Letter

To the Editors:

Let me add my congratulations to the flood, which must now be rolling over you….

If your initial issue is a fair sample of what can be sustained, you will, whether you intend it or not, be more than a review. And if you take this task seriously, you can become a major source for the kind of discussion and criticism that can orient the cultural life of America.

But if you take up that challenge—and I hope you will—I can see that the difficulty you show in obtaining enough reviews and discussion on science may be your Achilles heel. For better or worse, science can no longer be left out of the considerations of any serious review journal. I can very well imagine that you, yourself, are not pleased by the disproportionately small place given to it in your first issue (two out of about 40 reviews), and you very probably are hard at work on this problem anyway. There are more and more important and interesting books written by scientists which have relevance to the general reading public….

GERALD HOLTON

Professor of Physics

Harvard University