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  Philosophy On Doing Otherwise [long_description] The claim that to act freely is to be able to do otherwise has become the reigning assumption of the free-will debate, and the lever by which determinists such as Robert Sapolsky, in Determined, dismiss free will as an illusion. David Berlinski subjects the claim to a sustained logical analysis, tracing what "could have done otherwise" must mean across its modal and causal commitments, and reaches a contrary conclusion: that acting freely is a matter of how one acts, not of what one might instead have done.

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  Political Science A Passage from India [long_description] In his book Bland Fanatics, Pankaj Mishra reveals that in his thoughts on British imperialism, he is, of course, very much a made member of the moral majority. Whatever British policy, British imperialism was, Mishra believes, evil in its consequences. But reviewer David Berlinski argues that the truth about the British Empire is, as one might expect, very large.

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  Physics The Good Soldier [long_description] Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe is Brian Greene’s latest book. It is an account of how the universe began and how it might end. Things began with a bang and they will end in a whimper. But whether Greene is dealing with free will, consciousness, or what is fundamental in the universe, David Berlinski finds him to be gabbling and inexact.

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  Mathematics The Director’s Cut [long_description] One of the twentieth century’s great intellectual achievements is Kurt Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem. Gödel’s work remains difficult, uncanny in its power. David Berlinski writes that the phrase the director’s cut is useful “because it sets the scene: the masterful director; his view; his vision. Mathematics has always been rich in its directors of note.” Gödel and Peano are among them.

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  Biology The Social Set [long_description] Nicholas Christakis’s Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society argues it is our genetic destiny to construct societies built around generous and moral behavior. David Berlinski is not so optimistic. In his review of Christakis’s work, Berlinski riffs on various reasons to be less rosy.

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  Political Science Godzooks [long_description] David Berlinski reviews Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. To the question of whether human beings are shortly to become like gods, Berlinski answers not any time soon.

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  Linguistics The Recovery of Case [long_description] Jean-Roger Vergnaud’s famous 1977 letter to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik assumed that case is obligatory. As Juan Uriagereka and David Berlinski argue, Vergnaud’s case filter was a vindication of the principles and parameters approach to language. Case is an aspect of Universal Grammar itself.

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  Political Science The Best of Times [long_description] Has violence declined in the modern world? How can we tell? David Berlinski looks at medieval and modern violence, considering the various means by which we measure it. He also analyzes the causes of war, in particular World War I.

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  Astronomy A Natural History of Curiosity [long_description] During the living centuries of the Arab empire, a series of stellar observatories glittered like jewels throughout the archipelago of its conquests. None more so than that created by Ulugh Beg, an astronomer and king. After his death, the observatory was sacked by local rulers, unable to resist its wealth, and by local clerics, unwilling to abide its learning. By 1449, the observatory was in ruins.

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