Remembering William Magill Thompson

I heard last week from the stepson of my friend and colleague, Bill Thompson, that he had died at his home in Sheepscot, Maine on April 24, 2017.  He was 90. Bill was one of Princeton, New Jersey’s best-known residential architects, designing several hundred homes during his seventy-year career. He was also a high school counselor, college admissions consultant, Navy radio operator, psychologist, and writer. He would gladly have been known simply as an “environmental psychologist,” because he believed in that the built environment had a profound effect on one’s well being. Everything he designed, from garages to schools, reflected his belief that architecture could make people happier, more comfortable, more fully human in every way.

We spent many hours together discussing architecture, fine arts, literature, politics, and other topics of mutual interest. Though I knew Bill only during his final twenty or so years, he became a trusted friend who enriched my life immensely. I will miss him. I promised that I would not let his work be forgotten.

Bill’s ultimate claim to success in his profession was the fact that almost every one of his house clients became a friend once the building was occupied. He would visit owners all over the U.S., offering advice on how to maintain their dwellings, and often design second houses or additions in future years. Sons, daughters, nieces and nephews would telephone him asking for designs after they had grown up in one of his houses. Most retained their value, or increased it, over the decades. His psychological understanding of clients was so acute that he seldom took on a commission that might result in an unsatisfactory relationship or design. Few architects have that kind of wisdom.

That is not to say that his personal and professional life was free from conflict or misfortune. He was married three times, and had a turbulent childhood in Wisconsin, where his father struggled to earn a living during the Depression. His education at Yale was interrupted by World War II. He left Milwaukee for Florida and later Princeton, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Architecture in 1959. By 1963 he had begun to practice independently, but was always restless with the strictures of the profession, taking more than one sabbatical to pursue other interests.

This resulted in a peripatetic, unsettled life for Bill and his multiple families, but one that was enriched and broadened by varied experiences. Bill Thompson was ever the Renaissance Man, and I loved that about him. Look for more about him in a future post.

Twenty-first Century Brains

Though the 1990s were dubbed, the “decade of the brain” by scientists, there is something extraordinary occurring in the present decade that shouldn’t be ignored. Some of the brain research done during the end of the last century has spurred scientists and humanists to think differently about many things. The leaders in this renaissance of brain science and philosophy are writing books and articles for a lay audience–so many it’s been hard to keep up with them (though I have tried my best to do so).

My favorite “brainiacs” in the field are Antonio Damasio, Daniel Dennett, Eric Kandel, Paul Bloom and Merlin Donald. Each has written several books pressing society to more seriously consider new discoveries about the brain and its workings in our daily lives.

Damasio famously debunked Cartesian dualism (the mind-body problem) and unveiled the complex palette of emotions built into our nervous system. Dennett “explained” consciousness from both a philosophical and scientific perspective. Kandel gave us a masterpiece about the neuroscience of “memory” and subsequent books about art.  Bloom spent his career studying how babies develop an inner sense of “moral” judgment. Donald gave us a theory of how the human “mind” evolved from the brains of early hominids over hundreds of thousands of years.

I have just finished a new book by Dennett, entitled From Bacteria to Bach and Back. Dan has never been one to overlook a pun when it serves his purpose as a writer. In it he attempts to synthesize much of the brain science and evolutionary theory that have informed his philosophy. Reviewers have praised the book for its broad sweep and lively writing, and I found it fascinating, though too clever by half.

Two of the big ideas in BBB are intended to shake things up: the concept of “memetics” as a science, and the radical idea that consciousness is “an evolved user interface” with the outside world. For anyone interested in philosophy or cultural history, these perspectives are fascinating.

The news here is that brain scientists are pressing society to take note of the major discoveries that will change the way we live in the very near future–through advances in medicine, pharmacology, behavioral science, psychotherapy and other fields–transforming the world for the better. Robert Sapolsky’s Behave is a case in point–a Stanford professor on the talk show circuit explaining the evolution of the human brain to TV viewers. A generation of brilliant researchers is breaking out of their laboratories and taking to the streets. Watch out, they’re dangerous, like wild baboons.