.htm
/>
Hogwash Support by Dr Hacker, 12/20/2005 10:35:07 AM
artMonster is right on. The royalists from MaBell refuse to give up
their 100+ year monopoly. I say
give it up and become Americans instead of British-like thugs. We dont
want another 1776, but it
looks like we may need one!
Designers did it by Sundararajan Srinivasan, 12/28/2005 5:47:34 AM
Some of the internet bugs we have now has nothing to do with the OS.
It was the way in which it was
designed. For instance, SMTP does not provide authentication by
default. I can pose myself as bill.gates at microsoft.com
with an SMTP server, w/o any problem. This is because the SMTP does
not mind the &quotfrom" address.
The solution can be the usage of digital signature.
Internet and all the related protocols could
have been designed more secure. But it would not have got the same
popularity, as it is now. That
is why, we are now paying security experts to build layers of
security.

Impact of Emerging Technologies: The Internet Is Broken -- Part 3
http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16056,258,p1.html
Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The Internet Is Broken -- Part 3

Researchers are working to make the Internet smarter -- but that could
make it even slower, warn experts like Google's Vinton Cerf.

By David Talbot

This article -- the cover story in Technology Review's
December-January print issue -- was divided into three parts for
presentation online. This is part 3; [34]part 1 appeared on
December 19 and [35]part 2 on December 20.

In part 1, we argued (with the help of one of the Internet's "elder
statesmen," MIT's David D. Clark) that the Internet has become a vast
patchwork of firewalls, antispam programs, and software add-ons, with
no overall security plan. Part 2 dealt with how we might design a
far-reaching new Web architecture, with, for instance, software
that detects and reports emerging problems and authenticates users. In
this third part, we examine differing views on how to deal with
weaknesses in the Internet, ranging from an effort at the National
Science Foundation to launch a $300 million research program on future
Internet architectures to concerns that "smarter" networks will be
more complicated and therefore error-prone.

The Devil We Know
It's worth remembering that despite all of its flaws, all of its
architectural kluginess and insecurity and the costs associated with
patching it, the Internet still gets the job done. Any effort to
implement a better version faces enormous practical problems: all
Internet service providers would have to agree to change all their
routers and software, and someone would have to foot the bill, which
will likely come to many billions of dollars. But NSF isn't proposing
to abandon the old network or to forcibly impose something new on the
world. Rather, it essentially wants to build a better mousetrap, show
that it's better, and allow a changeover to take place in response to
user demand.

To that end, the NSF effort envisions the construction of a sprawling
infrastructure that could cost approximately $300 million. It would
include research labs across the United States and perhaps link with
research efforts abroad, where new architectures can be given a full
workout. With a high-speed optical backbone and smart routers, this
test bed would be far more elaborate and representative than the
smaller, more limited test beds in use today. The idea is that new
architectures would be battle tested with real-world Internet traffic.
"You hope that provides enough value added that people are slowly and
selectively willing to switch, and maybe it gets enough traction that
people will switch over," Parulkar says. But he acknowledges, "Ten
years from now, how things play out is anyone's guess. It could be a
parallel infrastructure that people could use for selective
applications."

[[36]Click here to view graphic representations of David D. Clark's
four goals for a new Internet architecture.]

Still, skeptics claim that a smarter network could be even more
complicated and thus failure-prone than the original bare-bones
Internet. Conventional wisdom holds that the network should remain
dumb, but that the smart devices at its ends should become smarter.
"I'm not happy with the current state of affairs. I'm not happy with
spam; I'm not happy with the amount of vulnerability to various forms
of attack," says Vinton Cerf, one of the inventors of the Internet's
basic protocols, who recently joined Google with a job title created
just for him: chief Internet evangelist. "I do want to distinguish
that the primary vectors causing a lot of trouble are penetrating
holes in operating systems. It's more like the operating systems don't
protect themselves very well. An argument could be made, 'Why does the
network have to do that?'"

According to Cerf, the more you ask the network to examine data -- to
authenticate a person's identity, say, or search for viruses -- the
less efficiently it will move the data around. "It's really hard to
have a network-level thing do this stuff, which means you have to
assemble the packets into something bigger and thus violate all the
protocols," Cerf says. "That takes a heck of a lot of resources."
Still, Cerf sees value in the new NSF initiative. "If Dave
Clark...sees some notions and ideas that would be dramatically better
than what we have, I think that's important and healthy," Cerf says.
"I sort of wonder about something, though. The collapse of the Net, or
a major security disaster, has been predicted for a decade now." And
of course no such disaster has occurred -- at least not by the time
this issue of Technology Review went to press.

References

   36. http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16056,258,p1.html

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: The Internet Is Broken -- Part 3
http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16056,258,p4.html

Discuss

slowing down of Internet by H.M. Hubey, 12/21/2005 10:56:22 AM
Long shift registers (multiple streams if needed for speed) at routers
to catch worms, viruses, Trojan
horses, etc will not slow down the Internet. The bits will be XORed as
they speed along at their
normal speed. The other end of the XOR will be registers that can be
loaded with bit-images of unwanted
pgms (e.g. viruses, etc). It will be a combination of HW and SW. Since
it will be expensive, it will
be best to implement at the routers. If the routers &quotsurrounding"
a country known for spamming
can catch these, it will be harder for this kind of SW to spread all
over the Internet. In effect,
one can quarantine a country so that spam and viruses do not infect
the rest of the Internet.
new internet? by Erik Karl Sorgatz, 12/21/2005 1:02:00 PM
If all the spam and cookies, virus and worm code were cut, wed have
50% more bandwidth! Then a little
blacklist to keep the spammers from gaining access after a 3rd strike
and we might find that the
existing internet is fairly responsive. Tax it? Nah..regulate it? Yes,
perhaps put all the porn garbarage
on its own backbone, with its own domain, and start fresh..it might be
a good idea if the college
kids were only allowed read-only access to USENET for the first six
months too. The commercial interests
should be blocking the known spam-friendly domains, and the
pill-vendors could be held responsible
for their commercial spams too - its a slippery slope, but the end
user shouldnt be required to support
the scum that perpetrate scams and spam.
Long shift registers in routers by Jesse, 12/27/2005 5:53:19 PM
Will not work.
1. You dont always have access to the contents. (encrypted)
2. You
dont always have access to the entire message (incomplete messages)
3. You dont even necessarily
have access to the entire packet (out of order fragmentation delivery)
Check the Security
Focus web site, and read the white paper on router hacking...
You just CANNOT validate
the contents at routers.
The Internet is Broken by Grant Callaghan, 12/21/2005 11:09:25 AM
Its all software -- even the hardware -- and the only question seems
to be, &quotWhere do we put
the fixes?" I think they belong at the end of the process rather than
at the beginning or in
the middle.
Charging a small amount per message would cut down on the spam, say a
fraction
of a penny, and it would generate enough money to police the system,
free up bandwidth and catch
bad hackers simply because the volume of traffic is so large.
The only danger I see to
this is that the government tends to want to feed its cash cows with
ever larger increases in taxation
of any kind. If you let them start taxing the internet, there will be
no end to it.
Encryption? by Aaron, 12/21/2005 12:52:35 PM
I think it is odd that an article about the future of the internet
makes no mention of encryption.
Public key encryption, the ability to know who is saying what, has
existed for longer than I have
been alive.
It also seems that a lot of the original ideas that made the internet
popular,
decentralization and anonymous communication, are lost on its current
inhabitants. My mother could
care less that emails from me are signed, she just wants less spam in
her mailbox.
Interesting idea about access charges by Dmitry Afanasiev, 12/26/2005
6:34:07 AM
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2005/01/voip_spam_and_a.html
Here access means access to user.
Obviously, this needs sender authentication, automatic charging or
balance verification, and probably
some sort of rule-based message cost negotiation (e.g. I want to
deliver this message, but only if
this costs me less than $xy.z). But it makes a lot of sense since
(thanks to Moores law) human time
and attention are now the most scarce and expensive resources on the
Net
Email postage, not so good by B. Curtis, 12/21/2005 1:04:06 PM
Although it seems simple, Mr. Calaghans concept of a small fee per
email is no good in reality. It
would equally penalize legitimate mass-email systems (newsletters,
discussion lists, etc.) as well
as spammers. E.g., there has been talk about sending tsunami warnings
to peoples cell phones via
email Id hardly want to charge the organization millions of dollars
right when theyre trying to save
my life. If the postage were optional (the recipient chooses if the
sender pays), then youre talking
about needing to positively identify both sender and receiver of an
email, which amounts to SSL in
every home. Some have posited using a difficult puzzle to extract a
&quotcost" of sending emails
even though no real money is involved, the same counter-arguments
apply.
No, postage on
email is just one of those fun ideas that just wont work.
Tariffing email by Jim Hayes, 12/21/2005 1:54:45 PM
B. Curtis seems to not be aware that postage of about $0.20 per letter
and who knows what per catalog
does not keep my mailbox at the end of my driveway from getting filled
with junk mail on paper, especially
in the last month.
Legit emaillers would gladly pay a penny per email to interested
recipients
while spammers sending out tens of millions of messages a day to
random addresses - many of whom
seem to illegally use some of my email addresses as return addresses
by the way - would be put to
rest.
By law, 911 calls are toll-free.
The issue of billing is easy - include 1000 emails
per month in an account from an ISP, so only the excess is billed, so
few users will even need to
be billed.
BTW, I do know companies who have limited access to the Internet for
employees because
of overloads of viruses and spam, as well as abuses in downloading
inappropriate material - I fired
an employee myself for storing his downloaded porn on a company
computer.
Parallel Internet by Khushnood Naqvi, 12/28/2005 3:27:48 AM
The idea of having a parallel Internet is good. The parallel Internet
can be implemented on the next
generation of protocols - all with authentication (through digital
certificates) and the like. And
will have no spam. Commercial sites would perhaps like to have a
presence on the more secure Internet.
Users also wont mind to connect to a different Internet for things
like Banking, or any business
transaction for that matter. Even if users have to pay a slightly
higher amount for that one it will
be a success.
But the only problem, I see with that one is that the Internet in the
current
form will be abondoned and so become more hazardous for people who
continue to rely on this one.
Press Re-Start button by 666, 12/21/2005 3:04:41 PM
The core problem is that Internet, like its underlying software is
becoming legacy and is an institution.
/>
The problem with all software is that underlying software is hard and
unmaintenable instead
being soft and flexible.
This will be rectified by my chosen acronym.
Security vs privacy by Jose I. Icaza, 12/23/2005 9:40:04 PM
Can we trust a government (NSF) initiative to design a more secure
internet that nevertheless makes
government and corporate tracking of individual users and their data
at least as difficult as the
present internet?

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: Click "Oh yeah?"
http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_15999,258,p1.html
Dec. 2005/Jan. 2006

How the Web's inventor viewed security issues a decade ago.

By Katherine Bourzac

As part of a larger proposed effort to rethink the Internet's
architecture (see "[27]The Internet Is Broken"), Internet elders such
as MIT's David D. Clark argue that authentication -- verification of
the identity of a person or organization you are communicating with --
should be part of the basic architecture of a new Internet.
Authentication technologies could, for example, make it possible to
determine if an e-mail asking for account information was really from
your bank, and not from a scam artist trying to steal your money.

Back in 1996, as the popularity of the World Wide Web was burgeoning,
Tim Berners-Lee, the Web's inventor, was already thinking about
authentication. In an article published in July of that year,
Technology Review spoke with him about his creation. The talk was wide
ranging; Berners-Lee described having to convince people to put
information on the Web in its early years and expressed surprise at
people's tolerance for typing code.

But he also addressed complaints about the Web's reliability and
safety. He proposed a simple authentication tool -- a browser button
labeled "Oh, yeah?" that would verify identities -- and suggested that
Web surfers take responsibility for avoiding junk information online.
Two responses are excerpted here.

>From Technology Review, July 1996:

TR: The Web has a reputation in some quarters as more sizzle than
steak -- you hear people complain that there's no way of judging the
authenticity or reliability of the information they find there. What
would you do about this?

Berners-Lee: People will have to learn who they can trust on the Web.
One way to do this is to put what I call an "Oh, yeah?" button on the
browser. Say you're going into uncharted territory on the Web and you
find some piece of information that is critical to the decision you're
going to make, but you're not confident that the source of the
information is who it is claimed to be. You should be able to click on
"Oh, yeah?" and the browser program would tell the server computer to
get some authentication -- by comparing encrypted digital signatures,
for example -- that the document was in fact generated by its claimed
author. The server could then present you with an argument as to why
you might believe this document or why you might not.

  ...Another common gripe is that the Web is drowning in banal and
useless material. After a while, some people get fed up and stop
bothering with it.

To people who complain that they have been reading junk, I suggest
they think about how they got there. A link implies things about
quality. A link from a quality source will generally be only to other
quality documents. A link to a low-quality document reduces the
effective quality of the source document. The lesson for people who
create Web documents is that the links are just as important as the
other content because that is how you give quality to the people who
read your article. That's how paper publications establish their
credibility -- they get their information from credible sources....You
don't go down the street, after all, picking up every piece of paper
blowing in the breeze. If you find that a search engine gives you
garbarage, don't use it.


From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan 13 16:53:58 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:53:58 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Sigma Xi: Naming Names
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312158420.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Naming Names 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/39138?&print=yes
[Best to click on the URL.]

COMPUTING SCIENCE

[31]Brian Hayes

Adam's only chore in the Garden of Eden was naming the beasts and
birds. The book of Genesis doesn't tell us whether he found this task
difficult or burdensome, but today the need to name and number things
has become a major nuisance. When you try to choose a name for a new
Internet domain or an e-mail account, you're likely to discover that
your first choice was taken long ago. One Internet service tells me
the name "brian" is unavailable and suggests "brian13311" as an
alternative. Perhaps I should think of this appellation in the same
category as Louis the 18th or John the 23rd, but being Brian the
13,311th seems a dubious distinction.

The challenge of inventing original names is particularly acute when
the name has to fit into a format that allows only a finite number of
possibilities. For example, the ticker symbols that identify
securities on the New York Stock Exchange can be no more than three
characters long, and only the 26 letters of the English alphabet are
allowed. The scheme imposes an upper limit of 18,278 symbols. If the
day ever comes that 18,279 companies want to be listed on the
exchange, the format will have to be expanded. And long before that
absolute limit is reached, companies could have a hard time finding a
symbol that bears any resemblance to the company name.

[33]Constraints on the size...

It's not just names that are scarce; we're even running out of
numbers. A few years ago telephone numbers were in short supply, and
so were the numbers that identify computers on the Internet. Those
crises have abated, but now attention has turned to the Universal
Product Code, the basis of the barcode labels found on virtually
everything sold in the United States and Canada. It seems the universe
has more products than the UPC has code numbers. For that reason and
others, the 12-digit UPC standard is being supplanted by a 13-digit
code, with provisions for adding a 14th digit. The "sunrise" date for
this transition is January 1, 2005. The old 12-digit codes will
continue to be recognized, so you may not notice an immediate change
on product labels, but every supermarket and drug store has had to
modify its database software to accommodate the extra digits. Some
commentators have drawn parallels with the year 2000 rollover, when
software had to be patched to deal with four-digit year numbers. That
event was a fizzle, anxiously anticipated but with little real
disruption on January 1, 2000. This time there has been little advance
publicity, so perhaps we should brace for turmoil in the checkout
line.

Finishing Adam's Job

Names and numbers were causing trouble long before the Internet age.
Biology had a naming crisis in the 17th and 18th centuries. The
problem wasn't so much a shortage of names but a surfeit of them:
Plants and animals were known by many different names in different
places. Then came the great reform of Carolus Linnaeus and his system
of Latin binomials, identifying each organism by genus and species.
The new scheme revolutionized taxonomy, not because there is any magic
in Latin or in two-part names but because Linnaeus and his followers
labored to preserve a strict one-to-one mapping between names and
organisms. Official codes of nomenclature continue to enforce this
rule--one name, one species--although rooting out synonyms and
homonyms is a constant struggle.

Linnaeus himself named some 6,000 species, and by now the number of
living things in the biological literature is approaching two million.
But there could be another 10 million species--or, who knows, even 100
million--yet to be catalogued. Might we run out of names before all
the species are described? If we were to insist that every binomial
consist of two real Latin words--words known to the Romans--then
perhaps there might be trouble ahead. But in practice Linnaean names
only have to look like Latin, and the only limit on their
proliferation is the ingenuity of the biologist. A dictionary of
classical Latin  will not help you understand the terms Nerocila and
Conilera, which designate two genera of isopods; more helpful is
knowing that the biologist who invented the terms was fond of someone
named Caroline.

Among all the sciences, the one with the most remarkable system of
nomenclature is organic chemistry. Names in most other realms are
opaque labels, which identify a concept or object but tell you little
about it. For most of us, a Linnaean name such as Upupa epops doesn't
even reveal whether the organism is animal or vegetable (this one's a
bird). In contrast, the full name of an organic compound specifies the
structure of the molecule in great detail.
"1,1-dichloro-2,2-difluoro-ethane" is a prescription for drawing a
picture of a Freon molecule. The mapping from name to structural
diagram is so direct that it can be done by a computer program. The
reverse transformation, from diagram to name, is trickier; in other
words, it's easier to make the molecule from the name than the name
from the molecule.

Exhausting the supply of names for organic compounds is not something
we need to worry about: By the very nature of the notational system,
there is a name for every molecule. On the other hand, the names can
get so long and intricate that only a computer can parse them.

Namespace

Although difficulties with names are nothing new, the nature of
name-giving changed with the introduction of computer technology.
There is greater emphasis now on making names uniform and unique.
Second, many names and identifying numbers must conform to a rigid
format, with a specified number of letters or digits drawn from a
fixed alphabet.

Place names--and abbreviations for them--offer a good example of how
names have changed. In the old days, a letter from overseas addressed
to the "U.S." or the "U.S.A." or even the "EE.UU." would stand a
chance of being delivered, but e-mail for the corresponding geographic
domain must have the exact designation "US"; no variation is tolerated
(except that upper case and lower case are not distinguished). The
list of acceptable country codes for Internet addresses is maintained
by the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA). Each code consists
of exactly two characters, drawn from an alphabet of 26 letters. Thus
the number of available codes--the total namespace--is 26 x 26, or
676. The current IANA list has 247 entries, so the filling factor--the
fraction of the space that's occupied--is 0.365. That leaves room for
growth if a few more nations decide to deconstruct themselves the way
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union did. But not every nation can get its
first choice code.

Consider the case of the ?land Islands, which, according to the Web
site www.aland.fi, "form an autonomous, demilitarized and unilingually
Swedish province of Finland." The islands are sufficiently autonomous
to have persuaded IANA to issue them a country code of their own--but
which code? Perhaps the first choice would have been AL, but Albania
already had that one. Or maybe AI, if Anguilla hadn't claimed it. Why
isn't Anguilla AN? Because that's the code for the Netherlands
Antilles (which might have been NA if it weren't for Namibia). The
preemption of AN also leads to less-than-obvious assignments for
Andorra, Angola, Antigua and even Antarctica. In the end, the ?landers
have wound up with the code AX (although, as the address www.aland.fi
indicates, not everyone uses it).

There is more to say about the difficulty of finding an unused name as
a namespace fills up. But first some more examples of finite
namespaces:

Stock market ticker symbols. Ticker symbols began as telegraphers'
informal shorthand, but today they are registered with the various
exchanges. The New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange
share a namespace; no symbol is allowed to have a different meaning in
the two markets. Ignoring certain minutiae, the symbols consist of
one, two or three letters; thus the size of the namespace is
26^3+26^2+26=18,278. The listing I consulted (at
www.commerce-database.com) had 3,926 active symbols, for a filling
factor of about 0.22. Stocks traded on the NASDAQ market use
four-letter symbols. There are fewer of these stocks (about 3,400) and
a much larger namespace (456,976), so it should be considerably easier
to find a symbol for a new company there. (The most notable recent
addition is Google, which chose the symbol GOOG.)

Telephone numbers. Telephone numbers in North America have 10 decimal
digits (including the area code), which suggests that the capacity of
the namespace should be 10 billion numbers. Under the rules prevailing
through the 1980s, however, fewer than a tenth of those combinations
were valid telephone numbers. The format of a phone number in those
days was expressed as NZX-NNN-XXXX, where N represents the digits 2-9,
Z the digits 0-1 and X any digit in the full range 0-9. That works out
to about 819 million numbers. Even that quantity should be plenty;
there are roughly 300 million telephones in use in the United States.
Nevertheless, during the  early 1990s the supply of numbers within
many area codes came close to exhaustion. Although the crisis was
often blamed on the proliferation of modems, fax machines and cellular
telephones, the real culprit was an inefficient scheme of allocation:
If a telephone company had even one subscriber within a region, the
company was assigned a block of 10,000 numbers. The main remedy was
allocating numbers in smaller blocks, but along the way the
grammatical rules defining a telephone number were relaxed, and the
namespace expanded. Any combination of digits of the form NXX-NXX-XXXX
is now a valid phone number, allowing some 6.4 billion possibilities.
With careful conservation, the supply is expected to last until
sometime in the 2030s.

[35]Simulation of the filling of a namespace...

Product codes. As in the telephone system, the shortage of Universal
Product Codes is partly a matter of allocation policy. Although a UPC
number has 12 digits (implying a maximum capacity of a trillion
items), the first digit is a category code that in practice is almost
always 0, and the final digit is a checksum used for detecting errors.
Of the remaining 10 digits, 5 identify the manufacturer and 5 the
individual product. Because of this fixed structure, every
manufacturer automatically gets a block of 100,000 item numbers, even
though most companies need far fewer. The new 13-digit standard coming
into force on the first day of 2005 not only expands the total
namespace by a factor of 10 but also allows a more flexible division
of resources. In particular, some companies will be given a longer
manufacturer code and fewer item codes.

The new product-code standard isn't really new. The United States and
Canada are merely acceding to another standard, called the European
Article Number, that is already in use almost everywhere else in the
world. (How quaint that the scheme known only in part of North America
is the one labeled "Universal.") After the merger, the entire suite of
product codes will be renamed the Global Trade Item Number. Most of
the barcode scanning devices at checkout counters have long been able
to read the 13-digit EAN format, but in many cases the database in the
back office could not handle the extra digit. While making the
necessary conversions, retailers have been urged to allow space for a
14-digit version of the GTIN. In 2007 publishers and libraries will
get their turn to renumber their world as the International Standard
Book Number is expanded to 13 digits and brought under the GTIN
umbrella.

Social Security numbers. With nine-digit decimal numbers, there should
be a billion possibilities. The Social Security Administration has
excluded only a few of them ("No SSNs with an area number of '666'
have been or will be assigned"), so that the actual size of the
namespace appears to be 987,921,198. Some 415 million numbers have
been issued since in 1936, for a filling factor of about 0.4. The
supply of numbers may well outlast the supply of funds to pay
benefits.

Other countries have quite different systems for allocating numbers
analogous to the U.S. Social Security number. In particular, the
Italian codice fiscale is not an arbitrary number assigned to a person
but rather a string of alphanumeric symbols calculated from personal
data such as name and date and place of birth. This scheme eliminates
all concerns over running out of numbers, but it has another potential
hazard: If the algorithm for calculating the codici is not chosen very
carefully, two individuals may wind up with the same number.

Radio station call signs. Broadcast radio stations in the United
States have call signs of either three or four letters, but the first
letter is always either K or W. These rules create a namespace with
room for 36,504 entries. I was surprised to discover how densely
filled this space is. Combining the AM and FM bands (many stations
broadcast on both), there are 12,560 call signs currently registered
with the Federal Communications Commission, a filling factor of more
than one-third.

Airport codes. When you check a bag at the airport, the luggage tag is
marked with a three-letter code that indicates where, if all goes
well, you'll eventually retrieve your belongings. The codes are
administered by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
There's a code for every airport that has airline service, not to
mention a few bus and train stations. Surprisingly, the IATA codes are
the most densely packed of all the naming schemes I have encountered.
Out of 17,576 possible codes, 10,678 are taken, a filling factor of
0.6. This may be why some of the codes are less than obvious (YYC for
Calgary?), although many such minor mysteries have historical
explanations. Chicago's O'Hare airport is ORD because it was once
called Orchard Field.

Making Hash of a Name

[37]Figure 3. Names are distributed nonrandomly...

Suppose you've just built a new airport or radio station or founded a
sovereign nation, and you want to register an identifying code with
the appropriate agency. What is the likelihood that your first choice
will be available? Or your second or third choice? How do these
probabilities change as the namespace fills up?

If we can make the assumption that preferences for codes are
distributed randomly throughout the namespace, then the question is
easily answered. The probability that your first choice is already
taken is just the filling factor of the namespace. The probability
that both your first choice and your second choice are taken is the
square of the filling factor, and so on. For example, if the namespace
is two-thirds filled, then in two-thirds of the cases a randomly
chosen code will already be present; four-ninths of the time, two
randomly generated codes will both be taken.

Searching at random for an unused name is related to the process known
in computer science as hashing. The idea of hashing is to store data
items for quick retrieval by scattering them seemingly at random
throughout a table in computer memory. The arrangement isn't truly
random; each item's position is set by a deterministic "hash
function." Sometimes the hash function sends two data items to the
same location; the collision must be resolved by putting one of the
items elsewhere. This is analogous to requesting your favored name or
code and finding that someone else has already claimed it.

The resemblance between name search and hashing is worth noting
because the performance of various hashing algorithms has been
carefully analyzed and documented. Much depends on the strategy for
resolving collisions, or, in the context of name search, the policy
for choosing an alternative when a desired name is not available.
Figure 2 reports the results of a simulation of a name search
equivalent to one of the simplest hashing methods. The rule here is to
generate a first-choice name at random; if that choice is taken, try
the next name in alphabetical order and continue until an opening is
found. Naturally, the number of collisions increases as the namespace
fills up, but the increase is not linear; the shape of the curve is
concave upward. Thus at any filling factor below about one-half, there
is a reasonable chance you will get one of your first few choices. At
higher filling factors, the average number of attempts before you find
an available name rises steeply.

But there is a flaw in this analysis: The assumption that preferences
for names are random is obviously bogus. People prefer names that
appear to mean something or that have some trait that distinguishes
them from random strings of symbols. In the stock market, the rare
one-letter ticker symbols carry much prestige; radio call signs that
spell a pronounceable word (WARM, KOOL) are in demand. It would be
difficult to codify or quantify these biases, but as a simple way of
estimating their effect I tried looking at the first-order statistics
of the code words in various data sets. The first-order statistics are
simply the letter frequencies at each position within a word.
(Higher-order statistics take into account correlations between the
letters.)

My experiments compared the success of two players--one who chooses
names utterly at random and another whose random choices are biased to
match the statistics of the names already in the data set. In other
words, the latter player tends to favor names that are like those
already present. Not surprisingly, the random player has an easier
time finding an available name. The magnitude of the effect can be
quite large. In the case of IANA country codes, random choices succeed
after an average of 1.6 probes, but finding a name with letter
frequencies similar to the existing population takes 2.5 trials on
average. For IATA airport codes, the statistical bias raises the
average number of attempts from 2.5 to 3.9. These results suggest that
some namespaces may become impractically full much sooner than would
be expected from an analysis based on hashing algorithms.

[39]Statistical bias within a namespace...

The experiment itself has a curious bias. Using an existing data set
to infer people's preferences neglects the fact that many of the code
words may not have been anyone's first choice; they may have been
selected merely because the real first choice was already taken.
Furthermore, the statistical bias varies with the filling factor. If
there are only a few names in the data set, the letter frequencies
will be strongly biased. Indeed, some letters may not appear at all,
and so the algorithm used in the experiment would assign them a
probability of zero. At the opposite end of the spectrum, variations
in letter frequencies inevitably diminish as the namespace fills up.
Once almost all the code words are taken, all letters must have nearly
the same frequency.

Horse Sense

As namespaces get larger, analyses based on random character strings
become less illuminating. A case in point is the naming of
thoroughbred horses. Under rules enforced by the Jockey Club, a
horse's name can have from 2 to 18 characters, drawn from an alphabet
consisting of the usual 26 letters plus the space, the period and the
apostrophe. This is an enormous namespace, with room for more than 2 x
10^26 entries. At any one time there are about 450,000 names assigned
to active or recently retired horses. Most of these names will
eventually become available for reuse, and so the pool of active names
stays at roughly constant size. (Only the names of very famous steeds
are permanently withdrawn; there will never be another Kelso or
Secretariat.)

With just 450,000 of 2 x 10^26 slots occupied, the filling factor of
this namespace might as well be zero. Generating strings of characters
at random, you would have to try 10^21 of them before you would have
much chance of stumbling on a name in use. And yet real-world
experience gives a very different impression. Of all the names
submitted by horse breeders, the fraction rejected is not 1 in 10^21
but close to 1 in 4. According to a spokesperson for the Jockey Club,
the most common reason for rejection is that the proposed name is too
close to an existing one. In this context names can clash even if they
are not spelled identically--mere phonetic similarity is enough to bar
a name. But even allowing for this broader criterion of uniqueness,
the thoroughbred namespace is not nearly as empty as it would seem
from a naive counting of character strings. A fair estimate of the
true filling factor would probably have to be based not on the
combinatorics of random letters but on combinations of words or some
other higher linguistic unit.

The same is surely true for Internet domain names. Each component of a
domain name--each part between dots--can have up to 63 characters, and
the acceptable characters include both letters and numbers as well as
the hyphen. The size of the namespace is nearly 10^100; we won't use
them all up anytime soon. But meaningful, pithy, clever domain
names--that's another matter.

Even outside the confines of finite name-spaces, the sheer onomastic
challenge of modern life sometimes gets to be a burden. Where's Adam
when we need him? Years ago, I could save a clipping from the
newspaper without any need to name it. Now, for every document I
create or choose to keep, I must enact a little ceremony of naming: I
dub thee "FILE-037.TXT." The workload has gotten serious enough that
consultants make a living out of nothing more than dreaming up names.
(One firm named itself A Hundred Monkees--well named!)

When my daughter was a voluble three-year-old, she would greet
passersby with the enthusiastic salute: "Hi! My name is named Amy.
What is your name named?" A dizzying recursion yawns before us. Once
we start naming names, and then the names of names of names, where do
we ever stop?

Bibliography

   * The Airline Codes Web Site. [40]http://www.airlinecodes.co.uk/
   * Book Industry Study Group. 2004. The evolution in product
  identification: Sunrise 2005 and the ISBN-13.
http://www.bisg.org/docs/The_Evolution_in_Product_ID.pdf
   * Federal Communications Commission. Undated. Index of Media Bureau
  CDBS public database files.
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/databases/cdbs
   * Garfield, Eugene. 1961. An Algorithm for Translating Chemical
  Names to Molecular Formulas. Doctoral dissertation, University of
  Pennsylvania.
http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v7p441y1984.pdf
   * Jeffrey, Charles. 1973. Biological Nomenclature. New York: Crane,
  Russak & Co.
   * The Jockey Club. 2003. The American Stud Book: Principal Rules and
  Requirements. Lexington, Ky.: The Jockey Club.
http://www.jockeyclub.com/pdfs/RULES_2003_PRINT.pdf
   * Knuth, Donald E. 1973. The Art of Computer Programming. Vol. 3:
  Sorting and Searching. Section 6.4, Hashing. Reading, Mass.:
  Addison-Wesley.
   * McNamee, Joe. 2003. Why do we care about names and numbers?
http://www.circleid.com/article/336_0_1_0/
   * Mockpetris, P. 1987. Domain names: implementation and
  specification. Network Working Group Request for Comments 1035.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1035.txt
   * NeuStar, Inc. 2003. North American Numbering Plan Administration
  Annual Report, January 1-December 31, 2003.
http://www.nanpa.com/reports/2003_NANPA_Annual_Report.pdf
   * Savory, Theodore. 1962. Naming the Living World: An Introduction
  to the Principles of Biological Nomenclature. London: The English
  Universities Press.
   * Uniform Code Council, Inc. Undated. 2005 Sunrise: Executive
  summary.
http://www.uc-council.org/ean_ucc_system/stnds_and_tech/2005_s unrise.html

References

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   33. 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/39138?&print=yes#39415
   35. 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/39138?&print=yes#39420
   37. 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/39138?&print=yes#39536
   39. 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/39138?&print=yes#39426

From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan 13 16:53:42 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:53:42 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Sigma Xi: On the Threshold
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312158360.28612@panix3.panix.com>

On the Threshold 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/18577?&print=yes
January-February 2003 COMPUTING SCIENCE
[Best to click the URL.]

    [31]Brian Hayes

    Last night I called technical support for the universe to report a
    bug. They kept me on hold for eternity, but finally I lodged my
    complaint: Some things in this world take entirely too long to
    compute--exponentially so, in the worst cases. "That's not a bug,
    that's a feature," was the inevitable reply. "It keeps the universe
    from running down too fast. Besides, NP-complete calculations are an
    unsupported option, which void your warranty. And where is it written
    that anything at all is guaranteed to be efficiently computable? Count
    yourself lucky that 1+1 is a polynomial-time calculation."

    Perhaps cosmic tech support is right: Quick and easy answers to
    computational questions are not something we are entitled to expect in
    this world. Still, it's puzzling that some calculations are so much
    harder than others. The classic example is multiplication versus
    factoring. If you are given two prime numbers, it's easy to multiply
    them, yielding a bigger number as the product. But trying to undo this
    process--to take the product and recover the two unknown
    factors--seems to be much more difficult. We have fast algorithms for
    multiplying but not for factoring. Why is that?

    Although such questions stump the help desk, there has been some
    progress lately in understanding the sources of difficulty in at least
    one family of computational tasks, those known as
    constraint-satisfaction problems. The new line of inquiry doesn't
    quite explain why some of these problems are hard and others are easy,
    but it traces the boundary between the two classes in considerable
    detail. Furthermore, a better map of the problem-solving landscape has
    led to a novel algorithm that pushes back a little further the
    frontier of intractability. The algorithm, called survey propagation,
    could well have important practical applications.

    Where the Hard Problems Are

    The new algorithm weaves together threads from at least three
    disciplines: mathematics, computer science and physics. The theme that
    binds them all together is the presence of sudden transitions from one
    kind of behavior to another.

    The mathematical thread begins in the 1960s with the study of random
    graphs, initiated by Paul Erdos and Alfred R?nyi. In this context a
    graph is not a chart or plot but a more abstract mathematical
    structure--a collection of vertices and edges, generally drawn as a
    network of dots (the vertices) and connecting lines (the edges). To
    draw a random graph, start by sprinkling n vertices on the page, then
    consider all possible pairings of the vertices, choosing randomly with
    probability p whether or not to draw an edge connecting each pair.
    When p is near 0, edges are rare, and the graph consists of many
    small, disconnected pieces, or components. As p increases, the graph
    comes to be dominated by a single "giant" component, which includes
    most of the vertices. The existence of this giant component is hardly
    a surprise, but the manner in which it develops is not obvious. The
    component does not evolve gradually as p increases but emerges
    suddenly when a certain threshold is crossed. The threshold is defined
    by a parameter I'll call , which is the number of edges divided by the
    number of vertices. The giant component is born when is about 1/2.

    [33]Figure 1. Graph coloring . . .

    In computer science, a similar threshold phenomenon came to widespread
    attention in the early 1990s. In this case the threshold governs the
    likelihood that certain computational problems have a solution. One of
    these problems comes straight out of graph theory: It is the
    k-coloring problem, which asks you to paint each vertex of a graph
    with one of k colors, under the rule that two vertices joined by an
    edge may not have the same color. Finding an acceptable coloring gets
    harder as increases, because there are more edges imposing constraints
    on each vertex. Again, the threshold is sharp: Below a certain ratio,
    almost all graphs are k-colorable, and above this threshold almost
    none are. Moreover, the threshold affects not only the existence of
    solutions but also the difficulty of finding them. The computational
    effort needed to decide whether a graph is k-colorable has a dramatic
    peak near the critical value of . (An influential paper about this
    effect was aptly titled "Where the really hard problems are.")

    Physicists also know something about threshold phenomena; they call
    them phase transitions. But are the changes of state observed in
    random graphs and in constraint-satisfaction problems truly analogous
    to physical events such as the freezing of water and the onset of
    magnetization in iron? Or is the resemblance a mere coincidence? For a
    time there was controversy over this issue, but it's now clear that
    the threshold phenomena in graphs and other mathematical structures
    are genuine phase transitions. The tools and techniques of statistical
    physics are ideally suited to them. In particular, the k-coloring
    problem can be mapped directly onto a model of a magnetic system in
    solid-state physics. The survey-propagation algorithm draws on ideas
    developed originally to describe such physical models.

    Where the Hard Problems Aren't

    Survey propagation is really a family of algorithms, which could be
    applied in many different realms. So far, the method has been tested
    on two specific problems. The first of these is Boolean
    satisfiability, or SAT, where the aim is to solve a large formula in
    symbolic logic, assigning values of true or false to all the variables
    in such a way that the entire formula evaluates to true. The second
    problem is k-coloring. Because I have written about satisfiability on
    an earlier occasion, I shall adopt k-coloring as the main example
    here. I focus on three-coloring, where the palette of available colors
    has just three entries.

    Three-coloring is a hard problem, but not an impossible one. The
    question "Is this graph three-colorable?" can always be answered, at
    least in principle. Since each vertex can be assigned any of three
    colors, and there are n vertices, there must be exactly 3 ^n ways of
    coloring the graph. To decide whether a specific graph is
    three-colorable, just work through all the combinations one by one. If
    you find an assignment that satisfies the constraint--that is, where
    no edges yoke together like-colored vertices--then the answer to the
    question is yes. If you exhaust all the possibilities without finding
    a proper coloring, you can be certain that none exists.

    This algorithm is simple and sure. Unfortunately, it's also useless,
    because enumerating 3 ^n colorings is beyond the realm of practicality
    for any n larger than 15 or 20. Some more-sophisticated procedures can
    retain the guarantee of an exact and exhaustive search while reducing
    the number of operations to fewer than 1.5 ^n . This is a dramatic
    improvement, but it is still an exponential function, and it merely
    raises the limit to n=50 or so. For large graphs, with thousands of
    vertices, all such brute-force methods are hopeless.

    On the other hand, if you could somehow peek at the solution to a
    large three-coloring problem, you could check its correctness with
    much less labor. All you would have to do is go through the list of
    edges, verifying that the vertices at the ends of each edge carry
    different colors. The number of edges in a graph cannot be greater
    than n ^2, which is a polynomial rather than an exponential function
    and which therefore grows much more slowly.

    Problems with answers that are hard to find but easy to check are the
    characteristic signature of the class called NP (which stands for
    "nondeterministic polynomial"). Three-coloring is a charter member of
    NP and also belongs to the more-elite group of problems described as
    NP-complete; the same is true of satisfiability. Barring a miracle,
    there will be no polynomial-time algorithms for NP-complete problems.

    Having thus established the credentials of three-coloring as a
    certifiably hard problem, it is now time to reveal that most
    three-coloring problems on random graphs are actually quite easy.
    Given a typical graph, you have a good chance of quickly finding a
    three-coloring or proving that none exists. There is no real paradox
    in this curious situation. The classification of three-coloring as
    NP-complete is based on a worst-case analysis. It could be overturned
    only by an algorithm that is guaranteed to produce the correct answer
    and to run in polynomial time on every possible graph. No one has
    discovered such an algorithm. But there are many algorithms that run
    quickly most of the time, if you are willing to tolerate an occasional
    failure.

    One popular strategy for graph-coloring algorithms is backtracking. It
    is similar to the way most people would attack the problem if they
    were to try coloring a graph by hand. You start by assigning an
    arbitrary color to an arbitrary vertex, then go on to the neighboring
    vertices, giving them any colors that do not cause a conflict.
    Continuing in this way, you may eventually reach a vertex where no
    color is legal; at that point you must back up, undoing some of your
    previous choices, and try again.

    [35]Figure 2. Transition between solvable and unsolvable phases . . .

    Showing that a graph cannot be three-colored calls for another kind of
    algorithm. The basic approach is to search for a small cluster of
    vertices that--even in isolation from the rest of the graph--cannot be
    three-colored. For example, a "clique" made up of four vertices that
    are all linked to one another has this property. If you can find just
    one such cluster, it settles the question for the entire graph.

    Algorithms like these are very different from the brute-force,
    exhaustive-search methods. The simple enumeration of all 3 ^n
    colorings may be impossibly slow, but at least it's consistent; the
    running time is the same on all graphs of the same size. This is not
    true for backtracking and other inexact or incomplete algorithms;
    their performance varies widely depending on the nature of the graph.
    In particular, the algorithms are sensitive to the value of , the
    ratio of edges to vertices, which again is the parameter that controls
    the transition between colorable and uncolorable phases. Well below
    the critical value of , where edges are sparse, there are so many ways
    to color the graph successfully that any reasonable strategy is likely
    to stumble onto one of them. At the opposite extreme, far above the
    threshold, graphs are densely interconnected, and it's easy to find a
    subgraph that spoils the chance of a three-coloring. The troublesome
    region is between these poles, near the threshold. In that middle
    ground there may be just a few proper colorings, or there may be none
    at all. Distinguishing between these two situations can require
    checking almost every possible assignment.

    Where the Solutions Are

    The critical value of is about 2.35. In other words, if a random graph
    with n vertices has fewer than 2.35n edges, it can almost surely be
    three-colored; if it has more than 2.35n edges, a three-coloring is
    unlikely. Moreover, the transition between these two regimes is known
    to be sharp; it is a true discontinuity, a sudden jump rather than a
    smooth gradation. To put this idea more formally, the width of the
    transitional region tends to zero as n tends to infinity.

    The sharpness of the phase transition could be taken as encouraging
    news. If algorithms for deciding colorability bog down only in the
    transitional region, and if that region is vanishingly narrow, then
    the probability of encountering a hard-to-classify graph is
    correspondingly small. But it seems the universe has another bug (or
    feature). In the first place, the sharpness of the colorability
    transition is assured only for infinitely large graphs; at finite n,
    the corners of the transition curve are rounded. And there is another
    disrupting factor, which has been recognized only recently. It has to
    do not with the structure of the graph itself but with the structure
    of the set of all solutions to the coloring problem.

    Although the uncolorable phase does not begin until ~ 2.35,
    experiments have shown that algorithms begin slowing down somewhat
    earlier, at values of around 2.2. The discrepancy may seem
    inconsequential, but it is too large to be explained merely by the
    blurring of the phase transition at finite n. Something else is going
    on.

    [37]Figure 3. Computational effort . . .

    To understand the cause, it helps to think of all the possible
    three-colorings of a graph spread out over a surface. The height of
    the surface at any point represents the number of conflicts in the
    corresponding coloring. Thus the perfect colorings (those with zero
    conflicts) all lie at sea level, while the worst colorings create
    high-altitude peaks or plateaus. Of course the topography of this
    landscape depends on the particular graph. Consider how the surface
    evolves as gradually increases. At low values of there are broad
    basins and valleys, representing the many ways to color the graph
    perfectly. At high the landscape is alpine, and even the lowest point
    is well above sea level, implying a complete absence of perfect
    colorings. The transitional value ~ 2.35 marks the moment when the
    last extensive areas of land at sea level disappear.

    What happens in this "solution space" at ~ 2.2? It turns out this is
    the moment when a broad expanse of bottomland begins breaking up into
    smaller isolated basins. Below 2.2, nearly all the perfect colorings
    form a single giant connected cluster. They are connected in the sense
    that you can convert one solution into another by making relatively
    few changes, and without introducing too many conflicts in any of the
    intermediate stages. Above 2.2, each basin represents an isolated
    cluster of solutions. Colorings that lie in separate basins are
    substantially different, and converting one into another would require
    climbing over a ridge formed by colorings that have large numbers of
    conflicts. Algorithms that work by conducting a local search are
    unlikely to cross such ridge lines, and so they remain confined for
    long periods to whichever basin they first wander into. As increases
    above 2.2, the number of perfect colorings within any one basin
    dwindles away to zero, and so the algorithms may fail to find a
    solution, even though many proper colorings still exist elsewhere on
    the solution surface.

    This vision of solutions spread out over an undulating landscape is a
    familiar conceptual device in many areas of physics. Often the
    landscape is interpreted as an energy surface, and physical systems
    are assumed to run downhill toward states of minimum energy. This
    analogy can be pursued further, setting up a direct correspondence
    between the k-coloring of graphs and a model of magnetic materials.

    Where the Spins Are

    Models of magnetism come in baffling varieties. The basic components
    are vectors that represent atomic spins. Usually the spins are
    arranged in a regular lattice, as in a crystalline solid, and the
    vectors are constrained to point in only a few possible directions. In
    a model of a ferromagnet, nearby spins have positive couplings,
    meaning that the energy of the system is lower when the spins line up
    in parallel. An antiferromagnet has negative couplings, favoring spins
    that point in different directions. The problem of three-coloring a
    graph can be seen as a model of an antiferromagnet in which each spin
    has three possible directions, corresponding to the three colors. It
    is antiferromagnetic because the favored state is one where the colors
    or the spins differ.

    [39]Figure 4. Random walks through the space of graph colorings . . .

    Most spin-system models focus on the effects of thermal fluctuations
    and the countervailing imperatives to minimize energy and to maximize
    entropy. In this respect the graph-coloring model is simpler than
    most, because the condition of interest is at zero temperature, where
    entropy can be neglected. On the other hand, the model is more
    complicated in another way: The spins are embedded in a graph with
    random interconnections, more like a glass than the geometrically
    regular lattice of a crystal.

    Having translated the coloring problem into the language of spin
    physics, the aim is to identify the ground state--the spin
    configuration of minimum energy. If the ground-state energy is zero,
    then at least one perfect coloring exists. If the energy of the spins
    cannot be reduced to zero, then the corresponding graph is not
    three-colorable. The minimum energy indicates how many unavoidable
    conflicts exist in the colored graph.

    Of course recasting the problem in a new vocabulary doesn't make the
    fundamental difficulty go away. In graph coloring, when you resolve a
    conflict by changing the color of one vertex, you may create a new
    conflict elsewhere in the graph. Likewise in the spin system, when you
    lower the energy of one pair of coupled spins, you may raise it for a
    different pair. Physicists refer to this effect as "frustration."

    Interactions between adjacent spins can be viewed as a kind of
    message-passing, in which each spin tells its neighbors what they
    ought to do (or, since the coupling is antiferromagnetic, what they
    ought not to do). Translating back into the language of graph
    coloring, a green vertex broadcasts a signal to its neighbors saying
    "Don't be green." The neighbors send back messages of their
    own--"Don't be red," "Don't be blue." The trouble is, every edge is
    carrying messages in both directions, some of which may be
    contradictory. And feedback loops could prevent the network from ever
    settling down into a stable state.

    A remedy for this kind of frustration is known in condensed-matter
    physics as the cavity method. It prescribes the following sequence of
    actions: First, choose a single spin and temporarily remove it from
    the system (thereby creating a "cavity"). Now, from among the
    neighbors surrounding the cavity, choose one node to regard as an
    output and consider the rest to be inputs. Sum up the signals arriving
    on all the input edges, and pass along the result to the output. The
    effect is to break open loops and enforce one-way communication.
    Finally, repeat the entire procedure with another spin, and continue
    until the system converges on some steady state.

    The cavity method was first applied to constraint-satisfaction
    problems by Marc M?zard of the Universit? de Paris Sud, Giorgio Parisi
    of the Universit? di Roma "La Sapienza" and Riccardo Zecchina of the
    Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste.
    Initially it was a tool for calculating the average properties of
    statistical ensembles of many spin systems. About a year ago, M?zard
    and Zecchina realized that it could also be adapted to work with
    individual problem instances. But a significant change was needed.
    Instead of simple messages such as "Don't be green," the information
    transmitted from node to node consists of entire probability
    distributions, which give a numerical rating to each possible spin
    state or vertex color.

    M?zard and Zecchina named the algorithm survey propagation. They got
    the "propagation" part from another algorithm that also inspired their
    work: a technique called belief propagation, which is used in certain
    error-correcting codes. "Survey" is meant in the sense of opinion
    poll: The sites surrounding a cavity are surveyed for the advice they
    would offer to their neighbors.

    Where the Bugs Are

    Over the past year the concept of survey propagation has been further
    refined and embodied in a series of computer programs by M?zard and
    Zecchina and a group of coworkers. Contributors include Alfredo
    Braunstein, Silvio Franz, Michele Leone, Andrea Montanari, Roberto
    Mulet, Andrea Pagnani, Federico Ricci-Tersenghi and Martin Weigt.

    To solve a three-coloring problem on a graph of size n, the algorithm
    first finds the vertex that is most highly biased toward one color or
    another, and permanently sets the color of that vertex accordingly.
    Then the algorithm is invoked recursively on the remaining graph of
    n-1 vertices, so that another vertex color is fixed. Obviously this
    process has to terminate after no more than n repetitions. In practice
    it usually stops sooner, when all the signals propagating through the
    network have become messages of indifference, putting no constraints
    on neighboring nodes. At this point survey propagation has nothing
    more to offer, but the graph that remains has been reduced to a
    trivial case for other methods.

    As with other algorithms for NP-complete problems, survey propagation
    comes with no guarantees, and it does sometimes fail. The process of
    deciding which vertex to fix next is not infallible, and when a wrong
    choice is made, there may be no later opportunity to recover from it.
    (Adding some form of backtracking or randomized restarting might
    alleviate this problem.) In its present form the algorithm is also
    strictly one-sided: It can usually color a colorable graph, but it
    cannot prove a graph to be uncolorable.

    Nevertheless, the algorithm has already had some impressive successes,
    particularly in the hard-to-solve region near the phase transition.
    The version for satisfiability has solved problems with 8 million
    variables. The graph-coloring program handles graphs of a million
    vertices. Both of these numbers are two orders of magnitude beyond
    what is routine practice for other methods.

    Graph coloring and satisfiability are not just toy problems for
    theorists. They are at the core of various practical tasks in
    scheduling, in the engineering of silicon circuits and in optimizing
    computer programs. Having an algorithm capable of solving much larger
    instances could open up still more applications.

    Ironically, although survey propagation works well on enormous
    problems, it sometimes stalls on much smaller instances, such as
    random graphs with only a few hundred vertices. This is not a pressing
    practical concern, since other methods work well in this size range,
    but it's annoying, and there's the worry that the same failures might
    show up in larger nonrandom graphs. The cause of these small-graph
    failures is not yet clear. It may have to do with an abundance of
    densely nested loops and other structures in the graphs. Then again,
    it may be just another bug in the universe.

    Brian Hayes

    Acknowledgment

    This article had its genesis during a 10-week residence at the Abdus
    Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, where I benefitted
    from discussions with Riccardo Zecchina, Muli Safra, Roberto Mulet,
    Marc M?zard, Stephan Mertens, Alfredo Braunstein, Johannes Berg and
    others.

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From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan 13 16:54:13 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:54:13 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Sigma Xi: Rumours and Errours
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312158460.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Rumours and Errours 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/42368?&print=yes
[Best to click the URL. End of articles from Sigma Xi.]

COMPUTING SCIENCE

[31]Brian Hayes

The confessional essay is not a popular genre in mathematics and the
sciences; few of us wish to dwell on our mistakes or call attention to
them. An inspiring exception is Donald E. Knuth of Stanford
University. During a decade's labor on the TeX typesetting system, he
kept a meticulous log of all his errors, and then he published the
list with a detailed commentary.

I have long admired Knuth's act of public bravery, and this column is
my attempt to follow his example. I took courage from the thought that
if there is any realm of life in which I might hope to surpass Don
Knuth, it's in making mistakes; but, alas, I've fallen short even in
this dubious department. Knuth's published error log runs to more than
900 entries, whereas here I am going to confess to only a paltry
handful of mistakes. Then again, Knuth needed 10 years' work on a
major software project to accumulate his budget of errors, but I was
able to commit some really serious howlers in a program of a dozen
lines.

Knuth remarks that keeping an error log not only helped in debugging
the program but also "helped me to get to know myself." I would like
to think that I too have acquired some self-knowledge from the
experience of confronting my own fallibility. And it would be
gratifying to suggest that by telling my story I might save others
from making the same mistakes--but I don't quite believe that, and I'm
not even sure it would be a good idea.

Start Spreading the News

[33]Figure 1. The birth and death of a rumor...

The story begins with a loose end from my column on the Lambert W
function in the March-April issue of American Scientist. I had been
looking for a paper with the curious title "Rumours with general
initial conditions," by Selma Belen and C. E. M. Pearce of the
University of Adelaide, published in The ANZIAM Journal, which is also
known as The Australia and New Zealand Industrial and Applied
Mathematics Journal. By the time I found the paper, my column had
already gone to press. This was a disappointment, because Belen and
Pearce describe an illuminating application of the W function in a
context that I found interesting in its own right. Here is how they
begin:

   The stochastic theory of rumours, with interacting subpopulations
   of ignorants, spreaders and stiflers, began with the seminal paper
   of Daley and Kendall. The most striking result in the area--that if
   there is one spreader initially, then the proportion of the
   population never to hear the rumour converges almost surely to a
   proportion 0.203188 of the population size as the latter tends to
   infinity--was first signalled in that article. This result occurs
   also in the variant stochastic model of Maki and Thompson, although
   a typographic error has resulted in the value 0.238 being cited in
   a number of consequent papers.

I was intrigued and a little puzzled to learn that a rumor would die
out while "almost surely" leaving a fifth of the people untouched. Why
wouldn't it reach everyone eventually? And that number 0.203188, with
its formidable six decimal places of precision--where did that come
from?

I read on far enough to get the details of the models. The premise, I
discovered, is that rumor-mongering is fun only if you know the rumor
and your audience doesn't; there's no thrill in passing on stale news.
In terms of the three subpopulations, people remain spreaders of a
rumor as long as they continue to meet ignorants who are eager to
receive it; after that, the spreaders become stiflers, who still know
the rumor but have lost interest in propagating it.

The Daley-Kendall and Maki-Thompson models simplify and formalize this
social process. Both models assume a thoroughly mixed population, so
that people encounter each other at random, with uniform probability.
Another simplifying assumption is that people always meet two-by-two,
never in larger groups. The pairwise interactions are governed by a
rigid set of rules:

o Whenever a spreader meets an ignorant, the  ignorant becomes a
spreader, while the original spreader continues spreading.

o When a spreader meets a stifler, the spreader becomes a stifler.

o In the case where two spreaders meet, the models differ. In the
Daley-Kendall version, both spreaders become stiflers. The
Maki-Thompson rules convert only one spreader into a stifler; the
other continues spreading.

o All other interactions (ignorant-ignorant, ignorant-stifler,
stifler-stifler) have no effect on either party.

The rules begin to explain why rumors are self-limiting in these
models. Initially, spreaders are recruited from the large reservoir of
ignorants, and the rumor ripples through part of the population. But
as the spreaders proliferate, they start running into one another and
thereby become stiflers. Because the progression from ignorant to
spreader to stifler is irreversible, it's clear the rumor must
eventually die out, as all spreaders wind up as stiflers in the end.
What's not so obvious is why the last spreader should disappear before
the supply of ignorants is exhausted, or why the permanently clueless
fraction is equal to 0.203188 of the original population.

The rumor models are closely related to well-known models of epidemic
disease, where the three subpopulations are usually labeled
susceptibles, infectives and removed cases. But there's a difference
between rumors and epidemics. In the rumor models, it's not only the
disease that's contagious but also the cure, since both spreading and
stifling are communicable traits.

The Rumor Mill

I was curious to see the rumor models in action, and so I wrote a
little program. I set up a population of 1,000 individuals, each of
whom could be an ignorant, a spreader or a stifler. Initially there
was just one spreader and all the rest were ignorants. At the heart of
the program was the following procedure, meant to implement the
Daley-Kendall model (the one in which pairs of spreaders annihilate
each other):

   repeat

choose X at random from among the spreaders in the population;

choose Y at random from the entire population;

if Y is an ignorant

then make Y a spreader

else if Y is a spreader

then make both X and Y stiflers

else if Y is a stifler

then make X a stifler

   until there are no more spreaders

When all the spreaders are gone, nothing more can change, so the
program ends and reports the fraction of the population still
oblivious of the rumor. This fraction, designated th, should be
0.203188. But the result from my program, averaged over a few thousand
runs, was 0.28 or 0.29--a considerable discrepancy.

At this point, let me pause to say that my big boo-boo had already
been committed. Before reading on, you might want to try debugging my
algorithm, or even write a program of your own.

Typos and Thinkos

Computer programming teaches humility, or at least that's my
experience. In principle, the discrepancy I observed might have
pointed to an error in the published result, but that wasn't my first
hypothesis. I checked my own code, fully expecting to find some
careless mistake--running through a loop one time too few or too many,
failing to update a variable, miscalculating an array index. Nothing
leapt out at me. The problem, I began to suspect, was not a typo but a
thinko.

I did know of one soft spot in the program. The individuals X and Y
were chosen in such a way that they could both turn out to be the same
person, suggesting the strange spectacle of spreading a rumor to
oneself. ("Pssst. Have I heard about...?") When I went to fix this
oddity, I discovered another bug. A variable named spreader-count was
incremented or decremented on each passage through the loop, according
to the outcome of the encounter; when this variable reached zero, the
program ended. After each spreader-spreader interaction, I decreased
spreader-count by 2--with potentially disastrous results if X and Y
were identical. This was a serious flaw, which needed to be repaired;
however, the change had no discernible effect on the value of th,
which remained stuck at 0.285.

I had another thought. Belen and Pearce were careful to state that
their result holds only when the population size tends to infinity.
Perhaps my discrepancy would go away in a larger sample. I tried a
range of populations, with these results:

   population  th
10  0.354
   100  0.296
  1,000 0.286
  10,0000.285
100,0000.285

The trend was in the right direction--a smaller proportion of residual
ignorants as population increased--but the curve seemed to flatten out
beyond 1,000, and th looked unlikely ever to reach 0.203. Even so, it
seemed worthwhile to test still larger populations, but for that I
would need a faster program. I wrote a new and simpler version,
dispensing with the array of individuals and merely keeping track of
the number of persons in each of the three categories. With this
strategy I was able to test populations up to 100 million. The value
of th remained steady at 0.285.

[35]Figure 2. The dynamics of rumors...

Looking at the distribution of th values from single runs of the
program (rather than averages over many runs) suggested another idea.
Most of the results were clustered between th=0.25 and th=0.35, but
there were a few outliers--runs in which 99 percent of the population
never heard the rumor. I could see what must be going on. Suppose on
the very first interaction X spreads the rumor to Y, and then in the
second round the random selection happens to settle on X and Y again.
The rumor dies in infancy, having reached only two people. Could it be
that excluding these outliers would bring the average value of th down
to 0.203? I gave it a try; the answer was no.

Mea Culpa

I was stumped. I had reached the point in a debugging session where
you begin to doubt your random-number generator, or even your
compiler. As it happens, Knuth found a few compiler bugs during his
work on TeX, but for me that road has always led nowhere.

For lack of a better idea, I decided to look at the other scheme of
rumor propagation, the Maki-Thompson model. As indicated above, this
model differs from the Daley-Kendall one in that an encounter between
two spreaders converts just one of them into a stifler. Modifying my
program took only a second. When I ran it, the answer came back
th=0.203. Now I was not just stumped but also thoroughly confused.

Here's where confession becomes a test of character. There was a
moment--it came in the dark of the night--when I allowed myself to
entertain the notion that maybe I was right after all, and the rest of
the world had a screw loose. I looked back at the opening paragraph of
the paper by Belen and Pearce. I realized that I could make sense of
it all, and reconcile their numbers with mine, merely by assuming that
the Australian authors had everything umop-episdn. The number 0.203,
which they identified as the result of the Daley-Kendall model, really
belonged with Maki-Thompson. As for 0.238, which they called a
typographical error--well, yes, that's just what it was, a
transposition of 0.283, which seemed close enough to 0.285, the value
of th I calculated for Daley-Kendall....

[37]Figure 3. The longevity of a rumor...

By morning this madness had abated, but the impasse remained. I knew I
could probably settle the matter by going back to the library and
looking up the sources cited by Belen and Pearce, but that seemed less
than sporting. I could have tried to prove the correctness of one
result or the other, but if I can't trust myself to write a correct
program, how can I be trusted to write a correct proof? Then there's
the experimental method: I might have assembled a thousand volunteers,
carefully instructed them on the Daley-Kendall rules, and set a rumor
loose in their midst.

In the end, what I tried was yet another computer simulation. I
decided to write a program that would mimic a real experiment as
closely as possible, reproducing all the basic events of the
underlying model with no shortcuts or optimizations. The image I had
in mind was a crowd of people milling about like molecules in a gas,
bumping into each other at random and passing on rumors during these
chance collisions. This was the system I wanted to simulate.

My first program, with its explicit representation of each member of
the population, was already fairly close to the goal. But I had made
one refinement for the sake of computational efficiency. Because
interactions in which neither party is a spreader could never affect
the fate of a rumor, it seemed wasteful to include them; I avoided
that waste by always choosing a spreader as the first party to an
encounter. This seemed a totally harmless bit of streamlining, but now
I went back and removed it. In the third version of the program, I
selected two individuals at random from the entire population, checked
to make sure they were not actually the same person, and then allowed
them to interact according to the Daley-Kendall rules. It seemed a
futile exercise, which would surely yield exactly the same result as
the other programs, only slower. To my astonishment, the new program
reported th=0.203.

My Bad

If you have already figured out where my reasoning went astray, I
offer my congratulations. My own belated enlightenment came when I
finally drew the matrix of all nine possible encounters of ignorants,
spreaders and stiflers. As shown in Figure 4, this diagram can serve
as more than just an enumeration of possible outcomes; it encodes the
entire structure and operation of the model. If we make the widths of
the columns and rows proportional to the sizes of the three
subpopulations, then the area of each of the nine boxes gives the
probability of the corresponding two-person encounter. Choosing two
participants at random is equivalent to choosing a point at random
within the diagram; the outcome of the interaction is then decided by
which of the nine boxes the chosen point lies within. (I am again
glossing over the issue of spreading a rumor to oneself; it's a minor
correction.)

[39]Figure 4. Matrix of all possible events...

To understand where I went wrong, it's enough to analyze the simplest
case, where the three subpopulations are of equal size and all nine
kinds of encounters have the same probability, namely 1/9. The boxes
at the four corners of the diagram correspond to events that do not
involve a spreader and that change no one's status. Two other boxes
describe ignorant-spreader encounters, which therefore have a total
probability of 2/9. Two more boxes correspond to spreader-stifler
meetings, so those events also occur with probability 2/9. But there
is only one box representing spreader-spreader interactions, which
accordingly must be assigned a probability of 1/9. The key point is
that ignorant-spreader and spreader-stifler events are each twice as
likely as spreader-spreader meetings.

Now consider what happens in my first program for the Daley-Kendall
model. By always choosing a spreader first, I confined all events to
the middle row of the matrix, and the three boxes in this row were
selected with equal probability. As a result, spreader-spreader
interactions were twice as frequent as they should have been, and the
rumor was extinguished prematurely.

>From the point of view of probability theory, the error is an
elementary one of failing to count cases properly. Perhaps a
professional programmer would cite a different root cause: I had
violated the old adage, "Don't start optimizing your program until
you've finished writing it."

Back to the Stacks

Not all of my confusion was cleared up by the discovery of this error.
In particular, the algorithm that I now knew to be incorrect for the
Daley-Kendall model still seemed to give the right answer for the
Maki-Thompson rules. To make sense of this situation, I finally went
back to the library to find out what the original authors had said.

Daley and Kendall are Daryl J. Daley, now of the Australian National
University, and David G. Kendall, a distinguished statistician and
probabilist at the University of Cambridge. Their paper, published in
1965, is a model of lucid exposition, which would have spared me all
my stumbling in the dark--and for that reason I'm glad I didn't see it
sooner. The correct calculation of probabilities is stated very
clearly (there's a factor of 1/2 in the expression for the
spreader-spreader interaction). Furthermore, the origin of the
mysteriously precise number 0.203188 is made plain. Those six digits
come not from a discrete-event simulation like the ones I had designed
but from a continuous, differential-equation version of the model. The
number th is a solution of the equation:

  th e ^2(1- ^th) = 1.

This equation brings us back almost to the Lambert W function, We^W.)

Maki and Thompson are Daniel P. Maki and Maynard Thompson of Indiana
University, who discussed rumors in a 1973 textbook, Mathematical
Models and Applications. They described the rumor-passing process in
terms of telephone calls, and they limited their attention to calls
placed by spreaders; because of this asymmetry, only the middle row of
the matrix in Figure 4 enters into the calculation, and my first
program was in fact a correct implementation of their model. (At least
I got something right.) It is almost a coincidence that Maki and
Thompson arrive at the same value of th as Daley and Kendall: Their
spreader-spreader interactions are twice as likely but have only half
the effect.

The paper by Belen and Pearce that launched me on this adventure also
deserves a further comment. The phrase "general initial conditions" in
their title refers to rumors initiated not by a single spreader but by
many. One might guess that with enough spreaders, the rumor must
surely permeate the entire society, but Belen and Pearce show
otherwise. Measuring the fraction of those originally ignorant who
remain ignorant when the rumor has finished, they find that this
fraction actually increases along with the number of initial
spreaders, tending to a maximum of 1/e, or about 0.368. In other
words, as more people spread the news, more people fail to hear it.
The reason is simply that the multitude of spreaders quickly stifle
one another.

By now the mathematics of rumors has acquired a vast literature.
Variant models track competing rumors and counter-rumors or allow
people to meet more than two at a time. Still more models study the
progress of rumors through networks or lattices rather than
structureless mixed populations. I have not yet had a chance to make
any errors in exploring these systems.

Gnothi Seauton

Mistakes bring the gift of self-knowledge--a gift that is not always
welcome. Looking back on this episode, I could summarize it as
follows: I wrote a program that gave a wrong answer, and then I
fiddled and fudged until I finally got the output I wanted, and then I
stopped. This is not a protocol to be recommended. What's most
troubling is the uncomfortable thought that if the textbook answer had
not been given to me at the outset, I would surely have been content
with the result of my first, fallacious, program.

Still, for most of us, the only way we'll never err is if we never
try. My fellow-columnist Henry Petroski has written eloquently about
the necessary role of error and failure in all worthy undertakings; as
he says, falling down is part of growing up. And if we are going to
make mistakes, it seems salutary to bring them out in the open and
discuss their causes. Staring them in the face makes them seem a
little less mortifying.

Only a little, though. A confession of this kind is not followed by
absolution. And instead of "Go and err no more," Knuth quotes Piet
Hein's advice: "Err and err and err again but less and less and less."
I take my own motto from the novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett:
"Fail again. Fail better."

Bibliography

   * Belen, Selma, and C. E. M. Pearce. 2004. Rumours with general
  initial conditions. The ANZIAM Journal 45:393-400.
   * Daley, D. J., and D. G. Kendall. 1965. Stochastic rumours. Journal
  of the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications 1:42-55.
   * Knuth, Donald E. 1989. The errors of TeX. Software--Practice &
  Experience 19:607-685. Reprinted with additions in Literate
  Programming, 1992, Stanford, Calif.: Center for the Study of
  Language and Information, pp. 243-339.
   * Maki, Daniel P., and Maynard Thompson. 1973. Mathematical Models
  and Applications, with Emphasis on the Social, Life, and
  Management Sciences. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

References

   31. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AuthorDetail/authorid/490
   33. 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/42368?&print=yes#42605
   35. 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/42368?&print=yes#42606
   37. 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/42368?&print=yes#42607
   39. 
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/42368?&print=yes#42956


From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan 13 16:55:42 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:55:42 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Seth Lloyd: Ultimate physical limits to computation
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312158510.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Seth Lloyd: Ultimate physical limits to computation
http://puhep1.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/QM/lloyd_nature_406_1047_00.pdf

d'Arbeloff Laboratory for Information Systems and Technology, MIT 
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology 3-160, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA (slloyd at mit.edu)

NATURE 406 (2000 August 31):1047-56

An insight review article

Abstract: Computers are physical systems: the laws of physics dictate what 
they can and cannot do. In particular, the speed with which a physical 
device can process information is limited by its energy and the amount of 
information that it can process is limited by the number of degrees of 
freedom it possesses. Here I explore the physical limits of computation as 
determined by the speed of light c, the quantum scale h-bar and the 
gravitational constant G. As an example, I put quantitative bounds to the 
computational power of an 'ultimate laptop' with a mass of one kilogram 
confined to a volume of one litre.

[I did some different calculations, on an upper bound for the number of 
possible computations since the Big Bang. This was simply the time a 
photon can cross the Planck distance times the number of photons times the 
number of such instants since the Big Bang.

[a. The Plank length is sqrt(hG/c^3) = 1.62 x 10^-35 meters.

[b. The Plank time is the length divided by c, or sqrt(hG/c^5) = 5 x 
10^-44 seconds.

[c. The universe is 4 x 10^17 seconds old, or 10^61 Plank time units old.
[d. There are 10^89 photons in the universe.

[I cannot easily recall where I got these numbers, but I don't think they 
are in serious doubt. So the number of photons having moved across a 
Planck distance since the Big Bang is the product of b, c, and d and is 
10^150.

[10^150 = (10^3)^50 ~ (2^10)^50 = 2^500.

[The number of actual calculations is vastly smaller than this, since 
particles do not communicate their movements instantaneously. How much 
vaster doesn't really matter right now. What does matter is that cracking 
a truth table puzzle that has 512 = 2^7 variables is impossible and that a 
512-bit encryption scheme is likewise impossible.

[All this sets sharp limits on the ability of anything whatever to 
calculate. It would not matter much, philosophically, if the figure were 
128 or 256 or 1024 or 2048 or even 1024^2. It is humanly-comprhensible 
number. We know from the results of G?del, Church, Turing, and so on about 
the limitations of any finite calculators.^ But when we come to people the 
limits on reason are much sharper, since our brains weigh only three 
pounds.

^[Recall that only finite sentences of finite length are admitted in the 
"formal systems" of the title of G?del's 1931 paper, which not so by the 
way, means that finite has suddenly become an undefined term! This is true 
of Raymond Smullyan's _Formal Systems_ and all similar books I have seen. 
Of course, there are plenty of definitions of finite *inside* mathematics, 
logic, and set theory, definitions that are not equivalent, but every one 
of these theories is handled only by formal systems, with their undefined 
finite sentences of finite length. And so in mathematics, one of the core 
terms is left as a KNOW-HOW term and never actually gets defined. The same 
is true of cost in economics. I could go on.]

[The Enlightenment optimism of using reason to solve all problems is dead. 
No one in the Enlightenment thought about solving 512 variable truth 
tables and all, except maybe LaPlace, would have admitted to limits on 
reason. Socially, though, the weaking of this optimism took place on a 
different plane. World War I, with it senseless trench warfare, destroved 
much optimism about human nature, as far as governing itself goes. 
Relativity theory and quantum mechanics did their part, too, in the realm 
of science.

[The Enlightenment was killed for good during six seconds on the Dealey 
Plaza.

[Before the article here is a talk by Lloyd with Edge.]

HOW FAST, HOW SMALL, AND HOW POWERFUL? 
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lloyd/lloyd_print.html

REBOOTING CIVILIZATION

"Something else has happened with computers. What's happened with society 
is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can 
register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant 
fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a 
species, can process. When I think of all the information being processed 
there, all the information being communicated back and forth over the 
Internet, or even just all the information that you and I can communicate 
back and forth by talking, I start to look at the total amount of 
information being processed by human beings -- and their artifacts -- we 
are at a very interesting point of human history, which is at the stage 
where our artifacts will soon be processing more information than we 
physically will be able to process."

SETH LLOYD -- HOW FAST, HOW SMALL, AND HOW POWERFUL?: MOORE'S LAW AND THE 
ULTIMATE LAPTOP [7.23.01]

Introduction

"Lloyd's Hypothesis" states that everything that's worth understanding 
about a complex system, can be understood in terms of how it processes 
information. This is a new revolution that's occurring in science.

Part of this revolution is being driven by the work and ideas of Seth 
Lloyd, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Last year, Lloyd 
published an article in the journal Nature -- "Ultimate Physical Limits to 
Computation" (vol. 406, no. 6788, 31 August 2000, pp. 1047-1054) -- in 
which he sought to determine the limits the laws of physics place on the 
power of computers. "Over the past half century," he wrote, "the amount of 
information that computers are capable of processing and the rate at which 
they process it has doubled every 18 months, a phenomenon known as Moore's 
law. A variety of technologies -- most recently, integrated circuits -- 
have enabled this exponential increase in information processing power. 
But there is no particular reason why Moore's law should continue to hold: 
it is a law of human ingenuity, not of nature. At some point, Moore's law 
will break down. The question is, when?"

His stunning conclusion?

"The amount of information that can be stored by the ultimate laptop, 10 
to the 31st bits, is much higher than the 10 to the 10th bits stored on 
current laptops. This is because conventional laptops use many degrees of 
freedom to store a bit whereas the ultimate laptop uses just one. There 
are considerable advantages to using many degrees of freedom to store 
information, stability and controllability being perhaps the most 
important. Indeed, as the above calculation indicates, to take full 
advantage of the memory space available, the ultimate laptop must turn all 
its matter into energy. A typical state of the ultimate laptop's memory 
looks like a plasma at a billion degrees Kelvin -- like a thermonuclear 
explosion or a little piece of the Big Bang! Clearly, packaging issues 
alone make it unlikely that this limit can be obtained, even setting aside 
the difficulties of stability and control."

Ask Lloyd why he is interested in building quantum computers and you will 
get a two part answer. The first, and obvious one, he says, is "because we 
can, and because it's a cool thing to do." The second concerns some 
interesting scientific implications. "First," he says, "there are 
implications in pure mathematics, which are really quite surprising, that 
is that you can use quantum mechanics to solve problems in pure math that 
are simply intractable on ordinary computers." The second scientific 
implication is a use for quantum computers was first suggested by Richard 
Feynman in 1982, that one quantum system could simulate another quantum 
system. Lloyd points out that "if you've ever tried to calculate Feynman 
diagrams and do quantum dynamics, simulating quantum systems is hard. It's 
hard for a good reason, which is that classical computers aren't good at 
simulating quantum systems."

Lloyd notes that Feynman suggested the possibility of making one quantum 
system simulate another. He conjectured that it might be possible to do 
this using something like a quantum computer. In 90s Lloyd showed that in 
fact Feynman's conjecture was correct, and that not only could you 
simulate virtually any other quantum system if you had a quantum computer, 
but you could do so remarkably efficiently. So by using quantum computers, 
even quite simple ones, once again you surpass the limits of classical 
computers when you get down to, say, 30 or 40 bits in your quantum 
computer. You don't need a large quantum computer to get a big huge 
speedup over classical simulations of physical systems.

"A salt crystal has around 10 to the 17 possible bits in it," he points 
out. "As an example, let's take your own brain. If I were to use every one 
of those spins, the nuclear spins, in your brain that are currently being 
wasted and not being used to store useful information, we could probably 
get about 10 to the 28 bits there."

Sitting with Lloyd in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Boston, overlooking the 
tranquil Boston Public Gardens, I am suddenly flooded with fantasies of 
licensing arrangements regarding the nuclear spins of my brain. No doubt 
this would be a first in distributed computing

"You've got a heck of a lot of nuclear spins in your brain," Lloyd says. 
"If you've ever had magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, done on your brain, 
then they were in fact tickling those spins. What we're talking about in 
terms of quantum computing, is just sophisticated 'spin tickling'."

This leads me to wonder how "spin tickling" fits into intellectual 
property law. How about remote access? Can you in theory designate and 
exploit people who would have no idea that their brains were being used 
for quantum computation?

Lloyd points out that so far as we know, our brains don't pay any 
attention to these nuclear spins. "You could have a whole parallel 
computational universe going on inside your brain. This is, of course, 
fantasy. But hey, it might happen."

"But it's not a fantasy to explore this question about making computers 
that are much, much, more powerful than the kind that we have sitting 
around now -- in which a grain of salt has all the computational powers of 
all the computers in the world. Having the spins in your brain have all 
the computational power of all the computers in a billion worlds like ours 
raises another question which is related to the other part of the research 
that I do."

In the '80s, Lloyd began working on how large complex systems process 
information. How things process information at a very small scale, and how 
to make ordinary stuff, like a grain of salt or a cube of sugar, process 
information, relates to the complex systems work in his thesis that he did 
with the late physicist Heinz Pagels, his advisor at Rockefeller 
University. "Understanding how very large complex systems process 
information is the key to understanding how they behave, how they break 
down, how they work, what goes right and what goes wrong with them," he 
says.

Science is being done in new an different ways, and the changes 
accelerates the exchange of ideas and the development of new ideas. Until 
a few years ago, it was very important for a young scientist to be to "in 
the know" -- that is, to know the right people, because results were 
distributed primarily by pre prints, and if you weren't on the right 
mailing list, then you weren't going to get the information, and you 
wouldn't be able to keep up with the field.

"Certainly in my field, and fundamental physics, and quantum mechanics, 
and physics of information," Lloyd notes, "results are distributed 
electronically, the electronic pre-print servers, and they're available to 
everybody via the World Wide Web. Anybody who wants to find out what's 
happening right now in the field can go to [13]http://xxx.lanl.gov and 
find out. So this is an amazing democratization of knowledge which I think 
most people aren't aware of, and its effects are only beginning to be 
felt."

"At the same time," he continues, "a more obvious way in which science has 
become public is that major newspapers such as The New York Times have all 
introduced weekly science sections in the last ten years. Now it's hard to 
find a newspaper that doesn't have a weekly section on science. People are 
becoming more and more interested in science, and that's because they 
realize that science impacts their daily lives in important ways."

A big change in science is taking place, and that's that science is 
becoming more public -- that is, belonging to the people. In some sense, 
it's a realization of the capacity of science. Science in some sense is 
fundamentally public.

"A scientific result is a result that can be duplicated by anybody who has 
the right background and the right equipment, be they a professor at 
M.I.T. like me," he points out, "or be they from an underdeveloped 
country, or be they an alien from another planet, or a robot, or an 
intelligent rat. Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that 
can be verified and duplicated by anybody. So science is basically, at it 
most fundamental level, a public form of knowledge, a form of knowledge 
that is in principle accessible to everybody. Of course, not everybody's 
willing to go out and do the experiments, but for the people who are 
willing to go out and do that, -- if the experiments don't work, then it 
means it's not science.

"This democratization of science, this making it public, is in a sense the 
realization of a promise that science has held for a long time. Instead of 
having to be a member of the Royal Society to do science, the way you had 
to be in England in the 17th, 18th, centuries today pretty much anybody 
who wants to do it can, and the information that they need to do it is 
there. This is a great thing about science. That's why ideas about the 
third culture are particularly apropos right now, as you are concentrating 
on scientists trying to take their case directly to the public. Certainly, 
now is the time to do it."

--JB

SETH LLOYD is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and 
a principal investigator at the Research Laboratory of Electronics. He is 
also adjunct assistant professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He works on 
problems having to do with information and complex systems from the very 
small -- how do atoms process information, how can you make them compute, 
to the very large -- how does society process information? And how can we 
understand society in terms of its ability to process information?

[14]Click Here for Seth Lloyd's Bio Page[15] [7.23.01]

SETH LLOYD: Computation is pervading the sciences. I believe it began 
about 400 years ago, if you look at the first paragraph of Hobbes's famous 
book Leviathan. He says that just as we consider the human body to be like 
a machine, like a clock where you have sinews and muscles to move energy 
about, a pulse beat like a pendulum, and a heart that pumps energy in, 
similar to the way a weight supplies energy to a clock's pendulum, then we 
can consider the state to be analogous to the body, since the state has a 
prince at its head, people who form its individual portions, legislative 
bodies that form its organs, etc. In that case, Hobbes asked, couldn't we 
consider the state itself to have an artificial life?

To my knowledge that was the first use of the phrase artificial life in 
the form that we use it today. If we have a physical system that's 
evolving in a physical way, according to a set of rules, couldn't we 
consider it to be artificial and yet living? Hobbes wasn't talking about 
information processing explicitly, but the examples he used were, in fact, 
examples of information processing. He used the example of the clock as 
something that is designed to process information, as something that gives 
you information about time. Most pieces of the clock that he described are 
devices not only for transforming energy, but actually for providing 
information. For example, the pendulum gives you regular, temporal 
information. When he next discusses the state and imagines it having an 
artificial life, he first talks about the brain, the seat of the state's 
thought processes, and that analogy, in my mind, accomplishes two things.

First, Hobbes is implicitly interested in information. Second, he is 
constructing the fundamental metaphor of scientific and technological 
inquiry. When we think of a machine as possessing a kind of life in and of 
itself, and when we think of machines as doing the same kinds of things 
that we ourselves do, we are also thinking the corollary, that is, we are 
doing the same kinds of things that machines do. This metaphor, one of the 
most powerful of the Enlightenment, in some sense pervaded the popular 
culture of that time. Eventually, one could argue, that metaphor gave rise 
to Newton's notions of creating a dynamical picture of the world. The 
metaphor also gave rise to the great inquiries into thermodynamics and 
heat, which came 150 years later, and, in some ways, became the central 
mechanical metaphor that has informed all of science up to the 20th 
century.

The real question is, when did people first start talking about 
information in such terms that information processing rather than 
clockwork became the central metaphor for our times? Because until the 
20th century, this Enlightenment mode of thinking of physical things such 
as mechanical objects with their own dynamics as being similar to the body 
or the state was really the central metaphor that informed much scientific 
and technological inquiry. People didn't start thinking about this 
mechanical metaphor until they began building machines, until they had 
some very good examples of machines, like clocks for instance. The 17th 
century was a fantastic century for clockmaking, and in fact, the 17th and 
18th centuries were fantastic centuries for building machines, period.

Just as people began conceiving of the world using mechanical metaphors 
only when they had themselves built machines, people began to conceive of 
the world in terms of information and information-processing, only when 
they began dealing with information and information processing. All the 
mathematical and theoretical materials for thinking of the world in terms 
of information, including all the basic formulas, were available at the 
end of the 19th century, because all these basic formulas had been created 
by Maxwell, Boltzmann and Gibbs for statistical mechanics. The formula for 
information was known back in the 1880s, but people didn't know that it 
dealt with information. Instead, because they were familiar with things 
like heat and mechanical systems that processed heat, they called 
information in its mechanical or thermodynamic manifestation, entropy. It 
wasn't until the 1930s, when people like Claude Shannon and Norbert 
Wiener, and before them Harry Nyquist, started to think about information 
processing for the primary purpose of communication, or for the purposes 
of controlling systems so that the role of information and feedback could 
be controlled. Then came the notion of constructing machines that actually 
processed information. Babbage tried to construct one back in the early 
19th century, which was a spectacular and expensive failure, and one which 
did not enter into the popular mainstream.

Another failure concerns the outgrowth of the wonderful work regarding 
Cybernetics in other fields such as control theory, back in the late 
1950s, early 1960s, when there was this notion that cybernetics was going 
to solve all our problems and allow us to figure out how social systems 
work, etc. That was a colossal failure -- not because that idea was 
necessarily wrong, but because the techniques for doing so didn't exist at 
that point -- and, if we're realistic, may in fact never exist. The 
applications of Cybernetics that were spectacularly successful are not 
even called Cybernetics because they're so ingrained in technology, in 
fields like control theory, and in the aerospace techniques that were used 
to put men on the moon. Those were the great successes of Cybernetics, 
remarkable successes, but in a more narrow technological field.

This brings us to the Internet, which in some sense is almost like Anti 
Cybernetics, the evil twin of Cybernetics. The word Cybernetics comes from 
the Greek word kybernotos which means a governor -- helmsman, actually, 
the kybernotos was the pilot of a ship. Cybernetics, as initially 
conceived, was about governing, or controlling, or guiding. The great 
thing about the Internet, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's completely 
out of control. In some sense the fact of the Internet goes way beyond and 
completely contradicts the Cybernetic ideal. But, in another sense -- the 
way in which the Internet and cybernetics are related, Cybernetics was 
fundamentally on the right track. As far as I'm concerned what's really 
going on in the world is that there's a physical world where things 
happen. I'm a physicist by training and I was taught to think of the world 
in terms of energy, momentum, pressure, entropy. You've got all this 
energy, things are happening, things are pushing on other things, things 
are bouncing around.

But that's only half the story. The other half of the story, its 
complementary half, is the story about information. In one way you can 
think about what's going on in the world as energy, stuff moving around, 
bouncing off each other -- that's the way people have thought about the 
world for over 400 years, since Galileo and Newton. But what was missing 
from that picture was what that stuff was doing: how, why, what? These are 
questions about information. What is going on? It's a question about 
information being processed. Thinking about the world in terms of 
information is complementary to thinking about it in terms of energy. To 
my mind, that is where the action is, not just thinking about the world as 
information on its own, or as energy on its own, but looking at the 
confluence of information and energy and how they play off against each 
other. That's exactly what Cybernetics was about. Wiener, who is the real 
father of the field of Cybernetics, conceived of Cybernetics in terms of 
information, things like feedback control. How much information, for 
example, do you need to make something happen?

The first physicists studying these problems were scientists who happened 
to be physicists, and the first person who was clearly aware of the 
connection between information, entropy, and physical mechanics and energy 
like quanta was Maxwell. Maxwell, in the 1850s and 60s, was the first 
person to write down formulas that related what we would now call 
information -- ideas of information -- to things like energy and entropy. 
He was also the first person to make such an explicit connection.

He also had this wonderfully evocative far-out, William Gibsonesque notion 
of a demon. "Maxwell's Demon" is this hypothetical being that was able to 
look very closely at the molecules of gas whipping around in a room, and 
then rearrange them. Maxwell even came up with a model in which the demon 
was sitting at a partition, a tiny door, between two rooms and he could 
open and shut this door very rapidly. If he saw fast molecules coming from 
the right and slow molecules coming from the left, then he'd open the door 
and let the fast molecules go in the lefthand side, and let the slow 
molecules go into the righthand side.

And since Maxwell already knew about this connection between the average 
speed of molecules and entropy, and he also knew that entropy had 
something to do with the total number of configurations, the total number 
of states a system can have, he pointed out, that if the demon continues 
to do this, the stuff on the lefthand side will get hot, and the stuff on 
the righthand side will get cold, because the molecules over on the left 
are fast, and the molecules on the right are slow.

He also pointed out that there is something screwy about this because the 
demon is doing something that shouldn't take a lot of effort since the 
door can be as light as you want, the demon can be as small as you want, 
the amount of energy you use to open and shut the door can be as small as 
you desire, and yet somehow the demon is managing to make something hot on 
one side. Maxwell pointed out that this was in violation of all the laws 
of thermodynamics -- in particular the second law of thermodynamics which 
says that if you've got a hot thing over here and a cold thing over there, 
then heat flows from the hot thing to the cold thing, and the hot thing 
gets cooler and the cold thing gets hotter, until eventually they end up 
the same temperature. And it never happens the opposite way. You never see 
something that's all the same temperature spontaneously. Maxwell pointed 
out that there was something funny going on, that there was this 
connection between entropy and this demon who was capable of processing 
information.

To put it all in perspective, as far as I can tell, the main thing that 
separates humanity from most other living things, is the way that we deal 
with information. Somewhere along the line we developed methods, 
sophisticated mechanisms, for communicating via speech. Somewhere along 
the line we developed natural language, which is a universal method for 
processing information. Anything that you can imagine is processed with 
information and anything that could be said, can be said using language.

That probably happened around a hundred thousand years ago, and since 
then, the history of human beings has been the development of ever more 
sophisticated ways of registering, processing, transforming, and dealing 
with information. Society through this methodology creates an 
organizational formula that is totally wild compared with the 
organizational structures of most other species, which makes the human 
species distinctive, if there is something at all that makes us 
distinctive. In some sense we're just like any ordinary species out there. 
The extent to which we are different has to do with having more 
sophisticated methods for processing information.

Something else has happened with computers. What's happened with society 
is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can 
register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant 
fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a 
species, can process. When I think of all the information being processed 
there, all the information being communicated back and forth over the 
Internet, or even just all the information that you and I can communicate 
back and forth by talking, I start to look at the total amount of 
information being processed by human beings -- and their artifacts -- we 
are at a very interesting point of human history, which is at the stage 
where our artifacts will soon be processing more information than we 
physically will be able to process. So I have to ask, how many bits am I 
processing per second in my head? I could estimate it, it's going to be 
around ten billion neurons, something like 10 to the 15 bits per second, 
around a million billion bits per second.

Hell if I know what it all means -- we're going to find out. That's the 
great thing. We're going to be around to find out some of what this means. 
If you think that information processing is where the action is, it may 
mean in fact that human beings are not going to be where the action is 
anymore. On the other hand, given that we are the people who created the 
devices that are doing this mass of information processing, we, as a 
species, are uniquely poised to make our lives interesting and fun in 
completely unforeseen ways.

Every physical system, just by existing, can register information. And 
every physical system, just by evolving according to its own peculiar 
dynamics, can process that information. I'm interested in how the world 
registers information and how it processes it. Of course, one way of 
thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the 
world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is 
about; that's what history is about. But since I'm a scientist who deals 
with the physics of how things process information, I'm actually 
interested in that notion in a more specific way. I want to figure out not 
only how the world processes information, but how much information it's 
processing. I've recently been working on methods to assign numerical 
values to how much information is being processed, just by ordinary 
physical dynamics. This is very exciting for me, because I've been working 
in this field for a long time trying to come up with mathematical 
techniques for characterizing how things process information, and how much 
information they're processing.

About a year or two ago, I got the idea of asking the question, given the 
fundamental limits on how the world is put together -- (1) the speed of 
light, which limits how fast information can get from one place to 
another, (2) Planck's constant, which tells you what the quantum scale is, 
how small things can actually get before they disappear altogether, and 
finally (3) the last fundamental constant of nature, which is the 
gravitational constant, which essentially tells you how large things can 
get before they collapse on themselves -- how much information can 
possibly be processed. It turned out that the difficult part of this 
question was thinking it up in the first place. Once I'd managed to pose 
the question, it only took me six months to a year to figure out how to 
answer it, because the basic physics involved was pretty straightforward. 
It involved quantum mechanics, gravitation, perhaps a bit of quantum 
gravity thrown in, but not enough to make things too difficult.

The other motivation for trying to answer this question was to analyze 
Moore's Law. Many of our society's prized objects are the products of this 
remarkable law of miniaturization -- people have been getting extremely 
good at making the components of systems extremely small. This is what's 
behind the incredible increase in the power of computers, what's behind 
the amazing increase in information technology and communications, such as 
the Internet, and it's what's behind pretty much every advance in 
technology you can possibly think of -- including fields like material 
science. I like to think of this as the most colossal land grab that's 
ever been done in the history of mankind.

From an engineering perspective, there are two ways to make something 
bigger: One is to make it physically bigger, (and human beings spent a lot 
of time making things physically bigger, working out ways to deliver more 
power to systems, working out ways to actually build bigger buildings, 
working out ways to expand territory, working out ways to invade other 
cultures and take over their territory, etc.) But there's another way to 
make things bigger, and that's to make things smaller. Because the real 
size of a system is not how big it actually is, the real size is the ratio 
between the biggest part of a system and the smallest part of a system. Or 
really the smallest part of a system that you can actually put to use in 
doing things. For instance, the reason that computers are so much more 
powerful today than they were ten years ago is that every year and a half 
or so, the basic components of computers, the basic wires, logic chips 
etc., have gone down in size by a factor of two. This is known as Moore's 
Law, which is just a historical fact about history of technology.

Every time something's size goes down by a factor of two, you can cram 
twice as many of them into a box, and so every two years or so, the power 
of computers doubles, and over the course of fifty years the power of 
computers has gone up by a factor of a million or more. The world has 
gotten a million times bigger because we've been able to make the smallest 
parts of the world a million times smaller. This makes this an exciting 
time to live in, but a reasonable question to ask is, where is all this 
going to end? Since Moore proposed it in the early 1960s, Moore's Law has 
been written off numerous times. It was written off in the early 1970s 
because people thought that fabrication techniques for integrated circuits 
were going to break down and you wouldn't be able to get things smaller 
than a scale size of ten microns.

Now Moore's Law is being written off again because people say that the 
insulating barriers between wires in computers are getting to be only a 
few atoms thick, and when you have an insulator that's only a few atoms 
thick then electrons can tunnel through them and it's not a very good 
insulator. Well, perhaps that will stop Moore's Law, but so far nothing 
has stopped it.

At some point Moore's Law has to stop? This question involves the ultimate 
physical limits to computation: you can't send signals faster than the 
speed of light, you can't make things smaller than the laws of quantum 
mechanics tell you that you can, and if you make things too big, then they 
just collapse into one giant black hole. As far as we know, it's 
impossible to fool Mother Nature. I thought it would be interesting to see 
what the basic laws of physics said about how fast, how small, and how 
powerful, computers can get. Actually these two questions: given the laws 
of physics, how powerful can computers be; and where must Moore's Law 
eventually stop -- turn out to be exactly the same, because they stop at 
the same place, which is where every available physical resource is used 
to perform computation. So every little subatomic particle, every ounce of 
energy, every photon in your system -- everything is being devoted towards 
performing a computation. The question is, how much computation is that? 
So in order to investigate this, I thought that a reasonable form of 
comparison would be to look at what I call the ultimate laptop. Let's ask 
just how powerful this computer could be.

The idea here is that we can actually relate the laws of physics and the 
fundamental limits of computation to something that we are familiar with 
-- something of human scale that has a mass of about a kilogram, like a 
nice laptop computer, and has about a liter in volume, because kilograms 
and liters are pretty good to hold in your lap, are a reasonable size to 
look at, and you can put it in your briefcase, et cetera. After working on 
this for nearly a year what I was able to show was that the laws of 
physics give absolute answers to how much information you could process 
with a kilogram of matter confined to a volume of one liter. Not only 
that, surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the amount of 
information that can be processed, the number of bits that you could 
register in the computer, and the number of operations per second that you 
could perform on these bits are related to basic physical quantities, and 
to the aforementioned constants of nature, the speed of light, Planck's 
constant, and the gravitational constant. In particular you can show 
without much trouble that the number of ops per second -- the number of 
basic logical operations per second that you can perform using a certain 
amount of matter is proportional to the energy of this matter.

For those readers who are technically-minded, it's not very difficult to 
whip out the famous formula E = MC2 and show, using work of Norm Margolus 
and Lev Levitin here in Boston that the total number of elementary logical 
operations that you can perform per second using a kilogram of matter is 
the amount of energy, MC2, times two, divided by H-bar Planck's constant, 
times pi. Well, you don't have to be Einstein to do the calculation; the 
mass is one kilogram, the speed of light is 3 times ten to the eighth 
meters per second, so MC2 is about ten to the 17th joules, quite a lot of 
energy (I believe it's roughly the amount of energy used by all the 
world's nuclear power plants in the course of a week or so), a lot of 
energy, but let's suppose you could use it to do a computation. So you've 
got ten to the 17th joules, and H-bar, the quantum scale, is ten to the 
minus 34 joules per second, roughly. So there you go. I have ten to the 
17th joules, I divide by ten to the minus 34 joules-seconds, and I have 
the number of ops: ten to the 51 ops per second. So you can perform 10 to 
the 51 operations per second, and ten to the 51 is about a billion billion 
billion billion billion billion billion ops per second -- a lot faster 
than conventional laptops. And this is the answer. You can't do any better 
than that, so far as the laws of physics are concerned.

Of course, since publication of the Nature article, people keep calling me 
up to order one of these laptops; unfortunately the fabrication plant to 
build it has not yet been constructed. You might then actually ask why it 
is that our conventional laptops, are so slow by comparison when we've 
been on this Moore's Law track for 50 years now? The answer is that they 
make the mistake, which could be regarded as a safety feature of the 
laptop, of locking up most of their energy in the form of matter, so that 
rather than using that energy to manipulate information and transform it, 
most of it goes into making the laptop sit around and be a laptop.

As you can tell, if I were to take a week's energy output of all the 
world's nuclear power plants and liberate it all at once, I would have 
something that looked a lot like a thermonuclear explosion, because a 
thermonuclear explosion is essentially taking roughly a kilogram of matter 
and turning it into energy. So you can see right away that the ultimate 
laptop would have some relatively severe packaging problems. Since I am a 
professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, I think packaging problems is 
where it's at. We're talking about some very severe material and 
fabrication problems to prevent this thing from taking not only you but 
the entire city of Boston out with it when you boot it up the first time.

Needless to say, we didn't actually figure out how we were going to put 
this thing into a package, but that's part of the fun of doing 
calculations according to the ultimate laws of physics. We decided to 
figure out how many ops per second we could perform, and to worry about 
the packaging afterwards. Now that we've got 10 to the 51 ops per second 
the next question is: what's the memory space of this laptop.

When I go out to buy a new laptop, I first ask how many ops per second can 
it perform? If it's something like a hundred megahertz, it's pretty slow 
by current standards; if it's a gigahertz, that's pretty fast though we're 
still very far away from the 10 to the 51 ops per second. With a 
gigahertz, we're approaching 10 to the 10th, 10 to the 11th, 10 to the 
12th, depending how ops per second are currently counted. Next, how many 
bits do I have -- how big is the hard drive for this computer, or how big 
is its RAM? We can also use the laws of physics to calculate that figure. 
And computing memory capability is something that people could have done 
back in the early decades of this century.

We know how to count bits. We take the number of states, and the number of 
states is two raised to the power of the number of bits. Ten bits, two to 
the tenth states, 1024 states. Twenty bits, two to the 20 bits, roughly a 
million states. You keep on going and you find that with about 300 bits, 
two to the 300, well, it's about ten to the one hundred, which is 
essentially a bit greater than the number of particles in the universe. If 
you had 300 bits, you could assign every particle in the universe a serial 
number, which is a powerful use of information. You can use a very small 
number of bits to label a huge number of bits.

How many bits does this ultimate laptop have?

I have a kilogram of matter confined to the volume of a liter; how many 
states, how many possible states for matter confined to the volume of a 
liter can there possibly be?

This happened to be a calculation that I knew how to do, because I had 
studied cosmology, and in cosmology there's this event, called the Big 
Bang, which happened a long time ago, about 13 billion years ago, and 
during the Big Bang, matter was at extremely high densities and pressures.

I learned from cosmology how to calculate the number of states for matter 
of very high densities and pressures. In actuality, the density is not 
that great. I have a kilogram of matter in a liter. The density is similar 
to what we might normally expect today. However, if you want to ask what 
the number of states is for this matter in a liter, I've got to calculate 
every possible configuration, every possible elementary quantum state for 
this kilogram of matter in a liter of volume. It turns out, when you count 
most of these states, that this matter looks like it's in the midst of a 
thermonuclear explosion. Like a little piece of the Big Bang -- a few 
seconds after the universe was born -- when the temperature was around a 
billion degrees. At a billion degrees, if you ask what most states for 
matter are if it's completely liberated and able to do whatever it wants, 
you'll find that it looks like a lot like a plasma at a billion degrees 
Kelvin. Electrons and positrons are forming out of nothing, going back 
into photons again, there's a lot of elementary particles whizzing about 
and it's very hot. Lots of stuff is happening and you can still count the 
number of possible states using the conventional methods that people use 
to count states in the early universe; you take the logarithm of the 
number of states, get a quantity that's normally thought of as being the 
entropy of the system (the entropy is simply the logarithm of the number 
of states which also gives you the number of bits, because the logarithm 
of the number of states, the base 2, is the number of bits -- because the 
number of bits raised to the power of -- 2 to the power of the number of 
bits is the number of states. What more do I need to say?)

When we count them, we find that there are roughly 10 to the 31 bits 
available. That means that there's 2 to the 10 to the 31 possible states 
that this matter could be in. That's a lot of states - but we can count 
them. The interesting thing about that is that you notice we've got 10 to 
the 31 bits, we're performing 10 to the 51 ops per second, so each bit can 
perform about 10 to the 20 ops per second. What does this quantity mean?

It turns out that the quantity -- if you like, the number of ops per 
second per bit is essentially the temperature of this plasma. And I take 
this plasma, I multiply it by Bell's constant, divide by Planck's 
constant, and what I get is the energy per bit, essentially; that's what 
temperature is. It tells you the energy per bit. It tells you how much 
energy is available for a bit to perform a logical operation. Since I know 
if I have a certain amount of energy I could perform a certain number of 
operations per second, then the temperature tells me how many ops per bit 
per second I can perform.

Then I know not only the number of ops per second, and the number of bits, 
but also the number of ops per bit per second that can be performed by 
this ultimate laptop, a kilogram of matter in a liter volume; it's the 
number of ops per bit per second that could be performed by these 
elementary particles back at the beginning of time by the Big Bang; it's 
just the total number of ops that each bit can perform per second. The 
number of times it can flip, the number of times it can interact with its 
neighboring bits, the number of elementary logical operations. And it's a 
number, right? 10 to the 20. Just the way that the total number of bits, 
10 to the 31, is a number -- it's a physical parameter that characterizes 
a kilogram of matter and a liter of volume. Similarly, 10 to the 51 ops 
per second is the number of ops per second that characterize a kilogram of 
matter, whether it's in a liter volume or not.

We've gone a long way down this road, so there's no point in stopping -- 
at least in these theoretical exercises where nobody gets hurt. So far all 
we've used are the elementary constants of nature, the speed of light, 
which tells us the rate of converting matter into energy or E = MC2. The 
speed of light tells us how much energy we get from a particular mass. 
Then we use the Planck scale, the quantum scale, because the quantum scale 
tells you both how many operations per second you can get from a certain 
amount of energy, and it also tells you how to count the number of states 
available for a certain amount of energy. So by taking the speed of light, 
and the quantum scale, we are able to calculate the number of ops per 
second that a certain amount of matter can perform, and we're able to 
calculate the amount of memory space that we have available for our 
ultimate computer.

Then we can also calculate all sorts of interesting issues, like what's 
the possible input-output rate for all these bits in a liter of volume. 
That can actually be calculated quite easily from what I've just 
described, because to get all this information into and out of a liter 
volume -- take a laptop computer -- you can say okay, here's all these 
bits, they're sitting in a liter volume, let's move this liter volume 
over, by its own distance, at the speed of light. You're not going to be 
able to get the information in or out faster than that.

We can find out how many bits per second we get into and out of our 
ultimate laptop. And we find we can get around 10 to the 40, or 10 to the 
41, or perhaps, in honor of Douglas Adams and his mystical number 42, even 
10 to the 42 bits per second in and out of our ultimate laptop. So you can 
calculate all these different parameters that you might think are 
interesting, and that tells you how good a modem you could possibly have 
for this ultimate laptop -- how many bits per second can you get in and 
out over the Ultimate Internet, whatever the ultimate Internet would be. I 
guess the Ultimate Internet is just space/time itself in this picture.

I noted that you can't possibly do better than this, right? These are the 
laws of physics. But you might be able to do better in other ways. For 
example, let's think about the architecture of this computer. I've got 
this computer that's doing 10 to the 51 ops per second, or 10 to the 31 
bits. Each bit can flip 10 to the 20 times per second. That's pretty fast. 
The next question is how long does it take a bit on this side of the 
computer to send a signal to a bit on that side of the computer in the 
course of time it takes it to do an operation.

As we've established, it has a liter volume, which is about ten 
centimeters on each side, so it takes about ten to the minus ten seconds 
for light to go from one side to another -- one ten billionth of a second 
for light to go from this side to the other. These bits are flipping 10 to 
the 20 times per second -- a hundred billion billion times per second. 
This bit is flipping ten billion times in the course of time it takes a 
signal to go from one side of the computer to the other. This is not a 
very serial computation. A lot of action is taking place over here in the 
time it takes to communicate when all the action is taking place over on 
this side of the computer. This is what's called a parallel computation.

You could say that in the kinds of densities of matter that we're familiar 
with, like a kilogram per liter volume, which is the density of water, we 
find that we can only perform a very parallel computation, if we operate 
at the ultimate limits of computation; lots of computational action takes 
place over here during the time it takes a signal to go from here to there 
and back again.

How can we do better? How could we make the computation more serial?

Let's suppose that we want our machine to do more serial computation, so 
in the time it takes to send a signal from one side of the computer to the 
other, there are fewer ops that are being done. The obvious solution is to 
make the computer smaller, because if I make the computer smaller by a 
factor of two, it only takes half the time for light, for a signal, for 
information, to go from one side of the computer to the other.

If I make it smaller by a factor of ten billion, it only takes one ten 
billionth of the time for its signal to go from one side of the computer 
to the other. You also find that when you make it smaller, these pieces of 
the computer tend to speed up, because you tend to have more energy per 
bit available in each case. If you go through the calculation you find out 
that as the computer gets smaller and smaller, as all the mass is 
compressed into a smaller and smaller volume, you can do a more serial 
computation.

When does this process stop? When can every bit in the computer talk with 
every other bit, in the course of time it takes for a bit to flip? When 
can everybody get to talk with everybody else in the same amount of time 
that it takes them to talk with their neighbors?

As you make the computer smaller and smaller, it gets denser and denser, 
until you have a kilogram of matter in an ever smaller volume. Eventually 
the matter assumes more and more interesting configurations, until it's 
actually going to take a very high pressure to keep this system down at 
this very small volume. The matter assumes stranger and stranger 
configurations, and tends to get hotter and hotter and hotter, until at a 
certain point a bad thing happens. The bad thing that happens is that it's 
no longer possible for light to escape from it -- it becomes a black hole.

What happens to our computation at this point. This is probably very bad 
for a computation, right? Or rather, it's going to be bad for 
input-output. Input is good, because stuff goes in, but output is bad 
because it doesn't come out since it's a black hole. Luckily, however, 
we're safe in this, because the very laws of quantum mechanics that we 
were using to calculate how much information a physical system can 
compute, how fast it can perform computations, and how much information it 
can register, actually hold.

Stephen Hawking showed, in the 1970s, that black holes, if you treat them 
quantum-mechanically, actually can radiate out information. There's an 
interesting controversy as to whether that information has anything to do 
with the information that went in. Stephen Hawking and John Preskill have 
a famous bet, where Preskill says yes -- the information that comes out of 
a black hole reflects the information that went in. Hawking says no -- the 
information that comes out of a black hole when it radiates doesn't have 
anything to do with the information that went in; the information that 
went in goes away. I don't know the answer to this.

But let's suppose for a moment that Hawking is wrong and Preskill is 
right. Let's suppose for a moment that in fact the information that comes 
out of a black hole when it evaporates, radiates information the wave 
length of the radiation coming out which is the radius of the black hole. 
This black hole, this kilogram black hole, is really radiating at a 
whopping rate; it's radiating out these photons with wave lengths of 10 to 
the minus 27 meters, this is not something you would actually wish to be 
close to -- it would be very dangerous. In fact it would look a lot like a 
huge explosion. But let's suppose that in fact that information that's 
being radiated out by the black hole is in fact the information that went 
in to construct it, but simply transformed in a particular way. What you 
then see is that the black hole can be thought of in some sense as 
performing a computation.

You take the information about the matter that's used to form the black 
hole, you program it in the sense that you give it a particular 
configuration, you put this electron here, you put that electron there, 
you make that thing vibrate like this, and then you collapse this into a 
black hole, 10 to the minus 27 seconds later, in one hundred billion 
billionth of a second, the thing goes cablooey, and you get all this 
information out again, but now the information has been transformed, by 
some dynamics, and we don't know what this dynamics is, into a new form.

In fact we would need to know something like string theory or quantum 
gravity to figure out how it's been transformed. But you can imagine that 
this could in fact function as a computer. We don't know how to make it 
compute, but indeed, it's taking in information, it's transforming it in a 
systematic form according to the laws of physics, all right, and then 
poop! It spits it out again.

It's a dangerous thing -- the Ultimate Laptop was already pretty 
dangerous, because it looked like a thermonuclear explosion inside of a 
liter bottle of coca cola. This is even worse, because in fact it looks 
like a thermonuclear explosion except that it started out at a radius of 
10 to the minus 27 meters, one billion billion billionth of a meter, so 
it's really radiating at a very massive rate. But suppose you could 
somehow read information coming out of the black hole. You would indeed 
have performed the ultimate computation that you could have performed 
using a kilogram of matter, in this case confining it to a volume of 10 to 
the minus 81 cubic meters. Pretty minuscule but we're allowed to imagine 
this happening.

Is there anything more to the story?

After writing my paper on the ultimate laptop in Nature, I realized this 
was insufficiently ambitious; that of course the obvious question to ask 
at this point is not what is the ultimate computational capacity of a 
kilogram of matter, but instead to ask what is the ultimate computational 
capacity of the universe as a whole? After all, the universe is processing 
information, right? Just by existing, all physical systems register 
information, just by evolving their own natural physical dynamics, they 
transform that information, they process it. So the question then is how 
much information has the universe processed since the Big Bang?
    _________________________________________________________________

References

13. http://xxx.lanl.gov/ 14. 
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/lloyd.html 15. 
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/varela.html 16. 
http://www.edge.org/discourse/information.html


[Now to the famous article by Seth Lloyd.]

-------------------

Over the past half century, the amount of information that computers are 
capable of processing and the rate at which they process it has doubled 
every 18 months, a phenomenon known as Moore's law. A variety of 
technologies--most recently, integrated circuits-- have enabled this 
exponential increase in information processing power. But there is no 
particular reason why Moore's law should continue to hold: it is a law of 
human ingenuity, not of nature. At some point, Moore's law will break 
down. The question is, when?

The answer to this question will be found by applying the laws of physics 
to the process of computation (1-85). Extrapolation of current exponential 
improvements over two more decades would result in computers that process 
information at the scale of individual atoms. Although an Avogadro-scale 
computer that can act on 10^23 bits might seem implausible, prototype 
quantum computers that store and process information on individual atoms 
have already been demonstrated (64,65,76-80). Existing quantum computers 
may be small and simple, and able to perform only a few hundred operations 
on fewer than ten quantum bits or 'qubits', but the fact that they work at 
all indicates that there is nothing in the laws of physics that forbids 
the construction of an Avogadro-scale computer.

The purpose of this article is to determine just what limits the laws of 
physics place on the power of computers. At first, this might seem a 
futile task: because we do not know the technologies by which computers 
1000, 100, or even 10 years in the future will be constructed, how can we 
determine the physical limits of those technologies? In fact, I will show 
that a great deal can be determined concerning the ultimate physical 
limits of computation simply from knowledge of the speed of light, c = 
2.9979 x 10^8 ms^-1, Planck's reduced constant, h-bar= h/2pi = 1.0545 x 
10^-34 Js, and the gravitational constant, G = 6.673 x 10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 
s^-2. Boltzmann's constant, k-sub-B = 1.3805 x10^-23 J K^-1, will also be 
crucial in translating between computational quantities such as memory 
space and operations per bit per second, and thermodynamic quantities such 
as entropy and temperature. In addition to reviewing previous work on how 
physics limits the speed and memory of computers, I present results--which 
are new except as noted--of the derivation of the ultimate speed limit to 
computation, of trade-offs between memory and speed, and of the analysis 
of the behaviour of computers at physical extremes of high temperatures 
and densities.

Before presenting methods for calculating these limits, it is important to 
note that there is no guarantee that these limits will ever be attained, 
no matter how ingenious computer designers become. Some extreme cases such 
as the black-hole computer described below are likely to prove extremely 
difficult or impossible to realize. Human ingenuity has proved great in 
the past, however, and before writing off physical limits as unattainable, 
we should realize that certain of these limits have already been attained 
within a circumscribed context in the construction of working quantum 
computers. The discussion below will note obstacles that must be 
sidestepped or overcome before various limits can be attained.

Energy limits speed of computation

To explore the physical limits of computation, let us calculate the 
ultimate computational capacity of a computer with a mass of 1 kg 
occupying a volume of 1 litre, which is roughly the size of a conventional 
laptop computer. Such a computer, operating at the limits of speed and 
memory space allowed by physics, will be called the 'ultimate laptop' 
(Fig. 1).

[Figure 1 The ultimate laptop. The 'ultimate laptop' is a computer with a 
mass of 1 kg and a volume of 1 liter operating at the fundamental limits 
of speed and memory capacity fixed by physics. The ultimate laptop 
performs 2mc^2/pi h-bar = 5.4258 x 10^50 logical operations per second on 
~10^31 bits. Although its computational machinery is in fact in a highly 
specified physical state with zero entropy, while it performs a 
computation that uses all its resources of energy and memory space it 
appears to an outside observer to be in a thermal state at ~10^9 degrees 
Kelvin. The ultimate laptop looks like a small piece of the Big Bang.]

First, ask what limits the laws of physics place on the speed of such a 
device. As I will now show, to perform an elementary logical operation in 
time Delta-t requires an average amount of energy E greater than or equal 
to pi h-bar/2Delta-t. As a consequence, a system with average energy E can 
perform a maximum of 2E/pi h-bar logical operations per second. A 1-kg 
computer has average energy E = mc^2 = 8.9874 x 10^16 J. Accordingly, the 
ultimate laptop can perform a maximum of 5.4258 x 10^50 operations per 
second.

Maximum speed per logical operation

For the sake of convenience, the ultimate laptop will be taken to be a 
digital computer. Computers that operate on nonbinary or continuous 
variables obey similar limits to those that will be derived here. A 
digital computer performs computation by representing information in the 
terms of binary digits or bits, which can take the value 0 or 1, and then 
processes that information by performing simple logical operations such as 
AND, NOT and FANOUT. The operation, AND, for instance, takes two binary 
inputs X and Y and returns the output 1 if and only if both X and Y are 1; 
otherwise it returns the output 0. Similarly, NOT takes a single binary 
input X and returns the output 1 if X = 0 and 0 if X = 1. FANOUT takes a 
single binary input X and returns two binary outputs, each equal to X. Any 
boolean function can be constructed by repeated application of AND, NOT 
and FANOUT. A set of operations that allows the construction of arbitrary 
boolean functions is called universal. The actual physical device that 
performs a logical operation is called a logic gate.

How fast can a digital computer perform a logical operation? During such 
an operation, the bits in the computer on which the operation is performed 
go from one state to another. The problem of how much energy is required 
for information processing was first investigated in the context of 
communications theory by Levitin (11-16), Bremermann (17-19), Beckenstein 
(20-22) and others, who showed that the laws of quantum mechanics 
determine the maximum rate at which a system with spread in energy Delta-E 
can move from one distinguishable state to another. In particular, the 
correct interpretation of the time-energy Heisenberg uncertainty principle 
Delta-E Delta-t is greater than or equal to h-bar is not that it takes 
time Delta-t to measure energy to an accuracy Delta-E (a fallacy that was 
put to rest by Aharonov and Bohm (23,24)), but rather that a quantum state 
with spread in energy Delta-E takes time at least Deltat = pi 
h-bar/2Delta-E to evolve to an orthogonal (and hence distinguishable) 
state(23-26). More recently, Margolus and Levitin (15,16) extended this 
result to show that a quantum system with average energy E takes time at 
least Delta-t = pi h-bar/2E to evolve to an orthogonal state.

Performing quantum logic operations

As an example, consider the operation NOT performed on a qubit with 
logical states |0> and |1>. (For readers unfamiliar with quantum 
mechanics, the 'bracket' notation |> signifies that whatever is contained 
in the bracket is a quantum-mechanical variable; |0> and |1> are vectors 
in a two-dimensional vector space over the complex numbers.) To flip the 
qubit, one can apply a potential H = E-sub-0|E-sub-0><E-sub-0|+ 
E-sub-1|E-sub-1><E-sub-1| with energy eigenstates |E-sub-0> = 
(1/sqrt2)(|0> + |1>) and |E-sub-1> = (1/sqrt2)(|0> - |1>). Because |0> = 
(1/sqrt2)(|E-sub-0> + |E-sub-1>) and |1> = (1/sqrt2)(|E-sub-0>- 
|E-sub-1>), each logical state |0>, |1>has spread in energy Delta-E = 
(E-sub-1 - E-sub-0)/2. It is easy to verify that after a length of time 
Delta-t = pi h-bar/2Delta-E the qubit evolves so that |0> -> |1> and |1> 
-> |0>. That is, applying the potential effects a NOT operation in a time 
that attains the limit given by quantum mechanics. Note that the average 
energy E of the qubit in the course of the logical operation is <0|H|0> = 
<1|H|1> = (E-sub-0+ E-sub-1)/2 = E-sub-0+ Delta-E. Taking the ground-state 
energy E-sub-0 = 0 gives E = Delta-E. So the amount of time it takes to 
perform a NOT operation can also be written as Delta-t = pi h-bar/2E. It 
is straightforward to show (15,16) that no quantum system with average 
energy E can move to an orthogonal state in a time less than Delta-t. That 
is, the speed with which a logical operation can be performed is limited 
not only by the spread in energy, but also by the average energy. This 
result will prove to be a key component in deriving the speed limit for 
the ultimate laptop.

AND and FANOUT can be enacted in a way that is analogous to the NOT 
operation. A simple way to perform these operations in a 
quantum-mechanical context is to enact a so-called Toffoli or 
controlled-controlled-NOT operation (31). This operation takes three 
binary inputs, X, Y and Z, and returns three outputs, X', Y' and Z'.

The first two inputs pass through unchanged, that is, X' = X, Y' = Y. The 
third input passes through unchanged unless both X and Y are 1, in which 
case it is flipped. This is universal in the sense that suitable choices 
of inputs allow the construction of AND, NOT and FANOUT. When the third 
input is set to zero, Z = 0, then the third output is the AND of the first 
two: Z' = X AND Y. So AND can be constructed. When the first two inputs 
are 1, X = Y = 1, the third output is the NOT of the third input, Z' = NOT 
Z. Finally, when the second input is set to 1, Y = 1, and the third to 
zero, Z = 0, the first and third output are the FANOUT of the first input, 
X' = X, Z' = X. So arbitrary boolean functions can be constructed from the 
Toffoli operation alone.

By embedding a controlled-controlled-NOT gate in a quantum context, it is 
straightforward to see that AND and FANOUT, like NOT, can be performed at 
a rate 2E/pi h-bar times per second, where E is the average energy of the 
logic gate that performs the operation. More complicated logic operations 
that cycle through a larger number of quantum states (such as those on 
non-binary or continuous quantum variables) can be performed at a rate 
E/pi h-bar--half as fast as the simpler operations (15,16). Existing 
quantum logic gates in optical-atomic and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) 
quantum computers actually attain this limit. In the case of NOT, E is the 
average energy of interaction of the qubit's dipole moment (electric 
dipole for optic-atomic qubits and nuclear magnetic dipole for NMR qubits) 
with the applied electromagnetic field. In the case of multiqubit 
operations such as the Toffoli operation, or the simpler two-bit 
controlled-NOT operation, which flips the second bit if and only if the 
first bit is 1, E is the average energy in the interaction between the 
physical systems that register the qubits.

Ultimate limits to speed of computation

We are now in a position to derive the first physical limit to 
computation, that of energy. Suppose that one has a certain amount of 
energy E to allocate to the logic gates of a computer. The more energy one 
allocates to a gate, the faster it can perform a logic operation. The 
total number of logic operations performed per second is equal to the sum 
over all logic gates of the operations per second per gate. That is, a 
computer can perform no more than

BigSigma-over-l 1/Delta-t-sub-l is less than or equal to

BigSigma-over- l underneath 2E-sub-l/pi h-bar= 2E/pi h-bar

operations per second. In other words, the rate at which a computer can 
compute is limited by its energy. (Similar limits have been proposed by 
Bremmerman in the context of the minimum energy required to communicate a 
bit (17-19), although these limits have been criticized for 
misinterpreting the energy-time uncertainty relation(21), and for failing 
to take into account the role of degeneracy of energy eigenvalues13,14 and 
the role of nonlinearity in communications7-9.) Applying this result to a 
1-kg computer with energy E = mc^2 = 8.9874 2 1016 J shows that the 
ultimate laptop can perform a maximum of 5.4258 x 10^50 operations per 
second.

Parallel and serial operation

An interesting feature of this limit is that it is independent of computer 
architecture. It might have been thought that a computer could be speeded 
up by parallelization, that is, by taking the energy and dividing it up 
among many subsystems computing in parallel. But this is not the case. If 
the energy E is spread among N logic gates, each one operates at a rate 
2E/pi h-bar N, and the total number of operations per second, N 2E/pi 
h-barN = 2E/pi h-bar, remains the same. then the rate at which they 
operate and the spread in energy per gate decrease. Note that in this 
parallel case, the overall spread in energy of the computer as a whole is 
considerably smaller than the average energy: in general Delta-E = 
sqrt(BigSigma-over-l Delta-E-sub-l^2) ~ sqrt(N Delta-E-sub-l) whereas E = 
BigSigma-over-l E-sub-l = NE-sub-l. efficiently, but it does not alter the 
total number of operations per second. As I will show below, the degree of 
parallelizability of the computation to be performed determines the most 
efficient distribution of energy among the parts of the computer. 
Computers in which energy is relatively evenly distributed over a larger 
volume are better suited for performing parallel computations. More 
compact computers and computers with an uneven distribution of energy are 
performing parallel computations,

Comparison with existing computers

Conventional laptops operate much more slowly than the ultimate laptop. 
There are two reasons for this inefficiency. First, mot of the energy is 
locked up in the mass of the particles of which the computer is 
constructed, leaving only an infintesimal fraction for performing logic. 
Second, a conventional computer uses many degrees of freedom (billions and 
billions of electrons) for registering a single bit. From the physical 
perspective, such a computer operates in a highly redundant fashion. There 
are, however, good technological reasons for such redundancy, with 
conventional designs depending on it for reliability and 
manufacturability. But in the present discussion, the subject is not what 
computers are but what they might be, and in this context the laws of 
physics do not require redundancy to perform logical operations--recently 
constructed quantum microcomputers use one quantum degree of freedom for 
each bit and operate at the Heisenberg limit De;ta-t = pi h-bar/2 Delta-E 
for the time needed to flip a bit (64,65,76-80). Redundancy is, however, 
required for error correction, as will be discussed below.

In sum, quantum mechanics provides a simple answer to the question of how 
fast information can be processed using a given amount of energy. Now it 
will be shown that thermodynamics and statistical mechanics provide a 
fundamental limit to how many bits of informatio can be processed using a 
given amount of energy confined to a given volume. Available energy 
necessarily limits the rate at which a computer can process information. 
Similarly, the maximum entropy of a physical system determines the amount 
of information it can process. Energy limits speed. Entropy limits memory.

Entropy limits memory space

The amount of information that a physical system can store and process is 
related to the number of distingt physical states that are accessible to 
the system. A collection of m two-state systems has 2^m accessible states 
and can register m bits of information. In general, a system with N 
accessible states can register log (base 2) N bits of information. But it 
has been known for more than a century that the number of accessible 
states of a physical system, W, is related to its thermodynamic entropy by 
the formula S = k-sub-B lnW, where kB is Boltzmann's constant. (Although 
this formula is inscribed on Boltzmann's tomb, it is attributed originally 
to Planck; before the turn of the century, kB was often known as Planck's 
constant.)

The amount of information that can be registered by a physical system is I 
= S(E)/k-sub-B ln2 where S(E) is the thermodynamic entropy of a system 
with expectation value for the energy E. Combining this formula with the 
formula 2E/pi h-bar for the number of logical operations that can be 
performed per second, we see that when it is using all its memory, the 
number of operations per bit per second that our ultimate laptop can 
perform is k-sub-B x 2ln(2)E/pi h-barS = k-sub-B T/h-bar, where T = 
(partialderivativeS/partialderivativeE)^-1 is the temperature of 1 kg of 
matter in a maximum entropy in a volume of 1 liter. The entropy governs 
the amount of information the system can register and the temperature 
governs the number of operations per bit per second that it can perform.

Because thermodynamic entropy effectively counts the number of bits 
available to a physical system, the following derivation of the memory 
space available to the ultimate laptop is based on a thermo dynamic 
treatment of 1 kg of matter confined to a volume of 1 l in a maximum 
entropy state. Throughout this derivation, it is important to remember 
that although the memory space available to the computer is given by the 
entropy of its thermal equilibrium state, the actual state of the ultimate 
laptop as it performs a computation is completely determined, so that its 
entropy remains always equal to zero. As above, I assume that we have 
complete control over the actual state of the ultimate laptop, and are 
able to guide it through its logical steps while insulating it from all 
uncontrolled degrees of freedom. But as the following discussion will make 
clear, such complete control will be difficult to attain (see Box 1).

[Box 1: The role of thermodynamics in computation

[The fact that entropy and information are intimately linked has been 
known since Maxwell introduced his famous 'demon' well over a century ago 
(1). Maxwell's demon is a hypothetical being that uses its 
information-processing ability to reduce the entropy of a gas. The first 
results in the physics of information processing were derived in attempts 
to understand how Maxwell's demon could function (1-4. The role of 
thermodynamics in computation has been examined repeatedly over the past 
half century. In the 1950s, von Neumann (10) speculated that each logical 
operation performed in a computer at temperature T must dissipate energy 
k-sub-B T ln2, thereby increasing entropy by k-sub-B ln2. This speculation 
proved to be false. The precise, correct statement of the role of entropy 
in computation was attributed to Landauer (5), who showed that reversible, 
that is, one- to-one, logical operations such as NOT can be performed, in 
principle, without dissipation, but that irreversible, many-to-one 
operations such as AND or ERASE require dissipation of at least k-sub-B 
ln2 for each bit of information lost. (ERASE is a one-bit logical 
operation that takes a bit, 0 or 1, and restores it to 0.) The argument 
behind Landauer's principle can be readily understood (37). Essentially, 
the one-to-one dynamics of hamiltonian systems implies that when a bit is 
erased the information that it contains has to go somewhere. If the 
information goes into observable degrees of freedom of the computer, such 
as another bit, then it has not been erased but merely moved; but if it 
goes into unobservable degrees of freedom such as the microscopic motion 
of molecules it results in an increase of entropy of at least k-sub-B ln2.

[In 1973, Bennett (28-30) showed that all computations could be performed 
using only reversible logical operations. Consequently, by Landauer's 
principle, computation does not require dissipation. (Earlier work by 
Lecerf (27) had anticipated the possibility of reversible computation, but 
not its physical implications. Reversible computation was discovered 
independently by Fredkin and Toffoli(31).) The energy used to perform a 
logical operation can be 'borrowed' from a store of free energy such as a 
battery, 'invested' in the logic gate that performs the operation, and 
returned to storage after the operation has been performed, with a net 
'profit' in the form of processed information. Electronic circuits based 
on reversible logic have been built and exhibit considerable reductions in 
dissipation over conventional reversible circuits (33-35).

[Under many circumstances it may prove useful to perform irreversible 
operations such as erasure. If our ultimate laptop is subject to an error 
rate of epsilon bits per second, for example, then error-correcting codes 
can be used to detect those errors and reject them to the environment at a 
dissipative cost of epsilon k-sub-B T-sub-E ln2 J s^-1, where T-sub-E is 
the temperature of the environment. (k-sub-B T ln2 is the minimal amount 
of energy required to send a bit down an information channel with noise 
temperature T (ref. 14).) Such error-correcting routines in our ultimate 
computer function as working analogues of Maxwell's demon, getting 
information and using it to reduce entropy at an exchange rate of k-sub-B 
T ln2 joules per bit. In principle, computation does not require 
dissipation. In practice, however, any computer--even our ultimate 
laptop--will dissipate energy.

[The ultimate laptop must reject errors to the environment at a high rate 
to maintain reliable operation. To estimate the rate at which it can 
reject errors to the environment, assume that the computer encodes 
erroneous bits in the form of black-body radiation at the characteristic 
temperature 5.87 x 10^8 K of the computer's memory (21). The 
Stefan-Boltzmann law for black-body radiation then implies that the number 
of bits per unit area than can be sent out to the environment is B = pi^2 
k-sub-B^3 T^3/60ln(2)h-bar^3 c^2 = 7.195 x 10^42 bits per square meter per 
second. As the ultimate laptop has a surface area of 10^-2 m^2 and is 
performing ~10^50 operations per second, it must have an error rate of 
less than 10-^10 per operation in order to avoid over-heating. Even if it 
achieves such an error rate, it must have an energy throughput (free 
energy in and thermal energy out) of 4.04 x 10^26 W--turning over its own 
resting mass energy of mc^2 ~ 10^17 J in a nanosecond! The thermal load of 
correcting large numbers of errors clearly indicates the necessity of 
operating at a slower speed than the maximum allowed by the laws of 
physics.

[End of Box 1]

Entropy, energy and temperature

To calculate the number of operations per second that could be performed 
by our ultimate laptop, I assume that the expectation value of the energy 
is E. Accordingly, the total number of bits of memory space available to 
the computer is S(E,V)/k-sub-B ln2 where S(E,V) is the thermodynamic 
entropy of a system with expectation value of the energy E confined to 
volume V. The entropy of a closed system is usually given by the so-called 
microcanonical ensemble, which fixes both the average energy and the 
spread in energy DeltaE, and assigns equal probability to all states of 
the system within a range [E, E + Delta-E]. In the case of the ultimate 
laptop, however, I wish to fix only the average energy, while letting the 
spread in energy vary according to whether the computer is to be more 
serial (fewer, faster gates, with larger spread in energy) or parallel 
(more, slower gates, with smaller spread in energy). Accordingly, the 
ensemble that should be used to calculate the thermodynamic entropy and 
the memory space available is the canonical ensemble, which maximizes S 
for fixed average energy with no constraint on the spread in energy 
Delta-E. The canonical ensemble shows how many bits of memory are 
available for all possible ways of programming the computer while keeping 
its average energy equal to E. In any given computation with average 
energy E, the ultimate laptop will be in a pure state with some fixed 
spread of energy, and will explore only a small fraction of its memory 
space.

In the canonical ensemble, a state with energy E-sub-i has probability 
p-sub-i = (1/Z(T) e^(-E-sub-ii/k-sub-BT) where Z(T) = BigSigma-over-i 
e^(E-sub-i/k-sub-BT) is the partition function, and the temperature T is 
chosen so that E = BigSigma-over-i p-sub-iE-sub-i. The entropy is S = 
-k-sub-bB BigSigma-over-i p-sub-i ln p-sub-i = E/T + k-sub-B lnZ. The 
number of bits of memory space available to the computer is S/k-sub-bB 
ln2. The difference between the entropy as calculated using the canonical 
ensemble and that calculated using the microcanonical ensemble is minimal. 
But there is some subtlety involved in using the canonical ensemble rather 
than the more traditional microcanonical ensemble. The canonical ensemble 
is normally used for open systems that interact with a thermal bath at 
temperature T. In the case of the ultimate laptop, however, it is applied 
to a closed system to find the maximum entropy given a fixed expectation 
value for the energy. As a result, the temperature T = 
(partialS/partialE)^-1 has a somewhat different role in the context of 
physical limits of computation than it does in the case of an ordinary 
thermodynamic system interacting with a thermal bath. Integrating the 
relationship T = (partialS/partialE)^-1 over E yields T = CE/S, where C is 
a constant of order unity (for example, C = 4/3 for black-body radiation, 
C = 3/2 for an ideal gas, and C = 1/2 for a black hole). Accordingly, the 
temperature governs the number of operations per bit per second, k-sub-B 
ln(2) E/h-barS ~ k-sub-B T/h-bar, that a system can perform. As I will 
show later, the relationship between temperature and operations per bit 
per second is useful in investigating computation under extreme physical 
conditions.

Calculating the maximum memory space

To calculate exactly the maximum entropy for a kilogram of matter in a 
litre volume would require complete knowledge of the dynamics of 
elementary particles, quantum gravity, and so on. Although we do not 
possess such knowledge, the maximum entropy can readily be estimated by a 
method reminiscent of that used to calculate thermodynamic quantities in 
the early Universe (86). The idea is simple: model the volume occupied by 
the computer as a collection of modes of elementary particles with total 
average energy E. The maximum entropy is obtained by calculating the 
canonical ensemble over the modes. Here, I supply a simple derivation of 
the maximum memory space available to the ultimate laptop. A more detailed 
discussion of how to calculate the maximum amount of information that can 
be stored in a physical system can be found in the work of Bekenstein 
(19-21).

For this calculation, assume that the only conserved quantities other than 
the computer's energy are angular momentum and electric charge, which I 
take to be zero. (One might also ask that the number of baryons be 
conserved, but as will be seen below, one of the processes that could take 
place within the computer is black-hole formation and evaporation, which 
does not conserve baryon number.) At a particular temperature T, the 
entropy is dominated by the contributions from particles with mass less 
than k-sub-B T/2c^2. The lth such species of particle contributes energy E 
= r-sub-i<pi^2 V(k-sub-B T)^4/30 h-bar^3 c^3 and entropy S = 2r-sub-l 
k-sub-B pi^2 V(k-sub-B T)^3/ 45h-bar^3 c^3= 4E/3T, where r-sub-l is equal 
to the number of particles/antiparticles in the species (that is, 1 for 
photons, 2 for electrons/positrons) multiplied by the number of 
polarizations (2 for photons, 2 for electrons/positrons) multiplied by a 
factor that reflects particle statistics (1 for bosons, 7/8 for fermions). 
As the formula for S in terms of T shows, each species contributes (2pi)^5 
r-sub-l</90ln2 ~ 10^2 bits of memory space per cubic thermal wavelength 
lambda-sub-T^3, where lambda-sub-T = 2pi h-barc/k-sub-B T. Re-expressing 
the formula for entropy as a function of energy, the estimate for the 
maximum entropy is

S = (4/3)k-sub-B(pi^2rV/30h-bar^3 c^3)^(1/4) E^(3/4) = k-sub-B ln(2)I

where r = BigSigma-over-l r-sub-l. Note that S depends only insensitively 
on the total number of species with mass less than k-sub-bB T/2c^2.

A lower bound on the entropy can be obtained by assuming that energy and 
entropy are dominated by black-body radiation consisting of photons. In 
this case, r = 2, and for a 1-kg computer confined to a volume of a 1 
liter we have k-sub-B T = 8.10 x10^-15 J, or T = 5.87 x 10^8 K. The 
entropy is S = 2.04 x 10^8 J K^-1, which corresponds to an amount of 
available memory space I = S/k-sub-Bln2 = 2.13 x 10^31 bits. When the 
ultimate laptop is using all its memory space it can perform 
2ln(2)k-sub-BE/pi h-bar S = 3ln(2)k-sub-BT/2pi h-bar ~ 10^19 operations 
per bit per second. As the number of operations per second 2E/pi h-bar is 
independent of the number of bits available, the number of operations per 
bit per second can be increased by using a smaller number of bits. In 
keeping with the prescription that the ultimate laptop operates at the 
absolute limits given by physics, in what follows I assume that all 
available bits are used.

This estimate for the maximum entropy could be improved (and slightly 
increased) by adding more species of massless particles (neutrinos and 
gravitons) and by taking into effect the presence of electrons and 
positrons. Note that k-sub-BT/2c^2 = 4.51 x 10^-32 kg, compared with the 
electron mass of 9.1 x 10^31 kg. That is, the ultimate laptop is close to 
a phase transition at which electrons and positrons are produced 
thermally. A more exact estimate of the maximum entropy and hence the 
available memory space would be straightforward to perform, but the 
details of such a calculation would detract from my general exposition, 
and could serve to alter S only slightly. S depends insensitively on the 
number of species of effectively massless particles: a change of r by a 
factor of 10,000 serves to increase S by only a factor of 10.

Comparison with current computers

The amount of information that can be stored by the ultimate laptop, 
~10^31 bits, is much higher than the ~10^10 bits stored on current 
laptops. This is because conventional laptops use many degrees of freedom 
to store a bit whereas the ultimate laptop uses just one. There are 
considerable advantages to using many degrees of freedom to store 
information, stability and controllability being perhaps the most 
important. Indeed, as the above calculation indicates, to take full 
advantage of the memory space available, the ultimate laptop must turn all 
its matter into energy. A typical state of the ultimate laptop's memory 
looks like a plasma at a billion degrees Kelvin--like a thermonuclear 
explosion or a little piece of the Big Bang! Clearly, packaging issues 
alone make it unlikely that this limit can be obtained, even setting aside 
the difficulties of stability and control.

Even though the ultimate physical limit to how much information can be 
stored in a kilogram of matter in a litre volume is unlikely to be 
attained, it may nonetheless be possible to progress some way towards such 
bit densities. In other words, the ultimate limits to memory space may 
prove easier to approach than the ultimate limits to speed. Following 
Moore's law, the density of bits in a computer has gone down from 
approximately one per square centimetre 50 years ago to one per square 
micrometre today, an improvement of a factor of 10^8. It is not 
inconceivable that a similar improvement is possible over the course of 
the next 50 years. In particular, there is no physical reason why it 
should not be possible to store one bit of information per atom. Indeed, 
existing NMR and ion-trap quantum computers already store information on 
individual nuclei and atoms (typically in the states of individual nuclear 
spins or in hyperfine atomic states). Solid-state NMR with high gradient 
fields or quantum optical techniques such as spectral hole-burning provide 
potential technologies for storing large quantities of information at the 
atomic scale. A kilogram of ordinary matter holds on the order of 10^25 
nuclei. If a substantial fraction of these nuclei can be made to register 
a bit, then we could get close to the ultimate physical limit of memory 
without having to resort to thermonuclear explosions. If, in addition, we 
make use of the natural electromagnetic interactions between nuclei and 
electrons in the matter to perform logical operations, we are limited to a 
rate of ~10^15 operations per bit per second, yielding an overall 
information processing rate of ~10^40 operations per second in ordinary 
matter. Although less than the ~1051 operations per second in the ultimate 
laptop, the maximum information processing rate in 'ordinary matter' is 
still quite respectable. Of course, even though such an 'ordinary matter' 
ultimate computer need not operate at nuclear energy levels, other 
problems remain--for example, the high number of bits still indicates 
substantial input/output problems. At an input/output rate of 10^12 bits 
per second, an Avogadro-scale computer with 10^23 bits would take about 
10,000 years to perform a serial read/write operation on the entire 
memory. Higher throughput and parallel input/output schemes are clearly 
required to take advantage of the entire memory space that physics makes 
available.

Size limits parallelization

Up until this point, I have assumed that the ultimate laptop occupies a 
volume of 1 liter. The previous discussion, however, indicates that 
benefits are to be obtained by varying the volume to which the computer is 
confined. Generally speaking, if the computation to be performed is highly 
parallelizable or requires many bits of memory, the volume of the computer 
should be greater and the energy available to perform the computation 
should be spread out evenly among the different parts of the computer. 
Conversely, if the computation to be performed is highly serial and 
requires fewer bits of memory, the energy should be concentrated in 
particular parts of the computer.

A good measure of the degree of parallelization in a computer is the ratio 
between the time it takes to communicate from one side of the computer to 
the other, and the average time it takes to perform a logical operation. 
The amount of time it takes to send a message from one side of a computer 
of radius R to the other is t-sub-com = 2R/c. The average time it takes a 
bit to flip in the ultimate laptop is the inverse of the number of 
operations per bit per second calculated above: t-sub-flip = pi 
h-barS/k-sub-B2ln(2)E. The measure of the degree of parallelization in the 
ultimate laptop is then

t-sub-com/t-sub-flip = k-sub-B 4ln(2) RE / pi h-bar cS which is 
equalivalent to k-sub-B RT / h-bar c = 2piR/lambda-sub-T

That is, the amount of time it takes to communicate from one side of the 
computer to the other, divided by the amount of time it takes to flip a 
bit, is approximately equal to the ratio between the size of the system 
and its thermal wavelength. For the ultimate laptop, with 2R = 10-^1 m, 
2E/pi h-bar ~ 10^51 operations per second, and S/k-sub-Bln2 ~ 10^31 bits, 
t/tflip ~ 10^10. The ultimate laptop is highly parallel. A greater degree 
of serial computation can be obtained at the cost of decreasing memory 
space by compressing the size of the computer or making the distribution 
of energy more uneven. As ordinary matter obeys the Beckenstein bound 
(20-22), k-sub-BRE/h-bar cS > 1/2pi, as the computer is compressed, 
t-sub-com/t-sub-flip ~ k-sub-BRE/h-bar cS will remain greater than one, 
that is, the operation will still be somewhat parallel. Only at the 
ultimate limit of compression--a black hole--is the computation entirely 
serial.

Compressing the computer allows more serial computation

Suppose that we want to perform a highly serial computation on a few bits. 
Then it is advantageous to compress the size of the computer so that it 
takes less time to send signals from one side of the computer to the other 
at the speed of light. As the computer gets smaller, keeping the energy 
fixed, the energy density inside the computer increases. As this happens, 
different regimes in high-energy physics are necessarily explored in the 
course of the computation. First the weak unification scale is reached, 
then the grand unification scale. Finally, as the linear size of the 
computer approaches its Schwarzchild radius, the Planck scale is reached 
(Fig. 2). (No known technology could possibly achieve such compression.) 
At the Planck scale, gravitational effects and quantum effects are both 
important: the Compton wavelength of a particle of mass m, lC = 2pi 
h-bar/mc, is on the order of its Schwarzschild radius, 2Gm/c 2. In other 
words, to describe behaviour at length scales of the size l-sub-P = 
sqrt(h-barwG/c^3) = 1.616 x 10^-35 m, timescales t-sub-P = sqrt(h-bar/c^5 
= 5.391 x 10^-44 s, and mass scales of m-sub-P = sqrt(h-barc/G)  ~ 2.177 x 
10^-8 kg, a unified theory of quantum gravity is required. We do not 
currently possess such a theory. Nonetheless, although we do not know the 
exact number of bits that can be registered by a 1-kg computer confined to 
a volume of 1 l, we do know the exact number of bits that can be 
registered by a 1-kg computer that has been compressed to the size of a 
black hole (87). This is because the entropy of a black hole has a 
well-defined value.

[Figure 2. Computing at the black-hole limit. The rate at which the 
components of a computer can communicate is limited by the speed of light. 
In the ultimate laptop, each bit can flip ~10^19 times per second, whereas 
the time taken to communicate from one side of the 1-liter computer to the 
other is on the order of 10^9 s--the ultimate laptop is highly parallel. 
The computation can be speeded up and made more serial by compressing the 
computer. But no computer can be compressed to smaller than its 
Schwarzschild radius without becoming a black hole. A 1-kg computer that 
has been compressed to the black-hole limit of R-sub-S = 2Gm/c^2 = 1.485 x 
10^-27 m can perform 5.4258 x 10^50 operations per second on its I = 
4piGm^2/ln(2)h-barc = 3.827 x 10^16 bits. At the black-hole limit, 
computation is fully serial: the time it takes to flip a bit and the time 
it takes a signal to communicate around the horizon of the hole are the 
same.]

In the following discussion, I use the properties of black holes to place 
limits on the speed, memory space and degree of serial computation that 
could be approached by compressing a computer to the smallest possible 
size. Whether or not these limits could be attained, even in principle, is 
a question whose answer will have to await a unified theory of quantum 
gravity (see Box 2).

[Box 2: Can a black hole compute?

[No information can escape from a classical black hole: what goes in does 
not come out. But the quantum mechanical picture of a black hole is 
different. First of all, black holes are not quite black; they radiate at 
the Hawking temperature T given above. In addition, the well-known 
statement that 'a black hole has no hair'--that is, from a distance all 
black holes with the same charge and angular momentum look essentially 
alike--is now known to be not always true (89-91). Finally, research in 
string theory (92-94) indicates that black holes may not actually destroy 
the information about how they were formed, but instead process it and 
emit the processed information as part of the Hawking radiation as they 
evaporate: what goes in does come out, but in an altered form.

[If this picture is correct, then black holes could in principle be 
'programmed': one forms a black hole whose initial conditions encode the 
information to be processed, lets that information be processed by the 
planckian dynamics at the hole's horizon, and extracts the answer to the 
computation by examining the correlations in the Hawking radiation emitted 
when the hole evaporates. Despite our lack of knowledge of the precise 
details of what happens when a black hole forms and evaporates (a full 
account must await a more exact treatment using whatever theory of quantum 
gravity and matter turns out to be the correct one), we can still provide 
a rough estimate of how much information is processed during this 
computation (95-96). Using Page's results on the rate of evaporation of a 
black hole (95), we obtain a lifetime for the hole t-sub-life = G^2 m^3 / 
3C h-bar c^4, where C is a constant that depends on the number of species 
of particles with a mass less than k-sub-BT, where T is the temperature of 
the hole. For O (10^1 to 10^2) such species, C is on the order of 10^-3 to 
10^-2, leading to a lifetime for a black hole of mass 1 kg of ~10^-19 s, 
during which time the hole can perform ~10^32 operations on its ~10^16 
bits. As the actual number of effectively massless particles at the 
Hawking temperature of a 1-kg black hole is likely to be considerably 
larger than 10^2, this number should be regarded as an upper bound on the 
actual number of operations that could be performed by the hole. Although 
this hypothetical computation is performed at ultra-high densities and 
speeds, the total number of bits available to be processed is not far from 
the number available to current computers operating in more familiar 
surroundings.

[End of Box 2]

The Schwarzschild radius of a 1-kg computer is RS = 2Gm/c 2= 1.485 x 10^27 
m. The entropy of a black hole is Boltzmann's constant multiplied by its 
area divided by 4, as measured in Planck units. Accordingly, the amount of 
information that can be stored in a black hole is I = 4piGm^2/ln(2)h-bar c 
= 4pim^2/ln(2)m-sub-P^2. The amount of information that can be stored by 
the 1-kg computer in the black- hole limit is 3.827 x 10^16 bits. A 
computer compressed to the size of a black hole can perform 5.4258 x 10^50 
operations per second, the same as the 1-l computer.

In a computer that has been compressed to its Schwarzschild radius, the 
energy per bit is E/I = mc^2/I = ln(2)h-bar c^3 / 4pimG = ln(2)k-sub-B 
T/2, where T = (partialS/partialE)^-1 = h-bar c/4pi k-sub-B R-sub-S is the 
temperature of the Hawking radiation emitted by the hole. As a result, the 
time it takes to flip a bit on average is t-sub-flip = pi h-barI/2E = 
pi^2RS/c ln2. In other words, according to a distant observer, the amount 
of time it takes to flip a bit, t-sub-flip, is on the same order as the 
amount of time t-sub-com = piR-sub-S/c it takes to communicate from one 
side of the hole to the other by going around the horizon: 
t-sub-com/t-sub-flip = ln2/pi. In contrast to computation at lesser 
densities, which is highly parallel, computation at the horizon of a black 
hole is highly serial: every bit is essentially connected to every other 
bit over the course of a single logic operation. As noted above, the 
serial nature of computation at the black-hole limit can be deduced from 
the fact that black holes attain the Beckenstein bound (20-22), k-sub-B 
RE/h-barcS = 1/2pi.

Constructing ultimate computers

Throughout this entire discussion of the physical limits to computation, 
no mention has been made of how to construct a computer that operates at 
those limits. In fact, contemporary quantum 'microcomputers' such as those 
constructed using NMR (76-80) do indeed operate at the limits of speed and 
memory space described above. Information is stored on nuclear spins, with 
one spin registering one bit. The time it takes a bit to flip from a state 
|uparrow> to an orthogonal state |downarrow> is given by pi h-bar/2muB = 
pi h-bar/2E, where m is the spin's magnetic moment, B is the magnetic 
field, and E = muB is the average energy of interaction between the spin 
and the magnetic field. To perform a quantum logic operation between two 
spins takes a time pi h-bar/2E-sub-gammma, where E-sub-gamma is the energy 
of interaction between the two spins.

Although NMR quantum computers already operate at the limits to 
computation set by physics, they are nonetheless much slower and process 
much less information than the ultimate laptop described above. This is 
because their energy is locked up largely in mass, thereby limiting both 
their speed and their memory. Unlocking this energy is of course possible, 
as a thermonuclear explosion indicates. But controlling such an 'unlocked' 
system is another question. In discussing the computational power of 
physical systems in which all energy is put to use, I assumed that such 
control is possible in principle, although it is certainly not possible in 
current practice. All current designs for quantum computers operate at low 
energy levels and temperatures, exactly so that precise control can be 
exerted on their parts.

As the above discussion of error correction indicates, the rate at which 
errors can be detected and rejected to the environment by error-correction 
routines places a fundamental limit on the rate at which errors can be 
committed. Suppose that each logical operation performed by the ultimate 
computer has a probability e of being erroneous. The total number of 
errors committed by the ultimate computer per second is then 2epsilonE/pi 
h-bar. The maximum rate at which information can be rejected to the 
environment is, up to a geometric factor, ln(2)cS/R (all bits in the 
computer moving outward at the speed of light). Accordingly, the maximum 
error rate that the ultimate computer can tolerate is epsilon less than or 
equal to?piln(2)h-bar cS/2ER = 2t-sub-flip/t-sub-com. That is, the maximum 
error rate that can be tolerated by the ultimate computer is the inverse 
of its degree of parallelization.

Suppose that control of highly energetic systems were to become possible. 
Then how might these systems be made to compute? As an example of a 
'computation' that might be performed at extreme conditions, consider a 
heavy-ion collision that takes place in the heavy-ion collider at 
Brookhaven (S. H. Kahana, personal communication). If one collides 100 
nucleons on 100 nucleons (that is, two nuclei with 100 nucleons each) at 
200 GeV per nucleon, the operation time is pi h-bar/2E ~ 10-29 s. The 
maximum entropy can be estimated to be ~4k-sub-B per relativistic pion (to 
within a factor of less than 2 associated with the overall entropy 
production rate per meson), and there are ~10^4 relativistic pions per 
collision. Accordingly, the total amount of memory space available is 
S/k-sub-B ln2 ~ 10^4 to 10^5 bits. The collision time is short: in the 
centre-of-mass frame the two nuclei are Lorentz-contracted to D/gamma 
where D = 12-13 fermi and gamma = 100, giving a total collision time of 
~10^-25 s. During the collision, then, there is time to perform 
approximately 10^4 operations on 10^4 bits--a relatively simple 
computation. (The fact that only one operation per bit is performed 
indicates that there is insufficient time to reach thermal equilibrium, an 
observation that is confirmed by detailed simulations.) The heavy-ion 
system could be programmed by manipulating and preparing the initial 
momenta and internal nuclear states of the ions. Of course, we would not 
expect to be able do word processing on such a 'computer'. Rather it would 
be used to uncover basic knowledge about nuclear collisions and 
quark-gluon plasmas: in the words of Heinz Pagels, the plasma 'computes 
itself ' (88).

At the greater extremes of a black-hole computer, I assumed that whatever 
theory (for example, string theory) turns out to be the correct theory of 
quantum matter and gravity, it is possible to prepare initial states of 
such systems that causes their natural time evolution to carry out a 
computation. What assurance do we have that such preparations exist, even 
in principle?

Physical systems that can be programmed to perform arbitrary digital 
computations are called computationally universal. Although computational 
universality might at first seem to be a stringent demand on a physical 
system, a wide variety of physical systems-- ranging from 
nearest-neighbour Ising models52 to quantum electrodynamics84 and 
conformal field theories (M. Freedman, unpublished results)--are known to 
be computationally universal (51-53,55-65). Indeed, computational 
universality seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Essentially 
any quantum system that admits controllable nonlinear interactions can be 
shown to be computationally universal (60,61). For example, the ordinary 
electrostatic interaction between two charged particles can be used to 
perform universal quantum logic operations between two quantum bits. A bit 
is registered by the presence or absence of a particle in a mode. The 
strength of the interaction between the particles, e^2/r, determines the 
amount of time t-sub-flip = pi h-bar r/2e^2 it takes to perform a quantum 
logic operation such as a controlled-NOT on the two particles. The time it 
takes to perform such an operation divided by the amount of time it takes 
to send a signal at the speed of light between the bits t-sub-com = r/c is 
a universal constant, t-sub-flip/t-sub-com= pi h-bar c/2e^2= p/2alpha, 
where alpha= e^2/h-bar c ~1/137 is the fine structure constant. This 
example shows the degree to which the laws of physics and the limits to 
computation are entwined.

In addition to the theoretical evidence that most systems are 
computationally universal, the computer on which I am writing this article 
provides strong experimental evidence that whatever the correct underlying 
theory of physics is, it supports universal computation. Whether or not it 
is possible to make computation take place in the extreme regimes 
envisaged in this paper is an open question. The answer to this question 
lies in future technological development, which is difficult to predict. 
If, as seems highly unlikely, it is possible to extrapolate the 
exponential progress of Moore's law into the future, then it will take 
only 250 years to make up the 40 orders of magnitude in performance 
between current computers that perform 10^10 operations per second on 
10^10 bits and our 1-kg ultimate laptop that performs 1051 operations per 
second on 10^31 bits.

Notes

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From shovland at mindspring.com  Sat Jan 14 04:42:39 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 20:42:39 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] Choppers going down in Iraq
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHCEIKCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

SMALL ARMS AIR DEFENSE

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

"The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it."
- - Winston Churchill
"If it flies it dies." - - Anon. ADA NCO

COMBAT EXPERIENCE

When facing an enemy that has air superiority or air parity, air attacks are
not just a probability--they are a certainty. The following battlefield
experiences relate some success by ground units engaging enemy aircraft with
small arms.

Lesson Learned

Fire at a coordinated selected aiming point (football field method) in front
of the aircraft so that it will fly into the "Curtain of Lead."


FALKLANDS
British troops were preparing to move out of the beachhead at San Carlos Bay
when four Argentine jets flying at a low level appeared without warning and
headed out over the water. Forces on the ground firing small arms and
automatic weapons placed a "curtain of lead" in front of the flight path of
the aircraft. As the four aircraft exited from the area, pieces of the tail
section from one of the Mirages began to fall off and smoke appeared to be
coming from out of its side just before it crashed. [15]

Lesson Learned

The use of a higher proportion of tracer rounds can disturb an enemy pilot's
concentration enough to cause him to miss the target or abort his attack
plan.


FALKLANDS
One British officer said that everything fired at attacking aircraft had
good effect. If the aircraft was not shot down, the tracers and pyrotechnics
intimidated the pilot into using his weapons prematurely, changing his
interest, or aborting the mission. To ensure that the Argentine pilots knew
they were being engaged by ground forces, the British relinked their machine
gun ammunition to add more tracers. British ground forces were credited with
downing three Argentine jet aircraft with small arms. [16]

Lesson Learned

Helicopters are especially vulnerable to ground fire.


FALKLANDS
Helicopter losses to ground fire on both sides were minimal. The British
lost four helicopters to ground fire and the Argentines lost one. However,
these low losses can be attributed to the support mission (resupply)
assigned to the helicopters and to the relatively few helicopters used by
both sides. Attack and air assault missions would have exposed these
critical assets to more small arms and shoulder-fired surface-to-air
missiles. [17]


GRENADA
U.S. forces in Grenada lost two helicopters to ground fire from Cubans at
Edgmont military barracks. The Rangers used four UH-60 to conduct an air
mobile assault on the Cuban stronghold. The landing zone was tight and
surrounded by a high barbed wire fence. In the last wave, one helicopter was
hit by small arms fire. The pilot, wounded in the arm and leg, lost control
of his aircraft and it tumbled into another UH-60 already on the ground.
Several soldiers on the ground were killed by the falling aircraft. [18]


AFGHANISTAN
The Mujahideen, Afghanistan freedom fighters, have proved to be major
threats to Soviet air during combat operations. An Afghan pilot of the
Communist Afghan Army, who defected in 1984, disclosed that the Soviet built
MI 24 (Hind) was extremely vulnerable to machine gun fire, especially when
it is engaged from elevated positions in the mountains. The Mujahideens'
effectiveness in engaging Soviet aircraft with all weapons systems forced
the Soviets to adopt the technique of engaging the Mujahideen at maximum
range. For example, the Soviets began to drop their bombs from 5000 feet and
fire their rockets beyond maximum effective ranges at the Mujahideen. As of
1984, the Mujahideen were credited with shooting down close to 300 Soviet
helicopters using small arms and anti-tank weapons. After the arrival of
Stingers in great numbers, the combined use of small-arms fire and
anti-aircraft missile reportedly brought down an average of one Soviet
aircraft a day during 1987. [19]

Lesson Learned

A coordinated team effort using all organic weapons can help win the
airspace battle over friendly forces.


IRAN / IRAQ
Air defense in the Iranian and Iraqi armies relies on air defense artillery,
SA-7s, and the concentrated fire of automatic weapons. Both sides use the
"curtain of lead" technique to focus the firepower of their small arms.
However, this technique works best as a supplement to other ADA systems.
Small arms fire and SAMs used together caused both Iran and Iraq to change
their close air support tactics. Aircraft from both sides now have to engage
their targets at the weapons system's maximum effective standoff range
rather than overflying the target. This makes them less accurate and
provides some measure of relief to the beleaguered infantrymen. [20]

References

These publications will help you train your unit to defeat attacking enemy
aircraft.

FM 44-8, Small Unit Self-Defense Against Air Attack, Dec 1981, is the
primary doctrine for defense against enemy air attacks.

FM 7-8, The Infantry Platoon and Squad (Infantry, Airborne, Assault,
Ranger), 31 Dec 1980. Appendix H describes the procedures that small units
should use in engaging enemy aircraft with small arms.

FM 7-10, The Infantry Rifle Company (Infantry, Airborne, Assault, Ranger),
Jan 1982. Appendix P provides doctrine at the company level on how to engage
enemy aircraft.

FM 7-20, The Infantry Battalion (Infantry, Airborne, and Air Assault), Dec
1981. Chapter 5 provides doctrine at the battalion level on engaging enemy
aircraft.

Bottom Line

Coordinated fire from small arms is effective against enemy aircraft. Even
if an aircraft is not hit or destroyed, it can intimidate the pilot and
cause him to fly higher or seek an easier target.

Lesson Learned

Live fire training teaches the importance of accurate and disciplined fire
and helps prepare the soldier for the shock and noise of combat.



From shovland at mindspring.com  Sat Jan 14 04:46:46 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 20:46:46 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] MILITARY OPERATIONS IN URBAN TERRAIN
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHIEIKCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

"What is the position about London? I have a very clear view that we should
fight every inch of it, and that it would devour quite a large invading
Army."
- -Winston Churchill
COMBAT EXPERIENCE

While armor and mechanized infantry dominate the open terrain, dismounted
infantry dominate the fight in built-up areas. Maneuver of mechanized forces
in the city is restricted to the streets and alleys. Therefore, roles are
reversed with mech and armor supporting dismounted infantry. MOUT is a
combined arms effort but it is the dismounted infantry that clears and
controls the cities.

Lesson Learned

MOUT demands the use of decentralized small unit operations and superb
leadership.


WW II: AACHEN
Some of the fiercest fighting in WW II in the European Theater occurred
during the Battle for Aachen in October 1944. The 26th Infantry Regiment of
the 1st Infantry Division had the mission to clear the city of Aachen
against stubborn German resistance. The soldiers were not prepared for urban
combat and had to learn "on the job."

Small Unit Operations

Most of the burden for the fighting fell on the infantryman. Small unit
actions were the rule. Infantry with hand grenades fought "from attic to
attic and from sewer to sewer." Occasionally some self-propelled 155mm
artillery was brought in to demolish a particularly hard target such as a
bunker or fortified building. However, small teams of infantry cleared out
house after house to seize the city. They used grenades and bazookas to blow
a hole in one of the inside walls and moved into the adjoining building
without having to brave the dangerous streets. Assault teams were formed
which combined fire support, armor and infantry actions, but the city was
only taken by the slow, careful and methodical advance of the infantrymen.
[11]

Lesson Learned

Dense urban areas are easily fortified and require combined arms cooperation
especially between the infantry and the engineers, to overcome major
obstacles.


ATTACK ON BREST
The problems of fighting in an urban environment are compounded when the
city in question has a number of easily fortified areas. This fact quickly
became apparent to the soldiers of the 8th, 29th and 2nd Infantry Divisions
of VIII Corps when they moved to attack Brest after the breakout from the
Normandy Beachhead. The Germans had fortified the city and harbor area and
were ordered to defend to the last man. The infantry had to infiltrate
through German minefields to clear a path for the tanks and the "crocodiles"
(flame-throwing tanks). They used self-propelled guns to blow down the walls
of houses as they moved from street to street.


FT. MONTBAREY
However, the men of the 29th division were stopped by Ft. Montbarey. Built
in the 17th century, Ft. Montbarey had walls up to 35 feet high, 25 feet
thick and was surrounded by a deep dry moat. Artillery shells, even those
from the 240 mm howitzers brought in especially for this operation, did
little more than destroy a few exposed artillery postions and disturb the
sleep of the Germans in their deep bunkers. The assault on the fort was led
by the 116th Infantry Regiment. Under cover of smoke, they cleared
minefields to allow the "crocodiles" to neutralize some exposed gun
positions and then the 121 Engineer Combat Battalion went forward to fill in
the moat. Finally, a 105 mm howitzer was brought in to fire against the main
gate of the fort. After this pounding the 80 German defenders surrendered.
[12]

Lesson Learned

Units must be trained to fight in urban areas.


IRAQ
Iraqi forces were neither prepared nor trained for urban warfare. In the
first year of the war, the Iraqi Army attacked Iranian cities such as
Khorramshahr with armored forces without dismounted infantry. These forces
were repeatedly destroyed at short distances by antitank weapons and
homemede explosives. The Iraqis soon discovered that fighting in built-up
areas deprives armor of its advantages of mobility and firepower. The Iraqis
also discovered that massing of artillery fires against the city was largely
ineffective due to the cover which the buildings provided the enemy. The
iraqis were completely bogged down in Khorramshahr and had to bring in a
special forces brigade to fight its way through the city to assist the
stranded Iraqi units. Iraq virtually halted all offensive operations for
three weeks to give special MOUT training to units before finally taking the
city. Even then it took a total of 15 days and some 5000 casualties to
secure the city. Iraqi losses in the city of Khorramshar were so great they
renamed it "Khunishar, The City of Blood." [13]


IRAN
The effectiveness of dismounted troops fighting in urban terrain was
reinforced by the Iranians in the same battle. The Iranian Revolutionary
Guards, a highly motivated organization with minimal military training, were
in command of the defenses of Khorramshahr. Under their control was a
hodgepodge of elements made up of police, customs agents, armed forces
trainees and volunteers. Fighting in small but organized teams, the Iranians
took advantage of the cover provided by the buildings and rubble to move
close enough to engage the Iraqi tanks at point blank range. A successful
tactic used by the Iranians was to knock out the lead and rear tanks with
antitank weapons at close range to stop the advance of an armored column.
Then, using all available weapons (to include homemade explosives and fire
bombs), they systematically destroyed the remaining aromored vehicles. The
makeshift army of the Revolutionary Guard successfully defended the city
until the Iraqis changed their tactics to counter dismounted infantry in the
city with dismounted infantry of their own. [14]

References

The following References will assist commanders to train for MOUT.

FM 90-10, Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT), Aug 79

FM 90-10-1, An Infantryman's Guide to Urban Combat, Sep 82

FM 7-70, 71, 72, Light Infantry Platoon/Squad Company, and Battalion, Sep
86, Aug 87, and Mar 87.

Bottom Line

Urban combat is primarily a dismounted infantry action that requires
different tactics, techniques and organization.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----



From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 14 10:24:18 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:24:18 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge Annual Question 2001: What Questions Have
	Disappeared?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601140516240.23373@panix3.panix.com>

Edge Annual Question 2001: What Questions Have Disappeared?

For its fourth anniversary edition--"The World Question Center 2001"--Edge 
has reached out to a wide group of individuals distinguished by their 
significant achievements and asked them to respond to the following 
question:  "What Questions Have Disappeared?"  At publication, 83 
responses (34,000 words plus) have been posted. Additional responses are 
expected in the coming weeks and will be posted on Edge as they are 
received.  Happy New Year!  John Brockman Publisher & Editor 
[Simultaneously published in German by Frankfurter Allgemeine 
Zeitung--Frank Schirrmacher, Publisher.] Join the Edge public forum at


New Minds Meet Online to Offer New Perspectives on Old Questions January 
9, 2001 By THE NEW YORK TIMES (free registration required)  Once a year, 
John Brockman of New York, a writer and literary agent who represents many 
scientists, poses a question in his online journal, The Edge, and invites 
the thousand or so people on his mailing list to answer it.  At the end of 
1998, for example, he asked readers to name the most important invention 
in 2,000 years; the question generated 117 responses as diverse as hay and 
birth control pills. This year, Mr. Brockman offered a question about 
questions: "What questions have disappeared, and why?"  Here are edited 
excerpts from some of the answers, to be posted today at www.edge.org.....


New "Welche Fragen sind verschwunden?"  Die Sphinx in der New Economy: 
Eine Umfrage unter f?hrenden Wissenschaftlern NEW YORK, 8. January Auch 
die Zukunft kommt nicht ohne Traditionen aus. Selbst eine mit Mlle. de 
Scud?ry zeitreisende Mme. de S?vign? m??te sich nicht gar zu sehr wundern, 
wenn sie beim Netzsurfen auf ein Internetmagazin stie?e, das sich 
unerschrocken prezi?s "Salon" nennt. Wo immer aber ein Salon zum 
Verweilen, Sinnieren und Brillieren l?dt, kann eine Preisfrage nicht weit 
sein.  Elektronisch funktioniert sie nicht viel anders als zu Zeiten der 
Aufkl?rung und ihrer Debattierzirkel. In seinem Internetsalon 
(www.edge.org) verf?hrt der Verleger und Literaturagent John Brockman zum 
Anfang des Jahres gelehrte Koryph?en gern zu Antworten auf solche Fragen. 
Diesmal hat er den Ritus selbst thematisiert und fragt nach Fragen, die 
keiner mehr stellt. An die hundert Wissenschaftler, Philosophen und 
Publizisten der sogenannten "Dritten Kultur" nehmen am Spiel teil, haben 
aber die Spielregeln nicht alle gleich verstanden. Warum eine Frage 
verschwindet, kann schlie?lich viele Gr?nde haben. Vielleicht ist sie 
beantwortet, vielleicht auch nicht zu beantworten, was freilich in der 
Regel den intellektuellen Spieleifer um so heftiger stimuliert, vielleicht 
aber war die Frage auch von Anfang an nicht fragenswert......

Izumi Aizu ? Alun Anderson ? Philip W. Anderson ? Robert Aunger ? John 
Barrow ? Thomas A. Bass ? David Berreby ? Susan Blackmore ? Stewart Brand 
? Rodney A. Brooks ? David M. Buss ? Jason McCabe Calacanis ? William H. 
Calvin ? Andy Clark ? Ann Crittenden ? Paul Davies ? Richard Dawkins ? 
Stanislas Dehaene ? David Deutsch ? Keith Devlin ? Denis Dutton ? George 
B. Dyson ? J. Doyne Farmer ? Kenneth Ford ? Howard Gardner ? Joel Garreau 
? David Gelernter ? Brian Goodwin ? David Haig ? Judy Harris ? Marc D. 
Hauser ? Geoffrey Hinton ? John Horgan ? Verena Huber-Dyson ? Nicholas 
Humphrey ? Mark Hurst ? Piet Hut ? Raphael Kasper ? Kevin Kelly ? Lance 
Knobel ? Marek Kohn ? Stephen M. Kosslyn ? Kai Krause ? Lawrence M. Krauss 
? Leon Lederman ? Joseph Le Doux ? Pamela McCorduck ? Dan McNeill ? John 
H. McWhorter ? Geoffrey Miller ? David Myers ? Randolph M. Nesse ? Tor 
Norretranders ? Rafael E. N??ez ? James J. O'Donnell ? Jay Ogilvy ? Sylvia 
Paull ? John Allen Paulos ? Christopher Phillips ? Cliff Pickover ? Steven 
Pinker ? Jordan Pollack ? David G. Post ? Rick Potts ? Robert Provine ? 
Eduardo Punset ? Tracy Quan ? Martin Rees ? Howard Rheingold ? Douglas 
Rushkoff ? sKarl Sabbagh ? Roger Schank ? Stephen H. Schneider ? Al Seckel 
? Terrence J. Sejnowski ? Michael Shermer ? Lee Smolin ? Dan Sperber ? Tom 
Standage ? Timothy Taylor ? Joseph Traub ? Colin Tudge ? Sherry Turkle ? 
Henry Warwick ? Margaret Wertheim ? Dave Winer ? Naomi Wolf ? Milford 
Wolpoff ? Eberhard Zangger ? Carl Zimmer ?

Izumi Aizu "Who should make the truly global decisions, and how?"  As we 
all use the global medium, Internet, people who are running it behind is 
making the decisions on how to run this medium. So far so good. But not 
anymore.  With all the ICANN process, commercialization of Domain Name 
registration, expanding the new gTLDs, one can ask: who are entitled to 
make these decisions, and how come they can decide that way?  Despite the 
growing digital divide, the number of people who use the Net is still 
exploding, even in the developing side of the world. What is fair, what is 
democratic, what kind of principles can we all agree on this single global 
complex system, from all corners of the world is my question of the year 
to come.  IZUMI AIZU, a researcher and promoter of the Net in Asia since 
mid 80s, is principal, Asia Network Research and Senior Research Fellow at 
GLOCOM (Center for Global Communications), at the International University 
of Japan.

Alun Anderson "Why are humans smarter than other animals?"  Such a simple 
question. Many of you might think "Has that question really disappeared?" 
Some questions disappear for ever because they have been answered. Some 
questions go extinct because they were bad questions to begin with. But 
there are others that appear to vanish but then we find that they are back 
with us again in a slightly different guise. They are questions that are 
just too close to our hearts for us to let them die completely.  For 
millennia, human superiority was taken for granted. From the lowest forms 
of life up to humans and then on to the angels and God, all living thing 
were seen as arranged in the Great Chain of Being. Ascend the chain and 
perfection grows. It is a hierarchical philosophy that conveniently allows 
for the exploitation of dumber beasts--of other species or races--as a 
right by their superiors. We dispose of them as God disposes of us.  The 
idea of human superiority should have died when Darwin came on the scene. 
Unfortunately, the full implications of what he said have been difficult 
to take in: there is no Great Chain of Being, no higher and no lower. All 
creatures have adapted effectively to their own environments in their own 
way. Human "smartness" is just a particular survival strategy among many 
others, not the top of a long ladder.  It took a surprisingly long time 
for scientist to grasp this. For decades, comparative psychologists tried 
to work out the learning abilities of different species so that they could 
be arranged on a single scale. Animal equivalents of intelligence tests 
were used and people seriously asked whether fish were smarter than birds. 
It took the new science of ethology, created by Nobel-prize winners Konrad 
Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch, to show that each species had 
the abilities it needed for its own lifestyle and they could not be not 
arranged on a universal scale. Human smartness is no smarter than anyone 
else's smartness. The question should have died for good.  Artificial 
intelligence researchers came along later but they too could not easily 
part from medieval thinking. The most important problems to tackle were 
agreed to be those that represented our "highest" abilities. Solve them 
and everything else would be easy. As a result, we have ended up with 
computer programs that can play chess as well as a grandmaster. But 
unfortunately we have none that can make a robot walk as well as a 2-year 
old, yet alone run like a cat. The really hard problems turn out to be 
those that we share with "lower" animals.  Strangley enough, even 
evolutionary biologists still get caught up with the notion that humans 
stand at the apex of existence. There are endless books from evolutionary 
biologists speculating on the reasons why humans evolved such wonderful 
big brains, but a complete absence of those which ask if a big brains is a 
really useful organ to have. The evidence is far from persuasive. If you 
look at a wide range of organisms, those with bigger brains are generally 
no more successful than those with smaller brains--hey go extinct just as 
fast.  Of course, it would be really nice to sample a large range of 
different planets where life is to be found and see if big-brained 
creatures do better over really long time scales (the Earth is quite a 
young place). Unfortunately, we cannot yet do that, although the fact that 
we have never been contacted by any intelligent life from older parts of 
the Universe suggests that it usually comes to a bad end.  Still, as we 
are humans it's just so hard not to be seduced by the question "What makes 
us so special" which is just the same as the question above but in a 
different form. When you switch on a kitchen light and see a cockroach 
scuttle for safety you can't help seeing it as a lower form of life. 
Unfortunately, there are a lot more of them than there are of us and they 
have been around far, far longer. Cockroach philosophers doubtless 
entertain their six-legged friends by asking "What makes us so special". 
ALUN ANDERSON is Editor-in-Chief of New Scientist.

Philip W. Anderson "A question no longer: what is the Theory of Every 
Thing?"  My colleagues in the fashionable fields of string theory and 
quantum gravity advertise themselves as searching desperately for the 
'Theory of Everything", while their experimental colleagues are gravid 
with the "God Particle", the marvelous Higgson which is the somewhat 
misattributed source of all mass. (They are also after an understanding of 
the earliest few microseconds of the Big Bang.) As Bill Clinton might 
remark, it depends on what the meaning of "everything" is. To these 
savants, "everything" means a list of some two dozen numbers which are the 
parameters of the Standard Model. This is a set of equations which already 
exists and does describe very well what you and I would be willing to 
settle for as "everything". This is why, following Bob Laughlin, I make 
the distinction between "everything" and "every thing". Every thing that 
you and I have encountered in our real lives, or are likely to interact 
with in the future, is no longer outside of the realm of a physics which 
is transparent to us: relativity, special and general; electromagnetism; 
the quantum theory of ordinary, usually condensed, matter; and, for a few 
remote phenomena, hopefully rare here on earth, our almost equally 
cut-and-dried understanding of nuclear physics. [Two parenthetic remarks: 
1) I don't mention statistical mechanics only because it is a powerful 
technique, not a body of facts; 2) our colleagues have done only a sloppy 
job so far of deriving nuclear physics from the Standard Model, but no one 
really doubts that they can.] I am not arguing that the search for the 
meaning of those two dozen parameters isn't exciting, interesting, and 
worthwhile: yes, it's not boring to wonder why the electron is so much 
lighter than the proton, or why the proton is stable at least for another 
35 powers of ten years, or whether quintessence exists. But learning why 
can have no real effect on our lives, spiritually inspiring as it would 
indeed be, even to a hardened old atheist like myself.  When I was 
learning physics, half a century ago, the motivation for much of what was 
being done was still "is quantum theory really right?" Not just QED, 
though the solution of that was important, but there were still great 
mysteries in the behavior of ordinary matter--like superconductivity, for 
instance. It was only some twenty years later that I woke up to the fact 
that the battle had been won, probably long before, and that my motivation 
was no longer to test the underlying equations and ideas, but to 
understand what is going on. Within the same few years , the molecular 
biology pioneers convinced us we needed no mysterious "life force" to 
bring all of life under the same umbrella. Revolutions in geology, in 
astrophysics, and the remarkable success of the Standard Model in sorting 
out the fundamental forces and fields, leave us in the enviable position I 
described above: given any problematic phenomenon, we know where to start, 
at least. And nothing uncovered in string theory or quantum gravity will 
make any difference to that starting point.  Is this Horgan's End of 
Science? Absolutely not. It's just that the most exciting frontier of 
science no longer lies at the somewhat sophomoric--or 
quasi-religious--level of the most "fundamental" questions of "what are we 
made of?" and the like; what needs to be asked is "how did all this 
delightful complexity arise from the stark simplicity of the fundamental 
theory?" We have the theory of every thing in any field of science you 
care to name, and that's about as far as it gets us. If you like, science 
is now almost universally at the "software" level; the fundamental 
physicists have given us all the hardware we need, but that doesn't solve 
the problem, in physics as in every other field. It's a different game, 
probably a much harder one in fact, as it has often been in the past; but 
the game is only begun.  PHILIP W. ANDERSON is a Nobel laureate physicist 
at Princeton and one of the leading theorists on superconductivity. He is 
the author of A Career in Theoretical Physics, and Economy as a Complex 
Evolving System.

Robert Aunger "Is the Central Dogma of biology inviolate?"  In 1957, a few 
years after he co-discovered the double helix, Francis Crick proposed a 
very famous hypothesis. It states that "once 'information' has passed into 
protein it cannot get out again. In more detail, the transfer of 
information from nucleic acid to nucleic acid, or from nucleic acid to 
protein may be possible, but transfer from protein to protein, or from 
protein to nucleic acid is impossible." After it had proven to form the 
foundation of molecular biology, he later called this hypothesis the 
"Central Dogma" of biology.  In the last years of the last millennium, 
Crick's dogma fell. The reason? Direct protein-to-protein information 
transfer was found to be possible in a class of proteins called "prions." 
With the aid of a catalyst, prions (short for "proteinaceous infectious 
particles") cause another molecule of the same class to adopt an 
infectious shape like their own simply through contact. Thus, prions are 
an important and only recently discovered mechanism for the inheritance of 
information through means other than DNA. Such an important discovery 
merited a recent Nobel Prize for Stanley Prusiner, who doggedly pursued 
the possibility of a rogue biological entity replicating without the 
assistance of genes against a back-drop of resistance and disbelief among 
most of his colleagues. Further testimony to the significance of prions 
comes from the current BSE crisis in Europe. Now that we know how they 
work, prions--and the diseases they cause--may begin popping up all over 
the place.  ROBERT AUNGER is an anthropologist studying cultural 
evolution, both through the now much-maligned method of fieldwork in 
nonwestern societies, and the application of theory adapted from 
evolutionary biology. He is at the Department of Biological Anthropology 
at the University of Cambridge, and the editor of Darwinizing Culture: The 
Status of Memetics as a Science.

John Barrow "How does a slide rule work?" My vanished question is:"'How 
does a slide rule work?"' Slide rules were once ubiquitous in labs, 
classrooms, and the pockets of engineers. They are now as common as 
dinosaurs; totally replaced by electronic calulators and computers. The 
interesting question to ponder is: what is it that in the future will do 
to computers what computers did to slide rules?  JOHN BARROW is a 
physicist at Cambridge University.. He is the author of The World Within 
the World, Pi in the Sky, Theories of Everything, The Origins of the 
Universe (Science Masters Series),The Left Hand of Creation, The Artful 
Universe, and Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of 
Limits.

Thomas A. Bass "The questions that have disappeared are eschatological." 
The twentieth century will be remembered as one of the most violent in 
history. There were two world wars, numerous genocides, and millions of 
murders conducted in the name of progress. Driving this violence was the 
urge to find truth or purity. The violence was lit by the refining fire of 
belief. The redemptive ideal was called national socialism, communism, 
stalinism, maoism.  Today, these gods have feet of clay, and we mock their 
pretensions. Global consumerism is the new world order, but global 
consumerism is not a god. Market capitalism does not ask questions about 
transcendent meaning. Western democracies, nodding into the sleep of 
reason, have grown numb with self-congratulation about having won the hot, 
the cold, and, now, the star wars.  The questions that have disappeared 
are eschatological. But they have not really disappeared. They are a 
chtonic force, waiting underground, searching for a new language in which 
to express themselves. This observation sprang to mind while I was 
standing in the Place de la Revolution, now known as the Place de la 
Concorde, awaiting the arrival of the third millennium. During the French 
revolution this square was so soaked in blood that oxen refused to cross 
it. On New Year's Eve it was soaked in rain and champagne, as we counted 
down to a display of fireworks that never materialized. Instead, there was 
a Ferris wheel, lit alternately in mauve and chartreuse, and some lasers 
illuminating the Luxor obelisk which today is the square's secular center. 
No one staring at it knew how to read the hieroglyphics carved on its 
face, but this obelisk was once a transcendent object, infused with 
meaning, and so, too, was the guillotine that formerly stood in its place. 
THOMAS A. BASS, who currently lives in Paris, is the author of The 
Eudaemonic Pie, Vietnamerica, The Predictors, and other books.

David Berreby ''How does [fill in the blank] in human affairs relate to 
the great central theory?'' I do not, of course, mean any particular Great 
Central Theory. I am referring to the once-pervasive habit of relating 
everything that had human scale--Chinese history, the Odyssey, your 
mother's fear of heights--to an all-explaining principle. This principle 
was set forth in a short shelf of classic works and then worked to a fine 
filigree by close-minded people masquerading as open-minded people. The 
precise Great Central Theory might be, as it was in my childhood milieu, 
the theories of Freud. It might be Marx. It might be Levi-Strauss or, more 
recently, Foucault. At the turn of the last century, there was a Darwinist 
version going, promulgated by Francis Galton, Herbert Spencer and their 
ilk.  These monolithic growths had begun, I suppose, as the answers to 
specific questions, but then they metastasized; their adherents would 
expect the great central theory to answer any question. Commitment to a 
Great Central Theory thus became more a religious act than an intellectual 
one. And, as with all religions, the worldview of the devout crept into 
popular culture. (When I was in high school we'd say So-and-So was really 
anal about his locker or that What's-his-name's parents were really 
bourgeois.) For decades, this was what intellectual life appeared to be: 
Commit to an overarching explanation, relate it to everything you 
experienced, defend it against infidels. Die disillusioned, or, worse, die 
smug.  So why has this sort of question vanished? My guess is that, 
broadly speaking, it was a product of the Manichean worldview of the last 
century. Depression, dictators, war, genocide, nuclear terror--all of 
these lend themselves to a Yes-or-No, With-Us-or-With-Them, Federation vs. 
Klingons mindset. We were, to put it simply, all a little paranoid. And 
paranoids love a Great Key: Use this and see the single underlying cause 
for what seems to be unrelated and random!  Nowadays the world, though no 
less dangerous, seems to demand attention to the seperateness of things, 
the distinctiveness of questions. ''Theories of everything'' are terms 
physicists use to explain their near-theological concerns, but at the 
human scale most people care about, where we ask questions like ''why 
can't we dump the Electoral College?'' or ''How come Mom likes my sister 
better?'', the Great Central Theory question has vanished with the 
black-or-white arrangement of the human world.  What's next?  Three 
possibilities.  One, some new Great Central Theory slouches in; some of 
the Darwinians think they've got the candidate, and they certainly evince 
signs of quasi-religious commitment. (For example, as a Freudian would say 
you doubted Freud because of your neuroses, I have heard Darwinians say I 
doubted their theories because of an evolved predisposition not to believe 
the truth. I call this quasi-religious because this move makes the theory 
impregnable to evidence or new ideas.)  Two, the notion that overarching 
theory is impossible becomes, itself, a new dogma. I lean toward this 
prejudice myself but I recognize its dangers. An intellectual life that 
was all boutiques could be, in its way, as stultifying as a giant 
one-product factory.  Three, we learn from the mistakes of the last two 
centuries and insist that our answers always match our questions, and that 
the distinction between theory and religious belief be maintained.  DAVID 
BERREBY'S writing about science and culture has appeared in The New York 
Times Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, The Sciences and many other 
publications.

Susan Blackmore "Do we survive death?" This question was long considered 
metaphysical, briefly became a scientific question, and has now 
disappeared again. Victorian intellectuals such as Frederic Myers, Henry 
Sidgwick and Edmund Gurney founded the Society for Psychical Research in 
1882 partly because they realised that the dramatic claims of spiritualist 
mediums could be empirically tested. They hoped to prove "survival" and 
thus overturn the growing materialism of the day. Some, like Faraday, 
convinced themselves by experiment that the claims were false, and lost 
interest. Others, like Myers, devoted their entire lives to ultimately 
inconclusive research. The Society continues to this day, but survival 
research has all but ceased. I suggest that no one asks the question any 
more because the answer seems too obvious. To most scientists it is 
obviously "No", while to most New Agers and religious people it is 
obviously "Yes". But perhaps we should. The answer may be obvious (it's 
"No"--I'm an unreligious scientist) but its implications for living our 
lives and dealing compassionately with other people are profound. SUSAN 
BLACKMORE is a psychologist and ex-parapsychologist, who--when she found 
no evidence of psychic phenomena--turned her attention to why people 
believe in them. She is author of several skeptical books on the 
paranormal and, more recently, The Meme Machine.

Stewart Brand "How will Americans handle a surplus of leisure?"  "Can the 
threat of recombinant DNA possibly be contained?"  "How will Americans 
handle a surplus of leisure?"  That was a brow-furrower in the late '50s 
and early '60s for social observers and forecasters. Whole books addressed 
the problem, most of them opining that Americans would have to become very 
interested in the arts. Turned out the problem never got around to 
existing, and the same kind of people are worrying now about how Americans 
will survive the stress of endless multi-tasking.  "Can the threat of 
recombinant DNA possibly be contained?"  That was the brand new bogey of 
the mid-'70s. At a famous self regulating conference at Asilomar 
conference center in California, genetic researchers debated the question 
and imposed rules (but not "relinquishment") on the lab work. The question 
was answered: the threat was handily contained, and it was not as much of 
a threat as feared anyway. Most people retrospectively applaud the 
original caution. Similar fears and debate now accompany the introduction 
of Genetically Modified foods and organisms. Maybe it's the same question 
rephrased, and it will keep being rephrased as long as biotech is making 
news. Can the threat of frankenfoods possibly be contained? Can the threat 
of gene-modified children possibly be contained? Can the threat of 
bioweapons possibly be contained? Can the threat of human life extension 
possibly be contained?  It won't be a new question until it reaches 
reflexivity: "Are GM humans really human?"  STEWART BRAND is founder of 
the Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder of The Well, cofounder of Global 
Business Network, cofounder and president of The Long Now Foundation. He 
is the original editor of The Whole Earth Catalog, author of The Media 
Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT , How Buildings Learn, and The Clock of 
the Long Now: Time and Responsibility (MasterMinds Series).

Rodney A. Brooks "What is it that makes something alive?"  With the 
success of molecular biology explaining the mechanisms of life we have 
lost sight of the question one level up. We do not have any good answers 
at a more systems level of what it takes for something to be alive. We can 
list general necessities for a system to be alive, but we can not predict 
whether a given configuration of molecules will be alive or not. As 
evidence that we really do not understand what it takes for something to 
be alive, we have not been able to build machines that are alive. 
Everything else that we understand leads to machines that capitalize on 
that understanding--machines that fly, machines that run, machines that 
calculate, machines that make polymers, machines that communicate, 
machines that listen, machines that play games. We have not built any 
machines that live.  RODNEY A. BROOKS is director of the MIT Artificial 
Intelligence Laboratory and Chairman of iRobot Corporation. He builds 
robots.

David M. Buss "Do Men and Women Differ Psychologically?" Psychology for 
much of the 20th century was dominated by the view that men and women were 
psychologically identical. So pervasive was this assumption that research 
articles in psychology journals prior to the 1970's rarely bothered to 
report the sex of their study participants. Women and men were understood 
to be interchangeable. Findings for one sex were presumed to be applicable 
to the other. Once the American Psychological Association required sex of 
participants to be reported in published experiments, controversy erupted 
over whether men and women were psychologically different. The past three 
decades of empirical research has resolved this issue, at least in 
delimited domains. Although women and men show great psychological 
similarity, they also differ in profound ways. They diverge in the sexual 
desires they express and mating strategies they pursue. They differ in the 
time they allocate to friends and relentlessness with which they pursue 
status. They display distinct abilities in reading other's minds, feeling 
other's feelings, and responding emotionally to specific traumas in their 
lives. Men opt for a wider range of risky activities, are more prone to 
violence against others, make sharper in-group versus out-group 
distinctions, and commit the vast majority of homicides worldwide. The 
question 'Do men and women differ psychologically?' has been replaced with 
more interesting questions. In what ways do these sex differences create 
conflict between men and women? Have the selection pressures that created 
these differences vanished in the modern world? How can societies premised 
on equality grapple with the profound psychological divergences of the 
sexes? DAVID M. BUSS is Professor of Psychology at the University of 
Texas, Austin, and author of several books, most recently The Dangerous 
Passion: Why Jealousy is as Necessary as Love and Evolutionary Psychology: 
The New Science of the Mind , and The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of 
Human Mating.

Jason McCabe Calacanis "How long before all nations obey the basic 
principles of the human rights as outlined in the Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights on December 10th, 1948?"  The distinctive Amnesty 
International arched sticker, with a burning candle surrounded by a swoosh 
of barbed wire, seemed to adorn every college dorm-room door, beat up 
Honda Accord, and office bulletin board when I started college in the late 
'80s at Fordham University. Human rights was the "in" cause. So, we all 
joined Amnesty and watched our heroes including Bruce Springsteen, Sting, 
and Peter Gabriel sing on the "Human Rights Now" tour (brought to you, of 
course, by Reebok).  As quickly as it took center stage, however, human 
rights seemed to fall off the map. Somewhere in the mid-90s, something 
stole our fire and free time, perhaps it was the gold rush years of the 
Internet or the end of the Cold War. The wild spread of entrepreneurship 
and capitalism may have carried some democracy along with it. Yet just 
because people are starting companies and economic markets are opening up 
doesn't mean that there are fewer tortures, rapes, and murders for 
political beliefs. (These kinds of false perceptions may stem from giving 
places like China "Most Favored Nation" status).  Youth inspired by 
artists created the foundation of Amnesty's success in the '80s, so maybe 
a vacuum of activist artists is to blame for human rights disappearing 
from the collective consciousness. Would a homophobic, misogynistic, and 
violent artist like Eminem ever take a stand for anyone other than 
himself? Could anyone take him seriously if he did? Britney Spears' fans 
might not have a problem with her dressing in a thong at the MTV Music 
Awards but how comfortable would they be if she addressed the issue of the 
rape, kidnapping, and torture of young women in Sierra Leone?  Of course, 
you don't have to look around the world to find human-rights abuses. 
Rodney King and Abner Louima taught us that human rights is an important 
and pressing issue right in our backyard. (Because of these examples, some 
narrow-minded individuals may see is as only a race specific issue.) One 
bright spot in all of this, however, is that the technology that was 
supposed to create a Big Brother state, like video cameras, is now being 
used to police Big Brother himself. (Check out witness.org and send them a 
check--or a video camera--if you have the means.)  Eleanor Roosevelt 
considered her fight to create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 
her greatest accomplishment. How ashamed would she be that 50 years has 
elapsed since her battle, and now, no one seems to care.  JASON McCABE 
CALACANIS is Editor and Publisher of Silicon Alley Daily; The Digital 
Coast Weekly, Silicon Alley Reporter and Chairman CEO, Rising Tide 
Studios.

William H. Calvin "Where did the moon go?"  When, every few years, you see 
a bite taken out of the sun or moon, you ought to remember just how 
frightening that question used to be. It became clockwork when the right 
viewpoint was eventually discovered by science (imagining yourself high 
above the north pole, looking at the shadows cast by the earth and the 
moon). But there was an intermediate stage of empirical knowledge, when 
the shaman discovered that the sixth full moon after a prior eclipse had a 
two-third's chance of being associated with another eclipse. And so when 
the shaman told people to pray hard the night before, he was soon seen as 
being on speaking terms with whomever ran the heavens. This helped convert 
part-time shamen into full-time priests, supported by the community. This 
can be seen as the entry-level job for philosophers and scientists, who 
prize the discoveries they can pass on to the next generation, allowing us 
to see farther, always opening up new questions while retiring old ones. 
It's like climbing a mountain that keeps providing an even better 
viewpoint.  WILLIAM H. CALVIN is a neurobiologist at the University of 
Washington, who writes about brains, evolution, and climate. His recent 
books are The Cerebral Code, How Brains Think, and (with the linguist 
Derek Bickerton) Lingua ex Machina.

Andy Clark  "Why Is There Something Instead of Nothing?" This is a 
question that the ancients asked, and one that crops up a few times in 
20th century philosophical discussions. When it is mentioned, it is 
usually as an example of a problem that looks to be both deep and in 
principle insoluble. Unsurprisingly, then, it seems to have fallen by the 
scientific, cosmological and philosophical waysides. But sometimes I 
wonder whether it really is insoluble (or senseless), or whether science 
may one day surprise us by finding an answer. ANDY CLARK is Professor of 
Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex, UK. He was 
previously Director of the Philosophy/Neuroscience/Psychology Program at 
Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Microcognition: 
Philosophy, Cognitive Science and Parallel Distributed Processing, 
Associative Engines, and Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World 
Together Again.

Ann Crittenden "Is human nature innately good or evil?" Another question 
that has fallen into the dustbin of history is this: Is human nature 
innately good or evil? This became a gripping topic in the late 17th 
century, as Enlightment thinkers began to challenge the Christian 
assumption that man was born a fallen creature. It was a great debate 
while it lasted: original sin vs. tabla rasa and the perfectability of 
man; Edmund Burke vs. Tom Paine; Dostoyevsky vs. the Russian reformers. 
But Darwin and Freud undermined the foundations of both sides, by 
discrediting the very possibility of discussing human nature in moral or 
teleological terms. Now the debate has been recast as "nature vs. nurture" 
and in secular scientific circles at least, man is the higher primate -- a 
beast with distinctly mixed potential.  ANN CRITTENDEN is an award-winning 
journalist and author. She was a reporter for The New York Times from 1975 
to 1983, where her work on a broad range of economic issues was nominated 
for the Pulitzer Prize. She is the author of several books inncluding The 
Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the 
Least Valued. Her articles have appeared in numerous magazines, including 
The Nation, Foreign Affairs, McCall's, Lear's, and Working Woman.

Paul Davies   "How fast is the Earth moving?" A hundred years ago, one of 
the most fundamental questions in physical science was: How fast is the 
Earth moving? Many experiments had been performed to measure the speed of 
the Earth through space as it orbits the sun, and as the solar system 
orbits the galaxy. The most famous was conducted in 1887 by Albert 
Michelson and Edward Morley using an optical interferometer. The result 
they obtained was... zero. Today, scientists regard the question of the 
Earth's speed through space as meaningless and misconceived, although many 
non-scientists still refer to the concept.  Why has the question 
disappeared? Einstein's theory of relativity, published in 1905, denied 
any absolute frame of rest in the universe; speed is meaningful only 
relative to other bodies or physical systems. Ironically, some decades 
later, it was discovered there is a special frame of reference in the 
universe defined by the cosmic microwave background radiation, the fading 
afterglow of the big bang. The Earth sweeps through this radiation at 
roughly 600 km per second (over a million miles per hour) in the direction 
of the constellation Leo. This is the closest that modern astronomy gets 
to the notion of an absolute cosmic velocity.  PAUL DAVIES is an 
internationally acclaimed physicist, writer and broadcaster, now based in 
South Australia. Professor Davies is the author of some twenty books, 
including Other Worlds, God and the New Physics, The Edge of Infinity, The 
Mind of God, The Cosmic Blueprint, Are We Alone? and About Time. He is the 
recipient of a Glaxo Science Writers' Fellowship, an Advance Australia 
Award and a Eureka prize for his contributions to Australian science, and 
in 1995 he won the prestigious Templeton Prize for his work on the deeper 
meaning of science.

Richard Dawkins   "As William Blake might have written to a coelacanth: 
Did he who made the haplochromids make thee?" Different people on the Edge 
list seem to have chosen to understand 'questions that have disappeared' 
in three very different senses:  1. Questions that were once popular but 
have now been answered  2. Questions that should never have been asked in 
the first place  3. Questions that have disappeared although they never 
received a satisfactory answer.  This third meaning is, I suspect, the one 
intended by the organizer of the forum. It is the most interesting of the 
three since it suggests real science that we should now be doing, rather 
than just raking over the historical coals.  The three meanings are too 
disparate to bring together easily, but I'll try. The popular question 
'Has there been enough time for evolution to take place?' can now 
confidently be answered in the affirmative. It should never have been put 
in the first place since, self-evidently, we are here. But what is more 
interesting is that the real question that faces us is almost the exact 
opposite. Why is evolution so slow, given that natural selection is so 
powerful? Far from there being too little time for evolution to play with, 
there seems to be too much.  Ledyard Stebbins did a theoretical 
calculation about an extremely weak selection pressure, acting on a 
population of mouse-sized animals to favor the largest individuals. His 
hypothetical selection pressure was so weak as to be below the threshold 
of detectability in field sampling studies. Yet the calculated time to 
evolve elephant-sized descendants from mouse-sized ancestors was only a 
few tens of thousands of generations: too short to be detected under most 
circumstances in the fossil record. To exaggerate somewhat, evolution 
could be yo-yo-ing from mouse to elephant, and back again, so fast that 
the changes could seem instantaneous in the fossil record.  Worse, 
Stebbins's calculation assumed an exceedingly weak selection pressure. The 
real selection pressures measured in the field by Ford and his colleagues 
on lepidoptera and snails, by Endler and his colleagues on guppies, and by 
the Grants and their colleagues on the Galapagos finches, are orders of 
magnitude stronger. If we fed into the Stebbins calculation a selection 
pressure as strong as the Grants have measured in the field, it is 
positively worrying to contemplate how fast evolution could go. The same 
conclusion is indirectly suggested by domestic breeding. We have gone from 
wolf to Yorkshire terrier in a few centuries, and could presumably go back 
to something like a wolf in as short a time.  It is indeed the case that 
evolution on the Galapagos archipelago has been pretty fast, though still 
nothing like as fast as the measured selection pressures might project. 
The islands have been in existence for five million years at the outside, 
and the whole of their famous endemic fauna has evolved during that time. 
But even the Galapagos islands are old compared to Lake Victoria. In the 
less than one million years of the lake's brief lifetime, more than 170 
species of the genus Haplochromis alone have evolved.  Yet the Coelacanth 
Latimeria, and the three genera of lungfish, have scarcely changed in 
hundreds of millions of years. Surviving Lingula ('lamp shells') are 
classified in the same genus as their ancestors of 400 million years ago, 
and could conceivably interbreed with them if introduced through a time 
machine. The question that still faces us is this. How can evolution be 
both so fast and so leadenly slow? How can there be so much variance in 
rates of evolution? Is stasis just due to stabilizing selection and lack 
of directional selection? Or is there something remarkably special going 
on in the (non) evolution of living fossils? As William Blake might have 
written to a coelacanth: Did he who made the haplochromids make thee? 
RICHARD DAWKINS is an evolutionary biologist and the Charles Simonyi 
Professor For The Understanding Of Science at Oxford University; Fellow of 
New College; author of The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype , The 
Blind Watchmaker, River out of Eden (ScienceMasters Series), Climbing 
Mount Improbable, and Unweaving the Rainbow.

Stanislas Dehaene  "The definition of life and consciousness?"  Some 
scientific questions cannot be resolved, but rather are dissolved, and 
vanish once we begin to better understand their terms.  This is often the 
case for "definitional questions". For instance, what is the definition of 
life? Can we trace a sharp boundary between what is living and what is not 
living? Is a virus living? Is the entire earth a living organism? It seems 
that our brain predisposes us to ask questions that require a yes or no 
answer. Moreover, as scientists, we'd like to keep our mental categories 
straight and, therefore, we would like to have neat and tidy definitions 
of the terms we use. However, especially in the biological sciences, the 
objects of reality do not conform nicely to our categorical expectations. 
As we delve into research, we begin to realize that what we naively 
conceived of as a essential category is, in fact, a cluster of loosely 
bound properties that each need to be considered in turn (in the case of 
life: metabolism, reproduction, autonomy, homeostasy, etc..). Thus, what 
was initially considered as a simple question, requiring a straightforward 
answer, becomes a complex issue or even a whole domain of research. We 
begin to realize that there is no single answer, but many different 
answers depending on how one frames the terms of the question. And 
eventually, the question is simply dropped. It is not longer relevant.  I 
strongly suspect that one of today's hottest scientific question,s the 
definition of consciousness, is of this kind. Some scientists seem to 
believe that what we call consciousness is an essence of reality, a single 
coherent phenomenon that can be reduced to a single level such as a 
quantum property of microtubules. Another possibility, however, that 
consciousness is a cluster of properties that, most of the time, cohere 
together in awake adult humans. A minimal list probably includes the 
ability to attend to sensory inputs or internal thoughts, to make them 
available broadly to multiple cerebral systems, to store them in working 
memory and in episodic memory, to manipulate them mentally, to act 
intentionally based on them, and in particular to report them verbally. As 
we explore the issue empirically, we begin to find many situations (such 
as visual masking or specific brain lesions) in which those properties 
break down. The neat question "what is consciousness" dissolves into a 
myriad of more precise and more fruitful research avenues.  Any biological 
theory of consciousness, which assumes that consciousness has evolved, 
implies that "having consciousness" is not an all-or-none property. The 
biological substrates of consciousness in human adults are probably also 
present, but only in partial form, in other species, in young children or 
brain-lesioned patients. It is therefore a partially arbitrary question 
whether we want to extend the use of the term "consciousness" to them. For 
instance, several mammals, and even very young human children, show 
intentional behavior, partially reportable mental states, some working 
memory ability--but perhaps no theory of mind, and more "encapsulated" 
mental processes that cannot be reported verbally or even non-verbally. Do 
they have consciousness, then? My bet is that once a detailed cognitive 
and neural theory of the various aspects of consciousness is available, 
the vacuity of this question will become obvious.  STANISLAS DEHAENE, 
researcher at the Institut National de la Sant?, studies cognitive 
neuropsychology of language and number processing in the human brain; 
author of The Number Sense: How Mathematical Knowledge Is Embedded In Our 
Brains.

David Deutsch  "And why?"  "What Questions Have Disappeared...And Why?" 
Funny you should ask that. "And why? " could itself be the most important 
question that has disappeared from many fields.  "And why?": in other 
words, "what is the explanation for what we see happening?" "What is it in 
reality that brings about the outcome that we predict?" Whenever we fail 
to take that question seriously enough, we are blinded to gaps in our 
favoured explanation. And so, when we use that explanation to interpret 
regularities that we may observe, instead of understanding that the 
explanation was an assumption in our analysis, we regard it as the 
inescapable implication of our observations.  "I just can't feel myself 
split", complained Bryce DeWitt when he first encountered the 
many-universes interpretation of quantum theory. Then Hugh Everett 
convinced him that this was the same circular reasoning that Galileo 
rejected when he explained how the Earth can be in motion even though we 
observe it to be at rest. The point is, both theories are consistent with 
that observation. Thanks to Everett, DeWitt and others, the "and why" 
question began gradually to return to quantum theory, whence it had 
largely disappeared during the 1930s. I believe that its absence did great 
harm both in impeding progress and in encouraging all sorts of mystical 
fads and pseudo-science. But elsewhere, especially in the human 
philosophies (generally known as social sciences), it is still largely 
missing. Although behaviourism--the principled refusal to ask "and 
why?"--is no longer dominant as an explicit ideology, it is still 
widespread as a psychological attitude in the human philosophies.  Suppose 
you identified a gene G, and a human behaviour B, and you undertook a 
study with 1000 randomly chosen people, and the result was that of the 500 
people who had G in their genome, 499 did B, while of the 500 who lacked 
G, 499 failed to do B. You'd conclude, wouldn't you, that G is the 
predominant cause of B? Obviously there must be other mechanisms involved, 
but they have little influence on whether a person does B or not. You'd 
inform the press that all those once-trendy theories that tried to explain 
B through people's upbringing or culture, or attributed it to the exercise 
of free will or the logic of the situation or any combination of such 
factors--were just wrong. You've proved that when people choose to do B, 
they are at the very least responding to a powerful influence from their 
genes. And if someone points out that your results are perfectly 
consistent with B being 100% caused by something other than G (or any 
other gene), or with G exerting an influence in the direction of not doing 
B, you will shrug momentarily, and then forget that possibility. Won't 
you?  DAVID DEUTSCH's research in quantum physics has been influential and 
highly acclaimed. His papers on quantum computation laid the foundations 
for that field, breaking new ground in the theory of computation as well 
as physics, and have triggered an explosion of research efforts worldwide. 
He is a member of the Centre for Quantum Computation at the Clarendon 
Laboratory, Oxford University and the author of The Fabric of Reality.

Keith Devlin "Why can't girls/women do math?"  Heavens, I take a couple of 
days off from reading email over Christmas and when I next log on already 
there are over twenty responses to the Edge question! Maybe the question 
we should all be asking is "Doesn't anyone take time off any more?"  As to 
questions that have disappeared, as a mathematician I hope we've seen the 
last of the question "Why can't girls/women do math?" With women now 
outnumbering men in mathematics programs in most US colleges and 
universities, that old wives' tale (old husbands' tale?) has surely been 
consigned to the garbage can. Some recent research at Brown University 
confirmed what most of us had long suspected: that past (and any remaining 
present) performance differences were based on cultural stereotyping. (The 
researchers found that women students performed worse at math tests when 
they were given in a mixed gender class than when no men were present. No 
communication was necessary to cause the difference. The sheer presence of 
men was enough.)  While I was enjoying my offline Christmas, Roger Schank 
already raised the other big math question: Why do we make such a big deal 
of math performance and of teaching math to everyone in the first place? 
But with the educational math wars still raging, I doubt we've seen the 
last of that one!  KEITH DEVLIN is a mathematician, writer, and 
broadcaster living in California. His latest book is The Math Gene: How 
Mathematical Thinking Evolved and Why Numbers Are Like Gossip.

Denis Dutton  "When will overpopulation create worldwide starvation?" 
They cordoned off the area and brought in disposal experts to defuse the 
bomb, but it turned out to be full of--sawdust. The Population Bomb is 
truly a dud, although this news and its implications have yet fully to 
sink into the general consciousness.  Ideas can become so embedded in our 
outlook that they are hard to shake by rational argument. As a Peace Corps 
Volunteer working in rural India in the 1960s, I vividly remember being 
faced with multiple uncertainties about what might work for the 
modernization of India. There was only one thing I and my fellow 
development workers could all agree on: India unquestionably would 
experience mass famine by the 1980s at the latest. For us at the time this 
notion was an eschatological inevitability and an article of faith.  For 
35 years since those days, India has grown in population by over a million 
souls a month, never failing to feed itself or earn enough to buy the food 
it needs (sporadic famine conditions in isolated areas, which still happen 
in India, are always a matter of communications and distribution 
breakdown).  Like so many of the doomsayers of the twentieth century, we 
left crucial factors out of our glib calculations. First, we failed to 
appreciate that people in developing countries will behave exactly like 
people in the rest of the world: as they improve their standard of living, 
they have fewer children. In India, the rate of population increase began 
to turn around in the 1970s, and it has declined since. More importantly, 
we underestimated the capacity of human intelligence to adapt changing 
situations.  Broadly speaking, instead of a world population of 25 or 30 
billion, which some prophets of the 1960s were predicting, it now looks as 
though the peak of world population growth might be reached within 25 to 
40 years at a maximum of 8.5 billion (just 2.5 billion above the present 
world population). Even without advances in food technology, the areas of 
land currently out of agricultural production in the United States and 
elsewhere will prevent starvation. But genetic technologies will increase 
the quantities and healthfulness of food, while at the same time making 
food production much more environmentally friendly. For example, combining 
gene modification with herbicides will make it possible to produce crops 
that induce no soil erosion. New varieties will requires less intensive 
application of nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides. If genetic techniques 
can control endemic pests, vast areas of Africa could be brought into 
productive cultivation.  There will be no way to add 2.5 billion people to 
the planet without environmental costs. Some present difficulties, such as 
limited supplies of fresh water in Third World localities, will only get 
worse. But these problems will not be insoluble. Moreover, there is not 
the slightest chance that population growth will in itself cause famine. 
What will be fascinating to watch, for those who live long enough to 
witness it, will be how the world copes with an aging, declining 
population, once the high-point has been reached.  The steady evaporation 
of the question, "When will overpopulation create worldwide starvation?", 
has left a gaping hole in the mental universe of the doomsayers. They have 
been quick to fill it with anxieties about global warming, cellphones, the 
ozone hole, and Macdonaldization. There appears to be a hard-wired human 
propensity to invent threats where they cannot clearly be discovered. 
Historically, this has been applied to foreign ethnic groups or odd 
individuals in a small-scale society (the old woman whose witchcraft must 
have caused village children to die). Today's anxieties focus on broader 
threats to mankind, where activism can mix fashionable politics with 
dubious science. In this respect alone, the human race is not about to run 
out of problems. Fortunately, it also shows no sign of running out of 
solutions.  DENIS DUTTON, founder and editor of the innovative Web page 
Arts & Letters Daily (www.cybereditions.com/aldaily/), teaches the 
philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and writes 
widely on aesthetics. He is editor of the journal Philosophy and 
Literature, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Professor 
Dutton is a director of Radio New Zealand, Inc.

George B. Dyson  "What does the other side of the moon look like?" This 
can be elaborated by the following anecdote, from an interview (2.99) with 
Herbert York:  "Donald Hornig, who was head of PSAC [President's Science 
Advisory Committee, during the Johnson Administration] was not 
imaginative. I can give you an example of this. I was very enthusiastic 
about getting a picture of the other side of the moon. And there were 
various ways of doing it, sooner or later. And I argued with Hornig about 
it and he said, 'Why? It looks just like this side.' And it turned out it 
didn't. But nevertheless, that was it, and that's the real Hornig. 'Why 
are you so enthused about the other side of the moon? The other side of 
the moon looks just like this side, why would you be so interested to see 
it?'"  GEORGE DYSON, a historian among futurists, has been excavating the 
history and prehistory of the digital revolution going back 300 years. His 
most recent book is Darwin Among the Machines.

J. Doyne Farmer  "What do these discarded questions tell us?"  The road of 
knowledge is littered with old questions, but by their very nature, none 
of them stands out above all others. The diversity of thoughtful responses 
given on the Edge forum, which just begin to scratch the surface, 
illustrates how progress happens. The evolution of knowledge is a 
Schumpterian process of creative destruction, in which weeding out the 
questions that no longer merit attention is an integral part of 
formulating better questions that should. Forgetting is a vital part of 
creation.  Maxwell once worried that the second law of thermodynamics 
could be violated by a demon who could measure the velocity of individual 
particles and separate the fast ones from the slow ones, and use this to 
do work. Charlie Bennet showed that that this is impossible, because to 
make a measurement the demon has to first put her instruments in a known 
state.  This involves erasing information. The energy needed to do this is 
more than can be gained. Thus, the fact that forgetting takes work is 
essential to the second law of thermodynamics. Why is this relevant? As 
Gregory Bateson once said, the second law of thermodynamics is the reason 
that it is easier to mess up a room than it is to clean it. Forgetting is 
an essential part of the process of creating order. Asking the right 
questions is the most important part of the creative process. There are 
lots of people who are good at solving problems, fewer who are good at 
asking questions.  Around the time I took my qualifying examination in 
physics, someone showed me the test that Lord Rayleigh took when he 
graduated as senior wrangler from Cambridge in 1865. I would have failed 
it. There were no questions on thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, 
quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, particle physics, condensed matter, or 
relativity, i.e. no questions covering most of what I had learned. 
However, the classical mechanics questions, which comprised most of the 
bets, were diabolically hard. Their solution involved techniques that are 
no longer taught, and that a modern physicist would have to work hard to 
recreate. Of course, in a field like philosophy this would not have 
surprised me--it just hadn't occurred to me that this was as true for 
physics as well. The physicists in Rayleigh's generation presumably worked 
just as hard, and knew just as many things. They just knew different 
things. After overcoming the shock of how much had seemingly been lost, I 
rationalized my ignorance with the belief that what I was taught was more 
useful than what Rayleigh was taught. Whether as a culture or as 
individuals, to learn new things, we have to forget old things. The notion 
of what is useful is constantly evolving.  The most important questions 
evolve through time as people understand little bits and pieces, and view 
them from different angles in the attempt to solve them. Each question is 
replaced by a new one that is (hopefully) better framed than its 
antecedant. Reflecting on those that have been cast aside is like sifting 
through flotsam on a beach, and asking what it tells us. Is there a common 
thread that might give us a clue to posing better questions in the future? 
When we examine questions such as "What is a vital force?", "How fast is 
the earth moving?", "Does God exist?", "Have we seen the end of science?", 
"Has history ended?", "Can machines think?", there are some common 
threads. One is that we never really understood what these questions meant 
in the first place. But these questions (to varying degrees) have been 
useful in helping us to formulate better, more focused questions. We just 
have to turn loose of our pet ideas, and make a careful distinction 
between what we know and what we only think we know, and try to be more 
precise about what we are really asking.  I would be curious to hear more 
discussion about the common patterns and the conclusions to be drawn from 
the questions that have disappeared.  J. DOYNE FARMER, one of the pioneers 
of what has come to be called chaos theory, is McKinsey Professor, Sante 
Fe, Institute, and the co founder and former co-president of Prediction 
Company in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Kenneth Ford  "When will we face another energy crisis, and how will we 
cope with it?"  This question (or pair of questions) was on everyone's 
lips in the 1970s, following the oil shortage and lines at gas stations. 
It stimulated a lot of good thinking and good work on alternative energy 
sources, renewable energy sources, and energy efficiency. Although this 
question is still asked by many knowledgeable and concerned people, it has 
disappeared from the public's radar screen (or, better, television 
screen). Even the recent escalation of fuel prices and the electricity 
shortage in California have not lent urgency to thinking ahead about 
energy.  But we should be asking, we should be worrying, and we should be 
planning. A real energy crisis is closer now than it was when the question 
had high currency. The energy-crisis question is only part of a larger 
question: How is humankind going to deal in the long term with its impact 
on the physical world we inhabit (of which the exhaustion of fossil fuels 
is only a part)? Another way to phrase the larger question: Are we going 
to manage more or less gracefully a transition to a sustainable world, or 
will eventual sustainability be what's left, willy nilly, after the chaos 
of unplanned, unanticipated change?  Science will provide no miracles (as 
the Wall Street Journal, in its justification of inaction, would have us 
believe), but science can do a lot to ameliorate the dislocations that 
this century will bring. We need to encourage our public figures to lift 
their eyes beyond the two-, four-, and six-year time horizons of their 
jobs.  KENNETH FORD is a retired physicist who teaches at Germantown 
Friends School in Philadelphia. He is the co-author, with John Wheeler, of 
Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics.

Howard Gardner  "Has History Ended?" I am going to take slight liberty 
with your question. With the publication a decade ago of Francis 
Fukuyama's justly acclaimed article The End Of History, many pundits and 
non-pundits assumed that historical forces and trends had been spent. The 
era of the "isms" was at an end; liberal democracy, market forces, and 
globalization had triumphed; the heavy weight of the past was attenuating 
around the globe.  At the start of 2001, we are no longer asking "Has 
History Ended?" History seems all too alive. The events of Seattle 
challenged the globalization behemoth; the world is no longer beating a 
path to internet startups; Communist and fascist revivals have emerged in 
several countries; the historical legacies in areas like the Balkans and 
the Middle East are as vivid as ever; and, as I noted in response to last 
year's question, much of Africa is at war. As if to remind us of our 
naivete, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein have been in "office" as long as 
most Americans can remember. If George II is ignorant of this history, he 
is likely to see it repeated. HOWARD GARDNER, the major proponent of the 
theory of multiple intelligences, is Professor of Education at Harvard 
University and author of numerous books including The Mind's New Science 
and Extraordinary Minds: Portraits of Four Exceptional Individuals.

Joel Garreau  "What can government do to help create a better sort of 
human?"  The moral, intellectual, physical and social improvement of the 
human race was a hot topic of the Enlightenment. It helped shape the 
American and French revolutions. Creating the "New Soviet Man" was at the 
heart of the Russian revolution--that's what justified the violence.  A 
central theme of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was not just that human 
misery could be alleviated. It was that core human problems like crime 
could be fixed by the government eliminating root causes like want. 
That's all gone.  We now barely trust government to teach kids to read. 
JOEL GARREAU, the cultural revolution correspondent of The Washington 
Post, is a student of global culture, values, and change whose current 
interests range from human networks and the transmission of ideas to the 
hypothesis that the '90s--like the '50s--set the stage for a social 
revolution to come. He is the author of the best-selling books Edge City: 
Life on the New Frontier and The Nine Nations of North America, and a 
principal of The Edge City Group, which is dedicated to the creation of 
more liveable and profitable urban areas worldwide.

David Gelernter   "How should adult education work? How do we educate the 
masses? (That's right, The Masses.)...." How should adult education work? 
How do we educate the masses? (That's right, The Masses.) How do we widen 
the circle of people who love and support great art, great music, great 
literature? How do we widen the circle of adults who understand the 
science and engineering that our modern world is built on? How do we rear 
good American citizens? Or for that matter good German citizens, or 
Israeli or Danish or Chilean? And if this is the information age, why does 
the population at large grow worse-informed every year? (Sorry--that last 
one isn't a question people have stopped asking; they never started.) 
These questions have disappeared because in 2001, the "educated elite" 
never goes anywhere without its quote-marks. Here in America's fancy 
universities, we used to believe that everyone deserved and ought to have 
the blessings of education. Today we believe our children should have 
them--and to make up for that fact, to even the score, we have abolished 
the phrase. No more "blessings of education." That makes us feel better. 
Many of us can't say "truth and beauty" without snickering like 
10-year-old boys.  But the situation will change, as soon as we regain the 
presence of mind to start asking these questions again. We have the raw 
materials on hand for the greatest cultural rebirth in history. We have 
the money and the technical means. We tend to tell our children nowadays 
(implicitly) that their goal in life is to get rich, get famous and lord 
it over the world. We are ashamed to tell them that what they really ought 
to be is good, brave and true. (In fact I am almost ashamed to type it.) 
This terrible crisis of confidence we're going through was probably 
inevitable; at any rate it's temporary, and if we can't summon the courage 
to tell our children what's right, my guess is that they will figure it 
out for themselves, and tell us. I'm optimistic.  DAVID GELERNTER, 
Professor of Computer Science at Yale University and author of Mirror 
Worlds, The Muse in the Machine, 1939: The Lost World of the Fair, and 
Drawiing a Life: Surviving the Unabomber.

Brian Goodwin  "Where Does Love Come From?"  What does science have to say 
about the origins of love in the scheme of things? Not a lot. In fact, it 
is still virtually a taboo subject, just as consciousness was until very 
recently. However, since feelings are a major component of consciousness, 
it seems likely that the ontology of love is now likely to emerge as a 
significant question in science.  Within Christian culture, as in many 
other religious traditions, love has its origin as a primal quality of God 
and so is co-eternal with Him. His creation is an outpouring of this love 
in shared relationship with beings that participate in the essential 
creativity of the cosmos. As in the world of Shakespeare and the 
Renaissance Magi, it is love that makes the world go round and animates 
all relationships.  This magical view of the world did not satisfy the 
emerging perspective of Galilean science, which saw relationships in 
nature as law-like, obeying self-consistent logical principles of order. 
God may well have created the world, but he did so according to 
intelligible principles. It is the job of the scientist to identify these 
and describe them in mathematical form. And so with Newton, love turned 
into gravity. The rotation of the earth around the sun, and the moon 
around the earth, was a result of the inverse square law of gravitational 
attraction. It was not a manifestation of love as an attractive principle 
between animated beings, however much humanity remained attached to 
romantic feelings about the full moon. Love was henceforth banished from 
scientific discourse and the mechanical world-view took over.  Now science 
itself is changing and mechanical principles are being replaced by more 
subtle notions of interaction and relationships. Quantum mechanics was the 
first harbinger of a new holistic world of non-local connectedness in 
which causality operates in a much more intricate way than conventional 
mechanism. We now have complexity theory as well, which seeks to 
understand how emergent properties arise in complex systems such as 
developing organisms, colonies of social insects, and human brains. Often 
these properties are not reducible to the behavior of their component 
parts and their interactions, though there is always consistency between 
levels: that is, there are no contradictions between the properties of the 
parts of a complex system and the order that emerges from them. 
Consciousness appears to be one of these emergent properties. With this 
recognition, science enters a new realm.  Consciousness involves feelings, 
or more generally what are called qualia, the experience of qualities such 
as pain, pleasure, beauty, and ??. love. This presents us with a major 
challenge. The scientific principle of consistency between levels in 
systems requires that feelings emerge from some property of the component 
parts (e.g., neurones) that is consistent with feeling, experience. But if 
matter is 'dead', without any feeling, and neurones are just made of this 
dead matter, even though organized in a complex way, then where do 
feelings come from ? This is the crunch question which presents us with a 
hard choice. We can either say that feelings are epiphenomena, illusions 
that evolution has invented because they are useful for survival. Or we 
can change our view of matter and ascribe to the basic stuff of reality 
some elementary component of feeling, sentience, however rudimentary. Of 
course, we could also take the view that nature is not self-consistent and 
that miracles are possible; that something can come from nothing, such as 
feeling from dead, insentient matter, thus returning to the magical 
world-view of the early renaissance. But if we are to remain scientific, 
then the choice is between the other two alternatives.  The notion that 
evolution has invented feelings because they are useful for survival is 
not a scientific explanation, because it gives no account of how feelings 
are possible as properties that emerge in the complex systems we call 
organisms (i.e., consistent emergent properties of life). So we are left 
with the other hard choice: matter must have some rudimentary property of 
sentience. This is the conclusion that the mathematician/philosopher A.N. 
Whitehead came to in his classic, Process and Reality, and it is being 
proposed as a solution to the Cartesian separation of mind and matter by 
some contemporary philosophers and scientists. It involves a radical 
reappraisal of what we call 'reality'. But it does suggest a world in 
which love exists as something real, in accord with most peoples' 
experience. And goodness knows, we could do with a little more of it in 
our fragmented world.  BRIAN GOODWIN is a professor of biology at the 
Schumacher College, Milton Keynes, and the author of Temporal Organization 
in Cells and Analytical Physiology, How The Leopard Changed Its Spots: The 
Evolution of Complexity, and (with Gerry Webster) Form and Transformation: 
Generative and Relational Principles in Biology. Dr. Goodwin is a member 
of the Board of Directors of the Sante Fe Institute.

David Haig  "questions that were asked in extinct languages" All those 
questions that were asked in extinct languages for which there is no 
written record. DAVID HAIG is an evolutionary geneticist/theorist at 
Harvard who is interested in conflicts and conflict resolution with the 
genome, with a particular interest in genomic imprinting and relations 
between parents and offspring. Hiscurrent interests include the evolution 
of linkage groups and the evolution of viviparity.

Judy Harris   "Do genes influence human behavior?"  This question bit the 
dust after a brief but busy life; it is entirely a second-half-of 
the-20th-century question. Had it been asked before the 20th century, it 
would have been phrased differently: "heredity" instead of "genes." But it 
wasn't asked back then, because the answer was obvious to everyone. 
Unfortunately, the answer everyone gave--yes!--was based on erroneous 
reasoning about ambiguous evidence: the difference in behavior between the 
pauper and the prince was attributed entirely to heredity. The fact that 
the two had been reared in very different circumstances, and hence had had 
very different experiences, was overlooked.   Around the middle of the 
20th century, it became politically incorrect and academically unpopular 
to use the word "heredity"; if the topic came up at all, a euphemism, 
"nature," was used in its place. The fact that the pauper and the prince 
had been reared in very different circumstances now came to the fore, and 
the behavioral differences between them was now attributed entirely to the 
differences in their experiences. The observation that the prince had many 
of the same quirks as the king was now blamed entirely on his upbringing. 
Unfortunately, this answer, too, was based on erroneous reasoning about 
ambiguous evidence.   That children tend to resemble their biological 
parents is ambiguous evidence; the fact that such evidence is 
plentiful--agreeable parents tend to have agreeable kids, aggressive 
parents tend to have aggressive kids, and so on--does not make it any less 
ambiguous. The problem is that most kids are reared by their biological 
parents. The parents have provided both the genes and the home 
environment, so the kids' heredity and environment are correlated. The 
prince has inherited not only his father's genes but also his father's 
palace, his father's footmen, and his father's Lord High Executioner (no 
reference to living political figures is intended).   To disambiguate the 
evidence, special techniques are required--ways of teasing apart heredity 
and environment by controlling the one and varying the other. Such 
techniques didn't begin to be widely used until the 1970s; their results 
didn't become widely known and widely accepted until the 1990s. By then so 
much evidence had piled up that the conclusion (which should have been 
obvious all along) was incontrovertible: yes, genes do influence human 
behavior, and so do the experiences children have while growing up.   (I 
should point out, in response to David Deutsch's contribution to the World 
Question Center, that no one study, and no one method, can provide an 
answer to a question of this sort. In the case of genetic influences on 
behavior, we have converging evidence--studies using a variety of methods 
all led to the same conclusion and even agreed pretty well on the 
quantitative details.)  Though the question has been answered, it has left 
behind a cloud of confusion that might not disappear for some time. The 
biases of the second half of the 20th century persist: when 
"dysfunctional" parents are found to have dysfunctional kids, the tendency 
is still to blame the environment provided by the parents and to overlook 
the fact that the parents also provided the genes.   Some would argue that 
this bias makes sense. After all, they say, we know how the environment 
influences behavior. How the genes influence behavior is still a 
mystery--a question for the 21st century to solve. But they are wrong. 
They know much less than they think they know about how the environment 
influences behavior.   The 21st century has two important questions to 
answer. How do genes influence human behavior? How is human behavior 
influenced by the experiences a child has while growing up?  JUDITH RICH 
HARRIS is a writer and developmental psychologist; co-author of The Child: 
A Contemporary View Of Development; winner of the 1997 George A. Miller 
Award for an outstanding article in general psychology, and author of The 
Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out The Way They Do.

Marc D. Hauser "Do animals have thoughts?"   The reason this question is 
dead is because traditional Skinnerianism, which viewed rats and pigeons 
as furry and feathered black boxes, guided by simple principles of 
reinforcement and punishment, is theoretically caput. It can no longer 
account for the extraordinary things that animals do, spontaneously. 
Thus, we now know that animals form cognitive maps of their environment, 
compute numerosities, represent the relationships among individuals in 
their social group, and most recently, have some understanding of what 
others know.  The questions for the future, then, are not "Do animals 
think?", but "What precisely do they think about, and to what extent do 
their thoughts differ from our own?"  MARC D. HAUSER is an evolutionary 
psychologist, and a professor at Harvard University where he is a fellow 
of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Program. He is a professor in the 
departments of Anthropology and Psychology, as well as the Program in 
Neurosciences. He is the author of The Evolution of Communication, and 
Wild Minds: What AnimalsThink.

Geoffrey Hinton   "What is 'vital force'?"  Nobody asks what "vital force" 
is anymore. Organisms still have just as much vital force as they had 
before, but as understanding of biological mechanisms increased, the idea 
of a single essence evaporated. Hopefully the same will happen with 
"consciousness".  GEOFFREY HINTON, is an AI researcher at the Gatsby 
Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, where he does 
research on ways of using neural networks for learning, memory, perception 
and symbol processing and has over 100 publications in these areas. He was 
one of the researchers who introduced the back-propagation algorithm that 
is now widely used for practical applications. His other contributions to 
neural network research include Boltzmann machines, distributed 
representations, time-delay neural nets, mixtures of experts, and 
Helmholtz machines. His current main interest is in unsupervised learning 
procedures for neural networks with rich sensory input.

John Horgan "Is enlightenment a myth or a reality?"  Is enlightenment a 
myth or a reality? I mean the enlightenment of the east, not west, the 
state of supreme mystical awareness also known as nirvana, satori, cosmic 
consciousnesss, awakening. Enlightenment is the telos of the great Eastern 
religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, and it crops up occasionally in western 
religions, too, although in a more marginal fashion. Enlightenment once 
preoccupied such prominent western intellectuals as William James, Aldous 
Huxley and Joseph Campbell, and there was a surge of scientific interest 
in mysticism in the 1960?s and 1970?s. Then mysticism became tainted by 
its association with the human potential and New Age movements and the 
psychedelic counterculture, and for the last few decades it has for the 
most part been banished from serious scientific and intellectual 
discourse. Recently a few scholars have written excellent books that 
examine mysticism in the light of modern psychology and neuroscience--Zen 
and the Brain by the neurologist James Austin; Mysticism, Mind, 
Consciousness by the philosopher Robert Forman; The Mystical Mind by the 
late psychiatrist Eugene d'Aquili and the radiologist Andrew Newberg--but 
their work has received scant attention in the scientific mainstream. My 
impression is that many scientists are privately fascinated by mysticism 
but fear being branded as fuzzy-headed by disclosing their interest. If 
more scientists revealed their interest in mystical consciousness, perhaps 
it could become a legitimate subject for investigation once again.  JOHN 
HORGAN is a freelance writer and author of The End of Science and The 
Undiscovered Mind. A senior writer at Scientific American from 1986 to 
1997, he has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, New 
Republic, Slate, London Times, Times Literary Supplement and other 
publications.

Verena Huber-Dyson  "Did Fermat's question, 'is it true that there are no 
integers x, y, z and n, all greater than 2, such that x^n + y^n = z^n?', 
F? for short, raised in the 17th century, disappear when Andrew Wiles 
answered it affirmatively by a proof of Fermat's theorem F in 1995?"  Did 
Fermat's question, "is it true that there are no integers x, y, z and n, 
all greater than 2, such that x^n + y^n = z^n?", F? for short, raised in 
the 17th century, disappear when Andrew Wiles answered it affirmatively by 
a proof of Fermat's theorem F in 1995?  The answer is no.  The question F? 
can be explained to every child, but the proof of F is extremely 
sophisticated requiring techniques and results way beyond the reach of 
elementary arithmetic, thus raising the quest for conceptually simpler 
proofs. What is going on here, why do such elementary theorems require 
such intricate machinery for their proof? The fact of the truth of F 
itself is hardly of vital interest. But, in the wake of Goedel's 
incompleteness proof of 1931, F? finds it place in a sequence of 
elementary number theoretic questions for which there provably cannot 
exist any algorithmic proof procedure!  Or take the question D? raised by 
the gut feeling that there are more points on a straight line segment than 
there are integers in the infinite sequence 1,2,3,4,.... Before it can be 
answered the question what is meant by "more" must be dealt with. This 
done by the 18th Century's progress in the Foundations, D? became amenable 
to Cantor's diagonal argument, establishing theorem D. But this was by no 
means the end of the question!  The proof gave rise to new fields of 
investigation and new ideas. In particular, the Continuum hypothesis C?, a 
direct descendant of D? was shown to be "independent" of the accepted 
formal system of set theory. A whole new realm of questions sprang up; 
questions X? that are answered by proofs of independence, bluntly by: 
"that depends"--on what you are talking about, what system you are using, 
on your definition of the word "is" and so forth. With this they give rise 
to comparative studies of systems without as well as with the assumption X 
added. Euclid's parallel axiom in geometry, is the most popular early 
example.  What about the question as to the nature of infinitesimal's, a 
question that has plagued us ever since Leibniz. Euler and his colleagues 
had used them with remarkable success boldly following their intuition. 
But in the 18th Century mathematicians became self conscious. By the time 
we were teaching our calculus classes by means of epsilon's, delta's and 
Dedekind cuts some of us might have thought that Cauchy, Weierstrass and 
Dedekind had chased the question away. But then along came logicians like 
Abraham Robinson with a new take on it with so-called non standard 
quantities--another favorite of the popular science press.  Finally, 
turning to a controversial issue; the question of the existence of God can 
neither be dismissed by a rational "No" nor by a politically expedient 
"Yes". Actually as a plain yes-or-no question it ought to have disappeared 
long ago. Nietzsche, in particular, did his very best over a hundred years 
ago to make it go away. But the concept of God persists and keeps a maze 
of questions afloat, such as "who means what by Him"?, "do we need a 
boogie man to keep us in line"?, "do we need a crutch to hold despair at 
bay"? and so forth, all questions concerning human nature.  Good questions 
do not disappear, they mature, mutate and spawn new questions.  VERENA 
HUBER-DYSON, is a mathematician who taught at UC Berkeley in the early 
sixties, then at the U of Illinois' at Chicago Circle, before retiring 
from the University of Calgary. Her research papers on the interface 
between Logic and Algebra concern decision problems in group theory. Her 
monograph Goedel's theorem: a workbook on formalization is an attempt at a 
self contained interdisciplinary introduction to logic and the foundations 
of mathematics.

Nicholas Humphrey  "...a set of questions that ought to have disappeared; 
questions that seek reasons for patterns that in reality are due to 
chance" There is a set of questions that ought to have disappeared, 
but--given human psychology--probably never will do: questions that seek 
reasons for patterns that in reality are due to chance.  Why is "one plus 
twelve" an anagram of "two plus eleven"? Why do the moon and the sun take 
up exactly the same areas in the sky as seen from Earth? Why did my friend 
telephone me just as I was going to telephone her? Whose face is it in the 
clouds?  The truth is that not everything has a reason behind it. We 
should not assume there is someone or something to be blamed for every 
pattern that strikes us as significant.  But we have evolved to have what 
the psychologist Bartlett called an "effort after meaning". We have always 
done better to find meaning where there was none than to miss meaning 
where there was.  We're human. When we win the lottery by betting on the 
numbers of our birthday, the question Why? will spring up, no matter what. 
NICHOLAS HUMPHREY is a theoretical psychologist at the Centre for 
Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, London School of Economics, and 
the author of Consciousness Regained, The Inner Eye, A History of the 
Mind, and Leaps of Faith: Science, Miracles, and the Search for 
Supernatural Consolation.

Mark Hurst  "Do I have e-mail?" The sudden increase in digital 
information, or bits, in our everyday lives has destroyed any question of 
permanence or scarcity of those bits. Just consider the example of e-mail. 
Years ago when you first got online, you were excited to get e-mail, 
right? So every day, the big question when you logged in was, Will I have 
any e-mail? The chirpy announcement that "You've got mail!" actually meant 
something, since sometimes you didn't have mail.  Today there's no 
question. There's no such thing as no mail. You don't have to ask; you DO 
have mail. If it's not the mail you want (from friends or family), it's 
work-related mail or, worse, spam. Our inboxes may soon be so flooded with 
spam that we look for entirely different ways to use e-mail.  The death of 
that question, "Do I have e-mail?" has brought us a new, more interesting 
question as a result: "What do I do with all this e-mail?" More generally, 
what do we do with all these bits (e-mail, wireless messages, websites, 
Palm Pilot files, Napster downloads)? This is the question that will 
define our relationship with digital technology in coming years.  MARK 
HURST, founder of Internet consulting firm Creative Good, is widely 
credited for popularizing the term "customer experience" and the 
methodology around it. Hurst has worked since the birth of the Web to make 
Internet technology easier and more relevant to its "average" users. In 
1999, InfoWorld magazine named Hurst "Netrepreneur of the Year", saying 
that "Mark Hurst has done more than any other individual to make 
Web-commerce sites easier to use." Over 39,000 people subscribe to his 
Good Experience newsletter, available for free at goodexperience.com or 
update at goodexperie nce.com.

Piet Hut  "What is Reality?"  It has become unfashionable to ask about the 
structure of reality without already having chosen a framework in which to 
ponder the answer, be it scientific, religious or sceptical. A sense of 
wonder at the sheer appearance of the world, moment by moment, has been 
lost.  To look at the world in wonder, and to stay with that sense of 
wonder without jumping straight past it, has become almost impossible for 
someone taking science seriously. The three dominant reactions are: to see 
science as the only way to get at the truth, at what is really real; to 
accept science but to postulate a more encompassing reality around or next 
to it, based on an existing religion; or to accept science as one useful 
approach in a plurality of many approaches, neither of which has anything 
to say about reality in any ultimate way.  The first reaction leads to a 
sense of wonder scaled down to the question of wonder about the underlying 
mathematical equations of physics, their interpretation, and the 
complexity of the phenomena found on the level of chemistry and biology. 
The second reaction tends to allow wonder to occur only within the 
particular religous framework that is accepted on faith. The third 
reaction allows no room for wonder about reality, since there is no 
ultimate reality to wonder about.  Having lost our ability to ask what 
reality is like means having lost our innocence. The challenge is to 
regain a new form of innocence, by accepting all that we can learn from 
science, while simultaneously daring to ask 'what else is true?' In each 
period of history, the greatest philosophers struggled with the question 
of how to confront skepticism and cynicism, from Socrates and Descartes to 
Kant and Husserl in Europe, and Nagarjuna and many others in Asia and 
elsewhere. I hope that the question "What is Reality?" will reappear soon, 
as a viable intellectual question and at the same time as an invitation to 
try to put all our beliefs and frameworks on hold. Looking at reality 
without any filter may or may not be possible, but without at least trying 
to do so we will have given up too soon.  PIET HUT is professor of 
astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. He is 
involved in the project of building GRAPEs, the world's fastest 
special-purpose computers, at Tokyo University, and he is also a founding 
member of the Kira Institute.

Raphael Kasper  "What does all the information mean?"  The ubiquity of 
upscale coffee houses has eliminated the need to ask "Where can I get a 
cup of coffee?" But I suspect that the question "What questions have 
disappeared?" is meant to elicit even deeper and [perhaps] more meaningful 
responses.  The coffee house glut has been accompanied--although with no 
necessarily causal link--by an avalanche of information [or, at least, of 
data] and in the rush to obtain [or "to access"--groan] that information 
we?ve stopped asking "What does it all mean?" It is as though raw data, in 
and of itself, has real value, indeed all of the value, and thus there is 
no need to stop, to assimilate, to ponder. We grasp for faster computers, 
greater bandwidth, non-stop connectivity. We put computers in every 
classroom, rewire schools. But, with the exception of a great deal of 
concern about the business and marketing uses of the new "information 
age," we pay precious little attention to how the information can be used 
to change, or improve, our lives, nor do we seem to take the time to slow 
down and deliberate upon its meaning.  We wire the schools, but never ask 
what all those computers in classrooms will be used for, or whether 
teachers know what to do with them, or whether we can devise ways to 
employ the technology to help people learn in new or better ways. We get 
cable modems, or high-speed telephone lines, but don?t think about what we 
can do with them beyond getting more information faster. [Really, does 
being able to watch the trailer for "Chicken Run" in a 2-inch square 
window on the computer screen after a several minute long download, 
constitute a major advance--and if we could cut the download time to 
several seconds, would that qualify?]  Most insidious, I think, is that 
the rush to get more information faster almost forces people to avoid the 
act of thinking. Why stop and try to make sense of the information we?ve 
obtained when we can click on that icon and get still more data? And more. 
RAPHAEL KASPER, a physicist, is Associate Vice Provost for Research at 
Columbia University and was Associate Director of the Superconducting 
Super Collider Laboratory.

Kevin Kelly  "What is the nature of our creator?"  This question was once 
entertained by the educated and non-educated alike, but is now out of 
fashion among the learned, except in two small corners of intellectual 
life. One corner is religious theology, which many scientists would hardly 
consider a legitimate form of inquiry at this time. In fact it would not 
be an exaggeration to say that modern thinking considers this question as 
fit only for the religious, and that it has no part in the realm of 
science at all. But even among the religious this question has lost favor 
because, to be honest, theology hasn't provided very many satisfactory 
answers for modern sensibilities, and almost no new answers in recent 
times. It feels like a dead end. A question that cannot be asked merely by 
musing in a book-lined room.  The other corner where this question is 
asked--but only indirectly--is in particle physics and cosmology. We get 
hints of answers here and there mainly as by-products of other more 
scientifically specific questions, but very few scientists set out to 
answer this question primarily. The problem here is that because the 
question of the nature of our creator is dismissed as a religious 
question, and both of these sciences require some of the most expensive 
equipment in the world paid by democracies committed to separation of 
church and state, it won't do to address the question directly.  But there 
is a third way of thinking emerging that may provide a better way to ask 
this question. This is the third culture of technology. Instead of asking 
this question starting from the human mind contemplating the mysteries of 
God, as humanists and theologists do, or starting from experiment, 
observation, and testing as scientists do, the third way investigates the 
nature of our creator by creating creations. This is the approach of nerds 
and technologists. Technologists are busy creating artificial worlds, 
virtual realities, artificial life, and eventually perhaps, parallel 
universes, and in this process they explore the nature of godhood. When we 
make worlds, what are the various styles of being god? What is the 
relation to the creator and the created? How does one make laws that 
unfold creatively? How much of what is created can be created without a 
god? Where is god essential? Sometimes there are theories (theology) but 
more often this inquiry is driven by pure pragmatic engineering: "We are 
as gods and may as well get good at it," to quote Stewart Brand.  While 
the third way offers a potential for new answers, more than the ways of 
the humanities or science, the truth is that even here this question--of 
the nature of our creator--is not asked directly very much. This really is 
a question that has disappeared from public discourse, although of course, 
it is asked every day by billions of people silently.   KEVIN KELLY is a 
founding editor of Wired magazine. In 1993 and 1996, under his 
co-authorship, Wired won it's industry's Oscar--The National Magazine 
Award for General Excellence. Prior to the launch of Wired , Kelly was 
editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox 
technical and cultural news. He is the author of New Rules for the New 
Economy; and Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, 
and the Economic World.

Lance Knobel "Are you hoping for a girl or a boy?" The moment of birth 
used to be attended by an answer to a nine-month mystery: girl or boy? 
Now, to anyone with the slightest curiosity and no mystical scruples, 
simple, non-invasive technology can provide the answer from an early stage 
of pregnancy. With both of our children, we chose to know the answer (in 
the UK about half of parents want to know), and I suspect the likelihood 
of the question continuing to be asked will diminish rapidly. What's 
interesting is this is the first of many questions about the anticipated 
child that will soon not be asked. These will range from the trivial (eye 
colour, mature height) to the important (propensity to certain diseases 
and illnesses). The uneasiness many people still have about knowing the 
sex of the child suggests that society is vastly unprepared for the 
pre-birth answers to a wide range of questions. LANCE KNOBEL is a managing 
director of Vesta Group, an Internet and wireless investment company based 
in London. He was formerly head of the programme of the World Economic 
Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos and Editor-in-Chief of World Link.

Marek Kohn  "What about the workers?" It may have been uttered as often in 
caricature as in anger, but the voice from the crowd asked a question that 
was accepted as reasonable even by those who winced at the jeering tone. 
Until fifteen or twenty years ago, the interest-earning and brain-working 
classes generally felt that they owed something to the workers, for doing 
the drudgery needed to keep an industrialised society going. And it was 
taken for granted that the workers were a class, with collective interests 
of their own. In some instances--British miners, for example--they enjoyed 
considerable respect and a romantic aura. Even in the United States, where 
perhaps the question was not put quite the same way, the sentiments were 
there. Now there is an underclass of dangerous and hopeless folk, an elite 
of the fabulous and beautiful, and everybody in between is middle class. 
Meritocracy is taken for granted, bringing with it a perspective that sees 
only individuals, not groups. There are no working classes, only low-grade 
employees. In a meritocracy, respect is due according to the rank that an 
individual has attained. And since achievement is an individual matter, 
those at the upper levels see no reason to feel they owe anything to those 
at lower ones. This state of affairs will probably endure until such time 
that people cease to think of their society as a meritocracy, with its 
upbeat tone of progress and fairness, and start to feel that they are 
living in a Red Queen world, where they have to run ever faster just to 
stay in the same place.  MAREK KOHN'S most recent book, published last 
year, is As We Know It: Coming to Terms with an Evolved Mind. His other 
books include The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science and Dope 
Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground. He writes a weekly 
column on digital culture, Second Site, for the London Independent on 
Sunday.

Stephen M. Kosslyn  "How do people differ in the ways they think and 
learn?"  Most Americans, even (or, perhaps, especially) educated 
Americans, seem to believe that all people are basically the same--we have 
the same innate abilities and capacities, and only hard work and luck 
separates those who are highly skilled from those who are not. But this 
idea is highly implausible. People differ along every other dimension, 
from the size of their stomachs and shoes to the length of their toes and 
tibias. They even differ in the sizes of their brains. So, why shouldn't 
they also differ in their abilities and capacities? Of course, the answer 
is that they do. It's time to acknowledge this fact and take advantage of 
it.  In my view, the 21st century is going to be the "Century of 
Personalization." No more off-the-rack drugs: Gene and proteonomic chips 
will give readouts for each person, allowing drugs to be tailored to their 
individual physiologies. No more off-the-rack clothes: For example, you'll 
stick your feet in a box, lasers will measure every aspect of them, and 
shoes will be custom-made according to your preferred style. Similarly, no 
more off-the-rack teaching.  Specifically, the first step is to diagnose 
individual differences in cognitive abilities and capacities, so we can 
play to a given person's strengths and avoid falling prey to his or her 
weaknesses. But in order to characterize these differences, we first need 
to understand at least the broad outlines of general mechanisms that are 
common to the species.  All of us have biceps and triceps, but these 
muscles differ in their strength. So too with our mental muscles. All of 
us have a short-term memory, for example (in spite of how it may sometimes 
feel at the end of the day), and all of us are capable storing information 
in long-term memory. Differences among people in part reflect differences 
in the efficacy of such mechanisms. For example, there are at least four 
distinct ways that visual/spatial information can be processed (which I'm 
not going to go into here), and people differ in their relative abilities 
on each one. Presenting the same content in different ways will invite 
different sorts of processing, which will be more or less congenial for a 
given person.  But there's more to it than specifying mechanisms and 
figuring out how well people can use them (as daunting as that is). Many 
of the differences in cognitive abilities and capacities probably reflect 
how mechanisms work together and when they are recruited. Understanding 
such differences will tell us how to organize material so that it goes 
down smoothly. For example, how--for a given person-should examples and 
general principles be intermixed?  And, yet more. We aren't bloodless 
brains floating in vats, soaking up information pumped into us. Rather, 
it's up to us to decide what to pay attention to, and what to think about. 
Thus, it's no surprise that people learn better when they are motivated. 
We need to know how a particular student should be led to use the 
information during learning. For example, some people may "get" physics 
only when it's taught in the context of auto mechanics.  All of this 
implies that methods of teaching in the 21st Century will be tightly tied 
to research in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. At 
present, the study of individual differences is almost entirely divorced 
from research on general mechanisms. Even if this is remedied, it's going 
to be a challenge to penetrate the educational establishment and have this 
information put to use. So, the smart move will probably be to do an 
end-run around this establishment, using computers to tutor children 
individually outside of school. This in turn raises the specter of another 
kind of Digital Divide. Some of us may in fact still get off-the-rack 
education.  Finally, I'll leave aside another set of questions no one 
seems to be seriously asking: What should be taught? And should the same 
material be taught to everyone? You can imagine why this second question 
isn't being asked, but it's high time we seriously considered making the 
curriculum relevant for the 21st Century.  STEPHEN M. KOSSLYN, a full 
professor of psychology at Harvard at age 34, is a researcher focusing 
primarily on the nature of visual mental imagery. His books include Image 
and Mind, Ghosts in the Mind's Machine, Wet Mind: The New Cognitive 
Neuroscience, Image and Brain: The Resolution of the Imagery Debate, and 
Psychology: The Brain, the Person, the World.

Kai Krause  "What is the difference between men and pigs?"  Questions... 
We ask many questions ...  ...about our species, our gender, our friends, 
lovers and ourselves, the mystery who each of us is and where in the ant 
hill the intelligence lies, if each ant has no clue.  We search for the 
variations amongst a set, try to define the set in its limits and borders 
against other sets, look for analogies, anomalies and statistical 
outliers....  There is in fact an almost universal algorithm, like cats 
stalking their prey, to makes sense of our nature by boundary conditions, 
alas compiled with spotty statistics and messy heuristics, gullible souls, 
political machinations, cheats, lies and video tape, in short: human 
nature. We search and probe, the literate digerati confer virtually, each 
wondering about the other, each looking at their unique sets of parents, 
and the impossibility to imagine them in the act of procreation.  In other 
words, we still have no idea what-so-ever who we really are, what mankind 
as a whole is all about. We have mild inclinations on where we have been, 
sort of, and contradictory intentions on where we may be headed, kind of, 
but all in all, we are remarkably clue-free.  But that question at least 
need no longer be asked and has indeed vanished after this:  Even when 
they had way too much to drink, pigs don?t turn into men.  KAI KRAUSE is 
currently building a research lab dubbed "Byteburg" in a thousand year old 
castle above the Rhein river in the geometric center of Europe. He asked 
not to be summed up by previous accomplishments, titles or awards.

Lawrence M. Krauss   "Does God Exist?"  In the 1960's and 70's it seemed 
just a matter of time before antiquated notions of god, heaven, and divine 
intervention would disappear from the intellectual spectrum, at least in 
the US. Instead, we find ourselves in an era when God appears to be on the 
lips of all politicians, creationism is rampant in our schools, and the 
separation of church and state seems more fragile than ever. What is the 
cause of this regression, and what can we do to combat it? Surely, one of 
the legacies of science is to learn to accept the Universe for what it is, 
rather than imposing our own belief systems on it. We should be prepared 
to offend any sensibilities, even religious ones, when they disagree with 
the evidence of experiment. Should scientists be more vocal in order to 
combat the born-again evangelists who are propagating ill-founded notions 
about the cosmos?  LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS is Ambrose Swasey Professor of 
Physics, Professor of Astronomy, and Chair of the Physics Department at 
Case Western Reserve University. He is the recipient of the AAAS Award for 
Public Understanding of Science, and this year's Lilienfeld Prize from the 
American Physical Society. He is the author of numerous books, including 
The Physics of Star Trek.

Leon Lederman  "Does God play dice?" (...first asked by Albert Einstein 
some time in the 30's.)  Like mathematics whose symbols can represent 
physical properties when applied to some scientific problem, God is a 
convenient symbol for nature, for the way the world works. Einstein's 
reaction of utter incredibility to the quantum theory from its development 
in the late 20's until his death in 1955, was echoed by colleagues who had 
participated in the early creation of the quantum revolution, which 
Richard Feynman had termed the most radical theory ever.  Well does she? 
The simplest example of what sure looks like God playing dice happens when 
you walk past a store window on a sunny day. Of course you are not just 
admiring your posture and checking your attire, you are probably watching 
the guy undressing the manikin, but that is another story.  So how do you 
see yourself, albeit dimly, while the manikin abuser sees you very 
clearly? Everyone knows that light is a stream of photons, here from the 
sun, some striking your nose, then reflected in all directions. We focus 
on two photons heading for the window. We'll need thousands to get a good 
picture but two will do for a start. One penetrates the window and impacts 
the eye of the manikin dresser. The second is reflected from the store 
window and hits your eye, a fine picture of a good looking pedestrian! 
What determines what the photons will do? The photons are 
identical...trust me. Philosophers of science assure us that identical 
experiments give identical results.  Not so!  The only rational conclusion 
would seem to be that she plays dice at each impact of the photon. Using a 
die with 10 faces, good enough for managing this bit of the world, numbers 
one to nine determine that the photon goes through, a ten and the photon 
is reflected. Its random...a matter of probability.  Dress this concept up 
in shiny mathematics and we have quantum science which underlies physics, 
most of chemistry and molecular biology. It now accounts for 43.7% of our 
GNP. (this is consistent with 87.1% of all numbers being made up.)  So 
what was wrong with Einstein and his friends? Probabilistic nature which 
is applicable to the world of atoms and smaller, has implications which 
are bizarre, spooky, wierd. Granting that it works, Einstein could not 
accept it and hoped for a deeper explanation. Today, many really smart 
physicists are are seeking a kinder, gentler formulation but 99.3% of 
working physicists go along with the notion that she is one hell-of-a crap 
shooter.  LEON M. LEDERMAN , the director emeritus of Fermi National 
Accelerator Laboratory, has received the Wolf Prize in Physics (1982), and 
the Nobel Prize in Physics (1988). In 1993 he was awarded the Enrico Fermi 
Prize by President Clinton. He is the author of several books, including 
(with David Schramm) From Quarks to the Cosmos : Tools of Discovery, and 
(with Dick Teresi) The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What 
Is the Question?

Joseph Le Doux  "How do our brains become who we are?"  Many 
neuroscientists, myself included, went into brain research because of an 
interest in the fact that our brains make us who we are. But the topics we 
end up working on are typically more mundane. It's much easier to research 
the neural basis of perception, memory or emotion than the way perceptual, 
memory, and emotion systems are integrated in the process of encoding who 
we are. Questions about the neural basis of personhood, the self, have 
never been at the forefront of brain science, and so are not, strictly 
speaking, lost questions to the field. But they are lost questions for 
those of us who were drawn to neuroscience by an interest in them, and 
then settle for less when overcome with frustration over the magnitude of 
the problem relative to the means we have for solving it. But questions 
about the self and the brain may not be as hard to address as they seem. A 
simple shift in emphasis from issues about the way the brain typically 
works in all of us to the way it works in individuals would be an 
important entry point. This would then necessitate that research on 
cognitive processes, like perception or memory, take subjects' motivations 
and emotions into consideration, rather than doing everything possible to 
eliminate them. Eventually, researchers would study perception, memory, or 
emotion less as isolated brain functions than as activities that, when 
integrated, contribute to the real function of the brain-- the creation 
and maintenance of the self.  JOSEPH LEDOUX is a Professor of Neural 
Science at New York University. He is author of The Emotional Brain.

Pamela McCorduck   "Can machines think?" It burned through the sixties, 
seventies and even eighties, until the answer was, Of course. It was 
replaced with a different, less emotionally fraught question: How can we 
make them think smarter/better/deeper? The central issue is the social, 
not scientific, definition of "thinking". A generation of Western 
intellectuals who took their identity mainly from their intelligence has 
grown too old to ask the question with any conviction, and anyway, 
machines are all around them thinking up a storm. Machines don't yet think 
like Einstein, but then neither do most people, and we don't question 
their humanity on that account. PAMELA McCORDUCK is the author or coauthor 
of seven books, among them Machines Who Think, and coauthor with Nancy 
Ramsey of The Futures Of Women: Scenarios for the 21st Century.

Dan McNeill "Where is the Great American Novel?" This question haunted 
serious writers in the early 20th century, when critics sought a product 
that measured up to the European standard. Now it is dead, and the 
underlying notion is in ICU. What happened?  Well, the idea itself was 
never a very good one. It had breathtakingly hazy contours. It ignored the 
work of authors like Melville, Hawthorne, Wharton, and Twain. And it 
seemed to assume that a single novel could sum up this vast and complex 
nation. I'd like to think its disappearance reflects these problems.   But 
technology also helped shelve the question. As media proliferated, 
literature grew less central. If the Great American Novel appeared 
tomorrow, how many people would actually read it? My guess: Most would 
wait for the movie. DANIEL McNEILL is the author of The Face, and 
principal author of the best-selling Fuzzy Logic, which won the Los 
Angeles Times Book Prize in Science and Technology, and was a New York 
Times "Notable Book of the Year".

John H. McWhorter  "Are subordinate clauses more typical of languages with 
a long literary tradition than integral features of human speech?" 
Contemporary linguists tend to assume in their work that subordinate 
clauses, such as "The boy that I saw yesterday" or "I knew what happened 
when she came down the steps", are an integral part of the innate 
linguistic endowment, and/or central features of "human speech" writ 
large. Most laymen would assume the same thing. However, the fact is that 
when we analyze a great many strictly spoken languages with no written 
tradition, subordinate clauses are rare to nonexistent. In many Native 
American languages, for example, the only way to express something like 
the men who were members is a clause which parses approximately as "The 
'membering' men"; the facts are similar in thousands of other languages 
largely used orally.  In fact, even in earlier documents in today's "tall 
building" literary languages, one generally finds a preference for 
stringing simple main clauses together--she came down the steps, and I 
knew what happened rather than embedding them in one another along the 
lines of when she came down the steps, I knew what happened. The guilty 
sense we often have when reading English of the first half of the last 
millennium that the writing is stylistically somewhat "clunky" is due 
largely to the marginality of the subordinate clause: here is Thomas 
Malory in the late fifteenth century:  And thenne they putte on their 
helmes and departed  and recommaunded them all wholly unto the Quene and 
there was wepynge and grete sorowe Thenne the Quene departed in to her 
chamber and helde her that no man shold perceyue here grete sorowes  Early 
Russian parses similarly, and crucially, so do the Hebrew Bible and the 
Greek of Homer.  At the time that these documents were written, writing 
conventions had yet to develop, and thus written language hewed closer to 
the way language is actually spoken on the ground. Over time, subordinate 
clauses, a sometime thing in speech, were developed as central features in 
written speech, their economy being aesthetically pleasing, and more 
easily manipulated via the conscious activity of writing than the 
spontaneous "on-line" activity of speaking. Educated people, exposed 
richly to written speech via education, tended to incorporate the 
subordinate clause mania into their spoken varieties. Hence today we think 
of subordinate clauses as "English", as the French do "French", and so 
on--even though if we listen to a tape recording of ourselves speaking 
casually, even we tend to embrace main clauses strung together in favor of 
the layered sentential constructions of Cicero.  But the "natural" state 
of language persists in the many which have had no written tradition. In 
the 1800s, various linguists casually speculated as to whether subordinate 
clauses were largely artifactual rather than integral to human language, 
with one (Karl Brugmann) even going as far as to assert that originally, 
humans spoke only with main clauses.  Today, however, linguistics operates 
under the sway of our enlightened valuation of "undeveloped" cultures, 
which has, healthily, included an acknowledgment of the fact that the 
languages of "primitive" peoples are as richly complex as written Western 
languages. (In fact, the more National Geographic the culture, the more 
fearsomely complex the language tends to be overall.) However, this sense 
has discouraged most linguists from treading into the realm of noting that 
one aspect of "complexity", subordinate clauses, is in fact not central to 
expression in unwritten languages and is most copiously represented in 
languages with a long written tradition. In general, the idea that First 
World written languages might exhibit certain complexities atypical of 
languages spoken by preliterate cultures has largely been tacitly taboo 
for decades in linguistics, generally only treated in passing in obscure 
venues.  The problem is that this could be argued to bode ill for 
investigations of the precise nature of Universal Grammar, which will 
certainly require a rigorous separation of the cultural and contingent 
from the encoded.  JOHN H. MCWHORTER is Assistant Professor of Linguistics 
at the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at Cornell 
University before entering his current position at Berkeley. He 
specializes in pidgin and creole languages, particularly of the Caribbean, 
and is the author of Toward a New Model of Creole Genesis and The Word on 
the Street : Fact and Fable About American English. He also teaches black 
musical theater history at Berkeley and is currently writing a musical 
biography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Geoffrey Miller  "Three Victorian questions about potential sexual 
partners: 'Are they from a good family?'; 'What are their 
accomplishments?'; 'Was their money and status acquired ethically?' "  To 
our "Sex and the City" generation, these three questions sound shamefully 
Victorian and bourgeois. Yet they were not unique to 19th century England: 
they obsessed the families of eligible young men and women in every 
agricultural and industrial civilization. Only with our socially-atomized, 
late-capitalist society have these questions become tasteless, if not 
taboo. Worried parents ask them only in the privacy of their own 
consciences, in the sleepless nights before a son or daughter's 
ill-considered marriage.  The "good family" question always concerned 
genetic inheritance as much as financial inheritance. Since humans evolved 
in bands of closely-related kin, we probably evolved an intuitive 
appreciation of the genetics relevant to mate choice--taking into account 
the heritable strengths and weakness that we could observe in each 
potential mate's relatives, as well as their own qualities. Recent 
findings in medical genetics and behavior genetics demonstrate the wisdom 
of taking a keen interest in such relatives: one can tell a lot about a 
young person's likely future personality, achievements, beliefs, parenting 
style, and mental and physical health by observing their parents, 
siblings, uncles, and aunts. Yet the current American anti-genetic 
ideology demands that we ignore such cues of genetic quality--God forbid 
anyone should accuse us of eugenics. Consider the possible reactions a 
woman might have to hearing that a potential husband was beaten as a child 
by parents who were alcoholic, aggressive religious fundamentalists. Twin 
and adoption studies show that alcoholism, aggressiveness, and 
religiousity are moderately heritable, so such a man is likely to become a 
rather unpleasant father. Yet our therapy cures-all culture says the woman 
should offer only non-judgmental sympathy to the man, ignoring the inner 
warning bells that may be going off about his family and thus his genes. 
Arguably, our culture alienates women and men from their own genetic 
intuitions, and thereby puts their children at risk.  The question "What 
are their accomplishments?" refers not to career success, but to the 
constellation of hobbies, interests, and skills that would have adorned 
most educated young people in previous centuries. Things like playing 
pianos, painting portraits, singing hymns, riding horses, and planning 
dinner parties. Such accomplishments have been lost through time 
pressures, squeezed out between the hyper-competitive domain of school and 
work, and the narcissistic domain of leisure and entertainment. It is rare 
to find a young person who does anything in the evening that requires 
practice (as opposed to study or work)--anything that builds skills and 
self-esteem, anything that creates a satisfying, productive "flow" state, 
anything that can be displayed with pride in public. Parental hot-housing 
of young children is not the same: after the child's resentment builds 
throughout the French and ballet lessons, the budding skills are abandoned 
with the rebelliousness of puberty--or continued perfunctorily only 
because they will look good on college applications. The result is a 
cohort of young people whose only possible source of self-esteem is the 
school/work domain--an increasingly winner-take-all contest where only the 
brightest and most motivated feel good about themselves. (And we wonder 
why suicidal depression among adolescents has doubled in one generation.) 
This situation is convenient for corporate recruiting--it channels human 
instincts for self-display and status into an extremely narrow range of 
economically productive activities. Yet it denies young people the breadth 
of skills that would make their own lives more fulfilling, and their 
potential lovers more impressed. Their identities grow one-dimensionally, 
shooting straight up towards career success without branching out into the 
variegated skill sets which could soak up the sunlight of respect from 
flirtations and friendships, and which could offer shelter, and 
alternative directions for growth, should the central shoot snap.  The 
question "Was their money and status acquired ethically?" sounds even 
quainter, but its loss is even more insidious. As the maximization of 
share-holder value guides every decision in contemporary business, 
individual moral principles are exiled to the leisure realm. They can be 
manifest only in the Greenpeace membership that reduces one's guilt about 
working for Starbucks or Nike. Just as hip young consumers justify the 
purchase of immorally manufactured products as "ironic" consumption, they 
justify working for immoral businesses as "ironic" careerism. They aren't 
"really" working in an ad agency that handles the Phillip Morris account 
for China; they're just interning for the experience, or they're really an 
aspiring screen-writer or dot-com entrepreneur. The explosion in 
part-time, underpaid, high-turnover service industry jobs encourages this 
sort of amoral, ironic detachment on the lower rungs of the corporate 
ladder. At the upper end, most executives assume that shareholder value 
trumps their own personal values. And in the middle, managers dare not 
raise issues of corporate ethics for fear of being down-sized. The dating 
scene is complicit in this corporate amorality. The idea that Carrie 
Bradshaw or Ally McBeal would stop seeing a guy just because he works for 
an unethical company doesn't even compute. The only relevant morality is 
personal--whether he is kind, honest, and faithful to them. Who cares 
about the effect his company is having on the Phillipino girls working for 
his sub-contractors? "Sisterhood" is so Seventies. Conversely, men who 
question the ethics of a woman's career choice risk sounding sexist: how 
dare he ask her to handicap herself with a conscience, when her gender is 
already enough of a handicap in getting past the glass ceiling?  In place 
of these biologically, psychologically, ethically grounded questions, 
marketers encourage young people to ask questions only about each other's 
branded identities. Armani or J. Crew clothes? Stanford or U.C.L.A. 
degree? Democrat or Republican? Prefer "The Matrix" or "You've Got Mail'? 
Eminem or Sophie B. Hawkins? Been to Ibiza or Cool Britannia? Taking 
Prozac or Wellbutrin for the depression? Any taste that doesn't lead to a 
purchase, any skill that doesn't require equipment, any belief that 
doesn't lead to supporting a non-profit group with an aggressive P.R. 
department, doesn't make any sense in current mating market. We are 
supposed to consume our way into an identity, and into our most intimate 
relationships. But after all the shopping is done, we have to face, for 
the rest of our lives, the answers that the Victorians sought: what 
genetic propensities, fulfilling skills, and moral values do our sexual 
partners have? We might not have bothered to ask, but our children will 
find out sooner or later.  GEOFFREY MILLER is an evolutionary psychologist 
at the London School of Economics and at U.C.L.A. His first book was The 
Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature.

David G. Myers   "Does money buy happiness?"  Three in four entering 
collegians today deem it "very important" or "essential" that they become 
"very well-off financially." Most adults believe "more money" would boost 
their quality of life. And today's "luxury fever" suggests that affluent 
Americans and Europeans are putting their money where their hearts are. 
"Whoever said money can't buy happiness isn't spending it right," 
proclaimed a Lexus ad. But the facts of life have revealed otherwise. 
Although poverty and powerlessness often bode ill for body and spirit, 
wealth fails to elevate well-being. Surveys reveal that even lottery 
winners and the super rich soon adapt to their affluence. Moreover, those 
who strive most for wealth tend, ironically, to live with lower well-being 
than those focused on intimacy and communal bonds. And consider post-1960 
American history: Average real income has doubled, so we own twice the 
cars per person, eat out two and a half times as often, and live and work 
in air conditioned spaces. Yet, paradoxically, we are a bit less likely to 
say we're "very happy." We are more often seriously depressed. And we are 
just now, thankfully, beginning to pull out of a serious social recession 
that was marked by doubled divorce, tripled teen suicide, quadrupled 
juvenile violence, quintupled prison population, and a sextupled 
proportion of babies born to unmarried parents. The bottom line: Economic 
growth has not improved psychological morale or communal health.  DAVID G. 
MYERS is a social psychologist at Hope College (Michigan) and author, most 
recently, of The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty 
and of A Quiet World: Living with Hearing Loss.

Randolph M. Nesse  "Why is life so full of suffering?"  Questions 
disappear when they seem to be answered or unanswerable. The interesting 
missing questions are the apparently answered ones that are not, and the 
apparently unanswerable ones that are.  One of life's most profound 
questions has been thought to be unanswerable. That question is, "Why is 
life so full of suffering?" Impatience with centuries of theological and 
philosophical speculation has led many to give up on the big question, and 
to ask instead only how brain mechanisms work, and why people differ in 
their experiences of suffering. But the larger question has an answer, an 
evolutionary answer. The capacities for suffering--pain, hunger, cough, 
anxiety, sadness, boredom and all the res--have been shaped by natural 
selection. They seem to be problems because they are so painful and 
because they are aroused only in adverse circumstances, but they are, in 
fact, solutions.  The illusion that they are problems is further fostered 
by the smoke-detector principle--selection has shaped control mechanisms 
that express defensive responses whenever the costs are less than the 
protection they provide. This is often indeed, much more often than is 
absolutely necessary. Thus, while the capacities for suffering are useful 
and generally well-regulated, most individual instances are excessive or 
entirely unnecessary. It has not escaped notice that this principle has 
profound implications for the power and limits of pharmacology to relieve 
human suffering.  RANDOLPH M. NESSE is Professor of Psychiatry and 
Director of the Evolution and Human Adaptation Program at the University 
of Michigan. He is the author, with George Williams, of Why We Get Sick: 
The New Science of Darwinian Medicine.

Tor Norretranders  "Who are we?" In the not so distant future we will have 
to revive the question about who and what we are. We will have to, not 
because we choose to do so, but because the question will be posed to us 
by Others or Otherness: Aliens, robots, mutants, and the like. New 
phenomena like information processing artifacts, computational life forms, 
bioengineered humans, upgraded animals and pen-pals in space will force us 
to consider ourselves and our situation: Why didn't we finish hunger on 
this planet? Are we evil or just idiots? Why do we really want to rebuild 
ourselves? Do we regain our soul when the tv-set is turned off? It?s going 
to happen like this: We build a robot. It turns towards us and says: "If 
technology is the answer then what was the question?" TOR NORRETRANDERS is 
a science writer, consultant, lecturer and organizer based in Copenhagen, 
Denmark. He was recently appointed Chairman of the National Council for 
Competency.

Rafael E. N??ez  "Do computers think?"  This question was at the heart of 
heated debates for decades during the recently past century, and it was at 
the ambitious origins of the Artificial Intelligence adventure. It had 
profound implications not only for science, but also for philosophy, 
technology, business, and even theology. In the 50's and 60's, for 
instance, it made a lot of sense to ask the question whether one day a 
computer could defeat an international chess master, and if it did, it was 
assumed that we would learn a great deal about how human thought works. 
Today we know that building such a machine is possible, but the reach of 
the issue has dramatically changed. Nowadays not many would claim that 
building such a computer actually informs us in an interesting way about 
what human thought is and how it works. Beyond the (indeed impressive) 
engineering achievements involved in building such machines, we got from 
them little (if any) insight into the mysteries, variability, depth, 
plasticity, and richness of human thought. Today, the question "do 
computers think?" has become completely uninteresting and it has 
disappeared from the cutting edge academic circus, remaining mainly in the 
realm of pop science, Hollywood films, and video games.  And why it 
disappeared?  It disappeared because it was finally answered with 
categorical responses that stopped generating fruitful work. The question 
became useless and uninspiring, ... boring. What is interesting, however, 
is that the question disappeared with no single definitive answer! It 
disappeared with categorical "of-course-yes" and "of-course-not" 
responses. Of-course-yes people, in general motivated by a technological 
goal (i.e., "to design and to build something") and implicitly based on 
functionalist views, built their arguments on the amazing ongoing 
improvement in the design and development of hardware and software 
technologies. For them the question became uninteresting because it didn't 
help to design or to build anything anymore. What became relevant for 
of-course-yes people was mainly the engineering challenge, that is, to 
actually design and to build computers capable of processing algorithms in 
a faster, cheaper, and more flexible manner. (And also, for many, what 
became relevant was to build computers for human activities and purposes). 
Now when of-course-yes people are presented with serious problems that 
challenge their view, they provide the usual response: "just wait until we 
get better computers" (once known as the wait-until the-year-2000 
argument). On the other hand there were the of-course not people, who were 
mainly motivated by a scientific task (i.e., "to describe, explain, and 
predict a phenomenon"), which was not necessarily technology-driven. They 
mainly dealt with real-time and real-world biological, psychological, and 
cultural realities. These people understood that most of the arrogant 
predictions made by Artificial Intelligence researchers in the 60's and 
70's hadn't been realized because of fundamental theoretical problems, not 
because of the lack of powerful enough machines. They observed that even 
the simplest everyday aspects of human thought, such as common sense, 
sense of humor, spontaneous metaphorical thought, use of counterfactuals 
in natural language, to mention only a few, were in fact intractable for 
the most sophisticated machines. They also observed that the nature of the 
brain and other bodily mechanisms that make thinking and the mind 
possible, were by several orders of magnitude, way more complex than what 
it was thought during the hey-days of Artificial Intelligence. Thus for of 
course-not people the question whether computers think became 
uninteresting, since it didn't provide insights into a genuine 
understanding of the intricacies of human thinking. Today the question is 
dead. The answer had become a matter of faith.  RAFAEL E. N??EZ, currently 
at the Department of Psychology of the University of Freiburg, is a 
research associate of the University of California, Berkeley. He has 
worked for more than a decade on the foundations of embodied cognition, 
with special research into the nature and origin of mathematical concepts. 
He has published in several languages in a variety of areas, and has 
taught in leading academic institutions in Europe, the United States, and 
South America. He is the author (with George Lakoff) of Where Mathematics 
Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being; and 
co-editor (with Walter Freeman) of Reclaiming Cognition: The Primacy of 
Action, Intention, and Emotion.

James J. O'Donnell  "the old Platonic questions about the nature of the 
good and the form of beauty" Metaphysical questions.   Metaphysical 
answers haven't disappeared: the new agers are full of them, and so are 
the old religionists.   Cosmological questions haven't disappeared: but 
scientists press them as real questions about the very physical universe. 
But the old Platonic questions about the nature of the good and the form 
of beauty--they went away when we weren't looking. They won't be back. 
JAMES J. O'DONNELL, Professor of Classical Studies and Vice Provost for 
Information Systems and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania, is 
the author of Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace.

Jay Ogilvy "What will life be like after the revolution?"  The 
disappearance of this question isn't only a trace of the deletion of the 
left. It is also a measure of our loss of faith in secular redemption. We 
don't look forward anymore to radical transformation.  Perhaps it's a 
result of a century of disappointments: from the revolution of 1917 to 
Stalin and the fall of communism; from the Spanish Civil War to Franco; 
from Mao's long march to Deng's proclamation that to get rich is glorious. 
Perhaps it's a result of political history. But there was more that had to 
do with psychological transformation. Remember Norman O. Brown's essay, 
"The place of apocalypse in the life of the mind"? Remember R. D. Laing's 
turn on breakdown as breakthrough? Remember the fascination with words 
like 'metamorphosis' and 'metanoia'?  Maybe we're just getting older and 
all too used to being the people we are. But I'd like to think we're 
getting wiser and less naive about the possibility of shedding our pasts 
overnight.  It's important to distinguish between political liberalism on 
the one hand and a faith in discontinuous transformation on the other. If 
we fail to make this distinction, then forgetting about the revolution 
turns (metanoically) into the familiar swing to the right. Old radicals 
turn reactionary. If we're less dramatic about our beliefs, if we're more 
cautious about distinguishing between revolutionary politics and 
evolutionary psychology, then we'll retain our faith in the dream that we 
can do better. Just not overnight.  p.s. Part of the passion for paradigms 
and thier shiftings may derive from displaced revolutionary fervor. If you 
yearn for transfiguration, but can't find it in religion or politics, then 
you'll seek it elsewhere, like the history of science.  p.p.s. There is 
one place where talk of transformation is alive and kicking, if not well: 
The executive suite. The business press is full of books about corporate 
transformation, re-engineering from a blank sheet of paper, reinvention 
from scratch. Yes, corporate America is feeling the influence of the 
sixties as boomers reach thte board room. And this is not a bad thing. 
For, just as the wisdom to distinguish between revolutionary politics and 
evolutionary psychology can help us keep the faith in marginal 
improvements in the human condition, so the tension between greying 
warriors for change and youthful stalwarts of the status quo will keep us 
from lurching left or right.  JAMES OGILVY is co-founder and managing 
director of Global Business Network; taught philosophy at Yale and 
Williams; served as director of research for the Values and Lifestyles 
Program at SRI International; author of Many Dimensional Man, and Living 
without a Goal.

Sylvia Paull  "What do women want?"  People in the Western world assume 
women have it all: education, job opportunities, birth control, love 
control, and financial freedom. But women still lack the essential 
freedom--equality--they lacked a century ago. Women are minorities in 
every sector of our government and economy, and women are still expected 
to raise families while at the same time earning incomes that are 
comparably lower than what males earn. And in our culture, women are still 
depicted as whores, bimbos, or bloodsuckers by advertisers to sell 
everything from computers to cars.  Will it take another century or 
another millenium before the biological differences between men and women 
are taken as a carte blanche justification for the unequal treatment of 
women?  SYLVIA PAULL is Founder, Gracenet (www.gracenet.net) Serving women 
in high-tech and business media.

John Allen Paulos  "Don't reckon that I know."  The question that has 
appeared this year is "What questions (plural) have disappeared and why?" 
Countless questions have disappeared, of course, but for relatively few 
reasons.   The most obvious vanishings are connected to the passing of 
time. No one asks anymore "Who's pitching tomorrow for the Brooklyn 
Dodgers?" or "Who is Princess Diana dating now?"  Other disappearances are 
related to the advance of science and mathematics. People no longer 
seriously inquire whether Jupiter has moons, whether DNA has two or three 
helical strands, or whether there might be integers a, b, and c such that 
a^3 + b^3 = c^3.  Still other vanished queries are the result of changes 
in our ontology, scientific or otherwise. We've stopped wondering, "What 
happened to the phlogiston?" or "How many witches live in this valley?" 
The most interesting lacunae in the erotetic landscape, however, derive 
from lapsed assumptions, untenable distinctions, incommensurable mindsets, 
or superannuated worldviews that in one way or another engender questions 
that are senseless or, at least, much less compelling than formerly. "What 
are the election's exact vote totals" comes to mind.  Now that I've 
clarified to myself the meaning of "What questions have disappeared and 
why?" I have to confess that I don't have any particularly telling 
examples. (Reminds me of the joke about the farmer endlessly elucidating 
the lost tourist's query about the correct road to some hamlet before 
admitting, "Don't reckon that I know.")  JOHN ALLEN PAULOS, bestselling 
author, mathematician, and public speaker is professor of mathematics at 
Temple University in Philadelphia. In addition to being the author of a 
number of scholarly papers on mathematical logic, probability, and the 
philosophy of science, Dr. Paulos books include Innumeracy - Mathematical 
Illiteracy and Its Consequences, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, and 
Once Upon a Number.

Christopher Phillips  "None."  Or at least, certainly not the ones that 
have so far been submitted to this list, since the questions posted are 
proof positive that they have not disappeared at all, or at least, not 
altogether. Sure, some questions have their heyday for a while, and then 
they may disappear for many a moon. But the great question you posed -- 
what questions have disappeared? -- shows that they were just waiting for 
a question like this for someone to be reminded just how much emptier our 
existence would be without certain questions.  But I also think that some 
questions certainly have gone by the wayside for a long time, though not 
necessarily the ones that so far have been posed. We may ask, for 
instance, questions like, Has history ended?, and then go on to offer up a 
response of one sort or another. But when is the last time we asked, what 
*is* history? What different types of history are there? What makes 
history history, regardless of which type it is? Or we may ask: Why have 
certain questions been discarded? But when's the last time anyone has 
asked, What is a question? What does a question do? What does a question 
to do us, and what do we do to it? We may ask: How do people differ in how 
they think and learn? But do we still ask: What is thinking? What is 
learning?  Instead, we seem to take for granted that we know what history 
is, that we know what thinking is, that we know what learning is, when in 
fact if we delved a little more into these questions, we may well find 
that none of us hold the same views on what these rich concepts mean and 
how they function. Which leads me to this perspective: What *has* all but 
disappeared, I think, is a way of answering questions, regardless of which 
one is being posed, regardless of how seemingly profound or off-beat or 
mundane it is. I'm speaking of the kind of rigorous, exhaustive, 
methodical yet highly imaginative scrutiny of a Socrates or a Plato that 
challenged all assumptions embedded in a question, and that revealed 
breathtakingly new vistas and hidden likenesses between seemingly 
disparate entities.  Who these days takes the time and effort, much less 
has the critical and creative acumen, to answer questions as those I've 
already posed, much less such questions as ?What is human good?? or ?What 
is a good human??in the soul-stirringly visionary yet at the same time 
down-to-earth way they did? We need a new generation of questioners in the 
mold of Plato and Sorcrates, people who dare to think a bit outside the 
lines, who take nothing for granted when a question is posed, and who 
subject their scrutiny to continual examination and consideration of 
cogent objections and alternative ways of seeing. CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS is 
the author of ?Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy?, and 
founder-executive director of the nonprofit Society for Philosophical 
Inquiry.

Cliff Pickover  "Did Noah Really Collect all Species of Earthly Organism 
on his Ark?"  People who interpret the Bible literally may believe that a 
man named Noah collected all species of Earthly organisms on his ark. 
However, scientists no longer ask this question. Let me put the problem in 
a modern perspective by considering what it means to have animals from 
every species on an ark. Consider that siphonapterologists (experts in 
fleas) recognize 1,830 variety of fleas. Incredible as it may seem, there 
are around 300,000 species of beetles, making beetles one of the most 
diverse groups of organisms on earth. When biologist J.B.S. Haldane was 
asked by a religious person what message the Lord conveyed through His 
creations, he responded, "an inordinate fondness for beetles."  One of my 
favorite books on beetles is Ilkka Hanski's Dung Beetle Ecology, which 
points out that a large number (about 7000 species) of the 300,000 species 
of beetles live off animal dung. Did Noah bring these species on the ark? 
If he did, did he concern himself with the fact that animal dung is often 
fiercely contested. On the African savanna up to 4000 beetles have been 
observed to converge on 500 grams of fresh elephant dung within 15 minutes 
after it is deposited.  Did Noah or his family also take kleptoparastic 
beetles on the ark? These are dung beetles known to steal dung from 
others. Did Noah need to take into consideration that insect dung 
communities involve hundreds of complex ecological interactions between 
coprophagous flies and their parasites, insects, mites, and nematodes (an 
ecology probably difficult to manage on the ark!). In South Africa, more 
than 100 species of dung beetle occur together in a single cow pat. One 
gigantic species, Heliocopris dilloni resides exclusively in elephant 
dung. A few species of beetles are so specialized that they live close to 
the source of dung, in the hairs near an animal's anus.  You get my point! 
It's quite a mystery as to what the Biblical authors meant when they 
called for Noah taking pairs of every animal on the Earth. Incidentally, 
scientists very roughly estimate that the weight of animals in the 
hypothetical ark to be 1000 tons. You can use a value of 10 million for 
the number of species and assume an average mass of 100 grams. (Insects 
decrease this figure for average mass because of the huge number of insect 
species.) There would be some increase in mass if plants were used in the 
computation. (How would this change if extinct species were included?) 
Even if Noah took ten or twenty of each kind of mammal, very few would be 
alive after a thousand years because approximately 50 individuals of a 
single species are needed to sustain genetic health. Any small population 
is subject to extinction from disease, environmental changes, and genetic 
risks--the gradual accumulation of traits with small but harmful effects. 
There is also the additional problem of making sure that there is both 
male and female offspring surviving. Today, species are considered 
endangered well before their numbers drop below fifty. (Interestingly, 
there's a conflicting Biblical description in the story of Noah that 
indicated God wanted Noah to take "seven pairs of clean animals... and a 
pair of the animals that are not clean... and seven pairs of the birds of 
the air also.")  The Biblical flood would probably kill most of the plant 
life on Earth. Even if the waters were to recede, the resultant salt 
deposits would prevent plants from growing for many years. Of additional 
concern is the ecological effect of the numerous dead carcasses caused by 
the initial flood.  Various authors have noted that if, in forty days and 
nights the highest mountains on Earth were covered, the required 
incredible rate of rain fall of fifteen feet per hour would sink the ark. 
All of these cogitations lead me to believe that most scientifically 
trained people no longer ask whether an actual man named Noah collected 
all species of Earthly organism on his ark. By extension, most 
scientifically trained people no longer ask if the Bible is literal truth. 
CLIFF PICKOVER is author of over 20 books, his latest being Wonders of 
Numbers: Adventures in Math, Mind, and Meaning. His web site, 
www.pickover.com, has received over 300,000 visits.

Steven Pinker "What are the implications of human nature for political 
systems? This question was openly discussed in two historical periods."` 
The first was the Enlightenment. Hobbes claimed the brutishishness of man 
in a state of nature called for a governmental Leviathan. Rousseau's 
concept of the noble savage led him to call for the abolition of property 
and the predominance of the "general will." Adam Smith justified market 
capitalism by saying that it is not the generosity but the self-interest 
of the baker that leads him to give us bread. Madison justified 
constitutional government by saying that if people were angels, no 
government would be necessary, and if angels were to govern people, no 
controls on government would be necessary. The young Marx's notion of a 
"species character" for creativity and self-expression led to "From each 
according to his ability"; his later belief that human nature is 
transformed throughout history justified revolutionary social change.  The 
second period was the 1960s and its immediate aftermath, when 
Enlightenment romanticism was revived. Here is an argument the US Attorney 
General, Ramsay Clark, against criminal punishment: "Healthy, rational 
people will not injure others ... they will understand that the individual 
and his society are best served by conduct that does not inflict injury. 
... Rehabilitated, an individual will not have the capacity-cannot bring 
himself-to injure another or take or destroy property." This is, of 
course, an empirical claim about human nature, with significant 
consequences for policy.  The discussion came to an end in the 1970s, when 
even the mildest non romantic statements about human nature were met with 
angry denunciations and accusations of Nazism. At the century's turn we 
have an unprecedented wealth of data from social psychology, ethnography, 
behavioral economics, criminology, behavioral genetics, cognitive 
neuroscience, and so on, that could inform (though of course, not dictate) 
policies in law, political decision-making, welfare, and so on. But they 
are seldom brought to bear on the issues. In part this is a good thing, 
because academics have been known to shoot off their mouths with 
half-baked or crackpot policy proposals. But since all policy decisions 
presuppose some hypothesis about human nature, wouldn't it make sense to 
bring the presuppositions into the open so they can be scrutinized in the 
light of our best data?  STEVEN PINKER is professor in the Department of 
Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT; director of the McDonnell-Pew Center 
for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT; author of Language Learnability and 
Language Development, Learnability and Cognition, The Language Instinct , 
How the Mind Works, and Words and Rules.

Jordan Pollack  "Should the right to own property be preserved?"  For all 
of history, humans traded objects, then traded currency for objects, with 
the idea that when you buy some thing, you own it. This most fundamental 
human right--the right to own--is under attack again. Only this time, the 
software industry, not the followers of Karl Marx, are responsible.  In 
the last 15 years of the information age, we discovered that every object 
really has three separable components: the informational content, 
delivered on a physical medium, governed by the license, a social or legal 
contract governing the rights to use the thing. It used to be that the 
tangible media token (the thing) both held the content, and (via 
possession) enforced the common understanding of the "ownership" license. 
Owners have rights to a thing--to trade it, sell it, loan it, rent it, 
destroy it, donate it, paint it, photograph it, or even chop it up to sell 
in pieces.  For a book, the content is the sequence of words themselves, 
which may be rendered as ink scratches on a medium of paper bound inside 
cardboard covers. For song it is a reproduction of the audio pattern 
pressed into vinyl or plastic to be released by a reading device. The 
license - to own all rights but copy rights--was enforced simply by 
possession of the media token, the physical copy of the book or disk 
itself. If you wanted to, you could buy a book, rip it into separate 
pages, and sell each page individually. You can slice a vinyl record into 
individual song rings for trade.   For software, content is the evolving 
bits of program and data arranged to operate on some computer. Software 
can be delivered in paper, magnetic, optical, or silicon form, or can be 
downloaded from the internet, even wirelessly. Software publishers know 
the medium is completely irrelevant, except to give the consumer the 
feeling of a purchase.  Even though you had the feeling of trading money 
for something, your really don't own the software you paid for. The 
license clearly states that you don't. You are merely granted a right to 
use the information, and the real owner can terminate your license at 
will, if you criticize him in public. Moreover, you cannot resell the 
software, you cannot take a "suite" apart into working products to sell 
each one separately. You cannot rent it or loan it to a friend. You cannot 
look under the hood to try to fix it when it breaks. You don't actually 
own anything but exchanged your money for a "right to use", and those 
rights can be arbitrarily dictated, and then rendered worthless by the 
very monopoly you got it from, forcing you to pay again for something you 
felt you had acquired last year.  There is no fundamental difference 
between software, recordings, and books. E-books are not sold, but 
licensed, and Secure Music will be available in a pay-per-download format. 
Inexorably driven by more lucrative profits from rentals, I predict that 
within a couple of decades, you will no longer be able to "buy" a new book 
or record. You will not be able to "own" copies. This may not seem so 
nefarious, as long as you have easy access to the "celestial jukebox" and 
can temporarily download a "read-once" license to any entertainment from 
private satellites. Your children will have more room in their homes and 
offices without the weight of a lifetime collection of books and 
recordings.  What are humans when stripped of our libraries? And it won't 
stop with books.  For an automobile, the content is the blueprint, the 
organization of mechanisms into stylistic and functional patterns which 
move, built out of media such as metals, pipes, hoses, leather, plastic, 
rubber, and fluids. Because of the great expense of cloning a car, Ford 
doesn't have to spell out the licensing agreement: You own it until it is 
lost, sold, or stolen. You can rent it, loan it, sell it, take it apart, 
and sell the radio, tires, engine, carburetor, etc. individually.  But the 
license agreement can be changed! And when Ford discovers the power of 
UCITA, you will have to pay an annual fee for a car you don't own, which 
will blow up if you fail to bring it in or pay your renewal fee. And you 
will find that you cannot resell your car on an open secondary market, but 
can only trade it in to the automobile publisher for an upgrade.  Without 
an effort to protect the right to own, we may wake up to find that there 
is nothing left to buy.  JORDAN POLLACK, a computer science and complex 
systems professor at Brandeis, works on AI, Artificial Life, Neural 
Networks, Evolution, Dynamical Systems, Games, Robotics, Machine Learning, 
and Educational Technology. He is a prolific inventor, advises several 
startup companies and incubators, and in his spare time runs Thinmail, a 
service designed to enhance the usefulness of wireless email.

David G. Post   "... can there really be fossil sea-shells in the 
mountains of Kentucky, hundreds of miles from the Atlantic coast? " This 
question about questions may be a useful way to differentiate "science" 
from "not-science"; questions really do disappear in the former in a way, 
or at least at a rate, that they don't in the latter.  A question that has 
disappeared: can there really be fossil sea-shells in the mountains of 
Kentucky, hundreds of miles from the Atlantic coast?  I came across this 
particular question recently when reading Thomas Jefferson's 'Notes on the 
State of Virginia'; he devotes several pages to speculation about whether 
the finds in Kentucky really were sea-shells, and, if so, how they could 
have ended up there. Geologists could, today, tell him.  "...from what 
source do governments get their legitimate power?"  Perhaps another 
question dear to Jefferson's heart has also disappeared: from what source 
do governments get their legitimate power? In 1780, this was a real 
question, concerning which reasonable people gave different answers: 
'God,' or 'the divine right of Kings,' or 'heredity,' or 'the need to 
protect its citizens.' By declaring as 'self evident' the 'truth' that 
'governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed,' 
Jefferson was trying to declare that this question had, in fact, 
disappeared. I think he may have been right.  DAVID POST is Professor of 
Law at Temple University, and Senior Fellow at The Tech Center at George 
Mason University, with an interest in questions of (and inter-connections 
between) Internet law, complexity theory, and the ideas of Thomas 
Jefferson.

Rick Potts  "How do societies function and change?"  The general question 
of how human societies operate, and how they change, was once a central 
feature of theory-building in anthropology. The question--at least 
significant progress in answering the question--has largely disappeared at 
the emergent, large-scale level ("society" or "culture") originally 
defined by the social sciences.  Over the past three decades, behavioral 
biology and studies of gene-culture coevolution have made some important 
theoretical advances in the study of human social behavior. However, the 
concepts of inclusive fitness, reciprocal altruism, memes, coevolution, 
and related ideas have yet to effectively penetrate the question of how 
large-scale cultural institutions--political, economic, religious, legal, 
and other systems--function, stay the same, or change.  The strong 
inclination toward bottom-up explanations, which account for human social 
phenomena in terms of lower-level individual behaviors and epigenetic 
rules--implies either that social institutions (and thus how they function 
and change) are only epiphenomena, thus less worthy of investigating than 
the genetic bases of behavior and evolutionary psychology; or that 
cultural systems and institutions do exist--they function and change at a 
level of complexity above human psychology, decision-making, and 
epigenetic rules--but have largely been forgotten by certain fields 
purporting to study and to explain human social behavior.  RICHARD POTTS 
is Director of The Human Origins Program, Department of Anthropology, 
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. He is the 
author of Humanity's Descent : The Consequences of Ecological Instability 
and a presenter, with Stephen Jay Gould, of a videotape, Tales of the 
Human Dawn.

Robert Provine  "Obsolete and Inappropriate Metaphors"  The detection of 
"questions that are no longer asked" is difficult. Old questions, like 
MacArthur's old soldiers, just fade away. Scientists and scholars in hot 
pursuit of new questions neither note nor mourn their passing. I regularly 
face a modest form of the disappearing question challenge when a textbook 
used in one of my classes is revised. Deletions are hard to find; they 
leave no voids and are more stealthy than black holes, not even affecting 
their surrounds. New text content stands out, while missing material must 
be established through careful line-by-line reading. Whether in textbooks 
or in life, we don't think much about what is no longer relevant.  My 
response to the inquiry about questions that are no longer asked is to 
reframe it and suggest instead a common class of missing questions, those 
associated with obsolete and inappropriate metaphors. Metaphor is a 
powerful cognitive tool, which, like all models, clarifies thinking when 
appropriate, but constrains it when inappropriate. Science is full of 
them. My professional specialties of neuroscience and biopsychology has 
mind/brain metaphors ranging from Locke's ancient blank slate (tabula 
rasa), to the more technologically advanced switchboard, and the metaphor 
de jour, the computer. None do justice to the brain as a soggy lump of 
wetware, but linger as cognitive/linguistic models. Natural selection in 
the realm of metaphors is slow and imperfect. Witness the reference to DNA 
as a "blueprint" for an organism, when Dawkins' "recipe" metaphor more 
accurately reflects DNA's incoding of instructions for organismic 
assembly.  ROBERT R. PROVINE is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience 
at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of Laughter: A 
Scientific Investigation.

Eduardo Punset  "Looking at the world upside down: what are we enhancing 
or what is vanishing in our brains while flat and dormant views of the 
universe are slowly disappearing?"  Wrapped like hotdogs full of mustard, 
snorting in search of air to breath from beneath the blanket--like 
dendrites looking for the first time for new contacts--, the skull plunged 
in a floppy pillow and the eyes allowed only to stare at the grey sky, 
most of the time too flat and low to enjoy a more diversified life in 
three dimensions. What has been the impact on the newly born brain's 
positioned mummy-like, and tight for generations in the pram, of this 
upside down perception of the Universe?  We do have a point of reference 
to imagine what life was like during the first eight or nine months after 
birth, before the invention of the anatomically shaped infant car seat 
that makes our youngest travel and look around from their earliest age. 
I'll come to that later.  First let me insist for those unaware of radical 
innovations in evolutionary psychology, that no baby has ever been 
found--there are plenty of very reliable tests for that--, who after 
having experienced the glamour of looking at the Universe face to face, 
right and left, backwards and forward, has regretted the odd way of being 
carried around by previous generations. Not only that; no newly born would 
ever accept now to look at the Universe from other vantage points than the 
high-tech pushchair, carriages, and travelling systems for children aged 
birth to four years, developed in the mid-80's , out of the original baby 
car seat invented in America.  Just as monkeys become quickly aware of new 
inventions and adopt them without second thoughts, our youngest do not 
accept any longer to be carried in prams where they lied flat and dormant. 
They have suddenly become aware that they can be taken around in 
efficiently designed traveling engines, from where they can look at the 
world in movement practically as soon as they open their eyes.  If 
somebody thinks that the end of looking upside-down at the Universe during 
the first eight or nine months of life is not important enough to be 
quoted as the end of anything, think of what neuroscientists are 
discovering about what happens during the first five months of the unborn 
just after conception.  Professor Beckman in Wursburg University (Germany) 
has convinced at last his fellow psychiatrists that neuron's mistakes in 
their migration from the limbic to the upper layers of the brain of the 
unborn are responsible, to a very large extent, for the 1% of epileptics 
and schizophrenics in the world's population. By the way, the 1% is fixed, 
no matter how many neuroscientists join the battle against mental illness. 
It is like a sort of cosmic radiation background. The only exception that 
shows up is whenever deep malnutrition or feverish influenza in expectant 
mothers pushes the rate significantly up.  Likewise, very few scientist 
would refuse to acknowledge today, that what happens during the first five 
months of the embryo is not only relevant in the case of malformations and 
mental disorders, but also in the case of levels of intelligence and other 
reasonable behavior patterns. How could anybody discard then the 
tremendous impact on the newly born brain of interacting with the Universe 
face to face during the first eight to nine months?  Surely, if we 
continue searching for the missing link between a single gene and a 
bark--and I deeply hope that we do now that molecular biology and genetics 
have joined forces--, everybody should care about the end of the 
upside-down perception of the Universe, and the silent revolution led by 
babies nurtured in the latest high-tech travelling system's interactive 
culture.  Professor EDUARDO PUNSET teaches Economics at the Sarri? 
Chemichal Institute of Ramon Llull University (Barcelona). He is Chairman 
of Planetary Agency, an audiovisual concern for the public understanding 
of Science. He was IMF Representative in the Caribbean, Professor of 
Innovation & Technology at Madrid University, and Minister for Relations 
with the UE.

Tracy Quan  "Who does your bleeding?"  Recently, I was relaxing in my 
hotel room with a biography of Queen Elizabeth I. Her biographer noted 
that when Elizabeth R wasn't feeling quite herself she would call for a 
good "bleeding." I wondered about this practice which now seems so 
destructive and dangerous, especially given the hygienic possibilities of 
16th-century Britain. Even for the rich and famous. But Elizabeth R 
survived numerous bleedings and, I imagine, lots of other strange 
treatments that were designed to make her look and feel like her very best 
self--by the standards of her time. (Did she have a great immune system? 
Probably.)  As dotty and unclean as "bleedings" now seem to a 21st century 
New Yorker, I realized with a jolt that Elizabeth was pampering, not 
punishing, herself--and I was going to be late for my reflexology 
appointment. I had scheduled a two-hour orgy of relaxation and 
detoxification at a spa.  I imagine that the ladies at court asked each 
other, in the manner of ladies who-lunch, "Who does your 
bleeding?"--trading notes on price, ambiance and service, just as ladies 
today discuss their facials, massages and other personal treatments.  Some 
skeptics assume that the beauty and spa treatments of today are as 
ineffective or dangerous as those of the Renaissance period. In fact, 
there have been inroads. Germ theory helped--as did a host of other 
developments, including a fascination in the West with things Eastern. The 
kind of people who would once have gone in for bleeding now go in for 
things like reflexology and shiatsu. That urge to cleanse and detoxify the 
body has long been around but we've actually figured out how to do it 
because we better understand the body.  The pampered are prettier and 
healthier today than were their 16th century European counterparts. I 
wonder whether, another thousand or so years into the future, we will all 
look prettier and healthier in ways that we can't yet fathom. This kind of 
query might seem irresponsible, shallow, even immoral--given the real 
health crises facing human beings in 2001. But the way we look has 
everything to do with how we live and how we think.  And I'm glad that 
bleedings are no longer the rage.  TRACY QUAN, a writer and working girl 
living in New York, is the author of "Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan 
Call Girl", a serial novel about the life and loves of Nancy Chan, a 
turn-of-the- millennium call girl. Excerpts from the novel--which began 
running in July, 2000 in the online magazine, Salon--have attracted a wide 
readership as well as the attention of the The New York Times and other 
publications.

Martin Rees  "Was Einstein Right?"  Einstein's theory of gravity--general 
relativity--transcended Newton's by offering deeper insights. It accounted 
naturally, in a way that Newton didn't, for why everything falls at the 
same speed, and why the force obeys an inverse square law. The theory 
dates from 1916, and was famously corroborated by the measured deflection 
of starlight during eclipses, and by the anomalies in Mercury's orbit. But 
it took more than 50 years before there were any tests that could measure 
the distinctive effects of the theory with better than 10 percent 
accuracy. In the 1960s and 1970s , there was serious interest in tests 
that could decide between general relativity and alternative theories that 
were still in the running. But now these tests have improved so much, and 
yielded such comprehensive and precise support for Einstein, that it would 
require very compelling evicence indeed to shake our belief that general 
relativity is the correct "classical" theory of gravity,  New and 
different experiments are nonetheless currently being planned. But the 
expectation that they'll corroborate the theory is no so strong that we'd 
demand a high burden of proof before accepting a contrary result, For 
instance, NASA plans to launch an ultra-precise gyroscope ("Gravity Probe 
B") to measure tiny precession effects. If the results confirm Einstein, 
nobody will be surprised nor excited--though they would have been if the 
experiment had flown 30 years ago, when it was first devised. On the other 
hand, if this very technically-challenging experiment revealed seeming 
discrepancies, I suspect that most scientists would suspend judgment until 
it had been corroborated. So the most exciting result of Gravity Probe B 
would be a request to NASA for another vast sum, in order repeat it.  But 
Einstein himself raised other deep questions that are likely to attract 
more interest in the 21st century than they ever did in the 20th. He spent 
his last 30 years in a vain (and, as we now recognize, premature) quest 
for a unified theory. Will such a theory--reconciling gravity with the 
quantum principle, and transforming our conception of space and time--be 
achieved in coming decades? And, if it is, what answer will it offer to an 
another of Einstein's questions: "Did God have any choice in the creation 
of the world?" Is our universe--and the physical laws that govern it--the 
unique outcome of a fundamental theory, or are the underlying laws more 
"permissive", in the sense that they could allow other very different 
universes as well?  MARTIN REES is Royal Society Professor at Cambridge 
University and a leading researcher in astrophysics and cosmology. His 
books include Before the Beginning, Gravity's Fatal Attraction and (most 
recently) Just Six Numbers.

Douglas Rushkoff "Is nothing sacred?" It seems to me we?ve surrendered the 
notion of the sacred to those who only mean to halt the evolution of 
culture. Things we call "sacred" are simply ideologies and truths so 
successfully institutionalized that they seem unquestionable. For example, 
the notion that sexual imagery is bad for young people to see--a fact 
never established by any psychological or anthropological study I?ve come 
across--is accepted as God-ordained fact, and used as a fundamental 
building block to justify censorship. (Meanwhile, countless sitcoms in 
which parents lie to one another are considered wholesome enough to earn 
"G" television ratings.) A politician?s claim to be "God-fearing" is meant 
to signify that he has priorities greater than short-term political gain. 
What most people don?t realize is that, in the Bible anyway, God-fearing 
is a distant second to God-loving. People who were God-fearing only 
behaved ethically because they were afraid of the Hebrew God?s wrath. This 
wasn?t a sacred relationship at all, but the self-interested avoidance of 
retaliation. Today, it seems that no place, and--more importantly--no time 
is truly sacred. Our mediating technologies render us available to our 
business associates at any hour, day or night. Any moment spent thinking 
instead of spending, or laughing instead of working is an opportunity 
missed. And the more time we sacrifice to production and consumption, the 
less any alternative seems available to us. One radical proposal to combat 
the contraction of sacred time was suggested in the book of Exodus, and 
it's called the Sabbath. What if we all decided that for one day each 
week, we would refrain from buying or selling anything? Would it throw 
America into a recession? Maybe the ancients didn't pick the number seven 
out of a hat. Perhaps they understood that human beings can only immerse 
themselves in commerce for six days at a stretch before losing touch with 
anything approaching the civil, social, or sacred.  DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF is 
the author of Coercion, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Ecstasy Club. 
Professor of Virtual Culture, New York University.

Howard Rheingold  "Why can't we use technology to solve social problems?" 
Not long after the Apollo landing, a prevalent cliche for a few years was 
"If we can put humans on the moon, why can't we....[insert prominent 
social problem such as starvation, epidemic, radical inequalities, etc.]? 
In 1980, in his book "Critical Path," Buckminster Fuller wrote:  "We are 
blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We 
have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, 
and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never 
have known before-that we now have the option for all humanity to "make 
it" successfully on this planet in this lifetime."  In the contemporary 
zeitgeist, Fuller's claims seem naively utopian. The past century saw too 
much misery resulting from the attempts to build utopias. But without the 
belief that human civilization can improve, how could we have arrived at 
the point where we can formulate questions like these and exchange them 
around the world at the speed of light?  There are several obvious choices 
for answers to the question of why this question isn't asked any more:  1. 
We might have been able to put humans on the moon in 1969, but not today. 
Good point. And the reason for this circumstance--lack of political will, 
and the community of know-how it took NASA a decade to assemble, not lack 
of technical capabilities--is instructive.  2. Technology actually has 
solved enormous social problems--antibiotics, hygienic plumbing, 
immunization, the green revolution. I agree with this, and see it as 
evidence that it is possible to relieve twice as much, a thousand times as 
much human misery as previous inventions.  3. Human use of technologies 
have created even greater social problems--antibiotics are misused and 
supergerms evolved; nuclear wastes and weapons are threats, not 
enhancements; the green revolution swelled the slums of the world as 
agricultural productivity rose and global agribiz emerged.  4. There is no 
market for solving social problems, and it isn't the business of 
government to get into the technology or any other kind of business. This 
is the fallacy of the excluded middle. Some technologies such as the 
digital computer and the Internet were jump-started by governments, 
evolved through grassroots enthusiasms, and later become industries and 
"new economies."  5. Throwing technology at problems can be helpful, but 
the fundamental problems are political and economic and rooted in human 
nature. This answer should not be ignored. A tool is not the task, and 
often the invisible, social, non-physical aspects of a technological 
regime make all the difference.  There's some truth to each of these 
answers, yet they all fall short because all assume that we know how to 
think about technology. Just because we know how to make things doesn't 
guarantee that we know what those things will do to us. Or what kind of 
things we ought to make.  What if we don't know how to think about the 
tools we are so skilled at creating? What if we could learn?  Perhaps 
knowing how to think about technology is a skill we will have to teach 
ourselves the way we taught ourselves previous new ways of thinking such 
as mathematics, logic, and science.  A few centuries ago, a few people 
began questioning the assumption that people knew how to think about the 
physical world. Neither philosophy nor religion seemed to be able to stave 
off famine and epidemic. The enlightenment was about a new method for 
thinking.  Part of that new method was the way of asking and testing 
questions known as science, which provided the knowledge needed to create 
new medicines, new tools, new weapons, new economic systems.  We learned 
how to think very well about the physical world, and how to unleash the 
power in that knowledge. But perhaps we have yet to learn how to think 
about what to do with our tools.  HOWARD RHEINGOLD is author of The 
Virtual Community, Virtual Reality, Tools for Thought. Founder of Electric 
Minds, named by Time magazine one of the ten best web sites of 1996. 
Editor of The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog.

Karl Sabbagh   "How many angels can dance on the point of a pin?"  This 
question is no longer asked, not because the question has been answered 
(although I happen to believe the answer is e to the i pi) but because the 
search for knowledge about the spiritual world has shifted focus as a 
result of science and maths cornering all the physical and numerical 
answers. Along with "Did Adam have a navel?" and "Did Jesus' mother give 
birth parthenogenetically?", this question is no longer asked by anyone of 
reasonable intelligence. Those who would in the past have searched for 
scientific support for their spiritual ideas have finally been persuaded 
that this is a demeaning use for human brainpower and that by moving 
questions about the reality of spiritual and religious ideas into the same 
category as questions about mind (as opposed to brain) they will retain 
the respect of unbelievers and actually get nearer to an understanding of 
the sources of their preoccupations.  As an addendum, although I wasn't 
asked I would like also to answer the question "What questions should 
disappear and why?"  The one question that should disappear as soon as 
possible ? and to a certain extent scientists are to blame for the fact 
that it is still asked ? is: What is the explanation for 
astrology/UFOs/clairvoyance/telepathy/any other 'paranormal' phenomenon 
you care to name?  This question is still asked because scientists and 
science educators have failed to get over to the public the fact that 
there is only one method of explaining phenomena ? the scientific method. 
Therefore, anything that people are puzzled by that has not been explained 
either doesn't exist or there isn't yet enough evidence to prove that it 
does. But still I get the impression that for believers in these phenomena 
there are two types of explanatory system ? science and nonscience (you 
can pronounce the latter 'nonsense' if you like). When you try to argue 
with these people by pointing out that there isn't sufficient repeatable 
evidence even to begin to attempt an explanation in scientific terms, they 
just say that this particular phenomenon doesn't require that degree of 
stringency. When the evidence is strong enough to puzzle scientists as 
well as nonscientists, they'll begin to devise explanations ? scientific 
explanations.  There's a good example of how this works currently with the 
interest taken in St John's wort as a possible treatment for depression. 
Once there was enough consistent evidence to suggest that there might be 
an effect, clinical trials were planned and are now under way. 
Interestingly, an indication that there might be a genuine effect comes 
from a substantial body of information suggesting that there are adverse 
drug interactions between St John's wort and immunosuppressive drugs taken 
by transplant patients. Once an 'alternative' remedy actually causes harm 
as well as having alleged benefits, it's claimed effects are more likely 
to be genuine. One argument against most of the quack remedies around, 
such as homoeopathy, is that they are entirely safe (although this is seen 
as a recommendation, by the gullible.)  The demand that phenomena that are 
not explainable in scientific terms should be accepted on the basis of 
some other explanation similar to the argument you might care to use with 
your bank manager that there is more than one type of arithmetic. Using 
his conventional accounting methods he might think your account is 
overdrawn but you would argue that, although the evidence isn't as strong 
as his method might require, you believe you still have lots of money in 
your account and therefore will continue writing cheques. (As like as not, 
this belief in a positive balance in your account will be based on some 
erroneous assumption ? for example, that you still have a lot of blank 
cheques left in your chequebook.)  KARL SABBAGH is a television producer 
who has turned to writing. Among his television programs are "Skyscraper" 
? a four-hour series about the design and construction of a New York 
skyscraper; "Race for the Top" ? a documentary about the hunt for top 
quark; and "21st Century Jet" ? a five part series following Boeing's new 
777 airliner from computer design to entry into passenger service.He is 
the author of six books including Skyscraper, 21st Century Jet, and A Rum 
Affair .

Roger Schank  "Why Teach Mathematics?"  Some questions are so rarely asked 
that we are astonished anyone would ask them at all. The entire world 
seems to agree that knowing mathematics is the key to something important, 
they just forget what. Benjamin Franklin asked this question in 1749 while 
thinking about what American schools should be like and concluded that 
only practical mathematics should be taught. The famous mathematician G.H. 
Hardy asked this question (A Mathematicians's Apology) and concluded that 
while he loved the beauty of mathematics there was no real point teaching 
it to children.  Today, we worry about the Koreans and Lithuanians doing 
better than us in math tests and every "education president" asserts that 
we will raise math scores, but no one asks why this matters. Vague 
utterances about how math teaches reasoning belie the fact that 
mathematicicans do everyday reasoning particularly better than anyone 
else. To anyone who reads this and still is skeptical, I ask: what is the 
Quadratic Formula? You learned it in ninth grade, you couldn't graduate 
high school without it. When was the last time you used it? What was the 
point of learning it?  ROGER SCHANK is the Chairman and Chief Technology 
Officer for Cognitive Arts and has been the Director of the Institute for 
the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University since its founding in 
1989. One of the world's leading Artificial Intelligence researchers, he 
is books include: Dynamic Memory: A Theory of Learning in Computers and 
People , Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and Artificial Memory, The 
Connoisseur's Guide to the Mind, and Engines for Education.

Stephen H. Schneider  "Will the free market finally triumph?"  Despite 
Seattle and the French farmers, free market advocates of globalization 
have largely won--even CHina is signing up to be a major player in the 
international trading and growth-oriented global political economy. So it 
is rare to hear this question anymore, even from so-called "enterprise 
institutes" dedicated to protecting property rights.  The problem is, what 
has been won?? My concern is not with the question no-longer asked in this 
context, but rather with the companion question not often enough asked: 
"Is there any such thing as a free market"?  To be sure, markets are 
generally efficient ways of allocating resources and accomplishing 
economic goals. However, markets are notorious for leaving out much of 
what people really value. In different words, the market price of doing 
business simply excludes much of the full costs or benefits of doing 
business because many effects aren't measured in traditional monetary 
units. For example, the cost of a ton of coal isn't just the extraction 
costs plus transportation costs plus profit, but also real expenses to 
real people (or real creatures) who happen to be external to the energy 
market. Such "externalities" are very real to coastal dwellers trying to 
cope with sea level rises likely to be induced from the global warming 
driven by massive coal burning.  I recall a discussion at the recent 
international negotiations to limit emissions of greenhouse gasses in 
which a chieftain from the tiny Pacific island of Kiribati was being told 
by an OPEC supporter opposed to international controls on emissions from 
fossil fuels that the summed economies of all the small island states were 
only a trivial fraction of the global GDP, and thus even if sea level rise 
were to drive them out of national existence, this was "not sufficient 
reason to hold back to economic progress of the planet by constricting the 
free use of energy markets".  "We are not ungenerous", he said, so in the 
"unlikely event" that you were a victim of sea level rise, "we'll just pay 
to relocate all of you and your people to even better homes and jobs than 
you have now", and this, he went on, will be much cheaper than to "halt 
industrial growth" (THis isn't the forum to refute the nonsense that 
controls on emissions will halt industrial growth.) After hearing this 
offer, the aging and stately chieftain paused, scratched his flowing hair, 
politely thanked the OPEC man for his thoughtfulness and simply said, "we 
may be able to move, but what do I do with the buried bones of my 
grandfather?"  Economists refer to the units of value in cost-benefit 
analyses as "numeraires"--dollars per ton carbon emitted in the climate 
example, is the numeraire of choice for "free market" advocates. But what 
of lives lost per ton of emissions from intensified hurricanes, or species 
driven off mountain tops to extinction per ton, or heritage sites lost per 
ton?? Or what if global GDP indeed goes up fastest by free markets but 25% 
of the world gets left further behind as globally economically efficient 
markets expand? Is equity a legitimate numeraire too?  Therefore, while 
market systems seem indeed to have triumphed, it is time to phase in a 
new, multi-part question: "How can free markets be adjusted to value what 
is left out of private cost-benefit calculus but represents real value so 
we can get the price signals in markets to reflect all the costs and 
benefits to society across all the numeraires, and not simply have market 
prices rigged to preserve the status quo in which monetary costs to 
private parties are the primary condition?"  I hope the new US president 
soon transcends all that obligatory free market rhetoric of the campaign 
and learns much more about what constitutes a full market price. It is 
very likely he'll get an earful as he jetsets about the planet in Air 
Force 1 catching up on the landscapes--political and physical--of the 
vastly diverse countries in the world that it is time for him to visit. 
Many world leaders are quite worried about just what we will have won as 
currently defined free markets triumph.  STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER is Professor 
in the Biological Sciences Department at Stanford University and the 
Former Department Director and Head of Advanced Study Project at the 
National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder. He is internationally 
recognized as one of the world's leading experts in atmospheric research 
and its implications for environment and society. Dr. Schneider's books 
include The Genesis Strategy: Climate Change and Global Survival; The 
Coevolution Of Climate and Life and Global Warming: Are We Entering The 
Greenhouse Century?; and Laboratory Earth

Al Seckel  "Why is our sense of beauty and elegance such a useful tool for 
discriminating between a good theory and a bad theory?"  During the early 
1980s, I had the wonderful fortune to spend a great deal of time with 
Richard Feynman, and our innumerable conversations extended over a very 
broad range of topics (not always physics!). At that time, I had just 
finished re-reading his wonderful book, The Character of Physical Law, and 
wanted to discuss an interesting question with him, not directly addressed 
by his book:  Why is our sense of beauty and elegance such a useful tool 
for discriminating between a good theory and a bad theory?  And a related 
question:  Why are the fundamental laws of the universe self-similar? 
Over lunch, I put the questions to him.  "It's goddam useless to discuss 
these things. It's a waste of time," was Dick's initial response. Dick 
always had an immediate gut-wrenching approach to philosophical questions. 
Nevertheless, I persisted, because it certainly was to be admitted that he 
had a strong intuitive sense of the elegance of fundamental theories, and 
might be able to provide some insight rather than just philosophizing. It 
was also true that this notion was a successful guiding principle for many 
great physicists of the twentieth century including Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, 
Gell-Mann, etc. Why this was so, was interesting to me.  We spent several 
hours trying to get at the heart of the problem and, indeed, trying to 
determine if it was even a true notion rather than some romantic 
representation of science.  We did agree that it was impossible to explain 
honestly the beauties of the laws of nature in a way that people can feel, 
without their having some deep understanding of mathematics. It wasn't 
that mathematics was just another language for physicists, it was a tool 
for reasoning by which you could connect one statement with another. The 
physicist has meaning to all his phrases. He needs to have a connection of 
words to the real world.  Certainly, a beautiful theory meant being able 
to describe it very simply in terms of fundamental mathematical 
quantities. "Simply" meant compression into a small mathematical 
expression with tremendous explanatory powers, which required only a 
finite amount of interpretation. In other words, a huge number of 
relationships between data are concisely fit into a single statement. 
Later, Murray Gell-Mann expressed this point well, when he wrote, "The 
complexity of what you have to learn in order to be able to read the 
statement of the law is not really very great compared to the apparent 
complexity of the data that are being summarized by that law. That 
apparent complexity is partly removed when the law is formed."  Another 
driving principle was that the laws of the universe are self similar, in 
that there are connections between two sets of phenomena previously 
thought to be distinct. There seemed to be a beauty in the 
inter-relationships fed by perhaps a prejudice that at the bottom of it 
all was a simple unifying law.  It was easy to find numerous examples from 
the history of modern science that fit within this framework (Maxwell's 
equations for electromagnetism, Einstein's general-relativistic equations 
for gravitation, Dirac's relativistic quantum mechanics, etc.,), but Dick 
and I were still working away at the fringes of the problem. So far, all 
we could do was describe the problem, find numerous examples, but we could 
not answer what provided the feeling for great intuitive guesses. 
Perhaps, our love of symmetries and patterns, are an integral part of why 
would embrace certain theories and not others. For example, for every 
conservation law, there was a corresponding symmetry, albeit sometimes 
these symmetries would be broken. But this led us to another question: Is 
symmetry inherent in nature or is it something we create? When we spoke of 
symmetries, we were referring to the symmetry of the mathematical laws of 
physics, not to the symmetry of objects commonly found in nature. We felt 
that symmetry was inherent in nature, because it was not something that we 
expected to find in physics. Another psychological prejudice was our love 
for patterns. The simplicity of the patterns in physics were beautiful. 
This does not mean simple in action ? the motion of the planets and of 
atoms can be very complex, but the basic patterns underneath are simple. 
This is what is common to all of our fundamental laws.  It should be noted 
that we could also come up with numerous examples where one's sense of 
elegance and beauty led to beautiful theories that were wrong. A perfect 
example of a mathematically elegant theory that turned out to be wrong is 
Francis Crick's 1957 attempt at working out the genetic coding problem 
(Codes without Commas). It was also true that there were many examples of 
physical theories that were pursued on the basis of lovely symmetries and 
patterns, and that these also turned out to be false. Usually, these were 
false because of some logical inconsistency or the crude fact that they 
did not agree with experiment.  The best that Dick and I could come up 
with was an unscientific response, which is, given our fondness for 
patterns and symmetry, we have a prejudice--that nature is simple and 
therefore beautiful.  Since that time, the question has disappeared from 
my mind, and it is fun thinking about it again, but in doing scientific 
research, I now have to concern myself with more pragmatic questions.  AL 
SECKEL is acknowledged as one of the world's leading authorities on 
illusions. He has given invited lectures on illusions at Caltech, Harvard, 
MIT, Berkeley, Oxford University, University of Cambridge, UCLA, UCSD, 
University of Lund, University of Utrecht, and many other fine 
institutions. Seckel is currently under contract with the Brain and 
Cognitive Division of the MIT Press to author a comprehensive treatise on 
illusions, perception, and cognitive science.

Terrence J. Sejnowski  "Is God Dead?"  On April 8, 1966, the cover of Time 
Magazine asked "Is God Dead?" in bold red letters on a jet black 
background. This is an arresting question that no one asks anymore, but 
back in 1996 it was a hot issue that received serious comment. In 1882 
Friedrich Nietzsche in The Gay Science had a character called "the madman" 
running through the marketplace shouting "God is dead!", but in the book, 
no one took the madman seriously.  The Time Magazine article reported that 
a group of young theologians calling themselves Christian atheists, led by 
Thomas J. J. Altizer at Emory University, had claimed God was dead. This 
hit a cultural nerve and in an appearance on "The Merv Griffin Show" 
Altizer was greeted by shouts of "Kill him! Kill him!" Today Altizer 
continues to develop an increasingly apocalyptic theology but has not 
received a grant or much attention since 1966.  The lesson here is that 
the impact of a question very much depends on the cultural moment. 
Questions disappear not because they are answered but because they are no 
longer interesting.  TERRENCE J. SEJNOWSKI, a pioneer in Computational 
Neurobiology, is regarded by many as one of the world's most foremost 
theoretical brain scientists. In 1988, he moved from Johns Hopkins 
University to the Salk Institute, where he is a Howard Hughes Medical 
Investigator and the director of the Computational Neurobiology 
Laboratory. In addition to co-authoring The Computational Brain, he has 
published over 250 scientific articles.

Michael Shermer  "Can science answer moral and ethical questions?"  From 
the time of the Enlightenment philosophers have speculated that the 
remarkable advances of science would one day spill over into the realm of 
moral philosophy, and that scientists would be able to discover answers to 
previously insoluble moral dilemmas and ethical conundrums. One of the 
reasons Ed Wilson's book Consilience was so successful was that he 
attempted to revive this Enlightenment dream. Alas, we seem no closer than 
we were when Voltaire, Diderot, and company first encouraged scientists to 
go after moral and ethical questions. Are such matters truly insoluble and 
thus out of the realm of science (since, as Peter Medewar noted, "science 
is the art of the soluble")? Should we abandon Ed Wilson's Enlightenment 
dream of applying evolutionary biology to the moral realm? Most scientists 
agree that moral questions are scientifically insoluble and they have 
abandoned the Enlightenment dream. But not all. We shall see.  MICHAEL 
SHERMER is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the 
acclaimed public science lecture series at Caltech, and a monthly 
columnist for Scientific American. His books include Why People Believe 
Weird Things, How We Believe, and Denying History.

Lee Smolin  "What is the next step in the evolution of democracy?"  A 
question no longer being asked is how to make the next step in the 
evolution of a democratic society. Until very recently it was widely 
understood that democracy was a project with many steps, whose goal was 
the eventual construction of a perfectly just and egalitarian society. But 
recently, with the well deserved collapse of Marxism, it has begun to seem 
that the highest stage of civilization we humans can aspire to is global 
capitalism leavened by some version of a bureaucratic welfare state, all 
governed badly by an unwieldy and corrupt representative democracy. This 
is better than many of the alternatives, but it is hardly egalitarian and 
often unjust; those of us who care about these values must hope that human 
ingenuity is up to the task of inventing something still better.   It is 
proper that the nineteenth century idea of utopia has finally been put to 
rest, for that was based on a paradox, which is that any predetermined 
blueprint for an ideal society could only be imposed by force. It is now 
almost universally acknowledged that there is no workable alternative to 
the democratic ideal that governments get their authority by winning the 
consent of the governed. This means that if we are to change society, it 
must be by a process of evolution rather than revolution. But why should 
this mean that big changes are impossible? What is missing are new ideas, 
and a context to debate them.   There are at least four issues facing the 
future of the democratic project. First, while democracy in the worlds 
most powerful country is perceived by many of its citizens as corrupted, 
there is little prospect for serious reform. The result is alienation so 
severe that around half of our citizens do not participate in politics. At 
what point, we may ask, will so few vote that the government of the United 
States may cease to have a valid claim to have won the consent of the 
governed. As the political and journalistic classes have largely lost the 
trust of the population, where will leadership to begin the reform that is 
so obviously needed come from?  A second point of crisis and opportunity 
is in the newly democratized states. In many of these countries 
intellectuals played a major role in the recent establishment of 
democracy. These people are not likely to go to sleep and let the World 
Bank tell them what democracy is.  The third opportunity is in Europe, 
where a rather successful integration of capitalism and democratic 
socialism has been achieved. These societies suffer much less from poverty 
and the other social and economic ills that appear so unsolvable in the US 
context. (And it is not coincidental that the major means of funding 
political campaigns in the US are illegal in most of Europe.) Walking the 
streets in Denmark or Holland it is possible to wonder what a democratic 
society that evolved beyond social democracy might look like. European 
integration may be only the first step towards a new kind of nation state 
which will give much of its sovereignty up to multinational entities, a 
kind of nation-as-local-government.  Another challenge for democracy is 
the spread of the bureaucratic mode of organization, which in most 
countries has taken over the administration of education, science, health 
and other vital areas of public interest. As any one who works for a 
modern university or hospital can attest to, bureaucratic organizations 
are inherently undemocratic. Debate amongst knowledgeable, responsible 
individuals is replaced by the management of perceptions and the 
manipulation of supposedly objective indices. As the politics of the 
academy begins to look more like nineteenth century Russia than 5th 
Century BC Athens we intellectuals need to do some serious work to invent 
more democratic modes of organization for ourselves and for others who 
work in the public interest.   Is it not then time we "third culture 
intellectuals" begin to attack the problem of democracy, in both our 
workplaces and in our societies? Perhaps, with all of our independence, 
creativity, intelligence and edginess, we may find we really have 
something of value to contribute?   LEE SMOLIN is a theoretical physicist; 
professor of physics and member of the Center for Gravitational Physics 
and Geometry at Pennsylvania State University; author of The Life of The 
Cosmos.

Dan Sperber  "Are women and men equal?"  No doubt, there are differences 
between women and men, some obvious and others more contentious. But 
arguments for inequality of worth or rights between the sexes have wholly 
lost intellectual respectability. Why? Because they were grounded in 
biologically evolved dispositions and culturally transmitted prejudices 
that, however strongly entrenched, could not withstand the kind of 
rational scrutiny to which they have been submitted in the past two 
centuries. Also because, more recently, the Feminist movement has given so 
many of us the motivation and the means to look into ourselves and 
recognize and fight lingering biases. Still, the battle against sexism is 
not over--and it may never be.  DAN SPERBER is a social and cognitive 
scientist at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 
(CNRS) in Paris. His books include Rethinking Symbolism, On 
Anthropological Knowledge, Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach, 
and, with Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition.

Tom Standage   "Are there planets around other stars?" Speculation about 
the possibility of a "plurality of worlds" goes back at least as far as 
Epicurus in the fourth century BC. Admittedly, Epicurus' definition of a 
"world" was closer to what we would currently regard as a solar 
system--but he imagined innumerable such spheres, each containing a system 
of planets, packed together. "There are," he declared, "infinite worlds 
both like and unlike this world [i.e., solar system] of ours."  The same 
question was subsequently considered by astronomers and philosophers over 
the course of many centuries; within the past half century, the idea of 
the existence of other planets has become a science fiction staple, and 
people have started looking for evidence of extraterrestrial 
civilizations. Like Epicurus, many people have concluded that there must 
be other solar systems out there, consisting of planets orbiting other 
stars. But they didn't know for sure. Today, we do.  The first 
"extrasolar" planet (ie, beyond the solar system) was found in 1995 by two 
Swiss astronomers, and since then another 48 planets have been found 
orbiting dozens of nearby sun-like stars. This figure is subject to 
change, because planets are now being found at an average rate of more 
than one per month; more planets are now known to exist outside the solar 
system than within it. Furthermore, one star is known to have at least two 
planets, and another has at least three. We can, in other words, now draw 
maps of alien solar systems--maps that were previously restricted to the 
realm of science fiction.  The discovery that there are other planets out 
there has not, however, caused as much of a fuss as might have been 
expected, for two reasons. First, decades of Star Trek and its ilk meant 
that the existence of other worlds was assumed; the discovery has merely 
confirmed what has lately become a widely-held belief. And second, none of 
these new planets has actually been seen. Instead, their existence has 
been inferred through the tiny wobbles that they cause in the motion of 
their parent stars. The first picture of an extrasolar planet is, however, 
probably just a few years away. Like the first picture of Earth from 
space, it is likely to become an iconic image that once again redefines 
the way we as humans think about our place in the universe.  Incidentally, 
none of these new planets has a name yet, because the International 
Astronomical Union, the body which handles astronomical naming, has yet to 
rule on the matter. But the two astronomers who found the first extrasolar 
planet have proposed a name for it anyway, and one that seems highly 
appropriate: they think it should be called Epicurus.  TOM STANDAGE is 
technology correspondent at The Economist in London and author of the 
books The Victorian Internet and The Neptune File, both of which draw 
parallels between episodes in the history of science and modern events. He 
has also written for the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Prospect, and 
Wired. He is married and lives in Greenwich, England, just down the hill 
from the Old Royal Observatory.

Timothy Taylor "How can I stop the soul of the deceased reanimating the 
body?"  At a particular point (yet to be clearly defined) in human 
cultural evolution, a specific idea took hold that there were two, 
partially separable, elements present in a living creature: the material 
body and the force that animated it. On the death of the body the 
animating force would, naturally, desire the continuation of this-worldly 
action and struggle to reassert itself (just as one might strive to 
retrieve a flint axe one had accidentally dropped). If the soul (or 
spirit) succeeded, it would also seek to repossess its property, including 
its spouse, and reassert its material appetites.   The desire of the 
disembodied soul was viewed as dangerous by the living, who had by all 
means to enchant, cajole, fight off, sedate, or otherwise distract and 
disable it. This requirement to keep the soul from the body after death 
did not last forever, only so long as the flesh lay on the bones. For the 
progress of the body's decomposition was seen as analogous to the slow 
progress the soul made toward the threshold of the Otherworld. When the 
bones where white (or were sent up in smoke or whatever the rite in that 
community was), then it was deemed that the person had finally left this 
life and was no longer a danger to the living. Thus it was, that for most 
of recent human history (roughly the last 35,000 years) funerary rites 
were twofold: the primary rites zoned off the freshly dead and 
instantiated the delicate ritual powers designed to keep the unquiet soul 
at bay; the secondary rites, occurring after weeks or months (or, 
sometimes--in the case of people who had wielded tremendous worldly 
power--years), firmly and finally incorporated the deceased into the realm 
of the ancestors.  Since the rise of science and scepticism, the idea of 
the danger of the disembodied soul has, for an increasing number of 
communities, simply evaporated. But there is a law of conservation of 
questions. "How can I stop the soul of the deceased reanimating the body?" 
is now being replaced with "How can I live so long that my life becomes 
indefinite?," a question previously only asked by the most arrogant 
pharaohs and emperors.  TIMOTHY TAYLOR lecturers in the Department of 
Archaeological Sciences, University of Bradford, UK. He is the author of 
The Prehistory of Sex.

Joseph Traub   "Have We Seen the End of Science?" "Will the Internet Stock 
Bubble Burst?"  I am taking the liberty of sending two questions. (After 
all, the people on the list like to push the boundaries.)  "Have We Seen 
the End of Science?"  John Horgan announced the end of science in his book 
of the same title. Almost weekly the most spectacular advances are being 
announced and intriguing questions being asked in fields such as biology 
and physics. The answer was always a resounding no; now nobody asks the 
question.  "Will the Internet Stock Bubble Burst?"  We certainly know the 
answer to that one now.  On February 22, 2000 I gave a talk at the Century 
Association in NYC titled "Modern Finance and Computers". One of the 
topics that i covered was "will the internet stock bubble burst?" I said 
it was a classic bubble and would end in the usual way. I cited the 
example of an Fall, 1999 IPO for VA Linux. This was a company that had a 
market capitalization of 10 billion dollars at the end of the first day 
even though it had never shown a profit and was up against competitors 
such as Dell and IBM.  The NASDAQ reached its high on March 10, 2000, and 
the internet sector collapsed a couple of weeks later. The high for VA 
Linux in 2000 was $247;yesterday it closed below $10.  JOSEPH F. TRAUB is 
the Edwin Howard Armstrong Professor of Computer Science at Columbia 
University and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He was 
founding Chairman of the Computer Science Department at Columbia 
University from 1979 to 1989, and founding chair of the Computer Science 
and Telecommunications Board of the National Academy of Sciences from 1986 
to 1992. From 1971 to 1979 he was Head of the Computer Science Department 
at Carnegie-Mellon University. Traub is the founding editor of the Journal 
of Complexity and an associate editor of Complexity. A Festschrift in 
celebration of his sixtieth birthday was recently published. He is the 
author of nine books including the recently published Complexity and 
Information.

Colin Tudge   "The Great Idea That's Disappeared" The greatest idea that's 
disappeared from mainstream science this past 400 years is surely that of 
God. The greats who laid the foundations of modern science in the 17th 
century (Galileo, Newton, Leibnitz, Descartes) and the 
significant-but-not-quite-so-greats (Robert Boyle, John Ray, etc.) were 
theologians as much as they were scientists and philosophers. They wanted 
to know how things are, of course--but also what God had in mind when he 
made them this way. They took it for granted, or contrived to prove to 
their own satisfaction, that unless there is a God, omniscient and 
mindful, then there could be no Universe at all.  Although David Hume did 
much to erode such argument, it persisted well into the 19th century. 
Recently I have been intrigued to find James Hutton--who, as one of the 
founders of modern geology, is one of the boldest and most imaginative of 
all scientists--earnestly wondering in a late 18th century essay what God 
could possibly have intended when he made volcanoes. The notion that there 
could be no complex and adapted beings at all without a God to create 
them, was effectively the default position in orthodox biology until (as 
Dan Dennett has so succinctly explained) Charles Darwin showed how natural 
selection could produce complexity out of simplicity, and adaptation out 
of mere juxtaposition. Today, very obviously, no Hutton-style musing would 
find its way into a refereed journal. In Nature, God features only as the 
subject of (generally rather feeble) sociological and sometimes 
evolutionary speculation.  Religion obviously flourishes still, but are 
religion and science now condemned to mortal conflict? 
Fundamentalist-atheists would have it so, but I think not. The greatest 
ideas in philosophy and science never really go away, even if they do 
change their form or go out of fashion, but they do take a very long time 
to unfold. For at least 300 years--from the 16th to the 19th 
centuries--emergent science and post- medieval theology were deliberately 
intertwined, in many ingenious ways. Through the past 150, they have been 
just as assiduously disentangled. But the game is far from over. 
Cosmologists and metaphysicians continue to eye and circle each other. 
Epistemology--how we know what's true--is of equal interest to scientists 
and theologians, and each would be foolish to suppose that the other has 
nothing to offer. How distant is the religious notion of revelation from 
Dirac's--or Keats's?--perception of truth as beauty? Most intriguingly of 
all, serious theologians are now discussing the role of religion in 
shaping emotional response while modern aficionados of artificial 
intelligence acknowledge (as Hume did) that emotion is an essential 
component of thought itself. Lastly, the ethics of science and 
technology--how we should use our new-found power--are the key discussions 
of our age and it is destructive to write religion out of the act, even if 
the priests, rabbis and mullahs who so far have been invited to take part 
have often proved disappointing.  I don't share the modern enthusiasm for 
over-extended life but I would like to see how the dialogue unfolds in the 
centuries to come.  COLIN TUDGE is a Research Fellow at the Centre for 
Philosophy, London School of Economics. His two latest books are The 
Variety of Life and In Mendel's Footnotes.

Sherry Turkle  "Can you have an artificial intelligence?"  Progress in the 
domain that Marvin Minsky once characterized as "making machines do things 
that would be considered intelligent if done by people" has not been as 
dramatic as its founders might once have hoped, but the penetration of 
machine cognition into everyday life (from the computer that plays chess 
to the computer that determines if your toast is done) has been broad and 
deep. We now the term "intelligent" to refer to the kind of helpful 
smartness embedded in such objects. So the language has shifted and the 
question has disappeared. But until recently, there was a tendency to 
limit appreciation of machine mental prowess to the realm of the 
cognitive. In other words, acceptance of artificial intelligence came with 
a certain "romantic reaction." People were willing to accept that 
simulated thinking might well be deemed thinking, but simulated feeling 
was not feeling. Simulated love could never be love.  These days, however, 
the realm of machine emotion has become a contested terrain. There is 
research in "affective computing" and in robotics which produces virtual 
pets and digital dolls--objects that present themselves as experiencing 
subjects. In artificial intelligence's "essentialist" past, researchers 
tried to argue that the machines they had built were "really" intelligent. 
In the current business of building machines that self-present as 
"creatures," the work of inferring emotion is left in large part to the 
user. The new artificial creatures are designed to push our evolutionary 
buttons to respond to their speech, their gestures, and their demands for 
nurturance by experiencing them as sentient, even emotional. And people 
are indeed inclined to respond to creatures they teach and nurture by 
caring about them, often in spite of themselves. People tell themselves 
that the robot dog is a program embodied in plastic, but they become fond 
of it all the same. They want to care for it and they want it to care for 
them.  In cultural terms, old questions about machine intelligence has 
given way to a question not about the machines but about us: What kind of 
relationships is it appropriate to have with a machine? It is significant 
that this question has become relevant in a day-to-day sense during a 
period of unprecedented human redefinition through genomics and 
psychopharmacology, fields that along with robotics, encourage us to ask 
not only whether machines will be able to think like people, but whether 
people have always thought like machines  SHERRY TURKLE is a professor of 
the sociology of science at MIT. She is the author of Life on the Screen: 
Identity in the Age of the Internet; The Second Self: Computers and the 
Human Spirit; and Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's 
French Revolution.

Henry Warwick "None." Why: 1. If Barbour's theory of Platonia is even 
roughly correct, then everything exists in a timless universe, and 
therefore doesn't actually "disappear". Therefore, all questions are 
always asked, as everything is actually happening at once. I know that 
doesn't help much, and it dodges the main thrust of the question, but it's 
one support for my answer, if oblique. 2. Other than forgotten questions 
that disappear of their own accord, or are in some dead language, or are 
too personal/particular/atomised (i.e., What did you think of the latest 
excretion from Hollywood? Is it snowing now? Why is that weirdo across the 
library reading room looking at me?!?! When will I lose these 35 "friends" 
who are perched on my belt buckle? etc.) questions don't really disappear. 
They are asked again and again and are answered again and again, and this 
is a very good thing. Three Year Olds will always ask "Daddy, where do the 
stars come fwum?" And daddys will always answer as best they can. 
Eventually, some little three year old will grow into an adult astronomer 
and might find even better answers than their daddy supplied them on a 
cold Christmas night. And they will answer the same simple question with a 
long involved answer, or possibly, a better and simpler answer. In this 
way, questions come up again and again, but over time they spin out in new 
directions with new answers. 3. It's important to not let questions 
disappear. By doubting the obvious, examining the the same ground with 
fresh ideas, and questioning recieved ideas, great strides in the 
collected knowledge of this human project can be (and historically, have 
been) gained. When we consign a question to the scrap heap of history we 
run many risks--risks of blind arrogance, deaf self righteousness, and 
finally choking on the bland pablum of unquestioned dogma. 4. It's 
important to question the questions. It keeps the question alive, as it 
refines the question. Question the questions, and then reverse the process 
- question the questioning of questions. Permit the mind everything, even 
if it seems repetitive. If you spin your wheels long enough you'll blow a 
bearing or snap a spring, and the question is re-invented, re-asked, and 
re-known, but in a way not previously understood. In this way, questions 
don't disappear, they evolve into other questions. For a while they might 
bloat up in the sun and smell really weird, but it's all part of the 
process... HENRY WARWICK sometimes works as a scientist in the computer 
industry. He always works as an artist, composer, and writer. He lives in 
San Francisco, California.

Margaret Wertheim  "...the old question of whether our categories of 
reality are discovered or constructed."  One question that has almost 
disappeared, but which I think should not is the old question about 
whether our categories of reality are discovered or constructed. In 
medieval times this was the debate about realism versus nominalism. 
Earlier this century the question flared up again in the debates about the 
relativistic nature of knowledge and has more recently given rise to the 
whole "science wars" debacle, but reading the science press today one 
would think the question had been finally resolved--on the side of 
realism. Reading the science press now one gets a strong impression that 
for most scientists our categories of reality are Platonic, almost 
God-given entities just waiting for the right mind to uncover them. This 
hard-nosed realist trend is evident across the spectrum of the sciences, 
but is particularly strong in physics, where the search is currently on 
for the supposed "ultimate" category of reality--strings being a favored 
candidate. What gets lost in all this is any analysis of the role that 
language plays in our pictures of reality. We literally cannot see things 
that we have no words for. As Einstein once said "we can only see what our 
theories allow us to see." I would argue that the question of what role 
language plays in shaping our picture of reality is one of the most 
critical questions in science today--and one that should be back on the 
agenda of every thoughtful scientiist.  Just one example should suffice to 
illustrate what is at stake here: MIT philosopher of science Evelyn Fox 
Keller has shown in her book Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death (and 
elsewhere) the primary role played by language in shaping theories of 
genetics. Earlier this century physicists like Max Delbruck and Erwin 
Schrodinger started to have a philosophical impact on the biological 
sciences, which henceforth became increasingly "physicized." Just as atoms 
were seen as the ultimate constituents of matter so genes came to be seen 
as the ultimate constituents of life--the entities in which all power and 
control over living organisms resided. What this metaphor of the "master 
molecule" obscured was th role played by the cytoplasm in regulating the 
function and activation of genes. For half a century study of the 
cytoplasm was virtually ignored because genetics were so fixed on the idea 
of the gene as the "master colecule." Sure much good work on genetics was 
done, but important areas of biological function were also ignored. And 
are still being ignored by the current "master molecule" camp--the 
evolutionary psychologists, who cannot seem to see anything but through 
the prism of genes.  Scientists (like all other humans) can only see 
reality as their language and their metaphors allow them to see it. This 
is not to say that scientists "make up" their discoveries, only to point 
out that language plays a critical role in shaping the way we categorize, 
and hence theorize, the world around us. Revolutions in science are not 
just the result of revolutions in the laboratory or at theorists 
blackboards, they are also linguistic revoluttions. Think of words like 
inertia, energy, momentum--words which did not have any scientific meaning 
before the seventeenth century. Or words like quantum, spin, charm and 
strange, which have only had scientific meaning science the quantum 
revolution of the early twentieth century. Categories of reality are not 
merely discovered--they are also constructed by the words we use. 
Understanding more deeply the interplay between the physical world and 
human language is, I believe, one of the major tasks for the future of 
science.  MARGARET WERTHEIM is the author of Pythagoras Trousers, a 
history of the relationship between physics and religion; and The Pearly 
Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. She is 
a research associate to the American Museum of Natural History in NY and a 
fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. She is currently 
working on a documentary about "outsider physics."

Dave Winer  "What's your business model?"  Until this summer this was the 
most common question at Silicon Valley parties, at bus stops, conferences 
and grocery stores. Everyone had a business model, none planned to make 
money, all focused on the exit strategy.   The euphoria attracted a 
despicable kind carpetbagger, one who wanted nothing more than money, and 
had a disdain for technology. All of a sudden technology was out of 
fashion in Silicon Valley.  Now that the dotcom crash seems permanent, 
entrepreneurs are looking for real ways to make money. No more vacuous 
"business models." VCs are hunkering down for a long haul. The average IQ 
of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is zooming to its former stratospheric 
levels. There's a genuine excitement here now, but if you ask what the 
business model is you're going to get a boring answer.  Silicon Valley 
goes in cycles. Downturns are a perfect time to dig in, listen to users, 
learn what they want, and create the technology that scratches the itch, 
and plan on selling it for money.   DAVE WINER, CEO UserLand Software, 
Inc. http://www.userland.com/

New Naomi Wolf  "...the narrative shifted and ...the female sense of 
identity in the West, for the first time ever, no longer hinges on the 
identity of her mate ..."  The question disappeared in most of Europe and 
North America, of course, because of the great movement toward women's 
employment and career advancement even after marrying and bearing 
children. Feminist historians have long documented how the "story" of the 
female heroine used to end with marriage; indeed, this story was so set in 
stone as late as the 1950's and early 60's in this country that Sylvia 
Plath's heroine in The Bell Jar had to flirt with suicide in order to try 
to find a way out of it. Betty Friedan noted in The Feminine Mystique that 
women (meaning middle class white women; the narrative was always 
different for women of color and working class women) couldn't "think 
their way past" marriage and family in terms of imagining a future that 
had greater dimension. But the narrative shifted and it's safe to say that 
the female sense of identity in the West, for the first time ever, no 
longer hinges on the identity of her mate--which is a truly new story in 
terms of our larger history.  NAOMI WOLF, author, feminist, and social 
critic, is s an outspoken and influential voice for women's rights and 
empowerment. she is the author of The Beauty Myth, Fire with Fire, and 
Promiscuities.

Milford H. Wolpoff  "Where has Darwin gone?"  Darwinism is alive and well 
in academic discussions and in pop thinking. Natural selection is a key 
element in explaining just about everything we encounter today, from the 
origin and spread of AIDS to the realization that our parents didn't "make 
us do it," our ancestors did. Ironically, though, Darwinism has 
disappeared from the area where it was first and most firmly seated the 
evolution of life, and especially the evolution of humanity. Human 
evolution was once pictured as a series of responses to changing 
environments coordinated by differences in reproduction and survivorship, 
as opportunistic changes taking advantage of the new possibilities opened 
up by the cultural inheritance of social information, as the triumph of 
technology over brute force, as the organization of intelligence by 
language. Evolutionary psychologists and other behavioralists still view 
it this way, but this is no longer presented as the mainstream view of 
human paleontologists and geneticists who address paleodemographic 
problems.  Human evolution is now commonly depicted as the consequence of 
species replacements, where there are a series of species emanating from 
different, but usually African homelands, each sooner or later replacing 
the earlier ones. It is not the selection process that provides the source 
of human superiority in each successive replacement, but the random 
accidents that take place when new species are formed from small 
populations of old ones. The process is seen as being driven by random 
extinctions, opening up unexpected oFpportunities for those fortunate new 
species lucky to be at the right time and place.  The origin and evolution 
of human species are now also addressed by geneticists studying the 
variation and distribution of human genes today (and in a few cases 
ancient genes from Neandertals). They use this information to estimate the 
history of human population size and the related questions of when the 
human population might have been small, where it might have originated, 
and when it might have been expanding. It is possible to do this if one 
can assume that mutation and genetic drift are the only driving forces of 
genetic change, because the effect of drift depends on population size. 
But this assumption means that Darwinian selection did not play any 
significant role in genetic evolution. Similarly, interpreting the 
distribution of ancient DNA as reflecting population history (rather than 
the history of the genes studied the histories are not necessarily the 
same) also assumes that selection on the DNA studied did not play a role 
in its evolution. In fact, the absence of Darwinian selection is the 
underlying assumption for these types of genetic studies.  Human 
paleontology has taken a giant step away from Darwin will it have the 
courage to follow the lead of evolutionary behavior and step back? 
MILFORD H. WOLPOFF is Professor of Anthropology and Adjunct Associate 
Research Scientist, Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. 
His work and theories on a "multiregional" model of human development 
challenge the popular "Eve" theory. His work has been covered in The New 
York Times, New Scientist, Discover, and Newsweek, among other 
publications. He is the author (with Rachel Caspari) of Race and Human 
Evolution: A Fatal Attraction

Eberhard Zangger  "Where Was Lost Atlantis?"  Two journalists once ranked 
the discovery of lost Atlantis as potentially the most spectacular 
sensation of all times. Now, the question what or where Atlantis might 
have been has disappeared. Why?  The Greek philosopher Plato, the only 
source for Atlantis, incorporated an extensive description of this 
legendary city into a mundane summary of contemporary (4th century BC) 
scientific achievements and knowledge of prehistory. Nobody attributed 
much attention to the account during subsequent centuries. In Medieval 
times, scholarly interest focussed on Aristotle, while Plato was 
neglected. When archaeology and history finally assumed the shape of 
scientific disciplines--after the middle of the 18th century AD--science 
still was under the influence of Christian theology, its Medieval mother 
discipline. The first art historians, who were brought up in a creationist 
world, consequently interpreted western culture as an almost divine 
concept which first materialized in ancient Greece, without having had any 
noticeable predecessors. Accordingly, any ancient texts referring to high 
civilizations, much older than Classical Greece, had to be fictitious by 
definition.  During the 20th century, dozens of palaces dating to a golden 
age a thousand years older than Plato's Athens have been excavated around 
the eastern Mediterranean. Atlantis can now be placed in a historical 
context. It is an Egyptian recollection of Bronze Age Troy and its 
awe-inspiring war against the Greek kingdoms. Plato's account and the end 
of the Bronze Age around 1200 BC can now be seen in a new light. Why was 
this connection not made earlier? Four Egyptian words, describing location 
and size, were mistranslated, because at the time Egypt and Greece used 
different calendars and scales. And, in contrast to biology, where, after 
Darwin, the idea of creationism was dropped in favor of evolutionism, 
Aegean prehistory has never questioned its basic premises. 
Geoarchaeologist EBERHARD ZANGGER is Director of Corporate Communications 
at KPNQwest (Switzerland) and the author of The Flood from Heaven : 
Deciphering the Atlantis Legend and Geoarchaeology of the Argolid. Zangger 
has written a monograph, published by the German Archaeological Institute, 
as well as more than seventy scholarly articles, which have appeared in 
the American Journal of Archaeology, Hesperia, the Oxford Journal of 
Archaeology, and the Journal of Field Archaeology.

Carl Zimmer   "When will disease be eradicated?"  By the middle of the 
twentieth century, scientists and doctors were sure that it was just a 
matter of time, and not much time at that, before most diseases would be 
wiped from the face of the Earth. Antibiotics would get rid of bacterial 
infections; vaccines would get rid of viruses; DDT would get rid of 
malaria. Now one drug after the next are becoming useless against 
resistant parasites, and new plagues such as AIDS are sweeping through our 
species. Except for a handful of diseases like smallpox and Guinea worms, 
eradication now looks like a fantasy. There are three primary reasons that 
this question is no longer asked. First, parasites evolution is far faster 
and more sophisticated than anyone previously appreciated. Second, 
scientists don't understand the complexities of the immune system well 
enough to design effective vaccines for many diseases yet. For another, 
the cures that have been discovered are often useless because the global 
public health system is a mess. The arrogant dream of eradication has been 
replaced by much more modest goals of trying to keep diseases in check. 
CARL ZIMMER is the author of Parasite Rex and writes a column about 
evolution for Natural History.


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 14 10:29:42 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:29:42 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling,
	' by Richard Lyman Bushman
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601140526150.23373@panix3.panix.com>

'Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling,' by Richard Lyman Bushman
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/books/review/15kirn.html

    Review by WALTER KIRN

    JOSEPH SMITH
    Rough Stone Rolling.
    By Richard Lyman Bushman, with the assistance of Jed Woodworth.
    Illustrated. 740 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35.

    Most men who go searching for signs from God look skyward, but
    Joseph Smith, the youthful Mormon prophet, distinguished himself
    from his visionary cohort by hunting for sacred wisdom in the
    ground. In 1827, this barely literate 21-year-old dug in a hillside
    in rural upstate New York and unearthed a set of golden plates
    whose unfamiliar characters he translated with the aid of magical
    "seer stones." The result was the Book of Mormon, a second Bible
    whose elaborate tale of interracial warfare between two ancient
    American peoples - the so-called Lamanites and Nephites - was
    dismissed by Mark Twain as "chloroform in print" but today forms
    the basis of a worldwide church with a still-growing membership of
    some six million in the United States and another six million
    overseas.

    The mystery of the scripture's origins (was it really translated
    from "reformed Egyptian" or was it made up or borrowed from other
    sources?) is just one of the burning questions about Smith that
    Richard Lyman Bushman, his latest biographer, examines from every
    conceivable rational angle before declaring it to be unanswerable -
    unanswerable in a way that vaguely suggests such puzzles were
    divinely intended to stay that way. Bushman, a retired Columbia
    history professor who also happens to be a practicing Mormon, has a
    tricky dual agenda, it turns out: to depict Smith both as the
    prophet he claimed to be and as the man of his times that he most
    certainly was. "The efforts to situate the Book of Mormon in
    history, whether ancient or modern, run up against baffling
    complexities," Bushman writes, seemingly closing the door on the
    whole matter while slyly leaving it open a crack for a faith. "The
    Book of Mormon resists conventional analysis, whether sympathetic
    or critical."

    As refracted through Bushman's intellectual bifocals - one lens is
    skeptical and clear, the other reverent and rosy - most of the rest
    of Smith's remarkable story is shown to resist such analysis as
    well. So why make the effort in the first place? By showing the
    inadequacy of reason in the face of spiritual phenomena, Bushman
    seems to be playing a Latter-Day-Saint Aquinas. It appears he wants
    to usher in a subtle, mature new age of Mormon thought - rigorous
    yet not impious - akin to what smart Roman Catholics have had for
    centuries.

    Once the reader despairs of ever finding out whether Smith was
    God's own spokesman or the L. Ron Hubbard of his day, it's possible
    to enjoy a tale that's as colorful, suspenseful and unlikely as any
    in American history. Operating on the margins of society, out where
    the traveled roads turned into paths, Smith managed to build a
    major religion from scratch. What's more, unlike other 19th-century
    utopian faiths, Smith's parade kept lengthening over time rather
    than dispersing from the start. Despite bloody harassment from all
    sides, a chronic shortage of funds and almost nonstop challenges to
    his authority, he did Moses one better by leading an exodus and
    amassing a tribe at the same time.

    Bushman's Smith, whatever else he was, comes off as a singularly
    brilliant motivator whose method - call it Dynamic Overextension -
    modern students of management would do well to study. By
    perpetually promising the world to a mixed bag of followers that
    included preachers picked off from other sects, Smith not only
    captured hundreds, then thousands, of minds, he harnessed their
    muscles, too. From New York he led his pilgrims to Ohio, only to
    tell them once they'd settled down that Zion lay in Missouri, much
    farther west, and that many of them would have to pack their things
    again. To make things yet more strenuous for everyone, he
    dispatched bands of missionaries to Europe to convert enough souls
    to populate the place.

    The upshot of always demanding the impossible was chronic
    disappointment and disaffection when Smith's followers walked face
    first into the actual and found it painfully solid, not made of
    cloud. Zion (near modern Kansas City) wasn't the promised land
    Smith had promised but a turbulent, insecure frontier whose
    residents tarred and feathered the hopeful interlopers, torched
    their houses and not infrequently murdered them - all with the
    tacit permission of politicians who feared the swelling Mormon vote
    and the liberal views of the prophet they believed controlled it.
    Though Mormons today tend to be social conservatives, their founder
    was something of a wild-eyed radical, opposing slavery, preaching
    kindness to animals and even promoting an economic order based on
    distributing wealth according to need. His dreams and schemes came
    in cascades of revelation, and when they evaporated, fresh visions
    arrived, many of them assigning blame for the misfortunes on the
    failings of those whom they befell while promising yet grander
    glories if the erring Mormons straightened up.

    The violent confrontations in Missouri and the humiliating retreat
    that brought the Mormons to Illinois (a haven they would have to
    flee after their prophet was assassinated in 1844) turned Smith
    from a primarily religious figure into a full-blown political
    leader. His idealistic pacifism gave way to a practical doctrine of
    self-defense. His mild-mannered tolerance for dissent became a
    cranky insistence on discipline. In tracing this fateful shift from
    seer to czar and oracle to general, Bushman earns a place for his
    biography on the very short shelf reserved for books on Mormonism
    with appeal to initiates and outsiders, too.

    Bushman marks the prophet's time in prison, where the Missourians
    had locked him up on a dubious charge of treason, as the dawn of
    his historical self-consciousness, when he recast the Mormon
    experience as myth and situated his people in a narrative that
    would give them a durable identity, not just a debatable theology:
    "Joseph had conceived a strategy. For the Saints to claim their
    rights, the story of persecution had to be told." Bushman, who
    seems to believe that psychoanalysis can shed a partial light on
    the miraculous, relates Smith's new emphasis on sacred suffering to
    the humiliations of his youth as the son of a scorned and
    struggling farmer. By uniting his private traumas with the public
    tribulations of his church, the first Mormon became the essential
    Mormon, too.

    The split personality diagnosed in Smith by his best-known modern
    biographer, Fawn Brodie, has no place in Bushman's study, whose aim
    is not really to get inside the prophet but to show him from so
    many angles that he achieves a lifelike roundness while retaining
    an impenetrable core, which Bushman suggests is where the holiness
    goes. But as Smith becomes increasingly ambitious about personally
    building and peopling God's kingdom in the American Midwest, it's
    hard not to wonder whether the forces driving him ran on chemical
    and neurological fuels. Bushman may find such medical hindsight
    trivial - a meaningless, anachronistic autopsy - but it might help
    make his behavior seem less ghostly, less unremittingly remote. We
    hear Smith's words but we can't quite picture him speaking them,
    can't quite imagine their flavor and their tone.

    "Awake, O Kings of the earth!" the prophet cried from Nauvoo, Ill.,
    the half-built Mississippi river town that he'd designed to
    accommodate immigrant Saints who would include but not be limited
    to "the polished European, the degraded Hottentot and the shivering
    Laplander." "Come ye, O! come ye with your gold and your silver,"
    he urged. The magnificent gathering Smith craved would also, on
    some level, include the dead, whom living Mormons would baptize in
    absentia and rescue from the spiritual darkness that had descended
    after the time of Christ and hung on until the teenage Smith,
    sitting up late in his parents' house, came face to face with the
    angel Moroni, whose strangely luminous white feet hovered several
    inches above the floor.

    That's where the journey that Bushman chronicles started - with the
    prayers of a boy of rudimentary schooling and no conspicuous talent
    other than a self-proclaimed ability to pinpoint buried caches of
    gems and gold, whose contentious local religious culture crackled
    with rumors of signs and wonders while ceaselessly arguing over
    salvation's fine points until former congregants could no longer
    stand each other and drifted off to join more agreeable sects that
    often disbanded more quickly than they'd been formed. The prayers
    from Smith that sliced through all the bickering constitute the
    inspiring story that Mormon missionaries first lavish on their
    converts, but as the faith of budding Mormons matures they're told
    the story of Smith's murder in 1844 - a date with destruction he
    may have made inevitable when his forces smashed the printing press
    of a newspaper Smith branded libelous and dangerous.

    The incident led to his jailing in nearby Carthage, where the
    governor guaranteed his safety from the latest in a series of mobs
    that saw the prophet as a monstrous devil and were repulsed by his
    polygamous household, disgusted with the uniform that he affected
    while drilling his militia, and perhaps most disturbed by his
    confident declaration that his followers would hold sway over the
    world someday, and perhaps quite soon. They rushed the jail and
    shot him. He staggered to the sill of a high window, tipped
    forward, and toppled to his death while calling out "O Lord my
    God." This cry to heaven drew no recorded response. Perhaps the
    realm that Smith had long conversed with had nothing more to say to
    him, or perhaps he'd fabricated his whole career. For Bushman, the
    fact that his church continues to grow is proof that he was onto
    something big, though. For logicians, this is tantamount to arguing
    that Santa Claus probably exists because he gets millions of
    letters each year from children. But but since logic played almost
    no part in Joseph Smith's life, it may be fitting that it's largely
    absent from this respectful biography as well.

    Walter Kirn is a regular contributor to the Book Review. His most
    recent novel is "Mission to America."

Related Searches

      * [68]Smith, Joseph
      * [69]Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
      * [70]Religion and Churches

References

   68. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=per&v1=SMITH%2C+JOSEPH&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=SMITH%2C+JOSEPH&rt=1%2Cdes%2Corg%2Cper%2Cgeo
   69. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=des&v1=MORMONS+%28CHURCH+OF+JESUS+CHRIST+OF+LATTER%2DDAY+SAINTS%29&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=MORMONS+%28CHURCH+OF+JESUS+CHRIST+OF+LATTER%2DDAY+SAINTS%29&rt=1%2Cdes%2Corg%2Cper%2Cgeo
   70. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=des&v1=RELIGION+AND+CHURCHES&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=RELIGION+AND+CHURCHES&rt=1%2Cdes%2Corg%2Cper%2Cgeo

If you want to retrieve any of the articles that are linked, send me an 
e-message.


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 14 10:32:40 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:32:40 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Discover Mag: We Find Out Why Stupid People Usually
	Die Young
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601140531330.23373@panix3.panix.com>

We Find Out Why Stupid People Usually Die Young
DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 01 | January 2006 | Mind &  Brain

At Last: We Find Out Why Stupid People  Usually Die Young

In 2001 researchers in Great Britain were surprised to discover that 
people with low IQs live shorter lives. But a more startling finding came 
this year with a report that reaction time proved an even stronger 
predictor of life span than IQ.

Ian Deary, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, and Geoff Der, a 
statistician at the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, 
suspected that higher IQ might lead to healthier habits like not smoking 
or healthier environments like safer office jobs. So they looked at data 
on 898 people first tested at about age 56, and then tracked their 
survival until age 70. They found that the link between IQ and mortality 
held strong even after adjusting for education, occupation, social class, 
and smoking.

But the group had also taken button-pressing reaction-time tests, which 
measure how quickly and accurately a person repeatedly makes a simple 
decision. Deary and Der wanted to find out whether there was still a 
relationship between mental ability and survival once a person's reaction 
time was taken into account. "And there wasn't," Deary says. The upshot: 
"We could explain the association between mental ability and survival with 
reaction time."  In this study, the reaction times tested in subjects at 
age 56 appeared to have about as strong a link to chances of survival over 
the next 14 years as did being a smoker.

Why is still uncertain. One possibility is that reaction time slows 
because an undetected disease has begun to compromise performance. 
Another hypothesis is that the differences result from more fundamental, 
lifelong variations in the speed at which people process information. Both 
factors could be at work. For clues, Deary hopes to track a younger sample 
over several years.

The study has sparked interest in what its authors call "cognitive 
epidemiology," the study of associations between mental ability tests and 
health outcomes. "One of the indicators of whether mental ability tests 
are useful is whether they predict things about real life," Deary says, 
and these findings suggest they do.

Marina Krakovsky



From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 14 10:38:30 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:38:30 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: New Light on Origins of Ashkenazi in Europe
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601140537510.23373@panix3.panix.com>

New Light on Origins of Ashkenazi in Europe
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/14/science/14gene.html

    By NICHOLAS WADE

    A new look at the DNA of the Ashkenazi Jewish population has thrown
    light on its still mysterious origins.

    Until now, it had been widely assumed by geneticists that the
    Ashkenazi communities of Northern and Central Europe were founded
    by men who came from the Middle East, perhaps as traders, and by
    the women from each local population whom they took as wives and
    converted to Judaism.

    But the new study, published online this week in The American
    Journal of Human Genetics, suggests that the men and their wives
    migrated to Europe together.

    The researchers, Doron Behar and Karl Skorecki of the Technion and
    Ramban Medical Center in Haifa, and colleagues elsewhere, report
    that just four women, who may have lived 2,000 to 3,000 years ago,
    are the ancestors of 40 percent of Ashkenazis alive today. The
    Technion team's analysis was based on mitochondrial DNA, a genetic
    element that is separate from the genes held in the cell's nucleus
    and that is inherited only through the female line. Because of
    mutations - the switch of one DNA unit for another - that build up
    on the mitochondrial DNA, people can be assigned to branches that
    are defined by which mutations they carry.

    In the case of the Ashkenazi population, the researchers found that
    many branches coalesced to single trees, and so were able to
    identify the four female ancestors.

    Looking at other populations, the Technion team found that some
    people in Egypt, Arabia and the Levant also carried the set of
    mutations that defines one of the four women. They argue that all
    four probably lived originally in the Middle East.

    A study by Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona showed five
    years ago that the men in many Jewish communities around the world
    bore Y chromosomes that were Middle Eastern in origin. This finding
    is widely accepted by geneticists, but there is less consensus
    about the women's origins.

    David Goldstein, now of Duke University, reported in 2002 that the
    mitochondrial DNA of women in Jewish communities around the world
    did not seem to be Middle Eastern, and indeed each community had
    its own genetic pattern. But in some cases the mitochondrial DNA
    was closely related to that of the host community.

    Dr. Goldstein and his colleagues suggested that the genesis of each
    Jewish community, including the Ashkenazis, was that Jewish men had
    arrived from the Middle East, taken wives from the host population
    and converted them to Judaism, after which there was no further
    intermarriage with non-Jews.

    The Technion team suggests a different origin for the Ashkenazi
    community: if the women too are Middle Eastern in origin, they
    would presumably have accompanied their husbands. At least the
    Ashkenazi Jewish community might have been formed by families
    migrating together.

    Dr. Hammer said the new study "moves us forward in trying to
    understand Jewish population history." His own recent research, he
    said, suggests that the Ashkenazi population expanded through a
    series of bottlenecks - events that squeeze a population down to
    small numbers - perhaps as it migrated from the Middle East after
    the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70 to Italy, reaching
    the Rhine Valley in the 10th century.

    But Dr. Goldstein said the new report did not alter his previous
    conclusion. The mitochondrial DNA's of a small, isolated population
    tend to change rapidly as some lineages fall extinct and others
    become more common, a process known as genetic drift. In his view,
    the Technion team has confirmed that genetic drift has played a
    major role in shaping Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA. But the linkage
    with Middle Eastern populations is not statistically significant,
    he said.

    Because of genetic drift, Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA's have
    developed their own pattern, which makes it very hard to tell their
    source. This differs from the patrilineal case, Dr. Goldstein said,
    where there is no question of a Middle Eastern origin.


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 14 10:39:26 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:39:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Reuters: Study Finds Why Jewish Mothers Are so
	Important
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601140538330.23373@panix3.panix.com>

Study Finds Why Jewish Mothers Are so Important
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-science-jews.html

    By REUTERS
    Filed at 12:21 p.m. ET

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four Jewish mothers who lived 1,000 years
    ago in Europe are the ancestors of 40 percent of all Ashkenazi Jews
    alive today, an international team of researchers reported on
    Friday.

    The genetic study of DNA paints a vivid picture of human evolution
    and survival, and correlates with the well-established written and
    oral histories of Jewish migrations, said Dr. Doron Behar of the
    Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, who worked on the study.

    The study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics,
    suggests that some 3.5 million Jews alive today all descended from
    four women.

    For their study, Behar and geneticist Karl Skorecki, with
    collaborators in Finland, France, Estonia, Finland, Portugal,
    Russia and the United States sampled DNA from 11,452 people from 67
    populations.

    ``All subjects reported the birthplace of their mothers,
    grandmothers, and, in most cases, great-grandmothers,'' they wrote
    in their report.

    They looked at mitochondrial DNA, which is found in cells, outside
    the nucleus and away from the DNA that carries most genetic
    instructions. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down virtually unchanged
    from mother to daughter, but it does occasionally mutate, at a
    known rate.

    Researchers can use this molecular clock to track genetic changes
    through time, and used it, for instance, to compute when the
    ``ancestral Eve'' of all living humans lived -- in Africa, about
    180,000 years ago.

    Now they have found four ancestral Jewish mothers.

    ``I think there was some kind of genetic pool that was in the Near
    East,'' Behar said in a telephone interview.

    ``Among this genetic pool there were four maternal lineages, four
    real women, that carried the exact specific mitochondrial DNA
    markers that we can find in mitochondrial DNA today.''

    SETTLING EUROPE

    They, or their direct descendants, moved into Europe.

    ``Then at a certain period, most probably in the 13th century,
    simply by demographic matters, they started to expand
    dramatically,'' Behar said.

    ``Maybe it was because of Jewish tradition, the structure of the
    family that might have been characterized by a high number of
    children.''

    But these four families gave rise to much of the population of
    European Jews -- which exploded from 30,000 people in the 13th
    century to ``something like 9 million just prior to World War II,''
    Behar said.

    The Nazis and their allies killed 6 million Jews during the war,
    but there are now an estimated 8 million Ashkenazi Jews, defined by
    their common northern and central European ancestry, cultural
    traditions and Yiddish language.

    Behar said as they sampled people from Ashkenazi communities around
    the world, the same mitochondrial genetic markers kept popping up.
    They did not find the markers in most of the non-Jewish people they
    sampled, and only a very few were shared with Jews of other origin.

    This particular study does not provide a direct explanation for
    some of the inherited diseases that disproportionately affect Jews
    of European descent, such as breast and colon cancer, because most
    diseases are caused by mutations in nuclear DNA, not the DNA
    studied by Behar's group.

    These genes are believed to date from a ``bottleneck'' phenomenon,
    when populations were squeezed down from large to small and then
    expanded again. Behar and Skorecki's team have found what is known
    as a ``founder effect'' -- when one or a small number of people
    have a huge number of descendants.

    What the study also shows, Behar said, is that Jewish mothers are
    highly valued for a good reason. ``This I could tell you even
    without the paper,'' he said.


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 14 10:42:21 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:42:21 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Hermenaut: Philosophy Hits the Newsstands
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312159180.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Philosophy Hits the Newsstands
http://www.hermenaut.com/a125.shtml
FEATURE | Joshua Glenn | 8/23/0

Philosophy Hits the Newsstands

Recently, in a Wicked Pavilion conference on ex-Harper's editor Willie
Morris, Hermenaut's Josh Glenn invited all present to help him dream
up the perfect periodical. One question that arose in the ensuing
discussion was this: How to publish a magazine, for a general
audience, which takes difficult ideas seriously, and refuses to dumb
them down--without gaining a reputation for being too esoteric? This
conundrum reminded me of Glenn's write-up of two English "popular
philosophy" magazines whose editors he'd interviewed earlier this year
for Britannica.com (as part of a short series in which he reported on
the so called applied philosophy movement in Europe and the United
States). Hoping, then, to fan the flames of the discussion on
intelligent magazines, we've decided to reprint "Philosophy Hits the
Newsstands: A Tale of Two Magazines" (February 9th, 2000) here, on our
site. Please join us in the Wicked Pavilion to discuss the prospect of
a magazine staking its claim in what is called, below, "the
inhospitable no-man's land between the academy and the real world."
--C. Ingoglia, ed.

Philosophy Hits the Newsstands
by Joshua Glenn

There is, by all accounts, an "applied philosophy" movement afoot in
the world today. In times past philosophers from Aristotle and Lao-tzu
to Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume applied philosophical
insights and methods to quotidian matters of diplomacy and public
policy. Over the course of the 20th century, however, philosophical
inquiry--particularly in the United States--grew largely abstract and
detached from public affairs. While a handful of the century's more
public philosophical figures, such as Bertrand Russell, John Dewey,
Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Herbert Marcuse, actively
participated in--indeed, played monumental roles in influencing--the
events of their times, they stand distinctly apart from the prevailing
tendency among their contemporaries to practice philosophy as if in a
cave, impervious to the world-historical upheavals and transformations
taking place around them. Worse, philosophy has been confined almost
exclusively to the isolated (and isolating) groves of academe.

All that seems to be changing, however. In the past few years men and
women who once seemed burdened with doctorates in philosophy and
consigned to the hermetic margins of society have begun engaging in
what's being described as "philosophical practice." Besides practicing
individual client counseling, these brave new philosophical
practitioners are engaging in philosophical discourse with children,
working with schools on educational programming, and consulting with
American corporations on everything from dilemma training to
designing, building, implementing, and maintaining codes of ethics.
Philosopher-led Socratic dialogues, or just plain old philosophical
forums, have been sprouting up in American caf?s, bookstores, senior
centers, libraries, hospices, prisons, and shopping malls. For
philosophers and interested laypeople alike it's an exciting time.

There's just one thing missing, though. What's a movement without a
magazine? There are plenty of scholarly and professional journals and
newsletters devoted to philosophical practice, but where's the Rolling
Stone, the Wired, the Utne Reader of the popular philosophy movement?
Where is the independently-published yet glossy magazine--which
supports itself through subscriptions and ad sales but maintains a
sense of mission--that tackles the burning issues of everyday life in
an informative, enjoyable, and thought-provoking manner, but with all
the clarity, rigor, and precision that define philosophy? Is the very
idea that such a magazine could survive in today's marketplace just a
pipe-dream?

There are, in fact, two contenders. Philosophy Now and The
Philosophers' Magazine, both quarterlies published in London and
distributed in the United Kingdom and the United States, have staked
their claim in what was previously regarded as the inhospitable
no-man's land between the academy and the real world. Which raises
another question: is there room enough, in that peculiar new "media
space," for both magazines? On closer inspection, it turns out that
these two periodicals aren't as similar as they first appear.

In 1990 Rick Lewis was working as a physicist for British Telecom
Laboratories. A couple of years earlier, having decided that he wanted
to be able to look back from his old age and see that he'd spent his
time well, he'd returned to school and earned a master's degree in
philosophy. In 1991, when the British government began slashing
funding for many philosophy departments without a squeak of public
protest, Lewis decided to take action: he started Philosophy Now, a
magazine devoted to what he calls "popular philosophy." ("You can't
expect people to pay taxes for something if they don't understand it
and can't see its importance," he told me.) Today, thanks in part to
the "applied philosophy" movement marching across Europe and the
United States, the magazine's circulation is at 8,000 and growing
rapidly.

Lewis remarks that "one way you can tell that an idea is successful is
that sooner or later people take it up and try to develop variations
on the theme. For almost seven years this didn't happen and I was
starting to worry why not!" In 1997 Julian Baggini, a disaffected
philosophy Ph.D., relieved Lewis of his worries on this matter.
Baggini told his friend Jeremy Stangroom, a Ph.D. in sociology, that
he was dissatisfied that no one was publishing a philosophy magazine
"that was both genuinely a magazine," as he put it to me recently,
"and genuinely philosophy." Stangroom, who'd become fascinated with
the Internet, launched The Philosophers' Web Magazine that spring, and
Baggini launched its sister publication, The Philosophers' Magazine, a
few months later. Today, their Web site receives between 2,500 and
3,000 unique visitors per week, and their magazine's circulation is
already at 3,500--double what it was a year ago.

Both magazines publish theme issues (on heavy-duty topics like "The
Meaning of Life" and "The New Problem of Evil"), but they leaven the
gravity of their feature articles with humorous cartoons, titles, and
short features. Commenting on this, Lewis argues that The
Philosophers' Magazine has followed in his publication's footsteps.
Baggini and Stangroom respond that Philosophy Now's redesign in the
spring of 1998 was clearly an attempt to reposition itself in response
to the challenge of its upstart rival. It's true: at the level of
format, it's extremely difficult to distinguish between the two
publications. Their covers and layouts are nearly identical, right
down to the typefaces--one of the perils of desktop publishing,
perhaps. Lewis insists that Philosophy Now's redesign was strictly
market-driven. "There is little point in producing a magazine to
popularize philosophy if nobody has a chance to read it," he explained
in an editorial at the time, "and to be displayed by the big retail
chains Philosophy Now really does have to look as slick as the
style-obsessed citizens of the '90s have come to expect."

Although the two popular philosophy magazines are eerily similar in
means, they diverge sharply when it comes to the question of ends.
Stangroom likes to say that the point of The Philosophers' Magazine,
both online and off, is to "break down some of the barriers that exist
between academia and the intelligent world outside." And Lewis might
describe Philosophy Now in similar terms. It's clear, however, that
whereas Philosophy Now wants to lead academics out of their ivory
towers into the light of day, The Philosophers' Magazine is more
concerned with inviting interested laypeople inside for a guided tour.

Philosophy Now, for example, invites prominent (mostly British)
philosophers--including Antony Flew, J.J.C. Smart, Richard Taylor, and
Mary Midgley--to write original articles on matters of everyday
importance, in a manner accessible to an intelligent magazine-reading
public. The Philosophers' Magazine, on the other hand, leans toward
the interview form: leading philosophers are encouraged to be clear,
but not necessarily un esoteric. Thus, in the Winter 1999/2000 issue
of Philosophy Now, we find Midgley weighing in on the "selfish gene"
debate with the elegant proposition that although everyone has "a Don
Giovanni somewhere inside him," we might ask why "there is usually
also, for a start, at least a Figaro, a Tamino, and a Sarastro, as
well as a whole crowd of unexpected characters whom the tide of life
is continually producing?" In the Winter 2000 issue of The
Philosophers' Magazine, on the other hand, we find Baggini asking the
eminent English philosopher Stuart Hampshire, "Aren't the procedures
by which you undertake [the conflict resolution mechanism that you
advocate] in some sense dependent upon the kinds of principles
established in deductive reasoning, such as the law of
non-contradiction?" A scholarly philosophy journal might get even more
technical than this, of course, but it isn't "popular philosophy."

It's also indicative of the difference between the magazines that
whereas Philosophy Now has gone to a good deal of trouble and expense
to get itself shelved at ordinary newsstands around the world, The
Philosophers' Magazine can for the most part only be found in
specialty bookstores. Dr. Charles Echelbarger, professor of philosophy
at the State University of New York-Oswego and a member of Philosophy
Now's U.S. editorial board since 1998, expresses what could be the
magazine's mission statement when he admits to having become
"increasingly frustrated over the fact that it is so difficult to
explain to people outside academic life what I do." Perhaps this
explains the helpful sidebar to each issue's editorial, which provides
a guide to "philosophy in a nutshell." The Philosophers' Magazine
turns up its nose at crutches like this; it's edited for people who
already know exactly what Echelbarger does. "Bertrand's Break," its
regular crossword puzzle--named after Bertrand Russell--challenges
readers to name, for example, a "Proponent of Theory of Relativity" or
a "Follower of Plotinus." This is fun, but decidedly in-crowd, stuff.

After reading half-a-dozen of the most recent issues of Philosophy Now
and The Philosophers' Magazine, I felt a burning need to ask the
editors of both magazines about the ends of philosophy itself. "What's
it for, anyway?" I asked in an e-mail. "And are academic philosophers
doing it right?"

Lewis replied that, although we may be living in the golden age of
democracy, this is also the golden age of spin-doctors and lobbyists.
So "clear thinking and a questioning, skeptical (rather than cynical)
attitude to life are not merely relevant--they are vital survival
skills!" Lewis doesn't want to be lumped in with those in the "applied
philosophy" movement who insist that academic philosophy is useless.
Although he's highly critical of professional philosophers "who've
forgotten how to communicate in ordinary English," Lewis's editorial
in Philosophy Now's Winter 1999/2000 issue insists that, by training
their students to have "a clear head and the courage to think
fundamental things through for [themselves]," dedicated, scholarly
teachers of philosophy are an asset to society.

In their responses to my question, Baggini and Stangroom were careful
to note that The Philosophers' Magazine covers philosophy as it is,
not as it ought to be. "I don't think people like me who have
effectively given up doing original philosophy for writing about it
have much right to comment on what the academy is up to," Baggini
insists. That said, however, he agrees with Lewis that philosophy can
be useful to everyday living, but notes that "a great deal of
philosophy has no relevance whatsoever to how we as individuals live
our lives, and if we don't accept that we're going to falsely accuse
philosophers of letting us down." Stangroom admits to having a more
jaundiced view about academic philosophy. "It seems to me that its
strength is its scholarship--philosophers almost invariably know the
minutiae of the philosophical canon," he offers. "However, that is
also its weakness, in that they frequently seem to know little else."
Stangroom and Baggini agree, though, that the greatest contribution
philosophy can make to society is "to introduce clearer, sharper
thinking on the issues which bother us, whether they're moral,
existential, legal, or epistemological."

In the end the editors of both publications insist that it would be a
fantasy to suggest that they're bitter rivals. Dr. Timothy J. Madigan,
another member of Philosophy Now's U.S. editorial board, sums up the
situation by noting that "it is important to try to return to the
Socratic tradition of philosophy in the marketplace, while not unduly
denigrating the Platonic tradition of academic philosophy per se.
There's no need to perpetuate a false dilemma--there's enough food for
thought at all levels for everyone to join the banquet." And, after
all, success for either publication is undoubtedly good for the other,
because it expands the circle of people interested in philosophy.
"Maybe," Madigan suggests hopefully, "the western world is ready for a
full-blown philosophical explosion."
   _________________________________________________________________

A version of this article originally appeared on the Web site
Britannica.com.

From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 14 10:42:02 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:42:02 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] SW: Dinosaurs and Grass
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312159050.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Paleontology: Dinosaurs and Grass
http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw051223-4.htm

[And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, 
and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, 
upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb 
yielding seed after his kind, and the three yielding fruit, whose seed was 
in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening 
and the morning were the third day. --Genesis 1:11-13

[And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, 
which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every 
winged fowl after his kind: and saw that it was good. And God blessed 
them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, 
and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and morning were the 
second day. --Genesis 1:21-23

[Paleontologists, however, hold that there were sea animals long before 
there was grasss. In either case, the role of grass is generally 
overlooked.]

    The following points are made by D.R. Piperno and H-D. Sues (Science
    2005 310:1126):
    1) Grasses (family Poaceae or Gramineae), with about 10,000 extant
    species, are among the largest and most ecologically dominant families
    of flowering plants, and today provide staple foods for much of
    humankind. Dinosaurs, the dominant mega-herbivores during most of the
    Mesozoic Era (65 to 251 million years ago), are similarly one of the
    largest and best known groups of organisms. However, the possible
    coevolution of grasses and dinosaurs has never been studied. New
    work[1] reports analysis of phytoliths -- microscopic pieces of silica
    formed in plant cells -- in coprolites that the authors attribute to
    titanosaurid sauropods that lived in central India about 65 to 71
    million years ago. Their data indicate that those dinosaurs ate
    grasses.
    2) Part of the difficulty in studying the question of dinosaur-grass
    coevolution results from the poor quality of the fossil record for
    early grasses. The earliest unequivocal grass fossils date to the
    Paleocene-Eocene boundary, about 56 million years ago [2,3], well
    after the demise of nonavian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous
    Period. Pollen and macrofossils of Poaceae are uncommon in sedimentary
    strata until the middle Miocene, about 11 to 16 million years ago,
    when the family is thought to have undergone considerable evolutionary
    diversification and ecological expansion [2]. Thus, dioramas in
    museums have long depicted dinosaurs as grazing on conifers, cycads,
    and ferns in landscapes without grasses. The work of Prasad et al [1]
    is the first unambiguous evidence that the Poaceae originated and had
    already diversified during the Cretaceous. The research shows that
    phytoliths, which have become a major topic of study in Quaternary
    research over the last 20 years [4,5], can provide a formidable means
    for reconstructing vegetation and animal diets for much earlier time
    periods when early angiosperms were diversifying. These results will
    force reconsideration of many long-standing assumptions about grass
    evolution, dinosaurian ecology, and early plant-herbivore
    interactions.
    3) Researchers have long known that grasses make distinctive kinds of
    phytoliths in the epidermis of their leaves and leaflike coverings
    that surround their flowers. More recent work has examined in greater
    detail phytolith characteristics from a large set of grasses
    comprising taxa representing the entire range of diversification
    within the family, showing that discriminations at the subfamily,
    tribe, and genus levels are often possible [1,4,5]. In addition,
    publication of a well-resolved consensus phylogeny of the Poaceae by
    the Grass Phylogeny Working Group (GPWG) considerably advances our
    overall understanding of the evolutionary history of grasses and leads
    to improved interpretations of the early grass fossil record. For
    example, by mapping the phytolith characters that discriminate clades
    and subfamilies of extant taxa onto this phylogenetic tree, we can
    infer how phytolith morphology changed at the origin of major clades
    and lineages.
    References (abridged):
    1. V. Prasad, C. A. E. Str?mberg, H. Alimohammadian, A. Sahni, Science
    310, 1177 (2005)
    2. B. F. Jacobs, J. D. Kingston, L. L. Jacobs, Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard. 86,
    590 (1999)
    3. E. A. Kellogg, Plant Physiol. 125, 1198 (2001)
    4. D. R. Piperno, Phytolith Analysis: An Archaeological and Geological
    Perspective (Academic Press, San Diego, CA, 1988)
    5. G. G. Fredlund, L. T. Tieszen, J. Biogeogr. 21, 321 (1994)
    Science http://www.sciencemag.org
    --------------------------------
    Related Material:
    DINOSAURS, DRAGONS, AND DWARFS: THE EVOLUTION OF MAXIMAL BODY SIZE
    The following points are made by G.P. Burness et al (Proc. Nat. Acad.
    Sci. 2001 98:14518):
    1) The size and taxonomic affiliation of the largest locally present
    species ("top species") of terrestrial vertebrate vary greatly among
    faunas, raising many unsolved questions. Why are the top species on
    continents bigger than those on even the largest islands, bigger in
    turn than those on small islands? Why are the top mammals marsupials
    on Australia but placentals on the other continents? Why is the
    world's largest extant lizard (the Komodo dragon) native to a
    modest-sized Indonesian island, of all unlikely places? Why is the top
    herbivore larger than the top carnivore at most sites? Why were the
    largest dinosaurs bigger than any modern terrestrial species?
    2) A useful starting point is the observation of Marquet and Taper
    (1998), based on three data sets (Great Basin mountaintops, Sea of
    Cortez islands, and the continents), that the size of a landmass's top
    mammal increases with the landmass's area. To explain this pattern,
    they noted that populations numbering less than some minimum number of
    individuals are at high risk of extinction, but larger individuals
    require more food and hence larger home ranges, thus only large
    landmasses can support at least the necessary minimum number of
    individuals of larger-bodied species. If this reasoning were correct,
    one might expect body size of the top species also to depend on other
    correlates of food requirements and population densities, such as
    trophic level and metabolic rate. Hence the authors assembled a data
    set consisting of the top terrestrial herbivores and carnivores on 25
    oceanic islands and the 5 continents to test 3 quantitative
    predictions:
    a) Within a trophic level, body mass of the top species will increase
    with land area, with a slope predictable from the slope of the
    relation between body mass and home range area.
    b) For a given land area, the top herbivore will be larger than the
    top carnivore by a factor predictable from the greater amounts of food
    available to herbivores than to carnivores.
    c) Within a trophic level and for a given area of landmass, top
    species that are ectotherms will be larger than ones that are
    endotherms, by a factor predictable from ectotherms' lower food
    requirements.
    3) The authors point out that on reflection, one can think of other
    factors likely to perturb these predictions, such as environmental
    productivity, over-water dispersal, evolutionary times required for
    body size changes, and changing landmass area with geological time.
    Indeed, the database of the authors does suggest effects of these
    other factors. The authors point out they propose their three
    predictions not because they expect them always to be correct, but
    because they expect them to describe broad patterns that must be
    understood in order to be able to detect and interpret deviations from
    those patterns.
    Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. http://www.pnas.org
    --------------------------------
    Related Material:
    ECOLOGY: ON FOOD-WEB INTERACTIONS
    The following points are made by A.R. Ives and B.J. Cardinale (Nature
    2004 429:174):
    1) Growing concern about how loss of biodiversity will affect
    ecosystems has stimulated numerous studies(1-5). Although most studies
    have assumed that species go extinct randomly, species often go
    extinct in order of their sensitivity to a stress that intensifies
    through time (such as climate change).
    2) For two reasons, interactions among species make it difficult to
    predict how ecological communities will respond to environmental
    degradation. First, the sensitivity of an individual species to
    environmental degradation depends not only on the direct impact of
    degradation on that species, but also on the indirect effects on that
    species caused by changes in densities of other species. For example,
    environmental degradation may decrease the density of competitors
    and/or predators of a species, thereby causing a compensatory increase
    in the density of that species. Second, as species go extinct, links
    within the food web are severed, changing the pathways through which
    indirect effects operate. Changes in food-web structure depend on the
    order in which species go extinct, making it difficult to extrapolate
    from studies that assume extinctions are random to real communities
    facing progressively intensifying stress from environmental
    degradation.
    3) To disentangle the effects of species interactions on the ability
    of communities to tolerate environmental degradation, the authors used
    mathematical simulations to compare how communities resist changes in
    abundance as species go extinct randomly versus going extinct in order
    of their sensitivity to an environmental stress. The authors
    considered communities with three trophic topologies that span a range
    of community types: tritrophic communities with plants, herbivores,
    and predators; monotrophic communities comprising just competitors;
    and communities with arbitrary topology containing prey and predators,
    competitors, and mutualists. For each topology, the authors
    constructed 1000 communities in which interaction strengths were
    chosen from random distributions under the constraints of the
    specified topology. The direct effects of the stressor on each species
    were also selected at random, but constrained so that the stressor had
    a negative effect on all species by decreasing their population growth
    rates.
    4) The authors demonstrate that the consequences of random and ordered
    extinctions differ. Both depend on food-web interactions that create
    compensation; that is, the increase of some species when their
    competitors and/or predators decrease in density due to environmental
    stress. Compensation makes communities as a whole more resistant to
    stress by reducing changes in combined species densities. As
    extinctions progress, the potential for compensation is depleted, and
    communities become progressively less resistant. For ordered
    extinctions, however, this depletion is offset and communities retain
    their resistance, because the surviving species have greater average
    resistance to the stress. Despite extinctions being ordered, changes
    in the food web with successive extinctions make it difficult to
    predict which species will show compensation in the future. This
    unpredictability argues for "whole-ecosystem" approaches to
    biodiversity conservation, as seemingly insignificant species may
    become important after other species go extinct.
    References (abridged):
    1. Sala, O. E. et al. Global biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100.
    Science 287, 1170-1174 (2000)
    2. Chapin, F. S. I. et al. Consequences of changing biodiversity.
    Nature 405, 234-242 (2000)
    3. Ehrlich, P. & Ehrlich, A. Extinction (Random House, New York, 1981)
    4. Terborgh, J. et al. Ecological meltdown in predator-free forest
    fragments. Science 294, 1923-1926 (2001)
    5. Naeem, S., Thompson, L. J., Lawler, S. P., Lawton, J. H. & Woodfin,
    R. M. Declining biodiversity can alter the performance of ecosystems.
    Nature 368, 734-737 (1994)
    Nature http://www.nature.com/nature

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 15 23:47:15 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 18:47:15 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Albert Hofmann: LSD - My Problem Child
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601151838310.3352@panix2.panix.com>

Albert Hofmann: LSD - My Problem Child
http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/ et seq.

    [1]Foreword
    [2]Translator's Preface

    1. [3]How LSD Originated
    1.1. [4]First Chemical Explorations
    1.2. [5]Ergot
    1.3. [6]Lysergic Acid and Its Derivatives
    1.4. [7]Discovery of the Psyhic Effects of LSD
    1.5. [8]Self-Experiments

    2. [9]LSD in Animal Experiments and Biological Research
    2.1. [10]How Toxic Is LSD?
    2.2. [11]Pharmacological Properties of LSD

    3. [12]Chemical Modifications of LSD

    4. [13]Use of LSD in Psychiatry
    4.1. [14]First Self-Experiment by a Psychiatrist
    4.2. [15]The Psychic Effects of LSD

    5. [16]From Remedy to Inebriant
    5.1. [17]Nonmedical Use of LSD
    5.2. [18]Sandoz Stops LSD Distribution
    5.3. [19]Dangers of Nomnedicinal LSD Experiments
    5.4. [20]Psychotic Reactions
    5.5. [21]LSD from the Black Market
    5.6. [22]The Case of Dr. Leary
    5.7. [23]Meeting with Timothy Leary
    5.8. [24]Travels in the Universe of the Soul
    5.9. [25]Dance of the Spirits in the Wind
    5.10. [26]Polyp from the Deep
    5.11. [27]LSD Experience of a Painter
    5.12. [28]A Joyous Song of Being

    6. [29]The Mexican Relatives of LSD
    6.1. [30]The Sacred Mushroom Teonanacatl
    6.2. [31]Psilocybin and Psilocin
    6.3. [32]A Voyage into the Universe of the Soul with Psilocybin
    6.4. [33]Where Time Stands Still
    6.5. [34]The "Magic Morning Glory" Ololiuhqui
    6.6. [35]In Search of the Magic Plant "Ska Maria Pastora" in the
    Mazatec Country
    6.7. [36]Ride through the Sierra Mazateca
    6.8. [37]A Mushroom Ceremony

    7. [38]Radiance from Ernst Junger
    7.1. [39]Ambivalence of Drug Use
    7.2. [40]An Experiment with Psilocybin
    7.3. [41]Another LSD Session

    8. [42]Meeting with Aldous Huxley

    9. [43]Correspondence with the Poet-Physician Walter Vogt

    10. [44]Various Visitors

    11. [45]LSD Experience and Reality
    11.1. [46]Valious Realities
    11.2. [47]Mystery and Myth
      ______________________________________________________________

    Formatted in HTML by [48]kk at sci.fi

References

    1. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/foreword.html
    2. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/preface.html
    3. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter1.html
    4. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter1.html#1
    5. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter1.html#2
    6. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter1.html#3
    7. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter1.html#4
    8. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter1.html#5
    9. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter2.html
   10. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter2.html#1
   11. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter2.html#2
   12. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter3.html
   13. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter4.html
   14. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter4.html#1
   15. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter4.html#2
   16. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html
   17. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#1
   18. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#2
   19. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#3
   20. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#4
   21. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#5
   22. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#6
   23. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#7
   24. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#8
   25. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#9
   26. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#10
   27. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#11
   28. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter5.html#12
   29. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter6.html
   30. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter6.html#1
   31. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter6.html#2
   32. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter6.html#3
   33. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter6.html#4
   34. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter6.html#5
   35. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter6.html#6
   36. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter6.html#7
   37. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter6.html#8
   38. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter7.html
   39. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter7.html#1
   40. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter7.html#2
   41. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter7.html#3
   42. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter8.html
   43. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter9.html
   44. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter10.html
   45. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter11.html
   46. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter11.html#1
   47. http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter11.html#2
   48. mailto:kk at sci.fi

      _________________________________________________________________

                                    Foreword

    There are experiences that most of us are hesitant to speak about,
    because they do not conform to everyday reality and defy rational
    explanation. These are not particular external occurrences, but rather
    events of our inner lives, which are generally dismissed as figments
    of the imagination and barred from our memory. Suddenly, the familiar
    view of our surroundings is transformed in a strange, delightful, or
    alarming way: it appears to us in a new light, takes on a special
    meaning. Such an experience can be as light and fleeting as a breath
    of air, or it can imprint itself deeply upon our minds.

    One enchantment of that kind, which I experienced in childhood, has
    remained remarkably vivid in my memory ever since. It happened on a
    May morning - I have forgotten the year - but I can still point to the
    exact spot where it occurred, on a forest path on Martinsberg above
    Baden, Switzerland. As I strolled through the freshly greened woods
    filled with bird song and lit up by the morning sun, all at once
    everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light. Was this something I
    had simply failed to notice before? Was I suddenly discovering the
    spring forest as it actually looked? It shone with the most beautiful
    radiance, speaking to the heart, as though it wanted to encompass me
    in its majesty. I was filled with an indescribable sensation of joy,
    oneness, and blissful security.

    I have no idea how long I stood there spellbound. But I recall the
    anxious concern I felt as the radiance slowly dissolved and I hiked
    on: how could a vision that was so real and convincing, so directly
    and deeply felt - how could it end so soon? And how could I tell
    anyone about it, as my overflowing joy compelled me to do, since I
    knew there were no words to describe what I had seen? It seemed
    strange that I, as a child, had seen something so marvelous, something
    that adults obviously did not perceive - for I had never heard them
    mention it.

    While still a child, I experienced several more of these deeply
    euphoric moments on my rambles through forest and meadow. It was these
    experiences that shaped the main outlines of my world view and
    convinced me of the existence of a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable
    reality that was hidden from everyday sight.

    I was often troubled in those days, wondering if I would ever, as an
    adult, be able to communicate these experiences; whether I would have
    the chance to depict my visions in poetry or paintings. But knowing
    that I was not cut out to be a poet or artist, I assumed I would have
    to keep these experiences to myself, important as they were to me.

    Unexpectedly - though scarcely by chance - much later, in middle age,
    a link was established between my profession and these visionary
    experiences from childhood.

    Because I wanted to gain insight into the structure and essence of
    matter, I became a research chemist. Intrigued by the plant world
    since early childhood, I chose to specialize in research on the
    constituents of medicinal plants. In the course of this career I was
    led to the psychoactive, hallucination-causing substances, which under
    certain conditions can evoke visionary states similar to the
    spontaneous experiences just described. The most important of these
    hallucinogenic substances has come to be known as LSD. Hallucinogens,
    as active compounds of considerable scientific interest, have gained
    entry into medicinal research, biology, and psychiatry, and later -
    especially LSD also obtained wide diffusion in the drug culture.

    In studying the literature connected with my work, I became aware of
    the great universal significance of visionary experience. It plays a
    dominant role, not only in mysticism and the history of religion, but
    also in the creative process in art, literature, and science. More
    recent investigations have shown that many persons also have visionary
    experiences in daily life, though most of us fail to recognize their
    meaning and value. Mystical experiences, like those that marked my
    childhood, are apparently far from rare.

    There is today a widespread striving for mystical experience, for
    visionary breakthroughs to a deeper, more comprehensive reality than
    that perceived by our rational, everyday consciousness. Efforts to
    transcend our materialistic world view are being made in various ways,
    not only by the adherents to Eastern religious movements, but also by
    professional psychiatrists, who are adopting such profound spiritual
    experiences as a basic therapeutic principle.

    I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual
    crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be
    remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift
    from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their
    environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an
    all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a
    reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all
    of creation.

    Everything that can contribute to such a fundamental alteration in our
    perception of reality must therefore command earnest attention.
    Foremost among such approaches are the various methods of meditation,
    either in a religious or a secular context, which aim to deepen the
    consciousness of reality by way of a total mystical experience.
    Another important, but still controversial, path to the same goal is
    the use of the consciousness-altering properties of hallucinogenic
    psychopharmaceuticals. LSD finds such an application in medicine, by
    helping patients in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy to perceive their
    problems in their true significance.

    Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and
    related hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary
    experiences, entails dangers that must not be underestimated.
    Practitioners must take into account the peculiar effects of these
    substances, namely their ability to influence our consciousness, the
    innermost essence of our being. The history of LSD to date amply
    demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can ensue when its
    profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken for a
    pleasure drug. Special internal and external advance preparations are
    required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful
    experience. Wrong and inappropriate use has caused LSD to become my
    problem child.

    It is my desire in this book to give a comprehensive picture of LSD,
    its origin, its effects, and its dangers, in order to guard against
    increasing abuse of this extraordinary drug. I hope thereby to
    emphasize possible uses of LSD that are compatible with its
    characteristic action. I believe that if people would learn to use
    LSD's vision-inducing capability more wisely, under suitable
    conditions, in medical practice and in conjunction with meditation,
    then in the future this problem child could become a wonder child.
      _________________________________________________________________

                              Translator's Preface

    Numerous accounts of the discovery of LSD have been published in
    English; none, unfortunately, have been completely accurate. Here, at
    last, the father of LSD details the history of his "problem child" and
    his long and fruitful career as a research chemist. In a real sense,
    this book is the inside story of the birth of the Psychedelic Age, and
    it cannot be denied that we have here a highly candid and personal
    insight into one of the most important scientific discoveries of our
    time, the signiflcance of which has yet to dawn on mankind.

    Surpassing its historical value is the immense philosophical import of
    this work. Never before has a chemist, an expert in the most
    materialistic of the sciences, advanced a Weltanschauung of such a
    mystical and transcendental nature. LSD, psilocybin, and the other
    hallucinogens do indeed, as Albert Hofmann asserts, constitute
    "cracks" in the edifice of materialistic rationality, cracks we would
    do well to explore and perhaps widen.

    As a writer, it gives me great satisfaction to know that by this book
    the American reader interested in hallucinogens will be introduced to
    the work of Rudolf Gelpke, Ernst Junger, and Walter Vogt, writers who
    are all but unknown here. With the notable exceptions of Huxley and
    Wasson, English and American writers on the hallucinogenic experience
    have been far less distinguished and eloquent than they.

    This translation has been carefully overseen by Albert Hofmann, which
    made my task both simpler and more enjoyable. I am beholden to R.
    Gordon Wasson for checking the chapters on LSD's "Mexican relatives"
    and on "Ska Maria Pastora" for accuracy and style.

    Two chapters of this book - "How LSD Originated" and "LSD Experience
    and Reality" - were presented by Albert Hofmann as apaperbefore the
    international conference "Hallucinogens, Shamanism and Modern Life" in
    San Francisco on the afternoon of Saturday, September 30, 1978. As a
    part of the conference proceedings, the first chapter has been
    published in the Journal of Psychedetic Drugs, Vol. 11 (1-2), 1979.

    Jonathan Ott
    Vashon Island, Washington
      _________________________________________________________________

                              1. How LSD Originated

    In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those
    who are prepared.

    Louis Pasteur

    Time and again I hear or read that LSD was discovered by accident.
    This is only partly true. LSD came into being within a systematic
    research program, and the "accident" did not occur until much later:
    when LSD was already five years old, I happened to experience its
    unforeseeable effects in my own body - or rather, in my own mind.

    Looking back over my professional career to trace the influential
    events and decisions that eventually steered my work toward the
    synthesis of LSD, I realize that the most decisive step was my choice
    of employment upon completion of my chemistry studies. If that
    decision had been different, then this substance, which has become
    known the world over, might never have been created. In order to tell
    the story of the origin of LSD, then, I must also touch briefly on my
    career as a chemist, since the two developments are inextricably
    interreleted.

    In the spring of 1929, on concluding my chemistry studies at the
    University of Zurich, I joined the Sandoz Company's
    pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratory in Basel, as a co-worker
    with Professor Arthur Stoll, founder and director of the
    pharmaceutical department. I chose this position because it afforded
    me the opportunity to work on natural products, whereas two other job
    offers from chemical firms in Basel had involved work in the field of
    synthetic chemistry.

First Chemical Explorations

    My doctoral work at Zurich under Professor Paul Karrer had already
    given me one chance to pursue my intrest in plant and animal
    chemistry. Making use of the gastrointestinal juice of the vineyard
    snail, I accomplished the enzymatic degradation of chitin, the
    structural material of which the shells, wings, and claws of insects,
    crustaceans, and other lower animals are composed. I was able to
    derive the chemical structure of chitin from the cleavage product, a
    nitrogen-containing sugar, obtained by this degradation. Chitin turned
    out to be an analogue of cellulose, the structural material of plants.
    This important result, obtained after only three months of research,
    led to a doctoral thesis rated "with distiction."

    When I joined the Sandoz firm, the staff of the
    pharmaceutical-chemical department was still rather modest in number.
    Four chemists with doctoral degrees worked in research, three in
    production.

    In Stoll's laboratory I found employment that completely agreed with
    me as a research chemist. The objective that Professor Stoll had set
    for his pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratories was to isolate
    the active principles (i.e., the effective constituents) of known
    medicinal plants to produce pure speciments of these substances. This
    is particularly important in the case of medicinal plants whose active
    principles are unstable, or whose potency is subject to great
    variation, which makes an exact dosage difficult. But if the active
    principle is available in pure form, it becomes possible to
    manufacture a stable pharmaceutical preparation, exactly quantifiable
    by weight. With this in mind, Professor Stoll had elected to study
    plant substances of recognized value such as the substances from
    foxglove (Digitalis), Mediterranean squill (Scilla maritima), and
    ergot of rye (Claviceps purpurea or Secale cornutum), which, owning to
    their instability and uncertain dosage, nevertheless, had been little
    used in medicine.

    My first years in the Sandoz laboratories were devoted almost
    exclusively to studying the active principles of Mediterranean squill.
    Dr. Walter Kreis, one of Professor Stoll's earliest associates,
    lounched me in this field of research. The most important constituents
    of Mediterranean squill already existed in pure form. Their active
    agents, as well as those of woolly foxglove (Digitalis lanata), had
    been isolated and purified, chiefly by Dr. Kreis, with extraordinary
    skill.

    The active principles of Mediterranean squill belong to the group of
    cardioactive glycosides (glycoside = sugar-containing substance) and
    serve, as do those of foxglove, in the treatment of cardiac
    insufficiency. The cardiac glycosides are extremely active substances.
    Because the therapeutic and the toxic doses differ so little, it
    becomes especially important here to have an exact dosage, based on
    pure compounds.

    At the beginning of my investigations, a pharmaceutical preparation
    with Scilla glycosides had already been introduced into therapeutics
    by Sandoz; however, the chemical structure of these active compounds,
    with the exception of the sugar portion, remained largely unknown.

    My main contribution to the Scilla research, in which I participated
    with enthusiasm, was to elucidate the chemical structure of the common
    nucleus of Scilla glycosides, showing on the one hand their
    differences from the Digitalis glycosides, and on the other hand their
    close structural relationship with the toxic principles isolated from
    skin glands of toads. In 1935, these studies were temporarily
    concluded.

    Looking for a new field of research, I asked Professor Stoll to let me
    continue the investigations on the alkaloids of ergot, which he had
    begun in 1917 and which had led directly to the isolation of
    ergotamine in 1918. Ergotamine, discovered by Stoll, was the first
    ergot alkaloid obtained in pure chemical form. Although ergotamine
    quickly took a significant place in therapeutics (under the trade name
    Gynergen) as a hemostatic remedy in obstetrics and as a medicament in
    the treatment of migraine, chemical research on ergot in the Sandoz
    laboratories was abandoned after the isolation of ergotamine and the
    determination of its empirical formula. Meanwhile, at the beginning of
    the thirties, English and American laboratories had begun to determine
    the chemical structure of ergot alkaloids. They had also discovered a
    new, watersoluble ergot alkaloid, which could likewise be isolated
    from the mother liquor of ergotamine production. So I thought it was
    high time that Sandoz resumed chemical research on ergot alkaloids,
    unless we wanted to risk losing our leading role in a field of
    medicinal research, which was already becoming so important.

    Professor Stoll granted my request, with some misgivings: "I must warn
    you of the difficulties you face in working with ergot alkaloids.
    These are-exceedingly sensitive, easily decomposed substances, less
    stable than any of the compounds you have investigated in the cardiac
    glycoside field. But you are welcome to try."

    And so the switches were thrown, and I found myself engaged in a field
    of study that would become the main theme of my professional career. I
    have never forgotten the creative joy, the eager anticipation I felt
    in embarking on the study of ergot alkaloids, at that time a
    relatively uncharted field of research.

Ergot

    It may be helpful here to give some background information about ergot
    itself.[For further information on ergot, readers should refer to the
    monographs of G. Barger, Ergot and Ergotism (Gurney and Jackson,
    London, 1931 ) and A. Hofmann, Die Mutterkornalkaloide (F. Enke
    Verlag, Stuttgart, 1964). The former is a classical presentation of
    the history of the drug, while the latter emphasizes the chemical
    aspects.] It is produced by a lower fungus (Claviceps purpurea) that
    grows parasitically on rye and, to a lesser extent, on other species
    of grain and on wild grasses. Kernels infested with this fungus
    develop into light-brown to violet-brown curved pegs (sclerotia) that
    push forth from the husk in place of normal grains. Ergot is described
    botanically as a sclerotium, the form that the ergot fungus takes in
    winter. Ergot of rye (Secale cornutum) is the variety used
    medicinally.

    Ergot, more than any other drug, has a fascinating history, in the
    course of which its role and meaning have been reversed: once dreaded
    as a poison, in the course of time it has changed to a rich storehouse
    of valuable remedies. Ergot first appeared on the stage of history in
    the early Middle Ages, as the cause of outbreaks of mass poisonings
    affecting thousands of persons at a time. The illness, whose
    connection with ergot was for a long time obscure, appeared in two
    characteristic forms, one gangrenous (ergotismus gangraenosus) and the
    other convulsive (ergotismus convulsivus). Popular names for ergotism
    - such as "mal des ardents," "ignis sacer," "heiliges Feuer," or "St.
    Anthony's fire" - refer to the gangrenous form of the disease. The
    patron saint of ergotism victims was St. Anthony, and it was primarily
    the Order of St. Anthony that treated these patients.

    Until recent times, epidemic-like outbreaks of ergot poisoning have
    been recorded in most European countries including certain areas of
    Russia. With progress in agriculture, and since the realization, in
    the seventeenth century, that ergot-containing bread was the cause,
    the frequency and extent of ergotism epidemics diminished
    considerably. The last great epidemic occurred in certain areas of
    southern Russia in the years 1926-27. [The mass poisoning in the
    southern French city of Pont-St. Esprit in the year 1951, which many
    writers have attributed to ergot-containing bread, actually had
    nothing to do with ergotism. It rather involved poisoning by an
    organic mercury compound that was utilized for disinfecting seed.]

    The first mention of a medicinal use of ergot, namely as an ecbolic (a
    medicament to precipitate childbirth), is found in the herbal of the
    Frankfurt city physician Adam Lonitzer (Lonicerus) in the year 1582.
    Although ergot, as Lonitzer stated, had been used since olden times by
    midwives, it was not until 1808 that this drug gained entry into
    academic medicine, on the strength of a work by the American physician
    John Stearns entitled Account of the Putvis Parturiens, a Remedy for
    Quickening Childbirth. The use of ergot as an ecbolic did not,
    however, endure. Practitioners became aware quite early of the great
    danger to the child, owing primarily to the uncertainty of dosage,
    which when too high led to uterine spasms. From then on, the use of
    ergot in obstetrics was confined to stopping postpartum hemorrhage
    (bleeding after childbirth).

    It was not until ergot's recognition in various pharmacopoeias during
    the first half of the nineteenth century that the first steps were
    taken toward isolating the active principles of the drug. However, of
    all the researchers who assayed this problem during the first hundred
    years, not one succeeded in identifying the actual substances
    responsible for the therapeutic activity. In 1907, the Englishmen G.
    Barger and F. H. Carr were the first to isolate an active alkaloidal
    preparation, which they named ergotoxine because it produced more of
    the toxic than therapeutic properties of ergot. (This preparation was
    not homogeneous, but rather a mixture of several alkaloids, as I was
    able to show thirty-five years later.) Nevertheless, the
    pharmacologist H. H. Dale discovered that ergotoxine, besides the
    uterotonic effect, also had an antagonistic activity on adrenaline in
    the autonomic nervous system that could lead to the therapeutic use of
    ergot alkaloids. Only with the isolation of ergotamine by A. Stoll (as
    mentioned previously) did an ergot alkaloid find entry and widespread
    use in therapeutics.

    The early 1930s brought a new era in ergot research, beginning with
    the determination of the chemical structure of ergot alkaloids, as
    mentioned, in English and American laboratories. By chemical cleavage,
    W. A. Jacobs and L. C. Craig of the Rockefeller Institute of New York
    succeeded in isolating and characterizing the nucleus common to all
    ergot alkaloids. They named it lysergic acid. Then came a major
    development, both for chemistry and for medicine: the isolation of the
    specifically uterotonic, hemostatic principle of ergot, which was
    published simultaneously and quite independently by four institutions,
    including the Sandoz laboratories. The substance, an alkaloid of
    comparatively simple structure, was named ergobasine (syn.
    ergometrine, ergonovine) by A. Stoll and E. Burckhardt. By the
    chemical degradation of ergobasine, W. A. Jacobs and L. C. Craig
    obtained lysergic acid and the amino alcohol propanolamine as cleavage
    products.

    I set as my first goal the problem of preparing this alkaloid
    synthetically, through chemical linking of the two components of
    ergobasine, lysergic acid and propanolamine (see structural formulas
    in the appendix).

    The lysergic acid necessary for these studies had to be obtained by
    chemical cleavage of some other ergot alkaloid. Since only ergotamine
    was available as a pure alkaloid, and was already being produced in
    kilogram quantities in the pharmaceutical production department, I
    chose this alkaloid as the starting material for my work. I set about
    obtaining 0.5 gm of ergotamine from the ergot production people. When
    I sent the internal requisition form to Professor Stoll for his
    countersignature, he appeared in my laboratory and reproved me: "If
    you want to work with ergot alkaloids, you will have to familiarize
    yourself with the techniques of microchemistry. I can't have you
    consuming such a large amount of my expensive ergotamine for your
    experiments."

    The ergot production department, besides using ergot of Swiss origin
    to obtain ergotamine, also dealt with Portuguese ergot, which yielded
    an amorphous alkaloidal preparation that corresponded to the
    aforementioned ergotoxine first produced by Barger and Carr. I decided
    to use this less expensive material for the preparation of lysergic
    acid. The alkaloid obtained from the production department had to be
    purified further, before it would be suitable for cleavage to lysergic
    acid. Observations made during the purification process led me to
    think that ergotoxine could be a mixture of several alkaloids, rather
    than one homogeneous alkaloid. I will speak later of the far-reaching
    sequelae of these observations.

    Here I must digress briefly to describe the working conditions and
    techniques that prevailed in those days. These remarks may be of
    interest to the present generation of research chemists in industry,
    who are accustomed to far better conditions.

    We were very frugal. Individual laboratories were considered a rare
    extravagance. During the first six years of my employment with Sandoz,
    I shared a laboratory with two colleagues. We three chemists, plus an
    assistant each, worked in the same room on three different fields: Dr.
    Kreiss on cardiac glycosides; Dr. Wiedemann, who joined Sandoz around
    the same time as I, on the leaf pigment chlorophyll; and I ultimately
    on ergot alkaloids. The laboratory was equipped with two fume hoods
    (compartments supplied with outlets), providing less than effective
    ventilation by gas flames. When we requested that these hoods be
    equipped with ventilators, our chief refused on the gound that
    ventilation by gas flame had sufficed in Willstatter's laboratory.

    During the last years of World War I, Professor Stoll had been an
    assistant in Berlin and Munich to the world-famous chemist and Nobel
    laureate Professor Richard Willstatter, and with him had conducted the
    fundamental investigations on chlorophyll and the assimilation of
    carbon dioxide. There was scarcely a scientific discussion with
    Professor Stoll in which he did not mention his revered teacher
    Professor Willstatter and his work in Willstatter's laboratory.

    The working techniques available to chemists in the field of organic
    chemistry at that time (the beginning of the thirties) were
    essentially the same as those employed by Justus von Liebig a hundred
    years earlier. The most important development achieved since then was
    the introduction of microanalysis by B. Pregl, which made it possible
    to ascertain the elemental composition of a compound with only a few
    milligrams of specimen, whereas earlier a few centigrams were needed.
    Of the other physical-chemical techniques at the disposal of the
    chemist today - techniques which have changed his way of working,
    making it faster and more effective, and created entirely new
    possibilities, above all for the elucidation of structure - none yet
    existed in those days.

    For the investigations of Scilla glycosides and the first studies in
    the ergot field, I still used the old separation and purification
    techniques from Liebig's day: fractional extraction, fractional
    precipitation, fractional crystallization, and the like. The
    introduction of column chromatography, the first important step in
    modern laboratory technique, was of great value to me only in later
    investigations. For structure determination, which today can be
    conducted rapidly and elegantly with the help of spectroscopic methods
    (UV, IR, NMR) and X-ray crystallography, we had to rely, in the first
    fundamental ergot studies, entirely on the old laborious methods of
    chemical degradation and derivatization.

Lysergic Acid and Its Derivatives

    Lysergic acid proved to be a rather unstable substance, and its
    rebonding with basic radicals posed difficulties. In the technique
    knon as Curtius' Synthesis, I ultimately found a process that proved
    useful for combining lysergic acid with amines. With this method I
    produced a great number of lysergic acid compounds. By combining
    lysergic acid with the amino alcohol propanolamine, I obtained a
    compound that was identical to the natural ergot alkaloid ergobasine.
    With that, the first synthesis - that is, artificial production - of
    an ergot alkaloid was accomplished. This was not only of scientific
    interest, as confirmation of the chemical structure of ergobasine, but
    also of practical significance, because ergobasine, the specifically
    uterotonic, hemostatic principle, is present in ergot only in very
    trifling quantities. With this synthesis, the other alkaloids existing
    abundantly in ergot could now be converted to ergobasine, which was
    valuable in obstetrics.

    After this first success in the ergot field, my investigations went
    forward on two fronts. First, I attempted to improve the
    pharmacological properties of ergobasine by variations of its amino
    alcohol radical. My colleague Dr. J. Peyer and I developed a process
    for the economical production of propanolamine and other amino
    alcohols. Indeed, by substitution of the propanolamine contained in
    ergobasine with the amino alcohol butanolamine, an active principle
    was obtained that even surpassed the natural alkaloid in its
    therapeutic properties. This improved ergobasine has found worldwide
    application as a dependable uterotonic, hemostatic remedy under the
    trade name Methergine, and is today the leading medicament for this
    indication in obstetrics.

    I further employed my synthetic procedure to produce new lysergic acid
    compounds for which uterotonic activity was not prominent, but from
    which, on the basis of their chemical structure, other types of
    interesting pharmacological properties could be expected. In 1938, I
    produced the twenty-fifth substance in this series of lysergic acid
    derivatives: lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD-25
    (Lyserg-saure-diathylamid) for laboratory usage.

    I had planned the synthesis of this compound with the intention of
    obtaining a circulatory and respiratory stimulant (an analeptic). Such
    stimulating properties could be expected for lysergic acid
    diethylamide, because it shows similarity in chemical structure to the
    analeptic already known at that time, namely nicotinic acid
    diethylamide (Coramine). During the testing of LSD-25 in the
    pharmacological department of Sandoz, whose director at the time was
    Professor Ernst Rothlin, a strong effect on the uterus was
    established. It amounted to some 70 percent of the activity of
    ergobasine. The research report also noted, in passing, that the
    experimental animals became restless during the narcosis. The new
    substance, however, aroused no special interest in our pharmacologists
    and physicians; testing was therefore discontinued.

    For the next five years, nothing more was heard of the substance
    LSD-25. Meanwhile, my work in the ergot field advanced further in
    other areas. Through the purification of ergotoxine, the starting
    material for lysergic acid, I obtained, as already mentioned, the
    impression that this alkaloidal preparation was not homogeneous, but
    was rather a mixture of different substances. This doubt as to the
    homogeneity of ergotoxine was reinforced when in its hydrogenation two
    distinctly different hydrogenation products were obtained, whereas the
    homogeneous alkaloid ergotamine under the same condition yielded only
    a single hydrogenation product (hydrogenation = introduction of
    hydrogen). Extended, systematic analytical investigations of the
    supposed ergotoxine mixture led ultimately to the separation of this
    alkaloidal preparation into three homogeneous components. One of the
    three chemically homogeneous ergotoxine alkaloids proved to be
    identical with an alkaloid isolated shortly before in the production
    department, which A. Stoll and E. Burckhardt had named ergocristine.
    The other two alkaloids were both new. The first I named ergocornine;
    and for the second, the last to be isolated, which had long remained
    hidden in the mother liquor, I chose the name ergokryptine (kryptos =
    hidden). Later it was found that ergokryptine occurs in two isomeric
    forms, which were differentiated as alfa- and beta-ergokryptine.

    The solution of the ergotoxine problem was not merely scientifically
    interesting, but also had great practical significance. A valuable
    remedy arose from it. The three hydrogenated ergotoxine alkaloids that
    I produced in the course of these investigations, dihydroergocristine,
    dihydroergokryptine, and dihydroergocornine, displayed medicinally
    useful properties during testing by Professor Rothlin in the
    pharmacological department. From these three substances, the
    pharmaceutical preparation Hydergine was developed, a medicament for
    improvement of peripheral circulation and cerebral function in the
    control of geriatric disorders. Hydergine has proven to be an
    effective remedy in geriatrics for these indications. Today it is
    Sandoz's most important pharmaceutical product.

    Dihydroergotamine, which I likewise produced in the course of these
    investigations, has also found application in therapeutics as a
    circulation- and bloodpressure-stabilizing medicament, under the trade
    name Dihydergot.

    While today research on important projects is almost exclusively
    carried out as teamwork, the investigations on ergot alkaloids
    described above were conducted by myself alone. Even the further
    chemical steps in the evolution of commercial preparations remained in
    my hands - that is, the preparation of larger specimens for the
    clinical trials, and finally the perfection of the first procedures
    for mass production of Methergine, Hydergine, and Dihydergot. This
    even included the analytical controls for the development of the first
    galenical forms of these three preparations: the ampules, liquid
    solutions, and tablets. My aides at that time included a laboratory
    assistant, a laboratory helper, and later in addition a second
    laboratory assistant and a chemical technician.

Discovery of the Psyhic Effects of LSD

    The solution of the ergotoxine problem had led to fruitful results,
    described here only briefly, and had opened up further avenues of
    research. And yet I could not forget the relatively uninteresting
    LSD-25. A peculiar presentiment - the feeling that this substance
    could possess properties other than those established in the first
    investigations - induced me, five years after the first synthesis, to
    produce LSD-25 once again so that a sample could be given to the
    pharmacological department for further tests. This was quite unusual;
    experimental substances, as a rule, were definitely stricken from the
    research program if once found to be lacking in pharmacological
    interest.

    Nevertheless, in the spring of 1943, I repeated the synthesis of
    LSD-25. As in the first synthesis, this involved the production of
    only a few centigrams of the compound.

    In the final step of the synthesis, during the purification and
    crystallization of lysergic acid diethylamide in the form of a
    tartrate (tartaric acid salt), I was interrupted in my work by unusual
    sensations. The following description of this incident comes from the
    report that I sent at the time to Professor Stoll:

    Last Friday, April 16,1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the
        laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being
        affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight
        dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant
        intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely
        stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I
        found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an
        uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes
        with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours
        this condition faded away.

    This was, altogether, a remarkable experience - both in its sudden
    onset and its extraordinary course. It seemed to have resulted from
    some external toxic influence; I surmised a connection with the
    substance I had been working with at the time, lysergic acid
    diethylamide tartrate. But this led to another question: how had I
    managed to absorb this material? Because of the known toxicity of
    ergot substances, I always maintained meticulously neat work habits.
    Possibly a bit of the LSD solution had contacted my fingertips during
    crystallization, and a trace of the substance was absorbed through the
    skin. If LSD-25 had indeed been the cause of this bizarre experience,
    then it must be a substance of extraordinary potency. There seemed to
    be only one way of getting to the bottom of this. I decided on a
    self-experiment.

    Exercising extreme caution, I began the planned series of experiments
    with the smallest quantity that could be expected to produce some
    effect, considering the activity of the ergot alkaloids known at the
    time: namely, 0.25 mg (mg = milligram = one thousandth of a gram) of
    lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate. Quoted below is the entry for
    this experiment in my laboratory journal of April 19, 1943.

Self-Experiments

    4/19/43 16:20: 0.5 cc of 1/2 promil aqueous solution of diethylamide
        tartrate orally = 0.25 mg tartrate. Taken diluted with about 10 cc
        water. Tasteless.
        17:00: Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual
        distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh.
        Supplement of 4/21: Home by bicycle. From 18:00- ca.20:00 most
        severe crisis. (See special report.)

    Here the notes in my laboratory journal cease. I was able to write the
    last words only with great effort. By now it was already clear to me
    that LSD had been the cause of the remarkable experience of the
    previous Friday, for the altered perceptions were of the same type as
    before, only much more intense. I had to struggle to speak
    intelligibly. I asked my laboratory assistant, who was informed of the
    self-experiment, to escort me home. We went by bicycle, no automobile
    being available because of wartime restrictions on their use. On the
    way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything
    in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved
    mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the
    spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had traveled
    very rapidly. Finally, we arrived at home safe and sound, and I was
    just barely capable of asking my companion to summon our family doctor
    and request milk from the neighbors.

    In spite of my delirious, bewildered condition, I had brief periods of
    clear and effective thinking - and chose milk as a nonspecific
    antidote for poisoning.

    The dizziness and sensation of fainting became so strong at times that
    I could no longer hold myself erect, and had to lie down on a sofa. My
    surroundings had now transformed themselves in more terrifying ways.
    Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and
    pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forrns. They were
    in continuous motion, animated, as if driven by an inner restlessness.
    The lady next door, whom I scarcely recognized, brought me milk - in
    the course of the evening I drank more than two liters. She was no
    longer Mrs. R., but rather a malevolent, insidious witch with a
    colored mask.

    Even worse than these demonic transformations of the outer world, were
    the alterations that I perceived in myself, in my inner being. Every
    exertion of my will, every attempt to put an end to the disintegration
    of the outer world and the dissolution of my ego, seemed to be wasted
    effort. A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind,
    and soul. I jumped up and screamed, trying to free myself from him,
    but then sank down again and lay helpless on the sofa. The substance,
    with which I had wanted to experiment, had vanquished me. It was the
    demon that scornfully triumphed over my will. I was seized by the
    dreadful fear of going insane. I was taken to another world, another
    place, another time. My body seemed to be without sensation, lifeless,
    strange. Was I dying? Was this the transition? At times I believed
    myself to be outside my body, and then perceived clearly, as an
    outside observer, the complete tragedy of my situation. I had not even
    taken leave of my family (my wife, with our three children had
    traveled that day to visit her parents, in Lucerne). Would they ever
    understand that I had not experimented thoughtlessly, irresponsibly,
    but rather with the utmost caution, an-d that such a result was in no
    way foreseeable? My fear and despair intensified, not only because a
    young family should lose its father, but also because I dreaded
    leaving my chemical research work, which meant so much to me,
    unfinished in the midst of fruitful, promising development. Another
    reflection took shape, an idea full of bitter irony: if I was now
    forced to leave this world prematurely, it was because of this
    Iysergic acid diethylamide that I myself had brought forth into the
    world.

    By the time the doctor arrived, the climax of my despondent condition
    had already passed. My laboratory assistant informed him about my
    selfexperiment, as I myself was not yet able to formulate a coherent
    sentence. He shook his head in perplexity, after my attempts to
    describe the mortal danger that threatened my body. He could detect no
    abnormal symptoms other than extremely dilated pupils. Pulse, blood
    pressure, breathing were all normal. He saw no reason to prescribe any
    medication. Instead he conveyed me to my bed and stood watch over me.
    Slowly I came back from a weird, unfamiliar world to reassuring
    everyday reality. The horror softened and gave way to a feeling of
    good fortune and gratitude, the more normal perceptions and thoughts
    returned, and I became more confident that the danger of insanity was
    conclusively past.

    Now, little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors
    and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes.
    Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating,
    variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and
    spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing
    themselves in constant flux. It was particularly remarkable how every
    acoustic perception, such as the sound of a door handle or a passing
    automobile, became transformed into optical perceptions. Every sound
    generated a vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and
    color.

    Late in the evening my wife returned from Lucerne. Someone had
    informed her by telephone that I was suffering a mysterious breakdown.
    She had returned home at once, leaving the children behind with her
    parents. By now, I had recovered myself sufficiently to tell her what
    had happened.

    Exhausted, I then slept, to awake next morning refreshed, with a clear
    head, though still somewhat tired physically. A sensation of
    well-being and renewed life flowed through me. Breakfast tasted
    delicious and gave me extraordinary pleasure. When I later walked out
    into the garden, in which the sun shone now after a spring rain,
    everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as
    if newly created. All my senses vibrated in a condition of highest
    sensitivity, which persisted for the entire day.

    This self-experiment showed that LSD-25 behaved as a psychoactive
    substance with extraordinary properties and potency. There was to my
    knowledge no other known substance that evoked such profound psychic
    effects in such extremely low doses, that caused such dramatic changes
    in human consciousness and our experience of the inner and outer
    world.

    What seemed even more significant was that I could remember the
    experience of LSD inebriation in every detail. This could only mean
    that the conscious recording function was not interrupted, even in the
    climax of the LSD experience, despite the profound breakdown of the
    normal world view. For the entire duration of the experiment, I had
    even been aware of participating in an experiment, but despite this
    recognition of my condition, I could not, with every exertion of my
    will, shake off the LSD world. Everything was experienced as
    completely real, as alarming reality; alarming, because the picture of
    the other, familiar everyday reality was still fully preserved in the
    memory for comparison.

    Another surprising aspect of LSD was its ability to produce such a
    far-reaching, powerful state of inebriation without leaving a
    hangover. Quite the contrary, on the day after the LSD experiment I
    felt myself to be, as already described, in excellent physical and
    mental condition.

    I was aware that LSD, a new active compound with such properties,
    would have to be of use in pharmacology, in neurology, and especially
    in psychiatry, and that it would attract the interest of concerned
    specialists. But at that time I had no inkling that the new substance
    would also come to be used beyond medical science, as an inebriant in
    the drug scene. Since my self-experiment had revealed LSD in its
    terrifying, demonic aspect, the last thing I could have expected was
    that this substance could ever find application as anything
    approaching a pleasure drug. I failed, moreover, to recognize the
    meaningful connection between LSD inebriation and spontaneous
    visionary experience until much later, after further experiments,
    which were carried out with far lower doses and under different
    conditions.

    The next day I wrote to Professor Stoll the abovementioned report
    about my extraordinary experience with LSD-25 and sent a copy to the
    director of the pharmacological department, Professor Rothlin.

    As expected, the first reaction was incredulous astonishment.
    Instantly a telephone call came from the management; Professor Stoll
    asked: "Are you certain you made no mistake in the weighing? Is the
    stated dose really correct?" Professor Rothlin also called, asking the
    same question. I was certain of this point, for I had executed the
    weighing and dosage with my own hands. Yet their doubts were justified
    to some extent, for until then no known substance had displayed even
    the slightest psychic effect in fractionof-a-milligram doses. An
    active compound of such potency seemed almost unbelievable.

    Professor Rothlin himself and two of his colleagues were the first to
    repeat my experiment, with only onethird of the dose I had utilized.
    But even at that level, the effects were still extremely impressive,
    and quite fantastic. All doubts about the statements in my report were
    eliminated.
      _________________________________________________________________

              2. LSD in Animal Experiments and Biological Research

    After the discovery of its extraordinary psychic effects, the
    substance LSD-25, which five years earlier had been excluded from
    further investigation after the first trials on animals, was again
    admitted into the series of experimental preparations. Most of the
    fundamental studies on animals were carried out by Dr. Aurelio
    Cerletti in the Sandoz pharmacological department, headed by Professor
    Rothlin.

    Before a new active substance can be investigated in systematic
    clinical trials with human subjects, extensive data on its effects and
    side effects must be determined in pharmacological tests on animals.
    These experiments must assay the assimilation and elimination of the
    particular substance in organisms, and above all its tolerance and
    relative toxicity. Only the most important reports on animal
    experiments with LSD, and those intelligible to the layperson, will be
    reviewed here. It would greatly exceed the scope of this book if I
    attempted to mention all the results of several hundred
    pharmacological investigations, which have been conducted all over the
    world in connection with the fundamental work on LSD in the Sandoz
    laboratories.

    Animal experiments reveal little about the mental alterations caused
    by LSD because psychic effects are scarcely determinable in lower
    animals, and even in the more highly developed, they can be
    established only to a limited extent. LSD produces its effects above
    all in the sphere of the higher and highest psychic and intellectual
    functions. It is therefore understandable that speciflc reactions to
    LSD can be expected only in higher animals. Subtle psychic changes
    cannot be established in animals because, even if they should be
    occurring, the animal could not give them expression. Thus, only
    relatively heavy psychic disturbances, expressing themselves in the
    altered behavior of research animals, become discernible. Quantities
    that are substantially higher than the effective dose of LSD in human
    beings are therefore necessary, even in higher animals like cats,
    dogs, and apes.

    While the mouse under LSD shows only motor disturbances and
    alterations in licking behavior, in the cat we see, besides vegetative
    symptoms like bristling of the hair (piloerection) and salivation,
    indications that point to the existence of hallucinations. The animals
    stare anxiously in the air, and instead of attacking the mouse, the
    cat leaves it alone or will even stand in fear before the mouse. One
    could also conclude that the behavior of dogs that are under the
    influence of LSD involves hallucinations. A caged community of
    chimpanzees reacts very sensitively if a member of the tribe has
    received LSD. Even though no changes appear in this single animal, the
    whole cage gets in an uproar because the LSD chimpanzee no longer
    observes the laws of its finely coordinated hierarchic tribal order.

    Of the remaining animal species on which LSD was tested, only aquarium
    fish and spiders need be mentioned here. In the fish, unusual swimming
    postures were observed, and in the spiders, alterations in web
    building were apparently produced by kSD. At very low optimum doses
    the webs were even better proportioned and more exactly built than
    normally: however, with higher doses, the webs were badly and
    rudimentarily made.

How Toxic Is LSD?

    The toxicity of LSD has been determined in various animal species. A
    standard for the toxicity of a substance is the LDso, or the median
    lethal dose, that is, the dose with which 50 percent of the treated
    animals die. In general it fluctuates broadly, according to the animal
    species, and so it is with LSD. The LDso for the mouse amounts to
    50-60 mgtkg i.v. (that is, 50 to 60 thousandths of a gram of LSD per
    kilogram of animal weight upon injection of an LSD solution into the
    veins). In the rat the LDso drops to 16.5 mg/kg, and in rabbits to 0.3
    mg/kg. One elephant given 0.297 g of LSD died after a few minutes. The
    weight of this animal was determined to be 5,000 kg, which corresponds
    to a lethal dose of 0.06 mg/kg (0.06 thousandths of a gram per
    kilogram of body weight). Because this involves only a single case,
    this value cannot be generalized, but we can at least deduce from it
    that the largest land animal reacts proportionally very sensitively to
    LSD, since the lethal dose in elephants must be some 1,000 times lower
    than in the mouse. Most animals die from a lethal dose of LSD by
    respiratory arrest.

    The minute doses that cause death in animal experiments may give the
    impression that LSD is a very toxic substance. However, if one
    compares the lethal dose in animals with the effective dose in human
    beings, which is 0.0003-0.001 mg/kg (0.0003 to 0.001 thousandths of a
    gram per kilogram of body weight), this shows an extraordinarily low
    toxicity for LSD. Only a 300- to 600-fold overdose of LSD, compared to
    the lethal dose in rabbits, or fully a 50,000- to 100,000fold
    overdose, in comparison to the toxicity in the mouse, would have fatal
    results in human beings. These comparisons of relative toxicity are,
    to be sure, only understandable as estimates of orders of magnitude,
    for the determination of the therapeutic index (that is, the ratio
    between the effective and the lethal dose) is only meaningful within a
    given species. Such a procedure is not possible in this case because
    the lethal doge of LSD for humans is not known. To my knowledge, there
    have not as yet occurred any casualties that are a direct consequence
    of LSD poisoning. Numerous episodes of fatal consequences attributed
    to LSD ingestion have indeed been recorded, but these were accidents,
    even suicides, that may be attributed to the mentally disoriented
    condition of LSD intoxication. The danger of LSD lies not in its
    toxicity, but rather in the unpredictability of its psychic effects.

    Some years ago reports appeared in the scientific literature and also
    in the lay press, alleging that damage to chromosomes or the genetic
    material had been caused by LSD. These effects, however, have been
    observed in only a few individual cases. Subsequent comprehensive
    investigations of a large, statistically significant number of cases,
    however, showed that there was no connection between chromosome
    anomalies and LSD medication. The same applies to reports about fetal
    deformities that had allegedly been produced by LSD. In animal
    experiments, it is indeed possible to induce fetal deformities through
    extremely high doses of LSD, which lie well above the doses used in
    human beings. But under these conditions, even harmless substances
    produce such damage. Examination of reported individual cases of human
    fetal deformities reveals, again, no connection between LSD use and
    such injury. If there had been any such connection, it would long
    since have attracted attention, for several million people by now have
    taken LSD.

Pharmacological Properties of LSD

    LSD is absorbed easily and completely through the gastrointestinal
    tract. It is therefore unnecessary to inject LSD, except for special
    purposes. Experiments on mice with radioactively labeled LSD have
    established that intravenously injected LSD disappeared down to a
    small vestige, very rapidly from the bloodstream and was distributed
    throughout the organism. Unexpectedly, the lowest concentration is
    found in the brain. It is concentrated here in certain centers of the
    midbrain that play a role in the regulation of emotion. Such findings
    give indications as to the localization of certain psychic functions
    in the brain.

    The concentration of LSD in the various organs attains maximum values
    10 to 15 minutes after injection, then falls off again swiftly. The
    small intestine, in which the concentration attains the maximum within
    two hours, constitutes an exception. The elimination of LSD is
    conducted for the most part (up to some 80 percent) through the
    intestine via liver and bile. Only 1 to 10 percent of the elimination
    product exists as unaltered LSD; the remainder is made up of various
    transformation products.

    As the psychic effects of LSD persist even after it can no longer be
    detected in the organism, we must assume that LSD is not active as
    such, but that it rather triggers certain biochemical,
    neurophysiological, and psychic mechanisms that provoke the inebriated
    condition and continue in the absence of the active principle.

    LSD stimulates centers of the sympathetic nervous system in the
    midbrain, which leads to pupillary dilatation, increase in body
    temperature, and rise in the blood-sugar level. The
    uterine-constricting activity of LSD has already been mentioned.

    An especially interesting pharmacological property of LSD, discovered
    by J. H. Gaddum in England, is its serotonin-blocking effect.
    Serotonin is a hormone-like substance, occurring naturally in various
    organs of warm-blooded animals. Concentrated in the midbrain, it plays
    an important role in the propagation of impulses in certain nerves and
    therefore in the biochemistry of psychic functions. The disruption of
    natural functioning of serotonin by LSD was for some time regarded as
    an explanation of its psychic effects. However, it was soon shown that
    even certain derivatives of LSD (compounds in which the chemical
    structure of LSD is slightly modified) that exhibit no hallucinogenic
    properties, inhibit the effects of serotonin just as strongly, or yet
    more strongly, than unaltered LSD. The serotonin-blocking effect of
    LSD thus does not suffice to explain its hallucinogenic properties.

    LSD also influences neurophysiological functions that are connected
    with dopamine, which is, like serotonin, a naturally occurring
    hormone-like substance. Most of the brain centers receptive to
    dopamine become activated by LSD, while the others are depressed.

    As yet we do not know the biochemical mechanisms through which LSD
    exerts its psychic effects. Investigations of the interactions of LSD
    with brain factors like serotonin and dopamine, however, are examples
    of how LSD can serve as a tool in brain research, in the study of the
    biochemical processes that underlie the psychic functions.
      _________________________________________________________________

                        3. Chemical Modifications of LSD

    When a new type of active compound is discovered in
    pharmaceutical-chemical research, whether by isolation from a plant
    drug or from animal organs, or through synthetic production as in the
    case of LSD, then the chemist attempts, through alterations in its
    molecular structure, to produce new compounds with similar, perhaps
    improved activity, or with other valuable active properties. We call
    this process achemical modification of this type of active substance.
    Of the approximately 20,000 new substances that are produced annually
    in the pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratories of the world, the
    overwhelming majority are modification products of proportionally few
    types of active compounds. The discovery of a really new type of
    active substance - new with regard to chemical structure and
    pharmacological effect - is a rare stroke of luck.

    Soon after the discovery of the psychic effects of LSD, two coworkers
    were assigned to join me in carrying out the chemical modification of
    LSD on a broader basis and in further investigations in the field of
    ergot alkaloids. The work on the chemical structure of ergot alkaloids
    of the peptide type, to which ergotamine and the alkaloids of the
    ergotoxine group belong, continued with Dr. Theodor Petrzilka. Working
    with Dr. Franz Troxler, I produced a great number of chemical
    modifications of LSD, and we attempted to gain further insights into
    the structure of lysergic acid, for which the American researchers had
    already proposed a structural formula. In 1949 we succeeded in
    correcting this formula and specifying the valid structure of this
    common nucleus of all ergot alkaloids, including of course LSD.

    The investigations of the peptide alkaloids of ergot led to the
    complete structural formulas of these substances, which we published
    in 1951. Their correctness was confirmed through the total synthesis
    of ergotamine, which was realized ten years later in collaboration
    with two younger coworkers, Dr. Albert J. Frey and Dr. Hans Ott.
    Another coworker, Dr. Paul A. Stadler, was largely responsible for the
    development of this synthesis into a process practicable on an
    industrial scale. The synthetic production of peptide ergot alkaloids
    using lysergic acid obtained from special cultures of the ergot fungus
    in tanks has great economic importance. This procedure is used to
    produce the starting material for the medicaments Hydergine and
    Dihydergot.

    Now we return to the chemical modifications of LSD. Many LSD
    derivatives were produced, since 1945, in collaboration with' Dr.
    Troxler, but none proved hallucinogenically more active than LSD.
    Indeed, the very closest relatives proved themselves essentially less
    active in this respect.

    There are four different possibilities of spatial arrangement of atoms
    in the LSD molecule. They are differentiated in technical language by
    the prefix isoand the letters D and L. Besides LSD, which is more
    precisely designated as D-lysergic acid diethylamide, I have also
    produced and likewise tested in selfexperiments the three other
    spatially different forms, namely D-isolysergic acid diethylamide
    (iso-LSD), L-lysergic acid diethylamide (L-LSD), and L-isolysergic
    acid diethylamide (L-iso-LSD). The last three forms of LSD showed no
    psychic effects up to a dose of 0.5 mg, which corresponds to a 20-fold
    quantity of a still distinctly active LSD dose.

    A substance very closely related to LSD, the monoethylamide of
    lysergic acid (LAE-23), in which an ethyl group is replaced by a
    hydrogen atom on the diethylamide residue of LSD, proved to be some
    ten times less psychoactive than LSD. The hallucinogenic effect of
    this substance is also qualitatively different: it is characterized by
    a narcotic component. This narcotic effect is yet more pronounced in
    lysergic acid amide (LA-111), in which both ethyl groups of LSD are
    displaced by hydrogen atoms. These effects, which I established in
    comparative self-experiments with LA-111 and LAE-32, were corroborated
    by subsequent clinical investigations.

    Fifteen years later we encountered lysergic acid amide, which had been
    produced synthetically for these investigations, as a naturally
    occurring active principle of the Mexican magic drug olotiuhqui. In a
    later chapter I shall deal more fully with this unexpected discovery.

    Certain results of the chemical modification of LSD proved valuable to
    medicinal research; LSD derivatives were found that were only weakly
    or not at all hallucinogenic, but instead exhibited other effects of
    LSD to an increased extent. Such an effect of LSD is its blocking
    effect on the neurotransmitter serotonin (referred to previously in
    the discussion of the pharmacological properties of LSD). As serotonin
    plays a role in allergic-inflammatory processes and also in the
    generation of migraine, a specific serotonin-blocking substance was of
    great significance to medicinal research. We therefore searched
    systematically for LSD derivatives without hallucinogenic effects, but
    with the highest possible activity as serotonin blockers. The first
    such active substance was found in bromo-LSD, which has become known
    in medicinal-biological research under the designation BOL-148. In the
    course of our investigations on serotonin antagonists, Dr. Troxler
    produced in the sequel yet stronger and more specifically active
    compounds. The most active entered the medicinal market as a
    medicament for the treatment of migraine, under the trademark
    "Deseril" or, in English-speaking countries, "Sansert."
      _________________________________________________________________

                           4. Use of LSD in Psychiatry

    Soon after LSD was tried on animals, the first systematic
    investigation of the substance was carried out on human beings, at the
    psychiatric clinic of the University of Zurich. Werner A. Stoll, M.D.
    (a son of Professor Arthur Stoll), who led this research, published
    his results in 1947 in the Schweizer Archiv fur Neurologie und
    Psychiatrie, under the title "Lysergsaure-diathylamid, ein
    Phantastikum aus der Mutterkorngruppe" [Lysergic acid diethylamide, a
    phantasticum from the ergot group].

    The tests involved healthy research subjects as well as schizophrenic
    patients. The dosages - substantially lower than in my first
    self-experiment with 0.25 mg LSD tartrate - amounted to only 0.02 to
    0.13 mg. The emotional state during the LSD inebriation was here
    predominantly euphoric, whereas in my experiment the mood was marked
    by grave side effects resulting from overdosage and, of course, fear
    of the uncertain outcome.

    This fundamental publication, which gave a scientific description of
    all the basic features of LSD inebriation, classified the new active
    principle as a phantas a phantasticum. However, the question of
    therapeutic application of LSD remained unanswered. On the other hand,
    the report emphasized the extraordinarily high activity of LSD, which
    corresponds to the activity of trace substances occurring in the
    organism that are considered to be responsible for certain mental
    disorders. Another subject discussed in this first publication was the
    possible application of LSD as a research tool in psychiatry, which
    follows from its tremendous psychic activity.

First Self-Experiment by a Psychiatrist

    In his paper, W. A. Stoll also gave a detailed description of his own
    personal experiment with LSD. Since this was the first self-experiment
    published by a psychiatrist, and since it describes many
    characteristic features of LSD inebriation, it is interesting to quote
    extensively from the report. I warmly thank the author for kind
    permission to republish this extract.

    At 8 o'clock I took 60 mcg (0.06 milligrams) of LSD. Some 20 minutes
        later, the first symptoms appeared: heaviness in the limbs, slight
        atactic (i.e., confused, uncoordinated) symptoms. A subjectively
        very unpleasant phase of general malaise followed, in parallel
        with the drop in blood pressure registered by the examiners.
        A certain euphoria then set in, though it seemed weaker to me than
        experiences in an earlier experiment. The ataxia increased, and I
        went "sailing" around the room with large strides. I felt somewhat
        better, but was glad to lie down.
        Afterward the room was darkened (dark experiment); there followed
        an unprecedented experience of unimaginable intensity that kept
        increasing in strength. It w as characterized by an unbelievable
        profusion of optical hallucinations that appeared and vanished
        with great speed, to make way for countless new images. I saw a
        profusion of circles, vortices, sparks, showers, crosses, and
        spirals in constant, racing flux.
        The images appeared to stream in on me predominantly from the
        center of the visual field, or out of the lower left edge. When a
        picture appeared in the middle, the remaining field of vision was
        simultaneously filled up with a vast number of similar visions.
        All were colored: bright, luminous red, yellow, and green
        predominated.
        I never managed to linger on any picture. When the supervisor of
        the experiment emphasized my great fantasies, the richness of my
        statements, I could only react with a sympathetic smile. I knew,
        in fact, that I could not retain, much less describe, more than a
        fraction of the pictures. I had to force myself to give a
        description. Terms such as "fireworks" or "kaleidoscopic" were
        poor and inadequate. I felt that I had to immerse myself more and
        more deeply into this strange and fascinating world, in order to
        allow the exuberance, the unimaginable wealth, to work on me.
        At first, the hallucinations were elementary: rays, bundles of
        rays, rain, rings, vortices, loops, sprays, clouds, etc. Then more
        highly organized visions also appeared: arches, rows of arches, a
        sea of roofs, desert landscapes, terraces, flickering fire, starry
        skies of unbelievable splendor. The original, more simple images
        continued in the midst of these more highly organized
        hallucinations. I remember the following images in particular:
        A succession of towering, Gothic vaults, an endless choir, of
        which I could not see the lower portions.
        A landscape of skyscrapers, reminiscent of pictures of the
        entrance to New York harbor: house towers staggered behind and
        beside one another with innumerable rows of windows. Again the
        foundation was missing.
        A system of masts and ropes, which reminded me of a reproduction
        of a painting seen the previous day (the inside of a circus tent).
        An evening sky of an unimaginable pale blue over the dark roofs of
        a Spanish city. I had a peculiar feeling of anticipation, was full
        of joy and decidedly ready for adventure. All at once the stars
        flared up, amassed, and turned to a dense rain of stars and sparks
        that streamed toward me. City and sky had disappeared.
        I was in a garden, saw brilliant red, yellow, and green lights
        falling through a dark trelliswork, an indescribably joyous
        experience.
        It was significant that all the images consisted of countless
        repetitions of the same elements: many sparks, many circles, many
        arches, many windows, many fires, etc. I never saw isolated
        images, but always duplications of the same image, endlessly
        repeated.
        I felt myself one with all romanticists and dreamers, thought of
        E. T. A. Hoffmann, saw the maelstrom of Poe (even though, at the
        time I had read Poe, his description seemed exaggerated). Often I
        seemed to stand at the pinnacle of artistic experience; I
        luxuriated in the colors of the altar of Isenheim, and knew the
        euphoria and exultation of an artistic vision. I must also have
        spoken again and again of modern art; I thought of abstract
        pictures, which all at once I seemed to understand. Then again,
        there were impressions of an extreme trashiness, both in their
        shapes and their color combinations. The most garish, cheap modern
        lamp ornaments and sofa pillows came into my mind. The train of
        thought was quickened. But I had the feeling the supervisor of the
        experiment could still keep up with me. Of course I knew,
        intellectually, that I was rushing him. At first I had
        descriptions rapidly at hand. With the increasingly frenzied pace,
        it became impossible to think a thought through to the end. I must
        have only started many sentences.
        When I tried to restrict myself to specific subjects, the
        experiment proved most unsuccessful. My mind would even focus, in
        a certain sense, on contrary images: skyscrapers instead of a
        church, a broad desert instead of a mountain.
        I assumed that I had accurately estimated the elapsed time, but
        did not take the matter very seriously. Such questions did not
        interest me in the slightest.
        My state of mind was consciously euphoric. I enjoyed the
        condition, was serene, and took a most active interest in the
        experience. From time to time I opened my eyes. The weak red light
        seemed mysterious, much more than before. The busily writing
        research supervisor appeared to me to be very far away. Often I
        had peculiar bodily sensations: I believed my hands to be attached
        to some distant body, but was not certain whether it was my own.
        After termination of the first dark experiment, I strolled about
        in the room a bit, was unsure on my legs, and again felt less
        well. I became cold and was thankful that the research supervisor
        covered me with a blanket. I felt unkempt, unshaven, and unwashed.
        The room seemed strange and broad. Later I squatted on a high
        stool, thinking all the while that I sat there like a bird on the
        roost.
        The supervisor emphasized my own wretched appearance. He seemed
        remarkably graceful. I myself had small, finely formed hands. As I
        washed them, it was happening a long way from me, somewhere down
        below on the right. It was questionable, but utterly unimportant,
        whether they were my own hands.
        In the landscape outside, well known to me, many things appeared
        to have changed. Besides the hallucinations, I could now see the
        real as well. Later this was no longer possible, although I
        remained aware that reality was otherwise.
        A barracks, and the garage standing before it to the left,
        suddenly changed to a landscape of ruins, shattered to pieces. I
        saw wall wreckage and projecting beams, inspired undoubtedly by
        the memory of the war events in this region.
        In a uniform, extensive field, I kept seeing figures, which I
        tried to draw, but could get no farther than the crudest
        beginnings. I saw an extremely opulent sculptural ornamentation in
        constant metamorphosis, in continuous flux. I was reminded of
        every possible foreign culture, saw Mexican, Indian motifs.
        Between a grating of small beams and tendrils appeared little
        caricatures, idols, masks, strangely mixed all of a sudden with
        childish drawings of people. The tempo was slackened compared to
        the dark experiment.
        The euphoria had now vanished. I became depressed, especially
        during the second dark experiment, which followed. Whereas during
        the first dark experiment, the hallucinations had alternated with
        great rapidity in bright and luminous colors, now blue, violet,
        and dark green prevailed. The movement of larger images was slower
        milder, quieter, although even these were composed of finely
        raining "elemental dots," which streamed and whirled about
        quickly. During the first dark experiment, the commotion had
        frequently intruded upon me; now it often led distinctly away from
        me into the center of the picture, where a sucking mouth appeared.
        I saw grottoes with fantastic erosions and stalactites, reminding
        me of the child's book Im Wunderreiche des Bergkonigs [In the
        wondrous realm of the mountain king]. Serene systems of arches
        rose up. On the right-hand side, a row of shed roofs suddenly
        appeared; I thought of an evening ride homeward during military
        service. Significantly it involved a homeward ride: there was no
        longer anything like departure or love of adventure. I felt
        protected, enveloped by motherliness, was in peace. The
        hallucinations were no longer exciting, but instead mild and
        attenuated. Somewhat later I had the feeling of possessing the
        same motherly strength. I perceived an inclination, a desire to
        help, and behaved then in an exaggeratedly sentimental and trashy
        manner, where medical ethics are concerned. I realized this and
        was able to stop.
        But the depressed state of mind remained. I tried again and again
        to see bright and joyful images. But to no avail; only dark blue
        and green patterns emerged. I longed to imagine bright fire as in
        the first dark experiment. And I did see fires; however, they were
        sacrificial fires on the gloomy battlement of a citadel on a
        remote, autumnal heath. Once I managed to behold a bright
        ascending multitude of sparks, but at half-altitude it transformed
        itself into a group of silently moving spots from a peacock's
        tail. During the experiment I was very impressed that my state of
        mind and the type of hallucinations harmonized so consistently and
        uninterruptedly.
        During the second dark experiment I observed that random noises,
        and also noises intentionally produced by the supervisor of the
        experiment, provoked simultaneous changes in the optical
        impressions (synesthesia). In the same manner, pressure on the
        eyeball produced alterations of visual perceptions.
        Toward the end of the second dark experiment, I began to watch for
        sexual fantasies, which were, however, totally absent. In no way
        could I experience sexual desire. I wanted to imagine a picture of
        a woman; only a crude modern-primitive sculpture appeared. It
        seemed completely unerotic, and its forms were immediately
        replaced by agitated circles and loops.
        After the second dark experiment I felt benumbed and physically
        unwell. I perspired, was exhausted. I was thankful not to have to
        go to the cafeteria for lunch. The laboratory assistant who
        brought us the food appeared to me small and distant, of the same
        remarkable daintiness as the supervisor of the experiment.
        Sometime around 3:00 P.M. I felt better, so that the supervisor
        could pursue his work. With some effort I managed to take notes
        myself. I sat at the table, wanted to read, but could not
        concentrate. Once I seemed to myself like a shape from a
        surrealistic picture, whose limbs were not connected with the
        body, but were rather painted somewhere close by....
        I was depressed and thought with interest of the possibility of
        suicide. With some terror I apprehended that such thoughts were
        remarkably familiar to me. It seemed singularly self-evident that
        a depressed person commits suicide....
        On the way home and in the evening I was again euphoric, brimming
        with the experiences of the morning. I had experienced unexpected,
        impressive things. It seemed to me that a great epoch of my life
        had been crowded into a few hours. I was tempted to repeat the
        experiment.
        The next day I was careless in my thinking and conduct, had great
        trouble concentrating, was apathetic. . . . The casual, slightly
        dream-like condition persisted into the afternoon. I had great
        trouble reporting in any organized way on a simple problem. I felt
        a growing general weariness, an increasing awareness that I had
        now returned to everyday reality.
        The second day after the experiment brought an irresolute
        state.... Mild, but distinct depression was experienced during the
        following week, a feeling which of course could be related only
        indirectly to LSD.

The Psychic Effects of LSD

    The picture of the activity of LSD obtained from these first
    investigations was not new to science. It largely matched the commonly
    held view of mescaline, an alkaloid that had been investigated as
    early as the turn of the century. Mescaline is the psychoactive
    constituent of a Mexican cactus Lophophora williamsii (syn. Anhalonium
    lewinii). This cactus has been eaten by American Indians ever since
    pre-Columbian times, and is still used today as a sacred drug in
    religious ceremonies. In his monograph Phantastica (Verlag Georg
    Stilke, Berlin, 1924), L. Lewin has amply described the history of
    this drug, called peyotl by the Aztecs. The alkaloid mescaline was
    isolated from the cactus by A. Heffter in 1896, and in 1919 its
    chemical structure was elucidated and it was produced synthetically by
    E. Spath. It was the first hallucinogen or phantasticum (as this type
    of active compound was described by Lewin) to become available as a
    pure substance, permitting the study of chemically induced changes of
    sensory perceptions, mental illusions (hallucinations), and
    alterations of consciousness. In the 1920s extended experiments with
    mescaline were carried out on animal and human subjects and described
    comprehensively by K. Beringer in his book Der Meskalinrausch (Verlag
    Julius Springer, Berlin, 1927). Because these investigations failed to
    indicate any applications of mescaline in medicine, interest in this
    active substance waned.

    With the discovery of LSD, hallucinogen research received a new
    impetus. The novelty of LSD as opposed to mescaline was its high
    activity, lying in a different order of magnitude. The active dose of
    mescaline, 0.2 to 0.5 g, is comparable to 0.00002 to 0.0001 g of LSD;
    in other words, LSD is some 5,000 to 10,000 times more active than
    mescaline.

    LSD's unique position among the psychopharmaceuticals is not only due
    to its high activity, in a quantitative sense. The substance also has
    qualitative significance: it manifests a high specificity, that is, an
    activity aimed specifically at the human psyche. It can be assumed,
    therefore, that LSD affects the highest control centers of the psychic
    and intellectual functions.

    The psychic effects of LSD, which are produced by such minimal
    quantities of material, are too meaningful and too multiform to be
    explained by toxic alterations of brain function. If LSD acted only
    through a toxic effect on the brain, then LSD experiences would be
    entirely psychopathological in meaning, without any psychological or
    psychiatric interest. On the contrary, it is likely that alterations
    of nerve conductivity and influence on the activity of nerve
    connections (synapses), which have been experimentally demonstrated,
    play an important role. This could mean that an influence is being
    exerted on the extremely complex system of cross-connections and
    synapses between the many billions of brain cells, the system on which
    the higher psychic and intellectual functions depend. This would be a
    promising area to explore in the search for an explanation of LSD's
    radical efficacy.

    The nature of LSD's activity could lead to numerous possibilities of
    medicinal-psychiatric uses, as W. A. Stoll's ground-breaking studies
    had already shown. Sandoz therefore made the new active substance
    available to research institutes and physicians as an experimental
    drug, giving it the trade name Delysid (D-Lysergsaure-diathylamid)
    which I had proposed. The printed prospectus below describes possible
    applications of this kind and voices the necessary precautions.

    Delysid (LSD 25)
        D-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate
        Sugar-coated tablets containing 0.025 mg. (25 mircog.)
        Ampoules of 1 ml. containing 0.1 mg. (100 microg.) for
        oral administration
        The solution may also be injected s.c. or i.v. The
        effect is identical with that of oral administration
        but sets in more rapidly.
        PROPERTIES
        The administration of very small doses of Delysid (1/2-2
        microg./kg. body weight) results in transitory disturbances of
        affect, hallucinations, depersonalization, reliving of repressed
        memories, and mild neurovegetative symptoms. The effect sets in
        after 30 to 90 minutes and generally lasts 5 to 12 hours. However,
        intermittent disturbances of affect may occasionally persist for
        several days.
        METHOD OF ADMINISTRATION
        For oral administration the contents of 1 ampoule of Delysid are
        diluted with distilled water, a 1% solution of tartaric acid or
        halogen-free tap water.
        The absorption of the solution is somewhat more rapid and more
        constant than that of the tablets.
        Ampoules which have not been opened, which have been protected
        against light and stored in a cool place are stable for an
        unlimited period. Ampoules which have been opened or diluted
        solutions retain their effectiveness for 1 to 2 days, if stored in
        a refrigerator.
        INDICATIONS AND DOSAGE
        a) Analytical psychotherapy, to elicit release of repressed
        material and provide mental relaxation, particularly in anxiety
        states and obsessional neuroses.
        The initial dose is 25 microg. (1/4 of an ampoule or 1 tablet).
        This dose is increased at each treatment by 25 microg. until the
        optimum dose (usually between 50 and 200 microg.) is found. The
        individual treatments are best given at intervals of one week.
        b) Experimental studies on the nature of psychoses: By taking
        Delysid himself, the psychiatrist is able to gain an insight into
        the world of ideas and sensations of mental patients. Delysid can
        also be used to induce model psychoses of short duration in normal
        subjects, thus facilitating studies on the pathogenesis of mental
        disease.
        In normal subjects, doses of 25 to 75 microg. are generally
        sufficient to produce a hallucinatory psychosis (on an average 1
        microg./kg. body weight). In certain forms of psychosis and in
        chronic alcoholism, higher doses are necessary (2 to 4 microg./kg.
        body weight).
        PRECAUTIONS
        Pathological mental conditions may be intensified by Delysid.
        Particular caution is necessary in subjects with a suicidal
        tendency and in those cases where a psychotic development appears
        imminent. The psycho-affective liability and the tendency to
        commit impulsive acts may occasionally last for some days.
        Delysid should only be administered under strict medical
        supervision. The supervision should not be discontinued until the
        effects of the drug have completely orn off.
        ANTIDOTE
        The mental effects of Delysid can be rapidly reversed by the i.m.
        administration of 50 mg. chlorpromazine.
        Literature available on request.
        SANDOZ LTD., BASLE, SWITZERLAND

    The use of LSD in analytical psychotherapy is based mainly on the
    following psychic effects.

    In LSD inebriation the accustomed world view undergoes a deep-seated
    transformation and disintegration. Connected with this is a loosening
    or even suspension of the I-you barrier. Patients who are bogged down
    in an egocentric problem cycle can thereby be helped to release
    themselves from their fixation and isolation. The result can be an
    improved rapport with the doctor and a greater susceptibility to
    psychotherapeutic influence. The enhanced suggestibility under the
    influence of LSD works toward the same goal.

    Another significant, psychotherapeutically valuable characteristic of
    LSD inebriation is the tendency of long forgotten or suppressed
    contents of experience to appear again in consciousness. Traumatic
    events, which are sought in psychoanalysis, may then become accessible
    to psychotherapeutic treatment. Numerous case histories tell of
    experiences from even the earliest childhood that were vividly
    recalled during psychoanalysis under the influence of LSD. This does
    not involve an ordinary recollection, but rather a true reliving; not
    a reminiscence, but rather a reviviscence, as the French psychiatrist
    Jean Delay has formulated it.

    LSD does not act as a true medicament; rather it plays the role of a
    drug aid in the context of psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic
    treatment and serves to channel the treatment more effectively and to
    shorten its duration. It can fulfill this function in two particular
    ways.

    In one procedure, which was developed in European clinics and given
    the name psychotytic therapy, moderately strong doses of LSD are
    administered in several successive sessions at regular intervals.
    Subsequently the LSD experiences are worked out in group discussions,
    and in expression therapy by drawing and painting. The term
    psycholytic therapy was coined by Ronald A. Sandison, an English
    therapist of Jungian orientation and a pioneerof clinical LSD
    research. The root -lysis or -lytic signifies the dissolution of
    tension or conflicts in the human psyche.

    In a second procedure, which is the favored treatment in the United
    States, a single, very high LSD dose (0.3 to 0.6 mg) is administered
    after correspondingly intensive psychological preparation of the
    patients. This method, described as psychedelic therapy, attempts to
    induce a mystical-religious experience through the shock effects of
    LSD. This experience can then serve as a starting point for a
    restructuring and curing of the patient's personality in the
    accompanying psychotherapeutic treatment. The term psychedelic, which
    can be translated as "mind-manifesting" or "mind-expanding," was
    introduced by Humphry Osmond, a pioneer of LSD research in the United
    States.

    LSD's apparent benefits as a drug auxiliary in psychoanalysis and
    psychotherapy are derived from properties diametrically opposed to the
    effects of tranquilizer-type psychopharmaceuticals. Whereas
    tranquilizers tend to cover up the patient's problems and conflicts,
    reducing their apparent gravity and importance: LSD, on the contrary,
    makes them more exposed and more intensely experienced. This clearer
    recognition of problems and conflicts makes them, in turn, more
    susceptible to psychotherapeutic treatment.

    The suitability and success of LSD in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy
    are still a subject of controversy in professional circles. The same
    could be said, however, of other procedures employed in psychiatry
    such as electroshock, insulin therapy, or psychosurgery, procedures
    that entail, moreover, a far greater risk than the use of LSD, which
    under suitable conditions can be considered practically safe.

    Because forgotten or repressed experiences, under the influence of
    LSD, may become conscious with considerable speed, the treatment can
    be correspondingly shortened. To some psychiatrists, however, this
    reduction of the therapy's duration is a disadvantage. They are of the
    opinion that this precipitation leaves the patient insufficient time
    for psychotherapeutic working-through. The therapeutic effect they
    believe, persists for a shorter time than when there is a gradual
    treatment, including a slow process of becoming conscious of the
    traumatic experiences.

    Psycholytic and especially psychedelic therapy require thorough
    preparation of the patient for the LSD experience, to avoid his or her
    being frightened by the unusual and the unfamiliar. Only then is a
    positive interpretation of the experience possible. The selection of
    patients is also important, since not all types of psychic disturbance
    respond equally well to these msthods of treatment. Successful use of
    LSD-assisted psychoanalysis and psychotherapy presupposes speclflc
    knowledge and experience.

    In this respect self-examination by psychiatrists, as W. A. Stoll has
    pointed out, can be most useful. They provide the doctors with direct
    insight, based on firsthand experience into the strange world of LSD
    inebriation, and make it possible for them truly to understand these
    phenomena in their patients, to interpret them properly, and to take
    full advantage of them.

    The following pioneers in use of LSD as a drug aid in psychoanalysis
    and psychotherapy deserve to be named in the front rank: A. K. Busch
    and W. C. Johnson, S. Cohen and B. Eisner, H. A. Abramson, H. Osmond,
    and A. Hoffer in the United States; R. A. Sandison in England; W.
    Frederking and H. Leuner in Germany; and G. Roubicek and S. Grof in
    Czechoslovakia.

    The second indication for LSD cited in the Sandoz prospectus on
    Delysid concerns its use in experimental investigations on the nature
    of psychoses. This arises from the fact that extraordinary psychic
    states experimentally produced by LSD in healthy research subjects are
    similar to many manifestations of certain mental disturbances. In the
    early days of LSD research, it was often claimed that LSD inebriation
    has something to do with a type of "model psychosis." This idea was
    dismissed, however, because extended comparative investigations showed
    that there were essential differences between the manifestations of
    psychosis and the LSD experience. With the LSD model, nevertheless, it
    is possible to study deviations from the normal psychic and mental
    condition, and to observe the biochemical and electrophysiological
    alterations associated with them. Perhaps we shall thereby gain new
    insights into the nature of psychoses. According to certain theories,
    various mental disturbances could be produced by psychotoxic metabolic
    products that have the power, even in minimal quantities, to alter the
    functions of brain cells. LSD represents a substance that certainly
    does not occur in the human organism, but whose existence and activity
    let it seem possible that abnormal metabolic products could exist,
    that even in trace quantities could produce mental disturbances. As a
    result, the conception of a biochemical origin of certain mental
    disturbances has received broader support, and research in this
    direction has been stimulated.

    One medicinal use of LSD that touches on fundamental ethical questions
    is its administration to the dying. This practice arose from
    observations in American clinics that especially severe painful
    conditions of cancer patients, which no longer respond to conventional
    pain-relieving medication, could be alleviated or completely abolished
    by LSD. Of course, this does not involve an analgesic effect in the
    true sense. The diminution of pain sensitivity may rather occur
    because patients under the influence of LSD are psychologically so
    dissociated from their bodies that physical pain no longer penetrates
    their consciousness. In order for LSD to be effective in such cases,
    it is especially crucial that patients be prepared and instructed
    about the kind of experiences and transformations that await them. In
    many cases it has proved beneficial for either a member of the clergy
    or a psychotherapist to guide the patient's thoughts in a religious
    direction. Numerous case histories tell of patients who gained
    meaningful insights about life and death on their deathbeds as, freed
    from pain in LSD ecstasy and reconciled to their fate, they faced
    their earthly demise fearlessly and in peace.

    The hitherto existing knowledge about the administration of LSD to the
    terminally ill has been summarized and published by S. Grof and J.
    Halifax in their book The Human Encounter with Death (E. P. Dutton,
    New York, 1977). The authors, together with E. Kast, S. Cohen, and W.
    A. Pahnke, are among the pioneers of this application of LSD.

    The most recent comprehensive publication on the use of LSD in
    psychiatry, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD
    Research (The Viking Press, New York, 1975), likewise comes from S.
    Grof, the Czech psychiatrist who has emigrated to the United States.
    This book offers a critical evaluation of the LSD experience from the
    viewpoint of Freud and Jung, as well as of existential analysis.
      _________________________________________________________________

                           5. From Remedy to Inebriant

    During the first years after its discovery, LSD brought me the same
    happiness and gratification that any pharmaceutical chemist would feel
    on learning that a substance he or she produced might possibly develop
    into a valuable medicament. For the creation of new remedies is the
    goal of a pharmaceutical chemist's research activity; therein lies the
    meaning of his or her work.

Nonmedical Use of LSD

    This joy at having fathered LSD was tarnished after more than ten
    years of uninterrupted scientific research and medicinal use when LSD
    was swept up in the huge wave of an inebriant mania that began to
    spread over the Western world, above all the United States, at the end
    of the 1950s. It was strange how rapidly LSD adopted its new role as
    inebriant and, for a time, became the number-one inebriating drug, at
    least as far as publicity was concerned. The more its use as an
    inebriant was disseminated, bringing an upsurge in the number of
    untoward incidents caused by careless, medically unsupervised use, the
    more LSD became a problem child for me and for the Sandoz firm.

    It was obvious that a substance with such fantastic effects on mental
    perception and on the experience of the outer and inner world would
    also arouse interest outside medical science, but I had not expected
    that LSD, with its unfathomably uncanny, profound effects, so unlike
    the character of a recreational drug, would ever find worldwide use as
    an inebriant. I had expected curiosity and interest on the part of
    artists outside of medicine - performers, painters, and writers - but
    not among people in general. After the scientific publications around
    the turn of the century on mescaline - which, as already mentioned,
    evokes psychic effects quite like those of LSD - the use of this
    compound remained confined to medicine and to experiments within
    artistic and literary circles. I had expected the same fate for LSD.
    And indeed, the first non-medicinal self-experiments with LSD were
    carried out by writers, painters, musicians, and other intellectuals.

    LSD sessions had reportedly provoked extraordinary aesthetic
    experiences and granted new insights into the essence of the creative
    process. Artists were influenced in their creative work in
    unconventional ways. A particular type of art developed that has
    become known as psychedelic art. It comprises creations produced under
    the influenced of LSD and other psychedelic drugs, whereby the drugs
    acted as stimulus and source of inspiration. The standard publication
    in this field is the book by Robert E. L. Masters and Jean Houston,
    Psychedelic Art (Balance House, 1968). Works of psychedelic art are
    not created while the drug is in effect, but only afterward, the
    artist being inspired by these experiences. As long as the inebriated
    condition lasts, creative activity is impeded, if not completely
    halted. The influx of images is too great and is increasing too
    rapidly to be portrayed and fashioned. An overwhelming vision
    paralyzes activity. Artistic productions arising directly from LSD
    inebriation, therefore, are mostly rudimentary in character and
    deserve consideration not because of their artistic merit, but because
    they are a type of psychoprogram, which offers insight into the
    deepest mental structures of the artist, activated and made conscious
    by LSD. This was demonstrated later in a large-scale experiment by the
    Munich psychiatrist Richard P. Hartmann, in which thirty famous
    painters took part. He published the results in his book Mlerei aus
    Bereichen des Unbewussten: Kunstler Experimentieren unter LSD
    [Painting from spheres of the unconscious: artists experiment with
    LSD], Verlag M. Du Mont Schauberg, Cologne, 1974).

    LSD experiments also gave new impetus to exploration into the essence
    of religious and mystical experience. Religious scholars and
    philosophers discussed the question whether the religious and mystical
    experiences often discovered in LSD sessions were genuine, that is,
    comparable to spontaneous mysticoreligious enlightenment.

    This nonmedicinal yet earnest phase of LSD research, at times in
    parallel with medicinal research, at times following it, was
    increasingly overshadowed at the beginning of the 1960s, as LSD use
    spread with epidemic-like speed through all social classes, as a
    sensational inebriating drug, in the course of the inebriant mania in
    the United States. The rapid rise of drug use, which had its beginning
    in this country about twenty years ago, was not, however, a
    consequence of the discovery of LSD, as superficial observers often
    declared. Eather it had deep-seated sociological causes: materialism,
    alienation from nature through industrialization and increasing
    urbanization, lack of satisfaction in professional employment in a
    mechanized, lifeless working world, ennui and purposelessness in a
    wealthy, saturated society, and lack of a religious, nurturing, and
    meaningful philosophical foundation of life.

    The existence of LSD was even regarded by the drug enthusiasts as a
    predestined coincidence - it had to be discovered precisely at this
    time in order to bring help to people suffering under the modern
    conditions. It is not surprising that LSD first came into circulation
    as an inebriating drug in the United States, the country in which
    industrialization, urbanization, and mechanization, even of
    agriculture, are most broadly advanced. These are the same factors
    that have led to the origin and growth of the hippie movement that
    developed simultaneously with the LSD wave. The two cannot be
    dissociated. It would be worth investigating to what extent the
    consumption of psychedelic drugs furthered the hippie movement and
    conversely.

    The spread of LSD from medicine and psychiatry into the drug scene was
    introduced and expedited by publications on sensational LSD
    experiments that, although they were carried out in psychiatric
    clinics and universities, were not then reported in scientific
    journals, but rather in magazines and daily papers, greatly
    elaborated. Reporters made themselves available as guinea pigs. Sidney
    Katz, for example, participated in an LSD experiment in the
    Saskatchewan Hospital in Canada under the supervision of noted
    psychiatrists; his experiences, however, were not published in a
    medical journal. Instead, he described them in an article entitled "My
    Twelve Hours as a Madman" in his magazine MacLean's Canada National
    Magazine, colorfully illustrated in fanciful fullness of detail. The
    widely distributed German magazine Quick, in its issue number 12 of 21
    March 1954, reported a sensational eyewitness account on "Ein kuhnes
    wissenschaftliches Experiment" [a daring scientific experiment] by the
    painter Wilfried Zeller, who took "a few drops of lysergic acid" in
    the Viennese University Psychiatric Clinic. Of the numerous
    publications of this type that have made effective lay propaganda for
    LSD, it is sufficient to cite just one more example: a large-scale,
    illustrated article in Look magazine of September 1959. Entitled "The
    Curious Story Behind the New Cary Grant," it must have contributed
    enormously to the diffusion of LSD consumption. The famous movie star
    had received LSD in a respected clinic in California, in the course of
    a psychotherapeutic treatment. He informed the Look reporter that he
    had sought inner peace his whole life long, but yoga, hypnosis, and
    mysticism had not helped him. Only the treatment with LSD had made a
    new, selfstrengthened man out of him, so that after three frustrating
    marriages he now believed himself really able to love and make a woman
    happy.

    The evolution of LSD from remedy to inebriating drug was, however,
    primarily promoted by the activities of Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr.
    Richard Alpert of Harvard University. In a later section I will come
    to speak in more detail about Dr. Leary and my meetings with this
    personage who has become known worldwide as an apostle of LSD.

    Books also appeared on the U.S. market in which the fantastic effects
    of LSD were reported more fully. Here only two of the most important
    will be mentioned: Exploring I nner Space by Jane Dunlap (Harcourt
    Brace and World, New York, 1961) and My Self and I by Constance A.
    Newland (N A.L. Signet Books, New York, 1963). Although in both cases
    LSD was used within the scope of a psychiatric treatment, the authors
    addressed their books, which became bestsellers, to the broad public.
    In her book, subtitled "The Intimate and Completely Frank Record of
    One Woman's Courageous Experiment with Psychiatry's Newest Drug, LSD
    25," Constance A. Newland described in intimate detail how she had
    been cured of frigidity. After such avowals, one can easily imagine
    that many people would want to try the wondrous medicine for
    themselves. The mistaken opinion created by such reports - that it
    would be sufficient simply to take LSD in order to accomplish such
    miraculous effects and transformations in oneself - soon led to broad
    diffusion of self-experimentation with the new drug.

    Objective, informative books about LSD and its problems also appeared,
    such as the excellent work by the psychiatrist Dr. Sidney Cohen, The
    Beyond Within (Atheneum, New York, 1967), in which the dangers of
    careless use are clearly exposed. This had, however, no power to put a
    stop to the LSD epidemic.

    As LSD experiments were often carried out in ignorance of the uncanny,
    unforeseeable, profound effects, and without medical supervision, they
    frequently came to a bad end. With increasing LSD consumption in the
    drug scene, there came an increase in "horror trips" - LSD experiments
    that led to disoriented conditions and panic, often resulting in
    accidents and even crime.

    The rapid rise of nonmedicinal LSD consumption at the beginning of the
    1960s was also partly attributable to the fact that the drug laws then
    current in most countries did not include LSD. For this reason, drug
    habitues changed from the legally proscribed narcotics to the
    still-legal substance LSD. Moreover, the last of the Sandoz patents
    for the production of LSD expired in 1963, removing a further
    hindrance to illegal manufacture of the drug.

    The rise of LSD in the drug scene caused our firm a nonproductive,
    laborious burden. National control laboratories and health authorities
    requested statements from us about chemical and pharmacological
    properties, stability and toxicity of LSD, and analytical methods for
    its detection in confiscated drug samples, as well as in the human
    body, in blood and urine. This brought a voluminous correspondence,
    which expanded in connection with inquiries from all over the world
    about accidents, poisonings, criminal acts, and so forth, resulting
    from misuse of LSD. All this meant enormous, unprofitable
    difficulties, which the business management of Sandoz regarded with
    disapproval. Thus it happened one day that Professor Stoll, managing
    director of the firm at the time, said to me reproachfully: "I would
    rather you had not discovered LSD."

    At that time, I was now and again assailed by doubts whether the
    valuable pharmacological and psychic effects of LSD might be
    outweighed by its dangers and by possible injuries due to misuse.
    Would LSD become a blessing for humanity, or a curse? This I often
    asked myself when I thought about my problem child. My other
    preparations, Methergine, Dihydroergotamine, and Hydergine, caused me
    no such problems and difficulties. They were not problem children;
    lacking extravagant properties leading to misuse, they have developed
    in a satisfying manner into therapeutically valuable medicines.

    The publicity about LSD attained its high point in the years 1964 to
    1966, not only with regard to enthusiastic claims about the wondrous
    effects of LSD by drug fanatics and hippies, but also to reports of
    accidents, mental breakdowns, criminal acts, murders, and suicide
    under the influence of LSD. A veritable LSD hysteria reigned.

Sandoz Stops LSD Distribution

    In view of this situation, the management of Sandoz was forced to make
    a public statement on the LSD problem and to publish accounts of the
    corresponding measures that had been taken. The pertinent letter,
    dated 23 August 1965, by Dr. A. Cerletti, at the time director of the
    Pharmaceutical Department of Sandoz, is reproduced below:

    Decision Regarding LSD 25 and Other Hallucinogenic Substances

    More than twenty years have elapsed since the discovey by Albert
        Hofmann of LSD 25 in the SANDOZ Laboratories. Whereas the .
        fundamental importance of this discovery may be assessed by its
        impact on the development of modern psychiatric research, it must
        be recognized that it placed a heavy burden of responsibility on
        SANDOZ, the owner of this product.
        The finding of a new chemical with outstanding biological
        properties, apart from the scientific success implied by its
        synthesis, is usually the first decisive step toward profitable
        development of a new drug. In the case of LSD, however, it soon
        became clear that, despite the outstanding properties of this
        compound, or rather because of the very nature of these qualities,
        even though LSD was fully protected by SANDOZ-owned patents since
        the time of its first synthesis in 1938, the usual means of
        practical exploitation could not be envisaged.
        On the other hand, all the evidence obtained following the initial
        studies in animals and humans carried out in the SANDOZ research
        laboratories pointed to the important role that this substance
        could play as an investigational tool in neurological research and
        in psychiatry.
        It was therefore decided to make LSD available free of charge to
        qualified experimental and clinical investigators all over the
        world. This broad research approach was assisted by the provision
        of any necessary technical aid and in many instances also by
        financial support.
        An enormous amount of scientific documents, published mainly in
        the international biochemical and medical literature and
        systematically listed in the "SANDOZ Bibliography on LSD" as well
        as in the "Catalogue of Literature on Delysid" periodically edited
        by SANDOZ, gives vivid proof of what has been achieved by
        following this line of policy over nearly two decades. By
        exercising this kind of "nobile offlcium" in accordance with the
        highest standards of medical ethics with all kinds of self-imposed
        precautions and restrictions, it was possible for many years to
        avoid the danger of abuse (i.e., use by people neither competent
        nor qualifled), which is always inherent in a compound with
        exceptional CNS activity.
        In spite of all our precautions, cases of LSD abuse have occurred
        from time to time in varying circumstances completely beyond the
        control of SANDOZ. Very recently this danger has increased
        considerably and in some parts of the world has reached the scale
        of a serious threat to public health. This state of affairs has
        now reached a critical point for the following reasons: (1) A
        worldwide spread of misconceptions of LSD has been caused by an
        increasing amount of publicity aimed at provoking an active
        interest in laypeople by means of sensational stories and
        statements; (2) In most countries no adequate legislation exists
        to control and regulate the production and distribution of
        substances like LSD; (3) The problem of availability of LSD, once
        limited on technical grounds, has fundamentally changed with the
        advent of mass production of lysergic acid by fermentation
        procedures. Since the last patent on LSD expired in 1963, it is
        not surprising to find that an increasing number of dealers in
        fine chemicals are offering LSD from unknown sources at the high
        price known to be paid by LSD fanatics.
        Taking into consideration all the above-mentioned circumstances
        and the flood of requests for LSD which has now become
        uncontrollable, the pharmaceutical management of SANDOZ has
        decided to stop immediately all further production and
        distribution of LSD. The same policy will apply to all derivatives
        or analogues of LSD with hallucinogenic properties as well as to
        Psilocybin, Psilocin, and their hallucinogenic congeners.

    For a while the distribution of LSD and psilocybin was stopped
    completely by Sandoz. Most countries had subsequently proclaimed
    strict regulations concerning possession, distribution, and use of
    hallucinogens, so that physicians, psychiatric clinics, and research
    institutes, if they could produce a special permit to work with these
    substances from the respective national health authorities, could
    again be supplied with LSD and psilocybin. In the United States the
    National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) undertook the distribution
    of these agents to licensed research institutes.

    All these legislative and official precautions, however, had little
    influence on LSD consumption in the drug scene, yet on the other hand
    hindered and continue to hinder medicinal-psychiatric use and LSD
    research in biology and neurology, because many researchers dread the
    red tape that is connected with the procurement of a license for the
    use of LSD. The bad reputation of LSD - its depiction as an "insanity
    drug" and a "satanic invention" - constitutes a further reason why
    many doctors shunned use of LSD in their psychiatric practice.

    In the course of recent years the uproar of publicity about LSD has
    quieted, and the consumption of LSD as an inebriant has also
    diminished, as far as that can be concluded from the rare reports
    about accidents and other regrettable occurrences following LSD
    ingestion. It may be that the decrease of LSD accidents, however, is
    not simply due to a decline in LSD consumption. Possibly the
    recreational users, with time, have become more aware of the
    particular effects and dangers of LSD and more cautious in their use
    of this drug. Certainly LSD, which was for a time considered in the
    Western world, above all in the United States, to be the number-one
    inebriant, has relinquished this leading role to other inebriants such
    as hashish and the habituating, even physically destructive drugs like
    heroin and amphetamine. The last-mentioned drugs represent an alarming
    sociological and public health problem today.

Dangers of Nomnedicinal LSD Experiments

    While professional use of LSD in psychiatry entails hardly any risk,
    the ingestion of this substance outside of medical practice, without
    medical supervision, is subject to multifarious dangers. These dangers
    reside, on the one hand, in external circumstances connected with
    illegal drug use and, on the other hand, in the peculiarity of LSD's
    psychic effects.

    The advocates of uncontrolled, free use of LSD and other hallucinogens
    base their attitude on two claims: (l) this type of drug produces no
    addiction, and (2) until now no danger to health from moderate use of
    hallucinogens has been demonstrated. Both are true. Genuine addiction,
    characterized by the fact that psychic and often severe physical
    disturbances appear on withdrawal of the drug, has not been observed,
    even in cases in which LSD was taken often and over a long period of
    time. No organic injury or death as a direct consequence of an LSD
    intoxication has yet been reported. As discussed in greater detail in
    the chapter "LSD in Animal Experiments and Biological Research," LSD
    is actually a relatively nontoxic substance in proportion to its
    extraordinarily high psychic activity.

Psychotic Reactions

    Like the other hallucinogens, however, LSD is dangerous in an entirely
    different sense. While the psychic and physical dangers of the
    addicting narcotics, the opiates, amphetamines, and so forth, appear
    only with chronic use, the possible danger of LSD exists in every
    single experiment. This is because severe disoriented states can
    appear during any LSD inebriation. It is true that through careful
    preparation of the experiment and the experimenter such episodes can
    largely be avoided, but they cannot be excluded with certainty. LSD
    crises resemble psychotic attacks with a manic or depressive
    character.

    In the manic, hyperactive condition, the feeling of omnipotence or
    invulnerability can lead to serious casualties. Such accidents have
    occurred when inebriated persons confused in this way - believing
    themselves to be invulnerable - walked in front of a moving automobile
    or jumped out a window in the belief that they were able to fly. This
    type of LSD casualty, however, is not so common as one might be led to
    think on the basis of reports that were sensationally exaggerated by
    the mass media. Nevertheless, such reports must serve as serious
    warnings.

    On the other hand, a report that made the rounds worldwide, in 1966,
    about an alleged murder committed under the influence on LSD, cannot
    be true. The suspect, a young man in New York accused of having killed
    his mother-in-law, explained at his arrest, immediately after the
    fact, that he knew nothing of the crime and that he had been on an LSD
    trip for three days. But an LSD inebriation, even with the highest
    doses, lasts no longer than twelve hours, and repeated ingestion leads
    to tolerance, which means that extra doses are ineffective. Besides,
    LSD inebriation is characterized by the fact that the person remembers
    exactly what he or she has experienced. Presumably the defendant in
    this case expected leniency for extenuating circumstances, owing to
    unsoundness of mind.

    The danger of a psychotic reaction is especially great if LSD is given
    to someone without his or her knowledge. This was demonstrated in an
    episode that took place soon after the discovery of LSD, during the
    first investigations with the new substance in the Zurich University
    Psychiatric Clinic, when people were not yet aware of the danger of
    such jokes. A young doctor, whose colleagues had slipped LSD into his
    coffee as a lark, wanted to swim across Lake Zurich during the winter
    at -20!C (-4!F) and had to be prevented by force.

    There is a different danger when the LSD-induced disorientation
    exhibits a depressive rather than manic character. In the course of
    such an LSD experiment, frightening visions, death agony, or the fear
    of becoming insane can lead to a threatening psychic breakdown or even
    to suicide. Here the LSD trip becomes a "horror trip."

    The demise of a Dr. Olson, who had been given LSD without his
    knowledge in the course of U.S. Army drug experiments, and who then
    committed suicide by jumping from a window, caused a particular
    sensation. His family could not understand how this quiet,
    well-adjusted man could have been driven to this deed. Not until
    fifteen years later, when the secret documents about the experiments
    were published, did they learn the true circumstances, whereupon the
    president of the United States publicly apologized to the dependents.

    The conditions for the positive outcome of an LSD experiment, with
    little possibility of a psychotic derailment, reside on the one hand
    in the individual and on the other hand in the external milieu of the
    experiment. The internal, personal factors are called set, the
    external conditions setting.

    The beauty of a living room or of an outdoor location is perceived
    with particular force because of the highly stimulated sense organs
    during LSD inebriation, and such an amenity has a substantial
    influence on the course of the experiment. The persons present, their
    appearance, their traits, are also part of the setting that determines
    the experience. The acoustic milieu isequally significant. Even
    harmless noises can turn to torment, and conversely lovely music can
    develop into a euphoric experience. With LSD experiments in ugly or
    noisy surroundings, however, there is greater danger of a negative
    outcome, including psychotic crises. The machine- and appliance-world
    of today offers much scenery and all types of noise that could very
    well trigger panic during enhanced sensibility.

    Just as meaningful as the external milieu of the LSD experience, if
    not even more important, is the mental condition of the experimenters,
    their current state of mind, their attitude to the drug experience,
    and their expectations associated with it. Even unconscious feelings
    of happiness or fear can have an effect. LSD tends to intensify the
    actual psychic state. A feeling of happiness can be heightened to
    bliss, a depression can deepen to despair. LSD is thus the most
    inappropriate means imaginable for curing a depressive state. It is
    dangerous to take LSD in a disturbed, unhappy frame of mind, or in a
    state of fear. The probability that the experiment will end in a
    psychic breakdown is then quite high.

    Among persons with unstable personality structures, tending to
    psychotic reactions, LSD experimentation ought to be completely
    avoided. Here an LSD shock, by releasing a latent psychosis, can
    produce a lasting mental injury.

    The psyche of very young persons should also be considered as
    unstable, in the sense of not yet having matured. In any case, the
    shock of such a powerful stream of new and strange perceptions and
    feelings, such as is engendered by LSD, endangers the sensitive,
    still-developing psycho-organism. Even the medicinal use of LSD in
    youths under eighteen years of age, in the scope of psychoanalytic or
    psychotherapeutic treatment, is discouraged in professional circles,
    correctly so in my opinion. Juveniles for the most part still lack a
    secure, solid relationship to reality. Such a relationship is needed
    before the dramatic experience of new dimensions of reality can be
    meaningfully integrated into the world view. Instead of leading to a
    broadening and deepening of reality consciousness, such an experience
    in adolescents will lead to insecurity and a feeling of being lost.
    Because of the freshness of sensory perception in youth and the
    still-unlimited capacity for experience, spontaneous visionary
    experiences occur much more frequently than in later life. For this
    reason as well, psychostimulating agents should not be used by
    juveniles.

    Even in healthy, adult persons, even with adherence to all of the
    preparatory and protective measures discussed, an LSD experiment can
    fail, causing psychotic reactions. Medical supervision is therefore
    earnestly to be recommended, even for nonmedicinal LSD experiments.
    This should include an examination of the state of health before the
    experiment. The doctor need not be present at the session; however,
    medical help should at all times be readily available.

    Acute LSD psychoses can be cut short and brought under control quickly
    and reliably by injection of chlorpromazine or another sedative of
    this type.

    The presence of a familiar person, who can request medical help in the
    event of an emergenCy, is also an indispensable psychological
    assurance. Although the LSD inebriation is characterized mostly by an
    immersion in the individual inner world, a deep need for human contact
    sometimes arises, especially in depressive phases.

LSD from the Black Market

    Nonmedicinal LSD consumption can bring dangers of an entirely
    different type than hitherto discussed: for most of the LSD offered in
    the drug scene is of unknown origin. LSD preparations from the black
    market are unreliable when it comes to both quality and dosage. They
    rarely contain the declared quantity, but mostly have less LSD, often
    none at all, and sometimes even too much. In many cases other drugs or
    even poisonous substances are sold as LSD. These observations were
    made in our laboratory upon analysis of a great number of LSD samples
    from the black market. They coincide with the experiences of national
    drug control departments.

    The unreliability in the strength of LSD preparations on the illicit
    drug market can lead to dangerous overdosage. Overdoses have often
    proved to be the cause of failed LSD experiments that led to severe
    psychic and physical breakdowns. Reports of alleged fatal LSD
    poisoning, however, have yet to be confirmed. Close scrutiny of such
    cases invariably established other causative factors.

    The following case, which took place in 1970, is cited as an example
    of the possible dangers of black market LSD. We received for
    investigation from the police a drug powder distributed as LSD. It
    came from a young man who was admitted to the hospital in critical
    condition and whose friend had also ingested this preparation and died
    as a result. Analysis showed that the powder contained no LSD, but
    rather the very poisonous alkaloid strychnine.

    If most black market LSD preparations contained less than the stated
    quantity and often no LSD at all, the reason is either deliberate
    falsification or the great instability of this substance. LSD is very
    sensitive to air and light. It is oxidatively destroyed by the oxygen
    in the air and is transformed into an inactive substance under the
    influence of light. This must be taken into account during the
    synthesis and especially during the production of stable, storable
    forms of LSD. Claims that LSD may easily be prepared, or that every
    chemistry student in a half-decent laboratory is capable of producing
    it, are untrue. Procedures for synthesis of LSD have indeed been
    published and are accessible to everyone. With these detailed
    procedures in hand, chemists would be able to carry out the synthesis,
    provided they had pure lysergic acid at their disposal; its possession
    today, however, is subject to the same strict regulations as LSD. In
    order to isolate LSD in pure crystalline form from the reaction
    solution and in order to produce stable preparations, however, special
    equipment and not easily acquired specific experience are required,
    owing (as stated previously) to the great instability of this
    substance.

    Only in completely oxygen-free ampules protected from light is LSD
    absolutely stable. Such ampules, containing 100 ,Lg (= 0.1 mg)
    LSD-tartrate (tartaric acid salt of LSD) in 1 cc of aqueous solution,
    were produced for biological research and medicinal use by the Sandoz
    firm. LSD in tablets prepared with additives that inhibit oxidation,
    while not absolutely stable, at least keeps for a longer time. But LSD
    preparations often found on the black market - LSD that has been
    applied in solution onto sugar cubes or blotting paper - decompose in
    the course of weeks or a few months.

    With such a highly potent substance as LSD, the correct dosage is of
    paramount importance. Here the tenet of Paracelsus holds good: the
    dose determines whether a substance acts as a remedy or as a poison. A
    controlled dosage, however, is not possible with preparations from the
    black market, whose active strength is in no way guaranteed. One of
    the greatest dangers of non-medicinal LSD experiments lies, therefore,
    in the use of such preparations of unknown provenience.

The Case of Dr. Leary

    Dr. Timothy Leary, who has become known worldwide in his role of drug
    apostle, had an extraordinarily strong influence on the diffusion of
    illegal LSD consumption in the United States. On the occasion of a
    vacation in Mexico in the year 1960, Leary had eaten the legendary
    "sacred mushrooms," which he had purchased from a shaman. During the
    mushroom inebriation he entered into a state of mystico-religious
    ecstasy, which he described as the deepest religious experience of his
    life. From then on, Dr. Leary, who at the time was a lecturer in
    psychology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
    dedicated himself totally to research on the effects and possibilities
    of the use of psychedelic drugs. Together with his colleague Dr.
    Richard Alpert, he started various research projects at the
    university, in which LSD and psilocybin, isolated by us in the
    meantime, were employed.

    The reintegration of convicts into society, the production of
    mystico-religious experiences in theologians and members of the
    clergy, and the furtherance of creativity in artists and writers with
    the help of LSD and psilocybin were tested with scientific
    methodology. Even persons like Aldous Huxley, Arthur Koestler, and
    Allen Ginsberg participated in these investigations. Particular
    consideration was given to the question, to what degree mental
    preparation and expectation of the subjects, along with the external
    milieu of the experiment, are able to influence the course and
    character of states of psychedelic inebriation.

    In January 1963, Dr. Leary sent me a detailed report of these studies,
    in which he enthusiastically imparted the positive results obtained
    and gave expression to his beliefs in the advantages and very
    promising possibilities of such use of these active compounds. At the
    same time, the Sandoz firm received an inquiry about the supply of
    lOOg LSD and 25 kg psilocybin, signed by Dr. Timothy Leary, from the
    Harvard University Department of Social Relations. The requirement for
    such an enormous quantity (the stated amounts correspond to 1 million
    doses of LSD and 2.5 million doses of psilocybin) was based on the
    planned extension of investigations to tissue, organ, and animal
    studies. We made the supply of these substances contingent upon the
    production of an import license on behalf of the U.S. health
    authorities. Immediately we received the order for the stated
    quantities of LSD and psilocybin, along with a check for $10,000 as
    deposit but without the required import license. Dr. Leary signed for
    this order, but no longer as lecturer at Harvard University, rather as
    president of an organization he had recently founded, the
    International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF). Because, in
    addition, our inquiry to the appropriate dean of Harvard University
    had shown that the university authorities did not approve of the
    continuation of the research project by Leary and Alpert, we canceled
    our offer upon return of the deposit.

    Shortly thereafter, Leary and Alpert were discharged from the teaching
    staff of Harvard- University because the investigations, at first
    conducted in an academic milieu, had lost their scientific character.
    The experiments had turned into LSD parties.

    The LSD trip - LSD as a ticket to an adventurous journey into new
    worlds of mental and physical experience - became the latest exciting
    fashion among academic youth, spreading rapidly from Harvard to other
    universities. Leary's doctrine - that LSD not only served to find the
    divine and to discover the self, but indeed was the most potent
    aphrodisiac yet discovered - surely contributed quite decisively to
    the rapid propagation of LSD consumption among the younger generation.
    Later, in an interview with the monthly magazine Playboy, Leary said
    that the intensification of sexual experience and the potentiation of
    sexual ecstasy by LSD was one of the chief reasons for the LSD boom.

    After his expulsion from Harvard University, Leary was completely
    transformed from a psychology lecturer pursuing research, into the
    messiah of the psychedelic movement. He and his friends of the IFIF
    founded a psychedelic research center in lovely, scenic surroundings
    in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. I received a personal invitation from Dr.
    Leary to participate in a top-level planning session on psychedelic
    drugs, scheduled to take place there in August 1963. I would gladly
    have accepted this grand invitation, in which I was offered
    reimbursement for travel expenses and free lodging, in order to learn
    from personal observation the methods, operation, and the entire
    atmosphere of such a psychedelic research center, about which
    contradictory, to some extent very remarkable, reports were then
    circulating. Unfortunately, professional obligations kept me at that
    moment from flying to Mexico to get a picture at first hand of the
    controversial enterprise. The Zihuatanejo Research Center did not last
    long. Leary and his adherents were expelled from the country by the
    Mexican government. Leary, however, who had now become not only the
    messiah but also the martyr of the psychedelic movement, soon received
    help from the young New York millionaire William Hitchcock, who made a
    manorial house on his large estate in Millbrook, New York, available
    to Leary as new home and headquarters. Millbrook was also the home of
    another foundation for the psychedelic, transcendental way of life,
    the Castalia Foundation.

    On a trip to India in 1965 Leary was converted to Hinduism. In the
    following year he founded a religious community, the League for
    Spiritual Discovery, whose initials give the abbreviation "LSD."

    Leary's proclamation to youth, condensed in his famous slogan "Turn
    on, tune in, drop out !", became a central dogma of the hippie
    movement. Leary is one of the founding fathers of the hippie cult. The
    last of these three precepts, "drop out," was the challenge to escape
    from bourgeois life, to turn one's back on society, to give up school,
    studies, and employment, and to dedicate oneself wholly to the true
    inner universe, the study of one's own nervous system, after one has
    turned on with LSD. This challenge above all went beyond the
    psychological and religious domain to assume social and political
    significance. It is therefore understandable that Leary not only
    became the enfant terrible of the university and among his academic
    colleagues in psychology and psychiatry, but also earned the wrath of
    the political authorities. He was, therefore, placed under
    surveillance, followed, and ultimately locked in prison. The high
    sentences - ten years' imprisonment each for convictions in Texas and
    California concerning possession of LSD and marijuana, and conviction
    (later overturned) with a sentence of thirty years' imprisonment for
    marijuana smuggling - show that the punishment of these offenses was
    only a pretext: the real aim was to put under lock and key the seducer
    and instigator of youth, who could not otherwise be prosecuted. On the
    night of 13-14 September 1970, Leary managed to escape from the
    California prison in San Luis Obispo. On a detour from Algeria, where
    he made contact with Eldridge Cleaver, a leader of the Black Panther
    movement living there in exile, Leary came to Switzerland and there
    petitioned for political asylum.

Meeting with Timothy Leary

    Dr. Leary lived with his wife, Rosemary, in the resort town
    Villars-sur-Ollon in western Switzerland. Through the intercession of
    Dr. Mastronardi, Dr. Leary's lawyer, contact was established between
    us. On 3 September 1971, I met Dr. Leary in the railway station snack
    bar in Lausanne. The greeting was cordial, a symbol of our fateful
    relationship through LSD. Leary was medium-sized, slender, resiliently
    active, his brown face surrounded with slightly curly hair mixed with
    gray, youthful, with bright, laughing eyes. This gave Leary somewhat
    the mark of a tennis champion rather than that of a former Harvard
    lecturer. We traveled by automobile to Buchillons, where in the arbor
    of the restaurant A la Grande Foret, over a meal of fish and a glass
    of white wine, the dialogue between the father and the apostle of LSD
    finally began.

    I voiced my regret that the investigations with LSD and psilocybin at
    Harvard University, which had begun promisingly, had degenerated to
    such an extent that their continuance in an academic milieu became
    impossible.

    My most serious remonstrance to Leary, however, concerned the
    propagation of LSD use among juveniles. Leary did not attempt to
    refute my opinions about the particular dangers of LSD for youth. He
    maintained, however, that I was unjustified in reproaching him for the
    seduction of immature persons to drug consumption, because teenagers
    in the United States, with regard to information and life experience,
    were comparable to adult Europeans. Maturity, with satiation and
    intellectual stagnation, would be reached very early in the United
    States. For that reason, he deemed the LSD experience significant,
    useful, and enriching, even for people still very young in years.

    In this conversation, I further objected to the great publicity that
    Leary sought for his LSD and psilocybin investigations, since he had
    invited reporters from daily papers and magazines to his experiments
    and had mobilized radio and television. Emphasis was thereby placed on
    publicity rather than on objective information. Leary defended this
    publicity program because he felt it had been his fateful historic
    role to make LSD known worldwide. The overwhelmingly positive effects
    of such dissemination, above all among America's younger generation,
    would make any trifling injuries, any regrettable accidents as a
    result of improper use of LSD, unimportant in comparison, a small
    price to pay.

    During this conversation, I ascertained that one did Leary an
    injustice by indiscriminately describing him as a drug apostle. He
    made a sharp distinction between psychedelic drugs - LSD, psilocybin,
    mescaline, hashish - of whose salutary effects he was persuaded, and
    the addicting narcotics morphine, heroin, etc., against whose use he
    repeatedly cautioned.

    My impression of Dr. Leary in this personal meeting was that of a
    charming personage, convinced of his mission, who defended his
    opinions with humor yet uncompromisingly; a man who truly soared high
    in the clouds pervaded by beliefs in the wondrous effects of
    psychedelic drugs and the optimism resulting therefrom, and thus a man
    who tended to underrate or completely overlook practical difficulties,
    unpleasant facts, and dangers. Leary also showed carelessness
    regarding charges and dangers that concerned his own person, as his
    further path in life emphatically showed.

    During his Swiss sojourn, I met Leary by chance once more, in February
    1972, in Basel, on the occasion of a visit by Michael Horowitz,
    curator of the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library in San Francisco, a
    library specializing in drug literature. We traveled together to my
    house in the country near Burg, where we resumed our conversation of
    the previous September. Leary appeared fidgety and detached, probably
    owing to a momentary indisposition, so that our discussions were less
    productive this time. That was my last meeting with Dr. Leary.

    He left Switzerland at the end of the year, having separated from his
    wife, Rosemary, now accompanied by his new friend Joanna
    Harcourt-Smith. After a short stay in Austria, where he assisted in a
    documentary film about heroin, Leary and friend traveled to
    Afghanistan. At the airport in Kabul he was apprehended by agents of
    the American secret service and brought back to the San Luis Obispo
    prison in California.

    After nothing had been heard from Leary for a long time, his name
    again appeared in the daily papers in summer 1975 with the
    announcement of a parole and early release from prison. But he was not
    set free until early in 1976. I learned from his friends that he was
    now occupied with psychological problems of space travel and with the
    exploration of cosmic relationships between the human nervous system
    and interstellar space - that is, with problems whose study would
    bring him no further difficulties on the part of governmental
    authorities.

Travels in the Universe of the Soul

    Thus the Islamic scholar Dr. Rudolf Gelpke entitled his accounts of
    self-experiments with LSD and psilocybin, which appeared in the
    publication Antaios, for January 1962, and this title could also be
    used for the following descriptions of LSD experiments. LSD trips and
    the space flights of the astronauts are comparable in many respects.
    Both enterprises require very careful preparations, as far as measures
    for safety as well as objectives are concerned, in order to minimize
    dangers and to derive the most valuable results possible. The
    astronauts cannot remain in space nor the LSD experimenters in
    transcendental spheres, they have to return to earth and everyday
    reality, where the newly acquired experiences must be evaluated.

    The following reports were selected in order to demonstrate how varied
    the experiences of LSD inebriation can be. The particular motivation
    for undertaking the experiments was also decisive in their selection.
    Without exception, this selection involves only reports by persons who
    have tried LSD not simply out of curiosity or as a sophisticated
    pleasure drug, but who rather experimented with it in the quest for
    expanded possibilities of experience of the inner and outer world; who
    attempted, with the help of this drug key, to unlock new "doors of
    perception" (William Blake); or, to continue with the comparison
    chosen by Rudolf Gelpke, who employed LSD to surmount the force of
    gravity of space and time in the accustomed world view, in order to
    arrive thereby at new outlooks and understandings in the "universe of
    the soul."

    The first two of the following research records are taken from the
    previously cited report by Rudolf Gelpke in Antaios.

Dance of the Spirits in the Wind

    (0.075 mg LSD on 23 June 1961, 13:00 hours)

    After I had ingested this dose, which could be considered average, I
        conversed very animatedly with a professional colleague until
        approximately 14:00 hours. Following this, I proceeded alone to
        the Werthmuller bookstore where the drug now began to act most
        unmistakably. I discerned, above all, that the subjects of the
        books in which I rummaged peacefully in the back of the shop were
        indifferent to me, whereas random details of my surroundings
        suddenly stood out strongly, and somehow appeared to be
        "meaningful." . . . Then, after some ten minutes, I was discovered
        by a married couple known to me, and had to let myself become
        involved in a conversation with them that, I admit, was by no
        means pleasant to me, though not really painful either. I listened
        to the conversation (even to myself) " as from far away. " The
        things that were discussed (the conversation dealt with Persian
        stories that I had translated) "belonged to another world": a
        world about which I could indeed express myself (I had, after all,
        recently still inhabited it myself and remembered the "rules of
        the game"!), but to which I no longer possessed any emotional
        connection. My interest in it was obliterated - only I did not
        dare to let myself observe that.
        After I managed to dismiss myself, I strolled farther through the
        city to the marketplace. I had no "visions," saw and heard
        everything as usual, and yet everything was also altered in an
        indescribable way; "imperceptible glassy walls" everywhere. With
        every step that I took, I became more and more like an automaton.
        It especially struck me that I seemed to lose control over my
        facial musculature - I was convinced that my face was grown stiff,
        completely expressionless, empty, slack and masklike. The only
        reason I could still walk and put myself in motion, was because I
        remembered that, and how I had "earlier" gone and moved myself.
        But the farther back the recollection went, the more uncertain I
        became. I remember that my own hands somehow were in my way: I put
        them in my pockets, let them dangle, entwined them behind my back
        . . . as some burdensome objects, which must be dragged around
        with us and which no one knows quite how to stow away. I had the
        same reaction concerning my whole body. I no longer knew why it
        was there, and where I should go with it. All sense for decisions
        of that kind had been lost . They could only be reconstructed
        laboriously, taking a detour through memories from the past. It
        took a struggle of this kind to enable me to cover the short
        distance from the marketplace to my home, which I reached at about
        15:10.
        In no way had I had the feeling of being inebriated. What I
        experienced was rather a gradual mental extinction. It was not at
        all frightening; but I can imagine that in the transition to
        certain mental disturbances - naturally dispersed over a greater
        interval - a very similarprocess happens: as long as the
        recollection of the former individual existence in the human world
        is still present, the patient who has become unconnected can still
        (to some extent) find his way about in the world: later, however,
        when the memories fade and ultimately die out, he completely loses
        this ability.
        Shortly after I had entered my room, the "glassy stupor" gave way.
        I sat down, with a view out of a window, and was at once
        enraptured: the window was opened wide, the diaphanous gossamer
        curtains, on the other hand, were drawn, and now a mild wind from
        the outside played with these veils and with the silhouettes of
        potted plants and leafy tendrils on the sill behind, which the
        sunlight delineated on the curtains breathing in the breeze. This
        spectacle captivated me completely. I "sank" into it, saw only
        this gentle and incessant waving and rocking of the plant shadows
        in the sun and the wind. I knew what "it" was, but I sought after
        the name for it, after the formula, after the "magic word" that I
        knew and already I had it: Totentanz, the dance of the dead....
        This was what the wind and the light were showing me on the screen
        of gossamer. Was it frightening? Was I afraid? Perhaps - at first.
        But then a great cheerfulness infiltrated me, and I heard the
        music of silence, and even my soul danced with the redeemed
        shadows to the whistle of the wind. Yes, I understood: this is the
        curtain, and this curtain itself IS the secret, the "ultimate"
        that it concealed. Why, therefore, tear it up? He who does that
        only tears up himself. Because "there behind," behind the curtain,
        is "nothing.". . .

Polyp from the Deep

    (0.150 mg LSD on 15 April 1961, 9:15 hours)

    Beginning of the effect already after about 30 minutes with strong
        inner agitation, trembling hands, skin chills, taste of metal on
        the palate.
        10:00: The environment of the room transforms itself into
        phosphorescent waves, running hither from the feet even through my
        body. The skin - and above all the toes - is as electrically
        charged; a still constantly growing excitement hinders all clear
        thoughts....
        10:20: I lack the words to describe my current condition. It is as
        if an "other" complete stranger were seizing possession of me bit
        by bit. Have greatest trouble writing ("inhibited"
        or"uninhibited"? - I don't know!).
        This sinister process of an advancing self-estrangement aroused in
        me the feeling of powerlessness, of being helplessly delivered up.
        Around 10:30, through closed eyes I saw innumerable,
        self-intertwining threads on a red background. A sky as heavy as
        lead appeared to press down on everything; I felt my ego
        compressed in itself, and I felt like a withered dwarf.... Shortly
        before 13:00 I escaped the more and more oppressing atmosphere of
        the company in the studio, in which we only hindered one another
        reciprocally from unfolding completely into the inebriation. I sat
        down in a small, empty room, on the floor, with my back to the
        wall, and saw through the only window on the narrow frontage
        opposite me a bit of gray- white cloudy sky. This, like the whole
        environment in general, appeared to be hopelessly normal at this
        moment. I was dejected, and my self seemed so repulsive and
        hateful to me that I had not dared (and on this day even had
        actually repeatedly desperately avoided) to look in a mirror or in
        the face of another person. I very much wished this inebriation
        were finally finished, but it still had my body totally in its
        possession. I imagined that I perceived, deep within its stubborn
        oppressive weight, how it held my limbs surrounded with a hundred
        polyp arms - yes, I actually experienced this in a mysterious
        rhythm; electrified contacts, as of a real, indeed imperceptible,
        but sinister omn sent being, which I addressed with a loud voice,
        reviled, bid, and challenged to open combat. "It is only the
        projection of evil in your self," another voice assured me. "It is
        your soul monster!" This perception was like a flashing sword. It
        passed through me with redeeming sharpness. The polyp arms fell
        away from me - as if cut through - and simultaneously the hitherto
        dull and gloomy gray-white of the sky behind the open window
        suddenly scintillated like sunlit water. As I stared at it so
        enchanted, it changed (for me!) to real water: a subterranean
        spring overran me, which had ruptured there all at once and now
        boiled up toward me, wanted to become a storm, a lake, an ocean,
        with millions and millions of drops - and on all of these drops,
        on every single one of them, the light danced.... As the room,
        window, and sky came back into my consciousness (it was 13:25
        hours), the inebriation was certainly not at an end - not yet -
        but its rearguard, which passed by me during the ensuing two
        hours, very much resembled the rainbow that follows the storm.

    Both the estrangement from the environment and the estrangement from
    the individual body, experienced in both of the preceding experiments
    described by Gelpke - as well as the feeling of an alien being, a
    demon, seizing possession of oneself - are features of LSD inebriation
    that, in spite of all the other diversity and variability of the
    experience, are cited in most research reports. I have already
    described the possession by the LSD demon as an uncanny experience in
    my first planned self-experiment. Anxiety and terror then affected me
    especially strongly, because at that time I had no way of knowing that
    the demon would again release his victim.

    The adventures described in the following report, by a painter, belong
    to a completely different type of LSD experience. This artist visited
    me in order to obtain my opinion about how the experience under LSD
    should be understood and interpreted. He feared that the profound
    transformation of his personal life, which had resulted from his
    experiment with LSD, could rest on a mere delusion. My explanation -
    that LSD, as a biochemical agent, only triggered his visions but had
    not created them and that these visions rather originated from his own
    soul - gave him confidence in the meaning of his transformation.

LSD Experience of a Painter

    . . . Therefore I traveled with Eva to a solitary mountain valley. Up
        there in nature, I thought it would be particularly beautiful with
        Eva. Eva was young and attractive. Twenty years older than she, I
        was already in the middle of life. Despite the sorrowful
        consequences that I had experienced previously, as a result of
        erotic escapades, despite the pain and the disappointments that I
        inflicted on those who loved me and had believed in me, I was
        drawn again with irresistible power to this adventure, to Eva, to
        her youth. I was under the spell of this girl. Our affair indeed
        was only beginning, but I felt this seductive power more strongly
        than ever before. I knew that I could no longer resist. For the
        second time in my life I was again ready to desert my family, to
        give up my position, to break all bridges. I wanted to hurl myself
        uninhibitedly into this lustful inebriation with Eva. She was
        life, youth. Over again it cried out in me, again and again to
        drain the cup of lust and life until the last drop, until death
        and perdition. Let the Devil fetch me later on! I had indeed long
        ago done away with God and the Devil. They were for me only human
        inventions, which came to be utilized by a skeptical, unscrupulous
        minority, in order to suppress and exploit a believing, naive
        majority. I wanted to have nothing to do with this mendacious
        social moral. To enjoy, at all costs, I wished to enjoy et apres
        nous te deluge. "What is wife to me, what is child to me - let
        them go begging, if they are hungry." I also perceived the
        institution of marriage as a social lie. The marriage of my
        parents and marriages of my acquaintances seemed to confirm that
        sufficiently for me. Couples remained together because it was more
        convenient; they were accustomed to it, and "yes, if it weren't
        for the children . . ." Under the pretense of a good marriage,
        each tormented the other emotionally, to the point of rashes and
        stomach ulcers, or each went his own way. Everything in me
        rebelled against the thought of having to love only one and the
        same woman a life long. I frankly perceived that as repugnant and
        unnatural. Thus stood my inner disposition on that portentous
        summer evening at the mountain lake.
        At seven o'clock in the evening both of us took a moderately
        strong dose of LSD, some 0.1 milligrams. Then we strolled along
        about the lake and then sat on the bank. We threw stones in the
        water and watched the forming wave circles. We felt a slight inner
        restlessness. Around eight o'clock we entered the hotel lounge and
        ordered tea and sandwiches. Some guests still sat there, telling
        jokes and laughing loudly. They winked at us. Their eyes sparkled
        strangely. We felt strange and distant and had the feeling that
        they would notice something in us. Outside it slowly became dark.
        We decided only reluctantly to go to our hotel room. A street
        without lights led along the black lake to the distant guest
        house. As I switched on the light, the granite staircase, leading
        from the shore road to the house, appeared to flame up from step
        to step. Eva quivered all at once, frightened. "Hellish" went
        through my mind, and all of a sudden horror passed through my
        limbs, and I knew: now it's going to turn out badly. From afar,
        from the village, a clock struck nine.
        Scarcely were we in our room, when Eva threw herself on the bed
        and looked at me with wide eyes. It was not in the least possible
        to think of love. I sat down on the edge of the bed and held both
        of Eva's hands. Then came the terror. We sank into a deep,
        indescribable horror, which neither of us understood.
        "Look in my eyes, look at me," I implored Eva, yet again and again
        her gaze was averted from me, and then she cried out loud in
        terror and trembled all over her body. There was no way out.
        Outside was only gloomy night and the deep, black lake. In the
        public house all the lights were extinguished; the people had
        probably gone to sleep. What would they have said if they could
        see us now? Possibly they would summon the police, and then
        everything would become still much worse. A drug scandal -
        intolerable agonizing thoughts.
        We could no longer move from the spot. We sat there surrounded by
        four wooden walls whose board joints shone infernally. It became
        more unbearable all the time. Suddenly the door was opened and
        "something dreadful" entered. Eva cried out wildly and hid herself
        under the bed covers. Once again a cry. The horror under the
        covers was yet worse. "Look straight in my eyes!" I called to her,
        but she rolled her eyes back and forth as though out of her mind.
        She is becoming insane, I realized. In desperation I seized her by
        the hair so that she could no longer turn her face away from me. I
        saw dreadful fear in her eyes. Everything around us was hostile
        and threatening, as if everything wanted to attack us in the next
        moment. You must protect Eva, you must bring her through until
        morning, then the effects will discontinue, I said to myself. Then
        again, however, I plunged into nameless horror. There was no more
        time or reason; it seemed as if this condition would never end.
        The objects in the room were animated to caricatures; everything
        on all sides sneered scornfully. I saw Eva's yellow-black striped
        shoes, which I had found so stimulating, appearing as two large,
        evil wasps crawling on the floor. The water piping above the
        washbasin changed to a dragon head, whose eyes, the two water
        taps, observed me malevolently. My first name, George, came into
        my mind, and all at once I felt like Knight George, who must fight
        for Eva.
        Eva's cries tore me from these thoughts. Bathed in perspiration
        and trembling, she fastened herself to me. "I am thirsty," she
        moaned. With great effort, without releasing Eva's hand, I
        succeeded in getting a glass of water for her. But the water
        seemed slimy and viscous, was poisonous, and we could not quench
        our thirst with it. The two night-table lamps glowed with a
        strange brightness, in an infernal light. The clock struck twelve.
        This is hell, I thought. There is indeed no Devil and no demons,
        and yet they were perceptible in us, filled up the room, and
        tormented us with unimaginable terror. Imagination, or not?
        Hallucinations, projections? - insignificant questions when
        confronted with the reality of fear that was fixed in our bodies
        and shook us: the fear alone, it existed. Some passages from
        Huxley's book The Doors of Perception came to me and brought me
        brief comfort. I looked at Eva, at this whimpering, horrified
        being in her torment, and felt great remorse and pity. She had
        become strange to me; I scarcely recognized her any longer. She
        wore a fine golden chain around her neck with the medallion of the
        Virgin Mary. It was a gift from her younger brother. I noticed how
        a benevolent, comforting radiation, which was connected with pure
        love, emanated from this necklace. But then the terror broke loose
        again, as if to our final destruction. I needed my whole strength
        to constrain Eva. Loudly I heard the electrical meter ticking
        weirdly outside of the door, as if it wanted to make a most
        important, evil, devastating announcement to me in the next
        moment. Disdain, derision, and malignity again whispered out of
        all nooks and crevices. There, in the midst of this agony, I
        perceived the ringing of cowbells from afar as a wonderful,
        promising music. Yet soon it became silent again, and renewed fear
        and dread once again set in. As a drowning man hopes for a
        rescuing plank, so I wished that the cows would yet again want to
        draw near the house.\But everything remained quiet, and only the
        threatening tick and hum of the current meter buzzed round us like
        an invisible, malevolent insect.
        Morning finally dawned. With great relief I noticed how the chinks
        in the window shutters lit up. Now I could leave Eva to herself;
        she had quieted down. Exhausted, she closed her eyes and fell
        asleep. Shocked and deeply sad, I still sat on the edge of the
        bed. Gone was my pride and self- assurance; all that remained of
        me was a small heap of misery. I examined myself in the mirror and
        started: I had become ten years older in the course of the night.
        Downcast, I stared at the light of the night-table lamp with the
        hideous shade of intertwined plastic cords. All at once the light
        seemed to become brighter, and in the plastic cords it began to
        sparkle and to twinkle; it glowed like diamonds and gems of all
        colors, and an overwhelming feeling of happiness welled up in me.
        All at once, lamp, room, and Eva disappeared, and I found myself
        in a wonderful, fantastic landscape. It was comparable to the
        interior of an immense Gothic church nave, with infinitely many
        columns and Gothic arches. These consisted, however, not of stone,
        but rather of crystal. Bluish, yellowish, milky, and clearly
        transparent crystal columns surrounded me like trees in an open
        forest. Their points and arches became lost in dizzying heights. A
        bright light appeared before my inner eye, and a wonderful, gentle
        voice spoke to me out of the light. I did not hear it with my
        external ear, but rather perceived it, as if it were clear
        thoughts that arise in one.
        I realized that in the horror of the passing night I had
        experienced my own individual condition: selfishness. My egotism
        had kept me separated from mankind and had led me to inner
        isolation. I had loved only myself, not my neighbor; loved only
        the gratification that the other offered me. The world had existed
        only for the satisfaction of my greed. I had become tough, cold,
        and cynical. Hell, therefore, had signified that: egotism and
        lovelessness. Therefore everything had seemed strange and
        unconnected to me, so scornful and threatening. Amid flowing
        tears, I was enlightened with the knowledge that true love means
        surrenderof selfishness and that it is not desires but rather
        selfless love that forms the bridge to the heart of our fellow
        man. Waves of ineffable happiness flowed through my body. I had
        experienced the grace of God. But how could it be possible that it
        was radiating toward me, particularly out of this cheap lampshade?
        Then the inner voice answered: God is in everything.
        The experience at the mountain lake has given me the certainty
        that beyond the ephemeral, material world there also exists an
        imperishable, spiritual reality, which is our true home. I am now
        on my way home.
        For Eva everything remained just a bad dream. We broke up a short
        time thereafter.

    The following notes kept by a twenty-five-year-old advertising agent
    are contained in The LSD Story by John Cashman (Fawcett Publications,
    Greenwich, Conn., 1966). They were included in this selection of LSD
    reports, along with the preceding example, because the progression
    that they describe - from terrifying visions to extreme euphoria, a
    kind of deathrebirth cycle - is characteristic of many LSD
    experiments.

A Joyous Song of Being

    My first experience with LSD came at the home of a close friend who
        served as my guide. The surroundings were comfortably familiar and
        relaxing. I took two ampuls (200 micrograms) of LSD mixed in half
        a glass of distilled water. The experience lasted for close to
        eleven hours, from 8 o'clock on a Saturday evening until very
        nearly 7 o'clock the next morning. I have no firm point of
        comparison, but I am positive that no saint ever saw more glorious
        or joyously beautiful visions or experienced a more blissful state
        of transcendence. My powers to convey the miracles are shabby and
        far too inadequate to the task at hand. A sketch, and an artless
        one at that, must suffice where only the hand of a great master
        working from a complete palette could do justice to the subject. I
        must apologize for my own limitations in this feeble attempt to
        reduce the most remarkable experience of my life to mere words. My
        superior smile at the fumbling, halting attempts of others in
        their attempts to explain the heavenly visions to me has been
        transformed into a knowing smile of a conspirator - the common
        experience requires no words.
        My first thought after drinking the LSD was that it was having
        absolutely no effect. They had told me thirty minutes would
        produce the first sensation, a tingling of the skin. There was no
        tingling. I commented on this and was told to relax and wait. For
        the lack of anything else to do I stared at the dial light of the
        table radio, nodding my head to a jazz piece I did not recognize.
        I think it was several minutes before I realized that the light
        was changing color kaleidoscopically with the different pitch of
        the musical sounds, bright reds and yellows in the high register,
        deep purple in the low. I laughed. I had no idea when it had
        started. I simply knew it had. I closed my eyes, but the colored
        notes were still there. I was overcome by the remarkable
        brilliance of the colors. I tried to talk, to explain what I was
        seeing, the vibrant and luminous colors. Somehow it didn't seem
        important. With my eyes open, the radiant colors flooded the room,
        folding over on top of one another in rhythm with the music.
        Suddenly I was aware that the colors were the music. The discovery
        did not seem startling. Values, so cherished and guarded, were
        becoming unimportant. I wanted to talk about the colored music,
        but I couldn't. I was reduced to uttering one-syllable words while
        polysyllabic impressions tumbled through my mind with the speed of
        light.
        The dimensions of the room were changing, now sliding into a
        fluttering diamond shape, then straining into an oval shape as if
        someone were pumping air into the room, expanding it to the
        bursting point. I was having trouble focusing on objects. They
        would melt into fuzzy masses of nothing or sail off into space,
        self-propelled, slow-motion trips that were of acute interest to
        me. I tried to check the time on my watch, but I was unable to
        focus on the hands. I thought of asking for the time, but the
        thought passed. I was too busy seeing and listening. The sounds
        were exhilarating, the sights remarkable. I was completely
        entranced. I have no idea how long this lasted. I do know the egg
        came next.
        The egg, large, pulsating, and a luminous green, was there before
        I actually saw it. I sensed it was there. It hung suspended about
        halfway between where I sat and the far wall. I was intrigued by
        the beauty of the egg. At the same time I was afraid it would drop
        to the floor and break. I didn't want the egg to break. It seemed
        most important that the egg should not break. But even as I
        thought of this, the egg slowly dissolved and revealed a great
        multihued flower that was like no flowerI have ever seen. Its
        incredibly exquisite petals opened on the room, spraying
        indescribable colors in every direction. I felt the colors and
        heard them as they played across my body, cool and warm, reedlike
        and tinkling.
        The first tinge of apprehension came later when I saw the center
        of the flower slowly eating away at the petals, a black, shiny
        center that appeared to be formed by the backs of a thousand ants.
        It ate away the petals at an agonizingly slow pace. I wanted to
        scream for it to stop or to hurry up. I was pained by the gradual
        disappearance of the beautiful petals as if being swallowed by an
        insidious disease. Then in a flash of insight I realized to my
        horror that the black thing was actually devouring me. I was the
        flower and this foreign, creeping thing was eating me!
        I shouted or screamed, I really don't remember. I was too full of
        fear and loathing. I heard my guide say: "Easy now. Just go with
        it. Don't fight it. Go with it." I tried, but the hideous
        blackness caused such repulsion that I screamed: "I can't! For
        God's sake help me! Help me!" The voice was soothing, reassuring:
        "Let it come. Everything is all right. Don't worry. Go with it.
        Don't fight."
        I felt myself dissolving into the terrifying apparition, my body
        melting in waves into the core of blackness, my mind stripped of
        ego and life and, yes even death. In one great crystal instant I
        realized that I was immortal. I asked the question: "Am I dead?"
        But the question had no meaning. Meaning was meaningless. Suddenly
        there was white light and the shimmering beauty of unity. There
        was light everywhere, white light with a clarity beyond
        description. I was dead and I was born and the exultation was pure
        and holy. My lungs were bursting with the joyful song of being.
        There was unity and life and the exquisite love that filled my
        being was unbounded. My awareness was acute and complete. I saw
        God and the devil and all the saints and I knew the truth. I felt
        myself flowing into the cosmos, levitated beyond all restraint,
        liberated to swim in the blissful radiance of the heavenly
        visions.
        I wanted to shout and sing of miraculous new life and sense and
        form, of the joyous beauty and the whole mad ecstasy of
        loveliness. I knew and understood all there is to know and
        understand. I was immortal, wise beyond wisdom, and capable of
        love, of all loves. Every atom of my body and soul had seen and
        felt God. The world was warmth and goodness. There was no time, no
        place, no me. There was only cosmic harmony. It was all there in
        the white light. With every fiberof my being I knew it was so.
        I embraced the enlightenment with complete abandonment. As the
        experience receded I longed to hold onto it and tenaciously fought
        against the encroachment of the realities of time and place. For
        me, the realities of our limited existence were no longer valid. I
        had seen the ultimate realities and there would be no others. As I
        was slowly transported back to the tyranny of clocks and schedules
        and petty hatreds, I tried to talk of my trip, my enlightenment,
        the horrors, the beauty, all of it. I must have been babbling like
        an idiot. My thoughts swirled at a fantastic rate, but the words
        couldn't keep pace. My guide smiled and told me he understood.

    The preceding collection of reports on "travels in the universe of the
    soul," even though they encompass such dissimilar experiences, are
    still not able to establish a complete picture of the broad spectrum
    of all possible reactions to LSD, which extends from the most sublime
    spiritual, religious, and mystical experiences, down to gross
    psychosomatic disturbances. Cases of LSD sessions have been described
    in which the stimulation of fantasy and of visionary experience, as
    expressed in the LSD reports assembled here, is completely absent, and
    the experimenter was for the whole time in a state of ghastly physical
    and mental discomfort, or even felt severely ill.

    Reports about the modification of sexual experience under the
    influence of LSD are also contradictory. Since stimulation of all
    sensory perception is an essential feature of LSD effects, the sensual
    orgy of sexual intercourse can undergo unimaginable enhancements.
    Cases have also been described, however, in which LSD led not to the
    anticipated erotic paradise, but rather to a purgatory or even to the
    hell of frightful extinction of every perception and to a lifeless
    vacuum.

    Such a variety and contradiction of reactions to a drug is found only
    in LSD and the related hallucinogens. The explanation for this lies in
    the complexity and variability of the conscious and subconscious minds
    of people, which LSD is able to penetrate and to bring to life as
    experienced reality.
      _________________________________________________________________

                         6. The Mexican Relatives of LSD

The Sacred Mushroom Teonanacatl

    Late in 1956 a notice in the daily paper caught my interest. Among
    some Indians in southern Mexico, American researchers had discovered
    mushrooms that were eaten in religious ceremonies and that produced an
    inebriated condition accompanied by hallucinations.

    Since, outside of the mescaline cactus found also in Mexico, no other
    drug was known at the time that, like LSD, produced hallucinations, I
    would have liked to establish contact with these researchers, in order
    to learn details about these hallucinogenic mushrooms. But there were
    no names and addresses in the short newspaper article, so that it was
    impossible to get further information. Nevertheless, the mysterious
    mushrooms, whose chemical investigation would be a tempting problem,
    stayed in my thoughts from then on.

    As it later turned out, LSD was the reason that these mushrooms found
    their way into my laboratory, with out my assistance, at the beginning
    of the following year.

    Through the mediation of Dr. Yves Dunant, at the time director of the
    Paris branch of Sandoz, an inquiry came to the pharmaceutical research
    management in Basel from Professor Roger Heim, director of the
    Laboratoire de Cryptogamie of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle
    in Paris, asking whether we were interested in carrying out the
    chemical investigation of the Mexican hallucinogenic mushrooms. With
    great joy I declared myself ready to begin this work in my department,
    in the laboratories for natural product research. That was to be my
    link to the exciting investigations of the Mexican sacred mushrooms,
    which were already broadly advanced in the ethnomycological and
    botanical aspects.

    For a long time the existence of these magic mushrooms had remained an
    enigma. The history of their rediscovery is presented at first hand in
    the magnificent two-volume standard work of ethnomycology, Mushrooms,
    Russia and History (Pantheon Books, New York, 1957), for the authors,
    the American researchers Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and her husband, R.
    Gordon Wasson, played a decisive role in this rediscovery. The
    following descriptions of the fascinating history of these mushrooms
    are taken from the Wassons' book.

    The first written evidence of the use of inebriating mushrooms on
    festival occasions, or in the course of religious ceremonies and
    magically oriented healing practices, is found among the Spanish
    chroniclers and naturalists of the sixteenth century, who entered the
    country soon after the conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortes. The most
    important of these witnesses is the Franciscan friar Bernardino de
    Sahagun, who mentions the magic mushrooms and describes their effects
    and their use in several passages of his famous historical work,
    Historia General de tas Cosas de Nueva Espana, written between the
    years 1529 and 1590. Thus he describes, for example, how merchants
    celebrated the return home from a successful business trip with a
    mushroom party:

    Coming at the very first, at the time of feasting, they ate mushrooms
        when, as they said, it was the hour of the blowing of the flutes.
        Not yet did they partake of food; they drank only chocolate during
        the night. And they ate mushrooms with honey. When already the
        mushrooms were taking effect, there was dancing, there was
        weeping.... Some saw in a vision that they would die in war. Some
        saw in a vision that they would be devoured by wild beasts....
        Some saw in a vision that they would become rich, wealthy. Some
        saw in a vision that they would buy slaves, would become slave
        owners. Some saw in a vision that they would commit adultery [and
        so] would have their heads bashed in, would be stoned to death....
        Some saw in a vision that they would perish in the water. Some saw
        in a vision that they would pass to tranquility in death. Some saw
        in avision that they would fall from the housetop, tumble to their
        death. . . . All such things they saw.... And when [the effects
        of] the mushroom ceased, they conversed with one another, spoke of
        what they had seen in the vision.

    In a publication from the same period, Diego Duran, a Dominican friar,
    reported that inebriating mushrooms were eaten at the great festivity
    on the occasion of the accession to the throne of Moctezuma II, the
    famed emperor of the Aztecs, in the year 1502. A passage in the
    seventeenth-century chronicle of Don Jacinto de la Serna refers to the
    use of these mushrooms in a religious framework:

    And what happened was that there had come to [the village] an Indian .
        . . and his name was Juan Chichiton . . . and he had brought the
        red-colored mushrooms that are gathered in the uplands, and with
        them he had committed a great idolatry.... In the house where
        everyone had gathered on the occasion of a saint's feast . . . the
        teponastli [an Aztec percussion instrument] was playing and
        singing was going on the whole night through. After most of the
        night had passed, Juan Chichiton, who was the priest for that
        solumn rite, to all of those present at the flesta gave the
        mushrooms to eat, after the manner of Communion, and gave them
        pulque to drink. . . so that they all went out of their heads, a
        shame it was to see.

    In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, these mushrooms were described
    as teonanactl, which can be translated as "sacred mushroom."

    There are indications that ceremonial use of such mushrooms reaches
    far back into pre-Columbian times. So-called mushroom stones have been
    found in El Salvador, Guatemala, and the contiguous mountainous
    districts of Mexico. These are stone sculptures in the form of pileate
    mushroom, on whose stem the face or the form of a god or an animallike
    demon is carved. Most are about 30 cm high. The oldest examples,
    according to archaeologists, date back to before 500 B.C.

    R. G. Wasson argues, quite convincingly, that there is a connection
    between these mushroom stones and teonanacatl. If true, this means
    that the mushroom cult, the magico-medicinal and religious-ceremonial
    use of the magic mushrooms, is more than two thousand years old.

    To the Christian missionaries, the inebriating, vision- and
    hallucination-producing effects of these mushrooms seemed to be
    Devil's work. They therefore tried, with all the means in their power,
    to extirpate their use. But they succeeded only partially, for the
    Indians have continued secretly down to our time to utilize the
    mushroom teonanacatl, which was sacred to them.

    Strange to say, the reports in the old chronicles about the use of
    magic mushrooms remained unnoticed during the following centuries,
    probably because they were considered products of the imagination of a
    superstitious age.

    All traces of the existence of "sacred mushrooms" were in danger of
    becoming obliterated once and for all, when, in 1915, an
    Americanbotanist of repute, Dr. W. E. Safford, in an address before
    the Botanical Society in Washington and in a scientific publication,
    advanced the thesis that no such thing as magic mushrooms had ever
    existed at all: the Spanish chroniclers had taken the mescaline cactus
    for a mushroom! Even if false, this proposition of Safford's served
    nevertheless to direct the attention of the scientific world to the
    riddle of the mysterious mushrooms.

    It was the Mexican physician Dr. Blas Pablo Reko who first openly
    disagreed with Safford's interpretation and who found evidence that
    mushrooms were still employed in medicinal-religious ceremonies even
    in our time, in remote districts of the southern mountains of Mexico.
    But not until the years 19338 did the anthropologist Robert J.
    Weitlaner and Dr. Richard Evans Schultes, a botanist from Harvard
    University, find actual mushrooms in that region, which were used
    there for this ceremonial purpose; and only in 1938 could a group of
    young American anthropologists, under the direction of Jean Bassett
    Johnson, attend a secret nocturnal mushroom ceremony for the first
    time. This was in Huautla de Jimenez, the capital of the Mazatec
    country, in the State of Oaxaca. But these researchers were only
    spectators, they were not permitted to partake of the mushrooms.
    Johnson reported on the experience in a Swedish journal (Ethnotogical
    Studies 9, 1939).

    Then exploration of the magic mushrooms was interrupted. World War II
    broke out. Schultes, at the behest of the American government, had to
    occupy himself with rubber production in the Amazon territory, and
    Johnson was killed after the Allied landing in North Africa.

    It was the American researchers, the married couple Dr. Valentina
    Pavlovna Wasson and her husband, R. Gordon Wasson, who again took up
    the problem from the ethnographic aspect. R. G. Wasson was a banker,
    vice-president of the J. P. Morgan Co. in New York. His wife, who died
    in 1958, was a pediatrician. The Wassons began their work in 1953, in
    the Mazatec village Huautla de Jimenez, where fifteen years earlier J.
    B. Johnson and others had established the continued existence of the
    ancient Indian mushroom cult. They received especially valuable
    information from an American missionary who had been active there for
    many years, Eunice V. Pike, member of the Wycliffe Bible Translators.
    Thanks to her knowledge of the native language and her ministerial
    association with the inhabitants, Pike had information about the
    significance of the magic mushrooms that nobody else possessed. During
    several lengthy sojourns in Huautla and environs, the Wassons were
    able to study the present use of the mushrooms in detail and compare
    it with the descriptions in the old chronicles. This showed that the
    belief in the "sacred mushrooms" was still prevalent in that region.
    However, the Indians kept their beliefs a secret from strangers. It
    took great tact and skill, therefore, to gain the confidence of the
    indigenous population and to receive insight into this secret domain.

    In the modern form of the mushroom cult, the old religious ideas and
    customs are mingled with Christian ideas and Christian terminology.
    Thus the mushrooms are often spoken of as the blood of Christ, because
    they will grow only where a drop of Christ's blood has fallen on the
    earth. According to another notion, the mushrooms sprout where a drop
    of saliva from Christ's mouth has moistened the ground, and it is
    thcrefore Jesus Christ himself who speaks through the mushrooms.

    The mushroom ceremony follows the form of a consultation. The seeker
    of advice or a sick person or his or her family questions a "wise man"
    or a "wise woman," asabio orsabia, also named curandero orcurandera,
    in return for a modest payment. Curandero can best be translated into
    English as "healing priest," for his function is that of a physician
    as well as that of a priest, both being found only rarely in these
    remote regions. In the Mazatec language the healing priest is called
    co-ta-ci-ne, which means "one who knows." He eats the mushroom in the
    framework of a ceremony that always takes place at night. The other
    persons present at the ceremony may sometimes receive mushrooms as
    well, yet a much greater dose always goes to the curandero. The
    performance is executed with the accompaniment of prayers and
    entreaties, while the mushrooms are incensed briefly over a basin, in
    which copal (an incense-like resin) is burned. In complete darkness,
    at times by candlelight, while the others present lie quietly on their
    straw mats, the curandero, kneeling or sitting, prays and sings before
    a type of altar bearing a crucifix, an image of a saint, or some other
    object of worship. Under the influence of the sacred mushrooms, the
    curandero counsels in a visionary state, in which even the inactive
    observers more or less participate. In the monotonous song of the
    curandero, the mushroom teonanacatl gives its answers to the questions
    posed. It says whether the diseased person will live or die, which
    herbs will effect the cure; it reveals who has killed a specific
    person, or who has stolen the horse; or it makes known how a distant
    relative fares, and so forth.

    The mushroom ceremony not only has the function of a consulation of
    the type described, for the Indians it also has a meaning in many
    respects similar to the Holy Communion for the believing Christian.
    From many utterances of the natives it could be inferred that they
    believe that God has given the Indians the sacred mushroom because
    they are poor and possess no doctors and medicines; and also, because
    they cannot read, in particular the Bible, God can therefore speak
    directly to them through the mushroom. The missionary Eunice V. Pike
    even alluded to the difficulties that result from explaining the
    Christian message, the written word, to a people who believe they
    possess a means - the sacred mushrooms of course - to make God's will
    known to them in a direct, clear manner: yes, the mushrooms permit
    them to see into heaven and to establish communication with God
    himself.

    The Indians' reverence for the sacred mushrooms is also evident in
    their belief that they can be eaten only by a "clean" person. "Clean"
    here means ceremonially clean, and that term among other things
    includes sexual abstinence at least four days before and after
    ingestion of the mushrooms. Certain rules must also be observed in
    gathering the mushrooms. With nonobservance of these commandments, the
    mushrooms can make the person who eats it insane, or can even kill.

    The Wassons had undertaken their first expedition to the Mazatec
    country in 1953, but not until 1955 did they succeed in overcoming the
    shyness and reserve of the Mazatec friends they had managed to make,
    to the point of being admitted as active participants in a mushroom
    ceremony. R. Gordon Wasson and his companion, the photographer Allan
    Richardson, were given sacred mushrooms to eat at the end of June
    1955, on the occasion of a nocturnal mushroom ceremony. They thereby
    became in all likelihood the first outsiders, the first whites, ever
    permitted to take teonanacatl.

    In the second volume of Mushrooms, Russia and History, in enraptured
    words, Wasson describes how the mushroom seized possession of him
    completely, although he had tried to struggle against its effects, in
    order to be able to remain an objective observer. First he saw
    geometric, colored patterns, which then took on architectural
    characteristics. Next followed visions of splendid colonnades, palaces
    of supernatural harmony and magnificence embellished with precious
    gems, triumphal cars drawn by fabulous creatures as they are known
    only from mythology, and landscapes of fabulous luster. Detached from
    the body, the spirit soared timelessly in a realm of fantasy among
    images of a higher reality and deeper meaning than those of the
    ordinary, everyday world. The essence of life, the ineffable, seemed
    to be on the verge of being unlocked, but the ultimate door failed to
    open.

    This experience was the final proof, for Wasson, that the magical
    powers attributed to the mushrooms actually existed and were not
    merely superstition.

    In order to introduce the mushrooms to scientific research, Wasson had
    earlier established an association with mycologist Professor Roger
    Heim of Paris. Accompanying the Wassons on further expeditions into
    the Mazatec country, Heim conducted the botanical identification of
    the sacred mushrooms. He showed that they were gilled mushrooms from
    the family Strophariaceae, about a dozen different species not
    previously described scientifically, the greatest part belonging to
    the genus Psilocybe. Professor Heim also succeeded in cultivating some
    of the species in the laboratory. The mushroom Psilocybe mexicana
    turned out to be especially suitable for artificial cultivation.

    Chemical investigations ran parallel with these botanical studies on
    the magic mushrooms, with the goal of extracting the
    hallucinogenically active principle from the mushroom material and
    preparing it in chemically pure form. Such investigations were carried
    out at Professor Heim's instigation in the chemicaI laboratory of the
    Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and work teams were
    occupied with this problem in the United States in the research
    laboratories of two large pharmaceutical companies: Merck, and Smith,
    Kline and French. The American laboratories had obtained some of the
    mushrooms from R. G. Wasson and had gathered others themselves in the
    Sierra Mazateca.

    As the chemical investigations in Paris and in the United States
    turned out to be ineffectual, Professor Heim addressed this matter to
    our firm, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, because he
    felt that our experimental experience with LSD, related to the magic
    mushrooms by similar activity, could be of use in the isolation
    attempts. Thus it was LSD that showed teonanacatl the way into our
    laboratory.

    As director of the department of natural products of the Sandoz
    pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratories at that time, I wanted
    to assign-the investigation of the magic mushrooms to one of my
    coworkers. However, nobody showed much eagerness to take on this
    problem because it was known that LSD and everything connected with it
    were scarcely popular subjects to the top management. Because the
    enthusiasm necessary for successful endeavors cannot be commanded, and
    because the enthusiasm was already present in me as far as this
    problem was concerned, I decided to conduct the investigation myself.

    Some 100 g of dried mushrooms of the species Psilocybe mexicana,
    cultivated by Professor Heim in the laboratory, were available for the
    beginning of the chemical analysis. My laboratory assistant, Hans
    Tscherter, who during our decade-long collaboration, had developed
    into a very capable helper, completely familiar with my manner of
    work, aided me in the extraction and isolation attempts. Since there
    were no clues at all concerning the chemical properties of the active
    principle we sought, the isolation attempts had to be conducted on the
    basis of the effects of the extract fractions. But none of the various
    extracts showed an unequivocal effect, either in the mouse or the dog,
    which could have pointed to the presence of hallucinogenic principles.
    It therefore became doubtful whether the mushrooms cultivated and
    dried in Paris were still active at all. That could only be determined
    by experimenting with this mushroom material on a human being. As in
    the case of LSD, I made this fundamental experiment myself, since it
    is not appropriate for researchers to ask anyone else to perform
    self-experiments that they require for their own investigations,
    especially if they entail, as in this case, a certain risk.

    In this experiment I ate 32 dried specimens of Psilocybe mexicana,
    which together weighed 2.4 g. This amount corresponded to an average
    dose, according to the reports of Wasson and Heim, as it is used by
    the curanderos. The mushrooms displayed a strong psychic effect, as
    the following extract from the report on that experiment shows:

    Thirty minutes after my taking the mushrooms, the exterior world began
        to undergo a strange transformation. Everything assumed a Mexican
        character. As I was perfectly well aware that my knowledge of the
        Mexican origin of the mushroom would lead me to imagine only
        Mexican scenery, I tried deliberately to look on my environment as
        I knew it normally. But all voluntary efforts to look at things in
        their customary forms and colors proved ineffective. Whether my
        eyes were closed or open, I saw only Mexican motifs and colors.
        When the doctor supervising the experiment bent over me to check
        my blood pressure, he was transformed into an Aztec priest and I
        would not have been astonished if he had drawn an obsidian knife.
        In spite of the seriousness of the situation, it amused me to see
        how the Germanic face of my colleague had acquired a purely Indian
        expression. At the peak of the intoxication, about 1 1/2 hours
        after ingestion of the mushrooms, the rush of interior pictures,
        mostly abstract motifs rapidly changing in shape and color,
        reached such an alarming degree that I feared that I would be torn
        into this whirlpool of form and color and would dissolve. After
        about six hours the dream came to an end. Subjectively, I had no
        idea how long this condition had lasted. I felt my return to
        everyday reality to be a happy return from a strange, fantastic
        but quite real world to an old and familiar home.

    This self-experiment showed once again that human beings react much
    more sensitively than animals to psychoactive substances. We had
    already reached the same conclusion in experimenting with LSD on
    animals, as described in an earlier chapter of this book. It was not
    inactivity of the mushroom material, but rather the deficient reaction
    capability of the research animals vis-a-vis such a type of active
    principle, that explained why our extracts had appeared inactive in
    the mouse and dog.

    Because the assay on human subjects was the only test at our disposal
    for the detection of the active extract fractions, we had no other
    choice than to perform the testing on ourselves if we wanted to carry
    on the work and bring it to a successful conclusion. In the
    self-experiment just described, a strong reaction lasting several
    hours was produced by 2.4 g dried mushrooms. Therefore, in the sequel
    we used samples corresponding to only one-third of this amount, namely
    0.8 g dried mushrooms. If these samples contained the active
    principle, they would only provoke a mild effect that impaired the
    ability to work for a short time, but this effect would still be so
    distinct that the inactive fractions and those containing the active
    principle could unequivocally be differentiated from one another.
    Several coworkers and colleagues volunteered as guinea pigs for this
    series of tests.

Psilocybin and Psilocin

    With the help of this reliable test on human subjects, the active
    principle could be isolated, concentrated, and transformed into a
    chemically pure state by means of the newest separation methods. Two
    new substances, which I named psilocybin and psilocin, were thereby
    obtained in the form of colorless crystals .

    These results were published in March 1958 in the journal Experientia,
    in collaboration with Professor Heim and with my colleagues Dr. A.
    Brack and Dr. H. Kobel, who had provided greater quantities of
    mushroom material for these investigations after they had essentially
    improved the laboratory cultivation of the mushrooms.

    Some of my coworkers at the time - Drs. A. J. Frey, H. Ott, T.
    Petrzilka, and F. Troxler - then participated in the next steps of
    these investigations, the determination of the chemical structure of
    psilocybin and psilocin and the subsequent synthesis of these
    compounds, the results of which were published in the November 1958
    issue of Experientia. The chemical structures of these mushroom
    factors deserve special attention in several respects. Psilocybin and
    psilocin belong, like LSD, to the indole compounds, the biologically
    important class of substances found in the plant and animal kingdoms.
    Particular chemical features common to both the mushroom substances
    and LSD show that psilocybin and psilocin are closely related to LSD,
    not only with regard to psychic effects but also to their chemical
    structures. Psilocybin is the phosphoric acid ester of psilocin and,
    as such, is the first and hitherto only phosphoric-acid-containing
    indole compound discovered in nature. The phosphoric acid residue does
    not contribute to the activity, for the phosphoric-acid-free psilocin
    is just as active as psilocybin, but it makes the molecule more
    stable. While psilocin is readily decomposed by the oxygen in air,
    psilocybin is a stable substance.

    Psilocybin and psilocin possess a chemical structure very similar to
    the brain factor serotonin. As was already mentioned in the chapter on
    animal experiments and biological research, serotonin plays an
    important role in the chemistry of brain functions. The two mushroom
    factors, like LSD, block the effects of serotonin in pharmacological
    experiments on different organs. Other pharmacological properties of
    psilocybin and psilocin are also similar to those of LSD. The main
    difference consists in the quantitative activity, in animal as well as
    human experimentation. The average active dose of psilocybin or
    psilocin in human beings amounts to 10 mg (0.01 g); accordingly, these
    two substances are more than 100 times less active than LSD, of which
    0.1 mg constitutes a strong dose. Moreover, the effects of the
    mushroom factors last only four to six hours, much shorter than the
    effects of LSD (eight to twelve hours).

    The total synthesis of psilocybin and psilocin, without the aid of the
    mushrooms, could be developed into a technical process, which would
    allow these substances to be produced on a large scale. Synthetic
    production is more rational and cheaper than extraction from the
    mushrooms.

    Thus with the isolation and synthesis of the active principles, the
    demystification of the magic mushrooms was accomplished. The compounds
    whose wondrous effects led the Indians to believe for millennia that a
    god was residing in the mushrooms had their chemical structures
    elucidated and could be produced synthetically in flasks.

    Just what progress in scientific knowledge was accomplished by natural
    products research in this case? Essentially, when all is said and
    done, we can only say that the mystery of the wondrous effects of
    teonanacatl was reduced to the mystery of the effects of two
    crystalline substances - since these effects cannot be explained by
    science either, but can only be describe.

A Voyage into the Universe of the Soul with Psilocybin

    The relationship between the psychic effects of psilocybin and those
    of LSD, their visionaryhallucinatory character, is evident in the
    following report from Antaios, of a psilocybin experiment by Dr.
    Rudolf Gelpke. He has characterized his experiences with LSD and
    psilocybin, as already mentioned in a previous chapter, as "travels in
    the universe of the soul."

Where Time Stands Still

    (10 mg psilocybin, 6 April 1961, 10:20)

    After ca. 20 minutes, beginning effects: serenity, speechlessness,
        mild but pleasant dizzy sensation, and "pleasureful deep
        breathing."
        10:50 Strong! dizziness, can no longer concentrate .
        10:55 Excited, intensity of colors: everything pink to red.
        11:05 The world concentrates itself there on the center of the
        table. Colors very intense.
        11:10 A divided being, unprecedented - how can I describe this
        sensation of life? Waves, different selves, must control me.
        Immediately after this note I went outdoors, leaving the breakfast
        table, where I had eaten with Dr. H. and ourwives, and lay down on
        the lawn. The inebriation pushed rapidly to its climax. Although I
        had firmly resolved to make constant notes, it now seemed to me a
        complete waste of time, the motion of writing infinitely slow, the
        possibilities of verbal expression unspeakably paltry - measured
        by the flood of inner experience that inundated me and threatened
        to burst me. It seemed to me that 100 years would not be
        sufficient to describe the fullness of experience of a single
        minute. At the beginning, optical impressions predominated: I saw
        with delight the boundless succession of rows of trees in the
        nearby forest. Then the tattered clouds in the sunny sky rapidly
        piled up with silent and breathtaking majesty to a superimposition
        of thousands of layers - heaven on heaven - and I waited then
        expecting that up there in the next moment something completely
        powerful, unheard of, not yet existing, would appear or happen -
        would I behold a god? But only the expectation remained, the
        presentiment, this hovering, "on the threshold of the ultimate
        feeling." . . . Then I moved farther away (the proximity of others
        disturbed me) and lay down in a nook of the garden on a sun-warmed
        wood pile - my fingers stroked this wood with overflowing,
        animal-like sensual affection. At the same time I was submerged
        within myself; it was an absolute climax: a sensation of bliss
        pervaded me, a contented happiness - I found myself behind my
        closed eyes in a cavity full of brick-red ornaments, and at the
        same time in the "center of the universe of consummate calm." I
        knew everything was good - the cause and origins of everything was
        good. But at the same moment I also understood the suffering and
        the loathing, the depression and misunderstanding of ordinary
        life: there one is never "total," but instead divided, cut in
        pieces, and split up into the tiny fragments of seconds, minutes,
        hours, days, weeks, and years: there one is a slave of Moloch
        time, which devoured one piecemeal; one is condemned to
        stammering, bungling, and patchwork; one must drag about with
        oneself the perfection and absolute, the togetherness of all
        things; the eternal moment of the golden age, this original ground
        of being - that indeed nevertheless has always endured and will
        endure forever - there in the weekday of human existence, as a
        tormenting thorn buried deeply in the soul, as a memorial of a
        claim never fulfilled, as a fata morgana of a lost and promised
        paradise; through this feverish dream "present" to a condemned
        "past" in a clouded "future." I understood. This inebriation was a
        spaceflight, not of the outer but rather of the inner man, and for
        a moment I experienced reality from a location that lies somewhere
        beyond the force of gravity of time.
        As I began again to feel this force of gravity, I was childish
        enough to want to postpone the return by taking a new dose of 6 mg
        psilocybin at 11:45, and once again 4 mg at 14:30. The effect was
        trifling, and in any case not worth mentioning.

    Mrs. Li Gelpke, an artist, also participated in this series of
    investigations, taking three self-experiments with LSD and psilocybin.
    The artist wrote of the drawing she made during the experiment:

    Nothing on this page is consciously fashioned. While I worked on it,
        the memory (of the experience under psilocybin) was again reality,
        and led me at every stroke. For that reason the picture is as
        many-layered as this memory, and the figure at the lower right is
        really the captive of its dream.... When books about Mexican art
        came into my hands three weeks later, I again found the motifs of
        my visions there with a sudden start....

    I have also mentioned the occurrence of Mexican motifs in psilocybin
    inebriation during my first selfexperiment with dried Psilocybe
    mexicana mushrooms, as was described in the section on the chemical
    investigation of these mushrooms. The same phenomenon has also struck
    R. Gordon Wasson. Proceeding from such observations, he has advanced
    the conjecture that ancient Mexican art could have been influenced by
    visionary images, as they appear in mushroom inebriation.

The "Magic Morning Glory" Ololiuhqui

    After we had managed to solve the riddle of the sacred mushroom
    teonanacatt in a relatively short time, I also became interested in
    the problem of another Mexican magic drug not yet chemically
    elucidated, olotiuhqui. Ololiuhqui is the Aztec name for the seeds of
    certain climbing plants (Convolvulaceae) that, like the mescaline
    cactus peyotl and the teonanacatl mushrooms, were used in
    pre-Columbian times by the Aztecs and neighboring people in religious
    ceremonies and magical healing practices. Ololiuhqui is still used
    even today by certain Indian tribes like the Zapotec, Chinantec,
    Mazatec, and Mixtec, who until a short time ago still led a geniunely
    isolated existence, little influenced by Christianity, in the remote
    mountains of southern Mexico.

    An excellent study of the historical, ethnological, and botanical
    aspects of ololiuhqui was published in 1941 by Richard Evans Schultes,
    director of the Harvard Botanical Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
    It is entitled "A Contribution to Our Knowledge of Rivea corymbosa,
    the Narcotic Ololiuqui of the Aztecs." The following statements about
    the history of ololiuhqui derive chiefly from Schultes's monograph.
    [Translator's note: As R. Gordon Wasson has pointed out, "ololiuhqui"
    is a more precise orthography than the more popular spelling used by
    Schultes. See Botanical Museum Leaflets Harvard University 20:
    161-212, 1963.]

    The earliest records about this drug were written by Spanish
    chroniclers of the sixteenth century, who also mentioned peyotl and
    teonanacatl. Thus the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun, in his
    already cited famous chronicle Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva
    Espana, writes about the wondrous effects of olotiuhqui: "There is an
    herb, called coatl xoxouhqui (green snake), which produces seeds that
    are called ololiuhqui. These seeds stupefy and deprive one of reason:
    they are taken as a potion."

    We obtain further information about these seeds from the physician
    Francisco Hernandez, whom Philip II sent to Mexico from Spain, from
    1570 to 1575, in order to study the medicaments of the natives. In the
    chapter "On Ololiuhqui" of his monumental work entitled Rerum
    Medicarum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus seu Plantarum, Animalium
    Mineralium Mexicanorum Historia, published in Rome in 1651, he gives a
    detailed description and the first illustration of ololiuhqui. An
    extract from the Latin text accompanying the illustration reads in
    translation: "Ololiuhqui, which others call coaxihuitl or snake plant,
    is a climber with thin, green, heart-shaped leaves.... The flowers are
    white, fairly large.... The seeds are roundish. . . . When the priests
    of the Indians wanted to visit with the gods and obtain information
    from them, they ate of this plant in order to become inebriated.
    Thousands of fantastic images and demons then appeared to them...."
    Despite this comparatively good description, the botanical
    identification of ololiuhqui as seeds of Rivea corymbosa (L.) Hall. f.
    occasioned many discussions in specialist circles. Recently preference
    has been given to the synonym Turbina corymbosa (L.) Raf.

    When I decided in 1959 to attempt the isolation o the active
    principles of ololiuhqui, only a single report on chemical work with
    the seeds of Turbina cormbosa was available. It was the work of the
    pharmacologist C. G. Santesson of Stockholm, from the year 1937.
    Santesson, however, was not successful in isolating an active
    substance in pure form.

    Contradictory findings had been published about the activity of
    theololiuhqui seeds. The psychiatrist H. Osmond conducted a
    self-experiment with the seeds of Turbina corymbosa in 1955. After the
    ingestion of 60 to 100 seeds, he entered into a state of apathy and
    emptiness, accompanied by enhanced visual sensitivity. After four
    hours, there followed a period of relaxation and well-being, lasting
    for a longer time. The results of V. J. Kinross-Wright, published in
    England in 1958, in which eight voluntary research subjects, who had
    taken up to 125 seeds, perceived no effects at all, contradicted this
    report.

    Through the mediation of R. Gordon Wasson, I obtained two samples of
    ololiuhgui seeds. In his accompanying letter of 6 August 1959 from
    Mexico City, he wrote of them:

    . . . The parcels that I am sending you are the following: . . .
        A small parcel of seeds that I take to be Rivea corymbosa,
        otherwise known as ololiuqui well-known narcotic of the Aztecs,
        called in Huautla "la semilla de la Virgen." This parcel, you will
        find, consists of two little bottles, which represent two
        deliveries of seeds made to us in Huautla, and a larger batch of
        seeds delivered to us by Francisco Ortega "Chico," the Zapotec
        guide, who himself gathered the seeds from the plants at the
        Zapotec town of San Bartolo Yautepec....

    The first-named, round, light brown seeds from Huautla proved in the
    botanical determination to have been correctly identified as Rivea
    (Turbina) corymbosa, while the black, angular seeds from San Bartolo
    Yautepec were identified as Ipomoea violacea L.

    While Turbina corymbosa thrives only in tropical or subtropical
    climates, one also finds Ipomoea violacea as an ornamental plant
    dispersed over the whole earth in the temperate zones. It is the
    morning glory that delights the eye in our gardens in diverse
    varieties with blue or blue-red striped caiyxes.

    The Zapotec, besides the original ololiuhqui (that is, the seeds of
    Turbina corymbosa, which they call badoh), also utilize badoh negro,
    the seeds of Ipomoea violacea. T. MacDougall, who furnished us with a
    second larger consignment of the last-named seeds, made this
    observation.

    My capable laboratory assistant Hans Tscherter, with whom I had
    already carried out the isolation of the active principles of the
    mushrooms, participated in the chemical investigation of the
    ololiuhqui drug. We advanced the working hypothesis that the active
    principles of the ololiuhqui seeds could be representatives of the
    same class of chemical substances, the indole compounds, to which LSD,
    psilocybin, and psilocin belong. Considering the very great number of
    other groups of substances that, like the indoles, were under
    consideration as active principles of ololiuhqui, it was indeed
    extremely improbable that this assumption would prove true. It could,
    however, very easily be tested. The presence of indole compounds, of
    course, may simply and rapidly be determined by colorimetric
    reactions. Thus even traces of indole substances, with a certain
    reagent, give an intense blue-colored solution.

    We had luck with our hypothesis. Extracts of ololiuhqui seeds with the
    appropriate reagent gave the blue coloration characteristic of indole
    compounds. With the help of this colorimetric test, we succeeded in a
    short time in isolating the indole substances from the seeds and in
    obtaining them in chemically pure form. Their identification led to an
    astonishing result. What we found appeared at first scarcely
    believable. Only after repetition and the most careful scrutiny of the
    operations was our suspicion concerning the peculiar findings
    eliminated: the active principles from the ancient Mexican magic drug
    ololiuhqui proved to be identical with substances that were already
    present in my laboratory. They were identical with alkaloids that had
    been obtained in the course of the decadeslong investigations of
    ergot; partly isolated as such from ergot, partly obtained through
    chemical modification of ergot substances.

    Lysergic acid amide, lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide, and alkaloids
    closely related to them chemically were established as the main active
    principles of olotiuhqui. (See formulae in the appendix.) Also present
    was the alkaloid ergobasine, whose synthesis had constituted the
    starting point of my investigations on ergot alkaloids. Lysergic acid
    amide and lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide, active principles of
    ololiuhqui, are chemically very closely related to lysergic acid
    diethylamide (LSD), which even for the nonchemist follows from the
    names.

    Lysergic acid amide was described for the first time by the English
    chemists S. Smith and G. M. Timmis as a cleavage product of ergot
    alkaloids, and I had also produced this substance synthetically in the
    course of the investigations in which LSD originated. Certainly,
    nobody at the time could have suspected that this cornpound
    synthesized in the flask would be discovered twenty years later as a
    naturally occurring active principle of an ancient Mexican magic drug.

    After the discovery of the psychic effects of LSD, I had also tested
    lysergic acid amide in a selfexperiment and established that it
    likewise evoked a dreamlike condition, but only with about a tenfold
    to twentyfold greater dose than LSD. This effect was characterized by
    a sensation of mental emptiness and the unreality and meaninglessness
    of the outer world, by enhanced sensitivity of hearing, and by a not
    unpleasant physical lassitude, which ultimately led to sleep. This
    picture of the effects of LA-l 1 1, as lysergic acid amide was called
    as a research preparation, was confirmed in a systematic investigation
    by the psychiatrist Dr. H. Solms.

    When I presented the findings of our investigations on ololiuhqui at
    the Natural Products Congress of the International Union for Pure and
    Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in Sydney, Australia, in the fall of 1960,
    my colleagues received my talk with skepticism. In the discussions
    following my lecture, some persons voiced the suspicion that the
    ololiuhqui extracts could well have been contaminated with traces of
    lysergic acid derivatives, with which so much work had been done in my
    laboratory.

    There was another reason for the doubt in specialist circles
    concerning our findings. The occurrence in higher plants (i.e., in the
    morning glory family) of ergot alkaloids that hitherto had been known
    only as constituents of lower fungi, contradicted the experience that
    certain substances are typical of and restricted to respective plant
    families. It is indeed a very rare exception to find a characteristic
    group of substances, in this case the ergot alkaloids, occurring in
    two divisions of the plant kingdom broadly separated in evolutionary
    history.

    Our results were confirmed, however, when different laboratories in
    the United States, Germany, and Holland subsequently verified our
    investigations on the ololiuhqui seeds. Nevertheless, the skepticism
    went so far that some persons even considered the possibility that the
    seeds could have been infected with alkaloid-producing fungi. That
    suspicion, however, was ruled out experimentally.

    These studies on the active principles of ololiuhqui seeds, although
    they were published only in professional journals, had an unexpected
    sequel. We were apprised by two Dutch wholesale seed companies that
    their sale of seeds of Ipomoea violacea, the ornamental blue morning
    glory, had reached unusual proportions in recent times. They had heard
    that the great demand was connected with investigations of these seeds
    in our laboratory, about which they were eager to learn the details.
    It turned out that the new demand derived from hippie circles and
    other groups interested in hallucinogenic drugs. They believed they
    had found in the ololiuhqui seeds a substitute for LSD, which was
    becoming less and less accessible.

    The morning glory seed boom, however, lasted only a comparatively
    short time, evidently because of the undesirable experiences that
    those in the drug world had with this "new" ancient inebriant. The
    ololiuhqui seeds, which are taken crushed with water or another mild
    beverage, taste very bad and are difficult for the stomach to digest.
    Moreover, the psychic effects of ololiuhqui, in fact, differ from
    those of LSD in that the euphoric and the hallucinogenic components
    are less pronounced, while a sensation of mental emptiness, often
    anxiety and depression, predominates. Furthermore, weariness and
    lassitude are hardly desirable effects as traits in an inebriant.
    These could all be reasons why the drug culture's interest in the
    morning glory seeds has diminished.

    Only a few investigations have considered the question whether the
    active principles of ololiuhqui could find a useful application in
    medicine. In my opinion, it would be worthwhile to clarify above all
    whether the strong narcotic, sedative effect of certain ololiuhqui
    constituents, or of chemical modifications of these, is medicinally
    useful.

    My studies in the field of hallucinogenic drugs reached a kind of
    logical conclusion with the investigations of ololiuhqui. They now
    formed a circle, one could almost say a magic circle: the starting
    point had been the synthesis of lysergic acid amides, among them the
    naturally occurring ergot alkaloid ergobasin. This led to the
    synthesis of lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD. The hallucinogenic
    properties of LSD were the reason why the hallucinogenic magic
    mushroom teonanacatl found its way into my laboratory. The work with
    teonanacatt, from which psilocybin and psilocin were isolated,
    proceeded to the investigation of another Mexican magic drug,
    olotiuhqui, in which hallucinogenic principles in the form of lysergic
    acid amides were again encountered, including ergobasin-with which the
    magic circle closed.

In Search of the Magic Plant "Ska Maria Pastora" in the Mazatec Country

    R. Gordon Wasson, with whom I had maintained friendly relations since
    the investigations of the Mexican magic mushrooms, invited my wife and
    me to take part in an expedition to Mexico in the fall of 1962. The
    purpose of the journey was to search for another Mexican magic plant.
    Wasson had learned on his travels in the mountains of southern Mexico
    that the expressed juice of the leaves of a plant, which were called
    hojas de la Pastora or hojas de Maria Pastora, in Mazatec ska Pastora
    or ska Maria Pastora (leaves of the shepherdess or leaves of Mary the
    shepherdess), were used among the Mazatec in medico-religious
    practices, like the teonanacatl mushrooms and the ololiuhqui seeds.

    The question now was to ascertain from what sort of plant the "leaves
    of Mary the shepherdess" derived, and then to identify this plant
    botanically. We also hoped, if at all possible, to gather sufficient
    plant material to conduct a chemical investigation on the
    hallucinogenic principles it contained.

Ride through the Sierra Mazateca

    On 26 September 1962, my wife and I accordingly flew to Mexico City,
    where we met Gordon Wasson. He had made all the necessary preparations
    for the expedition, so that in two days we had already set out on the
    next leg of the journey to the south. Mrs. Irmgard Weitlaner Johnson,
    (widow of Jean B. Johnson, a pioneer of the ethnographic study of the
    Mexican magic mushrooms, killed in the Allied landing in North Africa)
    had joined us. Her father, Robert J. Weitlaner, had emigrated to
    Mexico from Austria and had likewise contributed toward the
    rediscovery of the mushroom cult. Mrs. Johnson worked at the National
    Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, as an expert on Indian
    textiles.

    After a two-day journey in a spacious Land Rover, which took us over
    the plateau, along the snow-capped Popocatepetl, passing Puebla, down
    into the Valley of Orizaba with its magnificent tropical vegetation,
    then by ferry across the Popoloapan (Butterfly River), on through the
    former Aztec garrison Tuxtepec, we arrived at the starting point of
    our expedition, the Mazatec village of Jalapa de Diaz, lying on a
    hillside.

    There we were in the midst of the environment and among the people
    that we would come to know in the succeeding 2 1/2 weeks.

    There was an uproar upon our arrival in the marketplace, center of
    this village widely dispersed in the jungle. Old and young men, who
    had been squatting and standing around in the half-opened bars and
    shops, pressed suspiciously yet curiously about our Land Rover; they
    were mostly barefoot but all wore a sombrero. Women and girls were
    nowhere to be seen. One of the men gave us to understand that we
    should follow. him. He led us to the local president, a fat mestizo
    who had his office in a one-story house with a corrugated iron roof.
    Gordon showed him our credentials from the civil authorities and from
    the military governor of Oaxaca, which explained that we had come here
    to carry out scientific investigations. The president, who probably
    could not read at all, was visibly impressed by the large-sized
    documents equipped with official seals. He had lodgings assigned to us
    in a spacious shed, in which we could place our air mattresses and
    sleeping bags.

    I looked around the region somewhat. The ruins of a large church from
    colonial times, which must have once been very beautiful, rose almost
    ghostlike in the direction of an ascending slope at the side of the
    village square. Now I could also see women looking out of their huts,
    venturing to examine the strangers. In their long, white dresses,
    adorned with red borders, and with their long braids of blue-black
    hair, they offered a picturesque sight.

    We were fed by an old Mazatec woman, who directed a young cook and two
    helpers. She lived in one of the typical Mazatec huts. These are
    simply rectangular structures with thatched gabled roofs and walls of
    wooden poles joined together, windowless, the chinks between the
    wooden poles offering sufficient opportunity to look out. In the
    middle of the hut, on the stamped clay floor, was an elevated, open
    fireplace, built up out of dried clay or made of stones. The smoke
    escaped through large openings in the walls under the two ends of the
    roof. Bast mats that lay in a corner or along the walls served as
    beds. The huts were shared with the domestic animals, as well as black
    swine, turkeys, and chickens. There was roasted chicken to eat, black
    beans, and also, in place of bread, tortittas, a type of cornmeal
    pancake that is baked on the hot stone slab of the hearth. Beer and
    tequila, an Agave liquor, were served.

    Next morning our troop formed for the ride through the Sierra
    Mazateca. Mules and guides were engaged from the horsekeeper of the
    village. Guadelupe, the Mazatec familiar with the route, took charge
    of guiding the lead animal. Gordon, Irmgard, my wife, and I were
    stationed on our mules in the middle. Teodosio and Pedro, called
    Chico, two young fellows who trotted along barefoot beside the two
    mules laden with our baggage, brought up the rear.

    It took some time to get accustomed to the hard wooden saddles. Then,
    however, this mode of locomotion proved to be the most ideal type of
    travel that I know of. The mules followed the leader, single file, at
    a steady pace. They required no direction at all by the rider. With
    surprising dexterity, they sought out the best spots along the almost
    impassable, partly rocky, partly marshy paths, which led through
    thickets and streams or onto precipitous slopes. Relieved of all
    travel cares, we could devote all our attention to the beauty of the
    landscape and the tropical vegetation. There were tropical forests
    with gigantic trees overgrown with twining plants, then again
    clearings with banana groves or coffee plantations, between light
    stands of trees, flowers at the edge of the path, over which wondrous
    butterflies bustled about.... We made our way upstream along the broad
    riverbed of Rio Santo Domingo, with brooding heat and steamy air, now
    steeply ascending, then again falling. During a short, violent
    tropical downpour, the long broad ponchos of oilcloth, with which
    Gordon had equipped us, proved quite useful. Our Indian guides had
    protected themselves from the cloudburst with gigantic, heart-shaped
    leaves that they nimbly chopped off at the edge of the path. Teodosio
    and Chico gave the impression of great, green hay ricks as they ran,
    covered with these leaves, beside their mules.

    Shortly before nightfall we arrived at the first settlement, La
    Providencia ranch. The patron, Don Joaquin Garcia, the head of a large
    family, welcomed us hospitably and full of dignity. It was impossible
    to determine how many children, in addition to the grown-ups and the
    domestic animals, were present in the large living room, feebly
    illuminated by the hearth fire alone.

    Gordon and I placed our sleeping bags outdoors under the projecting
    roof. I awoke in the morning to find a pig grunting over my face.

    After another day's journey on the backs of our worthy mules, we
    arrived at Ayautla, a Mazatec settlement spread across a hillside. En
    route, among the shrubbery, I had delighted in the blue calyxes of the
    magic morning glory Ipomoea violacea, the mother plant of the
    ololiuhqui seeds. It grew wild there, whereas among us it is only
    found in the Garden as an ornamental plant.

    We remained in Ayautla for several days. We had lodging in the house
    of Dona Donata Sosa de Garcia. Dona Donata was in charge of a large
    family, which included her ailing husband. In addition, she presided
    over the coffee cultivation of the region. The collection center for
    the freshly picked coffee beans was in an adjacent building. It was a
    lovely picture, the young Indian woman and girls returning home from
    the harvest toward evening, in their bright garments adorned with
    colored borders, the coffee sacks carried on their backs by headbands.
    Dona Donata also managed a type of grocery store, in which her
    husband, Don Eduardo, stood behind the counter.

    In the evening by candlelight, Dona Donata, who besides Mazatec also
    spoke Spanish, told us about life in the village; one tragedy or
    another had already struck nearly every one of the seemingly peaceful
    huts that lay surrounded by this paradisiacal scenery. A man who had
    murdered his wife, and who now sits in prison for life, had lived in
    the house next door, which now stood empty. The husband of a daughter
    of Dona Donata, after an affair with another woman, was murdered out
    of jealousy. The president of Ayautla, a young bull of a mestizo, to
    whom we had made our formal visit in the afternoon, never made the
    short walk from his hut to his "office" in the village hall (with the
    corrugated iron roof) unless accompanied by two heavily armed men.
    Because he exacted illegal taxes, he was afraid of being shot to
    death. Since no higher authority sees to justice in this remote
    region, people have recourse to self-defense of this type.

    Thanks to Dona Donata's good connections, we received the first sample
    of the sought-after plant, some leaves of hojas de la Pastora, from an
    old woman. Since the flowers and roots were missing, however, this
    plant material was not suitable for botanical identification. Our
    efforts to obtain more precise information about the habitat of the
    plant and its use were also fruitless.

    The continuation of our journey from Ayautla was delayed, as we had to
    wait until our boys could again bring back the mules that they had
    taken to pasture on the other side of Rio Santo Domingo, over the
    river swollen by intense downpours.

    After a two-day ride, on which we had passed the night in the high
    mountain village of San MiguelHuautla, we arrived at Rio Santiago.
    Here we were joined by Dona Herlinda Martinez Cid, a teacher from
    Huautla de Jimenez. She had ridden over on the invitation of Gordon
    Wasson, who had known her since his mushroom expeditions, and was to
    serve as our Mazatec and Spanish-speaking interpreter. Moreover, she
    could help us, through her numerous relatives scattered in the region,
    to pave the way to contacts with curanderos and curanderas who used
    the hojas de 1a Pastora in their practice. Because of our delayed
    arrival in Rio Santiago, Dona Herlinda, who was acquainted with the
    dangers of the region, had been apprehensive about us, fearing we
    might have plunged down a rocky path or been attacked by robbers.

    Our next stop was in San Jose Tenango, a settlement lying deep in a
    valley, in the midst of tropical vegetation with orange and lemon
    trees and banana plantations. Here again was the typical village
    picture: in the center, a marketplace with a half-ruined church from
    the colonial period, with two or three stands, a general store, and
    shelters for horses and mules. We found lodging in a corrugated iron
    barracks, with the special luxury of a cement floor, on which we could
    spread out our sleeping bags.

    In the thick jungle on the mountainside we discovered a s-pring, whose
    magnificent fresh water in a natural rocky basin invited us to bathe.
    That was an unforgettable pleasure after days without opportunities to
    wash properly. In this grotto I saw a hummingbird for the first time
    in nature, a blue-green, metallic, iridescent gem, which whirred over
    great liana blossoms.

    The desired contact with persons skilled in medicine came about thanks
    to the kindred connections of Dona Herlinda, beginning with the
    curandero Don Sabino. But he refused, for some reason, to receive us
    in a consultation and to question the leaves. From an old curandera, a
    venerable woman in a strikingly magnificent Mazatec garment, with the
    lovely name Natividad Rosa, we received a whole bundle of flowering
    specimens of the sought-after plant, but even she could not be
    prevailed upon to perform a ceremony with the leaves for us. Her
    excuse was that she was too old for the hardship of the magical trip;
    she could never cover the long distance to certain places: a spring
    where the wise women gather their powers, a lake on which the sparrows
    sing, and where objects get their names. Nor would Natividad Rosa tell
    us where she had gathered the leaves. They grew in a very, very
    distant forest valley. Wherever she dug up a plant, she put a coffee
    bean in the earth as thanks to the gods.

    We now possessed ample plants with flowers and roots, which were
    suitable for botanical identification. It was apparently a
    representative of the genus Salvia, a relative of the well-known
    meadow sage. The plants had blue flowers crowned with a white dome,
    which are arranged on a panicle 20 to 30 cm long, whose stem leaked
    blue.

    Several days later, Natividad Rosa brought us a whole basket of
    leaves, for which she was paid fifty pesos. The business seemed to
    have been discussed, for two other women brought us further quantities
    of leaves. As it was known that the expressed juice of the leaves is
    drunk in the ceremony, and this must therefore contain the active
    principle, the fresh leaves were crushed on a stone plate, squeezed
    out in a cloth, the juice diluted with alcohol as a preservative, and
    decanted into flasks in order to be studied later in the laboratory in
    Basel. I was assisted in this work by an Indian girl, who was
    accustomed to dealing with the stone plate, the metate, on which the
    Indians since ancient times have ground their corn by hand.

    On the day before the journey was to continue, having given up all
    hope of being able to attend a ceremony, we suddenly made another
    contact with a curandera, one who was ready " to serve us ." A
    confidante of Herlinda's, who had produced this contact, led us after
    nightfall along a secret path to the hut of the curandera, lying
    solitary on the mountainside above the settlement. No one from the
    village was to see us or discover that we were received there. It was
    obviously considered a betrayal of sacred customs, worthy of
    punishment, to allow strangers, whites, to take part in this. That
    indeed had also been the real reason why the other healers whom we
    asked had refused to admit us to a leaf ceremony. Strange birdcalls
    from the darkness accompanied us on the ascent, and the barking of
    dogs was heard on all sides. The dogs had detected the strangers. The
    curandera Consuela Garcia, a woman of some forty years, barefoot like
    all Indian women in this region, timidly admitted us to her hut and
    immediately closed up the doorway with a heavy bar. She bid us lie
    down on the bast mats on the stamped mud floor. As Consuela spoke only
    Mazatec, Herlinda translated her instructions into Spanish for us. The
    curandera lit a candle on a table covered with some images of saints,
    along with a variety of rubbish. Then she began to bustle about
    busily, but in silence. All at once we heard peculiar noises and a
    rummaging in the room-did the hut harbor some hidden person whose
    shape and proportions could not be made out in the candlelight?
    Visibly disturbed, Consuela searched the room with the burning candle.
    It appeared to be merely rats, however, who were working their
    mischief. In a bowl the curandera now kindled copal, an incense-like
    resin, which soon filled the whole hut with its aroma. Then the magic
    potion was ceremoniously prepared. Consuela inquired which of us
    wished to drink of it with her. Gordon announced himself. Since I was
    suffering from a severe stomach upset at the time, I could not join
    in. My wife substituted for me. The curandera laid out six pairs of
    leaves for herself. She apportioned the same number to Gordon. Anita
    received three pairs. Like the mushrooms, the leaves are always dosed
    in pairs, a practice that, of course, has a magical significance. The
    leaves were crushed with the metate, then squeezed out through a fine
    sieve into a cup, and the metate and the contents of the sieve were
    rinsed with water. Finally, the filled cups were incensed over the
    copal vessel with much ceremony. Consuela asked Anita and Gordon,
    before she handed them their cups, whether they believed in the truth
    and the holiness of the ceremony. After they answered in the
    affirmative and the very bitter-tasting potion was solemnly imbibed,
    the candles were extinguished and, lying in darkness on the bast
    masts, we awaited the effects.

    After some twenty minutes Anita whispered to me that she saw striking,
    brightly bordered images. Gordon also perceived the effect of the
    drug. The voice of the curandera sounded from the darkness, half
    speaking, half singing. Herlinda translated: Did we believe in
    Christ's blood and the holiness of the rites? After our "creemos" ("We
    believe"), the ceremonial performance continued. The curandera lit the
    candles, moved them from the "altar table" onto the floor, sang and
    spoke prayers or magic formulas, placed the candles again under the
    images of the saints-then again silence and darkness. Thereupon the
    true consultation began. Consuela asked for our request. Gordon
    inquired after the health of his daughter, who immediately before his
    departure from New York had to be admitted prematurely to the hospital
    in expectation of a baby. He received the comforting information that
    mother and child were well. Then again came singing and prayer and
    manipulations with the candles on the "altar table" and on the floor,
    over the smoking basin.

    When the ceremony was at an end, the curandera asked us to rest yet a
    while longer in prayer on our bast mats. Suddenly a thunderstorm burst
    out. Through the cracks of the beam walls, lightning flashed into the
    darkness of the hut, accompanied by violent thunderbolts, while a
    tropical downpour raged, beating on the roof. Consuela voiced
    apprehension that we would not be able to leave her house unseen in
    the darkness. But the thunderstorm let up before daybreak, and we went
    down the mountainside to our corrugated iron barracks, as noiselessly
    as possible by the light of flashlights, unnoticed by the villagers,
    but dogs again barked from all sides.

    Participation in this ceremony was the climax of our expedition. It
    brought confirmation that the hojas de la Pastora were used by the
    Indians for the same purpose and in the same ceremonial milieu as
    teonanacatl, the sacred mushrooms. Now we also had authentic plant
    material, not only sufficient for botanical identification, but also
    for the planned chemical analysis. The inebriated state that Gordon
    Wasson and my wife had experienced with the hojas had been shallow and
    only of short duration, yet it had exhibited a distinctly
    hallucinogenic character.

    On the morning after this eventful night we took leave of San Jose
    Tenango. The guide, Guadelupe, and the two fellows Teodosio and Pedro
    appeared before our barracks with the mules at the appointed time.
    Soon packed up and mounted, our little troop then moved uphill again,
    through the fertile landscape glittering in the sunlight from the
    night's thunderstorm. Returning by way of Santiago, toward evening we
    reached our last stop in Mazatec country, the capital Huautla de
    Jimenez.

    From here on, the return trip to Mexico City was made by automobile.
    With a final supper in the Posada Rosaura, at the time the only inn in
    Huautla, we took leave of our Indian guides and of the worthy mules
    that had carried us so surefootedly and in such a pleasant way through
    the Sierra Mazatec. The Indians were paid of, and Teodosio, who also
    accepted payment for his chief in Jalapa de Diaz (where the animals
    were to be returned afterward), gave a receipt with his thumbprint
    colored by a ballpoint pen. We took up quarters in Dona Herlinda's
    house.

    A day later we made our formal visit to the curandera Maria Sabina, a
    woman made famous by the Wassons' publications. It had been in her hut
    that Gordon Wasson became the first white man to taste of the sacred
    mushrooms, in the course of a nocturnal ceremony in the summer of
    1955. Gordon and Maria Sabina greeted each other cordially, as old
    friends. The curandera lived out of the way, on the mountainside above
    Huautla. The house in which the historic session with Gordon Wasson
    had taken place had been burned, presumably by angered residents or an
    envious colleague, because she had divulged the secret of teonanacatl
    to strangers. In the new hut in which we found ourselves, an
    incredible disorder prevailed, as had probably also prevailed in the
    old hut, in which half-naked children, hens, and pigs bustled about.
    The old curandera had an intelligent face, exceptionally changeable in
    expression. She was obviously impressed when it was explained that we
    had managed to confine the spirit of the mushrooms in pills, and she
    at once declared herself ready to " serve us" with these, that is, to
    grant us a consultation. It was agreed that this should take place the
    coming night in the house of Dona Herlinda.

    In the course of the day I took a stroll through Huautla de Jimenez,
    which led along a main street on the mountainside. Then I accompanied
    Gordon on his visit to the Instituto Nacional Indigenista. This
    governmental organization had the duty of studying and helping to
    solve the problems of the indigenous population, that is, the Indians.
    Its leader told us of the difficulties that the "coffee policy" had
    caused in the area at that time. The president of Huautla, in
    collaboration with the Instituto Nacional Indigenista had tried to
    eliminate middlemen in order to shape the coffee prices favorably for
    the producing Indians. His body was found, mutilated, the previous
    June.

    Our stroll also took us past the cathedral, from which Gregorian
    chants resounded. Old Father Aragon, whom Gordon knew well from his
    earlier stays, invited us into the vestry for a glass of tequila.

A Mushroom Ceremony

    As we returned home to Herlinda's house toward evening, Maria Sabina
    had already arrived there with a large company, her two lovely
    daughters, Apolonia and Aurora (two prospective curanderas), and a
    niece, all of whom brought children along with them. Whenever her
    child began to cry, Apolonia would offer her breast to it. The old
    curandero Don Aurelio also appeared, a mighty man, one-eyed, in a
    black-andwhite patternedserape (cloak). Cacao and sweet pastry were
    served on the veranda. I was reminded of the report from an ancient
    chronicle which described how chocotatl was drunk before the ingestion
    of teonanacatl.

    After the fall of darkness, we all proceeded into the room in which
    the ceremony would take place. It was then locked up-that is, the door
    was obstructed with the only bed available. Only an emergency exit
    into the back garden remained unlatched for absolute necessity. It was
    nearly midnight when the ceremony began. Until that time the whole
    party lay, in darkness sleeping or awaiting the night's events, on the
    bast mats spread on the floor. Maria Sabina threw a piece of copal on
    the embers of a brazier from time to time, whereby the stuffy air in
    the crowded room became somewhat bearable. I had explained to the
    curandera through Herlinda, who was again with the party as
    interpreter, that one pill contained the spirit of two pairs of
    mushrooms. (The pills contained 5.0 mg synthetic psilocybin apiece.)

    When all was ready, Maria Sabina apportioned the pills in pairs among
    the grown-ups present. After solemn smoking, she herself took two
    pairs (corresponding to 20 mg psilocybin). She gave the same dose to
    Don Aurelio and her daughter Apolonia, who would also serve as
    curandera. Aurora received one pair, as did Gordon, while my wife and
    Irmgard got only one pill each.

    One of the children, a girl of about ten, under the guidance of Maria
    Sabina, had prepared for me the juice of five pairs of fresh leaves of
    hojas de la Pastora. I wanted to experience this drug that I had been
    unable to try in San Jose Tenango. The potion was said to be
    especially active when prepared by an innocent child. The cup with the
    expressed juice was likewise incensed and conjured by Maria Sabina and
    Don Aurelio, before it was delivered to me.

    All of these preparations and the following ceremony progressed in
    much the same way as the consultation with the curandera Consuela
    Garcia in San Jose Tenango.

    After the drug was apportioned and the candle on the "altar" was
    extinguished, we awaited the effects in the darkness.

    Before a half hour had elapsed, the curandera murmured something; her
    daughter and Don Aurelio also became restless. Herlinda translated and
    explained to us what was wrong. Maria Sabina had said that the pills
    lacked the spirit of the mushrooms. I discussed the situation with
    Gordon, who lay beside me. For us it was clear that absorption of the
    active principle from the pills, which must first dissolve in the
    stomach, occurs more slowly than from the mushrooms, in which some of
    the active principle already becomes absorbed through the mucous
    membranes during chewing. But how could we give a scientific
    explanation under such conditions? Rather than try to explain, we
    decided to act. We distributed more pills. Both curanderas and the
    curandero each received another pair. They had now each taken a total
    dosage of 30 mg psilocybin.

    After about another quarter of an hour, the spirit of the pills did
    begin to yield its effects, which lasted until the crack of dawn. The
    daughters, and Don Aurelio with his deep bass voice, fervently
    answered the prayers and singing of the curandera. Blissful, yearning
    moans of Apolonia and Aurora, between singing and prayer, gave the
    impression that the religious experience of the young women in the
    drug inebriation was combined with sensual-sexual feelings.

    In the middle of the ceremony Maria Sabina asked for our request.
    Gordon inquired again after the health of his daughter and grandchild.
    He received the same good information as from the curandera Consuela.
    Mother and child were in fact well when he returned home to New York.
    Obviously, however, this still represents no proof of the prophetic
    abilities of both curanderas.

    Evidently as an effect of the hojas, I found myself for some time in a
    state of mental sensitivity and intense experience, which, however,
    was not accompanied by hallucinations. Anita, Irmgard, and Gordon
    experienced a euphoric condition of inebriation that was influenced by
    tke strange, mystical atmosphere. My wife was impressed by the vision
    of very distinct strange line patterns.

    She was astonished and perplexed, later, on discovering precisely the
    same images in the rich ornamentation over the altar in an old church
    near Puebla. That was on the return trip to Mexico City, when we
    visited churches from colonial times. These admirable churches offer
    great cultural and historical interest because the Indian artists and
    workmen who assisted in their construction smuggled in elements of
    Indian style. Klaus Thomas, in his book Die kunstlich gesteuerte Seele
    [The artificially steered mind] (Ferdinand Enke Verlag, Stuttgart,
    1970), writes about the possible influence of visions from psilocybin
    inebriation on Meso-American Indian art: "Surely a culturalhistorical
    comparison of the old and new creations of Indian art . . . must
    convince the unbiased spectator of the harmony with the images, forms
    and colors of a psilocybin inebriation." The Mexican character of the
    visions seen in my first experience with dried Psilocybe mexicana
    mushrooms and the drawing of Li Gelpke after a psilocybin inebriation
    could also point to such an association.

    As we took leave of Maria Sabina and her clan at the crack of dawn,
    the curandera said that the pills had the same power as the mushrooms,
    that there was no difference. This was a confirmation from the most
    competent authority, that the synthetic psilocybin is identical with
    the natural product. As a parting gift I let Maria Sabina have a vial
    of psilocybin pills. She radiantly explained to our interpreter
    Herlinda that she could now give consultations even in the season when
    no mushrooms grow.

    How should we judge the conduct of Maria Sabina, the fact that she
    allowed strangers, white people, access to the secret ceremony, and
    let them try the sacred mushroom?

    To her credit it can be said that she had thereby opened the door to
    the exploration of the Mexican mushroom cult in its present form, and
    to the scientific, botanical, and chemical investigation of the sacred
    mushrooms. Valuable active substances, psilocybin and psilocin,
    resulted. Without this assistance, the ancient knowledge and
    experience that was concealed in these secret practices would
    possibly, even probably, have disappeared without a trace, without
    having borne fruit, in the advancement of Western civilization.

    From another standpoint, the conduct of this curandera can be regarded
    as a profanation of a sacred custom-even as a betrayal. Some of her
    countrymen were of this opinion, which was expressed in acts of
    revenge, including the burning of her house.

    The profanation of the mushroom cult did not stop with the scientific
    investigations. The publication about the magic mushrooms unleashed an
    invasion of hippies and drug seekers into the Mazatec country, many of
    whom behaved badly, some even criminally. Another undesirable
    consequence was the beginning of true tourism in Huautla de Jimenez,
    whereby the originality of the place was eradicated.

    Such statements and considerations are, for the most part, the concern
    of ethnographical research. Wherever researchers and scientists trace
    and elucidate the remains of ancient customs that are becoming rarer,
    their primitiveness is lost. This loss is only more or less
    counterbalanced when the outcome of the research represents a lasting
    cultural gain.

    From Huautla de Jimenez we proceeded first to Teotitlan, in a
    breakneck truck ride along a half-paved road, and from there went on a
    comfortable car trip back to Mexico City, the starting point of our
    expedition. I had lost several kilograms in body weight, but was
    overwhelmingly compensated in enchanting experiences.

    The herbarium samples of hojas de la Pastora, which we had brought
    with us, were subjected to botanical indentification by Carl Epling
    and Carlos D. Jativa at the Botanical Institute of Harvard University
    in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They found that this plant was a hitherto
    undescribed species of Satvia, which was named Salvia divinorum by
    these authors. The chemical investigation of the juice of the magic
    sage in the laboratory in Basel was unsuccessful. The psychoactive
    principle of this drug seems to be a rather unstable substance, since
    the juice prepared in Mexico and preserved with alcohol proved in
    selfexperiments to be no longer active. Where the chemical nature of
    the active principle is concerned, the problem of the magic plant ska
    Maria Pastora still awaits solution.

    So far in this book I have mainly described my scientific work and
    matters relating to my professional activity. But this work, by its
    very nature, had repercussions on my own life and personality, not
    least because it brought me into contact with interesting and
    important contemporaries. I have already mentioned some of
    them-Timothy Leary, Rudolf Gelpke, Gordon Wasson. Now, in the pages
    that follow, I would like to emerge from the natural scientist's
    reserve, in order to portray encounters which were personally
    meaningful to me and which helped me solve questions posed by the
    substances I had discovered.
      _________________________________________________________________

                          7. Radiance from Ernst Junger

    Radiance is the perfect term to express the influence that Ernst
    Junger's literary work and personality have had on me. In the light of
    his perspective, which stereoscopically comprises the surfaces and
    depths of things, the world I knew took on a new, translucent
    splendor. That happened a long time before the discovery of LSD and
    before I came into personal contact with this author in connection
    with hallucinogenic drugs.

    My enchantment with Ernst Junger began with his book Das
    Abenteuerliche Herz [The adventurous heart]. Again and again in the
    last forty years I have taken up this book. Here more than ever, in
    themes that weigh more lightly and lie closer to me than war and a new
    type of human being (subjects of Junger's earlier books), the beauty
    and magic of Junger's prose was opened to me-descriptions of flowers,
    of dreams, of solitary walks; thoughts about chance, the future,
    colors, and about other themes that have direct relation to our
    personal lives. Everywhere in his prose the miracle of creation became
    evident, in the precise description of the surfaces and, in
    translucence, of the depths; and the uniqueness and the imperishable
    in every human being was touched upon. No other writer has thus opened
    my eyes.

    Drugs were also mentioned in Das Abenteuerliche Herz. Many years
    passed, however, before I myself began to be especially interested in
    this subject, after the discovery of the psychic effects of LSD.

    My first correspondence with Ernst Junger had nothing to do with the
    context of drugs; rather I once wrote to him on his birthday, as a
    thankful reader.

    Bottmingen, 29 March 1947
        Dear Mr. Junger,
        As one richly endowed by you for years, I wished to send a jar of
        honey to you for your birthday. But I did not have this pleasure,
        because my export license has been refused in Bern.
        The gift was intended less as a greeting from a country in which
        milk and honey still flow, than as a reminiscence of the
        enchanting sentences in your book Auf den Marmorklippen (On the
        Marble Cliffs), where you speak of the "golden bees."

    The book mentioned here had appeared in 1939, just shortly before the
    outbreak of World War II. Auf den Marmorklippen is not only a
    masterpiece of German prose, but also a work of great significance
    because in this book the characteristics of tyrants and the horror of
    war and nocturnal bombardment are described prophetically, in poetic
    vision.

    In the course of our correspondence, Ernst Junger also inquired about
    my LSD studies, of which he had learned through a friend. Thereupon I
    sent him the pertinent publications, which he acknowledged with the
    following comments:

    Kirchhorst, 3/3/1948
        . . . together with both enclosures concerning your new
        phantasticum. It seems indeed that you have entered a field that
        contains so many tempting mysteries.
        Your consignment came together with the Confessions of an English
        Opium Eater, that has just been published in a new translation.
        The translator writes me that his reading of Das Abenteuerliche
        Herz stimulated him to do his work.
        As far as I am concerned, my practical studies in this field are
        far behind me. These are experiments in which one sooner or later
        embarks on truly dangerous paths, and may be considered lucky to
        escape with only a black eye.
        What interested me above all was the relationship of these
        substances to productivity. It has been my experience, however,
        that creative achievement requires an alert consciousness, and
        that it diminishes under the spell of drugs. On the other hand,
        conceptualization is important, and one gains insights under the
        influence of drugs that indeed are not possible otherwise. I
        consider the beautiful essay that Maupassant has written about
        ether to be such an insight. Moreover, I had the impression that
        in fever one also discovers new landscapes, new archipelagos, and
        a new music, that becomes completely distinct when the "customs
        station" ["An der Zollstation" [At the custom station], the title
        heading of a section in Das Abenteuerliche Herz (2d ed.) that
        concerns the transition from life to death.] appears. For
        geographic description, on the other hand, one must be fully
        conscious. What productivity means to the artist, healing means to
        the physician. Accordingly, it also may suffice for him that he
        sometimes enters the regions through the tapestries that our
        senses have woven. Moreover, I seem to perceive in our time less
        of a taste for the phantastica than for the
        energetica-amphetamine, which has even been furnished to fliers
        and other soldiers by the armies, belongs to this group. Tea is in
        my opinion a phantasticum, coffee an energeticum-tea therefore
        possesses a disproportionately higher artistic rank. I notice that
        coffee disrupts the delicate lattice of light and shadows, the
        fruitful doubts that emerge during the writing of a sentence. One
        exceeds his inhibitions. With tea, on the other hand, the thoughts
        climb genuinely upward.
        So far as my "studies" are concerned, I had a manuscript on that
        topic, but have since burned it. My excursions terminated with
        hashish, that led to very pleasant, but also to manic states, to
        oriental tyranny....

    Soon afterward, in a letter from Ernst Junger I learned that he had
    inserted a discourse about drugs in the novel Heliopolis, on which he
    was then working. He wrote to me about the drug researcher who figures
    in the novel:

    Among the trips in the geographical and metaphysical worlds, which I
        am attempting to describe there, are those of a purely sedentary
        man, who explores the archipelagos beyond the navigable seas, for
        which he uses drugs as a vehicle. I give extracts from his log
        book. Certainly, I cannot allow this Columbus of the inner globe
        to end well-he dies of a poisoning. Avis au lecteur.

    The book that appeared the following year bore the subtitle Ruckblick
    auf eine Stadt [Retrospective on a city], a retrospective on a city of
    the future, in which technical apparatus and the weapons of the
    present time were developed still further in magic, and in which power
    struggles between a demonic technocracy and a conservative force took
    place. In the figure of Antonio Peri, Junger depicted the mentioned
    drug researcher, who resided in the ancient city of Heliopolis.
    He captured dreams, just like others appear to chase after butterflies
        with nets. He did not travel to the islands on Sundays and
        holidays and did not frequent the taverns on Pagos beach. He
        locked himself up in his studio for trips into the dreamy regions.
        He said that all countries and unknown islands were woven into the
        tapestry. The drugs served him as keys to entry into the chambers
        and caves of this world. In the course of the years he had gained
        great knowledge, and he kept a log book of his excursions. A small
        library adjoined this studio, consisting partly of herbals and
        medicinal reports, partly of works by poets and magicians. Antonio
        tended to read there while the effect of the drug itself
        developed. . . . He went on voyages of discovery in the universe
        of his brain....

    In the center of this library, which was pillaged by mercenaries of
    the provincial governor during the arrest of Antonio Peri, stood

    The great inspirers of the nineteenth century: De Quincey, E.T.A.
        Hoffmann, Poe, and Baudelaire. Yet there were also books from the
        ancient past: herbals, necromancy texts, and demonology of the
        middle-aged world. They included the names Albertus Magnus,
        Raimundus Lullus, and Agrippa of Nettesheym.... Moreover, there
        was the great folioDe Praestigiis Daemonum by Wierus, and the very
        unique compilations of Medicus Weckerus, published in Basel in
        1582....

    In another part of his collection, Antonio Peri seemed to have cast
    his attention principally "on ancient pharmacology books, formularies
    and pharmacopoeias, and to have hunted for reprints of journals and
    annals. Among others was found a heavy old volume by the Heidelberg
    psychologists on the extract of mescal buttons, and a paper on the
    phantastica of ergot by Hofmann-Bottmingen...."

    In the same year in which Hetiopolis came out, I made the personal
    acquaintance of the author. I went to meet Ernst Junger in Ravensburg,
    for a Swiss sojourn. On a wonderful fall journey in southern
    Switzerland, together with mutual friends, I experienced the radiant
    power of his personality.

    Two years later, at the beginning of February 1951, came the great
    adventure, an LSD trip with Ernst Junger. Since, up until that moment,
    there were only reports of LSD experiments in connection with
    psychiatric inquiries, this experiment especially interested me,
    because this was an opportunity to observe the effects of LSD on the
    artistic person, in a nonmedical milieu. That was still somewhat
    before Aldous Huxley, from the same perspective, began to experiment
    with mescaline, about which he then reported in his two books The
    Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hett.

    In order to have medical aid on hand if necessary, I invited my
    friend, the physician and pharmacologist Professor Heribert Konzett,
    to participate. The trip took place at 10:00 in the morning, in the
    living room of our house in Bottmingen. Since the reaction of such a
    highly sensitive man as Ernst Junger was not foreseeable, a low dose
    was chosen for this first experiment as a precaution, only 0.05 mg.
    The experiment then, did not lead into great depths.

    The beginning phase was characterized by the intensification of
    aesthetic experience. Red-violet roses were of unknown luminosity and
    radiated in portentous brightness. The concerto for flute and harp by
    Mozart was perceived in its celestial beauty as heavenly music. In
    mutual astonishment we contemplated the haze of smoke that ascended
    with the ease of thought from a Japanese incense stick. As the
    inebriation became deeper and the conversation ended, we came to
    fantastic reveries while we lay in our easy chairs with closed eyes.
    Ernst Junger enjoyed the color display of oriental images: I was on a
    trip among Berber tribes in North Africa, saw colored caravans and
    lush oases. Heribert Konzett, whose features seemed to me to be
    transfigured, Buddha-like, experienced a breath of timelessness,
    liberation from the past and the future, blessedness through being
    completely here and now.

    The return from the altered state of consciousness was associated with
    strong sensitivity to cold. Like freezing travelers, we enveloped
    ourselves in covers for the landing. The return to everyday reality
    was celebrated with a good dinner, in which Burgundy flowed copiously.

    This trip was characterized by the mutuality and parallelism of our
    experiences, which were perceived as profoundly joyful. All three of
    us had drawn near the gate to an experience of mystical being;
    however, it did not open. The dose we had chosen was too low. In
    misunderstanding this reason, Ernst Junger, who had earlier been
    thrust into deeper realms by a high dose of mescaline, remarked:
    "Compared with the tiger mescaline, your LSD, is, after all, only a
    house cat." After later experiments with higher doses of LSD, he
    revised this estimation.

    Junger has assimilated the mentioned spectacle of the incense stick
    into literature, in his storyBesuch auf Gotenhotm [Visit to
    Godenholm], in which deeper experiences of drug inebriation also play
    a part:

    Schwarzenberg burned an incense stick, as he sometimes did, to clear
        the air. A blue plume ascended from the tip of the stick. Moltner
        looked at it first with astonishment, then with delight, as if a
        new power of the eyes had come to him. It revealed itself in the
        play of this fragrant smoke, which ascended from the slender stick
        and then branched out into a delicate crown. It was as if his
        imagination had created it-a pallid web of sea lilies in the
        depths, that scarcely trembled from the beat of the surf. Time was
        active in this creation-it had circled it, whirled about it,
        wreathed it, as if imaginary coins rapidly piled up one on top of
        another. The abundance of space revealed itself in the fiber work,
        the nerves, which stretched and unfolded in the height, in a vast
        number of filaments.
        Now a breath of air affected the vision, and softly twisted it
        about the shaft like a dancer. Moltner uttered a shout of
        surprise. The beams and lattices of the wondrous flower wheeled
        around in new planes, in new fields. Myriads of molecules observed
        the harmony. Here the laws no longer acted under the veil of
        appearance; matter was so delicate and weightless that it clearly
        reflected them. How simple and cogent everything was. The numbers,
        masses and weights stood out from matter. They cast off the
        raiments. No goddess could inform the initiates more boldly and
        freely. The pyramids with their weight did not reach up to this
        revelation. That was Pythagorean luster. No spectacle had ever
        affected him with such a magic spell.

    This deepened experience in the aesthetic sphere, as it is described
    here in the example of contemplation of a haze of blue smoke, is
    typical of the beginning phase of LSD inebriation, before deeper
    alterations of conscious begin.

    I visited Ernst Junger occasionally in the following years, in
    Wilfingen, Germany, where he had moved from Ravensburg; or we met in
    Switzerland, at my place in Bottmingen, or in Bundnerland in
    southeastern Switzerland. Through the shared LSD experience our
    relations had deepened. Drugs and problems connected with them
    constituted a major subject of our conversation and correspondence,
    without our having made further practical experiments in the meantime.

    We exchanged literature about drugs. Ernst Junger thus let me have for
    my drug library the rare, valuable monograph of Dr. Ernst Freiherrn
    von Bibra, Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch [Narcotic
    pleasure drugs and man] printed in Nuremburg in 1855. This book is a
    pioneering, standard work of drug literature, a source of the first
    order, above all as relates to the history of drugs. What von Bibra
    embraces under the designation "Narkotischen Genussmittel" are not
    only substances like opium and thorn apple, but also coffee, tobacco,
    kat, which do not fall under the present conception of narcotics, any
    more than do drugs such as coca, fly agaric, and hashish, which he
    also described.

    Noteworthy, and today still as topical as at the time, are the general
    opinions about drugs that von Bibra contrived more than a century ago:

    The individual who has taken too much hashish, and then runs
        frantically about in the streets and attacks everyone who
        confronts him, sinks into insignificance beside the numbers of
        those who after mealtime pass calm and happy hours with a moderate
        dose; and the number of those who are able to overcome the
        heaviest exertions through coca, yes, who were possibly rescued
        from death by starvation through coca, by far exceed the few
        coqueros who have undermined their health by immoderate use. In
        the same manner, only a misplaced hypocrisy can condemn the vinous
        cup of old father Noah, because individual drunkards do not know
        how to observe limit and moderation.

    From time to time I advised Ernst Junger about actual and entertaining
    events in the field of inebriating drugs, as in my letter of September
    1955:

    . . . Last week the first 200 grams of a new drug arrived, whose
        investigation I wish to take up. It involves the seeds of a mimosa
        (Piptadenia peregrina Benth,) that is used as a stimulating
        intoxicant by the Indians of the Orinoco. The seeds are ground,
        fermented, and then mixed with the powder of burned snail shells.
        This powder is sniffed by the Indians with the help of a hollow,
        forked bird bone, as already reported by Alexander von Humboldt in
        Reise nach den Aequinoctiat-Gegenden des Neuen Kontinents [Voyage
        to the equinoctial regions of the new continent] (Book 8, Chapter
        24). The warlike tribe, the Otomaco, especially use this drug,
        called niopo, yupa, nopo or cojoba, to an extensive degree, even
        today. It is reported in the monograph by P. J. Gumilla, S. J. (Et
        Orinoco Itustrado, 1741): "The Otomacos sniffed the powder before
        they went to battle with the Caribes, for in earlier times there
        existed savage wars between these tribes.... This drug robs them
        completely of reason, and they frantically seize their weapons.
        And if the women were not so adept at holding them back and
        binding them fast, they would daily cause horrible devastation. It
        is a terrible vice.... Other benign and docile tribes that also
        sniff the yupa, do not get into such a fury as the Otomacos, who
        through self-injury with this agent made themselves completely
        cruel before combat, and marched into battle with savage fury."
        I am curious how niopo would act on people like us. Should a niopo
        session one day come to pass, then we should on no account send
        our wives away, as on that early spring reverie [The LSD trip of
        February 1951 is meant here.], that they may bind us fast if
        necessary....

    Chemical analysis of this drug led to isolation of active principles
    that, like the ergot alkaloids and psilocybin, belong to the group of
    indole alkaloids, but which were already described in the technical
    literature, and were therefore not investigated further in the Sandoz
    laboratories. [Translator's note: The active principles of niopo are
    DMT (N,Ndimethyltryptamine) and its congeners. DMT was first prepared
    in 1931 by Manske.] The fantastic effects described above appeared to
    occur only with the particular manner of use as snuff powder, and also
    seemed to be related, in all probability, to the psychic structure of
    the Indian tribes concerned.

Ambivalence of Drug Use

    Fundamental questions of drug problems were dealt with in the
    following correspondence.

    Bottmingen, 16 December 1961
        Dear Mr. Junger,
        On the one hand, I would have the great desire, besides the
        natural- scientific, chemicalpharmacological investigation of
        hallucinogenic substances, also to research their use as magic
        drugs in other regions.... On the other hand, I must admit that
        the fundamental question very much occupies me, whether the use of
        these types of drugs, namely of substances that so deeply affect
        our minds, could not indeed represent a forbidden transgression of
        limits. As long as any means or methods are used, which provide
        only an additional, newer aspect of reality, surely there is
        nothing to object to in such means; on the contrary, the
        experience and the knowledge of further facets of the reality only
        makes this reality ever more real to us. The question exists,
        however, whether the deeply affecting drugs under discussion here
        will in fact only open an additional window for our senses and
        perceptions, or whether the spectator himself, the core of his
        being, undergoes alterations. The latter would signify that
        something is altered that in my opinion should always remain
        intact. My concern is addressed to the question, whether the
        innermost core of our being is actually unimpeachable, and cannot
        become damaged by whatever happens in its material,
        physical-chemical, biological and psychic shells-or whether matter
        in the form of these drugs displays a potency that has the ability
        to attack the spiritual center of the personality, the self. The
        latter would have to be explained by the fact that the effect of
        magic drugs happens at the borderline where mind and matter
        merge-that these magic substances are themselves cracks in the
        infinite realm of matter, in which the depth of matter, its
        relationship with the mind, becomes particularly obvious. This
        could be expressed by a modification of the familiar words of
        Goethe:

    "Were the eye not sunny,
        It could never behold the sun;
        If the power of the mind were not in matter,
        How could matter disturb the mind."

    This would correspond to cracks which the radioactive substances
    constitute in the periodic system of the elements, where the
    transition of matter into energy becomes manifest. Indeed, one must
    ask whether the production of atomic energy likewise represents a
    transgression of forbidden limits.

    A further disquieting tht)ught, which follows from the possibility of
    influencing the highest intellectual functions by traces of a
    substance, concerns free will.

    The highly active psychotropic substances like LSD and psilocybin
    possess in their chemical structure a very close relationship with
    substances inherent in the body, which are found in the central
    nervous system and play an important role in the regulation of its
    functions. It is therefore conceivable that through some disturbance
    in the metabolism of the normal neurotransmitters, a compound like LSD
    or psilocybin is formed, which can determine and alter the character
    of the individual, his world view and his behavior. A trace of a
    substance, whose production or nonproduction we cannot control with
    our wills, has the power to shape our destiny. Such biochemical
    considerations could have led to the sentence that Gottfried Benn
    quoted in his essay "Provoziertes Leben" [Provoked life]: "God is a
    substance, a drug!"

    On the other hand, it is well known that substances like adrenaline,
    for example, are formed or set free in our organism by thoughts and
    emotions, which for their part determine the functions of the nervous
    system. One may therefore suppose that our material organism is
    susceptible to and shaped by our mind, in the same way that our
    intellectual essence is shaped by our biochemistry. Which came first
    can indeed no better be determined than the question, whether the
    chicken came before the egg.

    In spite of my uncertainty with regard to the fundamental dangers that
    could lie in the use of hallucinogenic substances, I have continued
    investigations on the active principles of the Mexican magic morning
    glories, of which I wrote you briefly once before. In the seeds of
    this morning glory, that were called otoliuhqui by the ancient Aztecs,
    we found as active principles lysergic acid derivatives chemically
    very closely related to LSD. That was an almost unbelievable finding.
    I have all along had a particular love for the morning glories. They
    were the first flowers that I grew myself in my little child's garden.
    Their blue and red cups belong to the first memories of my childhood.

    I recently read in a book by D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture,
    that the morning glory plays a great role in Japan, among the flower
    lovers, in literature, and in graphic arts. Its fleeting splendor has
    given the Japanese imagination rich stimulus. Among others, Suzuki
    quotes a three- line poem of the poetess Chiyo (1702-75), who one
    morning went to fetch water from a neighbor's house, because . . .

    "My trough is captivated
        by a morning glory blossom,
        So I ask after water."

    The morning glory thus shows both possible ways of influencing the
    mind-body-essence of man: in Mexico it exerts its effects in a
    chemical way as a magic drug, while in Japan it acts from the
    spiritual side, through the beauty of its flower cups.

    Wilflingen, 17 December 1961

    Dear Mr. Hofmann,

    I give you my thanks for your detailed letter of 16 December. I have
    reflected on your central question, and may probably become occupied
    with it on the occasion of the revision of An der Zeitmauer [At the
    wall of time]. There I intimated that, in the field of physics as well
    as in the field of biology, we are beginning to develop procedures
    that are no longer to be understood as advances in the established
    sense, but that rather intervene in evolution and lead forth in the
    development of the species. Certainly I turn the glove inside out, for
    I suppose that it is a new world age, which begins to act
    evolutionarily on the prototypes. Our science with its theories and
    discoveries is therefore not the cause, rather one of the consequences
    of evolution, among others. Animals, plants, the atmosphere and the
    surfaces of planets will be concerned simultaneously. We do not
    progress from point to point, rather we cross over a line.

    The risk that you indicated is well to be considered. However, it
    exists in every aspect of our existence. The common denominator
    appears now here, now there.

    In mentioning radioactivity, you use the word crack. Cracks are not
    merely points of discovery, but also points of destruction. Compared
    to the effects of radiation, those of the magical drugs are more
    genuine and much less rough. In classical manner they lead us beyond
    the humane. Gurdjieff has already seen that to some extent. Wine has
    already changed much, has brought new gods and a new humanity with it.
    But wine is to the new substances as classical physics is to modern
    physics. These things should only be tried in small circles. I cannot
    agree with the thoughts of Huxley, that possibilities for
    transcendence could here be given to the masses. Indeed, this does not
    involve comforting fictions, but rather realities, if we take the
    matter earnestly. And few contacts will suffice here for the setting
    of courses and guidance. It also transcends theology and belongs in
    the chapter of theogony, as it necessarily entails entry into a new
    house, in the astrological sense. At first, one can be satisfied with
    this insight, and should above all be cautious with the designations.

    Heartfelt thanks also for the beautiful picture of the blue morning
    glory. It appears to be the same that I cultivate year after year in
    my garden. I did not know that it possesses specific powers; however,
    that is probably the case with every plant. We do not know the key to
    most. Besides this, there must be a central viewpoint from which not
    only the chemistry, the structure, the color, but rather all
    attributes become significant....

An Experiment with Psilocybin

    Such theoretical discussions about the magic drugs were supplemented
    by practical experiments. One such experiment, which served as a
    comparison between LSD and psilocybin, took place in the spring of
    1962. The proper occasion for it presented itself at the home of the
    Jungers, in the former head forester's house of Stauffenberg's Castle
    in Wilflingen. My friends, the pharmacologist Professor Heribert
    Konzett and the Islamic scholar Dr. Rudolf Gelpke, also took part in
    this mushroom symposium.

    The old chronicles described how the Aztecs drank chocolatl before
    they ate teonanacatl. Thus Mrs. Liselotte Junger likewide served us
    hot chocolate, to set the mood. Then she abandoned the four men to
    their fate.

    We had gathered in a fashionable living room, with a dark wooden
    ceiling, white tile stove, period furniture, old French engravings on
    the walls, a gorgeous bouquet of tulips on the table. Ernst Junger
    wore a long, broad, dark blue striped kaftan-like garment that he had
    brought from Egypt; Heribert Konzett was resplendent in a brightly
    embroidered mandarin gown; Rudolf Gelpke and I had put on housecoats.
    The everyday reality should be laid aside, along with everyday
    clothing.

    Shortly before sundown we took the drug, not the mushrooms, but rather
    their active principle, 20 mg psilocybin each. That corresponded to
    some twothirds of the very strong dose that was taken by the curandera
    Maria Sabina in the form of Psilocybe mushrooms.

    After an hour I still noticed no effect, while my companions were
    already very deeply into the trip. I had come with the hope that in
    the mushroom inebriation I could manage to allow certain images from
    euphoric moments of my childhood, which remained in my memory as
    blissful experiences, to come alive: a meadow covered with
    chrysanthemums lightly stirred by the early summer wind; the rosebush
    in the evening light after a rain storm; the blue irises hanging over
    the vineyard wall. Instead of these bright images from my childhood
    home, strange scenery emerged, when the mushroom factor finally began
    to act. Half stupefied, I sank deeper, passed through totally deserted
    cities with a Mexican type of exotic, yet dead splendor. Terrified, I
    tried to detain myself on the surface, to concentrate alertly on the
    outer world, on the surroundings. For a time I succeeded. I then
    observed Ernst Junger, colossal in the room, pacing back and forth, a
    powerful, mighty magician. Heribert Konzett in the silky lustrous
    housecoat seemed to be a dangerous, Chinese clown. Even Rudolf Gelpke
    appeared sinister to me; long, thin, mysterious.

    With the increasing depth of inebriation, everything became yet
    stranger. I even felt strange to myself. Weird, cold, foolish,
    deserted, in a dull light, were the places I traversed when I closed
    my eyes. Emptied of all meaning, the environment also seemed ghostlike
    to me whenever I opened my eyes and tried to cling to the outer world.
    The total emptiness threatened to drag me down into absolute
    nothingness. I remember how I seized Rudolf Gelpke's arm as he passed
    by my chair, and held myself to him, in order not to sink into dark
    nothingness. Fear of death seized me, and illimitable longing to
    return to the living creation, to the reality of the world of men.
    After timeless fear I slowly returned to the room . I saw and heard
    the great magician lecturing uninterruptedly with a clear, loud voice,
    about Schopenhauer, Kant, Hegel, and speaking about the old Gaa, the
    beloved little mother. Heribert Konzett and Rudolf Gelpke were already
    completely on the earth again, while I could only regain my footing
    with great effort.

    For me this entry into the mushroom world had been a test, a
    confrontation with a dead world and with the void. The experiment had
    developed differently from what I had expected. Nevertheless, the
    encounter with the void can also be appraised as a gain. Then the
    existence of the creation appears so much more wondrous.

    Midnight had passed, as we sat together at the table that the mistress
    of the house had set in the upper story. We celebrated the return with
    an exquisite repast and with Mozart's music. The conversation, during
    which we exchanged our experiences, lasted almost until morning.

    Ernst Junger has described how he had experienced this trip, in his
    book Annahenngenrogen und Rausch [Approaches-drugs and inebriation]
    (published by Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart, 1970), in the section
    "Ein Pilz-Symposium" [A mushroom symposium]. The following is an
    extract from the work:

    As usual, a half hour or a little more passed in silence. Then came
        the first signs: the flowers on the table began to flare up and
        sent out flashes. It was time for leaving work; outside the
        streets were being cleaned, like on every weekend. The brush
        strokes invaded the silence painfully. This shuffling and
        brushing, now and again also a scraping, pounding, rumbling, and
        hammering, has random causes and is also symptomatic, like one of
        the signs that announces an illness. Again and again it also plays
        a role in the history of magic practices.
        By this time the mushroom began to act; the spring bouquet glowed
        darker. That was no natural light. The shadows stirred in the
        corners, as if they sought form. I became uneasy, even chilled,
        despite the heat that emanated from the tiles. I stretched myself
        on the sofa, drew the covers over my head.
        Everything became skin and was touched, even the retina-there the
        contact was light. This light was multicolored; it arranged itself
        in strings, which gently swung back and forth; in strings of glass
        beads of oriental doorways. They formed doors, like those one
        passes through in a dream, curtains of lust and danger. The wind
        stirred them like a garment. They also fell down from the belts of
        dancers, opened and closed themselves with the swing of the hips,
        and from the beads a rippling of the most delicate sounds
        fluttered to the heightened senses. The chime of the silver rings
        on the ankles and wrists is already too loud. It smells of sweat,
        blood, tobacco, chopped horse hairs, cheap rose essence. Who knows
        what is going on in the stables?
        It must be an immense palace, Mauritanian, not a good place. At
        this ballroom flights of adjoining rooms lead into the lower
        stratum. And everywhere the curtains with their glitter, their
        sparkling, radioactive glow. Moreover, the rippling of glassy
        instruments with their beckoning, their wooing solicitation: "
        Will you go with me, beautiful boy?" Now it ceased, now it
        repeated, more importunate, more intrusive, almost already assured
        of agreement.
        Now came forms-historical collages, the vox humana, the call of
        the cuckoo. Was it the whore of Santa Lucia, who stuck her breasts
        out of the window? Then the play was ruined. Salome danced; the
        amber necklace emitted sparks and made the nipples erect. What
        would one not do for one's Johannes? [Translator's note:
        "Johannes" here is slang for penis, as in English "Dick" or
        "Peter."] -damned, that was a disgusting obscenity, which did not
        come from me, but was whispered through the curtain.
        The snakes were dirty, scarcely alive, they wallowed sluggishly
        over the floor mats. They were garnished with brilliant shards.
        Others looked up from the floor with red and green eyes. It
        glistened and whispered, hissed and sparkled like diminutive
        sickles at the sacred harvest. Then it quieted, and came anew,
        more faintly, more forward. They had me in their hand. "There we
        immediately understood ourselves."
        Madam came through the curtain: she was busy, passed by me without
        noticing me. I saw the boots with the red heels. Garters
        constricted the thick thighs in the middle, the flesh bulged out
        there. The enormous breasts, the dark delta of the Amazon,
        parrots, piranhas, semiprecious stones everywhere. Now she went
        into the kitchen-or are there still cellars here? The sparkling
        and whispering, the hissing and twinkling could no longer be
        differentiated; it seemed to become concentrated, now proudly
        rejoicing, full of hope.
        It became hot and intolerable; I threw the covers off. The room
        was faintly illuminated; the pharmacologist stood at the window in
        the white mandarin frock, which had served me shortly before in
        Rottweil at the carnival. The orientalist sat beside the tile
        stove; he moaned as if he had a nightmare. I understood; it had
        been a first round, and it would soon start again. The time was
        not yet up. I had already seen the beloved little mother under
        other circumstances. But even excrement is earth, belongs like
        gold to transformed matter. One must come to terms with it,
        without getting too close.
        These were the earthy mushrooms. More light was hidden in the dark
        grain that burst from the ear, more yet in the green juice of the
        succulents on the glowing slopes of Mexico. . . . [Translator's
        note: Junger is referring to LSD, a derivative of ergot, and
        mescaline, derived from the Mexican peyotl cactus.]
        The trip had run awry-possibly I should address the mushrooms once
        more. Yet indeed the whispering returned, the flashing and
        sparkling-the bait pulled the fish close behind itself. Once the
        motif is given, then it engraves itself, like on a roller each new
        beginning, each new revolution repeats the melody. The game did
        not get beyond this kind of dreariness.
        I don't know how often this was repeated, and prefer not to dwell
        upon it. Also, there are things which one would rather keep to
        oneself. In any case, midnight was past....
        We went upstairs; the table was set. The senses were still
        heightened and the Doors of Perception were opened. The light
        undulated from the red wine in the carafe; a froth surged at the
        brim. We listened to a flute concerto. It had not turned out
        better for the others: How beautiful, to be back among men." Thus
        Albert Hofmann.
        The orientalist on the other hand had been in Samarkand, where
        Timur rests in a coffin of nephrite. He had followed the
        victorious march through cities, whose dowry on entry was a
        cauldron filled with eyes. There he had long stood before one of
        the skull pyramids that terrible Timur had erected, and in the
        multitude of severed heads had perceived even his own. It was
        encrusted with stones.
        A light dawned on the pharmacologist when he heard this: Now I
        know why you were sitting in the armchair without your head-I was
        astonished; I knew I wasn't dreaming.
        I wonder whether I should not strike out this detail since it
        borders on the area of ghost stories.

    The mushroom substance had carried all four of us off, not into
    luminous heights, rather into deeper regions. It seems that the
    psilocybin inebriation is more darkly colored in the majority of cases
    than the inebriation produced by LSD. The influence of these two
    active substances is sure to differ from one individual to another.
    Personally, for me, there was more light in the LSD experiments than
    in the experiments with the earthy mushroom, just as Ernst Junger
    remarks in the preceding report.

Another LSD Session

    The next and last thrust into the inner universe together with Ernst
    Junger, this time again using LSD, led us very far from everyday
    consciousness. We came close to the ultimate door. Of course this
    door, according to Ernst Junger, will in fact only open for us in the
    great transition from life into the hereafter.

    This last joint experiment occurred in February 1970, again at the
    head forester's house in Wilflingen. In this case there were only the
    two of us. Ernst Junger took 0.15 mg LSD, I took 0.10 mg. Ernst Junger
    has published without commentary the log book, the notes he made
    during the experiment, in Approaches, in the section "Nochmals LSD"
    [LSD once again]. They are scanty and tell the reader little, just
    like my own records.

    The experiment lasted from morning just after breakfast until darkness
    fell. At the beginning of the trip, we again listened to the concerto
    for flute and harp by Mozart, which always made me especially happy,
    but this time, strange to say, seemed to me like the turning of
    porcelain figures. Then the intoxication led quickly into wordless
    depths. When I wanted to describe the perplexing alterations of
    consciousness to Ernst Junger, no more than two or three words came
    out, for they sounded so false, so unable to express the experience;
    they seemed to originate from an infinitely distant world that had
    become strange; I abandoned the attempt, laughing hopelessly.
    Obviously, Ernst Junger had the same experience, yet we did not need
    speech; a glance sufficed for the deepest understanding. I could,
    however, put some scraps of sentences on paper, such as at the
    beginning: "Our boat tosses violently." Later, upon regarding
    expensively bound books in the library: "Like red-gold pushed from
    within to without-exuding golden luster." Outside it began to snow.
    Masked children marched past and carts with carnival revelers passed
    by in the streets. With a glance through the window into the garden,
    in which snow patches lay, many-colored masks appeared over the high
    walls bordering it, embedded in an infinitely joyful shade of blue: "A
    Breughel garden-I live with and in the objects." Later: "At present-no
    connection with the everyday world." Toward the end, deep, comforting
    insight expressed: "Hitherto confirmed on my path." This time LSD had
    led to a blessed approach.
      _________________________________________________________________


                          8. Meeting with Aldous Huxley

    In the mid-1950s, two books by Aldous Huxley appeared, The Doors of
    Perception and Heaven and Hell, dealing with inebriated states
    produced by hallucinogenic drugs. The alterations of sensory
    perceptions and consciousness, which the author experienced in a
    self-experiment with mescaline, are skillfully described in these
    books. The mescaline experiment was a visionary experience for Huxley.
    He saw objects in a new light; they disclosed their inherent, deep,
    timeless existence, which remains hidden from everyday sight.

    These two books contained fundamental observations on the essence of
    visionary experience and about the significance of this manner of
    comprehending the world-in cultural history, in the creation of myths,
    in the origin of religions, and in the creative process out of which
    works of art arise. Huxley saw the value of hallucinogenic drugs in
    that they give people who lack the gift of spontaneous visionary
    perception belonging to mystics, saints, and great artists, the
    potential to experience this extraordinary state of consciousness, and
    thereby to attain insight into the spiritual world of these great
    creators. Hallucinogens could lead to a deepened understanding of
    religious and mystical content, and to a new and fresh experience of
    the great works of art. For Huxley these drugs were keys capable of
    opening new doors of perception; chemical keys, in addition to other
    proven but laborious " door openers" to the visionary world like
    meditation, isolation, and fasting, or like certain yoga practices.

    At the time I already knew the earlier work of this great writer and
    thinker, books that meant much to me, like Point Counter Point, Brave
    New World, After Many a Summer, Eyeless in Gaza, and a few others. In
    The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, Huxley's newly-published
    works, I found a meaningful exposition of the experience induced by
    hallucinogenic drugs, and I thereby gained a deepened insight into my
    own LSD experiments.

    I was therefore delighted when I received a telephone call from Aldous
    Huxley in the laboratory one morning in August 1961. He was passing
    through Zurich with his wife. He invited me and my wife to lunch in
    the Hotel Sonnenberg.

    A gentleman with a yellow freesia in his buttonhole, a tall and noble
    appearance, who exuded kindness- this is the image I retained from
    this first meeting with Aldous Huxley. The table conversation revolved
    mainly around the problem of magic drugs. Both Huxley and his wife,
    Laura Archera Huxley, had also experimented with LSD and psilocybin.
    Huxley would have preferred not to designate these two substances and
    mescaline as "drugs," because in English usage, as also by the way
    with Droge in German, that word has a pejorative connotation, and
    because it was important to differentiate the hallucinogens from the
    other drugs, even linguistically. He believed in the great importance
    of agents producing visionary experience in the modern phase of human
    evolution.

    He considered experiments under laboratory conditions to be
    insignificant, since in the extraordinarily intensified susceptibility
    and sensitivity to external impressions, the surroundings are of
    decisive importance. He recommended to my wife, when we spoke of her
    native place in the mountains, that she take LSD in an alpine meadow
    and then look into the blue cup of a gentian flower, to behold the
    wonder of creation.

    As we parted, Aldous Huxley gave me, as a remembrance of this meeting,
    a tape recording of his lecture "Visionary Experience," which he had
    delivered the week before at an international congress on applied
    psychology in Copenhagen. In this lecture, Aldous Huxley spoke about
    the meaning and essence of visionary experience and compared this type
    of world view to the verbal and intellectual comprehension of reality
    as its essential complement.

    In the following year, the newest and last book by Aldous Huxley
    appeared, the novel Island. This story, set on the utopian island
    Pala, is an attempt to blend the achievements of natural science and
    technical civilization with the wisdom of Eastern thought, to achieve
    a new culture in which rationalism and mysticism are fruitfully
    united. The moksha medicine, a magical drug prepared from a mushroom,
    plays a significant role in the life of the population of Pala (moksha
    is Sanskrit for "release," "liberation"). The drug could be used only
    in critical periods of life. The young men on Pala received it in
    initiation rites, it is dispensed to the protagonist of the novel
    during a life crisis, in the scope of a psychotherapeutic dialogue
    with a spiritual friend, and it helps the dying to relinquish the
    mortal body, in the transition to another existence.

    In our conversation in Zurich, I had already learned from Aldous
    Huxley that he would again treat the problem of psychedelic drugs in
    his forthcoming novel. Now he sent me a copy of Island, inscribed "To
    Dr. Albert Hofmann, the original discoverer of the moksha medicine,
    from Aldous Huxley."

    The hopes that Aldous Huxley placed in psychedelic drugs as a means of
    evoking visionary experience, and the uses of these substances in
    everyday life, are subjects of a letter of 29 February 1962, in which
    he wrote me:

    . . . I have good hopes that this and similar work will result in the
        development of a real Natural History of visionary experience, in
        all its variations, determined by differences of physique,
        temperament and profession, and at the same time of a technique of
        Applied Mysticism - a technique for helping individuals to get the
        most out of their transcendental experience and to make use of the
        insights from the "Other World" in the affairs of "This World."
        Meister Eckhart wrote that "what is taken in by contemplation must
        be given out in love." Essentially this is what must be
        developed-the art of giving out in love and intelligence what is
        taken in from vision and the experience of self-transcendence and
        solidarity with the Universe....

    Aldous Huxley and I were together often at the annual convention of
    the World Academy of Arts and Sciences (WAAS) in Stockholm during late
    summer 1963. His suggestions and contributions to discussions at the
    sessions of the academy, through their form and importance, had a
    great influence on the proceedings.

    WAAS had been established in order to allow the most competent
    specialists to consider world problems in a forum free of ideological
    and religious restrictions and from an international viewpoint
    encompassing the whole world. The results: proposals, and thoughts in
    the form of appropriate publications, were to be placed at the
    disposal of the responsible governments and executive organizations.

    The 1963 meeting of WAAS had dealt with the population explosion and
    the raw material reserves and food resources of the earth. The
    corresponding studies and proposals were collected in Volume II of
    WAAS under the title The Population Crisis and the Use of World
    Resources. A decade before birth control, environmental protection,
    and the energy crisis became catchwords, these world problems were
    examined there from the most serious point of view, and proposals for
    their solution were made to governments and responsible organizations.
    The catastrophic events since that time in the aforementioned fields
    makes evident the tragic discrepancy between recognition, desire, and
    feasibility.

    Aldous Huxley made the proposal, as a continuation and complement of
    the theme "World Resources" at the Stockholm convention, to address
    the problem "Human Resources," the exploration and application of
    capabilities hidden in humans yet unused. A human race with more
    highly developed spiritual capacities, with expanded consciousness of
    the depth and the incomprehensible wonder of being, would also have
    greater understanding of and better consideration for the biological
    and material foundations of life on this earth. Above all, for Western
    people with their hypertrophied rationality, the development and
    expansion of a direct, emotional experience of reality, unobstructed
    by words and concepts, would be of evolutionary significance. Huxley
    considered psychedelic drugs to be one means to achieve education in
    this direction. The psychiatrist Dr. Humphry Osmond, likewise
    participating in the congress, who had created the term psychedelic
    (mind-expanding), assisted him with a report about significant
    possibilities of the use of hallucinogens.

    The convention in Stockholm in 1963 was my last meeting with Aldous
    Huxley. His physical appearance was already marked by a severe
    illness; his intellectual personage, however, still bore the
    undiminished signs of a comprehensive knowledge of the heights and
    depths of the inner and outer world of man, which he had displayed
    with so much genius, love, goodness, and humor in his literary work.

    Aldous Huxley died on 22 November of the same year, on the same day
    President Kennedy was assassinated. From Laura Huxley I obtained a
    copy of her letter to Julian and Juliette Huxley, in which she
    reported to her brother- and sister-in-law about her husband's last
    day. The doctors had prepared her for a dramatic end, because the
    terminal phase of cancer of the throat, from which Aldous Huxley
    suffered, is usually accompanied by convulsions and choking fits. He
    died serenely and peacefully, however.

    In the morning, when he was already so weak that he could no longer
    speak, he had written on a sheet of paper: "LSD-try
    it-intramuscular-100 mmg." Mrs. Huxley understood what was meant by
    this, and ignoring the misgivings of the attending physician, she gave
    him, with her own hand, the desired injection-she let him have the
    moksha medicine.
      _________________________________________________________________

              9. Correspondence with the Poet-Physician Walter Vogt

    My friendship with the physician, psychiatrist, and writer Walter
    Vogt, M.D., is also among the personal contacts that I owe to LSD. As
    the following extract from our correspondence shows, it was less the
    medicinal aspects of LSD, important to the physician, than the
    consciousness-altering effects on the depth of the psyche, of interest
    to the writer, that constituted the theme of our correspondence.

    Muri/Bern, 22 November 1970
        Dear Mr. Hofmann,
        Last night I dreamed that I was invited to tea in a cafe by a
        friendly family in Rome. This family also knew the pope, and so
        the pope sat at - the same table to tea with us. He was all in
        white and also wore a white miter. He sat there so handsome and
        was silent.
        And today I suddenly had the idea of sending you my Vogel auf dem
        Tisch [Bird on the table]-as a visiting card if you so wish-a book
        that remained a little apocryphal, which upon reflection I do not
        regret, although the Italian translator is firmly convinced that
        is my best. (Ah yes, the pope is also an Italian. So it goes. . .
        .)
        Possibly this little work will interest you. It was written in
        1966 by an author who at that time still had not had any shred of
        experience with psychedelic substances and who read the reports
        about medicinal experiments with these drugs devoid of
        understanding. However, little has changed since, except that now
        the misgiving comes from the other side.
        I suppose that your discovery has caused a hiatus (not directly a
        Saul-to-Paul conversion as Roland Fischer says . . .) in my work
        (also a large word) - and indeed, that which I have written since
        has become rather realistic or at least less expressive. In any
        case I could not have brought off the cool realism of my TV piece
        "Spiele der Macht" [Games of power] without it. The different
        drafts attest it, in case they are still lying around somewhere.
        Should you have interest and time for a meeting, it would delight
        me very much to visit you sometime for a conversation.
        W. V.
        Burg, i.L. 28 November 1970
        Dear Mr. Vogt,
        If the bird that alighted on my table was able to find its way to
        me, this is one more debt I owe to the magical effect of LSD. I
        could soon write a book about all of the results that derive from
        that experiment in 1943....
        A. H.
        Muri/Bern, 13 March 1971
        Dear Mr. Hofmann,
        Enclosed is a critique of Junger's Annahenngen [Approaches], from
        the daily paper, that will presumably interest you....
        It seems to me that to hallucinate-to dream-to write,stands at all
        times in contrast to everyday consciousness, and their functions
        are complementary. Here I can naturally speak only for myself.
        This could be different with others - it is also truly difficult
        to speak with others about such things, because people often speak
        altogether different languages....
        However, since you are now gathering autographs, and do me the
        honor of incorporating some of my letters in your collection, I
        enclose for you the manuscript of my "testament" - in which your
        discovery plays a role as "the only joyous invention of the
        twentieth century...."
        W. V.
        dr. walter vogts most recent testament 1969 I wish to have no
        special funeral only expensive and obscene orchids innumerable
        little birds with gay names no naked dancers but psychedelic
        garments loudspeaker in every corner and nothing but the latest
        beatles record [Abbey Road] one hundred thousand million times and
        do what you like ["Blind Faith"] on an endless tape nothing more
        than a popular Christ with a halo of genuine gold and a beloved
        mourning congregation that pumped themselves full with acid [acid
        = LSD] till they go to heaven [From Abbey Road, side two] one two
        three four five six seven possibly we will encounter one another
        there
        most cordially dedicated to Dr. Albert Hofmann Beginning of Spring
        1971
        Burg i.L., 29 March 1971
        Dear Mr. Vogt,
        You have again presented me with a lovely letter and a very
        valuable autograph, the testament 1969....
        Very remarkable dreams in recent times induce me to test a
        connection between the composition (chemical) of the evening meal
        and the quality of dreams. Yes, LSD is also something that one
        eats....
        A. H.
        Muri/Bern, 5 September 1971
        Dear Mr. Hofmann,
        Over the weekend at Murtensee [On that Sunday, I (A. H.) hovered
        over the Murtensee in the balloon of my friend E. I., who had
        taken me along as passenger.] I often thought of you-a most
        radiant autumn day. Yesterday, Saturday, thanks to one tablet of
        aspirin (on account of a headache or mild flu), I experienced a
        very comical flashback, like with mescaline (of which I have had
        only a little, exactly once)....
        I have read a delightful essay by Wasson about mushrooms; he
        divides mankind into mycophobes and mycophiles.... Lovely fly
        agarics must now be growing in the forest near you. Sometime
        shouldn't we sample some?
        W. V.
        Muri/Bern, 7 September 1971
        Dear Mr. Hofmann,
        Now I feel I must write briefly to tell you what I have done
        outside in the sun, on the dock under your balloon: I finally
        wrote some notes about our visit in Villars-sur-Ollons (with Dr.
        Leary), then a hippie-bark went by on the lake, self-made like
        from a Fellini film, which I sketched, and over and above it I
        drew your balloon.
        W. V.
        Burg i.L., 15 April 1972
        Dear Mr. Vogt,
        Your television play "Spiele der Macht" [Games of power] has
        impressed me extraordinarily.
        I congratulate you on this magnificent piece, which allows mental
        cruelty to become conscious, and therefore also acts in its way as
        "consciousness- expanding", and can thereby prove itself
        therapeutic in a higher sense, like ancient tragedy.
        A. H.
        Burg i.L., 19 May 1973
        Dear Mr. Vogt,
        Now I have already read your lay sermon three times, the
        description and interpretation of your Sinai Trip. [Walter Vogt:
        Mein Sinai Trip. Eine Laienpredigt [My Sinai trip: A lay sermon]
        (Verlag der Arche, Zurich, 1972). This publication contains the
        text of a lay sermon that Walter Vogt gave on 14 November 1971 on
        the invitation of Parson Christoph Mohl, in the Protestant church
        of aduz (Lichtenstein), in the course of a series of sermons by
        writers, and in addition contains an afterword by the author and
        by the inviting parson. It involves the description and
        interpretation of an ecstatic-religious experience evoked by LSD,
        that the author is able to "place in a distant, if you will
        superficial, analogy to the great Sinai Trip of Moses." It is not
        only the "patriarchal atmosphere" that is to be traced out of
        these descriptions, that constitutes this analogy; there are
        deeper references, which are more to be read between the lines of
        this text.] Was it really an LSD trip? . . . It was a courageous
        deed, to choose such a notorious event as a drug experience as the
        theme of a sermon, even a lay sermon. But the questions raised by
        hallucinogenic drugs do actually belong in the church-in a
        prominent place in the church, for they are sacred drugs (peyotl,
        teonanacatl, ololiuhqui, with which LSD is mostly closely related
        by chemical structure and activity).
        I can fully agree with what you say in your introduction about the
        modern ecclesiastical religiosity: the three sanctioned states of
        consciousness (the waking condition of uninterrupted work and
        performance of duty, alcoholic intoxication, and sleep), the
        distinction between two phases of psychedelic inebriation (the
        first phase, the peak of the trip, in which the cosmic
        relationship is experienced, or the submersion into one's own
        body, in which everything that is, is within; and the second
        phase, characterized as the phase of enhanced comprehension of
        symbols), and the allusion to the candor that hallucinogens bring
        about in consciousness states. These are all observations that are
        of fundamental importance in the judgement of hallucinogenic
        inebriation.
        The most worthwhile spiritual benefit from LSD experiments was the
        experience of the inextricable intertwining of the physical and
        spiritual. "Christ in matter" (Teilhard de Chardin). Did the
        insight first come to you also through your drug experiences, that
        we must descend "into the flesh, which we are," in order to get
        new prophesies?
        A criticism of your sermon: you allow the "deepest experience that
        there is" - "The kingdom of heaven is within you"-to be uttered by
        Timothy Leary. This sentence, quoted without the indication of its
        true source, could be interpreted as ignorance of one, or rather
        the principal truth of Christian belief.
        One of your statements deserves universal recognition: "There is
        no non-ecstatic religious experience." . . .
        Next Monday evening I shall be interviewed on Swiss television
        (about LSD and the Mexican magic drugs, on the program "At First
        Hand"). I am curious about the sort of questions that will be
        asked. . .
        A. H.
        Muri/Bern, 24 May 1973
        Dear Mr. Hofmann,
        Of course it was LSD - only I did not want to write about it
        explicitly, I really do not know just why myself.... The great
        emphasis I placed on the good Leary, who now seems to me to be
        somewhat flipped out, as the prime witness, can indeed only be
        explained by the special context of the talk or sermon.
        I must admit that the perception that we must descend "into the
        flesh, which we are" actually first came to me with LSD. I still
        ruminate on it, possibly it even came "too late" for me in fact,
        although more and more I advocate your opinion that LSD should be
        taboo for youth (taboo, not forbidden, that is the difference . .
        .).
        The sentence that you like, "there is no nonecstatic religious
        experience," was apparently not liked so much by others for
        example, by my (almost only) literary friend and minister-lyric
        poet Kurt Marti. . . . But in any case, we are practically never
        of the same opinion about anything, and notwithstanding, we
        constitute when we occasionally communicate by phone and arrange
        little activities together, the smallest minimafia of Switzerland.
        W. V.
        Burg i.L., 13 April 1974
        Dear Mr. Vogt,
        Full of suspense, we watched your TV play "Pilate before the
        Silent Christ" yesterday evening.
        . . . as a representation of the fundamental man-God relationship:
        man, who comes to God with his most difficult questions, which
        finally he must answer himself, because God is silent. He does not
        answer them with words. The answers are contained in the book of
        his creation (to which the questioning man himself belongs). True
        natural science decipherin of this text.
        A. H.
        Muri/Bern, 11 May 1974
        Dear Mr. Hofmann,
        I have composed a "poem" in half twilight, that I dare to send to
        you. At first I wanted to send it to Leary, but this would make no
        sense.

    Leary in jail
        Gelpke is dead
        Treatment in the asylum
        is this your psychedelic
        revolution?
        Had we taken seriously something
        with which one only ought to play
        or
        vice-versa . . .

    W. V.
      _________________________________________________________________

                              10. Various Visitors

    The diverse aspects, the multi-faceted emanations of LSD are also
    expressed in the variety of cultural circles with which this substance
    has brought me into contact. On the scientific plane, this has
    involved colleagues-chemists, pharmacologists, physicians, and
    mycologists-whom I met at universities, congresses, lectures, or with
    whom I came into association through publication. In the
    literary-philosophical field there were contacts with writers. In the
    preceding chapters I have reported on the relationships of this type
    that were most significant for me. LSD also provided me with a
    variegated series of personal acquaintances from the drug scene and
    from hippie circles, which will briefly be described here.

    Most of these visitors came from the United States and were young
    people, often in transit to the Far East in search of Eastern wisdom
    or of a guru; or else hoping to come by drugs more easily there.
    Prague also was sometimes the goal, because LSD of good quality could
    at the time easily be acquired there. [Translator's Note: When
    Sandoz's patents on LSD expired in 1963, the Czech pharmaceutical firm
    Spofa began to manufacture the drug.] Once arrived in Europe, they
    wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to see the father of LSD,
    "the man who made the famous LSD bicycle trip." But more serious
    concerns sometimes motivated a visit. There was the desire to report
    on personal LSD experiences and to debate the purport of their
    meaning, at the source, so to speak. Only rarely did a visit prove to
    be inspired by the desire to obtain LSD when a visitor hinted that he
    or she wished once to experiment with most assuredly pure material,
    with original LSD.

    Visitors of various types and with diverse desires also came from
    Switzerland and other European countries. Such encounters have become
    rarer in recent times, which may be related to the fact that LSD has
    become less important in the drug scene. Whenever possible, I have
    welcomed such visitors or agreed to meet somewhere. This I considered
    to be an obligation connected with my role in the history of LSD, and
    I have tried to help by instructing and advising.

    Sometimes no true conversation occurred, for example with the
    inhibited young man who arrived on a motorbike. I was not clear about
    the objective of his visit. He stared at me, as if asking himself: can
    the man who has made something so weird as LSD really look so
    completely ordinary? With him, as with other similar visitors, I had
    the feeling that he hoped, in my presence, the LSD riddle would
    somehow solve itself.

    Other meetings were completely different, like the one with the young
    man from Toronto. He invited me to lunch at an exclusive
    restaurant-impressive appearance, tall, slender, a businessman,
    proprietor of an important industrial firm in Canada, brilliant
    intellect. He thanked me for the creation of LSD, which had given his
    life another direction. He had been 100 percent a businessman, with a
    purely materialistic world view. LSD had opened his eyes to the
    spiritual aspect of life. Now he possessed a sense for art,
    literature, and philosophy and was deeply concerned with religious and
    metaphysical questions. He now desired to make the LSD experience
    accessible in a suitable milieu to his young wife, and hoped for a
    similarly fortunate transformation in her.

    Not as profound, yet still liberating and rewarding, were the results
    of LSD experiments which a young Dane described to me with much humor
    and fantasy. He came from California, where he had been a houseboy for
    Henry Miller in Big Sur. He moved on to France with the plan of
    acquiring a dilapidated farm there, which he, a skilled carpenter,
    then wanted to restore himself. I asked him to obtain an autograph of
    his former employer for my collection, and after some time I actually
    received an original piece of writing from Henry Miller's hand.

    A young woman sought me out to report on LSD experiences that had been
    of great significance to her inner development. As a superficial
    teenager who pursued all sorts of entertainments, and quite neglected
    by her parents, she had begun to take LSD out of curiosity and love of
    adventure. For three years she took frequent LSD trips. They led to an
    astonishing intensification of her inner life. She began to seek after
    the deeper meaning of her existence, which eventually revealed itself
    to her. Then, recognizing that LSD had no further power to help her,
    without difficulty or exertion of will she was able to abandon the
    drug. Thereafter she was in a position to develop herself further
    without artificial means. She was now a happy intrinsically secure
    person-thus she concluded her report. This young woman had decided to
    tell me her history, because she supposed that I was often attacked by
    narrow-minded persons who saw only the damage that LSD sometimes
    caused among youths. The immediate motive of her testimony was a
    conversation that she had accidentally overheard on a railway journey.
    A man complained about me, finding it disgraceful that I had spoken on
    the LSD problem in an interview published in the newspaper. In his
    opinion, I ought to denounce LSD as primarily the devil's work and
    should publicly admit my guilt in the matter.

    Persons in LSD delirium, whose condition could have given rise to such
    indignant condemnation, have never personally come into my sight. Such
    cases, attributable to LSD consumption under irresponsible
    circumstances, to overdosage, or to psychotic predisposition, always
    landed in the hospital or at the police station. Great publicity
    always came their way.

    A visit by one youn American girl stands out in my memory as an
    example of the tragic effects of LSD. It was during the lunch hour,
    which I normally spent in my office under strict confinement-no
    visitors, secretary's office closed up. Knocking came at the door,
    discretely but firmly repeated, until eventually I went to open.it. I
    scarcely believed my eyes: before me stood a very beautiful young
    woman, blond, with large blue eyes, wearing a long hippie dress,
    headband, and sandals. "I am Joan, I come from New York-you are Dr.
    Hofmann?" Before I inquired what brought her to me, I asked her how
    she had got through the two checkpoints, at the main entrance to the
    factory area and at the door of the laboratory building, for visitors
    were admitted only after telephone query, and this flower child must
    have been especially noticeable. "I am an angel, I can pass
    everywhere," she replied. Then she explained that she came on a great
    mission. She had to rescue her country, the United States; above all
    she had to direct the president (at the time L. B. Johnson) onto the
    correct path. This could be accomplished only by having him take LSD.
    Then he would receive the good ideas that would enable him to lead the
    country out of war and internal difficulties.

    Joan had come to me hoping that I would help her fulfill her mission,
    namely to give LSD to the president. Her name would indicate she was
    the Joan of Arc of the USA. I don't know whether my arguments,
    advanced with all consideration of her holy zeal, were able to
    convince her that her plan had no prospects of success on
    psychological, technical, internal, and external grounds. Disappointed
    and sad she went away. Next day I received a telephone call from Joan.
    She again asked me to help her, since her financial resources were
    exhausted. I took her to a friend in Zurich who provided her with
    work, and with whom she could live. Joan was a teacher by profession,
    and also a nightclub pianist and singer. For a while she played and
    sang in a fashionable Zurich restaurant. The good bourgeois clients of
    course had no idea what sort of angel sat at the grand piano in a
    black evening dress and entertained them with sensitive playing and a
    soft and sensuous voice. Few paid attention to the words of her songs;
    they were for the most part hippie songs, many of them containing
    veiled praise of drugs. The Zurich performance did not last long;
    within a few weeks I learned from my friend that Joan had suddenly
    disappeared. He received a greeting card from her three months later,
    from Israel. She had been committed to a psychiatric hospital there.

    For the conclusion of my assortment of LSD visitors, I wish to report
    about a meeting in which LSD figured only indirectly. Miss H. S., head
    secretary in a hospital, wrote to ask me for a personal interview. She
    came to tea. She explained her visit thus: in a report about an LSD
    experience, she had read the description of a condition she herself
    had experienced as a young girl, which still disturbed her today;
    possibly I could help her to understand this experience.

    She had gone on a business trip as a commercial apprentice. They spent
    the night in a mountain hotel. H. S. awoke very early and left the
    house alone in order to watch the sunrise. As the mountains began to
    light up in a sea of rays, she was perfused by an unprecedented
    feeling of happiness, which persisted even after she joined the other
    participants of the trip at morning service in the chapel. During the
    Mass everything appeared to her in a supernatural luster, and the
    feeling of happiness intensified to such an extent that she had to cry
    loudly. She was brought back to the hotel and treated as someone with
    a mental disorder.

    This experience largely determined her later personal life. H.S.
    feared she was not completely normal. On the one hand, she feared this
    experience, which had been explained to her as a nervous breakdown; on
    the other hand, she longed for arepetitionof the condition. Internally
    split, she had led an unstable life. In repeated vocational changes
    and in varying personal relationships, consciously or unconsciously
    she again sought this ecstatic outlook, which once made her so deeply
    happy.

    I was able to reassure my visitor. It was no psychopathological event,
    no nervous breakdown that she had experienced at the time. What many
    people seek to attain with the help of LSD, the visionary experience
    of a deeper reality, had come to her as spontaneous grace. I
    recommended a book by Aldous Huxley to her, The Perennial Philosophy
    (Harper, New York & London, 1945) a collection of reports of
    spontaneous blessed visions from all times and cultures. Huxley wrote
    that not only mystics and saints, but also many more ordinary people
    than one generally supposes, experience such blessed moments, but that
    most do not recognize their importance and, instead of regarding them
    as promising rays of hope, repress them, because they do not fit into
    everyday rationality.
      _________________________________________________________________


                         11. LSD Experience and Reality

    Was kann ein Mensch im Leben mehr
        gewinnen
        Als dass sich Gott-Natur ihm offenbare?
        What more can a person gain in life
        Than that God-Nature reveals himself to
        him?
        Goethe

    I am often asked what has made the deepest impression upon me in my
    LSD experiments, and whether I have arrived at new understandings
    through these experiences.

Valious Realities

    Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as
    a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one
    commonly takes as "the reality," including the reality of one's own
    individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather
    something that is ambiguous-that there is not only one, but that there
    are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of
    the ego.

    One can also arrive at this insight through scientific reflections.
    The problem of reality is and has been from time immemorial a central
    concern of philosophy. It is, however, a fundamental distinction,
    whether one approaches the problem of reality rationally, with the
    logical methods of philosophy, or if one obtrudes upon this problem
    emotionally, through an existential experience. The first planned LSD
    experiment was therefore so deeply moving and alarming, because
    everyday reality and the ego experiencing it, which I had until then
    considered to be the only reality, dissolved, and an unfamiliar ego
    experienced another, unfamiliar reality. The problem concerning the
    innermost self also appeared, which, itself unmoved, was able to
    record these external and internal transformations.

    Reality is inconceivable without an experiencing subject, without an
    ego. It is the product of the exterior world, of the sender and of a
    receiver, an ego in whose deepest self the emanations of the exterior
    world, registered by the antennae of the sense organs, become
    conscious. If one of the two is lacking, no reality happens, no radio
    music plays, the picture screen remains blank.

    If one continues with the conception of reality as a product of sender
    and receiver, then the entry of another reality under the influence of
    LSD may be explained by the fact that the brain, the seat of the
    receiver, becomes biochemically altered. The receiver is thereby tuned
    into another wavelength than that corresponding to normal, everyday
    reality. Since the endless variety and diversity of the universe
    correspond to infinitely many different wavelengths, depending on the
    adjustment of the receiver, many different realities, including the
    respective ego, can become conscious. These different realities, more
    correctly designated as different aspects of the reality, are not
    mutually exclusive but are complementary, and form together a portion
    of the all-encompassing, timeless, transcendental reality, in which
    even the unimpeachable core of self-consciousness, which has the power
    to record the different egos, is located.

    The true importance of LSD and related hallucinogens lies in their
    capacity to shift the wavelength setting of the receiving "self," and
    thereby to evoke alterations in reality consciousness. This ability to
    allow different, new pictures of reality to arise, this truly
    cosmogonic power, makes the cultish worship of hallucinogenic plants
    as sacred drugs understandable.

    What constitutes the essential, characteristic difference between
    everyday reality and the world picture experienced in LSD inebriation?
    Ego and the outer world are separated in the normal condition of
    consciousness, in everyday reality; one stands face-to-face with the
    outer world; it has become an object. In the LSD state the boundaries
    between the experiencing self and the outer world more or less
    disappear, depending on the depth of the inebriation. Feedback between
    receiver and sender takes place. A portion of the self overflows into
    the outer world, into objects, which begin to live, to have another, a
    deeper meaning. This can be perceived as a blessed, or as a demonic
    transformation imbued with terror, proceeding to a loss of the trusted
    ego. In an auspicious case, the new ego feels blissfully united with
    the objects of the outer world and consequently also with its fellow
    beings. This experience of deep oneness with the exterior world can
    even intensify to a feeling of the self being one with the universe.
    This condition of cosmic consciousness, which under favorable
    conditions can be evoked by LSD or by another hallucinogen from the
    group of Mexican sacred drugs, is analogous to spontaneous religious
    enlightenment, with the unio mystica. In both conditions, which often
    last only for a timeless moment, a reality is experienced that exposes
    a gleam of the transcendental reality, in vihich universe and self,
    sender and receiver, are one. [The relationship of spontaneous to
    drug-induced enlightenment has been most extensively investigated by
    R. C. Zaehner, Mysticismacred and Profane (The Clarendon Press,
    Oxford, 1957).]

    Gottfried Benn, in his essay "Provoziertes Leben" [Provoked life] (in
    Ausdnckswelt, Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1949), characterized the
    reality in which self and world are separated, as "the schizoid
    catastrophe, the Western entelechy neurosis." He further writes:

    . . . In the southern part of our continent this concept of reality
        began to be formed. The Hellenistic-European agonistic principle
        of victory through effort, cunning, malice, talent, force, and
        later, European Darwinism and "superman," was instrumental in its
        formation. The ego emerged, dominated, fought; for this it needed
        instruments, material, power. It had a different relationship to
        matter, more removed sensually, but closer formally. It analyzed
        matter, tested, sorted: weapons, object of exchange, ransom money.
        It clarified matter through isolation, reduced it to formulas,
        took pieces out of it, divided it up. [Matter became] a concept
        which hung like a disaster over the West, with which the West
        fought, without grasping it, to which it sacrified enormous
        quantities of blood and happiness; a concept whose inner tension
        and fragmentations it was impossible to dissolve through a natural
        viewing or methodical insight into the inherent unity and peace of
        prelogical forms of being . . . instead the cataclysmic character
        of this idea became clearer and clearer . . . a state, a social
        organization, a public morality, for which life is economically
        usable life and which does not recognize the world of provoked
        life, cannot stop its destructive force. A society, whose hygiene
        and race cultivation as a modern ritual is founded solely on
        hollow biological statistics, can only represent the external
        viewpoint of the mass; for this point of view it can wage war,
        incessantly, for reality is simply raw material, but its
        metaphysical background remains forever obscured. [This excerpt
        from Benn's essay was taken from Ralph Metzner's translation
        "Provoked Life: An Essay on the Anthropology of the Ego," which
        was published in Psychedelic Review I (1): 47-54, 1963. Minor
        corrections in Metzner's text have been made by A. H.]

    As Gottfried Benn formulates it in these sentences, a concept of
    reality that separates self and the world has decisively determined
    the evolutionary course of European intellectual history. Experience
    of the world as matter, as object, to which man stands opposed, has
    produced modern natural science and technology- creations of the
    Western mind that have changed the world. With their help human beings
    have subdued the world. Its wealth has been exploited in a manner that
    may be characterized as plundering, and the sublime accomplishment of
    technological civilization, the comfort of Western industrial society,
    stands face-to-face with a catastrophic destruction of the
    environment. Even to the heart of matter, to the nucleus of the atom
    and its splitting, this objective intellect has progressed and has
    unleashed energies that threaten all life on our planet.

    A misuse of knowledge and understanding, the products of searching
    intelligence, could not have emerged from a consciousness of reality
    in which human beings are not separated from the environment but
    rather exist as part of living nature and the universe. All attempts
    today to make amends for the damage through environmentally protective
    measures must remain only hopeless, superficial patchwork, if no
    curing of the "Western entelechy neurosis" ensues, as Benn has
    characterized the objective reality conception. Healing would mean
    existential experience of a deeper, self-encompassing reality.

    The experience of such a comprehensive reality is impeded in an
    environment rendered dead by human hands, such as is present in our
    great cities and industrial districts. Here the contrast between self
    and outer world becomes especially evident. Sensations of alienation,
    of loneliness, and of menace arise. It is these sensations that
    impress themselves on everyday consciousness in Western industrial
    society; they also take the upper hand everywhere that technological
    civilization extends itself, and they largely determine the production
    of modern art and literature.

    There is less danger of a cleft reality experience arising in a
    natural environment. In field and forest, and in the animal world
    sheltered therein, indeed in every garden, a reality is perceptible
    that is infinitely more real, older, deeper, and more wondrous than
    everything made by people, and that will yet endure, when the
    inanimate, mechanical, and concrete world again vanishes, becomes
    rusted and fallen into ruin. In the sprouting, growth, blooming,
    fruiting, death, and regermination of plants, in their relationship
    with the sun, whose light they are able to convert into chemically
    bound energy in the form of organic compounds, out of which all that
    lives on our earth is built; in the being of plants the same
    mysterious, inexhaustible, eternal life energy is evident that has
    also brought us forth and takes us back again into its womb, and in
    which we are sheltered and united with all living things.

    We are not leading up to a sentimental enthusiasm for nature, to "back
    to nature" in Rousseau's sense. That romantic movement, which sought
    the idyll in nature, can also be explained by a feeling of humankind's
    separation from nature. What is needed today is a fundamental
    reexperience of the oneness of all living things, a comprehensive
    reality consciousness that ever more infrequently develops
    spontaneously, the more the primordial flora and fauna of our mother
    earth must yield to a dead technological environment.

Mystery and Myth

    The notion of reality as the self juxtaposed to the world, in
    confrontation with the outer world, began to form itself, as reported
    in the citation from Benn, in the southern portion of the European
    continent in Greek antiquity. No doubt people at that time knew the
    suffering that was connected with such a cleft reality consciousness.
    The Greek genius tried the cure, by supplementing the multiformed and
    richly colored, sensual as well as deeply sorrowful Apollonian world
    view created by the subject/object cleavage, with the Dionysian world
    of experience, in which this cleavage is abolished in ecstatic
    inebriation. Nietzsche writes in The Birth of Tragedy:

    It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
        primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the
        powerful approach of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature,
        that those Dionysian stirrings arise, which in their
        intensification lead the individual to forget himself
        completely.... Not only does the bond between man and man come to
        be forged once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but
        alienated, hostile, or subjugated nature again celebrates her
        reconciliation with her prodigal son, man.

    The Mysteries of Eleusis, which were celebrated annually in the fall,
    over an interval of approximately 2,000 years, from about 1500 B.C.
    until the fourth century A.D., were intimately connected with the
    ceremonies and festivals in honor of the god Dionysus. These Mysteries
    were established by the goddess of agriculture, Demeter, as thanks for
    the recovery of her daughter Persephone, whom Hades, the god of the
    underworld, had abducted. A further thank offering was the ear of
    grain, which was presented by the two goddesses to Triptolemus, the
    first high priest of Eleusis. They taught him the cultivation of
    grain, which Triptolemus then disseminated over the whole globe.
    Persephone, however, was not always allowed to remain with her mother,
    because she had taken nourishment from Hades, contrary to the order of
    the highest gods. As punishment she had to return to the underworld
    for a part of the year. During this time, it was winter on the earth,
    the plants died and were withdrawn into the ground, to awaken to new
    life early in the year with Persephone's journey to earth.

    The myth of Demeter, Persephone, Hades, and the other gods, which was
    enacted as a drama, formed, however, only the external framework of
    events. The climax of the yearly ceremonies, which began with a
    procession from Athens to Eleusis lasting several days, was the
    concluding ceremony with the initiation, which took place in the
    night. The initiates were forbidden by penalty of death to divulge
    what they had learned, beheld, in the innermost, holiest chamber of
    the temple, the tetesterion (goal). Not one of the multitude that were
    initiated into the secret of Eleusis has ever done this. Pausanias,
    Plato, many Roman emperors like Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, and many
    other known personages of antiquity were party to this initiation. It
    must have been an illumination, a visionary glimpse of a deeper
    reality, an insight into the true basis of the universe. That can be
    concluded from the statements of initiates about the value, about the
    importance of the vision. Thus it is reported in a Homeric Hymn:
    "Blissful is he among men on Earth, who has beheld that! He who has
    not been initiated into the holy Mysteries, who has had no part
    therein, remains a corpse in gloomy darkness." Pindar speaks of the
    Eleusinian benediction with the following words: "Blissful is he, who
    after having beheld this enters on the way beneath the Earth. He knows
    the end of life as well as its divinely granted beginning." Cicero,
    also a famous initiate, likewise put in first position the splendor
    that fell upon his life from Eleusis, when he said: " Not only have we
    received the reason there, that we may live in joy, but also, besides,
    that we may die with better hope."

    How could the mythological representation of such an obvious
    occurrence, which runs its course annually before our eyes-the seed
    grain that is dropped into the earth, dies there, in order to allow a
    new plant, new life, to ascend into the light-prove to be such a deep,
    comforting experience as that attested by the cited reports? It is
    traditional knowledge that the initiates were furnished with a potion,
    the kykeon, for the final ceremony. It is also known that barley
    extract and mint were ingredients of the kykeon. Religious scholars
    and scholars of mythology, like Karl Kerenyi, from whose book on the
    Eleusinian Mysteries (Rhein-Verlag, Zurich, 1962) the preceding
    statements were taken, and with whom I was associated in relation to
    the research on this mysterious potion [In the English publication of
    Kerenyi's book Eleusis (Schocken Books, New York, 1977) a reference is
    made to this collaboration.], are of the opinion that the kykeon was
    mixed with an hallucinogenic drug. [In The Road to Eleusis by R.
    Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck (Harcourt Brace
    Jovanovich, New York, 1978) the possibility is discussed that the
    kykeon could have acted through an LSD-like preparation of ergot.]
    That would make understandable the ecstatic-visionary experience of
    the DemeterPersephone myth, as a symbol of the cycle of life and death
    in both a comprehensive and timeless reality.

    When the Gothic king Alarich, coming from the north, invaded Greece in
    396 A.D. and destroyed the sanctuary of Eleusis, it was not only the
    end of a religious center, but it also signified the decisive downfall
    of the ancient world. With the monks that accompanied Alarich,
    Christianity penetrated into the country that must be regarded as the
    cradle of European culture.

    The cultural-historical meaning of the Eleusinian Mysteries, their
    influence on European intellectual history, can scarcely be
    overestimated. Here suffering humankind found a cure for its rational,
    objective, cleft intellect, in a mystical totality experience, that
    let it believe in immortality, in an everlasting existence.

    This belief had survived in early Christianity, although with other
    symbols. It is found as a promise, even in particular passages of the
    Gospels, most clearly in the Gospel according to John, as in Chapter
    14: 120. Jesus speaks to his disciples, as he takes leave of them:

    And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter,
        that he may abide with you forever;
        Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because
        it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he
        dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
        I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little
        while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I
        live, ye shall live also.
        At that day ye shatl know that I am in my Father, and ye in me,
        and I in you.

    This promise constitutes the heart of my Christian beliefs and my call
    to natural-scientific research: we will attain to knowledge of the
    universe through the spirit of truth, and thereby to understanding of
    our being one with the deepest, most comprehensive reality, God.

    Ecclesiastical Christianity, determined by the duality of creator and
    creation, has, however, with its nature-alienated religiosity largely
    obliterated the Eleusinian-Dionysian legacy of antiquity. In the
    Christian sphere of belief, only special blessed men have attested to
    a timeless, comforting reality, experienced in a spontaneous vision,
    an experience to which in antiquity the elite of innumerable
    generations had access through the initiation at Eleusis. The unio
    mystica of Catholic saints and the visions that the representatives of
    Christian mysticism-Jakob Boehme, Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius,
    Thomas Traherne, William Blake, and others describe in their writings,
    are obviously essentially related to the enlightenment that the
    initiates to the Eleusinian Mysteries experienced.

    The fundamental importance of a mystical experience, for the recovery
    of people in Western industrial societies who are sickened by a
    one-sided, rational, materialistic world view, is today given primary
    emphasis, not only by adherents to Eastern religious movements like
    Zen Buddhism, but also by leading representatives of academic
    psychiatry. Of the appropriate literature, we will here refer only to
    the books of Balthasar Staehelin, the Basel psychiatrist working in
    Zurich. [Haben und Sein (1969), Die Welt als Du (1970), Urvertrauen
    und zweite Wirklichkeit (1973), and Der flnale Mensch (1976); all
    published by Theologischer Verlag, Zurich.] They make reference to
    numerous other authors who deal with the same problem. Today a type of
    "metamedicine," "metapsychology," and "metapsychiatry" is beginning to
    call upon the metaphysical element in people, which manifests itself
    as an experience of a deeper, duality-surmounting reality, and to make
    this element a basic healing principle in therapeutic practice.

    In addition, it is most significant that not only medicine but also
    wider circles of our society consider the overcoming of the dualistic,
    cleft world view to be a prerequisite and basis for the recovery and
    spiritual renewal of occidental civilization and culture. This renewal
    could lead to the renunciation of the materialistic philosophy of life
    and the development of a new reality consciousness.

    As a path to the perception of a deeper, comprehensive reality, in
    which the experiencing individual is also sheltered, meditation, in
    its different forms, occupies a prominent place today. The essential
    difference between meditation and prayer in the usual sense, which is
    based upon the duality of creatorcreation, is that meditation aspires
    to the abolishment of the I-you-barrier by a fusing of object and
    subject, of sender and receiver, of objective reality and self.

    Objective reality, the world view produced by the spirit of scientific
    inquiry, is the myth of our time. It has replaced the
    ecclesiastical-Christian and mythical-Apollonian world view.

    But this ever broadening factual knowledge, which constitutes
    objective reality, need not be a desecration. On the contrary, if it
    only advances deep enough, it inevitably leads to the inexplicable,
    primal ground of the universe: the wonder, the mystery of the
    divine-in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral
    nebula; in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people.

    Meditation begins at the limits of objective reality, at the farthest
    point yet reached by rational knowledge and perception. Meditation
    thus does not mean rejection of objective reality; on the contrary, it
    consists of a penetration to deeper dimensions of reality. It is not
    escape into an imaginary dream world; rather it seeks after the
    comprehensive truth of objective reality, by simultaneous,
    stereoscopic contemplation of its surfaces and depths.

    It could become of fundamental importance, and be not merely a
    transient fashion of the present, if more and more people today would
    make a daily habit of devoting an hour, or at least a few minutes, to
    meditation. As a result of the meditative penetration and broadening
    of the natural-scientific world view, a new, deepened reality
    consciousness would have to evolve, which would increasingly become
    the property of all humankind. This could become the basis of a new
    religiosity, which would not be based on belief in the dogmas of
    various religions, but rather on perception through the "spirit of
    truth." What is meant here is a perception, a reading and
    understanding of the text at first hand, "out of the book that God's
    finger has written" (Paracelsus), out of the creation.

    The transformation of the objective world view into a deepened and
    thereby religious reality consciousness can be accomplished gradually,
    by continuing practice of meditation. It can also come about, however,
    as a sudden enlightenment; a visionary experience. It is then
    particularly profound, blessed, and meaningful. Such a mystical
    experience may nevertheless "not be induced even by decade-long
    meditation," as Balthasar Staehelin writes. Also, it does not happen
    to everyone, although the capacity for mystical experience belongs to
    the essence of human spirituality.

    Nevertheless, at Eleusis, the mystical vision, the healing, comforting
    experience, could be arranged in the prescribed place at the appointed
    time, for all of the multitudes who were initiated into the holy
    Mysteries. This could be accounted for by the fact that an
    hallucinogenic drug came into use; this, as already mentioned, is
    something that religious scholars believe.

    The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the
    boundaries between the experiencing self and the outer world in an
    ecstatic, emotional experience, makes it possible with their help, and
    after suitable internal and external preparation, as it was
    accomplished in a perfect way at Eleusis, to evoke a mystical
    experience according to plan, so to speak.

    Meditation is a preparation for the same goal that was aspired to and
    was attained in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Accordingly it seems
    feasible that in the future, with the help of LSD, the mystical
    vision, crowning meditation, could be made accessible to an increasing
    number of practitioners of meditation

    I see the true importance of LSD in the possibitity ofproviding
    material aid to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a
    deeper, comprehensive reality. Such a use accords entirely with the
    essence and working character of LSD as a sacred drug.


From he at psychology.su.se  Mon Jan 16 17:15:12 2006
From: he at psychology.su.se (Hannes Eisler)
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 18:15:12 +0100
Subject: [Paleopsych] Bush's real motive
Message-ID: <AE0479A1-BBF5-4628-A0F6-1EC9DF492BAB@psychology.su.se>

There has been quite a discussion about Bush's true incentives to  
start the war in Iraq. I am surprised that what I consider his real  
main motive has never been mentioned, as far as I know. It is that he  
wanted to surpass his father who did not dare to invade Iraq. As a  
European I have sometimes wondered about US motives being family  
reasons, intending to please parents or wives or boost the pride of  
children, rather than the objective ones. In American literature I  
remember my astonishment about two examples : the policeman or  
superintendent trying to stop the fight between the two groups of  
hooligans in "West side story," stating some private motive, and an  
officer at the landing in Normandy at the end of WW2 in Irwin Shaw*s  
" The young lions" who,  armed with a private gun with ivory handle,  
bragged about which impression he will make on his wife (or was it  
his parents?).
-------------------------------------
Prof. Hannes Eisler
Department of Psychology
Stockholm University
S-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden

e-mail:   he at psychology.su.se
fax   :   +46-8-15 93 42
phone :   +46-8-163967 (university)
           +46-8-6409982 (home)
internet: http://www.psychology.su.se/staff/he
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From shovland at mindspring.com  Mon Jan 16 23:37:19 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 15:37:19 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] Bush's real motive
In-Reply-To: <AE0479A1-BBF5-4628-A0F6-1EC9DF492BAB@psychology.su.se>
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHMEJFCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

If true, he has failed miserably.

Is that often true?  Boys wanting to show
their father how smart they are and making
a mess instead?


  -----Original Message-----
  From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org
[mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org]On Behalf Of Hannes Eisler
  Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 9:15 AM
  To: The new improved paleopsych list
  Cc: Anna Eisler
  Subject: [Paleopsych] Bush's real motive


  There has been quite a discussion about Bush's true incentives to start
the war in Iraq. I am surprised that what I consider his real main motive
has never been mentioned, as far as I know. It is that he wanted to surpass
his father who did not dare to invade Iraq. As a European I have sometimes
wondered about US motives being family reasons, intending to please parents
or wives or boost the pride of children, rather than the objective ones. In
American literature I remember my astonishment about two examples : the
policeman or superintendent trying to stop the fight between the two groups
of hooligans in "West side story," stating some private motive, and an
officer at the landing in Normandy at the end of WW2 in Irwin Shaw*s " The
young lions" who, armed with a private gun with ivory handle, bragged about
which impression he will make on his wife (or was it his parents?).
  -------------------------------------
  Prof. Hannes Eisler
  Department of Psychology
  Stockholm University
  S-106 91 Stockholm
  Sweden


  e-mail: he at psychology.su.se
  fax : +46-8-15 93 42
  phone : +46-8-163967 (university)
  +46-8-6409982 (home)
  internet: http://www.psychology.su.se/staff/he
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From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 17 16:10:26 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 11:10:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Ben Franklin 300 Package
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601171030270.25936@panix1.panix.com>

Ben Franklin 300 Package

[Today is the tricentennial of the birth of the most polymathic of the 
Foundng Fathers. First, an appreciation of his work on electricity, then 
news items for today and reflections, then reviews of books about him over 
the past few years. Mr. Jefferson is, of course, the visionary I feel 
closest to, and Washington the man most instrumental to our independence, 
but Franklin is surely the most complex.]

Benjamin Franklin and Lightning Rods
Physics Today January 2006
http://www.physicstoday.org/servlet/PrintPT
American Institute of Physics

Franklin's work on electricity and lightning earned him worldwide
fame and respect--ideal assets for brokering aid from France during
the American Revolution.

E. Philip Krider

sketch of the "sentry-box" experiment

   Figure 1

On 10 May 1752, as a thunderstorm passed over the village of
Marly-la-Ville, a retired French dragoon, acting on instructions
from naturalist Thomas-Fran?ois Dalibard, drew sparks from a tall
iron rod that had been carefully insulated from ground (see figure
1). The sparks showed that thunderclouds are electrified and that
lightning is an electrical discharge. In the mid-18th century, such
an observation was sensational and was soon verified by Delor,
Dalibard's collaborator in Paris. Within weeks of hearing the news,
many others throughout Europe had successfully repeated the
experiment.^1,2

When Dalibard and Delor reported their results to the Acad?mie des
Sciences in Paris three days later, they acknowledged that they had
merely followed a path that Benjamin Franklin had traced for them.
In June 1752, shortly after the experiment at Marly-la-Ville but
before he knew about it, Franklin drew sparks himself from a key
attached to the conducting string of his famous electrical kite
that was insulated from ground by a silk ribbon.

The French results were important because they called attention to
Franklin's small pamphlet, Experiments and Observations on
Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America,^3 that helped to
stimulate other work in electricity and contributed to the
beginning of modern physics.^4 The observations also validated the
key assumptions that lay behind Franklin's supposition that tall,
grounded rods can protect buildings from lightning damage.

A Philadelphia story

Franklin performed his initial experiments on electricity in
collaboration with friends and neighbors, including Thomas
Hopkinson, a lawyer and judge; Ebenezer Kinnersley, a clergyman and
teacher; and Philip Syng Jr, a master silversmith. Franklin
described the experiments and their results in five formal letters
to Peter Collinson, a fellow of the Royal Society of London, during
the years from 1747 to 1750. Collinson in turn communicated those
letters to the Society and published them in April 1751.

In his first letter,^5 Franklin described "the wonderful Effect of
Points, both in drawing off and throwing off the Electrical Fire."
He showed that points work quickly at "a considerable Distance,"
that sharp points work better than blunt ones, that metal points
work better than dry wood, and that the pointed object should be
touched--that is, grounded--to obtain the maximum draw effect.

Next, Franklin introduced the idea that rubbing glass with wool or
silk does not actually create electricity; rather, at the moment of
friction, the glass simply takes "the Electrical Fire" out of the
rubbing material. Whatever amount is added to the glass, an equal
amount is lost by the wool or silk. The terms plus and minus were
used to describe those electrical states; the glass was assumed to
be electrified positively and the rubbing material negatively. The
idea that electricity is a single fluid that is never created or
destroyed, but simply transferred from one place to another, was
profound, and it greatly simplified the interpretation of many
observations.

In his second letter,^5 Franklin described the behavior of a Leiden
jar capacitor by combining the concept of equal positive and
negative states with an assumption that glass is a perfect
insulator. "So wonderfully are these two States of Electricity, the
plus and minus combined and ballanced in this miraculous Bottle!"
He also made an analogy between electricity and lightning when he
described a discharge through the gold trim on the cover of a book
that produced "a vivid Flame, like the sharpest Lightning."

In his third letter,^5 Franklin began to use terms such as
"charging" and "discharging" when describing how a Leiden jar
works, and he noted the importance of grounding when charging and
discharging the jar. He also showed that the electricity in such a
device resides entirely in the glass and not on the conductors that
are inside and outside the jar. Franklin described how several
capacitors could be charged in series "with the same total Labour"
as charging one, and he constructed an "Electrical Battery"--a
capacitor bank in today's parlance--using panes of window glass
sandwiched between thin lead plates, and then discharged them
together so that they provided the "Force of all the Plates of
Glass at once thro' the Body of any Animal forming the Circle with
them." Later, Franklin used discharges from large batteries to
simulate the effects of lightning in a variety of materials.

In the fourth letter,^5 he applied his knowledge of electricity to
lightning by introducing the concept of the sparking or striking
distance: If two electrified gun barrels "will strike at two Inches
Distance, and make a loud Snap; to what great a Distance may 10 000
Acres of Electrified Cloud strike and give its Fire, and how loud
must be that Crack!" Based on his previous experiments with sharp
points, Franklin then postulated that when an electrified cloud
passes over a region, it might draw electricity from, or discharge
electricity to, high hills and trees, lofty towers, spires, masts
of ships, and chimneys. That supposition then led to some practical
advice against taking shelter under a single, isolated tree during
a thunderstorm; crouching in an open field is less dangerous.
Franklin also noted that out in the open during a thunderstorm,
clothing tends to become wet, thereby providing a conducting path
outside the body. His laboratory analogy was that "a wet Rat can
not be kill'd by the exploding electrical Bottle, when a dry Rat
may."

In the fifth letter,^5 Franklin described how discharges between
smooth or blunt conductors occur with a "Stroke and Crack," whereas
sharp points discharge silently and produce large effects at
greater distances. He then introduced what he viewed to be a "Law
of Electricity, That Points as they are more or less acute, both
draw on and throw off the electrical fluid with more or less Power,
and at greater or less Distances, and in larger or smaller
Quantities in the same Time." Given his interest in lightning and
the effects of metallic points, it was a short step to the
lightning rod:

   I say, if these Things are so, may not the Knowledge of this
   Power of Points be of Use to Mankind; in preserving Houses,
   Churches, Ships, etc. from the Stroke of Lightning; by Directing
   us to fix on the highest Parts of those Edifices upright Rods of
   Iron, made sharp as a Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and
   from the Foot of those Rods a Wire down the outside of the
   Building into the Ground; or down round one of the Shrouds of a
   Ship and down her Side, till it reaches the Water? Would not
   these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire silently
   out of a Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby
   secure us from that most sudden and terrible Mischief!

Clearly, Franklin supposed that silent discharges from one or more
sharp points might reduce or eliminate the electricity in the
clouds above and thereby reduce or eliminate the chances of the
structure being struck by lightning. From his earlier observations,
he knew that point discharges work best when the conductor is
grounded and that lightning tends to strike tall objects.
Therefore, even if the point discharges did not neutralize the
cloud, a tall conductor would provide a preferred place for the
lightning to strike, and the grounded conductor would provide a
safe path for the lightning current to flow into the ground.
Franklin also stated in his fifth letter,^5

   To determine the Question, whether the Clouds that contain
   Lightning are electrified or not, I would propose an Experiment
   to be try'd where it may be done conveniently.

   On the Top of some high Tower or Steeple, place a Kind of Sentry
   Box [see Figure 1] big enough to contain a Man and an electrical
   Stand. From the Middle of the Stand let an Iron Rod rise, and
   pass bending out of the Door, and then upright 20 or 30 feet,
   pointed very sharp at the End. If the Electrical Stand be kept
   clean and dry, a Man standing on it when such Clouds are passing
   low, might be electrified, and afford Sparks, the Rod drawing
   Fire to him from the Cloud.

Franklin was not the first person to compare sparks with lightning
or to hypothesize that lightning might be an electrical discharge.
In fact, almost every experimenter who had previously described
electric sparks had, at one time or another, mentioned an analogy
to lightning. Franklin's seminal contributions were his suggestions
that tall, insulated rods could be used to determine if
thunderclouds are, in fact, electrified and that tall, grounded
rods would protect against lightning damage.

The French connection

Shortly after Collinson published the first edition of Experiments
and Observations, he sent a copy to the famous French naturalist,
the Comte de Buffon, who asked Dalibard to translate it from
English into French. While he did that, Dalibard asked Delor to
help him repeat many of the Philadelphia experiments. In March
1752, Buffon arranged for the pair to show the experiments to King
Louis XV. The king's delight inspired Dalibard to try the
sentry-box experiment at Marly-la-Ville.

At the time of the sentry-box experiment, Abb? Jean-Antoine Nollet
was the leading "electrician" in France and was known throughout
Europe for his skill in making apparatus and in performing
demonstrations. Unfortunately, because of personal rivalries,
Buffon and Dalibard completely ignored Nollet's work in a short
history that preceded their translation of Franklin's book. After
Dalibard read an account of the sentry-box experiment to the
Acad?mie des Sciences on 13 May 1752, Nollet suppressed publication
of the results.^6 News reached the Paris newspapers, however, and
from there spread very rapidly. After Louis XV saw the experiment,
he sent a personal message of congratulations to Franklin,
Collinson, and the Royal Society of London for communicating "the
useful Discoveries in Electricity, and Application of Pointed Rods
to prevent the terrible Effects of Thunderstorms."^7

Nollet was both surprised and chagrined by the experiment at
Marly-la-Ville. He acknowledged that insulated rods or
"electroscopes" did verify that thunderclouds are electrified, but
for the rest of his life he steadfastly opposed the use of grounded
rods as "preservatives." In 1753, he published a series of letters
attacking Franklin's Experiments and Observations and suggested
other methods of lightning protection. On 6 August 1753, the
Swedish scientist Georg Wilhelm Richmann was electrocuted in St.
Petersburg while trying to quantify the response of an insulated
rod to a nearby storm. The incident, reported worldwide,
underscored the dangers inherent in experimenting with insulated
rods and in using protective rods with faulty ground connections.
Nollet used Richmann's death to heighten the public's fears and to
generate opposition to both types of rods.^8

In London, members of the Royal Society were amused when Franklin's
letter about lightning conductors was read to the Society, and they
did not publish it in their Philosophical Transactions. In 1753,
however, they awarded Franklin their highest scientific honor, the
Copley Gold Medal. In his 1767 history of electricity, Joseph
Priestley described the kite experiment as drawing "lightning from
the heavens," and said it was "the greatest, perhaps, in the whole
compass of philosophy since the time of Sir Isaac Newton."^9

Experiments in colonial America

  Modeled after a 1762 painting

   Figure 2

After Franklin learned about the success of the sentry-box
experiment in France, he installed a tall, insulated rod on the
roof of his house to study the characteristics of thunderstorm
electricity. The conductor ran down a stairwell to ground but had a
gap in the middle, as illustrated on the left side of figure 2. A
small ball suspended between chimes mounted on each end of the gap
would ring the chimes whenever an electrified cloud passed
overhead. Franklin used this apparatus to compare the properties of
atmospheric electricity with the electricity generated by friction
and to measure the polarity of thunderclouds.

He found that both types of electricity were the same and "that the
Clouds of a Thunder Gust are most commonly in a negative State of
Electricity, but sometimes in a positive State,"^10 a result that
was regarded as definitive for the next 170 years. At that time,
Franklin thought that all discharges went from positive to
negative, so he concluded "that for the most part in Thunder
Strokes, 'tis the Earth that strikes into the Clouds, and not the
Clouds that strike into the Earth." Judging by his later
correspondence, Franklin was fascinated by this discovery, and he
postulated that the effects of lightning would be very nearly the
same regardless of the direction of the current flow.

First protection system

In the 1753 issue of Poor Richard's Almanack, Franklin published a
method for protecting houses from lightning damage:

   It has pleased God in his Goodness to Mankind, at length to
   discover to them the Means of securing their Habitations and
   other Buildings from Mischief by Thunder and Lightning. The
   Method is this: Provide a small Iron Rod (it may be made of the
   Rod-iron used by the Nailers) but of such a Length, that one End
   being three or four Feet in the moist Ground, the other may be
   six or eight Feet above the highest Part of the Building. To the
   upper End of the Rod fasten about a Foot of Brass Wire, the Size
   of a common Knitting-needle, sharpened to a fine Point; the Rod
   may be secured to the House by a few small Staples. If the House
   or Barn be long, there may be a Rod and Point at each End, and a
   middling Wire along the Ridge from one to the other. A House
   thus furnished will not be damaged by Lightning, it being
   attracted by the Points, and passing thro the Metal into the
   Ground without hurting any Thing. Vessels also, having a sharp
   pointed Rod fix'd on the Top of their Masts, with a Wire from
   the Foot of the Rod reaching down, round one of the Shrouds, to
   the Water, will not be hurt by Lightning.

  Independence Hall

   Figure 3

The opening phrase of this description anticipated a religious
objection to protective rods that would soon appear in America and
Europe. In the late summer or fall of 1752, grounded conductors
were installed on the Academy of Philadelphia (later the University
of Pennsylvania) and the Pennsylvania State House (later
Independence Hall). Figures 3 and 4 show fragments of the original
grounding conductors that were installed inside the tower of
Independence Hall and on the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church in
Philadelphia, respectively.

   David B. Rivers

   Figure 4a

Three key elements made up Franklin's protection system. Metallic
rods, or air terminals as they're now called, were mounted on the
roof of a structure and connected by horizontal roof conductors and
vertical down conductors to a ground connection. Because Franklin
initially thought point discharges might provide protection, the
first air terminals were thin, sharp needles mounted on top of an
iron rod. The first down conductors were chains of iron rods, each
several feet long, that were mechanically linked or hooked together
as shown in figures 3 and 4. Because the current in point
discharges is usually less than a few hundred microamperes, the
roof and down conductors could be mechanically hooked together and
attached to the inside walls of towers and steeples without
creating a hazard.

Because Franklin wanted to verify that lightning would actually
follow the path of a metallic conductor and determine what size
that conductor should be, in June 1753 he published a "Request for
Information on Lightning" in the Pennsylvania Gazette and other
newspapers:

   Those of our Readers in this and the neighboring Provinces, who
   may have an Opportunity of observing, during the present Summer,
   any of the Effects of Lightning on Houses, Ships, Trees, Etc.
   are requested to take particular Notice of its Course, and
   Deviation from a strait Line, in the Walls or other Matter
   affected by it, its different Operations or Effects on Wood,
   Stone, Bricks, Glass, Metals, Animal Bodies, Etc. and every
   other Circumstance that may tend to discover the Nature, and
   compleat the History of that terrible Meteor. Such Observations
   being put in Writing, and communicated to Benjamin Franklin, in
   Philadelphia, will be very thankfully accepted and gratefully
   acknowledged.

In the summer of 1753, Dr. John Lining, a physician with many
scientific interests, verified Franklin's kite experiment in
Charleston, South Carolina, but when he tried to install a rod on
his house, the local populace objected. They thought that the rod
was presumptuous--that it would interfere with the will of God--or
that it might attract lightning and be dangerous.^11 In April of
that year, Franklin commented on that issue,

   [Nollet] speaks as if he thought it Presumption in Man to
   propose guarding himself against Thunders of Heaven! Surely the
   Thunder of Heaven is no more supernatural than the Rain, Hail,
   or Sunshine of Heaven, against the Inconvenience of which we
   guard by Roofs and Shades without Scruple.

   But I can now ease the Gentleman of this Apprehension; for by
   some late Experiments I find, that it is not Lightning from the
   Clouds that strikes the Earth, but Lightning from the Earth that
   Strikes the Clouds.^12

Improvements

In the following years, Franklin continued to gather information
about lightning, and in 1757 he traveled to London as an agent of
the Pennsylvania Assembly. In March 1761, Kinnersley sent Franklin
a detailed description of a lightning flash that struck a
Philadelphia house equipped with a protective rod. An observer had
reported at the time that "the Lightning diffused over the
Pavement, which was then very wet with Rain, the Distance of two or
three Yards from the Foot of the Conductor." Further investigation
showed that the lightning had melted a few inches of the brass air
terminal and Kinnersley concluded, "Surely it will now be thought
as expedient to provide Conductors for the Lightning as for the
Rain."^13

   mechanical link

   Figure 4b

Before Kinnersley's letter, Franklin had received reports of two
similar strikes to protected houses in South Carolina. In one case,
the points and a length of the brass down conductor had melted. In
the other, three brass points, each about seven inches long and
mounted on top of an iron rod, had evaporated. Moreover, several
sections of the iron down conductor, each about a half-inch in
diameter and hooked together, had become unhooked by the discharge
(see figure 4b). Nearly all the staples that held the conductor to
the outside of the house had also been loosened. "Considerable
cavities" had been made in the earth near the rod, sunk about three
feet underground, and the lightning had produced several furrows in
the ground "some yards in length." Franklin was pleased by these
reports, and replied to Kinnersley that "a conductor formed of nail
rods, not much above a quarter of an inch thick, served well to
convey the lightning" but "when too small, may be destroyed in
executing its office." Franklin sent the reports from South
Carolina to Kinnersley with a recommendation to use larger, more
substantial conductors and a deeper, more extensive grounding
system to protect the foundation of the house against the effects
of surface arcs and explosions in the soil.

Because all reports from North America showed that grounded rods
did indeed protect houses from lightning damage, in January 1762
Franklin sent an improved design for "the shortest and simplest
Method of securing Buildings, Etc. from the Mischiefs of
Lightning," together with excerpts from Kinnersley's letter and the
reports from South Carolina, to Scottish philosopher David Hume.
That letter was subsequently read to Edinburgh's philosophical
society, which published it in 1771.

   18th centurty house with lightning rod

   Figure 5

In the letter to Hume, Franklin recommended large, steel air
terminals, 5 to 6 feet long and tapered to a sharp point. He said
that any building with a dimension greater than about 100 feet
should have a pointed rod mounted on each end with a conductor
between them. All roof and down conductors should be at least a
half-inch in diameter, continuous, and routed outside the
building--the earlier design allowed routing the conductors inside
a building's walls. Any links or joints in these conductors should
be filled with lead solder to ensure a good connection. The
grounding conductor should be a one-inch-diameter iron bar driven
10 to 12 feet into the earth, and if possible, kept at least 10
feet away from the foundation. Franklin also recommended that the
ground rods be painted to minimize rust and connected to a well, if
one happened to be nearby. Figure 5 illustrates an implementation
of Franklin's 1762 design.

In the 1769 edition of Experiments and Observations, Franklin
published his reply to Kinnersley and the reports from South
Carolina together with some "Remarks" on the construction and use
of protective rods. After repeating his recommendations for an
improved design, he also noted a psychological benefit of having
protection against lightning:

   Those who calculate chances may perhaps find that not one death
   (or the destruction of one house) in a hundred thousand happens
   from that cause, and that therefore it is scarce worth while to
   be at any expense to guard against it. But in all countries
   there are particular situations of buildings more exposed than
   others to such accidents, and there are minds so strongly
   impressed with the apprehension of them, as to be very unhappy
   every time a little thunder is within their hearing; it may
   therefore be well to render this little piece of new knowledge
   as general and well understood as possible, since to make us
   safe is not all its advantage, it is some to make us easy. And
   as the stroke it secures us from might have chanced perhaps but
   once in our lives, while it may relieve us a hundred times from
   those painful apprehensions, the latter may possibly on the
   whole contribute more to the happiness of mankind than the
   former.^14

Today, most authorities agree that lightning rods define and
control the points where lightning will strike the structure and
then guide the current safely into ground. As Franklin noted in
1761, "Indeed, in the construction of an instrument so new, and of
which we could have so little experience, it is rather lucky that
we should at first be so near the truth as we seem to be, and
commit so few errors." Franklin was truly lucky: His original 1752
design was based on the low current levels of point discharges, but
direct lightning strikes deliver tens of kiloamperes of current,
enough to produce explosive arcs across any imperfect mechanical
connections; and those arcs can produce momentary overpressures of
several hundred atmospheres and enough heat to ignite flammable
materials. The early applications of lightning rods could have been
disastrous. Franklin's 1762 design, however, has stood the test of
time and remains the basis for all modern lightning protection
codes in the world today.

'Snatching lightning from the sky'

It is difficult for us living in an electrical age to appreciate
how important lightning conductors were in the 18th century. The
discovery that thunderclouds contain electricity and that lightning
is an electrical discharge revolutionized human perceptions of the
natural world, and the invention of protective rods was a clear
example of how basic, curiosity-driven research can lead to
significant practical benefits. In his later years, Franklin
devoted most of his time to public service, but he did continue to
follow the work of others and conduct occasional experiments. He
also participated on scientific advisory boards and panels that
reviewed methods of lightning protection, and made recommendations
for protecting cathedrals and facilities for manufacturing and
storing gunpowder.

Eventually, Franklin became a leader of the American Revolution.
When he embarked for France in November 1776 to seek aid for the
newly declared United States of America in the war against Great
Britain, he took with him a unique asset--his worldwide fame. By
then his work on lightning and electricity had called attention to
his other writings in science, politics, and moral philosophy,^15
and the intellectuals of France and Europe viewed Franklin as one
of their own.

In 1811, John Adams, the first vice president and second president
of the US, who served with Franklin in France in the 1770s (and who
actually hated him), summarized Franklin's reputation:

   Nothing, perhaps, that ever occurred upon this earth was so well
   calculated to give any man an extensive and universal celebrity
   as the discovery of the efficacy of iron points and the
   invention of lightning rods. The idea was one of the most
   sublime that ever entered a human imagination, that a mortal
   should disarm the clouds of heaven, and almost "snatch from his
   hand the sceptre and the rod!" The ancients would have enrolled
   him with Bacchus and Ceres, Hercules and Minerva. His
   Paratonnerres erected their heads in all parts of the world, on
   temples and palaces no less than on cottages of peasants and the
   habitations of ordinary citizens. These visible objects reminded
   all men of the name and character of their inventor; and, in the
   course of time, have not only tranquilized the minds and
   dissipated the fears of the tender sex and their timorous
   children, but have almost annihilated that panic terror and
   superstitious horror which was once almost universal in violent
   storms of thunder and lightning. . . .

   His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or
   Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character more beloved
   and esteemed than any or all of them. Newton had astonished
   perhaps forty or fifty men in Europe; for not more than that
   number, probably, at any one time had read him and understood
   him by his discoveries and demonstrations. And these being held
   in admiration in their respective countries as at the head of
   the philosophers, had spread among scientific people a
   mysterious wonder at the genius of this perhaps the greatest man
   that ever lived. But this fame was confined to men of letters.
   The common people knew little and cared nothing about such a
   recluse philosopher. Leibnitz's name was more confined
   still. . . . But Franklin's fame was universal. His name was
   familiar to government and people, to kings, courtiers,
   nobility, clergy, and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to
   such a degree that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a
   valet de chambre, coachman or footman, a lady's chambermaid or a
   scullion in a kitchen, who was not familiar with it, and who did
   not consider him as a friend to human kind. When they spoke of
   him, they seemed to think he was to restore the golden age.^16

In June 1776, the celebrated economist and former
comptroller-general of France, Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot, composed
a prophetic epigram in Latin that captures Franklin's legacy in a
single sentence: "Eripuit caelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis" ("He
snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants").^17

I am grateful to Penelope Hartshorne Batcheler for calling my
attention to the photograph in figure 3.

Philip Krider is a professor in the Institute of Atmospheric
Physics at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

References

  1. 1. Portions of this paper are based on the author's
  presentation at the Inaugural Symposium of the International
  Commission on History of Meteorology, International Congress of
  History of Science, Mexico City, 11-12 July 2001, and on E.P.
  Krider, in Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World, P.
  Talbott, ed., Yale U. Press, New Haven, CT (2005), chap. 5.
  2. 2. I. B. Cohen, Benjamin Franklin's Science, Harvard U. Press,
  Cambridge, MA (1990), chap. 6.
  3. 3. I. B. Cohen, Benjamin Franklin's Experiments: A New Edition
  of Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity,
  Harvard U. Press, Cambridge, MA (1941).
  4. 4. J. L. Heilbron, Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries:
  A Study of Early Modern Physics, U. of Calif. Press, Berkeley
  (1979).
  5. 5. Franklin's letters and associated quotations can be found in
  The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, L. W. Labaree et al., eds.,
  Yale U. Press, New Haven, CT, vol. 1 (1959) to vol. 37 (2003).
  In the following citations, these volumes will be referred to
  as Franklin Papers. The first letter is in vol. 3, p. 126, and
  the remaining four letters are in vol. 3, pp. 156, 352, and 365
  and vol. 4, p. 9.
  6. 6. Ref. 4, chap. 15.
  7. 7. Franklin Papers, vol. 4, p. 465.
  8. 8. Ref. 2, chap. 8.
  9. 9. J. Priestley, History and Present State of Electricity, with
  Original Experiments, printed for J. Dodsley, J. Johnson, B.
  Davenport, T. Cadell, London (1767), p. 179.
10. 10. Franklin Papers, vol. 5, p. 71.
11. 11. J. A. L. Lemay, Ebenezer Kinnersley: Franklin's Friend, U.
  of Penn. Press, Philadelphia (1964), p. 78.
12. 12. Franklin Papers, vol. 4, p. 463.
13. 13. Franklin Papers, vol. 4, p. 293.
14. 14. Franklin Papers, vol. 10, p. 52.
15. 15. J. A. L. Lemay, ed., Benjamin Franklin Writings, The
  Library of America, New York (1987).
16. 16. C. F. Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, vol. 1, Little
  Brown and Co, Boston (1856), p. 660.
17. 17. For further details on the influence of Franklin's science
  on his fame and diplomacy, see P. Dray, Stealing God's Thunder:
  Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America,
  Random House, New York (2005) and S. Schiff, A Great
  Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America,
  Henry Holt, New York (2005).

[p42fig1.jpg]

Figure 1. This sketch of the "sentry-box" experiment conducted at
Marly-la-Ville, France, in 1752 was based on Benjamin Franklin's
proposal to determine whether thunderclouds are electrified. Silk
ropes (g) and wine bottles (e) insulated a 13-meter iron rod (a)
from ground, and covers (h) sheltered the ropes from rain. A person
standing on the ground could draw sparks from the rod or charge a
Leiden jar when a storm was in the area. (From B. Franklin,
Exp?riences et Observations sur L'?lectricit? . . . , 2nd ed., vol.
2, an extended translation from English by T. F. Dalibard, Chez
Durand, Paris, 1756.)

[p42fig2.jpg]

Figure 2. Modeled after a 1762 painting by Mason Chamberlain, this
etching depicts Benjamin Franklin looking at electrostatic bells he
used to study cloud electricity. Two chimes, separated from each
other by a small gap, are connected to rods that go up through the
roof and to ground. A thundercloud charges the right-hand bell,
either by induction or point discharge; the bell then alternately
attracts or repels a small ball suspended between the chimes on a
silk thread. The ball rattles between the bells, ringing an alarm
when a storm approaches. The electroscope hanging from the
right-hand bell was used to measure the cloud's polarity. A
grounded rod of Franklin's 1762 design can be seen through the
window. (Frontispiece from Oeuvres de M. Franklin, translated by
J.B. Dubourg, Chez Quillau, Paris, 1773.)

[p42fig3.jpg]

Figure 3. Independence Hall, Philadelphia. During a restoration in 1960, 
fragments of the original grounding conductor were found under paneling 
and plaster on the inside wall of the northwest corner of the tower 
stairwell. (From the Independence National Historical Park Collection.)

  [p42fig4a.jpg][sm-p42fig4b.jpg]

Figure 4. David B. Rivers, pastor of the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes')
Church in Philadelphia, holds a section of the original iron
conductor that protected the church. The upper links in the chain
were stapled to the inside of a wooden steeple. The inset shows how
a mechanical link may have been ruptured, its hook forced open by
an explosive arc during a lightning strike. (Courtesy of E. Philip
Krider.)

[p42fig5a.jpg][p42fig5b.jpg]

Figure 5. An 18th-century house with a lightning rod of Franklin's
1762 design. The thick, continuous rod can carry tens of
kiloamperes of current to ground without harming the house or its
foundation.

------------------

300 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011600986_pf.html

300
Scientist, Diplomat And Wit: Franklin's Birth Merits a Toast

By Hillel Italie
Associated Press
Tuesday, January 17, 2006; A15

At the Smithsonian, a tribute to his statesmanship is planned. In London, 
an exhibit hails his medical contributions. But at McGillin's Olde Ale 
House in Philadelphia, they know best how to honor Benjamin Franklin on 
his 300th birthday: with a celebratory toast.

"He was a very jovial fellow who would meet at the taverns, discussing
the latest John Locke book or scientific breakthrough over a nice pint
of beer," McGillin's owner Chris Mullins said.

Franklin was a businessman, inventor, revolutionary, athlete (he is a
member of the United States Swim School Association Hall of Fame),
diplomat, publisher, humorist, sage and regular guy. "He certainly is
a multiplicity of persona, so one never knows which one is the real
Franklin," says Gordon Wood, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose
books include "The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin."

Franklin's approachability begins with his background. Unlike George
Washington or Thomas Jefferson, he did not grow up a landed
"gentleman." His rise, as Franklin himself later boasted, was "from
the Poverty and Obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a state of
affluence and some degree of Reputation in the World."

He was born in Boston on Jan. 17, 1706, the 10th son of a soap- and
candle-maker. Starting at age 12, he worked five years as an
apprentice at his brother James's newspaper, the New England Courant,
establishing himself as a prankster and satirist, and, not for the
last time, as "a little obnoxious to the governing party."

Over the next 30 years and beyond, he advanced himself as a printer,
publisher and humorist, composing such lasting epigrams as "Fish and
visitors stink in three days" and "Eat to live, and not live to eat."
For many, he is the founding American wit, grounded in plain talk, a
tradition carried on by Mark Twain and Will Rogers.

Franklin's greatest public triumph was probably as a diplomat,
persuading France to aid the colonies in their fight against the
British. But he needed no revolution to be a revolutionary, for he
changed the world by living in it. "The things which hurt, instruct,"
he observed.

Middle-aged eyesight led him to design a single, all-purpose set of
glasses -- bifocals. A struggle to raise money for a public hospital
led to a plan by which private contributions would be equaled by
government funds, the "matching grant" formula in use to this day.

Among other credits: modernized street lights, volunteer firefighters,
fire insurance, lending libraries, odometers, daylight saving time and
lightning rods (inspired by a kite excursion).

"His demonstration that lightning was not supernatural had huge
impact," says Dudley Herschbach, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist. "Since
lightning had long been considered a prerogative of the Almighty,
Franklin was attacked for presumption, vigorously but in vain."

Herschbach, a Harvard University professor who has lectured frequently
on Franklin, says: "Franklin's scientific curiosity extended far
beyond his adventures with electricity. He made important discoveries
and observations concerning the motion of storms, heat conduction, the
path of the Gulf Stream, bioluminescence, the spreading of oil films,
and also advanced prescient ideas about conservation of matter and the
wave nature of light."

Franklin was an innovator, but, unlike Jefferson, not a poet; ideas
didn't matter unless they were useful. He was the country's original
pragmatist -- the classic American art of learning through experience,
not theory, that was refined and adopted by William James and John
Dewey.

Franklin now seems the safest of the founders to celebrate, but when
he died, in 1790, he was mistrusted by many in power as a Francophile
synonymous with the excesses of the French Revolution. The Senate
rejected a proposal to wear badges of mourning in his honor. A year
passed before an official eulogy was delivered, by a longtime
detractor, Anglican minister William Smith, who belittled Franklin as
"ignorant of his own strength."

Condemned as a Jacobin upon his death, he would be satirized as a
middlebrow member of the booboisie for more than a century after.
Sociologist Max Weber believed Franklin stood for the "earning of more
and more money combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous
engagement in life." Poet John Keats disliked "his mean and thrifty
maxims." Historian Charles Angoff labeled him "the father of all the
Kiwanians."

"It was elitism, sort of a condescending elitism that looked down on
Franklin for having basic middle class values," says Walter Isaacson,
author of a 2003 bestseller about Franklin. "For a long time, most
intellectuals saw him as a spokesman for capitalism and for making
money and getting ahead, a view of America many have had," says
historian Gordon Wood.

The denigration of Franklin was partly his own doing. His
"Autobiography," unfinished at his death but published posthumously,
immortalized him as a crafty self-made man for whom all virtue was but
a means to success.

But the "Autobiography" underplays other sides of Franklin: the
statesman, dissident and man of conscience, the former slaveholder who
eventually called for abolition, the belated rebel who overcame his
reverence for the British crown and helped coin one of the era's
immortal phrases: "We hold these truths to be self-evident."

Franklin is praised now by both the left and right.

"He was a defender of limited government, and he was very much opposed
to taking on excessive debt," says Mark Skousen, an author and
economist whose edition of the "Autobiography" includes a Franklin
quote of appeal to conservatives: "A virtuous and industrious people
may be cheaply governed."

David Koepsell, executive director of the Council for Secular
Humanism, said he believes Franklin "would have been dismayed by
religious fundamentalism in government. He was a free thinker about
many things and at least a skeptic about the afterlife and the
divinity of Jesus. He was a scientist, a man of letters and a man of
Earth."

What would Ben Franklin do? 
http://www.thestate.com/mld/state/news/opinion/13642080.htm

Posted on Tue, Jan. 17, 2006
By SHERRY BEASLEY
Guest Columnist

There is a controversial war going on. Political scandal involving a
big-name lobbyist looms large in the nation's capital. The issue of
individual freedom versus government surveillance is once again
rearing its ugly head. Partisan politics are raging over a nominee to
the nation's highest court. The price of fuel continues to rise, and
for these and a myriad of other reasons, Americans are experiencing a
season of discontent early on in 2006.

So on this day, the 300th anniversary of his birth, there is only one
question to ask: What would Benjamin Franklin do?

We, as a nation, have long lauded Ben Franklin as the original
American Renaissance man. We have loved his larger-than-life persona
of diplomat, scientist, inventor, statesman, writer, humorist --- and
the legendary exploits that took him from Boston and Philadelphia to
all over the European continent. The stories of his pragmatic, yet
playful, spirit are the stuff of our American history pantheon. Recent
biographies have let us know that Ben wasn't exactly an avuncular guy
all the time, and that he generated his share of controversy during
his long life. However, as a New York Times editorial recently put it,
Ben Franklin, with all his inconsistencies, was the "founder not only
of American institutions, but of an idea of America itself."

During this tercentenary year of Franklin's birth, there are
celebrations planned nationwide, and we will have many opportunities
to review the lists of this Founding Father's remarkable contributions
to America. We will be reminded that his inventions included items as
disparate as bifocals, swim fins, a urinary catheter, the lightning
rod, the odometer and the Franklin stove. He also originated the idea
of the first public lending library, the first public hospital, the
first fire company and fire and property insurance. He also suggested
the idea of daylight-saving time and was one of the first to chart the
Gulf Stream on his many voyages to Europe.

Sometimes we forget that Ben Franklin was the only American to sign
all four documents that helped to create the United States: the
Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the
Treaty of Peace with Great Britain and the U.S. Constitution. He was a
lifelong believer in collaborative thinking, and is credited with
instilling the importance of community service and devotion to
compromise in many of his fellow Founding Fathers. Franklin's own
belief in the "mixture of cynicism and idealism abounding in human
beings" shaped his realistic viewpoints.

These viewpoints had ample forums in Franklin's writing. He was an
author who commented wryly on his life and times in Poor Richard's
Almanac as well as in his own autobiography, both sources of the rich
proverbial sayings for which Franklin has become famous. How many of
us, for example, have not been told that "Early to bed and early to
rise make a man healthy, wealthy and wise"? We all know that a "Penny
saved is a penny earned" and that "Three may keep a secret if two of
them are dead."

Franklin's bon mots of wisdom and insight find quite a remarkable
application in 2006, three centuries after he originated them. For
example, if we consider the current lobbying scandal in Washington, we
should remember that Ben told us to "Sell not virtue to purchase
wealth, nor liberty to purchase power."

The current controversy over the war in Iraq finds a voice in Franklin
as well. Although Franklin supported the war with Great Britain, he
exhausted diplomatic means before the fighting began. He later uttered
the succinct critique of war when he said, "There was never a good war
or a bad peace." Franklin might address the policy of government
surveillance of citizens to thwart terrorism by his words written in a
letter in 1778: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

His statement "When the well's dry, we know the worth of water" might
apply indirectly to the global fuel supply and the rising cost of
gasoline. And Franklin would probably address our contemporary
fascination with vacuous celebrities such as the Paris Hiltons of the
world with his pithy statement that "People who are wrapped up in
themselves make small packages" or that "It's hard for an empty bag to
stand upright."

And to politicians and pundits who fill our airwaves with constant
chatter, Ben could have addressed his famous line, "Well done is
better than well said."

Ben Franklin also knew how to describe the human quality of charity
and generosity. Global response to tragedies like the tsunami, Katrina
or the earthquake in Pakistan would find fitting descriptors in
Franklin's pronouncements that "A good example is the best sermon" and
"What is serving God? Tis doing Good to Man."

As the tricentennial of his birth year gets under way, and we remember
how uniquely Benjamin Franklin shaped the character of America, a
final quote of his seems to be profound policy for all of us: "If you
would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either
write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing." From
presidents to politicians to pundits to us peons, this is very sound
advice indeed. Thanks, Ben, and happy 300th birthday.

Ms. Beasley is grants director for Clemson's Institute for Economic
and Community Development.
  ___________________________________________________________________

Making the best use of thrift 
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/13642496.htm

Posted on Tue, Jan. 17, 2006
By David Blankenhorn

How should we celebrate the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin of
Philadelphia, born this day in 1706? Today, we as a society may be
unsure of the answer. But as recently as the 1920s, millions of
Americans were quite sure. They honored Franklin by publicly extolling
the virtue of thrift, a character trait that Franklin tirelessly
championed. Yes, thrift.

Thrift is a complex idea. It includes, but has never been merely, the
habit of saving money. Thrift is much more than sound approaches to
managing one's finances, and the main goal of thrift has never been
the accumulation of wealth as an end in itself.

The word thrift comes from the verb thrive. Thrift is the ethic and
practice of best use. Being thrifty means making the wisest use of all
that we have - time, money, our possessions, our health, and our
society's natural resources - to promote both our own flourishing and
the social good. To use Franklin's favorite terms, thrift's core ideas
are "industry" (that is, diligence) and "frugality" (that is,
conservation). The ideas most contrary to thrift are idleness and
waste.

Despite what you may have heard, thrift embraces the pleasure
principle. When Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanac, writes, "Fly
pleasures, and they'll follow you," he is offering a strategy for
pleasure. When he advises that "industry need not wish," he is
offering a strategy for getting one's wishes. That strategy, he tells
us, "consists very much in Thrift." Franklin openly proclaimed that
"wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it." In the 1920s,
the slogan of Thrift Week - which began on Jan. 17, Franklin's
birthday - was "For Success and Happiness."

Thrift is therefore flatly inconsistent with miserliness, or hoarding,
or seeking wealth for wealth's sake. Franklin refused to accept money
for any of his many inventions and spent much of his life performing
public services for which he was not paid. One of the 10 planks of
National Thrift Week was "Share with Others." The idea is that being
thrifty enables us to be generous.

More broadly, thrift is a pathway to, not a rejection of, social
awareness and humane moral values. As Franklin earnestly put it, "The
noblest question in the world is, What good may I do in it?" Franklin
was an unabashed moral and civic reformer who viewed the thrift ethic
as essential to improving the national character and ensuring American
progress. In almost identical ways, the leaders of the National Thrift
Movement of the 1920s believed that their movement was vital to the
broad goals of moral reform, character education, and civic progress.

They conceived of thrift in broad, progressive terms. They wanted
parents to teach thrift to children as a part of character education.
They were pioneers in the science of home economics. They wanted
Americans to take better care of their health. They wanted farmers and
businesses to become more efficient. They were consistently critical
of American materialism and consumerism. They were also early
environmentalists, strongly supporting the protection of our natural
resources. In all of their efforts, they regularly invoked the legacy
of Ben Franklin, whom they called in their literature "the American
Apostle of Thrift."

Today, of course, this movement is hardly remembered. What a pity.
These men and women did good work. In so many ways, we are in their
debt - sometimes debt is good! - just as they were in Franklin's and
others' debt. Much of what they fought for is still quite relevant to
our lives.

Yes, the word thrift today has a quaint, old-fashioned sound. Again,
what a pity. Our government budget deficits are ballooning out of
control. We Americans don't save much at all, even though most
economists agree that more savings and investment relative to consumer
spending would be good for us, both as individuals and as a society.
We waste a lot. We sometimes seem to think that buying more stuff will
make us happy. We sometimes seem confused about the relationship of
private gain to the public good.

What to do? Instead of inventing a new philosophy to help us wrestle
with these issues, we might consider dusting off an old one for
recycling. That would be the thrifty thing to do. And for what it's
worth, Ben Franklin would certainly approve.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Blankenhorn (blankenhorn at americanvalues.org) is president of the
Institute for American Values and codirects a research project on
thrift.
  ___________________________________________________________________

For Franklin, generosity and prudence were partners 
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/13642494.htm Posted on 
Tue, Jan. 17, 2006

For Franklin, generosity and prudence were partners
A call to continue his legacy of public service
By Amy Gutmann

Benjamin Franklin's genius harnessed entrepreneurial energy and
intellectual creativity in the service of civic improvement.
Philadelphians were the lucky beneficiaries; their city became his
laboratory for imagining, inventing, and creating a better world.

For example, while other colleges were founded to train a privileged
class for the clergy and courts, here Franklin founded an academy to
teach practical subjects, discover new knowledge, and prepare great
future leaders. Today the academy Franklin founded is Philadelphia's
largest private employer and one of the world's great research
institutions: the University of Pennsylvania.

By linking higher education to self-improvement and to serving
society, Benjamin Franklin created the very framework for American
philanthropy and civic-mindedness.

Today, Philadelphians enjoy the benefits of Franklin's drive to create
America's first modern city. Concerned for safety and security, he
proposed fire-fighting and insurance associations. The nation's first
hospital grew out of his campaign to promote better health care. The
first free library system came from Franklin's desire to bring the
benefits of reading to everyone.

How can we draw on his legacy to help us forward into the 21st
century?

One way is to improve education. Americans should concentrate on
providing students of all backgrounds with access to education that
prepares them for full participation in our democracy. An education at
most selective private colleges and universities, unfortunately,
remains beyond the reach of many qualified middle- and low-income
students.

The students I know at Penn from underrepresented groups include a
gifted writer who is the daughter of an auto mechanic and the first in
her family to attend college; the son of a truck driver who has become
a standout at the Wharton School and a campus leader; and the son of a
grocery store clerk who wants to pursue both a doctorate in philosophy
and a law degree.

One of our highest priorities is increasing accessibility, making our
excellent undergraduate, graduate and professional educations more
accessible and affordable to the sons and daughters of our country's
middle- and low-

income families. Accessibility is one of the guiding principles of the
Penn Compact, a statement of purpose I first put forward in the fall
of 2004. We work hard to attract students of diverse socioeconomic
backgrounds from the Philadelphia region; although the numbers are
climbing, we can do even better.

At the same time Americans must continue to push for greater
opportunity in elementary and secondary schools - to bring higher
education to a more diverse group of students whose contributions will
be vital to our country's future.

At our university-assisted neighborhood K-8 public school, the Penn
Alexander School, many students come from low-income households.
Seventy-two percent of last spring's graduating eighth graders are now
enrolled in magnet high schools in Philadelphia, greatly improving
their chances of getting accepted to selective colleges or
universities.

Such are the future citizens Benjamin Franklin had in mind. But how to
assure that they will have a thriving community to support?

Franklin's success was rooted as much in his low-key style as in the
brilliance of his ideas. Franklin would float a proposal (sometimes
under a pseudonym), then step back while others took credit. He jumped
back into action when the moment came to drum up broader support.

Let's follow Franklin's example. Put the greater good ahead of
parochial interests. Collaborate on solutions, and share the credit.
Relearn the art of compromise, which Franklin gracefully modeled in
engineering the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.

In Philadelphia, opportunities are many to embrace these principles.
For years, Penn has been collaborating with our neighbors on
initiatives to improve public education, public health, economic
development, employment opportunities, and the physical landscape of
West Philadelphia.

From such collaborations will grow efforts in the next decade to begin
converting 24 acres near 30th Street Station into parks and
recreational facilities; shops and restaurants; arts venues; buildings
for teaching, research, and technology transfer, and gateways along
the Schuylkill that better connect the university and West
Philadelphia to Center City.

Franklin loved to say, "People who are wrapped up in themselves make
small packages." His 300th birthday is the perfect occasion to follow
his inspiring example and open the package for as many people as
possible.
   _________________________________________________________________

Amy Gutmann (president at pobox.upenn.edu) is president of the University
of Pennsylvania.
  ___________________________________________________________________

AP: Boston, city of Franklin's birth, barely celebrates 300th B-Day 
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/01/16/boston_city_of_franklins_birth_barely_celebrates_300th_b_day/

By Andrew Ryan, Associated Press Writer | January 16, 2006

BOSTON --On Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday on Tuesday,
Philadelphia will be the celebratory hub, boasting a 42-page
full-color guide to 85 events that include Ben's Birthday Bash at the
National Liberty Museum and a gala parade to his grave.

And what about in Boston, where the founding father was born and his
intellect and character nurtured?

"We are going to have a party, cake and everything," said Jessica
Kriley, a manager at the Old South Meeting House, where Franklin was
baptized having been born across the street on Jan. 17, 1706. They
expect several dozen revelers to attend a lecture.

How about the mayor's office? No events were scheduled. Maybe
something's planned at the Boston Public Library, as Franklin opened
the country's first public library?

"Hmmm," said a woman in the communications office. "The 17th. Nothing
comes to mind."

"It's pathetic," said Bill Meikle, 70, a Boston-based Franklin
impersonator for 20-plus years who won an Emmy Award playing the
founding father on television. "I can't explain it. I don't want to
sound like I'm ... moaning but there is massive indifference. It
starts with the top at city hall and extends to the cultural
institutions."

The problem could be that when Franklin was 17 years old in September
1723, he left for Philadelphia. He fled from an abusive older brother
and a provincial, Puritan-controlled town.

"The great runaway," chuckled Walter Isaacson, author of "Benjamin
Franklin: An American Life." "I think Boston probably unfairly feels
left out because he ran away from town."

It could be more than that. Franklin did, after all, quip that Harvard
University was only able to teach "blockheads" and "dunces" how to
enter a room "genteelly," which is something that they could have
learned at a dance class.

Maybe that's why Boston's Museum of Science passed on a chance to host
a traveling $6 million exhibition marking Franklin's big 3-0-0.
Curators opted for a Star Wars exhibit instead.

"He did turn his back on the place," said Peter Drummey, librarian at
the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. "Still, I am struck by
the lack of local enthusiasm."

For its part the historical society launched an exhibition displaying
satirical essays that Franklin wrote for The New England Courant in
1722.

On its Web site, the society has posted a nostalgic letter Franklin
penned 61 years after he turned his back on his birthplace. "I long
much to See again my native Place," he wrote in 1784, "and once hoped
to lay my Bones there."

Franklin changed his mind. His bones rest near the corner of 5th and
Arch streets -- in Philadelphia.

"We are doing something for his birthday," said Michael Taylor,
president of Boston's Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology, a
college started with money from its namesake's will after his 200th
birthday.

The school is planning a forum hosted by Meikle in full character,
looking just as Franklin looked a few years before his death.

"The Franklin Institute is throwing me a party and I'm thrilled about
it," said Meikle, already playing the part. "I'm not going to get sour
grapes. I'm going to focus on the positive."

But for many serious Franklin-philes, Boston is not where it's at.

"I'll be in Philadelphia," said Isaacson, the author. "They are
throwing a huge party for him. Hundreds and hundreds of people are
coming."

Philadelphia is, after all, the town where Franklin became a famous
scientist, inventor, statesman, philosopher, musician and economist.
He served as the city's postmaster, and is its most famous -- albeit
adopted -- son.

That doesn't mean there isn't enough Franklin lore for Boston too.

"He loved the city, and it's a shame that nobody up there is paying
much attention," Isaacson said, speaking during a telephone interview
from his office in Washington D.C.

A computer chimed in the background.

"I'm getting e-mails from all the people in Philadelphia about what I
am supposed to do at the January 17th dinner," he said dismissively.
"Let me get back to work."

------

On the Net:

Massachusetts Historical Society: http://www.masshist.org/welcome/

Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology: http://www.bfit.edu/

Put your Franklinania to the test 
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/13642520.htm [No answers, but maybe 
in the dead-tree version.] Posted on Tue, Jan. 17, 2006

Put your Franklinania to the test

1 Which of these foods is Franklin NOT credited with bringing to the
United States?

a) tofu

b) Parmesan cheese

c) Parmesan cake

d) deep-fried Twinkies

2 What exactly is "Benergy"?

a) A corrupt Texas oil company

b) The coupling of actor Ben Affleck with Czech supermodel Jenergy
Lopascz

c) A Philadelphia tourism marketing slogan.

d) A Pittsburgh football marketing slogan

3Franklin was born in Boston. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a:

a) rolling stone.

b) butcher.

c) baker.

d) candlestick maker.

4 Franklin attended Boston Latin School, but he left:

a) when his first child was on the way.

b) when he was struck by lightning.

c) at the age of 10.

d) at the age of 13.

5 Franklin ran away from Boston and came to Philadelphia at age 17.
The only thing he had in his pocket was:

a) a $100 bill, hence the name.

b) A Dutch dollar and 20 pence.

c) Parmesan cheese.

d) three-day-old fish.

6 When Franklin was just a teenager, he wrote articles for the New
England Courant under the pseudonym of:

a) Dudley Doright.

b) Silence Dogood.

c) Doright Woman.

d) Doright Man.

7 Franklin is said to have enjoyed drinking a spicy beer brewed with
molasses and pieces of spruce tree, known as:

a) Michelob Ultra.

b) Spruce beer.

c) A White Hessian.

d) A microbrew.

8 In 1731, Franklin fathered an illegitimate son, William Franklin,
who grew up to become:

a) a spoilt ingrate.

b) Colonial governor of New Jersey.

c) A gay American.

d) A kite manufacturer.

9 Complete the following Ben Franklin quotation: "By failing to
prepare, you are preparing to ----."

a) invade Iraq.

b) father an illegitimate child.

c) fail.

d) die.

10In 1758, Franklin conducted early experiments in refrigeration, and
later wrote: "one may see the possibility of... "

a) ice-cold, refreshing Bud Light!

b) freezing a man to death on a warm summer's day.

c) spending one's sunset years in the humid territories recently
explored by Ponce de Leon.

d) cryogenics.

11 A known ladies' man, how many times did Franklin walk down the
aisle? (Careful, there could be a trick!)

a) 7

b) 2

c) 1

d) 0

12 Franklin was the founder of a legendary political discussion club
known as the:

a) Eschaton.

b) Junto.

c) Pinto.

d) Tonto.

13 From 1785 to 1790, Franklin held a job similar to that of governor
of Pennsylvania, although his actual title was:

a) president of the state Supreme Executive Council.

b) Knight Commander of the Most Exalted Order of Pennsylvanians.

c) Master of the Domain.

d) Leader of the Supremes.

14 One of Franklin's projects was to improve an 18th-century musical
instrument comprising water-filled glass bowls known as:

a) a harmonica.

b) an armonica.

c) a monica.

d) a honika.

15 In 1730, Franklin began publishing the legendary newspaper known
as:

a) the Metro.

b) The Pennsylvania Gazette.

c) The Police Gazette.

d) American Colonies Today.

16Franklin's wife, and mother of two of his children, was named
Deborah:

a) Kerr.

b) Reynolds.

c) Read.

d) Harry.

17 Complete this famous Franklin statement, which is NOT being used by
Philadelphia tourism officials: "Fish and -------- stink in three
days."

a) tofu

b) Jefferson

c) visitors

d) spruce beer

18 In 1749, Franklin was appointed president of the Academy and
College of Philadelphia. In 1791, it was merged with the University of
the State of Pennsylvania, to become:

a) Penn State.

b) Penn.

c) The Connecticut School of Broadcasting.

d) Drexel.

19 The inner-city action flick "It's All About the Benjamins" takes
its name from the fact that Franklin's picture is on:

a) The most popular type of crack

vial

b) A $100 bill

c) A $3 bill

d) A Snoop Dogg CD

20 Franklin didn't really write, "A penny saved is a penny earned." He
wrote, "A penny saved is... "

a) worth two in the bush.

b) for your thoughts.

c) two pence clear.

d) a waste of time.

21 In 1731, Franklin also started the first public:

a) bathhouse.

b) ale house.

c) library.

d) golf course.

22 On June 15, 1752, Franklin performed his famous electricity
experiment with a kite. Shortly after, a Russian scientist named Georg
Wilhelm Richmann tried the same thing, and was:

a) electrocuted.

b) awarded the first Nobel Prize in physics.

c) blown 60 feet into the air.

d) intoxicated.

23 It's hard to believe, butFranklin apparently was the first person
to figure out that:

a) the pope is Catholic.

b) pigs can't really fly.

c) most storms travel.

d) one size doesn't really fit all.

24 An intrepid reporter, Franklin is said to have gained a lot of his
information from:

a) senior administration officials.

b) hanging around farmers' markets.

c) hanging around popular taverns.

d) various and sundry girlfriends.

25 In 1757, Franklin was dispatched to England to protest the
influence of this in Pennsylvania politics:

a) Pay-to-play municipal contracting

b) The Penn family

c) The Casey family

d) The Gambino family

26 In 1768 in London, Franklin developed "A Scheme for a New Alphabet
and a Reformed Mode of Spelling" that:

a) proved he had way too much. spare time on his hands.

b) eliminated the letter "W" because Franklin did not like Washington.

c) would have eliminated six existing letters and added six new ones.

d) prompted the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

27 Franklin didn't write the Declaration of Independence, but he did:

a) add the part about "the pursuit of happiness."

b) edit it.

c) the penmanship.

d) draw the seldom-seen cover art.

28 Although he had owned two slaves, Franklin later became president
of the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in:

a) Camden.

b) bondage.

c) chains.

d) contempt.

29 Franklin owned two slaves named George and:

a) Dick.

b) Laura.

c) King.

d) Queen.

30 The Pennsylvania Gazette frequently carried ads for:

a) go-go taverns in lower Bucks County.

b) Parmesan cheese.

c) the sale and purchase of slaves.

d) Franklin stoves.
  ___________________________________________________________________

Happy 300th, Ben! http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/13642465.htm 
Posted on Tue, Jan. 17, 2006

Essay
Happy 300th, Ben!
By Tom Ferrick Jr.
Inquirer Columnist

If Benjamin Franklin were alive, he might skip the events planned
around town today for his 300th birthday.

Too much folderol for his taste, too much speechifying. Too much
Franklin, Franklin, Franklin.

It would offend his sense of modesty, and while Franklin wasn't humble
(he knew he was smarter than most), he worked hard at being modest.

It was a virtue he cultivated, aware of its value in everyday life. To
be a leader of men, he realized, it was best to be one of the guys:
generous in praise, respectful of divergent opinions, quick to give
credit to others, slow to take it himself.

In short, Franklin was a genius with a first-class disposition, a rare
thing. His brainpower, his energy, and his high emotional IQ made him
the de facto civic leader of Philadelphia, its go-to guy, while still
in his 30s.

The story of the founding of Pennsylvania Hospital is one example of
his uncanny ability to get things done.

It wasn't Franklin's idea. It was Dr. Thomas Bond, a London-trained
physician, who wanted a hospital for the poor and indigent. As Bond
pitched his idea around town, people invariably asked: Have you talked
to Franklin?

Franklin embraced the plan. But how to raise the 4,000 pounds?

Franklin had an idea. (He always had an idea.) He had a citizen
petition presented to the Colonial Assembly, asking it to create a
hospital.

When - as he knew they would - rural legislators objected to such a
large expenditure for Philadelphia, Franklin, a member of the
Assembly, rose and asked it to put forward half the money - but only
if the other 2,000 could be first raised privately. Assembly members
agreed, thinking that the private appeal would fail but that they
could collect political credits for their generosity.

Franklin then organized the fund-raising, the 2,000 pounds was raised,
the Assembly put up the other 2,000 pounds, and America's first
hospital was erected at Eighth and Pine Streets, where it stands
today.

Thus did Ben Franklin invent one of the mainstays of modern
philanthropy: matching funds.

As Franklin wrote later: "I do not remember any of my political
manoeuvres, the success of which gave me at the time more pleasure..."

The hospital was chartered in 1751, three years after Franklin retired
to give time to civic and scientific pursuits.

To friends who asked why he would give up a lucrative printing
business, Franklin explained that when he died, he would rather have
people say that "he was useful" than "he was rich."

Even before his retirement at 42, Franklin found the time to run a
printing business, raise a family, publish a newspaper, write Poor
Richard's Almanack, help create the colonies' first fire department,
organize the city's town watch, start America's first lending library,
found what would become the American Philosophical Society, start the
college that became the University of Pennsylvania, lead the militia
that drove hostile Indian tribes from the Lehigh Valley, serve in the
colonial legislature, invent the Franklin stove, and begin his
groundbreaking experiments on electricity.

What to do for an encore?

After his retirement, Franklin completed his experiments in
electricity, served as representative of the colonies in England,
returned to Philadelphia to help draft the Declaration of
Independence, served as minister of the new nation in France, invented
the lightning rod and bifocals, charted the Gulf Stream, and helped
write the U.S. Constitution.

One problem with discussing Franklin in brief is that his life ends up
sounding like a list. But it's important to recall what an amazing
life it was, because Franklin has devolved into a caricature in
popular culture.

This birthday celebration gives us a chance to remember what an
astonishing man he was and how lucky we are that Benjamin Franklin
decided to devote his life to being "useful."
   _________________________________________________________________

Contact Tom Ferrick at 215-854-2714 or tferrick at phillynews.com.
  ___________________________________________________________________

The Grandfather of our Country - Gallagher 
http://www.opinioneditorials.com/freedomwriters/pgallagher_20060117.html

January 17, 2006
Phil Gallagher

January 17th marks the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin. Many
volumes have been written since his death 216 years ago that explore
his many accomplishments in a wide variety of endeavors. Despite this
much time passing, Franklins list of achievements and his lifes work
still stands up against the many generations of Americans that have
followed him.
More impressive than any one achievement was his versatility in his
ability to contribute in so many areas of daily 18th century life. If
you lived in the colonies during that period more than likely your
home was heated by a Franklin stove, your church was protected by Bens
lightning rod, and your money was printed by him.
If you lived in Philadelphia you might have read books printed by him,
or took them out of a library he started. Your buildings were
protected by his fire brigade, fire insurance company or the night
watch that he started. In his spare time he led a militia that
protected your frontier.
Many a young man over the last two centuries has been lectured on
Franklins industriousness and his axioms on how to lead a productive
life. For today however it is another group of Americans that can take
a lesson from Franklin.
The first of the baby boomers are entering their sixties and beginning
the end game of their lives. As in every phase of their lives this
demographic crowd will have a major impact on the future of the United
States. How will the aging of this population contribute in a
productive way for themselves and to our country?
It is useful to look back at Franklin and observe that his
achievements in his old age are the ones that are likely to be the
most indelibly etched in American history as more centuries go by.
In an era when the average life span was somewhere in the forties
Franklin lived to be 84. It wasnt an easy 84 as he was beset with
maladies common to the times however despite these setbacks he was
undaunted.
Just after his seventieth birthday Franklin was busy as a
revolutionary involved by presiding at the constitutional convention,
editing Jeffersons work on the Declaration of Independence and
becoming its oldest signer.
To put Franklins age in context it might be useful to compare him to
some of the historical founding luminaries of the time, John Adams 41,
Sam Adams, 54, Thomas Jefferson, 33, George Washington 44, John Jay,
31 and John Hancock, 39.
At 70 Franklin only BEGAN his contribution to the birth and defense of
the fledgling nation. He spent the next nine years in Europe
tirelessly working to provide financial and material support for the
battle and subsequent peace back home. In 1782, he along with John Jay
and John Adams negotiated The Treaty of Peace with Great Britain.
In 1785 he made his last voyage home however he still wasnt done with
his contributions. In 1787, he was elected president of the
Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery; as well
servings as delegate to the Constitutional Convention.
As we all contemplate the aging process and where we fit in the scheme
of things we might stop and once again take a very hard look at the
old Ben Franklin. We cant be him nor can we duplicate his achievements
but we certainly can try to think like he did in his approach to all
aspects of our lives.
   _________________________________________________________________

AP: In Year of Franklin's 300th Birthday, It's Good to Be Ben 
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/national/16franklin.html

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 15 (AP) - It is clear to anyone attending a
convention or visiting historic sites here that Ben Franklin is not
only alive 300 years after he was born but that he has also been
cloned. Several times.

Franklin has always had a big presence in Philadelphia. Mayor John F.
Street and others have recently endorsed renaming the 30th Street
train station in his honor. And the city's yearlong celebration of his
300th birthday has created a huge demand for the small cadre of people
who portray him.

Backstage at one recent convention, Franklin could be found with a
cellphone to his ear, making notes in his appointment book.

Yes, he said somewhat wearily, he can make it to the afternoon tea.
But is it all right if he comes late to the breakfast? He would really
like that extra half-hour of sleep.

Such tight scheduling is not uncommon for Ralph Archbold, perhaps the
city's best-known Franklin, who does around 500 events a year. Things
have been especially hectic lately, with some three dozen appearances
planned in the 10 days before Franklin's birthday bash on Tuesday at
the National Constitution Center.

But there is always a role for Franklin here, whether it is talking to
tourists, cutting ribbons, giving lectures, filming documentaries or
visiting local schools.

At first, young students are not sure what to make of the gentleman
with the waistcoat and cane, said Bill Robling, who has played
Franklin for about four years.

"Aren't you dead?" they ask.

And Mr. Robling said adults who meet Franklin at Independence Hall are
equally blunt in their inquiries about the sex life of a man who was a
famous flirt.

Mr. Robling said he did not mind those kinds of questions, because
they provided an opening for him to discuss other aspects of
Franklin's life.

"Being Ben Franklin in his own words, in his own spaces, is probably
as rewarding as anything," said Mr. Robling, 61. "Plus, I love to
educate people."

Another impersonator, Bill Ochester, said he was always glad to see
how those who were initially skeptical of his portrayal ended up being
fascinated by the conversation they had with his character.

"If I continue to play the role, you'd be amazed how much they buy
into it," said Mr. Ochester, 55.

The costume helps. Mr. Ochester, who also participates in
Revolutionary War re-enactments, wears replicas of 18th-century
clothing and shoes. Mr. Robling wears a custom-made wig. And Mr.
Archbold, who turns 64 on Franklin's birthday, has business cards
based on the 1781 design of Franklin's calling card.

The impersonators all say they have read extensively about their alter
ego, and keep up with the latest research.

Each can put his own stamp on the portrayal.

"All of us bring a different personality, a different approach," Mr.
Robling said. "We've all come from different backgrounds."

Mr. Archbold was an industrial photographer before falling into the
role 32 years ago; Mr. Ochester was a physician's assistant in
cardiothoracic surgery; and Mr. Robling has been an actor for more
than 30 years..

They decline to talk about how much they get paid. And while they
acknowledge they face some competition, the market seems to be big
enough for all of them.

Philadelphia is not the only market for Franklin - he can also be
found in Boston, the city where he was born, though he is sometimes
overshadowed there by Paul Revere and Samuel Adams.

Mr. Robling said if there was ever a need for more Franklins in
Boston, he would be interested in reprising his role: "Have wig, will
travel."

The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA 
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/01/15/printable/ed.col.dennis.0115.f718GrS9.phtml

Ben Franklin offers lessons for our time
By Matthew Dennis
For The Register-Guard
Published: Sunday, January 15, 2006

In Paris, in 1784, Benjamin Franklin witnessed a landmark event in
aeronautical history - an unprecedented hot-air balloon ascent. When
some Parisians asked, what's the point? Franklin famously responded,
"What good is a newborn baby?"

Like few others, Franklin could imagine the future, and like few
Americans, he worked to secure that future - for himself, for his
country and for humanity.

Today, on the occasion of Franklin's 300th birthday, we are more apt
to ask, what good is a long-deceased historical figure? The answer in
Franklin's case: plenty.

We should celebrate Franklin on his birthday this Tuesday, not only
because he fundamentally shaped the future that has become our
present, but because his life continues to offer lessons for our time.

How appropriate for the man whose alter ego was "Poor Richard" - the
most famous advice-giver in American history, predating Dear Abby by
200 years. Poor Richard said, "Fools need Advice most, but wise Men
only are the better for it."

Which are we, fools or wise men? We can still agree that "a penny
saved is a penny earned," that "an apple a day keeps the doctor away,"
that "without pain there is no gain," that "honesty is the best
policy," and that "nothing is certain but death and taxes."

We might also consider Poor Richard's injunction: "Silence is not
always a Sign of Wisdom, but Babbling is ever a Mark of Folly." Read
on then, dear reader, and consider not these words mere babbling.

Franklin was born in Boston on Jan. 17, 1706 - only a decade removed
from the Salem Witch Trials - one of 17 children, the youngest son of
a candle and soap maker. His fate was to become a workingman, and he
was accordingly bound as an apprentice to his brother James, a
printer.

He showed great aptitude but little enthusiasm for his unfree state
and the domination of his brother. At the age of 17 in 1723, Ben
absconded to Philadelphia, violating the terms of his indenture (he
literally stole himself), and built a new life as journeyman and then
master printer and man of business.

By 1748 (at age 42) he was financially secure enough to retire to
devote himself more fully to science and public service. Franklin's
experiments with electricity made him America's greatest scientist and
brought him international fame.

Franklin embodied American geographic and social mobility - moving to
seek freedom and opportunity and pulling himself up by the proverbial
bootstraps, going from near rags to riches.

But he was more than a model of self-reliance, hard work and
individual ambition. He believed in community, responsibility,
equality and the common good, in reason and the life of the mind, in
peace more than war, and in a better future through technological
innovation and public investment.

Franklin recognized that not all shared the same possibility of
success. Many lacked Ben's luck, pluck and native brilliance, and some
were systematically held back, as apprentices, indentured servants or
even slaves.

Franklin sought to level the playing field and to become other
people's luck through his philanthropy and by creating (sometimes
inventing new) community institutions - public libraries, secular
public schools, research institutions and hospitals.

In our own age of corporate greed and unseemly battles over
intellectual property rights, Franklin is a beacon of integrity and
generosity, as he refused to patent any of his many inventions (the
lightning rod, the Franklin stove or bifocals, for example) or profit
from his civic improvements.

Instead, he shared his knowledge and innovations freely to improve the
world and the lives of his fellow citizens.

In the 1760s, Franklin denounced frontier violence against American
Indians and advocated respectful relations with native people. As Poor
Richard said, "Savages we call them because their manners differ from
ours."

An advocate of equality and opportunity, he served on the committee
that drafted the Declaration of Independence. If "all men are created
equal," he knew from personal experience that some labored in states
of bondage. In 1787, he became president of Pennsylvania's abolition
society and argued strenuously against the institution of slavery,
which would linger in America for almost another hundred years.

Franklin, a son of Puritan Boston, was a deist and skeptic, but he
tolerated and supported various faiths and advocated freedom of
religion, based on the separation of church and state. He appreciated
institutions - religious or secular - that promoted morality and
community. "What is serving God?" he asked. "Tis doing Good to Man."

As the Treaty of Paris (which he helped negotiate) ended the War for
Independence, Franklin wrote, "There was never a good War, or a bad
Peace." He wondered, "What vast additions to the Conveniences and
Comforts of Living might Mankind have acquired, if the Money spent in
Wars had been employed in Works of public utility!" Ben expressed
concern (legitimately, as it turned out) that the new hot-air balloon
might be used for military purposes.

Even in times of war, he urged citizens to preserve the basic
principles and arrangements that defined them as a free people: "Any
society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security
will deserve neither and lose both." Similarly apropos today, Ben
observed, "Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later."

Finally, Franklin enthusiastically supported pure and applied
research, and he saw education as the way to enlightenment, social
improvement, individual opportunity and success. As Poor Richard said,
"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest," and "Genius
without education is like silver in the mine."

Franklin challenged Americans to fund public education, including
higher education. He wrote to the president of Princeton College in
1784, "I am persuaded we are fully able to furnish our Colleges amply
with every Means of public Instruction, and I cannot but wonder that
our Legislatures have generally paid so little Attention to a Business
of so great Importance." Oregon legislators should take heed.

Franklin's words arrest our attention and continue to speak to us, not
merely because they are wise but because they are human and funny.
Late in life he wrote, "I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I
mind being fat and old." At the beginning of 2006, the rotund,
300-year-old Ben Franklin might give us this sage advice: "Be at war
with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year
find you a better man."

The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA

HoustonChronicle.com - Our intelligent design flap would astonish Franklin 
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3590974

Jan. 16, 2006, 7:10PM

   Surely, our first scientist would want us to use brains

By NEAL LANE

TODAY marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Ben Franklin, one of
America's most famous founding fathers and the first American
scientist.

Franklin's ideals and his wisdom are as fresh today as they were
during the troubled years of our nation's founding. I cannot help but
wonder how Franklin, a disciplined scientist and religious man, would
react to the idea of teaching "intelligent design" as an alternative
to the science of evolution in our schools.

Would he be surprised that the current president of the United States,
a self-proclaimed "education president," and the majority leader of
the Senate, a cardiovascular surgeon, have advocated such a change in
what our schools teach as science?

For his part, Franklin never had a problem reconciling his devotion
both to God and to the pursuit of scientific truth. While he was
unquestionably religious calling for regular morning prayers at the
Constitutional Convention he was insatiably curious, always
questioning, and he rejected all forms of intolerance. He believed
that science and mankind's understanding of nature, far from
questioning the existence of God, were ways to gain a deeper
appreciation of the nature, indeed the wonder, of God and His works.

How far we have come in 300 years. Scientists have built upon
Franklin's basic understanding of the nature of electricity to create
sophisticated electronics, cell phones, lasers, medical imaging
devices capable of resolving single molecules inside a living cell,
miniaturized computers and the global Internet, satellites and even
robotic explorers of distant planets.

In contrast to the many amazing advances made in science and
technology, we seem to have lost ground when it comes to religion. How
far apart we seem to be at least in time and understanding, if not in
geographical distance (only 62 miles) between Franklin's Philadelphia
and today's Dover, Pa., where a deeply divided community recently
awaited a court judgment concerning intelligent design.

Even before the judge ruled that it would be unconstitutional to teach
intelligent design as science, the majority of Dover's citizens had
already made their will known by tossing out the members of the school
board who favored intelligent design. But to be going through this at
all in a new millennium is truly remarkable.

Were Franklin alive today, he would undoubtedly attest that evolution
is a fact in the same way that gravitation and electromagnetism are
facts. The same scientific method was used to understand all three
aspects of nature. Early hypotheses become theories. Theories are
subjected to rigorous experimental testing, and factual descriptions
emerge. For centuries, that's how people, including Franklin, have
advanced their understanding of how nature works.

Notice that I do not say why nature works or what, ultimately, might
be behind the workings of nature; instead, science is our best
description of how nature works.

I know many scientists who are religious, and none of them considers
their faith in God to be in conflict with their faith in science or
the scientific method of discovery.

The belief that God created the universe, hence all of nature, is
fully consistent, in their minds, with the belief that science is how
we learn about nature.Why is this so difficult for some to accept?

I think the majority of the people who feel that children should be
exposed to alternative ideas to evolution are not expressing
irreconcilable religious beliefs but their own lack of understanding
of biological science.

The dismal quality of science education we provide in this country is
largely responsible for this lack of understanding. And all of us are
at fault for continuing to give such a low priority to educating
today's youth and tomorrow's leaders, even as our children's test
scores lag behind much of the rest of the world's.

As for Benjamin Franklin, we don't know, of course, what he might make
of all this. But given what we know about his views and philosophies
and his penchant for plain talk, I believe Franklin might express the
opinion that God created the heavens and Earth, the laws of nature, as
well as humans with brains, and that God might want us to use them.

Lane, a physicist, is a senior fellow in science and technology at
Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Malcolm
Gillis University Professor at Rice. He is a former director of the
National Science Foundation and served as assistant to the president
for Science and Technology during the Clinton administration.
   _________________________________________________________________

Americas First Self-Made Man: Ben Franklin - 17 Jan 2006 
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=101673

AccountingWEB.com - Jan-17-2006 - January 17 is the 300th birthday of
Benjamin Franklin. While Franklin lived to the advanced age of 84, he
has not survived three centuries. His wisdom, however, has. Today, he
stands as a shining example of what it means to be an American
business man or woman.

Franklin was a citizen of the world, well-traveled, well-read,
multi-lingual and always striving to improve himself. He learned his
trade, printing, by working for someone else but eventually went out
on his own. His famous work ethic, early to bed and early to rise
helped him succeed to the point of driving his competition out of
business. Probably his greatest success was Poor Richards
Almanack,/I>from which many of his most well-known quotes, wit and
advice are taken. He was so successful as a printer, in fact, that he
retired at 42, bringing in a partner to run his printing business
while he devoted himself to the study of philosophy, which in those
days included scientific experiments and inquiries, and public
service.

He was actually 42 when he retired, and he retired because he thought
he had better things to do with his time than make money. Franklin is
often cited as the prototype of the American capitalist. And it is
true that he was very successful in business. His Pennsylvania Gazette
was essentially The New York Times of his day. The Poor Richard's
Almanac, which ran for 25 years, was a great commercial success,
Professor Brands told National Public Radios Talk of the Nation. His
printing business made him a wealthy man. But by the age of 42, he had
as much money as he needed. He found an able managing partner in whose
hands he put the business, and he retired to study philosophy. And
philosophy in those days, of course, encompassed science and the
general study of the natural world. He thought that was a better use
of his time at that point. And so he had had enough of business.

Dr. Blaine McCormick, a professor of business at Baylor University,
has distilled and updated Franklins prolific writings into 12 rules of
management including:
   * Finish better than your beginnings.
   * All education is self-education.
   * Seek first to manage yourself, then to manage others.
   * Influence is more important than victory.
   * Work hard and watch your costs.
   * Everybody wants to appear reasonable.
   * Create your own set of values to guide your actions.
   * Incentive is everything.
   * Create solutions for seemingly impossible problems.
   * Sometimes its better to do 1,001 small things right than only one
  large thing right.
   * Deliberately cultivate your reputation and legacy.

These rules are explained in greater detail in the book Ben Franklins
12 Rules of Management: The Founding Father of American Business
Solves Your Toughest Business Problems.

In recent months, several new books about Franklin have been published
giving the impression that he the clear favorite of the Founding
Fathers. There are several reasons for this. His long life, open mind
and extensive writings have left a wealth of material for us to study
covering many topics still facing us today, often from different
perspectives. For accountants, however, in the wake of scandals and
increased scrutiny, his best advice may be: Think of these things,
whence you came, where you are going, and to whom you must account.
   _________________________________________________________________

'Benjamin Franklin': The Reluctant Revolutionary 
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/books/review/20DUNNLT.html
By SUSAN DUNN 
_________________________________________________________________

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN By Edmund S. Morgan. Illustrated. 339 pp. New Haven: 
Yale University Press. $24.95. 
_________________________________________________________________

"I love Company, Chat, a Laugh, a Glass, and even a Song, as well as 
ever,'' Benjamin Franklin wrote when he was in his 50's. He delighted in 
others and wanted to be liked by them. ''I never saw a man who was, in 
every respect, so perfectly agreeable to me,'' an English friend said 
about him, adding that ''some are amiable in one view, some in another, he 
in all.'' But Franklin was more than a magnetic extrovert: he channeled 
his sociability and extraordinary curiosity about the natural world and 
its inhabitants into decades of energetic commitment to his Philadelphia 
community and his revolutionary nation.

In this engaging and readable book, Edmund S. Morgan, the Sterling 
professor of history emeritus at Yale and the author of ''Inventing the 
People'' and ''American Slavery, American Freedom,'' among other works, 
does more than recount the colorful and gripping story of Franklin's long, 
action- and idea-filled life; he also skillfully dissects the man's 
personality and mind, his social self and political beliefs, deftly 
exploring in ''Benjamin Franklin'' how the two halves of his being lived 
together, not always in harmony.

Franklin had strong convictions, though in public he bowed to the ideas of 
others, diplomatically avoiding confrontation. He was ''the least 
doctrinaire of men,'' Morgan remarks. His recipe for power was to be 
inconspicuous. ''He was not without ambition,'' Morgan writes, ''he was 
simply too shrewd to show it.'' In his missions abroad, he endeavored to 
promote the policies of those he spoke for, keeping his own opinions to 
himself.

And yet, when Franklin represented American interests in England in the 
early 1770's, there was often a disconnect between the moderate, 
conciliatory tack he took and the more aggressive stance of his 
counterparts back home. He was a latecomer, Morgan underscores, to their 
intransigent assertion of American rights, sharing neither their horror at 
British taxation of the colonies nor their appetite for independence. For 
him, the future lay in an Anglo-American empire of equals. As late as 1774 
he was still trying to hold the empire together -- or at least his vision 
of it.

Then, the transformation. Upon his return to America, Franklin swiftly 
became a firebrand. ''He does not hesitate at our boldest measures,'' John 
Adams noted, ''but rather seems to think us too irresolute, and 
backward.'' Even so, if Franklin became a fervent patriot, it was by 
default, because of England's self-defeating, arrogant rejection of 
American rights.

As American minister to France, he brilliantly charmed and maneuvered the 
French into helping to finance -- and win -- the American War of 
Independence, at the cost of emptying their treasury and precipitating 
their own revolution. Still, as Morgan points out, Franklin preferred, to 
the waging of war, the simple, rational idea that territory could be had 
through cash purchase, however high the price. But if a war had to be 
fought, he wanted Americans to fight it themselves, without foreign 
allies.

There was a different kind of disconnect between Franklin's democratic, 
majoritarian political ideas and the checking-and-balancing caution of 
framers like James Madison. At the Constitutional Convention, Franklin 
pushed for a unicameral legislature and a weak executive council with no 
veto power. His proposals were treated, Madison wrote, with great respect 
for their ''author'' rather than for their ''practicability.''

Franklin's political ideas were to the populist left of the mainstream, 
and the Constitution was not entirely his cup of tea. But, understanding 
its critical importance, he accepted it and, in the self-effacing, 
tolerant language of an Enlightenment gentleman and diplomat, urged others 
to do the same. ''The older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own 
judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others,'' he remarked 
as the convention drew to a close. ''Thus I consent, Sir, to this 
Constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that 
it is not the best.'' For Franklin, public service -- and virtue -- meant 
doing what the people wanted, not simply what he wanted, Morgan concludes 
in this illuminating work.

When a man's life was over, Franklin once wrote, it should be said that he 
lived usefully, not that he died rich. Useful -- to others -- Franklin 
was. And rich, too, in the respect of history.

Susan Dunn is the author of ''Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, 
American Light'' and the forthcoming ''Showdown: The Revolution of 1800.''

------------------

'To Begin the World Anew': The Founding Yokels 
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/books/review/16BROOKHT.html

By RICHARD BROOKHISER

If the storms of fashion that have pounded the humanities during the last 
30 years have spared the study of early American history, one of the 
scholars we have most to thank is Bernard Bailyn. Bailyn's 1967 classic, 
''The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,'' kept the eyes of a 
generation of historians on the subjects that early Americans themselves 
eyed so obsessively: the ideas and the politics of a highly intellectual 
and political time. There were battles to be fought and money to be made 
during the American Revolution, and without victory in the first, or the 
lure of the second, the Revolution would never have been won. But the 
thoughts of even soldiers and speculators kept returning to politics, and 
to the ideals that they believed politicians lived to defend, or to 
threaten. Bailyn made the founders comprehensible, and lively -- for their 
ideas still march through our minds.

''To Begin the World Anew,'' a slim and handsome volume, is a collection 
of what Bailyn calls ''sketches'' on issues arising out of his lifework: 
the thought of Thomas Jefferson and the pizazz of Benjamin Franklin; the 
fear that the Constitution provoked in so many Americans when it was first 
presented to them, and the lessons that the rest of the world took from it 
after it had been ratified. The most important sketch is the first, which 
began life as a Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the 
Humanities, and which explains the influence on the founders of the fact 
that they were ''provincials -- marginal, borderland people.'' The best of 
these essays are like after-dinner speeches by a guest of honor who knows 
his subject so well that he can treat it lightly, and who has brought 
excellent slides with him.

The essay on Jefferson is the slightest. Bailyn draws attention to the 
ambiguities in his thought -- his glimpse of ''what a wholly enlightened 
world might be'' versus the compromises he made as a politician and an 
administrator to advance his agenda of the day. Basically, though, the 
essay is hero worship -- Ken Burns, one more time. This will no longer do. 
Jefferson's reputation has been taking on water at an alarming rate, from 
the twin leaks of Sally Hemings and the larger question of slavery. 
Federalist sympathizers, disgusted with his coldness, his cant and his 
many deceptions, may be tempted to view Jefferson's posthumous troubles 
with glee. But if Americans commit parricide on him, they commit suicide. 
Jefferson must be defended by those who love him toughly -- who know him 
well enough to dislike him, but who know themselves well enough to know 
what they owe him.

Bailyn's essay on The Federalist Papers begins with a wonderful line of 
Talleyrand (who had spent two years of exile in the United States, where 
he befriended Alexander Hamilton, one of The Federalist's main authors). 
When a Spanish diplomat admitted that he did not know the book, Talleyrand 
''wasted no sympathy on him: 'Then read it,' he told the envoy curtly, 
'read it.' '' People have been reading it ever since -- quite a tribute to 
a collection of hastily written newspaper essays that were often ''under 
the pen,'' as James Madison, the other main author, wrote, ''whilst the 
printer was putting into type'' the lead paragraphs. Bailyn places The 
Federalist in a four-step process of the Constitution's creation. The 
document was drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787; the state 
ratifying debates, which lasted through July of 1788, supplied the first 
authoritative glosses; the First Congress, which began meeting in the 
spring of 1789, wrote the Bill of Rights and the Judiciary Act; and the 
first term of the Washington administration (1789-93) defined aspects of 
the executive branch like the cabinet and the president's treaty-making 
power.

The Federalist belonged to the blizzard of polemics that accompanied Stage 
2. Most of the polemics came from the anticonstitutional side, and were 
motivated by fear. Some were silly -- what was there, North Carolinians 
asked, to prevent the pope from becoming president? Some were prescient -- 
Brutus,'' a New York writer, thought the power to tax ''will introduce 
itself into every corner of the city and country.'' America had thrown off 
one onerous government; was it saddling itself with another? The 
Federalist tirelessly addressed those fears. Its ultimate answer was a 
modest measure of hope: ''There is a portion of virtue and honor among 
mankind,'' Hamilton wrote, ''which may be a reasonable foundation of 
confidence.''

In a short but surprising essay (surprising to Americans, at any rate), 
Bailyn follows those hopes into the world, where the American example had 
a mixed run. English radicals looked to America as a beacon; French 
radicals toyed with its institutions at the beginning of their revolution, 
before turning onto a more populist path. America's strongest impact was 
on Switzerland and Argentina -- two turbulent countries that profited from 
the idea of federalism. Hamilton's modesty was as well judged as his 
confidence.

In the misleadingly titled ''Realism and Idealism in American Diplomacy,'' 
Bailyn hits top form. The real subject is the protean genius of Benjamin 
Franklin at recreating himself and his image. We meet the shape-shifter in 
his first portrait, painted when he was 40, as a middle-class man. As 
Franklin becomes a famous scientist, he poses with experimental 
paraphernalia. By the time he is 60, he sits beside a bust of Newton, in a 
blue velvet suit with gold trim -- a picture of intellectual and worldly 
success. Ten years later, in 1776, his newborn country sends him as its 
minister to France, where Franklin adopts a new look -- a plain dark suit, 
a cap of marten fur and long straight hair.

The French went wild. Franklin seemed like a 70-year-old child of nature, 
or of Rousseau (Rousseau, Bailyn notes, had worn a similar fur cap in a 
famous portrait). Franklin's face appeared on prints, medallions, busts 
and teacups. The apotheosis came in a 1778 portrait by Joseph Siffred 
Duplessis. Bailyn writes that this face -- hatless now -- is worn, the 
skin pouched, the eyes somewhat puffed and tired.'' Yet it ''radiates 
experience, wisdom, patience, tolerance . . . unconstrained by 
nationality, occupation or rank.'' Franklin had become identified ''with 
humanity itself, its achievements, hopes and possibilities.'' All these 
images were propaganda -- by boosting himself, Franklin boosted the United 
States. But he hit his grandest note when he employed the fewest 
artifices.

How did Americans come to entertain such aspirations? Bailyn's lead essay, 
''Politics and the Creative Imagination,'' takes its framework from an 
essay by the art critic Kenneth Clark entitled ''Provincialism.'' When the 
culture of the metropolis becomes stale, provincials can bring to it, as 
Bailyn gives us Clark's argument, ''the vigor of fresh energies.'' 
Colonial America, Bailyn reminds us, was a small and remote place. Bailyn 
makes the point by comparing the houses of rich Americans -- the Byrds and 
Carters of Virginia, the Van Cortlandts of New York -- with houses in 
England. Blenheim Palace is obviously from a different world, a ducal 
Brasilia. But even the stately homes of the lesser English gentry, which 
resemble their American counterparts in scale, reveal, in their interiors, 
riches of art and ornament that were unknown across the Atlantic. 
Similarly, the English country squires and their ladies painted by 
Gainsborough comport themselves with an assurance that makes the 
farmer-lawyer Roger Sherman of Connecticut, painted by Ralph Earl, look 
''rustic'' and ''clumsy in manner'' -- which indeed Sherman was.

Yet, Bailyn reminds us, Sherman ''was one of the most innovative political 
thinkers of his age.'' Sherman and his fellow rustics were innovative 
because they challenged received opinions, such as Montesquieu's belief 
that republics must be small, or the almost universal belief that dual 
sovereignties -- states within nations -- could not coexist. ''I ask,'' 
Bailyn quotes Oliver Ellsworth, another Connecticut rustic, ''why can they 
not? It is not enough to say they cannot. I wish for some reason.'' The 
answers to their pert questioning included The Federalist, the 
Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Bailyn's picture of feisty provincials raises a doubt. Do we have too much 
money, too many weapons and too many professors to be as intelligent as 
the founding rubes? Has our ''constitutional establishment'' become 
''self-absorbed, self-centered and . . . distant from the ordinary facts 
of life''?

Anxiety about our own decadence is also a very old feature of American 
life. Hold on to that thought. The slob you see may be your savior.

Richard Brookhiser is the author, most recently, of ''America's First 
Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918.''

----------------

The Founding Fathers Were NOT Christians 
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/founders.htm

Excerpts from:

The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians by Steven Morris, in 
Free Inquiry, Fall, 1995 (If you want to complain about this article, 
complain to Steven Morris, who wrote it)

"The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States 
as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to 
depict the founding fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United 
States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and 
Christianity.

This is patently untrue. The early presidents and patriots were generally 
Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but 
rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New 
testaments.

Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering 
spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the war of 
Independence: I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish 
church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, 
by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those 
churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve 
them all." From: The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, pp. 8,9 (Republished 
1984, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY)

George Washington, the first president of the United States, never 
declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any 
of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of 
freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a 
universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an 
army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his 
dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, 
Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a 
clergyman to be in attendance. From: George Washington and Religion by 
Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern 
Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)

John Adams, the country's second president, was drawn to the study of law 
but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he 
found among the lawyers 'noble and gallant achievments" but among the 
clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces". Late in life he 
wrote: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon 
the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, 
if there were no religion in it!"

It was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of 
Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of 
the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian 
Religion." From: The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw, pp. 17 (1976, 
North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC) Quoting a letter by JA to Charles 
Cushing Oct 19, 1756, and John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words, edited 
by James Peabody, p. 403 (1973, Newsweek, New York NY) Quoting letter by 
JA to Jefferson April 19, 1817, and in reference to the treaty, Thomas 
Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 311 (1991, Madison 
Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June, 
1814.

Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of 
Independence, said:"I trust that there is not a young man now living in 
the United States who will not die a Unitarian." He referred to the 
Revelation of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac" and wrote: The 
Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every 
understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of 
Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which 
might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give 
employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and 
pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself 
are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not 
yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious 
reason that nonsense can never be explained." From: Thomas Jefferson, an 
Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 453 (1974, W.W) Norton and Co. Inc. 
New York, NY) Quoting a letter by TJ to Alexander Smyth Jan 17, 1825, and 
Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 246 (1991, 
Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to John Adams, July 5, 
1814.

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme 
being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the 
fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." -- Thomas 
Jefferson (letter to J. Adams April 11,1823)

James Madison, fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not 
religious in any conventional sense. "Religious bondage shackles and 
debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." "During 
almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been 
on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and 
indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, 
superstition, bigotry and persecution." From: The Madisons by Virginia 
Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY) quoting a letter by JM 
to William Bradford April 1, 1774, and James Madison, A Biography in his 
Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY) 
Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by JM, 
June 1785.

Ethan Allen, whose capture of Fort Ticonderoga while commanding the Green 
Mountain Boys helped inspire Congress and the country to pursue the War of 
Independence, said, "That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his 
own words." In the same book, Allen noted that he was generally 
"denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being 
conscious that I am no Christian." When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he 
stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised 
"to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God." Allen refused 
to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of 
Nature, and the laws those "written in the great book of nature." From: 
Religion of the American Enlightenment by G. Adolph Koch, p. 40 (1968, 
Thomas Crowell Co., New York, NY.) quoting preface and p. 352 of Reason, 
the Only Oracle of Man and A Sense of History compiled by American 
Heritage Press Inc., p. 103 (1985, American Heritage Press, Inc., New 
York, NY.)


Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress and the 
Constitutional Convention, said: As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of 
whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his 
Religion...has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most 
of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' 
it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and 
think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an 
opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble." He died a month 
later, and historians consider him, like so many great Americans of his 
time, to be a Deist, not a Christian. From: Benjamin Franklin, A Biography 
in his Own Words, edited by Thomas Fleming, p. 404, (1972, Newsweek, New 
York, NY) quoting letter by BF to Exra Stiles March 9, 1790.
  ______________________________________________________________

The words "In God We Trust" were not consistently on all U.S. currency 
until 1956, during the [1]McCarthy Hysteria.

The Treaty of Tripoli, passed by the U.S. Senate in 1797, read in part: 
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the 
Christian religion." The treaty was written during the Washington 
administration, and sent to the Senate during the Adams administration. It 
was read aloud to the Senate, and each Senator received a printed copy. 
This was the 339th time that a recorded vote was required by the Senate, 
but only the third time a vote was unanimous (the next time was to honor 
George Washington). There is no record of any debate or dissension on the 
treaty. It was reprinted in full in three newspapers - two in 
Philadelphia, one in New York City. There is no record of public outcry or 
complaint in subsequent editions of the papers.
  ______________________________________________________________

[2]Contradictions in the Bible

[3]The Flat Earth

[4]AMERICA- Not A Christian Nation Another site with more quotes of the 
founders

[5]Debunking Fundamentalism

[6]The Nuclear Family Meltdown

[7]Mother Earth on the Chopping Block (The Coming Corporate World 
Government)

[8]Look into the eyes of the advertising demon!

[9]Pat Buchanan: Pit Bull in Wolf's clothing

References

1. http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/mccart.htm 2. 
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tcont.htm 3. 
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tcreat.htm 4. 
http://www.postfun.com/pfp/worbois.html 5. 
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tview.htm 6. 
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tfamly.htm 7. 
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tcorps.htm 8. 
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/telvision.htm 9. 
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/buch.htm

'Benjamin Franklin': The Many-Minded Man New York Times Book Review, 3.7.6 
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/books/review/06ELLIST.html

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: An American Life. By Walter Isaacson. Illustrated. 590 
pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $30.

By JOSEPH J. ELLIS

For reasons that no one has adequately explained, those prominent 
Americans often mythologized and capitalized as Founding Fathers, or 
alternatively demonized as the deadest-whitest-males in American history, 
have surged into vogue over the past decade. John Adams, Alexander 
Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson appeared to be the chief beneficiaries of 
this trend until recently, when Benjamin Franklin moved into contention. 
First H. W. Brands produced a well-received cradle-to-grave life of 
Franklin, then Edmund Morgan came forward with a beguilingly Boswellian 
character study of the great American sage. Now Walter Isaacson joins the 
list with a full-length portrait virtually assured to bring Franklin's 
remarkable career before a sizable readership.

Isaacson wrote this book while serving as managing editor at Time and then 
as head of CNN, both full-time jobs that presumably left little 
opportunity for travels back to the 18th century. But anyone assuming that 
''Benjamin Franklin: An American Life'' is aimed at the coffee table would 
be dead wrong. It is a thoroughly researched, crisply written, 
convincingly argued chronicle that is also studded with little nuggets of 
fresh information. Among the items that were new to me: that Franklin 
investigated ways to make flatulence less odorous, and that Davy Crockett 
went down at the Alamo carrying a copy of Franklin's ''Autobiography'' in 
his jacket.

Instead of Franklin's Boswell, Isaacson comes across as his Edward R. 
Murrow, diligently and often deftly interrogating the man while sifting 
through the veritable mountain of scholarship that has accumulated around 
him over the past two centuries. If anything, Isaacson engages in a bit of 
scholarly overkill at the end, providing a separate conclusion and 
epilogue on Franklin's legacy, a chronology of important dates, brief 
biographies of all the supporting characters in the story, conversion 
tables that provide modern dollar equivalents for British and colonial 
currency, an annotated bibliography and about 50 pages of endnotes. The 
erudition is somewhat conspicuous here, but it is also impressive.

The long arc of Franklin's life (1706-90) presents a major challenge to 
all biographers. As a boy he traded anecdotes with Cotton Mather about 
Puritan theology; as an elder statesman he compared notes with Thomas 
Jefferson on the likely course of the French Revolution. Franklin was also 
ubiquitous, the only person present at all three founding moments of 
American independence: the drafting of the Declaration of Independence; 
the negotiations that produced the Treaty of Paris, which ended the 
Revolutionary War; and the great debate that resulted in the Constitution. 
And beneath his folksy facade, Franklin was a world-class scientist, an 
accomplished prose stylist and a brilliant diplomat. (Think of Jonas Salk, 
Mark Twain and Henry Kissinger all rolled into one.) To top it off, he was 
a man of multiple masks, protean in his personas as well as his talents, 
gliding effortlessly from Poor Richard to promiscuous London bon vivant to 
backwoods Voltaire. Chronologically, intellectually and psychologically, 
he is a stretch.

Isaacson recognizes from the start that the character portrayed in the 
''Autobiography'' is one of Franklin's most artful inventions. He argues 
persuasively that Franklin's sharpest critics, from Max Weber to D. H. 
Lawrence, have directed their fire more at his masks than at the man 
beneath them. Rather than deploy elaborate psychological theories to 
explain Franklin's interior agility, Isaacson prefers an old-fashioned 
kind of explanation -- a narrative account of his career accompanied by 
interpretive assessments at the most salient moments of Franklinesque 
magic. If I read him right, Isaacson thinks it is both futile and 
misguided to search for the core Franklin among the ever-shuffling selves, 
since Franklin's orchestration of his different voices became the central 
feature of his personality.

The earliest chapters cover Franklin's ascent in Philadelphia from a 
penniless adolescent to its leading citizen. Isaacson complicates the 
familiar Horatio Alger theme of the ''Autobiography'' by noticing 
Franklin's early tendency to adopt fictional pseudonyms (for example, 
Silence Dogood) and to present his convictions obliquely in satirical 
fables, giving his public image a flirtatious and forever flickering 
quality. He also lingers over the oddly aloof version of intimacy he 
fashioned with Deborah Read, his semiliterate wife, and his illegitimate 
son, William, whom he would raise but eventually disown. While a famous 
advocate of family values in theory, Franklin was in practice an elusive 
husband and father whose most sustained expressions of affection came late 
in life with his grandchildren.

During the 1750's and 60's Franklin spent the bulk of his time in London 
seeking a royal charter for Pennsylvania to replace the proprietary 
government of the Penn family. Even within the most rarefied chambers of 
the American academy, scholars disagree about this phase of Franklin's 
career, in part because the political context in both Philadelphia and 
London is so tangled, in part because Franklin's allegiance to the British 
Empire does not fit comfortably with his subsequent commitment to 
independence. As Isaacson sees it, Franklin misread the mounting American 
opposition to British rule because he harbored a vision of the empire as a 
trans-Atlantic community of equal partners, an international theater in 
which British glory and his own burgeoning reputation would rise together. 
Though he was destined to become the prototypical American, Franklin came 
to American independence late in the game, and abandoned his identity as a 
Briton reluctantly. Isaacson does not say so explicitly, but he suggests 
that Franklin's dramatic renunciation of his son, who remained a Loyalist, 
had its roots in his agonized struggle with his own political allegiance. 
William, in effect, was the British side of Franklin that had to be 
forsaken.

Isaacson's most impressive chapter, a little tour de force of historical 
synthesis, focuses on Franklin's role during the Paris peace negotiations 
that ended the War of Independence. Again, this is bloody and 
well-trampled ground, littered with the bodies of several generations of 
historians. Isaacson's previous work as a student of American foreign 
policy and biographer of Henry Kissinger serves him well here. He somehow 
manages to sift his way through the diplomatic debris and recover 
Franklin's exquisite sense of the competing objectives among the American, 
British and French delegations, all the while recognizing that John Adams 
and John Jay were correct to insist, against Franklin's instincts, on a 
separate bargain with the British that left the French marooned and 
unrewarded. The most recent French-American diplomatic minuet, it would 
seem, has a long history.

Whatever the source of our current fascination with the founding 
generation, Isaacson's life of Franklin exemplifies the interpretive trend 
that defines the best of the recent biographies: namely, a flair for 
finding flaws within greatness. My sense is that Isaacson's own career as 
an executive within the media world has given him an affinity for 
Franklin's self-conscious manipulation of multiple versions of himself, an 
empathy for Franklin's always enlightened and often playful duplicities. 
For all these reasons, a definitive biography of Franklin is a 
contradiction in terms. Isaacson's intuitive understanding of those terms, 
and his prodigious appetite for research, combine to make this biography a 
prime candidate for the authoritative Franklin of our time.

Joseph J. Ellis is the author of ''Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary 
Generation.''

-----------------

'The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin': A Folksy Aristocrat New York 
Times Book Review, 4.8.8 By BARRY GEWEN

THE AMERICANIZATION OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN By Gordon S. Wood. Illustrated. 
299 pp. The Penguin Press. $25.95.

IT'S Benjamin Franklin's time. Two years ago Edmund S. Morgan gave us a 
fine character sketch with ''Benjamin Franklin.'' Then Walter Isaacson's 
''Benjamin Franklin: An American Life'' planted itself on the New York 
Times best-seller list for a long stay. H. W. Brands has chimed in with 
''The First American,'' a more commodious biography than Isaacson's, if a 
less fluent one. And now we have Gordon S. Wood's engaging book ''The 
Americanization of Benjamin Franklin.''

Wood has some tough acts to follow, but he is no slouch. A skilled writer 
with both Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes to his credit, he possesses as 
profound a grasp of the early days of the Republic as anyone currently 
working. He is the author of two books -- ''The Creation of the American 
Republic, 1776-1787'' and ''The Radicalism of the American Revolution'' -- 
that are essential for understanding the United States from its founding 
down to the present.

This study is not a biography, at least not a conventional one. Wood 
focuses on Franklin's personal development and constructs his narrative 
around various turning points in the life, almost like a bildungsroman. We 
learn the choices Franklin made, the conflicts he had to resolve. This is 
the most dramatic of the recent Franklin books.

One of Wood's major topics is Franklin's reputation, then and now. A 
reader today cannot fail to be astonished by Franklin's remarkable 
modernity. Isaacson calls him ''the founding father who winks at us.'' 
Wood echoes this judgment: ''He seems to be the one we would most like to 
spend an evening with.'' Washington was too solemn, Jefferson too lofty, 
Hamilton too driven, Madison too lawyerly, Adams too difficult, a royal 
pain. With his disdain of powdered wigs and the other formalities of his 
very formal age, Franklin comes across as the most recognizably human of 
them all, a man for our time. His immediacy compresses centuries. He is 
not even Franklin, he's just Ben -- witty, ironic, plain-spoken, shrewd, 
congenial, devious, visionary, lusty, magnanimous, hardheaded, 
manipulative, brilliant Ben.

Not everyone today would enjoy his company, be seduced by this 
consummately seductive man. The politically correct would most likely 
hector him if they could. For Franklin was a slaveholder. It's true he 
turned against slavery, and ardently so, at the very end of his life, but 
he took a long time getting there. He could be a bigot as well. He wrote 
nativist diatribes against the large German population in his own colony 
of Pennsylvania. In 1751 he argued for excluding everyone from 
Pennsylvania except the English; Morgan calls him ''the first spokesman 
for a lily-white America.'' Franklin loved the company of women, but he 
was no feminist. He treated his wife miserably, and he admonished young 
brides to attend to the word ''obey'' in their vows. He worried that 
handouts to the poor would encourage laziness, and he was a fervent 
supporter of a strong military.

An 18th-century Jesse Helms? Modern right-wingers would probably be even 
more uncomfortable with him than left-wingers. Take his religious views. 
Franklin was a deist; God, in his opinion, was a distant presence in the 
affairs of men. He was no churchgoer. He accepted neither the sacredness 
of the Bible nor the divinity of Jesus. His ideas about property rights 
were similarly unorthodox. Beyond basic necessities, he said, all property 
belonged to ''the public, who by their laws have created it.'' Brands 
calls such remarks ''strikingly socialistic.''

What most sets Franklin apart from contemporary conservatives, however, is 
his attitude toward that panoply of issues gathered under the heading of 
''family values.'' As a young man he consorted with ''low women,'' and 
fathered an illegitimate child. In 1745 he wrote a letter to a youthful 
friend -- long suppressed -- offering advice on choosing a lover. (Older 
women, he declared, were preferable to younger ones.) Franklin was always 
an incorrigible flirt. How much actual sex was involved is anybody's 
guess, but one incident stands out among the rest. When he was in his 70's 
and living in Paris, he became enamored of the captivating 33-year-old 
Mme. Anne-Louise Brillon, one of the leading lights of Parisian society. 
Even the puritanical John Adams was enchanted by her. She was no less 
taken with Franklin, and their vivacious correspondence consisted of a 
determined campaign on his part to bed her and her equally stalwart 
resistance, based on the customs of the day and what was proper between a 
widower and a married woman. Their bantering give-and-take, as quoted by 
Brands, constitutes one of the most charming episodes in early American 
history and -- since as far as the historians can tell they never did 
sleep together -- also one of the most poignant.

Moral zealots of his own era -- Adams, for example, and the Lees of 
Virginia -- didn't like him, and our own zealots of both the left and the 
right wouldn't like him now. In these overheated, bipolar times, if a 
decision had to be made about our currency, it's a safe bet that a 
slaveholding lecher would not be gracing our $100 bills. But Franklin was 
a hero of moderation throughout his life, and he is a hero for moderates 
today. He took the world as he found it, accepted people for what they 
were and didn't try to make them over. He had no axes to grind. His code 
of conduct began in sociability, with a firm commitment to the practical. 
Franklin has been criticized for not being a dreamer. He wasn't; he wanted 
to get things done. He was devoted to public service, the public good. 
Thus, the library, fire company, insurance company, hospital and 
university he founded in Philadelphia; thus, the inventions and scientific 
experiments that won him fame on both sides of the Atlantic; and thus, the 
magnificent political and diplomatic achievements. Franklin, as Isaacson 
points out, was the only person to sign the four major documents 
establishing the country: the Declaration of Independence, the treaties 
with France and Britain, and the Constitution. Wood calls him ''the 
greatest diplomat America has ever had.''

So extraordinary was the multifaceted Franklin that it's all too easy to 
sentimentalize him, and here Wood's book can serve as a useful corrective. 
Two themes in particular lend themselves to fuzzy effusiveness. The first 
is that Franklin was some kind of tribune of the masses, the populist 
among the founding fathers. But no less than Thomas Jefferson, Franklin 
believed in the idea of a natural aristocracy, and well understood where 
he was positioned within that hierarchy.

He could interact enjoyably with anyone, commoners as well as kings, yet 
as Morgan observes, he preferred associating with those ''on the same 
wavelength'' -- which meant neither commoners nor kings but Hume, Burke, 
Condorcet, Boswell, Beaumarchais, Adam Smith. He hated the rabble, feared 
mobs. When it came to decision making, he held that wisdom resided with 
the wise. ''The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin'' makes clear just 
how much of an elitist our folksiest founder was.

The other problematic theme concerns Franklin's ''Americanness.'' He seems 
almost a checklist for those national qualities Americans take pride in -- 
and others despise us for. Yet Wood alerts us to be careful in how we 
think about this aspect of his character. For he was the most cosmopolitan 
of the founders, at home anywhere. Twenty-five of the last 33 years of his 
life were spent abroad, and those years were anything but a hardship for 
him. He was wined and dined and celebrated by the Europeans more than he 
ever was by his own countrymen. Soon after arriving in London he was 
complaining about the provinciality and vulgarity of Americans. In Paris 
he was quite simply a superstar, acclaimed as the equal of Voltaire, and 
he gave thought to settling permanently in ''the civilest Nation upon 
Earth.'' These sentiments did not go unnoticed back home, and Franklin 
fell under suspicion of being a foreign agent, first for the British, then 
for the French. When he returned to Philadelphia for the last time in 
1785, it was in part to clear his name.

So what does it mean to speak of his ''Americanization''? What changed him 
from a citizen of the world to a citizen of the United States? As Wood 
shows, these aren't easy questions to answer. But it should be said that 
in one way Franklin never really did change. He turned against England 
because it had become smaller in his mind, oppressive and corrupt, no 
longer the center of civilization that he had come to love. Now it was 
America that seemed to be civilization's future. The Revolution was not a 
conflict over taxation or home rule, not even a dispute over the rights of 
Englishmen. For him it represented something universal, a world-historical 
event, ''a miracle in human affairs.'' That is, Franklin never stopped 
being the urbane cosmopolitan, the ultimate sophisticate. He stayed true 
to himself. But by 1776 he had concluded that the only way to remain a 
citizen of the world was to become an American.

Barry Gewen is an editor at the Book Review.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/books/review/08GEWENL.html

Excerpts from 'The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin' By GORDON S. WOOD

BECOMING A GENTLEMAN

BOSTON BEGINNINGS

Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706 (January 6, 1705, in the 
old-style calendar), of very humble origins, origins that always struck 
Franklin himself as unusually poor. Franklin's father, Josiah, was a 
nonconformist from Northamptonshire who as a young man had immigrated to 
the New World and had become a candle and soap maker, one of the lowliest 
of the artisan crafts. Josiah fathered a total of seventeen children, ten, 
including Benjamin, by his second wife, Abiah Folger, from Nantucket. 
Franklin was number fifteen of these seventeen and the youngest son.

In a hierarchical age that favored the firstborn son, Franklin was, as he 
ruefully recounted in his Autobiography, "the youngest Son of the youngest 
Son for 5 Generations back." In the last year of his life the bitterness 
was still there, undisguised by Franklin's usual irony. In a codicil to 
his will written in 1789 he observed that most people, having received an 
estate from their ancestors, felt obliged to pass on something to their 
posterity. "This obligation," he wrote with some emotion, "does not lie on 
me, who never inherited a shilling from any ancestor or relation."

Because the young Franklin was unusually precocious ("I do not remember 
when I could not read," he recalled), his father initially sent the 
eight-year-old boy to grammar school in preparation for the ministry. But 
his father soon had second thoughts about the expenses involved in a 
college education, and after a year he pulled the boy out of grammar 
school and sent him for another year to an ordinary school that simply 
taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. These two years of formal 
education were all that Franklin was ever to receive. Not that this was 
unusual: most boys had little more than this, and almost all girls had no 
formal schooling at all. Although most of the Revolutionary leaders were 
college graduates-usually being the first in their families to attend 
college-some, including Washington, Robert Morris, Patrick Henry, 
Nathanael Greene, and Thomas Paine, had not much more formal schooling 
than Franklin. Apprenticeship in a trade or skill was still the principal 
means by which most young men prepared for the world.

Franklin's father chose that route of apprenticeship for his son and began 
training Franklin to be a candle and soap maker. But since cutting wicks 
and smelling tallow made Franklin very unhappy, his father finally agreed 
that the printing trade might better suit the boy's "Bookish Inclination." 
Printing, after all, was the most cerebral of the crafts, requiring the 
ability to read, spell, and write. Nevertheless, it still involved heavy 
manual labor and was a grubby, messy, and physically demanding job, 
without much prestige.

In fact, printing had little more respectability than soap and candle 
making. It was in such "wretched Disrepute" that, as one 
eighteenth-century New York printer remarked, no family "of Substance 
would ever put their Sons to such an Art," and, as a consequence, masters 
were "obliged to take of the lowest People" for apprentices. But Franklin 
fit the trade. Not only was young Franklin bookish, but he was also nearly 
six feet tall and strong with broad shoulders-ideally suited for the 
difficult tasks of printing. His father thus placed him under the care of 
an older son, James, who in 1717 had returned from England to set himself 
up as a printer in Boston. When James saw what his erudite youngest 
brother could do with words and type, he signed up the twelve-year-old boy 
to an unusually long apprenticeship of nine years.

That boy, as Franklin later recalled in his Autobiography, was "extremely 
ambitious" to become a "tolerable English Writer." Although literacy was 
relatively high in New England at this time-perhaps 75 percent of males in 
Boston could read and write and the percentage was rapidly growing-books 
were scarce and valuable, and few people read books the way Franklin did. 
He read everything he could get his hands on, including John Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's Progress, Plutarch's Lives, Daniel Defoe's Essay on Projects, 
the "do good" essays of the prominent Boston Puritan divine Cotton Mather, 
and more books of "polemic Divinity" than Franklin wanted to remember. He 
even befriended the apprentices of booksellers in order to gain access to 
more books. One of these apprentices allowed him secretly to borrow his 
master's books to read after work. "Often," Franklin recalled, "I sat up 
in my Room reading the greatest Part of the Night, when the Book was 
borrow'd in the Evening & to be return'd early in the Morning lest it 
should be miss'd or wanted." He tried his hand at writing poetry and other 
things but was discouraged with the poor quality of his attempts. He 
discovered a volume of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's Spectator 
papers and saw in it a tool for self-improvement. He read the papers over 
and over again and copied and recopied them and tried to recapitulate them 
from memory. He turned them into poetry and then back again into prose. He 
took notes on the Spectator essays, jumbled the notes, and then attempted 
to reconstruct the essays in order to understand the way Addison and 
Steele had organized them. All this painstaking effort was designed to 
improve and polish his writing, and it succeeded; "prose Writing" became, 
as Franklin recalled in his Autobiography, "of great Use to me in the 
Course of my Life, and was a principal Means of my Advancement." In fact, 
writing competently was such a rare skill that anyone who could do it well 
immediately acquired importance. All the Founders, including Washington, 
first gained their reputations by something they wrote.

In 1721 Franklin's brother, after being the printer for another person's 
newspaper, decided to establish his own paper, the New England Courant. It 
was only the fourth newspaper in Boston; the first, published in 1690, had 
been closed down by the Massachusetts government after only one issue. The 
second, the Boston News-Letter was founded in 1704; it became the first 
continuously published newspaper not only in Boston but in all of the 
North American colonies. The next Boston paper, begun in 1719 and printed 
by James Franklin for the owner, was the Boston Gazette. These early 
newspapers were small, simple, and bland affairs, two to four pages 
published weekly and containing mostly reprints of old European news, ship 
sailings, and various advertisements, together with notices of deaths, 
political appointments, court actions, fires, piracies, and such matters. 
Although the papers were expensive and numbered only in the hundreds of 
copies, they often passed from hand to hand and could reach beneath the 
topmost ranks of the city's population of twelve thousand, including even 
into the ranks of artisans and other "middling sorts."

These early papers were labeled "published by authority." Remaining on the 
good side of government was not only wise politically, it was wise 
economically. Most colonial printers in the eighteenth century could not 
have survived without government printing contracts of one sort or 
another. Hence most sought to avoid controversy and to remain neutral in 
politics. They tried to exclude from their papers anything that smacked of 
libel or personal abuse. Such material was risky. Much safer were the 
columns of dull but innocuous foreign news that they used to fill their 
papers, much to Franklin's later annoyance. It is hard to know what 
colonial readers made of the first news item printed in the newly created 
South Carolina Gazette of 1732: "We learn from Caminica, that the Cossacks 
continue to make inroads onto polish Ukrania."

James Franklin did not behave as most colonial printers did. When he 
decided to start his own paper, he was definitely not publishing it by 
authority. In fact, the New England Courant began by attacking the Boston 
establishment, in particular the program of inoculating people for 
smallpox that was being promoted by the Puritan ministers Cotton Mather 
and his father. When this inoculation debate died down, the paper turned 
to satirizing other subjects of Boston interest, including pretended 
learning and religious hypocrisy, some of which provoked the Mathers into 
replies. Eager to try his own hand at satire, young Benjamin in 1722 
submitted some essays to his brother's newspaper under the name of Silence 
Dogood, a play on Cotton Mather's Essays to Do Good, the name usually 
given to the minister's Bonifacius, published in 1710. For a 
sixteen-year-old boy to assume the persona of a middle-aged woman was a 
daunting challenge, and young Franklin took "exquisite Pleasure" in 
fooling his brother and others into thinking that only "Men of some 
Character among us for Learning and Ingenuity" could have written the 
newspaper pieces.

These Silence Dogood essays lampooned everything from funeral eulogies to 
"that famous Seminary of Learning," Harvard College. Although Franklin's 
satire was generally and shrewdly genial, there was often a bite to it and 
a good deal of social resentment behind it, especially when it came to his 
making fun of Harvard. Most of the students who attended "this famous 
Place," he wrote, "were little better than Dunces and Blockheads." This 
was not surprising, since the main qualification for entry, he said, was 
having money. Once admitted, the students "learn little more than how to 
carry themselves handsomely, and enter a Room genteely, (which might as 
well be acquire'd at a Dancing-School,) and from whence they return, after 
Abundance of Trouble and Charge, as great Blockheads as ever, only more 
proud and self-conceited." One can already sense an underlying anger in 
this precocious and rebellious teenager, an anger with those who claimed 
an undeserved social superiority that would become an important spur to 
his ambition.

When Franklin's brother found out who the author of the Silence Dogood 
pieces was, he was not happy, "as he thought, probably with reason," that 
all the praise the essays were receiving tended to make the young teenager 
"too vain." Franklin, as he admitted, was probably "too saucy and 
provoking" to his brother, and the two brothers began squabbling. James 
was only nine years older than his youngest brother, but he nonetheless 
"considered himself as my Master & me as his Apprentice." Consequently, as 
master he "expected the same Services from me as he would from another; 
while I thought he demean'd me too much in some he requir'd of me, who 
from a Brother expected more Indulgence."

Since the fraternal relationship did not fit the extreme hierarchical 
relationship of master and apprentice, the situation became impossible, 
especially when James began exercising his master's prerogative of beating 
his apprentice.

Indentured apprentices were under severe contractual obligations in the 
eighteenth century and were part of the large unfree population that 
existed in all the colonies. In essence they belonged to their masters: 
their contracts were inheritable, and they could not marry, play cards or 
gamble, attend taverns, or leave their masters' premises day or night 
without permission. With such restraints it is understandable that 
Franklin was "continually wishing for some Opportunity" to shorten or 
break his apprenticeship.

In 1723 that opportunity came when the Massachusetts government-like all 
governments in that pre-modern age, acutely sensitive to libels and any 
suggestion of disrespect-finally found sufficient grounds to forbid James 
to publish his paper. James sought to evade the restriction by publishing 
the paper under Benjamin's name. But it would not do to have a mere 
apprentice as editor of the paper, and James had to return the old 
indenture of apprenticeship to his brother. Although James drew up a new 
and secret contract for the remainder of the term of apprenticeship, 
Franklin realized his brother would not dare to reveal what he had done, 
and he thus took "Advantage" of the situation "to assert my Freedom."

His situation with his brother had become intolerable, and his own 
standing in the Puritan-dominated community of Boston was little better. 
Since Franklin had become "a little obnoxious to the governing Party" and 
"my indiscreet Disputations about Religion began to make me pointed at 
with Horror by good People, as an Infidel or Atheist," he determined to 
leave Boston. But because he still had some years left of his 
apprenticeship and his father opposed his leaving, he had to leave 
secretly. With a bit of money and a few belongings, the headstrong and 
defiant seventeen-year-old boarded a ship and fled the city, a move that 
was much more common in the mobile eighteenth-century Atlantic world than 
we might imagine. Thus Franklin began the career that would lead him "from 
the Poverty & Obscurity in which I was born & bred, to a State of 
Affluence & some Degree of Reputation in the World."

PHILADELPHIA

Franklin arrived in the Quaker city renowned for its religious freedom in 
1723, hungry, tired, dirty, and bedraggled in his "Working Dress," his 
"Pockets stuffed out with Shirts and Stockings," with only a Dutch dollar 
and copper shilling to his name. He bought three rolls, and "with a Roll 
under each Arm, and eating the other," he wandered around Market, 
Chestnut, and Walnut Streets, and in his own eyes, and the eyes of his 
future wife, Deborah Read, who watched him from her doorway, made "a most 
awkward ridiculous Appearance." He finally stumbled into a Quaker 
meetinghouse on Second Street, and "hearing nothing said," promptly "fell 
fast asleep, and continu'd so till the Meeting broke up, when one was kind 
enough to wake me."


Franklin tells us in his Autobiography that he offers us such a 
"particular"-and unforgettable-description of his "first Entry" into the 
city of Philadelphia so "that you may in your Mind compare such unlikely 
Beginnings with the Figure I have since made there." Although he tried in 
his Autobiography to play down and mock his achievements, Franklin was 
nothing if not proud of his extraordinary rise. He always knew that it was 
the enormous gap between his very obscure beginnings and his later 
worldwide eminence that gave his story its heroic appeal.

Philadelphia in the 1720s numbered about six thousand people, but it was 
growing rapidly and would soon surpass the much older city of Boston. The 
city, and the colony of Pennsylvania, had begun in the late seventeenth 
century as William Penn's "Holy Experiment" for poor persecuted members of 
the Society of Friends. But by the time Franklin arrived, many of the 
Quaker families, such as the Norrises, Shippens, Dickinsons, and 
Pembertons, had prospered, and this emerging Quaker aristocracy had come 
to dominate the mercantile affairs and politics of the colony.

Continues...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/books/chapters/0808-1st-wood.html

Sunday Book Review > 'A Great Improvisation': Our Man in Paris 
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/books/review/03ISAACSO.html 5.4.3

By WALTER ISAACSON

A GREAT IMPROVISATION Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. By Stacy 
Schiff. Illustrated. 489 pp. Henry Holt & Company. $30.

IN 1776, after he had helped edit Thomas Jefferson's draft of the 
Declaration of Independence, the 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin was sent on 
a wartime Atlantic crossing deemed necessary to make that document a 
reality. America had to get France on its side in the Revolution, and, 
even back then, France was a bit of a handful.

Franklin was an ideal choice for the mission, as Stacy Schiff shows in 
this meticulously researched and judicious account of his eight years as a 
diplomatic dazzler and charmer in Paris. ''He happened to do a fine 
imitation of a French courtier,'' she writes, showing her astute feel for 
both Franklin and 18th-century court life at Versailles. ''He knew better 
than to confuse straightforwardness with candor; he was honest, but not 
too honest, which qualifies in France as a failure of imagination.'' What 
made Franklin such a great diplomat was that he could quote Cervantes's 
maxim about honesty being the best policy without trying to apply it in 
the Hall of Mirrors, where a more oblique approach had its advantages. He 
had a ''majestic suppleness'' that was rare, especially in a man of his 
age.

Today's stewards of America's foreign policy could learn much from the 
wily and seductive Franklin. He was as adroit as a Richelieu or Metternich 
at the practice of balance-of-power realism; he wrote memos to the French 
foreign minister Vergennes that showed a fine feel for the national 
interests of France and its Bourbon-pact allies; and he played the French 
off against the English envoys who came secretly suitoring for a 
back-channel truce. But he also wove in the idealism that was to make 
America's worldview exceptional both then and now; he realized that the 
appeal of the values of democracy and an attention to winning hearts and 
minds through public diplomacy would be sources of the new nation's global 
influence as much as its military might.

After a year of playing both seductive and coy, Franklin was able to 
negotiate a set of treaties with France that would, so the signers 
declared, bond the countries in perpetuity. One French participant 
expressed the hope that the Americans ''would not inherit the pretensions 
and the greedy and bold character of their mother country, which had made 
itself detested.'' As a result of the arrangements made by Franklin, the 
French supplied most of America's guns and nearly all of its gunpowder, 
and had almost as many troops at the decisive battle of Yorktown as the 
Americans did.

Schiff scrupulously researches the details of Franklin's mission and 
skillfully spices up the tale with the colorful spies, stock manipulators, 
war profiteers and double-dealers who swarmed around him. Most delightful 
are the British spy Paul Wentworth, so graceful even as he is 
outmaneuvered by Franklin, and the flamboyant playwright and secret agent 
Beaumarchais (''The Barber of Seville'' and ''The Marriage of Figaro''), 
so eager to capitalize on the news of the American victory at Saratoga 
that he was injured when his carriage overturned while speeding with a 
banker from Franklin's home to central Paris. Least delightful is the 
priggish and petulant John Adams, ''a man to whom virtue and unpopularity 
were synonymous'' and whom Schiff merrily tries to knock from the pedestal 
upon which he was placed by [1]David McCullough.

Schiff is somewhat less successful at capturing the sweep and excitement 
of Franklin's diplomatic achievements. She never offers up much of a 
theory of how he enticed the French into an alliance, what role the 
military victory at Saratoga played, how he really felt about the British, 
what games he was playing when he juggled two rival British envoys vying 
to be his interlocutor in the final peace talks or why he agreed with his 
fellow commissioners to negotiate that treaty with Britain behind the 
backs of the French. Nor does Schiff convey the brilliance of his writing 
and the exuberance of his flirtations with his two mistresses. Franklin, 
oddly enough, sometimes comes across as rather distant and lifeless, which 
is a shame.

In her two previous biographical studies -- [2]''V?ra: (Mrs. Vladimir 
Nabokov)'' and ''Saint-Exupery'' -- Schiff displayed her mastery as a 
literary stylist. This time, she occasionally lapses into clich?s (in one 
section Franklin ''dragged his feet'' and then ''led Vergennes down the 
primrose path'' from which position he ''backed them'' -- the Spaniards -- 
''into a corner''), and some of her phrases read as if she wrote them 
first in period French (''Franklin paid a call of which he could not have 
overestimated the symbolic value''). Nevertheless, her research is so 
convincing and her feel for the subject so profound that ''A Great 
Improvisation'' becomes both an enjoyable narrative and the most important 
recent addition to original Franklin scholarship.

When he embarked on his final voyage back home to America after his 
triumphant years in France, Franklin made a short stop in England, at 
Southampton, where he met with his illegitimate and prodigal son, William, 
who had remained loyal to the British crown. There William's own 
illegitimate son, Temple, who had sided with and worked for his 
grandfather Benjamin, tried to effect a reconciliation. Alas, the reunion 
was cold and bitter. It was a vivid reminder of how personality and 
character and emotion and diplomacy can become dramatically interwoven. 
That was one of the great themes of Franklin's life, one of the many that 
resonate today.

Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, is the author of 
''Benjamin Franklin: An American Life'' and ''Kissinger: A Biography.'' He 
is writing a biography of Albert Einstein.

-------------

Charming Paris 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17329-2005Mar31

Reviewed by Isabelle de Courtivron Sunday, April 3, 2005; Page BW04

A GREAT IMPROVISATION: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America

By Stacy Schiff. Henry Holt. 489 pp. $30

At the beginning of his February trip to Europe, President Bush quipped 
that he hoped for a reception similar to the one Benjamin Franklin 
received two centuries earlier, when he "arrived on this continent to 
great acclaim." (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told him he "should 
be a realist.") This was tongue in cheek, of course -- an attempt to 
smooth over the "Punish France!" pronouncements from the heated debate 
over Iraq and subsequent Francophobic actions such as renaming fries and 
dumping Beaujolais. But Bush probably did not realize what price Franklin 
had actually paid for retaining his extraordinary popularity in France and 
for surmounting political and personal obstacles on both sides of the 
Atlantic. The story of the eight and a half years he spent in Paris, 
persuading the French to support the fledgling American army in concrete 
as well as symbolic ways, is the subject of Stacy Schiff's engaging new 
book.

A Great Improvisation has many levels. It is a factual, historical and 
meticulously detailed recounting of the travails, vexations, negotiations, 
complexities and setbacks of the political and diplomatic maneuvers that 
ultimately led France to support the young American cause. It is also an 
enlightening discussion of the vexed and complex beginnings of the 
transatlantic alliance. Finally, it is an entertaining story, bringing 
alive a cast of colorful characters, strange plot twists and bizarre 
anecdotes, which sometimes reads like a movie script replete with 
intrigues, ultimatums, cabals, swindles and vendettas.

In 1776, the 70-year-old Franklin landed in France, sent by a Congress 
that had declared independence without the means to achieve it. The very 
idea of foreign help was unpalatable to some in Congress and considered 
suspect by many even after the court of young Louis XVI had come through. 
But these widely diverging opinions did not deter Franklin from his 
unwavering faith in the American Revolution and his steady conviction that 
every measure should be taken to sustain the new republic and win the war 
against the British. Franklin had the daunting task of advertising 
rebellion in an absolute monarchy; he did so doggedly, all the while 
underplaying what was often a desperate military situation.

When he arrived in France, he was already well known and widely respected 
as a statesman, philosopher and scientist. But what allowed him to succeed 
when all other emissaries charged with the same task had fallen into the 
deep Franco-American political and cultural divide? Schiff attributes it 
in large part to his ability to marshal "a great improvisation." She 
points to Franklin's laissez-faire attitude, his ability to be logical 
without being encumbered by exaggerated honesty, his voluble, genial and 
ruthless approach, and his calculated innocence. He was also a hit with 
the French because he knew how to adapt to the codes of the European 
nobility -- not to mention possessing a heroic and seemingly unlimited 
patience for people's exasperating foibles, French, British and Americans 
alike. Indeed, as thorny as Franklin's encounters with various French 
characters may have been, they seem tame next to his relations with 
members of his own mission and with his compatriots -- from the early 
tension between the original U.S. emissaries to France, William Lee and 
Silas Deane (who fought not only over strategy but over the colors of the 
American army uniforms), all the way to the uncompromising John Adams (who 
considered every laurel bestowed upon Franklin a personal affront).

Marshaling so much original information -- drawn from diplomatic archives, 
family papers, spy reports and the archives of the French foreign service 
-- could have made for a tedious read were it not for Schiff's 
storytelling skills. The author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of 
Vera Nabokov, Schiff introduces us to a cast of unique characters, whom 
she captures in a few vivid and incisive traits. They range from 
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the flamboyant, irrepressible, 
swashbuckling secret agent and playwright who became an important early 
arms dealer; to the recipient of those weapons, the dashing young marquis 
de Lafayette, who sailed to America against the king's order, wracked with 
violent seasickness, speaking not a word of English and leaving behind a 
pregnant wife; to the excitable, stubborn Viscount Stormont, the British 
ambassador to Versailles; and to the chevalier d'Eon, a cross-dressing 
dragoon officer who became a notable supporter of the young republic's 
cause.

Schiff does not forget the ladies with whom Franklin flirted so copiously, 
in person and by correspondence: for instance, the thirtysomething, 
married Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy, who had frail nerves, called him Papa 
and eventually promised to become his wife, but only in the afterlife, or 
Anne-Catherine Helv?tius, the philosopher's widow, a hostess with a 
powerful salon who was at the "center of Franklin's social life" in 
France. They figure prominently in Schiff's narrative, not simply because 
of Franklin's fraught infatuations with several of them but also because, 
in 18th-century French society, their salons were the places where 
important people could meet and network. Completing this tableau are 
members of the somewhat dysfunctional Franklin family: his illegitimate 
son William, a Loyalist leader in London with whom he was on terrible 
terms, and William's own illegitimate son, Temple, who worked for his 
grandfather in Paris and whose taste for Europe left him incapable of 
readapting to America. "For his service abroad," Schiff wryly notes, 
Franklin "wound up with an English son and a French grandson."

Schiff's allusions to the French-American misunderstandings and mutual 
suspicion will regale readers. Some of these lead to hilarious anecdotes; 
for example, Bostonians welcomed the French squadron in 1778 with a dinner 
of cooked green Massachusetts frogs. The French militiamen found American 
coffee undrinkable, the food inedible, the people "overly familiar and 
bizarrely peripatetic" and the women graceless and unshapely; the 
Americans felt that the French talked too fast and all at the same time 
without really saying much, opined on subjects they knew nothing about and 
considered that business consisted primarily of ceremony and pleasure. 
Despite the undeniable impact on U.S.-French relations of two tumultuous 
centuries, A Great Improvisation reminds us that profound cultural 
differences between the two societies have not changed all that much -- 
and thus remain at the root of their conflicting visions of the world. 
Plus ?a change . . . o

Isabelle de Courtivron is Friedlaender Professor of the Humanities at MIT 
and the editor of "Lives in Translation: Bilingual Writers on Identity and 
Creativity."

Forget the Founding Fathers New York Times Book Review, 5.6.5 
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/books/review/05GEWE01.html

By BARRY GEWEN

THE founding fathers were paranoid hypocrites and ungrateful malcontents. 
What was their cherished Declaration of Independence but empty political 
posturing? They groaned about the burden of taxation, but it was the 
English who were shouldering the real burden, paying taxes on everything 
from property to beer, from soap to candles, tobacco, paper, leather and 
beeswax. The notorious tea tax, which had so inflamed the people of 
Massachusetts, was only one-fourth of what the English paid at home; even 
Benjamin Franklin labeled the Boston Tea Party an act of piracy. 
Meanwhile, smugglers, with the full connivance of the colonists, were 
getting rich at the expense of honest tax-paying citizens. The recent 
French and Indian War had doubled Britain's national debt, but the 
Americans, who were the most immediate beneficiaries, were refusing to 
contribute their fair share.

The revolutionaries complained about a lack of representation in 
Parliament, but in this they were no different from the majority of 
Englishmen. What was more, the God-given or nature-given rights they 
claimed for themselves included the right to hold Africans in bondage. 
Edward Gibbon, who knew something about the ups and downs of history, 
opposed the rebels from the House of Commons. Samuel Johnson called them 
''a race of convicts'' who ''ought to be thankful for any thing we allow 
them short of hanging.''

Observed from across the Atlantic, the story of the Revolution looks very 
different from the one every American child grows up with. To see that 
story through British eyes, as Stanley Weintraub's ''Iron Tears: America's 
Battle for Freedom, Britain's Quagmire: 1775-1783'' enables us to do, is 
to see an all-too-familiar tale reinvigorated. Weintraub reminds us that 
justice did not necessarily reside with the rebels, that the past can 
always be viewed from multiple perspectives. And he confronts us with the 
fact that an American triumph was anything but inevitable. History of 
course belongs to the victors. If Britain's generals had been more 
enterprising, if the French had failed to supply vital military and 
financial assistance, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander 
Hamilton and the rest would be known to us not as political and 
philosophical giants but as reckless (and hanged) losers, supporting 
players in a single act of Britain's imperial drama. We would all be 
Canadians now, with lower prescription drug costs and an inordinate 
fondness for winter sports.

But Weintraub's book does more than add a fresh dimension to a tired 
subject. By giving the war a genuinely international flavor, it points the 
way to a new understanding of American history. Instead of looking out at 
the rest of the world from an American perspective, it rises above 
national boundaries to place the past in a global context. This is a 
significant undertaking. At a time when the role of the United States in 
the world has never been more dominant, or more vulnerable, it is 
crucially important for us to see how the United States fits into the 
jigsaw of international relations. Weintraub indicates how American 
history may come to be written in the future.

A globalized history of the United States would be only the latest twist 
in a constantly changing narrative. Broadly speaking, since the end of 
World War II there have been three major schools of American history; each 
reflected and served the mood of the country at a particular time. In the 
1940's and 50's, that mood was triumphal. As Frances FitzGerald explains 
in ''America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the 20th Century,'' the 
United States was routinely presented in those years as ''perfect: the 
greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom and 
technological progress.'' The outside world may have been intruding on the 
slumbering nation through the cold war, the United Nations, NATO and the 
rise of Communist China, but the textbooks' prevailing narrative remained 
resolutely provincial. ''The United States had been a kind of Salvation 
Army to the rest of the world,'' the books taught. ''Throughout history, 
it had done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant and diseased 
countries. . . . American motives were always altruistic.''

The histories of that time, FitzGerald says, were ''seamless,'' a word 
that applied not only to schoolbooks but also to the work of the period's 
most sophisticated scholars and writers, men like Richard Hofstadter and 
Louis Hartz. Reacting against the challenge of totalitarianism, they went 
looking for consensus or, in Hofstadter's phrase, ''the central faith'' of 
America, and they found it in the national commitment to bourgeois 
individualism and egalitarianism. Americans clustered around a democratic, 
capitalist middle. Uniquely among major nations, the United States had 
avoided serious ideological conflict and political extremes; even its 
radicals and dissenters adhered to what Hofstadter called the ''Whiggish 
center'' and Hartz termed ''the liberal tradition.'' Arthur M. Schlesinger 
Jr. wrote about ''the vital center.'' Daniel Bell spoke of ''the end of 
ideology.''

Because they emphasized unity at the expense of division and dissent -- 
Hartz referred to ''the shadow world'' of American social conflict -- 
these consensus historians later were criticized for being conservative 
and complacent. There is some truth to this charge, but only some. As a 
group, they were reformers, even liberal Democrats, but their liberalism 
was pragmatic and incremental. Mindful of the leftist extremism of the 
1930's, they looked upon idealism as something to be distrusted; grand 
visions, they had come to understand, could do grand damage. Taken too 
far, this viewpoint could lead to a defense of the status quo, or at least 
to a preference for the way things were to the way visionaries said they 
could be. Down that road, neoconservatism beckoned. Hofstadter, for one, 
was discomforted by some of his critics, and admitted to having ''serious 
misgivings of my own about what is known as consensus history.'' It had 
never been his purpose, he explained, to deny the very real conflicts that 
existed within the framework he and others were attempting to outline.

Hofstadter acknowledged that his writing ''had its sources in the Marxism 
of the 1930's,'' and an alert reader could detect a residual Marxism, or 
at least an old-fashioned radicalism, in some of his comments in ''The 
American Political Tradition.'' Though the book appeared in the late 
1940's, at the onset of one of the greatest economic booms in American 
history, Hofstadter was still complaining about ''bigness and corporate 
monopoly,'' misguidedly declaring that ''competition and opportunity have 
gone into decline.'' Similarly, in ''The Liberal Tradition in America,'' 
Hartz brilliantly but, it seemed, ruefully, analyzed why socialism had 
failed to take root in the United States.

However much these thinkers had been disappointed by Marxism, they were 
hardly ready to embrace straightforward majoritarian democracy. Indeed, 
with the exception of Henry Adams, there has probably never been a 
historian more suspicious of ''the people'' than Richard Hofstadter. For 
him vox populi conjured up images of racism, xenophobia, paranoia, 
anti-intellectualism. The more congenial Hartz described Americans as 
possessing ''a vast and almost charming innocence of mind''; his hope was 
that the postwar encounter with the rest of the world would awaken his 
countrymen from their sheltered, basically oafish naivete.

But if the consensus historians were not Marxists and not majoritarian 
democrats, what, during the cold war era, could they be? What other choice 
was there? The answer is that they were ironists who stood beyond 
political debate, beyond their own narratives. Hartz urged scholars to get 
''outside the national experience''; ''instead of recapturing our past, we 
have got to transcend it,'' he said. One became an anthropologist of one's 
own society. How better to understand the national character, what made 
America America? Yet the outsider approach had real limitations, as became 
apparent once the tranquil 50's turned into the tumultuous 60's. The 
consensus historian, Hartz wrote, ''finds national weaknesses and he can 
offer no absolute assurance on the basis of the past that they will be 
remedied. He tends to criticize and then shrug his shoulders.'' This 
preference for the descriptive over the prescriptive, with its mix of 
resignation and skepticism, its simultaneous enjoyment and rejection of 
the spectacle of American life, was at bottom ''aesthetic.'' In 
retrospect, one can even begin to see certain links between the consensus 
generation's aesthetic irony and the distancing attitude Susan Sontag 
described in her 1964 essay, ''Notes on Camp.''

In any event, the work of these historians was drastically undermined by 
the upheavals of the 60's and early 70's -- the Kennedy assassination and 
the other political murders, the Vietnam War, the urban riots, the student 
revolts, Watergate and the kulturkampf of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. As 
division and conflict consumed the country, the emphasis on American unity 
seemed misguided. And the ironic stance itself looked irresponsible. The 
times demanded not distance but engagement, not anthropologists but 
activists, not a shrug but a clenched fist. Everyone was being forced to 
make choices, and those choices presented themselves with an almost 
melodramatic starkness, especially on the campuses that were the homes of 
the consensus historians. It was the blacks against the bigots, the doves 
against the hawks, the Beatles against Rodgers and Hammerstein. For 
historians, too, the choice was easy: for the neglected minorities and 
against the dominant dead white males.

As postwar seamlessness faded in the 1960's, a school of multicultural 
historians emerged to take the place of the consensus historians. This 
school has been subjected to a lot of criticism of late, but in fact it 
brought forth a golden age of social history. Blacks, American Indians, 
immigrants, women and gays had been ignored in the national narrative, or, 
more precisely, treated as passive objects rather than active subjects. 
The Civil War may have been fought over slavery, but the slaves were 
rarely heard from. Who knew anything about the Indians at Custer's Last 
Stand? The immigrants' story was told not through their own cultures but 
through their assimilation into the mainstream. But now, the neglected and 
powerless were gaining their authentic voices.

New studies increased our knowledge, enlarging and transforming the 
picture of America, even when the multiculturalists worked in very 
restricted areas. Judith A. Carney's ''Black Rice: The African Origins of 
Rice Cultivation in the Americas,'' for example, describes how the South 
Carolina rice industry was built not only on slave labor but on the 
agricultural and technological knowledge brought over by the Africans. The 
book has not found many readers outside the academy, but it nonetheless 
changes our understanding of the black contribution to American life.

At its best, multiculturalism illuminated the niches and byways of 
American history. It investigated smaller and smaller subjects in greater 
and greater detail: gays in the military during World War II, black 
laundresses in the postbellum South. But this specialization created a 
problem of its own. In 1994, when the Journal of American History asked 
historians about the state of their profession, they bemoaned its 
''narrowness,'' its ''divorce from the public.'' The editor of the journal 
wrote that ''dazzling people with the unfamiliar and erudite'' had become 
''more highly prized than telling a good story or distilling wisdom.''

Yet what story, exactly, did the multiculturalists want to tell? Could all 
those detailed local and ethnic studies be synthesized into a grand 
narrative? Unfortunately, the answer was yes. There was a unifying vision, 
but it was simplistic. Since the victims and losers were good, it followed 
that the winners were bad. From the point of view of downtrodden blacks, 
America was racist; from the point of view of oppressed workers, it was 
exploitative; from the point of view of conquered Hispanics and Indians, 
it was imperialistic. There was much to condemn in American history, 
little or nothing to praise. Perhaps it was inevitable that 
multiculturalism curdled into political correctness.

Exhibit A, Howard Zinn's ''People's History of the United States,'' has 
sold more than a million copies. From the start, Zinn declared that his 
perspective was that of the underdog. In ''a world of victims and 
executioners, it is the job of thinking people . . . not to be on the side 
of the executioners.'' Whereas the Europeans who arrived in the New World 
were genocidal predators, the Indians who were already there believed in 
sharing and hospitality (never mind the profound cultural differences that 
existed among them), and raped Africa was a continent overflowing with 
kindness and communalism (never mind the profound cultural differences 
that existed there). American history was a story of cruel domination by 
the wealthy and privileged. The founding fathers ''created the most 
effective system of national control devised in modern times,'' Zinn 
stated. The Civil War was a conflict of elites, and World War II was 
fought not to stop fascism but to extend America's empire. The United 
States and the Soviet Union both sought to control their oppressed 
populations, ''each country with its own techniques.'' The Vietnam War was 
a clash between organized modern technology and organized human beings, 
''and the human beings won.'' We have traveled a long way from the 
sophisticated ironies of the consensus historians.

A reaction against distortions and exaggerations of this kind was sure to 
come. Battered by political correctness, basking in Reaganesque optimism 
and victory in the cold war, the country in the 1980's and 90's was ready 
for a reaffirmation of its fundamental values. After all, democracy was 
spreading around the world and history itself (treated as a conflict of 
ideologies) was declared at an end. One of the first historians to take 
heart from the cold war's conclusion and to see the value of re-examining 
the formative years of the republic was the early-American scholar Joseph 
J. Ellis. In ''Founding Brothers'' he wrote: ''all alternative forms of 
political organization appear to be fighting a futile rearguard action 
against the liberal institutions and ideas first established in the United 
States.''

Ellis was a major figure in the new school of founding fathers historians 
that emerged in the 1990's. But as an academic, he was exceptional. Most 
were amateur and freelance historians, since the universities had become 
hostile to the kind of ''great man'' history they were interested in 
doing. A National Review editor, Richard Brookhiser, taking Plutarch as 
his model, explained that his goal was to write ''moral biography,'' a 
phrase unlikely to endear him to postmodernist academics; in rapid 
succession he produced brief, deft studies of Washington, Hamilton and the 
Adams family. Ellis, the biographer of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and 
George Washington, saw himself engaged in retro battle against his own 
profession, and observed that his work was ''a polite argument against the 
scholarly grain, based on a set of presumptions that are so disarmingly 
old-fashioned that they might begin to seem novel in the current 
climate.'' George Washington, Ellis joked, was ''the deadest, whitest male 
in American history.''

But if the academy was hostile to these books, the larger world was not. 
The volumes by Brookhiser and Ellis, not to mention works by David 
McCullough, Ron Chernow and Walter Isaacson, were widely praised. Some won 
National Book Awards and Pulitzer Prizes. And in sharp contrast to the 
restricted monographs of the multiculturalists, they sold by the 
truckload. Here was genuinely popular history, written with a public 
purpose and designed to capture a large audience. Ellis's ''Founding 
Brothers'' was a best seller in hardback for almost a year, and a best 
seller in paperback for more than a year. Isaacson's ''Benjamin Franklin'' 
spent 26 weeks on the best-seller list; McCullough's ''John Adams'' 
entered the list at No.1, staying there for 13 weeks, rivaling for a while 
the popularity of novels by the likes of John Grisham and Danielle Steel. 
Chernow's ''Alexander Hamilton'' and Ellis's ''His Excellency: George 
Washington'' both made the best-seller list last year.

And yet there are reasons to believe the popularity of the school is 
peaking. For one thing, it is running out of founding fathers. The only 
major figure still awaiting his Chernow or McCullough is the thoughtful 
but unexciting James Madison. No doubt the principal author of the 
Constitution will have his day, but the founding fathers school is facing 
the choice of reaching down into the second ranks, or going over ground 
already covered by others. Brookhiser's most recent biography was of the 
less-than-great Gouverneur Morris, whom he teasingly describes as ''the 
rake who wrote the Constitution.'' Meanwhile, another formidable biography 
of Adams has just come out, and Benjamin Franklin has been turned into an 
industry unto himself, the subject of an apparently endless flood of 
books. There's always room for different interpretations, but the bigger 
picture is in the process of being lost. A school that arose in reaction 
to the excesses of the multiculturalists has started feeding on itself.

Most important, however, 9/11 has changed the way Americans relate to 
their past. The war on terror, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the 
apparently insoluble problem of nuclear proliferation and the ominous but 
real potential for a ''clash of civilizations'' -- all these are 
compelling us to view history in a new way, to shed the America-centered 
perspective of the founding fathers school and look at the American past 
as a single stream in a larger global current. Stanley Weintraub will 
never equal the best of the founding fathers authors in the felicity of 
his prose, and ''Iron Tears'' is unlikely to reach far beyond the 
campuses. But by embedding the American Revolution in British history, by 
internationalizing it, his book speaks more directly to the needs of our 
time than do biographies of Adams and Hamilton.

Weintraub is hardly alone. Another book that gains immediacy by giving a 
global spin to an old subject is Alonzo L. Hamby's ''For the Survival of 
Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s.'' The New 
Deal is as overdiscussed as the Revolution, yet by internationalizing it, 
Hamby is able to raise provocative, revealing questions, even disturbing 
ones. The Great Depression, he points out, was a crisis that ''begged for 
international solutions.'' The Western governments, however, pursued 
beggar-thy-neighbor policies, including protective tariffs and competitive 
currency devaluations, that ''frequently made things worse.'' And the 
United States, he says, was the worst offender of all, ''the most 
isolationist of the major world powers.'' Roosevelt was an economic 
nationalist who mistakenly treated his country as a self-contained unit, 
even actively sabotaging the feeble efforts at international cooperation. 
Whatever economic successes he had domestically -- and Hamby, following 
other recent historians, shows that those successes were modest indeed -- 
his actions contributed to the nation-against-nation, Hobbesian atmosphere 
of the world arena. Hamby does not go so far as to blame Roosevelt for 
Hitler's growing strength in the mid-1930's, but it would not be difficult 
to take his argument in that direction. Roosevelt was an ''impressive'' 
figure, Hamby writes. But from a global perspective, the New Deal record 
was ''hardly impressive.''

AS if to signal to historians the kind of reassessment that needs to be 
done, the National Endowment for the Humanities will sponsor a four-week 
institute at the Library of Congress later this month on ''Rethinking 
America in Global Perspective.'' And one group of professional historians 
has already begun submerging the United States within a broader identity. 
The growing field of ''Atlantic history,'' connecting Europe, Africa and 
the Americas through economics, demography and politics, has become a 
recognized academic specialty, taught not only in the United States but 
also in Britain and Germany. It is generating books, conferences, prizes 
and, of course, a Web site. No less a figure than the eminent Harvard 
historian Bernard Bailyn has devoted his most recent book to this ''very 
large subject'' that is ''now coming into focus.'' Bailyn writes that 
Atlantic history is ''peculiarly relevant for understanding the present.''

It may be that for general readers trying to understand the present (as 
opposed to scholars), Atlantic history goes too far in dissolving the 
United States into a blurry, ill-defined transoceanic entity -- the might 
and power of the nation are not about to disappear, nor is the threat 
posed by its enemies. But because the post-9/11 globalization of American 
history is really just now taking shape, there is sufficient flexibility 
at the moment to accommodate a wide range of approaches. Three recent 
books, for example, offer starkly contrasting visions of America's past 
and, correspondingly, of its present world role. They are of varying 
quality but in their different approaches, they point to the kind of 
intellectual debates we can expect in the future from historians who speak 
to our current condition.

In ''A Patriot's History of the United States,'' Larry Schweikart, a 
professor of history at the University of Dayton, and Michael Allen, a 
professor of history at the University of Washington, Tacoma, 
self-consciously return to 50's triumphalism, though with a very different 
purpose from that of the consensus historians. Not interested in irony or 
in standing outside of history, they are full-blooded participants, 
self-assured and robust moralists, who argue that the United States is a 
uniquely virtuous country, with a global mission to spread American values 
around the world. ''An honest evaluation of the history of the United 
States,'' they declare, ''must begin and end with the recognition that, 
compared to any other nation, America's past is a bright and shining 
light. America was, and is, the city on the hill, the fountain of hope, 
the beacon of liberty.'' Theirs is a frankly nationalistic -- often 
blatantly partisan -- text in which the United States is presented as 
having a duty to lead while other countries, apparently, have an 
obligation to follow. ''In the end,'' they write, ''the rest of the world 
will probably both grimly acknowledge and grudgingly admit that, to 
paraphrase the song, God has 'shed His grace on thee.' '' This is a point 
of view with few adherents in the academy these days (let alone in other 
nations), but it's surely one that enjoys warm support among many 
red-state conservatives, and in the halls of the White House.

Critics of the Bush administration will find more to agree with in the 
perspective of '' 'A Problem from Hell': America and the Age of 
Genocide,'' Samantha Power's Pulitzer Prize-winning history of 
20th-century mass murder. Unlike Schweikart and Allen, she does not see 
virtue inhering, almost divinely, in American history. Instead, she judges 
that history against a larger moral backdrop, asking how the country has 
responded to the most dire of international crimes, genocide. The record 
is hardly inspiring. Power reveals that throughout the 20th century, 
whenever genocide occurred, whether the victims were Armenians, Jews, 
Cambodians, Kurds or Tutsis, the American government stood by and did 
nothing. Worse, in some instances, it sided with the murderers. '' 'A 
Problem from Hell' '' exhorts Americans to learn from their history of 
failure and dereliction, and to live up to their professed values; we have 
''a duty to act.'' Whereas Schweikart and Allen believe American history 
shows that the United States is already an idealistic agent in world 
affairs, Power contends that our history shows it is not -- but that it 
should become one.

A third book, Margaret MacMillan's ''Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed 
the World,'' is in effect an answer to Schweikart, Allen and Power -- an 
object lesson in the ways American idealism can go wrong. MacMillan's 
focus is on Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I. A visionary, an 
evangelist, an inspiration, an earth-shaker, a holy fool, Wilson went to 
Paris in 1919 with grand ambitions: to hammer out a peace settlement and 
confront a wretched world with virtue, to reconfigure international 
relations and reform mankind itself. Freedom and democracy were ''American 
principles,'' he proclaimed. ''And they are also the principles and 
policies of forward-looking men and women everywhere, of every modern 
nation, of every enlightened community. They are the principles of mankind 
and they must prevail.'' Other leaders were less sure. David Lloyd George, 
the British prime minister, liked Wilson's sincerity and 
straightforwardness, but also found him obstinate and vain. France's prime 
minister, the acerbic and unsentimental Georges Clemenceau, said that 
talking to him was ''something like talking to Jesus Christ.'' (He didn't 
mean that as a compliment.)

As a committed American democrat, Wilson affirmed his belief in the 
principle of self-determination for all peoples, but in Paris his 
convictions collided with reality. Eastern Europe was ''an ethnic 
jumble,'' the Middle East a ''myriad of tribes,'' with peoples and 
animosities so intermingled they could never be untangled into coherent 
polities. In the Balkans, leaders were all for self-determination, except 
when it applied to others. The conflicting parties couldn't even agree on 
basic facts, making neutral mediation impossible. Ultimately, the 
unbending Wilson compromised -- on Germany, China, Africa and the South 
Pacific. He yielded to the force majeure of Turks and Italians. In the 
end, he left behind him a volcano of dashed expectations and festering 
resentments. MacMillan's book is a detailed and painful record of his 
failure, and of how we continue to live with his troublesome legacy in the 
Balkans, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Yet the idealists -- nationalists and internationalists alike -- do not 
lack for responses. Wilsonianism, they might point out, has not been 
discredited. It always arises from its own ashes; it has even become the 
guiding philosophy of the present administration. Give George W. Bush key 
passages from Wilson's speeches to read, and few would recognize that 
almost a century had passed. Nor should this surprise us. For while the 
skeptics can provide realism, they can't provide hope. As MacMillan says, 
the Treaty of Versailles, particularly the League of Nations, was ''a bet 
placed on the future.'' Who, looking back over the rubble, would have 
wanted to bet on the past?

Little has changed in our new century. Without the dreams of the 
idealists, all that is on offer is more of the same -- more hatred, more 
bloodshed, more war, and eventually, now, nuclear war. Anti-Wilsonian 
skeptics tend to be pessimistic about the wisdom of embarking on moral 
crusades but, paradoxically, it is the idealists, the hopeful ones, who, 
in fact, should be painting in Stygian black. They are the ones who should 
be reminding us that for most of the world, history is not the benign 
story of inexorable progress Americans like to believe in. Rather, it's a 
record of unjustified suffering, irreparable loss, tragedy without 
catharsis. It's a gorgon: stare at it too long and it turns you to stone.

Fifty years ago, Louis Hartz expressed the hope that the cold war would 
bring an end to American provincialism, that international responsibility 
would lead to ''a new level of consciousness.'' It hasn't happened. In the 
1950's, two wide oceans and a nuclear stockpile allowed Americans to 
continue living blithely in their imagined city on a hill, and the student 
revolts of the 60's and 70's, if anything, fed the notion that the rest of 
the world was ''out there.'' ''Bring the troops home'' was the protesters' 
idea of a foreign policy.

But the disaster of 9/11 proved that the oceans do not protect us and that 
our nuclear arsenal, no matter how imposing, will not save our cities from 
terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. Today, there is no 
retreating into the provincialism and innocence of the past. And because 
withdrawal is not an option, the work of the globalizing American 
historians possesses an urgency unknown to scholars of previous 
generations. The major lesson the new historians must teach is that there 
is no longer any safe haven from history's horror story. Looking forward 
is unnerving, but looking backward is worse. The United States has no 
choice. Like it or not, it is obliged to take a leading role in an 
international arena that is unpredictable and dangerous, hopeful perhaps, 
but also potentially catastrophic.

Barry Gewen is an editor at the Book Review.

Benjamin Franklin c/o Time Warp Mail Service Bob's Blog - 
WhitakerOnline.org ? 7/30/05 Insider Letter 
http://whyjohnny.com/blog/?p=639

Dear Mr. Franklin,

You are facing extremely serious legal problems.

1) Your invention of bifocal lens.

You have no qualifications whatsoever in the fields of optometry or 
ophthalmology. You are ordered to cease and desist from the use or 
discussion of this product.

Lawsuits have been lodged against you by people whose bifocals have broken 
and gashed their skins. Others say that they confuse the eyes and cause 
double vision.

2) Your invention of the stove

Your Franklin Stove has caused serious injury to a very large number of 
people. Children playing have bumped into it and been burned by it. You 
have no Federally-approve set of directions for its use, so you are 
personally responsible for every accident that occurs in using your 
product.

3) Your discovery of the Gulf Stream

As with optometry in the case of your invention of bifocals, you are 
practicing meteorology with no degree or other qualifications in the 
subject.

While no one has yet been able to formulate an actual lawsuit against you 
on this subject, you have made a laughing-stock of yourself by going 
outside the field of printing, where you do have some actual credentials.

You are in deep trouble in other areas.

Your comments about Quakers, Indians and other minority groups were 
definitely Hate Speech.

You are charged with manslaughter and armed robbery in aiding and abetting 
in the robbery of America from the Native Americans.

Other charges are pending.

Yours Indignantly,

The Association of Experts, Lawyers, Professors and Other Authorities in 
the Year 2005

Knowing a Man (Ben Franklin), but Not Melons 
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/arts/design/19fran.html [Click the URL 
to view the graphic.]

Exhibitions Review By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 14 -There was something insufferable about Benjamin 
Franklin, and many of his contemporaries knew it. John Adams wrote, "Had 
he been an ordinary man, I should never have taken the trouble to expose 
the turpitude of his intrigues, or to vindicate my reputation against his 
vilifications and calumnies."

"Dr. Franklin's Profile," by Red Grooms, is on view in Philadelphia. 
"Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World" is at the National 
Constitution Center in Philadelphia through April 30 and then travels to 
St. Louis, Houston, Denver, Atlanta and finally, in December 2007, to 
Paris. "Benjamin Franklin: In His Own Words" is at the Southwest Gallery 
of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in Washington 
through June 17.

Franklin could change positions when they seemed unpopular, compromise on 
principles and turn statecraft into a matter of personality. When he 
achieved any post of power, he stuffed relatives into remunerative 
positions while proclaiming that public servants should expect no payment 
at all.

In other contexts, Franklin's treatment of family could have made Poor 
Richard blush through his almanack: He began a three-generation tradition 
of siring illegitimate children; he made sure to spend 15 of the last 17 
years of his marriage away from his wife in foreign lands, making no 
effort to see her in her final years; to his children and heirs he was 
capable of stunning callousness mixed with bouts of devotion.

Nor was his later reputation sterling among literary figures. Melville 
referred to Franklin's "primeval orientalness." Mark Twain, only partly in 
jest, accused him of "animosity toward boys" with his pert maxims about 
propriety. D. H. Lawrence, who could have been Franklin in a fun-house 
mirror, called him a "dry, moral, utilitarian little democrat."

No, Franklin, the middle-class materialist and moralist, has not had an 
easy time of it, particularly during much of the 20th century when he was 
often considered annoyingly bourgeois. It is even difficult to clearly 
define his contribution to the founding of the United States. Unlike 
Jefferson, he was not a devotee of high principle and a practitioner of 
high prose. Unlike Washington, he could not have led an army through 
adversity or channeled a fledgling country through birth pangs. Unlike 
Madison or even Hamilton, he was no theoretician.

But none of this really matters compared with what Franklin did achieve. 
Nor can it dampen the celebratory impact of an exciting new exhibition 
about Franklin's life and achievements at the National Constitution Center 
in Philadelphia, or slight the imposing sobriety of the 10 display cases 
stocked with Franklin documents at the Library of Congress in Washington.

On Jan. 17, the 300th anniversary of Franklin's birth will be celebrated, 
notably in Philadelphia, which he was instrumental in establishing as a 
modern city by helping to found its major institutions: America's first 
nonsectarian college (ancestor to the University of Pennsylvania), its 
first public hospital, its first subscription library and its first 
property-insurance company. He will also be celebrated for his exploration 
of electricity (saving cities with his invention of the lightning rod); 
for slyly courting the French during the Revolutionary War (yielding a 
treaty that helped turn the tide against the British); and for spurring a 
stalled Constitutional Convention toward compromise and a bicameral 
legislature.

In fact, the difficulty we find in placing Franklin or in defining him is 
inseparable from the complexity of his achievements. In the last five 
years he has been the subject of at least four biographies - a gracefully 
intelligent survey by Walter Isaacson, a forceful and meticulous 
re-creation of his French years by Stacy Schiff, major scholarly books by 
H. W. Brands and Edmund S. Morgan. Franklin emerges in these 
reconstructions as a founder of not only American institutions but of an 
idea of America itself.

Like Whitman, he contained multitudes. And in his refusal to devote 
himself to a single dominating theory, in his skepticism about sweeping 
universals, in his devotion to compromise, in his forthright embrace of 
material prosperity, in his belief in community organization, and in his 
distinctive mixture of cynicism and idealism about humanity, he shaped a 
pragmatic temperament that can still be associated with the country he 
helped create.

If Franklin were to mount a museum exhibition about himself, it might very 
well resemble - in its variety, intelligence and pleasures - "Benjamin 
Franklin: In Search of a Better World"; the curator of this Philadelphia 
show is Page Talbott, a specialist in decorative and fine arts. It 
contains more than 250 artifacts, ranging from one of Jefferson's drafts 
of the Declaration of Independence (his originally held truths to be 
"sacred and undeniable"; Franklin transformed them into truths held to be 
"self-evident") to Franklin's fossilized mastodon tooth (found near the 
ruins of his Market Street home) to important paintings portraying the 
senior statesman.

Almost no aspect of Franklin's enterprise is left untouched: printer (the 
only surviving copy of Franklin's first Poor Richard's Almanack from 
1733), civic leader (a suggestion box from the subscription library), 
scientist (a modern version of his electrical apparatus, producing sparks 
by turning a handle), diplomat (including a life-size diorama of Franklin 
facing British parliamentary accusations of fomenting American rebellion), 
inventor (of bifocals, for instance, or the glass armonica, in which 
spinning bowls dampened by water created ethereal sounds that inspired 
compositions by Mozart and Beethoven). And scattered throughout the 
exhibition are usable replicas of an armchair Franklin invented; slight 
pressure on a foot pedal waves a fan above one's head.

In creating such a show, Franklin might have also done as this one does, 
and elide the shadows of his life and temperament, leaving behind only 
slight hints. "Did Franklin himself listen to Poor Richard's advice?" the 
exhibition asks about Franklin's proverbs. "Sometimes. Sometimes not."

There is also a tendency here at times to seek a kind of sensation that 
Franklin would have looked askance at, simply because it adds so little to 
understanding. One example is a giant model of a tree veined with colored 
fibers meant to symbolize Franklin's Junto Society, made up of 12 citizens 
who met weekly for debate and civic planning. Press a button next to each 
member's name and the tree's fibers light up, leading to hanging signs 
displaying the Philadelphia institutions that that member helped 
establish.

But one walks through the 8,000 square feet of this exhibition astonished 
at the fecundity of Franklin's imagination and the range of his 
inventions. Something is reproduced, too, of his practical and playful 
spirit. Visitors will be challenged to flip numbers on a giant magic 
square to make all rows add to 15 - the kind of puzzle that Franklin 
turned into a specialty. And just as Franklin was remarkably attentive to 
younger children (though he tended to become almost cavalier about their 
needs as they aged), the displays aimed at the younger set are whimsical 
without a hint of condescension. ("Men and melons" is the first half of a 
maxim displayed in a participatory exhibit about Poor Richard; visitors 
try to match the second half: "stink in three days," "are hard to know" or 
"should not go barefoot."

Missing in this chronological survey, though, is the kind of complication 
that accompanies darker shadows. We learn, for example, that Franklin's 
initial support of the British Stamp Act in 1765 led to serious problems 
with his American reputation, and we learn too that he hoped for some sort 
of reconciliation with the British Empire when many of his compatriots had 
already committed to independence.

But it is at the Library of Congress that visitors can see one of the bald 
propaganda exercises Franklin used to rescue his reputation when he 
returned to Philadelphia from England in 1775: a furious letter to a 
British friend ("You are now my enemy") that he never sent, but just 
showed around town. (The Washington exhibition also shows the handwritten 
"personal liturgy" that Franklin wrote for himself at the age of 22 as a 
substitute for attending church.

There could be more explanation in the Philadelphia show, too, of what was 
at stake when Franklin spent eight years in France as a representative of 
the Continental Congress, and of how difficult his task was - persuading 
the Continent's most tradition-bound court that this creditless assemblage 
of colonies should be taken seriously, while also persuading 
representatives of the colonies that the court in Paris could not simply 
be arm-wrestled into a treaty. Franklin used a chess metaphor, echoed in 
the Philadelphia exhibition, to explain his actions, but we don't really 
learn enough of the moves to understand.

Toward the end, this extraordinary exhibition almost peters out into 
generalities and gimmicky display. A real exploration of Franklin's impact 
would have meant showing just how controversial a character he had become, 
partly because of his long tenure in France; even the newly formed United 
States Senate (as one of its number reported) refused to wear "crape on 
their arms for a Month" as the House did after Franklin's death in 1790.

"Upon the whole," Franklin wrote in 1771, "I am much disposed to like the 
World as I find it, and to doubt my own Judgment as to what would mend 
it." That made him a pragmatist and a compromiser, a nonutopian, a man 
with bifocals. But what could he hope for? "The greatest Political 
Structure Human Wisdom ever yet erected." That made him a visionary. He is 
celebrated for being both.

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 17 18:48:29 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:48:29 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge Annual Question 2002: What Is Your Question? ...
	Why?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601171335100.13365@panix3.panix.com>

Edge Annual Question 2002: What Is Your Question? ... Why?
http://www.edge.org/q2002/question.02_print.html [links omitted]

"I can repeat the question, but am I bright enought to ask it?"
________________________________________________________________

The 5th Annual Edge Question reflects the spirit of the Edge motto:
"To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most
complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have
them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves."

The 2002 Edge Question is:

"WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION? ... WHY?"

I have asked Edge contributors for "hard-edge" questions, derived from
empirical results or experience specific to their expertise, that
render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefine who and what
we are. The goal is a series of interrogatives in which "thinking
smart prevails over the anaesthesiology of wisdom."

Happy New Year!

John Brockman
Publisher & Editor
[1.14.02] 
________________________________________________________________

Responses (in order received): Kevin Kelly o Paul Davies o Stuart A.
Kauffman o Alison Gopnik o John Horgan o Daniel C. Dennett o Derrick
De Kerkhove o Clifford A. Pickover o John McCarthy o Douglas Rushkoff
o William Calvin o Timothy Taylor o Marc D. Hauser o Roger Schank o
James J. O'Donnell o Robert Aunger o Lawrence Krauss o Jaron Lanier o
Freeman Dyson o Lance Knobel o Robert Sapolsky o Mark Stahlman o Andy
Clark o Sylvia Paull o Todd Feinberg, MD o Nicholas Humphrey o
Terrence Sejnowski o Howard Lee Morgan o Judith Rich Harris o Martin
Rees o Paul Bloom o Margaret Wertheim o George Dyson o Todd Siler o
Chris Anderson o Gerd Stern o Alan Alda o Henry Warwick o Delta Willis
o John Skoyles o Paul Davies o Piet Hut o Julian Barbour o Antony
Valentini o Stephen Grossberg o Rodney Brooks o Karl Sabbagh o David
G. Myers o John D. Barrow o Milford H. Wolpoff o Richard Dawkins o
David Deutsch o Joel Garreau o Gregory Benford o Eduardo Punset o Gary
F. Marcus o Steve Grand o Seth Lloyd o John Markoff o Michael Shermer
o Jordan B. Pollack o Steven R. Quartz o David Gelernter o Samuel
Barondes o Steven Pinker o Frank Schirrmacher o Leon Lederman o Howard
Gardner o Esther Dyson o Keith Devlin o Richard Nisbett o Stephen
Schneider o Robert Provine o Sir John Maddox o Carlo Rovelli o Tor
N?rretranders o David Buss o John Allen Paulos o Dan Sperber o W.
Daniel Hillis o Brian Eno o Anton Zeilinger o Eberhard Zangger o Mark
Hurst o Stuart Pimm o James Gilligan o Brian Greene o Rafael N??ez o
J. Doyne Farmer o Ray Kurzweil o Randolph Nesse o Adrian Scott o Tracy
Quan o Xeni Jardin o Stanislas Dehaene o Paul Ewald o George Lakoff o
David Berreby o Jared Diamond
________________________________________________________________

New Vordenker der "Dritten Kultur": Fragen f?r das Jahr 2002: "Wer
Nicht Fragt, Bleibt Dumm"
THOSE WHO DON'T ASK REMAIN DUMB
The haze of ignorance still has not disappeared: Whoever wants real
answers has to know what he's looking for -- A poll of scientists and
artists for the year 2002.

In a time when culture was still not numbered, the Count of Th?ringen
invited his nobles to the "Singers' War at the Wartburg," where he
asked questions (if we are to believe Richard Wagner) that would bring
glory, the most famous of which queried, "Could you explain to me the
nature of love?" The publisher and literary agent, John Brockman, who
now organizes singers' wars on the Internet, enjoys latching on to
this tradition at the beginning of every year. (FAZ, January 9, 2001).
His Tannh?user may be named Steven Pinker, and his Wolfram von
Eschenbach may go by Richard Dawkins, but it would do us well to trust
that they and their compatriots could also turn out speculation on the
count's favorite theme. Brockman's thinkers of the "Third Culture,"
whether they, like Dawkins, study evolutionary biology at Oxford or,
like Alan Alda, portray scientists on Broadway, know no taboos.
Everything is permitted, and nothing is excluded from this
intellectual game. But in the end, as it takes place in its own
Wartburg, reached electronically at www.edge.org, it concerns us and
our unexplained and evidently inexplicable fate. In this new year
Brockman himself doesn't ask, but rather once again facilitates the
asking of questions. The contributions can be found from today onwards
on the Internet. In conjunction with the start of the forum we are
printing a selection of questions and commentary, at times in somewhat
abridged form, in German translation. .... [click here]

F.A.Z. --Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14.01.2002, Nr. 11 / Seite 38
________________________________________________________________

99 contributors
59,000 words
In order received
________________________________________________________________

"What is your heresy?"
I've noticed that the more scientifically educated a person is, the
more likely they will harbor a quiet heresy. This is a strongly held
belief that goes against the grain of their peers, something not in
the accepted cannon of their friends and colleagues. Often the person
finds it difficult to fully justify their own belief. It may or may
not be believed by others outside their circle, that doesn't matter.
What is important is that this view is not held by people they respect
and admire. It's become almost a game for me to uncover a person's
heresy because I've found that this unconventional view -- held with
much effort against the tide of their peer's views -- tells me more
about them than does the bulk of their well-thought out,
well-reasoned, and well argued conventional views. The more unexpected
   the belief is, the more I like them.

Kevin Kelly is Editor-At-Large for Wired Magazine and author of New
  Rules for the New Economy.
________________________________________________________________

"Universe or multiverse, that is the question?"
Of late, it is fashionable among leading physicists and cosmologists
to suppose that alongside the physical world we see lies a stupendous
array of alternative realities, some resembling our universe, others
very different. The multiverse theory comes in several varieties, but
in the most ambitious the "other universes" have different physical
laws. Only in a tiny fraction of universes will the laws come out just
right, by pure accident, for conscious beings such as ourselves to
emerge and marvel at how bio-friendly their world appears.

The multiverse has replaced God as an explanation for the appearance
of design in the structure of the physical world. Like God, the agency
concerned lies beyond direct observation, inferred by inductive
reasoning from the properties of the one universe we do see.

The meta-question is, does the existence of these other universes
amount to more than an intellectual exercise? Can we ever discover
that the hypothesized alternative universes are really there? If not,
is the multiverse not simply theology dressed up in techno jargon? And
finally, could there be a Third Way, in which the ingenious features
of the universe are explained neither by an Infinite Designer Mind,
nor by an Infinite Invisible Multiverse, but by an entirely new
principle of explanation.

Paul Davies, a physicist, writer and broadcaster, now based in South
Australia, is author of How to Build a Time Machine.
________________________________________________________________

"What must a physical system be to be able to act on its own behalf?"
In or ordinary life, we ascribe action and doing to other humans, and
lower organisms, even bacteria swimming up a glucose gradient to get
food. Yet physics has no "doings" only happenings, and the bacterium
is just a physical system. I have struggled with the question "What
must a physical system be to be able to act on its own behalf?" Call
such a system an autonomous agent. I may have found an answer, such
systems must be able to replicate and do a thermodynamic work cycle.
But of course I'm not sure of my answer. I am sure the question is of
fundamental importance, for all free living organisms are autonomous
agents, and with them, doing, not just happenings, enters the
universe. We do manipulate the universe on our own behalf. Is there a
better definition of autonomous agents? And what does their existence
mean for science, particularly physics?

Stuart A. Kauffman, an emeritus professor of biochemistry at UPenn, is
a theoretical biologist and author of Investigations.
________________________________________________________________

"Why do we ask questions?" 
We all take for granted the fact that human beings ask questions and
seek explanations, and that the questions they ask go far beyond their
immediate practical concerns. But this insatiable human curiosity is
actually quite puzzling. No other animal devotes as much time, energy
and brain area to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Why? Is
this drive for explanation restricted to the sophisticated
professional questioners on this site? Or is it a deeper part of human
nature?

Developmental research suggests that this drive for explanation is, in
fact, in place very early in human life. We've all experienced the
endless "whys?" of three-year-olds and the downright dangerous
two-year-old determination to seek out strange new worlds and boldly
go where no toddler has gone before. More careful analyses and
experiments show that children's questions and explorations are
strategically designed, in quite clever ways, to get the right kind of
answers. In the case of human beings, evolution seems to have
discovered that it's cost-effective to support basic research, instead
of just funding directed applications. Human children are equipped
with extremely powerful learning mechanisms, and a strong intrinsic
drive to seek explanations. Moreover, they come with a support staff,
-- parents and other caregivers -- who provide both lunch and
references to the results of previous generations of human
researchers.

But this preliminary answer prompts yet more questions. Why is it that
in adult life, the same quest for explanatory truth so often seems to
be satisfied by the falsehoods of superstition and religion? (Maybe we
should think of these institutions as the cognitive equivalent of fast
food. Fast food gives us the satisfying tastes of fat and sugar that
were once evolutionary markers of good food sources, without the
nourishment. Religion gives us the illusion of regularity and order,
evolutionary markers of truth, without the substance.)

Why does this intrinsic truth-seeking drive seem to vanish so
dramatically when children get to school? And, most important, how is
it possible for children to get the right answers to so many questions
so quickly? What are the mechanisms that allow human children to be
the best learners in the known universe? Answering this question would
not only tell us something crucial about human nature, it might give
us new technologies that would allow even dumb adults to get better
answers to our own questions.

Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology at the University of
California at Berkeley and coauthor of The Scientist In The Crib.
________________________________________________________________

"Do we want the God machine?"
The God machine is the name that journalists have given to a device
invented by the Canadian psychologist Michael Persinger. It consists
of a bunch of solenoids that, when strapped around the head, deliver
pulses of electromagnetic radiation to specific regions of the brain.
Persinger claims he can induce mystical visions by stimulating the
temporal lobes, which have also been linked to religious experiences
by other scientists, notably V.S. Ramachandran of the University of
California at San Diego.

Persinger's machine is actually quite crude. It induces peculiar
perceptual distortions but no classic mystical experiences. But what
if, through further advances in neuroscience and other fields,
scientists invent a God machine that actually works, that delivers
satori, nirvana, to anyone on command, without any negative side
effects? It doesn't have to be an electromagnetic brain-stimulating
device. It could be a drug, a type of brain surgery, a genetic
modification, or some combination thereof.

One psychedelic researcher recently suggested to me that enlightenment
could be spread around the world by an infectious virus that boosts
the brain's production of dimethyltryptamine, a endogenous psychedelic
that the Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod of the National Institutes of
Health detected in trace amounts in human brain tissue in 1972. But
whatever form the God machine takes, it would be powerful enough to
transform the world into what Robert Thurman, an authority on Tibetan
Buddhism (and father of Uma), calls the "Buddhaverse," a mystical
utopia in which everyone is enlightened.

The obvious followup question: Would the invention of a genuine God
machine spell our salvation or doom?

John Horgan is a freelance writer and author of The Undiscovered Mind.
________________________________________________________________

"What kind of system of 'coding' of semantic information does the
brain use?"
My question now is actually a version of the question I was asking
myself in the first year, and I must confess that I've had very little
time to address it properly in the intervening years, since I've been
preoccupied with other, more tractable issues. I've been mulling it
over in the back of my mind, though, and I do hope to return to it in
earnest in 2002.

What kind of system of "coding" of semantic information does the brain
use? We have many tantalizing clues but no established model that
comes close to exhibiting the molar behavior that is apparently being
seen in the brain. In particular, we see plenty of evidence of a
degree of semantic localization -- neural assemblies over here are
involved in cognition about faces and neural assemblies over there are
involved in cognition about tools or artifacts, etc -- and yet we also
have evidence (unless we are misinterpreting it) that shows the
importance of "spreading activation," in which neighboring regions are
somehow enlisted to assist with currently active cognitive projects.
But how could a region that specializes in, say, faces contribute at
all to a task involving, say, food, or transportation or . . . . ? Do
neurons have two (or more) modes of operation -- specialized, "home
territory" mode, in which their topic plays a key role, and
generalized, "helping hand" mode, in which they work on other regions'
topics?

Alternatively, is the semantic specialization we have observed an
illusion -- are these regions only circumstantially implicated in
these characteristic topics because of some as-yet-unanalyzed
generalized but idiosyncratic competence that happens to be invoked
usually when those topics are at issue? (The mathematician's phone
rings whenever the topic is budgets, but he knows nothing about money;
he's just good at arithmetic.) Or, to consider another alternative, is
"spreading activation" mainly just noisy leakage, playing no
contributing role in the transformation of content? Or is it just
"political" support, contributing no content but helping to keep
competing projects suppressed for awhile? And finally, the properly
philosophical question: what's wrong with these questions and what
would better questions be?

Daniel C. Dennett is Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor at
Tufts University and author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
________________________________________________________________

"'To be or not to be' remains the question"
The fact is that is "To be or not to be" is both a simple, perhaps the
simplest, and a complex question, the hardest to sustain, let alone to
ask. I ask it myself often -- maybe as many times as five or six a
week -- and it is the asking, not any hope for an answer, that yields
the most searing and immediate insight. I don't get it right every
time, but when I do, I am thrown for a split second at the other side
of being, the place where it begins.

But I can never retain that amazing feeling for long. What is required
is a kind of radical pull-back of oneself from the most banal evidence
of life and reality. Jean-Paul Sartre, after Shakespeare, was probably
the thinker who framed the question best in his novels and
philosophical treatises. The issue, however, is that this question is
profoundly existential, not merely philosophical. It can be asked and
should be by any living, thinking, sentient being, but cannot be
answered.
There is huge energy and cognitive release to expect from it when it
is properly framed. You have to somehow imagine that everything,
absolutely everything has disappeared, or never was, that you have
just happened upon your own circumstances by accident, the first
accident of being. Another approach is to imagine sharply that
anything that is, is a result of a warp, a blip in nothingness. It is
not even a matter of finding out why or how, those demands are already
far too elaborate. It is a crude, raw, brutal question followed by
absolute, lightening speed amazement. And then the ordinary
familiarity of all things known and named takes over, slipping your
whole being into the stream of life, of being, with its attending
problems and felicities. I feel strongly that there is a fundamental
need for Shakespeare's question in every day life, but that is not
what you and I were taught in school.

Derrick de Kerckhove is Director of the McLuhan Program at the
University of Toronto and author of Connected Intelligence.
________________________________________________________________

"Would you choose universe Omega or Upsilon?"
Consider two universes. Universe Omega is a universe in which God does
not exist, but the inhabitants of the universe believe God exists.
Universe Upsilon is a universe in which God does exist, but no
inhabitant believes God exists. In which universe would you prefer to
live? In which universe do you think most people would prefer to live?
I recently posed this question to scientists, philosophers, and lay
people. Some respondents suggested that if people think God exists,
then God is sufficiently "real." A few individuals suggested that
people would behave more humanely in a Universe where people believed
in God. Yet others countered that an ethical system dependent on faith
in a watchful, omniscient, or vengeful God is fragile and prone to
collapse when doubt begins to undermine faith. A fuller listing of
responses is in the book.
To me, the biggest challenge to answering this question is
understanding what is meant by "God." Scientists sometimes think of
God as the God of mathematical and physical laws and the underpinnings
of the universe. Other people believe in a God who intervenes in our
affairs, turns water into wine, answers prayers, and smites the
wicked. The Koran implies that God lives outside of time, and, thus,
our brains are not up to the task of understanding Him. Some
theologians have suggested that only especially sensitive individuals
can glimpse God, but us ordinary folk shouldn't deny His existence in
the same way that a blind man shouldn't deny the existence of a
rainbow. In modern times, many scientists ponder the amazing panoply
of chemical and physical constants that control the expansion of the
universe and seem tuned to permit the formation of stars and the
synthesis of carbon-based life.
Questions about God's omniscience are particularly mind-numbing, yet
we can still ask if it is rational to believe in an omniscient God. As
Steven J. Brams points out in his book Superior Beings, "The
rationality of theistic belief is separate from its truth -- a belief
need not be true or even verifiable to be rational." However, if we
posit the existence of an omniscient God, His omniscience may require
him to know the history of all quarks in the universe, the states of
all electrons, the vibrations of every string, and the ripples of the
quantum foam. Is this the same God, who in Exodus 21 gave Moses laws
describing when one should stone an ox to death? Is the God of Gluons
and Galaxies the same God concerned with Israeli oxen dung?
But what about the Bible itself? Today, the Bible -- especially the
Old Testament -- may serve as an alternate reality device. It gives
its readers a glimpse of other ways of thinking and of other worlds.
It is also the most mysterious book ever written. We don't know the
ratio of myth to history. We don't know all the authors. We are not
always sure of the intended message. We don't fully understand the Old
Testament's Nephilim or its Bridegroom of Blood. We only know that
that the Bible reflects some of humankind's most ancient and deep
feelings. For some unknown reason, it is a bell that has resonated
through the centuries. It lets us reach across cultures, see visions,
and better understand what we have held sacred. Because the Bible is a
hammer that shatters the ice of our unconscious, it thus provides one
of many mechanisms in our quest for transcendence.

Clifford A. Pickover is a researcher at IBM's T. J. Watson Research
Center and author of The Paradox of God and the Science of
Omniscience.
________________________________________________________________

"How are behaviors encoded in DNA?"
Many animals have have quite substantial hereditary behavior.
Moreover, these behaviors are subject to evolution on fairly short
time scales, so they probably have straightforward DNA encodings on
which mutations can act. Mostly the behaviors seem to be sequences of
actions, but perhaps there are some of the form "do X until Y is
true".

John McCarthy is Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University.
________________________________________________________________

"Why do we tell stories?"
Why a story?
Human beings can't help but understand their world in terms of
narratives. Although the theory of evolution effectively dismantled
our creationist myths over a century ago, most thinking humans still
harbor an attachment to the notion that we were put here, with
purpose, by something. New understandings of emergence, as well as new
tools for perceiving the order underlying chaos, seem to the hold the
promise for a widescale liberation from the constructed myths we use
to organize our experience, as well as the dangers that
over-dependence on such narratives bring forth. At least I hope so.

At the very least, narratives are less dangerous when we are free to
participate in their writing. I'll venture that it is qualitatively
better for human beings to take an active role in the unfolding of our
collective story than it is to adhere blindly to the testament of our
ancestors or authorities.

But what of moving out of the narrative altogether? Is it even
possible? Is our predisposition for narrative physiological,
psychological, or cultural?

Is it an outmoded form of cognition that yields only bloody clashes
when competing myths are eventually mistaken for irreconcilable
realities? Or are stories the only way we have of interpreting our
world -- meaning that the forging of a collective set of mutually
tolerant narratives is the only route to a global civilization?

Douglas Rushkoff is a Professor of Media Culture at New York
University's Interactive Telecommu-nications Program and author of
Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say.
________________________________________________________________

"Eureka: What makes coherence so important to us?"
When something is missing, it bothers us that things don't hang
together. Consider: "Give him." In any language, that is a bothersome
sentence. Something essential is missing, and it rings an alarm bell
in our brains. We go in search of an implied "what" and try to guess
what will make the words all hang together into a complete thought.
We ask questions in search of satisfying incompletes, again hoping to
create some coherence. No other animal does such things. It even forms
the basis of many of our recreations such as jigsaw and crossword
puzzles, all those little eurekas along the way.
Guessing a hidden pattern fascinates us. It's part of our pleasure in
complex ritual or listening to Bach, to be able to guess what comes
next some of the time. It's boring when it is completely predictable,
however; it's the search for how things all hang together that is so
much fun. Of course, we make a lot of mistakes. Every other winter, I
get fooled into thinking that a radio has been left on, somewhere in
the house, and I go in search of it -- only to realize that it was
just the wind whistling around the house. My brain tried to make
coherence out of chaos by trying out familiar word patterns on it.
Astrology, too, seems to make lots of things "all hang together."
Often in science, we commit such initial errors but we are now fairly
systematic about discovering and discarding them. We go on to find
much better explanations for how things hang together. Finding
coherence is one of our great pleasures. It would be nice to know what
predisposes our brain to seek out hidden coherence.
For one thing, it might help illuminate the power of an idea -- and
with it, how fanaticism works.
Fundamentalist schemes that seem to make everything hang together can
easily override civilization's prohibitions against murder. Inferring
an enveloping coherence can create an "other" who is outside the
bounds of "us." Because it seems so whole, so right, it may become
okay to beat up on unbelievers -- say, fans of an opposing football
team, or of another religion.
For scientists and crossword fans, it's finding the coherence that is
important. Then we move on. But many people, especially in the
generation which follows its inventors, get trapped by a seemingly
coherent worldview. Things get set in concrete; the coherent framework
provides comfort, but it also creates dangerous us-and-them
boundaries.

William Calvin is a theoretical neurobiologist at the University of
Washington and author of How Brains Think.
________________________________________________________________

"Is morality relative or absolute?"
Humans spread out from a common origin into many different global
environments. It was a triumph of our unique adaptability, for we
display the broadest range of behaviours -- nutritional, social,
sexual and reproductive - of any animal. We also have classes of
behaviour -- religious, scientific, artistic, gendered, and
philosophical, each underpinned by special languages -- that animals
lack. Paradoxically, success also came through conformity.
Prehistorians track archaeological cultures by recognizing the
physical symbolic codes (art styles, burial rites, settlement layouts)
that channelled local routines. Each culture constrained diversity and
could punish it with ostracism and death. Isolation bred idiosyncracy,
and there was a shock when we began regional reintegration. Early
empires created state religions which, although sometimes refracting
species-wide instincts for a common-good, tended to elevate chosen
peoples and their traditional ways.
Now we can monitor all of our cultures there is a need to adjudicate
on conduct at a global level. But my question is not understood in the
same way by everyone. To fundamentalists, it is heretical, because
morality is God-given. Social theorists, on the other hand, often
interpret absolute morality as imperialist --no more than local ethics
metastasized by (for example) the United Nations. But appeals to
protect cultural diversity are typically advanced without regard to
the reality of individual suffering in particular communities. A third
position, shared by many atheistic scientists and traditional
Marxists, is based on ideas of utility, happiness and material truth:
what is right is understood as being what is good for the species. But
no one agrees on what this is, or how competing claims for access to
it should be settled.

The 'ethics of care', first developed within feminist philosophy,
moves beyond these positions. Instead of connecting morals either to
religious rules and principles or reductive natural laws, it values
shared human capacities, such as intimacy, sympathy, trust, fidelity,
and compassion. Such an ethics might elide the distinction between
relative and absolute by promoting species-wide common sense. Before
we judge the prospect of my question vanishing as either optimistic or
na?ve, we must scrutinize the alternatives carefully.

Timothy Taylor is an archaeologist at University of Bradford, UK, and
author of The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual
Culture.
________________________________________________________________

"How will the sciences of the mind constrain our theories and policies
of education?"
In several recent meetings that I have attended, I have been
overwhelmed by the rift between what the sciences of mind, brain and
behavior have uncovered over the past decade, and both how and what
science educators teach.
In many arenas, educators hold on to a now dated view of the child's
cognitive development, failing to appreciate the innate biases that
our species has been equipped with. These biases constrain not only
what the child can learn, but when it might most profitably learn such
things. Take, for instance, the acquisition of mathematical knowledge.
Educators aim for the acquisition of precise computations. There is
now, however, evidence for an innately available approximate number
system, one that operates spontaneously without education.

One might imagine that if educators attempted to push this system
first -- teaching children that 40 is a better answer to 25 + 12 than
is 60 -- that it might well facilitate the acquisition of the more
precise system later in development. Similar issues arise in
attempting to teach children about physics and biology. At some level,
then, there must be a way for those in the trenches to work together
with those in the ivory tower to advance the process of learning,
building on what we have discovered from the sciences of the mind.

Marc D. Hauser is an evolutionary psychologist, a professor at Harvard
University and author of Wild Minds: What AnimalsThink. 
________________________________________________________________

"What does it mean to have an educated mind in the 21st century?"

While education is on every politician's agenda as an item of serious
importance, it is astonishing that the notion of what it means to be
educated never seems to come up. Our society, which is undergoing
massive transformations almost on a daily basis never seems to
transform its notion of what it means to be educated. We all seem to
agree that an educated mind certainly entails knowing literature and
poetry, appreciating history and social issues, being able to deal
with matters of economics, being versatile in more than one language,
understanding scientific principles and the basics of mathematics.

What I was doing in my last sentence was detailing the high school
curriculum set down in 1892 by a committee chaired by the President of
Harvard that was mandated for anyone who might want to enter a
university. The curriculum they decided upon has not changed at all
since then. Our implicit notions of an educated mind are the same as
they were in the nineteenth century. No need to teach anything new, no
need to reconsider how a world where a university education was
offered solely to the elite might be different from a world in which a
university degree is commonplace.

For a few years, in the early 90's, I was on the Board of Editors of
the Encyclopedia Britannica. Most everyone else on the board were
octogenarians -- the foremost of these, since he seemed to have
everyone's great respect, was Clifton Fadiman, a literary icon of the
40's. When I tried to explain to this board the technological changes
that were about to come that would threaten the very existence of the
Encyclopedia, there was a general belief that technology would not
really matter much. There would always be a need for the encyclopedia
and the job of the board would always be to determine what knowledge
was the most important to have. Only Clifton Fadiman seemed to realize
that my predictions about the internet might have some effect on the
institution they guarded. He concluded sadly, saying: "I guess we will
just have to accept the fact that minds less well educated than our
own will soon be in charge."

Note that he didn't say "differently educated," but "less well
educated." For some years the literati have held sway over the
commonly accepted definition of education. No matter how important
science and technology seem to industry or government or indeed to the
daily life of the people, as a society we believe that those educated
in literature and history and other humanities are in some way better
informed, more knowing, and somehow more worthy of the descriptor
"well educated."

Now if this were an issue confined to those who run the elite
universities and prep schools or those whose bible is the New York
Review of Books, this really wouldn't matter all that much to anybody.
But this nineteenth century conception of the educated mind weighs
heavily on our notions of how we educate our young. We are not
educating our young to work or to live in the nineteenth century, or
at least we ought not be doing so. Yet, when universities graduate
thousands of English and history majors because it can only be because
we imagine that such fields form the basis of the educated mind. When
we choose to teach our high schoolers trigonometry instead of say
basic medicine or business skills, it can only be because we think
that trigonometry is somehow more important to an educated mind or
that education is really not about preparation for the real world.
When we focus on intellectual and scholarly issues in high school as
opposed to more human issues like communications, or basic psychology,
or child raising, we are continuing to rely upon out dated notions of
the educated mind that come from elitist notions of who is to be
educated.

While we argue that an educated mind can reason, but curiously there
are no courses in our schools that teach reasoning. When we say that
an educated mind can see more than one side of an argument we go
against the school system which holds that there are right answers to
be learned and that tests can reveal who knows them and who doesn't.

Now obviously telecommunications is more important than basic
chemistry and HTML is more significant than French in today's world.
These are choices that have to be made, but they never will be made
until our fundamental conception of erudition changes or until we
realize that the schools of today must try to educate the students who
actually attend them as opposed to the students who attended them in
1892.

The 21st century conception of an educated mind is based upon old
notions of erudition and scholarship not germane to this century. The
curriculum of the school system bears no relation to the finished
products we seek. We need to rethink what it means to be educated and
begin to focus on a new conception of the very idea of education.

Roger Schank is Distinguished Career Professor, School of Computer
Science, Carnegie-Mellon University and author of Virtual Learning: A
Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce.
________________________________________________________________

"Do the benefits accruing to humankind (leaving aside questions of
afterlife) from the belief and practice of organized religions
outweigh the costs?"
Given the political sensitivities of the topic, it is hard to imagine
that a suitably rigorous attempt to answer this question could be
organized or its results published and discussed soberly, but it is
striking that there is no serious basis on which to conduct such a
conversation. Religion brings peace and solace to many; religion kills
people, divides societies, diverts energy and resources. How to assess
the net impact in some meaningfully quantitative way? Even to imagine
the possibility of such an inquiry and to think through some of the
categories you would use could be very enlightening.

James J. O'Donnell is Professor of Classical Studies and Vice Provost
at UPenn and author of Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to
Cyberspace. 
________________________________________________________________

"Is technology going to 'wake up' or 'come alive' anytime in the
future?"
Bill Joy, the prominent computer scientist, argued in a Wired article
last year that "the future doesn't need us" because other creatures,
artificial or just post-human, are going to take over the world in the
21st century. He is worried that various technologies -- particularly
robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology -- are soon going to
be capable of generating either a self-conscious machine (something
like the Internet "waking up") or one capable of self-replication
(nanotechnologists inspired by the vision of Eric Drexler are
currently attempting to create a nano-scaled "universal assembler").
If either of these events came to pass, it would surely introduce
major changes in the planetary ecology, and humans would have to find
a new role to play in such a world. But is Joy right? Do we have to
worry about mad scientists producing some invention that inadvertently
renders us second-class citizens to machines in the next couple of
decades? (Joy is so distraught by this prospect he would have everyone
stop working in these areas.)

This is a difficult question to answer, mostly because we don't
currently have a very good idea about how technology evolves, so it's
hard to predict future developments. But I believe that we can get
some way toward an answer by adopting an approach currently being
developed by some of our best evolutionary thinkers, such as John
Maynard Smith, Eors Szathmary, and others. This "major transition"
theory is concerned with determining the conditions under which new
kinds of agents emerge in some evolutionary lineage. Examples of such
transitions occurred when prokaryotes became eukaryotes, or
single-celled organisms became multi cellular. In each case,
previously independent biological agents evolved new methods of
cooperation, with the result that a new level of organization and
agency appeared in the world. This theory hasn't yet been applied to
the evolution of technology, but could help to pinpoint important
issues. In effect, what I want to investigate is whether the futures
that disturb Bill Joy can be appropriately analyzed as major
transitions in the evolution of technology. Given current trends in
science and technology, can we say that a global brain is around the
corner, or that nano-robots are going to conquer the Earth? That, at
least, is my current project.

Robert Aunger is an evolutionary theorist and editor of Darwinizing
Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science. 
________________________________________________________________

"Was there any choice in the creation of the Universe?"

Here I paraphrase Einstein's famous question: "Did God have any choice
in the creation of the Universe". I get rid of the God part, which
Einstein only added to make it seem more whimsical, I am sure, because
that just confuses the issue. The important question, perhaps the most
important question facing physics today is the question of whether
there is only one consistent set of physical laws that allow a working
universe, or rather whether the constants of nature are arbitrary, and
could take any set of values. Namely, if we continue to probe into the
structure of matter and the nature of elementary forces will we find
that mathematical consistency is possible only for one unique theory
of the Universe, or not? In the former case, of course, there is hope
for an exactly predictive "theory of everything". In the latter case,
we might expect that it is natural that our Universe is merely one of
an infinite set of Universes within some grand multiverse, in each of
which the laws of physics differ, and in which anthropic arguments may
govern why we live in the Universe we do.

The goal of physics throughout the ages has been to explain exactly
why the universe is the way it is, but as we push closer and closer to
the ultimate frontier, we may find out that in fact the ultimate laws
of nature may generically produce a universe that is quite different
from the one we live in. This would force a dramatic shift in our
concept of natural law.

Some may suggest that this question is mere philosophical nonsense,
and is akin to asking how many angels may sit on the head of a pin.
However, I think that if we are lucky it may be empirically possible
to address it. If, for example, we do come up with some fundamental
theory that predicts the values of many fundamental quantities
correctly, but that predicts that other mysterious quantities, like
the energy of empty space, is generically different than the value we
measure, or perhaps is determined probabilistically, this will add
strong ammunition to the notion that our universe is not unique, but
arose from an ensemble of causally disconnected parts, each with
randomly varying values of the vacuum energy.

In any case, answerable or not, I think this is the ultimate question
in science.

Lawrence Krauss is Professor of Physics at Case Western Reserve
University and the author of Atom.
________________________________________________________________

"How much can we handle?"

We've got fundamental scientific theories (such as quantum theory and
relativity) that test out superbly, even if we don't quite know how
they all fit into a whole, but we're hung up trying to understand
complicated phenomena, like living things. How much complexity can we
handle?
We ought to be able to use computers to model complicated things, but
we can't as yet write software that's complicated enough to take
advantage of the ever-bigger computers we are learning to build.
Complexity, side effects, legacy. How much can we handle? That's the
question of the new century.
There's a social variant of the same problem:
In the twentieth century we become powerful enough to destroy
ourselves, but we seemed to be able to handle that. Now technology and
information flow have improved to the point that a small number of us
might be able to destroy us all. Can we handle that?
Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and musician, is currently the lead
scientist for the National Tele-Immersion Initiative.
________________________________________________________________

"Why am I me?"
This question was asked by my eight-year-old grandson George. In eight
letters it summarizes the conundrum of personal existence in an
impersonal universe. How does it happen that a couple of liters of
grey matter organizes itself into the unique stream of self-awareness
that calls itself George? If we could answer this question, we would
be on the way toward an understanding of brain structure and function
at a deep level. We would probably have in our hands the key to a more
rational and discriminating treatment of mental illnesses. We might
also have the key to the design of a genuine artificial intelligence.
Every human being must have asked this question in one way or another.
For most of us, the question expresses only a general philosophical
curiosity about our place in the order of nature. But for George the
question has a more specific technical meaning. He has an identical
twin brother Donald, and he understands the distinction between
monozygotic and fraternal twins. He knows that he and Donald not only
have the same genes but also have the same environment and upbringing.
When George asks the question, he is asking how it happens that two
people with identical genes and identical nurture are nevertheless
different. What are the non-genetic and non-environmental processes in
the brain that cause George to be George and cause Donald to be
Donald? If we could answer this question, we would have a powerful new
tool for the investigation of cognitive development. The conventional
wisdom says that mental differences between George and Donald arise
from local randomness of neural connections, undetermined either by
genes or by sensory input. But to say that the connections are random
only means that we do not yet understand how they came about.

Freeman Dyson is professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced
Study and author of The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet.
________________________________________________________________

"Do we want to live in one world, or two?"

One of the great achievements of recent history has been a dramatic
reduction in absolute poverty in the world. In 1820 about 85% of the
world's population lived on the equivalent of a dollar a day
(converted to today's purchasing power). By 1980, that percentage had
dropped to 30%, but it is now down to 20%.

But that still means 1 billion people live in absolute poverty. A
further 2 billion are little better off, living on $2 a day. A quarter
of the world's people never get a cup of clean water.

Part of what globalisation means is that we have a reasonable chance
of assuring that a majority of the world's people will benefit from
continuing economic growth, improvements in health and education, and
the untapped potential of the extraordinary technologies about which
most of the Edge contributors write so eloquently.

We currently lack the political will to make sure that a vast number
of people are not fenced off from this optimistic future. So my
question poses a simple choice. Are we content to have two,
increasingly estranged world? Or do we want to find the path to a
unified, healthy world?

Lance Knobel is Adviser, Prime Minister's Forward Strategy Unit,
London, and the former head of the program of the World Economic
Forums' Annual meeting in Davos.
________________________________________________________________

"What's the neurobiology of doing good and being good?"

I've spent most of my career as a neurobiologist working on an area of
the brain called the hippocampus. It's a fairly useful region -- it
plays a critical role in learning and memory. It's the area that's
damaged in Alzheimer's, in alcoholic dementia, during prolonged
seizures or cardiac arrest. You want to have your hippocampus
functioning properly. So I've spent all these years trying to figure
out why hippocampal neurons die so easily and what you can do about
it. That's fine, might even prove useful some day. But as of late,
it's been striking me that I'm going to be moving in the direction of
studying a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex (PFC).

It's a fascinating part of the brain, the part of the brain that most
defines us as humans. There's endless technical ways to describe what
the PFC does, but as an informal definition that works pretty well,
it's the closest thing we have to a superego. The PFC is what allows
us to become potty trained early on. And it is responsible for
squeezing our psychic sphincters closed as well. It keeps us from
belching loudly at the quiet moment in the wedding ceremony, prevents
us from telling our host just what we really think of the inedible
meal they've served. It keeps us from having our murderous thoughts
turn into murderous acts. And it plays a similar role in the cognitive
realm -- the PFC stops us from falling into solving a problem with an
answer that, while the easier, more reflexive one, is wrong. The PFC
is what makes us do the right thing, even if it's harder.

Not surprisingly, it's one of the last parts of the brain to fully
develop (technical jargon -- to fully myelinate). But what is
surprising is just how long it is before the PFC comes fully on line
-- astonishingly, around age 30. And this is where my question comes
in. It is best framed in the context of young kids, and this is
probably what has prompted me to begin to think about the PFC, as I
have two young children. Kids are wildly "frontally disinhibited," the
term for having a PFC that hasn't quite matured yet into keeping its
foot firmly on the brake. Play hide and seek with a three year old,
loudly, plaintively call, "Where are you," and their lack of frontal
function does them in -- they can't stop themselves from calling out
-- Here I am, under the table -- giving away their hiding spot. I
suspect that there is a direct, near linear correlation between the
number of fully myelinated frontal neurons in a small child's brain
and how many dominoes you can line up in front of him before he must
MUST knock them over.

So my question comes to the forefront in a scenario that came up
frequently for me a few years ago: my then three year old who, while a
wonderful child, was distinctly three, would do something reasonably
appalling to his younger sister -- take some stuffed animal away, grab
some contested food item, whatever. A meltdown then ensues. My wife or
I intervene, strongly reprimanding our son for mistreating his sister.
And then the other parent would say, "Well, is this really fair to be
coming down on him like this?, after all, he has no frontal function
yet, he can't stop himself" (my wife is a neuropsychologist so,
pathetically, we actually speak this way to each other). And the other
would retort -- "Well, how else is he going to develop that frontal
function?"

That's the basic question -- how does the world of empathy, theory of
mind, gratification postponement, Kohlberg stages of moral
development, etc., combine with the world of neurotrophic growth
factors stimulating neurons to grow fancier connections? How do they
produce a PFC that makes you do the harder thing because it's right?
How does this become a life-long pattern of PFC function

Robert Sapolsky is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford
University and author of A Primate's Memoir.
________________________________________________________________

"Is humanity in the midst of a cognitive 'Fourth-Transition?' Or, why
doesn't the Encyclopedia Brittanica matter any more?"

It feels to me like something very important is going on. Clearly our
children aren't quite like us. They don't learn about the world as we
did. They don't storehouse knowledge about the world as we have. They
don't "sense" the world as we do. Could humanity possibly already be
in the middle of a next stage of cognitive transition?

Merlin Donald has done a fine job of summarizing hundreds of inquiries
into the evolution of culture and cognition in his Origins of the
Modern Mind. Here, as in his other work, he posits a series of
"layered" morphological, neurological and external technological
stages in this evolutionary path. What he refers to as the "Third
Transition" (from "Mythic" to "Theoretic" culture), appears to have
begun 2500 (or so) years ago and has now largely completed its march
to "mental" dominance worldwide.

While this last "transition" did not require biological adaptation (or
speciation), it nonetheless changed us -- neurologically and
psycho-culturally. The shift from the "primary orality" of "Mythic
culture" to the literacy and the reliance of what Donald calls an
"External Symbolic Storage" network, has resulted in a new sort of
mind. The "modern" mind.

Could we be "evolving" towards an even newer sort of mind as a result
of our increasing dependence on newer sorts of symbolic networks and
newer environments of technologies?

Literacy (while still taught and used) doesn't have anywhere near the
clout it once had. Indeed, as fanatical "literalism" (aka
"fundamentalism") thrashes its way to any early grave (along with the
decline of the reciprocal fascination of the past 50 years to
"deconstruct" everything as "texts"), how much will humanity care
about and rely upon the encyclopedic storage of knowledge in
alphabetic warehouses?

Perhaps we are already "learning," "knowing" and "sensing" the world
in ways that presage something very different from the "modern" mind.
Should we ask the children?

Mark Stahlman, a venture capitalist who has been focused on next
generation computer/networking platforms, is co-founder the Newmedia
Laboratory, NYNMA.
________________________________________________________________

"What are minds, that they are both essentially mental yet
inextricably intertwined with body (and world)?"

We thought we had this one nailed. Believing (rightly) that the
physical world is all there is, the sciences of the mind re-invented
thought and reason (and feeling) as information-processing events in
the human brain. But this vision turns out to be either incomplete or
fatally flawed. The neat and tidy division between a level of
information processing (software) and of physicality (implementation)
is useful when we deal with humanly engineered systems. We build such
systems, as far as possible, to keep the levels apart. But nature was
not guided by any such neat and tidy design principles. The ways that
evolved creatures solve problems of anticipation, response, reasoning
and perceiving seem to involve endless leakage and interweaving
between motion, action, visceral (gut) response, and somewhat more
detached contemplation. When we solve a jigsaw puzzle, we look, think,
and categorise: but we also view the scene and pieces from new angles,
moving head and body. And we pick pieces up and try them out. Real
on-the-hoof human reason is like that through and through. Even the
use of pen and paper to construct arguments displays the same complex
interweaving of embodied action, perceptual re-encountering, and
neural activity. Mind and body (and world) emerge as messily and
continuously coupled partners in the construction of rational action.

But this leads to a very real problem, an impasse that is currently
the single greatest roadblock in the attempts to construct a mature
science of the mind. We cannot, despite the deep and crucial roles of
body and world, understand the mind in quite the same terms as, say,
an internal combustion engine. Where minds are concerned, it is the
flow of contents (and feelings) that seems to matter. Yet if we
prescind from the body and world, pitching our stories and models at
the level of the information flows, we again lose sight of the
distinctively human mind. We need the information-and-content based
story to see the mind as, precisely, a mind. Yet we cannot do justice
to minds like ours without including body, world (cognitive tools and
other people) and motion in roles which are both genuinely cognitive
yet thoroughly physical.

What we lack is a framework, picture, or model in terms of which to
understand this larger system as the cognitive engine. All current
stories are forced to one side (information flows) or the other
(physical dynamics). Cognitive Science thus stands in a position
similar to that of Physics in the early decades of the 20th century.
What we lack is a kind of 'quantum theory' of the mind: a new
framework that displays mind as mind, yet as body in action too.

Andy Clark is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the
University of Sussex, UK and the author of Being There: Putting Brain,
Body and World Together Again.
________________________________________________________________

"At what age should women say, 'No,' to first-time pregnancy?"

Scientific advances now make it possible for a woman past normal
child-bearing years to bear a child. Some of my high-tech friends who
range from age 43 to almost 50 are either bearing children or plan to
using in-vitro techniques. These women have postponed childbearing
because of their careers, but they want to experience the joys of
family that their male counterparts were able to share while still
pursuing their professional goals -- an option far more difficult for
the childbearer and primary care provider.

Many successful men start first, second, or third families later in
their lives, so why should we criticize women who want to bear a first
child, when, thanks to science, it is no longer "too late?"

Sylvia Paull is the founder of Gracenet (www.gracenet.net).
________________________________________________________________

"What is the relationship between being alive and having a mind?"

Last year, Steven Spielberg directed a film, based upon a Stanley
Kubrick project, entitled "A.I. Artificial Intelligence". The film
depicts a robotic child who develops human emotions. Is such a thing
possible? Could a sufficiently complex and appropriately designed
computer embody human emotions? Or is this simply a fanciful notion
that the public and some scientists who specialize in artificial
intelligence just wish could be true?

I don't think that computers will ever become conscious and I view
Spielberg's depiction of a conscious feeling robot a good example of
what might be called the "The Spielberg Principle" that states: When a
Steven Spielberg film depicts a world-changing scientific event, the
likelihood of that event actually occurring approaches zero." In other
words, our wishes and imagination often have little to do with what is
scientifically likely or possible. For example, although we might wish
for contact with other beings in the universe as portrayed in the
Spielberg movie "E.T", the astronomical distances between our solar
system and the rest of the universe makes an E.T.-like visit extremely
unlikely.

The film A.I. and the idea contained within it that robots could
someday become conscious is another case in which our wishes exceed
reality. Despite enormous advances in artificial intelligence, no
computer is able to experience a pin prick like a simple frog, or get
hungry like a rat, or become happy or sad like all of us carbon-based
units. But why is this the case? It is my conjecture that this is
because there are some features of being alive that makes mind,
consciousness, and feelings possible. That is, only living things are
capable of the markers of mind such as intentionality, subjectivity,
and self-awareness. But the important question of the link between
life and the creation of consciousness remains a great scientific
mystery, and the answer will go a long way toward our understanding of
what a mind actually is.

Todd E. Feinberg, MD is Chief, Yarmon Neurobehavior and Alzheimer's
Disease Center, Beth Israel Medical Center
________________________________________________________________

"To be or not to be?"
Old questions don't go away (at least while they remain unanswered).
Suppose Edge were to have asked Hamlet for his Y 2002 question We can
guess the answer. "Sorry, John, I know it's a bit of a clich?, but
it's the same question it has always been." Suppose Edge turned next
to Albert Camus. "John, I said it in 1942 and I'm still waiting.
'There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is
suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to
answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest --
whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has
nine or twelve categories -- comes afterwards.'"
Clich?s they may be.  But I'd say there's every reason for students of
human nature to continue to treat these questions with due
seriousness: and in particular to think further about who has been
asking them,  when, and why, and with what consequences.  It may seem
a paradox that human beings should have evolved to have a love-hate
relationship with their own existence. But in fact there may be a
simple Darwinian story to be told about how it has come to be  so.
Let's accept the stark truth that individual human beings have been
designed by natural selection to be, in Dawkins' famous phrase,
"survival machines" whose primary function is to help the genes they
carry to make it into future generations. We should admit, then, that,
from this evolutionary viewpoint, an  individual human life cannot be
considered an end in itself but only a means to promoting the success
of genes.

Yet the fact is that in the human case (and maybe the human case
alone) natural selection has devised a peculiarly effective trick  for
persuading individual survival machines to fulfill this seemingly
bleak role. Every human being is endowed  with the mental programs for
developing a "conscious self" or "soul": a soul which not only  values
its own survival but  sees itself as very much an end in its own
right  (in fact a soul which, in a fit of solipsism,  may even
consider itself the one and only source of all the ends there are!).
Such  a soul, besides doing all it can to ensure its own basic comfort
and security, will typically strive for self-development: through
learning, creativity, spiritual growth, symbolic expression,
consciousness-raising, and so on. These activities redound to the
advantage of mind and body. The result is that such "selfish souls" do
indeed make wonderful agents for "selfish genes".

There has, however,  always been a catch.  Naturally-designed
"survival machines" are not, as the name might imply machines designed
to go on and on surviving: instead they are machines designed to
survive only up to a point --  this  being the point where the genes
they carry have nothing more to gain (or even things to lose) from
continued life.  For it"s a sobering fact that genes are generally
better off taking passage and propagating themselves in younger
machines than older ones (the older ones will have begun to accumulate
defects, to have become set in their ways, to have acquired more than
enough dependents, etc.) It suits  genes therefore that their survival
machines should have a limited life-time, after which they can be
scrapped.

Thus,  in a scenario that has all the makings of tragedy (if not a
tragic farce),  natural selection has, on the one hand,  been shaping
up individual human beings at the level of their souls to believe in
themselves and their intrinsic worth, while on the other hand taking
steps to ensure that these same individuals on the level of their
bodies grow old and die --  and, most likely, since by this stage of a
life the genes no longer have any interest in preventing it,  to die
miserably, painfully and in a state of dreadful disillusion.

However,  here's the second catch. In order for this double-game that
the genes are playing to be successful, it's essential that the soul
they've designed does not see what's coming and realise the extent to
which it has been duped, at least until too late. But this means
preventing the soul, or at any rate cunningly diverting it,  from
following some of the very lines of inquiry on which it has been set
up  to place its hopes: looking to the future, searching for eternal
truths, and so on. In Camus' words "Beginning to think is beginning to
be undermined".

The history of human psychology and culture has revolved around this
contradiction built into human nature. Science has not had much to say
about it. But it may yet.

Nicholas Humhprey is a theoretical psychologist at the London School
of Economics, and author of Leaps of Faith.
________________________________________________________________

"Why Sleep?"
We need to sleep every day. Why do we spend a third of our lives in a
dormant state? Sleep deprivation leads to loss of judgment, failure of
health, and eventually to death. The cycle of sleep and alertness is
controlled by circadian rhythms, which also affect body temperature,
digestion and other regulatory systems. Despite the importance of
sleep its purpose is a mystery.

The brain remains highly active during sleep, so the simple
explanation that we sleep in order to rest cannot be the whole story.
Activity in the sleeping brain is largely hidden from us because very
little that occurs during sleep directly enters consciousness.
However, electrical recordings and more recently brain imaging
experiments during slow-wave sleep have revealed highly ordered
patterns of activity that are much more spatially and temporally
coherent than brain activity during states of alertness. Slow-wave
sleep alternates during the night with rapid eye sleep movement (REM)
sleep, during which dreams occur and muscles are paralyzed. For the
last 10 years my colleagues and I have been building computer models
of interacting neurons that can account for rhythmic brain activity
during sleep.

Computer models of the sleeping brain and recent experimental evidence
point toward slow-wave sleep as a time during which brain cells
undergo extensive structural reorganization. It takes many hours for
the information acquired during the day to be integrated into
long-term memory through biochemical reactions. Could it be that we go
to sleep every night in order to remember better and think more
clearly?

Introspection is misleading in trying to understand the brain in part
because much of the processing that takes place to support seeing,
hearing and decision-making is subconscious. In studying the brain
during sleep when we are aware of almost nothing, we may get a better
understanding of the brain's secret life and uncover some of the
elusive principles that makes the mind so illusive.

Terrence Sejnowski, a computational neurobiologist and Professor at
the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, is a coauthor of
Thalamocortical Assemblies: How Ion Channels, Single Neurons and
Large-Scale Networks Organize Sleep Oscillations.
________________________________________________________________

"What makes a genius, and how can we have more of them?"
As any software developer will tell you, one great programmer is
easily worth ten average ones. The great strides in knowledge have
most often come from those we label "genius." Newton, Gauss, Einstein,
Feyneman, de Morgan, Crick all seemed to be able to make connections
or see patterns that others had ignored. They often visualized the
world differently, or with fewer constraints than most of us have on
our imagination. There are many great problems of science and society
to be solved, and applying genius to them could help speed the
solutions.
Perhaps the analysis of Einstein's brain done by Professor Diamond at
Berkeley, which seems to show differences in structure in the inferior
parietal region, and a higher proportion of glial cells can lead to
some physiological answers. Perhaps there are chemical enhancers which
can be used (legally, one would hope), to increase oxygen flow to
neurons. Perhaps behavioral conditioning when we're young can help
create more of the right type of structures, just as musicians who
being training in early childhood have larger portions of the brain
devoted to their skills.
Whatever the answer, mankind might be better for some more genius
directed at the environmental, social and scientific fields.

Howard Morgan is Vice-Chairman, Idealab.
________________________________________________________________

"Why do people -- even identical twins -- differ from one another in
personality?"
This question needs to be asked because of the widely held conviction
that we already know the answer to it. We don't. Okay, we know half of
the answer: one of the reasons why people differ from each other is
that they have different genes. That's the easy half.
The hard half is the part that isn't genetic. Even people who have
identical genes, like Freeman Dyson's twin grandsons (see his
question), differ in personality. I am not asking about the feeling
each twin has of being "me": George and Donald could be identical in
personality, and yet each could have a sense of me-ness.

But if George and Donald are like most identical twins, they aren't
identical in personality. Identical twins are more alike than
fraternal twins or ordinary siblings, but less alike than you would
expect. One might be more meticulous than the other, or more outgoing,
or more emotional. The weird thing is that the degree of similarity is
the same, whether twins are reared together or apart. George and
Donald, according to their grandfather, "not only have the same genes
but also have the same environment and upbringing." And yet they are
no more alike in personality than twins reared by two different sets
of parents in two different homes.

We know that something other than genes is responsible for some of the
variation in human personality, but we are amazingly ignorant about
what it is and how it works. Well-designed research has repeatedly
failed to confirm commonly held beliefs about which aspects of a
child's environment are important. The evidence indicates that neither
those aspects of the environment that siblings have in common (such as
the presence or absence of a caring father) nor those that supposedly
widen the differences between siblings (such as parental favoritism or
competition between siblings) can be responsible for the non-genetic
variation in personality. Nor can the vague idea of an "interaction"
between genes and environment save the day. George and Donald have the
same genes, so how can an interaction between genes and environment
explain their differences?

Only two hypotheses are compatible with the existing data. One, which
I proposed in my book The Nurture Assumption, is that the crucial
experiences that shape personality are those that children have
outside their home. Unfortunately, there is as yet insufficient
evidence to support (or disconfirm) this hypothesis.

The remaining possibility is that the unexplained variation in
personality is random. Even for reared-together twins, there are
minor, random differences in their experiences. I find it
implausible, however, that minor, random differences in experiences
could be so potent, given the ineffectiveness of substantial,
systematic differences. If randomness affects personality, the way it
probably works is through biological means -- not genetic but
biological. The human genome is smallish and the human brain is vast;
the genome couldn't possibly contain precise specifications for every
neuron and synapse. Identical twins don't have identical brains for
the same reason that they don't have identical freckles or
fingerprints.

If these random physical differences in the brain are responsible for
some or all of the personality differences between identical twins,
they must also be responsible for some or all of the non-genetic
variation in personality among the rest of us. "All" is highly
unlikely; "some" is almost certainly true. What remains in doubt is
not whether, but how much.

The bottom line is that scientists will probably never be able to
predict human behavior with anything close to certainty. Next
question: Is this discouraging news or cause for celebration?

Judith Rich Harris is a developmental psychologist and author of The
Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out The Way They Do. 
________________________________________________________________

"Many Universes?"

Preliminaries

We do not know whether there are other universes. Perhaps we never
shall. But I want to respond to Paul Davies' questions by arguing that
"do other universes exist?" can be a genuine scientific question.
Moreover, I shall outline why it is an interesting question; and why,
indeed, I already suspect that the answer may be "yes".

First, a pre-emptive and trivial comment: if you define the universe
as "everything there is", then by definition there cannot be others. I
shall, however, follow the convention among physicists and
astronomers, and define the "universe" as the domain of space-time
that encompasses everything that astronomers can observe. Other
"universes", if they existed, could differ from ours in size, content,
dimensionality, or even in the physical laws governing them.

It would be neater, if other "universes" existed, to redefine the
whole enlarged ensemble as "the universe", and then introduce some new
term -- for instance "the metagalaxy" -- for the domain that
cosmologists and astronomers have access to. But so long as these
concepts remain so conjectural, it is best to leave the term
"universe" undisturbed, with its traditional connotations, even though
this then demands a new word, the "multiverse", for a (still
hypothetical) ensemble of "universes."

Ontological Status Of Other Universes
Science is an experimental or observational enterprise, and it's
natural to be troubled by assertions that invoke something inherently
unobservable. Some might regard the other universes as being in the
province of metaphysics rather than physics. But I think they already
lie within the proper purview of science. It is not absurd or
meaningless to ask "Do unobservable universes exist?", even though no
quick answer is likely to be forthcoming. The question plainly can't
be settled by direct observation, but relevant evidence can be sought,
which could lead to an answer.

There is actually a blurred transition between the readily observable
and the absolutely unobservable, with a very broad grey area in
between. To illustrate this, one can envisage a succession of
horizons, each taking us further than the last from our direct
experience:

(i) Limit of present-day telescopes

There is a limit to how far out into space our present-day
instruments can probe. Obviously there is nothing fundamental about
this limit: it is constrained by current technology. Many more
galaxies will undoubtedly be revealed in the coming decades by
bigger telescopes now being planned. We would obviously not demote
such galaxies from the realm of proper scientific discourse simply
because they haven't been seen yet. When ancient navigators
speculated about what existed beyond the boundaries of the then
known world, or when we speculate now about what lies below the
oceans of Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede, we are speculating
about something "real" -- we are asking a scientific question.
Likewise, conjectures about remote parts of our universe are
genuinely scientific, even though we must await better instruments
to check them.

(ii) Limit in principle at present era

Even if there were absolutely no technical limits to the power of
telescopes, our observations are still bounded by a horizon, set by
the distance that any signal, moving at the speed of light, could
have travelled since the big bang. This horizon demarcates the
spherical shell around us at which the redshift would be infinite.
There is nothing special about the galaxies on this shell, any more
than there is anything special about the circle that defines your
horizon when you're in the middle of an ocean. On the ocean, you
can see farther by climbing up your ship's mast. But our cosmic
horizon can't be extended unless the universe changes, so as to
allow light to reach us from galaxies that are now beyond it. If
our universe were decelerating, then the horizon of our remote
descendants would encompass extra galaxies that are beyond our
horizon today. It is, to be sure, a practical impediment if we have
to await a cosmic change taking billions of years, rather than just
a few decades (maybe) of technical advance, before a prediction
about a particular distant galaxy can be put to the test. But does
that introduce a difference of principle? Surely the longer
waiting-time is a merely quantitative difference, not one that
changes the epistemological status of these faraway galaxies?

(iii) Never-observable galaxies from "our" Big Bang,

But what about galaxies that we can never see, however long we
wait? It's now believed that we inhabit an accelerating universe.
As in a decelerating universe, there would be galaxies so far away
that no signals from them have yet reached us; but if the cosmic
expansion is accelerating, we are now receding from these remote
galaxies at an ever-increasing rate, so if their light hasn't yet
reached us, it never will. Such galaxies aren't merely unobservable
in principle now -- they will be beyond our horizon forever. But if
a galaxy is now unobservable, it hardly seems to matter whether it
remains unobservable for ever, or whether it would come into view
if we waited a trillion years. (And I have argued, under (ii)
above, that the latter category should certainly count as "real".)

(iv) Galaxies in disjoint universes

The never-observable galaxies in (iii) would have emerged from the
same Big Bang as we did. But suppose that, instead of
causally-disjoint regions emerging from a single Big Bang (via an
episode of inflation) we imagine separate Big Bangs. Are
space-times completely disjoint from ours any less real than
regions that never come within our horizon in what we'd
traditionally call our own universe? Surely not -- so these other
universes too should count as real parts of our cosmos, too.

This step-by-step argument (those who don't like it might dub it a
slippery slope argument!) suggests that whether other universes exist
or not is a scientific question. But it is of course speculative
science. The next question is, can we put it on a firmer footing? What
could it explain?

Scenarios For A Multiverse

At first sight, nothing seems more conceptually extravagant -- more
grossly in violation of Ockham's Razor -- than invoking multiple
universes. But this concept is a natural consequence of several
different theories ( albeit all speculative). Andrei Linde, Alex
Vilenkin and others have performed computer simulations depicting an
"eternal" inflationary phase where many universes sprout from separate
big bangs into disjoint regions of spacetimes. Alan Guth and Lee
Smolin have, from different viewpoints, suggested that a new universe
could sprout inside a black hole, expanding into a new domain of space
and time inaccessible to us. And Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum
suggest that other universes could exist, separated from us in an
extra spatial dimension; these disjoint universes may interact
gravitationally, or they may have no effect whatsoever on each other.

There could be another universe just a few millimetres away from us.
But if those millimetres were measured in some extra spatial dimension
then to us (imprisoned in our 3-dimensional space) the other universe
would be inaccessible. In the hackneyed analogy where the surface of a
balloon represents a two-dimensional universe embedded in our
three-dimensional space, these other universes would be represented by
the surfaces of other balloons: any bugs confined to one, and with no
conception of a third dimension, would be unaware of their
counterparts crawling around on another balloon. Variants of such
ideas have been developed by Paul Steinhardt, Neil Turok and others.
Guth and Edward Harrison have even conjectured that universes could be
made in some far-future laboratory, by imploding a lump of material to
make a small black hole. Could our entire universe perhaps then be the
outcome of some experiment in another universe? If so, the theological
arguments from design could be resuscitated in a novel guise. Smolin
speculates that the daughter universe may be governed by laws that
bear the imprint of those prevailing in its parent universe. If that
new universe were like ours, then stars, galaxies and black holes
would form in it; those black holes would in turn spawn another
generation of universes; and so on, perhaps ad infinitum.

Parallel universes are also invoked as a solution to some of the
paradoxes of quantum mechanics, in the "many worlds" theory, first
advocated by Hugh Everett and John Wheeler in the 1950s. This concept
was prefigured by Olaf Stapledon, in his 1937 novel, as one of the
more sophisticated creations of his Star Maker: "Whenever a creature
was faced with several possible courses of action, it took them all,
thereby creating many ... distinct histories of the cosmos. Since in
every evolutionary sequence of this cosmos there were many creatures
and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and the
combinations of all their courses were innumerable, an infinity of
distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal
sequence". None of these scenarios has been simply dreamed up out of
the air: each has a serious, albeit speculative, theoretical
motivation. However, one of them, at most, can be correct. Quite
possibly none is: there are alternative theories that would lead just
to one universe. Firming up any of these ideas will require a theory
that consistently describes the extreme physics of ultra-high
densities, how structures on extra dimensions are configured, etc. But
consistency is not enough: there must be grounds for confidence that
such a theory isn't a mere mathematical construct, but applies to
external reality. We would develop such confidence if the theory
accounted for things we can observe that are otherwise unexplained. As
the moment, we have an excellent framework, called the standard model,
that accounts for almost all subatomic phenomena that have been
observed. But the formulae of the "standard model" involve numbers
which can't be derived from the theory but have to be inserted from
experiment.

Perhaps, in the 21st-century theory, physicists will develop a theory
that yields insight into (for instance) why there are three kinds of
neutrinos, and the nature of the nuclear and electric forces. Such a
theory would thereby acquire credibility. If the same theory, applied
to the very beginning of our universe, were to predict many big bangs,
then we would have as much reason to believe in separate universes as
we now have for believing inferences from particle physics about
quarks inside atoms, or from relativity theory about the unobservable
interior of black holes.

Universal Laws, Or Mere Bylaws?
"Are the laws of physics unique?" is a less poetic version of
Einstein's famous question "Did God have any choice in the creation of
the Universe?" The answer determines how much variety the other
universes -- if they exist -- might display. If there were something
uniquely self-consistent about the actual recipe for our universe,
then the aftermath of any big bang would be a re-run of our own
universe. But a far more interesting possibility (which is certainly
tenable in our present state of ignorance of the underlying laws) is
that the underlying laws governing the entire multiverse may allow
variety among the universes. Some of what we call "laws of nature" may
in this grander perspective be local bylaws, consistent with some
overarching theory governing the ensemble, but not uniquely fixed by
that theory.

As an analogy (one which I owe to Paul Davies) consider the form of
snowflakes. Their ubiquitous six-fold symmetry is a direct consequence
of the properties and shape of water molecules. But snowflakes display
an immense variety of patterns because each is moulded by its
micro-environments: how each flake grows is sensitive to the
fortuitous temperature and humidity changes during its downward drift.
If physicists achieved a fundamental theory, it would tell us which
aspects of nature were direct consequences of the bedrock theory (just
as the symmetrical template of snowflakes is due to the basic
structure of a water molecule) and which are (like the distinctive
pattern of a particular snowflake) the outcome of accidents. The
accidental features could be imprinted during the cooling that follows
the big bang -- rather as a piece of red-hot iron becomes magnetised
when it cools down, but with an alignment that may depend on chance
factors. It may turn out (though this would be a disappointment to
many physicists if it did) that the key numbers describing our
universe, and perhaps some of the so-called constants of laboratory
physics as well, are mere "environmental accidents", rather than being
uniquely fixed throughout the multiverse by some final theory. This is
relevant to some now-familiar arguments (explored further in my book
Our Cosmic Habitat) about the surprisingly fine-tuned nature of our
universe.

Fine Tuning -- A Motivation For Suspecting That Our "Universe" Is One
Of Many.

The nature of our universe depended crucially on a recipe encoded in
the big bang, and this recipe seems to have been rather special. A
degree of fine tuning -- in the expansion speed, the material content
of the universe, and the strengths of the basic forces -- seems to
have been a prerequisite for the emergence of the hospitable cosmic
habitat in which we live. Here are some prerequisites for a universe
containing organic life of the kind we find on Earth:

First of all, it must be very large compared to individual particles,
and very long-lived compared with basic atomic processes. Indeed this
is surely a requirement for any hypothetical universe that a science
fiction writer could plausibly find interesting. If atoms are the
basic building blocks, then clearly nothing elaborate could be
constructed unless there were huge numbers of them. Nothing much could
happen in a universe that was was too short-lived: an expanse of time,
as well as space, is needed for evolutionary processes. Even a
universe as large and long-lived as ours, could be very boring: it
could contain just black holes, or inert dark matter, and no atoms at
all; it could even be completely uniform and featureless. Moreover,
unless the physical constants lie in a rather narrow range, there
would not be the variety of atoms required for complex chemistry.

If our existence depends on a seemingly special cosmic recipe, how
should we react to the apparent fine tuning? There seem three lines to
take: we can dismiss it as happenstance; we can acclaim it as the
workings of providence; or (my preference) we can conjecture that our
universe is a specially favoured domain in a still vaster multiverse.
Some seemingly "fine tuned" features of our universe could then only
be explained by "anthropic" arguments, which are analogous to what any
observer or experimenter does when they allow for selection effects in
their measurements: if there are many universes, most of which are not
habitable, we should not be surprised to find ourselves in one of the
habitable ones.

Testing Specific Multiverse Theories Here And Now
We may one day have a convincing theory that tells us whether a
multiverse exists, and whether some of the so called laws of nature
are just parochial by-laws in our cosmic patch. But while we're
waiting for that theory -- and it could be a long wait -- the "ready
made clothes shop" analogy can already be checked. It could even be
refuted: this would happen if our universe turned out to be even more
specially tuned than our presence requires. Let me give two quite
separate examples of how this style of reasoning can be used to refute
specific hypotheses.

(i) Ludwig Boltzmann argued that our entire universe was an
immensely rare "fluctuation" within an infinite and eternal
time-symmetric domain. There are now many arguments against this
hypothesis, but even when it was proposed one could already have
noted that fluctuations in large volumes are far more improbable
than in smaller volumes.

So, it would be overwhelmingly more likely, if Boltzmann were
right, that we would be in the smallest fluctuation compatible with
our existence (Indeed, the most probable fluctuation would be a
disembodied brain that merely simulated the sensations of the
external world.) Whatever our initial assessment of Boltzmann's
theory, its probability would plummet if we came to accept the
extravagant scale of the cosmos.

(ii) Even if we knew nothing about how stars and planets formed, we
would not be surprised to find that our Earth's orbit wasn't highly
eccentric: if it had been, water would boil when the Earth was at
perihelion and freeze at aphelion -- a harsh environment
unconducive to our emergence. However, a modest orbital
eccentricity (certainly up to 0.1) is plainly not incompatible with
life. If it had turned out that the earth moved in a near-perfect
circle (with eccentricity, say, less than 0.00001) , this would be
a strong argument against a theory that postulated anthropic
selection from orbits whose eccentricities had a "Bayesian prior"
that was uniform in the range from zero to one.

We could apply this style of reasoning to the important numbers of
physics (for instance, the cosmological constant lambda) to test
whether our universe is typical of the subset that that could harbour
complex life. Lambda has to be below a threshold to allow
protogalaxies to pull themselves together by gravitational forces
before gravity is overwhelmed by cosmical repulsion (which happens
earlier if lambda is large). An unduly fierce cosmic repulsion would
prevent galaxies from forming.

Suppose, for instance, that (contrary to current indications) lambda
was thousands of times smaller than it needed to be merely to ensure
that galaxy formation wasn't prevented. This would raise suspicions
that it was indeed zero for some fundamental reason. (Or that it had a
discrete set of possible values, and all the others were well about
the threshold).

The methodology requires us to decide what values of a particular
physical parameter are compatible with our emergence. It also requires
a specific theory that gives the relative Bayesian priors for any
particular value. For instance, in the case of lambda, are all values
equally probable? Are low values favoured by the physics? Or is there
a finite number of discrete possible values, depending on how the
extra dimensions "roll up"? With this information, one can then ask if
our actual universe is "typical" of the subset in which we could have
emerged. If it is a grossly atypical member even of this subset (not
merely of the entire multiverse) then we would need to abandon our
hypothesis. By applying similar arguments to the other numbers, we
could check whether our universe is typical of the subset that that
could harbour complex life. If so, the multiverse concept would be
corroborated.

As another example of how "multiverse" theories can be tested,
consider Smolin's conjecture that new universes are spawned within
black holes, and that the physical laws in the daughter universe
retain a memory of the laws in the parent universe: in other words
there is a kind of heredity. Smolin's concept is not yet bolstered by
any detailed theory of how any physical information (or even an arrow
of time) could be transmitted from one universe to another. It has,
however, the virtue of making a prediction about our universe that can
be checked. If Smolin were right, universes that produce many black
holes would have a reproductive advantage, which would be passed on to
the next generation. Our universe, if an outcome of this process,
should therefore be near-optimum in its propensity to make black
holes, in the sense that any slight tweaking of the laws and constants
would render black hole formation less likely. (I personally think
Smolin's prediction is unlikely be borne out, but he deserves our
thanks for presenting an example that illustrates how a multiverse
theory can in principle be vulnerable to disproof.) These examples
show that some claims about other universes may be refutable, as any
good hypothesis in science should be. We cannot confidently assert
that there were many big bangs -- we just don't know enough about the
ultra-early phases of our own universe. Nor do we know whether the
underlying laws are "permissive": settling this issue is a challenge
to 21st century physicists. But if they are, then so-called anthropic
explanations would become legitimate -- indeed they'd be the only type
of explanation we'll ever have for some important features of our
universe.

A Keplerian Argument
The multiverse concept might seem arcane, even by cosmological
standards, but it affects how we weigh the observational evidence in
some current debates. Our universe doesn't seem to be quite as simple
as it might have been. About 5 percent of its mass is in ordinary
atoms; about 25 percent is in dark matter (probably a population of
particles that survived from the very early universe contains atoms,
and dark matter; and the remaining 70 percent is latent in empty space
itself.

Some theorists have a strong prior preference for the simplest
universe and are upset by these developments. It now looks as thought
a craving for such simplicity will be disappointed. Perhaps we can
draw a parallel with debates that occurred 400 years ago. Kepler
discovered that planets moved in ellipses, not circles. Galileo was
upset by this. In his "Dialogues concerning the two chief systems of
the world" he wrote "For the maintenance of perfect order among the
parts of the Universe, it is necessary to say that movable bodies are
movable only circularly".

To Galileo, circles seemed more beautiful; and they were simpler --
they are specified just by one number, the radius, whereas an ellipse
needs an extra number to define its shape (the "eccentricic"). Newton
later showed, however, that all elliptical orbits could be understood
by a single unified theory of gravity. Had Galileo still been alive
when Principia was published, Newton's insight would surely have
joyfully reconciled him to ellipses.

The parallel is obvious. A universe with at least three very different
ingredients low may seem ugly and complicated. But maybe this is our
limited vision. Our Earth traces out just one ellipse out of an
infinity of possibilities, its orbit being constrained only by the
requirement that it allows an environment conducive for evolution (not
getting too close to the Sun, nor too far away). Likewise, our
universe may be just one of an ensemble of all possible universes,
constrained only by the requirement that it allows our emergence. So
I'm inclined to go easy with Occam's razor: a bias in favour of
"simple" cosmologies may be as short-sighted as was Galileo's
infatuation with circles.

What we've traditionally called "the universe" may be the outcome of
one big bang among many, just as our Solar System is merely one of
many planetary systems in the Galaxy. Just as the pattern of ice
crystals on a freezing pond is an accident of history, rather than
being a fundamental property of water, so some of the seeming
constants of nature may be arbitrary details rather than being
uniquely defined by the underlying theory. The quest for exact
formulas for what we normally call the constants of nature may
consequently be as vain and misguided as was Kepler's quest for the
exact numerology of planetary orbits. And other universes will become
part of scientific discourse, just as "other worlds" have been for
centuries. We may one day have a convincing theory that accounts for
the very beginning of our universe, tells us whether a multiverse
exists, and (if so) whether some so called laws of nature are just
parochial by-laws in our cosmic patch. may be vastly larger than the
domain we can now (or, indeed, can ever) observe. Most physicists hope
to discover a fundamental theory that will offer unique formulae for
all the constants of nature. But perhaps what we've traditionally
called our universe is just an atom in an ensemble -- a multiverse
punctuated by repeated big bangs, where the underlying physical laws
permit diversity among the individual universes.

Even though some physicists still foam at the mouth at the prospects
of be being "reduced" to these so-called anthropic explanations, such
explanations may turn out to be the best we can ever discover for some
features of our universe (just as they are the best explanations we
can offer for the shape and size of Earth's orbit). Cosmology will
have become more like the science of evolutionary biology. Nonetheless
(and here physicists should gladly concede to the philosophers), any
understanding of why anything exists -- why there is a universe (or
multiverse) rather than nothing -- remains in the realm of
metaphysics.

Sir Martin Rees, a cosmologist, is Royal Society Professor at Kings
College, Cambridge. He directs a research program at Cambridge's
Institute of Astronomy. His most recent book is Our Cosmic Habitat.
________________________________________________________________

"How will people think about the soul?"
Cognitive scientists believe that emotions, memories, and
consciousness are the result of physical processes. But almost nobody
else does. Common sense tells us that our mental life is the product
of an immaterial soul, one that can survive the destruction of the
body and brain. The physical basis of thought is, as Francis Crick put
it, "an astonishing hypothesis", one that few take seriously.

You might think that this will soon change. After all, people once
thought the earth is flat and that mental illness is caused by demonic
possession. But the belief in the immaterial soul is different. It is
rooted in our experience -- our gut feeling, after all, is not that we
are bodies; it is that we occupy them. Even young children are
dualists -- they appreciate and enjoy tales in which a person leaves
his body and goes to faraway lands, or when the frog turns into a
prince. And when they come to think about death, they readily accept
that the soul lives on, drifting into another body or ascending to
another world.

When the public hears about research into the neural basis of thought,
they learn about specific findings: this part of the brain is involved
in risk taking, that part is active when someone think about music,
and so on. But the bigger picture is not yet generally appreciated,
and it is an interesting question how people will react when it is.
(We are seeing the first signs now, much of it in the recent work of
novelists such Jonathan Franzen, David Lodge, and Ian McEwan). It
might be that non-specialists will learn to live with the fact that
their gut intuitions are mistaken, just as non-physicists accept that
apparently solid objects are composed of tiny moving particles. But
this may be optimistic. The notion that our souls are flesh is
profoundly troubling, in large part because of what it means for the
idea of life after death. The same sorts of controversies that raged
over the study and teaching of evolution in the 20th century might
well spill over to the cognitive sciences in the years to follow.

Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at Yale and author of How
Children Learn the Meanings of Words (Learning, Development, and
Conceptual Change).
________________________________________________________________

"How can we understand the fact that such complex and precise
mathematical relations inhere in nature?"

Of course this is one of the oldest philosophical questions in science
but still one of the most mysterious. For most of Western history the
cannonical answer has been some version of Platonism, some variation
on the esentially Pythagorean idea that the matherial universe has
been formed according to a set of transcendent and a priori
mathematical relations or laws. These relations/laws Pythagaoras
himself called the divine armonia of the cosmos, and have often been
referred to since as the "cosmic harmonies" or the "music of the
spheres". For Pythagoras numbers were actually gods, and the quest for
mathematical relations in nature was a quest for the divine archetypes
by which he believed that matter had literally been in-formed.
Throughout the age of science, and even today, most physicists seem to
be Platonists. Many are even Pythagoreans, implicitly (if not always
with much concious reflection) making an association between the
mathematical laws of nature and a transcendent being. The common
association today of a "theory of everything" with "the mind of God"
is simply the latest efflourescence of a two and a half millenia-old
tradition which has always viewed physics as a quasi-religious
activity.

Can we get beyond Platonism in our understanding of nature's
undeniable propensity to realize extraordinarily sophisticated
mathematical relations? Although I began my own life in science as a
Platonist I have come to believe that this philosophical position is
insupportable. It is not a rationally justifiable position at all, but
simply a faith. Which is fine if one is prepaared to admit as much,
something few physicists seem willing to do. To believe in an a priori
set of laws (perhaps even a single law) by which physical matter had
to be informed seems to me just a disguised version of deism -- an
outgrowth of Judeo-Christianity wrapped up in scientific language. I
believe we should do better than this, that we should articulate (and
need to articulate) a post-Platonist understanding of the so-called
"laws of nature." It is a far from easy task, but not an impossible
one. Just as mathematican Brian Rotman has put forward a
post-Platonist account of mathematics we need to achieve a similar
move for physics and our mathematical description of the world itself.

Margaret Wertheim is a science writer and commentator and the author
of The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to
the Internet.
________________________________________________________________

"Where Are They?"
When Enrico Fermi asked his famous question (now known as the Fermi
Paradox) more than fifty years ago -- if there is advanced
extraterrestrial life, intelligence, and technology, why don't we see
unmistakable evidence of it? -- it was the era of 60-megaton
atmospheric bomb tests and broadcast television, with unlimited fusion
power in plain sight.

Now, we don't even have underground testing, TV has gone cable,
wireless is going spread-spectrum, technology has grown microscopic,
our children encrypt text with PGP and swap audio via MP3, and Wolfman
Jack no longer broadcasts across the New Mexico desert at 50,000
watts.

Fermi's question is still worth asking -- and may not be the paradox
we once thought.

George Dyson is a historian among futurists and the author of Darwin
Among the Machines.
________________________________________________________________

"What is the nature of learning?"

That question strikes me as being as infinitely perplexing and
personal as, What's the meaning of life? But that's the beauty of its
ambiguity, and the challenge I enjoy grasping at its slippery
complexity.

Recent insights into the neural basis of memory have provided a couple
of key pieces to the puzzle of learning. The neuropsychological
research on "elaborative encoding," for example, has shown that the
long-term retention of information involves a spontaneous,
connection-making process that produces web-like associative linkages
of evocative images, words, objects, events, ideas, sensory
impressions and experiences.

Parallel insights have emerged from the exploratory work on learning
that's being conducted in the field of education and business, which
involves constructing multi-dimensional symbolic models. The symbolic
modeling process enables people to give form to their thoughts, ideas,
knowledge, and viewpoints. By making tangible the unconscious creative
process by which we use our tacit and explicit knowledge, the symbolic
models help reveal what we think, how we think and what we remember.
They represent our thought processes in a deep and comprehensive way,
showing the different ways we use our many intelligences, styles of
learning, and creative inquiry. In effect, the models demonstrate how
people create things to remember, and remember things by engaging in a
form of physical thinking.
Underneath our layers of individuality lives a core of universal
emotions that comprise a "global common language." This language of
feelings and sensory impressions not only unites us as human beings,
but also connects our creative process. It also enables us to generate
ideas together, create new knowledge and transfer it, come to some
deep shared understanding of ourselves or given subject, as well as
communicate this understanding across the various cultural, social and
educational barriers, that divide us. The studies on elaborative
encoding provide some basic insights into how these symbolic models
work as a kind of global common language, which people use to freely
build on the things they already knew and have an emotional connection
with.
In short: the symbolic models open up other pathways to understand-ing
the brainwork behind learning, remembering and the process by which we
selectively apply what we learn when we create.

As Dr. Barry Gordon of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine states, "What
we think of as memories are ultimately patterns of connection among
nerve cells." The Harvard psychologist Daniel Schachter arrived at a
similar conclusion when examining the 'unconscious processes of
implicit knowledge' and its relation to memory.

Clearly, when our brains are engaged by information that, literally
and figuratively speaking, "connects with us" (in more ways than one),
we not only remember it better, but tend to creatively act on it as
well. Symbolic modeling makes this fact self-evident.
How can we improve the way we learn, and foster the learning process
over a lifetime? How can we make the information we absorb daily more
personally meaningful, purposeful and memorable?

The answers remain to be seen in our connection-making process. This
private act of creation is becoming increasingly more public and
apparent through functional MRI studies and other medical imaging
techniques. Perhaps a more productive strategy for illuminating this
connection-making process would be to combine these high-tech
"windows" to the world of the mind with low-tech imaging tools, such
as symbolic modeling. The combination of these tools would provide a
more comprehensive picture of learning.
The ability to learn  or inability  seems to determine our happiness
and well being, not to mention the success we experience from
realizing our potential. Understanding the conditions that galvanize
great, memorable learning experiences will move us closer to
understanding the creative engine that powers our individual and
collective growth: learning.

Todd Siler is the founder and director of Psi-Phi Communications and
author of Think Like A Genius. 
________________________________________________________________

"Will humankind be able to use its growing self-knowledge to overcome
the biologically programmed instincts that could otherwise destroy
it?"
I am intrigued by the interplay between the following:

1) People always want a little bit more than they have.
2) The economic and political systems built on this instinct are
conquering the world.
3) Yet there is no correlation between owning a little bit more and
happiness. Instead, the long-term effect of everyone seeking to own
a little bit more could be calamitous.

Historically, religious figures have appealed to people to overrule
their greed with a concern for some higher good. In our supposed
scientific age, these arguments have lost their force. Instead our
public affairs are governed by the idea that people should just be
free as much as possible to choose what they want.
But what if people are programmed to make choices that are not in
their own best long-term interest? Suppose we discovered that what we
instinctively thought would bring us happiness is an illusion created
by our human-gene-built brains to induce human-gene-spreading
behavior?
Today's evolutionary psychologists provide compelling arguments why
this picture might be accurate. A species programmed to acquire stuff
might well spread itself successfully across the globe. But evolution
is blind. It has no plan regarding what might happen to that species
when the globe has been conquered. And in the meantime our genes don't
give a damn about our happiness. For them it's just another
propagation technology... perhaps made doubly efficient by ensuring
the carrot is yanked away each time it comes within reach. To achieve
true happiness we may need to be a great deal wiser than the loudest
demons in our head would suggest.
Will the new model of "Why We Are The Way We Are" finally convince us
that our political and economic systems, and the assumptions on which
they are based, are dangerously flawed. (The"problem isn't just the
economists' assumption that "greed is good", or the politicians'
assumption of politics that "growth is good'. We've all been brought
up to believe: "natural is good". As if it weren't the most natural
thing in the world for a planet to self-destruct.)
And how long will it take for the new ideas to have any impact? (What
if it were to take 50 years? In an era of exponential growth, and
accelerating technological change, can we afford even 10?)
More generally, can memes that have evolved in a single generation
countermand the influence of genes that evolved over millions of
years?

Chris Anderson is the incoming Chairman and Host of the TED Conference
(Technology, Education, Design) held each February in Monterey,
California and formerly a magazine publisher (Future Publishing).
________________________________________________________________

"If the medium is indeed the message, does (or can) the message define
the medium?"

(As a poet, I don't think I need to explicate the question.)

Gerd Stern is a poet, media artist and cheese maven and the author of
an oral history From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist
1948-1978. 
________________________________________________________________

"What is the nature of fads, fashions, crazes, and financial manias?
Do they share a structure that can in turn be found at the core of
more substantial changes in a culture? In other words, is there an
engine of change to be found in the simple fad that can explain and
possibly predict or accelerate broader changes that we regard as less
trivial than "mere" fads? And more importantly, can we quantify the
workings of this engine if we decide that it exists?"

I have shelves of books and papers by smart people who have brushed up
against the edge of this question but who have seldom attacked it head
on. I'm drawn to the question, and have been obsessed with it for
years, because I think it's one of the big ones. It touches on
everything humans do.

Fashions and fads are everywhere; in things as diverse as food,
furnishings, clothes, flowers, children's names, haircuts, body image,
even disease symptoms and surgical operations. Apparently, even the
way we see Nature and frame questions about it is affected to some
extent by fashion; at least according to those who would like to throw
cold water on somebody else's theory. (In the current discussion, Paul
Davies says, "Of late, it is fashionable among leading physicists and
cosmologists to suppose that alongside the physical world we see lies
a stupendous array of alternative realities&#138;")

But the ubiquity of fads has not led to deep understanding, even
though there are serious uses to which a working knowledge of fads
could be put. A million children each year die of dehydration, often
where rehydration remedies are available. What if rehydration became
fashionable among those children's mothers? Public health officials
have many times tried to make various behaviors fashionable. In
promoting the use of condoms in the Philippines or encouraging girls
in Africa to remain in school, they've reached for popular songs and
comic books to deliver the message, hoping to achieve some kind of
liftoff. Success has been real, but too often temporary or sporadic.
Would a richer understanding of fads have helped them create better
ones?

In trying to understand these phenomena, writers have been engaged in
a conversation that has spanned more than a hundred years. In 1895
Gustave LeBon's speculations on "The Crowd" contained some cockeyed
notions, and some that are still in use today. Ludwik Fleck, writing
on "The Evolution of a Scientific Fact" in the thirties, in part
inspired Thomas Kuhn's writings on the structure of scientific
revolutions in the sixties. Everrett Rogers's books on the "Diffusion
of Innovations" led to hundreds of other books on the subject and made
terms like early adopters and agents of change part of the language.
For several decades positive social change has been attempted through
a practice called Social Marketing, derived in part from advertising
techniques. Diffusion and social marketing models have been used
extensively in philanthropy, often with success. But to my knowledge
these techniques have not yet led to a description of the fad that's
detailed and testable.

Malcom Gladwell was stimulating in identifying elements of the fad in
The Tipping Point but we are still left with a recipe that calls for a
pinch of this and a bit, but not too much, of that.

Richard Dawkins made a dazzling frontal assault on the question when
he introduced the idea of memes in The Selfish Gene. The few pages he
devoted to the idea have inspired a number of books and articles in
which the meme is considered to be a basic building block of social
change, including fads. But as far as I can tell, the meme is still a
fascinating idea that urges us toward experiments that are yet to be
done.

Whether memes or some other formulation turns out to be the engine of
fads, the process seems to go like this: a signal of some kind
produces a response that in turn acts as a signal to the next person,
with the human propensity for imitation possibly playing a role. This
process of signal-response-signal might then spread with growing
momentum, looking something like biological contagion. But other
factors may also apply, as in Steve Strogatz's examination of how
things sync up with one another. Or Duncan Watt's exploration of how
networks of all kinds follow certain rules of efficiency. Or the way
crowds panic in a football stadium or a riot. Or possibly even the
studies on the way traffic flows, including the backward generated
waves that cause mysterious jams. The patterns of propagation may turn
out to be more interesting than anything else.

Fads and fashions have not been taken very seriously, I think, for at
least three reasons. They seem short-lived, they're often silly and
they seem like a break with normal, rational behavior. But as for
being short-lived, the history of fads gives plenty of examples of
fads that died out only to come back again and again, eventually
becoming customary, including the use of coffee, tomatoes and hot
chocolate. As for silliness, some fashions are not as silly as they
seem. Fashions having to do with the length of one's hair seem
trivial; yet political and religious movements have often relied on
the prominence or absence of hair as a rallying symbol. And fads are
far from aberrational. There are probably very few people alive who,
at any one time, are not under the sway of a fad or fashion, if not
dozens of them. And this is not necessarily a vacation from rational
behavior on our part. On the contrary, it might be essential to the
way we maximize the effectiveness of our choices. Two economists in
California have developed a mathematical model suggesting that in
following the lead of others we may be making use of other people's
experience in a way that gives us a slightly higher chance of success
in adopting a new product. The economists say this may explain a burst
of popularity in a new product and possibly throw light on fads
themselves.

But another reason fads may not have been examined in more detail, and
this could be the killer, is that at least for the moment they just
seem too complicated. Trying to figure out how to track and explain
change is one of the oldest and toughest of questions. Explaining
change among people in groups is perhaps complex beyond measure, and
may turn out to be undoable. It may forever be an art and not a
science. But still, the humble fad is too tantalizing to ignore.

We take it for granted and dismiss it, even while we're in the rapture
of it. This commonplace thing that sits there like the purloined
letter may or may not turn out to contain a valuable message for us,
but it is staring us in the face.

Alan Alda, an actor, writer and director, is currently playing Richard
Feynman in the stage play QED at Lincoln Center in New York.
________________________________________________________________

"What comes after Science? When?"
Questions? I don't ask questions. I ask answers, and then make up the
questions as I see fit. I assemble vast collections of answers and
while finding the questions, I make connections in the process. These
connections are new answers, and depending on my mood and how much
time I have at my disposal, I set about finding questions for them as
well. Often, if not usually, the question I find is: "Why on earth am
I wasting my time on this (project du jour)?" Once in a great while,
I'll find that something I've cooked up in my multi-media cauldron
"fits" just right -- an appropriate gesture at a propitious moment,
and it arrives with no explanation, no equation, no excuse, no reason,
nothing- it just sits there -- absolutely correct to itself in every
possible way.

The paradigm of Question/Answer doesn't really work in my world as
I've never really found Life, The Universe, and Everything (LU&E) and
most (but not all) of its constituent parts and systems to be
fundamentally amenable to it. From my research, I've come to a general
conclusion that LU&E and most of its parts are fundamentally not
knowable, or even humanly understandable in any linguistic or
mathematical sense, except when framed in a more narrow set of terms,
like "metaphor" or "pretend" or "just so".

A dear friend of mine once noted: "Nobody knows and you can't find
out" and I largely agree with him. However, I can also say that, like
being in the presence of a bucket of bricks, this is all more an
experiential thing, more like a synchronistic aesthetic moment and
less like a diachronistic or ahistorically definitive mathematical
proposition or linguistically intelligible conclusion. So, one can't
"know" it, nor can one "find out", but one can come to a sensibility
that is convincing at the time and creatively informs one's behaviour
and choices.

Hence, the only justice in this life is poetic, and everything else is
just some tweaky form of petty revenge or (more typically in this life
of entertainment and cultural anaesthesiology) dodging bullets while
one waits for the big storm to blow over.

It can be infuriating (to me and most everyone else, it seems) when my
work or research comes such conclusions, but since when has there been
some big carved-in-stone guarantee that it's supposed to make sense in
the first place? Isn't a rational conclusion a bit presumptuous and
arrogant? From what I can gather it seems that the complete object of
study fundamentally doesn't and shouldn't make sense (as sense seems
to be a tiny subset surrounded by a vast multitude of complex forms of
"nonsense"), and see that not as a shortcoming on the part of the
Universe, as much as it is an indication of the limitations of human
reason and the short time we get to spend on this planet.

But all this is probably not what you wanted to hear, so here's a good
question that's been bugging me for years and if anyone wants to
submit an answer, let me know - I'm all ears...

Mister Warwick asks:

"What comes after Science? When?"

Henry Warwick is an artist, composer, and scientist.
________________________________________________________________

"What is time, and what is the right language to describe change, in a
closed system like the universe, which contains all of its observers?"

This is, I believe, the key question on which the quantum theory of
gravity and our understanding of cosmology, depends. We have made
tremendous progress in the last years towards each goal, and we come
to the point where we need a new answer to this question to proceed
further. The basic reason for this problem is that most notions of
time, change and dynamics which physics, and science more generally,
have used are background dependent. This means that they define time
and change in terms of fixed points of reference which are outside the
system under study and do not themselves change or evolve. These
external points of reference include usually the observer and clocks
used to measure time. They constitute a fixed background against which
time and change are defined. Other aspects of nature usually assumed
to be part of the background are the properties of space, such as its
dimensionality and geometry.

General relativity taught us that time and space are parts of the
dynamical system of the world, that do themselves change and evolve in
time. Furthermore, in cosmology we are interested in the study of a
system that by definition contains everything that exists, including
all possible observers. However, in quantum theory, observers seem to
play a special role, which only makes sense if they are outside the
system. Thus, to discover the right quantum theory of gravity and
cosmology we must find a new way to formulate quantum theory, as well
as the notions of time and change, to apply to a system with no fixed
background, which contains all its possible observers. Such a theory
is called background independent.

The transition from background dependent theories to background
independent ones is a basic theme of contemporary science. Related to
it is the change from describing things in terms of absolute
properties intrinsic to a given elementary particle, to describing
things in terms of relational properties, which define and describe
any part of the universe only through its relationships to the rest.

In loop quantum gravity we have succeeded in constructing a background
independent quantum theory of space and time. But we have not yet
understood completely how to put the observer inside the universe.
String theory, while it solves some problems, has not helped here, as
it is so far a purely background dependent theory. Indeed string
theory is unable to describe closed universes with a positive
cosmological constant, such as observations now favor.

Among the ideas which are now in play which address this issue are
Julian Barbour's proposal that time does not exist, Fotini
Markopoulou's proposal to replace the single quantum theory relevant
for observing a system from the outside with a whole family of quantum
theories, each a description of what an observer might see from a
particular event in the history of the universe and 't Hooft's and
Susskind's holographic principle. This last idea says that physics
cannot describe precisely what is happening inside a region of space,
instead we can only talk about information passing through the
boundary of the region. I believe these are relevant, but none go far
enough and that we need a radical reformulation of our ideas of time
and change.

As the philosopher Peirce said over a century ago, it is fundamentally
irrational to believe in laws of nature that are absolute and
unchanging, and have themselves no origin or explanation. This is an
even more pressing issue now, because we have strong evidence that the
universe, or at least the part in which we live, came into existence
just a few billion years ago. Were the laws of nature waiting around
eternally for a universe to be created to which they could apply? To
resolve this problem we need an evolutionary notion of law itself,
where the laws themselves evolve as the universe does. This was the
motivation for the cosmological natural selection idea that Martin
Rees is so kind to mention. That is, as Peirce understood, the notions
of evolution and self-organization must apply not just to living
things in the universe, but the structure of the universe and the laws
themselves.

Lee Smolin, a theoretical physicist, is a founding member and research
physicist at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo Canada author of
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. 
________________________________________________________________

"Why doesn't conservation click?"

Three decades ago I began my first career working on a British
television series called "Survival". Unlike the current "Survivor"
series (about the politics of rejection while camping out) these were
natural history documentaries on a par with the best of National
Geographic and Sir David Attenborough: early recordings of humpback
whales, insights on elephant behavior, the diminishing habitats of
mountain gorillas and orangutans, a sweeping essay on the wildebeest
migration, and my favorite, an innovative look at the ancient baobab
tree.

In 2001 the "Survival" series died. It was a year when conservation
efforts lagged across the board, along with other failures to take the
long view. Survival programs may have told people what they could no
longer bear to hear (that the human species is soiling its own den)
without demonstrating constructive solutions. For example, there are
precious few incentives to develop alternate energy sources despite
the profound vulnerabilities that our dependence on foreign energy
revealed yet again. We have no "Vision Thing," despite the many clues.
"It's global warming, dude," a 28 year-old auto mechanic told The New
York Times as he fished in the Hudson River; "I don't care if the
whole planet burns up in a hundred years. If I can get me a fish
today, it's cool by me."

Happily this provides a continuum to the question I posed at this
forum in 1998:

"If tragedy + time = comedy, what is the formula for equally
therapeutic music? Do (Blues) musicians reach a third person
perspective similar to that found in meditation, mind-altering
drugs, and genius?"

What I was reaching for with that third person perspective was a
selfless overview. What I've since found is that healing dances of
Native Americans and some African peoples follow the saga of a hero or
heroine, much the way you or I listen to Bob Dylan or Bonnie Raitt and
identify with their lyrics.

While Carl Jung delved into the healing ritual archetype among many
cultures, a new science called Biomusicology suggests even more
ancient origins, tracing the inspiration for human music to natural
sounds (the rhythm of waves lapping at the shore, rain and waterfalls,
bird song, breathing, and our mother's heartbeat when we were floating
in the womb.) Songs of birds certainly influenced classical music, and
the call and response patterns of birds were imitated in congregations
and cotton fields, with shouts, which led to the Delta blues.

The salubrious influence of music, including research by Oliver Sacks,
is featured in a Discovery Channel program that I helped research.
"The Power of Music" will be broadcast in 2002, as will Sir David
Attenborough's new series on a similar theme, "Songs of the Earth."
But will these programs inspire viewers to relinquish their SUVs for a
hydrogen-powered car? How does one convince people to address global
warming when most minds are focused on the economy or terrorism?

Part one of this answer must include "An Ounce of Prevention." Richard
A. Clarke, former White House director of counterterrorism, explained
our ill preparedness for September 11 this way: "Democracies don't
prepare well for things that have never happened before." Another
senior analyst said. "Unfortunately, it takes a dramatic event to
focus the government's and public's attention." Finally, efforts to
prevent hijackings have been responsive, rarely proactive.

As we devise our New Year's Resolutions, how many of us will wait for
a scare (positive diagnosis) before we quit smoking, drinking or
sitting on our duff? Year 2002 should be the time when
conservationists not only demand action, but persuade people
everywhere that the demise of wild places can and should be stopped,
that some of our forces of habit (unneeded air conditioning, for
example) will eventually affect our quality of life in ways of greater
devastation. We need people to identify with the song lyrics of
others, who may live in distant lands, and feel the brunt of global
warming long before we do. But first we must learn to understand their
language.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera wrote, "True human
goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only
when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its
fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its
attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this
respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so
fundamental that all others stem from it." Survival indeed.

Delta Willis has searched for fossils alongside Meave and Richard
Leakey, profiled physicists and paleontologists who draw inspiration
from nature, and serves as chief contributor to the Fodor's Guide to
Kenya & Tanzania.
________________________________________________________________

Why is it only amongst adults in the Western world that has tradition
been so insistently and constantly challenged by the raising of Edge
questions?

Why do we ask Edge questions?

Why do we ask Edge questions that challenge the "anesthesiology" of
accepted wisdom and so the traditional answers we are given as to who
and what we are? In most societies, accepted wisdom is to be respected
not questioned, and who and what we are have long been decided by
custom, elders, social betters and the sacred word of God. Moreover,
why is it that the asking of Edge questions has only thrived and been
encouraged in Western societies (with the help of such individuals as
Socrates and the contributors to this Edge project)?

Children it should be noted readily ask Edge-type questions. The
problem is that they stop when they become adults except in the
civilization (with a few ups and downs) that started in Classical
Greece -- Western civilization.

"Are all our beliefs in gods, a myth, a lie foolishly cherished, while
blind hazard rules the world?" That perhaps is the first Edge question
(Euripides, Hecabe, lines 490-491) -- and importantly a question not
raised safely in private but before a large audience. Indeed,
Euripides raised it to gain public reward. Greek playwrights wrote
plays for competitions that were judged by ten randomly selected
members of the audience -- and given Euripides wanted to win -- he
must have believed that the average Greek would be hearing this Edge
question raised about the Gods.

The public exploring of Edge questions is rare outside Western
societies. Instead, "what was finally persuasive was appeal to
established authority", and that, "the authority of tradition came to
have more convincing effect than even direct observation and personal
experience" (Robert Oliver, Communication And Culture In Ancient India
And China, 1971). And as the Japanese scholar Hajime Nakamura noted,
the Chinese "insisted that the traditional sacred books are more
authoritative than knowledge based upon sense and inference" (Ways Of
Thinking Of Eastern Peoples, 1964). Job might seem to be asking the
Edge question "Why do the just suffer and the wicked flourish?" But
the story of Job is not about rewarding Edge questioning but faith in
the wisdom of God: "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words
without knowledge".

This Edge question might be criticized as Eurocentric. But it was
Western intellectuals that first asked the Edge question about whether
ones own culture might be privileged falsely over others and so
invented the idea of ethnocentricity.

So my Edge question is this: why is it only amongst adults in the
Western world that has tradition been so insistently and constantly
challenged by the raising of Edge questions?

John R. Skoyles is a researcher in the evolution of human intelligence
in the light of recent discoveries about the brain, who, while a
first-year student at LSE, published a theory of the origins of
Western Civilization in Nature.
________________________________________________________________

Paul Davies Responds

Response to John McCarthy:

John McCarthy asks how animal behavior is encoded in DNA. May I
sharpen the question? One of the most remarkable manifestations of
inherited behavior is the way birds navigate accurately whilst
migrating over vast distances. I understand that part of this skill
lies with the bird's ability to use the positions of stars as beacons.
Does this imply that some avian DNA contains a map of the sky? Could a
scientist in principle sequence the DNA and reconstruct the
constellations?

Response to Martin Rees's response to my question:

Sir Martin Rees has eloquently outlined the key issues concerning the
status of multiverse theories. I should like to make a brief response
followed by a suggestion for further research.

Sir Martin raises the question of whether what we consider to be
fundamental laws of physics are in fact merely local bylaws applicable
to the universe we perceive. Implicit in this assumption is the fact
that there are laws of some sort anyway. By definition, a law is a
property of nature that is independent of time. We still need to
explain why universes come with such time-independent lawlike
features, even if a vast and random variety of laws is on offer. One
might try to counter this by invoking an extreme version of the
anthropic theory in which there are no laws, just chaos. The apparent
day-by-day lawfulness of the universe would then itself be
anthropically selected: if a crucial regularity of nature suddenly
failed, observers would die and cease to observe. But this theory
seems to be rather easily falsified.

As Sir Martin points out, if a particular remarkable aspect of the
laws is anthropically selected from a truly random set, then we would
expect on statistical grounds the aspect concerned to be just
sufficient to permit biological observers. Consider, then, the law of
conservation of electric charge. At the atomic level, this law is
implied by the assumed constancy of the fine-structure constant. (I
shall sidestep recent claims that this number might vary over
cosmological time scales.) Suppose there were no such fundamental law,
and the unit of electric charge varied randomly from moment to moment?
Would that be life-threatening? Not if the variations were small
enough. The fine-structure constant affects atomic fine-structure, not
gross structure, so that most chemical properties on which life as we
know it depends are not very sensitive to the actual value of this
number.

In fact, the fine-structure constant is known to be constant to better
than one part in a hundred million. A related quantity, the anamolous
magnetic moment of the electron, is known to be constant to even
greater accuracy. Variations several orders of magnitude larger than
this would not render the universe hostile to carbon-based life. So
the constancy of electric charge at the atomic level is an example of
a regularity of nature far in excess of what is demanded by anthropic
considerations. Even a multiverse theory that treated this regularity
as a bylaw would need to explain why such a bylaw exists.

I now turn to my meta-question of whether the multiverse might be no
better than theism in modern scientific language. It is possible that
this claim can be tested using a branch of mathematics known as
algorithmic information theory, developed by Kolmogorov and Chaitin.
This formalism offers a means to quantify Occam's Razor, by
quantifying the complexity of explanations. (Occam's Razor suggests
that, all else being equal, we should prefer the simplest explanation
of the facts.)

On the question of how to explain certain fine-tuned bio-friendly
aspects of the universe, the crude response "God made it that way" is
infinitely complex (and therefore very unsatisfying), because God
might have made one of an infinite number of alternative universes.
Put differently, the selection set -- the "shopping list" of universes
available to an omnipotent Deity -- contains an infinite amount of
information, so the act of selection from this set involves discarding
this infinite quantity of information. In the same way, the multiverse
contains an infinite amount of information. In this case we observers
are the selectors, but we still discard an infinite quantity of
information by failing to observe the other universes. A proper
mathematical parameterization of various multiverse theories and
various theological models should enable this comparison to be made
precise.
Even if the two modes of explanation -- theistic and multiverse --
turned out to be mathematically equivalent -- one might still argue
(as Sir Martin has done) for the superiority of the multiverse theory
on the grounds that the other universes, whilst not directly
observable, are nevertheless strongly implied by extrapolation from
the structure of our physical theories. But a theist would readily
counter that the existence of God, whilst not directly obervable, is
nevertheless strongly implied by extrapolation from the nature of the
world, human wisdom, mystical revelation, moral awareness, etc.

I argued in my book The Mind of God that most attempts at ultimate
explanations run into this "tower of turtles" problem: one has to
start somewhere in the chain of reasoning, with a certain unproved
given, be it God, mathematics, a physical principle, revelation, or
something else. That is because of an implied dualism common to
scientific and theistic explanations alike. In science the dualism is
between states of the world and abstract laws. In theism it is between
creature (i.e. the physical universe) and Creator.

But is this too simplistic? Might the physical world and its
explanation be ultimately indecomposable? Should we consider
alternative modes of description than one based on linear reasoning
from an unproved given, which after all amounts to invoking a magical
levitating superturtle at the base of the tower? That is what I meant
by the "Third Way" in my original question.
________________________________________________________________

Could our lack of theoretical insight in some of the most basic
questions in biology in general, and consciousness in particular, be
related to us having missed a third aspect of reality, which upon
discovery will be seen to always have been there, equally ordinary as
space and time, but so far somehow overlooked in scientific
descriptions?

Is the arena of physics, constructed out of space and time with
matter/energy tightly interwoven with space and time, sufficient to
fully describe all of our material world? The most fundamental debates
in cognitive science take a firm "yes" for granted. The question of
the nature of mind then leaves open only two options: either a form of
reductionism, or a form of escapism. The latter option, a dualist
belief in a separate immaterial mental realm has fallen out of favor,
largely because of the astounding successes of natural science. The
former, reductionism, is all that is left, whether it is presented in
a crude form (denial of consciousness as real or important) or in a
more fancy form (using terms like emergence, as if that would have any
additional explanatory power).

The question I ask myself is whether there could not be another
equally fundamental aspect to reality, on a par with space and time,
and just as much part of the material world?

Imagine that some tribe had no clear concept of time. Thinking only in
terms of space, they would have a neat way to locate everything in
space, and they would scoff at superstitious notions that somehow
there would be "something else", wholly other than space and the
material objects contained therein. Of course they would see things
change, but both during and after each change everything has its
location, and the change would be interpreted as a series of purely
spatial configurations.

Yet such a geometric view of the world is not very practical. In
physics and in daily life we use time in an equally fundamental way as
space. Even though everything is already "filled up" with space,
similarly everything participates in time. Trying to explain that to
the people of the no-time tribe may be difficult. They will see the
attempt at introducing time as trying to sneak in a second type of
space, perhaps a spooky, ethereal space, more refined in some way,
imbued with different powers and possibilities, but still as a
geometric something, since it is in these terms that they are trained
to think. And they probably would see no need for such a parallel
pseudo-space.

In contrast, we do not consider time to be in any way less "physical"
than space. Neither time nor space can be measured as such, but only
through what they make possible: distances, durations, motion. While
space and time are in some sense abstractions, and not perceivable as
such, they are enormously helpful concepts in ordering everything that
is perceivable into a coherent picture. Perhaps our problems in coming
up with a coherent picture of mental phenomena tells us that we need
another abstraction, another condition of possibility for phenomena in
this world, this very material world we have always lived in.

Could it be that we are like that tribe of geometers, and that we have
so far overlooked a third aspect of reality, even though it may be
staring us in the face? Greek mathematicians used time to make their
mathematical drawings and construct their theories, yet they
disregarded time as non essential in favor of a Platonic view of
unchanging eternal truths. It took two thousand years until Newton and
Leibniz invented infinitesimal calculus, which opened the door for
time to finally enter mathematics, thus making mathematical physics
possible.

To reframe my question: could our lack of theoretical insight in some
of the most basic questions in biology in general, and consciousness
in particular, be related to us having missed a third aspect of
reality, which upon discovery will be seen to always have been there,
equally ordinary as space and time, but so far somehow overlooked in
scientific descriptions?

Although I don't know the answer, I suspect we will stumble upon it
through a trigger that will come from engineering. Newton did not work
in a vacuum. He built upon what Galileo, Descartes, Huygens and others
had discovered before him, and many of those earlier investigations
were triggered by concrete applications, in particular the
construction of powerful canons calling for better ways to compute
ballistic orbits. Another example is the invention of thermodynamics.
It took almost two centuries for Newtonian mechanics to come to grips
with time irreversibility. Of course, every physicist had seen how
stirring sugar in a cup of tea is not reversible, but until
thermodynamics and statistical mechanics came along, that aspect of
reality had mostly been ignored. The engineering problems posed by the
invention of steam engines were what forced a deeper thinking about
time reversibility.

Perhaps current engineering challenges, from quantum computers to
robotics to attempts to simulate large-scale neural interactions, will
trigger a fresh way of looking at the arena of space and time,
perchance finding that we have been overlooking an aspect of material
reality that has been quietly with us all along.

Piet Hut, professor of astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced
Study, in Princeton, is involved in the project of building GRAPEs,
the world's fastest special-purpose computers.
________________________________________________________________

"Is the universe really expanding? Or: Did Einstein get it exactly
right?"

As I prepare to head for Cambridge (the Brits' one) for the conference
to mark Stephen Hawking's 60th birthday, I know that the suggestion I
am just about to make will strike the great and the good who are
assembling for the event as my scientific suicide note. Suggesting
time does not exist is not half as dangerous for one's reputation as
questioning the expansion of the universe. That is currently believed
as firmly as terrestrial immobility in the happy pre-Copernican days.
Yet the idea that the universe in its totality is expanding is odd to
say the least. Surely things like size are relative? With respect to
what can one say the universe expands?

When I put this question to the truly great astrophysicists of our day
like Martin Rees, the kind of answer I get is that what is actually
happening is that the intergalactic separations are increasing
compared with the atomic scales. That's relative, so everything is
fine. Some theoreticians give a quite different answer and refer to
the famous failed attempt of Hermann Weyl in 1917 to create a
genuinely scale-invariant theory of gravity and unify it with
electromagnetism at the same time. That theory, beautiful though it
was, never made it out of its cot. Einstein destroyed it before it was
even published with the simple remark that Weyl's theory would make
the spectral lines emitted by atoms depend on their prior histories,
in flagrant contradiction to observation. Polite in public, Einstein
privately called Weyl's theory 'geistreicher Unfug' [inspired
nonsense].

Ever since that time it seems to have been agreed that, for some
inscrutable reason, the quantum mechanics of atoms and elementary
particles puts an absolute scale into physics. Towards the end of his
life, still smarting from Einstein's rap, Weyl wrote ruefully "the
facts of atomism teach us that length is not relative but absolute"
and went one to bury his own cherished ambition with the words
"physics can never be reduced to geometry as Descartes had hoped".

I am not sure the Cartesian dream is dead even though the current
observational evidence for expansion from a Big Bang is rather
impressive. The argument from quantum mechanics, which leads to the
identification of the famous Planck length as an absolute unit, seems
to me inconclusive. It must be premature to attempt definitive
statements in the present absence of a theory of quantum gravity or
quantum cosmology. And the argument about the relativity of scale
being reflected in the changing ratio of the atomic dimensions to the
Hubble scale is vulnerable.

To argue this last point is the purpose of my contribution, which I
shall do by a much simpler example, for which, however, the principle
is just the same. Consider N point particles in Euclidean space. If N
is greater than three, the standard Newtonian description of this
system is based on 3N + 1 numbers. The 3N (=3xN) are used to locate
the particles in space, and the extra 1 is the time. For an isolated
dynamical system, such as we might reasonably conjecture the universe
to be, three of the numbers are actually superfluous. This is because
no meaning attaches to the three coordinates that specify the position
of the centre of mass. This is a consequence of the relativity
principle attributed to Galileo, although it was actually first
cleanly formulated by Christiaan Huygens (and then, of course,
brilliantly generalized by Einstein). The remaining 3N - 2 numbers
constitute an oddly heterogeneous lot. One is the time, three describe
orientation in space (but how can the complete universe have an
orientation?), one describes the overall scale, and the remaining 3N -
7 describe the intrinsic shape of the system. The only numbers that
are not suspect are the last: the shape variables.

Developing further ideas first put forward in 1902 in his Science and
Hypothesis by the great French mathematician Poincare [ascii does not
allow me to put the accent on his e], I have been advocating for a
while a dynamics of pure shape. The idea is that the instantaneous
intrinsic shape of the universe and the sense in which it is changing
should be enough to specify a dynamical history of the universe. Let
me spell this out for the celebrated 3 body problem of Newtonian
celestial mechanics. In each instant, the instantaneous triangle that
they form has a shape that can be specified by two angles, i.e., just
two numbers. These numbers are coordinates on the space of possible
shapes of the system. By the 'sense' in which the shape is changing I
mean the direction of change of the shape in this two-dimensional
shape space. That needs only one number to specify it. So a dynamics
of pure shape, one that satisfies what I call the Poincare criterion,
should need only three essential numbers to set up initial conditions.
That's the only ideal that, in Poincare's words, would give the mind
satisfaction. It's the ideal that inspired Weyl (though he attacked
the problem rather differently).

Now how does Newtonian dynamics fare in the light of the Poincare
criterion? Oddly enough, despite centuries of dynamical studies, this
question hardly seems to have been addressed by anyone. However,
during the last year, working with some N-body specialists, I have
established that Newtonian mechanics falls short of the ideal of a
dynamics of pure shape by no fewer than five numbers. Seen from the
rational perspective of shape, Newtonian dynamics is very complicated.
This is why the study of the Moon (which forms part of the archetypal
Earth-Moon-Sun three-body problem) gave Newton headaches. Among the
five trouble makers (which I won't list in full or discuss here), the
most obstreperous is the one that determines the scale or size. The
same five trouble makers are present for all systems of N point
particles for N equal to or greater than 3. Incidentally, the reason
why 3-body dynamics is so utterly different from 2-body dynamics is
that shape only enters the picture when N = 3. Most theoretical
physicists get their intuition for dynamics from the study of
Newtonian 2-body dynamics (the Kepler problem). It's a poor guide to
the real world.

The point of adding up the number of the variables that count in the
initial value problem is this. The Newtonian three-body problem can be
expressed perfectly well in terms of ratios. One can consider how the
ratios of the individual sides to the perimeter of the triangle change
during the evolution. This is analogous to following the evolution of
the ratio of the atomic-radii to the Hubble radius in cosmology. To
see if scale truly plays no role, one must go further. One must ask:
do the observable ratios change in the simplest way possible as
dictated by a dynamics of pure shape, or is the evolution more
complicated? That is the acid test. If it is failed, absolute scale is
playing its pernicious role. The Poincare criterion is an infallible
test of purity.

Both Newtonian dynamics and Einstein's general relativity fail it. The
fault is not in quantum mechanics but in the most basic structure of
both theories. Scale counts. In fact, seen from this dynamical
perspective Einstein's theory is truly odd. As James York, one of John
Wheeler's students in Princeton, showed 30 years ago (in a beautiful
piece of work that I regard as the highest point achieved to date in
dynamical studies), the most illuminating way to characterize
Einstein's theory is that it describes the mutual interaction of
infinitely many degrees of freedom representing the pure shape of the
universe with one single solitary extra variable that describes the
instantaneous size of the universe (i.e., its 3-dimensional volume in
the case of a closed universe). From Poincare's perspective, this
extra variable, to put frankly, stinks, but the whole of modern
cosmology hangs on it: it is used to explain the Hubble red shift.

There, I have stuck my neck out in good Popperian fashion. Current
observations suggest I will have my head chopped off and Einstein will
be vindicated. Certainly all the part of his theory to do with pure
shape is philosophically highly pleasing and is supported by wonderful
data. But even if true dynamical expansion is the correct explanation
of the Hubble red shift, why did nature do something so unaesthetic?
As I hope to show very shortly on the Los Alamos bulletin board,
dynamics of pure shape can mimic a true Hubble expansion. The fact is
that Einstein's theory allows red shifts of two kinds: one is due to
stretching (expansion) of space, while the other is the famous
gravitational red shift that makes clocks on the Earth run at a now
observable amount slower than clocks in satellites. It is possible to
eliminate scale from Einstein's theory, as Niall O'Murchadha and I
have shown. This kills the stretching red shift but leaves the other
intact. It is just possible that this could explain the Hubble red
shift.
Let me conclude this possibly premature (but I feel justified, since
all dogmas need to be challenged) contribution by pointing out that
according to the standard Big-Bang scenario two things have been
happening simultaneously since something lit the fuse: the universe
has been expanding from an extraordinarily uniform and isotropic
compressed state and it has simultaneously been getting more and more
clumpy. Inflationists claim to have explained why we observe such a
uniform Big Bang, but sceptics (which include me) have the
uncomfortable feeling that an observational cosmic coincidence is
merely being described, rather than explained, by theoretical fine
tuning of an adjustable parameter. In a self-respecting universe that
dismisses size as opposed to shape as a fiction, sharper predictions
must be possible. In a dynamics of pure shape, the only thing that can
happen is change of shape. That must explain the Hubble red shift.
Merely by observing the rate at which matter and the universe in
general becomes more clumpy, above all the rate of formation of
gravitationally collapsed objects, astronomers ought to be able to
predict the value of the Hubble constant.

So my challenge to the theoreticians is this: Are you absolutely sure
Einstein got it exactly right? Prove me wrong in my hunch that the
universe obeys a dynamics of pure shape subtly different from
Einstein's theory. If size does count, why should nature do something
so puzzling to the rational mind?
Julian Barbour is an independent theoretical physicist and author of
The End of Time.
________________________________________________________________

"When will we emerge from the quantum tunnel of obscurity?"
Can contradictory things happen at the same time? Does the universe
continue about its business when we're not looking at it? These
questions have been raised in the context of quantum mechanics ever
since the theory was formulated in the 1920s. While most physicists
dismissed these issues as "just philosophical", a small minority
(inspired by the examples of Louis de Broglie, Albert Einstein and
Erwin Schroedinger) continued to question the meaning of the most
successful theory of science, and often suffered marginalisation and
even ridicule.
It is one thing to apply quantum mechanics to calculate atomic energy
levels or the rate at which atoms emit light. But as soon as one asks
what is actually happening during an atomic transition, quantum
mechanics gives no clear answer. The Copenhagen interpretation, forged
by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, emphasises the subjective
experience of "observers" and avoids any description of an objective
reality; it talks about the chances of different outcomes occuring in
a measurement, but does not say what causes a particular outcome to
occur. For decades, students have been taught to avoid asking probing
questions. An attitude of "shut-up-and-calculate" has dominated the
field. The result is widespread confusion, and a strange unwillingness
to ask clear and direct questions. As the late cosmologist Dennis
Sciama once put it, whenever the subject of the interpretation of
quantum mechanics comes up "the standard of discussion drops to zero".
The publication of John Bell's book Speakable and Unspeakable in
Quantum Mechanics in 1987 provided a point of reference for a change
in attitude that gained real momentum in the 1990s.
Bell spearheaded a movement to purge physics of some inherently vague
notions inherited from the founding fathers of quantum mechanics. For
instance the "measurement apparatus" was treated by Bohr and
Heisenberg as something fundamentally distinct from the "system being
measured": the latter was subject to the laws of quantum mechanics
whereas the former was not. But if everything -- including our
equipment -- is made of atoms, how can such a distinction be anything
more than an approximation? In reality everything -- "system",
"apparatus", even human "observers" -- should obey the same laws of
physics. The clarity of Bell's writings forced many people to confront
the uncomfortable fact that quantum mechanics as usually formulated
had a problem explaining why we see definite events taking place.
Bell advertised what he saw as two promising avenues to resolve the
quantum paradoxes: the theory must be supplemented either with a new
random process that selects outcomes (the "dynamical reduction of the
state vector") or with extra "hidden variables" whose unknown values
select outcomes. Theories of both types have been constructed. Indeed,
a correct hidden -- variables theory was written down by Louis de
Broglie as long ago as 1927, and was shown by David Bohm in 1952 to
account completely for quantum phenomena. The de Broglie -- Bohm
theory gave an objective account of quantum physics; yet, until about
10 years ago, most physicists had not heard of it. Today, many have
heard of it, but still very few understand it or work on it. And it is
still not taught to students (even though in my experience many
students would love to know more about this theory).
One wonders where things will go from here. On the one hand, in the
last five years the subject of the interpretation of quantum mechanics
has suddenly become more respectable thanks to the rising technology
of quantum information and computation, which has shown that something
of practical use -- novel forms of communication and computation --
can emerge from thoughts about the meaning of quantum mechanics. But
on the other hand, there is a danger that the problem of the
interpretation of quantum mechanics will be pushed aside in the rush
to develop "real" technological applications of the peculiarities of
quantum phenomena.
The rise of quantum information theory has also generated a widespread
feeling that "information" is somehow the basic building block of the
universe. But information about what? About information itself? As
noted by P.W. Anderson in a recent Edge comment on Seth Lloyd, not
only does it seem unjustified to claim that "information" is the basic
stuff of the universe: worse, an unfortunate tendency has developed in
some quarters to regard the theory of information as the only really
fundamental area of reseach. Personally, I find quantum information
theory very interesting, and it has without doubt enriched our
understanding of the quantum world: but I fear that in the long run
its most enthusiastic practitioners may lead us back to the vague
subjectivist thinking from which we were only just emerging.

Antony Valentini is a theoretical physicist at Imperial College in
London.
________________________________________________________________

"How does being able to learn about a changing world endow our minds
with expectations, imagination, creativity, and the ability to
perceive illusions?"

When you open your eyes in the morning, you usually see what you
expect to see. Often it will be your bedroom, with things where you
left them before you went to sleep. What if you opened your eyes and
found yourself in a steaming tropical jungle? or a dark cold dungeon?
What a shock that would be! Why do we have expectations about what is
about to happen to us? Why do we get surprised when something
unexpected happens to us? More generally, why are we Intentional
Beings who are always projecting our expectations into the future? How
does having such expectations help us to fantasize and plan events
that have not yet occurred? How do they help us to pay attention to
events that are really important to us, and spare us from being
overwhelmed by the blooming buzzing confusion of daily life? Without
this ability, all creative thought would be impossible, and we could
not imagine different possible futures for ourselves, or our hopes and
fears for them. What is the difference between having a fantasy and
experiencing what is really there? What is the difference between
illusion and reality? What goes wrong when we lose control over our
fantasies and hallucinate objects and events that are not really
there? Given that vivid hallucinations are possible, especially in
mental disorders like schizophrenia, how can we ever be sure that an
experience is really happening and is not just a particularly vivid
hallucination? If there a fundamental difference between reality,
fantasy, and illusion, then what is it?

Recent models of how the brain controls behavior have begun to clarify
how the mechanisms that enable us to learn quickly about a changing
world throughout life also embody properties of expectation,
intention, attention, illusion, fantasy, hallucination, and even
consciousness. I never thought that during my own life such models
would develop to the point that the dynamics of identified nerve cells
in known anatomies could be quantitatively simulated, along with the
behaviors that they control. During the last five years, ever-more
precise models of such brain processes have been discovered, including
detailed answers to why the cerebral cortex, which is the seat of all
our higher intelligence, is organized into layers of cells that
interact with each other in characteristic ways.

Although an enormous amount of work still remains to be done before
such insights are fully developed, tested, and accepted, the outlines
already seem clear of an emerging theory of biological intelligence,
and with it, the scaffold for a more humane form of artificial
intelligence. Getting a better understanding of how our minds learn
about a changing world, and of how to embody their best features in
more intelligent technologies, should ultimately have a transforming
effect on many aspects of human civilization.

Stephen Grossberg is a Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems,
Mathematics, Psychology, and Engineering at Boston University.
________________________________________________________________

"How will computation and communication change our everyday lives,
again?"
The actual day to day things that we do have been changed drastically
for many people in the world over the last twenty years by the arrival
of personal computers. We spend hours each day in front of a screen,
typing. This was not the norm twenty years ago (although a few of us
did it even then), and no one had access to the vast stores of
information that are available to us on our laps now. We no longer ask
for reprints or go to the library, but instead download pdf versions
of papers that interest us. We no longer need to go to reference works
but instead retrieve them directly on our PCs. The number of people
that we correspond with has increased dramatically -- granted, the
medium has changed too. And chatting on the phone to people on the
other side of the world is no longer expensive or an event -- it is
just as common and cheap as calling someone a hundred miles away. Our
interaction with media is changing too -- it is becoming more and more
pull rather than push, even for TV and radio entertainment -- we
choose when and where we want to receive it, and how we will store it.
Surprisingly, neither the book, nor the movie, nor the documentary are
dead. There are more of them, in fact, although the method of delivery
is slowly changing. We have increased our number of options rather
than supplanted the old ones.
Moore's law and the increase of telecommunications infrastructure are
both continuing. What new options should we expect, and how will they
change the way we work? What will be the next "web", as unimagined by
most educated people today as our current one was in 1988? And what
will be the impact of the new methods of delivery we can expect to be
developed in the next 20 years?
Already tens of thousands of people have cochlear implants with direct
electronic to neural connections to restore their hearing. Multiple
groups are working on retinal implants, either into the eyeball, or
interfacing to V1 at the back of the head; again to replace lost
capabilities such as those resulting from macular degeneration. A few
quadraplegics have direct neural connections to computer interfaces so
that they can control a mouse and even type. As progress is made with
these silicon/neural interfaces, pushed along by clinical pressures to
cure those who are impaired, we can expect more and more "plastic
surgery" applications. A direct neural typing interface first perhaps,
and later data going the other way directly from the network into our
brains. There are considerable challenges to be met in understanding
neural "coding" to do this, but the clinical imperative is pushing
this work along.
How will we all be in the world then, 20 years from now say, when we
all have direct wireless connections to the Internet of that time with
information services as yet unimaginable? How will our grandchildren's
interaction with information change the way they work and think, in
the same way that instant messaging and vast numbers of web pages have
changed the way our children in elementary and high school operate
today?

Rodney Brooks is Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, and Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science. He is also
Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of IS Robotics,
________________________________________________________________

"Would an extra-terrestrial civilization develop the same mathematics
as ours? If not, how could theirs possibly be different?"
In writing my next book, about maths, I have been led to ponder this
question by the fact that there are philosophers, and a few
mathematicians, who believe that it is conceivable that there could be
intelligences with a fully developed mathematics that does not, for
example, recognize the integers or the primes, let alone Fermat's Last
Theorem or the Riemann Hypothesis. And yet, whole numbers seem to us
such a basic property of "things", that unless there were
intelligences that were not embodied in any way (and/or couldn't "see"
the discrete stars, for example) they would be bound to come across
number and all that follows. But then, I suppose you could imagine
intelligent beings which consisted, say, of density differences in a
gas but lacked boundaries separating one from another. In any case, if
such creatures do exist, it rather pours cold water on the use by SETI
of maths (e.g. prime x prime pictorial grids) to communicate with them

Karl Sabbagh is a writer and television producer and author of A Rum
Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud.
________________________________________________________________

"Why do we fear the wrong things?"

A mountain of research shows that our fears modestly correlate with
reality. With images of September 11th lingering in their mind's eye,
many people dread flying to Florida for Spring break, but will instead
drive there with confidence -- though, mile per mile, driving during
the last half of the 1990s was 37 times more dangerous than flying.

Will yesterday's safety statistics predict the future? Even if not,
terrorists could have taken down 50 more planes with 60 passengers
each and -- if we'd kept flying -- we'd still have been ended last
year safer on commercial flights than on the road. Flying may be
scary, but driving the same distance should be many times scarier.

Our perilous intuitions about risks lead us to spend in ways that
value some lives hundreds of times more than other lives. We'll now
spend tens of billions to calm our fears about flying, while
subsidizing tobacco, which claims more than 400,000 lives a year.

It's perfectly normal to fear purposeful violence from those who hate
us. But with our emotions now calming a bit, perhaps it's time to
check our fears against facts. To be prudent is to be mindful of the
realities of how humans suffer and die.

(To see my question developed -- and answered -- please click here).
David G. Myers is a social psychologist David G. Myers at Hope College
(Michigan) and author of The Pursuit of Happiness.
________________________________________________________________

"Are the laws of nature a form of computer code that needs and uses
error correction?"
John D. Barrow is Research Professor of Mathematical Sciences,
University of Cambridge and author of Between Inner Space and Outer
Space.
________________________________________________________________

"Can we ever escape our past, or are we doomed to a future of
biobabble?"

In mid-November 1999, New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead published a
commentary on the candidacy of Al Gore, and in it she gave us a new
word. In the old days, candidates were advised in a pseudo-Freudian
frame. Clinton, in pre-Monica times, was told to emphasize his role as
"strong, assertive, and a good father." Now, however, this
psychobabble has been eclipsed by what she called biobabble and Mead
recommended that Gore's advice might best be based on evolutionary
psychology instead of Freud. In other words, it wasn't your parents
who screwed you up, it was the ancient environment. Mead cites Sarah
Hrdy, a primatologist, as suggesting that the ideal presidential
leader would be a grandma whose grandchildren were taken away and
scattered across the country in secret locations. Then the president
could be expected to act on the behalf of the general good, to
maximize her reproductive fitness. No wonder Gore wasn't appointed.

This is d?j? vu all over again, and after the last century of
biopolicy in action, can we still afford to be here? Somehow we can't
get away from a fixation on the link between biology and behavior. A
causal relationship was long championed by the Mendelian Darwinians of
the Western World, as breeding and sterilization programs to get rid
of the genes for mental deficiencies became programs to get rid of the
genes for all sorts of undesirable social behaviors, and then programs
to get rid of the undesirable races with the imagined objectionable
social behaviors. Science finally stepped back from the abyss of human
tragedy that inevitably ensued, and one result was to break this link
by questioning whether human races are valid biological entities. By
now, generations of biological anthropologists have denied the biology
of race. Arguing that human races are socially constructed categories
and not biologically defined ones, biological anthropologists have
been teaching that if we must make categories for people, "ethnic
group" should replace "race" in describing them.

The public has been listening. This is how the U.S. census came to
combine categories that Americans base on skin color
"African-American," delineated by "one drop of blood" with categories
based on language "Latino." However ethnic groups revitalize the
behavioral issue because ethnicity and behavior are indeed related,
although not by biology, but by culture. This relationship is
implicitly accepted as the grounds for the profiling we have heard so
much about of late, but here is the rub. Profiling has accomplished
more than just making it easier to predict behaviors, actually
revitalizing the issue of biology and behavior by bringing back "race"
as a substitution for "ethnic group." This might well have been an
unintended consequence of using "race" and "ethnic group"
interchangeably, because this usage forged a replacement link between
human biology and human culture. Yet however it happened, we are back
where we started, toying with the notion that human groups defined by
their biology differ in their behavior.

And so, how do we get out of this? Can we? Or does the programming
that comes shrink-wrapped with our state-of-the-art hardware continue
to return our thinking to this point because of some past adaptive
advantage it brought? It doesn't seem very advantageous right now.

Milford H. Wolpoff is Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Michigan and author (with Rachel Caspari) of Race and Human Evolution:
A Fatal Attraction.
________________________________________________________________

"How different could life have been?"
Physicists, including several in this group, are fond of asking, "What
if the universe had been different?" Are the fundamental constants
just numbers we accept as given, but which could have been different?
Or is there some deeper rationale, which we shall eventually discover,
that renders them unfree to change? Is our universe the way universes
have to be? Or is it one of a huge ensemble of universes? Given
present company, I would not aspire to this question, fascinating as
it is. Mine is its biological little brother. Is the life that we
observe the way life has to be? Or could we imagine other kinds of
life? Long the stock in trade of science fiction, I want to move it
closer to science's domain. Unfortunately the question is one for a
chemist - which I am not. My hope is that chemists will listen, and
work on it.
Life as we know it is far more uniform than superficially appears. The
differences between an elephant and an amoeba are superficial.
Biochemically speaking, we are all playing most of the same tricks. At
this level, most of the variation in life is to be found among the
bacteria. We large animals and plants have just specialised in a few
of the tricks that bacterial R & D developed in the Precambrian.
But all living things, bacteria included, practise the same
fundamental tricks. Using the universal DNA code, the one-dimensional
sequence of DNA codons specifies the one-dimensional sequence of amino
acids in proteins. This determines the proteins' three-dimensional
coiling, which specifies their enzymatic activity, and this, in turn
specifies almost everything else. So, I'm not talking about whether
living things on other planets will look like us, or will have
television aerials sticking on their heads. It is easy to predict that
heavy planets with high gravitational fields will breed elephants the
size of flies (or flies built like elephants); light planets will grow
elephant-sized flies with spindly legs. It is easy to predict that,
where there is light, there will be eyes. This is not what I am
talking about. I want the answer to a more fundamental question.
My question, which is for chemists, is this. Can you devise a
fundamentally different, alternative biochemistry? Given that, as I
firmly believe, life all over the universe must have evolved by the
differential survival of something corresponding to genes -
self-replicating codes whose nature influences their own long-term
survival - do they have to be strung along polynucleotides? The
genetic code itself almost certainly didn't have to be the one we
actually have - plenty of other codes would have done the job. Ours is
a frozen accident which, once crystallised, could not change. But can
you think of a completely different kind of molecule, not a
polynucleotide at all, perhaps not even organic, which could do the
coding? Does it have to be digital like the DNA/RNA code, or could
some kind of analogue code be accurate and stable enough to mediate
evolution? Does it even have to be a one-dimensional code? And is
there any other class of molecules that could step into the shoes of
proteins?
Biochemists, please stop focusing exclusively on the way life actually
is. Think about how life might have been. Or how life could be on
other worlds. Channel your creativity to devising a complete,
alternative biochemistry, whose components are radically different
from the ones we know, but are at the same time mutually compatible -
participants in a wholly consistent system which your chemical
calculations show could actually work.
Why should we want this? I wanted to ask the question, "Is there life
on other worlds, and how similar is it to the life we know?" But there
is no immediate prospect of our receiving direct answers to these
questions, and I am pessimistic of our ever doing so. Life has
probably arisen more than once, but on islands in space too widely
scattered to make a meeting likely. Theoretical calculations may be
our best hope, and are certainly our most immediate hope, of at least
estimating the probabilities. There's also the point, which hardly
needs making on Edge, that to seek the unfamiliar is a good way to
illuminate oneself.
Reply to Paul Davies's response to John McCarthy
Paul Davies notes that some night-migrating birds navigate by the
stars, and asks whether avian DNA contains a map of the sky. "Could a
scientist in principle sequence the DNA and reconstruct the
constellations?" Alas, no.
Stephen Emlen, of Cornell University, researched the matter in 1975.
He placed Indigo Buntings in a circular cage in the centre of a
planetarium, and measured their fluttering against different sides of
the cage as an indicator of their preferred migratory direction. By
manipulating the star patterns in the planetarium, blotting out
patches of sky and so on, Emlen showed that the buntings did indeed
use Polaris as their North, and they recognized it by the surrounding
pattern of constellations.
So far so good. Now comes the interesting part. Is the pattern of
stars built into the birds' DNA, or is there some other, more general
way to define the north (or south) pole of the heavens? Put it like
that, and the point jumps out at you: the polar position in the sky
can be defined as the centre of rotation! It is the hub that stays
still, while the rest of the heavens turn. Did the birds use this as a
rule for learning?
Emlen reared young buntings in the planetarium, giving them experience
of different artificial `night skies'. Half of them, the controls,
experienced a night sky that rotated about Polaris, as usual. The
other half, the experimental birds, experienced a night sky in which
the centre of rotation was Betelgeuse. The control birds ended up
steering by Polaris, as usual. But the experimental birds, mirabile
dictu, came to treat Betelgeuse as though it was due north. Clever, or
what?
Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and the Charles Simonyi
Professor For The Understanding Of Science at Oxford University. He is
the author of Unweaving the Rainbow.
________________________________________________________________

"How are moral assertions connected with the world of facts?"
Unlike many ancient philosophical problems, this one has,
paradoxically, been made both more urgent and less tractable by the
gradual triumph of scientific rationality. Indeed, the prevailing
modern attitude towards it is a sort of dogmatic despair: `you can`t
get an ought from an is, therefore morality must be outside the domain
of reason`. Having fallen for that non-sequitur, one has only two
options: either to embrace unreason, or to try living without ever
making a moral judgement. In either case, one becomes a menace to
oneself and everyone else.
On the tape of the bin Laden dinner party, a participant states his
belief that during the September 11 attack, Americans were afraid that
a coup d'?tat was under way. Worldwide, tens of millions of people
believe that the Israeli secret service carried out the attack. These
are factual misconceptions, yet they bear the imprint of moral
wrongness just as clearly as a fossil bears the imprint of life. This
illustrates an important strand in the fabric of reality: although
factual and moral assertions are logically independent (one cannot
deduce either from the other), factual and moral explanations are not.
There is an explanatory link between ought and is, and this provides
one of the ways in which reason can indeed address moral issues.
Jacob Bronowski pointed out that a commitment to discovering
scientific truth entails a commitment to certain values, such as
tolerance, integrity, and openness to ideas and to change. But there`s
more to it than that. Not only scientific discovery, but scientific
understanding itself can depend on one's moral stance. Just look at
the difficulty that creationists have in understanding what the theory
of evolution says. Look at the prevalence of conspiracy theories among
the supporters of bad causes, and how such people are systematically
blind to rational argument about the facts of the matter. And,
conversely, look at Galileo, whose factual truth-seeking forced him to
question the Church's moral authority.
Why does this happen? We should not be surprised - at least, no more
surprised than we are that, say, scientific and mathematical
explanations are connected. The truth has structural unity as well as
logical consistency, and I guess that no true explanation is entirely
disconnected from any other. In particular, in order to understand the
moral landscape in terms of a given set of values, one needs to
understand some facts as being a certain way too, and vice versa.
Moreover, I think it is a general principle that morally right values
are connected in this way with true factual theories, and morally
wrong values with false theories.
What sort of principle is this? Though it refers to morality, at root
it is epistemological. It is about the structure of true explanations,
and about the circumstances under which knowledge can or cannot grow.
This, in turn, makes it ultimately a physical fact - but that is
another story.
David Deutsch, a physicist, is a member of the Centre for Quantum
Computation at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University, and author
of The Fabric of Reality. 
________________________________________________________________

"Why is beauty making a comeback now?"
My hypothesis is that the modernist/post-modernist idea that beauty is
a social construct (with no deep bedrock in reality) is dead.

There are an increasing number of books coming out propounding the
notion that beauty is real and crosses all sorts of cultural and
historic lines. In their view, that which unites us as a species in
the perception of beauty is way larger than what divides us.

My big question is whether, in a disjointed world in which the search
for meaning is becoming ever more important, the existence of widely
agreed upon ideas of beauty will increasingly become a quick and
useful horseback way of determing whether or not *any* complex system,
human or technological, is coherent.

This idea draws in part from pre-industrial age definitions of beauty
that held that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty -- that is all ye know
on earth, and all ye need to know" (Keats, 1820), and most important,
"The most general definition of beauty....multeity in unity"
(Coleridge, 1814).

Interestingly enough, the idea that I view as increasingly dumb,
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" Bartlett's dates only to 1878,
which is about when the trouble started, in my view.

Joel Garreau is the cultural revolution correspondent of The
Washington Post and author of Edge City.
________________________________________________________________

"Do wormholes exist?"
Two startling ideas about wholly different classes of objects emerged
from general relativity: black holes and wormholes. For over half a
century black holes have grown in importance, with many convincing
candidates in the sky and a vast range of theoretical support.
"Einstein bridges" as they were first called, emerged in the 1930s,
yet have not met with nearly the attention they deserve. We still
don't know if any were made in the early universe. That seems by far
the easiest way to find one<inherit it from the Big Bang<because to be
stable they demand exotic matter. Matt Visser's Lorentzian Wormholes
(1996) details the many types of wormholes allowed by theory. It's an
impressive range, mostly unexplored theoretically.

If they do exist, they could lead to interstellar travel--indeed, to
instantaneous access to points at the far range of the universe. They
would also confirm both general relativity and the discovery of exotic
matter. But curiously little thought seems given to detecting
wormholes, or theorizing about how small, stable ones might have
evolved since the early universe. Several co-authors and I proposed
using the Massive Compact Halo Object (MACHO) searches to reveal a
special class--"negative mass" wormholes--since they would appear as
sharp, two-peaked optical features, due to gravitational lensing
(Physical Review D 51, p3117-20, 1995) So far all the two peaked cases
found have been attributed to binary stars or companion planets,
though the data fits are not very close.

Surely there could be other ways to see such exotic objects. Some
thought and calculations about wormhole evolution might produce a
checkable prediction, as a sidelight to an existing search. Further
thought is needed about the implications that extra dimensions from
string theory will have on wormholes. It seems theoretically plausible
that the inflationary phase of the early universe might have made
negative mass string loops framing stable Visser-type wormholes.

Perhaps wormholes do not exist. A plausible search that yielded
nothing would still be a result, because we could learn something
about the possibility of exotic matter. A positive result, especially
detection of a wormhole we could reach with spacecraft, could change
human history.

Gregory Benford is a professor of physics and astronomy at the
University of California, Irvine. His most recent nonfiction is Deep
Time.
________________________________________________________________

"What is the pertinent question?"

Surely, the right question it is not what was wrong before Sept.11th.
The question mark to be unravelled is why on earth the western
productive system has become all-dominant in the general pool of
genes, or memes.

The unsolved question is what makes that system so efficient, so
all-embracing that no other system or ideology can compete in this
planet's race for improving the economic well being per capita. It
must be infuriating for beleivers of so called alternative ways, to
deal with poverty and collective happiness -- in this end of live, I
mean, am not talking about afterwards or beyond.

We know a bit about the actual mechanisms of the system -- or rather,
what economists call aggregate demand. We also infere some of the
things which may influence the end product. But no attention is paid
to the type of intelligence which is at the roots of the system's
survival.

The answer might be that it is a self organizing system based on swarm
intelligence. The nearest thing to that are construction setups and
organization schemes by social insects like ants, bees and termites: A
few, very simple rules, instead of preprogramming and centralized
control; the right mixture of robustness and flexibility -- just like
DNA -- hardly any supervising body at all.

Termites of the genus Macrotermes have the added advantage of
responding, with due lags, to indirect stimulation from the
environment, and not only from other workers. This kind of termites
would quickly reduce by half the number of road accidents -- the
opposite practice of hominids -- by diverting traffic towards the
railways, just by looking at the death figures.

All this has to do with genetic knowledge. As to non-genetic factors,
two are of paramount importance: the separation of State from Religion
-- it was tantamount to a free entry ticket for everybody in the
decision making process -- and the neat distinction between Theology
and Philosophy (we call it now science); it opened the door to the
technological revolution.

Eduardo Punset is Director and Producer of "Networks," a weekly
programme of Spanish public television on Science and author of A
Field Guide to Survive in the XXI st Century.
________________________________________________________________

"How can a small number of genes build a complex mental machine?"

John McCarthy and I are from different generations (in the semester
before McCarthy invented Lisp, he taught my dad FORTRAN, using punch
cards on an old IBM) but our questions are nearly the same. McCarthy
asks "how are behaviors encoded in DNA"?

Until recently, we were not in a position to answer this question. Few
people would have even had the nerve to ask it. Many thought that most
of the brain's basic organization arose in response to the
environment. But we know that the mind of a newborn is far from a
blank slate. As soon as they are born, babies can imitate facial
gestures, connect what they hear with what they see, tell the
difference between Dutch and Japanese, and distinguish between a
picture of a scrambled face and a picture of a normal face. Nativists
like Steven Pinker and Stanislas Dehaene suggest that infants are born
with a language instinct and a "number sense". Since the function of
our minds comes from the structure of our brains, these findings
suggest that the microcircuitry of the brain is innate, largely wired
up before birth. The plan for that wiring must come in part from the
genes.

The DNA does not, however, provide a literal blueprint of a newborn's
mind. We have only around 35,000 genes, but tens of billions of
neurons. How does a relatively small set of genes combine to build a
complex brain? As Richard Dawkins has put it, the DNA is more like a
recipe than a blueprint. The genome doesn't provide a picture of a
finished product, instead it provides a set of instructions for
assembling an embryo. Those instructions govern basic developmental
processes such as cell division and cell migration; it has long been
known that such processes are essential to building bodies, and it now
is becoming increasingly clear that the same processes shape our
brains and minds as well.

There is, however, no master chef. In place of a central executive,
the body relies on communication between cells, and communication
between genes. Although the power of any one gene working on its own
is small, the power of sets of genes working together is enormous. To
take one example, Swiss biologist Walter Gehring has shown that the
gene pax-6 controls eye development in a wide range of animals, from
fruit flies to mice. Pax-6 is like any other gene in that it gives
instructions for building one protein, but unlike the genes for
building structural proteins like keratin and collagen because the
protein that pax-6 builds serves as a signal to other genes, which in
turn build proteins that serve as signals to still other genes. Pax-6
is thus a "master control gene" that launches an enormous cascade, a
cascade of 2,500 genes working together to build an eye. Humans that
lack it lack irises, flies that lack it lack eyes altogether. The
cascade launched by pax-6 is so potent that when Gehring triggered it
artificially on a fruit fly's antenna, the fly grew an extra eye,
right there on its antenna. As scientists begin to work out the
cascades of genes that build the brain, we will finally come to
understand the role of the genes in shaping the mind.

Response to Paul Davies' reply to John McCarthy

It is hard indeed to imagine that nature would endow an organism with
anything as detailed as The Cambridge Star Atlas. A typical bird
probably has fewer than 50,000 genes, but, as Carl Sagan famously
noted, there are billions and billions of stars.

Of course, you don't need to know all the stars to navigate. Every
well trained sailor knows that Polaris marks North. A
northern-hemisphere dwelling bird known as the Indigo Bunting knows
something even more subtle - it doesn't just look for the brightest
star (which could be lousy strategy on a cloudy night); instead it
looks for how the stars rotate.

Cornell ecologist Stephen Emlen proved this experimentally, by raising
buntings in a planetarium. One set of birds never got to see any
stars, a second set saw the normal pattern of stars, and a third group
saw a sneaky set of stars, in which everything rotated not around
Polaris, but around Betelgeuse. The poor birds who didn't see any
stars oriented themselves randomly (making it clear that they really
did depend on the stars rather than a built-in compass). The birds who
saw normal skies oriented themselves normally, and the ones who saw
skies that rotated around Betelgeuse oriented themselves precisely as
if they thought that Betelgeuse marked North. The birds weren't
relying on specific sets of stars, they were relying on the stars'
center of rotation.

You won't find the constellations in an indigo bunting's DNA, but you
would find in their DNA the instructions for building a biological
computer, one that can interpret the stars, taking the skies as its
input and producing an estimated direction as its output. Just how the
DNA can wire up such biological computers is my vote for the most
important scientific question of the 21st century.

Gary F. Marcus is a cognitive scientist at New York University and
author of The Algebraic Mind.
________________________________________________________________

"Why do we continue to act as if the universe were constructed from
nouns linked by verbs, when we know it is really constructed from
verbs linked by nouns?"
My question is to do with materialism, reductionism and the inertia of
intellectual progress. It is also connected with the limitations of
language as a mechanism for thought or, perhaps more accurately, of
thought as a mechanism that defines and constrains language. Above all
it is concerned with a 'process' view of the universe, which, although
frequently espoused by many of us in this group, still somehow manages
to remain trapped inside an older paradigm, like a butterfly that
can't quite break free from its chrysalis skin.
It seems to me that we intuitively, linguistically and historically
divide the world into tangible things, which we think of as real, and
intangible things, to which we usually (or latterly) accord less
respect. This is not really a valid distinction since, on closer
inspection, all supposedly solid, substantial things turn out to be
rather more ephemeral, distributed and transitive than we might like
to think. The whole edifice of the universe, it seems, is constructed
from interactions between smaller, simpler phenomena that are
themselves only patterns of interactions between even simpler
phenomena. There are no 'atoms' in the Greek sense. Our division of
the world into objects, properties and structures is an artifice to
help us deal with it, not a true description of reality. The universe
is not divided into hardware and software: there is only software.
Life and Mind are perhaps the most obvious examples of things that
subsist as pure process, but atoms, electrons, buildings and societies
are in truth no different. To some extent we already know and
understand this, and yet I think we can't stop ourselves from dividing
hardware from software and treating the former as more real and
significant than the latter. Even when we attempt to regard life and
mind in a process way we often end up reifying them again as
'information' (as if information were a kind of substance) and end up
missing the point.
Perhaps the most incapacitating aspect of our implicit reification of
natural phenomena can be seen in a malignant form of reductionism.
Benign reductionism -- trying to understand something complex by first
identifying the properties of its parts -- is a valid and powerful
tool, often the only one available to science. On the other hand, it
often leads implicitly to a belief that something complex can be
understood solely in terms of the properties of its parts, without
reference to the relationships between those parts. It can easily be
demonstrated that this is nonsense (perhaps almost the converse of the
truth), and yet much of our present failure to understand nature rests
on such a fallacy.
I believe we are edging towards a new paradigm, in which process and
interaction -- the verbs -- are all there is, and material stuff
-- the nouns -- are simply placeholders for more verbs. However, we
don't yet have suitable language or mathematics for describing this
new viewpoint, and we never will if we fail to recognise the reasons
why we so easily slip back into our old ways. Before we can construct
something new we must deliberately deconstruct what we have. So the
first question I want to ask is: how is our understanding constrained
by the apparatus we use for gaining that understanding? After that we
can start to discuss what new kinds of language and mathematics might
liberate us from this paradigm trap.
Steve Grand is an aritifical life researcher and creator of Lucy, a
robot babay orangutan. He is the author of Creation: Life and How to
Make It.
________________________________________________________________

"Is the universe a quantum computer?"
The universe is quantum mechanical, and its dynamics can be simulated
precisely and efficiently using quantum information processing. The
amount of quantum computation required to perform this simulation is
finite and has been calculated. Consequently, there is no obvious way
to distinguish the universe from a very large quantum logic circuit.

Seth Lloyd is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT
and a principal investigator at the Research Laboratory of
Electronics.
________________________________________________________________

"Can wealth be distributed?"
Even with productivity showing startling increases as a consequence of
new information technologies everything suggests that the gap between
rich and poor is growing dramatically globally and even beginning to
increase again in the U.S. So much for trickle down economics.

John Markoff covers the computer industry and technology for The New
York Times and is co-author of Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of
America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw (with Tsutomu Shimomura).
________________________________________________________________

"Is God nothing more than a sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial
intelligence?"
This question is based on what I call, tongue in cheek, "Shermer's
Last Law," that any sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial
intelligence is indistinguishable from God.
As scientist extraordinaire (most profoundly as inventor of the
communications satellite) and author of an empire of science fiction
books and films (most notably 2001: A Space Odyssey), Arthur C. Clarke
is one of the most far-seeing visionaries of our time. Thus, his pithy
quotations tug harder on our collective psyches for their inferred
insights into humanity and our place in the cosmos. And none do so
more than his famous three laws:
Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states
that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he
states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Clarke's Second Law: "The only way of discovering the limits of the
possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
This last observation stimulated me to think more on the relationship
of science and religion, particularly the impact the discovery of an
Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (ETI) would have on both traditions. To
that end I would like to immodestly propose Shermer's Last Law (I
don't believe in naming laws after oneself, so as the good book warns,
the last shall be first and the first shall be last): "Any
sufficiently advanced ETI is indistinguishable from God".
God is typically described by Western religions as omniscient and
omnipotent. Since we are far from the mark on these traits, how could
we possibly distinguish a God who has them absolutely, from an ETI who
has them in relatively (to us) copious amounts? Thus, we would be
unable to distinguish between absolute and relative omniscience and
omnipotence. But if God were only relatively more knowing and powerful
than us, then by definition it "would" be an ETI! Consider two
observations and one deduction:
1. Biological evolution operates at a snail's pace compared to
technological evolution (the former is Darwinian and requires
generations of differential reproductive success, the latter is
Lamarckian and can be implemented within a single generation). 2. The
cosmos is very big and space is very empty ("Voyager I", our most
distant spacecraft hurtling along at over 38,000 mph, will not reach
the distance of even our sun's nearest neighbor, the Alpha Centauri
system that it is "not" even headed toward, for over 75,000 years).
Ergo, the probability of an ETI who is only slightly more advanced
than us and also makes contact is virtually nil. If we ever do find
ETI it will be as if a million-year-old "Homo erectus" were dropped
into the middle of Manhattan, given a computer and cell phone and
instructed to communicate with us. ETI would be to us as we would be
to this early hominid -- godlike.
Science and technology have changed our world more in the past century
than it changed in the previous hundred centuries. It took 10,000
years to get from the cart to the airplane, but only 66 years to get
from powered flight to a lunar landing. Moore's Law of computer power
doubling every eighteen months continues unabated and is now down to
about a year. Ray Kurzweil, in The Age of Spiritual Machines,
calculates that there have been thirty-two doublings since World War
II, and that the Singularity point may be upon us as early as 2030.
The Singularity (as in the center of a black hole where matter is so
dense that its gravity is infinite) is the point at which total
computational power will rise to levels that are so far beyond
anything that we can imagine that they will appear near infinite and
thus, relatively speaking, be indistinguishable from omniscience (note
the suffix!).
When this happens the world will change more in a decade than it did
in the previous thousand decades. Extrapolate that out a hundred
thousand years, or a million years (an eye blink on an evolutionary
time scale and thus a realistic estimate of how far advanced ETI will
be, unless we happen to be the first space-faring species, which is
unlikely), and we get a gut-wrenching, mind-warping feel for just how
godlike these creatures would seem.
In Clarke's 1953 novel Childhood's End, humanity reaches something
like a Singularity (with help from ETIs) and must make the transition
to a higher state of consciousness in order to grow out of childhood.
One character early in the novel opines that "Science can destroy
religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one
ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or
Thor, but they have few followers now."
Although science has not even remotely destroyed religion, Shermer's
Last Law predicts that the relationship between the two will be
profoundly effected by contact with ETI. To find out how we must
follow Clarke's Second Law, venturing courageously past the limits of
the possible and into the unknown. Ad astra!
Michael Shermer is the founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and the
author of The Borderlands of Science. 
________________________________________________________________

"Is there Progress?"

I work on the question of evolution, not as it exists in Nature, but
as a formal system which enables open-ended learning. Can we
understand the process in enough detail to simulate the progress of
biological complexity in pure software or electronics? A phenomena has
appeared in many of my laboratory's experiments in learning across
many different domains like game playing and robots. We have dubbed it
a "Mediocre Stable State." It is an unexpected systematic equilibrium,
where a collection of sub-optimal agents act together to prevent
further progress. In dynamical systems, the MSS hides within cycles of
forgetting that which has been already been learned.

When a MSS arises, instead of achieving creativity driven by merit
based competition, progress is subverted through unspoken collusion.
This occurs even in systems where agents cannot "think" but are
selected by the invisible hand of a market. We know what collusion is:
the two gas stations on opposite street corners fix their prices to
divide the market. Hawks on both sides of a conflict work together to
undermine progress towards peace. The union intimidates the
pace-setter, lest he raise the work standards for everyone else. The
telephone company undercapitalizes its own lucrative deployment of
broadband, which might replace toll collection. Etc.

As a scientist with many interests in High Technology, of course I
know there is progress. I am witness to new discoveries, new
technologies, and the march of Moore's law. Clearly, the airplane,
long distance communication, and the computer are revolutionarily
progressive in amplifying human commerce, communication and even
conflict. But these scientific and technological advances stand in
stark contrast to the utter depressing lack of progress in human
affairs.

Despite the generation of material wealth, health breakthroughs, and
birth control methods which could end want and war, human social
affairs are organized almost exactly the way they were 500 years ago.
Human colonies seem -- like ant colonies and dog packs -- fixed by our
genetic heritage, despite individual cognitive abilities. In fact, it
is difficult to distinguish anymore between Dictatorships,
Authoritarian Regimes, Monarchies, Theocracies, and Kleptocracies, or
even one-party (or two party oscillatory) democracies. When labels are
removed, it looks as if authority and power are still distributed in
hierarchical oligarchies, arranged regionally. Stability of the
oligarchic network is maintained by complex feedback loops involving
wealth, loyalty, patronage, and control of the news.

Of course, I'm not against stability itself! But when patronage and
loyalty (the collusion of the political system) are rewarded more than
competitive merit and excellence, progress is subverted.

The 90's really felt like progress to me, especially with visible
movement towards peace in certain regions of the world and an
unparalleled creative burst in our industry. But now its like we've
just been memory bombed back to the 1950's. The government is printing
money and giving it to favored industries. We are fighting an
invisible dehumanized enemy. War is reported as good for the economy.
Loyalty to the fatherland must be demonstrated. One Phone Company to
rule us all. An expensive arms race in space. And law breaking secret
agents are the coolest characters on TV.

Havent we been here before? Haven't we learned anything?

Jordan B. Pollack is a computer science and complex systems professor
at Brandeis University who works on AI, Artificial Life, Neural
Networks, Evolution, Dynamical Systems, Games, Robotics, Machine
Learning, and Educational Technology.
________________________________________________________________

"Can there be a science of human potential and the good life?"
Despite monumental advances in brain and behavioral sciences, nothing
like a science of human potential and the good life has yet emerged.
This seems ironic in an age of unprecedented wealth, yet one that also
has chronically high levels of stress and life dissatisfaction.

My hunch is that there's not yet a science of human potential and the
good life because such concerns are only just now moving from the
realm of humanistic thinking to ones being informed by science. Much
of my research lies at the interface between humanities and brain
science, as my collaborators and I address basic issues regarding how
enduring questions about the quality of human life can be informed by
brain science.

In my primary research, I ask, what is the neural basis of human
intelligence, and how can our understanding of brain development and
plasticity be used to construct more effective learning environments?
With Gabrielle Starr, an English professor at NYU and Anne Hamker here
at Caltech, we are asking, what is the brain basis of aesthetic
experience, and how can such an understanding be used to deepen our
emotional life? With Michael Dobry, co-director of the graduate
industrial design program at the Art Center College of Design, we are
asking, what is the relation between design and the brain, and how can
the design of daily life be more in line with the brain's capacities?

Ultimately, a science of human potential and of the good life must
help explain how these human capacities can be actualized in contexts
that confer significance and dignity to individual life.

Steven R. Quartz is Director of the Developmental Cognitive
Neuroscience Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
________________________________________________________________

"Why is religion so important to most Americans and so trivial to most
intellectuals?"
Is it just a matter of IQ? (Though I thought intellectuals no longer
believed in IQ...) But empirically it can't be an IQ issue, because so
many of history's greatest minds based their lives on religion -- from
Michaelangelo or Bach to Spinoza or Dante or Kant. Do modern
intellectuals actually believe that all such people are naively
deluded? Or could they be missing something themselves?

David Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale, chief
scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies and author of Drawiing a Life:
Surviving the Unabomber. 
________________________________________________________________

"What, me worry?"
This question, which has been asked by many, is now usually attributed
to Alfred E. Newman, the poster boy of Mad Magazine. His face tells it
all -- a composite of attractive merriment and troublesome
mindlessness. Who doesn't want to feel like smiling all the time? But
at what price?

Psychiatrists know that some people have pathological forms of worry.
There are names for this such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and
generalized anxiety disorder; and treatments, such as psychotherapy
and Prozac. But what about the rest of us? What is the optimal balance
between worry and contentment? Should we all be offered some kind of
training to help us achieve this optimal balance? And how should we
apply our growing understanding of the brain mechanisms that control
these feelings?

Samuel Barondes is a professor and director of the Center for
Neurobiology and Psychiatry at the UC-San Francisco and author of Mood
Genes: Hunting for Origins of Mania and Depression.
________________________________________________________________

"What is the missing ingredient -- not genes, not upbringing -- that
shapes the mind?"

We know that genes play an important role in the shaping of our
personality and intellects. Identical twins separated at birth (who
share all their genes but not their environments) and tested as adults
are strikingly similar-though far from identical-in their intellects
and personalities. Identical twins reared together (who share all
their genes and most of their environments) are much more similar than
fraternal twins reared together (who share half their genes and most
of their environments). Biological siblings (who share half their
genes and most of their environments) are much more similar than
adopted siblings (who share none of their genes and most of their
environments).

Many people are so locked into the theory that the mind is a Blank
Slate that when they hear these findings they say, "So you're saying
it's all in the genes!" If genes have any effect at all, it must be
total. But the data show that genes account for about only about half
of the variance in personality and intelligence (25% to 75%, depending
on how things are measured). That leaves around half the variance to
be explained by something that is not genetic.

The next reaction is, "That means the other half of the variation must
come from how we were brought up by our parents." Wrong again.
Consider these findings. Identical twins separated at birth are not
only similar; they are "no less" similar than identical twins reared
together. The same is true of non-twin siblings -- they are no more
similar when reared together than when reared apart. Identical twins
reared together -- who share all their genes and most of their family
environments-are only about 50% similar, not 100%. And adopted
siblings are no more similar than two people plucked off the street at
random. All this means that growing up in the same home -- with the
same parents, books, TVs, guns, and so on -- does not make children
similar.

So the variation in personality and intelligence breaks down roughly
as follows: genes 50%, families 0%, something else 50%. As with Bob
Dylan's Mister Jones, something is happening here but we don't know
what it is.

Perhaps it is chance. While in the womb, the growth cone of an axon
zigged rather than zagged, and the brain gels into a slightly
different configuration. If so, it would have many implications that
have not figured into our scientific or everyday way of thinking. One
can imagine a developmental process in which millions of small chance
events cancel one another out, leaving no difference in the end
product. One can imagine a different process in which a chance event
could derail development entirely, making a freak or monster. Neither
of these happens. The development of organisms must use complex
feedback loops rather than blueprints. Random events can divert the
trajectory of growth, but the trajectories are confined within an
envelope of functioning designs for the species defined by natural
selection.

Also, what we are accustomed to thinking of as "the environment" --
namely the proportion of variance that is not genetic -- may have
nothing to do with the environment. If the nongenetic variance is a
product of chance events in brain assembly, yet another chunk of our
personalities and intellects would be "biologically determined"
(though not genetic) and beyond the scope of the best laid plans of
parents and society.

Steven Pinker, research psychologist, is professor in the Department
of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and author of Words and Rules.
________________________________________________________________

"When will our souls be upgraded?"
If, as Harold Bloom puts it, Shakespeare invented the modern soul, if
we are the way we are because Shakespeare existed as a writer, the
question arises, whether this historic progression has come to an end
and will soon be replaced by a new version of 21st century souls.

The Shakespearean soul will not be able to cope with the innovations
and insights of the near future. Star Wars, Star Trek, even Gibson
might prove unrealistic -- not because of their description of
hardware, but because of their description of the soul.

Frank Schirrmacher is Publisher, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and
author of Die Darwin AG. 
________________________________________________________________

"Is it conceivable that the standard curriculum in science and math,
crafted in 1893, will still be maintained in the 26,000 high schools
of this great nation?"

The world is caught up in a paroxysm of change. Key words: globalism,
multinational corporations, ethical influences in business, explosive
growth of science-based technology, fundamentalism, religion and
science, junk science, alternative medicines, rich vs. poor gap, who
supports research, where is it done, how is it used, advances in
cognition science, global warming, the disconnect between high school
and college....these and other influences are undergoing drastic
changes and all will have some impact on science, mathematics and
technology and therefore on how our schools must change to produce
graduates who can function in the 21st century...function and assume
positions of leadership. Is it conceivable that the standard
curriculum in science and math, crafted in 1893, will still be
maintained in the 26,000 high schools of this great nation?

This is a question that obsesses me in my daily activities. I have
been agonizing over it along with a few colleagues around Fermilab,
University of California, and the students, staff and trustees of the
Illinois Math Science Academy (IMSI), a three year public residential
high school for gifted students, I was involved in founding some 16
years ago.

Is not our nation even more at risk now than ever? Are not our 2
million teachers even more poorly trained now, even less respected,
hardly better compensated than when we were A Nation at Risk? Some 13
years ago, the collected Governors of the United States under the
leadership of the President made six promises, all starting with: "By
the year 2000 all students will....".

The rhetoric varies from high comedy to dark tragedy. Today, the Glenn
National Commission summarizes its dismal study of science and math
education in a succinct title: Before its Too Late. Alan Greenspan
mesmerizes a congressional panel on Education and the Work Force with
the warning that if we do not radically improve our educational
system, there is a danger to the future of the nation. Words carefully
chosen. Rhetoric. We have no national strategy to address this
question. In a war on ignorance and on looming changes of unknowable
dimensions, shouldn't we have a strategy?

Leon M. Lederman, the director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory, has received the Wolf Prize in Physics (1982), and the
Nobel Prize in Physics (1988). He is the author (with Dick Teresi)of
The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?
________________________________________________________________

"In view of globalization, which is here to stay, and the events of
September 11and its aftermath, which were a shock to most of us, do we
need to make fundamental changes in our educational goals and
methods?" 
Precollegiate education has been remarkably consistent over the
decades: literacy in the primary years, initial mastery of a few major
subject areas (math, science, history, language, perhaps in the arts)
in middle and secondary school. We could take the position that we
know how to do this and should just stick to our guns. I don't agree.

Because of globalization, the capacity to think across disciplines, to
synthesize wide ranges of information efficiently and accurately, to
deal with individuals and institutions with which one has no personal
familiarity, to adjust to the continuing biological and technological
revolutions, are at a far greater premium. And because of the events
of September 11, we need to think much more deeply about the nature of
democratic institutions and the threats to them, the role and limits
of tolerance and civil liberties, the fate of scarce resources,
profound gaps across religions and cultures, just to name a few.

The time has come where we need to rethink what we teach, how we
teach, what young people learn on their own, how they interact, how
they relate to mass culture, etc. The question we must then ask is: Do
we have to continue to be reactive or can we plan proactively the
education that is needed for our progeny in this new world?
Howard Gardner is Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard
University at the co-author (with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William
Damon) of Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet.
________________________________________________________________

"When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go
ahead and do what you know is right?"

In the world we live in, mathematicians and investors have become ever
better at calculating risks, assessing outcomes, laying out possible
scenarios. But real economic progress comes from taking challenges,
not risks, and building something fantastic *despite* the odds,
because you know you're smarter and more dedicated and more
persistent, and you can gather and lead a better team, than any
rational calculation would indicate. That's how new businesses get
built, new markets get opened, new value gets created.

And real political, social and ethical progress, likewise, comes not
just from negotiating a carefully calibrated "win-win"
balance-of-power compromise, matching move for move, but from taking
the lead, challenging the other guy to follow, showing the way
forward. We make progress by stretching the imagination and doing
things we won't regret. When you cannot predict consequences, then you
need to consider your conscience and do what's right.

We need not calculation, but courage!

Esther Dyson is president of EDventure Holdings and editor of the
computer-industry newsletter, Release 1.0, and author of the book,
Release 2.1: A Design for Living in the Digital Age.
________________________________________________________________

"The hows and whys of what led to us"

There are, it seems to me, just two fundamental scientific questions
that, for very different reasons, we may have no possibility of
answering with any certainty.

One question is so fundamental that it is arguably not a scientific
question at all: It's the big how and why question of existence
itself. Although there are many technical questions still to be
answered, as a mathematician, I find myself broadly content with
science's explanation of how the physical universe -- including time
itself -- sprang into being: the symmetry breaking, primordial
fireball we call the Big Bang, followed by the subsequent evolution
into the universe we see today. But that is simply an explanation of
the mechanics of the universe of our experience and perception. It
leaves us with a lingering question of how, and perhaps why, the
framework arose in which the Big Bang took place in the first place --
be that framework one in which our universe is the only one there is
and has ever been, or one that cycles in "universe time" (whatever
that is), or maybe some kind of multiple universe scenario.

I accept that this is not really a scientific question. Science only
addresses the how of our own universe, starting just after the Big
Bang. But my curiosity, both as a scientist and more generally just as
a thinking person, cannot help but dwell from time to time on the
biggest question of all -- the question that for those having a deep
religious faith seems to find an answer in the phrase "God made it
that way." (An answer that I find even more incomprehensible in a
world where millions of human beings believe that that same God
authorizes his chosen emissaries to fly jet airliners full of humans
into buildings full of other humans.)

My second fundamental question is clearly a genuine scientific matter.
In fact, it is a technical question about evolution by natural
selection. Exactly how and why did a species (namely, us) develop that
has the capacity to think abstractly, that possesses language, and
that can reflect on its own existence? Like the big existence issue,
this is a question that has enormous significance for us, as humans.
And that makes it the more frustrating that we may find ourselves
unable ever to answer it with any certainty.

In my recent book The Math Gene, I summarized arguments to show that
the possession of language (i.e., a symbolic communication system with
a recursive grammatical structure allowing for the production and
comprehension of meaningful utterances of unlimited length) and the
ability for "offline" thinking (reasoning about the world in the
absence of direct input from the environment and without the automatic
generation of a physical response) are two sides of the same coin.
Implicit in that argument is that this ability also brings with it the
capacity for self-reflective, conscious thought. (I also argued that
such a mental capacity also yields the potential for mathematical
thought.) Thus, we are talking here about the capacity that makes us
human, and in so doing makes us very different from any other species
on Earth.
The best evidence we have from anthropology is that our ancestors
acquired this capacity some time between 75,000 and 200,000 years ago.
(The evidence is in the form of manufactured artifacts that early
humans left behind, which indicate such a level of abstract thinking
and communication.) But how -- and in terms of natural selection, why
-- did our ancestors acquire this capacity? All we know for sure is
that it came at the end of a three-and-a-half-million year period in
which the average brain size of our ancestors grew to roughly its
present level, approximately nine times larger than is normal for a
mammal of our body size and about twice that of a present-day ape.

What makes this question particularly hard is that, at least in terms
of functionality (as opposed to brain structure), the acquisition of
syntactic structure (i.e., the structure that enables us to create
complex sentences or to reason abstractly about the world) is an
all-or-nothing event. As linguists have pointed out, you cannot have
"half a grammar". True, in theory you can have grammars without, say,
passive constructions, but there is no chain of gradually more complex
grammars that starts with protolanguage -- simple subject-predication
utterances -- and leads continuously to the grammatical structure that
is common to all human languages. The chain has to start with a sudden
jump. Although the acquisition of language was a major functional
change in brain capacity, there is no reason why that jump was not the
result of a tiny structural change in the brain. But what propelled
the brain to reach a stage where such a change could occur? And what
exactly was that small structural change? This would surely be a minor
technical question about one detail, among thousands, of evolutionary
history, were it not for the fact that it was this single change that
made us human -- that made it possible for us to ask these how and why
questions, and to care about the answers.

One oft-repeated suggestion for the natural selection advantage that
language provides is that it enabled the communication of more complex
thoughts and ideas than was previously possible. But that suggestion
falls down immediately when you realize that such communication can
only arise when the brain that is doing the communicating is able to
form those complex thoughts and ideas in the first place, and that
capacity itself requires a brain having grammatical structure.

It seems likely that the two sides of this particular coin, thinking
complex thoughts and communicating them, arose at the same time, and
indeed it could have taken both aspects together to spur the
development that led to their acquisition. But we are still left with
the tantalizing question that the obvious natural selection advantages
this capacity provides only came into play after the capacity was in
place. Just what led to and prompted that jump remains a mystery.

There has been, as you might imagine, no shortage of attempts to
provide an explanation, but so far I haven't seen one that I find
convincing, or even close to convincing. (I mention some in The Math
Gene, and give pointers to further reading on the matter.) And even if
someone produces a compelling explanation, it seems we will never know
for sure. When our early ancestors died, their brains rapidly rotted
away, leaving nothing but the skulls that contained them. And even if,
by some fluke, we found an intact brain from some early ancestor,
buried deep in the ice of a glacier somewhere, how could that help us?
Dissecting an object as complex as the human brain tells us virtually
nothing about what that brain did -- how it thought and what it
thought about.

Our higher brain functions could just have been an accident. Of
course, all evolutionary changes are accidents. What I mean here is
that it may be purely accidental that the structural change in the
brain that gave us language and abstract, symbolic thought did in fact
have that effect. It might just be, as some have suggested, that the
brain grew in complexity as a device for cooling the blood, and that
language and symbolic thought are mere accidental by-products of the
body's need to maintain a certain temperature range. (Certainly, the
brain is an extremely efficient cooling device, as illustrated by the
fact that putting on a hat is an extremely efficient way of staying
warm when we go skiing.) Personally, I don't buy the cooling mechanism
explanation. But unless and until someone comes up with something more
convincing, I see no way we can rule it out.

For all our huge success in telling the story of how life began and
evolved to its present myriad of forms, it seems likely that we may
never know for certain exactly what it was that gave us the one thing
we value above all else, and the thing that makes us human: our minds.
If there is one question I would like to answer above all others, it
is this one.

Keith Devlin, mathematician, is a Senior Researcher at Stanford
University, and author ot The Math Gene.
________________________________________________________________

"How different could minds be?"

Plato believed that human knowledge was inborn. Kant and Peirce agreed
that much of knowledge had to exist prior to birth or it would be
impossible to understand or learn anything. Until quite lately,
psychologists were almost uniformly opposed to this notion, insisting
that only process not content could be part of our native equipment.
Piaget was typical (and highly influential) in asserting that only
learning skills and inferential procedures such as deductive rules and
schemes for induction and causal analysis were native. He also
maintained that these were identical for all people with undamaged
minds, and that development of such processes ended with adolescence.
Content could be almost infinitely variable because these processes
operate on different inputs for different people in different
situations and cultures.

But recent work by psychologists provides evidence that some content
is universal and native. Theories of mechanics are present by the age
of three months and highly elaborated theories of mind and make their
appearance before the age of four, are universal, and may also be
native. Some anthropologists maintain that schemes for understanding
the biological world and even some for understanding the social world
are universal and native, as are some knowledge structures for
representing the spirit world.

Psychologists  and philosophers in this case as well  may turn out to
be wrong in assuming that all mental processes are universal, native
and unalterable. Though early in the 20th century there were claims by
Soviet psychologists Vygotsky and Luria that cognitive processes were
historically rooted, differentiated by culture, and alterable by
education, they were largely ignored. But findings have cropped up
from time to time that fit these assertions. Deductive rules may be a
trick learned in the process of Western-style education; rational
choice procedures may be applied primarily by economists and only in
very limited domains by lay people; statistical rules (Piaget's
"probability schema") may be used only to a very slight extent by
non-Western peoples.

Authors of this year's questions have asked how radical the
differences among universes, mathematical systems, and kinds of life
might be. How radical could the differences among humans be in basic
knowledge structures and inferential procedures? What has to be shared
or even inborn? What can be allowed to vary?

Richard Nisbett is Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the
Culture and Cognition Program at the University and author numerous
books.
________________________________________________________________

"Can democracy survive complexity?"

As any parent of adolescents has probably experienced, life has become
sufficiently complex that emotional maturity by the end of teen years
is a thing of the distant past. If adolescence would only be over by
25!

More seriously, for democracy to function representatives need to make
critical value trade-offs for citizens. But how can citizens send
messages on how they would like their values to drive policies when
the issues are so complex that very few citizens -- and not too many
politicians either -- really understand enough of what might happen
and at what probabilities to know how to make decisions that do
optimize the value signals from citizens.

The ultimate in irrationality is to make a decision that doesn't even
advance your values because the situation is so complex that the
decision makers -- or the public -- can't see clear connections
between specific policies and their potential outcomes (as one who
works on the global warming problem I see this conundrum all the
time).

The capacity to be literate about scientific and political
establishments and their disparate methods of approaching problems is
a good start, but such literacy is not widespread and the complexity
of most issues sees public and decision-makers alike disconnected from
core questions. Educational establishments often call for more content
in curriculum to redress this issue, but I think more understanding of
context of scientific debate and political and media epistemologies
will go further to build the needed literacy.

Stephen H. Schneider is Professor in the Biological Sciences
Department at Stanford University and author of Laboratory Earth.
________________________________________________________________

"What Is Real?"

The question of what is "real," defined here as the physical universe,
acquires special subtlety from the perspective of brain and cognitive
science. The question goes beyond semantic quibbling about the
difference between physical stimuli and our perception of them.
(Consider the old question, "If a tree falls in the forest, was a
sound made if no one is present to hear it?" The answer is "no,"
because a sound is a sensation that must be perceived by an observer,
and no observer was present to hear it.) The startling truth is that
we live in a neurologically generated, virtual cosmos that we are
programmed to accept as the real thing. The challenge of science is to
overcome the constraints of our kludgy, neurological wetware, and
understand a physical world that we know only second-hand. In fact, we
must make an intuitive leap to accept the fact that there is a problem
at all. Common sense and the brain that produces it evolved in the
service of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, not scientists.

Sensory science provides the most obvious discrepancies between the
physical world and our neurological model of it. Consider these
physical to perceptual transformations: photons stimulate the
sensations of light and color; chemicals produce tastes and odors; and
pressure changes become sounds. Yet, there is no "light" or "color" in
the wave or photon structure of electromagnetic radiation, no "sweet"
in the molecular structure of sugar, no "sound" in pressure changes,
etc. The brain produced these sensory attributes. Sensation is the
arbitrary experience that is correlated with a physical stimulus, but
is not the physical stimulus itself. Our brain manages these
psychophysical transformations in such a convincing manner that we
seldom consider that we are sensing a neurological simulation, not
physical reality. When do we question the physical meaning of "blue,"
"pain," or "B-flat?" Consider also the apparent seamlessness of the
reality illusion. Using a visual metaphor, our sensory environment is
like that of a person trapped in a tiny house, through which the
universe must be viewed through peep-holes, one per each sensory
channel, such as vision, taste, hearing, etc. From this limited, peep
hole vista, we synthesize a seamless, noisy, bright, flavorful,
smelly, three dimensional panorama that is an hypothesis of reality.
The peep-hole predicament is invisible to us. (Some animals have
peep-holes we lack, such as those associated with electric or magnetic
field perception.)

Sensory examples are instructive because the nature of the
psychophysical linkage is relatively clear. It's easy to imagine
sensory limits of bandwidth (the size of our "peephole"), absolute
sensitivity, or even modes of sensitivity (our "peep-holes").
Neurological limits on thinking may be as common as those on sensing,
but they are more illusive -- it's hard to think about what you can't
think about. A good example from physics is our difficulty in
understanding the space-time continuum -- our intellect fails us when
we move beyond the dimensions of height, width, and depth. Other
evidence of our neurological reality-generator is revealed by its
malfunction in illusions, hallucinations, and dreams, or in brain
damage, where the illusion of reality does not simply degrade, but
often splinters and fragments.

Why am I interested in this question? As a neuroscientist, I want to
understand how the brain evolved, developed, and functions. As a
biologist, I believe that all organisms are a theory of their
environment, and it's necessary to understand that environment. As an
amateur astronomer and cosmologist, I want to know the universe in
which I live. To me, physics, biology, neuroscience and psychology are
different approaches to a similar set of perceptual problems. It's no
coincidence that Herman Helmholtz, a great physicist of the past
century, appreciated that you can never separate the observer from the
observed, and became a founder of experimental psychology. The
distinction between psychology and physics is one of emphasis. The
time has come for experimental psychologists to return the favor and
remind physicists that they should be wary of confusing the physical
world with their neurologically generated model of it. The frontiers
of physics may be an exciting playground for the adventurous cognitive
scientist. Ultimately, physics is a study of the behavior of
physicists, scientists trying as best they can to understand the
physical world. The intellectual prostheses of mathematics, computers,
and instrumentation loosen but do not free our species of the
constraints of its neurological heritage. We do not build random
devices to detect stimuli that we cannot conceive, but build outward
from a base of knowledge. A neglected triumph of science is how far we
have come with so flawed an instrument as the human brain and its
sensoria. 
Robert R. Provine is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the
University of Maryland and author of Laughter: A Scientific
Investigation.
________________________________________________________________

"Is there, or should we expect, a fracture in the logical basis on
which people now look for a description of the nexus between particle
physics and cosmology?"
Question: Since the 1930s, we have had to live with Godel's theorem --
the apparently unshaken proof by the logician Kurt Godel that there
can be no system of mathematical logic that is at once consistent (or
free from contradictions) and complete (in the sense of being
comprehensive). The question is whether there is, or whether we should
expect, such a fracture in the logical basis on which people now look
for a description of the nexus between particle physics and cosmology.

Why: The chief interest of Godel's theorem is that it is a negative
answer to one of the questions in David Hilbert's celebrated list of
tasks for the twentieth century, put forward at the International
Mathematics Congress in Paris in 1900. Mathematicians in the
succeeding century seem not to have been unduly incommoded by Godel.
But if there were a comparable theorem in fundamental physics, we
should have more serious difficulties. Perhaps the circumstance that
string theory is getting nowhere (not fast, but slowly) should be
taken as a premonition that something is amiss. The search for a
Theory of Everything (latterly gone off the boil) may be logically the
wild goose chase it most often seems. If science had to abandon the
principle that to every event, there is a cause (or causes) , the cat
would really be among the pigeons.

Moral: Godel's theorem needs seriously to be re-visited, so that the
rest of us can properly appreciate what it means.

Sir John Maddox who recently retired having served 23 years as the
editor of Nature, is a trained physicist, and author of What Remains
to be Discovered: The Agenda for Science in the Next Century.
________________________________________________________________

"Are space, time, and all other physical quantities only relational?"
What do we actually know about the physical world after the scientific
revolution of the last century? Before the XXth century, the picture
of the physical world was simple: matter formed by particles (and
fields) moving in time over the stage of space, pushed and pulled by
forces, according to deterministic equations, which we could write
down. That's it.. But the 20th Century has changed all that in depth.
Matter has quantum properties: particles can be delocalized -as if
they were clouds- although they manifest themselves always as a single
point when interacting with us. Space and time are not just curved:
they are dynamical entities very much like the electric and magnetic
field. Is there a new consistent picture of the physical world, that
takes all this new knowledge into account?

The most remarkable aspect of quantum theory is its relational
character: elementary quantum events (such as a certain quantum
particle being "here") only happen in interactions, and, in a precise
sense they are only "real" with respect to, or in relation with,
another system. Indeed, I can see the particle "here", but at the same
time the particle and I can be in a quantum superposition in which the
particle has no precise localization. Thus, a quantum particle is not
just "here", but only "here for me".

On the other hand, the most remarkable property of general relativity
is that localization in space and time are not defined. Things are
only localized with respect to other things. In fact, the spacetime
coordinates have no meaning in general relativity, and only quantities
that are independent of these coordinates (such as relative
localizations) have physical meaning.

Now the question is: are the quantum relationalism (quantum systems
have definite properties only in nteracting with other systems) and
the general relativistic relationalism (position is only relative)
connected to each other? Are they indeed two aspects of the same
relationalism?

There is clearly some deep connection. In order to interact quantum
mechanically, two systems must be close in space and time, and,
viceversa, spacetime contiguity can only be checked via a quantum
interaction. So, is perhaps spacetime just the geography of the net of
the quantum interactions? Is the world just made of relations?

We are far from understanding all this, and the current highly
speculative physical theories haven't even started addressing this
kind of questions. But until we address these questions -which are the
interesting ones in physics for me- the great revolution of the 20th
century is not over. We have lost the old picture of the physical
world, but we haven't a new credible one yet.

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist at the Centre de Physique
Theorique in Marseille, France.
________________________________________________________________

"Why bother? Or: Why do we go further and explore new stuff?"

Many human skills enable an individual to do something with less
physiological effort. If you are good at skiing (and I am not) it
takes less energy to climb that mountain. One can even argue
forcefully that a mental "understanding" of a phenomenon allows one to
perceive it with less increase in brain metabolism.
But not all skills are directed at a reduction of the expenditure.
Many creative activities involve a huge effort to explore new issues
or phenomena. The better skier goes beyond the first mountain. New
worlds and ideas are explored. Why do we bother -- or why do some of
us bother?

One could argue that we explore new phenomena to produce skilful
insights that will in the future allow us to visit the same phenomena
again with less effort. But is that really enough? Can such a
functional explanation of creativity as an initial effort devoted to
enable a future reduction of the effort really capture the reasons for
people to involve themselves in lifelong efforts to understand the
world of ants or the intricacy of ski dope?

It seems that president John F. Kennedy captured an essential element
in creative efforts when he, in his famous speech at Rice University
in 1962, argued for the decision to create the Apollo program: "We
choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not
because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal
will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and
skills..."

Indeed, the most important outcome of Apollo -- offering earthlings an
outside view of their planet, visualizing the vulnerability of the
Earth and its biosphere -- was an unintended result of doing a major
effort. It did pay off to do something hard. Somehow we know that
doing something hard, rather than something easy, is fruitful. But we
also know that doing it the hardest way possible (like when I ski) is
not a very efficient way of getting anywhere.

We want to be efficient, but also to do difficult things. Why? In a
sense this is a rephrasing of Brian Eno's question in Edge 11: "Why
Culture"? Many different approaches can be taken involving different
disciplines such as economy, anthropology, psychology, evolutionary
biology etc.

An idea currently explored in both economy and evolutionary biology
could be relevant: Costly signals. They provide the answer to the
question: How does one advertise one's own hidden qualities (in the
genes or in the bank) in a trustworthy way? By giving a signal that is
very costly to produce. One has to have a strong bank account, a very
good physiology (and hence good genes) or a strong national R&D
programme to do costly things. The more difficult, the better the
advertising.

Perhaps we bother because we want to show that we are strong and
worthy of mating? Culture is all about doing something that is so
difficult that only a healthy individual or society could do it.

If so, it's not at all about reducing the effort, it's all about
expanding the effort.

Tor N?rretranders is a science writer, consultant, lecturer and
organizer based in Copenhagen, Denmark and author of The User
Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size.
________________________________________________________________

"Why do people kill other people?"

No offense against another human being inflicts greater costs than
killing. Simply put, it's bad to be dead. Nonetheless, hundreds of
thousands are murdered every year; tens of millions over the past
century. From baby killing to genocide, from Susan Smith to Osama bin
Laden, people in every culture experience the urge to kill. Some act
on it. They do so despite legal injunctions, religious prohibitions,
cultural interdictions, the risk of retaliation, and the threat of
spending life in a cage. Dead bodies, a trail of grief, and a thirst
for vengeance lie in their wake.

Many believe that they already know the answer to the question of
cause. But existing theories woefully fail to explain why people
murder. Theories that invoke violent media messages, for example,
cannot explain the high rates of homicide among tribal cultures that
lack media access. Theories that invoke uniquely modern causes cannot
explain the paleontological record -- ancient skulls and skeletons
that contain arrow tips, stone projectiles, and brutally inflicted
fractures. The stones and bones of the past leave no doubt that murder
has been a persistent problem of social living throughout human
history. We need to understand why.

David M. Buss is Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas,
Austin, and author of Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the
Mind.
________________________________________________________________

"What is the difference between the sigmundoscope and the
sigmoidoscope? Less cryptically, how is everyday narrative
logic different from extensional mathematical logic?
It differs in countless ways, most of them poorly understood. It
generally deals with individuals rather than analyses or averages,
with motives and reasons rather than movements and causes. It has a
point of view rather than a "view" from nowhere. As the writer's maxim
says, it shows rather than tells, contains dialogue rather than only
declarative sentences, relies on context rather than raw data alone,
is open-ended and metaphorical rather than determinate and literal, is
tied to a particular time rather than being timeless, and deals with
emotions rather than impersonal facts. Furthermore, narrative logic
must deal with the notion of "common knowledge," whereby two or more
people know something, know that the others know it, know that the
others know that others know, and so on. In short, narrative logic is
much harder than mathematical logic.

In everyday "story logic," how "we," the story-tellers, characterize
an event or person is crucial. If a man touches his hand to his
eyebrow, for example, we may see this as an indication he has a
headache. We may also see the gesture as a signal from a baseball
coach to the batter. Then again, we may infer that the man is trying
to hide his anxiety by appearing nonchalant, that it is simply a habit
of his, that he is worried about getting dust in his eye, or
indefinitely many other things depending on indefinitely many
perspectives we might have and on the indefinitely many human contexts
in which we might find ourselves. A similar open-endedness
characterizes the use of probability and statistics in surveys and
studies.

Furthermore, unlike mathematical logic, story logic does not allow for
substitutions. In mathematical contexts, for example, the number 3 can
always be substituted for the square root of 9 or the largest whole
number smaller than the constant without affecting the truth of the
statement in which it appears. By contrast, although Lois Lane knows
that Superman can fly, and even though Superman equals Clark Kent, the
substitution of one for the other can't be made. Oedipus is attracted
to the woman Jocasta, not to the extensionally equivalent person who
is his mother. In the impersonal realm of mathematics, one's ignorance
or one's attitude toward some entity does not affect the validity of a
proof involving it or the allowability of substituting equals for
equals.

John Allen Paulos is Professor of mathematics at Temple University
adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University, and author
Once Upon a Number. 
________________________________________________________________

"How much can we expect the social sciences to help build a just and
free society?"
Marx and Engels argued for "scientific socialism", that is, for a
political movement that would bring about a just and free society with
the help of science. No need to recall how the movements that they
inspired either failed to achieve much, or succeeded in establishing
societies tragically lacking in justice and freedom. Was the science
insufficiently scientific, or was the very idea of a scientific
socialism flawed? I became a social scientist (and then a cognitive
scientist and a philosopher) out of the conviction that what was
lacking in scientific socialism was a proper science of society. I
gave myself the goal of contributing to the development of a truly
scientific programme in the social sciences. Today, I believe some
significant steps have been taken in this direction, in particular by
beginning to bridge the gap between the social sciences and the
cognitive and, more generally, the natural sciences. But does this
bring us anywhere nearer, not "scientific socialism" (clearly an
obsolete notion), but, more generally, the possibility of using the
social sciences for radically bettering our world?

Most people understand the social relationships and institutions in
which they participate well enough to get the most (which often is not
much) out of their participation. The social sciences are, for the
most part, a systematized, de-parochialized, professionalized version
of this competence that we all have, to a smaller or greater extent,
as social actors. As such, the social sciences help us improve our
understanding of the social world; they help better understand in
particular the point of views of other actors in the same society and
of people in other societies. But this enhanced understanding is still
shallow, and strikingly weak in predictive power. It is, as far as
informing political action, little more than serious journalism
without the time pressure. The events of last September provide a
telling illustration: What did social scientists have to contribute to
our understanding of the events? Did interpretive anthropologists
provide a much deeper understanding of the fundamentalist terrorists?
Did sociologists give well argued and unexpected predictions as to how
the target societies would react? No, the contribution of social
scientists was, to say the least, modest. Still, the role of the
social sciences as enhancers of common sense social understanding may
be modest, but it is crucial in helping people overcome prejudices and
biases, and become better citizens not just of their own country, but
of the world. Immodest social scientists that presume say what is to
be done should not be easily believed.

But might, in the future, a more scientific social science emerge
(probably alongside, rather than in place of, the more common sense
social sciences that we know)? Its role would not be to ground
political action -- it is not the role of science to say what is good
and what is bad -- but to inform it well enough so that more daring
long-sighted political action could be undertaken -- action that might
help build a more just and freer society --without being all too
likely to have its unforeseen consequences compromise its initial
goals, as happened with communism? This is my question. I don't know
the answer.

Dan Sperber is a social and cognitive scientist at the French Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris and author, with
Deirdre Wilson, of Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 
________________________________________________________________

"Why do people like music?"
People from every culture like listening to some kind of music, so it
seems that it is something that is wired into us. Is there an
evolutionary advantage to liking music?

W. Daniel Hillis is Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Applied
Minds, Inc., a research and development company and author of The
Pattern on the Stone.
________________________________________________________________

"Why do we decorate?"
Why do all the human cultures that we know of decorate things? Why not
just leave them alone? Why put in all that extra, and apparently
non-functional, energy?

Brian Eno, an artist, makes and produces records. He has produced U2
("including this year's award- winning "All That You Can't Leave
Behind"), Talking Heads and Devo and collaborated with David Bowie,
John Cale, and Laurie Anderson.
________________________________________________________________

"Will unification ever come to a stop?"
Unification of opposites is an underlying theme in the development of
humanity. Newton showed us that the same laws govern the motion of
heavenly bodies and apples falling on Earth. Darwin unified the
concept of being a human with that of being another living organism.
There have been numerous other unifications in the history of mankind.
So, how will it go on? Which notions appearing to us as very distinct
today will turn out to be the same for future generations? Will there
ever be a limit to unification? Will we in the end be able to show
that everything just stems from one single fundamental idea? Or two?
Or many? Or infinitely many?
A more practical and immedite question is where the next step will
lead us to? Which is the next unification of seemingly opposite and
distinct concepts. Maybe we should look at the real big questions loom
today and take them as hints for the next unifications. So, very
specifically, which of the questions raised in the Edge World Question
drive points towards the next unification?

Anton Zeilinger is a Professor of Physics at the University of Vienna
whose work in quantum teleportation has received world-wide attention.
________________________________________________________________

"How do women's minds work?"
Try this question on any man: All you'll get for an answer is a
shrugging of shoulders along with a puzzled facial expression. The one
thing neither rocket scientists nor astrophysicists will ever be able
to comprehend is how women think and feel. Bill Watterson's eternal
six-year old Calvin (from "Calvin & Hobbes"), no smart scholar, but
the epitome of the self-assured yet forever puzzled boy, summarizes
his incomprehension of the opposite gender: "What is it like to be a
girl? Is it like being a bug? I imagine bugs and girls have a dim
perception that nature has played a cruel trick on them, but they lack
the intelligence to really comprehend the magnitude of it!"

In reality it is, of course, the other way around. Nature has played a
cruel trick on men - rather than on women. Men's minds, for the most
part, work along a single longitudinal path: A triggers B, B triggers
C and so forth. They consider themselves to be smart, because they are
barely able to grasp causal chains. Men's intelligence is expressed by
the extent to which they can estimate or predict a sequence of steps
in a chain reaction. Like chess players, some men can think one or two
steps ahead, some seven or eight. Alternatives to their
one-dimensional, allegedly "logical" path of thinking are beyond their
imagination.

Womens minds, on the other hand, are much more complex. Women embrace
several different natures in their personality. In addition to the
men's straightforward "logical" way of thinking, they (according to C.
G. Jung) incorporate a personification of the unconscious
counter-sexual image, in other words the inner man in a woman. This
archetype encompasses a number of instincts that are quite useful in
supplementing a woman's emotions. In addition, women's minds embrace a
third governing force, the so-called "shadow", a counter-image of
their true character. The working-type woman, for instance, can
identify with the feelings of a spoiled tootsie. A woman who has run
expeditions in Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan all her life, can
suddenly become flustered at the run of a nylon stocking. What makes
women so unfathomable to men is that they can leap in a split second
from one level of their personality to the other. As a consequence,
that charming lady you are flirting with suddenly turns into a
sharp-tongued businesswoman, only to react like a helpless college
girl in the next moment. It would be asking too much of a man's mind,
being merely a simplified, incomplete version of a woman's mind, to be
able to comprehend this kind of complexity in the opposite gender.

Of course, one might argue that men also incorporate an anima and a
shadow in their personality. So what? The effect of all three
personalities is still the same: A unilateral drive towards ambition,
competition and ultimately triumph. Let's face it: We men are
pathetically simple minded. How simple minded? Swiss author Melina
Moser knows the answer. She lists the only three things men need to be
happy: Admiration, oral sex and freshly pressed orange juice.

"What will happen when the increasing speed of communication, the
driving force behind cultural progress since the introduction of
husbandry, suddenly becomes irrelevant?"

I am convinced that there is a predominant driving force behind
cultural progress and that this driving force is speed of
communications. The ancestors of modern humans lived in caves and
hunted large mammals on essentially the same cultural level for over
two million years. The entire history of civilization is limited only
to the past 10,000 years.

In my opinion it began when, at the end of the Ice Age, sea level
rose, thereby drowning estuaries and creating innumerable natural
harbours. A high sea level invited people to climb aboard boats and
cross the sea, thus accelerating the exchange of information between
different peoples. Knowledge about new discoveries and achievements
spread more rapidly and the advance of culture received its first
major boost.

Since then, the acceleration of information exchange has driven
cultural progress. The wheel, sailing ships, trains, planes,
telephones, fax machines followed suit. Finally, the invention of the
Worldwide Web caused one of the biggest hysterias in world economics.
Today, we can transfer five thousand copies of the entire
Encyclopaedia Britannica from (almost) any place on earth to (almost)
any other place on earth in only one second  and at the maximum
possible speed, the speed of light.

After ten thousand years of cultural progress mankind is now reaching
the point at which any amount of information can be transferred to any
place at the speed of light. The increasing speed of communication,
the driving force behind cultural progress since the introduction of
husbandry, suddenly becomes irrelevant.

What will happen to progress as this threshold is crossed?

Eberhard Zangger is the geoarchaeologist who uncovered the most
plausible explanation for the legend of lost Atlantis of the past 2500
years and author of The Future of the Past.
________________________________________________________________

"Is the PC desktop really dead?"

Much ado has been made lately over the problems of the PC "desktop
metaphor," the system of folders and icons included in Macintosh and
Windows PCs. Critics of the desktop rightly point out that today's PC
users encounter much more information than in the 1980s, when the
desktop was first introduced. While I understand these criticisms, I
question whether the desktop is really dead < in other words, whether
the solution really lies in building a better desktop. Instead, I
think that the real issue is the increased information, not the
interface between it and the user.

Some technologists are ready to discard the old desktop. Last month
MIT's Technology Review ran a piece on new software attempting to
bypass the desktop metaphor. None of the tools are very convincing.
Scopeware, a software package from Mirror Worlds Technologies (founded
by David Gelernter, an Edge contributor), essentially removes all file
hierarchy by showing files sorted by creation date. While the tool has
some nice search features, it's unclear how removing all file
hierarchy is an improvement over today's desktop. Other technologies
in the article include a two-dimensional graphical "map" of the file
system and a 3-D navigable space. These programs try to solve the
problem of a cluttered desktop by presenting a new metaphor that could
become just as cluttered.

To be sure, there are advances to be made in the tools. Using
Microsoft Windows, even briefly, reveals so many interface flaws that
it makes me cringe. But fixing these myriad flaws will not address the
central issue, which is the tsunami of information arriving into
users' PCs. It is the user, not the tool, that should be the focus.

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed several Americans to
inquire about their personal strategies for dealing with their e-mail.
Receiving 50 to 150 incoming messages per day, these PC users
described the methods they use to stay on top of their information and
remain effective in their jobs.

What's interesting about this article is that the Journal recognized
e-mail use as a personal activity. Many other business activities,
like using approved software or submitting timesheets, may be closely
regulated by the IT department < but not e-mail. Each user in the
article has become conscious of his or her information flow and has
created a system to manage it, using the software (albeit flawed) at
his or her disposal. The story is about personal needs first, tools
second. The industry's response to this problem should be the same. If
we could just teach more users to use their tools better, we'd be in
far better shape than if we simply churned out yet more complex
software.

I would be happy to be proven wrong. Gelernter's Scopeware, for
example, could turn out to be a revolutionary advance in curing
information anxiety. My guess, however, is that even the best tools
will fall short of a cure. We may need a combined strategy of better
tools and greater education of users about the nature of a world awash
in information. To be effective in coming years, users must assume
greater responsibility for their own information management.

Of course, there are problems with that proposition. For one, new
desktop metaphors, like the 3-D software, is sexy and makes for
interesting press clips. Educating users is decidedly dull. What's
worse, there is no easy business plan to educate users en masse in
more efficient ways to organize their information. Making a tool that
promises to help is so much more profitable. But tools alone won't
save us. If all we can do for users is give them a newer, flashier,
more distracting interface, then the desktop may indeed be dead
forever.

Mark Hurst is the founder of Creative Good, Inc., a leading user
experience consulting firm.
________________________________________________________________

" Does life on Earth have a future?"
By "life on Earth" I mean the variety of life, the multitude of
species, the dazzling array of ecosystems they create from the
permanent snow fields of the Himalayas to steamy jungles, and coral
reefs, and the variety of including ourselves including and the 6000+
languages we speak and our cultures that they largely define.
There are two answers: no and yes.
A median estimate is that a third of all the species will be on the
fast track to extinction within the next quarter century. Over 90% of
all languages will be gone by then, because languages spoken by fewer
than a million people are rarely taught to children. Most tropical
forests will be gone by 2025 and with them, their species and peoples.
Global warming will ensure that the species that survive do so in the
wrong place. Coral reefs will be cooked alive in too-warm oceans,
tropical glaciers will long have been only a memory preserved in the
National Geographic photo collection.
So what will it mean for humanity to live in such a biological
impoverished world? I always think of Orange County, California, with
an airport named after an actor. A fake cowboy/war hero (delete as
appropriate) to introduce you to a desert world with nitrogen-enriched
green lawns, no sidewalks, golf courses, imported water. Instant
gratification reigns. The future? Don't worry be happy. Enough people
like that world; property values are high.
But suppose we saved the variety of life on Earth, grabbed the nettle
of global warming, and, in general thought about our human futures.
What would that tell us about ourselves -- and what we are capable of
achieving? What would it take to accomplish that?
Answer the life-on-Earth question and whatever answer one picks, so
much about ourselves must be revealed.
Stuart Pimm is Professor of Conservation Biology at Columbia
University in New Yorkand author of The World According to Pimm: A
Scientist Audits the Earth.
________________________________________________________________

"Is it possible to know what is good and what is evil?"
For the past four centuries, the attempt to answer this question has
been the main driving force of world history  not only the history of
ideas, but also the history of politics and collective violence. This
is true for two reasons:

1. It is impossible for people to live without constructing some
cognitive structure (which philosophers call practical reason) that
asks and answers questions concerning how to live and what to do
traditionally, by formulating them in moral or ethical terms as how
we should live and what we ought to do.

2. When humanity made the transition, at the time of the scientific
revolution of the 17th century, to a new and higher stage of its
collective cognitive development by progressing from theology and
philosophy to science, it became more and more difficult for people
to see how it could be possible to answer the old pre scientific
theological and philosophical questions, "what is good and what is
evil?" Those questions came to be seen as unanswerable and hence
meaningless because what the scientific revolution showed, above
all, was that what we call "knowledge" (scientia) is possible when,
and only when, it can be framed in the form of hypotheses that can
be confirmed or disconfirmed by means of experience, i.e.,
empirical data and observations.

That entailed, for example, the conclusion that metaphysical knowledge
(knowledge of Absolute Reality, or God, as It, He or She exists
independently of our perceptual and conceptual apparatus) is
unattainable. (Nietzsche called this the "death of God.") But that was
not an insuperable problem, because metaphysics was immediately
replaced by physics, which had far greater cognitive power to predict,
explain and control the phenomena being cognized anyway.

What has been an insuperable problem, up to now, has been the
unavailability of any cognitively adequate replacement for ethics.
Moral knowledge is unattainable because there is, in principle and by
definition, no conceivable moral hypothesis that could possibly be
proved or disproved by means of any conceivable type of empirical
data, test or experiment. That is true, among other reasons, because
moral statements do not take the form of empirically testable
hypotheses, or hypothetical imperatives ("If you want X, then you can
get it by doing Y" - but with no guidance as to whether you should
want X in the first place). Moral statements take the form of value
judgments and categorical imperatives (i.e., commandments or orders as
to what you should do or want). Commandments can never be true or
false, so they cannot communicate knowledge. And value judgments are
incapable of communicating knowledge about the external world; the
only thing they can express are subjective wishes, tastes and
preferences which are, from a logical and epistemological point of
view, completely non-rational and arbitrary, matters of whim, about
which we can only say De gustibus non disputandum est.

Of course, it has always been known that beauty exists in the eye of
the beholder. What had not been seen so clearly, until the scientific
revolution, was that the same was true of good and evil. The first
modern personality, Hamlet, expressed this clearly in 1601 when he
said "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."
I.e., good and evil are words for subjective preferences, sentiments
of approval or disapproval, that exist only in the mind of the
beholder. They do not exist as objective realities whose validity can
be known or tested, proved or disproved. And Hamlet's fate shows how
confused, paralyzed, violent and self-destructive people can become
when they have recognized that it is impossible to know what one
"should" do, but have not yet discovered how to replace that question
with one that is answerable.

Thus, it is not only God (and the Devil) that are dead; more
importantly, so are Good and Evil, the abstract philosophical concepts
of which the former are the concrete mythological and theological
incarnations. As Ivan Karamazov put it (speaking for those for whom
God is the only credible and legitimate source of moral authority),
"without God anything is possible, everything is permitted." But even
those who, following Kant or Rawls, would like to place their faith in
pure (a priori) reason, and would trust it to take the place of God as
the source of moral knowledge, are doomed to disappointment and
ignorance; for even Kant made it clear that moral knowledge was
unattainable. As he put it, "I must destroy knowledge in order to make
room for faith (Glaube, also translatable as "belief")." That is, even
the most dedicated champion of pure (a priori) practical reason as the
source of moral knowledge had to admit that moral knowledge is
unattainable; all he could put in its place was faith. And by the time
he wrote those words, the Age of Faith had long since been dead and
buried. Indeed, the whole history of modern science was one long
demonstration that knowledge was attainable when, and only when, one
replaced faith with its opposite, the attitude of universal doubt, and
refused to believe any proposition that had not been tested against
empirical evidence.

One inescapable consequence that followed from all this was the loss
of credibility of the traditional sources of moral authority (God and
pure reason). Why did that create such a crisis that most of human
history since the 17th century has been a series of attempts to come
to terms with it, both in theory and in practice? Because human nature
abhors a cognitive vacuum, especially in the sphere of practical
reason. For without some way of answering the questions that practical
reason asks, concerning how to live and what to do, humans are totally
disoriented and without direction, a condition that is intolerable and
panic-inducing. Once they have discovered the cognitive inadequacies
of the moral way of formulating those questions and answers, as they
have to an increasing extent since the scientific revolution of the
17th century, and have not yet discovered how to progress to a more
cognitively adequate form of practical reason, many people will
regress to a more intellectually primitive and politically reactionary
set of questions and answers. In the 20th century these took the form
of political totalitarianism, which led to genocide; more recently,
they have taken the form of religious fundamentalism, which has
increasingly led to apocalyptic terrorism. Given the existence of
weapons of mass destruction, it hardly needs to be stressed how much
both of these ideologies potentially threaten the survival of our
species.

These political/ideological movements have been widely, and correctly,
interpreted as rebellions or reactions against modernity (whether
modernity is conceived of as Western civilization, Jewish science,
modern technology, religious unbelief, freedom to express any opinion,
or whatever), though usually without specifying what it is about
modernity that threatens our very existence and survival. The deepest
threat, I would maintain, is cognitive chaos in the realm of practical
reason, and thus nihilism in the realm of morality, anomie in the
realm of law, and anarchy in the realm of politics. The paradox is
that the political movements that have been most widely interpreted as
nihilistic and "evil" - Nazi, Stalinist and theocratic totalitarianism
and their sequelae, genocide and terrorism  in fact originated as
desperate (and misguided) attempts to ward off nihilism and what their
adherents consider "evil." To them, the greatest evil is modernity, on
in other words, the modern scientific mentality, which replaces
certainty with doubt, dogmatism with skepticism, authority with
evidence, faith with agnosticism, coercion with persuasion, violence
with words and ideas, and hierarchy with democracy and equality of
opportunity  all of which fills them with overwhelming dread and
terror, amounting to a kind of existential or moral panic.

In fact, to the totalitarian/fundamentalist mind, modernity not only
represents absolute evil; it represents something even worse than
that, namely, the total absence and delegitimation of any standards of
good and evil whatsoever  the total death of good and evil, a state of
complete anomie and nihilism. For without knowing what is good and
evil, how can one know what to do? And without knowing what to do, how
can one live (not only biologically, but even mentally)? How can one
maintain any mental, emotional, social, cultural or political
coherence and order? As Kenneth Tynan remarked, "Hell is not the place
of evil; rather, Hell is the absence of any standards at all." That
condition is so intolerable to humans that many will regress to even
the most irrational and destructive ideology if they cannot find some
more epistemologically powerful cognitive structure with which to
replace the old moral way of thinking, once its cognitive inadequacy
has been so deeply perceived that its credibility has been
irreversibly destroyed.

Cognitive growth occurs by finding better and better answers to
existing questions. Cognitive development occurs only when one begins
to ask a new and different set of questions. We do this only when we
notice that our current questions are meaningless because they are
unanswerable, so that they need to be replaced with a different set of
questions that can be answered. By this point, in the 21st century, we
now realize that it is impossible to answer the moral (and legal and
political) questions, "How should we live and what ought we to do?"
The only questions that are meaningful, in that they can lead to
answers that possess cognitive content or knowledge, are the questions
"How can we live? i.e., what biological, psychological and social
forces, processes and behavior patterns promote, protect and preserve
life, and which ones cause death?" For that question can be answered,
by means of empirical investigation as to the causes and prevention of
the extinction of species (including our own, as by nuclear holocaust
or unrestrained devastation of our natural environment), the
extermination of social groups (through epidemics of collective
violence, such as war, genocide, poverty, famine, etc.), and the
deaths of individuals (by means of homicide, suicide, obesity,
alcoholism, etc.). In other words, the only possible replacement for
ethics or morality that is progressive rather than regressive is the
human sciences  human biology, psychology and psychiatry, and the
social sciences.

Unfortunately, the modern human sciences, unlike the natural sciences,
had not yet been invented when the scientific revolution of the 17th
century first showed that moral knowledge was unattainable. And even
today, the ability of the human sciences to predict, explain and
control the objects of their scrutiny (human behavior) is extremely
limited, whether compared with that which the natural sciences possess
with respect to their objects of study, or with the degree of
cognitive power that the human sciences will need to attain if we are
to gain the ability to avert the headlong rush to species-wide
self-destruction that we currently seem to be embarked upon. In other
words, to paraphrase Winston Churchill's remark about democracy, the
human sciences are the worst (the least cognitively adequate) of all
possible forms of practical reason  except for all the others (such as
moralism, fundamentalism and totalitarianism)! What that implies is
that nothing is more important for the continued survival of the human
species than a stupendously increased effort to make progress in the
further development of the human sciences, so as to increase our
understanding of the causes of the whole range of our own behaviors,
from life-threatening (violent) to life-enhancing.

James Gilligan has been on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry
at the Harvard Medical School since 1966. He is the author of
Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic.
________________________________________________________________

"Are space and time fundamental concepts or are they approximations to
other, more subtle, ideas that still await our discovery?"
It is hard to conceive of a universe that does not exist in space and
persist through time: space and time seem to be the basic framework of
the cosmos. Yet what is space and what is time? Are they "things" or
are they merely the language we use for organizing events we witness
in the world? Moreover, are they even fundamental? Could it be that
space and time conveniently summarize more basic ideas somewhat as
temperature summarizes the motion of atomic constituents? Will we one
day discover "atoms" of space and time---true, fundamental elements
which space and time as we now know them are simply coarse
approximations?

Brian Greene is a professor of physics and of mathematics at Columbia
University and author of The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden
Dimensions, and the Quest for an Ultimate Theory.
________________________________________________________________

"Are we ever going to be humble enough to assume that we are mere
animals, like crabs, penguins, and chimpanzees, and not the chosen
prot?g?s of this or that God?"
Recent events around the world remind us of historical phenomena
observed since the dawn of civilizations: wars, genocides, oppression,
conquests, occupations, and, of course, killings in the name of some
God. Although the underlying principles are the same, modern killings
are more sophisticated, spectacular, and effective than those in the
past. In a matter of hours, you can now hijack a plane and crush it
against an office building killing thousands, or you can (as it was
done more than 50 years ago) drop an atomic bomb over a city killing
hundreds of thousands of civilians. You can see all that on TV.
Studying non-human animals, contemporary biology, evolutionary theory,
and modern ethology have gathered enough knowledge to respond to
questions regarding the nature of aggression, social power, alliance
formation, hierarchical domination, and attack-defense behavior.
Psychology, anthropology and cognitive science have added important
pieces extending this knowledge into human animals. From these studies
contemporary science has got some deep understanding about what peace
is about. In a nutshell, the moral is that there is no absolute, ideal
or ultimate peace in the animal kingdom. Peace turns out to be a
fragile local phenomenon that depends on circumstances, population
density, biological needs, availability of resources, and so on. If
you value peace, the best you can do is to provide conditions for
peace, not to "install" peace itself.
So, if we have good scientific knowledge about the nature of peace,
how come we don't have peace on earth? Well, because we don't want to
accept that we are animals. We prefer to continue believing that we
are the prot?g?es of our own created Gods, and that we are, in a
transcendental sense, different from a chimpanzee. Peace for humans is
taken to be something profound, spiritual and pure, not a bio-social
emerging phenomenon. Our created Gods provide the moral values that
define what the absolute and ultimate peace is supposed to be, and who
is supposed to impose it. There is no surprise then if we see
intransigent world and religious leaders calling for holy wars,
fighting the Evil in the name of the Good, and justifying in the name
of peace, the bombing of civilians, the construction of missile
shields, or the occupation of foreign territories.
If we really value peace (but I am not sure this is what some world
powers really want!), what we need is to provide sustainable
conditions for peace. And for this, it would be much easier to know
how to do it, if we assume once for all, that we are indeed animals.
Rafael N??ez is professor of Cognitive Science at the University of
California at San Diego, and author of Where Mathematics Comes From
(with George Lakoff).
________________________________________________________________

"What is value?"
Oscar Wilde once said that "A fool is someone who knows the price of
everything and the value of nothing". Economists have struggled with
this question for several centuries and have largely given up - most
modern economists tacitly assert that price and value are the same
thing, except for possible "externalities" that prevent the market
system from functioning correctly. But many of us still believe that
the value of a good poem or a comforting word may not be fully
reflected in its price, and that value to society and GDP are only
weakly correlated.
The question behind this question is whether there is an objective
basis for saying that one thing is more valuable than another. In the
world of esthetics is inevitably subjective. But perhaps this is not
as manifest in other domains. For example, in engineering is it
possible to say that one design is inherently better than another?
This is closely related to the long standing and much debated question
of evolutionary progress. Is there a sense in which we can clearly say
that organisms tend to evolve toward better designs, when taken over
sufficiently long domains in time and space? When we compare the
non-living world of four billion years ago to the rich biosphere of
the present, the comparison seems obvious to some of us. But this is
hotly contested by others, who point to the lack of a objective
criteria for quality of design.
I think that, with functionality as the arbitrator, a mathematical
framework for distinguishing good and bad designs may be an achievable
goal. This has scientific importants for engineering and economics,
and profound implications for philosophy, relgion, and even politics.
In the postmodern world objectivity is out of fashion. Perhaps it is
time for reality to make a comeback.
J. Doyne Farmer , one of the pioneers of what has come to be called
chaos theory, is McKinsey Professor, Sante Fe, Institute, and the
co-founder and former co-president of Prediction Company in Santa Fe,
New Mexico.
________________________________________________________________

Who am I? What am I?
Perhaps I am this stuff here, i.e., the ordered and chaotic collection
of molecules that comprise my body and brain.

But there's a problem. The specific set of particles that comprise my
body and brain are completely different from the atoms and molecules
than comprised me only a short while (on the order of weeks) ago. We
know that most of our cells are turned over in a matter of weeks. Even
those that persist longer (e.g., neurons) nonetheless change their
component molecules in a matter of weeks.

So I am a completely different set of stuff than I was a month ago.
All that persists is the pattern of organization of that stuff. The
pattern changes also, but slowly and in a continuum from my past self.
From this perspective I am rather like the pattern that water makes in
a stream as it rushes past the rocks in its path. The actual molecules
(of water) change every millisecond, but the pattern persists for
hours or even years.

So, perhaps we should say I am a pattern of matter and energy that
persists in time.

But there is a problem here as well. We will ultimately be able to
scan and copy this pattern in a at least sufficient detail to
replicate my body and brain to a sufficiently high degree of accuracy
such that the copy is indistinguishable from the original (i.e., the
copy could pass a "Ray Kurzweil" Turing test). I won't repeat all the
arguments for this here, but I describe this scenario in a number of
documents including the essay "The Law of Accelerating Returns".)

The copy, therefore, will share my pattern. One might counter that we
may not get every detail correct. But if that is true, then such an
attempt would not constitute a proper copy. As time goes on, our
ability to create a neural and body copy will increase in resolution
and accuracy at the same exponential pace that pertains to all
information-based technologies. We ultimately will be able to capture
and recreate my pattern of salient neural and physical details to any
desired degree of accuracy.

Although the copy shares my pattern, it would be hard to say that the
copy is me because I would (or could) still be here. You could even
scan and copy me while I was sleeping. If you come to me in the
morning and say, "Good news, Ray, we've successfully reinstantiated
you into a more durable substrate, so we won't be needing your old
body and brain anymore," I may beg to differ.

If you do the thought experiment, it's clear that the copy may look
and act just like me, but it's nonetheless not me because I may not
even know that he was created. Although he would have all my memories
and recall having been me, from the point in time of his creation, Ray
2 would have his own unique experiences and his reality would begin to
diverge from mine.

Now let's pursue this train of thought a bit further and you will see
where the dilemma comes in. If we copy me, and then destroy the
original, then that's the end of me because as we concluded above the
copy is not me. Since the copy will do a convincing job of
impersonating me, no one may know the difference, but it's nonetheless
the end of me. However, this scenario is entirely equivalent to one in
which I am replaced gradually. In the case of gradual replacement,
there is no simultaneous old me and new me, but at the end of the
gradual replacement process, you have the equivalent of the new me,
and no old me. So gradual replacement also means the end of me.

However, as I pointed out at the beginning of this question, it is the
case that I am in fact being continually replaced. And, by the way,
it's not so gradual, but a rather rapid process. As we concluded, all
that persists is my pattern. But the thought experiment above shows
that gradual replacement means the end of me even if my pattern is
preserved. So am I constantly being replaced by someone else who just
seems a like lot me a few moments earlier?

So, again, who am I? It's the ultimate ontological question. We often
refer to this question as the issue of consciousness. I have
consciously (no pun intended) phrased the issue entirely in the first
person because that is the nature of the issue. It is not a third
person question. So my question is not "Who is John Brockman?"
although John may ask this question himself.

When people speak of consciousness, they often slip into issues of
behavioral and neurological correlates of consciousness (e.g., whether
or not an entity can be self-reflective), but these are third person
(i.e., objective) issues, and do not represent what David Chalmers
calls the "hard question" of consciousness.

The question of whether or not an entity is conscious is only apparent
to himself. The difference between neurological correlates of
consciousness (e.g., intelligent behavior) and the ontological reality
of consciousness is the difference between objective (i.e., third
person) and subjective (i.e., first person) reality. For this reason,
we are unable to propose an objective consciousness detector that does
not have philosophical assumptions built into it.

I do say that we (humans) will come to accept that nonbiological
entities are conscious because ultimately they will have all the
subtle cues that humans currently possess that we associate with
emotional and other subjective experiences. But that's a political and
psychological prediction, not an observation that we will be able to
scientifically verify. We do assume that other humans are conscious,
but this is an assumption, and not something we can objectively
demonstrate.

I will acknowledge that John Brockman did seem conscious to me when he
interviewed me, but I should not be too quick to accept this
impression. Perhaps I am really living in a simulation, and John was
part of the simulation. Or, perhaps it's only my memories that exist,
and the actual experience never took place. Or maybe I am only now
experiencing the sensation of recalling apparent memories of having
met John, but neither the experience nor the memories really exist.
Well, you see the problem.

Ray Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font
optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading
machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, among other
major inventions, and author of The Age of Spiritual Machines.
________________________________________________________________

"Why is life so full of suffering?"
It is a bit embarrassing to admit a preoccupation with this gigantic
old question, but it is human, I suppose. Tackling it straight on
seems to be an exercise in hubris, but if you stick to science, you
soon realize that we are still struggling to figure out what the
question is. It helps, I think, to distinguish four separate
questions.
The first question is why capacities for suffering exist at all. Why
do organisms care if they are injured? Why do they try so hard to
avoid dying? Why do they fight just to have sex? Why do we experience
a certain kind of pain just from being ignored? Such motives,
behaviors, and experiences are made possible by brain mechanisms
shaped by natural selection. While many individual experiences of
suffering arise because something has gone wrong, either in person's
life or brain, the capacities for suffering and pleasure exist because
they are useful, at least for the genes that make them possible. This
is terribly sobering. Many people still confuse the question of why
capacities for suffering exist, with the very different question of
what causes suffering in individual instances. I have called this the
"clinician's fallacy" because doctors and therapists so often treat
defenses as if they were diseases. Eventually the distinction will
become clear.
The second question is why we so often continue to do things that make
us miserable. Why do we pursue goals we can't reach given that this
causes so much unhappiness? Why we can't take Buddha's advice and
transcend our desires? The answer is that people who have given up
difficult goals have had fewer children. These goals are not just
wealth, power and sex. Trying without success to protect and help
one's children causes intense suffering and everyone recognizes why we
can't give up this goal. The evolutionary origins of our motives do
not make us helpless puppets but they can help us to understand why
controlling our desires is difficult.
The third question is why we treat others the way we do. It is silly
to say that people are innately generous or selfish, but the fact of
poverty is universal. I spent this week on call where the truth hits
you in the face; for all the riches of our society, millions of people
have no job, no money, few friends and not even a warm place to sleep.
Politicians enact policies that make it even easier for the rich to
keep their riches. This is nothing new, but neither is it unalterable.
Any improvement, however, needs to start from the realities of human
nature.
The fourth question is very different. The other three ask why people
are mostly the same, but this one instead asks why people are
different. The explanations for differences in suffering include
differences in genes, experiences, personalities, and social settings.
Most of our efforts to understand suffering have been here. This
research provides genuine knowledge, but only part of a complete
answer.
Big problems often motivate proposals for grand quick solutions that
give rise to horrendous unanticipated consequences. A gradual
deepening of our evolutionary understanding of ourselves offers more
modest but surer hope. Many misgivings about evolutionary approaches
to human behavior come from a simple misconception. Natural selection
explains how the competitive struggles of life shaped us, but this
does not mean that life is only a struggle nor does not mean that life
cannot be made better. Quite the contrary. If we want to prevent
social catastrophes and gradually improve our world, we had better
start with a real understanding of why we are the way we are. Negative
psychology tells us why some people are unhappy and how bad this is
for them. In another corner, positive psychology tells us why some
people are happier than others and how good this is for them. What we
need now is "diagonal psychology" that investigates the costs of
experiencing positive emotions when they are not warranted, and the
benefits of capacities for suffering. This will offer a real
foundation for understanding why the world is so full of suffering.
Randolph M. Nesse is Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of
Psychology at the University of Michigan and editor of Evolution and
the Capacity for Commitment.
________________________________________________________________

"How do we scale up the number of quality human relationships one
person can sustain by many orders of magnitude? In an increasingly
connected world, how does one person interact with a hundred thousand,
a million or even a billion people?"

Our one fixed resource is time -- human attention. As we become
increasingly networked in the technological sense, we also become more
networked in the social sense.

As our social networks scale up, we move more and more of our
interactions to the technological sphere. We can have many more
telephone interactions than we can have hand-written letter
interactions. When we move from telephone to e mail, the number of
interactions between people goes up even more dramatically.

Then we pair our e-mail interactions with a personal Web site, and we
start moving our personalities into the technology net, as a way of
automating and scaling up the number of relationships even further.

We end up with personal CRM systems to handle our increased
interaction load, and then add interfaces from our technology net to
our human forms. These interfaces will develop from current-day Palm
Pilots and Blackberry's to heads-up display style interfaces in
glasses and eventually retinal and neuronal interfaces.

"Hi Jerry, Ahh.., we met back in 1989, May 14th at 7pm, and since then
we've exchanged 187 e-mails and 39 phone calls. I hope your cousin's
daughter Gina had a wonderful graduation yesterday."

The whole range of interactions becomes organized. Introductions from
one person to another, and rating systems become automated.

Currently many people run into barriers as their personal networks
approach the range of thousands of people. Soon they will move to the
tens of thousands, to the millions and beyond.

With these trends, the friction costs of personal introductions go
down, and consequently the value of quality measurement and
gatekeeping go up dramatically. As the depth of knowledge in a
relationship increases, the threshold point at which you 'really know
someone' increases also. It's an arms race of intimacy.

Adrian Scott is founder of Ryze, a business networking community. He
is a founding investor in Napster, got his Ph.D. in nonlinear
optimization at age 20, and has sung with Placido Domingo and
performed with the NYC Ballet.
________________________________________________________________

"After postfeminism, what's next?"
Women of a previous generation said that their own mothers had missed
out on the fruits of feminism. Like many women in my cohort, I
discovered that my mother was born too early for postfeminism.
Of course, postfeminism makes sense only when basic legal and civil
rights exist for both sexes -- it's an irrelevant luxury for too many
women on this planet. Letitia Baldrige, the dean of American manners
(among other things), recently defined her own position as that of a
"conservative feminist." It makes sense, for the restless privileged
daughters of Western feminism, to become moderate postfeminists -- not
centrists, exactly, but realists.
Feminism is a seductive, useful and powerful ideology, provoking
reaction and rebellion whenever it becomes an established player. When
will postfeminism be a viable option the world over? Will it ever be
possible? And, in those cultures where postfeminism plays an important
role in women's lives, what's the next step? Is postfeminism a toy or
a tool?

Tracy Quan is a member of the International Network of Sex Work
Projects. She is the author of the novel, Diary of a Manhattan Call
Girl.
________________________________________________________________

"Do languages matter?"

A language dies when there is nobody left to speak it.

By the best estimates, around 6,000 languages are alive in the world
today. Half of them, perhaps more, will die in the next century --
that's 1,200 months from now. So this means that somewhere in the
world, a language dies about every two weeks.

Why do languages die? There are many reasons -- natural disasters (for
instance, if an entire village of speakers is killed in a flood, or
wiped out in a disease epidemic), social assimilation (speakers cease
using their native language and adopt a more popular language in
response to economic, cultural, or political pressures). Genocide,
colonization, and forced language extinction are causes.

The belief that language diversity is healthy and necessary is often
compared to biodiversity, and the idea that a wide array of living
species is essential to the planet's well-being.

Michael E. Krauss, of the University of Alaska's Alaska Native
Language Center, extends this analogy to define three stages of
language health in The World's Languages in Crisis:
moribund: "languages no longer being learned as mother-tongue by
children"

endangered: "languages which, though now still being learned by
children, will -- if the present conditions continue -- cease to be
learned by children during the coming century," and

safe: languages with 'official state support and very large numbers of
speakers.'

If we measure the value of a language simply by the number of people
it allows us to communicate with, bigger would always be better, and
the death of an endangered language would be of no consequence to the
rest of the world. If 128 million people speak French, and roughly 100
people speak Pomo -- a nearly extinct indigenous language in
California -- then French is exponentially more valuable than Pomo.

But language is not math. Language is embodiment of cultural identity.
Language is nuance, context, place, history, ancestry. Language is an
animate being; it evolves, it adapts, it grows. Language is the
unique, neural fingerprint of a people. Language is a living code that
provides structure for human experience. Language is intellectual DNA.

Does diversity of thought and culture matter?

Does human diversity matter?

Then, language matters.

Xeni Jardin is a freelance journalist and conference manager.
________________________________________________________________

"Is our brain smart enough to understand the brain?"

Here is a paradox for cognitive neuroscientists: We're trying to
understand the brain with the very mental resources that are afforded
by our brains. We hope that the brain is simple enough that we can
understand it; but it needs to be complex enough for us to be able to
understand it.

This is not completely unrelated to G?del's theorem, which states
-roughly- that in any sufficient complex formal system, there exists
truths that are inaccessible to formal demonstration. Strictly
speaking, G?del's theorem does not apply to the brain because the
brain is not a formal system of rules and symbols. Still, however, it
is a fact that the tightly constrained structure of our nervous system
constrains the thoughts that we are able to conceive. Our mathematics,
for instance, is founded on a small set of basic objects: a number
sense, an intuition of space, a simple symbol-manipulation system...
Will this small set of representations, crafted by evolution for a
very different purpose, suffice to understand ourselves?

I see at least two reasons for hope. First, we seem to have a
remarkable capacity for constructing new mental representations
through culture. Through metaphor, we are able to connect old
representations together in new ways, thus building new mathematical
objects that extend our brain's representational power (e.g. Cartesian
coordinates, a blend between number and space concepts). Second, and
conversely, Nature's bag of tricks doesn't seem so huge. Indeed, this
is perhaps the biggest unanswered question: how is it that with a few
simple mathematical objects, we are able to understand the outside
physical world in such detail? The mystery of this "unreasonable
efficacy of mathematics", as Wigner put it, suggests a remarkable
adaptation of our brain to the structure of the physical world. Will
this adaptation suffice for the brain to understand itself?

Stanislas Dehaene is a cognitive scientist at the Institut National de
la Sant? and author of The Number Sense: How Mathematical Knowledge Is
Embedded In Our Brains.
________________________________________________________________

"Who and what are the we in we?"

Humans are, to our knowledge, the only species who can inquire into
the nature of nature. So it is not just narcissism that drives our
efforts to understand what makes humans different from other animals.
Often we are drawn to the great achievements of Homo sapiens in the
arts, science, mathematics, and technology, because we view these
achievements and the minds that created them as the paragon of what
makes us special. The assumption is that these minds got an extra dose
of the best of what makes humans human. But several lines of evidence
are now coming together to suggest something a bit different and, for
many people, more than a bit disturbing.

It is now well known that great achievers are disproportionately
likely to suffer from mental illnesses. Severe mental illnesses,
particularly bipolar disorder, are much more common among the greatest
novelists, poets, painters, and musicians, than among your everyday H.
sapiens, especially in recent centuries as the great accomplishments
have become more abstract, that is, less normal. A Freudian might
explain this association by suppressed social environment that
generated both the creativity and their illness. To geneticists,
consideration of familial associations suggests a genetic causes. What
flows from these perspectives is the dogma that has dominated most of
the past century: mental illness and mental creativity result
primarily from an interaction between stressful environments and
unusual human alleles.

A careful consideration of the evidence and application of natural
selection, however, implicate another cause: infectious agents. People
with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for example, are more likely
to be born in late winter or spring, when born in temperate latitudes.
This pattern is a smoking gun for prenatal or perinatal infectious
causation, which can also explain the known familial associations as
well as or better than human genetics. And human genetics does not
offer sensible explanations of other aspects of these disease, such as
the season-of-birth associations, the urban/rural associations or the
high fitness costs associated with the diseases. People with severe
mental illnesses commit suicide at a rate that is far too high to
allow the maintenance of causal alleles simply by the generation of
those alleles through mutation.

Noninfectious environmental influences may help explain some of these
associations, but so far as primary causation of severe mental
illnesses is concerned, none of the noninfectious environmental or
allelic candidates have stood up to the evidence to date as well as
infectious candidates. The arguments will eventually move toward
resolution through the discovery of the causal agents whether they be
alleles, pathogens or some noninfectious environmental influence.
Alleles have been claimed as major causes of these diseases but
retractions have followed claims as soon as adequate follow-up studies
have been conducted. In contrast, evidence for associations between
infectious agents and severe mental illnesses has mounted over the
past decade in spite of much less funding support.

The associations between mental illness and creativity make sense from
an evolutionary perspective. If our minds evolved to solve the
challenges associated with hunting/gathering societies, we can expect
the normal mind to be poorly equipped to solve some of the
accomplishments valued by modern society, whether they be a new style
of painting or complex mathematical proofs. If neuronal networks could
fire differently, then new mental processes could be generated. Most
of the re-networking that accompanies severe mental illnesses makes a
person less functional for the tasks valued by society. But every now
and then the reorganized brain generates something different,
something that we consider extremely valuable. To distinguish this
abnormality that we esteem from the abnormality that we pity, we use
the term genius. If the geniuses of today were mentally ill at a rate
no greater than that of the general population, then we could
reasonably assume that genius was simply one tail of the naturally
selected distribution of intellectual capacities.

The high rates of mental illness highest achievers, particularly in
the arts, however, demand a different explanation. If the illnesses
associated with such creativity are caused by infection and the
infection cannot be explained as a consequence of the creative
lifestyle, as indicated by the season of birth associations, then the
range of feasible explanations is narrowed. The least tortuous
conclusion is that prenatal infections damage the development of the
brain, generating a brain that functions differently from the
naturally selected brain. Most of the time these pathogens just muck
up the mind, causing mental illness without generating anything in
return. But in a few lucky throws of the dice, a different mind that
is brilliantly creative.

At this level of accomplishment it is looking more and more like the
we in we do not just belong to Homo sapiens but also to a variety of
parasitic species. It may include human herpes simplex virus, borna
disease virus, Toxoplasma gondii, and many more yet to be discovered
species that alter the functioning of our brains, usually for the
worse, but occasionally generating minds of unusual insight. Richard
Dawkins's concepts of the extended phenotype and meme return with
extended license. In addition to viewing characteristics of an
organism as an extension of a manipulator species for the benefit of
manipulator genes, some characteristics that humans prize as the best
of what makes humans human may be side effects that do not actually
benefit the manipulator. They are in effect cultural mutations
generated as side effects of biological parasitism. Like biological
mutations the cultural mutations are often detrimental, but sometimes
they may create something that humans value: A Starry Night, The
Raven, Nash equilibria, or perhaps even calculus. The devastation
associated with these characteristics, which often involves extreme
fitness loss -- suicide with damage rather than benefit to kin --
cannot be explained by natural selection acting solely upon humans.
The principles of natural selection emphasize that we have to consider
other species that live intimately within us as part of us, affecting
our neurons, shaping our minds.

Paul W. Ewald is a professor of biology at Amherst College and author
of Plague Time.
________________________________________________________________

"Will cognitive science change the way we think as much as other
sciences have?"
Physical science has changed how we think. Those with a basic
education no longer think of sun revolving around the earth, or of
matter as made up of earth, air, fire, and water. The germ theory of
disease is well known, as is DNA.

Cognitive science is newer and it is not yet well-known, even among
prominent scientists, and the corner of cognitive science I work in --
cognitive linguistics -- is even less well-known. Yet its results are
just as startling and it has just as much capacity for changing how we
think.

As I read through the questions posed by my distinguished colleagues
from other disciplines, I realized that the very questions they posed
look very different to me as a cognitive linguist than they would to
most very well educated Edge readers. It occurred to me that simply
commenting on their questions from the perspective of a cognitive
linguist would provide some idea of how the world might look different
to someone who is acutely aware of the finding of cognitive science,
especially cognitive linguistics.

With the greatest of respect for my colleagues who raised the
following questions, here is one cognitive scientist's perspective on
those questions, given the findings in my discipline.

Todd Feinberg asks: "What is the relationship between being alive and
having a mind?"
The mind is embodied, with particular concepts "computed" by highly
specialized neural circuitry that is part of the brain and connected
to the body, especially the sensory-motor system and the emotional
system. As Antonio Damasio has repeatedly observed, rationality is
impossible without emotions, that is, without the appropriate
activation of the brains emotional centers.

Here are some examples of the ways that conceptual thought depends on
the peculiarities of the body and brain: Spatial relations concepts
arise from structures in the visual system like topographic maps and
orientation-sensitive cells. The way we structure events appears to
arise from neural schemas for motor control and perception in the
prefrontal cortex. Abstract reasoning makes use of embodied reasoning
via metaphoric projections from the sensory motor system to higher
cortex. Our vast system of primary conceptual metaphors appears to
develop spontaneously during childhood because just about all children
have certain recurrent experiences in the world.

In short, without a body with a brain functioning in the world, there
are no concepts and there is no mind. Computers don't think. They
don't understand. They just compute.

David Myers: "Why do we fear the wrong things?"
Because we all have conceptual systems that make use of prototypes,
conceptual frames, and conceptual metaphors, which operate below the
level of consciousness. These are neither literal, nor even consistent
with each other. Yet we understand the world in terms of those
conceptual structures. It is inevitable that human beings (scientists
included) will tend to act in terms of their natural cognitive
structures, which they use automatically and unconsciously, rather
than in terms of scientific rationality, which requires both training
and conscious effort.

Timothy Taylor asks: "Is morality relative or absolute?"
Neither. Human moral systems are not absolute, but not unrestrictedly
relative either. There is a relatively small set (about two dozen) of
metaphors for morality found around the world, and these, together
with traditional models of the family, give rise to a limited range of
moral systems. The ethics of care (which I "nurturant morality" in
Moral Politics) is, so far as I have been able to determine, the
system best suited to human flourishing. In short, I agree with Taylor
about the ethics of care

David Deutsch asks : "How are moral assertions connected with the
world of facts?"
Certain moral systems are inconsistent with what is known from
cognitive science. For example, strict father morality, which requires
absolute moral strictures and an absolute moral authority, simply is
out of synch with how the mind works. This is a case where an 'ought'
can arise from an 'is.'

Douglas Rushkoff: "Are stories the only way we have of interpreting
our world -- meaning that the forging of a collective set of mutually
tolerant narratives is the only route to a global civilization?"

In a word, yes. Interestingly enough, the kinds of stories that
defined civilizations seem rather restricted in character, as do the
kinds of stories that define what a possible "history" is. It is, of
course, an open question as to whether a "global civilization" is
possible, or even desirable. Diversity is a crucial value.

Jordan Pollack asks: "Is there Progress?"

What constitutes "progress" depends on your conceptual system,
especially your moral system. I happen to agree with Pollack that the
Bush administration is morally regressive and that things have gotten
much worse in the past year, especially since September 11. But that
is because I (and probably Pollack) accept nurturant morality. If you
see the world in terms of strict father morality, as George W. Bush
does, then from the perspective, there has been "progress."

There is of course a difference between scientific progress and human
progress. As Bill Joy has observed, there is some scientific
"progress" that represents a huge backward step.

Lance Knobel asks: ""Do we want to live in one world, or two?"
John Markoff asks: "Can wealth be distributed?"

Cognitive science is important here, because of certain myths arising
from moral conceptual systems, conceptual framing, and economic
metaphors. Here's what those myths are and how they work:

o The Market Myth: The market is seen metaphorically as a force of
nature that works optimally and that is it "unnatural" and dangerous
to "tinker with." It follows that, if the market determines the value
of your labor, that is "natural," "fair," and a consequence of an
optimal system.

This metaphor is disastrously at odd with how markets actually work.
Markets are constructed; for example, it took more than 900 pages of
regulations to build and constrain the global market of the WTO. The
stock market is constructed and maintained by the SEC and other
institutions.

o Moral Self-Interest: Strict father morality has a moral version of
Adam Smith's invisible hand metaphor: If everyone pursues his own
well-being, then the well being of all will be maximized. This has the
corollary: Being a "go-gooder" (not pursuing your own self-interest)
screws up the system.

o The Bootstrap Myth: In American, everyone can pull himself up by his
bootstraps -- succeed if he works hard enough.

These myths work in concert in a disastrous way. In the U.S., about
one-quarter of the population (roughly, those without health care)
performs difficult and absolutely essential work that, because of the
structure of the economy, they cannot be paid fairly for -- caring for
children and the elderly, house cleaning, picking fruits and
vegetables, working in fast-food joints, doing day labor, and on and
on. Without them, our economy could not function. These workers make
possible the lifestyles of the upper three-quarters of the population.
Yet, for the most part, the economy is such that their employers
cannot afford to pay them a wage commensurate with their contribution
to the economy.

The result is what I call the "two-tier economy."

Though any one person might be able to pull himself up by his
bootstraps, one-quarter of the economy cannot. For this society to
run, some quarter of the population has to do work that cannot be paid
commensurate with its value to the economy.

This is actually a failure of the way our economy is set up. Since
lower-tier workers effectively work to keep the economy going, they
should be paid by the economy as a whole -- via the way markets are
commonly constructed and tweaked, via the tax code. Provide for a
negative income tax. The money is there in the economy.

Why doesn't this happen? Partly because of the greed and power of the
wealthy. But also because of the three myths given above. They hide
the nature of the problem and its solution.

Globally, of course, the situation is much worse. Our current
regulations constructing the global marketplace are unethical. An
ethical globalization -- one based on an ethics of care --is needed.

Karl Sabbagh asks: "Would an extra-terrestrial civilization develop
the same mathematics as ours? If not, how could theirs possibly be
different?"
When one looks at the details of what is needed biologically to form a
human conceptual system, it turns out to be an awful lot of very
special biological structure that evolved via a very, very long
sequence of biological accidents. So many that, despite the vastness
of the universe, the probability that another enormously long sequence
of biological accidents would produce anything like the intelligence
we know is virtually null. There are no extra-terrestrial
civilizations.

Mathematics especially shows a dependence on the details of human
bodies and brains, as N??ez and I show in Where Mathematics Comes
From. Number arises from very special neural circuitry. Advanced
mathematical ideas arise from a long series of interlocking conceptual
metaphors. The most important of these is what we refer to as the
Basic Metaphor of Infinity, which allows one to use finite experience
to metaphorically characterize the idea of actual infinity -- which
stands outside the experience of finite beings. A vast portion of
modern mathematics depends on this metaphor.

Margaret Wertheim: "How can we understand the fact that such complex
and precise mathematical relations inhere in nature?"
They don't inhere in nature.

Mathematics makes use of the same conceptual apparatus used by the
human mind generally, which allows for mathematical ideas -- ideas
grounded in our bodies and that mostly make use of metaphor.
Mathematical ideas, like other ideas, don't go floating around in the
air. Those ideas arise from human brains that evolved to run human
bodies and don't exist outside those brains.

The neural capacity to link ideas to symbols is central to
mathematics. Computation is made possible by neural mappings that link
mathematical ideas to their symbolizations, in such a way that
conceptual inferences can be mirrored by symbolic computations.

Scientists are astute observers of nature. They use their conceptual
systems to understand nature and to classify natural phenomena and to
reason about them. Science uses ideas like change, size, proportion,
inversion, and so on. Mathematics uses the same ideas, mapped
precisely onto symbolizations. Thus, there are physical phenomena that
change in inverse proportion to their size and there is a mathematics
that expresses the same ideas with accompanying computations. The
correlation between the mathematics and the world occurs in the mind
of the scientist, because scientists understand the world in terms of
ideas, and those very ideas either occur in the conceptual system of
existing mathematics or scientists make up a new mathematics to
mathematicize those ideas.

Paul Bloom: "How will people think about the soul?"

David Gelertner: "Why is religion so important to most Americans and
so trivial to most intellectuals?"

John Horgan: "Do we want the God machine?"

Religion has many aspects -- at least the following, which cognitive
science has something to say about:
o The Metaphorical Aspect: There are three basic classes of metaphors
for God that arise naturally.

First, the personification metaphors, centering on God as Parent,
typically a father. Eve Sweetser has observed that if you take the
properties of the father (progenitor, authority figure, powerful
person, protector, he loves you, etc.), you get the other commonplace
metaphors for God (creator, lawgiver, king or lord, shepherd, lover,
and so on).

Second, the same basic metaphor of infinity that underlies actual
infinity in mathematics characterizes God as infinite: all-knowing,
all-powerful, first cause, the highest good.

Third, the immanence metaphor: God is the world. (Do not say God is
not in the stone; God is in the stone!) Most traditions have immanent
versions (e.g., Kabalistic Judaism), and immanence seems central to
Buddhism.

o The Explanatory Aspect: Religions claim to answer fundamental
questions: Where did we come from? What is the future? Is there life
after death? Are we mortal or immortal? Do we have a soul? Religions
commonly have prophets, who offer such explanations. Explanations come
in the form of rich metaphorical narratives. The highest calling is to
know God, or seek to do so, according to whatever metaphor for God one
is using.

o The Moral Aspect: Religions are fundamentally moral. They tell you
how to live, what is good or bad. They often use the metaphor of Moral
Accounting in one way or another, with good and bad deeds added up and
balanced. This is often tied up with issues of either Karma (moral
accounting with the universe) or reward and punishment in an
afterlife. In addition, there are saints (figures who set examples for
us to follow), devils (evil-doers who examples for us not to follow),
and martyrs (who have suffered for the religion and thus gain extra
credit). Following a religion is not easy, and involves considerable
responsibility and discipline.

o The Experiential Aspect: Forms of spiritual experience, which we now
know are physical in character -- brain states. Religious experience
is also communal, and communities are vital to religion.

From cognitive science, we know that thought, perception, and even
personality are embodied in the brain: you can't think, see, or be who
you are without appropriate neural activity in the right parts of the
brain. Thus, if you had a disembodied soul that could live on after
death, it couldn't see (without a visual cortex), couldn't hear
(without an auditory cortex), couldn't feel (with none of the brain's
emotional centers), couldn't have empathy (with no mirror neurons),
wouldn't have a memory, and wouldn't have your personality (without
the right prefrontal cortex). In short, it wouldn't be much of
anything, certainly not much of you.

It is easy to debunk aspects of religion, like religious explanations
and notions of the soul, and in cases like creationism, it is
important to do so. But there are very good cognitive reasons that
people find meaning in religion -- and believe religions. Religions
fit common metaphors. Religions provide moral guidance for life that
makes sense because religions use common metaphors for morality --
morality as accounting (summing up good and bad), purity, uprightness
(heaven is up, hell is down), and so on. Religions provide spiritual
practice, which is a seen as a way to gain knowledge (of God), to
connect with the infinite (God), and if followed, can lead to
spiritual experience (a real physical experience), involving a sense
of the elimination of boundaries and of connectedness with others and
with the universe. Religions also provide a spiritual community, in
which one can connect with others dedicated to the same ideals.

"Do we want the God machine?" No. The point of religion is the
practice, the path, the moral life, and the connection with others and
the world in one's everyday life. The end point makes no sense and has
no point without traveling the path. The God machine will be ignored
by those for whom religion in all its aspects is important.

It is often been observed that science has many of the properties of
religion. Science seems to take the form of a religion based on the
immanence metaphor, with God as the universe and the highest calling
being to understand the universe (to know God). Many central questions
of science come from religion: Where did we come from? (The Big Bang)
What is the future -- will the universe keep expanding? Is the
universe finite or infinite? From this perspective, the drive for a
single unified Theory of Everything is metaphorically the drive to
know a single God.

Issues of immortality are central to science, with Reputation
metaphorically playing the role of the Soul in some respects. Seeking
knowledge is moral behavior, and making important discoveries is doing
Good. The reward can be immortality -- your reputation can live
forever. If you win a Nobel Prize, it is there forever, whether you
are or not; it makes you one of the immortals. There are saints --
Einstein, Darwin, Newton, etc. -- and saints' lives. There are even
relics (Einstein's brain) and reliquaries (Who got Einstein's
office?).

The explanations science offers are metaphorical. Conceptual metaphors
preserve inferences, which makes them useful for science. But
scientific differ from the metaphors of religion because they
presuppose empirical observation and science uses very special
metaphors that that not only preserve inference but that are
mathematicized, that is, that have a symbolic calculus attached, which
allows for calculations and predictions. Einstein's great metaphor in
general relativity was that time is a spatial dimension and that
gravity is curvature in space-time. The metaphor yields a beautiful,
predictive mathematics, but is no consolation when you fall and hurt
your knee and are told by a literal Einsteinian that no force acted on
it; rather, it moved along a geodesic in space-time.

A common metaphor in physics is What Exists Is What Can Be Observed,
which lies behind Lee Smolin's contribution. Then there are the
proposed new metaphors that come out in the questions:

o "Are the laws of nature a form of computer code that needs and uses
error correction."

o "Is information the basic building-block of the universe?"

These are, of course, serious proposals to use new metaphors and the
mathematics that goes with them to yield laws of nature that make
better predictions.

A reasonable answer to David Gelertner's question is that scientists
do have a religion, science itself. As an immanence religion, in which
God is the Universe, the Universe becomes sacred, understanding the
universe becomes a form of knowing God, scientific practice is
religious practice, scientific discipline is devotion, the "work
trance" of the scientist is a form of meditation, scientific discovery
is moral action, a good reputation is a reward for moral action, and
the immortality of Reputation is the Immortality of Soul.

Science also has its cult aspects. They peek through occasionally in
Edge discussions. Sometimes, when I read Edge, I feel like I'm
standing at the supermarket checkout counter reading the National
Enquirer's stories about sightings of extraterrestrials.

"Is God nothing more than a sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial
intelligence?"

It could be a National Enquirer headline.
It is remarkable how many scientists -- respected scientists, great
scientists, even Nobel winners -- really believe in
extra-terrestrials. Not only that, but they believe that there are
extra-terrestrial scientists and even extra-terrestrial mathematicians
with the same mathematics we have. To a cognitive scientist, it's
quite charming, if occasionally as frustrating as encountering
creationists.

One would like to think that the belief in extra-terrestrial
scientists and mathematicians is just a lack of education in cognitive
science. That's not a field that most physical scientists or
mathematicians are trained in or even read. They don't learn all the
amazing details that go into the embodiment of concepts -- concept by
concept. They don't learn about the staggering number of biological
accidents that had to happen for cells to develop, and then neurons,
and then neural "computation," and neural networks, and then all the
myriad of further accidents required to get specialized neural
structures to run bodies, and after that to develop concepts and
reasoning biologically. Most scientists don't learn the details and so
don't know that the probability of anything like this happening twice
is virtually zero, despite the billions of stars out there. But I'm
not so sure that mere education would help.

There are reasons why ordinary folks believe in the soul, and there
are similar reasons why so many scientists believe in
extra-terrestrials with mathematics just like human mathematics.
Believing in the soul does not just allow for comforting beliefs--
that you will someday be reunited with loved ones who have died and
that you will get your reward for being good in heaven. It also has a
basis in experience, oddly enough.

Consider the phenomenon of hearing yourself think. When you hear
another person, there is an external sensory input coming from the
other person. But, though your thought is not something you can
perceive, there are neural connections linking ideas with the brain
centers for sound production and perception. The acoustic cortex can
be activated not just by external stimuli, but also by brain-internal
neural connections. When you "hear yourself think" the neural
activation is coming from inside the brain, but the experience, in
part, is similar to hearing a stimulus originating outside the body.
It is as though "you" are hearing another person express thoughts --
another "person" inside you, separate from your body. It is that
experience that makes it sensible to think in terms of a "soul" inside
you, capable of thought, but separate from your body.

The popular belief in extraterrestrials also has natural cognitive
origins. It seems to have arisen from the idea of the exotic
foreigner. Ming the Magnificent in Flash Gordon movies was made up to
look Asian. The reasoning seems to be: If there are people from other
countries, who looked vaguely like Westerners, but with somewhat
different features, language, and culture, there could be such folks
from other planets. The variations on extraterrestrials in science
fiction films go from Spock to Klingons to featureless creatures that
commandeer our bodies. There is an overlap as well with other
otherworldly creatures -- angels and devils. A common folk theory is
that it is human emotions that make us human; so Spock, for example,
has no emotions -- nor do machine- and insect-like extra-terrestrials.

But the most common theme is that that extraterrestrials are
foreigners-- explorers, exiles, or conquerors-- basically like us,
with language, reason, mathematical and scientific abilities, good and
evil motives, as well as bilateral symmetry, heads, eyes, ears,
mouths, arms, legs, and so on.

What interests me, as a cognitive scientist, is the physical
scientists' version, and the arguments usually given.

o The Hubris Argument: The progress of science is a move away from
human beings being at the center of the universe, starting with
Copernicus. This is one more step. This is a scientific, and hence
anti-religious progression away from human beings being special, being
made uniquely in the image of God and being the unique inheritors of
the material world. The idea of extraterrestrials make us more modest
-- modesty is a moral trait -- and to even suggest that human beings
might be the only intelligent species in the universe is to show
enormous and inappropriate hubris.

o The Probability + Evolution Argument: First, the probability
argument: There are billions and billions of stars in the universe and
some small percentage of them have planets, and some small percentage
of the planets have the right chemical composition, atmosphere and
clime for life. Even if that percentage is small, the number of stars
is so large that the probability is high that the chemical and
climactic conditions for life exist else whether in the universe.

Then the Evolution argument: Once the chemicals and the climate and
atmosphere are right, then evolution takes over. Evolution is a
natural universal process in which more complex molecules are formed
from less complex molecules and a certain percentage are stable. The
process produces more and more complex molecules, until DNA-like
molecules capable of reproduction (and hence life) are produced and
start reproducing. Evolution then takes over. More complex life forms
are randomly produced and a certain percentage survive and reproduce
further. It is assumed that organisms with higher complexity will be
able to survive better than those with lower complexity, so that
evolution will naturally progress toward more complex organisms.
Eventually organisms with some intelligence will be randomly produced,
and since they will have an evolutionary advantage, they will survive.
The process will repeat, with more and more complex intelligent
organisms being produced, until they become intelligent like us, and
develop mathematics and science, which allow them to adapt optimally.

o The Math in the World Argument: It is assumed that the physical
universe works according to fixed laws stateable in mathematical
terms, and that the mathematics inheres in the material world
(logarithmic spirals in snails and nebulae, Fibonnacci series in
flowers, quadratic equations in home runs). It is further assumed that
these laws are the same everywhere in the universe. Thus intelligent
beings who survived via evolution to function in the world, must have
acquired the same mathematics.
These are standard arguments. The Hubris argument is not a scientific
argument at all and we will discount it. The Math in the World
argument is just false. It assumes that mathematics has no ideas, no
concepts, no symbolization linking ideas with symbols. Mathematics has
both. But ideas and symbolizations of them only exist in beings with
minds, and we have a pretty good idea, at least from the study of
human beings, what the peculiar nature of ideas is, and what kinds of
embodied neural structures are required to characterize those ideas.
Ideas like actual infinity, infinite sets, transfinite numbers, and so
on are not magically part of the physical world. It takes beings with
brains and bodies to have such ideas.

The Probability + Evolution Argument leaves out the probabilities for
the evolution of biological structures of the precise form capable of
"computing" just the right kinds of ideas to reason with in general,
as well as just the right ideas for the relevant mathematics and for
characterizing the symbolization of those ideas. Those biological
mechanisms and neural structures are so peculiar and complex that the
probability is effectively zero that the precise biological structures
for the right mathematical ideas will evolve ever again anywhere.
Those astronomically low probabilities are always left out of the
argument.

Well, the counterargument goes, it happened once. How to you know it
couldn't happen again. Obviously we don't. But that's not the point. A
scientific argument must be positive. It must be an argument from
knowledge, not from lack of knowledge. No serious scientific argument
has ever been given that takes the relevant cognitive science into
account.

In short, the physical scientists who believe in extraterrestrial
intelligence are arguing in a way they would never get away with
arguing in their serious scientific fields. Why?

The answer is that their belief in extra-terrestrial mathematicians
who have our mathematics fits an important myth, an identity-defining
myth that N??ez and I, in Where Mathematics Comes From, called The
Romance of Mathematics. The Romance goes like this:

Mathematical entities and relations really exist. They structure this
universe and any possible universe. The physical universe works
according to mathematical laws that inhere in the universe itself,
independent of any beings. Correct reason is a form of mathematical
logic, which is a form of mathematics. Since the universe is
structured rationally, mathematical logic inheres in it too. Human
mathematics is part of the abstract, transcendent mathematics. A
mathematic proof is a discovery of a universal truth. It thus takes
one beyond the merely human and puts one in touch with transcendent
truth. To learn mathematics is thus to learn the language of nature, a
mode of thought that would have to be shared by any highly intelligent
beings anywhere in the universe. Because mathematics is disembodied
and rational thought is a form of mathematical logic, intelligent
thought can exist outside of living beings. Thus, machines can in
principle think.

Every part of this Romance is false. It contradicts what we know from
cognitive science and neuroscience. But it serves an important role in
the "religion" of many mathematicians and physical scientists. Indeed,
it is one of the defining narratives of that religion.

If God is taken in the immanent sense as being the universe, the
Romance says that those, and only those, who know mathematics can
understand the universe and thus, metaphorically, "know God." They are
"seers" who can see what ordinary folks cannot. Mathematics, according
to the Romance, takes you beyond yourself, to the realm of the
transcendent. Science and mathematics are therefore sacred activities,
and scientists and mathematicians become high priests of their
religion. They deserve not just with respect, but awe. Great
mathematicians and physical scientists are therefore special beings,
like saints. As such, they can communicate with the angels--the
extraterrestrial scientists and mathematicians of superior
intelligence.

It is unlikely that most people will give up the soul on the basis of
what is known about cognitive science and neuroscience. It is too much
part of who they are. It is part of a concept of self-identity that is
physically in their brains and not likely to change.

It is just as unlikely that most mathematicians and physical
scientists will give up on the Romance and their own religious
identity just because cognitive scientists and neuroscientists have
found that the Romance is scientifically untenable. The Romance is
also part of their understanding of who they are, and as such, is
physically instantiated in the brains of many mathematicians and
scientists. That is why they believe in extra-terrestrials and why
that belief is not likely to change.

Will cognitive science change the way we think?
It changed the way I think, but not without a struggle to overcome the
views I had grown up with.

George Lakoff is Professor of Linguistics at the University of
California at Berkeley and author of Where Mathematics Comes From
(with Rafael N??ez).
________________________________________________________________

"Do 'folk concepts' of the mind have anything to do with what really
happens in the brain?''
When we speak about our experiences, we use terms like emotion,
perception, thought, action, motivation, attention, free will. And
these concepts have been the starting point for research and
speculation about the brain. But now the evidence is starting to mount
that our categories don't fit what's really going on, as far as we can
measure and describe. It may turn out that the differences between a
thought and an emotion, a perception and an action, a mood and a
belief, are part of our tradition of "folk psychology" -- the things
we tell ourselves to explain the world in ordinary conversation.

For hundreds of years the pattern in science has been to overturn folk
concepts, and it seems to me the brain may be the next field for such
a conceptual revolution. It may be that in a hundred years people will
speak of free will, or the unconscious, or emotion, in the way that we
now speak of "sunrise" or "forever" -- words that serve for day-to-day
talk, but don't map reality. We know the sun doesn't rise because it
is the earth that moves and we know that humanity and its planet and
the universe itself won't last forever. I see signs that concepts of
the mind are due for the same sort of revision. And so that's the
question I keep returning to.

David Berreby writes about science and culture, His work has appeared
in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, The Sciences
and many other publications.
________________________________________________________________

"Will non-sustainable developments (i.e., atmospheric change,
deforestation, fresh water us, etc.) become halted in pleasant ways of
our choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice?"
To my mind, by far the most important question concerns the way in
which our currently non-sustainable course gets resolved in the next
several decades. Our present course with regards to many of our
demands on the environment cannot be sustained for more than several
decades. Those demands include atmospheric change, deforestation,
fresh water use, global warming, overfishing, production of toxic
materials, utilization of available photosynthetic capacity, and
utilization of topsoil. Hence the interesting question is whether
these non-sustainable developments become halted in pleasant ways of
our choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice.

Jared M. Diamond is Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of
Medicine, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the widely acclaimed
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies.

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 17 18:50:24 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:50:24 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Hermanaut: Identiopathy
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312159230.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Identiopathy
http://www.hermenaut.com/a165.shtml

Dear Colleagues:

   Enclosed please find a supplemental addition to the Diagnostic and 
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). Section 
301.75: Identiopathic Personality Disorder, should be added to DSM-IV 
between 301.7: Anti-Social Personality Disorder, and 301.83: Borderline 
Personality Disorder.

   As you know, the DSM-IV is a classification of mental disorders
that was developed for use in clinical, educational, and research
settings. The diagnostic categories, criteria, and textual
descriptions are meant to be employed by individuals with appropriate
clinical training and experience in diagnosis. This addition to the
category of Personality Disorders is the product of the extensive
research and clinical experience of the Task Force on DSM-IV and the
Personality Disorder Work Group. We hope the identification of this
new diagnosis will enhance your knowledge and understanding in a
constantly evolving field.

Yours,

The Association
   _________________________________________________________________

301.75 Identiopathic Personality Disorder

Diagnostic Features

The essential feature of Identiopathic Personality Disorder is a
pervasive pattern of acute, inflexible mimetic attachment to an
exaggerated and overly demonstrative identification of oneself with
perceived subversive ideology. This pattern typically begins in early
adulthood (though increasing reports of onset as early as age 10 are
becoming significant) and persists well into the 30s and beyond, and
is present in a variety of contexts.

This pattern has also been referred to as Identiopathy, Subsociopathy,
and Inverted Self-Aggrandizing Psychosis.

Individuals with Identiopathic Personality Disorder can only perceive,
relate to, or think about their environment or themselves through the
filter of a perceived collective truth, specifically one which is--or
appears to be--at odds with, or subversive of, received dominant
cultural truths (Criterion 1). In a parody of Paranoid Personality
Disorder, with which it is often mistaken, their attraction to
oversimplified formulations of the world tend to make them wary and
dismissive of ambiguous situations. This tendency resembles Paranoid
Personality Disorder, as these individuals often behave as fanatics
and form tightly knit groups with others who share "their" belief
system. Unlike individuals with Paranoid Personality disorder, their
understanding about the nature of the world is not in the least
abstract or fantastical, but is extremely concrete and literal
(Criterion 2).

Individuals with this disorder experience severe subjective distress
regarding an overly rigid certainty on issues relating to identity,
including long-term goals, lifestyle, friendship patterns, moral
values, and group loyalty. They have a pattern of immediate
demonstrative and intense relationships based predominantly on the
notion of shared vision and struggle (e.g., social, political,
personal). These relationships, though believed to be enduring, tend
to be unstable over time. Beneath the sense of camaraderie lies a
thinly veiled hierarchy based on a competitive mastering of the group
identity (e.g., A exuberantly tells B, "I too once thought that until
C called me on it..."). They demand consistency from themselves,
others, and their environment, and are unable to accept or reconcile
conflicting beliefs and desires. These relationships also tend to have
an undercurrent of distrust which grows out of a fear that the
individuals involved will prove inadequate to the demands of the group
identity. As a result, these individuals often experience low-grade
feelings of trepidation and one-up-myn-ship (Criterion 3).

Individuals with Identiopathic Personality Disorder cling to their
identities in order to authenticate their existence in a manner that
can be readily observed and taken note of by others. In doing so, the
individual solemnifies his sense of self (Criterion 4). Identiopathic
Personality disorder is often initially misdiagnosed as Borderline
Personality Disorder, since in both we see a pervasive pattern of
instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects,
and a chronic feeling of emptiness. However, whereas individuals with
Borderline Personality Disorder suffer from a markedly and
persistently unstable self-image or sense of self, in the
Identiopathic Personality Disorder the sense of self is, although
deeply flawed, unfortunately quite stable. Individuals with this
disorder may perceive themselves as possessing superior intellectual
powers and a vast capacity for empathy, causing them to have an
unreasonable expectation of deference or automatic compliance with
their values and beliefs (Criterion 5); they often appear haughty and
arrogant, and believe they can only be understood by, or should only
associate with, other "special people" (e.g., individuals believed to
be like-minded, more knowledgeable and unique, or relevant to "the
cause"). These individuals may interpret a lack of deference or
directed difference of opinion to be a personal attack, and may
quickly assume a combative and defensive stance. This is because their
sense of self is inextricable from a rigid belief system. Because this
enduring personality trait, which is exhibited in a wide range of
social and personal contexts, deviates markedly from the expectations
of dominant culture, individuals with this disorder tend to suffer
distress and/or impairment in social and occupational settings.

Individuals with Identiopathic Personality Disorder tend to be more
concerned with expressing impressions rather than ideas because of a
fear that misinterpretation of the information they convey may be used
against them. These individuals may use carefully regulated language
and word choices to ensure consistency and avoid misinterpretation.
Individuals with Identiopathic Personality Disorder are ever alert
for, and intolerant of, views that are perceived to deviate from their
"own" (Criterion 6). Any perceived deviation, whether it be through
simple misunderstanding or difference of opinion, is believed to be
untrustworthy and injurious, and reinforces the belief that the
individual is in possession of the Ultimate Truth. They experience a
compulsion to assert the wrongness of such deviations, often prefacing
their tirades with a huff, hiss, gasp, or tsk, lest their silence be
construed as tacit acquiescence; this compulsion is in no way lessened
in situations where the offending viewpoint is directed at a general
audience, or at someone else entirely: e.g., in classrooms, at the
movies, at nearby restaurant tables (Criterion 7). Although it is most
common for these individuals? beliefs to be grounded in an ideology
based on tolerance and inclusiveness, they may in fact be highly
intolerant (e.g., A verbally attacks B in public, on grounds that B?s
views are insensitive); the irony of this tends to be lost on them due
to their chronic state of humorless literalism (Criterion 8).

Associated Features

A regressive need to belong, which is at odds with their determination
to distinguish themselves from the dominant culture, may incline these
individuals to co-opt the cultural, social, and spiritual practices of
others. These individuals understand their born culture to be bland,
ill-defined, and unexotic. They may adopt the beliefs and ideologies
of other cultures (often more than one, creating a spiritual and
cultural m?lange), but most often they will focus on visible
representations such as outward customs, garb, or icons to demonstrate
their affinity and compassion, as well as confirm their allegiance and
loyalty to the targeted identity. The result is often a recognizable
sub-fashion which enables these individuals to identify each other and
distinguish themselves from dominant culture.

Some identiopaths are quite charismatic and find easy converts in
their counterparts with weaker self-constitutions. These converts are
in a sense "brought out" by their own through a system of rewards and
punishments (e.g., special treatment and excessive attention followed
by sudden and severe disinterest) not dissimilar to the recruitment
process of religious cults.

Authoritative pseudo-intellectual ramblings may be used to establish
the authenticity of these individuals' identity and beliefs; these
ramblings may vary in substance, but sometimes suffer from the
absolute poverty of content seen in the condition of alogia.
Interpersonal relations are typically impaired due to problems derived
from arrogance, inflexibility, and a disregard for the sensitivity of
others. Sometimes vocational functioning is limited where individuals
are unable to reconcile the content of their work and workplace with
their life criteria. Having initially adopted and applied theory of
real import in artificial and isolated situations (e.g., graduate
school), individuals with Identiopathic Personality Disorder
experience cognitive impairment and dysfunction when the applicability
of the theory is challenged by the ambiguities posed by the variations
of day-to-day life. These individuals become distressed with any
ambiguity when they are unable to reconcile their belief system with
the external world, causing them to lapse into an echopraxic parroting
of a party line.
   _________________________________________________________________

Diagnostic Criteria for 301.75 Identiopathic Personality Disorder

A lemming-like pattern of behavior and ideas beginning in early
adulthood (and quickly stagnating thereafter) whose so-called
alternative vision of dominant culture is unoriginal, predictable, and
un-open to discussion on any other terms, and which is present in a
variety of contexts, as indicated by six (or more) of the following:

  1. inability to interpret any information or experience without first
  filtering for deviations from, or inconsistencies with, chosen
  vision
  2. extremely concrete and literal understanding of the world that
  disables capacity for thinking critically, or considering
  ambiguities
  3. is quick to bond with mirror-image-like peers for a solidarity
  that is ultimately superficial and trepidatious
  4. gnawing desire to be seen and perceived as not-like-everybody-else
  5. perception of being more intelligent, sensitive, and privy to a
  "Truth" which others could see if they would only just listen
  6. infertile imagination and cowardice, manifested as a fanatical
  need for control over speech acts
  7. uses (often inappropriate) repetition to convince self and others
  of ideas; regularly hisses in movie theatres
  8. is so literal as to be humorless, hypocritical, and helpless

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 17 18:50:40 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:50:40 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Wikipedia: Michel Foucault
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312159270.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Michel Foucault
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
[Foucault and Baudrillard (to follow) are the most important French thinkers 
since Sartre. Links omitted.]

Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 - June 26, 1984) was a French
philosopher and held a chair at the Coll?ge de France, a chair to
which he gave the title "The History of Systems of Thought". His
writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work:
Foucault's influence extends across the humanities and social
sciences, and across many applied and professional areas of study.

Foucault is well known for his critiques of various social
institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine and the prison
system, and also for his ideas on the history of sexuality. His
general theories concerning power and the relation between power
and knowledge, as well as his ideas concerning "discourse" in
relation to the history of Western thought have been widely
discussed and applied. Foucault was also critical of social
constructs that implied an identity, which included everything from
the identity of male/female and homosexual, to that of criminals
and political activists. A philosophical example of Foucault's
theories on identity is an observation of the history of homosexual
identity, which progressed over the years from an implied act to an
implied identity.

His work is often described as postmodernist or post-structuralist
by contemporary commentators and critics. During the 1960s,
however, he was more often associated with the structuralist
movement. Although he was initially happy to go along with this
description, he later emphasised his distance from the
structuralist approach, arguing that unlike the structuralists he
did not adopt a formalist approach. Neither was he interested in
having the postmodern label applied to his own work, saying he
preferred to discuss how 'modernity' was defined.

Contents

* 1 Biography
  + 1.1 Early life
  + 1.2 The ?cole Normale Sup?rieure
  + 1.3 Early career
  + 1.4 Post-1968: Foucault the activist
  + 1.5 The late Foucault
* 2 Works
  + 2.1 Madness and Civilization
  + 2.2 The Birth of the Clinic
  + 2.3 The Order of Things
  + 2.4 The Archaeology of Knowledge
  + 2.5 Discipline and Punish
  + 2.6 The History of Sexuality
  + 2.7 Lectures
  + 2.8 Terminology
* 3 Criticisms of Foucault
* 4 Foucault's changing viewpoint
* 5 Intellectual contexts
  + 5.1 Influences on Foucault's work
  + 5.2 Influence of Foucault's work
* 6 Bibliography
  + 6.1 Monographs
  + 6.2 The Coll?ge Courses
  + 6.3 Other books
  + 6.4 Anthologies
* 7 References
* 8 Works available online
* 9 External links

Biography

Michel Foucault resisted biography on the grounds that he is both a
constantly evolving personality and that publicly he exists through
his work. Of this he wrote "Do not ask me who I am and do not ask
me to remain the same".

Early life

Foucault was born in 1926, in Poitiers, as Paul-Michel Foucault, to
a notable provincial family. His father, Paul Foucault, was an
eminent surgeon and hoped his son would join him in the profession.
Foucault later dropped the 'Paul' from his name for reasons which
are not entirely clear. His early education was a mix of success
and mediocrity until he attended the Jesuit College
Saint-Stanislaus where he excelled. During this period, Poitiers
was part of Vichy France and later came under German occupation.
After the War, Foucault gained entry to the prestigious ?cole
Normale Sup?rieure d'Ulm, the traditional gateway to an academic
career in France.

The ?cole Normale Sup?rieure

Foucault's personal life at the ?cole Normale was difficult -- he
suffered from acute depression, even attempting suicide. He was
taken to see a psychiatrist. Perhaps because of this, Foucault
became fascinated with psychology. Thus, in addition to his licence
in philosophy he also earned a licence (degree) in psychology,
which was at that time a very new qualification in France, and was
involved in the clinical arm of the discipline where he was exposed
to thinkers such as Ludwig Binswanger.

Like many 'normaliens', Foucault joined the French Communist Party
from 1950 to 1953. He was inducted into the party by his mentor
Louis Althusser. He left due to concerns about what was happening
in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Unlike most party members,
Foucault never actively participated in his cell.

Early career

Foucault passed his agr?gation in 1950. After a brief period
lecturing at the ?cole Normale, he took up a position at the
University of Lille, where from 1953 to 1954 he taught psychology.
In 1954 Foucault published his first book, Maladie mentale et
personnalit?, a work which he would later disavow. It soon became
apparent that Foucault was not interested in a teaching career, and
he undertook a lengthy exile from France. In 1954 Foucault served
France as a cultural delegate to the University of Uppsala in
Sweden (a position arranged for him by Georges Dum?zil, who was to
become a friend and mentor). In 1958 Foucault left Uppsala for
briefly held positions at Warsaw and at the University of Hamburg.

Foucault returned to France in 1960 to complete his doctorate and
take up a post in philosophy at the University of Clermont-Ferrand.
There he met Daniel Defert, with whom he lived in non-monogamous
partnership for the rest of his life. In 1961 he earned his
doctorate by submitting two theses (as is customary in France): a
'major' thesis entitled Folie et d?raison: Histoire de la folie ?
l'?ge classique and a 'secondary' thesis which involved a
translation and commentary on Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View. Folie et d?raison (ironically published in English
as Madness and Civilization) was extremely well-received. Foucault
continued a vigorous publishing schedule. In 1963 he published
Naissance de la Clinique (Birth of the Clinic), Raymond Roussel,
and a reissue of his 1954 volume (now entitled Maladie mentale et
psychologie) which he would again disavow.

After Defert was posted to Tunisia for his military service,
Foucault moved to a position at the University of Tunis in 1965. In
1966 he published Les Mots et les choses (The Order of Things),
which was enormously popular despite its length and difficulty.
This was during the height of interest in structuralism and
Foucault was quickly grouped with scholars such as Jacques Lacan,
Claude L?vi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes as the newest, latest wave
of thinkers set to topple the existentialism popularized by
Jean-Paul Sartre. By now Foucault was militantly anti-communist,
and some considered the book to be right wing, while Foucault
quickly tired of being labelled a 'structuralist'. He was still in
Tunis during the student rebellions, where he was profoundly
affected by a local student revolt earlier in the same year. In the
fall of 1968 he returned to France, where he published
L'arch?ologie du savoir (The Archaeology of Knowledge) -- a
response to his critics -- in 1969.

Post-1968: Foucault the activist

In the aftermath of 1968, the French government created a new
experimental university at Vincennes. Foucault became the first
head of its philosophy department in December of that year, having
appointed mostly young leftist academics, the radicalism of one of
whom (Judith Miller), resulted in the French ministry of education
withdrawing accreditation from the department. Foucault notoriously
also joined students in occupying administration buildings and
fighting with police.

Foucault's tenure at Vincennes was short-lived, as in 1970 Foucault
was elected to France's most prestigious academic body, the Coll?ge
de France as Professor of the History of Systems of Thought. His
political involvement now increased, Defert having joined the
ultra-Maoist Gauche Proletarienne (GP), with whom Foucault became
very loosely associated. Foucault helped found the Prison
Information Group (in French: Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons,
or GIP) to provide a way for prisoners to voice their concerns.
This fed into a marked politicization of Foucault's work, with a
book, Surveiller et Punir (Discipline and Punish), which 'narrates'
the micro-power structures that developed in Western societies
since the eighteenth century, with a special focus on prisons and
schools.

The late Foucault

In the late 1970s political activism in France tailed off, with the
disillusionment of many if not most Maoists, several of whom
underwent a complete reversal in ideology, becoming the so-called
New Philosophers, often citing Foucault as their major influence, a
status about which Foucault had mixed feelings. Foucault in this
period began a mammoth project to write a History of Sexuality,
which he was never to complete. Its first volume, The Will to
Knowledge, was published in 1976, and has much in common with
Discipline and Punish. The second and third volumes did not appear
for another eight years, and they surprised readers by their
relatively traditional style, subject matter (classical Greek and
Latin texts) and approach, particularly Foucault's concentration on
the subject, a concept he had previously tended to denigrate.

Foucault began to spend more time in the United States, at SUNY
Buffalo (where he had lectured on his first ever visit to the
United States in 1970) and more especially at UC Berkeley. In 1975
he took LSD at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park, later
calling it the best experience of his life. In 1978 Foucault made
two tours of Iran, undertaking extensive interviews with political
protagonists in support of the new revolutionary Islamic government
there. His many essays on Iran were published in the Italian
newspaper Corriere Della Sera, but remained little known to
Foucault's admirers in the English and French-speaking nations
until they were published in English in 2005.

Foucault enthusiastically participated in the gay culture in San
Francisco, particularly in the S&M culture - it is suspected that
it was here that he contracted HIV, in the days before the disease
was described as such. Foucault died of an AIDS-related illness in
Paris in 1984.

Works

Madness and Civilization

The English edition of Madness and Civilization is an abridged
version of Folie et d?raison, originally published in 1961. (A full
translation titled The History of Madness is due to be published by
Routledge in November 2005.) This was Foucault's first major book,
written while he was the Director of the Maison de France in
Sweden. It examines ideas, practices, institutions, art and
literature relating to madness in Western history.

Foucault begins his history in the Middle Ages, noting the social
and physical exclusion of lepers. He argues that with the gradual
disappearance of leprosy, madness came to occupy this excluded
position. The ship of fools in the 15th century is a literary
version of one such exclusionary practice, the practice of sending
mad people away in ships. In 17th century Europe, in a movement
which Foucault famously describes as the Great Confinement,
'unreasonable' members of the population were locked away and
institutionalised. In the eighteenth century, madness came to be
seen as the obverse of Reason, and, finally, with Freud, as mental
illness.

Foucault also argues that madness lost its power to signify the
limits of social order and to point to the truth and was silenced
by Reason. He examines the rise of scientific and 'humanitarian'
treatments of the insane, notably at the hands of Philippe Pinel
and Samuel Tuke. He claims that these new treatments were in fact
no less controlling than previous methods. Tuke's country retreat
for the mad consisted of punishing the madmen until they learned to
act 'reasonably'. Similarly, Pinel's treatment of the mad amounted
to an extended aversion therapy, including such treatments as
freezing showers and use of a straitjacket. In Foucault's view,
this treatment amounted to repeated brutality until the pattern of
judgment and punishment was internalized by the patient.

The Birth of the Clinic

Foucault's second major book, The Birth of the Clinic: An
Archaeology of Medical Perception (Naissance de la clinique: une
arch?ologie du regard m?dical in French) was published in 1963 in
France, and translated to English in 1973. Picking up from Madness
and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic traces the development of
the medical profession, and specifically the institution of the
clinique (translated as 'clinic', but here largely referring to
teaching hospitals). Its motif is the concept of the medical regard
(look, a concept which has garnered a lot of attention from
English-language readers, due to Alan Sheridan's unusual
translation, 'gaze').

The Order of Things

Foucault's Les Mots et les choses. Une arch?ologie des sciences
humaines was published in 1966. It was translated to English in
1970 under the title The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the
Human Sciences. (Foucault had preferred L'Ordre des Choses for the
original French title, but changed the title to suit the wishes of
his editor, Pierre Nora)

The book opened with an extended discussion of Diego Vel?zquez's
painting Las Meninas and its complex arrangement of sight-lines,
hiddenness and appearance. Then it developed its central claim:
that all periods of history possessed certain underlying conditions
of truth that constituted what was acceptable as, for example,
scientific discourse. Foucault argued that these conditions of
discourse changed over time, in major and relatively sudden shifts,
from one period's episteme to another. (Aside: Jean Piaget, in
"Structuralism" (1968/1970, p.132), compares Foucault's ?pist?me to
Thomas Kuhn's notion of a paradigm.)

The Order of Things brought Foucault to prominence as an
intellectual figure in France. A review by Jean-Paul Sartre
attacked Foucault as 'the last rampart of the bourgeoisie'.

The Archaeology of Knowledge

Published in 1969, this volume was Foucault's main excursion into
methodology. He wrote it in order to deal with the reception that
Les Mots et les choses had received. It makes references to
Anglo-American analytical philosophy, particularly speech act
theory.

Foucault directs his analysis toward the "statement", the basic
unit of discourse that he believes has been ignored up to this
point. "Statement" is the English translation from French "?nonc?"
(that which is enounced or expressed), which has a peculiar meaning
for Foucault. "?nonc?" for Foucault means that which makes
propositions, utterances, or speech acts meaningful. In this
understanding, statements themselves are not propositions,
utterances, or speech acts. Rather, statements create a network of
rules establishing what is meaningful, and it is these rules that
are the preconditions for propositions, utterances, or speech acts
to have meaning. Depending on whether or not they comply with the
rules of meaning, a grammatically correct sentence may still lack
meaning and inversely, an incorrect sentence may still be
meaningful. Statements depend on the conditions in which they
emerge and exist within a field of discourse. It is huge entities
of statements, called discursive formations, toward which Foucault
aims his analysis. It is important to note that Foucault reiterates
that the analysis he is outlining is only one possible tactic, and
that he is not seeking to displace other ways of analysing
discourse or render them as invalid.

Foucault's posture toward the statements is radical. Not only does
he bracket out issues of truth; he also brackets out issues of
meaning. Rather than looking for a deeper meaning underneath
discourse or looking for the source of meaning in some
transcendental subject, Foucault analyzes the conditions of
existence for meaning. In order to show the principles of meaning
production in various discursive formations he details how truth
claims emerge during various epochs on the basis of what was
actually said and written during these periods of time. He
particularly describes the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment,
and the 20th Century. He strives to avoid all interpretation and to
depart from the goals of hermeneutics. This posture allows Foucault
to move away from an anthropological standpoint and focus on the
role of discursive practices.

Dispensing with finding a deeper meaning behind discourse would
appear to lead Foucault toward structuralism. However, whereas
structuralists search for homogenity in a discursive entity,
Foucault focuses on differences. Instead of asking what constitutes
the specificity of European thought he asks what differences
develop within it over time. Therefore, he refuses to examine
statements outside of their role in the discursive formation, and
he never examines possible statements that could have emerged from
such a formation. His identity as a historian emerges here, as he
is only interested in analysing actual statements in history. The
whole of the system and its discursive rules determine the identity
of the statement. But, a discursive formation continually generates
new statements, and some of these usher in changes in the
discursive formation that may or may not be realized. Therefore, to
describe a discursive formation, Foucault also focuses on expelled
and forgotten discourses that never happen to change the discursive
formation. Their difference to the dominant discourse also describe
it. In this way one can describe specific systems that determine
which types of statements emerge.

Discipline and Punish

Main article: Discipline and Punish.

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison was translated to
English in 1977, from the French Surveiller et punir: Naissance de
la prison, published in 1975.
Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, discussed in Discipline and Punish Enlarge Jeremy 
Bentham's Panopticon, discussed in Discipline and Punish

The book opens with a graphic description of the brutal public
execution in 1757 of the regicide Robert-Fran?ois Damiens. Against
this it juxtaposes a colourless prison timetable from just over 80
years later. Foucault then inquires how such a change in French
society's punishment of convicts could have developed in such a
short time. These are snapshots of two contrasting types of
Foucault's "Technologies of Punishment." The first type,
"Monarchical Punishment," involves the repression of the populace
through brutal public displays of executions and torture. The
second, "Disciplinary Punishment," is what Foucault says is
practiced in the modern era. Disciplinary punishment gives
"professionals" (psychologists, programme facilitators, parole
officers, etc.) power over the prisoner, most notably in that the
prisoner's length of stay depends on the professionals' opinion.

Foucault also compares modern society with Jeremy Bentham's
"Panopticon" design for prisons (which was unrealized in its
original form, but nonetheless influential): in the Panopticon, a
single guard can watch over many prisoners while the guard remains
unseen. The dark dungeon of pre-modernity has been replaced with
the bright modern prison, but Foucault cautions that "visibility is
a trap." It is through this visibility, Foucault writes, that
modern society exercises its controlling systems of power and
knowledge (terms which Foucault believed to be so fundamentally
connected that he often combined them in a single hyphenated
concept, "power-knowledge"). Foucault suggests that a 'carceral
continuum' runs through modern society, from the maximum security
prison, through secure accommodation, probation, social workers,
police, and teachers, to our everyday working and domestic lives.
All are connected by the (witting or unwitting) supervision
(surveillance, application of norms of acceptable behaviour) of
some humans by others.

The History of Sexuality

Three volumes of The History of Sexuality were published before
Foucault's death in 1984. The first and most referenced volume, The
Will to Knowledge (previously known as An Introduction in English -
Histoire de la sexualit?, 1: la volonte de savoir in French) was
published in France in 1976, and translated in 1977, focusing
primarily on the last two centuries, and the functioning of
sexuality as an analytics of power related to the emergence of a
science of sexuality (scientia sexualis) and the emergence of
biopower in the West. In this volume he attacks the "repressive
hypothesis," the very widespread belief that we have, particularly
since the nineteenth century, "repressed" our natural sexual
drives. He shows that what we think of as "repression" of sexuality
actually constituted sexuality as a core feature of our identities,
and produced a proliferation of discourse on the subject.

The second two volumes, The Use of Pleasure (Histoire de la
sexualite, II: l'usage des plaisirs) and The Care of the Self
(Histoire de la sexualit?, III: le souci de soi) dealt with the
role of sex in Greek and Roman antiquity. Both were published in
1984, the year of Foucault's death, with the second volume being
translated in 1985, and the third in 1986. Some believe that a
fourth volume, dealing with the Christian era, was almost complete
at the time of Foucault's death. Foucault scholar and friend,
Arnold Davidson, has denied that an intended fourth and fifth
volume in the series had ever been written.

Lectures

From 1970 until his death in 1984, from January to March of each
year except 1977, Foucault gave a course of public lectures and
seminars weekly at the Coll?ge de France as the condition of his
tenure as professor there. All these lectures were tape-recorded,
and Foucault's transcripts also survive. In 1997 these lectures
began to be published in French with six volumes having appeared so
far. So far, three sets of lectures have appeared in English:
Society Must Be Defended, Abnormal, and The Hermeneutics of the
Subject. A set of Foucault's lectures from UC Berkeley has also
appeared as Fearless Speech.

Terminology

Terms coined or largely redefined by Foucault, as translated into
English:
   * biopower/biopolitics
   * episteme (?pist?m?)
   * genealogy
   * governmentality
   * heterotopia
   * parrhesia
   * power

Criticisms of Foucault

Many thinkers have criticized Foucault, ranging from Charles
Taylor, J?rgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, and Nancy Fraser to
Slavoj Zizek and historian Hayden White, among others. While each
of them takes issue with different aspects of Foucault's work, all
of these approaches share the same basic orientation: Foucault
clearly seems to reject the liberal values and philosophy
associated with the Enlightenment while simultaneously secretly
relying on them. They argue that this failure either makes him
dangerously nihilistic, or that he cannot be taken seriously in his
disavowal of normative values and in fact his work ultimately
presupposes them.

Some historians as well as others have also criticised Foucault for
his use of historical information, claiming that he frequently
misrepresented things, got his facts wrong, or simply made them up
entirely. Perhaps the most notable of these was Jacques Derrida's
extensive critique of Foucault's reading of Ren? Descartes'
Meditations on First Philosophy. Derrida's criticism led to a break
in their friendship and marked the beginning of a fifteen year-long
feud between the two.

It is important to note, however, that there has been considerable
debate over both these sets of criticisms and they are not
universally accepted as valid by all critics. Foucault himself on a
number of occasions took issue with the first kind of criticism
noting that he believed strongly in human freedom and that his
philosophy was a fundamentally optimistic one, as he believed that
something positive could always be done no matter how bleak the
situation. One might also add that his work is actually aimed at
refuting the position that Reason (or 'rationality' ) is the sole
means of guaranteeing truth and the validity of ethical systems.
Thus, to criticise Reason is not to reject all notions of truth and
ethics as some of these critics claim.

In relation to the second criticism, Foucault on a number of
occasions refuted charges of historical inaccuracy particularly in
relation to Madness and Civilization. There are notable exchanges
with Lawrence Stone and George Steiner on this subject as well as a
discussion with historian Jacques Leonard concerning Discipline and
Punish. Some of the criticisms of Foucault's use of history are
generated, as Foucault himself points out, by his use of and
approach to history in terms of dealing with specific problems
rather than more traditional general historical approaches.

Foucault's changing viewpoint

The study of Foucault's thought is complicated because his ideas
developed and changed over time. His ideas are best understood as
different (but related) bodies of thought associated with each of
his different major publications. Thus the Foucault who wrote
Madness and Civilisation (1961) did not have quite the same set of
ideas as the Foucault who wrote The Archaeology of Knowledge
(1969); and the Foucault who wrote The History of Sexuality
(1976-84) had developed an altogether new approach. As David
Gauntlett (2002) explains:

   "Of course, there's nothing wrong with Foucault changing his
   approach; in a 1982 interview, he remarked that 'When people
   say, "Well, you thought this a few years ago and now you say
   something else," my answer is... [laughs] "Well, do you think I
   have worked [hard] all those years to say the same thing and not
   to be changed?"' (2000: 131). This attitude to his own work fits
   well with his theoretical approach - that knowledge should
   transform the self. When asked in another 1982 interview if he
   was a philosopher, historian, structuralist, or Marxist,
   Foucault replied 'I don't feel that it is necessary to know
   exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to
   become someone else that you were not in the beginning' (Martin,
   1988: 9)."
   (from David Gauntlett, 2002, Media, Gender and Identity, London:
   Routledge).

In a similar vein, Foucault preferred not to claim that he was
presenting a coherent and timeless block of knowledge; rather, he
said:

   "I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can
   rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they
   wish in their own area... I would like the little volume that I
   want to write on disciplinary systems to be useful to an
   educator, a warden, a magistrate, a conscientious objector. I
   don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers."
   (Michel Foucault, (1974) 'Prisons et asiles dans le m?canisme du
   pouvoir' in Dits et Ecrits, t. II. Paris: Gallimard, 1994, pp.
   523-4).

Intellectual contexts

Influences on Foucault's work

Thinkers whose work strongly influenced Foucault's thought
included:
   * Louis Althusser -- French structuralist Marxist philosopher and
  Foucault's sometime teacher.
   * Georges Bataille -- French Nietzschean political and aesthetic
  philosopher.
   * Georges Canguilhem -- French historian of science.
   * Gilles Deleuze -- French philosopher. A great friend and ally
  of Foucault's in the early 1970s.
   * Georges Dum?zil -- French structuralist mythologist, known for
  his reconstruction of Indo-Aryan mythology.
   * Martin Heidegger -- German philosopher whose influence was
  enormous in post-war France. Foucault rarely referred to him,
  but called him 'the essential philosopher'.
   * Jean Hyppolite -- French Hegel scholar and Foucault's sometime
  kh?gne teacher.
   * Karl Marx -- Marx's influence in French intellectual life was
  dominant from 1945 through to the late 1970s. Foucault often
  found himself opposing Marxists, but claimed that he still
  quoted Marx without acknowledging him during this time as a
  kind of game.
   * Maurice Merleau-Ponty -- French philosopher and sometime
  teacher of Foucault. Phenomenologist instrumental in
  popularising Saussure's structuralism for a philosophical
  audience.
   * Friedrich Nietzsche -- German philosopher whose work influenced
  Foucault's conception of society and power.
   * Roland Barthes -- French (post) structuralist literary critic
  who was at one time very close to Foucault.

Influence of Foucault's work

Foucault's work is frequently referred to in disciplines as diverse
as philosophy, history, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology,
education, psychology, literary theory, feminism, management
studies, the philosophy of science, urban design, museum studies,
and many others. Quantitative evidence of the impact of his work
can be found in the sheer volume of citations in standard academic
journal indexes such as the Social Sciences Citation Index [1]
(more than 9000 citations). A keyword search of the Library of
Congress catalogue [2] reveals over 750 volumes in a variety of
languages relating to his writings, and a search on Google Scholar
[3] reveals thousands of citations.

The World Social Forum and other Anti-Globalization/Anti-Capitalist
movements have applied Foucault's philosophy of power dynamics
(de-centralized logic of power working from the bottom up) through
a lack of unification, hoping to spread an ideological influence in
all levels of society.

Bibliography

Monographs

   * Maladie mentale et personnalit? (1954); reed. Maladie mentale
  et psychologie (1995) (Mental Illness and Psychology)
   * Histoire de la folie ? l'?ge classique - Folie et d?raison
  (1961) (Madness and Civilization - although this is a revised
  version)
   * Naissance de la clinique - une arch?ologie du regard m?dical
  (1963) (The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical
  Perception)
   * Raymond Roussel (1963) (Death and the Labyrinth: the World of
  Raymond Roussel)
   * Les mots et les choses - une arch?ologie des sciences humaines
  (1966) (The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human
  Sciences)
   * La pens?e du dehors (1966) ('Thought of the Outside'; not
  published as a monograph in English)
   * L'arch?ologie du savoir (1969) (Archaeology of Knowledge)
   * L'ordre du discours (1971) ('The Order of Discourse'/'The
  Discourse on Language' [different translations]; not published
  as a monograph in English)
   * Ceci n'est pas une pipe (1973) (This Is Not a Pipe)
   * Surveiller et punir (1975) (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of
  the Prison)
   * Histoire de la sexualit? (The History of Sexuality)
  + Vol I: La Volont? de savoir (1976) (The Will to Knowledge)
  + Vol II: L'Usage des plaisirs (1984) (The Use of Pleasure)
  + Vol III: Le Souci de soi (1984) (The Care of the Self)

The Coll?ge Courses

   * 1976-1977 Il faut d?fendre la societ? (1997) (Society Must Be
  Defended)
   * 1974-1975 Les anormaux (1999) (Abnormal)
   * 1981-1982 L'herm?neutique du sujet (2001) (The Hermeneutics of
  the Subject)
   * 1973-1974 Le pouvoir psychiatrique (2003) (not yet available in
  English)
   * 1977-1978 Securit?, territoire, population (2004) (not yet
  available in English)
   * 1978-1979 Naissance de la biopolitique (2004) (not yet
  available in English)

Other books

   * Remarks on Marx (1991 - series of Italian interviews never
  published in French)
   * Fearless Speech (2001 - Berkeley lecture series, also never
  published in French)

Anthologies

In French, almost all of Foucault shorter writings, published
interviews and miscellany have been published in a collection
called Dits et ?crits, originally published in four volumes in
1994, latterly in only two volumes.

In English, there are a number of overlapping anthologies, which
often use conflicting translations of the overlapping pieces, which
frequently do not bear the same names as one another. To this end,
it is advisable to consult a full bibliography of Foucault's
shorter works, such as Richard Lynch's here. The major collections
in English are:
   * Language, counter-memory, practice, ed. Donald F. Bouchard
  (1977)
   * Power/Knowledge, ed. Colin Gordon (1980)
   * The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (1984)
   * Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (1988)
   * Foucault Live (2nd Ed.), ed. Sylv?re Lotringer (1996)
   * The Politics of Truth, ed. Sylv?re Lotringer (1997)
   * Ethics : subjectivity and truth (Essential Works Vol. 1),
  ed.Paul Rabinow (1997)
   * Aesthetics, Method, Epistemology (Essential Works Vol.2), ed.
  James D. Faubion (1998)
   * Power (Essential Works Vol. 3), ed. James D. Faubion (2000)
   * The Essential Foucault, eds. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose
  (2003)

References

   * Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault (Cambridge MA: Harvard
  University Press, 1991)
   * Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and
  Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy Publishing,
  2004)- situates Foucault in the context of developments in
  epistemology and politics since Rousseau and Kant.
   * David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (London: Hutchison,
  1993) - this is the most detailed biography of Foucault.
   * Stephan Moebius, Die Zauberlehrlinge. Soziologiegeschichte des
  Coll?ge de Sociologie, 2006, Konstanz (about influence of
  Bataille on Foucault)
   * James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (London:
  HarperCollins, 1993) - a number of scholars have expressed
  reservations in relation to some of the sensational claims made
  in this biography.
   * Janet Afary & Kevin B. Anderson. Foucault and the Iranian
  Revolution. (University of Chicago Press, 2005) - details
  Foucault's trips to Iran, and publishes his essays on Iran in
  English for the first time.

Works available online

   * Primary texts from Foucault.info
   * List of texts from DMOZ

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Michel Foucault

General sites (updated regularly):
   * Foucault, info
   * Michel Foucault Resources - excellent site by Clare O'Farrell
   * Foucault resources - at Theory.org.uk

Other Foucault entries:
   * Michel Foucault entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of
  Philosophy
   * Foucault article from the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary
  Theory and Criticism
   * Retrospective article written by Michel Foucault

Bibliographies:
   * Lynch's bibliography
   * French and English bibliographies

Pages of related links:
   * Links from Foucault Resources
   * Links from Foucault.info
   * Foucault, Michel category at dmoz.org

Miscelleanous:
   * Foucault Studies - a new electronic, refereed, international
  journal
   * Foucault's Paris - Walking tour of Paris
   * Online audiorecording of Foucault at UC Berkeley, April 1983:
  "The Culture of the Self"
   * The philosopher and the ayatollah (Wesley Yang)
   * Post-modern Philosophical Martyrdom
   * Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: Michel Foucault

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 17 18:50:57 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:50:57 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Wikipedia: Jean Baudrillard
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312159300.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Jean Baudrillard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard (born July 29, 1929) is a cultural theorist and
philosopher. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism
and post-structuralism.

Contents

* 1 Life
* 2 Introduction to work
  + 2.1 International Journal of Baudrillard Studies
  + 2.2 On the Gulf War
  + 2.3 Precession of Simulacra
  + 2.4 Baudrillard's Object Value System
  + 2.5 End of history and meaning
* 3 Critiques of Baudrillard
* 4 Bibliography
  + 4.1 Books
  + 4.2 Essays
* 5 External links

Life

He was born in Reims, France. He studied German at the Sorbonne
University in Paris and taught German in a lyc?e (1958-1966). He
worked as a translator and critic and continued to study philosophy
and sociology. In 1966 he completed his Ph.D. thesis: 'Th?se de
troisi?me cycle: Le Syst?me des objets' ('Third cycle thesis: The
system of objects') under the tuition of Henri Lefebvre. From 1966
to 1972 he worked as Ma?tre Assistant (Assistant) and Ma?tre de
Conf?rences en Sociologie (Assistant Professor). In 1972 he
finished his habilitation 'L'Autre par lui-m?me'. ('The other by
himself'.) and started teaching Sociology at the Universit? de
Paris-X Nanterre as a professor. From 1986 to 1990 Baudrillard
served as Directeur Scientifique (Scientific Director) at IRIS
(Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socio-?conomique) at the
Universit? de Paris-IX Dauphine. Since 2001 he has been a professor
of philosophy of culture and media criticism at the European
Graduate School. He continues to support the Institut de Recherche
sur l'Innovation Sociale at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique.

Introduction to work

Jean Baudrillard is best known for his formulation of the notion of
hyperreality, and in particular hyperreality in the United States.
According to Baudrillard, America has constructed itself a world
that is more 'real' than real, and where those inhabiting it are
obsessed with timelessness, perfection, and objectification of the
self. Furthermore, authenticity has been replaced by copy (thus
reality is replaced by a substitute), and nothing is "real," though
those engaged in the illusion are incapable of seeing it. Instead
of having experiences, people observe spectacles, via real or
metaphorical control screens. Instead of the real, we have
simulation and simulacra.

While early in his career he was influenced by Marxism, he
eventually came to the conclusion that Marx's attitudes were in
mirror opposition to that of capitalist thought, and that Marx in
fact held the same basic worldview as the capitalist. For instance,
he did not question such concepts as "work" or "value". In short,
while perhaps well-intentioned, he argued that Marx was infected by
the "virus of bourgeois thought". In opposition, he proposed a
concept of symbolic exchange, a "cycle of gifts and countergifts",
similar to a gift economy. However, in time he began to prefer the
idea of a system based around seduction, involving "the charms of
pure and mere games, superficial rituals". While he gives such
possible alternatives, he sees little hope in any repair of the
social world, but rather a further progression into a hyperreal
system offering little distinction between what is real and what is
not. He sees the United States as having moved furthest in this
direction, noting for instance that his decision to visit the
United States stemmed from his desire to seek "the finished form of
the future catastrophe."

International Journal of Baudrillard Studies
www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies

On the Gulf War

Shortly before the Gulf War, Baudrillard predicted that the war
would not actually happen. After the war, he claimed that he had
been correct, that no war had taken place. The reality of the war,
where people fight for a cause and are killed, had been replaced by
a 'copy' war that is delivered to televisions across the world
where no fighting is taking place. America was engaged in an
illusion that it was fighting, much as the mind engages with a
video game, where the experience tricks the consciousness into
believing it is an active participant in something that is not
happening. While the combat may have been real, only a few people
experienced it, and they were on the other side of the world. The
'war' that was broadcast on television, and therefore the war as it
was understood by the majority of people, was not actually real.

The real conflict, according to Baudrillard, was not a war with
Iraq over the invasion of Kuwait, but a greater question concerning
the concept of war. The first Gulf War served as a crisis point,
determining whether or not war was still possible in the
post-industrial age. One could imagine, with relation to this
claim, that the American soldier often fought solely within the
system of military technology, to the degree that the war's
"culture imprint" remains that of friendly fire created by faulty
machinery, and a lack of actual face-to-face combat. The video
screen-mediated concept of the precision strike became an
advertisement for American technological dominance, which makes it
possible to view the war as, in part, an advertisement for military
hardware.

The problem is that actual deaths were involved, deaths which were
as much de-realised by the rhetoric of the clinical, technological
war as Baudrillard's abstruse analysis of the war as a simulacrum.
The ongoing indecision and subterfuge involving Gulf War Syndrome
recalls again the precession of the real event, that of suffering
caused by war, by debate over what constitutes the real, and the
assertion of an authorised history which masks, and replaces in
public consciousness, the effects of the real.

Precession of Simulacra

In his essay 'The Precession of the Simulacra', Baudrillard recalls
a tale by a probably fictional 17th century author named Suarez
Miranda that was first recounted by Borges. In the story a map
(i.e. a representation) is produced so detailed that it ends up
coming into one-to-one correspondence with the territory (i.e.
everything that had once been directly lived), but argues that in
the postmodern epoch, the territory ceases to exist, and there is
nothing left but the map; or indeed, the very concepts of the map
and the territory have become indistinguishable, the distinction
which once existed between them having been erased.

Baudrillard's Object Value System

Baudrillard was heavily influenced by the works of Karl Marx. Like
many other philosophers of consumer society, Baudrillard was
particularly influenced by Marx's discussion of commodity
fetishism, and much of his earlier work was an attempt to
re-articulate the logic of commodity fetishism through a
post-Marxist frame of reference that took seriously twentieth
century developments in linguistic structuralism. Part of this
rearticulation involved what Baudrillard called the "four logics of
objects." He developed four categories for the value of
commodities:
  1. The functional value of an object is its instrumental purpose.
  (A pen writes. A diamond ring adorns an otherwise empty hand.)
  This is what Marx referred to as the 'use-value' of the
  commodity.
  2. The exchange value of an object is its economic value. (A pen
  is worth three pencils. A diamond ring is worth three months'
  salary.)
  3. The symbolic exchange value of an object is its arbitrarily
  assigned and agreed value in relation to another subject. (A
  pen represents a graduation present or a speaker's gift. A
  diamond ring symbolizes a public declaration of love between
  two individuals.)
  4. The sign exchange value of an object represents its value in a
  system of objects. (A pen is part of a desk set, or a
  particular pen confers social status. A diamond ring has sign
  exchange value in relation to other diamond rings, conferring
  social status to the person with the biggest or prettiest
  ring.)

End of history and meaning

According to Baudrillard, in the 20th century, we somehow reached
the termination of history. The method of this termination comes
through the lack of oppositional elements in society, with the mass
having become 'the silent majority', an imploded concept which
absorbs images passively, becoming itself a media overwritten by
those who speak for it. By its silence, contends Baudrillard, the
people create the extreme situation which is exploited by the
aestheticising of politics and the symbolically viral kind of
conflict that is terrorism. The end of history is typified by the
public assumption of revolutionary fulfillment, which is equal to
the same, the celebration of the past in the place of concern for
the future and the continual repetition of scenarios in identical
forms. For Baudrillard this is the natural result of an ethic of
unity in which actually agonistic opposites are taken to be
essentially the same. For example, Baudrillard contends that
universalism (human rights, equality) is equated with
globalisation, which is not concerned with immutable values but
with mediums of exchange and equalisation such as the global market
and mass media.

An example to be used is his elaboration on the loss of meaning.
Baudrillard remarks: 'the universe is not dialectical: it moves
toward the extremes, and not towards equilibrium; it is devoted to
a radical antagonism and not to reconciliation or to synthesis'.
For example, in today's society, there is excessive production,
where there is increasing technology enabling faster circulation of
production and distribution. Baudrillard however postulates that we
have passed beyond production itself and have come through the
previously-held distinctions of production. He argues that the
constancy and perpetuity of production has become so ordinary, that
the ideal disappears, that no semanticity or meaning is left, and
that method has become commonplace. This is related to Marshall
McLuhan's credo - 'The medium is the message'. This approach has
been criticized for confusing meaning per se with a mere shock
effect. Some theorists argue that by being more exposed to a
process of production, we may actually attach different types of
meaning to an object, albeit anthropocentrically, in terms of its
functions for humans.

Critiques of Baudrillard

Baudrillard has been criticized by many scholars. Douglas Kellner
offers a critique of Baudrillard in 'Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism
to Postmodernism and Beyond' (ISBN 0804717575) that attempts to
defend traditional Marxism from Baudrillard's critique. And
Christopher Norris attacked what he saw as Baudrillard's lack of
meaningful political engagement in 'Uncritical Theory :
Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War' (ISBN 0870238175).

Some counter that these critiques of Baudrillard are based on a
limited understanding of his work. While Baudrillard is deeply
critical of Marxism for its failure to engage in a deconstruction
of capitalism beyond the 'use-value-exchange-value' dichotomy (and
thus failing to account for the unproductive expenditure of luxury
goods, expendable purchases, etc., which have defined
late-capitalism since the mid-twentieth century), he himself has
rarely used the term 'postmodern'. When he does, it is to describe
in disparaging terms the decadence of Western culture, or more
specifically, "the exalting of residues, rehabilitation by
bricolage, eclectic sentimentality ... high dilution, low
intensities" (The Illusion of the End, 1994: 35).

Bibliography

Unless stated otherwise, publication dates given are those of the
original French language editions, and not those of their English
translations or subsequent revised editions.

Books

   * The System of Objects (1968)
   * The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures (1970)
   * For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1973)
   * The Mirror of Production (1973)
   * Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976)
   * Forget Foucault (1977)
   * Seduction (1979)
   * Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
   * In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (1982)
   * Fatal Strategies (1983)
   * America (1986)
   * Cool Memories (1987)
   * The Transparency of Evil (1990)
   * The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991)
   * The Illusion of the End (1992)
   * The Perfect Crime (1995)
   * Impossible Exchange (1999)
   * Passwords (2000)
   * The Singular Objects of Architecture (2000)
   * The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers (2002)
   * "The Conspiracy of Art" (2005)

Essays

   * "The Ecstasy of Communication" (en. 1983)

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Jean Baudrillard
   * Disneyfication in the New Media Chunnel: When Image Myth Takes
  Over, British Film Institute Conference paper
   * Jean Baudrillard Faculty Page and Archive
   * Baudrillard on the Web
   * 'Disneyworld Company' by Jean Baudrillard
   * 'The Violence of the Global' by Jean Baudrillard
   * Welcome to the World of Jean Baudrillard
   * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
   * International Journal of Baudrillard Studies
   * Baudrillard and Susan Sontag
   * Baudrillard Interview With Der Spiegel Magazine After 9/11
   * Baudrillard On American Abuse of Prisoners at Abu Ghraib
   * Reversibility Baudrillard's One Great Thought

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 17 18:52:02 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:52:02 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Hedgehog: Kenneth J. Gergen: The Self: Death by
	Technology
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312159340.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Kenneth J. Gergen: The Self: Death by Technology
The Hedgehog Review - Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-hh?specfile=/texts/english/modeng/journals/hh.o2w&act=text&offset=730656&textreg=1&id=GerSelf1-1

[I sent this before. It is an excellent article about the changing concepts of 
self, if not its disappearance.]

Kenneth Gergen asks whether in the midst of a techno-cultural revolution 
the traditional conceptions of self and community continue to secure a 
morally viable society. Gergen examines the erosion of both individualism 
and communalism (and their associated institutions) by the accumulating 
"technologies of sociation," the host of relatively low-cost technologies 
that dramatically expand and intensify social connection. He considers the 
effects of these technologies on the experience of a private self and 
argues that cumulatively they undermine the presumption of the individual 
as the locus of moral agency.

Kenneth J. Gergen is Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College. A 
prolific author, his most recent books include The Saturated Self: 
Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life and Realities and Relationships: 
Soundings in Social Construction.

Drawing from early Greek, Judaic, and Christian traditions, and
particularly from the Enlightenment, we have typically viewed the
single individual as the atom of the moral society. Whether we speak
in terms of psyche, soul, agency, rational deliberation, or conscious
choice, we generally hold that moral action is derived from particular
conditions of the individual mind. Thus, philosophers seek to
establish essential criteria for moral decision making, religious
institutions are concerned with states of individual conscience,
courts of law inquire into the individual's capacity to know right
from wrong, and parents are concerned with the moral education of
their young. The general presumption is that the virtuous mind propels
meritorious conduct, and that with sufficient numbers of individuals
performing worthy acts, we achieve the good society.

Yet, as Walter Ong's exploration of oral as opposed to literate
or print societies suggests, our conception of individual minds is
vitally dependent on the technological ethos.^1 The shift from an oral
to a print culture, Ong proposes, significantly alters the common
forms of thought. Thus, for example, in oral societies people are more
likely to depend on recall, concrete as opposed to abstract
categories, and redundancy as opposed to precision. Yet, there is an
important sense in which this fascinating thesis is insufficiently
realized. While Ong wishes to locate forms of mental life within a
cultural context, he has no access into mental conditions themselves.
That is, the analysis may be viewed as a treatise not on mental
conditions but on cultural constructions of the mind. It is not
thought in itself that changed but our way of defining what it is to
think.^2

To extend the implications of Ong's analysis, we may ask whether
the conception of the mind as a critical focus of study--something we
must know about--was not solidified by the expansion of printed media.
In an oral society, where the determination of the real and the good
grows from face-to-face negotiation, there is little reason to launch
inquiry into the speaker's private meaning. Through words, facial
expressions, gestures, physical context, and the constant adjustments
to audience expression, meanings are made transparent. However, when
print allows words to spring from the face-to-face relationship--when
the discourse is insinuated into myriad contexts separated in time and
space from its origins--then the hermeneutic problem becomes focal. To
wonder and speculate about "the mind behind the words" is to create
the reality of this mind. To grant this mental condition the status of
originary source of action is to solidify its importance. Both
hermeneutic study and psychological science have since assured the
reality of a meaning/full mind with moral intent.

Given the potential dependency of conceptions of self on
technological conditions, let us consider our contemporary ethos. In
particular, what is to be said about the increasing insinuation of the
technologies of sociation into our lives and its effects on our
beliefs in individual minds? In my view the transformation of the
technological ethos slowly undermines the intelligibility of the
individual self as an originary source of moral action. The reasons
are many and cumulative; I limit discussion here to several
concatenating tendencies.^3

Polyvocality. The dramatic expansion of the range of information
to which we are exposed, the range of persons with whom we have
significant interchange, and the range of opinions available within
multiple media sites make us privy to multiple realities. Or, more
simply, the comfort of parochial univocality is disturbed. Having
become privy to multiple realities, we do not know where to limit
ourselves. From the spheres of national politics and economics to
local concerns with education, environment, or mental health, we are
confronted with a plethora of conflicting information and opinion. And
so it is with matters of moral consequence. Whether it is a matter of
Supreme Court nominees, abortion policies, or affirmative action, for
example, one is deluged with conflicting moral standpoints. To the
extent that these standpoints are intelligible, they enter the
compendium of resources available for the individual's own
deliberations. In a Bakhtinian vein, the individual approaches a state
of radical polyvocality.

If one does acquire an increasingly diverse vocabulary of
deliberation, how is a satisfactory decision to be reached? The inward
examination of consciousness yields not coherence but cacophony; there
is not a "still small voice of conscience" but a chorus of competing
contenders. It is one's moral duty to pay taxes, for example, but also
to provide for one's dependents, to keep for oneself the rewards of
one's labor, and to withhold monies from unjust governmental policies;
it is one's moral duty to give aid to starving Africans, but also to
help the poor of one's own country, and to avoid meddling in the
politics of otherwise sovereign nations. Where in the mix of myriad
moralities is the signal of certitude?

If immersion in a panoply of intelligibilities leaves one's
moral resources in a state of complex fragmentation, then to what
degree are these resources guiding or directing? Or more cogently for
the present analysis, if "inward looking" becomes increasingly less
useful for matters of moral action, does the concern with "my state of
mind" not lose its urgency? The more compelling option for the
individual is to turn outward to his or her social context--to detect
the ambient opinion, to negotiate, compromise, and improvise. And in
this move from the private interior to the social sphere, the
presumption of a private self as a source of moral direction is
subverted. As negotiating the complexities of multiplicity becomes
normalized, the conception of the mind as a moral touchstone grows
stale.

Plasticity. As the technologies of sociation increase our
immersion in information and evaluation, they also expand the scope
and complexity of our activities. We engage in a greater range of
relationships distributed over numerous and variegated sites, from the
face-to-face encounters in the neighborhood and workplace, to
professional and recreational relationships that often span
continents. Further, because of the rapid movement of information and
opinion, the half life of various products and policies is shortened,
and the opportunities for novel departures expanded. The composition
of the workplace is thus in continuous flux. The working person shifts
jobs more frequently, often with an accompanying move to another
location. In the early 1990s one out of three American workers had
been with his or her employer for less than a year, and almost two out
of three for less than five years.

As a result of these developments, the individual is challenged
with an increasingly variegated array of behavioral demands. With each
new performance site, new patterns of action may be required;
dispositions, appetites, personas--all may be acquired and abandoned
and reappropriated as conditions invite or demand. With movements
through time and space, oppositional accents may often be fashioned:
firm here and soft there, commanding and then obedient, sophisticated
and then crude, righteous and immoral, conventional and rebellious.
For many people such chameleon-like shifts are now unremarkable; they
constitute the normal hurly burly of daily life. At times the
challenges may be enjoyed, even sought. It was only four decades ago
that David Riesman's celebrated book, The Lonely Crowd, championed the
virtues of the inner-directed man and condemned the other-directed
individual for lack of character--a man without a gyroscopic center of
being.^4 In the new techno-based ethos there is little need for the
inner-directed, one-style-for-all individual. Such a person is narrow,
parochial, inflexible. In the fast pace of the technological society,
concern with the inner life is a luxury--if not a waste of time. We
now celebrate protean being. In either case, the interior self recedes
in significance.^5

Repetition. Let us consider a more subtle mode of self-erosion,
owing in this instance to the increasing inundation of images,
stories, and information. Consider here those confirmatory moments of
individual authorship, moments in which the sense of authentic action
becomes palpably transparent. Given the Western tradition of
individualism, these are typically moments in which we apprehend our
actions as unique, in which we are not merely duplicating models,
obeying orders, or following conventions. Rather, in the innovative
act we locate a guarantee of self as originary source, a creative
agent, an author of one's own morality. Yet, in a world in which the
technologies facilitate an enormous sophistication in "how it goes,"
such moments become increasingly rare. How is it, for example, that a
young couple, who for 20 years have been inundated by romance
narratives--on television and radio, in film, in magazines and
books--can utter a sweet word of endearment without a haunting sense
of clich?? Or in Umberto Eco's terms, how can a man who loves a
cultivated woman say to her, "`I love you madly,'" when "he knows that
she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have
already been written by Barbara Cartland"?^6 In what sense can one
stand out from the crowd in a singular display of moral fortitude, and
not hear the voices of John Wayne, Gary Cooper, or Harrison Ford just
over one's shoulder?

Should one attempt to secure confirmation of agency from a
public action--political remonstrance, religious expression, musical
performance, and the like--the problems of authenticity are even more
acute. First, the existing technologies do not allow us to escape the
past. Rather, images of the past are stored, resurrected, and
recreated as never before. In this sense, the leap from oral to print
memory was only the beginning of a dramatic technological infusion of
cultural memory. Thus, it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid
observations of how any notable action is historically prepared. To
perform publicly is to incite incessant commentaries about how one is,
for example, "just like the 60s," "has his roots in Billy Sunday
revivalism," or "draws his inspiration from Jimmy Hendrix." Should the
public demonstration gain media interest, there is also a slow
conversion from the authentic to the instrumental. That is, what may
have once seemed spontaneous is now converted to a performance "for
the media" and its public. Indulgence in political passion, for
example, becomes muted by the attentions one must give to wardrobe,
voice projection, and facial expression. One cannot simply "play the
music," but must be concerned with hair styling, posture, and girth.
In a world in which the local is rapidly transported to the global,
the half-life of moral authenticity rapidly diminishes.

Transience. To the extent that one is surrounded by a cast of
others who respond to one in a similar way, a sense of a unified self
may result. One may come to understand, for example, that he is the
first son of an esteemed high school teacher and a devoted mother, a
star of the baseball team, and a devout Catholic. This sense of
perdurable character also furnishes a standard against which the
morality of one's acts can be judged. One can know that "this just
isn't me," that "If I did that I would feel insufferable guilt."
However, with the accumulating effects of the technologies of
sociation, one now becomes transient, a nomad or a "homeless mind."^7
The continuous reminders of one's identity--of who one is and always
has been--no longer prevail. The internal standard grows pallid, and
in the end, one must imagine that it counts for little in the
generation of moral action.

There is a more subtle effect of such techno-induced transience.
It is not only a coherent community that lends itself to the sense of
personal depth. It is also the availability of others who provide the
time and attention necessary for a sense of an unfolding interior to
emerge. The process of psychoanalysis is illustrative. As the analyst
listens with hovering interest to the words of the analysand, and
these words prompt questions of deeper meaning, there is created for
the analysand the sense of palpable interiority, the reality of a
realm beyond the superficially given, or in effect, a sense of
individual depth. The process requires time and attention. And so it
is in daily life; one acquires the sense of depth primarily when there
is ample time for exploration, time for moving beyond instrumental
calculations to matters of "deeper desire," forgotten fantasies, to
"what really counts." Yet, it is precisely this kind of "time off the
merry-go-round" that is increasingly difficult to locate. In the
techno-dominated world, one must keep moving, the network is vast,
commitments are many, expectations are endless, opportunities abound,
and time is a scarce commodity.

Each of these tendencies--toward polyvocality, plasticity,
repetition, and transience--function so as to undermine the
longstanding presumption of a palpable self, of personal consciousness
as an agentive source, or of interior character as a touchstone of the
moral life.^8 Yet, while lamentable in certain respects, the waning
intelligibility of moral selves is much welcomed in other quarters.
Both intellectually and ideologically the concept of the self as moral
atom is flawed. On the conceptual level, it is not simply that the
conception of moral agency recapitulates the thorny problems of
epistemological dualism--subject vs. object, mind vs. body, minds
knowing other minds--but the very idea of an independent decision
maker is uncompelling. How, it is asked, could moral thought take
place except within the categories supplied by the culture? If we
subtracted the entire vocabulary of the culture from individual
subjectivity, how could the individual form questions about justice,
duty, rights, or moral goods? In Michael Sandel's terms, "To imagine a
person incapable of constitutive attachments . . .is not to conceive
an ideally free and rational agent, but to imagine a person wholly
without character, without moral depth."^9

These conceptual problems are conjoined to widespread
ideological critique. Alexis de Tocqueville's observations of 19th
century American life set the stage: "Individualism is a calm and
considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from
the mass of his fellows . . .he gladly leaves the greater society to
look after itself."^10 Within recent decades these views have been
echoed and amplified by many. Christopher Lasch has traced linkages
between individualist presumptions and cultural tendencies toward
narcissism;^11 Robert Bellah and his colleagues argue that certain
forms of individualism work against the possibility for committed
relationships and dedication to community;^12 for Edward Sampson the
presumption of a self-contained individual leads to an insensitivity
to minority voices, suppression of the other, and social division.^13
Ultimately, the conception of an interior origin of action defines the
society in terms of unbreachable isolation. If what is most central to
our existence is hidden from the other, and vice versa, we are forever
left with a sense of profound isolation, an inability to ever know
what lies behind the other's visage. By constituting an interior self
we inevitably create the Other from whom we shall forever remain
alien.
________________________

^1 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
(London: Methuen, 1982). ] ^2 Such a conclusion would also be
congenial with a rapidly growing body of literature on the historical
and cultural construction of the mind. See, for example, Michel
Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. 1, trans.
Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978); Catherine Lutz, Unnatural
Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their
Challenge to Western Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1988); Carl F. Graumann and Kenneth J. Gergen, eds., Historical
Dimensions of Psychological Discourse (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1996). ] ^3 For a more extended analysis of the "loss of self"
in the media age, see Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in
the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995); and
Kenneth J. Gergen, "Technology and the Self: From the Essential to the
Sublime," Constructing the Self in a Mediated Age, ed. Debora Grodin
and Thomas R. Lindlof (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1996) 127-140. ] ^4 See
David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American
Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953). ] ^5 See, for
example, Robert Jay Lifton, The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an
Age of Fragmentation (New York: Basic, 1993). ] ^6 Umberto Eco,
Postscript to The Name of the Rose, trans. William Weaver (San Diego:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983) 67. ] ^7 Peter Berger, Brigitte
Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and
Consciousness (New York: Vintage, 1973). ] ^8 These conclusions are
surely resonant with other accounts of "the loss," "decentering," or
"deconstruction" of the self in recent scholarship. However, where key
writings by Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida derive their conclusions from
theoretical premises, the present analysis attempts to trace the sense
of dissolution to particular circumstances of cultural technology. In
effect, one might suppose that the very intelligibility of the
theoretical analyses may be derived from common experiences in
contemporary culture. ] ^9 Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits
of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 179. ] ^10
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Doubleday,
1969) 506. ] ^11 See Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism:
American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton,
1979). ] ^12 See Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart:
Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985). ] ^13 See Edward E. Sampson, Celebrating the
Other: A Dialogic Account of Human Nature, Psychology, Gender, and
Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993). ]

From checker at panix.com  Tue Jan 17 18:53:04 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:53:04 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Churches as businesses: Jesus, CEO
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312202300.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Churches as businesses: Jesus, CEO
http://www.economist.com/World/na/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5323597
Dec 20th 2005 | SOUTH BARRINGTON, ILLINOIS, HOUSTON, TEXAS AND
WASHINGTON, DC

America's most successful churches are modelling themselves on
businesses

VISIT Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, an
upscale exurb of Chicago, and you are confronted with a puzzle. Where
in God's name is the church? Willow Creek has every amenity you can
imagine, from food courts to basketball courts, from cafes to video
screens, not to mention enough parking spaces for around 4,000 cars.
But look for steeples and stained glass, let alone crosses and altars,
and you look in vain. Surely this is a slice of corporate America
rather than religious America?

The corporate theme is not just a matter of appearances. Willow Creek
has a mission statement ("to turn irreligious people into fully
devoted followers of Jesus Christ") and a management team, a
seven-step strategy and a set of ten core values. The church employs
two MBAs--one from Harvard and one from Stanford--and boasts a
consulting arm. It has even been given the ultimate business accolade:
it is the subject of a Harvard Business School case-study.

Willow Creek is just one of a growing number of evangelical churches
that borrow techniques from the corporate world. Forget those local
worthies who help with the vicar's coffee mornings and arrange
flowers. American churches have started dubbing their senior
functionaries CEOs and COOs. (North Point Community Church in
Alpharetta, Georgia, even has a director of service programming. Can
Chief Theological Officers be far behind?) And forget about parish
meetings in which people bat about random ideas on how to keep the
church going. America is spawning an industry of faith-based
consultancies. John Jackson, the senior pastor of Carson Valley
Christian Centre, a "high-impact" church in Minden, Nevada, has taken
to describing himself as a "PastorPreneur" and has published a book
with that title.

Willow Creek is based on the same principle as all successful
businesses: putting the customer first. Back in 1975 the church's
founder, Bill Hybels, conducted an informal survey of suburban
Chicagoans, asking them why they did not go to church, and then
crafted his services accordingly. He removed overtly religious images
such as the cross and stained glass. He jazzed up services with
videos, drama and contemporary music. And he tried to address people's
practical problems in his sermons.

An emphasis on user-friendliness continues to pervade the church. Mr
Hybels's staff try to view their church through the eyes of newcomers
(or "seekers" as they are dubbed). This means dedicating themselves to
"total service excellence". The grounds--"the path of first
impressions"--are kept impeccably, with the lawns mown and the car
park perfectly organised. It means being welcoming without being
over-the-top ("evangophobia" is a big worry). And it means having lots
of "hooks" that help to attach seekers to the church.

Willow Creek has dozens of affinity groups for everyone from
motor-cycle enthusiasts to weight-watchers. The church provides social
services, from counselling for drunks and sex-addicts to providing
help with transport. It has a "cars ministry" which repairs donated
vehicles and gives them to needy people. "Cars", of course, stands for
"Christian auto-repairmen serving". The church also lays on
entertainment, from sports to video-areas.

Willow Creek is particularly careful to ensure that everything is
suitably tailored for different age-groups. The church provides
child-care for thousands of children every weekend: this started out
as a necessity (parents will not come if their children are not taken
care of) but has become a hook in its own right (parents can relax at
the service while children are royally entertained). The church also
has a youth auditorium. Willow Creek's adolescent members have taken
over a hall, tearing up the carpet to expose the concrete floors,
painting the whole thing black and littering video-screens all over
the place.

Mr Hybels's emphasis on user-friendliness is now commonplace in the
Evangelical world. Rick Warren is a fifth-generation Southern Baptist
who was raised in a faith that is both austere and emotional. But when
he moved to Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Southern California, he
realised that Baptist staples like altar calls--in which worshippers
come to the front of the church and accept Jesus--would not go down
well with his prosperous and laid-back congregation. So he packaged
himself as a relaxed Californian: bearded and open-shirted, he served
up a diet of contemporary music and self-help tips.

In their pursuit of "total service excellence" America's
pastorpreneurs do not just preach on Sundays and deal with the
traditional "hatch, match and dispatch" rites of passage. They keep
their buildings open seven days a week, from dawn to dusk, and deliver
a truly catholic array of services. Some mega-church complexes house
banks, pharmacies and schools. Counselling and guidance groups are
routine. So are children's ministries.

The Second Baptist Church, in Houston, Texas, has a huge football
pitch. The Phoenix First Assembly of God has a medical-equipment
lending closet. The World Changers Ministry in Georgia offers help
preparing for tests, filling out tax forms and buying houses (it even
has a network of mortgage brokers and real-estate agents). Lakewood
Church, also in Houston, puts on one of its Sunday services en
espa?ol. Carson Valley Christian Centre (motto: "friends helping
friends follow Christ") offered sermons on how to slay the "Goliaths"
of procrastination, resentment, anxiety, temptation and loneliness. It
also offers classes in martial arts: "the Christian warrior way".

This emphasis on customer-service is producing a predictable result:
growth. John Vaughan, a consultant who specialises in mega-churches,
argues that 2005 has been a landmark year. This was the first time an
American church passed the 30,000-a-week attendance mark (it was
Lakewood, which earlier this year moved into its new home in Houston's
Compaq Center). It was also the first time that 1,000 churches counted
as mega-churches (broadly, you qualify if 2,000 or more people
attend). Willow Creek has seating for 7,200 (comfortable chairs, not
wooden pews). The fastest-growing church in the country, Without Walls
in Tampa, Florida, added 4,330 new members in the past year alone.

Let there be lighting

This sort of rapid growth brings all sorts of advantages. The most
obvious is that it lets churches put on extravaganzas. Willow Creek
regularly invites celebrities such as Randy Travis, a country singer,
or Lisa Beamer, the widow of Todd Beamer (a hero on one of the
hijacked aircraft on September 11th). Lakewood has a 500-strong choir.
Westlink Christian Church put on an outdoor display of extreme sports
that includes skate-boarders jumping over a fire to illustrate
salvation.

Growth also allows pastorpreneurs--empowered by a combination of large
cash flows and economies of scale--to exploit every available channel
to get their message across. Joel Osteen, the chief pastor of
Lakewood, has a television-ministry, which reaches 7m people around
the world, and a best-selling book, "Your Best Life Now". Rick
Warren's "The Purpose-Driven Life" has sold more than 25m copies and
spawned a follow-up industry of books, tapes, courses and CDs,
including a selection of songs. Bishop T.D. Jakes, the chief pastor of
The Potters House, reaches 260 prisons a week via satellite.

Most successful churches are humming with technology. Willow Creek
sports four video-editing suites. World Changers Ministries has a
music studio and a record label. The Fellowship Church in Grapevine,
Texas, employs a chief technology officer (and spends 15% of its $30m
annual budget on technology). Worshippers in such churches do not have
to worry about finding their place in the hymn book or that they will
catch cold. Computers project the words of the hymns onto huge
screens, and the temperature is perfectly controlled.

But this rapid growth brings problems in its wake too--problems that
usually end up forcing churches to become yet more business-like and
management-obsessed. The most obvious challenge is managing size. You
cannot just muddle through if you have an annual income of $55m (like
Lakewood in 2004) or employ 450 full- and part-time staff (like Willow
Creek). Such establishments need to set up a management structure with
finance departments and even human-resources departments. They also
need to start thinking--like Mr Hybels--about the relationship between
the religious leadership and the management team.

Another problem is subtler: how do you speak directly to individual
parishioners when you have a church the size of a stadium? Some
mega-churches have begun to see members drift away in search of more
intimate organisations. And many mega-preachers worry that they are
producing a flock who regard religion as nothing more than spectacle.
So they have begun to adopt techniques that allow churches to be both
big and small at once.

One ruse is to break the congregation into small groups. Most big
churches ask members of their congregation to join clutches of
eight-to-ten people with something in common (age or marital status,
for example). A second is to segment the religious market. Willow
Creek has two very different services. The Sunday one for new
"seekers" is designed to exhibit the Christian faith in a "relevant
and non-threatening way". Willow Creek estimates that over half of the
people who come to its Sunday services would otherwise be
"unchurched". The Wednesday service for people who are committed to
Christianity is designed to deepen their faith.

A third technique is to set up satellite churches--a form of religious
franchising. Willow Creek has set up several satellite churches in the
Chicago area so that nobody has to travel more than 50 miles. Life
Church has franchised five campuses in Oklahoma, two in Arizona and
one in Texas.

Growth in religious organisations is proving just as addictive as it
is in corporate ones, and successful churches are reaching deep into
business theory to feed their habit. They use strategic planning and
strategic "visions" to make sure they know where they are headed.

These pastorpreneurs are committed not just to applying good
management techniques to their own organisations but also to spreading
them to others. This is, after all, the world of evangelism. Willow
Creek has a consulting arm, the Willow Creek Association, that has
more than 11,500 member churches. It puts on leadership events for
more than 100,000 people a year (guest speakers have included Jim
Collins, a business guru, and Bill Clinton) and earns almost $20m a
year. Rick Warren likens his "purpose-driven formula" to an Intel
operating chip that can be inserted into the motherboard of any
church--and points out that there are more than 30,000
"purpose-driven" churches. Mr Warren has also set up a website,
pastors.com, that gives 100,000 pastors access to e-mail forums,
prayer sites and pre-cooked sermons, including over 20-years-worth of
Mr Warren's own.

Indeed, in a nice reversal businesses have also started to learn from
the churches. The late Peter Drucker pointed out that these churches
have several lessons to teach mainline businesses. They are excellent
at motivating their employees and volunteers, and at transforming
volunteers from well-meaning amateurs into disciplined professionals.
The best churches (like some of the most notorious cults) have
discovered the secret of low-cost and self-sustaining growth:
transforming seekers into evangelicals who will then go out and
recruit more seekers.

The Lord helps those who help themselves

There is no shortage of criticisms of these fast-growing churches. One
is that they represent the Disneyfication of religion. Forget about
the agony and ecstasy of faith. Willow Creek and its sort are said to
serve up nothing more challenging than Christianity Lite-- a bland and
sanitised creed that is about as dramatic as the average shopping
mall.

Another criticism is that these churches are not really in the
religion business but in the self-help trade. Mr Osteen and his
equivalents preach reassuring sermons to "victors not victims", who
can learn to be "rich, healthy and trouble free". God, after all,
"wants you to achieve your personal best". The result is a wash:
rather than making America more Christian, the mega-churches have
simply succeeded in making Christianity more American.

Moreover, it is a wash that is extraordinary good for the
pastorpreneurs themselves, who prosper by preaching the gospel of
prosperity. The wonderfully named Creflo Dollar, chief pastor of World
Changers Church International in Georgia, drives a Rolls-Royce and
travels in a Gulfstream jet. Joyce Meyer, who promises that God
rewards people with his blessings, counts among her own blessings a
$2m home and a $10m jet.

Yet three things can be said in the mega-churches' defence. The first
is that they are simply responding to demand. Their target audience
consists of baby-boomers who left the church in adolescence, who do
not feel comfortable with overt displays of religiosity, who dread
turning into their parents, and who apply the same consumerist
mentality to spiritual life as they do to everything else. The
mega-churches are using the tools of American society to spread
religion where it would not otherwise exist.

The second line of defence is that they are simply adding to a menu of
choices. There is no shortage of churches that offer more traditional
fare--from Greek Orthodox to conservative Catholic. The third defence
is more subtle: these churches are much less Disneyfied than they
appear. They may be soft on the surface, but they are hard on the
inside. The people at Lakewood believe that "the entire Bible is
inspired by God, without error". Cuddly old Rick Warren believes that
"heaven and hell are real places" and that "Jesus is coming again".
You may start out in the figurative hell of a Disney theme-park, but
you end up with the real thing.

The other common criticisms of the mega-churches--and the marriage of
religion and business that they embody--are practical. One is that the
mega-churches are a passing fad, doomed to be destroyed by a
combination of elephantiasis and scandal. Another is that they are an
idiosyncratic product of red-state America: amusing to look at, but
irrelevant to the rest of the world. Again, neither argument is
entirely convincing.

The marriage of religion and business has deep roots in American
history. Itinerant Methodist preachers from Francis Asbury (1745-1816)
onwards addressed camp meetings of thousands of people, and often
borrowed marketing techniques from business. Aimee Semple McPherson,
one of America's first radio Evangelists, built a church for 5,300
people in Los Angeles in 1923. (She had none of Mr Hybels's worries
about religious symbolism: she topped her church with an illuminated
rotating cross that could be seen 50 miles away.) And the gospel of
self-help and prosperity is as American as apple pie. In his 1925
bestseller, "The Man Nobody Knows", Bruce Barton, an adman turned
evangelist, pictured Jesus as a savvy executive who "picked up twelve
men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an
organisation that conquered the world". His parables were "the most
powerful advertisements of all time".

The mega-churches are also on the march well beyond red-state America.
America has an impressive track record of exporting its religious
innovations. Pentecostalism, which was invented in a Kansas bible
college in 1901, currently has well over 100m adherents around the
world. Even Mormonism, that most idiosyncratically American of
religious faiths, has 6.7m followers outside the United States. There
is no reason to think that the latest style of marriage between
religion and business is an exception. Rick Warren has inserted his
"purpose-driven operating chip" into churches in 120 countries around
the world. He and his congregation have also set themselves the goal
of eradicating poverty in Africa. The Willow Creek Association has
4,700 member churches abroad; a meeting in the staid English town of
Cheltenham recently attracted almost 3,000 people. The merger between
business and religion has been fabulously successful in America. Now
it is starting to do battle with the "evangephobia" that marks so much
of the rest of the world.

From HowlBloom at aol.com  Wed Jan 18 04:44:06 2006
From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 21:44:06 -0700
Subject: [Paleopsych] Fwd: image.jpg
Message-ID: <200601180444.k0I4i5e30533@tick.javien.com>

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From shovland at mindspring.com  Wed Jan 18 18:42:04 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (shovland at mindspring.com)
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:42:04 -0800 (GMT-08:00)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Fwd: image.jpg
Message-ID: <32324588.1137609724439.JavaMail.root@mswamui-thinleaf.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

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From he at psychology.su.se  Wed Jan 18 19:29:51 2006
From: he at psychology.su.se (Hannes Eisler)
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 20:29:51 +0100
Subject: [Paleopsych] Bush's real motive
In-Reply-To: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHMEJFCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>
References: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHMEJFCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <2D887250-98D5-4B50-B453-53E7D08A0C74@psychology.su.se>

I don't have any statistics, but my guess is that boys quite often  
compete with their fathers, not nedessarily with such a miserable  
result as in this case.
However, what I find so fascinating is the privatizing of a task. In  
Mailer's "The naked and the death" a general is asking for support   
by destroyers with the thought of what impact this operation would  
make on the military staff ratgher than that it would be a successful  
attempt to defeat the Japanese on the island in question. Another? 
real life?example. An American collegue and good friend of mine,  
unfortunately dead by now, decided not to continue with his sttudies  
in math because he realized he would not become famous and remembered  
this way.  so he switched to psychology (which proved to be the right  
thing to do from this particular perspective).


17 jan 2006 kl. 00.37 skrev Steve Hovland:

> If true, he has failed miserably.
>
> Is that often true?  Boys wanting to show
> their father how smart they are and making
> a mess instead?
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org [mailto:paleopsych- 
> bounces at paleopsych.org]On Behalf Of Hannes Eisler
> Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 9:15 AM
> To: The new improved paleopsych list
> Cc: Anna Eisler
> Subject: [Paleopsych] Bush's real motive
>
> There has been quite a discussion about Bush's true incentives to  
> start the war in Iraq. I am surprised that what I consider his real  
> main motive has never been mentioned, as far as I know. It is that  
> he wanted to surpass his father who did not dare to invade Iraq. As  
> a European I have sometimes wondered about US motives being family  
> reasons, intending to please parents or wives or boost the pride of  
> children, rather than the objective ones. In American literature I  
> remember my astonishment about two examples : the policeman or  
> superintendent trying to stop the fight between the two groups of  
> hooligans in "West side story," stating some private motive, and an  
> officer at the landing in Normandy at the end of WW2 in Irwin  
> Shaw*s " The young lions" who, armed with a private gun with ivory  
> handle, bragged about which impression he will make on his wife (or  
> was it his parents?).
> -------------------------------------
> Prof. Hannes Eisler
> Department of Psychology
> Stockholm University
> S-106 91 Stockholm
> Sweden
>
> e-mail: he at psychology.su.se
> fax : +46-8-15 93 42
> phone : +46-8-163967 (university)
> +46-8-6409982 (home)
> internet: http://www.psychology.su.se/staff/he
> _______________________________________________
> paleopsych mailing list
> paleopsych at paleopsych.org
> http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych


-------------------------------------
Prof. Hannes Eisler
Department of Psychology
Stockholm University
S-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden

e-mail:   he at psychology.su.se
fax   :   +46-8-15 93 42
phone :   +46-8-163967 (university)
           +46-8-6409982 (home)
internet: http://www.psychology.su.se/staff/he

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From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan 18 22:08:13 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 17:08:13 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Justices Reject U.S. Bid to Block Assisted Suicide
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601181440560.21382@panix2.panix.com>

Justices Reject U.S. Bid to Block Assisted Suicide
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/politics/politicsspecial1/18scotus.html

[News analysis from the Times follows, then the decision and dissent. It 
doesn't seem that this decision marks a major change in federal-state 
relations nor a development in the law for assisted suicide. These issues 
will loom larger in the future. But at least it's an indication of how the 
new court might be moving. Clarence Thomas's dissent is at the very end. 
He mostly points out the hypocrisy of the liberal judges. I had hoped he'd 
have been a consistent Federalist, which would have meant refusing 
jurisdiction for most of the cases brought before the federal Supreme 
Court.

[If you have not read any court decisions, this is a good one to read. 
These decisions rarely, if ever, come up to the rigor of the math you used 
in high school geometry and algebra, which left a lot to be desired, but I 
won't go into that now. But legal reasoning is much, much worse from even 
the somewhat relaxed standards of high school math.

[The business of the law must, nevertheless, go forward. It involves 
different skills, most basically, an ability to make fine distinctions 
(between legal and illegal). This is different from math and logic, which 
concentrates on exact rigor.

[If the law says A is legal and B illegal, what about A 1/2? Arguments for 
both can be made, and so often it is the side with the thicker stack that 
wins the day, even if exactly zero arguments are logical by the standards 
of high school math. Even refusing jurisdiction, I suspect.

[High school students, those among the cognitive elite (top 5%) at any 
rate, should study law as well as math. The more ways you learn how to 
reason, the better you will be in life. The content does not matter nearly 
so much as the training. Orthodox Jews often claim that studying the 
Talmud makes them better thinkers. I find that this sort of hair splitting 
is not the same as that involved in the law and of little use to me. In 
fact, a lot of writing by Jewish authors takes on this flavor and too many 
books written by them irritate me as failing to get to the point. (I said 
too many: lots of books by Jews very much do get to the point. But Philip 
Wiener's _Evolution and the Founders of Pragmatism_ (1972) is one of those 
bad books, while Cynthia Eagle Russett's _Darwin in America_ (1965) is not 
only one of the ten books that influence me the most, but she accomplished 
on one chapter of that book what Wiener could not in an entire book. And 
her chapter on time got to the point, while Stephen Toulman's _The 
Discovery of Time_ did not.

[I attribute this to Talmudic reasoning doing a fine job of keeping the 
community of Jews together and with raising their IQ. (Just when this 
happened, I'd love to know.) But as we know from religions generally, the 
social binding function can rest upon sheer rumble bumble. Well, not 
totally sheer, as David Sloan Wilson has shown in _Darwin's Cathedral_ 
(which book restores functionalism to sociology), because the moral 
content of religions that have survived tend to be functional. This means 
that the practices that have grown up in a religion, stray from the 
founding documents as they do, are as important in understanding the 
religion as its origins.

[And this is the post-modernist critique of historicism, I think. Time, or 
rather the cumulative causation, was first appreciated in the 18th 
century, as Russett (and probably Toulman) showed. It is one of the major 
deep ideas in our Darwinian civilization. But the pomos went to far, and 
so there's something called the New Historicism. I have peeked into this 
only slightly.

[Anyhow, further your education by reading the decision.

[Oh, Jews are vastly overrepresented in the legal profession, as everyone 
knows. Question: are they still overrepresented when IQ is factored out? 
During the early days of our great Republic, there were factions favoring 
the retention of the British common law and those who wanted to distance 
themselves from the hated mother country as much as possible. I'm glad the 
latter faction did not succeed. Perry Miller, in _The Law in Early 
America_ (something like that. He was one of the greats among historians 
of early America) quoted one of those in the breakaway faction as 
comparing the endless layers of common law court decisions *unfavorably* 
to the Talmud (about which, I would guess, the knew nearly nothing).]

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - The Supreme Court removed an obstacle on
Tuesday to state efforts to authorize physician-assisted suicide,
ruling 6 to 3 that John Ashcroft, the former attorney general,
acted without legal authority when he threw the federal
government's weight against the Death With Dignity Act in Oregon
five years ago.

With the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., in dissent in the
most high-profile case since he joined the court, the decision
lifted a major barrier to state initiatives like the one in Oregon,
which has the only assisted-suicide law in the country. [News
analysis, Page A16.]

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion did not say that
Congress could not act to block such laws, only that it had not
given Mr. Ashcroft the "extraordinary authority" that he claimed
when he threatened Oregon doctors who followed the state law with
losing their federal prescription-writing privileges.

While the court's decision was based on standard principles of
administrative law, and not on the Constitution, it was clearly
influenced by the majority's view that the regulation of medical
practice belonged, as a general matter, to the states. Mr. Ashcroft
acted contrary to "the background principles of our federal
system," Justice Kennedy said in his 28-page opinion.

The decision on Tuesday upheld rulings by two lower federal courts.
Mr. Ashcroft, while attorney general, appealed to the Supreme Court
in November 2004. His successor, Alberto R. Gonzales, embraced his
position and pursued the appeal after the justices agreed last
February to hear the case.

Chief Justice Roberts did not write a dissenting opinion, instead
signing a dissent written by Justice Antonin Scalia. For those
eager for any hint about the new chief justice's predilections, his
silent joining of this strongly worded opinion was intriguing. When
the case was argued on Oct. 5, his second day on the bench, Chief
Justice Roberts was an active participant but did not tip his hand.

At his confirmation hearing, he had declined to answer questions
about his personal views on issues like assisted suicide, saying a
judge's views and values should play no role in his judicial
decisions.

Justice Clarence Thomas did write a dissenting opinion, saying it
was "perplexing to say the least" to find the court interpreting
federal drug law narrowly in this instance when only months ago, it
upheld broad federal authority to prevent states from authorizing
the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Oregon voters approved the Death With Dignity Act in 1994 and
affirmed it 1997. The law says that doctors who follow specific
procedures may prescribe lethal doses of federally regulated
medications to help their mentally competent, terminally ill
patients end their lives. Through 2004, 325 people had obtained the
lethal prescriptions, and 208 had used them.

When the Oregon measure took effect, Mr. Ashcroft was a senator
from Missouri. Along with other members of Congress, he asked the
Clinton administration to take steps to block the law. Attorney
General Janet Reno refused, writing to Congress in June 1998 to say
she had no authority to act because there was no evidence that
Congress "intended to displace the states as the primary regulators
of the medical profession." Mr. Ashcroft then co-sponsored a bill
to give the government this authority, but it did not pass.

As attorney general, Mr. Ashcroft announced in November 2001 that
doctors who prescribed lethal doses of drugs for the purpose of
assisting a suicide risked losing their federal licenses to
prescribe all "controlled substances." Without such licenses,
doctors would find it difficult to practice medicine because
controlled substances include many prescription pain relievers and
other commonly used medications.

Oregon sued to block the new rule, joined by a doctor, a pharmacist
and several terminally ill patients.

As authority for his action, Mr. Ashcroft invoked the Controlled
Substances Act, a 1970 law that established the framework for
federal drug policy, as well as a regulation issued by the Justice
Department the following year that put the law into effect. The
regulation requires that every prescription for a controlled
substance "be issued for a legitimate medical purpose." Assisted
suicide is "not a legitimate medical purpose," Mr. Ashcroft said.

In his opinion on Tuesday, Gonzales v. Oregon, No. 04-623, Justice
Kennedy emphasized, with evident disapproval, the unilateral nature
of Mr. Ashcroft's action, taken "without consulting Oregon or
apparently anyone outside his department." The attorney general's
rule was not entitled to the deference the court usually gave to
interpretations of governing statutes by executive branch
officials, he said, because Congress had not given the attorney
general the authority he was invoking.

"The authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his
expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design,"
Justice Kennedy said.

Justice Scalia, in his dissenting opinion, took issue with the
argument that Congress could not have intended to delegate medical
judgments of this sort to the attorney general. The legitimacy of
physician-assisted suicide "ultimately rests, not on 'science' or
'medicine,' but on a naked value judgment," he said, adding, "It no
more depends upon a 'quintessentially medical judgment' than does
the legitimacy of polygamy or eugenic infanticide."

Justice Scalia said Mr. Ashcroft's action was "the most reasonable
interpretation" of the statute because "virtually every relevant
source of authoritative meaning confirms that the phrase
'legitimate medical purpose' does not include intentionally
assisting suicide."

In the few months since the case was argued on Oct. 5, the question
of how skeptically the Supreme Court will be willing to examine the
exercise of power by the executive branch has become considerably
more prominent. This issue also seemed to mark a divide between the
majority and the dissent.

In his opinion, Justice Kennedy said that Mr. Ashcroft was claiming
the "extraordinary authority" to declare as criminal actions that
Congress had not designated as crimes, and that he was seeking "a
radical shift of authority from the states to the federal
government to define general standards of medical practice in every
locality."

But Congress had no such intent in passing the Controlled
Substances Act, Justice Kennedy said. "The structure and operation
of the C.S.A. presume and rely upon a functioning medical
profession regulated under the states' police powers," he said,
adding that "Oregon's regime is an example of the state regulation
of medical practice that the C.S.A. presupposes."

Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer signed the majority
opinion.

The court was clearly aware that it was venturing into "an earnest
and profound debate," as Justice Kennedy noted, quoting from the
court's 1997 opinion in an assisted-suicide case. In that case,
Washington v. Glucksberg, the court said that the Constitution did
not convey a right to assistance in dying, but that states were
free to experiment with the issue. "The dispute before us," Justice
Kennedy said, "is in part a product of this political and moral
debate."

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday, "We
are disappointed at the decision." Mr. McClellan added, "The
president remains fully committed to building a culture of life, a
culture of life that is built on valuing life at all stages."

Fraught Issue, but Narrow Ruling in Oregon Suicide Case
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/national/18oregon.html

News Analysis
By TIMOTHY EGAN and ADAM LIPTAK

PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 17 - Just 30 terminally ill people exercise a
right each year that is unique in America to the state of Oregon,
hastening their deaths with a lethal dose of drugs prescribed by
doctors.

The Supreme Court decision on Tuesday rejecting the Justice
Department's effort to block the state's Death With Dignity Act
will allow such suicides to continue, but it may not have the broad
impact people on both sides of the debate are predicting.

There is no reason to think that the pace of physician-assisted
suicides will quicken in Oregon. And the decision lends little
support, one way or the other, to the efforts to enact similar laws
around the country that have stalled since the Oregon law was
enacted in 1994.

The Supreme Court's ruling was, in fact, notably focused and
technical. It did not address whether there is a constitutional
right to die. It did not say that Congress was powerless to
override state laws that allow doctors to help their patients end
their lives.

It said only that a particular federal law, the Controlled
Substances Act, which is mainly concerned with drug abuse and
illegal drug trafficking, had not given John Ashcroft, then the
attorney general, the authority to punish Oregon doctors who
complied with requests under the state's law. The law allows
mentally competent, terminally ill patients to ask their doctors
for lethal drugs.

"What the court decision means is simply that you won't have
federal agents trying to put an end to this in the state of
Oregon," said Dr. Timothy E. Quill, a professor of medicine and
psychiatry at the University of Rochester, who is a prominent
supporter of physician-assisted suicide. "We were very fearful of
what might have happened had the ruling gone the other way."

Here in Oregon, the issue was initially contentious, passed by a
bare margin in 1994. But the more that people outside the state
criticized the law, the more support it gained here. When it came
up for a second referendum in 1997, it was upheld 60 to 40.

"I would not expect to see an increase in doctor-assisted suicides
here," said Mary Williams, Oregon's solicitor general. "But I do
expect more states will at least have discussion now."

But states have been free to enact such laws, and they have not
followed Oregon's example. Mr. Ashcroft did not issue his
interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act until 2001, and it
was soon enjoined. The federal government lost in the courts every
step of the way.

One question now is whether the debate will move from the court to
Congress. Peg Sandeen, executive director of the Death With Dignity
National Center in Portland, said her group would move to push
legislation or voter initiatives in several states.

But Ms. Sandeen said the organization was concerned that "a
Congress that would intervene in the death of Terri Schiavo" might
be galvanized into action by this decision.

Still, Tuesday's decision may prompt lawmakers in some states to
give the matter a fresh look.

"This decision gives the green light to the rest of the nation to
move forward with assisted-suicide laws," said Mathew D. Staver,
president of Liberty Counsel, which filed a brief supporting the
federal government in the Oregon case. "This particular case was
either going to close the door or to open it, and it opened it."

In the handful of states where a similar measure has been under
consideration, supporters said they hoped the decision would help.

"This will be a tremendous momentum builder for Vermont and other
states who want to bring compassionate care to end-of-life issues,"
said Dr. David Babbott, a board member of Death With Dignity
Vermont.

Opponents of assisted suicide said Tuesday's decision was a narrow
and technical one that did not endorse any particular approach to
these issues.

"I don't think its impact will be great," Dr. Robert D. Orr, the
president of the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare, said of
the decision. "Some have misunderstood the Oregon case as a
challenge to the Oregon statute itself."

The Oregon law was initially held up by an injunction, and not
fully put into effect until 1998. Since then, through 2004, a total
of 208 people have taken their lives by lethal injection with a
physician-prescribed drug, usually a barbiturate.

Critics had said Oregon would become a suicide center, with people
flying in to end their lives. They also predicted that the law
would be unfairly used against uneducated people or those without
health insurance or adequate medical choices.

In the seven full years since the law has been in effect and
records have been kept, more than 60 percent of those who have
killed themselves have had some college education, the state
reported.

Nora Miller, whose husband, Rick, took his life here in Portland in
1999 after he was given less than six months to live with a
diagnosis of terminal lung cancer, said the Oregon law allowed for
a peaceful and relatively pain-free end to his life.

"He was worried about being unconscious and completely out of it,"
said Ms. Miller, whose husband was 52. "But it was as good a death
as he could have hoped for."

She praised the court decision as a backing of individual liberty.

"This country was founded on the idea that you should be able to
make these kinds of decisions without government interference," Ms.
Miller said.

But the leader of a group of Oregon physicians who have long
opposed the measure, Dr. Kenneth Stevens, said the medical
community had long had ways to help people deal with pain at the
end of their lives.

"I've been taking care of cancer patients for more than 30 years,"
Dr. Stevens said, "and I feel helping people kill themselves is not
something doctors should be doing."

Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski of Oregon said one effect of the
decision would be to allow innovative states like Oregon to
continue to be laboratories for new ideas.

"The U.S. Supreme Court recognized the delicate balance between our
federal system and the right of the states to be the crucibles for
new ideas and new ways to meet the changing needs of their
citizens," Mr. Kulongoski said.

Timothy Egan reported from Portland for this article, and Adam
Liptak from New York.

----------------

ALBERTO R. GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. OREGON ET 
AL.
No. 04-623
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

October 5, 2005, Argued
January 17, 2006, Decided

NOTICE:  [*1]

PRIOR HISTORY: ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT. Oregon v. Ashcroft, 368 F.3d 1118, 2004 U.S. App. 
LEXIS 10349 (9th Cir. Or., 2004)


DISPOSITION: Affirmed.

CORE TERMS: regulation, prescription, registration, suicide, Interpretive 
Rule, public interest, deference, medical practice, delegation, 
dispensing, physician-assisted, practitioner, patient, public health and 
safety, medicine, scheduling, state law, doctor, professional practice, 
drug abuse, deregister, addiction, dispense, dispensation, ambiguous, 
assisting, deregistration, illegitimate, scientific, expertise

SYLLABUS: The Controlled Substances Act (CSA or Act), which was enacted in 
1970 with the main objectives of combating drug abuse and controlling 
legitimate and illegitimate traffic in controlled substances, 
criminalizes, inter alia, the unauthorized distribution and dispensation 
of substances classified in any of its five schedules. The Attorney 
General may add, remove, or reschedule substances only after making 
particular findings, and on scientific and medical matters, he must accept 
the findings of the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary). 
These proceedings must be on the record after an opportunity for comment. 
The dispute [*2]  here involves controlled substances listed in Schedule 
II, which are generally available only by written prescription, 21 U.S.C. 
? 829(a). A 1971 regulation promulgated by the Attorney General requires 
that such prescriptions be used "for a legitimate medical purpose by an 
individual practitioner acting in the usual course of his professional 
practice." 21 CFR ? 1306.04. To prevent diversion of controlled 
substances, the CSA regulates the activity of physicians, who must 
register in accordance with rules and regulations promulgated by the 
Attorney General. He may deny, suspend, or revoke a registration that, as 
relevant here, would be "inconsistent with the public interest." 21 U.S.C. 
?? 824(a)(4), 822(a)(2). In determining consistency with the public 
interest, he must consider five factors, including the State's 
recommendation, compliance with state, federal, and local law regarding 
controlled substances, and "public health and safety." ? 823(f). The CSA 
explicitly contemplates a role for the States in regulating controlled 
substances. See ? 903.

The Oregon Death With Dignity Act (ODWDA) exempts from civil or criminal 
liability [*3]  state-licensed physicians who, in compliance with ODWDA's 
specific safeguards, dispense or prescribe a lethal dose of drugs upon the 
request of a terminally ill patient. In 2001, the Attorney General issued 
an Interpretive Rule to address the implementation and enforcement of the 
CSA with respect to ODWDA, declaring that using controlled substances to 
assist suicide is not a legitimate medical practice and that dispensing or 
prescribing them for this purpose is unlawful under the CSA. The State, a 
physician, a pharmacist, and some terminally ill state residents 
challenged the Rule. The District Court permanently enjoined its 
enforcement. The Ninth Circuit invalidated the Rule, reasoning that, by 
making a medical procedure authorized under Oregon law a federal offense, 
it altered the balance between the States and the Federal Government 
without the requisite clear statement that the CSA authorized the action; 
and in the alternative, that the Rule could not be squared with the CSA's 
plain language, which targets only conventional drug abuse and excludes 
the Attorney General from medical policy decisions.

Held: The CSA does not allow the Attorney General to prohibit doctors from 
[*4]  prescribing regulated drugs for use in physician-assisted suicide 
under state law permitting the procedure. Pp. 8-28.

(a) An administrative rule interpreting the issuing agency's own ambiguous 
regulation may receive substantial deference. Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 
452, 461-463, 117 S. Ct. 905, 137 L. Ed. 2d 79. So may an interpretation 
of an ambiguous statute, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837, 
842-845, 104 S. Ct. 2778, 81 L. Ed. 2d 694, but only "when it appears that 
Congress delegated authority to the agency generally to make rules 
carrying the force of law, and that the agency interpretation claiming 
deference was promulgated in the exercise of that authority," United 
States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 226-227, 121 S. Ct. 2164, 150 L. Ed. 
2d 292. Otherwise, the interpretation is "entitled to respect" only to the 
extent it has the "power to persuade." Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 
134, 140, 65 S. Ct. 161, 89 L. Ed. 124. Pp. 8-9.

(b) The Interpretive Rule at issue is not entitled to Auer deference as an 
interpretation of 21 CFR ? 1306.04. Unlike the underlying regulations in 
Auer, which gave specificity to a statutory scheme the Secretary of Labor 
was charged with [*5]  enforcing and reflected the Labor Department's 
considerable experience and expertise, the underlying regulation here does 
little more than restate the terms of the statute itself. The CSA allows 
prescription of drugs that have a "currently accepted medical use," 21 
U.S.C. ? 812(b); requires a "medical purpose" for dispensing the least 
controlled substances of those on the schedules, ? 829(c); and defines a 
"valid prescription" as one "issued for a legitimate medical purpose," 21 
U.S.C. A. ? 830(b)(3)(A)(ii). Similarly, physicians are considered 
practitioners if they dispense controlled substances "in the course of 
professional practice." 21 U.S.C. ? 802(21). The regulation just repeats 
two of these statutory phrases and attempts to summarize the others. An 
agency does not acquire special authority to interpret its own words when, 
instead of using its expertise and experience to formulate a regulation, 
it has elected merely to paraphrase the statutory language. Furthermore, 
any statutory authority for the Interpretive Rule would have to come from 
1984 CSA amendments adding the "public interest" requirement, but 21 CFR ? 
1306.04 [*6]  was adopted in 1971. That the current interpretation runs 
counter to the intent at the time of the regulation's promulgation is an 
additional reason why Auer deference is unwarranted. Pp. 9-11.

(c) The Interpretive Rule is also not entitled to Chevron deference. The 
statutory phrase "legitimate medical purpose" is ambiguous in the relevant 
sense. However, Chevron deference is not accorded merely because the 
statute is ambiguous and an administrative official is involved. A rule 
must be promulgated pursuant to authority Congress has delegated to the 
official. The specific respects in which the Attorney General is 
authorized to make rules under the CSA show that he is not authorized to 
make a rule declaring illegitimate a medical standard for patient care and 
treatment specifically authorized under state law. Congress delegated to 
the Attorney General only the authority to promulgate rules relating to 
"registration" and "control" of the dispensing of controlled substances, 
21 U.S.C. A. ? 821, and "for the efficient execution of his [statutory] 
functions," 21 U.S.C. ? 871(b). Control means "to add a . . .  [*7] 
substance to a schedule," ? 802(5), following specified procedures. 
Because the Interpretive Rule does not concern scheduling of substances 
and was not issued under the required procedures, it cannot fall under the 
Attorney General's control authority. Even if "control" were understood to 
signify something other than its statutory definition, it could not 
support the Interpretive Rule. Nor can the Interpretive Rule be justified 
under the CSA's registration provisions. It does not undertake the Act's 
five-factor analysis for determining when registration is "inconsistent 
with the public interest," ? 823(f), and it deals with much more than 
registration. It purports to declare that using controlled substances for 
physician-assisted suicide is a crime, an authority going well beyond the 
Attorney General's statutory power to register or deregister physicians. 
It would be anomalous for Congress to have painstakingly described the 
Attorney General's limited authority to deregister a single physician or 
schedule a single drug, but to have given him, just by implication, 
authority to declare an entire class of activity outside the course of 
professional practice and therefore a criminal [*8]  violation of the CSA. 
It is not enough that "public interest," "public health and safety," and 
"Federal law" are used in the part of the Act over which the Attorney 
General has authority. Cf. Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc., 527 U.S. 471, 
119 S. Ct. 2139, 144 L. Ed. 2d 450. The first two terms do not call on the 
Attorney General, or any Executive official, to make an independent 
assessment of the meaning of federal law. The Attorney General did not 
base the Interpretive Rule on an application of the five-factor test 
generally, or the "public health and safety" factor specifically. Even if 
he had, it is doubtful that he could cite those factors to deregister a 
physician simply because he deemed a controversial practice permitted by 
state law to have an illegitimate medical purpose. The federal-law factor 
requires the Attorney General to decide "compliance" with the law but does 
not suggest that he may decide what the law is. To say that he can define 
the substantive standards of medical practice as part of his authority 
would also put 21 U.S.C. ? 871(b) in considerable tension with the 
narrowly defined control and registration delegation. It would go, 
moreover, against the [*9]  plain language of the text to treat a 
delegation for the "execution" of his functions as a further delegation to 
define other functions well beyond the Act's specific grants of authority. 
The authority desired by the Government is inconsistent with the Act's 
design in other fundamental respects, e.g., the Attorney General must 
share power with, and in some respect defer to, the Secretary, whose 
functions are likewise delineated and confined by the Act. Postenactment 
congressional commentary on the CSA's regulation of medical practice is 
also at odds with the Attorney General's claimed authority. The 
Government's claim that the Attorney General's decision is a legal, not 
medical, one does not suffice, for the Interpretive Rule places extensive 
reliance on medical judgments and views of the medical community in 
concluding that assisted suicide is not a legitimate medical purpose. The 
idea that Congress gave him such broad and unusual authority through an 
implicit delegation is not sustainable. The importance of the issue of 
physician-assisted suicide makes the oblique form of the claimed 
delegation all the more suspect. Pp. 11-22.

(d) The Attorney General's opinion is unpersuasive [*10]  under Skidmore. 
The CSA and this Court's case law amply support the conclusion that 
Congress regulates medical practice insofar as it bars doctors from using 
their prescription-writing powers as a means to engage in illicit drug 
dealing and trafficking as conventionally understood. Beyond this, the Act 
manifests no intent to regulate the practice of medicine generally, which 
is understandable given federalism's structure and limitations. The CSA's 
structure and operation presume and rely upon a functioning medical 
profession regulated under the States' police powers. The Federal 
Government can set uniform standards for regulating health and safety. In 
connection with the CSA, however, the only provision in which Congress set 
general, uniform medical practice standards, 42 U.S.C. ? 290bb-2a, 
strengthens the understanding of the CSA as a statute combating 
recreational drug abuse, and also indicates that when Congress wants to 
regulate medical practice in the given scheme, it does so by explicit 
statutory language. The difficulty in defending the Attorney General's 
declaration that the CSA impliedly criminalizes physician-assisted suicide 
is compounded by [*11]  the Act's consistent delegation of medical 
judgments to the Secretary and its otherwise careful allocation of powers 
for enforcing the CSA's limited objectives. The Government's contention 
that the terms "medical" or "medicine" refer to a healing or curative art, 
and thus cannot embrace the intentional hastening of a patient's death, 
rests on a reading of 21 U.S.C. ? 829(a)'s prescription requirement 
without the illumination of the rest of the statute. Viewed in context, 
that requirement is better understood as ensuring that patients use 
controlled substances under a doctor's supervision so as to prevent 
addiction and recreational abuse. To read prescriptions for assisted 
suicide as "drug abuse" under the CSA is discordant with the phrase's 
consistent use throughout the Act, not to mention its ordinary meaning. 
The Government's interpretation of the prescription requirement also fails 
under the objection that the Attorney General is an unlikely recipient of 
such broad authority, given the Secretary's primacy in shaping medical 
policy under the CSA and the Act's otherwise careful allocation of 
decisionmaking powers. Pp. 22-28.

368 F.3d 1118 [*12]  ,affirmed.

JUDGES: KENNEDY, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which STEVENS, 
O'CONNOR, SOUTER, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a 
dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and THOMAS, J., joined. 
THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

OPINIONBY: KENNEDY

OPINION: JUSTICE KENNEDY delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question before us is whether the Controlled Substances Act allows the 
United States Attorney General to prohibit doctors from prescribing 
regulated drugs for use in physician-assisted suicide, notwithstanding a 
state law permitting the procedure. As the Court has observed, "Americans 
are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, 
legality, and practicality of physician-assisted suicide." Washington v. 
Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 735, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 117 S. Ct. 2302, 138 L. 
Ed. 2d 772 (1997). The dispute before us is in part a product of this 
political and moral debate, but its resolution requires an inquiry 
familiar to the courts: interpreting a federal statute to determine 
whether Executive action is authorized by, or otherwise consistent with, 
the enactment.

In 1994, Oregon became the first State to legalize assisted suicide when 
voters approved a ballot measure [*13] enacting the Oregon Death With 
Dignity Act (ODWDA). Ore. Rev. Stat. ? 127.800 et seq. (2003). ODWDA, 
which survived a 1997 ballot measure seeking its repeal, exempts from 
civil or criminal liability state-licensed physicians who, in compliance 
with the specific safeguards in ODWDA, dispense or prescribe a lethal dose 
of drugs upon the request of a terminally ill patient.

The drugs Oregon physicians prescribe under ODWDA are regulated under a 
federal statute, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA or Act). 84 Stat. 
1242, as amended, 21 U.S.C. ? 801 et seq. The CSA allows these particular 
drugs to be available only by a written prescription from a registered 
physician. In the ordinary course the same drugs are prescribed in smaller 
doses for pain alleviation.

A November 9, 2001 Interpretive Rule issued by the Attorney General 
addresses the implementation and enforcement of the CSA with respect to 
ODWDA. It determines that using controlled substances to assist suicide is 
not a legitimate medical practice and that dispensing or prescribing them 
for this purpose is unlawful under the CSA. The Interpretive Rule's 
validity under the CSA is the issue before us.  [*14]

I

A

We turn first to the text and structure of the CSA. Enacted in 1970 with 
the main objectives of combating drug abuse and controlling the legitimate 
and illegitimate traffic in controlled substances, the CSA creates a 
comprehensive, closed regulatory regime criminalizing the unauthorized 
manufacture, distribution, dispensing, and possession of substances 
classified in any of the Act's five schedules. Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 
____, ___, 125 S. Ct. 2195, 162 L. Ed. 2d 1 (2005) (slip op., at 9-10); 21 
U.S.C. ? 841 (2000 ed. and Supp. II); 21 U.S.C. ? 844. The Act places 
substances in one of five schedules based on their potential for abuse or 
dependence, their accepted medical use, and their accepted safety for use 
under medical supervision. Schedule I contains the most severe 
restrictions on access and use, and Schedule V the least. Raich, supra, at 
___ 125 S. Ct. 2195, 162 L. Ed. 2d 1 (slip op., at 11); 21 U.S.C. ? 812. 
Congress classified a host of substances when it enacted the CSA, but the 
statute permits the Attorney General to add, remove, or reschedule 
substances. He may do so, however, only after making particular findings, 
and on scientific and medical [*15] matters he is required to accept the 
findings of the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary). These 
proceedings must be on the record after an opportunity for comment. See 21 
U.S.C. A. ? 811 (main ed. and Supp. 2005).

The present dispute involves controlled substances listed in Schedule II, 
substances generally available only pursuant to a written, nonrefillable 
prescription by a physician. 21 U.S.C. ? 829(a). A 1971 regulation 
promulgated by the Attorney General requires that every prescription for a 
controlled substance "be issued for a legitimate medical purpose by an 
individual practitioner acting in the usual course of his professional 
practice." 21 CFR ? 1306.04(a) (2005).

To prevent diversion of controlled substances with medical uses, the CSA 
regulates the activity of physicians. To issue lawful prescriptions of 
Schedule II drugs, physicians must "obtain from the Attorney General a 
registration issued in accordance with the rules and regulations 
promulgated by him." 21 U.S.C. ? 822(a)(2). The Attorney General may deny, 
suspend, or revoke this registration if, as relevant here, the physician's 
[*16]  registration would be "inconsistent with the public interest." ? 
824(a)(4); ? 822(a)(2). When deciding whether a practitioner's 
registration is in the public interest, the Attorney General "shall" 
consider:

"(1) The recommendation of the appropriate State licensing board or 
professional disciplinary authority.

"(2) The applicant's experience in dispensing, or conducting research with 
respect to controlled substances.

"(3) The applicant's conviction record under Federal or State laws 
relating to the manufacture, distribution, or dispensing of controlled 
substances.

"(4) Compliance with applicable State, Federal, or local laws relating to 
controlled substances.

"(5) Such other conduct which may threaten the public health and safety." 
? 823(f).

The CSA explicitly contemplates a role for the States in regulating 
controlled substances, as evidenced by its pre-emption provision.

"No provision of this subchapter shall be construed as indicating an 
intent on the part of the Congress to occupy the field in which that 
provision operates . . . to the exclusion of any State law on the same 
subject matter which would otherwise be within the authority of the State, 
unless there is a [*17]  positive conflict between that provision . . . 
and that State law so that the two cannot consistently stand together." ? 
903.

B

Oregon voters enacted ODWDA in 1994. For Oregon residents to be eligible 
to request a prescription under ODWDA, they must receive a diagnosis from 
their attending physician that they have an incurable and irreversible 
disease that, within reasonable medical judgment, will cause death within 
six months. Ore. Rev. Stat. ?? 127.815, 127.800(12) (2003). Attending 
physicians must also determine whether a patient has made a voluntary 
request, ensure a patient's choice is informed, and refer patients to 
counseling if they might be suffering from a psychological disorder or 
depression causing impaired judgment. ?? 127.815, 127.825. A second 
"consulting" physician must examine the patient and the medical record and 
confirm the attending physician's conclusions. ? 127.800(8). Oregon 
physicians may dispense or issue a prescription for the requested drug, 
but may not administer it. ?? 127.815(1)(L), 127.880.

The reviewing physicians must keep detailed medical records of the process 
leading to the final prescription, ? 127.855, records that Oregon's 
Department of Human [*18]  Services reviews, ? 127.865. Physicians who 
dispense medication pursuant to ODWDA must also be registered with both 
the State's Board of Medical Examiners and the federal Drug Enforcement 
Administration (DEA). ? 127.815(1)(L). In 2004, 37 patients ended their 
lives by ingesting a lethal dose of medication prescribed under ODWDA. 
Oregon Dept. of Human Servs., Seventh Annual Report on Oregon's Death with 
Dignity Act 20 (Mar. 10, 2005).

C

In 1997, Members of Congress concerned about ODWDA invited the DEA to 
prosecute or revoke the CSA registration of Oregon physicians who assist 
suicide. They contended that hastening a patient's death is not legitimate 
medical practice, so prescribing controlled substances for that purpose 
violates the CSA. Letter from Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Henry Hyde to 
Thomas A. Constantine (July 25, 1997), reprinted in Hearings on S. 2151 
before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 105th Cong., 2d Sess., 2-3 
(1999) (hereinafter Hearings). The letter received an initial, favorable 
response from the director of the DEA, see Letter from Thomas A. 
Constantine to Sen. Orrin Hatch (Nov. 5, 1997), Hearings 4-5, but Attorney 
General Reno considered the matter and [*19]  concluded that the DEA could 
not take the proposed action because the CSA did not authorize it to 
"displace the states as the primary regulators of the medical profession, 
or to override a state's determination as to what constitutes legitimate 
medical practice," Letter from Attorney General Janet Reno to Sen. Orrin 
Hatch, on Oregon's Death with Dignity Act (June 5, 1998), Hearings 5-6. 
Legislation was then introduced to grant the explicit authority Attorney 
General Reno found lacking; but it failed to pass. See H. R. 4006, 105th 
Cong., 2d Sess. (1998); H. R. 2260, 106th Cong., 1st Sess. (1999).

In 2001, John Ashcroft was appointed Attorney General. Perhaps because Mr. 
Ashcroft had supported efforts to curtail assisted suicide while serving 
as a Senator, see, e.g., 143 Cong. Rec. 5589-5590 (1997) (remarks of Sen. 
Ashcroft), Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers wrote him to request a 
meeting with Department of Justice officials should the Department decide 
to revisit the application of the CSA to assisted suicide. Letter of Feb. 
2, 2001, App. to Brief for Patient-Respondents in Opposition 55a. Attorney 
General Myers received a reply letter from one of Attorney General 
Ashcroft's [*20]  advisers writing on his behalf, which stated

"I am aware of no pending legislation in Congress that would prompt a 
review of the Department's interpretation of the CSA as it relates to 
physician-assisted suicide. Should such a review be commenced in the 
future, we would be happy to include your views in that review." Letter 
from Lori Sharpe (Apr. 17, 2001), id., at 58a.

On November 9, 2001, without consulting Oregon or apparently anyone 
outside his Department, the Attorney General issued an Interpretive Rule 
announcing his intent to restrict the use of controlled substances for 
physician-assisted suicide. Incorporating the legal analysis of a 
memorandum he had solicited from his Office of Legal Counsel, the Attorney 
General ruled

"assisting suicide is not a 'legitimate medical purpose' within the 
meaning of 21 CFR 1306.04 (2001), and that prescribing, dispensing, or 
administering federally controlled substances to assist suicide violates 
the Controlled Substances Act. Such conduct by a physician registered to 
dispense controlled substances may 'render his registration . . . 
inconsistent with the public interest' and therefore subject to possible 
suspension or revocation under [*21]  21 U.S.C. 824(a)(4). The Attorney 
General's conclusion applies regardless of whether state law authorizes or 
permits such conduct by practitioners or others and regardless of the 
condition of the person whose suicide is assisted." 66 Fed. Reg. 56608 
(2001).

There is little dispute that the Interpretive Rule would substantially 
disrupt the ODWDA regime. Respondents contend, and petitioners do not 
dispute, that every prescription filled under ODWDA has specified drugs 
classified under Schedule II. A physician cannot prescribe the substances 
without DEA registration, and revocation or suspension of the registration 
would be a severe restriction on medical practice. Dispensing controlled 
substances without a valid prescription, furthermore, is a federal crime. 
See, e.g., 21 U.S.C. ? 841(a)(1) (2000 ed., Supp. II); United States v. 
Moore, 423 U.S. 122, 96 S. Ct. 335, 46 L. Ed. 2d 333 (1975).

In response the State of Oregon, joined by a physician, a pharmacist, and 
some terminally ill patients, all from Oregon, challenged the Interpretive 
Rule in federal court. The United States District Court for the District 
of Oregon entered a permanent [*22]  injunction against the Interpretive 
Rule's enforcement.

A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted the 
petitions for review and held the Interpretive Rule invalid. Oregon v. 
Ashcroft, 368 F.3d 1118 (2004). It reasoned that, by making a medical 
procedure authorized under Oregon law a federal offense, the Interpretive 
Rule altered the "' "usual constitutional balance between the States and 
the Federal Government"' " without the requisite clear statement that the 
CSA authorized such action. Id., at 1124-1125 (quoting Gregory v. 
Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 460, 111 S. Ct. 2395, 115 L. Ed. 2d 410 (1991) (in 
turn quoting Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 242, 105 
S. Ct. 3142, 87 L. Ed. 2d 171 (1985))). The Court of Appeals held in the 
alternative that the Interpretive Rule could not be squared with the plain 
language of the CSA, which targets only conventional drug abuse and 
excludes the Attorney General from decisions on medical policy. 368 F.3d 
at 1125-1129.

We granted the Government's petition for certiorari. 543 U.S. 1145, 125 S. 
Ct. 1299; 161 L. Ed. 2d 104 (2005).

II

Executive actors often must interpret the enactments Congress has charged 
[*23]  them with enforcing and implementing. The parties before us are in 
sharp disagreement both as to the degree of deference we must accord the 
Interpretive Rule's substantive conclusions and whether the Rule is 
authorized by the statutory text at all. Although balancing the necessary 
respect for an agency's knowledge, expertise, and constitutional office 
with the courts' role as interpreter of laws can be a delicate matter, 
familiar principles guide us. An administrative rule may receive 
substantial deference if it interprets the issuing agency's own ambiguous 
regulation. Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 461-463, 117 S. Ct. 905, 137 L. 
Ed. 2d 79 (1997). An interpretation of an ambiguous statute may also 
receive substantial deference. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837, 
842-845, 104 S. Ct. 2778, 81 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1984). Deference in accordance 
with Chevron, however, is warranted only "when it appears that Congress 
delegated authority to the agency generally to make rules carrying the 
force of law, and that the agency interpretation claiming deference was 
promulgated in the exercise of that authority." United States v. Mead 
Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 226-227, 121 S. Ct. 2164, 150 L. Ed. 2d 292 (2001). 
[*24]  Otherwise, the interpretation is "entitled to respect" only to the 
extent it has the "power to persuade." Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 
134, 140, 65 S. Ct. 161, 89 L. Ed. 124 (1944).

A

The Government first argues that the Interpretive Rule is an elaboration 
of one of the Attorney General's own regulations, 21 CFR ? 1306.04 (2005), 
which requires all prescriptions be issued "for a legitimate medical 
purpose by an individual practitioner acting in the usual course of his 
professional practice." As such, the Government says, the Interpretive 
Rule is entitled to considerable deference in accordance with Auer.

In our view Auer and the standard of deference it accords to an agency are 
inapplicable here. Auer involved a disputed interpretation of the Fair 
Labor Standards Act of 1938 as applied to a class of law enforcement 
officers. Under regulations promulgated by the Secretary of Labor, an 
exemption from overtime pay depended, in part, on whether the employees 
met the "salary basis" test. 519 U.S., at 454-455, 117 S. Ct. 905, 137 
L.Ed. 2d 79. In this Court the Secretary of Labor filed an amicus brief 
explaining why, in his view, the regulations gave exempt status to the 
officers. Id., at 461, 117 S. Ct. 905, 137 L.Ed.2d 79 [*25]  We gave 
weight to that interpretation, holding that because the applicable test 
was "a creature of the Secretary's own regulations, his interpretation of 
it is, under our jurisprudence, controlling unless plainly erroneous or 
inconsistent with the regulation. " Ibid. (internal quotation marks 
omitted).

In Auer, the underlying regulations gave specificity to a statutory scheme 
the Secretary was charged with enforcing and reflected the considerable 
experience and expertise the Department of Labor had acquired over time 
with respect to the complexities of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Here, on 
the other hand, the underlying regulation does little more than restate 
the terms of the statute itself. The language the Interpretive Rule 
addresses comes from Congress, not the Attorney General, and the 
near-equivalence of the statute and regulation belies the Government's 
argument for Auer deference.

The Government does not suggest that its interpretation turns on any 
difference between the statutory and regulatory language. The CSA allows 
prescription of drugs only if they have a "currently accepted medical 
use," 21 U.S.C. ? 812(b); requires a "medical purpose"  [*26]  for 
dispensing the least controlled substances of those on the schedules, ? 
829(c); and, in its reporting provision, defines a "valid prescription" as 
one "issued for a legitimate medical purpose," ? 830(b)(3)(A)(ii). 
Similarly, physicians are considered to be acting as practitioners under 
the statute if they dispense controlled substances "in the course of 
professional practice." ? 802(21). The regulation uses the terms 
"legitimate medical purpose" and "the course of professional practice," 
ibid., but this just repeats two statutory phrases and attempts to 
summarize the others. It gives little or no instruction on a central issue 
in this case: Who decides whether a particular activity is in "the course 
of professional practice" or done for a "legitimate medical purpose"? 
Since the regulation gives no indication how to decide this issue, the 
Attorney General's effort to decide it now cannot be considered an 
interpretation of the regulation. Simply put, the existence of a parroting 
regulation does not change the fact that the question here is not the 
meaning of the regulation but the meaning of the statute. An agency does 
not acquire special authority to interpret its own words [*27]  when, 
instead of using its expertise and experience to formulate a regulation, 
it has elected merely to paraphrase the statutory language.

Furthermore, as explained below, if there is statutory authority to issue 
the Interpretive Rule it comes from the 1984 amendments to the CSA that 
gave the Attorney General authority to register and deregister physicians 
based on the public interest. The regulation was enacted before those 
amendments, so the Interpretive Rule cannot be justified as indicative of 
some intent the Attorney General had in 1971. That the current 
interpretation runs counter to the "intent at the time of the regulation's 
promulgation," is an additional reason why Auer deference is unwarranted. 
Thomas Jefferson Univ. v. Shalala, 512 U.S. 504, 512, 114 S. Ct. 2381, 129 
L. Ed. 2d 405 (1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). Deference under 
Auer being inappropriate, we turn to the question whether the Interpretive 
Rule, on its own terms, is a permissible interpretation of the CSA.

B

Just as the Interpretive Rule receives no deference under Auer, neither 
does it receive deference under Chevron. If a statute is ambiguous, 
judicial review of administrative rulemaking often [*28]  demands Chevron 
deference; and the rule is judged accordingly. All would agree, we should 
think, that the statutory phrase "legitimate medical purpose" is a 
generality, susceptible to more precise definition and open to varying 
constructions, and thus ambiguous in the relevant sense. Chevron 
deference, however, is not accorded merely because the statute is 
ambiguous and an administrative official is involved. To begin with, the 
rule must be promulgated pursuant to authority Congress has delegated to 
the official. Mead, 533 U.S., at 226-227, 121 S. Ct. 2164, 150 L.Ed. 2d 
292.

The Attorney General has rulemaking power to fulfill his duties under the 
CSA. The specific respects in which he is authorized to make rules, 
however, instruct us that he is not authorized to make a rule declaring 
illegitimate a medical standard for care and treatment of patients that is 
specifically authorized under state law.

The starting point for this inquiry is, of course, the language of the 
delegation provision itself. In many cases authority is clear because the 
statute gives an agency broad power to enforce all provisions of the 
statute. See, e.g., Nat'l Cable & Telecomms. Ass'n. v. Brand X Internet 
Servs., 545 U.S. ___, ___ 125 S. Ct. 2688, 2699, 162 L. Ed. 2d 820, 837 
(2005) [*29]  (explaining that a Federal Communications Commission 
regulation received Chevron deference because "Congress has delegated to 
the Commission the authority to . . . 'prescribe such rules and 
regulations as may be necessary in the public interest to carry out the 
provisions' of the Act" (quoting 47 U.S.C. ? 201(b))); Household Credit 
Services, Inc. v. Pfennig, 541 U.S. 232, 238, 124 S. Ct. 1741, 158 L. Ed. 
2d 450 (2004) (giving Chevron deference to a Federal Reserve Board 
regulation where "Congress has expressly delegated to the Board the 
authority to prescribe regulations . . . as, in the judgment of the Board, 
'are necessary or proper to effectuate the purposes of '" the statute 
(quoting 15 U.S.C. ? 1604(a))). The CSA does not grant the Attorney 
General this broad authority to promulgate rules.

The CSA gives the Attorney General limited powers, to be exercised in 
specific ways. His rulemaking authority under the CSA is described in two 
provisions: (1) "The Attorney General is authorized to promulgate rules 
and regulations and to charge reasonable fees relating to the registration 
and control [*30]  of the manufacture, distribution, and dispensing of 
controlled substances and to listed chemicals," 21 U.S.C. A. ? 821 (Supp. 
2005); and (2) "The Attorney General may promulgate and enforce any rules, 
regulations, and procedures which he may deem necessary and appropriate 
for the efficient execution of his functions under this subchapter," 21 
U.S.C. ? 871(b). As is evident from these sections, Congress did not 
delegate to the Attorney General authority to carry out or effect all 
provisions of the CSA. Rather, he can promulgate rules relating only to 
"registration" and "control," and "for the efficient execution of his 
functions" under the statute.

Turning first to the Attorney General's authority to make regulations for 
the "control" of drugs, this delegation cannot sustain the Interpretive 
Rule's attempt to define standards of medical practice. Control is a term 
of art in the CSA. "As used in this subchapter," ? 802--the subchapter 
that includes ? 821--

"The term 'control' means to add a drug or other substance, or immediate 
precursor, to a schedule under part B of this subchapter, whether by 
transfer from another schedule or otherwise.  [*31]  " ? 802(5).

To exercise his scheduling power, the Attorney General must follow a 
detailed set of procedures, including requesting a scientific and medical 
evaluation from the Secretary. See 21 U.S.C. A. ?? 811, 812 (main ed. and 
Supp. 2005). The statute is also specific as to the manner in which the 
Attorney General must exercise this authority: "Rules of the Attorney 
General under this subsection [regarding scheduling] shall be made on the 
record after opportunity for a hearing pursuant to the rulemaking 
procedures prescribed by [the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. ? 
553]." 21 U.S.C. ? 811(a). The Interpretive Rule now under consideration 
does not concern the scheduling of substances and was not issued after the 
required procedures for rules regarding scheduling, so it cannot fall 
under the Attorney General's "control" authority.

Even if "control" in ? 821 were understood to signify something other than 
its statutory definition, it would not support the Interpretive Rule. The 
statutory references to "control" outside the scheduling context make 
clear that the Attorney General can establish controls "against [*32] 
diversion," e.g., ? 823(a)(1), but do not give him authority to define 
diversion based on his view of legitimate medical practice. As explained 
below, the CSA's express limitations on the Attorney General's authority, 
and other indications from the statutory scheme, belie any notion that the 
Attorney General has been granted this implicit authority. Indeed, if 
"control" were given the expansive meaning required to sustain the 
Interpretive Rule, it would transform the carefully described limits on 
the Attorney General's authority over registration and scheduling into 
mere suggestions.

We turn, next, to the registration provisions of the CSA. Before 1984, the 
Attorney General was required to register any physician who was authorized 
by his State. The Attorney General could only deregister a physician who 
falsified his application, was convicted of a felony relating to 
controlled substances, or had his state license or registration revoked. 
See 84 Stat. 1255. The CSA was amended in 1984 to allow the Attorney 
General to deny registration to an applicant "if he determines that the 
issuance of such registration would be inconsistent with the public 
interest." 21 U.S.C. ? 823(f) [*33]  . Registration may also be revoked or 
suspended by the Attorney General on the same grounds. ? 824(a)(4). In 
determining consistency with the public interest, the Attorney General 
must, as discussed above, consider five factors, including: the State's 
recommendation; compliance with state, federal, and local laws regarding 
controlled substances; and public health and safety. ? 823(f).

The Interpretive Rule cannot be justified under this part of the statute. 
It does not undertake the five-factor analysis and concerns much more than 
registration. Nor does the Interpretive Rule on its face purport to be an 
application of the registration provision in ? 823(f). It is, instead, an 
interpretation of the substantive federal law requirements (under 21 CFR ? 
1306.04 (2005)) for a valid prescription. It begins by announcing that 
assisting suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" under ? 1306.04, 
and that dispensing controlled substances to assist a suicide violates the 
CSA. 66 Fed. Reg. 56608 (2001). Violation is a criminal offense, and often 
a felony, under 21 U.S.C. ? 841 (2000 ed. and Supp. II). The Interpretive 
Rule thus purports to declare [*34]  that using controlled substances for 
physician-assisted suicide is a crime, an authority that goes well beyond 
the Attorney General's statutory power to register or deregister.

The Attorney General's deregistration power, of course, may carry 
implications for criminal enforcement because if a physician dispenses a 
controlled substance after he is deregistered, he violates ? 841. The 
Interpretive Rule works in the opposite direction, however: it declares 
certain conduct criminal, placing in jeopardy the registration of any 
physician who engages in that conduct. To the extent the Interpretive Rule 
concerns registration, it simply states the obvious because one of the 
five factors the Attorney General must consider in deciding the "public 
interest" is "compliance with applicable State, Federal, or local laws 
relating to controlled substances." 21 U.S.C. ? 823(f)(4). The problem 
with the design of the Interpretive Rule is that it cannot, and does not, 
explain why the Attorney General has the authority to decide what 
constitutes an underlying violation of the CSA in the first place. The 
explanation the Government seems to advance is that the Attorney General's 
authority [*35]  to decide whether a physician's actions are inconsistent 
with the "public interest" provides the basis for the Interpretive Rule.

By this logic, however, the Attorney General claims extraordinary 
authority. If the Attorney General's argument were correct, his power to 
deregister necessarily would include the greater power to criminalize even 
the actions of registered physicians, whenever they engage in conduct he 
deems illegitimate. This power to criminalize -- unlike his power over 
registration, which must be exercised only after considering five express 
statutory factors -- would be unrestrained. It would be anomalous for 
Congress to have so painstakingly described the Attorney General's limited 
authority to deregister a single physician or schedule a single drug, but 
to have given him, just by implication, authority to declare an entire 
class of activity outside "the course of professional practice," and 
therefore a criminal violation of the CSA. See Federal Maritime Comm'n v. 
Seatrain Lines, Inc., 411 U.S. 726, 744, 93 S. Ct. 1773, 36 L. Ed. 2d 620 
(1973) ("In light of these specific grants of . . . authority, we are 
unwilling to construe the ambiguous provisions . . . to serve this purpose 
[*36]  [of creating further authority] -- a purpose for which it obviously 
was not intended").

Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc., 527 U.S. 471, 119 S. Ct. 2139, 144 L. 
Ed. 2d 450 (1999), is instructive. The statute at issue was the Americans 
with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), which, like the CSA, divides 
interpretive authority among various Executive actors. The Court relied on 
"the terms and structure of the ADA" to decide that neither the Equal 
Employment Opportunity Commission, nor any other agency had authority to 
define "disability" in the ADA. Id., at 479, 119 S. Ct. 2139, 144 L. Ed. 
2d 450. Specifically, the delegating provision stated that the EEOC "shall 
issue regulations . . . to carry out this subchapter," 42 U.S.C. ? 12116, 
and the section of the statute defining "disability" was in a different 
subchapter. The Court did not accept the idea that because "the employment 
subchapter, i.e., 'this subchapter,' includes other provisions that use 
the defined terms, . . . the EEOC might elaborate, through regulations, on 
the meaning of 'disability' . . . if elaboration is needed in order to 
'carry out' the substantive provisions of 'this subchapter.'" 527 U.S., at 
514, 119 S. Ct. 2139, 144 L. Ed. 2d 450 (BREYER,  [*37]  J., dissenting). 
See also Adams Fruit Co. v. Barrett, 494 U.S. 638, 649-650, 110 S. Ct. 
1384, 108 L. Ed. 2d 585 (1990) (holding that a delegation of authority to 
promulgate motor vehicle safety "standards" did not include the authority 
to decide the pre-emptive scope of the federal statute because "no such 
delegation regarding [the statute's] enforcement provisions is evident in 
the statute").

The same principle controls here. It is not enough that the terms "public 
interest," "public health and safety," and "Federal law" are used in the 
part of the statute over which the Attorney General has authority. The 
statutory terms "public interest" and "public health" do not call on the 
Attorney General, or any other Executive official, to make an independent 
assessment of the meaning of federal law. The Attorney General did not 
base the Interpretive Rule on an application of the five-factor test 
generally, or the "public health and safety" factor specifically. Even if 
he had, it is doubtful the Attorney General could cite the "public 
interest" or "public health" to deregister a physician simply because he 
deemed a controversial practice permitted by state law to have an 
illegitimate medical purpose.  [*38]

As for the federal law factor, though it does require the Attorney General 
to decide "compliance" with the law, it does not suggest that he may 
decide what the law says. Were it otherwise, the Attorney General could 
authoritatively interpret "State" and "local laws," which are also 
included in 21 U.S.C. ? 823(f), despite the obvious constitutional 
problems in his doing so. Just as he must evaluate compliance with federal 
law in deciding about registration, the Attorney General must as surely 
evaluate compliance with federal law in deciding whether to prosecute; but 
this does not entitle him to Chevron deference. See Crandon v. United 
States, 494 U.S. 152, 177, 110 S. Ct. 997, 108 L. Ed. 2d 132 (1990) 
(SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment) ("The Justice Department, of course, 
has a very specific responsibility to determine for itself what this 
statute means, in order to decide when to prosecute; but we have never 
thought that the interpretation of those charged with prosecuting criminal 
statutes is entitled to deference").

The limits on the Attorney General's authority to define medical standards 
for the care and treatment of patients bear also on the proper 
interpretation [*39]  of ? 871(b). This section allows the Attorney 
General to best determine how to execute "his functions." It is quite a 
different matter, however, to say that the Attorney General can define the 
substantive standards of medical practice as part of his authority. To 
find a delegation of this extent in ? 871 would put that part of the 
statute in considerable tension with the narrowly defined delegation 
concerning control and registration. It would go, moreover, against the 
plain language of the text to treat a delegation for the "execution" of 
his functions as a further delegation to define other functions well 
beyond the statute's specific grants of authority. When Congress chooses 
to delegate a power of this extent, it does so not by referring back to 
the administrator's functions but by giving authority over the provisions 
of the statute he is to interpret. See, e.g., National Cable & 
Telecommunications Assn., 545 U.S. ___, 125 S. Ct. 2688, 162 L. Ed. 2d 
820; Household Credit Servs. v. Pfennig, 541 U.S. 232, 124 S. Ct. 1741, 
158 L. Ed. 2d 450.

The authority desired by the Government is inconsistent with the design of 
the statute in other fundamental respects. The Attorney General does not 
have the sole delegated authority under the CSA. He [*40]  must instead 
share it with, and in some respects defer to, the Secretary, whose 
functions are likewise delineated and confined by the statute. The CSA 
allocates decisionmaking powers among statutory actors so that medical 
judgments, if they are to be decided at the federal level and for the 
limited objects of the statute, are placed in the hands of the Secretary. 
In the scheduling context, for example, the Secretary's recommendations on 
scientific and medical matters bind the Attorney General. The Attorney 
General cannot control a substance if the Secretary disagrees. 21 U.S.C. ? 
811(b). See H. R. Rep. No. 91-1444, pt. 1, p. 33 (1970) (the section "is 
not intended to authorize the Attorney General to undertake or support 
medical and scientific research [for the purpose of scheduling], which is 
within the competence of the Department of Health, Education, and 
Welfare").

In a similar vein the 1970 Act's regulation of medical practice with 
respect to drug rehabilitation gives the Attorney General a limited role; 
for it is the Secretary who, after consultation with the Attorney General 
and national medical groups, "determines the appropriate methods of 
professional [*41]  practice in the medical treatment of . . . narcotic 
addiction." 42 U.S.C. ? 290bb-2a; see 21 U.S.C. ? 823(g) (2000 ed. and 
Supp. II) (stating that the Attorney General shall register practitioners 
who dispense drugs for narcotics treatment when the Secretary has 
determined the applicant is qualified to treat addicts and the Attorney 
General has concluded the applicant will comply with record keeping and 
security regulations); Moore, 423 U.S., at 144, 96 S. Ct. 335, 46 L. Ed. 
2d 333 (noting that in enacting the addiction-treatment provisions, 
Congress sought to change the fact "that 'criminal prosecutions' in the 
past had turned on the opinions of federal prosecutors"); H. R. Rep. No. 
93-884, p. 6 (1974) ("This section preserves the distinctions found in the 
[CSA] between the functions of the Attorney General and the Secretary . . 
. . All decisions of a medical nature are to be made by the Secretary . . 
. . Law enforcement decisions respecting the security of stocks of 
narcotics drugs and the maintenance of records on such drugs are to be 
made by the Attorney General").

Post enactment congressional commentary on the CSA's regulation of medical 
practice [*42]  is also at odds with the Attorney General's claimed 
authority to determine appropriate medical standards. In 1978, in 
preparation for ratification of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 
Feb. 21, 1971, [1979-1980] 32 U.S. T. 543, T. I. A. S. No. 9725, Congress 
decided it would implement the United States' compliance through "the 
framework of the procedures and criteria for classification of substances 
provided in the" CSA. 21 U.S.C. ? 801a (3). It did so to ensure that 
"nothing in the Convention will interfere with ethical medical practice in 
this country as determined by [the Secretary] on the basis of a consensus 
of the views of the American medical and scientific community." Ibid.

The structure of the CSA, then, conveys unwillingness to cede medical 
judgments to an Executive official who lacks medical expertise. In 
interpreting statutes that divide authority, the Court has recognized: 
"Because historical familiarity and policymaking expertise account in the 
first instance for the presumption that Congress delegates interpretive 
lawmaking power to the agency rather than to the reviewing court, we 
presume here that Congress [*43]  intended to invest interpretive power in 
the administrative actor in the best position to develop these 
attributes." Martin v. OSHRC, 499 U.S. 144, 153, 111 S. Ct. 1171, 113 L. 
Ed. 2d 117 (1991) (citations omitted). This presumption works against a 
conclusion that the Attorney General has authority to make 
quintessentially medical judgments.

The Government contends the Attorney General's decision here is a legal, 
not a medical, one. This generality, however, does not suffice. The 
Attorney General's Interpretive Rule, and the Office of Legal Counsel memo 
it incorporates, place extensive reliance on medical judgments and the 
views of the medical community in concluding that assisted suicide is not 
a "legitimate medical purpose." See 66 Fed. Reg. 56608 (noting the 
"medical" distinctions between assisting suicide and giving sufficient 
medication to alleviate pain); Memorandum from Office of Legal Counsel to 
Attorney General (June 27, 2001), App. to Pet. for Cert. 121a-122a, and n. 
17 (discussing the "Federal medical policy" against physician-assisted 
suicide), id., at 124a-130a (examining views of the medical community). 
This confirms that the [*44]  authority claimed by the Attorney General is 
both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and 
design.

The idea that Congress gave the Attorney General such broad and unusual 
authority through an implicit delegation in the CSA's registration 
provision is not sustainable. "Congress, we have held, does not alter the 
fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary 
provisions -- it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes." 
Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U.S. 457, 468, 121 S. Ct. 
903, 149 L. Ed. 2d 1 (2001); see FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 
529 U.S. 120, 160, 120 S. Ct. 1291, 146 L. Ed. 2d 121 (2000) ("We are 
confident that Congress could not have intended to delegate a decision of 
such economic and political significance to an agency in so cryptic a 
fashion").

The importance of the issue of physician-assisted suicide, which has been 
the subject of an "earnest and profound debate" across the country, 
Glucksberg, 521 U.S., at 735, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 117 S. Ct. 2302, makes the 
oblique form of the claimed delegation all the more suspect. Under the 
Government's theory, moreover, the medical judgments the Attorney General 
could make are not limited [*45]  to physician-assisted suicide. Were this 
argument accepted, he could decide whether any particular drug may be used 
for any particular purpose, or indeed whether a physician who administers 
any controversial treatment could be deregistered. This would occur, under 
the Government's view, despite the statute's express limitation of the 
Attorney General's authority to registration and control, with attendant 
restrictions on each of those functions, and despite the statutory 
purposes to combat drug abuse and prevent illicit drug trafficking.

We need not decide whether Chevron deference would be warranted for an 
interpretation issued by the Attorney General concerning matters closer to 
his role under the CSA, namely preventing doctors from engaging in illicit 
drug trafficking. In light of the foregoing, however, the CSA does not 
give the Attorney General authority to issue the Interpretive Rule as a 
statement with the force of law.

If, in the course of exercising his authority, the Attorney General uses 
his analysis in the Interpretive Rule only for guidance in deciding when 
to prosecute or deregister, then the question remains whether his 
substantive interpretation is correct. Since [*46]  the Interpretive Rule 
was not promulgated pursuant to the Attorney General's authority, its 
interpretation of "legitimate medical purpose" does not receive Chevron 
deference. Instead, it receives deference only in accordance with 
Skidmore. "The weight of such a judgment in a particular case will depend 
upon the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its 
reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all 
those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to 
control." 323 U.S., at 140, 65 S. Ct. 161, 89 L. Ed.2d 124; see also Mead, 
533 U.S., at 235, 121 S. Ct. 2164, 150 L. Ed. 2d 292 (noting that an 
opinion receiving Skidmore deference may "claim the merit of its writer's 
thoroughness, logic, and expertness, its fit with prior interpretations, 
and any other sources of weight"). The deference here is tempered by the 
Attorney General's lack of expertise in this area and the apparent absence 
of any consultation with anyone outside the Department of Justice who 
might aid in a reasoned judgment. In any event, under Skidmore, we follow 
an agency's rule only to the extent it is persuasive, see Christensen v. 
Harris County, 529 U.S. 576, 587, 120 S. Ct. 1655, 146 L. Ed. 2d 621 
(2000); [*47]  and for the reasons given and for further reasons set out 
below, we do not find the Attorney General's opinion persuasive.

III

As we have noted before, the CSA "repealed most of the earlier antidrug 
laws in favor of a comprehensive regime to combat the international and 
interstate traffic in illicit drugs." Raich, 545 U.S., at ___ , 125 S. Ct. 
2195, 2203, 162 L. Ed. 2d 1, 16). In doing so, Congress sought to "conquer 
drug abuse and to control the legitimate and illegitimate traffic in 
controlled substances." Ibid. It comes as little surprise, then, that we 
have not considered the extent to which the CSA regulates medical practice 
beyond prohibiting a doctor from acting as a drug "'pusher'" instead of a 
physician. Moore, 423 U.S., at 143, 96 S. Ct. 335, 46 L. Ed. 2d 333. In 
Moore, we addressed a situation in which a doctor "sold drugs, not for 
legitimate purposes, but primarily for the profits to be derived 
therefrom." Id., at 135, 96 S. Ct. 335, 46 L. Ed. 2d 333 (quoting H. R. 
Rep. No. 91-1444, pt. 1, at 10; internal quotation marks omitted). There 
the defendant, who had engaged in large-scale overprescribing of 
methadone, "conceded in his brief that he did not observe generally 
accepted medical practices." 423 U.S., at 126, 96 S. Ct. 335, 46 L. Ed. 2d 
333 [*48]  And in United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, 
532 U.S. 483, 121 S. Ct. 1711, 149 L. Ed. 2d 722 (2001), Congress' express 
determination that marijuana had no accepted medical use foreclosed any 
argument about statutory coverage of drugs available by a doctor's 
prescription.

In deciding whether the CSA can be read as prohibiting physician-assisted 
suicide, we look to the statute's text and design. The statute and our 
case law amply support the conclusion that Congress regulates medical 
practice insofar as it bars doctors from using their prescription-writing 
powers as a means to engage in illicit drug dealing and trafficking as 
conventionally understood. Beyond this, however, the statute manifests no 
intent to regulate the practice of medicine generally. The silence is 
understandable given the structure and limitations of federalism, which 
allow the States "'great latitude under their police powers to legislate 
as to the protection of the lives, limbs, health, comfort, and quiet of 
all persons.'" Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr, 518 U.S. 470, 475, 116 S. Ct. 
2240, 135 L. Ed. 2d 700 (1996) (quoting Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. 
Massachusetts, 471 U.S. 724, 756, 105 S. Ct. 2380, 85 L. Ed. 2d 728 
(1985)).

The structure [*49]  and operation of the CSA presume and rely upon a 
functioning medical profession regulated under the States' police powers. 
The Attorney General can register a physician to dispense controlled 
substances "if the applicant is authorized to dispense . . . controlled 
substances under the laws of the State in which he practices." 21 U.S.C. ? 
823(f). When considering whether to revoke a physician's registration, the 
Attorney General looks not just to violations of federal drug laws; but he 
"shall" also consider "the recommendation of the appropriate state 
licensing board or professional disciplinary authority" and the 
registrant's compliance with state and local drug laws. Ibid. The very 
definition of a "practitioner" eligible to prescribe includes physicians 
"licensed, registered, or otherwise permitted, by the United States or the 
jurisdiction in which he practices" to dispense controlled substances. ? 
802(21). Further cautioning against the conclusion that the CSA 
effectively displaces the States' general regulation of medical practice 
is the Act's pre-emption provision, which indicates that, absent a 
positive conflict, none of the Act's provisions should be [*50] 
"construed as indicating an intent on the part of the Congress to occupy 
the field in which that provision operates . . . to the exclusion of any 
State law on the same subject matter which would otherwise be within the 
authority of the State." ? 903.

Oregon's regime is an example of the state regulation of medical practice 
that the CSA presupposes. Rather than simply decriminalizing assisted 
suicide, ODWDA limits its exercise to the attending physicians of 
terminally ill patients, physicians who must be licensed by Oregon's Board 
of Medical Examiners. Ore. Rev. Stat. ?? 127.815, 127.800(10) (2003). The 
statute gives attending physicians a central role, requiring them to 
provide prognoses and prescriptions, give information about palliative 
alternatives and counseling, and ensure patients are competent and acting 
voluntarily. ? 127.815. Any eligible patient must also get a second 
opinion from another registered physician, ? 127.820, and the statute's 
safeguards require physicians to keep and submit to inspection detailed 
records of their actions, ?? 127.855, 127.865.

Even though regulation of health and safety is "primarily, and 
historically, a matter of local concern," Hillsborough County v. Automated 
Medical Laboratories, Inc., 471 U.S. 707, 719, 105 S. Ct. 2371, 85 L. Ed. 
2d 714 (1985), [*51]  there is no question that the Federal Government can 
set uniform national standards in these areas. See Raich, supra, at ___, 
125 S. Ct. 2195, 162 L. Ed. 2d 1 (slip op., at 6). In connection to the 
CSA, however, we find only one area in which Congress set general, uniform 
standards of medical practice. Title I of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse 
Prevention and Control Act of 1970, of which the CSA was Title II, 
provides that

"[The Secretary], after consultation with the Attorney General and with 
national organizations representative of persons with knowledge and 
experience in the treatment of narcotic addicts, shall determine the 
appropriate methods of professional practice in the medical treatment of 
the narcotic addiction of various classes of narcotic addicts, and shall 
report thereon from time to time to the Congress." ? 4, 84 Stat. 1241, 
codified at 42 U.S.C. ? 290bb-2a.

This provision strengthens the understanding of the CSA as a statute 
combating recreational drug abuse, and also indicates that when Congress 
wants to regulate medical practice in the given scheme, it does so by 
explicit language in the statute.

In the face of the CSA's silence on the practice of medicine generally 
[*52]  and its recognition of state regulation of the medical profession 
it is difficult to defend the Attorney General's declaration that the 
statute impliedly criminalizes physician-assisted suicide. This difficulty 
is compounded by the CSA's consistent delegation of medical judgments to 
the Secretary and its otherwise careful allocation of powers for enforcing 
the limited objects of the CSA. See Part II-B, supra. The Government's 
attempt to meet this challenge rests, for the most part, on the CSA's 
requirement that every Schedule II drug be dispensed pursuant to a 
"written prescription of a practitioner." 21 U.S.C. ? 829(a). A 
prescription, the Government argues, necessarily implies that the 
substance is being made available to a patient for a legitimate medical 
purpose. The statute, in this view, requires an anterior judgment about 
the term "medical" or "medicine." The Government contends ordinary usage 
of these words ineluctably refers to a healing or curative art, which by 
these terms cannot embrace the intentional hastening of a patient's death. 
It also points to the teachings of Hippocrates, the positions of prominent 
medical organizations, the Federal Government,  [*53]  and the judgment of 
the 49 States that have not legalized physician-assisted suicide as 
further support for the proposition that the practice is not legitimate 
medicine. See Brief for Petitioners 22-24; Memorandum from Office of Legal 
Counsel to Attorney General, App. to Pet. for Cert. 124a-130a.

On its own, this understanding of medicine's boundaries is at least 
reasonable. The primary problem with the Government's argument, however, 
is its assumption that the CSA impliedly authorizes an Executive officer 
to bar a use simply because it may be inconsistent with one reasonable 
understanding of medical practice. Viewed alone, the prescription 
requirement may support such an understanding, but statutes "should not be 
read as a series of unrelated and isolated provisions." Gustafson v. 
Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 570, 115 S. Ct. 1061, 131 L. Ed. 2d 1 (1995). 
The CSA's substantive provisions and their arrangement undermine this 
assertion of an expansive federal authority to regulate medicine.

The statutory criteria for deciding what substances are controlled, 
determinations which are central to the Act, consistently connect the 
undefined term "drug abuse" with addiction or abnormal effects on the 
nervous [*54]  system. When the Attorney General schedules drugs, he must 
consider a substance's psychic or physiological dependence liability. 21 
U.S.C. ? 811(c)(7). To classify a substance in Schedules II through V, the 
Attorney General must find abuse of the drug leads to psychological or 
physical dependence. ? 812(b). Indeed, the differentiation of Schedules II 
through V turns in large part on a substance's habit-forming potential: 
The more addictive a substance, the stricter the controls. Ibid. When 
Congress wanted to extend the CSA's regulation to substances not obviously 
habit forming or psychotropic, moreover, it relied not on Executive 
ingenuity, but rather on specific legislation. See ? 1902(a) of the 
Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990, 104 Stat. 4851 (placing anabolic 
steroids in Schedule III).

The statutory scheme with which the CSA is intertwined further confirms a 
more limited understanding of the prescription requirement. When the 
Secretary considers FDA approval of a substance with "stimulant, 
depressant, or hallucinogenic effect," he must forward the information to 
the Attorney General for possible scheduling. Shedding light on Congress' 
understanding [*55]  of drug abuse, this requirement appears under the 
heading "Abuse potential." 21 U.S.C. ? 811(f). Similarly, when Congress 
prepared to implement the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, it did so 
through the CSA. ? 801a.

The Interpretive Rule rests on a reading of the prescription requirement 
that is persuasive only to the extent one scrutinizes the provision 
without the illumination of the rest of the statute. See Massachusetts v. 
Morash, 490 U.S. 107, 114-115, 109 S. Ct. 1668, 104 L. Ed. 2d 98 (1989). 
Viewed in its context, the prescription requirement is better understood 
as a provision that ensures patients use controlled substances under the 
supervision of a doctor so as to prevent addiction and recreational abuse. 
As a corollary, the provision also bars doctors from peddling to patients 
who crave the drugs for those prohibited uses. See Moore, 423 U.S., at 
135, 143, 96 S. Ct. 335, 46 L. Ed. 2d 333. To read prescriptions for 
assisted suicide as constituting "drug abuse" under the CSA is discordant 
with the phrase's consistent use throughout the statute, not to mention 
its ordinary meaning.

The Government's interpretation of the prescription requirement also fails 
under the objection [*56]  that the Attorney General is an unlikely 
recipient of such broad authority, given the Secretary's primacy in 
shaping medical policy under the CSA, and the statute's otherwise careful 
allocation of decisionmaking powers. Just as the conventions of expression 
indicate that Congress is unlikely to alter a statute's obvious scope and 
division of authority through muffled hints, the background principles of 
our federal system also belie the notion that Congress would use such an 
obscure grant of authority to regulate areas traditionally supervised by 
the States' police power. It is unnecessary even to consider the 
application of clear statement requirements, see, e.g., United States v. 
Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 349, 92 S. Ct. 515, 30 L. Ed. 2d 488 (1971); cf. BFP 
v. Resolution Trust Corporation, 511 U.S. 531, 544-546, 114 S. Ct. 1757, 
128 L. Ed. 2d 556 (1994), or presumptions against pre-emption, see, e.g., 
Rush Prudential HMO, Inc. v. Moran, 536 U.S. 355, 387, 122 S. Ct. 2151, 
153 L. Ed. 2d 375 (2002), to reach this commonsense conclusion. For all 
these reasons, we conclude the CSA's prescription requirement does not 
authorize the Attorney General to bar dispensing controlled substances for 
assisted suicide in the face of a [*57]  state medical regime permitting 
such conduct.

IV

The Government, in the end, maintains that the prescription requirement 
delegates to a single Executive officer the power to effect a radical 
shift of authority from the States to the Federal Government to define 
general standards of medical practice in every locality. The text and 
structure of the CSA show that Congress did not have this far-reaching 
intent to alter the federal-state balance and the congressional role in 
maintaining it.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is

Affirmed.

DISSENTBY: THOMAS

DISSENT: JUSTICE SCALIA, with whom CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS and JUSTICE 
THOMAS join, dissenting.

The Court concludes that the Attorney General lacked authority to declare 
assisted suicide illicit under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), 
because the CSA is concerned only with "illicit drug dealing and 
trafficking," ante, at 23 (emphasis added). This question-begging 
conclusion is obscured by a flurry of arguments that distort the statute 
and disregard settled principles of our interpretive jurisprudence.

Contrary to the Court's analysis, this case involves not one but three 
independently sufficient grounds for reversing the Ninth [*58]  Circuit's 
judgment. First, the Attorney General's interpretation of "legitimate 
medical purpose" in 21 CFR ? 1306.04 (2005) (hereinafter Regulation) is 
clearly valid, given the substantial deference we must accord it under 
Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 461, 117 S. Ct. 905, 137 L. Ed. 2d 79 
(1997), and his two remaining conclusions follow naturally from this 
interpretation. See Part I, infra. Second, even if this interpretation of 
the Regulation is entitled to lesser deference or no deference at all, it 
is by far the most natural interpretation of the Regulation -- whose 
validity is not challenged here. This interpretation is thus correct even 
upon de novo review. See Part II, infra. Third, even if that 
interpretation of the Regulation were incorrect, the Attorney General's 
independent interpretation of the statutory phrase "public interest" in 21 
U.S.C. ?? 824(a) and 823(f), and his implicit interpretation of the 
statutory phrase "public health and safety" in ? 823(f)(5), are entitled 
to deference under Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDA, 467 U.S. 837, 104 S. Ct. 
2778, 81 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1984), and they are valid under Chevron. See Part 
[*59]  III, infra. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.

I

The Interpretive Rule issued by the Attorney General (hereinafter 
Directive) provides in relevant part as follows:

"For the reasons set forth in the OLC Opinion, I hereby determine that 
assisting suicide is not a 'legitimate medical purpose' within the meaning 
of 21 CFR ? 1306.04 (2001), and that prescribing, dispensing, or 
administering federally controlled substances to assist suicide violates 
the CSA. Such conduct by a physician registered to dispense controlled 
substances may 'render his registration . . . inconsistent with the public 
interest' and therefore subject to possible suspension or revocation under 
21 U.S.C. [? ]824(a)(4)." 66 Fed. Reg. 56608 (2001).

The Directive thus purports to do three distinct things: (1) to interpret 
the phrase "legitimate medical purpose" in the Regulation to exclude 
physician-assisted suicide; (2) to determine that prescribing, dispensing, 
and administering federally controlled substances to assist suicide 
violates the CSA; and (3) to determine that participating in 
physician-assisted suicide may render a practitioner's registration 
"inconsistent [*60]  with the public interest" within the meaning of 21 
U.S.C. ?? 823(f) and 824(a)(4) (which incorporates ? 823(f) by reference). 
The Court's analysis suffers from an unremitting failure to distinguish 
among these distinct propositions in the Directive.

As an initial matter, the validity of the Regulation's interpretation of 
"prescription" in ? 829 to require a "legitimate medical purpose" is not 
at issue. Respondents conceded the validity of this interpretation in the 
lower court, see Oregon v. Ashcroft, 368 F.3d 1118, 1133 (CA9 2004), and 
they have not challenged it here. By its assertion that the Regulation 
merely restates the statutory standard of 21 U.S.C. ? 830(b)(3)(A)(ii), 
see ante, at 10, the Court likewise accepts that the "legitimate medical 
purpose" interpretation for prescriptions is proper. See also ante, at 11 
(referring to "legitimate medical purpose" as a "statutory phrase"). It is 
beyond dispute, then, that a "prescription" under ? 829 must issue for a 
"legitimate medical purpose."

A

Because the Regulation was promulgated by the Attorney General, and 
because the Directive purported to interpret [*61]  the language of the 
Regulation, see 66 Fed. Reg. 56608, this case calls for the 
straightforward application of our rule that an agency's interpretation of 
its own regulations is "controlling unless plainly erroneous or 
inconsistent with the regulation." Auer, supra, at 461, 117 S. Ct. 905, 
137 L. Ed. 2d 79 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court reasons 
that Auer is inapplicable because the Regulation "does little more than 
restate the terms of the statute itself." Ante, at 9. "Simply put," the 
Court asserts, "the existence of a parroting regulation does not change 
the fact that the question here is not the meaning of the regulation but 
the meaning of the statute." Ante, at 10.

To begin with, it is doubtful that any such exception to the Auer rule 
exists. The Court cites no authority for it, because there is none. To the 
contrary, our unanimous decision in Auer makes clear that broadly drawn 
regulations are entitled to no less respect than narrow ones. "A rule 
requiring the Secretary to construe his own regulations narrowly would 
make little sense, since he is free to write the regulations as broadly as 
he wishes, subject only to the limits imposed by  [*62]  the statute." 519 
U.S., at 463, 117 S. Ct. 905, 137 L. Ed. 2d 79 (emphasis added).

Even if there were an antiparroting canon, however, it would have no 
application here. The Court's description of 21 CFR ? 1306.04 (2005) as a 
regulation that merely "paraphrases the statutory language," ante, at 10, 
is demonstrably false. In relevant part, the Regulation interprets the 
word "prescription" as it appears in 21 U.S.C. ? 829, which governs the 
dispensation of controlled substances other than those on Schedule I 
(which may not be dispensed at all). Entitled "prescriptions," ? 829 
requires, with certain exceptions not relevant here, "the written 
prescription of a practitioner" (usually a medical doctor) for the 
dispensation of Schedule II substances ( ? 829(a)), "a written or oral 
prescription" for substances on Schedules III and IV ( ? 829(b)), and no 
prescription but merely a "medical purpose" for the dispensation of 
Schedule V substances ( ? 829(c)).

As used in this section, "prescription" is susceptible of at least three 
reasonable interpretations. First, it might mean any oral or written 
direction of a practitioner for the dispensation of drugs. See United 
States v. Moore, 423 U.S. 122, 137, n. 13, 96 S. Ct. 335, 46 L. Ed. 2d 333 
(1975) [*63]  ("On its face ? 829 addresses only the form that a 
prescription must take . . . . [Section] 829 by its terms does not limit 
the authority of a practitioner"). Second, in light of the requirement of 
a "medical purpose" for the dispensation of Schedule V substances, see ? 
829(c), it might mean a practitioner's oral or written direction for the 
dispensation of drugs that the practitioner believes to be for a 
legitimate medical purpose. See Webster's New International Dictionary 
1954 (2d ed. 1950) (hereinafter Webster's Second) (defining "prescription" 
as "[a] written direction for the preparation and use of a medicine"); 
id., at 1527 (defining "medicine" as "any substance or preparation used in 
treating disease") (emphases added). Finally, "prescription" might refer 
to a practitioner's direction for the dispensation of drugs that serves an 
objectively legitimate medical purpose, regardless of the practitioner's 
subjective judgment about the legitimacy of the anticipated use. See ibid.

The Regulation at issue constricts or clarifies the statute by adopting 
the last and narrowest of these three possible interpretations of the 
undefined statutory term:  [*64]  "A prescription for a controlled 
substance to be effective must be issued for a legitimate medical purpose 
. . . ." 21 CFR ? 1306.04(a) (2005). We have previously acknowledged that 
the Regulation gives added content to the text of the statute: "The 
medical purpose requirement explicit in subsection (c) [of ? 829] could be 
implicit in subsections (a) and (b). Regulation ? [1]306.04 makes it 
explicit." Moore, supra, at 137, n. 13, 96 S. Ct. 335, 46 L. Ed. 2d 333. 
n1

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n1 To be sure, this acknowledgment did not go far enough, because it 
overlooked the significance of the word "legitimate," which is most 
naturally understood to create an objective, federal standard for 
appropriate medical uses. See Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. 
Holyfield, 490 U.S. 30, 43, 109 S. Ct. 1597, 104 L. Ed. 2d 29 (1989) ("We 
start . . . with the general assumption that in the absence of a plain 
indication to the contrary, . . . Congress when it enacts a statute is not 
making the application of the federal act dependent on state law" 
(internal quotation marks omitted)).


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The Court points out that the Regulation adopts some of the phrasing 
employed in unrelated sections of the statute. See ante, at 10. This is 
irrelevant. A regulation that significantly clarifies the meaning of an 
otherwise ambiguous statutory provision is not a "parroting" regulation, 
regardless of the sources that the agency draws upon for the 
clarification. Moreover, most of the statutory phrases that the Court 
cites as appearing in the Regulation, see ibid. (citing 21 U.S.C. ?? 
812(b) ("'currently accepted medical use'"), 829(c) ("'medical purpose'"), 
802(21) ("'in the course of professional practice'")), are inapposite 
because they do not "parrot" the only phrase in the Regulation that the 
Directive purported to construe. See 66 Fed. Reg. 56608 ("I hereby 
determine that assisting suicide is not a 'legitimate medical purpose' 
within the meaning of 21 CFR ? 1306.04 . . . "). None of them includes the 
key word "legitimate," which gives the most direct support to the 
Directive's theory that ? 829(c) presupposes a uniform federal standard of 
medical practice. n2

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - Footnotes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


n2 The only place outside 21 U.S.C. ? 801 in which the statute uses the 
phrase "legitimate medical purpose" is in defining the phrase "valid 
prescription" for purposes of the reporting requirements that apply to 
mail orders of regulated substances. See ? 830(b)(3)(A)(ii). The 
Regulation did not "parrot" this statutory section, because the Regulation 
was adopted in 1971 and the statutory language was added in 2000. See 
Brief for Petitioners 17 (citing the Children's Health Act of 2000, ? 
3652, 114 Stat. 1239, 21 U.S.C. ? 830(b)(3)). But even if the statutory 
language had predated the Regulation, there would be no "parroting" of 
that phrase. In using the word "prescription" without definition in the 
much more critical ? 829, Congress left the task of resolving any 
ambiguity in that word, used in that context, to the relevant Executive 
officer. That the officer did so by deeming relevant a technically 
inapplicable statutory definition contained elsewhere in the statute does 
not make him a parrot. He has given to the statutory text a meaning it did 
not explicitly -- and perhaps even not necessarily -- contain.


- - - - - - - - - - - - End Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - [*66]

Since the Regulation does not run afowl (so to speak) of the Court's newly 
invented prohibition of "parroting"; and since the Directive represents 
the agency's own interpretation of that concededly valid regulation; the 
only question remaining is whether that interpretation is "plainly 
erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation"; otherwise, it is 
"controlling." Auer, supra, at 461, 117 S. Ct. 905, 137 L. Ed. 2d 79 
(internal quotation marks omitted). This is not a difficult question. The 
Directive is assuredly valid insofar as it interprets "prescription" to 
require a medical purpose that is "legitimate" as a matter of federal law 
-- since that is an interpretation of "prescription" that we ourselves 
have adopted. Webb v. United States, 249 U.S. 96, 39 S. Ct. 217, 63 L. Ed. 
497, 17 Ohio L. Rep. 88 (1919), was a prosecution under the Harrison Act 
of a doctor who wrote prescriptions of morphine "for the purpose of 
providing the user with morphine sufficient to keep him comfortable by 
maintaining his customary use," id., at 99, 39 S. Ct. 217, 63 L. Ed. 497. 
The dispositive issue in the case was whether such authorizations were 
"prescriptions" within the meaning of ? 2(b) of the Harrison Act, 
predecessor to the CSA. Ibid. We held [*67]  that "to call such an order 
for the use of morphine a physician's prescription would be so plain a 
perversion of meaning that no discussion of the subject is required." Id., 
at 99-100, 39 S. Ct. 217, 63 L. Ed. 497. Like the Directive, this 
interprets "prescription" to require medical purpose that is legitimate as 
a matter of federal law. And the Directive is also assuredly valid insofar 
as it interprets "legitimate medical purpose" as a matter of federal law 
to exclude physician-assisted suicide, because that is not only a 
permissible but indeed the most natural interpretation of that phrase. See 
Part II, infra.

B

Even if the Regulation merely parroted the statute, and the Directive 
therefore had to be treated as though it construed the statute directly, 
see ante, at 11, the Directive would still be entitled to deference under 
Chevron. The Court does not take issue with the Solicitor General's 
contention that no alleged procedural defect, such as the absence of 
notice-and-comment rulemaking before promulgation of the Directive, 
renders Chevron inapplicable here. See Reply Brief for Petitioners 4 
(citing Barnhart v. Walton, 535 U.S. 212, 219-222, 122 S. Ct. 1265, 152 L. 
Ed. 2d 330 (2002); [*68]  5 U.S.C. ? 553(b)(3)(A) (exempting interpretive 
rules from notice-and-comment rulemaking)). Instead, the Court holds that 
the Attorney General lacks interpretive authority to issue the Directive 
at all, on the ground that the explicit delegation provision, 21 U.S.C. A. 
? 821 (Supp. 2005), limits his rulemaking authority to "registration and 
control," which (according to the Court) are not implicated by the 
Directive's interpretation of the prescription requirement. See ante, at 
12-14.

Setting aside the implicit delegation inherent in Congress's use of the 
undefined term "prescription" in ? 829, the Court's reading of "control" 
in ? 821 is manifestly erroneous. The Court urges, ante, at 12-13, that 
"control" is a term defined in part A of the subchapter (entitled 
"Introductory Provisions") to mean "to add a drug or other substance . . . 
to a schedule under part B of this subchapter," 21 U.S.C. ? 802(5) 
(emphasis added). But ? 821 is not included in "part B of this 
subchapter," which is entitled "Authority to Control; Standards and 
Schedules," and consists of the sections related to scheduling,  [*69]  21 
U.S.C. A. ?? 811-814 (main ed. and Supp. 2005), where the statutory 
definition is uniquely appropriate. Rather, ? 821 is found in part C of 
the subchapter, ?? 821-830, entitled "Registration of Manufacturers, 
Distributors, and Dispensers of Controlled Substances," which includes all 
and only the provisions relating to the "manufacture, distribution, and 
dispensing of controlled substances," ? 821. The artificial definition of 
"control" in ? 802(5) has no conceivable application to the use of that 
word in ? 821. Under that definition, "control" must take a substance as 
its direct object, see 21 U.S.C. ? 802(5) ("to add a drug or other 
substance . . . to a schedule") -- and that is how "control" is 
consistently used throughout part B. See, e.g., ?? 811(b) ("proceedings . 
. . to control a drug or other substance"), 811(c) ("each drug or other 
substance proposed to be controlled or removed from the schedules"), 
811(d)(1) ("If control is required . . . the Attorney General shall issue 
an order controlling such drug . . . "), 812(b) ("Except where control is 
required . . . a drug or other substance may [*70]  not be placed in any 
schedule . . . "). In ? 821, by contrast, the term "control" has as its 
object, not "a drug or other substance," but rather the processes of 
"manufacture, distribution, and dispensing of controlled substances." It 
could not be clearer that the artificial definition of "control" in ? 
802(5) is inapplicable. It makes no sense to speak of "adding the 
manufacturing, distribution, and dispensing of substances to a schedule." 
We do not force term-of-art definitions into contexts where they plainly 
do not fit and produce nonsense. What is obviously intended in ? 821 is 
the ordinary meaning of "control" -- namely, "to exercise restraining or 
directing influence over; to dominate; regulate; hence, to hold from 
action; to curb," Webster's Second 580. "Control" is regularly used in 
this ordinary sense elsewhere in part C of the subchapter. See, e.g., 21 
U.S.C. ?? 823(a)(1), (b)(1), (d)(1), (e)(1), (h)(1) ("maintenance of 
effective controls against diversion"); ?? 823(a)(5), (d)(5) 
("establishment of effective control against diversion"); ? 
823(g)(2)(H)(i) ("to exercise supervision or control over the practice of 
medicine"); [*71]  ? 830(b)(1)(C) ("a listed chemical under the control of 
the regulated person"); ? 830(c)(2)(D) ("chemical control laws") (emphases 
added).

When the word is given its ordinary meaning, the Attorney General's 
interpretation of the prescription requirement of ? 829 plainly "relates 
to the . . . control of the . . . dispensing of controlled substances," 21 
U.S.C. A. ? 821 (Supp. 2005) (emphasis added), since a prescription is the 
chief requirement for "dispensing" such drugs, see ? 829. The same meaning 
is compelled by the fact that ? 821 is the first section not of part B of 
the subchapter, which deals entirely with "control" in the artificial 
sense, but of part C, every section of which relates to the "registration 
and control of the manufacture, distribution, and dispensing of controlled 
substances," ? 821. See ?? 822 (persons required to register), 823 
(registration requirements), 824 (denial, revocation, or suspension of 
registration), 825 (labeling and packaging), 826 (production quotas for 
controlled substances), 827 (recordkeeping and reporting requirements of 
registrants), 828 (order forms), 829 (prescription requirements), 830 
(regulation [*72]  of listed chemicals and certain machines). It would be 
peculiar for the first section of this part to authorize rulemaking for 
matters covered by the previous part. The only sensible interpretation of 
? 821 is that it gives the Attorney General interpretive authority over 
the provisions of part C, all of which "relate to the registration and 
control of the manufacture, distribution, and dispensing of controlled 
substances." These provisions include both the prescription requirement of 
? 829, and the criteria for registration and deregistration of ?? 823 and 
824 (as relevant below, see Part III, infra). n3

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n3 The Court concludes that "even if 'control' in ? 821 were understood to 
signify something other than its statutory definition, it would not 
support the Interpretive Rule." Ante, at 13. That conclusion rests upon a 
misidentification of the text that the Attorney General, pursuant to his 
"control" authority, is interpreting. No one argues that the word 
"control" in ? 821 gives the Attorney General "authority to define 
diversion based on his view of legitimate medical practice," ibid. Rather, 
that word authorizes the Attorney General to interpret (among other 
things) the "prescription" requirement of ? 829. The question then becomes 
whether the phrase "legitimate medical purpose" (which all agree is 
included in "prescription") is at least open to the interpretation 
announced in the Directive. See Chevron U.S.A. Inc., v. NDRC, 467 U.S. 
837, 843, 104 S. Ct. 2778, 81 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1984). And of course it is -- 
as the Court effectively concedes two pages earlier: "All would agree, we 
should think, that the statutory phrase 'legitimate medical purpose' is a 
generality, susceptible to more precise definition and open to varying 
constructions, and thus ambiguous in the relevant sense." Ante, at 11 
(citing Chevron).


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C

In sum, the Directive's construction of "legitimate medical purpose" is a 
perfectly valid agency interpretation of its own regulation; and if not 
that, a perfectly valid agency interpretation of the statute. No one 
contends that the construction is "plainly erroneous or inconsistent with 
the regulation," Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., 325 U.S. 410, 414, 65 
S. Ct. 1215, 89 L. Ed. 1700 (1945), or beyond the scope of ambiguity in 
the statute, see Chevron, 467 U.S., at 843, 104 S. Ct. 2778, 81 L. Ed. 2d 
694. In fact, as explained below, the Directive provides the most natural 
interpretation of the Regulation and of the statute. The Directive thus 
definitively establishes that a doctor's order authorizing the 
dispensation of a Schedule II substance for the purpose of assisting a 
suicide is not a "prescription" within the meaning of ? 829.

Once this conclusion is established, the other two conclusions in the 
Directive follow inevitably. Under our reasoning in Moore, writing 
prescriptions that are illegitimate under ? 829 is certainly not "in the 
[usual] course of professional practice" under ? 802(21) and thus not 
"authorized by this subchapter" under ? 841(a). See 423 U.S., at 138, 
140-141, 96 S. Ct. 335, 46 L. Ed. 2d 333. [*74]  A doctor who does this 
may thus be prosecuted under ? 841(a), and so it follows that such conduct 
"violates the Controlled Substances Act," 66 Fed. Reg. 56608. And since 
such conduct is thus not in "compliance with applicable . . . Federal . . 
. laws relating to controlled substances," 21 U.S.C. ? 823(f)(4), and may 
also be fairly judged to "threaten the public health and safety," ? 
823(f)(5), it follows that "such conduct by a physician registered to 
dispense controlled substances may 'render his registration . . . 
inconsistent with the public interest' and therefore subject to possible 
suspension or revocation under 21 U.S.C. [? ]824(a)(4)." 66 Fed. Reg. 
56608 (emphases added).

II

Even if the Directive were entitled to no deference whatever, the most 
reasonable interpretation of the Regulation and of the statute would 
produce the same result. Virtually every relevant source of authoritative 
meaning confirms that the phrase "legitimate medical purpose" n4 does not 
include intentionally assisting suicide. "Medicine" refers to "the science 
and art dealing with the prevention, cure, or alleviation of [*75] 
disease." Webster's Second 1527. The use of the word "legitimate" connotes 
an objective standard of "medicine," and our presumption that the CSA 
creates a uniform federal law regulating the dispensation of controlled 
substances, see Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, 490 U.S. 
30, 43, 109 S. Ct. 1597, 104 L. Ed. 2d 29 (1989), means that this 
objective standard must be a federal one. As recounted in detail in the 
memorandum for the Attorney General that is attached as an appendix to the 
Directive (OLC Memo), virtually every medical authority from Hippocrates 
to the current American Medical Association (AMA) confirms that assisting 
suicide has seldom or never been viewed as a form of "prevention, cure, or 
alleviation of disease," and (even more so) that assisting suicide is not 
a "legitimate" branch of that "science and art." See OLC Memo, App. to 
Pet. for Cert. 113a-130a. Indeed, the AMA has determined that 
"'physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the 
physician's role as a healer.'" Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 
731, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 117 S. Ct. 2302, 138 L. Ed. 2d 772 (1997). "The 
overwhelming weight of authority in judicial decisions, the past and 
present policies of nearly all [*76]  of the States and of the Federal 
Government, and the clear, firm and unequivocal views of the leading 
associations within the American medical and nursing professions, 
establish that assisting in suicide . . . is not a legitimate medical 
purpose." OLC Memo, supra, at 129a. See also Glucksberg, supra, at 710, n. 
8, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 117 S. Ct. 2302 (prohibitions or condemnations of 
assisted suicide in 50 jurisdictions, including 47 States, the District of 
Columbia, and 2 Territories).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - Footnotes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


n4 This phrase appears only in the Regulation and not in the relevant 
section of the statute. But as pointed out earlier, the Court does not 
contest that this is the most reasonable interpretation of the section -- 
regarding it, indeed, as a mere "parroting" of the statute.


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In the face of this "overwhelming weight of authority," the Court's 
admission that "on its own, this understanding of medicine's boundaries is 
at least reasonable," ante, at 26 (emphasis added), tests the limits of 
understatement. The only explanation for such [*77]  a distortion is that 
the Court confuses the normative inquiry of what the boundaries of 
medicine should be -- which it is laudably hesitant to undertake -- with 
the objective inquiry of what the accepted definition of "medicine" is. 
The same confusion is reflected in the Court's remarkable statement that 
"the primary problem with the Government's argument . . . is its 
assumption that the CSA impliedly authorizes an Executive officer to bar a 
use simply because it may be inconsistent with one reasonable 
understanding of medical practice." Ibid. (emphasis added). The fact that 
many in Oregon believe that the boundaries of "legitimate medicine" should 
be extended to include assisted suicide does not change the fact that the 
overwhelming weight of authority (including the 47 States that condemn 
physician-assisted suicide) confirms that they have not yet been so 
extended. Not even those of our Eighth Amendment cases most generous in 
discerning an "evolution" of national standards would have found, on this 
record, that the concept of "legitimate medicine" has evolved so far. See 
Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 564-567, 125 S. Ct. 1183, 161 L. Ed. 2d 1 
(2005).

The Court contends [*78]  that the phrase "legitimate medical purpose" 
cannot be read to establish a broad, uniform federal standard for the 
medically proper use of controlled substances. Ante, at 22. But it also 
rejects the most plausible alternative proposition, urged by the State, 
that any use authorized under state law constitutes a "legitimate medical 
purpose." (The Court is perhaps leery of embracing this position because 
the State candidly admitted at oral argument that, on its view, a State 
could exempt from the CSA's coverage the use of morphine to achieve 
euphoria.) Instead, the Court reverse-engineers an approach somewhere 
between a uniform national standard and a state-by-state approach, holding 
(with no basis in the CSA's text) that "legitimate medical purpose" refers 
to all uses of drugs unrelated to "addiction and recreational abuse." 
Ante, at 27. Thus, though the Court pays lipservice to state autonomy, see 
ante, 23-24, its standard for "legitimate medical purpose" is in fact a 
hazily defined federal standard based on its purposive reading of the CSA, 
and extracted from obliquely relevant sections of the Act. In particular, 
relying on its observation that the criteria [*79]  for scheduling 
controlled substances are primarily concerned with "addiction or abnormal 
effects on the nervous system," ante, at 26-27 (citing 21 U.S.C. ?? 
811(c)(7), 812(b), 811(f), 801a), the Court concludes that the CSA's 
prescription requirement must be interpreted in light of this narrow view 
of the statute's purpose.

Even assuming, however, that the principal concern of the CSA is the 
curtailment of "addiction and recreational abuse," there is no reason to 
think that this is its exclusive concern. We have repeatedly observed that 
Congress often passes statutes that sweep more broadly than the main 
problem they were designed to address. "Statutory prohibitions often go 
beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and it is 
ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns 
of our legislators by which we are governed." Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore 
Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 79, 118 S. Ct. 998, 140 L. Ed. 2d 201 (1998). 
See also H. J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., 492 U.S. 229, 248, 
109 S. Ct. 2893, 106 L. Ed. 2d 195 (1989).

The scheduling provisions of the CSA on which the Court relies confirm 
that the CSA's "design,  [*80]  " ante, at 23, is not as narrow as the 
Court asserts. In making scheduling determinations, the Attorney General 
must not only consider a drug's "psychic or physiological dependence 
liability" as the Court points out, ante, at 26 (citing 21 U.S.C. ? 
811(c)(7)), but must also consider such broad factors as "the state of 
current scientific knowledge regarding the drug or other substance," ? 
811(c)(3), and (most notably) "what, if any, risk there is to the public 
health," ? 811(c)(6). If the latter factor were limited to 
addiction-related health risks, as the Court supposes, it would be 
redundant of ? 811(c)(7). Moreover, in making registration determinations 
regarding manufacturers and distributors, the Attorney General "shall" 
consider "such other factors as may be relevant to and consistent with the 
public health and safety," ?? 823(a)(6), (b)(5), (d)(6), (e)(5) (emphasis 
added) -- over and above the risk of "diversion" of controlled substances, 
?? 823(a)(1), (a)(5), (b)(1), (d)(1), (d)(5), (e)(1). And, most relevant 
of all, in registering and deregistering physicians, the Attorney General 
"may deny an application for such registration if he [*81]  determines 
that the issuance of such registration would be inconsistent with the 
public interest," ? 823(f); see also ? 824(a)(4), and in making that 
determination "shall" consider "such other conduct which may threaten the 
public health and safety," ? 823(f)(5). All of these provisions, not just 
those selectively cited by the Court, shed light upon the CSA's repeated 
references to the undefined term "abuse." See ?? 811(a)(1)(A), (c)(1), 
(c)(4), (c)(5); ?? 812(b)(1)(A), (b)(2)(A), (b)(3)(A), (b)(4)(A), 
(b)(5)(A).

By disregarding all these public-interest, public-health, and 
public-safety objectives, and limiting the CSA to "addiction and 
recreational abuse," the Court rules out the prohibition of 
anabolic-steroid use for bodybuilding purposes. It seeks to avoid this 
consequence by invoking the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990, 104 
Stat. 4851. Ante, at 27. But the only effect of that legislation is to 
make anabolic steroids controlled drugs under Schedule III of the CSA. If 
the only basis for control is (as the Court says) "addiction and 
recreational abuse," dispensation of these drugs for bodybuilding could 
not be proscribed.

Although, as I have described, the [*82]  Court's opinion no more defers 
to state law than does the Directive, the Court relies on two provisions 
for the conclusion that "the structure and operation of the CSA presume 
and rely upon a functioning medical profession regulated under the States' 
police powers," ante, at 23 -- namely the registration provisions of ? 
823(f) and the nonpre-emption provision of ? 903. Reliance on the former 
is particularly unfortunate, because the Court's own analysis recounts how 
Congress amended ? 823(f) in 1984 in order to liberate the Attorney 
General's power over registration from the control of state regulators. 
See ante, at 14; 21 U.S.C. ? 823(f); see also Brief for Petitioners 34-35. 
And the nonpre-emption clause is embarrassingly inapplicable, since it 
merely disclaims field pre-emption, and affirmatively prescribes federal 
pre-emption whenever state law creates a conflict. n5 In any event, the 
Directive does not purport to pre-empt state law in any way, not even by 
conflict pre-emption -- unless the Court is under the misimpression that 
some States require assisted suicide. The Directive merely interprets the 
CSA to prohibit, like countless other [*83]  federal criminal provisions, 
conduct that happens not to be forbidden under state law (or at least the 
law of the State of Oregon).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - Footnotes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


n5 Title 21 U.S.C. ? 903 reads, in relevant part, as follows: "No 
provision of this subchapter shall be construed as indicating an intent on 
the part of the Congress to occupy the field in which that provision 
operates, including criminal penalties, to the exclusion of any State law 
on the same subject matter . . . unless there is a positive conflict . . . 
."


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With regard to the CSA's registration provisions, 21 U.S.C. ?? 823(f), 
824(a), the Court argues that the statute cannot fairly be read to "'hide 
elephants in mouseholes'" by delegating to the Attorney General the power 
to determine the legitimacy of medical practices in "'vague terms or 
ancillary provisions.'" Ante, at 20 (quoting Whitman v. American Trucking 
Assns., Inc., 531 U.S. 457, 468, 121 S. Ct. 903, 149 L. Ed. 2d 1 (2001)). 
This case bears not the remotest resemblance to Whitman,  [*84]  which 
held that "Congress . . . does not alter the fundamental details of a 
regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions." Ibid. (emphasis 
added). The Attorney General's power to issue regulations against 
questionable uses of controlled substances in no way alters "the 
fundamental details" of the CSA. I am aware of only four areas in which 
the Department of Justice has exercised that power to regulate uses of 
controlled substances unrelated to "addiction and recreational abuse" as 
the Court apparently understands that phrase: assisted suicide, aggressive 
pain management therapy, anabolic-steroid use, and cosmetic weight-loss 
therapy. See, e.g., In re Harline, 65 Fed. Reg. 5665, 5667 (2000) (weight 
loss); In re Tecca, 62 Fed. Reg. 12842, 12846 (1997) (anabolic steroids); 
In re Roth, 60 Fed. Reg. 62262, 62263, 62267 (1995) (pain management). 
There is no indication that enforcement in these areas interferes with the 
prosecution of "drug abuse" as the Court understands it. Unlike in 
Whitman, the Attorney General's additional power to address other forms of 
drug "abuse" does absolutely nothing to [*85]  undermine the central 
features of this regulatory scheme. Of course it was critical to our 
analysis in Whitman that the language of the provision did not bear the 
meaning that respondents sought to give it. See 531 U.S., at 465, 121 S. 
Ct. 903, 149 L. Ed. 2d 1. Here, for the reasons stated above, the 
provision is most naturally interpreted to incorporate a uniform federal 
standard for legitimacy of medical practice. n6

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - Footnotes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


n6 The other case cited by the Court, FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco 
Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 120 S. Ct. 1291, 146 L. Ed. 2d 121 (2000), is even 
more obviously inapt. There we relied on the first step of the Chevron 
analysis to determine that Congress had spoken to the precise issue in 
question, impliedly repealing the grant of jurisdiction on which the FDA 
relied. 529 U.S., at 160-161, 120 S. Ct. 1291, 146 L. Ed. 2d 121. Here, 
Congress has not expressly or impliedly authorized the practice of 
assisted suicide, or indeed "spoken directly" to the subject in any way 
beyond the text of the CSA.


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Finally, respondents argue that the Attorney General [*86]  must defer to 
state-law judgments about what constitutes legitimate medicine, on the 
ground that Congress must speak clearly to impose such a uniform federal 
standard upon the States. But no line of our clear-statement cases is 
applicable here. The canon of avoidance does not apply, since the 
Directive does not push the outer limits of Congress's commerce power, 
compare Solid Waste Agency v. United States Army Corps of Eng'rs, 531 U.S. 
159, 172, 121 S. Ct. 675, 148 L. Ed. 2d 576 (2001) (regulation of isolated 
ponds), with United States v. Sullivan, 332 U.S. 689, 698, 68 S. Ct. 331, 
92 L. Ed. 297 (1948) (regulation of labeling of drugs shipped in 
interstate commerce), or impinge on a core aspect of state sovereignty, 
cf. Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 242, 105 S. Ct. 
3142, 87 L. Ed. 2d 171 (1985) (sovereign immunity); Gregory v. Ashcroft, 
501 U.S. 452, 460, 111 S. Ct. 2395, 115 L. Ed. 2d 410 (1991) 
(qualifications of state government officials). The clear-statement rule 
based on the presumption against pre-emption does not apply because the 
Directive does not pre-empt any state law, cf. id., at 456-457, 111 S. Ct. 
2395, 115 L. Ed. 2d 410; Rush Prudential HMO, Inc. v. Moran, 536 U.S. 355, 
359, 122 S. Ct. 2151, 153 L. Ed. 2d 375 (2002). [*87]  And finally, no 
clear statement is required on the ground that the Directive intrudes upon 
an area traditionally reserved exclusively to the States, cf. BFP v. 
Resolution Trust Corporation, 511 U.S. 531, 544, 114 S. Ct. 1757, 128 L. 
Ed. 2d 556 (1994) (state regulation of titles to real property), because 
the Federal Government has pervasively regulated the dispensation of drugs 
for over 100 years. See generally Brief for Pro-Life Legal Defense Fund et 
al. as Amici Curiae 3-15. It would be a novel and massive expansion of the 
clear-statement rule to apply it in a commerce case not involving 
pre-emption or constitutional avoidance, merely because Congress has 
chosen to prohibit conduct that a State has made a contrary policy 
judgment to permit. See Sullivan, supra, at 693, 68 S. Ct. 331, 92 L. Ed. 
2d 297.

III

Even if the Regulation did not exist and "prescription" in ? 829 could not 
be interpreted to require a "legitimate medical purpose," the Directive's 
conclusion that "prescribing, dispensing, or administering federally 
controlled substances . . . by a physician . . . may 'render his 
registration . . . inconsistent with the public interest' and therefore 
subject to possible suspension or revocation [*88]  under 21 U.S.C. [? 
]824(a)(4)," 66 Fed. Reg. 56608, would nevertheless be unassailable in 
this Court.

Sections 823(f) and 824(a) explicitly grant the Attorney General the 
authority to register and deregister physicians, and his discretion in 
exercising that authority is spelled out in very broad terms. He may 
refuse to register or deregister if he determines that registration is 
"inconsistent with the public interest," 21 U.S.C. ? 823(f), after 
considering five factors, the fifth of which is "such other conduct which 
may threaten the public health and safety," ? 823(f)(5). See also In re 
Arora, 60 Fed. Reg. 4447, 4448 (1995) ("It is well established that these 
factors are to be considered in the disjunctive, i.e., the Deputy 
Administrator may properly rely on any one or a combination of factors, 
and give each factor the weight he deems appropriate"). As the Court 
points out, these broad standards were enacted in the 1984 amendments for 
the specific purpose of freeing the Attorney General's discretion over 
registration from the decisions of state authorities. See ante, at 13.

The fact that assisted-suicide [*89]  prescriptions are issued in 
violation of ? 829 is of course sufficient to support the Directive's 
conclusion that issuing them may be cause for deregistration: such 
prescriptions would violate the fourth factor of ? 823(f), namely 
"compliance with applicable . . . Federal . . . laws relating to 
controlled substances," 21 U.S.C. ? 823(f)(4). But the Attorney General 
did not rely solely on subsection (f)(4) in reaching his conclusion that 
registration would be "inconsistent with the public interest"; nothing in 
the text of the Directive indicates that. Subsection (f)(5) ("such other 
conduct which may threaten the public health and safety") provides an 
independent, alternative basis for the Directive's conclusion regarding 
deregistration -- provided that the Attorney General has authority to 
interpret "public interest" and "public health and safety" in ? 823(f) to 
exclude assisted suicide.

Three considerations make it perfectly clear that the statute confers 
authority to interpret these phrases upon the Attorney General. First, the 
Attorney General is solely and explicitly charged with administering the 
registration and deregistration provisions. See ?? 823(f),  [*90]  824(a). 
By making the criteria for such registration and deregistration such 
obviously ambiguous factors as "public interest" and "public health and 
safety," Congress implicitly (but clearly) gave the Attorney General 
authority to interpret those criteria -- whether or not there is any 
explicit delegation provision in the statute. "Sometimes the legislative 
delegation to an agency on a particular question is implicit rather than 
explicit. In such a case, a court may not substitute its own construction 
of a statutory provision for a reasonable interpretation made by the 
administrator of an agency." Chevron, 467 U.S., at 844, 104 S. Ct. 2778, 
81 L. Ed. 2d 694. The Court's exclusive focus on the explicit delegation 
provisions is, at best, a fossil of our pre-Chevron era; at least since 
Chevron, we have not conditioned our deferral to agency interpretations 
upon the existence of explicit delegation provisions. United States v. 
Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 229, 121 S. Ct. 2164, 150 L. Ed. 2d 292 (2001), 
left this principle of implicit delegation intact.

Second, even if explicit delegation were required, Congress provided it in 
? 821, which authorizes the Attorney General to "promulgate rules and 
regulations [*91]  . . . relating to the registration and control of the 
manufacture, distribution, and dispensing of controlled substances . . . 
." (Emphasis added.) Because "dispensing" refers to the delivery of a 
controlled substance "pursuant to the lawful order of, a practitioner," 21 
U.S.C. ? 802(10), the deregistration of such practitioners for writing 
impermissible orders "relates to the registration . . . of the . . . 
dispensing" of controlled substances, 21 U.S.C. A. ? 821 (Supp. 2005).

Third, ? 821 also gives the Attorney General authority to promulgate rules 
and regulations "relating to the . . . control of the . . . dispensing of 
controlled substances." As discussed earlier, it is plain that the 
ordinary meaning of "control" must apply to ? 821, so that the plain 
import of the provision is to grant the Attorney General rulemaking 
authority over all the provisions of part C of the CSA, 21 U.S.C. A. ?? 
821-830 (main ed. and Supp. 2005). Registering and deregistering the 
practitioners who issue the prescriptions necessary for lawful 
dispensation of controlled substances plainly "relates to the . . . 
control of the [*92]  . . . dispensing of controlled substances." ? 821 
(Supp. 2005).

The Attorney General is thus authorized to promulgate regulations 
interpreting ?? 823(f) and 824(a), both by implicit delegation in ? 823(f) 
and by two grounds of explicit delegation in ? 821. The Court nevertheless 
holds that this triply unambiguous delegation cannot be given full effect 
because "the design of the statute," ante, at 18, evinces the intent to 
grant the Secretary of Health and Human Services exclusive authority over 
scientific and medical determinations. This proposition is not remotely 
plausible. The Court cites as authority for the Secretary's exclusive 
authority two specific areas in which his medical determinations are said 
to be binding on the Attorney General -- with regard to the "scientific 
and medical evaluation" of a drug's effects that precedes its scheduling, 
? 811(b), and with regard to "the appropriate methods of professional 
practice in the medical treatment of the narcotic addiction of various 
classes of narcotic addicts," 42 U.S.C. ? 290bb-2a; see also 21 U.S.C. ? 
823(g) (2000 ed. and Supp. II). See ante, at 17-19. Far from [*93] 
establishing a general principle of Secretary supremacy with regard to all 
scientific and medical determinations, the fact that Congress granted the 
Secretary specifically defined authority in the areas of scheduling and 
addiction treatment, without otherwise mentioning him in the registration 
provisions, suggests, to the contrary, that Congress envisioned no role 
for the Secretary in that area -- where, as we have said, interpretive 
authority was both implicitly and explicitly conferred upon the Attorney 
General.

Even if we could rewrite statutes to accord with sensible "design," it is 
far from a certainty that the Secretary, rather than the Attorney General, 
ought to control the registration of physicians. Though registration 
decisions sometimes require judgments about the legitimacy of medical 
practices, the Department of Justice has seemingly had no difficulty 
making them. See In re Harline, 65 Fed. Reg. 5665; In re Tecca, 62 Fed. 
Reg. 12842; In re Roth, 60 Fed. Reg. 62262. But unlike decisions about 
whether a substance should be scheduled or whether a narcotics addiction 
treatment is legitimate, registration decisions [*94]  are not 
exclusively, or even primarily, concerned with "medical [and] scientific" 
factors. See 21 U.S.C. ? 823(f). Rather, the decision to register, or to 
bring an action to deregister, an individual physician implicates all the 
policy goals and competing enforcement priorities that attend any exercise 
of prosecutorial discretion. It is entirely reasonable to think (as 
Congress evidently did) that it would be easier for the Attorney General 
occasionally to make judgments about the legitimacy of medical practices 
than it would be for the Secretary to get into the business of law 
enforcement. It is, in other words, perfectly consistent with an 
intelligent "design of the statute" to give the Nation's chief law 
enforcement official, not its chief health official, broad discretion over 
the substantive standards that govern registration and deregistration. 
That is especially true where the contested "scientific and medical" 
judgment at issue has to do with the legitimacy of physician-assisted 
suicide, which ultimately rests, not on "science" or "medicine," but on a 
naked value judgment. It no more depends upon a "quintessentially medical 
judgment," ante [*95]  , at 20, than does the legitimacy of polygamy or 
eugenic infanticide. And it requires no particular medical training to 
undertake the objective inquiry into how the continuing traditions of 
Western medicine have consistently treated this subject. See OLC Memo, 
App. to Pet. for Cert. 113a-130a. The Secretary's supposedly superior 
"medical expertise" to make "medical judgments," ante, at 19-20, is 
strikingly irrelevant to the case at hand.

The Court also reasons that, even if the CSA grants the Attorney General 
authority to interpret ? 823(f), the Directive does not purport to 
exercise that authority, because it "does not undertake the five-factor 
analysis" of ? 823(f) and does not "on its face purport to be an 
application of the registration provision in ? 823(f)." Ante, at 14 
(emphasis added). This reasoning is sophistic. It would be improper -- 
indeed, impossible -- for the Attorney General to "undertake the 
five-factor analysis" of ? 823(f) and to "apply the registration 
provision" outside the context of an actual enforcement proceeding. But of 
course the Attorney General may issue regulations to clarify his 
interpretation of the five factors, and to signal [*96]  how he will apply 
them in future enforcement proceedings. That is what the Directive plainly 
purports to do by citing ? 824(a)(4), and that is why the Directive's 
conclusion on deregistration is couched in conditional terms: "Such 
conduct by a physician . . . may 'render his registration . . . 
inconsistent with the public interest' and therefore subject to possible 
suspension or revocation under 21 U.S.C. [? ]824(a)(4)." 66 Fed. Reg. 
56608 (emphasis added).

It follows from what we have said that the Attorney General's 
authoritative interpretations of "public interest" and "public health and 
safety" in ? 823(f) are subject to Chevron deference. As noted earlier, 
the Court does not contest that the absence of notice-and-comment 
procedures for the Directive renders Chevron inapplicable. And there is no 
serious argument that "Congress has directly spoken to the precise 
question at issue," or that the Directive's interpretations of "public 
health and safety" and "inconsistent with the public interest" are not 
"permissible." Chevron, 467 U.S., at 842-843, 104 S. Ct. 2778, 81 L. Ed. 
2d 694. On the latter point, in fact, the condemnation of assisted suicide 
[*97]  by 50 American jurisdictions supports the Attorney General's view. 
The Attorney General may therefore weigh a physician's participation in 
assisted suicide as a factor counseling against his registration, or in 
favor of deregistration, under ? 823(f).

In concluding to the contrary, the Court merely presents the conclusory 
assertion that "it is doubtful the Attorney General could cite the 'public 
interest' or 'public health' to deregister a physician simply because he 
deemed a controversial practice permitted by state law to have an 
illegitimate medical purpose." Ante, at 17. But why on earth not? -- 
especially when he has interpreted the relevant statutory factors in 
advance to give fair warning that such a practice is "inconsistent with 
the public interest." The Attorney General's discretion to determine the 
public interest in this area is admittedly broad -- but certainly no 
broader than other congressionally conferred Executive powers that we have 
upheld in the past. See, e.g., National Broadcasting Co. v. United States, 
319 U.S. 190, 216-217, 63 S. Ct. 997, 87 L. Ed. 1344 (1943) ("public 
interest"); New York Central Securities Corp. v. United States, 287 U.S. 
12, 24-25, 53 S. Ct. 45, 77 L. Ed. 138 (1932) [*98]  (same); see also 
Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 415-416, 109 S. Ct. 647, 102 L. 
Ed. 2d 714 (1989) (SCALIA, J., dissenting).

* * *

In sum, the Directive's first conclusion -- namely that physician-assisted 
suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" -- is supported both by the 
deference we owe to the agency's interpretation of its own regulations and 
by the deference we owe to its interpretation of the statute. The other 
two conclusions -- (2) that prescribing controlled drugs to assist suicide 
violates the CSA, and (3) that such conduct is also "inconsistent with the 
public interest" -- are inevitable consequences of that first conclusion. 
Moreover, the third conclusion, standing alone, is one that the Attorney 
General is authorized to make.

The Court's decision today is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject 
of assisted suicide is none of the Federal Government's business. It is 
easy to sympathize with that position. The prohibition or deterrence of 
assisted suicide is certainly not among the enumerated powers conferred on 
the United States by the Constitution, and it is within the realm of 
public morality (bonos mores) traditionally addressed by the so-called 
police [*99]  power of the States. But then, neither is prohibiting the 
recreational use of drugs or discouraging drug addiction among the 
enumerated powers. From an early time in our national history, the Federal 
Government has used its enumerated powers, such as its power to regulate 
interstate commerce, for the purpose of protecting public morality -- for 
example, by banning the interstate shipment of lottery tickets, or the 
interstate transport of women for immoral purposes. See Hoke v. United 
States, 227 U.S. 308, 321-323, 33 S. Ct. 281, 57 L. Ed. 523 (1913); 
Lottery Case, 188 U.S. 321, 356, 23 S. Ct. 321, 47 L. Ed. 492 (1903). 
Unless we are to repudiate a long and well-established principle of our 
jurisprudence, using the federal commerce power to prevent assisted 
suicide is unquestionably permissible. The question before us is not 
whether Congress can do this, or even whether Congress should do this; but 
simply whether Congress has done this in the CSA. I think there is no 
doubt that it has. If the term "legitimate medical purpose" has any 
meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death.

For the above reasons, I respectfully dissent from the judgment of the 
Court.

JUSTICE [*100]  THOMAS, dissenting.

When Angel Raich and Diane Monson challenged the application of the 
Controlled Substances Act (CSA), 21 U.S.C. ? 801 et seq., to their purely 
intrastate possession of marijuana for medical use as authorized under 
California law, a majority of this Court (a mere seven months ago) 
determined that the CSA effectively invalidated California's law because 
"the CSA is a comprehensive regulatory regime specifically designed to 
regulate which controlled substances can be utilized for medicinal 
purposes, and in what manner." Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. ___, ___, 125 
S. Ct. 2195, 2211, 162 L. Ed. 2d 1, 25 (2005) (emphasis added). The 
majority employed unambiguous language, concluding that the "manner" in 
which controlled substances can be utilized "for medicinal purposes" is 
one of the "core activities regulated by the CSA." Id., at ___ , 125 S. 
Ct. 2195, 2212, 162 L. Ed. 2d 1, 25). And, it described the CSA as 
"creating a comprehensive framework for regulating the production, 
distribution, and possession of . . . 'controlled substances,'" including 
those substances that "'have a useful and legitimate medical purpose,'" in 
order to "foster the beneficial use of those medications" and [*101]  "to 
prevent their misuse." Id., at ___, 125 S. Ct. 2195, 2203, 162 L. Ed. 2d 
1, 16.

Today the majority beats a hasty retreat from these conclusions. 
Confronted with a regulation that broadly requires all prescriptions to be 
issued for a "legitimate medical purpose," 21 CFR ? 1306.04(a) (2005), a 
regulation recognized in Raich as part of the Federal Government's "closed 
. . . system" for regulating the "manner" in "which controlled substances 
can be utilized for medicinal purposes," 545 U.S., at ___, ___ 125 S. Ct. 
2195, 2211,162 L. Ed. 2d 1, 25, the majority rejects the Attorney 
General's admittedly "at least reasonable," ante, at 26, determination 
that administering controlled substances to facilitate a patient's death 
is not a "'legitimate medical purpose.'" The majority does so based on its 
conclusion that the CSA is only concerned with the regulation of "medical 
practice insofar as it bars doctors from using their prescription-writing 
powers as a means to engage in illicit drug dealing and trafficking as 
conventionally understood." Ante, at 23. In other words, in stark contrast 
to Raich's broad conclusions about the scope of the CSA as it pertains to 
the medicinal use of controlled substances, today this [*102]  Court 
concludes that the CSA is merely concerned with fighting "'drug abuse'" 
and only insofar as that abuse leads to "addiction or abnormal effects on 
the nervous system." n1 Ante, at 26.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - Footnotes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


n1 The majority does not expressly address whether the ingestion of a 
quantity of drugs that is sufficient to cause death has an "abnormal 
effect on the nervous system," ante, at 25, though it implicitly rejects 
such a conclusion.


- - - - - - - - - - - - End Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The majority's newfound understanding of the CSA as a statute of limited 
reach is all the more puzzling because it rests upon constitutional 
principles that the majority of the Court rejected in Raich. 
Notwithstanding the States'" 'traditional police powers to define the 
criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their 
citizens,'" 545 U.S., at ___, n. 38, 125 S. Ct. 2195, 2213, 162 L. Ed. 2d 
1, 26), the Raich majority concluded that the CSA applied to the 
intrastate possession of marijuana for medicinal purposes authorized by 
California law because "Congress could have rationally"  [*103]  concluded 
that such an application was necessary to the regulation of the "larger 
interstate marijuana market." Id., at ___, 125 S. Ct. 2195, 2208, 2213162 
L. Ed. 2d 1, 21, 27. Here, by contrast, the majority's restrictive 
interpretation of the CSA is based in no small part on "the structure and 
limitations of federalism, which allow the States '"great latitude under 
their police powers to legislate as to the protection of the lives, limbs, 
health, comfort, and quiet of all persons."' " Ante, at 23 (quoting 
Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr, 518 U.S. 470, 475, 116 S. Ct. 2240, 135 L. Ed. 2d 
700 (1996), in turn quoting Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 
471 U.S. 724, 756, 105 S. Ct. 2380, 85 L. Ed. 2d 728 (1985)). According to 
the majority, these "background principles of our federal system . . . 
belie the notion that Congress would use . . . an obscure grant of 
authority to regulate areas traditionally supervised by the States' police 
power." Ante, at 28.

Of course there is nothing "obscure" about the CSA's grant of authority to 
the Attorney General. Ante, p. ___ (SCALIA, J., dissenting). And, the 
Attorney General's conclusion that the CSA prohibits the States from 
authorizing physician assisted suicide is admittedly [*104]  "at least 
reasonable," ante, at 26 (opinion of the Court), and is therefore entitled 
to deference. Ante, at 6-7 (SCALIA, J., dissenting). While the scope of 
the CSA and the Attorney General's power thereunder are sweeping, and 
perhaps troubling, such expansive federal legislation and broad grants of 
authority to administrative agencies are merely the inevitable and 
inexorable consequence of this Court's Commerce Clause and 
separation-of-powers jurisprudence. See, e.g., Raich, supra; Whitman v. 
American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U.S. 457, 121 S. Ct. 903, 149 L. Ed. 
2d 1 (2001).

I agree with limiting the applications of the CSA in a manner consistent 
with the principles of federalism and our constitutional structure. Raich, 
supra, at ___ (THOMAS, J., dissenting); cf. Whitman, supra, at 486-487, 
121 S. Ct. 903, 149 L. Ed. 2d 1 (THOMAS, J., concurring) (noting 
constitutional concerns with broad delegations of authority to 
administrative agencies). But that is now water over the dam. The 
relevance of such considerations was at its zenith in Raich, when we 
considered whether the CSA could be applied to the intrastate possession 
of a controlled substance consistent with the limited federal [*105] 
powers enumerated by the Constitution. Such considerations have little, if 
any, relevance where, as here, we are merely presented with a question of 
statutory interpretation, and not the extent of constitutionally 
permissible federal power. This is particularly true where, as here, we 
are interpreting broad, straightforward language within a statutory 
framework that a majority of this Court has concluded is so comprehensive 
that it necessarily nullifies the States'" 'traditional . . . powers . . . 
to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens.'" n2 Raich, 
supra, at ___, n. 38, 125 S. Ct. 2195, 2213, 162 L. Ed. 2d 1, 26). The 
Court's reliance upon the constitutional principles that it rejected in 
Raich -- albeit under the guise of statutory interpretation -- is 
perplexing to say the least. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - Footnotes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


n2 Notably, respondents have not seriously pressed a constitutional claim 
here, conceding at oral argument that their "point is not necessarily that 
[the CSA] would be unconstitutional." Tr. of Oral Arg. 44. In any event, 
to the extent respondents do present a constitutional claim, they do so 
solely within the framework of Raich. Framed in this manner, the claim 
must fail. The respondents in Raich were "local growers and users of 
state-authorized, medical marijuana," who stood "outside the interstate 
drug market" and possessed "'medicinal marijuana . . . not intended for . 
. . the stream of commerce.'" 545 U.S., at ___, ___, 125 S. Ct. 2195, 
2201, 2232, 162 L. Ed. 2d 1, 13, 48 (THOMAS, J., dissenting). Here, by 
contrast, the respondent-physicians are active participants in the 
interstate controlled substances market, and the drugs they prescribe for 
assisting suicide have likely traveled in interstate commerce. If the 
respondents in Raich could not sustain a constitutional claim, then a 
fortiori respondents here cannot sustain one. Respondents' acceptance of 
Raich forecloses their constitutional challenge.


- - - - - - - - - - - - End Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - [*106]

From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 19 22:54:35 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:54:35 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge Annual Question 2003: What are the pressing
	scientific issues?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601191740290.24832@panix3.panix.com>

Edge Annual Question 2003: What are the pressing scientific issues for the 
nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal 
with them?
http://www.edge.org/q2003/question03_print.html

The following message is the basis for the 6th Annual Edge Question. I
sent individualized emails to the third culture mail list as in the
example below, addressed to Steven Pinker, the first participant to
respond.

From:"John Brockman" <address restricted>
To: "Steven Pinker" <address restricted>
Subject: THE EDGE ANNUAL QUESTION -- 2003
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
Importance: Normal
Steve,
This just in from Washington...

From: "George W. Bush" <address restricted>
To: "John Brockman" <address restricted>
Subject: Science Advisor
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002
Dear John,

I appreciate your taking the time to recommend the appointment of
Steven Pinker to be my next science advisor and I am pleased to
hear of his interest in the position.

I am impressed with the resume of Dr. Pinker which you sent
earlier. Could you please ask him to prepare a memo which answers
the following question:

"What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the
world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with
them?"

In addition to obvious issues that have dominated the headlines
during my first two years in office, I would hope to hear about
less obvious scientific issues as well.

I need the memo by the end of December.
Thank you for your help.
Sincerely,

GWB

I wish the above was really an email from President Bush. It is not.
It's the set-up for this year's Edge Annual Question -- 2003, and
because this event receives wide attention from the scientific
community and the global press, the responses it evokes just might
have the same effect as a memo to the President....that is, if you
stick to science and to those scientific areas where you have
expertise.

I am asking members of the Edge community to take this project seriously 
as a public service, to work together to create a document that can be 
widely disseminated to begin a public discussion about the important 
scientific issues before us. Address your memo to the President and very 
briefly add your credentials (as in the example below). I will post the 
responses as they come in. Please email your response to me on or before 
January 1, 2003 for publication the week of January 6th. I look forward to 
hearing from you.

Best,
JB

Happy New Year!

John Brockman
Publisher & Editor
January 6, 2003

p.s. A selection of the responses below were excerpted by The New York
Times Op-Ed Page on Saturday, January 4, 2003.
______________________________________________________________________

New Todd Siler o Philip Brockman o George Smoot o John McWhorter o
Sherry Turkle o Gregory Benford o Vera John-Steiner o Paul MacCready o
Margaret Wertheim
___________________________________

Ian Wilmut o J. Craig Venter o Steven Pinker o Ray Kurzweil o Gino
Segre o Stephen Schneider o Oliver Morton o Rodney Brooks o Seth Lloyd
o Denis Dutton o Freeman Dyson o Philip Campbell o Kevin Kelly o
Lawrence Brilliant o Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi o Paul Davies o Robert
Shapiro o Jaron Lanier o J. Doyne Farmer o Colin Tudge o Marvin Minsky
o George Dyson o William H. Calvin o David Gelernter o Janna Levin o
Howard Gardner o Martin Seligman o Richard Nisbett o David Lykken o
Alison Gopnik o Marc D. Hauser o Eric R. Kandel o K. Eric Drexler o
James J. O'Donnell o Michael Shermer o Daniel Goleman o Richard Saul
Wurman o Andy Clark o John Horgan o Roger C. Schank o Nancy Etcoff o
Gerald Holton o Judith Rich Harris o Brian Goodwin o Karl Sabbagh o
Joel Garreau o Susan Blackmore o Leo Chalupa o Jordan Pollack o David
Myers o Ernst P?ppel o Lisa Randall o Stuart Pimm o Eduardo Punset o
Lee Smolin o Rafael Nunez o Timothy Taylor o Mike Weiner o Leon
Lederman o Bart Kosko o Adam Bly o Randolph Nesse o Terrence Sejnowski
o Mary Catherine Bateson o Alan Alda o Cliff Barney o Douglas Rushkoff
o Donald D. Hoffman o Steve Giddings o Lance Knobel o Piet Hut o
Robert Aunger o Christine Finn o David M. Buss o Beatrice Golomb o
Rupert Sheldrake o Delta Willis o Clifford Pickover o Eberhard Zangger
o Steven Quartz o Keith Devlin o John McCarthy o Gary F. Marcus o
Justin Hall o Stephen Reucroft & John Swain
Press Suddeutsche Zeitung o Arts & Letters Daily o SlashDot o The New
York Times o The Wall Street Journal
_________________________________________________________________

The Engine of Prosperity
Academics Demand a New Science Policy from Bush
by Andrian Kreye
January 14, 2003
Because the last decade brought forth not only scientific successes,
but also a new scientific culture, the struggle for the future no
longer takes place in privileged circles, but on the public
stage...The worldview with the greatest profile in this regard is the
"third culture," because it attempts to find scientific answers to the
most important questions facing humanity. New York literary agent John
Brockman coined the term...and conducts its most important debating
club on his internet platform, Edge (http://www.edge.org).
______________________________________________________________________

Ideas -- Criticism -- Debate
January 6, 2003
Essays and Opinion (Lead item)
If you had the President's ear, what would you advise him was the most
urgent scientific issue the country faces? Energy? Stem-cell research?
Bioterror? Science teaching?... more?
______________________________________________________________________

2003 Edge.org World Question

The Media Posted by timothy on Monday January 06, @04:15AM
from the what-would-sauron-do dept.
murky.waters writes "The responses to this year's Edge.org question
have been published; basically, people were asked to imagine they were
nominated as White House science adviser and the President asked them
what are some important issues in science and what we should do about
them. There are 84 responses, ranging in topic from advanced
nanotechnology to the psychology of foreign cultures, and lots of
ideas regarding science, technology, politics, and education. The
responses were written by academics (e.g. Roger Schank, Marvin
Minsky), journalists (Kevin Kelly), Nobel Laureates (Eric Kandel), and
others (Alan Alda). Some of responses are politically loaded but the
majority has either a more specialised proposal, or general remarks
about our world. Many are absolutely fascinating: funny, insightful,
interesting, hell even informative. ... One of the most public
supporters of the Singularity 'religion', Ray Kurzweil, is a regular
at Edge, and currently discussed issues range from said transhumanism
to early-universe theories, and many other kinds of exciting and novel
science." ( Read More...)
______________________________________________________________________

New York Times, January 4, 2003

Today's Visions of the Science of Tomorrow

A t the end of every year, John Brockman, a literary agent and the
publisher of Edge.org, a Web site devoted to science, poses a question
to leading scientists, writers and futurists. In 2002, he asked
respondents to imagine that they had been nominated as White House
science adviser and that President Bush had sought their answer to
"What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world,
and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?" Here
are excerpts of some of the responses.

Mapping the Planet o Professor PlayStation o Little Geniuses o Think
Small o Science Without Secrets o Fending Off the Big One o
Intellectual Globalization o Cassandras of the Labs o Really Popular
Science

______________________________________________________________________

[wsj.jpg] 
SCIENCE JOURNAL 
By SHARON BEGLEY
December 27, 2002
Dear W: Scientists Offer
President Advice on Policy
DEAR READER,
Congratulations! President George W. Bush is considering asking you to
serve as his science adviser. He asks that you write him a memo
addressing, "What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation
and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with
them?"
So begins this year's online question from Edge, an e-salon of leading
scientists and members of the "Third Culture" (in answer to C.P.
Snow's scientists vs. humanists)...
This year--with smallpox vaccination, bioterror, stem-cell research,
climate change, energy policy and missile defense dominating news--the
annual question eschews intellectual posturing and gets down to
practicalities...

...You can improve your own science education at www.edge.org, where
the Edge memos will be available January 6.
[Click here for article--subscription required]
________________________________________________________________


There's a simple story that sums up the perils of global terrorism.
"Once there were two people sitting in a rowboat. One suddenly started
making a hole on his side of the boat. The other screamed. The first
countered and said, 'What do you care what I do on my side of the
boat?'"
Todd Siler

In your search for a new Science Advisor, I strongly recommend that
you select an individual who has as much common sense as he or she has
accomplishments in the sciences. Equally important, this open minded
advisor needs to approach our world of interrelated problems with a
systems view of things, which is something compartmentalized thinkers
struggle with conceptually. This systems view is essential for
effectively dealing with the web of gnarly problems that entangle
nations and strain international relations.
In reviewing the list of challenging scientific issues that need your
immediate attention, few strike me as being as important as fighting
the war on terror. But fighting it to win in both the short and long
run. As the world wrestles with how to best respond to terrorism in
the wake of September 11--and as our nation grapples with the lethal
threats of tyrants and their irrational actions--your advisory board
needs to be as agile and open to the possibilities of a "chance
discovery" as an inventor on the verge of a major breakthrough.
Sparking breakthrough thinking and accelerating innovation are two of
my specialties and passions. If I was fortunate enough to serve as a
member of your ad hoc committee on terrorism, I would suggest taking
the following course of action:

I'd help organize a maverick group of professional thinkers
(scientists, engineers, artists, educators, scholars, policy-makers,
and polymaths), and invite them to delve into a pool of obvious and
deep questions concerning national security.

I'd compare this exploratory work to the adventurous endeavors
undertaken by the American military strategist and futurist, Herman
Kahn, founder of the Hudson Institute think-tank and author of On
Thermonuclear War. Ideally, I would hope to see the creative energies
invested here parallel that of other intensely focused
science-technology-civil society-oriented projects in the past;
imagine a sort of Manhattan Project for Peaceful Solutions or a small
scale Pugwash Conference (without any formal conference which comes
with a certain structure that can inhibit the free exchange of ideas).
Our group would scope out a long-term strategic vision for securing
our nation and safeguarding the world from the projected charges and
potential damage of "rogue elephants."

Note that we would engage in this collaborative envisioning activity
using some unconventional, yet proven, techniques of communication
that involve symbolic modeling. One outcome of this work would be a
set of tactical, implementation plans. These practical plans could
then be evaluated and contrasted with the research-based
recommendations of groups such as the Rand Corporation, among other
solution providers.

They could also be run through the mill of Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis, a business practice I'm quite
familiar with having facilitated many strategic planning sessions for
executive officers of Fortune 500 Companies.
The types of open-ended questions this ad hoc group might consider
responding to could include the following:

o How do we foresee the forces of terrorism growing during this
decade? How will this growth impact our collective future? Describe
these forces.

o What are some non-military solutions for stemming further acts of
aggression against our principles and practices of democracy?

o How will this constant presence of terrorism profoundly affect
the American way of life as well as our dreams for improving the
state of the world?

o How will terrorism affect our advanced warfare programs and
defense policies?

o Is there any way to avoid the inevitable build up of weapons of
mass destruction in defense of by attacking civil liberties and
basic human rights for all?

o How can our world community do a better job of policing renegade
groups of people and organizations whose raison d'etre seems to be
to spread anarchy and other forms of social unrest?

o Other than U.N. disarmament resolutions, what additional
agreements would we need to have securely in place in order to
begin to abolish of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) programs?
Specifically, how will the advancement of these programs help our
prospects for a lasting peace?

o What benefits will the next generation of nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons "offer" us which an improvement in human
communication cannot?

These are merely a handful of basic questions that come to mind at the
moment. Any one of them could be explored by this group of thinkers
using the tools of science and common sense to solve this gravest of
problems: fighting a war on terror that doesn't perpetuate the cycle
of violence but rather prevents it by fostering a new understanding.
The main task of this group would be to find more ingenious ways of
dismantling this Gordian Knot of political, ideological and religious
beliefs other than reaching into that old Pandora's Box and taking out
another weapon to whack away at our worst primal fears.

Clearly we have much more scientific work to do to better understand
the nature of fear and terror, and to recognize the patterns of
ineffective responses to these phenomena. Whenever our brute fears
overpower our rationality trouble abounds.

Finally, we need to explore our deepest, most ambiguous questions
about the roots of terrorism that have as much to do with science as
they do with philosophy and religion. Naturally, your new Science
Advisor needs to handle this reality with the utmost sensitivity. And
the advisory board needs to value the fact that there's always more
than one viable solution to any given problem, when viewed from many
perspectives. Without this broader and deeper exploration, our world
may remain pinned and pained by the headlock we're in.

There's a simple story that sums up the perils of global terrorism.
"Once there were two people sitting in a rowboat. One suddenly started
making a hole on his side of the boat. The other screamed. The first
countered and said, 'What do you care what I do on my side of the
boat?'" I thank you for caring about the hole in our boat. Now you
need to get the rest of the world on board about caring too.
Todd Siler
Founder & Director, Psi-Phi Communications, LLC.
Former advisory board member of the Council on Art, Science,
Technology at M.I.T.
Author of Think Like A Genius and Breaking the Mind Barrier
________________________________________________________________

The type of research we pursue is not as important as the horizon.

Philip Brockman
Today I retire from 43-year career as a physicist for NASA. I look
back to when I began working at Langley Research Center in 1959. At
that time, NASA research centers had a base program and there was no
expectation that our research was to be applied. My goal at that time
was to work on long term problems and solutions.

The current method in government research is to work on projects with
a one or two year payoff. This is where our nation's corporations have
gone in the last few years. Government is now following corporate
America's lead in pursuing instant gratification rather than research
which reaches over the horizon. It is now an MBA-driven culture, one
which is anithetical to the long horizon stuff that inevitably leads
to future breakthroughs.

I have had a wonderful career at NASA and I've been at the edge as I
watched research from our laboratories change the world. But I am not
pleased with the direction the agency is now pursuing, and I regret
that a young physicist now beginning his or her career will not have
the same opportunities I have had to dream, to explore their vision.
This is to the detriment of NASA and to our nation.

The one big lesson I have learned in 43 years as a scientific
researcher: the type of research we pursue is not as important as the
horizon.

Philip Brockman
Physicist
Distinguished Research Associate
NASA--Langley Research Center
________________________________________________________________

Science and the nation are inextricably intertwined. The economic
and military strength of the county is based upon the technologies
that have sprung from our basic science research. Likewise our
medical system is fully dependent on a mixture of medical research
and physical sciences detector development. Thus the health, well
being, safety of our country's citizens depends very directly on
the technological fruits of scientific research.

George F. Smoot

Dear President Bush,

Standard Long Term Analysis in Style of Business and Government 
Science and the nation are inextricably intertwined. The economic and
military strength of the county is based upon the technologies that
have sprung from our basic science research. Likewise our medical
system is fully dependent on a mixture of medical research and
physical sciences detector development. Thus the health, well being,
safety of our country's citizens depends very directly on the
technological fruits of scientific research.

If the USA is to remain the premier nation on Earth, then it must
maintain a robust scientific research program. The appropriate level
is open to societal debate; however, many businesses, e.g. drug
companies and advanced electronic companies, have developed guidelines
at a few percent of their total budget. The issue is not can the
country afford this level of expense, but whether it can afford not to
continue an active, high-quality basic research program.

In terms of defense this is obvious. One only needs to ask the
question: What would be the consequence if some other country to
develop a new energy-directed or new generation bio-weapon, before the
US did and created countermeasures? However, that same thing is true
for major new technologies in the economic and health arenas? Basic
scientific research is so key to the long-term viability of the
nation, that even though the pay off is often years out, it is current
priority. Change can be so rapid in technology that ten years is often
two generations.

A strong scientific research program is not sufficient alone. Clearly,
there must be sufficient infrastructure. The most key ingredient is a
scientifically literate work force and general population. Just as it
is clearly wise to invest in science, investment in education
(science, mathematics, critical thinking) is better than exporting
technical jobs, electronically or otherwise, to other countries (e.g.
India, Russia, etc.) with stronger educational systems. No matter how
good an infrastructure the nation has, it still must have the people
to run it and the scientists and engineers to create and design the
next generations. It is hard to believe that the country would hire
foreign mercenaries for military and daily operations.

At present we enjoy a very good lifestyle. The primary question for
the nation and civilization as a whole is: What is it that allows
this? What has been the big change since the stone age? What steps can
we take to keep this and progress to the next level? Are humans
smarter, harder working, or any another way significantly better raw
material now than in the stone age? One surmises most of the
difference in physical attributes can be ascribed to better nutrition
and medical care.

The Human Future for Stone-Age Man?

It appears in fact that most humans use our technological
infrastructure to live a lifestyle with which a stone-age human could
readily identify. People live in shelters--houses or apartments rather
than caves. The go out daily to make their livelihood--now in SUVs,
cars, commuter trains rather than most by foot. People gather by
electronic fires (TV) or in bars most probably more isolated than the
stone-age clans. In general the bulk of people live in, exploit, and
make up a large cultural and technological infrastructure. They take
advantage of the base accumulated by humanity.

Nearly all the advances are made by a very small fraction of the
population--the innovators--mostly scientists, engineers,
entrepreneurs. The society and nation, which encourages, nurtures, and
makes this innovation possible and exploits it, will proper in many
ways.

Humans as a whole really have not have changed basically since the
stone age. Natural selection has not really changed humans since
humans became the dominant species. In some regions local culture has
instilled in its people respect for law and human life but even in
those places the people will go to war when threatened. Other regions
tribal and clan clashes are a way of life.

If the bulk of humans have not advanced physically, intellectually and
socially over the stone age milieu, then new technology can be as
easily used for terrorist and criminal activities as for neutral and
beneficial activities. Thus as technology improves, the potential for
devastating acts of terrorism continues to increase. The logical end
would be when it is possible for a small group or single individual to
destroy all life on Earth.

For economic, medical, and likely military motivations it is likely
that many areas of technology will continue to develop and its
potential for positive or negative consequences will increase. This
means that, if humans are not changed significantly physically
different, then we must understand how to develop a world culture that
rejects suicide attacks and then eventually violence to resolve
conflict. This would requires a whole program: (1) a better
understanding of why people form cults and groups that support such
activities, (2) understanding and removing the reservoir of young
people (e.g. HAMAS recruits, Jim Jones cult,) (3) demagogic and
totalitarian leaders and societies. This is a mixture of social and
political science studies and actual programs.

The first step is to assess the various issues and determine what
programs can be put in place in the short run and what research should
begin soon. Then developing a longer-term program to reduce the threat
of terrorism both by technical robustness and by social efforts. Note
that El Al is most successful through focusing on the people rather
than relying on sophisticated technology. Intelligence comes first and
then attention to people. We would prefer not to be in the position of
Israel as a country suffering terrorist activities on a very frequent
and regular basis. It costs much in terms of casualties, economic, and
military activities without any end in sight.

As long as terrorism can be kept at a low level in the country, then
the USA can continue most of its development including the scientific
research for the future. We also need to invest in the twin programs
of being robust against terrorist acts and an active program to
convert potential terrorists into positively contributing members of
society. Rather than nation building we must engage in civilization
building.

The path I did not mention was to stop or slow dramatically scientific
research and the development of new technologies and hope or search
for a new stability. We cannot stop things completely because other
countries already have significant scientific and technological
capability. Already third-rate countries, such as Iraq and North
Korea, are able to have advanced welcome programs. We could enter new
dark ages, the Nuclear Dark Ages or Weapons of Mass Destruction Dark
Ages. I don't mean nuclear winter from the exchange of thousands of
nuclear weapons; but a more gradual but catastrophe filled
deterioration. In the new Dark Ages there will be a repeat of regional
wars, blackmail and spoils of war, occasional small nuclear exchanges,
all of these leading to a spiraling down of civilization.

George F. Smoot
Professor of Physics
University of California at Berkeley
Leader. NASA's COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) Team
Author (with Keay Davidson) of Wrinkles In Time 
________________________________________________________________

The typical college student who has studied Arabic for a year has
essentially learned how to decode text and utter simple
sentences--which is useless in decoding a memo written in running
script by a terrorist, or even in understanding a speech by an Arab
official.

John H. McWhorter

Dear President Bush:

Recent geopolitical events bring into sharp relief the inadequacy of
foreign language training in the United States. I am dismayed by the
inability of our high schools and universities to impart a truly
useful competence in foreign languages to any but the most
self-directed and dedicated of students.

Obviously, our country is in dire need of people proficient in Arabic,
to assist us in defending ourselves against Islamicist terrorists. The
shortage of such people in the FBI, CIA, and Foreign Service is truly
chilling, as we see days go by before we even have worthy translations
of Arabic-language statements and documents.

Yet not only are few institutions of learning equipped to impart
Arabic to students, but even fewer are equipped to do so at anything
beyond an elementary level that will serve little use in the urgent
circumstances that confront us.

This is an especially serious problem with Arabic, a language that
seems to present a virtual hydra-head of challenges. The script is
elaborate, takes a great deal of practice to master, and only
approximately spells out the sounds of words. The vocabulary is too
different from English's to ease learning through ample cognates
(opportunity/opportunidad in Spanish, milk/Milch in German). And on
top of this, spoken Arabic varies from country to country to the point
that Egyptians, for example, speak essentially a different language
from Moroccans, and all of the spoken varieties are almost as
different from the written one as French and Spanish are from Latin.
The typical college student who has studied Arabic for a year has
essentially learned how to decode text and utter simple
sentences--which is useless in decoding a memo written in running
script by a terrorist, or even in understanding a speech by an Arab
official.

Military institutions, and other bodies with a concrete reason for
teaching their charges foreign languages well, such as religious
bodies, have long used truly effective, intense language-learning
programs that produce competent foreign language speakers. It is also
clear that European countries regularly give their students a solid
grounding in English that has always been the envy of Americans. For
years, I have been amazed at how an obscure series of books published
by the Assimil company in Europe can give the solitary learner a
decent conversational competence in any language in just six months of
home study, so cleverly are the lessons arranged to impart what is
really needed to speak the language in real life.

But meanwhile, school textbooks, for all their claims to teach "the
language as it is really spoken", continue in a tradition of foreign
language teaching descended from conceptions of grammar based on how
Latin happens to be constructed, imparting tiny vocabularies ("my
uncle is a lawyer but my aunt has a spoon") and rarely lending the
learner any genuine sense of the "feel" of how native speakers
actually put living sentences together. Language training rarely
affords the student any serious time speaking the language at length
on meaningful subjects. It is common to come away from several years
of classes in, say, French or Spanish unable to even carry on a simple
conversation with a native. Language training that leaves the student
unable to say "This smells like a rose", "Never mind", "The car is
stuck in the mud" or "Take your feet off the table"--sentences that
eight years of dedicated French "teaching" left me unable to
render--does not deserve the name.

The time has passed when our country could afford for excellent
language teaching to be limited to circumstances lending specialized
training to a few. Language teaching schools like Berlitz, the
military, and even findings from academic specialists in
second-language teaching have long bypassed our schools and
universities in foreign language teaching. In our moment, it is high
time that an effort on a nationwide scale be made to not only impart
foreign languages to students, but to do it in an effective way.

And in these times, our efforts must be focused as much on languages
like Chinese, Arabic, and Persian as the "old standby" languages like
French, Spanish and German. Our geopolitical situation requires this,
and the marvelous ethnic mixture of our country since the Immigration
Act of 1965 renders it even more urgent, in helping to foster
understanding and exchange in a new kind of America.

Sincerely,
John H. McWhorter
Associate Professor of Linguistics, UC Berkeley
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Author of Losing The Race: Self-Sabotage In Black America and The
Power Of Babel: A Natural History Of Language.
________________________________________________________________

Advocate technology as a learning partner across the curriculum.
This strategy is important for improving learning, developing
computer literacy, and for inviting a variety of users, including
girls, into technology.

Sherry Turkle

The Gender Gap In The Computer Culture 
There has been much interest in the digital divide as it pertains to
inequities between the poor and the rich. There is another digital
divide that threatens to limit scientific productivity and scope. This
is the inequity in the numbers of women who participate in the
computer culture. The computer culture is still, in the main, made by
engineers for engineers and by men for men. Girls are less likely to
take high-level computing classes in high school, and comprised just
17 percent of those taking Advanced Placement Computer Science exams.
Girls outnumbered boys only in their enrollment in "word processing"
classes, arguably the contemporary version of a typing class. In 1995,
at the post-secondary level, women received one in four of the
Computer/Information Sciences bachelor's degrees and only 11 percent
of the Ph.D.'s in Engineering-related technologies. These educational
gaps reverberate in the workplace, where by most estimates women today
occupy only 20 percent of the jobs in Information Technology.

A recent study of middle school and high school girls, commissioned by
the American Association of University Women made it clear that gender
inequity in digital culture is increasing. One goal is to get more
girls into the "pipeline" to computer-related careers. This could, of
course, be an end in itself, but diversity in participation would also
mean a richer digital culture. Digital culture (not so far away from a
world that asked users if they wanted to "abort, terminate, or fail"
processes running on their machines) could be positively transformed
through the integration of girls' and women's insights and life
experiences. So one of the values in getting more girls and women
interested in the computer pipeline is that their greater presence may
transform the computer culture overall; by the same token, changes in
the e-culture itself--the ways technology is discussed, valued, and
applied--would invite more girls and women to participate fully in
that culture, to become computer fluent.

This comment on values reflects the fact that today women seem to be
disenfranchised in the computer culture for cultural rather than
intellectual reasons. When young women are asked about their attitudes
towards computing they almost never report overt discrimination, but
at the same time, when asked to describe a person who is "really good
with computers" they describe a man. And most of them do not predict
that they will want to learn more about or become more involved with
computers in the future. These girls are not computer phobic, they are
"computer reticent." They say that they are not afraid but simply do
not want to get involved. They express a "we can, but I don't want to"
philosophy. Girls' views of computer careers, and of the computer
culture--including software, games, and Internet environments--tend to
reproduce stereotypes about a "computer person" as male and
antisocial, Women no longer (as they once did) see computing as "too
hard" for them. Earlier generations of women said, Women can't be
involved in technical professions, "We can't but I want to." Girls and
young women today seem to be saying, Women can do computing, "We can,
but I don't want to!" This position is usually accompanied by a
characterization of the computer as it has been presented to them at
school as infused with values that they cannot identify with. Simply
put: the computer culture is presented as a world which emphasizes
technical capacity, speed, and efficiency. It estranges a broad array
of learners, many girls included, who do not identify with the
wizardry of computer aficionados and have little interest in the
purely technical aspects of the machines. The computer culture has
become linked to a characteristically masculine worldview, such that
women too often feel they need to choose between the cultural
associations of "femininity" and those of "computers," a clich? that
has proven resistant to the growing diversity of information
technology and its users. Girls discuss information technology-related
careers not as too difficult, but as a "waste of intelligence."
Insists a young woman from Baltimore, "Guys just like to do that: sit
in a cubicle all day." In talking about their lack of desire to
continue learning about computers, girls also focus on the violence
and cruelty of current video games and see a culture that they do not
want to participate in. They are happy to play social simulation games
and chat with their friends, but see their identity on the computer as
that of "users," not the empowered.

Their teachers have given them little to inspire them. Teacher
education has stressed the "technical" side of things: Education
schools tend to give instruction in basic technical skills rather than
on how to integrate computers into the curriculum. A 1999 national
survey found that only 29 percent of teachers had six or more hours of
curriculum-integration instruction, whereas 42 percent had that amount
of basic-skills training. In the study by the American Association of
University Women of 2000, only 30% of teachers ranked as
"sophisticated" in their use of computers report that they received
any technology training in an undergraduate or master's teacher
education program, which probably reflects in part responses from
older teachers. Only 11 percent of the total teachers who were polled
report that they received training specifically in how to apply or
integrate computer technology into their lesson plans. Thus, current
teacher-training practices emphasize short technical courses on
connectivity and hardware. Preservice teachers make it clear that they
start their jobs uninformed about what the technology is supposed to
accomplish for their classrooms, either educationally or socially.

Our current approach to teacher training focuses on the technical
properties of hardware; it does not emphasize educational applications
or innovative uses of computing across the curriculum. Yet what
teachers need is sustained and ongoing education about how to
integrate technology with curricular materials and information about
how to make technology part of a humanistic classroom culture, so
essential for bringing girls into the picture. This latter approach
would create better informed teachers as well as multiple entry points
to computer competence for both students and teachers. The prevailing
emphasis on the "mechanics of computer operation" does not respond to
this need. As one teacher put it: "Without teacher education, it won't
matter if each student has his/her own computer. We teachers hate
having thousands of dollars of equipment thrown at us and being told
to use it when we have no clue how to go about it"

There are many points of entry to address this problem. All require
research and educational imagination in curriculum planning. All would
make the computer culture more vibrant and relevant for women as well
as men, and ultimately for us all.

o Advocate technology as a learning partner across the curriculum.
This strategy is important for improving learning, developing
computer literacy, and for inviting a variety of users, including
girls, into technology. The infusion of technology across the
curriculum also recognizes and supports multiple entry points into
technology. Some learners may develop a fluency with information
technology through music, some through mathematics, and others
through the arts.

o Enforce a distinction between using the computer as a tool
(teaching students how to use powerpoint) and using computation to
inspire new ways of thinking and learning. It is the second that
will inspire young minds to believe that there are rich rewards in
staying with the subject.

o Professional development for teachers, both preservice and
inservice, needs to emphasize not simply how computer technology
works but on how it can spark creativity across disciplines. There
appear to be a group of learners, predominantly young men, who are
willing to throw themselves into computing, presented as a
technical puzzle. But given the integration of computing into
culture, those in the field need to have broader interests and
motivation for being there. Improving the way computation is
introduced in education will thus not only draw in young women and
keep them from dropping out, it holds our only chance of having a
more broadly based computer culture for all of us.

Sherry Turkle
Director, Initiative on Technology and Self
MIT
Author of Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet and
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit.
________________________________________________________________

Rather than fixate on controlling greenhouse gases, which are
politically hard to suppress, I suggest a new, innovative research
program directed at the central global problem: warming. A partial
cure can come from simple methods, until now little studied.

Gregory Benford
Mr President:

Prudence alone should lead you to ask the scientific establishment to
study new, less costly methods of dealing with a global problem--the
possibility of climate change. It is time to require more inventive
thinking on this issue.
In his recent letter to you, William Calvin pointed out that shifting
ocean currents could trigger big shifts in weather. Rather than fixate
on controlling greenhouse gases, which are politically hard to
suppress, I suggest a new, innovative research program directed at the
central global problem: warming. A partial cure can come from simple
methods, until now little studied.

They are:

1) Increase the overall reflection of sunlight from the planet as a
whole. Here simple methods may work well. Trigger more cloud cover
over the tropical oceans. Color rooftops and blacktop roads lighter,
to lessen absorption. These ideas are fairly simple, and some field
work on them has been done. They do need study to make them efficient
and effective.

2) Hide carbon in the deep oceans. This keeps it from making carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere for about 1000 years. Most biospheric carbon
is already in the oceans anyway, and they can take a good deal more.

3) Push innovative energy research. Hand Ray Orbach at DOE the paper
by Hoffert et al, in Science 298, (p 981, 2002) and ask him to
implement its suggestions. You should also probably help develop
nuclear power in the most needy areas of the developing nations. With
safeguards against nuclear proliferation, this could cut down on the
default choice many are using--coal burning plants.
These approaches need further research, and should be fashioned into
off-the-shelf technologies. If in the next decade alarm bells go off,
warning of an approaching big wrench in our global climate, we can
then reach for these methods. Whatever one's position on global
warming, it is prudent to be prepared with a strategy that goes beyond
just nay-saying to the Kyoto Protocols.

Gregory Benford
Professor of Physics at University of California, Irvine
Author of Deep Time
________________________________________________________________

The problem of political and religious fanaticism is beyond the
scope separately of psychology, political science, or historical
study. An interdisciplinary program building upon current efforts
but addressing the issues with the use of multiple methods is
needed.

Vera John-Steiner
For a while after the defeat of Fascism and Nazism in the Second World
War, there was a hope for an era of enlightenment. It was thought that
a scientific understanding of its sources could help avoid a
repetition of the fascist nightmare. The Authoritarian Personality by
Theodor Adorno and co authors was a well known effort to achieve such
understanding.

Today political and religious fanaticisms are a source of world wide
anxiety. Al Qaeda is the most frightening at present. But it is not
only Islamic fanaticism that leads to atrocities. The Oklahoma City
bombing, mass murders of Moslems by Hindu mobs in India, the
assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in Israel and of Martin Luther
King in Nashville were the work of non-Islamic fanatics.

The torture-murder of a young gay man in Wyoming, the bombing of
abortion clinics, the torching of black churches and of Jewish
synagogues, all were associated with fanatical beliefs and movements.

Legislative, military, and educational solutions are proposed and
undertaken, but without any prior understanding of how fanaticism is
being fostered, both wittingly and unwittingly, or what causes certain
fanatical individuals to resort to individual or mass murder. Neither
is it well understood what factors or measures might counteract or
inhibit fanatical violence. At present, specialists concerned with
these issues focus either on social antecedents (including political,
economic and religious factors) or on personality variables .
.
The problem of political and religious fanaticism is beyond the scope
separately of psychology, political science, or historical study. An
interdisciplinary program building upon current efforts but addressing
the issues with the use of multiple methods is needed. Such a proposal
is made while recognizing that no single approach, however carefully
planned, can fully meet the challenge of fanaticism in contemporary
society. But a major and well-planned study, devoted to causes and
solutions, could make a contribution to the urgent task of decreasing
fanatical violence. President Bush should initiate such a program as a
scientific response to the sense of incomprehension and despair so
prevalent in the world at present.

Vera John-Steiner
Presidential Professor, University of New Mexico
Author of Notebooks of the Mind and Creative Collaboration
________________________________________________________________

Civilization's rocketing growth comes from exploiting
non-renewables: coal since 1800 and oil since 1900, for example. US
oil peaked about 15 years ago; global supplies should peak in about
10-15 years. There are semi-practical alternatives available or at
least conceivable to let us get by on renewables, but virtually no
one really sees the importance.

Paul B. MacCready
The world can support 1.5 to 2.0 billion people continuously, in
combination with a natural world. Right now we have 6.2 billion
people. The total mass of vertebrates on land and in the air is now
made up 98% by humans+livestock+pets, and 2% by all natural creatures.
Ten thousand years ago the 98% was only under 0.1%. Civilization's
rocketing growth comes from exploiting non-renewables: coal since 1800
and oil since 1900, for example. US oil peaked about 15 years ago;
global supplies should peak in about 10-15 years. There are
semi-practical alternatives available or at least conceivable to let
us get by on renewables, but virtually no one really sees the
importance.

Virtually all your correspondents focus on details of how to make
humans better and more numerous. Very few examine civilization's
growth and the world as would a creature from space visiting us every
few thousand years. Sincerely yours,

Paul B. MacCready
Chairman/Founder of AeroVironment Inc.
The "Father of Human-Powered Flight"
________________________________________________________________

In a climate of growing religious fundamentalism and rising
skepticism about science, the scientific community itself has began
to understand the importance of reaching out to the wider public.

Margaret Wertheim

Dear Mr. President

Of all the scientific issues currently confronting us it seems to me
that one is paramount--the woeful state of the public understanding of
science in our nation. Some of your other correspondents have already
raised this issue and I concur with much of what they have said. But I
would like to bring to your attention a further dimension of the
problem--the degree to which ignorance about science is correlated
with gender, age, race and socioeconomic position.

At present the serious science readership in the USA is estimated to
be around 1.5 million people, the combined subscriber base to our 2
major popular science publications, Discover and Scientific American.
Readers of these and other science-based magazines are well served and
scientifically fluent. But who precisely are these readers?
Overwhelmingly they are white, male, over 35, well educated (often
employed in science and technology fields) and in the upper
socioeconomic brackets. This 1.5 million people constitutes just a
little more than half a percent of our population, yet they are the
audience at whom almost all scientific publishing is aimed. This is
also the readers at whom science book publishers pitch their wares.
The question I would like to raise is what about the other 99% of our
population?

In a climate of growing religious fundamentalism and rising skepticism
about science, the scientific community itself has began to understand
the importance of reaching out to the wider public. Yet for all the
admirable rhetoric on this subject, most science communication
continues to be aimed at an already-well-informed audience. What I
would like to propose, Mr President, is the establishment of a
National Office for the Public Understanding of Science--an
organization that would be charged with responsibility for reaching
out to the "other 99", those who at present read almost no science and
who, as polls continue to show, are almost universally ignorant about
the subject. Such an office would have as its mission the task of
finding and supporting truly innovative ways to communicate about
science outside the box.

One major group of people who are disenfranchised from science are
women. One of the tasks for our proposed National Office could be to
explore ways in which science might be made more accessible and
exciting to women. It is a sad but true fact that few women read
science magazines, yet women buy and read an enormous number of
magazines per se. One thing our office might explore then is ways to
get science content into women's magazines such as Vogue, Elle and
Glamour. What about science programs on television that might appeal
to women? At present almost all the science on television is watched
by men--is it possible that there are other ways of presenting science
on TV that might also appeal to a female audience?

Another task our office might consider is ways in which scientific
organizations could be partnered with cultural organizations such as
art galleries and museums. So often science is presented as an
isolated activity, but like all human enterprises science takes place
within the context of the wider social and cultural spectrum. One way
to draw more people into science, I believe, is to bring them through
the portal of their other interests. There are, for example, many
artists today producing work based around scientific themes--genetic
engineering, nanotechnology, and computation in particular. This work,
and the immense interest in the arts world in scientific issues right
now, constitutes a formidable resource. Our office could work to
create links between artists and scientists in specific areas of
mutual interest.

We urgently need to improve our nation's pool of scientific literacy.
If we are serious about achieving this goal we must be serious about
reaching out to those who are disenfranchised. That means taking
seriously who those people are and how to speak to them effectively.
99% of our people is too large an audience to ignore--it is no good
sitting around demanding that they come to science--science must find
ways to go out to them!

Margaret Wertheim
Science writer and Commentator
Author of Pythagoras' Trousers and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A
History of Space from Dante to the Internet. 
________________________________________________________________

Biomedical research in the United States has a distinguished record
of contributing to knowledge and to new medical treatments. In the
same way, research with cells derived from cloned human embryos
will offer unique opportunities to study many extremely unpleasant
diseases, perhaps one day to have treatments for these diseases and
also to produce safer medicines. This research cannot be carried
out in any other way.

Ian Wilmut

Mr President,

Biomedical research in the United States has a distinguished record of
contributing to knowledge and to new medical treatments. In the same
way, research with cells derived from cloned human embryos will offer
unique opportunities to study many extremely unpleasant diseases,
perhaps one day to have treatments for these diseases and also to
produce safer medicines. This research cannot be carried out in any
other way.
The diseases include motor neurone disease, diabetes and genetic
causes of sudden heart failure. Researchers could learn a great deal
about these diseases if they could study in the laboratory the cells
that are affected by the disease. Later they would assess the effects
of drugs upon the malfunctioning cells. One day it may also be
possible use cells from cloned embryos to treat unpleasant
degenerative diseases by supplying replacement cells for those that
have been damaged in diseases such as diabetes or heart failure.

Each year thousands of people in the USA are killed by taking
medicines, even if the medicine was prescribed and used appropriately.
This is because people differ in the way that they react to drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies would be able to reduce this risk to us all
and design drugs to be safer and more effective if they could study
these differences in function of liver cells. At present the only
source of such cells for research is the liver of casualties, if the
organ is not suitable for transfer to a patient. Liver cells with
these important differences in responses to drugs could be derived
from cloned embryos and be used first to study these genetic
differences and then to design better drugs and to establish the basis
for personalised treatments.

There is no fully effective treatment for any of these conditions and
in some cases none at all. We all know people affected by them and may
fall victim ourselves, as we get older. In these circumstances, it
would be a tragedy if concern over the unsubstantiated claims of the
birth of a cloned child led to legislation that prohibited these
important research projects.

By contrast there is every reason to encourage legislation to prohibit
the production of children by cloning. Apart from the many ethical and
social concerns the evidence from experiments with animals all points
to the conclusion that the likely outcome of attempts to clone humans
would include late abortions, the birth of dead children and of
abnormal live children. As there is no way to avoid this tragic
outcome it is important that legislation is enacted as soon as
possible to prohibit such attempts.

I urge you to distinguish between these two uses of the cloning
procedure, to allow the research that has the potential to be so
beneficial, while prohibiting the misguided attempts to produce
children.

Ian Wilmut
Professor and Head of Department of Gene Expression and Development at
the Roslin Institute
Leader of the team that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1966 (The first
animal to be cloned from an adult cell).
Coauthor (with Colin Tudge & Keith Campbell) of The Second Creation;
author of After Dolly: The Uses and Misuses of Cloning (forthcoming).
________________________________________________________________

With the genetic material in hand of organisms such as human,
mouse, and fruit fly, researchers now have the opportunity to
understand these complex creatures so that we may one day better
treat disease, fully understand evolutionary biology, and thus
understand the most fundamental aspects of life and how we as
humans function.

J. Craig Venter

Dear President Bush:

At no time in our history is science more important in our society and
thus to your administration than now. We have made exciting and
promising advances in so many areas of scientific and medical research
yet we still have so much to learn. This is especially true in the
rapidly growing field of genomics.

In just the last 10 years we have gone from having the complete
genetic map of just a few microbes to today having completed the
sequencing of more than 100 organisms. With the genetic material in
hand of organisms such as human, mouse, and fruit fly, researchers now
have the opportunity to understand these complex creatures so that we
may one day better treat disease, fully understand evolutionary
biology, and thus understand the most fundamental aspects of life and
how we as humans function.

The future is indeed bright but only if we have a science-literate
administration to help translate this basic research into potential
treatments. With these great advances also come tough ethical issues.
But we must not become mired in these debates nor let fear and
ignorance win out over progress for us all. While I cannot accept the
offer to be science advisor I would like to outline a few ideas for
your administration to consider.

There are three key areas that need immediate attention:

o 1) Revamping the health care system using genomics and other
predictive tools to move toward a preventative medicine based
system.

o 2) Stepping up our efforts in developing deterrents and defensive
mechanisms to overcome the biological warfare threat to humans and
agriculture.

o 3) Moving as rapidly as possible toward a hydrogen-based economy.

Our health care system is suffering from double digit inflation while
the number of uninsured and underinsured continues to rise beyond any
acceptable level for a civilized nation. We have now the potential to
dramatically change the cost of health care by using the new
predictive tools that will come from the genomics revolution. It is
imperative that we make the commitment to go the less costly route of
preventing and limiting the extent of disease rather than treating
symptoms after they occur as we do now.

On this same preventative theme we can greatly diminish or effectively
eliminate the threat of bioterrorism by using the modern tools of
genomics to more quickly and accurately detect a suspect agent
including genetically modified organisms; develop new effective
vaccines without the risk profile associated with current small pox
and anthrax vaccines; and develop new effective antivirals and
antibiotics.

While your administration has made great progress in providing new
funding for these efforts, more direct funding for the National
Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) at the NIH will
move this field faster.

Despite much discussion on the topic of alternative energy solutions,
the United States continues to rely almost exclusively on fossil
fuels. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) approximately
80 percent of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions currently come
from fossil fuel combustion. The DOE also estimates that world carbon
dioxide emissions are projected to rise from 6.1 billion metric tons
carbon equivalent in 1999 to 7.9 billion metric tons per year in 2010
and to 9.9 billion metric tons in 2020.

This continued consumption of fossil fuels is ample evidence that
there is a growing need to eliminate carbon dioxide output into the
environment and capture back some of the carbon dioxide associated
with global warming. Recent climate modeling from Scripps Institute of
Oceanography suggests that if climate change is allowed to continue
unabated a temperature increase of just two degrees will be enough to
dramatically reduce annual snowfall and ultimately food production due
to the drought that will develop in our most important agricultural
states.

As a nation we must invest in finding new solutions for our energy
needs. I believe that genomics could provide a viable avenue for
alleviating some of the problems associated with carbon-based fuels.

I believe it is imperative that we push forward on all the fronts
outlined above to insure energy independence, national security, and
an improved environment, health and well-being for future generations.

Sincerely

J. Craig Venter
Pioneer in sequencing the human genome
President of the Center for the Advancement of Genomics
President and Chairman, J. Craig Venter Science Foundation
________________________________________________________________

Your father called himself "the education president," and you have
promised new educational policies in which"no child is left
behind."

Steven Pinker

Dear President Bush,

Your father called himself "the education president," and you have
promised new educational policies in which "no child is left behind."
These affirmations of the centrality of education in a modern
democracy are admirable. As our economy comes to depend increasingly
on technology, and as modern media present us with unprecedented
choices - in our lifestyles, our workplaces, and our political
commitments - a child who cannot master an ever-increasing body of
skills and knowledge will be left farther and farther behind.

Unfortunately, the goals of the Presidents Bush are not being
realized. Most debates about education in this country focus on issues
of administration: vouchers, charter schools, class size, teachers'
unions, budgets, high-stakes testing. Fewer have focused on the actual
process of education: how events in the classroom affect the minds of
the pupils. This is an area in which science - in particular, the
sciences of mind - can make crucial contributions.

Your immediate predecessor was enthusiastic about applying research on
the brain to education and child development. But as exciting as the
field of basic neuroscience is, I suspect it will provide few insights
into the process of education. All learning must change the brain, but
the changes at the level of brain cells are pretty much the same in
all complex organisms -- including mice, which don't learn to read,
write, or add. It is the patterns of changes across billions of
neurons that determine the distinctively human forms of learning that
face us in the classroom, and to understand them we need to understand
how intact human beings perceive, think, and act. These topics are the
province of the sciences of mind, particularly cognitive science,
  psychology, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and
evolutionary psychology, must be brought to bear on education in a
  more systematic way than has happened so far.

First and foremost, we must apply a scientific mindset to the
educational process. People outside of the educational establishment
are often shocked to learn how little in instructional practice has
   been evaluated using the standard paraphernalia of social
  science-control groups, random assignment, data collection,
statistics. Instead, classroom practice is set by fads, romantic
theories, slick packages, and political crusades. We already know that
some methods of teaching reading work better than others; we need more
of these assessments, and faster implementations of what works into
classroom settings.

Second, the sciences of mind can provide a sounder conception of human
nature, which ultimately underlies all educational policy. What is the
mind of a child inherently good at? What is it bad at? Without answers
to such fundamental questions we will be groping at random or plunging
headlong in wrong directions. An emerging view is that the human mind
is impressively competent at problems that were recurring challenges
to our evolutionary ancestors - seeing and moving, speaking and
listening, reading emotions and intentions, making friends and
influencing people. It is not so good at problems that are far simpler
(as gauged by what we can program a computer to do, for example) but
which are posed only by a modern way of life: reading and writing,
doing mathematical calculations, understanding the world of science or
  the mechanics of a complex society. If so, this has obvious
applications for education, both positive and negative. We should not
make false analogies that assume that children can learn to write as
easily as they learn to speak, that learning math can be as fun as
learning to run and throw, or that children in groups will learn to do
science as readily as they learn to exchange gossip. On the other hand
we can try to co-opt the mental faculties that work well (such as
understanding how objects fall and roll) and get children to apply
them to problems for which they lack natural competence.

Third, we can use an understanding of the mind to set priorities in
education at all levels. The goal of education should be to provide
students with the cognitive tools that are most important for grasping
the modern world and that are most unlike the cognitive tools they are
born with. Observers from our best science writers to Jay Leno are
frequently appalled by the innumeracy, factual ignorance, and
scientific illiteracy of typical Americans. This has implications in
countless areas of the public and private spheres - for example, when
people fall victim to scam artists and irrational exuberance in their
investments, when they squander their money and health on medical and
nutritional flim-flam, and when they misunderstand the advantages and
disadvantages of a market economy in their political decisions. The
obvious cure for these fallacies is enhanced education in relatively
new fields such as economics, biology, and probability and statistics.
Unfortunately, most high-school and college curricula have barely
changed since medieval times, and are barely changeable, because no
one wants to be the philistine who seems to be saying that it is
unimportant to learn a foreign language, or English literature, or
trigonometry, or the classics. But no matter how valuable a subject
may be, there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and a decision to
teach one subject is also a decision not to teach another one. The
question is not whether trigonometry is important, but whether it is
more important than statistics; not whether an educated person should
know the classics, but whether it is more important for an educated
person to know the classics than to know elementary economics. In a
world whose complexities are constantly challenging our intuitions,
  these tradeoffs cannot responsibly be avoided.

Sincerely,

Steven Pinker
Peter de Florez Professor of Psychology
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
  MIT
Author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules,
and The Blank Slate. 
________________________________________________________________

... my proposal is on a different front: to dramatically increase
funding for promising new methodologies in the field of "human
somatic cell engineering," which bypass entirely fetal stem cells.
These emerging technologies create new tissues with a patient's own
DNA by modifying one type of cell (such as a skin cell) directly
into another (such as a pancreatic Islet cell or a heart cell)
without the use of fetal stem cells.

Ray Kurzweil

FIRST, consider the following: would-be bioterrorists have no need to
put their "inventions" through the FDA for approval. But the
scientists we are depending on to develop the defensive technologies
(for example, new anti-viral medications) are required to go through
this extremely cumbersome process. Complying with these regulations
not only takes many years, but slows down the entire innovation
process.

If we look at an analogous offensive-defensive standoff, that of
software viruses, we find that the cyberterrorists are indeed creating
and unleashing ever more sophisticated software pathogens. But
development of the defensive technologies (for example, antiviral
software) has been able to keep pace, and software viruses are at
worst a nuisance. We have done so well precisely because the
development of software technologies is unhampered by sluggish
regulatory procedures. We will need the same speed of innovation and
implementation in the biological sciences.

In the current environment, when one person dies in gene therapy
trials, there are congressional investigations and all gene therapy
research comes to a grinding halt. There's a legitimate need to make
biomedical research as safe as possible, but our balancing of risks is
completely off. The millions of people who desperately need the
advances to be made available by gene therapy and other breakthrough
biotechnology advances appear to carry little political weight against
a handful of well publicized casualties from the inevitable risks of
progress.

This equation will become even more stark when we consider the
emerging dangers of bioengineered pathogens. What is needed is a
change in public attitude in terms of tolerance for needed risk. The
leadership for creating this change can only come from the top
official, the President of the United States.

SECOND, on another biotechnology front, pressure will heat up
considerably this year in the controversial area of stem cell
therapies. The number of available germ cell lines has turned out to
be a small fraction of the 60 lines that were to be made available for
research purposes. Although I would advocate that this policy be
reconsidered, my proposal is on a different front: to dramatically
increase funding for promising new methodologies in the field of
"human somatic cell engineering," which bypass entirely fetal stem
cells. These emerging technologies create new tissues with a patient's
own DNA by modifying one type of cell (such as a skin cell) directly
into another (such as a pancreatic Islet cell or a heart cell) without
the use of fetal stem cells. There have been breakthroughs in this
area in the past year. For example, scientists from the U.S. and
Norway successfully converted human skill cells directly into immune
system cells and nerve cells.

Consider the question: what is the difference between a skin cell and
any other type of cell in the body? After all, they all have the same
DNA. The differences are found in protein signaling factors that we
are now beginning to understand. By manipulating these proteins, we
can trick one type of cell into becoming another.

Perfecting this technology would not only diffuse a contentious
ethical and political issue, it is also the ideal solution from a
scientific perspective. If I need pancreatic Islet cells, or kidney
tissues, or a whole new heart, to avoid autoimmune reactions, I would
strongly prefer to obtain these with my own DNA, not the DNA from
someone else's germ line cells. The feasibility of doing this has been
demonstrated, and there should be a crash program to perfect a
technology that could dramatically improve the health of all
Americans.

THIRD, on a different front, that of energy, there has been dramatic
recent scientific progress in developing hydrogen fuel cells,
including microscopic-sized fuel cells using the same technology that
fabricates electronic circuits. These fuel cells, based on
micro-electronic mechanical systems (MEMS) can be scaled from tiny
devices that will power everything from portable electronics up to
cars, appliances, and homes. These systems use safe fuels such as
methanol and generate no emissions other than tiny amounts of water
and carbon dioxide. The fuels can be fabricated without environmental
impact from widely available coal and shale oil with new technologies
that capture emissions. All of the requisite technologies have been
demonstrated.

Perfecting these new hydrogen-based energy sources would have profound
and positive implications for the economy and the environment, not to
mention the geopolitical minefields of our current fossil fuel-based
economy.

Ray Kurzweil
Inventor and Technologist
Author of The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Age of Spiritual
Machines 
________________________________________________________________

New insights in developmental biology--our similarities to not only
chimpanzees and baboons, but to fruit flies and worms, the genomic
revolution and the invigorated emergence of neuroscience are all
candidates for unforgettable discoveries. They must be pursued with
all the means at our disposal. I would like to address a totally
different one: the birth of our universe.

Gino Segre

Dear President Bush:

We are becoming increasingly aware of the connectedness and smallness
of our world. Our problems are global- we are all affected by what one
area or country does. Mid-western industrial pollution impacts on
Washington D.C. air quality; Antarctic ice melting causes flooding in
Bangladesh and Peruvian El Ninos can be traced to atmospheric pressure
seesaws between the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. The AIDs epidemic's
ravages know no boundaries. These realizations have changed the way we
think and must change the way we act. Finding ways to deal with these
issues and ones like them is a pressing scientific need as well as a
political, economic and moral one.

Parallel to these concerns, however, are topics that are pressing even
though they do not directly alter the quality of our everyday life.
Science deals with day-to-day matters, but it also challenges us to
leave the legacy of its discoveries to future generations. The Greeks
are remembered because of their findings in philosophy and geometry,
not because of territorial conquests. Copernicus' realization of the
Sun's centrality marks the Renaissance. We want to be remembered in
the centuries that come because of our own great achievements, ones
that our descendants will say changed the way they see the world.

New insights in developmental biology--our similarities to not only
chimpanzees and baboons, but to fruit flies and worms, the genomic
revolution and the invigorated emergence of neuroscience are all
candidates for unforgettable discoveries. They must be pursued with
all the means at our disposal. I would like to address a totally
different one: the birth of our universe.

A century ago there was no scientific theory of the universe's origin.
It has been less than 40 years since we obtained the first evidence of
radiation in the creation's aftermath and only a decade since we
established convincingly that the universe was once a super-dense,
ultra hot medium at essentially one common temperature. I said
"essentially" because there are small deviations in that record;
differences far less that a part per thousand from point to point in
the sky, but these provide the clue to all the formations of galaxies,
stars and planets that followed. This journey back in time is the
greatest archaeological expedition ever undertaken, the uncovering of
how our universe began and evolved. We almost have the tools in hand
for embarkation on this voyage and should not dawdle.

Through the past century's insights, we have come to realize that we
live on an ordinary planet circling a typical star of a mid-sized
galaxy. Perhaps there is one additional step--that our very universe
is not an anomaly in a continuum of space and time. We can leave a
trace greater than Copernicus did. Such discoveries, achieved by
scientists engaged in international collaborations and speaking the
common language of science may serve as a role model for a world in
which national, ethnic and religious barriers are broken down.

I believe it is a pressing issue for the nation and the world to have
dreams worthy of the best it can achieve.

Sincerely yours,

Gino Segre

Professor of Physics and Astronomy
University of Pennsylvania
Author of A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About The Past
And Future Of Our Species, Planet And Universe 
________________________________________________________________

Science does not allocate equal time or space to all ideas once the
winnowing process of quality assessment has begun. To follow the
political doctrine of "balance" diminishes democracy since it
distorts the knowledge base upon which sound decisions should be
made.

Stephen H. Schneider

We all share a strong belief in democracy. But it can only function
well when the people understand the choices they need to make and are
in a position to make trade-offs rationally. As issues get
increasingly complex, ignorance decouples the people from the
knowledge they need to help guide policy choices that can shape our
future. Illiteracy in all forms--and especially in scientific
matters--is a threat to a functioning democracy.

Woodrow Wilson said about a century ago "what are we if we have to be
taken care of by a handful of experts who know the job, for if we
don't know the job we are not truly free". Therefore, as Science
Advisor I would work to greatly enhance the scientific literacy of the
public--but not just the public, also government employees, elected
officials and the media.

Science literacy is not just about the "facts"--knowledge of
chemistry, physics, biology or economics per se. More important for
non-specialists is to understand the process of science, and how
science interacts with public policy issues and gets communicated via
the media.

The media and political institutions are typically advocacy based--if
a reporter gets the views of a Democrat, she must also get the views
of a Republican. That is certainly appropriate in covering political
stories, but rarely are complex issues of science simply decomposable
into two polarized positions. Moreover, not only are there many
possibilities, but relative probabilities are attached by scientific
assessment to each of these possibilities.

Thus, an "equal time" doctrine is in fact a miscommunication of what
science knows or how it works. Science is about quality, not equality.
However, equality of opportunity to get your data and ideas heard is
essential too, but via forums in which people who are knowledgeable
about the complexities are present and in peer reviewed publications.
Such institutions of science are where probabilities get thrashed out.

Science does not allocate equal time or space to all ideas once the
winnowing process of quality assessment has begun. To follow the
political doctrine of "balance" diminishes democracy since it distorts
the knowledge base upon which sound decisions should be made. In
science all views are not given equal time or credence because the
scientific process of assessing likelihood takes precedence over mere
inclusion. This leads to many conflicts over controversial policy
issues, like climate change, strategic defense or health policy.

Climate change--in particular Global Warming--is a good case in point.
No honest scientist can assert with total confidence it will turn out
to be mild or catastrophic. But a dozen scientific assessments have
shown that the "good for you" and "end of the world" scenarios are the
two lowest probability outcomes. Some benefits are likely, but so too
are a range of risks--especially for natural systems and in poorer
countries.

The current political debates in which mild/catastrophic views are
polarized and get the bulk of the attention in the media and in front
of congress is an unfortunate distortion of what the scientific
community has reported in its assessments. Such false dichotomy
debates impede, rather than enhance democracy since they are not
accurately representing what is known and at what likelihood.

The role of science the is clear: assess what can happen and what are
the odds of it happening. The role of policy--driven by the beliefs of
the public--is to make value judgments on how to react to the odds of
various possibilities. It will take some major realignment of
institutions like the media and congressional hearings apparatus to
back away from the model of polarized advocates toward a doctrine of
"perspective": reporting and debating based on the assessment of the
likelihood of various events, not giving advocates of extreme opposite
views equal time or space.

Over time, better applications of science by a public and officials
who understand what can happen and at what odds will strengthen
democracy and distance it from both the special interests that spin
and distort to bolster ideological or client interests and the elitism
of the few people who are the only ones who currently "know the job".

Stephen H. Schneider
Professor, Dept. of Biological Sciences
Stanford University
________________________________________________________________

Your number one priority in science and technology should be a new
commitment to international public health. It is not a particularly
sexy topic; it needs no new nano-know-how, nor a radical change in
our way of seeing the physical world. It will create no great
technical advantage for America, nor add to its already impressive
defenses. Though it will employ the talents of hundreds of
thousands around the world, relatively few of them will be on the
cutting edge of research. But it is what you must do, nonetheless.

Oliver Morton

Dear Mr President,

Your number one priority in science and technology should be a new
commitment to international public health. It is not a particularly
sexy topic; it needs no new nano-know-how, nor a radical change in our
way of seeing the physical world. It will create no great technical
advantage for America, nor add to its already impressive defenses.
Though it will employ the talents of hundreds of thousands around the
world, relatively few of them will be on the cutting edge of research.
But it is what you must do, nonetheless.

I, like you, am a believer in progress. And it is for that reason that
I expect our descendants in a century or two to look back on our age
and hold us in contempt. Not for the fact that we fought wars; some
wars need to be fought, and some wars are hard to stop. Nor for the
fact that we polluted the environment; we are, after all, becoming
aware of the problems we have been storing up, and we are beginning to
address them on many levels. Our descendants will despise us for
having been content to live in a world where millions of poor people
died each year for want of basic medical interventions that the rich
half of the planet took for granted. And they will be right to do so.

Half a million women die each year because of complications
surrounding pregnancy and childbirth; 99% of those women are in low
and middle income countries. Saving the vast majority of them requires
nothing more than providing trained birth attendants. The 1.6 million
children in poor countries who die every year from measles, tetanus
and pertussis could almost all be saved by the provision of simple
vaccines, and if vaccines were developed against some of the other
diseases that kill poor children--diarrheal diseases and diseases of
the respiratory tract--that number could be doubled.That's without
starting on malaria, which kills over a million a year on its own.
Vaccines against malaria would be a great boon, and should be a high
priority--but even interventions available today, such as insecticide
impregnated sleeping nets and drug treatment, could save hundreds of
thousands. Aggressive extensions of existing tuberculosis treatment
programs could save millions more each year .

Some of your other advisers will tell you that there is no quick fix
for any of this--that the best medicine the poor of the world can get
is economic development, which slowly raises health standards in its
wake. They are wrong. It is possible to achieve impressive health
gains in very poor countries if the will and the resources are there.
There is good reason to believe that improving the health of the poor
makes subsequent economic development faster and more certain--and
helps plant the seeds of stable democracy.

This is not to say that the problems can be solved simply with money
and supplies. New interventions will be needed--most sorely vaccines
against AIDS and malaria. And much will need to be done to build the
capacity of health care systems to serve the poor. But that is not an
intractable problem--it has been solved in various ways in various
places. Evidence of a real commitment among rich countries to
providing the necessary resources would galvanise public health
workers around the world to take up those solutions and invent new
ones of their own. The idea that spending on aid is necessarily wasted
is a cynical and self-serving lie. If you don't believe me, ask Bill
Gates.

Other advisers will tell you that the American people will resent
money spent overseas when many are uninsured at home. Feel free to
tell them that you have some plans for dealing with that problem too.
Feel free to tell them that there will also be many benefits to
spending money on the health of the poor; that it will grow new
markets and win new friends, improving America's image both among
those who benefit from this new generosity and those in Europe and
Japan suddenly obliged to match it. But tell them too that you are
doing this not for those reasons, but because it is the right thing to
do.

And tell them that the American people are not as small of heart or
mean of spirit as they imagine. Tell them that the American people
will understand that the annual $8 billion budget you intend to have
set for this program by the end of your second term is less than one
percent of what America spends on health care. Tell them that every
American couple that leaves a maternity ward with a healthy baby will
be happy to think some of their money is making sure a mother in
Africa doesn't bleed out unattended. Tell them the opportunity to
change the world does not come often--and that as such opportunities
go, this one is cheap.

I wouldn't want you to cut other science and technology spending to
this end. But if you were to decide that was the only way to balance
the books, then I would say go right ahead. The end purpose of
research is knowledge with which to improve the human lot. At the
moment we already have the knowledge we need to save hundreds of
millions of lives over the coming decades, and if push were to come to
shove for a few years, using that knowledge should be a higher
priority than storing up more knowledge for the future .

You and I, as believers in progress, have faith that the future will
be able to take care of itself. We must turn our attention to the
present.

--
[This advice draws on work for the WHO's Commission on Macroeconomics
and Health summarised in "Improving the Health of the Global Poor",
Prabhat Jha et al, Science 295 2036-2039, March 15 2002]
--

Oliver Morton
Author of Mapping Mars 
________________________________________________________________

I would urge you to set aside perhaps a billion dollars to fund new
fellowships for graduate students from predominantly Islamic
countries to come and study science (broadly construed) in the
United States.

Rodney Brooks

Dear President Bush,

Science and the technology that flows from it have been great
strengths of the United States; without them the US would not be the
single superpower that it is today in the world.

For the last fifty years that science has been carried out largely in
the open and has been shared with the rest of the world. That sharing
has been a source of great strength. The US graduate education system
is the strongest in the world and many international leaders have had
some of their training in our Universities. The openness and the way
in which our universities have been run as meritocracies, not places
where national origin or religion is considered in evaluating one's
work, has attracted waves of immigration of great scientists and
engineers to this country.

There is a place for classified and restricted research but it is
mostly in areas that are close to application, not in fundamental
scientific and engineering questions. The place for that research is
not at our universities. The great universities of the US should
remain as open arenas for all areas of research where they act as an
engine of creativity that feeds the scientific needs of the US and the
world.

As science advisor I would urge you to continue, and strengthen, this
policy of openness. I would urge you to set aside perhaps a billion
dollars to fund new fellowships for graduate students from
predominantly Islamic countries to come and study science (broadly
construed) in the United States. I would urge you to direct the INS to
treat foreign students as welcome guests rather than suspected
criminals who must be monitored constantly by their host universities,
and who are to be arrested, as has recently happened, when the courses
they end up taking at a respected first rate university do not match
some preconceived plan.

To reach out this generous hand to aspiring young students would be
courageous in the current domestic climate of fear. But the long term
payoff for the United States will be immense. It will create long term
personal links between people in the countries we currently most fear
and our own country. Based on past experience we can predict that many
of those people will rise to positions of leadership and authority
within their countries. In the shorter term it will be an act of
generosity rather than aggression, and one can hope that it will have
positive effects in the way the US is viewed. Besides that we will
gain access to a large number of very smart, very driven, young minds
who will help us and the world in making scientific progress.

Once I have convinced you to follow this advice I will get to work on
some more radical ideas which involve funding science that is deep and
curiosity driven, rather than dressed up as responding to politically
justifiable immediate needs. Such science has been the well spring of
the great advances throughout history.

Rodney Brooks
Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
Author of Flesh and Machines: How Robots will Change Us 
________________________________________________________________

Science is public knowledge. But science is not the only field
where openness is important. The security failures of 9/11 were
caused not by too little, but by too much secrecy. And the
discussions that form public policy should be public...Science
isn't poker: it only works when the cards are dealt face up. Don't
go down in history as the Texan who closed the scientific frontier.

Seth Lloyd

Dear Mr. President,

Thank you for your invitation to advise you on matters of science.
Science is after all the most public form of knowledge.

Scientific knowledge consists exactly of those pieces of information
that can in principle be verified by anyone with the tools and desire
to do so.

My advice to our highest elected official is to keep science public.
Secret knowledge, no matter how laboriously acquired, is less than
science.

Some knowledge, of course, must remain secret for the security of the
nation. Do not have the National Security Administration publish its
cryptographic keys.

But unless there is a clear security risk, publish all else. Why?
Science belongs to the public: they pay for it; they benefit from it.
The benefits of scientific knowledge accrue far more rapidly when that
knowledge lies open for all to see, to test, and to try.

Your administration has presided over some good examples of the
benefits of open dissemination of scientific knowledge. I will
restrict my attention to my own field of quantum computation.

Quantum computers are devices that store information at the level of
atoms, and that process that information in a way that respects the
wave like nature of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is famously
weird, and one of the consequences of quantum weirdness is that even a
small quantum computer, consisting of a few thousand atoms, would be
able to break all existing public-key cryptosystems.

By their potential power, quantum computers pose a significant threat
to the security not only of classified encoded material, but to the
security of most commercial transactions, in particular those that
take place electronically. Despite the clear application of quantum
computation to problems of national security, your security agencies
have elected to pursue the majority of their research on quantum
computers by open competition for public funds, under the stipulation
that the results of the research be published and made available to
all.

This is a wise course. Although potentially highly disruptive, quantum
computers are hard to build. Large-scale quantum computation is a
decade away, at least. To construct such large-scale quantum computers
will require the scientific and engineering community to solve
wide-ranging problems of nanofabrication and control. The solutions to
such problems will have wide application in the design and manufacture
of high precision, high-power technologies across the board. The
potential benefits of such research are a thousand times greater than
any drawback from potential disruption to security.

By keeping the science public, your agencies are dramatically speeding
the development not only of quantum computers, but of a wide variety
of other quantum technologies, ranging from enhanced lithography to
more accurate atomic clocks, to precise global positioning. The
frontier of the very small offers huge space for development: keep
this frontier open to all.

Science is public knowledge. But science is not the only field where
openness is important. The security failures of 9/11 were caused not
by too little, but by too much secrecy. And the discussions that form
public policy should be public.

I know that other advisors are offering you conflicting advice: keep
your cards close to your chest--don't let our enemies (or our allies)
benefit from our hard-earned knowledge. Don't listen to them. Science
isn't poker: it only works when the cards are dealt face up. Don't go
down in history as the Texan who closed the scientific frontier.

Yours,

Seth Lloyd
Professor of Quantum-Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
________________________________________________________________

I hope your new Science Advisor comes to the job armed with
knowledge of the rich history of junk science and false predictions
served up to government in the last forty years.

Denis Dutton

Dear Mr. President,

Many thanks for your invitation to apply for the position of Science
Advisor to the President. Alas, there is some mistake, for I am a
philosophy professor. At their best, scientists respond to problems
with answers, and this can be useful to presidents. Philosophers have
a cranky habit of responding to answers with more problems. You don't
need that.

Taking into account all of the poor scientific policy advice that has
been promulgated in Washington for the last forty years, you'll need
luck in your search for the right person. The record shows that
scientists are as much victims of fashion as other ordinary mortals.
Recall a few examples of science in predictive mode:

o In the mid-1970, many climatologists warned of a coming Ice Age
that would severely diminish agricultural productivity by year
2000.

o Frightened by dramatic allegations in the 1960s about the
environmental effects of DDT, the U.S. banned the pesticide in
1972. In retrospect, the allegations of harm were so much
hyperbole. In the meantime, millions of people, especially in
Africa, have died of malaria, with Europe and the U.S. reluctant to
support them in DDT mosquito eradication.

o Let's not forget the scientific predictions about oil and mineral
resources. In the 1970s your predecessors in office were being told
that there would be essentially no oil left by the 1990s. Gold
would be $10,000 an ounce, of course.

o Overpopulation? When I was in the Peace Corps in India in the
1960s we all "knew," in line with expert scientific advice from the
U.S. government, that the population explosion would cause massive,
worldwide famine by the late 1980s.

This list could be expanded into periodic cancer scares, worries about
the ozone hole, silicon breast implants, acid rain (another wildly
exaggerated threat), air pollution, and so forth. It's odd when you
think about it: though you and I might have enjoyed scary Frankenstein
movies, when we were children, science and technology were seen as
great forces for the benefit of mankind. Things shifted in the 1960s,
and a spirit of pessimism began to invade science.

Today, it is much easier for scientists to receive grants if they
indicate their research might uncover a serious threat or
problem--economic, medical, ecological. Media fascination with bad
news is partly to blame, along with the principled gloominess and
nagging of organizations such as Greenpeace. But government itself has
played its natural part. After all, as H.L. Mencken once remarked,
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed,
and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an
endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Since I'm sure you're keen to avoid such alarmism, you'll need an
advisor who can see through the fashions of science, and understand
something of their psychology. The epidemiologist who slightly
overstates the conclusiveness of his study suggesting that french
fries might cause cancer (in mice) or the young climatologist on the
global-warming gravy train are not basically dishonest people. You too
might more easily buy into some doomsday scenario, if it meant regular
business-class flights to major resorts to compare computer climate
models with other experts (models that you know in your heart could
not possibly predict average atmospheric temperatures fifty years
hence, but what hell, the food's great).

I hope your new Science Advisor comes to the job armed with knowledge
of the rich history of junk science and false predictions served up to
government in the last forty years. The point is not to be cynical
about fads and careerism, but wisely to choose where best to support
both pure science and science that can give us beneficial
technologies.

Denis Dutton
Founder and Editor, Arts & Letters Daily 
Department of Philosophy
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
________________________________________________________________

The resulting memo is practical and unimaginative. It may not be of
much interest to the Edge community, but I think it would be more
useful to the president than a wider-ranging document. The second
memo is the unpractical and imaginative version. It is not very
imaginative, because I still want it to be taken seriously as an
agenda for the twenty-first century.

Freeman Dyson

Here two answers to the Edge Annual Question. In the first version I
have followed your instruction to stick to science and to those
scientific areas where I have expertise. The resulting memo is
practical and unimaginative. It may not be of much interest to the
Edge community, but I think it would be more useful to the president
than a wider-ranging document. The second memo is the unpractical and
imaginative version. It is not very imaginative, because I still want
it to be taken seriously as an agenda for the twenty-first century.

Memo to the President (I)

The scientific enterprise in this country is generally in good shape
and needs only modest increases in support to keep up with inflation.
One weakness of the enterprise that needs to be addressed is the
system of peer review that governs the support of
investigator-initiated proposals. The peer-review system works well
for proposals that lie within established disciplines of science. It
works badly for proposals that lie outside or between established
disciplines.

A glaring example of the failure of the system is the lack of support
for large underground detectors of elementary particles. During the
past year, the two most important discoveries in particle physics were
made using such detectors, one in Canada and one in Japan. The United
States has fallen behind in this highly promising area of research,
because underground detectors lie between the disciplines of physics
and astronomy. Physicist peer-reviewers failed to support underground
detectors because they are not accelerators, and astronomer
peer-reviewers failed to support them because they are not telescopes.

Similar failures of the peer-review system occur in areas of space
technology that lie outside mainstream disciplines. They probably also
occur in areas of biology and medicine with which I am not familiar. A
possible remedy for this state of affairs would be to assign a small
fraction of the national research budget, perhaps five or ten percent,
to proposals that are exempt from the normal process of peer-review.
The choice of exempt proposals to be supported could be made by
directors of federal agencies, with the help of panels representing
science as a whole rather than specialized disciplines.

Memo to the President (II)

During the last ten years, the human genome project has laid the
foundation for a comprehensive understanding of human biology. The
translation of the new understanding into cures for human diseases
will be a slow and difficult process.

Meanwhile, a new century has begun. It is time for you to launch a
bold new initiative in biology, a planetary genome project to sequence
the genomes of all the millions of species that live together on this
planet. This will require first of all an aggressive development of
new sequencing technology, comparable to the development of computer
technology during the last half century, so that the cost of
sequencing will continue to fall as rapidly as the cost of computing.

The goal will be to complete the sequencing of the biosphere within
less than half a century, at a cost comparable with the cost of the
human genome. The successful completion of the project will bring an
enormous increase in understanding of the ecology of the planet.
Increased understanding could then be translated into practical
measures to sustain and improve the ecology while allowing continued
rapid economic development.

Detailed understanding of the ecology could lead to large-scale and
cost effective use of solar energy and to stabilization of the
atmosphere and the climate. Let this century be the century of cures
for planetary as well as human diseases.

Freeman Dyson
retired professor of physics
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, New Jersey
Author of Disturbing the Universe; Infinite in All Directions; and The
Sun, the Genome, and the Internet. 
________________________________________________________________

There are many excellent researchers who would make rapid progress
in malarial "post-genomics" if substantial new money became
available. It would therefore be widely recognised as a wonderfully
enlightened action if you were to ensure that the National
Institutes of Health introduced a malaria post-genomics programme,
with a new budget of at least $300m, as a first step towards the
prevention and cure of this devastating disease.

Philip Campbell

Dear Mr President

Your administration has commendably focused not only on the urgent
ways in which science can help the nation, especially through the
National Institutes of Health and the Department of Homeland Security,
but also in boosting the broader and longer-term interests of the
country by increasing the budgets of, for example, the National
Science Foundation, whose science constituencies underpin critical
sources of knowledge and skills. I am troubled by the half-hearted
approach adopted by your administration towards alternative energy
sources and climate research, but will leave those issues for another
day.

However, every President should leave a personal legacy that goes
beyond the national political and social goals of the moment. If that
legacy addresses one of the major issues facing the wider world, so
much the better.

Malaria provides you with precisely that opportunity. It affects
hundreds of millions of people and kills well over one million every
year. It affects countries across South America, Africa and South East
Asia. The challenges are made all the more urgent by the development
of multidrug resistance by the parasite.

There have been some positive moves from philanthropists and charities
for the control of malaria and for the development of vaccines and
drugs, and some limited progress with private-public partnerships. But
these funds--two or three hundred million all told - are a drop in the
ocean. Furthermore, they do not seriously address the longer term need
to investigate the malaria parasite at a basic scientific level.

Some people will argue that we already have enough science, we simply
need to develop better drugs, or a vaccine, or have better controls of
the disease through prevention. History shows, however, that every one
of these alternative routes has its own chronic difficulties.
Addressing new opportunities in the basic science of the disease
could, in the long term, deliver more far-reaching solutions.

The journal Nature recently published the sequence of the malaria
parasite Plasmodium falciparum's genome, and other related fundamental
information critical in understanding the parasite. That's a key step
along the way, and provides a new platform on which to develop
essential insights into the many biomolecular and cellular pathways by
which the parasite survives and interacts with us, its indispensible
hosts. New techniques are beginning to be applied, such as
high-throughput analyses of the pattern of gene expression and of the
interactions of proteins at key phases of the parasite's lifecycle.
The new availability of the genome combined with these techniques will
undoubtedly spur progress significantly--if there are funds to permit
it.

For the United States to provide significant help in this battle would
not simply represent an act of great good will. It would also be in
the nation's long-term strategic interests. The less that so many
developing countries have to battle with the illness and mortality of
malaria and the social burdens that they bring, the more they can
focus on economic and social development and provide new opportunities
for US businesses and other organisations.

There are many excellent researchers who would make rapid progress in
malarial "post-genomics" if substantial new money became available. It
would therefore be widely recognised as a wonderfully enlightened
action if you were to ensure that the National Institutes of Health
introduced a malaria post-genomics programme, with a new budget of at
least $300m, as a first step towards the prevention and cure of this
devastating disease.

Philip Campbell, PhD
Editor-in-Chief
Nature 
________________________________________________________________

Science, like business, has been totally captured by the next
quarter mentality, and it will require a deliberate effort to
stress the long view so that our knowledge matches our predicament.

Kevin Kelly

Dear Mr. Bush,

Thank you for your confidence in me. Here are the three things you
should encourage; these are neglected by our current science policy:

1) Develop Long Term Science.

Most science experiments, clinical studies, and data collection lasts
about 4 years--the duration of a graduate student. Most problems we
have before us last for generations. Science, like business, has been
totally captured by the next quarter mentality, and it will require a
deliberate effort to stress the long view so that our knowledge
matches our predicament. Long-term studies can begin to alleviate much
of our ignorance of climatic, environmental, health, social, and
biological issues.

2) Foster a Global View.

While the United States is among the nations leading the world in
monitoring and mapping its own territory, most of the world has not
been mapped. We, as humans, lack a sufficient survey of the geology,
habitat, weather, and biological diversity of our home planet. For
instance we have identified as few as 5% of all the species living on
earth. A detailed map of the planet, which would include geological
assets, urban impacts, ecological assessments, and detailed
cartographic information would be invaluable to business, military
intelligence, social work, and peace and prosperity, at the very
least, to the US. As it is we are trying to run a planet with only a
dim sense of what it is.

3) Fund Blue Sky Work.

US universities were once renowned for funding work that could not
possibly pay off for ten years or more. Much of university research
was pure research that had no obvious application at all at the time
of its funding. In an effort to weed out seemingly frivolous work that
might wind up as a headline in a supermarket tabloid, a lot of bold
research has simply been dropped. Research is now expected to show
results quickly, and to fit into return on investment curves developed
by business. This may be good for business, and maybe even for
government in the short term, but it is disastrous for science,
especially in the long term. Some federally funded research should aim
for a ten- or even 25-year result horizon. This would create the
strongest possible science culture.

These three things could be implemented without substantially
increasing the science budget, although that is always a good idea.

Kevin Kelly
Editor-At-Large, Wired
Author of Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems,
and the Economic World; New Rules for the New Economy;and Asia Grace
(all images, not words).
________________________________________________________________

The fear of smallpox as a weapon of mass destruction in the hands
of terrorists is based either on the public information, which is
speculative and anecdotal, or on military or secret intelligence
sources which are unavailable.

Lawrence B. Brilliant, M.D.

Mr. President,

During the past several months, I've been frustrated by the smallpox
puzzle and the accompanying national agony about vaccination. Dozens
of people have cornered me asking "what should I do about vaccinating
my family" or, more pointedly: "are you or your family getting
vaccinated?"

I was vaccinated against smallpox hundreds of times in the smallpox
program in India, and again by CDC last year during the "smallpox bio
terrorism" sessions for first responders. In this regard, it is
appropriate that as President, you were recently vaccinated. My
children, wife, mother, brother and neighbors have not been recently
vaccinated and I do not recommend it, at least not yet. Based on the
risks and benefits of what we know today, I do not recommend anyone
rush out to get vaccinated unless they will be a "first responder" or
work in a hospital emergency room.

Why? My decision is based on trying to solve many simultaneous
equations. The smallpox dilemma has no simple answers, and making the
correct decision may, literally, be a matter of life and death.

The facts today: Smallpox as a disease does not exist. It has been
eradicated. A very small amount of the virus which causes smallpox,
Variola, has been held frozen in liquid nitrogen in two "legal and
secure" facilities in Atlanta and Moscow, as agreed to by the 150+
member states of the World Health Organization. It is easy to "awaken"
the demon of smallpox if it is removed from these freezers. Except for
a very controversial and potentially destabilizing removal last year
of some viral material by U.S. Army scientist Peter Jahrling who used
those viruses to infect monkeys with smallpox with the thought of
testing smallpox anti viral agents and improved vaccines all the other
legal viral samples remain in place. The fear of smallpox as a weapon
of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists is based either on the
public information, which is speculative and anecdotal, or on military
or secret intelligence sources which are unavailable. Vaccination of
280 million Americans could cause potentially fatal vaccine
side-effects in tens of thousands and death in 500 to 1000. In order
to justify so many vaccine side-effects, there must be real evidence
of incremental risk of an epidemic caused by vaccine preventable
smallpox. There are at least three gating items, all of which must be
true before it is logical to begin vaccinations against a disease
which does not exist:

o Gating item #1: Smallpox virus must exist outside of the two
"legal and secure" repositories where, with the only known
exception being the Jahrling experiments, it has resided securely
for nearly three decades

o Gating item #2: That smallpox virus which is outside of the two
"legal and secure" repositories must have reached the hands of
terrorists or nation-states that would use smallpox in war

o Gating Item #3: That smallpox virus which is outside of the
"legal and secure" repositories, in the hands of terrorists with an
intent to use it, must not have been genetically altered so as to
be impervious to the vaccine we currently have.

As is quite clear from credible journalistic sources, Gating Item #1
appears to have occurred-Russian scientists operating under a
Gorbachev approved billion dollar 5-year plan manufactured as much as
100 tons of Variola virus annually at a then secret facility called,
ironically, Vector, near Novosibirsk, Siberia in the Soviet Union
during the 1980's. There may have been other programs that have
remained secret, just as the CIA program "Bacchus" to build a
miniature anthrax production lab stayed secret virtually until the
anthrax attacks of 2001.

There is no public knowledge, and I stress "public" for obvious
reasons, that Gating Item #2 is true. The major known sources of
concern are:

o a) Saddam Hussein used saran gas and anthrax in missiles and
shells and attempted to use Camelpox in horrid experiments against
the Kurds. Logic dictates that if he does have smallpox, he is a
serious threat to use it as a "doomsday" weapon.

o b) Weapons inspectors found a refrigerator in Iraq, "ominously"
labeled "smallpox" during the last round of inspections-we do not
know if the "smallpox" referred to the disease of smallpox or the
vaccine against it, but there were active cases of smallpox in Iraq
as late as 1972 and there is no reason to believe harvesting viral
specimens from those cases was not done. Iran, Iraq's neighbor and
sometime enemy, certainly hid cases of smallpox from WHO inspectors
(I was one of these) as late as the Shah's ceremonial coronation in
1972-73. When Iran and Iraq went to war a few years later, Saddam
Hussein had reciprocal regional reasons for hoarding the Variola
virus.

o c) Al Qaeda documents, including some found on a personal
computer purchased by a Wall Street Journal reporter, contained
references to smallpox as a weapon to be used by terrorists.
Taliban fighters and Al Qaeda terrorists frequented a Soviet era
"weapons dump" just North of the Afghanistan border; it is not
known if any biological weapons were included amongst the other
weapons acquired there.

o d) Soviet smallpox epidemiologists, who had betrayed many of us
in the World Health Organization by lifting smallpox scabs from
patients in India and elsewhere, and then smuggling these
infectious specimens back to Russia to become part of Vector's
"collection" used to create the infamous India-1 "weaponized
smallpox", fell on hard times after the breakup of the Soviet
Union. So did some of the virologists at Vector who worked on
weaponizing smallpox and other biologicals; there is evidence some
of these scientists visited Iraq, and were paid to consult with
colleagues in Saddam Hussein's government on biologicals. There has
recently been an active US program to find other work for these
scientists to rid them of the financial necessity of such
activities. There is even the suggestion, strongly denied by her
Russian colleagues, that the eminent smallpox virologist Dr. Nelja
N. Maltseva, might have visited or even collaborated with the
Iraqis.

As for Gating Item #3, no one knows. The well known Australian
experiments altering a gene in mousepox suggests it would be easy for
terrorists-or even college microbiology students who had access to pox
to create a "superpox" impervious to today's vaccines. I won't go into
the details but the bottom line is that if anyone had enough hatred
and enough money, the creation of a vaccine-proof smallpox variant is
well within the realm of the possible. Obviously, if the terrorists
have vaccine-proof smallpox, it is silly to vaccinate anyone with a
high risk vaccine that is impotent against genetically altered
smallpox.

How great is the risk of adverse reactions? Again, no one can really
quantify it because much has changed, for better and for worse, since
the 1970's from which the last large datasets are available. At that
time the death rate from vaccine was about 2 or 3 per million
vaccinated, and the risk of serious side effects about ten times
higher. There are factors today which might raise or lower the rate of
complications. Thirty years ago far fewer Americans had immune systems
compromised by chemo therapy or AIDs, and the prevalence rates of
eczema, a serious contra indication to smallpox vaccine, were lower as
well. On the other hand, recent data from Israel and from vaccination
in the US military suggests that vaccinating young healthy
pre-screened men and women carries very few risks of side effects and
today's ICU medical care for vaccine complications is likely to
markedly reduce fatalities. All in all, it is likely that ten to one
hundred people per million vaccinated from the general public would
have a very serious reaction or even death from the vaccine-somewhere
between 3000 and 30,000.

And so, here we are, faced with the need to decide whether to
vaccinate our families. We will each need to make personal decisions
under conditions of uncertainty.

Here is why I chose not to vaccinate my family:

o 1) To the best of my knowledge, there is no proof of any link
between the experiments at Vector and either Al Qaeda or Saddam
Hussein, but concern is understandable. If any proof of linkage
arises, I might change my mind.

o 2) If Saddam Hussein has smallpox, I believe he might well be
crazy or desperate enough to use it as a "doomsday weapon" if he
were about to be destroyed; but it is also likely that Iraqi
scientists have the ability to genetically alter the virus to make
it vaccine-proof. If it is an end game, why would he use a virus
that we have a vaccine against? It makes no sense.

o 3) If Al-Qaeda has the smallpox virus, I do not believe they
would be willing to use it. Unlike Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda seeks
the victory of an entire people, a culture, a religion-not the
hegemony of any individual. Smallpox is the ultimate boomerang
weapon. If it is released from its captivity at Chicago O'Hare
airport, it is only a matter of days before it infects Mecca and
Medina. It is not a likely weapon for a war that is a "Clash of
Civilizations" unless a combatant sought the destruction of both
civilizations.

o 4) Smallpox can be prevented if an exposed person is vaccinated
as late as four or five days after exposure. While there is some
risk that smallpox could be spread unseen for the first attack,
within two weeks cases would start to appear and for nearly all
Americans, there would be ample time and ample vaccine to be
vaccinated after the first attack and still be safe.

o 5) I do not want to go into the fear that a small minority of
Americans have that the your administration is prone to exaggerate
the risks of terrorism in general and smallpox in particular as
part of an attempt to frighten the public into accepting the
erosion of civil liberties. As horrible as that allegation is, I
simply have no information on which to make any comment other than
to note the fear exists. And for my purposes here, it really does
not matter. Based on the evidence I have seen to date, the risk of
getting a case of vaccine-preventable smallpox today is just not as
high as the risk of an adverse reaction to the smallpox vaccine.

That is the conclusion that I have reached as of today. And unless or
until that changes, I will not vaccinate my family and the ones that I
love.

Lawrence B. Brilliant, M.D.
Interim CEO of Cometa Networks, Inc.
Medical officer for the United Nations World Health
Organization(1970s) helping lead the successful effort to eradicate
smallpox.
Author of nearly 100 scientific articles and two books and is an
expert on smallpox.
________________________________________________________________

The point is, Mr. President, that a National Bureau for the Support
of Science, with Cabinet status, is getting to be a necessity.

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi

Mr. President, allow me to start with a personal reminiscence. When I
was being interviewed for my first teaching job, almost four decades
ago, the head of the search committee  a nuclear physicist  told me in
dismissive tones: "Well, now that we scientists have been able to
harness the power of nuclear forces, let's see if you so-called social
scientists can teach us how to use it." His tone of voice and smirk
clearly meant that he didn't believe for a moment that we "soft"
scientists were up to even such an easy task as that of preventing
humanity from the misuse of nuclear energy.

Things haven't much improved since. To-day's issue of the Los Angeles
Times (12/2/02), for instance, carries three stories on the front page
that relate to the issue I am raising: One of them laments the fact
that patients are increasingly refusing to participate in drug trials
and medical experiments because they mistrust scientists; another
warns about the leakage in the former Soviet arsenal of deadly
weapons; and the third consists of a huge color photo of the black
waves carrying spilled oil advancing on Spanish beaches.

Now you and I know that it is childish to blame such problems on
science or on scientists. It is not their fault that their brilliant
advances are so tragically misused, corrupted, trivialized. Yet I am
afraid that the majority of our countrymen are going to draw that
conclusion, with consequences that are too dire to contemplate. A re
run of the Dark Ages would be much worse than the original.

Unfortunately our colleagues in the "hard" sciences have not been
entirely helpful either. Their mantra has been: "Our task is to push
further the boundaries of knowledge; what happens afterwards is not
our responsibility; that's for society to decide." Fair enough: But
let anyone else suggest how science should be used and he'll be
crucified as a philistine. We all wish to have the proverbial cake and
to eat it, too. Sooner or later, however, reality does intervene. It
is perhaps time for this to happen to science.

The point is, Mr. President, that a National Bureau for the Support of
Science, with Cabinet status, is getting to be a necessity. It should
not be a body controlled by scientists. Just as war is too important
to be left up to generals, and religion too important to be left in
the hands of clergy, so is science too important to be given over to
scientists. Nor should it be under the control  God forbid  of
business interests or politicians. It is much easier to specify who
should not control such a board than who should, but the task is too
urgent for us to be deterred by such an obstacle. It should be a
parliament composed by people who have demonstrated concern for the
future of humanity: Scientists as well as laypeople  yes, even
businesspersons, clergy, and generals.

The task of such a bureau would be to allocate a goodly proportion of
the national revenue to projects that are important to our survival
and wellbeing. Not to the discovery of more foul chemicals, deadly
viruses, or laser guns circling around the planet. Instead, ways to
produce clean energy, clean water, to keep biodiversity from
disappearing should be supported. We should be preparing for the
future, Mr. President, not continuing to invest in a mythical past.
Currently science is at the service of speculators and mindless
traffickers in destruction. It is time the rest of society reclaimed
its right to have a voice in determining what their lives shall be
like.

When people raise concerns about the headlong advance of science and
technology they are inevitably ridiculed as Luddites who are trying to
interfere with progress. You should not let this fact deter you, Mr.
President. Instead, you should remind those who protest that if there
is one issue on which scientists agree is that evolution is in itself
blind and unconcerned with our  or of any other species'  wellbeing.
It would be strange to exempt scientific progress from this
conclusion. Left to itself, the great power of science can be easily
misused and misdirected. If we do our best to direct it we may still
fail, but at least we tried.

Sincerely,

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Davidson Professor of Management
Claremont Graduate University
Author of Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience; The Evolving
Self; Creativity; and Finding Flow. 
________________________________________________________________

Many commentators are urging George Bush Jr. to finish in Iraq what
President George Bush Sr. began in the Gulf War. Mr. President, I
urge you to apply this advise in space. Take up the challenge. Go
to Mars!

Paul Davies

Mr. President,

As the year 2002 draws to an end, your Administration is preoccupied
with the prospect of war with Iraq, and with a more shadowy adversary
in the form of global terrorism. Much has been said in that context
about 'weapons of mass destruction.' It goes without saying that such
weapons are the products of science and technology; one might say they
are perversions of science and technology. What could be more pressing
than finding a way to promote the beneficial aspects of science while
curbing the misuse?

I do not wish to repeat here the well worn arguments about defensive
versus offensive military research, the development of better sensor
and detection technology and more efficient intelligence gathering
systems. Arms races have dogged mankind from the dawn of history, and
history seems bound to repeat itself.

What America, indeed the world, needs most urgently is a positive and
uplifting project, a project born of a vision that transcends the
factional squabbles that divide us, something to celebrate the
creative side of science by the world's greatest scientific power.
Forty years ago, when the world was in the grip of the Cold War, the
United States committed itself to putting a man on the moon. Although
the Apollo program was undeniably a by-product of the Cold War arms
race, viewed with hindsight it was the crowning achievement of
twentieth century science and engineering. Apollo continues to stand
as an emblem for the triumph of the human spirit in a world dominated
by dark fears and ideological divisions.

What, then, should be the Apollo program of the Bush Presidency? The
answer has been clear since your own father articulated the concept in
1989. The United States, together with its partners in space, should
commit to sending an expedition to the planet Mars. The Red Planet is
probably the only body in the solar system on which a permanent
self-sufficient colony might eventually be established. Although
relatively hostile to humans, the surface of Mars is far more
congenial than the moon. By establishing a human presence on Mars, our
species will be afforded an insurance policy against a global
cataclysm at home.

But that is not the prime reason to go to Mars. Rather, the
exploration of the Red Planet will represent a scientific bonanza of
unprecedented value. By general consent, Mars offers the best--quite
possibly the only--hope of finding life beyond Earth. It harbors vital
clues to the origin of life on our own planet; indeed, it is possible
that life came to Earth from Mars. So the search for life on Mars is a
search for ourselves: who we are and what our place is in the great
cosmic scheme.

Many commentators are urging George Bush Jr. to finish in Iraq what
President George Bush Sr. began in the Gulf War. Mr. President, I urge
you to apply this advise in space. Take up the challenge. Go to Mars!

Sincerely,

Paul Davies
Physicist, writer and broadcaster, now based in South Australia
Author of The Mind of God; Are We Alone?; The Fifth Miracle; and The
Last Three Minutes. 
________________________________________________________________

Our scientific and cultural heritage is abundant, and the threats
to it are numerous--it is time to back up civilization. To do this
we will need to establish secure sanctuaries (think of the
monasteries of the Middle Ages) that preserve and update copies of
the vital records and articles needed for the conduct of our
society.

Robert Shapiro

Dear Mr. President,

The finest days of your administration thus far were the ones
immediately after September 11, when you rallied the spirits of this
nation by your stand against the terrorists, and the values that they
stood for. You pointed out, quite correctly, that their actions
represented an attack against civilization itself. But by raising the
vision that our civilization was an entity that both needed protection
and was worthy of it, you entered an arena of concern that extends far
the particular threats of Al Queda and Saddam Hussein. Within your
lifetime, the fabric of scientific information that underlies our
technological society has become much more richly embroidered, and at
the same time much more vulnerable. And its preservation is essential
to the survival of our advanced civilization and even of our species.

At the time of your birth, in 1946, the scientific community was not
yet generally aware that our heredity is stored in sequences of
"letters" within the chemical called DNA. We now possess the complete
DNA sequence for a prototype human being, as well as a mouse, a simple
plant, and a number of other species. Each such sequence, or genome,
contains millions to billions of characters, far too many to be stored
conveniently in books; the data is kept within computers. The Chemical
Abstracts Service had been tabulating the literature of chemistry
since 1907, but when you were 11 years old, it established a Registry
that systematically records, classifies and renders available
information about the hosts of organic substances that exist naturally
or have been created within laboratories. The number of such
registered substances has passed 20 million and is growing by about
4,000 per day. Let us also note the endless reams of computer
instructions, and the hardware that executes them, that makes possible
the word processing instrument by which I am composing this letter,
and the Internet that allows me to send it off immediately. No trace
of these conveniences existed in 1946.

In the mid-twentieth century, technical information was stored in
books. The most important works were duplicated in hundreds of
libraries. A person who wished access to the information need only
walk in, locate the appropriate volumes by use of a mechanical
indexing system and thumb the pages to the relevant material. In the
future, the sheer volume and complexity of the information will
require digital storage on discs and tapes.

Apart from questions concerning authorization and passwords, up to
date hardware and considerable familiarity with the software will be
needed for access to these materials. Computer storage of each
document will be limited to a few locations.

Such arrangements may work well when our society is in a healthy
state, but very little provision is made for catastrophe. A number of
different scenarios can be envisaged which would eliminate electrical
power, disrupt or destroy networks, eliminate key personnel or
otherwise prevent access to our technological and cultural heritage by
survivors. The immense legacy of our civilization would be partly or
wholly lost. Such catastrophes have been listed by many writers--they
include bio terrorism and natural plagues, nuclear war, asteroid and
comet collision, massive and unexpected climate change, famine
associated with civil disorders and social collapse and others.

None of these events is probable on its own, nor even taken together
do they represent the most likely course for the future. But we make
no provision for these possibilities, then we as a civilization are
taking the position of an author who does not choose to back up the
novel he is typing on his word processor, or the home owner who
carries no insurance and does not store his valuables in a secure
cache far from his residence. Our scientific and cultural heritage is
abundant, and the threats to it are numerous--it is time to back up
civilization. To do this we will need to establish secure sanctuaries
(think of the monasteries of the Middle Ages) that preserve and update
copies of the vital records and articles needed for the conduct of our
society. As their interpretation and reinstallation after a
catastrophe would require hands-on human expertise, we would need
staffed settlements, rather that buried time capsules. Such
settlements would need to be remote enough to be immune from the
varied array of disasters that might afflict humanity, but close
enough top remain in direct contact, and to bring aid when
appropriate.

Although a network of Biosphere-like settlements in scattered
locations on Earth might be robust enough to weather most
difficulties, there is a safer bastion which would provide inspiration
and a variety of types of technological spin-off, in addition to its
prime function of backing up civilization on Earth. The construction
of a lunar base dedicated to that purpose would provide a superb goal
for our newly-born century and millennium. It would also provide
needed purpose and continuation to one of the great human achievements
of your lifetime; the Apollo Program.

I have sketched out a goal that extends in time far beyond few years
possible for one administration. The costs will require many years of
investment, with private contributions and international cooperation
highly desirable. The goals however could be embraced by you, and
planning commenced, at only moderate cost at the present time. What
greater enhancements of the concepts of Homeland Security and the war
against terrorism could there be, than to extend their protection to
the preservation of civilization itself, for the indefinite future.

Robert Shapiro
Professor of Chemistry, New York University
Author of Origins; The Human Blueprint; and Planetary Dreams. 
________________________________________________________________

You are in an amazing position. You are the most powerful president
in a generation. Be bold! Science and technology are the most
potent tools mankind has for improving our circumstances. Let's use
this amazing moment in history to create a new period of happiness
and prosperity. Please don't let your marvelous position in history
go to waste.

Jaron Lanier

Dear Mr. President,

Whether or not you choose to follow up with me specifically, I want to
thank you for reaching out to a scientist who doesn't benefit from
prior personal connections to someone associated with your
administration. Your sphere of advisors has seemed unusually distant
from the scientific and technical communities.

I can understand, in a way, why you have been reticent in the past.
Many scientists work in the academic environment, which tends to be
liberal minded, and perhaps you've worried that there would be an
ideological coloration in the advice you would receive. It would seem
that the scientific mainstream is often at odds with your
administration on issues such as stem cell research, global warming,
and so on.

But the best way around this is not to retreat from the scientific
community as a whole, but to embrace it, and demand that it find a way
to transcend ideological colorations in its interactions with you.
After all, much of the discipline of science is devoted to reducing
personal bias. We spend a lot of our time repeating work that's
already been done before because we're so cautious about our
all-too-human vulnerabilities that could lead to self-deception. In a
way we are the most skeptically conservative community around, and you
would probably find more common ground with us than you expect if you
gave us more of a try.

I suppose a science advisor has to be part speech writer and part
budget warrior.

With that in mind, I would like to give you a sense of what my advice
would be like on a variety of difficult issues.

You are in an amazing position. You are the most powerful president in
a generation. Be bold! Science and technology are the most potent
tools mankind has for improving our circumstances. Let's use this
amazing moment in history to create a new period of happiness and
prosperity. Please don't let your marvelous position in history go to
waste.

In this note I will address the four toughest issues, which present
the greatest opportunities and the most difficult political dilemmas.
These are:

1) New medicine

2) New energy and transportation solutions.

3) Global warming response.

4) War on terror.

America's success on every level has depended in the past on
government lead research initiatives.

There are three models from the twentieth century for giant government
research and development projects: The Manhattan Project, the Apollo
Program, and the era of massive public works, including the TVA, much
of the WPA, and the Interstates.

We have to be bold and imagine a new type of national initiative that
combines the best of all three models. The Manhattan project showed
what can be done by gathering the very best minds in one place. The
Apollo Program showed that it's possible to do big science in a way
that engages all the world in a positive way. The massive public works
projects I listed, while they might be abhorrent to your economic
advisors, should be appreciated because they showed that government
can create a giant infrastructure without damage to democracy or
capitalism.

I do not propose that big centralized science initiatives are the best
method of tackling all our hardest problems, only the ones I listed
above.

Private industry can sometimes address a big problem, even one that is
serious enough to threaten our survival. In such cases, government
should still play role of oversight and be ready to step in should
industry fail for some reason. Some examples in this category:

1) Impending loss of efficacy of antibiotics

2) Need for new desalinization technologies and other fixes for
looming shortages of fresh water

3) AIDS crisis. In this case, private industry has the research and
manufacturing infrastructure in place already, but is not
structured to do as much as it should to help patients in most of
the world. An enhanced government role is crucial, because this
problem as well as other related ones in the Third World will have
a huge impact on our security in the long term.

About stem cells, cloning, and such things:

Here we have the potential to extend and improve human life, and it's
just the sort of research that is better undertaken under governmental
lead. It's expensive, high risk, and fraught with ethical concerns.
Furthermore, if the vast new intellectual property riches are either
Balkanized or monopolized, humanity will suffer, and America's role in
the world order will be seriously challenged.

You face a tough situation here, though, in that one of your core
constituencies, the faith-based voters, is understandably queasy about
the whole direction. So you've sought compromises on such things as
embryonic stem cell research, but the available compromises don't
quite give the scientific community enough room to make progress. I
understand how difficult these decisions are.

There are two likely negative outcomes from your policies as they
stand. In the short term, legitimate research on new fundamental
medicine will often be overshadowed by weird proprietary outfits, such
as the supposed cloning achieved by a UFO cult or stray doctors here
and there. These events poison public discourse.

In the long term, foreign countries will enjoy an economic advantage
because the US will not be a center of expertise in medicine. In
twenty years we could see a phenomenon in which masses of Americans
who can afford the trip head to Europe or Asia for medical care,
leaving their dollars abroad, so that there's increasingly less wealth
to go around for those Americans who had to stay home.

I don't need to tell you how significant this would be to the long
term economic health of our nation.

I would advise you to use your bully pulpit to be tough with both your
religious constituents AND the scientific research establishments.

To the scientists, I would say something like this: "You have
yourselves to blame in part for the public's reticence to fund the new
age of medicine. You seem to love making claims about life's
fundamental questions. I'm sick of reading that some robot at MIT has
gained emotions, that some new gene explains as much as you seem to
claim about a person's character, or any opinion of yours at all about
consciousness or God. I don't believe you have expertise on these
matters and you embarrass yourselves."

Yes, I want you to be that tough on us, because we deserve it, and
because it is what your religious constituents need to hear in the
public sphere.

Of course you can have a speech writer smooth these thoughts out so
they sound nicer. I'm used to combative debates so you have to tone
down any advice I give you in matters of rhetoric. I'm sure you have
people who can handle that job.

To your religious constituents, I would say this: "Your concerns are
legitimate and sane, but it's possible you've been mislead a bit by
those who enjoy exaggerating the true nature of the new frontiers in
medicine. You must remember that scientists have to sell themselves in
order to be funded, just like everyone else, so you need to learn to
discount a little bit of the science fiction-like atmosphere that
surrounds reporting on recent research.

For instance, they talk about 'clones', but that's a science fiction
word. Dolly the sheep was really no more than a delayed twin, and in
fact less similar to Dolly than a regular twin would have been. That's
not to say that I support the creation of human delayed twins--I
don't. But it's important not to allow the scientific community to
mystify what it can do.

It is essential that we hold life precious. Unfortunately, Americans
don't always agree on specific questions like abortion, but I know
that almost all Americans do hold life sacred and precious. I want to
suggest to you that defining the chemical moment of conception as the
start of life is not going to work, because it is a definition based
on scientific concepts which are themselves in the process of being
transformed. We can't reduce human life to a mechanical interaction of
molecules, or whatever objects scientists are talking about in a given
era. I believe that there is a difference between a collection of
cells and a person--call it a soul if you like. If you believe there's
a soul in a Petrie dish, you reduce what you mean by a soul.

I want my family and friends to be relieved from disease when it is
possible and I want the same for your family and friends. Please join
me in a loving quest to achieve this possibility."

I think this approach can work.

Once you win the hearts of both sides, and I think you can, an ethics
policy should be based on open information and consent. A person
should know and approve of what happens to their tissue. No viable
embryo should be created outside of the rule of law. And so on.

But please, let us proceed to improve our lives using the means
available to us.

I'll next address Energy, Transportation, and Climate:

We have to address the possibility of climate cataclysm. If we take
the position that Kyoto is flawed, and I think there's a strong case
that it is, we must articulate an alternative soon, so that the world
doesn't think we're crazy.

The revolution in transportation and energy must come about anyway,
whether the climate scare is legitimate or not.

I have a bit of a confession to make here. My colleagues and I might
have contributed to your falsely optimistic sense about the near term
potential of the oil economy. In the last twenty years, ever more
powerful computers have created the illusion the oil supply is
increasing. I worked on some of the first virtual oil field
exploration tools, and such tools have made oil fields far more
productive than we ever imagined. Furthermore, computer-aided design
has helped produce a new generation of oil extraction machinery that
can get at the oil we discover through our simulations. That's all
fine, and I'm proud of how much computer science has been able to
contribute to the oil exploration business, but there's also a hidden
danger. Without computers, not only would oil have been running out by
now, but it would have run out gradually, with prices going up as a
warning sign. I'm afraid that computers are creating the illusion of
an ever increasing supply, and will therefore reduce the period of
warning before the supply runs out, which it will.

So, I suppose I hope to make you aware of how my colleagues and I have
inadvertently fooled you on this matter. But this issue can be framed
positively even better than it can be framed negatively. Why don't we
invent new, better fuels and engines and then sell them to the world?
What's wrong with that picture? It seems like such a win-win solution.

We should create a new energy/transportation infrastructure,
presumably based on a cleaner and more efficient chemistry than the
current one. I agree with the emerging consensus that it would
probably consist of decentralized hydrogen production, possibly using
biotechnology to make the hydrogen. I also see cars that can drive
themselves, almost never getting into accidents, and merging
flawlessly and automatically into trains to create ad-hoc mass-transit
solutions. Car accidents cause more deaths than wars, so the
introduction of this technology would create a new boom in wealth and
happiness even aside from the curing of problems related to dependence
on oil.

If the world saw us building the next energy cycle, our policies
related to the current energy cycle would be less contentious.

We might have already contorted the climate enough that switching
fuels will not be enough. We might need to resort to a massive
technological fix. I dearly hope this will not come to pass, but I
believe we should set up an institute that explores such high risk
measures as re-carving the ocean floors or intercepting the sun's
energy in space on its way to the Earth. Once again, I would grieve if
it came to pass that we had to attempt measures such as these in the
future, but I must regretfully recommend that we begin to prepare
ourselves just in case.

The recent surprise announcement by the Japanese that they had created
the world's fastest computer, in order to model the weather, should be
treated as a friendly Sputnik-like event. I'm on the science board for
what had been the world's fastest civilian computer, at the Pittsburgh
Supercomputer Center, and I have to tell you my heart sank when I read
the announcement, even though I'm also happy that the new Japanese
machine is being put to a good use. I hope you felt as embarrassed as
I did, and I wish you would share that emotion with the public.

About the war on terror.

War is Hell. I lived right by the World Trade Center, and I dearly
wish I had not been home that day. It is clear that in our connected
world, in which many technologies become cheaper and more widely
available because of Moore's Law-like processes, and in which
communication is easy and essentially free, the old equations about
privacy and liberty have to be re thought. I hate this fact with the
whole of my being, but I acknowledge it's a fact.

I don't think your administration has been handling this matter very
well. For instance, your attorney general comes off badly in public.
He seems to be enjoying this turn of events, as if it vindicates his
beliefs. If you want Americans or other people in the world to make
the mental transition and emotional commitment into a new order, your
administration ought to be able to show that it shares in the pain.

You might be thinking to yourself, "This matter is none of my science
advisor's business." But privacy these days is about digital policy,
and that overlaps both socially and institutionally with the
scientific and engineering communities.

I believe you have to have these communities on board in order for
your policies to be successful and for the country to be more secure.

I have two specific suggestions.

First, if you want the public to accept less privacy, make it
symmetric. Instead of merely building a new domestic spying capability
that itself would be vulnerable to corruption, as secret centers of
power always are, make key institutions more open and transparent.

This serves multiple purposes. Let's not forget that since the war on
terror began, corrupt accounting cost the country more, in monetary
terms, than the terrorist attacks. The direct costs were tremendous,
but the indirect costs due to the gutting of investor confidence were
immeasurable.

We have the greatest information infrastructure in all history, and
yet investors weren't tipped off about a wave of massive fraudulent
schemes until it was too late. This cannot stand. The remedy is to
make big companies and yes, big government agencies, as transparent to
the public as the public must become to the new security apparatus.

This might sound counterintuitive at first. Would this not give
terrorists more information and therefore advantage as they planned
attacks?

I think there are strong arguments that symmetry increases security.
No matter how big the spy agencies might be, they can't employ enough
trusted eyeballs to look at all the data. And no, as your advisor I
can assure you that you cannot count on artificial intelligence
programs to make up the gap. The only solution is to have the whole
public looking. It was widely distributed public information that lead
to the capture of the Unabomber, the DC snipers, and so on.

The strength of Islamist terrorist cells is not so much that they are
well trained as that they benefit from a surrounding society that
doesn't call in tips. This leads to the second reason to support
symmetry. Transparency can be used to make the world friendlier to the
US.

Here I would like to add a specific recommendation. The
Arabic-speaking world is encountering the power of modern propaganda
for the first time via satellite TV. Our response has been to craft
infomercials, but why not try to find the next generation of leaders
when they are young. They are undoubtedly oriented to new media just
like their Western counterparts. Why not make language translators
available on the web so that kids in Arabic speaking countries can
browse English language websites and learn for themselves about us?
Why not encourage personal links using the web? Why not make science
and technology education materials available in this way?

None of these proposals would be easy to implement. Computer access is
restricted in repressive countries, for instance. Nonetheless, there
is considerable room to maneuver and it doesn't cost much.

In a related vein, we could do more to help empower and win the hearts
of young people in the exploding populations of the third world by
cleverly using inexpensive technology. We could use the latest
advances in speech recognition and synthesis to empower illiterate
people with access to basic information, for instance. Even
undernourished populations often gain access to consumer electronics
these days. This strange situation could be turned to advantage. Why
not design a hard-to-detect, human powered, wireless communicator
designed for illiterate people and give away millions of them in the
poorest parts of the world? Why not bring these people into the web of
modernity, in which they might find their way to a better life and
coincidentally might just send in tips?

All of these ideas relate to security, because as soon as terrorists
realize there's even a slight increase in the chance that someone in
their home environment might rat on them, they rapidly lose
maneuvering room. A little openness could go a long way.

I believe that if such devices were in place, we'd have given out the
unclaimed cash award for information leading to the capture of Bin
Laden by now.

Respectfully,

Jaron Lanier
Computer Scientist And Musician
Pioneer of Virtual Reality
Founder and former CEO of VPL
Currently the lead scientist for the National Tele-Immersion
Initiative.
________________________________________________________________

...science is patriotic. Good old American know-how is the
foundation that has made this a great country. It is no coincidence
that so many of the founding fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and
Benjamin Franklin, had a lifelong passion for science. Science is
the engine that has fueled our prosperity.

J. Doyne Famer 
Dear Mr. President,

The most pressing issue facing the United States today is not doing
better science, but rather using the science that we already have to
make better public policy. Science, which originally came from the
Latin word for "knowledge", is not just something that weird guys in
lab coats do - it is a practical mode of thought, a nuts and bolts
approach, a way of telling fact from fiction. According to my
dictionary, "scientific" means "having an exact, objective, factual,
systematic, or methodological basis". It means that when you don't
understand something, you make careful observations or experiments,
understand what works and what doesn't work, and choose the things
that work. Unfortunately, all too often we are now making public
policy based on belief and uninformed public opinion rather than
science, even when science gives clear answers that directly
contradict belief. This approach may make you popular in the short
run, but in the long run it is doomed to failure.

I would also like to point out that science is patriotic. Good old
American know-how is the foundation that has made this a great
country. It is no coincidence that so many of the founding fathers,
such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, had a lifelong passion
for science. Science is the engine that has fueled our prosperity. The
United States has by far the greatest scientific establishment in the
world, the best that has ever existed. So why, at the peak of our
scientific power, are we completely ignoring science when it comes to
formulating public policy?

I began my career as a scientist studying what has now come to be
called "chaos". What this means is that lots of things, like the
weather, are inherently unpredictable. This has come up recently for
global warming, which I'm sure you've heard a lot about. It's true
that at this point we can't predict exactly what global warming is
going to do to the earth. But there is something we can predict with
complete certainty: Global warming is going to make some big changes,
and those changes are highly unpredictable. The unpredictability of
global warming is precisely why we need to do something to stop it
now. One definition of conservative is "preferring gradual development
to abrupt change". Conservatives feel particularly strongly about this
when we don't have any idea what that abrupt change is going to be.
Global warming is a situation where anyone who is paying any attention
to what science is telling us ought to be a conservative.

Science isn't just about things, its also about people. During the
last fifty years we've learned a lot about people and what makes them
happy and productive. For example, we know that once they have their
basic needs taken care of, making more money is not a big factor that
contributes to making people happy. Scientists have measured that, and
understand it a lot better than global warming. Dollar for dollar,
investing money in nice parks, safe neighborhoods, getting rid of
pollution, and instituting good social services has a much bigger
effect on people's happiness than lowering their taxes.

There are many other areas where science tells us things about the
world and we aren't paying attention. These include building an
effective national defense, preventing huge forest fires, managing
water in the west, education, prison reform, drug policy, or social
security. In all these areas science tells us a lot about how to make
things work better, but we just aren't making good use of what it's
telling us.

Sincerely,

Doyne Farmer
Pioneer of Chaos Theory
McKinsey Professor
Santa Fe Institute
________________________________________________________________

...science has become bound with wealth and power into a positive
feedback loop from which it cannot escape: its perceived role in
the present age is to provide high technologies of the kind that
generate capital which in turn supports more science, of the kind
that will provide high technologies to generate more capital and so
on and so on.

Colin Tudge

The prime task of 2003 and beyond is to re-define and re-discover the
intellectual and moral roots of science. For science has become bound
with wealth and power into a positive feedback loop from which it
cannot escape: its perceived role in the present age is to provide
high technologies of the kind that generate capital which in turn
supports more science, of the kind that will provide high technologies
to generate more capital and so on and so on. It becomes more and more
difficult to finance science that offers no obvious short-term
commercial or military reward. Worse: an entire generation of
scientists and politicians has grown up that takes it to be
self-evident that science should accept its role as the handmaiden of
commerce and power. Hence the present uncritical enthusiasm for GMOs,
with no clear vision of how they might benefit humankind, and for the
industrialisation of agriculture in general, with no knowledge of, or
respect for, all that is destroyed along the way.

So we need above all and as a matter of urgency to re-state what
science is, and what it is for, and to re-discover the political means
by which it might again promote the perennial human causes of justice,
human rights, and cultural and biological diversity. We need of course
to revise the teaching of it: to present science not simply as a
vocational pursuit, a means to promote wealth and power, but truly as
one of the world's most valuable cultural pursuits: not as the royal
road to omniscience, which it decidedly is not, but certainly as an
indispensable source of insight and enlightenment.

All the rest is detail.

Colin Tudge
Oxfordshire
Three-time winner of the Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year Award.
Author of The Time Before History; The Variety of Life; and coauthor
of The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control. 
________________________________________________________________

My idea is that the whole "Homeland Defense" thing is too
cost-ineffective to be plausible.

Marvin Minsky

Mr. President:

My idea is that the whole "Homeland Defense" thing is too
cost-ineffective to be plausible. The lifetime cost of, for example,
preventing each airplane-crash fatality will be the order of
$100,000,000--and we could save a thousand times as many lives at the
same cost by various simple public-health measures.

Conclusion: what we really need is a "Homeland Arithmetic"
reorganization.

Yours truly,

Marvin Minsky
Mathematician and computer scientist
Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences; Cofounder of Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory.
MIT
Author of eight books, including The Society of Mind.
________________________________________________________________

What's missing is that science (and engineering) is no longer a
fundamental priority of the national agenda--the way it was when
Sputnik galvanized us into action in the aftermath of World War II.

George Dyson 
Mr. President:

I appreciate the opportunity to offer some advice. We currently have
no shortage of scientific expertise to deal with the manifold issues
facing this nation and the world. What's missing is that science (and
engineering) is no longer a fundamental priority of the national
agenda--the way it was when Sputnik galvanized us into action in the
aftermath of World War II.

You have dozens of capable and distinguished advisors to call upon who
owe their training and their love of science to the excitement of the
Sputnik years. What worries me is that we are not instilling the same
spirit among the generations now in school.

Should I be accepted for the position, I will move immediately to
initiate a national program (with public/private partnership) of
sabbaticals for all science educators, from kindergarten through grade
12. This will attract better teachers to the field, encourage existing
science educators to widen their horizons, and allow them to remain
current with what's going on in the real world. The entire nation will
reap long-term benefits through better-educated and more-inspired
students, and short-term benefits from the kinds of projects that
individual teachers will undertake in their sabbatical years.

Thank you for inviting my comments, and I wish your new emphasis on
science all possible success.

Sincerely,

George B. Dyson
Science historian
Author of Darwin Among the Machines and Project Orion: The True Story
of the Atomic Spaceship. 
________________________________________________________________

But only a dozen years ago, no one knew much about abrupt climate
change, those past occasions when the whole world flipped out of a
warm-and-wet mode like today into the alternate mode, which is
cool, dry, windy, dusty.

William H. Calvin

A Machiavellian advisor to a president might note that scientists are
always handy when you need an excuse to postpone action. We're
professional skeptics, and can always find holes in any proposal. (You
say that you figured that one out already?) But the physician who
waits until dead certain of a diagnosis before acting is likely to
wind up with a dead patient. Sometimes things develop so rapidly that
only early action--back when you're still somewhat uncertain--stands a
chance of being effective, as in catching cancer before it
metastasizes.

When the patient is civilization itself, science can provide a
heads-up--but only the best politicians have the talent to implement
the foresight. And coming on stage now is a stunning example of how
civilization must rescue itself. Looked at one way, the story is about
abrupt climate change--but similar lessons about shocks and
instability likely apply to our current problems with suicidal
terrorists.

Another major climate story is now emerging, and it dwarfs the three
big scientific alerts from the 1970s about global warming, ozone loss,
and acid rain. (Yes, it really has been thirty years.) But only a
dozen years ago, no one knew much about abrupt climate change, those
past occasions when the whole world flipped out of a warm-and-wet mode
like today into the alternate mode, which is cool, dry, windy, dusty.

In abrupt climate change you see big alterations in only 3-5 years, as
sudden as a drought--which it is. We once thought of climate change as
gradual, like ramping up a dimmer switch (the usual greenhouse warming
notion). But now we know that some climate change is more like the
ordinary light switch that flips abruptly. Dozens of these flips have
recently been discovered in ice cores and layered sediments around the
world.

In scope, a flip looks like a worldwide version of the Oklahoma Dust
Bowl of the 1930s. A few centuries later, the drought climate flips
back into worldwide warm-and-wet, even more quickly. The big flips
have happened every few thousand years on average, though the most
recent one was back before agriculture in 10,000 B.C.

Were another climate lurch to happen in today's world, with a
population six thousand times greater than on the last occasion,
agriculture could no longer feed the city populations. People would
flee into the countryside, eating everything in sight, and losing much
of the societal organization needed for prompt recovery.

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall" will likely apply, with a
vicious downward spiral into the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
famine, pestilence, war, death. It probably won't be the end of human
beings but genocide will be widespread in this vast downsizing--and
not just on the scale of the genocide recorded in the Old Testament or
the Greek versions deplored by Thucydides. Just recall Bosnia or
Rwanda, multiply by ten, and imagine the whole ruined world affected
by such hatred. Recovery from that hellish state of affairs would take
many generations.

Can we head off the next flip, or perhaps slow it down? After all,
were the same climate changes spread out over 500 years, and not such
a shock, there might be a technofix, one that would counter the
tendency to collapse like a house of cards. Flips have a chain of
causation and, in medicine, this is good news, as it provides a number
of intermediate stages at which you can intervene. How much time do we
have, to develop this preventative medicine of climate that guards
against sudden shocks?

Alas, the next flip may arrive sooner than otherwise, thanks to our
current warming trend. The northern extension of the Gulf Stream
appears quite vulnerable to global warming in four different ways.
That's important because it fails in a flip. An early warning might be
a decline in this current. And according to two oceanographic studies
published this last year, this vulnerable ocean current has been
dramatically declining for the last 40-50 years, paralleling our
global warming and rising CO2.

Some optimists say, from what little is known about the climate
feedback mechanisms, that we might be immune to the usual flips for
awhile. I hope they are right, but a possible "out" is not something
to bet our civilization on. As the new National Research Council
report Abrupt Climate Change says dryly, "denying the likelihood, or
downplaying the relevance of past abrupt events, could be costly." It
is now clear that climate is like a drunk. If left alone, it sits.
Forced to move, it staggers.

While climate flips are a particularly dramatic setup for the failure
of civilization, other sudden shocks might set off much the same
scenario, where people flee the cities and destroy the remaining
efficient agriculture before starving. Epidemic disease in big cities
could trigger much the same thing. So could a widespread economic
collapse. Asymmetrical warfare may not yet be capable of starting a
climate flip, but we certainly have acquired suicidal enemies whose
shock tactics aspire to trigger epidemic and economic catastrophes.
But their victims might become the whole world, as many interdependent
countries, unable to feed their large populations, slide down the
slippery slope into genocidal downsizings.

We must shore up the foundations of civilization well in advance, much
as the medieval cathedrals had flying buttresses retrofitted. What to
do is a much longer story, but getting started now is important
because political consensus takes so long to achieve. The development
of atomic bombs required only a few years, yet Europe's impressive
achievement of a common currency took fifty years. Action and
effective societal reaction have very different time scales.

While scientists can provide better headlights to spot the turnings
and the washouts in advance, speeding up consensus-building requires a
different set of skills. Only an effective combination of foresight
and leadership stands a chance of building those flying buttresses
that are needed to protect the cathedral of civilization from abrupt
shocks.

I think that political leadership has the harder task, given how
difficult it is to make people aware of what must be done and get them
moving in time. It's going to be like herding kittens, and the
political leaders who can do it will be seen as the same kind of
geniuses that pulled off the American Revolution.

William H. Calvin
Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
University of Washington, Seattle
Author of A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate
Change and the Atlantic Monthly's cover story, "The great climate
flip-flop."
________________________________________________________________

What the president ought to do is obvious: focus the nation's mind
on a big, real and exciting problem. Ideally we ought to have a
competitor to keep us playing our best game--but if the problem is
interesting enough, maybe the competitor doesn't matter.

David Gelernter

The best thing that happened to U.S. science in the last half-century
was the Cold War and its consequences--one of them being the Space
Race. Americans cared about space in the 1960s as they'd never cared
about any science or engineering project before, and never have since.
The social catastrophe of the late '60s tends to obscure the
spectacular achievements of those years.

What the president ought to do is obvious: focus the nation's mind on
a big, real and exciting problem. Ideally we ought to have a
competitor to keep us playing our best game--but if the problem is
interesting enough, maybe the competitor doesn't matter.

We know several things for sure about what this Big Project ought to
be. "Men on Mars" is not it. (It's a fascinating prospect, but too
close intellectually and emotionally to the Moon program.)

The right answer will have nothing to do with environmental doomsday
stories; it will deal with people's everyday lives, making them
better.

Nowadays nearly everyone travels by air; it might be time to
reconsider supersonic passenger travel--but the solution has to be
cheap and clean and quiet enough to be acceptable, nothing like the
Concorde; a hard problem; that's what makes it interesting.

Or: a nationwide magnetic (or some other post-iron-on-iron technology)
rail system. Or: practical rocket planes for New York-Tokyo in two
hours or less. Or: anything whatsoever to get people between New York
and New Haven in under an hour.

That's the sort of science and engineering that changes lives, by
manufacturing time, the world's most precious commodity. (Maybe its
only precious commodity.)

These are the sorts of practical problems that scientists and
engineers (for the most part) no longer give a damn about. But
transportation has a lot to do with the nation's quality of life, and
transportation is headed downhill fast. For most people, travel is
substantially more of a pain today than it was in 1950. Why is that
acceptable? I don't give a damn how fast my computer runs if moving my
carcass costs more time, effort and pain every year.

David Gelernter
Professor of computer science, Yale University
Chief Scientist, Mirror Worlds Technologies
Board Member, National Endowment for the Arts
Author of Mirror Worlds and Drawing a Life: Surviving the Unabomber 
________________________________________________________________

It is a compelling human story. From genetics, to cognitive
science, to physics we can patch together a view of the world, our
place in it, our power and powerlessness. We can describe the mad
animals we are in the middle of a range of phenomenon from the
microscopic to the mind tauntingly vast.

Janna Levin

Dear Mr. President

There is a weighty apprehension that scientific issues in general have
been marginalized in your administration. We could detail our specific
causes but the impact is lost if the very nature of scientific pursuit
is not appreciated. Should we first advise you of the significance to
our country and the world of our broader scientific aspirations?

It is a compelling human story. From genetics, to cognitive science,
to physics we can patch together a view of the world, our place in it,
our power and powerlessness. We can describe the mad animals we are in
the middle of a range of phenomenon from the microscopic to the mind
tauntingly vast. The fruits of this vast scientific enterprise are of
pressing importance to our survival--a survival that is not currently
assured.

I have heard, to my persistent surprise, that people kill each other
for land, money, oil. Our petty gripes and vicious aggression as
insignificant as a dog fight kicking up dust and dirt in our squabbles
as the earth rolls us around the sun. And although so many of us
despair over the newspaper accounts of our more barbarous traits,
Tuesdays are always a good day as we get the special Science Section
in The New York Times and the pessimism lifts.

The articles are not about territory or struggle or financial gain
they're about strange crystal growths, rocks from Mars, the human
genome, an accelerating universe. These things we do out of purely
human curiosity. We are driven by inquisitiveness and a belief that
the world is beautiful and true and reaffirms our brand of faith which
transcends race and gender and national boundaries. Nature speaks to
all of us and any of us.

No one can guess the shape or size or language of the next genius but
we can all participate in the knowledge that is woven of all of our
contributions. Through a well-supported scientific initiative we could
develop energy sources to better protect our planet, cure AIDS, and
understand the origin and fate of our entire universe. No small aims.

Reaching these aims demands vision beyond our short-term ambitions.
When a Congressional Committee asked how scientific research would
advance defense of our country, Robert Wilson, the founding director
of Fermilab said, "it has nothing to do directly with defending our
country, except to make it worth defending". Our scientific culture
helps to make ours a world worth defending.

Janna Levin
Theoretical Physicist
Cambridge University
Author of How the Universe got Its Spots. 
________________________________________________________________

You went to Andover, Yale and Harvard, respected educational
institutions where educational values are debated up front, where
you were not a guinea pig in randomized trials, and where you had
some of the most gifted teachers in the world. Your children, our
children, deserve the same respect.

Howard Gardner

To President George Bush

Re: the new Institute for Educational Sciences

We are faced with a paradox. On the one hand, the United States leads
the world on nearly every dimension of scientific and technological
achievement, in both the biomedical and the physical sciences. At the
same time, we have a precollegiate educational system that is mediocre
at best. It is natural to ask whether we can use our scientific
strength to improve American education. And, indeed, that is the
purpose of the recently created Institute for Educational Sciences.
This Institute promises to improve the quality of educational research
by embracing models from biomedicine. Indeed it singles out
"randomized trials" as the "gold standard" for educational research.

By all means, we should ask science to do what it capable to do, but
not what it cannot do. (I am sure that, wearing your religious hat,
you would agree with that statement. No one is calling for randomized
trials in the church, synagogue, or mosque). Education differs from
medicine in three crucial respects and these need to be understood and
respected.

First of all, education is an endeavor that is laden with human
values. While almost no one disputes the medical goals of longer and
healthier lives, we in a democracy differ deeply about the kind of
education that we value. How could we ever design a single educational
system that would please Jesse Helms, Jesse Jackson, and Jesse
Ventura? We cannot conduct meaningful scientific research on
educational practices unless we articulate a value system with some
specificity. And so, to be concrete, we can't just compare three
scientific methods in terms of efficacy. We need to decide whether we
want a science education that focuses on factual knowledge, laboratory
skills, deep understanding of a few essential concepts, asking good
questions, or some amalgam thereof. Only thereafter can proper studies
be launched.

Second, young persons are not seeds of corn, nor are they informed
adults who can give consent to their involvement in an experiment. It
may be appropriate to have randomized trials for certain questions
(e.g. what are the benefits and losses of beginning secondary school
one hour later each day) but it is not appropriate to institute them
for other issues (e.g. teaching a class without any opportunity for
student questions, only to determine what the costs and benefits are
of such an approach). Certainly, as a parent, I would not give consent
for my child to be a guinea pig in order to demonstrate the merits or
liabilities of some educationalist's pet theory.

Third, teaching is and will always be in part an art or craft, and
properly so. Teaching depends upon human interactions over long
periods of time and on the transmission of wisdom as well as the
gradual elimination of pernicious practices. The educational systems
that we admire all over the world are not ones that are based on
scientific research; they are the ones where skilled practitioners
have cultivated wise procedures over the generations and passed them
on to their successors carefully though not uncritically. Attempts to
create teacher-proof environments are destined to fail. We need to
honor the craft of teaching, and not try to eliminate it by scientific
(which are often pseudo-scientific) manipulations.

So two cheers for the New Institute, Mr. President, but remember above
all: You went to Andover, Yale and Harvard, respected educational
institutions where educational values are debated up front, where you
were not a guinea pig in randomized trials, and where you had some of
the most gifted teachers in the world. Your children, our children,
deserve the same respect.

Howard Gardner
Professor of Education at Harvard University
Author of Frames of Mind, The Mind's New Science, and Extraordinary
Minds. 
________________________________________________________________

It takes a bomb in the office of some academics to make them
realize that their most basic values are now threatened, and some
of my good friends and colleagues on the Edge seem to have
forgotten 9/11.

Martin Seligman

The civilized world is at war with Jihad Islamic terrorism. It takes a
bomb in the office of some academics to make them realize that their
most basic values are now threatened, and some of my good friends and
colleagues on the Edge seem to have forgotten 9/11. If we lose the
war, the laudable, but pet projects they endorse, will not be issues.
Fighting fatwahs and no education for women will displace grousing
about random assignment of schoolchildren to study education. If we
win this war, we can go on to pursue the normal goals of science.

So a science advisor to the President today needs to help direct
natural science and social science toward winning our war against
terrorism. First and foremost.

Martin Seligman
Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology
University of Pennsylvania
Author of Learned Optimism; The Optimistic Child; and Authentic
Happiness. 
________________________________________________________________

Beneficial results for innovations in minority education have been
obtained at every level from early elementary school through
college. Unfortunately, it is frequently assumed, even by
educators, that such results are possible only for charismatic
individuals and that they cannot be duplicated by normal people in
normal school systems.

Richard E. Nisbett

Dear Mr. President,

American scientific success, as measured for example by the number of
Nobel Prize winners who live in the United States, helps to sustain an
illusion that the American educational system is fundamentally
healthy. This illusion is further aided by the fact that American
higher education is rightly the envy of the world. And it is helped
along by the fact that most Americans believe that, though there may
be serious problems with most U.S. schools, the ones their children go
to are an exception. (This is a variant of the same phenomenon that
gets people re-elected to Congress: the public has a low opinion of
the Congress in general, but people tend to regard their own
Representative as an exception.)

You are well aware that math and science education at the secondary
and elementary level is substandard in comparison to most of the rest
of the developed world. And education at those levels too often fails
across the boards to serve minority populations. You have commented on
these facts in public. But you sometimes speak as though we knew how
to improve education in all respects. The fact is that most of what we
know about education--when we know anything at all--is mostly at the
level of widely accepted anecdote rather than solid scientific
findings. Enough progress has been made in the last 30 years by
cognitive psychologists, as well as by developmental and social
psychologists, to allow for an avalanche of research on what is
effective in education if a serious national effort were to be made.

Generating support for a serious research program would likely be
impeded by pessimism on the part of the public. It is distressing how
many people assume that little can be done to improve
education--especially for minorities. But in fact we have a large
number of demonstrations that it is possible for minority students to
perform at levels well above the national average--the "Jaime
Escalante Effect." Beneficial results for innovations in minority
education have been obtained at every level from early elementary
school through college. Unfortunately, it is frequently assumed, even
by educators, that such results are possible only for charismatic
individuals and that they cannot be duplicated by normal people in
normal school systems.

Jaime Escalantes may in fact be rare, but there may be ways to help
minority children achieve high levels of educational success short of
providing each of them with an inspirational teacher. There are
already many hints about how to improve teaching of students in
general and there are some suggestions that not all students learn in
the same way. An example is tentative evidence that minority children
are particularly likely to benefit from interacting with computers as
opposed to traditional methods of reading books and listening to
lectures.

An all-out effort to find both the generalizations about what kinds of
education are good in general, and what kinds are most helpful for
minority children, would pay back many-fold. The obvious agency to
handle this is the Department of Education. You have directed the
Department to spend more money on basic research in education. Perhaps
that will be effective, despite the very poor record of the department
in spending money wisely for research. My recommendation, however, is
to establish a special bureau within the National Science Foundation
and avoid any situation where traditional educational researchers have
a veto over what kind of research gets funded.

Sincerely yours,

Richard E. Nisbett
Psychologist
University of Michigan
Author of The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think
Differently--And Why 
________________________________________________________________

One promising example of such legislation would be a program of
parental licensure requiring persons, wishing to birth and rear a
baby, to demonstrate at least what we should minimally require of
persons wishing to adopt someone else's baby.

David Lykken

Dear President Bush,

The rate of violent crime in the U.S. in 1993 was five times the rate
in 1960. In response to this epidemic, the number of inmates in U.S.
prisons began to rise rapidly in 1975 from some 200,000 to at least
1,400,000 today. Locking up seven times as many criminals produced a
recent (and temporary) dip in the crime rate but the latest statistics
show crime to be starting upwards yet again. Who are these violent
criminals? Where do they come from? Neither our state nor federal
prison systems normally collect the data required to answer these
questions.

Dr. Louis Sullivan, then Secretary of Health and Human Services,
reported in 1992 that 70% of juveniles in long-term correctional
facilities did not live with their biological father while growing up.
About 70% of teenage mothers, 72% of teenage runaways, 70% of
elementary school pupils with at least 22 unexcused absences per year,
were reared without fathers. In Minneapolis, 70% of 135 children
guilty of felonies ranging from arson to burglary and assault,
children 9 years old or younger, were found to be domiciled with
single mothers. There is strong reason to suspect that our crime
problem, involving perpetrators both black and white, is an inevitable
consequence of a growing and self-reproducing underclass consisting of
the unsocialized offspring of single-mothers who were immature,
over-burdened, and/or unsocialized themselves.

A research project to collect accurate, detailed information about the
psychological and demographic characteristics of all American
adjudicated felons, adult and juvenile, contrasted with a non-criminal
control group matched for age, race, and gender, would reveal whether
I am right in predicting that the great majority of current prison
inmates would have become law-abiding neighbors and citizens had they
gone home from the obstetrical hospital with a mature,
self-supporting, socialized mother and father. The definite
confirmation of that hypothesis would encourage state and federal
legislators to give serious consideration to, and at least local
experimentation with, legislation designed to inhibit further growth
of the underclass and to preserve the right of all American children
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

One promising example of such legislation would be a program of
parental licensure requiring persons, wishing to birth and rear a
baby, to demonstrate at least what we should minimally require of
persons wishing to adopt someone else's baby. These minimum
requirements, for undertaking one of the most important and most
demanding of human responsibilities, would include a mature married
couple, who are self-supporting, not incapacitated by mental or
physical disease, and without a prior conviction for a violent crime.
Family-court judges would be empowered to grant exceptions to these
simple requirements in special cases (e.g., to socially responsible
gay or lesbian couples). Babies born to unlicensed parents would be
placed for permanent adoption.

I believe that a well-designed, large-scale research program would
produce results that would motivate public demand for legislative
action. I think that this demand would come both from citizens who
fear crime and its heavy price tag and also from citizens who feel a
responsibility for those millions of once-innocent children whose
fatherless rearing has deprived them of a reasonable chance to grow up
as socialized citizens and neighbors.

David T. Lykken, PhD.
Emeritus Professor of Psychology
University of Minnesota
Author of Happiness: What Studies on Twins Show Us about Nature,
Nurture, and the Happiness Set Point. 
________________________________________________________________

Human beings have thrived because, more than any other creature, we
are naturally driven to learn about the world around us. Our
greatest scientists and most creative companies regularly borrow
the best practices of mothers and preschool teachers. Give all our
scientists, old and young, lunch, the right toys, a safe place to
play, interesting problems to solve, and someone to talk to, and
watch them fly.

Alison Gopnik

Dear President Bush,

Like many of your other prospective science advisors I would like to
urge you to provide more support for basic scientific research. But I
would especially urge more support for the most productive, and most
underfunded, scientific community in the country. This group of
scientists and science educators do more to provide the basic
intellectual infrastructure of the nation than any other. Every year
they make fundamental discoveries in physics, biology, mathematics,
and psychology, as well as ensuring that the discoveries of previous
generations of scientists are transmitted to the scientists of the
future. Yet they typically receive salaries somewhere between zero and
$15,000.00 a year, and 20% are below the poverty line. Most of the
science educators in this group actually make major financial
sacrifices to do their fundamentally important work. They receive less
federal and state support than any other part of the scientific
community, no grants, no scholarships, no R and D write-offs, less
even than public elementary schools or community colleges. In fact,
both your administration and the preceding one have actually cut the
small amount of funding that was once earmarked for this group. These
unsung geniuses, are, of course, children under five and the many
women (and a few men) who take care of them.

This may seem like a motherhood issue--well, actually, it is a
motherhood issue. But really valuing families and genuinely leaving no
child behind isn't just motherhood--its the soundest science policy
too. And don't please, waste all this scientific talent on meaningless
busy work by putting young children in junior versions of our
notoriously awful schools. America's science has always been most
successful where it is least constrained--we need blue sky research up
and down the line. In fact, blue sky research is our most fundamental
competitive advantage, not just as Americans but as Homo Sapiens, too.
Human beings have thrived because, more than any other creature, we
are naturally driven to learn about the world around us. Our greatest
scientists and most creative companies regularly borrow the best
practices of mothers and preschool teachers. Give all our scientists,
old and young, lunch, the right toys, a safe place to play,
interesting problems to solve, and someone to talk to, and watch them
fly.

Sincerely yours,
Alison Gopnik
Professor of Psychology
Coauthor of The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us
About the Mind 
________________________________________________________________

To understand the nature of foreign markets, we must understand the
psychology of foreign cultures. This entails a search for human
universals and how these constrain cultural variation. To
illustrate, consider the problem of cooperation, and in particular,
how people judge fairness and respond to unfair play.

Marc D. Hauser

Dear President Bush,

I am delighted to hear that you are willing to consider my application
as a science advisor to your administration. In the current climate, I
can't think of a more important mission than to clarify how the
different branches of science can contribute to the overall health of
our nation. I would put it stronger: the health of our nation depends
on science. In this spirit, I would like to sketch a proposal for how
recent developments in the sciences of the mind directly impact on
government policies concerning economics, law, and health care.

1. Human nature, universality, and the economics of fairness

Our economy is currently in a vulnerable state of affairs. The stock
market oscillates unpredictably. Some portion of this oscillation is
driven by foreign markets. To understand the nature of foreign
markets, we must understand the psychology of foreign cultures. This
entails a search for human universals and how these constrain cultural
variation. To illustrate, consider the problem of cooperation, and in
particular, how people judge fairness and respond to unfair play.

A standard test of resource distribution and maximization in
experimental economics is the Ultimatum Game. The standard game
entails one player making an offer to share some proportion of a pot
of money to another player. The game is played only once and the
identity of the other player is never revealed. Once the player making
an offer does so, the other player has a choice: accept the offer or
reject it. If the receiver accepts, then he or she keeps the
proportion offered and the player making the offer keeps the
remainder. If the offer is rejected, both players end the game with no
money at all. The intuition from economics, an intuition driven by the
view that people are generally selfish and wish to maximize personal
resources, is that the player offering should propose the smallest
amount acceptable to another player.

This makes good sense because from the receiver's perspective, some
money is better than no money, so all offers should be accepted. When
this game is played in developed nations such as the united States and
the UK, results indicate that the economist's intuition is wrong.
People typically make offers of about 50% of the pot and receivers
reject offers of 20% or less. Both moves are highly irrational if
resource maximization is the norm. It is clearly not the norm. In the
developed world, fairness drives both the offer and the acceptance,
and what appears to be fair is about a 50:50 split.

This was the standard textbook account until about 5 years ago. The
tide changed when a small group of economists decided to look into
cross cultural variation of resource maximization and distribution.
When people in small scale, non-industrial societies, play the
ultimatum game, there are two clear results. First, every human,
independent of cultural heritage, has a powerful sense of fairness.
Second, the local culture shifts what people consider fair and how
they respond to an unfair trade. For example, when the ultimatum game
is played in some cultures, there are modal offers of only 15% while
in other cultures the offers are as high as 50% but the rejection
rates are almost equally high. These results show that the human mind
has evolved a powerful sense of fairness, a capacity that is part of
the brain's unique endowment. What culture does, constrained by
biology, is change what constitutes a fair exchange. Other studies in
experimental economics have begun to reveal how public goods can be
protected against cheaters. Once again, pure economics fails where an
integration of economics, biology, and psychology pays off handsomely.
Public goods are vulnerable to cheaters because the payoffs are higher
if others contribute in your stead. To guard against defection,
economists working in an evolutionary psychology framework have shown
that two factors maintain public goods: information on reputation
(what participants contribute) and the capacity to punish those who
cheat. Again, these factors are cross-culturally important and stable,
revealing universal properties of the mind that persist in the face of
changes in the environment, including the emergence of civilization,
formal governments, universities and so forth.

This view of cooperation and fairness shows striking parallels with
other systems of knowing, including language and mathematics. Although
each of these systems show cross-cultural variation, each is
constrained by machinery in the brain that is present in all humans,
independent of culture. The implications of this perspective, and
these particular findings in anthropological economics, are profound.
Given our nation's interest in and commitment to international trade,
we would be well advised to take seriously both the facts concerning
human universals in decision making as well as the power of
cross-cultural differences to tweak the perception of fairness. We are
more likely to develop productive programs for economic development by
understanding those parts that unify all humans and those parts that
make us different. Our government must not only incorporate such
findings, but seriously consider the integration of scientists working
in these areas with government officials attempting to launch
international aid programs.

2. The brains underlying control and its loss

Each year, our government spends millions, if not billions of dollars
on problems concerning violence, drug abuse, gambling, smoking, and
eating disorders. Although these problems appear different on the
surface, they reflect a common underlying theme: overcoming temptation
in the face of weak systems of control. Over the last decade, studies
in cognitive neuroscience and genetics have begun to pinpoint areas in
the brain that are involved in reward, conflict monitoring, and
control, as well as gene sequences that may put some people at greater
risk than others with respect to overcoming problems of control. To
illustrate the importance of these findings for the health of our
nation, consider the following frightening fact: the best predictor,
internationally, of the level of violence within a nation is the
proportion of young men in the population. Men are more violent than
women in all cultures. Although cultures can shift the level of
violence, the sex difference remains. Men are more heavily involved in
risk taking. We now know that a significant correlate of violence in
humans, both men and women, is the level of circulating serotonin--a
key neurochemical in the brain. When serotonin levels are low, the
level of control is lower; low serotonin levels are associated with
greater impulsivity, more risk taking. We are only beginning to
understand what determines and changes levels of serotonin in the
brain. One thing is certain: the key lies in understanding what
happens in development. A recent study illustrates this point, and
shows why science must interface with policy. Genetic analyses have
revealed that a particular form of one gene causes differential
expression of an enzyme. This enzyme plays a critical role in the
production of serotonin. In a study of several hundred young boys,
results revealed that when this gene produces a low level of the
target enzyme, such children are far more vulnerable to physical abuse
by parents than in children with a high level of the enzyme. In
particular, boys who were targets of severe parental aggression were
much more likely to shows signs of antisocial personality disorder if
the level of the enzyme was low than if it was high. Parental
aggression should not be tolerated under any circumstance. But what
this study reveals is that we are not equally vulnerable to
aggression. As our understanding of genetics and neuroscience
increase, we will be able to use this information to better plan
programs for intervention. Ultimately, this interplay between
molecular genetics and neurobiology on the one hand, and social work
on the other hand, should lead to a reduction in overall levels of
violence as we can perhaps begin to target the source in development
as opposed to the consequences in adulthood.

In closing, I believe that our government is ideally poised to bring
science more fully into issues of policy. The rapid explosion of
knowledge in the sciences must not sit idly in the libraries of
universities, but should make its way into building a healthier
nation. As President, you have the opportunity to lead this
initiative.

Sincerely yours,

Marc D. Hauser
Professor of Psychology
Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
Harvard University
________________________________________________________________

The first and most important issue at the edge is the biology
underlying conscious experience, particularly the biology of
self-awareness: How do you study it? Where is it located in the
brain? How does it develop over time?

Eric R. Kandel

The issues at the edge of neuroscience are clear.

The first and most important issue at the edge is the biology
underlying conscious experience, particularly the biology of
self-awareness: How do you study it? Where is it located in the brain?
How does it develop over time?

A second problem is how is memory perpetuated to last the lifetime of
an individual.

A third problem is the future of stem cell biology in the brain. To
what degree will we be able to replace cells in the nervous system
that die with stem cells that take on similar properties?

Sincerely yours,

Eric R. Kandel, MD
Nobel Laureate
University Professor, Columbia University, Center for Neurobiology &
Behavior
Senior Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
________________________________________________________________

Advanced nanotechnologies, based on molecular manufacturing, will
enable the production of computer systems a billion times more
powerful than today's, aerospace vehicles with 98% less structural
mass, and medical tools enabling molecular repair of cells,
tissues, and organs. These and related technologies will be
economically and strategically decisive.

K. Eric Drexler

Dear Mr. President:

I must respectfully decline your invitation, as I am unsuited to such
a role, but I wish to take this opportunity to offer a potentially
crucial piece of advice regarding strategic research directions.

The United States, like all the leading technological powers, has
recently turned its research efforts toward a broad field called
"nanotechnology". I introduced this term in the mid-1980s and
described long-term prospects that helped motivate the recent
explosion of interest and investment. Advanced nanotechnologies, based
on molecular manufacturing, will enable the production of computer
systems a billion times more powerful than today's, aerospace vehicles
with 98% less structural mass, and medical tools enabling molecular
repair of cells, tissues, and organs. These and related technologies
will be economically and strategically decisive.

Molecular manufacturing will be based on molecular machine systems
able to manipulate and assemble molecular components to make larger
products. If you look in a conventional factory today, you will see
electronic devices sensing and controlling processes, but the actual
work--shaping, moving, and assembling parts--is done by machines that,
quite naturally, use moving parts to move parts.

Research programs today are poorly focused on developing the molecular
machine technologies essential to the strategic objective of molecular
manufacturing. Researchers, steeped in late-20th-century culture,
often see machinery as somehow archaic, left over from the 19th
century, rather than recognizing it as the necessary foundation of
technologies past, present, and future. The broad field of
nanotechnology embraces a host of topics related to more fashionable
academic topics, such as biotechnology, materials, and
microelectronics. Interest in these topics has diverted resources into
short-term efforts that are well worth doing--but not at the expense
of neglecting core technologies essential to the long-term promise of
nanotechnology.

The issues here are broad and basic enough that policy makers need not
defer to the judgment of narrow technical experts: Advanced
nanotechnologies will be based on molecular manufacturing, which, like
all manufacturing, will require systems of machines with moving parts.
Accordingly, the development of molecular machine systems must be a
central priority of the ongoing National Nanotechnology Initiative.

K. Eric Drexler
Chairman, Foresight Institute
Author of Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and
Computation; Unbounding the Future; and Engines of Creation. 
________________________________________________________________

The most critical science policy decisions that face you can all be
reduced to a three words: education, education, education.

James J. O'Donnell 
Mr. President,

The most critical science policy decisions that face you can all be
reduced to a three words: education, education, education.

In 1957, I was a little kid growing up at White Sands Proving Ground
in New Mexico, Werner Von Braun's first American test site. I well
remember the news stories in the paper on Saturday, October 5, when
Sputnik went up, and well remember the flood of money that came to our
missile base and to educational institutions everywhere in the months
that followed. Three of my classmates and I got our pictures in
newspapers all over the country posing thoughtfully with models of
missiles because we--growing up at White Sands--were supposed to be
the hope of the next generation. (Me, I decided a few years later that
rocket science was what middle aged guys in suits did, so to be truly
rebellious I went off to study Greek and Latin, but another few years
later I wound up as CIO of a great university, so the education money
wasn't all mis-spent.)

American science in the near half-century since has done wonderful
things--but we train fewer scientists every year, we can't fill
secondary school classrooms with trained science teachers, we cannot
support the building of research facilities in our universities, and
the mass media and the houses of congress are full of scientific
illiterates. Scientific research will not fix all humankind's
problems--but so far it has made us healthier, better fed, more
prosperous, and better able to achieve the potential of human
intelligence and human society than my grandfather's generation could
have imagined.

But we will go nowhere near where we need to go without the smart,
trained people to take us there. We must be as relentless in hunting
down that talent as we are in pursuing terrorists, and as committed to
winning the hearts and minds on the American street to an
understanding of the power of science as we are to winning hearts and
minds on middle eastern streets. We can probably win wars, but to make
them worth winning, we must build a world that makes all humankind
thrive in ways that are only possible with that most rigorous
application of our most precious resource--human intelligence.

James J. O'Donnell
Professor of Classics
Provost
Georgetown University
Author of Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace. 
________________________________________________________________

Science is a way of thinking that recognizes the need to test
hypotheses so that the process is not reduced to mere opinion
mongering, that the findings of such tests are provisional and
probabilistic, and that natural explanations are always sought for
natural phenomena.

Michael Shermer

Dear Mr. President:

We live in the age of science. The geometric growth in computing power
and internet communications is emblematic of the impact science has
had in all human endeavors. Science has made the world of today as
different from 1950, as 1950 was from 1500. Given that fact it is
jarring to encounter the results of the National Science Foundation's
biennial report on the state of science understanding, published last
April:

o 30% of Americans believe that UFOs are space vehicles from other
civilizations
o 60% believe in ESP
o 40% think that astrology is scientific
o 32% believe in lucky numbers
o 70% accept magnetic therapy as scientific
o 88% agree that alternative medicine is a viable means of treating
illness

Education by itself is not a panacea. Although belief in ESP decreased
from 65% among high school graduates to 60% among college graduates,
and belief in magnetic therapy dropped from 71% among high school
graduates to 55% among college graduates, that still leaves over half
fully endorsing such claims! And for embracing alternative medicine,
the percentages actually increase, from 89% for high school grads to
92% for college grads.

Why do so many people, even smart people, believe so many weird
things? The problem is usually blamed on education, especially science
education. That is only part of the problem. People believe weird
things because they are taught what to think, not how to think.
Consider these additional statistics from the NSF report: 70% of
Americans still do not understand the scientific process, defined in
the study as grasping probability, the experimental method, and
hypothesis testing. One solution is more and better science education,
as indicated by the fact that 53% of Americans with a high level of
science education (nine or more high school and college science/math
courses) understand the scientific process, compared to 38% with a
middle level (six to eight such courses) science education, and 17%
with a low level (less than five such courses).

To address this serious problem we need to teach people that science
is not simply a database of unconnected factoids, but a set of methods
aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or
confirmation. Science is a way of thinking that recognizes the need to
test hypotheses so that the process is not reduced to mere opinion
mongering, that the findings of such tests are provisional and
probabilistic, and that natural explanations are always sought for
natural phenomena.

Lacking a fundamental comprehension of how science works, the siren
song of pseudoscience becomes too alluring to resist, no matter how
smart you are. So my recommendation, Mr. Bush, is that since your
father was the "education President" you become the "science education
President." Not just any science education, but science education that
teaches students how to think; and not just how to think about weird
things, but how to think about, challenge, and be skeptical of all
things, including and especially political, economic, and social
issues.

Science is the greatest tool ever devised to understand the cause of
things. It is, therefore, our greatest hope for a viable future. Ad
astra!

Michael Shermer
Editor-in-Chief, Skeptic magazine
Monthly Columnist, Scientific American 
Author of In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel
Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History. 
________________________________________________________________

My proposal: surface the hidden links between what we buy and the
consequential impacts of those products. Then let consumers make
choices based on this new information--in a sense,"voting" every
time we purchase goods--and let the power of the free market,
rather than government policy alone, become a force for
improvement.

Daniel Goleman

Mr. President:

One large set of pressing problems our nation and the world
face--ranging from growing rates of childhood asthma to global
warming--stem in large part from a shared root cause: the cumulative
impacts of our habits of consumption. The asthma and global warming,
for example, both stem largely from the build-up in the air of
particulates from the production (through, say, coal-burning power
plants) of the energy we use in our homes and the exhaust of autos.
Yet most of us make little or no connection between our own buying
habits and concerns like our children's asthma or the warming of the
planet.

The reason: Virtually none of us can give a precise answer to the
question,"What are the impacts for health, the environment, our
planet's resources, the gap between rich and poor, of the products we
buy? The answers are potentially available, but now are hidden by a
fog about the consequences for ourselves and the world of our own
actions as consumers.

Yet the multiplier effect--the vast number of people who buy those
same products--creates a vast network of inadvertent, adverse
consequences. This goes on because we have little or no information
about the hidden links between what we buy, and how it impacts our
world, our health, our climate, our children. So those of us who
complain about or suffer from these problems still continue to be part
of their very cause.

My proposal: surface the hidden links between what we buy and the
consequential impacts of those products. Then let consumers make
choices based on this new information--in a sense,"voting" every time
we purchase goods--and let the power of the free market, rather than
government policy alone, become a force for improvement.

So, Mr. President, I urge you to deploy the forces necessary to fill
in the hidden links between the goods we consume and their impact in
the world. Then create a website that consumers could access at the
point of purchase--perhaps by passing a palm pilot-like device over
the barcode to get to the product-relevant area of the website.

That website should provide immediate data comparing a product to
others in its category on any of several dimensions, such as working
conditions in factories where components or the product was
manufactured; wages (weighted for national norms, etc.); how much
energy was used in producing and transporting the product to market;
impact on the environment of its production (this alone involves
multiple factors, from industrial byproducts like heavy metals and
other toxins, to polluting micro-particles); and so on.

Ideally, consumers could determine which of such dimensions were most
important in their personal decision to purchase, and so have a
built-in logarithm that would pop out the best choices as they wander
down the aisles of a store.

As we've seen in the diamond industry--with the industry wide effort
to certify the source of diamonds to keep from market "blood" diamonds
that finance corrupt regimes and civil wars in Africa--consumer
preferences can become forces for social, political, environmental and
economic good. But this can only be only true if consumers become
aware of links that are now hidden.

Such transparency could alter the buying habits of substantial numbers
of consumers, and so create a new marketing advantage for some
companies. Ethically driven (or simply nimble) companies could find
market advantage in becoming the"good guys" in their category, and so
gain market share. This could then open up an entirely new arena for
competition between companies, creating a financial incentive to find
ways to improve the environmental; health, and other consequences of
everything from their manufacturing processes to their wage
structures.

Of course, gathering the required data poses a formidable task. It can
begin modestly, focusing on the easier dimensions of information. But
ultimately filling in the missing links could require a Manhattan
Project-like intensity of research, that would draw on findings from
fields as diverse as industrial engineering and sociology,
environmental sciences and economics, biochemistry and systems theory.
It might also require the creation of an impartial body to gather and
vet the data--something like a mega-Consumer Reports. Perhaps a new
cabinet post for transparency, Mr. President?

Daniel Goleman
Psychologist
Author of the international bestsellers, Emotional Intelligence;
Working with Emotional Intelligence; (with Boyatzis & McKee) Primal
Leadership. 
________________________________________________________________

The making of scientific information understandable means
presenting, designing & structuring this information so that it is
accessible, available and actionable. Constructive science is based
upon accessibility, understandability, an informed constituency and
finally action.

Richard Saul Wurman

The role of the secretary of science.
At the beginning, there is always understanding.

In order to act on all issues scientific and otherwise with
constructive progress and the discovery of solutions, data,
information and ideas need to be put in an understandable form.

Public information about science should be made public.

Public information refers to everything that creates an informed
citizen. Public means everything that we as a society agree should be
available to the body politic.

The making of scientific information understandable means presenting,
designing & structuring this information so that it is accessible,
available and actionable. Constructive science is based upon
accessibility, understandability, an informed constituency and finally
action.

Richard Saul Wurman
TEDMed Conferences
Architect, cartographer, creator of the Access Travel Guide Series
Author and designer of Information Architects;Follow the Yellow Brick
Road; and Information Anxiety.
________________________________________________________________

As your new scientific advisor, I would like to draw your attention
to an important and perhaps surprising fact. The citizens of your
country are not just flesh and blood. They are, increasingly,
flesh, blood, and machine. Let me explain why, and then why it
matters.

Andy Clark

Mr President,

As your new scientific advisor, I would like to draw your attention to
an important and perhaps surprising fact. The citizens of your country
are not just flesh and blood. They are, increasingly, flesh, blood,
and machine. Let me explain why, and then why it matters.

While the biological bodies of our fellow citizens remain (temporarily
at least) much as they ever were, their minds are more and more the
minds of hybrid beings. As thinking beings, as persons, they are
constituted not just by the blood and guts contents of their ancient
biological skinbags, but also by vastly transformative webs of social
and technological structure.

To see what I mean, reflect that recent advances in genetics,
cognitive science, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and
cross-cultural studies are helping to paint a much fuller picture of
the complex interplay between native skills and rich developmental
plasticity that makes us who and what we are. Part of this picture
involves native dispositions of various kinds. But another big part
involves a vast and distinctive shot of cortical plasticity. This
plasticity allows young (and older) human brains to factor surrounding
culture, tools and technologies deep into their problem-solving
practice. Brains like ours alter profoundly to fit the technologies
and practices that surround them.

And there is more. In the past, this process of fit was mainly
one-way. Human brains adapted to the devices that they had to work
with. But new technologies are changing this one-sided profile. Our
best devices now adapt to individual users according to patterns of
use. They provide for fast, fluent, painless information retrieval
that alters the tasks left to biological memory. They are mobile,
portable, robust. Lose one and you feel impaired, as if afflicted by
some transient neural trauma. The simple cell phone, with its
ever-expanding range of functions, will probably one day be seen as
the key transition technology that led humankind into a new hybrid
age.

The level of productive debate and co-operation between the humanities
and the sciences of the mind is also rising daily. At this critical
historical moment, America can lead the world by taking the quality of
human life seriously, and by devoting its impressive resources not to
hopeless and misguided causes but to helping all its citizens lead
full and rewarding lives. That means spending money on the kinds of
education, training and research that will help us to understand
ourselves as we are today, and to build better hybrid minds tomorrow.
Such a project requires understanding both our biological roots and
the socio-technological matrixes that take those roots and turn them
into the hybrid intelligent systems we recognize as persons.

This project, the project of tracking the interactions between biology
and the social and technological matrix itself, could be for the new
century what sequencing the human genome was to the last. Done
properly, it could mark a transformative moment in human history: the
moment we put war and aggression aside, and tried to build better
people by better understanding who and what we are.

Andy Clark
Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Cognitive Science Program
Indiana University, Bloomington
Author of five books including Microcognition and Being There: Putting
Brain, Body and World Together Again. 
________________________________________________________________

I recommend that you create a new governmental body, The National
Institute for the Scientific Study of Peace, to address by far the
most pressing issue of our time: the persistence of war as a means
of resolving disputes between nations.

John Horgan

The National Institute for the Scientific Study of Peace (NISSP)

Dear Mr. President:

The technologist Kevin Kelly has urged you to give more support to
long-term, blue-sky, globally relevant research. I could not agree
more. In that spirit, I recommend that you create a new governmental
body, The National Institute for the Scientific Study of Peace, to
address by far the most pressing issue of our time: the persistence of
war as a means of resolving disputes between nations.

Fields such as evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive
science are now providing new insights into the brain, emotions,
reasoning and the evolution of human nature. Findings from these
fields as well as from economics, game theory, anthropology, and
political science can help us to understand the causes of war and find
ways to reduce its occurrence. Thus far, however, the scientific
community has not given war-related questions the serious, sustained
attention that they deserve.

The National Institute for the Scientific Study of Peace (NISSP) would
redress that insufficiency. Its short-term goal would be to find more
effective means of resolving conflict in the world today, wherever it
might occur. The long-term goal would be to explore ideas on how
nations can make the transition toward permanent disarmament: the
elimination of armies, arms, and arms industries. Through its grants
and publications, NISSP would encourage ambitious young scientists to
see peace as a challenge at least as worthy of pursuit as a unified
theory of physics, a cure for cancer, or a cheap, clean, renewable
source of energy.

Just as a percentage of the budget for the Human Genome Project is
allocated to ethical issues, so part of the Defense Department's
budget could be allocated to NISSP. One tenth of one percent should be
sufficient. Some might argue that war is not a scientific issue.
Certainly it is a dauntingly complex one, with political, economic,
and social ramifications. But the same could be said of global warming
and population growth.

Scholars such as the Yale political scientist Bruce Russett have noted
that democracies rarely wage war against each other. We need more
rigorous investigations of correlations such as these, which can
identify ways to promote stability within and between nations. What is
the link between the risk of war and nations' political ideologies?
Trade and economic policies? Religious and ethnic diversity?
Population growth and poverty? Education and womens' rights? Freedom
of the press? Availability of energy, food, and other vital resources?

Darwinian theory is sometimes said to imply that conflict is inherent
in nature and hence inevitable in human affairs. This view assumes
that evolution is primarily what game theorists call a zero-sum game,
in which one organism's gain is off-set by another's loss. War is the
ultimate zero sum--or, more often, negative--sum game.

But as the journalist Robert Wright points out in his book Nonzero,
non-zero-sum processes such as symbiosis and cooperation also play
vital roles in evolution. The key to global peace and prosperity,
Wright argues, lies in fostering trade, communications, and other
mutually beneficial interactions between nations. (Nonzero has been
touted by your predecessor in the White House, but don't hold that
against it.)

Many scientists will dismiss total, global disarmament, which I
believe should be the ultimate goal of our strivings toward peace, as
hopelessly unrealistic. These skeptics will argue that at the very
least some trans-national organization should always retain a military
force, perhaps equipped with nuclear weapons, to deter or suppress
attacks from outlaw states or quasi-states, such as Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Certainly global disarmament seems a remote possibility now, but that
does not mean we should fatalistically accept armies and armaments,
including weapons of mass destruction, as permanent features of
civilization. Given the extraordinary advances our species has already
achieved in science, technology, medicine, and human rights, surely we
are intelligent enough to make not only war but even the threat of war
obsolete. The only question is how, and how soon

Yours truly,

John Horgan
Freelance science journalist (Scientific American, the New York Times,
the Washington Post, among others)
Author of The End of Science; The Undiscovered Mind; and Rational
Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border Between Science and Spirituality
(forthcoming).
________________________________________________________________

I'll bet you didn't take a single science course at Yale. Who
could blame you? I was a member of the Yale faculty for many years.
The science professors are preparing future scientists not future
Presidents. The nation suffers as a result.

Roger Schank

Dear President Bush:

One thing a science advisor should do is attempt to define science.
The last definition we had was in 1892 when Charles Eliot, the
President of Harvard, led a committee that decided upon the high
school curriculum that is still in place today. They defined science
as biology, chemistry, and physics (in that order.) These just
happened to be the science departments at Harvard in 1892. They
defined mathematics as algebra, geometry and trigonometry (-- same
reason.) But a few things have happened since 1892.

One thing that has happened is that there are new and different
science departments at Harvard (and elsewhere.) Another thing that has
happened is that nearly everyone goes to high school and half of those
kids go on to college. In 1892 those who went to high school (and on
to Harvard which probably what President Eliot was worried about) were
preparing to become teachers, professors, ministers and statesmen.
They were not preparing the bulk of the population to live.

One of your illustrious predecessors, John Adams--he was the father of
another President of the same name, a confusion that I am sure you
identify with--said that education was about only two things: how to
make a living and how to live. Unfortunately our current school system
does neither.

Science is a good example. Should people learn science?

I have recently become the academic dean at Grandview Prep in Florida.
I am trying to build a realistic high school curriculum there. I will
tell you a story that will help you understand my problem:

I helped build an on line physics course for Columbia, so I installed
it in the curriculum at Grandview. There were immediate objections
that it would be too hard. (It is a college level course, but actually
it is intended to replace "Physics for Poets" at Columbia so it isn't
that hard.) Nevertheless it was decided that the good students at
Grandview could take this course but the bad students would have to
take regular physics. (I thought this bizarre but went along.)

So, I asked the physics teacher what he taught in regular physics. The
first thing he mentioned was Ohm's Law. Apparently, the bad kids could
understand Ohm's Law but not space travel (which is the basis of the
Columbia course.)

Now, I don't know about you President Bush, but Ohm's Law simply fails
to come up in my life. And, while we are discussing things that come
up in one's life, when was the last time you used the quadratic
formula? Your father said every graduating senior would know the
Pythagorean Theorem by the time his Presidency was finished (I suppose
he was counting on another term eh?) I have it on good authority (from
your brother Neil) that no adult member of the Bush family knows the
Pythagorean theorem, you or dad included. I suppose you never needed
it. (Neither did hardly anyone else.)

Our problems in science and in education come from our view that
education is about preparing for Harvard in 1892 and not for life in
2003. So, as your science advisor I would propose three things:

o 1) Begin to help change our education policy to create students
who prepare for the real world they will inhabit by learning how to
wire their houses instead of quoting Ohm's law or how and when to
refinance their house rather than learning Euclidean Geometry. I
would create more curricula in science and other subjects that
emphasized everyday reasoning issues like the use of stem cells or
waste cleanup or snow removal or alternative energy sources. Why
can't science be about real issues in real people's lives? I'll bet
you didn't take a single science course at Yale. Who could blame
you? I was a member of the Yale faculty for many years. The science
professors are preparing future scientists not future Presidents.
The nation suffers as a result.

o 2) We must call for a new curriculum meeting to replace the 1892
curriculum and to reinvent the schools. Stop going on about test
scores and making sure every kid studies the same stuff and build
hundreds of new curricula and let students choose. We need to teach
people how to think not how to memorize information.

o 3) We must consider education (and science) as our most likely
product for export. The world needs education more than it needs
food. This is the best way to counter terrorism in the long run. We
have the best and brightest in this country because a lot of our
education system isn't broken. (We have great universities and
superb Ph.D. programs for example.) Let's start considering how we
export these great educational products with the intent not of
taking others country's best minds and making them US citizens, but
with the idea that if they cant read in Pakistan this can cause us
a great many problems down the road. On line learning is the answer
because it is easy to export. Why haven't we spent money on
creating high quality on line literacy programs and science
reasoning programs that would make the export of education a real
possibility? Instead of spending money on making better tests why
not spend money on better curricula?

The time has come to make science more accessible and education in it
and other subjects more relevant.

Sincerely,

Roger C. Schank
Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science
Chief Education Officer
Carnegie Mellon West
Founder of the Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern
University
Author of Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane; Coloring Outside the Lines
(Raising a Smarter Kid by Breaking all the Rules), Engines for
Education 
________________________________________________________________

The new National Institute for Humanism would be a mechanism to
formally foster and encourage collaborations across the arts,
humanities, and sciences, create synergy and cross-fertilization of
ideas, uniting thinkers from different viewpoints and disciplines
in tackling important questions about who and what we are.

Nancy Etcoff

Mr. President,

I would recommend the creation of a new institute--The National
Institute for Humanism--that would fund research and programs that
address pressing national problems in a radically new way, by ignoring
traditional dividing lines and disciplines. The Institute would create
a mechanism to bridge the worlds of the arts and sciences, worlds that
have often acted unheeding of the other, or worse, mistrustful or
hostile to one another and in competition for the intellectual center.

As John Brockman has written "Around the fifteenth century, the word
'humanism' was tied in with the idea of one intellectual whole. A
Florentine nobleman knew that to read Dante but ignore science was
ridiculous. Leonardo was a great artist, a great scientist, a great
technologist."

Art and science both address the most profound issues of the day yet
often face each other across a great divide. The new National
Institute for Humanism would be a mechanism to formally foster and
encourage collaborations across the arts, humanities, and sciences,
create synergy and cross-fertilization of ideas, uniting thinkers from
different viewpoints and disciplines in tackling important questions
about who and what we are. Call it the intellectual equivalent of
globalization.

Milan Kundera once wrote that every novel offers some answer to the
question. "What is human existence and wherein does it poetry lie?" I
would submit, so does every work of important science.

Nancy Etcoff PhD
Faculty, Harvard Medical School/Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Initiative
Clinical Associate in Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital
Author of Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty, and the
forthcoming, Hooked on a Feeling: The Limits and Worth of Happiness 
________________________________________________________________

...it is essential to realize that behind the many pressing
scientific issues facing our Nation today, one stands out far among
the rest: The persistent decline for several years in the past, and
into the foreseeable future, of the very health of the
scientific/technological workforce of America.

Gerald Holton

No one can dispute any longer that when a Nation's science and
technology weaken, the Nation itself is in danger--economically,
militarily, intellectually, and in terms of its image and power as a
world leader. Therefore it is essential to realize that behind the
many pressing scientific issues facing our Nation today, one stands
out far among the rest: The persistent decline for several years in
the past, and into the foreseeable future, of the very health of the
scientific/technological workforce of America. This decline--which, if
not reversed, may well turn out to be the Achilles Heel in the battle
for maintaining the historic high standing of American science and
technology-- has several indicators. I will here confine myself to
two:

1) As the non-partisan Government-University-Industry Research
Roundtable determined by consensus a few days ago, the number and
quality of American S&E workers is dropping precipitously--with over
50 percent of federal S&E workers expected to retire within the next
ten years, with U.S. production of scientists decreasing since the
1990s (in part because of the long-term decline, in real $ and as a
fraction of GDP, in federal funding for true research, except for
biology). As the American Physical Society Science News of December
2002 stresses, "Overall, the number of PhD students in science and
engineering is at a 50-year low, and there is little sign of a
turn-about." To make up for the low enrollment of U.S. citizens, that
of "foreign students, in particular, ballooned in the '80s and '90s,"
and continues to do so--with many major university science departments
now having half or more of their graduate students recruited from
foreign countries--students which in large numbers return to their
home countries after graduation.

2) Not unrelated to the first point is--with few great exceptions--the
deplorable state of science/technology/mathematics knowledge and
teaching in K-12 classes, and even in U.S. colleges, where now only
about 30% of them require even one hour of science instruction for
graduation. In April 1983, just twenty years ago, the National
Commission on Excellence in Education published its unanimous report
on American schools, titled "A Nation at Risk." Its five main
recommendations were endorsed, in several public addresses, by
President Reagan. To a small degree, these recommendations, and others
like them, were adopted by some Governors and schools. But in fact the
performance, on average, of America's students is still painfully
poor, not only in science and not only with respect to international
comparisons with students in other main industrial nations. The Nation
is still at risk.

In the days after Sputnik, the nation's leadership aroused our
population to make major investments, in both scientific research and
science education. The time has come for analogous acts of national
leadership, on both points, and along the whole "pipeline," from early
schooling to the most advanced research labs. For example: With nearly
2 million new school teachers expected to be needed in the next 10
years, and many existing ones in positions still far below what a true
professional would deserve, a large-scale (perhaps State-centered) set
of Academic Year (or Summer) Institutes is needed to bring science
teachers up to speed, and to be ready to help the more educated pupils
reach the next levels. And, at the other end, talented Americans need
to be brought back in sufficient numbers into the U.S. research labs,
many of which are now demoralized by having to fight again and again
in the face of refusals of funding for their admittedly meritorious
projects.

I conclude by expressing my willingness to collaborate with others
interested in these (here much abbreviated) observations and
recommendations. Just as President Eisenhower invented, and
brilliantly used, a wide, non-partisan circle of science advisers to
deal with key aspects of the international challenges confronting
America at that time, so has history brought our current leadership to
an analogous moment. And history will judge the success or failure to
seize that moment.

Gerald Holton
Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of
Science, Emeritus, at Harvard University
Author of Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought; Science and
Anti-Science; and Einstein, History, and Other Passions. 
________________________________________________________________

Maybe you should look for a science advisor in some other field ...
um, botany? No, too controversial. Dermatology?

Judith Rich Harris

Dear President Bush:

I respectfully decline your invitation to compete for the job of
science adviser. I just don't think we could work together
successfully. For one thing, you're a morning type and a jogger, and
I'm not. For another, I somehow don't think we have compatible views
of what science is and how it works.

You're an upbeat sort of guy, and would no doubt expect your science
advisor to bring you lots of good news about how science is going to
solve all the world's problems. But to tell the truth, I'm a little
discouraged right now about science's ability to solve all the world's
problems.

You see, in my view the source of the world's problems is people. It's
people who make wars, commit crimes, mess up the environment, spend
too much, spend too little, whatever. So in order to solve the world's
problems, we need to understand people. The science of understanding
people is called "psychology." But psychology isn't taken seriously,
because most folks think they already understand people--who needs
science?

What's worse, this attitude is common not just among non-experts like
(begging your pardon) yourself: it's common even among psychologists.
They all have their own pet theories of what makes people tick, and if
the evidence doesn't happen to agree with their theories--well, to
hell with the evidence.

Do you see the dilemma? We need a science of human behavior--a science
of the human mind--that would tell us (among other things) why people
won't believe the evidence that science produces. But if such a
science produced interesting and novel results, nobody would believe
them! So what's the point?

Maybe you should look for a science advisor in some other field ...
um, botany? No, too controversial. Dermatology?

Thanks anyway, and good luck!

Judith Rich Harris
Psychologist
Author, The Nurture Assumption, and the forthcoming Why Are Siblings
So Different? 
________________________________________________________________

Accelerating the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere by
profligate use of Iraq's vast oil supplies, together with the
continuing deforestation of the Amazon, will not only turn the
Amazon basin into a parched desert but plunge the entire mid-West
into prolonged drought, resulting in famine in your own land.
History would then judge you as an apocalyptic Burning Bush,
bringing the scourge of parching fire to your country and its
people.

Brian Goodwin

Dear Mr Bush,

I am pleased to have this opportunity of sharing with you some of the
insights from science that are relevant to the situation you face at
home and abroad. Let me start by reminding you of something you
learned at school that holds the key to your own and everyone else's
future. It's a chemical process that looks like this : 2H2 + O2 ->
2H2O + energy.

Remember? Hydrogen burns with oxygen to produce water and energy.
Water and energy are the key to the future, as I'm sure you realise.

You learned from the oil business that whoever controls energy
controls the world. You are about to seize the billions of barrels of
liquid energy that lie beneath the sands and the coastal waters of
Iraq in order to secure the future for your country and gain control
of the uncertain politics of this fractious global village in which we
now live. However, this isn't a good policy and I want to persuade you
of a much better alternative.

Apart from the international political turmoil and increased terrorist
activity that this action will provoke, there are direct consequences
that will follow for the future of the US . Unrestricted access to all
that oil for US industry, with no effective Kyoto-type constraints
which you have refused to accept, will accelerate CO2 build-up in the
earth's atmosphere to a rate that guarantees a sudden failure of
rainfall over the bread basket of the American mid-West. We now know
from studies by your own scientists that it is the remarkable volume
of water transpired by trees in the Amazon basin that produces the
climatic conditions for rain to fall in Kansas and the mid-Western
states.

Accelerating the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere by profligate
use of Iraq's vast oil supplies, together with the continuing
deforestation of the Amazon, will not only turn the Amazon basin into
a parched desert but plunge the entire mid-West into prolonged
drought, resulting in famine in your own land. History would then
judge you as an apocalyptic Burning Bush, bringing the scourge of
parching fire to your country and its people.

The alternative that science provides for you comes through the
blessing of water. The little formula that I reminded you of contains
all the answers. You start with water and end with water, pure and
unpolluting. Use the sun's energy via solar panels, wind, wave and
hydroelectric power to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then
use the hydrogen to drive industry, cars and other means of transport.
The science and technology is all there, and the countries that
develop this industrial potential will lead the recovery from the
recession that is now deepening.

As we undertake this technological and economic transformation, we
will need to make other major adjustments to our world-view. However,
just as science has shown how to become sustainable in energy use, it
is providing the vision needed to follow ecological principles,
resulting in no waste or pollution in industrial production,
consistent with the principles of the hydrogen economy. And, most
important of all, there is a shift occurring both in sc silence and in
society that is taking us from preoccupation with quantities of goods
to concern about quality of life.

We have learned through science and technology how to turn the
bountiful resources of the earth into vast quantities of goods, enough
to provide for all if we share. However, in the process we have lost
sight of the qualities on which our lives depend, which make them
worthwhile and meaningful : health and well-being, relationships,
community living, sharing, caring for the planet and all of its
inhabitants, human and non human alike.

We have tried to substitute quantities for qualities and found that
this produces poverty in the quality of our relationships, in the
meaning and value of our lives. Science is now expanding so that
qualities of persons, communities, cultures, ecosystems, landscapes,
farms and animals, the Amazon, the planet , are primary, with a focus
on health, creativity and meaning. A science of qualities is now
developing in response to the recognised limitations of our science of
quantities, to refocus our attention on the qualities and values of
life. It's the path into the future. Why not take it? Then you'll go
down in history not as Burning Bush but as Bush the Bringer of
Universal Sustainability through Hydrogen.

Prof Brian Goodwin
Schumacher College
Dartington, Totnes, Devon, UK
Author of How The Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of
Complexity; (with Richard Sole) Signs if Life: How Complexity Pervades
Biology 
________________________________________________________________

The best way to deal with this particular problem [deep level of
ignorance of science], which impedes the solution of most other
scientific problems, is to provide an annual bonus on top of their
salary to new science teachers of $100,000 a year, and put
applicants through a rigorous selection process based on a
combination of knowledge, skill and passion for the subject,
combined with superb pupil handling ability.

Karl Sabbagh

Dear Mr President,

The most pressing scientific issue facing the nation and the world is
the deep level of ignorance of science that exists among the vast
majority of the world's population, civilized as well as uncivilized.
This is manifest in two ways: 1. Lack of knowledge of even basic
scientific discoveries about the world; and 2. Lack of appreciation of
the effectiveness of scientific reasoning at arriving at the truth:
what Eugene Wigner, one of the last century's leading scientists,
called "the unreasonable effectiveness of science".

This appreciation is necessary not only to remove current obstacles to
the advances of science; it also needs to infiltrate people's everyday
lives so that their daily decisions about how to live are based less
on fantasy and irrationality and more on facts and logic.

Until this ignorance is corrected, the whole of the scientific
enterprise will be continually hampered by its failure to convince an
uncomprehending legislature and electorate to provide suitable funding
for science, and to exploit to the maximum its discoveries. The best
way to deal with this particular problem, which impedes the solution
of most other scientific problems, is to provide an annual bonus on
top of their salary to new science teachers of $100,000 a year, and
put applicants through a rigorous selection process based on a
combination of knowledge, skill and passion for the subject, combined
with superb pupil handling ability.

There are about 3 million teaching posts in the USA. If, say, a
quarter are to teach math and science, that means finding $75 billion
a year. It sounds a lot, but it's actually $5 per person per week.
It's estimated that global warming could cost the world $300 billion a
year, and America a sizeable proportion of that amount. Good science
could deal with that problem and pay for itself. Or take something
more banal. In the US people spend almost $75 billion dollars a year
on nutritional supplements. If people understood science better, most
if not all of that money would be saved, either by eating a better
diet or by not buying junk medicines. In one generation the problem
will be solved, and during that generation, as a new breed of
scientists enters the universities and research institutes, the whole
of science will begin to benefit.

A less obvious issue is the deteriorating nature of man-machine
interfaces as technology becomes more complex. This is not just a
matter of better design of control panels and remote controls-it needs
a more fundamental innovation where the intention of the any user is
immediately translated into the actions of the device.

Karl Sabbagh
Public communicator in science
Author of A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud; The Riemann
Hypothesis: The Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics 
________________________________________________________________

We are entering an era of scientific change that is rocking no less
than human nature itself. This directed evolution is unprecedented.
It is convulsing everything from the affairs of state, to defense,
to commerce, to labor, to education, to health, to welfare, to the
economy. It is not science fiction. It has begun to occur and is
accelerating this decade. You need an advisor who can help you try
to ride this curve of change.

Joel Garreau

Mr. President:

We are entering an era of scientific change that is rocking no less
than human nature itself. This directed evolution is unprecedented. It
is convulsing everything from the affairs of state, to defense, to
commerce, to labor, to education, to health, to welfare, to the
economy. It is not science fiction. It has begun to occur and is
accelerating this decade. You need an advisor who can help you try to
ride this curve of change.

Human organization is always structured by the technology of the
time--"We shape our houses, then they shape us," as Churchill put it.
But culture moves more slowly than invention.

So in the '50s, for example, we may very well have been rocked by the
atomic bomb, television, mass-produced suburban housing, and all the
rest. Yet the '50s was the notoriously quiet Eisenhower decade. The
cultural upheaval of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll--enabled by The
Pill, synthetic psychedelics and the transistor--did not occur until
the '60s.

Similarly, the '90s saw the rise of a suite of technologies that are
fundamentally altering the underpinnings of our world. These are
genomics, robotics, information networking, and nanotechnology. Yet
the '90s was an astonishingly quiescent decade. The big news was
peace, prosperity, and Monica.

Only now are we beginning to sense a hinge in history, a time when the
earth is beginning to move beneath our feet. For only now is
technology augmenting and enhancing our very bodies and minds and
personalities.

This transformation of humanity demands leadership. It needs a guide
to what is being born. It will require someone with a road map and a
tout sheet and a cultural compass to the driving forces behind this
transformation, identifying opportunities. It needs a chief of state
who will provide a sense of intention. We can't live without this
transformation and we can't kill it. Trying to let it pass will only
turn our lives into a political and philosophical curiosity.

For all recorded history, humans have been trying to transcend human
nature: Think of Socratic reasoning, Buddhist enlightenment, Christian
sainthood, Cartesian logic or the Marxists' "New Man." Now such
transformation may actually be in reach because of technology. Is it a
good idea after all?

Little stands in the way of the transcendence of human nature
occurring in your lifetime 20 to 50 years from now. That's the one
thing on which everyone who looks at this compounding curve of change
agrees. You can get an argument about whether this is inevitable.
Biotech critic Francis Fukuyama proposes a broad program of government
intervention to preserve the human nature we've always known. Others
scoff, saying such efforts are like placing a rock in a stream. There
are more than enough labs run by brave souls in adventurous parts of
the world for events to just flow around any barriers.

You can also find disagreement about whether the biological revolution
or the computer revolution first will lead us to becoming trans-human.
Gregory Stock, director of the UCLA Program on Medicine, Technology
and Society, foresees widespread reworking of human biology via
genetic engineering that cannot be stopped by either governments or
religious groups. Others, like the much-honored computer pioneer Ray
Kurzweil, agree with Stock that the biogenetic changes will take
place, but believes that we also see profound integration of our
biological systems with non biological intelligence, enabling routine
integration of machines and the brain by 2030. As you know, Mr.
President, your Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has
already demonstrated remarkable progress on this front this year.

What none of these scientists dispute is the notion that as
exponential technological change continues to accelerate into the
first half of the 21st century, "it will appear to explode into
infinity, at least from the limited and linear perspective of
contemporary humans," as Kurzweil puts it. This will result in
"technological change so rapid and profound that it represents a
rupture in the fabric of human history."

The towering question is whether this is good or bad. In the near
term, the world could divide up into three kinds of humans. One would
be the Enhanced, who embrace these opportunities. A second would be
the Naturals, who have the technology available but who, like today's
vegetarians, choose not to indulge for moral or aesthetic reasons.
Finally, there would be The Rest those without access to these
technologies for financial or geographic reasons, lagging behind,
envying or despising those with ever-increasing choices. Especially if
the Enhanced can easily be recognized because of the way they look, or
what they can do, this is a recipe for conflict that would make racial
or religious differences quaintly obsolete.

There are a variety of scenarios for such a future. One critical
uncertainty is whether the technology is seen as benign or malignant.
Another is whether society coheres during this transformation or
bursts into shards. Some of the possible outcomes: The secrets of
human consciousness and the human brain elude us, and the change is
stately. Or incremental change continues to accelerate, aging is
reversed, the revolution has occurred, and we are just trying to deal
with the consequences. Another possibility: new intelligent species
roam the Earth in 20 or 30 years, some of them mainly flesh and blood,
and some of them mainly not.

In whatever case, what we're talking about here is transcendence
becoming separate from or going beyond the gritty world we've always
known. The realm of religion and mythology is being challenged by that
of science and technology as the key to overcoming the confines of
human nature. This is the stuff of Nietzsche, in his declaration that
"Man is a rope, fastened between animal and overman a rope over an
abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal."

"To me, that is what human civilization is all about," says Kurzweil.
"It is part of our destiny and part of the destiny of evolution to
continue to progress ever faster, and to grow the power of
intelligence exponentially. To contemplate stopping that to think
human beings are fine the way they are is a misplaced remembrance of
what human beings used to be. What human beings are is a species that
has undergone a cultural and technological evolution, and it's the
nature of evolution that it accelerates, and that its powers grow
exponentially, and that's what we're talking about."

The question then becomes whether we want to be evolving human nature
beyond what we've known for millennia. They involve difficult choices.
These go to those eternal questions of who we are, how we got that
way, where we're headed, and what makes us tick.

Joel Garreau
Cultural revolution correspondent, The Washington Post
Principal, The Garreau Group
Author of Edge City: Life on the New Frontier and The Nine Nations of
North America 
________________________________________________________________

Mr President, it is the United States of America who long ago
brought the evil of prohibition upon the world, and still holds the
power to prevent the rest of us from seeking freedom from
prohibition. Mr President, you could win the war on terrorism, not
by fighting, but by refusing to fight the war on drugs.

Susan Blackmore

Mr President

I have a dream.

I have a dream that one day we shall look back on today's society with
the same abhorrence with which we now view Victorian child labour, the
oppression of women, and the evils of slavery.

We shall look back with horror on terrorist attacks, street crime out
of control, and violence marring everyone's lives--to a time when
neither police nor the law were respected, and half our children were
criminals before they even left school. And we shall wonder why so few
people were prepared to stand up and shout "Enough."

In my dream I can walk down any street in Bristol, Boston, Bogot? or
Bombay and no one will steal my phone to get their next fix. No
heroin-dazed beggar will plead for my change. No crack-crazed youth
will kill me for my credit card. And why? Because in my dream they,
like me, can walk down that street and buy any drug they like.

Cannabis and ecstasy, heroin and cocaine, LSD and aspirin, will all be
sold - clean, legal, properly packaged in precise doses, with
appropriate warnings and proper regulation. Tax revenue will be more
than enough to treat addicts and to guide problem users. Scientists
will be free to research the effects of any drug without fear.
Children will be given true advice, and real drugs education that
teaches wise drug use, not ignorant abuse. And global terrorism will
have disappeared for lack of funds.

Our prisons will have room to spare. No one will be there for wanting
the freedom to control their own mind. And no one will be there
because gangs have lured or threatened them into a life of dealing and
violence. Police will once more earn the respect of the majority whose
lives they work to protect.

In my dream, the peasants of Afghanistan will work their poppy fields
for legal wages, the farmers of South America will labour free of the
fear of the drug barons, and the profits of world trade will not be
siphoned off by the criminals but returned to the people who earned
them.

Mr President, it is the United States of America who long ago brought
the evil of prohibition upon the world, and still holds the power to
prevent the rest of us from seeking freedom from prohibition. Mr
President, you could win the war on terrorism, not by fighting, but by
refusing to fight the war on drugs.

As your prospective scientific advisor on issues of mind and
consciousness, I know that there is no more pressing issue than the
problem of drugs. I urge you to act now to free us all.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Susan Blackmore
Psychologist
Bristol, England
Author of Dying to Live, The Meme Machine, and Consciousness: An
Introduction. 
________________________________________________________________

A key aspect of this program is the prize: $100,000 to each high
school senior and $1,000,000 to the college counterparts. The total
annual cost of the program (including administration) would be less
than $250 million, while its impact would be dramatic and long
lasting. With serious prize money on the line science would no
longer be just for the "weird" kids. Indeed, doing science would be
seen as cool.

Leo M. Chalupa

Dear Mr. President:

As you no doubt recognize, your scientific advisor is essentially a
soothsayer. This individual is called upon to make key predictions
about different aspects of the scientific enterprise, enabling the
President to make appropriate decisions for the benefit and welfare of
the American people. To assure you of my qualifications for this
position, I will go out on the proverbial limb and make three specific
predictions that you will find to be borne out by future events.

First, I predict that all the other applicants for this position will
urge you to increase federal funding for science. Second, every
applicant will make a special case for increased funding for the
scientific field in which he or she specializes. The biologists will
plead for more money for biomedical research, the physicists for
particle research, and the psychologists for behavioral studies. This
is not to belittle the worthiness of such advice. All branches of
science can make good use of more funding, and who better to make a
case for a particular field than an expert in that field.

Before providing you with my third prediction, allow me to identify
what I consider to be the most significant problem in science today.
In my opinion, our nation needs to get more of our young people
interested in pursuing a career in science.

We are just beginning to unravel the secrets of the universe, from
subatomic particles to the molecular cues that guide the building of
the brain. As Cole Porter wrote: "the best is yet to come,"and I
believe you will agree with me Mr. President that it is vitally
important for America to lead the world in this effort. Regretfully,
there has been a pronounced downturn in the number of young Americans
choosing to dedicate their lives to science. As I travel around the
country giving talks at our leading universities, it is readily
apparent to me that more and more graduate students and postdoctoral
fellows are from abroad. This is to be expected since at present we
are the world's leader in scientific research. But, I believe that it
would be a grave mistake for us to rely on foreign talent for our
future scientific breakthroughs. For one thing, there is no guarantee
that these individuals, whose costly training was paid for by the
American taxpayer, will remain in this country. It is also
shortsighted to assume that foreign scientific talent will be drawn to
our shores for evermore. Without in any way discouraging the world's
best young minds from coming to the United States to do science, we
must come up with a strategy to encourage the best and the brightest
in our nation to do the same.

My first recommendation to you, Mr. President would be to budget a
relatively small amount of money for a program that might be termed
"GWB Science Allstars of the Future." The program would annually
select 1000 high school seniors and 100 college seniors with
outstanding potential for future scientific achievements. (It might be
prudent to distribute the number of nominees and subsequent winners in
proportion to the congressional seats held by each of the 50 states,
but others are better suited than I to deal with such matters.) The
selection committee could be comprised of science teachers as well as
preeminent scientists from industry, government and universities. A
key aspect of this program is the prize: $100,000 to each high school
senior and $1,000,000 to the college counterparts. The total annual
cost of the program (including administration) would be less than $250
million, while its impact would be dramatic and long lasting. With
serious prize money on the line science would no longer be just for
the "weird" kids. Indeed, doing science would be seen as cool. With
the right kid of publicity the GWB Science Allstars would become
national celebrities, on par with sports heroes. One can even imagine
rap songs describing the travails and triumphs of particularly
charismatic young scientists.

This brings me to my third prediction, Mr. President. When the young
people in our nation get as much money for scientific achievement as
NBA draftees, the entire educational enterprise in this country will
be raised to a level unprecedented in the history of the world. This
could become the greatest the legacy of your presidency, perhaps even
rivaling our eventual victory in the war on terrorism, and at a cost
of much less than that a single stealth bomber.

Sincerely yours,

Leo M. Chalupa
Professor of Ophthalmology and Neurobiology
University of Irvine
________________________________________________________________

Taking all three points together, my advice is to stimulate
optimism by making a bold move turning America's focus from its
negative role in war brinkmanship to a positive role as a leader
who stands for peace, freedom and economic growth.

Jordan Pollack

Dear Mr. President,

In the mad hysteria of the moment, when all your intellectual
resources are focused on finding someone in the Middle East to play
Tit for Tat, whether Osama, Saddam, or Abu Nidal, I would remind you
of some common sense truths about the complex dynamics of living
systems.

First: Punishment doesn't work.

We know that beating a child doesn't make them peaceful, it makes them
more violent.

We know that exercise doesn't make you tired, it gives you more
energy.

If you have dandelions growing in your lawn, would you selectively
blow their heads off or fertilize the lawn to choke out the weeds?
Each dandelion you crush results in many more next year, while a
stronger lawn resists their invasion.

The moral of this story is that striking back at terrorists may merely
create more terrorists, while engaging the people in peaceful commerce
inhibits terror.

Second: You can bet your last nickel that masses are fickle.

The mass coherence which supports your initiatives can turn on a dime.
Spending $200B on war will cause severe "buyers remorse" when the
people realize they bought nothing but national debt, a mess in Iraq,
and higher prices for oil.

Third: Optimism is necessary.

Optimists behave different than pessimists. They buy more, invest
more, take risk for future gains, and work harder. One doesn't have to
be a genius to realize that the threat of continual war, while
enhancing power, leads to economic woes because investors and
consumers are uncertain. While oil profits may rise, all the rest of
our modern industries, from Airlines, to Investment Banking,
Telecommunications, Software and Chips will continue to collapse. To
end the depression, the country needs optimism about economic growth
driven by expectations of peace and stability.

Taking all three points together, my advice is to stimulate optimism
by making a bold move turning America's focus from its negative role
in war brinkmanship to a positive role as a leader who stands for
peace, freedom and economic growth.

Jordan Pollack
Professor of Computer Science
Brandeis University
________________________________________________________________

The moral: It is perfectly normal to fear purposeful violence from
those who hate us. When Saddam commits more evil, or when
terrorists strike again (likely where unexpected), we will all
recoil in horror. But smart thinkers will also want to check their
intuitive fears against the facts.

David G. Myers

Dear Mr. President,

"We refuse to live in fear," you declared in your October 7th address
from the Oval Office. If only it were so.

An hour before your address, I was screened into my local airport's
sleepy concourse (with but four small flights yet to depart) by
nineteen bored security personnel. Cars entering the parking lot,
though buffered from the single story airport by two streets,
underwent inspection (though not at more vulnerable venues across
America, such as ferries and underground parking lots). With 9/11's
four crashed airliners still vividly in mind, and with threats of more
terror to come, our airlines have been flying into the red.
Understandably, Mr. President, we are living in fear.

Terrorists may indeed strike again, though our preoccupation with
airline terror likely underestimates their creativity. Already in the
aftermath of 9/11 the terrorists have continued killing us, in ways
unnoticed. In the ensuing months, Americans flew 20 percent less. "No
way are we flying to Disneyland for vacation!" Instead, we drove many
of those miles, which surely caused more additional highway deaths
than occurred on those four ill-fated flights.

Consider: The National Safety Council reports that in the last half of
the 1990s Americans were, mile for mile, 37 times more likely to die
in a vehicle crash than on a commercial flight. When I fly to
Washington for our meetings, the most dangerous part of my journey is
my drive to the Grand Rapids airport.

Terrorists, perish the thought, could have taken down 50 more planes
with 60 passengers each in 2001 and--had we kept flying (speaking
hypothetically)--we would still have finished 2001 safer in planes
than on the road. Flying may be scary (531 people died on U.S.
scheduled airlines in 2001). But driving the same distance should be
many times scarier.

Why do we intuitively fear the wrong things? Why do so many smokers
(whose habit shortens their lives, on average, by about five years)
fret before flying (which, averaged across people, shortens life by
one day)? Why do we fear violent crime more than clogged arteries? Why
do we fear terrorism more than accidents--which kill nearly as many
per week in just the United States as did worldwide terrorism in all
of the 1990s. Even with the horrific scale of 9/11, more Americans in
2001 died of food poisoning (which scares few) than terrorism (which
scares many).

To understand why we live in fear, Mr. President, and how you might
lead us to think more rationally, consider four influences on our
intuitions about risk (as identified by psychological science).

o First, we fear what our ancestral history has prepared us to
fear--which includes confinement and heights, and therefore flying.

o Second, we fear what we cannot control. Driving we control,
flying we do not. "We are loathe to let others do unto us what we
happily do to ourselves," noted risk analyst Chauncey Starr.

o Third, we fear what is immediate. Teens are indifferent to
smoking's toxicity because they live more for the present than the
distant future. Likewise, the dangers of driving are diffused
across many moments to come, each trivially dangerous.

o Fourth, we fear what is most readily available in memory.
Horrific images of United Flight 175 slicing into the World Trade
Center, form indelible memories. And availability in memory
provides our intuitive rule for judging risks. Thousands of safe
car trips (for those who have survived to read this) have largely
extinguished our anxieties about driving. A thousand massively
publicized anthrax victims would similarly rivet our attention more
than yet another 20,000+ annual U.S. influenza fatalities, or
another 30,000+ annual gun deaths.

Some things we should fear more, Mr. President, and you can use your
bully pulpit to help us fear the right things. We fear too little
those threats that will claim lives undramatically, one by one (rather
than in bunches). Smoking kills 400,000 Americans a year, yet we
subsidize tobacco growers. Although killing many fewer, terrorists
cause more terror. Never again, we vow. And so will spend tens of
billions to save future thousands, yet are reluctant to spend a few
billion to save millions.

A 2002 report by Deloitte Consulting and Aviation Week projected that
the United States would spend between $93 and $138 billion during 2003
to deter potential terrorism. Alternatively, $1.5 billion a year would
be the U.S. share of a global effort to cut world hunger in half by
2015, according to a 2001 study done for the U.S. Agency for
International Development. Ten billion dollars a year would spare 29
million world citizens from developing AIDS by 2010, according to a
joint report by representatives of the United Nations, the World
Health Organization, and others. And a few tens of billions spent
converting cars to hybrid engines and constructing renewable energy
sources could help avert the anticipated future catastrophe of global
warming and associated surging seas and extreme weather.

While agonizing over missed signals of the 9/11 horror, are we missing
the clearer indications of greater horrors to come? "Osama bin Laden
can't destroy Western civilization," observed Paul Krugman (dare I
quote him). "Carbon dioxide can."

The moral: It is perfectly normal to fear purposeful violence from
those who hate us. When Saddam commits more evil, or when terrorists
strike again (likely where unexpected), we will all recoil in horror.
But smart thinkers will also want to check their intuitive fears
against the facts. To be prudent is to be mindful of the realities of
how humans die. By so doing, we can take away the terrorists' most
omnipresent weapon: exaggerated fear. If our fears cause us to live
and spend in ways that fail to avert tomorrow's biggest dangers, then
we surely do have something to fear from fear itself.

David G. Myers
John Dirk Werkman Professor of Psychology
Hope College
Author of Intuition: Its Powers and Perils, and The American Paradox:
Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty 
________________________________________________________________

Scientists are natural ambassadors...It is only scientists who
bring people and nations together. Independent of history,
religious faith, economic status, gender or color of skin,
scientists work together and have worked together to pursue a
common goal, i.e. a deeper understanding of nature and culture.

Ernst P?ppel

Dear Mr. President,

Scientists are natural ambassadors.

I consider it a great opportunity to get your attention for what I
believe is an important scientific and societal issue.

Who am I? A neuroscientist born in 1940 in an area of Germany which is
now Poland. I belong to the group of people who lost everything after
expatriation, and who had to start again at a new place owning only
what they had and have in their head, i.e. their brain.

With my experiences I have come to the conclusion stated in the
beginning: Scientists are natural ambassadors.

It is only scientists who bring people and nations together.
Independent of history, religious faith, economic status, gender or
color of skin, scientists work together and have worked together to
pursue a common goal, i.e. a deeper understanding of nature and
culture. As this is the case, I believe it is necessary to use the
sciences building bridges between cultures.

Although your administration is presently deeply involved, and
necessarily so, in fighting terrorism, I believe, Mr. President, that
a long-term issue should also be tackled by your administration.

Let me use a picture from physics. Stability is only given if an
object rests on three legs. This is also true in global politics. A
longterm balance is given if three large blocks develop and maintain
their identity. This is of course the US, but which is also East Asia
(in particular China), and Europe (in spite of some present
hesitations to see its identity and its global mission). In a world of
three large areas of cultural identity, i.e. US, East Asia and Europe,
each one of equal importance and expressing respect to the others, we
can hope for longterm stability.

It is the scientists in all these countries to create the necessary
atmosphere and provide the societal glue to reach that goal.

With all respect

Ernst P?ppel
Neuroscientist
Chair of the Board of Directors at the Center for Human Sciences
Director of the Institute for Medical Psychology, University of
Munich.
________________________________________________________________

The views of the scientific community could be especially relevant
today. Many pressing issues that will shape the lives of Americans
and the world in the coming years will be best addressed by leaders
who recognize that science, science education, scientific
expertise, and international science cooperation are crucial to
formulating the best policy.

Lisa Randall

I am pleased you are considering me for this advisory position.
However, before proceeding further, I would appreciate some
clarification about your vision for my role in your administration.
Particularly in these tumultuous times, I would like to know that you
will not neglect the advice of the scientific community. Since you
have moved my predecessor's office away from the White House and
downgraded his role, refusing to give him the customary title
"Assistant to the President," I cannot help but question your
commitment to furthering and best utilizing scientific advances.

This apprehension is compounded by your having eliminated my
predecessor's deputy from the National Security Council, explicitly
indicating that science is no longer an integral part of national
decision making.

The views of the scientific community could be especially relevant
today. Many pressing issues that will shape the lives of Americans and
the world in the coming years will be best addressed by leaders who
recognize that science, science education, scientific expertise, and
international scientific cooperation are crucial to formulating the
best policy.

Take the issue of national security. How can we assess other
countries' potential for creating weapons of mass destruction without
detailed understanding of potentially dangerous materials and what is
required to transform them into truly dangerous ones? How can any
agency hope to protect "the homeland" without evaluating our reliance
on technology and how best to safeguard it from interference? And how
can we hope to have a stable world unless the benefits and advances of
technology are more widely distributed?

I fear I will disqualify myself from this job by pointing out that the
threat of global warming is an issue the scientific community has
finally reached consensus on. Yet the detrimental effects, both
economically and environmentally, of excessive carbon dioxide
emissions have been completely neglected in formulating current
policy.

I do not wish to give the impression that I think the role of
scientific advisor is only to attend to the most pressing issues of
our day. It is critical that the importance of a long-term view of the
role and significance of science does not get subsumed by the more
immediate issues. Like a college education, which is absurdly
expensive yet repays itself in spades, science is difficult to assess
with a cost-benefit analysis. Current scientific policy focuses on
short-term achievement and success, to the exclusion of investigating
long-term potential and possibilities.

The long-term future of science might well involve big expensive tools
that take time to develop and employ. It is essential to develop some
riskier ideas if in the end we are to remain competitive. This is
particularly true for Particle Physics, where progress will only be
made with adequately funded big projects that will most likely happen
only with meaningful international cooperation. It is important that
you, the President, recognize that with action or inaction, we are
making a choice about our long-term competitiveness in this field and
physics as a whole. Europe devotes twice the percentage of its GDP
than America to physics. The European collider facility in Geneva,
CERN, has twice the budget of the main American facility, Fermilab, in
Batavia, Illinois. CERN has been able to develop new projects using
only its operating budget; American facilities lack that luxury.

My focus on Particle Physics is because it is my field of expertise.
But I want to emphasize that the benefits of Particle Physics, like
most scientific endeavors, spread beyond their immediate goals.
Accelerator technology was developed for purely scientific reasons yet
is now routinely utilized in hospitals. Advances in processing and
coordinating large databases has and will filter out of the physics
environment to the world at large. And exciting ideas and better
understanding are essential to stimulating and promoting the advanced
education which sustains our economy.

In summary, a coherent scientific policy is particularly imperative in
the world of today. There is a real danger of losing the priceless
environment, both physical and intellectual, that enhances our way of
life. With so many technological and scientific issues at stake, it is
critical that corporate interests and political calculations are not
the sole determinants of scientific policy. Let's not sacrifice
support for major scientific advances to short-term political agendas
whose legacy will forever be regretted.

Lisa Randall
Professor of Physics
Harvard University
________________________________________________________________

I have yet to see an area where science has informed any of this
present administration's policies. Despite much hand waving about
"sound science" I have no confidence that a science advisor would
have any useful impact whatsoever.

Stuart L. Pimm

I've given much thought to present adminstration's policy on science
particularly on evironmental issues (very broadly defined), but also
on related areas (such as energy policy), and have even been involved
in some of the issues involving terrorist threats (diseases of people
and agricultural resources). I have yet to see an area where science
has informed any of this present administration's policies. Despite
much hand waving about "sound science" I have no confidence that a
science advisor would have any useful impact whatsoever.

I think I'll give this position a pass, not so much out of spite, but
because I think there are many better platforms from which to ensure
that science effects good policy at the international, national, and
state levels.

Stuart L. Pimm
Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology
Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Science
Duke University
Author of The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth 
________________________________________________________________

Science is pointing towards an LSD-like world without LSD intake.
And we are wholly unprepared for both. Math, Physics, Chemistry,
Biology and Psychology--the things we are made of--are inextricably
intertwined. People though, remain interactiveless and
disentangled.

Eduardo Punset

Neuroscientists have recently discovered that a given visual
perception of the Universe activates the same group of neurons than
just to imagine that perception. Surprisingly, the discovery did not
make headlines in the press.

Apparently, it does not matter that much to perceive a fraction of the
tiniest part of the Universe--that is to say, the visible part--or
imagine instead the dominant invisible reality of atoms and void, in
order to feel something, the glory of colours in Newton's words, or to
be self-conscious.

The immediate corollary for corporate life of the absence of barriers
between visible and invisible at the level of consciousness is that
the same degree, at least, of attention should be paid to evaluating
customers degree of satisfaction, than to what is going on in their
imagination. Both might be very different and equally relevant. It is
obvious that some corporate projects might be geared to fulfill
consumers visible needs, and others to short-cut this lengthy process
by direct access to the imagination.

By and large people have not realized yet the impact of the sudden
crumbling down of all sorts of barriers. From the neuron's point of
view there is no difference between a visually perceived or imagined
bit of the Universe. From a professional chemist's point of view, it
has become irrelevant too to distinguish between a synthetic or a
natural compound. Both are likely to be impure, more so natural
extracts usually made of complex mixtures, unless processed to
separate the components.

Biologist John Bonner at Princeton has, following more than forty
years research, proved that it is impossible to distinguish between
human intelligence and that of a social amoeba like slime molds. You
just cannot demonstrate that slim molds--or bacteria for that
matter--are unconscious. Since Darwin and modern genetics, the old
debate around what distinguishes humans from other animals has become
redundant. If anything, we are looking now into the differences
betweens humans and minerals.

Astrophysicist John Gribbin--to the dismay of many--has been
meticulously unscafolding away the existence of that last barrier.
Life and the Universe are inextricably intertwined. There would be no
planets like the Earth, and no life forms like us, if there were no
clouds of gas laced with tiny traces of dusty debris produced by the
previous explosions of supernova. There is no doubt now. We are made
of interstellar galactic mineral dust.

Last but not least, the mother of all barriers, the last frontier
between life and death is becoming ever more suspicious and difficult
to ascertain. Hardly three years ago it was discovered that we humans
too--like mouse and rats--have stem cells. Or, stem cells happen to be
immortal. Stem cells command the process of morphogenesis from the
incipient and magic zygot to the finished embryo. They are not the
least important cells in the body. On the contrary. No wonder if the
mother of all barriers has been deadly shaken. If atoms are eternal,
and stem cells are immortal, what on earth dies out when somebody
dies.

The unprecedented disappearance of barriers clashes with every social
convention. Most people only feel comfortable within the narrow limits
of his or her own identity, if duly ranged with equals from the same
species, tribe, generation, church, country and culture. And identical
cultures provide similar sight, taste, tact and hearing. That is the
way the neocortex works. But the sudden lack of barriers tunes very
well with the unconscious brain and its capacity to allucinate under
the effects of LSD. The most powerful drug on earth happens to destroy
barriers between people, between mind and body, between oneself and
other living organisms and, finally, between the spirit and the
Universe.

Science is pointing towards an LSD-like world without LSD intake. And
we are wholly unprepared for both. Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology
and Psychology--the things we are made of--are inextricably
intertwined. People though, remain interactiveless and disentangled.

Governments have no more urgent task than to help to conciliate
individuals, corporations, institutions, and society at large with the
new frontierless Universe. Otherwise, managers will continue to hold
that science has nothing to do with their entrepreneurial projects,
citizens and their legal systems will be crushed by unexplained
violence, Universities will go on focusing on specific subjects amidst
growing demands for global interconnectivity between humans, robots
and computers, the practice of medicine will continue to exorcise
symptoms instead of regenerating tissues, and in a frontierless
Universe nations will continue to fight and hide behind frontiers.

Eduardo Punset
Professor of Economic Policy at the Chemical Institute of Ramon Llull
University in Barcelona
Director and Producer of Networks (a weekly programme of Spanish
public television on Science).
Author of A Field Guide to Survive in the XXI st Century. 
________________________________________________________________

In the modern world, science, democracy and prosperity go hand in
hand, and it is no coincidence that throughout history those
nations that led the development of democracy also led their times
in scientific advancement.

Lee Smolin

Dear Mr. President,

The United States has led the world in science and technology since
World War II. In recent years our lead has reduced as Europe, Japan
and Canada have matched and in some cases exceeded our investments in
education and science. This is to be expected, and we can be happy
that all of our rivals for scientific and technological leadership are
also our allies. Indeed, in the modern world, science, democracy and
prosperity go hand in hand, and it is no coincidence that throughout
history those nations that led the development of democracy also led
their times in scientific advancement. Our main goal, as the leader of
the democratic world, must be to see that the benefits of democracy
and science, and the prosperity they jointly give rise to, are
extended to all the peoples of the Earth.

To achieve this we shall have to make use of the unique strengths of
our society, which have been responsible for our dominance in science
and technology. These strengths are connected to the openness of our
society to new ideas and new immigrants, to our spirit of initiative
and innovation, to our generosity, our preference for peace over war,
and the respect for peoples of all cultures, races and nations that
comes from our being a nation of immigrants. We would best build on
these by the following steps:

1) Create crash programs, analogous to the Manhattan project and the
Apollo program, to solve the major scientific and technological
problems facing human kind. These include global warming, energy
efficiency and renewable energy resources. It also includes
developments in medicine and biology related to public health, such as
the AIDS epidemic as well as finding ways to protect against terrorism
without compromising our freedoms.

Only the United States has the scientific capability, economic
resources and technological base to mount programs to solve these
problems. Only the United States has the experience of successfully
carrying off such ambitious programs. Only the United States has the
spirit of innovation and risk taking that makes such projects succeed.
By taking on and solving these problems we would create enormous
benefits to all the peoples of the world. There is indeed no better
way to maintain our position of leadership in the eyes of the world.

Thus, in each of the areas I mentioned, I propose that the United
States announce a crash program with clearly defined goals. Put the
prestige of your office and the scientific and technological
capabilities of the United States on the line in each of these. Create
a flexible, flat organization, led by scientific and engineering
visionaries, not managers and bureaucrats, fund them generously and
give them all the scope and resources they need to succeed quickly.
Remember that it took less than five years to make the atomic bomb,
and less than ten to put a person on the moon. Avoid the temptation,
in areas such as global warming and energy independence, to reward
special interests by delaying action and funding further studies.
Instead, put the energy of our scientists and engineers into finding
and implementing workable solutions to the problems.

This is an expensive proposal, but it will be worth every dollar. For
example, in the long run it will be cheaper to invest our resources to
develop renewable sources of energy, and new energy efficient
technologies, than in increasingly risky and destabilizing attempts to
control oil and gas by military force.

2) Our leadership is due in no small measure to the fact that a large
fraction of scientists and engineers working in the United States
immigrated here in order to study and work. To maintain leadership, we
must keep open the possibility that a bright young engineer or
scientist can come to our shores from anywhere in the world and
realize the American dream while working in our universities,
laboratories and companies. We benefit enormously from the talents and
contributions of those who stay and become American citizens, but we
also benefit from those who return to their countries after studying
and working here. There is no better way to win friends and to promote
the spread of our values than by continuing to have open doors for
scientists and engineers. Generally speaking, there is no person of
any background or culture more likely to appreciate our democratic
values, and less likely to engage in terrorism or religious
fundamentalism, than a person trained in the sciences.

3) Let us do everything we can to maintain leadership in pure
sciences. This means funding the NSF and NIH generously, but it means
more than that. Over the last several decades these organizations have
become increasingly bureaucratic, inflexible and unresponsive to the
needs of those scientists who do the most to advance science. There
are fewer and fewer grants to individual scientists as an increasing
proportion of the funds are diverted to big projects and research
centers. But it can be documented that most major advances come from
the laboratories and offices of individual scientists, and not from
big research centers and projects. Then why the trend? Unfortunately
all too often, the big research centers and projects serve to further
the careers of bureaucrats and administrators in government and the
universities.

In the universities as well there has been also a rapid growth of
bureaucracy and middle management. Where there used to be one chair or
dean, there is now a suite of offices with several associate and
assistant bureaucrats. While many businesses have eliminated middle
managers and flattened hierarchies, to gain the flexibility needed to
innovate and compete in a rapidly changing world, universities have
been going in the other direction. Many business leaders are quite
simply shocked when they try to partner with universities, as they
discover how administrative heavy and bureaucratic the large
universities have become.

But progress in science depends on risk taking and an openness to
novelty and surprise. This is why most scientific advances are made by
young scientists, or by those who take the risk of switching fields
during their careers. I once asked a General of the Marine Corp how
they educate people to take on large amounts of risk. He said the most
important thing they teach a Marine officer is that there is a big
difference between leadership and management. This is a lesson too
many of the administrators who lead the big universities and research
projects never learned.

So I would ask: why should the universities, which are the sector of
our society most responsible for innovation and discovery, be the
place where seniority and bureaucracy most hinder the rise of talented
young people to positions of leadership?

I once asked a venture capitalist how he judged when he was taking on
the right amount of risk. He responded that when more than 10% of the
companies he funded succeeded, he knew that he was not taking on
enough risk, and that his profits would consequently suffer. This
amazed me, as we university professors write our grant proposals to
NSF and NIH as if there is no risk whatsoever. To be funded, we have
learned, we must present every scientific project as if it is bound to
succeed. Many scientists simply propose doing things they already know
will work. This reduces risk taking, leads to much duplication of
effort and slows down the progress of science. I would then propose
that you require that the federal funding agencies reorganize
themselves so that they behave more like venture capitalists than like
mortgage bankers, so that young scientists, and scientists of all ages
with bold and ambitious ideas, have the support they need to take on
the degree of risk that is required to keep science advancing rapidly
in the United States.

Lee Smolin
Theoretical Physicist
Founding member, Perimeter Institute in Waterloo Canada
Author of The Life of The Cosmos and Three Roads to Quantum Gravity.
________________________________________________________________

Without the Infinite, mathematics as we know it, would simply not
exist. But where does the Infinite come from? How do we grasp the
Infinite if, after all, our biology is finite, and so are our
experiences and everything we encounter with our bodies?

Rafael Nunez

How do our brains create Infinity?

The Infinite is one of the most intriguing ideas in which the human
mind has ever engaged. Full of paradoxes and controversies, it has
raised fundamental issues in domains as diverse as theology, physics,
philosophy, literature, and art. Moreover (and strangely enough), the
Infinite, elusive and counterintuitive, has played a central role in
defining a fundamental field of human intellectual activity
characterized by precision, certainty, objectivity, and effectiveness
in modeling our real finite world: mathematics!

Without the Infinite, mathematics as we know it, would simply not
exist. But where does the Infinite come from? How do we grasp the
Infinite if, after all, our biology is finite, and so are our
experiences and everything we encounter with our bodies?

From the point of view of the scientific study of the mind (i.e.,
cognitive science and related disciplines) several other questions
need to be addressed: What cognitive mechanisms make the Infinite
possible? How such an elusive and paradoxical idea structures an
objective and precise field such as mathematics? Why the various forms
of infinities in mathematics, such as infinite sums, limits, points at
infinity, infinite sets, and infinitesimal numbers, have the exact
conceptual structure they have?

Recent studies of human conceptual systems in cognitive linguistics,
cognitive semantics, and psycholinguistics show that like many
abstract ideas, the Infinite is created via very specific everyday
cognitive mechanisms that make human imagination possible such as
conceptual metaphors, conceptual metonymies, conceptual blends, and so
on (which are very precise inference-preserving inter-domains
mappings).

Now the big question for cognitive neuroscience is: How does the human
brain orchestrate and enact these cognitive mechanisms that bring
Infinity into being.

Rafael Nunez
Cognitive Scientist
Member, international board of the International Group for Psychology
of Mathematics Education
Author (with George Lakoff) of Where Mathematics Comes From;
Philosophy of the Flesh; and En de?? du transfini: Aspects
psychocognitifs sous-jacents au concept d'infini en math?mathiques. 
________________________________________________________________

I have recently suggested that what early humans were up to was
very different to what we hitherto thought, and that the birth of
religion and the emergence of social cohesion was rooted in
atavistic practices of human sacrifice and ceremonial cannibalism.

Timothy Taylor

Mr President,

I spent my Christmas on sick leave from my university, suffering from
a stress-related illness. OK, so I'm a periodic depressive of a
particular sort. A lot of scientists and thinkers are, alternating
between great activity and deep lassitude. Why am I telling you? Well,
because in Britain at least, the creeping managerial culture of
universities makes it very difficult for people like this to flourish.
In a misguided attempt to put accountancy procedures in place to
obtain value for money out of science, civil servants are in danger of
driving out the creativity and innovation that lie at the heart of the
story of western science.

It is natural for governments to expect results from science, but they
cannot be guaranteed. However, there are two positive things you can
do, each of which makes more sense in relation to the other than
either does alone. The first is to acknowledge the precedence of
observation over experiment. The second is to take the 'interpretive
dilemma' to heart.

When bureaucrats try to manage science they want experiments done.
That is what they think good science does. It is a convenient belief
because research-grant monies can be easily justified when measurable
results are produced to a pre-agreed schedule. But much (perhaps most)
great science has been based predominantly on observation and has no
timetable. Newton and Darwin did very few significant experiments, but
both exercised immense observational acumen on a daily basis. Both
also took so long to publish their insights that they would
undoubtedly both have been fired from modern universities for failing
to produce. But the mentality that finds it so hard to thrive in a
regularized accountancy culture is the one most suited to long and
profound contemplation of the meaning of phenomena. It is the one most
likely to crack through the interpretive dilemma.

The interpretive dilemma simply states that in order to interpret
something, one must have decided that there is something to interpret
and, in focussing on that something, one has already formed a strong
idea of what it is.

For example, as an archaeologist, I am used to interpreting burials.
But when I am trying to uncover the meaning of a particular burial, I
hardly stop to think that I have already decided the most important
thing about it when I called it a 'burial'. In casually naming it,
prior to conducting certain measurable experiments (dating and
technological analyses) I have already dramatically lessened the
possibility of understanding anything new and surprising.

By rethinking the nature of apparent 'burials'--a process that
involved absolutely no experimentation or new excavation at all, but
which nevertheless took up several years thinking time--I have
recently suggested that what early humans were up to was very
different to what we hitherto thought, and that the birth of religion
and the emergence of social cohesion was rooted in atavistic practices
of human sacrifice and ceremonial cannibalism. The ostensible
'burials' that archaeologists have dated to the period of the last Ice
Age are in fact the remains of elaborate, communally-approved ritual
murders.

Mr President, space to rethink the apparently familiar is essential to
all good science. It means that you need to trust scientists to follow
their instincts, and not make them accountable every year for a string
of tangible results. Look after your science contemplatives and they
will look after you.

Timothy Taylor
Archeologist, FSA Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and a member
of CIFA (Centre for International Forensic Assistance)
University of Bradford, UK
Author of The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual
Culture, and The Buried Soul. 
________________________________________________________________

We are benefitted by the significant investments into nano/bio
technologies being funded through NIH, NSF, DARPA/DOD. An increase,
modest on the scale of the overall budget, with a research mandate
encouraging exploring these new areas of potential discovery, can
yield enormous benefits in developing diagnostics, and as a result
of that, therapeutics, to tackle the many diseases afflicting
humanity, and the current enormous cost of treating these diseases.

Mike Weiner

Mr. President,

There is an opportunity to improve the quest for cures for many
diseases, including cancers, by increasing the instrumentation budget
for advanced detection of physical properties of the genome, such as
being able to view the conformal shape of DNA in live cells as it
twists and turns, winds and unwinds, achieving 5500:1 rates of
compression in size, knowing when to unwind and transcribe, photon and
EMF emission by DNA in cells in vivo and in vitro, which we have no
way to measure today; etc. Included in this
proposed initiative should be the involvement of more physicists to
aid molecular biologists in their interpretation of the state of
activity, including quantum mechanics, at work in the nanoworld of
live cells.

We cannot see into the nucleus of live cells very effectively, and
most of our understanding of DNA, its role in cells, and cellular
signalling, is deduced from chemical analysis and imputation. Not from
direct observation and measurement. Advances in many technologies,
including nanotechnology, neutron imaging, microscopy, SEM and AFM,
X-Ray crystallography, and more, are widening our ability to see.

Only two years ago the NIH began funding instrumentation to facilitate
sensing at the nano levels needed to really understand the processes
of cellular biology.

Complicating this quest is the lack of much coalescence among fields
of science. Few molecular biologists understand advanced physics,
photonics, Van der Waals forces, et al. And the reverse is also true,
few physicists are knowledgeable, in depth, about what goes on in
cells, at the level of understanding the potential role of histones,
microtubules, cellular signalling, and the complex, interrelated
activities of the cells which make up our bodies and determine our
health, longevity, aging and survival.

We are benefitted by the significant investments into nano/bio
technologies being funded through NIH, NSF, DARPA/DOD. An increase,
modest on the scale of the overall budget, with a research mandate
encouraging exploring these new areas of potential discovery, can
yield enormous benefits in developing diagnostics, and as a result of
that, therapeutics, to tackle the many diseases afflicting humanity,
and the current enormous cost of treating these diseases.

Mike Weiner
CEO, Biophan Technologies, Inc.
________________________________________________________________

When you remarked that the nation owes me (i.e. its scientists) a
great debt, I could not refrain from asking, "Sir, could you
possibly estimate approximately how much that would be?" the crowd
broke up and I missed my chance.

Leon Lederman

Dear Mr. President,

You may recall that we met at the White House during your reception
for U.S Nobel Laureates. My award was in Physics (1988) and we had a
brief discussion of neutrinos and our ever more incisive story of the
creation and evolution of the Universe and how the deep connections of
the outer space of cosmology and the inner space of particle physics
are joined to illuminate the history and structure of the physical
universe.

I was impressed by the questions you asked, with a line of Laureates
waiting to meet you. When you remarked that the nation owes me (i.e.
its scientists) a great debt, I could not refrain from asking, "Sir,
could you possibly estimate approximately how much that would be?" the
crowd broke up and I missed my chance. Now I would like to bring up a
new topic which I believe is as crucial to the future of the nation as
any that my illustrious colleagues have raised. This is the education
of our children and especially the prep to 12 schooling they are
receiving. I have spent the best part of the past decade in a growing
fascination with the problem and with growing despair.

I know you are aware of the problem and your "Leave no child behind"
rhetoric and legislation are bold steps to face the issue. But I am
afraid the problem is much more desperate than one imagines. My
vantage point as a scientist enables me to realize that out scientific
and technological successes are now at risk. Alan Greenspan has
testified before the Goodling Congressional Committee hearings that we
have maintained a robust science by means of fortuitous immigration
which is slowing down as nations begin to realize how crucial their
scientific and technological manpower are to their own development.
And our industries plead for more visas to supply the human resources
that our own schools are failing to do. Our founding fathers, in their
almost infinite wisdom, left education to states and localities,
failing perhaps to anticipate the national peril that would arise if
our (now) 16,000 separate school systems failed to educate the
populations we need, not only the future scientists and engineers but
also the voting citizens with a sense of science that a democratic
society must have in order to support difficult decisions that 21st
century society must make.

I suggest that the President convene a very powerful National
Commission on Education. It would consist of University Presidents,
CEO's of major technology industries, High ranking officers in the
military, scientists and educators. The Chair must be a person of
immense public recognition and respect, e.g. Colin Powell, should he
retire from your Government The charge would be to create an action
plan for a far reaching national consensus program to bring the U.S.
into the 21st century educationally. Whereas this would clearly not be
a Federally mandated program, the influential composition of the
Commission must have a profound effect on the States and localities.

We have a large number of successful schools and skilled teachers. We
have very strong elements of new curricula. The revolution we need is
to add the new elements of cognition science, to collect the new
information from the neurosciences that are useful in the classroom,
to create a new ethic of teacher education and continuous professional
development. Salaries for teachers and a creative effort at raising
the social status of teachers must be blended to make teaching a
primary objective of the best students.

It is not difficult to imagine that the Commission will suggest a
program of matching Federal and State resources to pay for the
increments that this program will require. There is probably a ten
year program of implementation before the payoffs begin to appear.
Special programs will be needed for the inner cities but solid
experience in Chicago and other cities indicate that, given the
resources, these can achieve spectacular success.

There are many holes in this proposal but that is why we need this
high level Commission. The Bush Education Commission will create a
heritage that few Presidents can claim, rivalling the creation of free
public education, the G.I. Bill , Social Security etc.

Generations of Americans will remember and honor you for finally
addressing the issue of our failed school system and of matching
resources with rhetoric to create a new age of education, a new
meaning of superpower.

With best wishes for the remainder of your term,

Leon M. Lederman
Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Nobel Laureate in Physics (1988)
Coauthor (with David Schramm) of From Quarks to the Cosmos : Tools of
Discovery, and (with Dick Teresi) of The God Particle: If the Universe
Is the Answer, What Is the Question? 
________________________________________________________________

But there is a more focused and more urgent crisis of scientific
literacy: There is widespread statistical illiteracy among
scientists themselves. The signature of this illiteracy is not
being able to tell a number from a curve.

Bart Kosko

Dear President Bush:

The country suffers from a crisis in scientific literacy. Indeed you
yourself have often used the phrase "fuzzy math" as an insult even
though your own home state of Texas funds fuzzy mathematics at
research centers at Texas A&M and at the University of Texas at El
Paso.

But there is a more focused and more urgent crisis of scientific
literacy: There is widespread statistical illiteracy among scientists
themselves. The signature of this illiteracy is not being able to tell
a number from a curve.

Please allow me to explain. Almost all scientists and engineers work
with and interpret statistical data. The very phrase "scientific
study" tends to mean a study conducted in accord with standard
principles of modern statistics. But few scientists or engineers can
distinguish the key condition that gives rise to the beloved bell
curve (remember those IQ and SAT tests?) from the condition that lets
a pollster accept the averaged answers of a thousand or so subjects as
a reliable estimate of the population at large (remember exit polls?).
The first case gives a curve and the other case gives a number and it
is crucial that at least the scientists who advise policy makers be
able to distinguish the two. This goes to the heart of whether in a
given case scientists should even apply the statistical framework and
whether they should accept the results if they do apply it.

I know you are not a detail person. But this is one detail worth
knowing: The whole distinction here turns on something as simple as
the square root of the number of samples. That's right: everything
turns on whether you use a number or its square root.

Here is how it turns out. The square-root case gives you something
called the Central Limit Theorem or CLT for short. The CLT gives you
the (thin tailed) bell curve that remains the most popular probability
model in science and engineering--even though more accurate bell
curves need thicker tails to account for the observed frequency of
"rare" events such as stockmarket crashes or big flashes of lightning.
Mathematicians even named this bell curve the Gaussian after the
German mathematician Gauss although more and more scientists simply
call it the "normal" bell curve because they find it so normal to
apply to random phenomena. (Behind this is a deeper illiteracy that
confuses data dispersion with an artificial and nonrobust contrivance
called the "variance" but that is too much detail for this memo.) The
other case works with the number of samples rather than the square
root of that number. It gives you one of many so-called Laws of Large
Numbers or LLNs for short. Those LLN theorems give you a single number
or "poll result" that lesser politicians might use to measure public
sentiment on a given yes-or-no question. This common confusion (that
CLT = LLN) over a mere square root ranges from science and engineering
to medicine and the war room.

See the problem? Social policy rests on empirical science or at least
it should. And empirical science rests in turn on statistics and this
is a subject far trickier than all too many scientists seem to think.
So a little statistical incompetence can have dramatic social
effects--think junk science in the courtroom.

What to do?

There isn't time to train or retrain our scientists and engineers and
physicians (and lawyers) in probability and statistics. Nor would it
be either cost effective or polite to require that at least once each
grant applicant submit her answers from a proctored multiple-choice
exam on basic statistics when she submits her grant proposal to a
federal funding agency--even though state governments periodically do
require just such test results to renew a driver's license.

Instead there is a simple rule of thumb you and your staff can use to
quickly weed out the least competent: Fire or at least ignore any
advisor or applicant who in good faith uses the phrase "law of
averages." There is no such law.

Bart Kosko
Professor of Electrical Engineering
University of Southern California
Author of Fuzzy Thinking; Heaven in a Chip; and the novel Nanotime. 
________________________________________________________________

In times where the most important issues facing your
administration, and indeed the nation, are science-centric--from
the search for biological weapons in Iraq to human cloning, from
global warming to smallpox vaccinations--the voice of the
President's chief science advisor must be more pronounced; the
public needs to see and hear a stronger scientific presence in the
West Wing.

Adam Bly

Dear Mr. President,

Unlike some of my colleagues, I am uncomfortable acting both as a
media executive and as an advisor to the President, and so I must
regrettably turn down your invitation to serve. But I will say this:

In times where the most important issues facing your administration,
and indeed the nation, are science-centric--from the search for
biological weapons in Iraq to human cloning, from global warming to
smallpox vaccinations--the voice of the President's chief science
advisor must be more pronounced; the public needs to see and hear a
stronger scientific presence in the West Wing.

Mr. Blair has taken noteworthy steps to increase science advice within
his government. It is critical that you have the necessary, direct
science advice to guide your decision-making. Budget increases for
research are commendable; informed policy can be revolutionary.

Sincerely,

Adam Bly
Founder and editor-in-Chief of SEED (Science has never looked so good)
________________________________________________________________

A World Science Collaboration committed to providing
no-strings-attached scientific resources to other countries would
change how the United States is viewed by the world community.

Randolph M. Nesse, M.D.

Dear President Bush,

It was somewhat surprising, but still most welcome, to receive your
request for advice on the pressing scientific issues of our time.
Brief general advice won't be very useful, with two possible
exceptions. First, support for superb science education will pay off
so handsomely that I have no idea why you have not done it already.
Probably you are distracted, but this is one of those "not urgent but
important" things that should not be put off further. Second, because
the big advances usually come from basic science, you would do well to
invest more there, instead of assigning resources mainly to solve
problems.

I suspect, however, that what you really want is advice on how to use
our scientific advantage to gain economic and military advantages. We
dominate the world in science, and this science helps us to dominate
the world. But, the price is high. Many in other countries see the
United States not as the leading light, but as a bully that uses its
scientific powers only to advance its own interests. Yes, I know we do
much that benefits other countries, and it must be frustrating to you
that these efforts get so little notice. Nonetheless, many people hate
us and see our science as an instrument of imperialism.

You can change this, and science can help. We are coming to new
explanations of how relationships work. Trading favors is only the
beginning; a reputation for fulfilling commitments is equally
important. Your current policies demonstrate that you understand the
importance of convincing others that we will fulfill military
commitments even when they are not in our direct interests. There is
also power in fulfilling commitments to help others even when no
benefit is expected.

Just a few generous actions based on values, not interests, would
change how the world sees us. Here is one way to proceed. You could
create a new organization, call it The World Science Collaboration, to
tackle problems that other countries find urgent. Provide them with
resources to deal with these problems, and with whatever help they
request from US scientists, many of whom will be eager to contribute
to such an effort. To work, this must not be aid with strings
attached, but a gift without any expectation of paybacks, financial or
political. Once it is clear that we are serious, the world will
quickly realize that we do not always use our science for ourselves.

Furthermore, the initiative will spread scientific expertise that will
foster development and fight superstition. If we invested 4.5 billion
dollars, the cost of one aircraft carrier, into finding cures for
malaria and sleeping sickness, the whole world would see us
differently, and the health of the world would soon be improved. If we
set up a dozen such projects, the changed outcomes in arguments about
the USA late at night in dirt-floored huts across the world might well
enhance our security more than all the technology we can muster.

This opportunity is rare in its appeal to people across the political
spectrum from the helping left, to the pragmatic center and, one would
hope, the truly religious on the right. People here will see this as a
small but feasible and tangible antidote to perceptions that the
United States is the enemy of the rest of the world. People elsewhere
will see that the United States can act on principle instead of
cynical self-interest. This could be the most important accomplishment
of your presidency.

I would be curious to hear your perspectives on this, and glad, if you
would like, to discussion specific plans for implementation.

Sincerely Yours,

Randolph M. Nesse, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Psychology
Senior Research Scientist, RCGD, Institute for Social Research
The University of Michigan
Author of Why We Get Sick, The New Science of Darwinian Medicine;
Editor of Evolution and the Capacity for Commitment 
________________________________________________________________

A bold new initiative is needed to train a new generation of
computational biologists who are equally at home in wet bench
science and the world of computational science.

Terrence Sejnowski

Dear President Bush:

A new branch of science is emerging that will have a far-reaching
impact on the economy of the United States, with applications to
medicine, agriculture and defense that will be revolutionary.

The discovery that DNA carries the genetic code for cells opened a new
era in biology that focused on the organization of information in
cells. Soon we will know all the genes in cells from humans and many
other species and high throughput methods are available to identify
proteins and to analyze their three dimensional structures. However,
the sequence of a genome only provides the equivalent of nature's
white pages, a useful index of genes but far less than we need in
order to know how cells work.

At present researchers are creating a list functions for those genes
in different cell, which is equivalent to nature's yellow pages. But
even this is not enough to know how organisms are built since the
genes encode a program that is used during development to create a
wide range of different cells and organs.

We need a new approach to these problems that uses all of the tools in
molecular genetics and in addition brings to bear powerful
computational tools from computer science. Although we have the tools
and techniques to make major discoveries, we do not have enough
scientists, trained at the interface between biology and computer
science, to make them.

A bold new initiative is needed to train a new generation of
computational biologists who are equally at home in wet bench science
and the world of computational science. A new national institute
should be initiated at the National Institutes of Health devoted to
the goal of discovering broad general theoretical principles for how
biological systems become self organized into functional systems.

For example, we can anticipate that general principles will emerge
from the study of how various proteins and macromolecular complexes in
cells interact with each other and control gene expression. The
potential payoff for establishing these general principles is
enormous. The Institute for Computational Biology and Medicine will be
a resource for the entire nation, focusing existing talent and
creating the computational infrastructure needed to make major
advances.

Sincerely,

Terrence Sejnowski
Computational Neuroscientist
Professor, Salk Institute; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical
Institute;
Professor of Biology and Neurosciences, University of California, San
Diego;
Coauthor of The Computational Brain and most recently (with Steven
Quartz) Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals
About How We Become Who We Are. 
________________________________________________________________

...we regard more and more problems of individual behavior as
biologically determined, but we are increasingly ready to treat
them biochemically, and looking forward to treating them
genetically. Our fatalism about the individual capacity to learn
and heal is matched only by our technological hubris.

Mary Catherine Bateson

Dear Mr. President,

I hope that some of my colleagues will offer you a shopping list of
specific goals. I want however to address a broader question that
requires fitting together the findings of many researchers and that
resonates with popular culture and the political process. For
simplicity let me put it in terms of a single question: Can Human
Beings Learn?

Most people would answer, of course. I am sure that you yourself
remember learning things from time to time, at Yale for instance, and
perhaps since. But I write to point out that we are steadily reducing
our estimate of what and how much humans can learn, except at a
relatively trivial level. And we are making policy on that basis.

We live at a time of impressive progress in biology (especially
genetics and neuroscience), which has replaced physics as the most
glamorous of the sciences. Certainly you have had to take positions on
applications of this new science to human beings, but you may be
unaware of the indirect influence of popularized scientific ideas on
our systems of child care, education, health, and criminal justice. In
all of these areas we are drifting toward biological determinism, but
the situation is complicated by the popular belief that whereas what
human individuals can learn is limited, scientists can learn to
tinker. Thus we regard more and more problems of individual behavior
as biologically determined, but we are increasingly ready to treat
them biochemically, and looking forward to treating them genetically.
Our fatalism about the individual capacity to learn and heal is
matched only by our technological hubris.

Let me give you a glimpse of each area:

o Learning begins at birth. But in child care there is now a
substantial community that says early childhood does not have the
importance it was believed to have. Even though there is some
continuing support for child health insurance, for daycare that
allows mothers to work, and for Headstart, the programs that are
actually funded are increasingly custodial and mechanistic.

o The K-12 years are critical in learning to think, feel, and
interact with others. But in education we are reducing our goals to
testable skills and information, diverting attention from more
subtle intellectual and social potentials. In poorer areas, we are
miseducating large numbers of children, and we are allowing them to
grow up in impoverished and violent environments--as if we believed
that an improvement in conditions would have no positive effect.

o Psychotherapy developed to promote reflection on experience and
to facilitate learning new ways to cope, physically and mentally.
But in mental health we are letting medication replace, rather than
support, psychotherapy. We are drugging or segregating problem
children and ignoring the experiential basis of many conditions.

o Learning does take place in prisons. But increasingly they are
training centers for crime and alienation, because we use them as
if those we incarcerate were already irreversible career criminals.
Thus, we increasingly assume that rehabilitation is impossible.

o Let me add foreign policy. If we believed that terrorism, for
instance, was learned rather than innate, would we not question the
policies that have kept three generations of Palestinian children
growing up in refugee camps? Would we not focus AID money on
education and social conditions rather than armaments? How many
future terrorists will emerge from today's traumas?

I can see a lightbulb flashing over your head. "She's not talking
science," you say, "she's talking the liberal agenda." That's true,
Mr. President: liberals are not people who spend money on government
programs per se, liberals are people who put money into improving
social conditions because they affirm that humans can learn--from
parents, peers, teachers, and what they see and hear around them. How
come? Because human biology evolved for adaptation by learning. Can
all humans learn equally well? Of course not, but they can learn
better. We have seen that in the case of the learning disabled over
the last generation. Are humans perfectible? Of course not. But
liberals tend to use government to improve social conditions (which is
to say, to support the learning environment in the widest sense)
rather than on coercion, incarceration, warfare--and rewarding those
who have already had the benefits of privileged environments. Have you
ever noticed, Mr. President, how so much of the twins research that is
used to argue the determining importance of genetics depends on
controlling for socioeconomic status? That little phrase is the basis
of the liberal agenda: give everyone an equal chance and, yes, the
genes will play a large role. Inequality blocks genetic potential.

But is this science, you ask? Indeed. Anthropologists have spent the
last century assembling evidence of how differently humans behave when
reared in different cultural settings--and how those differences
disappear when the settings change, sometimes overnight, sometimes
over a couple of generations.

Mr. President, do continue to support research in neuroscience. We
need to know more about the effects of love or trauma, of intellectual
stimulation or monotony on the brain itself. Brain structure may
increasingly be seen as a result rather than a cause. Keep the work
going in human genetics and biochemistry. Doing science is after all
derived from the evolved human capacity to adapt by learning and we
can hope that some of the hubris will settle down with time. But put
your money into research and policy for the great long term experiment
of building a world in which everyone can learn to be the best they
can be.

Respectfully submitted.

Mary Catherine Bateson
Anthropologist
Visiting Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Author of With a Daughter's Eye (on her parents Margaret Mead and
Gregory Bateson); Composing a Life; Peripheral Visions, and Full
Circles, Overlapping Lives: Culture and Generation in Transition. 
________________________________________________________________

Too many people think cloning cells for the fight against disease is the
same thing as creating Frankenstein's monster. Too many people think
evolution is the idea that people are descended from apes. And too many
people think that genetic modification of plants is a dangerous new idea,
instead of something that's been going on for ten thousand years...The
problem is that, although we're all entitled to our beliefs, our culture
increasingly holds that science is just another belief. Maybe this is
because it's easier to believe something--anything--than not to know.

Alan Alda

Dear Mr. President,

I think there may have been a terrible mistake. I'm not a scientist.

Worse than that, I'm an actor. So, I don't know how I got recommended
to you as a candidate for science advisor. Possibly, someone felt that
if we could let an actor be president without major damage beyond a
trillion or two, why not science advisor? But, I'm also a writer who
has a lifelong interest in science, and I host the PBS program
Scientific American Frontiers, and I have played Richard Feynman on
the stage, so I can see where the confusion might have arisen.

If you choose to name me as your advisor on scientific matters, I
would consider it my duty not to turn you down, but I think it only
fair to let you know the kind of advice I'm liable to give you.

First, I really do value science. I get the impression from some
previous appointments in your administration that the mission of the
appointees is to dismantle the agencies they were put in charge of. I
might do some damage through ignorance, which may be why I'm on your
short list, but I could not bring myself to put an end to science in
the United States; so if that's what you had in mind, please count me
out.

As for my actual advice, it breaks down into two major categories:
Deep and Deeper.

Deep:

The world is going to come to an end in about 5 billion years no
matter what we do. So, in the long run, you're off the hook. It's true
that things like Global Warming, plus the increasing loss of clean
water and bio diversity, can hasten The End Of Everything As We Know
It, but even so, it will all end eventually. Nobody gets blamed for
continuing a disastrous policy, so there will be no harm to your
reputation if you do nothing. People simply do not say, "Caesar did
nothing to halt the Roman practice of putting lead in the air and
water, probably resulting in the eventual weakening and fall of the
empire." But they're absolutely fascinated with the way he could
divide Gaul into thirds.

Recognizing this, I will not advise you to do anything related to the
environment. I will simply ask permission to put a glass of water on
your desk every day with little things swimming in it. Sooner or
later, you'll slip and drink from it, and while you're in the
hospital, we can talk about the billion or so people who have nothing
else to drink.

I will also arrange for the local gas station to charge your mom and
dad what a gallon of gas costs after the actual costs of the gas have
been added. This would include the cost of subsidies to oil producers,
health care for skin cancers and lung conditions, and a couple of
wars, but we'll skip the wars. I don't think this comes to more than a
thousand dollars a gallon, but if your folks write you about the awful
price of gas these days, then maybe we could have another talk.

And while we're on the subject of gas, I believe it is our duty as
patriotic citizens to end our reliance on foreign oil. It is also our
duty as rational people to end our reliance on any oil. Both of these
duties are satisfied by pouring a huge amount of money into the
development of hydrogen cells, as well as thermal, wind, solar and
several other forms of energy. But it will take a huge amount of
money--possibly what it will cost to pay for 3 or 4 days of the next
war.

As you can see, the Deep stuff isn't all that deep, and it's pretty
much what you would expect from your average limousine liberal. The
Deeper stuff gets, as you might suspect, deeper. It will also, I'm
afraid, get more earnest.

Deeper:

What your science advisor really needs to do is help you re-fashion
the thinking of the country. Too many people think cloning cells for
the fight against disease is the same thing as creating Frankenstein's
monster. Too many people think evolution is the idea that people are
descended from apes. And too many people think that genetic
modification of plants is a dangerous new idea, instead of something
that's been going on for ten thousand years.

If our people don't learn to make distinctions and challenge their own
thinking, as well as that of others, then they will be at a
disadvantage when facing the technologies, insights and strategies of
those who do. Rationality has a special importance for us now.

The commencement speaker at Caltech this past year said,

"We live in a time when massive means of destruction are right here in
our hands. We're probably the first species capable of doing this much
damage to our planet. We can make the birds stop singing; we can still
the fish and make the insects fall from the trees like black rain. And
ironically we've been brought here by reason, by rationality. We
cannot afford to live in a culture that doesn't use the power in its
hands with the kind of rationality that produced it in the first
place."

Actually, I was the commencement speaker who said that, but I thought
you'd pay more attention if I put the Caltech part first.

The problem is that, although we're all entitled to our beliefs, our
culture increasingly holds that science is just another belief. Maybe
this is because it's easier to believe something--anything--than not
to know.

We don't like uncertainty--so we gravitate back to the last
comfortable solution we had, and in this way we elevate belief to the
status of fact.

But scientists are comfortable with not knowing. They thrive on it.
They don't assume that just because they had an idea it must be right.
They attack it as vigorously as they can because they don't want to
lie to themselves. As Richard Feynman said, "Not knowing is much more
interesting than believing an answer which might be wrong."

Above, all, Mr. President, I think your science advisor needs to help
you help our country learn to be comfortable with uncertainty, and--as
hard as this might be to believe--to put reason ahead of belief.

Alan Alda
Actor, Director, Writer
Host of PBS program "Scientific American Frontiers"
________________________________________________________________

Your science advisor is really a social advisor, providing an
expert's view on how the state can best assist in and benefit from
the advancement of science.

Cliff Barney

Dear Mr. President,

The most pressing science-related issue for the nation and the world
concerns how best to make the existential choices that bring science,
a value-free process, into a social arena where values are central.

This is not, strictly speaking, a scientific issue. Your science
advisor is really a social advisor, providing an expert's view on how
the state can best assist in and benefit from the advancement of
science.

Therefore I urge you to appoint a social scientist, preferably a
sociologist who has studied the impact of science on society, as your
science advisor. More specifically, since a global networked economy
and global political issues (such as terrorism) are affecting the
entire planet, I suggest that you choose someone who has investigated
the new social forms that are developing to cope with the global
communications network.

This will not guarantee wise choices but it will at least meet
scientists half way in dealing with scientific issues.

Cliff Barney
Technology journalist, designer of online news systems
Publisher of Tales of the Network Frontier (www.netfront.to)
________________________________________________________________

To push a science agenda, we would have to promote the underlying
premise of science: that none of the systems we use to understand
this reality are pre-existing or true. They were simply the most
useful at a particular moment--very often to a particular group.
When they stop being useful, we must be prepared to discard them.

Douglas Rushkoff

A modest super-fund to explore alternative, non-resource-based energy
sources could solve a great majority of the world's problems. But it
would need to be accompanied by an equally serious look at our
commodities-based economic model. Our chief obstacle to sustainable
energy technology might not be scientific at all, but economic. What
would happen to the oil industry if we no longer needed oil?

The same could be asked about our chemically and genetically addicted
agriculture. It's not that high-yield, top-soil enriching farming
practices are out of reach; it's simply that our agribusiness industry
doesn't know how to profit off a paradigm that doesn't rely on
synthetic fertilizers and gene modification.

America's great problems lie in our inability to change the models we
are using to understand the challenges before us. And this is where a
genuine science education--both in schools and through good use of
media--would prove extraordinarily useful.

The scientific model acknowledges that it is just a model of our
reality. It is not the way things are, but rather a way of explaining
the way the way things are. Those of us who use the scientific model
have great practice in reminding ourselves that our understandings
must constantly be revised, evolved, even improvised.

To push a science agenda, we would have to promote the underlying
premise of science: that none of the systems we use to understand this
reality are pre-existing or true. They were simply the most useful at
a particular moment--very often to a particular group. When they stop
being useful, we must be prepared to discard them.

Douglas Rushkoff
Author, Lecturer, and Social Theorist
Professor of Media Culture at New York University's Interactive
Telecommunications Program
Author of Media Virus!; Coercion; and Nothing Sacred: The Truth About
Judaism.
________________________________________________________________

But the single greatest mystery facing science today arises,
remarkably, each time we see the red of an apple, hear the blast of
a trumpet, smell the fragrance of a rose, or reel with anger from
an insult. The mystery is this: What is the relationship between
our everyday conscious experiences and our brains?

Donald D. Hoffman

Mr. President,

Scientists are now studying many fascinating and fundamental problems:
What is the nature of "dark matter," the unseen and as yet unknown
matter which apparently comprises most of our universe? What is the
ultimate "theory of everything" that will unify our understanding of
the forces of nature? Will such a theory let us predict the masses of
fundamental particles?

But the single greatest mystery facing science today arises,
remarkably, each time we see the red of an apple, hear the blast of a
trumpet, smell the fragrance of a rose, or reel with anger from an
insult. The mystery is this: What is the relationship between our
everyday conscious experiences and our brains?

The issue is that brains seem to be physical objects with physical
properties like spin and momentum, but conscious experiences seem to
lack such properties. What, for instance, is the spin of anger or the
momentum of my experience of red? The very question sounds like
nonsense, and that raises the mystery.

The mystery is us. What kind of creatures are we? Are we composites of
physical bodies and nonphysical experiences? Or are we entirely
physical, or entirely nonphysical? Do brains create conscious
experiences, or vice versa? Could some complex pattern of neural
activity in my brain actually cause, or be identical with, my
experience of red? How, precisely? Is the distinction between physical
and nonphysical even useful here?

The mystery could hardly be more personal: What are we? And the fields
of science potentially relevant to its resolution could hardly be more
diverse: Quantum physics and chemistry, molecular biology,
evolutionary biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, sociology and
anthropology.

The mystery is as old as philosophy and religion, but today it engages
many of the brightest minds in diverse scientific fields. An
initiative to study this mystery could galvanize these fields and
promote multidisciplinary collaborations.

What are the potential payoffs of such an initiative? At a minimum
there is the intangible benefit of furthering our scientific
understanding of what we are. The tangible benefits of such an
understanding are anyone's guess. They might include payoffs of
interest to any administration, such as a better understanding of the
sources of interpersonal and international conflict and how these can
be resolved. For if we better understand what we are, we might better
understand why we behave as we do.

Donald D. Hoffman
Professor of Cognitive Science
University of California, Irvine
Author of Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See and coauthor
of Observer Mechanic 
________________________________________________________________

Science is the only way we have of truly understanding how our
increasingly complex world works. The scientific view is the long
view--it is not short term thinking; it seeks the big picture. The
choice is clear: a future of ignorance, or a far better future of
enlightenment.

Steve Giddings

Dear Mr. President:

A great president is measured in several ways. One is his response to
crisis. Another is his vision of the future.

Many of issues most critical to our future as a society, and indeed as
the human species, have a large scientific component. These include:

o Uncontrolled population growth, that is beginning to surpass the
level at which our world resources can sustain it. Another example
of an exponential growth curve in a finite system is cancer: by the
time you realize you have it, it's just a few more tumor-doubling
times to death.

o The related problem of global environmental crises: global
warming, species extinctions unparalleled since the end of the age
of the dinosaurs, large-scale loss of habitat of all kinds, from
forest to sea, global-scale pollution, and others.

o Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction: as North Korea is
demonstrating, this is not just a problem with Iraq, and soon this
problem will spread. Ultimately, our survival as a species is
probably at stake.

o Bioterrorism: I needn't explain its relevance to you.

There are many others, and that means there are some very tough
decisions that we, as a nation, have to make in confronting these
problems. We are in it for the long haul: they won't go away soon. It
is essential that we, as a people, be fully informed to make these
choices. Yet many among our population have a woefully inadequate
background in scientific matters, which lie at the very foundation of
these and other problems.

For this reason, the most important scientific matter facing the
nation is that of scientific education, literacy, and appreciation. It
is imperative that our populace, as well as our decision makers, have
a solid grounding in basic scientific principles, appreciation for
what science can (and cannot) do, and understanding of how science is
carried out.

I've referred to crisis, let's turn to vision. Not only would a
scientifically literate populace be better equipped to handle our
problems, but it would be better able to work towards a greatly
improved future. The fruits of past scientific innovation are all
around us: computers, TVs, the World Wide Web (invented by high energy
physicists!), medical diagnostics, advancing cures for many diseases,
new sources of power, and many more. Our modern society as we know it
would not exist without the discoveries of science--we'd still be
huddled around our wood stoves and lanterns and riding horses. And
there is so much more we can do, as we advance our fundamental
understanding of our Universe, our world, and our biology. Science is
a path of bold exploration, and it may someday even be a path to the
stars.

For this reason I would urge you to follow the vision of a
scientifically literate populace, able to intelligently confront our
crises and lead humanity to a better future.

There are many things that could be done, and we can discuss details
later. But here are some ideas:

o Advocate revamping of school curricula, at both the K-12 and
University levels, to place adequate focus on mathematics and
physical and biological sciences as an integral part of core
curricula. The US was reminded of the importance of science in the
Sputnik era, and responded well. Let's not wait for another
dramatic signal that we are falling behind. If you prefer to think
of it this way, this is, in the end, a matter of our national
security.

o Improve science funding through the NSF, DOE, NIH, and other
national funding organizations. Much of this funding ultimately
goes into the training of new leaders in science.

o Initiate programs to foster better communication between
scientists and the press. It is essential that the American people,
through their press, gain an understanding of what science is, what
is good (and bad) science, and appreciate the importance and great
promise that science holds for their future.

o Initiate programs to bring more scientific knowledge to our
decision makers: Congress and other administration officials. We
should have annual meetings in which leading scientists are invited
to brief our leaders on the implications, perils, and promises of
scientific discoveries. Congress, and all of your administration,
should, on an ongoing basis, actively seek the advice of
scientists, both in confronting crises, and in planning for a
better future for the American people.

Science is the only way we have of truly understanding how our
increasingly complex world works. The scientific view is the long
view--it is not short term thinking; it seeks the big picture. The
choice is clear: a future of ignorance, or a far better future of
enlightenment.

Steve Giddings
Professor of Physics
University of California, Santa Barbara
________________________________________________________________

Your friend Tony Blair recently gave a speech where he declared,
"We're at a crossroads. We could choose a path of timidity in the
face of the unknown. Or we could choose to be a nation at ease with
radical knowledge, not fearful of the future, a culture that values
a pragmatic, evidence-based approach to new opportunities." Prime
Minister Blair believes the second path is the clear choice. It's
time you demonstrated the same conviction.

Lance Knobel

Dear Mr President,

You are fortunate in leading a nation pre-eminent in science. By any
measure, scientists in the US are having a profound impact on our
understanding of virtually every field of research.

But this sustained excellence is matched by the steady of growth of a
culture of unreason, deeply opposed to the methods and conclusions of
science. You are in a uniquely powerful position to confront this
dangerous trend, but I'm afraid you are also in a deeply compromised
position. For tackling the culture of unreason means confronting the
core of your political support, the religious right.

Why is this important? The scientific issues we need to confront as a
society are increasingly posing hard questions of moral judgement and
of practical concern. This is particularly true in the revolution in
biosciences which intimately affects who and what we are. Your
administration has already compromised US scientific advance--and
potentially the health of many of your citizens--by a politically
motivated policy fudge over embryonic stem cells.

The questions in coming years will get harder, not easier. It will be
the task of elected politicians to make societal choices on the basis
of scientific evidence, not prejudice.

Your friend Tony Blair recently gave a speech where he declared,
"We're at a crossroads. We could choose a path of timidity in the face
of the unknown. Or we could choose to be a nation at ease with radical
knowledge, not fearful of the future, a culture that values a
pragmatic, evidence-based approach to new opportunities." Prime
Minister Blair believes the second path is the clear choice. It's time
you demonstrated the same conviction.

Sincerely,

Lance Knobel
Independent Writer and Strategist
Former Advisor, Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, London
________________________________________________________________

However, there is one aspect of my work that does have deadly
consequences, more precisely, will have deadly consequences if it
is ignored. Here is where heaven and earth meet: in the
possibility, and in the long run the certainty, that people will
die through the effects of an impact of an asteroid, large or
small.

Piet Hut

Dear Mr. President

I had to smile when I read the assignment, to give advice about
pressing scientific issues, while sticking to those scientific areas
where I have expertise. As an astrophysicist, few issues in my trade
could be considered pressing. When I meet people who ask me what I do
for a living, I often describe my area of work as being in some ways
more akin to art than to science: we astrophysicists produce pretty
pictures and interesting stories about places and times far away,
events that are unlikely to affect you and me in our daily lives.

However, there is one aspect of my work that does have deadly
consequences, more precisely, will have deadly consequences if it is
ignored. Here is where heaven and earth meet: in the possibility, and
in the long run the certainty, that people will die through the
effects of an impact of an asteroid, large or small.

Although there are several more pressing things to worry about right
now, including many already pointed out by the band of science
advisors reporting here, this does not mean that it would be wise to
neglect the threat of an asteroid impact. Would you be willing to face
the public if an asteroid would be discovered heading our way? You
would have to tell them that NASA has been discovering and tracking
asteroids, but that funding had not been sufficient to catalogue most
of them, and that there had not been any funding so far to study the
question of how to deflect an asteroid, once found, even though the
technology has in principle been available. Not a nice speech to give,
I bet.

Fortunately, it is rather straightforward to develop the technology to
send a spacecraft to a 100-meter diameter asteroid, in order to give
it a nudge so that it will miss the Earth. The ingredients are at
hand, and all we have to do is to carry out a test mission, in which
we demonstrate the capability to significantly alter the orbit of an
asteroid. That way, when we discover an asteroid with our name on it,
so to speak, we will be prepared. We could be in a position to save
millions of lives, and at the very least we could not be accused of
knowing about a danger and ignoring it.

Even if we are lucky, and no life-threatening asteroid crosses our
path in the foreseeable future, developing the technology to gently
nudge asteroids is likely to help us to explore the solar system.
Plasma engines, for example, can be used as tug boats for asteroids
but also to speed up human expansion into space. This could be a major
legacy of your administration: to open the door to populating other
worlds while at the same time making our own world a safer place.

Piet Hut
Astrophysicist, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton
A founding member of the Kira Institute and of the B612 Foundation.
________________________________________________________________

While the findings of anthropologists indicate that we should be
tolerant of cultural variation, taking anthropology seriously as a
science also indicates that we should not mistake exotic beliefs
for science. The fact that people have diverse systems of belief
does not give them all equal claims on truth.

Robert Aunger
Mr. President,

The appointment of an anthropologist such as myself to the post of
science advisor would be unusual, but perhaps opportune, as some of
the lessons anthropologists have drawn from their investigations over
the past century have some bearing on the times. Anthropology has
always been identified with the concept of culture, and recent events
suggest that the need to understand how different belief systems arise
and perpetuate themselves has become urgent. But let me first explain
how anthropologists use the culture concept as a way of identifying
how humankind is different from the rest of Creation, because this not
only contains its own lesson, it sets the stage for the argument about
how one cultural group comes to differ from another.

Culture is what we have that other creatures don't. However, as we
have learned more about other animals, the number of features unique
to our way of life has diminished considerably. For example, we used
to think that no other animal learned an idiosyncratic way of
performing some behavior that makes their group characteristically
different from other groups--what anthropologists call "cultural
traditions." Now we know that chimps--and probably a number of dolphin
and whale species--do have socially acquired traditions. So we can no
longer say that such traditions are unique to us.

Grammatical language is still on the list of quintessentially human
characteristics, but its status on the list is highly contested
because some say that chimps can be taught by human care takers to
speak (or use sign language) in grammatical fashion. Thus, some
species have near-human abilities to make complex judgments. Our first
lesson: We should therefore consider these animals as being worthy of
moral rights equal to their cognitive and emotional capacities.

The best we can say nowadays is that people have complex culture. This
means primarily that we have organizations (or designed,
special-purpose social groups), and technology (especially machines),
which have no parallel in the rest of the animal kingdom. What is
important about this, in light of recent events, is that organizations
and technology have allowed human cultures to diversify in ways seen
in no other animals.

Human groups exhibit specific ways of life that have emerged during
the individual history of that group. As a result, the human
population, unlike any other, can be divided into groups that live
according to quite different sets of rules. This sometimes makes it
hard for members of one group to sympathize with the members of other
groups, or even to comprehend what the rationale for some "exotic"
behavior like a witchcraft trial or an elaborate "rite of passage"
into adulthood might be.

The anthropological enterprise would be unnecessary if people
everywhere lived according to the same set of rules. At the same time,
anthropology would be impossible if it weren't the case that
individuals can learn to live successfully amongst those whose culture
is different from their own. Aspects of culture may reflect the
idiosyncratic history of each group, but they make sense within the
confines of that history. Our second lesson can be drawn from this
fact: Just as we should understand and respect other animals, so too
should we honor other cultures, because just as species diversity is
important to the survival of the biosphere, so too is cultural
diversity necessary for the health and longevity of the human species.
The world will only become a safer place when we realize that each and
every culture is an invaluable inheritance of knowledge tested against
local conditions over a long period of time.

While the findings of anthropologists indicate that we should be
tolerant of cultural variation, taking anthropology seriously as a
science also indicates that we should not mistake exotic beliefs for
science. The fact that people have diverse systems of belief does not
give them all equal claims on truth. Intelligent Design theorists, for
example, argue that because the natural world is complex, a
supernatural agent must have designed it. There are two problems with
this argument. First, scientific theories for the emergence of
complexity exist, such as Darwinian evolution and complexity theory.
Second, even if such theories did not exist, the conclusion that only
supernatural causes can explain such complexity does not follow, since
a scientific explanation for complexity could arise tomorrow. Our
final lesson: The teachings of Intelligent Design theorists therefore
belong in programs of religious, not scientific, instruction.

I believe these lessons from anthropology should play an important
role in deciding our future scientific policies. I respectfully hope
you will agree.

Sincerely,

Robert Aunger
Department of Anthropology
University College, London
Author of The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think. 
________________________________________________________________

Without a sense of the past, there is a danger of raising a
generation of change-junkies, weaned on the rush of accelerating
technologies, for whom history has no relevance. They would
recognise technological change only through its material
culture--the stuff--brought to them on the street and in a welter
of media hits. In their world where nothing stands still, they are
left with no space to evaluate why technological change happens
and, crucially, its implications.

Christine Finn

Mr.President,

Have you ever held in your hand a prehistoric stone tool and
considered the processes involved in making it? The hand that struck
the flakes and who it belonged to, and the world in which they
encountered this technology? And pondered the time scale of the
evolutionary technology involved in the transformation of stone into
an artifact, and one which holds the potential to make other tools?
And hold that thought (as well as the object) as you consider the
technological change in your own lifetime (computers you have used?),
and the acceleration of the rate of change that is now made even more
complex by overlays of hype, something which is itself generated and
spread by means of escalating technologies.

For the past eight years I have taught a course on Archaeology and
Anthropology to American High School students. These young people are
juggling their own rites of passage into adulthood with the external
demands of an increasingly challenging world. They don't talk readily
about what happened in their grandmother's day, or what their parents
grew up with. They can see more relevance in discussing what their
older siblings used at school. Last year's model is the new
archaeology. I encourage them to think about the evolution of the
computer over a few decades as if considering stone tool technology
over millenia. It's not change that is significant, it's the rate of
change, and that's a tricky concept to convey to students who have
never used a pen to write an essay.

But what is unique about the 21st century perspective of these
Americans is they have, potentially, more than objects to teach them
about change--they can hear the folk-memory of these archaic forms in
the stories of the Apple on which a mother wrote her thesis; the DEC
PD11 on which a father worked. They can learn to evaluate change from
observing the material culture of still-functioning computers, all the
more so because of the work of individuals and institutions such as
the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, who seek to preserve
them. And they can also consider the inequalities of technology by
finding out what becomes of old computers which are not yet
interesting, but simply out-moded.

Without a sense of the past, there is a danger of raising a generation
of change-junkies, weaned on the rush of accelerating technologies,
for whom history has no relevance. They would recognise technological
change only through its material culture--the stuff--brought to them
on the street and in a welter of media hits. In their world where
nothing stands still, they are left with no space to evaluate why
technological change happens and, crucially, its implications.

Change happens. The challenge is to work with the materiality and mass
consumerism of our everyday world, and to use it to communicate a
scientific context in which technological leaps and bounds make sense.
Not just to American High School students. But to all of us.

Christine Finn
Archaeologist and Journalist
Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and Research Associate, The
Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford.
Author of Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year In Silicon Valley.
________________________________________________________________

We are endangered from the outside by our avowed enemies. We are
threatened from within by killers among us. An urgent need for the
nation to establish a deep scientific understanding of
psychological circuits dedicated to murder and the causal processes
that create, activate, and deactivate those circuits.

David M. Buss

Dear President Bush,

One scientific issue that requires immediate attention is this:
Understanding the psychological circuits that motivate people to
murder. The impact of killing cascades beyond the obvious tragedy of
each prematurely terminated life. Each dead victim is also a son or a
daughter, a brother or a sister, a father or a mother, so the lives of
the victim's family shatter. Uncertain and unpredictable dangers
promote contagious anxiety. The limited days of our lives become
wasted when we seek to act, but lack the knowledge to detect and deter
killers.

The current lifetime odds of being murdered at the hands of a fellow
human being are far from trivial. In America, they are one in 200 for
the general population, and one in 26 for certain sub-groups of males.
If you add attempted homicides that are "unsuccessful" due to valiant
or desperate measures, the victim list more than triples. In the hot
spots around the world, the toll of dead bodies runs from the hundreds
to the hundreds of thousands.

In the past century, war across the world has claimed victims by the
millions. We are endangered from the outside by our avowed enemies. We
are threatened from within by killers among us. An urgent need for the
nation to establish a deep scientific understanding of psychological
circuits dedicated to murder and the causal processes that create,
activate, and deactivate those circuits. Without such knowledge, we
cannot effectively prevent the premature and irreversible ending of
lives.

Sincerely,

David M. Buss
Professor of Psychology
University of Texas at Austin
Author of The Evolution of Desire, Evolutionary Psychology: The New
Science of the Mind, and The Dangerous Passion.
________________________________________________________________

As recognized pathogens develop multi-drug resistance, and as new
pathogens are recognized, our tools for recognizing and treating
these agents must keep up. At one time it was thought that
infectious diseases had been practically vanquished. We must work
hard to keep up.

Beatrice Golomb

Dear Mr. President:

Among the pressing issues that we face:

1. Natural pathogens (bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites):

As recognized pathogens develop multi-drug resistance, and as new
pathogens are recognized, our tools for recognizing and treating these
agents must keep up. At one time it was thought that infectious
diseases had been practically vanquished. We must work hard to keep
up.

Conversely: Some microorganisms contribute to host health and defense.
There is need to focus on studying and mining the benefits of
beneficial organisms, as well as attending to those that produce harm.
(Thus, there is evidence of altered gut "flora", i.e. altered balance
of bacteria and fungi, in persons with irritable bowel syndrome; there
is evidence that some "intestinal flora" are vital to gut function and
nutrient absorption, and protect against invasion of pathogenic
organisms; there is evidence that H. pylori, a bacterium that may
contribute to gastroesophageal reflux, may also protect against
esophageal cancer;

2. Biowarfare agents:

Additional work must go toward defense against pathogens and toxins
developed as weapons of terrorism and biowarfare..

3. Chemical interactions and individual susceptibilities:

In our ever more chemically rich environment, certain health problems
are escalating that are likely to be linked to exposures to certain
chemicals and their combinations. Increasing evidence implicates
certain chemical agents, and combinations of these agents, in chronic
multisystem health problems to which a subset of the population
appears susceptible; persons with fibromalgia/chemical
sensitivity/chronic fatigue syndrome spectrum often report onset
following chemical exposure and there is increasing evidence to
support effects on membrane functioning, neurotransmitter systems, and
mitochondria (the energy producing elements of cells) from these
chemicals in susceptible persons. (Some genetic susceptibility factors
have already been identified.)

Persons with such chronic multisystem problems are disproportionate
users of healthcare resources. Fathoming the mechanisms of these
problems and developing strategies to mitigate their onset and treat
them when present will reduce healthcare costs and downstream
litigation costs, and will enhance the health of many. Understanding
these mechanisms may also lead to prevention, by permitting proper
warnings to be placed regarding use of potentially hazardous agents,
especially use in combination with agents that may have harmful
interactions.

4. Chemical warfare and terrorism defense:

Because some of the classes of chemical implicated above, particularly
carbamates and organophosphates (both of which act by inhibiting
regulation of a key nerve and muscle signaling chemical that has
widespread roles throughout the body), are used both to protect
military persons in the event of nerve agent attack, and are used as
nerve agents themselves, this work will have vital importance for
military preparedness and health protection; for treatment of veterans
in the event of renewed military conflict with nations that have or
are suspected to have chemical warfare agents; and for civilian health
protection.

5. Genomics and proteomics:

The time is ripe for increasing work to mine the genome, and more
pertinently, to study how the balance of proteins and non-protein
chemicals, using modern informatic and advanced statistical
techniques, can:

o Predict illness susceptibility from various causes
o Show who will respond to particular treatments
o Track the benefits of particular treatments
o Design drugs that may mitigate and even cure chronic and
uncurable diseases

6. Capitalize on existing databases to reap their full benefit:

There is much material that has never been culled from existing
federally funded databases. A major reason is that the incentive
system in academics rewards those who bring in large new grants, with
the attendant overhead dollars. Thus, rather than spend time to study
prior databases in detail, the incentive system encourages the time to
be spent on procuring new grants. Additionally, there is a peculiar
attitude, that must be changed, that major findings based on data
initially procured by someone else are of lesser importance, even if
they lead to paradigm shifts, than the expected next step that one
performs oneself. There is need to change this attitude.

7. Scientific Reasoning:

Surprisingly, neither medical schools nor graduate schools have formal
training in reasoning from evidence, the process of inference,
fallacies in reasoning, and factors that influence the credibility of
evidence. Even persons with a good grounding in statistics per se are
not trained in these areas. In consequence, even many persons that are
highly respected in the scientific community are ill-positioned to
generate the recommendations from evidence that they are tasked to do.
I can cite many instances in which failure of training and aptitude in
this area has unnecessarily held back progress. I believe that such
training should begin to be part of the core training process for
graduate and medical schools. Arguably, reasoning skills ("how to
think") should be an element of the core curriculum, at a more basic
level, even among undergraduates. While this need not be legislated,
it could certainly be strongly endorsed.

8. Informatics:

Additional focus should go to development and refinement of tools to
handle large and incomplete databases.

9. Energy:

Efforts are needed to develop technologies to reduce dependency on
foreign oil sources. This is an area in need of real leadership. We
all recognize the importance of the oil industry in the US, and there
is no reason that industry cannot participate in, or take a lead in,
developing alternative technologies, or technologies to enhance
efficiency of fuel use.

10. New means to disseminate scientific information:

The current structure of science leads to costly and needless delays
in release of scientific information resulting from the structure of
the publication process. Moreover, costly page charges lead to tightly
written documents, but at the expense of key information being
included. An antischolarly approach ensues: limitations in number of
citations prevents all but limited literature from being cited,
effectively leading to "loss" to the scientific community of valuable
older information, the costs of which have already been expended.
(Rather than it being required that each declarative statement should
have a source cited, it is now possible for authors to make assertions
that may have no basis in evidence--and if they do, the reader is not
in a position to ascertain what that basis is.)

In the modern internet era, new approaches to speeding information
dissemination, by capitalizing on internet technology should be
seriously considered. (As one primordial suggestion, a system could be
generated by which new research results could be posted on the
internet. The system would have in place an opportunity for
peer-review comments to be appended. This permits new readers to post
their comments and expertise. A continually modifiable process of
credentialing reviewers, with rankings by other readers, could
allowing ranking of review comments. Among the advantages of this
process, full database information could be provided, circumventing
space limitations in journals, permitting others to perform their own
analyses. Space limitations in journals often prevent pivotal
information from being expressed.

Beatrice Golomb
Assistant Professor (of Medicine; Family and Preventive Medicine; and
Psychology) at UCSD
Principal Investigator, UCSD Statin Study
University of California San Diego School of Medicine
________________________________________________________________

My proposal is that 99 per cent of the research funds continue to
be allocated in the usual way. But I suggest that 1 per cent is
spent in a way that reflects the curiosity of lay people, who pay
for all publicly funded research through taxes. It would be
necessary to create a separate funding body. One possible name
would be the National Discovery Center.

Rupert Sheldrake 
Dear President Bush,

I believe that if 1 percent of science funding went to research that
was of real interest to taxpayers, science would literally become more
popular.

At present the distribution of funds for research depends on the
priorities within the scientific establishment, and on the agendas of
corporations and government bureaucracies. The administration of
science is neither democratically accountable, nor carried out in a
democratic spirit.

My proposal is that 99 per cent of the research funds continue to be
allocated in the usual way. But I suggest that 1 per cent is spent in
a way that reflects the curiosity of lay people, who pay for all
publicly funded research through taxes. It would be necessary to
create a separate funding body. One possible name would be the
National Discovery Center.

What questions capable of being answered by scientific research are in
fact of interest to the electorate? The simplest way to find out would
be to ask for suggestions. Some would come from individuals, through
the Center's Web site. Some would come from local groups, like sports
clubs and horticultural associations; from national societies like the
National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club; from voluntary
organizations like Narcotics Anonymous; from consumer protection
organizations; and from local governments, schools, churches and
trades unions. Potential subjects for research could be discussed in
newspapers and magazines, and on radio and television. To find out in
more detail what subject areas are of significant public concern,
market research and opinion polls would probably be helpful.

The Center would be governed by a Board representing a wide range of
interests, including non-governmental organizations, schools and
voluntary associations. The Center would publish a list of the
research areas in which grants were available, and would invite
applications that would be evaluated on the basis of expert advice.
This Center would only fund research that is not already covered by
the regular science budget, and would therefore open up new areas of
scientific enquiry.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
(NCCAM), established by the US Congress in 1998, sets a precedent.
Complementary and alternative medicine are of great interest to
millions of American tax-payers, and the basis of a multi-billion
dollar industry. But before NCCAM's predecessor, the Office of
Alternative Medicine, was set up by Congress in 1992, research in
these fields was receiving practically no support through established
grant-giving agencies. NCCAM's current annual budget is about $100
million (less than 0.5 percent of the total budget of the NIH).

Diverting 1 percent of the present science budget to the National
Discovery Center, open to democratic input and public participation,
would involve no additional expenditure, but would have a big effect
on people's involvement in science and on innovation. It would appeal
to many voters, make science more attractive to young people,
stimulate interest in scientific thinking and hypothesis-testing, and
help break down the increasing alienation many people feel from
science. It would also enable many working scientists to think more
freely, and unleash some of the creative potential that is currently
being stifled.

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D.
Biologist
Author of Seven Experiments That Could Change The World and Dogs that
Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, And Other Unexplained Powers
of Animals.
________________________________________________________________

Your science advisor would also need to be a political analyst,
whose first hurdle would be overcoming West Wing Withdrawal. For
all Martin Sheen's ability to multi-task, in reality, key problems
are often pushed to the back burner, and domestic policy is
naturally suffering by the current need to put out so many fires in
foreign policy.

Delta Willis

Dear Mr. President,

A top priority for today's science advisor should be Alternative
Energy, with a fleet of Think Again Tanks to reconsider the potential
of cold fusion, hydrogen cells, more efficient solar power, better
methods of drilling for methane, and employing wind and tidal energy.

Your science advisor would also need to be a political analyst, whose
first hurdle would be overcoming West Wing Withdrawal. For all Martin
Sheen's ability to multi-task, in reality, key problems are often
pushed to the back burner, and domestic policy is naturally suffering
by the current need to put out so many fires in foreign policy.

Reducing our dependence on foreign oil was a need that should have
been addressed a few decades ago, a "Vision Thing". The long view so
necessary in science is limited by the preference for short-term
gains, i.e. how to be re-elected in 2004. Your father's success in
foreign policy was quickly undone by discontent on domestic policies
and a bad economy. So how to please the voters, create new jobs, and
maintain sustainable development?

Develop a project of broad appeal, say, something that will make Baby
Boomers look younger. (It was, after all, a marketing campaign
targeting Baby Boomers that promoted SUVs as must haves for the
adventurous.)

For the moment let's call this phase one Reinventing the Wheel. In
reality, we're reintroducing the bicycle, along with Green Lanes, to
combat urban sprawl. Lance Armstrong might be involved to give the
project broad appeal, although there's hardly a town or city
unaffected by this in the U.S.
Problems include loss of farmland, global warming from increased
traffic, loss of wilderness and wetland habitat, death of downtowns,
and voters stressed out by longer commutes. Americans are becoming
increasingly obese, partly from lack of exercise, yet it's
inconvenient and dangerous to walk in many US cities.

Green Lanes should accommodate bicycles, along with 3-wheel rickshaws,
Segways or other non-fossil-fuel burning transport, including horse
drawn carriages. These protected lanes could also allow golf carts,
electric powered, quiet and producing no fumes. All should be
registered and licensed to help fund the Green Lanes, designed with
some clever coverage for in-climate weather.

This would be the first small step towards reducing traffic, and
perhaps the beginning of an educational program that draws upon
talents of Hollywood, Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley to transform
scientific research into ideas that engage, and offer doable
solutions.

Finally, how can we return scientists and other thinking people to a
mentoring (celebrity) role? When Albert Einstein arrived in New York,
hundreds of fans turned out to greet him. I suggest the White House
consider a New Year's List similar to England's peerage designations,
to honor visionary leaders in science. The honorees could range
widely, including conservationists, AIDs researchers, even novelists
who write well about science and conservation. Instead of knighthood,
recipients might be denoted by a tier of titles (the Order of the
Helix) or put EMC after their name (Einstein's famous formula adapted
to denote "Einstein Mentoring Colleague.") Recipients would be
required to speak on issues that most concern them at Year's End,
answer questions from students, and participate in a roundtable
similar to "A Glorious Accident".

Delta Willis
Author of The Sand Dollar & the Slide Rule, The Leakey Family, and The
Hominid Gang. 
________________________________________________________________

Quantum dots consist of trapped electrons with no nucleus. Once
confined, the electrons repel one another and form orbitals
reminiscent of orbitals we find in actual atoms. Novel substances
made from quantum dots will be able to change their properties as
easy as a traffic light changes from red to green, and their
properties can be adjusted in real-time through the application of
light, electricity, and so forth.

Clifford Pickover

Dear President Bush,

We are entering an era of revolutionary scientific change, and you are
fortunate to be President of a nation that leads the world in
scientific and technological discovery. A top priority for today's
science advisor should be on-demand matter, a new area of science now
emerging that will have a far-reaching impact on the world's economy
and the well-being of humankind.

Perhaps you have heard of printing "on demand," a technology that
allows books to be quickly printed to meet the immediate needs of a
customer. Similarly, on-demand matter (OM) is just on the horizon and
will allow humanity to create new substances quickly and efficiently.

In particular, on-demand matter made from "quantum dots" will someday
allow us to produce virtual substances with undreamed of properties.
Let me give you some background.

Quantum dots consist of trapped electrons with no nucleus. Once
confined, the electrons repel one another and form orbitals
reminiscent of orbitals we find in actual atoms. Novel substances made
from quantum dots will be able to change their properties as easy as a
traffic light changes from red to green, and their properties can be
adjusted in real-time through the application of light, electricity,
and so forth. Visionary writer Wil McCarthy has coined the word
"wellstone" to refer to hypothetical woven solids, made from entities
such as quantum dots, whose bulk properties are broadly programmable.

With on-demand matter, humanity will be able to create ecologically
friendly industries that produce low-cost and exceptional products. OM
can be used to create novel sensors, computing devices, space
vehicles, windows, protective clothing, medical prostheses, rooftops,
auto parts, and a host of on-demand materials with limitless
potential. With just a voice command, your toothbrush becomes a
supercomputer, or your umbrella changes to a material that could never
be available by other means.

One of the first steps I would make as your science advisor would be
to recommend the formation of a number of think tanks to consider the
potential of on-demand matter. A modest funding agency to explore OM
may one day lead to a technology with the potential to solve a number
of the world's problems and empower humanity to sail on a shoreless
sea.

Clifford Pickover
Research Staff member, IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center
Author of The Paradox of God and The Science of Omniscience, Keys to
Infinity, and the Neoreality science-fiction series.
________________________________________________________________

What is needed now to get scientific research back on a fast and
efficient track again can be termed "lean science". Lean science is
slender, quick, efficient and inexpensive. It has the potential of
leading to numerous unexpected insights and discoveries.

Eberhard Zangger

Dear Mr. President,

In my opinion, in the future, what will be of major importance is how,
in principle, we carry out scientific inquiries--not in which fields
we conduct that research.

Let me use a simile to illustrate my point of view. The question as to
which fields to concentrate future research on reminds me a bit of the
question "What shall we have for lunch?" Everybody must eat--just as
every industrial nation needs a research plan. So, why not pick
something from the menu: Missions to Mars, the human genome, larger
accelerators--there are countless options.

However, when considering what to eat, the customer employs a certain
perspective, looking down the aisles past the waiter to the delights
behind the kitchen door--the latter being the equivalent of the chest
holding the nation's research funds. Let us now reverse the
perspective. Looking from the kitchen door down the aisles past the
waiter, we see the guest--and it turns out something has become
fundamentally wrong with him. The customer is an immensely huge freak,
almost immovable due to the large amounts of fat he has already
accumulated. The last thing this person needs is yet another meal.
Instead, a complete change in attitude towards eating seems
imperative, including a new perspective of life and its numerous
opportunities, more physical exercise and much less but smarter food
intake.

How did the customer grow so fat and cumbersome?

Over the past few decades, research focus was determined by big
science projects, beginning with the "Manhattan Project" and
continuing with the mission to the moon and the peaceful exploitation
of nuclear energy. As a consequence of the apparent success of these
big science projects, politicians consider focused research to be the
best way to achieve clearly defined scientific goals. To continue the
restaurant metaphor, uniting a few thousand scientists to strive for a
common goal to be reached at a certain time is like asking several
outstanding chefs to produce one certain dish--it is almost guaranteed
that they will be able to deliver a decent meal. But this is precisely
the reason why our patient has become so fat.

For politicians, big science projects can lead to immortality. John F.
Kennedy promised a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s and
consequently, on July 10, 1969, the nation got what the president had
asked for. Administrators also prefer big science projects, because
instead of having to split budgets amongst thousands of candidates,
they only have to pass the money on to a few large governmental
institutions.

Even scientists themselves prefer big science projects. Such projects
may bring tremendous power and fame to their leaders; at the same
time, they yield a structure that reduces insecurity among followers.
For taxpayers, however, big science is often useless at best, and
potentially harmful at worst. The "Manhattan Project" led to the
biggest single incident of manslaughter in human history, the
production of nuclear energy including the disposal of waste and
obsolete plants is economically futile, and the moon landing is
regarded by many as a cold war propaganda mission with questionable
scientific merit. Considering recent big science projects such as
super colliders, space stations and Mars missions, the effort and
costs to launch them appear to be inversely related to the
significance of potential results for the general public. Once again,
big science projects made our customer fat and immovable.

What is needed now to get scientific research back on a fast and
efficient track again can be termed "lean science". Lean science is
slender, quick, efficient and inexpensive. It has the potential of
leading to numerous unexpected insights and discoveries. Yet, lean
science also holds a number of potential weaknesses. It is more
difficult to administrate, the outcome cannot be determined
beforehand, and it requires education, patience and tolerance.

Lean science is built upon the concept that all scientific
achievements sprang up in the minds of individual people. Thus,
providing individual scientists with a hospitable environment in which
they can flourish and excel is bound to lead to new discoveries. Some
private universities in the United States have already realized this
and improved the environment in terms of academic freedom,
qualification of staff and quality of physical surroundings.

In the past, great thinkers and artists appear to have come in groups.
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were not only contemporaries, they also
lived in the same city--Athens in Greece. The coincidence of great
thinkers continued in history--artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and
Michelangelo were contemporaries just like painters such as Edgar
Degas, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet and Paul Cezanne or
poets like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Heinrich
von Kleist.

How come there was such an abundance of great thinkers in certain
places at certain times, while there seems to be little if any of such
excellence around today? I, for one, am utterly convinced that such
great minds are indeed around today--they always have been--but those
periods in Greece, France and Germany were rare times when the
environmental conditions were right for great thinkers to emerge and
become visible, speak up and meet each other, exchange ideas and then
take them further.

Thus, in my opinion, the first thing to consider when thinking about
pressing scientific issues would be to provide the right environmental
conditions for scientists to flourish in. That does not mean loads of
money. On the contrary, it means respect, freedom of thought, a
platform for the exchange of ideas, and a path forward even for the
non conformist--since by definition, all great thinkers were
non-conformists.

How can we obtain such an environment? We would probably have to
overhaul the medieval university system, in particular the obsolete
idea of uniting research and teaching, and the mad concept of peer
review, in which established authorities judge the merit of competing
ideas.

Getting rid of the old-fashioned universities would make room for a
new system that could operate similar to Montesquieu's scheme of
divided powers in politics (Executive, Legislative, Judicial) to
prevent misuse of power. A tri-partite control of powers in academia
could consist of research in think tank-equivalent institutions,
education in colleges, and administration of quality, funds, jobs,
permits, awards and the like in separate institutions. Scientists
would only work in one of these units at a time. Early on in their
careers, they would be researchers, then teachers and finally
administrators--instead of being all at the same time, as it is often
the case today. Funding would be provided individually, mainly on the
basis of track record and persuasiveness of ideas.

Hence, a long-term strategy is required--much like what is needed to
get a fat person thin and healthy. Your country was among the first to
fully adopt Montesquieu's scheme of a separation of powers, and today
it is the closest working model to the academic system I have
introduced here. Thus, you are in an ideal position to make a fat
system slender, beautiful, athletic and primed for success!

Eberhard Zangger
Geoarchaeologist
Discoverer of the lost continent of Atlantis
Author of The Future of the Past 
________________________________________________________________

Studies of our biological constitution make it increasingly clear
that we are social creatures of meaning, who crave a sense of
coherence and purpose. Yet, our modern way of life seems to provide
fewer and fewer opportunities to engage in the group life that
satisfies these human needs--indeed, many of its structures and
institutions stunts these very needs.

Steven R. Quartz

Dear Mr. President:

First, I should start off by endorsing virtually all the
recommendations you have received so far. I would add another
recommendation, which I believe addresses a fundamental, but
ironically largely ignored, problem facing us today. Let me put the
problem this way: why is it that in an age of unprecedented material
wealth, a billion dollar self-help industry, and an economy designed
to feed not stomachs but lifestyles, more and more people are
depressed and go through life listlessly, with little sense of purpose
or meaning? Why in the absence of such meaning do some people turn to
destructive ideologies, whose manifestations in terrorism are all to
real (I think a cult model is the way you should be thinking about
terrorist organizations, by the way)?

Studies of our biological constitution make it increasingly clear that
we are social creatures of meaning, who crave a sense of coherence and
purpose. Yet, our modern way of life seems to provide fewer and fewer
opportunities to engage in the group life that satisfies these human
needs--indeed, many of its structures and institutions stunts these
very needs. In addition to these obstacles within the design of modern
life, it's my hunch that modernist culture is based on a profoundly
mistaken view of human needs. The upshot is a deeply flawed view of
human happiness as the private pursuit of self actualization. The
implications are profound, and range from an enormous cost in public
health terms to more and more social conflicts, terrorism being just
one manifestation of these.

As science advisor, I would initiate a program at the intersection of
science and culture to investigate what modern brain science reveals
about human needs and how such an understanding can be applied to
create both ways of living and a culture that better satisfies
them--for lack of a better word, I'd call this "neurosociology."

I think we will find that the staggering advances in brain science
reveal human needs to be vastly different from the modern view--for
example, that we aren't the asocial, consumptive selves Freud thought
we were, but instead are deeply social and need not only to belong but
to identify with groups and purposes larger than ourselves.

This initiative would attempt to use this new knowledge to design ways
of living that provide more opportunity for real meaning and social
engagement that the human brain requires--from how we ought to think
about the design of communities, the workplace, learning institutions,
and entertainment and leisure. This initiative would also have to
focus on a deeply troubling problem: although science is the engine of
our society, its core values and insights have had only a weak
influence on our culture. This is a troubling gap: for science, and
therefore, our civilization, to sustain itself, we require a culture
that is built on the core values and insights of science itself, one
that endows human life with the meaning we all crave. Aligning the
design of life and a sustaining culture with the human needs that
brain science is beginning to reveal would, I think, have a profound
impact on many of the most troubling social dilemmas we face.

To sum it up, I would recommend the creation of a new science of human
flourishing and significance, a nascent neurosociology, whose goal
would be a happiness worth having.

Steven Quartz
Neuroscientist
Division of Humanities & Social Sciences, and Computation and Neural
Systems Program
California Institute of Technology
Coauthor (with Terrence Sejnowski) of Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What
the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are. 
________________________________________________________________

In short, most of the current effort being put into increasing
airline safety is a waste of valuable resources. In a world where
fanatical individuals are willing to give their own lives to
achieve their goals, we can never be 100% safe. What we should do,
is direct our resources in the most efficient manner possible.

Keith Devlin
Mr President,

I am pleased to learn that I am being considered as your next Science
Advisor. Unfortunately, as a mathematician, I do not feel sufficiently
well qualified for that position. I do, however, feel there is a clear
and demonstrated need for someone on your team to offer advice on
interpreting quantitative data, particularly when it comes to risk
assessment. I would like to suggest that you create such a position,
and I would be pleased to be considered for it.

For well understood evolutionary reasons, we humans are notoriously
poor at assessing risks in a modern society. A single dramatic
incident or one frightening picture in a newspaper can create a
totally unrealistic impression. Let me give you one example I know to
be dear to your heart. The tragic criminal acts of September 11, 2001,
have left none of us unchanged. We are, I am sure, all agreed that we
should do all we can to prevent a repetition.

Strengthening cockpit doors so that no one can force an entrance, as
you have done, will surely prevent any more planes being flown into
buildings. (El Al has had such doors for many years, and no
unauthorized person has ever gained access to the cockpit.)

Thus, the remaining risk is of a plane being blown up either by
suicide terrorists on board, by a bomb smuggled into luggage, or by
sabotage prior to take-off. In any such case, the likelihood of
significant loss of life to people on the ground is extremely low. So
low that we can ignore it. The pilot of a plane that has been damaged
while in the air will almost certainly be able to direct the plane
away from any urban areas, and the odds that any wreckage from a plane
that explodes catastrophically in mid-air are overwhelmingly that it
will not land on a populated region.

I know that what I say might sound cavalier or foolhardy or uncaring.
The hard facts the numbers present often fly in the face of our
emotional responses and our fears. But the fact is, we have limited
resources, and we need to decide where best to deploy them. This is
why you need someone to help you assess risk.

That leaves the threat to the plane and the people on board. Let me
try to put that risk into some perspective. For a single individual
faced with a choice of driving a car or flying, how do the dangers of
the two kinds of transport compare in the post September 11 world? We
know the answer, thanks to a calculation carried out recently at the
University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. In order for
commercial air travel to be as risky (in terms of loss of life) as
driving a car on a major road, there would have to be a September 11
style incident roughly once every month, throughout the year.

Let me stress that this figure is not based on comparing apples and
oranges, as some previous airline safety studies have done. By being
based on the lengths of journeys, those previous studies made airline
travel appear safer than it really is. The figure I have given you is
based on the computed risk to a single individual. It compares the
risks we face, for the journey we are about to take, when any one of
us decides whether to board a plane or step into our car. In other
words, "How likely am I to die on this trip?"

The answer, as the figures show, is that it would take a September 11
attack once every month before air travel offers the same kind of risk
as car travel.

In short, most of the current effort being put into increasing airline
safety is a waste of valuable resources. In a world where fanatical
individuals are willing to give their own lives to achieve their
goals, we can never be 100% safe. What we should do, is direct our
resources in the most efficient manner possible.

In that connection, if you have not already done so, I recommend you
see the movie The Sum of All Fears, where terrorists smuggle an atomic
bomb into the United States in a shipping crate and detonate it in
downtown Baltimore. Leaving aside the details of the plot, the risk
portrayed in that film is real, and one where we would be advised (and
I would so advise you) to put the resources we are currently
squandering on airline security.

That is why you need expert assistance when it comes to interpreting
the masses of numerical data that surround us, and putting those
numbers into simple forms that ordinary human beings, including
Presidents, can appreciate.

Numerically yours,

Keith Devlin
Mathematician
Executive Director of Stanford University's Center for the Study of
Language and Information
Author of The Math Gene and The Millennium Problems. 
________________________________________________________________

Now here's my warning; it may be unnecessary. The scientific
community, worldwide as well as in America, is like other
communities and given to fads and taboos. These taboos have
prevented some subjects from being researched or even discussed.
These subjects include the genetics of behavior and intelligence.

John McCarthy

Dear Mr. President:

A President can only do a very few of the many things proposed for the
improvement of American society. I want to make one positive proposal
for which Presidential action is appropriate and to issue one warning.

The weakest area of science is social science, specifically as it
evaluates the effects of changes in social institutions. These
institutions include education, taxation, criminal justice, structure
of government, the institutions that support scientific research.
Proposed changes in these and other institutions need to be evaluated
by systematic experiment with clear criteria of success and proper
statistical evaluation. The experiments need enough publicity all the
way through so that the results are heeded.

There are experimental programs today, but they are mostly too dilute.
Thus every state or city or school district wants its share of
experimental money, and there isn't enough money to experiment
everywhere. Social experiments need to concentrate the money in a few
places and provide enough scientific observers and statistical
resources.

Because Congress and administrations often respond to pressures to
divide the money "fairly", Presidential leadership can play a big role
in concentrating experimental programs.

Now here's my warning; it may be unnecessary. The scientific
community, worldwide as well as in America, is like other communities
and given to fads and taboos. These taboos have prevented some
subjects from being researched or even discussed. These subjects
include the genetics of behavior and intelligence. When a program
fails, the possibility that genetic differences are involved is not
allowed to be mentioned. Another taboo in the scientific community
that studies energy is nuclear energy. Nuclear energy provides the one
guarantee that those aspects of American society that depend on high
use of energy including personal mobility can be sustained
indefinitely, i.e. beyond the supply of oil

John McCarthy
Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University
Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence
________________________________________________________________

In the 20th century, we led the way--our discovery of transistors
led to everything from radios and televisions to cell phones and
PocketPCs. But the leading technologies in the 21st century--cures
for cancer, heart disease, and mental illness--will all be
biological, and without research on stem cells, we will be left
behind.

Gary Marcus

Dear Mr. President,

With the threat of war in the Middle East, continuing concerns about
terrorism, and a weak economy, science is probably not high on your
agenda right now. But it should be.

Some the decisions you make now could dramatically affect the fate of
our country, not just in the next decade, but in the next century.
Perhaps most important among them will be the choices you make about
stem cell research. If your administration continues to restrict stem
cell research as it has, America will lose its place at the forefront
of science and technology.

It will start slowly; few people will notice as some of our best
scientists move elsewhere--to countries like Britain, Canada, Germany,
and Japan. But within a decade or two, someone will notice that the
most important patents and technology of the 21st century are all held
elsewhere. In the 20th century, we led the way--our discovery of
transistors led to everything from radios and televisions to cell
phones and PocketPCs. But the leading technologies in the 21st
century--cures for cancer, heart disease, and mental illness--will all
be biological, and without research on stem cells, we will be left
behind.

Stem cells are so important because they hold the key to life itself.
Everything about the human condition--from the heartbeat or a smile of
a newborn baby to the ability of our bodies to fight off
disease--follows from the choices of individual cells in growing
organisms. Embryonic stem cells burst with potential, therapeutically
and scientifically; they truly can become anything. The researchers
who master their secrets will be able to use them to repair damaged
hearts, build vastly better drugs, and even regenerate damaged brain
tissue and heal fractured minds. They will also be able to use those
secrets to figure out what makes the human brain special, and in so
doing open the door to new kinds of tools for education, probably not
yet even dreamt of.

In the next century, the most educated, the most healthy, and the most
wealthy citizens will be the ones living in the country that best
understands the science of the human body. Let us not lose our place
at the head of the class.

Gary F. Marcus
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology at New York University
Author of The Birth of the Mind: Creating the Complexity of the Human
Brain (forthcoming).
________________________________________________________________

Video games compel kids to spend dozens of hours a week exploring
virtual worlds and learning their rules. Barring a massive overhaul
of our school system, Nintendo and PlayStation will continue to be
the most successful at captivating young minds.

Justin Hall

Mr. President:

Education is a proven means for investing in our future. But while
American schools are notoriously under-serving their students, kids
are rushing home to learn how to succeed in alternative universes.
Video games compel kids to spend dozens of hours a week exploring
virtual worlds and learning their rules. Barring a massive overhaul of
our school system, Nintendo and PlayStation will continue to be the
most successful at captivating young minds.

Over 60% of Korean homes have broadband Internet access. Massively
multiplayer online role-playing games are immensely popular there;
increasing numbers of people spend hours each night fighting monsters
together online. The largest Korean textbook distributor Daekyo and an
independent software design firm JMCJ (Interesting & Creative Co.,
Ltd.) have joined forces to make a massively multiplayer online
role-playing game in which children can study math, science and
history: Demiurges. These people intend to make it possible for people
to play in a virtual world saturated with real-world knowledge.

That game may not be successful--educational software has a famously
difficult time competing with splashier commercial titles. In their
paper "Serious Play," academics Jennifer Jensen and Suzanne de Castell
mourn that "Non-commercial development of 'educational games'has been
primarily in the hands of enthusiastic academics from a variety of
disciplines who frequently lack funding, skills, and/or access to
cutting edge technological resources." But while commercial games
seize the most attention in the industry, efforts are still underway
in the States to use games to teach specific skills.

With a budget of $7 million the U.S. Army built the first in a series
of games to be made available as free download over the web, and to be
distributed free on CDs with gaming magazines. Their first title,
"America's Army" helps teenagers learn about tactics and waging war,
as they rush through first-person shooter missions armed with guns and
grenades. Except for the U.S. military trim, and some mission
constraints, "America's Army" is indistinguishable from popular video
games for sale in stores.

Unfortunately, there are few games intent on teaching more civilian
skills. While televisions and slide shows play a large role in
classrooms, video games are still appallingly underutilized as means
for teaching. Throwing money at the problem is not the only answer;
however the kind of advanced technology and game design talent that
money could buy could well serve the project of developing engaging
educational electronic entertainment.

Jensen and de Castell continue: "what researchers and educational game
developers have so far been unable to do is to create an 'educational
game' which offers its players an engaging, immersive play space, in
which users want to stay, explore, and 'learn' as they consistently do
in commercial games." Let's match the money and effort spent on
"America's Army" to develop a freely-available game teaching kids
about math and science, history and citizenship.

Justin Hall
Web Pioneer
Video gaming consultant
Founder and author of Justin's Links
________________________________________________________________

Science is the nemesis of ignorance, and ignorance is our single
biggest enemy. Ignorance has been attacking us for ages and it is
so ever present that we often forget that it's there. Broad-based
support for science, and the public awareness and appreciation of
it, are essential if we are to have a future. There is no single
overwhelmingly pressing sub field or sub-issue. We need it all, we
need it now, and we need everyone to understand it as deeply as
possible.

Stephen Reucroft and John Swain

The bulk of the problems we face are ultimately due to ignorance: lack
of knowledge and understanding at one level or another. This has
always been the case in the past, and will certainly continue to be so
in the future.

Science is the nemesis of ignorance, and ignorance is our single
biggest enemy. Ignorance has been attacking us for ages and it is so
ever present that we often forget that it's there. Broad-based support
for science, and the public awareness and appreciation of it, are
essential if we are to have a future. There is no single
overwhelmingly pressing sub field or sub-issue. We need it all, we
need it now, and we need everyone to understand it as deeply as
possible.

We still die from diseases we don't know how to cure, or even worse
that we could easily prevent. We may even fail to follow up avenues of
research that could show success due to ignorance of basic biology.

We pollute our planet or are dependent on other countries for energy
because we don't know how to do any better, or we fail to understand
the consequences of our actions. Perhaps worse, we fail to appreciate
techniques that we already have which can produce power cleanly and
eliminate nuclear waste.

We treat each other with hatred or disrespect because we fail to
understand different cultures and customs. We harm ourselves with
dangerous chemicals because we don't know enough to keep away from
things that will ultimately hurt us.

With this in mind, and trying to capture some of the Zeitgeist, we
propose that the US launch a vigorous "War on Ignorance". Funding
comparable to that of the Wars on Drugs and Terror should be funneled
into an aggressive counterstrike against the things that wound us or
hold us back most.

We need better schools and a uniform and high standard of education
for everyone, better science in the media, better public education
(including about diet, health, drugs, sex, and everything else we so
often remain silent about, making safe harbors for the Axis of
Ignorance), and more money for both basic and applied research.

So let us arm the people--all of them--as well as we can. Arm them
with knowledge, so that they become productive, law-abiding,
tax-paying members of society. Arm them so that they may live with
hope and dignity, and contribute to the good of all.

Leave them without it, and we'll have a society governed by
irrationality and fear. It's an old saying that knowledge is power,
and this is truer now than it's ever been. Ignorance, as always,
remains our biggest foe. Focus on taking that one out, and the rest
will follow.

Stephen Reucroft
Physicist, Matthews Distinguished University Professor
Northeastern University
Coauthor (with John Swain) of syndicated column "Science Briefs"

John Swain
Physicist, Northeaster University
Coauthor (with Stephen Reucroft) of syndicated column "Science Briefs"

From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 19 23:36:02 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 18:36:02 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Zygmunt Bauman: The Self in a Consumer Society
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312159370.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Zygmunt Bauman: The Self in a Consumer Society
The Hedgehog Review - Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-hh?specfile=/texts/english/modeng/journals/hh.o2w&act=text&offset=100937&textreg=1&id=BauSelf1-1

[I also sent this before. As an economist, I've never understood this business 
about the "consumer society." Economics has always been about production, 
exchange, and consumption, and wants are always unlimited. Still, the 
persistence of the *sociological* idea of the "consumer society" should not be 
dismissed. It's just that I have a terrible time getting a handle on it. Help!]

The economic engines of the postmodern society, Zygmunt Bauman
argues, have powerful stratifying effects on social life, creating
divisions that, at the extremes, lead to almost diametrically opposite
individual experiences of time, distance, and place. "We are all on
the move," he writes, but at the rich and affluent end of the
hierarchy, individuals experience themselves participating and
exulting in the movement characteristic of contemporary life, while
those at the other, impoverished end are helplessly driven by it.
Those at one end experience space as a freedom; those at the other end
experience it as bondage. Here Bauman discusses in general terms the
ceaseless drive toward change inherent in consumerism and the vast
economic inequalities that it produces.

Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the
Universities of Leeds and Warsaw, is the author of many books,
including Modernity and the Holocaust, Postmodern Ethics, and
Globalization: The Human Consequences.

Our postmodern society is a consumer society. When we call it a
consumer society, we have in mind something more than the trivial and
sedate circumstance that all members of that society are
consumers--all human beings, and not just human beings, have been
consumers since time immemorial. What we do have in mind is that ours
is a "consumer society" in the similarly profound and fundamental
sense in which the society of our predecessors, modern society in its
industrial phase, used to be a "producer society." That older type of
modern society once engaged its members primarily as producers and
soldiers; society shaped its members by dictating the need to play
those two roles, and the norm that society held up to its members was
the ability and the willingness to play them. In its present
late-modern (Giddens), second-modern (Beck), or post-modern stage,
modern society has little need for mass industrial labor and conscript
armies, but it needs--and engages--its members in their capacity as
consumers.

The role that our present-day society holds up to its members is
the role of the consumer, and the members of our society are likewise
judged by their ability and willingness to play that role. The
difference between our present-day society and its immediate
predecessor is not as radical as abandoning one role and picking up
another instead. In neither of its two stages could modern societies
do without its members producing things to be consumed, and members of
both societies do, of course, consume. The consumer of a consumer
society, however, is a sharply different creature from the consumer of
any other society thus far. The difference is one of emphasis and
priorities--a shift of emphasis that makes an enormous difference to
virtually every aspect of society, culture, and individual life. The
differences are so deep and multiform that they fully justify speaking
of our society as a society of a separate and distinct kind--a
consumer society.

Ideally, all acquired habits should "lie on the shoulders" of
that new type of consumer just like the ethically inspired vocational
and acquisitive passions used to lie, as Max Weber repeated after
Richard Baxter, "on the shoulders of the `saint like a light cloak,
which can be thrown aside at any moment.'"^1 And the habits are indeed
continually, daily, and at first opportunity thrown aside, and never
given the chance to firm up into the iron bars of a cage (except one
meta-habit: the "habit of changing habits"). Ideally, nothing should
be embraced by a consumer firmly, nothing should command a commitment
forever, no needs should be seen as fully satisfied, no desires
considered ultimate. There ought to be a proviso "until further
notice" attached to any oath of loyalty and any commitment. It is the
volatility, the in-built temporality of all engagements that counts;
it counts more than the commitment itself, which anyway is not allowed
to outlast the time necessary for consuming the object of desire (or
the desirability of that object).

That all consumption takes time is in fact the bane of the
consumer society and a major worry for the merchandisers of consumer
goods. The consumer's satisfaction ought to be instant and this in a
double sense. Consumed goods should bring satisfaction immediately,
requiring no learning of skills and no lengthy groundwork, but the
satisfaction should end the moment the time needed for consumption is
up, and that time ought to be reduced to bare minimum. The needed
reduction is best achieved if the consumers cannot hold their
attention nor focus their desire on any object for long; if they are
impatient, impetuous, and restive; and above all if they are easily
excitable and predisposed to quickly lose interest. Indeed when the
waiting is taken out of wanting and the wanting out of waiting, the
consumptive capacity of consumers may be stretched far beyond the
limits set by any natural or acquired needs or designed by the
physical endurability of the objects of desire. The traditional
relationship between needs and their satisfaction is then reversed:
the promise and hope of satisfaction precedes the need promised to be
satisfied and will be always greater than the extant need--yet not too
great to preclude the desire for the goods which carry that promise.

As a matter of fact, the promise is all the more attractive the
less the need in question is familiar; there is a lot of fun in living
through an experience one did not know existed. The excitement of a
new and unprecedented sensation--not the greed of acquiring and
possessing nor wealth in its material, tangible sense--is the name of
the consumer game. Consumers are first and foremost gatherers of
sensations; they are collectors of things only in a secondary and
derivative sense. As Mark C. Taylor and Esa Saarinen put it, "Desire
does not desire satisfaction. To the contrary, desire desires
desire."^2 Such is the case at any rate with the ideal consumer. The
prospect of the desire fading off, dissipating, and having nothing in
sight to resurrect it, or the prospect of a world with nothing left in
it to be desired, must be the most sinister of the ideal consumer's
horrors (and, of course, of the consumer-goods merchandiser's
horrors).

To increase their capacity for consumption, consumers must never
be left to rest. They need to be constantly exposed to new temptations
to keep them in the state of perpetual suspicion and steady
disaffection. The bait commanding them to shift attention needs to
confirm the suspicion while offering a way out of disaffection: "You
reckoned you'd seen it all? You ain't seen nothing yet!" It is often
said that the consumer market seduces its customers. But in order to
do so, it needs customers who want to be seduced (just as to command
his laborers, the factory boss needed a crew with the habits of
discipline and command-following firmly entrenched). In a properly
working consumer society, consumers seek actively to be seduced. They
live from attraction to attraction, from temptation to
temptation--each attraction and each temptation being somewhat
different and perhaps stronger than its predecessor. In many ways they
are just like their fathers, the producers, who lived from one turn of
the conveyer belt to an identical next.

This cycle of desire is a compulsion, a must, for the
fully-fledged, mature consumer; yet that must, that internalized
pressure, that impossibility of living one's life in any other way, is
seen as the free exercise of one's will. The market might have already
selected them as consumers and so taken away their freedom to ignore
its blandishments, but in every successive visit to the market-place,
consumers have every reason to feel that it is they who are in
command. They are the judges, the critics, and the choosers. They can,
after all, refuse their allegiance to any one of the infinite choices
on display--except the choice of choosing among them.

It is the combination of the consumer, constantly greedy for new
attractions and fast bored with attractions already had, and of the
world in all its dimensions--economic, political,
personal--transformed after the pattern of the consumer market and,
like that market, ready to oblige and change its attractions with ever
accelerating speed, that wipes out all fixed signposts from an
individual map of the world or from the plans for a life itinerary.
Indeed, traveling hopefully is in this situation much better than to
arrive. Arrival has that musty smell of the end of the road, that
bitter taste of monotony and stagnation that signals the end to
everything for which the ideal consumer lives and considers the sense
of living. To enjoy the best this world has to offer, you may do all
sorts of things except one: to declare, after Goethe's Faust, "O
moment, you are beautiful, last forever!"

And so we all travel, whether we like it or not. We have not
been asked about our feelings anyway. Thrown into a vast and open sea
with no tracks and milestones fast sinking, we may rejoice in the
breath-taking vistas of new discoveries or tremble out of fear of
drowning. How does one voyage on these stormy seas--seas that
certainly call for strong boats and skillful navigators? This becomes
the question. Even more so when one understands that the more vast the
expanse of free sailing, the more the sailor's fate tends to be
polarized and the deeper the chasm between the poles.

But there is a catch. Everybody may be cast into the mode of
consumer; everybody may wish to be a consumer and indulge in the
opportunities which that mode of life holds. But not everybody can be
a consumer. Desire is not enough; to squeeze the pleasure out of
desire, one must have a reasonable hope of obtaining the desired
object, and while that hope is reasonable for some, it is futile for
others. All of us are doomed to the life of choices, but not all of us
have the means to be choosers.

But you can tell one kind of society from another by the
dimensions along which it stratifies its members, and, like all other
societies, the postmodern, consumer society is a stratified one. Those
"high up" and "low down" are plotted in a society of consumers along
the lines of mobility--the freedom to choose where to be. Those "high
up" travel through life to their hearts' desire and pick and choose
their destinations by the joys they offer. Those "low down" are thrown
out from the site they would rather stay in, and if they do not move,
it is the site that is pulled from under their feet. When they travel,
their destination, more often than not, is of somebody else's choosing
and seldom enjoyable; and when they arrive, they occupy a highly
unprepossessing site that they would gladly leave behind if they had
anywhere else to go. But they don't. They have nowhere else to go;
there is nowhere else where they are likely to be welcomed.
________________________

^1 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,
trans. Talcott Parsons (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1976) 181. ]
^2 Mark C. Taylor and Esa Saarinen, "Telerotics," Imagologies: Media
Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1994) 11. ]


From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 19 23:36:15 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 18:36:15 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Concepts from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312202430.28612@panix3.panix.com>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 17:27:21 -0500 (EST)
From: Premise Checker <checker at panix.com>
To: Premise Checker:  ;
Subject: Concepts from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Concepts from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The topic of concepts lies at the intersection of semantics and philosophy of 
mind. A concept is supposed to be a constituent of a thought (or 'proposition') 
rather in the way that a word is a constituent of a sentence that typically 
expresses a thought. Indeed, concepts are often thought to be the meanings of 
words (and will be designated by enclosing the words for them in brackets: 
[city] is expressed by 'city' and by 'metropolis'). However, the two topics can 
diverge: non-linguistic animals may possess concepts, and standard linguistic 
meanings involve conventions in ways that concepts do not.

Concepts seem essential to ordinary and scientific psychological explanation, 
which would be undermined were it not possible for the same concept to occur in 
different thought episodes: someone could not even recall something unless the 
concepts they have now overlap the concepts they had earlier. If a disagreement 
between people is to be more than 'merely verbal', their words must express the 
same concepts. And if psychologists are to describe shared patterns of thought 
across people, they need to advert to shared concepts.

Concepts also seem essential to categorizing the world, for example, 
recognizing a cow and classifying it as a mammal. Concepts are also 
compositional: concepts can be combined to form a virtual infinitude of complex 
categories, in such a way that someone can understand a novel combination, for 
example, [smallest sub-atomic particle], by understanding its constituents.

Concepts, however, are not always studied as part of psychology. Some logicians 
and formal semanticists study the deductive relations among concepts and 
propositions in abstraction from any mind. Philosophers doing 'philosophical 
analysis' try to specify the conditions that make something the kind of thing 
it is - for example, what it is that makes an act good - an enterprise they 
take to consist in the analysis of concepts.

Given these diverse interests, there is considerable disagreement about what 
exactly a concept is. Psychologists tend to use 'concept' for internal 
representations, for example, images, stereotypes, words that may be the 
vehicles for thought in the mind or brain. Logicians and formal semanticists 
tend to use it for sets of real and possible objects, and functions defined 
over them; and philosophers of mind have variously proposed properties, 
'senses', inferential rules or discrimination abilities.

A related issue is what it is for someone to possess a concept. The 'classical 
view' presumed concepts had 'definitions' known by competent users. For 
example, grasping [bachelor] seemed to consist in grasping the definition, 
[adult, unmarried male]. However, if definitions are not to go on forever, 
there must be primitive concepts that are not defined but are grasped in some 
other way. Empiricism claimed that these definitions were provided by sensory 
conditions for a concept's application. Thus, [material object] was defined in 
terms of certain possibilities of sensation.

The classical view suffers from the fact that few successful definitions have 
ever been provided. Wittgenstein suggested that concept possession need not 
consist in knowing a definition, but in appreciating the role of a concept in 
thought and practice. Moreover, he claimed, a concept need not apply to things 
by virtue of some closed set of features captured by a definition, but rather 
by virtue of 'family resemblances' among the things, a suggestion that has 
given rise in psychology to 'prototype' theories of concepts.

Most traditional approaches to possession conditions have been concerned with 
the internal states, especially the beliefs, of the conceptualizer. Quine 
raised a challenge for such an approach in his doctrine of confirmation 
holism', which stressed that a person's beliefs are fixed by what they find 
plausible overall. Separating out any particular beliefs as defining a concept 
seemed to him arbitrary and in conflict with actual practice, where concepts 
seem shared by people with different beliefs. This led Quine himself to be 
sceptical about talk of concepts generally, denying that there was any 
principled way to distinguish 'analytic' claims that express definitional 
claims about a concept from 'synthetic' ones that express merely common beliefs 
about the things to which a concept applies.

However, recent philosophers suggest that people share concepts not by virtue 
of any internal facts, but by virtue of facts about their external (social) 
environment. For example, people arguably have the concept [water] by virtue of 
interacting in certain ways with H2O and deferring to experts in defining it. 
This work has given rise to a variety of externalist theories of concepts and 
semantics generally.

Many also think, however, that psychology could generalize about people's minds 
independently of the external contexts they happen to inhabit, and so have 
proposed 'two-factor theories', according to which there is an internal 
component to a concept that may play a role in psychological explanation, as 
opposed to an external component that determines the application of the concept 
to the world.

   1. Concepts as shareable constituents of thought
   2. Meanings of words
   3. Concepts and analysis
   4. Referential views
   5. Possession conditions: external v. internal
   6. The classical view and empiricism
   7. Inferential roles and prototypes
   8. Metaphysics v. epistemology
   9. Difficulties for an internalist approach
   10. Two-factor theories and a modified classical view


1. Concepts as shareable constituents of thought

Constituents of thought. It is widely thought that 'intentional' explanation in 
terms of such states as belief, thought and desire affords the best explanation 
of the behaviour and states of people, many animals and perhaps some machines: 
someone drinks water because they have a thirst which they think water will 
quench. By and large, philosophers and psychologists such as Fodor (1975, 1991) 
or Peacocke (1992) who are interested in intentional explanation take 
themselves to be committed to the existence of concepts, whereas those 
sceptical of this form of explanation, for example, Quine (1960), tend to avoid 
them (see Animal language and thought; Cognitive development; Intentionality).

Suppose one person thinks that water dissolves salt, and another that it does 
not. Call the thing that they disagree about a 'proposition' - for example, 
[Water dissolves salt]. It is in some sense shared by them as the object of 
their disagreement, and it is expressed by the sentence that follows the verb 
'thinks that'. Concepts are the constituents of such propositions (in at least 
one understanding of them; see Propositions, sentences and statements), just as 
the words 'water', 'dissolves' and 'salt' are constituents of the sentence. 
Thus, these people could have these beliefs only if they had, inter alia, the 
concepts [water], [dissolves], [salt].

Just which sentential constituents express concepts is a matter of some debate. 
The central cases that are discussed tend to be the concepts expressed by 
predicates or general terms, such as is water' or 'x dissolves y', terms 
potentially true of many different individual things. But there are presumably 
concepts associated with logical words (for example, [not], [some]), as well as 
with individual things (for example, [Rome], [2]).

Shareability. If we are to make sense of processes of reasoning and 
communication, and have a basis for generalization in a cognitive psychology, 
then concepts must be shareable. Consequently, concepts need to be 
distinguished from the particular ideas, images, sensations that, consciously 
or unconsciously, pass through people's minds at a particular time. The concept 
[cat] could not be some individual experience someone has, since in that case 
no two people could share it and a single person probably could not have the 
same one twice. Just what kind of shareable object a concept might be is a 
matter of considerable disagreement among theorists. In much of the 
psychological literature, where the concern is often with features of actual 
mental processing, concepts are regarded as mental representations, on such as 
words or images.

It will be important with respect to this and later proposals to invoke a 
distinction from the study of language between types and tokens (see Type/token 
distinction). A linguistic token, such as an inscription of 'caf?' on a door, 
has a specific spacetime location: one can ask when and where it occurs; 
whereas a linguistic type - the word 'caf?' - like any 'universal', is an 
abstract object outside space and time. One can erase a token of the word 
'caf?', but the type word would still exist. Similarly, concepts could be 
regarded as internal representation types that have individual ideas as their 
specific tokens. On this view, you and I could share the concept [water] if you 
and I have tokens of the same representation type in our minds or brains. There 
is a good deal of discussion in psychology as to whether concepts in this sense 
are (type) words, phrases, pictures, maps, diagrams or other kinds of 
representations, for example, prototypes or 'exemplars' (see ?7 below; and 
Smith and Medin (1981); Rips (1995) for reviews of the psychological 
literature).

But many philosophers take the view that these mental representation types 
would no more be identical to concepts than are the type words in a natural 
language. Words in a language are usually individuated syntactically, allowing 
both spoken and written tokens of a word to be of the same type, and 
syntactically identical tokens (for example, of 'bank') to be ambiguous, or of 
different semantic types. Moreover, different syntactic types - for example, 
'city', 'metropolis' - can be synonymous, that is, be of the same semantic 
type. Similarly, one person might express the concept [city] by a mental 
representation 'city', another by 'metropolis'; still another perhaps by a 
mental image of bustling boulevards. But, for all that, they might have the 
same concept [city]: one could believe and another doubt that cities are 
healthy places to live. Moreover, different people could employ the same 
representation to express different concepts: one person might use an image of 
bustling boulevards to express [city], another to express [pollution]. So, on 
the standard philosophical reading (which we shall follow here), concepts are 
to be individuated differently from the representations that express them.

However, although concepts understood in this latter way are arguably also 
indispensable to psychology, they raise different issues from those concerning 
representations that standardly interest psychologists. Questions about 
representations typically involve just the issues that psychologists have 
tended to investigate: processing time, ease of judgment, susceptibility to 
errors. If one person represents cities and their relations 'spatially', where 
another represents them by names and descriptions, this may explain differences 
in how rapidly the two of them can answer questions about cities; but, again, 
presumably they both still have the concept [city]. Just why they would, what 
the possession conditions for [city] or any concept might be, is not easy to 
say (see ?5): the point here is that they seem to involve issues different from 
the issue of identifying a syntactically defined representation.

This difference between the psychologist's and philosopher's typical interest 
is sometimes obscured by ambiguous phrasing. When Kant identifies 'analytic' 
claims (or claims that express the 'analysis' of a concept) as those in which 
one concept is contained in' another, he glosses this by saying: 'I have merely 
to analyse the concept, that is, to become conscious to myself of the manifold 
which I always think in that concept' (1781/1787: A7). In our terms, this could 
be read as a claim about representations, or (presumably what he intended) 
about the concepts they express. My mental representation of freedom might 
invariably involve an image of dancing people, but surely neither Kant nor I 
would want to say that the analysis of my concept of freedom involved dancing. 
Conversely, there is no reason that a good analysis should serve as a 
representation in ordinary, rapid reasonings (for example, identifying 
something as a bird): indeed, vivid images might serve better.


2. Meanings of words

As most of our examples suggest, concepts are presumed to serve as the meanings 
of linguistic items, underwriting relations of translation, definition, 
synonymy, antinomy and semantic implication (Katz 1972). Indeed, much work in 
the semantics of natural languages (see Jackendoff 1987) takes itself to be 
addressing 'conceptual structure'. This is partly motivated by Grice's (1957) 
proposal to understand linguistic meaning ultimately in terms of the intentions 
with which speakers produce linguistic tokens: 'good' means what it does at 
least partly because of what users of the word have intended to mean by it; 
that is, because of the concept they have intended to express (see Meaning and 
communication; Grice, H.P. ?2).

One problem with this role for concepts is that it is by no means clear just 
what a theory of meaning is supposed to involve. Some of the issues are exactly 
the issues we are considering here. However, some issues seem peculiar to 
language: for example, how much of what is understood in the uttering of a 
sentence is part of its meaning, or semantics, and how much is part of its use, 
and so an issue of pragmatics? (See Pragmatics.) If I say of someone 'He is not 
very good at chess', is the meaning simply that 'It is not the case that he is 
very good', or 'He is bad at chess'?


3. Concepts and analysis

Objects of analysis. At least since Plato's Euthyphro, philosophers have been 
fascinated by a certain sort of question about constitutiveness: in virtue of 
what is something the kind of thing it is - for example, what is 'essential' to 
something's being good, a piece of knowledge, a free act? Obviously, not just 
any truth about the target phenomenon will suffice as an answer: to take 
Plato's Euthyphro example, merely the fact that the gods love the good is no 
reason to think that that is what makes something good, any more than that all 
bachelors eat is what makes them bachelors (see Conceptual analysis).

Some philosophers think such questions are answered by natural science. This 
certainly seems to be true in the case of 'natural kinds' such as water or 
polio, which arguably have 'real essences' largely independently of us (see 
Kripke [1972] 1980; Putnam 1975; Essentialism). But many concepts, such as 
[magic], [freedom], [soul] may not pick out any real kind of thing at all (much 
less one studiable by science): in these cases, all that seems shareable by 
different possessors of the concept is some belief or other. But even in the 
natural science cases, some conceptual analysis seems to many unavoidable, if 
only to determine exactly what the science is about (what makes an 
investigation one about water, or polio, or consciousness; Bealer 1987).

There is a related question that concepts are also sometimes recruited to 
answer; not a metaphysical question about 'the nature of things', but an 
epistemological one about how people seem to know a priori (or 'independently 
of experience') various necessary truths, for example, that there is an 
infinity of prime numbers or that equiangular triangles are equilateral ones. 
However, it should be seen as a substantive and controversial hypothesis, to 
which we will return, whether this epistemological interest should coincide 
with the above metaphysical one (see A priori; ?5 below).

Philosophers have also sometimes hoped that conceptual analysis would help 
(dis)solve certain philosophical questions about, for example, truth, free 
will, personal identity, either by clarifying the commitments of the relevant 
concepts, or by showing that they were somehow defective. A once popular 
strategy was to show that the application of a concept was not 'verifiable' (?5 
below). A more recent strategy is to show that the application of a purported 
concept would be unintelligible, as in the case of [absolute space] (Peacocke 
1992: ch. 8).

Whatever its ultimate philosophical benefits, conceptual analysis does seem to 
involve the sort of facts that are relevant to the question of concept 
possession. Returning to our pair of people who represent cites differently: 
what seems relevant to the question of whether, despite their different 
representations, they still have the same concept [city] is what sorts of 
things they believe are essential to being a city; what things they would and 
would not count as cities (which is not to say that this would be decisive; see 
?5). This difference can lend an air of unreality to philosophical as opposed 
to psychological discussions of concepts, depending, as it does, upon difficult 
questions about what (one would think) is possible in various often very 
outlandish situations.

Vagueness. One supposed defect of many concepts should be set aside from the 
start. The belief in constitutive analyses of a concept is often thought to be 
undermined by the existence of difficult, borderline cases for its application 
(Wittgenstein 1953: ??66-7; Smith and Medin 1981: 31). Now, it certainly cannot 
be denied that the world is full of genuine borderline cases: 'Is drizzle 
rain?', 'Are viruses alive?'. Arguably, the world does not supply determinate 
answers: all kinds in the world may have vague boundaries, any precise 
delimitation of which may depend upon human decision. But this does not imply 
that all applications of concepts are up to human decision, much less that 
there are no defining essences of the phenomena they pick out. [Unmarried adult 
male] may be a perfectly good analysis of [bachelor] not only despite hard 
cases, but because the hard cases for the one correspond exactly to the hard 
cases for the other. (See Vagueness.)


4. Referential views

One candidate for the common object of people's thoughts has been simply the 
referents of their representations, that is, the objects in the world picked 
out by them. Someone might say that two representations express the same 
concept if and only if they refer to the same thing(s) in the world. Putting 
aside the difficult problem of explaining 'reference', this seems an appealing 
suggestion, clearest in the case of (token) proper names such as 'Aristotle' 
where the name refers to a specific person (see proper names). When we turn to 
predicates, however, things are not so clear. There are a number of different 
candidates for what counts as the 'referent' of a predicate and so of the 
concept it would express: (1) its extension, (2) its intension (as function), 
and (3) the property that all the (possible) objects satisfying it have in 
common.

Extensions. The 'extension' is the set of actual objects that satisfy the 
concept. For example, the extension of [city] might be the set of cities: 
{Paris, London, Madrid,h}. Russell (1956) proposed an account of 'propositions' 
according to which they were composed of real objects in the world combined 
with properties (see also Kaplan 1979). Extensional logicians such as Goodman 
(1951) and Quine (1960) think that sets of actual objects are all that are 
needed for serious science: all that needs to be mentioned are actual lions, 
tigers and quarks. They realize that this suggestion clashes with our ordinary 
understanding. [Cordate] is not the same as [renate], despite the fact that 
(let us suppose) all and only actual creatures with kidneys are creatures with 
hearts ([renate] and [cordate] are 'coextensive'). It seems reasonable to 
require concepts to cover possible cases, for example, possible creatures that 
are renates but do not have hearts. Goodman would not agree, since, as he 
famously argues (1951: 5), 'the notion of "possible" cases, of cases that do 
not exist but might have existed, is far from clear' (see Counterfactual 
conditionals; Goodman, N. ?3). But he and Quine would also be wary of talk of 
concepts generally; and semanticists such as Kaplan (1979) and Salmon (1986) 
are anxious to avoid introducing talk of them into talk of the semantics of 
language.

Intensions as functions. Although one might agree that modal notions such as 
possibility and necessity are not as clear as one would like, it is by no means 
agreed that science can actually dispense with them. Many philosophers think 
that the laws essential to causal explanation in any science require modal and 
counterfactual talk. But, especially in psychology, it seems doubtful that 
extensions would perform all the explanatory work concepts are needed to 
perform. Whether or not biology need worry about the possibility of renates 
lacking hearts, someone could think something is a renate without thinking it 
has a heart. Consequently, many philosophers have claimed that, in addition to 
extensions, there must be 'intensions', or entities distinguished more finely 
than mere extensions permit (see Intensional entities; Intensional logics).

Intensions have been defined in a number of ways. One approach is in terms of 
senses or 'modes of presentation', to which we shall turn shortly (?5 below). 
Another approach simply amplifies the extensional characterization to include 
sets of possible as well as actual objects. Modal logicians and formal 
semanticists such as Montague (1974), D. Lewis (1972) and Stalnaker (1984), 
interested in presenting a formal account of the semantics of natural 
languages, have regarded intensions as functions that map a possible world to 
the extension of the concept in that world (see Semantics, possible worlds).

However, mere appeals to possibilia may still not cut things finely enough: for 
there are concepts that are different even though they apply to all the same 
things in all possible worlds, for example, [equiangular triangle] and 
[equilateral triangle], or, following Kripke ([1972] 1980), [water] and [H2O]; 
or, to take cases of necessarily empty extensions, [square circle] and [married 
bachelor], which both refer to nothing in all possible worlds. Particularly 
interesting examples of this latter category have been suggested by Kripke 
([1972] 1980) and Slote (1975), who argue in different ways that nothing could 
possibly satisfy the specific demands of [unicorn] or [monster]. How are we to 
distinguish these concepts by reference to possible objects?

Properties. Some philosophers think the appropriate reference for predicate 
concepts is not provided by the objects that the concepts pick out (whether in 
the actual or merely possible worlds), but rather by the properties those 
objects share. Thus, [city] is not individuated by the set of all actual or 
possible cities, but rather by the property, 'being a city.

Historically, concepts have not always been clearly distinguished from 
properties, both being regarded as 'universals' (see Universals). Thus, the 
mortality one found widespread among men was often assumed to be the same as 
the concept [mortality] that was a constituent of one's fears. Sometimes this 
identification seems terminological, as in Frege (1892a) (who uses 'concept' in 
a quite special way and discusses 'senses' independently), but at other times 
it is substantive, as in Carnap (1952). Most writers these days would 
distinguish the two (Putnam 1970; Bealer 1982), even if they also think that 
there is a property for every concept.

An interesting issue raised by Frege (1892a) that does seem common to both 
general concepts and properties is the difficulty of specifying exactly what 
sort of entities they are. As Frege noted, they seem to be incomplete, or 
'unsaturated', having places in them awaiting completion by objects, in the way 
that predicates in language, such as 'x loves y', have variables awaiting 
substitution with names (such as 'Romeo' and 'Juliet'). This issue becomes 
important when we try to specify how general and singular concepts combine to 
form a thought, or how properties and objects combine to constitute facts 
(Russell 1903: ch. 4; Wittgenstein 1921).

Many worry that appealing to properties to individuate concepts is gratuitous 
metaphysics, a free invention of a property for every concept, encouraged by 
the loose presumption that properties, such as 'immortality', can exist even 
without being instantiated. To answer this charge, philosophers often claim 
that properties are provided by the actual causal structure of the world: 
having kidneys and having a heart enter differently into causal relations, as 
perhaps do equiangularity and equilaterality (Sober 1982). Particularly 
philosophers of mind such as Dretske (1981, 1988), Millikan (1984) and Fodor 
(1991), interested in causal interactions between an organism and the world, 
find this way of thinking about concepts attractive (see Semantics, 
informational; Semantics, teleological).

However, it is not clear that causal properties will suffice. Are all our 
concepts really of causally efficacious properties? What about the concept [an 
inefficacious property]? Or concepts of secondary properties ([red], [sweet]), 
or ethics and aesthetics ([good], [comical]), which, many have argued, do not 
pick out genuine causal properties? Or consider, again, necessarily coextensive 
concepts such as [water] and [H2O] - which arguably correspond to the same 
property - or [round square] and [married bachelor], which arguably correspond 
to none. How could they differentially enter into the causal structure of the 
world? Or should we suppose that properties can be distinguished even though 
they are indistinguishable not only in the actual, but in all possible worlds? 
Are there any constraints?

Moreover, even if we could distinguish concepts by properties, that would not 
suffice for conceptual analysis. Plato's Euthyphro question - is something good 
because the gods love it, or do they love it because it is good? - brings this 
out nicely, since the question remains even if we assume that that gods love 
the good in all possible worlds (so that [good] and [god-beloved] are 
necessarily coextensive): the direction of analysis still needs to be 
specified.


5. Possession conditions: external v. internal

Many philosophers might not think that Plato's Euthyphro question needs an 
answer: for purposes of logic, and perhaps even formal semantics, appeal to any 
of these external phenomena (extensions, intensions or properties) may suffice, 
'analysis' be hanged. However, if concepts are to play a role in psychology, 
then one at least wants to know what sort of relation someone must bear to 
these external phenomena in order to qualify as a competent user of the 
concept. This is a question about the possession conditions for a concept to 
which many have thought analyses are crucial.

In considering possession conditions, special care is needed with the peculiar 
idiom 'concept of x' and the ontology it involves. Psychologists often speak of 
such things as the child's 'concept of causality'. This could mean the 
representation the child employs of the concept [causality] that the child 
shares with adults; or it could mean any of the extension, intension or rule 
that children associate with the English word 'cause'; or it could mean (as in 
fact it very often does mean) merely the standard beliefs - what some call the 
'conception' - that children associate with the extension, intension: 
[causality]. Which of these is intended all depends upon what entity one thinks 
of as the concept and what a mere accompaniment of it. What cannot be seriously 
intended is the suggestion that a child has a concept [causality] that is both 
identical to but different from the adults'. (What invites confusion here is 
the 'of' that implies no relation: just as 'the nation of China' means 'the 
nation, China', so 'the concept of x' often means 'the concept, [x]'.)

It might be thought that none of the external identifications of concepts could 
ever be viable for psychology, since psychology is about what is 'in the mind' 
(or 'in the head'), not what is in the world external to it (see Jackendoff 
1987: 126). This would be an error. We have already seen one way in which it 
cannot be true: in so far as concepts are shareable, they must be distinguished 
from individual mental episodes. But still it might be thought that a concept 
must be a type of internally specified mental state, since, after all, surely 
psychology aims to talk about individual minds, even if it categorizes them in 
various ways. However, an interest in characterizing what is going on in the 
mind need not exclude alluding to external objects: the fact that extensions or 
properties may be external to the head is no reason to think them unsuitable 
candidates for classifying things that are in the head, just as classifying 
various words in a book as 'about Vienna' does not prevent those words from 
existing entirely inside the book.

There have been a variety of external relations that philosophers have proposed 
that would link internal representations to external phenomena in a way that 
might constitute concept possession. Influential articles by Kripke ([1972] 
1980, 1982), Putnam (1975) and Burge (1979) have given rise to a variety of 
externalist theories of concepts, which look to such facts as actual causal 
history (Devitt 1981), various co-variation conditions (Dretske 1981, 1988; 
Fodor 1991) and evolutionary selection (Millikan 1984; Papineau 1987). However, 
in so far as they rely on real phenomena in the external world, they are 
subject to certain limitations that many feel can only be surmounted by 
appealing to some kind of conditions that are 'in the head'.

Intensions: 'senses'. What argues for the need for some internal condition on 
concept is the difficulty for any purely external account of capturing 
psychologically real distinctions. The examples of necessarily unextended 
concepts, such as [round square], suggest that the mind can somehow make 
distinctions for which there is no possible external reality. Consequently, 
many philosophers have argued that, in addition to the referent of a general 
term, there must also be (following Frege 1892b) its 'sense', or 'mode of 
presentation' (occasionally 'intension' is used here as well; see Sense and 
reference). Thus, what really seems to distinguish [equiangular triangles] and 
[equilateral triangles] is not the actual or possible things to which they 
refer, but rather the way the mind conceives them: it is one thing to think of 
something as (or qua) an equilateral triangle, another to think of it qua an 
equiangular triangle (which is why the proof that they are necessarily 
coextensive is informative). And this obviously helps with the problem of the 
necessarily coextensive: what distinguishes, for example, [water] and [H2O] are 
the different 'ways of thinking', not reflected in any even possible difference 
in the world. For some (for example, Peacocke 1992) concepts are senses so 
understood. But, of course, we then need a theory of senses.


6. The classical view and empiricism

One conception of senses is provided by the classical view of concepts. This 
view has two independent parts that are not always clearly distinguished, one 
making a claim about the nature of concepts, the other about what is to possess 
them: (a) concepts have an 'analysis' consisting of conditions that are 
necessary and sufficient for their satisfaction; and (b) these defining 
conditions are known to any competent user. An interesting, but problematic, 
example has been [knowledge], whose analysis was traditionally thought to be 
[justified true belief], but which has turned out to be far subtler, due to 
counterexamples raised by philosophers such as Gettier (1963) (see Knowledge, 
concept of).

The example of [knowledge] brings out an important caveat for the classical 
view: the proper analysis of a concept need not be readily available to a 
competent user of it. It was not easy for Athenians to reply to Plato's 
inquiries about [good], nor for recent philosophers to reply to Gettier. 
According to a reasonable version of the classical view, a competent user's 
knowledge of an analysis may be 'tacit' or 'unconscious', rather like the 
'knowledge' people have of the grammatical rules of their language, which they 
seem dependably to obey despite being unable to articulate them (see Evans 
1981; Katz 1971; Knowledge, tacit; Unconscious mental states). For Plato, the 
analyses could only be extracted from someone by a process of 'dialectic', 
involving consideration of various examples and arguments to a point of 
'reflective equilibrium' (Bealer 1987: 322; Jackson and Pettit 1995).

The classical view, however, has always had to face the difficulty of primitive 
concepts: how are they to be defined? An influential (but not the only 
possible) answer was provided by seventeenth-century British empiricists, who 
claimed that all the primitives were sensory. Indeed, the classical view has 
often been uncritically burdened with this further claim, or, anyway, the claim 
that all concepts are 'derived from experience'. Locke (1689), Berkeley (1710) 
and Hume (1739-40) seemed to take this to mean that concepts were somehow 
composed of introspectible mental items - images, 'impressions' - that were 
ultimately decomposable into basic sensory parts (see Empiricism; Sense-data).

Berkeley ([1710] 1982: 13) noticed a problem with this approach that every 
generation has had to rediscover: if a concept is a sensory impression, like an 
image, then how does one distinguish a general concept [triangle] from a more 
particular one - say, [isosceles triangle] - that would serve in imagining the 
general one? In any case, images seem quite hopeless for capturing the concepts 
associated with logical terms (what is the image for negation or for 
possibility?). Whatever the role of images, concepts and our competence with 
them involve something more (see Imagery).

Indeed, in addition to images and impressions and other sensory items, a full 
account of concepts needs to consider issues of logical structure. This is 
precisely what the logical positivists did, focusing on logically structured 
propositions and transforming the empiricist claim into their famous 
'verifiability theory of meaning': the meaning of a proposition is the means by 
which it is confirmed or refuted, ultimately by sensory experience; the concept 
expressed by a predicate is the statement of the (perhaps logically complex) 
sensory conditions under which people confirm or refute whether something 
satisfies it (see Meaning and verification). Thus, [acid] might be analysed by 
reference to tendencies to cause litmus paper to turn red; [belief] by 
observable behavioural dispositions (see Behaviourism, analytic); [material 
object] by enduring possibilities of sensation (see phenomenalism).

This once popular position has come under much attack in the last fifty years. 
Few, if any, successful 'reductions' of ordinary concepts (such as [material 
object], [cause]) to purely sensory concepts have ever been achieved, and there 
seems to be a pattern to the failures (Chisholm 1957). There have been four 
main diagnoses: (1) the classical search for 'necessary and sufficient' 
conditions is misguided and ought to be replaced by an appreciation of the role 
of a concept in our reasonings and theories of the world; (2) concepts should 
be regarded as 'family resemblance' structures, or 'prototypes', (3) because of 
the 'holism of confirmation', attempts to analyse concepts in terms of any 
verification conditions cannot succeed; and (4) we should stop looking for 
characterizations of concepts in terms of epistemic conditions, but rather, 
more metaphysically, in terms of the actual phenomena in the world to which 
people are referring, but about which they might be ignorant (thus, we would 
abandon clause (b) of the classical view, which requires analyses to be known 
by competent users). We will discuss each in turn.


7. Inferential roles and prototypes

Inferential roles. The first alternative, inspired by Wittgenstein's famous 
dictum, 'the meaning of a word is its use' (1953: ?43), treats concepts as 
involving some or other role of a representation, either in a theory or in 
thought. Thus, many (for example, Kuhn 1962) have argued that someone possesses 
a concepts such as [witch] or [phlogiston] only if they understand the theories 
in which they play a role, or can reason with it in certain appropriate ways 
(see Semantics, conceptual role).

A vexing problem with this approach has been the fact that it is hard to 
identify just which roles are essential to a concept. It would appear that 
people can be wrong and/or disagree about almost anything: Berkeley claimed 
that material objects were ideas, some creationists that people are not 
animals, some nominalists that numbers are concrete objects. If people are 
genuinely to disagree with these views, they must share the relevant concepts; 
otherwise their use of the same words would be equivocal, their disagreement 
'merely verbal'. But then it seems very hard to insist upon any specific 
inferential role being essential to possessing a concept.

Prototypes. Another proposal also inspired by Wittgenstein (1953: ?66) is to 
appeal to 'family resemblances' among the things to which a concept applies: he 
claimed that games, for example, share no single property, but are similar to 
each other in various ways that cluster together (some involve winning/losing, 
others mere entertainment; some are played in groups, others alone). This 
speculation was taken by psychologists (for example, Rosch 1973; Smith and 
Medin 1981) to be a testable psychological hypothesis. They showed that people 
respond differently (in terms of response time and other measures) to questions 
about whether, for example, penguins rather than robins are birds, in a fashion 
that suggested that concept membership was a matter not of possessing a 
classical analysis, but of distance from a 'prototype' or typical 'exemplar'. 
Thus, a robin satisfies many more of the features of a typical bird than does a 
penguin and so is a 'better' member of the category; and a malicious lie is a 
better case of a lie than a well-intentioned one.

It has not always been clear precisely what sort of thing a prototype or 
exemplar might be. One must take care not to import into the mind procedures, 
such as comparing one actual bird with another, that make sense only outside of 
it. Presumably either a prototype or an exemplar is some sort of representation 
(a list, or an 'image') indicating selected properties, and a metric for 
determining the distance of a candidate from those properties. Some writers 
have exploited the resources of 'fuzzy set theory' to capture the intended 
structure, whereby membership of a category is understood not as an 'all or 
none' affair, but as a matter of degree: everything satisfies every concept to 
some degree, however small (see Zadeh 1982; Fuzzy logic).

Quite apart from specifying just what the view involves, there are, however, a 
number of problems with appeals to prototypicality as a theory of concepts. In 
the first place, loosening the conditions on a concept's application from 
'defining' conditions to mere 'family resemblances' risks leaving that 
application far too unconstrained. Everything after all bears some resemblance 
to everything else (Goodman 1970): returning to Wittgenstein's example, 
anything, x, resembles standard games in some way or other (if only in 
belonging to some arbitrary set that contains all games and that thing x!). The 
question is which resemblances are essential to the concept, and which merely 
accidental - a question that returns us to the question the classical view 
tries to answer (see Essentialism).

Second, prototypes seem poor candidates for handling the crucial phenomenon of 
conceptual combination: the prototype for [tropical fish] does not seem 
constructible from the prototypes for [tropical] and [fish], yet someone could 
grasp [tropical fish] none the less (Osherson and Smith 1982).

Third, prototypicality, which presumably involves distances among a complex 
cluster of diverse properties, must be distinguished from both vagueness and 
estimation. As we have already observed (?1), nearly every concept admits of 
vague cases, in which it is not clear whether the concept applies. But this 
does not imply that the concept does not have a (correspondingly vague) 
definition. Similarly, estimation of whether or not something satisfies a 
concept is a question that arises with regard to any concept. But it is clearly 
not a metaphysical issue of the actual conditions something must satisfy in 
order to satisfy a concept, but rather an epistemological one concerning the 
belief or epistemic probability that something satisfies the conditions, given 
certain evidence (see Realism and antirealism). The sight of someone with a 
toupee may mean that there is a 90 per cent probability that he is actually 50 
per cent bald, or a 40 per cent probability that he is actually 95 per cent 
bald. The question of whether [bald] has a classical analysis is untouched by 
this issue as well (Rey 1983).


8. Metaphysics v. epistemology

These latter distinctions may turn on the different interests we have already 
noted (?1) in psychologists' and philosophers' use of 'concept', applying 
respectively to representations or to their shareable meanings. The fact that 
people are quicker to say that robins rather than penguins are birds may tell 
us something about people's representations of [bird], but nothing about the 
definition of the concept [bird] itself, that is, what is in fact required to 
satisfy that concept (on reflection, after all, most of us agree that penguins 
are bona fide birds, despite our initial hesitation). This is not to say that 
the definitional issue is not relevant to psychology: what people take to be 
required to be a bird is as much a psychological issue as how they figure out 
whether those requirements have been met. It is just that prototype theory 
seems to be addressed largely to the latter issue, the classical view to the 
former.

However, the differences may be deeper than merely terminological. As the 
example of estimation shows, it is extremely easy to conflate metaphysical 
issues about the conditions for something's satisfying a concept with the 
epistemic ones of estimating whether something actually satisfies those 
conditions. One reason is that English can encourage running the two together, 
phrasing the metaphysical question as 'What determines what is what?' and the 
epistemic one as 'How does someone determine what is what?'. A second reason is 
that epistemic conditions are as likely to come to mind' in thinking with a 
concept as are its defining conditions (see ?1 above).

But a more important reason is that empiricism made a policy of connecting the 
two: the defining conditions for a concept were to be stated in terms of 
experiential evidence. As anti-empiricists from Plato on have argued, however, 
many of our concepts seem to 'transcend experience', in that they seem to be 
graspable and sometimes applicable in the absence of it. For lack of any 
genuine Euclidean triangles in the world, it is unclear how our concept of them 
could be derived from experience. And even instantiated concepts such as 
[material object], [causation] and [prehistoric] seem to go far beyond mere 
sensory experience: we seem to be able to think coherently about material 
objects causally interacting in prehistoric times, even in the absence of any 
sensory evidence of that interaction. In any case, many of our concepts 
transcend their stereotypes: most of us understand the concept [female doctor], 
and recognize that [even number] has a perfectly good definition, despite our 
demonstrable reliance on stereotypes in both cases (Armstrong, Gleitman and 
Gleitman 1983).

Moreover, it can often seem arbitrary and unduly restrictive to tie a concept 
to any particular method of verification (or confirmation). Taking a page from 
Pierre Duhem (1914), Quine (1953) argued that 'our beliefs confront the 
tribunal of experience only as a corporate body': litmus paper turning red 
confirms that a solution is acidic only in conjunction with a great deal of 
background chemical and physical theory; indeed, Quine claims, only in 
conjunction with the whole of a person's system of beliefs (a view called 
'confirmation holism'; see Analyticity; Confirmation theory; Quine, W.V.). 
Hence, if a concept is to be analysed as its verification conditions, its 
meaning would be similarly holistic ('meaning holism'). Given that no two 
persons' beliefs are likely to be precisely the same, this has the consequence 
that no two people ever share precisely the same concepts - and no one could, 
strictly speaking, remember the same thing over any amount of time that 
included a change of any belief! Fodor and LePore (1992) have recently argued 
that this sort of conceptual (or semantic) holism would undermine serious 
psychology, but, fortunately, that the arguments for it are less than 
compelling (see Holism: mental and semantic; Atomism, ancient).


9. Difficulties for an internalist approach

Even if one distinguishes epistemological from metaphysical issues in 
determining concept identity, there remain a number of problems for any purely 
internalist theory of concepts. Whether classical or prototypical, any 
internalist theory of concepts requires distinguishing internal features - 
beliefs, inferential roles, prototypes - that are essential to (or defining of) 
a concept from those that are accidental, and many feel that it really is this 
distinction that is undermined by Quine's observations about holism. Indeed, 
'sameness of concept' for Quine becomes by and large an 'indeterminate' issue 
(see Radical translation and radical interpretation). The most one might expect 
is a similarity of inferential role between symbols in different theories or 
symbol systems (Harman 1972; Block 1986): which similarities are selected may 
vary for different explanatory tasks, and may be a pragmatic affair (Bilgrami 
1992; Lormand 1996).

A second problem emerged from the externalist approaches of Kripke ([1972] 
1980), Putnam (1975) and Burge (1979), and has come to be represented by 
Putnam's example of 'twin earth' (1975): suppose there were a planet exactly 
like the earth in every way except that, wherever the earth has H2O, twin earth 
has a different, but superficially similar chemical XYZ. Putnam argues that 
twin-earthlings would not mean by the word 'water' what we mean (for example, 
their tokens of the sentence 'Water is wet' would not have the same 
truth-conditions as ours), despite the fact that, ex hypothesi, twin-earthlings 
would have our same internal structure. (Burge (1979) and Stich (1983) present 
less outlandish examples.) As Putnam famously put it, 'meanings just ain't in 
the head'; rather, he argues, they depend at least in part upon the relations 
between internal states and external phenomena (see Content: wide and narrow).

In view of both these examples, and the Quinian worries, Fodor (1991, 1998) 
opts for an entirely 'atomistic' account of concepts, arguing that concepts 
have no 'analyses' whatsoever: they are simply ways in which people are 
directly related to individual properties in their environments, any one of 
which they might enjoy without the others. In principle, someone might have the 
concept [bachelor] and no other concepts at all, much less any 'analysis' of 
it, simply by virtue of having some internal state that is causally connected 
with bachelorhood in the local environment. Such a view goes hand in hand with 
Fodor's rejection of not only verificationist, but any empiricist, account of 
concept learning and construction. Indeed, given the failure of empiricist 
constructions, Fodor (1975, 1979) argues that concepts are not constructed or 
'derived from experience' at all, but are (nearly enough) all innate (see 
nativism). Devitt (1995) defends a more moderate, 'molecularist' position, 
allowing that many innate primitives are non-sensory (for example, [cause], 
[object]) but that others are susceptible to definition, especially in view of 
the thereby enlarged primitive base.


10. Two-factor theories and a modified classical view

Although externalism does seem to account both for the stability of concepts 
through variation in belief and for variations in concept due to variations in 
environment, it still must confront the issues we mentioned earlier (?5) that 
invite internalism, namely, that there seem to be more distinctions in the mind 
than are available in the external world. An increasingly popular approach is 
to separate the internal and external work concepts are asked to perform. 
According to 'two-factor' theories, 'concepts' should be regarded as having two 
components: one 'in the head', consisting of an internal representation playing 
a certain psychological role; and the other, some sort of co-variational law or 
evolutionary fact that, in a historical context, determines the reference and 
truth-conditions of the concept. (Sometimes 'concept' is restricted to the 
internal factor, 'content' to the external; and 'two-factor theory' is 
sometimes applied only to those views in which the two factors are relatively 
independent of one another.)

A two-factor theory leaves a place for a modified classical view, as well as 
for something like philosophical analysis. The internal factor would determine 
a full semantic content to a conceptual representation only in a particular 
context, so that the full analysis of (the content of) a concept might await 
empirical investigation of that context and not be available to its user. But 
this is perhaps as it should be: philosophical analysis of 'the nature of' a 
phenomenon may depend both upon the internal rule one is deploying and the 
actual phenomenon that, in a context, the rule picks out (Bealer 1987; Jackson 
and Pettit 1995).

See also: Content, non-conceptual; Semantics

GEORGES REY

References and further reading
Armstrong, S., Gleitman, L. and Gleitman, H. (1983) What Some Concepts Might 
Not Be', Cognition 13 (3): 263-308. (Discussion of experiments demonstrating 
prototypicality effects even with concepts, such as [even number], that have 
obvious classical definitions.)

Ayer, A.J. (1936) Language, Truth and Logic, London: Gollancz. (The classic 
defence of the logical positivist programme, including efforts to analyse all 
empirically meaningful statements into statements about possible sense 
experience.)

Bealer, G. (1982) Quality and Concept, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A 
recent effort to distinguish concepts from properties, and to provide a logical 
framework for discussing them both.)

Bealer, G. (1987) 'The Limits of Scientific Essentialism, in J. Tomberlin (ed.) 
Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 1, Metaphysics, Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview 
Press.(An argument that externalist theories of meaning and concepts must rely 
on certain internal conditions, knowable a priori.)

Berkeley, G. (1710) A Treatise concerning the Principles of Knowledge, 
Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1982.(Thirteen raises an 
important problem for an empiricism that derives 'ideas' too directly from 
sense 'impressions'.)

Bilgrami, A. (1992) Belief and Meaning: The Unity and Locality of Mental 
Content, Oxford: Blackwell.(A strategy for how meaning holism can be made 
compatible with interpersonal comparisons of meaning and concepts.)

Block, N. (1986) 'Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology', in P.A. 
French, T.E. Uehling, Jr and H.K. Wettstein (eds) Midwest Studies in 
Philosophy, vol. 10, Studies in the Philosophy of Mind, Minneapolis, MN: 
University of Minnesota Press.(A defence of an inferential role theory of 
meaning and concepts as involving merely similarity, not identity among those 
roles.)

Burge, T. (1979) 'Individualism and the Mental', in P.A. French, T.E. Uehling, 
Jr and H.K. Wettstein (eds) Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 4, Minneapolis, 
MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Subtle defence of an externalist account of 
concept possession.)

Carnap, R. (1952) Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science, 
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.(Good example of a work in which 
concepts and properties are identified.)

Chisholm, R. (1957) Perceiving: A Philosophical Study, Ithaca, NY: Cornell 
University Press.(Classic critique of 'phenomenalist' and 'behaviourist' 
efforts to 'reduce' talk about material objects to talk about sensations, and 
talk about mental states to talk about external behaviour.)

Devitt, M. (1981) Designation, New York: Columbia University Press. (A defence 
of a causal theory of the reference of names - plausible as part of an 
externalist account of concepts of individuals.)

Devitt, M. (1995) Coming to Our Senses, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
(A defence of a moderate conceptual molecularism, combining an externalist 
account of some non-sensory concepts, but also an inferential role account of 
others.)

Dretske, F. (1981) Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Cambridge, MA: MIT 
Press.(An effort to base an externalist theory of concepts on the notion of 
'information'.)

Dretske, F. (1988) Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes, 
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Further development of an informational semantics, 
linking informational roles to behavioural consequences.)

Duhem, P. (1914) The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. P. Wiener, 
New York: Atheneum, 1954. (Early statement of confirmation holism and, thereby, 
for an empiricist like Quine, for meaning, or conceptual, holism.).

Evans, G. (1981) 'Semantic Theory and Tacit Knowledge', in S. Holtzman and C. 
Leich (eds) Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 
118-37. (Discussion of the view that knowledge of the semantics of one's 
language might be tacit.)

Fodor, J.A. (1975) The Language of Thought, New York: Crowell. (Now classic 
statement of the claim that thought consists in computations on representations 
encoded in the brain, presumed throughout much cognitive psychology and in this 
entry; also, independently, initiates the argument that almost all concepts are 
innate.)

Fodor, J.A. (1979) 'The Present Status of the Innateness Controversy', in 
RePresentations: Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: 
MIT Press.(Rich discussion of the issues underlying the claim that almost 
concepts are innate.)

Fodor, J.A. (1991) A Theory of Content, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Vigorous 
defence of a radically externalist theory of meaning and concepts - although he 
tends to use the latter term for the internal representation of an externally 
determined 'content'.)

Fodor, J.A. (1998) Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, Oxford: Oxford 
University Press. (Extended critique of conceptual role and other analyses of 
concepts in current linguistics, philosophy and psychology.)

Fodor, J.A. and LePore, E. (1992) Holism: A Shoppers' Guide, Oxford: Blackwell. 
(A critique of arguments for semantic and conceptual holism.)

Frege, G. (1892a) '?ber Begriff und Gegenstand', Vierteljahrsschrift f?r 
wissenschaftliche Philosophie 16: 192-205; trans. P.T. Geach, 'On Concept and 
Object', in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, ed. 
P.T. Geach and M. Black, Oxford: Blackwell, 3rd edn, 1980. (Frege himself used 
'concept' for something like what is more commonly called a 'property'; but the 
subtle issues he raises here apply to both.)

Frege, G. (1892b) '?ber Sinn und Bedeutung', Zeitschrift f?r Philosophie und 
philosophische Kritik 100: 25-50; trans. M. Black, 'On Sense and Reference', in 
Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, ed. P.T. Geach 
and M. Black, Oxford: Blackwell, 3rd edn, 1980. (Locus classicus of a 'sense' 
theory of meaning and what many regard as concepts.)

Gettier, E. (1963) 'Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?', Analysis 23: 
121-3.(Short and highly influential article presenting counterexamples to the 
traditional 'analysis' of [knowledge]; excellent as a paradigm of the 
philosopher's interest in concepts.)

Goodman, N. (1951) Structure of Appearance, Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 
1966.(A classic effort at empiricist analysis of objective into sensory 
concepts, wholly within an extensional conception.)

Goodman, N. (1970) 'Seven Strictures on Similarity', in L. Foster and J. 
Swanson (eds) Experience and Theory, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts 
Press.(Excellent discussion of the perils of appealing to 'similarity' in 
theories of concepts.)

Grice, H.P. (1957) 'Meaning', Philosophical Review 66: 377-88. (Classic sketch 
of a programme for deriving the meaning of sentences from the intentions of 
speakers.)

Harman, G. (1972) Thought, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Defence 
of an inferential role theory of meaning and concepts as involving merely 
similarity, not identity among those roles.)

Hume, D. (1739-40) A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, revised 
P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. (Classic development of an early 
empiricist theory of concepts.)

Jackendoff, R. (1987) Consciousness and Computation, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 
(Lively and imaginative internalist account of conceptual structure as it 
appears to be revealed by the semantics of natural language.)

Jackson, F. and Pettit, P. (1995) 'Moral Foundationalism and Moral Motivation', 
Philosophical Quarterly 45 (178): 20-40. (Recent 'two-factor proposal to 
provide definitions by the role of terms in ordinary thought, which, given a 
context of utterance, determines a propositional content.)

Kant, I. (1781/1787) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith, New York: 
St. Martin's Press, 1968. (Classic study of the basic concepts arguably 
required for any understanding of an objective world.)

Kaplan, D. (1979) 'Dthat', in P. French, T. Uehling and H. Wettstein (eds) 
Contemporary Studies in the Philosophy of Language, Minneapolis, MN: University 
of Minnesota Press, 383-400. (Highly influential development of a 'direct 
reference' theory of demonstratives (for example, 'that', 'this'), indexicals 
('I', 'her') and other expressions, according to which 'concepts' play much 
less of a role than traditionally supposed.)

Katz, J. (1971) The Underlying Reality of Language and its Philosophical 
Import, New York: Harper & Row. (Early proposal modelling knowledge of 
semantics and concepts on the kind of tacit knowledge of syntax postulated by 
Chomsky.)

Katz, J. (1972) Semantic Theory, New York: Harper & Row. (Defence of the 
classical view on behalf of a semantics of natural language.)

Kripke, S.A. (1972) 'Naming and Necessity', in D. Davidson and G. Harman (eds) 
Semantics of Natural Language, Dordrecht: Reidel, 252-355; expanded version 
published as Naming and Necessity, Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1980.(One of 
the original defences of an externalist account of proper names and natural 
kind terms; suggestive of a similar account of the corresponding concepts.)

Kripke, S.A. (1982) Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Cambridge, MA: 
Harvard University Press.(An attack on an internalist account of concept 
possession, and a suggestion of an externalist 'social' theory instead.)

Kuhn, T. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, IL: 
University of Chicago Press.(Influential defence of a holistic, inferential 
role theory of concept possession.)

Laurence, S. and Margolis, E. (eds) (1998) Concepts, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 
(An excellent collection of leading articles on the topic by philosophers, 
psychologists and logicians.)

Lewis, D.K. (1972) 'General Semantics', in D. Davidson and G. Harman (eds) 
Semantics of Natural Language, Dordrecht: Reidel. (Systematic presentation of a 
theory of meaning and concepts as intension-functions on possible worlds.)

Locke, J. (1689) An Essay concerning Human Understanding, New York: Dutton 
(Everyman), 1961.(The original proposal of an empiricist theory of concepts.)

Lormand, E. (1996) 'How to Be a Meaning Holist', Journal of Philosophy 93: 
51-73.(Defence of the view that a token representation may have many different 
meanings, for different explanatory purposes.)

Millikan, R. (1984) Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories, 
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.(The original statement of an 
evolutionary/teleological theory of meaning and concepts.)

Montague, R. (1974) Formal Philosophy, ed. R. Thomason, New Haven, CT: Yale 
University Press.(A systematic development of a theory of meaning and concepts 
as intension-functions on possible worlds.)

Osherson, D. and Smith, E. (1982) 'Gradedness and Conceptual Combination', 
Cognition 12: 299-318. (Examination of the difficulties of conceptual 
combination for prototype theories.)

Papineau, D. (1987) Reality and Representation, Oxford: Blackwell. (Defence of 
an evolutionary approach to concept ascription.)

Peacocke, C. (1992) A Study of Concepts, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 
(Sophisticated and influential defence of a 'sense' theory of concepts.)

Plato (395-347 BC) Euthyphro, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato including the 
Letters, ed. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University 
Press, 1961.(Raises an important kind of question for conceptual analysis: is 
something good because the gods love it, or do they love it because it is 
good?)

Putnam, H. (1970) 'On Properties', in Philosophical Papers, vol. 1, Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 1975, 305-22. (Excellent discussion distinguishing 
properties from concepts.)

Putnam, H. (1975) 'The Meaning of "Meaning", in Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, 
Mind, Language, and Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Highly 
influential, lively and readable defence of an 'externalist' theory of meaning 
and concepts.)

Quine, W.V. (1953) 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', in From a Logical Point of View 
and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Important source of 
attacks on the scientific significance of conceptual analysis and on the 
classical view.)

Quine, W.V. (1954) 'Carnap and Logical Truth', in Ways of Paradox and Other 
Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2nd edn, 1976. (Superb essay 
on the history of 'conceptual analysis', as well as important arguments on 
behalf of his meaning holism and against the scientific significance of 
analyses.)

Quine, W.V. (1960) Word and Object, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Classic 
exposition of an account of mind and language without appeals to concepts or 
meanings.)

Rey, G. (1983) 'Concepts and Stereotypes', Cognition 15: 237-62; repr. in S. 
Laurence and E. Margolis (eds) Concepts, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 
1998.(Criticism of prototype theories for conflating epistemological with 
metaphysical issues.)

Rey, G. (forthcoming) 'A Naturalistic A Priori', Philosophical Studies.(Argues 
that the classical view can be defended against Quinian attacks by supposing 
analyses are sub-doxastic, like the rules of grammar.)

Rips, L. (1995) 'The Current Status of Research on Concept Combination', Mind 
and Language 10 (1/2): 72-104. (Excellent review of psychological research on 
concepts to that date.)

Rosch, E. (1973) 'On the Internal Structure of Perceptual and Semantic 
Categories', in T.E. Moore (ed.) Cognitive Development and Acquisition of 
Language, New York: Academic Press. (Influential discussion of the role of 
'prototypes' in categorization tasks.)

Russell, B. (1903) Principles of Mathematics, New York: Norton, 2nd edn, 1938. 
(Chapter 4 wrestles with the problem of distinguishing a sentence from mere 
lists of words, which involves thinking about how a general concept is related 
to the individual (concept?) that satisfies it; connected to discussions in 
Frege (1892a) and Wittgenstein (1921).)

Russell, B. (1956) Logic and Knowledge, Essays 1901-1950, ed. R.C. Marsh, 
London: Allen & Unwin; repr. London: Routledge, 1992. (Influential essays 
presenting a highly 'referential' conception of the constituents of thoughts 
and propositions.)

Salmon, N. (1986) Frege's Puzzle, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books. 
(Argues against 'sense' theories of linguistic meaning.)

Slote, M. (1975) 'Necessarily Inapplicable Concepts', Philosophical Studies 28: 
265-71.(Argues that certain familiar concepts, such as [miracle] and [evil], 
could not possibly be instantiated.)

Smith, E. and Medin, D. (1981) Concepts and Categories, Cambridge, MA: Harvard 
University Press.(Useful discussion of psychological research supporting 
prototype theories.)

Sober, E. (1982) 'Why Logically Equivalent Predicates May Pick Out Different 
Properties', American Philosophical Quarterly 19: 183-9. (Argues that 
predicates such as 'equiangular' and 'equilateral' may pick out not only 
different concepts, but also different properties.)

Stalnaker, R. (1984) Inquiry, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books. (Clear 
and readable defence of a theory of meaning and concepts as intension-functions 
on possible worlds.)

Stich, S. (1983) From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against 
Belief, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.(Proposes an essentially pragmatic approach to 
concept ascription across people; good discussion of intuitions leading us to 
different descriptions.)

Wittgenstein, L. (1921) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears and 
B.F. McGuinness, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961. (Proposes an interesting 
'picture' theory of meaning to solve the problem of how predicates combine with 
names to form sentential representations; suggestive of a similar treatment of 
mental representations and/or concepts.)

Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investigations, New York: Macmillan. (The 
source of use and 'inferential role' theories of concept possession, as well as 
of the suggestion that concepts might have a prototype or 'family resemblance' 
structure.

Zadeh, L. (1982) 'A Note on Prototype Theory and Fuzzy Sets', Cognition 12: 
291-7.(Application of the formalism of 'fuzzy set theory' to a prototype theory 
of concepts.)

From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 19 23:36:29 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 18:36:29 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Leave No Gifted Child Behind
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312203030.28612@panix3.panix.com>

Leave No Gifted Child Behind
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/26/AR2005122600553_pf.html

I should not repeat all my criticisms of NCLB, which should be renamed Gifted 
Children Left Behind (GCLB). NCLB does Federalize education to an extent, but 
this is in reaction to the *nation-wide* lobbying of the teachers' unions. 
(Likewise for tort reform, which apparently went nowhere.) This is justifiable, 
I think. But it was handled poorly. The net effect of NCLB is to promote 
centralization at the State level, away from counties and school districts.

The situation is much worse than the Washington Post article has it. That
article simply dwelt on the opportunity cost: less will be spent on the
gifted than before, in order to capture Federal money. Less is being spent
on art and music, too, and for exactly the same reason.

What is more serious, but under the radar, is curriculum shift toward
teaching so that "adequate yearly progress" can be shown. This means
drill, drill, drill, discipline, discipline. The results of ddd,dd can be
easily measured on tests, now standardized at the State level. Before
NCLB, there was a general movement toward skills needed for the 21st
century, like critical thinking, a movement that was taking place more at
the school, district, and county level (each at its own pace, drawing from
the "particular knowledge of time and circumstance" (Hayek)).

That gradual movement has come to a halt, thanks to NCLB. What might have
beens are not noticed, except by a few oddballs like me. But it is the
most serious drawback of NCLB.

The article was very, very good in pointing out that nothing above
"proficient" matters. I wish Secretary Spellings will wake up and alter
NCLB to reward an increase in performance at levels above proficient. But
she'd have to convince President Bush about it, which will be very tricky.

At the Department's Christmas party, I gave Sec. Spellings a copy of Deane
and David Heller, _The Kennedy Cabinet: America's Men of Destiny_, a
paperback that came out the Summer after JFK was inaugurated in 1961. It
had chapters on each of the cabinet members of the New Frontier. I told
her that such a book could not be written today. She suggested I write one
myself!

I didn't get to talk with her further, but one of her advance men came up
to me afterwards to get my name. I told him that, such is our age, that
Bush simply has no authority at all and mentioned Robert Nisbet's
_Twilight of Authority_ (1975) to him. Kennedy commanded authority, just
for being President. And Nixon, as Watergate was unfolding, cautioned the
nation not to destroy the Presidency, as distinct from the President,
namely Nixon.

Those days are gone, whether permanently or as a matter of Strauss-Howe
generational cycles, I don't know. Clinton had no authority in this sense,
but he did not care. Bush does care. Reflecting on the matter afterwards,
I felt sorry, actually and truly sorry, for Bush. No, I don't like his
policies, I don't like the way he was conned by the neocons, but I think I
can see how he became increasingly isolated.

Bush wants authority and not in a small measure because he has redeemed
himself from alcoholism and gained a clear measure of understanding right
and wrong that comes with Christian redemption. (Clinton was also a
redeemed man, a huge source of his popularity. I sent a CHE piece on this
earlier, the best piece on why Bush got reelected I have come across.)

So Bush is surrounded by loyalists, those who share his absolutism and
most of the same absolutes. Most of the critics of NCLB come from the
left, and Secretary Spelling has said repeatedly that, while she will
allow administrative changes she will most definitely not allow any
watering down.

Bush, of course, loves this, and it would be incredible if Sec. Spellings
could get him to ask for major reforms in the law that do not look like
caving in to the education lobby. Immodestly, but I do know Public Choice
theory and understand Federalism, I might be the best one help Sec.
Spellings understand that weaseling out is not the only possible way to
reform NCLB and thence to convince President Bush.

But I have no voice. I think I'll write to her advance man, though. If
anything comes of it, I'll let this group know. I absolutely must not give
any hint that heredity is the reason why some children will inevitably be
left behind. My record of such self-restraint is not good.

--------------

By Susan Goodkin
Tuesday, December 27, 2005; A25

Conspicuously missing from the debate over the No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) Act is a discussion of how it has hurt many of our most capable
children. By forcing schools to focus their time and funding almost
entirely on bringing low-achieving students up to proficiency, NCLB
sacrifices the education of the gifted students who will become our
future biomedical researchers, computer engineers and other scientific
leaders.

The drafters of this legislation didn't have to be rocket scientists
to foresee that it would harm high-performing students. The act's
laudable goal was to bring every child up to "proficiency" in language
arts and math, as measured by standardized tests, by 2014. But to
reach this goal, the act imposes increasingly draconian penalties on
schools that fail to make "adequate yearly progress" toward bringing
low-scoring students up to proficiency. While administrators and
teachers can lose their jobs for failing to improve the test scores of
low-performing students, they face no penalties for failing to meet
the needs of high-scoring students.

Given the act's incentives, teachers must contend with constant
pressure to focus their attention simply on bringing all students to
proficiency on grade-level standards. My district's elementary school
report card vividly illustrates the overriding interest in mere
proficiency. The highest "grade" a child can receive indicates only
that he or she "meets/exceeds the standard." The unmistakable message
to teachers -- and to students -- is that it makes no difference
whether a child barely meets the proficiency standard or far exceeds
it.

Not surprisingly, with the entire curriculum geared to ensuring that
every last child reaches grade-level proficiency, there is precious
little attention paid to the many children who master the standards
early in the year and are ready to move on to more challenging work.
What are these children supposed to do while their teachers struggle
to help the lowest-performing students? Rather than acknowledging the
need to provide a more advanced curriculum for high-ability children,
some schools mask the problem by dishonestly grading students as below
proficiency until the final report card, regardless of their actual
performance.

Perhaps these schools, along with the drafters of NCLB, labor under
the misconception that gifted students will fare well academically
regardless of whether their special learning needs are met.
Ironically, included in the huge body of evidence disproving this
notion are my state's standardized test scores -- the very test scores
at the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act. Reflecting the schools'
inattention to high performers, they show that students achieving
"advanced" math scores early in elementary school all too frequently
regress to merely "proficient" scores by the end. In recent years the
percentage of California students scoring in the "advanced" math range
has declined by as much as half between second and fifth grade.

Many gifted students, of course, continue to shine on standardized
tests regardless of the level of instruction they receive. But whether
these gifted students -- who are capable of work far above their grade
level -- are being appropriately educated to develop their full
potential is not shown by looking at test scores measuring only their
grade-level mastery. Nor do test scores indicate whether these
students are being sufficiently challenged to maintain their academic
interest, an issue of particular concern in high school. Shockingly,
studies establish that up to 20 percent of high school dropouts are
gifted.

When high school faculty members face the prospect of losing their
jobs if low achievers do not attain proficiency, what percentage of
their resources will they devote to maintaining the academic interest
of high-level students? How much money will administrators allocate to
providing advanced courses? How many of the most experienced teachers
will teach honors, rather than remedial, classes?

Surely we can find a way to help low-achieving children reach
proficiency without neglecting the needs of our gifted learners. If we
continue to ignore gifted children, the NCLB may end up producing an
entire generation of merely proficient students -- a generation that
will end up working for the science leaders produced by other
countries.

The writer lives in Ventura, Calif., and is an advocate for the
education of gifted children.


From checker at panix.com  Thu Jan 19 23:36:54 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 18:36:54 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] ScienceWeek Editorials
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312203080.28612@panix3.panix.com>

ScienceWeek Editorials
http://scienceweek.com/editorials.htm

[Something here to please everyone and to upset everyone, too. The editorial on 
evolutionary psychology echoes the familiar charges of circularity, and its 
likening to pscyhoanalysis is trenchant, devastating, even. As I got to 
thinking about the analogy, though, I realized that, unlike evolutionary 
psychology, psychoanalysis has no support from the empirical data.

[And the essays attacking "racism" are entirely of the variety, "these results 
have not convinced me." I should like to see the AntiRacists produce 
data-driven studies that give *positive* support FOR innate equality in average 
cognitive abilities across the various subgroupings of man.

[The piece on Creationism is just namecalling and the one on Larry Summers is 
just silly.]

----------------

Frankenstein, Faraday, and The Nation Magazine - 12/29/05

The New Anthropology, Happy Darkies, and the National Review -
12/13/05

Evolutionary Psychology: Science or Pseudoscience? - 12/3/05

Brain Size and the National Review - 10/30/05

Creationism vs. Sanity - 1/23/05

Harvard, Women, and Science - 1/19/05

   _________________________________________________________________

December 29, 2005
Frankenstein, Faraday, and The Nation Magazine

First, John Derbyshire of the rightist National Review magazine called
us "leftist-fascist" for criticizing his ideas about biological
justifications for social inequality.
Then Andrew Sullivan of the New Republic magazine called us "liberal
snobs" for the way we criticized Derbyshire.
Now maybe we'll soon be called a few names by the leftist The Nation
magazine.
On the cover of the January 9/16, 2006 issue of The Nation, you will
find a pretty blonde model, appropriately sad-looking, with her blonde
head morphed into a Medusa-like entanglement of electronic and
electrical cables and connectors, all of it as come-on bait for the
lead article entitled "Brave Neuro World".
Inside the magazine article, you find boxed marquee anxiety-producing
blurbs: "Neurotechnologies threaten to violate the freedom to have our
own personalities and control our inner lives."
Or another: "Neuroenhancement could make it not merely difficult but
biologically impossible for the poor to compete with the wealthy."
Hot dog, guys, we have a winner here, scare the hell out of 'em on the
newsstand and we'll sell more copies!
The gist of the article is that current research in neuroscience,
particularly research involving magnetic resonance imaging techniques,
coupled with development of neuroactive pharmaceuticals, may be
dangerous because it may allow control of the brain, or alterations of
mood and personality, and of course if any good at all may come of
that, the rich may deprive the poor of such benefits.
In other words, knowledge can be dangerous.
One can imagine a Pleistocene conversation:
--------------------------------
"Hey, this here thing about us making fire could be dangerous."
"So far it's only an idea. So far we have no way to do it and we have
to wait for lightning."
"Sure, but it's real enough and the idea for making it is here."
"But it cooks meat, the meat tastes better, and I think it's safer to
eat."
"But the fire burns. Maybe it'll burn our hands. Maybe it'll burn the
huts down."
"So we'll be careful."
"Maybe that's not good enough. Maybe we need to prevent it being used.
Or at least think about regulating it."
"But we're not using it yet. It's not here yet."
"I say we need to think about regulating it before it gets here."
--------------------------------
In general, that's the problem with this modern neurological luddism
(or with any sort of proactive neo-luddism): The technology for
controlling the brain is not here yet, not even close, and if the
technology is not yet present, the only way to "regulate" it is to
prevent it.
Do we really want that sort of intellectual tyranny in our society?
Rightists rant about preventing research on stems cells and cloning
because of possible dangers to the social order, and now Leftists give
us a rant about preventing research in neuroscience because of
possible dangers to the "free" exercise of personality and mood.
Are they serious or merely selling magazines? No matter which, the
public receives twisted information about science and is ill-served.
The fundamental idea behind this sort of magazine pop-science
journalism is to use the verbal qualifiers "could", "might",
"possible", and the like to conjure a scenario that shivers the guts
of readers, because you learned in journalism classes that if you
shiver their guts they're more likely to buy the magazine.
Of course, people don't really need to read the article to be
misinformed, all they need to do is pass the magazine on the newsstand
and they get the message: They remember the picture of that blonde
model with the crazy Medusa-head of electrical wires and cables and
the cover headline "BRAVE NEURO WORLD".
So goes twisting science against the interests of the public.
Twenty years ago, newsstand magazines pulled the same trick about
genetically modified food products with covers blaring alarm about
"Frankenstein Foods". The idea is the same: scare the hell out of the
public and you sell more magazines. It may be good business, but it's
not good for the public, and coming from the Left, the corner of
supposed public interest, it's a travesty.
Is the problem structural? Modern higher education is partitioned into
science versus non-science, and after completing their higher
education, maybe too many of the voices of the media are non-science
people whose views of science and technology are close to Mary
Shelley's view of Doctor Frankenstein in her novel Frankenstein, first
published in 1818.
Frankenstein, you remember, was fond of electricity and used
electricity to create and energize his monster. It's an irony that
while the 19th century public was busy shivering over Frankenstein,
another fellow with an interest in electricity, a blacksmith's son
named Michael Faraday, was busy providing the understanding of
electricity necessary for the future provision of electric lights,
telephones, tram-cars, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, washing machines,
and so on that essentially liberated people everywhere.
Maybe journalists on the Right and Left need to spend less time
reading Burke and Marx and more time cracking a few books on the
history of science and technology.
Maybe the free-lance author of The Nation article was pushed by the
editors to slant the article in a specific direction. We don't know.
We fault both the author of the article and the editors of The Nation
for presenting this twisted rant to the public when they had the
chance to offer the public a reasonable account of current research in
neuroscience and how such research might impact society.
As it stands, The Nation has done a disservice to the public whose
interest it purports to maintain.
Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
   _________________________________________________________________

December 13, 2005
The New Anthropology, Happy Darkies, and the National Review

You might think that these days racism in the American establishment
is muted, coded, or expressed with a quiet smile or raised eyebrow at
handsome cocktail parties. You might also think that the sons and
daughters of the establishment, who move in and out of academies like
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, might have by this time learned enough
biology, sociology, and anthropology to understand a few things.
Unfortunately, if this is what you think, your thoughts are denied by
reality.
Writing in the December 19, 2005 issue of the rightist National Review
magazine, the "Special Anniversary" Issue (50 years), Senior Editor
Richard Brookhiser (Yale University, 1977) ruminates about the
novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), calls Waugh an "anthropologist",
and says that Waugh taught him, or confirmed in him, a belief in
"happy darkies".
And pray, what's that? Who are they? So Brookhiser enlightens us:
"Happy darkies are most of the world: people with skins generally
darker than mine, who live in Africa, most of Asia, and much of the
Americas. Sometimes they start at Calais. These days they certainly
inhabit every restaurant kitchen in New York. It seems paradoxical to
call them happy. They are poor, numerous, and pregnant; if they work,
it is to little purpose; their religions span a simple spectrum from
witchcraft to wrath, and their societies alternate between tyranny and
chaos; they beat their wives, scarify their daughters, and
occasionally eat their enemies; they have never read (if they can
read) a book that was not holy, or heard a piece of music unrelated to
copulation."
So there it is. If you want to know the state of higher education in
America today, what the sons and daughters of privilege have learned
in the elite academies, what rightists want to hear in their
magazines, this is it: the anthropology of Happy Darkies.
Oh, these poor twits of advantage, these pale gnomes who pass their
lives nursing on the rot of disdain!
Brookhiser writes with a hint that he wants to improve the lot of the
Happy Darkies. Does he? He writes of possibilities of "mobility", but
what he proposes is not clear. An extended mission to save the
heathen? We do think his idea that the "multicultural left" wants to
maintain the status quo is sophistic nonsense.
In sum, we find the Waugh-Brookhiser view of the world disgusting. But
we're thankful that at least this "new anthropology" is now public.
Really, the National Review has done us all a great service by at last
nailing its creed to the post.
Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
   _________________________________________________________________

December 3, 2005
Evolutionary Psychology: Science or Pseudoscience?

The field of evolutionary psychology is now decades old and some
people believe it's here to stay. We don't think so. In fact, we think
the general method constitutes a pseudoscience.
A typical "proof" paradigm in evolutionary psychology might be as
follows (constructed by us for this text):
Because hoarding food would have increased chances for survival in
lean times, our Pleistocene ancestors should have developed by natural
selection an adaptive tendency to hoard food. Since the modern era is
too close to the Pleistocene for any substantial biological evolution
to have occurred, modern behavior should have strong Pleistocene
adaptive components. One assumption is that universality of a behavior
constitutes evidence of a biologically evolved adaptation. A current
survey of 10,000 households in 50 states shows that on average, when
economically possible, people tend to store excess food in quantity in
kitchen cupboards. The hypothesis of evolution of this adaptive
behavior by natural selection is thus considered to be confirmed.
Problems: Do we know enough about Pleistocene behavior to say that a
survey of current behavior confirms anything about any Pleistocene
evolutionary scheme? Are the conclusions here already implicit in the
premises? Is universality of a behavior pattern evidence of biological
evolutionary adaptation? Is this science or rhetoric?
Aside from questions about "confirmation", how is this game played?
Apparently, the first thing is to do a small pilot survey of maybe 100
households. If one obtains results that contradict the hypothesis, one
either puts the hypothesis in a drawer for "future study" and moves on
to another proposed evolved Pleistocene adaptive behavior, or one
looks for "faults" in the details of the survey sample or data
gathering and repeats the study. The probability is high that
eventually some behavioral survey will be made that "confirms" some
Pleistocene evolutionary adaptation scheme. A much larger study is
then designed and hopefully funded, and the general outcome is that
advocates of the theoretical approach of evolutionary psychology will
tend to publish research papers supporting their formulated
hypotheses, and tend not to publish research papers that contradict
biological determinism of particular behavior patterns.
The larger the survey that's published, the more likely, because of
time and expense, that it will not be repeated or redesigned by
others. Certainly at least not for a few years, often not for a decade
or more. Meanwhile, the large study is touted in college courses and
in the media as "evidence" for biological determinism of such things
as human mating behavior, marriage relations, altruism, parenting,
homicidal tendencies, gender-based social inequalities, and so on.
Another approach, even more egregious, is to first do a pilot survey,
get a small-sample determination of universality of some current
behavior, call it an evolutionary "adaptation", concoct a Pleistocene
story that explains why the behavior would evolve by natural
selection, then do a larger sample study to "confirm" the evolutionary
hypothesis.
As expected, at a number of campuses in the US, platoons of
evolutionary psychology doctoral students are busy constructing
evolutionary adaptation stories of human behavior as a prelude to
designing their pilot thesis surveys. Or maybe in some cases some
pilot thesis survey to identify the presence of a universal behavior
pattern comes first and the evolutionary adaptation story follows.
A usual commentary is to emphasize the heuristic value of the general
scientific approach, i.e., the approach at least produces new
research. But is that enough? During the 50-year period 1920-1970, a
similar research paradigm produced thousands of studies "derived" from
psychoanalytic theory in psychology, the number of such studies
dwindling to a trickle only after psychoanalytic theory went out of
fashion. Yes, such heuristic approaches do produce new research and
keep people busy and on salary. The question is, after the fashion
passes and the sand is sifted, are we left with any substantive and
enduring new knowledge?
Various proponents of evolutionary psychology talk of hypotheses
"derived" from Darwinian theory. But there are really no derivations
in any rigorous sense, merely speculations suggested by what are often
simplistic Darwinian ideas.
The scientific problem here is that our ability to concoct a
speculation about the behavior of Pleistocene humans that can be
argued as consistent with biological determinism is not evidence of
either Pleistocene behavior or biological determinism, but evidence
only of our imaginative abilities to concoct such speculations, and
studies of current human behaviors that are supposedly extensions of
Pleistocene behavior add no substance to the mix of speculation, since
the idea that any current behavior is an extension of Pleistocene
behavior is also a speculation. In sum, evolutionary psychology is not
even a "soft" science, it's a pseudoscience that endures as a fashion.
The main offering of evolutionary psychology consists merely of
arguments that are plausibly consistent with elementary Darwinism
coupled with simplistic speculations about Pleistocene adaptations.
It's not enough. And the bleat that human behavior is complex provides
no remedy for a pseudoscience of human psychology.
The idea that the social sciences can potentially benefit from more
attention to human biology is valuable and should definitely be
encouraged, especially in the training of social scientists. Whether
or not some or all aspects of human behavior are the result of
evolution by natural selection (as opposed to cultural consequences or
some combination of the two sources of variables) is still an open
question not yet handled adequately by any rigorous scientific
approach. Certainly, applications of any current "results" of
evolutionary psychology to public policy-making are at present not
justified and potentially dangerous to society.
In addition to generating technological and public progress, science
has always been a source of public confusions. From one academic
enclave or another, gas-filled balloons are sent out to be caught by
the media, who in turn do a wonderful job of confusing the public.
It's unfortunate that currently in the social sciences evolutionary
psychology is a prime source of confusions about the links between
biological evolution and human behavior.
--------------------------------
Addendum (12.04.05):
Evolutionary psychology has been vigorously criticized by others over
the years, and the ideas above are nothing new. What prompted this
editorial were some queries from readers concerning the origins of
human behavior, and a desire to clarify our views.
Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
   _________________________________________________________________

October 30, 2005
Brain Size and the National Review

When politics makes an incursion into science, a common result is
distortion and a misinformed and ill-served public. Of course, some
people don't care much about the public. In the November 7, 2005 issue
of the National Review magazine, a frequent repository of right-wing
propaganda, an article touts two papers that recently appeared in a
scientific journal (Science September 9, 2005 309:1717,1720). The
major point of the National Review article is that the two scientific
papers present evidence that different human groups may have different
gene frequencies influencing brain development, one consequence of
which is that "our cherished national dream of a well-mixed and
harmonious meritocracy with all groups equally represented in all
niches, at all levels, may be unattainable." The title of the National
Review article is "The Spectre of Difference". The interest of a
self-proclaimed arch-conservative magazine like the National Review in
this idea needs no explication.
The two scientific papers concern two genes, one called
"microcephalin", and the other gene called ASPM (abnormal spindle-like
microcephaly associated). Both genes may contribute to the regulation
of brain size, since mutations of either gene cause pathological
microcephaly. Both papers are from the research group of Bruce T.
Lahn, a human geneticist at the University of Chicago. The first paper
purports to present evidence that a genetic variant of microcephalin
in modern humans that arose 37,000 years ago increased in frequency
too rapidly to be compatible with neutral genetic drift, and thus must
have spread under strong positive natural selection, which in turn
suggests the ongoing evolutionary plasticity of the human brain. The
second paper, concerns the gene ASPM , and here also the authors
interpret their analysis as suggesting that the human brain is still
undergoing rapid adaptive evolution.
All of which is politically neutral, except that the authors also
present arguments that the frequencies of these two genes are
undergoing adaptive evolution that varies with different geographical
populations. In plain words, the data are presented as suggesting that
the brain size of different ethnic groups and races (and dependent
cultural outputs of such brains) are evolving (and have evolved) at
measurably different rates.
Unequivocal in the two scientific papers is the idea that brain size
is related to culture
Such is the gist of what the National Review picks up for its readers,
the article proposing that "results like these out of the human
sciences should prompt us to begin some hard thinking about our
society, and about what we can reasonably expect social policies to
accomplish."
But maybe before we get to hard thinking about social policies we need
some hard thinking about evidence and conclusions.
Let's consider the two scientific papers.
In the first paper, the demonstration of evolutionary selection is
inferential and not definitive. The authors state, "Our data on
haplotype 49 are consistent with these signatures of selection."
Yes, consistent only: no anthropological conclusions are justified,
and the so-called "signatures" of selection are provisional.
In the first paper, the anthropological statements are essentially
speculations, to wit: "Such population differentiation may reflect a
Eurasian origin of haplogroup D, local adaptation, and/or demographic
factors such as a bottleneck associated with human migration 50,000 to
100,000 years ago."
Again, speculation: "may reflect". In translation: "We think this work
may be related to demographic anthropology, but we don't know."
In the second paper, concerning the proposed adaptive evolution of the
gene ASPM, the authors conclude: "Although the age of haplogroup D and
its geographic distribution across Eurasia roughly coincide with two
important events in the cultural evolution of Eurasia -- namely, the
emergence and spread of domestication from the Middle East ~10,000
years ago and the rapid increase in population associated with the
development of cities and written language 5000 to 6000 years ago
around the Middle East -- the significance of this correlation is not
yet clear."
Exactly so. The coincidence is rough, the significance unclear, and
the authors nowhere discuss the important fact that within and across
present human populations, studies of brains without pathology show no
evidence of correlation of brain size with brain function or cultural
"achievement". Certainly, if the authors are working on genes
apparently associated with brain size, and the authors are also
interested in relating their work to current anthropology, one would
expect some discussion of their problem, to wit: If greater human
brain size is still undergoing evolutionary selection, how come we
have no strong correlations between brain size and important
functional attributes of the human nervous system? If the brain is
still evolving in size, what are the conceivable selection pressures,
given no apparent correlation between non-pathological brain size and
function? We're unhappy that the authors were not urged by the
referees to make some statements about these questions.
We're also fascinated by the opening sentence of the first paper: "The
most distinct trait of Homo sapiens is the exceptional size and
complexity of the brain (1,2). That's good, but the problem is the two
references are 46 years old and 32 years old, respectively, and we're
trying to imagine why anyone would choose these particular references
for a report of such research. If we're to choose old references, why
not choose von Bonin? But maybe that would be against the approach of
these authors. Consider, for example, the following quotation from von
Bonin:
"The results of our inquiries into the brains of fossil men are
somewhat meager: we cannot deduce any details about their mental life,
whether they believed in God, whether they could speak or not, or how
they felt about the world around them... That the brain increases in
size as we go from the Australopithecinae to modern man -- or to the
Upper Paleolithics, for that matter --is quite obvious and, of course,
gratifying. But the meaning of the increase is again not quite clear
because, as we all know, brain size as such is a very poor indicator
of mental ability. This has been shown best perhaps by Pearson (1925)
some years ago. In his series, very gifted persons, such as Leon
Gambetta, Anatole France, or Franz Joseph Gall, had very small brains,
of about 1100 grams. Other equally gifted persons had very large
brains; thus Byron and Dr. Johnson had brains of about 2000 grams.
And, of course, some very ordinary persons had equally large brains.
So brain size was certainly not very important, and the correlation
between brain size and mental capacity was insignificant. But whether
this argument can be extended to an evolutionary series is again
another matter. For one thing, we know far too little about the bodily
proportions of fossil forms. Obviously, the brain stands in a certain
relation to the rest of the body, and this rest is still largely
hidden from us. Brain size as such is none too meaningful. Moreover,
mere size completely leaves out of account the inner structure of the
brain, which may be different in different forms and which may
determine to a great extent what the brain can do." Gerhardt von
Bonin: THE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN BRAIN University of Chicago Press,
1963, p.76
So why cite Spuhler (1959) and Jerison (1973) rather than von Bonin
(1963)?
Our final comment is that human brain size, as a phenotype, has
important determinants arising from epigenetics, fetal environment,
and postnatal environment, in addition to the probable involvement of
many gene networks, and at the present level of our ignorance, any
attempt to lock in brain size to the activity of a few genes is most
likely an exaggeration. We would especially emphasize that whatever
genes or gene complexes may have been involved with the marked
increase in brain size apparently associated with our split from the
great ape line, the same genes or gene complexes may not at all be
involved with any apparent changes in brain size during the Holocene.
There is certainly no reason to believe that the human brain has
stopped evolving, and certainly brain size is a biological parameter
that may indeed be changing, but we don't think this work is of much
particular anthropological significance. We would say the work needs
to be done (and supported), but we are not at the point yet of making
important conclusions from such studies.
And finally there is this: Is it total brain size that's important or
the surface area and depth of neocortex? With an increase in total
brain size may come an increase in subcortical structures and not
necessarily a concomitant increase in neocortex at all, given the
existing foldings of neocortex. In plain words: Could evolution be
dumbing down the brain? (What an idea!)
In general, if there are any anthropologists and psychologists
listening, we would urge them not to jump to any conclusions on the
basis of this work alone or on the basis of any work like it. We
certainly need to identify the critical neurobiological variables that
may be associated with individual psychological performance and with
cultural change, but our view is that we're not there yet, not even
close.
As for the National Review, we suggest they do more homework. The
author of the article (John Derbyshire) calls himself "a simple
Darwinian rightist".
Indeed.
---------------------------

Addendum (11/09/05):
Following the appearance of this editorial, John Derbyshire, author of
the National Review article, called us "leftist-fascist". Whatever
that means, we assume it's meant to be pejorative. But what is it that
makes us "leftist" or "fascist" or some oxymoronic combine? Is it our
call for more caution in political interpretations of scientific
observations? Who knows?
Addendum (11/13/05):
The complete National Review article is at [17]NR-Derbyshire.
For Derbyshire's responses to our editorial, see [18]D1 and [19]D2.
Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
   _________________________________________________________________

January 23, 2005
Creationism vs. Sanity

One grows tired of the recurring efforts of inadequately educated
religionists to base the teaching of science in schools on biblical
passages written during a time when civilization and understanding of
the natural world were both primitive.
In a country of nearly 300 million people, there will always be some
people who, because of "religious" conviction, believe the Earth is as
flat as a pancake, a few thousand years old, and resting on the backs
of four giant elephants. Their belief is unfortunate. What is even
more unfortunate is teaching our children that such beliefs, because
they are "religious", deserve respect.
Creationism and its latest effluvium, intelligent design, are not
science, not evidentiary, not even close to science, and do not
deserve respect as material to be taught to children in public
schools. The idea of imposing one's religious views on others via
public education is totally un-American, and the people who promulgate
that idea need to be called that -- un-American.
Religionists who accept the work of their God as revealed by science,
and who understand that creationism is blasphemy, need to come out
into the arena and be heard.
Scientists who devote their lives to science and scientific attitudes
and scientific truths also need to come out into the arena and be
heard with their strongest voices.
Science teachers who find these creationist crusades obnoxious and
potentially damaging to the children they teach also need to come out
into the arena in droves and wage the battle of their intellectual
lives.
It is time. We are nearly 150 years after Darwin's Origin of Species,
and it is time for the United States, the foremost scientific
enterprise on the planet, to deal firmly with this issue. People are
free in the US to practice any particular religion. They are not free
to impose that religion on others, and they are certainly not free to
force the teaching of their religious beliefs in the public schools.
We call for an end to stickers on textbooks telling children that
evolution is only a "theory". We call for an end to mandated teaching
of creationism or intelligent design or any other attempt to subvert
the public school teaching of science as it is currently understood by
the scientific community. We call for all scientists, educators, and
thinking Americans to raise their voices in a decisive confrontation
against insidious and un-American anti-scientific dogma.
The US Supreme Court owes the American people a unanimous and
unambiguous rejection of religionist attacks on science education.
Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
   _________________________________________________________________

January 19, 2005
Harvard, Women, and Science

The recent comments by Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard
University, suggesting that biological differences between the sexes
may be one explanation why fewer women succeed in mathematics and
science careers, is evidence of at best a sophomoric understanding of
the professions of science and mathematics, and at worst possible
evidence of brain damage. Dr. Summers is an economist, not a scientist
and not a mathematician. At the present time, approximately half the
graduating PhDs in chemistry and MDs in medicine are women, and more
than a third in the biological sciences, particularly in molecular
biology. One can assume that any of these new women graduates knows
more science and mathematics than Dr. Summers, and in addition one
suspects that any of these new women graduates knows more about the
problems of women in science and mathematics than Dr. Summers does.
If Dr. Summers is really interested in understanding the present
situation of women in science and mathematics, he ought to have a
serious look at the history of his own university. In general, Harvard
University has never been known as a leader in the intellectual
emancipation of women, and throughout most of its existence, Harvard
was an all-male college that frowned on the idea of women in
intellectual pursuits. In the early years of stellar spectroscopy at
the Harvard Astronomical Observatory, for example, nearly all the data
were catalogued and analyzed by female astronomers, called
"computers", who were trained professional astronomers but forbidden
because of their sex to use the telescopes. Women astronomers at
Harvard were not allowed routine access to the telescopes until the
1950s. It is an irony of the social history of science that the work
of such female astronomers as Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1928) and
Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) came to be of greater significance than
the work of many of the male astronomers who considered these female
astronomers to be no more than menial assistants.
If understanding of women in science is the objective, after an
examination of the history of women at Harvard, we suggest to Dr.
Summers that he start thinking about attitudes rather than biological
differences, attitudes of men in science toward women in science, and
attitudes of university presidents who are supposed to lead forward
rather than backward.
In truth, this problem of attitudes toward women of accomplishment is
so old it feels trite. Plato, after all, that old Greek so clever with
his words, already pointed out in his time that wasting women, wasting
the intellectual capabilities of half the population, was a stupid
strategy for any society.
As always, in science or anywhere else, "old-boy" attitudes are the
attitudes of old boys.
Dan Agin
ScienceWeek

References

   17. http://olimu.com/Journalism/Texts/Commentary/SpecterOfDifference.htm
   18. http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_10_30_corner-archive.asp
   19. http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_11_06_corner-archive.asp


From HowlBloom at aol.com  Fri Jan 20 04:30:44 2006
From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom)
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 21:30:44 -0700
Subject: [Paleopsych] Fw: 
Message-ID: <200601200430.k0K4Uie09770@tick.javien.com>

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From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com  Fri Jan 20 14:25:13 2006
From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.)
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 07:25:13 -0700
Subject: [Paleopsych] Frank keeping his balance
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312202300.28612@panix3.panix.com>
References: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0512312202300.28612@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <43D0F2C9.4010402@solution-consulting.com>

Recently Frank talked about improving his sense of balance by not 
holding on while on the Metroliner during his commute. I just had a 
similar experience.

As I have gotten older, my skiing is slower and more conservative. My 
college-age boys recently created a balance board. It is a plastic pipe 
about five inches in diameter by 18 inches long, and a 5/8 plywood board 
about 1 1/2 feet by 2 1/2 feet. The purpose is to balance the board on 
the pipe, one foot on each side of the pipe. With quick back-and-forth 
movements you keep the board somewhat level. I could not do it at first, 
while my 15 year old son would balance, leap into the air, spin 180 
degrees, and land again on the board. Just trying to balance, I would 
fall sprawling and the dog would run out terrified.

I have practiced this for a couple of months, and it has improved my 
balance and fast-twitch muscles considerably. I can now balance for over 
a minute at a time.

Recently skiing with my 17 year old daughter, I was going very fast to 
try to catch up, and as the slope changed to a run-out, I was probably 
doing about 30 miles per hour. My outside edge of the less-weighted ski 
caught, shoving me forward, but for the first time in my life I was able 
to regain my form and not take one of those horrible cartwheel falls. I 
suppose it has to do withthe balance exercises I am doing.

I think Frank is onto something with his balance-improvement exercises.

Lynn

Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.
Solutions Consulting Group
166 East 5900 South, Ste. B-108
Salt Lake City, UT 84107

Tel: (801) 261-1412; Fax: (801) 288-2269

Check out our webpage: www.solution-consulting.com

Feeling upset? Order Get On The Peace Train, my new solution-oriented book on negative emotions.



From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan 20 19:00:55 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 14:00:55 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Many College Students Graduate With Low
 Proficiency in Math and Reading, Study Finds
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601201340380.11076@panix3.panix.com>

Many College Students Graduate With Low Proficiency in Math and Reading,
Study Finds
News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 6.1.20
http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/01/2006012004n.htm

[Click on the report and look at the sample questions, which are in the 
appendix. They are so simple that I would have been ashamed to have missed 
any of them when in the eighth grade, if not the sixth grade. No, before 
that. I do qualify for Mensa, but these are really, really simple 
questions. Don't think they are trick questions.

[I am frightened to think how those in the 90 IQ countries (the world 
average) cope with ordinary living. I am more frightened about the social 
effects of mass unemployment as robots take over more and more jobs of 
these people.

[Yesterday, I went to a wonderful exhibit, "Liquid Stone: New Architecture 
in Concrete," at the National Building Museum. Hurry if you are near D.C., 
for it closes on January 29, for there is much to be learned about a 
substance we take for granted. There were several excerpts from movies, 
and a few showed honest workers doing various things with concrete. I was 
thinking that these workers may not really need to be all that proficient 
in mathematics and reading to earn an honest living. (This is *skilled* 
labor, actually.)

[But what if their jobs are taken over by robots? Alas, toward the very 
end of the exhibit, there were pictures of robots doing this sort of work. 
People being more flexible than robots, concrete workers need not be 
unemployed in every area, even if most jobs in this specific area 
disappear. But as robots get better and better, the value of honest 
toilers will go down. I do have compassion for honest toilers and am 
willing to support them at the level of college students (recall my 
Double-Tullock Welfare Plan), with the proviso that they forego having 
children.

[It's not the fault of government education that causes college graduates 
even (to say nothing of skiller laborers, let along those of 90 IQ, the 
world average) to do so poorly on the test the American Institutes for 
Research gave. It's deeper than that, I am afraid.]

    [54]By SARA LIPKA

    Fewer than half of today's college students graduate with broad
    proficiency in mathematics and reading, according to a report issued
    on Thursday by the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit
    organization based in Washington.

    Still, current college graduates perform better than do previous
    graduates when it comes to reading comprehension and map or chart
    analysis, the report says. In mathematical literacy, however, they
    score only as high as their predecessors.

    Such findings spell trouble because "rapid changes in technology make
    it necessary for adults of all ages to use written information in new
    and more complex ways," the report says. Ever higher levels of
    literacy "enable individuals to keep pace with changing educational
    expectations."

    The [70]report, "The Literacy of America's College Students,"
    evaluated 1,800 graduating students at 80 two- and four-year
    institutions, 85 percent of them public.

    Students responded to written questions designed to assess three sets
    of skills: quantitative literacy, or the basic arithmetic required to
    calculate a tip or balance a checkbook; prose literacy, or reading
    comprehension; and document literacy, such as filling out a job
    application or reading a food label. Based on the students' answers,
    their skills were classified as proficient, intermediate, basic, or
    below basic.

    While fewer than half of graduating students at four-year institutions
    were rated proficient in all three categories, fewer than one-quarter
    of those at two-year institutions were scored proficient across the
    board. In quantitative literacy, 20 percent of students at four-year
    institutions and 30 percent of those at two-year institutions were at
    or below the basic level.

    Literacy levels of students at four-year public institutions were not
    significantly different from those of students at four-year private
    institutions, but there remained a gap between the skills of white and
    minority students.

    Over all, "students may not be as prepared as most of us think they
    are when they're graduating college," said St?phane Baldi, who
    directed the survey, which was financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
    "Institutions of higher education should take a good look at this," he
    said, "and ask themselves what they are teaching."

    More information about the survey, including sample questions given to
    students, is available on the [71]Web site of the American Institutes
    for Research.
      _________________________________________________________________

    Background articles from The Chronicle:
      * [72]Consensus Grows on Basic Skills That Colleges Should Teach,
        but Gauges of Those Abilities Are Poor, Report Says (11/7/2005)
      * [73]Engineering Graduates Have Improved Over the Last Decade,
        Accreditor's Study Finds (10/27/2005)
      * [74]Study Suggests a Way to Gauge College Performance on a
        State-by-State Basis, Report Says (10/13/2005)
      * [75]Colleges Face New Demands for Accountability, Conference
        Speakers Say (3/21/2005)

    Opinion:
      * [76]College Graduates Aren't Ready for the Real World (2/18/2005)
      * [77]Higher Education Isn't Meeting the Public's Needs (10/15/2004)

References

   54. mailto:sara.lipka at chronicle.com
   70. http://www.air.org/news/documents/The%20Literacy%20of%20Americas%20College%20Students_final%20report.pdf
   71. http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200601pew.htm
   72. http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/11/2005110704n.htm
   73. http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/10/2005102703n.htm
   74. http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/10/2005101307n.htm
   75. http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/03/2005032101n.htm
   76. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i24/24b01101.htm
   77. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i08/08b00601.htm

E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles.

From HowlBloom at aol.com  Fri Jan 20 22:42:56 2006
From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 17:42:56 EST
Subject: [Paleopsych] what it means to have guts
Message-ID: <d8.34e67262.3102c170@aol.com>

 
Put the following two articles together and you get this  pair of 
conclusions:   
    1.  the protein stathmin kicks fear  into high gear and   
    2.  the protein gastrin stops fear in its tracks.  
Gastrin is a protein from the intestines, a protein  involved in having a 
good meal.  So  does being well-fed stop fear?does it make you fearless?   
The folks who made up our clich?s may have been more  accurate than they knew 
when they said that people who are fearless ?have  guts.? 
By the way, I?ve been looking for the stress-handling  system in the brain 
for the last decade.  It looks as if the stathmin and gastrin system may be a 
part of it.  When I came down with Chronic Fatigue  Syndrome in 1988, my 
stress-handling system seemingly lost its inhibitory  abilities and ramped up my 
stress sensitivity beyond all imagining.  Was I overloaded with stathmin and  
stripped of gastrin? 
________ 
Retrieved November 18, 2005, from  the World Wide Web  
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8337  
Gene turn-off makes meek mice fearless  * 17:00 17  November 2005 * 
NewScientist.com news service Deactivating a specific  gene transforms meek mice into 
daredevils, researchers have found. The team  believe the research might one 
day enable people suffering from fear ? in the  form of phobias or anxiety 
disorders, for example ? to be clinically  treated. 
The  research found that mice lacking an active gene for the protein stathmin 
are not  only more courageous, but are also slower to learn fear responses to 
 pain-associated stimuli, says geneticist Gleb Shumyatsky, at Rutgers 
University  in New Jersey, US.  In the  experiments, the stathmin-lacking mice 
wandered out into the centre of an open  box, in defiance of the normal mouse 
instinct to hide along the box?s walls to  avoid potential predators.  And to  test 
learned fear, the mice were exposed to a loud sound followed by a brief  
electric shock from the floor below them. A day later, normal mice froze when  the 
sound was played again. Stathmin-lacking mice barely reacted to the sound at  
all. Neural responses  In both mice  and humans, the amygdala area of the 
brain serves as the control centre of basic  fear impulses. Stathmin is found 
almost exclusively in this and related brain  areas.  The protein is known to  
destabilise microtubule structures that help maintain the connections between  
neurons. This allows the neurons to make new connections, allowing the animal to 
 learn and process fear experiences, Shumyatsky says. Without it, the neural  
responses are stilted.  The lack of  the protein does not appear to affect 
other learning experiences, as both sets  of mice were able to memorise the 
paths out of mazes equally well. ?This is a  good sign for an eventual clinical 
application that could let people deal with  their fears in an entirely 
different way,? Shumyatsky says.  In 2002, Shumyatsky and colleagues  published a 
study on a similar gene encoding for a protein called GRP. But this  protein seems 
only to be associated with learned fear, and would therefore only  have 
clinical implications for conditions such as post-traumatic stress  disorder.  
Stathmin, on the other hand, seems to  affect both learned and innate fear, which 
could lead to treatments for a much  broader range of phobias and anxiety 
disorders, Shumyatsky says.  Journal reference: Cell (DOI:  
10.1016/j.cell.2005.08.038) Printable version Email to a friend RSS Feed Cover  of latest issue of 
New  
_________ 
Site:  ScienceDaily Magazine Page URL:  
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021213062425.htm  Original Source: Howard Hughes Medical  Institute 
Date Posted: 12/13/2002 Researchers Discover Gene That Controls  Ability To 
Learn Fear Researchers have discovered the first genetic component  of a 
biochemical pathway in the brain that governs the indelible imprinting of  fear-related 
experiences in memory.  The gene identified by researchers at  the Howard 
Hughes Medical Institute at  Columbia  University encodes a protein that  
inhibits the action of the fear-learning circuitry in the brain.  Understanding how 
this protein quells fear may lead to the design of new drugs  to treat 
depression, panic and generalized anxiety disorders.  The findings were reported in 
the  December 13, 2002 issue of the journal Cell, by a research team that 
included  Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators Eric Kandel at 
Columbia  University and Catherine Dulac at Harvard University. Lead author of the 
paper  was Gleb Shumyatsky, a postdoctoral fellow in Kandel's laboratory at  
Columbia  University. Other members of the  research team are at the National 
Institutes of Health and  Harvard  Medical  School.  According to Kandel, 
earlier studies  indicated that a specific signaling pathway controls fear-related  
learning, which takes place in a region of the brain called the  amygdala. 
"Given these preliminary analyses, we wanted to take a more  systematic approach 
to obtain a genetic perspective on learned fear," said  Kandel.  One of the 
keys to doing  these genetic analyses, Kandel said, was the development of a 
technique for  isolating and comparing the genes of individual cells, which was 
developed at  Columbia by Dulac with HHMI  investigator Richard Axel. 
Shumyatsky applied that technique, called  differential screening of single-cell cDNA 
libraries, to mouse cells to compare  the genetic activity of cells from a 
region of the amygdala called the lateral  nucleus, with cells from another region 
of the brain that is not known to be  involved in learned fear. The 
comparison revealed two candidate genes for  fear-related learning that are highly 
expressed in the amygdala.  The researchers decided to focus further  study on one 
of the genes, Grp, which encodes a short protein called  gastrin-releasing 
peptide (GRP), because they found that this protein has  an unusual distribution 
in the brain and is known to serve as a  neurotransmitter. Shumyatsky's 
analysis revealed that the Grp gene was  highly enriched in the lateral nucleus, 
and in other regions of the brain that  feed auditory inputs into the amygdala.  
"Gleb's finding that this gene was  active not only in the lateral nucleus 
but also in a number of regions that  projected into the lateral nucleus was 
interesting because it suggested that a  whole circuit was involved," said 
Kandel. Shumyatsky next showed that GRP  is expressed by excitatory principal 
neurons and that its receptor, GRPR, is  expressed by inhibitory interneurons. The 
researchers then undertook  collaborative studies with co-author Vadim 
Bolshakov at  Harvard  Medical  School to characterize cells in the  amygdala that 
expressed receptors for GRP. Those studies in mouse brain slices  revealed that 
GRP acts in the amygdala by exciting a population of inhibitory  interneurons 
in the lateral nucleus that provide feedback and inhibit the  principal 
neurons. 
The  researchers next explored whether eliminating GRP's activity could 
affect the  ability to learn fear by studying a strain of knockout mice that lacked 
the  receptor for GRP in the brain.  In behavioral experiments, they first 
trained both the knockout mice and  normal mice to associate an initially 
neutral tone with a subsequent unpleasant  electric shock. As a result of the 
training, the mouse learns that the neutral  tone now predicts danger. After the 
training, the researchers compared the  degree to which the two strains of mice 
showed fear when exposed to the same  tone alone -- by measuring the duration 
of a characteristic freezing response  that the animals exhibit when fearful.  
"When we compared the mouse strains, we saw a powerful enhancement of  learned 
fear in the knockout mice," said Kandel. Also, he said, the knockout  mice 
showed an enhancement in the learning-related cellular process known as  
long-term potentiation.  "It is  interesting that we saw no other disturbances in 
these mice," he said. "They  showed no increased pain sensitivity; nor did they 
exhibit increased instinctive  fear in other behavioral studies. So, their 
defect seemed to be quite specific  for the learned aspect of fear," he said. 
Tests of instinctive fear included  comparing how both normal and knockout mice 
behaved in mazes that exposed them  to anxiety-provoking environments such as 
open or lighted areas.  "These findings reveal a biological  basis for what had 
only been previously inferred from psychological studies --  that instinctive 
fear, chronic anxiety, is different from acquired fear," said  Kandel.  In 
additional behavioral  studies, the researchers found that the normal and 
knockout mice did not differ  in spatial learning abilities involving the 
hippocampus, but not the amygdala,  thus genetically demonstrating that these two 
anatomical structures are  different in their function.  According to Kandel, further 
understanding of the fear-learning pathway  could have important implications 
for treating anxiety disorders. "Since GRP  acts to dampen fear, it might be 
possible in principle to develop drugs that  activate the peptide, 
representing a completely new approach to treating  anxiety," he said. However, he 
emphasized, the discovery of the action of the  Grp gene is only the beginning of a 
long research effort to reveal the other  genes in the fear-learning pathway.  
More broadly, said Kandel, the fear-learning pathway might provide an  
invaluable animal model for a range of mental illnesses. "Although one would  
ultimately like to develop mouse models for various mental illnesses such as  
schizophrenia and depression, this is very hard to do because we know very  little 
about the biological foundations of most forms of mental illness," he  said. 
"However, we do know something about the neuroanatomical substrates of  anxiety 
states, including both chronic fear and acute fear. We know they are  centered 
in the amygdala.  "And  while I don't want to overstate the case, in studies 
of fear learning we could  well have an excellent beginning for animal models 
of a severe mental illness.  We already knew quite a lot about the neural 
pathways in the brain that are  involved in fear learning. And now, we have a way 
to understand the genetic and  biochemical mechanisms underlying those 
pathways."  Editor's Note: The original news release  can be found here.  Note: This 
story  has been adapted from a news release issued for journalists and other 
members of  the public. If you wish to quote from any part of this story, 
please credit  Howard Hughes Medical Institute as the original source.   


----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A  Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History and Global Brain: The Evolution  of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 
21st Century
Recent Visiting  Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; 
Core Faculty  Member, The Graduate  Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder:  International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic 
of Evolution  Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The 
Big Bang Tango  Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American 
Association for the  Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, 
Academy of Political  Science, Advanced Technology Working Group, Human Behavior 
and Evolution  Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory 
board member:  Institute for Accelerating Change ; executive editor -- New 
Paradigm book  series.
For a peek into the ultimate cross-disciplinary field, Omnology, see  
http://bigbangtango.net/website/omnology.html
For information on The  International Paleopsychology Project, see: 
www.paleopsych.org
for two  chapters from 
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces  of History, 
see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain:  The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big 
Bang to the 21st Century, see  www.howardbloom.net

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From kendulf at shaw.ca  Sat Jan 21 00:10:53 2006
From: kendulf at shaw.ca (Val Geist)
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:10:53 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] what it means to have guts
References: <d8.34e67262.3102c170@aol.com>
Message-ID: <011901c61e1f$25206fa0$c83e4346@yourjqn2mvdn7x>

Dear Howard,

Here is another connection: luxury phenotypes which grow and develop due to the ingestion of high levels of high quality food (high gastrin?), during the ontogeny are - fearless! It is the poorly fed efficiency phenotypes (low gastrin?) that are quickly intimidated by almost anything. The fearless phenotype test and test and test (brain growth galore!) while the fearful phenotypes shrink into inactivity (little brain stimulation). Ergo the differences in brain size between the two phenotypes. Also, dispersal phenotypes are not discouraged by pain. The way I thought of previously is that the dispersal phenotype was insensitive to both "pleasure" or "pain". Consequently, it displayed the observed high level of appetitive behavior.

I bet gastrin secretion is related to protein intake and digestion in the gut!

Cheers, Val Geist
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: HowlBloom at aol.com 
  To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org 
  Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 2:42 PM
  Subject: [Paleopsych] what it means to have guts


  Put the following two articles together and you get this pair of conclusions:  

   

    1.. the protein stathmin kicks fear  into high gear and 
    2.. the protein gastrin stops fear in its tracks. 
   

  Gastrin is a protein from the intestines, a protein involved in having a good meal.  So does being well-fed stop fear?does it make you fearless?  

   

  The folks who made up our clich?s may have been more accurate than they knew when they said that people who are fearless ?have guts.?

   

  By the way, I?ve been looking for the stress-handling system in the brain for the last decade.  It looks as if the stathmin and gastrin system may be a part of it.  When I came down with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 1988, my stress-handling system seemingly lost its inhibitory abilities and ramped up my stress sensitivity beyond all imagining.  Was I overloaded with stathmin and stripped of gastrin?

  ________

  Retrieved November 18, 2005, from the World Wide Web  http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8337 

  Gene turn-off makes meek mice fearless  * 17:00 17 November 2005 * NewScientist.com news service Deactivating a specific gene transforms meek mice into daredevils, researchers have found. The team believe the research might one day enable people suffering from fear ? in the form of phobias or anxiety disorders, for example ? to be clinically treated.

    The research found that mice lacking an active gene for the protein stathmin are not only more courageous, but are also slower to learn fear responses to pain-associated stimuli, says geneticist Gleb Shumyatsky, at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.  In the experiments, the stathmin-lacking mice wandered out into the centre of an open box, in defiance of the normal mouse instinct to hide along the box?s walls to avoid potential predators.  And to test learned fear, the mice were exposed to a loud sound followed by a brief electric shock from the floor below them. A day later, normal mice froze when the sound was played again. Stathmin-lacking mice barely reacted to the sound at all. Neural responses  In both mice and humans, the amygdala area of the brain serves as the control centre of basic fear impulses. Stathmin is found almost exclusively in this and related brain areas.  The protein is known to destabilise microtubule structures that help maintain the connections between neurons. This allows the neurons to make new connections, allowing the animal to learn and process fear experiences, Shumyatsky says. Without it, the neural responses are stilted.  The lack of the protein does not appear to affect other learning experiences, as both sets of mice were able to memorise the paths out of mazes equally well. ?This is a good sign for an eventual clinical application that could let people deal with their fears in an entirely different way,? Shumyatsky says.  In 2002, Shumyatsky and colleagues published a study on a similar gene encoding for a protein called GRP. But this protein seems only to be associated with learned fear, and would therefore only have clinical implications for conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder.  Stathmin, on the other hand, seems to affect both learned and innate fear, which could lead to treatments for a much broader range of phobias and anxiety disorders, Shumyatsky says.  Journal reference: Cell (DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2005.08.038) Printable version Email to a friend RSS Feed Cover of latest issue of New 

   

  _________

  Site:  ScienceDaily Magazine Page URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021213062425.htm  Original Source: Howard Hughes Medical Institute Date Posted: 12/13/2002 Researchers Discover Gene That Controls Ability To Learn Fear Researchers have discovered the first genetic component of a biochemical pathway in the brain that governs the indelible imprinting of fear-related experiences in memory.  The gene identified by researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University encodes a protein that inhibits the action of the fear-learning circuitry in the brain. Understanding how this protein quells fear may lead to the design of new drugs to treat depression, panic and generalized anxiety disorders.  The findings were reported in the December 13, 2002 issue of the journal Cell, by a research team that included Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators Eric Kandel at Columbia University and Catherine Dulac at Harvard University. Lead author of the paper was Gleb Shumyatsky, a postdoctoral fellow in Kandel's laboratory at Columbia University. Other members of the research team are at the National Institutes of Health and Harvard Medical School.  According to Kandel, earlier studies indicated that a specific signaling pathway controls fear-related learning, which takes place in a region of the brain called the amygdala. "Given these preliminary analyses, we wanted to take a more systematic approach to obtain a genetic perspective on learned fear," said Kandel.  One of the keys to doing these genetic analyses, Kandel said, was the development of a technique for isolating and comparing the genes of individual cells, which was developed at Columbia by Dulac with HHMI investigator Richard Axel. Shumyatsky applied that technique, called differential screening of single-cell cDNA libraries, to mouse cells to compare the genetic activity of cells from a region of the amygdala called the lateral nucleus, with cells from another region of the brain that is not known to be involved in learned fear. The comparison revealed two candidate genes for fear-related learning that are highly expressed in the amygdala.  The researchers decided to focus further study on one of the genes, Grp, which encodes a short protein called gastrin-releasing peptide (GRP), because they found that this protein has an unusual distribution in the brain and is known to serve as a neurotransmitter. Shumyatsky's analysis revealed that the Grp gene was highly enriched in the lateral nucleus, and in other regions of the brain that feed auditory inputs into the amygdala.  "Gleb's finding that this gene was active not only in the lateral nucleus but also in a number of regions that projected into the lateral nucleus was interesting because it suggested that a whole circuit was involved," said Kandel. Shumyatsky next showed that GRP is expressed by excitatory principal neurons and that its receptor, GRPR, is expressed by inhibitory interneurons. The researchers then undertook collaborative studies with co-author Vadim Bolshakov at Harvard Medical School to characterize cells in the amygdala that expressed receptors for GRP. Those studies in mouse brain slices revealed that GRP acts in the amygdala by exciting a population of inhibitory interneurons in the lateral nucleus that provide feedback and inhibit the principal neurons.

    The researchers next explored whether eliminating GRP's activity could affect the ability to learn fear by studying a strain of knockout mice that lacked the receptor for GRP in the brain.  In behavioral experiments, they first trained both the knockout mice and normal mice to associate an initially neutral tone with a subsequent unpleasant electric shock. As a result of the training, the mouse learns that the neutral tone now predicts danger. After the training, the researchers compared the degree to which the two strains of mice showed fear when exposed to the same tone alone -- by measuring the duration of a characteristic freezing response that the animals exhibit when fearful.  "When we compared the mouse strains, we saw a powerful enhancement of learned fear in the knockout mice," said Kandel. Also, he said, the knockout mice showed an enhancement in the learning-related cellular process known as long-term potentiation.  "It is interesting that we saw no other disturbances in these mice," he said. "They showed no increased pain sensitivity; nor did they exhibit increased instinctive fear in other behavioral studies. So, their defect seemed to be quite specific for the learned aspect of fear," he said. Tests of instinctive fear included comparing how both normal and knockout mice behaved in mazes that exposed them to anxiety-provoking environments such as open or lighted areas.  "These findings reveal a biological basis for what had only been previously inferred from psychological studies -- that instinctive fear, chronic anxiety, is different from acquired fear," said Kandel.  In additional behavioral studies, the researchers found that the normal and knockout mice did not differ in spatial learning abilities involving the hippocampus, but not the amygdala, thus genetically demonstrating that these two anatomical structures are different in their function.  According to Kandel, further understanding of the fear-learning pathway could have important implications for treating anxiety disorders. "Since GRP acts to dampen fear, it might be possible in principle to develop drugs that activate the peptide, representing a completely new approach to treating anxiety," he said. However, he emphasized, the discovery of the action of the Grp gene is only the beginning of a long research effort to reveal the other genes in the fear-learning pathway.  More broadly, said Kandel, the fear-learning pathway might provide an invaluable animal model for a range of mental illnesses. "Although one would ultimately like to develop mouse models for various mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression, this is very hard to do because we know very little about the biological foundations of most forms of mental illness," he said. "However, we do know something about the neuroanatomical substrates of anxiety states, including both chronic fear and acute fear. We know they are centered in the amygdala.  "And while I don't want to overstate the case, in studies of fear learning we could well have an excellent beginning for animal models of a severe mental illness. We already knew quite a lot about the neural pathways in the brain that are involved in fear learning. And now, we have a way to understand the genetic and biochemical mechanisms underlying those pathways."  Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here.  Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote from any part of this story, please credit Howard Hughes Medical Institute as the original source.  

   


  ----------
  Howard Bloom
  Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century
  Recent Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
  www.howardbloom.net
  www.bigbangtango.net
  Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Advanced Technology Working Group, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Institute for Accelerating Change ; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.
  For a peek into the ultimate cross-disciplinary field, Omnology, see http://bigbangtango.net/website/omnology.html
  For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org
  for two chapters from 
  The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
  For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net



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From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 21 01:06:11 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 20:06:11 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Vernon L. Smith: Constructivist and Ecological
 Rationality in Economics
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601021200440.3109@panix3.panix.com>

Vernon L. Smith: Constructivist and Ecological Rationality in Economics
The American Economic Review, 2003 June, pp. 465-508

[This article is a fabulous one. It brings together the concepts of 
Friedrich Hayek and his notion of dispersed knowledge, the separate 
concepts of rationality in the classical SSSM (Standard Socioeconomic 
Science Model, which is NOT the SSSM (Standard Social Science Model, with 
its avoidance of Darwin, whose collapse last year I reported) and the 
rationality of brains with shaply limited abilities to know and to 
calculate, experimental economics (the work in which garnered Smith the 
Nobel Prize in economics), game theory, and neurobiology.

[Read it as closely as you wish, though it assumes a fairly high level of 
understanding of work in game theory and economics. The talk itself is 
given at http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/2002/smith-lecture.pdf 
and appears to be shorter that what you see below. I tried mightily to 
modify the output of Adobe's PDF --> TXT converter of the American 
Economic Review article to something more readable. If you'd like the AER 
PDF, send me an e-mail.]

This article is a revised version of the lecture Vernon L. Smith delivered 
in Stockholm, Sweden, on December 8, 2002, when he received the Bankof 
Sweden Prize in Eco?nomic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

The title was suggestedto the author in the paper by Joel Norman, "Two 
Visual Systems and Two Theories of Per?ception: An Attempt to Reconcile 
the Constructivist and Ecological Approaches" (Behavioral and Brain 
Sciences, 2002). After .nishing this paper I found that my use of the term 
below had been used byGerd Gigerenzer et al. (1999), for application to 
"fast and frugal decision making," by individuals: "A heuristic is 
ecologically rational to the de?gree thatitis adapted to the structure 
ofan environment" (p. 13). Hayek, in the citations below, identi. es both 
kinds of rationality.

* Department of Economics and Law, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic 
Science, George Mason University, 4400 UniversityDrive, MSN 1B2, Fairfax, 
VA 22030. Doing experimental economics has changed the way I thinkabout 
economics. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most prominent 
is that designing and conducting experi?ments forces you to think through 
the process rules and procedures of an institution. Few, like Einstein, 
can perform detailed and imaginative mental experiments. Most of us need 
the challenge of real experiments to discipline our thinking. In this 
paper I hope to indicate how my thinking has been changed in some detail. 
Iam indebted to Sid Siegel for technical and conceptual inspiration; to 
John Hughes, Stan Reiter, andthe Purdue Universityfacultyfrom 1955 to 1967 
for warm, tolerant support beginning with my .rst experiment; to Charles 
Plott, Charles Holt, and Martin Shu?bik for many valuable encounters over 
the years on institu?tional and experimental issues; to students, 
visitors, the current ICES team, and especially to my growing but 
tol?erating family who have made all these years the best years of my 
life.

When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs oflife, 
(reason's) con?clusions seem to vanish, like the phan?toms ofthe nighton 
the appearance of the morning;and 'tis dif. cult for us to retain even 
that conviction, which we had at?tained with dif.culty... (David Hume, 
1739, 1985, p. 507).

... we must constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts and our emotions, in 
order to live simultaneouslywithin different kinds of orders according to 
different rules. If we were to apply the unmodi.ed, un?curbed rules 
(ofcaring intervention to do visible "good") of the ... small band or 
troop, or ... our families ... to the (ex?tendedorder of cooperation 
throughmar?kets), as our instincts and sentimental yearnings often make us 
wish to do, we would destroy it. Yet ifwe were to always apply the 
(competitive) rules of the ex?tendedorder to our more intimate group?ings, 
we would crush them (Friedrich A. Hayek, 1988, p. 18; italics are his, 
paren?thetical reductions are mine).

We have become accustomed to the idea that a naturalsystem like the human 
body or an ecosystem regulates itself. To ex?plain the regulation, we 
lookfor feedback loops rather than a centralplanningand directing body. 
But somehow our intui?tions about self?regulation do not carry over to the 
arti. cial systems of human society. (Thus) ... the ... disbelief always 
expressed by (my) architecture students (about)... medieval cities as 
marvelously patterned systems that had mostly just "grown" in response to 
myriads of indi?vidualdecisions. To my studentsa pattern implieda planner 
... . The idea that a city could acquire its pattern as "naturally" as a 
snow. ake was foreign to them (Herbert Alexander Simon, 1981, 1996, p. 
33).

Historically, a recurrent theme in economics is that the values to which 
people respond are notcon.ned to thoseone wouldexpectbasedon the narrowly 
de.ned canons of rationality. These roots go back to Adam Smith (1759, 
1776), who examined the moralsympathiesthat characterize natural human 
sociality.1Contrary to vulgar impressions, in Smith?s view, each 
indi?vidual de. ned and pursued his own interest in his own way, and 
individuals were mischaracterized

1 Economistsare largelyuntouched by Smith?s .rst great work, which was 
eclipsed by the Wealthof Nations. Thus, one of the profession?s best?known 
historian of economic thought, "found these two works in some measure 
basically inconsistent" (Jacob Viner, 1991, p. 250). For a contrary 
interpretation seeSmith (1998). Many of the references herein to my own 
andcoauthored work have been reprinted in Smith (1991, 2000).

by the metaphor, "economic man." (cf., Hayek, 1991, p. 120). This careless 
scholarship fails to recognize the key proposition articulated by the 
Scottish philosophers: to do good for others, does not require deliberate 
action to further the perceived interest ofothers. As Mandeville so 
succinctlyput it, "The worst of all the multitude did something for the 
common good." (See Mandeville?s poem, "The Grumbling Hive" or "Knaves 
Turned Honest," 1705; quoted in Hayek, 1991, p. 82.) Manycontemporary 
schol?ars, and not only popular writers, have reversed Mandeville?s 
proposition, and argued that the standard socioeconomic science model 
(SSSM) requires,justi.es, and promotes sel.sh behav?ior.2On the contrary, 
because enforceable rights can never cover every margin of decision, 
op?portunism in all relational contracting and ex?change across time are 
costs, not bene.ts, in achievinglong?term value from trade;an ideol?ogy of 
honesty3 means that people play the game of "trade," rather than "steal," 
although crime may often pay the rational lawbreaker who always chooses 
dominant strategies. Nor does nonsel. sh behavior in ordinary market 
transactions prevent those transactions from promoting specialization and 
creating wealth.

Cultures that have evolved markets have enor?mously expandedresource 
specialization, created commensurate gains from exchange, and are 
wealthier than those that have not. This proposi?tion says nothing about 
the necessity of human sel. shness--the increased wealth of particular 
in?dividuals can be used for consumption, invest?ment, to pay taxes, for 
Macarthur Fellows, gifted to the symphony, the Smithsonian, or the poor.4

2 That A implies B in no sense allows the reverse state?ment. But why 
would we economists confuse necessary with suf. cient conditions?The 
textfrom Hume provides the answer. No one can consistentlyapplyrational 
logical prin?ciples to everything he or she does; if there are cognitive 
costs in every application then the effort cost will often exceed the 
bene. ts (Smith and Ferenc Szidarovszky, 2003). Theorists live by 
provingtheorems, and when in this mode we rarely make such errors. A 
missingchapter in the study of bounded rationality is its application to 
understanding, and accepting with a little humility, the severe 
limitations it imposes on our developmentof economic theory.

3 Douglass Cecil North (1981) has emphasized the im?portance of ideology 
in promoting economic growth. 4In the Potlatch, some wealth-- created in 
part by pri?vate property rights in .shing grounds--was publicly 
de?stroyed. Markets economize on the need for virtue, but do not eliminate 
it.

Researchin economic psychology5has prom?inently reported examples where 
"fairness" considerations are said to contradict the ratio?nality 
assumptions of the standardsocioeconomic science model. But 
experimentaleconomists have reported mixed results on rationality: people 
are often better (e.g., in two?person anonymous inter?actions), in 
agreement with (e.g., in .ow supply and demand markets), or worse (e.g., 
in asset trading), in achieving gains for themselves and others than is 
predicted by rational analysis. Pat?terns in these contradictions and con. 
rmations provide important clues to the implicit rules or norms that 
people may follow, and can motivate new theoretical hypotheses for 
examination in both the .eld and the laboratory. The pattern of results 
greatly modi.es the prevailing, and I be?lieve misguided, rational SSSM, 
and richly modernizes the unadulterated message of the Scottish 
philosophers.

I. On Two Forms of Rationality

The organizing principle throughout this pa?per is the simultaneous 
existence of two rational orders. I shall try to make the case that both 
orders are distinguishingcharacteristics of what we are as 
socialcreatures; that both are essential to understanding and unifying a 
large body of experience from socioeconomic life and the ex?perimental 
laboratory, and in charting relevant new directions for economic theory as 
well as experimental?empirical programs.

A. Constructivist Rationality

The .rst concept of a rational order derives from the SSSM going back to 
the seventeenth century. The SSSM is an example of what Hayek has called 
constructivist rationality (or "constructivism"), which stems particularly

5I will use the term "economic psychology" generally to refer to cognitive 
psychology as it has been applied to economic questions, and to a third 
sub.eld of experimental methods in economics recently 
product?differentiated as "behavioral economics" (Sendhil Mullainathan and 
Richard H. Thaler, 2001), and further differentiated into "behavioral game 
theory" (Colin F. Camerer, 2002); the original foun?dations were laid byW. 
Edwards, DannyKahneman, Anatol Rapoport, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky to 
name some of the most prominent.

from Descartes (also Bacon and Hobbes),6 who believed and argued that all 
worthwhile social institutions were and should be created bycon?scious 
deductiveprocesses of human reason.7In economics the SSSM leads to 
rational predic?tive models of decision that motivate research hypotheses 
thatexperimentalists have been test?ing in the laboratory since the 
mid?twentieth century. Although the test results tend to be con.rming in 
impersonal market exchange, the results are famously and recalcitrantly 
mixedin "personal exchange," notably in a great variety of two?person 
extensive?form games where some half of the people attempt and frequently 
succeed when risking cooperation, even when anonymously paired.8These 
results have moti?vated constructivist extensions of game theory based on 
other?regarding, in addition to own?regarding, preferences (e.g., Gary E 
Bolton, 1991; Matthew Rabin, 1993), and on "learning"--the idea that the 
predictions of the SSSM might be approached over time by trial?and?error 
adaptation processes (Ido Erev and

6 In the nineteenth century, Bentham and John Stuart Mill were among the 
leading constructivists. Bentham (and the utilitarians) sought to "... 
remake the whole of... (Brit?ish) ... law and institutions on rational 
principles" (Hayek, 1960, p. 174). Mill introduced the much?abused 
construc?tivist concept of(but not the name)"natural monopoly." To Mill it 
was transparently wasteful and duplicative to have two or more mail 
carriers operating on the same route. He is the intellectual father of the 
U.S. and other postal mo?nopolies around the world, their resistance to 
innovation, and their demise in the face of the privatization movement in 
some countries and the growth of superior substitutes in others. Mill 
could not imagine that it would be ef.cient for two cities to be connected 
by two parallel railroad tracks (Mill, 1899, Vol. 1, pp. 131, 141- 42; 
Vol. 2, p. 463). Mill died in 1873. I would conjecture that by that date, 
or soon thereafter, men with grade?school educations had become rich 
constructing the .rst parallel?route railroads. These emergent 
contradictions to constructivist natural monopoly are examples ofwhat we 
shall call ecological rationality, as detailed below.

7 "... Descartes contended that all the useful human in?stitutions were 
and ought to be deliberate creation(s) of conscious reason ... a capacity 
of the mind to arrive at the truth by a deductive process from a few 
obvious and un?doubtable premises" (Hayek, 1967, p. 85).

8 Behavioral economists have made a cottage industry of showing that the 
SSSM assumptions seem to apply almost nowhere to real decisions. This is 
because their research program has been a deliberate search in the tails 
of distri?butions for "Identifyingthe ways in which behavior differs from 
the standard model ..." (Mullainathan and Thaler, 2001, Vol. II, p. 1094), 
a search that can only succeed. Alvin E. Roth, 1998; Camerer and Teck?Hua 
Ho, 1999).

An alternative and perhaps complimentary explanation of some of these 
contradictions to theory is that people may use social?grown norms of 
trust and reciprocity9 (including eq?uity, meaning to each according to 
his justly earned dessert; i.e., equality ofopportunity, not outcome)to 
achieve cooperative states superior to individuallyrational defection 
outcomes. We will report some experimental tests designedto separate 
competing preference and reciprocity theories of behavior in personal 
exchange. Al?though reciprocity seems to be a leader in the comparisons we 
summarize, its strength is not uniform across alltests, andmuch remains to 
be learned aboutthe hidden recesses ofmeaningin human behaviorandthe 
circumstances in which cooperative or noncooperativebehavior is 
man?ifest.10Technically, the issue is how most pro?ductively to model 
agent "types" byextending game theory so that types are an integral part 
of its predictive content, rather than merely im?ported as an ex post 
technical explanation of experimental results. For example, moves can 
signal types, andeffect decision,which explains why game form matters, 
andwhy payoffs avail?able, but forgone, can effect outcomes. These 
elements must be part ofthe internal structure of the theory such that 
outcomes become predic?tions conditional on the elementarycharacteris?tics 
of players who read each other?s intentions. If successful, many of the 
basic results in game

9 Dissatis.ed with the utilitarian approach because its predictions fail 
to account for the observed importance of instructions/procedures, we 
began investigating the reci?procity hypothesis in Elizabeth Hoffman et 
al. (1994). Me?chanically, utilities can serve as intermediate 
placeholders for reciprocal trust, but, as surface indicators, serve 
poorly to generate new hypotheses designed to understandinterac?tive 
processes. Good theory must be an engine for generat?ing testable 
hypotheses, and utility theory runs outof fuel quickly. Utility values are 
seen as providing the ultimate "given" data, and the conversation stops.

10I am reminded of a department head from Hewlett?Packard visitingour lab. 
Inaively assumed that he would be most interested in demonstrations of 
some of our market experiments. Not so. He was more interested in the 
"trust" experiments. Why?He saw the HP management problem as one 
ofgettingteams to cooperate internallyby buildingtrust and 
trustworthiness, while being vigorous competitors ex?ternally. Could the 
trust games serve as a measurement and teaching tool for helpingto solve 
this problem? This nicely illustrates the tension in Hayek?s two?worlds 
quote in the text. theory would become special cases of the ex?tended 
theory.

In market experiments--where cooperation can occur through the 
coordination function of prices produced by, but simultaneously result?ing 
from, interaction with individual choice behavior--the results are more 
commonly in accord with standard competitive models that maximize group 
welfare. This professionalvic?tory is hollowed by the failure of standard 
the?ory to predict the "surprisingly"11 weak conditions under which the 
results obtain.12 Thus, for tractability, Cartesian rationalism 
provisionally assumes or "requires" agents to possess complete payoff and 
other information-- far more than could ever be given to one mind. In 
economics the resulting exercises are be?lieved to sharpen economic 
thinking, as if-then parables. Yet, these assumptions are unlikelyto 
approximate the levelofignorance thathas con?ditioned either individual 
behavior, or our evolved institutions, as abstract norms or rules 
independent of particular parameters, which have survived as part of the 
world of experi?ence.13 The temptation is to ignore this reality because 
it is poorly understood, and does not yieldto our familiar but inadequate 
modeling tools, and to proceed in the implicit belief that our parables 
capture what is most essential

11Robert B. Wilson (1992, p. 256)discusses an ef. ?ciency theorem, and 
suggests that the phenomenon is "per?haps unsurprising." It is, nowadays, 
but few believe it; also, theory has lagged well behind the evidence, and 
yields inadequate testable insight into the process dynamics oper?ating in 
different institutions.

12I want to acknowledge correspondence with Charles Plott andaddthe 
following:Althoughthis is a giant victory for the economic theory of 
markets it simultaneously dem?onstrates that the theory is incomplete. The 
unexpectedly weak conditions under which the results obtain are good news 
for market performance, but not such good news for the scienti. c 
community because itdemonstrates that we do not understand why markets 
work as they do. You do not have to have large numbers of agents, each an 
insigni. cant part ofthe whole--three or four buyers andas manysellers are 
entirely adequate in a wide range of economic environ?ments; they do not 
have to have complete or perfect or common information--each can have only 
private informa?tion; nor is it required that individuals make decisions 
systematically or be economically sophisticated.

13Throughout the paper I will use "environment" to mean the collection of 
agentvalues (preferences) that de.ne the gains from trade; "institution" 
to refer to the language (messages), rules of message exchange, and 
contract in a market; and "behavior" for agent message choices 
condi?tional on the environment and institution (Smith, 1982).

about what we observe. Having sharpened our understanding on Cartesian 
complete informa?tion parables we carry these tools into the world for 
applicationwithoutall the necessary caveats that re. ect the tractability 
constraints imposed by our bounded professional cognitive capaci?ties as 
theorists.

In summary, constructivism uses reason to deliberately create rules of 
action, and create human socioeconomic institutions that yield outcomes 
deemed preferable, given particular circumstances, to those producedby 
alternative arrangements. Although constructivism is one of the crowning 
achievements of the human intellect, it is important to remain sensitive 
to the fact that human institutions and most deci?sion makingis not guided 
primarily, ifat all, by constructivism. Emergent arrangements, even if 
initially constructivist in form, must have sur?vival properties that take 
accountofopportunity costs and environmentalchallenges invisible to our 
modeling efforts.

B. Limitations and Distractions of Constructivist Rationality

Since our theories and thought processes about social systems involve the 
conscious and deliberate use of reason, it is necessary to con?stantly 
remindourselves that human activity is diffused and dominated by 
unconscious, auto?nomic, neuropsychologicalsystems that enable people to 
function effectively without always calling upon the brain?s scarcest 
resource-- attentional and reasoning circuitry. This is an important 
economizing property of how the brain works. If it were otherwise, no one 
could get through the day under the burden of the self?conscious 
monitoring and planning of ev?ery trivial action in detail.14 Also, no one 
can express in thoughts, let alone words, all that he or she knows, 
anddoes not know but might call upon, or need to discover, for some 
purposive action. Imagine the strain on the brain?s re?sources if at the 
supermarket a shopper were required to explicitly evaluate his preferences 
for every combination of the tens of thousands of grocery items that are 
feasible for a given

14 "If we stopped doing everythingfor which we do not know the reason, or 
for which we cannot provide ajusti. ?cation ... we would probably soon be 
dead" (Hayek, 1988, p. 68).

budget. Such mental processes are enormously opportunity?costly and 
implicitly our brain knows, if our conscious mind does not know, that we 
must avoid incurring opportunity costs that are not worth the bene. t.15 
The challenge ofanyunfamiliar action or problemappears .rst to trigger a 
search bythe brain to bring to the conscious mind what one knows that is 
related to the decision context. Context triggers auto?biographic 
experiential memory, which ex?plains why context surfaces as a nontrivial 
treatment, particularly in small group experi?ments. The brain (including 
the entire neuro?physiological system) takes over directly in the case of 
familiar, mastered tasks, and plays the equivalent of lightening chess 
when the "ex?pert" trades, plays Beethoven?s Fifthpiano con?certo, or 
connects with a 95?mile/hour fastball--all without self?aware "thinking" 
by the mind.

We fail utterly to possess natural mechanisms for reminding ourselves of 
the brain?s off?line activities and accomplishments. This important 
proposition has led Michael S. Gazzaniga (1998)to askwhy the brain fools 
the mind into believing it is in control.16 Andto Hayek, who

15Expected utility theory is for teaching (as Wassily Leontief once 
suggested), but also for the constructivist modeling of consistent choice. 
It seems inadequate for the prediction, or the ecological understanding, 
ofbehavior. Its inadequacy for prediction has been plainly emphasized in 
the many contributions of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kah?neman (see their 
1987 paper for an excellent summary statement), some of which have been 
quali. ed and reinter?preted in the work of Gigerenzer et al. (1999). The 
results are far more encouraging in the context of markets, where subjects 
are not consciously maximizing. See, e.g., Smith (1991, 2000)and Plott 
(2001). Joyce Berg et al. (1994), in a signi. cant paper, .nd that the 
measurement of risk aver?sion varies with the type of market institution 
or procedure used in extracting risk measures from decisions. See Smith 
and Szidarovszky (2003) for a constructivist utilitarian treatmentof 
decision whose reward outcome requires cog?nitive costs to be incurred: 
objective rationality is not sub?jectively rational, and therefore it is 
not optimal for the individualto apply the objectively "optimal" 
prescriptions.

16 "By the time we thinkwe know something--it is part ofour conscious 
experience--the brain has already done its work. It is old news to the 
brain, but fresh to ?us.? Systems built into the brain do their work 
automatically and largely outside ofour conscious awareness. The brain 
.nishes the work half a second before the information it processes reaches 
our consciousness. ... We are clueless about how all this works and gets 
effected. We don?t plan or articulate these actions. We simply observe the 
output. ... The brain begins to cover for this ?done deal? aspect ofits 
functioning thoroughly understood this proposition, what was the "fatal 
conceit"? "The idea that the abil?ity to acquire skills stems from 
reason." The constructivist mindmakes a fatal "error," blind?ing itself to 
understanding, as we are warned, "one should never suppose that our reason 
is in the higher critical position andthatonly those moral rules are valid 
that reason endorses" (Hayek, 1988, p. 21). But the anthropocentric 
(?morphic) mind routinely makes this signi. ?cant error.

Most ofour operating knowledge17 we do not remember learning. Natural 
language is the most prominent example, but also music and virtually 
everything that constitutes our devel?opmentalsocialization. We learn the 
rules ofa language and of ef. cient social intercourse, 
withoutexplicitinstruction, simply byexposure to family and extended 
family social networks (Jerome Kagan and Sharon Lamb, 1987; Alan Page 
Fiske, 1991;Kagan, 1994;Steven Pinker, 1994). That the brain is capable of 
off?line subconscious learning is shown by experiments withamnesiacs who 
are taught a new task. They learn to perform well, but memory of having 
learned the task escapes them (Barbara J. Knowlton et al., 1996).

C. Ecological Rationality

These considerations lead to the secondcon?cept of a rational order, as an 
undesigned eco?logical system that emerges out of cultural and biological 
evolutionary18 processes: homegrown

by creating in us the illusion that the events we are experi?encingare 
happeningin real time--notbefore our conscious experience ofdeciding to do 
something" (Gazzaniga, 1998, pp. 63-64).

17 Hayek (1967, p. 44) notes that "... modern English usage does not 
permit generallyto employthe verb ?can? (in the sense of the German 
konnen) to describe all those instances in which an individualmerely 
?knows how? to do a thing... (including)... the capacity to act according 
to rules which we may be able to discover but which we need not be able to 
state in order to obey them."

18Manyrecognize that evolutionary processes are nec?essarily 
coevolutionary,butthere is also deep denial of this, and bias, that all is 
due to "culture" (which is even more poorly understood than biology), 
leading Pinker (2002)to investigate why. Heritable abstract function can 
become dormant, atrophied, or malfunctional in the absence of 
ini?tializing input on a developmental time schedule for the brain?s 
vision, language, and socialization circuitry. That these processes are 
coevolutionary is evidentin the study of twins (Nancy L. Segal, 1999). 
Deconstructivist reports ar?gue that these studies exhibit many of the 
usual data and statistical identi.cation problems (Arthur S. Goldberger, 
1979), but the need is for positive revisionist analysis.

principlesofaction, norms, traditions, and"mo?rality."19 Ecological 
rationality uses reason-- rationalreconstruction--to examine the behavior 
of individuals based on their experience and folkknowledge, who are 
"naive" in their ability to apply constructivist tools to the decisions 
they make;to understandthe emergentorder in human cultures; to discover 
the possible intel?ligence embodiedin the rules, norms, and insti?tutions 
of our cultural and biological heritage that are createdfrom human 
interactions but not bydeliberatehuman design. People follow rules without 
being able to articulate them, but they can be discovered. This is the 
intellectualheri?tage ofthe Scottish philosophers, who described and 
interpreted the social and economic order they observed.

An eighteenth?century precursor of Herbert Simon, David Hume was concerned 
with the limits of reason, the bounds on human under?standing, and with 
scalingbackthe exaggerated claims of Cartesian constructivism. To Hume, 
rationality was phenomena that reason discov?ers in emergent institutions. 
Thus, "the rules of morality... are not conclusions of(our) reason." 
(Hume, 1985, p. 235). Adam Smith developed the idea ofemergent order for 
economics. Truth is discovered in the form of the intelligence embodied in 
rules and traditions that have formed, inscrutably, outofthe 
ancienthistory of human social interactions. This is the antithesis of the 
anthropocentric beliefthat ifan observed social mechanism is functional, 
somebody in the unrecordedpast must have used reason con?

19 "Morality" refers to any maxim of cohesive social behavior that 
survives the test of time, and is prominently represented by the great 
"shalt not" prohibitions of the leading world religions: thou shalt not: 
(1) steal, (2) covet the possessions of others, commit (3)murder, (4) 
adultery, or (5) bear false witness. The .rst two de.ne and defend 
property rights in the product of one?s labor, and all re?sources 
accumulated bysuch labor, enabling the emergence of the extended order of 
mind through markets. The last three commandments protect the sanctity of 
social exchange--the external order of the mind. These modest exclusionary 
constraints leave an immense scope for free?dom within their bounds. 
Corollaries, like the Buddhist live?and?let?live version of the golden 
rule, are explicit in this respect:"do not unto others as you would have 
them not do unto you." sciously to create it to serve its perceived 
in?tended purposes.20

In experimental economics the eighteenth?century Scottish tradition is 
revealed in the ob?servation ofemergent order in numerous studies of 
existing market institutions such as the con?tinuous double auction 
(CDA).21To paraphrase Adam Smith, people in these experiments are led to 
promote group welfare?enhancing social ends that are not part of their 
intention. This principle is supported by hundreds of experi?ments whose 
environments and institutions (sealed bid, posted offer, and others 
besides CDA) may exceed the capacity offormalgame?theoretic analysis to 
articulate predictive mod?els. But they do not exceed the functional 
capacity of collectives of incompletely in?formed human decision makers, 
whose auto?nomic mental algorithms coordinate behavior through the rules 
of the institution--social algorithms--to generate high levels of 
mea?sured performance.

Acknowledging and investigating the work?ings of unseen processes are 
essential to the 20In cultural and biological evolution, order arises from 
mechanisms for generating variation to which is applied mechanisms for 
selection. I am indebted to Todd Zywicki, who, at a recent Liberty Fund 
conference on "Hayek, Ex?periment and Freedom," observed that reason is 
good at providing variation, but not selection. Constructivism is indeed 
an engine for generating variation, but is far too limited in its ability 
to comprehend and apply all the rele?vant facts to serve the process of 
selection, which is better left to ecological processes. 21What 
experimentalists have unintentionally brought to the table is a 
methodology for objectively testing the Scottish?Hayekian hypotheses under 
scienti. c controls. This answers the question Milton Friedman is said to 
have raisedconcerningthe validity of Hayek?s theory/reasoning: "How would 
you know?" (I am unable to .nd/provide the reference). Remarkably, Hayek 
stated on the very edge of recognizing what experiments could do for 
testing his the?ory, then dismissed it. Thus,"We can test it (?competition 
as a discovery procedure?) on conceptual models, and we might conceivably 
test it in arti. cially created real situa?tions, where the facts which 
competition is intended to discover are already known to the observer. But 
in such cases it is of no practical value, so that to carry out the 
experiment would hardly be worth the expense" (Hayek, 1984, p. 255;also 
see Smith, 2002, pp. 95-96). Economic historians, e.g., 
North(1981),andpolitical economists, e.g., Elinor Ostrom (1990), have long 
explored the intelligence and ef. cacy embodied in emergent socioeconomic 
institu?tions that solve, or fail to solve, problems of growth and 
resource management. They study "natural" ecological ex?periments from 
which we have learned immeasurably.

growthofour understandingof social phenom?ena, and enable us to probe 
beyond the anthro?pocentric limitations ofconstructivism.

Both kinds of rationalityhave in. uenced the design and interpretation of 
experiments in economics. Thus, if people in certain contexts make choices 
that contradict our formaltheory of rationality, rather than conclude that 
they are irrational, some ask why, reexamine main?tained hypotheses 
including all aspects of the experiments--procedures, payoffs, context, 
in?structions, etc.--and inquire as to what new concepts and experimental 
designs can help us to better understandthe behavior. What is the 
subjects? perceptionofthe problem that they are trying to solve?

Finally, understanding decision requires knowl?edge beyond the 
traditionalbounds of econom?ics,22 a challenge to which Hume and Smith 
were not strangers.23 This is manifest in the recentstudies of the 
neuralcorrelates ofstrate?gic interaction (McCabe calls it 
neuroeconom?ics) using fMRI and other brain?imaging technologies. That 
researchexplores the neuro?correlates of intentions or "mind reading," and 
other hypotheses aboutinformation,choice, and own versus other payoffs in 
determining inter?active behavior.

The above themes will be illustrated and dis?cussed in a wide variety of 
examples drawn from economics, law, experimental economics, and 
psychology. I will begin with impersonal exchange through markets, drawing 
on the learning from experiments and .eld observa?tions to illustrate how 
the contrast between con?structive and ecological rationality informs 
learning from observation. Then I willexamine 
personalexchange,particularlyin the context of two?person extensive?form 
games, asking why constructivist models are of limited success in 
predicting behavior in single?play games, even when subjects are 
anonymously matched.

22I importune students to read narrowly within econom?ics, but widelyin 
science. Within economics there is essen?tially only one model to be 
adapted to every application: optimization subject to constraints due to 
resource limita?tions, institutional rules, and/or the behavior ofothers, 
as in Cournot?Nash equilibria. The economic literature is not the best 
place to .ndnew inspiration beyond these traditional technical methods of 
modeling.

23Thus, for Hayek, "an economist who is onlyan econ?omist cannot be a good 
economist."

II. Impersonal Exchange: The Extended Order of the Market

A. How Are the Two Concepts of a Rational Order Related?

Constructivism takes as given the social structures generated by emergent 
institutions that we observe in the world, and proceeds to model it 
formally. An example would be the Dutch auction or its alleged isomorphic 
equiv?alent, the sealed?bidauction (William Vickrey, 1961; Paul Milgrom 
and Robert J. Weber, 1982). Constructivist models need notask why or how 
an auction institutionarose or what were the ecologicalconditions that 
createdit, or why there are so many distinctauction institutions. In some 
cases it is the other way around. Thus, revenue equivalence theorems show 
that the standard auctions generate identical expected outcomes, which, if 
taken literally, leave no modeled economicreason for choosingbetween them.

More generally, using rational theory, one represents an observed 
socioeconomic situation withan abstract interactive game tree. 
Contrar?ily, the ecological concept of rationality asks from whence came 
the structure capturedby the tree? Why this social practice, from which we 
can abstract a particular game, andnot another? Were there other practices 
and associated game trees that lacked survival properties and were 
successfully invaded by what we observe? There is a sense in which 
ecological systems, whether cultural or biological, must necessarily be, 
or are in the process of becoming, rational: they serve the .tness needs 
of those who unin?tentionally created them through their interac?tions. 
Constructivist mental models are based on assumptions about behavior, 
structure, and the value?knowledge environment. These as?sumptions might 
be correct, incorrect, or irrel?evant, and the models may or may not lead 
to rational action in the sense of serving well the needs ofthose to whom 
the models apply. As theorists the professional charge for which we are 
paid is to formulate and prove theorems. A theorem is a mapping from 
assumptions into testable or observable implications. The de?mands 
oftractabilityloom large in this exercise, and to get anything much in the 
way of results it is necessary to consider both the assumptions andtheir 
implications as variables. Few game theorists, buildingon the assumption 
thatagents always choose dominant strategies, believed this to 
characterize the behavior ofall agents in all situations. Hence, the 
near?universal justi. ?cation oftheory as an exercise in "understand?ing." 
But the temptation is to believe that our "castles in the sky" (as W. 
Brock would say) have directmeaningin our worlds ofexperience andproceedto 
impose them where itmaynotbe ecologically rational to do so.

To understandwhat is--the tip of the knowl?edge iceberg--requires 
understandingofa great deal that is not. In the laboratory we can not 
onlyrationally reconstruct counterfactuals, as in economic history, but 
also use experiments to test and examine their properties. Let us lookat 
two contemporary examples.

1. Deregulating Airline Routes.--Airline route deregulation brought an 
unanticipated re?organizationofthe network, calledthe hub?and?spoke 
system. (See, e.g., George Donahue, 2002). This is an 
ecologicallyrationalresponse, apparently anticipated bynone of the 
construc?tivist arguments for deregulation, and predicted byno one. Nor 
could it have been uncovered, I submit, in 1978by surveys of airline 
managers, or by marketing surveys of airline customers. Unknown to both 
managers and customers was the subsequently revealed decision preferences 
of customers who unknowingly favored fre?quencyof daily departure 
andarrival times--a preference that had to be discovered through market 
experimentation. Nonstop service be?tween secondary cities was simply not 
sustain?able in a deregulatedworldof free choice. The onlyway to achieve 
ef. ciency, both the demand for frequency of service and pro.table load 
factors, among secondary cities was for the .ights to connect through 
hubs. Hence, the hy?pothesis that a rational ecologicalequilibrium emerged 
to dominate repeated constructivist at?tempts, by business entrants and 
start?ups, to satisfy an incompatible set of constraints pro?vided by the 
microstructure of demand, pro.t?ability, and technology.

Might it have been otherwise if airport run?way rights, or "slots," had 
been an integral part of the deregulation of airline routes, and the 
time?of?day spotpricing ofslots had emerged to re.ect hub congestion 
costs? (Stephen Rassenti et al., 1982). We do not know, but the effectof 
this hypotheticalcounterfactualon the viability of hub bypass could be 
assessed in laboratory experiments. As in allstudies of what is not, the 
challenge is to estimate the parameters that would implement the 
appropriate economic environment.

2. The California Energy Crisis.--Asecond, and very troubling, example is 
the circum?stances leadingto the California energycrisis. As in other 
regions of the country and the world, deregulation was effected as a 
planned transition with numerous political compro?mises. In California it 
took the form of deregu?lating wholesale markets and prices while 
continuing to regulate retail prices at .xed hourly rates over the daily 
and seasonalcycles in consumption. The utilities negotiated an in?crease 
in these average retail rates to meet the revenue requirements of capital 
investments that were "stranded" (i.e., werebelieved to be unable to 
recover their costs under competi?tion). This preoccupationwith the past, 
and with average revenue/cost thinkingbyregulators and regulated alike, 
ill?prepared the state for the consequences of having no dynamic 
mecha?nisms for prioritizing the end use consumption of power.

As expected, traditionalvolatilityin the mar?ginal cost of 
generatedelectricity was immedi?atelytranslatedinto volatileintra?day 
wholesale prices. What was not expected was that a com?binationoflow 
rainfall(reducingPaci. c North?west hydroelectric output), growth in 
demand, unseasonably hot weather, generators down on normal maintenance 
schedules, etc., caused the temporary normal daily peakingof prices to be 
greatly accentuated, and to be muchmore last?ingthan had occurred earlier 
in the Midwestand South. Events of small probability happen at about the 
expected frequency, and since there are many such events the unexpectedis 
not that unlikely. Constructivist planning failed to pro?vide for retail 
competition to experiment with programs allowingconsumers to save money by 
enablingtheir lower priorityuses of power to be interrupted in times of 
supply stress. Interrupt?ible deliveries are a direct substitute for both 
energy supply and energy reserves, and are an essential means of assuring 
adequate capacity and reserves that cover all the various supply 
contingencies faced bythe industry.

Because of the regulatory mandate that all demand must be served at a .xed 
price, the planning did notallow for the earlyintroduction of demand 
responsive retail prices and technol?ogies to enable peak consumption to 
be re?duced. Instead of mechanism design we had .xed retail price "design" 
to generate average revenue that was supposed to cover average cost, and 
it failed. The regulatory thought pro?cess is as follows: the function of 
price is to provide revenue, and the function of revenue is to cover cost. 
But this is the antithesis of the market function of price. For neither 
manage?ment nor the regulators was itnaturalto thinkin terms of pro.ting 
from selling less power. Yet that was precisely the route by which the 
Cali?fornia distributors could have avoided the loss of an estimated $15 
billion: every peak kilo?watt?hour not sold at the average retail rate 
wouldhave saved upto ten times that amountof energy cost. Static 
technology, and the utter fantasy that all load can always be served, was 
protected from innovation bythe legally fran?chised local wires monopoly. 
An entrant could not seekto win customers by offering discounts for 
switching from peak to off?peak consump?tion, and, at the entrant?s 
investment risk, in?stalling the required control devices on end?use 
appliances. This legacy--long entrenched, and jealously sheltered by local 
franchised monop?olies after deregulation--gave California dis?patchers no 
alternative but to trap people in elevators and shut down high?end 
computer programming facilities at critical times of peak power shortage.

All power delivery systems are vulnerable to a combination of unfavorable 
events that will produce short supplies at peak demand. Con?structivism 
alone, without competitive trial?and?error ecologicalexperimentationwith 
retail delivery technologies and consumer prefer?ences, cannot design 
mechanisms that process all the distributed knowledge that individuals 
either possess or will discover, and that is rele?vant to .nding an ef. 
cient mix of both demand and supply responsiveness.24

24This is illustrated bya November 6, 2002 press release by Puget 
SoundEnergy. "PSE Proposes to End Pilot Time?of?Use Program Ahead of 
Schedule: PSE?s time?of?use (TOU) program was created in 2000 duringthe 
energycrisis and was intended to provide .nancial incentives for 
cus?tomers to shift some of their electricity consumption to less 
expensive, off?peak times of the day. The program was restructured in July 
2002to re. ect a calmer energy market.

Economic Systems Design. 25--What can we learn from experiments about how 
demand re?sponsiveness could impact energy shortages as in the California 
crisis? Rassenti et al. (2003) measure this impact by creating a market in 
which a modest and achievable 16 percent of peak retail demand can be 
interrupted voluntar?ily at discount prices by wholesale energy 
pro?viders. In the experiments, demand cycles throughfour levels each 
"day" and is expressed in the wholesale market with two contrasting 
experimental treatments: (1) robot buyers who reveal all demand at the 
spot market clearing price; (2) four pro.t?motivated human buyers who are 
free to bid strategically in the market to obtain the lowest available 
prices. In each case bids to supply power are entered by .ve 
pro.t?motivated human suppliers. In the passive?demand treatment prices 
average much above the benchmark competitiveequilibrium, and are very 
volatile. In the treatment with human buy?ers, prices approach the 
competitive equilib?rium, and price volatility becomes miniscule. By 
empowering wholesale buyers, in addition to sellers, to bidstrategicallyin 
their own inter?est, even though 84 percent of peak demand is "must 
serve," buyers are able to effectivelydis?cipline sellers and hold prices 
at competitive levels.26

Since that time it has resulted in most participants? bills being slightly 
higher than on .at rates. ... Reynolds (a PSE spokesman, said) ?However, 
when exploring new territory, you need to be able to recognize when the 
program is not working as you had hoped... and begin a rigorous analysis 
ofthe program andhow it could be successfully restructured for the future 
energy marketplace.? " It is because no one knows what will work best that 
you have to open retailing up to the .eld experiment called "free entry 
and exit." One experimental possibility is a contract that would share the 
inherently unknown and unpredictable savings with the customer. When a 
total cannot be known in advance, use a proportionalityrule. New Zealand?s 
tradable .sh catch quo?tas were originally speci.ed in quantities, and 
were rede?signed as proportions of the changing quantity available (oral 
communication with Maurice McTigue, 2002). An advantage of laboratory 
experiments is that these kinds of errors are exposed, and corrective 
alternatives tested, at very low cost.

25I have never been comfortable with this label because it is reminiscent 
of the idea that we can engineer best social arrangements, which the 
reader will see is not my interpre?tation. See footnote 20.

26The most widely agreed?upon design failure in the California crisis was 
the rule preventing the distribution utilities from engaging in long?term 
contracts to supply power (Wilson, 2002, p. 1332). Beware this simplistic 
pop?ular explanation:it is a two?wrongs?make?a?rightargument: yes, of 
course, given that you were going to protect the monopoly power ofthe 
distribution utilities to tie the rental of the wires to the metering and 
sale of energy at a .xed regulated price, then one way to protect them 
temporarily from the consequent wholesale price volatility might be to 
encourage long?term contracts at a .xed average delivery cost. But 
suppliers willwant higher prices and/or short?term contracts if they 
anticipate shortages--you cannot get blood outofa turnip; long contracts 
work to lower cost only to the extent that suppliers are surprised by high 
spot prices, but when it comes time to renegotiate expiring contracts they 
will not replicate the error. California discovered this when they 
intervened to sign long?term contracts, and encoun?tered high prices. This 
whole argument turns the design problem on its head. You must (1) remove 
the legal power of the local wires monopoly to prevent competing energy 
suppliers from contracting with customers to discount off?peak energy, 
charge premiums for peak energy, and install the supporting control 
devices; (2)let this competition de?termine the dynamic price structure, 
and investment re?quired to implement it; (3) simultaneously, let .nancial 
instruments evolve to hedge whatever risk is left over as prices become 
less volatile. Financial instruments can hedge price volatility,notload 
volatility. Only demand?responsive interruptible loads can relieve supply 
stress and provide the demand?side reserves that reduce the risk of lost 
load. No one mind or collective can anticipate and plan the needed mix of 
technologies to enable the market to manage de?mand. Therefore it is 
essential to remove all entry barriers, and allow .rms to experiment 
through competition to dis?cover and innovate ef. cient ways of organizing 
retail de?livery systems. Claims that short?run retail demand is 
"notoriously" inelastic miss the point: how would you know if 
loan?sheddingtechnologyis in.exible? Competition and incentives to 
innovate have never been part ofthe structure.

This example illustrates the use ofthe labo?ratory in economic systems 
design. In these exercises we can test?bed alternative market auction 
rules andthe effect oftransmission con?straintson generator supply 
behavior(Steven R. Backerman et al., 2001), vary the degree of 
marketconcentration, or "power" in a noncon?vex environment (Michael J. 
Denton et al., 2001), compare the effectof more or less stra?tegic demand 
responsiveness (Rassenti et al., 2003), study network and multiple market 
ef?fects also in a nonconvex environment (Mark Olson et al., 2003), and 
test?bed markets to inform, but not .nalize, market liberalization policy 
(Rassenti et al., 2002). For a survey of many examples, see McCabe et al. 
(1991).

The two types of rational order are bothex?pressedin the 
experimentalmethodology devel?opedfor economic systems design. This branch 
of experimentaleconomics uses the labas a test bed to examine the 
performance of proposed new institutions, and modi. es their rules and 
implementation features in the lightofthe test results. The proposed 
designs are initially con?structivist, although most applications, such as 
the design ofelectricitymarkets or auctions for spectrum licenses, are far 
too complicated for formalanalysis (Jeffrey Banks et al., 2003;Ras?senti 
et al., 2003).

But when a design is modi.ed in the lightof test results, the modi.cations 
tested, modi.ed again, retested, and so on, one is using the laboratory to 
effect an evolutionary adaptation as in the ecological concept ofa 
rationalorder. If the .nalresult is implemented in the .eld, it certainly 
undergoes further evolutionary change in the light ofpractice, 
andofoperational forces not tested in the experiments because they were 
unknown, or beyondcurrentlaboratory technol?ogy.27 In fact this 
evolutionary process is es?sential if institutions, as dynamic social 
tools, are to be adaptive and responsive to changing conditions. How can 
such .exibility be made part of their design? We do not know because no 
one can foresee what changes will be needed.

Market Institutionsand Performance.--Non?cooperative or Cournot?Nash 
competitive equi?librium (CE)theory has conventionallyoffered two speci. 
cations concerningthe preconditions for achievinga CE:(1)agents require 
complete, or "perfect," information on the equations de?.ning the CE; also 
common knowledge--all must know that all know that all know that they have 
this information. In this way all agents have common expectations of a CE 
and their behavior must necessarily produce it; (2) an?other tradition, 
popularly articulated in text?books, and showing, perhaps, more 
sensitivity for plausibility,has argued for a weaker require?mentthat 
agents needonly be price?takers in the market.

27People often ask, What are the limits of laboratory investigation? I 
think any attempt to de. ne such limits is very likely to be bridged by 
the subsequent ingenuity and creativity (the primary barriers at any one 
time) of some experimentalist. Twenty?. ve years ago I could not have 
imagined being able to do the kinds of experiments that today have become 
routine in our laboratories. Experimen?talists also include many of us who 
see no clear border separating the lab and the .eld.

The alleged"requirement" ofcomplete, com?mon, or perfect information is 
vacuous: I know of no predictive theorem stating that when agents have 
such information their behavior produces a CE, andin its absence their 
behavior fails to produce a CE. If such a theorem existed, it could help 
us to design the experiments that could test these dichotomous 
predictions. I sug?gest that the idea that agents need complete 
information is derived from introspective error: as theorists we need 
complete information to calculate the CE. But this is not a theory of how 
information or its absence causes agent behav?ior to yield or not a CE. It 
is simplyan unmo?tivated statement declaring, without evidence, that every 
agentis a constructivist in exactlythe same sense as are we as theorists. 
Andthe claim that it is "as if" agents had complete informa?tion, helps 
not a wit to understand the well?springs ofbehavior. What is missing are 
models of the process whereby agents go from their initial circumstances, 
and dispersed informa?tion, using the algorithms ofthe institution to 
update their status, andconverge (or not) to the predictedequilibrium.28

28The inherent dif. culty in equilibrium modeling of the CDA is shown by 
the fact that so few have even attempted. Wilson (1987), 
characteristically, has had the courage and competence to log progress. 
Daniel Friedman (1984) uses an unconventional no?congestion assumption to 
.nesse Nash?Cournot analysis, concluding ef. ciency and a .nal competitive 
clearing price. Wilson (1987) uses standard assumptions of what is common 
knowledge--number of buyers (sellers), each with inelastic 
demand(supply)for one unit, preferences linear in payoffs, no risk 
aversion or wealth effects, valuations jointly distributed, and agent 
ca?pacity to "compute equilibrium strategies and select one equilibrium in 
a waythat is common knowledge" (p. 411). This is an abstract 
as?if?all?agents?were?game?theorists con?structivist modelofa thought 
process that no game theorist would or does use when participatingin a 
CDA. The model itself generates its own problems, such as degeneracy in 
the endgame when there is only one buyer and seller left who can feasibly 
trade--a problem that is not a problem for the subjects, who do not know 
this, and see imperfectly in?formed buyers and sellers still attempting to 
trade and thereby disciplining price. Extra marginal traders provide 
opportunity cost endgame constraints on price. Agents need have no 
understandingof opportunity cost in order for their behavior to be shaped 
by it. Wilson recognizes these con?siderations: "The crucial de. ciencies, 
however, are inescap?able consequences of the game?theoretic formulation" 
(Wilson, 1987, p. 411). We are squarely up against the 
limitations--perhaps the dead?end ultimate consequences-- of Cartesian 
constructivism. We have not a clue, any more than the so?called "naive" 
subjects in experiments, how it is that our brains so effortlessly solve 
the equilibration prob?

As a theory the price?takingparable is also a nonstarter: who makes price 
if all agents take price as given?If it is the Walrasian auctioneer, why 
have such processes been found to be so inef. cient? (Corrine Bronfman et 
al., 1996).

Hundreds ofexperiments in the past 40 years (Smith, 1962, 1982; Douglas D. 
Davis and Charles A. Holt, 1993, 1995;John H. Kageland Roth, 1995;Plott, 
2001)demonstrate that com?plete information is not necessary for a CE to 
form out of a self?ordering interaction between agent behavior and the 
rules of information exchange and contract in a variety of different 
institutions,but most prominentlyin the contin?uous bid/ask double auction 
(CDA).29 That complete information also may not be suf. cient for a CEis 
suggested(the samples are small)by comparisons showing that convergence is 
slowed or fails under complete information in certain environments (Smith, 
1976, 1980).

An interesting contribution by Dhananjay K. Gode and Shyam Sunder 
(hereafter GS; see Shyam Sunder, 2003, and the references itcon?tains) is 
to demonstrate that an important com?ponent of the emergentorder observed 
in these marketexperiments derives from the institution, not merely the 
presumedrationalityof the indi?viduals. Ef. ciency is 
necessarilyajointproduct ofthe rules ofthe institutionandthe behaviorof 
agents. What Sunder and his coauthors have shown is that in the 
double?auctionmarket for a single commodity (we know not yet how far it 
can be generalized),ef. ciency is higheven with "zero" intelligence robot 
agents, each of whom chooses bids (asks)completely at random from all 
those thatwillnotimpose a loss on the agent. Thus, agents who are 
notrational constructivist pro.t maximizers, and use no learning or 
up?dating algorithms, achieve most of the possible social gains from trade 
using this institution. Does this example illustrate in a small way those 
"super?individualstructures within which individuals found great 
opportunities ... (and that)... could take account of more factual 
cir?cumstances than individualscould perceive,and in consequence... is in 
some respects superior to, or 'wiser' than, human reason ... "? (Hayek, 
1988, pp. 77, 75). We do not know if the GS results generalize to multiple 
market settings as discussed in the next paragraph. Ross M. Miller (2002), 
however, has shown that in a very elementarytwo?market 
environment--intertemporally separated mar?kets for the same 
commodity--the GS results are quali. ed. Complex price dynamics, 
includ?ing "bubbles," appear, and there is loss of ef.?ciency, although 
the loss is not substantial. On average the decline is apparently from 
around 94 percent to 88 percent.

lem in interacting with other brains though the CDA (and other) 
institutions. We model not the rightworld to capture this important 
experimental .nding. 29See Jon Ketcham et al. (1984) for a comparison of 
CDA with the posted offer (PO)retail pricing mechanism. CDA converges more 
rapidly andis more ef. cient than PO. So why does not CDA invade and 
displace PO? It is the high cost of training every retail clerk to be an 
effective negotiator for the .rm. Institutions re.ect the .ne structure of 
opportunitycost, and the loss of exchange ef.ciency in PO is more than 
offset by the distributional productive ef. ciency of the mass 
retailinginnovation of the 1880?s that led price policy to be centralized. 
As I write, those policies are being modi. ed on the Internet where prices 
can be adjusted to the opportunity cost characteristics of buyers, such as 
how many other Internet sites they have visited (Cary Deck andBart Wilson, 
2002).Institutional changes in response to innovations like mass retailing 
are part of the emergence of an ecologically rational equilibrium.

In multiple market trading in nonlinear inter?dependent 
demandenvironments, each individ?ual?s maximum willingness?to?pay for a 
unitof commodity A depends on the price of B, and vice versa, and in this 
more complex economy double auction, markets also converge to the vector 
of CE prices and trading volumes. A two?commodity example is reported in 
Smith (1986), based on nonlinear demand (CES pay?off function)and linear 
supply functions found in Arlington Williams and Smith (1986); also see 
Williams et al. (2000). In these experiments, numerical tables based on 
the preference and cost information de.ning the general?equilibrium 
solution of four nonlinear equations in two prices andtwo quantities are 
dispersedamong the undergraduate subjects. They buy and sell units 
ofeachof the two commodities in a series of trading periods. Prices and 
trading volume converge, after several trading periods, to the CE de. ned 
by the nonlinear equations. The subjects would not have a clue as to how 
to solve the equations mathematically. The exper?imenter applies the tools 
of constructivist rea?son to solve for the benchmark CE, butin repeat play 
this "solution" emerges from the spontane?ous order created by the 
subjects trading under the rules ofthe double?auction market institu?tion. 
Numerous other experiments with many simultaneousinterdependentmarkets 
show sim?ilar patterns ofconvergence (Plott, 1988, 2001).

The Iowa Electronic Market.--What evi?dence do we have that the laboratory 
ef.ciency properties ofcontinuous double auction trading apply also in the 
.eld? One of the best sources of evidence, I believe, is found in the Iowa 
Electronic Market (IEM) used widely around the world (Robert Forsythe et 
al., 1992, 1999). These markets are used to study the ef. cacy of futures 
markets in aggregatingwidelydispersed information on the outcomes of 
political elec?tions, or any well?de. ned extra?laboratory event, such as 
a change in the discount rate by the Fed. The "laboratory" is the 
Internet. The "subjects" are all who log on and buy an initial portfolio 
of claims on the .nalevent outcomes; they consist of whomever logs in, and 
are not anykind ofrepresentativeor"scienti.c" sample as in the polls with 
which they are paired. The institution is the open?book double auction.

In the IEM, traders make a market in shares representing pair?mutuel 
claims on the popular vote (or winner?take?all) outcome of an elec?tion, 
referendum, etc. For example, the .rst IEM was on the 1988 presidential 
election. Each person wanting to trade shares deposits a minimum sum, $35, 
with the IEM and receives a trading account containing $10 cash for 
buy?ingadditionalshares, and ten elemental portfo?lios at $2.50 each, 
consisting of one share of each of the candidates--Bush, Dukakis, Jackson, 
and"rest?of?. eld." Tradingoccurs continuously in an open?book bid?ask 
market for several months, and everyone knows that the market will be 
called (tradingsuspended) in November on election day, when the 
dividendpaidon each share is equal to the candidate?s fraction of the 
popular vote times $2.50. Hence if the .nal two candidates and all others 
receive popular vote shares (53.2 percent, 45.4 percent, 1.4 percent), 
these proportions (times $2.50) represent the payoff to a trader for each 
share held. Conse?quently, at any time t, normalizing on $1, the price of 
a share(4$2.50) re. ects the market expectationofthat candidate?s share 
ofthe total vote. A price, $0.43, means the market predicts that the 
candidate will poll 43 percent of the vote. Other forms of contract that 
can be traded in some IEMs include winner?take?all, or num?ber of seats in 
the House, and so on.

The IEM data set includes 49 markets, 41 worldwide elections, and 13 
countries. Several results standout:the closingmarket prices, pro?duced 
bya nonrepresentativesample of traders, show lower average absolute 
forecasting error (1.5 percent) than the representative exit poll samples 
(1.9 percent); in the subset of 16 na?tional elections, the market 
outperforms the polls in 9of 15 cases; in the course ofseveral months 
preceding the election outcome, the market predictions are consistently 
much less volatile than the polls; generally, larger and more active 
markets predict better than smaller, thinner markets; surveys ofthe market 
traders show that their share holdings are biased in favor of the 
candidates they themselves prefer.

In view of this last result why do markets outperform the polls? Forsythe 
et al. (1992) argue that it?s their marginal trader hypothesis. Those who 
are active in price "setting," that is, in entering limit bids or asks, 
are found to be less subject to this bias, than those traders ac?cepting 
(selling and buying "at market") the limit bids and asks. Polls record 
unmotivated, representative, average opinion. Markets record motivated 
marginal opinion that cannot be de?scribed as "representative." This 
analysis helps to provide a good mechanical, if notultimate, understanding 
of how human interaction with the rules of a bid/ask CDA yield ef. cient 
predictions.30

30 Other markets besides the IEM are known to have ef. cient 
information?aggregating properties. Pari?mutuel racetrack markets are an 
example where, interestingly, the environmentis much like the IEM: the 
settlements occur at a well?de. ned end?state known to all agents, unlike 
stock market trading where expectations .oat continuously with no clear 
value revelation endpoint. "The racetrack betting market is surprisingly 
ef. cient. Market odds are remarkably good estimates ofwinning 
probabilities. This implies (sic) that racetrack bettors have considerable 
expertise, and that the markets shouldbe taken seriously" (Thaler 
andWilliam T. Ziemba, 1988, p. 169). It is surprising to behavioral 
economists because their methodologyis restricted to look?ing for 
deviations from the standard model. What is unusual here is that in 
racetracks they have found reportable evi?dence for ef. cient outcomes.For 
those who follow the experimental economics, IEM and similar 
controlled?environmentmarket studies, ef. ciency is notonly common?place 
(if notuniversal), it cannotbe attributed to agents with "considerable 
expertise." The agents are mostly naive, al?though they get repeat 
interaction experience, which, from the evidence, clearly gives them 
expertise enough. But, as in the IEM and experimental markets, racetrack 
markets are not perfect: there are inef. ciencies in the "place" and 
"show" options and the favorite?long?shot bias, with the

We have seen that markets economize on information, understanding, the 
number of agents, and individualrationality. Can they also economize on 
the need for externalintervention to protect particular interests, ifall 
are empow?ered by the trading institution to act in their 
individualinterests?

B. Strategy?proofness: Theory and Behavior

Preferences are private and unobservable, and institutions have to rely on 
the messages reported by agents, not their true preferences. This follows 
from the fact that no one mindhas all the information known together by 
all those in the market. It is therefore possible for an agent to affect 
prices andoutcomes in a market by strategically misreporting preferences. 
This prospect has motivated the literature seeking strategy?proof 
mechanisms: "An allocation mechanism is strategy?proof if every agent?s 
utility?maximizing choice of what preferences to report depends only on 
his own preferences andnot on his expectationsconcerning the pref?erences 
that other agents will report" (Mark Satterthwaite, 1987, p. 519). This 
requires each agent to have a dominantstrategyto report true preferences, 
and has led to impossibility theo?rems establishing the nonexistence of 
such a mechanism under certain conditions.

In view of such negative theoretical results and the narrow conditions 
under which solu?tions have been investigated, it is important to ask what 
people actually do in experimental environments in which the experimenter 
in?duces preferences privately on individual sub?jects. We know what is 
impossible, but what is possible in more open?ended systems than are 
modeled by theory? Is it possible that when all are free to choose from a 
large space of strategies, ecologically rational strategies will emerge 
that immunize against strategic manip?ulation? Given that information is 
inherently latter more pronounced in the last two races of the day. 
Various hypotheses have been offered to explain these inef. ciencies,but 
more signi.cantis that computer pro?grams have been written to arbitrage 
(yielding returns of some 11 percent per bet), the place, show, and 
long?shot inef. ciencies. (It is my understandingthat goodpro.ts have been 
accumulated on these programs, so far without neu?tralizing the arbitrage 
opportunities--let the good times roll!) dispersed, has society evolved 
institutions in which forms of behavior arise that result in practical 
ifnotuniversal solutions to the prob?lem ofstrategy?proofness?

The double auction is a well?known example yielding CE in a wide range of 
economic envi?ronments including small numbers. Are there other examples, 
and if there are, what are the strategic behavioral mechanisms that people 
adopt to achieve strategy?proofness?

One example is the sealed?bid?offer auction: in each contract period the 
submitted bids are orderedfrom highest to lowest, the offers (asks) from 
lowest to highest, with the intersection (cross) determining the uniform 
clearing price andvolume exchanged (see TimothyCason and Friedman, 1993; 
Friedman, 1993; and Wilson, 1993). Also see Smith etal. (1982)for 
compar?ative studies of different versions of the sealed?bid?offer 
mechanism andthe continuousdouble auction.

In experiments with stationary supply and demand, initiallybothbuyers 
andsellers greatly underreveal their true individual willingness to buy or 
sell. Volume is very low (10-15 percent ofoptimal), the market is inef. 
cient andeach agent can see that at the initial clearing price they are 
leaving money on the table. In repeat play they increase revelation, but 
mostly of units near the last period?s clearing price. As volume increases 
and the clearing price closes in on the CE, the realized inverse demandand 
supply become very .at near the true clearing price with many tied or 
nearly tied bids and asks that exceed the capacity of any single buyer or 
seller. At this steady state, and given this behavior, if anyone withholds 
purchases or sales she is denied an allocation as other more competitively 
traded units substitute for hers. This results in a "behavioral 
strategy?proof equilibrium." Such is the power of motivated, privately 
informed agents in trial?and?error re?peat interaction.

These experimentalresults make it plain that the theoretical condition for 
a strategy?proof equilibrium--that each agent have a dominate strategy to 
reveal true willingness?to?pay or willingness?to?accept for allunits, 
andnotjust units near the margin--is much too strong. The above 
description from blind two?sided auc?tions, however, also shows that there 
is a social cost to the achievement ofa strategy?proofequi?librium: blind 
two?sided auctions converge more slowlyto the competitiveequilibriumthan 
continuous double auctions, andupon converg?ing, may not be quite as ef. 
cient if agents occasionally attempt manipulation, are disci?plined, and 
return to the full exchange volume.

A second example is the uniform price dou?ble auction (UPDA), a real?time 
continuous feedback mechanism clearing all trades at a single price in 
each trading period. This is a "designer market" inventedby 
experimentalists who asked, "Can we combine the continuous information 
feedback advantages of the double auction with the uniform price (zero 
within?period volatility)advantages of the sealed?bid?offer auction?" As 
we have seen above, with blind bidding several repeat interactions are 
re?quired to reach optimality, with many lost trades in the process. Can 
we accelerate the price discoveryprocess bycontinuouslyfeeding back 
information on the tentative state of the market, and allowing bids (asks) 
to be adjusted within each period?

This institution is made possible by high?speed computer and communication 
technol?ogy. It comes in several .avors, or variationson the rules. In 
allversions ateach time, t # T 5 time market is "called" (closed), the 
tentative clearing price, pt, is displayed and each agent knows the 
acceptance state of all her bids (asks). This allows bids andasks to be 
adjusted in realtime. See the chapter by McCabe et al. (1993, pp. 311-16) 
for a report of 49 UPDA experiments comparing these different versions 
with the continuous double auction. UPDA ex?hibits even more 
underrevelation of demand and supply than the blind two?sided auction 
discussed above, but ef. ciency tends to be much higher, especially in the 
.rst periods, and, in one form (endogenous close, open book, the "other 
side" rule with conditional time priority), exceeds that of the continuous 
double auction.

Experiments using UPDA in a randomly .uctuating supply and demand 
environment routinelyexhibit ef. ciencies of95-100percent, sometimes 
withas little as 5-10 percentof the available surplus revealed. This is 
shown in Table 1 for summary data from UPDA experi?mentup43. Most agents 
enter bids (asks) equal to or near the clearing price as it is 
continuously displayed in real time. It is ofcourse true, hy?pothetically, 
that if all agents reveal their true demand or supply with the exception 
of one intra?marginal buyer or seller, then that agent

TABLE1--SUMMARY OFRESULTS: UPDA EXPERIMENT UP 43; 5, 5

Notes: (Pe, Qe) 5 equilibrium price and quantity. (Pr, Qr) 5 realized 
price and quantity. Eff% 5 ef. ciency, % max surplus. Rev% 5 %of surplus 
revealed. can manipulate the price to his or her advantage. But this 
parable is irrelevant. The relevantques?tion is what behavior is manifest 
when every agent has the potential for manipulating the price. Without 
knowledge or understandingof the whole, and without design or intention, 
the participants use the rules at their disposal to achieve three 
properties observed by the exper?imenter: (1)highef. ciency, (2) maximum 
indi?vidual pro.t given the behavior of all other agents, and(3)protection 
from manipulation by their protagonists.31This ecologicalresult 
illus?trates the perceptive insight ofHayek (1988, pp. 19-20). "Rules 
alone can unite an extended

31Space prevents me from dealing fully with the many importantissues 
raised when a subset ofagents have asym?metric advance information on 
product quality or value characteristics. The analysis shows that such 
conditions generate market failure or inef. ciency. Some of these 
prob?lems, however, arise because the analysis is inadequate in examining 
both sides of the market, and the implications of the information content 
of prices. Experiments have estab?lishedthat constructivist inef. ciency 
is often alleviated by one of several ecologically rational response 
mechanisms: competition among sellers for reputations, quality (brand) 
signaling,product warranties, andthe aggregationofprivate asymmetric 
information into public price patterns that self?correct the alleged 
problems. See, e.g., Plott and Louis Wilde (1982); Plott and Sunder (1982, 
1988); Miller and Plott (1985); Camerer and Keith Weigelt (1988).

order ... . Neither all ends pursued, nor all means used, are known or 
need be known to anybody, in order for them to be taken account of within 
a spontaneous order. Such an order forms of itself... ."

C. Gresham?s Law: If It Isn?t Cournot?Nash, Why Is It a Law?

In this section Ihave given manyexamples of institutions in whichthe CE 
theoryof markets predicts their observed behavior. Do we have contrary 
examples? Yes. Gresham?s Law: bad money drives out good. This "law," while 
sometimes claimed to be an observed phenom?ena in countries all over the 
world, is not a Cournot?Nash equilibrium.32 If currencies A and B are both 
available, A having an intrinsic worth while B is worthless .at money, 
then the theory predicts that A will drive out B. This is because each 
agent believes other agents are rational, and will accept only A in 
exchange. Each agent will therefore avoid getting stuck with the inferior 
B by accepting only A, which becomes the dominant circulating medium of 
exchange, while B is "horded." Experiments have con.rmed that if both 
types of money are initially available, subjects use onlythe superior 
currency (an interest?bearing consol) as a me?dium of exchange. But in 
treatments in which subjects .rst experience a history ofusing .at money, 
it being the only medium of exchange available, and then the consol is 
introduced, subjects continue trading withthe .at money, hording the 
interest?bearing consol (Gabriele Camera etal., 2003). This is entirely 
rational if each agent believes others will accept the .at money in 
exchange and this belief is supported by experience. Think of Gresham?s 
Law as a belief equilibrium in which theory alone is un?able to predict 
when it might occur (Ledyard, 1986).

Complementingthese results, another exper?imentalstudyshows that when .at 
money is the only currency, it will be used even under the 32 Hayek (1967, 
p. 318) notes that Gresham?s Law is not due to Gresham nor is it a "law" 
in the theoretical sense, and "... as a mere empirical rule is practically 
worthless." In the 1920?s when people started using dollars and other hard 
currencies in substitution for the depreciating mark, the claim emerged 
that Gresham?s Law was wrong--that it was the other way around.

conditionthat it is abandonedand replaced with a new .at money issue at 
the end of a .nite horizon. In this studythe realeconomy is found to 
suffer some loss in ef. ciency relative to the use of "backed" (commodity) 
money, but the economy does not collapse even in short hori?zon 
treatments. Collapse in real sector ef.?ciency is observed only when a 
"government" sector prints .at money to purchase real goods from the 
private sector. Moreover, additional experimental tests show thatthe 
collapse cannot be due to the resulting in.ation, but to interfer?ence 
with the real price discovery of markets when some agents are able to 
crowd out private real purchases with printing press money33 (Deck et al., 
2001).

D. Psychology and Markets

Psychologists and "behavioral economists" who study decision behavior 
almost uniformly report results contrary to rational theory (Robin Hogarth 
and Melvin Reder, 1987). It was not always so,34but the focus on 
"anomalies," be?ginning in the 1970?s, converted the emerging discovery 
enterprise into a search for contradic?tions between reports of behavior 
andthe cari?catures35 of mainstream theory that constitute much of its 
core. Psychologists, to their credit,

33This is demonstrated by comparison experiments in which there are no 
government agents, but .at money is in. ated each period by the average 
rate that is observed in those experiments with government agents present.

34 "Prior to 1970 or so, most researchers in judgment and decision?making 
believedthatpeople are pretty good decision?makers. ... Since then, 
however, opinionhas taken a decided turn for the worse, though the decline 
was not in any sense demanded by experimental results. Subjects did not 
sud?denly become any less adept at experimental tasks nor did 
experimentalists begin to grade their performance against a tougher 
standard. Instead, researchers began selectively to emphasize some results 
at the expense of others." "The view that people are irrational is real in 
the sense that people hold it to be true. But the reality is mostly in the 
rhetoric" (Lola Lopes, 1991, pp. 66, 80).

35I say "caricatures" because economics has long of?fered much in the way 
of theoretical exceptions to the core neoclassical model of 
self?interested market competition: externalities in choice, public 
goodeffects, and "anomalies" in choice under uncertainty 
requiringexplanation (Friedman and L. J. Savage, 1948; Harry Markowitz, 
1952). But it is the neoclassical assumption of self?interested agents 
that hasbeen the most productive of theoretical results and therefore is a 
prominent and easy target of criticism.

have maintained an intensive program examin?ingthe behavioralnature 
ofthese contradictions to the classical model. For example, Sidney Siegel 
(1959) and Lawrence E. Fouraker and Siegel (1963) reported both 
con.rmations and contradictions, and used the pattern to propose improved 
models. Similarly, in prospect theory Kahneman and Tversky (1979) have 
proposed modi.cations in both the utility and probability 
weightingfunctions of standard expected utility theory.36 Research 
strategies that focus on the study of errors, however, can distort 
profes?sional beliefs, to say nothing of popular repre?sentations, if the 
primary emphasis is on the failures, to the exclusion ofthe predictive 
suc?cesses, ofthe theory.37

E. Psychology, Economics, and the Two Kinds of Rationality

Curiously, the image ofeconomists and psy?chologists as protagonists 
obscures their under?lyingagreement on foundations. Bothrely upon 
constructivism:(1)to the extentthatmarkets are

36Their most important contributions in prospect theory were in empirical 
tests demonstrating the relevance of two ideas suggested originally by 
Markowitz (1952): the idea that the theory applies to changes in wealth 
(income) rela?tive to the individual?s current asset state, andthat people 
are risk preferring in losses and risk averse in gains. This much is 
consistent with standard expected utility theory, which requires onlythat 
the prizes ofchoice can be ordered, and therefore applies either to wealth 
or income. Which prizes the theory is best applied to has always seemed to 
me to be inherently a subject for empirical determination. If applied to 
wealth, the theory starts to infringe on preference theory over time, long 
recognized as especially dif. cult modeling terrain.

37As Isee it experimental market economics and behav?ioral economics are 
in principle complementary. Experi?mental economists study market 
performance (rationality) given individual valuations, while cognitive 
psychologists study the valuations (rationality)of individuals. If the 
ob?jects traded are prospects the appropriate valuations are their "cash 
values," whether based on expected utility, pros?pect theory (Kahneman and 
Tversky, 1979), or some other representation. Thus Plottand Jonathan T. 
Uhl (1981)study experimental markets in which the items traded are 
gam?bles, and reportconvergence to a CEde. ned by demand and supplybased 
on the expected values ofthe gambles. But the connective interface between 
rationality at the individual and at the market level and how institutions 
modulate the interface has not been well explored. Markets do their thing 
with whatever are the values--rational, irrational, or 
nonrational--thatare provided by individuals. rational38 or irrational,39 
this derives directly andonly from the rationality or irrationality of 
agents;40 (2) individual rationality is a self?aware, calculating process 
of maximization;41

(3) predominantly both are reluctant to allow that naive, unsophisticated 
agents can achieve socially optimalends withoutcomprehensionof the whole, 
as well as their individual parts, implemented by deliberate action (there 
is no "magic," and no room for the GS zero intelli?gence traders); (4) 
consequently, psychologists test the rationality of individual decisions 
largely byaskingfor subject responsesto choice problems to discover how 
they "reason." Rather than challenge this constructivist view, 
econo?mists, subject to the identical vision (how do agents consciously 
think?), are critical of the question?response survey methods used in 
cog?nitive psychology: the stakes are zero or too low,42and the subjects 
are too unsophisticated, inexperienced, or untrained to allow a serious 
researcher to .nd out how "real agents really think." Many psychologists 
appear to .nd irra?tionality everywhere, and many economists appear to see 
the .ndings as everywhere irrel?evant. To these economists, how agents 
think indeed exhausts the core of empirical econom?

38For example, the double?auction markets discussed above.

39Experimental asset markets bubble and crash on the long path 
ofexperience to equilibrium (Smith et al., 1988; Porter and Smith, 1994). 
For a new study of subject expe?rience and asset bubbles see Martin 
Dufwenberg et al. (2003).

40 Thus, even a "... monopolist ... has to havea fullgeneral?equilibrium 
model of the economy" (Kenneth Arrow, 1987, p. 207). Also see footnote 30 
above on racetrack market ef. ciency, and the inference that the bettors 
must therefore have considerable expertise. Thus, market rationality is 
au?tomatically assumed to derive entirely from individual ra?tionality.

41 Here is a particularly clear statement of decision as rational 
constructivist action: "Incentives do not operate by magic: they work by 
focusing attention and by prolonged deliberation" (Tversky and Kahneman, 
1987, p. 90).

42The use of cash or other reward medium in decision behavior experiments 
is listed by Ralph Hertwig and An?dreas Ortmann (2001)as one ofthe key 
differences between psychology and economics experiments. The controversy 
over paying subjects, however, is rapidly being eroded as cognitive 
psychologists and experimental economists join with 
neurobiologists--including those who are informed on animal behavior 
models--and subjects are paid salient re?wards (Gregor Thut et al., 1997; 
Hans C. Breiter et al., 2001;McCabe et al., 2001). ics; psychologists 
merely "fail" to properly im?plement their investigation of this core.43 
In point of fact, opinion surveys can provide important insights: 
sometimes survey .ndings can be tested more rigorously with 
reward?motivated choices in the laboratory or the .eld and are found to 
have predictive content (e.g., the asymmetry between losses and gains in 
wealth). Sometimes what people actually do completely contradicts what 
they say, and sometimesyou cannot .nd out by asking be?cause the agents 
themselves do not know what they will do or are doing. For example:

Comparisons of riskpreferences under low and high monetary stakes have 
shown that actual reward levels have a statistically signi.cant effect on 
decision, but that the qualitative conclusions from hypothetical choice 
re?sponse surveys are not refuted by studies using very high stakes--the 
accumulated payoffs average three times subjects? normal monthly living 
expenses (Steven J. Kachelmeier and Mohamed Shehata, 1992; also see Hans 
P. Binswanger, 1980, for similar .ndings).

Consider the double auction in classroom demonstration experiments:in 
debrie. ngs af?terwards students deny that there is any kind of 
quantitative model that could predict their market price and exchange 
volume, or that they were able to maximize their pro.ts; but a participant 
with an envelope containing the predictions provided in advance, opens it 
showing that this consensus is false. The dis?persed private value/cost 
information is ag?gregated into prices thatare at the equilibrium andeach 
agentis maximizinghis or her pro.t given the behavior ofall others. Here 
there is indeed a kindof"magic," but only, I think, in not being well 
understood or modeled at the game?theoretic level of individual choice.44

43 Kahneman clearly does not see people as irrational except in the narrow 
context used in economic modeling based on dominant choice. In fact he 
describes his empirical .ndings contradicting the SSSM as having been 
easy, thanks to the implausibility to any psychologist of the SSSM. See 
the Nobel Foundation interview of the 2002 Nobel Laureates in economics at 
http://www.nobel.se/ economics/laureates/2002/kahneman?interview.html.

44 At the macro?market level, convergence, and cases of stable and 
unstable equilibrium, are well predicted by the classical Walrasian 
adjustment model, but the paths taken, including jumps across alternative 
unstable equilibria, are

Our bounded rationality as economic theo?rists is far more constraining on 
economic science, than the bounded rationality of pri?vately informed 
agents is constraining on their ability to maximize the gains from 
exchange. In asset trading, participant survey responses re. ect the 
disconnect between their informa?tion on fundamental value and their 
puzzling experience of a price bubble and crash gen?eratedon the long path 
to the rational expec?tations equilibrium (T. Schwartz and J. S. Ang, 
1989). Opinion polls administered to the IEM trad?ers show the same 
judgment biases that psy?chologists and political scientists .nd in public 
opinion polls, but these biases did not interfere with the market?s 
ability to predict the popular vote outcomes (Forsythe et al., 1992). In 
preference reversal survey experiments subjects report many inconsistent 
choices: gamble A is preferredto B buta subject will sell A for less than 
B. Arbitraging the sub?jects? cash?motivated choices quicklyreduces these 
inconsistencies (Yun Peng Chu and RueyLingChu, 1990, p. 906), andit has 
been shown that the inconsistencies are unbiased random errors under some, 
but not all, con?ditions (James C. Cox and DavidM. Grether, 1996); also 
see Barry Soper and Gary Gigio?lotti, 1993, where choice intransitivity is 
studied directly and the errors are found to be random. Kahneman et al. 
(1986; hereafter KKT) pro?vide many examples in which respondents are 
asked to rate the fairness,45 on a four?

not well predicted by the model. See the outstanding sum?mary by Plott 
(2001). The disconnect with choice behavior is evident in the following: 
Walrasian dynamics makes ad hoc assumptions about price adjustments in 
response to excess demandsayingnothing about the correspondingpay?off 
motivation of the agents who drive the price changes. Walrasian dynamics 
is a story about the ta?tonnement mech?anism in which there are no 
disequilibrium trades, whereas Plott?s (2001)summary is about continuous 
double?auction trading witha great many disequilibrium trades.

45The descriptor "fairness" has so many meanings in different contexts 
that I believe it is best to avoid the term entirelyin experimental 
science except where it is explicitly modeled and the model tested in 
environments where sub?jects make decisions on the basis of the de. 
ningparameters of the model; then the descriptor "fair" and its ambiguity 
can be avoided altogether. This is the way it is used in the utilitarian 
de. nitions by Robert Franciosi et al. (1995), in Ernst Fehr and Klaus M. 
Schmidt (1999), and Bolton and Axel Ockenfels (2000). Of course it is 
appropriate to use the point scale, of elementary business actions in 
competitive environments. In one case a hardware store raises the price 
ofsnow shov?els from $15 to $20 after a snowstorm. Eighty?two percent of 
the respondents con?sider this action either unfair or very unfair. 
Franciosi et al. (1995, pp. 939- 40)substitute the words "acceptable" for 
"fair" and "unac?ceptable" for "unfair"46and add one additional sentence 
to this KKT example: "The store does this to prevent a stock out for its 
regular customers since another store has raised its price to $20." Now 
only 32percent rate the action unfavorably. This exercise suggests the 
possible sensitivity of survey results to emotive words and/or perceived 
"justi. ca?tion" in terms of impersonal market forces.

Note that it is in private information environ?ments, where the market is 
aggregating infor?mation far beyond the reach of what each individual 
knows, and is able to comprehend, that the solicited opinions are so far 
off the mark. The surveys yield no useful understand?ing because the 
subjects have none to relate. In the complete information asset market, 
subjects are aware of its fundamental value structure, and come to have 
common expectations through an experiential process of repetition; i.e., 
initialcommon information is not suf.cient to induce common 
expectations.47 They play myopically and their expressed baf.ement 
("prices rise without cause") re. ects this myo?

descriptor if the purpose is to see how its instructional use might have 
an emotive affect on behavior. The emotive content of "fairness" is clear 
in the important work of Edward E. Zajac (1995), who has also examined the 
rhetoric of fairness arguments as self?interest serving in the Florida, 
2000, election controversy (Zajac, 2002).

46 KKT state that "... the phrase ?it is fair,? is simply an abbreviation 
for a substantial majority of the population studied thinks it is fair" 
(KKT, 1986,p. 201). But their main interest is in whether .rm behavior is 
affected by commu?nitynorms. Whether or not an action is "acceptable" 
would seem to be just as important in determining .rm behavior as whether 
or not it is "fair." If the two terms map into different attitudes, then 
there is inherent ambiguity in spec?ifying the effect on .rm behavior.

47This interpretation is consistent with asset?trading ex?periments using 
undergraduates, small businesspersons, corporation managers, and 
over?the?counter traders (Smith et al., 1988, Porter and Smith, 1994). 
Exceptions using inexperienced subjects, to my knowledge, have only been 
observed with advanced graduate students (McCabe and Smith, 2000).

pia. These comments suggest that much insight might be obtained from the 
systematic study of the conditions under which surveyresults are robustly 
informative and the conditions where they are not.

F. Fairness: An Experimental Market Test

In developing a descriptive theory48 of the "reference transaction," KKT 
state that what is considered "fair" may change: "Terms of ex?change that 
are initially seen as unfair may in time acquire the status of a reference 
transac?tion" (KKT, 1991, p. 203). This paves the way for the adaptation 
of "fairness beliefs" to changes in the competitive equilibrium. 
Al?thoughthe competitivemodelis the one thathas static predictive content, 
its prediction is silent as to how long it will take to respond to a 
change in parameters. KKT?s arguments are not predictive, but they tella 
story about why mar?kets might be sluggish in respondingto change. How 
good is their story?

Franciosi et al. (1995) state a preference modelofoptimal choice that 
allows for a utili?tarian trade?off between own consumption and 
"fairness." For example, the utility of two com?modities (x, z)is given 
by: u(x, z)5 z 1 ax 2 (b/2)x2 2 ax[(p/p0) 2 1], in which the sell?er?s 
pro.t, p, relative to a reference pro. t, p0, appears as an "externality" 
in the buyer?s utility function. The usual maximization subject to an 
income constraint yields the inverse demand equation:p 5 a 2 bx 2 
a[(p/p0)2 1]. Thus, for a . 0 any change in the environment that increases 
a .rm?s pro.t relative to the reference pro.t has an external effect that 
lowers the buyer?s inverse demand for units x. If a 5 0, then we have the 
standard own?maximizingthe?ory. Consequently, Franciosi et al. (1995) can 
test the hypothesis, never using the word "fair?ness," that if subject 
buyers have a utilitarian concern for pro.ts not being increased relative 
to a baseline then after a change from the base?line this should alter the 
observed equilibrium relative to the standard predicted equilibrium withno 
externaleffect, a 5 0. In a posted offer market giving KKT their best shot 
(sellers can?not see each other's posted prices, andtherefore cannot 
knowingly emulate or undercut each other's prices), Franciosi etal. 
(1995).nd that when a 5 0 (implemented by either no disclo?sure, or by 
marginal cost?justifying disclosure) the market converges quickly to the 
new com?petitive equilibrium. When a . 0 (implemented by pro.t p and 
p0disclosure)prices converge more slowly, but precisely, to the new 
equilib?rium. Hence, under conditions most favorable to a "fairness" 
effect, the response dynamics is changed,butnotthe equilibriumas predicted 
by the standard competitive model. The discipline of the market swamps all 
but a transient "fair?ness" effect. If, realistically,sellers can see each 
others prices, I would predict a much smaller "fairness" effect, if any.

48This methodology is driven by the untenable belief that general theories 
can be derived directly from observa?tions if youjust have enoughdata (see 
Smith, 2002, and the references therein). "Perhaps the most important 
lesson learned from these studies is thatthe rules of fairness cannot be 
inferred either from conventional economic principles or from intuition 
and introspection. In the words of Sherlock Holmes in ?The Adventure of 
the Copper Beaches?: ?Data! Data! Data! I cannot make bricks without clay? 
" (KKT, 1986, pp. 115-16). Neither can a predictive theory of"fair?ness" 
be inferred from any amount of the KKT data. If N "fairness" rules are 
discovered by trial and error modi. ca?tions in the survey questionnaires, 
you cannot reject the hypothesis that there is an N 1 1 variation that 
will identify a new one. More data will not help, as the fairness concept 
is used here as a word that provides no effective means of 
modifyingstandard theory to correct for its predictive .aws.

III. Personal Social Exchange

One of the most intriguing discoveries of experimental economics is that 
(1) as we have seen, people invariably behave noncoopera?tively in small 
and large group "impersonal" market exchange institutions; (2) many (up to 
half in single play; over 90 percent in repeat play) cooperate in 
"personal" exchange (two?person extensive?form games); (3)yet in both 
economic environments all interactions are be?tween anonymous players. In 
this section Ishall attempt to summarize some of the most com?pelling 
evidence of cooperation in personal ex?change--in the .eld as well as the 
laboratory-- and review some of the test results designed to discriminate 
among the more prominentpredic?tive hypotheses for modeling cooperative 
be?havior. Whatever might be the most useful way to model and explain 
cooperation, unaided by market incentives, my working hypothesis 
throughoutis that it is a product of an unknown mix of cultural and 
biological evolution, with the biologyprovidingabstract function de. ning 
potential, and culture shaping the emergent forms that we observe. But to 
motivate the whole exercise in thought, I will begin with a discussion 
ofsome persistent cross?cultural so?cial practices from business, law, 
anthropology, and American economic history.

How might a social rule (practice, norm) emerge, become a cultural .xture, 
and be widely emulated? I will use a parable to illus?trate how a rule for 
"bargaining in good faith" might become established.

In bargaining over the exchange price be?tween a buyer and seller, suppose 
the seller begins byannouncinga selling price, the buyer responds with a 
lower buying price, the seller reduces his asking price, and so on. In 
this concessionary process it is considered bad form for the buyer (or 
seller), once having made a concession, to return to a lower (or higher) 
price. This violates a principle of"bargainingin good faith" (see Siegel 
and Fouraker, 1960, p. 20). How might this come about? One can sup?pose 
that those who failto bargain in goodfaith would be less likely to be 
sought out by others for repeat transactions. Such behavior raises 
transactions cost by increasing the time it takes to complete a sale. 
Trading pairs would be expected to self?select, tending to isolate the 
more time?consuming bargainers, and it would take them longer to .ndthose 
willingto tolerate the time cost of bargaining. Such practices-- 
inherently economizing in this parable--might then become part of a 
cultural norm, powerful enoughto be codi.edultimately in contractlaw andin 
stock exchange rules. Proposition:in this manner collectives discover law 
in those rules that persist long enough to become entrenched practices. In 
this example the emergent rule reduces transaction cost, leaving open the 
clas?sical question of how equilibrium can be char?acterized in bilateral 
bargaining.

A. Spontaneous Order Without the Law49

The early "law?givers" didnotmake the law they "gave"; they studied social 
traditions and

49Experimental studies have inquired as to whether emergent norms 
ofcooperation and constructivist incentive schemes are substitutes, the 
latter crowding out the former. See Iris Bohnet et al. (2001) and Fehr and 
Simon Ga?chter (2002) for studies suggesting that they are substitutes 
(for?mal rules undermine informal cooperative norms), and Ser? gio G. 
Lazzarini et al. (2002) for new results suggesting that they are 
complements-- contracts facilitate the self?enforcement of relational 
elements beyond contractibility. I would hypothesize that both must be 
true: constructivist rules ultimately must pass .tness tests of ecological 
ratio?nality. Formal rules that are incompatible with informal rules will 
be modi.ed or eliminated; those that are compat?ible willpersist. Hence, 
at any time slice in history, both must necessarilybe observedacross 
allsocioeconomicexperiments.

informal rules andgavevoice to them, as God?s, or natural, law.50 The 
common lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, championed seventeenth?century social 
norms as law commandinghigher author?ity than the king. Remarkably, these 
forces pre?vailed, paving the way for the rule of law in England.51 
Similarly, the cattlemen?s associa?tions, land clubs, and mining districts 
in the American West allfashionedtheir own rules for 
establishingpropertyrights andenforcingthem: the brandon the hindquarters 
ofhis calf was the cattlemen?s indelible ownership signature on his 
property, enforcedbygunmen hiredthrough his cattle club;52squatter?s 
rightswere defended ably (possession is nine points of the law?) by the 
land clubs composedof those brave enough to settle wilderness lands in 
advance ofveterans exercising their land script claims, and of set?

50 "... ([A]ll early (my insertion: as in Sumar with the beginning of 
writing) ?law?giving? consisted in efforts to record and make known a law 
that was conceived as unal?terably given. A ?legislator? might endeavor to 
purge the law of supposed corruptions, or to restore it to its pristine 
purity, but it was not thought that he could make new law. ... But if 
nobody had the power or intention to change the law ... this does not 
meanthat law did notcontinue to develop" (Hayek, 1973, p. 81).

51What allowed the rule of "natural" or found law to prevail in England 
"... was the deeply entrenched tradition of a common law that was not 
conceived as the product of anyone?s will but rather as a barrier to all 
power, including that of the king--a tradition which Edward Coke was to 
defend against King James I and Francis Bacon, and which Matthew Hale at 
the end of the seventeenth century mas?terly restated in opposition to 
Thomas Hobbes" (Hayek, 1973, p. 85; also see pp. 167, 173-74).

52These voluntary private associations for sharing the cost ofa common 
good--policing--were subsequently un?dermined by statehood, and the 
publicly .nanced local sheriff as the recognized monopolylaw enforcement 
of. cer. This observation contradicts the myththat a central function of 
government is to "solve" the free?rider problem in the private 
provisionofpublic goods. Here we have the reverse: the incentive of the 
cattlemen?s clubs was to free ride on the general taxpayer, assigningthe 
sheriff the task of enforcing property rights in cattle. The same 
free?ridingoccurs with school busingprograms, andin

publicly provided education itself in which government .nancing need not 
require gov?ernment provision. tlers under the Homestead Act; mining 
claims were de.ned, established, and defended by the guns of the mining 
clubbers, whose rules were later to become part of public mining law 
(Terry L. Anderson andPeter J. Hill, 1975;John Umbeck, 1977). For over a 
century, the Maine lobstermen have establishedrights, usedthreats, then 
force, to defend exclusive individual lobster?.shing territories in the 
ocean (James Acheson, 1975). Eskimo polar bear hunting teams awardedthe 
upperhalfofthe bear?s skin (prized for its long mane hairs used to line 
women?s boots)to that person who .rst .xed his spear in the prey (Peter 
Freuchen, 1961). Extant hunter?gatherers have evolved sharingcustoms for 
the products of communal hunting and gathering. For example, the Ache of 
Eastern Paraguay share the volatile products of the hunt widely within the 
tribe, while the low variance products of gatheringare sharedonly within 
the nuclear family (Hillard Kaplan and Kim Hill, 1985; Kristen Hawkes, 
1991).

B. Ellickson Out?Coases Coase

Using the rancher/farmer parable, Ronald H. Coase (1960)argued that if 
there were no costs of transacting, then theoretically ef. ciency could 
not depend on who was liable for dam?ages to crops caused by stray 
animals. Legal liability gives the rancher an incentive to em?ploycost?ef. 
cient measures to control straying cattle. But if she were not liable, 
then in a world ofzero transactions cost, victims would be led in their 
own interest to negotiate a settlement paying the rancher to undertake the 
same ef.?cient control measures induced by legal liabil?ity. In so doing, 
trespass victims save the costof crop damage, assumed to be more than the 
cost of cattle control--otherwise it is inef. cient to control them. The 
externality is internalizedby market negotiation incentives. Curiously, 
the Coase Theorem--that in the absence of trans?actions cost ef. 
ciencydoes notdepend upon the locus of liability--was controversial. It 
was clearly intended as a kindly spoof of oversim?pli. ed theories that, 
in particular, ignored trans?actions cost.53 The real problem, addressed

53Later game?theoretic formulations have allowed that with two or more 
alternatives there may exist "standoff equilibria" that stall agreement in 
Coase bargaining (see

brilliantlyby Coase, was to deal with the ques?tion of ef. cient liability 
rules in a world of signi. cant transactions cost. He then proceeded to 
use the transactions cost framework to exam?ine the problem of social cost 
in a variety of legal precedents andcases.54

In the beginning Shasta County California was governed by "open range" 
law, meaning that in principle ranchers are not legally liable for damages 
resulting from their cattle acciden?tally trespassing on unfenced land. 
Then, in 1945 a California law authorized the Shasta County Board of 
Supervisors to substitute a "closed range" ordinance in subregions of the 
county. Dozens of conversions have occurred since this enabling law. Under 
a closed range law the rancher is strictly liable--even if not 
negligent--for damage caused by his livestock. Robert C. Ellickson (1991), 
out?Coased Coase by, in effect, asking, "Given that this county applies 
the polar legal rules used in Coase?s illustration, how do neighbors in 
Shasta County actually handle the problem of stray cattle?" The answer: 
"Neighbors in fact are strongly inclined to cooperate, but theyachieve 
cooper?ative outcomes not by bargaining from legally established 
entitlements,55 as the parable sup?poses, but rather developing and 
enforcing adaptive norms of neighborliness that trump formal legal 
arrangements. Although the route chosen is not the one that the parable 
anticipates, the end reached is exactly the one that Coase predicted: 
coordination to mutual advantage without supervision by the state"56 
(Ellickson, Roger B. Myerson, 1991, p. 506). These cases may limit 
extensions of the Coase Theorem, butdo not, Ithink,detract from its 
essential message that the locus of liability was irrelevant.

54Coase (1974) also noticed that the lighthouse was frequently cited by 
theorists as an example of a "pure" public good. As was his style (to 
confront the casual para?bles oftheory that .nessed certain costs by .at), 
his re?sponse in effect was, "Well, let?s see what people have done who 
actually operate lighthouses, or who use the services of lighthouses." It 
turned out that early lighthouses were pri?vate enterprise, not 
government, solutions to a public good problem, and the alleged 
inevitability of free?riding was solved by the owner who contracted with 
port authorities to collect lighthouse fees when ships arrived portside to 
load or unload cargo.

55These are the outside options or threat points in game theory.

56The same results emerge in laboratory experiments reported by Hoffman 
and Matthew L. Spitzer (1985). 1991, p. 4). Thus, Shasta County citizens, 
in?cluding judges, attorneys, and insurance adjus?tors, do not have full 
working knowledge of formal local trespass law.57Citizens notifyowners and 
help catchthe trespassinganimal; use men?tal accounting(reciprocity)to 
settle debts, e.g., a rancher, whose cattle have strayedmaytellthe victim 
to come down and take some hay, or if your goat eats my tomato plants, you 
offer to help me replant them; use negativegossip, com?plain to of. cials, 
submit informal claims for money (but not through a lawyer) to punish 
deviant neighbors; rarely use lawyers to seek monetary compensation; share 
the building of fences, most often bya rule ofproportionality-- you pay 
more if you have more animals than your neighbor; ignore fence law as 
irrelevant; and do not change fence obligations with the plantingofcrops. 
Finally, contrary to the Coa?sian parable, the main cost of trespass is 
not from crop damage, but from highwaycollisions that killanimals and 
damage property.

C. Extensive Form Interactions Between Anonymously Paired Individuals

Cooperation has also emerged in anonymous two?person extensive?form games 
in laboratory experiments. Although such behavior is con?trary to rational 
prescriptions, it is not inconsis?tent with our examples of spontaneous 
order without externally imposed law. Why do we study anonymous 
interactions in the laboratory?The model ofnonrepeated game theory is 
about strangers without a historyor a future (Robert W. Rosenthal, 1981), 
but ano?nymity has long been used in small group ex?periments to control 
for the unknown complexities of natural social intercourse (Sie?geland 
Fouraker, 1960). It is well documented that face?to?face interaction 
swamps subtler procedural effects in yielding cooperative out?comes 
(Hoffman and Spitzer, 1985; Kagel and Roth, 1995). But more important, I 
believe it is this condition that provides the greatest scope for 
exploring the human instinct for social ex?change, and how it is affected 
by context, re?

57 Under open range the animal owner is liable for in?tentional trespass, 
trespass ofa lawfulfence, andtrespass by goats, whatever the 
circumstances, suggestingthe hypothe?sis that goat behavior had long been 
recognized in pastoral norms and now captured in codi. ed law. ward, and 
procedural conditions that vary elements of social distance. Again, 
studying what is not helps us to understand what is.

D. Perception and the Internal Order of the Mind: Why Context Matters

Two decision tasks, represented by the same abstract game tree, may lead 
to different re?sponses because they occur in different con?texts. Why? 
The answer may be found in the process by which we perceive the external 
world. Hayek (1952)58 was a pioneer in devel?oping a theory of perception, 
which anticipated recent contributionsto the neuroscience of per?ception. 
It is natural for our minds to suppose that experience is formed from the 
receipt of sensory impulses that re. ect unchanging at?tributes 
ofexternalobjects in the environment. Instead, Hayek proposed that our 
current per?ception results from a relationship between ex?ternal impulses 
and our past experience of similar conditions. Categories formed in the 
mind are based on the relative frequency with which current and past 
perceptions coincide. Memory consists of external stimuli that have been 
modi.ed by processing systems whose organizationis conditionedbypast 
experience59 (Hayek, 1952, pp. 64, 165). There is a "constant dynamic 
interaction between perception and memory, which explains the ... identity 
of pro?cessing and representational networks of the cortex that modern 
evidence indicates." "Al?though devoid of mathematical elaboration, 
Hayek?s model clearly contains most of the elements of those later network 
models of as?sociative memory ..." (Joaquin M. Fuster, 1999, pp. 88- 89).

Hayek?s model captures the idea that, in the internal order of the mind, 
perception is self?organized:abstract function combines withex?perience to 
determine network connectivityand expansion.60Loss can occur either from 
lack of

58The Sensory Order was notpublished until 1952when Hayek revised a 
manuscript, originally written in the 1920?s, entitled in English 
translation, "Contributions to a Theory of How Consciousness Develops" 
(noted in corre?spondence to me by Bruce Caldwell).

59The interdependence between perception andmemory is revealed by the 
different descriptions of the same event by two eyewitnesses (Gazzaniga et 
al., 1998, pp. 484- 86).

60Built into your brain is the maintained hypothesis that the world around 
you is stationary. Look at the wall and function or the stimulus of 
developmental ex?perience. Block or distort sensory input, and function is 
impaired; impair function by brain lesions or inherited de.ciency, and 
develop?ment is compromised.

This model is consistent with the hypothesis that the mind is organized by 
interactive mod?ules (circuits) that are specialized for vision, for 
language learning, for socialization, and a host ofother functions(see 
Leda Cosmides andJohn Tooby, 1992; Pinker, 1994). In this view, mind is 
the unconscious product of coevolution be?tween the biological and 
cultural development of our brains that distinguished us from other 
primates. It was what made reason possible. Our folk predilection for 
believing in the "blank slate" concept of mind (Pinker, 2002) makes plain 
that this interpretation of mind is just as consonant with our direct 
experience as was once the idea that the earth is .at, or that witches had 
to be destroyed. In each case to escape from the folk perception requires 
the falsifyingindirect evidence, based on reason, to become partofour 
"felt" experience. Construc?tivist rationality then becomes ecologically 
rational.

E. Experimental Procedures

The experiments I will report will show how social contextcan be 
importantin the interactive decision behavior we observe. This 
possibilityfol?lows from the autobiographical character of memoryand the 
manner in which past encoded experience interacts with current sensory 
input in creating memory. I will be reporting the results of 
decision?making in single play, two?person, sequential?move game trees. 
Subject in?structions do not use technical and role?

move your eyes back and forth with head still. The wall does not move. Now 
press your eyeball with your .nger through the eyelid from the side. The 
wall moves as you jiggle your eyeball. Why the difference? When you .ex 
the eye muscles and move your eyes back and forth, a copy of the signal 
goes to the occipital cortex to offset apparent movementofthe wall so that 
the net perception is that ofa stationary wall. This stabilizing 
self?ordered system for seeing also makes you vulnerable to optical 
illusions of motion. Moving your eyes back and forth between the tunnel 
gate and your airplane as it docks, you ambiguously "sense" that either 
the gate or the plane, or both, is in motion. The ambiguity is resolved 
only when the gate, or plane, stops.

suggestive words like "game," "play," "players," "opponent," and "partner" 
(except where variations on the instructions are used as systematic 
treatments to identify their effect);61 rather, reference is made to the 
"decision tree," "decision maker 1" (DM1) or 2 (DM2), and "your 
counterpart," etc. The purpose is to pro?vide a baseline context, which 
avoids emotive words that might trigger unintended meanings by the 
experimenter.62 I do not mean that the baseline is "neutral," a concept 
that is not clearly de.nable, given thatcontext effects can dependon 
autobiographical experience. The ef?fect of instructionalvariation on 
decision is an empirical matter and any particular set of in?structions 
must always be considered a treat?ment unless the observations are shown 
to be robust to changes in the instructions. All obser?vations must be 
seen as ajoint productof ex?perimental procedures and the theoretical 
hypotheses, implemented by particular parame?ters that it is our intention 
to test. This is not unique to laboratory observations, but a 
charac?teristic also of .eld observations, and the whole of science (see 
Smith, 2002, for examples from physics, astronomy, andexperimental 
econom?ics). It is therefore important to understandhow procedures as well 
as different parameteriza?tions (games, payoffs) affect behavior.

Subjects are recruited in advance for an eco?nomics experiment. Upon 
arrival at the ap?pointed time they register, receive a show?up fee, and 
are assigned to a private computer terminalin a large room with 
40stations. Com?monly there are 11 other people, well spaced throughout 
the room, in the experiments re?ported below. After everyone has arrived, 
each person logs into the experiment, reads through the instructions for 
the experiment, responds to instructional questions, andlearns that he or 
she is matched anonymously with another person in the room, whose identity 
willnever be known,

61See Terence Burnham et al. (2000), discussed below, for a study 
comparing the effect of using "partner" and "opponent" in a trust game.

62It is not meaningful or helpful to talk about "experi?menter effects." 
There are instructional and procedural ef?fects, includingthe presence or 
absence ofan experimenter, what he/she knows or does not know (as in 
double blind behavioral experiments), and what he/she does or does not do. 
All of the elementary operations used to implement an experiment are 
treatments that may or may not have a signi. cant effect on observed 
outcomes. and vice versa. This does not mean that a sub?ject knows nothing 
about their matched coun?terpart. For example, it mayappear evident that 
he or she is another "like" person, such as an undergraduate, or an 
industry executive with whom one may feel more?or?less an in?group 
identity. Obviously, each person imports into the experiment a host of 
different past experi?ences and impressions that are likely to be 
as?sociated with the currentexperiment.

F. The Contextof Decision: The Ultimatum Game Example

Consider the ultimatum game, a two?stage, two?person game with the 
following abstract form: for each pair the experimenter makes a .xed sum 
of money, m, available (e.g., m will be 10 one?dollar bills, or 10 
ten?dollar bills); Player 1 moves .rst offering 0 # x # m units of the 
money to Player 2, Player 1 retaining m 2 x;Player 2 then responds by 
either accept?ing the offer, in which case Player 1 is paid m 2x, and 
Player 2 is paid x, or rejecting the offer, in whichcase each player 
receives nothing.

Below I report ultimatum results from four different 
instructional/procedural treatments (contexts) that have the same 
underlying ab?stract game structure. In each case imagine that you are 
Player 1. See Hoffman et al. (1994; hereafter HMSS) for instructional 
details, and for references to the literature and the origins of the 
ultimatum game.

Divide $10.--You and your counterpart have been provisionallyallocated$10, 
and randomly assigned to positions. Your task as Player 1is to divide the 
$10 by .lling out a form that will then go to your counterpart who will 
acceptor reject it.

Contest Entitlement.--The 12 people in the room each answer the same 10 
questions on a general knowledgequiz. Your score is the num?ber of 
questions answered correctly; ties are broken in favor of the person who 
.rst .nished the quiz. The scores are ranked from 1(highest) through 12 
(lowest). Those ranked 1-6 are in?formed that they have earned the right 
to be Player 1, the other six will be Players 2.

Exchange.--Player 1 is a seller, and Player 2 is a buyer. A table lists 
the buyer and seller pro.t for each price $0, $1, $2, ... , $10charged by 
the seller, and the buyer chooses to buy or not buy. The pro.t of the 
seller is the price chosen;the pro. tof the buyer is ($10 2 price). Each 
receives nothing if the buyer refuses to buy.

Contest/Exchange.--This treatment combines Contest withExchange; i.e., the 
sellers andbuy?ers in Exchange are selected by the contest scoring 
procedure. In one version the total amount is 10one?dollar bills, and in 
the second it is 10 ten?dollar bills.

Whatever the context there is a game?theoretic concept ofequilibrium 
(subgame per?fect) that yields the same prediction in all four treatments 
(Reinhard Selten, 1975): Player 1 offers the minimum unit ofaccount, $1 
($10)if m 5 $10 ($100), andPlayer 2 accepts the offer. This follows from 
the assumption that each player is self?interested in the narrow sense of 
always choosing the largest of two immediate payoffs for herself; that 
this condition is com?mon knowledge for the two players; and that Player 1 
applies backward induction to the de?cision problem faced by Player 2, 
conditional on Player 1?s offer. Thus Player 1 reasons that 
anypositivepayoff is better than zero for Player 2andtherefore, Player 
1need onlyoffer x 5 $1 ($10).

One dif. culty with this analysis is that, de?pending on context, the 
interaction may be in?terpreted as a social exchange between the two 
anonymously matched players who in day?to?day experience read intentions 
into the actions ofothers (S. Baron?Cohen, 1995). Suppose the situation is 
perceived as a social contract as follows: if Player 2 has an entitlement 
to more than the minimum unitofaccount, then an offer of less than the 
perceived entitlement(say, only $1, or even $2-$3) may be rejected by some 
Players 2. Player 1, introspectively anticipating this possible mental 
state of Player 2, might then offer $4 or $5 to insure acceptance of his 
offer. Alternatively, Player 1 might enjoy (get utility from) giving money 
to his counterpart. The point is simply that there are alternative models 
to that of subgame perfection that pre?dict choices in the ultimatum game, 
and these alternatives leave wide latitude for the possibil?ity of context 
affecting the behavior of both players. Abstract game theory can embrace

TABLE 2--MEAN PERCENTAGE OFFERED BY TREATMENT IN ULTIMATUM GAMES

these alternatives through the arti.ce of "types"-- utilities, or beliefs 
states suchas trust, trustworthiness, reciprocation, etc. Ultimately the 
predictive success of such models depends on relating task descriptions 
de. ning context to autobiographical characteristics of individuals that 
are then identi.ed by types that in turn determine behavior. The point 
that needs em?phasis is that it is easy to go from types (tradi?tionally 
utility or beliefs about states) to game?theoretic choice;the hard part is 
to relate types to characteristics of the individual?s memory?sensory 
system. Given the directions ofneuro?science andthe learning from brain 
imaging, I do not think this is an impossible order.

Observe thatin "Divide $10" the original$10 is allocated imprecisely to 
both players. More?over, a common de. nition of the word "divide" 
(Webster) includes the separation of some di?visible quantity into equal 
parts. Finally, ran?dom devices are recognized as a standard mechanism for 
"fair" (equal)treatment. Conse?quently, the instructions might be 
interpretedas suggesting that the experimenter is engaged in the "fair" 
treatment of the subjects cueing them to be "fair" to each other.

As an alternative, Contest deliberately intro?duces a pre?game procedure 
that requires Player 1 to "earn" the right to be the .rst mover. This may 
cue some insipient norm of just desserts based on the pre?game quiz. In 
Exchange the ultimatum game is imbed?ded in the gains from exchange from a 
transac?tion between a buyer and a seller. In an exchange, both the buyer 
and the seller are made better off, and buyers in our culture may accept 
the right of a seller to move.rstby quotinga price. Contest/Exchange 
combines the implicit property right norm of a seller with a mecha?nism 
for earning the property right.

Table 2 summarizes the results from two different studies ofultimatum game 
bargaining with stakes of either 10 one?dollar or 10 ten?dollar bills for 
eachofNpairs of players, where N varies from 23 to 33 subject pairs.

1. Comparing Divide $10 with Divide $100 under the random entitlement we 
observe a trivial difference in the amount offered be?tween the low stakes 
(43.7 percent) and the tenfold increase in the stakes (44.4 percent). 
Also, there is no signi. cant difference in the percentage rate at 
whichoffers are rejected, 8.3 percent, and 3.7 percent, respectively.

2. When Exchange is combined with an earned entitlement the increase in 
stakes lowers the offer percentage from 30.8 percent for $10 stakes to 
27.8 percent for $100 stakes, but this difference is within the normal 
range of sampling error usingdifferentgroups ofsub?jects and is not signi. 
cant. Surprisingly, however, this miniscule decline in the mean offer 
causes the rejection rate to go up from 12.5 percent to 21.7percent. Three 
of four subject Players 1 offering $10 are rejected, and one offer of $30 
is rejected in the game with $100 stakes. As has been shown in 
trust/punishment games, this behavior is as?sociated with a strong human 
propensity to incur personal cost to punish those who are perceived as 
cheaters, even under strict anonymity.

3. We note that comparing the Divide $10/ Random entitlement condition 
withthe Ex?change entitlement, the offer percentage declines from 43.7 
percent to 37.1 percent, and comparing the former to the Earned 
en?titlement the decline is from 43.7 percent to 36.2 percent, both 
reductions being statisti?callysigni. cant. Even more signi. cant is the 
reduction from 43.7 percent to 30.8 percent when the Earned and Exchange 
entitlements are combined. Moreover, in all four of these comparisons the 
rejection rate is null or modest (0 to 12.5 percent).

4. The small proportion of the offers that were rejected, except when the 
stakes were $100 in the Earned/Exchange context and the mean offers 
declined to a low of 27.8 per?cent, indicates thatPlayers 1read their 
coun?terparts well, and as the context is altered, normally offer a suf. 
cient amount to avoid being rejected. The one exception shows clearly that 
pushing the edge, even if it seems justi.ed by the higher stakes, may 
invite an escalation ofrejections.

These data indicate that context is important in the ultimatum game: the 
percentage offered varies by over a third as we move from the highest 
(44percent)to the lowest (28 percent) measured effect. Also see Hoffman et 
al. (2000). Like variation is reported in cross?cultural exper?iments: a 
comparison of two hunter?gather and .ve modern cultures reveals variation 
from a high of 48 percent (Los Angeles subjects) to a low of 26 percent 
(Machiguenga subjects from Peru) (Joseph Henrich, 2000). These 
compari?sons used care in attempting to control for in?structional 
differences across different languages, but this is inherently 
problematic, given the nature ofperception, in that one cannot be sure 
thatthe instructions, translations, payoffs, or the proce?dures for 
handling the subjects,control adequately for context across cultures. In 
each culture one needs to vary the instructions/procedures and ob?serve 
the sampling distribution of outcomes, then compare the sample 
distributions across cultures. These instructionaltreatment effects call 
into question the extent to which one can de.ne what is meant by 
"unbiased" instructions. If results are robust with respect to 
instructional changes, this can only be established empiri?cally. Without 
such studies no claims can be made concerning the relative "neutrality" of 
instructions. The main lesson is that, because of the nature of perception 
and memory, context should matter, and in the ultimatum game the variation 
of observed results with systematic instructional changes designed to 
alter context shows clearly that context can and does matter. 
Experimenters, subject to the same perception/ memory variations, are 
likely to disagree as to what is "neutral."

G. Dictator Games With and Without Gains from Exchange

The ultimatum game is converted into a dic?tator game byremoving the 
rightof the second mover to veto the offer of the .rst. Forsythe et al. 
(1994; hereafter FHSS) note that if the ob?served tendency toward equal 
split of the prize is due primarily to "fairness"--a socialnorm of just 
division--then it should be of little conse?quence if this right is 
eliminated. But if it is the prospectofrejection-- however 
irrational--that tempers the amount offered by Player 1, then the outcomes 
should be materially affected by removing the right of rejection, which 
converts the ultimatum game into what is called the dictator game. Thus a 
signi. cant reduction in the mean percent offered in the dictator game 
wouldbe consistentwith the secondhypothesis, while no signi. cant 
reduction would be consis?tent with the .rst. Comparing the results in 
Table 3, column 1 with those for Divide $10, Random entitlement in Table 
2, we see that the mean dictator offer is only 23.3 percent com?pared with 
the mean ultimatum offer of 43.7 percent. FHSS conclude that fairness 
alone can?notaccountfor behaviorin the ultimatumgame. This is correct, 
but, equallyof interest, why are dictators giving away nearly a quarter of 
their endowment? This research puzzle was picked up by HMSS who 
conjectured thatsuch gener?

TABLE3--DICTATOR GIVING: WITH AND WITHOUT GAINS FROM EXCHANGE AND SOCIAL 
HISTORY

ositymight be, at least in part, a consequence of the incompleteness of 
anonymity. In all the games prior to the HMSS studythe members of each 
player pair were anonymous with respect to each other butnotwithrespect to 
the exper?imenter who knew every person?s decision. Hence, they introduced 
a "double blind" treat?ment category (two versions) in which the pro?tocol 
made it transparent that no one, including the experimenter, could learn 
the decisions of any player. Data from the secondversion, Dou?ble Blind 2, 
are reported in Table 3. In this treatment mean dictator offers decline to 
only 10.5 percent. Consequently, context--in this case social 
connectedness or distance--has an important affect on dictator 
transfers.63 These issues are explored more fully in Hoffman et al. 
(1996b), who vary social distance by varying the instructional and 
protocol parameters that de.ne various versions of single?and 
double?blinddictator games. Also reported in Table 3is the percent given 
by the top 50 percent ofthe most generous dictators: 38.3 percent for 
Single Blind and 21 percent for Double Blind. Berg et al. (1995, hereafter 
BDM)modify the dictator game to introduce gains from "ex?

63These double blind procedures and treatment effects have been replicated 
by two other investigations (Catherine C. Eckel and Philip J. Grossman, 
1996, and Burnham, 1998). Bolton et al. (1998), usinga different double 
blind procedure failed to replicate the results, suggesting that 
procedures matter and interact with the double blind con?dition.

change."64Their investmenttrust two?stage dic?tator game also uses the 
Double Blind 2 protocol: dictators in room Asend any portion of their $10 
(0 to $10)to their random counter?part in room B. People in bothrooms know 
that if $x is sent byanyone, it is tripled, so that the counterpart 
receives $3x. Thus, the most gener?ous offer, $10, yields a gain of $30. 
The coun?terpart can then respond by sending any part (0 to $3x)of the 
amountreceived backto his or her matchedsender. Now an exchangewithgains 
to both parties is possible, and BDM ask if this context is a signi. cant 
treatment. Note that the analysis of the game is no different than the 
one?stage dictator game: by the principle of backward induction Player 1 
can see that Player 2?s interest is to keep all the money received, and 
therefore nothing should be sent. The fact thatthe sender?s transfer 
willbe tripled is irrelevant. But it is not irrelevant if both players see 
the interactionas an exchange based on trust by Player 1 and 
trustworthiness by Player 2.

In Table 3 sender Players 1 now give 51.6 percent when the transfer is 
tripled, compared with 23.3 percent when it is not. Furthermore, the top 
50 percent of the givers send 74.4 per?cent of the money, up from 38.3 
percent. This shows how the tripledpie shifts the distribution 64For a 
recent extension and replication of the BDM .ndings see Madan Pillutla et 
al. (2003). Also see Ortmann et al. (2000). toward larger transfers by 
Players 1. But on average the senders do not quite break even: an average 
of 27.2 percent of the amount received byPlayers 2is returned to Players 
1(break even would be 33.3 percent since x is tripled). In the social 
history treatment the instructions and protocolare the same as described 
above except that the second treatment group is shown the 
distributionofamounts transferredand returned for the .rst group. 
Comparingthe social history with the baseline mean percent given and 
re?turned reveals the effect ofbeingexposedto the decision data ofthe .rst 
group. Social history does not cause a reduction in transfers, which 
actually increases marginally from 51.6 percent to 53.6 percent. The 
average percent returned increases from 27.2percent to 35.5percent,just 
above the break?even level.

These results are not explicable bythe canons of traditional game theory 
that assumes self?interested (in the sense of always choosing larger 
payoffs) types. Byintroducinggainsfrom the investment by Player 1, who can 
only ben?e.t if Player 2 perceives the process as an exchange calling for 
payment for services ren?dered, dictator giving more than doubles. And the 
effect ofsocial history does not precipitate a decline in investment nor 
in the return to Play?ers 2--in fact both increase slightly. The same 
behaviors have been observed in chimpanzee and capuchin monkey communities 
(Frans B. M. deWaal, 1989, 1997). Should such trust?ingand trustworthy 
behaviors be diminishedin human communities characterized by the maxim 
that "the rules ofmoralityare not ... con?clusions of (our) reason?"

H. Trust Games

Ultimatum and dictator games have been studiedextensively, butare much too 
simple to allow an adequate understandingofsome ofthe underlying behavior 
manifest in them. It is tempting to overinterpret them in terms of a mixed 
utility for own and other reward. The potential for greatly expanding what 
can be learned is illustrated in Table 3 where BDM extendedthe dictator 
game to a two?stage game with gains from voluntary exchange. We turn 
therefore to a somewhat richer class of two?person extensive?form trust 
games in which equilibrium play, cooperation, and the prospect ofdefection 
can be studiedin a richer parameter space than the ultimatum game.65

Figure 1 is a typical"trust" game tree.66 Play starts at the topofthe 
tree, node x1, withPlayer 1 who can move right, which stops the game 
yielding the upper payoff to Player 1, $10, and the lower payoffto Player 
2, $10, or move down in which case Player 2chooses a move at node x2. If 
Player 2?s move is right, Player 1receives $15, and Player 2, $25. This is 
the cooperative (C) outcome. If, however, Player 2 moves down, the payoffs 
to 1 and 2are, respectively, $0and $40. This is the defection (D) outcome, 
in which Player 2 defects on Player 1?s offer to cooperate. The 
subgame?perfect equilibrium (SPE) is $10 for each player. This follows 
be?cause at node 1 Player 1 can apply backward inductionbyobservingthat if 
play reaches node x2, Player 2?s dominant choice is to defect. Seeing that 
this is the case, Player 1?s dominant choice is to move right at the top 
of the tree, yielding the SPE outcome.

These game?theoretic assumptions are very strong. As we see from the above 
discussion, however, they have the dubious meritof allow?ing "unambiguous" 
predictions to be made about behavior.67 We particularly want to note that 
if every player is exactly like every other player, and is strictly 
self?interested, there is no room for "mind reading," or 
inferringintentions from actions, and no room for more sophisti?cated and 
subtle action in the self?interest.

To illustrate, suppose that you have been throughthe standard economics 
course in game

65Space does not permitexamining also the effect of beingable to punish 
defection. See McCabe et al. (1996)for a more complete report of trust 
games with and without punishment of defection and witha wide variety of 
match?ing protocols.

66 As indicated above, the word "trust" never appears in the instructions. 
Of interest, however, is that the subjects use this word when you ask them 
open?ended questions about their analysis and perceptions of the game. 
"Its all a ques?tion of whether you can trust your partner." Neither do we 
use the word "partner."

67Except see Smith (2002), wherein it is shown that if, in addition to the 
research hypothesis derived from game theory (e.g., Cournot?Nash or SPE), 
there is one auxiliary hypothesis (e.g., payoffs are adequate, types have 
been accuratelyde. ned, or subjects are sophisticated), then either the 
theoretical hypothesis is not falsi.able, or it has no predictive content. 
The belief, however, persists that the predictions of game theory are 
sharp andunambiguous (see, e.g., Camerer et al., 2001).

theory and that you are in the position of Player 2 in Figure 1. 
Consequently, you expect Player 1 to move right at the top of the tree. He 
does not. He moves down, and it is your turn. Surely he did not move down 
because he prefers $0 to $10, or expects you to defect. He must thinkthat 
you thinkthat he wants you to choose C. What?ever else can he have in 
mind? Maybehe cannot do backward induction, or thinks you are not 
self?interested. So how are you going to re?spond? He is making it 
possible for you to increase your payoff by 150percent, and his by 50 
percent, compared with the SPE. He is not even asking for the larger share 
ofthe pie that his action has created! According to reciprocity theory, 
ifyou choose C, you will reciprocate his inferred intentions, and complete 
an ex?change--exactlyin the same way that you trade favors, services, and 
goods across time with your closer friends andassociates in life (except 
for those who are victims of antisocial person?ality disorder, or 
sociopaths, and are unable to maintain social relations based on 
reciproc?ity),68 also in the same way that you do not hesitate to leave a 
"tip" ("to insure prompt?ness"?) for good service at a restaurant even in 
a foreign city. Without a conscious thoughtyou often say, "I owe you one," 
in response to an acquaintance?s favor. So you might choose C with hardly 
a thought, or, since he will never know your identity, upon closer re. 
ection, you may thinkthat it just makes no sense not to take the $40. 
Although you are nota clinical socio?path, here is an opportunityto cuta 
corner and no one can know. As Player 1 in Figure 1 are you certain that 
you wouldwant to play SPE?69

68 "Sociopaths, who comprise only 3-4 percent of the male population and 
less than 1 percent of the female population, are thought to account for 
20 percent of the UnitedStates prison population andbetween 33 percent and 
80 percentof the population of chronic criminaloffenders. Furthermore, 
whereas the "typical" U.S. burglar is esti?mated to have committed a 
median .ve crimes per year before being apprehended, chronic 
offenders--those most likely to be sociopaths--report committing upwards 
of 50 crimes per year and sometimes as many as two or three hundred. 
Collectively, these individuals are thought to ac?count for over 50 
percent of all crimes in the U.S." (see Linda Mealy, 1995, p. 523, and pp. 
587-99 for references and caveats; also David T. Lykken, 1995).

69This thought process may explain why, in data re?ported by Giorgio 
Coricelli et al. (2000)comparing faculty with undergraduate subjects, the 
faculty take much longer (and earn less money) than the undergraduates to 
decide

FIGURE1. INVEST$10 TRUSTGAME: FREQUENCY OF PLAY

In regard to this reciprocity analysis of the game, we should note that 
the game in Figure 1 is a much reduced?form version of the BDM game: 
thinkof Player 1 as sending $10, which becomes $30;Players 2can either 
split the $30 equally with Player 1, givingthe imputation C, or Player 2 
can keep it all, yielding the D outcome. But there is another difference, 
one of context. In the experiment using Figure 1 the subjects play an 
abstract game, one that is not embedded in a BDM?type story about sending 
$10 upstairs, which becomes $30, and the re?ceiver can either keep it all 
or split the gain made possible by the sender. But given the BDM outcomes 
reported above we shouldnot be too surprised that some subject pairs might 
endat C.

The outcomes are shown in Figure 1 for 24 undergraduate subjects: 50 
percent move down, and of these 75 percent "reciprocate." whether to offer 
cooperation, and whether to defect. Yet given knowledge of game theory, 
and knowing that one?s counterpart has the equivalent knowledge, what is 
there to think about?

Why So Much Cooperation?--Mycoauthors and I have interpreted the outcome 
Cas due to reciprocity. But there are other interpretations; e.g., that 
the subjects are game?theoreticallyun?sophisticated or have nonsel. sh 
preferences. The effectof subjects on outcomes is an empir?icalmatter, 
andis most important, butcannotbe pursued here in depth. It is essential 
to programs concerned with extending game theory to "player types." 
Subject background diversity and resulting choice behavior can help inform 
the identi.cation andclassi.cation of "types," whether reciprocators, 
sophisticates, or utilitar?ian (see McCabe and Smith, 2001; McCabe et al., 
2001).

Is It the Subjects? Undergraduate?s Versus Graduates.--In the above trust 
game nearly half the Players 1forgo the sure thing, SPE, and 
three?quarters of the responses are cooperative. We have often heard 
suchresults dismissedas a consequence of usingnaive subjects. (This 
dis?missal has the logicalimplication that the orig?inal 
theoreticalhypothesis is either not falsi. able or has no predictive 
content. See footnote 67.) McCabe andSmith(2000) examinedthis expla?nation 
using advanced graduate students from the population, a sample of whom 
participated in the $100 Exchange/Entitlement version of the ultimatum 
game reported in Table 2, show?ing almost identical results for graduate 
and undergraduate students. They used the trust game shown in Figure 1. 
For comparison, McCabe and Smith (2000)used the undergrad?uate data shown 
in Figure 2. In both groups 50 percent of Players 1offer cooperation, 
while 75 percent of the undergraduate and 64 percent of the graduate 
student Players 2 reciprocate. However naive undergraduates are alleged to 
be, these tests suggest that graduate students with training in economic 
theory are capable of showingvery similar behaviorin this extensive?form 
game, andin the ultimatum game reported in Table 2.

Is It Utility for Other?--Bolton (1991), Rabin (1993), Fehr and Schmidt 
(1999), and Bolton and Ockenfels (2000) have proposed usefulpreference 
models ofdecision that aim at accounting for behavior in a variety of 
experi?ments, most particularlyultimatum and dictator games. The idea 
behindthese models is that we can explain cooperation in bargaininggames 
by

FIGURE2. INVEST$10 TRUST GAME COMPARING UNDERGRADUATES (U) AND GRADUATES 
(G)

saying that people have a taste for altruism or for "fair" outcomes (or a 
distaste for "unfair" outcomes), where fairness is understoodas pay?off 
equity, as in Franciosi et al. (1995). The hypothesis is that subjects 
seek to maximize these adjusted utilities. It is only the intrinsic 
propertiesofoutcomesthatare assumed to drive behavior; what alternatives 
the players facedat a previous decision node are irrelevant. This means 
that intentions, as re.ected in the move choices, are assumedto be super. 
uous in the interactions between the parties. The former approach identi. 
es utilitytypes. The latter iden?ti.es types who signal intentions, who 
are into reading move signals, and risk misidentifying reciprocity versus 
defection types. The impor?tant testable distinctions are that the former 
are immune to instructional procedures and to path dependency--the 
opportunity costs of forgone options; this constitutes the core of the 
research program of my coauthors andme. This program leads naturally to an 
understand?ing of its own limitations as well as that of the utilitarian 
program, i.e., both types may be needed.

Other?regarding preference models are un?able to account for our previous 
data demon?strating that procedures and context variables matter. In the 
ultimatum game data reported above where the context is variedfrom "Divide 
$10" to "Context/Exchange," ostensibly the utilities to the participants 
are the same under each ultimatum condition. However, behavior varies 
dramatically. These models also cannot explain the results reported above 
in the single versus double blind protocol in dictator games, and the 
dramatic change in dictator behavior in the BDM investment trust game. 
Clearly, the behavioris muchmore variable than is expected from 
outcome?based utility models.

An altruistic utility interpretation of cooper?ation can be invokedin 
trust games like that in Figure 1: Player 2 may move down because her 
utility for reward is increasing in bothown and other payoff. Figure 3 is 
a trust game that enables us to distinguish subjects who cooper?ate from 
motivations of altruism, and those whose cooperation derives from 
reciprocity in an exchange. The game starts at the top, node x1, with 
Player 1 who can move right, which stops the game yielding the upper 
payoff to Player 1, $7, andthe lower payoff to Player 2, $14, or move down 
in which case Player 2 chooses a move at node x2. If the move is right, 
each player gets $8. If Player 2 moves down, Player 1can then move rightat 
node x3yielding $10 for each, or down, yielding $12 for Player 1 and $6 
for Player 2. The subgame?perfect equilibrium (SPE) is $8 for each player. 
This follows because at node x1, Player 1 can apply backward induction by 
observing that if play reaches node x3, Player 1 will want to move down. 
But Player 2, also usingbackward induc?tion will see that at node x2 he 
should move right. Since right at node x2 yields a higher payoff to Player 
1, at node x1 Player 1 will conclude that he should move down. Hence, the 
SPE outcome would prevail by the logic of self?interestedplayers who 
always choose dom?inantstrategies, andapply the principleofback?ward 
induction.

If Player 1 has other?regarding preferences (altruism) and is willing to 
incur some cost to greatly increase the payoff to Player 2, Player 1 may 
move right at x1. His payoff of $7 is only one?eighth smaller than his 
payoff at the SPE, and yields $14 for Player 2. Hence, at a cost of $1 to 
himself, Player 1 can increase his coun?

FIGURE3. TRUST GAME WITH ALTRUISM: FREQUENCY OFPLAY

terpart Player 2?s payoff by $6. Player 1 need have onlya modest 
preference for an increase in Player 2?s welfare to induce him to move 
right because of the 6 to 1 return for the other player over the cost to 
Player 1.

At x2, Player 2 maymove down signalingto Player 1 that such a move enables 
both to pro.t (gains from exchange), provided that at x3 Player 1 
cooperates by reciprocatingPlayer 2?s favor. Alternatively at x3 Player 1 
can defect (D) on the offer to cooperate by choosing his dominate 
strategy, and move down.

The outcome frequencies for the trust game (N 5 26pairs) are 
entereddirectlyon the tree in Figure3.The .rst result-- overwhelmingly 
decisively--is that no Player 1 chooses the A

FIGURE4A. VOLUNTARYTRUST GAME

(altruistic) outcome;all choose to pass to Player 2 seeking a higher 
payoff for themselves, and being content to give Player 2 a smaller payoff 
than is achieved at A, dependingupon the .nal outcome of the move 
sequence. Secondly, 46 percent offer to cooperate (down), and 50 per?cent 
reciprocate.

I. Utility Versus Exchange: Does Opportunity Cost Matter?

If reciprocity is perceived as an exchange in which each player gains 
relative to the default outcome (SPE), then the cooperative outcome must 
yieldan increase in the size of the prize to be splitbetween the two 
players (see McCabe et al., 2003). Also, Player 2 must believe that (i) 
Player 1 made a deliberate choice to make this outcome possible, and (ii) 
incurred an opportu?nity cost in doing so, i.e., gave up a smaller certain 
payoff riskinga still smaller payoff if C is not attained. It then becomes 
credible to Player 2that Player 1 did a favor for Player 2, and reasonably 
can expect reciprocal action in return. Notice that our argument is in the 
form

FIGURE4B. INVOLUNTARY TRUST GAME

of a constructivist theory that need not charac?terize the subjects? 
reasoning, even if it has predictiveaccuracy; i.e., 
constructiverationality may predict emergent ecologically 
rationalout?comes, just as CE theory predicts market out?comes notpart 
ofthe consciousintentionsofthe agents. McCabe et al. (2001), however, 
report fMRI brain?imaging data supporting the hy?pothesis that subjects 
who cooperate use the "mind reading" circuit modules in their brains (see 
Baron?Cohen, 1995). This circuitry is not activatedin subjects who choose 
not to cooper?ate (SPE). In responding to postexperiment 
questionsaskingthem to write their impressions oftheir decisions, subjects 
frequentlyreport that the experiment is all about whether you can trust 
your counterpart. They do not refer to returning a favor, to reciprocity, 
an exchange, fairness, etc., suggestingthat if their actions are driven by 
reciprocity motives, such are not part of a self?aware reasoning process.

Reciprocity reasoning motivated the alterna?tive game trees shown in 
Figure 4 designed to test reciprocity against utility interpretations of 
choice. In Figure 4A, ifPlayer 1moves down at the topthe potential prize 
increases from $40to $50. Player 2 can defect at a cost to Player 1, and 
can clearly infer that Player 1 deliberately enabled the outcome to 
increase from ($20, $20)to ($25, $25). But in Figure 4B Player 2 can see 
that Player 1 was presented with no voluntary choice to move down. 
Consequently, Player 1 incurred no opportunitycost to enable Player 2 to 
achieve C. Player 1 did nothing intentionally for Player 2, and according 
to rec?iprocity reasoning, Player 2 incurredno implied debt that neededto 
be repaid. Player 2can thus move down with impunity. Consequently, 
reci?procity theory predicts a greater frequency of right moves by Players 
2 in Figure 4A than in Figure 4B. Since only outcomes matter, both 
own?andother?regardingutilitytheories predict no difference in Player 2?s 
choices between Figures 4A and 4B. In fact, as shown by the frequency data 
on the trees, a third of the Play?ers 2on the right play C, whereas nearly 
twice that manychoose C in the left game.

Intentionshave also been foundto matter in a study of ultimatum 
bargaining: "... we show that identical offers in an ultimatum game 
trig?ger vastlydifferent rejection rates dependingon the other offers 
available to the proposer" (Armin Falk et al., 1999, p. 2).

J. Extensive?Versus Normal?Form Games

A fundamental principle of game theory is that rational behavior is 
invariant to the form-- extensive or normal--of the game. Behavior in the 
extensive andnormal forms has been com?pared byAndrew Schotter et al. 
(1994), Amnon Rapoport (1997), and McCabe et al. (2000). All three reject 
the invariance principle, but in the .rst study the rationality principles 
they pro?posedto explain the invariance either failedto predict the 
differences, "or they were notwhat we expected" (Schotter et al., 1994, 
pp. 446- 47). Rapoport provides two versions of the "Battle?of?the?Sexes" 
game to show how order?of?play information in the extensive form al?lows 
players to better coordinate their actions. McCabe et al. (2000) argue 
that the important principle that allows better coordination "de?rives 
from the human capacity to read another person?s thoughts or intentions by 
placing themselves in the position and information state ofthe other 
person" (p. 4404). This"mindread?ing" to detect intentions underlies 
reciprocity.

($7, $14)  0 26 5 0.0 0 245 0.0 12 7 26 5 0.46 245 0.29 ($8, $8)  6 12 5 
0.50 1 75 0.14 ($12, $6)  6 12 5 0.50 6 75 0.86

We summarize here the .ndings of McCabe et al. (2000)for the trimmed 
version of the game they study, which is the game we have depicted in 
Figure 3. In the extensive form of the game in Figure 3, Player 2 sees the 
move of Player 1 before Player 2 chooses to move. In this form of the 
game, intentions can be clearly communicated along the lines storiedabove. 
In the normal (or strategic) form of the same game each player chooses a 
move at each node without knowing whether thatnode willactuallybe 
reachedin the move sequence. Decisions are thus contingent on the node 
beingreachedandmay be irrelevant in determining the payoffs. In the normal 
form, therefore, we can present the game as an n 3 m matrix ofthe n 5 
3strategies ofPlayer 1--right at node x1, right or down at node x3, and 
the m 5 2 strategies of Player 2, right or down at node x2. Players 1 and 
2 each simultaneously choose among these alternatives not knowing the 
choice of the other.

McCabe et al. (2000) predict that Players 2 willmove down at x2, with 
higher frequency in the extensive than the normal form. They also predict 
higher rates of cooperation by Players 1 (andlower defection rates) in the 
extensive than normal forms. Neither own?or other?regarding utility 
theorycan support these predictions. The data are shown in Table 4: 46 
percent of the Players 1 offer to cooperate in the extensive form, only 29 
percent in the normal form. Sim?ilarly, they observe a 50 percent 
cooperative rate byPlayers 2in the extensive form, but only 14 percent in 
the normal form.

These results and that of others cited above imply that the extensive and 
normal forms are not played as if they were the same games. Players? moves 
signalintentionsthat are not the same when actually experienced in 
extensive form as when imaginedin a mental experiment corresponding to the 
normal form. I would ar?gue that experience and its memory in life is an 
extensive process that encodes context along with outcome. The brain is 
not naturally adapted to solve all sequential move problems byreducing 
them to a single strategyvector as in a highly structured game. 
Apparently, we have a built?in tendency to wait, observe, then decide--a 
process that conserves cognitive re?sources by applyingthem only to 
contingencies that are realized, and avoids the need for revi?sion, given 
the inevitable surprises in the less structured games of 
life.70Constructivist mod?eling glosses over distinctions of which we are 
unaware that govern the ecologyofchoice. Ex?perimental designs conditioned 
only by con?structivist thinking, ill?prepare us to collect the data that 
can inform needed revisions in our thinking. It is both cost effective and 
faithfulto game?theoretic assumptions in experiments to collect move data 
from each subject under all contingencies, but it distorts 
interpretability if game forms are not equivalent. The assump?tions of 
game theory, such as those leadingto the logical equivalence of the two 
game forms, shouldnot be imposedon experimental designs, thereby 
constraining our understanding of be?havior beyond those assumptions.

K. Neuroeconomics

Neuroeconomics is concerned with studying the connections between how the 
mind/brain works--the internal order of the mind--and behavior in (1) 
individual decision making, (2) social exchange, and (3) institutions such 
as markets. The working hypothesis is that the brain has evolved 
different, but interdependent, adaptive mechanisms for each of these tasks 
involving experience, memory, and perception. The tools include 
brain?imagingtechnology and the existence of patients with localized brain 
lesions associated with speci.c loss of certain mental functions. Decision 
making has drawn the attention of

70 Any such natural process must be deliberately over?come, 
constructively, in situations where nature serves us poorly. 
neuroscientists who study the deviant behavior of neurological patients 
with speci.c brain le?sions, suchas front lobe (ventromedialprefron?tal) 
damage.

Such patients have long been known to be challenged by tasks involving 
planning and coordination over time, although they score normallyon 
batteries of psycholog?ical tests (Antonio R. Damasio, 1994). A land?mark 
experimental study of such patients (compared with controls) in individual 
decision?making under uncertainty is that of Antoine Bechara et al. 
(1997). Starting with (. ctional) endowments of $2,000, each subject on 
each trialdraws a card from one offour freely chosen decks (A, B, C, D). 
In decks (A, B) each card has a payoff value of $50, whereas in decks (C, 
D), each is worth $100.

Also, the $100 decks contain occasional large negative payoff cards, while 
the $50deckshave much smaller negative payoff cards. All this must be 
learned from single card draws in a sequence of trials, with a running 
tally of cumulative payoff value. A subject performs much better by 
learning to avoid the $100decks in favor of the $50decks. By period 60, 
normal control subjects have learned to draw onlyfrom the $50(C, D) decks, 
while the brain?damaged subjects continue to sample disadvantageously the 
$100 (A, B) decks. Furthermore, the controlsubjects shift to the (C, D) 
decks before they are able to articu?late why, in periodic questioning. 
Also, they pre?register emotional reactions to the (A, B) decks as 
measured by real?time skin conductiv?ity test (SCT)readings. But the 
brain?damaged patients tend to verbally rationalize continued sampling of 
the (A, B) decks, and some types (with damaged amygdala) register no SCT 
re?sponse. Results consistent with those of Be?chara et al. (1997)have 
been reported byVinod Goel et al. (1997) who study patient perfor?mance in 
a complex .nancial planning task.

Over 50 years ago experiments with animal behavior demonstrated that 
motivation was based on relative or forgone reward-- opportunity cost--and 
not on an absolute scale of values generated by the brain. Thus David J. 
Zeaman (1949)reported experiments in which rats were trained to run for a 
large reward?motivatedgoal. When shifted to a small reward, the rats 
re?sponded by running more slowly than they wouldto the small rewardonly.

Acontrolgroup began witha smallreward andshiftedto a large one, andthese 
rats immediately ran faster than if the large reward alone was applied. 
Monkeys similarly respondto comparisons of differential rewards. It is now 
establishedthat orbitofrontal cortex (just above the eyes) neuron activity 
in monkeys enable them to discriminate between rewards that are directly 
related to the animals? relative, as distinct from absolute, preference 
amongrewards suchas cereal, apple,andraisins (in order of increasing 
preference in monkeys) (Leon Tremblay and Schultz, 1999). Thus suppose A 
is preferred to B is preferred to C based on choice response. Then 
neuronal activity is greater for A than for B when the subject is viewing 
A and B, and similarlyfor B and C when comparing B and C. But the 
activ?ity associated with B is much greater when comparedwith C than when 
it is compared with A. This is contrary to what one would expect to 
observeif A, B, and C arecodedon a .xed properties scale rather than a 
relative scale (Tremblay and Schultz, 1999, p. 706).

These studies have a parallel signi.cance for humans. Prospect theory 
proposes that the eval?uationofa gamble depends noton the totalasset 
position but focuses myopically on the oppor?tunitycost, gain or loss, 
relative to one?s current asset position. There is also asymmetry--the 
effectofa loss looms larger than the effect ofa gain of the same magnitude 
(Kahneman and Tversky, 1979).Barbara A. Mellers et al. (1999) have shown 
that the emotional response to the outcome ofa gamble depends on the 
perceived value and likelihoodof the outcome andon the forgone outcome. It 
feels better (less bad) to receive $0from a gamble when you forgo 1$10 
than when you forgo 1$90. (Theyuse the term "counterfactual" rather than 
"opportunity cost" to refer to the alternative that might have 
pre?vailed.) Thus, our ability to form opportunity cost comparisons 
receive importantneurophys?iological support from our emotional circuitry. 
Breiter et al. (2001)use these same principlesin the design of a 
functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) study of human hemodynamic re?sponses 
to both the expectation andexperience ofmonetary gains and losses under 
uncertainty. They observedsigni.cantactivation responses in the amygdala 
and orbital gyrus, with both activations increasing with the expected 
value of the gamble. There was also some evidence that the right 
hemisphere is predominantly ac?tive for gains, and the left for losses--a 
partic?ularly interesting possibility inviting deeper examination, perhaps 
by imaging split?brain subjects in the same task. Also see Kip Smithet al. 
(2002).

The effect of paying subjects is informed by Thut et al. (1997)who compare 
brain activation under monetary rewards with the feedbackofan "OK" 
reinforcement in a dichotomous choice task. The monetary rewards yielded a 
signi. ?cantly higher activationofthe orbitofrontal cor?tex and other 
related brain areas (see also Schultz, 2000, 2002).

The neuralcorrelates of individual decision?making were extended, by 
McCabe et al. (2001), to an fMRI study of behavior in two?person strategic 
interactions in extensive?form trust games like those in Figures 1 to 4. 
The prior hypothesis, derived from reciprocity the?ory, the theory?of?mind 
literature, and sup?ported by imaging results from individual studies of 
cued thought processes (P. C. Fletcher et al., 1995), was that cooperators 
would show greater activation in the prefrontal cortex (speci.cally BA?8) 
and supporting cir?cuitry, than noncooperators. The control, for 
comparison with the mental processes used when a subject is playing a 
human, is for the subject to play a computer knowing the pro?grammed 
response probabilities and therefore havingno needto interpretmoves as 
intentions. The predicted activations were signi. cantly greater, relative 
to controls, for cooperators than noncooperators, and are consistent with 
the rec?iprocity interpretation of behavior discussed above.

IV. Conclusions

Cartesian constructivism applies reason to the design ofrules for 
individualaction, to the design of institutions that yield socially 
optimal out?comes, and constitutes the standard socioeco?nomic science 
model. But most ofour operating knowledge, and ability to decide 
andperform is nondeliberative. Our brains conserve attentional, 
conceptual, and symbolic thoughtresources be?cause they are scarce, and 
proceeds to delegate most decision?making to autonomic processes 
(including the emotions) that do not require conscious attention. Emergent 
arrangements, even if initially constructivist, must have survival 
properties that incorporate opportunity costs andenvironmental challenges 
invisible to con?structivist modeling. This leads to an alternative, 
ecological concept of rationality: an emergent order based on 
trial?and?error cultural and bio?logical evolutionary processes. It yields 
home?and socially grown rules of action, traditions and moral principles 
that underlie property rights in impersonalexchange, and socialcohe?sion 
in personalexchange. To studyecological rationality we use rational 
reconstruction--for example, reciprocity or other?regarding 
prefer?ences--to examine individual behavior, emer?gent order in human 
culture and institutions, and their persistence, diversity, and 
develop?ment over time. Experiments enable us to test propositions derived 
from these rational reconstructions.

The study of both kinds of rationality has been prominent in the work of 
experimental economists. This is made plain in the many direct tests of 
the observable implications of propositions derived from economic and game 
theory. It is also evident in the great variety of experiments that have 
reached far beyond the theory to ask why the tests have succeeded, failed, 
or performed better (under weaker con?ditions) than was expected. What 
have we learned, not as.nal truth, but as compelling working hypotheses 
for continuing examination?

1. Markets constitute an engine of productiv?ity by supporting resource 
specialization throughtrade andcreatinga diverse wealth of goods 
andservices.

2. Markets are rule?governed institutions pro?viding algorithms that 
select, process, and order the exploratory messages of agents who are 
better informedas to their personal circumstances than that of others. As 
pre?cautionary probes by agents yield to con?tracts, each becomes more 
certain ofwhat must be given in order to receive. Out of this interaction 
between minds through the intermediary of rules the process aggre?gates 
the dispersed asymmetric informa?tion, converging more?or?less rapidly to 
competitive equilibria if they exist. Each experimental market carries its 
own unique mark with a different dynamic path.

3. Allthis information is captured in the static or time?variable supply 
and demand envi?ronment and must be aggregated to yield ef. cient 
clearingprices. We can never fully understand how this process works in 
the world because the required information is not given, or available, to 
any one mind. Thus, for many, the arguments of the Scot?tish philosophers 
and of Hayekare obscure and mystical. But we can design experi?ments in 
whichthe information is not given to any participant, then compare market 
outcomes with ef. cient competitive out?comes and gauge a market 
institution?s performance.

4. The resulting order is invisible to the par?ticipants, unlike the 
visible gains they reap. Agents discover what they need to know to achieve 
outcomes optimal against the con?straining limits imposed byothers.

5. Rules emerge as a spontaneousorder--they are found--not deliberately 
designed by one calculating mind. Initially constructiv?ist 
institutionsundergo evolutionary change adapting beyond the circumstances 
that gave them birth. What emerges is a form of "social mind" that solves 
complex organi?zation problems without conscious cogni?tion. This "social 
mind" is born of the interaction among all individuals through the rules 
of institutions that have to date survived cultural selection processes.

6. This process accommodates trade?offs be?tween the cost 
oftransacting,attending,and monitoring, andthe ef.ciencyofthe allo?cations 
so that the institution itself gener?ates an order of economy that .ts the 
problem it evolved to solve. Hence, the hundreds of variations on the .ne 
structure of institutions, each designedwithout a de?signer to accommodate 
disparate condi?tions, but all of them subservient to the reality of 
dispersed agent information.

7. We understand little about how rule sys?tems for social interaction and 
markets emerge, but it is possible in the laboratory to do variations on 
the rules, and thus to study that which is not.

8. Marketsrequire enforcement--voluntaryor involuntary--of the rules of 
exchange. These are: the right possession, it?s trans?ference by consent, 
and the performance of promises (Hume). Voluntary enforcement occurs when 
people in the market reward good services with gratuities or "tips," an 
example, perhaps, of an emergent cultural norm in which people recognize 
that tips are part of an informal exchange. If self?or 
community?enforcement conditions are not present, the result is unintended 
conse?quences for the bad, as markets are com?promisedor may fail. The 
game of "trade" must not yield to the game of "steal."

9. Reciprocity, trust, and trustworthiness are important in personal 
exchange where for?mal markets are not worth their cost, yet there are 
gains from exchange to be cap?tured. They are also important in 
contract?ing as not every margin of gain at the expense of other can be 
anticipated and formalized in written contracts.

10. People are not required to be sel.sh;rather the pointofthe Scottish 
philosophers was that people did not have to be good to produce good. 
Markets economize on in?formation, understanding, rationality, num?bers of 
agents, andvirtue.

11. Markets in no way need destroythe foun?dation upon which they probably 
emerged--social exchange between family, friends, andassociates. This is 
supported in the studies reported by Henrich (2000). Thus, individuals can 
be habitual socialex?changers and vigorous traders as well, but as in 
Hayek?s "two worlds" text, the eco?logically rational coexistence of 
personal and impersonal exchange is not a self?aware Cartesian construct. 
Consequently, there is the ever?present danger that the rules of "personal 
exchange" will be ap?plied inappropriately to govern or modify the 
extended order ofmarkets. Equallydan?gerous, the rules of 
impersonalmarketex?change may be applied inappropriately to our cohesive 
social networks.

12. New brain?imaging technologies have mo?tivatedneuroeconomic studies of 
the inter?nal order of the mindand its links with the spectrum of human 
decision from choice among.xedgambles to choice mediatedby market and 
other institutionalrules. We are onlyat the beginningof this enterprise, 
but its promise suggests a fundamental change in how we think, observe, 
and model deci?sion in all its contexts.

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Interdependence." Economic Theory, November 2000, 16(3), pp. 511-28.

Wilson, Robert B. "On Equilibria of Bid?Ask Markets," in George R. Feiwal, 
ed., Arrow and the ascent of modern economic theory. New York: New York 
University Press, 1987, pp. 375- 414.

. "Strategic Analysis of Auctions," in Robert J. Aumann and Sergi Hart, 
eds., Handbook of game theory. Amsterdam: North?Holland, 1992, pp. 227-79.

. "Design of Ef. cient Auction Proce?dures," in D. Friedman and J. Rust, 
eds., The double auction market: Institutions, theory, and evidence. 
Reading, MA: Addison?Wesley Publishing Co., 1993, pp. 125-52.

. "Architecture of Power Markets." Econometrica, July 2002, 70(4), pp. 
1299- 1340.

Zajac, Edward E. Politicaleconomy of fairness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 
1995.

. "What Fairness?and?Denial Research Could Have Told the Florida Supreme 
Court (and Can Tell the Rest of Us)." Independent Review, Winter 2002, 
6(3), pp. 377-97.

Zeaman, David J. "Response Latency as a Func? tion of the Amount of 
Reinforcement." Ex? perimental Psychology, 1949, 39, pp. 466- 83.

From shovland at mindspring.com  Sat Jan 21 18:24:58 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 10:24:58 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] what it means to have guts
In-Reply-To: <d8.34e67262.3102c170@aol.com>
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHOEKMCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

The stress-handling system may not be in the brain brain.
It may be in the heart brain or stomach brain.

Steve H.
  -----Original Message-----
  From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org [mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org]On Behalf Of HowlBloom at aol.com
  Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 2:43 PM
  To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org
  Subject: [Paleopsych] what it means to have guts


  Put the following two articles together and you get this pair of conclusions:  

   

    1.. the protein stathmin kicks fear  into high gear and 
    2.. the protein gastrin stops fear in its tracks. 
   

  Gastrin is a protein from the intestines, a protein involved in having a good meal.  So does being well-fed stop fear?does it make you fearless?  

   

  The folks who made up our clich?s may have been more accurate than they knew when they said that people who are fearless ?have guts.?

   

  By the way, I?ve been looking for the stress-handling system in the brain for the last decade.  It looks as if the stathmin and gastrin system may be a part of it.  When I came down with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 1988, my stress-handling system seemingly lost its inhibitory abilities and ramped up my stress sensitivity beyond all imagining.  Was I overloaded with stathmin and stripped of gastrin?

  ________

  Retrieved November 18, 2005, from the World Wide Web  http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8337 

  Gene turn-off makes meek mice fearless  * 17:00 17 November 2005 * NewScientist.com news service Deactivating a specific gene transforms meek mice into daredevils, researchers have found. The team believe the research might one day enable people suffering from fear ? in the form of phobias or anxiety disorders, for example ? to be clinically treated.

    The research found that mice lacking an active gene for the protein stathmin are not only more courageous, but are also slower to learn fear responses to pain-associated stimuli, says geneticist Gleb Shumyatsky, at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.  In the experiments, the stathmin-lacking mice wandered out into the centre of an open box, in defiance of the normal mouse instinct to hide along the box?s walls to avoid potential predators.  And to test learned fear, the mice were exposed to a loud sound followed by a brief electric shock from the floor below them. A day later, normal mice froze when the sound was played again. Stathmin-lacking mice barely reacted to the sound at all. Neural responses  In both mice and humans, the amygdala area of the brain serves as the control centre of basic fear impulses. Stathmin is found almost exclusively in this and related brain areas.  The protein is known to destabilise microtubule structures that help maintain the connections between neurons. This allows the neurons to make new connections, allowing the animal to learn and process fear experiences, Shumyatsky says. Without it, the neural responses are stilted.  The lack of the protein does not appear to affect other learning experiences, as both sets of mice were able to memorise the paths out of mazes equally well. ?This is a good sign for an eventual clinical application that could let people deal with their fears in an entirely different way,? Shumyatsky says.  In 2002, Shumyatsky and colleagues published a study on a similar gene encoding for a protein called GRP. But this protein seems only to be associated with learned fear, and would therefore only have clinical implications for conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder.  Stathmin, on the other hand, seems to affect both learned and innate fear, which could lead to treatments for a much broader range of phobias and anxiety disorders, Shumyatsky says.  Journal reference: Cell (DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2005.08.038) Printable version Email to a friend RSS Feed Cover of latest issue of New 

   

  _________

  Site:  ScienceDaily Magazine Page URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021213062425.htm  Original Source: Howard Hughes Medical Institute Date Posted: 12/13/2002 Researchers Discover Gene That Controls Ability To Learn Fear Researchers have discovered the first genetic component of a biochemical pathway in the brain that governs the indelible imprinting of fear-related experiences in memory.  The gene identified by researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University encodes a protein that inhibits the action of the fear-learning circuitry in the brain. Understanding how this protein quells fear may lead to the design of new drugs to treat depression, panic and generalized anxiety disorders.  The findings were reported in the December 13, 2002 issue of the journal Cell, by a research team that included Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators Eric Kandel at Columbia University and Catherine Dulac at Harvard University. Lead author of the paper was Gleb Shumyatsky, a postdoctoral fellow in Kandel's laboratory at Columbia University. Other members of the research team are at the National Institutes of Health and Harvard Medical School.  According to Kandel, earlier studies indicated that a specific signaling pathway controls fear-related learning, which takes place in a region of the brain called the amygdala. "Given these preliminary analyses, we wanted to take a more systematic approach to obtain a genetic perspective on learned fear," said Kandel.  One of the keys to doing these genetic analyses, Kandel said, was the development of a technique for isolating and comparing the genes of individual cells, which was developed at Columbia by Dulac with HHMI investigator Richard Axel. Shumyatsky applied that technique, called differential screening of single-cell cDNA libraries, to mouse cells to compare the genetic activity of cells from a region of the amygdala called the lateral nucleus, with cells from another region of the brain that is not known to be involved in learned fear. The comparison revealed two candidate genes for fear-related learning that are highly expressed in the amygdala.  The researchers decided to focus further study on one of the genes, Grp, which encodes a short protein called gastrin-releasing peptide (GRP), because they found that this protein has an unusual distribution in the brain and is known to serve as a neurotransmitter. Shumyatsky's analysis revealed that the Grp gene was highly enriched in the lateral nucleus, and in other regions of the brain that feed auditory inputs into the amygdala.  "Gleb's finding that this gene was active not only in the lateral nucleus but also in a number of regions that projected into the lateral nucleus was interesting because it suggested that a whole circuit was involved," said Kandel. Shumyatsky next showed that GRP is expressed by excitatory principal neurons and that its receptor, GRPR, is expressed by inhibitory interneurons. The researchers then undertook collaborative studies with co-author Vadim Bolshakov at Harvard Medical School to characterize cells in the amygdala that expressed receptors for GRP. Those studies in mouse brain slices revealed that GRP acts in the amygdala by exciting a population of inhibitory interneurons in the lateral nucleus that provide feedback and inhibit the principal neurons.

    The researchers next explored whether eliminating GRP's activity could affect the ability to learn fear by studying a strain of knockout mice that lacked the receptor for GRP in the brain.  In behavioral experiments, they first trained both the knockout mice and normal mice to associate an initially neutral tone with a subsequent unpleasant electric shock. As a result of the training, the mouse learns that the neutral tone now predicts danger. After the training, the researchers compared the degree to which the two strains of mice showed fear when exposed to the same tone alone -- by measuring the duration of a characteristic freezing response that the animals exhibit when fearful.  "When we compared the mouse strains, we saw a powerful enhancement of learned fear in the knockout mice," said Kandel. Also, he said, the knockout mice showed an enhancement in the learning-related cellular process known as long-term potentiation.  "It is interesting that we saw no other disturbances in these mice," he said. "They showed no increased pain sensitivity; nor did they exhibit increased instinctive fear in other behavioral studies. So, their defect seemed to be quite specific for the learned aspect of fear," he said. Tests of instinctive fear included comparing how both normal and knockout mice behaved in mazes that exposed them to anxiety-provoking environments such as open or lighted areas.  "These findings reveal a biological basis for what had only been previously inferred from psychological studies -- that instinctive fear, chronic anxiety, is different from acquired fear," said Kandel.  In additional behavioral studies, the researchers found that the normal and knockout mice did not differ in spatial learning abilities involving the hippocampus, but not the amygdala, thus genetically demonstrating that these two anatomical structures are different in their function.  According to Kandel, further understanding of the fear-learning pathway could have important implications for treating anxiety disorders. "Since GRP acts to dampen fear, it might be possible in principle to develop drugs that activate the peptide, representing a completely new approach to treating anxiety," he said. However, he emphasized, the discovery of the action of the Grp gene is only the beginning of a long research effort to reveal the other genes in the fear-learning pathway.  More broadly, said Kandel, the fear-learning pathway might provide an invaluable animal model for a range of mental illnesses. "Although one would ultimately like to develop mouse models for various mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression, this is very hard to do because we know very little about the biological foundations of most forms of mental illness," he said. "However, we do know something about the neuroanatomical substrates of anxiety states, including both chronic fear and acute fear. We know they are centered in the amygdala.  "And while I don't want to overstate the case, in studies of fear learning we could well have an excellent beginning for animal models of a severe mental illness. We already knew quite a lot about the neural pathways in the brain that are involved in fear learning. And now, we have a way to understand the genetic and biochemical mechanisms underlying those pathways."  Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here.  Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote from any part of this story, please credit Howard Hughes Medical Institute as the original source.  

   


  ----------
  Howard Bloom
  Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century
  Recent Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
  www.howardbloom.net
  www.bigbangtango.net
  Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Advanced Technology Working Group, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Institute for Accelerating Change ; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.
  For a peek into the ultimate cross-disciplinary field, Omnology, see http://bigbangtango.net/website/omnology.html
  For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org
  for two chapters from 
  The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
  For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
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From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 01:32:26 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 20:32:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: In New York,
 Power of DNA Spurs Call to Abolish Statute of Limitations for Rape
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601212027010.13460@panix2.panix.com>

Power of DNA Spurs Call to Abolish Statute of Limitations for Rape
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/02/nyregion/02rape.html

    By JULIA PRESTON

    It was his eyes. She was flipping through a newspaper, and suddenly
    his eyes were staring at her from a police photograph in the crime
    pages. Even before she read the headline, she felt shock. Then nausea.

    "The way he came at me with that knife, I can't forget those eyes,"
    she said, recalling the stranger who climbed through her Manhattan
    apartment window one night in late 1972 and raped her.

    The man's photograph, published last April, brought it all back in an
    instant for Stefanie Aubry, the victim. It brought back her agonizing
    decision to submit silently so he would not harm her two young
    daughters, asleep in the same room. It revived her furious anger -
    even though the crime happened more than three decades ago.

    Ms. Aubry learned from news accounts that the man's name was Fletcher
    A. Worrell and that he was accused, based on DNA evidence, of a
    strikingly similar rape in the same area of Manhattan just seven
    months after her attack. Certain that he was the one who had assaulted
    her, Ms. Aubry called the Manhattan district attorney.

    She was one of six victims of decades-old unsolved rapes who contacted
    New York prosecutors after Mr. Worrell's police photo was released
    last spring, describing the marrow-deep chill of recognition they felt
    when they saw his face.

    But the only thing certain at this point is that Mr. Worrell, 59, who
    has never been a suspect in any of those attacks, can never be
    prosecuted for them. New York's five-year state statute of limitations
    for rape has long since run out. The victims will not get a chance to
    prove their suspicions in court, nor will Mr. Worrell get a chance to
    prove them wrong.

    Prosecutors can only lend an ear to the victims, who say they are
    living with unhealed wounds, as though the rapes happened weeks ago.
    "It was one tale of horror after another," said Martha Bashford, the
    assistant district attorney who fielded the calls. "I take notes and
    try to make sure it becomes part of the record. But otherwise, there
    is nothing I can do."

    City officials say Mr. Worrell's case provides a stark example of why
    New York's 40-year-old statute of limitations for sexual assault cases
    has become obsolete. Since he was arrested last year, Mr. Worrell has
    been linked by DNA to a decades-long trail of predation. In November,
    a jury convicted him in the 1973 rape of Kathleen Ham in Chelsea. DNA
    matches have tied him to at least 21 other rapes in New Jersey and
    Maryland.

    Mr. Worrell's lawyer, Michael F. Rubin, declined to comment on the
    cases of the six victims who came forward after his client's picture
    was published, saying Mr. Worrell had not been legally implicated in
    any of them. But he disputed the idea that DNA testing had made the
    statute of limitations outdated.

    The statute "ensures timely prosecution when memories are still fresh,
    and the advent of DNA technology hasn't changed that," Mr. Rubin said.

    The arrest of Mr. Worrell in Ms. Ham's case was a lucky exception for
    the prosecutors. A trial for her rape that Mr. Worrell faced in 1974
    ended in a hung jury. He jumped bail soon after, so a warrant was
    issued for his arrest. It was discovered last year in a background
    check when Mr. Worrell tried to buy a shotgun in Georgia. When
    prosecutors went to their old files, they found Ms. Ham's underpants
    stuffed in a folder. Traces of semen on the underwear matched Mr.
    Worrell's DNA.

    The prospects for justice for the six women who believe they also were
    Mr. Worrell's victims are remote. The assaults happened in the 1970's,
    two decades before DNA testing became common forensic practice. The
    law at the time required eyewitness corroboration of a victim's
    testimony and proof that she had put up "earnest" resistance, making
    rape cases hard for the police to resolve and discouraging detectives
    from investing time and resources in them.

    The six victims told prosecutors that the police did not collect
    fingerprints or other evidence from the crime scene, and in most cases
    did not send them for medical examinations.

    "I didn't feel like anybody made a big deal about it," Ms. Aubry said
    of the police who answered her 911 call. Now 57, Ms. Aubry lives on
    Staten Island and works as an administrator at a medical center. In
    November 1972, she says, she was a long-distance telephone operator
    making $2.91 an hour.

    Just as the attacker did in Ms. Ham's rape, the man who attacked Ms.
    Aubry crept in darkness up a rear fire escape and through an open
    window. Ms. Aubry lived with her daughters, 2 and 3 years old, on the
    third floor of a building on East Third Street in Manhattan.

    Ms. Aubry recalls that the man brazenly switched on the light before
    he jumped on her bed clutching her kitchen carving knife, threatening
    to kill the girls if she screamed. She stayed quiet, and the girls
    stayed asleep.

    She called 911 as soon as he left, and two police officers were there
    in minutes, asking questions and taking notes. But they never sent her
    for a medical exam, she said, and she showered immediately, washing
    away crucial evidence. The next morning she pored over the precinct's
    books of sexual assault suspects. But the eyes she could not forget
    were not there.

    Retelling the story in her living room recently, Ms. Aubry at first
    seemed calm. Suddenly she was shuddering, crying, struggling to clear
    her throat. "It never leaves your mind completely," she said. "There
    are times, I could be just sitting alone, or in my car driving, it
    would come back into my head. And the anger comes right back with it."

    Joyce Doyle, another woman who called the district attorney after
    seeing Mr. Worrell's picture, said she was attacked in June 1973 in
    her apartment on East 31st Street. The intruder came through the
    living room window, threw a cloth over her head and "was dragging me
    around by the hair."

    He tied her hands with a pillowcase, she recalled. But when he left
    her alone for a moment she twisted her legs together like a vine. He
    was not able to force them apart, and he finally fled without raping
    her.

    Although the man had spent 20 minutes rifling through her closets and
    drawers, Ms. Doyle said the police did not collect fingerprints. If
    they had, she noted, they could have compared them with Mr. Worrell's
    prints when he was arrested three weeks later, on June 26, in the rape
    of Ms. Ham.

    Perhaps because Ms. Doyle thwarted the rape, she said she was not as
    emotionally scarred as some victims. "I was only crazy for two years,
    instead of 32 years," said Ms. Doyle, now 68 and a retired lawyer. But
    that did not lessen the impact when she spotted Mr. Worrell's
    photograph on television during his trial in November.

    "I just looked up from my computer," Ms. Doyle said, "and I said, 'My
    God, it's him.' "

    Another woman who called about Mr. Worrell said she had been raped in
    November 1973 by a man who sneaked into her Upper East Side apartment
    when she left her door ajar to take out the garbage.

    "It kicked me in the stomach" to see Mr. Worrell's picture in the
    paper, she told Ms. Bashford, the prosecutor. A fourth victim also
    told Ms. Bashford that she was sure Mr. Worrell was the man who raped
    her at knifepoint in an East Village apartment later in 1973.

    Under New York state law, rape is a B felony, on a par with burglary
    and grand larceny. The five-year statute can be extended to 10 years
    if the perpetrator's whereabouts are unknown. Adopted in 1970, the
    statute is intended to protect defendants against stale prosecution in
    which evidence is lost and witnesses have faded recollections or are
    no longer available.

    But city officials argue that DNA, offering the possibility of a
    scientifically precise identification of the criminal many years after
    the crime, has changed the legal calculus.

    "DNA doesn't have any of the human frailties," said John Feinblatt,
    the justice coordinator for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "It's time for
    law to catch up to science."

    Since reform of New York's rape laws began in the late 1970's, the
    police have more systematically collected evidence known as a rape
    kit, including samples of semen and hair taken from different areas of
    a victim's body. The F.B.I. maintains a national databank of DNA
    profiles taken from crime scene evidence and from convicted sex
    offenders.

    In New York, bills offered by State Senator Dean G. Skelos, a
    Republican, to abolish the statute of limitations for rape have been
    repeatedly adopted by the Senate over the last decade, but have not
    passed the Assembly. A bill the Bloomberg administration offered last
    spring to eliminate the statute is awaiting action in the legislative
    session beginning in January.

    "Many criminals got away with it because they simply disappeared,"
    said Assemblyman Mark Weprin, a Queens Democrat who sponsored the
    city's bill.

    The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, has proposed
    elevating rape to a Class A felony, like murder, kidnapping and arson,
    which do not have statutes of limitations. He noted that 26 states
    have abolished such statutes.

    "The victim doesn't ever get over it," Mr. Morgenthau said, "so
    there's no reason why the perpetrator should be home free."

    Defense attorneys say that the statute serves to spur timely action by
    police. It "has been working for decades, ensuring prompt
    investigation by the police and the prosecuting authorities," said Ray
    Kelly, a veteran lawyer who is the president of the New York State
    Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. None of the proposed reforms
    would be retroactive, so they would offer no relief to victims like
    Ms. Aubry.

    She remains haunted by the image of Mr. Worrell and the thought of the
    crime. "It stays in my mind," Ms. Aubry said, hunched over on her
    living-room couch. "It keeps me always on guard. You just have to
    leave it to God and go on living. You have to keep your eyes open and
    your doors locked."


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 01:32:34 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 20:32:34 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Suburbs: For Some, It's a Disaster,
 and They Race Back to the City as Fast as They Can
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601212027210.13460@panix2.panix.com>

The Suburbs: For Some, It's a Disaster, and They Race Back to the City as Fast 
as They Can
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/realestate/08cov.html

    Goodbye, Suburbs

    By TERI KARUSH ROGERS

    FOR many New York City families, January is the cruelest month. It is
    a time to get seriously claustrophobic in an apartment stocked with
    young children and the vast plastic undergrowth in which they thrive.
    It also a time for many to ponder the absurdity (or impossibility) of
    paying thousands upon thousands of dollars for private-school tuition,
    soon due for the coming semester.

    But those plotting a hasty exit to the suburbs (the space! the
    schools! the space!) may want to consider the experience of others who
    went before them, only to double back within a year.

    "I'm never leaving the city again; I'm terrified of leaving the city,"
    said Anna Hillen, 42, summing up the prevailing sentiment among the
    repatriates interviewed for this article.

    Ms. Hillen, her husband, Gerry McConnell, 42, and their son, Duncan,
    who was 1 at the time, vacated their TriBeCa loft in December 2001,
    shortly after 9/11. They bought a 6,000-square-foot newly built
    McMansion on three acres in the upscale, semirural Westchester enclave
    of Pound Ridge, N.Y., not far from the country homes they had rented
    before.

    "It was just a giant, echoing space," Ms. Hillen said, adding, "It was
    great to have all that room, but we never used it," except to put up
    extended family on holidays.

    Once settled, Ms. Hillen, a stay-at-home mother, embarked on a
    fruitless hunt for companionship. "Out there, you have to work at
    being with people," she said. "In a year, I got one play date for my
    kid. We joined the Newcomers Club, and the day we put our house on the
    market, they finally called. You'd go to the library for a reading and
    there would be no one there." She added, "You're a lonely, desperate
    housewife with nothing to do."

    Even the playgrounds were desolate. "And on the rare occasions there
    was somebody there and you struck up a conversation," she said, "they
    would literally move away. And they didn't encourage the kids to play
    together. We were so shocked."

    She spent every Wednesday in the city. At home, she busied herself
    with gardening. Still, she said, "you could only garden so many hours
    a day. And Duncan - I mean, you wouldn't think at one and
    three-quarters they're set in their ways but they are. He wouldn't go
    outside. In the summer I would stand outside with a Popsicle and go,
    'Come on, honey, you can have a Popsicle if you come outside.' But he
    would just stand at the door."

    After nine months, she persuaded her husband - who was enjoying his
    truncated commute to his financial services job in Greenwich, Conn. -
    to sell the house. "Summer had come and gone and I was looking at
    another winter of being completely alone," she said, citing frequent
    power failures as another concern, along with the so-so restaurants
    and lack of food delivery. "He was very supportive, the poor man."

    By December 2002, the house was sold at a loss and the furniture
    stowed away, and the family was tucked back into their old
    1,800-square-foot, two-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment in TriBeCa,
    which they had never got around to selling.

    It's worth noting that the suburbs are populated by plenty of
    satisfied former city dwellers harboring few, if any, regrets. Fully
    expecting to join the ranks of the contented, most of the couples
    interviewed here said their motivation for moving out was linked to a
    vague understanding that it was a prerequisite for raising children -
    a normal transition from one phase of life to the next, and one in
    which they would find plenty of company.

    "Everybody says when you get the baby, you leave the city," said Ronn
    Torossian, 31, the president and chief executive of 5W Public
    Relations in Midtown Manhattan. In July, he and his wife, Zhana - who
    have a 1-year-old daughter - sold their large one-bedroom on West 68th
    Street and Broadway and moved into a 3,500-square-foot split-level
    house in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., near friends. With the help of Ilan
    Bracha, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman, who had sold their
    apartment on West 68th, they moved back in December to a three-bedroom
    rental a block south from where they started.

    "It's like death out there," said Mr. Torossian, a fast-talking Bronx
    native who resisted the comparatively tempered pace, like food
    delivery that stops at 9 p.m. and a newspaper delivered at 7:30 a.m.

    "I can't wait 15 minutes in a bagel store to get two bagels," he said.
    "I can't have people looking at me like I'm crazy when I walk in and
    put a quarter on the table to get my paper and walk out. I go home and
    there's, like, people doing their lawn every five minutes. They seem
    like normal people but they spend, like, hours working on their lawn."

    What pushed him over the edge, he said, was the "drama" of his commute
    by car into Midtown. At 5 a.m., when Mr. Torossian ordinarily made the
    trip to avoid traffic, it took as little as 17 minutes. But coming
    home took three or four times that (two hours or more in foul
    weather), partly because of the bottleneck at his Midtown garage.
    "Calling ahead doesn't work because everybody leaves at the same
    time," he said. "If you don't bribe the guys there, you wait 15 to 20
    minutes for your car." He said he spent $100 a week in tips.

    His miasma has evaporated since his return to the city last month. "I
    feel like I'm walking on water," he said. "It's just a whole level of
    stress eliminated from my life. I go out a lot more, it's allowed me a
    lot more time to spend with my daughter, it's less stressful at work.
    It's phenomenal."

    Others who came back noted that beyond the city's borders,
    neighborhoods aren't exactly what they seem.

    "You go to these little towns and they are very charming and sweet and
    have all these cute little shops," said Brian Lover, who put his West
    Orange, N.J., house back on the market just three months after moving
    there. "But I think when you live in these areas full time, those
    neighborhood shops aren't so cute. And those neighborhood restaurants
    that look so great, you know how bad they really are."

    Mr. Lover, 42, a vice president at the Corcoran Group, and his wife,
    Kristina Rinaldi, 41, an interior decorator, decided to give up their
    one-bedroom rental on West 55th Street when they had a daughter,
    Tallulah. They wanted to live in Montclair, N.J., a popular magnet for
    exurbanites. Outmatched in bidding wars, they expanded their search to
    neighboring West Orange. There they became besotted by "an old English
    Tudor with a slate roof, character, an acre and a half of land," said
    Mr. Lover, who worked as a fashion advertising director for Esquire
    magazine at the time.

    In July 2001 they bought the house for $480,000; it came with a tinge
    of unreality. "Every day when I came home, I would say to myself, 'I
    really am a king and this is a castle, and who do I think I am?' "

    With their baby in tow, the couple stalked the parks and Gymboree
    classes in nearby Montclair, figuring "that's where we'll find the
    city people and the cool parents," Mr. Lover said. "But there wasn't
    anyone we could find a core to. It was all air." As for the city
    people they'd hoped to meet? "They were city people, not anymore," he
    said. "The suburbs have some way of sucking the city out of you."

    The events of 9/11 provided the final shove eastward. "We felt an
    empty pit in our stomachs because it was our city and we weren't
    living there with our friends who lived there," he said. The couple
    rented a 1,500-square-foot loft (sans interior doors) on Nassau Street
    near ground zero.

    "We lost a little bit of money," Mr. Lover said of the retreat back to
    familiar ground. "For a lot of people that would be kind of torturous.
    For us, I didn't care about the money. I wanted my life back."

    A short drive from Montclair up the Garden State Parkway lies
    Ridgewood, N.J., considered by many to be among the most desirable of
    New Jersey's commuter towns.

    "It's definitely someone's dream; it's just not our dream," said
    Andrew McCaul, a 37-year-old photographer who moved from Ridgewood
    back to Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, in June - exactly one year after
    buying a $580,000 three-bedroom Dutch colonial, in walking distance of
    town, with his wife, Sarma Ozols, 36, and their son Aidan, now 2.

    Their suburban sojourn started off promisingly in June 2004. "It was
    like a honeymoon period where it felt like we had a country house in
    the summer," Mr. McCaul said. But after three months, he said, "real
    life started setting in."

    There was the commute, for one thing. "You kind of trick yourself into
    thinking the commute is going to be easier than it is," said Mr.
    McCaul, who only occasionally caught the express train for a 40-minute
    door-to-door commute. "I spent many depressing nights at the Hoboken
    station," he added, waiting more than half an hour for a connection.

    "If you go out for a drink with friends, you're always watching the
    clock," he said. Adding insult to tedium, Mr. McCaul suffered through
    the suburban version of the Freshman 15, putting 10 to 15 pounds on
    his normally thin frame, which he attributed to his mostly
    nonpedestrian lifestyle.

    Though the couple liked their neighbors, Ms. Ozols, a photographer at
    home part time with her young son, recalled feeling cut off. "I didn't
    have a community of moms, and I guess that would have come in time if
    my child were older and going to school," she said. "It's not as easy
    as being in Brooklyn where you just start talking at the playground
    and there's always someone to talk to."

    She also found that the unaccustomed space - the house was roomy
    compared with the 850-square-foot rental they had left behind -
    "weighed on me," she said. And she developed an unfamiliar, unwelcome
    compulsion toward domesticity. "On Thanksgiving, I kind of felt I had
    to be Martha Stewart, with all the right plates and everything," she
    said.

    They listed the house last Mother's Day and sold it for $60,000 more
    than they had paid. The couple, who now also have a 4-month-old child,
    Julian, put the proceeds toward a 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom,
    two-bath condo loft in Carroll Gardens West. "The space is a lot
    smaller, but it's all we need," Ms. Ozols said.

    Melanie Williams, 40, also determined that smaller can be better. In
    February 2004, she exchanged a $950-a-month, rent-stabilized
    two-bedroom apartment in a "decrepit" Hell's Kitchen building for a
    spacious $1,350-a-month four-room apartment in Riverdale, a
    suburban-feeling section of the Bronx, in part because of the good
    public schools available to her daughter, Dorothy, now 5.

    "It was just like this land of no culture," said Ms. Williams, who
    owns Plain Jane, a children's home furnishings shop on the Upper West
    Side. "You never met anybody. There's one little street with a meat
    market on it. It was very bizarre but beautiful."

    Petty crime troubled them. The family car was broken into several
    times while parked on the street - an unfortunate necessity, she said,
    because all the garages were full. And over the next nine months, she
    said, both she and her actor/carpenter husband, Andrew Finney, 44,
    came to realize that although they had moved, "our life was still in
    New York."

    In November 2004, they rented a 900-square-foot loft in the financial
    district, in the well-regarded Public School 234 school district,
    which cost a third more than the Riverdale apartment. "It didn't
    matter," she said. "We had to get out of there."

    Some couples beating hasty tracks back to the city allowed that things
    might have turned out differently if they had school age children to
    provide a firmer wedge into the community.

    "It was a little premature for us, because we don't have kids," said
    Sara Mendelsohn, about the move she and her husband, Brian, made to a
    one-bedroom co-op in Great Neck on Long Island this past spring. The
    27-year-old newlyweds bought and renovated the dwelling after deciding
    their money wouldn't go far enough in Manhattan.

    Things went well at first. "We bought a car and really enjoyed having
    that kind of freedom," said Ms. Mendelsohn, who works as a business
    planner at Marc Jacobs. "And we always spend our summers out on the
    island at either one of our family's homes." But they failed to
    integrate into the community - in large part because they couldn't
    find it.

    "When we come home and walk from the train to our apartment, there's
    no one on the street between 7 and 10 p.m.," she said. "It's just that
    feeling of being alone. You walk the dog and there's no one there."
    She and her husband, who works in media sales, listed their apartment
    for $299,000 in October; they have been working with Barbara Haynes at
    Bellmarc and Lauren Cangiano at Halstead to find a place to rent or
    buy in the city.

    Learning the hard way, twice, Mary A. Sweeney, an Upper East Side
    registered nurse, moved back and forth - then back and forth again -
    to Poughkeepsie. (The first chapter, beginning in 2000, lasted almost
    two years; she blamed the second, three-month-long episode, occurring
    in 2003 when Ms. Sweeney was newly pregnant with her third child, on
    "lack of oxygen going to the brain.")

    Ms. Sweeney, 36, recalled the many disconnects she discovered between
    fantasy and reality.

    "We had this beautifully landscaped acre-and-a-half of land for the
    kids to play in, but we were terrified of Lyme disease," Ms. Sweeney
    said. "We lived in a cul-de-sac and it was lovely but if we biked off
    the cul-de-sac, we were on these beautiful country roads that were
    curved so that bike riding on them wasn't so safe. We realized we were
    far safer going to Central Park, really playing with the kids and
    having our picnic, especially in the summertime."

    She mostly stayed at home while her husband, Azeddine Yachkouri, 43,
    commuted to his job as a banquet manager at the Mandarin Oriental
    hotel in Manhattan. "It was lovely for him to drive home to me and the
    kids and the house and then drive back to the city the next day and
    work and socialize," she recalled. "But for me, when this retreat is
    my everyday life, it became monotonous and mundane."

    In the city, "I can go out with the girls when my husband is late at
    work or I don't feel like cooking," she said. "We can go into
    family-style restaurants with great buzz, great atmosphere."

    Though the Sweeneys' house was many times bigger than their old
    two-bedroom apartment, it exerted an unforeseen undertow. "All of a
    sudden you find all these projects to do in the house," she said. "It
    keeps you indoors more than you ever thought."

    She added: "We looked at other communities - Scarsdale and so forth -
    and it was the same thing. It was beautiful houses on these beautiful
    streets and as soon as the children were in school you could hear a
    pin drop on the streets. The only life was the birds chirping. I
    prefer to interact with my doorman or the guy on the corner of the
    street where you get your paper or your coffee."

    Those who have left and returned sometimes share their wisdom with
    friends who are considering the same move. "When people tell us that
    they're thinking about it, I'm like, don't do it," Ms. Ozols said.
    "But everybody has to get it out of their system. If we didn't do it,
    it would still be in the back of our heads. Maybe I would tell them to
    rent instead."


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 01:32:42 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 20:32:42 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Diabetes Series
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601212027310.13460@panix2.panix.com>

NYT Diabetes Series

[Four articles and a later one on genes an diabetes. Being more Nietzschean 
than Mr. Mencken (I think), I have never been much interested in how the human 
body goes wrong, this in spite of my father, my mother's father, and my 
father's mother's father all having been physicians. I only repeat Mr. 
Mencken's observation that the botched state of the human body is proof of the 
Trinity, that man was designed by a committee.

[Still, all this medical knowledge shows the triumph of science.]

Diabetes and Its Awful Toll Quietly Emerge as a Crisis
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/09/nyregion/nyregionspecial5/09diabetes.html

Bad Blood
By N. R. KLEINFIELD

Begin on the sixth floor, third room from the end, swathed in
fluorescence: a 60-year-old woman was having two toes sawed off.
One floor up, corner room: a middle-aged man sprawled,
recuperating from a kidney transplant. Next door: nerve damage.
Eighth floor, first room to the left: stroke. Two doors down:
more toes being removed. Next room: a flawed heart.

As always, the beds at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx
were filled with a universe of afflictions. In truth, these
assorted burdens were all the work of a single illness: diabetes.
Room after room, floor after floor, diabetes. On any given day,
hospital officials say, nearly half the patients are there for
some trouble precipitated by the disease.

An estimated 800,000 adult New Yorkers - more than one in every
eight - now have diabetes, and city health officials describe the
problem as a bona fide epidemic. Diabetes is the only major
disease in the city that is growing, both in the number of new
cases and the number of people it kills. And it is growing
quickly, even as other scourges like heart disease and cancers
are stable or in decline.

Already, diabetes has swept through families, entire
neighborhoods in the Bronx and broad slices of Brooklyn, where it
is such a fact of life that people describe it casually, almost
comfortably, as "getting the sugar" or having "the sweet blood."

But as alarmed as health officials are about the present, they
worry more about what is to come.

Within a generation or so, doctors fear, a huge wave of new cases
could overwhelm the public health system and engulf growing
numbers of the young, creating a city where hospitals are swamped
by the disease's handiwork, schools scramble for resources as
they accommodate diabetic children, and the work force abounds
with the blind and the halt.

The prospect is frightening, but it has gone largely unnoticed
outside public health circles. As epidemics go, diabetes has been
a quiet one, provoking little of the fear or the prevention
efforts inspired by AIDS or lung cancer.

In its most common form, diabetes, which allows excess sugar to
build up in the blood and exact ferocious damage throughout the
body, retains an outdated reputation as a relatively benign
sickness of the old. Those who get it do not usually suffer any
symptoms for years, and many have a hard time believing that they
are truly ill.

Yet a close look at its surge in New York offers a disturbing
glimpse of where the city, and the rest of the world, may be
headed if diabetes remains unchecked.

The percentage of diabetics in the city is nearly a third higher
than in the nation. New cases have been cropping up close to
twice as fast as cases nationally. And of adults believed to have
the illness, health officials estimate, nearly one-third do not
know it.

One in three children born in the United States five years ago
are expected to become diabetic in their lifetimes, according to
a projection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The forecast is even bleaker for Latinos: one in every two.

New York, perhaps more than any other big city, harbors all the
ingredients for a continued epidemic. It has large numbers of the
poor and obese, who are at higher risk. It has a growing
population of Latinos, who get the disease in disproportionate
numbers, and of Asians, who can develop it at much lower weights
than people of other races.

It is a city of immigrants, where newcomers eating American diets
for the first time are especially vulnerable. It is also yielding
to the same forces that have driven diabetes nationally: an aging
population, a food supply spiked with sugars and fats, and a
culture that promotes overeating and discourages exercise.

Diabetes has no cure. It is progressive and often fatal, and
while the patient lives, the welter of medical complications it
sets off can attack every major organ. As many war veterans lost
lower limbs last year to the disease as American soldiers did to
combat injuries in the entire Vietnam War. Diabetes is the
principal reason adults go blind.

So-called Type 2 diabetes, the predominant form and the focus of
this series, is creeping into children, something almost unheard
of two decades ago. The American Diabetes Association says the
disease could actually lower the average life expectancy of
Americans for the first time in more than a century.

Even those who do not get diabetes will eventually feel it,
experts say - in time spent caring for relatives, in higher taxes
and insurance premiums, and in public spending diverted to this
single illness.

"Either we fall apart or we stop this," said Dr. Thomas R.
Frieden, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health
and Mental Hygiene.

Yet he and other public health officials acknowledge that their
ability to slow the disease is limited. Type 2 can often be
postponed and possibly prevented by eating less and exercising
more. But getting millions of people to change their behavior, he
said, will require some kind of national crusade.

The disease can be controlled through careful monitoring,
lifestyle changes and medication that is constantly improving,
and plenty of people live with diabetes for years without serious
symptoms. But managing it takes enormous effort. Even among
Americans who know they have the disease, about two-thirds are
not doing enough to treat it.

Nearly 21 million Americans are believed to be diabetic,
according to the Centers for Disease Control, and 41 million more
are prediabetic; their blood sugar is high, and could reach the
diabetic level if they do not alter their living habits.

In this sedentary nation, New York is often seen as an island of
thin people who walk everywhere. But as the ranks of American
diabetics have swelled by a distressing 80 percent in the last
decade, New York has seen an explosion of cases: 140 percent
more, according to the city's health department. The proportion
of diabetics in its adult population is higher than that of Los
Angeles or Chicago, and more than double that of Boston.

There was a pronounced increase in diagnosed cases nationwide in
1997, part of which was undoubtedly due to changes in the
definition of diabetes and in the way data was collected, though
there has continued to be a marked rise ever since.

Yet for years, public health authorities around the country have
all but ignored chronic illnesses like diabetes, focusing instead
on communicable diseases, which kill far fewer people. New York,
with its ambitious and highly praised public health system, has
just three people and a $950,000 budget to outwit diabetes, a
disease soon expected to afflict more than a million people in
the city.

Tuberculosis, which infected about 1,000 New Yorkers last year,
gets $27 million and a staff of almost 400.

Diabetes is "the Rodney Dangerfield of diseases," said Dr. James
L. Rosenzweig, the director of disease management at the Joslin
Diabetes Center in Boston. As fresh cases and their medical
complications pile up, the health care system tinkers with new
models of dispensing care and then forsakes them, unable to wring
out profits. Insurers shun diabetics as too expensive. In Albany,
bills aimed at the problem go nowhere.

"I will go out on a limb," said Dr. Frieden, the health
commissioner, "and say, 20 years from now people will look back
and say: 'What were they thinking? They're in the middle of an
epidemic and kids are watching 20,000 hours of commercials for
junk food.' "

Of course, revolutionary new treatments or a cure could change
everything. Otherwise, the price will be steep. Nationwide, the
disease's cost just for 2002 - from medical bills to disability
payments and lost workdays - was conservatively put by the
American Diabetes Association at $132 billion. All cancers, taken
together, cost the country an estimated $171 billion a year.

"How bad is the diabetes epidemic?" asked Frank Vinicor,
associate director for public health practice at the Centers for
Disease Control. "There are several ways of telling. One might be
how many different occurrences in a 24-hour period of time,
between when you wake up in the morning and when you go to sleep.
So, 4,100 people diagnosed with diabetes, 230 amputations in
people with diabetes, 120 people who enter end-stage kidney
disease programs and 55 people who go blind.

"That's going to happen every day, on the weekends and on the
Fourth of July," he said. "That's diabetes."

One Day in the Trenches

The rounds began on the seventh floor with Iris Robles. She was
26, young for this, supine in bed. She wore a pink "Chicks Rule"
T-shirt; an IV line protruded from her arm. For more than a year,
she had had a recurrent skin infection. The pain overwhelmed her.
Then came extreme thirst and the loss of 50 pounds in six weeks.
In the emergency room, she found out she had diabetes.

She was out of work, wanted to be an R & B singer, had no
insurance. It was her fourth day in Montefiore Medical Center.
Her grandmother, aunt and two cousins have diabetes.

"I'm scared," she said. "I'm still adjusting to it."

Next came Richard Dul, watching news chatter on a compact TV. Now
64, he has had diabetes since he was 22. A month before, he had a
blockage in his heart and needed open-heart surgery. He was home
a few days, but an infection arose and he was back. Postoperative
infections are more common with diabetes. This was his 21st
straight day in the hospital.

Here, then, was the price of diabetes, not just the dollars and
cents but the high cost in quality of life.

Simply put, diabetes is a condition in which the body has trouble
turning food into energy. All bodies break down digested food
into a sugar called glucose, their main source of fuel. In a
healthy person, the hormone insulin helps glucose enter the
cells. But in a diabetic, the pancreas fails to produce enough
insulin, or the body does not properly use it. Cells starve while
glucose builds up in the blood.

There are two predominant types of diabetes. In Type 1, the
immune system destroys the cells in the pancreas that make
insulin. In Type 2, which accounts for an estimated 90 percent to
95 percent of all cases, the body's cells are not sufficiently
receptive to insulin, or the pancreas makes too little of it, or
both.

Type 1 used to be called "juvenile diabetes" and Type 2
"adult-onset diabetes." By 1997, so many children had developed
Type 2 that the Diabetes Association changed the names.

What is especially disturbing about the rise of Type 2 is that it
can be delayed and perhaps prevented with changes in diet and
exercise. For although both types are believed to stem in part
from genetic factors, Type 2 is also spurred by obesity and
inactivity. This is particularly true in those prone to the
illness. Plenty of fat, slothful people do not get diabetes. And
some thin, vigorous people do.

The health care system is good at dispensing pills and opening up
bodies, and with diabetes it had better be, because it has proved
ineffectual at stopping the disease. People typically have it for
7 to 10 years before it is even diagnosed, and by that time it
will often have begun to set off grievous consequences. Thus,
most treatment is simply triage, doctors coping with the
poisonous complications of patients who return again and again.

Diabetics are two to four times more likely than others to
develop heart disease or have a stroke, and three times more
likely to die of complications from flu or pneumonia, according
to the Centers for Disease Control. Most diabetics suffer
nervous-system damage and poor circulation, which can lead to
amputations of toes, feet and entire legs; even a tiny cut on the
foot can lead to gangrene because it will not be seen or felt.

Women with diabetes are at higher risk for complications in
pregnancy, including miscarriages and birth defects. Men run a
higher risk of impotence. Young adults have twice the chance of
getting gum disease and losing teeth.

And people with Type 2 are often hounded by parallel problems -
high blood pressure and high cholesterol, among others - brought
on not by the diabetes, but by the behavior that led to it, or by
genetics.

Dr. Monica Sweeney, medical director of the Bedford-Stuyvesant
Family Health Center, offered an analogy: "It's like bad kids. If
you have one bad kid, not so bad. Two bad kids, it's worse. Put
five bad kids together and it's unmanageable. Diabetes is like
five bad kids together. You want to scream."

The Caro Research Institute, a consulting firm that evaluates the
burden of diseases, estimates that a diabetic without
complications will incur medical costs of $1,600 a year -
unpleasant, but not especially punishing. But the price tag
ratchets up quickly as related ailments set in: an average
$30,400 for a heart attack or amputation, $40,200 for a stroke,
$37,000 for end-stage kidney disease.

One of the most horrific consequences is losing a leg. According
to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, some
70 percent of lower-limb amputations in 2003 were performed on
diabetics. Sometimes, the subtraction is cumulative. One toe
goes. Two more. The ankle. Everything to the knee. The other leg.
Studies suggest that as many as 70 percent of amputees die within
five years.

Yet medical experts believe that most diabetes-related
amputations are preventable with scrupulous care, and that is why
the offices of conscientious doctors post signs like this: "All
patients with diabetes: Don't forget to bare your feet each
visit."

To witness the pitiless course that diabetes can take, simply
continue on the hospital tour. This one day will do. Dr. Rita
Louard, an endocrinologist, and Anne Levine, a nurse diabetes
educator, were making their way through the rooms at Montefiore.

Here was Julius Rivers, 58, on the sixth floor. Three years with
diabetes. He had been at home in bed when he saw a light like a
starburst and told his wife to take him to the emergency room.
His blood sugar was 1,400, beyond the pale. (A fasting level of
126 milligrams per deciliter is the demarcation point of
diabetes.)

This was his third trip to the hospital in seven months. At the
moment, he had a blood clot in his left leg. He had a heart
attack a few years ago. He was on dialysis. "Tuesday, Thursday
and Saturday," he said.

On the sixth floor was Mauri Stein, 58, a guidance counselor, a
diabetic for 20 years. She had been at a party recently and
"zoned out." Her words slurred. Foam appeared on her mouth. She
had had a mild stroke.

Now she tried to control her emotions, tried not to cry. She had
had repeated laser surgery on her eyes, and was effectively blind
in one. She had recovered from the stroke, but doctors had also
found a tumor on her heart and said it would need surgery.

"My feet burn," she said. "My toes burn all the time. My days of
wearing my pumps are over. I've gotten more cortisone shots in my
feet than I'm sure are legal."

She mentioned her brother, who lived in California. Diabetes had
ransacked his body - an amputation, kidney dialysis, heart
disease, blindness in one eye. He now resided in an
assisted-living center. He was 53.

Ms. Stein's husband walked in and sat on the bed. Six months ago,
he found out the same truth: he had diabetes.

This was one day in one hospital.

Inside the Incubator

Little about diabetes is straightforward, and to comprehend why
New York is such an incubator for the disease, it is necessary to
grasp that diabetes is as much a sociological and anthropological
story as a medical one. While it assaults all classes, ages and
ethnic groups, it is inextricably bound up with race and money.

Diabetes bears an inverse relationship to income, for poverty
usually means less access to fresh food, exercise and health
care. New York's poverty rate, 20.3 percent, is much higher than
the nation's, 12.7 percent.

African-Americans and Latinos, particularly Mexican-Americans and
Puerto Ricans, incur diabetes at close to twice the rate of
whites. More than half of all New Yorkers are black or Hispanic,
and the Hispanic population is growing rapidly, as it is around
the nation.

Some Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders also appear more
prone, and they can develop the disease at much lower weights.
Asians constitute one-tenth of New York's population, more than
twice their proportion nationwide.

The nature of these groups' susceptibility remains under study,
but researchers generally blame an interplay of genetic and
socioeconomic forces. Many researchers believe that higher
proportions of these groups have a "thrifty gene" that enabled
ancestors who farmed and hunted to stockpile fat during times of
plenty so they would not starve during periods of want. In modern
America, with food beckoning on every corner, the gene works
perversely, causing them to accumulate unhealthy quantities of
fat.

But the velocity of new cases among all races has accelerated
significantly from just a few decades ago. Genetics cannot
explain this surge, because the human gene pool does not change
that fast. Instead, the culprit is thought to be behavior: faulty
diet and inactivity. Dr. Vinicor, of the Centers for Disease
Control, likes to use this expression: "Genetics may load the
cannon, but human behavior pulls the trigger."

Of the country's spike in diabetes cases over the last two
decades, C.D.C. studies suggest that about 60 percent stem from
demographic changes: a population increasingly comprising older
people and ethnic groups with a higher risk.

The studies ascribe the other 40 percent to lifestyle changes:
the fundamental shift that has people eating jumbo meals and
shunning exercise as if it were illegal. At every turn,
technology has made physical activity unnecessary or unappealing.
Gym class has largely been deleted from schools. Fewer than a
third of junior high schools require physical education at all,
the C.D.C. says.

On the whole, New York's corpulence is below the national
average, with 20 percent of adults qualifying as obese, compared
with 30 percent for the country, the C.D.C. says. But the figure
is much higher in poor areas like the South Bronx and East
Harlem.

When the health department studied diabetes in the city's 34
major neighborhoods, the distribution echoed demographic
patterns: Diabetes left only a light imprint on more affluent,
white areas like the Upper West Side and Brooklyn Heights. The
prevalence was about average in working-class Ridgewood, Queens,
and almost nil on the Upper East Side.

But that apparent immunity is weakening. Of those 34
neighborhoods, 22 already have diabetes rates above the national
average, and the numbers are rising all over as the city
continually remakes itself.

"New York is switching from a mom-and-pop type of environment to
a chain-store type of environment, a proliferation of fast food,
even in high-rent neighborhoods they haven't had access to
before, like the East Village and Lower Manhattan," said Peter
Muennig, an assistant professor of health policy and management
at Columbia.

If changes in daily living can bring on diabetes, they can also
delay it, though it is uncertain for how long.

A federal program studied people around the country at high risk
of getting diabetes, and concluded that 58 percent of new cases
could be postponed by shifts in behavior - most notably, shedding
pounds.

But Dr. Frieden, New York's health commissioner, says meaningful
prevention cannot be achieved at the city level. "I can urge
people until I'm blue in the face to walk and take the stairs and
eat less, and it won't make much difference," he said.

His emphasis is on trying to better treat those who already have
diabetes, an ambitious goal in its own right. Most primary care
doctors treat too many patients to provide the attention that
diabetics need, or to check for the disease, he said. Specialists
are scarce. And compliance among patients is notoriously poor.

Even the most basic step in controlling the disease - watching
one's blood sugar - is too much for many diabetics. Doctors
recommend that two to four times a year, patients take a
so-called A1c test, which gauges the average sugar level over the
prior 90 days and is more revealing than daily at-home
measurements.

But in 2002 , the health department found that 89 percent of
diabetics did not know their A1c levels. Of those who did,
presumably the most conscientious, four out of five had readings
over the level the American Diabetes Association says separates
well-controlled from poorly controlled diabetes.

The patients in the survey were not much better at knowing their
blood pressure and cholesterol, which are also crucial for
diabetics to control.

"Diabetes is an interesting beast," said Dr. Diana K. Berger, who
heads the diabetes division at the health department. "It's
probably one of the easier conditions to diagnose but one of the
hardest to manage."

Shortages and Shipwrecks

There is an underappreciated truth about disease: it will harm
you even if you never get it. Disease reverberates outward, and
if the illness gets big enough, it brushes everyone. Diabetes is
big enough.

Predicting the path of a disease is always speculative, but
without bold intervention diabetes threatens to hamper some of
society's most basic functions.

For instance, no one with diabetes can join the military, though
service members whose disease is diagnosed after enlisting can
sometimes stay. No insulin-dependent diabetic can become a
commercial pilot.

Shereen Arent, director of legal advocacy for the American
Diabetes Association, says she already fields 150 calls a month
from diabetics who complain that they are being discriminated
against in the workplace, double the number just a couple of
years ago. She mentioned a typical case, a man rejected for a job
at a baked-bean factory in Texas as a safety risk. "If this
continues," she said, "we're in big trouble."

Dr. Daniel Lorber is an endocrinologist in Queens who thinks a
lot about the disease's present and future. "The work force 50
years from now is going to look fat, one-legged, blind, a
diminution of able-bodied workers at every level," he said,
presuming that current trends persist.

As more women contract diabetes in their reproductive years, Dr.
Lorber said, more babies will be born with birth defects. Those
needy babies will be raised by parents increasingly crippled by
their diabetes.

"At a time when we are trying to shift health care out of
hospitals, with diabetics you don't have a choice," he said.
"Nursing homes are going to be crammed to the gills with amputees
in rehab. Kidney dialysis centers will multiply like rabbits. We
will have a tremendous amount of people not blind but with low
vision. And we have lousy facilities in this country for
low-vision problems. These people will not be able to function in
society without significant aid."

Cost pressures have been slashing the number of hospital beds,
and some exasperated doctors are known to denigrate advanced
diabetics as "shipwrecks," because they have so many health
problems and virtually live in the hospital.

Not only will the future mean too few beds and unsupportable
drains on Medicaid and Medicare, Mr. Muennig said, but if an
emergency strikes - a terrorist attack, an earthquake - the city
health system's ability to respond may be compromised because all
the beds will be full of diabetics.

Most schools do not have full-time nurses. Some public schools,
Ms. Arent said, try to turn away children with diabetes, even
though that is illegal. Others ban them from field trips and
sports teams. And this is now, when diabetes is still relatively
rare among children.

If trends continue, people will live through years blighted by
disability, then die too young. Diabetes is thought to shave 5 to
10 years off a life.

"Life expectancy usually decreases because there's a plague or
there's a massive economic trauma," Mr. Muennig said. "In this
case, we will see a decline in life expectancy due to a chronic
condition."

In 2003, diabetes vaulted past stroke and AIDS from the
sixth-leading cause of death in New York to the fourth. It was
fifth, slightly behind stroke, in 2004. But the health department
says it believes the actual toll is much worse because doctors
who fill out death certificates may ascribe the death to a
complication rather than to the diabetes at its root. Lorna
Thorpe, deputy health commissioner, combed through medical charts
and concluded that diabetes should be third, trailing
cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Laurie Raps is a claims representative for Social Security on
Staten Island, 31 years on the job. From her perspective,
interviewing people embarking on full-time disability, she has
seen the disease's long tentacles. When she started, she saw
people in their 50's and 60's, hobbled by the usual problems of
age: arthritis, herniated discs, heart conditions. Now, every
week, she gets diabetic after diabetic, people as young as 30.

In fact, a 2004 study by UnumProvident, a major provider of
disability insurance, found that the number of workers filing
claims for Type 2 diabetes doubled between 2001 and 2003.

"It's a double whammy," Ms. Raps said. "You don't have these
people working and paying into the system, and then you have
these people collecting from the system."

Ten years ago, Ms. Raps developed diabetes. Her husband has it.
Both her parents have it, their lives being washed away.

"When I look at the people who sit before me with disability
claims, I have to check the birth date in their records," she
said. "They look 10 or 20 years older. Diabetes does that. It
wears you down and wears you down. We're looking at a future of
people 10 or 20 years older in sickness than they are. What kind
of future is that?"

'A 15-Year-Old Is Immortal'

"I'm Linda and I've had diabetes for 13 years."

"I'm Dominique and I've had diabetes for seven years."

"I'm Joseph and I've had diabetes for two months."

The brisk introductions went on, the ritual start to the monthly
meeting of a support group called Sugar Babes Place. All the
members had diabetes. All were children.

Sugar Babes is the idea of Dr. Yolaine St. Louis, chief of
pediatric endocrinology at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center. When
she started practicing medicine 16 years ago, the only children
she saw with diabetes had Type 1.

Now, of Sugar Babes' 90 official members, roughly 40 percent have
Type 2. One is 8. Another is 7.

It scares Dr. St. Louis. It scares many doctors who see the same
thing, because they know it does not have to be. Type 2 was
supposed to be an old person's disease. Diabetes still increases
with age in an almost linear fashion - today, one in five New
Yorkers age 65 and older have it - but the starting point used to
be mostly in their 50's.

Dr. Alan Shapiro, a pediatrician with the Children's Health Fund
and Montefiore Medical Center who has spent 13 years ministering
to children in the South Bronx, said there was an easy way to
illustrate the change. When he began, there was a
"failure-to-thrive" clinic, meant to address the undernourished,
because so many children were dangerously thin and small.

"Now I don't think we hardly ever see a failure-to-thrive case,"
he said.

In the clinic's place is an obesity program. Dr. Shapiro never
saw children with Type 2 diabetes in his early years in medicine.
Now, the program has about 10 cases.

One concern he and fellow doctors have is the surge in children
who take antipsychotic drugs for anxiety and conditions like
autism. Some newer drugs can promote weight gain and thus elevate
the risk of diabetes. Dr. Shapiro has an autistic patient who he
feels needs the new medication. But since taking it, the young
man has markedly put on weight and, at 18, developed diabetes.

This extension of the disease to the young is where health care
professionals feel society and public policy have most glaringly
failed. Diabetes, they say, should never have gotten there.

There has been little research into the long-term impact of Type
2 diabetes on children. But doctors have a rough idea. The harsh
consequences that can accompany diabetes tend to arrive 10 to 15
years after onset.

If people contract diabetes when they are 15, 10 or even 5, they
may well start developing complications, not on the cusp of
retirement but in the prime of their lives.

There is a big difference between losing a limb at 21 and at 70.
There is a big difference between going on dialysis at 30 and at
65.

"I heard a horror story a few weeks ago," Dr. Lorber said, "of a
girl who was born deaf, got diabetes at 11 or 12 and went blind
from diabetes at 30."

The C.D.C. has projected that a child found to have Type 2
diabetes at age 10 will see his life shortened by 19 years.

"Imagine if kids were showing up at emergency rooms in cardiac
arrest," said Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention
Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine.
"Frankly, I think that's the next big thing. It's that dramatic.
If diabetes doesn't respect age, why should coronary disease?
Lord knows, I hope this never happens. But this is what keeps me
up at night."

Yet children can be the most reluctant to accept the truths of
their condition.

"A lot of them are in denial," Dr. St. Louis said. "They have
blood sugars of 300, 400, and they tell me right to my face they
don't have diabetes. 'You're wrong,' they say. 'I don't feel
anything.' I tell them what can happen down the road, and they
shrug. A 15-year-old doesn't care what's going to happen at 35 or
45. A 15-year-old is immortal."

The doctor was telling the Sugar Babes that everyone should have
two compact blood-sugar meters, one for home and one for school.
Then she warned them, "If your sugar is bad and you don't do
anything, you're going to be dropping down all over the Bronx."

Interest was tepid. Some children couldn't keep their eyes off
the waiting dinner arranged at a buffet table by the wall. No
rapt attention from Joseph, 12, who had begged not to come, until
his mother put her foot down. He moaned that he had schoolwork.

"Look at that," said Dorothy Morris-Swaby, a diabetes nurse
educator who worked with Dr. St. Louis, nodding at a girl who was
talking on her phone. "We're educating about diabetes, and she's
on her cellphone. Typical teenager."

As time ran out, hula hoops were brought out. Dr. St. Louis was
trying to identify activities other than video games and TV that
the children might try. Last meeting, they held a jump-rope
contest.

"They have 10,000 excuses why they can't do something," the
doctor said. "So you have to give them ideas and then hope."

The meeting wound up. The hoops were stashed away. Some of the
children stepped toward the buffet table and began to eat.

Living at an Epicenter of Diabetes, Defiance and Despair
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/nyregion/nyregionspecial5/10diabetes.html

Bad Blood
By N. R. KLEINFIELD

Santos Alicea tottered haltingly over to the art shop in East
Harlem, his legs screaming. The regulars knew what he was going
through. They always did - the diabetes was speaking. He
confirmed this with numerical rigor: 228, his nasty blood-sugar
reading this morning. Nods all around. They had ugly numbers,
too.

James De La Vega owned the art shop on Lexington Avenue, near
104th Street, and regarded the sidewalk out front as his living
room. There, with his friends and family, he shared a lot over
the years: Latino art and culture, the slow cadences of East
Harlem life, runs of hard luck. And diabetes.

Indeed, in East Harlem, it is possible to take any simple nexus
of people - the line at an A.T.M., a portion of a postal route,
the members of a church choir - and trace an invisible web of
diabetes that stretches through the group and out into the
neighborhood, touching nearly every life with its menace.

Mr. De La Vega, a 33-year-old self-styled "sidewalk philosopher"
whose murals and sidewalk chalk drawings are familiar
neighborhood ornaments, has a mother with diabetes. His
stepfather's case was confirmed in March. And a number of Mr. De
La Vega's friends who occupied his chairs or sat in the bordering
garden, well, they had it. Mr. De La Vega said he would probably
get it, too.

In East Harlem, in fact, it seems peculiar if you don't have it.

Months spent in the easy company of the shop's dozen or so
regulars reveal something more than just the insidiousness of
Type 2 diabetes, the disease's most common form. Those months,
and conversations, disclose with relentless consistency the human
behavior that makes dealing with Type 2 often feel so futile -
the force of habit, the failure of will, the shrugging defeatism,
the urge to salve a hard life by surrendering to small comforts:
a piece of cake, a couple of beers, a day off from sticking
oneself with needles.

That behavior is all the more evident in East Harlem, a gritty
neighborhood where problems back up on people like fallen
dominoes.

For as bad as diabetes is in New York, it is staggeringly worse
in East Harlem. Precise numbers are hard to ascertain, but the
prevalence of the disease, factoring in an estimate for
undiagnosed cases, has fluctuated in recent city health
department surveys between 16 percent and 20 percent, as many as
one in five adults.

People in East Harlem die of diabetes at twice the rate of people
in the city as a whole. Diabetes-related amputations are higher
than in any other part of New York. For hospitalizations linked
to diabetes, East Harlem is the third-worst neighborhood. It has
the largest percentage of obese people, whose weight makes them
more susceptible to Type 2.

The fact that East Harlem is roughly 90 percent Hispanic and
black, groups believed to have a genetic predisposition to the
disease, explains part of the problem. There are also other
factors: bad food habits, little exercise, rampant poverty and,
according to health officials, poor access to medical care.

In East Harlem, then, you're in the teeth of an epidemic, a place
where, as health officials warn of a worsening crisis, you can
see the ruins the disease has already wrought.

Most of the afflicted people in East Harlem have Type 2 diabetes,
the focus of this series, which has been linked to obesity and
inactivity, as well as to heredity. (Type 1, which comprises only
5 percent to 10 percent of diabetes cases, is not associated with
behavior, and is believed to stem almost entirely from genetic
factors.)

East Harlem is not just any neighborhood. It is the fabled home
of Rao's, the always-booked Italian restaurant, and El Museo del
Barrio, which celebrates Latin culture. Early on, it was the
repository of Russian Jewish, Irish and Italian immigrants,
congealing into the city's hub of Italian life; after World War
II, a Puerto Rican influx converted it into Spanish Harlem.

Recently, there has been an uptick in Mexican, Dominican and
Asian arrivals, and stirrings of gentrification. But the core
population that has been its ballast for a half-century is being
eroded by forces as powerful as real estate values and
immigration waves: a deviously complicated disease, poverty and
simple human frailty.

'Then I Started Cheating'

The sun was piercing, and the light banged off the side of the
art shop. The air was stippled with fragrances of fried meat.
Crammed inside the claustrophobic interior were assorted
paintings, decorated mugs, greeting cards and other oddments.
Elsie Matos, Mr. De La Vega's mother, sat out front, her dark
hair in a ponytail. The two of them still lived together. She was
56 and worked in the office at a local public school.

She discovered her diabetes coincidentally, as many do, nine
years ago. A boil on her left thigh refused to heal. A blood test
told her what she didn't want to know. Her fasting blood-sugar
reading was nearly triple the 126 milligrams per deciliter that
defines the illness.

She was no stranger to the complexities of diabetes. A few years
ago, an East Harlem coalition fighting the disease enlisted her
son to sketch some pithy warnings. He did this for brochures; and
he scattered chalk drawings across the sidewalks of East Harlem,
depicting his barefoot mother in a sun dress and hoop earrings,
beseeching people: "Eat well and exercise!" "Test your blood for
sugar!" "Check and protect your feet!"

It turns out that the woman in his sketches was a version of Ms.
Matos that had ceased to exist. She was no longer that thin. And
like most people burdened with the disease, whether they lived in
East Harlem or Chelsea or Jamaica, Queens, she toggled back and
forth between obeying its dictates and ignoring them.

When she got the diagnosis, the doctor told her to shed 100
pounds. With a crash diet she did just that, slimming down to
150. She stayed thinner for a year.

"Then I started cheating," she said. "Sandwiches. Frankfurters. I
didn't care. I didn't think it would matter."

She was put on pills. Those who have diabetes usually suffer from
related conditions, especially high blood pressure and high
cholesterol, and often swallow 8 to 10 pills a day. Ms. Matos had
high cholesterol and asthma.

She was warned that she had to control her lust for calorie-rich
food, that taking pills was not enough. Doctors like to say that
patients can eat their way through the pills. And a cruel truth
of diabetes care is that many oral medications prompt weight
gain. Oral diabetes drugs also tend to lose effectiveness. They
sometimes work for a few years, then have to be teamed with other
drugs. Anyone who has diabetes long enough is likely to find
herself on insulin.

Ms. Matos frowned at her stomach. She said she was 165 or 170
pounds, still too much. "The doctor said if I didn't diet, I'd
have to take the insulin," she said. "I don't want the needle."

Despite that dreaded prospect, she had difficulty satisfying the
disease's persistent needs. Among widespread chronic conditions,
diabetes is arguably the most arduous to control.

Diabetics not only need to take an array of drugs, but must also
prick themselves one to four times a day to check their blood
sugar, keeping a log of the results, and then adjust their eating
habits according to the readings. Blood-sugar meters are much
improved from years ago, when they had to be plugged in and
warmed up for an hour. But some diabetics skip the readings,
filling in fake numbers to show their doctors.

For many Type 2 diabetics, doctors say, a half-hour of daily
exercise and the loss of as little as 10 to 15 pounds can make a
big difference in their health. Still, that can be a formidable
challenge.

Understandably, people talk about wanting to take a vacation from
diabetes, but it grants no time off.

Ms. Matos often found herself succumbing to a lifestyle
guaranteed to make her sicker. Until it has been in the system
for a long time, diabetes doesn't hurt. In East Harlem, what
doesn't hurt is often ignored.

She pointed out that many people in her world were stressed out
and depressed. There are other serious health issues, like asthma
and H.I.V., the signposts of many poor neighborhoods. Their
cobbled-together lives drain residents of their resolve. And so
they cede diabetes the upper hand and eat what tastes good to
them to counteract the gravity of unhappiness.

So if diabetes didn't cause her pain, as it didn't most of the
time, then Ms. Matos dismissed it as a problem for another day.

"Listen, if I want to eat a piece of cake, I'm going to eat it,"
she said. "No doctor can tell me what to eat. I'm going to eat
it, because I'm hungry. We got too much to worry about. We got to
worry about tomorrow. We got to worry about the rent. We got to
worry about our jobs. I'm not going to worry about a piece of
cake."

Ms. Matos gave a feeble glance at a shopper mulling the mugs and
T-shirts. She carried her glucose meter around, but didn't like
to use it regularly, especially when she was with friends, a
vanity of hers. "It's embarrassing to check your blood in front
of people," she said. It irked her, this machine laying a claim
on her.

Diabetes, then, had worn her out. She was quite direct about
that. "I hate it," she said. "I hate diabetes. I'm tired of
checking my blood three times a day." She tidied up some
merchandise.

"You get used to it, but you know what?" she said. "You don't get
used to it."

Society of the Sick

First Raul Rivera parked his bike, then he slid into a chair. A
shadow fell over his face. The street was characteristically
cacophonous. The door to the art shop was agape.

Diabetes hadn't visited him yet, but his stomach was expanding,
and that gave him pause. He knew what diabetes did. It made you
somebody else.

He was 50 and lived with his mother. She was 66, and after more
than a dozen years with diabetes had been hit by its full-court
press. Kidney dialysis three times a week. Open-heart surgery.
Dependent on a wheelchair. Legally blind. It was Mr. Rivera who
had to inject her with insulin twice a day. "She's black and blue
from all the needles," he said. Lately, she had been in the
hospital more than out.

Mr. Rivera, after a back injury, quit his job as a parking
attendant 15 years ago. He had no income or insurance. He had not
been to a doctor in several years. Last time he saw one, he was
told he had high cholesterol and given medication. He didn't take
it. He didn't like pills. "That's me," he said.

Juan Concepcion, 57, Mr. De La Vega's stepfather, materialized.
He had been a truck mechanic, until he became disabled by
rheumatoid arthritis. In March, he spent 12 days in the hospital
after nearly passing out, and his diabetes became bleakly clear.
Ten years ago, his father died of diabetes. "He kept taking
sugar," Mr. Concepcion said. "He kept drinking beer. He was a
stubborn guy. They cut one leg at the ankle. Then they took the
other above the knee."

He stared unblinkingly into the distance. "I felt I was too
strong for it," he said.

He drew on a cigarette, ashes fluttering in the air. He knew he
should quit. Smoking is especially bad for diabetics. "I check my
blood every morning and every night," he said. "I'm supposed to
do it four times, but sometimes my fingers hurt and I don't do it
as often." He was trying to lose weight. "I loved my coffee with
three sugars. My Pepsi, Coke, beer." He was given a book about
diabetes by a doctor. "But I didn't go deep into the book,
because it makes me lose my mind," he said. "I'm going to do it
slowly. But I know, this is a killing machine."

He shook his head. "Everywhere you go here, someone tells me they
have diabetes. I'll go into a store and ask for coffee, no sugar.
They say, 'Oh, you have diabetes?' "

He was having trouble figuring out how to fit the disease's
maxims into his life. "I'm trying to give up beer," he said. "I
would drink at 7 at night until 3 in the morning, watched boxing
and baseball, drinking beer. I drank 15 or 20 beers in a night."

He had been avoiding his drinking buddies. "I have friends who
have diabetes and they continue drinking," he said. His doctor
told him to avoid stress. "How do you do that, not put worries in
your head?" he asked. "I have to go on living. I've always been a
fast guy."

Across East Harlem, there is a great range in response to the
disease: some diabetics embrace the daily regimens that now frame
their lives, many others constantly struggle to. Doctors say the
will to fight the disease is often eroded by its psychological
toll.

Sitting with these men and women whose lives were pervaded by
diabetes, one couldn't escape feeling that they shared a dark
cosmic joke - that diabetes was too much to master at the
individual level in a world that had become so hospitable to it.

Mr. Concepcion said: "Everything about this neighborhood, the
pollution in the air, it all makes you sick. Don't get me wrong,
we love this place, we love Spanish Harlem. But it does stuff to
us. Now it's giving us all diabetes."

Mr. De La Vega nodded. "We love eating trash," he said. "We grew
up eating McDonald's, and I still find myself eating candy and
chocolate cake."

People got huffy about their doctors. "Mine tells me, 'Lose
weight, exercise more,' " Ms. Matos said. "Let him live my life
and see."

Mr. Rivera said: "You know what I think? I think there's a cure.
We're the poor, so they don't want to give it to us."

Mr. Concepcion rubbed his forehead. "Since I got the diabetes,
maybe twice a week I sit down and pray," he said. "Because if I
don't take care, I'm going to go down the drain. I put myself in
God's hands."

Mr. Rivera bathed Mr. De La Vega with an odd look: "Did Mike have
diabetes? The guy who passed away?"

Mr. De La Vega said, "Yeah, he had it."

"He was, like, 300 pounds."

"He would brag about eating a pint of ice cream every night."

"He used to eat six pork chops in one sitting. Then he would
drown them down with a quart of Budweiser. What was he when he
died?"

"Fifty-four."

"You know Bigwig? He's 42. He just found out he has diabetes.
Like, two weeks ago."

New Rhythms, Old Patterns

Bigwig pulled up a chair beneath a thicket of light. The streets
were puddled from morning rain. His real name was Luis Hernandez.
His job was route supervisor for a produce company. He was a
veteran member of the art-shop crowd, and now a new admission to
its diabetic subset.

His vision had been getting a little blurred - he'd look at a
paper and it was like 3-D vision; one morning he woke up and one
eye wouldn't focus - and a physical found the source. "When they
told me, it was like somebody punched me in the gut," he said.

His diabetic mother died in 2004, at 59. She had done little to
address her condition. She continued to smoke and eat generously.

He was confused. He said his doctor put him on pills and
suggested avoiding juice or sweets, but didn't tell him much
more.

He weighed 252 when he got the news. He had cut it to 245. He
knew it should be lower. But he found it excruciatingly hard to
adopt a new rhythm of life, particularly since it was less
appealing than the one he had.

Bigwig had to go. Maria Calderon stopped by to visit Elsie Matos.
Give her a moment. Ms. Matos was waiting on a young woman torn
between two T-shirts.

Yes, Ms. Calderon had it, too. Seven years since the diagnosis.
She was 69. She was 210 pounds, and had been told to lose weight.
"I didn't think it was important," she said.

Then, more than a year ago, a solution presented itself, and it
was the worst kind. Her grandson was killed in a holdup over a
car.

Devastated, she lost her will and her appetite. She shed 60
pounds. Now she was gaining again, six pounds in a month.

"How can you worry about your health when you don't know where
you're going to live next week?" she said.

She watched Ms. Matos help the customer. "We are the poor
people," she said. "We only get the crumbs. I used to advocate a
lot. I got tired. I don't do it anymore. I'm not tired in my
heart. I'm tired in my body."

She said to Ms. Matos: "I have a friend, she's diabetic and
everything else. She takes 52 pills a day. She has everything in
the book. When she calls, she wants to talk for 99 hours. I say:
'My sister's calling. I've got to get off.' "

Ms. Matos said: "What, 52 pills? She's nuts."

Frank Gonzalez had something to say. He was 77, compact, peppy.
He used to work as a security guard at a hospital, had clocked 16
years with diabetes.

When things were not going well, as they weren't now, you could
see the fanned-up embers in his eyes. Hear his speedy voice:
"Diabetes is the worst disease I've ever seen. You can't trust
it. Two weeks ago, I got all messed up. You know why? I've got
two machines. One gave me a reading of 150. The other machine
gave me 130. I said this can't be. So I changed the batteries on
both machines. You've got to keep an eye on your machines."

He went on. "Diabetes is something you have to look at from all
sorts of angles. It takes a long time to find out the real truth.
And you know what? You never find out the real truth."

He went home, a couple of blocks away, to take a blood-sugar
reading. He opened a hallway closet, wedged full of supplies -
test strips and lancets and pill bottles and batteries. Most, but
not all for diabetes. He showed a bottle: Viagra. Opened it and
smiled: half-full.

He inserted a strip into his machine. He swabbed his ring finger
with alcohol, then pricked it with a lancet. The machine counted
down 45 seconds. The reading: 152. High. He stared balefully at
the number.

"It could be I've been sitting too much," he said. "I should be
out and walking. I don't know, I was going to do the cleaning."

A Geography Lesson

A few things to notice. On Third Avenue, around the corner from
the art shop, a banner outside McDonald's proclaimed, "$1 Menu."
Down the way, plastered on Burger King, "New Enormous Omelet
Sandwich. It's Huge." At KFC, a sign boasted, "Feed Your Family
for Under $4 each."

The art-shop gatherers sometimes talked about 96th Street, the
tangible southern divide of a neighborhood and of a disease. Go
north of 96th Street and you enter a constricted world laden with
poverty. Go south and you find promise and riches, thin not fat,
the difference between East Harlem and the Upper East Side, the
difference between illness and health.

Go north and the chances of bumping into a diabetic are maybe 20
times greater than if you go south. For the Upper East Side,
according to the health department, has the lowest prevalence in
the city, about 1 percent.

In East Harlem, people sometimes have to choose between getting
their diabetes medication and eating. They sometimes share their
pills, cut them in half and take half-dosages. They improvise.
Everywhere blare the signals that the best meal is the biggest
meal.

Nutritious food exists, but it isn't easy to find. Dr. Carol R.
Horowitz, an assistant professor at Mount Sinai School of
Medicine, heads an East Harlem coalition trying to improve
diabetes care. She oversaw a study several years ago that tracked
the availability of diet soda, low-fat or fat-free milk,
high-fiber bread, fresh fruit and fresh vegetables in food stores
in East Harlem and the Upper East Side.

Stores on the Upper East Side were more than three times more
likely than those in East Harlem to stock all five items. It did
not seem to matter that East Harlem has more than twice as many
food stores per capita as its wealthier neighbor to the south.

Diet on the Down Low

All the same, it was worth asking: Why not stop with the
doughnuts and fried calories and eat salads, drink diet soda?

James De La Vega laughed. "We've got cultural differences," he
said. "Here, for a guy to eat a salad, he's a wimp. He'll eat a
big portion of rice and beans and chicken. The women can't be
chumps, either. A woman can eat a salad but has to eat it on the
low. She has to do it quiet. They make fun of you: What are you,
a rabbit?"

What's wrong with an orange?

Mr. De La Vega said: "Oranges are messy. You dirty your teeth."

Uncontrolled diabetes is a forced death march. Literature handed
out in the community underscores this.

Knowledge alone, though, is never enough to change behavior,
particularly in an overwhelmed neighborhood. Chocolate cake may
be a risk, but it tastes so good on a bleak day. What stops that?

Mr. De La Vega said: "People ultimately feel powerless about a
lot of things. People think about bigger things. They think about
survival. Kids grow up fighting in the streets, so you want to
raise big, strong kids. So you give them three pork chops, a nice
tall glass of soda to make them strong. You realize, some of
these people go to prison, and they have to be strong. They eat
and they eat. Nobody teaches them about diabetes."

"I have two nieces," Ms. Matos said. "They're 24. I call them the
sumo wrestlers. They eat everything."

Mr. De La Vega said: "A lot of people eat on the streets. I eat
breakfast on the street and lunch on the street, and sometimes
dinner. I have hot dogs. I had two today."

His mother said, "If you drink a diet soda and a man is watching,
he'll say, 'Why you drinking that?' "

Mr. De La Vega said: "Nobody here goes out and gets an apple.
They get cake. People here associate diet as unhealthy. If you're
dieting, then you're sick. You look at the people on the streets,
they're heavy. That's the way we grow up here."

Mr. De La Vega was silent, listening to the boom box. He said:
"Around here, if you make it to 40, you think, hey, I'm lucky, I
made it to 40. You have to understand, the philosophy out here is
we're going to die from something."

Young and Unconcerned

At times the art-shop regulars pondered what diabetes meant for
the neighborhood's young. They surveyed the pudgy children
sauntering past and shook their heads.

And so, a not uncharacteristic East Harlem story. A couple of
blocks away, on East 102nd Street, lived Xiomariz Downs. She was
15, sweet and polite. She weighed 287 pounds. She lived with her
mother, Olga Pagan, her grandmother, her brother, her sister and
two cousins in an apartment not intended for that many people.
Someday, she said, she wants to be a missionary or a beautician.

On a Thursday, after school, she was in sweatpants at the Bally
gym near her home, her second day in an attempted fitness
regimen. Her grandmother had enrolled her.

At the start of last year, when she was still 14, she was found
to have Type 2 diabetes. It happened this way: She had gotten
horribly depressed. Her mother had lupus, and had had two
strokes. School had been going badly; Xiomariz was failing math,
English, science and history. She made a feeble attempt to cut
her wrists. She spent a week in a hospital and the diabetes
revealed itself.

Doctors had been hectoring her for years, saying that if she
didn't lose weight she was going to end up with diabetes. But she
didn't feel sick. She wasn't worried about what might happen at
40. She was a teenager, with teenage hauteur, living in the now.

Again she was told to diet. Her mother said Xiomariz was "on the
see-food diet - every food she sees, she eats." Her mother felt
frustrated: "I want her to go live with her father and have him
knock some sense into her - literally." He, too, had diabetes.

Xiomariz didn't mind her weight. "I feel my weight makes me look
like me," she said. "So I don't have to look like those skinny
people."

Not long after starting, in fact, she quit the gym - too much
time and too much money.

She didn't comprehend the terror of the disease. "I know you
can't pass it like kissing someone or something," she said.

Some mornings, rushing, she neglected to take her pills. She had
stopped checking her sugar. She said she had lost the meter.

Was she worried about her diabetes?

She moved her head from side to side. "Sometimes I forget I have
it," she said. "It's not that big a deal."

What other disease would she compare diabetes to? She thought a
moment, and found the answer. She said, "A cold."

Veterans, and War Stories

Santos Alicea had not been by the art shop in days. He was
usually around so often that he seemed part of the d?cor. Now,
here he was again, scraping somnolently along behind his walker.
He had just gotten out of the hospital. Doctors had removed his
right eye. The usual reason around here: diabetes. He got the
disease 20 years ago, at 47. He used to work in a laundry and as
a security guard, until he had a heart attack.

He plopped down onto the brick ledge beside the art shop. "I'm
killing time," he said. He gave a craggy grin.

He settled his walker before him. "The circulation is no good in
my legs," he said. He rubbed them.

He unabashedly admitted that good management of his diabetes
often seemed like a drama of grand futility. "I got 200 this
morning," he said, reciting his latest reading. "Not good. Maybe
I ate the wrong thing. I had rice and beans last night. It was
good."

He was talking to Jose Castro, 52, a squat man with a grizzled
face, worlds of feeling in his eyes. "I got it, too," he said.
"Yeah, I got the diabetes."

The diagnosis came six years ago. Was he monitoring his sugar?

"I check once a day or every two days."

How was it?

He laughed. "Been a little high," he said. "I started eating
Frosted Flakes. What can I say? I like them. You can't always be
eating things without sugar. Sometimes, you have to take a
chance."

He used to deliver flowers, but stopped a few years ago after
having a liver transplant. Besides insulin, he took 10 pills a
day.

He took a drag on a cigarette. He said he was working on
quitting. His method, he said, was to sleep a lot. "Sometimes, I
sleep all day," he said.

He bore a visible scrape on his left arm. His circulation was bad
and he sometimes saw double. "I'll be watching TV and I'll see
two images," he said. "I have to wink to see the show."

He had fainting spells, falls. Thus his bruised left arm. He
showed another mark on his right arm and one above his eye.

"The other day, I took my blood count and it was 40," he added.
"My son took me to the hospital. They said I may have forgotten
to take my insulin. I don't know. I don't remember."

He used to keep a log of his readings, but quit. Why?

"I don't know," he said. "So many things you have to do. It gets
boring."

A mariachi band arrived in the garden and began to play. Mr.
Alicea and the others tapped their feet.

As New York got ready for its evening routines, Mr. Alicea tired,
his eyelids sailing down, and he returned to his two-room
apartment across the street. His furniture was plain. Bare bulbs
protruded from the ceiling. Mr. Alicea shared the place with his
older brother, Pedro.

He, too, had diabetes. His vision was poor, his circulation was
not good, he had asthma, he had a weak heart. A while ago, he had
fallen and broken his arm and hit his head, and had not been
himself since. "He's like a baby," Mr. Alicea said. "He's
supposed to use insulin, but he doesn't like the needle."

He didn't like to prick his finger to check his sugar level, so
he had no idea what it was. Pedro didn't go out much. No scale
was needed to judge that he was obese. He watched TV, one more
soap.

A home attendant helped care for them. She had dinner on the
stove, cream of tomato soup. The dining table was shoved against
the wall. Resting on it was a box of corn flakes and a container
with doughnuts.

The phone rang. Santos spoke briefly. "My daughter," he said when
he hung up. He said she lived in the Bronx, and worked as a
waitress near Yankee Stadium. "Yes, my daughter," he repeated.
"She has diabetes."

Racing Against the Blade

There is no way to talk about diabetes without talking about
money, because they are interwoven. The story with Fernando
Salicrup was the foot and the money.

Go see him, Mr. De La Vega had said. He'll tell you something
about diabetes.

He was an artist, too, 58. He did computer-assisted art, printed
out his efforts on a big Epson printer in the back of his
apartment.

He got the diagnosis 20 years ago. His mother and grandmother
died of diabetes complications. "They told me about diet and
exercise," he said. "But you're a young man, and you don't
listen. I didn't take it very seriously."

He had no insurance, either, and so he took his medication when
he could afford it, tested himself when he could afford it.

He got a drink. He walked slowly, with a cane. He told the story.
Nearly two years ago, overseas for an art exhibit, he twisted the
big toe on his right foot on the cobblestone streets. It became
infected. When he finally got to see a doctor, the toe had to be
removed, along with two others. The infection spread, and he lost
the final two.

"All the things you take for granted, you have to give up," he
said. "Dancing. You have to plan things out, take things slow.
It's not just that they operate on your toes. Your veins aren't
working properly. You don't have feel."

He was worried about his vision. An artist without eyes, that was
tough to imagine. He mentioned a sad case, a jazz drummer he
knew. He had diabetes and had to have a hand amputated. His hand,
his livelihood.

When he had the amputations, Mr. Salicrup was in the hospital a
month and a half, amassing medical bills he put at more than
$300,000. It was an amount in some ways laughable to him, because
he expected never to pay it off in this lifetime, but at the same
time he knew it was a serious matter. He gave something each
month, and it constricted his life, hanging over him like a
sentence. He had since acquired insurance, for which he paid
stiff premiums.

"You make choices," he said. "Instead of buying sneakers, you
stay with what you're wearing. I've got to stay ahead of the
blade."

He massaged his leg. Diabetics, often with subdued feeling in
their legs, don't realize they have cuts until irreversible
infections set in. Doctors caution that they should check their
feet daily, using a mirror if they can't see past their stomachs.
That they never go around barefoot. That even abrasive socks can
lead to an infection. That a simple toenail-clipping mishap can
escalate into an amputation.

Five toes gone, Mr. Salicrup didn't want to lose more. He did his
best, he said, to tame his illness. He never cut the toenails on
his left foot. He paid a podiatrist. He still had a hard time
wrapping his mind around that: Here he was, a grown man, paying
somebody else to clip his nails.

One Fewer Shop, One More Ghost

The city seemed caught in overcooked air. The art-shop regulars
were out, the usual byplay. A gaunt man was selling Gillette
razors out of a backpack: $7. Interested, Santos Alicea dug out
some bills and took one.

Mr. Alicea mentioned that another diabetic had died the other
day. A massive heart attack, and the man became one more diabetes
ghost to haunt the neighborhood.

Elsie Matos was displeased with her blood sugar. It was
mercilessly high.

Raul Rivera, wearing a smudged T-shirt, began watering the
garden's plants, swishing the spray back and forth. How was his
mother? Bad, he said. Very bad.

Bigwig said that he had shed some weight, was getting used to
one-and-a-half spoonfuls of sugar on his corn flakes instead of
four. But also, he had stopped taking his diabetes pills, not
wanting to get too used to them, not knowing if that was right or
wrong.

James De La Vega's art shop closed at the end of August. Word
arrived that the space would become a hot-dog place. Mr. De La
Vega moved down to the East Village.

The regulars frowned on the displacement. "Just what the
diabetics need," Ms. Matos said. "Hot dogs."

In the Treatment of Diabetes, Success Often Does Not Pay
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/11/nyregion/nyregionspecial5/11diabetes.html

Bad Blood
By IAN URBINA

With much optimism, Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan
opened its new diabetes center in March 1999. Miss America,
Nicole Johnson Baker, herself a diabetic, showed up for
promotional pictures, wearing her insulin pump.

In one photo, she posed with a man dressed as a giant foot - a
comical if dark reminder of the roughly 2,000 largely avoidable
diabetes-related amputations in New York City each year. Doctors,
alarmed by the cost and rapid growth of the disease, were getting
serious.

At four hospitals across the city, they set up centers that
featured a new model of treatment. They would be boot camps for
diabetics, who struggle daily to reduce the sugar levels in their
blood. The centers would teach them to check those levels, count
calories and exercise with discipline, while undergoing prolonged
monitoring by teams of specialists.

But seven years later, even as the number of New Yorkers with
Type 2 diabetes has nearly doubled, three of the four centers,
including Beth Israel's, have closed.

They did not shut down because they had failed their patients.
They closed because they had failed to make money. They were
victims of the byzantine world of American health care, in which
the real profit is made not by controlling chronic diseases like
diabetes but by treating their many complications.

Insurers, for example, will often refuse to pay $150 for a
diabetic to see a podiatrist, who can help prevent foot ailments
associated with the disease. Nearly all of them, though, cover
amputations, which typically cost more than $30,000.

Patients have trouble securing a reimbursement for a $75 visit to
the nutritionist who counsels them on controlling their diabetes.
Insurers do not balk, however, at paying $315 for a single
session of dialysis, which treats one of the disease's serious
complications.

Not surprising, as the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes has grown,
more than 100 dialysis centers have opened in the city.

"It's almost as though the system encourages people to get sick
and then people get paid to treat them," said Dr. Matthew E.
Fink, a former president of Beth Israel.

Ten months after the hospital's center was founded, it had
hemorrhaged more than $1.1 million. And the hospital gave its
director, Dr. Gerald Bernstein, three and a half months to direct
its patients elsewhere.

The center's demise, its founders and other experts say, is
evidence of a medical system so focused on acute illnesses that
it is struggling to respond to diabetes, a chronic disease that
looms as the largest health crisis facing the city.

America's high-tech, pharmaceutical-driven system may excel at
treating serious short-term illnesses like coronary blockages,
experts say, but it is flailing when it comes to Type 2 diabetes,
a condition that builds over time and cannot be solved by surgery
or a few weeks of taking pills.

Type 2 , the subject of this series, has been linked to obesity
and inactivity, as well as to heredity. (Type 1, which comprises
only 5 percent to 10 percent of cases, is not associated with
behavior, and is believed to stem almost entirely from genetic
factors.)

Instead of receiving comprehensive treatment, New York's Type 2
diabetics often suffer under substandard care.

They do not test their blood as often as they should because they
cannot afford the equipment. Patients wait months to see
endocrinologists - who provide critical diabetes care - because
lower pay has drawn too few doctors to the specialty. And
insurers limit diabetes benefits for fear they will draw the
sickest, most expensive patients to their rolls.

Dr. Diana K. Berger, who directs the diabetes prevention program
for the City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the
bias against effective care for chronic illnesses could be seen
in the new popularity of another high-profit quick fix: bariatric
surgery, which shrinks stomach size and has been shown to be
effective at helping to control diabetes.

"If a hospital charges, and can get reimbursed by insurance,
$50,000 for a bariatric surgery that takes just 40 minutes," she
said, "or it can get reimbursed $20 for the same amount of time
spent with a nutritionist, where do you think priorities will
be?"

Back in the Pantsuit

Calorie by calorie, the staff of Beth Israel's center tried to
turn diabetic lives around from their base of operations: a
classroom and three adjoining offices on the seventh floor of
Fierman Hall, a hospital building on East 17th Street.

The stark, white-walled classroom did not look like much. But it
was functional and clean and several times a week, a dozen or so
people would crowd around a rectangular table that was meant for
eight, listening attentively, staff members said.

Claudia Slavin, the center's dietitian, remembers asking the
patients to stand, one by one.

"Tell me what your waking blood sugar was," she told them, "and
then try to explain why it is high or low."

People whose sugars soar damage themselves irreparably, even if
the consequences are not felt for 10 or 20 years. Unchecked,
diabetes can lead to kidney failure, blindness, heart disease,
amputations - a challenging slate for any single physician with a
busy caseload to manage.

One patient, Ella M. Hammond, a retired school administrator,
recalled standing up in the classroom one day in 1999.

"Has anyone noticed what's different about me?" Ms. Hammond
asked.

Blank stares.

"Now, come on," she said, ruffling the fabric of a black
gabardine pantsuit she had not worn since slimmer days, years
earlier.

"Don't y'all notice 20 pounds when it goes away?" she asked.

Ms. Slavin, one of four full-time staff members who worked at the
center, remembers laughing. There were worse reasons for an
interruption than a success story.

Like many Type 2 diabetics, Ms. Hammond had been warned
repeatedly by her primary care doctor that her weight was too
high, her lifestyle too inactive and her diet too rich. And then
she had been shown the door, until her next appointment a year
later.

"The center was a totally different experience," Ms. Hammond
said. "What they did worked because they taught me how to deal
with the disease, and then they forced me to do it."

Two hours a day, twice a week for five weeks, Ms. Hammond learned
how to manage her disease. How the pancreas works to create
insulin, a hormone needed to process sugar. Why it is important
to leave four hours between meals so insulin can finish breaking
down the sugar. She counted the grams of carbohydrates in a bag
of Ruffles salt and vinegar potato chips, her favorite, and
traded vegetarian recipes.

After ignoring her condition for 20 years, Ms. Hammond, 63, began
to ride a bicycle twice a week and mastered a special sauce,
"more garlic than butter," that made asparagus palatable.

She also learned how to decipher the reading on her A1c test, a
periodic blood-sugar measurement that is a crucial yardstick of
whether a person's diabetes is under control.

"I was just happy to finally know what that number really meant,"
she said.

Many doctors who treat diabetics say they have long been
frustrated because they feel they are struggling single-handedly
to reverse a disease with the gale force of popular culture
behind it.

Type 2 diabetes grows hand in glove with obesity, and America is
becoming fatter. Undoubtedly, many of these diabetics are often
their own worst enemies. Some do not exercise. Others view salad
as a foreign substance and, like smokers, often see complications
as a distant threat.

To fix Type 2 diabetes, experts agree, you have to fix people.
Change lifestyles. Adjust thinking. Get diabetics to give up
sweets and prick their fingers to test their blood several times
a day.

It is a tall order for the primary care doctors who are the sole
health care providers for 90 percent of diabetics.

Too tall, many doctors say. When office visits typically last as
little as eight minutes, doctors say there is no time to retool
patients so they can adopt an entirely new approach to food and
life.

"Think of it this way," said Dr. Berger. "An average person
spends less than .03 percent of their entire life meeting with a
clinician. The rest of the time they're being bombarded with all
the societal influences that make this disease so common."

As a result, primary care doctors often have a fatalistic
attitude about controlling the disease. They monitor patients
less closely than specialists, studies show.

For those under specialty care, there is often little
coordination of treatment, and patients end up Ping-Ponging
between their appointments with little sense of their prognosis
or of how to take control of their condition.

Consequently, ignorance prevails. Of 12,000 obese people in a
1999 federal study, more than half said they were never told to
curb their weight.

Fewer than 40 percent of those with newly diagnosed diabetes
receive any follow-up, according to another study. In New York
City, officials say, nearly 9 out of 10 diabetics do not know
their A1c scores, that most fundamental of statistics.

In fact, without symptoms or pain, most Type 2 diabetics find it
hard to believe they are truly sick until it is too late to avoid
the complications that can overwhelm them. The city comptroller
recently found that even in neighborhoods with accessible and
adequate health care, most diabetics suffer serious complications
that could have been prevented.

This grim reality persuaded hospital officials in the 1990's to
try something different. The new centers would provide the tricks
for changing behavior and the methods of tracking complications
that were lacking from most care.

Instead of having rushed conversations with harried primary care
physicians, patients would discuss their weights and habits for
months with a team of diabetes educators, and have their
conditions tracked by a panel of endocrinologists,
ophthalmologists and podiatrists.

"The entire country was watching," said Dr. Bernstein, director
of the Beth Israel center, who was then president of the American
Diabetes Association.

By all apparent measures, the aggressive strategy worked. Five
months into the program, more than 60 percent of the center's
patients who were tested had their blood sugar under control.
Close to half the patients who were measured had already lost
weight. Competing hospitals directed patients to the program.

"For the first time in my 23 years of diabetes work I felt like
we had momentum," said Jane Seley, the center's nurse
practitioner. "And it wasn't backwards momentum."

Failure for Profit

From the outset, everyone knew diabetes centers were financially
risky ventures. That is why Beth Israel took a distinctive
approach before sinking $1.5 million into its plan.

Instead of being top-heavy with endocrinologists, who are
expensive specialists, Beth Israel relied more on nutritionists
and diabetes educators with lower salaries, said Dr. Fink, the
hospital's former president.

The other centers that opened took similar precautions.

The St. Luke's-Joslin diabetes center, on the Upper West Side,
tried lowering doctors' salaries, hiring dietitians only part
time and being aggressive about getting reimbursed by insurers,
said Dr. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, who ran the center.

Mount Sinai Hospital's diabetes center hired an accounting firm
to calculate just how many bypass surgeries, kidney transplants
and other profitable procedures the center would have to send to
the hospital to offset the cost of keeping the center running,
said Dr. Andrew Drexler, the center's director.

Nonetheless, both of these centers closed for financial reasons
within five years of opening.

In hindsight, the financial flaws were hardly mysterious, experts
say. Chronic care is simply not as profitable as acute care
because insurers, and consumers, do not want to pay as much for
care that is not urgent, according to Dr. Arnold Milstein,
medical director of the Pacific Business Group on Health.

By the time a situation is acute, when dialysis and amputations
are necessary, the insurer, which has been gambling on never
being asked to cover procedures that far down the road, has
little choice but to cover them, if only to avoid lawsuits,
analysts said.

Patients are also more inclined to pay high prices when severe
health consequences are imminent. When the danger is distant,
perhaps uncertain, as with chronic conditions, there is less
willingness to pay, which undercuts prices and profits, Dr.
Milstein explained.

"There is a lesser sense of alarm associated with slow-moving
threats, so prices and profits for chronic and preventive care
remain low," he said. "Doctors, insurers and hospitals can
command much higher prices and profit margins for a bypass
surgery that a patient needs today than they can for nutrition
counseling likely to prevent a bypass tomorrow."

Ms. Seley said the belief was that however marginal the centers
might be financially, they would bring in business.

"Diabetes centers are for hospitals what discounted two-liter
bottles of Coke are to grocery stores," she said. "They are not
profitable but they're sold to get dedicated customers, and with
the hospitals the hope is to get customers who will come back for
the big moneymaking surgeries."

Indeed, former officials of the Beth Israel center said they
anticipated that operating costs would be underwritten by the
amputations and dialysis that some of their diabetic patients
would end up needing anyway, despite the center's best efforts.
"In other words, our financial success in part depended on our
medical failure," Ms. Slavin said.

The other option was to have a Russ Berrie.

Mr. Berrie, a toymaker from the Bronx, made a fortune in the
1980's through the wild popularity of a product he sold, the
Troll doll, a three-inch plastic monster with a puff of
fluorescent hair. Mr. Berrie took more than $20 million of his
doll money and used it to finance the diabetes center at Columbia
University Medical Center in memory of his mother, Naomi, who had
died of the disease. The center was also helped by a
million-dollar grant from a company that makes diabetes drugs and
equipment.

Even with its stable of generous donors, even with more than
10,000 patients filing through the doors each year, the Columbia
center struggles financially, said Dr. Robin Goland, a
co-director. That, she said, is because the center runs a deficit
of at least $50 for each patient it sees.

Without wealthy benefactors, Beth Israel's center had an even
tougher time surviving its financial strains.

Ms. Slavin said the center often scheduled patients for multiple
visits with doctors and educators on the same day because it
needed to take advantage of the limited time it had with its
patients. But every time a Medicaid patient went to a diabetes
education class, and then saw a specialist, the center lost
money, she said. Medicaid, the government insurance program for
the poor, will pay for only one service a day under its rules.

The center also lost money, its former staff members said, every
time a nurse called a patient at home to check on his diet or
contacted a physician to relate a patient's progress. Both calls
are considered essential to getting people to change their
habits. But medical professionals, unlike lawyers and
accountants, cannot bill for phone time, so more money was lost.

And the insurance reimbursement for an hourlong diabetes class
did not come close to covering the cost. Most insurers paid less
than $25 for a class, said Denise Rivera, the secretary for the
center.

"That wasn't even enough to pay for what it cost to have me to do
the paperwork to get the reimbursement," she said.

Beth Israel was not alone in this predicament. Dr. C. Ronald
Kahn, president and director of the Joslin Diabetes Center in
Boston, the nation's largest such center, with 23 affiliates
around the country, said that for every dollar spent on care, the
Joslin centers lost 35 cents. They close the gap, but just
barely, with philanthropy, he said.

"So you have the institutions, which are doing much of the work
in dealing with this major health epidemic, depending on
charity," he said. "In the long run, this is definitely not a
tenable system."

Plastic Strips and Red Tape

Sidney Schonfeld was not a patient at Beth Israel, but he ran
into his own set of financial obstacles in trying to manage his
disease.

"Controlling my condition isn't that hard," said Mr. Schonfeld,
82, a retired businessman from Washington Heights. "The hard part
are the things outside my control, like getting the test strips
and the medicines."

Test strips are not complicated pieces of medical equipment. They
are inch-long pieces of plastic with tiny metal tabs that
diabetics use to measure the sugar in their blood. After pricking
their finger, diabetics place a drop of blood on the strip and
then insert it into the side of a handheld meter that analyzes
their sugar levels.

Each strip costs only about 75 cents, but many diabetics are poor
and, over the course of a year, those who test their blood
frequently, as instructed, will spend more than $500 on strips.

Mr. Schonfeld, like many diabetics, is supposed to test his blood
at least twice a day so he can make adjustments to his diet and
medications that can ward off serious complications. But many
insurers cover only one strip per day unless a patient obtains
written justification from a doctor. Even with letters from his
doctor, Mr. Schonfeld has had a tough time getting insurers to
pay for his strips, his doctor and nurse said.

"Fighting the disease is only half of this job," said Mr.
Schonfeld's doctor, Dr. Goland. She held up a manila folder thick
with letters that she had sent to his insurer explaining Mr.
Schonfeld's case. Mr. Schonfeld had his own pile of letters: the
rejection notices he got back.

Dr. Goland says that Mr. Schonfeld has good reason to be
vigilant. His mother lost her left foot to Type 2 diabetes. She
died several months later after gangrene spread to her right. Mr.
Schonfeld's six uncles and aunts on his mother's side had the
disease. Three of them underwent amputations. His son, Gary, is
also diabetic.

"You can't get a more textbook high-risk case than Sidney," Dr.
Goland said.

Though the health care system asks diabetics to become rigorously
involved in daily management of their conditions, red tape and
the cost of drugs and supplies put self-management out of reach
for many patients. As a result, many diabetics either do without
or pay out of their own pockets. Some resort to other means to
get their supplies.

In Indiana, hospital workers organized Diabetes Bingo Night last
May to collect money for strips and supplies. In California,
F.B.I agents found that diabetics were buying stolen strips on
eBay. Last year, the agents charged a couple with mail fraud and
accused them of having sold $2.5 million worth of stolen test
strips and supplies.

In East Harlem, doctors at Mount Sinai were mystified by a number
of cases in 2002: patients came into the hospital asserting that
they had been testing themselves daily and were sure that their
blood sugar was under control. Hospital tests, however, showed
just the opposite.

"We finally figured out," said Dr. Carol R. Horowitz, an
assistant professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, "that
patients who could not afford the strips for their blood monitor
were buying cheaper strips that were incompatible and that were
giving false reads."

At least they knew they had the disease. A third of diabetics do
not, in part because doctors do not screen as often as they
should, studies show. Since symptoms do not appear for 7 to 10
years on average, the effects of the elevated sugars begin to
build and become irreversible.

Mr. Schonfeld has known about his diabetes for more than 20 years
and prides himself on keeping it in check.

"I've seen what it can do," he said. "So I know better than to
ignore it."

When Dr. Goland told him to limit the chocolate mousse and
frankfurters, he did.

When she told him to start walking two miles a day, he did that,
too. But her instructions to test his blood at least twice a day
were not as easy to follow.

Mr. Schonfeld runs out of strips even though he tries to plan
ahead by ordering extras, said Kathy Person, his nurse. "The
insurance reps say they don't want the strips to end up on the
black market, so they don't let people preorder extras," she
said.

The Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center has a full-time staff member who
tries to do the clerical work associated with insurance coverage.
"Still, it's a struggle to keep up with the paperwork," Dr.
Goland said.

Some doctors simply do not have time and patients are left to
haggle with insurers - usually unsuccessfully - on their own.

Although a recent federal study found that an increasing number
of health insurers cover strips, few cover more than one a day,
according to strip manufacturers. In fact, a study last year by
Georgetown University found that insurance restrictions on strips
and other services for diabetics were reducing the quality of
care.

"I was a businessman for more than 40 years," said Mr. Schonfeld,
a former food importer. "What I just don't understand is how
these insurance companies can operate the way they do and keep
their customers."

Sick Patient? Expensive Patient

As it turns out, keeping customers who are diabetic is not the
goal of most health insurance companies, experts said. Avoiding
diabetics is actually more the point.

Understanding why, the experts said, requires an appreciation of
one of the crucial obstacles to better diabetes care.

Most insurers do not operate the way Mr. Schonfeld did in the
import business, luring additional customers by advertising a
good product at a fair price. Were they to operate in that
fashion, health plans looking to grow might advertise better
coverage for diabetics, such as a wide choice of blood-sugar
monitors.

But in the insurance business - and virtually all businesses
based on risk - the point is not to attract the most customers
but rather the best ones. As businesses, not charities, insurers
need to attract healthy customers, not sick ones, said David
Knutson, a former insurance executive who studies the industry's
economics for the Park Nicollet Institute, a health research
organization in Minneapolis.

As a result, experts say, insurance executives usually think
twice before bolstering their diabetes benefits, for fear they
will attract the chronically ill.

In a 2003 survey, 87 percent of health insurance actuaries
queried by Mr. Knutson said that if they were to improve coverage
with richer drug benefits or easier access to specialists, they
would incur financial problems by attracting the sickest, most
expensive patients.

"Insurers are as eager to attract the chronically ill as banks
are interested in loaning to the unemployed," Mr. Knutson said.
"The chances of losing money are simply too high."

Insurers are not alone in these concerns. Large employers, many
of which devise and finance their own employee health plans, know
that their allotted reserves are jeopardized if too much of their
work force is seriously ill. Last year, for example, a Wal-Mart
executive suggested in an internal memo that the company could
reduce costs by discouraging unhealthy people from applying for
work.

Even when insurers are simply third-party administrators,
processing claims but not covering the actual medical expenses,
they try to keep claims down by attracting healthier patients to
their plans, Mr. Knutson said.

Similarly, coverage for Medicaid recipients, though underwritten
by the government, can be subject to the same private-sector
pressures. More than 70 percent of Medicaid recipients in New
York now receive their health care through private health
maintenance organizations that operate under government contract.
These H.M.O.'s get the same annual flat fee from the government,
regardless of whether the patient is robustly healthy or
chronically ill, thus creating an incentive to attract the
healthiest customers.

For insurers, the high cost of attracting the sick is far from a
hypothetical problem, said David V. Axene, president of Axene
Health Partners, a consulting firm that advises these companies.
For each additional session of nutritional counseling, he said,
an insurer must account for the likely cost of luring sick
patients away from its competitors.

Mr. Axene cited an example from several years ago when, he said,
an insurer became puzzled about why a provider network that it
had set up at a Boston hospital was consistently over budget. Mr.
Axene's company found that two-thirds of the hospital's diabetics
had chosen to enroll in that network over others.

The reason? The insurer had mistakenly listed an endocrinologist
on its network's primary care physician list, he said.

"These patients no longer needed to get a referral to see the
endocrinologist, and with one visit they could get their general
and their diabetes needs filled," Mr. Axene said. Within months,
the network had redrafted its lists, dropping the
endocrinologist, he said.

Mohit Ghose, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, an
industry trade association, said insurers were working to improve
chronic care coverage. Many have created disease management
programs to track their sickest patients and pay bonuses to
doctors who show results in treating the chronically ill.

"Is there still a long way to go? Yes, definitely," Mr. Ghose
said. "But we're on the right track."

Some preventive measures would, at first glance, seem sure money
savers for health insurers since they might eliminate or
forestall expensive diabetes complications down the road. But
many insurers do not think that way. They figure that
complications are often so far into the future, insurance
analysts say, that many people will have already switched jobs or
insurers, or have even died, by the time they hit. As a result,
any savings from preventive measures will only go to their
competitors anyway, analysts say.

In fact, experts say, people generally change their health
insurance about every six years.

"It's perverse," Mr. Knutson said. "But it's the reality of there
being a weak business case for quality when it comes to handling
chronic care."

'Jerry, We Need to Talk'

It usually took Dr. Bernstein seven minutes to walk from his
office in Fierman Hall to the hospital president's office across
17th Street. On Jan. 4, 2000, he had a bounce in his step, and it
took him half that time, he recalled.

He had a good story to tell, and graphs and tables to back it up.
The Beth Israel center was an unqualified medical success. In
fact, patient loads were growing by 20 percent each month as its
reputation spread.

When he arrived, Dr. Fink, then the hospital's president, asked
the three other executives to take their seats. Dr. Bernstein
began talking before he had reached his chair.

"Things are really coming along well," he said as he handed out a
spreadsheet. "Patients are starting to turn their lives around."

Pausing, Dr. Bernstein looked around the table. He was struck by
an awkward silence.

"Jerry, we need to talk about what is happening at the hospital,"
Dr. Fink said. "We're going to have to close your program."

Dr. Bernstein cannot say which was more jarring: the news or the
way it arrived.

Numb, he kept his composure for 25 minutes, he said. The
administrators explained that the hospital was running a deficit.
The diabetes program was not helping matters.

"It was really not about the medicine but the business," Dr. Fink
said recently about the meeting. "That didn't make it any easier
to deliver the news, especially since I had been one of the main
advocates behind getting the center started."

After the meeting, as Dr. Bernstein walked back to his office, he
wondered where he would direct the program's 300 or so patients.
Still, he remained sympathetic to the hospital's plight.

"I was not of the belief that we should save the center only to
end up losing the hospital," he said.

For many of the patients, the news was a second strike of
lightning. They had come to Dr. Bernstein only after being cut
loose by the closing of the St Luke's diabetes center earlier
that year. Now they were being cut loose again, to drift back to
a life of limited care options: understaffed and overwhelmed
clinics; general practitioners with too little time; a city with
about 100 overbooked diabetes educators surrounded by 800,000
patients; and a shortage of endocrinologists, the specialists who
are often critical providers of diabetes care.

Since endocrinology is one of the lower-paying specialties, there
is a national shortage of such doctors. In New York, with its
armies of diabetics, patients must often wait months for an
appointment with one of fewer than 200 endocrinologists. The
poorest patients face the biggest problem, as only a fraction of
the specialists accept Medicaid.

Once the center had closed, Dr. Bernstein continued to teach at
Beth Israel, but he began to devote more and more time to a side
project. He was working on an inhaler that delivers insulin in
the form of a mist. The product is being developed by Generex,
and it is designed to appeal to patients who are reluctant to use
insulin because they do not like the idea of injections or
needles.

But the device will probably cost about 15 percent more than
traditional insulin and is likely to be too expensive for many of
the poorest diabetics, who are often the patients who need it
most because their illness is most severe.

"The center was a way to really make a dent in this epidemic,"
Dr. Bernstein said. "The inhaler is a promising breakthrough. But
it's mostly a business opportunity."

Other pharmaceutical innovations are likely to soften the toll of
diabetes for many patients in coming years, doctors said. With an
average diabetic spending more than $2,500 per year on drugs and
equipment, pharmaceutical companies have good reason to focus
their attention on the more than $10 billion market in
controlling the disease's complications.

But there is only so much the drugs can do, they add, if they are
not accompanied by the sort of changes in patient habits that the
centers fostered through education and monitoring.

Health economists suggest that if these preventive measures were
practiced on a wide scale, complications from diabetes would be
largely eliminated and the American medical system, and by
extension taxpayers, could save as much as $30 billion over 10
years. The experts disagree on what such an effort would cost.
(How much nutrition counseling does it take to wean the average
person from French fries?) Nonetheless, many of them believe the
cost would be largely offset by the savings.

Dr. Bernstein says the lone hope on the horizon is a restructured
reimbursement system that puts the business of chronic care on a
more competitive footing with acute care. Experts say this
restructuring could start if government insurance programs like
Medicaid began paying more for preventive efforts like education,
a move that the private sector would be likely to follow.

"Until we address the financing and the reimbursement structure,
this disease is going to rage out of control," Dr. Bernstein
said.

Not everyone believes the centers were the best answer to
diabetes care. Even with their demise, many hospitals, clinics
and endocrinology practices say they are providing
cost-effective, quality treatment.

"The care we provide now is on the par with what was offered
before," said Dr. Leonid Poretsky, who became director of Beth
Israel's endocrinology division after the diabetes program
closed. "The main difference is that we are financially viable
because half of our patients are not diabetic."

These facilities, though, often find themselves in the same
position the centers did: financing prevention efforts with
profits from the very kidney transplants and amputations that
preventive care is meant to deter.

It is tough to convince a former patient like Ms. Hammond that
the closing of the Beth Israel center was anything but a mistake.
She had started to make critical changes in her lifestyle after
just a few weeks there. She did not find out it had closed, she
said, until several months after the doors had shut, when she
called looking to sign up for a refresher class. She was starting
to fall back into old habits.

"I needed reminding," she said.

With the center gone, Ms. Hammond said she has had to try to
muddle through. She goes to the podiatrist once a year, but she
said she could not remember the last time she visited an eye
doctor. She has gained about 40 pounds.

Some days she wakes up and her blood sugar is high. Other
mornings she doesn't bother to check, she said.

"I couldn't get to where I was before," she said.

Two years ago, she said, she took a last look at that favorite
gabardine pantsuit she had once modeled for her class. Then, she
said, she gave it to her cousin.

East Meets West, Adding Pounds and Peril
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/nyregion/nyregionspecial5/12diabetes.html

Bad Blood
By MARC SANTORA

May Chen is slender and healthy, a lively little girl whose
parents left their rural Chinese village just a decade ago in
search of a better life. But at age 9, still in pigtails, she is
already coming face to face with the forces that many say are
making America fat and diabetic.

When May watches cartoons in her family's apartment in Flushing,
Queens, the commercials tell her that junk food is good food -
the latest message from an industry that spends $10 billion a
year marketing to children.

When she strolls down Main Street, she walks a growing gantlet of
fast-food restaurants, many of them built with the help of
government loans.

At her public school, the city sells sugary Snapple in vending
machines to raise money. But it does not pay for a full physical
education program, so May's fourth-grade class has gym just once
a week, in violation of state law.

And when she and her friends gather for snacks, she basks in
their approval as she produces the high-calorie American-style
treats, from chips to sweets, that are rapidly replacing
traditional foods in the local markets.

Children all over the world are walking the same sort of obstacle
course as obesity and Type 2 diabetes increasingly strike the
young.

But to spend time with May Chen and the other children of
immigrants in Flushing - at home in front of the TV, in the
places where they eat and buy food, in their schools - is to
appreciate the everyday threat confronting a particularly
vulnerable group: the Asian-Americans who make up half the
community's population.

It is also to understand what alarms health authorities about the
future of New York, a city of immigrants where Asians are the
fastest-growing racial group.

Asians, especially those from Far Eastern nations like China,
Korea and Japan, are acutely susceptible to Type 2 diabetes, the
most common form of the disease and the subject of this series.
They develop it at far lower weights than people of other races,
studies show; at any weight, they are 60 percent more likely to
get the disease than whites.

And that peril is compounded by recent immigrants' sudden
collision with American culture. Many of them left places where
factory and field work was strenuous, televisions were rare and
advertising was limited. They may speak little English and have
poor access to medical care.

Many have never even heard of diabetes, much less the recent
scientific studies showing that a Western diet, high in fat and
sugar, puts them in danger of getting Type 2 diabetes, which has
been linked to obesity and inactivity, as well as to heredity.
(Type 1, which comprises only 5 percent to 10 percent of cases,
is not associated with behavior, and is believed to stem almost
entirely from genetic factors.)

Many recent Chinese immigrants have come from places where food
was scarce, and experts say some view fat as a trophy of wealth
and status. Their children try to fit into their new country by
embracing its foods and its sedentary pastimes.

"When they give you the visa to the United States in Shanghai,
Fujian or Beijing, they should stamp a clear warning: danger to
your health," said Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco, co-director of
immigration studies at New York University.

So far, that danger has not been fully realized. Flushing has
only half as many diabetics as the New York neighborhoods where
the disease has made its deepest inroads. City epidemiologists
say they have limited data on its spread among Asians.

But they do know that 14 percent of Asian children in New York
are obese, more than twice the rate among their parents. And they
say there is mounting evidence - including soaring diabetes rates
in major cities in China, and in other countries with Chinese
immigrants - that New York will soon experience a similar
explosion as more Asians arrive and have their first encounters
with Western ways.

The clash of cultures is vividly apparent in Flushing, one of the
city's new Chinatowns. On streets like Roosevelt Avenue, older
immigrants still throng traditional Asian markets, with their
signs in Chinese, and dine at noodle shops where windows fog with
steam. Their children, however, are increasingly lured by fast
food. Along a 100-yard strip of storefronts are a McDonald's, a
Burger King, a Taco Bell, a Pizza Hut, and a Joe's Best Burger.

Even in China, the number of obese people has tripled since 1992
to 90 million, as Western food has become popular and prosperity
has made it possible to eat more. The World Health Organization
has warned that Asia faces a "tsunami" of diabetes in the coming
decade, and health officials have assailed the Chinese government
for its tepid response to the crisis.

But in this country, where children are bombarded with much more
food advertising, many health experts say the response has not
been much stronger.

In Washington, money for school gym programs is measured in the
millions, while billions are spent on subsidies for those who
produce food sweeteners.

In Albany, where the restaurant and food industries are generous
campaign donors, bills to raise awareness of nutrition and
diabetes have been dismissed or derided.

In New York's City Hall, a former councilwoman who has been
outspoken on childhood obesity, Eva S. Moskowitz, sees similar
apathy. "We have a massive problem on our hands," she said.
"There is an utter lack of urgency to do anything about it."

And in Flushing, where the Small Business Administration has lent
$4.6 million in the last decade to spur fast-food franchises, the
community health center has trouble finding money for diabetes
education.

Here, for anyone who cares to look, are the people left to fend
for themselves: a new generation that will soon fill New York's
schools and workplaces, making the daily choices that could mean
the difference between a healthy city and a colony of the sick.

A Melting Pot, Boiling Fiercely

Incredible, Li Li kept repeating, simply incredible.

For 14 years, ever since he moved to Flushing from Canton, China,
he has hewed to the same diet that his ancestors ate for
hundreds, if not thousands, of years. "Chicken, frog, duck, all
very fresh - that is what we like," said Mr. Li, a 40-year-old
business consultant, as he steered a cart through the Hong Kong
Market on Main Street.

But at only 3 years old, his twin daughters have already blazed
their own path away from history. "They both like the American
food," he said. "I cannot stop that."

He found the switch profoundly unsettling - not because he saw
health consequences, but because it had happened so fast.

"Only recently, they tried Coke and they loved that," he said, as
one twin tried to grab a package of candy. "They won't drink tea
anymore. Can you believe it? They will not drink tea."

It was a classic scene from the well-known story of American
immigration: the children of newcomers eagerly assuming the ways
of their new world, and rejecting the old.

But a rite of passage that used to take most immigrant families a
generation or two - fully adopting the American diet - has
accelerated for Asians, said James L. Watson, a Harvard
anthropologist who has studied their response to fast food. Many
have moved in just a few years from villages to China's
increasingly Westernized cities and then to the United States, he
said, quickly abandoning traditional foods.

"Everything is happening at warp speed," Dr. Watson said. "The
melting pot may have been simmering in the past, but now it is
raging."

And the American diet they are taking up is far different from
what it was for earlier generations of immigrants: a
mind-boggling array of processed products, with added sugars and
fats that can turn these unfamiliar foods into seductive
pleasures.

Even the store Mr. Li was shopping in is a startling departure
from the small produce and poultry shops that still crowd
Flushing. The Hong Kong Market, which opened in 1996, is a
meeting spot for old and new: a huge supermarket that stocks
Chinese versions of processed American foods.

One shopper, Jian Kang Qiu, 43, an artist who moved from a
coastal village in the province of Guangdong six years ago, said
his family's eating had changed radically.

"At home we would shop in the open market," he said. "There was
not so much packaged food. We would eat maybe two meals a day.
Rice with something on the side, fish or vegetables." Now, faced
with the unlimited choices here, they eat a far broader diet,
with many treats.

Mr. Qiu's mother has Type 2 diabetes, and recently his younger
sister learned that she does, too. It has made him a little more
conscious of what he consumes. But he has given up trying to
control what his 16-year-old daughter, Vicky, eats.

"She would prefer American food," he said. "Her friends are going
for pizza, she wants to go for pizza. It is normal. She wants to
do what her friends are doing."

The need to fit in is no less important for the fourth graders at
Public School 120, where May Chen, the pigtailed 9-year-old, was
the center of attention one afternoon as snack time rolled
around.

May's parents co-own a sushi restaurant, but she had come to
school with a bag of all-American snacks: a shiny blue can of
Lay's Stax potato chips and a package of neon-orange Cheetos
Puffs. She passed out chips to her friends, and in no time hands
were stretched out all over the classroom.

No one gave a second glance to the steamed dumplings that a
classmate, Annie Wu, had brought from home.

"There is a kind of shame issue," said Professor Suarez-Orozco of
N.Y.U., who has spent the last five years studying the lives of
400 immigrant families, with a focus on Asians. "The kids feel if
they bring food from home, some ethnic dish, they are seen as not
as cool and not with it."

School is one place where good eating habits can be taught. Yet
at P.S. 120, fats, sugars and calories figure heavily in
cafeteria fare: burgers, pizza and chicken nuggets.

In the last two years, the Bloomberg administration has made some
changes: hiring an executive chef to make food in all schools
more nutritious; installing salad bars at many schools, including
P.S. 120; and cutting the fat and calories in some of the most
popular items. At lunch, every student gets a banana or an apple
- a requirement that schools must meet to receive federal
reimbursements.

But schools, critics say, are reluctant to change their menus too
drastically and risk a drop in sales that would reduce those
reimbursements. And at the end of each school day, the trash
baskets at P.S. 120 are filled with the compulsory fruit.

'If It Is Delicious, I Love It'

A sweet tooth is standard equipment on any child. But the
sweetness that satisfies it is no longer limited to cookies and
candy.

When 18-year-old Jin Yang dashed into a Key Food supermarket one
rainy afternoon to buy food for her friends at Flushing High
School, she wasn't looking at nutrition labels. If she had, she
might have noticed that nearly every purchase she considered -
the low-fat yogurt, the basil vinaigrette and even the chicken
noodle soup she ended up buying - shared the same major
ingredient: high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener first derived
from corn in the 1960's.

Underwritten by roughly $40 billion in federal subsidies paid to
corn growers in the past 10 years alone, it is now so cheap that
it has all but replaced cane sugar as the sweetener of choice in
processed foods.

The syrup has been singled out by many health experts as one of
the chief culprits in the rise of obesity. Its inexpensiveness,
they say, has helped soda producers create the larger portions
that have led to overconsumption. It is so versatile, they say,
that it now shows up in many foods that would not have been
sweetened at all in the past.

There is wide disagreement among scientists over some studies
indicating that high-fructose corn syrup can hinder the body's
ability to process sugar, and can promote faster fat growth than
sweeteners derived from cane sugar.

What no one disputes, however, is that since the advent of the
syrup, consumption of all sweeteners has soared; the average
American's intake has increased about 35 percent, according to
the Federal Department of Agriculture. And a 2004 study in The
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that the rise of
Type 2 diabetes since 1980 had closely paralleled the increased
use of sweeteners, particularly corn syrup.

Food industry officials say there is nothing wrong with the syrup
as long as people eat it in moderation.

But Jin, who came here just a year ago from rural northeastern
China, said she had never even heard of the sweetener - or
diabetes, for that matter. Thin and healthy, she subjects each
food purchase to only one test. "If it is delicious," she said,
"I love it."

Moderation may also be a foreign concept to many new immigrants
from China because of deep-seated attitudes they have brought
with them.

In many Chinese families, it is difficult to get parents and
grandparents who were raised during the deadly famines and
deprivations of the 1950's to stop overfeeding their children.
"Increased girth is an indicator of wealth," said Dr. Thomas
Tsang, medical director of the Charles B. Wang Community Health
Center in Flushing.

But any extra weight is dangerous for Asians, research shows,
because of their susceptibility to Type 2 diabetes. For example,
a 5-foot-9 Japanese man who weighs 156 pounds - and who may never
develop the sort of belly that is a warning sign for the disease
- is twice as likely as a white man that size to become diabetic.

Because of that, Dr. Tsang said he believed that the number of
Asian diabetics is underestimated; he has recently diagnosed at
least a dozen new cases among his longtime patients. "It's
astounding," he said. "And it puts a lot of pressure on us to
educate them."

The Wang Center has hired three diabetes nurse educators and a
nutritionist in the last two years. But the effort to prevent,
diagnose and treat the disease is hobbled, Dr. Tsang said, by
cultural barriers. Asian immigrants who are in the country
illegally tend to avoid doctors, and some Chinese people will not
test their blood sugar.

"My own mother has diabetes," the doctor said, "and she will not
draw her own blood. She believes blood is the life essence and
should not be lost."

Selling Frosted Flakes and Fitness

At age 3, Henry Chen is learning his first words in English.
"Mother" was first, followed by "father." What came next,
however, surprised his aunt, Cindy Chen.

"McDonald's," she said. "It was one of his first words."

Neither fast food nor television was part of the Chens' life in
Fuzhou, a Chinese city where they struggled to find work before
moving to Flushing four years ago.

Now Henry and his family show up at least once a week at
McDonald's. At home, he perches on the sofa to watch Nickelodeon.
By his aunt's estimate, he spends as much as 30 hours a week in
front of the TV - more than double the average for a child in
China, according to data collected for The New York Times by AGB
Nielsen Media Research. Like a human SpongeBob, he soaks up ads
for Pop-Tarts and Lucky Charms.

There is nothing new about the marketing of food to children,
with all of its cartoon characters and free toys. According to a
study released in May by the Grocery Manufacturers Association,
the average child watches 4,900 food commercials a year.

What is new, though, is the message that child - and his parents
- are hearing.

Ronald McDonald now snowboards, and his once-portly frame looks
to have shed at least 30 pounds. The box for Henry's Happy Meals
reads, "A game of tag keeps me happy and fit." In one commercial,
a woman does a victory jig when she finds out her Lay's potato
chips are low-fat. A Frosted Flakes ad shows children running
around a soccer field with Tony the Tiger.

"Without a doubt, the food industry, while not moving away from
convenience, has begun to push health as the main driver of food
packaging and promotion," said Don Montuori, publisher of
Packaged Facts, which does consumer research for food companies.

The companies say they are doing their part to combat obesity by
offering lower-calorie, lower-fat choices, and encouraging
children to exercise. McDonald's sponsors track events for young
runners, and Coca-Cola has created the Tiger Woods Foundation to
promote children's sports.

But what would seem to be welcome news has simply created a
different problem, according to many nutritionists and public
health officials. Despite a salad here or a lower-fat oil there,
they say, the food industry has done little to change the basic
unhealthfulness of its best-selling products. And by making the
link to fitness, they say, the companies are telling children
that all of those foods are good for them.

New immigrants from China are keenly receptive to such claims
because the Chinese have used foods to cure illnesses and promote
general health for thousands of years, said Dr. Watson, the
Harvard anthropologist. One cure for a cough, for instance,
involves duck gizzards, apricot kernels and watercress. A variety
of foods are thought to improve brain function.

Many Chinese people have replaced those traditional foods with
processed foods, Dr. Watson said, and have little idea what is in
them. Still, the faith in food persists: for instance, he said,
there is a widespread perception in China that eating at
McDonald's can somehow make you smarter. In New York, Professor
Suarez-Orozco said, immigrant parents often reinforce that
connection by rewarding academic achievement with a McDonald's
meal.

And many Chinese companies have adopted the same kind of health
pitches as their American counterparts. At the Hong Kong Market,
a juice box called Vita Chrysanthemum Tea promotes itself as a
health drink for children, though nutritionally it is little
different from Snapple.

Ye Zhou, a sixth grader whose parents arrived from China shortly
before she was born, said she tried to eat right, and knew that
some foods were unhealthful. On this day she had come to the
McDonald's on Main Street to try the new Premium Crispy Chicken
Breast Sandwich, drawn by the ads that touted the "energy" packed
in the meal, which includes French fries and a soda.

How, she was asked, did it compare nutritionally with the
stir-fried chicken and rice her mother made at home?

"They taste different," she said. "But one is not healthier than
the other."

Actually, the fast-food meal has at least one-third more
calories, carbohydrates and grams of fat than a typical homemade
one.

Even before the latest blitz of health messages, children were
confused, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation said in a 2004
report on childhood obesity. In a 1997 study it cited, fourth and
fifth graders were asked which of two foods - say, corn flakes or
frosted flakes - was more healthful; the children who watched the
most TV were the most likely to pick the less nutritious one.

For more than two decades, Dr. Daniel S. Acuff helped hone food
ads aimed at children as a marketing consultant to companies like
Coca-Cola and Nestle. But about two years ago, he said, he
stopped consulting on products he did not consider nutritious
after recognizing the threat posed by obesity. He called the
industry's new sales strategies disingenuous. "To position
themselves as leaders in providing healthy food for children is
nonsense," he said.

He and others - including the American Academy of Pediatrics and
the American Psychological Association - have called for tighter
restrictions on advertising to children, similar to limits in
Australia, Canada and England. They are also concerned about the
increasing use of the Internet and video games to sell food.

But repeated attempts to enact such strictures in the United
States have failed for three decades, and at a meeting last July
in Washington, the Federal Trade Commission told food and
advertising executives that it favored letting the industry
police itself.

A few companies have done just that - most notably Kraft Foods,
which decided last January to curb its advertising of certain
products, like Oreos and Kool-Aid, to children under 12. The move
raised eyebrows both in the food industry and in public health
circles because of its implicit suggestion that there are bad
foods. The industry has long maintained that there are no bad
foods, only bad habits - like overeating.

Tim Wong is only 10, but he had no problem polishing off a large
dinner platter from the adult menu one afternoon at the KFC on
Main Street in Flushing. He had asked his mother to take him and
his 6-year-old sister, Tiffany, so they could try "the new stuff"
on the menu. "I see the new items on television and I want them,"
he said.

When he was asked what his favorite foods were, his mother
laughed.

"Look at him," she said in a matter-of-fact way, as Tim is
obviously overweight. "He likes his junk."

Time for Gym! O.K., Time's Up!

"Two fingers in the air!" the teacher aides shouted at the more
than 100 children squirming in the auditorium seats.

Two fingers held high is the way students at May Chen's school
signal that they are sitting quietly enough to be let out for
recess. It was 10:30 a.m., less than two hours after they had
been served a breakfast that included chocolate milk, a doughnut
and a juice box - at least 400 calories and 47 grams of sugar
waiting to be burned off.

Finally the doors opened, and the students scampered out to the
playground, a parking lot ringed by a chain-link fence. Several
boys ran around like mad. In a makeshift game of keep-away, May
and some other girls tossed around a bag of cheese snacks.

They had to play fast. Twelve girls were lined up to jump rope,
but only three had a chance before a bell summoned them back
inside for lunch.

May's recess had lasted eight minutes.

It was, as always, the only recess for the day, and fortunately
the weather was mild. On cold or rainy days, the children stay
inside and watch movies.

Recess and physical education are treated like luxuries in the
New York City schools. Though half the grade schoolers are
overweight and roughly one in four are obese, the city did little
until last year to promote one of the best antidotes: exercise.

May, like most schoolchildren in the city, does not get even the
minimum amount of physical education mandated by state law, two
hours a week. She has a single gym class each week, for 50
minutes.

She is among the lucky ones. More than half the city's 700
elementary schools have no usable outdoor play space, according
to a 2003 survey by the City Department of Education. May's
school has only one gym teacher for its 1,000 students, but
roughly one in seven elementary schools in the city have no
teacher dedicated to physical education.

And although P.S. 120 has a functioning gym, many elementary
schools do not, according to reports by the City Council and the
State Assembly. Even those that have gyms often use them for
classes or meetings. There has been no standardized testing of
student fitness in more than a generation.

The sad state of the school gym class is a legacy of the city's
fiscal crisis in the 1970's, when the budget for physical
education was slashed to protect other academic programs. But New
York's plight is not much worse than the rest of the country's.

Even as the health authorities pronounced obesity a national
epidemic, daily participation in gym classes dropped to 28
percent in 2003 from 42 percent in 1991, according to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. And the Bush administration
recently proposed cutting Physical Education Program grants to
schools by more than one-quarter, to $55 million, though Congress
rejected the proposal.

Schools are so desperate to finance exercise programs that many
have turned to food companies for help. McDonald's is offering
curriculums and undisclosed sums to 31,000 schools across the
country to improve physical education through an effort called
Passport to Play; every piece of program literature that children
see will carry the company's golden-arches logo.

Two years ago, even as New York's health department was assigning
a team to improve the treatment of diabetics, the city signed a
deal with Snapple that made its fruit drinks the only beverages,
besides water, sold in school vending machines. A 12-ounce can of
Snapple contains 170 calories and 40 grams of sugar, as much as
most colas. The calories in three cans - the amount many students
drink every day - would take at least three hours to walk off.

The 29 fourth graders in May Chen's class have gym directly after
lunch, and their stomachs were full this day with chicken
nuggets. They did not change into gym clothes. The teacher, Bruce
Adler, started them off with calisthenics, moving quickly to
situps and three leisurely laps around the basketball court.
There were groans, and several children were winded, but few
broke a sweat.

Mr. Adler, 55, said the school could really use a second teacher,
recalling how different things were when he was growing up in
Yonkers. Students there had at least three gym classes a week, he
said.

New York school officials say they are adding more physical
education teachers each year. And two years ago, the Bloomberg
administration created the Office of Fitness and Physical
Education. Its director, Lori Rose Benson, has begun a program
called Physical Best, which will track students' fitness,
charting progress for each school. She said she hoped to start
the program by the end of this school year in every grade school
with a physical education teacher, including May's.

She conceded it was merely a first step. "It is very difficult to
reverse a culture that existed for 20 to 30 years," she said.

Tilting at Golden Arches

At least two unthinkable things happened in Albany in the past
year.

One made headlines: The Legislature passed a budget on time. The
other went unnoticed: The Assembly actually debated a bill that
tried to address, in some small way, the leap in obesity and Type
2 diabetes.

It was a rare moment of attention for a cause that has drawn
little more than lip service from government officials, and it
was short-lived. The debate, and the bill, died in mocking
laughter.

The story of that bill, known as A5664, is a lesson in the ways
of Albany - and the apathy that diabetes experts say is blocking
any effective response to the epidemic.

The lesson was an abrupt one for Assemblyman Jimmy Meng of
Flushing, who had already embarked on a sharp learning curve.
When he was elected the previous fall - the first Asian-American
voted into state office in New York - diabetes was nowhere near
the top of his list of health issues.

But as he became more aware of the disease's threat to children
and young adults in his community, Mr. Meng said, he became
frustrated with the ignorance and inaction he discovered.

In April, he organized and led the first march in Queens to raise
money and awareness in the battle against diabetes. And he agreed
to support legislation by a fellow Assembly Democrat, Felix Ortiz
of Brooklyn.

The bill would require all restaurants to prominently post the
amounts of calories, fat and salt in each menu item. It was
hardly a radical notion. Many fast-food chains had already begun
listing calorie counts in restaurants and on Web sites, and
months later McDonald's would decide to print nutritional data
right on its wrappers.

But Mr. Ortiz felt those moves were only a start. Who knew how
many calories were in a slice of the neighborhood pizza or a
Starbucks caramel macchiato?

His passion for the issue - this was just one of six bills he
introduced in the 2004-5 session to fight obesity and diabetes -
was fed by his own loss. His mother died of the disease when she
was only 58.

"Everything was caused because she did not take care of her
weight," he said.

In Albany, the path from legislation to law is thorny, and Mr.
Ortiz brought along his own set of hurdles. He was hardly an
insider within the Democratic conference, which is controlled by
Speaker Sheldon Silver, and some of his bills were considered
odd. One would have made it a crime for a person not to come to
the aid of another in trouble.

The restaurant labeling bill looked like another loser. It had no
support from the Democratic leadership. Although it was backed by
the American Diabetes Association, which has spent $9,000
lobbying New York lawmakers in the past few years, it was opposed
by the food industry, which contributed more than $4 million to
legislative and gubernatorial campaigns between 1999 and 2005,
according to state records.

And diabetes had hardly caught fire as a pressing health issue.
The Pataki administration is investing $9 million this year to
encourage physical activity among children, but the state has not
moved to limit the sale of unhealthful snacks in schools, as a
half-dozen other states have. Only $1.9 million of the $100
billion state budget goes directly to diabetes prevention and
control, roughly the same amount spent to fight anorexia and
bulimia.

Two months after the Health Committee approved Mr. Ortiz's bill,
it had still not come up for a full Assembly vote. But on June
22, as the legislative session wound down, the bill found its
moment.

Many members were in a hurry to leave town. As evening
approached, Mr. Ortiz spotted Mr. Silver, chased him down a
corridor and cornered him outside the speaker's office, in a
space where legislators often horse-trade in whispers. Mr. Ortiz,
however, was shouting: "I get the same excuse every year!"

He wanted his bill debated and voted on by the full Assembly - an
unusual request in Albany, where measures rarely make it to the
floor of either house unless they are assured passage. Mr.
Ortiz's five other bills to fight obesity had languished in
committees.

If a bill this mild could not succeed in New York, Mr. Ortiz
argued, what hope was there for more sweeping measures?

Mr. Silver relented. And when the bill came up for a vote, near
midnight, Mr. Ortiz had the floor. "This is about the future of
our children," he said.

When he stopped, the sarcasm began.

James D. Conte, a Long Island Republican, said his family owned a
burger restaurant. What would happen, he asked, in the case of
all-you-can-eat buffets?

Mr. Ortiz said the law would apply only to standard menu items.

"What about the weekly specials?" Mr. Conte asked.

Laughter rose in the chamber. Daniel J. O'Donnell, a fellow
Democrat from Manhattan, kept it going. "I watch people who work
at McDonald's, and they don't measure how much salt they put on
fries," he said. "Do you expect there to be a shaker lesson?"

Mr. Ortiz said he guessed that employees were adequately
educated.

An hour went by. A few colleagues defended the measure. Others
argued that enforcing it would be a nightmare, and that the costs
would hurt small restaurants.

As the time for debate waned, Joel M. Miller, a Republican from
Poughkeepsie, rose to state his position. "I did not develop this
physique by eating healthy," Mr. Miller, a stout man, said to
guffaws. A colleague completed the joke by bringing him a
generous plate of cookies.

"The bottom line is, it is not going to matter," Mr. Miller said.
"We are fooling and deluding ourselves."

Mr. Ortiz made one last plea. "When we look at the rate of
diabetes in our state," he said, "and when we look at this bill,
we should remind ourselves that the decision we make here tonight
will make an impact on our kids."

The result was clear as soon as the voting began. The yes votes
showed up on an electric signboard in green, the no votes in red.
Within minutes, the board was glowing red.

Before the tally could be completed, Mr. Ortiz stood and
delivered the final word: "I would like to say, with a lot of
passion, I withdraw this bill."

Gene Increases Diabetes Risk, Scientists Find
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/science/16gene.html

By NICHOLAS WADE

Scientists have discovered a variant gene that leads to a sizable
extra risk of Type 2 diabetes and is carried by more than a third
of the American population.

The finding is being reported today in the journal Nature Genetics
by researchers at Decode Genetics, a company in Reykjavik, Iceland,
that specializes in finding the genetic roots of human diseases.
Decode Genetics first found the variant gene - one of many
different versions that exist in the human population - in
Icelanders and has now confirmed the finding in a Danish and an
American population.

An immediate practical consequence of the discovery, said Decode's
chief executive, Kari Stefansson, would be to develop a diagnostic
test to identify people who carry the variant gene. If people knew
of their extra risk, they would have an incentive to stay thin and
exercise, he said.

Diabetes, a disease in which damaging amounts of sugar build up in
the blood, with risk of blindness and loss of limbs, affects 20.8
million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. An estimated 800,000 adult New Yorkers - more than one
in every eight - now have diabetes, and city health officials have
expressed concern about its growing incidence.

Type 2 diabetes, the predominant form, is typically diagnosed in
adults and adolescents, though it is creeping into younger age
groups. The Type 2 kind accounts for up to 95 percent of all
diagnosed cases, according to the centers.

Because people carry two copies of every gene, one inherited from
each parent, the risk conferred by the new gene depends on whether
one or two copies of it have been inherited. The estimated 38
percent of Americans who have inherited a single copy have a 45
percent greater risk of Type 2 than do unaffected members of the
population. The estimated 7 percent who carry two copies are 141
percent more likely to develop the disease, according to the Decode
researchers, who were led by Struan F. A. Grant.

What scientists call the "population-attributable risk" of the new
variant is 21 percent, which means that if all the variant genes in
the population were erased, so would be 21 percent of diabetes
cases.

The finding is "a beautiful piece of work and as convincing as any
initial publication could be," said David Altshuler, a medical
geneticist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who has in the past
taken issue with certain aspects of Decode's claims.

"In terms of the epidemiological risk of diabetes, this is by far
the biggest finding to date," he said, just after hearing a lecture
on the finding by Augustine Kong, Decode's chief statistician.
Diabetes is thought to be caused by a variety of different genes,
each conferring a risk for the disease. Because most of the
variants exert a minor effect, they are hard to detect, and many
claims to have found diabetes-causing genes have turned out to be
unfounded.

"This has turned out to be the disease that has been the most
difficult for geneticists to crack, probably because of the large
environmental contribution," Dr. Stefansson said.

The new variant identified by Decode was of a somewhat obscure gene
that had not been suspected of having any involvement in diabetes.
The gene, designated TCF7L2, is one that controls the activity of
other genes. Its role may include setting the level of a hormone
that acts along with insulin to control blood sugar levels.

Discovery of the TCF7L2 gene could be therapeutically helpful, Dr.
Stefansson said, because it identified a major biochemical chain
reaction or pathway through which the disease developed. Several
different genes, and their protein products, are involved in the
pathway that sets the level of the companion hormone. Any of these
genes and proteins are potential targets for new drugs.

Dr. Altshuler, of Massachusetts General, agreed. "Being directed
down that pathway is very helpful," he said, though he added that
the process of developing better treatments might take a decade or
two.

While Type 2 diabetes is more common in African-Americans, Latinos,
American Indians, and Asian-Americans, Dr. Stefansson said more
studies were needed to see whether there were significant
differences in the variant gene's distribution among races.

He said he could not yet say if the genetic variant was more common
in African-Americans and so might explain their greater burden of
Type 2 diabetes. But he noted that the variant was ancient, having
arisen before the dispersal of modern humans from Africa some
50,000 years ago, and would probably be found to exist to varying
degrees in all populations.

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 01:32:54 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 20:32:54 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: What Is a Living Wage?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601212027430.13460@panix2.panix.com>

What Is a Living Wage?
http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2006/01/15/magazine/1124993105428.html

[This article is thorough proof that the Triune God botched our brains. 
David Card's infamous article is the only evidence cited. It looked 
ridiculous to me on its surface. Since it overturned some very basic 
economic principles, it cried out for replication and followups. The 
Journal of Economic Perspectives carries a regular column called 
"Anomalies," which goes to show that economists are quite willing to Check 
their own Premises (except in the case of group differences in innate 
intelligence: shouldn't this play the greatest role in "The Wealth of 
Nations," the title of the founding book in the field? There is a book, 
"IQ and the Wealth of Nations," by Richard Lynn, who is NOT an economist. 
IQ is the top explanatory variable, followed next by the stupidity of the 
economic system.

[After reading about Card, I just hastily glanced through the rest, which 
seemed to be nothing but preposterous moralizing. If I'm wrong, and you 
can get through it, alert me.]

    By JON GERTNER

    If It Happened in Baltimore, Maybe It Can Happen Anywhere

    For a few weeks in the summer of 1995, Jen Kern spent her days at a
    table in the Library of Congress in Washington, poring over the fine
    print of state constitutions from around the country. This was, at the
    time, a somewhat-eccentric strategy to fight poverty in America. Kern
    was not a high-powered lawyer or politician; she was 25 and held a
    low-paying, policy-related job at Acorn, the national community
    organization. Yet to understand why living-wage campaigns matter -
    where they began, what they mean, and why they inspire such passion
    and hope - it helps to consider what Kern was doing years ago in the
    library, reading obscure legislation from states like Missouri and New
    Mexico.

    A few months earlier, she and her colleagues at Acorn witnessed an
    energetic grass-roots campaign in Baltimore, led by a coalition of
    church groups and labor unions. Workers in some of Baltimore's
    homeless shelters and soup kitchens had noticed something new and
    troubling about many of the visitors coming in for meals and shelter:
    they happened to have full-time jobs. In response, local religious
    leaders successfully persuaded the City Council to raise the base pay
    for city contract workers to $6.10 an hour from $4.25, the federal
    minimum at the time. The Baltimore campaign was ostensibly about
    money. But to those who thought about it more deeply, it was about the
    force of particular moral propositions: first, that work should be
    rewarded, and second, that no one who works full time should have to
    live in poverty.

    So Kern and another colleague were dispatched to find out if what
    happened in Baltimore could be tried - and expanded - elsewhere. As
    she plowed through documents, Kern was unsure whether to look for a
    particular law or the absence of one. Really, what she was trying to
    do was compile a list of places in the U.S. where citizens or
    officials could legally mount campaigns to raise the minimum wage
    above the federal standard. In other words, she needed to know if
    anything stood in the way, like a state regulation or court decision.
    What she discovered was that in many states a law more ambitious than
    Baltimore's - one that didn't apply to only city contractors but to
    all local businesses - seemed permissible.

    Whether a wage campaign was winnable turned out to be a more
    complicated matter. In the late 1990's, Kern helped Acorn in a series
    of attempts to raise the minimum wage in Denver, Houston and Missouri.
    They all failed. "It wasn't even close," she says. In the past few
    years, though, as the federal minimum wage has remained fixed at $5.15
    and the cost of living (specifically housing) has risen drastically in
    many regions, similar campaigns have produced so many victories
    (currently, 134) that Kern speaks collectively of "a widespread
    living-wage movement."

    Santa Fe has been one of the movement's crowning achievements. This
    month the city's minimum wage rose to $9.50 an hour, the highest rate
    in the United States. But other recent victories include San Francisco
    in 2003 and Nevada in 2004. And if a ending bill in Chicago is any
    indication, the battles over wage laws will soon evolve into campaigns
    to force large, private-sector businesses like Wal-Mart to provide not
    only higher wages but also more money for employee health care.

    It is a common sentiment that economic fairness - or economic justice,
    as living-wage advocates phrase it - should, or must, come in a
    sweeping and righteous gesture from the top. From Washington, that is.
    But most wage campaigns arise from the bottom, from residents and
    low-level officials and from cities and states - from everywhere
    except the federal government. "I think what the living-wage movement
    has done in the past 11 years is incredible," David Neumark, a
    frequent critic of the phenomenon who is a senior fellow at the Public
    Policy Institute of California, told me recently. "How many other
    issues are there where progressives have been this successful? I can't
    think of one."

    The immediate goal for living-wage strategists is to put initiatives
    on the ballots in several swing states this year. If their reckoning
    is correct, the laws should effect a financial gain for low-income
    workers and boost turnout for candidates who campaign for higher
    wages. In Florida, a ballot initiative to raise the state's minimum
    wage by a dollar, to $6.15, won 71 percent of the vote in 2004, a
    blowout that surprised even people like Kern, who spent several weeks
    in Miami working on the measure. "We would like it to become a fact of
    political life," Kern says, "where every year the other side has to
    contend with a minimum-wage law in some state." Though victories like
    the one in Florida may have done little to help the Kerry-Edwards
    ticket - George Bush won 52 percent of the state's vote - Kern and
    some in the Democratic establishment have come to believe that the
    left, after years of electoral frustration, has finally found its
    ultimate moral-values issue. "This is what moves people to the polls
    now," Kern insists. "This is our gay marriage." Already, during the
    past few months, a coalition of grass-roots and labor organizations
    have begun gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures to ensure
    that proposed laws to increase wages are voted on in November. The
    first targets, Kern told me, will be Arizona, Colorado, Michigan and
    Ohio. Next in line, either this year or soon after, are Montana,
    Oklahoma and Arkansas, the home of Wal-Mart.

    Does America Care About the Gap Between Rich and Poor?

    I first met Kern on a sunny morning in late September in Albuquerque,
    a city of 4770,000 that made her list when she was working in the
    Library of Congress 10 years ago. She was now, at age 35, campaigning
    for a ballot initiative that would raise the minimum wage in the city
    to $7.50 an hour from $5.15. There was no face for the placards, no
    charismatic presence to rally the troops at midnight or shake hands at
    dawn outside 7-Eleven. Instead, there was a number, $7.50, a troop of
    campaign workers to canvass the neighborhoods and an argument: that
    many low-wage workers were being paid poverty wages. That a full-time
    job at the federal minimum rate added up to $10,712 a year. That local
    businesses could afford the pay raise. And that it was up to the
    voters to restore balance.

    One of the more intriguing questions about campaigns like the one in
    Albuquerque, and those planned for swing states next fall, is whether
    they reflect a profound sense of public alarm about the divergence
    between rich and poor in this country. Certainly most Americans do not
    support higher wages out of immediate self-interest. Probably only
    around 3 percent of those in the work force are actually paid $5.15 or
    less an hour; most low-wage workers, including Wal-Mart employees, who
    generally start at between $6.50 and $7.50 an hour, earn more.
    Increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour would directly affect the
    wages of only about 7 percent of the work force. Nevertheless,
    pollsters have discovered that a hypothetical state ballot measure
    typically generates support of around 70 percent. A recent poll by the
    Pew Research Center actually put the support for raising the national
    minimum wage to $6.45 at 86 percent. Rick Berman, a lobbyist who
    started the Employment Policies Institute and who is a longtime foe of
    living-wage laws, agrees that "the natural tendency is for people to
    support these things. They believe it's a free lunch." On the other
    hand, the electorate's reasons for crossing party lines to endorse the
    measures may be due to the simple fact that at least 60 percent of
    Americans have at one time or another been paid the minimum wage.
    Voters may just know precisely what they're voting for and why.

    In the mid-1990's, the last time Congress raised the minimum wage, the
    Clinton White House was reluctant to start a war over the federal
    rate, according to Robert Reich, the former labor secretary. For an
    administration bent on policy innovation, that would have seemed "old"
    Democrat. "Then we did some polling and discovered that the public is
    overwhelmingly in favor," Reich told me recently. "At which point the
    White House gave the green light to Democrats in Congress." Reich, now
    a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, happens to view
    the minimum wage as a somewhat inefficient tool for alleviating
    poverty (compared with earned income tax credits, say). But he
    acknowledges that it has a powerful moral and political impact, in
    states red as well as blue, and especially now, in an era when workers
    see the social contract with their employers vanishing. "They see
    neighbors and friends being fired for no reason by profitable
    companies, executives making off like bandits while thousands of their
    own workers are being laid off," Reich says. "They see health
    insurance drying up, employer pensions shrinking. Promises to retirees
    of health benefits are simply thrown overboard. The whole system has
    aspects that seem grossly immoral to average working people." As Reich
    points out, whatever the minimum wage's limitations may be as a policy
    instrument, as an idea "it demarcates our concept of decency with
    regard to work."

    The idea, Reich points out, isn't new, even if the recent fervor for
    it is. Massachusetts enacted a state minimum wage in 1912, several
    decades before the federal minimum wage of 25 cents an hour was
    adopted in 1938. And most of the wage ordinances of the past decade
    specifically trace their origins back to Baltimore, in 1995. After
    that moment, in fact, the phrase "living wage" soon caught on - or,
    you might say, returned. It was a popular workers' refrain in the late
    19th century and was the title of a 1906 book by John Ryan, a Roman
    Catholic priest. In the late 1990's, a loose national network of
    advocates sprang up, incorporating organized labor, grass-roots groups
    like Acorn and the Industrial Areas Foundation and, more recently, the
    National Council of Churches. Legal advice often came out of the
    Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school, where
    a lawyer named Paul Sonn helped write wage ordinances and ballot
    measures for various states and cities.

    By dint of its piecemeal, localized progress, the modern living-wage
    movement has grown without fanfare; one reason is that until recently,
    most of the past decade's wage laws, like Baltimore's, have been
    narrow in scope and modest in effect. Strictly speaking, a "living
    wage" law has typically required that any company receiving city
    contracts, and thus taxpayers' money, must pay its workers a wage far
    above the federal minimum, usually between $9 and $11 an hour. These
    regulations often apply to employees at companies to which
    municipalities have outsourced tasks like garbage collection, security
    services and home health care. Low-wage workers in the private sector
    - in restaurants, hotels, retail stores or the like - have been
    unaffected. Their pay stays the same.

    In Santa Fe, the City Council passed a similar kind of wage law in
    2002, raising the hourly pay for city employees and contractors. Some
    officials in Santa Fe, however, had decided from the start that its
    wage rules should ultimately be different - that the small city
    (population 666,000) could even serve as a test example for the rest
    of the U.S. Early on, several city councilors told me, they
    anticipated that Santa Fe - with a high cost of living, a large
    community of low-paid immigrants and a liberal City Council - would
    eventually extend its wage floor to all local businesses, private as
    well as public, so that every worker in the city, no matter the
    industry, would make more than $5.15. The initial numbers the
    councilors considered as they began to strategize seemed
    stratospheric: a living wage that began at $10 or $12 or even $14.50
    an hour. For some laborers, that would constitute a raise of 200
    percent or more. Nothing remotely like it existed in any other city in
    the country.

    The Economists Are Surprised

    In the years before the enactment of the federal minimum wage in the
    late 1930's, the country's post-Depression economy was so weak that
    the notion that government should leave private business to its own
    devices was effectively marginalized. During the past few decades,
    though, in the wake of a fairly robust economy, debates on raising the
    minimum wage have consistently resulted in a rhetorical caterwaul.
    While the arguments have usually been between those on the labor side,
    who think the minimum wage should be raised substantially, and those
    on the employer side, who oppose any increase, a smaller but vocal
    contingent has claimed, more broadly and more philosophically, that it
    is in the best interest of both business and labor to let the market
    set wages, not the politicians. And certainly not the voters.

    This last position was long underpinned by the academic consensus that
    a rise in the minimum wage hurts employment by interfering with the
    flow of supply and demand. In simplest terms, most economists accepted
    that when government forces businesses to pay higher wages,
    businesses, in turn ,hire fewer employees. It is a powerful argument
    against the minimum wage, since it suggests that private businesses as
    a group, along with teenagers and low-wage employees, will be
    penalized by a mandatory raise.

    The tenor of this debate began to change in the mid-1990's following
    some work done by two Princeton economists, David Card (now at the
    University of California at Berkeley) and Alan B. Krueger. In 1992,
    New Jersey increased the state minimum wage to $5.05 an hour
    (applicable to both the public and private sectors), which gave the
    two young professors an opportunity to study the comparative effects
    of that raise on fast-food restaurants and low-wage employment in New
    Jersey and Pennsylvania, where the minimum wage remained at the
    federal level of $4.25 an hour. Card and Krueger agreed that the
    hypothesis that a rise in wages would destroy jobs was "one of the
    clearest and most widely appreciated in the field of economics." Both
    told me they believed, at the start, that their work would reinforce
    that hypothesis. But in 1995, and again in 2000, the two academics
    effectively shredded the conventional wisdom. Their data demonstrated
    that a modest increase in wages did not appear to cause any
    significant harm to employment; in some cases, a rise in the minimum
    wage even resulted in a slight increase in employment.

    Card and Krueger's conclusions have not necessarily made philosophical
    converts of Congress or the current administration. Attempts to raise
    the federal minimum wage - led by Senators [3]Edward M. Kennedy on the
    left and Rick Santorum on the right - have made little headway over
    the past few years. And the White House went so far as to temporarily
    suspend the obligation of businesses with U.S. government construction
    contracts to pay so-called prevailing wages (that is, whatever is paid
    to a majority of workers in an industry in a particular area) during
    the rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. David Card, who seems nothing
    short of disgusted by the ideological nature of the debates over the
    wage issue, says he feels that opinions on the minimum wage are so
    politically entrenched that even the most scientific studies can't
    change anyone's mind. "People think we're biased, partisan," he says.
    And he's probably right. While Card has never advocated for or against
    raising the minimum wage, many who oppose wage laws have made exactly
    those assertions about his research. Nonetheless, in Krueger's view,
    he and Card changed the debate. "I'm willing to declare a partial
    victory," Krueger told me. Some recent surveys of top academics show a
    significant majority now agree that a modest raise in the minimum wage
    does little to harm employment, he points out.

    If nothing else, Card and Krueger's findings have provided persuasive
    data, and a degree of legitimacy, to those who maintain that raising
    the minimum wage, whether at the city, state or federal level, need
    not be toxic. The Economic Policy Institute, which endorses wage
    regulations, has succeeded recently in getting hundreds of respected
    economists - excluding Card and Krueger, however, who choose to remain
    outside the debate - to support raising the federal minimum to $7 an
    hour. That would have been impossible as recently as five years ago,
    says Jeff Chapman, an economist at the E.P.I. Even Wal-Mart's
    president and C.E.O., Lee Scott, recently spoke out in favor of
    raising the minimum wage. It wasn't altruism or economic theory or
    even public relations that motivated him, but a matter of bottom-line
    practicality. "Our current average hourly wage for workers is $9.68,"
    Lee Culpepper, a Wal-Mart spokesman, told me. "So I would think
    raising the wage would have minimal impact on our workers. But we
    think it would have a beneficial effect on our customers."

    What a Higher Minimum Wage Can Mean to Those Making It

    One evening in Santa Fe, I sat down with some of the people Wal-Mart
    is worried about. Like Louis Alvarez, a 58-year-old cafeteria worker
    in the Santa Fe schools who for many years helped prepare daily meals
    for 700 children. For that he was paid $6.85 an hour and brought home
    $203 every two weeks. He had no disposable income - indeed, he wasn't
    sure what I meant by disposable income; he barely had money for rent.
    Statistically speaking, he was far below the poverty line, which for a
    family of two is about $12,800 a year. For Alvarez, an increase in the
    minimum wage meant he would be able to afford to go to flea markets,
    he said.

    I also met with Ashley Gutierrez, 20, and Adelina Reyes, 19, who have
    low-paying customer-service and restaurant jobs. By most estimates, 35
    percent of those who make $7 an hour or less in the U.S. are
    teenagers. A few months ago, Reyes told me, she was spending 86 hours
    every two weeks at two minimum-wage jobs to pay for her car and to pay
    for college. Gutierrez, also in school, was working 20 hours a week at
    Blockbuster video for the minimum wage. People like Alvarez and
    Gutierrez and Reyes were the ones who spurred two city councilors in
    Santa Fe, Frank Monta?o and Jimmie Martinez, to introduce the
    living-wage ordinance. "Our schools here don't do so well," Monta?o
    told me, explaining that he believed higher-wage jobs would let
    parents, who might otherwise have to work a second job, spend more
    time with their children. (At the same time working teenagers like
    Gutierrez would have more time with their parents.) For Santa Fe
    residents who were living five or six to a room in two-bedroom adobes,
    Monta?o said he hoped a higher minimum wage might put having their own
    places to live at least within the realm of possibility.

    Monta?o was confident - perhaps too confident, as it would turn out -
    that businesses would become acclimated to higher payroll costs. He
    has run a restaurant and a tour-bus company himself, and he knew that
    the tight labor market in Santa Fe had pushed up wages so that many
    entry-level workers were already earning more than $8 an hour. "The
    business owners believe that government, especially at the local
    level, should not dictate to business, so to them it was a matter of
    principle," Monta?o says. It was to him too. "We knew that other
    communities were watching what we were doing," he explains. He and his
    colleagues on the council were already receiving help from Paul Sonn
    at the Brennan Center in New York. "I knew that their involvement
    meant that they saw this as something that was important nationally,"
    Monta?o says. "As we got our foot in the door in terms of this
    ordinance being applied to the private sector," he surmised, that
    would give the living-wage network the ammunition to help other
    communities across the country do likewise. "I always knew, early on,"
    Monta?o says, "that if Santa Fe enacted such an ordinance, that it
    likely would go to court, and that if it passed the legal test, it
    would be the kind of ordinance that other communities would copy." The
    problem, at least from Monta?o's perspective, was getting it enacted
    in the first place.

    The Moral Argument Carries the Day in Santa Fe

    Santa Fe's City Council asked nine residents, representing the
    interests of labor and management, to join a round table that would
    settle the specifics of the proposed living-wage law - how high the
    wage would be, for instance, and how soon it would be phased in. Some
    members of the round table, like Al Lucero, who owns a popular local
    restaurant, Maria's New Mexican Kitchen, found the entire premise of a
    city wage law objectionable. "I think the minimum wage at $5.15 is
    ridiculous," Lucero told me. "If the state were to raise it overall,
    to $7 an hour or $7.50 an hour, I think that would be wonderful. I
    think we need to do it." But $9 or $10 or $11 was too high, in his
    view - and it would put Santa Fe at a disadvantage to other cities in
    the state or region that could pay workers less. Also, there were the
    free-market principles that Frank Monta?o had anticipated: "They were
    trying to push and tell us how to live our lives and how to conduct
    our business," says Lucero, who employs about 60 people.

    Not surprisingly, Lucero's opponents on the round table saw things in
    a different light. For example, Carol Oppenheimer, a labor attorney,
    viewed the proposed law as a practical and immediate solution. "I got
    involved with the living-wage network because unions are having a very
    hard time," she told me. She assumed that local businesses could
    manage with a higher payroll. Yet after only a few meetings of the
    task force, both sides dug in, according to Oppenheimer.

    It was then that the living-wage proponents hit on a scorched-earth,
    tactical approach. "What really got the other side was when we said,
    'It's just immoral to pay people $5.15, they can't live on that,' "
    Oppenheimer recalls. "It made the businesspeople furious. And we
    realized then that we had something there, so we said it over and over
    again. Forget the economic argument. This was a moral one. It made
    them crazy. And we knew that was our issue."

    The moral argument soon trumped all others. The possibility that a
    rise in the minimum wage, even a very substantial one, would create
    unemployment or compromise the health of the city's small businesses
    was not necessarily irrelevant. Yet for many in Santa Fe, that came to
    be seen as an ancillary issue, one that inevitably led to fruitless
    discussions in which opposing sides cited conflicting studies or
    anecdotal evidence. Maybe all of that was beside the point, anyway.
    Does it - or should it - even matter what a wage increase does to a
    local economy, barring some kind of catastrophic change? Should an
    employer be allowed to pay a full-time employee $5.15 an hour, this
    argument went, if that's no longer enough to live on? Is it just under
    our system of government? Or in the eyes of God?

    The Rev. Jerome Martinez, the city's influential monsignor, began to
    throw his support behind the living-wage ordinance. When I met with
    him in his parish, in a tidy, paneled office near the imposing
    18th-century church that looks over the city plaza, Martinez traced
    for me the moral justification for a living wage back to the
    encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI and John Paul II, in which
    the pontiffs warned against the excesses of capitalism. "The church's
    position on social justice is long established," Father Jerome said.
    "I think unfortunately it's one of our best-kept secrets."

    I asked if it had been a difficult decision to support the wage law.
    He smiled slightly. "It was a no-brainer," he said. "You know, I am
    not by nature a political person. I have gotten a lot of grief from
    some people, business owners, who say, 'Father, why don't you stick to
    religion?' Well, pardon me - this is religion. The scripture is full
    of matters of justice. How can you worship a God that you do not see
    and then oppress the workers that you do see?"

    I heard refrains of the moral argument all over Santa Fe. One
    afternoon I walked around the city with Morty Simon, a labor lawyer
    and a staunch supporter of the living wage whose wife is Carol
    Oppenheimer. "This used to be the Sears," Simon told me as we walked,
    pointing to boutiques and high-end chain stores. "And we had a
    supermarket over here, and there was a hardware store too." Simon came
    to Santa Fe 34 years ago as a refugee from New York, he said, and for
    him the unpretentious city he once knew was gone. The wealthy retirees
    and second-home buyers had come in droves, and so had the movie stars.
    Gene Hackman and Val Kilmer had settled here; Simon had recently found
    out that someone had plans for a 26,000-square-foot house, a new local
    record. For him, the moral component of the law, the possibility of
    regaining some kind of balance, was what mattered. "It was really a
    question of, what kind of world do you want to live in?" he said.

    Several Santa Fe councilors had, over the course of the previous year,
    come to Morty Simon's view that the wage ordinance presented an
    opportunity to stop the drift between haves and have-nots. Carol
    Robertson Lopez, for example, had initially opposed the living-wage
    law but changed her mind after 30 hours of debate. "We take risks,
    oftentimes, to benefit businesses," she told me, "and we take risks to
    benefit different sectors. I felt like this was an economic risk that
    we were taking on behalf of the worker." She acknowledged that some
    residents thought the city had started down a slippery slope toward
    socialism; jokes about the People's Republic of Santa Fe were rampant.
    But Robertson Lopez says that by the night of the vote she had few
    reservations. "I think the living wage is an indicator of when we've
    given up on the federal government to solve our problems," she says.
    "So local people have to take it on their own."

    The living-wage ordinance had its final hearing on Feb. 26, 2003, in a
    rancorous debate that drew 600 people and lasted until 3 a.m. The
    proposal set a wage floor at $8.50 an hour, which would increase to
    $9.50 in January 2006 and $10.50 in 2008. It would also regulate only
    businesses with 25 or more employees.

    It passed the City Council easily, by a vote of 7 to 1. A few weeks
    later, a group of restaurant and hotel owners filed suit in state
    court on the grounds that the living-wage ordinance exceeded the
    city's powers and was a violation of their rights under New Mexico's
    constitution. A judge suspended the wage law until a trial could
    resolve the issues.

    Businesses Fight Back

    To business owners in Santa Fe, the most worrisome aspect of the
    living-wage law is that the city has sailed into uncharted territory.
    Most of the minimum-wage campaigns in the U.S. have been modest
    increases of a dollar or a dollar and a half. The numerous state
    campaigns for 2006 will probably propose raises to between $6.15 and
    $7 and hour. (When San Francisco raised its minimum wage to $8.50 an
    hour in 2004 - indexed to inflation, it is now $8.82 - California's
    state minimum wage was $6.75, so the increase was 26 percent.) And
    even staunch supporters of a higher minimum wage accept that there is
    a point at which a wage is set so high as to do more harm than good.
    "There is no other municipality in the country that believes that
    $9.50 should be the living wage," says Rob Day, the owner of the Santa
    Fe Bar and Grill and one of the plaintiffs who sued the city. In fact,
    the most apt comparison would be Great Britain, which now has a
    minimum wage equivalent to about $8.80 an hour. "They have minimum
    wages that are Santa Fe level," says Richard Freeman, a Harvard
    economist. And at least for the moment, he says, "they have lower
    unemployment than we do."

    As the lawsuit against the city progressed, though, Europe wasn't even
    a distant consideration. The focus was on the people of Santa Fe. I
    read through a transcript of New Mexicans for Free Enterprise v. City
    of Santa Fe one day this fall in a conference room at Paul, Weiss,
    Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, the white-shoe law firm in Midtown
    Manhattan that defended, pro bono, Santa Fe's right to enact the
    living-wage ordinance. In many respects, the trial, which took place
    over the course of a week in April 2004, was an unusual public
    exchange on profits, poverty and class in America. Paul Sonn, the
    lawyer at the Brennan Center at New York University who wrote the
    Santa Fe ordinance, had enlisted Sidney Rosdeitcher, a partner at
    Paul, Weiss, to be lead counsel for Santa Fe's defense. Rosdeitcher
    told me that before the trial began he wasn't convinced that there
    were many factual issues in dispute; as he saw it, the living-wage
    controversy was about the law and, in particular, whether Santa Fe had
    a legal "home rule" authority, under the provisions of the New Mexico
    constitution, to set wages, even for private industry. Nevertheless,
    several low-wage workers took the stand to relate the facts, as they
    saw them, of what the wage increase would do to improve their quality
    of life. The Rev.

    Jerome Martinez took the stand as an employer of 65 people in his
    parish and Catholic school. And a number of restaurant owners, in
    turn, explained how the new law could ultimately force them out of
    business.

    The plaintiffs - the New Mexicans for free enterprise - were not
    unsympathetic: the restaurateurs who took the stand, like Rob Day or
    Elizabeth Draiscol, who runs the popular Zia Diner in town, opened
    their books to show that their margins were thin, their costs high,
    their payrolls large. They cared about their employees (providing
    health care and benefits), trained unskilled workers who spoke little
    or no English, gave regular raises and paid starting salaries well
    above $5.15. They had built up their businesses through an
    extraordinary amount of hard work. Draiscol testified that her
    restaurant, for instance, had $2.17 million in annual revenue in the
    fiscal year of 2003. Though her assets were substantial - a restaurant
    can be valued at anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of its annual
    revenues, and Draiscol said Zia had been appraised at 66 percent of
    revenues, or about $1.4 million - she earned a salary of $49,000 a
    year. Draiscol testified that the living wage would raise her payroll,
    which accounted for 55 to 65 employees (depending on the season), by
    about $43,192 a year. Rob Day put the expenses of a living-wage
    increase even higher. In addition to labor costs, he estimated that
    the price of goods would go up as his local suppliers, forced to pay
    employees higher wages themselves, passed along their expenses to the
    Santa Fe Bar and Grill.

    Rosdeitcher showed that the restaurants had made serious errors
    overestimating their costs. Still, the increase in expenditures was
    not negligible. Over the past few years, a variety of experts have
    tried to perfect the science of predicting what will happen to a
    community in the wake of a minimum-wage change, and one of those
    experts, Robert Pollin, a professor of economics at the University of
    Massachusetts, Amherst, served as the expert witness on behalf of
    Santa Fe. Pollin projected that the living wage would affect the wages
    of about 17,000 workers. About 9,000 of those workers would receive
    raises because of the ordinance, he said; the rest would receive what
    he called "ripple effect" increases - which meant that those making,
    say, $8.50 or more before the raise would most likely receive an
    additional raise from their employers to reflect their job seniority.
    Pollin calculated that wage increases would cost businesses a total of
    $33 million. And to pay for those amounts, restaurants and hotels and
    stores would probably need to raise prices by between 1 and 3 percent.
    The question, therefore, was whether business owners were willing to
    raise prices or make less in profits. In the trial, Pollin cited an
    obscure 1994 academic experiment in which several economists had set a
    different price within the same restaurant for a fried-haddock dinner.
    In varying the price of the haddock between $8.95 and $10.95, the
    researchers' goal was to find out whether variations in cost affected
    demand in a controlled environment. As it turned out, they didn't.
    Customers ordered the haddock at both $8.95 and $10.95.

    Results From the Santa Fe Experiment

    That the city of Santa Fe has effectively become a very large
    fried-haddock-dinner experiment is difficult to deny. A state court
    judge ruled in favor of the city soon after the trial, allowing the
    living-wage ordinance to take effect in June 2004; recently, the
    judge's decision was affirmed by a state appellate court, giving the
    city, and its living-wage advocates, a sweeping victory. Many business
    owners have found these legal losses discouraging. This fall, not long
    after I visited the city, the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce sent a note
    to its members to gauge their opinion on the $8.50 living wage and the
    hike on Jan. 1 to $9.50. Some members reported that they had no
    trouble adjusting to the first raise and supported a further increase.
    (Some of these owners, whose high-end businesses employ skilled
    workers, paid more than the $8.50 to begin with.) Others insisted that
    they were not averse to a state or federal raise in the minimum but
    that Santa Fe's citywide experiment had put local businesses at a
    competitive disadvantage: companies could move outside the city limits
    or could outsource their work to cheaper places in the state. But most
    respondents opposed the law. The living wage had forced them to raise
    prices on their products and services, which they feared would cut
    into business.

    To look at the data that have accumulated since the wage went into
    effect is to get a more positive impression of the law. Last month,
    the University of New Mexico's Bureau of Business and Economic
    Research issued some preliminary findings on what had happened to the
    city over the past year and a half. The report listed some potential
    unintended consequences of the wage raise: the exemption in the
    living-wage law for businesses with fewer than 25 employees, for
    instance, created "perverse incentives" for owners to keep their
    payrolls below 25 workers. There was some concern that the high living
    wage might encourage more high-school students to drop out; in
    addition, some employers reported that workers had begun commuting in
    to Santa Fe to earn more for a job there than they could make outside
    the city.

    Yet the city's employment picture stayed healthy - overall employment
    had increased in each quarter after the living wage went into effect
    and had been especially strong for hotels and restaurants, which have
    the most low-wage jobs. Most encouraging to supporters: the number of
    families in need of temporary assistance - a reasonably good indicator
    of the squeeze on the working poor - have declined significantly. On
    the other hand, the city's gross receipts totals, a reflection of
    consumer spending and tourism, have been disappointing since the wage
    went into effect. That could suggest that prices are driving people
    away. Or it could merely mean that high gas and housing prices are
    hitting hard. The report calculates that the cost of living in Santa
    Fe rose by 9 percent a year over the past two and a half years.

    Rob Day of the Santa Fe Bar and Grill sees this as the crux of the
    matter. In his view, the problem with Santa Fe is the cost of housing,
    and there are better ways than wage regulations - housing subsidies,
    for example - to make homes more affordable. In the wake of the wage
    raise, Day told me, he eventually tweaked his prices, but not enough
    to offset the payroll increases. He let go of his executive chef and
    was himself working longer hours. "Now in the matter of a year and a
    half, I think there is a whole group of us who thought, if we were
    going to start over, this isn't the business we would have gone into,"
    he says.

    Al Lucero, the owner of Maria's New Mexican Kitchen, says that the
    living-wage battle has risked turning him into a caricature. Opponents
    backing the living wage "paint us as people who take advantage of
    workers," he told me. By contrast, Lucero sees himself as an
    upstanding member of the community who provides jobs (he has 60
    employees) and had always paid well above the federal minimum. Other
    business owners said similar things but would not speak out publicly.
    They feared alienating customers. As some told it, they had started
    businesses with a desire to create wealth and jobs in a picturesque
    small city. Then they had awakened in a mad laboratory for urban
    liberalism.

    The Issue in Albuquerque

    Long after he did his influential research with David Card on the
    effect of minimum-wage raises, Alan Krueger says, he came to see that
    ultimately the minimum wage is less about broad economic outcomes than
    about values. Which is not to say that workers' values should trump
    those of owners'. Rather, that when wealth is being redistributed from
    one party to another - and not, in the case of Santa Fe, from overpaid
    C.E.O.'s and hedge-fund managers but from everyday entrepreneurs who
    have worked long hours to succeed in their businesses - things can get
    complicated. Indeed, while it is tempting to see the wage disputes in
    Santa Fe and elsewhere as a reflection of whether one side is right or
    wrong, on either economic or moral grounds, they are, more
    confusingly, small battles in a larger war (and, in America, a very
    old war) over where to draw the line on free-market capitalism. On one
    side there is Al Lucero, on the other someone like Morty Simon, or the
    economist Robert Pollin, who says: "The principled position is, 'Why
    should anyone tell anyone what to do? Why should the government?' I
    just happen to disagree with that. A minimally decent employment
    standard, to me, overrides the case for a free market."

    And yet, the fact that voters or elected politicians should decide who
    wins these battles, rather than economists or policy makers, seems
    fitting. During Albuquerque's living-wage campaign this past fall,
    Santa Fe - the smaller, wealthier, northern neighbor - served as a
    rallying point. But it was also a question mark: Was Santa Fe's
    experience repeatable? Was it even worth pointing to as an exemplar?
    In the final days of the Albuquerque effort, Jen Kern of Acorn told me
    she had little doubt that the wage victory in Santa Fe, like the one
    in San Francisco, was an indication that a battle for creating high
    base wages in America's cities, in addition to the states, could be
    won. But these were also rich cities, liberal cities - "la-la lands,"
    as she put it. "I think with citywide minimums, if this is going to be
    the next era in the living-wage movement, it's got to look like it's
    winnable," Kern says. "The danger or the limitations of just having
    San Francisco and Santa Fe having passed this is that people in other
    parts of the country are going to say, 'Well, I'm not Santa Fe, I'm
    not San Francisco."' In Kern's view, a win "in a city like
    Albuquerque, which I think everyone thinks of as sort of a normal
    city," was a truer test.

    And it didn't pass that test. When the $7.50 ballot initiative lost by
    51 percent to 49 percent on Oct. 4, it made many in the living-wage
    movement wonder how these battles will play out over the next year or
    two. One political consultant involved in the movement questioned
    whether the Albuquerque wage itself, at $7.50 an hour, had been set
    too high by Acorn to win broad support. Matthew Henderson of Acorn,
    who ran the day-to-day campaign, said he thought they were outspent by
    their opponents. Most likely, though, the outcome was determined by
    the actual grounds on which the battle was fought. The businesses that
    opposed the $7.50 wage, represented mainly by the Greater Albuquerque
    Chamber of Commerce, challenged a small provision in the proposed
    living-wage law that would allow those enforcing a living wage to have
    wide "access" to a workplace. The campaigns soon began trading
    allegations through television ads and direct mailings about how far
    such access might go. And so the living-wage campaign had become a
    surreal fight over privacy (it would allow "complete strangers to
    enter your child's school," one mailing against the measure alleged)
    rather than wages. When I met with Terri Cole, the president and
    C.E.O. of Albuquerque's Chamber of Commerce, a few days before the
    vote, she acknowledged that the chamber opposed the living-wage law on
    philosophical grounds. But she said she saw the access clause as a
    legitimate grounds for a fight.

    Will It Play Nationally?

    In the aftermath of Albuquerque, Jen Kern took solace in the fact that
    10 years after she visited the Library of Congress, and 10 years after
    she began working on living-wage campaigns, the opposition fought not
    on the economic merits or risks of a higher wage, but on a side issue
    like privacy. Still, a loss is a loss. It is possible that the
    Albuquerque wage campaign may still prevail, in effect: New Mexico's
    governor, [4]Bill Richardson, has said he would consider a statewide
    raise this spring, presumably to $7 or $7.50, from $5.15, that would
    affect all New Mexicans. (It would, in all likelihood, leave Santa
    Fe's higher wage unaffected.) Yet such an act does little to clarify
    whether progressives can actually transform strong levels of voter
    support for higher wages into wins at the polls. Kristina Wilfore, the
    head of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a progressive advocacy
    group, says that over the years there has been anywhere from a 2 to 5
    percent increase in voter turnout specifically correlated with wage
    measures. "But people think it's some big panacea, and it's not," says
    Wilfore, who regards success as dependent on how well a local wage
    coalition (organized labor, grass-roots groups, church-based
    organizations) can work together at raising money and mobilizing
    voters.

    For specific candidates in a state or city where a wage measure is on
    the ballot, it can be similarly complicated. Representative Rahm
    Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign
    Committee, told me that the local battles over living wages reflect
    the broader debate in the U.S. over health care, retirement security
    and an advancing global economy. "Every district is different,"
    Emanuel says of the slate of Congressional races for 2006, "But there
    is not one where the living wage, competitive wages or health care
    doesn't play out. The minimum-wage issue, if it's on the ballot, is
    part of the economic argument."

    David Mermin of Lake Research Partners, who frequently conducts polls
    on minimum-wage issues, told me that the dollar level of a wage
    proposal is important, though it can vary from place to place.
    ("People have different feelings about what's a lot of money," he
    says.) But he has found that quirks can emerge. An increase to $6.15
    sometimes doesn't poll as well as an increase to $6.75, which can
    generate more intensity and broader support from voters. Mermin also
    says that wage measures have had success in recent years, Albuquerque
    notwithstanding, not because Americans feel differently but because
    campaigners are getting smarter about stressing morals over economics.
    And when handled adroitly, a wage platform can motivate the kind of
    voters who are difficult to engage in other ways: younger voters,
    infrequent voters, low-income urban voters. His research, Mermin adds,
    shows that most people who vote for the minimum wage know it's not
    going to affect their lives tomorrow: "It's not like fixing the
    health-care system, or repairing the retirement system," he says. "It
    doesn't rise to that level directly. And if you list it in 10 issues,
    it doesn't pop out in priority. But when it is on the ballot, it
    crystallizes a lot of things people feel about the economy and about
    people who are struggling." In his experience, voters seem to process
    these measures as an opportunity to take things into their own hands
    and change their world, just as Morty Simon did.

    Still, as an endgame, many in the living-wage movement see the prize
    not in a series of local victories in 2006 but in Congressional action
    that results in a substantial increase in the federal minimum wage -
    and even better - one that is indexed to inflation, so that such
    battles about raising the wage don't need to be fought every few
    years. The long-run trajectory, Paul Sonn told me, is for cities and
    states to create enough pressure to ultimately force a raise on the
    federal level. Or to put it another way, the hope is that raising
    wages across the U.S. will ultimately demonstrate to voters and to
    Washington lawmakers both the feasibility and the necessity of a
    significantly higher minimum wage. In the meantime, Sonn says, cities
    like Santa Fe play an important role in policy innovation, "really as
    sort of laboratories of economic democracy." Richard Freeman of
    Harvard echoes this point. "If you go back, a lot of the New Deal
    legislation, good or bad, came about because there was a lot of state
    legislation," Freeman says. Policies from New York or Wisconsin were
    adapted into the federal system of laws. "A lot of it came from state
    variations in the past, and I think we'll see a lot more of this in
    the next few years. The things that work the best might be adopted
    nationally."

    Of course, it also seems plausible that any kind of national coherence
    on economic - or moral - matters may have ended long ago. Just as the
    voters of states and cities have sorted themselves politically into
    red and blue, and into pro- and anti-gay marriage, in other words,
    they are increasingly sorting their wage floors and (perhaps soon)
    their health-care coverage. This trend may produce not progressive
    national policies but instead a level of local self-determination as
    yet unseen. Or as Freeman puts it, "Let Santa Fe do what it wants, but
    let's not impose that on Gadsden, Ala." That wouldn't make a federal
    increase in the minimum wage insignificant, but it would make it
    something of a backdrop for major population centers. As Robert Reich
    says, "The reality is, even if the wage were raised to $6.15, it would
    not be enough to lift a family out of poverty." And as Jen Kern points
    out, even a federal minimum wage that goes up to $7.25, which is the
    proposal from the Senate Democrats and which probably isn't going
    anywhere until 2008, doesn't approach what it now costs to live in
    some cities.

    This was why, in December, Kern and Acorn were considering the
    prospects for laying the groundwork for living-wage ordinances in
    other cities. And it's why, also in December, Paul Sonn was helping to
    write an ordinance for Lawrence Township, N.J., aimed at forcing the
    city's big-box retailers like Wal-Mart to pay a higher wage (more than
    $10 an hour) and to contribute a larger share of employee benefits.
    Last month, Sonn also pointed out to me that Santa Cruz, Calif., was
    considering plans to introduce a measure that would establish a
    minimum wage of $9.25 an hour.

    It wasn't quite Santa Fe's level, but close. And that suggested that
    the small New Mexican city, to the delight of its living-wage
    advocates and the chagrin of many business owners, was no longer just
    an experiment. Rather, it had already become something best described,
    for better or for worse, as a model.

    Jon Gertner is a contributing writer for the magazine.

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 01:33:02 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 20:33:02 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Shutting Themselves In
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601212028240.13460@panix2.panix.com>

Shutting Themselves In
http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2006/01/15/magazine/1124993107440.html

    By MAGGIE JONES

    One morning when he was 15, Takeshi shut the door to his bedroom, and
    for the next four years he did not come out. He didn't go to school.
    He didn't have a job. He didn't have friends. Month after month, he
    spent 23 hours a day in a room no bigger than a king-size mattress,
    where he ate dumplings, rice and other leftovers that his mother had
    cooked, watched TV game shows and listened to Radiohead and Nirvana.
    "Anything," he said, "that was dark and sounded desperate."

    I met Takeshi outside Tokyo not long ago, shortly after he finally
    left his parents' house to join a job-training program called New
    Start. He was wiry, with a delicate face, tousled, dyed auburn hair
    and the intensity of a hungry college freshman. "Don't laugh, but
    musicians really helped me, especially Radiohead," he told me through
    an interpreter, before scribbling some lyrics in English in my
    notebook. "That's what encouraged me to leave my room."

    The night Takeshi and I met, we were at one of New Start's
    three-times-a-week potluck dinners at a community center where the
    atmosphere was like a school dorm's - a dartboard nailed to the wall
    over a large dining table, a worn couch and overstuffed chairs in
    front of a TV blaring a soccer match. About two dozen guys lounged on
    chairs or sat on tatami mats, slurping noodles and soup and talking
    movies and music. Most were in their 20's. And many had stories very
    much like Takeshi's.

    Next to us was Shuichi, who, like Takeshi, asked that I use only his
    first name to protect his privacy. He was 20, wore low-slung jeans on
    his lanky body and a 1970's Rod Stewart shag and had dreams of being a
    guitarist. Three years ago, he dropped out of high school and became a
    recluse for a miserable year before a counselor persuaded him to join
    New Start. Behind him a young man sat on the couch wearing small
    wire-frame glasses and a shy smile. He ducked his head as he spoke,
    and his voice was so quiet that I had to lean in to hear him. After
    years of being bullied at school and having no friends, Y.S., who
    asked to be identified by his initials, retreated to his room at age
    14, and proceeded to watch TV, surf the Internet and build model cars
    - for 13 years. When he finally left his room one April afternoon last
    year, he had spent half of his life as a shut-in. Like Takeshi and
    Shuichi, Y.S. suffered from a problem known in Japan as hikikomori,
    which translates as "withdrawal" and refers to a person sequestered in
    his room for six months or longer with no social life beyond his home.
    (The word is a noun that describes both the problem and the person
    suffering from it and is also an adjective, like "alcoholic.") Some
    hikikomori do occasionally emerge from their rooms for meals with
    their parents, late-night runs to convenience stores or, in Takeshi's
    case, once-a-month trips to buy CD's. And though female hikikomori
    exist and may be undercounted, experts estimate that about 80 percent
    of the hikikomori are male, some as young as 13 or 14 and some who
    live in their rooms for 15 years or more.

    South Korea and Taiwan have reported a scattering of hikikomori, and
    isolated cases may have always existed in Japan. But only in the last
    decade and only in Japan has hikikomori become a social phenomenon.
    Like anorexia, which has been largely limited to Western cultures,
    hikikomori is a culturebound syndrome that thrives in one particular
    country during a particular moment in its history.

    As the problem has become more widespread in Japan, an industry has
    sprung up around it. There are support groups for parents,
    psychologists who specialize in it (including one who counsels
    shut-ins via the Internet) and several halfway programs like New
    Start, offering dorms and job training. For all the attention, though,
    hikikomori remains confounding. The Japanese public has blamed
    everything from smothering mothers to absent, overworked fathers, from
    school bullying to the lackluster economy, from academic pressure to
    video games. "I sometimes wonder whether or not I understand this
    issue," confessed Shinako Tsuchiya, a member of Parliament, one
    afternoon in her Tokyo office. She has led a study group on
    hikikomori, but most of her colleagues aren't interested, and the
    government has yet to allocate funds. "They don't understand how
    serious it is."

    That may be in part because the scope of the problem is frustratingly
    elusive. A leading psychiatrist claims that one million Japanese are
    hikikomori, which, if true, translates into roughly 1 percent of the
    population. Even other experts' more conservative estimates, ranging
    between 100,000 and 320,000 sufferers, are alarming, given how dire
    the consequences may be. As a hikikomori ages, the odds that he'll
    re-enter the world decline. Indeed, some experts predict that most
    hikikomori who are withdrawn for a year or more may never fully
    recover. That means that even if they emerge from their rooms, they
    either won't get a full-time job or won't be involved in a long-term
    relationship. And some will never leave home. In many cases, their
    parents are now approaching retirement, and once they die, the fate of
    the shut-ins - whose social and work skills, if they ever existed,
    will have atrophied - is an open question.

    That isn't a problem just for the hikikomori and their families but
    also for a country that has been struggling with a sagging economy, a
    plummeting birth rate and what has been called a youth crisis. The
    rate of "school refusal" (kids who skip school for one month or more a
    year, which is sometimes a precursor to hikikomori) has doubled since
    1990. And along with hikikomori sufferers, hundreds of thousands of
    other young men and women are neither working nor in school. After 15
    years of sluggish growth, the full-time salaryman jobs of the previous
    generation have withered, and in their places are often part-time jobs
    or no jobs and a sense of hopelessness among many Japanese about the
    future.

    In addition to the economy, Japanese culture and sex roles play a
    strong part in the hikikomori phenomenon. "Men start to feel the
    pressure in junior high school, and their success is largely defined
    in a couple of years," said James Roberson, a cultural anthropologist
    at Tokyo Jogakkan College and an editor of the book "Men and
    Masculinities in Contemporary Japan." "Hikikomori is a resistance to
    that pressure. Some of them are saying: 'To hell with it. I don't like
    it and I don't do well."' Also, this is a society where kids can drop
    out. In Japan, children commonly live with their parents into their
    20's, and despite the economic downturn, plenty of parents can afford
    to support their children indefinitely - and do. As one hikikomori
    expert put it, "Japanese parents tell their children to fly while
    holding firmly to their ankles."

    One result is a new underclass of young men who can't or won't join
    the full-time working world and who are a stark counterpoint to
    Japan's long-running image as a country bursting with industrious
    salarymen. "We used to believe everyone was equal," said Noki
    Futagami, the founder of New Start. "But the gap is growing. I suspect
    there will be a bipolarization of this society. There will be the
    group of people who can be in the global world. And then there will be
    others, like the hikikomori. The ones who cannot be in that world."

    I n the mid-1980's, young men began showing up at Dr. Tamaki Saito's
    office who were lethargic and uncommunicative and spent most of their
    days in their rooms. "I didn't have a name for it," Saito told me one
    Friday evening at Sofukai Sasaki Hospital outside Tokyo, where he's
    the medical director. Saito is soft-spoken with sleepy eyes and thick
    black hair that he brushes off his forehead as he talks. For the last
    decade he has been Japan's reigning expert on hikikomori, and his
    office shelves are filled with books he has written on the subject,
    including "How to Rescue Your Child From Hikikomori."

    "Initially, I diagnosed it as a type of depression or personality
    disorder, or schizophrenia," Saito went on to say. But as he treated
    an increasing number of patients with similar symptoms, he used the
    term hikikomori for the problem. Soon after, the media latched on to
    the phenomenon, dubbing the shut-ins "the lost generation," "the
    missing million" and "the ultimate in social parasitism" and making
    hikikomori the focus of dozens of books, magazine articles and films -
    including a documentary, "Home," in which a filmmaker tracked the life
    of his shut-in brother. At the same time, hikikomori were making
    headlines for sensationalistic crimes, like the kidnapping of a
    9-year-old girl by a shut-in who hid her in his room for almost a
    decade.

    In reality, though, most hikikomori are too trapped by inertia to
    leave their houses, much less plot violent schemes. Instead, they are
    more likely to suffer depression or obsessive-compulsive behaviors. In
    some cases these psychological problems lead to hikikomori. But often
    they are symptoms - a consequence of spending months cooped up inside
    their rooms and inside their heads. One hikikomori took showers
    several hours a day and wore gloves as thick as an astronaut's to ward
    off germs (he eventually joined a halfway program, threw away the
    gloves and got a job), while another scrubbed the tiles in his
    family's shower for hours at a time. "Our water bills were 10 times
    what they'd normally be," his brother told me. "It's as if he was
    trying to clean the dirt in his mind and his heart."

    Saito, who has treated more than 1,000 hikikomori patients, views the
    problem as largely a family and social disease, caused in part by the
    interdependence of Japanese parents and children and the pressure on
    boys, eldest sons in particular, to excel in academics and the
    corporate world. Hikikomori often describe years of rote classroom
    learning followed by afternoons and evenings of intense cram school to
    prepare them for high-school or university entrance exams. Today's
    parents are more demanding because Japan's declining birth rate means
    they have fewer children on whom to push their hopes, says Mariko
    Fujiwara, director of research at the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and
    Living in Tokyo. If a kid doesn't follow a set path to an elite
    university and a top corporation, many parents - and by extension
    their children - view it as a failure. "After World War II," Fujiwara
    told me, "Japanese only knew a certain kind of salaryman future, and
    now they lack the imagination and the creativity to think about the
    world in a new way."

    Those post-World War II salarymen who did work so tirelessly were at
    least rewarded with the security of lifetime employment. "It was
    simple in my youth - you went to high school, then to the University
    of Tokyo," says Noki Futagami of New Start, referring to Japan's most
    prestigious university. "And then you got a job in a major
    corporation. That's where you grew up. The corporation took care of
    you for the rest of your life." Now in its place is a leaner global
    economy that demands the kinds of skills - independent thinking,
    communication, entrepreneurship - that many parents and schools don't
    teach. Boys have spent their young lives being educated for a work
    system that has shriveled, leaving many feeling inadequate and stuck.

    Many hikikomori also describe miserable school years when they didn't,
    or couldn't, conform to the norm. They were bullied for being too fat
    or too shy or even for being better than everyone else at sports or
    music. As the Japanese saying goes, "The nail that sticks out gets
    hammered in." One hikikomori was a victim of bullying in fifth grade
    because he excelled in baseball without having played as long as his
    teammates. His father admitted that he did nothing to help him. "We
    told him to handle it himself. We thought he was stronger than he
    was." Fujiwara says that urban Japanese parents lead increasingly
    isolated lives - removed from the extended family and tight-knit
    communities of previous generations - and simply don't know how to
    teach their children to communicate and negotiate relationships with
    peers.

    In other societies the response from many youths would be different.
    If they didn't fit into the mainstream, they might join a gang or
    become a Goth or be part of some other subculture. But in Japan, where
    uniformity is still prized and reputations and outward appearances are
    paramount, rebellion comes in muted forms, like hikikomori. Any urge a
    hikikomori might have to venture into the world to have a romantic
    relationship or sex, for instance, is overridden by his self-loathing
    and the need to shut his door so that his failures, real or perceived,
    will be cloaked from the world. "Japanese young people are considered
    the safest in the world because the crime rate is so low," Saito said.
    "But I think it's related to the emotional state of people. In every
    country, young people have adjustment disorders. In Western culture,
    people are homeless or drug addicts. In Japan, it's apathy problems
    like hikikomori."

    One Friday afternoon not long ago, Yoshimi Kawakami waited at a
    doorstep near Kyoto, expecting to be stood up. It has happened in the
    snow in Tokyo and in the heat of Kyoto summer afternoons. She has
    waited for two hours or more, fueled by the hope that - this time -
    someone will answer.

    It is part of being a "rental sister," as the outreach counselors are
    known at New Start. Rental sisters are often a hikikomori's first
    point of contact and his route back to the outside world. (There are a
    few rental brothers, too, but "women are softer, and hikikomori
    respond better to them," one counselor told me.)

    The relationship usually begins after a parent telephones New Start
    and arranges for consultations and routine visits from a rental
    sister, which costs about $8,000 a year. The rental sister then writes
    a letter to the hikikomori, introducing herself and the program. "I
    never read it; I threw it away," said Y.S., the 28-year-old with the
    shy smile I'd met at New Start's potluck. When Kawakami arrived at his
    house in Chiba, near Tokyo, for the first time, Y.S. opened his
    bedroom door long enough to tell her, "Please, go home."

    It was a typical first meeting. "We'll just talk through the door,"
    Kumi Hashizume, a counselor at New Start, said. "And tell them our
    interests and hobbies. Very rarely do we get any words back. And if
    they do speak, it's very stressed." Months can go by before a
    hikikomori opens his door and more months before he ventures out with
    a rental sister to the park or to the movies. The goal is that
    eventually he will enroll in New Start and live in the program's dorms
    and participate in its job-training programs, at a day-care center, a
    coffee shop, a restaurant.

    Y.S. was not going to be one of Kawakami's easier cases. On her second
    visit, Y.S. refused again to open the door. "I told him it was snowing
    and I might have to spend the night unless he came out to talk to me,"
    she recalled. Kawakami, who is 31 and girlish in a miniskirt, white
    platforms and sea green eye shadow, has a playful, cajoling manner
    with hikikomori clients, as if she were an older sister prodding an
    obstinate kid brother. "He came out that day and sat stiff-straight in
    the living room for two hours while I and another person from New
    Start talked to him about ourselves and the program," she told me
    through an interpreter. By the fifth visit, Y.S. still refused to
    talk. So Kawakami asked him to write a letter about himself. Y.S. no
    longer remembered what he wrote, but Kawakami did: he told her his
    birth date and that he loved making plastic model cars. He wrote: "I
    don't think the situation is good, but I don't know how to solve it.
    This might be a chance to change it. But I don't know if I can do it."
    When Kawakami asked him to create a car for some children at a
    day-care center, two weeks later he gave her one, meticulously
    detailed and painted. "He seemed so pleased," she said. "It was as if
    he'd never been asked to do something for someone else before. He was
    sitting in his room all day where nothing was expected of him, and he
    did nothing to show his value." Her visits continued every other week
    for six months, and she encouraged Y.S. to set a goal to leave home
    before his next birthday. On the day before he turned 28, he packed
    two boxes into Kawakami's car, and they drove two hours to New Start.

    Now, four months later, Kawakami stood in front of the house of a new
    client, a 26-year-old former engineering grad student named Hiroshi,
    who, for reasons that were unclear to his parents and Kawakami,
    stopped attending school two years ago. He goes out occasionally - no
    one knows where - particularly, it seemed, when Kawakami was scheduled
    to visit.

    While the stereotype of a hikikomori is a man who never leaves his
    room, many shut-ins do venture out once a day or once a week to a
    konbini, as a 24-hour convenience store is known in Japan. There, a
    hikikomori can find a to-go bento box for breakfast, lunch and dinner,
    which means he doesn't have to rely on his mother to cook, and he
    doesn't have to suffer through a meal in public. And for hikikomori,
    who tend to live on a reversed clock, waking around noon and going to
    sleep in the early-morning hours, the konbini is a safe and anonymous
    late-night choice: the cashier doesn't make small talk, and the
    salarymen in their suits and schoolchildren in their uniforms -
    reminders of the life the hikikomori is not living - are asleep at
    home.

    Konbini are just one of the accouterments that facilitate the
    hikikomori life. They don't cause hikikomori any more than do the TV's
    and computers and video games that hikikomori rely on to fill out the
    tedious hours. But if objects can be enablers, to borrow from recovery
    lingo, then modern technology would be among them, as would the
    konbini, where, like nocturnal animals, hikikomori grab what they need
    to feed their sheltered lives and quickly return home before the
    morning light cracks and the working world reappears.

    Back at Hiroshi's house, no one knew whether he was at a konbini or
    elsewhere or when he'd be back. "I told him you were coming this week,
    and he's been out every day," his mother, Mieko, said, greeting
    Kawakami at the door. Mieko and her husband, Kazuo, are the parents of
    four grown children and are still struggling with how to get their
    eldest son out of their house. Hiroshi rarely speaks to either of
    them, and though his bedroom is 15 feet from the kitchen, he has had
    only two meals with them in the last two years. Mieko would gladly
    cook three meals a day for him if he'd eat them. "It's very hard for
    me as a mother," she said. She occasionally finds empty packages of
    fermented soybeans in the kitchen garbage can - one clue that he eats
    at all.

    At their dining-room table that afternoon, Mieko and Kazuo offered a
    few theories about Hiroshi's retreat. He was embarrassed about an oral
    presentation in graduate school; he felt he had performed terribly.
    She and her husband expected a lot from him - "maybe too much," Mieko
    said. He was smart, but they didn't praise him or express affection.
    And they pushed him to attend a junior high school he disliked. "We
    forced him to study hard," Mieko said, "and our relationship wasn't
    good after that."

    As she spoke, the front door shut and Hiroshi slinked by the dining
    room, disappearing into his bedroom. Mieko raised her eyebrows and
    exchanged a glance with Kawakami, who took a deep breath and followed
    him in.

    "You knew I was coming! And you left!" she teased him in a lilting
    voice, as she sat down on a tatami mat across from him. He was tall
    and skinny, dressed in chinos and sneakers and a button-down shirt,
    with the sleeves rolled above his elbows. He crouched on the floor and
    seemed distracted, as if he had come from someplace important and had
    an equally important appointment to get to shortly.

    By Japanese standards, his room was enormous, with a wall of delicate
    shoji screens leading to a rock garden. But it was hard to imagine
    what he did there all day. There were no stacks of manga, the popular
    Japanese comic books, no DVD's, no computer games, all things found in
    the rooms of most hikikomori. The TV was broken, and the hard drive
    was missing from his computer. There were a few papers on his desk,
    including a newsletter from New Start that Kawakami brought on her
    last visit. Otherwise, the only evidence that this was a hikikomori's
    room were three holes in the wall - the size of fists. Shut-ins often
    describe punching their walls in a fit of anger or frustration at
    their parents or at their own lives. The holes were suggestive too of
    the practice of "cutting" among American adolescent girls. Both acts
    seemed to be attempts to infuse feeling into a numb life.

    "You stay in this room all day? What do you do?" Kawakami needled
    Hiroshi.

    Hiroshi looked away and folded his legs under him.

    "I don't know what I do. Nothing important. Is it so bad to stay in
    your room?"

    She told him she wanted him to visit New Start. Next week? she asked.
    The week after? He didn't say no but wouldn't say yes. Instead, he
    rubbed his arm, refolded his shirt sleeve, crossed his legs again. He
    looked out the window, up at the ceiling, then glanced back at
    Kawakami before shifting his eyes away again. He was like a trapped
    bird, curious about her, but also, it seemed, scared and eager to
    flee.

    Still, Hiroshi interacted with her and was engaged. The exchange
    between them was very different from one I saw the day before between
    Hajime Kitazawa, a rental brother, and a client named Eisuke, whom he
    has visited every week for five months. Eisuke has been a shut-in for
    four years and rarely responds with more than a word or two. The
    biggest breakthrough came one day when Eisuke turned on his
    PlayStation 2 and set out a joystick - an invitation to play. But
    Kitazawa later lost ground when he asked him about his plans for the
    future. Eisuke wouldn't speak or make eye contact for more than 30
    minutes. "I dropped the subject," Kitazawa said. "Then we went back to
    playing the game, and he started to react again."

    Back in Hiroshi's room, that same question didn't seem as risky. "I
    don't have anything I want to do," he said. "That's why I'm in this
    trouble. I missed the chance. I was in graduate school while most
    people were getting jobs. If I'd gone to work it would have been
    good."

    Hiroshi didn't say why working would have been better or why it was
    too late at age 26 to start a career. He said only that he wouldn't
    leave the house "until I know exactly what I want to do." It was
    typical hikikomori thinking: better to stay in your room than risk
    venturing into the world and failing.

    As she walked back to the train station that evening, though, Kawakami
    said she felt hopeful that Hiroshi would come to visit New Start soon,
    even though about 30 percent of rental sisters' clients won't leave
    their rooms and another 10 percent of those who do join the program
    eventually return to the hikikomori life. "We usually limit our visits
    to a year, but if we see progress, we'll keep coming back," a
    counselor said. One rental sister visited a 17-year-old for more than
    18 months before he finally joined the program. And in one of the most
    extreme cases, Takeshi Watanabe of the Tokyo Mental Health Academy
    counseled a hikikomori for 10 years - 500 visits - until he persuaded
    him to leave home. He has since graduated from a university, works
    part time and last summer vacationed in Spain.

    O n a Saturday afternoon thick with Tokyo humidity, about 30 mothers
    and fathers milled around the hallway of a community center in a Tokyo
    suburb. Many were retirees, and under different circumstances they
    might have been on the golf course or enrolled in the center's
    swing-dancing class. Instead, at a time when they expected their sons
    and daughters to be married and having children of their own, once a
    month they spend a weekend afternoon at a hikikomori parents' support
    group. "I'm 69 and I would be retired, but hikikomori is expensive,"
    said Kouhei Nishizuka, a father with neatly combed silver hair and the
    stooped shoulders of someone who spends too much time at his desk.

    He has been supporting his 28-year-old daughter, among the minority of
    female hikikomori, for the last eight years. "I have been to
    hospitals; I've read books," he said as he sat in the lobby holding a
    folder thick with newsletters and reports from the support group. "My
    wife and I put her in the hospital, but doctors couldn't help her. So
    what do we do? I don't know what caused it. She wanted to be an
    animator, but found it difficult to find a job." Over time, he said,
    she lost more and more weight. "I worried about her." So he asked her
    to move home. "Then she was worried about people in the neighborhood
    seeing her, and that's when it started. I think she hates to be out
    because she doesn't want to be compared to the neighbors. I'm trying
    to get her to gain energy to do something."

    By the time parents seek help, often their child has been shut in for
    a year or more. "When they call," Dr. Saito said, "I offer them three
    choices: 1) Come to me for counseling; 2) Kick your child out; 3)
    Accept your child's state and be prepared to take care of him for the
    rest of your life. They choose Option 1." He also offers poignantly
    simple parenting tips, like not leaving dinner at a child's doorstep.
    "You make dinner and call him to the table, and if he doesn't come
    then let him fend for himself." In addition to meals, parents often
    provide monetary allowances for their adult child, and in rare cases,
    if a child has become verbally or physically abusive, parents move
    out, leaving their home to the shut-in.

    "They do everything for the child," one counselor said. "When we take
    a step forward, the parents get afraid. They don't want turbulence."

    But some parents also genuinely fear that their children won't survive
    without them. "Maybe we should have kicked him out," Mieko, Hiroshi's
    mother, told me. "But we couldn't in the beginning. And now it's too
    late. I don't know how he'd take care of himself. He doesn't have the
    skills. We'd just end up supporting him." Meanwhile, her daughter
    wants to marry, and Mieko worries that her hikikomori son hurts her
    chances. "People check a family's background," she said. Reputation is
    everything.

    Which means it takes some courage to pick up the telephone and call
    New Start or Saito or Sadatsugu Kudo, who runs an organization called
    Youth Support Center, which fields about 1,500 calls a year from
    families seeking help. "You have to understand the relationship
    between parent and child in Japan," he says. "It is so unique. Most
    parents feel that hikikomori is a failure of their child-rearing. And
    consulting someone about it is getting rid of your responsibility as a
    parent; it's like getting rid of your child."

    A few weeks after I first met Takeshi, the Radiohead fan at the New
    Start potluck, I returned to visit. Takeshi was getting off work at
    the program's coffee shop and offered to show me his room, a few
    blocks away in a low-slung concrete building with linoleum floors. The
    bedroom was no bigger than 8 feet by 8 feet and decorated with little
    more than a single-bed futon, CD's and a guitar. Next door was a
    common room, and across from it was a closed door with a small stream
    of light underneath. Takeshi pointed to it and said: "He's a little
    strange. We very rarely talk. He buys his own dinner and eats in his
    room all the time."

    After Takeshi spent four years in his childhood bedroom, he was
    finally motivated to leave, he said, by his frustration with himself
    and by the Radiohead lyrics: "This is my final fit, my final
    bellyache." Then he said: "It's not hopeful, but I learned that the
    world is not such a good place, and regardless we have to move on.
    That caught my heart." He re-enrolled in high school, and on that
    first day out, his skin was pale from being inside for so long; he
    didn't shave or brush his teeth; his pants and white T-shirt were
    dirty. "I'd forgotten all the basic rules." None of the students
    talked to him, a pattern that would more or less continue for the next
    two years. It wasn't until he graduated and found a job cleaning
    offices where his co-workers were in their 50's and 60's - "These
    people were adults and didn't have a bias about me and my background"
    - that he had conversations again. Still, when he wasn't at work, he
    was home, where his mother was worried enough that she eventually
    called New Start. And after meeting a rental sister once, he joined
    the program.

    The night of my visit, Takeshi took me to the Wednesday potluck
    already under way. The room was bustling with more than 20 people and
    several conversations going on at once. A couple of guys were sitting
    alone, and some seemed much younger than their years, as if frozen in
    the time they first retreated to their rooms. But overall this group
    included New Start's most promising clients; another 40 percent don't
    come to the communal meals at all. And then there are the hikikomori
    who never cross the doorway of New Start or places like it. The
    director of one parents' support group receives letters from
    hikikomori in their 40's who have been withdrawn for a decade or more.
    "I tell them about halfway programs," he said, "but they never go."

    It was 9 p.m. and the potluck was winding down. Before Takeshi
    returned to his dorm, I asked him what he wanted to do once he leaves
    New Start. He looked at me for a few seconds, assessing, I sensed,
    whether he could trust me. "You might find it silly, but I'd like to
    do something with TV variety shows," he said. "I'd like to be a
    scriptwriter." He also wants to enroll in a university. "But there are
    idealistic dreams," he said, "and then there's reality." Neither plan
    seemed particularly far-fetched, I told him. "You think so?" he said.
    "I don't know. It might be too late for me." He is 23 years old.

    Maggie Jones is a Japan Society media fellow. She last wrote for the
    magazine about the grown "victims" of a child sex-abuse ring recanting
    their stories.


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 01:34:45 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 20:34:45 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Women Who Make the World Worse,
	' by Kate O'Beirne
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601212030340.13460@panix2.panix.com>

'Women Who Make the World Worse,' by Kate O'Beirne
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/books/review/15cox.html
Easy Targets

    WOMEN WHO MAKE THE WORLD WORSE
    And How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Families,
    Military, Schools, and Sports.
    By Kate O'Beirne.
    230 pp. Sentinel. $24.95.

    Review by ANA MARIE COX

    I was as eager as anyone to discover the individuals whom Kate
    O'Beirne, an editor at National Review, identifies as "women who
    make the world worse." While I fantasized about an exhaustive
    catalog - running, say, from female suicide bombers to Martha
    Stewart - I would have been pleased if her new book were just
    another haphazard laundry list on the order of Bernard Goldberg's
    "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America" or "The Sexiest Man
    Alive." Whether the inventory springs from Joe McCarthy or People
    magazine, the fake authority of this sort of hectic litany makes
    for diverting cocktail conversation, alternate schemes of
    organization and elaborate conspiracy theories. After all,
    Americans have been second-guessing official lists since the Bill
    of Rights.

    But O'Beirne does not deliver on expectations for a roll call of
    Republican enemies. Sure, she tosses invective at some specific
    (and predictable) targets, but for the most part the women in her
    book are less a real threat to the contemporary conservative
    project than a history lesson. Her salvos against such dusty icons
    as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and Catharine
    MacKinnon do all these women the enormous favor of making them
    relevant again. And, surely, anytime anyone recalls the deeds of
    Bella Abzug, an angel gets its wings.

    In chapters on child care, women in the military, women's athletics
    programs and education, O'Beirne dutifully catalogs the rhetorical
    (and occasional legislative) excesses of these high-profile
    activists and some of their less prominent sisters in academe. She
    recalls The Washington Post's refutation of the oft-repeated claim
    that Super Bowl Sunday brings a spike in domestic violence. She
    mocks MacKinnon's (decades-old) contention that "all heterosexual
    intercourse is rape." She collects arguments against the charge
    that women are paid less than men for jobs of "comparable worth."
    And she drums up outrage against elimination of high school
    wrestling teams under the duress of Title IX. We are frequently
    reminded that there are real biological differences between women
    and men. These are op-ed conservatism's greatest hits, a retro
    compilation one might market as "Now That's What I Call Culture
    War!"

    O'Beirne did not compose these familiar tunes. She regurgitates
    whole pints of earlier books with similar arguments, particularly
    "The War Against Boys" by Christina Hoff Sommers and Daphne Patai's
    "Heterophobia." Copious quotations from Steven Rhoads's "Taking Sex
    Differences Seriously" form the backbone for her conclusion,
    amusingly entitled "Mother Nature Is a Bitch." O'Beirne's endnotes
    lack much in the way of citations of original research, but they
    are an excellent bibliography for anyone interested in the history
    of modern (or not-so-modern) antifeminism.

    Indeed, it is O'Beirne's desire to demonize feminists in general,
    rather than naming names, that really disappoints. When she's not
    picking off the old and weak, she's aiming for the broad side of a
    barn.

    One of O'Beirne's few truly compelling arguments - though, again,
    not exactly an original one - attacks the idea of an electoral
    "gender gap" that runs decisively in the Democrats' favor: "There
    is no monolithic women's vote and there is no monolithic women's
    agenda," she writes (though she adds that the "feminized Democratic
    Party" has a big problem because it has lost its appeal with male
    voters). Would that she would give feminists the same credit for
    not being a monolith. I have considered myself feminist since I
    understood what the word meant, but O'Beirne's depiction made me
    reconsider. According to her, "feminists have been peddling the
    message that women should count on the workplace for fulfillment,"
    "classrooms have been turned into feminist re-education camps to
    stamp out all sex differences and smother the natural attributes
    and aspirations of girls and boys," and (as she puts it in her
    chapter on the military) "a woman being brutally killed alongside
    men is a long-awaited feminist dream of equality."

    Clearly, I've missed some meetings.

    In the age of the book-as-rant (see Goldberg, Ann Coulter, Al
    Franken and Michael Moore), perhaps one shouldn't expect better
    than O'Beirne's simplistic caricatures. Today American women have
    unprecedented access to educational and professional opportunity
    and to the machinery of power. O'Beirne, however, attributes
    women's progress not to any feminist agitation but to "the natural
    evolution of social expectations."

    Unfortunately, there is no such thing. Social change is often the
    product of confrontation between extremes. To depict one extreme as
    pernicious and all-powerful reduces real debate about equality into
    a cartoon about underarm hair. Feminism isn't always pretty (see:
    underarm hair). Without it, however, Kate O'Beirne would have been
    unlikely to have this book published - and most women would not
    have their own money to waste on it.

    Ana Marie Cox is the author of the novel "Dog Days."


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 01:34:55 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 20:34:55 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Every New Yorker Issue (Some Swapping Required)
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601212030560.13460@panix2.panix.com>

Every New Yorker Issue (Some Swapping Required)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/business/media/16yorker.html

[Alert me, in details I can understand, about how to do this sort of 
thing.]

    By SARA IVRY

    When Peter Vermelen, an avid reader of The New Yorker, got word
    last year that the magazine's entire archive would be available on
    DVD in September, he ordered a copy. When he was thwarted in his
    efforts to copy the multidisc anthology onto his hard drive - so he
    could read and search the content from there rather than using the
    discs - he became angry and started writing about his frustration
    on Hooptyrides, a blog he maintains under the nom de plume Mister
    Jalopy.

    "I looked forward to having 'The Complete New Yorker' on my laptop.
    Airplane trips would never be the same," he wrote last month. In
    response, other online posts, including one on the widely read
    BoingBoing.net, weighed in with tips on how to override the digital
    rights management software that seemed to prevent copying from the
    eight DVD's.

    The essence of the complaint was that switching among the discs to
    conduct thematic searches was "really onerous," Mr. Vermelen said.
    "If you want to read the magazine in order, there's no problem. But
    if you want to search by Thurber or Capote or Chinatown or
    Halloween or some broad topic, it's spread over eight discs."

    Edward Klaris, The New Yorker's general counsel and project
    director of "The Complete New Yorker," shrugged off concerns that
    disc-switching posed a burden, saying that each disc contained 500
    issues, an ample store of articles.

    "The people who are complaining are the exception to the rule," Mr.
    Klaris said, noting that the bloggers weighing in on the topic tend
    to be supporters of open-source technologies.

    That bloggers are counseling each other on how to circumvent
    software restrictions is "an inevitable result in this day and age
    and not particularly of concern." He would not say whether the
    magazine would take legal action against anyone who has made a copy
    of the anthology.

    Mr. Klaris also dismissed a subsequent grievance, which has
    elicited fiery online debate among Mr. Vermelen and others, that
    the software used to read the DVD's could mine data about what
    specific articles users were reading to sell to advertisers. Mr.
    Vermelen inferred that a data collection enterprise might be under
    way, because of a clause in the anthology's user agreement.

    Mr. Klaris said the clause's inclusion was inadvertent. He said
    that the magazine had no intention of accessing that information,
    and that user agreements in future releases of the DVD set would
    not include that provision. SARA IVRY


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 22:47:26 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 17:47:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: If New York's Irish Claim Nobility,
 Science May Back Up the Blarney
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601212031200.13460@panix2.panix.com>

If New York's Irish Claim Nobility, Science May Back Up the Blarney
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/science/18irish.html

    By NICHOLAS WADE

    Listen more kindly to the New York Irishmen who assure you that the
    blood of early Irish kings flows in their veins. At least 2 percent
    of the time, they are telling the truth, according to a new genetic
    survey.

    The survey not only bolsters the bragging rights of some Irishmen
    claiming a proud heritage but also provides evidence of the
    existence of Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the
    fifth century A.D. regarded by some historians as more legend than
    real.

    The survey shows that 20 percent of men in northwestern Ireland
    carry a distinctive genetic signature on their Y chromosomes,
    possibly inherited from Niall, who was said to have had numerous
    sons, or some other leader in a position to have had many
    descendants.

    About one in 50 New Yorkers of European origin - including men with
    names like O'Connor, Flynn, Egan, Hynes, O'Reilly and Quinn - carry
    the genetic signature linked with Niall and northwestern Ireland,
    writes Daniel Bradley, the geneticist who conducted the survey with
    colleagues at Trinity College in Dublin. He arrived at that
    estimate after surveying the Y chromosomes in a genetic database
    that included New Yorkers.

    About 400,000 city residents say they are of Irish ancestry,
    according to a 2004 Census Bureau survey.

    "I hope this means that I inherit a castle in Ireland," the
    novelist Peter Quinn said by phone from the Peter McManus cafe in
    Chelsea. Some McManuses also have the genetic signature. ("I hang
    out with kings," Mr. Quinn said.)

    He said his father used to tell him that all the Quinn men were
    bald from wearing a crown. But he added, "We spent 150 years in the
    Bronx, and I think we wiped out all the royal genes in the
    process."

    The report appears in the January issue of The American Journal of
    Human Genetics.

    Dr. Bradley said he was as surprised at finding evidence that Niall
    existed as he would have been to learn that King Arthur had been
    real. Niall of the Nine Hostages was so named because in his early
    reign he consolidated his power by taking hostages from opposing
    royal families.

    He estimated that two million to three million men worldwide carry
    the distinctive Y chromosome signature, which he named the I.M.H.,
    for Irish modal haplotype. A haplotype is a set of genetic
    mutations.

    If he was indeed the patriarch, Niall of the Nine Hostages would
    rank among the most prolific males in history, behind Genghis Khan,
    ancestor of 16 million men in Asia, but ahead of Giocangga, founder
    of China's Manchu dynasty and forefather of some 1.6 million. This
    calculation, and the estimate of the I.M.H. signature's frequency
    in New York, were derived from a database of Y chromosome
    mutations.

    The writer and actor Malachy McCourt said he was not surprised,
    since every Irish person is related to a king.

    "They didn't mind who they slept with, and they had first dibs," he
    said. "It's so boring. It's not like the house of Windsor; every
    tribe had its own king."

    He said Niall was "a highwayman. He was a slave trader, nothing
    noble about him. He was a pirate."

    The link between the Niall Y chromosome and social power, which
    would have enabled the king to leave many descendants, "stretches
    back to the fifth century, which is a long time in Western European
    terms," Dr. Bradley said.

    Asked if he himself carried the Niall signature, Dr. Bradley said
    he did and was "quite pleased," even though tradition holds that
    Niall captured and enslaved St. Patrick, who brought Christianity
    to Ireland.

    Niall is said to have obtained hostages from each of the five
    provinces that then constituted Ireland, as well as from Scotland,
    the Saxons, the Britons and the Franks. He is thought to be the
    patriarch of the Ui Neill, meaning "the descendants of Niall," a
    group of dynasties that claimed the high kingship and ruled the
    northwest and other parts of Ireland from about A.D. 600 to 900.

    But historians have tended to view the Ui Neill as a political
    construct, doubting their genealogical claims of descent from Niall
    and even whether Niall existed at all.

    When the Irish took surnames, however, around A.D. 1000, some chose
    names associated with the Ui Neill dynasties. Dr. Bradley tested
    Irishmen with Ui Neill surnames and found the I.M.H. signature was
    much more common among them than among Irishmen as a whole.

    The men with Ui Neill surnames tested by Dr. Bradley included those
    with the names, in anglicized form, O'Gallagher, O'Boyle,
    O'Doherty, O'Donnell, O'Connor, Cannon, Bradley, O'Reilly, Flynn,
    McKee, Campbell, Devlin, Donnelly, Egan, Gormley, Hynes, McCaul,
    McGovern, McLoughlin, McManus, McMenamin, Molloy, O'Kane, O'Rourke
    and Quinn. (The prefix "O" is sometimes dropped.)

    Dr. Katherine Simms, a Celtic historian at Trinity College who
    advised the geneticists and was a co-author of their report, said
    some historians had assumed that the common ancestor of the Ui
    Neill was "merely a mythical divine ancestor figure, imagined in
    order to explain the political links that existed between the
    dynasties themselves in the later period."

    But Dr. Bradley's findings, she said, "appear to confirm that the
    Ui Neill really did come from a common ancestor," and perhaps that
    the mythical narrative of Niall's birth and ascent to kingship "had
    a genetic basis."

    The earliest Irish genealogies, if true, must have been recorded in
    oral form for several generations, since writing did not become
    common in Ireland until 600. Dr. Daibhi O'Croinin of the National
    University of Ireland in Galway said he was confident that
    "extensive genealogical material" could have been memorized and put
    into writing later, but "whether Niall of the Nine Hostages ever
    existed is itself a moot point."

    Another Celtic expert, Dr. Catherine McKenna of Harvard University,
    said in an e-mail message that "historians will be skeptical about
    the notion that all of the Ui Neill descend from the ancestor who
    seems to be implied by the genetic evidence, or that this ancestor
    was Niall Noigiallach (Niall of the Nine Hostages) himself."

    She said the number of Niall's supposed sons grew from 4 to 14 as
    new dynasties achieved power and claimed descent from Niall. "The
    evidence for the Ui Neill as a political construct is strong enough
    that historians wouldn't readily believe in the historical reality
    of Niall himself," she said.

    Still, the new genetic evidence may convince historians that there
    was a common ancestor for at least one of the major branches of the
    Ui Neill, such as the Cenel nEogain, which lived in an area of
    northwest Ireland where the I.M.H. is most common.

    "In fact," Dr. McKenna said, "I find the evidence, from that point
    of view, really fascinating."

    Michelle O'Donnell contributed reporting for this article.


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 22:47:41 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 17:47:41 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Nine Short Scenes of Women in Crisis
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601212031360.13460@panix2.panix.com>

Nine Short Scenes of Women in Crisis
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/movies/redcarpet/15hold.html

[This is a lovely story, but of no relevance to me whatsoever. A review of 
the entire film is appended. That's the end of 30 NYT pieces. It took me 
an hour and fifteen minutes to format and forward them. Now back to 
reading MSS.]

    The Unforgettable Moment
    By STEPHEN HOLDEN

    EACH of the nine brief scenes in Rodrigo Garc?a's [4]"Nine Lives" is a
    little epiphany that revolves around a different woman under emotional
    stress. Together they add up to a collection of wrenching, minutely
    observed moments that suggest Chekhov short stories. Each is written,
    acted and directed with such exquisite calibration of tone, subtext
    and body language that the performances seem less like acting than
    fleeting, revelatory moments of real life captured on film.

    The supermarket in which Diana ([5]Robin Wright Penn) and Damian
    ([6]Jason Isaacs), former lovers now pushing 40, run into each other
    by chance couldn't be a more banal setting for a shattering reunion.
    In the fluorescent glare, with barely audible Muzak humming in the
    background, they reconnect and within minutes dive into the murky
    emotional depths of their past.

    Like the other eight stories in the suite, "Diana" is only about 10
    minutes long and filmed in real time. But by the end we've learned
    more about the inner lives of Diana and Damian than is revealed about
    most couples in a feature-length movie.

    Even before Diana, in the final months of pregnancy, spots her ex,
    traces of anger and disappointment are visible in her face, as she
    impatiently pushes her shopping cart through the aisles. When they
    catch up with each other next to the canned soup section, they
    exchange friendly greetings and chitchat.

    Both are now married. Diana is expecting her baby in August. Damian,
    handsome in a lightweight hooded jacket, is back in the city after
    several years and is about to move to a new apartment with his wife,
    Lisa.

    Their conversation ends as Damian extends his hand, and with a tense,
    too-bright smile, Diana playfully bats it away. The camera trails her
    from behind as she moves on and then, unable to resist a backward
    look, turns around to reveal her stricken face.

    When they bump into each other again moments later in the produce
    section, Damian makes the leap back in time.

    "Actually, I think about you all the time - the stuff we did, the
    things that happened to us, the people we were - it was lovely for a
    long time, wasn't it?" he says in a tone of urgent romantic gravity.

    Diana stiffens. "It was lovely by fits and starts," she corrects,
    adding, "I think we should talk about something else, if we're going
    to talk."

    They retreat into chitchat in which he tells her about his job as
    producer of a current affairs show for public radio.

    Diana's head has lowered, as though she can hardly bear to look at
    him.

    "You never really opened up to me, you know," she blurts.

    "That's not true," he replies.

    "It is true," she says. "You made me sad for a long time." Trying to
    lighten up, she remarks: "I'm not hurt, and I'm not angry. It's how I
    remember it. But none of it matters anymore anyway, right?"

    By now Diana is ready to move on, but Damian, abandoning his cart,
    insists on accompanying her.

    "Are you going to have kids?" she asks.

    "No," he answers.

    "Why?"

    "I can't," he says tonelessly. "I'm sterile."

    At a loss for words, she laughs nervously, then apologizes.

    When they reach the wine section, Damian takes charge and chooses one
    red and one white as though he had done it countless times in the
    years when they were together. Diana observes how they're walking and
    talking "like lovebirds," then covers her face with one hand as her
    feelings well up.

    "Five minutes with you and I always feel like my life is a figment of
    my imagination," she confesses, exasperated. "You've just always been
    this thing that swallows me." She pauses. "I've got to go."

    She hurries off, then suddenly turns back, anguished. "You can't just
    come up to me after a hundred years, married, and tell me that you
    think about me. You can't do that," she says.

    "Why not?"

    "Do you love your wife?"

    "Yeah. Of course I do. You love your husband. And this is different
    because it's us. We're Damian and Diana. Nothing's going to change it.
    You might as well accept. You know it's true."

    Diana pushes her cart away furiously. But their need to connect drives
    them to turn around and face each other one last time.

    "Damian," she whispers under her breath.

    Approaching her, he gently places his hands on the sides of her belly,
    stoops and softly, reverently, kisses her stomach. For a long moment,
    they touch their foreheads together, looking beseechingly into each
    other's eyes. He almost speaks, then stops, and they break apart. She
    stands there for a moment, her eyes smarting with tears before she
    continues to shop, dropping a bottle of dishwashing liquid into her
    cart.

    When Diana can't bear it anymore, she abandons her cart and races down
    the aisles frantically searching for him. Rushing to the supermarket
    entrance, she peers in both directions, but he's gone. Blackout.

References

    4. 
http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=319601&inline=nyt_ttl
    5. 
http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=77633&inline=nyt-per
    6. 
http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=34601&inline=nyt-per

FILM REVIEW; Nine Women and Nine Intense Moments in Their Lives
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html

    October 14, 2005

    By STEPHEN HOLDEN

    During the final vignette of ''Nine Lives,'' Rodrigo Garc?a's
    extraordinarily rich and satisfying suite of fleeting but intense
    moments in the lives of nine women, Maria (Dakota Fanning), a girl
    visiting a cemetery with her mother, Maggie (Glenn Close), notices a
    cat wandering on the lawn and wonders out loud if cats really have
    nine lives; her mother answers that she doesn't think so.

    Maggie has spread out a picnic blanket in front of a modest tombstone
    that marks the grave of her husband or a close relative (the
    inscription is never shown nor is a name mentioned). Later, she stands
    guard behind a tree while her daughter urinates. At another point, she
    remarks at how amazing it is that people make it through life carrying
    so much heavy baggage.

    This is how the moments unfold in the movie and in life, like the
    shadows of clouds skittering across the lawn. While Maggie converses
    with her daughter, there is a split second in which her grief suddenly
    wells up, but she catches herself and swallows it. And in one slow,
    breathtaking shot, the camera pans 360 degrees to observe the trees
    and grass and to drink in the quiet of an eternal resting ground.

    Although the vignette is set in a cemetery, it doesn't offer the sort
    of weepy closure that people go to the movies expecting to find. Nor
    do any of the film's eight other vignettes end in snug little
    epiphanies. Together, however, they add up to a film that may be the
    closest movies have come to the cinematic equivalent of a collection
    of Chekhov short stories. The film's reward for intense concentration
    is a feeling of deep empathy and connection. For once, you don't
    harbor the uneasy suspicion of having been emotionally manipulated.
    Given our immersion in the ways of Hollywood, the absence of that
    feeling may frustrate some moviegoers accustomed to getting the
    message in a neatly tied package.

    In each vignette, filmed in one continuous Steadicam shot, a
    10-to-14-minute slice of a different woman's life passes before your
    eyes in real time. The nuances of body language and details in the
    setting tell as much about the people in these stories as what is
    actually said.

    Working with many of the actors who have appeared in his earlier
    mosaics, ''Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her'' (five
    vignettes) and ''Ten Tiny Love Stories'' (10 monologues), Mr. Garc?a
    has made a film that could be described as radically realistic. ''Nine
    Lives'' is a quantum leap better than its forerunners. In its subtle,
    understated performances, the actors vanish into characters who behave
    like ordinary people observed through one-way glass.

    The movie begins in prison where an inmate, Sandra (Elpidia Carrillo),
    is visited by her young daughter and has a meltdown when the telephone
    connecting them for their five-minute monthly conversation fails.
    Sandra's treatment by the guards suggests she is an unruly prisoner,
    and this chapter leaves you with a chill of foreboding about her
    future in or out of jail.

    It would be stretching a metaphor to say that all nine of the stories'
    focal characters are in some way imprisoned, unless the concept of
    imprisonment is meant to imply the notion of life itself as a kind of
    confinement. But Mr. Garc?a, the son of the Colombian writer Gabriel
    Garc?a M?rquez, is too discreet and subtle a storyteller to voice the
    theme in more than a murmur.

    With a Chekhovian objectivity and compassion, he brings to his
    characters' struggles and pains an evenhanded awareness of how the
    ties that bind also inevitably chafe. Diana (Robin Wright Penn), the
    second story's focal character, is a married, very pregnant woman with
    trouble in her face who runs into an old lover (Jason Isaacs), also
    now married, while in a supermarket. Erotic sparks fly, and she is
    gripped by the familiar, scary feeling of disappearing in his
    presence.

    Holly (Lisa Gay Hamilton), an enraged African-American woman in the
    third vignette, returns to her childhood home to confront her
    estranged stepfather over childhood wounds that may have involved
    sexual abuse. In the fourth story, Sonia (Holly Hunter) and her
    boyfriend (Stephen Dillane) have a revealing fight while visiting the
    elegant new apartment of their closest friends (Mr. Isaacs and Molly
    Parker). Samantha (Amanda Seyfried), the beautiful, bright, teenage
    protagonist of the fifth vignette, resists leaving her disabled father
    (Ian McShane) and long-suffering mother (Sissy Spacek), to attend an
    elite Eastern college, for to leave would mean forsaking her role as
    parental go-between in an undeclared war.

    Ms. Spacek's character is one of several in the movie to appear in
    more than one vignette. In the episode ''Ruth,'' she has a secret
    motel rendezvous with a Scotch-swilling boyfriend (Aidan Quinn) on the
    night of a full moon.

    In one of the rawest vignettes, Lorna (Amy Brenneman) finds herself an
    uneasy guest at the funeral of her ex-husband's wife. When the
    widower, who is deaf and communicates mostly in sign language, drags
    her aside and confesses his lingering passion for her, she is forced
    to acknowledge her contribution to the wife's suicide.

    Anyone who has ever faced surgery can identify with Camille (Kathy
    Baker), a woman awaiting a mastectomy, who expresses her terror of
    ''no consciousness'' while under anesthesia and her horror at being
    ''at the mercy of others'' to her patient husband (Joe Mantegna).

    As ''Nine Lives'' winds it way from a prison to a cemetery with stops
    in many houses along the way, it walks a tightrope. Any glitch in a
    film this committed to a delicate, slightly heightened realism, risks
    throwing the whole thing off the track. You hold your breath waiting
    for that false moment to arrive, and you heave a sigh of amazement and
    relief when it doesn't.

    ''Nine Lives'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or
    adult guardian). It has profanity and sexual situations.
    Nine Lives
    Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.
    Written and directed by Rodrigo Garc?a; director of photography,
    Xavier P?rez Grobet; edited by Andrea Folprecht; music by Edward
    Shearmur; production designer, Courtney Jackson; produced by Julie
    Lynn; released by Magnolia Pictures. Running time: 115 minutes.
    WITH: Kathy Baker (Camille), Amy Brenneman (Lorna), Elpidia Carrillo
    (Sandra), Glenn Close (Maggie), Stephen Dillane (Martin), Dakota
    Fanning (Maria), William Fichtner (Andrew), Lisa Gay Hamilton (Holly),
    Holly Hunter (Sonia), Jason Isaacs (Damian), Joe Mantegna (Richard),
    Ian McShane (Larry), Molly Parker (Lisa), Mary Kay Place (Alma),
    Sydney Tamilia Poitier (Vanessa), Aidan Quinn (Henry), Miguel Sandoval
    (Ron), Amanda Seyfried (Samantha), Sissy Spacek (Ruth) and Robin
    Wright Penn (Diana).

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 22:47:54 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 17:47:54 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: New Doubts Are Cast on Einstein's Cosmological
	Constant
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601212031540.13460@panix2.panix.com>

New Doubts Are Cast on Einstein's Cosmological Constant
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/science/12cosmos.html

    By DENNIS OVERBYE

    Einstein was wrong.

    Einstein was right.

    He was wrong about being wrong.

    An astronomer from Louisiana State University said yesterday that
    a new analysis of cosmic history cast doubts on Einstein's
    cosmological constant, the leading explanation for the mysterious
    force that appears to be pushing apart the universe.

    But other astronomers said that conclusion itself was in doubt.

    The astronomer, Bradley E. Schaefer, said his analysis showed
    that the force, known as dark energy, was not constant, as
    Einstein would have predicted, but was growing more violent as
    cosmic time went on.

    "The cosmological constant does not look good," said Dr.
    Schaefer, who used the violent flashes called gamma ray bursts as
    cosmic mileage markers to describe the history of the expansion
    of the universe.

    In an interview Dr. Schaefer cautioned that it was just a
    preliminary result with years before a final answer came in. He
    presented his report at a meeting of the American Astronomical
    Society in Washington.

    Several astronomers said it was Dr. Schaefer, not Einstein, who
    was wrong. His conclusion, they said, was undermined by
    mathematical and statistical flaws. Moreover, some astronomers
    questioned whether the properties of gamma ray bursts were known
    precisely enough to serve as cosmological beacons.

    "I flat out don't believe this result," said Adam Riess, an
    astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore
    who was a discoverer of dark energy eight years ago.

    Einstein first proposed the constant in 1917, as a way of
    explaining how the universe could be static despite the force of
    gravity. It was a sort of universal antigravity embedded in
    space. He abandoned that theory as a blunder when the universe
    proved to be expanding.

    But in 1998, the cosmological constant gained new life. It was
    then that competing teams of astronomers, using exploding stars
    known as Type 1a supernovas as cosmic mileage markers, discovered
    that the expansion of the universe appeared to be accelerating,
    as if a dark antigravitational force were indeed at work.

    As Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas said, Einstein's
    biggest blunder was believing the cosmological constant was a
    blunder.

    Since the 1998 discovery, astronomers have been racing to chart
    the history of the expansion of the universe more precisely to
    pin down the properties of dark energy. Observations by Dr. Riess
    and his colleagues with the Hubble Space Telescope two years ago
    have determined that the universe hit the gas pedal about five
    billion years ago.

    Dr. Schaefer used as his mileage markers 52 gamma ray bursts,
    which are 100 to 1,000 times as powerful as Type 1a supernovas,
    and can thus be seen much farther away, or back in time. The
    bursts, which can be seen only from space, have been studied by
    satellites like the High Energy Transient Explorer, or HETE.

    The most distant burst, at 12.8 billion light-years, occurred
    when the universe was 6 percent of its present age, Dr. Schaefer
    said.

    His measurements put the dark energy in a controversial category
    named phantom energy, which if it continued unabated would rip
    apart the cosmos in a few billion years.

    But Donald Lamb, an astronomer at the University of Chicago, and
    others who were interviewed before Dr. Schaefer's talk but were
    made familiar with its conclusions, disagreed.

    They said Dr. Schaefer had been forced to his finding about the
    Einstein constant by his use of a mathematical parameter called
    w-prime, a measure of how fast the violence of the dark energy
    appears to be changing with distance in the universe.

    At large distances, Dr. Lamb said, the parameter becomes
    mathematically meaningless, and theorists have dropped it.

    Moreover, he said, if Dr. Schaefer's analysis is valid, his
    results agree with Einstein's constant, within the measurements'
    uncertainties.

    "It's not a meaningful discrepancy," Dr. Lamb said, adding that a
    statement like Dr. Schaefer's required stronger evidence. "The
    bottom line is the result doesn't show Einstein was right. And it
    doesn't show he was wrong."

    That was echoed by Robert R, Caldwell, a dark-energy theorist at
    Dartmouth, who added that if dark energy evolved as swiftly as
    Dr. Schaefer said, it would have interfered with the formation of
    galaxies.

    Another criticism is that most of Dr. Schaefer's data points are
    from the early universe, more than five billion years ago, before
    dark energy became a dominant force in the universe. The action,
    they say, is all at later times, when dark energy's effects are
    more easily seen, but his data is sparse there.

    In his presentation, Dr. Schaefer said it was too early to make
    claims about the usefulness and ultimate meaning of his proposal.

    "The first results are pointing to the cosmological constant not
    being constant, a point I don't want to push too much," he said.
    "This is the first demonstration of cosmologically useful results
    from a new method. We can't be too confident in the results right
    now."

    The dispute shines an awkward light on what some astronomers
    regard as a promising and powerful tool for cosmology, gamma ray
    bursts. Dr. Schaefer called his work a "proof of purchase" for
    the use of the bursts, which can emit as much light in a second
    as our Sun does in a billion years, to investigate dark energy
    and other puzzles of the long night.

    George Ricker, a gamma ray astronomer at M.I.T., said of Dr.
    Schaefer's work: "It's great that he's doing this. He's drawing
    attention to fact that this is possible."

    Other astronomers said the use of gamma ray bursts for cosmology
    was in its infancy at best.

    Until recently, astronomers did not even know what they were.
    Lately, the bursts have been traced to the titanic implosions of
    very massive stars into black holes, and astronomers have begun
    to learn how to calibrate the flashes.

    Lorenzo Amati of the Institute of Space Astrophysics and Cosmic
    Physics in Bologna, Italy, and his colleagues discovered a
    correlation between the total luminosity of a gamma ray burst and
    the wavelength at which it appears brightest.

    Using such techniques, astronomers can estimate the intrinsic
    luminosity of a gamma ray burst within 25 percent, Dr. Lamb said.
    That is only two or three times the uncertainty associated with
    the Type 1a supernova explosions, considered the gold standard
    for cosmological work.

    Dr. Lamb was the lead author of a report last summer outlining
    how a gamma ray burst mission could be used to investigate dark
    energy.

    Such a mission is unlikely soon, however, because NASA's science
    budget suffers overruns from the James Webb Space Telescope, and
    scientists are trying to find money to maintain the HETE
    satellite, which is scheduled to be turned off.

    Optical astronomers point out that it will take many more gamma
    ray bursts than supernovas to reach the same precision. Lacking a
    sound theoretical reason to believe that gamma ray bursts should
    be standard candles, they are reluctant to give them much
    credence.

    Dr. Riess said, "The news is that we are really stumped about
    this dark energy puzzle and are being forced to be very creative
    to probe it."

    Warren E. Leary contributed reporting from Washington for this
    article.


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 22:48:00 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 17:48:00 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: (Grimms) Gabriel Josipovici: By a cool well
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601221746180.28035@panix3.panix.com>

Gabriel Josipovici: By a cool well
The TLS 	July 08, 2005

[This is a great review!]

Where to find the princesses and their frogs

SELECTED TALES. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Edited and translated by Joyce Crick. 
344pp. Oxford University Press. Paperback, Pounds 8.99. - 0 19 280479 0.

Why do we need another edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales? Are there not already 
several complete editions in English and any number of picture-book selections 
for children, with new ones appearing every Christmas? Instead of answering 
this question directly let us take another example of a "world's classic", the 
Bible. Though there are countless editions of the Bible around, and a large 
number of commentaries, OUP's World's Classics edition, published in 1997, 
filled a yawning gap. Edited by Robert Carroll, an Old Testament scholar with a 
real feeling for literature, and Stephen Prickett, a literary critic and 
scholar with a strong interest in the Bible and its afterlife in literature, 
this contained a long and extremely interesting introduction and copious 
footnotes. It did not try to summarize the many biblical commentaries, which 
tend to be theological and historical, but rather to raise questions about the 
Bible as a book and a great literary document, which of course it is, as well 
as being a cultural and religious one. In a similar way, Joyce Crick, a fine 
scholar of German literature who has always been adept at addressing a larger 
audience than simply her fellow Germanisten, has set out here to rescue Grimm's 
Tales both from children and from folklorists and to help us see it as a major 
literary work. Like Carroll and Prickett, she has done a magnificent job, and 
both she and OUP are to be congratulated.

For too long these haunting tales have been pulled out of context and subjected 
to mythological and psychological exegesis. Crick has done us an enormous 
service by returning them to their context in the Germanic lands of early 
modern Europe (Brueghel has always seemed to me a better key to their 
interpretation than Freud, Marx, or Mircea Eliade). Though she does not include 
some of my favourite stories (the wonderfully surreal "Herr Korbes" and 
"Lauschen und Flohchen", for example), and though she can do nothing about 
conveying the huge linguistic range of the collection, this is nevertheless a 
volume to treasure.

Carroll and Prickett had no problem selecting their master text: it had to be 
the 1611 King James Bible, which has been a "world classic" from the moment it 
was published. Where the Grimms are concerned the choice is a little more 
difficult.

To understand why, one needs to understand the publishing history of the Tales.

The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born within a year of each other (in 
1785 and 1786) and, as law students at the University of Marburg, were drawn to 
the study of the past of the German people, as were many idealistic youths in 
the troubled period of the early nineteenth century, when Napoleon's armies 
were conquering Europe - simultaneously arousing nationalist opposition in the 
areas they occupied and spreading the creed of liberty in states still in the 
grip of petty princelings and feudal rule. Enlisted by the young Romantic 
writers Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, who were compiling their 
anthology of German folk songs, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, to put together an 
anthology of the earliest German prose narratives, by 1810 the two brothers had 
prepared a manuscript consisting of thirty tales and dispatched it to Brentano.

In 1812, Volume One of their Kinder-und Hausmarchen (Children's and Household 
Tales) appeared, followed by a second volume in 1815. These were so successful 
that they were thoroughly revised and enlarged for a second edition in 1819. A 
"little edition" appeared in 1825, consisting of most of what have become the 
best-known fairy tales, which was quickly translated into other European 
languages, and this was followed by further revised and enlarged editions in

1837, 1840, 1843, 1850 and 1857. These were mainly the work of Wilhelm, the 
more literary of the two, while Jacob pursued his philological and 
mythographical interests, becoming a leading figure in the German cultural 
renaissance of the nineteenth century. They died within four years of each 
other, Wilhelm in 1859, Jacob in 1863.

The question is, which edition does one choose as one's master text? As has 
been pointed out by Hans Rollecke, the leading scholar in the field -constantly 
acknowledged by Joyce Crick in her introduction and notes to the Selected Tales 
she has edited and translated -no two editions are identical, for even when no 
major changes were made between editions Wilhelm was constantly rewriting and 
"improving". Rollecke chose the 1837 edition as the master text for his edition 
of the Tales for the German equivalent of the Pleiade, the Deutsche Klassiker 
Verlag.

Most complete English editions choose to work from the last German edition, 
that of 1857, and this is what Joyce Crick has done. That makes sense, for it 
yields not only the last word of the Grimms on the subject, but provides us 
with a translation of a mid- nineteenth-century children's classic. I cannot 
help feeling, however, that an opportunity has been missed and that a selection 
from the first edition, of 1812/15, would have given us not just a classic of 
German tales for children, but one of the great books of world literature.

To understand why this should be so we need to look in a little more detail at 
the differences between the 1810 manuscript, the first publication, and 
subsequent editions. Crick is well aware of these differences, discussing the 
issue in her introduction, pinpointing changes in her notes to the Tales, and 
printing selections from earlier versions in Apppendix A, while in Appendix B 
she prints a selection of tales that were in the first edition but were 
subsequently removed. Yet I don't feel she has fully grasped what is at issue 
here.

Though the brothers had been set to work by von Arnim and Brentano, they 
quickly realized that they were unhappy with the attitude of the two Romantic 
writers to their sources, which, they felt, was cavalier in the extreme.

Instead of using the ancient German poems and stories as launching pads for 
their own Romantic effusions, they were very clear that they wanted to present 
to the world what the ancient Germans had said in as unadulterated a form as 
possible. This is how they put it in the beautiful opening of their 
introduction to the first edition of 1812, repeated in 1819:

It is good, we find, when an entire harvest has been beaten down by storm or 
some other heaven-sent disaster, that beneath lowly hedges and wayside bushes 
some small corner has still managed to preserve a shelter, and single heads of 
corn have remained standing. Then, if the sun shines kindly again, they go on 
growing solitary and unnoticed . . . .

"That", they go on, "is how it seemed to us when we saw how, of so much that 
once flourished in times past, nothing has survived -even the memory of it has 
been almost entirely lost -except, among the common folk, their songs, a few 
books, legends, and these innocent household tales . . . ." "We were", they 
conclude, in words that were to be echoed by folklorists everywhere in the 
century to come, "perhaps only just in time to record these tales, for those 
who should be their keepers are becoming ever fewer."

They were, they felt, the keepers and preservers of an ancient seed, what they 
describe as "these innocent household tales". Yet, as all the great 
nineteenth-century collectors from Scott to Lonnrot demonstrate, this is easier 
said than done. Even today, with the help of aural and even visual recordings, 
it is not so easy to decide what is part of an authentic tradition, what is 
embellishment by the modern singer or narrator, and exactly how to transcribe 
what one is hearing. The Grimms, we must remember, were working long before 
folklore studies were established, though by the time of the last edition, and 
thanks in large part to them, the situation was very different.

Here, then, to demonstrate the problem, is the opening of the very first story 
in the collection, "The Frog Prince, or Iron Henry". In the 1810 manuscript it 
is called "The King's Daughter and the Enchanted Prince". As Joyce Crick points 
out, the drafts in the manuscript were "written down with little attention to 
style, often with abbreviated forms, insertions, and minimal punctuation", 
which she has normalized:

The king's youngest daughter went out into the forest and sat down by a cool 
well. Then she took a golden ball and was playing with it when it suddenly 
rolled down into the well. She watched it falling into the depths and stood at 
the well and was very sad. All at once a frog reached his head out of the water 
and said: "Why are you wailing so much?" "Oh! You nasty frog," she answered, 
"my golden ball has fallen into the well." Then the frog said: "If you will 
take me home with you and I can sit next to you, I'll fetch your golden ball 
for you." And when she had promised this, he dived down and soon came back up 
with the ball in his mouth, and threw it onto land.

And here is the 1812 version (because it is considerably longer I will only 
give the equivalent of the first version's first two sentences):

There was once a king's daughter who went out into the forest and sat down by a 
cool well. She had a golden ball which was her favourite toy; she would throw 
it up high and catch it again in the air, and enjoyed herself as she did this .

One day the ball had risen very high; she had already stretched out her hand 
and curled her fingers ready to catch it when it bounced past onto the ground 
quite close to her and rolled straight into the water .

Finally, the 1857 version (since this is considerably longer again, I will only 
give the equivalent of the first version's initial one and a half sentences):

In the old days, when wishing still helped, there lived a king whose daughters 
were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, 
which after all has seen so many things, marvelled whenever it shone upon her 
face. Not far from the king's palace there lay a big, dark forest, and in the 
forest, beneath an ancient linden tree, there was a well. Now if it was a very 
hot day the king's daughter would go out into the forest and sit at the edge of 
the cold well; and if she was bored she would take a golden ball, throw it up 
high and catch it again; and that was her favourite toy.

The first version is clearly very raw. It plunges straight in, a little too 
breathlessly perhaps, but it still has time for an adjective to convey the 
young girl's pleasure at being where she is: the well is "cool", inviting one 
to sit down beside it, and highlighting the contrast with what is to come, for 
water is an element alien to humans and which they cannot control. When her 
ball rolls into it she is "very sad", and when a frog pops up out of its 
depths, she is immediately repelled by him: "Oh! You nasty frog".

The second version provides the classic fairy-tale opening: "There was once .

.

.". Since in this story, unlike the majority of them, the fact of being the 
youngest child is irrelevant, for the tension develops between the girl and the 
frog and the girl and her father (who holds that once she has given the frog 
her promise she can't go back on it), not between siblings, it removes that bit 
of information. After that it is difficult to decide if its greater 
expansiveness weakens or strengthens it. What is important is that the girl is 
playing with a ball which falls into the well and is only given back to her by 
the frog in exchange for a promise to let him sit next to her. Do we need to be 
told that it was "her favourite toy" and that "she enjoyed herself" as she 
played with it? But perhaps the expansion creates the sense of her pleasure and 
self-absorption, as does the new phrase, "she had already stretched out her 
hand and curled her fingers ready to catch it", and so prepares us for her 
response to the frog and indeed to the rest of the story, which implies that we 
cannot live our lives simply taking pleasure in our own games but must somehow 
relate to others if we are to grow up. That, it seems to me, is reinforced by 
the splicing onto the story at this stage of the faithful servant of the Frog 
Prince, who, in a very German way, cannot utter his sorrow at what has happened 
to his master, but from whose chest the iron bands that have constricted him 
fall away one by one when his master regains his rightful shape.

The 1857 version carries the principle of expansion much further. Now, instead 
of the focus being on the narrative, it is on the (wise and kindly old) 
narrator, telling us that "In the old days, when wishing still helped . . .", 
and that the youngest was not just beautiful but "so beautiful that the sun 
itself, which after all has seen many things, marvelled whenever it shone upon 
her". Now the forest is no longer just a forest but "big and dark", and the 
well now lies "beneath an ancient linden tree". It is as though this narrator 
can no longer trust us to imagine for ourselves, but has to fill in every 
detail for us.

What the successive changes bring out, first of all, is that, despite the 
Grimms' Romantic claim (echoed by nearly all the early collectors of folk songs 
and tales) that they were preserving the precious seed of the Folk that was in 
imminent danger of disappearing, we can never get at a version that is 
absolutely authentic: every version will bear the imprint of the last speaker 
or compiler, no matter how neutral and scientific one tries to be. As Italo 
Calvino points out in his introduction to his collection of Italian tales, the 
task of the compiler is therefore to be as sensitive to the essential nature of 
his material as possible, and to try and "render" it as well as possible, using 
all the resources at his command. My own feeling is that the Grimms came as 
close to perfection as is possible in the first, 1812/15 edition of their 
tales, but strayed further and further from their original ideal with each 
subsequent edition.

Why should this have been? Crucially, in the wake of the success of the first 
edition and of the many letters it elicited, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began to 
think of their work not as a collection of early German narratives but as a 
book designed specifically for children. Thus propriety, or what was deemed 
acceptable to children, became a key issue. Some tales, such as the 
magnificent, brief "Wie Kinder Schlachtens miteinander gespielt haben" 
(translated by Crick in an appendix under the title "Playing Butchers"), two 
versions of which were offered in 1812, were removed for the second edition 
after parents had complained that they were too violent for their children 
(English readers have long been surprised at the violence and sadism that were 
left in or even increased in subsequent editions, but it seems that if 
punishment was deserved the Grimms did not mind including it). In the 1812 
version of "Rapunzel", the girl, shut up in the tower by the witch, but letting 
her long hair down to allow the prince to climb up to her, gives the game away 
by saying to the witch: "Tell me, Godmother, why are my clothes getting so 
tight they don't fit me any longer?". This becomes, in the later versions:

"Tell me, Dame Godmother, how is it that you are so much heavier to draw up 
than the young king's son, who only takes a moment to reach me?". In that 
mysterious tale "Allerlei-Rauh" ("Coat-o'-Skins"), a father falls in love with 
his daughter after the death of his wife and determines to marry her. She 
escapes and wanders, disguised, in a forest, where she is found by "the King, 
her betrothed" in the 1812 edition, "the king to whom that forest belonged" in

1819, no doubt in an effort to distinguish her rescuer from her pursuer.

But it is not just a question of propriety. As they thought of their collection 
more and more as tales for children rather than as ancient Germanic household 
tales, the Grimms inevitably altered them in the light of a particular image of 
the child as pure and innocent, an image which developed, especially in Germany 
and England, in the course of the nineteenth century, and which we, today, find 
deeply suspect. The changes were also dictated by more mysterious imperatives, 
of which the Grimms were certainly not conscious. Joyce Crick, in one of her 
excellent notes (to "The Goose-Girl"), remarks that the tales "are invitations 
to interpretation, but never yield a single meaning". This alerts us to the 
fact that what we are witnessing in the transformation of the tales is a 
phenomenon that has analogues in other times and places. Eric A. Havelock tried 
to explain the phenomenon in ancient Greece, in the transition from oral to 
written, in his marvellous Preface to Plato (1963). We see it in the Jewish 
tradition in the transformation of biblical narratives into Midrash. God calls 
Abraham. Why? The Bible does not say. But Jewish tradition finds it hard to 
live with the apparently arbitrary ("How odd of God to choose the Jews"), and 
so elaborates a series of stories about Abraham's childhood, about his belief 
in the one God, his hatred of idol-worship, and his consequent persecution by 
the idolatrous King Nimrod. That, then, is why God called Abraham and told him 
to leave his house and go where He, God, would tell him. We are at the point of 
transition, in all these cases, between two different attitudes to the world 
and to storytelling. Walter Benjamin struggles to explain this in his essay 
"The Storyteller", contrasting storyteller and novelist:

The storyteller takes what he tells from experience: his own or that reported 
by others. And he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening to 
his tale. The novelist has isolated himself. The birthplace of the novel is the 
solitary individual, who . . . is himself uncounselled, and cannot counsel 
others.

The novelist deals with information, the storyteller with wisdom. This wisdom 
is artisanal. It belongs to shared work, in the fields or the house. Moreover, 
"storytelling, in its sensory aspect, is by no means a job for the voice alone.

Rather, in genuine storytelling the hand plays a part which supports what is 
expressed in a hundred ways with its gestures trained by work".

Benjamin is not simply looking at differences between stories and novels, he 
grasps that to make sense of both sets of phenomena you need to have some 
understanding of what it is that drives storytelling on the one hand and novel 
writing on the other. More light is shed on this in a remarkable entry by 
Kierkegaard in his journal for 1837 (he was twenty-three). It is worth quoting 
in full:

There are two recommended ways of telling children stories, but there are also 
a multitude of false paths in between.

The first is the way unconsciously adopted by the nanny, and whoever can be 
included in that category. Here a whole fantasy world dawns for the child, and 
the nannies are themselves deeply convinced that the stories are true . . . 
which, however fantastic the content, can't help bestowing a beneficial calm on 
the child. Only when the child gets a hint of the fact that the person doesn't 
believe her own stories are there ill-effects -not from the content but because 
of the narrator's insincerity -from the lack of confidence and suspicion that 
gradually envelops the child.

The second way is possible only for someone who with full transparency 
reproduces the life of childhood, knows what it demands, what is good for it, 
and from his higher standpoint offers the children a spiritual sustenance that 
is good for them -who knows how to be a child, whereas the nannies themselves 
are basically children.

This suggests that what happened to the Grimm Tales in the course of fifty 
years of "revision" was that they were transformed from tales told by speakers 
who were deeply convinced that they were true (whatever meaning one assigns to 
the term) into tales told by writers (Wilhelm Grimm, in effect) who did not 
believe in them and therefore added scene-setting, morality and psychology to 
make them both attractive and meaningful. It also gives us a hint as to why a 
novelist like Dickens had (and still has) the effect he had on his readers: he 
was one who knew "how to be a child". However, it was perhaps Kleist alone 
among the writers of the century who really grasped what was at issue here. His 
great novella, Michael Kohlhaas, takes many of the elements that go to make up 
the Grimm Tales and stands them on their head, bidding an anguished farewell as 
it does so both to community values and to the power of wishful thinking. But 
Kleist had no successors, and, by and large, nineteenth-century novelists and 
storytellers took the path of Midrash and romance, still the staple diet of 
readers of twentieth-century fiction, with neither writers nor readers quite 
believing what they are doing, but under a strange compulsion to pretend that 
they do.

The odd thing about the changes the brothers made to the Tales in the course of 
the different editions is that at some level they always seem to have 
understood the nature of the material they were dealing with better than anyone 
else. As Joyce Crick is at pains to point out, even though they kept adding new 
tales (and occasionally removing old ones), they had a very clear sense of the 
overall shape they wanted their collection to have. All the editions begin with 
the mysterious and powerful "Frog Prince" and all end with "The Golden Key", 
whose theme is identical to that of "The Fox and the Geese", with which the 
first, 1812, volume ended: a poor lad goes into the snow to find wood and comes 
across a golden key. "Now he thought that where there was a key there must be a 
lock to match, so he dug in the earth and found a little iron casket." 
Eventually he manages to fit the key into the tiny lock. "Then he turned it 
once -and now we must wait until he has unlocked it completely and lifted the 
lid, and then we shall find out what marvellous things were in the casket." 
Here, surely, is a tale about tales, to adapt Kafka, an injunction to be 
patient, to read and savour and not rush to interpret. For, as Kafka said 
elsewhere, "Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of 
impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return".

Despite my reservations about her choice of text, Joyce Crick nevertheless 
still gives us the best guidance possible to the world of the storyteller as 
exemplified by the Grimm Tales (her nearest rival in the field, The Annotated 
Brothers Grimm by Maria Tatar, published by Norton last year, stays resolutely 
within the world of the "fairytale" as traditionally understood). For one 
thing, she provides a generous selection of other writings by Jacob and Wilhelm 
Grimm -prefaces, essays and the like -to help us understand what it was they 
felt they were trying to do. Secondly, as I have said, she is alert to the 
overall shape of the collection, recognizing that the brothers put it together 
with all the care of a Yeats or Wallace Stevens bringing a new volume of poems 
before the public. Thirdly, instead of focusing exclusively on the tales of 
magic and transformation, as do most commentators, she gives us a large enough 
selection of tales to make us grasp the sheer variety of the collection, which 
is a crucial part of its meaning and significance: tales of foolish peasants, 
discharged soldiers and cunning craftsmen, animal tales, pious tales, riddles 
and counting rhymes. The first four tales in all the Grimm editions lay the 
main genres before us. The first is the "fairytale" of the frog prince. The 
second, "Cat and Mouse As Partners" is an animal fable, though "fable" is the 
wrong term for an imaginative if anthropomorphic representation of the animal 
world. The third, "Our Lady's Child", is a religious piece -the Tales are 
deeply imbued with the pietistic spirit so prevalent in German popular culture 
of the time, a spirit which is by and large repugnant to us in its mixture of 
morality, cruelty and smugness, but which is indubitably there. The fourth, 
"The Boy Who Set Out To Learn Fear", introduces us to a key figure in these 
German tales: the Dummling or simpleton. The title of the story doesn't 
accurately reflect its contents, for the boy doesn't want to learn fear but 
rather "what it means to make the flesh creep". The ending is as wonderfully 
ambiguous as anything in the Tales, for when his new bride's resourceful 
chambermaid pours a bucketful of little fishes over him as he sleeps he wakes 
up and cries: "Oh, my flesh is creeping! My flesh is creeping, wife dear! Yes, 
now I do know what flesh- creeping is".


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 22:48:07 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 17:48:07 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: (Kinsey) Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy: Dob, dob, dob
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601221746430.28035@panix3.panix.com>

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy: Dob, dob, dob
The TLS 	July 08, 2005

AMERICAN SEXUAL CHARACTER. Sex, gender and national identity in the Kinsey 
Reports. Miriam G. Reumann. 294pp. University of California Press. $49.95; 
distributed in the UK by Wiley. ?32.50. 0 520 23835 4.

One of the oddest contradictions, in a country riven by contradictions, is how 
the United States - the world's most powerful and confident nation - is at the 
same time the most insecure, the most anxious, the most terrified of national 
collapse.

One manifestation of this is an obsession with that slippery and quite possibly 
non-existent thing, national character. There is nothing new about this. In the 
early 1900s, for example, the US was swept with fears about declining 
masculinity.

One solution was Boy Scouts, imported from Britain to stiffen effete and feeble 
American manhood. Alfred C. Kinsey's father shared these fears and compelled 
his son, the future entomologist and sex researcher, to become a Scout. Kinsey 
loved it. He wore his uniform all the time and eventually became the first 
Eagle Scout in America.

Kinsey is the focus, or at least the jumping-off point, for American Sexual 
Character. Miriam G. Reumann has taken reactions during the 1950s to the two 
Kinsey Reports (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male published in 1948, Sexual 
Behavior in the Human Female in 1953) as the best way to analyse America's 
perception at that time of its national character. Reumann feels she can do 
this for two reasons: it was axiomatic then (as it is now) that American sexual 
character was national character. Americans could be defined by what they did 
sexually. From this it followed that private sexual acts were in fact political 
acts. In 1956, the Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin wrote that the new 
sexual freedoms were "the greatest threat to American democracy since the rise 
of Fascism in Europe". Sexual anarchy, widely foretold, would lead to political 
anarchy.

If this was so, Kinsey's Reports would clearly be explosive. His Male Report 
revealed that men were behaving in ways totally different from those hitherto 
assumed and accepted by society. For instance, half of them were unfaithful to 
their wives. Only 45 per cent of their sexual outlets were obtained in 
marriage.

Even more disconcerting, 37 per cent of them had had some experience of 
homosexuality leading to orgasm, and for 4 per cent this was their only 
experience of sex. Both Reports were extremely dense. The New Yorker said that 
"much of the (Male) volume consists of tables and charts" so confusing "that 
the ordinary reader can no more appraise its contents justly than he can 
appraise those of a manual on pre-stressed concrete". No doubt -but thousands 
of commentators were eager to do the appraisal for him.

The Report's revelations covered such a wide range of behaviours that they 
could be extended to an equally wide range of anxieties. The sociologist David 
Riesman and others talked of Americans as "consumers of sex", echoing and 
adding to contemporary anxieties about burgeoning consumer capitalism. American 
sex lives would threaten the international balance of power. The fear was: what 
would foreigners think? They would think Americans were sex mad and lose all 
respect for them.

(This is almost the only area where Reumann's usual multitude of examples fail 
to appear. It seems that foreigners didn't particularly care.)

Kinsey's statistics about men could just about be accepted, despite the 
anxieties they aroused. What nearly everyone hoped was that his Female Report 
would reveal a much more reassuring situation: that women were faithful in 
marriage, and chaste outside it and before it. According to Modern Woman: The 
lost sex (1947) by Marynia F. Farnham and Ferdinand Lundberg, a woman's sexual 
"role is passive. It is not as easy as rolling off a log for her. It is as easy 
as being the log itself". No wonder the Report was awaited with excitement. In 
a rather odd comparison, Reumann points out that readers ranked only the 
possibility of a Third World War as "more exciting". However, the results were 
horrifying. American women, it seemed, were not logs at all -they were far more 
like American men.

They had apparently been leaping the boundaries that were meant to circumscribe 
them in all directions -into bed with other women (possibly 25 per cent of them 
if you allowed fantasy as well); with other men, 40 per cent outside marriage,

50 per cent before marriage; they masturbated almost as much as men (all of 
whom masturbated).

A great many commentators were duly horrified. Clearly, marriage was 
threatened.

Divorce rates had rocketed as a result of the Second World War. So what now? 
Marriage was the bedrock of society. "If the family fails", said a professor of 
education, "it might well be impossible for industry or the Government to 
succeed." Other authorities spoke of "tidal waves of promiscuity, delinquency 
and divorce". And what of unfortunate men? Faced by the voracious women 
revealed by Kinsey, many would become impotent. Demanding better sex, women 
would leave their husbands for other men if they didn't get it -or, it now 
seemed likely, for other women. One of the most disturbing flaws in the 
American national character revealed by Kinsey was homosexuality. Homosexuals, 
of course, welcomed this. But, at first, very few other people did -though 
reactions were complex and contradictory. The 1950s saw the country once again 
in the grip of anxieties about a decline in masculinity -the figures about 
homosexuality "proved" this to be true. At this time, it seemed a further 
threat to marriage. Homosexual sex was seen as so fatally attractive that men 
would be seduced from their wives by other men, and wives seduced from their 
husbands by other women. "Mass chaos" was predicted. A Senate Committee found 
that "one homosexual can pollute an (entire) Government office".

Of course, reactions were not as simple as this brief resume suggests. Miriam 
Reumann threads her way through the complexities and contradictions, and 
demonstrates them with great skill and an almost overwhelming mass of 
quotation. Yet her book raises questions. For one thing, why is America wracked 
by these intense anxieties? This is speculative territory. National cultures 
often seem to remain dominated for centuries by powerful factors in the past 
which have long since ceased to operate, or operate much less powerfully. The 
United States was an immigrant nation composed in waves of widely different 
nationalities and races. It is hardly surprising, perhaps, if feelings that the 
nation might disintegrate, might even have not really cohered as a nation, 
remained strong.

But then, why the 1950s? The particular years of this study were indeed 
turbulent and frightening, the disturbances after a real war were followed by 
the Cold War, the changes being brought about by the very rapid growth of 
wealth and the first stirrings of feminism: all these made for anxiety. But 
most of these changes took place all over Western Europe. Moreover, sex, in the

US, is still a major election issue. George W. Bush, in his recent election 
manifesto, promised millions of dollars for abstinence programmes -and they are 
now pouring out. Abortion and gay marriage (indeed, homosexuality generally) 
were both central talking points. Kinsey ushered in decades of sexual 
discussion, which continues today. Intense verbosity has replaced intense 
silence. Surveys are still forbidden Federal funds. The Conservative Institute 
puts Kinsey's work third on its list of the most dangerous and damaging books 
published in the twentieth century.

But were, are, the particular anxieties here set forth justified? The answer 
would seem to be -not really. As Kinsey pointed out, nearly all his informants 
were born in the early 1900s. He hadn't created anything: he had simply 
revealed social/sexual changes that had been going on for half a century. And 
America was still standing. Take divorce. It took thirty years for divorce 
rates to climb back to the height they were after the War, and they are now 
even higher than that; yet marriage is still central and society survives.

(The anxiety is partly because contemporary divorce is compared to a mythical 
past of stable marriage.)

The fact is there doesn't seem to be any real connection between sex and 
politics, or "national character", or the strength of a nation, or any of the 
other issues raised by the voluminous material gathered here. Certainly, no 
cogent argument for this is provided. American Sexual Character is little more 
than a colossal round-up of dozens and dozens and dozens of quotations -from 
books and newspapers and magazines -and if sourced from recent publications, it 
would have been dismissed as a scissors-and-paste job. But as Alan Watkins 
noted recently in the Observer, the further back such surveys go, the more 
scholarly and respectable they become (this book is certainly scholarly -the 
words "discourse", "critique" and/or "narrative" are on every page). In 
America, it will, for this reason, be respected. But whether it is significant 
or valuable, I am much less sure.

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 22 22:48:14 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 17:48:14 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Animal Self
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601221747030.28035@panix3.panix.com>

The Animal Self
http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2006/01/22/magazine/1124993979623.html

By CHARLES SIEBERT

A big-city aquarium after closing hours is an eerie, spectral
place. With the lights turned down in the empty viewing galleries,
the luminous dioramas of the different fish fairly swell against
your senses, rendering you the viewed and startled captive, adrift
in your own natural medium, in a literal suspension of disbelief.
"Help yourself," Sal Munoz, a night-shift biologist at the Seattle
Aquarium, told me one night this past fall, pointing to the huge
12-foot-high glass tank in which the subject of my specially
arranged private encounter that evening resided: a 70-pound giant
Pacific octopus named Achilles.

I was first introduced to Achilles earlier that day by Roland
Anderson, another scientist at the aquarium, and I was still having
trouble with Anderson's description of him as "a young, pretty
male." There are, as fellow life forms go, few as deeply alien - in
both substance and appearance - as the giant Pacific octopus.
"G.P.O." adults can weigh more than 100 pounds, and yet all of
their throbbing, multi-tentacled mass can pass like water through a
drain pipe no bigger in circumference than an apple, just wide
enough to accommodate the octopus's cartilaginous beak, its only
solid body part. These creatures look, at rest, like cracked
leather discards from a handbag factory; in motion, like wind-swept
hot-air balloons in severe deflation distress, with no one at home
in the balloon's gondola but for a pair of unsettlingly knowing
black eyes.

It was those eyes more than anything that I had asked Anderson for
special permission to come back and stare into on my own. Just me
and Achilles. With no one else around to make me self-conscious for
engaging in a protracted stare-down with an octopus. For reading
impossible complexities into his muffled side of the conversation.
For tapping my fingers on the glass in hopes of getting Achilles
riled. For behaving, in short, in a way that even I, an inveterate
lingerer before zoo enclosures and fish tanks, would have
considered preposterous had I not heard Anderson's real-life
octopus stories earlier that day.

Anderson told me that he and his staff started naming the G.P.O.'s
at the Seattle Aquarium 20 years ago. Not out of cutesy
sentimentality. Anderson, a longtime marine biologist and the son
of a sea captain, is not given to that sort of thing. It was, he
said, because they couldn't help noticing the animals' distinct
personalities. G.P.O.'s live about three or four years, and the
aquarium typically keeps three on the premises - two on display and
one backup or understudy octopus - so there have been a good number
of G.P.O.'s at the aquarium over the past two decades. Still,
Anderson had little trouble recalling them: Emily Dickinson, for
example, a particularly shy, retiring female G.P.O. who always hid
behind the tank's rock outcroppings, or Leisure Suit Larry, who,
Anderson told me, would have been arrested in our world for sexual
assault, with his arms always crawling all over passing
researchers. And then there was Lucretia McEvil. She repeatedly
tore her tank apart at night, scraping up all the rocks at the
base, pulling up the water filter, biting through nylon cables, all
the parts left floating on the surface when Anderson arrived in the
morning.

One particularly temperamental G.P.O. so disliked having his tank
cleaned, he would keep grabbing the cleaning tools, trying to pull
them into the tank, his skin going a bright red. Another took to
regularly soaking one of the aquarium's female night biologists
with the water funnel octopuses normally use to propel themselves,
because he didn't like it when she shined her flashlight into his
tank. Yet another G.P.O. of the Leisure Suit Larry mold once tried
to pull into his tank a BBC videographer who got her hand a bit too
close, wrapping his tentacles up and down her arm as fast as she
could unravel them. When she finally broke free, the octopus turned
a bright red and doused her with repeated jets of water.

Just across from Achilles that night was another G.P.O. named
Mikala, their two tanks connected by an overhead, see-through
passageway, the doors to which were closed. Mikala was a recent
replacement for Helen, who had just been released back into the sea
after a failed attempt by the scientists to mate her with Achilles.
Anderson told me that they had left Achilles and Helen together in
the same tank for a week, but, he said, "there wasn't any
chemistry." In the coming months, they would be trying the same
routine with Mikala, to see if anything clicked.

At one point I decided to absent myself from Achilles' stare and
walk around to the far side of his tank to look at Mikala in hers.
Standing in the narrow space beneath the overhead passageway, I
found her sound asleep, mushed between her tank's outer glass and
some craggy rocks. I thought about tapping the glass to see if I
could stir her, but decided to leave her be. When I turned around,
Achilles was right there behind me, bobbing against the glass,
bright red, his black eyes opened wide.

"How do we even define what an emotion is in an animal?" I recalled
Roland Anderson asking earlier that day. "And why do they even have
these different temperaments?"

It was back in 1991 that Anderson and Jennifer Mather, a
psychologist from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada,
first decided to undertake a joint personality study of 44 smaller
red octopuses at the aquarium as a way to begin to codify and
systematize what they thought they had been observing. Using three
categorizations from a standard human-personality-assessment test -
shy, aggressive and passive - their data would ultimately show that
the animals did consistently clump together under these different
categories in response to various stimuli, like touching them with
a bristly test-tube brush or dropping a crab into the tank.

"The aggressive ones would pounce on the crab," Anderson told me.
"The passive ones would wait for the crab to come past and then
grab it. The shy animal would wait till overnight when no one was
looking, and we'd find this little pile of crab shell in the
morning."

Anderson and Mather's resulting 1993 paper in the Journal of
Comparative Psychology, entitled "Personalities of Octopuses," was
not only the first-ever documentation of personality in
invertebrates. It was the first time in anyone's memory that the
term "personality" had been applied to a nonhuman in a major
psychology journal.

Scientists are not typically disposed to wielding a word like
"personality" when talking about animals. Doing so borders on the
scientific heresy of anthropomorphism. And yet for a growing number
of researchers from a broad range of disciplines - psychology,
evolutionary biology and ecology, animal behavior and welfare - it
is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid that term when trying
to describe the variety of behaviors that they are now observing in
an equally broad and expanding array of creatures, everything from
nonhuman primates to hyenas and numerous species of birds to water
striders and stickleback fish and, of course, giant Pacific
octopuses.

In fact, in the years since Anderson and Mather's original paper, a
whole new field of research has emerged known simply as "animal
personality." Through close and repeated observations of different
species in a variety of group settings and circumstances,
scientists are finding that our own behavioral traits exist in
varying degrees and dimensions among creatures across all the
branches of life's tree. Observing our fellow humans, we all
recognize the daredevil versus the more cautious, risk-averse type;
the aggressive bully as opposed to the meek victim; the sensitive,
reactive individual versus the more straight-ahead, proactive sort,
fairly oblivious to the various subtle signals of his surroundings.
We wouldn't have expected to meet all of them, however, in
everything from farm animals and birds to fish and insects and
spiders. But more and more now, we are recognizing ourselves and
our ways to be recapitulations of the rest of biology. And as
scientists track these phenomena, they are also beginning to
unravel such core mysteries as the bioevolutionary underpinnings of
personality, both animal and human; the dynamic interplay between
genes and environment in the expression of various personality
traits; and why it is that nature invented such a thing as
personality in the first place.

Animal personality studies are only the most recent manifestation
of the inroads that science is now making into what has long been
uncharted terrain: the very inscrutability of our fellow creatures
that has, from the dawn of human consciousness, both begotten and
bound us to our wildest imaginings about them. All sorts of
research has been done in recent years revealing various aspects of
animal complexity: African gray parrots that can not only count but
can also grasp the concept of zero; self-recognition, empathy and
the cultural transference of tool use in both chimps and dolphins;
individual face-recognition among sheep; courtship songs in mice;
laughter in rats. This is no longer merely the stuff of
anthropomorphism or isolated anecdote. As Jaak Panksepp, the
neuroscientist who first discovered rat laughter, has pointed out:
"Every drug used to treat emotional and psychiatric disorders in
humans was first developed and found effective in animals. This
kind of research would obviously have no value if animals were
incapable of experiencing these emotional states."

Now, with the emergence of animal-personality studies, we are
gaining an even fuller appreciation not only of the distinctiveness
of birds and beasts and their behaviors but also of their deep
resemblances to us and our own. Somehow, through the very creatures
we have long piggybacked upon to tell stories about ourselves, we
are beginning to get at the essence of that one aspect of the self
we have long thought to be exclusively and quintessentially ours:
the individual personality. The octopuses' garden is proving to be
quite deeply and variously shaded indeed.

Appropriately enough for a newly emerging psychological science,
the world's first Animal Personality Institute, or A.P.I., is still
more of a proposition than a physical place. Indeed, outside of a
newly established Web site with a flashy bright blue logo, A.P.I.'s
only visitable locale can be found on the third floor of the
psychology-department building at the University of Texas in
Austin, in the small, book-crammed office of A.P.I.'s founder, Sam
Gosling, a London-born, 37-year-old professor of psychology. "This
here is my collection of animal-personality literature," Gosling
told me one afternoon in October, pointing to a long row of thick
blue binders along the top shelf of his office's bookcase,
including animal studies from fields as diverse as agricultural
science, anthropology, psychology, veterinary medicine and zoology.
"We're trying to scan them all and make them available, because
part of. . . I mean.. . ."

A tall, gaunt figure whose flowing locks, untucked striped shirt,
slightly flared bell bottoms and ankle-high leather boots give him
the appearance of a 60's-era British rock star, Gosling is given to
switching gears midsentence, his active mind going in a number of
directions at once. "Part of what we're trying to do here," he
continued, "is create a field."

Gosling, who often refers to himself as "a bit of a fraud," being
what he calls "a personality expert who knows very little about
actual animals," was a young graduate student in psychology at the
University of California, Berkeley, when he first came upon
Anderson and Mather's paper on octopus personality. It was not at
all an area of research he expected to be poking his nose into,
having originally attended Berkeley to pursue a degree in human
personality. But in the course of one of his first seminars, he
suddenly found his thoughts going in an unlikely direction, what he
now refers to as his "reductio ad absurdum moment."

"It was a basic seminar in human personality," he recalled. "We
were considering the question of what is personality. And I
thought, O.K., let's try to push it to its limit. To find out what
personality is, let's start by taking what's clearly outside that
category and discover what's different about that. Let's take
animals. They obviously don't have personality. So then I thought,
O.K., if animals don't have it, then what is it that makes them not
have it, and I couldn't come up with an answer."

A standard answer, of course, is that animals do not, as far as we
know, reflect upon and argue with their experiences, emotions and
behaviors in the way that we humans do. They do not possess, in
other words, that dynamic, self-reflective, internal dialogue the
very outcome of which is, many scientists say, our personality. Of
course, whether or not self-knowledge is truly a defining
characteristic of personality is a question scientists disagree on,
as they do about much else in the field. Indeed, the whole notion
of personality is one that we only began trying to measure and
codify in the past century. Personality theory started showing up
in the writings of Ivan Pavlov and Sigmund Freud as a somewhat
vague, broadly drawn concept. It has only been in the last 60 years
or so that the modern science of human personality began to emerge,
a system of assessing distinct personality traits that has its
roots in World War II, when the U.S. government assigned to the
Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of today's C.I.A.) the
task of identifying which individuals had the right traits to be
spies. A number of different personality-mapping methods and
traits-assessment tests have been developed over the years, all of
them pivoting around the principle that certain traits can be
consistently observed in individuals across time and different
situations. The most widely applied test today uses the categories
defined by what is known as the Five-Factor Model (F.F.M.):
openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and
neuroticism. Under each of these broad dimension headings are
so-called clusters of recognizable traits: an extroverted person,
for example, is more sociable, outgoing and assertive; a neurotic
one, more anxious, moody and stressed.

Gosling, however, was intent on exploring personality at its most
rudimentary level - below the radar, if you will, of human
consciousness. Applying some of the very same personality
assessments that we use on humans, he wondered whether we could
observe in animals essential traits like fearfulness,
aggressiveness, affability or calmness, traits that can exist
outside of cognition and yet are clearly and repeatedly apparent in
varying measures in different individual animals within a given
species.

Does one duck, in other words, behave consistently differently from
another duck, over time and across situations? If so, why doesn't
that meet the definition of personality as we apply it to
ourselves, regardless of the presence or absence of self-awareness?
In a sense, Gosling was posing a psychologist's rendition of that
old philosophical query about whether the tree that falls in the
forest, miles from anyone's ears, still makes a sound. That is, if
an animal behaves in distinctly consistent ways but isn't fully
cognizant of such behaviors, can the behaviors still be aspects and
indications of its personality?

One way Gosling set about answering that question was to focus on a
colony of 34 hyenas being kept on the Berkeley campus by Steve
Glickman, a professor of psychology. With Glickman's blessing,
Gosling asked four caretakers of the colony to independently fill
out questionnaires about each animal, using a modified version of
the F.F.M. test. He soon found that the caretakers' assessments had
the same level of agreement, or "convergence," as is found in
assessments done on humans, with such distinct human dimensions as
"excitability," "sociability," "curiosity" and "assertiveness"
being repeatedly observed.

Gosling then reviewed 19 different previous behavioral studies of
nonhuman species through the same F.F.M. framework and found a
similar recurrence of those dimensions across a surprisingly broad
spectrum of species. Among the traits remarked upon were such
things as "opportunistic, self-serving" behavior in certain vervet
monkeys; "emotionality" in rats; "fear avoidance" in some guppies
and "extroversion" in others; and, in Anderson and Mather's 1993
paper, both "boldness" and "avoidance" in octopuses.

"The evolutionary continuity between humans and other animals
suggests that some dimensions of personality may be common across a
wide range of species," Gosling wrote in the resulting paper he
published in 1999 in the journal Current Directions in
Psychological Science. "Scientists have been reluctant to ascribe
personality traits, emotion and cognitions to animals, even though
they readily accept that the anatomy and physiology of humans is
similar to that of animals. Yet there is nothing in evolutionary
theory to suggest that only physical traits are subject to
selection pressures."

Gosling told me that his seminar adviser thought the whole thing
sounded a bit "goofy" at first. Some of his fellow students,
meanwhile, were irked at him for trying to bring the field of
personality to disrepute, as Gosling put it, by studying silly,
trivial, frivolous stuff. The major sticking point, of course, was
his insistence on using the obviously loaded word "personality," a
choice that he admits was purposefully provocative.

In some quarters, the term still rankles. "Personality ratings have
been done with chimps where you can see in them intimations of
human characteristics," says Jack Block, an emeritus professor of
personality psychology at Berkeley. "Now, where you want to take
that, I don't know. Even with chimps, it is a big extrapolation
from them to us. But personality in fruit flies or octopi? Heck,
no. All living organisms do react to pain and seek what they have
developed to want in terms of food or mating. But they cannot
manifest the complexity of responses that human beings can."

John Capitanio, a psychology professor at the University of
California, Davis, who does extensive behavioral studies with
rhesus monkeys, is more willing to extrapolate. "Animal
behaviorists or behavioral ecologists are mostly interested in what
the animal is presenting them with in terms of behavior," he told
me recently. "And yet the behaviors exhibited are not dissimilar
from our own, and that's what causes us to infer these personality
characteristics. Now do they really exist in animals? I think the
answer is yes, they do in some form."

In many of his early talks, people would ask Gosling why he didn't
use the word "temperament" instead of personality. His response was
- and is - that temperament is always invoked as a purely
biological, inherited quality, whereas personality is thought of as
a "higher order phenomenon" that grows out of the interaction of
our inherited temperaments and our experiences. If he used only the
word temperament with animals, he would be dismissing the
possibility that they may have some of the same personality
processes as humans. "I don't want to rule that out," Gosling told
me. "I also think the word personality is as appropriate for
animals as it is for us. Of course, we still have to be suspicious.
People will also rate the personality of a loaf of bread or a car.
A colleague has poked fun at me about that: 'A temperamental car is
difficult to start across time and situations. So why isn't that
personality?' Well, the fundamental difference, of course, is that
with an animal there is an underlying physiology and biology.
Saying my car is temperamental is an analogy. And some people will
rate dogs not only as friendly or fearful but as philosophical.
Now, I do not believe dogs are philosophical, whereas I do believe
in their fearfulness. So we have to be careful where to draw the
line between what's reality and what's analogy."

Dogs, in a way, offer the most obvious proof of the existence of
animal personality. They have long been bound to us and bred by us
precisely for their very particular physical and temperament
traits, and, of course, even among specific breeds there are all
kinds of variation in the personalities of individuals. Indeed,
animals like dogs and cats point up what often appears to be a
paradoxically prodigious "duh factor" behind this otherwise
cutting-edge science. While scientists may tussle endlessly over
the validity of applying the word personality to nonhumans, for
people in the everyday world - especially those who spend any time
around animals - the assertion that they have distinct
personalities seems absurdly obvious.

Not so very long ago, concepts like animal sentience, emotion and
personality were not merely the stuff of anecdotes told by farmers
and pet owners; they were wholly embraced by the scientific
community as well. In the late 19th century, animal emotion and
behavior were integral aspects of the newly emerging science of
human psychology. Charles Darwin devoted much of his time after the
publication of "The Origin of Species" to researching "The
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," published in 1872.
Although that era's cross-species conjecturing and comparing was
often na?ve or intuitive, the impulse behind it went on to inform
human psychological study well into the 20th century. Beginning
with the appearance in 1908 of more sober, scientifically sound
works like John Lubbocks's "On the Senses, Instincts, and
Intelligence of Animals With Special Reference to the Insects" or
Edward L. Thorndike's "Animal Intelligence," animal studies figured
prominently in standard human psychology textbooks well into the
1940's. And then, steadily, the animals began to disappear.

At one point in his Austin office on the afternoon I met with him,
Sam Gosling pulled from his shelves the 1935 edition of "A Handbook
of Social Psychology," a standard human psychology textbook of the
time, and showed me the table of contents. More than a quarter of
the textbook's chapters were devoted to studies of animals and
other life forms, titles like "Population Behavior of Bacteria,"
"Insect Societies" or "The Behavior of Mammalian Herds and Packs."
There is even a chapter devoted to "Social Origins and Processes
Among Plants." But in the 1954 edition of a similar work called
"The Handbook of Social Psychology," there is but one chapter
devoted to nonhuman research. Titled "The Social Significance of
Animal Studies," it is essentially a desperate last plea to social
psychologists not to abandon animal studies, arguing at one point
that "social psychology must be dangerously myopic if it restricts
itself to human literature." The warning clearly went unheeded. The
most recent edition of the handbook, from 1998, is devoted entirely
to humans.

The banishment of our fellow beasts from psychological literature
can be blamed by and large on that branch of psychology known as
behaviorism. The field's major proponents, eminent psychologists
like B.F. Skinner, stressed the inherent inscrutability of mental
states and perceptions to anyone but the person experiencing them.
And even though the behaviorists were themselves major proponents
of the use of animals in behavioral research, they sought to rein
in subjective verbal descriptions of the animals' mental states, as
well as the sorts of experiments that relied on such necessarily
vague data. If the human mind was, as Skinner famously referred to
it, "a black box," then surely the minds of animals were even
further beyond our ken.

"The great and enduring contribution of behaviorism," Gosling says,
"is that it introduced the scientific method to the study of
behavior. They said, 'Let's get rid of the fuzzy, sentimental
higher-level descriptions.' And they did. They went to great
efforts to record specific behaviors, things like how many times a
chimpanzee scratched its head or nose. But it's hard to study
higher-order phenomena, things like personality and emotion, in
just those ways. In the end, what you're left with is this long
catalog of meaningless descriptions. If I need to know whether I
can go into that cage or not to clean it, it's not useful to tell
me the chimp scratched its nose 50,000 times in the past year. Just
tell me, Is it aggressive or not?"

In their dogged pursuit of hard science and their strict avoidance
of what Sam Gosling referred to in his first published paper as the
"specter of anthropomorphism," the behaviorists, especially in the
eyes of many who currently study animal behavior, greatly limited
the field of psychology by ultimately outlawing things like
intuition, inference and common sense. Now, however, the pendulum
has begun to swing back in that direction, and it is a shift that
has been impelled, somewhat surprisingly, by hard science.

Advances in fields like genetics and molecular and evolutionary
biology have lent to the study of psychology something that it
really didn't have when behaviorism first came to the fore: a
better understanding of the biological and bioevolutionary
underpinnings of behavior. No longer is the study of animal
behavior rooted in that inherently na?ve and anthropocentric desire
to see ourselves in animals or to project upon them our thoughts
and feelings. Animal personality, along with such integral fields
as animal behavior, behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology,
all pivot now around what might be called deep analogies. The more
detailed and specific our knowledge has become of the animals and
of the many differences between them and us, the more clearly we
can see what is analogous about our respective behaviors.

Animal personality, in other words, is now redirecting psychology's
focus in a direction the behaviorists would most appreciate: away
from airy abstractions about personality and down to its very
tangible and widely dispersed roots. It might be thought of as a
kind of biological Buddhism or muscular mythologizing or armed
anthropomorphism: a more disciplined and detailed form of that idle
speculating we have all done in front of the head tilt of a dog or
the sudden skyward shift of a flock of sea gulls or the comings and
goings of ants around their respective mounds.

"Now, those there I can almost guarantee you are females," Jason
Watters, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California,
Davis, told me one afternoon this past autumn. He was pointing to a
cluster of water striders that had climbed up the side wall of one
of the collecting pools in the artificial stream that Watters had
erected at the far western edge of the Davis campus for a six-month
study that he and his lab director, Andy Sih, recently completed on
the role of genetic and environmental factors in the expression of
behavior in water striders: those spindly black, surface-flitting
wraiths whose indent on their tenuous native terrain is never more
than four slightly concave, lunar-module-like landing cups.

Watters personally reared several thousand water striders for the
experiment and would come to know them about as intimately as any
human can an insect. He knew each strider's parents and siblings.
He photographed and marked each of them with paint-on numbers and
then tracked them through more or less every circumstance and
experience in their roughly yearlong lives: what and how they ate,
their responses to new environments or to simulated predator
attacks, their social interactions and mating practices out in the
simulated stream.

"I haven't gathered all the data yet," Watters said, grabbing one
of the clustered striders and confirming his suspicion about its
sex. "But what we do know is that these water striders express
consistent behavioral types. Like in the presence of a predator
some individuals will run and get right out of the water. Others
don't seem concerned whatsoever. Just sit there. Others get out and
then get back in after a little while. So there's a great deal of
variation in what they do. Especially in a mating situation, here
in the stream we've found among the males that there is the
consistently more aggressive guy - so that's his type or his
personality - and then there are these very active, hyperaggressive
males. They're the ones who are always forcing females to have sex
and driving them out of the water and really messing things up for
themselves and everybody. We don't know yet if this is really the
best way to be or what the point of it is. We're working on that.
But I've got to believe there's going to be some circumstances
where it's a good idea to be a really mean, brutish type of guy and
others where it's not."

A similar array of behaviors is now being encountered in other
insects. In her current research at Davis, Judy Stamps, a professor
of biology and animal behavior, has been looking into how early
experience affects habitat selection in drosophila, better known to
you and me as the common fruit fly. Stamps escorted me one
afternoon to one of the biology department's "animal rooms," where
she and her students have been conducting their experiments. The
room was the size of a small walk-in closet, barely large enough to
contain the 11-foot-long metal table before us.

To a tiny fruit fly, however, the strange, artificial fruit-bowl
habitats of upward twisting wire set at either end of the table are
separate universes, the various fruit-shaped planets of which,
Stamps has discovered, fruit flies approach and settle in a number
of ways, some of which depend on early experience and some on their
distinct personalities. Fruit flies born and raised on a plum, for
example, will seek out the next plum to settle upon, as will the
offspring that they raise there: a "no place like home" impulse.
But in the course of their research, Stamps and her students have
also encountered everything from overly shy, timorous fruit flies
to bold trailblazers to downright feisty and ultimately
self-defeating bullies.

"You don't think of drosophila in that way," Stamps told me. "They
can be very territorial, and some of the males are fairly
aggressive. They tussle with each other. When we did our free-range
fly experiments, we marked them individually. We put little colored
paint dots on their thorax. The students loved it. They'd say: 'You
know Blue? He's been attacking everyone this morning. He's on
Banana A, and everyone else is on Banana B. He's the ruler of
Banana A.' Of course, the other thing we've noticed is that
individuals that behave like Blue get into trouble because, you
see, they end up with nobody to mate with."

Another member of Andy Sih's lab, Alison Bell, has done extensive
studies of the three-spined stickleback fish, a tiny
prehistoric-looking fish with armorlike outer lateral plates and
serrated, lancelike spines protruding from the dorsal region. As
well as finding the same spectrum of behaviors in sticklebacks -
from extremely bold and bullying sticklebacks to extremely shy and
timid ones - Bell has found groups of sticklebacks that exhibit a
similar type of behavior: tribelike populations of bold and
aggressive sticklebacks, for example, or of extremely timid ones.
Their collective disposition seems to have been shaped by the
respective environment in which they were raised - whether it was
predator-free or predator-laden - and their physical appearance
reflects their environment as well: the timid sticklebacks having
far heavier armor and longer, more serrated spines.

The questions that scientists are now beginning to address are why
evolution has wielded such a variety of temperaments in animals and
why it hasn't weeded out the clearly deleterious ones: the shyness
and timidity that deprives some members of a group of food or mates
or the overaggression and extreme risk-taking behavior that can
often result in both the disruption of the group's overall
reproductive success and the aggressors' becoming some other
creature's food.

Roland Anderson sees the diversity of temperaments as a
manifestation of that most basic biological imperative of survival,
an array of personality traits being kept in play in a given
species because of the differing, shifting environmental
circumstances that groups may encounter. "What happens," he asked,
"if a big school of herring comes along and eats all the
aggressive, fearless males in a group of smaller fish? Well, there
will still be some of the more passive or shy ones hiding under
that rock that can say: 'Hey, they're all gone now. There's a
nice-looking female over there. I think I'll reproduce with her."'

Andy Sih, like most of his colleagues at Davis, views personality
differences in animals in a Darwinian context. He considers
specific behaviors and preferences from an evolutionary perspective
and tries to determine how various traits affect the long-term
survival of a given species. And in the course of his research on
everything from water striders to salamanders, Sih has become
fairly obsessed with what he calls "stupid behaviors," ones that
don't seem to make any evolutionary sense whatsoever.

"You'd expect animals to be doing smart stuff," Sih told me one
evening over dinner. "The whole tradition in most of evolutionary
ecology has been to emphasize adaptation where organisms do smart
things. But I've been making the case for a while that the most
interesting behaviors are actually the stupidest."

It's typically the males of a given species that seem to figure
most prominently in the stupid-behavior department - the militant,
mayhem-causing water striders and sticklebacks, for example, or
fierce male Western bluebirds, who spend so much time defending
nests or courting females that they completely neglect their own
offspring. But perhaps the most glaring instance of dumb-animal
doings is to be found in the female North American fishing spider.
Studies have shown that a good number of female fishing spiders are
from a very early age highly driven and effective hunters. It is a
trait that serves them well most of their lives, particularly in
lean times, but it wholly backfires during mating season, when
these females can't keep themselves from eating prospective
suitors.

"Now why would anybody, why would any organism do that?" asked Sih.
"If you look at these female spiders just in the context of mating
behavior, you would conclude that they're doing something mighty
stupid here. But their behavioral type is very good for them for
much of their life growing up in a highly competitive world where
food is often scarce. They're so geared up, though, that when
mating season comes around, they really mess up. And experiments
have shown that even if they're given a reasonable amount of food,
they'll still behave this way."

These same hyped-up females have also been shown to be the most
fearless in the face of predators. In simulated attacks, all
fishing spiders retreated underwater. The overaggressive, ravenous
females, however, were always the first to pop back up, giving them
at once the greatest chance of getting available food and, if the
predator was still around, of becoming its meal. Of course, a good
proportion of female fishing spiders are able to make the
distinction between sex and dinner and between finding and becoming
dinner. But for Sih and others, the persistence in certain members
of a species of these extreme behaviors and the inability of some
to modulate that behavior give rise to a more profound question
about the nature of personality types in general and how plastic or
not they actually are, whether in animals or humans.

In animals, it is now becoming evident, there is a certain degree
of evolutionary inertia when it comes to their behavior, wherein
the very behaviors that accord some members of the group a distinct
evolutionary advantage in one set of circumstances can do them in
in the next. They are stuck, to some extent, with their distinct
ways of being. We humans, on the other hand, tend to think of our
personalities as protean, mutable entities that, unlike our
physical selves, we can shape to suit shifting circumstances. Sih
disagrees. He says he thinks that our behaviors, no matter how
complex the human social contexts that help to shape them, are not
nearly as pliant as we believe them to be.

"Behavioral ecologists actually tend to model animals and humans as
both being very flexible, as being capable of changing their
behaviors as necessary to do the right things in all situations,"
he said. But in our own day-to-day experience, he said, we
recognize that humans don't really behave that way. "We all know
that overly bold person," he pointed out. "We have friends like
that. They do things that are just like: Hey, this can get you
killed. What are they doing that for? And there are people that are
shy, and they're missing out on opportunities they could have had."

There is currently a paucity of human studies along these lines,
but a recently published human-personality study of 545 people by
Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in England shows a
strong parallel with some of these recent animal studies. It found
that the more extroverted and outgoing people were, the more sex
partners they tended to have, an evolutionary edge that was
mitigated by the fact that these were the same people who were most
likely to end up in the hospital because of stupid risk-taking
behaviors.

Indeed, however elaborate an argument we humans may have with our
own biology, we are each of us to some extent locked into a
personality type, a consistent way of being without which we would
each be, in a sense, unrecognizable to ourselves or others. The
oft-heard comment "Hey, that's not like you" is a tacit
acknowledgment of your recognizably consistent way of being. If, in
other words, someone were to be entirely flexible and unpredictable
in their behavior, were able to respond with any one of the full
palette of behavioral responses in any given circumstance, they
would be not only, as Andy Sih put it, "scary to be around," but
they would also be someone of whom you could say, they have no
personality.

This set of ideas, Sih told me, suggests new questions that are
rarely posed about humans. "Like why do we even have a
personality?" he asked. "Why do we have a relatively narrow range
of responses as opposed to a full range? Why can't we all be bold
when we need to be and cautious and shy when we need to be? Then
we'd have no identifiable personality, and that would free us all
to become optimal."

For Sih, the answer seems to be that our personality is a
manifestation of a complex interplay between genetic inheritance
and environment and early-life experience. Bold people, for
example, are both naturally disposed to boldness and, further,
choose to be bold, becoming ever better at it, building from an
early age a mountain of abilities and tendencies that become a
personality. It might happen, as well, that an inherently shy
person is induced by an early-life experience to venture away from
his or her natural disposition and cultivate a bold personality.
But whether a person ends up building and climbing a shy or a bold
mountain, it may become increasingly difficult to come back down
and build another one.

"It's not impossible," Sih said, "but it's not going to be easy.
I'll give you another human example. It's always mystified me why
anyone would be a pessimist. It seems to me like optimism has to be
the way to go. But, in fact, there is some recent literature that
shows that pessimists are good at being pessimists. And that when
things go badly, they expected it anyway, and it doesn't hurt them.
And so it's this notion that personality types build because of
these feedback loops."

In human beings, of course, as with other highly social species,
the shaping of personality entails a complex web of influences and
imperatives. It is not merely about the acquisition of food or
mates but involves as well issues of group interaction,
cooperation, deception and so on. It is a dynamic that, in an ever
more complex series of evolutionary feedback loops, at once
impelled the formation of larger and more sophisticated brains and
the more nuanced emotional responses to social interaction -
feelings of embarrassment, guilt, empathy, confidence, etc. - that
such a brain allows.

The attempt to parse that web of entanglements has for decades been
a motivation of fields like psychology, psychiatry and sociology.
What seems so promising about the field of animal personality is
that in the course of allowing us to better understand and more
effectively conserve the animals themselves, it is also affording
scientists new pathways of understanding ourselves and our
behavior, through the kind of experimentation that we are unable to
perform on humans.

"Do thrill seekers thrive in certain speculative business or
military environments?" Sih asked. "I don't know. But I can do
experiments to look at analogous situations in animals, can take
different animals with different personalities and see how they do
in different environments - in a high-predation-risk situation, in
a cooperative situation, during a courtship-mating situation. Along
similar lines, we can test ideas like, Are animals particularly
aggressive when they invade new regions because it is primarily the
bold, aggressive individuals that tend to immigrate to new areas?
How does the personality of the immigrant pool in humans differ
from those who stay behind, and does that difference influence
success - and does this basic view apply to the melting pot of
America?"

Alison Bell has done related experiments with sticklebacks. It has
long been clear to researchers that fish that have lived for many
generations in the proximity of dangerous predators are less bold
and less aggressive than animals that have lived relatively
risk-free. What Bell discovered is that those cautious tendencies
outlast the presence of risk, even by a generation. When she moved
sticklebacks who had always lived in a high-risk environment into a
low-risk environment, she found that not only did they retain their
cautious tendencies, but so did their offspring. Even fish raised
from birth in a low-risk environment behave more fearfully if
raised by a particularly vigilant father from a high-risk
background.

"There's definitely the effect of genetic difference," Bell
explained, "but there's also the effect of what is experienced as
they grow up. Genotype and environment interactions make it
difficult to detect the effects of genes, because you have to take
the environment into account. This is annoying to geneticists." To
scientists like Bell who are studying the interplay of genes and
environment, however, it is of profound interest.

In the coming year, the sequence of the full stickleback genome
will have been assembled, which will open doors into all kinds of
cross-species research on the relationship between genes and
environment. Alison Bell will be looking at such things as
risk-taking behavior in sticklebacks - which may, by extension,
give us insight into the behavior of humans. The same genes and
hormone receptor systems associated with such behaviors have been
conserved across a broad spectrum of species from sticklebacks to
rhesus monkeys to us. John Capitanio has already done a number of
experiments with rhesus monkeys that look into how the manner of
their rearing affects what Capitanio (in a hedge on the loaded
P-word) calls an animal's "biobehavioral organization" - and how,
in turn, that biobehavioral organization affects everything from
gene expression to immune-system function against ailments like
simian AIDS.

What once seemed the hopelessly subjective pursuit of understanding
human behavior and personality is now increasingly being tied down
to and girded by the objective moorings of our own and other
animals' biology. The very names of newly emergent fields like
biological psychiatry, molecular psychiatry and, of course, animal
personality reflect this trend. It is not, as Capitanio points out,
a reductionistic concept but more of a holistic one, one that
allows for an unprecedentedly subtle reading of the integrative
influences - genetic, experiential and environmental - that shape
each individual's personality.

Capitanio is currently writing, with Sam Gosling, the first chapter
on animal personality to be included in "The Handbook of
Personality," a standard reference book of human-personality
psychology. This week, he will be in Palm Springs, Calif.,
presenting a paper on personality in rhesus monkeys as part of an
animal-social psychology symposium led by Gosling at the annual
meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the
first symposium of its kind at a human psychology conference. For
Gosling, it is the realization of the very thing he envisioned when
he first started pursuing the possibility of personality in animals
at Berkeley back in the mid-1990's.

"What really got me interested when I started exploring this,"
Gosling told me, "is I noticed that what the animal researchers
were doing in practice was exactly what human researchers were
saying would be the perfect study they could do in a perfect world.
Like you ask a human personality researcher, they might say what
we'd do is take a bunch of individuals, and we'd watch them from
conception till death and record all the major events in their
lives and know who mated with whom and who had a fight with whom.
And if we wanted, we could give them frightening stimuli and so on.
And a lot of my job is saying to those in human psychology: 'Hey,
you should talk to these other guys. What they're doing is really
relevant.' I'm like the middleman."

Looking through some of the animal-personality literature in
Gosling's office that afternoon, I came upon an intriguing paper
titled "Microscopic Brains," published in the March 13, 1964,
edition of the journal Science, in the midst of the great animal
blackout from psychological literature. Written by a professor of
zoology and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania named
Vincent Dethier, the paper is at once a study of insect behavior
and a remarkably prescient argument for a more intuitive,
empathetic and integrative approach to the study of psychology.

"The farther removed an animal is from ourselves," Dethier writes,
"the less sympathetic we are in ascribing to it those components of
behavior that we know in ourselves. There is some fuzzy point of
transition in the phylogenetic scale where our empathizing acquires
an unsavory aura. Yet there is little justification for this
schism. If we subscribe to an idea of a lineal evolution of
behavior, there is no reason for failing to search for adumbrations
of higher behavior in invertebrates."

Dethier concludes on a decidedly haunting note: "Perhaps," he
writes, "these insects are little machines in a deep sleep, but
looking at their rigidly armored bodies, their staring eyes and
their mute performances, one cannot help at times wondering if
there is anyone inside."

We will never know, of course, one way or the other. And yet
somehow, science, of all things, is rendering the empirical answer
to such a question incidental to a more felt and intuitive one.
Perched now, like entranced children, along the banks of their
respective simulated streams, scientists are staring for hours at
the least human of creatures - everything from bullying fruit flies
to ravenous, oversexed water striders and fishing spiders to
perilously fearless hordes of armored stickleback fish - and are
beginning to see in them not just their distinct patterns of
behavior but also something deeply and distinctly recognizable.
Something, well, not altogether inhuman.

Charles Siebert is a contributing writer and the author most
recently of "A Man After His Own Heart: A True Story."

From shovland at mindspring.com  Sun Jan 22 23:27:32 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 15:27:32 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] Histones exert epigenetic control
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHEELDCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

Two Papers Broaden Understanding of Epigenetic Control
 by Jeremy Cherfas

http://www.sciencewatch.com/may-june2003/sw_may-june2003_page8.htm

Genes are controlled in at least two distinct ways. One is the
sequence-specific switches that enable regulatory elements to control
individual genes by interacting with set stretches of DNA associated with
that gene. The other is known as epigenetic regulation, because although it
is heritable, it seems to operate independently of the DNA sequence. Two Hot
Papers offer an insight into the workings of one part of epigenetic
regulation.

      Epigenetic control is exerted through histones, proteins that are
intimately associated with DNA, much of which wraps around histones to form
the chromatin of chromosomes. In 1993 Bryan Turner, professor of
experimental genetics at the University of Birmingham Medical School in the
U.K., put forward the idea that chemical modifications to the tails of the
histone proteins created a code, somewhat like the DNA code, that regulatory
elements could read and act upon. This histone code hypothesis, as it was
named in 2000 by C. David Allis, of the University of Virginia School of
Medicine, Charlottesville , finds confirmation in the papers at #4 and #5.
"Something is writing this code," Allis has said, "and something is reading
this code."

     The papers, from groups led by Tony Kouzarides of the University of
Cambridge and by Thomas Jenuwein of the Research Institute of Molecular
Pathology in Vienna, Austria, focus on methylation. This represents a shift
from earlier work, which looked at the more common phenomenon of histone
acetylation. Shiv Grewal, of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York ,
had previously shown that in the budding yeast Saccharomyces pombe, two
proteins are crucially important to epigenetic control. Swi6 is needed both
to silence a stretch of DNA and to maintain the inactivation through cell
divisions. Swi6 also needs Clr3, which de-acetylates histones, to keep
inactive DNA silent. A related protein, Clr4, methylates histones.

     The mammalian equivalent of Swi6 is known as HP1, while the equivalent
of Clr4 is known as SUV39H1. Using almost identical techniques the two
groups showed that HP1 proteins, which have long been implicated in
gene-silencing and the structure of DNA-histone complexes, would bind to
histone H3 if the lysine amino acid at position 9 were methylated, but not
if the nearby lysine-4 is methylated, nor if the lysine-9 is unmethylated.
To prove the functional significance of these events Kouzarides?s group
looked at a mutant of Clr4 in yeast. This mutant lacked the ability to
methylate the lysine-9 of H3. As a result, Swi6 did not bind to the H3, and
as a result of that a normally silent marker gene was expressed. Jenuwein?s
group used mouse cells that lacked SUV39H1 in the same search for proof.
These knockout cells did not form the histone-DNA complexes until they were
given a functional version of the SUV39H1 mouse equivalent gene.

     Both groups agree on the picture that emerges from their data. SUV39H1
comes along and places a marker methyl group on lysine 9 of histone 3. This
marker attracts the attention of HP1. Thus SUV39H1 writes at least this part
of the histone code, and HP1 reads it. But HP1 itself contains a domain that
binds with SUV39H1, which is then in a position to place a methyl marker on
the next H3 histone. Like the structure of the DNA double helix itself,
published exactly 50 years ago at this writing, this arrangement is highly
suggestive. Says Kouzarides, it offers "a mechanism for epigenetic events to
be passed on to the next generation."

     Bryan Turner, originator of the histone code hypothesis, does not
begrudge these two papers their moment in the limelight. "I?m absolutely
delighted," Turner tells Science Watch. But he points out that  they were
"pushing at an open door." By that, Turner means that much of the evidence
was already in the literature, albeit in scattered form and not linked
together. These results were just what everyone wanted, Turner said, himself
included, and "that?s why they are so highly cited." Turner is also
convinced that things are going to prove much more complicated than this
first, "shiny example" of a complete specific sequence of events
underpinning epigenetic control.

     One of the exciting aspects of epigenetic control is that it probably
underlies the long-term differentiation of cells. At the start of
development, genes are switched on and off according roughly to their
position in the developing embryo. As differentiation proceeds, however, a
cell?s pattern of activity becomes fixed and is passed on to daughter cells
in a stable manner. To begin with, a cell might become either liver or
muscle, but thereafter liver cells remain liver cells, while muscle cells
remain muscle cells. The ability to manipulate, and possibly even reverse,
this type of differentiation could be the key to new approaches to disease.



From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan 23 21:14:42 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:14:42 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge Annual Question 2004: What's Your Law?
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601231559020.2181@panix2.panix.com>

Edge Annual Question 2004: What's Your Law?
http://edge.org/q2004/q04_print1.html

There is some bit of wisdom, some rule of nature, some law-like
pattern, either grand or small, that you've noticed in the universe
that might as well be named after you. Gordon Moore has one; Johannes
Kepler and Michael Faraday, too. So does Murphy.

Since you are so bright, you probably have at least two you can
articulate. Send me two laws based on your empirical work and
observations you would not mind having tagged with your name. Stick to
science and to those scientific areas where you have expertise. Avoid
flippancy. Remember, your name will be attached to your law.

I am asking members of the Edge community to take this project
seriously as a public service, to work together to create a document
that can be widely disseminated, that can stimulate discussion and the
imagination.

Say the words....

Happy New Year!

John Brockman
Publisher & Editor

164 Contributors: George Dyson o Bruce Sterling o William Calvin o
Howard Gardner o James J. O'Donnell o Marc D. Hauser o David Lykken o
Irene Pepperberg o Daniel Gilbert o Joseph Traub o Roger Schank o
Douglas Rushkoff o Karl Sabbagh o Carlo Rovelli o Timothy Taylor o
Richard Nisbett o Freeman Dyson o John Allan Paulos o John McWhorter o
Kevin Kelly o Brian Goodwin o John Barrow o Marvin Minsky o Garniss
Curtis o Todd Siler o Howard Rheingold o David G. Myers o Michael
Nesmith o Arnold Trehub o Keith Devlin o Arthur R. Jensen o John
Maddox o John Skoyles o Pamela McCorduck o Philip W. Anderson o
Charles Arthur o David Bunnell o Esther Dyson o Scott Atran o Jay
Ogilvy o Steven Kosslyn o Jeffrey Epstein o Stewart Brand o Piet Hut o
Geoffrey Miller o Nassim Taleb o Donald Hoffman o Richard Rabkin o
Stanislas Dehaene o Susan Blackmore o Raphael Kasper o Alison Gopnik o
Art De Vany o Robert Provine o Stuart Pimm o Chris Anderson o Alan
Alda o Andy Clark o Charles Seife o Jaron Lanier o Seth Lloyd o John
Horgan o Robert Aunger o Ernst P?ppel o Michael Shermer o Colin
Blakemore o Scott Sampson o Verena Huber-Dyson o Gary Marcus o Rodney
Brooks o David Deutsch o Steve Grand o Paul Davies o David Finkelstein
o Richard Dawkins o J. Craig Venter o Steve Quartz o Philip Campbell o
Tor N?rretranders o Julian Barbour o Maria Spiropulu o Eberhard
Zangger o David Buss o Mark Mirsky o Lee Smolin o Nancy Etcoff o Anton
Zeilinger o Edward O. Laumann o George Lakoff o Haim Harari o Matt
Ridley o Daniel C. Dennett o W. Brian Arthur o Samuel Barondes o
Jamshed Bharucha o Ray Kurzweil o Adam Bly o Kai Krause o Dylan Evans
o Jordan Pollack o Stuart Kauffman o Niels Diffrient o Gerald Holton o
Robert Sapolsky o Izumi Aizu o Randoph Nesse o Dave Winer o Rupert
Sheldrake o Ivan Amato o Judith Rich Harris o Steven Strogatz o Sherry
Turkle o Leonard Susskind o Christine Finn o Simon Baron-Cohen o Henry
Warwick o Gino Segre o Neil Gershenfeld o Steven Levy o Paul Ryan o
Stuart Hameroff o Leo Chalupa o Terrence Sejnowski o Eduard Punset o
Paul Steinhardt o Delta Willis o Rudy Rucker o Al Seckel o Howard
Morgan o Clifford Pickover o Beatrice Golomb o K. Eric Drexler o Mark
Hurst o Art Kleiner o Yossi Vardi o Nicholas Humphrey o Martin Rees o
John Markoff o Gerd Gigerenzer o Steve Lohr o David Berreby o William
Poundstone o Dennis Overbye o Sara Lippincott o Albert-L?szl? Barab?si
o David Gelernter o W. Daniel Hillis o Marti Hearst o Steven Pinker o
Lisa Randall o Gregory Benford o Allan Snyder o Mike Godwin o Dan
Sperber o Frank Tipler o Andrian Kreye o Eric S. Raymond o Brian Eno o
Antonio Damasio o Helena Cronin o Paul Ewald o Charles Simonyi o John
Rennie o Alun Anderson

[nytimes.gif]
CONNECTIONS
Finding the Universal Laws That Are There, Waiting . . .
By Edward Rothstein, January 10, 2004 [free registration required]

Nature abhors a vacuum. Gravitational force is inversely proportional
to the square of the distance between two objects. Over the course of
evolution, each species develops larger body sizes. If something can
go wrong, it will.

Such are some of nature's laws as handed down by Aristotle, Newton,
Edward Cope and Murphy. And regardless of their varying accuracy (and
seriousness), it takes an enormous amount of daring to posit them in
the first place. Think of it: asserting that what you observe here and
now is true for all times and places, that a pattern you perceive is
not just a coincidence but reveals a deep principle about how the
world is ordered.

If you say, for example, that whenever you have tried to create a
vacuum, matter has rushed in to fill it, you are making an
observation. But say that "nature abhors a vacuum" and you are
asserting something about the essence of things. Similarly, when
Newton discovered his law of gravitation, he was not simply accounting
for his observations. It has been shown that his crude instruments and
approximate measurements could never have justified the precise and
elegant conclusions. That is the power of natural law: the evidence
does not make the law plausible; the law makes the evidence plausible.

But what kind of natural laws can now be so confidently formulated,
disclosing a hidden order and forever bearing their creator's names?
We no longer even hold Newton's laws sacred; 20th-century physics
turned them into approximations. Cope, the 19th-century
paleontologist, created his law about growing species size based on
dinosaurs; the idea has now become somewhat quaint. Someday even an
heir to Capt. Edward Aloysius Murphy might have to modify the law he
based on his experience about things going awry in the United States
Air Force in the 1940's.

So now, into the breach comes John Brockman, the literary agent and
gadfly, whose online scientific salon, Edge.org, has become one of the
most interesting stopping places on the Web. He begins every year by
posing a question to his distinguished roster of authors and invited
guests. Last year he asked what sort of counsel each would offer
George W. Bush as the nation's top science adviser. This time the
question is "What's your law?"

"There is some bit of wisdom," Mr. Brockman proposes, "some rule of
nature, some lawlike pattern, either grand or small, that you've
noticed in the universe that might as well be named after you." What,
he asks, is your law, one that's ready to take a place near Kepler's
and Faraday's and Murphy's.

More than 150 responses totaling more than 20,000 words have been
posted so far at www.edge.org/q2004/q04_print.html. The respondents
form an international gathering of what Mr. Brockman has called the
"third culture" ? scientists and science-oriented intellectuals who
are, he believes, displacing traditional literary intellectuals in
importance. They include figures like the scientists Freeman Dyson and
Richard Dawkins, innovators and entrepreneurs like Ray Kurzweil and W.
Daniel Hillis, younger mavericks like Douglas Rushkoff and senior
mavericks like Stewart Brand, mathematicians, theoretical physicists,
computer scientists, psychologists, linguists and journalists....

Hartford Courant:
Edge.org Compiles Rules Of The Wise Observations Of Thinking People
January 9, 2004 By John Jurgensen, Courant Staff Writer [free
registration required] 
Everything answers to the rule of law. Nature. Science. Society. All
of it obeys a set of codes...It's the thinker's challenge to put words
to these unwritten rules. Do so, and he or she may go down in history.
Like a Newton or, more recently, a Gordon Moore, who in 1965 coined
the most cited theory of the technological age, an observation on how
computers grow exponentially cheaper and more powerful... Recently,
John Brockman went looking for more laws.

..."It's interesting to sit back and watch this crowd move the
question in different directions that I hadn't intended," says
Brockman, who has been posting answers to the annual question online
since 1997... This year's results, published on edge.org, run the
gamut from brainy principles to homespun observations in the tradition
of Murphy's Law...If all this theorizing sounds a little high-flown,
it's not, says Brockman. The important questions of life aren't
restricted to an exclusive club - this just happens to be the
intellectual company Brockman keeps.
" They're not sitting around looking at their work in awe and wonder,"
he says. "They're looking at experiments and empirical results and
asking, `Where do we go from here?'"
... As for choosing a favorite among the crop of submissions, Brockman
invokes a law of his own: "Nobody knows, and you can't find out."

Wall St. Journal:
SCIENCE JOURNAL By Sharon Begley, January 2 , 2004
Scientists Who Give Their Minds to Study, Can Give Names, Too
(Subscription Required)

Heisenberg has one, and so do Boyle and Maxwell: A scientific
principle, law or rule with their moniker attached.... It isn't every
day that a researcher discovers the uncertainty principle, an ideal
gas law, or the mathematical structure of electromagnetism. And ours
is the era of real-estate moguls, phone companies and others slapping
their name on every building, stadium and arena in sight.... So, John
Brockman, a New York literary agent, writer and impresario of the
online salon Edge, figures it is time for more scientists to get in on
the whole naming thing.... As a New Year's exercise, he asked scores
of leading thinkers in the natural and social sciences for "some bit
of wisdom, some rule of nature, some law-like pattern, either grand or
small, that you've noticed in the universe that might as well be named
after you."...The responses, to be posted soon on Mr. Brockman's Web
site www.edge.org, range from the whimsical to the somber, from
cosmology to neuroscience...You can find other proposed laws of nature
on the Edge Web site. Who knows? Maybe one or more might eventually
join Heisenberg in the nomenclature pantheon.

The Independent (UK)
A Week in Books: Core principles are needed in the muddled business of
books
By Boyd Tonkin, 02 January 2004

The literary agent John Brockman, who makes over significant
scientists into successful authors, has posted an intriguing question
on his Edge website. He seeks suggestions for contemporary "laws",
just as Boyle, Newton, Faraday and other pioneers gave their names to
the rules of the physical universe. (That eminent pair, Sod and
Murphy, soon followed suit.) Brockman advises his would-be legislators
to stick to the scientific disciplines, and you can find their
responses at www.edge.org.
______________________________________________________________________

   "WHAT'S YOUR LAW?"
______________________________________________________________________

Alun Anderson

Anderson's First Law (of the Experienced Science Journalist)

Science may be objective but scientists are not.

Anderson's Second Law (of the Experienced Science Journalist)

A scientist who can speak without jargon is either an idiot or a
genius.

Anderson's Third Law (on Subjectivity and Objectivity from the
Interface of Neuroscience and Computers)

The bigger the brain, the better the stories it fabricates for us.

Corollary

The more technology gives us the power to record and store everything,
the less it captures reality.
laws on subjectivity and objectivity from the interface of
Neuroscience and Computers

Anderson's Fourth Law (for ordinary folk)

Science can produce knowledge but it cannot produce wisdom.

Anderson's Fifth Law (Based on An Ancient Zen Saying to An Untutored
Monk Seeking Wisdom)

If you can tell the false from the true you are already a scientist.

John Rennie

Rennie's Law of Credibility
Scientists don't always know best about matters of science-but they're
more likely to be right than the critics who make that argument.
1st Corollary to the Law of Credibility
The first job of any scientific fraud is to persuade the public that
science is itself unscientific.
2nd Corollary to the Law of Credibility
Any iconoclast with a scientifically unorthodox view who reminds you
that Galileo was persecuted too...ain't Galileo.
Rennie's Law of Evolutionary Biology
The most important environmental influences on any organism are always
the other organisms around it.
Corollary to the Law of Evolutionary Biology
Species do not occupy ecological niches; they define them.

Charles Simonyi

Simonyi's Law of Guaranteed Evolution
Anything that can be done, could be done "meta".
______________________________________________________________________

Paul Ewald

Ewald's First Law

The defining characteristic of science--the one that gives sciences
its extraordinary explanatory power--is the objective use of evidence
to distinguish between alternative guesses.
Corollary 1
Most of religion is antithetical to science.
Corollary 2
Much of Western Medicine is antithetical to science.
.
Corollary 3
Quite a bit of Science is antithetical to science.
Ewald's Second Law

When the practice of medicine finally obtains a balanced perspective,
Medicine and Evolutionary Medicine will be one and the same.
______________________________________________________________________

Helena Cronin

Cronin's law of dual information storage

Adaptations stockpile information in environments as well as in genes.
The Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos used to describe himself as a
"machine for turning coffee into theorems". In much the same way,
genes are machines for turning stars into a bird's compass;
carotenoids into males of dazzling beauty; smells into love-potions;
facial muscles into signals of friendship; a glance into uncertainty
of paternity; and oxygen, water, light, zinc, calcium and iron into
bears, beetles, bacteria or bluebells. More strictly, genes are
machines for turning stars into birds and thereby into more genes.
This reminds us that adaptations weld together two information-storage
systems. They build up a store of information in genes, meticulously
accumulated, elaborated and honed down evolutionary time. And, to
match that store, they also stockpile information in the environment.
For genes need resources to build and run organisms; and adaptations
furnish genes (or organisms) with the information to pluck those
resources from the environment. So stars and carotenoids and glances
need to be there generation after generation no less reliably than the
information carried by genes.
Thus genes and environments are not in opposition; not zero-sum; not
parallel but separate. Rather, they are designed to work in tandem.
Their interconnection is highly intricate, minutely structured; and it
becomes ever more so over evolutionary time.
And thus, without environments to provide resources, genes would not
be viable; and without genes to specify what constitutes an
environment, environments would not exist. So how could biology not be
an environmental issue? And, conversely, how could environments not
be--necessarily--a biological issue?

Cronin's law of adaptations and environments

What constitutes an organism's environment depends on the species'
adaptations.
What constitutes an organism's environment? The answer is that it is
the organism's adaptations that stake out which are the relevant
aspects of the world. An environment is not simply a given. It is the
typical characteristics of a species, its adaptations, that specify
what constitutes the environment for that species.
Think of it this way. Adaptations are keys to unlocking the world's
resources. They are the means by which organisms harness features of
the world for their own use, transforming them from part of the
indifferent world-out-there into the organism's own tailor-made,
species-specific environment, an environment brimming with materials
and information for the organism's own distinctive adaptive needs.
And so to understand how any species interacts with its environment,
we need to start by exploring that species' adaptations. Only through
adaptations was that environment constructed and only through
understanding adaptations can we reconstruct it.
And, similarly, within a sexually reproducing species, differences
between the sexes should be the default assumption. In particular, the
female's adaptations should not be treated as mere adumbrations of the
male's. On the contrary, if a rule-of-thumb default is needed, turn to
the female. After all, the 'little brown bird' is what the entire
species--males, females and juveniles--looks like before sexual
selection distorts her mate into a showy explosion of colour and song.
When it comes to environments, males perceive them as platforms for
status games. Females most certainly do not.
______________________________________________________________________

Antonio Damasio
Damasio's First Law
The body precedes the mind.

Damasio's Second Law
Emotions precede feelings.

Damasio's Third Law

Concepts precede words.
______________________________________________________________________

Brian Eno

Eno's First Law

Culture is everything we don't have to do
We have to eat, but we didn't have to invent Baked Alaskas and Beef
Wellington. We have to clothe ourselves, but we didn't have to invent
platform shoes and polka-dot bikinis. We have to communicate, but we
didn't have to invent sonnets and sonatas. Everything we do--beyond
simply keeping ourselves alive--we do because we like making and
experiencing art and culture.
Eno's Second Law

Science is the conversation about how the world is. Culture is the
conversation about how else the world could be, and how else we could
experience it.
Science wants to know what can be said about the world, what can be
predicted about it. Art likes to see which other worlds are possible,
to see how it would feel if it were this way instead of that way. As
such art can give us the practice and agility to think and experience
in new ways - preparing us for the new understandings of things that
science supplies.
______________________________________________________________________

Eric S. Raymond
Raymond's Law of Software

Given a sufficiently large number of eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
Raymond's Second Law

Any sufficiently advanced system of magic would be indistinguishable
from a technology.

The first one is sometimes called "Raymond's Law" now, though I
originally called it "Linus's Law" when I formulated it. Second one.
Hmmm. Several people have since invented this one independently, but I
came up with it more than twenty years ago. It's a reply to Arthur C.
Clarke's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."

Raymond's Law of Consequences
The road to hell has often been paved with good intentions. Therefore,
evil is best recognized not by its motives but by its methods.
______________________________________________________________________

Andrian Kreye
Kreye's Law of Literalism

When devaluated information makes opinion an added value, the law of
literalism is permanently questioned, while remaining the last resort
of reason.

The inflation of available information has devaluated word and image
to mere content. The resulting perception fatigue is increasingly met
with the overused rhetorical tool of polarizing opinion. It's based on
an old trick used by street vendors. In the intellectual food court of
mass media, opinion appeals to reflexes just as the fried fat and
sugar smells of snackfood outlets activate age-old instincts of
hunting and gathering. In the average consumer opinion triggers an
illusion of enlightenment and understanding that ultimately clouds the
reason of literalism.

Literalism is freedom from credo, dogma and philosophical pessimism.
It's the process of finding reality driven by an optimistic faith in
its existence. It tries to transcend the limits of the word, by
permanently questioning any perception of reality.

Belief and ideology, the strongest purveyors of opinion, have long
known the language of science and reason. Creationists use secular
reasoning to demand that schools stop teaching the laws of evolution.
Right-wing radicals and religious fundamentalists of all creeds tone
down their world visions to fit into an opinionated consensus.
Economic and political forces use selective findings to present their
interests as fact.

Literalism can become an exhausting effort to defend the principles of
fact and reason in a polarized world. The complex and often boring
nature of factual reality makes it an unglamorous voice amid a choir
of sparkling witticisms and provocations. Devoid of the ecstasies and
spiritual cushioning of religion it denies age old longings. It can be
decried as heresy or simultaneously accused of treason by all sides.
It must sustain the insecurities brought on by the absence of ultimate
truth. Having been the gravitational center of enlightenment, it must
be defended as the last resort of reason.
______________________________________________________________________

Frank Tipler 
Tipler's Law of Unilimited Progress
The laws of physics place no limits on progress, be it scientific,
economic, cultural, or intellectual. In fact, the laws of physics
require the knowledge and wealth possessed by intelligent beings in
the universe to increase without limit, this knowledge and wealth
becoming literally infinite by the the end of time. Intelligent life
forms must inevitably expand out from their planets of origin, and
convert the entire universe into a biosphere. If the laws of physics
be for us, who can be against us?
______________________________________________________________________

Dan Sperber
Sperber's Shudder
Thanks for the invitation, but this time I will pass: I am too much of
an anarchist: the only laws I like are scientific ones, and the idea
of some normative statement being labelled, even if just for fun,
"Sperber's Law", makes me shudder. Sorry! (But I will enjoy reading
the "laws" of other people).
______________________________________________________________________

Mike Godwin 
Godwin 's Law
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. 
______________________________________________________________________

Allan Snyder
Snyder's First Law

The most creative science is wrong, but the deception ultimately leads
to the benefit of mankind. Think Freud!
Snyder's Second Law

Everyone steals ideas from everyone else, but they do so
unconsciously. This has evolved for our very survival. It maximises
the innovative power of society. 
______________________________________________________________________

Gregory Benford
Benford's Modified Clarke Law
Any technology that does not appear magical is insufficiently
advanced.
______________________________________________________________________

Lisa Randall

Randall's First Law
Non-existence "theorems", which state something cannot happen, are
untrustworthy; they are only statements about what we have seen or
thought of so far. Non-existence theorems often appear in physics.
They are useful guidelines, but there are often loopholes. Sometimes
you find those loopholes by looking--and sometimes you find them by
accident through superficially unrelated research
Randall's Second Law
Studies confirming Baron-Cohen's First Law will always reflect the
bias of the investigator.
______________________________________________________________________

Steven Pinker

Pinker's First Law
Human intelligence is a product of analogy and combinatorics. Analogy
allows the mind to use a few innate ideas--space, force, essence,
goal--to understand more abstract domains. Combinatorics allows an a
finite set of simple ideas to give rise to an infinite set of complex
ones.
Pinker's Second Law
Human sociality is a product of conflicts and confluences of genetic
interests. Our relationships with our parents, siblings, spouses,
friends, trading partners, allies, rivals, and selves have different
forms because they instantiate different patterns of overlap of
ultimate interests. History, fiction, news, and gossip are endlessly
fascinating because the overlap is never 0% or 100%.
______________________________________________________________________

Marti Hearst
Hearst's Law
A public figure is often condemned for an action that is taken
unfairly out of context but nevertheless reflects, in a compelling and
encapsulated manner, an underlying truth about that person.
______________________________________________________________________

W. Daniel Hillis
Hillis' Law
The representation becomes the reality.

Or more precisely: Successful representations of reality become more
important than the reality they represent.
Examples:
Dollars become more important than gold.
The brand becomes more important than the company.
The painting becomes more important than the landscape.
The new medium (which begins as a representation of the old medium)
eclipses the old.
The prize becomes more important than the achievement.
The genes become more important than the organism.
______________________________________________________________________

David Gelernter
Gelernter's First Law
Computers make people stupid.

Gelernter'sSecond Law
One expert is worth a million intellectuals. (This law is
onlyapproximate.)

Gelernter's Third Law
Scientists know all the right answers and none of the right questions.
   _________________________________________________________________

Albert-L?szl? Barab?si
Barab?si's Law of Programming
Program development ends when the program does what you expect it to
do--whether it is correct or not.
   _________________________________________________________________

Sara Lippincott

Lippincott's Law
God is evolving. So if you're an atheist, you'd better hope that the
arrow of time only goes in one direction.
   _________________________________________________________________

Dennis Overbye
Overbye's Law

"There's always a faster gun."
   _________________________________________________________________

William Poundstone
Poundstone's First Law
Independent discoverers of great ideas emerge in proportion to the
time spent looking for them. The history of science is a fractal, with
co-discoverers emerging like crinkles in the Norwegian coastline.
Poundstone's Second Law
The fractal dimension of scientific discovery increases with time.
Where people once marveled at the simultaneous discovery of calculus,
we now marvel when a Nobel science prize goes to one person.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Berreby

Berreby's First Law

Human kinds exist only in human minds.
Human differences and human similarities are infinite, therefore any
assortment of people can be grouped together according to a shared
trait or divided according to unshared traits. Our borders of race,
ethnie, nation, religion, class etc. are not, then, facts about the
world. They are facts about belief. We should look at minds, not
kinds, if we want to understand this phenomenon.
Berreby's Second Law
Science which seems to confirm human-kind beliefs is always welcome;
science that undermines human-kind belief is always unpopular.
To put it more cynically, if your work lets people believe there are
"Jewish genes'" (never mind that the same genes are found in
Palestinians) or that criminals have different kinds of brains from
regular people (never mind that regular people get arrested all the
time), or that your ancestors 5,000 years ago lived in the same neck
of the woods as you (never mind the whereabouts of all your other
ancestors), well then, good press will be yours. On the other hand, if
your work shows how thoroughly perceptions of race, ethnicity, and
other traits change with circumstances, well, good luck. Common sense
will defend itself against science.
   _________________________________________________________________

Steve Lohr

Lohr's Law

The future is merely the past with a twist--and better tools.

Gerd Gigerenzer

Gigerenzer's Law of Indispensable Ignorance
The world cannot function without partially ignorant people.
The ideal of omniscience fuels the many disciplines and theories that
envision godlike humans. Much of cognitive science, and Homo
economicus as well, assume the superiority of a mind with complete,
veridical representations of the outside world that remain stable and
available throughout a lifetime. The Law of Indispensable Ignorance,
in contrast, says that complete information is neither realistic nor
generally desirable. What is desirable are partially (not totally)
ignorant people.
Justice is blindfolded; jurors are not supposed to know the criminal
record of the defendant; trial consultants hunt for "virgin minds"
rather than academics as jurors. Academics in turn review papers
anonymously under the veil of ignorance about the authors; trust in
experiments demands double-blind procedures; economic fairness
encourages sealed bids. The efficient market hypothesis implies that
knowledge of future stock prices is impossible, and the Greek skeptics
taught their students that they knew nothing.
When watching a pre-recorded football game, we do not want to know the
result in advance; knowledge would destroy suspense. The estimated 5
to 10% of children and their fathers who falsely believe that they are
related might not lead a happier life by becoming less ignorant;
knowledge can destroy families. And few of us would want to know the
day we will die; knowledge can destroy hope.
Zero-intelligence traders who submitted random bids and offers in
double auctions were as good as experts. Pedestrians who chose stocks
by mere name recognition outperformed market experts and the Fidelity
Growth Fund--and even more successfully when they were from abroad and
more ignorant of the stock names. Expert ball players made better
decisions about where to pass the ball when they had less time.
Recreational tennis players who had only heard of half of the
professional players in Wimbledon 2003 and simply bet that those they
had not heard of would lose predicted the outcomes of the matches
better than the official ATP-rankings and the seeding. Adam Smith's
invisible hand is a metaphor for how collective wisdom emerges from
the uninformed masses.
We can prove that situations exist in which a group does best by
following its most ignorant member rather than the consensus of their
informed majority, and we can prove that a heuristic that ignores all
information except for one reason will make better predictions than a
multiple regression with a dozen reasons. Mnemonists, who have
virtually unlimited memory, are swamped by details and find it
difficult to abstract and reason, while ordinary people's working
memory limitations maximize the ability to detect correlations in the
world. Limited memory facilitates acquisition of language, in infants
and computers alike; the more complex the species, the longer the
period of infancy.
Theories that respect the Law of Indispensable Ignorance incorporate a
more realistic picture of people as being partially ignorant.
Omniscience is dispensable.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Markoff 
Markoff's Law of Inversion
Technology once trickled down from supercomputers to PCs. Now new
computing technology comes to game machines first.
Corollary
The companies who make the fastest computers are the ones that make
things that go under Xmas trees.
   _________________________________________________________________

Martin Rees
Rees's Law
As cosmological theories advance, they will draw more concepts from
biology.
The part of the universe astronomers can observe is probably only a
tiny part of the aftermath of 'our' big bang, which in turn may be one
of an infinity of 'bangs' in which the physics may be very different
from in ours. To analyse how our own cosmic habitat relates to this
ensemble, we'll need to draw on concepts from ecology and evolutionary
biology ('fitness landscapes', etc).
So we'll need biological ideas to understand the beginning. But
biology may control the far future too. In some 'universes' (ours
perhaps among them) life can eventually become pervasive and powerful
enough to renders the dynamics of the cosmic future as unpredictable
as that of an organism or mind.
   _________________________________________________________________

Nicholas Humphrey
Humphrey's Law of the Efficacy of Prayer
In a dangerous world there will always be more people around whose
prayers for their own safety have been answered than those whose
prayers have not.
[Think about it.]
   _________________________________________________________________

Yossi Vardi 
Vardi's Law
Experts predictions are always correct.

[cnn.jpg]

   1. A certain portion of all predictions made by experts will be
   correct.
   2. Human memory is short.
   3. Make lot of forcasts, most of the people will remember the
   correct ones.
   4. A good hedge: make contradictory predictions with intervals
   between them.
   _________________________________________________________________

Art Kleiner
Kleiner's Law
Every organization always operates on behalf of the perceived needs
and priorities of some core group of key people. This purpose will
trump every other organizational loyalty, including those to
shareholders, employees, customers, and other constituents.
   _________________________________________________________________

Mark Hurst
Hurst's Law
Any unbounded bitstream tends to irrelevance.
Bits are so easy to create, copy, and send that without some filtering
process, the worth of the entire bitstream decays
rapidly. A good example is the e-mail inbox. Many e-mail users have no
discipline about deleting or filtering their mail, and thus the bits
that flow in--spam and legimitate mail together--clutter the inbox to
an extent that the worth of the inbox overall tends to zero.
Stated another way, the worth of a bitstream is proportional to the
accuracy and usage of the filters and meta-bits applied to the
bitstream.
   _________________________________________________________________

K. Eric Drexler

Drexler's First Law

Physical technology evolves toward limits set by physical law.
Drexler's Second Law

A technology approaching the limits set by physical law must build
with atomic precision.
   _________________________________________________________________

Beatrice Golomb
Golomb 's Law
Everything in biology is more complicated than you think it is, even
taking into account Golomb's Law.
   _________________________________________________________________

Clifford Pickover
Pickover 's Law of Mutating Conjectures
I am having difficulty formulating a law to give you. Through the
millennia, even the most brilliant minds rarely generated great and
profound "laws." Probably every "law" ever made had been broken or
will crumble after a time. Perhaps Edge is asking the wrong question.
Knowledge moves in an ever-expanding, upward-pointing funnel. From the
rim, we look down and see previous knowledge from a new perspective as
new theories are formed. Today's conjectures mutate, new theories
evolve, and yesterday's impossibilities become part of everyday life.
   _________________________________________________________________

Howard Morgan
Morgan's First Law
To a first approximation, no deals close.

Morgan's Second Law
To a first approximation all appointments are canceled.

Morgan's Third Law

Events of probability zero happen--they are the ones that change the
world.
These laws are actually the engineering approximations to life.
   _________________________________________________________________

Al Seckel
Seckel's First Law

Visual Perception is Essentially an Ambiguity Solving Process.

Most of us take vision for granted. After all, it comes to us so
easily. With normal vision we are able to navigate quickly and
efficiently through a visually rich three-dimensional world of light,
shading, texture, and color--a complex world in motion, with objects
of different sizes at differing distances. Looking about we have a
definite sense of the "real world".

In fact, our visual system is so successful at building an accurate
representation of the real world (our perception) that most of us do
not realize what a difficult task our brain is performing. Without
conscious thought, our visual system gathers and interprets complex
information, providing us with a seamless perception of our
environment. The complexities of how we perceive are cleverly
concealed by a successful visual system.

It might seem reasonable for us to assume that there is a one-to-one
mapping between the real world and what you perceive--that your visual
system "sees" the retinal image, in much the way that a digital camera
records what it "sees."

Although it seems like a useful analogy, there is no real comparison
between our visual system and a camera beyond a strictly surface
level. Furthermore, this comparison trivializes the accomplishments of
our visual system. This is because a camera records incoming
information, but our brain interprets incoming information.
Furthermore, it feels to us as if a photograph reproduces a
three-dimensional world, but it doesn't. It only suggests one. The
same visual system that interprets the world around us also interprets
the photograph to make it appear as a three-dimensional scene.

Our perceptions are not always perfect. Sometimes our brain will
interpret a static image on the retina in more than one way. A
skeleton cube, known as a Necker cube, is a classic example of a
single image that is interpreted in more than one way. If you fixate
on this cube for any length of time, it will spontaneously reverse in
depth, even though the image on the retina remains constant. Our brain
interprets this image differently because of conflicting depth cues.

The great 19th century German physicist and physiologist Hermann Von
Helmholtz first discovered the basic problem of perception over one
hundred years ago. He correctly reasoned that the visual information
from our world that is projected onto the back of the retina is
spatially ambiguous. Helmholtz reasoned that there can be an infinite
variety of shapes that can give rise to the same retinal image, as
long as they subtend the same visual angle to the eye.

However, the concept of visual ambiguity is far deeper than what
Helmholtz originally proposed, because it turns out that any one
aspect of visual information, such as brightness, color, motion, etc,
could have arisen from infinitely many different conditions. It is
very hard to appreciate this fact at first, because what we perceive
in a normal viewing environment is not at all ambiguous.

If all visual stimuli are inherently ambiguous, how does our
visual/perceptual system discard the infinite variety of possible
conditions to settle on the correct interpretation almost all the
time, and in such a quick and efficient manner? The problem basically
stated is, how does the visual system "retrieve" all of the visual
information about the 3D world from the very limited information
contained in the 2D retinal image? This is a basic and central
question of perception.

Studying the visual system only at one level will never result in a
full understanding of visual perception. Many of the underlying
mechanisms that mediate vision may be even "messier" than previously
thought, with cross-feedback from more than one level of visual
processing contributing to processing at another level. UCSD vision
scientist V.S. Ramachandran is correct when he believes that it is
time to "open the black box in order to study the responses of nerve
cells," but he is also probably right to promote his Utilitarian
Theory of Perception, which argues for a clever "bag of tricks" that
the human visual system has evolved over millions of years of
evolution to resolve the inherent ambiguities in the visual image.
Visual perception is largely an ambiguity-solving process.

The task of vision scientists, therefore, is to uncover these hidden
and underlying constraints, rather than to attribute to the visual
system a degree of simplicity that it simply does not possess.

Seckel's Second Law

Our Visual/Perceptual System is Highly Constrained.

Sometimes our perceptions are wrong. Often these errors have been
classified as illusions, dismissed by many as failures of the visual
system, quirky exceptions to normal vision.

If illusions are not failures of the visual system, then, what are
they? After all, we do categorize a number of different perceptual
experiences as "illusions". What makes them fundamentally different
than those we perceive as normal?

One difference is a noticeable split between your perception and
conception. With an illusion, your perception is fooled but your
conception is correct--you're seeing something wrong (your mis
perception), but you know it's wrong (your correct conception).
Initially, your conception may be fooled too, but at that point you
are unaware that you are encountering an illusion. It is only when
your conception is at odds with your perception that you are aware
that you have encountered an illusion.

Furthermore, in almost all pictorial illusions (where the meaning of
the image is not ambiguous), your perceptions will continue to be
fooled, even though your conception is fine, no matter how many times
you view the illusion. It does not matter how old you are, how smart
you are, how cultured you are, or how artistic you are, you will
continue to be fooled by these illusions over and over again. In fact,
you cannot "undo" your incorrect perceptions, even with extended
experiences, worldly knowledge, or training. It is more important for
your visual system to adhere to these constraints than to violate them
because it has encountered something unusual, inconsistent, or
paradoxical. This indicates that your visual/perceptual system is
highly constrained on how it interprets the world.

It is not my intention to cause the reader to think that visual
perception is unreliable and untrustworthy. This would be a mistake
as, for the most part, our perceptions of the world are veridical.
However, how we perceive the world is not a mirror image of reality,
but an actively and intelligently constructed one that allows us to
have the best chances for survival in a complicated environment.
   _________________________________________________________________

Rudy Rucker
Rucker's Law of Morphogenesis
Most biological, social, and psychological systems are based on
interactions between an activator and an inhibitor. The patterns which
emerge depend upon the relative rates at which the activator and
inhibitor spread. Three main cases occur, depending on whether the
activator's diffusion rate is much less than, roughly equal to, or
greater than the rate at which the inhibition spreads. In these three
cases we observe, respectively, isolated patches like zebra stripes or
leopard spots, moving complex patterns like Belusov-Zhabontinsky
scrolls, or seething chaos. Applying this to the activator-inhibitor
patterns in the human brain, if you inhibit new thoughts, you are left
with a few highly stimulated patches: obsessions and fixed ideas. If
you manage to create new thought associations at about the same rate
you inhibit them, you develop creative complexity. And too high a rate
of activation leads to unproductive mania. Exercise: apply this notion
to spread of good and bad news in society.
   _________________________________________________________________

Delta Willis
Delta's Law
There are three sides to every story.

The Greek letter delta is a symbol for change in formulas. This
triangle can be taken personally to create a philosophy that can be
used as laws. For example, the 3 points of a triangle create a
possibility space for change. Two points in a debate provide nothing
more than a tyranny of dichotomies, whereas adding a third possibility
is always more interesting, and closer to the true complexity of life.
This rule of favoring 3s instead of 2s also works in any design to
please the eye, such as three pictures on a wall instead of two. A
couple become more interesting when they go beyond their own twosome
to create a third focal point, whether a child, a book or a business.
As Yale paleontologist Dolf Seilacher put it, Symmetry is boring. The
next time you are confronted with only two choices, create a third,
and see the possibility space expand.
   _________________________________________________________________

Paul Steinhardt
Steinhardt's Law

Good science creates two challenging puzzles for each puzzle it
resolves.
Corollary 1
Contrary to some prognostications, science is not coming to an end.
Good science is growing every day.
Corollary 2
The Anthropic Principle does not resolve any puzzles andcreates no new
ones. Hence, ...
(Exercise left for the reader--fill in the blank. For hint, see
Steinhardt's Law.)
   _________________________________________________________________

Eduard Punset

Punset's First Law

If fully conscious, don?t trust your brain.
The brain is very good at managing automated, unconscious processes
such as breathing, digesting or transpiring. But so far neuroscience
has not produced the slightest evidence that flipping a coin to decide
on important matters such as marriage, taking up a job, or traveling
is any worst than a formal, conscious, discriminatory decision made by
the brain. This should not surprise anybody. If we leave aside the
individual brain, and look at the evolution of social primates as a
whole, few would question that the history of civilization equals the
history of sucessive and cumulative automatization in fields such as
agriculture, industry or information. Why should it be different for
the individual brain?

Punset's Second Law

When in doubt, please ask Nature, not people. After all, this is the
stuff scientists are made of.
This Law has to do with Darwinian Theory and Business Practice. There
is a huge amount of money to be made by just applying basic science to
ordinary business. In the Universe as a whole--according to
Physics--95% of reality is invisible. Most businessmen, however, are
convinced that 95% of what is going on in their firms, workshops or
projects can be seen at first sight. No wonder that it takes on
average over three failures for an innovation to succeed.
   _________________________________________________________________
   _________________________________________________________________

Terrence Sejnowski

Sejnowski's Law

For every important function that a cell needs to carry out Nature has
created a gadget to make it more efficient.
(Gadgets are macromolecular complexes made from proteins, RNA, and DNA
and often have hundereds of parts.)
   _________________________________________________________________

Leo Chalupa
Chalupa's First Law
No matter how good or bad things are at any given point in time (in
science as in life), remember that "this too shall pass."

This is key for attaining longevity in this business...people who
"violate" or are unaware of this rule are doomed to failure. In other
words, it is vitally important how one deals with success and failure
in doing cutting edge science. Failure is the rule even among the most
successful working scientists (since 90% of grant application are
typically rejected and the top journals reject even a higher
percentage); and with respect to success, in all but a few exceptional
cases, institutional memory is exceedingly fleeting (i.e, yesterday's
superstars are unrecognized by today's grad students, postdocs, junior
faculty). So you've got to keep pitching if you want to stay in the
science game.

Chalupa's Second Law
Don't underestimate the importance of fashion in doing science.

Another key for success in science...if you're too far ahead of the
herd (with very few exception) you're not going to get funded by
NIH/NSF or published in the premier journals. This is in spite of the
fact that they claim that they fund innovative research. Anyone who
has spend as much time on grant review committees as I have will
recognize the power of this rule. In other words, there is a price to
pay for originality and every working scientist knows this is the
case.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stuart Hameroff

Hameroff's Law

The sub-conscious mind is to consciousness what the quantum world is
to the classical world.

The vast majority of brain activity is non-conscious; consciousness is
"the tip of an iceberg" of neural activity. Yet the threshold for
transition from pre-, non-, or sub-conscious processes into conscious
awareness is unknown. The sub-conscious mind as revealed in dreams has
been described by Matte Blanco as a place where "paradox reigns, and
opposites merge to sameness". Reality is seemingly described by two
separate sets of laws. In our everyday classical world, Newton's laws
and Maxwell's equations accurately portray reality. However at small
scales, the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics rule: particles are
distorted in space and time (uncertainty), exist in multiple states or
locations simultaneously (superposition) and remain connected in
opposite states over distance (nonlocal entanglement). In the quantum
world "paradox reigns and opposites merge to sameness".
The boundary, or threshold between the quantum and classical worlds
(i.e. quantum state reduction, collapse of the wave function,
measurement, decoherence) remains mysterious. Early quantum theorists
attributed reduction/collapse to observation: "consciousness collapses
the wave function". Modern physics attributes reduction/collapse to
any interaction with the classical environment ("decoherence").
Neither solves the problem of isolated quantum superpositions which
are nonetheless useful in quantum computation.
In quantum computation, information may be represented as isolated
superpositions (e.g. as quantum bits--"qubits"--of both 1 AND 0) which
interact/compute by nonlocal entanglement, and eventually
reduce/collapse to classical solutions.
Based on a 1989 suggestion by Sir Roger Penrose, he and I have put
forth a specific model of consciousness involving quantum computation
in microtubules within the brain's neurons. Superpositions of multiple
possible pre-/sub-conscious perceptions or choices reach threshold for
self-collapse (by Roger's "objective reduction" due to properties of
fundamental spacetime geometry), and select/reduce to particular
classical perceptions or choices. Each reduction is a conscious event,
a series of which gives a "stream of consciousness".
The main scientific objection to our proposal has been that the brain
is too warm for quantum computation which in the technological realm
seems to require ultra cold temperatures to avoid thermal decoherence.
However recent evidence shows that quantum processes in biological
molecules are enhanced by increased temperature. Evolution has had
billion of years to solve the problem of decoherence. Consciousness
may be a particular form of quantum state reduction: a process on the
edge between the quantum and classical worlds.
   _________________________________________________________________

Paul Ryan

Ryan's Law

Once the miind is freed to think positionally without orientation, a
logic of relationships naturally ensues.
   _________________________________________________________________

Steven Levy
Levy's Law

The truth is always more interesting that your preconception of what
it might be.

In journalism, this means that the best practicioners should not have
the stories written out in their heads before they report them.
Preconceptions can blind you to the full, rich human reality that
awaits you when you actually listen to your subjects and approach the
material with an open mind. It wouldn't surprise me if the same tabula
rasa principle applies when scientists try to answer the big
questions.
   _________________________________________________________________

Neil Gershenfeld

Gershenfeld's Law on Research

Experiments take pi times longer than planned (no matter how many
factors of pi you account for).

Gershenfeld's Law on Writing

Good [theses, papers, books] are never finished, just abandoned.

Gershenfeld's Goal

Function from form.

"Form follows function" implies that they're separable; the most
profound scientific and technological insights that I know follow from
abstracting logical functions from physical forms.
   _________________________________________________________________

Gino Segre
Segre's First Law
Numbers are everything.
This is just a rephrasing of the Pythagorean credo, proclaimed 2500
years ago, that "All things are numbers". Science began with it, but
it's still worth remembering that measurements are at the base of all
science.

Segre's Second Law
Understand what the numbers mean.
One has to keep looking for a theory that will explain the numbers.
Our galaxy has a hundred billion stars and our brain has a hundred
billion neurons. Understanding our galaxy and our brain are great
challenges, but two different theories are required.
   _________________________________________________________________

Henry Warwick

Warwick's First Law

Art takes you out of town, and gives you a destination. Science builds
the bus that takes you there.
Art, at its best, takes you out of your town, your home, your living
room, your armchair, your mind, and brings you some place--a
destination, a wonderful place, a new way of looking at things, a deep
shift in your understanding of what it means to be human with a sense
of profundity and awe at the Creation, pointing toward a new and
better environment for living, smiling a new smile--all by altering
your consciousness in some useful and insightful way.
Cooking up the better paint or programming didn't make the better
paintmaker a better painter, or the better word processor-maker a
better writer, but the great painter required the skills of the better
paint makers and the great writer needs the tool of the trade. If we
are to go to these grand destinations, artists need the insights and
tools provided by science--the " bus" to take us there. And we need to
heed Art.
Warwick's Second Law

Art tells the jokes that science insists on explaining.
   _________________________________________________________________

Simon Baron-Cohen

Baron-Cohen's Law of Sex differences in the Mind

In any random population, of those who score in the above-average
range on tests of empathizing, females will significantly outnumber
males. And of those who score in the above-average range on tests of
systemizing, males will significantly outnumber females.

Baron-Cohen's Law of Autism

What unites individuals on the autistic spectrum is impaired
empathizing in the presence of intact or even superior systemizing,
relative to non-autistic individuals of the same mental age.
   _________________________________________________________________

Chritsine Finn

Finn's Law

Uncertainty is the final test of innovation.

That is, new concepts are tested best by a sudden faltering confidence
on the part of the innovator operating in an almost-liminal,
almost-sure intellectual state.
Does not the palpible quiver preceding the sudden rush of certainty
give that
final kick to real innovation?
This is especially good for interdisciplinary areas, where unusual
conjunctions
generally involve more maverick trip-wire than usual.
   _________________________________________________________________

Leonard Susskind

Susskind's Rule of Thumb

Don't ask what they think. Ask what they do.
My rule has to do with pardigm shifts--yes, I do believe in them. I've
been through a few myself. It is useful if you want to be the first on
your block to know that the shift has taken place. I formulated the
rule in 1974. I was visiting the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(SLAC) for a weeks to give a couple of seminars on particle physics.
The subject was QCD. It doesn't matter what this stands for. The point
is that it was a new theory of sub-nuclear particles and it was
absolutely clear that it was the right theory. There was no critical
experiment but the place was littered with smoking guns. Anway, at the
end of my first lecture I took a poll of the audience. "What
probability would you assign to the proposition 'QCD is the right
theory of hadrons.'?" My socks were knocked off by the answers. They
ranged from .01 percent to 5 percent. As I said, by this time it was a
clear no-brainer. The answer should have been close too 100 percent.

The next day I gave my second seminar and took another poll. "What are
you working on?" was the question. Answers: QCD, QCD, QCD, QCD,
QCD,........ Everyone was working on QCD. That's when I learned to ask
"What are you doing?" instead of "what do you think?"

I saw exacly the same phenomenon more recently when I was working on
black holes. This time it was after a string theory seminar, I think
in Santa Barbara. I asked the audience to vote whether they agreed
with me and Gerard 't Hooft or if they thought Hawkings ideas were
correct. This time I got a 50-50 response. By this time I knew what
was going on so I wasn't so surprised. Anyway I later asked if anyone
was working on Hawking's theory of information loss. Not a single hand
went up. Don't ask what they think. Ask what they do.
   _________________________________________________________________

Sherry Turkle

Turkle's Law of Evocative Objects

Every technology has an instrumental side, what the technology does
for us and a subjective side, what the technology does to us, to our
ways of seeing the world, including to our ways of thinking about
ourselves.

So the Internet both facilitates communication and changes our sense
of identity, privacy, and sexual possibility; gene sequencing both
gives us new ways of diagnosing and treating disease and new ways of
thinking about human nature and human history. On an instrumental
level, interactive, "sociable" robotics offers new opportunities for
education, childcare, and eldercare; on a subjective level, it offers
new challenges to our view of human nature, and to our moral sense of
what kinds of creatures are deserving of relationship.

Turkle's Law of Human Vulnerability to An Active Gaze

If a creature, computational or biological, makes eye contact with a
person, tracks her gaze, and gestures with interest toward her, that
person will experience the creature as sentient, even capable of
understanding her inner state.

The human has evolved to anthropomorphize. We are on the brink of
creating machines so "sociable" in appearance that they will push our
evolutionary buttons to treat them as kindred. Yet they will not have
shared our human biological and social experience and will thus not
have our means of access to the meanings of moments in the human life
cycle: a child's first step, an adolescent's strut, a parent's pride.
Yet we will not be in complete control of our feelings for these
objects because our feelings will not be based on what they know or
understand, but on what we "experience" them as knowing, a very
different thing.

We don't know what people and animals are "really" thinking but grant
them a "species pass" in which we make assumptions about their inner
states. It is a social and moral contract. Contemporary technology has
put us close to the moment when we shall be called upon to make this
kind of contract (or some other kind) about creatures of our own
devising. We are called upon to answer the question: What kinds of
relationships are appropriate to have with a machine? Our answer will
not only affect the instrumental roles that we allow technology to
play but the way technology will co-create the human psyche and
sensibility of the future.
   _________________________________________________________________

Steven Strogatz

Strogatz's First Law of Doing Math

When you're trying to prove something, it helps to know it's true.

Strogatz's Second Law of Doing Math

To figure out if something is true, check it on the computer. If the
machine agrees with your own calculations, you're probably right.
   _________________________________________________________________

Judith Rich Harris

Harris's First Law
Good things go together. Miller's Iron Law of Iniquity--" in practice,
every good trait correlates positively with every other good
trait"--is true, and follows from Harris's First Law.
Harris's Second Law
Bad things go together, too.
Harris's Third Law
People think they know why good things go together, and why bad things
go together, but they are wrong.
   _________________________________________________________________

Ivan Amato

Amato's First Law of Awe
Awe begins in the eye of the beholder.
Limited as it is, biology's homegrown sensory physiology is sufficient
in our case to ignite wonder and curiosity about just where it is we
find ourselves thrown, how we got there, and how we can even know
anything at all. Therein lies the beginning of science.
Amato's Second Law of Awe
Transcending our own sensory limitations with technological tools of
observation, a relentless theme of the history of science, enhances
the experience of awe itself because it expands the variety of
attributes of the universe that we can know about. Therein lies one of
the most underrated values of science.
(For example, we used to see the world in only a rainbow of colors.
Our tools have shown us that the rainbow is a mere sliver of
electromagnetic wavelengths sandwiched between an infinitude of
previously invisible ones.)
   _________________________________________________________________

Rupert Sheldrake

Sheldrake's Principle
The "laws" of nature are more like habits.

Sheldrake's Reformulation of a Traditional Theory of Vision
Vision involves a movement of light into the eyes, changes in the
brain, and the outward projection of images to where they seem to be.
   _________________________________________________________________

Dave Winer

Winer's Law of the Internet

Productive open work will only result in standards as long as the
parties involved strive to follow prior art in every way possible.
Gratuitous innovation is when the standardization process ends, and
usually that happens quickly.
Think about the process of arriving at a standard. Someone goes first
with something new. Assume it catches on and becomes popular. Because
the person did it in an open way, with no patents, or other barriers
to competitors using the technology, a second developer decides to do
the same thing. The innovator supports this, because he or she wants a
standard to develop. At that point the second person has the power to
decide how strong a standard it will be. If the new implementation
strives to work exactly as the original does, then it's more likely
the standard will be strong, and there will be a vibrant market around
it. But if the second party decides to use the concept but not be
technically compatible, it will be a weak standard.
One would assume that the second mover would make every effort to do
it exactly the same way as the first, but over the years, but this has
not been the case. As soon as a standard becomes popular, market
forces lead to multiple incompatible ways forward. Microsoft called
this Embrace & Extend, but all technology vendors are driven to break
standards. Standards can only go a short distance before forking
defeats the standardization process.
This is an extension to Postel's Law (the late Jon Postel was one of
the key players of the development of the Internet), which says you
should be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you
send. It goes further by saying that we should all collectively be
conservative in what we send. This keeps the technology small and the
market approachable by developers of all sizes. The large companies
always try to make the technology complicated to reduce competition to
other organizations with large research and development budgets.
   _________________________________________________________________

Izumi Aizu

Aizu's Fisrt Law

Using is believing.
As was the case for the Internet, or the PCs, unless you use it, you
cannot understand its real significance. To put it the other way
around, if and when you use it, it will prevail.
Instead of "seeing" from afar, you must use it to understand. So many
people denied the potential and the impact of the Net simply because
they never tried to use it.

Aizu's Second Law

What changes the world is communication, not information.
We are living in a world where we can exchange ideas and emotions
freely and inexpensively, the first time in the history. Information
piled up, or disseminated one way down, never makes people happy or
feel compelled to act that much, while communication, just a single
line or word from your friends or beloved, or even from a total
stranger, that catches your heart, often results in collective
actions.
   _________________________________________________________________

Randlph Nesse, M.D.
Nesse's Laws for deciding when it is safe to use drugs to block
evolved protective responses.

Aversive responses, such as pain, fever, vomiting and panic, were
shaped by natural selection because they gave selective advantages in
the face of various dangers. Optimal decisions about when to use our
growing pharmacological powers to block these responses will require
signal-detection models of how defenses are regulated.

Nesse's First Law

An optimal mechanism to regulate an all-or-none defensive response
such as vomiting or panic will express the response whenever CD<
\sum(pH x CH w/o defense) -\sum(pH x CH w/defense). That is,
expressing a defense is worth it whenever the cost of the defense (CD)
is less than the estimated reduction in harm, based the probability
(pH) and cost of various harmful outcomes (CH) with and without the
expression of the defense. This means that optimal systems that
regulate inexpensive defenses against large somewhat unpredictable
potential harms will express many false alarms and that blocking these
unnecessary responses can (and does) greatly relieve human suffering.
Blocking responses yields a net benefit, however, only if we can
anticipate when a normal response is likely to be essential to prevent
catastrophe.
Nesse's Second Law

An optimal mechanism to regulate a continuously expressed defense,
such as fever or pain, will increase the defensive response up to the
point where the sum of CH and CD is minimized. At this point the
marginal increase in the cost of the defense becomes greater than the
marginal decrease in harm. This helps to explain why so many defenses,
such as those involved in inflammation and the immune responses, so
often seem excessive.

Many will recognize this analysis as a less grand and somewhat more
practical variation on Pascal's Wager. So far, however, few in the
pharmaceutical industry seem to recognize the importance of routinely
assessing the effects of new drugs on normal defensive responses.
   _________________________________________________________________

Robert Sapolsky
Sapolsky's Three Laws for Doing Science

Sapolsky's First Law

Think logically, but orthogonally.

Sapolsky's Second Law

It's okay to think about nonsense, as long as you don't believe in it.

Sapolsky's Third Law

Often, the biggest impediment to scientific progress is not what we
don't know, but what we know.
   _________________________________________________________________

Gerald Holton
Holton's First Law

The turning points in individual and national life are most probably
guided by probabilism. (Examples: You are one of about a billion
possible yous, since only one spematozoon [or sometimes two] make it
to the ovum, out of about a billion different competitors, none the
same. Or on the national/ international scale, the availability of a
Churchill in 1940.)
The Second Law

The probability of a right answer or a beneficent outcome is usually
much smaller than that of the wrong or malignant ones. ( This is not
pessimism, but realism--an amplified analogue of the Law of Entropy.)
The Third Law

In the limit of small numbers, the previous two Laws may not
rigorously apply. Therefore if you need only one parking place when
driving your car, look for one first right where you want to go.
   _________________________________________________________________

Niels Diffrient
Diffrient's Law

The improvements derived from technological advances have an equal and
opposite effect on culture and the environment magnified by time and
scale.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stuart Kauffman

The biosphere advances, on average, at the maximum rate it can sustain
into the adjacent possible.
The adjacent possible, for a chemical reaction graph, is the set of
novel molecules that can be created out of those existing now. The
biosphere has advanced into the chemical adjacent possible over the
history of life.The issue is, are there laws that govern this advance?
And so too for technology. I'm very unsure about my candidate law, but
at least it points to the reality that we do advance into the adjacent
possible and perhaps some law governs how we do so.
   _________________________________________________________________

Jordan Pollack
Pollack's Law

Progress requires the Pareto Optimization of Competitiveness and
Informativeness
The simple idea that Nature is "Red in Tooth and Claw" lends a
religious fervor to those promoting Competition as the right
organizing principle for open-ended innovation, e.g. in Laissez Faire
Capitalism, government procurement, Social Darwinism, personnel
review, and even high-stakes educational testing.

Through the use of mathematical and computer models of learning, we
discovered that competition between learning agents does not lead to
open-ended progress. Instead, it leads to boom-bust cycles,
winner-take-all monopolies, and oligarchic groups who collude to block
progress. Unfortunately, cooperation (collaborative learning,
altruism) fails as well, leading to weak systems easy to invade or
corrupt.

The exciting new "law" is that progress can be sustained among
self-interested agents when both competitiveness and informativeness
are rewarded. A chess master who wins every game  like one who loses
every game - provides no information on the strengths and weaknesses
of other agents, while an informative agent, like a teacher,
contributes opportunity and motivation for further progress. We
predict that this law will be found in Nature, and will have
ramifications for building new learning organizations.
The Pollack

A measurement of innovation rate.
There is no measure of the rate at which processes like art,
evolution, companies, and computer programs innovate.

Consider a black box that takes in energy and produces bit-strings.
The complexity of a bit-string is not simply its length, because a
long string of all 1's or all 0's is quite simple. Kolmogorov measures
complexity by the size of the smallest program listing that can
generate a string, and Bennet's Logical Depth also accounts for the
cost of running the program. But these fail on the Mandelbrot Set, a
very beautiful set of patterns arising from a one-line program
listing. What of life itself, the result of a simple non-equilibrium
chemical process baking for quite a long time? Different algorithmic
processes (including fractals, natural evolution, and the human mind)
"create" by operating as a "Platonic Scoop," instantiating "ideals"
into physical arrangements or memory states.

So to measure innovation rate (in POLLACKS) we divide the P=Product
novelty (assigned by an observer with memory) by the L=program listing
size and the C= Cost of runtime/space/energy.

  Platonic Density = P / LC

Pollack's Law of Robotics
Start over with Pinball Machines.
Moore's law existed before computers; it is just economics of scale
with zero labor. If enough demand can justify capital investment in
fully automated factories, then the price of a good approaches the
cost of its raw materials, energy dissipated, and (patent/copyright)
monopoly tax. Everyone knows Moore's law has lead to ultra-small-cheap
integrated circuits. But why don't we have ultra-small-cheap
mechanical parts?

Pollack's law of Robotics states that we won't get a Moore's law for
electro-mechanical systems until we return to the age of the Pinball
Machine, and bootstrap the manufacture of general purpose integrated
mechatronics, reducing scale from macro through mesa and MEMS. Leaping
to Nano is likely to fail.
   _________________________________________________________________

Dylan Evans

Evans' laws of the completeness of good old fashioned AI.
Evans' First Law

For every intelligent agent, there is a Turing-machine that provides
an exhaustive description of its mind.

Evans' Second Law

When the Turing-machine that describes the mind of intelligent agent
has been specified, there is nothing more to say about that mind,
apart from how it is implemented in hardware.
   _________________________________________________________________

Kai Krause

Kai's Existential Dilemma
I think....
there....
4a.m.

Kai's Exactness Dilemma
93.8127 % of all statistics are useless.

Kai's Example Dilemma

A good analogy is like a diagonal frog.
   _________________________________________________________________

Adam Bly

Bly's First Law
Science is culture.
Bly's Second Law
High public interest in science without growing public understanding
of science is worse than low public interest in science.
   _________________________________________________________________

Ray Kurzweil

Kurzweil's Law (aka "The Law of Accelerating Returns")

   Evolution applies positive feedback in that the more capable
   methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used
   to create the next stage. Each epoch of evolution has progressed
   more rapidly by building on the products of the previous stage.

   Evolution works through indirection: evolution created humans,
   humans created technology, humans are now working with increasingly
   advanced technology to create new generations of technology. As a
   result, the rate of progress of an evolutionary process increases
   exponentially over time.

   Over time, the "order" of the information embedded in the
   evolutionary process (i.e., the measure of how well the information
   fits a purpose, which in evolution is survival) increases.

A comment on the nature of order.

The concept of the "order" of information is important here, as it is
not the same as the opposite of disorder. If disorder represents a
random sequence of events, then the opposite of disorder should imply
"not random." Information is a sequence of data that is meaningful in
a process, such as the DNA code of an organism, or the bits in a
computer program. Noise, on the other hand, is a random sequence.
Neither noise nor information is predictable. Noise is inherently
unpredictable, but carries no information. Information, however, is
also unpredictable. If we can predict future data from past data, then
that future data stops being information. We might consider an
alternating pattern ("0101010. . . .") to be orderly, but it carries
no information (beyond the first couple of bits).

Thus orderliness does not constitute order because order requires
information. However, order goes beyond mere information. A recording
of radiation levels from space represents information, but if we
double the size of this data file, we have increased the amount of
data, but we have not achieved a deeper level of order.

Order is information that fits a purpose. The measure of order is the
measure of how well the information fits the purpose. In the evolution
of life-forms, the purpose is to survive. In an evolutionary algorithm
(a computer program that simulates evolution to solve a problem)
applied to, say, investing in the stock market, the purpose is to make
money. Simply having more information does not necessarily result in a
better fit. A superior solution for a purpose may very well involve
less data.

The concept of "complexity" is often used to describe the nature of
the information created by an evolutionary process. Complexity is a
close fit to the concept of order that I am describing, but is also
not sufficient. Sometimes, a deeper order--a better fit to a
purpose--is achieved through simplification rather than further
increases in complexity. For example, a new theory that ties together
apparently disparate ideas into one broader more coherent theory
reduces complexity but nonetheless may increase the "order for a
purpose" that I am describing. Indeed, achieving simpler theories is a
driving force in science. Evolution has shown, however, that the
general trend towards greater order does generally result in greater
complexity.

Thus improving a solution to a problem--which may increase or decrease
complexity--increases order. Now that just leaves the issue of
defining the problem. Indeed, the key to an evolution algorithm (and
to biological and technological evolution) is exactly this: defining
the problem.
We may note that this aspect of "Kurzweil's Law" (the law of
accelerating returns) appears to contradict the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, which implies that entropy (randomness in a closed
system) cannot decrease, and, therefore, generally increases. However,
the law of accelerating returns pertains to evolution, and evolution
is not a closed system. It takes place amidst great chaos, and indeed
depends on the disorder in its midst, from which it draws its options
for diversity. And from these options, an evolutionary process
continually prunes its choices to create ever greater order. Even a
crisis, such as the periodic large asteroids that have crashed into
the Earth, although increasing chaos temporarily, end up
increasing--deepening--the order created by an evolutionary process.

   o A primary reason that evolution--of life-forms or of
   technology--speeds up is that it builds on its own increasing
   order, with ever more sophisticated means of recording and
   manipulating information. Innovations created by evolution
   encourage and enable faster evolution. In the case of the evolution
   of life forms, the most notable early example is DNA, which
   provides a recorded and protected transcription of life's design
   from which to launch further experiments. In the case of the
   evolution of technology, ever improving human methods of recording
   information have fostered further technology. The first computers
   were designed on paper and assembled by hand. Today, they are
   designed on computer workstations with the computers themselves
   working out many details of the next generation's design, and are
   then produced in fully-automated factories with human guidance but
   limited direct intervention.
   o The evolutionary process of technology seeks to improve
   capabilities in an exponential fashion. Innovators seek to improve
   things by multiples. Innovation is multiplicative, not additive.
   Technology, like any evolutionary process, builds on itself. This
   aspect will continue to accelerate when the technology itself takes
   full control of its own progression.
   o We can thus conclude the following with regard to the evolution
   of life-forms, and of technology: the law of accelerating returns
   as applied to an evolutionary process: An evolutionary process is
   not a closed system; therefore, evolution draws upon the chaos in
   the larger system in which it takes place for its options for
   diversity; and evolution builds on its own increasing order.
   Therefore, in an evolutionary process, order increases
   exponentially.
   o A correlate of the above observation is that the "returns" of an
   evolutionary process (e.g., the speed, cost-effectiveness, or
   overall "power" of a process) increase exponentially over time. We
   see this in Moore's law, in which each new generation of computer
   chip (now spaced about two years apart) provides twice as many
   components, each of which operates substantially faster (because of
   the smaller distances required for the electrons to travel, and
   other innovations). This exponential growth in the power and
   price-performance of information-based technologies--now roughly
   doubling every year--is not limited to computers, but is true for a
   wide range of technologies, measured many different ways.
   o In another positive feedback loop, as a particular evolutionary
   process (e.g., computation) becomes more effective (e.g., cost
   effective), greater resources are deployed towards the further
   progress of that process. This results in a second level of
   exponential growth (i.e., the rate of exponential growth itself
   grows exponentially). For example, it took three years to double
   the price-performance of computation at the beginning of the
   twentieth century, two years around 1950, and is now doubling about
   once a year. Not only is each chip doubling in power each year for
   the same unit cost, but the number of chips being manufactured is
   growing exponentially.
   o Biological evolution is one such evolutionary process. Indeed it
   is the quintessential evolutionary process. It took place in a
   completely open system (as opposed to the artificial constraints in
   an evolutionary algorithm). Thus many levels of the system evolved
   at the same time.
   o Technological evolution is another such evolutionary process.
   Indeed, the emergence of the first technology-creating species
   resulted in the new evolutionary process of technology. Therefore,
   technological evolution is an outgrowth of--and a continuation
   of--biological evolution. Early stages of humanoid created
   technology were barely faster than the biological evolution that
   created our species. Homo sapiens evolved in a few hundred thousand
   years. Early stages of technology--the wheel, fire, stone
   tools--took tens of thousands of years to evolve and be widely
   deployed. A thousand years ago, a paradigm shift such as the
   printing press, took on the order of a century to be widely
   deployed. Today, major paradigm shifts, such as cell phones and the
   world wide web were widely adopted in only a few years time.
   o A specific paradigm (a method or approach to solving a problem,
   e.g., shrinking transistors on an integrated circuit as an approach
   to making more powerful computers) provides exponential growth
   until the method exhausts its potential. When this happens, a
   paradigm shift (a fundamental change in the approach) occurs, which
   enables exponential growth to continue.
   o Each paradigm follows an "S-curve," which consists of slow growth
   (the early phase of exponential growth), followed by rapid growth
   (the late, explosive phase of exponential growth), followed by a
   leveling off as the particular paradigm matures.
   o During this third or maturing phase in the life cycle of a
   paradigm, pressure builds for the next paradigm shift, and research
   dollars are invested to create the next paradigm. We can see this
   in the enormous investments being made today in the next computing
   paradigm--three-dimensional molecular computing--despite the fact
   that we still have at least a decade left for the paradigm of
   shrinking transistors on a flat integrated circuit using
   photolithography (Moore's Law). Generally, by the time a paradigm
   approaches its asymptote (limit) in price-performance, the next
   technical paradigm is already working in niche applications. For
   example, engineers were shrinking vacuum tubes in the 1950s to
   provide greater price-performance for computers, and reached a
   point where it was no longer feasible to shrink tubes and maintain
   a vacuum. At this point, around 1960, transistors had already
   achieved a strong niche market in portable radios.
   o When a paradigm shift occurs for a particular type of technology,
   the process begins a new S-curve.
   o Thus the acceleration of the overall evolutionary process
   proceeds as a sequence of S-curves, and the overall exponential
   growth consists of this cascade of S-curves.
   o The resources underlying the exponential growth of an
   evolutionary process are relatively unbounded.
   o One resource is the (ever-growing) order of the evolutionary
   process itself. Each stage of evolution provides more powerful
   tools for the next. In biological evolution, the advent of DNA
   allowed more powerful and faster evolutionary "experiments." Later,
   setting the "designs" of animal body plans during the Cambrian
   explosion allowed rapid evolutionary development of other body
   organs, such as the brain. Or to take a more recent example, the
   advent of computer-assisted design tools allows rapid development
   of the next generation of computers.
   o The other required resource is the "chaos" of the environment in
   which the evolutionary process takes place and which provides the
   options for further diversity. In biological evolution, diversity
   enters the process in the form of mutations and ever- changing
   environmental conditions. In technological evolution, human
   ingenuity combined with ever-changing market conditions keep the
   process of innovation going.
   o If we apply these principles at the highest level of evolution on
   Earth, the first step, the creation of cells, introduced the
   paradigm of biology. The subsequent emergence of DNA provided a
   digital method to record the results of evolutionary experiments.
   Then, the evolution of a species that combined rational thought
   with an opposable appendage (the thumb) caused a fundamental
   paradigm shift from biology to technology. The upcoming primary
   paradigm shift will be from biological thinking to a hybrid
   combining biological and nonbiological thinking. This hybrid will
   include "biologically inspired" processes resulting from the
   reverse engineering of biological brains.
   o If we examine the timing of these steps, we see that the process
   has continuously accelerated. The evolution of life forms required
   billions of years for the first steps (e.g., primitive cells);
   later on progress accelerated. During the Cambrian explosion, major
   paradigm shifts took only tens of millions of years. Later on,
   Humanoids developed over a period of millions of years, and Homo
   sapiens over a period of only hundreds of thousands of years.
   o With the advent of a technology-creating species, the exponential
   pace became too fast for evolution through DNA-guided protein
   synthesis and moved on to human-created technology. Technology goes
   beyond mere tool making; it is a process of creating ever more
   powerful technology using the tools from the previous round of
   innovation, and is, thereby, an evolutionary process. As I noted,
   the first technological took tens of thousands of years. For people
   living in this era, there was little noticeable technological
   change in even a thousand years. By 1000 AD, progress was much
   faster and a paradigm shift required only a century or two. In the
   nineteenth century, we saw more technological change than in the
   nine centuries preceding it. Then in the first twenty years of the
   twentieth century, we saw more advancement than in all of the
   nineteenth century. Now, paradigm shifts occur in only a few years
   time.
   o The paradigm shift rate (i.e., the overall rate of technical
   progress) is currently doubling (approximately) every decade; that
   is, paradigm shift times are halving every decade (and the rate of
   acceleration is itself growing exponentially). So, the
   technological progress in the twenty-first century will be
   equivalent to what would require (in the linear view) on the order
   of 200 centuries. In contrast, the twentieth century saw only about
   20 years of progress (again at today's rate of progress) since we
   have been speeding up to current rates. So the twenty-first century
   will see about a thousand times greater technological change than
   its predecessor.
   _________________________________________________________________

Jamshed Bharucha

Bharucha's Law
To understand what people are thinking and feeling, look beyond what
they say. Language does not capture the full range and grain of
thought and experience, and its unique power enables us as easily to
mask our thoughts and feelings as it does to express them.
   _________________________________________________________________

Samuel Barondes

Barondes' First Law

Science abhors contradictions; scientist's minds are replete with
them.

Barondes' Second Law

Self-understanding is inherently inaccurate because most of our
knowledge comes from specific behavioral experiences that are often
inconsistent; and our mechanisms of learning are designed to store
memories whether or or not their implications are formally
contradictory.
   _________________________________________________________________

W. Brian Arthur

Arthur's First Law
High-tech markets are dominated 70-80% by a single player--product,
company, or country.
The reason: Such markets are subject to increasing returns or
self-reinforcing mechanisms. Therefore an initial advantage--often
bestowed by chance--leads to increasing advantage and eventually heavy
market domination. (Absent government intervention, of course).

Arthur's Second Law

As technology advances it becomes ever more biological.
We are leaving an age of mechanistic, fixed-design technologies, and
entering an age of metabolic, self-reorganizing technologies. In this
sense, as technology becomes more advanced it becomes more
organic--therefore more "biological." Further, as biological
mechanisms at the cellular and DNA levels become better understood,
they become harnessed and co-opted as technologies. In this century,
biology and technology will therefore intertwine.

Arthur's Third Law
The modularization of technologies increases with the extent of the
market.
Just as it pays to create a specialized worker if there is sufficient
volume of throughput to occupy that specialty, it pays to create a
standard prefabricated assembly, or module, if its function recurs in
many instances. Modularity therefore is to a technological economy
what the division of labor is to a manufacturing one--it increases as
the economy expands.
   _________________________________________________________________

Daniel C. Dennett
Dennett's Law of Needy Readers
is an extension of Schank's Law
On any important topic, we tend to have a dim idea of what we hope to
be true, and when an author writes the words we want to read, we tend
to fall for it, no matter how shoddy the arguments. Needy readers have
an asymptote at illiteracy; if a text doesn't say the one thing they
need to read, it might as well be in a foreign language. To be
open-minded, you have to recognize, and counteract, your own doxastic
hungers.
   _________________________________________________________________

Matt Ridley
Ridley's First Law
Science is the discovery of ignorance. It is not a catalog of facts.
Ridley's Second Law
Experience affects an organism largely by switching genes on and off.
(Nurture works through nature.)
Ridley's Third Law
Neither the number of base pairs nor the number of genes in an
organism's genome bears much if any relation to that organism's size
or complexity.
   _________________________________________________________________

Haim Harari

Harari's Law of Science Eucation
The faster Science and Technology advance--the more important it is to
teach and to learn the basics of Math and Science and the less
important it is to teach and to learn the latest developments.

Harari's Law of Particle Physics
The electron, its replicas (muon and tau), the quarks and the
neutrinos are all composed of the same set of more fundamental
objects, which will become the newly accepted basic building blocks of
all of nature.

Harari's Law of Scientific Fads and Bandwagons
Every scientific discovery is first made by one person or by a few
people. At the time of the discovery, they are the only ones aware of
it. It follows logically that democratic votes, public opinion polls,
majority views of scientists and scientific fads do not necessarily
represent scientific truth. Only correct experimental results do.
   _________________________________________________________________

George Lakoff

Lakoff's First Law
Frames trump facts.
All of our concepts are organized into conceptual structures called
"frames" (which may include images and metaphors) and all words are
defined relative to those frames. Conventional frames are pretty much
fixed in the neural structures of our brains. In order for a fact to
be comprehended, it must fit the relevant frames. If the facts
contradict the frames, the frames, being fixed in the brain, will be
kept and the facts ignored.
We see this in politics every day. Consider the expression "tax
relief" which the White House introduced into common use on the day of
George W. Bush's inauguration. A "relief" frame has an affliction, an
afflicted party, a reliever who removes the affliction and is thereby
a hero, and in the frame anyone who tries to stop the reliever from
administering the relief is a bad guy, a villain. "Tax relief" imposes
the additional metaphor that Taxation Is an Affliction, with the
entailments that the president is a hero for attempting to remove this
affliction and the Democrats are bad guys for opposing him. This frame
trumps many facts: Most people wind up paying more in local taxes,
payments for services cut, and debt servicing as a result of the
Bush's tax cuts.
There is of course another way to think about taxes: Taxes are what
you pay to live in America--to have democracy, opportunity, government
services, and the vast infrastructure build by previous taxpayers--the
highways, the internet, the schools, scientific research, the court
system, etc. Taxes are membership fees used to maintain and expand
services and the infrastructure. But however true this may be, it is
not yet an established frame inscribed in the synapses of our brains.
This has an important consequence. Political liberals have inherited
an assumption from the Enlightenment, that The facts will set us free,
that if the public is just given the facts, they will, being rational
beings, reach the right conclusion. It is simply false. It violates
Lakoff's Law.

Lakoff's Second Law
Voters vote their identities, not their self-interest.
Because of the way they frame the world, voters vote in a way that
best accords with their identities and not in accord with their
self-interest. That is why it is of no use for Democrats to keep
pointing out that Bush's tax cuts go to the top 1 percent, not to most
voters. If they identify with Bush because they share his culture and
his world view, they will vote against their self-interest.
We saw this in California in the recall election, when, for example,
union members overwhelming favored Gray Davis' policies as being
better for them, yet voted for Schwartzenegger.
   _________________________________________________________________

Edward O. Laumann

Laumann's First Proposition

Moderation in levels of partnered sex activity is the mode for the
bulk of humankind and is consistent with high levels of subjective
well-being.
Laumann's Second Proposition

Low levels of subjective sexual well-being is associated with poor
physical, emotional, and mental health.

These propositions (they are empirical associations and not
established as causal) are based on my extensive international work on
human sexuality. They are based on surveys I have conducted in the
United States and China as well as the Pfizer-funded Global Survey of
Sexual Attitudes and Behavior (N = 27,500) which interviewed equal
numbers of men and women 40 to 80 years old in 29 countries world
wide. The real question is the nature of the causal link between these
variables.
   _________________________________________________________________

Anton Zeilinger

Zeilinger's Fundamental Law
There is no Fundamental Law.
Zeilinger's Law on Reality, Space and Time
Information is the most Fundamental Concept, it's all we have.
   _________________________________________________________________

Nancy Etcoff

Etcoff's Law

Be wary of scientific dualisms.

Approach them with caution, the way demolition experts regard bombs,
likely to explode, in this case into unproductive argument and the
obscuring of truth. "Opposing forces" are the scientific version of
the original dualism--good vs evil and darkness vs. light. Instead, of
acting in opposition, in nature two forces are likely to dependent,
interactive and interwoven; sometimes they are merely two names for
the same thing.
For example:

   Brain vs Mind
   Mind vs Body
   Emotion vs Reason
   Nature vs Nurture
   Us vs Them

Seek unity.
Remember always that it is easy to be in possession of some facts,
extraordinarily difficult to know the truth.
   _________________________________________________________________

Lee Smolin

Smolin's First Law
Genuine advances are rarely made by accident; in fact, the outcome of
a scientific investigation is usually less dramatic than originally
hoped for. Therefore, if you want to do something really significant
in science, you must aim high and you must take genuine risks.
Smolin's Second Law
In every period and every community there is something that everybody
believes, but cannot justify. If you want to understand anything, you
have to start by ignoring what everyone believes, and thinking for
yourself.
This was advice given to me by my father when I was a child. Feynman
said something very similar: "Science is the organized skepticism in
the reliability of expert opinion."
Smolin's Third Law
Time does exist.

Smolin's Zeroth Law
A measure of our ignorance about nature is the extent to which our
theories depend on background structures, which are entities necessary
to define the quantities in the theory, that do not themselves refer
to anything which evolves dynamically in time. Our understanding can
always be deepened by bringing such fixed, background structures into
the domain of dynamical law. By doing so, we convert absolute
properties, defined with respect to background structures, into
relational properties, defined in terms of relationships among
dynamical degrees of freedom.
   _________________________________________________________________

Mark Mirsky

Mirsky's Law

Imagination precedes reality.

To imagine the universe is to fear it, even as one feels the power and
pleasure of trying to find its furthest boundaries. To meet that fear
one has to seek consolation whether in scientific theory or intuitive
vision.
As a corollary to that, the return of past time in the present, as
death comes steadily closer, if not unique to the human mind, is
certainly one of the consolations of consciousness, and of the shadow
realm of dream. If there is hope it is in our ability as men and women
to imagine ourselves not only in other worlds but as an "other," as an
opposite. Robert Musil, Proust, Kafka, Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri
together with the anonymous scribes of the religious epics, Gilgamesh,
the Old Testament, were uncanny in their ability to imagine in this
way.

Imagination precedes what we call reality. I would propose this as a
law of daily life and suspect that it plays a large part in our
evolution. Trying to preserve and recreate what was best in my past
and the past of distant ancestors is part of what keeps me balanced
before a future in which I want to hope.
To imagine is not just to exist, but to prolong existence. At the last
moment Spinoza could not surrender the idea that somehow memory of
what had happened would not be lost in the vastness of the universe.
Spinoza needed that consolation. Whether it does or not, we need to
believe that memory persists, and that we are capable of influencing
just what memory will be valued and given predominance.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Buss

Buss's Laws of Human Mating
Buss's Third Law of Human Mating
For every mating adaptation in one sex, there exists at least one
co-evolved adaptation in the other sex designed to manipulate and
exploit it.
Buss's Fourth Law of Human Mating
For every co-evolved exploitative mating adaptation, there exists at
least one co-co-evolved defensive adaptation designed to circumvent
being manipulated and exploited.
Buss's Seventh Law of Human Mating
Never reveal your first two laws of mating, lest they be used to
manipulate and exploit you.
   _________________________________________________________________

Eberhard Zangger

Zangger's First Law

Most scientific breakthroughs are nothing else than the discovery of
the obvious.

Zangger's Second Law

Truly great science is always ahead of its time.

Although there seems to be a slight contradiction in my laws,
historical evidence proves them right:

   o The Hungarian surgeon Ignaz Semmelweiss in 1847 reduced the death
   rate in his hospital from twelve to two percent, simply by washing
   hands between operations -- a concept that today would be advocated
   by a four year old child. When Semmelweiss urged his colleagues to
   introduce hygiene to the operating rooms, they had him committed to
   a mental hospital where he eventually died.

   o The German meteorologist Alfred Wegener discovered in 1913 what
   every ten year old looking at a globe will notice immediately: That
   the Atlantic coasts of the African and South American continents
   have matching contours and thus may have been locked together some
   time ago. The experts needed sixty more years to comprehend the
   concept.

   o When Louis Pasteur stated that bacteria could cause disease,
   colleagues treated the idea as "an absurd fantasy'!

   o The theories of the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud were
   called "a case for the police" during a neurologists' congress in
   Hamburg in 1910.

   o Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, only eight years
   before Orville and Wilbur Wright left the ground in an aeroplane,
   remarked: "Machines that are heavier than air will never be able to
   fly!"

   o German physicists Erwin Schr?dinger's PhD thesis, in which he
   first introduced his famous equation, was initially rejected.

   o When the Spanish nobleman de Satuola discovered the Late Ice Age
   painted cave at Altamira, established scholars described him as a
   forger and a cheat.

   o The decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean Francois
   Champollion in 1822 was still rejected by scholar twenty years
   after his death.

   o And when Johann Karl Fuhlrott discovered the bones of a
   Neanderthal in a cave near Duesseldorf in 1856, the president of
   the German Society of Anthropology considered it a bow-legged,
   Mongolian Cossack with rickets, who had been lucky enough to
   survive multiple head injuries, but who, during a campaign by
   Russian forces against France in 1814, had been wounded, and (stark
   naked) had crawled into a cave, where he died.

   o Heinrich Schliemann's excavation of Bronze Age Mycenae and Tiryns
   in Greece was considered by English archaeologists in The Times' as
   the remains of some obscure barbarian tribe' from the Byzantine
   period. In particular, the so-called prehistoric palace in Tiryns
   was labelled "the most remarkable hallucination of an unscientific
   enthusiast that has ever appeared in literature."

Scientific breakthroughs will always be held hostage to the lag needed
to overcome existing beliefs. Lucius Annaeus Seneca realized this
already two thousand years ago, when he said: "The time will come,
when our successors will be surprised that we did not know such
obvious things."
   _________________________________________________________________

Maria Spiropulu

Maria's 1st Law
The anthropic principle in cosmology is just a (silly) corollary of
the anthropic principle in religion: We are, therefore god is.

Maria's 2nd Law
We are not the source of the laws of nature. Nature is, whether we are
or not.

Maria's 3rd Law
A law at the time of its conception is the solution to a problem or
the answer to a question; at that time both the solution and the
problem, the question and the answer, are ill-posed.
   _________________________________________________________________

Julian Barbour
My laws make more precise Carlo Rovelli's two principles: time does
not exist, space does not exist. He argues that the universe is a
network of relations and not a game played out on some invisible arena
of absolute space and time such as Newton postulated. I agree but
believe it is important to formulate precisely the manner in which the
universe is relational.
Barbour's First Law
The change of a physical field at a given point is not measured by
time but by the changes of all the other physical fields at the same
point. To determine a rate of change, one does not divide an
infinitesimal change by an infinitesimal time interval but by the
weighted average of all the other changes at the same point. This
ensures that an invisible time can play no role in the dynamics of the
universe.
Barbour's Second Law
Geometry is founded on congruence, dynamics on minimisation of
incongruence.
This requires amplification. Suppose just three particles in space.
Newton defined their motions relative to absolute space. In relational
dynamics, this is not allowed. Instead, the motions (changes) between
two instantaneous states of the three particles are completely
determined by the intrinsic changes of the triangles that they form.
Real change will happen when a triangle becomes incongruent with
itself. To determine the intrinsic change between one triangle and
another ever so slightly incongruent with it, move one relative to
each other until the position of best matching, in which they coincide
more closely than in any other possible relative positioning, is
achieved. The corresponding displacements (changes) determined by this
minimisation of incongruence are the true physical displacements. The
notion of best matching can be applied universally to both particles
and fields.
Barbour's Third Law
Space is Riemannian.
Spelled out in the appropriate mathematical detail, these three laws
seem to explain the structure of all currently known physical fields
as well as the existence of the universal light cone of Einstein's
special relativity and gauge theory.
   _________________________________________________________________

Tor N?rretranders

N?rretranders' Law of Symmetrical Relief
If you find that most other people, upon closer inspection, seem to be
somewhat comical or ludicrous, it is highly probable that most other
people find that you are in fact comical or ludicrous. So you don't
have to hide it, they already know.
N?rretranders' Law of Understanding Novelty
The difficulty in understanding new ideas originating from science or
art is not intellectual, but emotional; good ideas are simple and
clear, but if they are truly new, they will be hard to swallow. It is
not difficult to understand that the Earth is not at the center of the
Universe, but it is hard to believe it. Science is simple, simply
strange.
   _________________________________________________________________

Philip Campbell

Campbell's First Law
Whatever the science, the forces of nature will exploit any loophole
in experimental or theoretical design and construction, any ambiguity
in measurement and any unchecked or unrecognised assumption to lead a
researcher to enticing but false conclusions.
Campbell's Second Law
Scientists are as vigorous in complaining about the
incomprehensibility of others' scientific papers as they are lazy in
clarifying their own.
Campbell's Third Law
The probability that a Powerpoint presentation will fail is
proportional to the technical sophistication of the institution at
which you are presenting it. (And by the way, where the failure is
total, your talk will be all the better for it.)
   _________________________________________________________________

Steve Quartz

Quartz's Law of The Primacy of Feeling

In everyday life, one's anticipated emotions regarding a decision is a
better guide than rational deliberation. Brain science is increasingly
appreciating the centrality of emotions as guides to life, and
emotions are typically more in line with one's wishes than rational
deliberation, which can be easily disconnected from one's desires and
goals. The upshot: deliberation is cheap, emotions are honest.

Quartz's Law of Latent Plasticity
Failure to alter thought, mood, personality, or other facets of
ourselves through environmental means is not a demonstration that
these are hard-wired. Rather, such failure should be taken merely as
an indication that we have not yet discovered the appropriate regime
of experience. New experience-based approaches to brain change are
rapidly emerging, and overturn the dogma of the inflexible brain. We
can now utilize the brain's latent capacity for change to treat mood
disorders through experience-based brain change. Learning how to
utilize the brain's latent plasticity, or capacity for change, will
produce revolutions in physical, cognitive, and mental health
remediation.
   _________________________________________________________________

J. Craig Venter

Venter's First Law

Discoveries made in a field by some one from another discipline will
always be upsetting to the majority of those inside.

Venter's Second Law

The ability to directly read the genetic code will continue
exponentially, with the cost per nucleotide (base pair) decreasing by
one-half every two years.

Corollary to Law 2
While DNA sequencing has changed faster than Moore's Law for computer
chips, it will become dependent on and therefore limited by Moore's
Law. (Based on an exchange with Gordon Moore).

Venter's Third Law

We have the tools for the first time in the history of humanity to
answer virtually any question about biology and our own evolution.

Venter's Fourth Law

The Earth's Oceans are the ultimate source of genetic/genomic
diversity providing at least half of the more than 10 billion genes in
the planet's gene pool.

Venter's Fifth Law

Life is like sailing: It is easy to run downwind but usually if you
want to get somewhere worthwhile a long hard beat to weather is
necessary.
   _________________________________________________________________

Richard Dawkins

Dawkins's Law of the Conservation of Difficulty
Obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its
intrinsic simplicity.

Dawkins's Law of Divine Invulnerability
God cannot lose.

   Lemma 1
   When comprehension expands, gods contract--but then redefine
   themselves to restore the status quo.
   Lemma 2

   When things go right, God will be thanked. When things go wrong, he
   will be thanked that they are not worse.
   Lemma 3
   Belief in the afterlife can only be proved right, never wrong.
   Lemma 4
   The fury with which untenable beliefs are defended is inversely
   proportional to their defensibility

The following law, though probably older, is often attributed to me in
various versions, and I am happy to formulate it here as

Dawkins's Law of Adversarial Debate
When two incompatible beliefs are advocated with equal intensity, the
truth does not lie half way between them.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Finkelstein

Finkelstein's First Law

Everything is relative.

Finkelstein's Second Law

Everything (which is relative).
   _________________________________________________________________

Paul Davies

Davies' First Law

Time does not pass.

Davies' Second Law

Never let observation stand in the way of a good theory.
   _________________________________________________________________

Steve Grand

Grand's First Law
Things that persist, persist; things that don't, don't.

This tautology underlies every single phenomenon we see around us,
from
molecules to religions. The purpose of science is simply to discover
how and
why any given class of pattern manages to persist. Life is best
understood
as a group of patterns that are able to persist because they
spontaneously
duplicate themselves and adapt to change. Equally, an electron is a
pattern
that persists as a self-maintaining resonant mode in the
electromagnetic
field. The universe is what is left over when all the
non-self-maintaining
patterns have faded away.

Grand's Second Law
Cortex is cortex is cortex.

Our brains may end up as a collection of highly specialised 'modules',
but
the functioning of these modules is not the key to intelligence. The
key is
the deeper set of rules that enable a homogeneous pink goo to wire
itself up
into such a collection of specialised machines in the first place,
merely by
being exposed to the sensory world.

Grand's Third Law

The more carefully one makes contingency plans, the more bizarre the
actual
circumstances will turn out to be.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Deutsch

Deutsch's Law

Every problem that is interesting is also soluble.

   Corollary #1
   Inherently insoluble problems are inherently boring.
   Corollary #2
   In the long run, the distinction between what is interesting and
   what is boring is not a matter of subjective taste but an objective
   fact.
   Corollary #3
   The problem of why every problem that is interesting is also
   soluble, is soluble.
   _________________________________________________________________

Rodney Brooks

Brooks' First Law

A good place to apply scientific leverage is on an implicit assumption
that everyone makes and that is so implicit that no one would even
think to mention it to students entering the field. Negating that
assumption may lead to new and interesting ways of thinking.
Brooks' Second Law

If you don't have a solid example then your theory is not a good
theory.
   _________________________________________________________________

Gary Marcus

Marcus' First Law
Nature and nurture are not in opposition; nature is what makes nurture
possible.
Marcus' Second Law
Nothing in evolution is without precedent; even the most wondrous
adaptations are modifications of pre-existing systems.
Marcus' Third Law
What's good enough for the body is good enough for the brain. Brains,
like any other organ, take their special character from the actions of
individual cells that divide, differentiate, migrate, and die,
according to genetic programs that are the product of evolution.
   _________________________________________________________________

Verena Huber-Dyson

Verena's Law of Sane Reasoning
Hone your Hunches, Jump, then backtrack to blaze a reliable trail to
your Conclusion.

But avoid reductios; they lead to mere counterfeits of truth.

Verena's Law of Constructive Proof

Every sound argument can and ought to be turned into a construction
that embodies and explains its conclusion.
   _________________________________________________________________

Scott Sampson

Sampson's Law of Interdependent Origination

Life's unfolding is a tapestry in which every new thread is contingent
upon the nature, timing, and interweaving of virtually all previous
threads.

This is an extension of the idea that the origin of new life forms is
fundamentally contingent upon interactions among previous biotas. As
Stephen J. Gould described it, if one could rewind the tape of life
and let events play out again, the results would almost certainly
differ dramatically. The point of distinction here is a deeper
incorporation of the connections inherent in the web of life.
Specifically, the origin of new species is inextricably linked both to
evolutionary history and to intricate ecological relationships with
other species. Thus, speciation might be aptly termed "interdependent
origination." So, for example, it is often said that the extinction of
dinosaurs 65 million years ago cleared the way for the radiation of
mammals and, ultimately, the origin of humans. Yet the degree of
life's interconnectedness far exceeds that implied in this statement.
Dinosaurs persisted for 160 million years prior to this mass dying,
co-evolving in intricate organic webs with plants, bacteria, fungi,
and algae, as well as other animals, including mammals. Together these
Mesozoic life forms influenced the origins and fates of one another
and all species that followed. Had the major extinction of the
dinosaurs occurred earlier or later, or had dinosaurs never evolved,
subsequent biotas would have been wholly different, and we almost
certainly wouldn't be here to contemplate nature. An equivalent claim
could be made for any major group at any point in the history of life.
   _________________________________________________________________

Colin Blakemore

Blakemore's First Law

People are never more honest than you think they are.
Blakemore's Second Law
The only form of intelligence that really matters is the capacity to
predict.
   _________________________________________________________________

Michael Shermer

Shermer's Last Law
Any sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial intelligence is
indistinguishable from God.
Any ETI that we might encounter would not be at our level of culture,
science, and technology, nor would they be behind us. How far ahead of
us would they be? If they were only a little ahead of us on an
evolutionary time scale, they would be light years ahead of us
technologically, because cultural evolution is much more rapid than
biological evolution. God is typically described by Western religions
as omniscient and omnipotent. Since we are far from the mark on these
traits, how could we possibly distinguish a God who has them
absolutely, from an ETI who has them in relatively (to us) copious
amounts? Thus, we would be unable to distinguish between absolute and
relative omniscience and omnipotence. But if God were only relatively
more knowing and powerful than us, then by definition it would be an
ETI! 
Shermer's Three Principles of Provisional Morality and Evolutionary
Ethic

   1. The ask-first principle: to find out whether an action is right
   or wrong, ask first.
   2. The happiness principle: it is a higher moral principle to
   always seek happiness with someone else's happiness in mind, and
   never seek happiness when it leads to someone else's unhappiness.
   3. The liberty principle: it is a higher moral principle to always
   seek liberty with someone else's liberty in mind, and never seek
   liberty when it leads to someone else's loss of liberty.
   0. The Zeroeth principle: do unto others as you would have them do
   unto you.

(These principles were derived from a scientific analysis of the
evolutionary origins of the moral sentiments and the historical
development of evolutionary ethics. The Zeroeth Principle, which
precedes the three principles, first evolved hundreds of thousands of
years ago but was first codified in writing by the world's great
religious leaders and has come down to us as the golden rule. The
foundation of the Zeroeth Principle, and the three derivative
principles is, in evolutionary theory, reciprocal altruism and the
process of reciprocity.)
   _________________________________________________________________

Ernst P?ppel

I refer to my "laws" as "P?ppel's Paradox", and "P?ppel's Universal".
Actually the names have been invented by others.

P?ppel's Paradox

Not to see, but to see. Some years ago (1973) we described a
phenomenon that patients with a certain brain injury show some
residual vision although they do not have a conscious representation
of their remained visual capacity. They can orient in space, or they
can discriminate simple patterns, but they do not know that they can
do it. This phenomenon became known as "blindsight". Apparently there
is a lot of implicit processing going in our brain that lacks an
explicit representation, but which usually is associated with
conscious experience. Interestingly, the phenomenon of blindsight not
only made a "career" in the neurosciences, but also in philosophy.

P?ppel's Universal

We take life 3 seconds at a time. Human experience and behaviour is
characterized by temporal segmentation. Successive segments or "time
windows" have a duration of approx. 3 seconds. Examples: Intentional
movements are embedded within 3 s (like a handshake); the anticipation
of a precise movement like hitting a golf ball does not go beyond 3 s;
if we reproduce the duration of a stimulus, we can do so accurately up
to 3 s but not beyond; if we look at ambiguous figures (like a vase
vs. two faces) or if we listen to ambiguous phoneme sequences (like
Cu-Ba-Cu-Ba-.., either hearing Cuba or Bacu) automatically after
approx. 3 s the percept switches to the alternative; the working
platform of our short term memory lasts only 3 s (being interrupted
after 3 s most of the information is gone); spontaneous speech in all
languages is temporally segmented, each segment lasting up to 3 s;
this temporal segmentation of speech shows up again in poetry, as a
verse of a poem is embedded within 3 s (Shakespeare: "Shall I compare
thee to a summer's day"); musical motives preferably last 3 s
(remember Beethoven's Fifth Symphony); decisions are made within 3 s
(like zapping between TV channels); and there are more examples. Thus,
the brain provides a temporal stage that last approx. 3 s, which is
used in perception, cognition, movement control, memory, speech, or
music.
   _________________________________________________________________

Robert Aunger

Aunger's Law of Human Evolution
Human life is unique in being the result of three coevolving
information inheritance systems: genes, minds and technology.

Aunger's Law of Technological Evolution
As the rate of technological innovation increases, so too does the
inertia from ancillary institutions, but not as much.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Horgan

Horgan's First Law

If science has limits--and science tells us that it does--the only
question is when, not if, it reaches them.

Horgan's Second Law
Every garbage-removal system--whether Zen, skepticism, or
existentialism--generates garbage. If you want to clear your mind, the
best you can hope for is to find a system, or anti-system, that
removes more garbage than it generates.
   _________________________________________________________________

Seth Lloyd

Lloyd's It From Qubit Law

The universe is a quantum computer: life, sex, the brain, and human
society all arise out of the ability of the universe to process
information at the level of atoms, photons and elementary particles.
   _________________________________________________________________

Jaron Lanier

The following are Lanier's Laws for Putting Machines in their Place,
distilled from comments I've posted on Edge over the years. They are
all stolen from earlier laws that predate the appearance of computers
by decades or centuries.

Lanier's First Law
Humans change themselves through technology.

Example: Lanier's Law of Eternal Improvement for Virtual Reality:
Average human sensory perception will gain acuity over successive
generations in tandem with the improving qualities of pervasive media
technology.

Lanier's Second Law
Even though human nature is dynamic, you must find a way to think of
it as being distinct from the rest of nature.

You can't have a categorical imperative without categories. Or, You
can't have a golden rule without gold. You have to draw a Circle of
Empathy around yourself and others in order to be moral. If you
include too much in the circle, you become incompetent, while if you
include too little you become cruel. This is the "Normal form" of the
eternal liberal/conservative dichotomy.

Lanier's Third Law

You can't rely completely on the level of rationality humans are able
to achieve to decide what to put inside the circle. People are
demonstrably insane when it comes to attributing nonhuman sentience,
as can be seen at any dog show.

Lanier's Fourth Law
Lanier's Law of AI Unrecognizability.
You can't rely on experiment alone to decide what to put in the
circle. A Turing Test-like experiment can't be designed to distinguish
whether a computer has gotten smarter or a person interacting with
that computer has gotten stupider (usually by lowering or narrowing
standards of human excellence in some way.)

Lanier's Fifth Law

If you're inclined to put machines inside your circle, you can't rely
on metrics of technological sophistication to decide which machines to
choose. These metrics have no objectivity.

For just one example, consider Lanier's retelling of Parkinson's Law
for the Post-dot-com Era: Software inefficiency and inelegance will
always expand to the level made tolerable by Moore's Law. Put another
way, Lanier's corrolary to Brand's Laws: Whether Small Information
wants to be free or expensive, Big Information wants to be
meaningless.

Lanier's Sixth Law

When one must make a choice despite almost but not quite total
uncertainty, work hard to make your best guess.

Best guess for Circle of Empathy: Danger of increasing human stupidity
is probably greater than potential reality of machine sentience.
Therefore choose not to place machines in Circle of Empathy.
   _________________________________________________________________

Charles Seife

Seife's First Law
A scientific revolution is a complete surprise. Especially to its
authors.

Seife's Second Law

Each generation's scientific neologisms adorn the labels of the next
generation's quack cures.
   _________________________________________________________________

Andy Clark
Clark's Law

Everything leaks.

There are no clear-cut level distinctions in nature. Neural software
bleeds into neural firmware, neural firmware bleeds into neural
hardware, psychology bleeds into biology and biology bleeds into
physics. Body bleeds into mind and mind bleeds into world. Philosophy
bleeds into science and science bleeds back.The idea of levels is a
useful fiction, great for hygienic text-book writing and quick answers
that defend our local turf but seldom advance scientific
understanding).
   _________________________________________________________________

Alan Alda

The following is written by a non-scientist who supposes it might be
entertaining for scientists to see what passes through the head of a
curious layman while trying to understand the people who try to
understand Nature.

Alda's First Law of Laws
All laws are local.

In other words, something is always bound to come along and make you
rethink what you know by forcing you to look at it in a broader
context. I've arrived at this notion after interviewing hundreds of
scientists, and also after being married for 46 years.

I don't mean that laws are not true and useful, especially when they
have been verified by experiment. But they are likely to continue to
be true only within a certain frame, once another frame is discovered.

Some scientists will probably find this idea heretical and others may
find it obvious. According to this law, they'll both be right
(depending on the frame they're working in).

Another way of saying this is that no matter how much we know about
something, it is just the tip of the iceberg. And most disasters occur
by coming in contact with the other part of the iceberg.

Alda's Second Law of Laws
A law does not know how local it is.

Citizens of Lawville do not realize there are city limits and are
constantly surprised to find out they live in a county.

When you're operating within the frame of a law, you can't know where
the edges of the frame are--where dragons begin showing up.

I've just been interviewing astronomers about dark matter and dark
energy in the universe. These two things make up something like 96% of
the universe. The part of the universe we can see or in some way
observe is only about 4%. That leaves a lot of universe that needs to
be rethought. And some people speculate that dark energy may be
leaking in from a whole other universe; an even bigger change of
frame, if that turns out to be the case.

It's now known that vast stretches of DNA once thought to be Junk DNA
because they don't code for proteins actually regulate or even silence
conventional genes. The conventional genes--what we used to think were
responsible for everything we knew about heritability--account for
only 2% of our DNA. Apparently, it's not yet known how much of the
other 98% is active, but I think the frame has just shifted here.

Welcome to Lawville; you are now leaving Lawville.
   _________________________________________________________________

Chris Anderson
Anderson's Law of Causal Instinct
Humans are engineered to seek for laws, whether or not they're
actually there.
Anderson's Law of Skepticism
Most proposed laws, including this one, will probably turn out to be
vacuous.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stuart Pimm

Pimm's First Law
No language spoken by fewer than 100,000 people survives contact with
the outside world, while no language spoken by more than one million
people can be eliminated by such contact.
Pimm's Second Law
With every change in language (including first contact with humanity),
a region's biodiversity shrinks by 20%.
   _________________________________________________________________

Robert Provine

Provine's Motor Precocity Principle
Organisms spond before they respond (act before they react).
This principle of neurobehavioral development and evolution describes
the tendency of the nervous system to produce motor output before it
receives sensory input. Because motor systems often evolve and develop
before sensory systems, sensory input cannot have the dominant
influence on neural structure and function predicted by some
psychological and neurological theories.

The evolutionary precocity of motor relative to sensory systems also
argues against the classical reflex as a primal step in
neurobehavioral evolution. Spontaneously active motor processes are
adaptive and can emerge through natural selection unlike sensory
processes that are not adaptive without a behavior to guide. Sensory
systems evolved to control already existing movement.

Another argument against the primacy of reflexes is that they require
the unlikely simultaneous evolution of a sensory and a motor process.
The tendency of organisms to "spond before they respond" requires the
re-evaluation of many other traditional neurobehavioral concepts and
processes.

Provine's Self/Other Exclusionary Principle
The "self," the most basic sense of personhood, is defined as that
which is not "other." "Other," the most primitive level of social
entity, is defined as a non-self, animate stimulus on the surface of
your skin.

Self is distinguished from other by a neurological cancellation
process. These definitions are attractive because they permit a
neurologically and computationally based approach to problems that are
traditionally mired in personality and social theory. Although our
sense of identity involves more than self/non-self discrimination,
such a mechanism may be at its foundation and a first step toward the
evolution of personhood and the neurological computation of its
boundaries. For a demonstration of this mechanism, consider your
inability to tickle yourself. Tickle requires stimulation by a
non-self animate entity on the surface of your skin. Similar,
self-produced stimulation is cancelled and is not ticklish.
Without such a self/non-self discriminator, we would be constantly be
tickling ourselves by accident, and the world would be filled with
goosey people lurching their way through life in a chain reaction
filled with tactile false alarms. Developing a similar machine
algorithm may lead to "ticklish" robots whose performance is enhanced
by their capacity to distinguish touching from being touched, and,
provocatively, a computationally based construct of machine
personhood.
   _________________________________________________________________

Art De Vany

De Vany's Law
The future is over-forecasted and underpredicted.
   _________________________________________________________________

Alison Gopnik

Gopnik's Learning Curve
The ability to learn is inversely proportional to years of school,
adjusted for hormones.

Gopnik's Gender Curves

The male curve is an abrupt rise followed by an equally abrupt fall.
The female curve is a slow rise to an extended asymptote. The areas
under the curves are roughly equal. These curves apply to all
activities at all time scales (e.g. attention to TV programs, romantic
love, career scientific productivity).

   _________________________________________________________________

Raphael Kasper

Kasper's Law

One should never blindly accept things as they are.

Jose Saramago writes in The Cave with his usual quirky punctuation and
sentence structure:

   "... we often hear it said, or we say it ourselves, I'll get used
   to it, we say or they say, with what seems to be genuine acceptance
   ..., what no one asks is at what cost do we get used to things."

Kasper's Second Law

Try to know where and how your thoughts arise and always give credit
to your teachers.
   _________________________________________________________________

Susan Blackmore

Blackmore's First Law

People's desire to believe in the paranormal is stronger than all the
evidence that it does not exist.

Blackmore's Second Law
Humans are not in control of the web; the memes are.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stanislas Dehaene

Dehaene's First Law

Every successful human invention such as arithmetic or the alphabet
has a "neuronal niche"--a set of cerebral processors that evolved for
a distinct purpose, but can be recycled to implement the new function.

Two corollaries:

   The difficulty of learning a new concept or technique is directly
   related to the amount of recycling needed--the distance between the
   evolutionary older function and the new one.
   When the old and the new functions are closely related
   (isomorphic), an evolutionary old cerebral processor can provide a
   fast, unconscious and unexpected solution to a recent cultural
   problem--this is what we call
   "intuition".

Dehaene's Second Law

The confusability of two ideas, however abstract, is a direct function
of the overlap in their neuronal codes.
   _________________________________________________________________

Richard Rabkin

Rabkin's Rule

Nothing is a simple as it seems.

Rabkin's Dictum
If you don't understand something, it's because you aren't aware of
its context.
   _________________________________________________________________

Donald Hoffman

Hoffman's First Law

A theory of everything starts with a theory of mind.

Quantum measurement hints that observers may create microphysical
properties. Computational theories of perception hint that observers
may create macrophysical properties. The history of science suggests
that counterintuitive hints, if pursued, can lead to conceptual
breakthroughs.

Hoffman's Second Law

Physical universes are user interfaces for minds.

Just as the virtual worlds experienced in VR arcades are interfaces
that allow the arcade user to interact effectively with an unseen
world of computers and software, so also the physical world one
experiences daily is a species-specific user interface that allows one
to survive while interacting with a world of which one may be
substantially ignorant.
   _________________________________________________________________

Nassim Taleb

Taleb's First Black Swan Law

The risk you know anything about today is not the one that matters.
What will hurt you next has to look completely unplausible today. The
more unplausible the event the more it will hurt you.

Consider that had the WTC attack been deemed a reasonable risk then we
would have had tighter control of the skies and it would have not
taken place. It happened because it was improbable. The awareness of a
specific danger makes you protect yourself from its precise effect and
may prevent the event itself from occurring.
Taleb's Second Black Swan Law (corollary)

We don't learn that we don't learn.
We don't learn the First Black Swan Law from experience, yet we think
that we learn something from it. Abstract subject matters (and
metarules) do not affect our risk avoidance mechanisms; only vivid
images do. People did not learn from the WTC (and the succession of
similar events in history such as the formation of financial bubbles)
that we have a horrible track record in forecasting such occurrences.
They just learned the specific task to avoid tall buildings and
Islamic terrorists--after the fact.
   _________________________________________________________________

Geoffrey Miller

Miller's Law of Strange Behavior
To understand any apparently baffling behavior by another human, ask:
what status game is this individual playing, to show off which
heritable traits, in which mating market?

Miller's Iron Law of Iniquity
In principle, there is an evolutionary trade-off between any two
positive traits. But in practice, every good trait correlates
positively with every other good trait.

Miller's First Law of Offspring Ingratitude
People who don't understand genetics attribute their personal failings
to the inane role models offered by their parents.

Miller's Second Law of Offspring Ingratitude
People who do understand genetics attribute their personal failings to
the inane mate-choice decisions made by their parents.
   _________________________________________________________________

Piet Hut

Hut's First Law

Any attempt to define what is science is doomed to failure

Scientists often attack what they consider irrational creeds by first
defining what counts as science and then showing that those creeds
don't fit within the limits specified. While their motive is often
right, their approach is totally wrong. Science has no method. It is
opportunistic in the extreme, with theory adapting with admirable
agility to the most amazing experimental discoveries, no matter what
previous 'corner stones' have to be given up: quantum mechanics is the
most striking example. This opportunism is the only reason that
science has remained alive and well, notwithstanding the human
tendency for stagnation that is exemplified so clearly through more
than a dozen successive generations of individual scientists.

Hut's Second Law

In scientific software development, research = education

When writing a large software package or a whole software environment,
the most efficient way to produce a robust product is to write
documentation simultaneously with the computer codes, on all levels:
from comment lines to manual pages to narrative that explains the
reasons for the many choices made. Having to explain to yourselves and
your coworkers how you choose what why when is the best guide to
quickly discovering hidden flaws and better alternatives, minimizing
the need to
backtrack later. Therefore, the most efficient way to write a large
coherent body of software as a research project is to view it as an
educational project.

I have come across similar endorsements of documentation in various
places, including Donald Knuth's idea of literate programming, and
Gerald Sussman's advice to write with utmost clarity for humans first,
and for computers as an afterthought.
   _________________________________________________________________

Stewart Brand

Brand's Law
Information wants to be free.

The rest of Brand's Law
Information also wants to be expensive.

Brand's Pace Law
In haste, mistakes cascade. With deliberation, mistakes instruct

Brand's Asymmetry
The past can only be known, not changed. The future can only be
changed, not known.

Brand's Shortcut
The only way to predict the future is to make sure it stays exactly
the same as the present.
   _________________________________________________________________

Jeffrey Epstein

Epstein's First Law

Know when you are winning.
Epstein's Second Law

The key question is not what can I gain but what do I have to lose.
   _________________________________________________________________

Steven Kosslyn

Kosslyn's First Law

Body and mind are not as separate as they appear to be. Not only does
the state of the body affect the mind, but vice-versa.

Kosslyn's Second Law

The individual and the group are not as separate as they appear to be.
A part of each mind spills over into the minds of other people, who
help us think and regulate our emotions.
   _________________________________________________________________

Jay Ogilvy

Ogilvy's Law

Many well defined manifolds lack unifying centers that define or
control them.

   o Just because some things are genuinely sacred does not mean that
   there is a god.
   o Just because a corporation or a country seems to be
   hierarchically structured does not mean that any single leader is
   really in charge.
   o Just because some behavior is conscious and intentional does not
   entail a "ghost in the machine," a homunculus, or a central
   intender.
   o Just because evolution appears to be directional, from less order
   and complexity toward greater order and complexity, that does not
   presuppose either an alpha-designer or an omega-telos.

Precursors to Ogilvy's Law:

   1. Derridean Deconstruction, which is not about taking things
   apart, but showing how they were never all that unified in the
   first place

   2. Wittgenstein's replacement of Platonic Ideas<e.g., that one
   thing which all instances of 'game' or 'justice' have in
   common<with the much looser notion of "family resemblances"

Lemma to Ogilvy's Law:

Demythologizing false unities does not degrade the values to be found
in their respective manifolds.


   o Nietzsche's announcement of the death of god does not mean that
   nothing is sacred.
   o Skepticism regarding conspiracy theories does not entail naivet?
   regarding power or the impossibility of effective leadership.
   o Seeing through Cartesianism in the cognitive sciences does not
   entail eliminative materialism, a lack of intentionality, or the
   reduction of mind to matter.
   o Dismissing teleology does not deny a manifest directionality to
   evolution.
   In each of these cases and many others like them, the
   deconstructive turn should not be confused with nihilism or
   deflationary debunking. The value of Ogilvy's Law lies in its
   ability to help predict which valleys harbor real value, and which
   peaks are better left undefended
   _________________________________________________________________

Scott Atran

Atran's Power Law of History

(a corollary to the law of unintended consequences)

The major events that determine human history follow a power
distribution (a more or less straight line on a log-log scale), with
catastrophic and cascading consequences (economic and health crises,
political and cultural revolutions, war and terrorism, etc.), because
people naturally prefer to act upon the future based on their modeling
of past occurrences. People do not repeat the catastrophes of history
because they forget it; people build up self-destructing ideologies
and behavior patterns that continue history's catastrophic path
because they remember the past too well (e.g., "the maginot effect"
for war and the soon-to-be "box-cutting effect" for terrorism).

Ancillary: For politics, history's most well-developed and
self-assured "isms" (e.g., colonialism, fascism, communism, globalism)
are those most prone to radical collapse.

Atran's Law of Bare Counterintuition

(for the cultural survival of absurd ideas)

Natural selection endowed humans with an intuitive ontology that
includes folkbiology (e.g., biodiversity divides into mutually
exclusive groups of beings, and each group has a proprietary essence),
folkpsychology (e.g., intentional and emotional beings have bodies,
and have knowledge of other like beings by observing and inferring how
other bodies act), and folkphysics (e.g., two bodies cannot
simultaneously occupy the same place at the same time, and no body can
occupy different places at the same time). Barely counterintuitive
ideas, which violate universal constraints on intuitive ontology
(e.g., a bodiless being) but otherwise retain most commonsense
properties associated with intuitive ontology (a bodiless being who
mostly acts and thinks like a person), are those fictions most apt to
survive within a culture, most likely to recur in different cultures,
and most disposed to cultural variation and elaboration (e.g.,
sphinxes and griffins, spirits and crystal balls, ghosts and gods).

Ancillary: For religion (i.e., for most humans in all human
societies), the more costly one's commitment to some factually absurd
but barely counterintuitive world (e.g., afterlife), the more others
believe that person to be sincere and trustworthy.
   _________________________________________________________________

Esther Dyson
Dyson's Law

Do ask; don't lie.

(Rationale:) How can we find the happy medium between disclosure and
prying, between transparency and overexposure? The last thing we want
is a law saying that everyone should disclose everything: vested
interests, negotiating strategies, intentions, bank account, marital
status, whatever.

How can we instead devise some rule that fits the best qualities of
the Net decentralized, more or less self-enforcing, flexible.....and
responsive to personal choices? The idea is to create a culture that
expects disclosure, rather than a legal regime that requires it.
People can decide how much they want to play, and others can decide
whether to play with them.

First of all, it's two-way. It's not for a single person; it's for an
interaction. The first person has to ask; the second person, to answer
truthfully or refuse openly to answer.

It drives the responsibility for requiring disclosure down to where it
belongs - to those most likely to be affected by the disclosure. It
decentralizes the requirement and the enforcement to everyone, instead
of leaving it in the hands of a few at the top. (If that's an awkward
use of "requirement," it's because we don't even have a word for
"decentralized command.")

As an individual, you are not commanded to answer; you may want to
protect your own privacy or someone else's. But if you do answer, you
must do so truthfully.

Then it's up to the people involved to decide whether to engage - in
conversation, in a transaction, in whatever kind of interaction they
might be contemplating. The magic of Do ask; don't lie is that the
parties to any particular interaction can make a specific, local
decision about what level of disclosure is appropriate.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Bunnell

Bunnell's First Law of Retrievability
Everything is retrievable.
Bunnell's Second Law of Retrievability
Everything is stored somewhere. The secret to retrieving things is
simply finding out where they are stored.
   _________________________________________________________________

Charles Arthur

Arthur's First Law

Nothing is evenly spread; everything happens in clumps. The universe
has clumps--galaxies, star systems, stars, planets, asteroids. You
meet an old friend for the first time in years, then again and again.
The smart folk are all together. It's a universal.

Arthur's Second Law

More data is good, and drives out the bad.
   _________________________________________________________________

Philip W. Anderson

Anderson's Law

More is different.
   _________________________________________________________________

Pamela McCorduck

McCroduck's Law

A linear projection into the future of any science or technology is
like a form of propaganda -- often persuasive, almost always wrong.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Skoyles

Skoyles' Law of Culture and the Brain

Human culture and human cognition exists because the brain's neural
plasticity allows learned symbolic associations to substitute for the
innate inputs and outputs of already evolved ape cognitions, a process
that extends greatly their functionality.

Skoyles' Law of Literacy

A society develops democracy to the degree that it writes social,
legal and religious ideas using the syntax, vocabulary and
pronunciation of everyday speech, rather than that of a professional,
literary or dead language.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Maddox
Maddox's First Law

Those who scorn the "publish or perish" principle are the most eager
to see their own manuscripts published quickly and given wide
publicity--and the least willing to see their length reduced.
Maddox's Second Law

Reviewers who are best placed to understand an author's work are the
least likely to draw attention to its achievements, but are prolific
sources of minor criticism, especially the identification of typos.
Maddox's Third Law

Just as nature is supposed to abhor a vacuum, so scientific opinion
abhors questions unlikely to be answered soon, whence the general
belief that the origin of the Universe is now nearly understood.
   _________________________________________________________________

Arthur R. Jensen

Jensen's First and Second Laws of Individual Differences in Cognitive
Abilities have crucial educational, economic, and social consequences.
Jensen's two fundamental laws derived from empirical studies of human
individual differences (population variance) in cognitive ability:
Jensen's First Law

Individual differences in learning and performance increase as a
monotonic function of task complexity or difficulty.
Jensen's Second Law

Individual differences in learning and performance increase with
continuing practice and experience,
unless there is an intrinsically low ceiling on task proficiency.
   _________________________________________________________________

Keith Devlin

Devlin's First Law

Buyer beware: in the hands of a charlatan, mathematics can be used to
make a vacuous argument look impressive.

Devlin's Second Law

So can PowerPoint.
   _________________________________________________________________

Arnold Trehub

Trehub's Law

For any experience, thought, question, or solution there is a
corresponding analog in the biophysical state of the brain.
   _________________________________________________________________

Michael Nesmith

Nesmith's First Law
The Universe includes no contrary laws

Nesmith's Second Law
Mind is the Constant in all equations
   _________________________________________________________________

David G. Myers

Myers' Law of Truth

The surest truth is that some of our beliefs err.

Monotheism, someone has said, offers two simple axioms: 1) There is a
God. 2) It's not you. Knowing that we are fallible humans underlies
the humility and openness that inspires science, and democracy. As
Madeline L'Engle noted, "The naked intellect is an extraordinarily
inaccurate instrument."

Myers' Law of Self-Perception

Most people see themselves as better than average.

Nine in ten managers rate themselves as superior to their average
peer. Nine in ten college professors rated themselves as superior to
their average colleague. And six in ten high school seniors rate their
"ability to get along with others" as in the top 10 percent. Most
drivers-even most drivers who have been hospitalized after
accidents-believe themselves more skilled than the average driver.
"The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age,
gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background," observes Dave
Barry, "is that deep down inside, we all believe that we are above
average drivers." Excess humility is an uncommon flaw.

Myers Law of Writing

Anything that can be misunderstood will be.
   _________________________________________________________________

Howard Rheingold

Rheingold's Law

Communication media that enable collective action on new scales, at
new rates, among new groups of people, multiply the power available to
civilizations and enable new forms of social interaction. The alphabet
enabled empire and monotheism, the printing press enabled science and
revolution, the telephone enabled bureaucracy and globalization, the
Internet enabled virtual communities and electronic markets, the
mobile telephone enabled smart mobs and tribes of urban info-nomads.
   _________________________________________________________________

Todd Siler

Siler's First Law

The brain is what the brain creates. Its workings reflect the workings
of everything it creates.

Siler's Second Law
Genius is everywhere, everyday, in everyone, in every way imaginable.
   _________________________________________________________________

Garniss Curtis

Curtis' First Law
With several unknown keys in hand, one of which fits the lock in front
of you, the first time you try all the keys, none will open it.

Curtis' Second Law

If you try all the keys again, there is only a fifty/fifty chance you
will be successful.
   _________________________________________________________________

Marvin Minsky

Minsky's First Law

Words should be your servants, not your masters.

Misnksy's Second Law

Don't just do something. Stand there.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Barrow
Barrow's first 'law'
Any Universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a
mind able to understand it.
Barrow's second 'law'
All difficult conjectures should be proved by reductio ad absurdum
arguments. For if the proof is long and complicated enough you are
bound to make a mistake somewhere and hence a contradiction will
inevitably appear, and so the truth of the original conjecture is
established QED.
   _________________________________________________________________

Brian Goodwin
Goodwin's Limited Law
The truth has as many faces as there are beings that express it. so
no-one is ever wrong. everyone is right, though in limited ways.
wisdom lies in spotting the limitation while being grateful for the
insight.
   _________________________________________________________________

Kevin Kelly

Kellys' First Law
Power, understanding, control. Pick any two.
Kellys' Second Law
Nobody is as smart as everybody.
   _________________________________________________________________

John McWhorter

McWhorter's Law of Social History
In a context of widespread literacy, easy communications, and a large
class of people with ample leisure time, the social movement that
begins by addressing a concrete grievance will, after the grievance
has been largely addressed, pass into the hands of persons inclined
for individual reasons towards the dramatic and self-righteous, who
will manipulate the movement's iconography and passion into a staged
indignation difficult for outsiders to square with reality, and with
little actively progressive or beneficent intention.
   _________________________________________________________________

John Allen Paulos

Paulos' Law of Coincidence

People often note some unlikely conjunction of events and marvel at
the coincidence. Could anything be more wonderfully improbable, they
wonder. The answer is Yes. The most amazing coincidence of all would
be the complete absence of coincidence.
   _________________________________________________________________

Freeman Dyson

Dyson's Law of Obsolescence

If you are writing history and try to keep it up-to-date up to a time
T before the present, it will be out-of-date within a time T after the
present.

This law applies also to scientific review articles.
( Thanks for including the Doctor Moreau quote, which describes us
very well.)
   _________________________________________________________________

Richard Nisbett

Nisbett's Law
When you have the beginnings of an idea about something, the worst
thing to do is to consult "the literature" before you get started to
work on it. You are sure to assimilate your potentially original idea
to something that is already out there.
   _________________________________________________________________

Timothy Taylor

Taylor's Law

There are no laws of human behaviour.
   _________________________________________________________________

Carlo Rovelli

Rovelli's Two Principles

Time Does Not Exist
Contrary to what generally assumed, the physical world does not exist
"in time". At the basic microscopic level, the world is better
described in terms of a a-temporal theory, where physical laws do not
express time evolution of physical variables, but just relations
between variables. Time emerges only thermodynamically when describing
macroscopic variables. Therefore time is only a side effect of our
ignorance of the microscopic state of the world. "Time is a side
effect of ignorance."

Space Does Not Exist
The physical world does not exist "in space". The physical world is
made by an ensemble of particles and fields, which do not live in an
external space, but rather live "on each other", and which can be in a
relation of contiguity with respect to one another. "Space" is the
order implied by this relation. These two principles are implied by
what we have learned about the physical world with general relativity
and with quantum mechanics. The second principle is largely a return
to the Pre-Newtonian relational understanding of space, while the
first has few antecendents in our culture.
   _________________________________________________________________

Karl Sabbagh

Sabbagh's First Law
Never assume.
All the mistakes I have made in my life--not that there are that many,
of course--have been because I failed to follow my own law.
Sabbagh's Second Law
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has
occurred. I think this is the more original and far-reaching of the
two laws but I have put it second because it's not really mine. It was
said to me by Alan Mulally, an inspiring Boeing manager (and they need
inspiring managers at
the moment.)
   _________________________________________________________________

Douglas Rushkoff
Rushkoff's Law
A religion will increase in social value until a majority of its
members actually believe in it--at which point the social damage it
causes will increase exponentially as long as it is in existence.
Rushkoff's Law of Media
True communication can only occur between people with equal access to
the medium in which the communication is taking place.
   _________________________________________________________________

Roger Schank

Schank's Law

Because people understand by finding in their memories the closest
possible match to what they are hearing and use that match as the
basis of comprehension, any new idea will be treated as a variant of
something the listener has already thought of or heard. Agreement with
a new idea means a listener has already had a similar thought and well
appreciates that the speaker has recognized his idea. Disagreement
means the opposite. Really new ideas are incomprehensible. The good
news is that for some people, failure to comprehend is the beginning
of understanding. For most, of course, it is the beginning of
dismissal.
   _________________________________________________________________

Joseph Traub
Traub's Law (Version 1)

The important things in life often happen by chance while we're
agonizing over the trivia.

Traub's Law (Version 2)

The important events of a person's life are the products of chains of
highly improbable occurrences.
   _________________________________________________________________

Daniel Gilbert 
Gilbert' Law
Happy people are those who do not pass up an opportunity to laugh at
themselves or to make love with someone else. Unhappy people are those
who get this backwards.
   _________________________________________________________________

Irene Pepperberg

Pepperberg's Law of Comparative Cognition
Any behavior exhibited by young children that is taken as evidence of
the early emergence of intelligence will, when subsequently exhibited
by nonhumans, be interpreted by many humans as a set of simple
stimulus-response associations lacking cognitive processing, whereas
the stimulus-response explanation will rarely be used to re-interpret
the behavior of the child.
   _________________________________________________________________

David Lykken

Lykken's First Law
The quality of one's intellectual productions is a function of the
product of talent (e.g., intelligence) times mental energy. Although
there are many and varied tests for assessing intelligence,
psychologists have not as yet even attempted to construct a measure of
individual differences in mental energy.

Lykken's Second Law
The mind consists of genetically-determined hardware and
experientially-determined software. The hardware components are not
constructed by genes working either individually or additively but,
rather, by groups of genes working sequentially and configurally. Each
human mating produces at least some gene configurations that are
unique, having never occurred previously. This is why, among other
things, human genius often occurs uniquely in an otherwise
undistinguished family line.
   _________________________________________________________________

Marc D. Hauser

Hauser's First Law

Every uniquely human ability, including cooking, mathematics,
morality, and music, is based on a set of biologically primitive
capacities that evolved before our species walked the earth.

Hauser's Second Law
The historical stability of our prescriptive claims (what we ought to
do) are determined by principles underlying our universal judgments.
Nature's is constrains our lofty hopes for what ought to be.
   _________________________________________________________________

James J. O'Donnell

O'Donnell's Law of Academic Administration

If it feels good, don't do it.

   Because if it feels good, it's going to be because it eases some
   frustration you're feeling from all the constraints and hassles of
   the institution; or because it really shows up so-and-so; or
   because it makes you feel you really do have a little authority
   around here after all. It won't, it won't, and you don't. Better to
   calm down, make sure you know all the facts, make sure you've
   talked to all 49 stakeholders, and sleep on it, then do the thing
   you have to hold your nose to do.

O'Donnell's Law of History
There are no true stories.

   Story-tellers are in the iron grip of readers' expectations.
   Stories have beginnings, middles, ends, heroes, villains, clarity,
   resolution. Life has none of those things, so any story gets to be
   a story (especially if it's a good story) by edging away from what
   really happened (which we don't know in anywhere near enough detail
   anyway) towards what makes a good story. Historians exist to
   wrestle with the story temptation the way Laocoon wrestled with the
   snakes. But at the end of the day, to tell anybody anything, you'll
   probably tell a story, so then be sure to follow:

Luther's Law
Pecca fortiter.

   Literally, "Sin bravely." His idea was that you're going to make a
   mess of things anyway, so you might as well do so boldly,
   confidently, with a little energy and imagination, rather than
   timidly, fearfully, half-heartedly.
   _________________________________________________________________

Howard Gardner

Gardner's First Law
Don't ask how smart someone is; ask in what ways is he or she smart.

Gardner's Second Law

You can never go directly from a scientific discovery to an
educational recommendation: all educational practices presuppose
implicit or explicit value judgments.
   _________________________________________________________________

William H. Calvin

Calvin's Law of Coherence

When things "all hang together," you have either gotten the joke,
solved the puzzle, argued in a circle, focused your chain of logic so
narrowly that you will be blindsided--or discovered a hidden pattern
in nature. Science, in large part, consists of imagining coherent
solutions and then making sure that you weren't fooled by a false
coherence as in astrology.
   _________________________________________________________________

Bruce Sterling

Sterling's Law of Ubiquitous Computation
First, your home is a constant, while the Net is a place you go; then
the Net becomes a constant while your home is a place you go.

Sterling's Corollary to Clarke's Law

Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic.
   _________________________________________________________________

George B. Dyson

Dyson's Law of Artificial Intelligence
Anything simple enough to be understandable will not be complicated
enough to behave intelligently, while anything complicated enough to
behave intelligently will not be simple enough to understand.

From shovland at mindspring.com  Tue Jan 24 05:04:27 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:04:27 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] More on histones
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHGELICDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>



Histone
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search
In biology, histones are the chief proteins of chromatin. They act as spools
around which DNA winds and they play a role in gene regulation. Histones are
found in the nuclei of eukaryotic cells. Bacteria do not have histones, but
histones are found in certain Archaea, namely Euryarchaea. These archaeal
histones may well resemble the evolutionary precursors to the eukaryotic
histones.

Contents [hide]
1 Classes
2 Structure
3 Functions
3.1 Packing proteins
3.2 Histone modfications in chromatin regulation
4 History
5 See also



[edit]
Classes
Six histone classes are known:

H1 (sometimes called the linker histone or H5.)
H2A
H2B
H3
H4
Archaeal histones
Two each of the class H2A, H2B, H3 and H4 assemble to form one octameric
nucleosome core particle by wrapping 146 base pairs of DNA around the
protein spool in 1.65 left-handed super-helical turn. The linker histone H1
binds the nucleosome and the entry and exit sites of the DNA, thus locking
the DNA into place and allowing the formation of higher order structure. The
most basic such formation is the 10 nm fiber or beads on a string
conformation. This involves the wrapping of DNA around nucleosomes with
approximately 50 base pairs of DNA spaced between each nucleosome (also
referred to as linker DNA). Higher order structures include the 30 nm fiber
(forming an irregular zigzag) and 100 nm fiber, these being the structures
found in normal cells. During meiosis, through the combination of nucleosome
interactions with other proteins, the chromosome is assembled. The assembled
histones and DNA is called chromatin.

[edit]
Structure

Schematic representation of the assembly of the core histones into the
nucleosome.The nucleosome core is formed of two H2A-H2B dimers and two H3-H4
dimers, forming two nearly symmetrical halves by tertiary structure (C2
symmetry; one macromolecule is the mirror image of the other). The H2A-H2B
and H3-H4 dimers themselves also show pseudodyad symmetry.

The 4 'core' histones (H2A, H2B, H3 and H4) are relatively similar in
structure and are highly conserved through evolution, all featuring a 'helix
turn helix turn helix' motif (which allows the easy dimerisation). They also
share the feature of long 'tails' on one end of the amino acid structure -
this being the location of post-transcriptional modification (see below).

In all, histones make five types of interactions with DNA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histone

lots of good links from this page.  there are other levels of
control/influence :-)


Helix-dipoles from alpha-helices in H2B, H3, and H4 cause a net positive
charge to accumulate at the point of interaction with negatively charged
phosphate groups on DNA.
Hydrogen bonds between the DNA backbone and the amine group on the main
chain of histone proteins.
Nonpolar interactions between the histone and deoxyribose sugars on DNA.
Salt links and hydrogen bonds between side chains of basic amino acids
(especially lysine and arginine) and phosphate oxygens on DNA.
Non-specific minor groove insertions of the H3 and H2B N-terminal tails into
two minor grooves each on the DNA molecule.
The highly basic nature of histones, aside from facilitating DNA-histone
interactions, contributes to the water solubility of histones.

Histones are subject to posttranslational modification by enzymes primarily
on their N-terminal tails, but also in their globular domains. Such
modifications include methylation, acetylation, phosphorylation,
ubiquitination, and ADP-ribosylation. This affects their function of gene
regulation (see functions).

In general, genes that are active have less bound histone, while inactive
genes are highly associated with histones during interphase. It also appears
that the structure of histones have been evolutionarily conserved, as any
deleterious mutations would be severely maladaptive.

[edit]
Functions
[edit]
Packing proteins
Histones act as spools around which DNA winds. This enables the compaction
necessary to fit the large genomes of eukaryotes inside cell nuclei: the
compacted molecule is 50,000 times shorter than an unpacked molecule.

[edit]
Histone modfications in chromatin regulation
Histones undergo posttranslational modifications which alter their
interaction with DNA and nuclear proteins. The H3 and H4 histones have long
tails protruding from the nucleosome which can be covalently modified at
several places. Modifications of the tail include methylation, acetylation
and phosphorylation. The core of the histones (H2A and H3) can also be
modified. Combinations of modifications are thought to constitute a code,
the so-called "histone code". Histone modifications act in diverse
biological processes such as gene regulation, DNA repair and chromosome
condensation (mitosis).

The common nomeclature of histone modifications is as follows:

The name of the histone (e.g H3)
The single letter amino acid abbreviation (e.g. K for Lysine) and the amino
acid position in the protein
The type of modification (Me: methyl, P: phosphate, Ac: acetyl, Ub:
ubiquitin)
So H3K4Me denotes the methylation of H3 on the 4th lysine from the start
(N-terminal) of the protein.

(See also Histone methyltransferase, Histone acetyltransferase)

For a detailed example of histone modifications in transcription regulation
see RNA polymerase control by chromatin structure.

[edit]
History
Histones were discovered in 1884 by Albrecht Kossel. The word "histone"
dates from the late 19th century and is from the German "Histon", of
uncertain origin: perhaps from Greek histanai or from histos. Until the
early 1990s, histones were dismissed as merely packing material for nuclear
DNA. During the early 1990s, the regulatory functions of histones were
discovered.

[edit]
See also
Gene silencing
Genetics
Histone deacetylase
Chromatin



From checker at panix.com  Wed Jan 25 21:35:51 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:35:51 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] =?iso-8859-1?q?Esther_Greenleaf_M=FCrer=3A_Jens_Bjo?=
	=?iso-8859-1?q?rneboe?=
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601251624220.19628@panix2.panix.com>

Jens Bjo/rneboe
Also known as: Jens Bjorneboe

[He was among the Norwegian authors enthusiastically recommended to me by 
an absolutely delightful and insightful Norwegian immigrant, Lene 
Johansen, at last September's meeting of the Association for Politics and 
the Life Sciences. (I don't think Knut Hamsen. Funny.) See her site, 
lenejohansen.com. She is as broadly read as I am, and has a degree 
bachelor's degree from the University of Olso with a degree emphasis in 
comparative religion, law, and intellectual history and an upcoming MA in 
journalism from the University of Missouri. She was thinking next of 
either a doctorate at the Kennedy School of Government at Ha'va'd (please 
no! There are too many of them where I work and are merely perfect 
bureaucrats) or one in economics (George Mason has by far the most 
innovative and varied curriculum in the world, having replaced U.Va. as 
the headquarters for Public Choice, having picked up neuroeconomics, 
Austrian school, hermeneutical theory and no doubt more, as well.

[She is most definitely my kind of person, in other words, except that she 
is not a big fan of classical music, like my current wife is. She also 
wears make-up.

[I have as yet to read any of his books and would like a recommendation 
from those who know me well enough in person or online.]

By Esther Greenleaf M?rer
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 297: Twentieth-Century Norwegian 
Writers. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Tanya Thresher, 
University of Wisconsin. Gale, 2004. pp. 11-26.

Source Database:? Dictionary of Literary Biography

[Norwegian o slash (&oslash; or &#248; in HTML) replaced by o/, and small 
a ring (&aring; or &#229; in HTML) replace with ao throughout.]

Dates 1920-1976

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

BOOKS

* Dikt (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1951).
* Fo/r hanen galer (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1952).
* Ariadne (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1953).
* Jonas: roman (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1955); translated by Bernt Jebsen and 
Douglas K. Stafford as
The Least of These: A Novel (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959).
* Under en haordere himmel (Oslo: Cappelen, 1957).
* Den store by (Oslo: Cappelen, 1958).
* Vinter i Bellapalma: av forfatteren Hans Berlows efterlatte papirer 
(Oslo: Cappelen, 1958).
* Blaomann (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1959).
* Den onde hyrde: roman (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1960).
* Dro/mmen og hjulet: roman (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1964).
* Til lykke med dagen (Oslo: Pax, 1965).
* Fugleelskerne (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1966); translated by Frederick Wasser as 
The Bird Lovers (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1994).
* Frihetens o/yeblikk: heiligenberg-manuskriptet (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1966); 
translated by Esther Greenleaf M?rer as Moment of Freedom: The 
Heiligenberg Manuscript (New York: Norton, 1975; Norwich, U.K.: Norvik 
Press, 1999).
* Uten en traod, anonymous (Oslo: Scala, 1966); translated by Walter 
Barthold as Without a Stitch (New York: Grove, 1969).
* Norge, mitt Norge: essays on formyndermennesket (Oslo: Pax, 
1968)--includes "Hans J?ger," translated by M?rer as "Hans J?ger," Jens 
Bjo/rneboe in English (29 December 1999) 
<http://emurer.home.att.net/texts/jaeger.htm>.
* Semmelweis: et anti-autorit?rt skuespill (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1968); 
translated by Joe Martin as Semmelweis: An Anti-authoritarian Play (Los 
Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1999).
* Uden en tr?vl II (Copenhagen: Stig Vendelkaers, 1968); translated by H. 
H. Bridge as Without a Stitch 2 (New York: Grove, 1971).
* Aske, vind og jord: sanger, viser, og dikt (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1968).
* Kruttaornet (La Poudri?re): vitenskapelig efterord og siste protokoll 
(Oslo: Gyldendal, 1969); translated by M?rer as Powderhouse: Scientific 
Postscript and Last Protocol (Norwich, U.K.: Norvik Press, 2000; Chester 
Springs, Pa.: Dufour, 2000).
* Vi som elsket Amerika: essays om stormaktsgalskap, straffelyst, kunst og 
moral (Oslo: Pax, 1970).
* Amputasjon: arenaspill i ?n akt (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1970); translated by 
Solrun Hoaas as Amputation, in Amputation: Texts for an Extraordinary 
Spectacle, translated by Hoaas and M?rer, edited by Karl Kvitko (Los 
Angeles: Xenos, 2003), pp. 55-124.
* Politi og anarki: essays om katter, domstoler og mennesker (Oslo: Pax, 
1972)--includes "Litteratur og virkelighet," translated by M?rer as 
"Literature and Reality," Jens Bjo/rneboe in English (28 March 2000) 
<http://emurer.home.att.net/texts/lit-real.htm>; "Hemingway og dyrene," 
translated by M?rer as "Hemingway and the Beasts," Jens Bjo/rneboe in 
English (18 June 1999) <http://emurer.home.att.net/texts/hemingwy.htm>.
* Hertug Hans: en novelle (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1972).
* Stillheten: en anti-roman og absolutt aller siste protokoll (Oslo: 
Gyldendal, 1973); translated by M?rer as The Silence: An Anti-novel and 
Absolutely the Very Last Protocol (Norwich, U.K.: Norvik Press, 2000; 
Chester Springs, Pa.: Dufour, 2000).
* Tilfellet Torgersen: rekonstruert av aktstykker. Sc?nario (Oslo: Pax, 
1973).
* Haiene: historien om et mannskap og et forlis (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1974); 
translated by M?rer as The Sharks: The History of a Crew and a Shipwreck 
(Norwich, U.K.: Norvik Press, 1992).
* Dongery: en collage om forretningsstaanden og om markedsfo/rerens liv 
(Oslo: Pax, 1976).
* Under en mykere himmel: brev og bud fra en Steinerskole, edited by Andr? 
Bjerke (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1976).
* Ro/d Emma (Oslo: Forlaget Bjo/rnsons Grav, 1976).
* Samlede dikt, edited by Bjerke (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1977).
* Lanterner: noveller, reisebrev, epistler, edited by Bjerke, illustrated 
by Bjo/rneboe (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1977).
* Om Brecht, edited by Tone T. Bjo/rneboe and Fredrik Engelstad (Oslo: 
Pax, 1977).
* Om teater, edited by Tone T. Bjo/rneboe and Engelstad (Oslo: Pax, 
1978)--includes "Teateret i morgen," translated by M?rer as "The Theater 
Tomorrow," in Amputation: Texts for an Extraordinary Spectacle, pp. 3-18; 
"Skogene bak Iguananatten," translated by M?rer as "The Forests behind The 
Night of the Iguana," Jens Bjo/rneboe in English (28 April 2000) 
<http://emurer.home.att.net/texts/williams.htm>.
* Bo/ker og mennesker: artikler i utvalg, edited by Aud Gulbransen and 
Jadwige T. Kvadsheim (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1979)--includes "Ernst 
Josephson--hans liv og kunst," translated by M?rer as "Ernst Josephson, 
His Life and Work," Jens Bjo/rneboe in English (July 2001) 
<http://emurer.home.att.net/texts/josephsn.htm>; "N?r jeg skrev Jonas," 
translated by M?rer as "When I Wrote Jonas," Jens Bjo/rneboe in English 
(February 2001) <http://emurer.home.att.net/texts/jonas.htm>; 
"Strindberg--den fruktbare," translated by M?rer as "Strindberg the 
Fertile," Jens Bjo/rneboe in English (July 2001) 
<http://emurer.home.att.net/texts/strindberg.htm>.

Editions and Collections

* Samlede skuespill (Oslo: Pax, 1973).
* Samlede verker, 15 volumes (Oslo: Gyldendal/Pax, 1995).
* Samlede essays, 6 volumes (Oslo: Gyldendal/Pax, 1996).

Editions in English

* "Anarchism--Today?" and "Anarchism as Future," in Degrees of Freedom: 
Anarchist Essays by and about Jens Bjo/rneboe, translated by Esther 
Greenleaf M?rer (Philadelphia: Protocol Press, 1998), pp. 1-11.

PLAY PRODUCTIONS

* Friedrich D?rrenmatt, Romulus den Store, translated by Bjo/rneboe, Oslo, 
Nationaltheatret, 1960.
* Til lykke med dagen, Oslo, Oslo Nye Teater, 21 February 1965.
* Ornithofilene, Oslo, Odin Teater, October 1965; revised as 
Fugleelskerne, Oslo, Nationaltheatret, 5 November 1966.
* Edward Albee, Balansegang, translated by Bjo/rneboe, Oslo, 
Nationaltheatret, 1967.
* D?rrenmatt, Meteoren, translated by Bjo/rneboe, Oslo, Nationaltheatret, 
1967.
* Friedrich von Schiller, Morderne, translated by Bjo/rneboe, Oslo, 
Nationaltheatret, 1967.
* Peter Weiss, Sangen om utysket, translated by Bjo/rneboe, Oslo, 
Nationaltheatret, 1967.
* Semmelweis, Turku, Finland, aobo Svenska Teater, 24 September 1969; 
Oslo, Nationaltheatret, 19
November 1969.
* Amputasjon, Stockholm, Friteatern, 1 April 1970; Oslo, Nationaltheatret, 
February 1971.
* August Strindberg, Fro/ken Julie, translated by Bjo/rneboe, Oslo, 
Nationaltheatret, 1972.
* Tilfellet Torgersen, Oslo, Scene 7, 25 November 1973.
* Dongery, Oslo, Scene 7, November 1974.
* Franz Wedekind, Vaorlo/sning, translated by Bjo/rneboe, Oslo, Oslo Nye 
Teater, 1975.

PRODUCED SCRIPTS

* Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, Det gamle spill om Enver, translated by 
Bjo/rneboe, radio, Radioteatret, 5 April 1955.
* Brendan Behan, S?rlingen, translated by Bjo/rneboe, television, 
Fjernsynsteatret, 4 April 1963.
* "Semmelweis," radio, Radioteatret, Norsk rikskringkasting, 29 May 1977.
* "Semmelweis," television, Fjernsynsteatret, Norsk rikskringkasting, 30 
August 1983.
* "Fugleelskerne," radio, Radioteatret, Norsk rikskringkasting, 2 October 
1983.
* "Til lykke med dagen," television, Fjernsynsteatret, Norsk 
rikskringkasting, 3 May 1988.

RECORDING

* Vaopenlo/s: Jens Bjo/rneboe leser egne dikt, read by Bjo/rneboe, 
Zarepta, SKA 1434, 1976.

TRANSLATIONS

* Bertolt Brecht, Tolvskillingsoperaen (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1964).
* Miodrag Bulatovic, Helten pao eselryggen (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1966).
* Andr? Grabar and Manolis Chatzidakis, Det kristne og bysantinske maleri 
* Friedrich D?rrenmatt, Meteoren (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1967).
* Donatien-Alphonse Fran?oise, marquis de Sade, Justine eller Dydens 
ulykker (Oslo: Pax, 1970).
* Georg B?chner, Dantons do/d and Voyzek, in B?chner, Samlede verker 
(Oslo: Gyldendal, 1973).

SELECTED PERIODICAL PUBLICATION--UNCOLLECTED

* "Det utrolige," Spektrum, no. 2 (1949): 101-111.

TEXT:

Jens Bjo/rneboe was one of the most cosmopolitan, versatile, and 
controversial Norwegian writers of his day. His career is fraught with 
paradoxes. He belongs to the tradition of Norwegian literary radicalism in 
that he engaged intensely with the issues of his time and place, taking 
the part of the wretched, defending individual freedom against convention 
and authoritarianism, and mounting strong attacks on the Norwegian 
educational and judicial systems. Yet, he was first and foremost a 
European writer, mindful of a deeper cultural stream--the Bible, classical 
antiquity, and the masterpieces of European literature and art--and most 
of his major works are set outside Norway. While his writings are both 
strongly political and strongly metaphysical, Bjo/rneboe resisted 
identification with any political or religious orthodoxy. Although he made 
relentless use of his own biography, his sights remained firmly fixed on 
the outside world. In his essay "Litteratur og virkelighet" (Literature 
and Reality), published in Politi og anarki: essays om katter, domstoler 
og mennesker (Police and Anarchy: Essays about Cats, Courts, and People, 
1972), he maintained that "Skjo/nnlitteraturens omraode er hverken det 
indre eller det ytre; dens oppgave er ao utforske mo/tet mellom dem begge" 
(The province of literature is neither the interior nor the exterior; its 
task is to explore the meeting between the two).

The list of non-Scandinavian writers, artists, and thinkers to whom 
Bjo/rneboe pays homage in his works is a long one. German, French, and 
Italian names predominate, but the roster also includes Eastern Europeans 
and Anglophone writers. His essays on Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee 
Williams--"Hemingway og dyrene" (translated as "Hemingway and the Beasts," 
1999) in Politi og anarki and "Skogene bak Iguananatten" (translated as 
"The Forests behind The Night of the Iguana," 2000), first published on 3 
December 1962 in the newspaper Dagbladet and collected in his Om Teater 
(On Theater, 1978)--are among his strongest. The failure of his work to 
cross the language barrier into English during his lifetime has prevented 
this atypically universalist Norwegian writer from receiving a hearing in 
the international arena where he most properly belongs. Only since 1990 
have a significant number of his works appeared in English translation.

In a span of twenty-five years Bjo/rneboe published four volumes of 
poetry, fourteen novels, six plays, and several hundred articles and 
essays. In addition, fourteen of his translations of German, French, and 
English works were either published or performed. He was a disciplined 
craftsman; yet, most of his work is flawed. He was an experimenter, not a 
perfectionist. He says in "Litteratur og virkelighet" that "efter min 
oppfatning er diktningen en empirisk vitenskap" (in my experience writing 
literature is an empirical science), and he was continually in search of 
the right form for the expression of what he wanted to say. He is at his 
most polished and formally conventional as a poet and at his most 
experimental in his trilogy of novels popularly known as Bestialitetens 
Historie (The History of Bestiality) and in his plays. As a dramatist 
Bjo/rneboe sought alternatives to the bourgeois theater tradition of 
Henrik Ibsen, which he saw as reflecting an ordered, moral, logical 
worldview that no longer sufficed.

Jens Ingvald Bjo/rneboe was born on 9 October 1920 in Kristiansand in 
southern Norway. He was the youngest of three children of Ingvald 
Bjo/rneboe, a shipowner who also served as the Belgian consul, and Anne 
Marie "Maja" Bjo/rneboe, n?e Svenson. His mother, who was twenty years 
younger than her husband, cultivated the family's prominence in local 
society while distancing the children from their father. Bjo/rneboe 
relates in an unpublished autobiographical fragment that he felt stifled 
by the conventional and conservative small-town milieu. He was a sickly 
child and was often depressed and lonely. At fifteen he took a year off 
from school because of pleurisy and read voraciously. A book that made a 
decisive impression on him was Wolfgang Langhoff's Die Moorsoldaten: 13 
monate konzentrationslager (Peatbog Soldiers: Thirteen Months in a 
Concentration Camp, 1935; translated as Rubber Truncheon: Being an Account 
of Thirteen Months Spent in a Concentration Camp, 1935). This account by 
an escapee from the Oranienburg concentration camp set Bjo/rneboe to 
pondering the problem of evil and marked the beginning of his lifelong 
love-hate affair with German culture.

From early adolescence Bjo/rneboe became increasingly rebellious; his 
alcoholic tendencies also began at this time. He was expelled from several 
schools, worked as a deckhand on his father's ships, traveled on the 
Continent with his mother, and studied painting with the Kristiansand 
expressionist painter Edvard Vigebo. His father died in 1939. The 
following year Bjo/rneboe enrolled at the Kunst- og haondverkskolen 
(School of Art and Handicraft) in Oslo; the school was closed by the 
Germans soon after they invaded Norway on 9 April 1940, and Bjo/rneboe 
continued his studies at the painter Axel Revold's illegal art academy. 
For two years he shared an apartment with Vigebo and Vigebo's wife, who 
had moved to Oslo, and he and Vigebo--who had also studied with 
Revold--continued painting together. In Oslo he became acquainted with 
anthroposophy, the religious system founded by Rudolf Steiner, through his 
cousin Andr? Bjerke and Bjerke's friend Karl Brodersen.

In 1943 Bjo/rneboe was warned that the Germans were about to conscript him 
for forced labor, and he and Brodersen fled to Sweden. Bjo/rneboe found 
lodgings with Karl Enqvist, a priest of the Steiner-inspired 
Kristensamfunn (Christian Community) church, where Bjo/rneboe participated 
in services as an acolyte. During the rest of the war years he deepened 
his acquaintance with anthroposophy and studied painting at the Kunglige 
Kunsth?gskolan (Royal Academy of Art) in Stockholm under Isaac Gr?newald, 
a former pupil of Henri Matisse. Bjo/rneboe made his debut as an artist in 
1944 with a solo exhibition of landscapes, portraits, and still lifes in 
which the most salient influence is that of Paul C?zanne.

The years in Stockholm brought Bjo/rneboe into close contact with many 
refugees from both the German and the Soviet regimes. In 1945 he married 
Lisel Funk, a German Jewish refugee he had met in anthroposophical 
circles. Bjo/rneboe returned to Norway with his bride and continued to 
paint; but he recalled in a 1971 interview with Odd Berset that is 
included in Samtaler med Jens Bjo/rneboe (Interviews with Jens Bjo/rneboe, 
1987), edited by Haovard Rem, that "Mens jeg malte . . . surret det inne i 
hodet mitt alltid en dialog . . . om kulturpolitiske, om sosiale, 
psykologiske, og andre problemer. Av og til ble jeg fortvilet, fordi jeg 
ikke maktet ao bremse denne ustoppelige dialogen, mens jeg malte" (As I 
painted . . . there was always a dialogue buzzing inside my head . . . 
about cultural, political, social, psychological, and other problems. I 
sometimes despaired because I could not manage to put the brakes on this 
unstoppable dialogue while I was painting). In 1946 he had a solo 
exhibition of forty-five paintings in Kristiansand and used the proceeds 
from the works he sold to buy a typewriter. The following year he appeared 
in print for the first time with an article about a Swedish painter, 
"Ernst Josephson--hans liv og kunst" (translated as "Ernst Josephson, His 
Life and Work," 2000), in the Oslo newspaper Aftenposten. (Bjo/rneboe 
continued to draw throughout his life but seems not to have painted after 
1950.)

During the next few years Bjo/rneboe traveled on the Continent. He 
supported himself by writing travel letters to Aftenposten, often with 
witty illustrations, which were posthumously collected in Lanterner: 
Noveller, reisebrev, epistler (Lanterns: Short Stories, Travel Sketches, 
Epistles, 1977). He also tried his hand at an historical novella set in 
the early seventeenth century, Hertug Hans (Duke Hans), which was turned 
down by several publishers in 1948. The title character, the younger 
brother of Christian IV of Denmark, is to marry the czar's daughter after 
undertaking a mission to the Spanish general Ambrogio di Spinola, who is 
fighting the Protestants in the Netherlands. The horrors he encounters en 
route are too much for Hans's melancholic nature, and he wastes away and 
dies in Russia at the age of nineteen. When Hertug Hans was finally 
published in 1972, Bjo/rneboe wrote in the foreword that the novella 
"slutter seg konsekvent til nesten alt jeg senere har skrevet: sinnets 
mo/te med virkeligheten, med urettens og bestialitetens verden,--med det 
uforstaoelige at en i seg selv god og vakker verden er blitt ond og 
urettferdig" (was consistent with almost everything I have written since: 
the mind's meeting with reality, with the world of injustice and 
bestiality--with the incomprehensible fact that a world in itself good and 
beautiful has become evil and unjust). Still, Hertug Hans definitely 
belongs to Bjo/rneboe's early period and has a clear anthroposophical 
subtext.

In 1950 Bjo/rneboe took a part-time job teaching carpentry at the Rudolf 
Steiner School in Oslo. The following year he became a full-time teacher 
in all subjects; he remained in that position until 1957. During much of 
this period he edited the school magazine, Ny skole (New School). His 
articles from that publication, elucidating various facets of Steiner's 
system of Waldorf education, as well as two short plays he wrote for 
performance by his pupils, were collected posthumously as Under en mykere 
himmel: Brev og bud fra en Steinerskole (Under a Gentler Sky: Letters and 
News from a Steiner School, 1976).

In 1950 Bjerke published four sonnets by Bjo/rneboe in the magazine Ordet 
(The Word), of which he was the editor. The following year Bjo/rneboe 
brought out his first book, the small collection Dikt (Poems); it was an 
instant success, going through three printings that fall. The poems are 
heavily inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke and the Norwegian lyric poet Olaf 
Bull; most are sonnets and other forms with rhyme and meter. Themes from 
the Bible, classical antiquity, and medieval and Renaissance art reflect 
Bjo/rneboe's affiliation with anthroposophy and Waldorf education, as well 
as his background as a painter. Poems of a more personal nature include 
some that deal with his childhood. The critics, while mostly positive, 
worried about Bjo/rneboe's aestheticism and lack of political engagement. 
Yet, the seeds of his later anarchism are present in such poems as "Fo/r 
solhverv" (Before the Solstice), a long ode to the nineteenth-century 
bohemian and anarchist Hans J?ger that concludes the collection.

On a visit to Germany in 1947 Bjo/rneboe had been given trial documents 
concerning medical experiments on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps by 
Sigmund Rascher; later he had come into contact with members of Rascher's 
family. Bjo/rneboe wrote about the case in a long article, "Det utrolige" 
(The Unbelievable), published in the magazine Spektrum in 1949, then used 
the material as the basis for a play. When the play was rejected by the 
Oslo Studioteatret (Studio Theater) in 1950, Bjo/rneboe turned it into the 
novel Fo/r hanen galer (Ere the Cock Crows, 1952).

The first two chapters of Fo/r hanen galer are a fictionalized 
first-person account of Bjo/rneboe's own experiences: a Norwegian 
journalist in postwar Germany encounters relief workers, a former SS man, 
and the widow and son of Reynhardt, who is based on Rascher, and pieces 
together the events of 1940. The narrator then disappears, and his 
reconstruction of the story is presented in the third person. It centers 
on the moral schizophrenia that enables Reynhardt to believe that his 
experiments on prisoners are ethically and politically neutral as he 
succumbs to pressure from the camp commandant, Heidebrand, to use his 
scientific prestige for political ends. In the end Heidebrand undergoes a 
spiritual transformation, while Reynhardt becomes thoroughly hated and is 
finally killed by the prisoners. Although the initial reception of the 
novel was in the main positive, most commentators agree that the content 
is not well served by the abrupt change of form after the strong opening.

Bjo/rneboe published a second poetry collection, Ariadne, in 1953. The 
fiftieth anniversary of Norway's independence called forth one of his most 
seminal essays, "Hans J?ger" (translated, 1999), published in Spektrum in 
1955 and collected in his Norge, mitt Norge: essays on formyndermennesket 
(Norway, My Norway: Essays on the Guardian Type) in 1968. He thinks that 
his own generation, having come of age with the Reichstag fire and the 
Moscow Trials, has more in common with fin de si?cle sensibilities and the 
dire prophecies of Jaeger than with those who are celebrating the events 
of 1905. Building on J?ger's slogan, "Metafysikk eller selvmord" 
(Metaphysics or suicide), Bjo/rneboe works out an early statement of the 
tension between his own metaphysical and politically engaged sides by 
contrasting two archetypes: the "Monk," who keeps the metaphysical 
connection but risks losing "blodtilfo/relsen fra den jordiske virkelighet 
og dens problemer" (the blood supply from earthly reality and its 
problems), and the "Knight of the Grail," who, if he loses sight of the 
Grail, "mister sin navlestreng til det metafysiske som en gang faktisk 
satte ham igang, og alle hans gjerninger havner i meningslo/st slagsmaol 
og tomt stell" (loses the umbilical cord to the metaphysical realm that in 
fact once set him in motion, and all his deeds end up in meaningless 
fights and empty busyness). Bjo/rneboe sees J?ger as the quintessential 
"tapte Gralsridder" (failed Knight of the Grail): "han tapte metafysikken, 
men beholdt selvmordet" (he lost the metaphysics but kept the suicide).

Bjo/rneboe often used essays as preliminary sketches for longer works, and 
the essay on J?ger anticipates his next novel, Jonas (1955; translated as 
The Least of These, 1959), both with its portrait of Bjo/rneboe's 
generation and with its use of the Holy Grail legend. The novel draws on 
Bjorneboe's experiences as a teacher. A bright but dyslexic boy from a 
poor family is brutalized by the "salamanders," the bureaucrats of the 
Norwegian public-school system. When the authorities threaten to send him 
to a school for the retarded, he stows away on a ship. He is discovered by 
a sailor known only as Jungmannen (the Apprentice), whose history has 
elements in common with Bjo/rneboe's own. The boy and the sailor end up as 
pupil and teacher at a school much like the Steiner School, a milieu in 
which they can thrive.

Jonas was read as an attack on the Norwegian school system and awakened a 
storm of controversy. In the Oslo newspaper Verdens Gang (11 October 1955) 
the writer Sigurd Hoel called it the most significant Norwegian novel 
since the war. In the essay "N?r jeg skrev Jonas" (translated as "When I 
Wrote Jonas," 2001), published in the Swedish magazine Bokv?nnen in 1956 
and collected in Bo/ker og mennesker: artikler i utvalg (Books and People: 
Selected Articles, 1979), Bjo/rneboe insists that the work was not 
intended as a tendentious novel but as a morality play based on the Holy 
Grail legends and the biblical story of Jonah. To the charge that the 
school authorities in his novel were caricatures rather than fully 
developed human beings he replied that they were intended as symbols of 
"systemet--det store vacuum. Dette er samtidens demoni: 'mennesket' uten 
blikk og trekk" (the system--the great vacuum. This is the demonic of our 
time--the "human being" without gaze or features). Jonas remains the most 
widely read of Bjo/rneboe's early novels. It includes some of the finest 
descriptions of childhood in Norwegian literature, as well as a moving 
portrait of the rootlessness of Bjo/rneboe's generation. It is also his 
longest work; it was heavily edited, and passages were rearranged, in the 
English translation.

In 1956 Bjo/rneboe visited the Goetheanum, the world headquarters of the 
anthroposophical movement in Dornach, Switzerland. While there, he read 
Bertolt Brecht's obituary in a Swiss newspaper. In the foreword to an 
unfinished book with the working title "Brecht--kommis?r eller yogi?" 
(Brecht--Commissar or Yogi?), fragments of which are included in the 
posthumous collection Om Brecht (On Brecht, 1977), Bjo/rneboe says that 
despite his early immersion in German literature, his wartime acquaintance 
with refugees whose relatives Joseph Stalin had handed over to Adolf 
Hitler had caused him to avoid Brecht. But after reading the poem "An die 
Nachgeborenen" (To Those Born Later), reprinted in the newspaper that 
carried the obituary, he came to see Brecht in a wholly different light. A 
performance of Brecht's Die heiglige Johanna der Schlachth?fe (1932; 
translated as Saint Joan of the Stockyards, 1969) that he saw in Hamburg 
shortly afterward rekindled his long-dormant interest in the theater. 
Those two events began "en aorelang beskjeftigelse med Brechts diktning og 
teaterarbeide" (years of engagement with Brecht's writings and theater 
work), which included several sojourns with Brecht's Berliner Ensemble 
during which he studied Brecht's plays and observed the company's 
performance techniques.

Bjo/rneboe's next novel, Under en haordere himmel (Under a Harsher Sky, 
1957), also uses characters to represent moral abstractions. It takes aim 
at an even more explosive subject than Jonas: the treatment of Nazi 
collaborators in Norway after World War II. A family collaborates for 
reasons that are naive but well intentioned and is destroyed by the 
reprisals following the war. The villain is Wastrup, a leftist 
intellectual who cynically undermines the Norwegian constitutional 
provision against retroactive laws. He represents what Bjo/rneboe sees as 
the destructive, conflict-loving masculine principle, while the heroine, 
Fransiska, embodies the life-conserving, constructive feminine 
principle--a portrayal that some feminists have found offensive.

As with Jonas, the mythological structure Bjo/rneboe had intended for the 
novel was overshadowed by the topical subject matter. The book was met 
with virtually unanimous outrage: Bjo/rneboe was accused of falsifying the 
historical facts, oversimplification, and distortion, and he received 
death threats. Although in Metafysikk eller selvmord: et essay om Jens 
Bjo/rneboe og antroposofien (Metaphysics or Suicide: An Essay on Jens 
Bjo/rneboe and Anthroposophy, 1996) Kaj Skagen calls Under en haordere 
himmel one of Bjo/rneboe's most artistically successful novels, few other 
commentators have ever had a good word to say about it.

The attacks came at a time when Bjo/rneboe's marriage was breaking up; he 
had lost his job at the Steiner School; and he was suffering a resurgence 
of depression and alcoholism. Sentenced to jail for drunk driving, he fled 
to southern Europe and spent the next two years traveling, chiefly in 
Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. During this period he published a third 
poetry collection, Den store by (The Big City, 1958), and the comic novel 
Vinter i Bellapalma: av forfatteren Hans Berlows efterlatte papirer 
(Winter in Bellapalma: From the Posthumous Papers of the Writer Hans 
Berlow, 1958), a burlesque of Hemingway about the relations between 
tourists and natives in an Italian fishing village. This novel foreshadows 
Bjo/rneboe's treatment of the impact of globalization on a community in 
the play Fugleelskerne (1966; translated as The Bird Lovers, 1994)--the 
priest, Father Leone, is a clear prototype of Father Piccolino in the 
later work--and also anticipates elements in the Italian sections of 
Frihetens o/yeblikk: heiligenberg-manuskriptet (1966; translated as Moment 
of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript, 1975). It includes a sympathetic 
portrayal of a gay man, the first overt reference to homosexuality in 
Bjo/rneboe's writings. But the lighthearted tone of the novel is so unlike 
what readers had come to expect of Bjo/rneboe that it has been virtually 
ignored by critics.
The year 1959 was a pivotal one for Bjo/rneboe. He continued to prepare 
for his long-delayed debut as a dramatist during a long sojourn with the 
Berliner Ensemble. A second visit to Dornach provided closure to his 
formal affiliation with anthroposophy. In his 1984 biography Fredrik 
Wandrup quotes Bjo/rneboe as saying in a 1970 interview in the newspaper 
Morgenposten that he had come to see anthroposophy as "en lukket, 
autorit?r bevegelse . . . stadig mer kryptisk, sekterisk, selvopptatt og 
verdensfjern" (a closed, authoritarian movement . . . increasingly 
cryptic, sectarian, self-absorbed and isolated from the world). 
Bjo/rneboe, however, remained a member of the Kristensamfunn until his 
death.

On his return to Norway, Bjo/rneboe published Blaomann (Little Boy Blue, 
1959), a bildungsroman about the childhood and early manhood of Sem 
Tangstad, a gifted painter from a town resembling Kristiansand. As a child 
Sem, whose father committed suicide when Sem was an infant, is isolated 
from normal social relationships by his overprotective mother and two 
aunts; he finds solace in a set of illustrated books about European art 
museums, from which he assiduously copies the paintings. He studies with a 
local painter, attends art school in Oslo, marries, and has a child. He is 
regarded as a genius but does not exhibit. When he receives a substantial 
commission for a portrait, he squanders the money in a several-week-long 
drinking binge from which he emerges ready to move forward with his 
painting. Critics generally agree that the novel loses its way after a 
strong beginning, but recent scholarship has shown how Bjo/rneboe uses 
color to symbolize the tension between the physical and spiritual aspects 
of the protagonist's life.

In the fall of 1959 Bjo/rneboe served the several weeks' jail sentence for 
drunk driving that he had incurred two years earlier. He subsequently 
published a series of newspaper articles exposing the medieval punishments 
meted out to young offenders and the frequency of bizarre suicide 
attempts; in one case he accused the judicial authorities of murder. 
Readers reacted with shock, the authorities with silence. Bjo/rneboe used 
the prison material in the novel Den onde hyrde (The Evil Shepherd, 1960). 
Tonnie, the product of juvenile homes and a reformatory, is released from 
prison and attempts to go straight but is rejected by everyone but a 
former partner in crime. When he ends up back in prison, he retreats into 
catatonia. The insight that the bureaucracy's first priority is always 
self-defense crystallized the anti-authoritarian stance for which 
Bjo/rneboe became known in the 1960s.

Bjo/rneboe's first marriage was dissolved, and in March 1961 he married 
the actress and dancer Tone Tveteraas. The dramatist Helge Krog, who had 
been involved in a similar debate on prison conditions in the 1930s, 
proposed that he and Bjo/rneboe collaborate on a dramatization of Den onde 
hyrde. The collaboration was cut short by Krog's illness and death in 
1962.

Meanwhile, Bjo/rneboe was working out his own views on dramaturgy. He 
wrote an erotic comedy, Ingen har sett oss (No One Has Seen Us), in which 
the plot hinges on the gradual revelation of past events through 
conversation in the manner of Ibsen's plays. The work was accepted by the 
Oslo Nye Teater (New Theater) in 1961, but Bjo/rneboe withdrew it before 
it could be performed. He had decided that before he could make his debut 
as a dramatist he must find an alternative to the naturalist retro 
technique that, because of Ibsen, dominated the Norwegian theater. In the 
essay "Strindberg--den fruktbare" (translated as "Strindberg the Fertile," 
2001), published in Aftenposten (4 April 1963) and collected in Bo/ker og 
Mennesker, he says,

Pao den rent teatermessig plan er Strindberg blitt en inspirator, hvor 
Ibsen er blitt en belastning, en urokkelig gravsten som bevarer den 
teaterform som Ibsen behersket og derfor ville beholde uforandret. I den 
dramatiske verdenslittertur har Strindberg mange efterkommere, Ibsen 
ingen. Ogsao i sin sterilitet var han fullkommen.
(On a purely theatrical plane [August] Strindberg has become a source of 
inspiration, while Ibsen has become a burden, an immovable gravestone 
which preserves that form of theater which Ibsen mastered and therefore 
wished to keep unchanged. In dramatic world literature Strindberg has many 
descendants, Ibsen none. In his sterility too he was perfect.)

In quest of an alternative to Ibsen, Bjo/rneboe immersed himself in the 
work of such non-Norwegian innovators as Brecht, Strindberg, Williams, 
Marcel Marceau, Friedrich D?rrenmatt, and Henryk Tomaszewski and such 
pioneers as Carlo Goldoni and Andr? Antoine. Many of the essays in the 
posthumous collections Om Brecht (On Brecht, 1977) and Om teater were 
first published during this period. In "Teatret i morgen" (translated as 
"The Theater Tomorrow," 2003), published in Ordet in 1963 and collected in 
Om Teater, Bjo/rneboe argues that as thought becomes more abstract in the 
nuclear age the theater must become more physical and concrete, drawing on 
pantomime and the circus:

Bak den frykteligste fysiske virkning menneskeheten hittil har 
iscenesatt--Hiroshima og Nagasaki--lao ogsao den abstrakteste tenkning 
some hittell er blitt prestert. Det mest paofallende ere altsao i hvilken 
grad den abstrakte tanke har inkarnert i materien. Det samme mao gjelde 
teatret; det filosofiske tankeinnhold vil ikke leve i dialogene eller 
monologene som tidligere,--men stadig mere direkte inkarnert i de 
fysisk-sceniske prosesser. . . . Et tidsmessig teater vil altsao bli baode 
vitenskapelig-filosofisk og sirkusmessig-fysisk pao ?n gang. Alt mao bli 
handling, og det vil bli definitivt slutt pao den gamle statuariske 
deklamasjon av "poetiske" eller "dypsindige" replikker.
(Behind the most horrible physical effects humanity has hitherto 
produced--Hiroshima and Nagasaki--lay the most abstract thinking that has 
so far been achieved. The most striking thing is thus the degree to which 
abstract thought has been incarnated in matter. The same must apply to the 
theater: the philosophical content will not come to life in dialogues or 
monologues as before--but must be ever more directly incarnated in 
physical stage processes. . . . A contemporary theater will thus be 
scientific and philosophical, and circus-like and physical, all at the 
same time. Everything must become action, and there will be a definitive 
end to the old statuary declamation of "poetic" or "profound" speeches.)

He embodied these ideas in the experimental fragment Amputasjonen (The 
Amputation), published in Ordet in 1964 and collected in Om Teater, but he 
did not think that he would find a troupe with the acrobatic ability to 
perform it.

In 1962 the Bjo/rneboes had moved to the former estate of the Jo/lsen 
family in Enebakk. Bjo/rneboe's next novel, Dro/mmen og hjulet (The Dream 
and the Wheel, 1964), follows the family for several generations but 
focuses on Holm Jo/lsen, who had attempted to industrialize the valley, 
and his daughter, the novelist Ragnhild Jo/lsen, who died from a drug 
overdose at thirty-three. The latter is Bjo/rneboe's most fully realized 
female character. His identification with her as an artist--her dark 
themes, her immersion in local pagan myths and rejection of conventional 
Christianity, and her resistance to finishing her chef d'oeuvre--enables 
him to transcend the conventional view of women for which he has often 
been criticized.

In 1963 Bjorneboe had completed the naturalistic drama based on Den onde 
hyrde that he and Krog had begun, but with the encouragement of the 
Israeli director Izzy Abrahami he took the material in a more experimental 
direction. To the story of Tonnie he added a sardonic counterpoint through 
the use of a two-tier stage set and three representatives of "the system": 
the prison director, chaplain, and doctor. The theatrical illusion is 
further broken by elements of circus and pantomime and by songs, with 
music by Finn Ludt, that contrast with and comment on the action. The play 
premiered at the Olso Nye Teater in February 1965 as Til lykke med dagen 
(Many Happy Returns).

Bjo/rneboe's second play appeared in two versions. Eugenio Barba's Odin 
Theater, then located in Oslo, staged an improvisatory version titled 
Ornithofilene after a working draft. It ran for fifty-one performances 
between October 1965 and March 1966 and gave Bjo/rneboe fresh insights for 
the final version, Fugleelskerne, which opened at the Nationaltheatret 
(National Theater) in November 1966 under the direction of Carl Maria 
(Charly) Weber and with music by Hans Dieter Hosalla, both of the Berliner 
Ensemble. The play is a savage satire of economic imperialism and the way 
greed destroys the sense of community. A group of Germans, some of them 
former Nazis, want to turn an Italian village into a tourist resort for 
bird-watchers; they are opposed by the local hunting club, which includes 
former partisans victimized by the same Nazis. After many plot twists, the 
defrocked priest, Father Piccolino, finds a way for the villagers to 
justify selling out. Fugleelskerne is considered Bjo/rneboe's best and 
most innovative play. It has been translated into many languages, and at 
least three English translations exist (only one has been published). In 
1967 the Nationaltheatret declined an invitation to perform the play at 
the International Theater Festival in Venice, exacerbating an already bad 
relationship between Bjo/rneboe, who was difficult to work with and was 
trying to challenge Ibsen's grip on Norwegian dramaturgy, and the 
Norwegian theater establishment. Bjo/rneboe, however, later admitted that 
the spectacle of Norwegians playing Italians in Italy would have been 
embarrassing.

Also in 1966 Bjo/rneboe published the experimental bildungsroman Frihetens 
o/yeblikk, which is generally considered his masterpiece. The unnamed 
narrator is a rettstjener (rendered as "Servant of Justice" in the English 
translation, the word also means "court official") in the fictional Alpine 
principality of Heiligenberg. In his spare time he is writing a colossal 
multivolume work, The History of Bestiality. The narrator struggles to 
remember his past, his long years of wandering in "landet Kaos" (the Land 
of Chaos), and how he came to be in Heiligenberg. Like Bjo/rneboe, the 
narrator spent the war years in Stockholm and studied painting with 
Gr?newald. He has also been in Germany--"min p?l i kjo/det . . . det kors 
jeg er spirket pao" (the thorn in my flesh . . . the cross I'm nailed 
to)--and in Italy, which gave him a liberating perspective. He has written 
fourteen "protocols," volumes of The History of Bestiality that mirror 
Bjo/rneboe's previous works. The central dynamic of the novel is the 
narrator's struggle to overcome his resistance to speaking his own truth 
about the world around him. In his Et speil for oss selv: menneskesyn og 
virkelighetsoppfatning i norsk etterkrigsprosa (A Mirror for Ourselves: 
View of Man and Conception of Truth in Postwar Norwegian Prose, 1968) Leif 
Longum contends that in this work Bjo/rneboe finally found a way to 
"uttrykke en ny virkelighet, som de gamle ordene, de gamle formene, ikke 
lenger strekke til for. . . . Den frigjo/ringsprosess boken forteller om, 
bekreftes av det den er: den forteller om en vilje til ao gi en personlig 
visjon av sannheten, her og nu, eksistentielt" (express a new reality for 
which the old words, the old forms, no longer suffice. . . . The process 
of liberation the book tells about is confirmed by what it is: it tells of 
a will to give a personal vision of the truth, here and now, 
existentially).

For most Norwegians, however, Frihetens o/yeblikk was overshadowed by 
another Bjo/rneboe novel that appeared the same year: the pornographic 
Uten en traod (translated as Without a Stitch, 1969), an unflagging 
account of the sexual adventures of a young woman. Although it was 
published anonymously, the author was soon unmasked; the book was 
confiscated; and the author and publisher were prosecuted in a trial that 
was frequently in the headlines in 1967. The defense argued that the book 
was mild compared to much of the pornography freely available; but the 
book was banned (the prohibition was not lifted until the early 1990s). 
Bjo/rneboe and the publisher were each fined 100 kroner; Bjo/rneboe had to 
pay 5,000 kroner and the publisher 10,000 kroner in court costs, and both 
men were sentenced to two days in jail.

After losing an appeal to the Supreme Court--which even increased both the 
fine and the jail sentence--Bjo/rneboe wrote a sequel that was published 
in Denmark as Uden en tr?vl 2 (1968; translated as Without a Stitch 2, 
1971). It was dedicated to the Norwegian Supreme Court and included 
obscene, wittily surrealistic drawings by the author, mostly involving 
judges or policemen. That same year he published his first essay 
collection, Norge, mitt Norge. The many pieces related to the trial 
include Bjo/rneboe's 1957 defense of Agnar Mykle, whose Sangen om den 
ro/de rubin (1956; translated as The Song of the Red Ruby, 1961) had been 
the subject of a similar case. A section on the United States anticipates 
the theme that dominates his next collection, Vi som elsket Amerika: 
essays om stormaktsgalskap, straffelyst, kunst og moral (We Who Loved 
America: Essays on the Madness of Superpowers, the Desire to Punish, Art 
and Morals, 1970). He also published a mostly complete but 
nonchronological collection of his poetry, Aske, vind og jord: Sanger, 
viser, og dikt (Ashes, Wind and Earth: Songs, Ditties, and Poems, 1968), 
meant to show the affinities between his earlier and later work.

Semmelweis: et anti-autorit?rt skuespill (1968; translated as Semmelweis: 
An Anti-authoritarian Play, 1999) was intended as the first in a projected 
series of works about "frihetens historie" (the history of freedom). It is 
the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, the discoverer of antisepsis. After finding 
that childbed fever could be prevented if doctors washed their hands 
before examining the mothers, Semmelweis spent the rest of his life 
battling to get a hearing from the medical establishment. The issue of 
class prejudice looms large in the play as the prestige of the doctors 
takes precedence over the welfare of the lower-class women and the 
authority of the textbooks overrides the empirical findings of the "mad 
Hungarian" who gets his ideas from prostitutes and toilet cleaners. 
Bjo/rneboe's first play without songs, Semmelweis is of epic length, with 
many short scenes and minimal sets that can be shifted quickly. A statue 
of Semmelweis, unveiled at the beginning and present throughout the play, 
serves in various ways as a prop. The play begins and ends with framing 
scenes evocative of the student protests of the 1960s; meant to lend 
contemporaneity, underline the anti-authoritarian message, and provide a 
contrast with the docility of the medical students in the central play, 
the scenes seem dated today and are relegated to an appendix in Joe 
Martin's translation.

Kruttaornet (La Poudri?re): vitenskapelig efterord og siste protokoll 
(1969; translated as Powderhouse: Scientific Postscript and Last Protocol, 
2000) is a sequel to Frihetens o/yeblikk. The preoccupation with the 
atrocities of the twentieth century in the first volume is supplemented by 
a longer historical perspective. The narrator now occupies an ambiguous 
position as caretaker and, probably, patient in a private asylum in 
Alsace. The inmates include an American general, a Soviet ambassador's 
wife, and others symbolic of contemporary ills. The unorthodox methods of 
treatment used by the chief physician, Lef?vre, include allowing the 
patients to give lectures; three of the lectures form the core of the 
book. In the first lecture the narrator discusses "Den permanente 
Heksejakt" (the permanent witch-hunt), which he sees as a constant of 
Western civilization; LaCroix, a retired executioner, lectures on capital 
punishment from the executioner's point of view; and Lef?vre, in 
"Kjetterbaolenes kultur" (The Culture of the Stake), asks what gives a 
human being the strength to suffer torture and death for the sake of 
truth. Interspersed with the lectures are conversations; lyrical, 
pastoral, and erotic interludes; and an abortive murder mystery. The 
formal experiment is too daring to be entirely successful. In Keeper of 
the Protocols: The Works of Jens Bjo/rneboe in the Crosscurrents of 
Western Literature (1996) Martin contends that "The boundaries which 
define our conception of what a novel is are forced to expand or even 
dissolve under the pressure of texts such as this one, in which so many 
conflicts in style, form and content are held between two covers."

In late 1969 the Swedish director Martha Vestin asked Bjo/rneboe if he had 
any material she could use. The following year Amputasjon: arenaspill i ?n 
akt (1970; translated as Amputation, 2003), a revised and expanded version 
of the 1964 fragment, was staged in Stockholm by the Friteatern (Free 
Theater), which at that time was associated with the touring company of 
the Svenska Riksteatern (Swedish National Theater); the Swedish troupe 
brought the play to Oslo in 1971. It is a dystopian satire set in a future 
when all individual differences have been eradicated. Deviants are 
brutally "normalisert" (normalized) or, if that procedure fails, become 
human guinea pigs. The setting is a surgical amphitheater where 
"disiplin?rkirurgi" (disciplinary surgery) is about to be performed on a 
deviant. Two rival surgeons, representing the United States and the Soviet 
Union, have conflicting theories about what kind of surgery is needed. The 
added material includes four vignettes showing how various characters were 
or were not "normalized"--cured of such deviant behavior as thinking for 
oneself, being a virgin, or liking solitude. Critics found the unrelieved 
brutality of the play hard to endure. The first of Bjo/rneboe's plays to 
be performed in English, it was produced in Solrun Hoaas's translation in 
1977 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and in Canberra, Australia.

In 1972 Bjo/rneboe wrote a series of newspaper articles arguing that 
Fredrik Fasting Torgersen, who had been convicted of murder in 1958 and 
sentenced to life imprisonment, was innocent. The articles, which provoked 
a furious debate, are included in his third essay collection, Politi og 
anarki, published the same year. The collection also includes Bjo/rneboe's 
fullest statement on anarchism, the essay "Anarchismen--idag?" (translated 
as "Anarchism--Today?" 1998). He writes that "anarchismen idag bare kan 
eksistere som innslag" (anarchism today can exist only as a leaven) but 
that the leaven is essential: "Et samfunn er et sundt samfunn bare i den 
grad det viser anarkistiske trekk" (A society is a healthy society only to 
the degree that it exhibits anarchistic traits). The following year 
Bjo/rneboe's documentary play, Tilfellet Torgersen (The Torgersen Case), 
was produced at Scene 7, a small ensemble theater in Oslo. Conceived 
primarily as propaganda, the play lends itself better to reading than to 
performance.

"The History of Bestiality" became a trilogy with the publication of 
Stillheten: en anti-roman og absolutt aller siste protokoll (1973; 
translated as The Silence: An Anti-novel and Absolutely the Very Last 
Protocol, 2000). To the historical perspective of Kruttaornet Bjo/rneboe 
adds geographical distance, with the aim of viewing the European 
Continental sickness from outside. The narrator is now sojourning in an 
unnamed country in North Africa. The theme is colonialism, and Bjo/rneboe 
uses the narrator's alcoholism as a metaphor for European dependence on 
the exploitation of other peoples. The novel moves back and forth in time 
as the narrator has conversations with Ali, an African revolutionary, and 
with Christopher Columbus, Maximilien Robespierre, and God. There are 
mock-epic accounts of Hernando Cortez's and Francisco Pizarro's conquests 
of Mexico and Peru, and a guilt-ridden American Vietnam veteran is killed 
by a mob of hungry children. An encounter with a child prostitute sends 
the narrator into a drinking-and-sleeping-pill binge during which his 
subconscious wrestles with issues of individual and social transformation, 
and he emerges with new energy and hope.

Stillheten brought Bjo/rneboe Kritikkerprisen (The Norwegian Critics' 
Prize), as well as the Swedish Academy's Dobloug Prize, but, like 
Kruttaornet, it got mixed reviews. The two books involve quite different 
mixes of Bjo/rneboe's metaphysical and engaged sides and seem to appeal to 
different audiences: in general, critics who admired Kruttaornet regarded 
Stillheten as a sellout to leftist ideological fashions, while those who 
liked Stillheten saw Kruttaornet as reactionary; readers, too, tend to 
prefer one novel over the other.
After completing Stillheten, Bjo/rneboe suffered a prolonged bout with 
alcoholism and depression and spent several months in a clinic. He 
increasingly experienced blackouts and did bizarre things that he did not 
remember afterward. His status as a cult figure for youth, and his coming 
out as a bisexual, added to the chaos of his life.

The cabaret sketch Dongery: en collage om forretningsstaanden og om 
markedsfo/rerens liv (Blue Jeans: A Collage about Sales and the Life of a 
Marketer), produced in 1974 and published in 1976, was Bjo/rneboe's last 
completed play. It satirizes the advertising industry's penchant for 
turning social issues into moneymaking commodities--for example, by 
packaging starvation in India as a series of coffee-table books aimed at 
different audiences. This return to the musical genre lacks the energy and 
bite of its predecessors.

Bjo/rneboe's final novel, Haiene: historien om et mannskap og et forlis 
(1974; translated as The Sharks: The Story of a Crew and a Shipwreck, 
1992), is an allegorical sea story. The narrator, Peder Jensen, is second 
mate and medical officer on the bark Neptune, which sails from Manila in 
the fall of 1899 with a crew drawn from the oppressed classes and the 
third world and officers from the privileged classes. Jensen becomes a 
surrogate father for the deck boy Pat and mediates between officers and 
forecastle as the tensions grow into mutiny and the forces of nature 
compel cooperation for the sake of survival. The work is an anarchist 
allegory with a strong dose of mysticism and functions as a kind of coda 
to "The History of Bestiality" trilogy in that the themes broached there 
are here presented in a much more accessible form. The novel was 
universally acclaimed and was an instant best-seller. In a letter dated 2 
November 1974 Bjo/rneboe described the attendant publicity as "en blanding 
av mareridt og triumf" (a mixture of nightmare and triumph).

In the fall of 1974, as his second marriage disintegrated, Bjo/rneboe 
moved to an apartment in Oslo, but "byen Python" (the city Python), as he 
called it, soon overwhelmed him. In 1975 he bought a house and land on 
Veierland, an island off the old whaling town of To/nsberg, hoping for the 
peace to write his memoirs but managing only an unpublished fragment. He 
also planned to complete Ro/d Emma (Red Emma), a play about the anarchist 
Emma Goldmann. He attempted to stop drinking and published a long 
free-verse poem, "Farvel--bror Alkohol" (Farewell--Brother Alcohol) in the 
Oslo newspaper Dagbladet (27 December 1975); it is included in his Samlede 
dikt (Collected Poems, 1977). He had many visitors, including his 
daughters and young admirers, but was often alone. He was in constant pain 
from advancing cirrhosis, and after a harrowing journey to Oslo to read 
his poetry for the recording Vaopenlo/s (Defenseless, 1976), he committed 
suicide at Veierland on 9 May 1976. Shortly before his death he had 
received a grant to go to Japan to study Japanese whaling practices for a 
novel to be set in the future.

After Bjo/rneboe's death the struggle over his legacy began. At his 
funeral, conducted according to the ritual of the Kristensamfunn, a group 
of anarchists placed a red and black flag over the coffin. A fragment of 
Ro/d Emma, which Bjo/rneboe had written in the English and German of the 
sources he used, was translated into Norwegian by an anarchist collective 
and published in a pirated edition by Forlaget Bjo/rnsens grav in 1976 but 
was suppressed after a protest from Bjo/rneboe's estate. The following 
year a program of readings from his work at Nationaltheatret was disrupted 
by anarchists who read a manifesto accusing the organizers of the 
performance of exploiting and perverting Bjo/rneboe's work now that he 
could no longer defend himself.

Posterity has tried to render Bjo/rneboe "safe." The Henie-Onstad Art 
Center, a modern-art gallery in Ho/vikodden that Bjo/rneboe had attacked 
as a symbol of capitalist hegemony over the arts, commemorated the 
seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth in the fall of 1995 with an exhibit 
of his paintings and drawings. It was not well received by fans of his 
later writing. In a 2001 memoir the writer Sven K?rup Bjo/rneboe comments 
on the significance of the paintings for his uncle's career:

Jens' styrke som saokalt anarkist, og det faktum at han av samtlige 
samfunnsstormere i 60- og 70-aorene har overlevet med sitt oppro/r og 
fremdeles inspirerer de unge, skyldes denne ballasten av kunnen, og 
selvdisiplin. Naor han fo/rst slaor haoret ut og gyver lo/s pao Makten, 
pao autoritetene, skjer det med en tyngde i slaget som de o/vrige 
rebellene manglet.

(Jens's strength as a so-called anarchist, and the fact that he out of all 
the radical assailants of the system in the Norway of the 1960s and 1970s 
has survived with his rebellion and still inspires the young, are due to 
this ballast of craft, and self-discipline. When he first tears his hair 
and lets fly at Power, at the authorities, it happens with a weight in his 
punches which the other rebels lacked.)

There was a similar synergy between Bjo/rneboe's activist and 
contemplative sides. His nephew comments, "Til siste forble han en 
metafysicus og en rebell. . . . den ene ikke utelykket den andre, men 
forutsatte hverandre" (To the end he remained a metaphysician and a rebel. 
. . . the one did not exclude the other, but they presupposed each other). 
In his preface to Aske, vind og jord, Jens Bjorneboe wrote:

Den mest aopenbare motsetning i det jeg har skrevet siden jeg debuterte i 
1951, har v?rt spenningen mellom en sterkt innadvendt, avgjort metafysisk 
legning pao den ene side--og en like sterkt utadvendt, polemisk og 
dokumentarisk, "samfunnsengasjert" og egentlig revolution?r holdning pao 
den annen side. For meg ligger der ingen virkelig motsetning i disse to 
ytterligheter, og jeg har ikke o/nsket ao viske motsetningen ut.
(The most obvious contrast in what I have written since my debut in 1951 
has been the tension between a strongly introverted, decidedly 
metaphysical leaning on the one hand--and a just as strongly extroverted, 
polemic and documentary, "socially engaged" and downright revolutionary 
attitude on the other. For me there is no real opposition between these 
two extremes, and I have not wished to erase the contradiction.)

Jens Bjo/rneboe strove throughout his career to maintain these two poles 
in tension. His refusal to abandon either one remains a perennial 
stumbling block for his critics. The wish to identify this or that aspect 
of his work as "the real Bjo/rneboe," together with the myths and scandals 
surrounding his life, continue to make it difficult to assess his 
achievement. As the specific controversies and issues in which Bjo/rneboe 
was engaged recede into the background, however, the essential unity of 
his vision is becoming clearer.

Papers:? Jens Bjo/rneboe's manuscripts are in the archives of the 
Gyldendal publishing firm in Oslo. His other papers and books are in the 
possession of his heirs.

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Interviews:

* Samtaler med Jens Bjo/rneboe, edited by Haovard Rem (Oslo: Dreyer, 
1987).
Bibliographies:
* Aud Gulbransen and Jadwiga Teresa Kvadsheim, Jens Bjo/rneboe: En 
bibliografi (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1978).
* Esther Greenleaf M?rer, "Bibliography of Literature about Jens 
Bjo/rneboe, 2: Selected Articles Published since 1976," Jens Bjo/rneboe in 
English (January 2000) <http://emurer.home.att.net/about/aboutart.htm>.
* M?rer, "Bibliography of Literature about Jens Bjo/rneboe, 1: Books and 
Dissertations," Jens Bjo/rneboe in English (March 2002) 
<http://emurer.home.att.net/about/aboutmon.htm>.
Biographies:
* Fredrik Wandrup, Jens Bjo/rneboe: mannen, myten og kunsten (Oslo: 
Gyldendal, 1984).
* Sven K?rup Bjo/rneboe, Onkel Jens: Et familieportrett av Jens Bjo/rneboe 
(Oslo: Aschehoug, 2001).

References:

* Arken, special Bjo/rneboe issue, 4 (Winter 1981).
* Atli Evje, "Jens Bjo/rneboe: '. . . det er jo lyrikker jeg egentlig 
er,'" in Frihet! Sannhet! edited by Yngvild Risdal Otnes (Oslo: Pax, 
1977), pp. 131-153; translated by Esther Greenleaf M?rer as ". . . After 
All, I'm Basically a Poet," Jens Bjo/rneboe in English (August 1999), part 
1: "The 1950s" <http://emurer.home.att.net/about/evje1.htm>; part 2: "The 
1960s" <http://emurer.home.att.net/about/evje2.htm>.
* Janet Garton, Jens Bjo/rneboe: Prophet without Honor (Westport, Conn.: 
Greenwood Press, 1985).
* ?yvind Gulliksen, "Bjo/rneboe og Amerika," Norsk litteraer aorbok 
(1976): 157-169; translated by M?rer as "Bjo/rneboe and America," Jens 
Bjo/rneboe in English (28 September 1999) 
<http://emurer.home.att.net/about/gulliksn.htm>.
* Gulliksen, "Tunnel of Love: American Influences on Norwegian Culture," 
in Images of America in Scandinavia, edited by Poul Houe and Sven Haokon 
Rossel (Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998), pp. 101-127.
* John M. Hoberman, "The Political Imagination of Jens Bjo/rneboe: A Study 
of Under en haordere himmel," Scandinavian Studies, 48 (1976): 52-70.
* Espen Haavardsholm, "Av jorden har vi gjort et slakterhus," in 
Forfatternes litteraturhistorie, volume 4, edited by Kjell Heggelund, 
Simen Skjo/nsberg, and Helge Vold (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1981), pp. 216-229; 
republished as "Jens Bjo/rneboe," in Haavardsholm, Essays i utvalg (Oslo: 
Forlaget Oktober, 1996), pp. 15-32.
* Jens Bjo/rneboe: Bilder (Ho/vikodden: Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, 1995).
* Jens Bjo/rneboe in English <http://emurer.home.att.net/index.htm>.
* Oddbjo/rn Johannessen, "Det autorit?re og 'svikerne': En kortfattet 
studie i en bjo/rnboesk temakrets med utgangspunkt i skuespillet 
Semmelweis," Sro/landsk magasin, 7 (1991): 50-53; translated by M?rer as 
"The Authoritarian and 'the Traitors,'" Jens Bjo/rneboe in English (August 
1999) <http://emurer.home.att.net/about/sem-oj.htm>.
* Johannessen, "Jens Bjo/rneboe and the Norwegian Theater," translated by 
M?rer, in Amputation: Texts for an Extraordinary Spectacle, edited by Karl 
Kvitko (Los Angeles: Xenos, 2003), pp. 137-142.
* Gary Kern, "Bjo/rneboe's Great Failure: The History of Bestiality," in 
Genre at the Crossroads: The Challenge of Fantasy, edited by George 
Slusser and Jean-Pierre Barricelli (Riverside, Cal.: Xenos, 2003), pp. 
198-222.
* Inge S. Kristiansen, Jens Bjo/rneboe og Antroposofien: En analyse av 
esoteriske og mytologiske motiver med hovedvekt pao det sene 
forfatterskapet (Oslo: Solum, 1989).
* Steinar Lem, Bjo/rneboes menneskesyn i "Frihetens o/yeblikk" (Oslo: 
Aschehoug, 1981).
* Leif Longum, Et speil for oss selv: Menneskesyn og 
virkelighetsoppfatning i norsk etterkrigsprosa (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1968).
* Longum, "Jens Bjo/rneboe and the Laughter of Tuscany," in I rapporti tra 
Italia e Europa del nord nella letteratura e nell'arte: Giornate 
scandinavie 3-5 maggio 1989, edited by Randi Langen Moen (Bologna: 
Universita di Bologna, 1992), pp. 127-136.
* Longum, "Jens Bjo/rneboes Fugleelskerne: tidslo/shet og 
samtidsproblematikk," in his Drama-analyser fra Holberg til Hoem (Oslo: 
Universitetsforlaget, 1977), pp. 114-126; translated by M?rer as "Jens 
Bjo/rneboe's The Bird-Lovers: Timelessness and Contemporary Problematic," 
Jens Bjo/rneboe in English (October 1999) 
<http://emurer.home.att.net/about/ll-bird.htm>.
* Joe Martin, Keeper of the Protocols: The Works of Jens Bjo/rneboe in the 
Crosscurrents of Western Literature (New York: Peter Lang, 1996).
* William Mishler, "Jens Bjo/rneboe, Anthroposophy and Hertug Hans," Edda 
(1987): 167-178.
* M?rer, "Glossary of Historical Persons Mentioned in Jens Bjo/rneboe's 
Last Four Novels," Jens Bjo/rneboe in English (August 1999) 
<http://emurer.home.att.net/about/names.htm>.
* M?rer, "Jens Bjo/rneboe's Winter in Bellapalma: Hemingway Tribute, 
Harbinger of Works to Come," Jens Bjo/rneboe in English (June 1999) 
<http://emurer.home.att.net/about/wint-com.htm>.
* M?rer, "Mad Scientists and Moral Outrage: The Genesis of Jens 
Bjo/rneboe's Amputation," in Bjo/rneboe, Amputation: Texts for an 
Extraordinary Spectacle, translated by M?rer and Solrun Hoaas, edited by 
Karl Kvitko (Los Angeles: Xenos, 2003), pp. 143-166.
* Mark Mussari, "Color: The Material of Immateriality in Jens Bjo/rneboe's 
Blaomann," Edda (1999-2000): 340-349.
* Yngvild Risdal Otnes, ed., Frihet! Sannhet! Temaer i Jens Bjo/rneboes 
forfatterskap (Oslo: Pax, 1977).
* Kaj Skagen, Jens Bjo/rneboe om seg selv (Oslo: Ekstrabokklubben, 1984).
* Skagen, Metafysikk eller selvmord: Et essay om Jens Bjo/rneboe og 
antroposofien (Oslo: Cappelen, 1996).
* So/rlandsk Magasin, special Bjo/rneboe issue, 12 (1996).
* Ottil Tharaldsen, Kvinnesyn og mannsrolle i fire romaner av Jens 
Bjo/rneboe (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1977).
* Sigurd Aa. Aarnes, "'Det ondes problem': Nazismen i Jens Bjo/rneboes 
dikting," in Nazismen og norsk litteratur, edited by Bjarte Birkeland and 
Stein Ugelvik Larsen (Bergen & Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1975), pp. 
173-194; translated by John Weinstock as "'The Problem of Evil'--Nazism in 
Jens Bjo/rneboe's Writing," in The Nordic Mind: Current Trends in 
Scandinavian Literary Criticism, edited by Weinstock and Frank Egholm 
Andersen (Lanham, Md.: University Presses of America, 1986), pp. 223-250.

From shovland at mindspring.com  Fri Jan 27 03:34:55 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:34:55 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] They Thought They Were Free : The Germans, 1933-45 
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHAEMICDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

Among the impossibly vast literature about how the Nazis took and held
power, this book is one of a kind. It is an honest look into the minds of
"typical" Germans, not as we see them, but as they saw themselves. The
author admits his biases and overcomes them to let his subjects speak for
themselves. We hear them, in their own words, make their excuses and
justifications and evasions, but the same question will not stop coming up
in our minds: "What would I have done?" This book is a journey of questions
without final answers, and it deserves to be ranked as one of the essential
books of our time. The fact that it is so little known, and particularly
that it is not required reading in college courses, is a disgrace.


Mayer gives us a chilling look at Nazi Germany through conversations and
interviews with ten self described 'little men', who were all members of the
party. The men tell of their beliefs and experiences during the years of the
Third Reich. In some ways the scariest aspect of the book is how normal the
men seem to be. Their Nazi beliefs are somehow more frightning as they do
not come from high ranking officials like Himmler and Goebbles, but rather
from ordinary civilians.
Mayer lived in Germany for several years after the Second World War and
learned quite a bit about Germany. His book gives us a fascinating look at
the Germans and why they behave as they do. We learn a great deal about why
they supported Hitler, their love for law and order, and their general
outlook.

The one weakness here is that his material is out of date. His statements
may accurately reflect on the Germany of the 40's and 50's, but most likely
do not apply to that country in the Twenty-First Century. The Germany of
today is largely free of the hatred and fear that existed in earlier times.


Shortly after World War II, Milton Sanford Mayer traveled to Germany to find
out the mind set of ordinary Germans who were "little men" in the Nazi
Party. They did not know that he was an American Jew, although he did not
lie to them. To a man, they declared that their days under Hitler were the
best in their lives. I found the parallels with current day America to be
much to close for comfort, if you substitute white rural culture for Jews in
Germany. This book will open your eyes as to how totalitarianism is welcomed
by the mass of people if the media support it, and the economy is good.



From checker at panix.com  Fri Jan 27 21:44:45 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:44:45 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Meme 057: Mozart 250 Package
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601271631000.6932@panix1.panix.com>

Meme 057: Mozart 250 Package
sent 2006.1.27

First off, has anyone bought the 172-CD "complete" Mozart that is floating 
around on e-Bay? (In light of what I am about to say, you might wonder 
that I'd be interested in getting small beer Mozart. It's just that I am 
addicted to collecting. I bought the 171-CD "complete" Bach, the Hannsler 
set, for $200 and took a year to get through it. Nothing replaced any 
favorites. The first klavier concerto played by Robert Levin was the most 
exciting in the set, and Bine Katrine Bryndorf is a great organist, the 
best alive today afaik. Men have run out of things to say, and it's the 
women who are taking over. There's also Marin Alsop, conductor; H?l?ne 
Grimaud and Mitsuko Uchida, piano; and Lara St. John, violin.

My question: How much space does this set take up? The Bach consists of 
two boxes, 11 inches (28 cm) long (and the height and depth of a compact 
disc). I most definitely do NOT want 171 individual jewel boxes. What is 
not included in the set among the K?chel numbers. (I have three CDs of 
fragments that were not in the 180-CD "complete Philips edition of 1991. I 
got a copy of the 6th edition of the K?chel catalog exactly a year ago, 
but I haven't used it beyond an initial look-over (lots and lots of great 
appendixes), while my Schmieder gets heavy use and my Kinsky less.) And, 
of course, what about the performances? Which labels did they come from. I 
recall a Fanfare article that the Brilliant set of sonatas is very good, 
and I believe this is these are in the "complete" set? I don't even know 
who publishes it. I placed a bid for the set on e-Bay. My bid of $80 
lasted until the last day, but then the bids went up close or even beyond 
the "buy it now" price. So I dropped out of the bidding. I seems there 
were quite a lot of people like me who were hoping to get a set cheaper 
than the "buy it now" price. The postage for "buy it now" is $30 but for a 
bid upon set $40.

Now to my reflections:

Mozart is uncontestably a great composer, but my feelings are ambiguous. 
Basically, he did not sweat. He is the only great composer whose 
personality eludes me, even though we have a quite detailed knowledge of 
his life. But it's impersonal knowledge. We don't know what his music 
meant to him. We don't know what Bach's music meant to Bach, at least from 
the writings of him and his contemporaries, of course, but it's not the 
same thing.

Mozart was a great genius, but I sense that his superbly intricate music 
just gushed out of him, though several of the writers below insist that 
this is a myth. We do have fragments of abandoned works, but not, it 
seems, complete works movement of works that were never finished, like 
Schubert's Unfinished symphony and the Relique sonata. And there is the 
draft of the first movement of the sixth piano sonata, which is quite a 
bit different from the one we all know. Even here, there's no reason to 
think that Mozart sweated over the revisions.

The authors below concentrate almost entirely on his operas to justify 
Mozart's greatness. Opera is not for me, as I find the essence of great 
music in large scale abstract forms, not those that follow someone else's 
plot. Whether it was Mozart of Da Ponte who was the most responsible for 
the plots of his three great Italian operas (argued below), Da Ponte is 
another man whose genius came too easily for him. After he settled in the 
United States, he wrote no more libretti, though he still kept up 
promoting music, that of others. At least he's better than Korngold, who 
allegedly wrote a masterpiece at age 12 (Mendelssohn, more an earlier 
achiever than Mozart, wrote his Octet and MSND at ages 15 and 16, while 
Mozart's first memorable works were his first piano sonatas at age 18), he 
chucked it all when he came to the United States and gave up serious music 
for film "music." The excuse he needed it for the money does not wash. 
Faulker wrote for Hollywood to make money, to be sure, but he kept on 
writing literature all the while. It makes me think that Korngold (and 
several other refugees to Hollywood, but *not* Schoenberg) did not really 
care about music. They were highly talented and did not sweat. And the 
inner Puritan in me suspects that their music was not genuine.

And this is what clouds my appreciation of Mozart. I do champion art for 
arts sake (a later notion), and Mozart's music certainly is art and on a 
very high level. After all, he is one of the greats, Norman Lehrbrecht 
below to the contrary notwithstanding. He died at age 35, the whole world 
knows. He would have been but 47 when the Eroica symphony was written. 
(Beethoven was 33.) Who knows how he might have responded to the wave of 
romanticism. We get four hints from works composed in his last year after 
the Jupiter: the last piano concerto, the clarinet quintet, the clarinet 
concerto, and the Requiem. New directions all of them, along with a lot of 
pure hack work and some very good work, like his last two piano sonatas, 
but which do not suggest new paths.

Why do I insist that artists sweat, that genius is not enough? I am not 
sure. I don't think it's envy. I myself am a point in case, though on a 
much lesser level. I had outstanding abilities in mathematics, but never 
the sheer diligence to make use of them, which I failed to do by age 25, 
by which time most mathematicians have made their most outstanding 
contributions. I've coasted through life, doing very little actual work, 
but following down a wide number of paths to my own liking, though not 
adding up to a concrete whole. I can only hope that my gaining a knowledge 
of diverse areas and following them to their roots by Checking the 
Premises allows insights across disciplines, which insights I share with 
others, now that there is an Internet. I might have been an inspiring 
teacher, like the University of Chicago economist Frank Knight, for a very 
select bunch of students, for most of them did not like him at all. Here's 
hoping that I've imparted in some of you ideas--questions, really--that 
will set you afire.

I want a moral insistence in music, one we find in Beethoven preeminently. 
Glenn Gould put it best: "This is not to say that the aspiration to 
transcend the human condition would be forever lost to art--certainly it 
is the essence of the work of Beethoven, for instance, that we feel him 
struggling to strike beyond the realization of human potential--but the 
grandeur of Beethoven's art resides in the struggle rather than in the 
occasional transcendence which he achieves...." ("Bach the Nonconformist" 
(1962), John P.L. Roberts, ed., _The Art of Glenn Gould_ (Toronto: Malcolm 
Lester Books, 1999). I find a moral insistence in Bach and in the 
Romantics, but not in Mozart and Haydn. It is true that Bach deeply 
understood human feelings, but only those that were to be found in 
Christian worship, not in those emotions of defiance that are so abundant 
in Beethoven but were only socially constructed at a later date. Mozart 
did not know the emotions of Beethoven either. Had he lived, he might not 
have given us music of Beethoven's depth. It was Schubert's early death, 
at age 31, that was the greater loss for art. Like Mozart, he was forging 
new paths before he died. Beethoven lived longer and never stopped 
reaching. Neither did Brahms. Bruckner stopped. Dvorak and Tchaikovsky had 
their say. Mendelssohn did not really develop any further depth after his 
first masterpieces. But Schumann's early death was a loss. I don't know 
about Franck. Bartok's last compositions took him in new directions.

It is too much a commonplace to say that an artist's life is not tied to 
his music. This is widely used to excuse Wagner's political opinions. I 
see them as of a piece. It matters not that I share or don't share these 
opinions. It does matter that he had grandiose visions, but I don't 
appreciate opera (see Mr. Mencken's thoughts on them below) and wish he 
had composed instrumental music beyond some early works. By all accounts, 
Wagner was not a pleasant man. Neither was Mozart. He never grew up, and 
the evidence for this is well supported (if not intended) by Edward 
Rothstein, "Mozart: In Search of the Roots of Genius," _Smithsonian_, 2006 
February (not yet online). I can surely understand: an exploitative 
father, a confining environment in Salzburg. But we don't know what how he 
would have followed the new directions he was forging in his last year.

Mr. Mencken is like me. He more appreciated Mozart than really loved him. 
I find tributes to his greatness scattered in _H.L. Mencken on Music_ but 
no sustained appreciation. I cannot do any better toward appreciating his 
instrumental music than the authors below. If anyone has, send it to me!

The transhumanists, those that want to reach beyond the merely human, are 
rare. Beethoven was one, Nietzsche another, and so was C?zanne. I'll have 
to considerably reflect and name others. None in religion, surely none in 
politics.

That Mozart was not among them, though well enough a genius to have been 
one, is what causes my ambiguous feeling about him. Let us, instead, just 
enjoy his music.

-----------------

My Favorite Recordings of Mozart
* means especially outstanding; **head and shoulders above all others.

Piano

**Sonatas. Glenn Gould, then Reine Gianoli (Westminster mono) for the 
whole cycle. I do not worship this music and love the way these two artists 
play around with it. Backhaus also, esp. the electric no. 11 and the mono 
LP. Serious, of course. Schnabel ditto. The combination of a Frick Museum 
concert of 1945 and a U.S. Armed Forces recording of 1944 by Schnabel is a 
miracle of music making. Once on a Discocorp LP, I don't think it has ever 
been transferred to Compact Disc. Wilhelm Kempff is surprisingly weak here. 
Gieseking is the first set I bought, but now I find it dull, as do a lot 
of folks. Mr. Walter Klien (Vox Box) is better. I have an unopened 
original LP box from 1954! (Bids accepted.) I eyed it in the Schwann 
catalog as soon as I first started getting them. It was $75.00 back then, 
a lot of money. I don't know what the e-Bay price is.

Gould, Schnabel, Backhaus, and Kempff are my favorite pianists. I collect 
Gianoli, long forgotten but emphatically herself.

Rondo in a, K. 411. Wilhelm Backhaus and Artur Schnabel.


Variations. Reine Gianoli, Westminster mono

Sonata in D, K. 448. Alfred Brendel and Mr. Walter Klien, Vox stereo. The 
most enthusiastic recording of anything in my entire collection, along 
with the Serkin's cadenza to the Casals (not the Busch) recording of the 
fifth Brandenburg.


Chamber Music

Sonata in Bb, bassoon and cello, K. 292. Benjamin Cohon, bassoon, and 
Joseph Schuster, cello. Victor.12149, electric. This is a trifle, but the 
performers reversed the parts for reasons that I don't know. A delight.

Violin Sonatas. Joseph Szigeti, esp. with Schnabel (live) and Andor Foldes 
(live). The studios for Columbia and Vanguard are not so good. Also Adolf 
Busch and Rudolf Serkin No. 25 in F, K. 377 (1937); Albert Spalding and 
Andre Benoist on 28 in Eb, K. 380 (electric); and Jacques Thibaud and 
Marguerite Long for Nos. 26 in Bb, K. 378, and 34 in A, K. 526 (late 
electrical 78s or early mono LP)

My favorite violinists are just these four. One never knows if, coming 
across just one recording, one would really like it. But I love hearing my 
favorite artists grind away on everything. Music is a *performing* art and 
should be half composer and half performer. In the case of the piano 
sonatas, it's about 9/10 Gould, but that's okay for Mozart. It is most 
definitely not okay for Gould's Beethoven.

Quartets. I am not fond of these pieces, though I have inevitably 
collected lots of recordings of them, including several acoustics.

**Quintet 3 in C, K. 515. Pro Arte and Alfred Hobday, 2nd viola, 1934 
electric. All other recordings make this piece like just one more Mozart 
string work.

Quintet, clarinet, in A, K. 581. Leopold Wlach, Vienna Konzerthaus 
Quartet, mono 1951 for Westminster. Wlach is my favorite clarinetist. 
Mellow, depressing even.

**Quintet, winds, in Eb, K. 581. Brain Ensemble, 1954 mono. Within one 
minute of hearing this for the first time, I knew all other recordings 
were headed to the garbarage heap.

Serenade 10 in Bb, K. 361 (13 instruments). Stokowski, stereo 1966. This 
is lively, bouncy Mozart.


Concerti

Clarinet Concerto. Wlach, Westminster mono

Horn concerti. Brain. I prefer the 78s of Nos. 2 and 4 to the remakes with 
Carry-On

Piano 9. Kempff, mono

**Piano 10. Brendel and Klien

Piano 14. Serkin, Busch

*Piano 15. Kempff, mono

Piano 17. Dohnanyi, electric. First recording of the work. **Mvt. 2 
Schnabel, live. Miraculously probing.

Piano 19. Schnabel, electric

Piano 20. Schnabel and Kempff, both electric

*Piano 21. Foldes, mono. Best articulated playing of the work I know of. I 
collect Foldes.

**Piano 22. Serkin, Casals, mono. I listen to the entire first movement in 
anticipation of the dissonant clashes of the magnificent cadenza.

**Piano 23. Kempff, stereo. Limpid, weightless, cool. Kempff at his very 
best.

*Piano 24. Gould, stereo. Exciting

Piano 26. Backhaus, electric; Ingrid Haebler, mono Vox

Piano 27. Backhaus, stereo. Schnabel too, sure. All Schnabel is superb. 
Kempff, too, mostly, but 21 and 22 were late recordings that I found weak. 
27, not early, but also weak. Don't know why.

I am not denigrating the other concerti 9-27. It's just that I don't have 
any clear favorite.

All piano concerti. Listen to Mitsuko Uchida more.

Violin 3. Thibaud, Enescu, ORTF live 1951.

Violin 4. Szigeti, 1934 electric.

**Violin 5. Arthur Catterall, Hamilton Harty, anon. orch. 1924 acoustic. 
First recording of the work. How often it is that the first recording is 
never improved upon! Catterall is forgotten; too bad.


Symphonies

Symphony 25. Klemperer, both Vox mono and Angel stereo. Minor music, but I 
was in a store for over an hour and the Klemperer stereo was played over 
and over again. I came to like the last movement, especially. I do like 
minor key Mozart, but there's very little of it. In the Baroque era, it 
was much the reverse, a good majority of the music being in the minor key. 
Don't know why. With Brahms, it doesn't seem to matter.

**Symphony 35. Toscanini, NBC, mono. He really whips it up.

Symphonies 36 and 38. No decided preferences. Walter (stereo) and Casals 
(stereo) as good as any.

Symphony 39. Furtw?ngler and Toscanini, both mono. Mravinsky, stereo. I'd 
say Richard Strauss on the last three are good.

**Symphony 40. Second Klemperer (both are stereo). I was burnt out on this 
until I came across this recording.

Symphony 41. Schmidt-Isserstedt, Mercury stereo. I am burned out on this 
work. The S-I I got in junior high and it holds up well, very nice 
pointing out of details. For a while, and on the basis of this record, I 
thought Mozart was greater than Beethoven! I am fond of the Albert Coates 
acoustic, but he plays the first movement ridiculously fast.

It is telling that, of my four favorite conductors, we have no symphonies 
from Mengelberg, just the Jupiter from Coates, just the 33rd, 39th, and 
40th (which I have not heard) from Mravinsky, and only early recordings, 
that is before he reached his stride, from Scherchen (namely 29, 35, 36, 
39-41).

Vocal

**Requiem. Scherchen mono. Westminster WL 5233. This performance is sheer 
perfection. I say this about only an handful of recordings: Fritz 
Lehmann's Brahms German Requiem, Hermann Scherchen's mono Handel's 
Messiah, Fricsay's Zauberfl?te. Scherchen's stereo remakes of both the 
Requiem and the Messiah are too drawn out, too much of a good thing. But 
if they were his only recordings, I'd love them.

**Don Giovanni. Rosbaud on Vox OPBX 162, 1956.7.12 live and 1956.9 
(?studio). Be sure it's this one. It has Teresa Stich-Randall, Suzanne 
Danco, Nicolai Gedda, etc., a stellar cast, but the singers don't matter. 
Miraculous performance. The orchestra usually rests in the background, but 
here Rosbaud subtly and quietly makes you listen past the singers to the 
orchestra.

*Zauberfl?te. Fricsay, mono. My favorite opera (along with Fidelio). Sheer 
perfection also.

Cosi and Figaro. I am not an opera lover, as I have never been able to 
develop any real appreciation for the interplay between text and action 
(to my loss, for those I respect for other reasons do like opera). A lot 
of opera is written to show off the high notes of the singers. There is no 
actual meaning conveyed if the singer goes up five notes or ten at some 
dramatic point. My favorite singer, by far, is Helmut Krebs, but he was 
intellectual only.


Mozart on the Web
http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/living/13671682.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Sun, Jan. 22, 2006 [topstory_fromthe_txt.gif]
Mozart on the Web

You can't have an official holiday anymore without an official Web
site, right? For Mozart, information on the 250th birthday year in
Austria, including lots of tourist information, is at
www.mozart2006.com. The site first appears in German, but it has a
translation. Once you enter, go all the way to the bottom of the
screen and click on the word English.

Mozart at 250: No Signs of Slowing Down
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012000422_pf.html

As Birthday Nears, Composer Is the One Bestowing Gifts

By Tim Page
Washington post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 22, 2006; N01

It is now 250 years since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, 
Austria -- and some 245 years since this prodigy among prodigies fashioned 
his first little pieces for keyboard under the helpful eye of his father, 
Leopold. The world has changed radically since 1756 but Mozart remains a 
constant -- we continue to regard the mixture of clarity, grace and formal 
balance in his music with undiminished awe. He seems to have been 
incapable of vulgarity or overstatement: In his mature works, there is 
hardly a wasted gesture or a note out of place. And yet it all seems so 
effortless, so absolutely spontaneous.

Indeed, because Mozart's music is so flowing, direct and eloquent,
many listeners think it must be easy to perform. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Although almost any third-year piano student
can read through the Mozart sonatas, it is a different matter entirely
to play them well . Many other composers demand more in terms of
muscle, pyrotechnics and flashy virtuosity, but there is an
extraordinary transparency to Mozart's music, and any imbalance, no
matter how slight, is glaringly obvious. As such, the interpretation
of Mozart remains one of the supreme tests of any great musician.

Friday marks the anniversary of Mozart's birth and -- not surprisingly
-- there are a number of celebrations planned for our area. They
include the National Symphony Orchestra's semi-staged rendition of
Mozart's early opera "Abduction From the Seraglio," which will be
presented Thursday, Friday and Saturday, under the direction of
Leonard Slatkin. The cast will include Jennifer Casey Cabot, JiYoung
Lee, Richard Clement and Robert Baker, with newscaster Sam Donaldson
in the speaking role of the Pasha Selim. The staging design will be by
Douglas Fitch, who previously participated in the Kennedy Center's
semi-staged production of Ravel's "L'Enfant et les Sortileges" in the
2004 Festival of France.

Also on Thursday night, Misha and Cipa Dichter will play Mozart works
for piano four-hands as well as for two pianos at the Kennedy Center
Terrace Theater, as part of the Fortas Chamber Music Series. And the
Embassy Series will present two Mozart programs this week at the
Austrian Embassy: On Thursday, the mezzo-soprano Elisabeth von Magnus
will sing lieder not only by Mozart but also by his great teacher,
Franz Joseph Haydn, and by his supposed "rival," Antonio Salieri (who,
the film "Amadeus" to the contrary, was both a solid composer and a
decent man).

Friday night, the Minetti Quartet will play music by Mozart and Franz
Schubert (who would have celebrated his 209th birthday Jan. 31). (For
information: http://www.embassyseries.com/ .) Meanwhile, at the Tivoli
Theater, the In Series is offering a drastic, controversial revision
of "Le Nozze di Figaro," updated and set in Las Vegas.

Every composer's stock rises in notable birthday years. In 1970, the
Beethoven bicentenary, it seemed that every other new recording was
devoted to one of his symphonies or sonatas. In 1985, we were served
helping upon helping of Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel
and Georg Philipp Telemann, the tricentenary birthday boys
(esotericists also made note of the 400th anniversary of the birth of
the Renaissance composer Heinrich Schutz).

And now it is Mozart's turn. Yet he is always a familiar presence in
the concert hall and opera house, even when it isn't "his year." Up in
New York, Lincoln Center has presented an annual festival,
appropriately titled "Mostly Mozart," for the past 40 years: No other
composer could fill the house so reliably.

I suspect that a principal reason for Mozart's popularity is his
universality. He speaks to almost everybody (the only convinced
Mozart-haters who come to mind are Noel Coward and Glenn Gould) and he
never pushes us. If all you want from one of his compositions are some
good tunes and seraphic harmonies, he will surely provide them. If you
want much, much more, Mozart, in virtually all of his mature pieces,
will provide that, too.

This sets him apart. Charming composers such as Vivaldi and Telemann
offer a good deal of pleasure but usually -- usually -- not much else.
And there is necessarily work involved in coming to terms with the
greatest music by Bach and Beethoven; it is impossible to imagine,
say, a late Beethoven quartet or Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" playing
as background music. But it is not so impossible with Mozart --
indeed, turn on your television late at night and prepare to shudder
at the uses to which this composer's music is put.

In no way am I trying to justify such debasement, nor am I suggesting
that Mozart is somehow less deep than Bach and Beethoven. But Bach and
Beethoven tell us exactly what they want to tell us, while Mozart lets
us find what we want in him, on our own levels of need and
understanding. And -- as sorry as this fact makes professional
musicians -- a good percentage of any classical audience merely wants
to sit back and be entertained. So be it. The depths will always be
there for those who are ready to plumb them.

For example, I first heard "The Marriage of Figaro" as a 12-year-old
boy and found it sweet and pretty and ever so much less impressive
than, say, "Tosca" or "Cavalleria Rusticana," which had blood and guts
and bawling and mad passion. But then I heard "Figaro" again, and then
again, and I heard more and more in it, until it became my favorite
opera. Now, almost 40 years since my first encounter, every time I
play "Figaro" -- or even more happily see it performed -- I marvel
anew that one of my fellow human beings actually managed to pull
himself far enough out of the mud to create this miracle of order and
civility. Yet it's such a friendly masterpiece -- warm, funny,
forgiving, even downright silly -- and if there is an important
universal emotion that is not explored, musically and dramatically,
over the course of the opera's duration, I don't know what it is.

The legend of the eternally cheerful, periwigged boy wonder to the
contrary, Mozart worked hard throughout his life. From earliest
childhood he was a breadwinner for his family, a crushing
responsibility for any child, as the example of artists ranging from
Jackie Coogan to Michael Jackson can attest. He suffered first from
parental exploitation, later from a certain immaturity that comes from
being detained in childhood too long, and finally from melancholia,
dissipation and frail health that led to his death at the age of 35.
He was buried in an unmarked grave -- a not-uncommon practice in
18th-century Vienna, and certainly no disgrace. Still, many have
always found it deeply disturbing that we have no way of locating the
remains of this great genius.

And yet he need not be sought, for he is all around us. In 1906 the
pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni was asked to write a series of
aphorisms to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Mozart's birth and --
100 years later -- most of us would echo what he had to say. "Up to
now he is the most complete manifestation of musical gifts," Busoni
began. "Every genuine musician looks up to him, happy and disarmed. .
. . He disposes of light and shadow, but his light does not pain and
his darkness still shows clear outlines. Even in the most tragic
situations he still has a witticism ready; in the most cheerful, he is
able to draw a thoughtful furrow in his brow. He is young as a boy and
wise as an old man -- never old-fashioned and never modern, carried to
the grave and always alive.

"His smile, which was so human, still shines on us transfigured."

Rethinking Mozart - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10965518/site/newsweek/

On the 250th anniversary of his birth, a more realistic picture of the
composer's musical genius is emerging.
By By Andrew Moravcsik
Newsweek International

Jan. 30, 2006 issue - Mozart has overtaken Beethoven, the favorite son
of the 19th century, as the most admired composer in the history of
Western music. He has the most recordings. Classical radio stations
run a morning Mozart hour. Before the sophisticated audiences of
Manhattan, he alone gets his own annual festival: Mostly Mozart. Many
believe (despite meager scientific evidence) that if one plays
Mozart's music to babies in the womb, they will grow up smarter and
more musical-perhaps even a genius like Wolfgang.

In our minds, Mozart has become the archetypal genius, a divinely
inspired wunderkind for whom composing came easily. He was talented
and therefore-so the Hollywood script of "Amadeus" tells us-a
counterculture rebel who wore crazy clothes, told racy jokes and
slummed with the downtrodden. Eventually he suffered the inevitable
martyrdom of being misunderstood. Lesser minds, led by imperial
composer Antonio Salieri, plotted against him. In the end, his
audience deserted him. He died penniless, and was cast into a pauper's
grave.

Yet what we know of Mozart's life suggests that all these
preconceptions are false. He was neither poor nor underappreciated.
Composing did not always come easily to him. And he was not a
scatological social misfit. But he was a genius.

Mozart was an astonishingly productive composer. In 35 short years, he
wrote more than 600 works-enough music to fill nearly 200 CDs. Nearly
every year, Mozart wrote more music than the Beatles recorded in their
entire career. He excelled in every leading musical form of his era,
composing 41 symphonies, 27 piano concertos, 26 string quartets, 21
operas, 17 piano sonatas, 15 masses and a host of other pieces. And
had he not died young, what we have would be known as mere "middle
period" Mozart.

It is strikingly original music. Mozart invented the modern piano
concerto, in part to show off his own virtuosity. His late symphonies,
grand in scale and sonority, pointed the way to Beethoven. His string
quartets won praise from his friend Joseph Haydn (who invented the
genre) as "the greatest composer I know." At his best-above all in his
mature operas-Mozart ranks with the likes of Shakespeare and Rembrandt
as creator of some of humankind's most moving art. He was, the
authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians concludes,
"the most universal composer in the history of Western music."

Mozart was a piano virtuoso at 6; a great composer at 18. He was
legendary, above all, for his ability to improvise. His memory was
extraordinary, and included the ability to sit down after hearing a
piece for the first time and write it down. He could compose while
doing other things: he wrote one piece while playing pool, another
while bowling.

Yet while most great musicians were prodigies, only a small percentage
of prodigies become mature musicians, let alone transcendent
composers. Mozart beat the odds because he had everything else going
for him.

His father, Leopold Mozart, was a professional composer and one of
Europe's leading music teachers. Surely he ranks among history's
pushiest stage dads, giving up nearly all his outside activities to
manage his son's extraordinary talent. Leopold promoted the young
prodigy by spreading myths about Wolfgang's ability to play piano and
violin without any lessons, but behind the scenes he made his young
son practice hard. The same goes for composing. Of Wolfgang's early
minuets, Princeton musicologist Scott Burnham quips: "It's pretty
clear Papa was helping him with his homework."

Mozart was also in the right place. His birthplace of Salzburg was
small, but it lay in the musical epicenter of Europe. Young Wolfgang
spent most of his youth traveling to the top cultural spots-Italy,
Germany, Austria, France, England-where he learned all the current
musical styles.

Even in his maturity, and despite a gift for melodic invention, Mozart
often struggled for musical breakthroughs. His greatest string
quartets-the six he dedicated to Haydn-required three years of work.
Before producing his first great German opera, "The Abduction From the
Seraglio," he started three successive operas and left them
incomplete-though he already had 12 others under his belt.

In his prime, living in Vienna, Mozart was no starving recluse, but an
18th-century Yuppie who spent money compulsively. He remained
practical about his livelihood, never writing a piece unless he
expected to earn some cash. He spent his income-$100,000 a year or
more in current dollars-on fancy apartments, fine food, servants, a
comfortable carriage, fancy clothes and his family. His favorite
possession was a flashy red silk coat. Far from feeling contempt for
aristocrats, Mozart wanted to fit in with them.

In his last years, war and recession interrupted Viennese concert life
and medical problems plagued his wife, Konstanze. He was forced to
borrow from friends, giving rise to the myth of his poverty. Had he
lived just a few more years, however, he almost certainly would have
followed his friend Haydn to lucrative London. His music was already
popular across Europe, and Mozart might well have emerged as its
pre-eminent composer. When he died, he was cast into a common grave
not because he was poor, but because every commoner, by imperial
decree, got the same treatment.

Yet the story of the maligned and misunderstood artist persists. In
the modern world, we cling to the romantic notion that geniuses must
live this way-thanks in part to the image that Beethoven, a generation
after Mozart, cultivated. But Mozart was a creature of the
18th-century Enlightenment. He knew his music was better than most,
and he said so. But he did not adopt-and would not have understood-the
role of the distant romantic hero possessed of extraordinary genius.
In his greatest works, "The Magic Flute" or "The Marriage of Figaro,"
Mozart appeals to both the most popular and the most sophisticated
musical awareness within us. And he renders in music the subtlest
shadings of human emotions-love, jealousy, duty and wit-with a
naturalness and human sympathy that has never been equaled in opera.
It is music, so pianist Robert Levin puts it, that "holds up a mirror
and lets us see ourselves." No wonder our love affair with Mozart goes
on.

Moravcsik directs the European Union program at Princeton University.

FT.com / Arts & Weekend - Sublime, not divine
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/8e88d502-88b1-11da-94a6-0000779e2340.html


By Andrew Clark
Published: January 20 2006 14:57 | Last updated: January 20 2006 14:57

ftmag 21-1 Did God choose Mozart? For the past 250 years an
influential body of opinion has assumed so. His elder sister told an
obituary writer that even as a three-year-old Mozart had shown
"extraordinary, God-given talent". When Mozart was 12, his father
Leopold defended the decision to exhibit him round Europe by saying it
was his duty "to proclaim to the world a miracle, which God allowed to
be born in Salzburg". After his death in 1791 the notion that Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart had been uniquely blessed took hold. He had been chosen
by divine providence to represent something perfect.

Nothing in the intervening two and a half centuries - not even
disclosures about Mozart's less-than-divine language or lifestyle -
has succeeded in denting this view. Barely a month ago the German news
magazine Der Spiegel carried a cover story under the headline "Das
himmlische Kind" (The heavenly child). It maintained that "just a few
bars of his music are enough to make it immediately obvious why, in
subway stations where Mozart's music is played, the crime-rate drops".
Mozart opens the ears of the unborn, it said; he reawakens a belief in
God.

It is easy to understand why the divine view of Mozart still holds
sway. The 19th and 20th centuries spawned all sorts of Mozart myths,
encouraging people to believe that not only was every piece of music
he wrote a work of genius, but that it flowed from his pen without
effort. Milos Forman's 1984 film Amadeus compounded those myths, while
creating one of its own: that Mozart was a clown. To this day Mozart's
music is generally believed to represent a perfection of pleasantness.
And perfection is not human.

The divine inspiration theory is a convenient way of ducking the
question most fundamental to a proper understanding of Mozart: what
made him special? Why was Mozart, more than anyone else, able to
create music that has resonated down the ages, transcending barriers
of age, ethnicity, taste and education? And what are the particular
characteristics that distinguish a Mozart score from the work of his
contemporaries?

You might have expected these questions to come into detailed
consideration somewhere in the deluge of books published to coincide
with the 250th anniversary of his birth next Friday. But no: Mozart's
"specialness" is so all-encompassing, so self-explanatory, that no
musicological explanation or contextual analysis is apparently
necessary. It is as if, by recounting the life, appraising the works
and sketching the background, it will be obvious why Mozart holds the
place he does.

And anyway, asking what made Mozart special is to ask the
unanswerable, isn't it? Despite the enormous advances in genetic
research over the past 40 years we still don't know what biological
factors govern the distribution and concentration of talent. The world
of science has yet to work out how the neuro-receptors in our brain
and nervous system respond to stimuli such as sound. All we can say is
that Mozart's "gift" was a unique fusion of genetic happenstance and
musical environment.

Even if science has not advanced far enough to divine the secret of
his genius, the latest Mozart bibliography at least furnishes us with
a more accurate picture of his life and music than was previously
available. The weightiest of these new tomes is the Cambridge Mozart
Encyclopedia: it cites personality traits that have had little place
in the traditional view of the composer, such as complacency,
arrogance and a need to be loved for himself and not for his musical
achievements - the latter a product of his being paraded around Europe
like a circus animal from the age of seven. But even the Encyclopedia
occasionally falls for the sugarcoated view, as when it lists the
ingredients of "Mozart balls", the chocolate confection sold in
Salzburg since the late 19th century.

Stanley Sadie brings us closer to the composer's skin: Mozart: The
Early Years 1756-1781 is the most balanced guide to Mozart's youth
ever published in English. Sadie's self-confessed aim is to be
comprehensive, and it is to his great credit that he wears his
learning lightly, while reaching so many corners of Mozart's world.
All the more tragic, then, that Sadie, one of the most eminent English
musicologists of the past 50 years, should have died before completing
a companion volume on the composer's final decade. His book
nevertheless stands well on its own, because it diverts our gaze from
the fully formed works on which Mozart's reputation is staked, and
focuses on the youthful experiences and influences that made them
possible.


Mad on Mozart?

In Mozart and his Operas, by contrast, David Cairns homes in on the
mature masterpieces, examining them from a noticeably more Anglophone
viewpoint than Sadie. Unlike Sadie, who lays out the evidence and
leaves us to draw our own conclusions, Cairns writes with the zeal of
a missionary, arguing his case with evidence drawn from a lifetime's
fascination with his subject. Mozart's music, he writes, "is an
ever-expanding universe. The better we know it... the more marvellous
it becomes". But this is a partial view, hanging on a narrow slice of
Mozart's output.

Where Cairns scores is in his analysis of Mozart's attitude to women.
Of the three da Ponte operas, the only one revealing a split in the
approach of composer and librettist, he says, is Cosi fan tutte.
Lorenzo da Ponte's view of the sexes was one-sided; Mozart's music
restores the balance. By implying the incompleteness of the lovers'
reconciliation at the final curtain, Mozart makes it "true to life" -
an issue delicately sidestepped in Anthony Holden's The Man Who Wrote
Mozart. Despite the title of this new biography of da Ponte, Mozart
emerges as the senior partner.

As for Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart's other great librettist, Cairns
says the original draft for Die Zauberflote is "full of condescending
or disparaging comments [about women] fit to raise the hackles not
simply of feminists but of anyone with the most elementary sense of
justice". Here again Mozart transcended his librettist's misogyny: "By
the middle of the second act Pamina and her progress have become the
central issue of the drama and the inspiration of the most intensely
charged music."

Reappraisal of Mozart's women - to the point of tipping the balance
from one extreme to the other - is very much in keeping with our
Zeitgeist. So is the process of going back to sources, weighing their
reliability and revising inherited interpretations. In his short
prologue and epilogue Cairns debunks as many of the myths surrounding
Mozart as he can find. So does Jeremy Siepmann in his brief study,
Mozart: His Life and Music. But the best equipped in this regard is
Early Music enthusiast Nicholas Kenyon: his Faber Pocket Guide to
Mozart is not just the cheapest but the most down-to-earth and
succinct of anniversary commentaries.

We know now, for example, that the Sinfonia Concertante for wind
instruments, long-established in the Kochel catalogue of Mozart's
works, was almost certainly not composed by him; that the published
score of Mitridate includes an aria by Quirino Gasparini, who had
already written an opera to the same libretto; that the Requiem is as
much a fabrication of posterity as an authentic Mozart score.

More significantly, new light has been thrown on Mozart's use of
language, his health, finances and working methods. Contrary to
popular belief, the frequent references he made to "shit" and
"arsehole" - a supposedly infantile fascination for the scatological
that still shocks believers in the "divine" Mozart - were not personal
to him or indicative of a scatty nature. No, these words and
references were a lingua franca in the Mozart family, including his
mother.

Studies of the paper he used have shown how he sometimes started works
and broke off - countering the notion that Mozart always wrote fully
finished masterpieces straight from his head. As to his earnings, it
transpires he was probably not as impoverished in his final years as
has been claimed. And his corpse was definitely not given a pauper's
burial or flung into a communal grave. The third-class funeral chosen
by Constanze, his widow, was one that most Viennese opted for - the
result of Emperor Joseph II's reforms, aimed at curbing the costly and
ostentatious burial customs popular in 1780s Vienna.

Of course, the myth of a pauper's burial may be too deeply entrenched
to be destroyed: it suits the notion of the miraculous being who
vanished as mysteriously as he had come. If so, the chasm between
academic research and popular perception is set to grow, not narrow.

Which makes it all the more vital that scholars descend from the
clouds and specify what it was in Mozart's nature and nurture than
made him unusual, and what are the ingredients that distinguish his
music. No one today could convincingly claim there's something
"special" about Mozart's early works. Their only value is the light
they shed on his development, illustrating how he taught himself from
others' music and built the foundations for his own creativity.

What distinguished Mozart was not just his receptivity to sound and
musical organisation - something that was determined genetically.
There has to be more to it than that, because many other musicians,
from Felix Mendelssohn to Nat King Cole, have proved themselves
equally receptive. I would even venture that similarly great talents
exist today - but they have little or nothing to say because their
talent does not correspond to the time in which they live.

Mozart's talents corresponded exactly to the time in which he lived -
an aesthetic world of extreme formality, which he used as a backdrop
for his great powers of expression. And he was given the ideal
introduction to it, being raised and educated by a man, Leopold
Mozart, who had written the foremost book on music-making of his time;
a man who was himself an accomplished composer, who had the
wherewithal to recognise and exploit his son's extraordinary talent.
By the age of 12 Mozart had met just about every major living composer
and, in Mannheim, worked with the greatest orchestra of his day. It
was an advantage of humungous proportions.

Mozart worked within the strict musical forms of his time but
transcended the limitations of his contemporaries. What enabled him to
do so was his sense of invention and improvisation, harmonically as
well as melodically: no one else made scales and simple melodic
passages sound so interesting. The material itself is not "difficult",
but Mozart adds ingredients that keep it from sounding routine. Even
when he introduces dissonances, the music is never ugly. In its
highest state, it is the expression of utter beauty. That is what
makes it immortal.

If Mozart had lived in Siberia or the Sahara it is unlikely he would
have written music of such proportion and depth as the Sinfonia
Concertante for violin and viola. If he was born today I doubt if he
would be writing music at all. But the wonder of Mozart is that no
"ifs" are necessary. He is a rare instance of one man, one time, one
place, the fusion of which gave us a musical legacy that is heavenly
for its very humanity.

MOZART: The Early Years 1756-1781
by Stanley Sadie
Oxford University Press ?25, 644 pages

MOZART AND HIS OPERAS
by David Cairns
Penguin ?22, 272 pages

THE CAMBRIDGE MOZART ENCYCLOPEDIA
edited by Cliff Eisen and Simon Keefe
Cambridge University Press ?95, 662 pages

MOZART: His Life and Music
by Jeremy Siepmann
Naxos ?16.99, 209 pages

THE FABER POCKET GUIDE TO MOZART
by Nicholas Kenyon
Faber ?8.99, 390 pages

THE MAN WHO WROTE MOZART: The Extraordinary Life of Lorenzo da Ponte
by Anthony Holden
Weidenfeld & Nicolson ?18.99, 238 pages

SouthFlorida.com: Why Mozart matters
http://www.southflorida.com/sfl-mu22mozartjan22,0,3411381,print.story

From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel


On the 250th anniversary of his birth, the world's greatest composer seems
omnipresent

By Lawrence A. Johnson
Classical Music Writer
January 22 2006
The facts of his life are iconic, even to a wider public that has
never attended a concert or purchased a recording of his music.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born 250 years ago this Friday in
Salzburg, Austria, and died in Vienna in 1791, at age 35. In his short
life, Mozart composed voluminously, completing more than 600 works.
His early years as a scarily gifted prodigy, equally adept at violin,
piano and composition, are as well known as his later impatience with
the indignities of court life and his mixed success as a freelance
composer.
While its premise of Mozart's poisoning by his rival Salieri is
fictional, the 1984 film version of Peter Shaffer's hit play Amadeus
is generally correct in its broad-brush outline of the composer's
biography. Directed by Milos Forman, the movie succeeded in bringing
Mozart's music to a wider audience beyond the concert hall -- even if
Tom Hulce's Americanized Wolfgang cemented for many Shaffer's view of
the composer as a vulgar, scatological boob touched by the hand of God
with unparalleled musical genius.
Mozart's 250th is being marked with all the hoopla one would expect,
from copious performances and recording reissues to such Gothic
weirdness as a recent Austrian television special that did a
toxicological examination of what was believed to be the composer's
skull. (The results of this "CSI: Salzburg" were inconclusive.)
In the coming days and weeks, South Floridians will have plenty of
choices of where to get their Amadeus fix (see performance sidebar);
this afternoon's all-Mozart chamber concert and next weekend's New
World Symphony concerts are fine places to start.
BEYOND BIOGRAPHY
It's easy to become ensnared in the compelling details of his
biography or pore over his engaging and compulsively readable
correspondence, and the true Mozartian should find time for both this
anniversary year. But the best way to fete Mozart on his 250th
birthday is simply to listen to his music.
He wrote with bracing individuality and supreme mastery in every
genre: more than 40 symphonies, operas, chamber music, 27 piano
concertos, five violin concertos, two flute concertos, string
quartets, sonatas, serenades, church music, masses and such oddities
as cassations and the Masonic Funeral Music.
In the decades after his death, his music was viewed as a quaint court
relic: elegant and tuneful but without much depth or, amazingly, much
passion. In the early 19th century, Mozart's most performed works were
his most tragic -- the Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466 and the
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, music more in tune with the prevailing
tragic-romantic zeitgeist.
Mozart's slow, inexorable comeback reached its height in the 20th
century, where historical perspective and the explosion of
contemporary musical "isms" made it easier to appreciate the full
extent of his achievement.
Today Mozart's music is omnipresent, relentlessly utilized for
commercial and background music in fine dining establishments as an
aural decorative element and instant imprimatur of "class." In the
wider culture, it's more often mined as a kind of handy, sonic
pick-me-up ("Mozart in Morning Moods"); works like the relentlessly
peppy Eine kleine Nachtmusick and his opera overtures make a quick
jolt of musical caffeine.
So why does Mozart matter now? What is it, really, about Mozart's
music that makes it so compelling and rewarding to 21st century
audiences?
A MELODIC GIFT
First and most obviously, no composer before or since -- not even his
great friend Haydn -- possessed a more limitless font of gracious,
seemingly effortless melody. The blend of elegant lyricism and
quicksilver virtuosity in his piano concertos remains unequaled:
Mozart often reels off four deftly varied themes before the soloist
even enters. The same bounteous thematic richness is found in his
myriad of concertos for other instruments.
No one wrote better tunes or more memorable ones. The sheer range of
expression is mind-boggling, encompassing the infectious cheer of the
Horn Concertos and the bleak grimness of the Adagio in B minor and
Requiem and all points in between.
His final three symphonies remain the most performed, but it is the
striking richness of the three-dozen-plus that preceded them that is
truly astonishing. The finale of Mozart's Jupiter symphony offers one
of the most amazing moments in all of Western music, when the five
themes of the final movement take flight simultaneously in a
remarkable feat of contrapuntal legerdemain. In his late works, Mozart
pared his lyricism down to even purer and deeper essentials, as with
the Clarinet Concerto, the 27th and final piano concerto and The Magic
Flute.
In addition to the indelible melodic gift, what also appeals is the
form, order and expressive precision: Mozart's line, balance and
proportion provide qualities infrequently apparent in our notably
graceless age. That rigor is complemented by the verve and youthful
spirit, tonal polish and supreme craft that Mozart brought to every
form.
OPERATIC GENIUS
But allied to the Apollonian balance and seamless mastery of every
genre, it is in his operas that one finds Mozart's greatest genius
manifested.
It's striking how music written in the past decade can sound more
dated than Jimmy Carter jokes. And yet the three Mozart-da Ponte
operas, penned more than two centuries ago, remain fresh, engaging and
insightful in the eternal foibles, contradictions and complexities of
the human heart. It is here that Mozart's unmatched flair for vocal
writing, allied to da Ponte's sharply observed words, reaches a
humanity unequalled in its depth, unflinching honesty and yet
ultimately benevolent view.
At times, the psychological penetration seems startlingly modern.
After the light-hearted high jinks of Act I of Le nozze di Figaro, the
Countess enters in Act 2 and the mood instantly changes, deepening and
darkening as she muses on the pain of living with a philandering mate.
At the opera's close, when the Count kneels to ask her forgiveness,
the effect is intensely moving, the vocal writing for the ensemble
moving from darkness to bright rejoicing in a modulation of
breath-taking depth and beauty.
In Cosi fan tutte, two cocky young men wager that their sibling
fianc?es will remain faithful, a bet that goes very wrong. When they
return in disguise to romance each other's sweetheart, the opera veers
from broad slapstick to an unexpectedly unresolved ending, with the
old relationships destroyed and one of the suitors coldly embittered.
And in The Magic Flute, Mozart's music transcends the formulaic
"escape" scenario and Masonic allegorical scaffolding to morph into a
journey of enlightenment for the audience as well as the characters.
His penultimate opera explores serious themes such as personal
discipline, the primacy of loving relationships in the social order,
and the importance of searching for truth and higher values while
subjecting selfish interests to a greater common good. It's all
wrapped around some of the most glorious music ever put to paper, from
Papageno's childlike songs and the lovers' soaring arias to the Queen
of the Night's brilliant coloratura and the spiritual nobility of
Sarastro.
As with any art form, what you get out of Mozart's music depends upon
the effort you put into it. Catch a Mozart performance this month,
pick up a recording, even add Amadeus to your Netflix queue. Few
composers are as readily accessible to even the wariest classical
novice.
And though the bracing vitality and melodies will draw you in at
first, wait for Mozart's deeper rewards: the generosity of spirit,
consolatory spiritual depth and profound insight into what it means to
be human in a decidedly imperfect world. To borrow a title from a
once-popular crossover series, you may well find yourself hooked on
Mozart.
Lawrence A. Johnson can be reached at ljohnson at sun-sentinel.com or
954-356-4708.

'Beloved of God' -- The Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20060120-095732-5007r

By Jo Biddle
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Published January 21, 2006

PARIS -- Try to imagine a world without Mozart. What a desolate place
that would be, empty of the joyous, graceful melodies from piano
sonatas to lullabies that have passed into our collective
consciousness.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, as Europe's feuding royal
dynasties were about to embark on the Seven Years' War, Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg on Jan. 27, 1756.
By age 3, he was playing on a keyboard, and by 5, he had written
his first composition. When this child prodigy died at 35 in Vienna,
he left behind a prodigious body of some 630 works, including 41
symphonies and 27 piano concertos.
Despite more than two centuries of human scientific, intellectual
and cultural achievements, Mozart has transcended the vagaries of
changing tastes and fashions to remain perhaps the best-loved composer
of classical music.
Even those who profess to be cultural ignoramuses can hum a Mozart
tune -- such as the nursery rhyme "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" (he
wrote the tune; the words were added later) -- while many unknowingly
have a Mozart composition as a ring tone on their mobile phones.
Babies are played Mozart's complex compositions to stimulate their
intellectual development, and when Voyager 1 took off for the edge of
the solar system in 1977, it was carrying in its time capsule a
recording of Mozart's "Magic Flute," among other examples of Earth
music.
"Mozart's music has a mysterious quality which speaks to everyone.
It speaks as much to people who know nothing about music and seduces
them, as well as to musicologists," explains Genevieve Geffray,
curator at the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation.
Mozart's genius appears even to have been hinted from birth; his
middle name, Amadeus, means "beloved of God."
However, it was his father, Leopold, himself a musician with a
court orchestra, who recognized and nurtured his son's incredible
talent from a very early age.
In 1761, Leopold decided it was time to introduce his young son
and his talented elder daughter, Nannerl (Maria Anna), to the public,
and they embarked on a series of tours to royal courts, including in
Milan, Naples, Munich, Paris and Vienna.
Such tours were to become common later during the Romantic era,
but in Mozart's time, they were rare and grueling. Leopold and the two
children traveled thousands of miles on bumpy roads in their coach and
horses.
Mozart "went to meet some of the best musicians of his time, and
in this he was one of the first great Europeans," Miss Geffray says.
In 1781, Mozart, by then a young man, opted to settle in Vienna.
Against his father's wishes, he married Constanze Weber, with whom he
had six children, two of whom survived.
He lived off teachings and commissions, and during the last 10
years of his life, he was to write some of his greatest works,
including his operas "The Marriage of Figaro," "Cosi Fan Tutte" and
"The Magic Flute."
"Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be
painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always
remain music," Mozart once said.
He was to die in dire financial straits, with his last work "The
Requiem," commissioned by an anonymous stranger, unfinished. The
family was forced to hire another composer to complete it.
Despite his musical legacy, the many unresolved questions
surrounding Mozart make it hard to separate the man from the myth.
The 1984 box-office hit "Amadeus," by Milos Forman, presented the
world with an image of Mozart as a crude braggart with a puerile,
sniggering sense of humor.
This has led to unconfirmed speculation that he may have suffered
from the neurodevelopmental disorder Tourette's syndrome.
"In the 19th century, he was considered a cherub; they made a
saint out of him. And then with the Forman film, the public at large
discovered a human being with all his impulses and his problems,
rude-speaking and writing vulgarities to his cousin," Miss Geffray
says. "That was just one part of his personality, not the whole
Mozart."
Whatever the composer's true nature, the world is preparing to
honor and celebrate his musical legacy during the 250th anniversary of
his birth this year, and many agree none can compare with him.
"Mozart's music is so beautiful as to entice angels down to
Earth," the German poet Franz Alexander von Kleist, a Mozart
contemporary, once wrote.
Even other renowned composers have bowed to Mozart's outstanding
talent.
"Mozart is the highest, the culminating point that beauty has
attained in the sphere of music," 19th-century Russian composer Peter
Ilich Tchai-kovsky said.

Bill Kristol: Bravo! Mozart
Because of his greatness, Mozart cannot help but be edifying.
Weekly Standard, 01/30/2006, Volume 011, Issue 19

"POSTERITY WILL NOT SEE such a talent for a century to come." So said
Josef Haydn, shortly after Mozart's death at age 35 in 1791. Haydn might
safely have said posterity would not see such a talent for two centuries
to come--and counting.

But talent is one thing. Talent that becomes greatness is another.
Mozart's greatness is far more widely, and intelligently, appreciated
today than it was 100 years ago, or even 50. And no one can complain that
Mozart's 250th birthday is going unnoticed, or that his legacy isn't being
treated with appropriate respect. But when the New York Times weighed in a
few days ago with a silly, pseudo-ironic debunking of anticipated excesses
in this year of celebrating Mozart, I was reminded of how much trouble we
have with human greatness.

And always have had. The English critic W.J. Turner wrote Mozart: The Man
and His Works in 1938. Much of it has been overtaken by subsequent
scholarship, but it remains full of insights: "The truth is that we
mediocre men cannot even imagine what it is to be a great man like Mozart
and Shakespeare and thus to be free from the domination of the
contemporary prejudices, beliefs, morals, artistic rules, scruples (call
them what you will) with which even the most enlightened of us are--often
unconsciously--obsessed."

Real greatness causes discomfort. You'd think it would make people feel
better--you look up at someone's achievement and think, gee, the human
condition isn't as hopeless as I suspected. But greatness is
nervous-making. And it can be, in a way, depressing. Charles Gounod said,
"Before Mozart, all my ambition turns to despair."

But we have far more reason to be grateful than to despair. Allan Bloom
believed that listening to Mozart was as close to the "experience of the
beautiful" as he ever encountered in his life. And when things feel stale,
you can listen to Mozart, and see what moved Robert Schumann to ask: "Does
it not seem as if Mozart's works become fresher and fresher the oftener we
hear them?"

Not just fresher, but more interesting. Mozart's music transcends all the
obvious categories. By this I don't mean that he wrote amazing works in
every genre--operas, symphonies, piano and other concerti, chamber music,
sonatas, and so on--but that he transcends the usual moods. Mozart is
light and grave, pretty and profound, masculine and feminine, comic and
tragic--often all in the same work.

This seems particularly clear in the great operas written in collaboration
with Lorenzo da Ponte. The Marriage of Figaro is a comic opera, but like
many of Shakespeare's comedies, it's a short step from tragedy. Don
Giovanni pretends to be a moralizing tragedy, Cos? fan Tutte a
demoralizing comedy--but both are like Shakespeare's "problem plays,"
neither clearly comic nor tragic. Turner observes: "What puzzles the
average person is just this strange blend of the tragic and the comic.
Most people like to have these elements carefully separated into different
works of art so that they may feel safe. They are prepared to look upon
life as either a comedy or a tragedy, since in such a presentation life is
made a little less real and provides a form of escape, a convention or
refuge. One may thus laugh or weep to the full, knowing in one's heart
that life is not quite like this; it is neither so comic nor tragic."

Mozart provides no such comfort or escape. He does inspire, as Aaron
Copland said, "a certain awe and wonder." We're short on awe and wonder
these days, long on cheap cynicism and solemn sanctimony. Mozart has
little use for either. Bloom notes Mozart's "capacity to be both deep and
rational, a combination often said to be impossible." And he adds, "As
Rossini recognized, no composer was witty as Mozart."

For Bloom, Mozart's music was "an antidote to all the seductions of
nihilism present in our world." Does Bloom here run the risk of trying to
make Mozart's music edifying? Of course he knew that great music does not
necessarily make its listeners better human beings. And he was aware that
the leading nihilists of our age, the Nazi regime in Germany, tried to
make a big production of the 150th anniversary of Mozart's death. But it
didn't quite work. Mozart resists political appropriation.

"Mozart took so very much for granted which lesser minds argue about,"
said W.J. Turner. "He was too understanding and too profound (though
active) a fatalist to be a partisan. He never turned his works of art into
judgments. He merely--like the Creator of nature--gave them individual
life, and in his works his music, like the rain and the sunshine, falls
alike on the just and the unjust."

And yet, because of his greatness, Mozart cannot help but be edifying.

Celebrating Mozart's 250th Anniversary - New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2006/01/29/travel/1124994361879.html
January 29, 2006

Journeys
By ANNE MIDGETTE

TWO hundred and fifty years old and still a wunderkind: Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart, probably the most beloved classical composer in the
Western world, is the birthday boy of 2006, and he will be honored
around the globe.

Mozart was himself a world-class traveler, crisscrossing Europe from
England to Prague, and this anniversary year, most of the stations of
his journeys - and some places he never went to at all - will be
pulling out the stops to commemorate the anniversary with concerts,
Mozart tours, Mozart meals, you name it, to enable modern travelers to
follow, more or less, in his footsteps.

Following are a few particularly important sites for celebrating
"Mozart 2006."

Salzburg

Mozart is a tourist industry in Salzburg even in nonanniversary years.
Visitors flock to the modest houses where he was born in 1756 (the
Geburtshaus) and grew up (Wohnhaus), and eat the famous Mozartkugel
bonbons (whose only direct connection with the composer is his face on
the wrapper). The Mozarteum, the local music conservatory, offers
concerts throughout the year and a Mozartwoche every winter. And the
Salzburg Festival, a European summer highlight, was founded in 1920 to
present Mozart's operas, though its mandate has expanded considerably
since then.

While attempting to outdo all this for the anniversary - starting with
a star-studded series of birthday concerts this weekend - the city
fathers are also trying to relate Mozart to the modern world. The
birth house has been fitted out with an installation by the
avant-garde theater artist Robert Wilson. The Mozarteum, in addition
to its traditional Mozartwoche (Jan. 22 to Feb. 5), is offering a
four-part festival called "Dialogues," linking Mozart with
contemporary composers in themed miniseries with titles like "Love"
and "Death" (the last three are in March, May and December). A
festival called "OFF Mozart" (Aug. 20 to Oct. 7) gives experimental
performers their own Mozart forum.

Opera, too, will be state of the art. Even though the local
Landestheater has three Mozart operas ("La Finta Giardiniera," "Don
Giovanni" and "The Magic Flute") in repertory this year, the year's
biggest attraction will be the Salzburg Festival (July 23 to Aug. 31),
which is presenting all 22 of Mozart's stage works, from juvenilia to
masterpieces, in cutting-edge productions with major singers,
including Anna Netrebko and Thomas Hampson. But there will be plenty
of traditional Mozart performances as well, starting with a series of
30 "Best of Mozart" concerts on weekends from February to November.
The famous Salzburger Marionetten will still be going strong (in
January, April, May to September and late December), performing puppet
versions of Mozart operas. An exhibition called "Viva! Mozart"
organized by the Carolino Augusteum Museum presents images and scores
from the composer's life. And the Mozartkugel should remain the same.

For details on programs and sites, see the English version of the
Salzburg Mozart 2006 Web site at www.mozart2006.at; click "English" at
the bottom of the page.

Vienna

Salzburg may have been the city of Mozart's birth, but Vienna was
where he chose to live as an adult, and where he wrote some of his
greatest music. And Vienna never passes up a chance to celebrate its
storied past, at, for instance, the famous Albertina, which recreates
Mozart's milieu through art works and documents, or the J?disches
Museum (Jewish Museum), which focuses on Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo
da Ponte (both March through September).

The city's famous theaters will enjoy a particularly happy
renaissance. The Theater an der Wien, founded in 1801 by Mozart's
"Magic Flute" librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, but recently a home to
Broadway-like musicals, has returned to its original function as an
opera house for the event. Check out "Idomeneo" with Neil Shicoff, a
co-production with the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera), in
February and June, or ballets by John Neumeier ("Requiem," September)
and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker ("Un moto di gioia," December).

Then there's the gorgeous Burgtheater, the most important locale for
spoken theater in the German-speaking world, which non-German visitors
to the city often miss: in May, the Staatsoper will offer another
coproduction here, "Abduction From the Seraglio." Equally storied, the
State Opera itself has three Mozart operas in its own repertory this
year, and on July 1, it will be host to the jazz pianist Chick Corea
in a Mozart piano concerto and a piece he wrote.

An artistic highlight every year in Vienna is the Wiener Festwochen
(Vienna Festival Weeks, May 12 to June 18), which offers Mozart in
every form, from concerts at the fabled Musikverein (which boasts one
of the best acoustics in Europe) to Peter Sellars, the perpetual
provocateur, directing the unfinished opera "Zaide" (May 21 to 27).

Another highlight of the year is a series of eight carefully chosen
concerts by the fine pianist Maurizio Pollini (February, April, June,
October and December) at the Konzerthaus. With all of this, it should
be easy to avoid "Mozart! The Musical."

For more details on programs and sites, go to www.wienmozart2006.at;
click "English version" at the top of the page.

Prague

Mozart loved Prague, and Prague loved him back. The world premiere of
"Don Giovanni" took place in 1787 in the lovely little Estates
Theater, and it was one of Mozart's biggest hits during his own
lifetime (though "La Clemenza di Tito," which followed in 1791, was,
and remains, less of a crowd-pleaser). So you'd better believe that
there will be plenty of "Don Giovannis" to see as part of Prague's
Mozart celebrations, including the premiere of a new production at the
Estates Theater on May 20 that will run frequently throughout the
summer (and every day in late July and August).

The city has three opera houses. The National Theater was one of the
first monuments to overt Czech nationalism; it administers the Estates
Theater, but will be offering plenty of Mozart operas itself as well
as a new ballet by the noted Czech choreographer Jiri Kylian, called
"Mozart? Mozart!" (March, April, May and October). Then there's the
cash-strapped State Theater, originally built as the playhouse for the
city's large German-speaking population; it will weigh in with "Magic
Flute" and an exhibit about its own long history with Mozart
(September to December).

This year, the Czech Philharmonic is more interested in another
anniversary: its own 100th. But in addition to a gala Mozart concert
in January, it will play at least one Mozart symphony, the "Jupiter,"
during the Prague Spring Festival (May 11 to June 3), which has a
number of other Mozart works - and orchestras - scattered through the
program. In August comes the Prague Music Festival; among its Mozart
offerings the Prague Philharmonia performing Mozart's Symphony No. 38,
the so-called "Prague" symphony (Aug. 22).

And in December, the city's orchestras will mark the end of the Mozart
year with another burst of Mozartiana.

The Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra will offer a concert with one of
the composer's finest concertos, also premiered in Prague, the
clarinet concerto, as well as the great Requiem (Dec. 5). And the
Prague Symphony Orchestra will give the official closing concert on
Dec. 14, with a program of arias and Symphony No. 39 under the baton
of an esteemed local son, Jiri Kout.

For details, see www.mozartprague2006.com.

New York

The closest Mozart ever got to New York was in the mind of his
librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, who ended his turbulent days teaching at
Columbia University. Still, if you don't travel to Europe for Mozart
this year, Europe's Mozart will travel to you. Can't make it to the
Mozarteum in Salzburg? Its orchestra will play at Lincoln Center on
Feb. 26. Won't be in Vienna for the Festwochen? You can still see
Peter Sellars's "Zaide" at the Mostly Mozart Festival on Aug. 9, 11
and 12 at the Rose Theater at the Time Warner Center.

Mostly Mozart (July 28 to Aug. 26) will be a linchpin of New York's
Mozart celebration, trying to put a fresh spin on the composer's work.
This includes commissioning a new piece by the choreographer Mark
Morris, "Mozart Dances" (Aug. 17, 18 and 19), or offering the violin
concertos with the eclectic soloist Gidon Kremer (Aug. 6 and 7). At
the other end of the spectrum are William Christie and Les Arts
Florissants in what is sure to be an interesting period "Idomeneo"
(Aug. 23 and 25).

But there are plenty of other Mozart homages. The Chamber Music
Society of Lincoln Center offers concerts at Alice Tully Hall titled
"Mozart, Soul of Genius" through Tuesday and May 5 to 7. The last two
concerts in the venerable Guarneri Quartet's Mozart celebration at the
Metropolitan Museum are on Feb. 25 and April 8. For even deeper
immersion, try the pianist Charles Rosen's three lecture-performances
at the 92nd Street Y, called "Mozart within History" (March 12 and 19,
April 23), or the musicologist Robert Levin's talk about the violin
sonatas in his continuing series "Mozart Explored" (May 25 at Weill
Hall at Carnegie Hall). Downstairs at Zankel Hall, the Takacs Quartet
offers an "Accent on Mozart" on Feb. 24 and April 21.

April is the Mozart month in New York's opera houses: "The Marriage of
Figaro" comes to the Met, and both the City Opera and the tiny Amato
Opera will offer very different takes on "Don Giovanni."

And for a different taste of Mozart, there's the Caf? Mozart (154 West
70th Street), with live music every weekend.

For information on the Mostly Mozart Festival and other Lincoln Center
events, see www.lincolncenter.org. Other relevant Web sites include
www.carnegiehall.org and www.chambermusicsociety.org.

The Reform Club: The Mozart Model
http://reformclub.blogspot.com/2006/01/mozart-model.html#comments

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

The Mozart Model

Dr. Francis Schaeffer wisely looked to the culture and intellectual
traditions of Western civilization for answers to the important
question he repeatedly asked in his excelllent writings: How should we
then live? I suspect that quite a few of us look to the arts, and
particularly the popular arts, with exactly that in mind, whether
consciously or otherwise. An excellent look at the works of Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart in the current Weekly Standard, by Fred Baumann,
examines the great composer with that in mind:
. . . [L]istening to Mozart calls to mind (and in some ways turns you
into) a certain kind of person, a more complicated sort than we mostly
go in for today. Not a redemptive Wagnerian hero or cynical slacker,
not a high-minded virtuoso of compassion and/or righteous indignation,
not a "realist" or an "idealist," but someone who both acknowledges,
lives in, accepts the viewpoint of, and participates in, all human
feelings--even the ugly ones, as we see in the marvelous revenge arias
given to the Count, Dr. Bartolo, and Figaro--but who also, in the end,
maintains as sovereign the viewpoint of rationality and order. . . .
In invoking, and to some degree creating, such a person, Mozart
implicitly makes a kind of moral case, a case for how we should live.
It is not "aesthetic" in the sense of replacing the moral with formal
beauty; it is much closer to what we find in Shakespeare's Tempest or
Measure for Measure; i.e., models of a kind of control of the passions
that gives them their due. Yet it is presented aesthetically, not
through argument or exhortation. . . .
In the end, the romantic hero and the homo economicus turn out to be
not basically different, but two sides of the same forged coin. The
Mozartean hero, whom we approach, admire, and even learn to resemble,
if only slightly, puts them to shame.
It is a figure that we don't meet much otherwise. On sale for
generations now have been simpler models of heroism, at their best the
superficially cynical but deeply moral idealist (say, Humphrey Bogart)
but, more typically, various chest-pounding moralists and romantics.
For that reason--that we tend to operate, as though instinctively, on
romantic and post-romantic antitheses about passion and reason--it is,
in fact, harder to hear Mozart well today than it used to be. Insofar
as his music transcends our categories, we either consign him to the
realm of the pretty-pretty or turn him, as some 20th-century criticism
did, into a grotesque quasi-existential Angst-ling. And of course,
Nietzsche was right that the language of aristocratic, pre-Romantic
taste is no longer available to us.
The article makes one want to listen to some Mozart and contemplate
how we should then live. It will transform your understanding of the
music and of the preternaturally wise and kindhearted man who made it.

posted by S. T. Karnick at 12:35 PM

8 Comments:

James Elliott said...
Curious. The interpretation here is almost directly contrary to
the way Mozart lived his life - which is to say, in a libertine
fashion.

1:11 PM

S. T. Karnick said...
Mozart was by no means the silly character Schaffer's play and
especially Forman's film portrayed him to be. In addition,
great artists can surpass their personal limitations through
the use of the imagination.

1:56 PM

brmerrick said...
"...[S]omeone who both acknowledges, lives in, accepts the
viewpoint of, and participates in, all human feelings..."
I think this statement goes along with what I appreciate about
Mozart (and Haydn) the most: their almost exclusively unique
ability to transcend what was otherwise a more uninteresting
period of music, marked by hundreds of forgotten composers and
their dreadfully simplistic classical forms.
What musicologists can't explain is how these two men, steeped
in the "high" classical tradition, were able to sidestep the
pitfalls of pandering to the baser human ear as so many of
their contemporaries did. Just listen to the opening theme of
Mozart's G Minor Symphony (No. 39). Where on earth (or above)
did that come from?!?
Listening to Mozart not only improves a man for the reasons
that Schaeffer mentioned, but if you understand his
contemporary history, it humbles that man as well.

2:20 PM

tbmbuzz said...
brmerrick -
One of the aspects of Mozart's genius (and to a lesser extent
Haydn's) was his ability to transcend (sometimes very subtly)
and break through the shackles of the very rigid restrictions
placed on musical structure, form and harmony during the period
he lived in. Sometimes the effect is literally unearthly. For
instance, listen to the C major chord that quietly and totally
unexpectedly slips in toward the end of the slow movement of
his Piano Concerto #22 in E flat (I forget at the moment the
key of the 2nd movement but I think it's C minor, which of
course is related to E flat major). Or the theme of the first
movement of his 24th piano concerto, where he uses ALL the
notes of the chromatic scale; talk about daring in the context
of his period! (Beethoven, of course, is known for subsequently
revolutionizing musical forms, but it was Schubert even more
who explored new bounds of harmonic progression). Countless
examples abound of Mozart's unique genius. IMO he is the best -
in every sense of the word - musician Earth has ever produced
and comes closer to absolute perfection (in the idealistic
meaning of the word) than any human being has before or since.
p.s. You mean his symphony #40 in G minor. :)

2:46 PM

S. T. Karnick said...
We must not forget that it is the existence of conventions that
enables artists to create astonishing effects by breaking the
boundaries in strategic places. As Umberto Eco points out, art
is in finding the right balance between convention and
innovation.
I too am a great admirer of Haydn, and I think him a great
example of Eco's dictum.
I think that brmerrick's characterization of the classical era
is rather an unfortunate caricature, in that even the minor
music of that time has charms that are absent from even some of
the greatest music of the Romantic Era and seldom found at all
in the subsequent century. Prettiness is not beauty, but at
least it is not ugly.

3:04 PM

brmerrick said...
Oops. No. 40 is right. 39 is E-flat Major, an entirely
different sound. Thanks for the correction.
"I think that brmerrick's characterization of the classical era
is rather an unfortunate caricature, in that even the minor
music of that time has charms that are absent from even some of
the greatest music of the Romantic Era and seldom found at all
in the subsequent century." I guess this makes S.T. Karnick a
classicist (or whatever you want to call it), but this is where
the discussion gets highly subjective. I disagree that the
minor works of the Classical Era hold a candle to the greatest
works of the Romantic Era, or the first half of the 20th
century, no matter what "charms" are found there. But then, I'm
far more interested in the dramatic, emotionally grounded,
big-orchestral works of the decades from 1870 to 1950. If
that's not your bag, baby, I can dig it.

3:22 PM

The Classic Liberal Anonymous said...
For instance, listen to the C major chord that quietly and
totally unexpectedly slips in toward the end of the slow
movement of his Piano Concerto #22 in E flat
While my knowledge of music is rather limited, I believe what
you are talking about is called a Picardy third.
I'll have to dust off my (small) Mozart collection (or find it
on the LAN w/iTunes).

3:28 PM

S. T. Karnick said...
brmerrick, I think that you have characterized our differences
admirably.

4:14 PM

---------------------

"Opera"

Opera, to a person genuinely fond of aural
beauty, must inevitably appear tawdry and
obnoxious, if only because it presents aural
beauty in a frame of purely visual gaudiness,
with overtones of the grossest sexual
provocation. It is chiefly supported in all
countries by the same sort of wealthy
sensualists who also support musical comedy.
One finds in the directors' room the
traditional stock company of the stage-door
alley. Such vermin, of course, pose in the
newspapers as devout and almost fanatical
partisans of art. But one has merely to
observe the sort of opera they think is good
to get the measure of their actual artistic
discrimination.
The genuine music-lover may accept the
carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of
actual music within, but that is no sign that
he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing
through it. Most musicians, indeed, prefer to
hear operatic music outside the opera house;
that is why one so often hears such lowly
things, say, as "The Ride of the Valkyrie" in
the concert hall. "The Ride of the Valkyrie"
has a certain intrinsic value as pure music;
played by a competent orchestra it may give
civilized pleasure. But as it is commonly
performed in an opera house, with a posse of
fat beldames throwing themselves about the
stage, it can only produce the effect of a
dose of ipecacuanha. The sort of person who
actually delights in such spectacles is the
sort of person who delights in gas-pipe
furniture. Such half-wits are in a majority
in every opera house west of the Rhine. They
go to the opera, not to hear music, not even
to hear bad music, but merely to see a more
or less obscene circus. A few, perhaps, have
a further purpose; they desire to assist in
that circus, to show themselves in the
capacity of fashionables, to enchant the
yokelry with their splendor. But the majority
must be content with the more modest aim.
What they get for the outrageous prices they
pay for seats is a chance to feast their eyes
upon glittering members of the superior
demi-more magnificoes on their own side of
the footlights. They esteem a performance,
not in proportion as true music is on tap,
but in proportion as the display of notorious
characters on the stage is copious, and the
exhibition of wealth in the boxes is lavish.
A soprano who can gargle her way up to F
sharp in alt is more to such simple souls
than a whole drove of Johann Sebastian Bachs;
her one real rival in the entire domain of
art is the contralto who has a pension from a
former grand duke and is reported to be
enceinte by several stockbrokers.
The music that such ignobles applaud is
often quite as shoddy as they are themselves.
To write a successful opera a knowledge of
harmony and counterpoint is not enough; one
must also be a sort of Barnum. All the
first-rate musicians who have triumphed in
the opera house have been skillful
mountebanks as well. I need cite only Wagner
and Richard Strauss. The business, indeed,
has almost nothing to do with music. All the
actual music one finds in many a popular
opera--for example, "Thais"--mounts up to
less than one may find in a pair of Gung'l
waltzes. It is not this mild flavor of tone
that fetches the crowd; it is the tinpot show
that goes with it. An opera may have plenty
of good music in it and fail, but if it has a
good enough show it will succeed.
Such a composer as Wagner, of course,
could not write even an opera without getting
some music into it. In all of his works, even
including "Parsifal", there are magnificent
passages, and some of them are very long.
Here his natural genius overcame him, and he
forgot temporarily what it was about. But
these magnificent passages pass unnoticed by
the average opera audience. What it esteems
in his music dramas is precisely what is
cheapest and most mountebankish--for example,
the more lascivious parts of "Tristan und
Isolde." The sound music it dismisses as
tedious. The Wagner it venerates is not the
musician, but the showman. That he had a king
for a backer and was seduced by Liszt's
facts, and not the fadous talent, are the
foundation stones of his fame in the opera
house.
Greater men, lacking his touch of the
quack, have failed where he
succeeded--Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann,
Brahms, Bach, Haydn. Not one of them produced
a genuinely successful opera; most of them
didn't even try. Imagine Brahms writing for
the diamond horseshoe! Or Bach! Or Haydn!
Beethoven attempted it, but made a mess of
it; "Fidelio" survives today chiefly as a set
of concert overtures. Schubert wrote more
actual music every morning between 10 o'clock
and lunch time than the average opera
composer produces in 250 years, yet he always
came a cropper in the opera house.

From The Allied Arts, PREJUDICES: SECOND
SERIES, 1920, pp. 197-200.
First printed in the New York Evening Mail,
Feb. 22, 1918.
Included in A MENCKEN CHRESTOMATHY, 1949, pp.
545--7.

----------------

Norman Lehbrecht: Too much Mozart makes you sick
http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/051214-NL-250mozart.html
5.12.14

They are steam cleaning the streets of Vienna ahead of next month's 
birthday weekend when pilgrim walks are planned around the composer's 
shrines. Salzburg is rolling out brochures for its 2006 summer festival, 
which will stage every opera in the Kochel canon from infantile fragments 
to The Magic Flute, 22 in all. Pierre Boulez, the pope of musical 
modernism, will break 80 years of principled abstinence to conduct a 
mostly-Mozart concert, a celebrity virgin on the altar of musical 
commerce.

Wherever you go in the coming year, you won't escape Mozart. The 250th 
anniversary of his birth on January 27 1756 is being celebrated with 
joyless efficiency as a tourist magnet to the land of his birth and a 
universal sales pitch for his over-worked output. The complete 626 works 
are being marketed on record in two special-offer super coffers. All the 
world's orchestras will be playing Mozart, wall to wall, starting with the 
Vienna Philharmonic on tour this weekend.

Mozart is the superstore wallpaper of classical music, the composer who 
pleases most and offends least. Lively, melodic, dissonance free: what's 
not to like? The music is not just charming, it's full of good vibes. The 
Mozart Effect, an American resource centre which ascribes 
'transformational powers' to Austria's little wonderlad, collects 
empirical evidence to show that Mozart, but no other music, improves 
learning, memory, winegrowing and toilet training and should be drummed 
into classes of pregnant mothers like breathing exercises.

A 'molecular basis' identified in Mozart's sonata for two pianos is 
supposed to have stimulated exceptional brain activity in laboratory rats. 
How can one argue with such 'proof'? Science, after all, confirms what we 
want to believe - that art is good for us and that Mozart, in his 
short-lived naivety, represents a prelapsarian ideal of organic beauty, 
unpolluted by industrial filth and loss of faith. Nice, if only it were 
true.

The chocolate-box image of Mozart as a little miracle can be promptly 
banged on the head. The hard-knocks son of a cynical court musician, 
Mozart was taught from first principles to ingratiate himself musically 
with people of wealth and power. The boy, on tour from age five, hopped 
into the laps of queens and played limpid consolations to ruthless 
monarchs. Recognising that his music was better than most, he took 
pleasure in humiliating court rivals and crudely abused them in letters 
back home.

A coprophiliac obsession with bodily functions, accurately evinced in 
Peter Shaffer's play and Milos Forman's movie Amadeus, was a clear sign of 
arrested emotional development. His marriage proved unstable and his 
inability to control the large amounts he earned from wealthy Viennese 
patrons was a symptom of the infantile behaviour that hastened his early 
death and pauper burial. Musical genius he may have been, but Mozart was 
no Einstein. For secrets of the universe, seek elsewhere.

The key test of any composer's importance is the extent to which he 
reshaped the art. Mozart, it is safe to say, failed to take music one step 
forward. Unlike Bach and Handel who inherited a dying legacy and vitalised 
it beyond recognition, unlike Haydn who invented the sonata form without 
which music would never have acquired its classical dimension, Mozart 
merely filled the space between staves with chords that he knew would 
gratify a pampered audience. He was a provider of easy listening, a 
progenitor of Muzak.

Some scholars have claimed revolutionary propensities for Mozart, but that 
is wishful nonsense. His operas of knowing servants and stupid masters 
were conceived by Da Ponte, a renegade priest, from plays by Beaumachais 
and Ariosto; and, while Mozart once indulged in backchat to the all-high 
Emperor Joseph II, he knew all too well where his breakfast brioche was 
buttered. He lacked the rage of justice that pushed Beethoven into 
isolation, or any urge to change the world. Mozart wrote a little night 
music for the ancien regime. He was not so much reactionary as regressive, 
a composer content to keep music in a state of servility so long as it 
kept him well supplied with frilled cuffs and fancy quills.

Little in such a mediocre life gives cause for celebration and little 
indeed was done to mark the centenary of his birth, in 1856, or of his 
death in 1891. The bandwaggon of Mozart commemorations was invented by the 
Nazis in 1941 and fuelled by post-War rivalries in 1956 when Deutsche 
Grammophon rose the from ruins to beat the busy British labels, EMI and 
Decca, to a first recorded cycle of the Da Ponte operas.

The 1991 bicentennial of Mozart's death turned Salzburg into a swamp of 
bad taste and cupidity. The world premiere of a kitsch opera, Mozart in 
New York, had me checking my watch every five unending minutes. The record 
industry, still vibrant, splattered Mozart over every vacant hoarding and 
a new phenomenon, Classic FM, launched in 1992 on the Mozart tide, ensured 
that we would never be more than a fingerstretch away from the nearest 
marzipan chord.

What good all this Mozart does is disputable. For all the pseudoscience of 
the Mozart Effect I have yet to see a life elevated by Cosi fan tutte or a 
criminal reformed by the plinks of a flute and harp concerto. Where ten 
days of Bach on BBC Radio 3 will flush out the world's ears and open minds 
to limitless vistas, the coming year of Mozart feels like a term at 
Guantanamo Bay without the sunshine. There will be no refuge from neatly 
resolved chords, no escaping that ingratiating musical grin.

Don't look to mass media for context or quality control. Both the BBC and 
independent channels have rejected any critical perspective on Mozart in 
the coming year, settling for sweet-wrapper documentaries that regurgitate 
familiar clich?s. In this orgy of simple-mindedness, the concurrent 
centenary of Dmitri Shostakovich ? a composer of true courage and 
historical significance ? is being shunted to the sidelines, celebrated by 
the few.

Mozart is a menace to musical progress, a relic of rituals that were 
losing relevance in his own time and are meaningless to ours. Beyond a 
superficial beauty and structural certainty, Mozart has nothing to give to 
mind or spirit in the 21st century. Let him rest. Ignore the commercial 
onslaught. Play the Leningrad Symphony. Listen to music that matters.

---------------

A Long Life in America After Writing the Big Mozart Librettos
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/arts/music/05lore.html?pagewanted=print

By [3]JEREMY EICHLER

On June 4, 1805, a ship from London sailed into the harbor of
Philadelphia, and a toothless 56-year-old Italian man disembarked. He
was completely broke, having gambled away all his money on the
two-month passage from Europe, so he borrowed $32 to pay the customs
taxes on his violin, his tea urn, his carpet and his trunk of Italian
literature.

An observer at the scene would never have guessed that here stood one
of the greatest librettists in the history of music, but sure enough,
it was Lorenzo Da Ponte, a name that would be forever yoked to the
beloved operas that his graceful, witty and songlike poetry enabled
Mozart to create: "Le Nozze di Figaro," "Don Giovanni" and "Cos? Fan
Tutte."

Da Ponte never tired of dropping Mozart's name, but his time in Vienna as 
the poet of the Italian opera, appointed by Emperor Joseph II, was in 
truth only one exciting episode in a long and fantastically colorful life. 
After leaving Vienna in 1791 and wending his way through Europe for more 
than a decade, seemingly always on the run from creditors and plagued by 
financial woes, Da Ponte joined his unofficial wife and children in this 
country. He lived out his final three decades here as a tireless emissary 
of Italian culture, a poet of the European Enlightenment magisterially 
adrift in a young, rough-and-tumble America. He died in New York in 1838 
at 89.

Even today, the story of Da Ponte's American chapter remains little known, 
despite the entertaining memoirs he left behind, recounting not only his 
picaresque adventures in Europe as a connoisseur of feminine beauty and 
friend of Casanova, but also his experiences in New York, [4]New Jersey 
and [5]Pennsylvania, running a grocery store, trading in medical supplies 
and liquor, selling Italian books, importing an Italian opera company and, 
finally, teaching the language and literature he loved to students, both 
in private lessons and as the first professor of Italian at Columbia 
University. It was an afterlife worthy of his stage creations.

This week Columbia's Italian Academy for Advanced Studies is celebrating 
the 200th anniversary of Da Ponte's arrival in America. "Lorenzo Da Ponte, 
a Bridge From [6]Italy to New York" includes three vocal recitals, 
beginning tonight with the mezzo-soprano Krista River and the pianist 
Alison D'Amato performing settings of Da Ponte texts by Mozart, Bellini, 
Verdi, Storace and others. The Da Ponte focus continues on Oct. 10 and 11, 
with an academic symposium and an exhibition devoted to his life and 
legacy, co-sponsored by the Da Ponte Institute of Vienna.

"Da Ponte was the first representative of cosmopolitan enlightened
European culture in America," said David Freedberg, director of the
Italian Academy. "He was the bridge. There's something telling and
very sad about the fact that he remains a completely unknown figure in
the history of American cultural life. America ignored him when he
came and has continued to ignore him. This is how we're trying to
celebrate him."

Born into a Jewish family in Ceneda in 1749, Da Ponte was converted
and baptized after his mother's death so that his father could marry a
young Catholic woman. He entered the seminary, where he received a
rigorous classical education, and even became a priest before
embarking on what one might call protracted field research for his
future work on "Don Giovanni." By the time he arrived in America,
however, he had become more of a family man and used his wife's money
to open a grocery store, chuckling in his memoirs about how his
"poet's hand" was now asked to measure out tea and tobacco.

But business suited Da Ponte as poorly as the priesthood. His memoirs,
while famously exaggerated, present him as a kind of magnet for rogues
and rapscallions, or as he described them, "the poisonous leeches who
are ever in pursuit of honest people to suck their blood and repay
them then with disdain, criticism, and often slander." Da Ponte was
constantly on the verge of financial ruin induced by a combination of
gullibility, genuine misfortune and the incorrigible generosity of his
big Italian heart.

His next incarnation as a teacher and cultural impresario suited him
far better, though it led to no greater financial security. He got his
start thanks to a chance meeting with Clement Moore, later
immortalized as the author of "The Night Before Christmas." The
well-connected Moore helped Da Ponte convince prominent New York
families to send their sons and daughters to him to study Italian
language and literature. Judging from surviving anecdotes, Da Ponte
was a devoted and gifted teacher, even building a small stage in his
house on which his students could perform. But the teaching business
was not steady, and Da Ponte returned to odd jobs, trading goods and
taking in boarders, to whom a newspaper ad promised that "a knowledge
of Italian may be acquired without additional expense."

According to his biographer, Sheila Hodges, the shortage of Italian
books in New York was a tremendous obstacle for Da Ponte, and he was
shocked to discover how hard it was to find an Italian dictionary.
Even Columbia's library, he reported, had only one "worm-eaten
Boccaccio with a broken binding." He began importing books, opened a
bookstore and traveled door-to-door hawking Dante, Machiavelli,
Petrarch and others. By the end of his life he claimed to have
imported more than 26,000 volumes, many of which ended up at the
Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and Columbia
University.

But Da Ponte knew that Italian books alone could not win over the
American public. They needed - of course - the Italian opera, which he
described simply as "the noblest and most pleasurable of all the many
spectacles the human intelligence ever invented." Already an
octogenarian, he raised the money to bring a company of 53 Italian
singers, for a tour that nearly bankrupted him. Da Ponte was forced to
sell his beloved books, and he addressed them in a little poem that
will be on display at the Columbia exhibition: "My heart is torn apart
in giving you away; for in one single moment I lose what I love most."

Still one more scheme followed, as Da Ponte raised funds for a lavish
Italian Opera House that opened in New York in 1833 and burned down
six years later. Not surprisingly, by the end of his life he was an
embittered old man. He lived an eternity by the standards of the day,
but not quite long enough to see Italian culture flower here a half
century later.

The current acknowledgment is indeed overdue. Even during his
lifetime, Da Ponte lamented: "In more than twenty years not one
charitable writer has been found who has deigned to put down in black
on a small piece of paper, so that the literary world, and in
particular the Italians, may learn about it, what I have done in
America!

[I am sending forth these memes, not because I agree wholeheartedly with 
all of them, but to impregnate females of both sexes. Ponder them and
spread them.]

From shovland at mindspring.com  Sat Jan 28 16:01:21 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 08:01:21 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] Resurgence of Fascism
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHCENBCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

Allied victory in World War II destroyed the Nazi
state, but the not the ideas underlying it.

Many former Nazis found new employment as
Cold Warriors.  Their contacts from the Reich
were useful in the new struggle.

This gave them an organizational and financial
base for recruiting new followers.

The ideas that drove the Nazis are very old,
and receptive minds are still being born.

Here is a link to an outline of "The Beast Reawakens"
on Wikipedia.  Wiki has the complete introduction
and a chapter outline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_Reawakens

The Beast Reawakens
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search
The Beast Reawakens is a book by investigative journalist Martin A. Lee. It
tells the story of old-guard fascists' strategy for survival and the revival
of fascism. Special attention is given to ODESSA actions during the Cold
War, international fascist networks, young militant neofascists skinheads,
and political inroads to the right-wing mainstream.

It was published in 1997 by Little, Brown and Company (ISBN 0316519596).
Later printings carried the subtitle: "Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's
Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists".





From shovland at mindspring.com  Sat Jan 28 16:45:17 2006
From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 08:45:17 -0800
Subject: [Paleopsych] Fourth Reich Rising - Bitter Pill to chew
Message-ID: <BKELILMJLCPGPPBCGKNHKENBCDAA.shovland@mindspring.com>

If I was rich I'd be eccentric
But I'm poor so I'm just a fool 
To set about to change the world
It's not what they teach in school
 
This world it's not what it seems to be
>From the papers and on TV
Freedom screams at the sacrifice
So you can fuel your SUV 
 
As Brown & Root and the Carlyle Group
Make their money in the fog of war
And the banks extend their credit
Well we seen it all before
 
When I was twelve I heard the tale
Of slave labour in the Reich
Financed by David Rockerfella
Morgan Stanley and the like
 
My teacher she gave me Tolkein
A backdrop for a quest
Where the edge is clear and men know fear
As they stand at the abyss
 
When petty peacetime squabblings
Paper trades of paper men
Are forgot in the cold awareness
That Evil walks again.
 
And I read about the death camps
And the slaughter of the Jews
Tried to comprehend the loss
Twelve Million  empty shoes
 
The tryranny, pure evil
For which the Wall Street bankers paid
My Grandfathers generation died
So that profits could be made
 
As the horror of the Holocaust
Was played upon our screens
Nazi gold from the Dulles boys
Was moving behind the scenes
 
And the Reich of 45
Took shape and began to feed
In a Homeland rich and fertile
Ploughed ready for their seed
 
The lies are still the same
The stakes higher than before
While the people look for terrorists
And the press shout loud for war
 
Under a cloud of commerce
The Beast puts out a claw
It reaches for the Caspian oil
Like Hitlers did before
 
Their motives never compromised
All plans still working through
A master race in full control
Of everything you do
 
They grind mens bones for the bread of war
Then feed it back to you
Every bombs a profit and as the money filters through
 
A little pill of feelgood,
 
An empty meal to chew
 
As you graze the mall,from your virtual stall
Shop for God and Country
They'll bleed you till your blue
 
And the Power behind the Fourth Reich
Is the same as it was before
When Prescott Bush sent off that cable
March 19th, 1934.
 
from: http://www.unclenicks.net/canvas/Fourth_Reich/fourth_reich.html


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 28 20:06:48 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:06:48 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] EDGE: Verena Huber-Dyson: On the Nature of
	Mathematical Concepts 
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EDGE: Verena Huber-Dyson: On the Nature of Mathematical Concepts
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/huberdyson/index.html et seq.
[Links omitted. Best, perhaps, to click on the URLs.]

ON THE NATURE OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS: WHY AND HOW DO MATHEMATICIANS
JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS? by Verena Huber-Dyson

Verena Huber-Dyson Photo

Introduction by
Verena Huber-Dyson

(In early December, I received the following email message from Verena
Huber-Dyson - JB)

"Quite a while ago my son George Dyson handed me a batch of comments dated 
Oct. 29 - EDGE 29 (What Are Numbers, Really? A Cerebral Basis For Number 
Sense", by Stanislas Deheane and Nov. 7 - EDGE 30 (the subsequent Reality 
Club discussion) by your group of EDGE researchers. I read it all with 
great interest, and then my head started spinning.

Anyone interested in the psychology (or even psycho-pathology) of
mathematical activity could have had fun watching me these last weeks.
And now here I am with an octopus of inconclusive ramblings on the
Foundations bulging my in "essays" file and a proliferation of
hieroglyphs in the one entitled "doodles". It is so much easier to do
mathematics than to philosophize about it. My group theoretic musings,
the doodles, have been a refuge all my life.

Although I am a mathematician, did research in group theory and have
taught in various mathematics departments (Berkeley, U of Ill in
Chicago and others), my move to Canada landed me in the philosophy
department of the University of Calgary. That is where I got exposed
to the philosophy of Mathematics and of the Sciences and even taught
in these realms, although my main job was teaching logic which led to
a book on G?del's theorems. To my mind the pure philosophers, those who
believe there are problems that they can get to grips with by pure
thinking, are the worst.

If I am right you Reality people all have a definite subject of
research and a down to earth approach to it. That is great.

There are two issues in your group's commentary that I would like to
address and possibly clarify.

For a refutation of Platonism George Lakoff appeals to non standard
phenomena on the one hand and to the deductive incomplenetess of
geometry and of set theory on the other. First of all these two are
totally different situations, to each of which the Platonist would
have an easy retort. The first one is simply a matter of the
limitation inherent in first order languages: they are not capable of
fully characterizing the "intended Models", the models that the
symbolisms are meant to describe. The Platonist will of course
exclaim: "If you do not believe in the objective existence of those
standard models, how can you tell what is standard and what is not ?".
The deductive incompleteness of a theory such as geometry or set
theory, however, simply means that the theory leaves some sentences
undecided. Here the Platonist will point out that your knowledge of
the object envisaged is incomplete and encourage you to forge ahead
looking for more axioms, i.e., basic truths !

Incidentally I consider myself an Intuitionist not a Platonist.

I wonder whether it is appropriate for me to send you my rather
lengthy discourse on non standard phenomena. You may find it tedious.
Yet I believe that the question how it is possible for us to form
ideas so definite that we can make distinctions transcending the reach
of formal languages is pertinent to your topic "what are numbers
really?" It is very difficult to put these phenomena into a correct
perspective without explaining at least a little bit how they come
about.

The other contribution is a simple illustration of the naive
mathematical mind at work on the number 1729! And a remark about a
prodigy."

-Verena Huber-Dyson

VERENA HUBER-DYSON is a mathematician who received her PhD. from the
University of Zurich in 1947. She has published research in group
theory, and taught in various mathematics departments such as UC
Berkeley and University of Illinois at Chicago.She is now emeritus
professor from the philosophy department of the University of Calgary
where she taught logic and philosophy of the sciences and of
mathematics which led to a book on Goedel's theorems published in
1991.

The Paper...

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/huberdyson/huberdyson_p2.html

by Verena Huber-Dyson [2.16.98]

Notation: x for products: 2 x 3 =6, ^3 for cubes: 2^3 = 8, ^exponent:
2^11 = 2048.]

While engaged in the mathematical endeavor we simply jump, hardly ever
asking "why" or "how". It is the only way we know of grappling with
the mathematical problem that we are out to understand, to articulate
as a question and to answer by a theorem or a whole theory. What
drives our curiosity is a question for psychologists. Only after the
jump has landed us on a viable branch the labor of proving the theorem
or constructing a coherent theory can set in. The record of the end
result, usually a presentation at a conference, a paper in a learned
journal or a chapter in a book, is laid out in a sequence of rational
deductions from clearly stated premisses and rarely conveys the
process by which it has been arrived at.

The question why we have no other choice but to jump has received a
remarkably precise answer through G?del's Proof of Incompleteness in
1931 and Tarski's analysis of the concept of Truth in the thirties in
Poland. Since then the development of a rigorous concept of an
algorithm has led to a proliferation of so-called undecidability and
inseparability results underscoring the limitations of the formal
method.

The question how we jump has many aspects. First: what does the
jumping consist of, what are we doing when we jump, what is going on
in our minds when we are hunting down a mathematical phenomenon? And
then: what is guiding us, how come we jump to CORRECT conclusions?
Even if the guess was not quite correct, it usually was a good hunch
that, properly adjusted, will open up new territory. Where do these
hunches come from? Probably the simplest recorded answer to that
question goes back to Plato and has spawned a school of thought in the
Foundations of Mathematics that bears his name. It puts those hunches
on a par with our spontaneous reactions to physical messages "smell
that? someone must be roasting a lamb in the next clearing", "there is
a storm brewing in the South West, I can feel it in my bones".
According to Plato's view mathematical objects exist eternally and
immutably in a realm of ideas, an abstract reality accessible, if only
dimly, to pure reasoning. That is how we discover them and their
properties. By now, what with 2000 years of escalating experience with
mathematics and painstaking critical analyses of its tenets, Platonism
is no longer the accepted view in the Foundations. But, if nothing
else, it is a wonderful allegory and an extremely useful working
hypothesis.

To put it bluntly, while at work a mathematician is too busy
concentrating on deciphering the hints he can gather from the trail he
is following to stop and bother asking how the trail got here. It is
enough for him to have a good hunch that the trail will lead to the
goal.

The following is a slightly polished version of my spontaneous
response to the assortment of EDGE-comments on Stanislas Dehaene's
question "What Are Numbers, Really? A Cerebral Basis For Number Sense"
and the subsequent discussion at The Reality Club. After a simple
illustration of how we ponder, jump and then fill in the steps I
address some general considerations raised on EDGE, which leads me to
an exposition of the limitation phenomena.

Although keeping technicalities to a minimum, both conceptually and
typographically, I am careful to be precise and correct. In our field
the smallest inaccuracy can have disastrous consequences leading head
on into contradictions.

1729 AN EXAMPLE OF MATHEMATICAL REASONING

Stanislas Dehaene brings up the Ramanujan-G.H.Hardy anecdote
concerning the number 1729. The idea of running through the cubes of
all integers from 1 to 12 in order to arrive at Ramanujan's
spontaneous recognition of 1729 as the smallest positive integer that
can be written in two distinct ways as the sum of two integral cubes
is inappropriate and obscures the workings of the naive mathematical
mind. To be sure, a computer-mind could come up with that list at a
wink. But what would induce it to pop it up when faced with the number
1729 if not prompted by some hunch? Here is a more likely account:

Confronted with 1729 you will recognize at a glance that:

i) 1729 = 1000 + (810-81) = 10^3 + 81 x (10-1)
  = 10^3 + 9^2 x 9
  = 10^3 + 9^3 = (1 + 9)^3 + 9^3
  = 1 + 3 x 9 + 3 x 9^2 + 9^3 + 9^3
  = 1 + (3^3 + 3 x 3^2 x 9 + 3 x 3 x 9^2 + 9^3)
  = 1 + (3 + 9)^3
  = 1^3 + 12^3  in view of the pattern

ii) (a + b)^3  = a^3 + 3 x a^2 x b + 3 x a x b^2 + b^3.

Now all those 3's in the above expressions spring to attention, you
fleetingly call up THE EQUATIONS

iii) (a + b)^3 + d^3 =  a^3  + (c + d)^3
a^3 + (3 x a^2 x b + 3 x a x b^2 + b^3)
+ d^3

= a^3 + (c^3 + 3 x c^2 x d + 3 x c x d^2)
+ d^3

and JUMP to the conclusion that the choice of (1,9; 3,9) for a,b; c,d
will give you the smallest positive integer that can be written as the
sum the cubes of two integers (a+b) and d and also of a different pair
a and (c+d). You have a well trained instinct. But, if called upon, it
will be a simple matter to fill in that jump by a proof, the fixed
coefficients 3 ruling out smaller choices for b,c,d, once the minimal
possible value 1 is chosen for a.

ANALYSIS OF A TRAIN OF THOUGHT

The best way to understand the process encoded above in technical
shorthand is via a metaphor, which should be spun out at leisure. Say
you are driving into a strange town, and, for some reason or other, a
building complex catches your attention. It does not just pop into
your field of vision; at first glance you see it as a museum, a villa,
a church or whatever. And then, depending on your particular interests
and background, you may recognize its shape, size and purpose, muse
over its style, venture a guess as to its vintage, and so forth.

Upon meeting 1729, your first reaction will probably be to break it up
into the sum of 1000 and 729, because of our habit of counting in
decimal notation. Stop for a moment to consider what would have been
facing Ramanujan if Taxi cab companies were favoring binary notation!
[11011000001 = 11011000000 + 1 = 11^3 x 100^3 + 1^3 = 101^3 x 10^3 +
11^3 x 11^3 = 1111101000 + 1011011001]. On the other hand, if you are
one of those people obsessed with prime factorization you'll "see" the
product 7 x 13 x 19 when somebody says "1729" to you while a
before-Thompson-and-Feit but after-Burnside group theorist will say
"Aha that is an interesting number, all groups of order 1729 are
solvable" and anyone with engineering experience immediately thinks of
the 1728 cubic inches contained in a cubic foot [1]. But a historian
of Mathematics will see 1729 as the year of Euler's friend and
benefactress Catherine the Great's birth.

Next you decide, more or less deliberately, how to investigate the
phenomenon. Do you drive to the nearest kiosk, buy a "Baedecker",
search for that building and read through all you can find in there
about it, before you make up your mind about what you want to know, in
other words, assuming you have a kiosk full of lists handy in your own
mind, do you run through all the integral cubes smaller than 1729? If
so, why cubes?

If you have that kind of mind you probably would first run through the
squares before getting to the cubes. The less methodical tourist,
eager to enjoy rather than out to complete his (or her) knowledge, may
choose to investigate in a haphazard way, spurred on by curiosity,
guided by experience, using skills automatically while impulsively
following hunches, prowling, sniffing, looking behind bushes, and then
jump to rational conclusions.

Now return to Ramanujan and see how the first thing that springs to
the naive eye beholding the number 729 is that adding 81 = 9^2 turns
it into 810, whereupon 10 drops its disguise, shows one of its true
natures as the sum of 1 and 9 and, lo and behold, all those powers of
3 start tumbling in. All the while you are aware of the pattern ii),
just below the threshold of consciousness, exactly as a driver is
aware of the traffic laws and of the coordinated efforts of his body
and his jeep. That is how you find your way through the maze of
mathematical possibilities to the "interesting" breakdown of 1729 into
two distinct sums of integral cubes.

When you stop to ask yourself what is so great about that, something
clicks in your mind: you are facing a positive integer with a certain
property, you know that

iv) every collection of positive integers has a least member
(in terms of its natural ordering).

That knowledge, always hovering below the threshold of consciousness,
prompts the question whether 1729 might in fact be the LEAST positive
integer expressible in distinct ways as the sum of two cubes. Having
another look at the representation of 1729 as a sum of various powers
of 3 as held in your mind's eye and exhibited in the third line of i)
above, the more or less conscious awareness of ii) invites you to
break up those sums of cubes according to the pattern iii) where you
assume "without loss of generality" that a < d = a + b, and hence c <
b. At this point the solution a = 1, b = c^2 = d and c = 3 surfaces by
inspection as "obviously" yielding the minimal value for (a + b)^3 +
d^3.

ABOUT MATHEMATICAL ACTIVITY

I have gone through this simple illustrative example at such length in
order to underscore a few of my pet contentions:

What we sorely need is a phenomenological study of mathematical
practice. Polya and Lakatos had independently started out on that
path, I do not know to what extent it has been followed up.
Mathematicians are well aware of how they work, whether by themselves
or in teams. But their goals are results that must be presented in a
conclusive and "clean" form that makes them publicly accessible, at
least within the profession, a form that necessarily obscures the path
that led to them, just as the most beautiful tombstone will sum up a
life but give no inkling of how it really has been lived, to use an
observation by Claude Chevalley [2].

a) Much mathematical reasoning is done subconsciously, just as we
automatically obey traffic rules and handle our cars, whether we know
why and how they work or not. Symbolic notation is an "artificial aid"
used to secure a hold like a piton, to survey a situation like a
geological map and to encode general patterns for repeated
application. But it is not mathematics. Mathematics can be done
without symbols by a particularly "gifted" individual, like, e.g.,
Ramanujan. What that gift consists of is one of the questions raised
in the EDGE piece. Obviously we are not all of us born with it. Nor do
I believe that all people born as potential mathematicians become
actual ones. Tenacity of motivation, an uncluttered and receptive
mind, an unerring ability to concentrate the mind's focus on long
intricate chains of reasoning and relational structures, the self
discipline needed for snatching such a mind out of vicious circles,
these are only a few characteristics that spring to mind. They can be
cultivated. Experience will train the judgment to distinguish between
blind alleys and sound trails and to divine hidden animal paths
through the wilderness.

b) Free association plays an important role, an agility of mind that
allows reasoning to jump ahead with a sure touch, after which comes
the dogged toil of constructing proofs.

c) Conceptual visualization is an indispensable attendant to
mathematical thinking. Formalization is only a tool and may encourage
lazy thinking! Look at the freshmen who enroll in math because they
assume they won't be expected to produce coherent arguments or to
write grammatical text, that bureaucratic neatness in "plugging in
numbers and turning the crank" will suffice to pass the course.

It is fascinating to browse through some of the essays on the
Foundations of Mathematics by the topologist and logician L.E.J.
Brouwer, the father of Intuitionism. You will find very few formulas
in them, and yet they are rigorously reasoned, tightly and succinctly,
more so than many formal texts. [3]

d) That practice, familiarity, experience and experimentation are
important prerequisites for successful mathematical activity goes
without saying. But less obvious and just as important is a tendency
to "day dream", an ability to immerse oneself in contemplation
oblivious of all surroundings, the way a very small child will abandon
himself to his blocks. Anecdotes bearing witness to the enhancement of
creative concentration by total relaxation abound, ranging from
Archimedes' inspiration in a bath tub to Alfred Tarski's tales of
theorems proved in a dental chair.
   _________________________________________________________________

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/huberdyson/huberdyson_p3.html

The tenet that MATHEMATICAL OBJECTS ARE MENTAL CONSTRUCTS conceived by
the human species for the purpose of forging its way through life and
environment is compelling. How could we orient ourselves in space
without discerning dimensions and estimating distances, how could we
keep track of possessions and offsprings without a sense for numbers
(cardinals), groupings and hierarchies (ordinals)?

Maybe the prototypical shepherd just kept a heap of pebbles handy by
his cave, one for each sheep, to make sure by MATCHING that at the end
of the day he had his whole flock together ? the first occurrence of
the mathematical arrow. The next guy paid attention to the pecking
order among his charges and chose his pebbles accordingly. And then ?
much later ? one with a poetic twist of mind gave individual names to
his sheep and picked pebbles to match their personalities in looks,
color, shape and mood so that, if one went missing, he could tell by
looking at the leftover pebble which one of his flock to search for
where, according to the culprit's specific idiosyncrasies. Finally,
with all that time on their hands, some of the shepherds started
creating poetry or inventing music, others projected and extrapolated
their minds into higher realms of mathematics ? and started wondering.

Here is the beginning of mathematics, not only arithmetic, the whole
works, structures (you start grouping your flock, and those groups
will interact), mappings and probably even the concept of infinity,
"what if those ewes keep lambing and lambing till I run out of
pebbles...". Pretty soon these concepts become PHENOMENA and begin
evolving in interaction with their creators and with the uses they are
put to.

When the ANTHROPOLOGIST has told his story and the PHENOMENO- LOGIST
has had a look at how a mathematician's mind works it is for the NEURO
PHYSIOLOGISTS to figure out what is going on in the brain of those
shepherds and their descendants. The PSYCHOLOGY of mathematical
activity ? and obsession ? also deserves attention and is bound to
shed light on the mystery of the prodigy.

The view of mathematical "objects" as mental constructs forever caught
up in a dynamic process of evolution was succinctly articulated by
L.E.J. Brouwer, the Dutch topologist who, during the first quarter of
this century, founded the school of INTUITIONISM as the most
compelling alternative to PLATONISM. Occasionally Intuitionism is
accused of leading into solipsism. But the understanding of
mathematical intuition as a sense for charting one's way around an
environment including fellow creatures implies that its tools, the
concepts, must be evolving by joint and competing efforts of a
community. Very much in keeping with what I understand is Stanislas
Dehaene's view. With Brouwer I believe in preverbal mathematical
perception, where by perception I mean an activity, a process of
"seeing as", picking out of patterns and imposing frames of reference.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) had a keen understanding of
the anthropological evolution of mathematics and rational thinking.
His Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power, 1887) contains poignantly
expressed insights into the genesis of the laws of Logic, many of them
anticipating Intuitionism!

George Lakoff's stress on image schemes and conceptual metaphors is
compelling, especially his suggestion of "expansion to abstract
mathematics by metaphorical projections from our sensory-motor
experience". Yes we do have mathematical bodies! On a primordially
homogenous environment we impose a grid commensurate in size and
compatible in shape with our bodies as we know them from direct
experience. One step further, we project our bodies beyond what is
immediately perceivable, spurred on by a tenacious intention "to make
sense of it all". Have you ever noticed how many mathematicians are
rock climbers? The process of mulling over a mathematical problem
displays a striking similarity to that of surveying a cliff before the
ascent; of visualizing and comparing alternate routes, from the big
lines of ridges, ledges and chimneys down to the details of toe and
finger holds, and then weighing possibilities of what might be
encountered beyond the visible; all in perfectly focused
concentration, projecting ahead, extrapolating, performing so-called
"Gedankenexperimente" (thought experiments) and sensing them
throughout one's bones and muscles. And finally setting off to break
trail through the folds of a brain!

Already in 1623 Blaise Pascal articulated in his Penses (thoughts) the
observation that the abstract schemata we impose on the world in order
to interact meaningfully with it are shaped by the experience of our
bodies. [4]

During the last half century the evolution of so-called CATEGORY
THEORY out of algebraic topology has developed a dynamic language of
diagrams in which the abstract concepts of universal algebra find
their natural habitat. [5] "Diagram chasing" ? a systematic form of
hand waving ? is a way of making sense of the abstract structural and
conceptual under-pinnings of mathematics, including Arithmetic and
Geometry, Logic and set theory, as well as of the juxtaposition
between discrete and continuous phenomena. It turns out that Topoi, a
particularly prolific species of categories, have the structure of
intuitionistic Logic ? an amazing corroboration of INTUITIONISM. F. W.
Lawvere at SUNY Buffalo, a pioneer in the field since the early
sixties, and his associates are beginning to make significant
contributions to cognitive science.

As to PLATONISM, whether deliberately or inadvertently, most
mathematicians still act and talk as if they were dealing with objects
that are part and parcel of the furniture of their Universe. I do it
myself, and so does George Lakoff when he refers to the straight line
and the reals. It is such a convenient make-believe stance, not to be
confounded, however, with the deep allegorical truths revealed in the
poetry of Plato's dialogues.

But there is more to be said when we stop to contemplate what we call
REALITY. Think how often a writer will create characters only to find
them taking on a life of their own, doing things or getting into
trouble that their creator had not intended for them at all. So, the
positive integers are mental constructs. They are tools shaped by the
use they are intended for. And through that use they take on a patina
of reality! Nor do they rattle about in isolation. They interrelate,
they pick up individual personalities through interaction, by their
position in the natural ordering, by splitting into primes, by what
they are good for, in what contexts they play what roles.

And before we know it we have a problem on our hands like Fermat's
Last Theorem! Its statement can be explained to every child, using a
bit of hand waving and the ever handy dots. Through generations the
belief in its truth had grown for ever more entrenched. No counter
example was found, but no proof was in sight either until Andrew Wiles
[6] succeeded in blazing the final trail to the goal through abstract
territory, rugged and disconnected in places and prepared by the toil
of his peers in others. To the experts the proof is illuminating, but
not to the ordinary mathematician in the street. By now our tools are
so highly developed that they bring us information about our own
creations that we cannot fathom with the unaided mathematical senses,
even though it may concern situations whose meaning we can understand
perfectly well. In physics and astronomy we are used to similar
situations: our instruments can reach physical phenomena way beyond
the reach of our physical bodies. The interpretations of these
messages from beyond are encoded in theories of our own construction.

The method of FORMALIZATION is by now widely accepted, used and
discussed. But it has limitations and is trailing some baffling
"non-standard" phenomena in its wake. In order to put these into
proper perspective a technical digression is needed.

FORMAL THEORIES

While mathematics is forging mental tools for charting our way through
the world, our brains playing very much the part of our senses, things
become so intricate that we need artifacts for keeping track of those
constructs. That is where symbols come in ? algebraic notation,
diagrams, technical languages and so forth ? as mechanisms for storing
and surveying insights and for communicating about them. Extension of
this method to the analysis of mathematical reasoning itself leads to
so-called meta mathematics and symbolic logic.

Allowing the articulation of "axioms" and of rules of deduction
governing their use, the systematic construction of formal languages
leads to FORMALIZED THEORIES consisting of theorems, i.e., wellformed
sentences (wfs' for short) obtained from axioms by chains of
deductions according to those rules.

A formal proof is a finite sequence of wfs' starting with axioms,
hanging together by the formal rules and ending with the theorem
proved by it. The formalized theory itself becomes a topic for
theoretical investigation since it is bound to have properties that go
beyond what we put into it. Will it be formally consistent in the
sense that the negation of a theorem will never show up as a theorem
too? Is it formally complete ,i.e., does every sentence have a proof
unless its negation has one? These are typical problems for the
meta-theory.

The choice of axioms is not arbitrary. We are guided by common sense
of mathematical perception, by criteria that deserve investigations to
which the EDGE group seems to be making valuable contributions. As we
acquire and develop intuitive concepts of sets, spaces, geometries,
algebraic structures and all the rest, we try to grasp them by
characteristic properties and are led to basic postulates.

Occasionally sustained experience reveals that the original
construction was not fully determinate, that the axioms are not
complete. They don't suffice to pin down the intended concept
uniquely. Some sentence A ? Euclid's fifth postulate for instance ? is
left undecided by what was considered an axiomatic characterization of
the concept ? of, say, a geometry. Both A and its negation not-A are
formally consistent with the axioms. Well, for some purposes it is
useful to assume Euclid's parallel axiom for geometry, or
well-foundedness for sets, at other times it may be handy to deal with
bottomless sets or crooked squares. The tools are evolving as we are
using, refining and adjusting them. Such experiences that at first
look like failures deepen conceptual understanding and expand
mathematical horizons.

The situation of the arithmetic N over the natural numbers 0,1,2,3,...
and that of the ordered field R of the reals are more subtle. In both
cases we "know exactly" what structure we have in mind, there is no
question of bifurcation of concepts. Yet in the case of N a complete
axiomatization founders on the requirement of effectiveness while,
even though completely formalizable, the elementary theory of R, has
so-called non-standard models, as does every theory of an infinite
structure.
   _________________________________________________________________

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/huberdyson/huberdyson_p4.html

ELEMENTARY THEORIES

These phenomena are a manifestation of the precarious balance between
algorithmic precision and expressive power inherent in every formal
language and its logic. The most popular, widely taught formalization
is the first order predicate calculus, also called elementary logic, a
formalization of reasoning in so-called first order predicate
languages. That apparatus leads from "elementary axioms" to
"elementary" theories.

The important requirement for any formalization is the existence of
both a "mechanism" (algorithm) for deciding, given any well formed
sentence (wfs) of the language concerned, whether or not that wfs is
an axiom, and one for deciding of any given configuration of wfs's
whether or not it is an instance of one of the rules. The resulting
concept of a formal proof is decidable, i.e., there exists an
algorithm, which, when fed any finite sequence of wfs', will come up
with the "answer yes" (0) or the "answer no" (1) according as that
sequence is a formal proof in the system or not. The resulting
axiomatizable theory will in general only be effective in the sense
that there exists an algorithmic procedure for listing all and only
those wfs' that are theorems. That does by no means guarantee a
decision procedure for theoremhood. In fact most common theories have
been proven undecidable.

To start with, a familiar structure like N or R will serve as the
so-called STANDARD MODEL or INTENDED INTERPRETATION for the elementary
theory meant to describe it. Observe that the notion of a standard
model presupposes some basic concept of mathematical reality and
truth. G?del talks of "inhaltliches Denken" (formal thinking) in
juxtaposition to "formales Denken" (formal thinking). His translators
use the term 'contentual'. 'Intentional' might be just as good a
choice.

Of course one might dodge the need for a metaphysical position by
using terms like "preverbal" or "informal".

But that does not make the problem go away. If we want to talk about
standard models, if we want our theories to describe something ?
approximately and formally ? what is it that we want them to describe?
A question that would not disturb a Platonist like G?del. The
formalist's way out is to throw away the ladder once he has arrived at
his construction and to concentrate on the questions of formal
consistency and formal completeness, purely syntactic notions.

A theory is formally consistent if and only if for no wfs A both A and
not-A are theorems and formally complete if and only if for every wfs
A either A or not-A is a theorem.

To an extreme formalist the existence of an abstract object coincides
with the formal consistency of the properties describing it. If at
all, he will draw his models from yet another theory, most likely
some, necessarily incomplete, formalization or other of elementary set
theory, presumed ? but only presumed ? to be consistent. An
unsatisfactory strategy.

We, however, are left with the conundrum of Mathematical Truth and the
semantic notions that depend on a "meaning" attached to the theory.
With respect to an interpretation of its language over a structure S a
theory, formalized or not, is

sound (semantically consistent) if and only if only wfs' true in S
are theorems

semantically complete  if and only if all wfs' true in S  are theorems.

Granted a clear and distinct idea of the structures N and R we talk of
the sets of all wfs' that are true under the intended interpretations
on N and on R as True Elementary Arithmetic, TN, and as the True
Theory TR of the Reals.

Consider an EXAMPLE: Leaving aside the question where N comes from, I
should think that we all know what we mean by the wfs

(F^3) for ALL positive integers x, y and z: the sum of the cubes of x
and y is not equal to the cube of z.

F is short for FERMAT. To explain it to a naive computer mind, we
would say: "Make two lists as follows; in the left one, L, write down
successively the results of adding the cubes of two positive integers,
1^3 + 1^3, 1^3 + 2^3, 2^3 +2^3, 1^3 + 3^3, 2^3 + 3^3, 3^3 + 3^3,...,
and into the right one, R, put all the cubes 1^3 (1), 2^3 (8), 3^3
(27), 4^3 (64), 5^3 (125) and so on. Now run through both lists
comparing the entries. (F^3) claims that you will never find the same
number showing up both on the left and on the right". A computer can
easily compile these lists in so orderly a fashion and run through
them so systematically that, for each bound N, it will, after a
computable number of steps, say f(N) of them, have calculated and
compared all pairs of numbers in L and in R smaller than N. You will
probably agree that this tedious explanation makes it sufficiently
clear what we mean here by ALL. You may want to use nicer language
like talking about NEVER finding a matching pair. The purpose of
symbolization, however, is not only orderliness, but clarification.
The dual to the so-called UNIVERSAL QUANTIFIER (for all) is the
EXISTENTIAL QUANTIFIER. Just think for a moment, assuming (F^3) were
false, how easy it would be for your patient computer to prove that.
It would only have to go on long enough until it found a COUNTER
EXAMPLE, i.e., a positive integer that shows up in both lists, R and
L. Having done so it would have proved

NOT(F^3) there EXIST positive integers x,
y and z, such that the sum of the cubes of
x and y is equal to the cube of z.

In 1753, using clever transformations of the problem, Euler succeeded
in proving the restriction (F^3) of Fermat's theorem to cubes. But
Fermat's general Conjecture

(F) for ALL positive integers x, y, z and n,
n greater than 2,
the sum of the n-th powers of x and y
is not equal to the n-th power of z

has only been proved conclusively a few years ago by means of
techniques way beyond elementary arithmetic. It should be noted here
that variable exponentiation is not part of the language of N but can
be paraphrased in it. In the above procedure you will have to organize
your left list according to an enumeration of triples (x,y,n) and the
right one according to pairs (z,n).

The capacity to visualize an ongoing sequence of calculations and
comparisons leads to an understanding of what is meant by the truth of
(F). Yet, in spite of many efforts, its proof had to wait till
algebraic geometry and number theory had achieved the maturity
necessary to allow its construction.

We have a pretty good understanding of what we mean when we claim that
ALL integers ? or all pairs or triples of them ? have a certain
property, provided that we understand the property itself. The most
manageable kind of properties that integers may have are what we call
recursive or computable. They are susceptible to a decision procedure
as illustrated by the example of checking for fixed n and any given
triple of integers x,y,z whether or not the sum of the n-th powers of
the first two is equal to that of the third.

A property P of triples of numbers is called recursive if and only if
its so-called characteristic function that takes on value 0 at the
triple (m,n,q) if that triple has the property and value 1 otherwise
(its decision function) is computable by an algorithm like a Turing
machine, or, equivalently, is recursive.

The amazing ? often elusive ? power of the universal quantifier
brought home by G?del's incompleteness proof, discussed in the next
section, is again manifest in the intrinsic difficulties with which
the conclusive proof of Fermat's theorem is fraught.

ELEMENTARY ARITHMETIC

Based on a naive concept of Truth, every true theory of a definite
structure is complete and consistent in both senses, a pretty useless
observation. For, a byproduct of G?del's Incompleteness proof of 1931
[7] is the non-formalizability of elementary arithmetic, TN, and with
it of many other theories.

EVERY SOUND AXIOMATIZATION OF ELEMENTARY ARITHMETIC IS INCOMPLETE.

The most natural candidate for axiomatizing TN goes back to Giuseppe
Peano (1895) and consists of the recursive rules for addition,
multiplication and the natural ordering on the set N of non negative
integers built up from 0 by the successor operation that leads from n
to n+1, together with the Principle P of Mathematical Induction, which
postulates that every set of numbers containing 0 and closed under the
successor operation exhausts all of N, or, equivalently, that every
property enjoyed by 0 and inherited by successors is universal. P is a
principle that adults may consider a definition of the set N, while
children will ? in my experience ? take it for granted. But, if you
want to articulate it in the language of the first order predicate
calculus you run into trouble. As illustrated in example (F)
elementary languages can quantify over individuals. But quantification
over so-called HIGHER ORDER items like properties is beyond its scope.
P is a typical sentence of second order logic.

PEANO ARITHMETIC, PA, is the first order approximation to second order
arithmetic obtained by replacing P with the following schema of
infinitely many axioms

(PW) If 0 has the property expressed by the
wff W and,
whenever a number x has that property,
then so does x+1,
then all natural numbers have property W.

one for each wff (well formed formula) W of the elementary language of
arithmetic.

Reformulating (PW) in terms of proofs rather than truth sheds light on
it and illustrates how one might want to go about replacing the basic
concept of truth in mathematics by a primitive notion of proof.
Writing W(x) for "x has property W" the Principle of Proof by
Mathematical Induction reads

(PPW) Given  1) a proof of W(0)  and  2) a
method for turning any proof of W(x)
into a proof of W(x+1)
THEN there exists a proof of
"for all x: W(x)".

Note how appealing this formulation is: Given any number n, you only
have to start with the proof given by 1) and then apply the method of
2) n times to obtain a proof of the sentence W(n). But there is a
subtlety here. So understood, the principle only guarantees that, for
every number n, a proof of W(n) can be found, a typical "for all ?
there exists ?" claim. Its power lies, however, in the "there
exists-for all ?" form of the conclusion as exhibited above.

These may sound like nit-picking distinctions, but they are of great
proof-theoretic significance. For instance, from the consistency of
PA, proved by means transcending PA, follows:

If g is the G?del number of the G?del sentence G then:

for each natural number n, the sentence
"n is not the G?del number of a proof
of the sentence with G?del
number g"

is a theorem of PA.

However G itself, namely the sentence

"for all x: x is not the G?del number of a
proof of the sentence with G?del number g"

is not a theorem of PA.

G is the sentence that truthfully claims its own unprovability. Much
deep work is required to establish this result rigorously.

Occasionally proofs by mathematical induction are confused with
arguments based on so-called 'inductive reasoning', a term used in
philosophical discussions of logic and the sciences ? yet another
reason for all these elaborations.

Axiomatized but undecidable theories are a fortiori incomplete. In
1939 Tarski proved that

THERE IS A FINITELY AXIOMATIZABLE FRAGMENT OF PA ALL OF WHOSE
CONSISTENT EXTENSIONS ARE UNDECIDABLE. [8]

And yet, if we accept an intentional concept of truth, we seem to
obtain a complete theory from Peano's mere handful of axioms together
with that one marvelous second order tool P on which so much of our
mathematical thinking hinges. For:

ALL MODELS OF PEANO'S SECOND ORDER AXIOM SYSTEM ARE ISOMORPHIC.

Still, any attempt to formalize second order arithmetic is again
doomed to founder on the cliffs identified by G?del and Tarski. The
juxtaposition of these claims is and ought to be baffling. In fact
they bring home the discrepancy between the naive and the formalist
concept of a model. From the naive point of view they mean that higher
order logic cannot be completely formalized. Even so completeness
proofs for it are widely hailed ? at the price of allowing all sorts
of non-isomorphic models even for second order Peano Arithmetic.
Enough of that for now. Fermat's last theorem may well be beyond the
scope of elementary Peano Arithmetic. In other words, (F) is
presumably left undecided by PA. A few mathematically interesting
theorems expressible in the language of PA with that property are
already known. They are embeddable in stronger but still convincing
first order theories, some elementary set theory or other.

After all that we are faced with the question where new axioms come
from, in other words with THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURE OF MATHEMATICAL
TRUTH. To declare "OK, as of October 27, 1995, the day that Wiles was
awarded the Prix Fermat by the town of Toulouse, (F) shall be added to
the list of axioms for elementary arithmetic" would seem quite
inappropriate. We want more intuitively obvious first principles.
   _________________________________________________________________

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/huberdyson/huberdyson_p5.html

NON STANDARD MODELS

In amazing contrast to TN the first order theory TR of the ordered
field of the REALS has been successfully and completely formalized ?
starting with Euclid's axioms, improved by Hilbert just before the
turn of the century and completed as well as proved complete by Tarski
about the time of the Second World War. My immediate reaction when I
first heard of this feat was shock and distrust of those Berkeley
logicians. "How could that be? The reals are so much more complicated
than the integers. Aren't the natural numbers defined as the non
negative integral reals?" Well, the solution of that conundrum lies in
the

LIMITATION OF EXPRESSIVE POWER INHERENT IN FORMAL LANGUAGES.

As a matter of fact, the natural numbers are not "elementarily
definable" among the reals; there is no wff of the language of R that
picks out the natural numbers among the reals.

Moreover, in spite of its completeness, TR has non-isomorphic models!
It has countable models, uncountable ones, Archimedean as well as
Non-Archimedean ones; some harbor hyperreals, others only standard
reals... What is going on? First the chicken-or-egg question must be
faced: what comes first, the model or the theory? Ever since the
elaborations by Tarski in 1934 and by Mal'cev in 1936 of the results
by Lwenheim of 1915, and by Skolem of 1920 (a brief exposition will
follow below) we understand that first order chickens are prone to lay
a medley of eggs, some "real" in the Platonic sense of being standard
and others weird, artificial, substitutes, freaks, in short
non-standard. The Ur-hen, the axiomatization, originated from a
standard egg, the "intended interpretation", a natural mathematical
construct like our everyday arithmetic of the positive integers, or,
more sophisticated, the real number system of the 19th century. After
the chicken has grown to maturity it starts laying models, and,
roaming through the virtual reality of model theory instead of free
ranging in Platonic realms, it comes up with non-standard eggs. The
only constraint on those is consistency and the verification of the
axioms, i.e., the genetic chicken code. These models are hatched
within the confines of some entrenched formalization of set theory.

What really lies at the basis of non standard objects like hyper reals
is ? again ? the limitation inherent in first order languages. In the
elementary language of real number theory we cannot distinguish
between Archimedean and non Archimedean orderings and that opens the
door to constructions that were scorned by my teachers although they
might use infinitesimals as a handy figure of speech the way we still
talk Platonically. We thought that Cauchy and Weierstrass'
arithmetization of analysis had done away with that alleged abuse of
language, but now it is back en vogue again and very useful too (see
below).

NON STANDARD PHENOMENA are closely connected with the SEMANTIC
COMPLETENESS OF ELEMENTARY LOGIC, first proved by G?del in 1930 [9] and
extended in many ways since, in particular by Henkin who also dealt
with formalizations of higher order logic. The underlying meta theorem
rests on two facts, one inherent in the finitary nature of a formal
deduction, the second involving non- constructive instructions for
building a model

1. WHENEVER ALL FINITE SUBSETS OF A SET OF WFS' ARE CONSISTENT THEN
SO IS THE ENTIRE SET and
2. EVERY CONSISTENT SET OF WFS' HAS A MODEL.

By definition Semantic Completeness of a formal calculus means
EQUIVALENCE BETWEEN FORMAL DERIVABILITY AND SEMANTIC VALIDITY where
validity stands for truth under all interpretations, i.e. in all
models.

At first this looks like an amazing result especially in view of
currently rampant incompleteness. It is unfortunate that popular
literature so often fails to make a clear distinction between the two
concepts of semantic and of syntactic completeness (pp.10,11). Only
the experienced reader will automatically know from the context which
notion is at stake.

As a matter of fact the completeness of first order logic is achieved
at a price: the expressive poverty of the formal language.
Completeness proofs for higher order logic are ensnared in the same
kind of bargain. They are based on a concept of model that to the
naive mind seems contrived. Elementary languages are incapable of
distinguishing between arbitrarily large finiteness and infinity, and
so are forced to tolerate the infinitely small. Consider the infinite
set of wfs' 0 < a < 1, a + a < 1, a + a + a < 1,..,a + a + a +...+ a <
1,... and let U be its union with TR, the set of all wfs' that are
true in the field R of the reals. Every finite subset V of U has a
model: just take R and interpret a by 1/n, where n is the number of
symbols occurring in that finite set V. By 1) then the whole set U is
consistent and so, by 2) it and with it the elementary theory of the
reals has a model which harbors an element satisfying all these
inequalities, i.e., a non- Archimedean, non-standard, or hyper, real
a. It is positive and yet smaller than any fraction 1/n, n a positive
integer.

Ruled by its logic, the language cannot prohibit such anomalies. But
there is a silver lining to this shortcoming: Because of the
consistency of infinitesimals with TR every truth about the reals that
can be expressed in the elementary language of R holds for all reals ?
standard or not ? and so, by G?del's completeness theorem, it has a
formal proof. And if the approach via infinitesimals is smoother that
is just great. One cannot help but marvel at the native instinct with
which the seventeenth century mathematicians went about their work

Similarly, any first order theory of N, including TN, has models that
contain infinitely large integers. The elementary theory of finite
groups has infinite models and so in fact does every first order
theory of arbitrarily large finite models.

All this is meant to explain that these non standard phenomena have no
bearing on the question whether Platonism is an appropriate view of
the origin of Mathematics. I am deliberately not using the word
"correct". Whether Platonism is "true" seems an ill posed question,
luring into vicious circles. How can we contemplate the truth of this,
that or the other "ism" before we have a clear and distinct idea of
what ? if anything ? we mean by the Truth of a theory?

The existence of non standard models should NOT be confounded with the
occurrence of incomplete concepts like that of a geometry or that of a
set. In the case of hyperreals we are running into limitations of the
formal language while dealing with complete theories, in the second
case we are simply facing the fact that the intuitive concept, say of
a geometry or a set, that we had in mind when setting up the
formalization is not completely fathomed yet, in both senses of
completeness. Of course the easiest reaction is to say, "that concept
is out there, let us go look more closely and we shall eventually find
its complete characterization". In this frame of mind G?del is reputed
to have been convinced that we shall eventually understand enough
about sets to come up with new axioms that will decide the continuum
hypothesis. But in other cases the expedient policy will allow a
concept to bifurcate ? sailors have no trouble with non-Euclidean
geometries.

The big question is where our standard concepts come from, how do we
all know what we mean by the Standard Reals? How can we distinguish
between Archimedean orderings and non Archimedean ones, when we cannot
make the distinction in first order language? Well we can always
resort to hand waving when words fail. We can indeed communicate about
them beyond the confines of formalism. They are conceptions,
constructions, structures, figments of our imagination, of the human
mind that is our common heritage. Other creatures may have other ways
of making sense of and finding their way in a Universe that we are
sharing with them.

This century has seen the development of a powerful tool, that of
formalization, in commerce and daily life as well as in the sciences
and mathematics. But we must not forget that it is only a tool. An
indiscriminate demand for fool proof rules and dogmatic adherence to
universal policies must lead to impasses. The other night, watching a
program about the American Civil Liberties Union I was repeatedly
reminded of G?del's Theorem: every system is bound to encounter cases
which it cannot decide, snags that will confront its user with a
choice between either running into a contradiction or jumping out of
the system . That is when, with moral issues at stake, cases of
precedence are decided by thoughtful judgment going back to first
principles of ethics, in the sciences alternate hypotheses are formed
and in mathematics new axioms crop up.

Returning to my question, think of mathematics as a jungle in which we
are trying to find our way. We scramble up trees for lookouts, we jump
from one branch to another guided by a good sense of what to expect
until we are ready to span tight ropes (proofs) between out posts
(axioms) chosen judiciously. And when we stop to ask what guides us so
remarkably well, the most convincing answer is that the whole jungle
is of our own collective making ? in the sense of being a selection
out of a primeval soup of possibilities. Monkeys are making of their
habitat something quite different from what a pedestrian experiences
as a jungle.

To sum it all up I see mathematical activity as a jumping ahead and
then plodding along to chart a path by rational toil.

The process of plodding is being analyzed by proof theory, a prolific
branch of meta mathematics. Still riddled with questions is the
jumping.
   _________________________________________________________________

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/huberdyson/fn.html

Notes

[1] cf. Charles Simonyi on EDGE quoting Richard Feynman

[2] cf. D. Guedj: Nicholas Bourbaki, collective mathematician, an
interview with Claude Chevalley, The Mathematical Intelligencer vol.
7, no. 2, 1985. [3] Cf. the two anthologies Philosophy of Mathematics:
selected readings edited by P. Benacerraff and H.Putnam, Cambridge
University press 1964 and reprinted with some deletions 1985, and J.
van Heijenoort's From Frege to G?del; a source book in mathematical
logic 1879-1931 Harvard University Press 1971.

[4] In a fine essay, entitled "Bemerkungen zu zwei wenig beachteten
'Gedanken' Pascals" ("Remarks on two of Pascal's 'thoughts' that have
hitherto received little attention") in his collection Ausgew?hlte
Vortr?ge und Aufs?tze (selected talks and essays), Bern 1955 pp.
226-234, the Swiss psychoanalyst and phenomenologist Ludwig Binswanger
elaborates on Pascal's "penses" (thoughts or reflections) on this
topic and substantiates them with clinical experiences pertaining
especially to the role played by symmetries in Rorschach tests.

[5] cf. chapter III of my G?del's Theorems; a Workbook on
Formalization, Teubner Texte zur Mathematik, Stuttgart-Leipzig 1991.

[6] Modular elliptic curves and Fermat's Last Theorem, Ann. Math. 141,
1995, 443 551.

[7] ber formal unentscheidbare S?tze der Principia Mathematica und
verwandter Systeme Monatshefte fr Mathematik und Physik 37,
1931,173-198. For a translation see Kurt G?del, Collected Works, Volume
1, ed. S. Feferman et al, Oxford U. Press 1986.

[8] cf. p. 39 ff. of the excellent and very readable monograph
Undecidable Theories by Tarski, Mostowski and Robinson, North Holland
Press 1953.

[9] cf. the collected works cited before.

From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 28 20:07:09 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:07:09 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] EDGE Digerati: The WYSIWYG - Charles Simonyi
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281456190.15827@panix3.panix.com>

EDGE Digerati: The WYSIWYG - Charles Simonyi
http://www.edge.org/digerati/simonyi/simonyi_p1.html et seq.
[Links omitted.]

"INTENTIONAL PROGRAMMING" A Talk With Charles Simonyi
("The WYSIWYG")

Charles Simonyi Photo

Introduction by
John Brockman

During the 1970s at Xerox PARC, Charles Simonyi led a team of programmers 
in the development of Bravo, the first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you 
get) word-processing editor. Bravo was a fundamental departure from the 
way information was previously displayed and organized and it was part of 
PARC's contribution that changed the face of computing and ultimately led 
to personal computing.

Simonyi, born in Budapest, Hungary, holds a bachelor of science degree
in engineering mathematics from the University of California at
Berkeley and a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University.
He worked for the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center from 1972-80 and
joined Microsoft in 1981 to start the development of microcomputer
application programs. He hired and managed teams who developed
Microsoft Multiplan, Word, Excel, and other applications. In 1991, he
moved to Microsoft Research where he has been focusing on Intentional
Programming. He is generally thought of as one of the most talented
programmers at Microsoft.

Dr. Simonyi, whose long career has made him independently wealthy, has
endowed two chairs: the Charles Simonyi Professorship For The
Understanding Of Science at Oxford University which is held by the
evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins; and the Charles Simonyi
Professorship in Theoretical Physics at the Institute for Advanced
Study.

John Markoff, writing in The New York Times (12 Nov 1990), relates the
following anecdote: "He enjoys taking visitors to the machine shop in
the basement of his new home, complete with lathe and drill press. 'In
Hungary,' he said, 'they told us that the workers would never own the
means of production.'"

Charles Simonyi is "The WYSIWYG."

-JB

Charles Simonyi talks with John Brockman...

http://www.edge.org/digerati/simonyi/simonyi_p2.html

JB: What's new, Charles?

SIMONYI: I have been working on what we call "intentional
programming." It's very exciting. It has to do with professional
programming, so it's kind of hard to get into the details. It also
relates to the work of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in a
fairly direct way. We are trying to create an ecology of abstractions.
Abstraction is really the most powerful tool that we have in thinking
about problems. An abstraction is a single thing, yet if it is a good
one, it can have many applications, even an infinite number of them.
So an abstraction may be looked at from one side as a compression of
many instances into one generality or from the other side as a special
purpose power tool that yields the solution for many problems. If one
could attach a dollar sign to this power, the economies would be
amazing: rivaling that of chips or application software itself.

Programming languages are really just vehicles to supply abstractions
to programmers. People think of programming languages as being good or
bad for a given purpose, but they are really criticizing the
abstractions that a language embodies. The progress in programming
languages has been incredibly slow because new programming languages
are difficult to create and even more difficult to get adopted. When
you have a new programming language, the users have to rewrite their
legacy code and change their skills to accommodate the language. So,
basically, new programming languages can come about only when there is
an independent revolution that justifies the waste of the legacy, such
as Unix which gave rise to C, or the Web which gave rise to Java. Yet
it's not the languages that are of value, but only the abstractions
that the languages carry.

It's very much like Dawkins' idea that it's the genes, not the
individuals, that are important in evolution. And, in fact, what's
being reproduced are the genes, not individuals. Otherwise, how would
we have worker bees and so on. We are doing the same thing; it's
abstractions that matter, not languages. It's just that we don't think
of abstractions without languages, because languages used to be the
only carriers for abstractions. But if you could create an ecology in
which an abstraction could survive independent of everything else,
then you would see a much more rapid evolution for abstractions, and
you would witness the evolution of much more capable abstractions.

To enable the ecology, all you have to do is make the abstractions
completely self-describing, so that an abstraction will carry all of
its description, both of how it looks and of what it does. It's called
intentional programming because the abstractions really represent the
programmers' original computational intent. And that's what the
important invariant is, everything else of how something looks or how
something is implemented, these are things that should evolve and
should be improved so they can change. What you want to maintain
invariantly is the computational intent as separated from
implementation detail.

JB: It sounds biological in nature.

SIMONYI: Yes, we are using a lot of biological metaphors. We call our
transformations, for example, enzymes. It's just that biology, and all
the sciences of complexity, are making big forward strides, and it's
just a matter of using as many of the metaphors as one can.

JB: But it is still a programming language, isn't it??

SIMONYI: Absolutely not. Intentional Programming relates to a
Programming Language as a powerset relates to a set. It is strictly
greater, there cannot be any isomorphism between the two. IP programs
are encoded in a tree-like data structure where each node also has a
graph-like pointer to the definition of the intention the node is an
instance of. Every node can have arbitrary nodes underneath it, that
is nodes can be parameterized arbitrarily. The semantics of intentions
are described by the tree transformations which convert the instances
into primitive intentions from which native or interpreted code can be
generated by standard means. The looks of intentions are also defined
by arbitrary computation which serves no purpose other than to ease
interaction with the programmer. So names and looks what used to be
called "syntax" will have no effect on the computation and may be
changed arbitrarily as programming styles and programmers' needs
evolve. Knuth's dream of "literate programming" will become practical
and I expect a great deal of visual richness to also emerge in the
programs.

JB: Isn't this just another meteor that wipes out legacy to make room
for evolution?

SIMONYI: Luckily that is not the case. Intentions can be defined for
all features of all legacy languages, so legacy code can be imported
into IP without loss of information or functionality. Once in IP, the
process of incremental, continuous improvement can begin and the
lifetime of the legacy code will be limited only by its usefulness,
not by the means used to encode it.

JB: Do you foresee structural changes in the industry as a result of
this?

SIMONYI: It will be very exciting. The personal computer industry has
enabled evolution in the platforms. Out of the Cambrian Explosion of
the early eighties there emerged a few dominant architectures, the
Windows family being the most popular of them. There is incredible
variety in terms of peripherals, applications, networking, form
factors, performances all the result of evolution. I foresee a similar
progression in the realm of abstractions. Once everybody with a $5K
machine and good programming skills is empowered to create and publish
abstractions for which any one of the tens of millions of programmers
will be potential customers, there will be a tremendous explosion of
creativity. Many of the early new abstractions will be addressing the
same easily accessible niches, such as collections and maps of course,
so a shakeout will be inevitable. Then the creative energies will be
channeled to the myriad domains: software sharing, user interfaces,
graphics, accounting, animal husbandry, whatever. Each of these areas
will benefit from domain-specific abstractions and optimizations which
in turn will improve the quantity and quality of application software
in those domains. There will be more shareable software artifacts,
thanks to IP's ability to parameterize any abstraction further with
any kinds of parameters.

The "first law" of intentional programming says: For every abstraction
one should be able to define an equal and opposite "concretion". So
repeated abstraction or parameterization need no longer create "Turing
tarpits" where everything eventually grinds to a halt due to the
overhead introduced by the layers. In IP, the enzymes associated by
the abstractions can optimize out the overhead, based on the enzymes'
domain specific knowledge. The overhead associated with abstraction
has always been the bane of the very-high-level languages in the past.

There will be markets for flexible artifacts, abstractions in all
domains, and different implementations for those abstractions. These
in turn will improve tremendously the quality and availability of
application software.

Once one looks at abstraction as a commodity, the standard rules of
business can be applied. For example, one should be able to invest in
the manufacturing process in order to make the product more
competitive. Or in the software arena one should be able to elaborate
the definition of an abstraction in order make its application more
effective: simpler, faster, more flexible. Conventional programming
languages completely ignored this elementary rule: declarations and
references were all designed with the same high-falutin principles in
mind: orthogonality, cleanliness, what have you. It's as if we used
the same standards, materials, and budgets for the factory and the
retail store, or for the machine tools and for the product. Nobody in
business would behave in such an idiotic fashion. In IP one can
associate an arbitrary computation with any definition, so the
opportunities for making investments in definitions are limitless.
   _________________________________________________________________

http://www.edge.org/digerati/simonyi/simonyi_p3.html

JB: I've been hearing your name since the mid-seventies. It seems like
you've been a player in almost every epic of personal computing.

SIMONYI: I've been incredibly lucky, in a strange way. In the U.S.,
computers that operated with vacuum tubes were obsolete in the late
50's, whereas in Hungary, where I grew up, they were in use. It was a
time-warp. Also, I started working with computers at a young age. When
the personal computer revolution came about much later, the people in
the U.S. that had worked with tube computers were long retired, if not
dead, while I was really in the prime of my career. So starting very
young and starting in a time-warp gave me this double benefit that I
think very few people had. It was very unusual, at least in Hungary,
to start that young, but if you look at it today, you know that
computer programming is not difficult. Or rather, the kind of computer
programming that was done in the 60's is really child's play. It's
just that at that time that secret was well hidden, so people were
very worried about letting me close to very expensive machines. But I
had a certain pull through my dad, who was a professor of electrical
engineering, and I made myself useful by working for free, which was
also a kind of an unknown notion, but I had this intuitive idea of
looking at it as an investment.

This was in Hungary, in 1965, when I was 16 years old. I learned a lot
then. In a period of three years I traversed three generations of
computers: the first generation in Hungary, then a year and a half in
Denmark on a very typical second generation machine in Copenhagen.
Then I proceeded to Berkeley where I wound up in a computer center on
a CDC 6400, which was a fantastic third generation machine.

JB: How did you get out of Hungary?

SIMONYI: I went to a lot of subterfuge to get out, to be sure. I got
out legally; but it was illegal not to return. The way I got out was
that I finished high school one year before it was expected, which was
a unique feat at the time, in terms of actually getting permission and
go through with it. People there were living in a very fearful and
lock-step way, and just to do something unusual was a big deal. So
when I got out of high school I was 17, underage, so the military
couldn't touch me. I also secured an invitation to work at
Regnecentralen in Copenhagen, where one of the first Algol compilers
was developed. At that time university people had deferments, so the
military were in a quandary. If I were to go to university in Hungary,
then I would have been completely out of their reach. Whereas if I had
spent the year by going to this Danish institute, for example, then
they could catch me on the rebound. So they took the lesser of two
evils, and they let me out.

JB: Did your father leave with you?

SIMONYI: No, I left alone. He had many political problems and later
suffered because of my defection, but we had already taken that into
consideration. It worked out for the best in the end, and he would
have been very unhappy if I had been on his side having the same
problems as he did. He didn't want to leave his country for many
reasons, and I think he was egging me on to leave. I mean, now I can
say freely that he was encouraging me to get out.

JB: What happened at Berkeley?

SIMONYI: I got there when I was 18, and I was kind of a starving
student. Basically, I had a lot of problems with the immigration
people, because nobody had been shooting at me at the Hungarian
border. I was just a normal student, except a student whose passport
seemed to expire every minute. Though I had plenty of offers to be a
programmer, they were pretty strict about taking up employment, which
I thought was very strange in the land of the free. Also, you couldn't
get scholarships as a foreign student, so I was pretty much living
without visible means of support.

I worked for the Computer Center first and met Butler Lampson and did
some jobs for him. He and some other professors started a company
called Berkeley Computer Corporation, and they invited me to work for
them, and that's when I first received a stock option. It wasn't worth
anything in the end, but it's a funny story I haven't told before.

Sometimes I was an outstanding student and sometimes I was a terrible
student, depending on if I had money or if I had to work or whatever.
Also, I had no incentive to get good grades; I just wanted to get an
education. I was completely on my own; I paid for it myself; I viewed
myself as the customer, and a grade was just some stupid rule that the
university had. So I optimized my grades just so they won't throw me
out. Anyway, the Dean talked to me and said, well, Mr. Simonyi, you
were doing so well and are now doing so poorly; what's the reason? Can
we help you? You can share anything with us, tell us what it is. Is it
drugs, is it grass, acid, or mescaline? I smiled at him and said, I
think it's a stock option. He said, well in that case we can't help
you.

Berkeley Computer was really an offshoot of Project Genie, which was
funded by ARPA, and Bob Taylor was doing the funding. When Berkeley
Computer went bankrupt, the core people were hired by Bob Taylor who
was working for Xerox by then. This is how I got into Xerox PARC. I
still didn't have my Bachelors degree. With all this skimming the
bottom of the expulsion curve, it took me five years to get the
degree.

At PARC I had a number of different projects. Then the Alto came into
being the first personal computer and we had this fantastic capability
that was so evident. The most interesting thing: when you see a
capability that kind of blows you away, and you know that this is
going to be the biggest thing, but then some people don't see it. So
it's not like Alto was the only project at PARC; it was just one of a
number of similar projects that was fighting for resources. A resource
is more than just dollars, it's all forms of attention, attention of
the key people and so on.

One day I saw some pieces of paper on Butler's desk, and I asked him
what it was, and he said, Oh, it's a sketch for a text editor, we need
that for the Alto, and I said, well, can I take a look at them? He
said yes, there's nobody working on it. So I took it and decided to
make it happen, because it looked very sweet.

We had to create, again, a subterfuge to make it happen. I had to do
some experiments on programmer productivity, for my Ph.D. thesis. The
first experiment was called Alpha, the second experiment was Bravo.
That's how the first WYSIWYG editor was called Bravo, and it was
funded, in a way, as an experiment for part of my thesis.

My thesis was not about WYSIWYG. The thesis had some philosophical
parts and some measurement parts. The measurement parts are pretty
useless, the philosophical part was quite good, and it served us well
later in the early days of Microsoft. It had to do with organizing
teams, looking at projects, naming conventions and evolving
techniques.

Meanwhile, of course, WYSIWYG was born. Once the Bravo editor and the
other component of the "office of the future" were operational, it
created a fair amount of attention, and a lot of VIPs came to look at
what PARC was coming up with. The name WYSIWYG came about during a
visit from Citibank representatives. We had a demo showing how we
could display a memo with nice fonts, and specifically the Xerox logo
in its specific Xerox font, on screen, and then send it through the
Ethernet and print it out on the laser printer. So we printed what we
had created on the screen onto transparent slide stock. Part of the
demo was to push the button to print and then we held the printed
version up, in front of the screen, so you could see through the
transparent stock that the two were identical. Actually they weren't
exactly identical, but they were close enough. It was pretty
impressive.

One of these visitors said, "I see, what you see is what you get."
Which was of course, you must remember, the Flip Wilson tag-line from
Laugh-In, which was a big TV hit at the time. I think he was doing a
female impersonation. What you see is what you get. Well, that's the
first time I heard it used around the system, which was the first
incorporation of that idea, so somehow the term WYSIWYG must have
spread from that event.
   _________________________________________________________________

http://www.edge.org/digerati/simonyi/simonyi_p4.html

JB: How did developing the WYSIWYG word processor lead you to
Microsoft. Or, rather, was Microsoft then in existence?

SIMONYI: Microsoft might well have been founded on the very day we
gave that demo to Citibank in 1975.

At that time we already had a Mac, with a bigger screen than Mac, with
a mouse and so on. The Alto was a very, very serious machine. It cost
fifty thousand bucks; the printer cost two hundred thousand bucks, in
1975 dollars. Gosh, I remember thinking that maybe one day the
drugstore at the corner might have one of those machines, and then it
might be shared by the whole block, or a whole area in a city. Now I
have several of them at home.

Microsoft began at that time by doing Microsoft Basic. I started to
hear about microcomputers in E78, E79, and it sounded like a kids toy.
I recall that Larry Tesler at PARC had a Commodore 64 in his office,
and we sometimes went there to smile at it. I certainly never took it
seriously.

Eventually I started to become deeply unhappy because Xerox seemed to
be treating these ideas in an incompetent fashion. My fear was that I
would be missing out because I was allied with Xerox, and that the
world would be missing out because they were not going to get what was
possible. It wasn't just the Xerox marketing or management
organization, but also the technical organizations, that share a lot
of the blame if it should be called blame. Perhaps we should just
think of it as evolution in action.

The failure of Xerox saved me from a fate worse than death, which
would have been not sharing in the success. If Xerox had been
successful, I would have gotten a thousand dollar bonus, and that
would have been it. And I would have felt a little bit dumb.

But I didn't see the future until I saw Visicalc running on an Apple
II. That was a capability that we didn't have. I thought Xerox
suffered from a disease we call "biggerism," which is the
bigger-the-better type of engineering mentality. And it always
escalates and compounds, and it results in very complicated and very
expensive machines, which is very, very risky, because it's very
difficult to change or to tune to the market, or even discover what
the market wants.

I saw this nimble machine, the Apple II, providing both some
functionality which we at Xerox did not possess, and also having an
incredible biological advantage.

JB: Then what?

SIMONYI: I met Bill Gates, and I clicked with him right away, very
quickly in a very intense way. He was still very, very young, in his
early 20's. This was in November of 1980. But the scope of his vision
was extraordinary for the time, including his ideas about the
graphical user interface. We had a discussion, and I came back a
couple of weeks later with a summary of the discussion. Bill saw
Microsoft becoming the leading producer of microcomputer software,
worldwide. We wanted a worldwide, international market, and to be a
leading producer with a full offering of operating systems,
applications, languages, and consumer products.

It was easy for me to believe in the importance of applications and
graphical user interface because of my experience at Xerox. It was
amazing to see it coming from Bill with an equal intensity, when he
hadn't seen all that stuff, certainly not with the same intimacy as I
had. Furthermore, I realized that he actually had the wherewithal to
deliver it. It was interesting to look at a company like Xerox, with a
hundred thousand people and billions of dollars, and realize that the
success of your project depends on having the right two people that
you want to hire, who may not fit into the corporate structure. And
then you realize that this single guy can hire anybody he wants to!
Bill just said, hire two people, or hire five people. What do you
need? Do you need rooms? Do you need chairs? Yeah! We can do that.
Computers? Yes. You need this, you need that. Sure. We were talking
about only a few hundred thousand dollars which could make a
difference, we weren't talking about a billion.

Bill did spend a lot of money on one thing: a Xerox Star. We got one
of these biggered, enormous, expensive machines, but it had the germ
of the right idea in it. And we just wanted everybody in the
organization to get used to the desktop and to the mouse and to
pointing and to what's possible. And if it's not perfect, that's fine.
We didn't want to use operationally; we used it for education of the
people.

I described myself in an interview as the messenger RNA of the Parc
virus. I never thought the journalist would use it, because at the
time nobody was talking about viruses, about DNA, let alone RNA, let
alone messenger RNA, let alone getting the metaphor. But it was used.

It was the biggest thing in my life, certainly, joining Microsoft and
getting involved in the tremendous energy of those years. Probably one
of the most important things that we did was the hiring. That's one of
the enabling factors of growth, and I think we did a super job in
hiring. Many those people are still with us, and many of them are in
very high positions in the company. But, more than for any of our
competitors, they formed a very responsive, very efficient programming
organization.

That was key, because we did have problems. In applications, we had to
be able to do spreadsheets, we had to do word processing, we had to do
the databases. It was a no-brainer to know that. We did a fairly good
job in spreadsheets. We were competing very effectively against
Visicalc using a strategy that is very much like Java today; it was a
platform independent, interpretive, bytecoded system, that enabled us
at one point to run on 100 different platforms, so we could fund the
international organization and get acquainted with localization
problems, and all those things. Actually, Multiplan, our spreadsheet,
remained very popular in Europe, for much longer than in the States.
What happened in the States was that Lotus 1-2-3, wiped us out. So
that was kind of difficult, but it was our fault. We were betting on
the wrong horse the mixed market with a variety of systems, instead of
the right horse, which happened to be also ourselves, namely MS-DOS.
   _________________________________________________________________

http://www.edge.org/digerati/simonyi/simonyi_p5.html

JB: The software war du jour.

SIMONYI: Out of this debacle came Excel later on. I think that
competition is very important. It obviously creates again, comes from
biology much better results. If you look at evolution, much of
evolution is not in response to the environment, it's response to
other flora and fauna in the environment. So we need that, and it's
sad when the opponent doesn't put up a good fight.

You want to have competitors who really put up a really great fight,
and who have incredibly great ideas, and then you improve your ideas.
It's like when somebody runs the four minute mile. Once people see
that it can be done, then they will be able to do the same thing. And
so the four minute mile run isn't copied by the next competitor, he
achieves it through competition.

But every once in a while our competitors do completely crazy things
and they collapse by their own craziness and due to lack of hardcore
and disciplined technical evaluation of what they are doing. I mean,
hype is one thing, but believing your own hype is unforgivable.

JB: What are you referring to?

SIMONYI: The NC, for example. I think that the people around the NC
started with some valid concerns. There is a price concern, which is
not that great, but it is there. Obviously, if something is $900 it's
better than if it's $1200. Certainly there are valid concerns in terms
of cost of ownership, the problem of administration, and the issue of
updating of software in a network. The boot time is a valid concern.
But these concerns can be solved within the existing framework
relatively easily. I mean it's not rocket science, it's a matter of
attention, it's a matter of time; they will be solved.

The NC attempts create a whole new paradigm, where the user will be
faced with a whole new set of tradeoffs but where these problems are
allegedly solved. Of course who knows, because it does not exist yet,
but it's plausible that the start-up time will be solved, or if
there's no local state, that the administration problem is solved.
It's plausible. It's not a hundred percent, because even then there
have to be multiple servers, and when you update something it has to
go to multiple servers.

So it's not like there will be one server machine in the world and all
you have to do is change that machine and all the networked computers
are suddenly up-to-date. No. In some organization there will be 20
servers, and so the updates have to go to all the 20 servers, and so
on so forth. And when you are talking about computers there is no real
difference between 20 servers or 200 work stations, both of them
involve communications, both of them involve synchronization, both of
them involve data distribution yeah, one of them involves a few more
cycles, but cycles are the cheapest things in the world, they are like
dirt, they cost ten to the minus ten cents per. You can't pretend that
the problems will be only solved by creating this new architecture,
and that the other tradeoffs (things like you don't have privacy or
flexibility to run the program you need or that you can't exchange
media or can't take a diskette home or can't install the nice new
voice card) will be accepted without a word by the customer.

And then there are the speeches by Scott McNealy, where he says that
the office computers, by golly, really belong to the companies so they
should be able to do whatever they want. This is strictly speaking
true, but doesn't he see how irrelevant it is, or how annoying it
might be to the person who's working with that computer. And I guess
they could get into a shouting match, and the office worker would say
well, in that case I'm not going to take any work home, or in that
case why don't we have a punch clock and punch in and out, and lose
all the flexibility and all the innovation that people have offered in
the past. It's crazy to try to make such a radical investment on the
basis of such dubious tradeoffs. I'm sorry, but the claimed benefits
are perfectly obtainable within the existing Windows framework and
will be available in the existing framework, at which point the NC
companies will be left with nothing. Zero. Zip. Which will be very
sad. And meanwhile they will have made a considerable investment. And
then we'll be blamed for wiping them out or something.


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 28 20:07:31 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:07:31 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Animal Self
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281456300.15827@panix3.panix.com>

The Animal Self
http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2006/01/22/magazine/1124993979623.html

By CHARLES SIEBERT

A big-city aquarium after closing hours is an eerie, spectral
place. With the lights turned down in the empty viewing galleries,
the luminous dioramas of the different fish fairly swell against
your senses, rendering you the viewed and startled captive, adrift
in your own natural medium, in a literal suspension of disbelief.
"Help yourself," Sal Munoz, a night-shift biologist at the Seattle
Aquarium, told me one night this past fall, pointing to the huge
12-foot-high glass tank in which the subject of my specially
arranged private encounter that evening resided: a 70-pound giant
Pacific octopus named Achilles.

I was first introduced to Achilles earlier that day by Roland
Anderson, another scientist at the aquarium, and I was still having
trouble with Anderson's description of him as "a young, pretty
male." There are, as fellow life forms go, few as deeply alien - in
both substance and appearance - as the giant Pacific octopus.
"G.P.O." adults can weigh more than 100 pounds, and yet all of
their throbbing, multi-tentacled mass can pass like water through a
drain pipe no bigger in circumference than an apple, just wide
enough to accommodate the octopus's cartilaginous beak, its only
solid body part. These creatures look, at rest, like cracked
leather discards from a handbag factory; in motion, like wind-swept
hot-air balloons in severe deflation distress, with no one at home
in the balloon's gondola but for a pair of unsettlingly knowing
black eyes.

It was those eyes more than anything that I had asked Anderson for
special permission to come back and stare into on my own. Just me
and Achilles. With no one else around to make me self-conscious for
engaging in a protracted stare-down with an octopus. For reading
impossible complexities into his muffled side of the conversation.
For tapping my fingers on the glass in hopes of getting Achilles
riled. For behaving, in short, in a way that even I, an inveterate
lingerer before zoo enclosures and fish tanks, would have
considered preposterous had I not heard Anderson's real-life
octopus stories earlier that day.

Anderson told me that he and his staff started naming the G.P.O.'s
at the Seattle Aquarium 20 years ago. Not out of cutesy
sentimentality. Anderson, a longtime marine biologist and the son
of a sea captain, is not given to that sort of thing. It was, he
said, because they couldn't help noticing the animals' distinct
personalities. G.P.O.'s live about three or four years, and the
aquarium typically keeps three on the premises - two on display and
one backup or understudy octopus - so there have been a good number
of G.P.O.'s at the aquarium over the past two decades. Still,
Anderson had little trouble recalling them: Emily Dickinson, for
example, a particularly shy, retiring female G.P.O. who always hid
behind the tank's rock outcroppings, or Leisure Suit Larry, who,
Anderson told me, would have been arrested in our world for sexual
assault, with his arms always crawling all over passing
researchers. And then there was Lucretia McEvil. She repeatedly
tore her tank apart at night, scraping up all the rocks at the
base, pulling up the water filter, biting through nylon cables, all
the parts left floating on the surface when Anderson arrived in the
morning.

One particularly temperamental G.P.O. so disliked having his tank
cleaned, he would keep grabbing the cleaning tools, trying to pull
them into the tank, his skin going a bright red. Another took to
regularly soaking one of the aquarium's female night biologists
with the water funnel octopuses normally use to propel themselves,
because he didn't like it when she shined her flashlight into his
tank. Yet another G.P.O. of the Leisure Suit Larry mold once tried
to pull into his tank a BBC videographer who got her hand a bit too
close, wrapping his tentacles up and down her arm as fast as she
could unravel them. When she finally broke free, the octopus turned
a bright red and doused her with repeated jets of water.

Just across from Achilles that night was another G.P.O. named
Mikala, their two tanks connected by an overhead, see-through
passageway, the doors to which were closed. Mikala was a recent
replacement for Helen, who had just been released back into the sea
after a failed attempt by the scientists to mate her with Achilles.
Anderson told me that they had left Achilles and Helen together in
the same tank for a week, but, he said, "there wasn't any
chemistry." In the coming months, they would be trying the same
routine with Mikala, to see if anything clicked.

At one point I decided to absent myself from Achilles' stare and
walk around to the far side of his tank to look at Mikala in hers.
Standing in the narrow space beneath the overhead passageway, I
found her sound asleep, mushed between her tank's outer glass and
some craggy rocks. I thought about tapping the glass to see if I
could stir her, but decided to leave her be. When I turned around,
Achilles was right there behind me, bobbing against the glass,
bright red, his black eyes opened wide.

"How do we even define what an emotion is in an animal?" I recalled
Roland Anderson asking earlier that day. "And why do they even have
these different temperaments?"

It was back in 1991 that Anderson and Jennifer Mather, a
psychologist from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada,
first decided to undertake a joint personality study of 44 smaller
red octopuses at the aquarium as a way to begin to codify and
systematize what they thought they had been observing. Using three
categorizations from a standard human-personality-assessment test -
shy, aggressive and passive - their data would ultimately show that
the animals did consistently clump together under these different
categories in response to various stimuli, like touching them with
a bristly test-tube brush or dropping a crab into the tank.

"The aggressive ones would pounce on the crab," Anderson told me.
"The passive ones would wait for the crab to come past and then
grab it. The shy animal would wait till overnight when no one was
looking, and we'd find this little pile of crab shell in the
morning."

Anderson and Mather's resulting 1993 paper in the Journal of
Comparative Psychology, entitled "Personalities of Octopuses," was
not only the first-ever documentation of personality in
invertebrates. It was the first time in anyone's memory that the
term "personality" had been applied to a nonhuman in a major
psychology journal.

Scientists are not typically disposed to wielding a word like
"personality" when talking about animals. Doing so borders on the
scientific heresy of anthropomorphism. And yet for a growing number
of researchers from a broad range of disciplines - psychology,
evolutionary biology and ecology, animal behavior and welfare - it
is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid that term when trying
to describe the variety of behaviors that they are now observing in
an equally broad and expanding array of creatures, everything from
nonhuman primates to hyenas and numerous species of birds to water
striders and stickleback fish and, of course, giant Pacific
octopuses.

In fact, in the years since Anderson and Mather's original paper, a
whole new field of research has emerged known simply as "animal
personality." Through close and repeated observations of different
species in a variety of group settings and circumstances,
scientists are finding that our own behavioral traits exist in
varying degrees and dimensions among creatures across all the
branches of life's tree. Observing our fellow humans, we all
recognize the daredevil versus the more cautious, risk-averse type;
the aggressive bully as opposed to the meek victim; the sensitive,
reactive individual versus the more straight-ahead, proactive sort,
fairly oblivious to the various subtle signals of his surroundings.
We wouldn't have expected to meet all of them, however, in
everything from farm animals and birds to fish and insects and
spiders. But more and more now, we are recognizing ourselves and
our ways to be recapitulations of the rest of biology. And as
scientists track these phenomena, they are also beginning to
unravel such core mysteries as the bioevolutionary underpinnings of
personality, both animal and human; the dynamic interplay between
genes and environment in the expression of various personality
traits; and why it is that nature invented such a thing as
personality in the first place.

Animal personality studies are only the most recent manifestation
of the inroads that science is now making into what has long been
uncharted terrain: the very inscrutability of our fellow creatures
that has, from the dawn of human consciousness, both begotten and
bound us to our wildest imaginings about them. All sorts of
research has been done in recent years revealing various aspects of
animal complexity: African gray parrots that can not only count but
can also grasp the concept of zero; self-recognition, empathy and
the cultural transference of tool use in both chimps and dolphins;
individual face-recognition among sheep; courtship songs in mice;
laughter in rats. This is no longer merely the stuff of
anthropomorphism or isolated anecdote. As Jaak Panksepp, the
neuroscientist who first discovered rat laughter, has pointed out:
"Every drug used to treat emotional and psychiatric disorders in
humans was first developed and found effective in animals. This
kind of research would obviously have no value if animals were
incapable of experiencing these emotional states."

Now, with the emergence of animal-personality studies, we are
gaining an even fuller appreciation not only of the distinctiveness
of birds and beasts and their behaviors but also of their deep
resemblances to us and our own. Somehow, through the very creatures
we have long piggybacked upon to tell stories about ourselves, we
are beginning to get at the essence of that one aspect of the self
we have long thought to be exclusively and quintessentially ours:
the individual personality. The octopuses' garden is proving to be
quite deeply and variously shaded indeed.

Appropriately enough for a newly emerging psychological science,
the world's first Animal Personality Institute, or A.P.I., is still
more of a proposition than a physical place. Indeed, outside of a
newly established Web site with a flashy bright blue logo, A.P.I.'s
only visitable locale can be found on the third floor of the
psychology-department building at the University of Texas in
Austin, in the small, book-crammed office of A.P.I.'s founder, Sam
Gosling, a London-born, 37-year-old professor of psychology. "This
here is my collection of animal-personality literature," Gosling
told me one afternoon in October, pointing to a long row of thick
blue binders along the top shelf of his office's bookcase,
including animal studies from fields as diverse as agricultural
science, anthropology, psychology, veterinary medicine and zoology.
"We're trying to scan them all and make them available, because
part of. . . I mean.. . ."

A tall, gaunt figure whose flowing locks, untucked striped shirt,
slightly flared bell bottoms and ankle-high leather boots give him
the appearance of a 60's-era British rock star, Gosling is given to
switching gears midsentence, his active mind going in a number of
directions at once. "Part of what we're trying to do here," he
continued, "is create a field."

Gosling, who often refers to himself as "a bit of a fraud," being
what he calls "a personality expert who knows very little about
actual animals," was a young graduate student in psychology at the
University of California, Berkeley, when he first came upon
Anderson and Mather's paper on octopus personality. It was not at
all an area of research he expected to be poking his nose into,
having originally attended Berkeley to pursue a degree in human
personality. But in the course of one of his first seminars, he
suddenly found his thoughts going in an unlikely direction, what he
now refers to as his "reductio ad absurdum moment."

"It was a basic seminar in human personality," he recalled. "We
were considering the question of what is personality. And I
thought, O.K., let's try to push it to its limit. To find out what
personality is, let's start by taking what's clearly outside that
category and discover what's different about that. Let's take
animals. They obviously don't have personality. So then I thought,
O.K., if animals don't have it, then what is it that makes them not
have it, and I couldn't come up with an answer."

A standard answer, of course, is that animals do not, as far as we
know, reflect upon and argue with their experiences, emotions and
behaviors in the way that we humans do. They do not possess, in
other words, that dynamic, self-reflective, internal dialogue the
very outcome of which is, many scientists say, our personality. Of
course, whether or not self-knowledge is truly a defining
characteristic of personality is a question scientists disagree on,
as they do about much else in the field. Indeed, the whole notion
of personality is one that we only began trying to measure and
codify in the past century. Personality theory started showing up
in the writings of Ivan Pavlov and Sigmund Freud as a somewhat
vague, broadly drawn concept. It has only been in the last 60 years
or so that the modern science of human personality began to emerge,
a system of assessing distinct personality traits that has its
roots in World War II, when the U.S. government assigned to the
Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of today's C.I.A.) the
task of identifying which individuals had the right traits to be
spies. A number of different personality-mapping methods and
traits-assessment tests have been developed over the years, all of
them pivoting around the principle that certain traits can be
consistently observed in individuals across time and different
situations. The most widely applied test today uses the categories
defined by what is known as the Five-Factor Model (F.F.M.):
openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and
neuroticism. Under each of these broad dimension headings are
so-called clusters of recognizable traits: an extroverted person,
for example, is more sociable, outgoing and assertive; a neurotic
one, more anxious, moody and stressed.

Gosling, however, was intent on exploring personality at its most
rudimentary level - below the radar, if you will, of human
consciousness. Applying some of the very same personality
assessments that we use on humans, he wondered whether we could
observe in animals essential traits like fearfulness,
aggressiveness, affability or calmness, traits that can exist
outside of cognition and yet are clearly and repeatedly apparent in
varying measures in different individual animals within a given
species.

Does one duck, in other words, behave consistently differently from
another duck, over time and across situations? If so, why doesn't
that meet the definition of personality as we apply it to
ourselves, regardless of the presence or absence of self-awareness?
In a sense, Gosling was posing a psychologist's rendition of that
old philosophical query about whether the tree that falls in the
forest, miles from anyone's ears, still makes a sound. That is, if
an animal behaves in distinctly consistent ways but isn't fully
cognizant of such behaviors, can the behaviors still be aspects and
indications of its personality?

One way Gosling set about answering that question was to focus on a
colony of 34 hyenas being kept on the Berkeley campus by Steve
Glickman, a professor of psychology. With Glickman's blessing,
Gosling asked four caretakers of the colony to independently fill
out questionnaires about each animal, using a modified version of
the F.F.M. test. He soon found that the caretakers' assessments had
the same level of agreement, or "convergence," as is found in
assessments done on humans, with such distinct human dimensions as
"excitability," "sociability," "curiosity" and "assertiveness"
being repeatedly observed.

Gosling then reviewed 19 different previous behavioral studies of
nonhuman species through the same F.F.M. framework and found a
similar recurrence of those dimensions across a surprisingly broad
spectrum of species. Among the traits remarked upon were such
things as "opportunistic, self-serving" behavior in certain vervet
monkeys; "emotionality" in rats; "fear avoidance" in some guppies
and "extroversion" in others; and, in Anderson and Mather's 1993
paper, both "boldness" and "avoidance" in octopuses.

"The evolutionary continuity between humans and other animals
suggests that some dimensions of personality may be common across a
wide range of species," Gosling wrote in the resulting paper he
published in 1999 in the journal Current Directions in
Psychological Science. "Scientists have been reluctant to ascribe
personality traits, emotion and cognitions to animals, even though
they readily accept that the anatomy and physiology of humans is
similar to that of animals. Yet there is nothing in evolutionary
theory to suggest that only physical traits are subject to
selection pressures."

Gosling told me that his seminar adviser thought the whole thing
sounded a bit "goofy" at first. Some of his fellow students,
meanwhile, were irked at him for trying to bring the field of
personality to disrepute, as Gosling put it, by studying silly,
trivial, frivolous stuff. The major sticking point, of course, was
his insistence on using the obviously loaded word "personality," a
choice that he admits was purposefully provocative.

In some quarters, the term still rankles. "Personality ratings have
been done with chimps where you can see in them intimations of
human characteristics," says Jack Block, an emeritus professor of
personality psychology at Berkeley. "Now, where you want to take
that, I don't know. Even with chimps, it is a big extrapolation
from them to us. But personality in fruit flies or octopi? Heck,
no. All living organisms do react to pain and seek what they have
developed to want in terms of food or mating. But they cannot
manifest the complexity of responses that human beings can."

John Capitanio, a psychology professor at the University of
California, Davis, who does extensive behavioral studies with
rhesus monkeys, is more willing to extrapolate. "Animal
behaviorists or behavioral ecologists are mostly interested in what
the animal is presenting them with in terms of behavior," he told
me recently. "And yet the behaviors exhibited are not dissimilar
from our own, and that's what causes us to infer these personality
characteristics. Now do they really exist in animals? I think the
answer is yes, they do in some form."

In many of his early talks, people would ask Gosling why he didn't
use the word "temperament" instead of personality. His response was
- and is - that temperament is always invoked as a purely
biological, inherited quality, whereas personality is thought of as
a "higher order phenomenon" that grows out of the interaction of
our inherited temperaments and our experiences. If he used only the
word temperament with animals, he would be dismissing the
possibility that they may have some of the same personality
processes as humans. "I don't want to rule that out," Gosling told
me. "I also think the word personality is as appropriate for
animals as it is for us. Of course, we still have to be suspicious.
People will also rate the personality of a loaf of bread or a car.
A colleague has poked fun at me about that: 'A temperamental car is
difficult to start across time and situations. So why isn't that
personality?' Well, the fundamental difference, of course, is that
with an animal there is an underlying physiology and biology.
Saying my car is temperamental is an analogy. And some people will
rate dogs not only as friendly or fearful but as philosophical.
Now, I do not believe dogs are philosophical, whereas I do believe
in their fearfulness. So we have to be careful where to draw the
line between what's reality and what's analogy."

Dogs, in a way, offer the most obvious proof of the existence of
animal personality. They have long been bound to us and bred by us
precisely for their very particular physical and temperament
traits, and, of course, even among specific breeds there are all
kinds of variation in the personalities of individuals. Indeed,
animals like dogs and cats point up what often appears to be a
paradoxically prodigious "duh factor" behind this otherwise
cutting-edge science. While scientists may tussle endlessly over
the validity of applying the word personality to nonhumans, for
people in the everyday world - especially those who spend any time
around animals - the assertion that they have distinct
personalities seems absurdly obvious.

Not so very long ago, concepts like animal sentience, emotion and
personality were not merely the stuff of anecdotes told by farmers
and pet owners; they were wholly embraced by the scientific
community as well. In the late 19th century, animal emotion and
behavior were integral aspects of the newly emerging science of
human psychology. Charles Darwin devoted much of his time after the
publication of "The Origin of Species" to researching "The
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," published in 1872.
Although that era's cross-species conjecturing and comparing was
often na?ve or intuitive, the impulse behind it went on to inform
human psychological study well into the 20th century. Beginning
with the appearance in 1908 of more sober, scientifically sound
works like John Lubbocks's "On the Senses, Instincts, and
Intelligence of Animals With Special Reference to the Insects" or
Edward L. Thorndike's "Animal Intelligence," animal studies figured
prominently in standard human psychology textbooks well into the
1940's. And then, steadily, the animals began to disappear.

At one point in his Austin office on the afternoon I met with him,
Sam Gosling pulled from his shelves the 1935 edition of "A Handbook
of Social Psychology," a standard human psychology textbook of the
time, and showed me the table of contents. More than a quarter of
the textbook's chapters were devoted to studies of animals and
other life forms, titles like "Population Behavior of Bacteria,"
"Insect Societies" or "The Behavior of Mammalian Herds and Packs."
There is even a chapter devoted to "Social Origins and Processes
Among Plants." But in the 1954 edition of a similar work called
"The Handbook of Social Psychology," there is but one chapter
devoted to nonhuman research. Titled "The Social Significance of
Animal Studies," it is essentially a desperate last plea to social
psychologists not to abandon animal studies, arguing at one point
that "social psychology must be dangerously myopic if it restricts
itself to human literature." The warning clearly went unheeded. The
most recent edition of the handbook, from 1998, is devoted entirely
to humans.

The banishment of our fellow beasts from psychological literature
can be blamed by and large on that branch of psychology known as
behaviorism. The field's major proponents, eminent psychologists
like B.F. Skinner, stressed the inherent inscrutability of mental
states and perceptions to anyone but the person experiencing them.
And even though the behaviorists were themselves major proponents
of the use of animals in behavioral research, they sought to rein
in subjective verbal descriptions of the animals' mental states, as
well as the sorts of experiments that relied on such necessarily
vague data. If the human mind was, as Skinner famously referred to
it, "a black box," then surely the minds of animals were even
further beyond our ken.

"The great and enduring contribution of behaviorism," Gosling says,
"is that it introduced the scientific method to the study of
behavior. They said, 'Let's get rid of the fuzzy, sentimental
higher-level descriptions.' And they did. They went to great
efforts to record specific behaviors, things like how many times a
chimpanzee scratched its head or nose. But it's hard to study
higher-order phenomena, things like personality and emotion, in
just those ways. In the end, what you're left with is this long
catalog of meaningless descriptions. If I need to know whether I
can go into that cage or not to clean it, it's not useful to tell
me the chimp scratched its nose 50,000 times in the past year. Just
tell me, Is it aggressive or not?"

In their dogged pursuit of hard science and their strict avoidance
of what Sam Gosling referred to in his first published paper as the
"specter of anthropomorphism," the behaviorists, especially in the
eyes of many who currently study animal behavior, greatly limited
the field of psychology by ultimately outlawing things like
intuition, inference and common sense. Now, however, the pendulum
has begun to swing back in that direction, and it is a shift that
has been impelled, somewhat surprisingly, by hard science.

Advances in fields like genetics and molecular and evolutionary
biology have lent to the study of psychology something that it
really didn't have when behaviorism first came to the fore: a
better understanding of the biological and bioevolutionary
underpinnings of behavior. No longer is the study of animal
behavior rooted in that inherently na?ve and anthropocentric desire
to see ourselves in animals or to project upon them our thoughts
and feelings. Animal personality, along with such integral fields
as animal behavior, behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology,
all pivot now around what might be called deep analogies. The more
detailed and specific our knowledge has become of the animals and
of the many differences between them and us, the more clearly we
can see what is analogous about our respective behaviors.

Animal personality, in other words, is now redirecting psychology's
focus in a direction the behaviorists would most appreciate: away
from airy abstractions about personality and down to its very
tangible and widely dispersed roots. It might be thought of as a
kind of biological Buddhism or muscular mythologizing or armed
anthropomorphism: a more disciplined and detailed form of that idle
speculating we have all done in front of the head tilt of a dog or
the sudden skyward shift of a flock of sea gulls or the comings and
goings of ants around their respective mounds.

"Now, those there I can almost guarantee you are females," Jason
Watters, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California,
Davis, told me one afternoon this past autumn. He was pointing to a
cluster of water striders that had climbed up the side wall of one
of the collecting pools in the artificial stream that Watters had
erected at the far western edge of the Davis campus for a six-month
study that he and his lab director, Andy Sih, recently completed on
the role of genetic and environmental factors in the expression of
behavior in water striders: those spindly black, surface-flitting
wraiths whose indent on their tenuous native terrain is never more
than four slightly concave, lunar-module-like landing cups.

Watters personally reared several thousand water striders for the
experiment and would come to know them about as intimately as any
human can an insect. He knew each strider's parents and siblings.
He photographed and marked each of them with paint-on numbers and
then tracked them through more or less every circumstance and
experience in their roughly yearlong lives: what and how they ate,
their responses to new environments or to simulated predator
attacks, their social interactions and mating practices out in the
simulated stream.

"I haven't gathered all the data yet," Watters said, grabbing one
of the clustered striders and confirming his suspicion about its
sex. "But what we do know is that these water striders express
consistent behavioral types. Like in the presence of a predator
some individuals will run and get right out of the water. Others
don't seem concerned whatsoever. Just sit there. Others get out and
then get back in after a little while. So there's a great deal of
variation in what they do. Especially in a mating situation, here
in the stream we've found among the males that there is the
consistently more aggressive guy - so that's his type or his
personality - and then there are these very active, hyperaggressive
males. They're the ones who are always forcing females to have sex
and driving them out of the water and really messing things up for
themselves and everybody. We don't know yet if this is really the
best way to be or what the point of it is. We're working on that.
But I've got to believe there's going to be some circumstances
where it's a good idea to be a really mean, brutish type of guy and
others where it's not."

A similar array of behaviors is now being encountered in other
insects. In her current research at Davis, Judy Stamps, a professor
of biology and animal behavior, has been looking into how early
experience affects habitat selection in drosophila, better known to
you and me as the common fruit fly. Stamps escorted me one
afternoon to one of the biology department's "animal rooms," where
she and her students have been conducting their experiments. The
room was the size of a small walk-in closet, barely large enough to
contain the 11-foot-long metal table before us.

To a tiny fruit fly, however, the strange, artificial fruit-bowl
habitats of upward twisting wire set at either end of the table are
separate universes, the various fruit-shaped planets of which,
Stamps has discovered, fruit flies approach and settle in a number
of ways, some of which depend on early experience and some on their
distinct personalities. Fruit flies born and raised on a plum, for
example, will seek out the next plum to settle upon, as will the
offspring that they raise there: a "no place like home" impulse.
But in the course of their research, Stamps and her students have
also encountered everything from overly shy, timorous fruit flies
to bold trailblazers to downright feisty and ultimately
self-defeating bullies.

"You don't think of drosophila in that way," Stamps told me. "They
can be very territorial, and some of the males are fairly
aggressive. They tussle with each other. When we did our free-range
fly experiments, we marked them individually. We put little colored
paint dots on their thorax. The students loved it. They'd say: 'You
know Blue? He's been attacking everyone this morning. He's on
Banana A, and everyone else is on Banana B. He's the ruler of
Banana A.' Of course, the other thing we've noticed is that
individuals that behave like Blue get into trouble because, you
see, they end up with nobody to mate with."

Another member of Andy Sih's lab, Alison Bell, has done extensive
studies of the three-spined stickleback fish, a tiny
prehistoric-looking fish with armorlike outer lateral plates and
serrated, lancelike spines protruding from the dorsal region. As
well as finding the same spectrum of behaviors in sticklebacks -
from extremely bold and bullying sticklebacks to extremely shy and
timid ones - Bell has found groups of sticklebacks that exhibit a
similar type of behavior: tribelike populations of bold and
aggressive sticklebacks, for example, or of extremely timid ones.
Their collective disposition seems to have been shaped by the
respective environment in which they were raised - whether it was
predator-free or predator-laden - and their physical appearance
reflects their environment as well: the timid sticklebacks having
far heavier armor and longer, more serrated spines.

The questions that scientists are now beginning to address are why
evolution has wielded such a variety of temperaments in animals and
why it hasn't weeded out the clearly deleterious ones: the shyness
and timidity that deprives some members of a group of food or mates
or the overaggression and extreme risk-taking behavior that can
often result in both the disruption of the group's overall
reproductive success and the aggressors' becoming some other
creature's food.

Roland Anderson sees the diversity of temperaments as a
manifestation of that most basic biological imperative of survival,
an array of personality traits being kept in play in a given
species because of the differing, shifting environmental
circumstances that groups may encounter. "What happens," he asked,
"if a big school of herring comes along and eats all the
aggressive, fearless males in a group of smaller fish? Well, there
will still be some of the more passive or shy ones hiding under
that rock that can say: 'Hey, they're all gone now. There's a
nice-looking female over there. I think I'll reproduce with her."'

Andy Sih, like most of his colleagues at Davis, views personality
differences in animals in a Darwinian context. He considers
specific behaviors and preferences from an evolutionary perspective
and tries to determine how various traits affect the long-term
survival of a given species. And in the course of his research on
everything from water striders to salamanders, Sih has become
fairly obsessed with what he calls "stupid behaviors," ones that
don't seem to make any evolutionary sense whatsoever.

"You'd expect animals to be doing smart stuff," Sih told me one
evening over dinner. "The whole tradition in most of evolutionary
ecology has been to emphasize adaptation where organisms do smart
things. But I've been making the case for a while that the most
interesting behaviors are actually the stupidest."

It's typically the males of a given species that seem to figure
most prominently in the stupid-behavior department - the militant,
mayhem-causing water striders and sticklebacks, for example, or
fierce male Western bluebirds, who spend so much time defending
nests or courting females that they completely neglect their own
offspring. But perhaps the most glaring instance of dumb-animal
doings is to be found in the female North American fishing spider.
Studies have shown that a good number of female fishing spiders are
from a very early age highly driven and effective hunters. It is a
trait that serves them well most of their lives, particularly in
lean times, but it wholly backfires during mating season, when
these females can't keep themselves from eating prospective
suitors.

"Now why would anybody, why would any organism do that?" asked Sih.
"If you look at these female spiders just in the context of mating
behavior, you would conclude that they're doing something mighty
stupid here. But their behavioral type is very good for them for
much of their life growing up in a highly competitive world where
food is often scarce. They're so geared up, though, that when
mating season comes around, they really mess up. And experiments
have shown that even if they're given a reasonable amount of food,
they'll still behave this way."

These same hyped-up females have also been shown to be the most
fearless in the face of predators. In simulated attacks, all
fishing spiders retreated underwater. The overaggressive, ravenous
females, however, were always the first to pop back up, giving them
at once the greatest chance of getting available food and, if the
predator was still around, of becoming its meal. Of course, a good
proportion of female fishing spiders are able to make the
distinction between sex and dinner and between finding and becoming
dinner. But for Sih and others, the persistence in certain members
of a species of these extreme behaviors and the inability of some
to modulate that behavior give rise to a more profound question
about the nature of personality types in general and how plastic or
not they actually are, whether in animals or humans.

In animals, it is now becoming evident, there is a certain degree
of evolutionary inertia when it comes to their behavior, wherein
the very behaviors that accord some members of the group a distinct
evolutionary advantage in one set of circumstances can do them in
in the next. They are stuck, to some extent, with their distinct
ways of being. We humans, on the other hand, tend to think of our
personalities as protean, mutable entities that, unlike our
physical selves, we can shape to suit shifting circumstances. Sih
disagrees. He says he thinks that our behaviors, no matter how
complex the human social contexts that help to shape them, are not
nearly as pliant as we believe them to be.

"Behavioral ecologists actually tend to model animals and humans as
both being very flexible, as being capable of changing their
behaviors as necessary to do the right things in all situations,"
he said. But in our own day-to-day experience, he said, we
recognize that humans don't really behave that way. "We all know
that overly bold person," he pointed out. "We have friends like
that. They do things that are just like: Hey, this can get you
killed. What are they doing that for? And there are people that are
shy, and they're missing out on opportunities they could have had."

There is currently a paucity of human studies along these lines,
but a recently published human-personality study of 545 people by
Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in England shows a
strong parallel with some of these recent animal studies. It found
that the more extroverted and outgoing people were, the more sex
partners they tended to have, an evolutionary edge that was
mitigated by the fact that these were the same people who were most
likely to end up in the hospital because of stupid risk-taking
behaviors.

Indeed, however elaborate an argument we humans may have with our
own biology, we are each of us to some extent locked into a
personality type, a consistent way of being without which we would
each be, in a sense, unrecognizable to ourselves or others. The
oft-heard comment "Hey, that's not like you" is a tacit
acknowledgment of your recognizably consistent way of being. If, in
other words, someone were to be entirely flexible and unpredictable
in their behavior, were able to respond with any one of the full
palette of behavioral responses in any given circumstance, they
would be not only, as Andy Sih put it, "scary to be around," but
they would also be someone of whom you could say, they have no
personality.

This set of ideas, Sih told me, suggests new questions that are
rarely posed about humans. "Like why do we even have a
personality?" he asked. "Why do we have a relatively narrow range
of responses as opposed to a full range? Why can't we all be bold
when we need to be and cautious and shy when we need to be? Then
we'd have no identifiable personality, and that would free us all
to become optimal."

For Sih, the answer seems to be that our personality is a
manifestation of a complex interplay between genetic inheritance
and environment and early-life experience. Bold people, for
example, are both naturally disposed to boldness and, further,
choose to be bold, becoming ever better at it, building from an
early age a mountain of abilities and tendencies that become a
personality. It might happen, as well, that an inherently shy
person is induced by an early-life experience to venture away from
his or her natural disposition and cultivate a bold personality.
But whether a person ends up building and climbing a shy or a bold
mountain, it may become increasingly difficult to come back down
and build another one.

"It's not impossible," Sih said, "but it's not going to be easy.
I'll give you another human example. It's always mystified me why
anyone would be a pessimist. It seems to me like optimism has to be
the way to go. But, in fact, there is some recent literature that
shows that pessimists are good at being pessimists. And that when
things go badly, they expected it anyway, and it doesn't hurt them.
And so it's this notion that personality types build because of
these feedback loops."

In human beings, of course, as with other highly social species,
the shaping of personality entails a complex web of influences and
imperatives. It is not merely about the acquisition of food or
mates but involves as well issues of group interaction,
cooperation, deception and so on. It is a dynamic that, in an ever
more complex series of evolutionary feedback loops, at once
impelled the formation of larger and more sophisticated brains and
the more nuanced emotional responses to social interaction -
feelings of embarrassment, guilt, empathy, confidence, etc. - that
such a brain allows.

The attempt to parse that web of entanglements has for decades been
a motivation of fields like psychology, psychiatry and sociology.
What seems so promising about the field of animal personality is
that in the course of allowing us to better understand and more
effectively conserve the animals themselves, it is also affording
scientists new pathways of understanding ourselves and our
behavior, through the kind of experimentation that we are unable to
perform on humans.

"Do thrill seekers thrive in certain speculative business or
military environments?" Sih asked. "I don't know. But I can do
experiments to look at analogous situations in animals, can take
different animals with different personalities and see how they do
in different environments - in a high-predation-risk situation, in
a cooperative situation, during a courtship-mating situation. Along
similar lines, we can test ideas like, Are animals particularly
aggressive when they invade new regions because it is primarily the
bold, aggressive individuals that tend to immigrate to new areas?
How does the personality of the immigrant pool in humans differ
from those who stay behind, and does that difference influence
success - and does this basic view apply to the melting pot of
America?"

Alison Bell has done related experiments with sticklebacks. It has
long been clear to researchers that fish that have lived for many
generations in the proximity of dangerous predators are less bold
and less aggressive than animals that have lived relatively
risk-free. What Bell discovered is that those cautious tendencies
outlast the presence of risk, even by a generation. When she moved
sticklebacks who had always lived in a high-risk environment into a
low-risk environment, she found that not only did they retain their
cautious tendencies, but so did their offspring. Even fish raised
from birth in a low-risk environment behave more fearfully if
raised by a particularly vigilant father from a high-risk
background.

"There's definitely the effect of genetic difference," Bell
explained, "but there's also the effect of what is experienced as
they grow up. Genotype and environment interactions make it
difficult to detect the effects of genes, because you have to take
the environment into account. This is annoying to geneticists." To
scientists like Bell who are studying the interplay of genes and
environment, however, it is of profound interest.

In the coming year, the sequence of the full stickleback genome
will have been assembled, which will open doors into all kinds of
cross-species research on the relationship between genes and
environment. Alison Bell will be looking at such things as
risk-taking behavior in sticklebacks - which may, by extension,
give us insight into the behavior of humans. The same genes and
hormone receptor systems associated with such behaviors have been
conserved across a broad spectrum of species from sticklebacks to
rhesus monkeys to us. John Capitanio has already done a number of
experiments with rhesus monkeys that look into how the manner of
their rearing affects what Capitanio (in a hedge on the loaded
P-word) calls an animal's "biobehavioral organization" - and how,
in turn, that biobehavioral organization affects everything from
gene expression to immune-system function against ailments like
simian AIDS.

What once seemed the hopelessly subjective pursuit of understanding
human behavior and personality is now increasingly being tied down
to and girded by the objective moorings of our own and other
animals' biology. The very names of newly emergent fields like
biological psychiatry, molecular psychiatry and, of course, animal
personality reflect this trend. It is not, as Capitanio points out,
a reductionistic concept but more of a holistic one, one that
allows for an unprecedentedly subtle reading of the integrative
influences - genetic, experiential and environmental - that shape
each individual's personality.

Capitanio is currently writing, with Sam Gosling, the first chapter
on animal personality to be included in "The Handbook of
Personality," a standard reference book of human-personality
psychology. This week, he will be in Palm Springs, Calif.,
presenting a paper on personality in rhesus monkeys as part of an
animal-social psychology symposium led by Gosling at the annual
meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the
first symposium of its kind at a human psychology conference. For
Gosling, it is the realization of the very thing he envisioned when
he first started pursuing the possibility of personality in animals
at Berkeley back in the mid-1990's.

"What really got me interested when I started exploring this,"
Gosling told me, "is I noticed that what the animal researchers
were doing in practice was exactly what human researchers were
saying would be the perfect study they could do in a perfect world.
Like you ask a human personality researcher, they might say what
we'd do is take a bunch of individuals, and we'd watch them from
conception till death and record all the major events in their
lives and know who mated with whom and who had a fight with whom.
And if we wanted, we could give them frightening stimuli and so on.
And a lot of my job is saying to those in human psychology: 'Hey,
you should talk to these other guys. What they're doing is really
relevant.' I'm like the middleman."

Looking through some of the animal-personality literature in
Gosling's office that afternoon, I came upon an intriguing paper
titled "Microscopic Brains," published in the March 13, 1964,
edition of the journal Science, in the midst of the great animal
blackout from psychological literature. Written by a professor of
zoology and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania named
Vincent Dethier, the paper is at once a study of insect behavior
and a remarkably prescient argument for a more intuitive,
empathetic and integrative approach to the study of psychology.

"The farther removed an animal is from ourselves," Dethier writes,
"the less sympathetic we are in ascribing to it those components of
behavior that we know in ourselves. There is some fuzzy point of
transition in the phylogenetic scale where our empathizing acquires
an unsavory aura. Yet there is little justification for this
schism. If we subscribe to an idea of a lineal evolution of
behavior, there is no reason for failing to search for adumbrations
of higher behavior in invertebrates."

Dethier concludes on a decidedly haunting note: "Perhaps," he
writes, "these insects are little machines in a deep sleep, but
looking at their rigidly armored bodies, their staring eyes and
their mute performances, one cannot help at times wondering if
there is anyone inside."

We will never know, of course, one way or the other. And yet
somehow, science, of all things, is rendering the empirical answer
to such a question incidental to a more felt and intuitive one.
Perched now, like entranced children, along the banks of their
respective simulated streams, scientists are staring for hours at
the least human of creatures - everything from bullying fruit flies
to ravenous, oversexed water striders and fishing spiders to
perilously fearless hordes of armored stickleback fish - and are
beginning to see in them not just their distinct patterns of
behavior but also something deeply and distinctly recognizable.
Something, well, not altogether inhuman.

Charles Siebert is a contributing writer and the author most
recently of "A Man After His Own Heart: A True Story."

From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 28 20:10:20 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:10:20 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] AP: Inmate Testifies Why He Killed Molester Priest
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281456530.15827@panix3.panix.com>

Inmate Testifies Why He Killed Molester Priest
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/national/24priest.html

[I have been told that child molestation is a worse crime than murder, 
since the molesters get worse treatment by other prisoners. This article 
is evidence of that. But why should this be?]

    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

    WORCESTER, Mass., Jan. 23 (AP) - The prisoner who strangled the
    child-molesting priest John J. Geoghan behind bars testified Monday
    that he had resolved to kill him after Mr. Geoghan arrogantly
    brushed off criticism that he had "destroyed all kinds of lives."

    The witness, Joseph Druce, took the stand a second day at his trial
    for killing Mr. Geoghan, who was serving time for groping a
    10-year-old boy, had been accused of molesting 150 other children
    and had been defrocked. Mr. Druce, who is already serving a life
    sentence for another killing, has pleaded not guilty by reason of
    insanity, arguing that his own molestation as a child and years in
    prison had filled him with rage.

    Mr. Druce, 40, said that in the weeks before the killing, he twice
    confronted Mr. Geoghan, then 68, about the former priest's
    molesting children. Mr. Geoghan was "arrogant" and said he was
    worth far more than the millions that the Roman Catholic
    Archdiocese of Boston had paid to settle lawsuits involving his
    offenses, Mr. Druce testified.

    "I was just, like, 'That's it, that's it, I've got to stop this,' "
    Mr. Druce said. "I couldn't get it out of my head."

    Mr. Druce said he had overheard Mr. Geoghan talking on the phone to
    his sister, as well as engaged in conversations with other
    prisoners, about plans to move to South America once he was
    released so he could work with children again.

    Once, Mr. Druce said, he heard Mr. Geoghan discussing with other
    prisoners how to molest young boys.

    "That just, like, freaked me out," he said.

    He said that during one conversation, he told Mr. Geoghan: "You're
    bankrupting the archdiocese. You're costing them $10 million" - a
    reference to the amount the church had paid to settle lawsuits.

    Mr. Geoghan replied, "I'm worth $20 million," Mr. Druce said.

    During a later conversation, Mr. Druce said, he told Mr. Geoghan
    that in molesting 150 to 200 children, he had "destroyed all kinds
    of lives." Mr. Geoghan responded, "I'm worth 300 of them," the
    witness testified.

    When asked by his lawyer why he had killed Mr. Geoghan, Mr. Druce
    referred to his claims that he had been molested as a child.

    "I wanted to get the thoughts out of my mind of being molested
    myself, and the arrogant way he answered my questions," Mr. Druce
    said.

    He also said he had wanted to "make a statement."

    "I had seen myself as the designated individual who had to put a
    stop to the pedophilia in the church," he said.

    The judge in the case, Francis R. Fecteau of Worcester Superior
    Court, told the jurors Monday that they would hear closing
    arguments and begin deliberating on Thursday.


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 28 20:10:35 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:10:35 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] 
	NYT: It May Look Authentic; Here's How to Tell It Isn't
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281457010.15827@panix3.panix.com>

It May Look Authentic; Here's How to Tell It Isn't
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/science/24frau.html
[Click the URL to view the graphic.]

    By NICHOLAS WADE

    Among the many temptations of the digital age, photo-manipulation
    has proved particularly troublesome for science, and scientific
    journals are beginning to respond.

    Some journal editors are considering adopting a test, in use at The
    Journal of Cell Biology, that could have caught the concocted
    images of the human embryonic stem cells made by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk.

    At The Journal of Cell Biology, the test has revealed extensive
    manipulation of photos. Since 2002, when the test was put in place,
    25 percent of all accepted manuscripts have had one or more
    illustrations that were manipulated in ways that violate the
    journal's guidelines, said Michael Rossner of Rockefeller
    University, the executive editor. The editor of the journal, Ira
    Mellman of Yale, said that most cases were resolved when the
    authors provided originals. "In 1 percent of the cases we find
    authors have engaged in fraud," he said.

    The two editors recognized the likelihood that images were being
    improperly manipulated when the journal required all illustrations
    to be submitted in digital form. While reformatting illustrations
    submitted in the wrong format, Dr. Rossner realized that some
    authors had yielded to the temptation of Photoshop's image-changing
    tools to misrepresent the original data.

    In some instances, he found, authors would remove bands from a gel,
    a test for showing what proteins are present in an experiment.
    Sometimes a row of bands would be duplicated and presented as the
    controls for a second experiment. Sometimes the background would be
    cleaned up, with Photoshop's rubber stamp or clone stamp tool, to
    make it prettier.

    Some authors would change the contrast in an image to eliminate
    traces of a diagnostic stain that showed up in places where there
    shouldn't be one. Others would take images of cells from different
    experiments and assemble them as if all were growing on the same
    plate.

    To prohibit such manipulations, Dr. Rossner and Dr. Mellman
    published guidelines saying, in effect, that nothing should be done
    to any part of an illustration that did not affect all other parts
    equally. In other words, it is all right to adjust the brightness
    or color balance of the whole photo, but not to obscure, move or
    introduce an element.

    They started checking illustrations in accepted manuscripts by
    running them through Photoshop and adjusting the controls to see if
    new features appeared. This is the check that has shown a quarter
    of accepted manuscripts violate the journal's guidelines.

    In the 1 percent of cases in which the manipulation is deemed
    fraudulent - a total of 14 papers so far - the paper is rejected.
    Revoking an accepted manuscript requires the agreement of four of
    the journal's officials. "In some cases we will even contact the
    author's institution and say, 'You should look into this because it
    was not kosher,' " Dr. Mellman said.

    He and Dr. Rossner plan to add software tests being developed by
    Hani Farid, an applied mathematician at Dartmouth. With a grant
    from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is interested in
    ways of authenticating digital images presented in court, Dr. Farid
    is devising algorithms to detect alterations.

    His work has attracted interest from many people, he said,
    including eBay customers concerned about the authenticity of
    images, people answering personal ads, paranormal researchers
    studying ghostly emanations and science editors.

    For the latter, Dr. Farid is developing a package of algorithms
    designed to spot specific types of image manipulation. When
    researchers seek to remove an object from an image, such as a band
    from a gel, they often hide it with a patch of nearby background.
    This involves a duplication of material, which may be invisible to
    the naked eye but can be detected by mathematical analysis.

    If an object is enlarged beyond the proper resolution, Photoshop
    may generate extra pixels. If the object is rotated, another set of
    pixels is generated in a characteristic pattern.

    An object introduced from another photo may have a different angle
    of illumination. The human eye is largely indifferent to changes in
    lighting, Dr. Farid said, but conflicting sources of illumination
    in a single image can be detected by computer analysis and are a
    sign of manipulation.

    "At the end of the day you need math," Dr. Farid said. He hopes to
    have a set of tools available soon for beta-testing by Dr. Rossner.

    Journals depend heavily on expert reviewers to weed out papers of
    poor quality. But as the Hwang case showed again, reviewers can do
    only so much. The defined role of reviewers is not to check for
    concocted data but to test whether a paper's conclusions follow
    from the data presented.

    The screening test addresses an issue reviewers cannot easily
    tackle, that of whether the presented data accurately reflect the
    real data. Because journal editors now have the ability to perform
    this sort of quality control, "they should do it," Dr. Rossner
    said.

    The scientific community has not yet come to grips with the
    temptations of image manipulation, Dr. Mellman said, and he would
    like to see other journals adopt the image-screening system, even
    though it takes 30 minutes a paper. "We are a poor university
    press," he said, without the large revenue enjoyed by journals such
    as Nature, Science and Cell. "If they can't bear this cost,
    something must be dreadfully wrong with their business models," he
    said.

    Science, in fact, has adopted The Journal of Cell Biology's
    guidelines and has just started to apply the image-screening test
    to its own manuscripts. "Something like this is probably inevitable
    for most journals," said Katrina Kelner, a deputy editor of
    Science.

    She became interested as a quality control measure, not because of
    the concocted papers of Dr. Hwang, two of which Science published.
    Dr. Mellman says the system would have caught at least the second
    of Dr. Hwang's fabrications, since it "popped out like a sore
    thumb" under the image screening test.

    But other editors are less enthusiastic. Emilie Marcus, editor of
    Cell, said that she was considering the system, but that she
    believed in principle that the ethics of presenting true data
    should be enforced in a scientist's training, not by journal
    editors.

    The problem of manipulated images, she said, arises from a
    generation gap between older scientists who set the ethical
    standards but don't understand the possibilities of Photoshop and
    younger scientists who generate a paper's data. Because the whole
    scientific process is based on trust, Dr. Marcus said: "Why say,
    'We trust you, but not in this one domain?' And I don't favor
    saying, 'We don't trust you in any.' "

    Rather than having journal editors acting as enforcers, she said,
    it may be better to thrust responsibility back to scientists,
    requiring the senior author to sign off that the images conform to
    the journal's guidelines.

    Those guidelines, in her view, should be framed on behalf of the
    whole scientific community by a group like the National Academy of
    Sciences, and not by the fiat of individual editors.


From checker at panix.com  Sat Jan 28 20:11:18 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:11:18 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: This Is Your Brain on Schadenfreude
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281457050.15827@panix3.panix.com>

This Is Your Brain on Schadenfreude
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/science/24side.html

Side Effects
By JAMES GORMAN

Now that schadenfreude, which I always thought meant "shades of Freud"
but actually means taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune, has
been located in the brain, I am awaiting news on the location of
ennui, angst, misery, malaise and "feeling pretty."

I was actually hoping for anomie as well, but that was when I thought
it was something like ennui. Apparently, if we are to believe the
several dictionaries I consulted, anomie isn't exactly a state of mind
but a kind of disconnected lack of direction or morals.

I think my expectations are reasonable. After all, brain scans - which
were used in the detection of schadenfreude - have clearly reached the
level of sophistication required to identify states of mind described
by complicated German words. Soon they will advance to states of mind
truly expressible only in French, and ultimately to the kind of
internal experience until now captured only in our best musical
comedies.

Tania Singer at University College London and her colleagues, who
published a schadenfreude paper in Nature, were not actually searching
for schadenfreude when they used functional magnetic resonance imaging
to watch the brains of subjects in action. Their primary interest was
variation in levels of empathy, which can be detected by the activity
in "pain-related areas" like the "fronto-insular and anterior
cingulate cortices" of the brain when a person is watching someone
else in pain.

First the experimental subjects watched people playing a game in which
some cheated (bad people) and others played fair (good people). Then
they watched the same people suffering from a painful stimulus.

The empathy circuits lighted up in both men and women when bad things
happened to good people. When bad things happened to bad people, the
women in the study were still empathic. But not the men. Not only did
they show less empathy toward bad people, but the reward center in the
left nucleus accumbens lighted up. All that translates as "Serves him
right!"

I wouldn't exactly call that schadenfreude, although Nature made it
the core of its press release and most news coverage emphasized the
big German word. Dr. Singer didn't actually put the word in her paper,
either, but in an interview she defended the idea that the emotion she
was viewing came under the heading of schadenfreude. She did
acknowledge that the word included other feelings.

When someone slips and falls on the ice, celebrities have wardrobe
malfunctions and rich people lose money, your reward center may light
up. Sometimes envy inspires schadenfreude. Sometimes it's just a good
camera angle. Another example, not mentioned in the Nature press
release, might be when a competitor, say the journal Science,
publishes papers by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk that turn out to be fabricated
and you (Nature) publish a paper by the same author about an
improbably cloned Afghan hound that has held up to scrutiny so far.

There is a small flaw in my wish to see what part of the brain lights
up when Maria sings "I Feel Pretty" in "West Side Story." With brain
scans, a lot depends on context. What Dr. Singer and colleagues saw
was a reward center lighting up and the empathy circuits dimming. She
said the same reward center might also be active in anticipation of
chocolate, for instance, and in drug addiction.

Still, even if we need to bring in context, there is a great big world
of emotions and mental activity out there to be scanned. There's
amusement, bemusement and disillusionment. One could be dazed, or
confused, or dazed and confused. Would those be different?

Not to mention the blues. There are the morning blues, the poor man's
blues, the white boy blues, the Chicken Cordon Blues and the "blues
you get from trying to keep your Uncle Bill from dying and he
afterward forgets you in his will." Are they all the same?

These questions may not be answered in my lifetime, but I hope for the
resolution of one question that has always plagued me, the difference
between ennui and boredom.

Suppose one performed brain scans of adolescents refusing to do their
homework, prisoners serving life sentences and graduate students
suffering from ennui. Based on the self-assessments of adolescents I
know, I predict that the prisoners and the adolescents will show
similar brain activity - anger toward the warden turned inward.

I don't know where that happens in the brain, but I'm betting the
graduate students are just going through periods of involuntary
celibacy and trying not to be obvious about their desperation.


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 29 02:15:42 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 21:15:42 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] CPE: Geoffrey M. Hodgson: The Evolution of
 Institutions: An Agenda for Future Theoretical Research
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601282112050.25370@panix3.panix.com>

Geoffrey M. Hodgson: The Evolution of Institutions: An Agenda for Future 
Theoretical Research
Constitutional Political Economy, 13, 111-127,  2002.

The Business School, University of Hertfordshire, Mangrove Road, Hertford, 
Hertfordshire SG13 8QF, UK g.m.hodgson at herts.ac.uk

[This is a frustrating article that addresses a big theme, namely that 
there are institutional backdrops behind every institution that we observe 
evolving. The article is as once too abstract and not abstract enough. 
Just exactly what an institution is is never clearly specified. The 
analysis could be so abstract as to include robots or just computer games, 
and there would be no need to talk about people, as we know them, who 
already have institutions, or rather social orderings, which we see this 
in social mammals.

[Hodgson's prime example of a pre-existing institution is language, and he 
is presumably speaking of human language and not just animal 
communication. Those who use language already obey social norms: you do 
have to shut up and listen and not bash someone who is trying to 
communicate with you over the head and steal his property. Habermas 
extended this simple idea to a complex notion of "communicative 
rationality," and one that entails, so he claims, something not far from 
the modern welfare state. Hodgson does not go to this length, but he does 
not develop the idea that language usage would at least entail a certain 
amount of peace (you do have to shut up).

[And his notion of preferences needs to be better specified. Economists 
generally think of preferences as ordering bundles of economic goods, but 
Hodgson seems to think preferences can also be for having and holding 
habits of one sort or another. More still, habits, and preferences for 
these habits (I guess that what's he struggling to get at) develop out of 
living together.

[All this is very good, but the article needs a lot more concretes. Try to 
supply them for your self as you sweat through the article, for the 
general ideas of mutual co-evolution of individuals and institutions is 
certainly among the most important issues there are. He makes only bare 
reference to Boyd and Richerson's Culture and the Evolutionary Process, the 
only iirc sociobiologically informed reference in the essay. And, as you 
read articles that invoke supposedly purely rational calculator, look for 
Unchecked anthropomorphic Premises. Too concrete a specification of a 
calculating agents as being people as we now know them (think of Mr. 
Mencken's depictions of man) will make difficult extensions to transhumans 
and posthumans.]

Abstract.

This article reviews some theoretical questions concerning the processes 
of institutional evolution. The necessity of assuming the prior existence 
of some other institutions, such as language, is underlined. Arguably, the 
emergence and stability of some institutions may be enhanced by processes 
of 'downward causation' through which institutional constraints lead to 
the formation of concordant habits of thought and behaviour. Having 
pointed to the importance of pre-existing, as well as emerging, 
institutions, this article reconsiders the possible role of the state in 
the emergence and maintenance of some institutions, in particular money 
and property. An agenda for future research is outlined.

JEL classification: B4, D0, K0.

Keywords: institutions, evolution, downward causation, habits, 
constraints, the state.

1. Introduction

In a book first published in German in 1871, Carl Menger (1981) pioneered 
a basic analysis of how institutions evolve. His chosen example was the 
institution of money. Menger saw money as emanating in an undesigned 
manner from the communications and interactions of individual agents. He 
started with a barter economy. As is well known, a problem with barter is 
the lack of a general 'double coincidence of wants'. To deal with this 
problem, traders look for a convenient and frequently exchanged commodity 
to use in their exchanges with others. Once such usages become prominent, 
a circular process of institutional self-reinforcement takes place. 
Emerging to overcome the difficulties of barter, a prototype money is 
chosen because it is a frequently used commodity, and its use becomes all 
the more frequent because it is chosen. This circular positive feedback 
leads to the emergence of the institution of money.

In this Mengerian approach, individual preference functions are taken as 
given for the purpose of this analysis. The direction of analysis is from 
the given individual to the emergent institution. Menger thus inspired a 
central, unifying future project in both Austrian economics and the 'new 
institutional economics': to explain the existence of political, legal, or 
social, institutions by reference to a model of given, individual 
behaviour, tracing out its consequences in terms of human interactions. 2

However, theoretical analyses or simulations of the evolution of money" or 
other institutions" have proved to be remarkably problematic. For example, 
in the work of Ramon Marimon et al. (1990) an attempt is made to model the 
emergence of money with artificially intelligent agents. Their results are 
highly qualified and partially inconclusive. A single monetary unit does 
not always readily emerge. Menger's discursive analysis of an emergent 
convention has proved to be remarkably difficult to replicate in a 
computer simulation. 3

Attempts to simulate the emergence of other institutions or conventions 
show similar difficulties. For example, in a simulation of the emergence 
of a simple traffic convention Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbj?rn Knudsen 
(2001) show that artificially intelligent 'drivers' negotiating in both 
directions a two-lane circular track, do not always shift to the same side 
of the road to avoid collision. Although this outcome sometimes appears in 
this simulation, it is not guaranteed, even with foresighted and agile 
agents.

It is also worth noting that, in the twenty years since the first mass 
production of the cheap microcomputer, very few agent-based computer 
simulations exhibiting the emergence of an institution along Mengerian 
lines have been published. Computing power has become ubiquitous but 
successful simulations along these lines have been rare. This is again a 
ground for suspicion that the simulation of convergent outcomes may be 
much more difficult than previously envisaged. Although convergence is 
possible in many cases, many simulation runs lead to contrary outcomes, 
depending on such factors as decision algorithms, parametric adjustments 
and stochastic errors.

At the theoretical and methodological level, there is no clear consensus 
among modern researchers as to what would constitute an adequate or 
acceptable explanation of the process of emergence of an institution. This 
question is at present under-researched. As a result, a contributor to the 
'new' institutional economics found 'the "hard core" of this new research 
program in disarray' (Sened 1997: 179-80). Oliver Williamson (2000: 595) 
himself admits that 'we are still very ignorant about institutions.' These 
assertions do not undermine the value or importance of the work of Menger 
and others on the evolution of institutions. Instead they point to a 
number of substantial research questions that remain to be answered. It is 
the purpose of this essay to make some of these questions and issues 
explicit, so that further research can address them.

Broadly, three types of question emerge concerning the Mengerian approach 
to the analysis of the evolution of institutions. The first problem, which 
will be briefly discussed here, concerns the theoretical impossibility of 
starting from an institution-free 'state of nature' in the analysis of the 
emergence of institutions. Several authors have already acknowledged this 
problem, and a brief discussion is included for reasons of completeness. 
It is the subject of section 2.

Section 3 considers the role of constraints in institutional evolution and 
addresses the Mengerian 'bottom up' approach of starting from the given 
individual. Given the lack of adequate support from formal analyses and 
simulations, the Mengerian argument may not always be sufficient to 
explain the evolution of institutions. On this tentative assumption, it is 
suggested that real world institutional emergence may be aided by the 
development of concordant habits, particularly as a result of emerging 
channels and constraints. In some contexts, habit formation may greatly 
enhance the formation and stability of institutions. It is argued here 
that this is tantamount to the assumption of malleable preferences, along 
the lines of authors in the 'old' institutionalist tradition. If such 
mechanisms exist, then they are cases of 'reconstitutive downward 
causation' in which institutions and constraints have a capacity to mould 
individual preferences. 4 This argument is discussed alongside some former 
claims from the literature in economics that suggest that institutional 
constraints have more importance than formerly acknowledged.

Section 4 raises again the role of statutory and other forms of 
intervention in the evolution and sustenance of institutions. One of 
Menger's aims was to show that institutions could emerge spontaneously 
from the interaction of individuals alone. He has thus been interpreted as 
an opponent of the 'state theory of money', as found in works from 
Aristotle through Georg Knapp (1924) to John Maynard Keynes (1930) and 
others. However, Menger (1936 [1909] ) himself accepted that the 
intervention of the state may be necessary to maintain the integrity of 
the monetary unit in some circumstances. Accordingly, and more generally, 
it remains a question of research and debate as to whether, and if so in 
what circumstances, the state or other powerful organisations can 
facilitate the emergence and stability of other institutions. Some 
preliminary suggestions are developed here. Section 5 concludes the essay.

It must be emphasised that the aim of the article is to review the issues 
at the current cutting edge of research in institutional economics. The 
aim is not to provide final or definitive answers. To do so at the current 
stage of research in this area would be dogmatic and unwarranted.

2. The Problem of Infinite Institutional Regress

We follow widespread practice and define institutions as durable systems 
of established and embedded social rules that structure social 
interactions. Language, money, law, systems of weights and measures, 
traffic conventions, table manners, firms (and other organisations) are 
all institutions. Such a broad definition of institutions has now become 
widely accepted. As Menger and others recognise, this broad set of 
institutions falls into a number of subcategories, including the division 
between those that emerge spontaneously and those that result from a 
process involving conscious design.

The work of Menger and many 'new' institutional economists is concerned to 
show how spontaneous institutions can emerge, simply out of the 
interactions of individuals, each pursuing their given purposes and 
preferences. Andrew Schotter (1981: 5, emphasis removed) goes so far as to 
define 'economics as the study of how individual economic agents pursuing 
their own selfish ends evolve institutions as a means to satisfy them'. 
Their emphasis is on a 'bottom up' approach: given a set of interacting 
individuals, how do institutions then emerge?

The value of this work should not be denied. Substantial heuristic 
insights about the development of institutions and conventions have been 
gained on the basis of the assumption of given, rational individuals. The 
main problem addressed here is the incompleteness of this research program 
in its attempt to provide a general theory of the emergence and evolution 
of institutions.

Alexander Field (1979, 1981, 1984) advances a fundamental criticism. In 
attempting to explain the origin of social institutions, the new 
institutional economics has to presume given individuals acting in a 
certain institutional context. Along with the assumption of given 
individuals, there is always a supposition of some rules of behaviour 
governing their interaction. What is sometimes forgotten is that in the 
original, hypothetical, 'state of nature' from which institutions are seen 
to have emerged, a number of weighty rules, institutions and cultural and 
social norms have already been presumed. Arguably, these original 
institutions, roles and norms are unavoidable; even in an unreal 'thought 
experiment' we can never properly envisage an original 'state of nature' 
without them.

For example, in attempting to explain the origin of institutions through 
game theory, Field points out that certain norms and rules must inevitably 
be presumed at the start. There can be no games without rules, and thus 
game theory can never explain the elemental rules themselves. As Field 
(1984) argues, game theory may be used to explain the emergence of some 
institutions, but to do so it has to assume a significant number of rules 
and constraints at the outset. Even in a sequence of repeated games, or of 
games about other (nested) games, at least one game or meta-game, with a 
structure and payoffs, must be assumed at the outset. Any such attempt to 
deal with history in terms of sequential or nested games is thus involved 
in a problem of infinite regress: even with games about games about games 
to the nth degree there is still one preceding game left to be explained.

As another illustrative example, Williamson (1975: 20; 1985: 143) writes 
that 'in the beginning there were markets' . However, the market itself is 
an institution (Hodgson 1988; Loasby 2000). The market involves social 
norms and customs, instituted exchange relations, and" sometimes 
consciously organized" information networks that themselves have to be 
explained. All market and exchange relations themselves involve complex 
rules and cannot be an institution-free or any other 'beginning'. As 
Viktor Vanberg (1986: 75) puts it: 'What we call a market is always a 
system of social interaction characterized by a specific institutional 
framework, that is, by a set of rules defining certain restrictions on the 
behavior of market participants'. Hence Williamson fails to explain the 
evolution of the firm from an institution-free 'state of nature'. In a 
type of comparative static approach, he implicitly assumes one 
institutional framework and explicitly attempts to derive another. 
Accordingly, the project of starting simply from given individuals is 
implicitly abandoned.

These examples disclose a problem of potentially infinite regress. 
Attempts to explain each emergent layer of institutions always rely on 
previous institutions and rules. According to the Mengerian research 
programme, these in turn have to be explained. Unless an institution-free 
state of nature can be formulated or discovered, then the idea of 
explaining all institutions in terms of individual interactions alone 
faces an infinite chain of links to be revealed.

There is a fundamental reason why the idea of explaining all institutions 
in terms of the interactions of individuals, starting from an 
institution-free state of nature, must be abandoned. This is because all 
individual interaction depends unavoidably on some" at least rudimentary" 
form of language. Language itself is an institution. Individuals rely on 
customs, norms and language in order to interact. Interpersonal 
communication, which is essential to all stories of institutional 
emergence, itself depends on linguistic and other rules and norms. The 
institution-free state of nature is unattainable, in theory as well as 
reality. 5

Individual choice requires a conceptual framework to make sense of the 
world. The reception of information by an individual requires a paradigm 
or cognitive frame to process and make sense of that information. The 
acquisition of this cognitive apparatus involves processes of 
socialisation and education, involving extensive interaction with others 
(Mead 1934; Hodgson 1988). As well as language, these interactions require 
other, pre-existing institutions. Individual choice is impossible without 
them. We cannot understand the world without concepts and we cannot 
communicate without some form of language.

What is being contested here is the possibility of using given individuals 
as the institution-free starting point in the explanation. Institutions 
are structures that can constrain and influence individuals. Accordingly, 
if there are institutional influences on individuals, then these are 
worthy of explanation. In turn, the explanation of those may be in terms 
of other purposeful individuals. But where should the analysis stop? The 
purposes of an individual could be partly explained by relevant 
institutions, culture and so on. These, in their turn, would be partly 
explained in terms of other individuals. But these individual purposes and 
actions could then be partly explained by cultural and institutional 
factors, and so on, indefinitely. We are involved in an apparently 
infinite regress, similar to the puzzle 'which came first, the chicken or 
the egg?' Such an analysis never reaches an end point. It is simply 
arbitrary to stop at one particular stage in the explanation and say 'it 
is all reducible to individuals' just as much as to say it is 'all social 
and institutional.' The key point is that in this infinite regress, 
neither individual nor institutional factors have legitimate explanatory 
primacy. The idea that all explanations have ultimately to be in terms of 
individuals (or institutions) is thus unfounded.

There is thus an unbreakable circle of determination. This does not mean, 
however, that institutions and individuals have equivalent ontological and 
explanatory status. Clearly, they have different characteristics. 
Individuals are purposeful, whereas institutions are not, at least in the 
same sense. Institutions have different lifespans from individuals, 
sometimes enduring the passing of the individuals they contain. Their 
mechanisms of reproduction and procreation are very different.

All theories must first build from elements which are taken as given. 
However, the particular problem of infinite regress identified here 
undermines any claim that the explanation of the emergence of institutions 
can start from some kind of institution-free ensemble of (rational) 
individuals in which there is supposedly no rule or institution to be 
explained. Consequently, the project to explain the emergence of 
institutions on the basis of given individuals runs into difficulties, 
particularly with regard to the conceptualization of the initial 
circumstances from which institutions are supposed to emerge (Hodgson 
1998).

A reformulated project would stress the evolution of institutions, in part 
from other institutions, rather than from a hypothetical, institution-free 
'state of nature' . Notably, in recent years, a number of significant 
studies have developed in this direction. Accordingly, Jack Knight (1992) 
criticizes much of the new institutionalist literature for neglecting the 
importance of distributional and power considerations in the emergence and 
development of institutions. Even more clearly, Masahiko Aoki (2001) 
identifies the problem of infinite regress in much of the former 
literature and develops a novel approach. He not only takes individuals as 
given, but also a historically bestowed set of institutions. With these 
materials, he explores the evolution of further institutions, using game 
theory. Other recent and significant studies of the evolution of 
institutions also explicitly take other institutions as given (Howitt and 
Clower 2000).

The next step, which Aoki recognises but does not fully complete, is to 
develop a more evolutionary and open-ended framework of analysis. Instead 
of focusing on just two points in time" the given starting point and the 
evolved outcome" the next step is to develop an evolutionary approach, in 
which the emphasis is on the ongoing process of change. We are reminded of 
Veblen's (1919: 37) search for 'a theory of the process of consecutive 
change, realized to be self-continuing or self-propagating and to have no 
final term.'

3. The Role of Constraints

The previous section pointed to a more open-ended evolutionary approach. 
Once we take a step in this direction, another question is raised. If in 
principle every component in the system can evolve, then so too can 
individual preferences. Of course, most economists recognise that 
preferences are malleable in the real world. But they have often taken the 
assumption of fixed preferences as a reasonable, simplifying assumption. 
In contrast, the possibility is raised here that some malleability of 
preferences may be necessary to explain fully the evolution and stability 
of institutions.

What is proposed here is a contingent and tentative hypothesis. We may 
briefly sketch out a possible argument along the following lines. The 
institutionalizing function of institutions means that a degree of order 
and relative stability can be reinforced despite variety and diversity at 
the microeconomic level. Institutions involve rules, constraints, 
practices and ideas that can" through psychological and social mechanisms 
that have to be specified" sometimes mould individual purposes and 
preferences in some way. This preference malleability could improve the 
possibility and stability of an emergent institution and overcome 
difficulties in some cases where institutions fail to emerge.

Such intuitions can be found in the writings of the neglected tradition of 
'old' institutionalism. For instance, Wesley Mitchell argues that the 
evolution of money cannot be understood simply in terms of cost reduction 
and individual convenience. He maintained that money 'stamps its pattern 
upon wayward human nature, makes us all react in standard ways to the 
standard stimuli it offers, and affects our very ideals of what is good, 
beautiful and true' (Mitchell 1937: 371). Accordingly, the evolution of 
money changes the mentality, preferences and way of thinking of 
individuals themselves. This does not mean that Menger's insights 
concerning the evolution of money are without value, but that they are 
inadequate. Arguably, they have to be supplemented by an analysis of how 
market institutions can change individual perceptions and preferences 
(Bowles 1998). The idea of the malleability of individual preferences 
pervades the 'old' institutional economics, from Thorstein Veblen to John 
Kenneth Galbraith.

However, what is lacking in much of this literature is a clear exposition 
of the causal processes involved. It is one thing to claim that 
institutions affect individuals in a process of downward causation. It is 
another to explain in detail the causes and effects. The most satisfactory 
explanation of the relevant processes in the writings of the 'old' 
institutionalists was in the writings of Veblen (1899: 190), who wrote: 
'The situation of today shapes the institutions of tomorrow through a 
selective, coercive process, by acting upon men's habitual view of 
things'.

From this viewpoint, inspired by pragmatist philosophy and habit-instinct 
psychology, the key element in this process is habit. Habits themselves 
are formed through repetition of action or thought. They are influenced by 
prior activity and have durable, self-sustaining qualities. However, habit 
does not mean behaviour. It is a propensity to behave in particular ways 
in a particular class of situations. Crucially, we may have habits that 
lie unused for a long time. A habit may exist even if it is not manifest 
in behaviour. Habits are submerged repertoires of potential behaviour; 
they can be triggered by an appropriate stimulus or context. 6

Our habits help to make up our preferences and dispositions. When new 
habits are acquired or existing habits change, then our preferences alter. 
John Dewey (1922: 40) thus wrote of 'the cumulative effect of insensible 
modifications worked by a particular habit in the body of preferences'. 
Crucially, institutional changes and constraints can cause changes in 
habits of thought and behaviour. Institutions constrain our behaviour and 
develop our habits in specific ways. What does happen is that the framing, 
shifting and constraining capacities of social institutions give rise to 
new perceptions and dispositions within individuals.

Institutions channel and constrain behaviour so that individuals form new 
habits as a result. At the level of the human agent, there are no 
mysterious 'social forces' controlling individuals, other than those 
affecting the actions and communications of human actors. People do not 
develop new preferences, wants or purposes simply because 'values' or 
'social forces' control them. What does happen is that the framing, 
shifting and constraining capacities of social institutions give rise to 
new perceptions and dispositions within individuals. Upon new habits of 
thought and behaviour, new preferences and intentions emerge.

Elsewhere, this process of habit formation, resulting from institutional 
channels and constraints, is described elsewhere as 'reconstitutive 
downward causation' (Hodgson, forthcoming; Hodgson and Knudsen 2001). The 
crucial point in the argument here is to recognise the significance of 
reconstitutive downward causation on habits, rather than merely on 
behaviour, intentions or beliefs. Clearly, the definitional distinction 
between habit (as a propensity or disposition) and behaviour (or action) 
is essential to make sense of this statement. Once habits become 
established they become a potential basis for new intentions or beliefs. 
As a result, shared habits are the constitutive material of institutions, 
providing them with enhanced durability, power and normative authority.

A pressing issue for future research is the extent to which these 
mechanisms of habituation play a role in different cases of institutional 
evolution. What is being proposed here is; first, the possibility of a 
viable causal mechanism by which institutions can lead to changes in 
individual purposes and preferences; second, the possibility that such 
mechanisms may lead to some degree of conformity; and third, the 
possibility that such conformism may help to strengthen and sustain the 
institution in question.

Note, however, that the process of conformism involving habituation is 
quite different from the previous models of Stephen Jones (1984) and 
Ekkehart Schlicht (1998) in which agents exhibit 'rule preference' or a 
'preference for conformism'. In these models the problem of institutional 
emergence is 'solved' by making some key properties of institutions also 
the properties of individual preferences. In these analyses the preference 
for conformism or rules is assumed as given at the outset. In contrast, 
the mechanism of habituation points to the possibility of such preferences 
being formed as a result of institutional channelling and constraint. 
Preferences for rules and conformism are not assumed: their evolution is 
explained. 7

To recapitulate, two important and connected issues have been raised here 
as part of a future research agenda. The first is the possibility of 
institutions having a reconstitutive effect on the preferences of 
individual actors. The second is the key element in the mechanism of 
reconstitution: the formation of habits through the operation of 
institutional channels and constraints.

These issues relate to some former pieces of relevant research. In one of 
his earliest papers, Becker (1962) demonstrates that behaviour ruled by 
habit and inertia is just as capable as rational optimisation of 
predicting the standard downward-sloping demand curve and the 
profit-seeking activity of firms. Becker shows how the negatively inclined 
market demand curve could result from habitual behaviour. Actors 'can be 
said to behave not only "as if" they were rational but also "as if" they 
were irrational: the major piece of empirical evidence justifying the 
first statement can equally well justify the second' (Becker 1962: 4). 
Kenneth Arrow (1986) has also accepted the possibility of an alternative 
approach based on habit. Dhananjay Gode and Shyam Sunder (1993) went on to 
show that experiments with agents of 'zero intelligence' produce 
predictions that differ little from those with human traders. As in 
Becker's (1962) model, systemic constraints prevail over micro-variations.

From these previous studies, two conclusions follow. First, the 'accuracy 
of the predictions' or other familiar criteria for theory selection do not 
give outright victory to rational choice models. Second, these models 
suggest that ordered and sometimes predictable behaviour can result 
largely from institutional constraints. As Andy Clark (1997: 276) puts it: 
'The clear indicator of this is once again the fact that the explanatory 
burden is borne by overall systems dynamics in which the microdynamics of 
individual psychology is relatively unimportant.' The emergence of settled 
patterns of behaviour may be either largely independent of the 
deliberation of the agents, or even dependent on the existence of 
behaviour dominated by habit or inertia. 8

The rediscovery of the role of habit in human behaviour and the 
realisation of the powerful role of institutional constraints, together 
point to the development of a research agenda focused on the 
reconstitutive effects of institutions on individuals, and on the degree 
to which institutional evolution may depend on the formation of concordant 
habits.

4. A Possible Role for the State

Clearly, there are many different types of institution and they can emerge 
and evolve in different ways. Some institutions" such as language" appear 
and develop with little planning or state interference. A question of 
importance is: what other institutions can emerge in a similarly 
spontaneous manner? Alternatively, is the assistance of a powerful, 
pre-existing institution required to create or sustain some other 
institutions? As well as language, we here consider two more examples: the 
institutions of money and of contract. In the earlier versions of his 
theory, Menger saw the emerging monetary unit as homogeneous and 
invariant. In this case there is no possibility of quality variation, 
debasement or forgery. It is as if everyone is assumed to know 24-carat 
gold when they see it. In reality, however, the emerging monetary unit can 
be debased or forged. This would affect the process of monetary evolution, 
as described by Menger. With potential quality variation, the purity and 
value of the emerging monetary unit may be in doubt. Some actors may 
notice the high frequency of the trade in a particular commodity, but 
regard the commodity in question as unreliable and thereby avoid it as a 
medium of exchange. Such problems, arising from potential quality 
variation, could subvert the evolution of the monetary unit.

In later discussions of the evolution of money, Menger did raise the 
question of potential and covert quality variation. But at first he 
dismissed the problem, saying that money is likely to take the form of 
precious metals, and these are 'easily controlled as to their quality and 
weight' (Menger 1892: 255). Later, however, in his article on 'Geld', 
Menger recognised that the problem of potential quality variation could be 
so serious that the state had to play a role. Menger (1936 [1909]: 42) 
thus wrote: 'Only the state has the power to protect effectively the coins 
and other means of exchange which are circulated, against the issue of 
false coins, illegal reductions of weight and other violations that impede 
trade.' Nevertheless, Menger applied this argument to a 'developed 
economy' only. He was reluctant to admit that the state was necessary to 
protect the integrity of the monetary unit at earlier stages of economic 
development, and he still clung to his view that, in essence, money was a 
phenomenon independent of the state. Arguably, however, debasement is a 
potential problem at the inception of money, not merely at its developed 
stage.

Of course, another strong institution, or coalition of traders, may be 
able to overcome some of these problems, as an alternative to the state. 
However, there is a particular reason why the state is more likely to take 
this role. While Menger was right to emphasise that many social 
institutions emerge and develop without a conscious plan, it is often the 
case that an institution reaches an important stage of development when it 
becomes consciously recognised and legitimated by other institutions. It 
is possible that the formation of habits of thought and action that are 
concordant with the emergent monetary unit are reinforced by other 
already-formed habits of obedience and deference to the state. Symbol and 
ceremony have an important part here. Money has self-regulating and 
spontaneous properties, but typically it is also endorsed by another 
powerful socio-economic institution. Although state decree alone is far 
from sufficient to create money, as a commanding social institution at the 
apex of the legal system, the state is well positioned to take on this 
declaratory and legitimising role. In legitimating a monetary unit and 
helping to engender trust in it, the state relies on its crucial symbolic 
as well as its legislative powers. It is not accidental that the images of 
monarchs and presidents adorn many notes and coins. Menger's original 
account of the origin of money as a purely spontaneous process downplays 
these declaratory aspects and their symbolic representations. This 
argument does not imply that the state is necessarily the best or more 
efficient solution. It suggests that the state is well-positioned to take 
a regulatory role, and if this develops then the state can make use of its 
substantial symbolic, ceremonial and legitimatory powers.

If legal or state instruments are necessary to some degree for the full 
development of money, then these elements could reasonably account for 
part of the essence of money itself: they are more than mere accidental, 
historical appearances. As a result, Menger's argument against the 'state 
theory of money'--as promoted by the German historical school and others-- 
would lose some of its impact. Furthermore, if the state and other 
institutions are necessary at the very point of conception of money, then 
they, along with individuals, have to enter as elements in the explanation 
of its emergence and development. 9

It is reasonable to ask the question why the evolution of the institution 
of money may require some state involvement but, in contrast, institutions 
such as language may emerge spontaneously. It has been argued elsewhere 
(Hodgson 1993) that a crucial difference is whether or not an institution 
has intrinsic error-correcting or self-policing mechanisms. The 
philosopher Willard van Orman Quine (1960) makes the point that language 
has an error-correcting regime. Individuals have an incentive to make 
their words clear. As an essential condition of communication, the coding 
itself (the signifier) must be unmistakable, even if the meaning (the 
signified) remains partly ambiguous. In communication we have strong 
incentives and inclinations to use words and sounds in a way that conforms 
as closely as possible to the perceived norm. Although languages do change 
through time, there are incentives to conform to, and thus reinforce, the 
linguistic norms in the given region or context. Norms of language and 
pronunciation are thus largely self-policing.10

Similarly, some legal rules have a strong self-policing element. For 
example, there are obvious incentives to stop at red traffic lights and to 
drive on the same side of the road as others. Although infringements will 
occur, these particular laws can be partly enforced by motorists 
themselves. However, things are very different with many other laws and 
institutions. Laws that restrict behaviour, where there are substantial, 
perceived net advantages to transgression, are the ones that require the 
most policing. Hence people frequently evade tax payments or break speed 
limits. Without some policing activity the law itself is likely to be 
infringed, debased and 'brought into disrepute.'

Likewise, there are incentives to debase money. With potential quality 
variation, individual agents have an obvious incentive to use a less 
costly or poor quality version of the medium of exchange in preferment to 
the good. Given that traders cannot readily detect all variations, then 
forgeries and debasements are possible. If they are allowed to endure, 
then bad money will drive out the good. Money is not self-policing in the 
same way as language.

Accordingly, any self-policing mechanisms can be undermined if there is 
the possibility of undetected variation from the norm and there is 
sufficient incentive to exert such variations. Language and money differ 
in this respect. The argument for the intervention and policing of the 
state is thus much stronger in the case of money and some laws, than in 
the case of language.11

We turn now to the institutions of contract and private property. In this 
case it would seem that without the threat of the legal system and the 
courts, people might often default on contracts and take what is not 
theirs. Despite this, there have been several attempts to explain the 
evolution of property without the involvement of the state or a developed 
legal system. For example, Williamson (1983, 1985) addresses the latter 
problem in one of his excursions into legal theory, arguing that property 
can emerge through 'private ordering', that is, individual-to-individual 
transactions, without state legislation or interference. In particular, 
Williamson discusses the part that 'hostages' may play in enforcing 
transactions. A 'hostage' refers to such arrangements as where both 
parties to an agreement are committed to non-salvageable costs. The effect 
is to tighten the bond between the parties and reduce the risk of 
contractual default. Thus, in the view of Williamson and others, a 
workable system of property and contract is possible without the state.

Some recent work in economic history has been interpreted as support for a 
similar view. There are historical cases, in the absence of an 
over-arching authority, where there has been a problem of contract 
enforcement in trade between one community and another. There was often no 
dominant political power or supra-national authority to resolve disputes. 
For instance, early medieval international trade depended on reputation 
and sometimes relied on coalitions, guilds, kinship links or religious 
ties to sustain enforceability (Greif 1989, 1993, 1994; Greif et al. 1994; 
Landa 1994; North 1991). Even in more recent times, in the absence of an 
adequate international political or legal authority, such institutional 
structures have assumed quasi-legal powers (Clay 1997). Several of these 
cited articles show, using game theoretic models with a few players, how 
trading coalitions can evolve. These historical studies show that in the 
absence of a strong (international) legal authority, quasi-legal 
institutions emerged to help regulate and enforce contracts. The 
historical evidence suggests that quasi-legal institutions such as trading 
coalitions are likely to develop in the absence of legal and statutory 
ones. We can conclude that trade generally may rely on extra-legal as well 
as legal powers of contract enforcement. However, it would be wrong to 
presume that extra-legal institutions are always adequate or efficient, or 
that legal authorities generally play a minor or dispensable role in all 
trade. The historical existence of trading coalitions does not point to a 
purely spontaneous and lasting solution to problems of contract 
enforcement.

Celebrations of the possibility of property and contract without any role 
for the state are not typical of modern legal theory (Collins 1986). The 
institutional economist Itai Sened (1995, 1997) has also challenged the 
notion of property without the state. Sened (1995: 162) notes:

Like traditional economists, most game theorists systematically overlook 
the role of law enforcement.... Many important social institutions do not 
emerge as equilibria in games among equal agents, but as equilibria in 
games among agents who control old institutions and agents who challenge 
such institutions with new demands. In particular, governments play a 
crucial role in the evolution of institutions that protect individual 
rights.

In his extended critique of the notion of property without law, Sened 
(1997) argues that true individual rights are established only when a 
territorial institution establishes its monopoly over the use of force. 
Sened's argument departs significantly from that of Robert Sugden (1986: 
5) and others, who argue that legal codes 'merely formalize ... 
conventions of behaviour' that have evolved out of individual 
interactions. However, to accept the role of the state in the evolution of 
property and contract is not to romanticise this institution. Sened sees 
the state not as a benevolent and disinterested legislator but as an 
institution whose members pursue their own interests.

Sened develops a version of the Hobbesian 'social contract'. This 'social 
contract' is not just between individuals in agreeing laws and rights, but 
also between the individuals and the state. For Sened, governments weight 
the benefits of granting rights against the cost of enforcement. He 
writes:

Governments do not erect such structures out of benevolence or moral 
concern. They grant and protect rights in order to promote their own 
interests. But in doing so, they fulfil two crucial social functions. The 
function of maintaining law and order that is a necessary condition for 
economic growth and affluence, and the function of arbitrage between 
conflicting interests. (Sened 1997: 123)

In addition, Sened shows the limitations of the aforementioned type of 
game theoretical model involving a few agents. With a larger number of 
players it is more difficult for individuals to establish mutual and 
reciprocal arrangements that ensure contract compliance. If trading 
coalitions do emerge, then these themselves take upon state-like qualities 
to enforce agreements and protect property. In a world of incomplete and 
imperfect information, high transaction costs, asymmetrically powerful 
relations and agents with limited insight, powerful institutions are 
necessary to enforce rights. These institutions result from a complex 
bargaining process. Sened uses an n-person prisoners' dilemma to show that 
the introduction of a government, enforcing rights, can often improve on a 
suboptimal outcome.

It is an open question as to whether another strong institution, apart 
from the state, could fulfil this necessary role. However, it is not to 
endorse or glorify the state if we start analytically from the likelihood 
and reality that a state will emerge and analyse its possible role on the 
process of establishment of property.

Individual property is not mere possession; it involves socially 
acknowledged and enforced rights. Individual property, therefore, is not a 
purely individual matter. It is not simply a relation between an 
individual and an object. It requires a powerful, customary and legal 
apparatus of recognition, adjudication and enforcement. Such legal systems 
make their first substantial appearance within the state apparatuses of 
ancient civilisation. Thus, nearly four thousand years ago, on the famous 
stone of Hammuraby, the Ancient Babylonians carved their detailed code of 
laws, prescribing penalties and rights. Since that time, states have 
played a major role in the establishment, enforcement and adjudication of 
property rights.

At the same time, the development of any state apparatus carries the 
omnipresent danger that individual private property would be wilfully 
appropriated by the state, perhaps using the ancient norms and precedents 
of communal tenure. The state has the capacity to appropriate, as well as 
to protect, private property. For private property to be relatively 
secure, a particular form of state had to emerge, countered by powerful 
and multiple interest groups in civil society. This meant that a 
pluralistic state with some separation of powers, backed up by a plurality 
of group interests in the community at large. With such a balance of 
power, a framework of constitutional law could be established, in which 
the interests of both the state and the citizenry could be protected to 
some degree. According to this line of argument, the emergence of a 
powerful institution like the state is a necessary but not a sufficient 
condition for the protection of property and other individual rights.

5. Conclusion

The aim of this article has been to raise some theoretical questions 
concerning the processes of institutional evolution. While Menger's basis 
argument concerning the possibility of spontaneous institutional emergence 
remains a powerful heuristic, some key problems remain. The first problem 
is methodological, and it attaches to any attempt to explain the emergence 
of institutions starting from an institution-free state of nature. It has 
been argued here that any such attempt is confounded by the unavoidable 
necessity of assuming the prior existence of other institutions, such as 
language (Hodgson 1998). It is also noted, however, that this problem is 
now becoming widely recognised, leading to a significant re-orientation of 
the research programme of the 'new' institutional economics. For instance, 
a significant feature of the recent work of Aoki (2001) is to take some 
institutions as given at the beginning of the formal analysis.

Once it is recognised that human activity can only be understood as 
emerging in a context with some pre-existing institutions, then we are 
more able to focus on the effects of institutional constraints and 
'downward causation' upon individuals, as well as to understand how 
interactions between individuals give rise to new institutional forms. The 
suggestion here is that the emergence and stability of some institutions 
may be enhanced by processes through which institutional channels and 
constraints lead to the formation of concordant habits of thought and 
behaviour. These arguments point to a more open-ended approach to the 
evolution of institutions, downplaying static comparisons in favour of 
more processual, algorithmic analyses. In considering an open-ended 
evolution of both institutions and individual preferences, such arguments 
are redolent of the 'old' institutionalism, although a detailed 
specification of the mechanisms of 'downward causation' was often lacking 
in that literature. Links are also made with other results that underline 
the role of constraints in systemic behaviour, such as Becker (1962) and 
Gode and Sunder (1993).

Having pointed to the importance of pre-existing, as well as emerging, 
institutions and constraints, the fourth section of this article 
considered the possible role of the state in the emergence and maintenance 
of some institutions, in particular money and property. It was argued that 
reasons for such a role might exist when the institution lacks adequate 
inherent self-policing mechanisms. While the discussion here provides 
provisional rather than final conclusions, it points to an important 
future research programme that will consider in more detail the role and 
limitations of the state in institutional evolution.

Strikingly, with the decline of the research programme that attempted to 
explain all institutions from individuals in an original, institution-free 
'state of nature' , some of the former boundaries between the 'old' and 
the 'new' institutional economics have been eroded. In addition, 
reconsideration must be given to some of the arguments of the German 
historical school, concerning the role of the state in buttressing and 
maintaining some institutions. In particular, Sened's (1997) forceful 
argument that a state apparatus is necessary to sustain the institution of 
property is an unacknowledged vindication of an aspect of the historical 
school case.

The re-emergence of institutional economics in the final quarter of the 
twentieth century is one of the most important and fruitful developments 
in social science. It has been the


124 HODGSON

aim of this article to review some of the more pressing issues of 
theoretical enquiry and raise some questions for future research.

Notes

1. Address for correspondence: Malting House, 1 Burton End, West Wickham, 
Cambridgeshire CB1 6SD, UK. Tel: (44) 1223 290 251.

2. Among a large number of possible examples of this type of approach see 
Ullmann-Margalit (1977), Schotter (1981), Hayek (1982) and Sugden (1986).

3. Despite the apparent simplicity of this monetary argument, analyses, 
experiments and simulations based upon it are remarkably complex (Jones 
1976; Kiyotaki and Wright 1989; Oh 1989; Wa?rneryd 1989, 1990a,b; Hodgson 
1993; Marimon et al. 1990; Duffy and Ochs 1999). Klein and Selgin (2000) 
report an apparently successful Mengerian simulation where agents select 
the medium of exchange from a set of homogeneous commodities in a Polya 
Urn process. Instead of making choices based on preferences, each agent is 
obliged to select randomly an exchange medium at each trade. Each 
commodity is equally desirable to all agents, equally durable and equally 
physically convenient as an exchange medium. The presence or absence of 
the double coincidence of wants does not figure in their model. Neither 
does a highly desirable commodity that would be perishable or inconvenient 
as a medium of exchange. Hence Klein and Selgin give an inadequate picture 
of how a monetary unit emerges from barter.

4. The concept of 'reconstitutive downward causation' builds upon the 
earlier concept of 'downward causation' in psychology and biology 
(Campbell 1974; Sperry 1969, 1991).

5. Bovill (1958) notes that the Moors and Ashanti traded salt for gold 
without a verbal language, by placing their products on opposite banks of 
the river and withdrawing, taking the merchanidise back if the other offer 
was not deemed to be satisfactory. Nevertheless, even in this case there 
was a form of communication with shared interpretations and meanings. 
Otherwise trade would not be possible.

6. Note that Becker's (1992) definition of habit is very different, 
amounting to serially correlated behaviour rather than a programmed 
disposition or propensity. 7.

In some respects, this proposed approach is closer to the work of Boyd and 
Richerson (1985, ch. 7), where the evolution of a propensity to conform 
('conformist genotype' ) is discussed, as well as its effects.

8. For a discussion of the connection of these ideas with recent 
developments in psychology see Twomey (1998).

9. For a further discussions of this issue, and the related controversy 
between 'Metallists' and 'Chartalists', see Bell (2001), Ingham (2000) and 
Wray (2000).

10. Of course, this does not exclude the possibility of cumulative error 
and 'drift' in the evolution of language.

11. However, there has been some limited institutional regulation of 
language in France, and spelling reforms have been inaugurated (relatively 
successfully) in the Netherlands and (less successfully) in Germany. Much 
earlier, after achieving its independence, some changes in the spelling of 
English were established in the United States.

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From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 29 21:01:00 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:01:00 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: A Shocker: Partisan Thought Is Unconscious
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281457110.15827@panix3.panix.com>

A Shocker: Partisan Thought Is Unconscious
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/science/24find.html

    Findings
    By BENEDICT CAREY

    Liberals and conservatives can become equally bug-eyed and irrational
    when talking politics, especially when they are on the defensive.

    Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens
    in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning
    facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is
    almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and
    there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when
    unwelcome information is being rejected.

    "Everything we know about cognition suggests that, when faced with a
    contradiction, we use the rational regions of our brain to think about
    it, but that was not the case here," said Dr. Drew Westen, a
    psychologist at Emory and lead author of the study, to be presented
    Saturday at meetings of the Society for Personality and Social
    Psychology in Palm Springs, Calif.

    The results are the latest from brain imaging studies that provide a
    neural explanation for internal states, like infatuation or
    ambivalence, and a graphic trace of the brain's activity.

    In 2004, the researchers recruited 30 adult men who described
    themselves as committed Republicans or Democrats. The men, half of
    them supporters of President Bush and the other half backers of
    Senator John Kerry, earned $50 to sit in an M.R.I. machine and
    consider several statements in quick succession.

    The first was a quote attributed to one of the two candidates: either
    a remark by Mr. Bush in support of Kenneth L. Lay, the former Enron
    chief, before he was indicted, or a statement by Mr. Kerry that Social
    Security should be overhauled. Moments later, the participants read a
    remark that showed the candidate reversing his position. The quotes
    were doctored for maximum effect but presented as factual.

    The Republicans in the study judged Mr. Kerry as harshly as the
    Democrats judged Mr. Bush. But each group let its own candidate off
    the hook.

    After the participants read the contradictory comment, the researchers
    measured increased activity in several areas of the brain. They
    included a region involved in regulating negative emotions and another
    called the cingulate, which activates when the brain makes judgments
    about forgiveness, among other things. Also, a spike appeared in
    several areas known to be active when people feel relieved or
    rewarded. The "cold reasoning" regions of the cortex were relatively
    quiet.

    Researchers have long known that political decisions are strongly
    influenced by unconscious emotional reactions, a fact routinely
    exploited by campaign consultants and advertisers. But the new
    research suggests that for partisans, political thinking is often
    predominantly emotional.

    It is possible to override these biases, Dr. Westen said, "but you
    have to engage in ruthless self reflection, to say, 'All right, I know
    what I want to believe, but I have to be honest.' "

    He added, "It speaks to the character of the discourse that this
    quality is rarely talked about in politics."


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 29 21:01:17 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:01:17 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Evolution Update: Heavy Breathing in an Early Ear
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281457180.15827@panix3.panix.com>

Evolution Update: Heavy Breathing in an Early Ear
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/science/24obox.html

[It's the earbones that constitute the earmarks distinguishing mammal from 
reptile. Here's another clue about how the transition could have taken 
place. Two other observations, well worth reading, appended.]

    Observatory
    By HENRY FOUNTAIN

    Forget that adage about how you've got to walk before you can run. In
    evolution, it might be more appropriate to say that you've got to
    breathe before you can hear.

    Scientists in Sweden have filled in a piece of an evolutionary puzzle:
    how the middle ear developed in tetrapods, four-limbed creatures.

    The answer, they report in the journal Nature, is that before the
    middle ear became part of the auditory system, its precursor might
    have been part of the respiratory system.

    The researchers, Martin D. Brazeau and Per E. Ahlberg from Uppsala
    University, base their claim on a study of a fossil of Panderichthys,
    a 370-million-year-old fish that is an immediate ancestor of the most
    primitive tetrapods.

    The fossil has an enlarged spiracle, a passageway between the jaw and
    the top of the head, as well as other changes that represent a middle
    ground between the relatively simple structures of more ancient fish
    and the complex morphology of tetrapods.

    "It's got this combination of fish- and tetrapod-like features," said
    Mr. Brazeau, who undertook the research as part of his work on a
    doctorate in evolutionary biology.

    Scientists have known since the 19th century that in tetrapods,
    including humans, the middle ear develops from an embryonic structure
    called the first gill arch. In fish, the first gill arch forms the
    support for the jaws including the spiracle.

    In fish that are ancestral to Panderichthys, the spiracle is small. In
    Panderichthys, Mr. Brazeau said, "the first thing that happens is that
    the spiracle becomes very large." Further alterations follow, he said,
    including changes to a bone that is the forerunner of the stapes, or
    stirrup bone, that is part of the middle ear structure.

    So the Panderichthys fossil, which was found in Latvia, is a useful
    snapshot of a moment in evolution. But why do the researchers suspect
    that the spiracle was part of the fish's breathing system?

    Part of the answer can be found in modern bottom-dwelling marine
    creatures like rays. When they are on the sea floor, rays use
    spiracles on the top of the head for breathing instead of their
    mouths, to avoid sucking up sand. Panderichthys, Mr. Brazeau said, may
    have been a bottom dweller and have had the same need for an alternate
    respiration route. "It may very well have had its face in the mud," he
    said.

    Crash Course

    The space age has spawned a lot of things - global communications,
    precise weather forecasts and Tang, to name a few - but it has also
    generated a lot of junk. More than 11 million pounds of orbital debris
    are now being tracked, including old satellites, pieces of exploded
    rockets and smaller items like astronaut gloves.

    All that space junk poses a collision threat to current and future
    space missions, manned or robotic, government or commercial. And just
    about every new launching adds more debris.

    But as a review of the situation in the journal Science points out,
    the problem has taken on a life of its own as well.

    The review, by J. C. Liou and N. L. Johnson of NASA's Johnson Space
    Center, notes that simulations show that over the next 200 years, the
    number of pieces of debris will continue to increase, even without
    more rocket launchings.

    That's because existing pieces will occasionally collide, producing
    fragments that will outnumber other debris that has burned up in the
    atmosphere.

    A few collisions have already occurred, including one a year ago
    between a 1970's-vintage American rocket body and a piece from a
    Chinese rocket that exploded in 2000.

    The NASA scientists point out that the worst area for collisions is a
    band from about 550 to 625 miles up. The density of debris in this
    band is higher because, among other reasons, larger rocket stages are
    used to push satellites to this altitude, and it takes longer for
    orbits there to decay.

    The NASA scientists say that suggested methods of disposing of the
    junk - by attaching tethers to fragments, for example, to increase
    drag and speed up orbital decay - are not economically feasible. New,
    cheaper technologies are needed, they say.

    Light, Action, Birdsong

    Early risers are familiar with a phenomenon of the avian world, the
    tendency of many birds to sing at first light. No one knows exactly
    why this dawn chorus occurs, but there are several theories.

    One is that as birds become active at that time of day, they don't
    have enough light for foraging. So the birds use their considerable
    energy to engage in social communication instead.

    If light availability is important, then different birds should begin
    chorusing at different times, depending on several factors. Species
    that live high up in the canopy of trees should begin singing sooner
    than those near the forest floor, where there is less ambient light.
    And species with larger eyes, which can see better in low-light
    conditions, should sing earlier, too.

    Karl S. Berg of Florida International University and colleagues tested
    the effect of these factors in a tropical forest in Ecuador.

    Dr. Berg, now at the University of California, Berkeley, recorded
    singing times for 57 species, including many songbirds.

    The findings, reported in Proceedings B, a journal of the Royal
    Society, showed that in songbird species, height in the trees and eye
    size did affect when singing started.

    In nonsongbirds, however, there was less of a correlation. The
    researchers say that this may be because the nonsongbird species
    studied have varying diets, with some eating fruits that are easily
    seen in low-light conditions. Most songbirds eat insects, which remain
    hard to see until conditions get lighter.

    Belts of Their Own

    The existence of the Kuiper Belt, that vast band of icy and rocky
    objects beyond Neptune that includes Pluto and Quaoar, was confirmed
    only about a decade ago. But now astronomers from Berkeley and the
    Goddard Space Flight Center have discovered what they think are
    similar belts around two other stars.

    Using the Hubble Space Telescope, they observed debris disks around
    the stars, both of which are about 60 light-years away. The finding is
    being reported in Astrophysical Journal Letters, and images are at
    hubblesite.org/news/2006/05.

    Debris disks have been found around about a half-dozen other stars,
    but these two systems are older - so it is more likely that the disk
    has settled into a stable configuration, like the Kuiper Belt.


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 29 21:01:29 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:01:29 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Mastering the Geometry of the Jungle
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281457260.15827@panix3.panix.com>

Mastering the Geometry of the Jungle
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/science/24geom.html

    By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

    An indigenous group called the Munduruk?, who live in isolated
    villages in several Brazilian states in the Amazon jungles, have no
    words in their language for square, rectangle, triangle or any other
    geometric shape except circles.

    The members use no measuring instruments or compasses, they have no
    maps, and their words for directions are limited to sunrise, sunset,
    upstream and downstream. The Munduruk? language has few words for
    numbers beyond five except "few" and "many," and even those words are
    not used consistently.

    Yet, researchers have discovered, they appear to understand many
    principles of geometry as well as American children do, and in some
    cases almost as well as American adults. An article describing the
    findings appears in the Jan. 20 issue of Science.

    "Across cultures that live extremely different lives, we see common
    foundational sets of abilities," said Elizabeth Spelke, a co-author of
    the paper and a professor of psychology at Harvard, "and they are not
    just low-level kinds of abilities that humans share with other
    animals, but abilities that are at the center of human thinking at its
    highest reaches."

    To test their understanding of geometry, the researchers presented 44
    members of a Munduruk? group and 54 Americans with a series of slides
    illustrating various geometric concepts. Each slide had six images.
    Five of them were examples of the concept; one was not.

    The Munduruk? subjects, tested by a native speaker of Munduruk?
    working with a linguist, were asked to identify the image that was
    "weird" or "ugly." For example, to test the concept of right angles, a
    slide shows five right triangles and one isosceles triangle. The
    isosceles triangle is the correct answer.

    In data that do not appear in the article but were presented by e-mail
    from the authors, Munduruk? children scored the same as American
    children - 64 percent right - while Munduruk? adults scored 83 percent
    compared with 86 percent for the American adults.

    The researchers also tested the Munduruk? with maps, demonstrating
    that people who had never seen a map before could use one correctly to
    orient themselves in space and to locate objects previously hidden in
    containers laid out on the ground.

    The indigenous people were able to use the maps to find the objects,
    even when they were presented with the maps at varying angles so that
    they had to turn them mentally to match the pattern on the ground in
    front of them. Dr. Spelke found this particularly significant.

    "The Munduruk?, who aren't themselves in a culture that relies on
    symbols of any kind, when they were presented with maps were able to
    spontaneously extract the geometric information in them," she said.

    The idea that an understanding of geometry may be a universal quality
    of the human mind dates back at least as far as Plato. In the Meno
    dialogue by Plato, written about 380 B.C., he describes Socrates as he
    elicited correct answers to geometric puzzles from a young slave who
    had never studied the subject.

    Do these findings among the Munduruk? confirm Socrates' contention
    that concepts of geometry are innate? Stanislas Dehaene, another
    co-author and a professor of psychology at the College of France, is
    not willing to go quite that far. People learn things, after all, just
    by living in the world.

    "In our article we do not use the word 'innate,' " he said in an
    e-mail message. "We do not know whether this core knowledge is present
    very early on - the youngest subjects we tested were 5 years old - or
    to what extent it is learned. The Munduruk?, like all of us, do
    interact with 3-D objects, navigate in a complex spatial environment,
    and so on."

    Instead, Dr. Dehaene described an innate ability, rather than an
    innate knowledge. "Our current thinking is that the human brain has
    been predisposed by millions of years of evolution to 'internalize,'
    either very early on or through very fast learning, various mental
    representations of the external world, including representations of
    space, time and number," he explained.

    "I have proposed that such representations provide a universal
    foundation for the cultural constructions of mathematics," he added.

    Dr. Spelke sees in these results evidence of the universality of human
    thought processes. "Geometry is central to the development of science
    and the arts," she said. "The profile of abilities that the Munduruk?
    show is qualitatively very similar to what we see in our own culture.
    This suggests that we are finding some of the common ground at the
    center of human knowledge."

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 29 21:01:43 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:01:43 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Love You, K2a2a, Whoever You Are
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281458360.15827@panix3.panix.com>

Love You, K2a2a, Whoever You Are
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/weekinreview/22harmon.html

    Connected
    By AMY HARMON

    THERE are a lot of things I may never know about K2a2a, one of four
    founding mothers of a large chunk of today's Ashkenazi Jewish
    population and the one from whom - I learned last week - I am directly
    descended.

    I may never know whether she lived 1,000 years ago or 3,000. I may
    never know if she was born in the Judea, as the scientists who
    identified her through mitochondrial DNA say they suspect. I will
    certainly never know her name.

    I do know that I carry her distinctive genetic signature. My mother
    carried it, my mother's mother carried it, my daughter now carries it,
    too.

    And the thrill of that knowledge - for the price of the $100 cheek
    swab test of my own DNA - may be all I can handle.

    The popular embrace of DNA genealogy speaks to the rising power of
    genetics to shape our sense of self. By conjuring a biologically based
    history, the tests forge a visceral connection to our ancestors that
    seems to allow us to transcend our own lives.

    But will our genetic identity undermine our cultural identity? The
    tests can add depth to what we have long believed, but they can also
    challenge our conception of who we are. The trauma some experience
    when their tests conflict with what they have always believed to be
    true has prompted some researchers to call for counseling to accompany
    the results.

    Just how informative the tests are is also a matter of considerable
    debate.

    Because the Y chromosome, which determines maleness, is passed
    unchanged from father to son, scientists can use it to determine
    whether two men share a common ancestor. When rare mutations do occur,
    they are unique to a single man and his male descendants, and
    scientists can often pinpoint when and where this founding father
    lived.

    Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on largely intact from mothers to
    their children, can be used similarly to trace maternal ancestry.

    But each test can trace only one lineage back to a single ancestor.
    K2a2a was my mother's mother's mother's ... mother, for instance, and
    my father has taken the test so we can learn about his father's
    father's father's ... father.

    But these kinds of tests can't teach me anything about any of the
    thousands of other ancestors of mine who were living 1,000 or 2,000
    years ago.

    A different kind of test, which promises to parse the percentage of a
    customer's genome that came from different geographical regions, can
    be misled by the reproductive shuffling of each generation.

    Some anthropologists worry that what they call the "geneticization of
    identity" could lead to a dangerous view of race and ethnicity as
    biologically based. But many who have taken the tests say that the
    details of their DNA can underscore that we are all genetic cousins.

    Why the genetic claiming of an ancient grandmother holds such
    emotional sway I am not quite sure. I mean, I've never even been to
    Ellis Island. And I have spent too many Christmases ordering in
    Chinese for it to come as a surprise that I am more likely to share
    mitochondrial DNA with Ashkenazi Jews than other groups.

    But to judge by the growing throngs of other newly minted DNA
    genealogists, I'm not the only one to find appeal in the idea that the
    key to our past is lodged in our own genes.

    On the "DNA-Genealogy" e-mail group last week, the buzz about the
    Jewish founding mothers was quickly supplanted by the news that
    scientists had traced a widely distributed genetic signature among
    people of Irish descent to a legendary Irish king.

    "I've never felt more Irish," e-mailed Larry Slavens, a computer
    programmer in Des Moines whose family had immigrated from Ireland in
    1740 but hadn't known of ties to Niall of the Nine Hostages, a high
    king of the fifth century, until last week. "I tell ya, my next tattoo
    is going to incorporate the Red Hand of Ulster in honor of my O'Neill
    kin."

    Others were less impressed by the connection. "My understanding was
    that he was one of the nine hostages, not that he took nine hostages,"
    wrote a disdainful John O'Connor, whose DNA links him to a different
    genealogical pretender to the ancient Irish throne.

    Once used almost exclusively by research scientists, the tests used to
    cost thousands of dollars apiece. Now, thanks largely to the Human
    Genome Project, they are relatively cheap, and a cottage industry of
    commercial test companies has sprung up to take advantage of it.

    By some estimates, 200,000 Americans have explored their ancestry
    through such ventures, which include a collaboration between the
    National Geographic Society, I.B.M. and Family Tree DNA of Houston
    whose goal is to build a database of 100,000 DNA samples from ethnic
    groups around the world to detail the history of human migrations. The
    project charges the public $99.95 to send in their DNA and find out
    where they fit on the resulting map.

    Genetic genealogy may simply be the most recent way of fulfilling an
    age-old need to tell stories about our origins, anthropologists say.
    But because Americans put so much faith in science, our DNA results
    can seem more meaningful than the more standard family lore, or even
    years of painstaking archival research.

    "DNA don't lie," said Ed Martin, 61, a retired telecommunications
    engineer in Orange Park, Fla., whose test put his paternal ancestors
    in Central Asia.

    Mr. Martin had already traced his paternal line through the 1500's to
    a town in Germany using family records. The DNA test results, however,
    have persuaded him that he is descended from the Huns, who invaded an
    area of Germany where he still has living relatives - an area, he
    wrote in an e-mail message, "known as the HUNSruck."

    "I spend time now visualizing what their lives may have been like,
    moving and attacking and conquering," he said with obvious relish.
    "All these groups were trying to kill the other one off. They were
    just brutal."

    The adoption of new ancestral identities does not come so easy to
    everyone.

    Given her previous research, Lisa B. Lee, a black systems
    administrator in Oakland, Calif., was sure she would find a link to
    Africa when she submitted her father's DNA for testing. Family lore
    had it that his people were from Madagascar. But after tests at three
    companies, the results stubbornly reported that he shared genetic
    ancestry with Native Americans, Chinese and Sardinians. No Africa.

    "What does this mean; who am I then?" said Ms. Lee, who was active in
    the Black Power movement of the 1960's. "For me to have a whole half
    of my identity to come back and say, 'Sorry, no African here.' It
    doesn't even matter what the other half says. It just negates it all."

    "Am I Sardinian?" she said. "Am I Chinese? Well that doesn't mean
    anything to me. It doesn't fit, it doesn't feel right."

    DNA skeptics worry that there is a threatening side to the rise of DNA
    genealogy. Historically, associating human difference with genetic
    characteristics has had disastrous social consequences. These tests,
    marketed as tools to connect to a familial past, DNA skeptics say,
    often rely on the ability to differentiate people by the parts of our
    genetic makeup that correlate with racial identity.

    DNAPrint Genomics in Sarasota, Fla., for instance, produces reports
    stating that an individual is, say, 15 percent Native American, 50
    percent Western European, 10 percent African, 5 percent South Asian
    and 20 percent Middle Eastern.

    Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, senior research scholar at the Stanford Center for
    Biomedical Ethics, said that history teaches the dangers of trying to
    define racial groups with science. "If we're going to relinquish
    control of our identities to science, we need to realize that we're
    embarking on that trajectory," she said.

    When I called Dr. Karl Skorecki, one of the scientists in Israel who
    had tracked down K2a2a, to ask him what more he could tell me about
    her, he acknowledged that he finds the potential social implications
    of his work troubling.

    "I like to confine it to what it tells us about history, and to
    insights about disease patterns," said Dr. Skorecki, a professor of
    medicine at Technion and Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. "That's
    different than identity. Identity is metaphysical, not physical."

    So why had K2a2a's line thrived, I had wanted to know, while others
    had died out?

    "It is rather remarkable, after having gone through plague and wars
    left and right, still having left a number of descendants," Dr.
    Skorecki said, tantalizingly. "But I think it's random."

    Still, at Family Tree DNA's Web site, I paid $75 to get another test,
    a higher-resolution scan of my mitochondrial DNA.


From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 29 21:02:13 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:02:13 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: When Business Has Questions,
	Drucker Still Has Answers
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281458430.15827@panix3.panix.com>

When Business Has Questions, Drucker Still Has Answers 
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/business/yourmoney/22shelf.html

    Off the Shelf
    By ROGER LOWENSTEIN

    PETER F. DRUCKER, the management thinker and consultant, wrote about
    40 books and inspired executives from Alfred P. Sloan to John F. Welch
    Jr. and Bill Gates, not to mention political figures like Winston
    Churchill.

    Management writing will probably never produce a Shakespeare, but when
    Mr. Drucker died last November, at 95, he was acknowledged to be the
    closest contender. His 1967 classic "The Effective Executive," just
    reissued as a trade paperback by HarperCollins, has lost little of its
    relevance; indeed, the passage of time has mostly confirmed him as a
    prophet.

    About 25 years ahead of others, he foresaw that the decentralized
    structure he had long applauded at General Motors would someday saddle
    it with vestigial and meaningless car divisions.

    Mr. Drucker also recognized, a generation before it became a
    new-economy clich?, that companies hoping to be competitive in the
    future should never become too comfortable with existing technologies,
    no matter how successful. As he put it, to create the future is to be
    "the enemy of today."

    If the book, whose rerelease was planned by HarperCollins before Mr.
    Drucker's death, remains imperfect, it is owing to the discipline of
    management consulting itself. What is it that managers actually do,
    and how is one to teach it? It's a mushy science at best.

    Perhaps recognizing the innate limitations of his field, Mr. Drucker
    wasn't interested in forging "brilliant" executives, but in developing
    "effective" ones. Effective management is about picking the right
    battles and making sure that the troops are aware of the aims. It
    relies less on genius than on sound, well-practiced technique. Indeed,
    he wrote on the very first page, "Effectiveness can be learned."

    Mr. Drucker's foremost counsel was to stop wasting time, a problem he
    saw as endemic. He urged executives to monitor rigorously the hours
    and minutes they devoted to each task - and to do so twice a year.

    Perhaps this dictum was the origin of the comical-seeming vogue, which
    I remember from my childhood in the 1960's, of efficiency experts
    traipsing behind the boss, stopwatches in hand.

    Mechanistic as the concept was, Mr. Drucker had a singular insight.
    It's not that necessary jobs were done too slowly, but that executives
    spent much of their time on functions that did not advance their
    goals. Indeed, the higher an executive climbed, the more their time
    was claimed by others.

    Nonetheless, Mr. Drucker aimed his prescriptions far beyond the circle
    of senior managers or, indeed, managers of any rank. After all, who
    among us does not waste time? To Mr. Drucker, an executive was any
    worker - government official, advertising agent, senior clerk - whose
    job required decision-making. He even had a name for this emerging
    class: the knowledge worker, who produces not tangible products but
    "knowledge, ideas, information." In effect, he had coined the first
    term for the information age.

    Mr. Drucker is most famous for asserting that labor should be viewed
    as an asset, not a cost. He thought that executives should focus more
    on what they, individually, can contribute and less on what is wrong
    with their staffs.

    Like other Druckerisms, this prescription would seem applicable well
    beyond the realm of management - to members of a sports team, for
    example, or partners in a marriage. It is management science tempered
    by Zen, or at least an appreciation for one's fellow employees.
    Perhaps today he would be a guest on "Oprah."

    He prized Japanese managers for empowering their workers - since they
    couldn't fire them, they had little choice - but he recognized, even
    in 1967, that the Japanese model was too rigid. Eventually, it would
    calcify and rot. He did not quite describe the ideal model for
    decision makers because it did not yet exist. It is, of course, the
    knowledge company of today - Google or Microsoft or, given its
    extensive use of data on inventory and the like, Wal-Mart.

    Mr. Drucker, however, was slow to grasp the effectiveness of smaller
    companies. This is curious, because he diagnosed the bureaucratic
    failings of large outfits adroitly. So ensnared were they in their own
    politics that (big-company) managers tended to ignore the outside
    world, or to see it "only through thick and distorting lenses." Office
    politics would come before customers.

    But it did not seem to occur to him, at least here, that there was an
    effective alternative to size. Perhaps that was because he was too
    much the social scientist, or the "social ecologist" as he elsewhere
    described himself. A Viennese Jew born in 1909 and forced to take
    refuge in California in World War II, Mr. Drucker nurtured a Teutonic
    affection for process and systematic thinking.

    Most business issues, he argued, were generic issues - repetitions of
    familiar problems cloaked in the guise of uniqueness. Henry Ford, he
    argued, misread this by inventing a car, the Model T, that was
    intended to last forever. But its popularity was fleeting. Mr. Ford
    had arrived at only a specific solution. By contrast, Mr. Sloan at
    G.M. built an enduring organization. Mr. Sloan realized, Mr. Drucker
    maintains, "that the problem was generic and could only be solved
    through a rule, a principle."

    SIMILARLY, Mr. Drucker, who takes as many examples from government as
    he does from business, faults President John F. Kennedy's "pragmatism"
    for his various foreign policy blunders. For what is pragmatism but an
    insistence on meeting each problem as it develops - that is, a
    "refusal to develop rules"?

    Mr. Drucker believed that the executive who solves "generic
    situations" can handle most events as "cases under the rule." In a
    large organization, it then becomes a simple matter to extrapolate the
    rule, or to apply it across many situations. If only life were that
    programmatic.

    All too often, real life presents special cases for which no existing
    rule is applicable - or, even worse, for which a number of
    contradictory rules seem to apply. Consider the decision of whether to
    hire consultants. Based on the fate of many ill-advised companies, one
    might decide to shun them. But that would not take into account the
    luck of those that hired Peter F. Drucker.

From checker at panix.com  Sun Jan 29 21:02:26 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:02:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: It Pays to Have a Smart Child, but It Can Cost,
	Too
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601281458560.15827@panix3.panix.com>

It Pays to Have a Smart Child, but It Can Cost, Too
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/business/yourmoney/22gifted.html

    Spending
    By JULIE BICK

    WHEN Reed Molbak was 7 years old and living in Kansas City, Mo., his
    parents took him to hear a visiting Columbia physics professor lecture
    about string theory. Reed listened with interest. If space is like
    fabric, he wondered, can it tear? Even in preschool, he was the one
    doing the tearing - through books on how things worked - and now, at
    13, he enjoys theoretical physics. Along the way, his family has spent
    more than $100,000 on testing, counseling, science experiments and
    software - and on enrolling him in a variety of schools and learning
    programs.

    "Intellectually gifted" may have a variety of definitions. But
    assuming that people scoring in the top 10 percent of intelligence
    tests meet the criteria, the country has millions of gifted children -
    and many opportunities for them, especially if parents are willing to
    pay the bill.

    At the Robinson Center for Young Scholars at the University of
    Washington, psychologists meet with parents about educational goals
    and test a child's intelligence for fees of up to $756. Students in
    5th through 10th grade who score in the top 3 percent on standardized
    tests may, for $700, attend a challenging summer course with their
    intellectual peers.

    At Stanford, the Education Program for Gifted Youth offers classes via
    computer; students work at home, communicating with a tutor, for $350
    to $700 a course each quarter. Children in these kinds of specialized
    programs sometimes become excited about learning "at a level their
    parents have never seen before," said Ray Ravaglia, the program's
    deputy director.

    "They really hit their stride," he added.

    Some parents find these programs enriching for smart children who are
    bored with their usual schoolwork. Other parents may sign them up for
    the chess club, the debate team or another extracurricular activity at
    their regular schools, in part to find other parents with whom they
    can discuss educational and social issues. Or the parents may simply
    want to find playmates who will understand their child's jokes.

    Whatever their motivation, parents can find that the cost of the care
    and feeding of a prodigy, starting with testing, may quickly run into
    the thousands of dollars.

    Dr. Deborah L. Ruf, author of "Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left
    Behind," found that the first expense for some families of gifted
    children may be for an assessment to discover what is "wrong" with a
    child who, teachers complain, has been disruptive or not focused in
    class. "The parents often find out the child isn't paying attention,"
    she said, "because they already know everything that is being taught."

    The students may take a combination of achievement tests, measuring
    what they know, and aptitude tests, measuring verbal and numerical
    ability. The bill for such tests generally goes to the parents.
    "There's lots of funding for kids who aren't keeping up in school,"
    Dr. Ruf said, "but if you have a bright child you just get a pat on
    the head." She said she had seen "families at all economic levels
    prioritize their budgets to pay for testing, enrichment and learning
    opportunities."

    Charles Beckman, director of communications for the Johns Hopkins
    Center for Talented Youth, has noted an uptick in applications to its
    programs in the last few years, as well as an increase in the number
    of colleges and for-profit institutions that offer course work for
    gifted children.

    "The No Child Left Behind Act has forced many states to redirect money
    from gifted education to bringing other kids up to a minimally
    acceptable skill level," he said. "Cutting the education dollars of
    tomorrow's leaders, thinkers and doers means more families are looking
    for ways to have their kids' intellectual needs met outside of
    school."

    Some 77,000 children in grades 2 through 7 last year paid a $25 to $35
    application fee and $29 to $75 to take a test that would qualify them
    for the Hopkins programs. Ultimately, more than 10,000 of them
    attended a Hopkins summer course, offered at 23 sites around the
    country.

    A typical sleepaway program for a seventh grader costs $2,900 for
    three weeks, including room and board. Students choose programs that
    range from genomics to etymology to music theory.

    Eric Viola, a high school freshman in Basking Ridge, N.J., whose
    family sacrificed other vacation opportunities to finance his Hopkins
    educational travel program to Montana, said, "You get to see how stuff
    actually works instead of reading about it - like how the physics of
    water pressure and heat create the geysers at Yellowstone."

    Some parents also pay air fare, hotel and entry fees to attend
    conferences (without their children) like the one organized by the
    California Association for the Gifted. It expects nearly 3,000 at its
    event in March in Palm Springs; participants will share strategies for
    gifted education and join a supportive network.

    Reed's mother, Heidi Molbak, tried home schooling her little string
    theorist one year, and once enrolled him in language-immersion school
    to keep him occupied. In fourth grade, he took an online course in
    expository writing through the Stanford program, which taught concepts
    typical of a ninth-grade writing course.

    Reed sent his work electronically to his tutor, who held seminars once
    a week via headphones and the Internet. "Distance learning," Dr. Ruf
    said, "is a great option for kids who are self-motivated and want to
    go at their own speed." Reed has completed his computerized tutoring
    and now attends a private school.

    Parents of gifted children manage their budgets in different ways.
    Barbara Poyneer of Renton, Wash., realized that her daughters were
    gifted when they started playing around with fractions before entering
    kindergarten. She and her husband chose travel abroad over private
    school, "because they could soak up so much," she said. Today one
    daughter, who is 32, holds a B.A. in physics from Johns Hopkins, and
    the other, 30, a Rhodes scholar who attended Oxford and M.I.T., is
    earning her Ph.D.

    TO be sure, some in the education field say they believe that private
    programs for gifted children are unnecessary. Nancy Siegel, head
    guidance counselor at Millburn High School in Millburn, N.J., advises
    parents to resist overprogramming children. If a high school does not
    offer many advanced-placement classes, "the student can look for a
    great internship or writing contest or independent project to show
    their stuff," she said. "There is no need to enroll in expensive
    programs hoping it will get your child into a top college."

    Others go so far as to doubt that gifted programs are beneficial for
    children. "It's important to give kids normal experiences that are
    typical for children of that age," said Prof. Perry Prestholdt, who
    taught psychology at Louisiana State University before retiring last
    month. "Unique and expensive opportunities can imbue these kids with a
    false sense of privilege."

    According to Dr. Ruf, gifted programs may make a child feel
    advantaged, but they also offer the challenge and competition of the
    real world, so that youngsters "realize they aren't always going to be
    the smartest one in the room."

    And parents of gifted children can find some resources that won't take
    a big bite out of a retirement plan. American Mensa, a nonprofit
    organization of adults scoring in the top 2 percent of standardized
    intelligence tests, is seeking to attract "Young Mensans." If a family
    lives near an active chapter, a $30 application fee and yearly dues of
    $52 will provide it with national and local newsletters that list
    events.

    Adult Mensans are often eager to help younger ones, said Laura Loos,
    children's program coordinator for the greater New York chapter, whose
    members helped to plan free backstage trips to theaters and to a zoo
    to see how displays are created.

    "We want to expand the horizons of gifted children because schools
    aren't doing it for them anymore," she said. "Our country is going to
    fall behind because we are ignoring our future scientists,
    entrepreneurs and leaders."

    Other free resources include Web sites like HoagiesGifted.org, for the
    Hoagies' Gifted Education Page; it offers connections to mailing
    lists, message boards and Web logs as well as other information for
    parents, educators and children.

    Whatever resources they use, Ms. Molbak encourages parents to make a
    serious commitment. "We try to have as normal a life as possible," she
    said, "but at the same time, it's important to take charge of your
    child's education." She added that "if the schools can't challenge
    your child, you need to figure out how to do it."


From checker at panix.com  Mon Jan 30 00:16:47 2006
From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 19:16:47 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [Paleopsych] Thorbjorn Knudsen: The Evolution of Cooperation in
 Structured Populations
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0601291915590.25370@panix3.panix.com>

This may be of interest Howard. References to Eschel.

Thorbjorn Knudsen: The Evolution of Cooperation in Structured Populations
Constitutional Political Economy, 13, 129-148, 2002.
tok at sam.sdu.dk
Department of Marketing, School of Business and Economics, University of 
Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark

[This paper, the second in an issue of _Constitutional Political Economy_ 
devoted to using tools of evolutionary biology to help understand 
political behavior, is excessively mathematical. Since none of the values 
of variables are actually measured (and I'm not sure how often they do get 
measured in biology itself!), purely verbal arguments will be just as 
satisfactory.

[I can send the PDF to anyone who wants it. The PDF --> TXT conversion 
does not handle formulas very well, so I got rid of most of them. Alt-172, 
?, which shows up on ISO-8859-1 as one-quarter, is the equals sign (=) in 
the PDF, for example.

[When you find the going tough, speed to the fourth and fifth sections. 
Viscosity means stickiness, but here the author takes it to mean genetic 
or spatial proximity.]

Abstract. The present paper analyses the evolution of costly cooperation 
in a multi-group population. Building on insights first developed in 
modern biology the idea of viscous population equilibria is introduced [a 
population is said to be viscous when a (sub)population of players is 
spatially or genetically clustered). A simple model then analyses how the 
combined effect of viscosity within multiple subgroups and different 
levels of between-group segregation influences the evolution of 
cooperation. The results suggest that a key issue in the evolution of 
cooperation is the shifting balance between the need to protect 
cooperators and propagation of the tendency to cooperate.

JEL classification: C72, D71.

Keywords: viscosity, multi-group selection, structured populations, 
population dynamics.

1. The Evolution of Cooperation in Structured Populations The interaction 
between cooperators and defectors is often modelled in terms of the 
Prisoners' Dilemma (PD henceforth) where two players each have two 
possible strategies: defect or cooperate. In face of the negative fate of 
cooperators implied by non-cooperative game theory and epitomised in the 
famous PD-game, there is an obvious difficulty in sustaining the argument 
of persistent costly cooperative behaviour. 3 Nevertheless, examples of 
costly cooperative behaviour are replete both in biological (Hamilton 
1975; Sella and Lachmann 2000) and social populations (Axelrod 1997; 
Becker 1996; Elster 1989; Hechter 1988; Hodgson 1994).

Hamilton (1964) demonstrated that cooperation could be sustained in 
viscous populations, i.e., when close relatives are more likely to 
interact than they are with distant ones, e.g. due to the formation of 
local herds and colonies. This analysis was extended in Hamilton (1975) 
and recently supplemented by research on geographical dispersal (Nakamura, 
Nogami, and Iwasa 1998). Since most of these studies consider single 
populations, it would be interesting to see how the interaction of 
multiple clustered populations influences the evolution of team play.

In the ensuing, I address this problem in a model where each of a number 
of finite interacting subgroups is populated by members of which a 
proportion is cooperators and the rest are defectors. A member of a 
subgroup meets another subgroup member and receives the PD pay-off in 
terms of an expected number of offspring.4 The PD pay-off is thus a 
measure of fitness in a biological model. In a model relevant for the 
social realm, the PD pay-off may denote the number of students educated by 
a specific university (department) or the number of new team members 
trained by a specific team (in a private company as well as in a state 
institution such as the U.S. Navy Seals).

The purpose of the present paper is to analyse a population of multiple 
interacting subgroups in which each subgroup is more or less clustered. 
Thus, in addition to the described within-group interaction and death, 
there is migration between groups. Migration is modelled as a tendency 
that the difference in population mixture between segregated subgroups 
will vanish. This type of dynamics seems to have a number of close 
parallels both in the biological and the social realm. One example of such 
structural dynamics is associated with the interaction within and between 
departments in private corporations, universities and military 
organisations. Another relates to the interaction within and between 
strategic groups of private corporations and yet another to the 
interaction within and between nation states.

Extending the analysis of viscosity (clustering) from single-to 
multi-group populations, the present work is closely related to Hamilton 
(1964, 1975) and Myerson et al. (1991). Also, the multilevel problem 
mentioned in Sober and Wilson (1998) is given consideration. Other related 
work is Becker (1976), Bergstrom and Stark (1993), DeCanio and Watkins 
(1998) and Eshel et al. (1998). The paper is organised as follows. First, 
the concept of viscosity that defines clustering in a population is 
related to the evolution of cooperation in structured biological and 
social populations. Then, a simple model illustrates how the combined 
effect of viscosity within multiple subgroups and different levels of 
segregation between the subgroups influence the evolution of cooperation. 
Some implications for theories of innovation are discussed followed by the 
conclusion.

2. Structured Populations and Viscous Population Equilibria

In the following, I consider the dynamics of population structure on two 
levels: within and between multiple subgroups. That is, in addition to 
within-group dynamics, I consider different levels of segregation between 
subgroups.

At this point, it is useful to provide the definition of viscosity used to 
model clustering within subgroups of a population. Thus, in accordance 
with Hamilton (1964, 1975), a viscous population is one where there is 
spatial or genetic clustering. More precisely, the degree of clustering 
can be defined in terms of a viscosity parameter d referring to the 
probability of interacting with a neighbour who plays a similar strategy. 
For a cooperator this implies that the probability of interaction is the 
sum of the probabilities of two forms of interaction: (1) the probability 
of interacting with random strangers (cooperators or defectors), and (2) 
the probability of interacting with players that are definitely 
cooperators. An equivalent definition applies to defectors. When an 
interaction is of the first type, I shall refer to it as "random." The 
second type of interaction is referred to as, "non-random." When the 
interaction is random, the individual meets cooperators and defectors with 
a probability in proportion to their population mixture. When the 
interaction is non-random, the individual definitely meets its own 
strategy (including the interaction of the individual with itself]. Thus 
for cooperators, the probability of meeting cooperators (including self ) 
within subgroup i is defined as:

P(Csubi,Csubj) = deltai + (1 - deltai)Csubi*

[That's how I can best type it. When I got is

i ;

P?Ci; Ci??di ??1 di?C* ?1?

where C* i ? Ci /

( Di + Ci) is the proportion of cooperators in subgroup i, di is the 
viscosity parameter specific to subgroup i and P(Ci, Di) ? 1 . P(Ci, Ci).5 
As the viscosity parameter di increases, the subgroup is increasingly 
clustered or viscous, and, the probability that a cooperator meets a 
cooperator increases for a given mixture of cooperators and defectors.

A different way to look at this is that N samples were obtained from 
subgroup i by a random procedure and then correlated. If N is arbitrarily 
large, the viscosity parameter di is an expression of the correlation as 
measured by the correlation coefficient. In biological models, a positive 
correlation coefficient is often referred to as positive assortment. The 
viscosity parameter di, therefore, provides a convenient compact 
representation of a statistical relationship between members of any 
population whatever its source (spatial structure or genetic relatedness). 
Therefore, whatever its source, I shall refer to a subgroup as being 
viscous if di > 0, meaning that there is a statistical relationship 
between subgroup members that deviates from the expectation under a random 
distribution of subgroup members. In addition to the viscosity parameter 
that regulates the interaction of cooperators and defectors within each 
subgroup, I define an equivalent population parameter, c, that regulates 
between-group segregation. The frequency Fic of cooperators in subgroup i 
is defined as:

Fc

i ?Ci =?Ci ?Di?; ?2?


[My typing gives Fsubi-superc = Csubi divided by Csubi + Dsubi.]

The frequency of cooperators in each of the j neighbouring subgroups after 
migration is defined as:

[I am going to expunge the math. Ask me for the PDF.]

where c is the segregation parameter bounded between 0 and 1. All L 
subgroups live on a one-dimensional lattice folded into a ring and the 
summation is taken over j < L adjacent subgroups. Starting from subgroup 1 
(randomly assigned), there is migration between the subgroups 1, 2, ..., j 
in time step 1, between 2, 3, ..., j + 1 in time step 2, and so on (since 
the lattice is folded into a ring, there is no boundary problem). C* i is 
the proportion of cooperators in each of the subgroups i ?1, 2, ... L. 
Note that c ? 1 [typing in, this is gamma = 1] is an expression of 
complete segregation between subgroups and c ? 0 is the situation with no 
segregation between subgroups. As can be seen by comparison, c is the 
population level equivalent of the within-group viscosity parameter di. 
[footnote]7

2.1. Viscosity and the Evolution of Cooperation in Biological Populations

In biology, the evolution of cooperation is associated with two distinct 
ideas: (1) a gene- centred view which dissolves a conflict between the 
gene and its carrier, and (2) viscous populations in terms of genetic 
relatedness (referred to as positive assortment by the biologist) or 
spatial clustering (referred to as viscosity by the biologist). Much has 
been said about the first point (e.g. Dawkins 1976). Apparent altruism on 
part of a gene- carrying individual is sometimes a clever strategy 
favouring the gene's multiplication. What perhaps needs more emphasis in 
this story is that the potential immortality of genes opens the 
possibility of infinitely repeated games and thus altruism on part of the 
gene. Therefore, the universal selfishness of genes promoted by Dawkins 
(1976) may be an overstatement. We shall leave this matter here and in the 
ensuing focus on the second point, viscous populations where the 
expression of genetic relatedness or spatial clustering explains the 
persistence of cooperation. The evolution of cooperation in biological 
populations has been associated with the clustering of organisms in 
geographical space. The original formulation was due to Hamilton (1964):

With many natural populations it must happen that an individual forms the 
centre of an actual local concentration of his relatives, which is due to 
a general inability, or disinclination of the organisms to move far from 
their places of birth. (Hamilton 1964: 10).

Hamilton (1964) further developed a model, which distinguished between two 
effects: a diluting effect and an inclusive fitness effect. Inclusive 
fitness was defined as a measure of the total effect of an organism's 
behaviour upon all genes identical by descent whereas the diluting effect 
measured the total effect on other organisms. The sum of the two, then, 
accounts for the total effects on reproduction due to a particular 
organism. Whereas the diluting effect was shown to influence the level of 
altruism, the inclusive fitness effect was shown to be more fundamental, 
determining the direction and progress in frequencies of altruistic genes. 
Crucially, the possibility that altruism may evolve by natural selection 
was shown to depend upon inclusive fitness. A vivid illustration of the 
idea, provided by Hamilton (and before him Haldane) is that we should 
expect that no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single person 
but that everyone will sacrifice it when he can thereby save more than two 
sisters, four half-sisters, or eight first cousins etc.8 Moreover, in 
comparison to the classical model, where advantages are conferred directly 
by a gene to its carrier, another gene, which conferred similar advantages 
to its sibs, would progress at exactly half the rate, i.e., the more 
indirect the transfer of reproductive potential, the slower the rate of 
evolutionary progress. This point indicates a general trade-off between 
probabilistic dilution and the speed of progress, or, in different terms, 
the need to balance protection and propagation of cooperation depending on 
the rate at which cooperation is "produced" within each subgroup.

Considering the case of multiple subgroups, Hamilton (1975) used the Price 
(1970, 1972) equations to further clarify how between-group selection 
favouring altruistic traits, to some extent, but never completely, may 
slow down within-group selection favouring selfishness. Briefly, the 
higher the between-group differences, the more important is between-group 
selection compared to within-group selection, however, within-group 
selection is always stronger. Unless a mechanism can be devised that 
continuously supplies new between-group variance, altruism cannot prosper. 
Two extreme models of multiple subgroups are analysed by Hamilton (1975). 
The first assumes persistent groups with no extinction and no 
between-group variation. Since, in this model, between-group variance is 
reduced as the best group increasingly dominates, altruism cannot evolve. 
The analysis of a model at the opposite extreme in which groups break up 
completely and reform in each generation leads to the same conclusion, 
altruism cannot evolve. However, slightly changing the assortment 
procedure so the correlation in two samples of randomly selected members 
of a group is F can make the model work. Hamilton (1975) assumes this is 
achieved by having a fraction F of groups made pure for each type and the 
remainder formed randomly. Then, if the altruist gives up k units of 
fitness to add K units to joint fitness, it is relatively straightforward 
to show that the criterion for positive selection of altruism is (Hamilton 
1975):

[I'll type in this one: K/k > 1/F.]

K=

k > 1=

F

?4?

As Hamilton (1975) further notes, this criterion is completely general for 
asexual models with non-overlapping generations, and also holds for 
diploid biological models. In other words, it is general to both social 
and biological populations. Moreover, Hamilton (1975) provides the 
following useful general definition of F later adopted by Myerson et al. 
(1991) in terms of the viscosity parameter (d): ...the existence of the 
positive correlation F could be interpreted as implying in this case that 
there is a chance F that the K units of fitness are definitely given to a 
fellow altruist, while with chance [1 . F ) they are given (as they always 
were) to a random member of the population.

Three general conclusions flow from Hamilton's (1975) model. The first is 
that between-group segregation is important in determining the level which 
altruism can reach, a point also emphasised by Eshel (1972). Second, 
altruism can evolve if the population is genetically related or spatially 
clustered so the viscosity parameter F [? d) > 0. Third, the population 
dynamics introduced by migration may be a source of spatial clustering but 
mere segregation between multiple subgroups is not enough to substitute 
for viscosity within the individual subgroups.9 Segregation between 
subgroups clearly helps sustain cooperation but without the presence of 
viscosity at the subgroup level, cooperators will eventually wither away. 
Thus viscosity within subgroups (and not different levels of segregation 
between subgroups) may lead to the co-existence of cooperative and 
defective strategies in a biological population. The mechanism that 
accounts for this result is the spatial clustering or genetic relatedness, 
which gives rise to uneven dispersal of strategies within a subgroup. When 
strategies are unevenly distributed, the probability of meeting a relative 
programmed with a similar strategy may be sufficiently high to ensure that 
the cooperative strategy will be fixed in the population. This would be 
the case when local herds or colonies build up as in the examples of the 
social insects provided by Hamilton (1964, 1975).

2.2. Viscosity and the Evolution of Cooperation in Social Populations

Since deterministic biological models are not obviously relevant in the 
social realm, it is important to identify conditions that justify their 
application. As aforementioned, we often encounter structured social 
populations, such as evolutionary cells and strategic groups within 
interacting industries. Although the underlying source of the prevailing 
population structure in terms of persistent subgroup heterogeneity may 
differ from case to case, it is important to emphasise that the population 
structure needs to be persistent. Therefore, a general source of 
between-group segregation in social populations is the opportunity costs 
involved in changing membership from one subgroup to the next. As the 
opportunity costs of moving between subgroups approach zero, nothing 
prevents the differences between subgroups to vanish. A number of sources 
for opportunity costs associated with membership of social populations 
such as sentiment, club membership and industrial entry barriers can be 
envisioned. But what are the sources of within-group viscosity in social 
populations?

Viscosity refers to the tendency for agents with a stable predisposition 
towards a certain type of behaviour to cluster in geographical space or in 
gene-space. In a previous paper (Knudsen and Foss 1999) it was argued that 
behavioural programmes, specifically the tendency to cooperate or defect, 
could be viewed as a semi-stable trait acquired in a particular subgroup, 
i.e., a production team in a business organisation. As pointed out by, 
among others, March and Simon (1958), Nelson and Winter (1982) and 
Langlois (1995), the role of behavioural programmes and routines is not 
just the storing of production knowledge, but also the storing of 
behavioural knowledge. If it is further accepted that behavioural 
programmes and routines involve a tacit component acquired in time- 
consuming face-to-face interaction, particular behavioural traits will not 
only tend to be relatively stable, they will also spread slowly in a 
larger subgroup. Therefore, in larger subgroups close neighbours should be 
more likely to share behavioural dispositions than distant neighbours. 
Thus we have arrived at a social equivalent of viscosity, i.e., clustering 
in social space.

Professionalization is obviously an example of a possible source of stable 
social stereotypes acquired by face-to-face interaction during long 
periods of training (Van Maanen 1973). Surely, such stereotypes spread 
relatively slowly and unevenly in the social landscape. As described by 
Nelson and Winter (1982), training in business organisations plays a 
similar role. According to Nelson and Winter (1982), new organisation 
members acquire the routines that carry the firm's productive knowledge 
through face-to-face interactions. The reason that face-to-face 
interaction is necessary is that knowledge is sticky, routines contain a 
tacit component that can only be acquired through an emulation procedure 
involving learning by doing with other team members (Knudsen 2001).

A further source of viscosity in social populations, originally pointed 
out by Hamilton (1964), is provided by discrimination, i.e., when norms 
dictate that frequent social interaction with some is more appropriate 
than with others.

Having provided equivalents to within-group viscosity and between-group 
segregation in social populations, I next turn to a model that illustrates 
how their combined effect influences the evolution of cooperation. In 
order to strip the analysis down to essentials, I shall not consider 
reciprocity, i.e., strategies relying on discrimination and memory are 
ignored. If cooperation can evolve in a model without reciprocity, surely, 
the introduction of reciprocity will allow cooperation to prosper in yet a 
number of additional situations.

3. The Model

3.1. The Evolution of Cooperation in Isolated or Single Groups

Before presenting the case of multiple subgroups, I first turn to Myerson 
et al.'s (1991) useful extension of Hamilton's (1964, 1975) insights. 
Myerson et al. (1991) define a viscosity parameter (d), a viscous 
population equilibrium and, taking the limit as viscosity goes to zero, 
they define a fluid population equilibrium. In the present article the 
analyses are limited to non-cooperative games and use the PD pay-offs 
shown below in Table 1a. Furthermore, I refer to Myerson et al. (1991) for 
the generalisation that at least one viscous equilibrium exists in a 
finite strategy set.

For a moment, consider a one-shot PD-game where pay-offs are utilities (or 
profits). Let strategy C meet its kin with probability P(Ci, Ci) ?di +[1 
di) C* i and its opponent D with probability P(Ci, Di) ?

1 P(Ci, Ci) as previously defined (equation 1 and note 5). Likewise, D 
meets D with probability P(Di, Di) ?di +[1 di) D* i and its opponent C 
with probability P(Di, Ci) ?

1 P(Di, Di).10 In this case, the expected value of the pay-off associated 
with a cooperator's (defector's) strategy profile s is:

[omit]

Table 1b below shows the relevant adjusted PD pay-offs where C is the 
strategy cooperate and D is the strategy defect.11 Note that the expected 
value of the pay-offs uC(s) and uD(s) can be read off directly from Table 
1b if we, for a moment, interpret the population states C* i and Di * as 
the components of a mixed strategy.12 Note that the

[omit tables]

normalised adjusted pay-offs, which are used in the analysis of the 
replicator dynamics in later sections of the paper, are derived from the 
pay-offs in Table 1b and are for reasons of convenient comparison shown 
here in Table 1c.

From the adjusted pay-off matrix shown in Table 1b, it is straightforward 
to see that cooperation can only evolve when the probability of meeting a 
fellow cooperator is at least 1/2, i.e., when 1/2 . di, the unique viscous 
equilibrium is C and everybody receives pay-off 3. When di . 1/3, the 
unique viscous equilibrium is D, and when 1/ 3 < di < 1/2, the unique 
equilibrium is mixed. The thrust of the example, is that cooperation can 
evolve in a single subgroup if the viscosity parameter di is sufficiently 
high, i.e., if spatial or genetic clustering is sufficiently high. One 
limit of the example, however, is that fitness is suppressed. What would 
happen if we interpreted the pay-offs as an expression of the individual's 
fitness in terms of the number of offspring produced per time unit?

In the remainder of the paper, the game is thought of as a meeting between 
two individuals programmed to play the pure strategy C or D. The 
individuals live in subgroup i and the state of the subgroup is defined as 
the vector whose components C* i and D* i are the shares of subgroup i 
programmed to play C and D, respectively. Within each subgroup, the 
players meet in pairs according to the probabilities P(Ci, Ci), and P(Di, 
Di)as previously defined.

Assuming a population with non-overlapping generations, we can use 
Hamilton's (1975) general criterion for altruism to evolve, i.e., K/ k > 
1/F as explained in the above. The question is, what values of the 
viscosity parameter di ( F in Hamilton's model), can sustain cooperation 
when the opportunity cost to the altruist is k and the benefit added to 
the group is K?

With the above pay-offs, and assuming a population where all defect, k ? 1 
and K ? 3 so cooperation can evolve when F > k/K ? 1/3.13 As indicated by 
this calculation, some level of cooperation will prosper for 1/3 < di < 
1/2 in models of non-overlapping generations where fitness is expressed, 
i.e., in growth models where pay-offs denote differential increases (or 
decreases) in the actual number of particular types of agents.14 Even if 
this result can be obtained directly from an inspection of the eigenvalues 
associated with the replicator dynamics, as shown in the following 
section, it provides a useful connection to Hamilton's original model.

The result that cooperation can evolve when F [? di) > 1/3 demonstrates 
that Hamilton's (1975: 140) assortment procedure can be respecified to 
work in a population that is not divided into subgroups or demes. 
Consequently, Sober and Wilson's (1998: 76-7) claim that the significance 
of relatedness for the evolution of altruism is to increase genetic 
variation among subgroups and thereby increasing the importance of group 
selection needs further qualification. The general cause of altruism in 
Hamilton's (1975) model is viscosity and although viscosity may be 
produced by an assortment procedure involving multiple subgroups, as 
specified by Hamilton (1975), this is not really necessary.

However, this clarification points to a further limit of the above 
example. What would happen if we allowed for differences in viscosity in a 
population of multiple subgroups? In particular, it would be interesting 
to see how the combined effect of viscosity within subgroups, and, the 
level of segregation between subgroups, influences the range of feasible 
equilibria, an issue not addressed by Myerson et al. (1991). To shed light 
on this problem, the ensuing sections study how viscosity within and 
segregation between multiple subgroups influence the range of stable 
states where a proportion of cooperators is sustained.

3.2. Evolution with Viscosity within and Segregation between Multiple 
Subgroups

This section describes a simple model of evolution in a multi-group 
population. The model illustrates how different levels of within-group 
viscosity and between-group segregation influences survival of 
cooperation. To simplify matters, we use the above PD pay-offs and note 
that conclusions will not change qualitatively as long as this pay-off 
structure is unaltered.

3.2.1. Interactions Between Individuals Within Subgroups

Assume a finite subgroup i of Ni players programmed to play C and D in the 
proportions C* i , D* i . In each time unit t, all agents within subgroup 
i meet in pairs according to the probabilities P(Ci, Ci), and P(Di, Di) as 
previously defined. As a result of the meeting, a C and D player will 
receive the number offspring specified by the pay-offs in Table 1.

3.2.2. Analysis of One Subgroup

Before the multi-group model is presented, it is useful to analyse the 
replicator dynamics in the case of a single subgroup (identical to the 
case of complete segregation). The replicator dynamics provides an 
expression for the growth rate of the population share C* i (D* i ) in 
terms of the difference between the number of offspring (pay-off) 
currently obtained by C-players and the current average pay-off (Weibull 
1997). The replicator dynamics, is therefore a convenient basis for 
computing the steady states of the within-

group dynamics in the case of a single subgroup. Since the growth rate is 
independent of the background birth-and death rates in the case of a 
single subgroup (Weibull 1997), I first introduce death when the 
multi-group model is analysed. It should also be noted that although there 
exists a multi-group version of the replicator dynamics ( Hofbauer and 
Sigmund 1998; Weibull 1997), it is not readily tailored to the purpose of 
the present multi-group study. Using the normalised adjusted pay-offs 
shown in Table 1c, the replicator dynamics for a single completely 
segregated subgroup can be defined as (Weibull 1997):

[omit]


3.2.3. Analysis of Multiple Subgroups

I now proceed to illustrate how between-group dynamics [0 c < 1) alter 
the values of Ci * and Di * when di is allowed to vary across subgroups. I 
use a simulation model since it is not straightforward to obtain an 
analytic solution for n subgroups when there are differences across more 
than two subgroups in di and c < 1.15 A model of 20 subgroups i of size Ni 
with NiC cooperators and NiD defectors is studied. The results are 
independent of the value of Ni, which is set to 50. The expected value of 
the pay offs to the Ni agents in each subgroup are according to the 
adjusted pay offs shown in Table 1b:

[omit]

3.2.4. Between-Group Segregation

As previously defined, c regulates between-group segregation. In the 
present model there are L ?20 subgroups and there is migration between j ? 
4 neighbouring subgroups at each time step.16 The probability that 
cooperators will migrate between the 4 neighbouring subgroups i and j was 
previously defined in equation (2).

3.2.5. Death

After each period, the Ci and Di strategists are reduced with a factor w. 
w is 2 with certainty plus a random component drawn from a uniform 
distribution [0,2], so E(w) ?3.

3.3. The Combined Influence of Within-Group Viscosity and Between-Group 
Segregation

This section presents the results of the analysis of the model described 
in the above. Two configurations with initial maximum differences in 
subgroup composition were analysed.

In the first configuration, all 20 subgroups were identical and completely 
mixed in period one, i.e., 50% cooperators and 50% defectors. In the 
second configuration, 10 subgroups were populated entirely by cooperators 
and the remaining 10 subgroups were populated entirely by defectors. Apart 
from the extreme situation where all subgroups were completely segregated 
(c ?1), the equilibrium proportions of cooperators converged in the two 
configurations. Averaging 100 runs of the model, 50 for each configuration 
obtained the results reported in the ensuing. Each run encompassed 150 
periods since stability was usually obtained in less than 100 periods. The 
analyses cover the following topics: (1) the evolution of cooperation in 
completely segregated subgroups (c ?1), (2) the evolution of cooperation 
when there is no segregation between subgroups (c ?0), (3) the evolution 
of cooperation when there is some segregation between subgroups [0 < c < 
1),(4) the evolution of cooperation for low and high average subgroup 
viscosity d ?1/20 Sdi when there is some segregation between subgroups [0 
< c < 1), and (5) the sensitivity to initial conditions.

3.3.1. The Evolution of Cooperation in Completely Segregated Subgroups

The subgroups are completely segregated when there is no migration between 
neighbouring subgroups. The evolution of cooperation in completely 
segregated subgroups (c ? 1) is identical to the evolution of cooperation 
in a single subgroup covered in the above analysis. Thus, stable 
proportions of both Ci * and Di * are sustained for 1/3 < di < 1/2. For di 
? 3/7, 50% of the subgroup are cooperators. Unless, subgroups are 
initially pure (Ci * ? 1), it is impossible to sustain cooperation for any 
di < 1/3. That is, the population viscosity average d for the 20 subgroups 
needs to be larger than 1/ 3 for cooperation to survive. How does the 
level of segregation between groups change this fact?

3.3.2. The Evolution of Cooperation when there is Complete Migration 
Between Subgroups

As c ! 0, migration between neighbouring subgroups increases and it 
becomes increasingly difficult to sustain cooperation. When c ? 0, the 
cooperators in subgroup i can only survive when all 1/ 3 < di implying an 
average 1/3 < d. Some degree of segregation between subgroups [0 < c < 1), 
however, introduces a delay that allows cooperation to be sustained for 
very low average d's (in the present study d > 0.05).

3.3.3. The Evolution of Cooperation when there is some Segregation Between 
Subgroups

In the case where di has the same value in all subgroups (di ? d for all 
i), increasing the segregation between subgroups (c ! 1) does not help to 
sustain cooperation. For (di ?] d < 1/3, cooperation cannot be sustained 
even when c ? 0.99. For 1/3< (di ?] d < 1/2, the stable proportion of 
cooperators is identical to the case of completely isolated subgroups but 
as the level of segregation increases, the number of periods to reach the 
steady state also increases. For (di ?] d ? 1/2, (and slightly above 1/2), 
however, segregation does make a difference. For very high levels of c, 
cooperation will drive out defection. As segregation decreases, however, a 
small proportion of defectors can survive. Since the reduction of group 
size (death) after each period includes a stochastic component, the 
defectors' survival point, defined by d, increases slightly (from 0.50 to 
0.54).

Figure 1 shows the case where d ? 1/2.

As shown in Figure 1, if c ? 0.99, the population consists only of 
cooperators (C* ? 1) when di ? d ? 1/2. In the ensuing, the fitness 
landscape in Figure 1 is explained in more detail.17

3.3.4. The Evolution of Cooperation when Subgroup Viscosity Differs

Introducing differences in viscosity (di) across subgroups for a given 
average d changes matters. For a given level of the population average d, 
maximum differences in subgroup di's are analysed. Maximum differences are 
obtained when some subgroups

[omit]

are set to a given value of di and di ? 0 for the remaining subgroups. 
When di ? 0 for the remaining subgroups, a population average d ? 0.50 
can, for example, be obtained by the following values of di, 0.50 in all 
20 subgroups, 0.60 in 16 subgroups and 0.40 in one subgroup, 0.70 in 14 
subgroups and 0.20 in one subgroup, and so on, till 10 out of 20 subgroups 
have di ? 1.00. Note that maximum differences include the case of maximum 
variance, i.e., when the average d is obtained by setting subgroup di's to 
one and zero.

Figure 1 above shows the results for population average d ? 0.50. For very 
high segregation (c ? 0.99), the highest proportion of cooperators (C*] is 
sustained when di's are set as low as possible. By contrast, for very low 
segregation (c ? 0.00), the highest proportion of cooperators is sustained 
when di's are set as high as possible. For extreme values of segregation 
(c ? 0.00 or c ? 0.99) only cooperators survive (C* ? 1). Some level of 
segregation (c) between the extreme values allows some defectors to 
survive (C* < 1) for the same value of average d [? 0.50). For example, 
when c ? 0.20, about 85% cooperators survive independent of the subgroup 
values of di (see Figure 1).

As shown in Figure 1, for average d ? 0.50, increasing segregation (c) 
benefits cooperation when there is minimum differences in viscosity across 
subgroups (all di ? 0.50). Decreasing segregation (c) benefits cooperation 
when there are maximum differences in viscosity across subgroups (di's set 
to 1.00 and 0.00). These conclusions do not hold for values of the 
population average di different from 0.50. In the following, I describe 
how changes in levels of the population average d alter the fitness 
landscape.

[omit]

Figure 2. Stable proportions of C* for alternative values of c and average 
d ? 1/20 Sdi ? 0.05 for 0.30 . di . 1.00.

3.3.5. The Evolution of Cooperation for Low Average Subgroup Viscosity (d 
< 0.50)

It is possible to sustain an evolutionarily stable proportion of 
cooperators even for very low values of the population average d when the 
level of segregation is sufficiently high. Figure 2 shows the fitness 
landscape for average d ? 0.05, i.e., one subgroup with di ? 1.00 and the 
nineteen remaining di's ? 0.00, one subgroup with di ? 0.90 another with 
di ? 0.10 and the remaining eighteen di's ? 0.00 etc.

The first thing to notice is that cooperation cannot be sustained for d < 
1/ 3 when segregation is zero. It is necessary with 0.40 . c to sustain 
cooperation. Generally, the evolutionarily stable proportion of 
cooperators increases in c. Moreover, for very high levels of c [? 0.99), 
the sustainable proportion of cooperators increases as di approach 0.50. 
Indeed, for all d < 0.50, the maximum evolutionarily stable proportion of 
cooperators is sustained for c ? 0.99 and di ? 0.50 for the relevant 
number of subgroups (two in the present model when di ? 0.05). For lower 
levels of c (. 0.80 when d ? 0.05), the sustainable proportion of 
cooperators increases as di approach 1.00 for the relevant number of 
subgroups (see Figure 2). For low values of average d, the general issue 
is the trade off between the protection of cooperators provided by high 
levels of segregation (high c) and the need to reproduce new cooperators 
fast enough (high di). For very low levels of average d (0.05 in the 
present model), the necessary speed in replication can only be maintained 
when the subgroup is protected against invasion by very high levels of c. 
In this case, the evolutionarily stable proportion of cooperators shrinks 
as c decreases. As average d increases from very low levels towards 0.50, 
the pressure against cooperators eases. Gradually, for every level of c, 
the value of di that sustains the maximum level of cooperators approaches 
0.50. In consequence, raising average d from 0 towards 0.50 increases the 
smoothness of the fitness landscape but the peak at (c ? 0.99 and di ? 
0.50 remains).

3.3.6. The Evolution of Cooperation for High Average Subgroup Viscosity 
(0.50 . d)

For high levels of d, the general issue is the trade off between the speed 
in replication of new cooperators and the protection of cooperators caused 
by high levels of segregation (high c). Viewed from the perspective of 
defectors', the issue is identical to the cooperator's problem when 
average d is low. For high levels of average d, the defector's general 
problem is the trade off between the protection provided by high levels of 
segregation (high c) and the need to reproduce new defectors fast enough 
(increases in di). Therefore, increasing c for high levels of d, slightly 
decreases the evolutionarily stable proportion of cooperators. Even when d 
is quite high, i.e., average population d ? 0.80 as shown in Figure 3, 
some proportion of defectors is sustained.

The explanation is that d ? 0.80 implies di ? 0.00 in four subgroups and 
di ? 1.00 in sixteen subgroups. When the diffusion of cooperators is 
slowed down (by increasing c), some proportion of defectors is sustained. 
Even if this is the case, when d increases, the cooperators' fitness 
surface becomes increasingly smooth and approaches 1.00.

3.3.7. Sensitivity to Initial Conditions

Apart from the extreme case where c ? 1.00, initial conditions will not 
influence the evolutionarily stable proportion of cooperators. In other 
words, initial differences in the mix of strategies and the number of 
agents in each subgroup will not change the stable proportions of 
surviving cooperators, however, the subgroup and population growth rates 
will change. Furthermore, the implications of the above conclusions hold 
for any pay-offs that respect the PD pay-off structure. The initial 
subgroup composition matters for growth, however. When average d is low, 
populations with maximum initial differences among subgroups outgrow 
populations with completely mixed subgroups (for identical population d 
and independent of c). By contrast, high average d in combination with low 
c favour populations where subgroups initially are completely mixed, 
however, uncertainty about the outcome increases in c.

In sum, the above analysis showed that within-group viscosity is necessary 
for cooperation to evolve whereas between-group segregation has an 
important role in influencing the level of cooperation, i.e., the stable 
fraction of cooperating agents. Clearly, within-group viscosity is the 
more important source of cooperation. Having said that, it was striking to 
notice that some level of cooperation could prosper even for very low 
average values of the viscosity parameter. Put differently, only one 
viscous subgroup was needed for high levels of segregation. The analyses 
implied that a key issue in the evolution of cooperation is the balance 
between protection and propagation of the tendency to cooperate. As we 
have seen, high levels of segregation helps protect cooperation when 
viscosity is low, however, reduces the propagation of cooperation when 
viscosity is high. In the following, we turn to this issue and consider 
the role of viscosity in different stages of revolution, broadly 
understood as overthrowing old ideas through cooperative efforts.

4. Viscosity and the Diffusion of Innovations

When new innovations threaten to overthrow received wisdom they are likely 
to be met by negative reactions and to be opposed by the potential losers. 
Therefore, development in the progress of technology and science includes 
moments of revolution. As indicated by Mokyr (1990), resistance to 
innovation is a common phenomenon including historical examples such as 
the prolonged resistance to new technology in the textile trade, the edict 
which in 1299 banned the use of Arabic numbers by Florentine bankers and 
the delayed introduction of printing into Paris caused by resistance from 
the scribes guild.

Comparable resistance to scientific change has been observed in economics, 
as beautifully illustrated by Shackle (1967), in biology (Mayr 1982) and 
undoubtedly most other disciplines. Historical examples include the 
declaration of Mandeville's 1723 edition of the Fable of the Bees as a 
public nuisance by the Grand Jury of Middlesex and the subsequent assail 
on his work by eminent contemporary writers (Torrance 1998). More recent 
examples include the rejection of Darwinian theory as unscientific and its 
long period of eclipse (Cronin 1991), the reluctance in mainstream 
economics to renounce the assumption of perfect competition and, 
subsequently, to consider process and learning (Shackle 1967).

Since the distribution of benefits flowing from new ideas probably can be 
characterised by a low average and a high variance, some resistance is 
clearly apposite. In numerous situations new ideas are clear improvements, 
however; at least viewed from the perspective of society. Since an 
invention in its early phases threaten the private interests of the 
potential losers, its propagation often depends on the protection of the 
inventor from those who stand to benefit from the suppression of the 
invention (Mokyr 1990). In other words, there is a conflict between those 
who oppose the invention and the cooperating revolutionaries who aim to 
propagate it.

As the above analyses have shown, the general issue in such situations is 
the trade off between the protection of cooperators provided by high 
levels of segregation (high c) and propagation in terms of the need to 
reproduce new cooperators fast enough (high di].

The trade-off is well known to planners of political revolutions. 
Cooperating comrades are organised in cells and the segregation between 
cells needs to be high enough to protect against invasion of subversive 
elements. Moreover, the rate of conversion of newcomers to the cause 
(pay-offs in our model) depends on the probability of interacting with 
other genuine proponents of the cause. Seasoned members should meet each 
other more frequently than they meet newcomers and the segregation between 
cells should be high. Early phases of successful revolutions seem to have 
these characteristics.

As the above model illustrates, the problem in early phases of political, 
technological or scientific revolutions is to strike a proper balance 
between interacting with like-minded people and running the risk of 
betrayal or losing faith by meeting new prospects. In later phases of 
revolution, when the faithful are plenty and their presence clustered 
within a local population, the cause will prosper by decreasing 
segregation. Similar considerations can be associated with the evolution 
of cooperation in other structured populations such as research teams 
within interacting universities, strategic groups within interacting 
industries and rock musicians playing in alternative "interacting" bands. 
In all these cases, changes in structural dynamics will influence the 
protection and propagation of cooperation.

5. Conclusion

Successfully overthrowing existing wisdom is facilitated by particular 
structural conditions that need adjustment as support is gained. The above 
model suggests how the general trade-off between protection and 
propagation may be balanced. It also complements existing research on 
viscous equilibria by introducing a multi-level selection environment, 
however, to maintain focus, the model ignores the issue of how structural 
dynamics interacts with differences in information processing power across 
agents.

It should be mentioned that prior research on multi-level selection 
reported in Sober and Wilson (1998), to some extent, is challenged but 
also supported by the above results. Sober and Wilson (1998) claim that 
the significance of relatedness for the evolution of altruism is to 
increase genetic variation among subgroups and thereby increasing the 
importance of group selection. As indicated in the above, this claim 
relies on a specific interpretation of Hamilton's (1975) argument. It is 
viscosity, which allows cooperation to evolve, both for Hamilton (1975) 
and in the model analysed in the present work. Although between-group 
segregation can influence the level of cooperation, it can never sustain 
cooperation in the absence of viscosity. Here it should be noted that the 
above analyses excluded the possibility of empty subgroups and thus a 
dynamics that includes the birth and death of subgroups. If this 
possibility is included, the conclusion may or may not be reversed 
depending on the definition of the transition probabilities, which 
determine in which order and at what rate cooperators and defectors arrive 
at empty subgroups. It should further be noted that since segregation 
between subgroups may actually compensate for clustering within subgroups, 
the simulation lends support to Sober and Wilson's (1998) claim that group 
selection and individual selection are best seen as distinct causes that 
may interact to sustain costly cooperation.

Concerning the general issue of altruism versus egoism, we reach similar 
conclusions as prior research. In a local interaction model where players 
choose strategies by imitating successful players, Eshel et al. (1998) 
showed that altruists need protection to survive. Protection is provided 
by local interaction patterns that allow groups of altruists to share the 
net cost of altruism, however, mutant egoists or defectors can always 
invade altruists or cooperators. In Eshel et al.' s (1998) model, the 
limit to expansion of egoism is the fall in pay-off to egoism, which at 
some point leads imitators to become altruists. Even if Eshel et al.'s 
(1998) model is different from the one studied above, it shares its 
central feature; cooperation cannot survive in a completely unstructured 
(fluid) population. By contrast, when factors such as spatial or genetic 
clustering introduce constrained non-random interaction patterns, it is 
possible for some proportion of cooperators or altruists to survive. As in 
Eshel et al. (1998) this result does not rely on reciprocity.

In sum, the simple model analysed in the present work, showed how the 
combined effect of viscosity within multiple subgroups and segregation, 
defined as limits in the migration of members between these, influence the 
evolution of cooperation. In particular, the model showed that segregation 
(slow migration between subgroups) is important because it helps to 
sustain the weaker strategy. The present work has assumed that 
within-group viscosity existed in biological and social populations. This 
is obviously an empirical question. Nevertheless, it would be interesting 
to identify the dynamics, which could "produce" viscosity as an outcome of 
an evolutionary process. The above results suggest that we should look for 
a dynamics, which combine slow migration with the possibility of 
persistent subgroup heterogeneity. This suggests that a sufficiently large 
delay in replication caused by slow migration [a transient fitness 
reduction) may be enough to produce the positive correlation between 
subgroups, which can be interpreted as an expression of viscosity.

Notes

1. The author appreciates helpful comments on earlier drafts from Rabah 
Amir, Mie Augier, Markus Becker, Ken Binmore, Nicolai J. Foss, Geoffrey M. 
Hodgson, Josef Hof bauer, Oddvar M. Kaarb?e, Michael Lachmann, Daniel 
Levinthal, Brian Loasby, James G. March, Trond Olsen, Ludo Pagie, John 
Pepper, Walter W. Powell, Christian Sartorius, Markus Schmidt, Sara J. 
Solnick, Robert Sugden, Viktor Vanberg, Jack Vromen, Ulrich Witt and 
others.

2. Phone: +45 6550 3148, Fax: +45 6615 5129.

3. The terms "team play," "altruism" and "cooperation" are used 
synonymously to denote cooperative behaviour, which at a real cost to its 
provider adds a greater benefit to the group.

4. The model, therefore, is different from the multi-population models 
described by Weibull (1997) where members from one subpopulation can 
interact directly with members from other subpopulations.

5. The probability of a (Di, Di) meeting is P(Di, Di) ? di +[1 . di) Di *, 
where Di * is the proportion of defectors in subgroup i and the 
probability of a (Di, Ci) meeting is P(Di, Ci) ? 1 . P(Di, Di).

6. The frequency of migrating cooperators from subgroup i is ( Fic . Z] / 
Fic: if the sign is positive, cooperators leave subgroup i, and if the 
sign is negative cooperators arrive to subgroup i.

7. Since P(Ci) ? Z . c [Z . Ci *] ? c Ci * +[1 . c)Z.

8. Since, on average, a human being shares 50% of its genes with its 
sisters, 25% with half-sisters etc.

9. An exception includes the situation where the pay-off to a defector 
meeting another defector < 1 provided there is sufficient initial 
differences in the size of sub-populations (see Sella and Lachman 2000).

10. The probabilities P(Ci, Ci) and P(Di, Di) provide a complete 
description of the interaction between players.

11. The pay-offs in 1b can be obtained directly from the matrix A ? 
(3,0;5,1) shown in 1a, i.e., by adding [1 . d) A and dA' where A' ? 
(3,3;1,1).

12. We can do this since a population state is formally identical with a 
mixed strategy (Weibull 1995).

13. The joint benefit K to the group is calculated by inclusion of the 
altruists pay-offs.

14. An economic model where fitness is expressed would imply that the 
appropriate criterion of success is actual asset accumulation. Profits in 
such models, in contrast to most models analysed in evolutionary 
economics, must be seen as a medium which translates into asset 
accumulation.

15. Weibull (1997) considers alternative approaches to multipopulation 
replicator dynamics (e.g. Hofbauer and Sigmund 1998) without viscosity. In 
the present work, we study different levels in viscosity among a number of 
non-fixed populations.

16. If the condition j < L is fullfilled, the obtained results are not 
sensitive to the particular number L of subgroups analysed or the 
particular number j < L of subgroups among which there is migration in 
each time step.

17. Figure 2 shows a fitness landscape for cooperators in terms of the 
actual evolutionarily stable proportions C* for alternative levels of 
between-group segregation (c) and within-group (di) viscosity. In biology, 
fitness is commonly defined in terms of the expected number of offspring. 
In economics matters are less settled and fitness can be defined in terms 
of profits or growth (actual of expected). Using the latter definition, I 
refer to Figure 1 as a fitness landscape.

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