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Nautilus Magazine WHAT WAR IS GOOD FOR WE DREAM TO SOLVE PROBLEMS HOW WE’LL FIND ALIENS How conflicts advanced science The science behind sleeping on it Where space research is headed The Novel Machine CAN A COMPUTER DO DICKENS? P.20 Issue 36 Science Connected NAUTIL.US The power of manyfive 5 is an impact media foundation connecting thinkers and doers to co-create a more sustainable future. Join us here: fivemedia.com Issue 36 Contents Editor’s Note 5 It’s a Wonderful Life BY KEVIN BERGER Reader Response 7 Comments and letters about stories from print issue 35 Preludes 12 The trouble with the search for ET; how an imaginary friend can help you; why fish should own the ocean; why our solar system is special; and chimpanzee and ant societies Cover Story LITERATURE 20 Why Computers Will Never Write Good Novels The power of narrative flows only from the human brain BY ANGUS FLETCHER The Last Word 108 Heidi Hammel The planetary astronomer on the enigmatic “ice giants” Neptune and Uranus INTERVIEW BY COREY S. POWELL COVER Jonathon Rosen 1 Professor Stéphanie Lacour holds the Bertarelli Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, based at Campus Biotech in Geneva. A pioneer in the fi eld of soft bioelectronic interfaces, her lab’s focus is on designing devices that have mechanical properties close to those of the host biological tissue so that wearable and implantable man-made systems become truly biointegrated. IDEAS SPARKED KNOWLEDGE SHARED RESEARCH ADVANCED THERAPIES DEVELOPED Founded in 2010, the Bertarelli Foundation’s neuroscience research programme has, as its guiding principle, a commitment to funding research that breaks down barriers across geographies, institutions and disciplines. By fostering new collaborations, the #BertarelliNeuro programme is helping to bridge the gap between basic and translational neuroscience, and its teams are addressing medical issues that, once solved, will have life-changing outcomes for patients. www.fondation-bertarelli.org Issue 36 Features LITERATURE NEUROSCIENCE 30 Literature Should Be 60 Dreaming Is Like Taking LSD Taught Like Science A new theory explains that dreaming opens our minds to unexplored possibilities This renegade professor says literature is a BY ANTONIO ZADRA & ROBERT STICKGOLD machine that accelerates the human brain BY KEVIN BERGER ENVIRONMENT LITERATURE 68 We Crush, Poison, and 36 Who Said Nobody Read Destroy Insects at Isaac Newton? Our Own Peril It’s a myth that legendary works in science Insects are escape artists. Now they face a aren’t read threat more pernicious than predation. BY CALEB SCHARF BY JOHN HAINZE HEALTH ANTHROPOLOGY 42 The Doctor Will 74 Why a Universal Society Sniff You Now Is Unattainable Step aside, Dr. House, Deep Nose will one day Our minds evolved in an Us-vs-Them be the best diagnostician in medicine universe of our own making BY LINA ZELDOVICH BY MARK W. MOFFETT SOCIOLOGY SOCIOLOGY Professor Stéphanie Lacour holds the Bertarelli Chair in 48 We Need More Feminist Dads 82 Humans Have Gotten Nicer Neuroprosthetic Technology at the École Polytechnique Fédérale It’s not easy to overcome the masculine and Better at Making War de Lausanne, based at Campus Biotech in Geneva. A pioneer in the conception of fatherhood Historian Margaret MacMillan on fi eld of soft bioelectronic interfaces, her lab’s focus is on designing BY JORDAN SHAPIRO devices that have mechanical properties close to those of the host what war reveals about human nature biological tissue so that wearable and implantable man-made BY STEVE PAULSON systems become truly biointegrated. EARTH SCIENCE 54 Digging Deeper Into ASTRONOMY IDEAS SPARKED Holocaust History 90 If Aliens Exist, Here’s How KNOWLEDGE SHARED What geoscientists are uncovering in We’ll Find Them Eastern Europe Two esteemed astrophysicists peer into the RESEARCH ADVANCED BY VIRAT MARKANDEYA future of space exploration THERAPIES DEVELOPED BY MARTIN REES & MARIO LIVIO Founded in 2010, the Bertarelli Foundation’s neuroscience research programme has, as its guiding principle, a commitment to funding research that breaks down barriers across geographies, institutions and disciplines. By fostering new collaborations, the #BertarelliNeuro programme is helping to bridge the gap between basic and translational neuroscience, and its teams are addressing medical issues that, once solved, will have life-changing outcomes for patients. www.fondation-bertarelli.org 3 EDITORIAL BOARD OF ADVISORS NautilusNext CEO David Agus Professor of Medicine and David Kaiser Germeshausen Professor Nicholas White Engineering, University of Southern of the History of Science, MIT California Publisher & Editorial Director Lisa Kaltenegger Associate Professor of John Steele Bob Bazell Adjunct Professor of Astronomy, Cornell University and Director of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental the Carl Sagan Institute Editor Biology, Yale University Kevin Berger Sep Kamvar LG Associate Professor of Media Christina Beck Head of Science & Arts and Sciences, MIT; Director of the Social Managing Editor Corporate Communications, The Max Computing Group, MIT Media Lab Liz Greene Planck Society Associate Editor Sean Carroll Senior Research Associate, David Krakauer President, Santa Fe Institute Brian Gallagher Department of Physics, California Institute of Technology Ben Lamm Founder and CEO of HyperGiant Copy Editor Teresa Cirolia Jennifer Dunne Professor and V.P. for Barnaby Marsh Senior Advisor to the Science, Santa Fe Institute President, John Templeton Foundation Design Tasnuva Elahi Josh Empson Managing Director, Gayil Nalls Artist, Philosopher, and Writer Providence Equity Partners Elisa New Powell M. Cabot Professor of Bran Ferren Co-Chairman, American Literature, Harvard University Applied Minds, Inc. Gerry Ohrstrom Private Investor Stuart Firestein Chairman of the and Producer; Former Chairman of G.L. Department of Biological Sciences, Ohrstrom & Co. and the Ohrstrom Foundation Columbia University Jerry Sabloff External Professor and Past Jessica Flack Professor and Director, President, Santa Fe Institute Collective Computation Group, Santa Fe Institute Paula Sabloff External Professor, Santa Fe Institute Peter Galison Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics, Caleb Scharf Director of Astrobiology, Harvard University Columbia University Thomas Campbell Jackson Venture Ian Tattersall Curator Emeritus, American Partner, Easton Capital Investment Group Museum of Natural History Beth Jacobs Managing Partner, Geoffrey West Distinguished Professor and Excellentia Global Partners Past President, Santa Fe Institute Published by: Copyright © 2021. All rights reserved. 4 Editor'S Note It’s a Wonderful Life BY KEVIN BERGER E NEED WONDER in our days.” That’s Angus Fletcher, an English professor at Ohio State University, telling W Nautilus why literature matters. Why science matters. And, more provocatively, how science evolved from literature. Who can argue with him? Well, you might argue with Fletcher’s declaration that literature “is a machine designed to work in concert with another machine, our brain,” as he states in our interview, “Why Literature Should Be Taught Like Science.” And that’s just Fletcher’s opening salvo. In our cover story, “Why Computers Will Never Write Good Novels,” he writes that AI boosters who are convinced Hal will one day write beau- tiful fiction and music, are perpetrating “a hoax, a complete cheat, a total scam, a fiction of the grossest kind.” In short, Fletcher says, computers, based on their design, do not perform causal reasoning. Only the human brain does. Which is why only humans can write literature. Causal reasoning is the engine of the human brain, which generates narratives to guide us through the world. Narra- tives, in life and literature, despite how fantastical they may be, fuel “plots, characters, and nar- rators, which give us literary style and voice,” Fletcher says. “The best that computers can do is spit out word soups.” Fletcher was born in England’s Lake District, stomping ground of Romantic poets Word- sworth and Coleridge. He came to America to attend college, supported by the Marines’ ROTC program—“I came up with this fake American accent to avoid being attacked by my drill instruc- tor!”—studied neuroscience, worked in a neurophysiology lab, got a Ph.D. in literature at Yale, worked as a story consultant for films and TV, and is now settled at Ohio State as a professor of “story science.” The wide aperture of Fletcher’s intellect, focused with a unique perspective, puts him right at home in Nautilus, where science and art come into view through the same lens. In this issue’s “Who Said Nobody Read Isaac Newton,” Caleb Scharf, our favorite astrobiologist, who was inspired to study science by his parents, professors of art history, dusts off the myth that origi- nal works in science, and literature, go unread. Important works most certainly get read, Scharf writes, “or how else would we ever consider them important?” That people love to read challenging and original works is a clarion message in today’s cultural noise about shrinking attention spans. It’s a bell we ring with every issue of Nautilus. But wait, before I go, let’s get back to wonder. Heidi Hammel, whose insights close this issue, is a planetary astronomer with a long and distinguished career studying Uranus and Neptune. Why has she spent decades studying the “ice giants” of our solar system that neither other astronomers nor the public seems to care about? Because, she says, they “are enigmas.” Why do we need wonder? Because we need science. 5 OUR PLANET’S JOIN US FOR OUR OCEAN UNDERSTOOD #OZOCEANS2020 THROUGH CAMPAIGN as we live stream TECHNOLOGICAL never-before seen ADVANCEMENT, environments in INTELLIGENT Australia’s deep waters OBSERVATION, AND OPEN SHARING OF INFORMATION schmidtocean.org Readers Respond Comments and letters about stories from print issue 35. “THE SYNCHRONICITY OF Energy transforms from one form the smell inside the old Peking WOLFGANG PAULI AND CARL to another, we just may not have the Hotel when I stayed there in 1975. JUNG” perceptual savvy to understand the It smelled ancient, a mixture of I read Jung’s collected works many non-physical forms.
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