Brain-map.org

I read an article this week that shows how my Dad's world of manufacturing, mine of brain imaging, and computer science Google style are teaming up on neuroscience lately.

The Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle was started by Paul Allen, co-founded of Microsoft and the 44th richest person on earth, in 2002. The project's goal is to map gene expression for the entire human brain. Where in the brain are each of some 22,000 genes expressed? Gene expression is being visualized by a lab-bio method called "in situ hybridization"-- dripping onto slices of brain RNAs that will bind to corresponding base-pairs of DNA, then dyes that bind to the RNAs and stain them purple, "the color of spilled wine", with the shades' intensity corresponding to the concentration of a particular gene. The science is all doable. The difficulty of the Allen Institute's project was the sheer scale of it: Each individual brain would need to be sliced into thousands of one-micron-thick slices, and stained for 20,000 different genes, then each stained slice would need to be photographed and analyzed. This would take human scientists years and years of repetitive labor. The answer?

Industrialized science by robots! I've always believed that science ought to be imagined by scientists, the theory and experimental design thought out, and then all the math and data-crunching should be left to teams of unthinking drones, either robots, mole-rats, ants, or number-grubbing physicists, so a scientist's work can stick to the interesting, imaginative stuff. Now my dream of science seems to have come true. "What the institute needed was someone who could translate this epic ambition into an efficient production process, in which thousands of brain slices would be collected and assessed every day." The guy the head of the lab, Allan Jones, found to solve this engineering problem has a background alot like my Dad's: "this led Jones to hire Paul Wohnoutka, a former Boeing engineer with decades of experience in managing complex manufacturing systems ("I thought a commercial airliner was the most challenging thing I'd help build," he says, "I was wrong.")"


So Wohnoutka designed this elaborate system of bar-coded brain-slice-slides, that neuroscientists can scan with computerized gadgets to get all the data they need about the slice instantaneously. Amazingly, the slices are even analyzed by robots(!): robotic Leica microscopes with glass-slide loaders, barcode readers, and small computers running image-analysis software (that is, statistical pattern recognition algorithms like the ones we use in our fMRI work at Princeton and in Kyoto, and in Google searches). Each slice of brain converts instantly into its location in the digital brain-map, showing the expression of each of 22,000 genes in each voxel.

Here's where the project converges with the brain-mapping work I've done. The Allen Institute is the first "wet lab" project I've heard of that thinks of the brain in terms of "voxels"-- those 3mmX3mm cubes of cortex that we break the brain down into in fMRI (~40,000 per brain). The project needed to decide on a level of resolution larger than individual neurons but smaller than "brain parts", and since they don't have any over-aching theory or hypothesis about the functional architecture of brain gene expression, they just decided to think of the brain as a volume of cubes, as we do. So, they'll end up converting the brain into a "3D matrix" form a lot like the one we think about in fMRI. Anyone doing an fMRI experiment will be able to spot an active voxel and say, "I wonder what genes are expressed in that cube?" and on brain-map.org-- The FREE, open-source gene-brain map from the Allen Insitute, which will be finished by the robots in 2012-- they'll be able to see, instantaneously.

Pretty wild stuff, eh? If you're interested in this convergence of comp sci and brain-mapping, a friend of mine David Weiss explains the idea really well here.

David Weiss '07 on his Senior Thesis, Play video (3 min. 15 sec.) »
David Weiss '07, currently pursuing a PhD in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania, speaks about his Princeton thesis, for which he developed computer science methods to help neuroscientists analyze fMRI data.

David was the other undergrad advisee in Ken Norman's lab with me senior year (We were both research assistants in Ken's lab the same summer, so we got to know each other pretty well, and Dave helped with my Spidey experiment. He was a computer science major, not psych, bio or neuro, and his job was more Googley, developing the algorithsms for "dimensionality reduction"-- how to reduce fMRI activity patterns to relevent features that a pattern classification algorithm can actually parse and make sense of.) Anyway, check out this little 3 minute clip and let me know your thoughts. That computer behind Dave with the brains on it is in the scanner room I used to scan my nine friends' brains in This is Your Brain on Spiderman.

One day maybe we'll all end up teamed-up on a Google-Meets-Kyoto-meets Brooklyn indie rock- meets Chicago comedy- meets jazz project of interstellar brain decoding, where all you'll have to do is flip a switch to churn bebop, jokes or novels out of your skull. What do you say?

Yes we can!

I spent this first of Obama's presidency teaching my kids "Telephone Conversation" with Super Mario Bros. puppets. In my free periods, I translated articles about Obama from the 毎日小学生新聞, the primary school kids' daily newspaper. At recess, we played the "flying pigs game", where I spin them around in circles until I get dizzy. The second grade girls sing a song I made up, in my scrappy Japanese, to the tune of Frere Jacque that goes "Tobu buta, tobu buta, toberu! toberu! Tobu tobu buta tobu tobu buta, dekiru, dekiru!", meaning, roughly, "We're flying pigs, we're flying pigs, we can fly, yes we can!"

Obama made the front page every day this week- manga of Obama, rather- in the lead-up and aftermath of his inaugural address. I photocopied all the pages and keep them in my kanji notebook. On Obama's first day in office, December 22 in Japan, I bought the adult Yomiuri newspaper from the convenience store on my way home from school, to keep the front page photo of his family, and translate the article later. In the photo on the cover of another daily, the Asahi Shinbun, Michelle is looking at Barack as he puts his hand on the Bible to take the oath, with this proud look that says: my husband is the hottest man in the world.

I laminated pictures of all my favorite video game characters with magnets on the backs- Yoshi, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Donkey Kong, Toad, along with cartoon telephones. Toad the toadstool, I learned, is called "Kinopiyo" in Japanese, a diminutive of the word for mushroom that sounds like "Pinochio". Lots of the kids mix up and call him "Pinokyo".

Last week, the kids learned how to have a simple phone conversation, scheduling a play date with a friend. They'd come up in pairs, and play the roles of their favorite Mario characters, complete with video-game voices:
"Hello, it's Mario!"
"Hello, it's Kupa. Let's play! (or, Let's fight!)"
"Ok. Where?"
"Let's go to the park."
"Ok. See you!"

This week, though, I started my lesson by showing the kids the front page of their newspaper, and telling them how Obama became president of America this week. The kids all recognize Obama, and many of them know his slogans in English: "CHANGE!" they'll call out. Or, as the caption of one newspaper article said in both English and the Japanese syllabary, "Yes We Can!"

I showed the kids a cute cartoon inside the paper, titled "ホワイトハウス小学校入学": White House Elementary School Enrollment: Shiny-new First Graders!" Obama and Hilary are shown as Japanese first graders holding hands, dressed in the elementary-school uniform and the standard red- or black- "randoseru" Japanese knapsacks. Joe Lieberman is opening Obama's backpack to load it with textbooks on "Finance", "Iraq/ Afghanistan", "Terrorism", and "Energy", saying "There's a lot to study!" (勉強することがいっぱいあります！) In the background is the Capitol building, with Lincoln floating on a cloud, wearing an angel's halo and waving to baby Obama. Off to one side is an embarrassed looking Bush, getting hit by a shoe. And behind him, a mother bald eagle in her nest standing over a newly-hatched chick, saying "自由の新たなる誕生", jiyuu no arata naru tanjyou": "Birth of liberty anew!"

The article published today is headed "Q: What did Obama call for in his inaugural address? A: Hope and Unity". The cartoon shows Obama being offered the Bible, with an image of Lincoln hovering behind his pointing hand. The final paragraph is about discrimination. It says: "From this point forward everyday, children all over the world will see a black president of America. "Discrimination" (差別, sabetsu)-- when a person can not make certain choices because of the country where he was born, the color of his skin, or the job his parents have; when strangers say mean things to him for no reason; when he is excluded from groups. Such discrimination is dying out from the world now. It's wonderful, don't you think?"

I asked each class if they know why Obama is a special president. Typically, one student would raise her hand and say "Hajimete no kokujin no daitouryou da kara.": Because he's the first black president. Good! I'd say. Then I'd show them a cartoon of Lincoln and ask if they knew who he was, what he did. Typically they wouldn't, but their teacher would help me explain how in olden times in America, black people had to work for white people for no money, but Lincoln freed the slaves. I told them how Obama was sworn in on the same Bible that Lincoln had touched- the first black president swearing on a book from the president who gave American blacks freedom.

I also explained how Obama's mother, after she had him, got divorced from his African father, and married an Indonesian, an Asian man. Obama's half-sister is not black, but Asian, and she's married to a Chinese man from Canada. So, in America's White House family now, there are people from Asia, Africa, and America-- blood from Kenya, Kansas, Canada, China, and Jakarta. "So," I said in Japanese. "there is an international first family of the United States. America is changing!" "CHANGE!" all the kids called out happily. "Hopefully now America and other countries can start to become friends." "And there will be no war, right?" One third grader asked me. "I hope not," I said.

We played a special "Inauguration Day" version of the Mario Telephone game. Yoshi wanted to fly to Washington DC to see Obama's Inauguration Ceremony, so he called his friend Sonic the Hedgehog to invite him along (Or Mario called Peach to invite her, as a date). I used a flashcard I have of "America", showing a big bald eagle's head, over the Blue Ridge mountains, a river, the Statue of Liberty, and Mt. Rushmore; a map of the U.S. showing Virginia highlighted in orange, with DC as a star; and a photo of the Jefferson Memorial in April, with the Japanese sakura blossoms in bloom all around it. The script was changed a little too:
"Hi Peach, it's Mario! Let's go to [Washington DC] for [Obama}!"
"Yes we can! What time?"
"__ o'clock."
"Ok. See you! YES WE CAN!"

I asked a series of questions in Japanese to the whole class afterwards. They caught on fast.
"Gaikokujin to hanasukoto ga dekimasu ka?" Can you speak to foreigners?
"YES WE CAN!"
"America to hokano kuni wa tomodachi ni narukoto ga dekimasu ka?" Can America and other countries become friends?
"YES WE CAN!"
"Can we end violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East?"
"YES WE CAN!"
"Can you come visit Te-i-ra sensei in Virginia?"
"YES WE CAN!"

By the time I left the fourth grade class at Oda, everybody was jumping up and down and shouting and clapping. "Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Watashi-tachi wa dekiru da yo!" "CHANGE!"

I learned the kanji for "Hope" and "Unity" today from Obama's shyuuin enzetsu, his inaugural address: 希望, kibou, and 団結, danketsu. I hope Obama doesn't disappoint the hopes of these Japanese kids, and mine.

Dreams you can see. or, 将来の可能、future possibilities

My future just took a little more shape... I've been offered a job in the brain-imaging lab in Kyoto when I finish teaching in Yakage.

The Japanese psychologist I've been working with, Yuki Kamitani, sent me Japanese news clips about his lab's "Neuron" publication last week, which I used to learn new kanji about fMRI. When I wrote him to say thanks this weekend, I asked about the possibility of doing some volunteer work with his lab when I finish my teaching contract in Yakage. The articles about Yuki's experiment all mention "Possibilities for the future"-- shourai no kanou, 将来の可能,-- such as allowing disabled people to express themselves through brain activity, and re-constructing images from people's dreams. So I titled my e-mail "将来の可能かな？"... Possibilities for the Future?

Yuki replied that he'd be glad to have me, not just for a "short time" but for several months, as an intern in his lab. He can offer me a visa and housing, and even a Japanese class through ATR, Advanced Telecommunications Research International, his research institute. (My next workplace will be 京都の国際電気通信基礎研究場所-- Kyoto's kokusai-denki-tsuushin-kisou-kenkyuujyou, "International Electrical-Communication Fundamental Research Institute"! Quite a mouthful to fit on a business card...). This is exactly what I had been hoping for. It will give me the chance to deepen my Japanese, to take the next level of the language proficiency exam next December, and Yuki says I can take the GRE from Japan. I'll get my act together to apply to graduate programs in neuroscience in December (American programs!). Assuming I do well in Yuki's lab, I'll have recommendations from Yuki, Ken, and hopefully Sam Wang (the biologist I took seminar and went to the Society For Neuroscience conference in Atlanta with senior year), plus the experience in Ken and Yuki's lab, at the cutting edge of fMRI research! ;-)

The only barrier will be, well, my ability. And my interest. But I've got hope that I may make it as a scientist yet. Plus, even if I don't... This is a once in a lifetime chance to work in a futuristic brain-imaging lab in Kyoto, and come away with better Japanese than I ever could have from just my teaching job in Yakage. I'll be writing like a fiend. Wide-eyed like an infant all along, I hope.

I'm still as undecided about my life as ever. But I feel resolved about my future for at least this next step. I may not be able to charm my way much further into my career... But maybe, just maybe, somewhere in this next year I'll find serious direction, apply myself, and start to grow up.

Meantime, my adventure won't stop yet. I'm not through being young yet, and glad not to be.

What all this means for you guys is: You haven't missed your chance to see Kyoto's beautiful fall leaves! You've got three more months when you could visit me in Japan.

I will almost definitely come home to the U.S. in early September, right after my Yakage contract ends and before my gig in Kyoto starts, to bring home my Yakage life, see you guys, my family and Claire. Any of you would be welcome to come see me in Yakage over the summer. From late July through August my life will be low-key. Since my elementary students will be finished school, I'll just be playing with the kindergardeners during the week (any of you could probably tag along), starting to pack up and ship out my house, and prepping about neuroscience stuff for operation Kyoto Brain-reading Adventure. So think about it! please. I'd love to get as many of you guys out here to this country that's come to mean so much to me, before I leave.

DBow's already made his plane reservation for early May. Owen, Brett, James, SD... When might you could come see me and my Japan?

Brain-imaging in Japanese

When I got to Mitani this morning, dressed as "Spidey Santa", the school nurse Kuboyama-sensei had newspaper clippings for me.

Last week, when Kamitani's "Neuron" paper came out on Thursday it made the front page of the Asahi Shinbun (目で見た文字や図形、脳活動からコンピューターが再現 "Letters and Shapes seen with the eye are recreated from brain activity by a computer.") The Asahi is kind of like Japan's NYTimes, one of the two most-read national newspapers, with the Yomiuri. It was also written-up on page 3 of the more local Sanyou Shinbun. Both had some great manga like the ones I've doodled in my notebooks, to illustrate how brain-imaging and pattern classification work. A person imagining a snowman, having his brain decoded and the snowman reproduced on a computer screen. The headlines mention mental images, too: "Dreams and fantasies we can see" was the headline of one:夢や空想見えれかも, yume ya kuusou mierekamo. It's exciting to see the experiment start popping up in the real-world press.

I haven't spotted anything in the mainstream U.S. media yet, but it popped up on pink tentacle through digg.com if anybody wants to read something in English that's not hardcore technical jargon. My friend Adam mentioned the experiment on a train on Saturday, after reading about it on Digg, without ever having heard of it from me ;-)

I spent all afternoon learning how to say things like "brain-imaging", "changes in cerebral blood flow", and "functional magnetic resonance imaging" in Japanese. It's exciting to be learning the vocabulary, and even kanji, I'd need to talk about my thesis in Japan. Let me know if you guys spot the study anywhere else.

p.s. No newspaper yet has mentioned the foreigner who provided mild grammatical help and was credited in small print on page 33. Most papers, true to Japanese style, don't even mention the main author of the paper. Just Kamitani, since he's the 研究室長、the head of the lab. No credit to the little guys...

Simstim

Definitely the coolest science cover I've seen ;-) That roll of "brain film" is actual pictures reproduced from visual-cortex activity, of what people were seeing or reading. This is the first time my name's appeared in a scientific journal. In a brain-reading study from Yuki Kamitani's lab in Kyoto called "Visual image reconstruction from human brain activity." I'm the only non-Japanese name on the paper! I'm credited in the acknowledgments section on the last page for "manuscript editing" (fixing English prepositions and overuse of the word "the", mostly; very scientific). I can send anybody a copy if you're interested to read it.

The paper gets pretty technical in parts, but at least take a look at the first two figures. These are two of the clearest images of brain-pattern classification I've seen, like cartoons of how this science is done. And the pictures of the word "NEURON" reconstructed in real-time from visual-cortex brain activity are eery. I love how the figures illustrate the power of the technique both scientifically-- in terms of "mean square errors"-- and viscerally, in the form of the actual images being decoded direct from the brain. I'm excited to have been attached to this paper in any way, even if my only contribution was English prepositions and articles (If you read a particularly well-used "the", "of", or "in", that may have been me ;-). I really think this is a paradigm shift in brain-imaging... Gone are the days of flaky region-of-interest studies pointing to a hunk of cortex "representing language" or "emotion". If you like this one, definitely check out the Mitchell, 2007 paper from Carnegie Mellon. Those people are decoding words-- novel nouns that the classifier's never seen before!-- from brain pattern's, by defining "meaning" in terms of a noun's frequency of co-ocurrence with certain sensory-motor verbs. Language theory meets biology meets computer science in a really thrilling way.

Speaking of speech. I heard today on the November "Neuropod" podcast on this year's Society For Neuroscience conference (SfN; the conference I went to in Atlanta in senior year; this year in DC) that a neuroscientist and a brain surgeon at BU, Frank Gunter and Dr. Kennedy, have designed a brain-machine interface that can decode speech sounds from neural activity. Speech from thought! Our work is connected to this-- the ultimate clinical goal for all brain-pattern-classification work, like my Spidey experiment in Ken's lab-- to help brain- damaged people regain use of speech and motion and their senses.

This speech-decoder is an implanted electrode in the brain of a guy in Georgia with "locked-in syndrome", who's paralyzed except for his eyes. The coolest part about the brain chip is that it's a "neurotrophic device", meaning that it's filled with nerve food-- neurotrophic factors, nutrients for neurons. So, the axons of the nerves actually grow inside the chip, stitching it in place so it doesn't move relative to the brain. A genuine neural cyborg! The hope is that within five years, this locked-in man who hasn't been able to speak beyond yes/no eye-blinks for years, might be able to talk at speech-speed through a computer's synthesized voice. Amazing stuff huh?

If anyone's interested to hear the podcast, it's the November edition here. Neuropod is the journal Nature Neuroscience's monthly podcast, and I love it. It's at a layman's enough level that someone pretty interested in brain science would get something out of it, and it clues you into the latest cutting edge in research if you happen to not be in academia... So I can get cool new articles sent to me from Greg, my grad student buddy back at Princeton. Brain still hungry for brain. and stomach for dinner.

best from the paddies and brains of japan,
T

夢 Obama's election across the world.

I was hanging my Spidey suit out to dry one evening last week when my neighbor walked by with his dog and introduced himself.

He asked in Japanese if I was American, then whether I support Obama or McCain. When I said Obama, his response was immediate: "If Obama is elected, he will be assassinated." I raised an eyebrow, he explained: "In America, there are lots of guns." I didn't understand the Japanese word for 'assassinate', or was surprised he'd used it, so he held up his hand like a gun to show what he meant. "Like Kennedy, or King-san. Same thing. America is a dangerous place." I finished hanging my Spidey mask, shook the guy's hand and said I'd see him around.

Spiderman told my kids today about America's election, as I taught my last Halloween lessons in costume. I told them Obama had been elected, by 7 million votes, and about the Obama and Sarah Palin jack-o-lanters my Dad carved for last Friday night. I told them the most popular Halloween costumes in the U.S. are monsters, super-heroes, jobs like policeman, doctor and teacher, and this year, Obama and McCain costumes. (Obama costumes sold more than McCain's, according to the BBC). The kids seemed pretty excited at the idea of America's first black president. One second-grade girl, Megumi-chan, said she wanted to vote for Obama too. Her teacher had to tell her she can't vote for President, because she's Japanese. It was sad. At lunch one of the 6th graders asked me a lot of questions about America's political system and history, and quoted Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" (just that sentence, not the speech...). His teacher seemed interested, too, to teach me about Japan's political process, parties, and legislature, and to ask me about ours.

I got a cellphone e-mail after school from my Korean friend Minhee in Japanese, congratulating America on Obama's election. The subject line said 夢 yume: dream. Her message, in emoticons, Japanese characters, and one English sentence, said:

オハヨー [pink music note] [Ohayo = Good morning!]

オバマの当選おめでとう [yellow star] [Congratulations on Obama's election]

We can do it!
感動的だったよ [This makes me believe "we can do it!". I was very moved. [smiley face]]

今日も頑張ってね [Today too, let's do our best, eh? [Minhee's signature winking girl with rabbit ears]

Getting Minhee's message made it worth living abroad on Obama's election night. The excitement being generated by one man in Chicago is palpable on the other side of the globe.

* * *

The school nurse this morning at Nakagawa Shougakko seemed moved by Obama's victory, and envious of me as an American. She told me that Japan's prime minister (大統領　daitouryou; same kanji as "daimyou", feudal lord) is not popularly elected. "Citizens don't choose our leader in Japan," she said in Japanese. She added that she wants to see change in Japan, but it doesn't happen here.

Japan's prime minister is chosen by the Diet: The head of the party with the most seats in the two-house legislature becomes president of the country. These representatives are elected by the citizens, but only about 50% of Japan's eligible voters tend to show up, and the same conservative party, the Liberal Democratic Party (自民党　Jimintou) has run Japan's government continuously since World War II. Almost every prime minister since the war had been a bureacrat in the pre-war government, or a descendant of one, the same aristocratic old boys' network, and the government is overwhelmingly male. Only 7.5% of the Diet is women. In the 2002 election, 10% of the candidates were women but only 5% got elected, despite more than half of the voters being women! In the time from 1989 to 2001, when America had 3 presidents, Japan had no fewer than TWELVE prime ministers-- each forced to resign after a few months or years because of corruption scandals or a vote of no-confidence. Pork-barrel meetings behind closed-doors among old men in suits is really how politics are done in Japan. The Japanese people seem generally apathetic. Almost no Japanese people I've met have political opinions. Most, when you ask, will tell you straight: "I don't care about politics" or "I'm not interested in government."

At taiko practice last night, I asked my friend Yasu why Japanese people aren't more political. I asked in particular about Japan's "Peace Constitution" (平和憲法), which has barely been modified from the version written by the Americans 60 years ago. Yasu shrugged and said "We don't care. It's so old." So it is... but there was a time when it wasn't old, and no one seems to have cared then either. The Constitution is a living document, anyway-- it's the basis of Japanese law. But honestly, no one here cares. "Popular sovereignty" isn't a felt ideal in Japan-- personal freedom and responsibility isn't a political tradition here, and the people here don't seem to feel civic responsibility, or political power. Nationalistic, sometimes racist pride at the purity of the Japanese race, yes, but not civic responsibility, not active involvement in the political process.

Many Japanese politicians don't even have responsible political views. Many are outright right-wing nationalists, and revisionist history deniers-- and few in Japan seem bothered by this. The Prime Minster at the time when we were born, Nakasone (still a popular political figure), said in a speech in 1986 that Japanese are more intelligent than people from multiracial societies, because unlike the U.S., their blood is not tainted by Hispanics and blacks. Nakasone also was the first PM to visit Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead from WWII including convicted war criminals, angering Koreans and Chinese and blurring the line back into official state Shinto. The current prime minister, Aso Tarou, refuses to acknowledge the Korean "comfort women" who were kept as prostitutes by Japanese soldiers in the War, supports the textbook revisions (教科書 作る買い、kyoukasho tsukuru kai) to omit teaching the history of Japan's wartime atrocities in schools. Some of his ministers have denied the Nanjing Massacre, including his tourism minister who was dismissed a month ago for saying that "Japanese don't like foreigners" and that Japan is a proudly mono-ethnic society. The mayor of Tokyo, Ishihara Yoshitsune, is probably the most disturbing. He has repeatedly said that Korea wanted Japan to take it over during its occupation from 1910-1945, and suggested that many Asian countries are better off now, having been Japanese colonies, whereas European and American former colonies are floundering. He also believes that the U.S. used the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima rather than on Germany for racist reasons, ignoring the not insignificant fact that atomic bombs were not tested until July 1945, three months after Germany surrendered. Ishihara is allowed to say racist nationalistic nonsense like this, and nobody within Japan speaks up. Nobody cares.

The nurse's Obama enthusiasm today made me appreciate how rare our "we the people" politics truly is. I feel lucky to have been born American.

Democracy as Science: truth is provisional

Absolutes are anathema to scientists, and liberals. James Madison, the great experimenter-founder of America, stitched the ephemerality, the mutability of all truth into the very fabric of our government, in what Joseph Ellis calls the "evolutionary revolution" of America's founding (American Creation, 3-19).

When I read about James Madison's political philosophy last month in Ellis' American Creation ("The Argument" p. 87-126), I realized that Madison envisioned politics as a scientist would. He founded American government on progressive renewal-- the belief that principles must be challenged continually in order to remain vital, that conflict would stabilize not weaken a democracy, that no politics of individual liberty remains free if it calcifies into conservative doctrine, but must be kept "true" by being debated, questioned, tested. As in the peer review process of science, where any theory is validated with experimental evidence and old theories are continually tested, clarified, sharpened, modernized, by new experiments, American politics should be forever a work in progress.

Obama, as an expert on constitutional law, understands this:
"Its not just absolute power that the founders sought to guard against. Implicit in the Constitution's structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth — the infallibility of any idea or ideology, or theology, or 'ism', any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course."
(From The Audacity of Hope, quoted here.)

Science's assumption about the nature of "truth" is that it doesn't exist. All facts are provisional on experimental evidence. This is why it is silly when Creationists argue that evolution is "just" a theory. That's right, it is a theory, as is all of human knowledge-- but it happens to be a theory that is supported by more empirical evidence, replicable experimental evidence, than, say, the "theory" of Intelligent Design (which isn't a theory because it poses no testable hypotheses to verify). Churchill might have said about natural selection what he did about government: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried". Yes, it's just a theory, inferior perhaps to absolute truth, but it is better than any other theory we've come up with yet-- including the theory of an absolute truth. Scientific "knowledge" is a liquid rather than a solid form of fact, adaptable rather than brittle. It is a body of temporary claims, that today's scientist realizes may be overturned, or better put, re-framed, by the discoveries of tomorrow. We work to make our picture of the world ever clearer, recognizing that the scientists of the future will see a different world than the one we see now, and will adapt our contribution to that newer, more modern reality.

Madison envisioned American politics like this, as a laboratory, "an institutionalized forum for everlasting debate" (125). He came to believe that the best resolution to the argument over central versus state sovereignty was to leave it unresolved, forever . In fact to institutionalize the conflict, to make the tension permanent. That way, competing factions would continually negotiate compromise between two opposing visions of America, allowing neither to dominate unchallenged. John Adams used the same logic in distributing powers among the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches of government, and in keeping the Judiciary independent of the federal government. A distributed network of competing interests insured against consolidation of power, and against political stultification. Ideas that are being constantly debated-- "peer reviewed" in the science language-- never have the chance to calcify into unquestioned facts or political cudgels.

"The genius of Madison's argument," as Ellis writes, "for a version of sovereignty that was at once shared and divided raised the wholly pragmatic and politically painful compromises reached at the Constitutional Convention to the level of a novel political discovery: to wit, the notion that government was not about providing answers, but rather about providing a framework in which the salient questions could continue to be debated" (p. 123).

The role of government: Not to provide answers, but to provide a framework in which the questions can continue to be debated. Discussed. Sounds an awful lot like the kind of world Obama sees.

Hopefully we'll all live in that world, starting tomorrow.