{"id":1689,"date":"2008-04-23T10:40:56","date_gmt":"2008-04-23T15:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/04\/23\/public-intellectuals\/"},"modified":"2008-04-23T10:40:56","modified_gmt":"2008-04-23T15:40:56","slug":"public-intellectuals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/23\/public-intellectuals\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Intellectuals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/crookedtimber.org\/2008\/04\/23\/airmiles-2\/\">Eric Rauchway<\/a> (of <a href=\"http:\/\/edgeofthewest.wordpress.com\/\">The Edge of the American West<\/a>, but guest-blogging at Crooked Timber), here is a list of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/story\/cms.php?story_id=4293\">Top 100 Public Intellectuals<\/a>, as put together by <em>Foreign Policy<\/em> and <em>Prospect<\/em> magazines.  (You can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/story\/cms.php?story_id=4262\">vote<\/a> for your top five.)  Here are the natural scientists they&#8217;ve chosen to include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Richard_Dawkins\">Richard Dawkins<\/a>, biologist, author<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jared_Diamond\">Jared Diamond<\/a>, biologist, historian<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neil_Gershenfeld\">Neil Gershenfeld<\/a>, physicist, computer scientist<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Lovelock\">James Lovelock<\/a>, environmental scientist<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lee_Smolin\">Lee Smolin<\/a>, physicist<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Harold_Varmus\">Harold Varmus<\/a>, medical scientist<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Craig_Venter\">J. Craig Venter<\/a>, biologist, entrepreneur<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/E.O._Wilson\">E.O. Wilson<\/a>, biologist<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lomborg\">Bj\u00f8rn Lomborg<\/a> is also on the list, but I don&#8217;t count him as a natural scientist &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sunita_Narain\">Sunita Narain<\/a> is also a close call, but seems to fall more on the activism side than pure environmental science.  <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Noam_chomsky\">Noam Chomsky<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steven_Pinker\">Steven Pinker<\/a> would also be there if you classified linguistics as a natural science.  I also didn&#8217;t include economists, who are certainly social scientists in my classification.  And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/story\/cms.php?story_id=4262\">V.S. Ramachandran<\/a> I counted as more of a psychologist.  This is a thankless task.<\/p>\n<p>Note that the list is concerned with <em>public<\/em> intellectuals &#8212; people who have influenced the wide-ranging public discussion in some substantial way &#8212; so there&#8217;s no point in wondering why Lee Smolin is there but not Ed Witten.  You are, however, allowed to wonder why there aren&#8217;t more physicists over all, and whether physicists should be blaming themselves or shaking impotent fists of rage at the selection committee.  Either way, those biologists are kicking our butts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via Eric Rauchway (of The Edge of the American West, but guest-blogging at Crooked Timber), here is a list of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals, as put together by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. (You can vote for your top five.) Here are the natural scientists they&#8217;ve chosen to include: Richard Dawkins, biologist, author Jared [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-science-and-society"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}