Who would not ʃingfor Lycidas? ARTICLES POETRY Isaiah Berlin Bertolt Brecht Notes on the Foundation of A Worker Reads, and asks these Wolfson College Questions 30 Nigel Derrett 2 Vietnamese Haiku 28 Jerome Bruner Henry Graham Human Development Good Luck to you Kafka/ You'll need it Boss 30 5 George Jones Stephen Gardiner The Yellow Submarine 13 The White Space 16 Philip Larkin Arnold Mallinson Mr Bleaney 30 Introducing Numismatology 18 Arnold Mallinson Andrew Prentice Joan (or The Relic) 20 The Origin of the Solar System 11 Geoffrey Masefield John Wain One Poet's Advice to Others 31 Poet in Residence? 14 Peter Redgrove Brothel Allotment 30 REVIEWS Tao Tao Sanders Michael Argyle The Psychology of Two Chinese Ballads from the Han 21,34 Interpersonal Zaituna f/mer(with Elizabeth Jennings) Behaviour (Vincent Hetreed) 22 Compass Round the Soul 31 The Social Psychology of Work (Edmund Rolls) 22 COLLEGE RECORD Isaiah Berlin Construction of the College Buildings: Fathers and Children (Angus Walker) 23 Principal Dates 38 Michael Brock 1972-1973 35 The Great Reform Act (Kim Roberts) 24 Lists 40 Michael Chanan Logic Lane: films on College Officers 40 Oxford philosophy Elections and Admissions 40 (Christopher Schenk) 29 Degrees and Diplomas 49 Geoffrey Masefield A History of the Professional News 50 Colonial Agricultural Books 51 Service (Kenneth Hunt) 25 Personal News 51 Kurt Mendelssohn Wolfson College Trust 52 The World of Walter Nernst: the Rise and Fall of German Science EDITORIAL (Margaret Gowing) 26 David Robey (ed.) 1 Structuralism (Samuel Guttenplan) 27 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 33 Geza Vermes ACADEMIC LIFE 32 Jesus the Jew (Tessa Rajak) 28 The editor would like to thank all those who have contributed to this issue: Photocopying of any part of this magazine is prohibited: extra copies may both those who provided articles, poems, photographs etc., and those who be purchased from the College Office, 47 Banbury Road. assisted in various other invaluable ways, especially Bill Beaver, Cecilia Dick, Colin Kraay, Derek Wyatt, Edward Larrissy, Keith Fosbrook, Keith For acknowledgements, credits and recommendations for contributors to Scorer, Linda Dymarczyk, Nicky Tayler, Paul Boddington, Robert the next issue see p.52. Dugdale, Samuel Guttenplan, Sheila McMeekin, Sophie Dick and Sue Hales. Without whom not. Set in English 49 and printed photolithographically. Printed by PARCHMENT (Oxford) LIMITED, 60 Hurst Street, OXFORD. OX4 1HD Edited by Henry Hardy Copyright ©reserved paʃtures new Lycidas. The physical structure in which an institution is housed clearly affects its character. The cramped conditions of temporary buildings foster a communicative and friendly No 1 1972-73 atmosphere: spacious modern purpose-built palaces with their long corridors and wide concourses tend to allow anonymity, and so formality, to set in. Until recently there have been too few past members of When we finally move into the new buildings some time Wolfson to justify printing a College record, and too few during the coming year, will Wolfson become quite a members of any kind to make a more general magazine a different sort of place, and arriving in Wolfson as a new practical proposition. But this year we stand on the (ever- member quite a different sort of experience? It would be sad receding) threshold of the new buildings, with our numbers if it were so: new arrivals and visitors are frequently steadily increasing to match; and the number of past impressed by the personal tone of Wolfson — how members who would be glad of news of Wolfson is no satisfactory, one visitor said, to be able to phone the hall at longer insignificant. 60 Banbury Road and as often as not to find that whoever Lycidas aims to combine two functions. First, it includes answers knows what the person one wants to speak to is a record of the College's activities during the year (at doing, or can at any rate find out in a few seconds whether present, Lycidas is envisaged as an annual publication; but he or she is in College: no clueless porter to reckon with. Of there is nothing fixed about this), and of the public events course, the small numbers in the College have been in the personal and professional lives of its members. important in making this kind of thing possible: but it is Secondly, it provides a place where members of the College also significant that all the rooms at 60 Banbury Road lead may publish their creative writing, or their views on the aims off one hall, through which one is bound to pass, and that in and organisation of the College, or accounts of their work dining and common rooms one's company is often chosen written for the non-specialist, to mention only three by the gaps available. In the huge expanses of public rooms possibilities. The third is particularly important, in arts as like those at St Antony's it is too easy for cliques to well as science, and between the two as well as within each. develop. The 'cultural' split between most artists and scientists is It is interesting that architects appear not to learn the well known, and regrettable: within science (and to a lesser often repeated lesson of experience in makeshift extent within the arts, where the smog of technicality is not accommodation. The sheer size of the new Psychology- so dense), as research becomes more specialised, the need Zoology building, not to mention its unnecessarily vast grows for reliable accounts of recent advances, written by public areas and its featureless corridors with their rows of experts but comprehensible to people in other fields. identical, inscrutable doors, has not been good for the social Insularity is bad for progress, let alone on social grounds. or academic life of the departments housed in it: the What more appropriate place for such accounts to appear distances which now separate different parts of the same than the journal of a community of practising researchers? department are so large that members of the department We may not become Medawars, or Bronowskis, at a stroke: interact far less than they used to do when each department but we can try. Spontaneous response to the circular had its own building. It is a mistake to put so many people inviting such contributions to this issue was less intense in one building in the first place: but if it has to be done, it is than might have been hoped (Andrew Prentice's article a pity to maximise the impersonality of the architecture. being a notable exception): perhaps next year, with this The new Wolfson building, as far as one can tell without issue in front of them as a sample, more people will having lived in it, is much better than this. But will the lofty volunteer. square hall come to be regretted? With larger maximum The first, recording function is essential for any numbers a larger floor space is inevitable, but low ceilings established institution which wishes to keep in touch with its and irregular floor plans help to create a feeling of intimacy past members, and also provides an opportunity for the when few people are dining, which may often happen. After building up of a basic College archive. Accordingly, it is Banbury Road the sumptuousness of the new hall may seem being financed by the College. The other function is seen as embarrassing, an anomalous imitation of a bygone ape. a luxury, and this year the College has not felt able to offer Good relations flourish naturally at 60 Banbury Road: in any financial support in this direction. So the parts of this Linton Road they may need more conscious cosseting. We issue which are not concerned with recording the year's don't want to find ourselves having to long for the good old events and achievements have been financed by the profits days at 60 (already there are some fond backward glances to made from two showings, under Wolfson's auspices, of the sparsely populated early days of the College), and we Michael Chanan's films on Oxford philosophy. (These films don't want the move to be used as an opportunity to make are reviewed on p.29.) Wolfson more like other Oxford Colleges in ways which This kind of subvention cannot be counted on for every have been impossible hitherto. The differences, in issue. If the contents of this first issue of Lycidas show that particular the single common room organisation and the the venture of producing a general Wolfson magazine is absence of rank-revealing rituals, are essential parts of the worth while, then perhaps the College or the Common nature the College has chosen for itself, and should be Room will be able to find some way of offering financial jealously preserved. It would be nice to believe that once help in the future; for example, a small charge might be things have been as relaxed as they are in Wolfson at the made for the magazine in the case of current members. moment, it is impossible to go backwards. But in fact Otherwise Lycidas may have to shrink in future years to a maintaining the status quo on this front may take some mere record, which would be a pity. working at. 1 Isaiah Berlin Notes on THE FOUNDATION OF WOLFSON COLLEGE It is reported that when, sometime in the mid-thirties, developed historically, imponderable elements, unanalys- the President of Harvard, who was then visiting Oxford, able patterns which gave its own unique character to each asked the Vice-Chancellor — at that time A. D. Lindsay, college, all that engaged the affection and loyalty and sense Master of Balliol — to explain (if possible in a nutshell) the of solidarity of its members past and present: in short, the constitution of his University, he replied that it was conflict of values that has been with us for at least two somewhat like the kind of constitution the United States hundred years: Burke versus Bentham, history and might have had if the Southern states had won the Civil impalpable ties and a sense of community versus general War.