Detached Ideas

In April of 2005, shortly after Larry Summers’ public comments which resulted in his resignation as president of Harvard, there was a debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke, both from the Harvard psychology department, on “The Science of Gender and Science.” Streaming video, a transcript, and slides from this debate are available on Edge – here. There are also comments on the debate by Nora Newcomb, David Haig, Alison Gopnik and Diane Halpern, with a response by Pinker —  here.

The question under debate was whether innate differences between the sexes might help account for the dearth of women tenure track faculty in the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering at elite universities. At the beginning of his remarks, Steven Pinker made what seems to me to be a vital distinction:

[I]t is crucial to distinguish the moral proposition that people should not be discriminated against on account of their sex — which I take to be the core of feminism — and the empirical claim that males and females are biologically indistinguishable. They are not the same thing. Indeed, distinguishing them is essential to protecting the core of feminism. Anyone who takes an honest interest in science has to be prepared for the facts on a given issue to come out either way. And that makes it essential that we not hold the ideals of feminism hostage to the latest findings from the lab or field. . . . The truth can­not be sexist.

The debate proceeded mainly on empirical grounds, although there were also a few philo­so­phical moments. Elizabeth Spelke is the 2009 winner of the Jean Nicod Prize. Steven Pinker is author of The Blank Slate, among many other books, and is married to Rebecca Goldstein.

–Paul

by Alexander Pope

‘Tis hard to say, if greater Want of Skill
Appear in Writing or in Judging ill,
But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’ Offence,
To tire our Patience, than mis-lead our Sense:
Some few in that, but Numbers err in this,
Ten Censure wrong for one who Writes amiss;
A Fool might once himself alone expose,
Now One in Verse makes many more in Prose.

‘Tis with our Judgments as our Watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
In Poets as true Genius is but rare,
True Taste as seldom is the Critick’s Share;
Both must alike from Heav’n derive their Light,
These born to Judge, as well as those to Write.
Let such teach others who themselves excell,
And censure freely who have written well.
Authors are partial to their Wit, ’tis true,
But are not Criticks to their Judgment too?

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The world premiere of Nathan’s Tenebrae, for harp and string quartet, will be March 31, 2011, at Lincoln Center. It is sponsored by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and will be performed by Bridget Kibby and the Jupiter String Quartet. Tickets go on sale August 2 here.

–Paul

This post is about a remarkable man who I have been fortunate to have as my friend. Philip Barlow is a Mormon and a scholar of American religion; he earned his B.A. in History from Weber State College in 1975, his M.T.S. from Harvard in 1980, and his Th.D. from Harvard Divinity School in 1988. He taught Religion at Hanover College — a Presbyterian School — until 2007, when he was appointed the Leonard J. Arring­ton Professor of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University.

Last summer I reread Phil’s book, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion, pub­lished in 1991, by Oxford University Press. This is a book that deserves the many accolades it has received; it is an honest and thoughtful dis­cussion of scriptural inter­pretation and religious belief in Mormonism. One reason that this dis­cussion is important for non-Mormons is that it con­cerns the early stages — more accessible than in main­stream Christianity or Judaism — in the development of a religious tradition. The recent appearance of Mormonism, and its extensive docu­men­ta­tion, comprise a valuable resource for understanding how religions in general evolve. Especially interesting to me is the unique relation of Mormon scriptural exe­gesis to secular philosophy and changing standards in textual criticism.

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In commemoration of Apple surpassing Microsoft in market capitalization last week, here is Steve Jobs on Apple’s choice not to support Flash on the IPad:

–Paul

With summer coming on, this seems appropriate:

From Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, played by the young Ukrainian accordionist Aleksandr Hrustevich. (via Alex Ross)

It is a recurrent trope in writing about Thucydides to place him in opposition to Plato. I would like to consider some of the ramifications that this opposition may have for our understanding of Thucydides, and to evaluate its limitations. But first we must try to disentangle the various guises that it assumes.

At the most specific level, the contrast between Plato and Thucydides may be broken down into various small polarities, in each of which the two thinkers do indeed seem to hold irreconcilable views. Thus the Socratic maxim that no one does evil knowingly seems to directly contradict Thucydides’ tragic vision of human nature, as the Platonic search for universals stands in opposition to the Thucydidean concern with the con­crete particular. None of the individual contrasts between Plato and Thucydides, how­ever, adequately capture the opposition that historians and philosophers have argued exists between them. This opposition is taken, rather, to arise from a funda­mental difference in one’s way of seeing, which subsumes all of these smaller dis­tinctions, and which leads the two thinkers to systemically different conclusions.

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From xkcd.

The name “positivism” comes from the writing of Auguste Comte, the 19th century philosopher of science and founder of sociology.  In his Course of Positive Philosophy, published from 1830 through 1842, Comte described human history as progressing through three distinct stages, which he called the theological, metaphysical, and positive – the final stage corresponding to the ordering of society by modern science. Comte’s positive philosophy was quite influential in the nineteenth century. According to Michel Bourdeau:

It is difficult today to appreciate the interest Comte’s thought enjoyed a century ago, for it has received almost no notice during the last five decades. Before the First World War, Comte’s movement was active nearly everywhere in the world. The best known case is that of Latin America: Brazil, which owes the motto on its flag ‘Ordem e Progresso’ (Order and Progress) to Comte and Mexico are two prominent examples. The positivists, i.e., the followers of Comte, were equally active in England, the United States and India. And in the case of Turkey, its modern secular character can be traced to Comte’s influence on the Young Turks.

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Benjamin Peirce, the father of Charles Sanders Peirce, taught mathematics and astronomy at Harvard from 1831 until his death in 1880. and was probably the leading American mathe­matician of his time. He is best known, in the history of mathematics, for his Linear Asso­ci­ative Algebra of 1870, and for his proof, as a young man, that there is no odd perfect number with fewer than four distinct prime factors.[1] Benjamin also published over a dozen other mathema­tical texts and treatises, including his well known A System of Analytical Mechanics in 1855. He helped to create a modern science curriculum at Harvard, and was an importent force in the professionalization of mathematics and science education across America. [2]

Benjamin’s personality left a powerful impression on those who encountered him. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard from 1909 to 1933, described him as follows:

Looking back over the space of fifty years since I entered Harvard College, Benjamin Peirce still impresses me as having the most massive intellect with which I have ever come into close contact, and as being the most profoundly inspiring teacher that I ever had. His personal appearance, his powerful frame, and his majestic head seemed in harmony with his brain. [3]

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Lawrence Lessig earned an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a law degree from Yale. He is a founder of Creative Commons. Formerly a professor of law at Stanford, he is currently the director of the Safra Foun­dation Center for Ethics at Harvard.

Here is the Wikipedia entry on Alec Derwent Hope.

‘Theodore Dalrymple’ is the pen-name of Dr. Anthony Daniels, retired British doctor, contributing editor for the City Journal, author, and eloquent conservative obser­ver of contem­po­rary culture. Recently, Daniels was invited to give the annual John Kenneth Galbraith Lecture at Memorial University in Newfoundland. The Galbraith Revival is a reflection on that experience.

Other articles to try include: They dance, I take the dog for a walk, What is Poverty?, What the New Atheists Don’t See, False Apology Syndrome, and All Sex, All the Time. There is a directory of Dalrymple’s City Journal work here.

–Paul

by Johann Sebastian Bach

The Cantata “Actus Tragicus”, BWV 106, is one of Bach’s greatest cantatas. Here is Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (Part II), from a wonderful performance on period instruments by Joshua Rifkin and The Bach Ensemble.

actus.mp3

Recorded in 1985, Joshua Rifkin and The Bach Ensemble, with Ann Monoyios, Steven Rickards, Edmund Brownless, Jan Opalach. Decca

Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, and is the director of the MIT Initiative on Tech­nology and Self. She earned her doctorate in sociology and per­son­ality psychology from Harvard University, and is a licensed clinical psycho­logist. She writes about the “subjective side” of the relationship between people and technology.

I first read The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit nearly twenty years ago, and have used it in var­ious courses. Turkle describes how children often em­ploy computers as evocative objects — “things to think with” — which assist them in understanding their own capacities and limi­tations. The sense of self that emerges in children who have grown up with computers, for instance, can be quite different from that of children who have grown up, say, with animals and pets. Instead of the traditional Aristotelian notion of being a “rational animal”, the experience of such children can lead them to formulate a new genus and specific difference, to conceive of themselves as “feeling machines.” This sort of radical change in our understanding of who we are, it seems to me, could have pro­found consequences for our culture. It is important that we consider the pos­si­bility that technology might induce deep change.

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(via Instapundit)

–Paul

Verdi’s Otello is a work very much of its time, and this is true nowhere more than in its treatment of love and the erotic.  The simplest illustration of this may be found in the stark contrasts between the opera and its source.

Shakespeare’s Othello, more than any other play, is haunted by the theme of sexual disgust.  A.C. Bradley writes of the way in which “the matter of a play seems to go on working in Shakespeare’s mind and reappears, generally in a weaker form, in his next play.” [1] But the reverse process may also obtain, wherein a theme appears in one play in nascent form, only to be revisited on a far vaster scale in the next.  Thus the appalled fascination with sexuality in Hamlet, which lies behind both the title character’s ambivalent treatment of Ophelia and his famous castigation of his mother,

is echoed on a far vaster scale in Othello, taking root in the very first scene, in Iago’s mockery of Desdemona’s father, and growing until it all but dominates Othello’s mind.

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Stephen Toulmin died last month. He studied with Wittgenstein and was a reader, with Kolakowski, of Phil’s dissertation. Toulmin was probably best known for his 1958 book, The Uses of Argument, and for his seminal work on the philosophy of science. In a long and distinguished career, he taught at Oxford, Melbourne, Leeds, Brandeis, Columbia, Michigan State, Chicago, Northwestern, and USC. Here is the NYT obituary.

All three of us have been greatly influenced by a book that Toulmin wrote with Allan Janik in 1973 called Wittgenstein’s Vienna. A fasci­nating account of Viennese culture at the turn of the century, it is an indispensable book that everyone should read.

In 1997 Toulmin was honored by the NEH with the Jefferson Lecture.

In an article for Wired, Uranium is So Last Century, Richard Martin touts the promise of thorium fueled nuclear fission. Unlike uranium, thorium is plentiful in nature and produces a “miniscule” amount of radioactive waste. It is also an effective breeder and lacks the weaponization potential of uranium. The tech­nology is called LFTR — for Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor — and seems to be fairly well understood. There is a blog called Energy from Thorium, by Kirk Sorensen, which keeps up with the latest news and has useful links and discussion.

LFTR in 16 minutes

Like Polywell fusion, the development of thorium reactors could be funded at a small fraction of the anticipated cost of cap and trade. If we are serious about the threat of carbon-induced warming, then we ought to explore serious energy alter­natives.

–Paul

by William Wordsworth (1807)

Ode

Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.

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A profile, Centre of the Storm, from Macleans.ca.

by Mary Oliver

1.

I rose this morning early as usual, and went to my desk
But it’s spring,

and the thrush is in the woods,
somewhere in the twirled branches, and he is singing.

And so, now, I am standing by the open door.
And now I am stepping down onto the grass.

I am touching a few leaves.
I am noticing the way the yellow butterflies
move together, in a twinkling cloud, over the field.

And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening
is the real work.

Maybe the world, without us,
is the real poem.

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Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) was a composer and virtuoso pianist who lived in Paris and knew both Chopin and Lizst. He was an orthodox Jew, and the legend is that he died when one of his bookcases fell on him (also a hazard in academic life).

This is Alkan’s transcription of the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #3, in c minor. The piano plays both the orchestra and piano parts. I like how pianist Marc-André Hamelin, the master of this ferociously difficult repertoire, delineates the orchestral and solo voices. But the remarkable thing about this piece is clearly the extraordinary cadenza that Alkan wrote — it is bizarre and breathtaking.

The piano enters at 3:06, the cadenza begins at 11:34.

BeethovenAlkan.mp3

Live performance by Marc-André Hamelin at Wigmore Hall, London, June 1994

–Paul

Last week an unknown hacker — or inside whistleblower — distributed on the internet emails and documents apparently taken from the computers of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. The CRU and its director, Phil Jones, were central players in establishing the theory of anthropocentric global warming that is endorsed by the IPCC. In conjunction with the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office, they maintain HadCRUTv3, one of the principal datasets of global temperature.

By now the purloined files have been disseminated throughout the internet, and have created quite a stir. The original zip file (62 MB) is here; when unzipped it contains about 160 MB of information, with over 1000 emails and 2000 other documents. The blogosphere has primarily focused on the emails, which include exchanges between Phil Jones and many leading climate scientists. There is now a searchable database of the emails and Bishop Hill provides a synopsis of some of the more interesting cases. The other documents — with data, code, and financial records — will probably have a greater impact over the long run. There are questions, for instance, about coding practice — see here. Evidence so far seems to indicate that all of this material is genuine; many recipients have confirmed the accuracy of emails, and as yet nothing has been disputed.

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Golf Dreams is John Updike’s brilliant collection of stories and essays about the game of golf. In the title story, Updike describes a golf dream — a dream in which targets mysteriously recede, hazards materialize out of thin air, balls change into cylinders, and clubs develop an odd flabby appen­dage which prevents them from contacting the ball crisply. Nonetheless, he observes, the dreamer “surrenders not a particle of hope of making the shot.”

After all, are these nightmares any worse than the “real” drive that skips off the toe of the club, strikes the prism-shaped tee marker, and is swallowed by weeds some twenty yards behind the horrified driver? Or the magical impotence of an utter whiff? Or the bizarre physical comedy of a soaring slice that strikes the one telephone wire strung across three hundred acres? The golfer is so habituated to humiliation that his dreaming mind never offers any protest of implausibility. Whereas dream life, we are told, is a therapeutic caricature, seamy side out, of real life, dream golf is simply golf played on another course. . .

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by W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

During May and June I listened to the live webcasts of most of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition. I am not sure what to think about competitions in general — perhaps they are a necessary evil — but it was a good opportunity to hear wonderful young musicians and some remarkable performances. Early on, I was captivated by the music of 19 year-old Haochen Zhang of China, who eventually shared the gold medal. Here is his performance of the Beethoven Sonata in A flat, Op. 110:

ZhangOp110.mp3

In the semi-finals, Zhang programmed the complete Chopin Preludes, Op. 28. Here is the “Raindrop” Prelude:

ZhangRaindrop.mp3

and Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit from the finals:

ZhangGaspard.mp3

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Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked rhetorically, Do we bring up our children because we have found it pays? [1] This sounds absurd, yet in many ways our expressed thinking about children is utilitarian and fails to take them seriously as ends in themselves. Perhaps we are no longer driven to produce family heirs, but when we want to draw attention to the importance of educating children we still speak of them as “the leaders of tomorrow.” If we argue that the importance of children derives from the fact that they are future adults, we neglect to recognize any inherent value to child­hood itself. We look back with horror at Puritans who expected children to behave like little adults and viewed play as sin, but many developmental theories are still prone to analyze childhood as a series of stages leading to adulthood. In this case the mature adult remains the measure and the end of analysis, and childhood is just a means. Play is acceptable in children because we have recognized that through play various capacities are developed that we value in the mature adult. Does such thinking respect childhood, or have we raised the reductionism of our Puritan fore­bears to a new level of sophistication and subtlety? This is not to suggest that developmental models are not important and illuminating, but only that taken alone such models are inherently reductive and that perhaps we have not yet earned the right to look down on Puritans.

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by W. B. Yeats

ALL the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken’d or starry bright.

Several weeks ago I went on a binge reading about Polywell fusion. The brainchild of Dr. Robert Bussard, Polywell fusion is a variety of inertial electrostatic confinement, a combination of the inertial confine­ment (IFE) and magnetic confine­ment (MFE) ap­proaches to plasma con­tainment. The idea is to use a polyhedron of electromag­netic coils into which electrons are intro­duced. The electrons become concen­trated by the mag­ne­tic and electrical fields at the center of the device, creating a well of electro­static potential that confines the ions for fusion. Advantages claimed for this approach are that it does not release any radioactive byproducts, and that it is highly scalable. One conse­quence of the latter is that the time and expense required for development is considerably less than with, e.g., the Tokamak design. For more information, see the Wikipedia entry on Polywell fusion and the Talk-Polywell discussion forum.

In 2006, Dr. Bussard gave a talk at Google — primarily to solicit funding. This talk is interesting not only as an introduction to the idea of Polywell fusion, but also for Dr. Bussard’s remarks on aspects of the institutional culture of science.

Should Google Go Nuclear?

Low-level funding for Polywell fusion was provided to Dr. Bussard’s company, Energy Matter Conversion Cor­poration, by the Navy from 1992 to 2005. Funding was resumed in 2007, shortly prior to Dr. Bussard’s death. Last month, the Department of Defense announced a contract of $7,855,504 for “validation of basic physics,” to be completed by April, 2011.

We could fund thousands of such ideas for less than the cost of cap and trade.

–Paul