Dædalus coming up in Dædalus: Dædalus on happiness Martin E. P. Seligman, Richard A. Easterlin, Martha C. Nussbaum, Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Anna Wierzbicka, Bernard Reginster, Robert H. Frank, Julia E. Annas, Roger Shattuck, Darrin M. McMahon, and Ed Diener Winter 2004 Winter 2004: on learning on progress Joseph Stiglitz, John Gray, Charles Larmore, Randall Kennedy, on learning Howard Gardner What we do & don’t know 5 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Jagdish Bhagwati, Richard A. Shweder, and others Jerome Bruner The psychology of learning: a short history 13 Alison Gopnik Finding our inner scientist 21 on human nature Steven Pinker, Jerome Kagan, Vernon Smith, Richard Wrangham, Daniel John Povinelli Of apes & men 29 Patrick Bateson, Thomas Sowell, Jonathan Haidt, and Donald Patricia Smith Brown Churchland How do neurons know? 42 Michael Tomasello Learning through others 51 on race Kenneth Prewitt, Orlando Patterson, George Fredrickson, Ian Susan Carey On the origin of concepts 59 Hacking, Jennifer Hochschild, Glenn Loury, David Hollinger, Clark Glymour The automation of discovery69 Victoria Hattam, and others poetry David Ferry October 78 on imperialism Niall Ferguson, Kenneth Pomeranz, Tzvetan Todorov, Anthony Pagden, Jack Snyder, Akira Iriye, Molly Greene, William Easterly, ½ction Robin Blackburn, Henk Wesseling, and others Chuck Wachtel The Annunciation 79 notes Jennifer Hochschild on the social science wars 91 plus poetry by Richard Wilbur, Franz Wright, Rachel Hadas, Gerald Early on literature & childhood 95 W. S. Merwin, Charles Wright, Richard Howard &c.; ½ction by Richard Stern on a writer’s endgame 98 Erin McGraw, Roxana Robinson, Victor LaValle, Sigrid Nunez &c.; and notes by Michael Wood, S. George H. Philander, Linda letter on Cambridge’s ½rst African Ph.D. 103 Hutcheon, Charles Altieri, Donald Green, Shelley Taylor, Robert Nagel, Philip L. Quinn, Michael Kremer, Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Peter Hohendahl, Morris E. Fine, Richard Sobel, Stephen Hubbell &c. U.S. $13 www.amacad.org Inside front cover: Megan, a fourteen-year-old chimpanzee, uses a simple tool to reach for an apple. “Surely chimpanzees form con- cepts about concrete things. But what about more abstract concepts? Concepts like ghosts, gravity, and God?” See Daniel John Povinelli on Behind the ape’s appearance: escaping anthropocentrism in the study of other minds, pages 29–41. Photograph courtesy of the Cognitive Evolution Group, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 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 (psychology, Harvard), 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 labyrinth designed by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete, on a silver tetradrachma from Cnossos, Crete, c. 350–300 b.c. (35 mm, Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque National, Paris). “Such was the work, so intricate the place, / That scarce the workman all its turns cou’d trace; / And Daedalus was puzzled how to ½nd / The secret ways of what himself design’d.”–Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 8 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 Winter 2004 Subscription rates: Electronic only for non- Issued as Volume 133, Number 1 member individuals–$36; institutions–$72. Canadians add 7% gst. Print and electronic © 2004 by the American Academy for nonmember individuals–$40; institu- of Arts & Sciences tions–$80. Canadians add 7% gst. Outside October the United States and Canada add $20 for © 2004 by David Ferry postage and handling. Prices subject to change The Annunciation without notice. © 2004 by Chuck Wachtel Institutional subscriptions are on a volume- Editorial of½ces: Dædalus, Norton’s Woods, year basis. All other subscriptions begin with 136 Irving Street, Cambridge ma 02138. the next available issue. Phone: 617 491 2600. Fax: 617 576 5088. Email: [email protected]. Single issues: current issues–$13; back issues for individuals–$13; back issues for institu- Library of Congress Catalog No. 12-30299 tions–$26. Outside the United States and isbn 0-87724-042-6 Canada add $5 per issue for postage and han- dling. Prices subject to change without notice. Dædalus publishes by invitation only, and as- sumes no responsibility for unsolicited manu- Claims for missing issues will be honored free scripts. The views expressed are those of the of charge if made within three months of the author of each article, and not necessarily of publication date of the issue. Claims may be the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. submitted to [email protected]. 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Email: journals-rights@ mit.edu. Howard Gardner What we do & don’t know about learning Suppose that we were commissioned or so, and how can these revolutionary to create a museum of learning. I don’t insights inform the education of future mean a stuffy, hands-off collection of generations? Finally, what puzzles old manuscripts or ½lms, but rather a remain? state-of-the-art exploratorium that In all probability our museum’s ½rst displayed the full spectrum of learning displays would show humans learning: types and, in vivid form, everything that infants crawling, walking, talking; tod- is known about learning.1 Suppose, fur- dlers engaged in rough-and-tumble or ther, that we had a budget for consul- imaginative play; youngsters (or old- tants and were able to hire the seven sters) at school, learning their 3Rs and experts whose essays are collected here. going on to master the disciplines and Presumably we would have in mind a perhaps engage in interdisciplinary number of guiding questions, among work. Casting our net more widely, we them: What examples of learning might exhibit a child