Founded 1983: Liberal Mindset; Conservative Morality

May 14, 2026May 14, 2026

The Placebo Button

The elevator in my building has a door-close button that does nothing. I learned this the way everyone learns it, which is to say I pressed it for years under the impression that it was speeding up my departure. The button lights up. It makes a small click when pressed. It provides every sensory signal of function. What it does not do is close the door any faster than the door was going to close on its own. The elevators in most American buildings installed since 1990 have door-close buttons wired to nothing, because the Americans with Disabilities Act requires the door to stay open long enough for a person using a wheelchair or walker to enter, and the button that overrides that requirement is accessible only to the fire department with a key.

Continue reading → The Placebo Button

March 6, 2026

The Cooperator’s Dilemma: How Martin Nowak’s Mathematics of Kindness Became a Blueprint for Control

Martin Nowak wanted to prove that cooperation is the animating force of evolution. He succeeded. His mathematical models, published across decades of work at Oxford, Princeton, and Harvard, demonstrate with formal rigor that cooperation is not an anomaly in a competitive world but a fundamental mechanism by which biological complexity arises. Genomes cooperate. Cells cooperate. Organisms cooperate. Societies cooperate. Without cooperation, there are no multicellular bodies, no ant colonies, no languages, no civilizations. This is not sentiment. It is mathematics. And it is precisely because the mathematics are correct that they are dangerous.

Continue reading → The Cooperator’s Dilemma: How Martin Nowak’s Mathematics of Kindness Became a Blueprint for Control

February 14, 2014February 14, 2014

The Titular, Circular, Cyclical and the Forlorn: Rescuing Robert Frost from Himself

Robert Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry. He was an earthy icon and, in some eyes, an American shame, for the man could love only himself and not his children or his wife. I’m not sure if that’s a crime against himself, or his promises, but there is no denying the man was an original and he knew how to write and he knew what he was.

Marred by the mistake of genius, Robert Frost cared only for his poetry, and his legacy, and that’s why the new fascination with protecting Frost’s legacy on the page is so intriguing.

Continue reading → The Titular, Circular, Cyclical and the Forlorn: Rescuing Robert Frost from Himself

February 24, 2012

Obama to Reward Restraint in Tuition Increases

My mother always told me that when it came to higher education, it was more important where you got degrees at the Masters level and above than where you got your bachelor’s degree. A person could, for example, get a bachelor’s degree at my alma mater Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and then a Masters degree from Harvard and be equally impressive (according to my mother) as a person who got both degrees from Harvard. At the time that I attended Rutgers, the tuition was under four thousand dollars for New Jersey residents.

Continue reading → Obama to Reward Restraint in Tuition Increases

February 28, 2011October 17, 2023

Dr. Howard Stein on Owning the Subject

In a conversation with Robert Chapman many years ago, he who was the co-author of the play, Billy Budd, and the director of the Loeb Theatre at Harvard University, I mentioned a playwright whose work seemed limited to me.

Continue reading → Dr. Howard Stein on Owning the Subject

September 8, 2010January 21, 2013

How to Know a Good Man

If we were to have a mascot for this Scientific Aesthetic blog where the Arts and Science converge, it would undoubtedly be the visage of the medically trained essayist, poet philosopher and Harvard professor — and brother of Henry and Alice and son of Henry, Sr. — William James.