About Dædalus

Dædalus became an open access journal in 2021. 
We are grateful to the members and donors who help to make this possible through their support of the Academy. 
The editors of Dædalus also thank you for your patience while they work to digitize the back catalog.

Representing the intellectual community in its breadth and diversity, Dædalus explores the frontiers of knowledge and issues of public importance.

Dædalus was founded in 1955 and established as a quarterly in 1958. The journal’s namesake was renowned in ancient Greece as an inventor, scientist, and unriddler of riddles. Its emblem, a maze seen from above, symbolizes the aspiration of its founders to “lift each of us above his cell in the labyrinth of learning in order that he may see the entire structure as if from above, where each separate part loses its comfortable separateness.”

Drawing on the enormous intellectual capacity of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, whose members are among the world’s most prominent thinkers in the sciences, humanities, arts, and social sciences, as well as the professions and public life, each issue of Dædalus features multidisciplinary, authoritative essays centered on a theme or subject.

Dædalus continues the volume and numbering system of Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which ceased publication under that title with volume 85 in 1958.

To request a PDF of any Dædalus issue or essay not yet available on our website, please write to daedalus@amacad.org.

Dædalus is also accessible through JSTOR and MIT Press.