9/11 was the final nail in the coffin of post-modernism, writes Michael Barnes. “No matter which side one takes in these post 9/11 conflicts – which could make the culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s look like child’s play – the rantings of late 20th-century postmodern relativists seem as quaint and distant today as the prattlings of Victorian sentimentalists. The absence of a seductive replacement for postmodernism has left public intellectuals – can we use that word in a daily newspaper these days without smirking? – with a renewed respect and affection for the paramount movement of the 20th century: modernism.”
Category: ideas
Measuring The Origins Of Ideas
Charles Murray did a statistical analysis of humankind’s greatest accomplishments in history. “According to his statistics, a whopping 72 percent of the significant figures in the arts and sciences between 1400 and 1950 came from just four European countries: Britain, France, Germany and Italy. But after weighing a number of possible explanations, including the effects of war, civil unrest, economic growth, cities and political freedom on achievement rates, Mr. Murray still was not satisfied. Why, he wondered, when he factored in population growth, did the achievement rate in Europe appear to plummet beginning in the mid-19th century, a period when peace, prosperity, cities and political freedom were steadily increasing?”
Critically Realist?
So post-modernism is dead. And what’s to succeed it? Perhaps a period of critical realism? “Clearly, critical realism is by now a diffuse and interdisciplinary movement, covering a wide spectrum of opinions. The question is: how broad a church can critical realism be if it is to remain both critical and realist?”
The Death Of Languages
There are only about 5000 languages left in the world. And the number is shrinking fast. “With the rise of international travel, world commerce, globalization and mass media, that number is declining rapidly. Of working languages still in everyday use, there are perhaps only 120. And more than half the world speaks one (or more) of only a dozen languages, including Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Russian – and, of course, English, the most pervasive of them all. Some linguists estimate nearly two billion people have at least a workaday knowledge of English, and that number is growing.”
Is Thinking Just A Series Of Inferences?
“It’s plausible that at least some kinds of thinking just are processes of drawing inferences. It’s the same for a lot of other things the mind does, such as learning, perceiving and planning. The picture that emerges is of the mind (or the brain if you prefer) as some kind of inferring machine; perhaps some kind of computing machine, since computations are themselves plausibly construed as chains of inference.”
Forget The Trial! What’s Up With The Building?
Libby Copeland is covering the trial of accused D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammed in Virginia Beach. It’s a fascinating legal spectacle, but Copeland can’t get her mind off the architecture of the city’s judicial complex. It’s not that it’s ugly, exactly. But it’s not very judicial, either. “Is there such a thing as too much brick? Can beige and brown — the colors of all the signs here — be considered colors of oppression with their monotony, ubiquity and utter authority? … In short, this is a place where people bring their lunches from home. A place unfriendly to feet. A place that ceases to exist after dark.”
Arts: The Antidrug?
A consortium of community groups, medical researchers, and arts groups in Cleveland has receieved a $1 million federal grant to mount a major study intended to determine whether the arts can play a major role in keeping children from indulging in illegal drugs and risky sexual behavior. The study will revolve around 300 test subjects, all African-American youths between 11 and 14 years old, who will participate in a specially designed arts curriculum, which will be partially designed by community leaders in the city.
Making The ‘Creative Class’ Feel Welcome. Or Not.
What with the down economy, the war, and all, it can be easy to forget that an urban revival is continuing to progress in cities throughout North America. Thanks in large part to author Richard Florida’s urban planning idea-of-the-moment (that cities should embrace the arts, culture, and something called the “creative class” in order to spur economic development,) cities are seeking out new ways to include the arts in their plans for a bigger and better future. But there’s a difference between throwing a theatre festival designed for the same old elite (and mostly suburban) crowd, and actually looking for new ways to bring a community together around a cultural scene.
How Technology Trumps Law-making
Technology always finds a way around obstacles, writes Clay Shirkey. Peer-to-peer file-sharing technologies will continue to adapt to the ways recording companies try to stop them. Social softwarefinds ways to connect people. “In hostile environments, organisms often adapt to become less energetic but harder to kill, and so it is now.”
Study: Brain Forms Maps To Make Sense Of Music
New studies of the brain show that mental “maps” to make sense of what you hear in music begin to form within minutes of studying an instrument. “In professional musicians at least, recent brain imaging studies have shown that the different ways they respond to sound and finger movements seem paradoxical: when they hear a sound it activates areas of the brain that process movement, but when they silently tap out musical phrases it evokes brain activity in areas involved in hearing.”