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 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. He is the author of several books on sci- glass flasks, Bunsen burners, scales. I ence, including “Ancient Light: Our Changing delighted in my equipment. I loved to View of the Universe” (1991) and “Origins: build things. Around the age of thirteen, The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists” I built a remote control device that could (with R. Brawer, 1990). His works of ½ction in- activate the lights in various rooms of clude “Einstein’s Dreams” (1993), “The Diagno- the house, amazing my three younger sis” (2000), which was a ½nalist for the National brothers. With a thermostat, a light- Book Award, and, most recently, “Reunion” bulb, and a padded cardboard box, I (2003). constructed an incubator for the cell cul- tures in my biology experiments. After © 2003 by Alan Lightman seeing the Frankenstein movie, I built a

Dædalus Fall 2003 5 Alan spark-generating induction coil, requir- expedition to Clark and Fay’s on Poplar Lightman ing tedious weeks upon weeks of wind- Avenue, the best-stocked supply store in on science ing a mile’s length of wire around an Memphis. There, we squandered whole iron core. Saturdays happily adrift in the aisles of In some of my scienti½c investi- copper wire, socket wrenches, diodes, gations, I had a partner, John, my best and oddly shaped metallic brackets that high-school friend. John was a year old- we had no immediate use for but pur- er than I, and as skinny as a strand of chased anyway. Clark and Fay’s was our number-30-gauge wire. When he home away from home. No, more like thought something ironic, he would our temple. At Clark and Fay’s, we spoke let out a high-pitched shrill laugh that to each other in whispers. sounded like a hyena. John did not share Our most successful collaboration was my interest in poetry and the higher arts. a light-borne communication device. For him, all that was a sissyish waste of The heart of the thing was a mouthpiece calories. John was all practicality. John made out of a lid of a shoe polish can, wanted to seize life by the throat and cut with a flat section of a balloon stretched straight to the answer. tightly across it. Onto this rubber mem- As it turned out, he was a genius with brane we attached a tiny piece of sil- his hands. Patching together odds and vered glass, which acted as a mirror. A ends from his house, he could build any- light beam was focused onto the tiny thing from scratch. John never saved the mirror and reflected from it. When a directions that came with new parts, he person talked into the mouthpiece, the never drew up detailed schematic dia- rubber vibrated. In turn, the tiny mirror grams, and his wiring wandered drunk- quivered, and those quiverings produced enly around the circuit board, but he had shimmerings in the reflected beam, like the magic touch, and when he would sit the shimmerings of sunlight reflected down cross-legged on the floor of his from a trembling sea. Thus, the informa- room and begin ½ddling, the transistors tion in the speaker’s voice was precisely hummed. His inventions were not pret- encoded onto light, each rise and dip of ty, but they worked, often better than uttered sound translating itself into a mine. brightening or dimming of light. After Weekends, John and I would lie its reflection, the fluttering beam of light around in his room or mine, bored, lis- traveled across John’s messy bedroom to tening to Bob Dylan records, occasional- our receiver, which was built from large- ly thinking of things to excite our imagi- ly off-the-shelf stuff: a photocell to con- nations. Most of our friends ½lled their vert varying intensities of light into weekends with the company of girls, varying intensities of electrical current, who produced plenty of excitement, but an ampli½er, and a microphone to con- John and I were socially inept. So we lis- vert electrical current into sound. Final- tened to Dylan and read back issues of ly, the original voice was reproduced at Popular Science. Lazily, we perused dia- the other end. Like any project in which grams for building wrought-iron furni- John was involved, our communication ture with rivets instead of welded joints, device looked like a snarl of spare parts circuits for fluorescent lamps and voice- from a junkyard, but the thing worked. activated tape recorders, and one-man It was with my rocket project that my flying machines made from plastic beach scienti½c and artistic proclivities ½rst bottles. And we undertook our ritual collided. Ever since the launch of Sputnik

6 Dædalus Fall 2003 in October of 1957, around my ninth swerve, spun out of control, and A sense birthday, I had been entranced with the crashed. The ½ns had come off. With of the mysterious idea of sending a spacecraft aloft. I imag- sudden clarity, I remembered that in- ined the blastoff, the uncoiling plume of stead of riveting the ½ns to the rocket smoke, the silvery body of the rocket lit body as I should have, I had glued them by the sun, the huge acceleration, the on. To my eye, the rivets had been far beautiful arc of the trajectory in the sky. too ugly. How I thought that mere glue By the age of fourteen, I was experiment- would hold under the heat and aerody- ing with my own rocket fuels. A fuel that namic force, I don’t know. Evidently I burned too fast would explode like a had sacri½ced reality for aesthetics. John bomb; a fuel that burned too slow would have been horri½ed. would smolder like a barbecue grill. Later I learned that I was not the ½rst What seemed to work best was a mix- scientist for whom beauty had ultimate- ture of powdered charcoal and zinc, sul- ly succumbed to reality. Aristotle fa- fur, and potassium nitrate. For the igni- mously proposed that as the heavens tion, I used a flashbulb from a Brownie revolve about the Earth, the planets camera, embedded within the fuel move in circles. Circles because the cir- chamber. The sudden heat from the bulb cle is the simplest and most perfect would easily start the combustion, and shape. Even when astronomers discov- the bulb could be triggered by thin wires ered that the planets changed in bright- trailing from the tail of the rocket to the ness during their orbits, showing that battery in my control center, a hundred they couldn’t remain a constant distance feet away. The body of the rocket I built from Earth, scientists remained so en- from an aluminum tube. The craft had thralled with the circle that they decided red tail ½ns. It was beautiful. For a the planets must move in little circles at- launch pad, I used a V-shaped steel gird- tached to big circles. The circle idea was er, pointed skyward at the appropriate lovely and appealing. But it was proved angle and anchored in a wooden Coca- wrong by the careful observations of Cola crate ½lled with concrete. Brahe and Kepler in the late sixteenth I invited my awed younger brothers and early seventeenth centuries. Planets and several friends from the neighbor- orbit in ellipses, not circles. Equally hood to attend the launch, which took beautiful was the idea, dating from place one Sunday at dawn at Ridgeway the 1930s, that all phenomena of nature Golf Course. John, who was not the should be completely identical if right- slightest romantic and didn’t see any- hand and left-hand are reversed, as if thing useful about rockets, elected to reflected in a mirror. This elegant idea, stay in his bed and sleep. But even so, I called parity conservation, was proved had a good audience. wrong in the late 1950s by the experi- Because I had estimated from thrust ments proposed by Lee and Yang, show- and weight calculations that my rocket ing that some subatomic particles and might ascend a half mile into space, reactions do not have identical mirror- some of the boys brought binoculars. image twins. Contrary to all expecta- From my control center, I called out the tions, right- and left-handedness are not countdown. I closed the switch. Ignition. equal. With a flash and a whoosh, the rocket When my scienti½c projects went shot from its pad. But after rising only a awry, I could always ½nd certain ful- few hundred feet, it did a sickening ½llment in mathematics. I loved mathe-

Dædalus Fall 2003 7 Alan matics just as I loved science and poetry. A long time later, after I became a Lightman on When my math teachers assigned home- novelist, I realized that the ambiguities science work, most other students groaned and and complexities of the human mind are complained, but I relished the job. I what give ½ction and perhaps all art their would save my math problems for last, power. A good novel gets under our skin, right before bedtime, like bites of choco- provokes us and haunts us long after late cake awaiting me after a long and the ½rst reading, because we never fully dutiful meal of history and Latin. Then understand the characters. We sweep I would devour my cake. In geometry, I through the narrative over and over loved drawing the diagrams, I loved again, searching for meaning. Good ½nding the inexorable and irrefutable characters must retain a certain mys- relations between lines, angles, and tery and unfathomable depth, even for curves. In algebra, I loved the idea of the author. Once we see to the bottom abstraction, letting Xs and Ys stand for of their hearts, the novel is dead for us. the number of nickels in a jar or the Eventually, I learned to appreciate height of a building in the distance. both certainty and uncertainty. Both are And then solving a set of connected necessary in the world. Both are part of equations, one logical step after another. being human. I loved the shining purity of mathemat- ics, the logic, the precision. I loved the In college, I made two important deci- certainty. With mathematics, you were sions about my career. First, I would put guaranteed an answer as clean and crisp my writing on the back burner until I as a new twenty-dollar bill. And when became well established in science. I you had found that answer, you were knew of a few scientists who later be- right, unquestionably right. The area of came writers, like C. P. Snow and Rachel a circle is π r2. Period. Carson, but no writers who later in life Mathematics contrasted strongly with became scientists. For some reason, sci- the ambiguities and contradictions of ence–at least the creative, research side people. The world of people had no cer- of science–is a young person’s game. In tainty or logic. People confused me. My my own ½eld, physics, I found that the mother sometimes said cruel things to average age at which Nobel Prize win- me and my brothers, even though I felt ners did their prize-winning work was that she loved us. My aunt Jean contin- only thirty-six. Perhaps it has something ued to drive recklessly and at great to do with the focus and isolation of the speed, even though everyone told her subject. A handiness for visualizing in that she would kill herself in an automo- six dimensions or for abstracting the bile. My uncle Edwin asked me to do a motion of a pendulum favors an agility mathematical calculation that would of mind but apparently has little to do help him run the family business with with anything else. By contrast, the arts more ef½ciency, but when I showed him and humanities require experience with the result he brushed it aside with dis- life and the awkward contradictions of dain. Blanche, the dear woman who people–experience that accumulates worked forever for our family, deserted and deepens with age. her husband after he abused her and Second, I realized that I was better then talked about him with affection for suited to be a theorist than an experi- years. How does one make sense out of mentalist. Although I loved to build such actions and words? things, I simply did not have the hands-

8 Dædalus Fall 2003 on dexterity and practical talents of the One of Kip’s programs was to compare A sense of the best students. My junior-year electronics general relativity to other modern theo- mysterious project caught ½re when I plugged it in. ries of gravity. And it was in that pro- My senior thesis project, a gorgeous ap- gram that he assigned me my ½rst re- paratus of brass ½ttings and mylar win- search problem. I was supposed to show, dows designed to measure the half-life by mathematical calculation, whether a of certain radioactive atoms, was side- particular experimental result required lined on the lab bench instead of being that gravity be geometrical. The known installed in the cyclotron for a real ex- experimental result was that all objects periment. I never did believe the thing fall under gravity with the same acceler- would actually work. And apparently ation. Drop a book and a cannonball neither did my professor, who kindly from the same height and they will hit gave me high marks for my endless the floor at the same time, if air resist- drawings of top views and side views ance is small. By ‘geometrical,’ Kip and calculations of solid angles and ef- meant that gravity could be described ½ciencies. By graduation, I knew that I completely as a warping of space. In was destined to be a theorist, a scientist such a picture, a mass like the sun acts who worked with abstractions about as if it were a heavy weight sitting on a the physical world, ideas, mathematics. stretched rubber sheet, and orbiting My equipment would be paper and pen- planets follow along the sagging surface cil. of the sheet. In the early 1970s, some A year or two later, I had my ½rst true modern theories of gravity, such as Ein- experience with original research. It was stein’s general relativity, were geometri- an experience that I can compare only cal. Some were not. To be ‘geometrical,’ to my ½rst love affair. At the time, I was to be equivalent to a bending of space, a twenty-two years old, a graduate student theory had to have a particular mathe- in physics at the California Institute of matical form. So my project amounted Technology. My thesis advisor at Caltech to writing down on a piece of paper the was Kip Thorne, only thirty himself but equations representing a giant umbrella already a full professor. Kip had grown theory of gravity, a theory of theories up in Mormon Utah but had completely that encompassed many different possi- acclimatized to the hip zone of Califor- ble theories, next imposing the restric- nia in the early 1970s. He sported long tion that all objects fall with the same red hair, starting to thin, a red beard, acceleration, and then ½nding out sandals, loose kaftan-like shirts whether that restriction were suf½cient- splotched with colors, sometimes a ly powerful to rule out all nongeometri- gold chain around his neck. Freckled, cal theories. lean-limbed, wiry. And brilliant. His spe- I was both thrilled and terri½ed by my cialty was the study of general relativity, assignment. Until this point of my aca- Einstein’s theory of gravity. In fact, there demic life, my theoretical adventures was at this time a renaissance of interest had consisted mainly of solving home- in Einstein’s arcane theory because as- work problems. With homework prob- tronomers had recently discovered new lems, the answer was known. If you objects in space, such as neutron stars, couldn’t solve the problem yourself, you that had enormous gravity and would could look up the answer in the back of require general relativity for a proper the book or ask a smarter student for understanding. help. But this research problem with

Dædalus Fall 2003 9 Alan gravity was different. The answer wasn’t moment is sailing a round-bottomed Lightman on known. And even though I understood boat in strong wind. Normally, the hull science that my problem was inconsequential in stays down in the water, with the fric- the grand sweep of science, it was still tional drag greatly limiting the speed of original research. No one would know the boat. But in high wind, every once in the answer until I found it. Or failed to a while the hull lifts out of the water and ½nd it. the drag goes instantly to near zero. It After an initial period of study and feels like a great hand has suddenly work, I succeeded in writing down all grabbed hold and flung you across the the equations I thought relevant. Then I surface like a skimming stone. It’s called hit a wall. I knew something was amiss, planing. because a simple result at an early stage So I woke up at ½ve to ½nd myself of the calculation was not coming out planing. Although I had no sense of my right. But I could not ½nd my error. And ego, I did have a feeling of rightness. I I didn’t even know what kind of error. had a strong sensation of seeing deeply Perhaps one of the equations was wrong. into this problem and understanding it Or maybe the equations were right but I and knowing that I was right–a certain was making a silly arithmetic mistake. kind of inevitability. With these sensa- Or perhaps the conjecture was false but tions surging through me, I tiptoed out would require an especially devious of my bedroom, almost reverently, afraid counterexample to disprove it. Day af- to disturb whatever strange magic was ter day, I checked each equation, I paced going on in my head, and I went to the back and forth in my little windowless kitchen. There, I sat down at my ram- of½ce, but I didn’t know what I was shackle table. I got out the pages of my doing wrong. This confusion and failure calculations, by now curling and stained. went on for months. For months, I ate, A tiny bit of daylight was starting to seep drank, and slept my research problem. through the window. Although I was I began keeping cans of tuna ½sh in the oblivious to myself, my body, and every- lower drawer of my desk and eating thing around me, the fact is that I was meals in my of½ce. completely alone. I don’t think any oth- Then one morning, I remember that it er person in the world would have been was a Sunday morning, I woke up about able to help me at that moment. And I 5 a.m. and couldn’t sleep. I felt terribly didn’t want any help. I had all of these excited. Something strange was happen- sensations and revelations going on in ing in my mind. I was thinking about my my head, and being alone with all that research problem, and I was seeing deep- was an essential part of it. ly into it. I was seeing it in ways I never Somehow, I had reconceptualized the had before. The physical sensation was project, spotting my error of thinking, that my head was lifting off my shoul- and began anew. I’m not sure how this ders. I felt weightless. And I had abso- rethinking happened, but it wasn’t by lutely no sense of my self. It was an expe- going from one equation to the next. rience completely without ego, without After a while at the kitchen table, I any thought about consequences or solved my research problem. I had approval or fame. I didn’t know who I proved that the conjecture was true. was or where I was. I was simply spirit, The equal acceleration of the book and in a state of pure exhilaration. the cannonball does indeed require that The best analogy I’ve been able to ½nd gravity be geometrical. I strode out of for that intense feeling of the creative the kitchen, feeling stunned and power- 10 Dædalus Fall 2003 ful. Suddenly I heard a noise and looked with mathematics, which exists com- A sense of the up at the clock on the wall and saw that pletely within its own world of logical mysterious it was two o’clock in the afternoon. abstraction, you can never prove a scien- I was to experience this creative mo- ti½c proposition or theory true because ment again, with other scienti½c proj- you can never be sure that tomorrow ects. But this was my ½rst time. As a you might not ½nd a counterexample in novelist, I’ve experienced the same sen- nature. Scienti½c theories are just sim- sation. I’ve read the accounts of other pli½ed models of nature. Such a model writers, musicians, and actors, and I might be mathematically correct but its think the sensation and process are al- beginning premises may not be in suf½- most identical in all creative activities. cient accord with physical reality. But The pattern seems universal: The study you can certainly prove any scienti½c and hard work. The prepared mind. The theory false. You can ½nd a counterex- being stuck. The sudden shift. The let- ample, an experiment that disagrees ting go of control. The letting go of self. with the theory. And, according to Pop- I learned many things about science per, unless you can at least imagine an ex- from Kip. One of the most important periment that might falsify the theory, was the concept of the ‘well-posed prob- that theory or statement is not scienti½c. lem.’ A well-posed problem is a problem In direct and indirect ways, Kip em- that can be stated with enough clarity phasized to his students that we should and de½niteness that it is guaranteed a not waste time on problems that weren’t solution. Such a solution might require well posed. I have since come to under- ten years, or a hundred, but there should stand that there are many interesting be a de½nite solution. Such a solution problems that are not well posed in the may be arrived at by a variety of differ- Popper or Thorne sense. For example: ent approaches–such as Schrödinger’s Does God exist? Or, What is love? Or, wave equation versus Heisenberg’s ma- Would we be happier if we lived a thou- trix formulation of quantum mechan- sand years? These questions are terribly ics–and these different expressions may interesting, but they lie outside the do- involve very different mental pictures main of science. Never will a physics and interpretations and even psycholog- student receive his or her degree work- ical force. But they are mathematically ing on such a question. One cannot falsi- and logically equivalent, and they all fy the statement that God exists (or lead to the same numerical answers. doesn’t exist). One cannot falsify the They are all tools in the service of the statement that we would be happier (or well-posed problem. While it is true not happier) if we lived longer. Yet these that science is constantly revising itself are still fascinating questions, questions to respond to new information and that provoke us and bring forth all kinds ideas, at any moment in time scientists of creative thought and invention. For are working on well-posed problems. many artists and humanists, the ques- I often think of Kip’s idea of the well- tion is more important than the answer. posed problem as closely related to Karl One of my favorite passages from Rilke’s Popper’s notion of what makes a scien- Letters to a Young Poet: “We should try to ti½c proposition. According to Popper, love the questions themselves, like who was an important early-twentieth- locked rooms and like books that are century British philosopher of science, a written in a very foreign tongue.” Sci- scienti½c proposition is a statement that ence is powerful, but it has limitations. can in principle be proved false. Unlike Just as the world needs both certainty Dædalus Fall 2003 11 Alan and uncertainty, the world needs ques- where I was in the intellectual landscape Lightman on tions with answers and questions with- of physics. science out answers. Another thing I learned from Kip, I vividly remember a scene from some- more a matter of personal style, was gen- time in 1975. It takes place during my erosity. Kip bent over backwards to give two years as a postdoctoral fellow at credit ½rst to his students. He would put Cornell. I am sitting on a couch in Edwin his name last on joint papers, he would Salpeter’s house. Ed, suffering from one heap praise on his students at public of his recurring back problems, lies on lectures. Kip was well aware of his the floor. From that low vantage, he is strengths, but he was modest at the same helping me think through a problem time, and he was deeply generous in his involving stars being ripped apart and heart. I believe that he inherited these consumed by a giant black hole. It is a virtues from his own thesis advisor at theoretical problem of course. Princeton, John Wheeler. Wheeler, in At this time, Ed would have been turn, absorbed much of his personal about ½fty years old. He was widely style from his mentor, the great atomic regarded as one of the two or three physicist Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. In greatest theoretical astrophysicists in a sense, I was a great-grandstudent of the world. His most famous work, done Bohr. in the 1950s, involved the theoretical rec- Three Caltech professors served on ipe for how helium atoms in stars can my thesis committee, charged with ex- combine to make carbon and then heav- amining me at my ½nal thesis defense. ier elements beyond that. It is believed Richard Feynman was one of the three. that all of the chemical elements in the For some years, Feynman had taken an universe heavier than the two lightest, interest in Kip’s students and, every cou- hydrogen and helium, were forged at ple of months, would go to lunch with us the centers of stars. Ed and his col- and pepper us with questions about the leagues showed how that process was latest ½ndings in gravitational waves or possible. Among some of his other ac- black holes or some other topic in gener- complishments, he calculated how many al relativity. At my thesis defense, I stood stars should be created in each range of at a blackboard in a small room while mass–a sort of birth weight chart for these guys sat comfortably and asked me newborn stars. questions. Feynman asked the ½rst two When I ½rst arrived at Cornell, in the questions. His ½rst question was rather fall of 1974, Ed immediately dragged me easy, and I answered it without too much out to the tennis court to ½nd out what I trouble. His second question was just a was made of. I was a fair tennis player little beyond my reach. I struggled with myself. After a number of exhausting it, I went sideways and backwards, I cir- matches over the season, we were ap- cled around. Finally, after about twenty proximately tied, but Ed could not re- minutes of fumbling at the blackboard, I frain from quietly gloating whenever he managed an answer. Feynman asked no beat me. And I could see that same gen- more questions. Later, I realized that tlemanly but competitive edge in his sci- with his two questions he had precisely ence. He didn’t like to lose. bracketed my ability. He had launched On and off the tennis court, Ed two artillery shells at me, one falling dressed in tattered short-sleeve sports short, one long, and he knew exactly shirts. These, combined with his loafers

12 Dædalus Fall 2003 and stylishly long hair and faint Austrian and the other postdoctoral fellow collab- A sense of the accent, gave him an air of casual ele- orating with me on the problem can now mysterious gance. But Ed was enormously serious work out the details. The result will be a about his physics. When he was talking prediction for the Hubble Space Tele- about a physics problem, he would scope, more than a decade away. Ed asks sometimes stop, turn his head, and just if I would please bring him a cup of tea. stare off into space for a few moments, He has other things to think about this and you knew that he was delving into morning. deeper layers of thought. Some months later, I had a severe What I found most brilliant about Ed emotional upheaval with a different sci- was his physical intuition. He could vi- enti½c project. I was working on the sualize a physical problem and almost arrangement of stars in a globular clus- feel his way to the core of it, all in his ter. A globular cluster is a congregation head. This ability arose from his vast of about a hundred thousand stars, all knowledge of physics and astronomy orbiting each other under their mutual and his talent for making analogies gravitational attraction. There are about from one subject to another. Many of a hundred globular clusters in our gal- the greatest scientists have had this tal- axy. Through the telescope, a globular ent for analogies. Planck compared the cluster appears as a beautiful, shining inside surface of a container to a collec- ball of light. Imagine: a hundred thou- tion of springs with different oscillation sand stars all concentrated together in a frequencies. Bohr compared the nucleus tight ball, whizzing about like angry of an atom to a drop of liquid. bees in a bees’ nest. So we’re in Ed’s living room, me on Since about 1970, astrophysicists had the couch, Ed on his back on the floor, begun to simulate the structure and evo- some kind of classical music floating in lution of globular clusters on a comput- from the next room, and Ed draws an er. You feed the computer the initial po- analogy between stars being swallowed sition of a lot of points, each represent- by the big black hole and a drunk wan- ing a star or group of stars, you put in the dering on a street with an uncovered effects of gravity, each point gravitation- sewer hole. If a star comes too close to ally attracting all the others, and you let the black hole it will be destroyed, just the computer tell you what happens in as if the drunk stumbles to the sewer time. In a sense, the computer is doing hole he will fall in. Each star, in each or- an experiment for you. Each minute of bit around the central black hole, is giv- computer time might represent a million en a random jostle by the gravity of the years for the globular cluster. One of the other stars, just as the drunk takes a ran- ½ndings of these ‘experiments’ was that dom step every minute. Such random the simulated globular clusters begin steps can lead a star, or a drunk, to fall collapsing. The inner stars lose energy into the hole. The star bumps about in and move closer to the center, while the two-dimensional ‘angular-momentum outer stars gain energy and move farther space,’ just as the drunk wanders around from the center. For extra grati½cation, on a two-dimensional street. The critical there were even observations of actual question, Ed announces from the floor, globular clusters in space, observations is whether each random step of the suggesting that some globular clusters drunk is bigger or smaller than the di- may indeed have undergone such col- ameter of the hole. With this insight, I lapse.

Dædalus Fall 2003 13 Alan Many of the computer simulations Presumably, Martians would have also Lightman on had been done with the simpli½cation gotten the same answer to three decimal science that all stars have the same mass. I want- places. There was a terrible precision in ed to investigate what happens under the the world. more realistic assumption that there is a After this feeling of awe at the terrible range of masses of stars. But instead of precision and exactness of the world, I doing a computer simulation, which is began to experience another emotion: extremely time-consuming to set up and irrelevancy. If the physical universe is costly to run, I found an approximate reducible to precise equations with pre- way to attack the problem using only cise answers to three decimal places pencil and paper. As I suspected, having (and more), then why was I, as a particu- a range of masses of stars made the clus- lar person, needed to ½nd those an- ter collapse even sooner and faster. swers? For the globular cluster problem While in the ½nal stages of writing up with multiple masses, Saito and Yoshiza- my results for publication, I strolled into wa had found the answer before me. If the astronomy library to complete my neither they nor I had found the answer, list of references to previous work. And then in another month or another year there, to my horror, I discovered a brand somebody else would have found the new issue of Astrophysics and Space Science answer. Another scientist might have in which two Japanese scientists had used a different formulation of the prob- solved the same problem. With my lem, or described his or her results with pulse racing, I checked their results different language, but the answer would against mine. Our ½gures and graphs have been the same. It seems to me that agreed to within three decimal places. I science is not the best occupation for a had been scooped! Of course, most peo- person who wants to make a mark as an ple get scooped at various times of their individual, accomplishing something lives if they’re working on anything at all only that individual can do. In science, it interesting. But this was the ½rst time for is the ½nal measured number or the ½nal me. equation that matters most. If Heisen- I experienced a complex set of reac- berg and Schrödinger hadn’t formulated tions. I was embarrassed. I was humiliat- quantum mechanics, then someone else ed. I grieved the loss of several months would have. If Einstein hadn’t formulat- of my time. I worried whether the wast- ed relativity, then someone else would. If ed effort would compromise my chances Watson and Crick hadn’t discovered the for an assistant professorship. But then, double-helical structure of dna, then another emotion began working its way someone else would. Science brims with through my body. Amazement. I was colorful personalities, but the most im- utterly amazed that people on the other portant thing about a scienti½c result is side of the planet, with no correspon- not the scientist who found it but the dence between us, no comparing of result itself. Because that result is uni- notes, had decided to solve the same versal. In a sense, that result already ex- problem and had gotten the same an- ists. It is found by the scientist. For me, swer to three decimal places. There was this impersonal, disembodied character something wonderful and thrilling about of science is both its great strength and that. Here was powerful evidence of a its great weakness. thing–part science, part mathematics– I couldn’t help comparing the situa- that exists outside of our own heads. tion to my other passion, the arts. In the

14 Dædalus Fall 2003 arts, individual expression is everything. ism that travel through space at the A sense of the You can separate Einstein from the equa- speed of light. Likewise, Einstein’s gen- mysterious tions of relativity, but you cannot sepa- eral relativity predicted that when you rate Beethoven from the Moonlight Sona- shake a mass of any kind, whether elec- ta. No one will ever write the The Tempest trically charged or not, it emits gravita- except Shakespeare or The Trial except tional waves, waves of oscillating gravity Kafka. that travel through space at the speed of I loved the grandeur, the power, the light. Hypothetically, the strongest beauty, the logic, and the precision of sources of such waves would be cata- science, but I also ached to express clysmic cosmic events, like the collision something of myself, my individuality, of black holes in space. the particular way that I saw the world, How does one observe a gravitational my unique way of being. On that day in wave? When a gravitational wave strikes the Cornell library as I feverishly turned a mass, it causes that mass to expand the pages of Astrophysics and Space Science, and contract like a working billows I learned something about science, and I pump. Gravitational waves, however, are also learned something about myself. I fantastically weaker than electromagnet- would continue following my passion ic waves. A typical expansion or contrac- for science, but I could no longer sup- tion expected for a cosmic gravitational press my passion for writing. wave might be one part in 1021 or small- er, corresponding to a thousand-mile- Finally, in the early 1980s, I began writ- long ruler changing its length by the ing essays. For some years I had been width of a single atomic nucleus. Conse- publishing poems in small literary mag- quently, while a high-school student can azines. The essay gave me the greater build a crystal radio set to detect electro- flexibility I wanted. With an essay, I magnetic waves, gravitational waves re- could be informative, poetic, philosophi- quire extraordinarily sensitive equip- cal, personal. And, at a time when most ment to measure them. of my self-identity and con½dence were In 1960, when no one else was dream- still based on my achievements as a sci- ing of detecting gravitational waves, entist, with the essay I could connect my Weber conceived of the idea of a reso- scienti½c and artistic interests. I would nant cylinder, a metallic cylinder that come home in the evening, elated from would ring like a bell (but an extremely a day of research at the Harvard-Smith- soft bell) when struck by a gravitational sonian Center for Astrophysics, and wave. One of the problems of building ponder an essay. such a resonant cylinder, or any detector, One of my ½rst essays concerned Jo- is that it is always expanding and con- seph Weber, a distinguished professor of tracting a little bit from tiny random dis- physics at the University of Maryland. turbances, such as a truck turning a cor- Weber had pioneered the ½rst gravita- ner a half a mile away. It is extremely dif- tional wave detectors. And he had be- ½cult to discriminate such noise from come somewhat of an outcast in the sci- the minuscule motions expected from enti½c community because he claimed a gravitational wave. So you build two to see gravitational waves when no one cylinders, thousands of miles apart, and else could. monitor them closely. If both of them When you shake an electrical charge, begin softly ringing in precisely the it emits waves of electricity and magnet- same way at the same time, then perhaps

Dædalus Fall 2003 15 Alan they’ve just been struck by a gravitation- tional waves in space. According to these Lightman on al wave. calculations, Weber’s resonant cylinders science In the early 1960s, Weber began build- were not remotely sensitive enough to ing such cylinders, the ½rst one located detect gravitational waves, even if such at the University of Maryland near waves did indeed exist. A few theorists Washington, D.C., the second at Ar- proposed the possibility of exotic mech- gonne National Laboratory near Chi- anisms to generate gravitational waves cago. Each cylinder had a length of ½ve with enormous power, and these propos- feet, a diameter of about two feet, and a als confused the discussion. Weber pas- weight of about three thousand pounds. sionately held his ground. In telephone In 1968, not long after the completion conversations, in personal visits, at sci- of his second cylinder, Weber began enti½c conferences, he got into scathing reporting the observation of simulta- arguments. He lost friends and col- neous oscillations of his two cylinders. leagues. Yet, in the face of a mountain He claimed to have discovered the ½rst of contradictory evidence, he continued gravitational waves. to maintain that he was measuring gravi- In the following decade, other groups tational waves. Clearly, Weber was not of scientists attempted to duplicate behaving in the traditions of science. Jo- Weber’s results. They built their own seph Weber was allowing his personal cylinders, hooked them up to their own investment to interfere with good judg- piezoelectric crystals to measure minute ment. oscillations, compared their own charts Then I, a greenhorn essayist, leaped of the oscillations in time. No one saw into the fray. I wrote an essay about emo- oscillations of the magnitude claimed tional prejudice in scientists for the mag- by Weber, and no one saw simultaneous azine Science 83. The title: “Nothing but oscillations of their cylinders except the Truth.” In this essay, I ridiculed sev- what would be expected by chance. In eral scientists, including Weber. I cringe fact, other detectors were built with a when I reread it. With self-righteous hundred times more sensitivity than flourish, I wrote that “The white-haired Weber’s, and they failed to ½nd gravita- Weber has become something of a tragic tional waves. ½gure in the scienti½c community, con- Weber published his results. Other tinuing to declare his rightness in the scientists published theirs. Weber dis- face of incontrovertible evidence.” missed the negative ½ndings of other sci- A few months after the essay was pub- entists. Experimental physicists studied lished, I found myself ten feet from Weber’s results and said he was making Weber at a scienti½c conference. Some mistakes. Perhaps the tape recorders he unsuspecting colleague introduced us. used to combine the data from the two Weber’s face immediately turned purple, cylinders were themselves accidentally he snarled something at me, and he injecting simultaneous signals. Or per- stomped away. haps small magnetic fluctuations in elec- Later, I decided that I deserved his tric power lines or lightning bolts could contempt, and I hated myself for what mimic gravitational waves. Weber held I had written. Because Joseph Weber his ground. Theorists got into the act. was really a hero. Yes, he was almost cer- They calculated the amount of expan- tainly sloppy in his experiment. And he sion and contraction that would be ex- should have graciously accepted the op- pected from realistic sources of gravita- posing results of other scientists. But he

16 Dædalus Fall 2003 had imagined the ½rst gravitational wave Einstein’s. Over the next year, the great A sense of the detector, he had built the ½rst gravita- Max Planck, father of the quantum, mysterious tional wave detector, and his insights carefully studied Kaufmann’s experi- about gravitational wave detectors had ment but could ½nd no flaw. Neverthe- created the ½eld. Today, the most ad- less, Planck threw his support behind vanced gravitational wave detector in Einstein’s theory. the world, the Laser Interferometer Einstein himself, in a review article in Gravitational Wave Observatory 1907, said he could see nothing wrong (ligo), has just recently begun opera- with Kaufmann’s experiments and tions. If ligo does not detect the ½rst agreed that they ½t Abraham’s theory gravitational wave, then its upgraded better than his. Yet, he continued, “In version probably will. ligo would not my opinion other theories [theories exist without Weber’s seminal work. other than his own] have a rather small And it is quite possible that Weber probability because their fundamental would not have accomplished that work assumptions concerning the mass of the without his emotional prejudice and moving electrons are not explainable in passion. In the book Personal Knowledge, terms of theoretical systems which em- the chemist Michael Polanyi argues that brace a greater complex of phenomena.” such personal passion is vital to the ad- Here and elsewhere, Einstein clearly pre- vance of science. I agree. Without a pow- ferred his prejudice for comprehensive erful emotional commitment, scientists theoretical systems over actual experi- could not summon up the enormous mental data. And data do sometimes energy needed for pursuing an idea for change. A few years later, the experi- years, working day and night in the lab ments of Kaufmann were proved to or at their desks doing calculations, of- be in error, and Einstein was vindicated. ten sacri½cing the rest of their lives. It is In future years, however, his prejudices little wonder that such a personal com- sometimes led him astray. For decades, mitment sometimes causes the scientist Einstein was personally committed to to defend his or her beliefs regardless of his nonquantum uni½ed theory that facts. combined gravity and electromagne- Even extraordinary physicists such as tism. In a letter to his friend Paul Ehren- Einstein and Planck have defended their fest in 1929, Einstein wrote, “[My] latest prejudices in the face of opposing evi- results are so beautiful that I have every dence. Soon after Einstein published his con½dence in having found the natural theory of special relativity in 1905, a Ger- ½eld equations of such a variety.” This man experimental physicist named Wal- time, Einstein turned out to be wrong. ter Kaufmann repeated a crucial experi- But that is not the point. When right and ment to measure the mass of electrons when wrong, Einstein’s passion, his aes- moving at high speed. According to Ein- thetic and philosophical prejudices, and stein’s theory, the mass of a moving par- his personal commitment were probably ticle should increase with speed in a par- essential to his scienti½c creativity. ticular way. A competing theory by Max All of which led me to question the Abraham, a colleague of Kaufmann’s at meaning of ‘the scienti½c method.’ Göttingen University, proposed a differ- Since high school, I had been taught that ent formula for the increase in mass. scientists must wear sterile gloves at all Kaufmann’s experimental results were times and remain detached from their closer to Abraham’s predictions than to work, that the distinguishing feature of

Dædalus Fall 2003 17 Alan science is the much vaunted scienti½c life. I was studying the effects of particle Lightman on method, whereby hypotheses and theo- creation in high-temperature gases. Ac- science ries are objectively tested against experi- cording to Einstein’s famous formula, ments. If the theory is contradicted by E = mc2, energy can be created from experiments, then it must be revised or matter and matter can be created from discarded. If one experiment is contra- energy. The phenomenon has been ob- dicted by many other experiments, then served in the lab. It should also occur in it must be critically examined. Such an space. Whenever the temperature of a objective procedure would seem to leave gas is high enough, as should happen in little room for personal prejudice. strong gravity, then some of that thermal I have since come to understand that energy can be transformed into electrons the situation is more complex. The sci- and their antiparticles, the positrons. In enti½c method does not derive from the turn, the creation of those particles will actions and behavior of individual scien- act back on the properties and emitted tists. Individual scientists are not emo- radiation of the gas. Thus, a good theo- tionally detached from their research. retical understanding of the nature of Rather, the scienti½c method draws its such a ‘relativistic thermal plasma’ strength from the community of scien- would be interesting not only in its own tists, who are always eager to criticize right, but also as a diagnostic for inter- and test each other’s work. Every week preting the gamma rays and X-rays ob- there are many journal articles, confer- served from high-energy objects in ences, and informal gatherings at the space. blackboard in which scientists analyze This research problem had been sug- the latest ideas and results from all over gested to me by Martin Rees of the Insti- the world. It is through this collective tute of Astronomy in England. I ½rst met activity that objectivity emerges. Martin during a visit to his institute in So how could I reconcile the Popper- the summer of 1974, just after receiving ian view of science, with its unbudging my Ph.D. Martin was only thirty-two at demand for objective experimental tests, the time. In the world of astrophysics, against the Polanyian view, with its he was already a natural phenomenon. emphasis on the personal commitments Among his many accomplishments, he and passions of individual scientists? was one of the ½rst to point out that the The answer, perhaps obvious but at ½rst distribution of quasars in space was in- shocking to a young scientist, is that one consistent with the steady-state theory must distinguish between science and of cosmology, thus lending support to the practice of science. Science is an ide- the big bang theory. He has made major al, a conception of logical laws acting in contributions to the astrophysics of the world and a set of tools for discover- black holes, the theory of galaxy for- ing those laws. By contrast, the practice mation, the origin of the cosmic back- of science is a human affair, complicated ground radiation, and many other top- by all the bedraggled but marvelous psy- ics. In fact, there has been practically no chology that makes us human. area of modern astronomy and cosmolo- gy that has not bene½ted from Martin About the time of my ill-considered Rees’s imagination. Martin is always essay on Joseph Weber, I had a most erupting with new ideas, and he freely beautiful experience with scienti½c dis- shares these without seeking acknowl- covery, perhaps the most beautiful of my edgment or credit. Many of the nearly

18 Dædalus Fall 2003 illegible letters I received from him dur- diation would be trapped, except for A sense of the ing the middle and late 1970s, when we a thin layer at the outer edge of the gas. mysterious were working on similar problems, The properties of this gas were also well would begin, “Thank you Alan for your understood. In such a situation, the very interesting preprint on X. I agree emerging radiation would have a well- almost entirely with you, except for one known form, called black-body radia- or two small points.” And then he would tion, that would increase with tempera- go on to elaborate on a number of im- ture in a known way. However, because portant and often critical effects that I of the prodigious energy requirements, had missed in my investigation. such extremely high-temperature gases Many a pleasant summer I spent en- with black-body radiation would not ac- joying the unhurried pace and intimacy tually exist in space. Most interesting, of Cambridge, England, walking through therefore, was the intermediate case, the luxurious gardens of the colleges and when the temperature is high enough bicycling up Madingley Road to the In- to create particles but not so high to pro- stitute of Astronomy. At that time, it was duce enough particles to trap the radia- a modest one-story building bordered by tion and yield black-body radiation. a wooden fence and a cow pasture. In the I was fascinated by the question of 1970s and 1980s, nearly everyone in the how the intermediate case would join to world worth their salt in astrophysics the others. I expected that as energy was visited that building–to quietly work, to put into the gas at a higher and higher gather for British tea at four in the after- rate, the temperature would ½rst start to noon, and to catch ideas thrown out by increase according to the low-tempera- the youthful but silver-haired Martin ture case, then increase at some other Rees, Plumian Professor of Astronomy intermediate rate, then ½nally begin in- and Experimental Philosophy. (In the creasing according to the ultra high- 1990s, Martin became Sir Martin and temperature case. was further elevated to Astronomer To my astonishment, I discovered Royal of England.) something entirely different. With in- Sometime around 1980, Martin creasing energy input, the temperature suggested the importance of under- at ½rst did indeed rise as expected. But standing the theoretical properties of after increasing to a critical value, the high-temperature gases. The problem temperature began decreasing with fur- nagged at me for a couple of years before ther increase of the rate of energy input I found a way to approach it. There were and emitted radiation. Finally, at a very two obvious extreme cases. When the high rate of energy input, the tempera- temperatures were low, there would be ture turned around and began increasing no creation of particles. The proper- again, in the known way for a very high- ties of such a gas were well understood. temperature gas. In particular, the emitted radiation in- At ½rst, this result seemed absolutely creased with increasing temperature in a counter to my physical intuition. Put known way. (All gases emit some radia- more energy into something and you tion, except at zero temperature.) Also expect its temperature to go up, not well understood was the case of ex- down. Then I understood. The temper- tremely high temperatures. Here, there ature of a gas is the average energy of a would be such a huge number of elec- particle in that gas. Once you begin cre- trons and positrons created that the ra- ating new particles, the additional parti-

Dædalus Fall 2003 19 Alan cles can soak up all the increased energy, and unknown and gaze into that cavern Lightman on so much so that the average energy per and be exhilarated rather than fright- science particle actually can decrease. By analo- ened. I have experienced that beautiful gy, when you give increasing quantities mystery both as a physicist and as a nov- of food to a nation, the amount of food elist. As a physicist, in the in½nite mys- per person normally increases. But if the tery of physical nature. As a novelist, in people of that nation produce children at the in½nite mystery of human nature a fast enough rate, then the food per per- and the power of words to portray some son can actually begin decreasing even of that mystery. though there is more and more total food. In the decade after my project on high- The result was not only astonishing. temperature gases, my science began It was delightful, it was beautiful, and it gently subsiding, like a retreating blue was a little mysterious. Again, I experi- tide. I looked out at the horizon and felt enced a kaleidoscope of emotions. Ini- that my best work as a scientist was tially, I was surprised. Then, I was puz- moving away into my past. At the same zled. Then, when I understood the re- time, I gazed into the future and began sult, I was extremely happy. I had found pushing the boundaries of my essays, something new–again not terribly im- which took on more of a fabulist quality, portant in the grand scheme of science, like the writings of Italo Calvino and but something that no one had ever Primo Levi. I invented. I told stories. I known before me–and I felt elated and wrote about life and society on a planet powerful with the knowledge. (In fact, a made entirely of iron. I wrote about a Swedish physicist, Roland Svensson, in- moody Isaac Newton visiting my of½ce. dependently found the same result about The science in my essays became only a the same time, and we published nearly doorway to what lay beyond. Eventually, simultaneously.) when I was about forty years old, I began Then I felt a sense of mystery. I had writing ½ction. The time had arrived for shed light on a small corner of nature. my other passion to take over. Around Other scientists had illuminated larger 1990, when I left Harvard for mit, I had regions. But there were almost certainly stopped doing scienti½c research alto- vast chambers and ballrooms that re- gether. I miss it terribly, despite the mained in the dark. So many beautiful many pleasures and rewards of being a and strange things as yet unknown. In an writer. article published in 1931, Einstein wrote, But I am still a scientist. I am still fasci- “The most beautiful experience we can nated by how things work, by the beauty have is the mysterious. It is the funda- and logic of the natural world. When I mental emotion which stands at the cra- see something interesting, like a particu- dle of true art and true science.” What lar angle made by the wake of a boat, I did Einstein mean by “the mysterious?” still take out a pencil and calculate why. I don’t think he meant that science is When I travel on airplanes, I still amuse full of unpredictable or unknowable or myself by rederiving mathematical theo- supernatural forces. I believe that he rems that I learned years ago. Even when meant a sense of awe, a sense that there I write a scene for a novel, I sometimes are things larger than us, that we do not subconsciously begin a paragraph with a have all the answers. A sense that we can topic sentence–a perfect metaphor for stand right at the edge between known science, but nearly fatal for art.

20 Dædalus Fall 2003 Every writer has a source for his writ- A sense of the ing, a deep hidden well that he draws mysterious from to create. For me that source is sci- ence. In ways that I cannot explain, sci- ence suffuses all of my novels, charac- ters, scenes, sentences, even individual words. Some people have told me that my novels have an architectural quality, a prominence of design. Perhaps that is a sign of the source. Over the years, I have learned to rec- ognize the different sensations of sci- ence and of art in my body. Some of the sensations, such as the creative moment, are the same. But I know the feeling in my body of deriving an equation. I know the different feeling in my body of listening to one of my characters speak before I have told her what to say. I know the line. I know the swoop of an idea. I know the wavering note. Most of the time, these feelings swirl all together as a rumbling in my stomach, a wondrous and beautiful and ½nally mysterious cry of the world, logic and illogic, certainty and uncertainty, questions with answers and questions without.

Dædalus Fall 2003 21 Albert Einstein

Physics & reality

Editor’s Note: There is probably no modern In the essay excerpted here, and ½rst pub- scientist as famous as Albert Einstein. Born in lished in 1936, Einstein demonstrates his sub- Germany in 1879 and educated in physics and stantial interest in philosophy as well as sci- mathematics at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic ence. He is pragmatic, in insisting that the School in Zurich, he was at ½rst unable to ½nd only test ofconcepts is their usefulness in de- a teaching post, working instead as a technical scribing the physical world, yet also idealistic, assistant in the Swiss Patent Of½ce from 1901 in aiming for the minimum number of con- until 1908. cepts to achieve that description. Early in 1905, Einstein published “A New In 1933, Einstein renounced his German Determination of Molecular Dimensions,” citizenship and moved to the United States, a paper that earned him a Ph.D. from the where he lived until his death in 1955. A recipi- University of Zurich. More papers followed, ent of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921, he and Einstein returned to teaching, in Zurich, was elected a member of the American Acad- in Prague, and eventually in Berlin, where an emy of Arts & Sciences in 1924. appointment in 1914 to the Prussian Academy of Sciences allowed him to concentrate on re- general consideration con- search. cerning the method of science In November of 1919, the Royal Society of It has often been said, and certainly not London announced that a scienti½c expedition without justi½cation, that the man of had photographed a solar eclipse and com- science is a poor philosopher. Why, then, pleted calculations that veri½ed the predictions should it not be the right thing for the that Einstein had made in a paper published physicist to let the philosopher do the three years before on the general theory of rel- philosophizing? Such might indeed be ativity. Virtually overnight, Einstein was the right thing at a time when the physi- hailed as the world’s greatest genius, instantly cist believes he has at his disposal a rigid recognizable, thanks to “his great mane of system of fundamental concepts and crispy, frizzled and very black hair, sprinkled fundamental laws which are so well es- with gray and rising high from a lofty brow” tablished that waves of doubt cannot (as Romain Rolland described in his diary). reach them; but, it cannot be right at a time when the very foundations of phys- ics itself have become problematic as Permission to reprint Physics & reality grant- they are now. At a time like the present, ed by the Albert Einstein Archives, the Jew- when experience forces us to seek a new- ish National & University Library, the He- er and more solid foundation, the physi- brew University ofJerusalem, Israel. cist cannot simply surrender to the phi- 22 Dædalus Fall 2003 losopher the critical contemplation of ences of others), and we correlate to Physics the theoretical foundations; for, he him- them a concept–the concept of the bod- & reality self knows best, and feels more surely ily object. Considered logically this con- where the shoe pinches. In looking for cept is not identical with the totality of a new foundation, he must try to make sense impressions referred to; but it is a clear in his own mind just how far the free creation of the human (or animal) concepts which he uses are justi½ed, and mind. On the other hand, this concept are necessities. owes its meaning and its justi½cation The whole of science is nothing more exclusively to the totality of the sense than a re½nement of everyday think- impressions which we associate with it. ing. It is for this reason that the critical The second step is to be found in the thinking of the physicist cannot possibly fact that, in our thinking (which deter- be restricted to the examination of the mines our expectation), we attribute to concepts of his own speci½c ½eld. He this concept of the bodily object a sig- cannot proceed without considering ni½cance, which is to a high degree inde- critically a much more dif½cult problem, pendent of the sense impressions which the problem of analyzing the nature of originally give rise to it. This is what we everyday thinking. mean when we attribute to the bodily Our psychological experience con- object “a real existence.” The justi½ca- tains, in colorful succession, sense expe- tion of such a setting rests exclusively on riences, memory pictures of them, im- the fact that, by means of such concepts ages, and feelings. In contrast to psy- and mental relations between them, we chology, physics treats directly only of are able to orient ourselves in the laby- sense experiences and of the “under- rinth of sense impressions. These no- standing” of their connection; but even tions and relations, although free mental the concept of the “real external world” creations, appear to us as stronger and of everyday thinking rests exclusively on more unalterable than the individual sense impressions. sense experience itself, the character of Now we must ½rst remark that the dif- which as anything other than the result ferentiation between sense impressions of an illusion or hallucination is never and images is not possible; or, at least it completely guaranteed. On the other is not possible with absolute certainty. hand, these concepts and relations, and With the discussion of this problem, indeed the postulation of real objects which affects also the notion of reality, and, generally speaking, of the existence we will not concern ourselves but we of “the real world,” have justi½cation shall take the existence of sense experi- only in so far as they are connected with ences as given, that is to say, as psychic sense impressions between which they experiences of a special kind. form a mental connection. I believe that the ½rst step in the set- The very fact that the totality of our ting of a “real external world” is the for- sense experiences is such that by means mation of the concept of bodily objects of thinking (operations with concepts, and of bodily objects of various kinds. and the creation and use of de½nite func- Out of the multitude of our sense experi- tional relations between them, and the ences we take, mentally and arbitrarily, coordination of sense experiences to certain repeatedly occurring complexes these concepts) it can be put in order, of sense impressions (partly in conjunc- this fact is one which leaves us in awe, tion with sense impressions which are but which we shall never understand. interpreted as signs for sense experi- One may say “the eternal mystery of the Dædalus Fall 2003 23 Albert world is its comprehensibility.” It is one tions of science become general state- Einstein on of the great realizations of Immanuel ments about complexes of sense experi- science Kant that the postulation of a real exter- ences. nal world would be senseless without We shall call “primary concepts” such this comprehensibility. concepts as are directly and intuitively In speaking here of “comprehensibili- connected with typical complexes of ty,” the expression is used in its most sense experiences. All other notions modest sense. It implies: the production are–from the physical point of view– of some sort of order among sense im- possessed of meaning only in so far as pressions, this order being produced by they are connected, by propositions, the creation of general concepts, rela- with the primary notions. These propo- tions between these concepts, and by sitions are partially de½nitions of the de½nite relations of some kind between concepts (and of the statements derived the concepts and sense experience. It is logically from them) and partially prop- in this sense that the world of our sense ositions not derivable from the de½ni- experiences is comprehensible. The fact tions, which express at least indirect re- that it is comprehensible is a miracle. lations between the “primary concepts,” In my opinion, nothing can be said a and in this way between sense experi- priori concerning the manner in which ences. Propositions of the latter kind are the concepts are to be formed and con- “statements about reality” or laws of nected, and how we are to coordinate nature, i.e., propositions which have to them to sense experiences. In guiding us show their validity when applied to in the creation of such an order of sense sense experiences covered by primary experiences, success alone is the deter- concepts. The question as to which of mining factor. All that is necessary is to the propositions shall be considered as ½x a set of rules, since without such rules de½nitions and which as natural laws the acquisition of knowledge in the de- will depend largely upon the chosen rep- sired sense would be impossible. One resentation. It really becomes absolutely may compare these rules with the rules necessary to make this differentiation of a game in which, while the rules only when one examines the degree to themselves are arbitrary, it is their ri- which the whole system of concepts gidity alone which makes the game pos- considered is not empty from the physi- sible. However, the ½xation will never be cal point of view. ½nal. It will have validity only for a spe- cial ½eld of application (i.e., there are no stratification of ½nal categories in the sense of Kant). the scientific system The connection of the elementary The aim of science is, on the one hand, a concepts of everyday thinking with com- comprehension, as complete as possible, plexes of sense experiences can only be of the connection between the sense ex- comprehended intuitively and it is un- periences in their totality, and, on the adaptable to scienti½cally logical ½xa- other hand, the accomplishment of this tion. The totality of these connections– aim by the use ofa minimum of primary none of which is expressible in concep- concepts and relations. (Seeking, as far as tual terms–is the only thing which dif- possible, logical unity in the world pic- ferentiates the great building which is ture, i.e., paucity in logical elements.) science from a logical but empty scheme Science uses the totality of the primary of concepts. By means of these connec- concepts, i.e., concepts directly connect- tions, the purely conceptual proposi- ed with sense experiences, and proposi- 24 Dædalus Fall 2003 tions connecting them. In its ½rst stage which concepts belong to the primary Physics of development, science does not con- layer. As a matter of fact, we are dealing & reality tain anything else. Our everyday think- with freely formed concepts, which, ing is satis½ed on the whole with this with a certainty suf½cient for practical level. Such a state of affairs cannot, how- use, are intuitively connected with com- ever, satisfy a spirit which is really scien- plexes of sense experiences in such a ti½cally minded; because the totality of manner that, in any given case of experi- concepts and relations obtained in this ence, there is no uncertainty as to the manner is utterly lacking in logical unity. validity of an assertion. The essential In order to supplement this de½ciency, thing is the aim to represent the multi- one invents a system poorer in concepts tude of concepts and propositions, close and relations, a system retaining the pri- to experience, as propositions, logically mary concepts and relations of the “½rst deduced from a basis, as narrow as pos- layer” as logically derived concepts and sible, of fundamental concepts and fun- relations. This new “secondary system” damental relations which themselves pays for its higher logical unity by having can be chosen freely (axioms). The liber- elementary concepts (concepts of the ty of choice, however, is of a special second layer), which are no longer di- kind; it is not in any way similar to the rectly connected with complexes of liberty of a writer of ½ction. Rather, it is sense experiences. Further striving for similar to that of a man engaged in solv- logical unity brings us to a tertiary sys- ing a well-designed word puzzle. He tem, still poorer in concepts and rela- may, it is true, propose any word as the tions, for the deduction of the concepts solution; but, there is only one word and relations of the secondary (and so which really solves the puzzle in all its indirectly of the primary) layer. Thus the parts. It is a matter of faith that nature– story goes on until we have arrived at a as she is perceptible to our ½ve senses– system of the greatest conceivable unity, takes the character of such a well- and of the greatest poverty of concepts formulated puzzle. The successes reaped of the logical foundations, which is still up to now by science do, it is true, give a compatible with the observations made certain encouragement for this faith. by our senses. We do not know whether The multitude of layers discussed or not this ambition will ever result in a above corresponds to the several stages de½nitive system. If one is asked for his of progress which have resulted from the opinion, he is inclined to answer no. struggle for unity in the course of devel- While wrestling with the problems, opment. As regards the ½nal aim, inter- however, one will never give up hope mediary layers are only of temporary that this greatest of all aims can really nature. They must eventually disappear be attained to a very high degree. as irrelevant. We have to deal, however, An adherent to the theory of abstrac- with the science of today, in which these tion or induction might call our layers strata represent problematic partial suc- “degrees of abstraction”; but I do not cesses which support one another but consider it justi½able to veil the logical which also threaten one another, be- independence of the concept from the cause today’s system of concepts con- sense experiences. The relation is not tains deep-seated incongruities. analogous to that of soup to beef but rather of check number to overcoat. The layers are furthermore not clearly separated. It is not even absolutely clear Dædalus Fall 2003 25 Gerald Holton

Einstein’s Third Paradise

Historians of modern science have years: to sit down to write, in 1946 at age good reason to be grateful to Paul Arthur sixty-seven, an extensive autobiography Schilpp, professor of philosophy and –forty-½ve pages long in print. Methodist clergyman but better known To be sure, Einstein excluded there as the editor of a series of volumes on most of what he called “the merely per- “Living Philosophers,” which included sonal.” But on the very ½rst page he several volumes on scientist-philoso- shared a memory that will guide us to phers. His motto was: “The asking of the main conclusion of this essay. He questions about a philosopher’s mean- wrote that when still very young, he ing while he is alive.” And to his ever- had searched for an escape from the lasting credit, he persuaded Albert Ein- seemingly hopeless and demoralizing stein to do what he had resisted all his chase after one’s desires and strivings. That escape offered itself ½rst in reli- gion. Although brought up as the son of Gerald Holton is Mallinckrodt Research Professor “entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents,” of Physics and Research Professor of History of through the teaching in his Catholic pri- Science at Harvard University. A Fellow of the mary school, mixed with his private in- American Academy since 1956, he served the struction in elements of the Jewish reli- Academy for several decades in a variety of of- gion, Einstein found within himself a ½ces. Soon after his election as Editor, he founded “deep religiosity”–indeed, “the reli- “Dædalus” as the quarterly journal of the Acade- gious paradise of youth.” my, with its ½rst issue appearing in the winter of The accuracy of this memorable expe- 1958. At the request of the Albert Einstein estate, rience is documented in other sources, he initiated and for several years supervised the including the biographical account of conversion of the collection of Einstein’s largely Einstein’s sister, Maja. There she makes unpublished correspondence and manuscripts into a plausible extrapolation: that Einstein’s an archive suitable for scholarly study. Among his “religious feeling” found expression in recent books are “Einstein, History, and Other later years in his deep interest and ac- Passions” (2000), “Physics, the Human Adven- tions to ameliorate the dif½culties to ture” (with S. G. Brush, 2001), and “Ivory which fellow Jews were being subjected, Bridges: Connecting Science and Society” (with actions ranging from his ½ghts against G. Sonnert, 2002). anti-Semitism to his embrace of Zionism (in the hope, as he put it in one of his © 2003 by Gerald Holton

26 Dædalus Fall 2003 speeches [April 20, 1935], that it would Third Paradise, where the meaning of a Einstein’s Third include a “peaceable and friendly coop- life of brilliant scienti½c activity drew on Paradise eration with the Arab people”). As we the remnants of his fervent ½rst feelings shall see, Maja’s extrapolation of the of youthful religiosity. reach of her brother’s early religious feelings might well have gone much fur- For this purpose, we shall have to make ther. what may seem like an excursus, but one that will in the end throw light on his The primacy of young Albert’s First overwhelming passion, throughout his Paradise came to an abrupt end. As scienti½c and personal life, to bring he put it early in his “Autobiographical about the joining of these and other Notes,” through reading popular science seemingly incommensurate aspects, books he came to doubt the stories of whether in nature or society. In 1918 he the Bible. Thus he passed ½rst through gave a glimpse of it in a speech (“Prinzipi- what he colorfully described as a “posi- en der Forschung”) honoring the sixtieth tively fanatic indulgence in free think- birthday of his friend and colleague Max ing.”1 But then he found new enchant- Planck, to whose rather metaphysical ments. First, at age twelve, he read a lit- conception about the purpose of science tle book on Euclidean plane geometry– Einstein had drifted while moving away he called it “holy,” a veritable “Wun- from the quite opposite, positivistic one der.” Then, still as a boy, he became en- of an early intellectual mentor, Ernst tranced by the contemplation of that Mach. As Einstein put it in that speech, huge external, extra-personal world of the search for one “simpli½ed and lucid science, which presented itself to him image of the world” not only was the “like a great, eternal riddle.” To that supreme task for a scientist, but also cor- study one could devote oneself, ½nding responded to a psychological need: to thereby “inner freedom and security.” flee from personal, everyday life, with all He believed that choosing the “road to its dreary disappointments, and escape this Paradise,” although quite antitheti- into the world of objective perception cal to the ½rst one and less alluring, did and thought. Into the formation of such prove itself trustworthy. Indeed, by age a world picture the scientist could place sixteen, he had his father declare him to the “center of gravity of his emotional the authorities as “without confession,” life [Gefühlsleben].” And in a sentence and for the rest of his life he tried to dis- with special signi½cance, he added that sociate himself from organized religious persevering on the most dif½cult scien- activities and associations, inventing his ti½c problems requires “a state of feeling own form of religiousness, just as he [Gefühlszustand] similar to that of a reli- was creating his own physics. gious person or a lover.” These two realms appeared to him eventually not as separate as numerous Throughout Einstein’s writings, one biographers would suggest. On the con- can watch him searching for that world trary, my task here is to demonstrate picture, for a comprehensive Weltan- that at the heart of Einstein’s mature schauung, one yielding a total conception identity there developed a fusion of his that, as he put it, would include every First and his Second Paradise–into a empirical fact (Gesamtheit der Erfahrungs- 1 All translations from the original German are tatsachen)–not only of physical science, this author’s, where necessary. but also of life.

Dædalus Fall 2003 27 Gerald Einstein was of course not alone in move alongside him, thus indicating the Holton on this pursuit. The German literature of equivalence of acceleration and gravity. science the late nineteenth and early twentieth In Einstein’s words, “the acceleration of centuries contained a seemingly obses- free fall with respect to the material is sive flood of books and essays on the therefore a mighty argument that the oneness of the world picture. They in- postulate of relativity is to be extended cluded writings by both Ernst Mach and to coordinate systems that move non- Max Planck, and, for good measure, a uniformly relative to one another . . . . ” 1912 general manifesto appealing to For the present purpose I want to draw scholars in all ½elds of knowledge to attention to another passage in that combine their efforts in order to “bring manuscript. His essay begins in a largely forth a comprehensive Weltanschauung.” impersonal, pedagogic tone, similar to The thirty-four signatories included that of his ½rst popular book on relativi- Ernst Mach, Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand ty, published in 1917. But in a surprising Tönnies, David Hilbert, Jacques Loeb– way, in the section titled “General Rel- and the then still little-known Albert ativity Theory,” Einstein suddenly Einstein. switches to a personal account. He re- But while for most others this cultural- ports that in the construction of the spe- ly profound longing for unity–already cial theory, the “thought concerning the embedded in the philosophical and liter- Faraday [experiment] on electromagnet- ary works they all had studied–was ic induction played for me a leading mostly the subject of an occasional op- role.” He then describes that old experi- portunity for exhortation (nothing came ment, in words similar to the ½rst para- of the manifesto), for Einstein it was graph of his 1905 relativity paper, con- different, a constant preoccupation re- centrating on the well-known fact, dis- sponding to a persistent, deeply felt in- covered by Faraday in 1831, that the in- tellectual and psychological need. duced current is the same whether it is This fact can be most simply illustrat- the coil or the magnet that is in motion ed in Einstein’s scienti½c writings. As a relative to the other, whereas the “theo- ½rst example, I turn to one of my favor- retical interpretation of the phenome- ite manuscripts in his archive. It is a non in these two cases is quite differ- lengthy manuscript in his handwriting, ent.” While other physicists, for many of around 1920, titled, in translation, decades, had been quite satis½ed with “Fundamental Ideas and Methods of that difference, here Einstein reveals a Relativity.” It contains the passage in central preoccupation at the depth of his which Einstein revealed what in his soul: “The thought that one is dealing words was “the happiest thought of my here with two fundamentally different life [der gluecklichste Gedanke meines cases was for me unbearable [war mir Lebens]”–a thought experiment that unertraeglich]. The difference between came to him in 1907: nothing less than these two cases could not be a real differ- the de½nition of the equivalence princi- ence . . . . The phenomenon of the electro- ple, later developed in his general rela- magnetic induction forced me to postu- tivity theory. It occurred to Einstein– late the (special) relativity principle.” thinking ½rst of all in visual terms, as was usual for him–that if a man were Let us step back for a moment to con- falling from the roof of his house and template that word “unbearable.” It is tried to let anything drop, it would only reinforced by a passage in Einstein’s

28 Dædalus Fall 2003 “Autobiographical Notes”: “By and by I larity. There he tried to bring together in Einstein’s Third despaired [verzweifelte ich] of discovering one theory the opposing behaviors of Paradise the true laws by means of constructive bodies: moving upward when a liquid is efforts based on known facts. The longer in a capillary tube, but downward when and the more despairingly I tried, the the liquid is released freely. In that letter, more I came to the conviction that only he spelled out his interpenetrating emo- the discovery of a universal formal prin- tional and scienti½c needs in one sen- ciple could lead us to assured results.” tence: “It is a wonderful feeling [ein herr- He might have added that the same pos- liches Gefühl] to recognize the unity of a tulational method had already been pio- complex of appearances which, to direct neered in their main works by two of his sense experiences, appear to be quite heroes, Euclid and Newton. separate things.” Other physicists, for example Bohr The postulation of universal formal and Heisenberg, also reported that at principles, and the discovery among times they were brought to despair in phenomena of a unity, of Einheitlichkeit, their research. Still other scientists were through the generalization of the basic evidently even brought to suicide by theory–those were two of Einstein’s such disappointment. For researchers favorite weapons,2 as his letters and ½ercely engaged at the very frontier, the manuscripts show. Writing to Willem de psychological stakes can be enormous. Sitter on November 4, 1916, he con- Einstein was able to resolve his discom- fessed: “I am driven by my need to gen- fort by turning, as he did in his 1905 rela- eralize [mein Verallgemeinerungsbeduerf- tivity paper, to the postulation of two for- nis].” That need, that compulsion, was mal principles (the principle of relativity also deeply entrenched in German cul- throughout physics, and the constancy ture and resonated with, and supported, of the velocity of light in vacuo), and Einstein’s approach. Let me just note in adopting such postulation as one of his passing that while still a student at the tools of thought. Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, in order to get his certi½cate to be a high school Einstein also had a second method to science teacher, Einstein took optional bridge the unbearable differences in a courses on Immanuel Kant and Goethe, theory: generalizing it, so that the appar- whose central works he had studied ently differently grounded phenomena since his teenage years. are revealed to be coming from the same That Verallgemeinerungsbeduerfnis was base. We know from a letter to Max von clearly a driving force behind Einstein’s Laue of January 17, 1952, found in the career trajectory. Thus he generalized archive, that Einstein’s early concern from old experimental results, like Fara- with the physics of fluctuation phenom- day’s, to arrive at special relativity, in ena was the common root of his three which he uni½ed space and time, electric great papers of 1905, on such different and magnetic forces, energy and mass, topics as the quantum property of light, and so resolved the whole long dispute Brownian movement, and relativity. But 2 A third was his use of freely adopted (non- even earlier, in a letter of April 14, 1901, Kantian) categories, or thematic presupposi- to his school friend Marcel Grossmann, tions. The prominent ones include unity or Einstein had revealed his generalizing uni½cation; logical parsimony and necessity; approach to physics while working on symmetry; simplicity; causality; completeness of explanation; continuum; and, of course, his very ½rst published paper, on capil- constancy and invariance.

Dædalus Fall 2003 29 Gerald among scientists between adherence to a “Herr Weber.” And at the other end of Holton on mechanistic versus an electromagnetic the spectrum, in his essay on ethics, Ein- science world picture. Then he generalized the stein cited Moses, Jesus, and Buddha as special theory to produce what he ½rst equally valid prophets. signi½cantly called, in an article of 1913, No boundaries, no barriers; none in not the general but the generalized relativity life, as there are none in nature. Ein- theory. Paul Ehrenfest wrote him in puz- stein’s life and his work were so mutual- zlement: “How far will this Verallge- ly resonant that we recognize both to meinerung go on?” And, ½nally, Einstein have been carried on together in the threw himself into the attempt of a service of one grand project–the fusion grand uni½cation of quantum physics into one coherency. and of gravity: a uni½ed ½eld theory. It is an example of an intense and perhaps There were also no boundaries or barri- unique, life-long, tenacious dedication, ers between Einstein’s scienti½c and reli- despite Einstein’s failure at the very end gious feelings. After having passed from –which nevertheless, as a program, set the youthful ½rst, religious paradise into the stage for the ambition of some of his second, immensely productive scien- today’s best scientists, who have taken ti½c one, he found in his middle years a over that search for the Holy Grail of fusion of those two motivations–his physics–a theory of everything. Third Paradise. We had a hint of this development in So much for trying to get a glimpse of his remark in 1918, where he observed the mind of Einstein as scientist. But at the parallel states of feeling of the scien- this point, for anyone who has studied tist and of the “religious person.” Other this man’s work and life in detail, a new hints come from the countless, well- thought urges itself forward. As in his known quotations in which Einstein science, Einstein also lived under the referred to God–doing it so often that compulsion to unify–in his politics, in Niels Bohr had to chide him. Karl Pop- his social ideals, even in his everyday per remarked that in conversations with behavior. He abhorred all nationalisms, Einstein, “I learned nothing . . . . he tend- and called himself, even while in Berlin ed to express things in theological terms, during World War I, a European. Later and this was often the only way to argue he supported the One World movement, with him. I found it ½nally quite uninter- dreamed of a uni½ed supernational form esting.” of government, helped to initiate the in- But two other reports may point to the ternational Pugwash movement of sci- more profound layer of Einstein’s deep- entists during the Cold War, and was as est convictions. One is his remark to one ready to befriend visiting high school of his assistants, Ernst Straus: “What students as the Queen of the Belgians. really interests me is whether God had His instinctive penchant for democracy any choice in the creation of the world.” and dislike of hierarchy and class differ- The second is Einstein’s reply to a curi- ences must have cost him greatly in the ous telegram. early days, as when he addressed his In 1929, Boston’s Cardinal O’Connell chief professor at the Swiss Polytechnic branded Einstein’s theory of relativity as Institute, on whose recommendation his “befogged speculation producing uni- entrance to any academic career would versal doubt about God and His Cre- depend, not by any title, but simply as ation,” and as implying “the ghastly

30 Dædalus Fall 2003 apparition of atheism.” In alarm, New spected and laudable focus of attention.” Einstein’s Third York’s Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein asked The social scientist Bernard H. Gustin Paradise Einstein by telegram: “Do you believe in elaborated on this perception, writing God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words.” In that science at the highest level is charis- his response, for which Einstein needed matic because scientists devoted to such but twenty-½ve (German) words, he tasks are “thought to come into contact stated his beliefs succinctly: “I believe in with what is essential in the universe.” I Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in believe this is precisely why so many the lawful harmony of the world, not in who knew little about Einstein’s scien- a God Who concerns Himself with the ti½c writing flocked to catch a glimpse of fate and the doings of mankind.” The him and to this day feel somehow uplift- rabbi cited this as evidence that Einstein ed by contemplating his iconic image. was not an atheist, and further declared that “Einstein’s theory, if carried to its Starting in the late 1920s, Einstein be- logical conclusion, would bring to man- came more and more serious about clari- kind a scienti½c formula for monothe- fying the relationship between his tran- ism.” Einstein wisely remained silent on scendental and his scienti½c impulses. that point. He wrote several essays on religiosity; The good rabbi might have had in ½ve of them, composed between 1930 mind the writings of the Religion of Sci- and the early 1950s, are reproduced in ence movement, which had flourished in his book Ideas and Opinions. In those Germany under the distinguished aus- chapters we can watch the result of a pices of Ernst Haeckel, Wilhelm Ost- struggle that had its origins in his school wald, and their circle (the Monisten- years, as he developed, or rather invent- bund), and also in America, chiefly in ed, a religion that offered a union with Paul Carus’s books and journals, such as science. The Open Court, which carried the words In the evolution of religion, he re- “Devoted to the Religion of Science” on marked, there were three developmental its masthead. stages. At the ½rst, “with primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious If Einstein had read Carus’s book, The notions. This ‘religion of fear’. . . is in an Religion of Science (1893), he may have important degree stabilized by the for- agreed with one sentence in it: “Scien- mation of a special priestly caste” that ti½c truth is not profane, it is sacred.” colludes with secular authority to take Indeed, the charismatic view of science advantage of it for its own interest. The in the lives of some scientists has been next step–“admirably illustrated in the the subject of much scholarly study, for Jewish scriptures”–was a moral religion example in Joseph Ben-David’s Scienti½c embodying the ethical imperative, “a Growth (1991), and earlier in Robert K. development [that] continued in the Merton’s magisterial book of 1938, Sci- New Testament.” Yet it had a fatal flaw: ence, Technology and Society in Seventeenth- “the anthropomorphic character of the Century England. In the section entitled concept of God,” easy to grasp by “The Integration of Religion and Sci- “underdeveloped minds” of the masses ence,” Merton notes that among the sci- while freeing them of responsibility. entists he studied, “the religious ethic, This flaw disappears at Einstein’s considered as a social force, so conse- third, mature stage of religion, to which crated science as to make it a highly re- he believed mankind is now reaching

Dædalus Fall 2003 31 Gerald and which the great spirits (he names (Ethica Ordinae Geometrico Demonstrata), Holton on Democritus, St. Francis of Assisi, and a system constructed on the Euclidean science Spinoza) had already attained–namely, model of deductions from propositions. the “cosmic religious feeling” that sheds Soon after getting his ½rst real job at the all anthropomorphic elements. In de- patent of½ce, Einstein joined with two scribing the driving motivation toward friends to form a discussion circle, meet- that ½nal, highest stage, Einstein uses ing once or twice a week in what they the same ideas, even some of the same called, with gallows humor, the Akade- phrases, with which he had celebrated mie Olympia. We know the list of books ½rst his religious and then his scienti½c they read and discussed. High among paradise: “The individual feels the futili- them, reportedly at Einstein’s sugges- ty of human desires, and aims at the sub- tion, was Spinoza’s Ethics, which he limity and marvelous order which reveal read afterwards several times more. themselves both in nature and in the Even when his sister Maja joined him in world of thought.” “Individual existence Princeton in later life and was con½ned impresses him as a sort of prison, and he to bed by an illness, he thought that wants to experience the universe as a reading a good book to her would help, single, signi½cant whole.” Of course! and chose Spinoza’s Ethics for that pur- Here as always, there has to be the intox- pose. icating experience of uni½cation. And so By that time Spinoza’s work and life Einstein goes on, “I maintain that the had long been important to Einstein. He cosmic religious feeling is the strongest had written an introduction to a biogra- and noblest motive for scienti½c re- phy of Spinoza (by his son-in-law, Rud- search . . . . A contemporary has said not olf Kayser, 1946); he had contributed to unjustly that in this materialistic age of the Spinoza Dictionary (1951); he had re- ours the serious scienti½c workers are ferred to Spinoza in many of his letters; the only profoundly religious people.” and he had even composed a poem in In another of his essays on religion, Spinoza’s honor. He admired Spinoza Einstein points to a plausible source for for his independence of mind, his deter- his speci½c formulations: “Those indi- ministic philosophical outlook, his skep- viduals to whom we owe the great cre- ticism about organized religion and or- ative achievements of science were all thodoxy–which had resulted in his ex- of them imbued with a truly religious communication from his synagogue in conviction that this universe of ours is 1656–and even for his ascetic prefer- something perfect, and susceptible ence, which compelled him to remain in through the rational striving for knowl- poverty and solitude to live in a sort of edge. If this conviction had not been a spiritual ecstasy, instead of accepting a strongly emotional one, and if those professorship at the University of Hei- searching for knowledge had not been delberg. Originally neglected, Spinoza’s inspired by Spinoza’s amor dei intellectu- Ethics, published only posthumously, alis, they would hardly have been capa- profoundly influenced other thinkers, ble of that untiring devotion which such as Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich alone enables man to attain his greatest Schleiermacher, Goethe (who called him achievements.” “our common saint”), Albert Schweit- zer, and Romain Rolland (who, on read- I believe we can guess at the ½rst time ing Ethics, confessed, “I deciphered not Einstein read Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics what he said, but what he meant to say”). 32 Dædalus Fall 2003 For Spinoza, God and nature were one Max Jammer, in his book Einstein and Einstein’s Third (deus sive natura). True religion was based Religion (1999), considers as amounting Paradise not on dogma but on a feeling for the ra- to intimate connections. For example, in tionality and the unity underlying all Part I of Ethics (“Concerning God”), ½nite and temporal things, on a feeling Proposition 29 begins: “In nature there of wonder and awe that generates the idea is nothing contingent, but all things are of God, but a God which lacks any an- determined from the necessity of the thropomorphic conception. As Spinoza divine nature to exist and act in a certain wrote in Proposition 15 in Ethics, he op- manner.” Here is at least a discernible posed assigning to God “body and soul overlap with Einstein’s tenacious devo- and being subject to passions.” Hence, tion to determinism and strict causality “God is incorporeal”–as had been said at the fundamental level, despite all the by others, from Maimonides on, to proofs from quantum mechanics of the whom God was knowable indirectly reign of probabilism, at least in the sub- through His creation, through nature. In atomic realm. other pages of Ethics, Einstein could read There are other such parallels through- Spinoza’s opposition to the idea of cos- out. But what is considered by some as mic purpose, and that he favored the pri- the most telling relationship between macy of the law of cause and effect–an Spinoza’s Propositions and Einstein’s all-pervasive determinism that governs physics comes from passages such as nature and life–rather than “playing at Corollary 2 of Proposition 20: “It follows dice,” in Einstein’s famous remark. And that God is immutable or, which is the as if he were merely paraphrasing Spin- same thing, all His attributes are immu- oza, Einstein wrote in 1929 that the per- table.” In a letter of September 3, 1915, to ception in the universe of “profound rea- Else (his cousin and later his wife), Ein- son and beauty constitute true religiosi- stein, having read Spinoza’s Ethics again, ty; in this sense, and in this sense alone, wrote, “I think the Ethics will have a per- I am a deeply religious man.” manent effect on me.” Two years later, when he expanded his Much has been written about the re- general relativity to include “cosmologi- sponse of Einstein’s contemporaries cal considerations,” Einstein found to to his Spinozistic cosmic religion. For his dismay that his system of equations example, the physicist Arnold Sommer- did “not allow the hypothesis of a spa- feld recorded in Schilpp’s volume that he tially closed-ness of the world [raeum- often felt “that Einstein stands in a par- liche Geschlossenheit].” How did Einstein ticularly intimate relation to the God of cure this flaw? By something he had Spinoza.” But what ½nally most interests done very rarely: making an ad hoc addi- us here is to what degree Einstein, hav- tion, purely for convenience: “We can ing reached his Third Paradise, in which add, on the left side of the ½eld equation his yearnings for science and religion are a–for the time being–unknown uni- joined, may even have found in his own versal constant, - λ.” In fact, it seems research in physics fruitful ideas emerg- that not much harm is done thereby. It ing from that union. In fact there are at does not change the covariance; it still least some tantalizing parallels between corresponds with the observation of passages in Spinoza’s Ethics and Ein- motions in the solar system (“as long as stein’s publications in cosmology–par- λ is small”), and so forth. Moreover, the allels that the physicist and philosopher proposed new universal constant λ also

Dædalus Fall 2003 33 Gerald determines the average density of the damental unity within natural science, Holton on universe with which it can remain in and at last to his recognition of science science equilibrium, and provides the radius as the devotion, in his words, of “a and volume of a presumed spherical deeply religious unbeliever”–his ½nal universe. embrace of seeming incommensurables Altogether a beautiful, immutable uni- in his Third Paradise. verse–one an immutable God could be identi½ed with. But in 1922, Alexander Friedmann showed that the equations of general relativity did allow expansion or contraction. And in 1929 Edwin Hubble found by astronomical observations the fact that the universe does expand. Thus Einstein–at least according to the physi- cist George Gamow–remarked that “in- serting λ was the biggest blunder of my life.” Max Jammer and the physicist John Wheeler, both of whom knew Einstein, traced his unusual ad hoc insertion of λ, nailing down that “spatially closed-ness of the world,” to a relationship between Einstein’s thoughts and Spinoza’s Prop- ositions. They also pointed to another possible reason for it: In Spinoza’s writ- ings, one ½nds the concept that God would not have made an empty world. But in an expanding universe, in the in½nity of time, the density of matter would be diluted to zero in the limit. Space itself would disappear, since, as Einstein put it in 1952, “On the basis of the general theory of relativity . . . space as opposed to ‘what ½lls space’ . . . had no separate existence.”

Even if all of these suggestive indica- tions of an intellectual, emotional, and perhaps even spiritual resonance be- tween Einstein’s and Spinoza’s writings were left entirely aside, there still remains Einstein’s attachment to his “cosmic religion.” That was the end point of his own troublesome pilgrimage in religiosity–from his early vision of his First Paradise, through his disillu- sionments, to his dedication to ½nd fun-

34 Dædalus Fall 2003 Peter Pesic

The bell & the buzzer: on the meaning of science

To seek the meaning of science is to ity. As with science itself, our story seek its human signi½cance. At ½rst emerges as much in the gaps as in what glance, that seems problematic because we can connect. modern science characteristically calls into question many of our all-too- Modern science is a newcomer, barely human preconceptions in its effort to four hundred years old. Though indebt- discover the truth. Still, to those who ed in deep ways to Plato, Aristotle, and care for it, science can have a com- Greek natural philosophy, the pioneers pelling, human quality. It is a quest, of the ‘new philosophy’ called for a deci- and as such has common elements with sive break with ancient authority. In other heroic journeys. 1536, Pierre de La Ramée defended the Jason and the Argonauts knew they provocative thesis that “everything Aris- were seeking the Golden Fleece. But sci- totle said is wrong.” Francis Bacon and entists seek something that is unknown René Descartes criticized scholarship and hidden–the ultimate laws of na- that remained in thrall to the ancients. ture. The elusiveness of this goal condi- This adversarial stance implied a prob- tions the search and the searchers. Even lematic relation to the established order. setting aside the complex effects of sci- In spite of Bacon’s efforts to persuade ence on the world, to seek the meaning his king to support his fledgling scien- of science, like the scienti½c quest itself, ti½c research efforts, King James mock- is to seek something unknown, to gather ingly compared Bacon’s words with the seemingly disconnected stories and per- peace of God that “passeth all under- spectives fully aware of their discontinu- standing.” Though later rulers came to value the powers that science gave them, Peter Pesic is a tutor and musician-in-residence at they recurrently turned against its ever St. John’s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Before more expensive projects of ‘pure’ re- joining the faculty of St. John’s College, he was a search. research assistant and associate at the Stanford To render the new philosophy more Linear Accelerator Center. A concert pianist, he is comprehensible to an audience steeped also the author of three books on the history and in classical learning, Bacon often resort- philosophy of mathematics and science: “Abel’s ed to reinterpretations of ancient myths. Proof” (2003), “Seeing Double” (2002), and He compared science to the Sphinx “Labyrinth” (2000). because each, “being the wonder of the ignorant and unskillful, may be not ab- © 2003 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Dædalus Fall 2003 35 Peter Pesic surdly called a monster.” His irony im- no less than they vexed nature with on plies that this super½cial view has its experiments.1 science own truth, though it also must be con- Bacon anticipated that the votaries of sidered within a larger, deeper perspec- his ‘new philosophy’ would prick their tive. Here the concept of depth is crucial, desire to know with the spur of self- for the essential innovation of modern questioning. Fired with visionary ex- science has been to disclose the secrets citement, they should nevertheless try and depths of nature. Though this has to undermine their own dearest theories, become a familiar image, it represents a lest they fall victim to self-delusion. He radical departure from Aristotle’s view compared this dilemma to struggling that nature is fundamentally open to with the Sphinx’s menacing claws: human understanding, not hidden. In- “distraction and laceration of mind, if stead, Bacon turned to alternative in- you fail to solve them; if you succeed, a sights, to Heraclitus’s enigmatic teach- kingdom.” If they solve her riddle, the ing that “nature loves to hide” and to seekers will discover the secret sources Isaiah’s recognition that “thou art a of power over the political and natural God that hidest thyself.” worlds, thereby facing the deepest pos- We have only begun to estimate the sibilities of corruption. In such works effect on human understanding of this as his un½nished New Atlantis, Bacon quest for the depths. Bacon envisaged framed the hope that these “sons of sci- that the new philosopher, as a “skillful ence” (as he called them) would emerge Servant of Nature,” would wrestle with triumphant from this ordeal whose trag- Proteus, “the messenger and interpreter ic possibilities he also sensed. of all antiquity and all secrets,” whom he Four centuries later, we continue to identi½ed as “Matter–the most ancient wonder at this unfolding drama, trying of things, next to God.” Bacon empha- to gauge whether Bacon’s hopes were sized that this ordeal of experiment was vain or whether they might yet be sus- to be heroic testing, not the torture of a tained. Kepler, Newton, Darwin, and slavish and submissive victim. Bacon Einstein bore out many of Bacon’s an- also anticipated that the evidence that ticipations, both in the heroic tenor of emerged would be enigmatic, even enci- what they attempted and achieved but phered. He judged that “the universe to also in the peculiar dif½culties their the eye of the human understanding is quests raised for their desires. Einstein framed like a labyrinth,” requiring a new speaks for all of them: “I want to know kind of interpretation akin to the then God’s thoughts. The rest is trash.” Those emergent art of codebreaking. Bacon did who seek such knowledge must wrestle not anticipate the form this decipher- with something beyond the human. ment would take–symbolic mathemat- ics–though he mused on the unexplored Consider the paradoxical demands possibilities that lay beyond the mathe- that Bacon anticipated. On one hand, matics he knew, convinced that the fu- ture would far outstrip any anticipation. 1 My book Labyrinth (Cambridge, Mass.: mit He guessed that this extraordinary quest Press, 2000), drawing on the important work of would have deep effects on the seekers, John C. Briggs, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University penetrating the nature and wellsprings Press, 1989), treats these Baconian themes and of their passions as they scourged and their relation to the work of Kepler, Newton, tested their own intensely felt theories, and Einstein.

36 Dædalus Fall 2003 the seekers must be cold, impersonal, sickens from the emotional aridity of his The bell & testing each theory mercilessly. On the erudition and develops an inordinate de- the buzzer other, they must be ½lled with ardor, on sire to control the world as a surrogate or ½re to imagine radically new insights perhaps cure. Goethe’s Mephistopheles, into the depths. Their imaginations a hedonistic grand seigneur, deplores the must be feverish enough to conjure up conflicted desires of his protégé: “You ever more daring flights of fancy, but can’t get the Doctor out of your system then cold enough to try to annihilate [Dir steckt der Doktor noch im Leib].” The their own creations. This paradox mad scientist cuts a tragicomic ½gure threatens to unravel the seekers’ selves because of his obsessions and his dislo- and to paralyze their desires. As a result, cation from the ordinary human world. their humanity may be hostage to their Hair disheveled, erotically unful½lled, integrity as ‘scientists’ or ‘physicists.’ he sells his soul for delusive dreams of These names, only coined in the 1830s, power. replaced the older term ‘natural philoso- Thus far, the mad scientist is a kind of pher,’ which Isaac Newton and Michael parody of Bacon’s forebodings. Never- Faraday had applied to themselves. Our theless, the parodic exaggerations point literary representations of this new back to the emotional dilemma that breed are similarly recent. Consider the Bacon more subtly discerned when he ‘mad’ scientists inspired by Mary Shel- pointed to wounded seekers such as ley’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prome- Oedipus as archetypes of the new phi- theus (1818). The original Victor Franken- losophers. In Bacon’s account, Oedipus stein is sensitive and intelligent, deeply solves the Sphinx’s riddle not despite affected by the early death of his mother. but because of his wounded, limping “The world was to me a secret I desired feet. And Bacon did not allude to the to divine,” he recalls. “Curiosity, earnest tragic sequel–incest and parricide–as research to learn the hidden laws of na- if his Oedipus has emerged triumphant, ture, gladness akin to rapture” are his blessed by his wound and thereby be- earliest recollections, blending intellec- stowing blessings. Perhaps Bacon imag- tual with passionate response. After a ined a more positive and heroic version youthful infatuation with alchemy and of the ancient story, whose foreboding magic, he encounters the wonders of power he must have known. He went on modern chemistry and is seized by the to depict benign scientist-priests as the desire to “explore unknown powers, hidden rulers of his scienti½c utopia, and unfold to the world the deepest the New Atlantis, who conceal even from mysteries of creation.” His obsessive their wise king scienti½c discoveries they quest eclipses ordinary human love and deem too dangerous. even makes him forget his own family. Here again popular imagination fol- His only offspring is his creature, a mon- lows with its own version of the scientist strous man-child who disappears into as magus. Einstein’s wild hair is not the inhuman isolation and whose delicate mad scientist’s coiffure but a secular au- sensibility turns to cruelty as his suffer- reole, bespeaking his superhuman intel- ings transpose Rousseau’s noble savage ligence and wisdom. A Jew fleeing race into a dark key. hatred, he de½es its threats. He is even The mad scientist is also akin to Goe- (if wrongly) credited with the atomic the’s Faust (Part I, 1808), who wants to bomb, but he is saddened and wounded know the inmost secrets of the world but by the use of that bomb. He is an advo-

Dædalus Fall 2003 37 Peter Pesic cate of peace, a rebel against the estab- overzealous students who read by moon- on science lishment that reveres him, offering a light, spent all their money on books, new vision of human potentiality. His and neglected their health–proto-nerds, casual dress and dislike of wearing socks if you will.3 Descartes added the crucial reflects his liberation from convention, element by turning this intensi½ed and an anti-style adopted by students since interiorized studiousness not toward the 1960s. Like all true myths, the humane letters and classical scholarship scientist-magus lives on, as does the but toward a new mathematics and nat- wounded hero: Stephen Hawking’s pop- ural science, and he did so in phases of ular appeal reflects the fascination with his life in which he notably shut himself a powerful intellect struggling to over- off from other people for long periods come a crippling physical disability. of time. His intense aloneness deeply Besides these exceptional stories, stud- marks important passages in his philo- ies show that scientists suffer from ill- sophical works. He shut himself up in a ness and disability during childhood far stove-heated room to make his fateful in excess of the general population.2 Sci- experiment on himself, to get rid of all entists bear the mark of their struggle, his opinions “all in one go, in order to but they also may attain compensatory replace them afterwards with better powers. Between the extremes of magus ones, or with the same ones once I had and mad scientist, consider the nerd. squared them with the standards of rea- About 1957, mit undergraduates began son.” referring to ‘gnurds,’ studious grinds, Of course, calling Descartes the ½rst especially in science and engineering. nerd grossly ignores his personal re½ne- The nerd is emotionally immature, so- ment, elegant prose style, sly wit, even cially isolated, unfashionably dressed, his surprising career as a soldier of for- and erotically unattractive. He is the sci- tune. I only want to point to a certain entist as Unmensch and scapegoat, the lo- constellation of qualities that link him cus of feelings of confusion, inadequacy, with continuing elements in the modern and mistrust that modern science can mythology of science. Consider, for excite. Though he tends to be the butt of instance, the 1701 frontispiece to Des- comedy, there is a certain pathos about cartes’s posthumous works, depicting his human incapacity. him as Faust, seated in his study, sur- The nerd is a ½gure in contemporary rounded by mathematical instruments, mythology, but he is not without ante- illuminated by the ostentatious rays cedents. What is known of Descartes’s of the light of nature shining into his persona ½ts the category. His mother chamber. Though Descartes was melan- died when he was very young; he was a cholic, the ½gure in the frontispiece has a sickly child, emotionally remote from debonair smile of self-satisfaction. This his father. At age eight he became a Faust is not tormented or agonizingly boarding student at a Jesuit collège, where conflicted, but quietly triumphant even he excelled. Such institutions fostered a in his isolation. Descartes chose as his new kind of self-discipline that bred motto bene vixit bene qui latuit–“he lived well who hid well”–and gazed at the 2 See Anne Roe, The Making of a Scientist (New world through the mask of a scholar York: Dodd, Mead, 1953), and Gerald Holton, The Scienti½c Imagination: Case Studies (New 3 See Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellec- York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), tual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 229–252. 15–37.

38 Dædalus Fall 2003 who outwits the world in the hidden Einstein satirized quantum theory’s The bell & fortress of his mind. On the other hand, reliance on probability in his aphorism the buzzer he hid in a kind of inner exile from the “God does not play dice.” He insisted outer world, and placed just this separa- on the necessity of distinguishing the tion between mind and body. constituents of the world and following their individual careers. But ironically The nerd, the magus, and the mad sci- Einstein was a great practitioner of the entist are modern mythic ½gures, some- statistical method, a pioneer in applying what disheveled descendants of Bacon’s statistical concepts to fundamental attempts to reenvision ancient myth. physics, as when he used the observed In different ways, they live out the impli- jittering of microscopic particles cations of the project to ½nd out what (Brownian motion) to deduce the size is hidden behind nature. Yet this pre- of the atom. Einstein also pioneered the sumes a basic split between manifest new statistics of quanta in advance of and underlying realities, which Bacon the full flowering of quantum theory in had already discerned but whose full 1926. But in these cases, he always sought dimensions only emerged much later. a nonstatistical underlying theory. Nature is more protean than Bacon The essentially probabilistic character dreamed: Proteus merely assumes dif- of quantum theory emerges as we com- ferent shapes; nature shifts between pel subatomic matter to respond to ex- whole realities. periments built to human size. In so Indeed, no one could have anticipated doing, we exert an unavoidable and un- the way quantum mechanics trans- controllable (though limited) influence formed our sense of reality. Consider a on what we observe, an influence that particle observed at point A and time ta, always bears the mark of our observa- then at point B and time tb. The laws tion. As Werner Heisenberg put it, “the of quantum mechanics assign to each object of research is no longer nature in possible path connecting A and B an itself but rather nature exposed to man’s ‘amplitude,’ a complex number that questioning, and to this extent man here depends on the ‘action,’ the difference also meets himself.” We are no longer between kinetic and potential energy grappling only with the protean forms summed along that path. Where New- of matter in the labyrinth. Commenting tonian mechanics had allowed only on Heisenberg’s insight, Gerald Holton one possible path (that of least action), evoked the possibility that we traverse quantum mechanics allows all possible “the labyrinth with the empty center, paths, each weighted by its action. The where the investigator meets only his net amplitude is the sum of the separate own shadow and his blackboard with his amplitudes for all the paths. But this is a own chalk marks on it, his own solutions complex number, not directly observ- to his own puzzles.”5 Here even the dice- able. If you take the absolute square of playing God has disappeared, or never the net amplitude, the result is a positive real number that tells the total probabili- ty of that particle appearing at point A to be |z|2 = (a + bi)(a - bi) = a2 + b2, a positive real number. and time ta, then at point B and time tb.4 4 Any complex number z can be written as 5 See Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scien- z = a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i ti½c Thought, 1st ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Har- is √-1. Then the absolute square of z is de½ned vard University Press, 1973), 34–36.

Dædalus Fall 2003 39 Peter Pesic come, leaving only a mocking echo to In so doing, he tacitly questioned the on science taunt us. presumption that physical science ex- Well before these issues emerged in cludes randomness and natural selec- physics, Darwin’s account of natural tion. To be sure, he himself raised no selection pointed to the randomness at such question, but gradually physicists the heart of biology. Under the urbane, raised it themselves. cheerful civility of The Origin of Species James Clerk Maxwell, a religious man, lies an abyss. Contrary to common opin- would not allow Darwin’s theories to ion, identifying us as ambitious apes was be discussed in his presence. In 1872, not Darwin’s greatest scandal; after all, Maxwell took pains to deny that atoms the doctrine of original sin also under- evolved, since they show no evidence of mines human pretension, holding that variation or selection, no “missing links” nature fell with our fall. No, our relation or signs of evolution or change, “as to the primates merely reveals us to be though they had all been cast in the same nouveaux riches trying to live down our mould, like bullets, not merely selected humble origins. Far more disturbing is and grouped according to their size, like Darwin’s veiled but unmistakable dis- small shot.” Likewise, Maxwell noted proof of divine providence, though he the perfect likeness of atomic spectra himself remained faithful to the older on Earth and distant stars, “like tuning- tradition of natural theology and did not forks all tuned to concert pitch,” all cut draw this more radical conclusion.6 to a universal measure, “the double royal Nevertheless, in flat contradiction of any cubit of the Temple of Karnak.” For him, “special providence in the fall of a spar- this was powerful testimony to the per- row,” Darwin’s nature is utterly heed- fect workmanship of the divine Manu- less. No purpose or direction guides nat- facturer. Implicitly, Maxwell wished to ural selection; there is only the battle to exorcise the ghastly specter of Darwin- survive and (far more important) to pre- ian randomness from any intercourse vail in reproduction. with the universality of physical law. As a result, the process of the origina- Yet his reaction indicated that the Dar- tion of species constantly hides and even winian possibility was present in his annihilates those origins, not purposive- mind. Maxwell took the observed equal- ly but through random carnage and mere ity of atomic properties and spectra as oblivion. If so, what is hidden about that positive evidence for the unity of the process is not some divine secret or in- universe and the sameness of its con- telligible law, but a blind, implacable stituents. So far, no evidence has play of random variations in mindless emerged to contradict either of those competition. Indeed, in Darwin’s ac- propositions. count, mind itself emerges randomly in But now consider Andrei Linde’s sug- the course of that struggle. gestion that, rather than there being on- Darwin did not merely present an al- ly one universally valid set of physical ternative account to Genesis; he under- laws, there are many different universes, mined any account not based on chance. each with its own laws of nature, each randomly different from the other. 6 See John F. Cornell, “God’s Magni½cent Linde’s “chaotic inflationary universe” Law: The Bad Influence of Theistic Meta- calls into question the presumption that physics on Darwin’s Estimation of Natural Selection,” Journal of the History of Biology 20 there is a unique set of God’s thoughts, (1987): 381–412. the physical laws of a unique universe.

40 Dædalus Fall 2003 His proposal that multiple universes articulated by Max Born in 1926. So far, The bell & have randomly different physical laws we have treated ‘reality’ as a single level, the buzzer still lacks any observation that might whether encompassing one universe or con½rm or deny it. Yet his hypothesis is many. But quantum mechanics operates not merely a perverse possibility but fol- on two levels, even in the simplest exam- lows the probabilistic direction of quan- ples. First is the inner level of the ampli- tum mechanics. Uncomfortably, we tudes. Since these are complex numbers, remember that once we presumed the they are not observable. Nevertheless, Earth was unique, central. Is the as- they follow strictly deterministic mathe- sumption that there is any unique uni- matical equations (like those of Erwin versal physical law another childish Schrödinger or Paul Dirac) as they un- dream from which we must awaken? fold in time. Second is the outer level of Here the crux may be the randomness probabilities. These are positive real of the physical laws differentiating these numbers predicting the results of actual universes. Such ‘laws’ appear unground- observation and experiment. However, ed on any principle or necessity. If ran- these probabilities do not, like their con- dom, they cannot be God’s thoughts, stituent amplitudes, follow determinis- because they are not the product of any tic mathematical equations; this is the thought, much less that of God. In the very meaning of probability as opposed ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quan- to certainty. Despite randomness on the tum theory put forward by Hugh Everitt level of observation, the inner level of in 1957, each possible path is a world un- quantum mechanics is deterministic, to itself. At every instant, an in½nite ar- not random. ray of branching paths leads into the fu- This may give the key to our problem: ture, though at any time we only experi- wherever there is randomness, consider ence one of these possibilities, the fork another level of reality that weights the we happen to have taken. Linde’s sug- manifold of possibilities. In the case of gestion takes this idea a step further: Linde’s universes, let each universe and alternative universes may not be abso- its space-time be represented by a single lutely separated (as in the many worlds point in a superspace and by a corre- view), but extremely distant. To be sure, sponding amplitude for its formation. Everitt’s many worlds may be simply al- Seek then the equation (now in super- ternative versions of the same universe, space, not ordinary space) that describes while Linde’s universes may have no re- the evolution of each sort of universe. lation to each other, since their physical God only appears to be gambling if we laws are fundamentally (if randomly) look only at one level of reality. To make different. sense of this, we must give up a simple, The bizarre quality of these sugges- unequivocal sense of ‘reality.’ tions shows why Einstein would have Einstein was not willing to pay this wanted to exclude them from God’s price; he thought that physics should thoughts. (In contrast, Niels Bohr deal with observation and be deter- thought we have no right to tell God mined unequivocally on that level. He what to do; surely the Old One may hoped by some arti½ce of ½elds and ge- gamble without our consent.) Yet I think ometry to account for quantum phe- that this problem has a deeper resolu- nomena. His efforts met with no suc- tion stemming from the interpretation cess, and quantum theory remains un- of amplitudes and probabilities ½rst contradicted by any experiment so far.

Dædalus Fall 2003 41 Peter Pesic This is a warrant to embrace the multi- tudes are perfectly intelligible, totally on science plicity of realities–not to resist them. determined by fundamental equations. Ironically, it is the outer level of observa- The idea of such multiple realities is tion that is probabilistic, not completely not new. Mathematics has considered knowable. In this way, quantum theory alternatives to Euclidean space since the shares Kant’s divided view of reality but early nineteenth century. In the early takes it in a very different direction. This twentieth century, John von Neumann dialogue between physics and philoso- showed that quantum theory is most phy has only just begun. naturally formulated in Hilbert space, an in½nite-dimensional manifold of ‘state Every reality has its price and its value, vectors.’ Economic models routinely which we need to gauge. The possibility rely on ‘spaces’ of high dimensionality, of illusion is ever-present, for the multi- each dimension a different economic plication of ‘realities’ lends each one of index. Yet we speak of the Dow Jones In- them a certain quality of unreality, of dex going ‘up,’ as if it were an object in deceptiveness through being an alterna- ordinary space. tive or a part, not a whole. The differ- But these are only representations, ence between levels of reality cannot be whose relation to reality was Immanuel dismissed; probabilities are not the same Kant’s deep concern. His Critique of Pure as amplitudes, though we must pay heed Reason (1781) separated phenomena (the to both. Here, Bacon reminds us that we world as it appears to us) from noumena must not merely gaze aimlessly at the (the ultimate nature of things in them- varying shapes of Proteus. selves). By dividing reality in this way, First and foremost, we have to wrestle Kant sought to protect Newtonian phys- with the premise that reality could be ics from David Hume’s skeptical ques- multiple. Is not the concept of ‘reality’ tion: What guarantees that physical law singular, unique by its very de½nition? and causality are valid, beyond our ex- Out of several ‘realities,’ must not one of pectations based on past experience? them be the most fundamental, the real To this, Kant conceded that we cannot reality? So at least Einstein seemed to know by pure reason anything about assume. Yet the two levels of quantum things in themselves. Physical law ap- theory both seem necessary because nei- plies to phenomena alone. In his vivid ther can be reduced to the other. If we image, we live on an isolated island (the consider amplitudes more fundamental, phenomena) surrounded by vast, un- we dismiss the observable world and its fathomable depths (the noumena). The inescapable probabilities. Since each of coherence of our science depends on the us is composed of roughly a hundred built-in categories of the human mind, trillion trillion (1026) atoms, we take for rather than the unknowable depths of granted prejudices based on our sheer nature. size. Because of this, we tend to identify Kant’s two levels of reality are compa- ‘reality’ with the familiar world of dis- rable to those of quantum theory. Ob- tinguishable, macroscopic individuals. servable appearances are like probabili- But on the atomic scale, there are no ties; noumena are like amplitudes. How- such individuals.7 This subverts our ever, Kant denies that pure reason can ‘common-sense’ assumptions about acquire any knowledge of noumena, but 7 I have discussed this at length in Seeing Dou- the inner, unobservable quantum ampli- ble (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 2002).

42 Dædalus Fall 2003 reality and is at the heart of quantum The felt character of this divided The bell & theory. world, which is the inner dilemma of the the buzzer However, our argument does show the scientist, reaches out to touch all who problem of insisting on wholly incoher- partake in the insights of science. Unlike ent, separate ‘realities,’ for probabilities the common stereotype of cold abstrac- and amplitudes are deeply connected tion, the real problem is that the process because the one is the absolute square of of scienti½c thought is so hot to grasp the other. Perhaps then the better term something radically new, yet deliberately for them is ‘levels of reality.’ Bacon held chilled to temper and chasten merely that the “hidden God” of scripture de- wishful thinking. The simultaneous feel- lights in our search into his divine abyss. ing of opposites, of hot and cold togeth- Perhaps it may be naive or outmoded to er, results in a kind of shiver, exactly the speak thus about the hidden levels of feeling Einstein remembered in old age reality. Yet what more secret mark could about his earliest memory–looking at sign a book of secrets? the compass in his father’s hand and realizing that “something deeply hidden What unites these divergent realities had to be behind things.” Such a frisson may be nothing other than the human goes beyond pain and pleasure to indi- mind itself. The effort to connect the cate the powerful experience of new disparate, to mediate between our inner insight, and signal a drastic departure and outer worlds, is precisely the strug- from common humanity. It is, I suggest, gle of consciousness. Here, it is crucial a deep element of the inner perils and that there is no formula that connects exaltations of the scienti½c experience. them, that our experience is irreducibly There is a curious parallel in behav- multiform. In the face of this, our efforts ioral psychology. Consider Ivan Pavlov’s of thought aim to bridge these gaps and famous experiments conditioning dogs grasp a seamless whole. Certainly it is to expect food after a bell is rung or an the ambition of most philosophical sys- electric shock after a buzzer sounds. tems to resolve the blooming confusion When both the bell and buzzer sound of the world into consonance. simultaneously, most dogs exhibit In contrast, Plato reminds us that strong signs of anxiety, unsure whether the basic notion of ‘system’ misses the they are to be fed or shocked. However, essential character of our experience, at that juncture a very few dogs suddenly which is closer to dialogue than mono- cease to be conditioned to either stimu- logue. Science works by drastically over- lus. Under the paradoxical stress, it is as simplifying the world, cutting out every- if the scales fall from the dogs’ eyes to thing that cannot be mathematized. Our reveal bell and buzzer as meaningless quest for meaning must bracket this un- constructs. Through their peculiar expe- sparing simpli½cation within a broader rience of cognitive dissonance, those perspective that struggles to grasp some few dogs have entered a new relation to larger wholeness, if only by trying, and ‘reality,’ precisely because they fully ex- failing, to connect the disparate pieces. perienced its doubleness, if not duplici- In the moment of failure, we feel most ty. Perhaps they enter into complete ca- clearly the leap between levels. That sur- nine cynicism and disillusionment about prising, sinking, excited feeling may be their trainers’ deceitfulness. At least, the essence of thought as felt experience, they are intractable to further condition- rather than as bare abstraction. ing.

Dædalus Fall 2003 43 Peter Pesic Like Pavlov’s dogs confronted with the on science simultaneous sounding of bell and buzz- er, scientists subjected to contrary yet superimposed levels of reality may sud- denly cease to regard any single level in the way they had been conditioned. They may feel: like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Paci½c–and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise– Silent, upon a peak in Darien.8 The crisis comes not from one level but from the deeply felt dissonance be- tween many. If they can withstand the resultant emotional stress, they may experience a sudden realization. What then? Perhaps they will recognize the one, true level of reality, of which all other levels are merely distorted reflec- tions. Perhaps they will turn away in dis- illusionment, as if such discord mocks all meaning. Or perhaps in the very mul- tiplicity they will recognize a new, disso- nant polyphony. Einstein once remarked that “the real nature of things, that we shall never know, never.” Max Planck also believed that “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mys- tery that we are trying to solve.” Even so, Planck considered that the chief attrac- tion of science is “the pursuit of the un- knowable.” In the struggle to know what may be unknowable, our mind and na- ture wrestle on all levels. The bell and buzzer are sounding ever louder. To what will we awaken?

8 John Keats, “On First Looking into Chap- man’s Homer” (1817).

44 Dædalus Fall 2003 David Pingree

The logic of non-Western science: mathematical discoveries in medieval India

One of the most signi½cant things one ceive of these sciences as more or less learns from the study of the exact sci- clumsy attempts to express modern sci- ences as practiced in a number of an- enti½c ideas. They must be understood cient and medieval societies is that, and appreciated as what their practition- while science has always traveled from ers believed them to be. The historian is one culture to another, each culture be- interested in the truthfulness of his own fore the modern period approached the understanding of the various sciences, sciences it received in its own unique not in the truth or falsehood of the sci- way and transformed them into forms ence itself. compatible with its own modes of In order to illustrate the individuality thought. Science is a product of culture; of the sciences as practiced in the older it is not a single, uni½ed entity. There- non-Western societies, and their differ- fore, a historian of premodern scienti½c ences from early modern Western sci- texts–whether they be written in Akka- ence (for contemporary science is, in dian, Arabic, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, general, interested in explaining quite Hebrew, Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, or any different phenomena than those that other linguistic bearer of a distinct cul- attracted the attention of earlier scien- ture–must avoid the temptation to con- tists), I propose to describe briefly some of the characteristics of the medieval David Pingree, a Fellow of the American Acade- Indian ´as¯stra of jyoti.sa. This discipline my since 1971, is University Professor in the de- concerned matters included in such partment of the history of mathematics at Brown Western areas of inquiry as astronomy, University. He teaches about the transmission of mathematics, divination, and astrology. science between cultures, and his publications in- In fact, the jyoti.s¯•s, the Indian experts in clude many editions of astronomical, astrological, jyoti.sa, produced more literature in these and magical works in Akkadian, Arabic, Greek, areas–and made more mathematical Latin, and Sanskrit. Most recently he has written discoveries–than scholars in any other “Arabic Astronomy in Sanskrit” (with T. Kusuba, culture prior to the advent of printing. In 2002), “Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia” (with order to explain how they managed to H. Hunger, 1999), and “Babylonian Planetary make such discoveries–and why their Omens” (with E. Reiner, 1998). discoveries remain largely unknown–I will also need to describe briefly the gen- eral social and economic position of the © 2003 by the American Academy of Arts jyotis¯•s. & Sciences .

Dædalus Fall 2003 45 David ‘S´¯astra’ (‘teaching’) is the word in San- empli½ed below), and the consequent Pingree skrit closest in meaning to the Greek ambiguity of these expressions encour- on , science ‘επιστηµη´ ’ and the Latin ‘scientia.’ The aged the natural inclination of Sanskrit teachings are often attributed to gods pan.dits. to test playfully their readers’ or considered to have been composed by acumen. It takes some practice to divine .r.sis; but since there were many of achieve sureness in discerning the both kinds of superhuman beings, there technical meanings of such texts. were many competing varieties of each But in this opaque style the jyoti.s¯•s pro- ´as¯stra. Sometimes, however, a school duced an abundant literature. It is esti- within a ´as¯stra was founded by a human; mated that about three million manu- scientists were free to modify their scripts on these subjects in Sanskrit ´as¯stras as they saw ½t. No one was con- and in other Indian languages still exist. strained to follow a system taught by a Regrettably, only a relatively small num- god. ber of these has been subjected to mod- Jyotih. is a Sanskrit word meaning ern analysis, and virtually the whole en- ‘light,’ and then ‘star’; so that jyotihs. ´a¯stra semble is rapidly decaying. And because means ‘teaching about the stars.’ This there is only a small number of scholars ´as¯stra was conventionally divided into trained to read and understand these three subteachings: ganita. (mathematical texts, most of them will have disap- astronomy and mathematics itself ), sam-. peared before anyone will be able to hit¯a (divination, including by means of describe correctly their contents. celestial omens), and hor¯a (astrology). A number of jyoti.s¯•s (students of the stars) In order to make my argument clearer, followed all three branches, a larger I will restrict my remarks to the ½rst number just two (usually samhit¯. a and branch of jyotihs. ´a¯stra–ganita. . Geometry, hor¯a), and the largest number just one and its branch trigonometry, was the (hor¯a). mathematics Indian astronomers used The principal writings in jyotihs. ´a¯stra, most frequently. In fact, the Indian as- as in all Indian ´as¯stras, were normally in tronomers in the third or fourth century, verse, though the numerous commen- using a pre-Ptolemaic Greek table of taries on them were almost always in chords,1 produced tables of sines and prose. The verse form with its metrical versines, from which it was trivial to de- demands, while it aided memorization, rive cosines. This new system of trigo- led to greater obscurity of expression nometry, produced in India, was trans- than prose composition would have en- mitted to the Arabs in the late eighth tailed. The demands of the poetic meter century and by them, in an expanded meant that there could be no stable tech- form, to the Latin West and the Byzan- nical vocabulary; many words with dif- tine East in the twelfth century. But, de- ferent metrical patterns had to be de- spite this sort of practical innovation, vised to express the same mathematical the Indians practiced geometry without procedure or geometrical concept, and the type of proofs taught by Euclid, in mathematical formulae had frequently to be left partially incomplete. More- 1 For a description of the table of chords, cy- over, numbers had to be expressible in clic quadrilaterals, two-point iteration, ½xed- point iteration, and several other mathematical metrical forms (the two major systems . terms mentioned in this essay, please see Vic- used for numbers, the bh¯utasankhya¯and tor J. Katz, A History of Mathematics: An Intro- the katapaya. ¯di, will be explained and ex- duction (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).

46 Dædalus Fall 2003 which all solutions to geometrical prob- equations of the ½rst degree, described Mathematical lems are derived from a small body of already by ¯Aryabhata; the partial solu- discoveries . in medieval arbitrary axioms. The Indians provided tion of indeterminate equations of the India demonstrations that showed that their second degree, due to Brahmagupta; solutions were consistent with certain and the cyclic solution of the latter type assumptions (such as the equivalence of indeterminate equations, achieved by of the angles in a pair of similar triangles Jayadeva and described by Udayadiv¯a- or the Pythagorean theorem) and whose kara in 1073 (the cyclic solution was validity they based on the measurement rediscovered in the West by Bell and Fer- of several examples. In their less rigor- mat in the seventeenth century). Inter- ous approach they were quite willing to polation into tables using second-order be satis½ed with approximations, such differences was introduced by Brah- as the substitution of a sine wave for al- magupta in his Khan. dakh¯. adyaka of 665. most any curve connecting two points. The use of two-point iteration occurs Some of their approximations, like those ½rst in the Pañcasiddh¯antik¯a composed by devised by ¯Aryabhata. in about 500 for Var¯ahamihira in the middle of the sixth the volumes of a sphere and a pyramid, century, and ½xed-point iteration in were simply wrong. But many were sur- the commentary on the Mah¯abh¯askar¯•ya prisingly useful. written by Govindasv¯amin in the middle Not having a set of axioms from which of the ninth century. The study of com- to derive abstract geometrical relation- binatorics, including the so-called Pas- ships, the Indians in general restricted cal’s triangle, began in India near the their geometry to the solution of practi- beginning of the current era in theChan- cal problems. However, Brahmagupta dahs¯utras, a work on prosody composed . . in 628 presented formulae for solving a by Pingala, and culminated in chapter dozen problems involving cyclic quadri- 13 of the Ganitakaumud¯. • completed by laterals that were not solved in the West N¯ar¯ayana. Pan. dita. in 1350. The four- before the Renaissance. He provides no teenth and ½nal chapter of N¯ar¯ayana’s. rationales and does not even bother to work is an exhaustive mathematical inform his readers that these solutions treatment of magic squares, whose study only work if the quadrilaterals are cir- in India can be traced back to the B.rhat- cumscribed by a circle (his commenta- samhit¯. a of Var¯ahamihira. tor, Prth¯. udakasv¯amin, writing in about In short, it is clear that Indian mathe- 864, follows him on both counts). In this maticians were not at all hindered in case, and clearly in many others, there solving signi½cant problems of many was no written or oral tradition that pre- sorts by what might appear to a non- served the author’s reasoning for later Indian to be formidable obstacles in the generations of students. Such disdain conception and expression of mathe- for revealing the methodology by which matical ideas. mathematics could advance made it dif- Nor were they hindered by the restric- ½cult for all but the most talented stu- tions of ‘caste,’ by the lack of societal dents to create new mathematics. It is support, or by the general absence of amazing to see, given this situation, monetary rewards. It is true that the how many Indian mathematicians did overwhelming majority of the Indian advance their ½eld. mathematicians whose works we know I will at this point mention as exam- were Br¯ahmanas,. but there are excep- ples only the solution of indeterminate tions (e.g., among Jainas, non-Brah-

Dædalus Fall 2003 47 David m¯anical scribes, and craftsmen). Indian often more widely accepted if they were Pingree on society was far from open, but it was not presented as those of a divine being, a science absolutely rigid; and talented mathe- category that in many men’s minds in- maticians, whatever their origins, were cluded kings. not ignored by their colleagues. Howev- One way in which a jyoti.s¯• could make er, astrologers (who frequently were not a living was by teaching mathematics, Br¯ahmanas). and the makers of calendars astronomy, or astrology to others. Most were the only jyoti.s¯•s normally valued by frequently this instruction took place the societies in which they lived. The at- in the family home, and, because of the traction of the former group is easily caste system, the male members of a understood, and their enormous popu- jyoti.s¯•’s family were all expected to fol- larity continues today. The calendar- low the same profession. A senior jyoti.s¯•, makers were important because their job therefore, would train his sons and often was to indicate the times at which rituals his nephews in their ancestral craft. For could or must be performed. The Indian this the family maintained a library of calendar is itself intricate; for instance, appropriate texts that included the com- the day begins at local sunrise and is positions of family members, which numbered after the tithi that is then cur- were copied as desired by the younger rent, with the tithis being bounded by members. In this way a text might be the moments, beginning from the last preserved within a family over many previous true conjunction of the Sun generations without ever being seen and the Moon, at which the elongation by persons outside the family. In some between the two luminaries had in- cases, however, an expert became well creased by twelve degrees. Essentially, enough known that aspirants came from each village needed its own calendar to far and wide to his house to study. In determine the times for performing pub- such cases these students would carry lic and private religious rites of all kinds off copies of the manuscripts in the in its locality. teacher’s collection to other family By contrast, those who worked in the libraries in other locales. various forms of ganita. usually enjoyed The teaching of jyotihs. ´a¯stra also oc- no public patronage–even though they curred in some Hindu, Jaina, and Bud- provided the mathematics used by archi- dhist monasteries, as well as in local tects, musicians, poets, surveyors, and schools. In these situations certain stan- merchants, as well as the astronomical dard texts were normally taught, and the theories and tables employed by astro- status of these texts can be established logers and calendar-makers. Sometimes by the number of copies that still exist, a lucky mathematical astronomer was by their geographical distribution, and supported by a Mah¯ar¯aja whom he by the number of commentaries that served as a royal astrologer and in whose were written on them. name his work would have been pub- Thus, in ganita. the principal texts used lished. For example, the popular R¯ajamr- in teaching mathematics in schools were . . g¯anka is attributed, along with dozens of clearly the L¯•lavat¯• on arithmetic and the other works in many ´as¯stras, to Bhojade- B¯•jaganita. on algebra, both written by va, the Mah¯ar¯aja of Dh¯ar¯a in the ½rst Bh¯askara in around 1150, and, among . half of the eleventh century. Other jyoti- Jainas, the Ganitas¯. arasangraha composed .s¯•s substituted the names of divinities or in about 850 by their coreligionist, Ma- ancient holy men for their own as au- h¯av¯•ra. In astronomy there came to be thors of their treatises. Authorship often ½ve pak.sas (schools): the Br¯ahmapak.sa, brought no rewards; one’s ideas were whose principal text was the Siddh¯anta- 48 Dædalus Fall 2003 ´iromas ni. of the Bh¯askara mentioned He began by considering an octant of Mathematical ¯ ¯ discoveries above; the Aryapak.sa, based on theArya- a circle inscribed in a square, and, after in medieval bhat¯.•ya written by ¯Aryabhata. in about some calculation, gave the rule (I trans- India 500; the Ardhar¯¯ atrikapak.sa, whose princi- late quite literally two verses): pal text was the Khandakh¯adyaka com- . . Multiply the diameter (of the circle) by 4 pleted by Brahmagupta in 665; the and divide by 1. Then apply to this sepa- Saurapaksa, based on the S¯uryasiddh¯anta . rately with negative and positive signs composed by an unknown author in alternately the product of the diameter about 800; and the Ganes´apaksa, whose . . and 4 divided by the odd numbers 3, 5, principal text was the Grahal¯aghava au- and so on . . . . The result is the accurate thored by Ganesa ´ in 1520. Each region . circumference; it is extremely accurate of India favored one of these paksas, . if the division is carried out many times. though the principal texts of all of them enjoyed national circulation. The com- This describes the in½nite series: mentaries on these often contain the C = 4D − 4D +4D − 4D + 4D . . . . most innovative advances in mathemat- 1 3 5 7 9 ics and mathematical astronomy found in Sanskrit literature. By far the most That in turn is equivalent to the in½nite popular authority, however, was Bh¯as- series for π that we attribute to Leibniz: kara; a special college for the study of his π = 1 − 1 +1 − 1 + 1 . . . . numerous works was established in 1222 4 3 5 7 9 by the grandson of his younger brother. No other Indian jyoti.s¯• was ever so hon- M¯adhava expressed the results of this ored. formula in a verse employing the . Occasionally, indeed, an informal bh¯utasankhy¯a system, in which numbers school inspired by one man’s work are represented by words denoting would spring up. The most noteworthy, objects that conventionally occur in the composed of followers of M¯adhava of . world in ½xed quantities: Sangamagr¯ama in Kerala in the extreme south of India, lasted for over four hun- vibudhanetragaj¯ahihut¯a´sanatrigunaved-. dred years without any formal structure abhav¯aranab¯. ahavah. | –simply a long succession of enthusiasts navanikharvamite vrtivistare. who enjoyed and sometimes expanded paridhim¯anam idam. jagadur budh¯ah. || on the marvelous discoveries of M¯adha- va. A literal translation is: Gods [33], eyes [2], elephants [8], snakes Madhava¯ (c. 1360–1420), an Empr¯an- [8], ½res [3], three [3], qualities [3], Vedas tiri Br¯ahmana,. apparently lived all his [4], naksatras. [27], elephants [8], and arms life on his family’s estate, Ilaññipalli, in [2]–the wise say that this is the measure . .. Sangamagr¯ama (Irinj¯alakhuda). near of the circumference when the diameter Cochin. His most momentous achieve- of a circle is nine hundred billion. ment was the creation of methods to . The bh¯utasankhy¯a numbers are taken in compute accurate values for trigonomet- reverse order, so that the formula is: ric functions by generating in½nite se- ries. In order to demonstrate the charac- π = 2827433388233 ter of his solutions and expressions of 900000000000 them, I will translate a few of his verses (= 3.14159265359, which is correct to the and quote some Sanskrit. eleventh decimal place).

Dædalus Fall 2003 49 David Another extraordinary verse written by θ 2 54007 θ 2 54009 Pingree − 6 − 8 − on M¯adhava employs the katapay¯. adi system ()5400 [ R 7! ()5400 [ R 9! in which the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, science 11 9, and 0 are represented by the consonants θ 2 5400 5400 10 that are immediately followed by a vowel; ()[R 11! ]]]] this allows the mathematician to create a and this formula is a simple transforma- verse with both a transparent meaning tion of the ½rst six terms in the in½nite due to the words and an unrelated nu- power series for sinθ found indepen- merical meaning due to the consonants dently by Newton in 1660: in those words. M¯adhava’s verse is: sinθ = vidv¯ams. tunnabalah. kav¯•sanicaya´ h. sar- 3 5 7 9 11 θ − θ +θ − θ +θ − θ v¯arthas¯ ´•lasthiro 2 4 6 8 10 . . R 3! R 5! R 7! R 9! R 11! nirviddh¯anganarendrarun Not surprisingly, M¯adhava also discov- The verbal meaning is: “The ruler whose ered the in½nite power series for the army has been struck down gathers to- cosine and the tangent that we usually gether the best of advisors and remains attribute to Gregory. ½rm in his conduct in all matters; then he shatters the (rival) king whose army The European mathematicians of the has not been destroyed.” seventeenth century derived their The numerical meaning is ½ve sexa- trigonometrical series from the applica- gesimal numbers: tion of the calculus; M¯adhava in about 0;0,44 1400 relied on a clever combination of 0;33,6 geometry, algebra, and a feeling for 16;5,41 mathematical possibilities. I cannot here 273;57,47 go through his whole argument, which 2220;39,40. has fortunately been preserved by several of his successors; but I should mention These ½ve numbers equal, with R = some of his techniques. 3437;44,48 (where R is the radius) : He invented an algebraic expansion formula that keeps pushing an unknown 540011 R1011! quantity to successive terms that are alternately positive and negative; the 54009 series must be expanded to in½nity to get 8 R 9! rid of this unknown quantity. Also, 54007 because of the multiplications, as the R67! terms increase, the powers of the indi- 54005 vidual factors also increase. One of these R45! factors in the octant is one of a series of integers beginning with 1 and ending 3 5400 with 3438–the number of parts in the R23! radius of the circle that is also the tan- These numbers are to be employed in gent of 45°, the angle of the octant; this the formula: means that there are 3438 in½nite series that must be summed to yield the ½nal θ 3 54003 θ 2 54005 in½nite series of the trigonometrical sinθ = θ − 5400 2 − 5400 4 ()[ R 3! ()[ R 5! function.

50 Dædalus Fall 2003 It had long been known in India that angle θ is equal to θ minus the sum of Mathematical discoveries the sum of a series of integers beginning the sums of the second differences of the in medieval with 1 and ending with n is: sines of the preceding tabulated angles. India (n −1) n2 n M¯adhava discovered, by some very n + 1 , that is, − + n. Since n ( 2 ) 2 2 clever geometry, that the sum of the here equals 3438, M¯adhava decided that sums of the second differences approxi- n 3438 θ 3 n– , which equals , is negligible mately equals R23! and that the versine of 2 2 θ 2 2 θ is approximately equal to . Since with respect to 3438 . Therefore, an 2R 2 sin2θ = R2 − cos2θ and versθ = R − cosθ, approximation to the sum of the n2 M¯adhava could correct the approxima- series of n integers is 2 . Similarly, the tion to the versine by the approximation sums of the squares of a series of n inte- to the sum of the sums of the second dif- gers beginning with 1 was known to be ferences of tabulated sines; then he could correct the approximation to the −n 2 2[2(n + 1) − (n + 1)] . If n is large, this sum of the sums of the second differ- 3 n(n + 1)2 ences by the corrected approximation is approximately equal to since − (n + 1) 3 to the versine; and he could continue 6 is negligible. But, with n = 3438, building up the two parallel series by 3 3438 × 34392 3438 applying alternating corrections to 3 is little different from3 . them. He ½nally arrives at two in½nite Therefore, as an approximation, the sum power series, equivalent, if R = 1, to: of the series of the squares of 3438 inte- θ 3 5 θ 7 9 3 sin θ θ . . . , n θ = θ − 3! +5! − 7! + 9! gers beginning with 1 is 3 . Finally, it was known that the sum of the cubes of and a series of n numbers beginning with 1 θ 2 θ 4 θ 6 θ 8 2 n2(n + 1)2 cosθ = 1 − + − + . . . . is: n (n + 1)2 or . If n is 3438, 2! 4! 6! 8! ()2 4 there is little difference between Subsequent members of the ‘school’ of 2 2 4 3438 × 3439 and 3438 . Therefore, the M¯adhava did remarkable work as well, 4 4 n4 in both geometry (including trigonome- expression is a close approximation 4 try) and astronomy. This is not the occa- to the sum of the cubes of a series of n sion to recite their accomplishments, numbers beginning with 1. From these but I should remark here that, among three examples M¯adhava guessed at the these members, Indian astronomers general rule that the sum of n numbers attempted especially to use observations in an arithmetical series beginning with to correct astronomical models and their 1 all raised to the same power, p, is ap- parameters. p +1 proximately equal to n . This began with M¯adhava’s principal p + 1 pupil, a Namp¯utiri Br¯ahmana named It had also been realized in India since . Paramesvara, ´ whose family’s illam was the ½fth century–from examining the Vatasre ´ ni in Asvatthagr¯ ´ ama, a village sine table in which the radius of the cir- . . about thirty-½ve miles northeast of 21,600 . cle, R, is2π (which was approximat- Sangamagr¯ama. He observed eighteen ed by 3438) and in which there are 24 lunar and solar eclipses between 1393 sines in a quadrant of 90º, so that the and 1432 in an attempt to correct tradi- length of each arc whose sine is tabulat- tional Indian eclipse theory. One pupil ed is 225′–that the sine of any tabulated of Paramesvara’s ´ son, D¯amodara, was Dædalus Fall 2003 51 David N¯•lakan.tha–another. Namp¯utiri Br¯ah- dia; the furthest they got was Katattan¯. at Pingree mana who was born in 1444 in the Kelal- in northern Kerala, about one hundred on . . l¯ur illam located at Kundapura, which is miles north of Sangamagr¯ama, where science . . . about ½fty miles northwest of Asvattha- ´ the R¯ajakum¯ara Sa ´ nkara Varman repeat- gr¯ama. ed M¯adhava’s trigonometrical series in a N¯•lakan.tha. made a number of obser- work entitled Sadratnam¯al¯a in 1823. This vations of planetary and lunar positions was soon picked up by a British civil ser- and of eclipses between 1467 and 1517. vant, Charles M. Whish, who published N¯•lakan.tha. presented several different an article entitled “On the Hind u´ Quad- sets of planetary parameters and sig- rature of the Circle and the In½nite Se- ni½cantly different planetary models, ries of the Proportion of the Circumfer- which, however, remained geocentric. ence to the Diameter in the Four Sástras, He never indicates how he arrived at the Tantra Sangraham, Yocti Bháshá, these new parameters and models, but Carana Paddhati and Sadratnamála” in he appears to have based them at least in Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society in large part on his own observations. For 1830.2 While Whish was convinced that he proclaims in his Jyotirm¯•m¯ams¯. a–con- the Indians (he did not know of M¯adha- trary to the frequent assertion made by va) had discovered calculus–a conclu- Indian astronomers that the fundamen- sion that is not true even though they tal siddh¯antas expressing the eternal rules successfully found the in½nite series for of jyotihs. ´a¯stra are those alleged to have trigonometrical functions whose deriva- been composed by deities such as S¯urya tion was closely linked with the discov- –that astronomers must continually ery of calculus in Europe in the seven- make observations so that the computed teenth century–other Europeans phenomena may agree as closely as pos- scoffed at the notion that the Indians sible with contemporary observations. could have achieved such a startling suc- N¯•lakan.tha. says that this may be a con- cess. The proper assessment of M¯adha- tinuous necessity because models and va’s work began only with K. Mukunda parameters are not ½xed, because longer Marar and C. T. Rajagopal’s “On the periods of observation lead to more ac- Hindu Quadrature of the Circle,” pub- curate models and parameters, and be- lished in the Journal of the Bombay Branch cause improved techniques of observing of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1944. and interpreting results may lead to su- perior solutions. This af½rmation is al- So while the discoveries of Newton, most unique in the history of Indian jyo- Leibniz, and Gregory revolutionized ti.sa; jyoti.s¯•s generally seem to have mere- European mathematics immediately ly corrected the parameters of one pak.sa upon their publication, those of M¯adha- to make them closely corresponded to va, Paramesvara, ´ and N¯•lakan.tha,. made those of another. between the late fourteenth and early The discoveries of the successive gen- sixteenth centuries, became known to a erations of M¯adhava’s ‘school’ contin- handful of scholars outside of Kerala in ued to be studied in Kerala within a . . small geographical area centered on San- 2 Note that the Tantrasangraha was written by gamagr¯ama. The manuscripts of the the N¯•lakan.tha. whom we have already men- tioned, the Yuktibh¯asa by his colleague and fel- school’s Sanskrit and Malay¯alam treatis- . low pupil of D¯amodara, Jyes.thadeva,. and the es, all copied in the Malay¯alam script, Karanapaddhati. by a resident of the Putumana never traveled to another region of In- illam in Sivapura´ in 1723.

52 Dædalus Fall 2003 India, Europe, America, and Japan only Mathematical discoveries in the latter half of the twentieth centu- in medieval ry. This was not due to the inability of India Indian jyoti.s¯•s to understand the mathe- matics, but to the social, economic, and intellectual milieux in which they worked. The isolation of brilliant minds was not uncommon in premodern India. The exploration of the millions of sur- viving Sanskrit and vernacular manu- scripts copied in a dozen different scripts would probably reveal a number of other M¯adhavas whose work deserves the attention of historians and philoso- phers of science. Unfortunately, few scholars have been trained to undertake the task, and the majority of the manu- scripts will have crumbled in just anoth- er century or two, before those few can rescue them from oblivion.

Dædalus Fall 2003 53 Susan Haack

Trials & tribulations: science in the courts

“I should like to know” [asked Mr. Chi- mining factual truth, in both criminal chely] “how a coroner is to judge of evi- and civil cases, courts very often need dence if he has not had a legal training?” to call on scientists: on toxicologists and “In my opinion,” said Lydgate, “legal tool-mark examiners, epidemiologists training only makes a man more incompe- and engineers, serologists and psychia- tent in questions that require knowledge trists, experts on pcbs and experts on of another kind. People talk about evi- paternity, experts on rape trauma syn- dence as if it could really be weighed in drome and experts on respiratory disor- scales by a blind Justice. No man can judge ders, experts on blood, on bugs, on bul- what is good evidence on any particular lets, on battered women, etc. For, as sci- subject unless he knows that subject well. ence has grown, so too has the legal A lawyer is no better than an old woman system’s dependence on scienti½c evi- at a post-mortem examination. How is he dence; it has been estimated that by 1990 to know the action of a poison? You might around 70 percent of cases in the United as well say that scanning verse will teach States involved expert testimony, most you to scan the potato crops.” of it scienti½c. Such testimony can be a powerful tool for justice; but it can also –George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872) be a powerful source of confusion–not to mention opportunities for oppor- Justice requires just laws, of course, and tunism. just administration of those laws; but it Who could have imagined, when dna also requires factual truth. And in deter- was ½rst identi½ed as the genetic materi- al half a century ago, that dna analysis Susan Haack is Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and would by now have come to play so large Sciences, professor of philosophy, and professor of a role in the criminal justice system, and law at the University of Miami. Internationally in the public perception of the law? known for her work in philosophy of logic, episte- Even twenty years ago, forensic scien- mology, pragmatism, philosophy of science, and tists could tell only whether a blood the law of scienti½c testimony, Haack is the author sample was animal or human, male or of several books, most recently “Manifesto of a female, and, if human, of what type (the Passionate Moderate” (1998) and “Defending least common blood type being found in Science–Within Reason: Between Scientism and 3 percent, and the commonest in 43 per- Cynicism” (2003). cent, of the U.S. population). Then, in the mid-1980s, dna ‘½ngerprinting’ © 2003 by Susan Haack made vastly more accurate identi½cation 54 Dædalus Fall 2003 possible, to probabilities of the order of on the reliability of memory, perception, Science in a billion to one; and by now new tech- and eyewitness testimony, that less the courts niques have made it possible to amplify than half a century later psychological and test the tiniest samples. evidence would play a signi½cant role At ½rst, such evidence was strenuously in such landmark constitutional cases contested in court; but as its solidity, as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), or and its power to enable justice, became that by now it would have come to play unmistakable, the ‘dna wars’ gradually so large a role in the criminal justice sys- died down. By the spring of 2002, dna tem–or that it would be the focus of testing had exonerated more than a hun- seemingly endless controversy? For dred prisoners, including a signi½cant while the work of experimental psy- number on death row, and helped con- chologists on eyewitnesses, memory, vict numerous rapists and murderers. In etc., has indeed proved useful, clinical at least one instance, it both exonerated psychologists’ and psychiatrists’ diag- and convicted the same person: after noses of this syndrome and that, and es- serving nearly eleven years of a twenty- pecially their theories about the repres- ½ve-to-½fty-year sentence for rape, Kerry sion and recovery of traumatic memo- Kotler was released in 1992 when newly ries, have been the subject of heated bat- conducted dna tests established his in- tles in the courtroom, in the press, and nocence; less than three years after his in the academy. release, he was charged with another In the mid-1980s, testimony of alleg- rape, and this time convicted on the ba- edly repressed and recovered mem- sis of dna analysis identifying him as ories came to public attention in the the perpetrator. McMartin Preschool case–the longest Even so, dna evidence can present U.S. criminal trial ever (six years), and problems of its own: police of½cers and one of the most expensive (around $15 forensic technicians make mistakes– million). But in 1990 the seven defen- and have been known deliberately to fal- dants were acquitted of the ritual sexual sify or misrepresent evidence; juries may abuse that, under the influence of thera- misconstrue the signi½cance of expert pists, numerous children at the school testimony about the probability of a ran- had claimed to remember. George dom match with the defendant, or of in- Franklin spent nearly seven years in formation about the likelihood that a prison for the murder of nine-year-old sample was mishandled–and attorneys Susan Nason, convicted on his daugh- have been known to contribute to such ter’s supposed memory of the event, misunderstandings; criminals devise recovered under hypnosis twenty years devious ways to circumvent dna iden- afterward; he was released in 1996, after ti½cation–and at least one prisoner, ap- his daughter also ‘remembered’ his com- parently hoping to exploit the potential mitting two other murders, with respect for confusion, has petitioned for a dna to one of which he could be unambigu- test that, as he must have anticipated, ously ruled out. (Franklin later sued con½rmed his guilt. prosecutors and the experts who testi- And who could have imagined, when ½ed against him for wrongful prosecu- Hugo Münsterberg urged in his On the tion and violation of his civil rights.) By Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and the late 1990s, it began to seem that crit- Crime (1908) that the law avail itself of ics such as experimental psychologist the work of experimental psychologists Elizabeth Loftus, who had maintained

Dædalus Fall 2003 55 Susan all along that supposedly repressed and atric and clinical testimony, experimen- Haack on recovered ‘memories’ could be the result tal psychologist Margaret Hagen writes science of therapists’ suggestive questioning, of “charlatans and greedy frauds.” were vindicated. But recently the ‘mem- But other scientists–like Eliot’s Dr. ory wars’ have flared up all over again, Lydgate–think the real problem is, rath- this time in legal claims ½led against er, that jurors, attorneys, and judges are Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse too illiterate scienti½cally to discrimi- of children and young people. nate sound science from charlatanism. Norman Levitt, for example, comment- Why has the legal system found scien- ing in Prometheus Bedeviled (1999) on the ti½c testimony hard to handle? Ever “noisome travesty” of the O. J. Simpson since there have been scienti½c witness- trial, complains that “the basic princi- es, lawyers and legal scholars–like ples of statistical inference were opaque Eliot’s Mr. Chichely–have had their to all concerned except the witnesses doubts about them. The commonest themselves. The lawyers . . . , the judge, complaint has been that venal scientists the dozens of commentators . . . , and brought in by unscrupulous attorneys certainly the woozy public–all seemed will testify to just about anything a case utterly ignorant as to what . . . statistical demands. In 1858, the Supreme Court independence might mean . . . . All the observed that “experience has shown other scienti½c issues encountered the that the opposite opinions of persons same combination of neglect and eva- professing to be experts may be ob- sion.” tained in any amount”; in 1874, John Or- There surely are venal and incompe- dronaux wrote in the American Journal of tent scienti½c witnesses, and there surely Insanity that “If Science, for a consider- are scienti½cally ignorant and credulous ation, can be induced to prove anything jurors, attorneys, and judges; but the fa- which a litigant needs in order to sustain miliar complaints gloss over many com- his side of an issue, then Science is fairly plexities. Scienti½c testimony may be open to the charge of venality and per- flawed by outright fraud, or, more often, jury, rendered the more base by the dis- by the overemphatic presentation of guise of natural truth in which she robes scanty or weak evidence; it may be solid herself.” More than a century later, in science misapplied by a poorly run labo- Galileo’s Revenge (1991), Peter Huber was ratory, or serious but highly speculative sounding a similar theme: junk science and controversial science, or sloppily –“data dredging, wishful thinking, truc- conducted scienti½c work, or pseudo- ulent dogmatism, and, now and again, scienti½c mumbo jumbo. The motive outright fraud”–was flooding the may be an expert’s greed, or his desire to courts. Some scientists concur. In her feel important, or his anxiety to help the study of the silicone breast implant ½as- police or a sympathetic plaintiff; or it co, Science on Trial (1996), Marcia Angell may be a scientist’s conservatism about complains that “[e]xpert witnesses may new and radical-sounding ideas; or a wear white coats, be called ‘doctor,’ pur- plaintiff’s attorney’s interest in keeping port to do research, and talk scienti½c disputes long settled in science legally jargon. But too often they are merely alive. Failures of understanding may be adding a veneer to a foregone, self- due to jurors’ or judges’ or attorneys’ interested conclusion”; in Whores of the inability to follow complex statistical Court (1997), an exposé of flimsy psychi- reasoning, or to their ignorance of the

56 Dædalus Fall 2003 kind of controls needed in this or that ½nality. But these pragmatic and piece- Science in type of experiment or study, or to their meal strategies, though in some ways the courts excessive deference to science, or their more promising, raise hard questions resentment of its perceived elitism. Or about why we value trial by jury, why we the problem may simply be jurors’ sense want ½nality, and whether the adversar- that someone should compensate the vic- ial process is really an optimal way of tim of an awful disease or injury, or that ensuring–in the words of the preamble someone should be punished for a horri- to the Federal Rules of Evidence–“that ble crime. the truth be ascertained.” And the familiar complaints also gloss over the deep tensions between science The present practice of relying on ex- and the law that are at the root of these perts proffered by the parties not to re- problems. The culture of the law is ad- port on what they saw but rather to give versarial, and its goal is case-speci½c, ½- their informed opinion, evolved only nal answers. The culture of the sciences, gradually, along with the growth of the by contrast, is investigative, speculative, adversary system, cross-examination, generalizing, and thoroughly fallibilist: and formal rules governing the admissi- most scienti½c conjectures are sooner or bility of evidence. For a long time it was later discarded, even the best-warranted required only that a scienti½c witness, claims are subject to revision if new evi- like any other expert witness, establish dence demands it, and progress is ragged his quali½cations as an expert–until and uneven. Science doesn’t always have 1923, when the Frye1 ruling imposed new the ½nal answers the law wants, or not restrictions on the proffered testimony when it wants them; and even when sci- itself. ence has the answers, the adversarial In Frye, excluding testimony of a then process can seriously impede or distort new blood-pressure deception test, the communication. It’s no wonder that the D.C. court ruled that novel scienti½c evi- legal system often asks more of science dence was admissible only if it had than science can give, and often gets less gained “general acceptance in the ½eld from science than science could give; to which it belongs.” At ½rst cited only nor that strong scienti½c evidence some- quite rarely, and almost always with re- times falls on deaf legal ears, while flim- gard to lie-detector evidence, the Frye sy scienti½c ideas sometimes become le- rule gradually came to be widely fol- gally entrenched. lowed in criminal trials, and by 1979 had One response to the dif½culties has been adopted in a majority of states. (It been to try to tame scienti½c testimony remains of½cially the law today in a by devising legal rules of admissibility to number of states, Florida included.) Of ensure that judges don’t allow flimsy course, general acceptance is a better stuff to be presented to juries. But, as the proxy for scienti½c robustness when the tortuous history of efforts to frame such ½eld in question is a mature, established formal rules suggests, no legal form of scienti½c specialty than when it is a words could guarantee that only good- highly speculative area of research–or, enough scienti½c testimony is admitted. worse, the professional turf of a trade Another response has been, instead, to union of mutually supportive charlatans. adapt the culture of the law, bringing it Moreover, the rule is highly manipula- more into line with science by compro- 1 Frye v. United States, 54 App. D.C. 46, 293 mising adversarialism or the concern for F. 1013 (1923).

Dædalus Fall 2003 57 Susan ble, depending, among other things, on scandalously weak scienti½c testimony Haack on how broadly or narrowly a court con- that would have been excluded under science strues the ½eld in question. Neverthe- Frye but was being admitted under the less, a main focus of criticism was that Federal Rules. Then in 1993, with pro- the Frye test was too restrictive. posals before Congress to tighten up The Federal Rules of Evidence (1975) the Federal Rules, the Supreme Court is- seemed to set a less restrictive standard: sued its ruling in the landmark Daubert the testimony of a quali½ed expert is ad- case3–the ½rst case in the Court’s 204- missible provided only that it is relevant, year history where the central issue was and not legally excluded on grounds of the standard of admissibility of scienti½c unfair prejudice, waste of time, or po- testimony. tential to confuse or mislead the jury. In Daubert was a tort action against line with the Federal Rules’ apparently Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals brought liberal approach, in Barefoot,2 a 1983 by parents who claimed that their chil- constitutional case, the Supreme Court dren’s severe birth defects had been af½rmed that the rights of a Texas defen- caused by their mothers’ taking the dant were not violated by the jury’s company’s morning sickness drug, Ben- being allowed, in the sentencing phase, dectin, during pregnancy. In excluding to hear psychiatric testimony predicting the plaintiffs’ expert testimony, the his future dangerousness–even though lower court had cited Frye (which up an amicus brief ½led by the American till then, contrary to Huber’s diagnosis, Psychiatric Association reported that had almost always been cited in crimi- two out of three psychiatric predictions nal, not civil, cases). Remanding the of future dangerousness are mistaken. case, the Supreme Court held that the Justice White, writing for the majority, Federal Rules had superseded Frye, but observed that the Federal Rules antici- added that the Rules themselves re- pate that courts will admit relevant evi- quired judges to screen proffered expert dence and leave it to juries, with the help testimony not only for relevance, but al- of cross-examination and presentation so for reliability. of contrary witnesses, to determine its Justice Blackmun wrote for the majori- weight. In dissent, however, noting that ty that courts must look not to an ex- a scienti½c witness has a special aura of pert’s conclusions, but to his methodol- credibility, Justice Blackmun averred ogy, to determine whether proffered tes- that “[i]t is extremely unlikely that the timony is really “scienti½c . . . knowl- adversary process will cut through the edge,” and hence reliable. Citing law facade of superior knowledge.” professor Michael Green citing philoso- By the late 1980s, as legal scholars de- pher of science Karl Popper, and adding bated whether the Federal Rules had or a quotation from Carl Hempel for good hadn’t superseded Frye, and whether a measure, the ruling suggested four fac- more or a less restrictive approach to sci- tors for courts to consider: falsi½ability, enti½c testimony was preferable, there i.e., whether the proffered evidence can was rising public and political concern be, and has been, tested; the known or that the tort system was getting out of potential error rate; peer review and hand; a crisis due in large measure, publication; and (in a nod to Frye) ac- Huber argued in his influential book, to ceptance in the relevant scienti½c com- 2 Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U.S. 880, 103 S.Ct. 3383 3 Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm. Inc., 509 U.S. 579, (1983). 113 S.Ct. 2786 (1993).

58 Dædalus Fall 2003 munity. Dissenting in part, however, Jus- But Popper’s and Hempel’s philoso- Science in tice Rehnquist pointed out that the word phies of science are not compatible. the courts ‘reliable’ nowhere occurs in the text of Worse, neither can supply the hoped-for Rule 702; anticipated that there would crisp criterion to discriminate the scien- be dif½culties over whether and how ti½c, and hence reliable, from the un- Daubert should be applied to nonscien- scienti½c, and hence unreliable. No phi- ti½c expert testimony; worried aloud losophy of science could do this; no such that federal judges were being asked to criterion is possible, for not all scientists, be amateur scientists; and questioned and not only scientists, are good, reliable the wisdom of his colleagues’ foray into inquirers. Nor is there a uniquely ratio- the philosophy of science. nal mode of inference or procedure of That foray was indeed (if you’ll pardon inquiry used by all scientists and only by the expression) ill judged. As Justice scientists–no ‘scienti½c method’ in the Blackmun’s ellipses acknowledge, Rule sense the Court assumed. Rather, as Ein- 702 doesn’t speak of “scienti½c knowl- stein once put it, scienti½c inquiry is “a edge,” but of “scienti½c or other techni- re½nement of our everyday thinking,” cal knowledge.” However, doubtless in- superimposing on the inferences, desid- fluenced by the honori½c use of “sci- erata, and constraints common to all ence” and “scienti½c” as all-purpose serious empirical inquiry a vast variety terms of epistemic praise, the majority of ampli½cations and re½nements of hu- apparently took for granted that there is man cognitive powers: instruments of some mode of inference or procedure of observation, models and metaphors, inquiry, some methodology, that is dis- mathematical and statistical techniques, tinctive of genuinely scienti½c, and experimental controls, etc., devised by hence reliable, investigation. And so generation upon generation of scientists, they reached for Popper’s criterion of constantly evolving, and often local to demarcation, according to which the this or that area of science. hallmark of genuine science is that it is So perhaps it is no wonder that in the falsi½able, i.e., could be shown to be two subsequent decisions in which it has false if it is false; and for his account of spoken on the admissibility of expert the scienti½c method as conjecture and testimony, the Supreme Court quietly refutation, i.e., as making bold hypothe- backed away from the confused philoso- ses, testing them as severely as possible, phy of science built into Daubert. In the and, if they are falsi½ed, giving them up Court’s ruling in Joiner4 (a toxic tort case and starting again rather than protecting involving pcb exposure), references to them by ad hoc maneuvers. Unfortu- Hopper, Pempel, falsi½ability, scienti½c nately, however, Popper’s philosophy of method, etc., are conspicuous by their science is singularly ill suited as a guide absence; and the distinction between to reliability; for, if he were right, sci- methodology and conclusions, crucial to enti½c theories could never be shown Daubert, is repudiated as not really viable to be true or even probable, but at best after all. And in response to inconsistent “corroborated,” by which Popper means rulings across the circuits over the appli- only “tested but not yet falsi½ed.” And cability of Daubert to nonscienti½c ex- so the Court ran Popper together with perts, in Kumho5 (a product liability case Hempel, whose logic of con½rmation 4 General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136, 118 does allow that scienti½c claims can be S.Ct. 512 (1997). con½rmed as well as discon½rmed. 5 Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137, 119 S.Ct. 1167 (1999).

Dædalus Fall 2003 59 Susan involving a tire blowout) the Court ruled from weak, the Daubert ruling involved Haack on that Daubert applies to all expert testi- a signi½cant shift of responsibility from science mony, not only the scienti½c. According juries to judges, a shift Justice White to the Kumho Court, the key word in Rule had resisted. As Judge Alex Kozinski, to 702 is “knowledge,” not “scienti½c”; whom Daubert was remanded,6 causti- what matters is whether proffered testi- cally observed, he and his colleagues mony is reliable, not whether it is sci- “face a far more complex and daunting ence. task in a post-Daubert world . . . . [T]hough However, the Supreme Court certainly we are largely untrained in science and didn’t back away from its commitment certainly no match for any of the wit- to federal judges’ gatekeeping responsi- nesses whose testimony we are review- bilities. Far from it. In Joiner, the Court ing, it is our responsibility to determine af½rmed that a judge’s decision to allow whether the experts’ proposed testimo- or exclude scienti½c testimony, even ny amounts to ‘scienti½c knowledge,’ though it may determine the outcome of constitutes ‘good science,’ and was de- a case, is subject only to review for abuse rived by the ‘scienti½c method.’” In a of discretion, not to any more stringent post-Kumho world, the task is even more standard. And in Kumho, stressing that daunting. the factors listed in Daubert are “flexi- In the wry words of Federal Judge ble,” the Court ruled that a judge may Avern Cohn: “You do the best you can.” use any, all, or none of them. So, aban- A sensible layperson might suspect that doning the false hope of ½nding a form an expert witness is confused, self- of words to discriminate “reliable, scien- deceived, or dishonest, or that he has ti½c” testimony from the rest, the Kumho failed to take account of readily available Court left federal judges with wide-rang- relevant information; and should be ing responsibility and considerable dis- capable of grasping the importance of cretion in determining whether expert double-blinding, independence of vari- testimony is reliable enough for juries to ables, etc. But the fact is that serious ap- hear, but with little guidance about how praisal of the worth of complex scien- to do this. ti½c evidence (as Dr. Lydgate pointed Though the Daubert ruling spoke of out long ago) almost always requires the Federal Rules’ “preference for ad- much more than an intelligent layper- missibility,” it imposed signi½cantly son’s understanding of science: the spe- more stringent requirements than Jus- cialized knowledge needed to realize tice White had envisaged in Barefoot; that an experimenter failed to control arguably, indeed, more stringent re- for this subtle potentially interfering quirements than Frye. (In 2000, revised factor; that these statistical inferences Federal Rules made explicit what, ac- failed to take account of that subtle de- cording to Daubert, had been implicit in pendence of variables; that new work Rule 702 all along: admissible expert tes- has cast doubt on this widely accepted timony must be based on “suf½cient” theory; that this journal is credible, that facts or data and be the product of “reli- journal notorious for such-and-such edi- able” principles or methods, which the torial bias. witness has “reliably” applied to the Since Daubert there have been various facts of the case.) And, despite the usual efforts to educate judges in science– rhetoric about the Court’s con½dence such as the two-day seminar on dna for in the adversarial system and in jurors’ 6 Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm. Inc., 43 F.3d 1311 ability to sift strong scienti½c testimony (1995). 60 Dædalus Fall 2003 Massachusetts Superior Court judges at When the report was made public, a Science in the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical headline in The Washington Post hailed it the courts Research, after which, the director of the as a “Benchmark Victory for Sound Sci- institute told The New York Times, they ence,” and an editorial in The Wall Street would “understand what is black and Journal announced that “reason and evi- white . . . what to allow in the court- dence have ½nally won out.” And it is room.” But while a bit of scienti½c edu- not only those whose sympathies lie cation for judges is certainly all to the with defendant companies in danger of good, a few hours in a science seminar being bankrupted by baseless tort claims will no more turn judges into scientists who welcome the idea; so do the many competent to make subtle and sophisti- scientists impatient with what they see cated scienti½c judgments than a few as lawyers’ pointless wrangling over hours in a legal seminar would trans- well-known scienti½c facts. Indeed, form scientists into judges competent where mass torts involve vast numbers to make subtle and sophisticated legal of litigants on the same issue, where the judgments; and may risk giving judges science concerned is especially complex, the false impression that they are quali- and where hired scienti½c guns are en- ½ed to appraise specialized and complex trenched on both sides, court-appointed scienti½c evidence. experts may well be the best way to reach the right upshot (and more uni- As judges’ gatekeeping responsibilities form results than the kind of legal lot- have grown, so too has their willingness tery in which some plaintiffs win huge to call directly on the scienti½c commu- awards and others nothing)–especially nity for help. Since 1975, under fre 706, if judges learn from Judge Pointer’s ex- a court has had the power to “appoint perience about the pitfalls of choosing witnesses of its own selection.” Used in scientists to advise them, and about a number of asbestos cases between 1987 instructing those scientists on record- and 1990, the practice came to public keeping, conflict of interest, etc. attention in the late 1990s, when Judge Still, though the conclusion the Point- Sam Pointer, to whom several thousand er panel reached was almost certainly federal silicone breast implant cases had correct, it is troubling to think that just been consolidated, appointed a National four scientists–all of whom combined Science Panel to report on whether these this work with their regular jobs, and implants were implicated in the system- one of whom revealed poor judgment, ic connective-tissue diseases attributed to say the least, in signing a letter, while to them. In 1998, the four-member panel serving on the panel, to ask for ½nancial reported that the evidence did not war- support for another project from one rant claims that the implants caused of the defendant companies–were in these diseases. (Six months later, a thir- effect responsible for the disposition of teen-member committee of the Institute thousands of cases. More radically than of Medicine reached the same conclu- Frye’s oblique deference to the relevant sion.) The plan had been for the video- scienti½c community–more radically taped testimony of panel members to be even than Daubert’s (and Joiner’s and presented at trial; after the contents of Kumho’s) extension of judges’ gate- the report became known, however, and keeping powers–reliance on court- before the testimony had been tran- appointed scientists departs from the scribed, most of the cases were settled. adversarial culture of the common-law

Dædalus Fall 2003 61 Susan approach. Proponents have recognized only if Y caused harm to Z, given other Haack on this from the beginning: “[t]he expert desiderata of principle or policy: that it science should be regarded as an amicus curiae” is worse to convict the innocent than to (John Ordronaux); a court should have free the guilty; that constitutional rights the power to appoint “a board of experts must be observed; that legal resolutions or a single expert, not called by either should be prompt and ½nal; that people side” (Judge Learned Hand, 1901). So should not be discouraged from making have contemporary critics of the prac- repairs that, if made earlier, might have tice, such as Sheila Jasanoff, who com- prevented the events for which they are plain that it is elitist, undemocratic, a being sued; etc. We also like to think move in the direction of an inquisitorial that our adversarial system (under system. which a jury is asked to decide, on the Then there are the ripple effects of basis of evidence presented by compet- those disturbing dna exonerations, ing advocates, held to legally proper con- which have prompted not only re- duct by a judge, whether guilt or liability newed scrutiny of forensic laboratories, has been established to the required renewed concern about how lineups are degree of proof ) is as good a way as we conducted and photographs presented can ½nd to reach the desired balance. But to eyewitnesses, moves to videotape in- problems with scienti½c testimony terrogations, and so on–all, surely, wel- oblige us to think harder both about come developments–but also legisla- exactly what balance is most desirable tion to overcome obstacles to admitting and about the best means to achieve it. ‘new’ evidence, i.e., the results of new There is no question about the desir- dna tests on old material. Notwith- ability of prompt and ½nal legal deci- standing the law’s traditional empha- sions; think of totalitarian regimes sis on (in Justice Blackmun’s words) where people routinely languish in jail “quick, ½nal, and binding” solutions, without trial, or of Dickens’s Jarndyce v. some states have mandated post- Jarndyce. Nevertheless, if new scienti½c conviction dna testing, and others have work makes it possible to establish that extended or eliminated the statute of an innocent person has been convicted, limitations where dna evidence may be it seems obtuse to refuse to compromise available. ½nality in the service of truth. And, while it is salutary to remember that the “The basic purpose of a trial is the deter- brouhaha over recovered memories also mination of truth,” the Supreme Court prompted some modi½cations of stat- averred in a 1966 ruling. “Our system of utes of limitations, with dna analysis criminal justice is best described as a there really are the strongest grounds for search for the truth,” Attorney General such an adaptation of the culture of the Janet Reno af½rmed in her introduction law. to the 1996 National Institute of Justice There is no question, either, that trial report on dna evidence, Convicted by by jury is a vastly superior way of getting Juries, Exonerated by Science. So we like to at the truth than the trials by oath, or- think; but it would be more accurate to deal, or combat that gradually came to say that the law seeks resolutions that an end after 1215, when the Fourth Later- correspond as closely as possible to the an Council prohibited priests from par- ideal of convicting X if and only if X did ticipating in such theologically ground- it, or obliging Y to compensate Z if and ed tests. Our adversarial system is a dis-

62 Dædalus Fall 2003 tant and highly evolved descendant of Science in the ½rst English jury trials; but it is not the courts perfectly adapted for an environment in which key factual questions can be an- swered only with the help of scienti½c work beyond the comprehension of anyone not trained in the relevant disci- pline. We value trial by jury in part be- cause we think it desirable that citizens participate in public life not only by vot- ing, but also by jury service; still, though such participation is a desirable expres- sion of the democratic ethos, civics edu- cation for jurors hardly seems adequate justi½cation for tolerating avoidable, consequential factual errors. But we also value trial by jury for a more fundamental reason: the protec- tion it affords citizens against partial or irrational determinations of fact. Court- appointed experts are no panacea, and there are both legal and practical prob- lems to be worked out; but if, where complex scienti½c evidence is con- cerned, we can sometimes do a signi½- cantly better job of determining the truth with their help, adapting the cul- ture of the law in this way might afford better protection, and thus better serve the fundamental goal.

Dædalus Fall 2003 63 Andrew Jewett

Science & the promise of democracy in America

The intellectual skirmishes known naturally dispute. The science wars, he as the science wars have centered on writes, are a series of “credibility con- whether scienti½c facts and theories are tests in which rival parties manipulate socially constructed. This is, of course, a the boundaries of science in order to le- substantive argument over meaningful gitimate their beliefs about reality and issues: the nature of truth, the possibili- secure for their knowledge-making a ty of objective knowledge, and the prop- provisional epistemic authority that car- er methodology for scholarly inquiry. ries with it influence, prestige, and mate- But why in the past decade has debate rial resources.”1 over this particular set of abstract ques- For Gieryn what is really at stake is so- tions become so acrimonious, so deeply cial status. But I am not convinced. I be- politicized? And why has the debate lieve that the science wars express some- erupted most stridently in the United thing more than a substantive debate States? over epistemological issues, and some- Commentators sometimes claim that thing deeper than a dispute over aca- sociological factors explain the intensity demic status. What we are witnessing of the conflict, and that this philosophi- is a new chapter in an ongoing struggle cal quarrel gains its emotional tenor over the meaning of modern science for from an underlying struggle over aca- American democracy. demic turf. Thomas F. Gieryn argues, This is a struggle that took shape in the for example, that sociologists and liter- ½rst half of the twentieth century, espe- ary theorists are trying to portray their cially during the 1920s and 1930s. The own disciplines as the only sources of vigorous debates of that period about authoritative judgment–an assertion the political meaning of science inform that physicists, chemists, and biologists today’s political, institutional, and cul- tural climate, and by reconsidering them Andrew Jewett, a visiting scholar at the American we may discover the deep roots and true Academy in the academic year 2002–2003, is a stakes of the science wars today. lecturer in history at Yale University. He is com- pleting a book on the understanding of scienti½c In the late nineteenth century, a few democracy in early-twentieth-century America. Americans began to argue that the na- tion could best guarantee its political © 2003 by the American Academy of Arts 1 Thomas F. Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Sci- & Sciences ence: Credibility on the Line (Chicago, Ill.: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1999), 337. 64 Dædalus Fall 2003 health by expanding its scienti½c institu- that the path to individual salvation ran Science & the tions. After the turn of the century, an through social salvation, and they advo- promise of increasingly broad group of academ- cated for, among other moralities, the democracy ics–some based in the natural sciences worker’s right to a living wage and safe in America but most in the social sciences, philoso- working conditions. Other responses phy, history, and educational theory– included socialism and trade unionism. were joined in this endeavor by journal- But the scienti½c democrats felt that ists and educators outside the academy none of these programs could adequate- who agreed that science held great social ly address the political challenges of an promise. industrial society. Since most of these This group of ‘scienti½c democrats’ in- democrats had been raised in evangeli- cluded (to name only a few of the most cal Protestant environments, they still famous) the philosopher John Dewey, believed that personal benevolence was President Herbert Hoover, the physicist central to solving the nation’s industrial Robert A. Millikan, the anthropologist woes. They therefore rejected what they Franz Boas–and Vannevar Bush, the saw as the narrowly material goals of the electrical engineer who directed the socialists and the trade unionists. wartime effort to build the ½rst atomic Yet they also moved away from institu- bomb.2 They constituted a large propor- tional Protestantism, believing that it tion, perhaps even an outright majority, was still tainted by a stringent Calvinist of those Americans engaged in research, emphasis on self-denial and failed to ex- study, and writing during the ½rst half plain how benevolence, by itself, could of the twentieth century. And, although transform a complex industrial society. their views were far from uniform, they The “major problem of life,” as Ralph shared enough ideas that we can consid- Barton Perry put it, was to foster simul- er them a social movement. taneously “sentiments” and “modes of For the scienti½c democrats the most organization” by which “human suffer- salient fact of American life during the ing may be mitigated, and by which ev- Gilded Age was the spread of egoistic ery unnecessary thwarting of human and self-seeking behavior. As the fron- desire may be eliminated.”3 tier closed and the economy industrial- To solve this problem, the scienti½c ized, the nation seemed increasingly in democrats proposed a return to the sci- danger of developing some of the most enti½c method, as they understood it. feared solvents of a republican society: (By the standards of contemporary phys- a permanent class of dependent wage- ics or biology, what they meant by ‘sci- earners and an economically parasitic ence’ was quite broad–it implied a gen- elite. eral commitment to the experimental One response was the Social Gospel investigation and theoretical explana- movement in American Protestantism. tion of a variety of phenomena, both Theologians of this bent emphasized natural and social.) In their optimistic 2 I use the term ‘democrat’ in a relatively loose view, modern science had proved its sense to refer to those who rejected authoritari- power in practice, by harnessing natural an solutions to the nation’s problems and who resources and creating new inventions retained a place for universal suffrage and the such as the steam engine and the rail- consent of the governed. We have, of course, come to see many of their proposals as some- 3 Ralph Barton Perry, “Realism in Retrospect,” thing less than democratic in the wake of the in Contemporary American Philosophy, ed. New Left’s renewed emphasis on the value of George P. Adams and William P. Montague political participation. (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 187–209, 206. Dædalus Fall 2003 65 Andrew road, creating an industrial society with use it against them,” Bryson continued, Jewett on the potential to overcome scarcity. The society had to provide for “common science task now was to apply the methods of ownership” of such “effective thought.” modern science to the improvement of Science would protect the public against social organization itself. The applica- not only errors in judgment, but also tion of such methods might allow the “enslavement” by the more knowledge- nation to close the gap between its pro- able.5 Universal access to science would fessed ideals and the realities of industri- liberate the public from its mental bond- al social life, by organizing a new kind of age. political community that was capable of To modern ears, the scienti½c demo- enlightened self-rule. crats’ program may sound as deeply au- By taking as givens both political de- thoritarian as the intellectual tyranny mocracy and an industrial system based they feared. But the now common on extensive personal interdependence, charge that these ½gures imposed a con- the scienti½c democrats were forced to crete ethical system under the cover of reject the nineteenth-century equation absolute neutrality misses the point, for of civic virtue with economic indepen- the scienti½c democrats de½ned intellec- dence. In effect, the scienti½c democrats tual freedom in far different terms than neatly severed the two halves of what we do. Scholars have long noted that Sacvan Bercovitch describes as the Progressive Era reformers developed a nineteenth-century American model positive notion of political freedom, in of “representative selfhood”: “indepen- which removing obstacles to action was dence of mind” and “independence of only the ½rst step toward making freely means.”4 What virtue, they asked, was chosen action possible. The scienti½c economic independence supposed to democrats understood intellectual free- have protected in the ½rst place? dom in equally positive terms, conceiv- Their answer was intellectual freedom, a ing it as the possession of suf½cient re- social-psychological state that allowed sources to think effectively in a social the individual to participate construc- setting, rather than as merely the ab- tively in collective action and decision- sence of coercion. “No man and no making. The problem, as they saw it, mind,” Dewey wrote in 1927, “was ever was to restore the intellectual freedom emancipated by being left alone.”6 Free- that had been lost during the rise of the dom was a product of social relations, industrial economy. According to Lyman not of the escape from them. Mean- Bryson, “scienti½c or objective think- while, science seemingly reinforced the ing” was the source of “the only kind of point that an attitude of pure neutrality freedom that is worth having, the free- or pure self-seeking was counterproduc- dom to use the mind in all its untram- tive; what characterized science as a cul- meled strength and to abide by clearly tural practice was the participants’ emo- seen conclusions.” And in order to keep tional commitment to the pursuit of col- the people from “suffering at the hands lective truths. of those who have knowledge and would 5 Lyman Bryson, The New Prometheus (New 4 Sacvan Bercovitch, “The Rites of Assent: York: Macmillan, 1941), 74, 82, 99, 107. Rhetoric, Ritual, and the Ideology of American Consensus,” in The American Self: Myth, Ideology, 6 John Dewey, “The Public and Its Problems,” and Popular Culture, ed. Sam B. Girgus (Albu- in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, vol. querque, N.Mex.: University of New Mexico 2, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, Ill.: South- Press, 1981), 5–42, 13. ern Illinois University Press, 1988), 340.

66 Dædalus Fall 2003 uring its ½rst phase, in the years landscape to be collected and assembled Science D & the before World War I, the movement for by any frontiersman. The general public promise of scienti½c democracy centered on two consistently got the facts wrong, and, democracy goals. The ½rst was increasing the cogni- more importantly, consistently read in America tive and social authority of science. This the social implications of even the meant familiarizing the public with the most well-established facts–in particu- inevitability of industrialization, as well lar, the irreversible rise of the industrial as expanding the predictive power of the economy–incorrectly. Abandoning physical and social sciences, establishing common-sense realism, then, the scien- these disciplines on a ½rmer professional ti½c democrats developed a range of new basis, and strengthening the universities theories based on the work of European with which these disciplines were in- thinkers such as John Stuart Mill, Karl creasingly associated. Despite internal Pearson, and Ernst Mach. These theo- divisions, the nascent movement united ries, typically designated either posi- during these early years behind a general tivism or pragmatism, held that the pro- program of persuading Americans that a duction of scienti½c knowledge required commitment to ‘science’–however coordinated effort by specially trained vaguely de½ned–promoted social inte- individuals. gration and the only kind of democracy When these scienti½c democrats in- compatible with an industrial society. voked objectivity as a characteristic of The second shared goal prior to World scienti½c knowledge, they meant neither War I was more subtle, though equally that the knowledge was absolutely cer- consequential: rede½ning how scien- tain nor that the generalizations would ti½c inquiry itself was understood. necessarily hold permanently true. As Nineteenth-century American inter- one researcher summarized recently, preters of science offered a narrowly “All the great scientists of the last hun- empirical reading based on the work of dred years (and some much earlier ones) Francis Bacon, as ½ltered through the have in one place or another clearly stat- writings of the Scottish common-sense ed that their purpose was to create plau- realists. They held that all individuals sible theoretical models for the organisa- possessed a truth-½nding faculty that tion of experience and that these models could perceive the orderly, lawful struc- must not be considered representations tures of the universe, just as the eye per- of absolute reality.”8 Objectivity, for ceived light and shape. Scienti½c facts these theorists, meant that scienti½c were like objects to be collected or dis- covered, available to all and requiring lit- of the continent. The government scientist tle analysis beyond systematic classi½ca- was, in many cases, a pioneer in actual as well tion. The scientist was like a pioneer on as metaphorical terms, accompanying various the prairie, struggling to organize the expeditions to work in relatively unpopulated elements of an inhuman but morally re- areas on the frontier. See Philip J. Pauly, Biol- 7 ogists and the Promise of American Life: From sponsive nature. Meriwether Lewis to Alfred Kinsey (Princeton, But to the scienti½c democrats it was N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), esp. abundantly clear that morally normative 44–70. facts were not simply strewn about the 8 Ernst von Glasersfeld, “Comment on Neil 7 Historians have demonstrated that science Ryder’s ‘Science and Rhetoric,’” Pantaneto flourished in the nineteenth-century state only Forum 10 (April 2003), .

Dædalus Fall 2003 67 Andrew knowledge was as immune as possible So the deliberativists set out to create Jewett on to the influence of the observer’s own not merely a new science but what they science desires. Science was, in the new theories, often called ‘a science of science’–a most fundamentally a means of error methodologically self-conscious form of correction, producing not perfect truths inquiry that, by going beyond both real- but simply the best available truths. ism and positivism, would automatically generate democratic knowledge. The In the wake of World War I, a new vari- most influential formulation of this idea ant of scienti½c democracy appeared, was Dewey’s instrumentalism. This endorsed by such ½gures as Dewey, philosophy held that all intellectual con- Perry, Bryson, and Eduard C. Lindeman. structs and even the scienti½c method Rather than leave the organization of itself were merely tools for the achieve- society to the political-economic conclu- ment of human values, available for use sions of a small group of scienti½c ex- by any and all actors in the pursuit of perts, this group of ‘deliberative demo- any and all conceivable ends. crats’ wanted to engage the public in the A purely methodological conception intellectual freedom represented by sci- of science had positive consequences for ence. If science was the preeminent form the organization of intellectual life. It of free communication, then it was also allowed the specialized disciplines to the preeminent means by which the so- claim scienti½c authority without step- cial organism could alter itself demo- ping on each other’s toes. In lieu of tran- cratically. By Dewey’s account, “Society scendent or universal principles, stan- not only continues to exist by transmis- dards of explanation could be deter- sion, by communication, but it may fair- mined locally, according to the speci½c ly be said to exist in transmission, in characteristics of the phenomena under communication.”9 Even if substantial investigation. It also provided a quasi- socialization of property was the wave political role for a new group of scien- of the future, the process would attain ti½c democrats: ½rst- and second- political legitimacy only through the generation immigrants, almost all of public’s active intellectual participation. them Jews. These ½gures were deeply The deliberativists agreed with their committed to the tenets of democracy, predecessors that the scienti½c method but found the United States far less egal- as such was value neutral, in that it nei- itarian and open than it proclaimed it- ther forced any particular values nor self to be. Suspicious of crass business produced facts that were inherently nor- values, and harboring idealized images mative. Yet they suspected that the sci- of the highly integrated Old World com- enti½c methodologies inherited from munities they or their parents had left their European predecessors were them- behind, they faced what one historian selves part of the social problem; science has called a standing ideological chal- would have to be puri½ed or American- lenge “to relate the myth of America to ized so that it could perform its appoint- the context and conditions of modern ed task of buttressing democratization. America.”10 Tools of inquiry that re- tained their validity no matter who cre- 9 John Dewey, “Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Educa- 10 Sam B. Girgus, “The New Covenant: The tion,” in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899– Jews and the Myth of America,” in The Ameri- 1924, vol. 9, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, can Self: Myth, Ideology, and Popular Culture, ed. Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976), 7. Girgus, 105–123, 111.

68 Dædalus Fall 2003 ated or used them offered an important a tool for the pursuit of human values in Science & the means by which they could help close favor of rigorous new theories of objec- promise of the cultural gap. tivity that gained their support from democracy On the other hand, installing this the work of the logical empiricists in the in America methodological de½nition of science new ½eld of philosophy of science. The at the heart of American democratic the- new, postwar emphasis was summarized ory forced a split between institutionally by Harvard economics professor John D. committed religious thinkers–no mat- Black, writing that the growth of science ter how supportive they were of modern secured a new Bill of Rights for Ameri- science’s ½ndings–and scienti½c demo- cans: crats. A strict insistence on scienti½c To every man shall be given a job suited to his methods ruled out reference to biblical abilities, or a shop of his own in which to turn authority or mystical visions as guides out products or services needed by his fellow to political action. The program of the men, or a piece of land upon which to make a deliberative democrats was, in this re- living for his family. To every woman shall be gard, radically secular. And because it given a home or these same opportunities. To denigrated in principle the beliefs and every father and mother shall be given the same religious convictions held by many ordi- opportunities for their children to be well-fed nary Americans, the movement was nev- and educated and successful as are given to any er able to win the democratic support its other children. No man or woman is entitled to own vision demanded. any share of the world’s goods larger than he produces; but he shall be given an opportunity The ascendancy of the movement to to produce according to his abilities and his create a scienti½c democracy did not in ambition and a necessary minimum of food, any case last long. The Great Depres- clothing, and shelter, regardless of his means; sion, the rise of fascism and Nazism, and the child shall not be denied an equal op- and America’s entry into World War II portunity merely because of the poverty of the and subsequent emergence as a global parent.12 power with a large standing army pre- sented formidable new challenges to the ideal of a deliberative democracy. By the versity: The Transformation of Stanford (Berke- 1950s, with new support in all quarters ley: University of California Press, 1997), even for research and a seemingly endless during the depths of the Cold War there were Cold War underway, the language of sci- scientists who fought against a militaristic reading of their enterprise. The socio-political enti½c democracy had lost much of its meaning of science has always been contested, critical edge. both inside and outside the scienti½c disci- The rhetorical identi½cation of science plines. David Hollinger discusses scienti½c in- with democracy remained a staple of tellectuals’ participation in the cultural battles Cold War rhetoric, but in the publicly of the midcentury in “Science as a Weapon in Kulturkämpfe in the United States during and visible invocations of this equation, both after World War II,” in Science, Jews, and Secular science and democracy were de½ned in Culture: Studies in Mid-Twentieth-Century Intel- strictly material fashion and shorn of lectual History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni- the deliberative idealism championed by versity Press, 1996), 155–174. Dewey.11 Defenders of science had jetti- soned Dewey’s emphasis on science as 12 John D. Black, Design for Defense: A Sympos- ium of the Graduate School, U.S. Department of 11 As Rebecca Lowen shows in her study of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: American Stanford University, Creating the Cold War Uni- Council on Public Affairs, 1941), 40.

Dædalus Fall 2003 69 Andrew Such a deeply chastened consensus set tivist science as the supreme intellectual Jewett 13 on the stage for an inevitable reaction. authority.” science And as the conservative ascendancy of When the ideological pressures of the the 1970s and 1980s swept away hopes of Cold War eased in the early 1960s, a new social reconstruction, the critics redou- generation began to wonder why con- bled their efforts to unmask the preten- sumption and military spending were sions of science to enlighten and liber- politically untouchable. The situation ate. Meanwhile, defensively minded sci- was galling, in part, precisely because entists dug in their feet and took a stand educated middle-class Americans– for the possibility of objectivity, even if and the generation of the 1960s was no they personally sought different political exception–had entertained such lofty goals than those articulated by Black. political hopes for science and the uni- The outspoken entomologist Edward O. versities. Faced with the argument that Wilson wrote in a characteristic recent not even those scientists funded by the passage that “The propositions of the Department of Defense bore responsi- original Enlightenment are increasingly bility for the use of their discoveries, favored by objective evidence, especially many social critics turned against from the natural sciences.”14 The stage the language of scienti½c objectivity was set for the science wars. itself. Believing that they were forced to Still, the original vision of scienti½c choose between democratic values and democracy has yet to disappear fully the bene½ts of science, many Americans from the American scene. Despite the were prepared to reject the dream of the sound and fury of contemporary argu- scienti½c democrats and their Enlighten- ments in the academy, the prospect that ment-inspired vision of a society mod- science can have cultural as well as mate- eled on the intellectual freedom of scien- rial bene½ts for ordinary Americans has tists. not entirely lost its hold on the national As they entered academia, these critics imagination. And while it seems unlike- retained their focus on science as the ly that any group of academics will ever ideological core of the American social voluntarily surrender its hard-won and political system. Assuming, as had claims to institutional authority, the the scienti½c democrats, that intellectual time may come again when America’s and institutional change were causally natural and social scientists, leaving be- linked, they insisted that the critique of hind the disputes of the 1990s, under- objectivity offered a theoretical lever for take a new joint effort to redeem the moving society toward social justice. In promise of American democracy under fact, historian Edward A. Purcell, Jr., the banner of intellectual freedom. writes, the “most characteristic and sig- ni½cant intellectual endeavor of the Six- 13 Edward A. Purcell, Jr., “Social Thought,” ties” was the “attempt to reevaluate the American Quarterly 35 (Spring/Summer 1983): nature of science: to analyze its socio- 80–100, 84. logical bases, to illuminate its political functions, and, above all, to deny its pre- 14 Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, tensions to exclusive and total access to 1998), 8. truth.” The goal was to “dethrone objec-

70 Dædalus Fall 2003 Poems by Les Murray

The Tune on Your Mind

Asperges me hyssopo the snatch of plainsong went, Thou sprinklest me with hyssop was the clerical intent, not Asparagus with hiccups and never autistic savant.

Asperger, mais. Asperg is me. The coin took years to drop:

Lectures instead of chat. The want of people skills. The need for Rules. Never towing a line from the Ship of Fools. The avoided eyes. Great memory. Horror not seeming to perturb– Hyssop can be a bitter herb.

Dædalus Fall 2003 71 Photographing Aspiration

Fume-glossed, unhearably shrill, this car is dilated with a glaze that will vanish before standstill–

and here’s the youth swimming in space above his whiplash motorcycle: quadriplegia shows him its propped face–

after, he begged video scenes not display his soaking jeans, urine that leathers would have hidden and the drag cars have engines on their engines.

Les Murray is Australia’s leading poet. His most recent collections are “Poems the Size of Photographs” (2002) and “Collected Poems 1961–2002” (2002). He has published some thirty books, including the verse novel “Fredy Neptune” (1999).

© 2003 by Les Murray

72 Dædalus Fall 2003 Fiction by Joanna Scott

That place

At ½rst the doctor assured Nora her mother’s surgical incision across her that her mother’s complaints–nausea, lower abdomen had begun to bleed. The mouth ulcers, headaches, dizziness– stain on the sheet, though, didn’t have were the inevitable response to the regi- the tint of fresh blood. The stain, Nora men of chemo. But then Bev developed a realized after a moment, was coffee, low-grade fever, indicating the presence which led her to the temporary conclu- of an infection and earning the patient a sion that her mother had fallen asleep prescription for erythromycin. Twelve and the mug had overturned. But the hours later the fever had climbed to 101. way her mother’s head, tilted back By the next day her lips had swelled against the pillow, moved in a rhythmic and turned the pale, pinkish hue of the twitch indicated either that her sleep underside of her tongue. The doctor was troubled or she was having dif½cul- changed the antibiotic and prescribed a ty breathing. Nora tried nudging her course of antihistamines to relieve the awake. Bev kept twitching. The cracks symptoms of the allergic reaction as well between her eyelids showed only white. as reduce the stiffness in her neck. The The seizure lasted less than ½ve min- next morning, she sat propped up in bed, utes, but by then the ambulance was al- a coffee mug tucked in the crumpled ready en route, and Nora agreed to let sheet between her thighs. She felt im- the medics transport her groggy mother proved enough to request a breakfast of to the hospital. After a wait that extend- scrambled eggs. ed into the early afternoon, the emer- Returning to Bev’s bedside with the gency department physician diagnosed a plate of eggs in hand, Nora thought that brain abscess. An anticonvulsant was given to prevent repeated seizures–this, Joanna Scott, professor of English at the Univer- a nurse explained, would act as a seda- sity of Rochester, is the author of six novels, in- tive, so Nora shouldn’t be surprised if cluding “Tourmaline” (2002),“Make Believe” her mother remained dif½cult to rouse (2000), and “The Manikin” (1996), and a for another day or two. By 10 p.m., Bev collection of short stories, “Various Antidotes” was resting comfortably, and Nora’s hus- (1994). The recipient of the Pushcart Prize, band, Adam, who had driven up to Mas- she has also received Guggenheim, MacArthur sachusetts from Philadelphia, took Nora Foundation, and Lannan Fellowships. back to her mother’s house. A call from the neurologist early the © 2003 by Joanna Scott next morning brought Nora and Adam

Dædalus Fall 2003 73 Fiction by back to the hospital. A corticosteroid, “She looks good, doesn’t she?” Joanna Scott administered intravenously to control “She looks peaceful.” the swelling in the brain, failed to have “She looks like photographs of herself the desired effect. The neurologist need- when she was in her thirties. Bev? I ed consent to drain the pus, which in- wonder if she can hear us. Bev? Can you volved drilling a small hole through wiggle your ½nger for me? This ½nger Bev’s skull. This, or Nora’s mother here, on your right hand. This one. Can could suffer permanent brain damage. you lift it?” The procedure took less than half an Between the shush-shushing of the hour, though Nora imagined that she ventilator, the heartbeat graph on the would have to wait for time to move in monitor, and the flat gray sky outside the reverse before she saw her mother again. window, the room had a contagious se- While she sat with Adam in the lobby renity. Adam and Nora stayed with Bev outside of surgery she heard a buzzing through much of the afternoon, passing sound–the sound, she was convinced, sections of the newspaper between of a hand-held drill grinding through them. They spoke in whispers. Adam bone. She touched her husband’s arm to stared out the window for a long while. draw his eyes away from the soccer game When he turned back he seemed to be on television and told him she was going trying to hide his confusion, as though to be sick. He grabbed a plastic waste- he didn’t want to admit that he didn’t basket and held it in front of her. It was understand how he’d come to be here. empty, except for a piece of white gum “We’re not doing much good,” he ½- stuck to the black disc at the bottom. nally said, stretching out his arms. “Why Nothing more than old peppermint don’t we go back to the house?” gum. Shimmer of a fluorescent light “You go on. I’ll stick around for a overhead. Colors flickering on the tv. while.” On again, off again. Who’s winning? But she needed to eat, Adam pointed Everything conspiring to remind her of out. She said she wasn’t hungry. She the contest between life and death. needed rest, he insisted. She said she’d “Do you still feel sick?” stretch out on the cushioned alcove “I’m ½ne. Thanks.” bench. She’d stay as long as hospital She leaned back into the curve of his rules allowed, and then she’d take a taxi arm and took in the action on the screen, and join Adam at Bev’s. the players’ leaping jubilation, a World “Look,” she murmured with her eyes Cup game, U.S. leading Spain 1–0. And closed. “I’m already asleep.” He kissed then the long exhalation in the after- her on the forehead beneath the pep- math. Bev Knox, formerly Bev Owen, pered arc of her bangs. born Beverly Diamond, topped with a turbaned bandage, scrubbed and ruddy She must have some idea that she’s not and looking younger than she had in lying in her own bed in her own home. years, was wheeled into a private room Not working in her garden. Not dancing in the critical care unit. with Gus. Bev can’t have forgotten that “Bev? Bev, it’s me, Nora.” The stupid Gus is dead. His ½nal whisper of a groan. human need to be oneself. And even stu- Who could forget? The man whom oth- pider–“How are you doing?” As if she ers described to her as a shrink with a expected her mother to lift up on her el- passion for tofu. His shroud of gray bows and say through the airway, I’m curls. Straw sandals. Remember the ½ne, dear. And you? evening of his ½rst visit to the Ridge½eld 74 Dædalus Fall 2003 house, Gus chasing a bat around the teeth, the steady breathing of the venti- That place kitchen with a broom? He ½nally man- lator, the bulge of her mother’s eyeballs aged to trap it beneath an overturned under the thin skin of her lids, the ½gure pot, and they all relaxed with tall glasses of a man in the doorway, backlit by the of lemonade and then watched inamaze- recessed ceiling lights. ment as the bat flattened itself into a “Nora, honey . . .” puddle and seeped from under the rim It was her father’s voice, all right, and of the pot, unfolded its wings, and flew her father’s bald, freckled head and full across the room and out the open door. beard. Nora half-rose, then settled back Or the time she was pregnant with onto the bench. Nora, and she and Lou stayed in a cheap “Lou! You startled me.” motel in the Berkshires. Animals crack- “Didn’t Adam tell you I was coming?” ling through the dry groundcover out- “What are you doing here?” side their open window all night. And “I’m here to see your mother.” then when Lou was getting dressed the Why? she wanted to ask–a purely next morning he discovered a chipmunk spiteful question that would have put asleep inside his boot. Bev, come see! him on the defensive. Instead, she re- Lou’s ambition to follow the example mained silent while he stepped into the of the Raytheon executive who at the age room. He stepped forward again with a of ½fty quit his job and took his family to jerk, as though pushing through an invis- live among the Bushmen in the Kalahari. ible barrier, and stood beside Bev’s bed. Bev, out of necessity, adept at pretending Watching him graze his ex-wife’s hand that anything is possible. with his fore½nger and then lift it, tubes Making puppets out of rosehips. Mak- and all, to his lips, Nora didn’t know ing whistles out of acorn shells. whether to feel embarrassed, offended, Benny Goodman’s thin lips and rim- or impressed. She couldn’t muster pity; less glasses. Goodnight, my love. she couldn’t tell whether the gesture Listening to a bird in the garden while was purely for show–an old gentle- she waited for Nora to bring her break- man’s debonair display of affection. A fast. Chickadee-dee-dee-dee-dee. display for whose bene½t? Nora suspect- ed that Lou would have done the same It felt good to give into fatigue. But whether or not he’d had his daughter when Nora found herself awake later for an audience. He even seemed mildly in the evening, she wasn’t certain she’d taken aback either by his own impulsive actually been asleep. How much time action or by the taste of Bev’s skin. Bev- had passed since Adam had left the hos- erly Knox, formerly Owen. This wife pital? Since her mother had gone into Lou had left thirty years ago for another surgery? Since her mother had been di- woman and who wouldn’t take him back agnosed with ovarian cancer? Since when he came begging. Nora’s birth? Lou gently lay Bev’s hand back on the The strange fact of passing time. Ac- mattress and bowed his head with a so- ceptance had felt like defeat when she lemnity that Nora thought both tender was a young girl and her mother ½nally and portentous. convinced her that the Earth was turning “Were you planning to stay with us at beneath her feet. Even now, what she Bev’s house?” she asked. knew to be the truth seemed the oppo- “Is that all right?” site of such dependable impressions as “I guess so.” these: the day’s ½lmy residue on her “I appreciate it.” Dædalus Fall 2003 75 Fiction by Nora was used to Lou’s habit of visit- Nora explained to her father the rea- Joanna Scott ing without invitation. He moved sons for the surgery. Lou wanted to around so frequently he used a po box know if she’d gotten a second opinion. for his home address. But she was sur- Yes, she lied. She’d gotten a second and a prised by how old he looked. She’d seen third opinion, and all the doctors had him last . . . when? Summer a year ago, said the same: surgery or brain damage. and he’d been ½t enough to dive naked Which would you choose, Lou? from the dock of the lake house. Shed- Surgery or brain damage? “What ding his jeans right there in front of his about surgery and brain damage? daughter and son-in-law, he’d squeezed What’s the point of that?” together those skinny buttocks of his, As predictable as Lou was in his disap- pushed off his toes, and with a yelp dove proval, Nora couldn’t be sure how best into the water that by then, mid-August, to respond. It always took some time to was topped with a thick scum of algae. size him up after a long absence. Youthful Right through the green bloom went was the word others used to describe Lou, and he didn’t surface again for so him even into his seventies. The better long that Nora had risen to her feet in word, Nora thought, was incomplete. panic and was about to dive in after him Whoever her father had been the last when he ½nally did bob up ten yards time she’d seen him, he’d be more stub- away, on the other side of the dock. born, more resigned in his misgivings Rising again from the murky depths in about his past actions, and more blatant- Bev’s hospital room after an absence of ly contradictory when she saw him eleven months. again. “How is Brunswick?” she asked him. More Lou than Lou. A man who “I moved down to Harpswell for the couldn’t see the point of putting a hole summer. How is your mother?” in an old woman’s head. “For a woman with a hole in her head, Nora might have folded her arms and she’s managing.” scowled. Or she might have given Lou “What in heaven’s name have you let a detailed description of traumatized them do to her?” brain tissue. Instead, she decided to His expression of indignation was typ- challenge him: “What’s the point of ical. He had a deft way of implying that life?” she asked with a twitch of a grin. Nora only ever made the wrong deci- The point of life? he echoed, unex- sion. She’d gone to the wrong college, pectedly deflated. Life as he lived it shacked up with the wrong man, and before his split with Bev or after? How had denied herself the pleasure of having about both? Nora had heard him talk a child of her own. She’d never be more on many occasions about his regret. She than what she was: an assistant superin- knew what he would say–how he’d nev- tendent in a pint-sized suburban school er gotten over Bev and had spent the last district. She’d never know better than to three decades longing for reconciliation. give consent to a surgeon who wanted to What unnerved Nora now was that he drill a hole through her mother’s skull. was saying it in Bev’s presence. She was her father’s daughter, con- Louis Owen was an old man, and he demned to repeat his mistakes in judg- had come to make a full disclosure. Time ment, and like Lou, she’d have to wait was running out. Nora already knew until old age to recognize that she’d what had happened to her father after caused more trouble than she was Bev refused to take him back. He’d told worth. her the story plenty of times. And now 76 Dædalus Fall 2003 he wanted to tell the same story over Talk, talk, talk. Lou had always been too That place again, for Bev’s sake. eccentric, as he liked to think of himself, He sat on the lower corner of Bev’s or too lazy, as others thought, to have bed near where the catheter emerged anything productive to say about theory, from under the sheet, and he lifted a cig- and he’d lost interest in the social ele- arette out of the pack in his shirt pocket. ment of the conferences. He’d met the Nora reminded him that smoking was woman for whom he’d left his wife at prohibited in the hospital. He left the one of those conferences; he wasn’t in cigarette dangling unlit from the corner the mood to meet another woman right of his mouth and looked at his daughter then. with a raised-brow expression clearly He’d intended to keep driving up intended to challenge her to pay careful through Canada into the wilderness of attention. the Northwest Territories, but his car broke down in Niagara just before he’d Or the time Bev called Nora into the cleared the border. So he booked himself kitchen to examine a germinating bean. the cheapest room he could ½nd in a mo- Forget the television show, for god’s tel across from a Nabisco factory. How sake, and come see this. The seed coat many times had he told Nora about this disintegrating. The withered cotyledon. motel? Seventy dollars a week, morning Trying to explain the paradox of loss and coffee included, the smell of burnt sugar gain, all that we have to give up in order clinging to the sheets and towels. to move forward, arriving in this place. Finishing this ½rst part of the account, What place? And who asked Lou to he paused and through his unlit cigarette come along? drew in a long breath that was synchro- Deep in thought, running her ½ngers nized with Bev’s respirator. over the velvety purple sepal of a lark- “So you hung out in Niagara Falls for a spur. Doesn’t that feel nice? Clouds while.” gathering for a late afternoon thunder- “Feeling sorry for myself, I admit. storm. Her garden. Her house. 7 Fairport Having lost the love of a good woman, Lane. Built in 1890, the floorboards I’d lost my future.” warped, the chimney crumbling where You and your sentimental clichés, she the vines have grown into the mortar. wanted to say. Instead–“What’s that The place Gus and Bev went to live out supposed to mean?” their last years together. Sweet Gus. “You know how many people throw Plucking dead blossoms off a rhododen- themselves over the Falls each year? You dron. The perfume of lily of the valley don’t want to know. Every morning I’d hanging in the humid air. The wind pick- walk from my motel room to the park ing up. Silver shine of the poplar leaves. and spend the day there. What a wreck I was, destined for the junkyard. And yet On that terrible night ending with somehow I found ways to make myself Bev’s assurance that she would never useful–snapping photographs for tour- again speak his name aloud, Louis Ow- ists, pointing them in the right direction. en drove north. It was summer, between I got friendly with the grounds staff and semesters, and he would miss nothing when one of the guys quit I was offered more than a couple of conferences with his job. Did you know that your dad had inconsequential panels about theoretical a job picking up trash?” rubrics and anthropology’s hidden bias. “You’ve always kept yourself busy.”

Dædalus Fall 2003 77 Fiction by “Collecting soda cans and hot dog and showed her the shadow of the seed Joanna Scott wraps, newspaper, old socks, and lost leaf inside. Then they went inside and hats. I wish you could have seen me.” Nora dressed up in Bev’s old belted blue “I can imagine.” dress with padded shoulders. Bev paint- “I was missing you like crazy, Nora. ed Nora’s eyelashes blue and dusted her Believe me, I never wanted to stop being cheeks with cyclamen rouge, and Nora your father. You know, I wrote to you. went clacking around the house in her More than once.” How come you never mother’s high heels. Hey gorgeous! answered me? he would say next. “How Or the time, the last time, Lou came come you never–forget it.” He gave a to dinner. Asking for Bev’s forgiveness. dull shrug. “Your mother forwarded the Begging for Bev’s forgiveness. Demand- bills. Of course she did. I’m not com- ing Bev’s forgiveness. Don’t you dare plaining. And wouldn’t you know, she threaten me, Lou! Get out! No. Yes. sent along the certi½cate con½rming our And snap, she’s an old woman pulling plots at White Oak Cemetery.” out a maple sapling by its roots and try- “Where?” ing to recall a song she once knew about “Crazy business, eh? We bought our mandrakes. Her back aching, her head little patch of land on sale. And she’d throbbing, only wisps of hair left after sent a copy of the certi½cate to remind the chemo, her ears ringing, and Nora’s me of our commitment.” at the kitchen door calling– “Where did you say?” Bev! Bev! Telephone. At ½rst he’d thought it was a nasty Did someone say something? Voices joke designed to remind him that his life swishing, or is that the dry leaves mov- would add up to no more than dates ing in the breeze? Sky darkening. All carved in stone. But the more he’d the work she wants to ½nish before the thought about it, the more he’d studied rain. the paper and traced his ½ngers across the numbers, the more he’d been com- It didn’t have to be that way, he remind- forted by the idea. He and Bev would be ed Nora. She thought he meant it didn’t together in the end. have to be White Oak Cemetery–he and Where? Bev could have chosen a different place. She’d heard correctly. Cemetery, he’d But he meant that Bev didn’t have to re- said. And White Oak. It had to be White fuse him. She could have forgiven him Oak. He’d never mentioned this before, and taken him back. That they were and neither had Bev. They had pur- never a family again was her decision. chased plots there. That place. The same He spent that whole summer hanging place. Crazy business. out in Niagara Falls, having decided that “A pact made long ago,” he said, his he could never love anyone else but the irony tinged with pride, though he ad- woman he’d betrayed. What a mess he’d mitted it must be disturbing for Nora to made of his life. Had he ever told Nora imagine her parents together in the end, about the bar in Niagara? That dingy given their years of estrangement, plant- saloon, where he could drink away his ed side by side. sorrows. A white man adrift. The lino- leum floor was sticky with beer. Ciga- Or the time Nora stepped on the rette smoke hung so thickly he could spiny husk of a chestnut, and to stop hold it in ½stfuls. Two men were singing her from crying Bev split open the nut with the jukebox. A drunk old woman

78 Dædalus Fall 2003 laughed in delight, her wrinkles like a plained, were the body’s normal effort That place ½ne net pressed against her face. Her joy to clear the lungs of mucus. Bev wasn’t was infectious. in any pain, and she wouldn’t wake up “Did I ever tell you about that woman from sedation anytime soon. But it in the bar?” would be best not to disturb her. “No,” Nora said, though she was After the nurse left the room, Lou thinking yes. needed to be reminded: “Where were we?” Or this same dream that returns to her when she’s ill: she is in a waiting He’d ½nished one bourbon. Two. room. There are strangers sitting in seats Three. And then, oh shit, he’d realized against the opposite wall. They are read- he didn’t have enough money to pay for ing books they had the foresight to bring his drinks. A new crisis to follow the with them. Bev brought nothing with last. What could he do? Stiff the bar- her, so she sits there bored with her tender? Admit that he had only spare thoughts. Idly, she scratches her shoul- change in his pocket? Then his eyes set- der and feels an odd patch like hardened tled on the drunk old lady with the ½sh- syrup stuck to her skin. She ½nds anoth- net face. She represented life and hope, er patch on her elbow. She is spotted and she would surely have compassion with this hard, transparent substance– on a man who had no family anymore. tiny crystals on her arms, her legs, and at “What did I know? I was an idiot.” the base of her throat. There was so much he didn’t know. Beverly Diamond Owen Knox is be- For instance, Nora considered telling coming the woman she’d been named to him right then and there about what be. At ½rst she’s not sure whether to re- happened in White Oak Cemetery when sist or give in. There are patches on the she was a girl. But now the thought of all back of her hands. Brilliant crystals pick- the necessary explanation she’d have to ing up the buttery tint from the surface offer Lou exhausted her, like the work of her skin. The ache in her joints is that would go into renovating an old worse than arthritis. The discomforting house that had been shut up for years. It bristle of crystals between her toes and would be better to build a new house on behind her ears. The sensation of being the property. buried alive inside precious stone. Help Lou was talking about the old lady in me, Nora. I’m not ready yet. Her lips the bar in Niagara Falls: her head tipped tearing at the corners. Help me. The back in laughter, skin a toffee brown, taste of blood. Help me. darker in the creases, with lips painted a “Bev!” ½ery red, and dark, leathery pouches “She said something. What did she beneath the rims of her eyeglasses. She say?” wore a red saucer hat to match her red “Bev, it’s me, Nora. Lou’s here as well. shoes, and her summery dress was a Can you open your eyes? Do you think loose black-and-white polka-dot wrap. she can hear us? Bev? Maybe we should She looked like a charitable person who call the nurse. Bev, are you ok?” would lend a few dollars to a man in The nurse, summoned by Lou, lis- need. tened with a stethoscope to Bev’s chest “I called to her–Ma’am!–but she and checked fluid levels in the iv bag. couldn’t hear me above the music. I Any sounds she made, the nurse ex- called louder. Excuse me, Ma’am, par-

Dædalus Fall 2003 79 Fiction by don–but she still didn’t hear me. So I turned to apologize. She remembered Joanna Scott went ahead and tapped her on the shoul- lying in her bed pretending to sleep and der. She tipped her head to look at me listening for the shrill explosions in over the top of her spectacles. She Lou’s voice when his pleading turned switched off her smile. And at the same into threats. She thought about how time the music stopped. I don’t know wrong it was that Bev and Lou should be whether someone pulled the jukebox buried side by side in White Oak Ceme- plug or, by coincidence, the song had tery, though she didn’t say this. The ended.” truth was, though she sometimes nee- This was the scene in the story that dled him with her rebuttals, she never Lou liked to label a situation. An old meant to say anything that would cause woman who happened to be the mother her father pain. of one of the singing men. And it sure “Sometimes,” she said to Lou, who sat looked like the bartender was her grand- waiting for her response, “it’s better just son, while Louis Owen was a white no- to keep your mouth shut.” body who stupidly decided to call atten- tion to himself. Or just the other day, wasn’t it, when He spoke in the direction of the win- a storm blew in. The smell of fresh-cut dow facing the hospital parking lot, as grass. Screeching of red-wing blackbirds though his intended audience were the in the marsh. The ½rst drops of rain. ghost of his reflection. He didn’t seem to Growl of thunder. Flicker of lightning. care anymore whether Nora was paying On again, off again. Crash, bang, run for attention. And he might as well have for- cover in the shed! gotten about Bev. He was talking to him- Dripping beneath the cloth hat she self, re½ning the patterns of experience uses to hide her thinning hair. The chill that had made him who he was. His ten- of damp clothes. It’s not the same kind dency, as he would say, to put his foot in of chill as the chill in her bones. This it. despite the doctor’s optimism. But she “Next thing I knew, one man was can still notice things. There in the cor- holding me by the collar, and another ner, for instance, a nest made of dry had a knife at my throat.” grass and shredded paper from a fertiliz- Nearly had his throat sliced because er bag, crowded with four baby mice. he’d been bold enough to tap an old And there’s the mama retreating with woman on the shoulder. And yet he was the ½fth baby in her mouth to the safe alive because of that same old woman’s shelter behind an old wheelbarrow that dispensation. All she had to do was give had been overturned and left to rust by a slight, severe nod in the direction of the previous owner. Back again, to fetch the door, and the two men threw Lou out the rest of her offspring, carrying them on the sidewalk. one by one while Bev watches. That was Nora’s father: savvy only in Nora, come see! the aftermath. Bev, you’re soaked. His conclusion, always the same, invit- Watch now. The mother carrying ed dramatic comment. Nora imagined them to safety one right after the other, Bev sitting up and uttering a good, veri- failing none of them. fying insult. She thought of the ½ght Or the time Gus and Bev threw a they’d had in the kitchen when she party for themselves one year after was thirteen years old, the night Lou re- they’d gone off to City Hall to get mar-

80 Dædalus Fall 2003 ried. The two of them dancing to “This Bev’s hand, the same hand he’d kissed. That place Year’s Kisses” in the center of the crowd “The peace of our eternal sleep together of guests while Nora watched from the on some shady slope in White Oak.” ballroom’s balcony. “You did say White Oak.” Or the day after Lou left for good and Their own private property. Two Bev hired a locksmith to change the names, two stones. They didn’t even locks. She sipped her coffee and chatted have to let on that they’d once been mar- with the man while he worked on the ried. Just as long as they were together in kitchen door. Nora came into the kitch- the end. en to pour herself some milk and over- “Lou–” ½lled the glass. “The only home I’ll never lose to fore- Nora! closure.” Or watching Nora watching Jeopardy, “Lou–” her one leg thrown over the back of the “Thirty years I’ve been waiting to hold couch. Bev gave her big toe a tug. her in my arms again.” You ok? “Lou!” Yeah. “What? You think I’m not sincere?” Want to talk? “If you’d be quiet and listen, for Nope. once.” The one thing they needed to talk “You have something you want to tell about kept Nora from wanting to talk at me?” all. She couldn’t be budged. Bev had bet- He looked at her with a smile she in- ter luck guessing the answers to the terpreted as smug, as if he were satis- questions on Jeopardy: Dale Carnegie’s ½ed that the setup had worked and he’d number one best-seller. What is How To trapped her, making it impossible for her Win Friends & Influence People? not to match his disclosures with some X-shaped stigma, reflexed yellow se- of her own–and yet because of this ex- pals. What is an evening primrose? pression of expectation he made it nec- What are ragged robins and corn cock- essary for her to resist. This was an un- les? Did you know that a fly must beat familiar predicament. Usually she was its wings two hundred times a second to adept at closing the conversation with stay airborne? Look: you can tell from a decisive comment. But she thought the white dots and the red-barred fore- she’d had something else she’d wanted wings that it’s a red admiral butterfly. to say. What? She wasn’t sure. Nora, take out the garbage please! Nora, There was no way she’d tell Lou about did you hear me? what happened thirty years ago in White Oak Cemetery. That place she and her “ T hrown out on my ass,” Lou was say- girlfriends used to go to smoke in secret. ing. “First by your mother. And then by The same place where a troubled teenag- two toughs in a bar.” His tone was wry- er named Jonathan Baggley strangled lit- er than earlier, his eyes narrowed in a tle Larry Groton and left the body lying slightly mischievous squint. on a bed of pine needles for Nora to ½nd “It’s true I learned from you,” Nora as she was walking home alone. Climb- said, “how to get into trouble. But also ing the hill, seeing ½rst his sneaker how to get out of it.” turned at an odd angle, then the mud- “And remember that there’s rest at caked ½ngers of his left hand resting on the end.” He leaned forward and patted his knee.

Dædalus Fall 2003 81 Fiction by The coincidence of White Oak Ceme- “Why?” Joanna Scott tery. Lou had been living in Thailand at “Yes.” the time, and as far as Nora knew, Bev “Don’t you remember? We lived never told him what had happened. It down the street. We used to take you was important to Nora not to tell him. sledding there, and walk the dog.” She hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, except “And you really thought you’d stay in her mother–she’d told her mother right that town forever? You, who couldn’t away, as soon as she’d raced home from settle down?” the cemetery. When Bev called the po- “I don’t know . . .” lice, Nora couldn’t help but feel be- “Why White Oak?” trayed. She felt tainted and newly vul- “What’s the big deal? Why White nerable in a way her mother didn’t un- Oak, why that place, why any place? derstand. She had cooperated with the We just wanted to be together, if you can police and led them up the cemetery hill, believe it. Doesn’t seem possible, does but only out of necessity. And afterward, it? Hey, Bev? Can you hear me, Bev? I she’d shut up. Even when her friends wonder if she’s been listening? Why gathered around her and demanded to there? Why us? Why did we spend thir- know what she’d seen, she’d kept her ty years apart if we planned to be togeth- mouth closed. er in the end? Why did we do any- But thirty years had passed, and she thing?” was ready to talk to Bev about it now. Both Lou and Nora watched Bev for She needed to know why Bev hadn’t some indication that she had an opinion found somewhere else to spend eternity. she wanted to share. She just lay there, Why White Oak, the place where chil- unblinking, unsmiling, her chest swell- dren died horrible deaths and were left ing and flattening with the action of the to rot? Why did Bev want to be buried respirator, but Lou and Nora would have there–and next to Lou, no less? Why gone on watching her forever if the hadn’t she ever mentioned this to Nora? nurse hadn’t come in to tell them that They’d talk as soon as Bev’s condition visiting hours were over, which seemed improved. They’d begin with the story strange to Nora, whose fatigue had led of ½nding Larry Groton, and from there, her to believe that it was the middle of wherever. The past or the present. It the night. She’d call a taxi, she said. Lou would depend upon Bev. Nora could reminded her that he had his car. They only guess what her mother would tell could stop at a diner for a bite to eat, she her. But she didn’t want to guess. She suggested, and they could talk some wanted to know what Bev would say, if more. They’d have a good night’s rest she could say anything. That and more. and come back to visit Bev the next Her mother being far less predictable morning. She would probably be awake than her father, complete, though par- by then. Lou said he’d bet she had heard tially hidden from view. Lou, much as everything and would give them an ear- he liked to talk, would never adequately ful! answer the one question Nora wanted to ask: The voice of her own father. The red “Why White Oak, of all places?” circles on his cheeks. He was telling her “What?” about Joe Louis ko’ing Natie Brown in “Why did you choose White Oak the 4th round. One cigar after another. Cemetery?” Bev, phone’s for you!

82 Dædalus Fall 2003 What? That place The whir of a fan. The roll of a carou- sel horse. The swoop of a swallow. Or the time she found her husband’s lover’s name and number written on a slip of paper in his wallet. See how it is, Nora, when we have to make do with suspicion? Sometimes it’s best to tell. Two cups of flour. Cream the butter with the sugar. Crack of an egg against the rim of a bowl. The satisfaction of catching the yolk whole. The time Gus came out to the garden, where Bev was trying to screw the noz- zle of the hose on a spigot, and she could see from the look on his face that some- thing terrible had happened. More pre- cisely, somehow she knew that his son was gone. She didn’t yet know the de- tails–that he’d been killed in a bus acci- dent while traveling in Mexico. But in that flash of a glance, she felt as though she knew everything. Or the days following the day Nora ran home to tell her mother she’d found something in the cemetery. Nora wore her softball cap around the house to hide her eyes in shadow. Or the time Bev was about to remind her again how much she loved Adam and was grateful for Nora’s happiness, and the next thing she knew. What? She’s not sure she weeded the garden before she left. Those stubborn little maple saplings, as tough as mandrakes. The songs she used to sing. Gus, accord- ing to his wishes, reduced to ashes and scattered over the North Atlantic. Lou, come closer so I can look at your face. The wiry white curls of your beard. The wide pores of your tanned skin. And you, Nora. Sitting in the garden cradling cups of coffee. We must do something about the potato vine tangled in the pachysandra. Is that what she wanted to say? Also, the thicket of loosestrife at the top of the front walk. Dædalus Fall 2003 83 about those implications, can be risky. Giving expert testimony in the adversar- ial setting of a court case–as I have done –is not simply moving from the labora- tory into the ½eld. It’s moving into a bat- Elizabeth F. Loftus tle½eld. As a result of publishing ½ndings that on science under have cast doubt on cases of supposed re- legal assault pressed memory, I have become accus- tomed to receiving harsh criticism, and even personal threats. But nothing had quite prepared me for the Orwellian nightmare I currently confront. This nightmare began with my reading of a paper coauthored by a psychiatrist named David Corwin. In an article pub- lished in 1997 in the journal Child Mal- treatment, Corwin purported to offer new For more than three decades, I have proof that repressed memory was a gen- conducted research on memory. My re- uine phenomenon, by recounting the search shows that memory is malleable story of “Jane Doe.” Corwin had video- –and that it is a flimsy curtain indeed taped Jane on several occasions. The that separates memory from imagina- ½rst was in 1984, as part of a custody dis- tion. pute between her divorcing parents; in I’ve seen how false memories can de- this video, the six-year-old Jane de- stroy lives, especially when such mis- scribed how her mother had sexually takes in recollection work their way in- abused her. On the basis of Jane’s testi- to the legal system. As a result of eyewit- mony, the mother lost custody of her ness accounts of imagined events, I’ve daughter, and also lost the right to visit seen more than a few innocent people her. sent to prison. Eleven years later, at Jane’s request, Doing research that has practical im- Corwin videotaped another interview. plications, and being willing to speak out Now seventeen, Jane was bothered that she could not now recall being sexually abused by her mother. But under further Elizabeth F. Loftus is Distinguished Professor in questioning by Corwin, Jane suddenly the department of psychology and social behav- did recall, recounting an instance when ior at the University of California, Irvine. In her mother had sexually abused her in “Eyewitness Testimony” (1979), she described the bathtub–thus, to Corwin’s satisfac- her theory of how perceptions can modify hu- tion, con½rming the phenomenon of man memory, and her research helped her to traumatic amnesia. become one of the nation’s leading legal consul- After publishing his paper about Jane tants in the area of eyewitness testimony in trials. Doe in Child Maltreatment, Corwin trav- She has been a Fellow of the American Academy eled around the country giving lectures since 2003. and showing videotapes of Jane. Thera- pists began to use the case as proof of © 2003 by the American Academy of Arts repressed memory. Psychologists began & Sciences

84 Dædalus Fall 2003 to teach the case in their classes. Lawyers Award at the annual convention of the Science under legal began to cite the case in court during the American Psychological Society. Most of assault prosecution of other individuals charged my colleagues at the convention had no with sexually abusing their children. idea what was going on. Those who had Despite its currency in courts and heard about the case history were free to classrooms, the story of Jane Doe sound- discuss it. But I could not discuss either ed ½shy to me. I became interested in the case history or the subsequent in- learning more. But studies like this are quiry. shrouded in secrecy. Instead, in my speech accepting the Still, using public records and newspa- William James Award, I raised some per clips, I eventually tracked down Jane questions: “Who bene½ts from my si- Doe’s mother. I teamed up with Mel lence? . . . Who bene½ts from keeping Guyer, a psychologist and lawyer from such investigations in the dark? . . . the University of Michigan, and we Those of us who value the First Amend- poured over every page of the divorce ment and open scienti½c inquiry must ½le. We immersed ourselves in the pub- bring these efforts to suppress freedom lic evidence, and we gathered new evi- of speech into the light.” dence from new witnesses around the Shortly afterward, I was exonerated country. We even tracked down Jane’s by the university’s investigation. Finally, stepmother, who was working in a gro- Guyer and I were able to publish our ex- cery store. She recounted the battle to posé of the case study. And I could take wrest custody of Jane from her biologi- some satisfaction out of thinking that cal mother. Referring to Jane’s alleged we had disproved Corwin’s claims. memories of sexual abuse, she boasted, But the cost was tremendous. The “That’s how we ½nally got her–the sex- university’s actions left me feeling be- ual angle.” trayed. Instead of offering a real apology, To our bewilderment, though, be- university of½cials would say only that fore we had even published a word on they were sorry that the investigation the case, Jane Doe complained that her had taken so long. privacy was being violated. And so a year later I left my friends, Responding to her complaint, of½- my lovely old house, and the place where cials from the University of Washington, I had worked for twenty-nine years, in where I then taught, called to say that order to move to the University of Cali- they were seizing my ½les. Within ½fteen fornia, Irvine. minutes, my ½les had been impounded And that was the end of the matter, it –and an inquiry launched to investigate seemed–until early this year when Jane potential scienti½c misconduct. Doe ½led a lawsuit. In spite of the university’s own stat- She sued Guyer, me, and our colleague ute of limitations–one hundred twenty Carol Tavris for defamation and invasion days–its investigation lasted more than of privacy, even though we had never re- twenty-one months. As long as the in- vealed her name. (It was Jane Doe her- vestigation was ongoing, I could not self who revealed her name–in her law- publicly discuss the case of Jane Doe, suit.) or publish anything about what Guyer The three of us have thus become part and I had discovered. of a new and disturbing trend: through- In June of 2001, while still under inves- out America, scientists are being sued tigation, I received the William James simply for exercising their constitutional

Dædalus Fall 2003 85 Note by right to speak out on matters of grave a free, independent, and virtuous peo- Elizabeth F. Loftus public concern. ple.” Now, more than ever, that goal is at This is not simply a problem for psy- risk, unless we step up our efforts to chologists. In 1997, in an article pub- defend the right of scientists in a free lished in The New England Journal of society to speak out–even when their Medicine, R. A. Deyo, B. M. Psaty, G. Si- ½ndings are controversial. mon, E. H. Wagner, and G. S. Omenn recounted a number of instances in which efforts had been made to intimi- date medical researchers. An expert on spinal-fusion surgery who raised doubts about its bene½ts was faced with efforts to block publication of his work, and forced to spend endless hours respond- ing to subpoenas from companies with a vested interest in the procedure. Anoth- er scholar who had raised doubts, in this case about the value of certain tests used to support disability claims for chemical sensitivity, had to fend off charges of sci- enti½c misconduct and ½ght to keep his medical license. The conclusion of Deyo et al: “investigators should be aware that applied research is not for the naive or faint of heart.” The possibility of being sued into si- lence delivers an ominous message for all scientists. Baseless litigation not only affects the defendants–it also discour- ages scientists from speaking out on controversial topics, for fear that they will be next. We need better ways to investigate al- legations of scienti½c misconduct. We need stronger judicial sanctions, such as awarding attorneys fees and court costs, to deter people from ½ling baseless law- suits. And as my own case demonstrates, we need our universities to offer stron- ger support to researchers who come under attack. The members of the Amer- ican Academy of Arts and Sciences have a special role to play in these circum- stances. This organization was founded in order “to cultivate every art and sci- ence which may tend to advance the in- terest, honour, dignity, and happiness of

86 Dædalus Fall 2003 program or paideia aimed at the many- sided development of man’s faculties and the creation of the highest excel- lence of which he was capable. “The un- examined life,” Plato’s Apology recorded Perez Zagorin Socrates as saying, “is not worth living.” Indeed, although the Greek language on humanism had no word for humanism, a concern past & present with man and his dignity became the focus of Greek thought at this period in drama, philosophy, and history. And so Sophocles wrote, “Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man.” Greek humanism persisted among the successors of Plato and Aristotle, but, al- though it included lasting values, it was not an offering to all mankind. It was a cultural program designed predominant- Is there, or can there be, any place for ly for an elite of free men of aristocratic humanism in the world of the twenty- background and independent means ½rst century? After the appalling events who had the leisure for the pursuit of ex- of the past century, is there any ground cellence. It was predicated on the idea of left to believe that mankind may yet an inherent superiority of the Greek over come to regard the life and happiness the barbarian. It arose and developed in of human beings as a supreme value to an era of internecine war between the be cherished and promoted in every pos- Greek cities, and extended down to the sible way? time of the conquests of Alexander the These are some of the questions com- Great. It took for granted the existence prised in the broad general question of of war and the institution of human slav- whether humanism both as a concept ery as permanent features of human so- and a substantive ideal may still possess ciety. the power to help shape the course of The humanism that developed in re- human affairs. publican Rome rested on similar values. In the West, humanism ½rst came to The Romans of the republic were one of birth in Greece during the fourth and the most predatory peoples in world his- ½fth centuries b.c.e., in the age of Plato tory, as well as among the greatest mili- and Aristotle. It was the Sophists who, tary leaders, statesmen, empire builders, rulers, legislators, and administrators. In as teachers in the ½fth century, originat- b.c.e. ed humanism as a cultural-educational the ½rst century , during the ½nal years of the republic, before Julius Cae- sar’s heir Augustus acquired sole power, Perez Zagorin is Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Cicero, a Roman consul and member of History Emeritus at the University of Rochester the republican ruling class, de½ned hu- and a Fellow of the Shannon Center for Advanced manism in a manner that was to remain Studies at the University of Virginia. He has been influential for centuries. For him, hu- a Fellow of the American Academy since 1976. manism was an educational and cultural program and an ideal expressed in the © 2003 by the American Academy of Arts concept of humanitas. & Sciences Dædalus Fall 2003 87 Note by This Latin term designated a number the creation. But Scholastic humanism Perez of studies–philosophy, history, litera- was not a general social program based Zagorin ture, rhetoric, and training in oratory– on an ideal of human excellence; it was a that were considered to be the ingredi- select type of higher education designed ents of a liberal education, and it also for the minority of clergy who went to referred to the moral attributes of hu- university in order to be trained as the- maneness, philanthropy or benevolence, ologians and teachers or to take their gentleness, and kindness. Something of place as of½cials in papal and ecclesiasti- the essence of Ciceronian humanism cal government or in the expert service might be summed up in the words with of secular rulers. which the seventeenth-century English Of all the major versions of human- poet John Milton, who was a Christian ism, the Renaissance humanism that humanist, de½ned the nature of edu- developed in Italy during the fourteenth cation. In 1644, Milton wrote that “a and ½fteenth centuries has been the complete and generous education”–by most influential. The humanism of the which he meant the education of a gen- Renaissance was neither anti-Christian tleman–was one that “½ts a man to per- nor irreligious, but it centered increas- form justly, skillfully, and magnani- ingly upon human interests and moral mously all the of½ces, both private and concerns rather than religion. Human public, of peace and war.” dignity, the value of the active life in the There was also a medieval humanism, world, and man’s possession of free will whose character has most recently been to do good or evil were among the essen- traced out in the last works of the great tial premises of this humanism. And yet, English medievalist R. W. Southern. like the humanisms that preceded it, it This humanism appeared as part of the exempli½ed an elitist ideal; its highest renewal of civilization that followed the aim was the formation of Christian end of the Roman empire and pagan cul- gentlemen–classically educated, mor- ture in the West and the gradual emer- ally sound, accomplished in the arts of gence of a new Christian and feudalized speaking and writing, competent to ad- society in the earlier Middle Ages. The vise and serve in the governments of cathedral schools and the new universi- kings, princes, and cities, and possessed ties of Paris and some of the Italian cities of the manners to make a creditable ap- then became the centers for the three pearance at royal and princely courts. disciplines that constituted the bases of The conception of culture and edu- order and civilization in medieval Eu- cation that humanism propounded in rope: liberal arts, Roman and canon law, the ½fteenth and sixteenth centuries es- and theology. Along with these disci- tablished the languages, literature, and plines, the medieval study of the works thought of classical antiquity as the ba- of Aristotle in Latin translations was sis of a proper education in the Western perhaps the single most important intel- world. Compulsory Greek and Latin in lectual foundation of scholastic human- the schools was only one of its conse- ism. Another foundation was the belief quences. As time passed, and with the in the dignity of human nature, which advent of the European Enlightenment scholastic thinkers equated with the in the late seventeenth and eighteenth power of the human mind to perceive centuries, humanism became ever more the grandeur of the universe, the princi- independent of religion and sometimes ples of nature, and the divine purpose of af½liated with deism, religious indiffer-

88 Dædalus Fall 2003 ence, and unbelief. The principle of the Western culture, and of its withering Humanism dignity of man remained, but it was of- away during the past century. past & present ten absorbed into philosophies that were The most important philosophical opposed to religion, that exalted human discussion of humanism since the end of reason and science as the solvent of all World War II makes clear that a philoso- otherworldly beliefs and superstitions, phy of antihumanism has become a pre- and that enthroned humanity and its dominant trend in Western thought. progress as the supreme meaning of his- This discussion has taken place largely tory. among French thinkers, although it has During the nineteenth century, hu- also had a wide impact outside France in manist values had to confront the grow- the form of postmodernism. It began ing importance of the physical and bio- with the proclamation of humanism in logical sciences, the emergence of social the existentialist philosophy of Jean- sciences such as political economy and Paul Sartre and continued with Martin sociology, and the rivalry of new and Heidegger’s critical response to Sartre’s modern subjects that sought to gain proclamation and its subsequent influ- entry into the educational curriculum. ence. So by the end of the century, humanistic In 1946, in reply to objections from disciplines were only one strand in the communist and Christian critics that complex fabric of a liberal education. his philosophy pictured human life as This collapse of humanism was fore- ugly and meaningless, Sartre defended shadowed in the philosophy of Nietz- his views in a lecture af½rming that exis- sche, with its invocation of the will to tentialism was a type of humanism. The power and challenge to the belief in fundamental premises of his argument truth, and in the theories of Sigmund were that there is no God to tell us what Freud, which stressed the irrational we ought to do, that there is no human forces and sexual drives of the uncon- essence to de½ne our ends, and that scious in explaining human personality. man, thrown randomly into existence, is During the twentieth century the con- compelled to make his own life by his cept of man ceased to be dominated by personal choices and actions. humanistic assumptions, so man now Sartre’s humanism, it seems to me, is not only stood apart from God, but also, in general a very debilitated kind of hu- with the ascendancy of the naturalistic manism based on a number of nonse- perspective, ceased to be seen as a spe- quiturs. Among other failings, it is a hu- cial being. The eclipse of humanism manism totally without content, since it was largely completed by the enormous offers no objective reasons or principles and pointless slaughter of World War I for our decision to act in one way rather and the disillusionment that followed. than another. It calls upon us for a com- Thereafter, the Western faith in progress mitment, but not to anything in particu- was largely discarded, and with it the hu- lar, and without any principles of justi½- manistic belief in the dignity and nobili- cation. And when it does ½nally propose ty of man, which no longer seemed ten- such principles, as for example that it is able to most intellectuals. wrong to treat people with cruelty, it on- I have thought it necessary to present a ly imports them from traditional ethics. brief sketch of the history of humanism The year after Sartre’s lecture, Heideg- in order to convey an idea of the impos- ger wrote his Letter on Humanism at the ing place humanism once occupied in request of Jean Beaufret, a French disci-

Dædalus Fall 2003 89 Note by ple who regarded him as the greatest liv- From the 1950s and 1960s on, the Perez Zagorin ing philosopher. The main question most prominent French thinkers shared Beaufret put to Heidegger was: “How a common antihumanism, and, as the can we restore meaning to the word French philosopher Vincent Descombes ‘humanism’?” Beaufret’s aim in solicit- has observed, “humanism became a ing Heidegger’s views was partly to chal- term of ridicule . . . to be entered among lenge Sartre’s current ascendancy over the collection of discarded ‘isms.’” existentialism. But he also hoped that Among recent French thinkers, it is Mi- bringing the German philosopher into chel Foucault who is perhaps the best- the French discussion would help reha- known representative of antihumanism. bilitate Heidegger’s reputation, which It was Foucault, writing in The Order of had been deeply compromised by his Things, who declared the “death of man” previous endorsement of Hitler and Na- –and so became an international celeb- zism as the salvation of Germany and rity. The excessively abstract and over- the West. blown style of Foucault’s arguments, Heidegger’s well-known attitudes–his the vacuity of many of his generaliza- hatred of modernity, his certainty of the tions, and his many substantial factual decline of Western thought and culture, errors that numerous scholars have his assumption that he is the one philo- pointed out, show that he is far from sopher who preeminently understands being an accurate or trustworthy histo- what philosophic thinking is, and his rian. Hence, when he erroneously de- contempt for democracy, etc.–pervade clares in The Order of Things that the con- his Letter on Humanism. The Letter also ception of man is an invention of recent rests on a primordial concept of Being, date, no earlier than the end of the eigh- the conviction of the abandonment of teenth century, and goes on to voice the Being in Western philosophy, and the hope that man is nearing his end in phi- necessity of overcoming metaphysics. losophy and the human sciences, it can According to Heidegger, every type of only be a cause for surprise that his theo- humanism, whether Hellenic, Roman, ries have exerted such an influence upon Christian, or Marxist, places man at the literary and cultural studies, history, and center and claims to determine man’s sociology in the past three decades. essence. Yet each type, he claims, fails Part of the explanation, of course, is to ask about the truth of Being, and each the chastening effect of recent history. furthers man’s destructive aim of impos- After the Holocaust and the more recent ing his mastery upon the world and na- atrocities in Cambodia, Bosnia, and ture, the planetary domination of tech- Rwanda, many among us ½nd it intolera- nology, and what Heidegger laments as ble to hear mention of the dignity or no- man’s homelessness in the world. So in bility of man. Yet the principle of the response to Beaufret’s question about dignity of man remains an essential con- how to restore meaning to the word cept in any viable philosophy of human- ‘humanism,’ he suggests that it would ism for our time. be better to abandon the word altogeth- This principle does not, of course, de- er, because of the damage it has done in ny man’s animal traits, his kinship with turning philosophy away from Being. other living creatures, nor the fact that After the appearance in France of Hei- he is part of nature and came into exis- degger’s Letter, it is no wonder that the tence as a result of the creative process idea of humanism fell into discredit. of evolution that gave rise in time to life

90 Dædalus Fall 2003 in all its vast and awesome variety. The together in their differences as part of Humanism past & af½rmation of the dignity and special an overlapping consensus because they present position of man is based on reasons that share fundamental reasonable values of seem to me unquestionable. These are pluralism and mutual tolerance. Provid- that humans are by a long way the most ed, therefore, that institutional religion intelligent creatures who inhabit the renounces the support of the state and Earth and possibly also, so far as we recognizes freedom of conscience for know at present in our search for extra- everyone, humanism can not only coex- terrestrial life, the most intelligent ist on amicable terms with religion, but beings who exist in the universe. They should also ½nd it possible to enter into are also the only one of nature’s crea- dialogue with it on the basis of common tions on Earth who have fashioned pro- values that both of them af½rm. gressive moral codes ordaining love, I believe that the conception of human care, compassion, and concern for their rights is the best foundation for a new fellow creatures and other living things, humanism. In 1948, the United Nations and who by the exercise of their intelli- General Assembly unanimously adopted gence and through their exclusive and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, inestimable prerogative of language which asserts equal political, social, and have achieved a great, ever-growing economic rights for all human beings knowledge of the physical, social, and regardless of race, color, religion, and cultural worlds and of their own histori- ethnic membership. In relation to a re- cal past. newed humanism, the rights that people If a renewed humanism is to be possi- may justi½ably claim beyond those that ble, we cannot doubt that it has to be are already assured to them in contem- genuinely universal–something past porary democratic societies, and how far Western humanism never was. But to the principle of human rights can be ex- accomplish this universality, a new hu- panded without losing itself in utopi- manism must achieve a modus vivendi anism or coming into conflict with the with religion, of which, since the En- value of political freedom itself are both lightenment, Western humanism has questions to be decided by philosophical increasingly been an adversary. I think, and political debate. Such a humanism nevertheless, that an accord between hu- can be predicated only on democracy, manism and religion may be possible in because this is the sole system of govern- any society where, as in the contempo- ment that recognizes the freedom and rary Western world, the state and organ- rights of the individual and that pro- ized religion fully accept the principles vides for equal citizenship and peaceful and practice of religious, political, and change. Such a humanism would like- intellectual tolerance, freedom, and plu- wise uphold the principle of complete ralism. freedom of religion, condemn all reli- In taking this view, I ½nd support in gious violence and hatred, and work to- the American philosopher John Rawls’s ward tolerance and understanding be- conception of an “overlapping consen- tween different religious communities. sus.” In a liberal society, as he points out, Humanism also needs to be able to people may reasonably disagree in some take part in the discussion in contempo- of their basic beliefs and their concep- rary society that weighs the deep and tions of the good. But those who dis- troubling problems resulting from scien- agree can nonetheless live peaceably ti½c and technological advance against

Dædalus Fall 2003 91 Note by the hopeful prospects of human better- Perez Zagorin ment that science and technology create. It seems obvious to me that humanism must lay aside once and for all the hostil- ity and indifference that its representa- tives in the past have often shown to- ward science, in order to establish com- mon ground with science as one of the greatest intellectual achievements of mankind. As part of such an ideal, hu- manism would most certainly have to include an environmental ethic as an essential component of contemporary human values. Reflecting on the great history of hu- manism and its belief in human dignity, I cannot think that humanism has be- come an outdated philosophy. On the contrary, it seems to me that a renewed humanism, of which the principle of human rights is the germ, would incor- porate many of the aspirations of the world’s people in this era of global inter- action and communication. With the French poet Francis Ponge, I am con- vinced that “l’homme est l’avenir de l’homme”–man is the future of man. I also agree with the eminent French his- torian Fernand Braudel, who, in an essay some years ago on the history of civiliza- tion, noted the unity and diversity of the world and voiced the need for “a modern Humanism”: a way of hoping or wishing men to be brothers with one another, of wishing that civilizations, each on its own account and all together, should save themselves and save us. It means accepting and hoping that the doors of the future should be wide open to the present beyond all the failures, declines, and catastrophes predicted by strange prophets. The present cannot be the boundary which all centuries, heavy with eternal tragedy, see before them as an obstacle, but which the hope of man, ever since man has been, has succeeded in overcoming.

92 Dædalus Fall 2003 President Patricia Meyer Spacks Executive Of½cer Leslie Cohen Berlowitz Vice President Louis W. Cabot Secretary Emilio Bizzi Treasurer John S. Reed Editor Steven Marcus Vice President, Midwest Center Martin Dworkin Vice President, Western Center John R. Hogness

Dædalus Board of Editors Committee Steven Marcus, Chair, Joyce Appleby, Russell Banks, Stanley Hoffmann, Donald Kennedy, Martha C. Nussbaum, Neil J. Smelser, Rosanna Warren, Steven Weinberg; ex of½cio: Patricia Meyer Spacks, Leslie C. Berlowitz

Committee on Publications & Public Relations Guy W. Nichols, Chair, Emilio Bizzi, Joan Bok, Jesse H. Choper, Denis Donoghue, Jerome Kagan, Jerrold Meinwald; ex of½cio: Patricia Meyer Spacks, Steven Marcus, Leslie C. Berlowitz

Inside back cover: dna testing for a murder investigation, 1987. “Science doesn’t always have the ½nal answers the law wants, or not when it wants them; and even when science has the answers, the adversarial process can seriously impede or distort communication.” See Susan Haack on Trials & tribulations: science in the courts, pages 54–63. Photograph © 2003 by Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos.

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 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