During my year at the Center I read a great deal in a variety of fields, outside my training as a physicist or my work in city planning. Moreover, I learned a lot from the anthropologists and historians of science, all quite eminent, and from other scholars as well. I was the youngest member of our class, and so I could benefit the most. I have published nine books, four on modeling physical and social processes, and others on design and planning theory. Hunter Dupree, an historian of science in our class, pushed me to think about physics. The philosophers (Keith Lehrer) did not discourage me from reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, for example.
I also rewrote the draft of my first book using my reading of Heidegger’s Being and Time, the previous year. But the biggest consequence of that year was my starting to think about physics in a more analytic and philosophical way. At the same time, a revolution was taking place in particle physics, the discovery of the J/psi and the emergence of electroweak symmetry and eventually the Standard Model. I am sure this had a big influence, as well. For when I went to read about the revolution, what struck me how much it is more of the same (essentially electromagnetism) with a new twist (non-commuting field theory), the twist actually opening a very large window.
I also read some about religion, perhaps influenced by the anthropologists. They sent me to Leach’s analysis of Genesis, for example. Again, this had pervasive influence in my writing over the years, including a book about entrepreneurship using sacred figures (Moses, Augustine,…).
I regret not learning from the economists—Lionel McKenzie was a fellow that year, for example.
I remained blithely ignorant of the ways of academic career building. But my work at the Center allowed me to do interesting work for the next forty years. And I made lifelong friends. I recall John Hope Franklin and Robert K. Merton talking at lunch, each one-upping the other in the most gracious of ways.
Professor of Planning
Sol Price School of Public Policy
University of Southern California
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