Harvard University Alumni

"The probability of policy change is nearly the same (around 0.3) whether a tiny minority or a large majority of average citizens favor a proposed policy change. ... A proposed policy change with low support among economically-elite Americans (one out of five in favor) is adopted only about 18 percent of the time, while a proposed change with high support (four out of five in favor) is adopted about 45 percent of the time."

"The question of whether particular goals are achievable by specified means (or indeed by any means at all) is an elementary and unavoidable question about any theory of justice."

"All the elements of the democratic method are means to render voting practically effective and politically significant, and all the elements of the democratic ideals are moral extensions and elaborations of the features of the method that make voting work."

"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."

"We can say that voting […] is at the heart of both the method and the ideal of democracy."

"As a rough description of the realities of the democratic process when it is applied to large-scale systems, and of the values of large-scale democracy, Riker's argument has much to be said for it (cf. chap. 16 below). However, his argument is subject to some grave difficulties. First, as critics have pointed out, his "liberal democracy" does not escape the difficulties of "populist democracy." If his criticisms of the ambiguity of social choice are correct, then simply because citizens vote to remove officials from office in an election does not provide adequate grounds for determining what the outcome means. Second, the extent to which voting cycles are a genuine problem in democratic associations is unclear; some social theorists have concluded that the importance Riker and others have attributed to voting cycles is exaggerated."

"Among students and faculty alike, any mention of his name is usually accompanied by a quick glance around, a devious smile, and hunched-over, half-whispered anecdotes about the man."

"Noam is unlike anyone we've ever had."

"One does not have to have experience raising children through school, dealing with family tragedies, and so forth, to be able to find three numbers whose fourth powers add up to another one."

"One of the things about math and chess is that we’re better at doing it than philosophizing about it."

"Indeed, Elkies admits he can improvise fugues, "at least on reasonable themes in a slow enough tempo.""

"Quantum mechanics explains the physical stability of the atom by predicting its allowed discrete energy levels and defining the wave functions (also called atomic orbitals) associated with each energy level. The orbitals determine the probability density for finding the electrons at particular locations in the atom when the electrons are in a specific quantum state."

"The central idea of quantum theory is that energy, like matter, is not continuous but it exists only in discrete packets. Discreteness of matter and charge on the microscopic scale seems entirely reasonable and familiar to us, based on the modern picture of atomic structure. But, the idea that energy also exists only in discrete chunks is contrary to our experience of the macroscopic world. The motions of a soccer ball rolling up and down the sides of a gully involve arbitrary amounts of kinetic and potential energy; nothing in ordinary human experience suggests that the energy of a system should change abruptly by “jumps.” Understanding quantum mechanics requires that we develop a new kind of physical intuition, based on the results of experiments that are impossible to understand using classical mechanics. These results are completely divorced from ordinary human experience in the macroscopic world around us, and our physical intuition from the macroscopic world cannot be transferred to the quantum domain. We must resist the urge to interpret these quantum results in terms of ordinary experience."

"We point out that not every reactant is completely consumed in a chemical reaction, and that the limiting reactant determines the maximum theoretical yield; the percentage yield may be somewhat less."

"The shapes of molecules influence their behavior and function, especially the ease with which they can fit into various guest-host configurations important in biology and biochemistry."

"Investigating chemical reactions can be greatly complicated and often obscured by the presence of extraneous materials. So, the first step, therefore, is to learn how to analyze and classify materials to ensure that you are working with pure substances before initiating any reactions."

"The definite mass ratios involved in reactions suggested a convenient method for counting the number of atoms of each element participating in the reaction. These results, summarized as the laws of chemical combination,provided overwhelming, if indirect, evidence for the existence of atoms and molecules."

"Chemists think in the highly visual nanoscopic world of atoms and molecules, but they work in the tangible world of macroscopic laboratory apparatus. These two approaches to the chemical sciences cannot be divorced."

"Knowledge of the components of the atom and of the forces that hold them together stimulated entirely new fields of basic science and technology that continue to the present."

"Upon encountering a new topic, try this: imagine that you are the first person ever to see the laboratory results on which it is based. Imagine that you must construct the new concepts and explanations to interpret these results, and that you will present and defend your conclusions before the scientific community. Be suspicious. Cross-check everything. Demand independent confirmations. Always remain, with Boyle, the “skeptical chemist.”"

"Chemical reasoning, as used both in applications and in basic research, resembles a detective story in which tangible clues lead to a mental picture of events never directly witnessed by the detective."

"Laboratory or industrial chemical reactions are carried out with quantities that range from milligrams to tons, so we must be able to relate the relative atomic mass scale to the macroscopic scales used in practice. The link between the two scales is provided by Avogadro’s number (NA)."

"The science of chemistry rests on two well-established principles: the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy."

"The conservation of matter in a chemical change is represented in a balanced chemical equation for that process. The study of the relationships between the numbers of reactant and product mole­cules is called stoichiometry. Stoichiometry is fundamental to all as­pects of chemistry."

"We are used to rhetoric that casts “government” as a threat to our liberties. By making it clear that the workplace is a form of government (that the state is not the only government that rules us), we can make clear how the authority that employers have over workers threatens their dignity and autonomy. By naming that government as “private” — that is, as kept private from the workers, as something employers claim is none of the workers’ business — we can make more vivid the fact that workers are laboring under arbitrary, unaccountable dictatorships."

"If free market prices don't give people what they morally deserve, should we try to regulate factor prices so that they do track producers' moral deserts? Hayek offered two compelling arguments against this proposal. First, if you fix prices on a backward-looking standard, they will no longer be able to perform their informational function. Producers will produce for what was demanded last quarter, even if it isn't demanded today. This creates enormous waste and generates huge opportunity costs. We'd be much poorer in an economy that worked like this. […] Hayek was right. It might sound like a compelling idea, to make sure that people receive the income they morally deserve. But orienting the economy around this goal, assuming it is achievable at all (and there are principled doubts about that), would doom us to poverty and serfdom. It would abolish capitalism, along with its chief virtues. It isn't worth the draconian costs."

"Several implications follow from Hayek's insights into the nature of capitalism.(a) The claim "I deserve my pretax income" is not generally true. Nor should the basic organization of property rules be based on considerations of moral desert. Hence, claims about desert have no standing in deciding whether taxation for the purpose of funding social insurance is just. (b) The claim that people rocked by the viccisitudes of the market, or poor people generally, are getting what they deserve is also not generally true. To moralize people's misfortunes in this way is both ignorant and mean. Capitalism continuously and randomly pulls the rug out from under even the most prudent and diligent people. It is in principle impossible for even the most prudent to forsee all the market turns that could undo them. (If it were possible, then efficient socialist planning would be possible, too. But it isn't.) (c) Capitalist markets are highly dynamic and volatile. This means that at any one time, lots of people are going under. Often, the consequences of this would be catastrophic, absent concerted intervention to avert the outcomes generated by markets. For example, the economist Amartya Sen has documented that sudden shifts in people's incomes (which are often due to market volatility), and not absolute food shortages, are a principal cause of famine. (d) The volatility of capitalist markets creates a profound and urgent need for insurance, over and above the insurance needs people would have under more stable (but stagnant) economic systems. This need is increased also by the fact that capitalism inspires a love of personal independence, and hence brings about the smaller ("nuclear") family forms that alone are compatible with it. We no longer belong to vast tribes and clans. This sharply reduces the ability of individuals under capitalism to pool risks within families, and limits the claims they can effectively make on nonhousehold (extended) family members for assistance. To avoid or at least ameliorate disaster and disruption, people need to pool the risks of capitalism."

"Twenty-five years ago, when most economists were extolling the virtues of financial deregulation and innovation, a maverick named Hyman P. Minsky maintained a more negative view of Wall Street; in fact, he noted that bankers, traders, and other financiers periodically played the role of arsonists, setting the entire economy ablaze. Wall Street encouraged businesses and individuals to take on too much risk, he believed, generating ruinous boom-and-bust cycles. The only way to break this pattern was for the government to step in and regulate the moneymen. Many of Minsky’s colleagues regarded his “financial-instability hypothesis,” which he first developed in the nineteen-sixties, as radical, if not crackpot. Today, with the subprime crisis seemingly on the verge of metamorphosing into a recession, references to it have become commonplace on financial Web sites and in the reports of Wall Street analysts. Minsky’s hypothesis is well worth revisiting. In trying to revive the economy, President Bush and the House have already agreed on the outlines of a “stimulus package,” but the first stage in curing any malady is making a correct diagnosis."

"In Bentham's vision, the poor should be treated like criminals, forced to labor in prison for the private profit of capitalist entrepreneurs. Such a totalitarian idea might seem remote from purportedly enlightened twenty-first-century practices in liberal democracies. Yet both the criminalization of poverty, and the subjection of the criminalized poor to unpaid labor for corporate profit, exist in the United States today."

"Incarceration in prison or a local jail sets poor people up for exploitation in a forced labor system. New Deal laws once prohibited the use of prison labor except for state institutions. Businesses won the right to use prison labor in 1979. They won an exception from minimum wage laws for prison workers in 1995. This led to the employment of hundreds of thousands of inmates of federal and state prisons for mere pennies per hour. Many are forced to work in unsafe conditions without protective equipment, because workplace health and safety laws do not apply to prison workers."

"I think I’m starting to resolve a puzzle that’s been bugging me for awhile. Pop economists (or, at least, pop micro-economists) are often making one of two arguments:1. People are rational and respond to incentives. Behavior that looks irrational is actually completely rational once you think like an economist. 2. People are irrational and they need economists, with their open minds, to show them how to be rational and efficient. Argument 1 is associated with “why do they do that?” sorts of puzzles. Why do they charge so much for candy at the movie theater, why are airline ticket prices such a mess, why are people drug addicts, etc. The usual answer is that there’s some rational reason for what seems like silly or self-destructive behavior. Argument 2 is associated with “we can do better” claims such as why we should fire 80% of public-schools teachers or Moneyball-style stories about how some clever entrepreneur has made a zillion dollars by exploiting some inefficiency in the market. The trick is knowing whether you’re gonna get 1 or 2 above. They’re complete opposites!"

"I’m not saying that arguments based on rationality are necessarily wrong in particular cases. (I can’t very well say that, given that I wrote an article on why it can be rational to vote.) I’m just trying to understand how pop-economics can so rapidly swing back and forth between opposing positions. And I think it’s coming from the comforting presence of rationality and efficiency in both formulations. It’s ok to distinguish economists from ordinary people (economists are rational and think the unthinkable, ordinary people don’t) and it’s also ok to distinguish economists from other social scientists (economists think ordinary people are rational, other social scientists believe in “culture”). You just have to be careful not to make both arguments in the same paragraph."

"In general the claim can be supported that a view of classical political economy as committed to extreme laissez-faire or unmitigated economic individualism misrepresents or at the very least analytically overgeneralizes their circumscribed theoretical and practical aims. In general then, with regard to both political and economic liberty, the classical political economists might be seen to be united in their efforts to theorize and systematize the productive and allocating functions of the mechanism of the market as the most efficient means to engender the growth of wealth. At the same time, classicals such as Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill recognized that the market, of necessity, operated in a larger context of restriction – not only legal, but equally as important, within political, religious, moral, and conventional restrictions – which could not be readily or in some cases even desirably overcome."

"With these dramatic words, Kant alludes to the two great problems and accomplishments of his philosophical career. On the one hand, he wants to know how we who as creatures are a mere part of nature can discover how all of nature … does and even must work. On the other hand, he wants to display the unconditional value that we have as rational rather than merely natural beings, … and that we are always free to act in accordance with and indeed for the sake of this principle, thus free to realize the unconditional value for which we unlike anything else in nature have the potential."

"It may seem as if Kant was content with such a radically dualistic view of human action, but ultimately he was not. … What Kant is assuming here is that morality is not just a matter of making rightful or virtuous choices, but also requires us to put those choices into practice by attempting to realize the goals or ends that they entail in the arena of action, that is, nothing less than the realm of spatial, temporal, and causal nature in which we live and act."

"It was Einstein who had introduced almost all the revolutionary ideas underlying quantum theory, and who saw first what these ideas meant. His ultimate rejection of quantum theory was akin to Dr. Frankenstein’s shunning of the monster he had originally created for the betterment of mankind. Had Einstein not done so, in all likelihood he would be seen as the father of the modern theory."

"Indeed, once Kant had discovered the Humean problem of skepticism about the universality and necessity of first principles, he generalized it not only to the first principles of “speculative philosophy,” that is, theoretical cognition, but also to the first principle of practical philosophy, the fundamental principle of morality. Thus, from a methodological point of view, Kant’s project in philosophy became that of undermining both Humean and Pyrrhonian skepticism in both theoretical and practical philosophy, and, much more incidentally, along the way refuting Cartesian skepticism about external objects as a nagging but by no means central problem in theoretical philosophy."

"When we finally got our hands on the paper, we quickly realized that Einstein had put his finger on the essence of the problem and had delineated when it has a solution, before the invention of the modern quantum theory. Moreover, Einstein wrote with great lucidity about the subject, so that it seemed as if he were speaking directly to us, a century later. There was nothing dated or quaint about the analysis. For the first time in a long while, I found myself thinking, “Wow, this man really was a genius.”"

"Political science is the study of the authoritative allocation of values for a society."

"Wolff is logically confronted by a choice between a world of robots subject to authority, on the one hand, and, on the other, a world of human beings subject to no authority whatsoever but responsibly exercising their moral autonomy. … Consequently Wolff fails, as he must, in his attempt to show that authority and autonomy could be reconciled in a state governed by unanimous direct democracy. … In attempting to build the edifice of anarchism on the foundations of responsibility and moral autonomy, Wolff is ultimately self-contradictory. For it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that except in extraordinary circumstances that are rarely attainable in our world, if we wish to maximize autonomy our only reasonable and responsible choice is to seek the best possible state. If a democratic state is the best possible state (as probably few anarchists would deny), then the most responsible way of exercising our moral autonomy is to opt for a democratic state."

"There has never been just one best way to teach quantum mechanics. My goal is neither to sow nostalgia for the philosophically engaged style of Oppenheimer and Nordheim, nor to condemn the pragmatic approach of Fermi, Bethe and Feynman. It is rather to highlight the choices that physicists must always make when stepping into the classroom. Choices of topics to discuss and problems to assign reflect deeper decisions about the ideal type of physicist one seeks to train. Should the new generation be philosophically attuned, concerned with minute details of conceptual interpretation? Or should physicists hone their ability to calculate, pushing Heisenberg’s and Schrödinger’s equations into the service of ever more elaborate problems to solve and phenomena to analyse? Competing ideals have flourished under different pedagogical conditions."

"Strangely enough, many of the philosophical issues surrounding quantum mechanics are today being used to entice potential students into physics. As quantum computing and quantum communication become a commercial reality, tomorrow’s students may find themselves routinely grappling with the same philosophical questions that challenged their forebears almost a century ago."

"The armature of economic neo-liberalism ... cannot concede any space to the idea of counter-conduct; counter-conduct becomes inconceivable, since conduct as such is a concept fully integrated into a scientific-epistemological field. Regime of veridiction, homo oeconomicus, rational behavior, ethical and political neutralization – such is the scheme, for instance, of American neo-liberalism. In this setting, counter-conduct is nothing more than a form of irrationality, just as in the history of psychiatry, it is but a form of abnormality."

"I once asked Bell whether during the years he was studying the quantum theory it ever occurred to him that the theory might simply be wrong. He thought a moment and answered, “I hesitated to think it might be wrong, but I knew that it was rotten.” Bell pronounced the word “rotten” with a good deal of relish and then added, “That is to say, one has to find some decent way of expressing whatever truth there is in it.” The attitude that even if there is not something actually wrong with the theory, there is something deeply unsettling—“rotten”—about it, was common to most of the creators of the quantum theory. Niels Bohr was reported to have remarked, “Well, I think that if a man says it is completely clear to him these days, then he has not really understood the subject.” He later added, “If you do not getschwindlig [dizzy] sometimes when you think about these things then you have not really understood it.” My teacher Philipp Frank used to tell about the time he visited Einstein in Prague in 1911. Einstein had an office at the university that over looked a park. People were milling around in the park, some engaged in vehement gesture-filled discussions. When Professor Frank asked Einstein what was going on, Einstein replied that it was the grounds of a lunatic asylum, adding, “Those are the madmen who do not occupy themselves with the quantum theory.”"

"The signs on Bell’s door read “J.Bell” and “M.Bell.” I knocked and was invited in by Bell. He looked about the same as he had the last time I saw him, a couple of years ago. He has long, neatly combed red hair and a pointed beard, which give him a somewhat Shavian figura. On one wall of the office is a photograph of Bell with something that looks like a halo behind his head, and his expression in the photograph is mischievous. Theoretical physicists’ offices run the gamut from chaotic clutter to obsessive neatness; the Bells’ is somewhere in between. Bell invited me to sit down after warning me that the “visitor’s chair” tilted backward at unexpected angles. When I had mastered it, and had a chance to look around, the first thing that struck me was the absence of Mary. “Mary,” said Bell, with a note of some disbelief in his voice, “has retired.” This, it turned out, had occurred not long before my visit. “She will not look at any mathematics now. I hope she comes back,” he went on almost plaintively; “I need her. We are doing several problems together.” In recent years, the Bells have been studying new quantum mechanical effects that will become relevant for the generation of particle accelerators that will perhaps succeed the LEP. Bell began his career as a professional physicist by designing accelerators, and Mary has spent her entire career in accelerator design. A couple of years ago Bell, like the rest of the members of CERN theory division, was asked to list his physics speciality. Among the more “conventional” entries in the division such as “super strings,” “weak interactions,” “cosmology,” and the like, Bell’s read “quantum engineering.”"

"I have avoided so far the use of the term —the analog in the of the . Certainly, deserves the credit for first exhibiting the mechanism in the context of . But as I have tried to show, it took other people to make it work. The Higgs boson is what is being looked for at . If they find it, we shall all be happy and relieved. And if not? I am reminded of a story about Einstein. He had just received a telegram with the news that the eclipse expeditions had confirmed his general relativity prediction about the Sun bending starlight. He was very pleased with himself and showed the telegram to one of his students, . She asked him what he would have done if the telegram had contained the news that the experiments disagreed with the theory. He replied, “Da könt mir halt der lieber Gott leid tun—die theorie stimmt doch. (Then I would have been sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is right).”"

"Although it is always somewhat dangerous to look for the cause of a complex sociological phenomenon in a single event, nonetheless, I believe that a cause can be made for the proposition that the present widespread interest in the quantum theory can be traced to a single paper with the nontransparent title “On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox,” which was written in 1964 by the then thirty-four-year-old Irish physicist John Bell. It was published in the obscure journal Physics, which expired after a few issues. Bell’s paper was, as it happens, published in its first issue. Bell, who has worked since 1960 at CERN, the gigantic elementary-particle physics laboratory near Geneva, has been known to claim that his paper involves only the use of “high school mathematics”; however, its six pages are dense with an extremely abstract set of arguments, which even professionals in the field must work hard at to understand. In fact, for several years after its publication, few if any professional physicists bothered to try."

"Some have thought that Wittgenstein's lectures were only for his friends and favourites. In fact he would admit anyone to his lectures. He required, however, that they should attend continuously and for a considerable period of time. He would not allow anyone to come for only one or two meetings. To one such request he replied, 'My lectures are not for tourists.'"

"Wittgenstein expressed more than once the fear that his writings would be destroyed by fire. He related with horror how the great historian, Mommsen, had lost a manuscript volume of his History of Rome in that way."

"Wittgenstein's personality dominated these meetings. I doubt that anyone in the class failed to be influenced by him in some way. Few of us could keep from acquiring imitations of his mannerisms, gestures, intonations, exclamations. These imitations could easily appear ridiculous when compared with their original."