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Views Expressed Are Those of the 37086 Dædalus coming up in Dædalus: Dædalus on learning Alison Gopnik, Howard Gardner, Jerome Bruner, Susan Carey, Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Elizabeth Spelke, Patricia Smith Churchland, Clark Glymour, Daniel John Povinelli, and Michael Tomasello Fall 2003 Fall 2003: on science Fall on happiness Martin E. P. Seligman, Richard A. Easterlin, Martha C. Nussbaum, on science Alan Lightman A sense of the mysterious 5 Anna Wierzbicka, Bernard Reginster, Robert H. Frank, Julia E. Annas, Roger Shattuck, Darrin M. McMahon, and Ed Diener Albert Einstein Physics & reality 22 Gerald Holton Einstein’s Third Paradise 26 on progress Joseph Stiglitz, John Gray, Charles Larmore, Randall Kennedy, Peter Pesic Bell & buzzer 35 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Jagdish Bhagwati, Richard A. Shweder, and David Pingree The logic of non-Western science 45 others Susan Haack Trials & tribulations 54 Andrew Jewett Science & the promise of democracy on human nature Steven Pinker, Lorraine Daston, Jerome Kagan, Vernon Smith, in America 64 Joyce Appleby, Richard Wrangham, Patrick Bateson, Thomas Sowell, Jonathan Haidt, and Donald Brown poetry Les Murray The Tune on Your Mind & Photographing Aspiration 71 on race Kenneth Prewitt, Orlando Patterson, George Fredrickson, Ian Hacking, Jennifer Hochschild, Glenn Loury, David Hollinger, ½ction Joanna Scott That place 73 Victoria Hattam, and others notes Elizabeth F. Loftus on science under legal assault 84 Perez Zagorin on humanism past & present 87 plus poetry by David Ferry, Richard Wilbur, Franz Wright, Rachel Hadas, W. S. Merwin, Charles Wright, Richard Howard &c.; ½ction by Chuck Wachtel &c.; and notes by Gerald Early, Linda Hutcheon, Jennifer Hochschild, Charles Altieri, Richard Stern, Donald Green, S. George H. Philander, Shelley Taylor, Philip L. Quinn, Robert Nagel, Michael Kremer &c. U.S. $13 www.amacad.org Inside front cover: A scientist eagerly encountering the wonders of modern chemistry: a scene from Thomas Edison’s ½lm Frankenstein (1910), starring Charles Ogle. “The world was to me a secret I desired to divine,” declares Dr. Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s original novel (1818). See Peter Pesic on The bell & the buzzer: on the meaning of science, pages 35–44. Photograph from the book Edison’s Frankenstein by Frederick C. Wiebel, Jr., courtesy of the author and The Fort Lee Film Commission. James Miller, Editor of Dædalus Phyllis S. Bendell, Managing Editor and Director of Publications Janet Foxman, Assistant Editor Contributing editors: Robert S. Boynton, D. Graham Burnett Board of editors Steven Marcus, Editor of the Academy Russell Banks, Fiction Adviser Rosanna Warren, Poetry Adviser Joyce Appleby (u.s. history, ucla), Stanley Hoffmann (government, Harvard), Donald Kennedy (environmental science, Stanford), Martha C. Nussbaum (law and philosophy, Chicago), Neil J. Smelser (sociology, Berkeley), Steven Weinberg (physics, University of Texas–Austin); ex of½cio: Patricia Meyer Spacks (President of the Academy), Leslie Cohen Berlowitz (Executive Of½cer) Editorial advisers Daniel Bell (sociology, Harvard), Michael Boudin (law, u.s. Court of Appeals), Wendy Doniger (religion, Chicago), Howard Gardner (education, Harvard), Clifford Geertz (anthropology, Institute for Advanced Study), Carol Gluck (Asian history, Columbia), Stephen Greenblatt (English, Harvard), Thomas Laqueur (European history, Berkeley), Alan Lightman (English and physics, mit), Steven Pinker (neuroscience, mit), Diane Ravitch (education, nyu), Richard Shweder (human development, Chicago), Frank Wilczek (physics, mit) Dædalus is designed by Alvin Eisenman Dædalus Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences The pavement labyrinth once in the nave of Reims Cathedral (1240), in a drawing, with ½gures of the architects, by Jacques Cellier (c. 1550–1620). Dædalus was founded in 1955 and established as a quarterly in 1958. The journal’s namesake was renowned in ancient Greece as an inventor, scientist, and unriddler of riddles. Its emblem, a maze seen from above, symbolizes the aspiration of its founders to “lift each of us above his cell in the labyrinth of learning in order that he may see the entire structure as if from above, where each separate part loses its comfortable separateness.” The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, like its journal, brings together distinguished individuals from every ½eld of human endeavor. It was chartered in 1780 as a forum “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Now in its third century, the Academy, with its more than four thousand elected members, continues to provide intellectual leadership to meet the critical challenges facing our world. Dædalus Fall 2003 Subscription rates: Print and electronic for Issued as Volume 132, Number 4 nonmember individuals–$40; institutions– $80. Canadians add 7% gst. Electronic only © 2003 by the American Academy for nonmember individuals–$36; institu- of Arts & Sciences tions–$72. Canadians add 7% gst. Outside Trials & tribulations: science in the courts the United States and Canada add $20 for © 2003 by Susan Haack postage and handling. Prices subject to change Einstein’s Third Paradise without notice. © 2003 by Gerald Holton A sense of the mysterious Institutional subscriptions are on a volume © 2003 by Alan Lightman year basis. All other subscriptions begin with The Tune on Your Mind the next available issue. & Photographing Aspiration Single issues: current issues–$13; back issues © 2003 by Les Murray for individuals–$13; back issues for institu- That place tions–$26. Outside the United States and © 2003 by Joanna Scott Canada add $5 per issue for postage and han- Physics & reality dling. Prices subject to change without notice. permission to reprint granted by the Albert Einstein Archives, the Jewish National & Claims for missing issues will be honored free University Library, the Hebrew University of charge if made within three months of the of Jerusalem, Israel publication date of the issue. Claims may be submitted to [email protected]. Mem- Editorial of½ces: Dædalus, Norton’s Woods, bers of the American Academy please direct all 136 Irving Street, Cambridge ma 02138. questions and claims to [email protected]. Phone: 617 491 2600. Fax: 617 576 5088. Email: [email protected]. Postmaster: Send address changes to Dædalus, Five Cambridge Center, Cambridge Library of Congress Catalog No. 12-30299 ma 02142-1407. Periodicals postage paid at isbn 0-87724-041-8 Boston ma and at additional mailing of½ces. Dædalus publishes by invitation only, and as- Newsstand distribution by Ingram Periodicals sumes no responsibility for unsolicited manu- Inc., 1240 Heil Quaker Blvd., La Vergne tn scripts. The views expressed are those of the 37086. Phone: 800 627 6247. author of each article, and not necessarily of Advertising and mailing list inquiries may be the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. addressed to Marketing Department, mit Dædalus (issn 0011-5266) is published quar- Press Journals, Five Cambridge Center, Cam- terly (winter, spring, summer, fall) by The mit bridge ma 02142-1407. Phone: 617 253 2866. Press, Cambridge ma 02142, for the American Fax: 617 258 5028. Email: journals-info@ Academy of Arts & Sciences. An electronic full mit.edu. text version of Dædalus is available from The Permission to photocopy articles for internal mit Press. Subscription and address changes or personal use is granted by the copyright should be addressed to mit Press Journals, Five owner for users registered with the Copyright Cambridge Center, Cambridge ma 02142-1407. Clearance Center (ccc) Transactional Report- Phone: 617 253 2889. Fax: 617 577 1545. ing Service, provided that the per copy fee Email: [email protected]. of $10 per article is paid directly to the ccc, Printed in the United States of America by 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers ma 01923 (fee Cadmus Professional Communications, code: 0011-5266/03). Address all other in- Science Press Division, 300 West Chestnut quiries to the Subsidiary Rights Manager, Street, Ephrata pa 17522. mit Press Journals, Five Cambridge Center, Cambridge ma 02142. Phone: 617 253 2864. The typeface is Cycles, designed by Sumner Fax: 617 258 5028. Email: journals-rights@ Stone at the Stone Type Foundry of Guinda mit.edu. ca. Each size of Cycles has been separately designed in the tradition of metal types. Alan Lightman A sense of the mysterious Ever since I was a young boy, my pas- silvery, prickly to touch, blaring like a sions have been divided between science trumpet call, fluid, pitter-pattered in and art. I was fortunate to make a life in rhythm. And, as if by magic, words both, as a physicist and a novelist, and could create scenes and emotions. When even to ½nd creative sympathies be- my grandfather died, I buried my grief in tween the two, but I have had to live writing a poem, which I showed to my with a constant tension in myself and a grandmother a month later. She cradled continual rumbling in my gut. my face with her veined hands and said, In childhood, I wrote dozens of po- “It’s beautiful,” and then began weeping ems. I expressed in verse my questions all over again. How could marks on a about death, my loneliness, my admira- white sheet of paper contain such power tion for a plum-colored sky, my unre- and force? quited love for fourteen-year-old girls. Between poems, I did scienti½c ex- Overdue books of poetry and stories lit- periments. These I conducted in the tered my second-floor bedroom. Read- cramped little laboratory I built out of a ing, listening, even thinking, I was mes- storage closet in my house. In my home- merized by the sounds and the move- made alchemist’s den, I horded resistors ment of words. Words could be sudden, and capacitors, coils of wire of various like ‘jolt,’ or slow, like ‘meandering.’ thicknesses and grades, batteries, Words could be sharp or smooth, cool, switches, photoelectric cells, magnets, dangerous chemicals that I had secret- Alan Lightman, a Fellow of the American Acade- ly ordered from unsuspecting supply my since 1996, is adjunct professor of humanities stores, test tubes and Petri dishes, lovely at mit.
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