Includes a variety of articles by Faculty and Members exploring gravitational-wave detection, military coups, the sizes of infinity, and the moral economy of asylum.
Moral economies represent the production, circulation, and
appropriation of values and affects regarding a given social issue.
Consequently, they characterize for a particular historical moment
and a specific social world the manner in which this...
What is a state? Answers to this question vary, depending on
whether they are provided by a political philosopher, a political
scientist, a legal scholar, or a historian. We propose our own
response as sociologists and anthropologists. But rather...
Historical epidemiologists are beginning to explore the
documentary record of interventions in tropical Africa to prevent
the transmission of infectious diseases and reduce their
prevalence. Some interventions against individual diseases began
in...
The Institute sometimes spends money on risky ventures, giving
sustained support to people who work on unfashionable and dubious
projects. One example of a risky venture was Einstein, who worked
here for twenty years on unified field theories that...
The next time you are enjoying the sun’s warm rays, think of the
tremendous voyage those photons have taken to get to you.
Traveling, by definition, at the speed of light they left their
point of origin about eight minutes previously in a furious...
It should come as no surprise that our planet was nicknamed “the
pale blue dot” in the wake of the 1990s iconic photograph taken by
Voyager. Approximately 68 percent of Earth’s surface is
covered with water—that is, two-thirds of our galactic home...
In the beginning of the twentieth century, the University of
Göttingen was one of the top research centers for mathematics in
the world. The mathematician David Hilbert was a well-established
professor there, and during the winter semester of 1924...
“Art” and “science” meant something very different in the
Renaissance than they do within the strict disciplinary divides of
today’s academy. Beginning in the sixteenth century, inquiry into
the workings of the natural world engaged the visual and...
In 1948, approximately 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from
their homes, going both to neighboring countries such as Jordan,
Syria, and Lebanon and to the parts of Mandate Palestine that
became the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. These refugees...
The number of military coups and coup attempts since 1950
currently stands at around 530, an astonishing number. We tend to
have a very specific notion of a military coup: a military coup is
something that rarely takes place; is characteristic of...
The status of “women” as interpreted by Shiites in a
philosophical and legal context, as well as their social status in
Shiite communities, throughout history up until today, can only be
considered and studied within a general framework, using an...
Matisse gave two separate accounts of the moment at which he
began work on the first version of The Dance, each of them
emphasizing the immensity of the surface he had to master, “to
possess,” as he put it. In the first version, it is an...
Why do we still prohibit incest? Despite our sense that the
incest taboo is universal, beyond question, it is in fact neither
consistent nor universal. The prohibition of incest has existed
across cultures and epochs, but it has varied in...
Carl P. Feinberg recently endowed a Professorship in the
School of Natural Sciences in which Juan Maldacena becomes the
first Carl P. Feinberg Professor in the School. Feinberg is founder
and Chief Executive Officer of the software products
firm...
