Issues

Volume 2, Issue 2

May 19, 2016

Critical Essays

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Smells, Spanners, and Switches

Luca Turin

[short_description] What if we have the olfactory system all wrong? Luca Turin shows how thinking of the nose as a vibrational spectroscope clarifies much we still do not understand about how olfaction works.

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Chemistry

Animadversions of a Synthetic Chemist

James Tour

[short_description] Chemists study molecules. Synthetic chemists make them. What Nature does is anyone’s guess. James Tour constructs nanovehicles and considers the difficulties. What can we say of abiogenesis?

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Genetics

Genes Without Prominence

Keith Baverstock

[short_description] Evolution and the origin of life through the lens of thermodynamics: using dynamical systems theory, Keith Baverstock argues natural selection is based on metabolic efficiency, not genetic variation.

Review Essays

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Astronomy

Across the Universe

Steven Wheeler

[short_description] The detection of gravitational waves by LIGO made global news. Steven Wheeler looks at the technological achievement and its contentious history, and considers the future of gravitational astronomy.

Book Reviews

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Biology

Mindfulness

George Scialabba

[short_description] Consider the mind-body problem and the question of consciousness. Will a naturalistic account serve? Thomas Nagel says no. George Scialabba reviews the short but ambitious Mind and Cosmos.

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Philosophy

More Better Meta

Nona Robinson

[short_description] Empty sets, conspiracies, and indeterminacy. Nona Robinson reviews Numero Zero, the last novel by the late Umberto Eco, connoisseur of secrets.

Biographies

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Biology

Austin L. Hughes

The Neutral Theory of Evolution

Chase Nelson

[short_description] Focusing on the neutral theory of evolution and its most significant consequences, Chase Nelson details the scientific achievements of his mentor, Austin Hughes, brilliant evolutionary biologist.

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Sociology

René Girard

Desire, Violence, and Religion

Jean-Pierre Dupuy

[short_description] Scapegoats then and now. Looking at mythology, ritual, and law, Jean-Pierre Dupuy reviews the late René Girard’s theory of sacrifice and mimetic desire, and applies it to economics.

Letters to the Editors

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Jean-Pierre Luminet

[short_description] Though some American astronomers were reluctant to accept that gravitational wave physics is indeed astronomy, this was not at all the case in France.

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Keith Baverstock

[short_description] With his telescope to his blind eye, Michael Fumento manages not to see two signals: the public health costs of nuclear accidents, and the economic costs of dealing with nuclear waste.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Hitler’s Christianity

Chris Lawson

[short_description] Far from irreligious, Adolf Hitler did not perceive himself as being anti-Christian, but rather as bringing the Church back to what he saw as its proper, traditional role in persecuting the pestilent.

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Richard Weikart

[short_description] Adolf Hitler, while rejecting more traditional conceptions of God, such as Christianity, nonetheless did believe in some kind of God, but his God actually approved of his atrocities.

ISSN #2576–4403