Lincoln

The Meaning of Antebellum Politics in America vis-a-vis the Current Collapse of The Republic.

gregladen — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 13:13:52 +0000

The Meaning of Antebellum Politics in America vis-a-vis the Current Collapse of The Republic.

I am reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin, whom you may know from her occasional and always informative appearances on various TV news shows as a ranking Presidential Historian.

I started reading it because I wanted to see in some detail what was going on in American politics during the decade or so prior to the start of the Civil War. What I did know about it indicated that there would be interesting parallels, and important differences, between then and right now. It turns out that this suspicion was well founded, and I am probably learning quite a bit. Will it be applicable and how? Not sure yet, but I want EVERYBODY to read this book so we could have a conversation about it!

Here's the blurb:

Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.

On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.

Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.

It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.

We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through.

This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.

gregladen Wed, 02/15/2017 - 08:13

Patterns of coincidence, patterns in common

bioephemera — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Patterns of coincidence, patterns in common

About two weeks ago I went to Politics and Prose for a great talk by the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, who was in DC promoting his new book, Angels and Ages, a book of essays about Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. The words and actions of these two influential men - some would call them secular saints - still reverberate today. And coincidentally, they were also born just hours apart, on the same day: February 12, 1809.

Gopnik explicitly said that he did not intend to suss out any mystical or astrological significance to the shared birthday: it's a coincidence, and nothing more. But as he explains in his book,

The shared date of their birth is, obviously, "merely" a coincidence, what historians like to call an "intriguing coincidence." But coincidence is the vernacular of history, the slang of memory - the first strong pattern where we begin to search for more subtle ones. Like the simultaneous deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826, the accidental patterns of birth and death point to other patterns of coincidence in bigger things.

When a member of the audience asked if Gopnik would have written the book, had the two great men not shared a birthday, Gopnik laughed and said he would - but it would obviously not have been the same book. The "mere" coincidence of birth is the hook on which Gopnik hangs the entwined lives of his heroes, the starting point for his thoughtful and insightful foray into modernity. That's what a wonderful writer like Gopnik can weave through the warp of coincidence.

Over at SEED's newly redesigned website, I've written a little piece about art, science, and common patterns. Basically, I think that good art prompts the viewer to find meaningful connections between things that seem unrelated, to draw parallels that previously went unnoticed. Art can be a springboard to insight. Science, which can so easily become insular and near-sighted, needs that springboard, even if - like a shared birthday - it's just a hook to get the story started.

It's worth noting that Darwin was a great scientist precisely because he could make meticulous, minute observations of a single species - he wrote a whole book about earthworm digestion, for heaven's sake! - while also seeing the grand, universal, far-reaching forces that shape finch beaks, beetle shells, poodles and pigeons. It's not easy to make those linkages, in history or in science; sometimes art, literature, or music can give the roving mind a nudge in the right direction. As Gopnik notes in his book, "there is no struggle between science and art": both are ways of understanding the world, and their strengths are complementary. That's what this blog is about - when it's not about cephalopods, zombies and Pi Day.

bioephemera Sun, 03/15/2009 - 03:00

Tags

Science in Culture & Policy

I enjoy Gopnik's writings; lucky you to get to hear him speak! Thanks for the review.

Congrats! Can't wait to read your piece! Took a quick look and it looks lovely.

That's why your blog kicks fucking ass!

... "there is no struggle between science and art" ...

Run them both through the same funding agency, then see how they relate...

First off, art and science aren't generally funded by the same agency, because different metrics are appropriate for selecting the best projects to fund. Second, while at a macro level there is only so much funding to go around, that practical challenge is hardly an indication that the *fields* of science and art are fundamentally in conflict.

There's definitely a connection between art and science. Archeologists even go around looking for 'arty-facts' :D

Great post. But I'm still going to quibble with you a bit (hey -- it would be boring otherwise, right? :-) ) I'm with you on the point that art serves an important purpose as a springboard to insight (great phrase) and that's a much-needed function for scientists, who can be pretty myopic.

But I'm not convinced it's valid to make the connection between art -- which has intention and authorship behind it -- and random chance events, like the Darwin-Lincoln birthday overlap. A piece of art that sparks an otherwise unforeseen connection in the mind of the viewer (be s/he a scientist or not) is the product of an intentional act on the part of the artist who created the work. Not that the artist deserves credit for the inspiration/insight, but there is, at the heart of it, non-arbitrary human intent.

That's not what's going on with the Lincoln-Darwin birthday coincidence. That's a truly random event, that has nothing human driving it. So to put it in the same category as connection-inspiring artwork isn't really fair. In fact, it could make somebody start asking why we need artwork to inspire connections in the minds of viewers -- aren't there enough random coincidences in the world to supply all the inspiration we need?

(And I won't even get started on the differences between truly random events -- i.e., birthday overlaps -- and seemingly random coincidences that are in fact due to deep scientific connections.)

Incisive little posts like these are why Bioephemera is so damned high on my reading list. You continue to make this generalist very happy. Thanks.

Colin - very good points. First off, I didn't mean to imply that coincidences like a shared birthday are equivalent to those commonalities in nature which are based on natural laws, like fractal patterns or convergent evolution or whatnot (although your point about the counterintuitive statistics of shared birthdays is precisely why I think "coincidence" always bears closer examining - it depends on your perspective, doesn't it?) If I did imply that the two were equivalent, I apologize. It's a bit more complex than that - what I'm talking about here are initial observations and what you then do with them.

In his book, Gopnik uses the birthday coincidence as the hook for a work of literature which in turn highlights certain larger themes. I'm arguing in this post that art (in this case a book, or literary art) can use the raw material of coincidence to foster insight in the reader, and that this is an intriguing parallel to how Christopher's painting in the SEED piece used similar natural patterns to foster insight in the viewer. In both cases authorial intent is interposed between the observation and the viewer, to transform observations or events which might otherwise seem unrelated into a meaningful and intriguing line of thought.

In the case of Christopher's piece, the similarity between neurons and antlers turns out to not be "merely coincidental," but has to do with the rules governing growth in biological systems. But that isn't immediately apparent, is it? When you begin making observations, you don't know if any commonalities you observe are caused by random chance, or not.

Anyway, I thought it was a neat connection given that I had written the SEED piece just prior to Gopnik's reading. And while I'd like to call that timing another evocative coincidence, it's much more likely that I just had convergent patterns and connections on the brain. :) Hope this clarifies.

Evolution of Democracy

terrasig — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:13:26 +0000

Evolution of Democracy

This guest post comes to us from a colleague and friend, Dr Michael Wolfe. Enjoy!

The simultaneous celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the births of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin today offers a special opportunity to reflect on the state of our democracy and the status of science in our society. That these two iconic figures were born on the exact same day is, of course, a coincidence. And yet, as often happens in life, a chance confluence of events can help us see connections that we might otherwise miss.

Today we lionize Lincoln as perhaps our greatest President, and his eloquent expression of our democratic ideals is embedded in our national psyche. In stark contrast, if Darwin's concepts were to be put up for a democratic vote of confidence in American society today, we would likely find, as polls have shown, that nearly half do not believe in evolution. State boards of education still battle over its teaching, and the controversy over evolution is too often one of the driving factors in parents deciding not to enroll their children in public schools.

Why the resistance to Darwin and evolution? A major part of the problem is that science is viewed as essentially materialistic: it informs us about what nature is and how it works, but it cannot tell us why we are here and what we should value. Despite these limitations, scientific advances have allowed us remarkable control over our environment, so that we are not so much at the mercy of the elements and disease as our ancestors were. And science has provided us with perspective about where humanity fits in space and time.

Darwin's gift was to provide us with this much needed perspective. The world's species have been evolving over a very long period of time and share common ancestry. We are literally related to all other forms of life on the planet. And we know this now because it is clearly written in the code of our genes, important confirming evidence about which Darwin had no clue.

Since the publication of On the Origin of the Species, 150 years of research has confirmed and extended Darwin's concepts of descent with modification and natural selection to the point where there is no valid scientific debate over the matter. Indeed, as has been said, nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution. And evolutionary biology has been an essential factor in the advance of modern molecular medicine. As a biomedical researcher, I can attest that we routinely use the genetic relationship between humans and other organisms (including yeast, worms, flies and mice) to discover important processes involved in human health and disease. Not only is evolution true, it is practical; we need the insight it offers to understand and treat illness.

Democracy needs to evolve to the point where our representatives cannot vote on matters of scientific truth, just as a majority should not be able to vote to deny the rights of a minority. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and through this executive order, set the stage for the total abolition of slavery in this country. In the same way, national standards for science education should be established so that state and municipal boards of education cannot work to deny the truth of evolution and cause distraction and confusion by having scientifically inaccurate and indefensible alternatives taught in the science classroom and espoused in science textbooks.

Lincoln saved our union from dissolution and opened our minds to the equality of man. Darwin unified biology and opened our minds to the origin of man. Today we should proudly celebrate both men and their legacies. And let's recommit ourselves, as President Obama said in his inaugural address, to "restoring science to its rightful place".

Michael Wolfe is Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.

terrasig Thu, 02/12/2009 - 14:13