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Home , Martin Gardner

A ConversationWith Martin Gardner

AnthonyBarcellos

On the last day of Februaryof 1979,Martin Gardner was interviewedby the Two-YearCollege Mathematics Journal. The journal's interviewerwas assistedby a panelconsisting of the TYCMJ editor, Donald Albers; W. H. Freemanmathemat- ics editor,Peter Renz; and mathematiciansRonald Graham, of Bell Laboratories, and StanislawM. Ulam,of the Universityof Floridaat Gainesville.Gardner lookedback overhis twenty-twoyears as themathematical games columnist for ScientificAmerican and forwardto hissixty-fifth birthday and possibleretirement.

Originof "Mathematical Games"

Barcellos: How did a philosophystudent at the Universityof Chicagoeventually find himselfwriting about mathematicalgames and recreationsfor "ScientificAmerican"? Gardner:It was a combinationof a lifelonginterest in mathematics,without any formaltraining, and just a seriesof accidents. When I was in highschool, my great love was mathematics,and thatwas my highschool major. My hopes wereto becomea physicist.I wrote to Caltech,which was whereI wantedto go,and found thatI had to spendtwo years in collegebefore they would take me. So I wentto theUniversity of Chicago, and thereI gothooked on thephilosophy of science. So insteadof transferringto Caltech I just stayedon at the universityand got a bachelor'sdegree. After I graduatedI wentinto journalism, and thenspent four yearsin theNavy. After that I wentback to Chicagoand did somegraduate work in ,but didn'tget any higherdegree. Then I wentto New York to becomea free-lancewriter, and forthe first eight years there I was earningmy livingwriting for a magazinefor childrencalled HumptyDumpty; I did their .And thenI soldan articleon thehexaflexagon to ScientificAmerican.

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions B. Youjust wroteit and sentit offto them? G. I had sold themone previousarticle on logic machines,so I queriedthem aboutthis second piece, explained what a flexagonwas, and theysaid, "Go ahead." So I madea tripto Princetonand interviewedJohn Tukey and BryantTuckerman; theyand ArthurStone and physicistRichard Feynman were the four who did the pioneerwork on hexaflexagonswhen they were undergraduates at Princeton. After thatpiece ran in theScientific American, Gerard Piel, the publisher, called me in and askedme if I thoughtthere was enoughmaterial in thefield of recreational mathematicsto justifya monthlyfeature. At thattime I don'tthink I ownedany bookson recreationalmath at all, but I knewthere was a big fieldout there.I rushedaround New York and boughtall themajor references I could find,like Ball's MathematicalRecreations and Essays, and starteda library.I turnedin a column,Gerry Piel likedit, and thatwas thestart of mycolumn. It was Gerry Piel'sidea. I mustsay thisis aboutthe time that Newman had broughtout The Worldof Mathematics.Nobody expected that these four volumes would become a bestseller, but theydid. Theywent through innumerable printings. So GerryPiel suddenly realizedthere was a tremendousmarket out there.It cameas sortof a . I have enjoyeddoing the column["Mathematical Games"] because I love mathematics,and I havea prettygood head for it in general.The factthat I really don'tknow too muchabout mathematics, I think, works to myadvantage: If I can'tunderstand what I'm writingabout, why my readers can't either. B. Can you explainwhat it is aboutmathematics that makes you like it so much? G. I can'tsay anything different from what mathematicians have said before.It's just thepatterns, and theirorder-and their beauty: The wayit all fitstogether so it all comesout rightin the end. It exercisesyour reason. Almost all the great mathematicianssaid somethinglike that. B. How do you chooseyour topics? G. Well,it's hard to say. I have a lot of thingsin mind.I have a big fileof possiblefuture topics. I tryto picka topicthat is as differentas possiblefrom the lastfew so thatI getmaximum variety from month to month-sortof a surprise element.And thenI tryto picktopics that are halfrecreational mathematics but also lead intowhat I thinkis significantmathematics. B. How didpeople react to your April Fool's joke in theApril 1975 issue? Werethey mostlyamused or mostlydistressed? G. I thinkthat eventually they were mostly amused, but it cameas a tremendous surpriseto me and also to theeditors of themagazine; because when I turnedin thecolumn it seemedinconceivable to me thatanyone could take it veryseriously. I gotseveral thousand letters on it,and thething that startled me mostwas thatI was gettingletters from people who took it all seriouslyexcept for one itemin the -columnthat was in theirspeciality. For example,I got about a thousandletters fromphysicists; and a typicalletter would say, "I enjoyedyour column very much

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and you're doing us a great serviceby lettingus know about these new breakthroughs,but I thinkyou make a terriblemistake in demolishingrelativity." Andthen there would follow four or fivepages of elaborate diagrams showing why myparadox was not a paradoxafter all. The map-coloringthing drew the most letters.A lotof people colored the map and thensent me thecolored map. By the way,that hoax is stillgoing on: Abouta yearago somebodysent me a clipping froman Australianpaper announcing the factthat the four-colortheorem had been provedby Appeland Haken; and thensome reader wrote in and said that thisproof couldn't possibly be truebecause had publisheda mapwhich was a counterexample.

Albers: Amongyourmany columns are thereone or twothat you are especiallyproud of? G. I particularlyenjoy writing columns that overlap with philosophical issues. For example,I did a columna fewyears ago on a marvelousparadox called New- comb'sparadox, in decisiontheory. It's a veryintriguing paradox and I'm notsure thatit's even yet resolved. And then every once in a whileI geta sortof scoop. The lastscoop that I gotwas whenI heardabout the public-key cryptograph system at MIT. I realizedwhat a big breakthroughthis was and based a columnon it,and thatwas thefirst publication the general public had on it.[The system produces a code thatis, in practice,impossible to break.] B. Do you get manyscoops? G. No, thathappens very rarely. A. Besides all the standardbooks on recreationalmathematics you must have developedother more arcane sources, and also, obviously,a networkof correspondents and consultants.

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions G. That'sright. Aside from the books-and I tryto buyall thebooks that come out on recreationalmath-the second big source is, of course,periodicals. I subscribeto aboutten journals that publish recreational problems, including, of course,the Journal of . The thirdmajor sourceis just a big correspondencewith readers who send me theirideas. It developedvery soon once the columnbecame popular and people interestedin recreationalmath started writingto me. Then if there'ssomething that I don'tquite understand, I rely on mathematiciansthat I' know,like Stan Ulam and Ron Graham,to giveme an opinion.

Pseudoscience

B. In "Fads and Fallacies"you said, "It is notat all amusingwhen people are misled byscientific claptrap." Do you thinkthings have gotten any bettersince you wrotethat in theearly fifties, or arepeople moresusceptible to than ever before? G. Oh, I thinkthings have gotten tremendously worse in thepast twenty years as faras scienceis concerned.I don'tdiscern any great increase in pseudomathemat- ics. And I don't knowwhy that is. Thereare alwayspeople aroundwho are trisectingthe angle and thingslike that; and, of course,I hear fromthem occasionally.But the interest in pseudoscienceon thepart of the general public has been on an incrediblerise. I have oftenthought of doinga sequel to Fads and Fallacies,but I haven'thad enoughtime. John Wheeler's blast at the AAAS (AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Science)is thefirst time, I think, thata majorscientist has takena strongposition on the rise of pseudoscience. Wheelerhad beenattending a conferencein Switzerland.He was speakingon the subjectof quantummechanics and ,and a parapsychologistrushed up to himafterward, embraced him, and said,"I'm so happy,Dr. Wheeler,to learn that you think quantum mechanicsprovides an explanationfor phenomena."Poor Wheeler was takenaback and realizedfor the first time that the papers he had been writinghad been picked up and misinterpretedby the parapsychologists-andthat they were quoting him all overthe place as justifica- tion.So whenWheeler got back and attendedthe AAAS conferencein Houston and foundhimself on thesame panel with Puthoff and Targof StanfordResearch Institute,*who lecturedon clairvoyancetests, and ,a parapsychologistfrom Maimonides, he issueda strongstatement which started out by sayingthat if he had knownthat they were on thepanel he wouldn'thave come. In thepast ten years the situation has gottenso muchworse that funding has been divertedinto crazytheories. He pointedout thatwe now have two thousand professionalastronomers whereas there are twentythousand professional astrolo- gers. So he thoughtit was time for the AAAS to reconsiderwhether the parapsychologistsshould have a specialaffiliation with the organization [AAAS].

* Not affiliatedwith .

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mathematicians and the Public B. ShermanStein wants to knowif you thinkmathematicians are doinganything wrongin theirpublic relations and whetherother scientists or disciplinesdo it better. G. That'sa toughone, because almost all ofthe really exciting research going on in mathematicsis notthe sort of thingthat the public can understand.It takesa considerableknowledge of mathematicsto know what the breakthroughsare, whereasbig breakthroughs in biology and manyother fields are popularizedfairly easily.Certainly mathematicians like Sherman Stein have done a marvelousjob of doingpopular articles on the subject,and books thatthe laymancan read and understand;but I reallydon't know what could be done thatisn't already being done. Ulam: Well,I thinkthat you, Martin, do that.In fact, yesterday Ron Graham gave a marvelouslecture about some esoteric question; and I waswondering during it: Well, whydevote so muchingenuity? Then, I rememberedwhat, I think,Fourier or Laplace wrote,that mathematics-one reason for its being-is to defend the honor of the human mind.And yourcolumn does that,defends the honor-maybealso the sense of humor-ofthe human brain. G. Why,thank you. Well, it wouldbe goodif other science magazines would run similarcolumns on mathematics,and perhapsthey will. Right now Timemagazine is makingpreparations for a new magazinedevoted to science,to be editedby Leon Jaroff.I think he's planningto have somesort of a departmentdevoted to reportingon mathematics.I hope it goesthrough, because I thinkLeon Jaroffwill do a verygood job on it; and it willfill a placethat Omni should have filled, but I don'tthink quite does it,because the publisher, Guccione, is pressingfor more and moreemphasis on theparanormal. B. Ifperhaps the scientific community made a greatereffort to tellthe public what they'reup toand what's going on, it would make people appreciative ofwhat science is as opposedto whatis beingladled out in themedia. G. Yes, I thinkso. However,I can understandwhy scientists are reluctantto take timeoff from their work in orderto appearon a TV program,let's say, or writea populararticle attacking pseudoscience. The situationhas gottenso bad nowthat I thinkyou may see moreand moreof themtaking a littletime for public relations, but so faronly a verysmall number do that. and his writingsabout Velikovskyis an exampleof an astronomertaking the timeto respondto Veli- kovsky.Most astronomerswouldn't want to wastetime even meeting Velikovsky. Saganhas a bookcoming out, by theway, a collectionof essays;and a portionof thebook is devotedentirely to pseudoscience-notjust Velikovsky,but othersas well. A. It seemsto me you're saying there's a responsibilitytoknow what the opposition is up to thatscientists have perhaps ignored. G. Yes, I thinkso. The otherday I was readingsome old essaysby T. H. Huxley, and I noticedquite a numberof them deal with what he regardedas pseudoscience.

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Huxley,as youknow, was one of thegreat popularizers of science,and notonly a good geologistand biologist,but also a veryskillful writer. He wrotequite a numberof articlesthat were specific exposes of attackson thetheory of evolution and otherkinds of pseudoscience. Peter Renz: Martin,I wonderif you could mentionsome books or magazinesthat you thinkwould be particularlyattractive to people whoare interestedin recreational mathematics. G. Certainlythe great English classic is Ball's book on recreationalmath. And thenKasner and Newmandid a marvelousjob ofpopularizing modern mathemat- ics in theirMathematics and the Imagination.It's not so much recreationalmath, althoughthey have somein it. It'sjust a veryexciting and well-writtensurvey of certainaspects of modernmathematics. And Honsbergerhas writtentwo books calledMathematical Gems that I thinkare excellent.

Adviceto Teachers

A. We as teachersare involved,in a way,in an ongoingpublic relationseffort with our students.What advice can you give to teachersof mathematicsto make their subjectmore interesting? G. Well,I can onlyrepeat what I've said beforein theintroductions to someof my collections,and thatis thatI've alwaysfelt that a teachercan introduce recreationalmath; and I'm definingit in thevery broad sense to includeanything thathas a spiritof play about it. I don'tknow of any betterway to hook the interestsof the students. I think teachers are beginning to discoverthat it does have pedagogicalvalue. And successfultextbooks like Jacobs's Mathematics, A Human Endeavorare heavilyloaded with recreational math. A. Do you thinkthat this [recreational math] will sell betterthan the "applications" approachthat people are trottingout now? G. I thinkthe two should go together.I certainlydon't think a teachershould spendall thetime on puzzles,of course;then the whole thing becomes trivial. If mathcan be appliedsomehow that's useful in thechild's experience and thingscan be introducedso they'rechallenging and havea playaspect, I thinkthe two sort of go together.And we'reentering a revolutionnow where everybody's going to own a pocketcomputer. This is anotherimportant aspect of thewhole thing. Kids love to workthings out on a programmablecomputer. So I thinkthat if the applications of mathand therecreational aspects of mathare tiedin withcomputer program- mingthen that will do a lot to getto thestudents. As youprobably know, the big field in gamesnow is no longerthe board game, playedwith counters on a board.All thegames that are sellingvery well now are electronicgames that involve some type of computer.

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Of course,one of thedangers of havinga pocketcalculator is thatyou forget howto do ordinaryarithmetic. I had thisbrought home to me veryrecently. I had a problemin a columna monthor so ago: It was to arrangethe first nine positive integersto forma nine-digitnumber such that the number formed by thefirst two digitswas divisibleby two, the number formed by the first three digits was divisible bythree, and so on untilthe entire nine-digit number was divisibleby nine. It has a uniquesolution. I havereceived now between two and threehundred letters from readersthat all say,"I read thatit had a uniquesolution, but I have foundtwo more."And then they all listthe same two "solutions," and noneof them have the firsteight digits divisible by eight.This had me honestlypuzzled until suddenly I realizedwhat had happened;and thatis thatthey were all usingsmall pocket calculatorswith eight-digit read-outs. When they divided by eightit didn'tshow anyremainder..Not one of them bothered to divideby eight by hand. I thinkin the longrun though it's going to turnout that the pocket calculator is a blessingrather thanotherwise.

Who Is Peter Fromm?

B. PeterRenz remindedme beforewe beganthis interview that you are principallya writer,and thoughat thepresent time you writemainly about recreational mathematics you have venturedapart from that. Your novel,"The Flightof PeterFromm," deals witha theologystudent at the Universityof Chicago in the thirtiesand fortiesand promptsan obviousquestion: Are you PeterFromm? G. Well,you mustbe one of the thirteenpeople who read thatnovel. Yes, basicallythat's sort of an autobiographicalpiece. I neverwent to theological school,and Peterhas a differentpersonality from mine, but basically the novel is aboutthe changes that I wentthrough when I was a freshmanand sophomorein college.I came froman orthodoxProtestant family in Tulsa,the fundamentalist capitalof theworld. I wentthrough a Protestantfundamentalist stage when I was in highschool. I quicklygot over it in college,and I drewon thatexperience when I wrotethe novel. A. But therewas a dramaticshift for you in movingfrom high school to college.In highschool you werestill thinking about doing physics seriously and continuingwith the mathematicsthat would be needed to do physics,and yet whenyou went to the Universityof Chicagoyou did notenroll in a freshmanmath course. G. Well,there really wasn't much opportunity in the first two years. When I was at Chicagothey had just instituted what they called the New Plan,under Hutchins, and theidea was forthe student to geta generalliberal education the first two years.So thefirst chance really to takea mathcourse would have been the third year,and bythat time I had decidedto majorin philosophy.The otherbig change, of course,was thatI gotover my Protestant orthodoxy. I finally got it all offmy chest,in thatnovel. B. Was thatthe purpose of thenovel?

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions G. Actually,when I beganfree-lancing I started out writing fiction; and thatwas whatI mostwanted to do. WhenI gotout of theNavy and wentback to Chicago, the only reasonI didn'ttake back my old job-public relationswork at the Universityof Chicago-was that I solda shortstory to Esquiremagazine. So I was supportingmyself for about the first two years by sellingfiction to Esquire.I had abouta dozenstories published in themagazine. It was duringthat period that I wrotethe first draft of thisnovel, and I foundit to be totallyunsalable. It was whenBill Kauffman, who had formerlybeen with W. H. Freeman,came out to see me one dayand askedme ifI had anymanuscripts lying around that I thoughtof thisthing; and I pulledit out and let himsee it. He said he wouldpublish it if I revisedit; so that'show it got published-an old novelfrom way back in myyouth. A. Do you have anotherin theworks? G. No, theonly book thatI have in theworks that is differentfrom what I've beenwriting is a book ofphilosophical essays that will deal withvarious problems in contemporaryphilosophy. And again, it's the sort of book that probably will not sellvery well. That's the next major project that I wouldlike to do.

The Futureof "Mathematical Games"

B. I've beenhearing things suggesting you mightstop doing the column for "Scientific American." G. Well, that'strue. I'll be sixty-fivein Octoberand eligiblefor retirement benefits.Even though I contributeon a free-lancebasis, I'm actuallyconsidered to be on thestaff of themagazine, so I'm eligiblefor their health benefits, retirement benefits,and so on. I havean optionto resignfrom the column in October,and I also have an optionto continueit-in otherwords, it's not a forcedretirement. I just haven'tmade up mymind yet. And I don'tknow quite how to workit out, becauseif I couldstop doing the column I wouldhave time to do booksI would liketo do-for example,the book of philosophical essays. I seemto getto workon it abouttwo days a month,and at thatrate I'll neverfinish it. B. I believethat "ScientificAmerican" might have some qualms about lettingthe columnevaporate. G. They'veasked me to continue,and I don'tknow quite how to workit out. I thinkthat my only suggestion was thatit mightbe good to haveit replacedby a columnthat would emphasize computer recreation, because that's really a growing field. Theremight be a compromisein whichmaybe I wouldalternate columns with somebodywho would do columnsmore on thecomputer side. Up untilnow I don't thinkit [computerrecreations] would have had a big readership,but I'm thinking thatit would in thenext four or fiveyears. I don'thave any regrets about doing the column,because I've enjoyedevery column that I've written.The successof the columnhas madeit possiblefor me to sellbooks in otherfields that I don'tthink I couldhave sold otherwise.It's just a questionof whetherI wantto go on forthe

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions nextten years writing the same kind of thing, or whetherI should at thispoint stop thecolumn and getinto the things that I wantto writeabout while I stillhave my witsabout me.

Alice, the , and Casey

U. That's almostan hourabout mathematics.We couldspend another hour dealing withthe marvelousthings you've done in physics,relativity, articles and books-and also "The AnnotatedAlice." That's entirelydifferent. You haven't mentionedit yourself. G. No, but I wouldlike to do morebooks of thatsort too. It's just very,very difficultto do themand keepthe column going. Each yearthe column gets more difficultto do becausemy correspondence on it increases. TheAnnotated Alice, of course, does tie in withmath, because was, as youknow, a professionalmathematician. So it wasn'treally too farafield from recreationalmath, because the two books are filledwith all kindsof mathematical jokes. I was luckythere in thatI reallydidn't have anythingnew to say in The AnnotatedAlice because I just looked over the literatureand pulled together everythingin the form of footnotes. But it was a luckyidea becausethat's been the bestseller of all mybooks. R. Andyou did "The AnnotatedSnark"? G. I laterdid TheSnark, but that didn't do too well. B. And "The AnnotatedCasey at theBat," whatprompted that? G. Oh,I havealways been interested in thefact that there are poemsthat are not greatpoetry but seemto outlastthe entire poetic output of poetswho werevery famousin theirday. I guessthe best term for them is popularverse. They don't

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions pretendto be greatpoems and yeta singlepoem writtenby an individuallike Thayer,who wroteCasey at theBat, can go on and on and on, and everybody knowsabout it. It willprobably be rememberedafter everybody's forgotten every poemever written by, say, Ezra Pound.This has alwaysstruck me as a verycurious phenomenon.So I did an articleon thehistory of Caseyat theBat thatI sold to SportsIllustrated. That was howit started.After it appeared,it occurredto me that I mightput together an anthologyof sequelsto Casey.That's what the book is, a collectionof the originalpoem withsequels by variousother people. Then I annotatedall thepoems with sort of fakeannotations to tiethem all togetherin a connectedstory. The book is done as kindof a joke. It didn'tsell too welleither. R. How aboutthings in physics like your "AmbidextrousUniverse"? G. TheAmbidextrous Universe was greatfun to write,and I'm happyto say that Scribner'sis bringingit out in a new editionthis month with four new chapters. Whenthe book came out,all thework on time-reversalwas too late forme to catch,so theoriginal book doesn't have anything in it aboutthe recent work that's beendone on timeasymmetry. This gave me a chanceto writefour new chapters thatdeal withspeculation about time-reversed galaxies and thatsort of thing.

Magicians and B. How aboutmagic? G. It'sjust beena minorhobby of mineever since I was a boy.I've alwaysbeen interestedin thefield. I've writtensome books that sell only in magicstores. B. You are affiliatedwith a groupof magiciansand scientistswho are debunkers, right? G. Yes,we havean organizationcalled the Committee for the Scientific Investiga- tionof Claimsof theParanormal, and we publisha magazinecalled the .It's nowa quarterly,but it first came out twice a year.The idea was to put outa magazinethat would try to tellthe other side of thestory, so thateditors and TV managementcould turnto it if theywanted to findout how the scientific communityfelt about something. B. Is theinitial response encouraging? G. Yes, I thinkso. I thinkthe membership of thecommittee has been growing and thecirculation of themagazine has beenincreasing. It's beingvery well edited by Ken Frazier,who used to be theeditor of ScienceNews magazine. It's doing verywell considering the fact that it's only about a yearold and we haven'thad too muchpublicity about it. B. Whatdo magiciansdo in theorganization? Why would they be interested? G. Well,because rightnow so manyparapsychologists are beingtaken in by ""who are just simplymagicians in disguise.The outstandingexample, of

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions course,is ,who-in my opinion,and the opinionof almostevery magicianwho has studiedGeller-is nothingmore than a magicianwho is pretendingto be a psychic.A lotof the physicists who are into , like Puthoffand Targat SRI, forexample, took Geller very seriously. There's really a rathersurprising number of top physicistswho are convincedthat the kind of psychicphenomena that Uri producesis reallygenuine. There's , whowon a Nobel Prizefor his work on thetunneling effect, and GeraldFeinberg, at Columbia.They thought Geller was a genuinepsychic. What our committeeis reallysaying is thatbefore you go overboardand writearticles and booksabout thiskind of psychic phenomenon, at leasthave the sense to consulta magicianand gethim in as an observer.Of course,the outstanding example of a manwho did makea real ass out of himselfis JohnTaylor, the mathematicalphysicist from England,who fellfor Geller and wrotethis gigantic book called Superminds.He was finallyconvinced that he was takenin and now has retractedhis whole positionin articlesin . R. Whatabout themathematical side of thisparapsychological research? G. I'm goingto do a columnthat will discuss this whole aspect of contemporary parapsychology,and theneed for a moresophisticated understanding of someof thestatistics involved. R. Justto cheeryou up, I noticedthat some nationalpoll indicatedthat something like 70 percentof all highschool students interviewed believed that ESP was a proven fact. G. Absolutely,there's no questionthat most people believe that. If youtry to tell themthat 99 percentof theprofessional psychologists around the country take an oppositeposition, they can't believe it. They see thesepseudodocumentaries on TV in whichthese things are treatedas thoughthey're genuine scientific break- throughs.I think it's damaging to Americaneducation and damagingto American science.There was one verygood documentary on theBermuda Triangle from the skepticalpoint of view that I think"Nova" did,but it's very hard to getthe major networksto backsuch programs because the public is interestedin theother side of thestory. One programthat I hopewill get off the ground in a yearor twois the Children'sWorkshop Theater. They're the ones who produce "Sesame Street," and theyhave finally gotten funding for a programdealing with science for children. I thinkthat the people involved are goingto be verycareful to keeppseudoscience out,although one of theadvisors is dean of theengineering school at Princeton University-aman named Robert Jahn. To everybody'ssurprise he has suddenly becomea new convertto parapsychology.And the latestnews is thatCharles Honortonis leavingMaimonides and teamingup withDr. Jahnat Princeton. They'regoing to have a parapsychologylaboratory in the engineeringschool at Princeton.So that'sa littlebit discouraging. I don't know how that's going to work out.

R. We'll certainlyexpect to see somegood effects.

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This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BIBLIOGRAPHY

MartinGardner Articlesin ScientificAmerican: (December 1956). Freewill revisited, with a mind-bendingprediction paradox by William Newcomb (July 1973). Reflectionson Newcomb'sproblem: A predictionand free-will dilemma (guest column by R. Nozick) (March1974). Sixsensational discoveries that somehow or another have escaped public attention (April Fool's hoax) (April1975). Concerningan effortto demonstrateextrasensory perception by machine(Puthoff and Targ) (October1975). A newkind of cipher that would take millions of years to break(August 1977). Books: TheAmbidextrous Universe, Scribner's, 1978. The AnnotatedAlice, Meridian Books, The NewAmerican Library, 1960. The AnnotatedCasey at theBat, C. N. Potter,1967. The AnnotatedSnark, Simon & Schuster,1962. Fads and Fallaciesin theName of Science,Dover, 1957. The Flightof PeterFromm, William Kauffman, Inc., 1973.

W. W. Rouse Ball and H. S. M. Coxeter,Mathematical Recreations and Essays,12th ed., Toronto UniversityPress, 1974. Ross Honsberger,Mathematical Gems (1973) and MathematicalGems II (1976), Mathematical Associationof America. HaroldJacobs, Mathematics, A Human Endeavor, W. H. Freeman,1970. EdwardKasner and JamesR. Newman,Mathematics and theImagination, Simon & Schuster,1940. JamesR. Newman,The Worldof Mathematics, Simon & Schuster,1956. ShermanK. Stein,Mathematics: The Man-madeUniverse, W. H. Freeman,1976. JohnTaylor, Superminds: An Enquiryinto the , Macmillan, London and Basingstoke,1975. JohnTaylor and E. Balanovski,Can electromagnetismaccount for extrasensory phenomena? Nature, 276,64 (November1978). JohnArchibald Wheeler, Not Consciousness, but the Distinction Between the Probe and theProbed, as Centralto theElemental Quantum Act of Observation;Appendix A: Drivethe Pseudos Out of the Workshopof Science;Appendix B: WhereThere's Smoke There's Smoke, American Associationfor the- Advancement of ScienceAnnual Meeting, Houston, January 8, 1979.[See also Psi-Fiin Scienceand theCitizen, Scientific American, April 1979.]

Whereuponthe Plumber said in tonesof disgust: "I suggestthat we proceedat onceto infinity."

-J. L. Synge 244 -

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