3 Questions: Stefan Helmreich on wave science
In 2009, MIT anthropologist Stefan Helmreich explored the depths of recent scientific thinking about the living sea in his award-winning book “Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas.” Now, the Elting E. Morison Professor of Anthropology has turned his attention to the world of wave science — the study of periodic, oscillating, and undulating phenomena — in fields including oceanography, cosmology, electrical engineering, biomedicine, sports, and social science. Helmreich investigates waves not simply as facts of nature but also as objects of scientific, and therefore cultural, interpretation: Indeed, the very definition of waves is in transition, as waves are explored by new scientific modes of measurement and description. This fall, Helmreich delivered the prestigious Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture at the University of Rochester, an annual event established in 1963 to honor one of America’s first anthropologists. He recently elaborated on the ideas he described in his talk, which was titled,...