Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Thinking about the Two Cultures

I’ve been thinking a lot about C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures lately. Snow, in his seminal mid-twentieth century lecture (followed by an article and two books) put forward the notion of a dialectic between the social sciences and the hard sciences. One of his most famous quotes concerns querying some literary friends about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in response to their complaints about the general ignorance of scientists about literature. The upshot is that they didn’t know about entropy or the 2nd Law.

Here at Krasnow, we have, only in recent years, become a true locus for advanced studies as we added, first a center for social complexity and second a department of computational social sciences to our existing center of mass in neuroscience (writ large). These days research at Krasnow spans Snow’s two cultures pretty effectively, but largely without the communications divide postulated in Two Cultures.

Why is this?

For one thing, I think it’s a result of an unspoken norm at Krasnow to strive mightily away from the technical jargon of one’s field. For another, it’s the result of another de facto agreement to actually communicate intellectually outside one’s comfort zone. Taken together, the result is what has been called a “third culture”. From my own perspective as Institute director, this third culture is one where intellectuals actively appreciate the connection between human creative and artistic expression and the neural activity of brains that produce those expressions. Hence high culture becomes an emergent of interacting human minds, rather than a no-go zone for those well-steeped in the hard disciplines. At the same time, intellectuals in the social sciences are willing to explore and leverage the tools of hard science (especially computation and complexity theory).

Summer Short Courses

Next summer (2011) we have some major academic plans on the table. We’re going to be offering summer short courses at the Fairfax Campus of George Mason. The topics are still in flux, but they will bring top-flight faculty from around the world to Mason’s brand new Hotel and Conference Center, the Mason Inn. Generally we’ll be teaching week long short courses in our areas of expertise: social complexity, neuroethics and policy, and possibly agent based modeling. The courses will leverage the newly expanded Institute Facility (by next summer we’ll be around 60,000 square feet) and the University’s close proximity to the Nation’s capital. Stay tuned!

The Annual Science Retreat


This is one of my favorite times of year: our annual science retreat at the Institute for Advanced Study. This year, as with others, we get a fabulous overview of the depth and breadth of the research portfolio at Krasnow. Yesterday’s session featured back-to-back talks, today student poster sessions and a faculty luncheon.

In the foreground here Giorgio Ascoli is engaged in a deep discussion about networks with Claudio Cioffi. Behind them doctoral students and Ted Dumas focus in on a poster.

Craig still makes news….

Genome Pioneer Craig Venter still knows how to make the news. Read about it here.

This time, he’s entirely synthesized the entire genome of a bacterium.
Teaser quote from the New York Times on-line:
At a press conference Thursday, Dr. Venter described the converted cell as “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”

Olvia Judson’s NY Times Science Blog

I am a very avid supporter of Olivia Judson’s wonderful science blog over at the New York Times (click on the link above). Today she salutes archaea, the third domain of the tree of life. These microbes are both ubiquitous and in many senses unexplored territory as far as biology is concerned–they’re difficult to culture in the laboratory.

Teaser quote:

More diagnostic: archaeal cell membranes have a different structure and composition from those of bacteria or eukaryotes. And although archaea organize their DNA much as bacteria do (they also have no cell nucleus, for example), many aspects of the way the DNA gets processed are distinctly different. Instead, the processing is more similar to what goes in within eukaryotic cells. Archaea also have large numbers of genes that are not found in the other groups.

Commencement and new beginnings

Tomorrow morning is Commencement at George Mason University. As in so many previous years, I’ll arrive early at the Institute, don my academic regalia and walk across the campus lawns to the Patriot Center to join the platform party and mark the end of another academic year.

The carnival of academic regalia reflects the diversity of our faculty, my own bears the markings of the University of Michigan where I received my doctorate. But those of us on the faculty, as we enter the arena, will be swamped by the sea of green, as thousands of Mason students prepare to begin the rest of their lives.
In the end, it’s the ability to positively influence the education of thousands of students, that is the core mission of this large public university. Teaching, this past semester, to both undergraduates and doctoral students, I felt energized by this core mission in a way that both invigorates my own efforts here at Mason as an administrator and that gets leveraged into my role as a science leader at this institute for advanced study.
Already, only the seniors are left on Mason’s campus, some 12 miles from the U.S. Capitol Building. After tomorrow, we’ll settle into the summer routine–for administrators, things only gradually begin to wind down–but I already can’t wait for the Fall semester and the challenges that await: working with my graduate students on research, building out Phase II in our expansion project, teaching undergraduate neuroscience and continuing to edit a 100+ year old scientific journal called The Biological Bulletin.
I feel energized by what’s ahead, just as I feel satisfaction in what’s now past. And I continue to consider this, the best job anyone could hope to have.
Jim