Just what does creative, groundbreaking, or brilliant mean? In the possibility that it means asking questions that challenge what we thought it possible to know, On Campus took a page from the Edge Foundation, Inc.

A word of explanation: Edge is an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club, which “held its meetings in Chinese restaurants, artists lofts, the Board Rooms of Rockefeller University, The New York Academy of Sciences, and investment banking firms, ballrooms, museums, and living rooms.” The Edge’s website reports that membership included some of the most interesting minds in the world and that the most challenging evenings were when the speakers presented the questions they were asking themselves.

To challenge our readers, we asked a random sampling of Williams faculty to share with the questions they are asking themselves. You will find the submissions varied: original, visionary, quixotic, profound, difficult, beguiling — and creative.

Why are only 10 percent of students at elite colleges and universities from families with income in the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. income distribution?

David J. Zimmerman
Professor of Economics and Orrin Sage Professor of Political Economy

What can the chemical makeup of gas clouds in the Milky Way Galaxy (and in other galaxies) tell us about how galaxies assembled themselves and, over time, became enriched in many elements, including those needed for life?

Karen B. Kwitter
Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Astronomy

What concrete steps should be taken so that Iraq will be a productive and peaceful nation in the near and distant future?

Magnus T. Bernhardsson
Associate Professor of History

So — how do genomes work?

It’s nice to have complete linear arrays of As, Gs, Cs, and Ts that constitute an organism’s genome, but there is a lot about the functioning of that genome that can’t be read from the DNA sequence or revealed outside of a living cell. For example, whether a stretch of DNA is expressed or not can depend on how it is folded in 3-D space, whether it is in direct contact with other genes in the nucleus, where it is located within the nucleus, or whether it was inherited from Mom or from Dad. DNA in a test tube is a very different thing from a DNA molecule in its living context where it has a history, architecture, and location that add to its character.

Marsha I. Altschuler
Professor of Biology

Why one would try to be better without first trying to be good?

Omar A. Sangare
Assistant Professor of Theatre

There have been civilizations that knew numbers but did not have the concept of zero as a number. So there was a time when the number zero was not known. Did zero exist at that time independent of us knowing about it or is it something we invented? Is the new mathematical concept related to mixing I am working on an invention or an exploration into a pre-existing reality?

Cesar E. Silva
Hagey Family Professor of Mathematics

To what extent did the nature of the local environment determine how people used the land over the past 250 years and in turn how have those land-uses influenced the biological history of the local environment? How enduring are the late 18th and 19th Century land-use legacies on the region’s landscapes and do these legacies give insight into how humans should be using the landscape today?

Henry W. Art
Samuel Fessenden Clarke Professor of Biology

If I had read different novels in my twenties, would I be a markedly different person today? I think of this whenever I assign reading to my students.

Christopher A. Bolton
Assistant Professor of Japanese and Comparative Literature

How and why do we believe what we believe? How much of our belief and perception is based on assumptions we hold sub-consciously, without even being aware we hold them? How are we, individually and collectively, to reconcile and balance reason and faith, reason and emotion?

Peter Just
Professor of Anthropology

I wonder if art can liberate itself from museums and galleries and become an agent in everyday life, transforming the mundane into little acts of grace?

Example: I placed a dozen items on the conveyor and the check out person began to process my order as she greeted me with a polite, “Hello.” She chose the heaviest items to process first, so they could go directly into the bag. To further minimize delay, she limited the movement of her torso and exploited the dexterity of her hands and arms so that items passed from scanner to bag without pause. Once, when a price check was required, she entered the code into the register with one hand, glanced at the readout to check the accuracy of her work, and continued to scan and pack without pause. Through this she kept a pleasant expression and concluded the transaction with “Thank you and have a good day.” This performance was at once a display of her talent and a demonstration of her implicit respect for me, a stranger.

Michael A. Glier
Professor of Art

Is the shape or form of works of art “meaningful,” in itself? In poems, for instance — does the form (the design, and the rules used to arrange the words) do some kind of work all by itself, or does it only work with the meaning of the words?

Peter T. Murphy
Professor of English

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