Word: wrights
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Robert Wright...
...life and work of Harvard's own E.O. Wilson, expert in insect communication and sometime "father of sociobiology," leads Wright to investigate biology. Finally, attention shifts to the role of information in the social sciences and the work of economist and systems-theorist Kenneth Boulding...
...Wright's three scientists are not "representative" of accepted opinion, but creative thinkers willing to break new ground. All three, while attaining academic respectability, even distinction, have seen many of their ideas dismissed by the majority of their colleagues as, at best, incautious, at worst, dangerously erroneous quackery...
...precisely this boldness and individualism which offends others draws Wright to these thinkers. The clarity and friendliness of the author's prose allows us to enjoy a triptych of scientists at work. We watch each of them grow with their ideas, which both guide them and are in turn reshaped by their contributions...
...WRIGHT'S journey through the role of information in cosmology, sociobiology and systems theory teaches us also about the joys and pains of being a scientist, particularly one with his own personal ideas about how the world works. Sometimes, all three seem to share the frustration of Ed Fredkin, who tells the author, "I feel like I'm the only person with eyes in a world that's blind...