Mathematicians and scientists search for theories and equations in which physical properties and their relationships are explained with the fewest words and symbols. Pythagoras neatly formulated how to calculate the length of a triangle’s hypotonus as the square root of the sum of the squares of its two sides. Copernicus offered a path to our understanding of the seemingly confounding movement of planets in the night sky with the simple assertion that the earth rotates on an axis and it and the other planets rotate around the sun, facilitating Kepler’s subsequent succinct explanations of planetary motion.

Most of us intuit that it is within the brain that all our thinking takes place, where our minds, the feeling of a self, the experience of our own existence resides (“I Think Therefore I Am” as Rene Descartes put it). But we now know that our brain and our mind are not the same even though we, the descendants of the Age of Enlightenment, tend to conflate them.

In 1998 the scientist/philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers published a short paper in which they introduced the concept of “The Extended Mind” by which they meant that the generator and receiver of thoughts and feelings that we call the mind locates not within our brains, but within our environments. Our minds in their words are “embodied, embedded, and situated” meaning residing within and throughout our bodies, our relationships (with other people) and our physical settings.

That we need to better care for our environment seems self-evident, but environmentalists are not my favorite people. That anyone faced with an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy should discern for themselves how best to handle their situation with respect for the lives of everyone involved seems right, but pro-life and pro-choice activists are annoying, as are gun rights and social justice activists. While certainly at the right time and in the right place, activism can be occasionally effective (1960s civil rights) - it has never been our thing, ideology even less. We’re more into ideas and action-- theory and practice.

Toward the end of an interview with a kid recently, we asked, “who are some of your favorite architects, dead or alive?” with the caveat that there was no right answer. We wanted an understanding or feeling for his point of view, what he valued in his education and work. His response was “hmmm, no one’s ever asked me that question” and he could not answer it. Steve and I thought and did not say: “Really? There is no one you can think of (and really no one has ever asked you)?” His answer would have been, it appeared, a resigned “no.” No need to ask or answer, the sense of defeat was palpable.

A 19th-century German philosopher first named such a state of mind, one in which there is nothing of value or to value, nothing to live for, just sustained apathy. He called it “Nihilism” and he was Friedrich Nietzsche. The idea was, like German romanticism, melodramatic, but to not miss his point he was talking not about an individual’s state of mind, but rather a collective state of mind, meaning not individual but shared values. It was possible, he thought, that a group of people (a state or nation) could be made up of individuals with individual values and live in a state of nihilism--no shared values, little to nothing in common to live for, no sustained vitality as a society.

In America, we recoil from political elitism in Washington and state capitols. We resent that our elected and appointed leaders are not “just like us” that they seem to think they know more than us, that they hang out more with each other than with us. In the popular imagination, anyone can be president (or a senator or congressman) and therefore they should act accordingly, they should act like us. We are starting to feel the same about professionals, even doctors and attorneys, financiers, and university professors with tenure. Oddly, we don’t feel the same about actors and musicians and athletes. We readily accept their elitism. It seems the more formal the education the less regard afforded.

Clearly, we have a problem in America with science. Most prominently are the examples of the anti-vaxxers and the climate deniers, but the examples are many. There are still parents who believe, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that vaccines administered at infancy cause autism in children and not long ago, it was controversial to suggest that ingested smoke of any kind caused cancer despite the evidence borne of the science.

But it hasn’t always been that way. Without our confidence in Newton (laws of gravity), Kepler (laws of planetary motion), Liebniz (calculus), Oersted, Volta, Tesla and Edison (electricity), Goddard (rocket propulsion), Marconi (wireless communication), and Turing (computer science) as well as countless others like them, we never would have put a man on the moon in 1969 (although there are those, however marginalized, who still believe we never did). That success among others engendered dutiful confidence in science and it has come to permeate every area of our life. We now have food science, exercise science, and sleep science. One wonders how we ever got along without science.

Our ridgetop homes, our beach houses and cabins in the woods, our country houses and Hawaiian estates, our panoramic views and private parks-- our front yards and back yards-- our swimming pools and hot tubs, our outdoor kitchens and barbecue grills, our tropical gardens and evergreen lawns, our drip irrigation systems and automatic sprinklers, our very own tennis courts and basketball hoops and driving ranges and bowling alleys. Alright.

Our entry halls and powder rooms, grand stairs, and great rooms. Our family rooms and rec rooms and media rooms and TVs in every room. Our billiards rooms, personal gyms, dens, home offices, and home theaters. Our meditation rooms, sewing rooms, and craft rooms. Our wine cellars, utility rooms and mud rooms, walk-in pantries and walk-in closets, our his and her bathrooms, giant master bedrooms and sitting rooms and vanities and side-by-side king-size beds. Terrific.

Buildings are inherently unsafe. They can catch fire, break apart and fall on you, trap you, and trip you. They can be disorienting and inhibit free movement. And therefore, aside perhaps from the health care industry, there is no industry that is more regulated than the planning, design, and construction industry. (We are amused by the growing cacophony of big tech’s whiny protestations against even the mere wisp of a fledgling regulatory regime that might cramp their technocratic Ayn Rand-inspired libertarian enterprise.)