Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan
A. General Works
Human Activities in the Quest for Knowledge
Collection: The Providence Athenaeum is a Greek Revival building whose bookcase end panels rise to the ceiling, evoking the columns of a Greek temple (2015).Reading: “Reading is not history.” — sign at Wardah Books, Singapore (2016).Observation: Sydney Observatory on a hill above Port Jackson (2008). Once used for astronomical timekeeping; the yellow time ball atop the tower signaled the exact time to ships by rising and dropping.Calculation: HOKUSAI SailingShip, a supercomputer at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) in Wako, Japan, has been operational since 2020 (2024).Experiment: High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Japan’s largest particle-physics laboratory, in Tsukuba (2024). Its accelerators collide electrons and positrons at nearly the speed of light to produce and observe composite particles, enabling precision tests of fundamental physics.Thinking: The Thinker, originally created for The Gates of Hell but often regarded as an icon of contemplation, on view at the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia (2015).Research: The study room of Kumagusu Minakata (1867–1941), a Japanese naturalist, biologist, and folklorist, in Tanabe (2023). He spent time in the U.S. and U.K., published many papers in Nature, and later pursued independent research and conservation work in Tanabe.Diffusion: A mimeograph machine that helped diffuse knowledge in Singapore, displayed at the Malay Heritage Centre (2016).Interaction: In 1743, Benjamin Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society, the first learned society in America dedicated to the exchange and development of ideas, in Philadelphia (2015).
