hand. This conclusion would commend itself to almost all scholars because the philosophical digression seems to be based on Plato's earlier Theory o[ Ideas, whereas the Seventh Letter must be late. If Plato did not write the Seventh Letter, then who? There is extant

a letter attributed to Plato's nephew and successor as head of the academy, Speusippus, written to Philip of Macedon. When the de tests were ap- plied, the consonance between this work and the Seventh Letter turned out to be extraordinary, and the exalting possibility arose that Speusippus rather than Plato wrote the 'platonic' Seventh Letter. But one or two other works, namely the Critias and portions of the Laws, seem to be influenced by these same stylistic patterns. Work is still going forward to determine: (a) whether the difference between the style of the dialogues and the

style of the Seventh Letter, Speusippus' Letter and the Critias could be influenced by the fact that most of the Platonic writing is in dialogue form, whereas the three above-mentioned works are straight- forward narrative; and

(b) whether Speusippus played an editorial part not only in these three works but also in some parts of the Laws, and possibly also the Tirnaeus, which does not seem to be a homogeneous work. This is, let us repeat, a preliminary report and work is still proceed-

ing. This development, without making exaggerated claims, does seem to hold out the possibility of introducing objectivity and mathematical staffs- tics into a field which has in the past been far too subjective.

The New Center for Research at the

University of Pennsylvania By Bernard W. Wishy A Center for Computer-Oriented Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences has been established at the University of Pennsylvania. It will work in three areas: in information and instruction, it will publish peri- odic indexes of all known work in the humanities and social sciences using computers; it will conduct special courses and seminars on campus for Pennsylvania faculty and students; and it will provide research facili- ties for national and foreign fellows of the Center. Its organization will aid in the creation of various models to provide for scholars in the human- ities and the social sciences more extensive data processing services, in. duding those of specialized systems analysts and programmers

The University of Pennsylvania's Computer Center next summer will install an IBM System/360 Model 67. Eventually, this computer will be capable of connecting hundreds of users simultaneously with the central processing unit through such devices as console typewriters and small dis- play screens located in faculty offices, laboratories, and libraries. These changes are likely to affect fimdamentally the org~ni:,~tion of the scholarly" community and its means of communication, the standards of research

Bernard IV. IVishy is on the history/a¢#lty o/the University o/Pennsylvania and the di/rector o/the new [aeility he describes.

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and intellectual performance, and the undergraduate and graduate cur- riculum.

A t the new Center, studies on the work of computers in various humanistic and social science fields will be commissioned. These will consist of essays describing the history and special problems of computer usage in a humanity or social science, followed by a series of papers illus- trating various computer applications. This Center will be the first in the world to take a national and international view of what are, in fact, common problems now being approached by individual scholars working in isolated areas.

The Center's concerns are primarily scholarly, not technological. It has not been established to do things with machines just for the sake of the technology involved. Our primary purpose will be to present the University of Pennsylvania as a model and as an international training and information institution, showing what can be done to advance the use of computers by students and teachers in the humanities and social sciences. We shall be involved in basic research on broad general areas such as content analysis. We also hope to establish links between com- puters and photographic files for storage and retrieval.

The first project of the Center m see fruition is a series of lectures on 'The Un.iversity and the New Technology," now being given monthly to invited guests. The opening lecture on "Intellectuals and Tectmological Innovation" was delivered by Dr. Bernard Barber, professor of sociology at Columbia University. This was followed by a talk by Dr. Edison Mont- gomery, president of the Inter-Universiry Communications Council (EDUCOM), who discussed his 42-institution group's plans to develop a national communications network linking the computer centers of uni- versities, libraries, medical schools and other institutions. Other lectures i~ the series will include a description of changes computers are bringing about in the analysis of literary texts and a discussion of the problems in phnning the new computer-oriented campus of the University of Cali- fornia at Irvine.

Now being planned is a course, probably offered without credit at first, in which we plan to examine some of the principal types of computer applications in the humanities and social sciences. Without delving into programming, this course for graduate students, faculty members and selected undergraduates will describe resources available at Pennsylvania and elsewhere so that interested scholars can properly hunch computer- oriented research projects.

Increasingly many academic persons are involved in national and international projects concerned with the rationalized use of this new technology for the general convenience of their scholarly guilds. These projects involve data banks, information retrieval, bibliography control, and other automated or semi-auromated systems. Most American univer- sity computing centers, however, are still oriented predominantly towards scientific and administrative work. The special needs of other scholars are dimly understood and poorly aided. The University of Pennsylvania's new Center is dedicated to ending the frustrations of such scholars.

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