Daedalus articles from September 2004

Daedalus archives from September 2004

Why nature & nurture won't go away.(Distinguish nature and nurture in human development)
September 22, 2004... When Richard Mulcaster referred in 1581 to "that treasure... bestowed on them by nature, to be bettered in them by nurture," he gave the world a euphonious name for an opposition that has been debated ever since. People's beliefs about the...

Philosophy-envy.(Philosophers about human nature)
September 22, 2004... When philosophers like Ortega y Gasset say that we humans have a history rather than a nature, they are not suggesting that we are blank slates. They do not doubt that biologists will eventually pin down the genetic factor in autism,...

Killer species.
September 22, 2004... Human social behavior varies so much that our plasticity can sometimes seem infinite. But human variation has obvious limits when we compare ourselves with our primate relatives. Napoleon may have claimed that he always had to give in to his...

The origins of human differences.(development of human behavior)
September 22, 2004... With increasing frequency the media report the discovery of genes for distinct human characteristics, such as athletic prowess or male promiscuity. Yet it is obvious that experience, education, and culture make a big difference in how people...

Human universals, human nature & human culture.
September 22, 2004... Human universals--of which hundreds have been identified--consist of those features of culture, society, language, behavior, and mind that, so far as the record has been examined, are found among all peoples known to ethnography and history....

Intuitive ethics: how innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues.
September 22, 2004... Strangeness is fascinating. Medieval maps embellished with fantastical beasts, sixteenth-century wonder chambers filled with natural and technological marvels, even late-twentieth-century supermarket tabloids--all attest to the human...

Human nature: an economic perspective.
September 22, 2004... Fruitful social science must be very largely a study of what is not. --F. A. Hayek, Rules and Order An economist writing on the topic of human nature is surely expected to talk about decision making by narrowly self-interested rational...

The uniquely human in human nature.
September 22, 2004... We can describe an object by listing its features, as manufacturers do when they provide a description of the parts of an assembly-required crib; or by comparing the object with one from a related category, as parents do when they tell their...

The DNA behind human nature: gene expression and the role of experience.
September 22, 2004... The idiosyncrasies of one person cannot be human nature, nor can a feature of human behavior that is merely typical of many animals, such as hunger. Human nature must be the product of a uniquely human, but near species-universal, combination...

Improvisations for Hart Crane: thou canst read nothing except through appetite.(Poem)
September 22, 2004... 1 Super-ego crash-meshed idiot-savant. And what have you. This has to be the show-stopper. Stay put. Slumming for rum and rumba, dumb Rimbaud, he the sortilegist, visionary on parole, floor-walker watching space, the candy man,...

I left my heart in Skaftafell.(Fictional Work)
September 22, 2004... He was meek, homicidal, wore a long scarf tied once around his neck as must have been the style for trolls that year. I never saw him board the bus, but it may have been in Varmahlid, though I can't be sure since I slept so much in Iceland. ...

On difficulty in contemporary American poetry.
September 22, 2004... Experimental poetry has fallen on hard times. Poetry that makes its difficulty a basic means to accomplishing its ends seems now mostly a throwback, a fantasy that the excitements of modernist art can continue into the present. It also faces...