Science & Technology
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
ROBERT SCHUMANN: taken that same day Herald of a ‘New Poetic Age.’ to an asylum, where By John Daverio. Oxford University Press. he died two years 624 pp. $45 later. Eccentric, Although he gave us such indisputably great dark, and often re- works as his Piano Quintet (1842) and Cello petitive, the compo- Concerto (1850), few composers have been sitions dating from subject to as many unfounded charges as has this period have Robert Schumann (1810–56). Scholars claim been dismissed as that he was unable to orchestrate, that he the products of a de- couldn’t handle larger musical forms, and that caying intelligence. his later pieces, composed when he was suffer- But Daverio finds in ing from mental illness, are gloomy failures them “a heightened devoid of the freshness and lyricism found in intensity of expression” and an inventiveness his earlier work. presaging the music of Anton Bruckner, Max The shade of the German romanticist Reger, and Arnold Schönberg. Daverio insists may now rest more easily, thanks to this that the economical use of thematic material authoritative new biography. To defend and masterful handling of form in pieces such Schumann’s skill in orchestration, Daverio, as the Fourth Symphony (1851), the Faust a musicologist at Boston University, shows overture, and the Violin Concerto (1853) how the rich programmatic content of such could have come only from an artist “in full works as Scenes from Goethe’s Faust (1844- command of his or her rational powers.” 53) is conveyed through inventive instru- What Daverio fails to note is that perform- mental combinations. And to demonstrate ers, too, have misread these later works. Take that the composer could handle longer the underplayed Violin Concerto. From its first forms, Daverio points to the highly logical interpreter, Georg Kulenkampff, violinists architecture of Paradise and the Peri (1843). have disfigured the polonaise finale by speed- By far, though, Daverio is best at reevalu- ing it up, reaching for the sort of pyrotechnic ating Schumann’s final works. To be sure, display associated with concerto finales. A Schumann did descend into psychosis. On recent recording by Latvian violinist Gidon February 26, 1854, after several years of Kremer is a more faithful account. Perhaps depression and two weeks of hearing voices Daverio’s inspired scholarship will encourage (angelic and demonic), he plunged from a other more authentic interpretations. If so, bridge into the icy waters of the Rhine. Res- Schumann’s neglected gems will receive the cued by fishermen and carried home amid a performances they deserve. crowd of jeering Carnival revelers, he was —Sudip K. Bose Science & Technology MONAD TO MAN: self and his followers—the more speculative The Concept of Progress in style of early evolutionists such as Jean La- Evolutionary Biology. marck and Darwin’s own grandfather Erasmus. By Michael Ruse. Harvard University Over the long term, however, such restraint Press. 640 pp. $49.95 was a lot to ask. Beginning with T. H. Huxley, Evolutionary biology is seductively meta- evolutionary biologists arrived at a two-track phorical. Its evidence points in so many sug- solution to the problem: they published one set gestive directions that its practitioners are natu- of books and articles to establish professional rally tempted to make global speculations. credentials, and a distinct but parallel set to Charles Darwin understood this very well, and appeal to popular audiences and to serve as an knew moreover that it could lead to unfound- outlet for speculation. This strategy has not ed ideas as well as innovative ones. Concerned been lost on mainstream biologists, many of to establish his new theory as serious science, whom see evolutionary biology as a field taint- Darwin laid out a rigorous formula for evolu- ed by the imposition of cultural values. They tionary discourse, explicitly rejecting—for him- pay lip service to it but in practice regard it as a Books 103 less-than-orthodox subject for research. University, the visual explosion ignited by the Rightly so, says Ruse, professor of philoso- computer age is both sinister and inspiring. phy and zoology at the University of Guelph in McCullough is concerned about the com- Ontario. He argues that evolutionary studies puter’s ability not only to multiply images but have been shaped from the beginning by an (with advances in digital technology) to alter overarching “concept of progress” that does them as well. “Bits replace atoms,” he writes, not, despite its secular nature, fit comfortably “and digital signal processing undermines the into the scientific enterprise. In this methodi- very physicality of reproduction.” Armed with cal study, he tries to show how notions of social keyboard, mouse, and staggeringly sophisticat- and moral betterment—and their perceived ed graphics software, the computer artisan can connection to biological progression from experiment endlessly on a single base image, microorganism to man—have influenced the the untouched original on a disk. Were he scientific thought of major Anglo-American alive today, Leonardo da Vinci could spawn a figures from Herbert Russell Wallace to myriad of Mona Lisas, each with her own enig- George Gaylord Simpson and Geoffrey Parker. matic smile. The case is not always convincing. Consider Yet what about creating the Mona Lisa Ronald A. Fisher (1890–1962), whose achieve- in the first place? Admitting that “comput- ment was to add nuance and mathematical ers’ incontestable practicality gives rise to structure to evolutionism by combining Dar- an astonishing amount of banal and win’s theory of natural selection with Gregor cheaply executed work,” McCullough Mendel’s principles of genetics. Fisher was pas- makes the seemingly commonplace obser- sionately interested in eugenics and believed, vation that the computer is a tool, not a erroneously, that almost all human abilities are substitute for the vision of the artist or the innate. Ruse asserts, but does not really prove, thinker. In effect, he denies the claims of that Fisher’s enthusiasm for human progress most software marketers. Buying a copy of through breeding distorted his actual scientific Adobe Illustrator will not magically trans- work. form someone into, say, Maurice Sendak. More compelling is Ruse’s examination of Such conclu- the contemporary debate over Edward O. Wil- sions may not be son’s theory of sociobiology, which posits that astounding, but human social behavior can be understood in they do illuminate terms of evolutionary origins. Ruse makes the matters that can be cogent point that while Wilson’s enthusiasm overlooked or mis- for cultural progress has led to an explicitly stat- understood in to- ed belief in biological progress, the same day’s workplace. enthusiasm in Stephen Jay Gould has led to a Too often, writes career built on energetic denial of biological McCullough, “left- progress. In this modern context, it does seem over industrial-era that evolutionary biology has become infused, attitudes about indeed polarized and defined, by an underly- technology” lead ing cultural value. managers to employ armies of workers with —David Reich only modest computer skills to perform sim- ple drafting and other applications, rather ABSTRACTING CRAFT: than hire highly skilled people capable of a The Practiced Digital Hand. variety of functions. Such “task automation” By Malcolm McCullough. M.I.T. Press. overlooks that “the computer is not a tool so 250 pp. $25 much as hundreds of tools.” “Between the morning news and your bed- Further, McCullough urges people with time reading there will be road signs, bill- artistic ability not to turn their backs on com- boards, computer screens, junk mail, posters, puters. In his brave new world, the digital photo prints, presentation slides, pictures on artisan will use a computer just as a stone people’s shirts, snippets of television shows, carver wields a pneumatic drill to sculpt, or maybe a movie, a computer game, maybe a a skilled potter operates a motorized wheel couple of downloads from the Internet, a to create an exquisite vase: as an aid, not an videotape....” As described by McCul- adversary. lough, a professor of architecture at Harvard —James Carman 104 WQ Winter 1997.