Daedalus articles from June 2006

Daedalus archives from June 2006

Assessing U.S. energy policy.
June 22, 2006... For decades, our political leaders have told us that we need to use energy more efficiently and derive more of it from domestic sources. (1) Since the energy crisis of 1973, U.S. presidents have declared the need to gain independence from...

Incarnation: 9:30 am to 9:36 am.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... She sits on the straightback chair in the room. A ray of sun is calling across the slatwood floor. I say she because my body is so still in the folds of daylight through which the one beam slants. I say calling because it lays itself...

Minding the body.
June 22, 2006... We spend a good part of our lives attending to the sights and sounds of the world outside of us, oblivious to the fact that we (mentally speaking) exist in our bodies, and that our bodies exist in our minds. (1) This neglect is both good and...

The embodiment of mind.
June 22, 2006... The word 'mind' is a loose one with many applications in use. As I use it here, I am restricting it to one definition in Webster's Third International Dictionary: "Mind--the sum total of the conscious states of an individual." I want to suggest...

Making sense of emotion: evolution, reason & the brain.
June 22, 2006... We often define the basic goals of human striving in terms of emotion: we yearn for happiness and do our utmost to avoid misery. (1) But making the distinction between positive and negative emotions is not as simple as saying that we seek the...

Mind incarnate: from Dewey to Damasio.
June 22, 2006... To be a human being requires a functioning human brain, in a living human body, interacting with complex physical, social, and cultural environments, in an ongoing flow of experience. What could be more self-evident than the fact that the human...

When the mind leaves the body ... and returns.
June 22, 2006... I am sitting with a colleague on a platform at the front of a large university lecture hall. We are psychologists teaching in the same department, brought together on this occasion by students who want to hear how we converse. It is a Monday...

Experience & experiment.
June 22, 2006... Social scientists and interpretive theorists of culture have struggled with the 'mind-body problem' since the inception of the human sciences. To emulate the natural sciences as they understand them, many social scientists pursue a predictive...

The mind in dance.(Ballet dancers)
June 22, 2006... At eighteen years of age, I had already been a member of the New York City Ballet for three years and had just been made a principal dancer. While performing at the ballet company's home, the City Center of Music and Drama on 56th Street in New...

The body in the brain.
June 22, 2006... In J. M. Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello, the protagonist, fictional author Elizabeth Costello, delivers a prize lecture entitled "The Lives of Animals." Costello contrasts reason, exemplified by the Descartian credo Cogito Ergo Sum, with...

How the mind works: what we still don't know.
June 22, 2006... One could make a case that the history of cognitive science, insofar as it's been any sort of success, has consisted largely of finding more and more things about cognition that we didn't know and didn't know that we didn't. 'Throwing some...

The door in the woods.(Short story)
June 22, 2006... The cancer did not so much kill Frieda's mother as engulf her like rising water. Within a week of her death, Frieda's father had locked himself in the cabin at the edge of Frieda's property. He had the clothes on his back and the few amenities...

Leo Strauss in Chicago.(University of Chicago)(Viewpoint essay)
June 22, 2006... I first met Leo Strauss when I was nineteen years old and a student in the College of the University of Chicago. It was the spring of 1949--this was during the epoch of the presidency of Robert Maynard Hutchins, when the University was at the...

On welfare reform's hollow victory.(Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996)
June 22, 2006... Almost a decade has passed since President Clinton fulfilled his pledge to "end welfare as we know it" by signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). PRWORA, commonly known as 'welfare reform,'...

On the reemergence of political pluralism.(poilitics after world wars)
June 22, 2006... As recently as a century ago, the forms of government known in classical antiquity--empire, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and mixed regimes--still existed. Moreover, people regarded them as legitimate. However, in the aftermath of the...

On history in the twentieth century.(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2006... May 10, 2006 To the Editor: Anthony Grafton's essay, "History's postmodern fates," in the Spring 2006 issue of Daedalus was interesting and informative, but I share neither his pessimism about the fate of history nor his limited view...

On peace in the Middle East.(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2006... May 8, 2006 To the Editor: If William B. Quandt is to have any credibility as an expert "on the peace process in the Middle East" (published in the Spring 2006 issue of Daedalus), he should at least know that the first name of former...

On teaching in European universities.(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2006... May 14, 2006 To the Editor: In their essay, "American philosophy in the twentieth century," which appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Daedalus, Professors Dagfinn Follesdal and Michael Friedman write: "Unlike their European...