The growth of the profession of science, the scientific enterprise, is bound to reach certain limits.
A scholar once called the late 18th century an era of "competitive dying." The ability to die well, preferably with a few well-chosen words on one's lips, was widely seen as a measure of greatness. For the philosopher David Hume, our author writes, death provided what many considered the ultimate test of his ideas.
Recent events in Russia raise fears that authoritarianism is making a comeback. Our author finds that the danger is not an overly powerful state but an enfeebled one.
Bosnia has become a synonym, along with Beirut, Somalia, and Rwanda, of murderous conflict and political anarchy. The tragedy of this Balkan nation, a Sarajevo-born journalist explains, cannot be understood apart from the larger story of Yugoslavia's unraveling.
Even its defenders concede that the modern American suburb has many
shortcomings. An antidote may be found in the ideas of the nation's earliest suburban pioneers.
Many Americans long for the virtues of the 1950s--community, security, certainty. To retrieve them, they will have to reconsider their allegiance to other cherished values.
The introduction to this issue's cluster of articles.