|  Investigations
In defense of modernity - While
postmodernists declare modernity dead, Robert Pippin says the movement—and
its preeminent philosopher—are misunderstood.
After working on a book called Hegel’s Practical
Philosophy for 13 years, Robert Pippin says he needs just one
more year—“to write a couple more chapters and link
it all together.” For the Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner
distinguished service professor in the philosophy department and
chair of the Committee on Social Thought, 2003–04 should be
the year. Pippin will be at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin—Berlin’s
Institute for Advanced Study—trading ideas with 40 scholars
from around the world.
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Speaking of the Balkans
Victor Friedman, AM’71, PhD’75,
began his first serious linguistics work as a nine-year-old living
in Hyde Park, when he became interested in foreign curses and obscenities.
“My grandfather’s brother and my father used rather
harsh Russian expressions humorously as terms of endearment,”
explains Friedman, a grandson of Russian and Romanian immigrants.
He started a collection, to which his parents’ friends cheerfully
contributed.
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The facts about truth serum
In a fascinating chapter of Mesmerized:
Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago, 1998) associate
professor of history Alison Winter, AB’87, details how mesmerism
was commonly used to treat chronic illness. Originally called “animal
magnetism” and later “mesmerism” after its creator,
Franz Anton Mesmer, the practice required the mesmerist (usually
a man) to make “magnetic passes” over his subject (usually
a woman) to bend her to his will. These passes—long, sweeping
hand gestures over the surface of the subject’s skin—were
close enough that each felt the body heat of the other, without
actually touching.
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Citations
Cancer-treatment response is in the
genes
Your genes may determine how you respond
to cancer treatment, reports Chicago oncologist Mark Ratain. In
a study of 61 colon-cancer patients, Ratain found that a patient’s
UGT1A1 gene variant determines his or her susceptibility to severe
side effects from the new colon-cancer drug Irinotecan. Patients
with the gene variant 7/7 taking the drug experience a substantial
white-blood-cell drop and become infection prone. Ratain, who announced
his findings at a spring American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting,
believes that a screening test for the variant could become available
soon.
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Next Generation
This artist’s conception of
a NASA Mars Exploration Rover portrays the rover after landing on
the Red Planet. University physicist Thanasis Economou is on the
science teams for two missions—”Spirit,” launched
June 10, and “Opportunity,” launched July 7—to
examine the rocks and soil of Mars for evidence that water ever
existed there.
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