Briefly Noted

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:11:00 +0000

Arnold Kramish. 1986. The Griffen: The Greatest Untold Espionage Story of World War II. Houghton Mifflin Company.

Not too long ago, reading a biography of Lise Meitner (see last post), a very interesting character appeared. His name was Paul Rosbaud. Rosbaud, friend of Meitner and (evidently) every other European physicist, Axis-or-Ally, Nazi-fascist-or-democrat, it didn't seem to matter. That was good. In those days, it was good to have friends if you were a spy.

Surely any spy's story is a bit unusual. Rosbaud's, however, must be practically unique. At least as the story is told by Kramish, he single-handedly created the field of technical espionage. And, he did this by his own appointment, not because he had been placed by any official agency. Indeed, he appears never to have received any training, but simply exploited the freedoms to travel and associate with scientists of any political persuasion. These liberties (uncommon, especially during the most important period of Rosbaud's espionage activities) were afforded to him as an editor of the scientific publishing firm Springer Verlag. In this capacity, he both collected information (among others, on the German bomb project and on the V-1 and V-2 rocket projects at Peenemunde) and passed it along, either to other scientists who would see that it made it's way to Britain, or to handlers that had been placed in Germany, Norway, and elsewhere specifically to receive Rosbaud's intelligence.

The Griffen is really a fascinating story. As a biography, it wasn't as well researched as (for instance) Sime's Lise Meitner--it is not some dense academic monograph--and indeed some parts are quite speculative. But, then, Rosbaud was a spy working for himself--and he was careful not to leave too many clues. Kramish admirably unearthed much, and, as he himself suggests, there probably is a lot more that would be interesting, but will never be known. It is our loss, for it is a fascinating piece of history. Highly recommended.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:44:00 +0000

Ruth Lewin Sime. 1996. Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics. University of California Press.

Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was born in Vienna, where she first studied physics at the University of Vienna under Ludwig Boltzmann. She earned her doctorate in 1906 (the second woman at the university of Vienna to do so in physics) under Franz Exner for a dissertation entitled Test of a Formula of Maxwell's. Already at this time, Meitner had shown evidence of a scientific precocity and taste for ambition. In fall of '07 she moved to Berlin where she attended Max Planck's lectures at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universitat and was introduced to Otto Hahn, then an Assistent in the Chemistry Institute headed by Emil Fischer.

From that point on, the story of the Meitner-Hahn collaboration accelerates, culminating in the discovery of fission some thirty years. With the exception of a brief period during the first world war, these thirty years are story of scientific discovery at breakneck speed: the discovery of 231-Pa, a long-live isotope of the element protactinium; early description of the Auger effect (predating the account of Pierre Auger, for whom the effect is named); the search for the "trans-uranes", elements heavier than uranium, the heaviest element known at the time; and, stemming from this work on high molecular weight radioactive isotopes, the discovery of nuclear fission. These were heady times. One can only imagine at the inspiration to any junior scientist in the audience of the "Wednesday colloquium" (and intimidation to the speaker): evidently, Einstein, Planck, Laue, Nernst, and Haber sat in the first row while Meitner, Baeyer, Franck, Geiger, Hertz, and "others not quite so distinguished" would occupy rows two and three (p. 96)

And that is only the scientific story. Overlapping this period of intense scientific activity in the '30s is a story of social unease and political strife, and the rise of the Third Reich. The time leading to Meitner's own eleventh hour escape from Germany was fraught with fear and confusion, not only, but especially, for Meitner. The narrative is captivating, of course. How could it not be. But, this is more than a biography of a near catastrophe. For, what one sees most clearly is how institutions like the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut become overwhelmed by the sea of politics surrounding it and above all how important are the personalities of the characters. One sees not just the development of scientific ideas as a social process, but the execution of experimental research, the resistance or capitulation of scientists to serve political ends, and the shortsightedness of the involved parties, even among the more clear-headed ones (except, perhaps for Einstein).

The story, after this climax, comprises not much more than a sad, and very lengthy, denouement. Her long time collaborator and friend Otto Hahn received the Nobel prize for the discovery of fission -- without Meitner, despite her crucial involvement in the discovery. Worse, after World War II, Hahn distanced himself from Meitner, possibly as a psychological defense in the face of the patent unfairness of his being the sole recipient of the prize and/or his continued involvement in German science throughout the war (though Hahn did not work on the German bomb project). Thus, Meitner lost not only the credit for her contribution to the discovery of fission, she also lost a deep friend in the process. Europe's loss of great physicists was America's gain. It was Meitner's loss, too. She lost many friends to America and spent most of the remaining years of research feeling isolated and alienated (but at least employed) at the Nobel Institute for Experimental Physics in Stockholm, Sweden.

Why is the story of Lise Meitner, co-discoverer of nuclear fission, student of Boltzmann, colleague of Einstein, second woman recipient of the physics doctorate at the University of Vienna not more widely known to reader's of science history? Partly it is because out of modesty (or a sense of propriety too tightly wound?) she did not tout her own discoveries. This cannot be said of many of the more well known physicists of the period. Partly it was due to the continuous, if sometimes subtle, prejudice she experienced as a woman scientist in an era and discipline dominated by men. Indeed, the domination of the discipline by men is striking. There is a photograph reproduced in this book of 41 of the world's most prominent physicists of the time (most of the names will be known to the reader knowledgeable in the history of science). Only two are women: Lise Meitner and Irene Joliot-Curie. Finally, at least partly it is that while Meitner was a lover of physics and science, she was not a careerist. For reasons of psychological inertia and her preference for continental Europe, Meitner several times rejected occasions to move that would have advanced her opportunities and reputation.

Lise Meitner is doubtless the best book I've read so far this year. In my judgment, it belongs with other great books of the period and topic--American Prometheus, the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, and The Nazi Doctors, by Robert Jay Lifton--books that simultaneously touch one with both the humanity and inhumanity of science's history. Like these, the characters are alternately charming and winsome, quirky, malicious, or downright evil. Like these, the narrative is absorbing. Like these, a greater number of questions are raised than answered. The reader is challenged to wonder if society's aims, manifested in the unstable political ends of the temporarily powerful--and influential to science in the funding, propogandization, and institutionalization of research--are indeed proper guides to the path of scientific discovery. But, to whom else is science responsible? To whom could it be responsible? And, above all, how has the emergence of technologically advanced societies affected our moral well-being? To these and related questions, history is very much an imperfect guide.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:17:00 +0000

Pierre Bayard. 2007. How to talk about books you haven't read. Bloomsbury.

This is a clever little volume. Bookish. Impish. Imminently readable. The topic is what all book-people never admit, but characteristically practice: non-reading. The thesis is that relationships other than reading, of which there are many, often obtain between people (even seriously bookish people) and books.

But, looking around for some intelligent ideas about non-reading -- what it is, what it isn't, what it could be, what it should be -- the interested and ingenuous non-reader winds up finding relatively little on which to hang the non-reading hat and with which to defend the notorious, but common, practice.

Enter Bayard and How to talk about books you haven't read. Using as both example and authority a range of books (all "literary" -- some read, some unread, at least by Bayard), Bayard explores the varieties of non-reading: books one doesn't know at all, skimmed books, books one has heard of, books once read but now forgotten. Indeed, finding our modern great multitude of books, even the most optimistic reader must despair of serious reading, if by serious we mean comprehensive. Further reflection by an serious reader yields that of the small fraction of books once encountered, most have already been forgotten. And what is the difference between a book forgotten and a book never read at all? One must conclude that books both read and ready-to-mind are only the rarest of books at all and that non-reading, therefore, is no eclectic practice, an option exercised by few readers and then only occasionally. Rather, non-reading is typical. It is the commonest of relations between readers and books in general, and between any specific reader and her specific books in particular.

Curiously, though, Bayard has missed one important category of non-reading: books partly read. Indeed, it is with this category of books that I often find myself in the most questionable positions. Is it acceptable to remark on a book mostly read? Sometimes I have read all but the very end. After absorbing the argument, one likes to stop before the delight is tarnished by some lacklustre denoument. Or sometimes once simply doesn't want the joy to end. And though the maximum extent of this joy is proportional only to the time the reading requires, its end can be postponed indefinitely. One need never read that last word. Je n'ai pas fini! To other books I intended and still intend to return, when it is the right mood and with nothing more pressing. But here, too, what is postponed for a time is often postponed forever, for moods are fickle and some moods are irrecoverable -- to say nothing of when there will be a time with nothing more pressing. I must admit, I am a non-reader.

Suppose, then, we accept non-reading and we wash it (in at least some of its forms) of its questionable reputation. How then shall we talk about books? After all, of all literary confrontations, the private one between reader and book is only a small part. Once again Bayard is prepared to rescue the unrepentent reader. The second part of How to talk about books you haven't read is about how to talk about books you haven't read. With detailed instructions for "encounters in society", "encouters with professors", "encounters with the writer", or "encounters with someone you love", the careful reader will be prepared to negotiate all manner of non-private literary confrontations. (A non-reader will have to be more careful still, to extract these life lessons. There is a reflexive problem here, but since I have read these chapters I will have to wait until I more fully forget them to again be in the relation of non-reading and to puzzle over that quandary).

Thus, we have categories of non-reading and ways to talk about books not read. What else is there, but the gentle reader herself? We must therefore conclude by considering private literary confrontations -- the confrontation of the non-reader with her non-reading self -- what Bayard calls "ways of behaving". For non-reading of necessity must bring with it a kind of cognitive dissonance that can be dissipated only with utmost seriousness. Bayard, for one, holds that "the first condition for speaking about a book you haven't read is not to be ashamed". This is a negative stance, and so he complements it with a positive one. From where do ideas come (if there are any) in the activity of non-reading? The answer: from you, the non-reader. (Of course. From where else could they have come?) For in the end, the non-reader can find in books only that which she herself has put there. And what else is there to reading, except reading itself? In the end, then, Bayard (the author), and the reader (but not the non-reader, except on extremely rare coincidence), find with Oscar Wilde that the literary encounter "is primarily a pretext for writing your autobiography". No doubt, for some, How to talk about books you haven't read is that precisely.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 03:06:00 +0000

Silvia, Paul. 2007. How to write a lot. American Psychological Association.

Self-improvement books are like antibiotics. They get one back on the feet after being debilitated by attack from an enemy that works from the inside out. Maybe they even clear up a chronic problem or two that, unnoticed, had resulted in a general malaise. But, as with other powerful medicines, they need to be administered in small, timely does. Applied carelessly and too often, they breed resistance, undermining their own effectiveness and setting up those infected with the disease for an even more spectacular fall. This book is not like those. It does not pander to the hypochondriac.

Rather, this book is for those who know full well what their disease is and just need to kick the reinforcing habits. Its lessons will be appreciated by clear-eyed graduate students, professors, and other academic writers. It will patronized by the self-assured; ignore them. It is entertaining and to the point--which is to say it is short. The investment will be well rewarded. It's also important--or it could be--to you, if your goal is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your writing. When I'm back in the lab on Monday morning I plan to pass it along to a couple of postdocs I know are interested in precisely that situation.

The goal of this book is to demystify prolific academic writing. It does not, by and large, address writing well, which is a different (and more commented-upon) topic. Rather, it is how to do it--however one does, though writing well is recommended--productively. Some myths exposed: writer's block (it doesn't exist); to be useful, academic writing must be original (most academic writing is formulaic--learn the formula and you'll be able to turn our journal articles faster than John Grisham turns out lawyer novels); finally, great academic writing results from inspiration (it doesn't, it results from thinking about writing, which results from writing a lot, which results from discipline). So, then, how does one write a lot? The answer is simple: plan it out and follow through.

You should consult the book for details, but some high points are worth mentioning. First, a couple of tricks from a psychologist help with the motivation side of things. For instance, when motivation doesn't come easily persist anyway. Silvia points out that even the most undisciplined among us schedule some events with strict observance. (What time does you favorite TV show come on? What's the last time you forgot to show up for your own lecture?) Our problem, says Silvia, is one of priorities. Our language betrays us. We (the overcommitted academics) try to find time to write. When was the last time we found time to eat, shower, or check email? No, these we do because they are a pattern. Thus with writing. The successful writer will allocate time to write. Once allocated, that time must be protected.

Second: plan. To write effectively one needs to know what to write. This means, in the first place, having some goals. These are both long term goals (projects) and short term goals (what I will write today). In the second place it means setting priorities among these goals--having a strategy to get from one to the next to the next. Finally, it mean outlining. Just do it.

Third: monitor. Silvia keeps data on his writing. When. How much. Whether or not the daily goal was met. Sure, maybe its a little nerdy. But if you're reading this book it's because you're already a little nerdy in the first place and, indeed, even want to become more efficient at nerdy things--like writing journal articles. Monitoring satisfies two needs. First, it reinforces success. (Silvia notes without irony the satisfaction he gets from marking down the day as "goal met".) Second, it provides information for better planning in the future. How long does it really take to write an article? How much time should be allocated to preparing a grant versus a book review? I've never thought of keeping data on writing. I think I'm going to try it.

In conclusion, this is a book for people who have a lot to say but a difficult time figuring out how to say it. It's an odd, but not unusual situation for the aspiring academic. For this problem, this book isn't so much an antibiotic but a prescription for healthy living: watch how much you consume, mostly exercise a lot.

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:27:00 +0000

Greenspan, Alan. 2007. The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. Penguin Press.

This was a good book. Much-hyped, yes, but it lived up to expectation. After all, one comes almost to expect books by bureaucrats to be self-serving and books by economists... well, it's the rare volume that is merely bland; the majority are also vastly overreaching. And here, the marriage of the two in the self-same person. I was not optimistic. Still, Greenspan is arguably among the smartest and most influential public intellectuals of our day, so I geared up for the expected slog.

Instead of slog, however, The Age of Turbulence was a delight. Especially the first half, which is more memoir and less prognosis. What was it like, in those heady days in Ayn Rand's Manhattan apartment? How did this self-made individual so quickly find himself among the finance cognoscenti? How much of what Greenspan did, and does, is technique? How much art? How much ideology? It's wasn't just the social and intellectual (and of course economic) history that interested me, but the person. Greenspan has been a household name and American newspaper mug for decades. But, who could say they knew the man behind the "Fedspeak"? To this reader, it is above all the personality of the memoirist that carries the story.

Most of what's been written about The Age of Turbulence is Greenspan's self-declared departure from the policies and politics of present White House inhabitants. Fair enough to set the record straight, but in today's climate of dissatisfaction, Greenspan's disavowal comes across as rather less than necessary and quite probably a bit self-serving. But this is beside the point, none of the interesting bits have to do with the current president at all. Rather, they're about former presidents, former policies (wage and price control under Nixon, social security amendments under Regan's, for instance), and what's going on in the rest of the world. One doesn't get the sense that the White House even matters all that much, at least by comparison to the persistence of the business cycle, technological change, and market globalization.

Another delight of this book is its candor. Just like Greenspan-the-chairman, Greenspan-the-memoirist doesn't shy from making judgments. For instance, the smartest president in recent memory (Clinton), the minimal ingredients for economic development (property rights and the rule of law), and above all, the proper relationship of the Federal Reserve Board to the Treasury Department (fully independent). Right or wrong, the opinions are interesting, and judgments are reasoned and reasonable. And, unlike so much pontification by experts, opinion is given on the authority of those reasons, not just the presumed authority of the reasoner.

Really, however, this volume is two books in one cover. The first, we have covered. This is the memorable part. The second is the exercise of former-board-chairman-prerogative to speak on all matters of economic concern, the decline of Europe, emerging markets throughout the world, corporate governance, education, and American's position with respect to each. Unfortunately, while the first book, the memoir, fairly sparkles with sentiment and woos the reader with nuance, the second falls not exactly flat, but rather starts sliding down that oblique ramp of ideology. Partly this is because this the the forward-looking bit. There are no facts of the matter to illuminate when the facts haven't happened yet. And then, what is there left about which to reason, but theory? Ideology edges out the sophisticated reflection of earlier chapters so that the prescription for all anticipated ills, ever freer markets and disdain for all manner of progressive policy, is like aspirin. It gets prescribed for everything, but probably only works under the severest heart attack or mildest headache, and then only for awhile. In most cases true relief requires stronger medicine.

I do not want to end on a critical note, however. There were two gems in this second bit, what I have been calling the second book. The first is a call to the American people to pony up the cost to remedy what is one of our greatest embarrassments-our failure to provide a primary and secondary education that prepares its students to function in the high-tech present, and increasingly information-centered global future. This second is the last chapter, in which Greenspan relaxes his need for data and reliance on the libertarian, free market ideology to speak about what we might expect in the near, but not too near, future. What will the world economic picture be, in the year 2030? What could the world look like? Here we have Greenspan at his best, exercising a skill, economic forecasting, at which he is perhaps unmatched in the world. But, you'll have to read the book to find out the answer.

Concluding thoughts... I approached The Age of Turbulence with little knowledge of the man who wrote it. At the time, my regard for him was unwarranted and inchoate, supported, I suppose, only by his reputation for effectiveness. But, effectiveness can result from many things, some unworthy of regard, like luck. But my regard persisted through the reading. It persisted, notwithstanding political differences, ideological misgivings, and occasional skepticism. Now, on the other side, I find in myself not only a deep regard, but also admiration, for a public intellectual whose ideas and practice have had so much influence in our present age of unreason.

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:30:00 +0000

Lockwood, Julie, L., Martha F. Hoopes, and Michael P. Marchetti. 2006. Invasion Ecology. Blackwell.

If you or your institution subscribes to the Times Higher Education Supplement you can read my review in the May textbook guide. If not, please email me for a pdf. The bottom line: Summarizing the field of invasion ecology is a difficult task. Species invasions are a hot topic in agriculture, conservation, marine biology, and basic research and each area has evolved its own somewhat idiosyncratic literature. This book is a good but not great attempt to succinctly and accessibly summarize this complicated literature.

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 02:45:00 +0000

Elkins, J. 2003. What happened to art criticism? Prickly Paradigm Press: Chicago.

What has happened to art criticism. To be honest, I don't know. I don't have an opinion, mostly because I'm largely ignorant of art criticism, art history, and the history of art criticism -- the triple juncture that is the subject of James Elkins reflection. Besides, how positively superciliously gratuitous it would be to criticize this criticism of the criticism of art.

I didn't read this book as an entre to art criticism, though (and perhaps advisedly -- for, if Elkins is right, art criticism is in a state of sad disrepair). Rather, I picked it up because I've been taken with a notion that there needs to be something akin to art criticism (or akin to what art criticism should be) for science. We need a science criticism. Now, this is something about which I'm likely to have an opinion.

What is the reason for thinking there should be a science criticism? Science, like art (on my telling, anyway), results from a special mix of technique and substance, facts-in-the-world and their rational representational, perceptions and the theories in which they are constituted. Further, scientific theories (and not just theories -- data, technology, methods, all of it) are evaluated according to theoretical virtues: elegance, simplicity, completeness, and accuracy among others. Now, the purpose of this brief essay is not to delve (deeply) into the nature of science, its methods, or its epistemologies. Can we just agree that there is in science, somewhere, an element of art? And, in our modern technically-infused (if not strictly technocratic) society, as much as there is for the history of science, the philosophy of science, the sociology of science, science policy, science ethics, and scientific law, indeed even popular science, also a place for science criticism? I think it is so.

So suppose you agree with me. What, then, should science criticism look like? It is to answer this question that I have turned, inter alia, to Elkins. In outline, the purpose of science criticism would be to pass judgments on all the different parts of science (its theories, its data, its methods, etc.) with respect to the theoretical and practical virtues good science seeks to satisfy. Admittedly, these virtues are not settled (which is to be preferred, an elegant theory or one that unifies disparate phenomena?). But isn't deliberating the relative merits of different virtues (and different virtue systems) a task suited to critical discourse? Like other criticisms, science criticism will probably be 10% global, taking the long view of science's history, and 90% local, passing judgment on just this or that part with respect to its role in the vast enterprise. For each piece of science, the critic's eye will bring to view the subtle and compelling features of a "work" while exposing incongruence, ugliness, and slapdash. Analysis will be unforgiving and our science will be better for it.

Let us see, then, what the critic of criticism has to say. Here are some nuggets. May we hope never to have the occasion where we must ask, what has happened to science criticism?

Art criticism is not considered as part of the brief of art history: it is not a historical discipline, but something akin to creative writing (p. 8)
The lack of an academic practice of art criticism... means that art criticism is unmoored. Its freedom is exhilerating, occasionally, but for a steady reader it is stultifying. (p. 8-9)
If it were disciplinary in any sense, it would have a center of some kind against which to push. At the moment art critics feel very little resistance... An academic discipline, as fractious and contradictory as it may be, puts two kinds of pressure on a practitioner: it compels an awareness of colleagues, and it instills a sense of the history of previous efforts. Both are absent, with spectacular and fantastical effect, from current art criticism. (p. 9)

Thus, the first lesson of art criticism for science is that it must exercise discipline. It need not, I submit, be strictly academic. Of erudition and pretension we have enough already. But, it must exercise the kind of rigor that "compels an awareness of colleagues" and imbues the discourse with its own "sense of history". But, for the nascent science critic, Elkins is not all admonition. There is questioning, too, of a kind well worth considering in advance of a headlong rush into we know not what critical discourse may bring.

Does it make sense to talk about art criticism as a single practice, or is it a number of different activities with different goals? (p. 13)

I have presented one goal of science criticism: to evaluate the parts of science (particularly its theories -- but I think it has other evaluable pieces as well) with respect to their objectives and criteria applied to the way in which those objectives are accomplished (scientific virtues). But, probably science criticism has other aims, too: tying scientific findings to real-world technological problems, evaluating the match between scientific knowledge and the existential questions it sometimes is posited to satisfy, weighing the gravitas of knowledge and satisfaction of airy curiosity. What else might the aims of science criticism be remains a question for science criticism, interestingly its first reflexive question.

Still, what should science criticism look like? Perhaps like art criticism, but that has its own jargony-style, with trope and tripe imported from an increasingly dated criticism of another kind -- literary. So,

Why not try to build a new kind of writing for a new subject matter? (p. 26)

Here is an idea that has promise! What we are after is a new kind of writing. Not a new vocabulary -- probably we can cobble that together from science itself, the various science parasites (history of science, philosophy of science, etc.), and critical discourse as it exists already (art criticism, literary criticism). What we need is a new genre. Clearly, this is not a part of the scientific paper itself or the various documents that seek to publicize it. Neither is it the science writing that appears in national newspapers and weekly magazines. It is not even the popular book or article that summarizes for the uncritical reader the state of scientific knowledge. Rather, it is a self-consciously, unapologetically intellectual form of writing that seeks to evaluate, interpret, orient, re-define, reveal, triangulate, and (above all) criticize the science in all its technicality. I submit that such a genre does not yet exist, at least not in full flower.

We are becoming too somber, however. Criticism is light. It moves fast. It is timely, choosing to err on the side of unsophistication to secure relevance and bearing. This is no analytic philosophy (else it would be not criticism, but philosophy). So,

Cultural criticism still needs to have a little laugh at the expense of the defenders of art... that, in turn, means that cultural criticism can ultimately be an evasion of some serious issues in contemporary culture (p. 28)

Okay, then. We can laugh. We do not take outselves (or our criticism) too seriously. But let us return to this judgment thing. That is a serious thing. Isn't the passing of judgment both impossible and presumptuous -- impossible that science could hope a critic, let us assume not a scientist herself, to be knowledgable enough to understand the science, let alone to offer valid judgments, presumtuous for precisely the same reason but from the standpoint of the critic herself. (And if she is a scientist, then isn't the critic too "close" to criticize). While there are variations that we could explore, in the end I see no reason why this is any more a problem for science than for art. There are artists and there are art critics. Why can there not be scientists and science critics? Indeed, what makes for an effective critic is that one has distance from the work being criticized, and scope within which to criticize. Thus, "external" judgment seems to be paramount. Where would we be if there was criticism and no judgment. We turn again to Elkins. Of the period of art criticism's decay, its "dissolving into the background clutter of ephemeral cultural criticism," Elkins says,

The ebb of judgment was one of the most significant changes in the art world (p. 48)

Indeed, we surmise, judgment is the essential thing.

Let us bring to an end our irreverent reflection. The opposite of being damned by faint praise -- to be worthy of critiqe, dismantling, and reconstruction -- is a noteworthy trait. It is a trait Elkins believes, evidently, to be possessed by art criticism. Where art criticism's re-building begins is where also the first building of science criticism should start. I conclude, therefore, with Elink's "three qualities" of contemporary criticism.

Ambitious Judgment

In my view, as in Elkins, it is not possible for that which is not openly ambitious to contribute to progress in those things that are, namely art and science.

Reflection about Judgment Itself

Science criticism, like art criticism, could "content itself with description". But, this would be a failure. It would be masquerading. For, always, when not explicit, descriptions are judgments implict.

Criticism Important Enough to Count as History, and Vice Versa

Science, like art, will last. It will not be the same. But it will be recognizable as a history of something, because (also like art) it does not appear without precedent from the scientific imagination. If we have learned nothing else about science in the nearly fifty years since Kuhn, we have learned this. Since science will last, its criticism also must be worthy to last.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 01:46:00 +0000

Lang, J.M. 2005. Life on the tenure track: Lessons from the first year. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Been there; done that. This is James Lang's consolation to the tenderfoot professor. I'll take it. I started reading this book around month four of the job. I finished it about month four and one day. Variously wry, amusing, and inspiring -- and occasionally disconcerting -- Lang also is reassuring. His experience (I gather) is nothing new. From the medieval universities of England to the august academies and l'ecoles of nineteenth century Europe to today's technocratic, culture-warring academic establishment in the United States, the phrase "academic affairs" has been nearly synonymous with "politics". Lang relates his academic coming-of-age with both deference and panache, naming names, calling it like it is, never sinking into the bitterness with which he is tempted, and always keeping foremost in view the purpose of it all: the students, the scholarship, and the satisfaction of the (occasionally) reflective life. For Lang the first year was eye-opening and exhausting. He waited for three years distance before passing his judgments, laudatory and damning alike. Such consideration isn't necessary to take the measure of his story, however. It, as much in idiosyncracy as in generality, is a spark for those who live life on the tenure track hoping someday to cross over to the other side. His lessons bid us to keep this end in sight and do it with optimism and cheer.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 12:13:00 +0000

Gotelli, N.J., and A.M. Ellison. 2004. A primer of ecological statistics. Sinauer, Sunderland, Massachusetts. xviii + 510 p. $34.95, ISBN: 0-87893-269-0.

[I reviewed A primer of ecological statistics in the March 2005 issue of Ecology. Click here to read the review. If access is prevented, email me for a pdf.]

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 06:11:00 +0000

Stauffer, D., and A. Aharony. 1994. Introduction to percolation theory. 2nd ed. CRC Press.

There is a classic book in environmental science with the title Consider a spherical cow (Harte 1988). Tongue in cheek, the author asks us from the outset to consider how far are we willing to depart from a perfect representation of the world in order to solve a scientific problem. Of course, we must first admit that simplifying abstractions are the basis of theoretical science, that in fact no scientific model will achieve the goal of isomorphism between dynamics in the model and dynamics in the world (van Fraassen 1980), at least not any model for a system sufficiently complex to be truly interesting. Instead, science proceeds by trial and error, in a dialectic of simplification and complexification, with the criteria for model acceptability determined by the problem at hand.

One of the simplifications that scientists have long had to “consider” is the fiction of homogeneous space. Fundamental models assume complete mixing in chemical reactions and disease transmission, and symmetry in the horizontal movement of water particles and foraging organisms. We assume that rates of spread for mutant genes, forest fires, or invasive species are the same in all directions. But, let us now instead consider a heterogeneous world. This we can do, for our experience is that wherever we look the world is heterogeneous, it is grainy. One of the great scientific insights of the twentieth century is just how thoroughgoing is the fractal geometry of nature (Mandelbrot 1982). Percolation theory is for scientists for whose problems the heterogeneity and graininess of nature matter.

Percolation theory is not a theory in the sense of the “special theory of relativity” or the “phlogiston theory of combustion”. Its purpose is not to explain a particular phenomenon. Rather it gives a set of tools to researchers interested in a variety of problems ranging from statistical mechanics to ecology. Imagine a grid in one, two, three or more dimensions. One can either focus on the squares (site percolation) or the lines between them (bond percolation). Now, randomly assign attributes to each square or line with a given probability. Since these attributes are assigned randomly sometimes squares (or lines) with the same property will be adjacent. Sometimes they will form clusters. Percolation theory is concerned with the statistical properties of these clusters. How many clusters are there of what size? What is the length of the perimeter around these clusters? At what point, known as the percolation threshold, does a major portion of the grid coalesce into one giant cluster? (This property, described here imprecisely, is defined for theoretical infinite networks as the point at which an infinite cluster first appears. Properties of finite networks can be related to the percolation threshold, too.) Initially it may seem that this level of abstraction and the simplicity of the properties that can be calculated would limit the range of applications. But, to the contrary, researchers in many fields have found ways to conceptualize discipline-specific questions in the general formulas of percolation theory, solving problems in physics, chemistry, biology, and social networks. The problems range from understanding transport of liquids in porous media (hence the name “percolation”) to the control of disease outbreaks to phase transitions in condensed matter physics.

Introduction to percolation theory is a widely recommended, much sought out-of-print introduction to the topic. As far as theoretical physics goes (theoretical anything for that matter) it assumes relatively little in terms of physics (none) and math (basic programming, differentiation and integration of functions of one variable, and elementary probability theory). It derives many of the basic known results and presents others that go beyond the level of mathematics for which the book was written. It introduces basic concepts of percolation, renormalization, and diffusion on porous medium. From this book, an interested scientist or student from any field in which stochastic processes are used to represent dynamics can obtain techniques to complement existing conceptual toolboxes, while the background obtained from reading this book will provide confidence to venture further into the technical literature. An ecologist by training, I found this book readable and informative with a rare style for the genre. As an introduction and reference for computational scientists in many fields, it is indispensable. Highly recommended.

Harte, J. 1988. Consider a spherical cow. Reprint edition. University Science Books.
Mandelbrot, B. 1982. The fractal geometry of nature. W.H. Freeman & Co.
van Fraassen, B. 1980. The scientific image. Oxford.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 01:32:00 +0000

Kirsch, S. 2005. Proving grounds: Project Plowshare and the unrealized dream of nuclear earthmoving. Rutgers University Press.

In 1957 the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, California began an audacious experimental program to study potential peaceful applications of nuclear explosions. I reiterate, the intention was to carry out peaceful nuclear explosions. These nuclear scientists sought to exploit the energy of uncontrolled nuclear reactions in the service of society's greater good. From start to finish, the goal was constructive destruction. This sounds preposterous to modern sensibilities. How any nuclear explosions during the negotiation of the Limited Test Ban Treaty could be considered peaceful, even welcomed in some communities (the anti-NIMBY), is almost incomprehensible. This however, is the story of Proving Grounds.

Project Plowshare was the name of this experimental program, lasting more than fifteen years from 1957 to 1974 and costing the US government about 155 million $US in the currency of that time. The biggest projects contemplated by Plowshare scientists were to be demonstrations of nuclear excavation. The first was a harbor planned for an isolated corner of Alaska (Project Chariot), the second a sea level canal across the Isthmus of Panama. But neither of these projects was carried out. Indeed, in fifteen years the total earthmoving of Project Plowshare comprised a few minor explosions at the Nevada Test Site, basically leaving a few large holes (but we knew nuclear explosions could do that!), or, in one interesting case (Project Sulky), a pile of rubble. (You'll have to read the book to see why this is interesting.)

Individually, these episodes tell us a bit about the politics, economics, and social organization of science in the immediate post war era. What is more interesting about Plowshare, however, is not the idiosyncracies of the individual projects (themselves attesting to the idiosyncracy of the scientific process) but the program's eventual failure as a whole. Further, this failure was not primarily in the view of the physicists who participated in it, or in their peers at other institutions. Evidently, physicists by and large judged the models of Plowshare to be basically correct, so far as they went (the extent of nuclear fallout notwithstanding), and its applications sound. Rather, Plowshare failed because it could not command public assent, nor the assent of other non-physicist scientists, primarily ecologists and public health professionals. It is common knowledge among students of science and technology that (contrary to myth) science is not universal, that its communities skirt the borders of public and private knowledge. But here we have a science the outcome of which was wholly determined by non-experts. The bungled politics that makes up the bulk of this tale only accelerated the failure which in retrospect seems to have been Plowshare's destiny from the outset. (Surely at least, it could have been seen from the event of a college textbook, Constructive Uses of Nuclear Explosives, published prior to the existence of any real experimental program and certainly before any successful demonstrations of this new science.) Curious.

In the end, the end of Plowshare was politics. Kirsch writes that “Marcuse's fears of technocracy were quite legitimate, of course, and have in some ways been realized” (p. 208). But, I think there is no “of course” about it. It is not evident to me that Marcuse's fears were legitimate (or that they have been realized). The “of course” is to forestall any doubts we may have to the validity of this claim. But, the story of Plowshare, carefully researched and expertly told, tells us just the opposite. Technocracy is not the inevitable conclusion of technology, but just one of its possibilities. Dissent is not futile. But we, the dissenting, cannot slide into cynicism but must vigilantly call technocrats to account. Science also belongs to us.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

noreply@blogger.com (John M. Drake) — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 17:41:00 +0000

Habermas, J. 2003. The Future of Human Nature. J. Habermas. Cambridge: Polity Press. 127 pp.

Recent developments in biotechnology – especially in cloning and human reproduction – have occasioned the rise of a bioethics cast in the idiom of “human dignity”. This new bioethics isn’t just about the moral gravity of technical knowledge, but also the politics of technology and social constraints on science. At its core, it is about what kind of beings we think we are, shocked as we are to learn that we have only about 30,000 genes and that a large number of them are shared with the genus Paramecium. Of course, the politics is about how much restraint should be exercised in various fields of research, and who should use what kind of muscle to leverage that restraint. As usual, there are progressives and futurists alongside more conservative pundits – writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben and doctor/philosopher Leon Kass come to mind – though there are many others who also would cease active research on controversial topics hoping for moral clarity, or at least that we will not seriously misstep, trudging as we are on ethically rocky soil.

The Future of Human Nature, by philosopher and social thinker Jürgen Habermas, is a recent and welcome contribution to this discourse. It is also the most compelling argument for the conservative position. In part, this is because Habermas takes a political angle on some of the metaphysically more windward questions. Compare with Kass’s Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity. Whereas Kass’s position depends on the premise that political liberalism is antithetical to human dignity (indeed to many virtues worth preserving), and that human dignity cannot be understood apart from deeply metaphysical notions about free will and the like, much of Habermas’s argument actually relies on the suppositions of political liberalism. In three brief essays, Habermas addresses these questions:

Are there postmetaphysical answers to the question: What is the good life?
How might biotechnology influence the self-understanding of the human species?
How should religious intuitions, beliefs and doctrine, and institutions address social policy in a secular society?

These are weighty questions. Habermas is to be commended for having addressed them, clearly and cogently, in just 127 pages.

Habermas’s first question is an old one, but not one much talked about by philosophers nowadays. Habermas observes that it is “precisely with regard to the questions that have the greatest relevance for us” that philosophers are the least useful. Seemingly, the best they can do is to tell us how we can’t answer a question, not how we can. Why is this? Is it truly the case that philosophy after Kant cannot guide self-understanding, because the philosophers themselves have lost faith in their ability to tell a coherent story? Habermas thinks not, at least not entirely, because language, even the language of analytic philosophy, is not a “kind of private property”; it is shared. For Habermas, the content of the answers we seek resides in the self-understanding of shared language-users. When the self-understanding of the language community is threatened, as Habermas perceives that it is by modern biological technologies, not only can philosophy intervene, it must.

Lurking behind this moral imperative is a thesis about the self-understanding of human beings as biologically indeterminate organisms. The second essay, comprising approximately the second third of the book, explores the political and moral consequences of cloning and other genetic technologies (e.g. preimplantation genetic diagnosis). Habermas argues seven points. First, Habermas believes that the most useful approach to a politics of biotechnology is to determine what it means to say that “the genetic foundations of our existence should not be disposed over” (p. 22). Therefore, (point number two) the comparison of reproduction technology with the abortion debate has been misleading. Third, the human genome is constitutive of our self-understanding as Homo sapiens, and therefore gene-manipulation dangerously interferes with the identity of the species. Then, fourth, a moral distinction should be made between “made” and “grown”. Thus, fifth, gene-manipulation will affect the self-understanding of the “genetically programmed person”. Sixth, the knowledge of a genetically programmed person that they are such may restrict the choice of one’s way of life and thereby disrupt the symmetrical relationship that obtains between free and equal human beings. (In particular, the parent generation will be empowered at the expense of the offspring.) Finally, certain research strategies exemplify the “dangers of liberal eugenics” and are to be strictly avoided.

Habermas’s defenses of (1), (2), and (4) cogently address some of the more important political considerations for a modern liberal society contemplating the gravity of biotechnology. Serious questions about privacy and legal standing sit at the juncture of made/grown and our previous political experience will not serve us well here. However, in Habermas’s view these considerations, which I think should be a part of the political discourse, are intertwined with (3), (5), and (6) which are (in my view) based on scientifically unjustifiable premises. I do not think, for instance, that our self-understanding as a species is much at all related to our (mostly) shared genome, which we share (mostly) with all other living organisms. Our common-sense self-understanding did not change an iota when we learned that the Human Genome Project had been 99% (or 100%) completed. I suspect it did not affect the self-understanding of the scientists involved in the project either, not even for the project leader whose own DNA was used in the project.

What has happened here is that the biological discourse has inherited concepts from a metaphysical one. These are ideas like “free will” and “determined” and “programmed”. But these concepts do not truly belong to biology; they are not a part of the workaday world of DNA extraction and sequencing. For the most part, they are not even a component of biological theorizing. However much we share Habermas’s premise that our shared self-understanding is based on our shared language, we also must admit that our scientific language and its concepts are not broadly shared (our society is by and large scientifically unschooled), that our scientific concepts and the language used to communicative them are continually changing, and that even if science was fixed and scientific knowledge was universal the majority of us would not take our existential cues from our scientific dogmas.

The final essay in this volume, “Faith and Knowledge”, is predicated upon the supposition that religion does in fact have something meaningful to say in a secular world. For Habermas, the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack in New York is sufficient evidence of this. But, when should society heed religion? When should religion defer? Habermas consistently cautions against univocal moral pronouncements, never affirming the complete moral authority of religion in either its supernatural or secular varieties. There are some who believe that science is a special language game particularly useful for technological applications, but that it is not pertinent to our deepest metaphysical and ethical intuitions. Habermas objects. Modern science, as alien and exotic as it is, does inform our common sense self-identity.

I differ. Truly, our world was changed by Copernicus and Darwin. But, this in no way justifies the presumptions of secularism. Modern political liberalism does not embody a single scientistic public; democracy is “many-voiced”. The upshot of this is that when it comes to bioethics—Habermas uses genetic engineering as an example—one need not assent to (possibly dubious) theological claims to find reason in the voice of religion. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” (Gen 1:27). From this, Habermas finds insight for even the irreligious to appreciate: God the creator is not God the technician. “One need not believe in theological premises in order to understand what follows from this… [if] the place of God be taken by a peer… Would not the first human being to determine, at his own discretion, the natural essence of another human being at the same time destroy the equal freedoms that exist among persons of equal birth in order to ensure their difference?”

As should be clear from my comments, I think that Habermas has failed to identify the solution. I do not think that the genome is the essence of the man. Importantly, however, he has correctly identified the question. What does it mean to say that the genetic foundations of our existence should not be disposed over?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.