the next thing

One of the contributors to "History and human nature" asked me if I were not inclined to heave a sigh of relief at the completion of the issue. "Yes -- and no" was my answer: yes, because of course I wanted to see the result of such a great collaborative effort in print and wanted it to be out in the world; no, because the collaboration itself was, as I said earlier, one of the things that this scholar lives for. But I suppose that I'm no different than anyone else who takes pleasure in his work, which is to say, in the working.

In fact even before the project had begun I was looking ahead to future issues, as a journal editor must, and several weeks before "History and human nature" drew to a close I was working steadily more and more on the next issue, and ever more intensively planning those scheduled to come after it. (Forthcoming issues are listed on the website, www.isr-journal.org, including a very exciting project with the novelist A. S. Byatt.)

This next is issue is not quite fully assembled. With one article still awaiting review ISR 36.1 contains the following:

1. David Link, "Enigma rebus: Prolegomena to an archaeology of algorithmic artefacts", which the author describes as preliminary thoughts towards the definition of a necessary novel discipline, the archaeology of algorithmic artefacts" (emphasis mine). He enlists "the little creature 'Odradek' invented by Kafka [to serve] as an emblem for the enigmatic state of artefacts before they become and after they have been effective".

2. Charles Pasternak, "Placebo: no longer a phantom response", a review of recent clinical studies that "have revealed several neural pathways that are activated during the response of patients to a placebo. This", he argues, "lends credence to the view that placebos have a genuine role to play in clinical medicine." He proposes "that mechanisms similar to those that cause a placebo response may underlie the beneficial effects of religious belief and other neural stimuli."

3. Philip Ball, "Schoenberg, serialism and cognition: Whose fault if no one listens", presents clues from the science of music cognition to explain why atonal compositions based on the twelve-tone scale devised by Schoenberg remain unpopular. "Schoenberg's method of atonal composition", he argues, actively undermines some of the basic cognitive principles that allow our brains to turn notes into music."

4. Andrew Yang, "Interdisciplinarity as critical inquiry: Visualizing the art/bioscience interface", begins with the significant epistemological, cultural and ethical costs of the social boundaries maintained by disciplines. Taking the biosciences as his example he asks how non-specialists participate in crucial scientific decision-making in such a complex situation. His response is to consider the engagement of contemporary art and design with biology, hence Bioart.

5. Conor Douglas, Rebecca Goulding, Lily Farris and Janet Atkinson-Grosjean, "Socio-cultural characteristics of usability of bioinformatics databases and tools". These characteristics the authors take to be the norms, attitudes and beliefs that mediate the interactions between the structures and institutions of science. They focus on accessibility (the socio-cultural factors that make resources open and available for use), utility (perceived usefulness, affected potentially by non-technical matters such as trust and taste) and portability (social aspects of factors that allow a tool to move through space and time).

There will also be a few book reviews. The issue will be published in March.

WM
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