The Scholar's Stage

Science Proceeds One Question at a Time

01 January, 2025Books and Literature, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, Small and Simple Things

MIDWAY through his 900 page history of biology, zoologist Ernst Mayr considers the problem posed by Alfred Wallace. Wallace was a contemporary of Charles Darwin who independently developed a theory of speciation by means of natural selection. By the time Wallace came on the scene Darwin had been sitting on his evolutionary theory for two decades. Reading Wallace’s 1858 paper “On the Tendency of Species to Form Varities” spooked Darwin. He did not want to be scooped. Within a year Darwin had rushed his material into an “abstract which… must necessarily be imperfect” as it only gave “the general conclusions” of his theory, and offered only a “few facts in illustration” to support them. We know this abstract well: it was published as The Origin of Species.

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Republican Debates on China: A Political Compass

31 October, 2024Bargaining and Balancing, Diplomacy, Dogs of War, Entangling Alliances, The Middle Kingdom, The Presidency, Uncategorized

MANY HAVE TRIED to pin Trump to Heritage’s “Project 2025.” The Trump campaign has not only refused to endorse Project 2025—they have refused to endorse any detailed policy plan whatsoever. Trump prefers to keep his options open.

One unanticipated benefit of this approach is that Republicans have spent much of the last year engaged in intensive but open debates over policy. Ambitious politicians, congressional offices, and think tanks have laid out their preferred plans on almost every issue of importance. These plans often differ from each other in striking ways. Absent endorsement from Trump or his campaign, no one quite knows which of these policy packages will eventually be adopted as the Republican standard. The Republicans involved have thus been free to debate the merits and costs of each.

Take China policy.

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Dionysus Against the Daoists

29 September, 2024History, Narrative, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, Religion, Romans and Grecians, The Middle Kingdom

IN WESTERN PHILOSOPHY AND AESTHETICS a contrast is sometimes made between the Dionysian and the Apollonian. Made famous by Nietzsche, this schema was first used to describe the thought and art of Ancient Greece. On the Apollonian end we have all that is rational, intentional, structured, abstract, or well ordered; on the Dionysian side we find all that is passionate, instinctual, chaotic, sensual or protean. The Apollonian strain of western culture is associated with daylight, law, mathematics, sculpture, discipline, and the city; the Dionysian strain is associated with nightfall, violence, poetry, music, drunkenness, and nature. The Apollonian element is stereotypically male; the Dionysian element is stereotypically female. The Apollonian ideal is realized by the solitary philosopher solemn in thought. The model Dionysian is an ecstatic madman frenzied in a crowd.

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Washington DC is Not a Popularity Contest

27 September, 2024Culture

IN 2009 PAUL GRAHAM WROTE A THOUGHTFUL ESSAY titled “Cities and Ambition.” There he proposes that a great city is defined by the sort of ambitions it kindles—or perhaps more accurately, the sort of ambitious it gathers. As Graham puts it:

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The Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the American Tech Elite

21 August, 2024Books and Literature, Community, Complex Systems, The Cybernetic Web

I often draw a distinction between the political elites of Washington DC and the industrial elites of Silicon Valley with a joke: in San Francisco reading books, and talking about what you have read, is a matter of high prestige. Not so in Washington DC. In Washington people never read books—they just write them.

To write a book, of course, one must read a good few. But the distinction I drive at is quite real. In Washington, the man of ideas is a wonk. The wonk is not a generalist. The ideal wonk knows more about his or her chosen topic than you ever will. She can comment on every line of a select arms limitation treaty, recite all Chinese human rights violations that occurred in the year 2023, or explain to you the exact implications of the new residential clean energy tax credit—but never all at once.

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Five Fundamentals of Chinese Grand Strategy

17 August, 2024Geopolitics, The Middle Kingdom

Last month Civic Future invited me to join a panel at their annual policy forum. The topic: what the United Kingdom should do about China. As I am neither a British citizen nor an expert in British affairs, I thought it impolitic to lecture my hosts on how they should be governing their own country. Instead I focused my remarks on the communist government in Beijing. My aim was to lay out several elements of Chinese foreign policy that must be taken into account by statesmen from any Western country.

It will be difficult to guide any nation through the storms of the next two decades; it will be harder still if our leaders chart their course without reference to the fundamental ways, means, and ends of Chinese strategy. These ways, means, and ends are discernible. When you clear out the deadwood and the underbrush you will find that the many branches of Chinese foreign policy spring from five trunks, each vital and deep-rooted.

These can be stated as follows:

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Uber is a Poor Replacement for Utopia

24 July, 2024Complex Systems, Electoral Intrigues, Futuristics, Wealth

Two items of interest passed through my feeds this week. The first is the podcast Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz released to explain why they are endorsing Trump for president. The second is an evocative and viral internet advertisement for careersbuilttolast.com, a slick recruiting website trying to attract young workers to production lines in the maritime industrial base. If you have not seen the ad yet, please watch it now:

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Patronage vs. Constituent Parties (Or Why Republican Party Leaders Matter More Than Democratic Ones)

20 July, 2024Bargaining and Balancing, By The People, Electoral Intrigues, History, The Presidency

The Republican and Democratic parties are not the same: power flows differently within them. The two big political news items of this week—the happenings of the Republican National Convention and the desperate attempts of many Democrats to replace their candidate before their own convention next month—reflect these asymmetries. Nevertheless, many discussions of American politics assume that that the structures and operational norms of the two parties are the same. If these party differences were more widely recognized, I suspect we would see fewer evangelicals frustrated with their limited influence over the GOP party platform, fewer journalists shocked with J.D. Vance’s journey from never-Trump land to MAGA-maximalism, and greater alarm among centrist Democrats about the longer-term influence that the Palestine protests will have on the contours of their coalition.

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More on Xi Jinping’s Industrial Drive + London Meet Up

27 June, 2024Futuristics, Site Announcements, The Middle Kingdom, Things I Do Other Than Blogging

A few items of interest to my readers:

First, at the end of last month I appeared on the German Marshall Fund’s China Global podcast to discuss the CPC’s current techno-industrial drive. You can listen to the full thing on Simplecast, Apple Podcast, or in the embed below:

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Xi Jinping’s Plan to Save China Through Science

08 May, 2024Complex Systems, Dogs of War, Futuristics, The Middle Kingdom, Wealth

Does China have a plan to save its wobbly economy?

Last week in Foreign Policy I argued that it does—but not the sort of plan most Western economists are comfortable with. Western analysts blame slowing growth on a variety of factors: a communist bureaucracy paralyzed by purges and confused by an unfavorable economic environment, ‘animal spirits’ that never recovered after being caged by zero-COVID, a property bubble too large to pop, and most importantly of all, policies that favor state investment in a country where savings rates are too high and consumption rates too low. The question was posed again and time again: how will the PRC surmount these problems?

Beijing answered this question conclusively during the Two Sessions held this March. Li Qiang’s Government Work Report makes clear the government’s priorities for the economy—and everything else. As I summarize in Foreign Policy:

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