Exploring Interdisciplinarity

The good china having been put away, the dirty pots and pans disposed of, my husband and I set out to salvage the remains of the turkey, and to transform it into a variety of other dishes that we might enjoy over the next few weeks. Every year I am determined to do the turkey justice, making the most of it; but all too often a post-Thanksgiving lethargy overwhelms my good intentions. Not this year! Facing the on-set of a real Depression, my husband, and I called upon all of our creative juices to devise a number of extendable dishes, including turkey soup, turkey tetrazzini, and turkey croquets. It turned out to be a lot of fun.

I learned how to do such magic tricks from my mother who–at the time of the Great Depression–was in her early twenties, and just married. It was difficult in those days to make do. My parents’ only asset was a house, left to them by my grandparents, who had died of typhoid fever, en route home from Paris. The house was their salvation. To supplement my father’s minimal salary, earned by clipping coupons at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, my mother took in borders, many of whom were also in similar financial straits.

Cooking for such a brood, my mother learned a major economic lesson, which she passed on to me: AIM BIG. Although my mother didn’t use the jargon, her advice was all about externalities and increasing returns. 

Cooking for such a brood, my mother learned a major economic lesson, which she passed on to me: AIM BIG. Although my mother didn’t use economic jargon, her advice was all about externalities and increasing returns. Take the turkey, for example: “Buy a big one,” she would say. “The cost per serving goes down the more meat there is on the turkey in relationship to the bone, especially if you combine your leftovers with other foods to add value and extend their life cycle.”

My mother, grandparents, and oldest sister Judie

Then she would tell me the story of stone soup.

But my mother didn’t only use scraps of meat to pinch pennies; she would use scraps of everything imaginable–ribbons, ties, pieces of wood–to create delightful, but at the same time low cost, presents for my sisters and me. Among my favorites was a circus ensemble, which was comprised of animal figures, designed by my mother, carved by my great grandfather with his jig saw, and then hand-painted by my mother. Equally precious were the raggedy dolls, donning straw hats and calico dresses, and carrying baskets of flowers, all of which my mother stitched together, just-in-time, working late into the night on Christmas eve.

Growing up in the Fifties, my recollection of hard times began to fade. It was only some years later, when living the tenuous life of a graduate student at Columbia University, and caring for a brand new baby, that I found myself, just like my mother, having to make do. Fortunately, I could build on the never-give-up strategies she had pursued as a young adult. So, I stretched myself, expanding my horizons beyond my dream of becoming the world’s greatest political scientist. Refocusing some of my efforts, I learned how to sew my own cloths and crochet Christmas gifts, simple things at first. To supplement my income from my job as a teaching assistant, I took up babysitting, and even ironed a few shirts at 19 cents apiece. My former husband–also a student–worked part time selling boys cloths at Bergdoff Goodman. Not surprisingly, meals were simple: hash, macaroni and cheese, tuna fish casserole, hamburger borgonone, and spaghetti–often without the sauce. Entertainment, for us, was not expensive either; we engaged in pot lucks, enjoying our time with friends. Even as we skimped by, we were very rich indeed!

Even as we skimped by, we were very rich indeed! 

As I was cooking in the kitchen, savoring these experiences, I wondered whether the coping strategies that have proved so useful to me over the years might apply equally–even if on a grander scale–to the Government’s effort to deal with today’s economic demise. In this context, Jane Jacobs came to mind. As she has argued, generating economic growth cannot be given; it must be earned. For it is by pulling oneself up by the bootstraps that creativity takes place and the keys to economic success are learned. Bailouts, Jacobs might say, are a gift, and hence unlikely to make a difference over the long term. I’m quite sure my mother would agree.

On Technorati: bailouts, creativity, difficult times, economic depression, Jane Jacobs, Personal

Courtesy of Avoire

Across the globe, the New Year is celebrated at different times of year. My own preference is to begin the New Year in September–the date used in the Gregorian, Eastern Orthodox calender; for this is the time when, everywhere, students and teachers alike, are returning back to school. To be sure, on January 1st, I never fail to make New Year resolutions, some of which I actually keep. But in September, I feel differently. Instead of focusing on self-improvement, my expectations run high when the new school year begins. Satiated with all the diverse, lackadaisical, and serendipitous happenings of Summer, I am right up there–at the gate–ready to take off. Enthused and excited, I think: A new year, a new beginning!

I attribute some of these positive aspirations to nostalgia, and my early summers spent at Lake Hawthorne. In mid-August, not long after the brown-eyed susans blossomed, the huckleberries ripened, and the katydids arrived, we would begin to plan for school. It was a memorable event. My mother would drive my sister and I in our old, maroon-colored Dodge to the nearest large town, about forty five minutes away. Wandering along the streets inhabited by white, Victorian buildings, their paint often peeling down the sides, we would shop to buy new outfits for the first day of school. The selection in this rural town was limited to say the least, but we always found something–typically a red/blue plaid dress with a white collar and ruffled sleeves. No matter, it was never the actual style of the dress that was important: Rather, it was its newness, an important symbol that conjured up for me the idea of a a fresh start and a propitious beginning. To accompany the dress, we bought very sensible shoes, the ugly, brown, lace-up type. Then, we would stop by the five-and-ten cent store–now an artifact of antiquity, to be sure–where we would very carefully finger through and select from among the wide array of three-ringed notebooks, paper, and pens. I hesitated, convinced that my choice of which items to buy would determine my academic success. Best of all, before driving home, we would visit the local luncheonette, where we sat at the counter, and slowly savored an ice cream soda. Back at the lake, I imagined myself on the first day of school, dressed in my new outfit, and armed with my ‘lucky’, hand-selected writing implements. A renewed sense of confidence came over me. I knew that I would not be shy on that first day. No, I would be thrilled to see my old friends; glad to make new ones; and–in those brown shoes–start off on the right foot with my new teacher.

More than fifty summers later, it is that time again. Time to get ready for a new academic year. Already I have noticed recent graduates stopping by the office to catch up and say their final goodbyes; new students visiting in search of housing and perhaps to reassure themselves that their investments in the CCT Program will payoff; faculty straying back from out of town with tales of their summer exploits, and, of course, the book store nagging faculty to turn in their book orders. Refreshed and stimulated by my month-long vacation, I am eager to start. However, just as I did as a youth, I follow some rituals. First, I prime my pump, putting all my recent reading materials on the floor, and slowly savoring each. Each book has become a part of me, a new window through which I can look at the world. But, my attachment to all these books constitutes a major problem for me as well: how will I ever decide what books I should assign, and which I should leave out? Without a doubt, I will include The Stag Hunt, and for sure, Epstein’s introductory chapter in Generative Social Science.. Likewise, in my discussions on networks and emergence, I will use Paul Pierson’s Politics in Time and Beinhocker’s wonderful book, The Creation of Wealth. As part of this sorting process, I fiddle, and faddle, and fiddle some more, changing the reading assignments, the sequence of classes, and even the style of the font. Having become a convert to blogging, I also integrate an on-line component into my courses. Eventually, I am satisfied–I think I have it right.

Then, before going home, I check out Howard Rheingold’s blog, and look at his syllabi posted there. In one, he includes a short film clip, produced by Michael Wesch and his students at the University of Kansas. Entitled A Vision of Students Today, the film takes me aback. It all too compellingly coveys how our traditional teaching styles are less and less relevant in today’s digital environment. I stop. I pause. Tomorrow, I determine, I will revisit my syllabus, taking this film into account. In the meantime, and just to be on the safe side, I will stop at the store on my way home, and buy a new outfit to wear on the first day of school.

On Technorati: CCT, Georgetown, Howard Rheingold, Interdisciplinarity, Lake Hawthorne, nostalgia, school, Stag hunt

Six years later, we are grateful for each and every day. We no longer wonder “why us?” but rather “why not us”: Why is my husband one of the lucky minority who has survived so long?

Two days, and six loads of laundry later, we are making a quick turn-around. My husband Brock and I are on our way to visit the Huntsman Cancer Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he is doing follow-up visits, having successfully staved off the dread cancer — multiple myeloma — for more than six years. The initial prognosis, when he was first diagnosed in July 2002, was dim: Make out your will — you have three weeks to live. Talk about the need to focus; to bring all of one’s intellectual, intuitive, and spiritual resources to bear! Eventually, that is precisely what we did. But at first, on hearing the news, we were shocked and dejected. Desperately trying to postpone our fate, we went for what we thought at the time would be our last walk together along the Potomac River, at Great Falls Park. We asked ourselves: Why us? Six years later, we are grateful for each and every day. We no longer wonder “why us?” but rather “why not us”: Why is my husband one of the lucky minority who has survived so long?

Interestingly enough, as I sit in the waiting room at the hospital, while my husband undergoes his first test of the day — a PET scan — I find myself reading the very same book that I read while waiting, six years ago, in the radiologist’s office. The book is Baribasi’s Linked: The New Science of Networks. Describing and explaining the evolution of our thinking about networks, this book has been useful to me in the intervening years in a number of ways. For one, I was teaching a course at the time called “The Networked Economy,” and Barabasi makes a convincing case — useful for contextualizing this course for my students — as to why networks provide a wonderful unit of analysis. But, perhaps more important to me at the time was Barabasi’s discussion of cancer cells from a network perspective. I breathed a sigh of relief upon reading that our knowledge of networks, and how they operate, held promise for discovering a cure for cancer. By understanding the architecture and the topology of the cancer cell network, he said, we could find ways to stress the system and undermine the way its components — the cells — communicated and interacted, thereby wiping it out. Never before had my intellectual life and personal life been so intertwined!

He even went so far as to organize his fighting cells into famous military units — Israel’s Golani Brigade, Britain’s famous Red Devils parachute brigade, the Union Army’s Iron Brigade, and the 1st Marine Division from its days in Korea.

In the last six years, science and the medical profession has come a long way in its efforts to conquer multiple myeloma. To be sure, their medical advances constitute one way of exerting mind (in the form of scientific knowledge) over matter (the diseased body). However, as I witnessed my husband rise to the occasion, resolutely determining that he would fight the cancer back, I came to appreciate more fully the role that an individual can play is using his or her mind to guide the body back to health. Drawing on his own internal resources, my husband practiced guided visualization¹, going down into his body and rallying his good cells to fight the cancer. He even went so far as to organize his fighting cells into famous military units — Israel’s Golani Brigade, Britain’s famous Red Devils parachute brigade, the Union Army’s Iron Brigade, and the 1st Marine Division from its days in Korea. Having marshalled his best troops, he would visually reenter his body at night and strategize with them. Occasionally he would award them medals for their outstanding bravery and sacrifices.

It was only an hour ago that I witnessed what can happen when these two different ways of employing the mind are joined together.

He turned to us with a broad grin, announcing “Perfect–it couldn’t be better. There is no trace of the cancer.”

While we waited anxiously, Dr. Zangari reviewed the results of my husband’s tests. He turned to us with a broad grin, announcing “Perfect — it couldn’t be better. There is no trace of the cancer.” Savoring the joy of it all, and anticipating a trip into the Utah mountains, I thought to myself: If all of our mental powers can be brought together to defeat something as terrible as cancer, can we not also employ them to address the many other challenges that we face in life? Part of the answer, I though to myself, is to keep our minds open to all possibilities.

On Technorati: Body, Brock, cancer, Dualism, Military, Mind, myeloma, oncology, SaltLakeCity, Utah, visualization

The Office of Technology Assessment was deprived of its funding by the 104th Congress.  The Agency, which we as staffers labeled “Congress’ Own Think Tank,” had become official in 1972, and was tasked with taking a long-term look at the implications of technology on all aspects of society.  By most accounts, we did a phenomenal job.  Although Congress has yet to rally enough support to reauthorize the Office of Technology Assessment, the former Agency’s loyal supporters and advocates have written frequently about the role the OTA could be playing in public discourse.  They have also recently launched an on-line archive of all of OTA’s work, which also depicts and details its 20+ year history.

From a posting on an FAS listserv by Nate Hafer, of the Federation of American Scientists:

Today the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) launched the Office of Technology Assessment Archive, http://www.fas.org/ota . The site allows the public to access over 720 reports and documents produced by OTA during its 23 year history, including many that have not been available to the public previously. OTA served as an independent branch of the U.S. Congress that provided nonpartisan science and technology advice from 1972 until it was defunded and forced to close in 1995.

The site also features a new video interview with Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ), who has been spearheading the effort on Capitol Hill to revive OTA. According to Rep. Holt, “if OTA were here, doing this kind of work, we would have better legislation for school safety, chemical exposure, grain dust explosions, the R&D tax credit, on and on.” He goes on to describe some current policy issues that OTA could address and explains why Congress should bring back OTA.

“The OTA was an invaluable resource that informed Congress about an incredibly broad range of science and technology issues,” said Henry Kelly, President of the Federation of American Scientists and a former OTA staff member. “Numerous reports, on subjects such as transportation, energy, health care, and information technology remain relevant, more than 10 years after OTA issued its final report.”

“OTA produced the first report raising the possibility of genetic discrimination in the workplace almost 17 years before the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was passed,” according to Michael Stebbins, Director of Biology Policy at FAS. “That kind of foresight into major policy issues is sorely missed in Washington today.”

The Archive will track efforts to bring back OTA and will also highlight items not previously available to the public in a “Document of the Day” feature. The website also includes a new search engine that allows users to quickly and easily find specific content in OTA reports.

Visit the Office of Technology Assessment Archive at http://www.fas.org/ota

As a former OTA employee, I would like to add a tribute of my own.  From my perspective, the OTA not only provided Congress and the public with outstanding policy foresight on technology-related issues, in so doing, it also greatly advanced interdisciplinary research.  As Einstein once commented, problems cannot be solved within the context in which they were originally created.  The methods and practices at OTA implicitly took this insight into account.  Because many of its reports were problem-centered, OTA analysts reached out across a variety of venues to garner information and engage in cross-disciplinary dialogues.  As a result, those analysts frequently generated a number of creative, and often quite successful, policy solutions.

I owe my interest and devotion to interdisciplinary scholarship in part to the twenty years that I was fortunate enough to have worked at the Congressional Office of Technology.  Today, I try to maintain that legacy by bringing what I learned at OTA to Georgetown University’s interdisciplinary program — the Communication, Culture and Technology Program — where I presently serve as Director.  I like to believe that, in teaching my students to think holistically, and to conceptualize their research in an interdisciplinary framework, I am planting the seed corn for the time when Congress regains its wits and revives the OTA.

On Technorati: blogosphere, Congress, Interdisciplinarity, OTA, policy, research, science

Often, when I am planning to travel to an Italian, German, or Spanish-speaking country, my foreign language skills improve the closer and closer I get to the trip. Then, when I arrive at my destination, and begin to immerse myself in the foreign experience, the language becomes ever so more natural to me. Eventually, I feel at home. But, to my surprise, towards the end of the trip, an inverse process occurs — I stumble on grammar, am reduced to the present tense, and forget all sorts of familiar, every-day words.

Experimenting with this blog has been much the same for me as learning a new language.

Experimenting with this blog has been much the same for me as learning a new language. I had to seek help, stumble a lot, and make many mistakes before I could begin to get the hang of it. And now that I have, my vacation here at Lake Hawthorne is coming to an end: We are about to leave this idyllic place for home — forsaking the frogs in favor of sirens in Washington DC. Sitting, for the last time, on the porch in the early morning, watching the reflecting sun ripple like diamonds across the water, I take my leave, wondering: Have I met my husband’s challenge to use the blog to relate theory to practice and practice to theory? More specifically, has blogging affected how I experienced my own vacation at our cabin, here on the lake? Did it alter the way I think about and perceive what I am reading? Will I keep blogging, or will my new found enthusiasm deteriorate, much the way my skills at a foreign language might, when I return home to Washington and become engrossed in the world of work?

The Forest Food Web (courtesy Maryland Public Schools)

I speculate… Yes, to be sure, blogging has made a difference. I am more attuned to, and reflective about, what is happening around me. I find that, when reading, writing, and reflecting on my own experiences, I bring my whole self to bear on a problem, issue, or observation. Every object around me is brought into greater relief, and I can recall it in the greatest detail. Thus, I can still see in my mind’s eye the three pileated woodpeckers, their red top-nots bobbing, hammering away simultaneously at the dead tree adjacent to our house. At the same time, however — as is true when looking at any set of objects and activities in all their complexity — I experience how the whole is greater than any of the parts. So I see the frogs, the birds, the midnight sky, my grandchildren — even the deer ticks — as part of a wondrous on-going process: The substance of life, as well as the material for the blog. As Ron Burt might agree, it is the interaction among the diverse senses that is the source of good ideas.

On Technorati: blogs, DC, Lake Hawthorne, New Jersey, praxis, Theory

Last night there were no frogs. It was raining. I lay awake listening to the sounds of rain on the roof, more like the monotone tap, tap, tap of a snare drum rather than the plucking of a cello string. As the rain’s intensity increased, the individual taps appeared to merge together — or should I say emerge, in somewhat of a phase transition — culminating in the thunderous boom of the kettle drum and the clashing clang of the cymbal, just as the lightning struck. Wide awake and idling the early morning hours away, I began wondering: Are the heavens a complex, networked system, and — if so — what constitutes its parts? How do they communicate with one another? What type of signals do they use? How does change in the weather system come about? There was no possibility of falling asleep after that! Too many books, too many theories, too many questions, I thought.

In the morning it was still raining. Based on nature’s signals, many of which I had noted yesterday, I might have anticipated that this would be the case. As I learned from my husband Brock, a seasoned environmentalist, if you want to know how the weather will unfold, pay attention, as other species do, to a number of signals. Specifically, when at our cottage at the Lake, you might look for a shift in the ambience of the air — in particular, sudden changes in the temperature, the direction of the breeze, as well as the level of humidity. For example, a sudden drop in the air temperature, accompanied by a rising breeze from the west, indicates that a cool front, most likely preceded by a storm, is on its way. However, while this information is helpful for planning a daily itinerary, it does not explain how nature and its subsidiary parts — a complex system — know when and how to react. For sure, this is a subject of future inquiry.

On a more personal level, I might also note how we adapt to changes in the weather here in the relatively isolated woods at Lake Hawthorne. For children, this is never a problem. They simply change their venue of play. For example, as children, we took advantage of the rain, especially during the hurricane season in 1954, to create an entire waterway in our back yard, with an elaborate bridge and canal system that extended more than fifty yards. Then, we would build little boats and watch them float from one end of the tributary to the other. Today, as adults, we often “hole up,” and take a “rain sleep,” much like the man “who went to bed with a cold in his head and didn’t get up ’till morning.” There being little chance of sleep this morning, however, my husband and I decided instead to snuggle under our comforter, and spend the day listening to The Learning Company’s tapes on the History of Rome.

Call it serendipity, but I am struck at how, given my growing interest in social structure and complexity, everything that I attend to now appears to be on this subject. Consider, for example, the Learning Company lecture we heard describing the unique nature of the rise of the Roman Republic. The lecturer, Professor Garrett G. Fagan, from Pennsylvania State University, identified the way in which the Roman Republic employed a network strategy to consolidate its confederation. According to Fagan, the Romans sent many of their centurions, together with citizens of varying statuses, to strategic places throughout the peninsula, which served as intelligence nodes in an every growing and, more complex, network of governance structures. As the professor notes, this unique, networked organizational structure constituted a successful innovative strategy that allowed the Romans not only to effectively adapt to their changing environment but also to undergo their own phase transition with the evolution and establishment of an even more complex set of arrangements — the Roman Empire. Equally exciting to me, this strategy was totally in keeping with the advice of Ron Burt, one of today’s leading management experts, and author of Brokerage and Closure (2005). Burt advises businesses to do just as the Romans did: Establish links across major holes in the social structure in order to maximize innovation and control information flows.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, just as the tapes were about to end, the rain stopped. Suddenly there was silence: No frogs plinking, no birds chirping, no dogs barking, no children laughing. A momentary relief from “thinking thoroughly.” I grasped the opportunity, and fell asleep.

On Technorati: Burt, Fagan, Roman Empire, Rome, systems, TLC, weather

I was happy to read on his Smart Mobs weblog that tomorrow, Wednesday, July 15th, my friend Howard Rheingold will be awarded an honorary Doctorate of Technology by De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. De Montfort is fast becoming an important site of hybrid thinking about technology: Prof. Rheingold, D.Tech., is currently a visiting professor of at the Institute for Creative Technologies there; and the University has apparently just contributed 1 million pounds, as part of a novel partnership, to the innovative Digital Media Centre in Leicester.

Less than a year ago, Howard was gracious enough to come to our Program at Georgetown to speak to our students at length about some of his passions. They loved him.

Our online journal, gnovis, sat down with Howard after lunch to talk about new media technologies and democracy.

Congratulations, Howard.

On Technorati: CCT, gnovis, Higher Education, Howard Rheingold, New Media, Smart Mobs, Technology

In Washington, D.C., I am often awakened by the shrieking sounds of sirens, as police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances go racing past my house and down my street. But here, at Lake Hawthorne, it is the sounds of frogs — Bull Frogs to be exact — that interrupt my nightly reveries. Some say that it is chirping, but I perceive the Bull Frogs’ vocal chorus more like “plink-plunk,” as in the cello’s pizzicato notes that adorn some of Beethoven’s chamber music. Except for their mysterious, and thankfully temporary, disappearance several years ago — the Bull Frogs, together with many amphibians all across the States, constitute an eternal feature of The Lake. Thus, as is true for other aspects of my surroundings here, I have tended to take them for granted. No longer! Reading Skyrms’ The Stag Hunt, I have been inspired to ponder them, or in Jim Rosenau’s words, “to think about them thoroughly.”

Nature’s solution to this dilemma is the evolution of a signaling systems (or, as we have seen in the specific case of language, conventions) are established not by prior agreement. Rather, they evolve through interactions.

Recall that the Stag Hunt is all about cooperation, and how it might emerge and be maintained, notwithstanding that, at the individual level, non-cooperation will likely have a higher pay-off. Here we have a major social dilemma; for, although the individual may gain in such a case, society as a whole loses. Nature’s solution to this dilemma is the evolution of a signaling systems (or, as we have seen in the specific case of language, conventions) are established not by prior agreement. Rather, they evolve through interactions. As importantly — pointing to many human experiments and computer simulations — Skyrms notes that signaling systems are in equilibrium (in other words self-enforcing) in nature; hence, alternative strategies just don’t survive the evolutionary process. No wonder, then, that this kind of cooperation can be observed all around us, especially in the biological world. Thus, we find that cells merge together to create organisms; mouth bacteria join together in a community to form plaque; and myxococcis xantus aggregate themselves in mounds so as to survive food shortages. When, and how, these life forms alter their behaviors — often described as a phase transition — depends on timing and the specific situation in which they are located, as well as the types of messages that they exchange. 

At Lake Hawthorne, with Skryms’ discussion in mind, I am not only awakened by the Bull Frogs, I typically spend the next few hours, after their first “plink-plunk,” contemplating their sounds and signals. Imagining the contours in the lake’s circumference, and imaging the sequence of coves, I wonder which frogs are making what signals, where? I ask myself: What messages are they communicating? Do their different pitches signal a different message? According to my subsequent Google search, Bull Frogs communicate in order to stake out their territories, or to attract a mate and reproduce — certainly one form of cooperation. That the Bull Frogs signaling system is effective in this latter regard is verified to the extent that, according to my Google sources, female Bull Frogs — on connecting up with a Bull male — produce up to 25,000 eggs. This number assures their survival, even if, as my dog Sparky is wont to do, intruders constantly dive into the frogs’ habitat, seeking to satisfy their own curiosity about the sounds and signals.

There is another way in which The Stag Hunt is relevant to my experiences with frogs at Lake Hawthorne. As young adults, my cohorts and I initiated one more yearly tradition — the Frog Jumping Contest. It was held on the Fourth of July. To enter, and capture a contestant, we had to organize a “stag hunt.” In our little cooperative venture, one person rowed the boat, one held the flashlight, and two got in the muck (along with the leeches) to net the frog. The pay-off was having fun. In those days, we called it a “blast.” But one night, after searching all the coves, and getting all mucked up, we had little to show for our efforts — a smallish frog, no more that four inches in length. Perhaps we were over-zealous, but in our merriment, we decided to substitute our frog for a larger frog that our friends — who were also competing in the Jump — had sequestered that evening in their bathtub. Stealthily sneaking into their house, and switching our frog for theirs, was every bit as challenging, not to say entertaining, as the hunt itself. But in the morning, it didn’t seem so funny: our friends, viewing us as “defectors” who had broken the rules of the game, were no longer enthusiastic about the Jump. Understandably, there were few subsequent jumping contests after that night. And it was soon thereafter that the frogs just disappeared. My mother, who loved the frogs, said it was the fault of Frog Hunts. Post-Skyrms, I think that she might have been right — too many intruders disrupting their life cycle, or, better yet, their signaling system.

On Technorati: Bull Frogs, individual, Lake Hawthorne, Language, Nature, Rosenau, Rousseau, Skyrms, Society, Stag hunt

Non Sequitur, by Wiley

Sunday morning, while sitting on the porch, sipping coffee, I picked up the comics in The Newark Star-Ledger, the only Sunday paper available in this North Jersey outpost. As the dealer told us when we asked for The New York Times, “We don’t carry The Times. The people here don’t have time to read such a paper: They are working class people, too busy just trying to survive.” No mind. The funnies are the funnies, and The Ledger carries many of my favorites including Non Sequitur by Wiley. Moreover, that day’s cartoon was not only very clever, it was especially pertinent to my readings and reflections at “The Lake.”

Entitled “The First Wordsmiths”, the comic strip featured three cavemen trekking through the woods. One, the ostensible leader, is pointing to objects and identifying them for the others, who then repeat the words — rock, rock; tree, tree; water, water. When the leader inadvertently steps in a pile of mud, so to speak, he blurts out “Aw, S***”, and the others respond with the word “Politics!”

Laughing at the comic strip, I was struck by how it captured aspects of the most recent book I have been reading, The Stuff of Thought: Language As A Window Into Human Nature, by Steven Pinker (2007). Written with the non-professional in mind, this book about words is both eloquent and interdisciplinary. Perhaps the theme that appealed to me most was Pinker’s discussion of how words come about, and how their meaning is determined not simply by someone pointing and identifying “objects,” as in the case of Wiley’s cavemen. Rather, as Pinker describes, the full meaning of a word emerges from and reflects the social interactions of the specific context in which the word evolves. No wonder, then, that with all the mud slinging going on today, many people share Wiley’s dark humor in associating politics with “S***”.

Words are also important at Lake Hawthorne, where, over time, they have taken on unique meanings of their own. Consider some of these words:

• the island
• the beach
• the meadow
• Pirate’s Cove
• the old road.

These are not just the names of things; they are also–and as importantly–the names of places where special kinds of activities and interactions, fraught with emotional meanings, have taken place. Thus, the island is the place where children first experience setting up tents, enjoying their independence in an outside overnight. The beach is where families convene each afternoon, the children building sand castles and enjoying swimming and other water sports while their mothers and fathers socialize. For community events, such as meetings, picnics, and weddings, the meadow is the place to go. For more frivolous activities, explore Pirate’s Cove, where from your boat or canoe you can catch a frog, capture a turtle, or look for treasure. And, if there is time left, one option is to gather some neighbors together, and hike the old road, recounting all the while the lake lore and a shared repertoire of ghost stories.

In this vocabulary of lake-goers, one word stands out above all the rest. This word is “The Lake.” It is a symbol, commonly referred to by all, a metaphor — if not a substitute — for the experience itself. Like the other words, it is emergent — the product of an evolutionary process, the result of ongoing social interactions. But it subsumes the others, and at one and the same time is far greater than the sum of these parts. As Pinker might agree, the meaning of “The Lake” has evolved through interaction over generations — on the island, at the beach, down the old road.” At the same time, it gives guidance and greater meaning to those who are presently engaging in, and reproducing, these activities.

On Technorati: comics, Language, New York Times, Pinker, politics, Wiley