Tripping History

The week between Christmas and New Year's is a perennial gathering time for the academic clans, who convene in hotel ballrooms around the land to discuss the use of dependent clauses in Hamlet or the number of DNA molecules that can fit on the head of a pin. These occasions usually range from the merely boring to the achingly tedious. Sometimes there are exceptions, provoked by hostility or humor (see SCIENCE). Last week, at the American Historical Association meetings in New York City, Professor James Parsons of the University of California's Riverside campus proposed that his colleagues use psychedelic drugs to expand their understanding of the past.

With perceptions heightened by drugs, said Parsons, a man might "reach a greater understanding of early China by investigating the fondness that the ancient Chinese had for the particularly exotic dish of bear paws." Or a researcher who wanted to understand President James K. Polk, suggested the professor, could hole up for two years in an ante-bellum Tennessee mansion, read the books Polk would have read, ride horseback through the countryside and trip out occasionally on drugs--all in order to put himself inside Folk's psyche. Parsons' point is that historians too often neglect what he calls the "emotional dimension" of history. He is probably right, but using LSD to re-create the Spirit of '76 might make the upcoming bicentennial celebration a bit more than most Americans bargain for.

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