Richard Hofstadter

"Although everybody with a political agenda routinely professes great respect for the wisdom of the American people, the actual behaviors reveal not respect but thinly veiled contempt." W. T. Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World (New York: Harper & Row, 1993) In the imposing main building of my alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stands a frieze honoring the immortals of science: Archimedes, Newton, and Pasteur, among others. It reminds those who enter that science and its practitioners can profoundly change the world and our understanding of it.