ake STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
iy STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305

 

; August 15, 1974
STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Department of Genetics
(415) 497-5052

Dr. Z.J. Lipowski
Department of Psychiatry
Dartmouth Medical School
Hanover, New Hampshire 03755

Dear Dr. Lipowski,

I appreciate your having sent me your manuscript and reprints
March 17, The reasons for the delay in my response would ordinarily be
appropriate for an apology, but are too congruent with your own theme
to require one here! I hope my comments may still be useful,

Your 1971 paper (Beh. Sci.) was more interesting to me than your
new draft which I thought was so indiscriminating in the range of
topics as to diminish its utility for the intended audience. Perhaps
if you had placed your admirable theoretical formulation (p. 33ff)
first, I would have been less impatient with the prior development
which did indeed appear to be simplistically reductionistic. But if
you use that framework, would you spend so much space on non-meaningful
and aversive inputs? Science, on the other hand, is not the place
for a detailed analytical justification of a theoretical system.

Please do not misunderstand: I accept the importance of your
thesis and agree (p.37) that it warrants attention by scientists.
Your 1971 paper is, I thought, closer to the appropriate vehicle,
It would then profit from some tighter analysis - and perhaps more
examples relevant to scientists’ life style ~ that might distinguish 44 nt
different kinds of overload. °

Your new draft seemed to place less stress on the intrapsychic _*
stress of surfeit - an idea that seems introspectively quite sound. ae
Was that calculated?

Theory in my unoriginal view is the main tool we have for
coping with a surfeit of information, I guess I am urging that
principle on you in these remarks about your draft, and that you
undertake rather more responsibility in organizing and filtering
“highly diverse and widely scattered reports" for the particular
audience to which this paper is directed.

I will be most interested to hear of further progress in your
work; and again, thank you for the privilege of seeing it.

Sincerely yours,

JL/rr Joshua Lederberg, Professor of Genetics
LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LARORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE

AR Maden , unter.