With the United States no longer engaged in war, hot or cold, American science is entering a new-- and uncertain-- age. The close relationship between science and government is being redefined. The exponential growth of the scientific enterprise is at an end. And science itself comes increasingly under attack.
SkaltISkalt Not
n the whole, the arrangement
wasn't bad. Sex you learned about
mostly on the streets, long before
you were caught off guard one day by a parentwho had found thecourage to be straight-faced about the mechanics and their ("Take my word for it") spiritual dimension. The details, such as they were, resembled what you already knew about as much as a stick figure re- sembles a Reubens.
And religion you learned about mostly in school (theory) and church (practice). Th...
That maker and breaker of literary reputations, T. S. Eliot, began an essay on Ben Jonson (1572-1637) this way: "The reputation of Jonson has been of the most deadly kind that can be compelled upon the memory of a great poet. To be universally accepted; to be damned by the praise that quenches all desire to read the book; to be afflicted by the imputation of the virtues which excite the least pleasure; and to be read only by historians and antiquaries-this is the most per- fect conspiracy...
Faith and art once nurtured each other. Now the relationship is uneasy. Two writers ponder what has gone wrong.
Faith and art have coexisted peacefully, even amicably, throughout most of history. In our day, however, relations between the realm of religion and the realm of literature are uneasy at best. As our contributors here suggest, the fault may lie with both sides-in the deafness of most contemporary writers to the religious yearnings of the average person; and in the aggressive intolerance of some believers who have gone the way of fundamentalism.
Faith and art have coexisted peacefully, even amicably, throughout most of history. In our day, however, relations between the realm of religion and the realm of literature are uneasy at best. As our contributors here suggest, the fault may lie with both sides-in the deafness of most contemporary writers to the religious yearnings of the average person; and in the aggressive intolerance of some believers who have gone the way of fundamentalism.
National mythologies are based as much on features of landscape as on heroic individuals, ideals, and great events. Simon Schama here tells how the "discovery" of giant sequoias in the 1850s helped to confirm America's sense of manifest destiny "at a time when the Republic was suffering its most divisive crisis since the Revolution."
In August the world will solemnly mark the 50th anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their devastation in 1945 inaugurated an age fraught with doomsday anxieties: the fear of Armageddon, of uncontrolled proliferation, and, more recently, of nuclear terrorism. Yet even before the Cold War began to fade, many countries were quietly retreating from the nuclear temptation. Mitchell Reiss explains why - and what can be done to encourage the trend.
Theodore Roosevelt celebrated the "bully pulpit" as one of the grandest prerogatives of the presidency. But the pitfalls of serving as the nation's voice have contributed to the undoing of more than one of his successors.
We all derive different, private meanings from the music that delights us, but the recurrence of certain musical patterns in the works of great composers hints at meanings of a more universal character.