-ologies


  • Book review, Title The Double Helix: Norton Critical Edition, Author James D. Watson, Gunther Stent, Rating 5.0,

    The Double Helix: Norton Critical Edition

    James D. Watson, Gunther Stent

    Book review

    Reviews,  Science

    Honest Jim

    Watson's superb account of his and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA. It is the rarest of books: a scientific page-turner, with suspense, strong personalities and a child-like narrator.

  • Book review, Title Darwin On Trial, Author Phillip E. Johnson, Rating 3.0,

    Darwin On Trial

    Phillip E. Johnson

    Book review

    Religion,  Reviews,  Science

    Wide of the Mark

    Johnson's book provides a perspective on creationist thinking and argumentation. It demonstrates that attorneys are trained to advocate, to argue, not to look hard for the best understanding.

  • Book review, Title Gravity, Author George Gamow, Rating 4.5,

    Gravity

    George Gamow

    Book review

    Reviews,  Science

    Gamow on Gravity

    Those genuinely curious about the intellectual story of gravity will find Gamow a superb teacher, one adept at explaining physics to the uninitiated,and to the newly initiated, high school and college students, most effectively to an audience comfortable with algebra and geometry.

  • Book review, Title Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, Author Brenda Maddox, Rating 4.5,

    Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA

    Brenda Maddox

    Book review

    History,  Reviews,  Science

    The Dark Lady of DNA

    Rosalind Franklin made critical contributions to the discovery of DNA's structure, yet was not awarded the Nobel. Why not? Rank villainy? Maddox's masterful recounting lays out the complex tale.

  • Book review, Title A Brief History Of Time, Author Stephen W. Hawking, Rating 4.5,

    A Brief History Of Time

    Stephen W. Hawking

    Book review

    Reviews,  Science

    Short and sweet

    A Brief History of Time is the single best popularized science book I have read to date on the subject of modern physics. It has been held that kind of regard since it has been published in 1988, but I resisted reading it, because I had formed the opinion that modern physics, buried so deeply in mathematical models divorced from everyday experience, was simply too difficult to convey to the non-practitioner, that vast group including myself.

  •   -PD-US, modified.

    Attrib: modified, PD-US.

     

    Essays,  Science

    The moons of Jupiter

    The fascination of astronomy for me, beyond the beauty of the night sky, beyond the immense imponderables of a vast and ancient universe, is that our understanding of the universe has been gleaned by observing a few points of light in the sky. One illustration of this can be found in the history of our knowledge of the moons of Jupiter.
  • Book review, Title The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction, Author Peter Atkins, Rating 3.0,

    The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction

    Peter Atkins

    Book review

    Reviews,  Science

    Entropy is so simple

    Peter Atkins, a bona fide chemistry professor, takes a shot at summarizing the Laws of Thermodynamics, particularly the 2nd Law, for the million. He claims that when he is done explaining, you will understand how all change of any kind occurs, why death itself must come, even how the unfolding of the very thoughts you are employing to read his book is a consequence of the 2nd Law. Alas his explanations fall short of such a lofty goal.

  •   -PD-US, .

    PD-US.

     

    Reviews,  Science

    Pandora has many boxes

    The ability to directly and much more easily modify the genome of any living organism, via somatic or germline modification, has become a reality via CRISPR-Cas9 techniques. Chinese scientist He Jiankui recently claimed to have opened yet another of Pandora's seemingly endless set of boxes: Germline gene editing. Jennifer Doudna's recent book A Crack in Creation, a must-read, warns about premature application of CRISPR-Cas9.

  • Book review, Title The Beak Of The Finch, Author Jonathan Weiner, Rating 4.0,

    The Beak Of The Finch

    Jonathan Weiner

    Book review

    Reviews,  Science

    A Finch in Time

    The Beak of the Finch follows a husband and wife scientific team, Peter and Rosemary Grant, in their studies of Darwin's finches on Daphne Major island in the Galapagos archipelago, looking for evidence of natural selection. They have spent twenty years observing the finch population for direct evidence of natural selection. They concluded from these observations that natural selection is occurring daily.

  • Book review, Title Perfect Rigor, Author Masha Gessen, Rating 3.5,

    Perfect Rigor

    Masha Gessen

    Book review

    Reviews,  Science

    Too simply pure

    The Poincaré conjecture, one of the great unsolved topological problems, was finally proven at the end of the 20th century by Grigoriy Perelman, a Russian mathematician of genius. Topology might be described as distilled geometry. The historian Masha Gessen, who grew up herself in the Russian mathematical culture, invites us into the Aspergian milieu of world-class geometers to tease out the tale.

  •   -PD-US, .

    PD-US.

     

    Religion,  Reviews

    Reforming progress

    Calvinist philosophy professor Theodore Plantinga suggests that 'post-Enlightenment' Protestants, so as to act progressively or correctly in support of individual liberties, should embrace the Protestant faith, building their responses to the world on the foundation of Calvin and Luther, rather than embrace 'short-sighted' Enlightenment ideas. How does Plantinga justify his view that the societal direction of Western civilization can be improved by eschewing the Enlightenment influence and replacing it with the Reformational Christian outlook of the 16th century?

  •   -PD-USGOV, .

    PD-USGOV.

     

    Observations,  Politics-Government,  Religion

    Apocalyptic politics

    Donald Trump's latest international provocation, the decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, marches Trump-backing evangelicals a step closer to their deeply held desire for the fulfillment of Biblical end-times prophecies. A recent CNN article by Diana Bass suggests that, for many evangelicals, Jerusalem is about prophecy, not politics. I would partially agree: It is about prophecy, but it is also explicitly about politics.

  • Book review, Title The Laws of Medicine, Author Siddhartha Mukherjee, Rating 3.5,

    The Laws of Medicine

    Siddhartha Mukherjee

    Book review

    Reviews,  Science

    Are there Laws of Medicine?

    Modern medicine began embracing scientific methods during the last couple of centuries, and in the past one hundred years this has produced an explosion of medical technologies that have aided physicians in significantly controlling some diseases and in particular, extending lives. Today in developed countries, many tests are available for diagnosis and many drugs are available for possible treatment. So why can't physicians today just run a comprehensive battery of tests for every sick patient and spit out a clear diagnosis, and with that, a clear prognosis and plan for a cure? Siddhartha Mukherjee proffers an answer via his Laws of Medicine.

  •  Galaxy NGC 1300 -PD-USGOV, NASA, modified.

    Galaxy NGC 1300. Attrib: NASA, modified, PD-USGOV.

     

    Religion,  Science

    Evolution + Intelligent Design = 42

    Are evolutionary biology, intelligent design and the existence of God compatible? A reasonable case can be made for it, particularly if one relaxes their culture warrior muscles for a moment, and considers the argument that: science offers little tangible evidence of abiogenesis, the spontaneous creation of life from inanimate material, leaving room for God as the creator of the initial life forms; that God could just as well have created the remainder of life via the slow mechanism of biological evolution. This is not a new argument, and finds a much larger audience than the shouters like to acknowledge.

  •   -PD, Forluvoft, modified.

    Attrib: Forluvoft, modified, PD.

     

    Science

    Has Lamarckism been revived?

    Epigenetic studies are burgeoning; these genetic mechanisms that are external to direct DNA/RNA encoding and expression are being intensively studied, particularly how environmental factors can stimulate methylation and acetylation of bases of DNA or histone proteins, which then affects the expression of specific gene activity. Is epigenetic modification heritable, and if so, does this represent a revival of Lamarckism?

  •   -CC-BY-SA-3.0, Scotted400.

    Attrib: Scotted400, CC-BY-SA-3.0.

     

    Observations,  Science

    Large Scale Genomics in Beijing

    Beijing Genomics Institute, BGI, situated in Shenzhen, on the border between Guangdong and Hong Kong, claims the title of the world's biggest Genomics institute. Their president Jian Wang said, 'For the last 500 years, you (the West) have been leading the way with innovation. We are no longer interested in following.' The scale of their sequencing capability is large, as are their goals: to crack hunger, illness, evolution - and the genetics of human intelligence.
  •   -CC BY 2.5, Dietmar Nill, PLoS Computational Biology, July 2009.

    Attrib: Dietmar Nill, PLoS Computational Biology, July 2009, CC BY 2.5.

     

    Education,  Science

    Evolutionary zinger: Bats, moths and mites

    When Fred Rickson taught his section of General Biology at Oregon State, I made sure to attend all of his lectures, as he opened them with his evolutionary zingers, hoping that his students would would be enticed to be more prompt than usual.  My favorite was his zinger about the three-way symbiotic relationship between a bat, a moth, and a mite.
  •   -PD, .

    PD.

     

    Education,  Science

    Evolutionary zinger: Ants and acacia trees

    I treasure the science education I obtained at Oregon State University. One standout class was General Biology, a portion of which was taught by professor Fred Rickson. He did not like people slipping in late, so he gave short teasers promptly at the start of the hour, which he entitled evolutionary zingers, hoping that his students would enjoy the stories sufficiently to show up on time. It definitely worked for me. I was not in the habit of attending a lot of lectures, but the intricate stories of complex life told by professor Rickson were as attractive to me as nectar "fountains" are to acacia ants, the subject of one of his zingers.
  • Book review, Title What Is Life?, Author Erwin Schrödinger, Rating 4.5,

    What Is Life?

    Erwin Schrödinger

    Book review

    History,  Reviews,  Science

    The physical sublety of life

    I recently re-read portions Erwin Schroedinger's amazing little book What is Life?, which was a post-war stimulus for a number of physicists to switch from physics to biology and look hard for a physical understanding of living organisms.

  • Book review, Title Flora of the Pacific Northwest, Author C. Hitchcock, A. Cronquist, Rating 4.0,

    Flora of the Pacific Northwest

    C. Hitchcock, A. Cronquist

    Book review

    Memoirs,  Reviews,  Science

    Of ovules and ovaries

    Flora of the Pacific Northwest is an excellent dichotomous key of indigenous regional flora. It served as one of my texts for a college class in Systematic Botany, which I feared would be deathly dull, and so proved the lectures, but the laboratory unexpectedly turned out to be a rewarding journey exploring the world without and the world within.

  • Book review, Title The Global Public Square, Author Os Guinness, Rating 2.5,

    The Global Public Square

    Os Guinness

    Book review

    Politics-Government,  Religion,  Reviews

    Halting steps to soul freedom

    Os Guinness' The Global Public Square oscillates between a Utopian call for a universal human rights and a sectarian application of those rights, as if the author was of two minds, wrestling with the views of Roger Williams and James Dobson.

  •   -CC0 PD, .

    CC0 PD.

     

    Education,  Essays,  Philosophy

    Life, education, and life-long learning

    We each are given a precious life and can choose to do with it what we will. We can act in our natural self-interest and seek safety, material wealth and pleasure, or we can act outside of our direct interests, enriching our lives through the consideration of others. Our lives are most meaningful and worthwhile when we love others. The elements of life to be savored most are those that are founded on the humble idea that we are all human beings who are worthy of consideration.
  • Book review, Title When I Was a Child I Read Books, Author Marilynne Robinson, Rating 5.0,

    When I Was a Child I Read Books

    Marilynne Robinson

    Book review

    Essays,  Religion,  Reviews

    The capacious heart of Marilynne Robinson

    Every few odd years Marilynne Robinson has produced a book of essays, notably Absence of Mind and The Death of Adam. The latest arrival is When I was a Child I Read Books: Essays. The best of Robinson shines in these latest essays: In them she lays out her vision of the American Dream, celebrating the strengths of the American way of life, marked by its liberality (individual freedom), sense of community, and generosity, each informed by a non-sectarian respect for the soul.

  • Book review, Title What Paul Meant, Author Garry Wills, Rating 4.0,

    What Paul Meant

    Garry Wills

    Book review

    Religion,  Reviews

    Paul, simply

    In What Paul Meant, Garry Wills translates the authentic Pauline letters himself, and combines a careful translation of the koiné Greek with modern scholarship to suggest that Paul, who is the modern intellectual's favorite whipping boy as the man who distorted Jesus' message, is in fact a faithful interpreter of the Jesus of the Gospels.

  • Book review, Title The Origins of Modern Science, Author Herbert Butterfield, Rating 4.5,

    The Origins of Modern Science

    Herbert Butterfield

    Book review

    History,  Reviews,  Science

    The Origins of Modern Science

    Herbert Butterfield, in his book The Origins of Modern Science, tells the story of the development of modern science by focusing on the ideational changes in what is now referred to as science from the late Middle Ages until the advent of the French Revolution, with primary emphasis on the development of the modern understanding of motion. This is a brilliant choice, as it was the development of a robust physical and mathematical model of motion that allowed Newton to unite terrestrial and astronomical physics into a universal set of physical laws describing mechanics.

  • Book review, Title Protestantism And Progress, Author Ernst Troeltsch, Rating 4.0,

    Protestantism And Progress

    Ernst Troeltsch

    Book review

    History,  Religion,  Reviews

    The origins of modern society

    Ernst Troeltsch was a fin de siècle Protestant theologian who wrote Protestantism and Progress: A Historical Study of Protestantism and the Modern World. This work, along with his friend Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, both written just before World War I, are reasoned historical treatments of the influence of Protestantism on the perceived and potential progress of Western society. They provide effective contrast to the often simplistic and one-sided efforts by Protestant Evangelicals to do the same, such as Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live?

  • Observations,  Science

    The many ways of misusing quantum physics

    Doctor Moriarty, that is physicist Phil Moriarty, holds forth on the various ways of misapplying quantum mechanics, to philosophy, religion, and just about anything but the world of the atom for which it was constructed.  He is charmingly cranky about such "Woo".

  •   -PD-US, adapted from <em>Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition</em>, by Cristiano Banti.

    Attrib: adapted from Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition, by Cristiano Banti, PD-US.

     

    Religion,  Reviews

    My favorite inquisitor

    Since all other than orthodox is heretical by definition, it is thereby 'Bad Religion.' Ross, a practicing Catholic, argues that Christianity is a highly paradoxical religion whose orthodox views provide a necessary and hard won synthetic narrative providing the one true way. The argument is not very compelling, particularly as it contains the usual demagogic description of American society as corrupted, long in decline, whose only salvation is embracing his orthodoxy. (Yawn ... the ancient clarion call of the entrenched and the reactionary.)

  • Book review, Title People of the Book, Author Geraldine Brooks, Rating 4.0,

    People of the Book

    Geraldine Brooks

    Book review

    History,  Religion,  Reviews

    Convivencia is a state of mind

    Geraldine Brook's historical novel, People of the Book, tells the fascinating and uplifting story of how people of different faiths created and protected a Jewish book of worship known as the Sarajevo Haggadah for over five hundred years, a period marked by much religious conflict.

  •   -PD-USGOV, .

    PD-USGOV.

     

    Observations,  Religion

    To the power of love

    Pope Francis, recently elected, has my attention and admiration.  I must admit to having been uninterested in those men who have occupied the papacy during my lifetime; I am not a Catholic, nor particularly religious for that matter.   But Francis seems different: He has humbly eschewed the pomp of the office, worries aloud and often about the poor, opens the door to all, emphasizes a loving attitude towards homosexuals (contrary to so many fundamentalists of various religions), openly questions the excesses of the marketplace, has recently taken steps to deal more honestly with the pedophilia issues within his Church, and emphasizes much more the mystery of God rather than the rigid confines of orthodoxy and doctrine.

  •   -PD-US, Oren Jack Turner.

    Attrib: Oren Jack Turner, PD-US.

     

    Essays,  Philosophy,  Science

    Fuzziness is all

    Alongside Newton's powerful physical model of the universe came a growing belief that the universe in principle was deterministic, that the rules by which the universe behaved could be discovered and modeled, were repeatable, and could be in principle exactly or absolutely determined. Absolute determinism came under serious question with the advent of subatomic physics at the start of the 20th century, more or less collapsing in the face of problems insoluble with the physics of Newton and Maxwell, and only explicable by using the new quantum mechanics, which posits that natural phenomena could be modeled at the highest attainable precision only by using explicitly probabilistic models, that is, by building into the models a modicum of fuzziness.