dependent on U.S. charity and on em- and Weinberger say they wanted to visit and Weinberger are forced by the ployment at the military base. “The Russia “to see if the billions being spent scope of their travels to miniaturize tragedy of Kwajalein and the Marshall on preventing nuclear terrorism . . . were their account of each facility, by juxta- Islands,” the authors say, “was that the really making the world any safer”—as posing so many sites they are able to only thing worse than the American if in just a few days they could find out convey the surprising disconnected- presence would be the absence of the anything that countless government ness of people at each facility from American presence.” studies have not already found. In fact, the people at all the other facilities. The chapter on the authors’ visit to they were denied access to almost every- In addition, readers get a sense of Iran (approved by the Iranian govern- thing they wanted to see in Russia. The the breathtaking scale of the nuclear ment at the last minute, just as their chapter jumbles secondhand accounts weapons enterprise that has been built flight to Tehran was about to depart) is of the Russian nuclear complex with sto- in the shadows since the early 1940s. fascinating, because we at least get to ries of brief encounters with uncoopera- It is a project on the scale of the pyra- hear Iranians defend their right to enrich tive Russian officials. The chapter is also mids, and if Hodge and Weinberger uranium—a side of the story we seldom marred by the patronizing attitude that are to be believed, no one quite knows encounter in the American press. The the authors adopt toward their hosts: For what to do with it anymore. chapter on Russia, on the other hand, example, the Minister of Atomic Energy is weak. After the Cold War, the United does not just have bad teeth, he suffers Hugh Gusterson is a professor of anthropology and States began giving millions of dollars from “Soviet dentistry”; and, although sociology at George Mason University. He is the a year to the Russian nuclear weapons Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes go unmen- author of Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Labora- complex to help with security upgrades tioned, Boris Yeltsin is “erratic, binge- tory at the End of the Cold War (University of and to give Russian weapons scientists a drinking president Boris Yeltsin.” California Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb: reason to stay in place rather than moon- What are we left with at the end Portraits of America’s Nuclear Complex (Uni- light for Iran or North Korea. Hodge of our nuclear tour? Although Hodge versity of Minnesota Press, 2004).

NEUROHISTORY very bones of the animals he studied; history thus had consequence for all organisms, not just human beings. In Recovering the Past On the Origin of Species, he reflected Robert J. Richards precisely on the implications of this new understanding: ON DEEP HISTORY AND THE BRAIN. Daniel Lord Smail. xiv + 271 pp. University of When we no longer look at an California Press, 2008. $21.95. organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when he doyen of modern historical and so he explicitly rejected specula- we regard every production of na- research, the great 19th-century tion about what is usually and anoma- ture as one which has had a his- scholar Leopold von Ranke lously called “prehistory,” that period T tory; . . . when we thus view each (1795–1886), maintained that history prior to the advent of writing. organic being, how far more inter- should be conducted as a science Ranke’s conviction reflected a gen- esting, I speak from experience, (Wissenschaft), a systematic inquiry eral assumption of 19th-century schol- will the study of natural history based on the kind of evidence that ars, especially those in the German become! would allow the explanation of tradition: namely, that language was a particular events. He also thought distinctive trait of human beings and Daniel Lord Smail, in his intrigu- of it as an art, one that recreated in was a causal factor in becoming hu- ing little book On Deep History and the imagination the individual actions man. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Brain, recognizes Darwin’s accom- and accomplishments of human (1770–1831), in his Lectures on the Phi- plishment and performs the reciprocal beings. But as science or as art, history losophy of World History, argued further task of showing the relevance of biol- had the aim, as Ranke famously put that the rational spirit arose only when ogy for history. He thereby attempts to it, to demonstrate “wie es eigentlich the writing of history itself did. In his render moot the 19th-century concept gewesen [ist]” (how it actually was). view, the period prior to the advent of of prehistory. In Ranke’s view, written docu- writing existed outside the sphere of As introduction to his study, Smail ments—letters, diaries, government history proper, because human beings describes the billowing spread of dispatches and civic records—formed did not yet have the tools to recognize ­Ranke’s restrictive methods during the indispensable kind of evidence re- a past and its bearing on the present the late 19th and early 20th centuries. quired for this purpose. Documents so as to formulate laws and establish Rankean history furnishes the foil to allowed one to determine those plans a state. For Hegel it was a period of Smail’s argument. Smail contends that and schemes that revealed human “prehistory” (Vorgeschichte). evolutionary considerations and relat- motivation, intention and judgment, In the same year as Hegel’s death, ed advances in the neurosciences offer either directly or as inferred between the young Charles Darwin (1809–1882) ways of traversing the divide between the lines. Without documents, he be- embarked on his Beagle voyage. The the earliest eras of human appearance lieved, we could have no reliable evi- theory that he wrought in the wake and the documented periods of human dence of human thought and action; of his travels infused history into the history. The central part of his book

418 American Scientist, Volume 96 © 2008 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction with permission only. Contact [email protected]. sketches the explanatory possibilities of tistical analyses (as applied to Homer- province of historians, whereas natu- the new sciences—especially as instan- ic exaggerations, say) and a variety of ral scientists have concerned them- tiated in sociobiology and theories of other means to extend the scope of a selves with biological evolution and brain development. Those disciplines recoverable past. Few historians today emotional development. provide instruments not only for cap- would hesitate to use the techniques Some scholars, including Stephen turing the early stages of human be- pioneered by Thucydides, along with Jay Gould, have suggested that at a coming but also for enriching our un- the several others that have subse- certain point in human evolution, derstanding of even those periods that quently become available. Moreover, Lamarckian cultural acquisition and have been amply documented. the metaphysical justifications stem- inheritance took over from Darwin- Since Ranke’s time, historians have ming from German idealism for re- ian natural selection of genetically generally constructed their explana- stricting historical analysis to the writ- based traits. Smail believes this to be tory narratives on a foundation of ten word have completely evanesced. a too-hasty abandonment of Darwin- documents, but not exclusively so. Smail, of course, knows this. His aim ism. Drawing on ideas from Donald Even the father of scientific history, in specifying the Rankean restriction Campbell, David Sloan Wilson, Rich- Thucydides, showed how the histori- seems more to make obvious the util- ard Dawkins, Clifford Geertz, and an might reach back to undocumented ity of evolutionary theory and neuro- Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson, he periods (for him, the times prior to biology for augmenting the historian’s proposes a role for the natural selec- the Peloponnesian War) to recover a repertoire of investigative resources. tion of cultural traits. reasonable portrait of that past. In ar- The chapters that describe these The process Smail suggests would guing that no great enterprises could modern sciences are intelligently done, not be biological but would instead have occurred prior to the war that providing an account that is detailed occur through conceptual variation he described, Thucydides employed enough to satisfy curious readers in- and selective retention of ideas. Im- archaeological remains (including ev- terested in exploring these matters portant cultural acquisitions—for in- idence from skeletons), sociological further. The heart of Smail’s proposal stance, an early Indian tribe’s adopt- inferences (from habits of rustics to for rethinking historical techniques ing a new design for arrowheads—can those of city-dwelling ancestors, for concerns overcoming two barriers: be regarded as the result of many example), economic analyses (such as that between biological evolution and chance trials, with the most success- lack of accumulated capital for great cultural evolution, and that between ful innovations spreading through the undertakings), linguistic implications emotional development and rational group. Smail acknowledges that at (for instance, the early Greeks having thinking. Usually cultural evolution some point, one generation would di- no common name for themselves), sta- and rational thinking have been the rectly teach the next how to construct

www.americanscientist.org © 2008 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction 2008 September–October 419 with permission only. Contact [email protected]. the new implements, but he thinks abandoned, although most historians cisely how biology matters to history. that the early introduction could best will hesitate to embrace a construction Smail, though, has made a start. be understood as a Darwinian pro- of the past driven by theories danc- cess. This means that in preliterate ing on the border of what used to be cultures—or even in fully literate called psychohistory, especially when Robert J. Richards is Morris Fishbein Professor of ones—new discoveries can profitably the sources themselves (such as socio- the History of Science and Medicine; professor of history, philosophy and psychology; and director of be construed as resulting from a pro- biology and cerebral determination) the Fishbein Center for the History of Science and cess of cognitive variation and selec- remain highly contested within the Medicine at the University of Chicago. His most tive retention, a process isomorphic sciences. Darwin clearly demonstrated recent book is The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst with the biological one. For historians, how history mattered to biology; we Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary the payoff is this: New cultural shifts await a new Ranke to show more pre- Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2008). need not be attributed to any one indi- vidual or the work of a great person; rather, they can be understood as the MATHEMATICS work of a great process. This kind of Darwinian analysis, in Smail’s estimation, can be pushed Applied Geometry even further back, so that the very Stan Wagon receptivity to cultural learning itself might be regarded as a biological ad- aptation. Thus the human brain seems HOW ROUND IS YOUR CIRCLE?: Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet. John designed by natural selection to be re- Bryant and Chris Sangwin. xxii + 306 pp. Princeton University Press, 2008. $29.95. sponsive to oral communication and to organize that communication, if Noam he great power of computers The discussion of roundness leads Chomsky is right, into general gram- to model various aspects of naturally to a discussion of curves of matical patterns. However, the spe- T geometry and mechanics has constant width, and that is very well cific language and grammar learned made it possible to visualize things done here, with lots of detail. The au- depend on quite contingent social and quickly and in useful and innovative thors describe two applications—the geographical circumstances. Smail ways. But nothing beats the con­ design of the British 50-pence coin (a comparably argues that evolution has struction of a physical model. And 7-sided curve of constant width) and instilled general synaptic connections when the model conforms exactly to the design of the rotary (Wankel) en- for cultural learning, but a given cul- the mathematical prediction, it is very gine used to power some cars. Bry- tural milieu inscribes in the develop- satisfying. How Round Is Your Circle?, ant and Sangwin, who are British, ing brain of the child specific kinds of by John Bryant and Chris Sangwin, is are probably not aware of a beautiful circuits. These circuits enable what he a guide to making physical models of American application: In San Francisco calls “psychotropic” sensitivity—that various phenomena of geometry that there are manhole covers in the shape is, emotional reactions to such general are related to serious applications, of Reuleaux triangles (see image at cultural institutions as dance, ritual, both historical and contemporary. The www.drainspotting.com/view_photo. games and so forth. An example (if mathematics required is elementary: php?photoid=2662), which are easily I understand him rightly) might be standard geometry and trigonometry, distinguished from round covers, yet something like this: Those children with occasional bits of calculus. will not fall through the hole. brought up on computer games that Let’s start with the book’s title, which The authors do discuss in detail a require a quick response to rapidly is connected to the problem of how to ­little-known application: a device that changing target opportunities may determine whether a roundish object can drill square holes. I was aware have their hormonal juices primed so is exactly round, to a certain tolerance. that Reuleaux triangles could be used that as young adults they are emotion- This turns out to be much trickier than ally adapted to the requirements of one would expect. For a start, there are modern warfare. Military historians the curves of constant width (such as might thus have another conceptual the Reuleaux triangle, which is made resource for understanding the char- by drawing three 60-degree arcs of a acter of contemporary combat. circle centered at the vertices of an equi- Smail is quite right that most his- lateral triangle). Because one can make torians deploy, in the construction of such curves with many bumps, a de- their narratives, some general psycho- vice that just checks several diameters logical assumptions. So it would seem for equality can be fooled. The authors the mark of historiographic wisdom describe various ways in which one to reform those assumptions in light might try to confirm roundness, but of contemporary science. Yet the con- they all have drawbacks, and when it clusions he draws from modern evo- comes to the definitive answer, Bryant lutionary theory and neurobiology re- and Sangwin admit that it takes very main quite general and tentative. The complicated machinery to perform a This device, based on a variation of the Reu- abstemious Rankean mode of histori- proper check (basically by rotating the leaux triangle, drills holes that are perfectly cal investigation has long since been given object around an axis). square. From How Round Is Your Circle?

420 American Scientist, Volume 96 © 2008 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction with permission only. Contact [email protected].