american academy of arts & sciences Bulletin

spring 2005

Page 1

Academy Begins Yearlong Celebration of 225th Anniversary

Page 20

Biodiversity and our Common FuturePeter Raven

Academy Receives $3 Million Grant, Page 6

Russian Religious Mystics and French Rationalists, Page 12

A Bach Cult in Late-Eighteenth-Century Berlin, Page 26

Project Update, Page 39

inside:

american academy of arts & sciences

vol. lviii, no. 3Bulletin

Page 8

The Predicament of American Health CareHarvey Fineberg

Saturday, October 8, 2005

Stated Meeting and National InductionCeremony–Cambridge

Location: Sanders Theatre, Harvard University

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Stated Meeting–Cambridge

Speaker: David McCullough

Location: To be announced

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Stated Meeting–Chicago

Speakers: To be announced

Location: Art Institute of Chicago

Friday, December 2, 2005

Stated Meeting–Cambridge

Speaker: Robert Levin, Harvard University

Location: House of the Academy

Fall meetings in New York and Californiato be announced.

For information and reservations, contact the Events Of½ce (phone: 617-576-5032; email: [email protected]).

Calendar of Events

Contents

Academy News 1

Record-Breaking Support for the Academy 6

Visiting Scholars and University Af½liates 7

Stated Meeting Reports

The Predicament of American Health CareHarvey Fineberg 8

Russian Religious Mystics and FrenchRationalists: Mathematics, 1900–1930

Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor 12

Biodiversity and Our Common FuturePeter Raven 20

A Bach Cult in Late-Eighteenth-CenturyBerlin: Sara Levy’s Musical Salon

Christoph Wolff 26

James Bowdoin and the Patriot Philosophers 32

Around the Country 34

Nominating Committee Report 38

Project Update 39

Noteworthy 42

From the Archives 44

Bulletin of the American Academy Spring 2005 1

Cherishing Knowledge, Shap-ing the Future” sets the theme forthe Academy’s 225th anniversarylectures and publications. Meet-ings will be held throughout thecountry to mark this special oc-casion, with a focus on the prin-ciples underlying the foundingof the nation and the Academy–how they have been transformedthroughout history and how theyare interpreted today.

To inaugurate these events, VicePresident and Chair of the Acad-emy Trust Louis W. Cabot wel-comed several hundred guests to a special program on April 21,2005, celebrating the Academy’shistoric mission and its accom-plishments over three centuries.The evening began with FellowsJames Carroll and Linda Green-house reading an August 1776 ex-change of letters between Johnand Abigail Adams that foreshad-owed the creation of the Acad-emy. Members of the Counciland Trust read from the Massa-chusetts Constitution and fromthe Academy’s Charter, acknowl-

edged sister organizations estab-lished in the founding period, andspoke of the Academy’s work inscience, social policy, and the artsand humanities.

Several speakers recalled theevolution of the Academy’s workover the past three centuries. NealLane (Rice University) called at-tention to the Academy’s ongoingconcern with both pure researchand the practical applications ofscience–from an expedition toobserve an eclipse of the sun inthe midst of the War for Indepen-dence to one of the ½rst Darwin-ian debates in America in themid-eighteenth century and theestablishment of the ½eld of armscontrol in the twentieth century.Robert C. Post (Yale Law School)traced the changing meaning ofsocial welfare in the Academyfrom improving crop productionin 1780 to a conference on the so-cial impact of science and tech-nology held two months beforePearl Harbor, a series of path-breaking studies on race and pov-erty in the 1960s, and current stud-

ies on corporate and nonpro½taccountability. Executive Of½cerLeslie Berlowitz considered hu-manistic study within the Acad-emy, beginning with a focus onthe language of the new nationand extending to the creation ofimportant institutions in the hu-manities, particularly the Na-tional Humanities Center, and a study of the challenges facingthe humanities in contemporaryAmerica.

Highlights of the evening includ-ed congratulatory remarks byMary Maples Dunn, Co-Execu-tive Of½cer of the American Phil-osophical Society in Philadelphia;video tributes from Senator Ed-ward M. Kennedy, Supreme CourtJustice Stephen G. Breyer, U.S.Secretary of Energy Samuel W.Bodman, and Chief Justice Mar-garet H. Marshall of the Massa-chusetts Supreme Judicial Court;and musical performances bymembers of the Lydian String

Quartet, Sergeant Dan Clark ofthe Massachusetts State Police,and the Lincoln Minutemen Fifeand Drum Corps.

As Peter Nicholas, Chairman ofBoston Scienti½c Corporation andCo-Chair of the Academy Trust,observed in his remarks at thecelebration, “what is particular-ly exciting about the Academy is its ability to adapt its historicmission to ensure that we remaina vital resource for contemporarysociety. The Academy’s successis due to its capacity to use itstraditions imaginatively, whilealways promoting constructivechange.”

Academy NewsAcademy Begins Yearlong Celebration of 225th Anniversary

James Carroll (Boston, Massachusetts) and Linda Greenhouse (The NewYork Times)

Peter Nicholas (Boston ScientificCorporation)

Neal Lane (Rice University)

“

2 Bulletin of the American Academy Spring 2005

225th Celebration

Readings from the Letters of John and Abigail AdamsJames CarrollLinda Greenhouse

Welcome and A Remembrance by John AdamsLouis W. Cabot

A Tribute to the AcademyThe Honorable Margaret H. Marshall

Chapter 5, Section 2 from the Massachusetts ConstitutionCheryl Finley

The Charter of the American AcademyJohn S. Reed

A Tribute to Sister OrganizationsLouis W. Cabot

Acknowledgment from the American Philosophical SocietyMary Maples Dunn

A Tribute to the AcademyThe Honorable Samuel W. Bodman

The Academy’s Work: Science and Global SecurityNeal Lane

A Tribute to the AcademyThe Honorable Stephen G. Breyer

The Academy’s Work: Social Policy and American Institutions

Robert C. Post

The Academy’s Work: The Humanities and CultureLeslie C. Berlowitz

A Tribute to the AcademyThe Honorable Edward M. Kennedy

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Allegro movement from theDivertimento in E Flat, K. 563

Members of the Lydian String QuartetIntroduced by Jerrold Meinwald

An AppreciationLeslie C. Berlowitz

Proclamation from the White HouseJesse H. Choper

The Academy’s FuturePeter Nicholas

“America the Beautiful”Sergeant Dan Clark

Order of Speakers

Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshallof the Massachusetts SupremeJudicial Court

U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman

Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer

Senator Edward M. Kennedy


Members of the Lydian String Quartet: Daniel Stepner (violin), JoshuaGordon (violoncello), and Mary Ruth Ray (viola)

Jerrold Meinwald (Cornell University) and Robert G. Stone, Jr. (KirbyCorporation)

Louis W. Cabot (Cabot-Wellington, LLC), Cheryl Finley (Visiting Scholar,American Academy), Carolyn S. Shoemaker (Lowell Observatory)

At a dinner honoring members ofthe Council and the Trust, PresidentPatricia Meyer Spacks (University ofVirginia) toasted the legacy and thepromise of the Academy:

As President of the Academy, I want to celebrate the ac-complishments of my forty-one predecessors. Beginningwith merchant and astronomer James Bowdoin, they laidthe foundation for an institution that has advanced changewhile remaining faithful to a 225-year-old mission celebrat-ing the life of the mind in service to society. They neverlost sight of the distinctive characteristics that de½ne theAcademy. We remain interdisciplinary, independent, re-flective, pragmatic, and always aimed at promoting thecommon good.

Lest you think that presidents alone set the Academy’scourse, let me assure you otherwise. My fellow of½cers,members of the Council and the Trust, the leaders of ourresearch programs, and all those who work with us to ad-vance our goals are critical to our success. Thinkers anddoers, working under no academic or political pressureand with no collective preconceptions, join forces to de-velop fresh approaches to dif½cult problems. Just as wecherish knowledge, we cherish all of you who value theAcademy’s past and inspire its future.

John S. Reed (Citigroup, retired)

Patricia Meyer Spacks


225th Celebration

Robert C. Post (Yale University) and Michael E. Gellert(Windcrest Partners)

Charles M. Haar (Harvard Law School) and Allan Robinson (Harvard University)

Leslie Berlowitz (American Academy) and William T. Golden (New York, New York)

Members of the Lincoln Minutemen Fife and Drum Corps


John Holdren (Harvard University) and Hugh Huxley(Brandeis University). Holdren spoke on “The Energy/Well-Being Nexus: Economy, Security, Environment” ata dinner following the program.

Carl H. Pforzheimer III (Carl H. Pforzheimer and Co.) and Father J. BryanHehir (Harvard University)

Banners of some of the sister organizations established in the founding period of the Academy.

Sergeant Dan Clark of the Massachusetts State Police


Record-Breaking Support for the Academy

In acknowledging the award, Executive Of½cer Leslie Berlowitz noted, “This new grant will advance all aspects ofour work, as we enhance our role as an independent, intellectual center for addressing pressing issues of our time.The Academy is extremely grateful to the President of the Hewlett Foundation, Paul Brest, and to the members ofits board of trustees for recognizing the need and providing the critical support to realize the Academy’s ambitiousgoals.”

President Patricia Meyer Spacks added, “The Hewlett award represents a strong vote of con½dence in the importantwork of the Academy. It will increase our ability to draw on the Academy’s unique assets–a distinguished member-ship, unparalleled convening power, and institutional independence–to sustain and strengthen a 225-year traditionof advancing scholarship and serving society.”

The Academy is the bene½ciary of important new fundsto support both its research program and the work of theVisiting Scholars. These gifts will help the Academy to ini-tiate new projects on topics such as the governance of theInternet, corporate and nonpro½t responsibility, highereducation, and challenges to American science. Several ofthe grants will support the Visiting Scholars Program, nowcompleting its third year.

Lead gifts have been received from:

The Annenberg FoundationThe Cabot Family Charitable TrustThe Virginia Wellington Cabot FoundationThe Carl and Lily Pforzheimer FoundationThe Charles and Suzanne Haar FundThe Esther Haar Scholar Exchange ProgramThe National Endowment for the Humanities.

Expanded Support for Academy Research

A $3 million capacity-building grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation will signi½cantlystrengthen the Academy’s research program, expand outreach, and build a more secure ½nancial base.Plans call for increasing the number of projects with public policy implications, involving more Fellowsand Visiting Scholars in this work, and broadening Academy activities across the country.

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Awards Academy $3 Million Grant

and Cynthia Reed, and E. JohnRosenwald, Jr.

The Academy is indebted to theco-chairs of the DevelopmentCommittee, Louis W. Cabot andRobert A. Alberty, and to theCommittee’s members–Jesse H.Choper, Michael E. Gellert, Wil-liam T. Golden, Charles M. Haar,and Jack W. Peltason–for thededication and hard work thathas helped to make this year’sAnnual Fund such a success.

A full list of all contributors tothe 2004–2005 Annual Fundwill appear in the Academy’sAnnual Report, to be issued infall 2005.

“Every gift is important to us,”emphasized Vice President andChair of the Trust Louis W.Cabot. “The Academy relies onAnnual Fund gifts to underwriteresearch projects and a growingschedule of programs across thecountry. We extend our deep ap-preciation to all of the Fellows,friends, and foundations whohave helped us to exceed our goalagain this year.”

Setting the pace in individualgiving with leadership gifts wereLeonore Annenberg, Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr., Louis W. Cabot,Lewis B. Cullman, William T.Golden, Walter B. Hewlett,Martin Lipton, Peter Nicholas,Carl H. Pforzheimer III, John

Over the past year, the Academy reached two importantmilestones in its fund-raising efforts. Gifts and grants tosupport projects and programs totaled over $5 million, andthe Annual Fund surpassed the $1 million mark for the ½fthconsecutive year, exceeding $1.25 million for the ½rst time.

Annual Giving at New Level


The Visiting Scholars Programwas created to expand the Acad-emy’s research by supporting thework of the next generation ofscholars and investing in theirprofessional development. Freeof regular teaching and adminis-trative responsibilities, postdoc-toral scholars and junior facultycombine their independent re-search with participation in con-ferences, Stated Meetings, andinformal gatherings.

Over the past three years, re-sponse to the program has beenoverwhelmingly enthusiastic.Participants welcome the oppor-tunity to engage with Fellows ina “vital, stimulating atmospherethat spins off new insights, ideas,and projects, even as it encour-ages basic study, writing, andresearch.”

Eight Visiting Scholars completedtheir yearlong residency in Cam-bridge in May. Their new univer-sity and professional positionsand the topics of their researchat the Academy follow:

Christopher Capozzola:Assistant Professor of History,Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

Research: Uncle Sam Wants You:Citizenship and Obligation in WorldWar I America

Cheryl Finley: PostdoctoralScholar, Ford Foundation; Assis-tant Professor in the History ofArt Department, Cornell Univer-sity (on leave).

Research: Committed to Memory:The Slave Ship Icon in the BlackAtlantic Imagination

University Af½liates

Boston University–Aram V. Chobanian, Interim PresidentBrandeis University–Jehuda Reinharz, PresidentBrown University–Ruth J. Simmons, PresidentColumbia University–Lee Bollinger, PresidentCornell University–Jeffrey Sean Lehman, PresidentDartmouth College–James Wright, PresidentDuke University–Richard H. Brodhead, PresidentEmory University–James W. Wagner, PresidentGeorge Washington University–Stephen J. Trachtenberg, PresidentHarvard University–Lawrence H. Summers, PresidentIndiana University–Adam W. Herbert, PresidentJohns Hopkins University–William R. Brody, PresidentMassachusetts Institute of Technology–Susan Hock½eld, PresidentMichigan State University–Lou Anna Kimsey Simon, PresidentNew York University–John Sexton, PresidentNorthwestern University–Henry Bienen, PresidentOhio State University–Karen Holbrook, PresidentPennsylvania State University–Graham Spanier, PresidentPrinceton University–Shirley Tilghman, PresidentRice University–David W. Leebron, PresidentSmith College–Carol T. Christ, PresidentStanford University–John L. Hennessy, PresidentTufts University–Lawrence S. Bacow, PresidentUniversity of California, Berkeley–Robert J. Birgeneau, ChancellorUniversity of California, Davis–Larry N. Vanderhoef, ChancellorUniversity of California, Irvine–Ralph J. Cicerone, ChancellorUniversity of California, Los Angeles–Albert Carnesale, ChancellorUniversity of Chicago–Don Michael Randel, PresidentUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign–Richard Herman,

Interim ChancellorUniversity of Iowa–David J. Skorton, PresidentUniversity of Maryland–C.D. Mote, Jr., PresidentUniversity of Michigan–Mary Sue Coleman, PresidentUniversity of Minnesota–Robert Bruininks, PresidentUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill–James Moeser, ChancellorUniversity of Notre Dame–Rev. Edward A. Malloy, PresidentUniversity of Pennsylvania–Amy Gutmann, PresidentUniversity of Pittsburgh–Mark A. Nordenberg, ChancellorUniversity of Southern California–Steven B. Sample, PresidentUniversity of Texas, Austin–Larry R. Faulkner, PresidentUniversity of Virginia–John T. Casteen, III, PresidentUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison–John D. Wiley, ChancellorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State University–

Charles W. Steger, President

Hsuan Hsu: Assistant Professorof English, Yale University.

Research: Scales of Identi½cation:Geography, Affect, and Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature

Christopher Klemek: AssistantProfessor of History, Florida In-ternational University.

Research: Urbanism and Transi-tion: Modernist Planning and theCrisis of Urban Liberalism in Europeand North America, 1945–1975

Matthew Lindsay: Associate atthe Boston law ½rm, Foley Hoag.

Research: In Defense of “RacialBalancing”: Accounting for Inequal-ity in the Post-Civil-Rights Era

Robert McDougall: AssistantProfessor of History, Universityof Western Ontario.

Research: The People’s Phone:Rewriting the History of the GildedAge and the Progressive Era

Asif Sidiqqi: Assistant Professorof History, Fordham University.

Research: Science and Repressionin the Twentieth Century: RevisitingSoviet Science

Lisa Szefel: Lecturer in Historyand Literature, Harvard Univer-sity.

Research: The American PoeticCommunity: 1890–1920

2004–2005 Visiting Scholars’Appointments for the Coming Year Emory University is the 42nd institution to become a member

of the Academy’s consortium of University Af½liates–a groupof colleges and universities from across the country that providesupport and guidance for Academy research, including the Vis-iting Scholars Program and inter-university projects. The Acad-emy is deeply grateful to President James W. Wagner of Emoryand to the leaders of all the Af½liates for their con½dence in theAcademy’s efforts to support interdisciplinary research and toexpand opportunities for postdoctoral scholars and junior faculty.

Emory Joins University Af½liates


Harvey Fineberg is President of the Institute ofMedicine. He has been a Fellow of the AmericanAcademy since 1994.

The predicament of American health caretoday is a concern for virtually every citizenin this country. When we think about Amer-ican health care, as a matter of perspective, itmay be useful to remember where we’ve comefrom. At the beginning of the twentieth cen-tury, life expectancy at birth in the UnitedStates was only about forty-eight years. Infantmortality (deaths among newborns beforethe age of one) was greater than one hundredper one thousand live births. From 1900 tothe year 2000, life expectancy increased bymore than 50 percent (greater than seventy-½ve years), and infant mortality in the UnitedStates declined by an order of magnitude, toless than ten. Heart disease, which is the ma-jor killer, has actually diminished by half in

its age-speci½c mortality since the 1950s. Asa cause of death, stroke similarly decreasedby more than 50 percent in that period oftime. If you think about the broad sweep ofprogress and the outcomes of health in theUnited States over the twentieth century, itis historically unprecedented, dramatic, andstunning. Never before in human history hadanything like that improvement in popula-tion health been achieved.

Thinking about our current health-care sys-tem, how many of you would say that youare very satis½ed or somewhat satis½ed withthe health-care system of the United States?It looks like about 20 percent. How manywould say that you’re somewhat unsatis½edor very unsatis½ed with the health-care sys-tem of the United States? That looks likeabout 80 percent. Now, particularly for thoseof you who are unsatis½ed, what is it aboutour health system that makes you unsatis½ed?

What things stand out as something you’dsay is a problem with our health care today?The lack of health insurance for all Ameri-cans, the high cost of services that are some-times of poor quality, disparities in care, andlack of emphasis on preventive medicine arekey components of the predicament of healthcare in America today.

In 2003, there were 46.5 million Americanswithout health insurance, and the number isincreasing. This ½gure, keep in mind, is not a reflection of the number of people who inthe course of a year may go without healthinsurance; it reflects the number who lackhealth insurance for the entire year. If we takeinto account the number of people who atany one time do not have health insurancebecause of changing jobs, or graduating fromschool, and so on, that number would aboutdouble.

The Predicament of American Health CareHarvey Fineberg

This presentation was given at the 1883rd Stated Meeting, held at the Seattle Art Museum on October 30, 2004.

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People today are rightly concerned about therising cost of health care and of prescriptiondrugs. Right now in the United States we’respending more than a trillion and a half dol-lars a year for health care. We in the UnitedStates spend more money on health care thanthe poorest half of the world spends for ev-erything. Right now, about one in every sevendollars in the economy goes to health care,and it seems like there’s no end in sight. Sowe have a big problem with cost.

But why is cost a problem? Why do we careabout the cost of health care relative to whatpeople spend for travel or binoculars? Sowhat if we spend a trillion and a half dollars ayear on keeping well. Recently, we had a veryinteresting debate about the cost of healthcare at the annual meeting of the Institute ofMedicine. One argument put forward wasthat cost per se is not a problem; another was

that cost is a real and growing problem. Whatis it about the expenditures that is causing somuch concern? Part of the problem of costis affordability. But you could argue that dis-tribution of cost is mainly an exchange prob-lem, a task of moving resources to wherethey are needed. One concern about costs isthat consumers don’t really have a choice. Ifyou have a serious illness, you go to the hos-pital, whether you like it or not, or else youmay die. Collectively we are demanding carethat is technologically more sophisticatedand that from the provider’s point of view isincreasingly complex and costly to provide.

One concern is the expectation and pressureto keep people alive at all costs. The problemof the end stage of disease, its cost and humanburden, raises profound questions of profes-

sional ethics and individual choice. From thevantage point of cost, approximately onequarter of the total Medicare expendituresare in the last year of life.

Interestingly, malpractice probably does notplay a big part in increasing health-care costs,although it is a signi½cant burden on doctorsand contributes to declining professionalmorale and loss of practitioners, particularlyin selected geographic and specialty areas.Malpractice deserves notice as a problem,but not as a cost driver.

Compared to other economically developedcountries, the United States spends muchmore on health care. For example, comparedto Germany and Switzerland, we spend 50percent more per capita in dollar equivalentpurchasing power. We spend twice as muchper capita as Sweden and more than twice asmuch per capita as the United Kingdom. Thequestion then is what are these expendituresbuying us? What’s our life expectancy com-pared to other countries in the world? An-swer: not in the top ten. What’s our infantmortality compared to other countries in theworld? Answer: not in the top twenty. Whatare we doing in terms of quality of care asjudged by people getting the care? In this au-dience, about 80 percent of the people saidthey’re somewhat dissatis½ed or very dissat-is½ed with our health-care system. In a num-ber of other countries, including Canada andparts of western Europe, there’s a lot of dis-satisfaction, but it’s not as high as in the Unit-ed States. Interestingly, if you ask people thequestion a little bit differently, if you ask areyou satis½ed with your personal physician, amuch higher proportion of Americans willsay, yes.

Part of the cost driver is that what we expendwhen we go to buy health care is often notour own dollars. Those of us with insurancethat offers ½rst dollar coverage are spendingthe money of everyone who is part of our in-surance group. The health-care market is farfrom an economically functional market withinformed consumers, competition, and freechoice. In a market that works, the personwho makes the decision to buy, the personwho receives the product and experiences thegood or the bad, and the person who pays forthat product is the same person. You decide,for example, that you’re going to go to themarket and buy some grapes; you pick outthe bunch, you pay with your money, and youeat them. By contrast, in health care, it is of-ten the professional who decides what you

do most of the time. It is the doctor who de-cides on the treatment and orders the tests.It is the insurer who pays. It is you the patientwho gets whatever degree of satisfactionfrom the experience. But you have less thanfull control over the basic decisions that pro-duced those results.

Health care today in the United States is verycostly, and relative to what many other coun-tries seem to be buying for their expenditures,we seem to be buying less for ours. On aver-age, we don’t have the quality of care and theoutcomes that we should. At its best, U.S.health care compares favorably with any inthe world, but on average, we have someserious de½ciencies.

Five years ago, the Institute of Medicine pub-lished its landmark report on errors in healthcare: To Err Is Human. The report estimatedthat every year in the United States tens ofthousands of people die in hospitals becauseof medical errors. Other studies examiningthe problem also found shortcomings in qual-ity. For example, in 2003, a report publishedin the New England Journal of Medicine, by BethMcGlynn and her colleagues at the randCorporation, looked at the care received bythousands of people in thirty different com-munities around the country. They consid-ered a number of speci½c medical conditionswhere there are speci½c guidelines about howpatients should be treated. These includetesting for diabetes, measurement and con-trol of high blood pressure, and treatment ofpeople with heart attacks, among others. Thegeneral conclusion across the board was ifyou are a patient in the United States todaywith one of these conditions and you go toyour doctor in one of these communities, onaverage, you have about a ½fty-½fty chanceof getting the care that is indicated for yourcondition. Overall, 46 percent of the peoplein that study did not receive the recommend-ed standard of care.

The lack of health insur-ance for all Americans, thehigh cost of services that aresometimes of poor quality,disparities in care, and lackof emphasis on preventivemedicine are key compo-nents of the predicamentof health care in Americatoday.

Health care today in theUnited States is very costly,and relative to what manyother countries seem to bebuying for their expendi-tures, we seem to be buyingless for ours.


In some cases, failure to meet the standardsof care can mean the difference between lifeand death. For example, it is well establishedthat most persons who have myocardial in-farctions should be treated with a kind ofagent called a beta-blocker, which slows thenerve impulses and reduces the work burdenon the heart. Clinical studies have demon-strated repeatedly that this is a life-saving in-tervention. The McGlynn study found that

beta-blockers were prescribed for fewer than60 percent of people recovering from a heartattack. I have a theory about why beta-block-ers are underprescribed: they are simply toocheap; they cost pennies per dose, and no-body has a reason to promote them. If theywere the “purple pill,” I can assure you thatwe would be demanding beta-blockers. Butit is up to the doctor to prescribe them, andphysicians are not doing it often enough.The situation is similar for diabetes: peoplehave about a ½fty-½fty chance of receivingbasic tests indicated for the care of personswith diabetes.

The United States has a triple problem: weare spending a lot of money, our quality issubstandard, and we have 46.5 million peo-ple without health insurance. That numberof uninsured has a cost impact on the health-care system because those people do not staycompletely out of the system. They delay care,but when they get seriously ill, the cost ofcaring for them is higher than if they had re-ceived preventive or earlier therapeutic care.

Another dimension of the quality problemis to improve training at every level in themedical profession. We are not doing a goodjob in suf½ciently educating for quality, whichhas a number of dimensions beyond themastery of a current body of knowledge. Itrequires educating people who have a life-time capacity for learning.

We also need to place more emphasis ontraining across the professions because thetreatment of people with chronic diseasesoften requires a team. Caregivers must beable to respond to the needs of patients withchronic illnesses–100 million plus people inthe United States, with the number increas-ing as the population ages.

On a positive note, there is a very encourag-ing degree of experimentation now going onin medical education, particularly in terms ofimproving the clinical elements of training.The dif½culties here are in part the changesin the nature of practice, as patients on aver-age spend much less time in the hospital thanthey ever did before. Hospital-based training,then, is not the suf½cient model that it pre-viously was for clinical education. And thereis a lot of room for improvement. As part ofwhat we call the “quality chasm series” in theInstitute of Medicine, we are working on awhole array of related elements of qualityimprovement, and education is a big part ofit. A year ago we brought together leadersfrom different professional schools (pharma-cy, nursing, social service, and medicine) fora summit meeting on education for quality.

Many other countries face shortfalls in qual-ity of care, as measured against the kinds of standards that I have been discussing. InAustralia, for example, a study that repli-cated an assessment in U.S. hospitals foundsimilar levels of error and similar problems.The United Kingdom is also dealing with thechallenge of reducing errors and improvingquality. Its National Health Service has madea commitment to put an automated recordsystem into every general practitioner’s of-½ce within the next two years. General prac-titioners will be linked to a database systemfor their patients and their prescriptions,with automatic checks of the side effects andthe incompatibilities of different medica-tions that a patient is taking. In the UnitedStates, incorrect medication is still the mostfrequent source of error, though individualhospitals and care groups have model sys-tems in place.

Some countries are working more aggressive-ly than we are at the present time in acknowl-edging the problems of health-care qualityand taking steps to solve the problems. Thecurrent administration has championed auto-mating health-care records. The questionsare what is the best mechanism and whatresources are needed to accomplish this.

The mix of uninsured patients, high cost,quality that’s less than our patients deserve,disparities in care, and underinvestment inprevention represents the ingredients of theAmerican dilemma in health care. Lookingat the three at the top–insurance, cost, andquality–you cannot solve one without solv-ing them all. We need a comprehensive ap-proach that looks at all three together. Thereis an ambivalence in this country about wheth-er health is a social good or a market good,and from that philosophical difference fol-lows many other distinctions. We need lead-ership with a political will and skill to bridgethose philosophies, to ½nd common groundfor solutions. From the Right we need accept-ance that the idea of universal coverage isnecessary and required as a society. Fromthe Left, we need a recognition that there areindividual responsibility and income-relatedburdens of care that will affect decisionsabout utilization.

The health predicament in America will notbe resolved quickly or easily. However, unlesswe commit as a nation to making progresson its several dimensions, we will never workour way out of the predicament.

© 2005 by Harvey Fineberg.

The United States has atriple problem: we arespending a lot of money,our quality is substandard,and we have 46.5 millionpeople without healthinsurance.


Harvey Fineberg speaking on American health care.

Gerald J. Wasserburg (California Institute of Technology), Edward A. Feigenbaum(Stanford University), and Eugene Wong (University of California, Berkeley)

Academy President Patricia Meyer Spacks (University of Virginia) and WilliamH. Gates, Sr. (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)

Patricia Gill, Gordon N. Gill, co-chair of the Western Center (University ofCalifornia, San Diego), and John R. Hogness, former Vice President of theWestern Center (University of Washington), who was honored for his serviceto the Academy and for his long and distinguished career in medicine andhigher education.

Daniel J. Evans and Robert H. Waterston (both, Universityof Washington)

Western Meeting–Seattle


the twentieth century; Sergei Novikov;Vladimir Arnol’d; Lev Pontriagin; PavelAleksandrov; and Mstislav Keldysh, one-time president of the Soviet Academy ofSciences and the theoretician of the Sovietspace program.

At the top of the genealogical tree are Egorovand Luzin. Who were these men? Where didthey come from? What motivated them?How did they differ from other leading math-ematicians, especially the French who wereat the time considered pioneers in the same½elds? My colleague from Paris, Jean-MichelKantor, and I have been investigating thesequestions, and we have come to a conclusionthat surprises us and runs counter to our ownsecular predispositions: at the heart of thebirth of the Moscow School of Mathematicswas a mystical religious impulse. This mysti-cal doctrine was de½ned by the establishedRussian Orthodox Church as a heresy andhence condemned. Yet the heresy, known asName Worshipping (imiaslavie), never diedand it even has a small life in Russia today;indeed, it has gained some strength in recentyears. Several outstanding mathematiciansare involved with it at present, but their inter-est in it remains hidden, as it always has been.

During the last two years, I have been in Mos-cow a number of times, and I have visitedwith Russian scholars who are familiar withthe Name Worshipping movement. One ofthem was a mathematician–a rather wellknown one whom I prefer not to name inorder to preserve his privacy. I knew that hewas philosophically and religiously interest-ed in Name Worshipping, and so I asked if itwould be possible to witness Name Worship-pers practicing their faith. His answer wasno: “Name Worshipping is an intimate prac-tice that is best done alone.” I asked if therewas any place where Name Worshippersparticularly liked to worship. He replied thatName Worshipping cannot be done openly inestablished churches or cathedrals becausethe of½cial church disapproves of the prac-tice. He added, however, that there was oneplace particularly sacred to Name Worship-pers: the basement of the Church of SaintTatiana the Martyr in Moscow. I knew wherethis church was. Before the Russian Revolu-tion it was the of½cial church of Moscow Uni-versity, and now that the Soviet Union hasdisappeared, it has become so again. For manyyears the mathematics department of theuniversity was located next to it. During theSoviet years it was converted into a sort ofstudent club, and one time in the early 1960sI went to a dance there with my young wife,

Loren Graham is Professor of the History ofScience in the Program in Science, Technology,and Society at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology. He has been a Fellow of the Ameri-can Academy since 1981.

Jean-Michel Kantor is a mathematician at theInstitut Mathématiques de Jussieu, UniversitéParis.

Loren Graham

If someone were to ask me what I think wasthe greatest intellectual contribution thatRussians made in the twentieth century, Iwould answer, without much hesitation,mathematics and ½elds closely connectedwith it, such as theoretical physics. The Mos-cow School of Mathematics was one of the

most influential movements in twentieth-century mathematics. In particular, the studyof functions and the descriptive theory ofsets (the application to real numbers of settheory), initiated by Dmitrii Egorov, NikolaiLuzin, and their students in the ½rst decadesof the twentieth century, has had a world-wide impact.

If you go today to the mathematics depart-ment of Moscow University, where thismovement began, you might see on a bulletinboard, as I have seen, a genealogical chartdepicting the founders of this impressivemathematical movement and their succeed-ing generations of students. Mathematiciansor those familiar with the world of mathe-matics would recognize the names of someof the most influential mathematicians ofthe last century: for example, Andrei Kolmo-gorov, perhaps the greatest probabilist of

Russian Religious Mystics and FrenchRationalists: Mathematics, 1900–1930Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor

This presentation was given at the 1884th Stated Meeting, held at the House of the Academyon November 10, 2004.

∞ℜ∑⇔

†☯

∏


Patricia. We did not know at the time that wewere dancing in what had once been a church,nor did we have any idea that this place wouldbecome important to my research.

I asked the Moscow mathematician how Iwould know when I had reached the spot sa-cred to Name Worshippers. He told me thatI would know when I got there. I went therethis past July and wandered around, search-ing the whitewashed walls of the basement.Then I found a peculiar corner, and I knewimmediately I was in the right place. On thewalls were two photographs of the two menwho were instrumental in establishing NameWorshipping among mathematicians, name-ly, Dmitrii Egorov and Pavel Florenskii.

Dmitrii Egorov (1869–1931) and Nikolai Lu-zin (1883–1950) founded the Moscow Schoolof Mathematics. They had close connectionswith French and German mathematicians.Egorov spent the year of 1902 in Paris, Berlin,

and Göttingen and talked with, among oth-ers, the mathematicians Henri Lebesgue,Henri Poincaré, Jacques Hadamard, and KurtHensel. Luzin ½rst went to western Europein 1905, later visited France and Germany anumber of times, and had frequent contactswith mathematicians there.

In the ½rst years of the twentieth century,Luzin studied mathematics in Moscow Uni-versity under Egorov and as a fellow studentwith Pavel Florenskii (1882–1937), who wereinfluential in forming the ideas of the Mos-cow School. In their mature and profession-ally active years, all three men–Florenskii,Egorov, and Luzin–were deeply religious.Florenskii, disappointing his teachers, aban-doned mathematics for religious studies andbecame a priest. Egorov and Luzin went onto become outstanding mathematicians whohelped create an explosion of mathematicalresearch in Moscow in the 1920s and early1930s. Florenskii and Egorov would eventu-

ally be arrested by the Communist authori-ties, accused of mixing mathematics andreligion. They subsequently died in prison.(Parenthetically I would observe that it is oneof the cruel ironies of history that the Com-munists’ charge that Florenskii and Egorovmixed mathematics and religion was correct;although contrary to the assumption of theCommunists, the mixture was amazinglyfruitful to the ½eld of mathematics.) Luzinnarrowly escaped imprisonment, even thoughhe was put on “trial” for ideological devia-tions and severely reprimanded. Florenskiiis credited with developing a new ideologyof mathematics and religion that played arole in the pioneering mathematics work ofEgorov, Luzin, and their students.

Florenskii was one year older than Luzin andentered Moscow University in 1900; Luzinfollowed him in 1901. Both studied with Ego-rov, who was a young professor of mathemat-ics. Luzin at that time was not the religiousbeliever that he later became. By his own ad-mission he was a “materialist,” like manyother young Russian intellectuals, and heknew very little about philosophy or politics.

From 1905 to 1908 Luzin underwent a psy-chological crisis so severe that several timeshe contemplated suicide. One precipitatingevent in Russia was the unsuccessful revolu-tion of 1905, a moment that sobered manyleft-wing members of the intelligentsia whohad talked romantically of their hopes for arevolution without comprehending the bloodand violence that revolutions often bring.Shocked by the suffering, a number of intel-lectuals, in both the natural and social sci-ences, began to rethink their positions.

Luzin possessed a tender, somewhat naivepersonality, and he was not prepared for thepain he saw around him during and immedi-ately after the revolutionary events. In an ef-fort to relieve his spiritual crisis, his teacherEgorov sent him abroad in December 1905,but the trip did not solve Luzin’s spiritual andintellectual problems. Not only did Luzin’smaterialist worldview collapse, but his faithin science and mathematics did as well. Hewas totally without a purpose in life. In de-spair on May 1, 1906, he wrote Florenskiifrom Paris:

You found me a mere child at the Univer-

sity, knowing nothing. I don’t know how

it happened, but I cannot be satis½ed any

more with the analytic functions and Tay-

lor series. . . . To see the misery of people,

to see the torment of life . . . this is an un-

bearable sight. . . . I cannot live by science

MOSCOW MATHEMATICAL SCHOOL

LUZINVeniaminov

Suslin

Fedorov

Nemytskii

KHINCHIN

MEN’SHOV

BARI

P. S. NOVIKOV

LYUSTERNIKM. V. LAVRENT’EV

P. S. ALEKSANDROV

KOLMOGOROV

Glivenko Gel’fond

Gnedenko Shidlovskii

Skorokhod Fel’dman

Evgrafov

EGOROV

Tolstov Stechkin Chelidze

Brudno E½mov Zhizhiashvili

Talalyan Garkava

Volkov

Dolzhenko

Kuptsov

Skvortsov M.V. Keldysh Bitsadze Markushevich

Mergelyan Shabat Tumarkin

Gonchar Zarich Davydov

Khavinson

Mal’tsev

Ershov

Kargapolov

Taimanov

Millionshchikov Gonchar Gnedenko Nikol’skii

Mikhalevich Monin Amanov

Gel’fand Uspenskii Korneichuk

Shilov Borovkov Potapov

Kostyuchenko Zolotarev

Palamodov Sinai

Raikov Meshalkin

Kirillov Rozanov

Minlos Tikhomirov

Vitushkin

Kozlov Ul’yanov Kaz’min

Nikishin

L.V. Keldysh

Shnirel’man

Adyan A.A. Lyapunov Yablonskii

Makanin Ershov Lupanov

Buslenko Kudryavtsev

Sobolev

Vishik

Glivenko

Uryson

Fomin

Maslov

Lomov

Prokhorov

Arnol’d

Varchenko

Postnikov E.F. Mishchenko Andrunakievich

S.P. Novikov Gamkrelize Golovin

A.S. Mishchenko Boltyanskii Skornyakov

Rokhlin Shirshov

Rozov Latyshev

Shmel’kin

Ol’shanskii

Pontryagin Kurosh

Tikhonov

Il’in Samarskii Guseinov

Alimov Govorun Akhmedov

Ponomarev Kostomarov Babaev


alone. . . . I have nothing, no worldview,

and no education. I am absolutely igno-

rant of the philological sciences, history,

philosophy.

In a long correspondence and in numerousmeetings at Sergeev Posad, Zagorsk, a mon-astery town outside Moscow, Florenskii, al-ready a devout believer, supplied Luzin witha new worldview. It combined both religionand mathematics and, as we will see, gavethe desperate Luzin reason to believe that hecould renew his mathematical research whileat the same time serving moral and religiouspurposes.

Many of the ideas Luzin found stimulatingand reassuring were presented in an essayFlorenskii wrote in 1903, when he was onlytwenty-one years old and still a mathematicsstudent at Moscow University. In this essay,entitled “The Idea of Discontinuity as an El-ement of World View,” Florenskii displayeda characteristic that was very common amongmembers of the Russian intelligentsia of histime: the belief that all intellectual life formsa connected whole and that therefore ideasin mathematics and philosophy could be ex-tended to the social and moral realms, andvice versa.

Florenskii thought that much of the nine-teenth century had been a disaster from thestandpoint of philosophy, religion, and eth-ics and that the particular type of mathemat-ics that reigned during that century was oneof the important causes of this misfortune.The governing mathematical principle of thenineteenth century, which Florenskii saw asresponsible for ethical decline, was determin-istic “continuity”: the belief that all phenom-ena pass from one state to another smoothly.In substitution of this “false” principle ofcontinuity, Florenskii proposed its opposite,discontinuity, which he saw as morally andreligiously superior. The nineteenth century

was, according to him, the unfortunate apo-gee in faith in deterministic continuity; in-deed, he wrote that in the nineteenth century“the cementing idea of continuity broughteverything together in one gigantic mono-lith.” The mathematical approach that cre-ated this monolith was in½nitesimal analysisand differential calculus. This method be-came all-powerful because differential cal-culus was at the heart of the physical sciencesthrough Newtonian mechanics. One of theresults of its seeming omnipotence was thatmathematicians concentrated only on con-tinuous functions, since “continuous func-tions are differentiable” and therefore sus-ceptible to analysis by the calculus.

Florenskii believed that, as a result, mathe-maticians and philosophers tended to ignorethose problems that could not be analyzedby calculus, namely, the discontinuous phe-nomena. Seeing continuous functions inmathematics as “deterministic,” Florenskiibelieved the expansion of the philosophy ofdeterminism throughout psychology, sociol-ogy, and religion was the destructive resultof a temporary emphasis in mathematics.Thus he held nineteenth-century mathemat-ics responsible for the erosion of earlier be-liefs in freedom of will, religious autonomy,and redemption.

Florenskii thought that the ½eld that was“guilty” of the glaring overestimation of con-tinuity–mathematics–was destined to leadthinkers out of the blind alley that it had cre-ated. In the 1880s the German mathematicianGeorg Cantor, the founder of set theory, hadanalyzed “continuum” as merely a set amongpossible other sets and had therefore deprivedthe concept of its metaphysical, dogmaticpower. Now the road was open, maintainedFlorenskii, to restore discontinuity and in-determinism to their rightful place in one’sworldview. He saw the power of discontinu-ity in recent developments in many ½eldsoutside mathematics, such as the theory ofmutations in biology (delivering, accordingto Florenskii, biology from the “heartless”continuity of Darwinism), new ideas aboutmolecular physics, and concepts of “sublim-inal consciousness” and “creativity” in psy-chology. Surveying these developments,Florenskii called for “the dawn of a new dis-continuous worldview” and challenged hismathematician colleagues, such as Luzin andEgorov, to foster this new approach, onethat would combine mathematics, religion,and philosophy.

In the years just before the Russian Revolu-tion of 1917, the world of Russian Orthodoxy,the state religion, was shaken by a theologi-cal struggle that further influenced Floren-skii, Luzin, and Egorov and their ideas aboutthe relationship between mathematics andreligion. A polemic developed between twogroups of religious believers: the Worship-pers of the Name, or Nominalists (Imiaslav-tsy), and the Anti-Nominalists (Imiabortsy).The dispute was rooted in an ancient ques-tion about how humans can worship an un-knowable deity. If God is in principle beyondthe comprehension of mortals (and holyscripture contains many such assertions),how, in complete ignorance of his nature, canhuman beings worship him? What does oneworship? The most common response givento this dilemma throughout religious histo-ry was the resort to symbols: icons, names,rituals, music, relics, scents, tastes, art, archi-tecture, literature. Symbolism is the termgiven to a perceptible object or activity thatrepresents to the mind the semblance ofsomething that is not shown but realized byassociation with it.

Mathematical objects cannot be shown soboth religion and mathematics make heavy–but different–use of symbols. Mathematicsuses such symbols as:

∫ ∑ ∞ ℜ ⇔ ∏Religion uses a great variety of symbols, suchas the Star of David and the cross, as well asicons, prayers, chants, and hymns.

☯But some questions naturally arise: Whatreality, if any, lies behind the symbol? Whatdoes a religious icon or a mathematical sym-bol really represent? Does the symbol ac-quire any sort of autonomy?

The issue of religious symbols took on anunusual sharpness in Russia in the years1908–1930, the same years in which the Mos-cow School of Mathematics was created.Priests and mathematicians were involvedin both the religious and the mathematicaldiscussions. In 1907 a monk of the OrthodoxChurch, Ilarion, who had earlier spent yearsin a Russian monastery in Mount Athos inGreece, published a book, In the Mountains of the Caucasus, that seized on an existing

If someone were to ask mewhat I think was the great-est intellectual contributionthat Russians made in thetwentieth century, I wouldanswer, without much hes-itation, mathematics.


tradition in Orthodox liturgy, especially thechanting of the Jesus Prayer (Iisusova molitva),and raised it to a new prominence. In the Je-sus Prayer, the religious believer chants thenames of Christ and God over and over again,hundreds of times, until his whole bodyreaches a state of religious ecstasy in whicheven the beating of his heart, in addition tohis breathing cycle, is supposedly in tune withthe chanted words “Christ” and “God.” (Astate vividly described by J. D. Salinger inFranny and Zooey.) According to Ilarion, theworshipper achieves a state of unity with Godthrough the rhythmic pronouncing of hisname. This demonstrates, said Ilarion, thatthe name of God is holy in itself, that thename of God is God (Imia Bozhie est’ sam Bog).

At ½rst this book was well received by manyRussians interested in religious thought. Ila-rion’s views became very popular among thehundreds of Russian monks in Mount Athos,who gradually spread the views elsewhere.But the highest of½cials in Russian Ortho-doxy, in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, soonbegan to consider the book not just as a de-scription of the reality of prayer but as a the-ological assertion. For many of them, theadherents of Ilarion’s beliefs were heretics,even pagan pantheists, because they alleged-ly confused the symbols of God with Godhimself. On May 18, 1913, the Holy Synod inSaint Petersburg condemned the Name Wor-shippers; soon thereafter the Russian Navy,with the approval of Tsar Nikolai II, sent sev-eral ships (the Donets and the Kherson) toMount Athos to bring the rebellious monksforcibly to heel. Over six hundred unrepen-tant monks were flushed out of the monasticcells with ½re hoses, arrested, and broughtunder guard to Odessa. In later detentions,the number grew to approximately one thou-sand. The dissidents strongly protested their

treatment and obtained promises of furtherinvestigation and reconsideration.

With the advent of World War I, the issue re-ceded into the background, but until the endof the tsarist regime, the adherents of the“heresy” were forbidden to return to MountAthos or to reside in major cities like SaintPetersburg and Moscow. The most fervent ofthem retreated to monasteries, where theycontinued to practice their variant of the faith.After the Bolshevik Revolution in Octoberand November of 1917, the Name Worship-pers, now living all over rural Russia, weremore successful than most other religiousbelievers in continuing their practices out ofview of Soviet political authorities, who weretrying to suppress religion. After all, the NameWorshippers had already been de½ned asheretics and excluded from the establishedchurches. But in secret they continued theirfaith, and as a result they were not compro-mised by association with the Bolsheviks, assome of the established church leaders soonbecame. The dissidents claimed to be repre-sentatives of the unde½led “true faith,” in-creasing their popularity with some religiousopponents of the new Communist regime.

In the 1920s the German writer and journal-ist Rene Fulop-Muller spent much time inRussia and in his remarkable book The Mindand Face of Bolshevism, he wrote that NameWorshipping was “a movement to which agreat part of the intelligentsia as well as a con-siderable part of the peasantry belong. Thebest men of Russia lead this school, whichproclaims the magic power of the divinename.”

After the Bolshevik Revolution, Florenskiilived in Sergeev Posad, Zagorsk, and he wasclose religiously and intellectually to theName Worshipper dissidents. He commu-nicated their ideas to Luzin and Egorov, hismathematician colleagues, and he translatedthese religious concepts into mathematicalparlance. In the early 1920s, there was a NameWorshipper Circle (imeslavcheskii kruzhok) in Moscow where the ideas of the religiousdissidents and the concepts of mathematicswere brought together. Florenskii and thephilosopher A. F. Losev attended meetingsof the circle, which included ½fteen or six-teen philosophers, mathematicians, and re-ligious thinkers. Sometimes the circle met at Egorov’s apartment and Florenskii gavepapers at the meetings. At these meetings,Florenskii maintained that “the point wheredivine and human energy meet is ‘the sym-bol,’ which is greater than itself.” To Floren-

skii, religious and mathematical symbolscould attain full autonomy.

Florenskii saw that the Name Worshippershad raised the issue of “naming” to a newprominence. To name something was to givebirth to a new entity. God said in Genesis,“Let there be Light, and there was Light.” Henamed it ½rst, and then He created it. Namesare words. In the Gospel according to SaintJohn, the statement occurs, “In the beginningwas the Word, and the Word was with God,and the Word was God.” Florenskii believedthat mathematicians who created new enti-ties like sets by naming them came as closeas humans are permitted to approaching thedivine.

Contrary to the Marxists who connected sci-ence and mathematics to the material world,Florenskii was convinced that mathematicswas a product of the free creativity of humanbeings and that it had a religious signi½cance.

The famous sentence of Georg Cantor, “Theessence of mathematics lies precisely in itsfreedom,” clearly had a strong appeal to Flo-renskii. In mathematics, more than in thethreatening Soviet world he was facing, menlike Florenskii could exercise their free willand create beings (sets) by just naming them.For example, de½ning the set of numbers suchthat their squares are less than 2, and namingit “A,” and analogously the set of numberssuch that their squares are larger than 2, andnaming it “B,” immediately brought into ex-istence the real number √⎯2 (essentially theCauchy construction).

The development of set theory was to Floren-skii a brilliant example of how renaming andreclassifying can lead to mathematical break-throughs. A “set” was simply a renaming of

Contrary to the Marxistswho connected science andmathematics to the mate-rial world, Florenskii wasconvinced that mathemat-ics was a product of thefree creativity of humanbeings and that it had areligious signi½cance.

When a mathematiciancreated a set by naming it,he was giving birth to anew mathematical being.The naming of sets was amathematical act, just asthe naming of God was areligious one, according tothe Name Worshippers.


entities according to an arbitrary mental sys-tem, not a recognition of the types of real ma-terial objects. When a mathematician createda set by naming it, he was giving birth to anew mathematical being. The naming of setswas a mathematical act, just as the naming of God was a religious one, according to theName Worshippers. A new form of mathe-matics was coming, said Florenskii, and itwould rescue mankind from the materialis-tic, deterministic modes of analysis so com-mon in the nineteenth century. Indeed, settheory and new insights on continuous anddiscontinuous phenomena became hallmarksof the Moscow School of Mathematics.

Leading mathematicians everywhere at thistime were wrestling with the problem of whatis allowed in mathematics and what is to beconsidered a good de½nition of a mathemat-ical object. As the French mathematician Le-besgue wrote to his colleague Emile Borel in1905, “Is it possible to prove the existence ofa mathematical object without de½ning it?”To Florenskii the question was the analogueof, “Is it possible to prove the existence ofGod without de½ning him?” The answer forFlorenskii and later for Egorov and Luzin wasthat the act of naming in itself gave the objectexistence. Thus naming became the key toboth religion and mathematics. The NameWorshippers gave existence to God by nam-ing him and worshipping him, and mathe-maticians gave existence to sets by namingthem and working with them. The Russianmathematicians asked, for example, “Howcan we know that there are numbers greaterthan in½nity–trans½nite numbers–if in½ni-ty is de½ned as the largest possible number?We know because we can name them–wecall them ‘aleph numbers’–and we workwith them.”

The idea that naming is an act of creation goesback very far in religious and mythologicalthought. The claim has been made that theEgyptian god Ptah created with his tongue

that which he conceived. In the Jewish mys-tical tradition of the Kabbala (Book of Cre-ation, Zohar), there is a belief in creationthrough emanation, and the name of God isconsidered holy.

The connection between the religious dissi-dents in Russia and the new trends in Moscowmathematics went beyond the suggestionsand implications so far discussed. There wasa direct linguistic connection. The Moscowmathematicians Luzin and Egorov were inclose communication with French mathe-maticians with similar concerns. Lebesgueintroduced in 1905 the concept of “effectivesets,” and he spoke of “naming a set” (nom-mer un ensemble); such a set was then oftencalled a “named set” (ensemble nommé). TheRussian equivalent was imennoe mnozhestvo.Thus the root word imia (name) occurred inthe Russian language in both the mathemat-ical terms for the new types of sets and thereligious trend of imiaslavie (Name Worship-ping). Indeed, much of Luzin’s work on settheory involved the study of effective sets(named sets). To Florenskii this meant thatboth religion and mathematics were movingin the same direction.

Jean-Michel Kantor

The French mathematicians were not readyfor the new mathematics that occurred withthe birth of set theory. They were rather skep-tical of this “German metaphysics” foundedby Georg Cantor. If we want to give an over-view of French reaction at this time, in orderto compare their attitude with that of theRussians, we need to comprehend a very dif-ferent cultural context. The French culturalmilieu is strongly marked (through central-ized education, for example) by at least threedifferent influences.

First, there is the old cultural tradition of Car-tesianism: Le primat de la raison. Penser (tothink), this is the main activity in science.The main activity of thought is la raison (rea-son). One can think about mathematics (pen-ser les mathématiques); it is not purely formallogic, as Bertrand Russell would say later. If Ican think about a mathematical notion, thenit exists; conversely, if I cannot think of it, itsurely does not exist.

This is a very important concept for Lebes-gue and Borel, who could not think of non-denumerable in½nities and so denied theirexistence (after a short period of juvenile en-thusiasm by Borel). It accounts for their res-

ervation about the Russian approach (see,for example, Lebesgue’s description of Lu-zin’s “philosophical” mind in the preface ofhis 1930s book). Also important is the tradi-tion of the Cartesian method as described byRené Descartes: If you have a problem, justcut it into parts as long as you can and you’llsolve the problem.

A second strong influence is Auguste Comte’spositivism. Science cannot reach the primalcauses (les causes premières) but can, after lib-erating itself from all metaphysical influenceand any theological tendency, reach a perfectform of discourse. Comte’s philosophy buildsa wall between the metaphysical and the sci-enti½c order of things. Once science entersthe “positive stage,” its goal is no longer ametaphysical quest for truth nor a rationaltheory purporting to represent reality. Scienceis composed of laws, not theories. Laws arecorrelations of observable facts that we needin order to predict. Mathematics, throughthe theory of functions (an old French tradi-tion going back to Joseph-Louis Lagrange andCharles Fourier), is suitable for the analysisof natural phenomena via the laws of physicsexpressed since Isaac Newton by differentialequations.

A third, more subtle, factor is Blaise Pascal’sesprit de géométrie. I remind you that geome-try for Pascal is much broader than what weimagine today as geometry. The universal,unique, human truth comes from geometrythrough la lumière naturelle, a very religiousapproach in Pascal, but also very deeply in-volved in philosophy, without being ever ableto reach the deepest of things. Geometry’sreal content allows one to distinguish be-tween nominal and real de½nitions (la dé½n-ition de noms et la dé½nition de choses).

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) created set theoryaround 1870. It started with a revolutionaryde½nition of in½nities, the ½rst new step sinceAristotle (384–322 b.c.) distinguished be-tween potential and actual in½nities in hisPhysics, denying that the actual in½nite existsand allowing only the potential in½nite. Can-tor gave it a name; he called it the ½rst in½nite“aleph-zero,” the denumerable, the numberso to say of all integral numbers: 0, 1, 2 . . . .Galileo had already noticed that there are justas many integers as there are even integers:that is, there are just as many 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, asthere are 2, 4, 6, 8. Cantor turned this appar-ent contradiction into a de½nition of what isan “in½nite” set. He de½ned many more in-½nite numbers. It is interesting to notice atthis point that the creation of these alephswas very close in Cantor’s mind to the crea-

The answer for Florenskiiand later for Egorov andLuzin was that the act ofnaming in itself gave theobject existence. Thus nam-ing became the key to bothreligion and mathematics.


tion of irrational numbers starting from ra-tional numbers, which allows a precise math-ematical de½nition of what we call today thecontinuum–the continuum of space or oflines. Applying his new theory to the contin-uum–the real line, the set of all real num-bers–was the next revolutionary step. Wasthis allowed? How the continuum could bemade out of points, like matter from atoms,was an issue at the time.

German mathematician Paul Du Bois-Reymond (1831–1889) had already rejected apart of the new set theory. He accepted “ac-tual in½nite” but rejected the philosophy ofthe continuum (points on the line or pointsof our space) as presented by Cantor. For Can-tor the continuum was a reduction of contin-uous quantities to discrete entities; for Du

Bois-Reymond the continuum had a mysti-cal nature outside of mathematical knowl-edge. This direction of thought would bedeveloped further by Herman Weyl (1885–1955) and Jan Brouwer (1881–1966), leadingto an important current in mathematicalthought called intuitionism.

A natural question to ask was, is there anotherin½nite between aleph-zero and the power ofthe continuum? This is the famous Contin-uum Hypothesis, stated as the ½rst problemin the famous list of problems given by DavidHilbert (1862–1943) at the Paris Internation-al Congress of Mathematicians in 1900 un-der the title “Problème de M. Cantor relatif à lapuissance du continu.”

Since 1878, the main purpose of Cantor’sresearch had been to prove the ContinuumHypothesis, which led (through importantresults in analysis) to the birth of descriptiveset theory. His strategy was to invent andconstruct more and more complicated sub-sets of the continuum. For example, he in-vented the “Cantor ternary set,” which hede½ned in an endnote to Grundlagen in 1883:It is the limit of the sets obtained by taking

one out from one-third intervals at each step.It is equal to its set of accumulation points,not isolated points; it does not contain anyinterval; and it has “the power of the con-tinuum” (number of elements).

On September 26, 1904, Ernst Zermelo (1871–1953) wrote to Hilbert, telling him that he haddeveloped a proof that in any set there is away to put all elements in a good order (Beweis,dass jede Menge wohlgeordnet worden kann): thatis, an order with essentially the same prop-erties as the order of positive integers. In theproof, he used a fact that would later be calledthe Axiom of Choice: for any family of non-empty sets, there exists a way to associate oneparticular element to each of these sets. Ofcourse, one may ask what is meant by “asso-ciate” and “particular element.” After Zer-melo’s declaration, the ½ght began!

The debate was especially strong in France,where most of the important young mathe-maticians exchanged strong-worded letters.The ½ve letters that Baire, Borel, Lebesgue,and Hadamard exchanged in 1905 describethe point of view of the most active youngmathematics leaders with respect to the newset theory.

The men who faced the new mathematicswere very different in character as well as insocial personalities. Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) was the master of French mathematics,the last universal mathematician, and a phi-losopher of mathematics. René Baire (1874–1932) came from a very poor family in the re-gion of Beauvais. He had a strict, serious life.He taught in colleges for most of his careerand suffered from psychosomatic diseases,with his life ending very sadly. Emile Borel’s(1871–1956) life is a typical success story ofthe French intellectual elite of the Third Re-public. He was a brilliant, successful mathe-matician, a journalist, and an active partici-pant in the Parisian scene. At the same time,Borel had strong country roots: his fatherwas a protestant priest in the southwest(Rouergue).

For Borel, numbers had a reality almost likeflesh. He required that mathematics provideCartesian evidence that was as close to thesensual as to the rational. This is why he laterabandoned mathematics when he realizedthat set theory was taking a path too abstractfor him.

Henri Lebesgue (1875–1941) was a passion-ate, pure spirit; more precisely, he was anaristocrat of geometry. Lebesgue and Borelhad a long friendship based on mutual ad-

miration. But Lebesgue looked for quarrelsconcerning intellectual priorities, and theirfriendship ended with a remarkable sad let-ter of farewell from Lebesgue: “I kept toomuch hidden friendship for you not to be sadabout my current state of mind.” Both Baireand Lebesgue have left their names in the do-main called analysis; both had a strong ob-session with rigor inherited from the schoolof Cauchy.

Lebesgue, Baire, and Borel did not antici-pate the events of 1900 and 1904 in Paris andthen in Germany. The French mathematicianJacques Hadamard (1865–1963) acceptedthe new axiom, while Lebesgue, Baire, andBorel essentially opposed the consequencesof the axiom. Borel later published articlesand books about set theory and applications,trying to explain ½fty years of varying opin-ions concerning set theory.

The axiom discussion centered on what couldbe done in mathematics, how mathematicalbeings could be de½ned in order to be accept-ed in the process of mathematics, and whatwas a good de½nition. Among the motiva-tions for this attitude, I mention the Cartesianprinciple of separating the problems, the dis-ciplines, and the absolute truth of mathemat-ics. As Borel put it: “We are serious people;this at least is not philosophy; a disagreementcan only be due to a misunderstanding.” Butwhat is allowed in mathematics? Here are afew sentences from Lebesgue about the Ax-iom of Choice: “If you have to choose in aset, you talk about objects as if they were in abag, and you know nothing about them. Youjust know they have a certain property, whichother elements in the bag don’t have. So youcannot de½ne any order about the elements.”

This is the French approach to ontologicalissues. As Lebesgue put it, “What we say hasonly some meaning if precise laws are given,if we apply our reasonings to precise data.”

For Cantor the continuumwas a reduction of contin-uous quantities to discreteentities; for Du Bois-Rey-mond the continuum had amystical nature outside ofmathematical knowledge.

The issues mixed philoso-phy, linguistics, psychology,and mathematics and theresults were too much tohandle. How would oneseparate and use theCartesian method?


The discussion about the Axiom of Choicewas lively for yet another reason. If the Axi-om was accepted, many consequences wouldfollow from it, even in the familiar realm ofgeometry (such as the Hausdorff paradox,which led, in 1924, to a surprising fact in ge-ometry called the Banach-Tarski paradox).

As a result of this discussion, French mathe-maticians limited themselves, for example,to the ½rst in½nite (aleph-zero). Borel, in atypical Cartesian attitude, would not acceptbig in½nities if he could not imagine them orthink of them. Lebesgue called a set “nommé,”and then later “ensemble effectif,” where therewould be no construction using the existenceof a Zermelo correspondence.

The issues mixed philosophy, linguistics, psy-chology, and mathematics and the resultswere too much to handle. How would oneseparate and use the Cartesian method? Take,for example, Richard’s paradox, which ap-peared in 1905. Richard was a young, provin-cial math teacher in Dijon who wrote an ar-ticle in which he described, in a simple way,a number given by a seemingly paradoxicalde½nition: For example, call N the smallestnumber that could not be described with lessthan thirty words in English. Now I just de-½ned a number that has been de½ned by thesentence above. The de½nition de½nes it,although it cannot be de½ned!

This mixing of ½elds was frightening to theFrench. For example, in 1919, reporting onLebesgue’s work, Paul Appell (Borel’s father-in-law and a very powerful mathematician)wrote, “We come close to metamathematics,and you meet the two opposite schools. Theseschools ½ght together, like the scholastics inthe Middle Ages, and discuss what meaningto give to the word ‘existence’ in mathemat-ics.” Now the same word can be found with

a big “E” and with very different tonality inLuzin’s manuscripts, but not with the sameconnotations.

Incidentally, Luzin’s manuscripts, copied by R. Cooke in 1979 and not yet completelyanalyzed, reveal dramatic efforts includingpsychological approaches to mathematicalissues. I quote: “Everything seems to be a day-dream, playing with symbols, which, how-ever, yield great things.” French mathemati-cians limited the direct search into the gouffredu continu, the black hole of the continuum.Other constructions, more down-to-earth,with numbers de½ned by decimal expansions,were proposed by Borel. For example, he wasinterested in a concrete de½nition of normalnumbers in connection with probability andmeasure theory. But the French mathemati-cians still used set theory for the classi½cationof functions, as in a remarkable text of Lebes-gue’s in 1905, where he de½ned a new class offunction called “analytically representable.”

The new ½eld of mathematics that resultedfrom ½rst the trials of the French school andthen Luzin’s work, which would be calleddescriptive set theory, can be assigned a pre-cise birth day: the day Mikhail Suslin (1894–1919), a young student, rushed to see his the-sis-advisor, Luzin, to show him the mistakehe had found in a ten-year-old seminal arti-cle of Lebesgue’s. This famous mistake hasbeen the subject of much discussion. It is nei-ther subtle nor trivial and can be seen fromdifferent points of view. In particular, therehas been some phenomenologist analysis ofthis mistake (by J. Toussaint-Desanti). Thiserror has been corrected with dif½culty. Hereis another way of stating the radical noveltyof Luzin and Suslin’s approach. But of coursewe don’t pretend to go along with a religiousexplanation just as we do not believe in aphenomenological deconstruction.

In order to see what could be saved fromLebesgue’s study, Suslin and later Luzin in-troduced a scheme, called Suslin’s scheme,which can be represented symbolically by anin½nite tree. It’s basically a graph. Startingwith zero, you have an in½nite number ofnumbers: 0, 1, 2, and so on. It symbolizes theright way to “come close” to in½nity, to ap-proximate in½nities with a ½nite constructionof sets: a geometrical look at the old distinc-tion between potential and actual in½nitymade by Aristotle.

An idea of the richness of the analytic sub-sets of the continuum, discovered by Luzinand his school, can be seen in a drawing made

from the continuum of the plane, given byfractal pictures of the plane. The notationsthemselves lead naturally to considering non-denumerable cardinals. The class of analyticsets is rich and complicated. They satisfy theContinuum Hypothesis–that is, every un-countable analytic set is equinumerous withthe set of all real numbers.

Of course, our example is not the only oneof close connections between mathematicaland philosophical thoughts. Interesting con-clusions may be obtained by studying oldand new examples, as in Pascal’s “geometryof chance.”

In another approach, Baruch Spinoza gives avery important role to in½nity in his philos-ophy “more geometrico.” And ½nally, one ofthe principal mathematicians of the recentperiod, Alexander Grothendieck, has providedpenetrating analyses of the role of naming inthe process of discovery. Remembering thirtyyears later his approach to a new geometryin 1958 with the notion of “topoi,” he writes,“This vision was so obvious that I had notthought to give it a name, although it has al-ways been my passion to name things thatoccur to me just as a ½rst mean to apprehendthem.”

In the recent period, mathematics has devel-oped new ½elds, with new symbols like thediagrams of arrows in categorical theories,thereby stimulating new intuitions that gowell beyond what was known before. Butthere is still a mystery in the in½nity and thecontinuum, as described beautifully by Gott-fried Wilhelm Leibniz: “There are surely twolabyrinths for the human mind: one is con-cerned with the making of continuum, theother with the nature of freedom, and theyare born both from the same in½nity.”

© 2005 by Loren Graham and Jean-MichelKantor, respectively.

We come close to meta-mathematics, and you meetthe two opposite schools.These schools ½ght together,like the scholastics in theMiddle Ages, and discusswhat meaning to give tothe word ‘existence’ inmathematics.


Jean-Michel Kantor and Loren Graham, whospoke on Russian Religious Mystics and FrenchRationalists.

Allan Robinson (Harvard University) andRonald Probstein (MIT)

Everett Mendelsohn (Harvard University) and Renate Mayntz (Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung)


Peter Raven is Director of the Missouri BotanicalGarden and George Engelmann Professor of Bot-any at Washington University in St. Louis. He hasbeen a Fellow of the American Academy since 1977.

Before I begin my presentation on biodiver-sity, I would like to say a brief word about theMissouri Botanical Garden. Established in1859–the same year that Charles Darwin’s

Origin of Species was published–it is the old-est surviving botanical garden in the UnitedStates and it is still going strong.

In 1880, Chancellor William Greenleaf Elli-ot of Washington University, the founder ofWashington University and later its chan-cellor, went to Henry Shaw–the Englishmerchant who came to St. Louis in 1819 andfounded this garden–and said, “Mr. Shaw,

why don’t you turn your garden and all yourmoney over to Washington University. Wecan really manage it very well for you.” Shaw,who was eighty then, said, “At my age, I needtime to think over serious proposals like this.”

And he thought it over and consulted his bo-tanical advisors. They advised him it wouldbe better to remain independent, like the oth-er major botanical institutions of the world.What he did later, however, was a stroke ofgenius. It was a great bene½t for both insti-tutions when, in 1885, Shaw endowed theSchool of Botany at Washington Universityand put in his will that the Professor of Bot-any at Washington University should eitherbe the ½rst or second in command at the Gar-den. In 1889, Shaw passed away at the age ofeighty-nine, after running the Garden per-sonally for thirty years. William Trelease,who was a graduate of Cornell University andwho had come to Washington University in1885, was selected ½rst director of the Gardenafter Shaw’s death.

The ½rst doctoral graduate from WashingtonUniversity in any ½eld and fourteen of the½rst twenty graduates with master’s or doc-toral degrees were products of the Washing-ton University-Missouri Botanical Gardenjoint program. Subsequently, similar liaisonswere established with the University of Mis-souri at St. Louis and St. Louis University, so that in residence at the Garden at any onetime are thirty-½ve to forty graduate studentsfrom those institutions.

Many museums and other institutions likethe Garden are seeking ways to project them-selves onto the graduate stage and to be deep-ly involved with graduate students. But theformula that Shaw devised, along with of½-cials of Washington University in the 1880s,appears to be the most durable and best thatI know about. And it certainly has servedboth institutions well, as hundreds of gradu-ates have been products of the joint programover the years.

We have permanent staff in eight foreigncountries and eight other states. And sinceI’ve been here for thirty-three years, our wayof operating has always been to encouragepeople to be in the best places to do theirwork. And that’s why we have staff membersliving in Madagascar, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay,Argentina, Vietnam, China, Britain, andFrance.

Why are we so anxious to develop scienti½cexpertise throughout the world, to learn

Biodiversity and Our Common FuturePeter Raven

This presentation was given at the 1885th Stated Meeting, held at the Missouri BotanicalGarden on November 13, 2004.

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about plants and, more especially, to empow-er people around the globe to be able to dealwith that knowledge for their own bene½t?We know, intuitively, that our lives are sup-ported by the wonderful biodiversity ofplants, animals, and microorganisms thatexists on our planet. But we sometimes for-get–particularly when we live in cities–justhow very important that biodiversity is forour happiness and for our lives. At the Gar-den, we try to get people out of the countryor to our nature reserve, which is four squaremiles on the edge of the Ozarks, thirty-½vemiles away, to remind people of our interde-pendence–interdependence that I’ll illus-trate as we go along.

Unfortunately, much of the world is not liv-ing sustainably, although it’s hard to remem-ber that when one lives in a place like theUnited States or Europe where we take over-consumption for granted. One out of twopeople–that’s 50 percent of the world’s pop-ulation–lives on less than $2 a day. One ineight people is, literally, starving, in terms ofthe United Nation’s recommended minimumcaloric intake. And one out of two people ismalnourished in respect to at least one criti-cal dietary element as calculated by the WorldHealth Organization.

It’s the condition of the human race and itsnumbers that is the major problem concern-ing biological diversity. If you live in a coun-try like the United States, it is easy to say thatpopulation is the major problem. But if youthink about it a little more deeply, you couldrapidly come to understand that consump-tion and the kinds of technology that we useare also very important in setting the stagefor the world of the future.

For example, people in rural Brazil or ruralIndonesia live at about one-fortieth of theconsumption level of people in the UnitedStates. If you consider that we’ve added 135million people to the population of the Unit-ed States since the end of World War II, thenyou realize that the impact of the extra peoplein the United States on the world–in termsof levels of consumption, levels of pollution,uses of inappropriate technologies that maythemselves be destructive–is about equal tothe impact on the world of all the entire pop-ulation of developing countries–4.2 billionpeople. It is not justi½able to say that popu-lation is the only factor. It’s our lifestyle andour way of dealing with the world that is tru-ly signi½cant. There are various ways of grad-ually showing the impact that people haveon the environment.

Look at the kinds of zoning that we like inthe United States. For example, from 1945through 1973, we paved over an area the sizeof the state of Ohio, as people fled to distantsuburbs and got cars to get out there. Thenext time you hear people screaming aboutan intolerable two-cent increase in the gastax that is bringing this country to its knees,remember that before the war in Iraq everstarted, America had been spending, on theaverage, $30 to $60 billion a year around thePersian Gulf to help stabilize the politicalsituation there and protect our supply of oil.It becomes a kind of a vicious circle–peopleliving farther and farther away, dependingmore on automobiles, using up more andmore land and resources.

Jack Benny used to say that Los Angeles wouldwake up to the coughing of the birds. DavidLetterman, I think, came up with a better onewhen he said; “Autumn is my favorite timeof the year in Los Angeles. It’s when the birdschange colors and fall out of the trees.”

Human impact really began in earnest withthe development of crop agriculture. In theFertile Crescent, at the eastern end of theMediterranean, people were living in smallvillages before they developed crop agricul-ture. But with the growth of agriculture andthe ability to get supplies of food that wouldlet local populations outlast dif½cult seasons,those villages began to grow into towns, andeventually into even larger entities.

This growth began only about 10,500 yearsago, around 425 generations, which is not verylong. At that time, the entire human popula-tion of the world amounted to somethinglike three or four million people–about thepopulation of Greater St. Louis. And those

three or four million people were scatteredthroughout Eurasia, North and South Amer-ica, and Australia and Africa. With the inven-tion of crop agriculture, the human popula-tion began to increase rapidly.

In the complex societal systems that emerged,most of what we think of as civilization todaybegan to develop. Thus, for example, our ½rstwritten language comes from about 5,500years ago in Sumeria–between Baghdad andFallujah: two place names that we wish weweren’t quite so familiar with. Written lan-guages began to develop as people becamespecialists in many different professions:scribes, philosophers, religious and civic lead-ers, and many others. In the 2-million-yearhistory of people on Earth and the 10,500-year history of agriculture, this all took placeover a very short time.

By the time of Christ, there were several hun-dred million people in the world; and be-tween Medieval and Renaissance times, abouthalf a billion. When the Reverend ThomasMalthus was saying that human populationgrowth was bound to overcome our ability tofeed ourselves in the 1790s, there were about800 million people in the world. By compar-ison, there are now 1.3 billion in China and1.1 billion people in India. We reached a bil-lion people early in the nineteenth century, 2 billion people in 1930, 2.5 billion people in1950. And since then, in the ensuing ½fty-four years, the population has gone from 2.5billion people–which already was an un-precedented level that would have been un-imaginable earlier–to the 6.3 billion peoplewho are living today.

Since 1950, we’ve lost about 20 percent of theworld’s topsoil–much of it in developingcountries, where its loss could least be afford-ed. We’ve lost about 20 percent of the agri-cultural land in the world, partly due to urbansprawl, partly to deserti½cation, partly tooverfertilization. So we’re presently feeding6.3 billion people on 80 percent of the landthat we had available to feed 2.5 billion peo-ple in 1950. We cut about a third of the forestswithout replacing them. We increased car-bon dioxide, the main factor in global warm-ing, in the atmosphere by about six times.Over the last ½fty years, we have lost about 6 to 8 percent of the ozone layer, which in-creases the incidence of malignant skin can-cer by about 20 percent.

Much agriculture now depends on drawingup artesian water. In the north China plain,which feeds about 40 percent of the 1.3 bil-

We know, intuitively, thatour lives are supported bythe wonderful biodiversityof plants, animals, andmicroorganisms that existson our planet. But we some-times forget just how veryimportant that biodiversityis for our happiness and forour lives.


lion people of China, the water table is drop-ping 1.5 meters a year. And over much of In-dia, which has 1.1 billion people, the watertable is dropping by about a meter a year.Since energy is subsidized in India, it’s theo-retically cheaper to drill more from belowthan it is to deal with surface water. So muchof the surface water is polluted, it is simplerto keep drilling more wells than to clean it up.

With the total population growth not expect-ed to level off for ½fty years or more, whenan extra two billion or more people will havebeen added, and with half of the world livingin a state of poverty and/or malnutrition, it’spretty obvious that it’s going to be very dif-½cult to live up to any happy dreams in thefuture.

Experts estimate that we use about 55 percentof the renewable supplies of fresh water, mostof it for agriculture at rates that are subsidized.What do we do to increase our supplies ofwater, when a very large portion of people inthe world have no access to dependable sup-plies of fresh water to begin with, and thereare no obvious options now? This will be anincreasingly serious problem in the future.

The obvious question laid out by the Brundt-land Report, the report of the World Commis-sion on the Environment and Development,is: Can all nations achieve the standards ofprosperity now in developed countries, usingavailable technologies?

In 1947, when Gandhi was visiting England, areporter said, “Mr. Gandhi, now that India isgoing to become independent, will it achievea standard of living like that of the UnitedKingdom?” And Gandhi said, “When I look atthe map, about half of it is colored red, whichmeans it’s the British Empire. The wealth ofthe British Empire comes from these coun-tries all over the world. And it’s not obviousto me how India–a much larger country inpopulation, with no empire–can achievethose standards of living.”

So how many planets do we need to have allnations achieve the same level of prosperitynow in developed countries? If we were to

use our present population and our presentstandards of living, our affluence and ourtechnology, to bring everybody up to the stan-dards of Europe and the United States, wewould use about 120 percent of what we growand produce per year–up from 70 percent asrecently as 1970. That’s de½nitely a frighten-ing relationship, because it indicates that wewould need another two copies of the planetEarth to enable all of the people who are liv-ing today to enjoy the same level of prosperi-ty that we do now in industrialized countries.It means that the productive systems of theworld–the potentially sustainable systems ofthe world–are being progressively degradedby the way we’re using them at the presenttime. This projection strongly suggests thatnot only do we need to reach a level popula-tion, but we need to ½nd levels of affluenceand consumption that can be sustained inthe long run, and we also need to developtechnologies that are not as damaging as theones that we use at present, and to keep im-proving them into the future.

When I was on the faculty at Stanford in the1960s, we calculated that if you used the en-tire gross economic product of the world, youcould export twelve people to the nearestplanet that was likely to be habitable eachyear. That calculation indicates clearly thatwe must depend on our existing resources inour efforts to develop sustainability, and wemust adjust our consumption, our technolo-gy, and our population levels in order to at-tain a sustainable world in the future.

In the middle of our runaway consumption–which is well beyond the levels that the worldcan sustain–we have the problem of biodi-versity. Over 80 percent of the organisms in the world–not counting bacteria–arecompletely unknown, lacking even scienti½cnames. If you breed a tropical rain forest,nineteen of the twenty kinds of organismsthat you’ll be bringing up will never havebeen seen by a scientist, will be completelyunknown, and will have no name. Even if itdoes have a name, what that name is likelyto tell you is: There’s a dead one in the bot-tom of a bottle on a shelf in The Natural His-tory Museum in London that somebody gotsomewhere in the Central Amazon in 1860.

The number of species of organisms for whichwe have a reasonable amount of informationis more like ½fty thousand or one hundredthousand, and that’s it. For all the others, evenknowing what they are won’t lead to any use-ful information. Without a reliable census ofthe species of organisms on Earth, it is very

dif½cult to estimate how many species arebecoming extinct. We can, however, estimateextinction rates by reference to well-knowngroups of organisms, especially those thathave hard body parts and are well document-ed in the fossil record–about one per mil-lion per year over the past sixty-½ve millionyears–since the great extinction at the endof the Cretaceous period.

Then we come to a written record that wecan compare directly with that of about fourhundred years ago. Over the last four hundredyears, about one hundred species per yearhave become extinct. Now we’re up to sever-al thousands per year, and with the rate ofhabitat destruction and the other forces thatI have discussed, we’ll very soon be eliminat-ing tens of thousands of species per year. Thevast majority of them will be unknown at thetime that they’re lost. We won’t even haveknown that they existed.

We are currently spending tens of billions ofdollars trying to determine if there was onespecies on Mars, two to three billion yearsago, which might be preserved in the rocksto demonstrate that life once existed there.Now place yourself on Mars, coming to Earthto ½nd this great diversity of organisms thatwe’ve been treating with a cavalier kind ofdisdain, low funding, and disinterest.

Habitat destruction is a major force in drivingorganisms extinct. It is estimated that theAmazon Forest will be about 5 percent of itspresent size by the middle of this century.Couple this fact with our well-established re-lationships between members of species andsize of habitat. Habitat destruction is the onlyforce taken into account in estimating thattwo-thirds of all the species on Earth will beextinct by the end of this century if presenttrends continue. But then, there are manyother factors. What about gathering plantsin the wild? Ginseng, for example, is hound-

We must adjust our con-sumption, our technology,and our population levelsin order to attain a sustain-able world in the future.

We’ll very soon be elimi-nating tens of thousandsof species per year. Thevast majority of them willbe unknown at the timethat they’re lost. We won’teven have known that theyexisted.


ed throughout its range in North Americaand it is not alone. Most people in the worlddepend on wild plants as their source of med-icine and are basically harvesting them veryrapidly.

The importance of bush meat–hunting foranimals in natural forests–is increasing yearafter year in Africa and throughout the trop-ics. When an oil company goes to Africa orSouth America to drill, it doesn’t say, “Here’ssome food.” It says “Here are some guns. Goout and get what you need to feed yourself.”Another very important factor: all along thecoast of Africa, European ½shing boats aresucking the ½sheries dry so that in places likeGhana, which really depend on ½sh, therearen’t any ½sh. The ½sh are all being broughtback to Europe as luxury foods. As a result,people in Africa are turning more and moreto bush meat, leading rapidly to the extinc-tion of many species.

Then there’s the matter of introduced speciessuch as the zebra mussel in the United States.Alien invasive species of plants and animalsare the likely cause of extinction of at least athird of the endangered plants and animalsin this country. They are moving around theworld at a frightening pace; in Hawaii, forexample, they are the cause of extinction orlikely extinction of every endangered plantand animal. It’s estimated that in the UnitedStates we lose about $140 billion a year toalien invasive species.

In comparison to the $155 billion spent on theentire criminal justice system in the UnitedStates, $140 billion looks pretty big. It’s alsoabout a third of our military budget, givingyou an idea, even in nonbiological terms, ofhow important the problem of invasive spe-cies is. Yet people continue to drag plants and

animals all over the world and they literallyeat up biodiversity wherever they are intro-duced.

Next we come to climate change. The Inter-national Panel on Climate Change (ipcc),now in its fourth cycle of climate modeling,has made it very clear that climate is chang-ing rapidly, in some places more rapidly thanin others. Human-produced gasses are themajor component in climate change. For ex-ample, all alpine and sub-alpine habitats inthe United States will be lost by the end ofthis century. In the Alps, not only are the gla-ciers receding rapidly, but famous climbs,like the north face of the Eiger, can no longerbe undertaken: the north face never freezesand you can’t climb up the rotten rocks.

So there are three major causes for extinction–alien invasive species, climate change, andhunting and gathering–that aren’t even takeninto account when we say that two-thirds ofthe species may be lost over the course of thiscentury. This is an extraordinarily seriousdevelopment for human beings because wedepend entirely on biodiversity, and speci½-cally on plants, as our source of food. More-over, 70 percent of the people of the worlddepend directly on plants as their source ofmedicine, and at least 25 percent of the pre-scription drugs written in the United Statesalso have a “suborder” base. With the hungerfor nutraceuticals in Japan, Europe, and theUnited States, plants that people are using astheir source of medicine are being scroungedright out of existence. For example, curare,used for muscle relaxation in thoracic surgery,is based on knowledge gained from groupsof Indians hunting in the Amazon who use itas a muscle relaxant as well.

It’s also important to remind ourselves thatwe live in the very early days of a revolutionin biology–the double helix: ½fty-one yearsago, the ½rst transfer of a gene from one un-related kind of organism to another; thirty-one years ago, widespread use of geneticallyaltered products in medicine and then, ½fteento twenty years ago, in crops; in the last ½veyears, knowledge about genomics and thecomparison of gene families across differentkinds of organisms. Here is the biology andthe technology that we expect to be able touse to make the world sustainable. Can youthink of anything more stupid than drivingtwo-thirds of these kind of organisms intoextinction, 80 percent of them completelyunknown before we even get our hands onthem to see how they might be useful?

Where are we heading? If you think that hu-man ingenuity is going to get us out of this,well, it’s not. Human ingenuity is extremelyimportant in ½nding better ways to move intothe future, but I think that we are sapping theproductive capacity and the diversity of theworld extremely rapidly, yet slowly enoughthat a single lifetime doesn’t give us a veryclear focus on it. Think about what the placewhere you grew up looks like now, and you

will have a pretty good snapshot of what rap-id change means. It is leading to better waysto ½ght diseases, travel, talk on the telephone,and, heaven help us, communicate on theInternet, but it’s not making the world morebeautiful or interesting or diverse or philo-sophically better, more musical or more cul-tured or more poetic or anything else.

By our pell-mell rush toward success, devel-opment, and consumption, we are destroyingthe world at a rate that is unworthy of us interms of the bene½ts we have. But what we donow is going to affect the ½nal product whenwe do achieve some kind of stability. We’renot engaged in a pell-mell rush toward extinc-tion; we’re engaged in a pell-mell rush towarda less interesting, duller world. What are theindividual parts going to look like? What’sChicago, St. Louis, Boston, or Bolivia goingto look like? What is going to be the sum to-tal of the activities of a lot of people doing alot of different things to affect the outcome?

Preserving and keeping national parks andother kinds of similar reserves is a very im-portant strategy for conservation, but it canbe badly impacted by climate change. Thecoexistence with organisms that we can tol-erate in modi½ed lands is going to have agreat deal to do with how many organismssurvive. Alien invasive species must be con-trolled. We need to save plants and other or-ganisms in cultivation or, when we can, tryto keep tissue culture slides in order to try to

There are three majorcauses for extinction–alieninvasive species, climatechange, and hunting andgathering–that aren’t eventaken into account whenwe say that two-thirds ofthe species may be lost overthe course of this century.

By our pell-mell rush to-ward success, development,and consumption, we aredestroying the world at arate that is unworthy of usin terms of the bene½ts wehave.


keep them for the future. We must do a greatdeal of education and communication withone another about the importance of biodi-versity. Otherwise, none of this effort will besupported by anyone.

Increasing scienti½c capabilities around theworld, by any means possible, is one of themost important things that scholars can doto secure the future not only for the UnitedStates, but for the entire world. We’ve got toreach a higher level of morality and realizethat people around the world don’t have theopportunities that we do. The alienation ofwomen and children throughout the world isunforgivable, unmistakable, and a true char-acteristic of world civilization. There is noway that women and children can contributetheir unique talents to a sustainable worlduntil they’re encouraged to be part of theirsocieties, achieving similar levels of educa-tion with men, sharing the same privileges,bene½ts, and work as men.

We need to deal seriously with air pollution,especially the air pollution that affects cli-mate change. In 1991, Stephen Schmidheiny, aSwiss industrialist who developed the WorldBusiness Council for Sustainable Develop-ment in the years prior to the Rio summit,wrote in a brilliant opinion piece in the NewYork Times: “There is no greater gift thatAmerican industry can give to European andJapanese industry than going on pretendingthat global warming does not exist. By doingso, you are giving us time to invent and pat-ent all the things that you will want to buydesperately from us later, when you come toyour senses. And basically, once again, put-

ting yourself in the same position that youdid in the early 1970s, when you wisely de-cided that small, ef½cient Japanese cars hadno place in the American economy. Thankyou, America.”

We need to ½nd alternative sources of energyand energy conservation. In constant dollars,the U.S. Department of Energy now spends15 percent of what it did in 1979 for energyconservation and alternative energy and in1979, we thought there was a problem. Shelland British Petroleum, the two major Euro-pean oil companies, spent 15 percent of theirpretax income in these areas. American oilcompanies–virtually none. Which wouldyou rather invest in?

Ultimately, sustainability begins with everyone of us. As I pointed out, in the UnitedStates, we consume thirty to ½fty times whatthe poorer people of the world do and we can

make many, many choices here that will besigni½cant, including promoting interna-tionalism, learning more and spreading thatknowledge, and especially voting, being en-gaged in the political process. What aboutautomobiles? Choices about places to live?What are we going to do about it, individual-ly? To say that none of this makes any differ-ence is simply to postpone the obvious out-comes. It all makes a huge difference. Whatabout sustainable use of seafood? What aboutcomposting? Catching rainwater? Greenarchitecture–building with things that canbe recovered later and building with materi-als that have low cost to the environment?Building energy effectively? Recycling? En-vironmental literacy? In every university thatI have anything to do with, I say that environ-mental literacy for undergraduates is a pre-requisite to living intelligently in a modernworld. So far, only the University of Georgiahas an environmental requirement for everysingle undergraduate. Should we be optimistsor pessimists? Does the tree get cut down orare we about to learn something about it?

As Gandhi said, the world provides enough tosatisfy every man’s need, but not every man’sgreed. Let’s be more thoughtful. Let’s try toremember how much we enjoy evenings ofcompanionship like this and the ½ner thingsthat we’ve achieved and realize that withoutattending to the sustainable base of all of this,the biodiversity of our world cannot and willnot be preserved for our grandchildren andtheir grandchildren.

© 2005 by Peter Raven.

We need to deal seriouslywith air pollution, especiallythe air pollution that affectsclimate change. We needto ½nd alternative sourcesof energy and energy con-servation. Ultimately, sus-tainability begins with everyone of us.

Gerald Early (Washington University in St. Louis), Leslie Berlowitz(American Academy), and Patricia Meyer Spacks (University ofVirginia)

Robert M. Wald (University of Chicago) and John Katzenellenbogen(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)


Peter Raven speaking on biodiversity Missouri Botanical Garden

Martin Dworkin (University of Minnesota), VicePresident of the Midwest Center, presided at themeeting.

Priscilla McDonnell, John McDonnell (McDonnell Douglas Corporation), and David Forney (MIT)

Midwest Meeting–St. Louis


Christoph Wolff is Adams University Professor atHarvard University. He has been a Fellow of theAmerican Academy since 1982.

A Problem of MusicalHistoriography

The rediscovery of Johann Sebastian Bach in the Romantic period long after the com-poser’s death belongs among the most wide-spread misconceptions in the historiographyof music. The following quote is symptom-atic: “Bach and his works have met a strangefate at the hands of posterity. They were fair-ly well recognized in their day; practicallyforgotten by the generations following his;rediscovered and revived; and ½nally accord-ed an eminence far beyond the recognitionthey had originally achieved.”1

Scholarship of recent decades has found itnecessary to turn away from a Bach imagethat resembles the metaphorical paradigm of“Death and Resurrection”–the characteris-tic heading of the pertinent chapter in AlbertSchweitzer’s J. S. Bach of 1908, arguably themost influential Bach book of all time. To-day we differentiate between two complemen-tary factors. First, the beginning of a broadlybased public reception of Bach’s music in theearly nineteenth century, for which Mendels-sohn’s 1829 performance of the St. MatthewPassion represents a decisive landmark. Sec-ond, the uninterrupted reception of a moreprivate kind, primarily con½ned to profession-al musical circles where Bach’s compositions

were regarded as a continuing challenge, asource of inspiration, and a yardstick for mea-suring quality.

My remarks today will focus on a third andlargely unexplored aspect: the role played bya small circle of early bourgeois Bach devo-tees in an atmosphere of emerging musicalhistoricism. The phenomenon of historicism,which ½rst arose in eighteenth-century En-gland, had a growing impact on the publictaste. It contributed signi½cantly to an increas-ing interest in music of the past and eventu-ally led to an ostensibly irreversible paradigmshift. Up to the period of Haydn, Mozart, andBeethoven, it was contemporary music thatoverwhelmingly dominated the scene. Todayit is the music of the past that, in terms ofclassical performance statistics, practicallymarginalizes new music.

Musical historicism advanced in Germanyand on the European continent during theearly decades of the nineteenth century. Aprogrammatic milestone was set in 1835 byFelix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who, in his

½rst season as music director of the LeipzigGewandhaus, established so-called “Histor-ische Concerte” speci½cally featuring com-positions of the past. Works by J. S. Bachplayed an essential role in this respect. In his½rst such program, Mendelssohn performed,for instance, the solo part in Bach’s keyboardConcerto in d Minor, bwv 1052. The work,unknown at the time, received great praisefrom the general public but especially fromthe music critic Robert Schumann. Nobody,however, including Mendelssohn himself,knew that this same concerto had actuallybeen played in public almost thirty years ear-lier, before Mendelssohn was even born, bya certain Sara Levy at a concert of the BerlinSing-Akademie.

Madame Levy, who stands at the center ofmy talk, was none other than Mendelssohn’sgreat-aunt, the younger sister of his maternalgrandmother. Young Mendelssohn is gener-ally credited with bringing about one of themost seminal events in musical historicism,the aforementioned 1829 performance ofBach’s St. Matthew Passion by the Sing-Akad-emie in Berlin. He certainly deserves creditas the inspired musical leader of this mostinfluential performance attended by Fried-rich Wilhelm IV and the royal family, thePrussian nobility, and notably the intellectu-al elite of the capital, headed by the theolo-gian Schleiermacher, the philosopher Hegel,and the historian Droysen. However, thetrue origins of that particular event must besought in the remarkable musical traditionsof Mendelssohn’s extended family–a tradi-tion underemphasized, underresearched, orneglected if not suppressed by earlier histor-ical German scholarship for reasons of anapparent anti-Semitic bias.

The phenomenon of histor-icism, which ½rst arose ineighteenth-century England,had a growing impact onthe public taste. It contri-buted signi½cantly to anincreasing interest in musicof the past.

1 The Bach Reader: A Life of Johann SebastianBach in Letters and Documents, ed. Hans T. David

and Arthur Mendel, rev. ed. (New York: W. W.

Norton, 1966), 358.

A Bach Cult in Late-Eighteenth-Century Berlin: Sara Levy’sMusical SalonChristoph Wolff

This presentation was given at the 1886th Stated Meeting, held at the House of the Academyon December 15, 2004. It was followed by a musical performance by Academy Fellow MalcolmBilson (Cornell University), Christopher Krueger (University of Massachusetts at Amherst),Academy Fellow Robert Levin (Harvard University), and Daniel Stepner (Lydian String Quar-tet). The program consisted of works by Johann Sebastian, Wilhelm Friedemann, and CarlPhilipp Emanuel Bach from the collection of Sara Levy, individually introduced by ChristophWolff. Sara Levy, drawing by Anton Graff, 1786


Early Bach Veneration in theItzig and Mendelssohn Families

Johann Friedrich Reichardt, last Kapellmei-ster in the service of Prussia’s Friedrich II(“the Great”), refers in his autobiography of1813 to “a veritable Sebastian and EmanuelBach cult” transpiring in the early 1770s at thehouse of Felix Mendelssohn’s great-grand-father, Daniel Itzig of Berlin, banker of theking and the most privileged and highest-ranking Jew in all of Prussia. Bach esteem, in-

deed adoration, in professional music circlesof the later eighteenth century was nothingspecial; one need only remember Beethoven’sgrowing up with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.Yet, neither Haydn, Mozart, nor Beethovenpursued anything like a Bach cult. Hence,this particular characterization of reverenceand cultivation in the Itzig family is a mostunusual phenomenon. Moreover, it indicatesa surprising continuity of interest in the mu-sic of J. S. Bach after his death in 1750, nottraceable elsewhere in private homes.

Daniel Itzig, born in 1723 in Berlin, began hisbanking career as the principal supplier of thePrussian mint to the court and the army andwas instrumental in assisting the king in fund-ing the Seven-Years War against Maria The-resa’s Austria (1756–1763). While it is con-ceivable that Itzig heard J. S. Bach on the oc-casion of the latter’s visit to the Prussian courtin 1747, he certainly would have known Bach’ssecond son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, a promi-nent member of the king’s capelle through1768. Be that as it may, Itzig had great inter-est in music, found the best possible musicinstructors for his children, and paid themwell. For his two oldest daughters, Hanna andBella, he hired Johann Philipp Kirnberger,one of J. S. Bach’s most prominent studentsand the one who codi½ed Bach’s teachings ina two-volume treatise on strict musical com-position, published in 1772.

Bella Itzig, incidentally, became Felix Men-delssohn’s maternal grandmother. She sharedthe same keyboard instructor with Felix’spaternal grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn,who also took lessons in music theory fromKirnberger. Mendelssohn, a faithfully prac-ticing Jew, successful businessman, eminentphilosopher of the German Enlightenment,along with Daniel Itzig and David Friedländer(Itzig’s son in-law), “devoted himself to theemancipation, both civil and intellectual, ofEurope’s ghettoized Jewish community.”2

Abraham Mendelssohn, his second son, re-ceived no particular musical training, but he joined in 1793 the newly established Sing-Akademie, a bourgeois choral society mod-eled after the Academy of Ancient Music inLondon and founded in 1791 by Carl Fasch,C. P. E. Bach’s assistant and later successor asharpsichordist to the Prussian court. In 1796,

Abraham Mendelssohn’s future wife, LeaSalomon, joined the same organization. Heprobably knew her from earlier family con-nections, for she was the daughter of BellaItzig, now married to the Berlin banker JacobSalomon. An accomplished pianist, Lea isknown to have played the Well-Tempered Cla-vier regularly.

The newly-wed Mendelssohns moved toHamburg in 1804, the year in which C. P. E.Bach’s daughter Anna Carolina, last custodi-an of the Bach family estate, died. When theestate came up for auction in 1805, the Men-delssohns quickly decided to buy the bulk ofthe music in order to donate it to the Sing-Akademie in Berlin, now under the directionof Carl Friedrich Zelter with whom they haddeveloped a warm relationship. Mendels-sohn’s acquisition of the Bach estate, whichincluded not only the complete works ofC. P. E. Bach but also a signi½cant portion ofthe surviving works of J. S. Bach, representeda genuine rescue operation with respect to

Top row, left to right: Daniel Itzig, anonymous painting, c. 1770; Moses Mendelssohn, painting byJohann Christoph Frisch, c. 1780. Bottom row, left to right: Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy, drawingby Wilhelm Hensel, 1834; Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, watercolor by James Warren Childe, 1829.

2 Steven P. Meyer, “Moses Mendelssohn and

the Bach Tradition,” Fidelio Magazine 8 (2)

(1999): 27.

Madame Levy’s music col-lection was quite compre-hensive, consisting almostexclusively of instrumentalmusic by all major compos-ers active in the second halfof the eighteenth century.


the latter’s music. Its importance for the sur-vival of J. S. Bach’s music, contained in morethan a hundred unique autograph scores,must not be underestimated and it is safe tosay that, without Abraham Mendelssohn’sefforts, the losses of Bach’s music would besigni½cantly greater than what we have todeplore already.

The acquisition of the Bach estate for theBerlin Sing-Akademie forms the immediatesalient background for the later performanceof the St. Matthew Passion under the baton ofnineteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. Thisbackground, however, is even more directlyand concretely connected with the Mendels-sohn family. Shortly after Abraham Mendels-sohn had donated the Bach manuscript scoresof unpublished works to the Sing-Akademiein 1811, Carl Friedrich Zelter began to performexcerpts from the Passions, Masses, and can-tatas of J. S. Bach based on the materials savedby Mendelssohn. Meanwhile, Abraham Men-delssohn’s family relocated to Berlin. At ageten, Felix joined the Sing-Akademie and, more

importantly, was put under Zelter’s privatetutelage. He could have had no better teacherwho, among other things, exposed him toBach’s vocal works, including the St. MatthewPassion–but almost exclusively in the form ofexcerpts. Zelter did not consider the large-scale work performable, for musical-techni-cal reasons as much as for its “wretched texts,”referring to the baroque-style poetry. Butyoung Felix eagerly wanted to see and studythe whole piece. Finally, grandmother BellaSalomon ful½lled his wish, had a profession-al copy made from the manuscript of the un-published work in the collection of the Sing-Akademie, and gave it to Felix for Christmasin 1823. He was fourteen then and it took him

another ½ve years to persuade his teacherZelter to agree to a complete performance.

Christmas 1823 was special, for it followed theyear in which Abraham and Lea Mendels-sohn converted to Protestant Christianity and

added “Bartholdy” to their name in order tobe distinguished from the Jewish Mendels-sohns. The baptism took place in Frankfurtbecause Abraham wanted to avoid a publicrift with his in-laws, especially since BellaSalomon had disowned her son Jacob uponhis conversion.3 Intermarriage and conver-sion had become a major trend among Jewsin Prussia because it opened up new social,commercial, political, and educational op-portunities. Bella Salomon, like her father

Daniel Itzig, was seriously opposed to whatwas happening to the younger generation. Wedon’t know the details of the internal familydisputes, but seen in this context, the Christ-mas present to her grandson Felix in the yearof his baptism seems a particularly remark-able gesture, perhaps a sign of reconciliation:a work of undeniably Christian art handeddown by a faithful Jewess, with Bach’s musicstanding above doctrinal and confessionaltraditions. She came to tolerate, if not accept,the notion expressed by Abraham Mendels-sohn that true Christianity “contains nothingthat can lead you away from what is good.”4

Sara Levy’s Salon and MusicCollection

Bella’s younger sister Sara held similar, prob-ably even stronger, views about conversion.When she died at age ninety-four, childless,she left her considerable fortune to charityby establishing a foundation for a Jewish or-phanage in Berlin. Otherwise, like the rest ofthe Itzigs, Mendelssohns, Salomons, Ephra-ims, Friedländers, and others in her extendedfamily, she ½t perfectly into the environmentof intellectual, cultural, and to some extentpolitical liberalism in a period quite uniquein German history: the quarter century from1780 to 1806, when Napoleon conquered Prus-sia. This was also a period in which a groupof wealthy Jewish women in Berlin “achievedsocial glory by entertaining the cream of gen-tile society.”5 The literary and philosophicalsalons of Rahel Varnhagen, Henriette Herz,Rebecca Friedländer, and Dorothea Schlegelwere among the most prominent and bestknown, and the success of these Jewish salon-ières “was based on de½ance of the tradition-al boundaries separating noble from com-moner, gentile from Jew, man from woman.The public happiness achieved in these sa-lons was a real-life enactment of the ideal ofBildung, encompassing education, re½nement,and the development of character.”6

4 For Abraham Mendelssohn’s views on con-

version see Wulf Konold, Felix MendelssohnBartholdy und seine Zeit (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag,

1984), 69–80.

5 Deborah Hertz, Jewish High Society in OldRegime Berlin (New Haven and London: Yale

University Press, 1988), 3.

6 Ibid., 3–4.

3 Jacob Salomon, who, after his conversion,

adopted the name “Bartholdy,” provided the

model for Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn’s

name change.

Within Levy’s musiclibrary, the works of J. S.Bach and his four sons–Wilhelm Friedemann, CarlPhilipp Emanuel, JohannChristoph Friedrich, andJohann Christian–repre-sent a signi½cant section of a scope and characterwithout parallel elsewhere.

Itzig

Daniel Itzig, 1722–1799∞ Miriam Wulff, 1727–1788→ 15 children, among them:

Sara, 1761–1854 Bella, 1749–1824∞ Samuel Levy ∞ Jacob Salomon→ no children → 4 children,

among them:

Lea, 1777–1842

Mendelssohn

Moses Mendelssohn, 1729–1786∞ Fromet Guggenheim, 1737–1812→ 6 children, among them:

∞ Abraham M. (Bartholdy), 1776–1835→ 4 children, among them:

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, 1809–1847


Sara Itzig, after her marriage in 1783 to thebanker Samuel Levy, established a weekly sa-lon with a strong focus on music at her state-ly home in old Berlin’s poshest neighborhood.For about ten years, from 1774 to 1784, she hadstudied with Friedemann Bach, J. S. Bach’soldest, and became a keyboard virtuoso in herown right. The silverpoint portrait by AntonGraff of 1786 (see page 26) shows a very at-tractive young woman at age twenty-½ve,who regularly performed at the weekly after-noon gatherings in her house but also else-where. After the death of her husband in 1806,

she became more engaged in the public con-certs of the Sing-Akademie where she regu-larly appeared as a soloist with the orchestra,performing concertos by Bach and his sonsbut also by other composers. Sometime after1815, however, in her mid-½fties, she stoppedperforming in public (grand-nephew Felixmost likely never heard her play).

An undated early photograph from around1850 depicts Sara Levy in her old age; shesurvived her grand-nephew by almost sevenyears. The silverpoint and the photograph injuxtaposition show very dramatically the con-trast of two different centuries, not just asreflected in the different age, changed face,body, clothing, and habit of one and the samewoman, but also reflected in the techniqueof portraiture: drawing versus photography.More than that, the new industrial age leftno room for the salon culture of the late eigh-teenth and early nineteenth centuries. SaraLevy observed and experienced this ½rst hand.

After giving up public performance Sara Levydonated the bulk of her very large music col-lection to the library of the Berlin Sing-Akad-emie. Her substantial gift, never inventoriedand evaluated in the past, was not accessiblefor more than half a century after the end ofWorld War II. The Red Army had con½scatedthe musical archive of the Sing-Akademie to-gether with numerous other trophy materials.Fortunately, since the archive of the Sing-Akademie was recently repatriated from Kiev

to Berlin, the materials can now be examinedand the extent of the Levy collection assessed.Only now it becomes clear how prominentlythis extraordinary woman ½gures in the ear-ly reception of the music of the Bach family.

Madame Levy’s music collection was quitecomprehensive, consisting almost exclusive-ly of instrumental music by all major com-posers active in the second half of the eigh-teenth century. The repertoire extended fromsolo keyboard works and chamber music ofdifferent kinds to concertos and symphonies

–the music room in her house could easilyaccommodate an orchestra of eighteenth-century proportions. She owned many key-board instruments of various kinds and wasparticularly fond of the fortepianos by Fried-rich Silbermann of Strasbourg.

Within Levy’s music library, the works of J. S.Bach and his four sons–Wilhelm Friede-mann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Chris-toph Friedrich, and Johann Christian–re-present a signi½cant section of a scope andcharacter without parallel elsewhere. More-over, her collection formed a library for prac-tical use, that is, the collection contained notonly scores but also performing parts. Thetitle wrapper for a set of parts usually pro-vides an incipit of the work for easy identi½-cation and usually shows Sara Levy’scharacteristic round ownership stamp.

W. F. Bach, Trio Sonata in B-flat Major, title page

Sara Levy, photograph, c. 1850

The names on the list of subscribers to C. P. E. Bach, Six Concertos for Harpsichord (Hamburg, 1772)includes Mademoiselle Itzig.


Sara Levy not only arranged musical perfor-mances, both with and without her partici-pation, but she also occasionally commis-sioned new works and became a major patronfor the two elder Bach brothers. Her teacherW. F. Bach wrote a song for her wedding in1783–probably his last composition, for hedied a year later. Sara Levy had supported him½nancially for the last ten years of his life; hein turn provided her with music. It was prob-ably only after Friedemann’s death that sheestablished direct contact with his youngerbrother Emanuel (who had left Berlin forHamburg when she was only seven) and main-tained relations with him and, after his deathin 1788, with his widow. Her collection al-ready contained 16 keyboard concertos by C. P. E. Bach when she commissioned him to write another concerto, this time for harp-sichord, fortepiano, and orchestra, whichturned out to be C. P. E. Bach’s last compo-sition. Levy’s collection contains the auto-graph score of this most special piece thatdeliberately juxtaposes two different types,or if you will generations, of keyboard soloinstruments: the traditional harpsichord andthe modern fortepiano.

Just prior to this commission she apparentlyordered from C. P. E. Bach a set of three quar-tets, also with an unusual combination of in-struments: fortepiano, flute, and viola. Again,the autograph score of 1788 and sole surviv-

ing source of the work forms part of her col-lection. This score also shows the unstableand trembly hand of the seventy-four-year-old composer who suffered from gout andwrote with considerable dif½culty. All threepieces are headed “Quartet fürs Clavier, Flöte u.Bratsche” (quartet for clavier, flute, and vio-la) and the layout of the score indicates Bach’sde½nition of quartet: rather than referring tofour different instruments he stresses four in-dependent contrapuntal lines of music, oneeach for flute, viola, fortepiano right hand,and fortepiano left hand. Haydn or Mozartwould have called it a piano trio, but theirstandard scoring would be for violin, cello,and piano.

The unusual and innovative approach thatC. P. E. Bach takes here in the last year of hislife focuses on a well-adjusted distributionof the four instrumental voices and the cleardistinctions between them. The integrationof a woodwind and a string instrument addsdifferent colors to the homogeneous keyboardparts. Moreover, using a viola instead of a vi-olin puts emphasis on the middle ground ofthe score, that is, on the center of the soundspectrum. The result constitutes an evenlybalanced instrumental discourse that permitsthe composer to engage in a lively, intense,and witty musical dialogue–in all likelihooda ½tting interlude to the verbal conversationsinvariably conducted among the guests of

Sara Levy’s literary-musical salon, whichincluded the Humboldt brothers and othermembers of Berlin’s intellectual elite.

Their discussions are not recorded, of course,but their listening to the music of two differ-ent generations of Bachs, the father and hissons, would have invited them to comparestylistic dialects of the past with the best ofwhat was new in the contemporary scene ofmusic–like the works of Mozart, who per-formed in Berlin in the spring of 1789. Thisexperience undoubtedly would have giventhem a clear sense of a historical dimensionin music together with a sense of urgency in preserving the musical past for the future.That was eventually realized when in 1809Wilhelm von Humboldt expanded the Prus-sian Academy of Arts by adding a music divi-sion. Its ½rst head was Carl Friedrich Zelter,director of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, FelixMendelssohn Bartholdy’s principal teacher,and the one who consciously started an ar-chive of music that eventually came to incor-porate Sara Levy’s collection.

© 2005 by Christoph Wolff.

Sara Levy, drawing by Anton Graff, 1786;Daniel Itzig, anonymous painting, c. 1770;Moses Mendelssohn, painting by JohannChristoph Frisch, c. 1780; Abraham Men-delssohn Bartholdy, drawing by WilhelmHensel, 1834; Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy,watercolor by James Warren Childe, 1829Photo credit: Mendelssohn-Archiv, Staatsbib-liothek zu Berlin–Preussischer Kulturbesitz

Sara Levy, photograph, c. 1850 Photo credit: Bach-Archiv Leipzig

W. F. Bach, Trio Sonata in B-flat Major, titlepage Photo credit: Sing-Akademie zu Berlin

C. P. E. Bach, Quartet in G Major, Wq 95;autograph manuscriptPhoto credit: Sing-Akademie zu Berlin

C. P. E. Bach, Quartet in G Major, Wq 95; autograph manuscript


Robert Levin (Harvard University), Christopher Krueger (University of Massachusetts atAmherst), Daniel Stepner (Lydian String Quartet), and Malcolm Bilson, seated (CornellUniversity) performed works by Johann Sebastian, Wilhelm Friedemann, and Carl PhilippEmanuel Bach.

Christoph Wolff speaking on A Bach Cult in Late-Eighteenth-CenturyBerlin.


The American Academy and theDibner Institute for the Historyof Science and Technology cele-brated the publication of a newbook entitled James Bowdoin andthe Patriot Philosophers. Writtenby the late Frank E. Manuel, anAcademy Fellow, and his wife,Fritzie P. Manuel, the study re-lates in rich detail the foundingof the Academy and the life of its½rst president, James Bowdoin.

In his opening remarks, LouisW. Cabot, Vice President of theAcademy and Chair of the Acad-emy Trust, noted that “the bookhas been in the minds and handsof the Manuels for many years;it is ½tting that it comes to us inpublished form on the eve of theAcademy’s 225th year.”

Gerald Holton, Mallinckrodt Re-search Professor of Physics andResearch Professor of the Historyof Science at Harvard University,presented the keynote address.He observed that, with this pub-lication, the Manuels have notonly “resurrected a fascinatingpatriot/philosopher but they haveprovided deep insight into thelives, the politics, the thoughts,and sometimes the mischief ofmid-eighteenth-century Bostonintellectuals.” A merchant by

trade but “an amateur Newton-ian scientist” by avocation, Bow-doin, like many of his compatri-ots, justi½ed his interest in sci-ence on both religious and utili-tarian grounds–a combinationthat, as the Manuels point out,“made it twice blessed.”

As an example, Holton called at-tention to a scienti½c paper, pub-lished by Bowdoin in the ½rstvolume of the Academy’s Mem-oirs, reporting on an observation“tending to prove by phenome-na and scripture” that a hollowshell surrounding the sun’s plan-etary system was necessary topreserve the universe from col-lapsing. As Holton described (seeaccompanying excerpt), the roleof religion in understanding theuniverse was to concern scien-tists, from Newton to Einstein,for centuries to come and stillconcerns them.

Following Holton’s presentation,George Smith, Acting Directorof the Dibner Institute and Pro-fessor of Philosophy at Tufts Uni-versity, reflected on the meaningof the word “Newtonian” in theyears from 1780 to 1790–the de-cade when the “last serious looseend of the Principia was ½nally re-solved.” He observed that at the

same time that Bowdoin becameGovernor of Massachusetts, Lap-lace explained the mystery of thepeculiar motions of Jupiter andSaturn. In Smith’s words, “fromthat day forward, observation be-came secondary to calculationthroughout planetary astrono-my.” Shortly after Bowdoin pub-lished his paper on the danger ofthe universe collapsing inward,Laplace described the ½rst proofof the stability of the system notcollapsing outward. “What struckme about reading the Manuels’book,” Smith declared, “was thesharp difference between themeaning of the word ‘Newtonian’in the city of Boston in 1780 andits meaning in the city of Paristhat same year.”

Turning to Bowdoin’s role as gov-ernor of Massachusetts, Robert S.Cohen, Professor of Philosophyand Physics Emeritus at BostonUniversity, considered the con-flicting issues surrounding thesuppression of Shays’ Rebellion.As Cohen explained, the classstruggle and the threat of civilwar, demonstrated in what Bow-doin called a “rebellion from be-low,” are evident in society to-day. Bowdoin himself admittedthat the grievances of rural work-ing class farmers against the richmerchants were justi½ed, but asCohen emphasized, for this “gen-erous, humanistic man, the prior-ity of preventing civil war domi-nated the ethical problems of theexploited and aggrieved people.”

James Bowdoin and the Patriot Philosophers

George Smith (Dibner Instituteand Tufts University), SilvanSchweber (Brandeis University),Fritzie Manuel, and Robert S.Cohen (Boston University)

Gerald Holton (Harvard University)

Continued on page 33


Reflecting on the impact of theManuels as scholars and friends,Silvan Schweber, Professor Emer-itus of Physics and the Historyof Ideas at Brandeis University,compared Frank Manuel’s class-room with “cooking” in a jazzsession: “There would be ani-mated exchanges between Frankand the students at the end ofwhich it was clear that somehowthings had fallen into place forthem, a new world had been seen,a new understanding had beenobtained, and an eagerness toprobe more deeply had been im-parted.” Schweber went on tonote that “Fritzie made possibleall that Frank accomplished. Theresearch was carried out jointly;she made sure that the narrativewas cohesive, and that all thearguments were consistent andconvincing. She could do so be-cause she is an impressive schol-ar in her own right and ½ercelyindependent in her views.”

Responding to the remarks of hercolleagues, Fritzie Manuel saidthat the couple’s walks throughBoston streets with such namesas Hancock, Otis, and Bowdoininspired the book. When Frankretired, they had the time to pur-sue an interest far removed fromtheir earlier work. Curiosity ledthem to the area’s rich libraryresources on the colonial periodand the happy discovery of thediverse characters and personal-ities that inspired the early yearsof the Academy and the country.

James Bowdoin and the Patriot Phi-losophers is published by the Amer-ican Philosophical Society Press.The Academy and the Dibner In-stitute expressed their gratitudeto Mary McDonald, Editor of theaps, who worked with the Man-uels to produce what is an impor-tant contribution to the historyof this nation’s founding.

After Bowdoin’s Inaugural Ora-tion as the Academy’s presidenton 8 November 1780, he began tosubmit a slew of scienti½c papers,which were collected and pub-lished also in the ½rst volume of the Academy’s Memoirs. Nearthe start of the volume are three“physical papers” of his, the thirdbeing the most interesting, “theclimax of his scienti½c achieve-ment,” with the remarkable title,“Observation tending to prove,by Phaenomena and Scripture,the Existence of the Orb, whichsurrounds the whole visible ma-terial System [of the heavens];and which may be necessary topreserve from the Ruin to which,without such a Counterbalance,it seems liable, by that universalPrinciple of Matter, Gravitation.”What Bowdoin does here is topropose that a huge hollow sphereof an unde½ned substance encasesthe Sun’s planetary system, aswell as other such spheres for theoutlying parts of the visible uni-verse, and so prevent its collapse.

Why? It is an attempt to deal withan old fear: that the universe willnot be a stable unity forever andever, as is God, its Creator, Him-self, but that by the mutual grav-itational attraction of the planetsand stars they will somehow con-geal into one shameful lump. Thismust not happen. As Frank Man-uel wrote in his book The Religionof Newton, God is one of order,not of confusion. Newton him-self had also been deeply con-cerned with the possible collapseof the solar system by its owngravitation. He said to DavidGregory, “a continual miracle isneeded to prevent the sun andthe ½xed stars from rushing to-gether through gravity;” andelsewhere Newton wrote that

God’s hand is continually need-ed to put again into order theplanets’ paths after a passingcomet had diverted them.

But of course the grand homoge-neous sphere Bowdoin imaginedwould do nothing to help, sinceas Physics 101 teaches, in its mid-dle there would be no gravitation-al attraction to help prevent thecollapse, because all parts of sucha sphere cancel out in their gravi-tational effect. Perhaps John Win-throp’s lectures had not includedthat awkward fact.

And yet, this problem of a possi-ble collapse of the universe hadto be solved some way or other.When Einstein in 1917 came toinclude “cosmological consider-ation” when expanding his Gen-eral Relativity theory, he foundto his dismay that his equationsdid “not allow the hypothesis ofa spatially closed-ness [a con-stancy] of the world,” but permit-ted expansions or contractionsof the universe. That seemed tohim dangerous, not least becauseEinstein had long read and re-vered Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics,which in Proposition 20 says “Itfollows that God is immutable(and) all his attributes are immu-table.” At any rate, Einstein, toassure an immutable universe,put into his equation famously afudge factor, “an unknown uni-versal constant,” called the cos-mological constant, which wouldkeep the universe stable. JamesBowdoin would have approved.But in 1929, Hubble discoveredthat the universe is not immuta-ble but expanding, and so thecosmological constant fell intodisrepair. But again, just a fewyears ago, it was discovered thatthis expansion is not steady butis accelerating. Ironically, contra

to Newton and Bowdoin, it seemsto be tearing itself apart insteadof shrinking under mutual grav-ity. So now some sort of cosmo-logical ½x has to be reinserted in-to the equation. Neither Bow-doin’s quasi-religious specula-tions nor those of the God-½lledSpinoza are of any help.

As the great Alexandre Koyré sum-marized the matter at the end ofhis book, From the Closed World tothe In½nite Universe: “The mighty,energetic God of Newton whoactually ‘ran’ the universe accord-ing to His free will and decision,became, in quick succession, aconservative power, an intelligen-tia supra-mundana, a ‘Dieu fainé-ant. . . . The in½nite Universe ofthe New Cosmology, in½nite inDuration as well as in Extension,in which eternal matter in ac-cordance with eternal and nec-essary laws moves endlessly andaimlessly in external space, in-herited all the ontological attri-butes of Divinity. Yet only those–all the others the departed Godtook away with Him.”

So, as scientists, we are now onour own, for better or worse.

Excerpt from Gerald Holton’s PresentationJames Bowdoincontinued from page 32


Around the CountryOver the past several months, campus receptions were held in the Midwest and in California as part of the Academy’sexpanding outreach activities. President Patricia Meyer Spacks, Vice President Louis W. Cabot, and Executive Of½cerLeslie Berlowitz participated in many of these events, which provide expanded opportunities for Fellows to meet eachother and present their research.

On November 22, 2004, VicePresident of the Western Centerand Academy Councilor Jesse H.Choper and Academy CouncilorRandy W. Schekman co-hosteda gathering at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley to welcomeBerkeley’s new Chancellor, Rob-ert Birgeneau, who spoke to thegroup about the challenges andopportunities in higher education.

Jesse H. Choper and David Collier (both, UC Berkeley)

Robert J. Birgeneau (UC Berkeley)

At a meeting at Stanford Uni-versity on November 23, 2004,Kathleen M. Sullivan, StanleyMorrison Professor of Law atStanford Law School, spoke onthe topic “Do we have an emer-gency Constitution?” (The fulltext of Sullivan’s remarks willappear in a forthcoming Acad-emy publication.) Stanford Pres-ident John Hennessy presidedover the campus reception thatattracted Fellows and guests fromthroughout the Palo Alto area.

Kathleen Sullivan (Stanford Law School) and LouisW. Cabot (Cabot-Wellington, LLC)

John Hennessy (Stanford University)

Stanford University

Randy W. Schekman and Charles B. Harris (both, UCBerkeley)

University of California, Berkeley


David Baltimore and Colin Camerer (both, California Institute of Technology)

Following greetings from Chan-cellor Albert Carnesale, Profes-sor of Astronomy Andrea M.Ghez and Richard C. MaxwellProfessor of Law and Professorof Policy Studies Joel F. Handlerdiscussed their research at aninformal meeting of Fellows onthe campus of the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles on Febru-ary 16, 2005. Ghez explores starformation and has establishedthe existence of a supermassiveblack hole at the center of theGalaxy; Handler studies welfarelaw and policy and has examinedcurrent policy issues relating topoverty and high-risk adolescents.

University of California, Los Angeles

Albert Carnesale and Joel F. Handler (both, UCLA)

Andrea M. Ghez (UCLA)

Caltech President David Balti-more welcomed Fellows andguests to a campus reception onFebruary 15, 2005, where ColinCamerer, Rea A. and Lela G. Ax-line Professor of Business Eco-nomics, spoke about the rapidlyemerging ½eld of neuroeconom-ics. Camerer conducts laboratoryexperimental research in games,decisions, and markets.

California Institute of Technology

At a campus gathering for Fellowson November 11, 2004, HudaAkil, Gardner C. Quarton Dis-tinguished Professor of Neuro-science and Psychiatry and Co-Director and Senior ResearchScientist of the University ofMichigan Mental Health Re-

Huda Akil

search Institute, presented a talkon “Stress and Equanimity inTurbulent Times.” Akil’s researchcenters on the neurobiology ofbehavior, especially the molecu-lar mechanisms underlying re-sponsiveness to stress and pain.

University of Michigan


Around the Country

Dean of the School of Medicineand Vice Chancellor for MedicalAffairs David A. Kessler hosteda reception for Fellows on Feb-ruary 17, 2005, at the Universityof California, San Francisco. Re-flecting on his induction as a newmember of the Academy, Profes-sor of Medicine Jay A. Levy spokeof the Academy’s work in scienceover the past three centuries, urg-ing the group to propose newideas for Academy projects in thebiological and medical sciences.

David A. Kessler (UCSF) Jay A. Levy (UCSF)

Dedre Gentner, Director of theCognitive Science Program andProfessor of Psychology and Edu-cation, and Paul F. Berliner, Pro-fessor of Musicology, spoke at areception for Fellows at North-western University on March 29,2005. In a talk entitled “WhyWe’re So Smart,” Gentner dis-cussed her research on the natureand function of analogical reason-ing and on the interplay betweenlanguage and thought. Berlinerconsidered the fate of the mbriaplayers during Zimbabwe’s strug-gle for independence in his talk“The Heart that Remembers: ATale of Musicians in a Time ofWar.” Northwestern PresidentHenry S. Bienen presided at themeeting.

Northwestern University

Paul F. Berliner (Northwestern University)

University of California, San Francisco

Henry S. Bienen, Ursula Oppens, and Loren F. Ghiglione (all, Northwestern University)

Dedre Gentner (NorthwesternUniversity)


Lieutenant General William Odom (U.S. Army, Ret.), Robert Legvold (Columbia University),Dmitri Trenin (Carnegie Moscow Center), and Elihu Rose (Rose Associates, Inc.)

On December 1, 2004, the Acad-emy hosted “A Conversation onRussia and Its Neighbors,” a pan-el discussion on the issues raisedby the project on InternationalSecurity in the Post-Soviet Space.The meeting was moderated byElihu Rose, an Academy Fellowand professor of military histo-ry at New York University. Thespeakers included Robert Leg-vold, Professor of Political Sci-ence at Columbia University,Dmitri Trenin, Deputy Directorof the Carnegie Moscow Center,and Lieutenant General WilliamOdom (U.S. Army, Ret.), formerdirector of the National SecurityAdministration and Senior Fel-low at the Hudson Institute.

New York City

Are institutions of higher educa-tion the new catalysts for majortrends in urban design? On Feb-ruary 28, 2005, a Stated Meetingof the Academy explored the roleof universities as urban planners.Moderated by architect and writ-er Robert Campbell, a panel ofspeakers– including ColumbiaUniversity President Lee Boll-inger, architect James Polshek(Polshek Partnership Architectsllp), and University of Penn-

sylvania Senior Vice PresidentOmar Blaik–described theirexperiences with major construc-tion projects. The group dis-cussed ways in which universi-ties are collaborating with theircommunities to transform andexpand their campuses. E. JohnRosenwald, Jr. (Bear StearnsCompanies), who has been in-volved with numerous buildingprojects at educational and cul-tural institutions, presided.

New York City

Left to right: Omar Blaik (University of Pennsylvania), James Polshek (Polshek Partnership Architects, LLP), LeeBollinger (Columbia University), Robert Campbell (Cambridge, Massachusetts), and E. John Rosenwald, Jr. (BearStearns Companies)

John Brademas (NYU) and Conrad KennethHarper (Simpson Thacher & Bartlett)


Project Update

When Robert Legvold (Colum-bia University) ½rst proposed thatthe Academy sponsor a projecton security in the countries ofthe former Soviet Union in early2000, he believed that the majorpowers were overlooking theimportance of this region and itsrole in world affairs. Since then,with Legvold’s guidance, theAcademy has produced a seriesof four volumes that provide in-sight into patterns in the post-Soviet space that have receivedtoo little scholarly attention.

“Because the woes of this part ofthe world have not yet producedmajor dramas or large explo-sions,” Legvold wrote in 2000,“the tendency is to assume thatevents will remain under con-trol.” Since then, events in theregion have dramatically con-½rmed its strategic importance tothe United States and the world.

According to Legvold, “each ofthe challenges featured in thesebooks . . . from the economics ofnational security to the primalthreats to statehood itself, under-scores how bound together thesestates remain, and how impera-tive it is for the United Statesand other major powers to adoptpolicy frameworks transcendingsingle states and single issues.”

The project’s focus has been theoverarching economic and secu-rity concerns that tied the disin-tegrating space of the former So-viet Union together. Most studiesof the post-Soviet region tend tofocus on isolated issues, such asCaspian Sea oil and gas, “loosenukes,” or the election crisis inUkraine. Although the formerSoviet republics are in many waysdrifting apart, the security out-look for the region depends on

the interactions between them.Bound together by oil pipelinesand energy grids, by interdepen-dent markets and defense indus-tries, and by porous borders, thestrategic interests of states in thisregion frequently overlap andconflict.

During the project’s ½rst year, Leg-vold and an international groupof scholars met to produce a col-lection of essays that consideredhow each of the major powersapproached security challengesin Central Asia. The ½nal draft ofThinking Strategically: The MajorPowers, Kazakhstan, and the CentralAsian Nexus was submitted onSeptember 1, 2001. Ten days later,perceptions of the region hadwholly changed.

September 11 altered the promi-nence of Central Asia in interna-tional security discussions, andin many ways bore out Legvold’sinitial call for scholarly analysisof the international security im-plications of instability in thecountries of the post-Soviet space.Global events transformed thevolume from a discussion of theneed for strategic thinking in aregion whose importance hadyet to be recognized to a timelyanalysis of the issues that rapid-ly developing security strategiesshould address.

The volume succeeded in direct-ing attention to the need for ac-tive international involvementand coordinated planning to pro-mote stability in the region.

As Oslo-based Russian militaryexpert Pavel Baev stated in a re-cent review, the book conveys theoverall picture of “Kazakhstanbecoming the center of the in-creasingly interconnected InnerAsia, where the balance of oppor- Continued on page 40

International Security in the Post-Soviet Space

tunities and risks is now extreme-ly precarious.”

From the strategic interactionsof major powers in Central Asia,Legvold turned his focus to thequestion of how economic insta-bility in Russia affects the coun-tries of the post-Soviet region.Ukraine and Belarus, both vul-nerable to changes in the Russianeconomy but each with a uniquesecurity outlook, were the cen-tral subjects of the second volumein the series, Swords and Suste-nance: The Economics of Security in Belarus and Ukraine.

With co-editor Celeste Wallan-der, of the Center for Strategicand International Studies, Leg-vold assembled experts fromUkraine, Great Britain, and theUnited States to consider Russianeconomic reform and its impacton the defense trends of Ukraineand Belarus.

Contributor Hrihoriy Perepelitsaof the National Institute for Stra-tegic Studies of Ukraine focusedon the dominance of the defensesector in Ukraine and Belarus andthe dependence of these countrieson the Russian economy. This

dependence has strongly influ-enced the security policies of bothcountries. While Belarus looksto strengthen its ties to the Rus-sian military to encourage thedefense production that keepsits economy afloat, Ukraine hassought to create an independentdefense capacity and to becomean autonomous player in the in-ternational arms market.

Since the late 1990s, Ukraine has expressed interest in joiningnato, which Russia continuesto view with anxiety. The nato-Ukraine relationship has steadi-ly deepened, with NATO invit-ing an “intensi½ed dialogue” onUkraine’s goal of joining theorganization.

The move for independence fromRussia within Ukraine has beenhighly visible in recent months.In November 2004, the peacefulprotests of the “Orange Revolu-tion” came to a head as the state-sponsored media proclaimed theMoscow-backed candidate to bethe victor, while Ukrainians andforeign monitors claimed mas-sive fraud. The hotly contested

Robert Legvold (Columbia University)

race focused primarily on the pur-suit of Western-style reforms andthe development of close tieswith Europe.

As contributors to Swords andSustenance emphasize, and as theinvolvement of Russia, nato,the E.U. and U.S. demonstrates,complex economic and securitychoices are not for Ukraine andBelarus to face alone. The bookunderscores one lesson for policy-makers in particular. Despite the“large and unresolved challenge”of creating economic and nation-al security in these countries, theauthors see “a moment of oppor-tunity, if leadership in all threequarters–Russia, the West, andthe two countries themselves–will seize it.” A complex situationis not the same as a hopeless sit-uation, and the volume pointsthese actors toward policies thatcould lead to a more secure fu-ture for all.

Although the security issues atplay in the many small, recentlyindependent nations of the post-Soviet region are engaging andcomplex in and of themselves, anextensive study of security in thepost-Soviet region cannot ignorethe central role that Russia con-tinues to play. The Russian mili-tary has not maintained the im-mense reach and influence thatthe Soviet military once held, butit still plays a signi½cant role indirecting defense concerns in Eur-asia, while Russia’s nuclear capa-bilities remain globally relevant.The third volume published bythe project, The Russian Military:Power and Policy, edited by StevenE. Miller (Harvard University)and Dmitri Trenin (CarnegieMoscow Center), enlisted bothRussian and non-Russian expertsto consider the Russian approachto defense and the condition ofthe Russian military.

The contributors to the volumebegan with the simple fact thatRussia inherited only a fragmentof the Soviet military–a largefragment, but a fragment none-theless. Since the collapse of theSoviet Union, Russian leadershave failed to reshape this mili-tary into a force that meets theirneeds or to develop a defenseposture that realistically assess-es their new global position.

The Russian Military includes amix of insiders and expert “out-siders” from Alexei Arbatov, for-mer Duma member, and VitalyShlykov, advisor to one of Russia’slargest engineering and weapons-production companies, to jour-nalist Aleksandr Golts and re-search fellow Roy Allison of Ox-ford’s Centre for InternationalStudies. Each tackled a key fea-ture of Russia’s military and se-curity policy, shedding light onthe complex issues that have sty-mied reform. They include therole of the defense sector in theRussian economy; discontentamong both of½cers and recruitsin the military; a continued focuson facing global opponents, suchas nato, instead of addressingthe concerns of such regions asChechnya; and the use of the So-viet nuclear arsenal as a securitycrutch. All contributors arguedfor the necessity of swift reform.

The signi½cance of the Russianmilitary to security in the post-Soviet region may be apparent,but the important role of militarydynamics in the smaller countriesand subregions is often far lessrecognized. The ½nal study in theproject focuses on military dy-namics and security challengesin the Georgia and Caucasusregion.

Georgia is an apt choice. In No-vember 2003, protests over themanipulation of legislative elec-tions led to the ousting of the sit-ting president. The largely peace-

ful overthrow, called the “RoseRevolution,” indicated Georgia’spromising steps toward becom-ing a more democratic nation. It also underscores a basic fact:Georgia, like many countries inthe region, continues to strugglewith the development of viablepolitical and economic systemsin the aftermath of the dissolu-tion of the Soviet Union. In ad-dition to building state capacity,Georgia must also negotiate sep-aratist movements within itsborders, its relationship with itsimmediate neighbors, and Rus-sia’s moves to disrupt power bal-ances in the region. The new gov-ernment under President Mik-heil Saakashvili faces complexsecurity problems.

Bruno Coppieters of Vrije Univer-siteit Brussel joined Legvold inco-editing the volume Statehoodand Security: Georgia after the RoseRevolution (forthcoming, 2005).Reviewing events in Georgia withthe contributors, it became clearto Legvold and Coppieters thatsecurity in Georgia must beginwith the development of a soundstate structure. Only then can a national security policy be de-½ned.

The essays in Statehood and Secu-rity reveal the breadth of threatsthat Georgia faces. The Rose Rev-olution may have pointed Geor-gia in the direction of a more sta-ble government, but a history ofcorruption in the state and mili-tary, warring national identities,and the agitations of breakawayAbkhazia and South Ossetia con-stitute signi½cant roadblocks.Outside of Georgia, troubled re-lations with Russia and the insta-bility of other countries in theSouth Caucasus create regionalturmoil. On an internationalscale, oil and gas pipelines andthe war on terrorism make theregion politically important tothe United States and other coun-


International Securitycontinued from page 39

Continued on page 41


State Department rules; a pro-jected shortfall in the Americanscience and engineering work-force; unrealistic plans fornasa’sfuture space missions that neg-lect the important role of science;and faltering international coop-eration on existing and plannedspace missions. As Lane andAbbey write, “U.S. space policypresents a paradoxical picture ofhigh ambition and diminishingcommitment.” Their study offersrecommendations for redirectingpolicy to ensure the future suc-cess of the U.S. space program.

Lane and Abbey’s work will ap-pear as part of a series of papersemerging from the Academy’sReconsidering the Rules of Spaceproject. The Academy recentlypublished “The Physics of SpaceSecurity,” a reference manual thatpresents technical facts for a gen-eral audience about space oper-ations. Also forthcoming arepapers that offer internationalperspectives on U.S. space plans.

The project is directed by JohnSteinbruner (University of Mary-land) of the Academy’s Commit-tee on International SecurityStudies and supported by a grantfrom the Carnegie Corporationof New York.

Speaking of the post-Soviet re-gion in December 2004, Legvoldsaid, “The area itself–given itslocation, given its resources, giv-en developments within that partof the world–is going to haveenormous signi½cance for whathappens in international politicsnow and into the future.” RobertLegvold’s work at the Academybrings attention to this region ata critical point in time.

The project on International Se-curity in the Post-Soviet Spacewas funded by a grant from theCarnegie Corporation. Each ofthe volumes produced by theproject is available in both Englishand Russian editions.

On March 4, 2005, the Ameri-can Academy sponsored a work-shop on the interaction of mili-tary, civil, and scienti½c interestsin space. Experts from the UnitedStates, Canada, Britain, France,Germany, and China consideredthe ways in which military plansfor space impinge on, or are ad-vanced by, commercial and sci-enti½c activity. Participants iden-ti½ed the civilian space operationsthat might be undermined by in-creased military usage of spaceand discussed the developmentof appropriate legal principles toprotect both civilian uses of spaceand international security.

Neal Lane and George Abbey(both of Rice University) pre-sented their forthcoming paper,“United States Space Policy:Challenges and Opportunities.”The paper describes the ways inwhich national security provi-sions governing the productionof satellites and satellite tech-nology have curtailed the growthof the U.S. commercial space in-dustry and limited possibilitiesfor international cooperation.

Lane and Abbey describe fourbarriers to a healthy U.S. spaceprogram. These barriers include:the strict regulation of satelliteexports as munitions under the

U.S. Space Program Assessed

Theresa Hitchens (Center for Defense Information), Neal Lane (Rice Uni-versity), Joanne Gabrynowicz (University of Mississippi), George Abbey(Rice University)

An article by Fellows Joel E.Cohen (Rockefeller and Colum-bia Universities) and David E.Bloom (Harvard University) isthe lead feature in the upcom-ing issue of the InternationalMonetary Fund’s magazine, Fi-nance and Development. Cohenand Bloom are co-directors ofthe Academy’s Project on Uni-versal Basic and Secondary Ed-ucation (ubase). The issue,which has a special focus on ed-ucation, appears in June 2005.

The article, entitled “Cultivat-ing Minds,” draws heavily onresearch completed as part ofthe ubase project and sets theframework for the issue. Cohenand Bloom present a summaryof progress on achieving univer-sal education to date. They ex-amine rationales for continuingto work toward the goal of uni-versal access to primary and sec-

ondary education and empha-size the need to focus on the quality of education that is pro-vided. They also provide an esti-mate of the cost and the abilityof the world to ½nance this work,as well as a summary of obsta-cles–political, cultural, infor-mational, and organizational–that stand in the way of achiev-ing universal coverage.

The ubase project has shownthat providing education to allchildren is not overwhelminglycostly, though the necessary toolsmay not yet be in hand. Crudeestimates of the cost of achiev-ing universal primary and sec-ondary education fall between$34 and $69 billion additionalper year. As Cohen and Bloomwrite, “This is a huge amountof money, but certainly not be-yond the ability of the world tofund.”

Academy’s UBASE ProjectFeatured in IMF Quarterly

tries of the West. Statehood andSecurity demonstrates that Geor-gia’s problems need to be takenseriously by the great powers.

Eurasia has not exploded sincethe beginning of the project onInternational Security in the Post-Soviet Space, but the signs ofdiscontent are visible. Georgia’sRose Revolution and Ukraine’sOrange Revolution may be exam-ples of more democratic process-es emerging in the area. Otherevents, such as the Beslan schoolsiege of September 2004, whichoccurred in the Russian internalrepublic of North Ossetia, andthe ongoing election struggles inKyrgyzstan, are less encouraging.

International Securitycontinued from page 40

Select Prizes and Awards

National Medals of Science, 2003

Behavioral and Social SciencesR. Duncan Luce (University ofCalifornia, Irvine)

Biological SciencesJ. Michael Bishop (University of California, San Francisco)

Solomon H. Snyder (JohnsHopkins University School ofMedicine)

Charles Yanofsky (StanfordUniversity)

EngineeringJohn M. Prausnitz (University of California, Berkeley)

MathematicsCarl R. de Boor (University ofWisconsin, Madison)

Physical SciencesG. Brent Dalrymple (OregonState University)

Riccardo Giacconi (AssociatedUniversities, Inc. and JohnsHopkins University)

National Medals of Technology,2003

Jan D. Achenbach (NorthwesternUniversity)

Robert M. Metcalfe (PolarisVenture Partners)

Lewis C. Cantley (Harvard Medi-cal School) is the recipient of theeighth annual Pezcoller Found-ation-American Association forCancer Research InternationalAward for Cancer Research.

Gordon Davidson (Center The-ater Group) received the Nation-al Corporate Theatre Fund Lead-ership Award.

Sidney Drell (Stanford Univer-sity), Mildred S. Dresselhaus(Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology), and Mark di Suvero(Spacetime C.C.) are among therecipients of the Heinz Awardsin honor of the late U.S. SenatorJohn Heinz, given by the HeinzFamily Foundation.

Stephen Elledge (Harvard Medi-cal School) received the 2005 Gen-etics Society of America Medal.

David Hackett Fischer (BrandeisUniversity) won a 2005 PulitzerPrize for his book Washington’sCrossing (Oxford UniversityPress).

James E. Gunn (Princeton Univer-sity), P. James E. Pebbles (Prince-ton University), and Martin J.Rees (University of Cambridge)have been awarded the CrafoordPrize in Astronomy.

Brian K. Hall (Dalhousie Univer-sity) and Linda Hutcheon (Uni-versity of Toronto) are amongthe recipients of the 2005 KillamPrizes, awarded by the CanadaCouncil for the Arts.

Peter D. Lax (New York Univer-sity) has been awarded the AbelPrize in Mathematics.

Laurie Olin (Olin Partnership),James Stewart Polshek (PolshekPartnership Architects llp),Cindy Sherman (New York, NewYork), and Rosanna Warren (Bos-ton University) have been elect-ed to the American Academy ofArts and Letters.

Judith L. Rapoport (National In-stitute of Mental Health) has beenawarded the 2005 Edward M.Scolnick Prize in Neuroscienceby the McGovern Institute forBrain Research at mit.

Manfred R. Schroeder (Univer-sity of Goettingen, Germany) wasawarded the 2004 isca Medal ofthe International Speech Com-munication Association and the2004 Technology Prize of theRhein Foundation.

Eduard Sekler (Harvard Univer-sity) has been awarded the Aus-trian Decoration for Science andArt.

Geoffrey R. Stone (University ofChicago) received the Robert F.Kennedy Book Award for PerilousTimes: Free Speech in Wartime fromthe Sedition Act of 1798 to the Waron Terrorism, given by the RobertF. Kennedy Memorial.

Charles H. Townes (Universityof California, Berkeley) has beenawarded the 2005 Templeton Prize

for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about SpiritualRealities.

Stanford E. Woosley (Universityof California, Santa Cruz) hasbeen awarded the Bruno RossiPrize by the High Energy Astro-physics Division of the AmericanAstronomical Society.

New Appointments

Peter C. Agre (Johns HopkinsUniversity) will join Duke Uni-versity Medical Center in July2005 as Vice Chancellor for Sci-ence and Technology.

A. Paul Alivisatos (University ofCalifornia, Berkeley) has beennamed associate laboratory direc-tor for physical sciences at theLawrence Berkeley National Lab-oratory.

Frederick Alt (Children’s Hospi-tal, Boston) has been named sci-enti½c director of the cbr Insti-tute for Biomedical Research.

Alan Altshuler (Harvard Univer-sity) has been appointed dean ofthe Harvard Graduate School ofDesign.

Ben S. Bernanke (Princeton Uni-versity) has been designated byPresident Bush to be chairmanof the White House Council ofEconomic Advisers.

Ronald E. Cape (San Francisco,California) has been elected tothe board of directors of Neuro-biological Technologies, Inc.

James DePreist (Tokyo Metro-politan Symphony Orchestra)has been appointed PermanentConductor of the Tokyo Metro-politan Symphony Orchestra.

Zach W. Hall (University ofSouthern California) has beenappointed interim president ofthe California Institute for Re-generative Medicine.

Robert B. Shapiro (Pricewater-houseCoopers) has been appoint-ed as an independent director ofthe Board of Directors of DyadicInternational, Inc.

Claude M. Steele (Stanford Uni-versity) has been appointed di-

rector of the Center for AdvancedStudy in the Behavioral Sciences,effective September 2005.

Keith Yamamoto (University ofCalifornia, San Francisco) hasbeen appointed chair of the Sci-enti½c Advisory Board of SirnaTherapeutics.

Select Publications

Fiction

Seamus Heaney (Dublin, Ireland).The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles’ “Antigone.” Farrar,Straus & Giroux, November 2004

James Lehrer (NewsHour withJim Lehrer). The Franklin Affair.Random House, May 2005

Reynolds Price (Duke Univer-sity). The Good Priest’s Son. Scrib-ner, June 2005

Non½ction

Robert Alter (University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley). Imagined Cities:Urban Experience and the Legend ofthe Novel. Yale University Press,May 2005

Joyce Appleby (University of Cal-ifornia, Los Angeles). A RestlessPast: History and the American Pub-lic. Rowman & Little½eld Publish-ers, January 2005

Margaret Atwood (Toronto, Can-ada). Writing With Intent: Essays,Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983–2005. Carroll & Graf, April 2005

Edward Ayers (University of Vir-ginia). What Caused the Civil War:Reflections on the South and South-ern History. W. W. Norton, June2005

Bernard Bailyn (Harvard Univer-sity). Atlantic History: Concept andContours. Harvard UniversityPress, March 2005

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (HarvardBusiness School). Shaping the In-dustrial Century: The RemarkableStory of the Evolution of the ModernChemical and Pharmaceutical In-dustries. Harvard University Press,April 2005

Noteworthy



Denis Donoghue (New York Uni-versity). The American Classics: A Personal Essay. Yale UniversityPress, April 2005

Louis Dupre (Yale University).The Enlightenment and the Intellec-tual Foundations of Modern Cul-ture. Yale University Press, June2004

Harry G. Frankfurt (PrincetonUniversity). On Bullshit. PrincetonUniversity Press, January 2005

Richard Nelson Frye (HarvardUniversity). Greater Iran: A 20th-Century Odyssey. Mazda Publish-ers, February 2005; Ibn Fadlan’sJourney to Russia: A Tenth-CenturyTraveler from Baghdad to the VolgaRiver. Markus Wiener Publishers,April 2005

Carlos Fuentes (University ofCambridge, UK). An A to Z of aLife. Random House, February2005

Owen Gingerich (Harvard Uni-versity). The Book Nobody Read:Chasing the Revolutions of NicolausCopernicus. Penguin, February2005

Francine du Plessix Gray (NewYork, New York). Them: A Mem-oir of Parents. Penguin Press, May2005

Linda Greenhouse (New YorkTimes). Becoming Justice Blackmun:Harry Blackmun’s Supreme CourtJourney. Times Books, May 2005

Russell Hardin (New York Uni-versity), Margaret Levi (Univer-sity of Washington), and KarenCook (Stanford University). Co-operation Without Trust? RussellSage Foundation, July 2005

Charles M. Harr (Harvard LawSchool). Mastering Boston Harbor:Courts, Dolphins, and Imperiled Wa-ters. Harvard University Press,March 2005

Gerald Holton (Harvard Univer-sity). Victory and Vexation in Sci-ence: Einstein, Bohr, Henderson,and Others. Harvard UniversityPress, May 2005

Diane Johnson (San Francisco,California). Into a Paris Quarter:Reine Margot’s Chapel and Other

Haunts of St. Germain. NationalGeographic Directions, May 2005

Nathan Key½tz (Harvard Univer-sity) and Hal Caswell (WoodsHole Oceanographic Institution).Applied Mathematical Demography,third edition. Springer-Verlag,January 2005

Jaroslav Jan Pelikan (Yale Uni-versity). Whose Bible Is It? A His-tory of the Scriptures Through theAges. Viking, March 2005

George Rochberg (University ofPennsylvania). The Aesthetics ofSurvival: A Composer’s View ofTwentieth-Century Music, revisedand expanded edition. Universityof Michigan Press, January 2005

Exhibitions

John Baldessari (University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles): A Dif-ferent Kind of Order (Works 1962–1984), Museum Moderner KunstStiftung Ludwig Wien, Austria,through July 3, 2005.

Bruce Nauman (Galisteo, NewMexico): Printed Work in SwissPublic Collections, Cabinet desestampes, Geneva, June 8–August 28, 2005.

Ed Ruscha (Los Angeles, Califor-nia): Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smokeand Mirrors: The Drawings of EdRuscha, National Gallery of Art,through May 30, 2005.

Bill Viola (Bill Viola Studio):Surrender (2001), “Getting Emo-tional,” The Institute of Contem-porary Art, Boston, May 18–Sep-tember 5, 2005; The Greeting(1995), “Marking Time/MovingImages,” Miami Art Museum,Florida, May 13–September 11,2005.

We invite all Fellows and Foreign Honorary Membersto send notices about theirrecent and forthcoming pub-lications, scienti½c ½ndings,exhibitions and performances,and honors and prizes to [email protected].


“Rapt into future times,” and anticipating the history of our coun-try, methinks I read in the admired pages of some American Livy, orThucydides, to the following effect. . . .

It was not to be expected, that our ancestors, involved as they werein a civil war, could give any attention to literature and the sciences:but superior to their distresses, and animated by their general princi-ples, which liberty and independency inspire, they instituted the ex-cellent society, called The American Academy of Arts and Sciences . . .

. . . [T]hey proceeded on fact and observation, and did not admit ofany reasonings or deductions, but such as clearly resulted from them.This has been the uniform practice of the society: whose members,from time to time, having been chosen from men of every country,from every class and profession, without any other distinction thanwas dictated by the dignity of their characters, by their morality, goodsense, and professional abilities, we ½nd in the printed transactionsof this society, the best compositions on every subject, within theline of their department. We ½nd in those transactions new facts,new observations and discoveries; or old ones placed in a new light,and new deductions made from them.

They have particularly attended to such subjects as respect the growth,population, and improvement of their country: in which they have sohappily succeeded, that we now see agriculture, manufactures, navi-gation and commerce, in a high degree of cultivation; and all of themmaking swift advances in improvement, as population increases. Inshort, they have, agreeably to the declared end of the institution, “cul-tivated every art and science, which might tend to advance the inter-est and honour of their country, the dignity and happiness of a free,independent, and virtuous people.”

Reprinted from the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts andSciences, 1783, volume 1.

cêçã=íÜÉ=^êÅÜáîÉëThe ½rst president of the American Academy, James Bowdoin, was a businessman and a scientist who went on to becomegovernor of Massachusetts. He and the other founders of the Academy were deeply concerned with the role of the artsand sciences in building a new nation. In his inaugural address, Bowdoin voiced the expectations of the fledging societyand imagined what a historian living a hundred years after 1780 might say about its founders:

Norton’s Woods, 136 Irving Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138telephone 617-576-5000, fax 617-576-5050,

email [email protected], website www.amacad.org

academy officers

Patricia Meyer Spacks, President

Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, Executive Of½cer

Louis W. Cabot, Vice President

Emilio Bizzi, Secretary

Jerrold Meinwald, Deputy Secretary

John S. Reed, Treasurer

Steven Marcus, Editor

Geoffrey Stone, Vice President, Midwest Center

Jesse H. Choper, Vice President, Western Center

publications advisory board

Jesse H. Choper, Denis Donoghue, Jerome Kagan, Steven Marcus,Jerrold Meinwald, Patricia Meyer Spacks

editorial staff

Alexandra Oleson, Editor

Phyllis S. Bendell, Director of Publications

Janet Foxman, Assistant Editor

Debra Stern, Layout & Design

Initial design by Joe Moore of Moore + Associates

Bulletin Spring 2005Issued as Volume lviii, Number 3© 2005 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

The Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (issn 0002–712x)is published quarterly by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.Periodicals rate postage paid at Boston ma, and additional mailingof½ces. Postmaster: Send address changes to Bulletin, AmericanAcademy of Arts & Sciences, 136 Irving Street, Cambridge ma 02138.

The views expressed in the Bulletin are those held by each contribu-tor and are not necessarily those of the Of½cers and Fellows of theAmerican Academy of Arts & Sciences.

photo credits

Steve Rosenthal inside front cover

Gail Oskin pages 1, 3–5

Kathryn Sauber page 11

Martha Stewart pages 19, 31–32, 41

Robert George pages 24–25

Steve Castillo page 34, top two

Jim Block page 34, bottom three

Robert J. Paz page 35, top

Todd Cheney page 35, middle two

Joshua Borstein page 35, bottom

Chris T. Anderson page 36, top two

Andrew Campbell page 36, bottom three

Wendy Barrows pages 37, 39