Issues

Volume 3, Issue 3

November 23, 2017

Critical Essays

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MAD-Made World

Jean-Pierre Dupuy

[short_description] Notions such as deterrence and mutually-assured destruction have held sway over nuclear strategy more than five decades. Jean-Pierre Dupuy concludes it is a miracle that mankind has survived.

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Physics

As the Loom of Physics Expands

Sheldon Lee Glashow

[short_description] The second of a three-part journey through the history of physics by Sheldon Lee Glashow. In this installment, Glashow discusses, among other topics, Einstein’s general and special relativity.

Review Essays

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Mathematics

Big, Little, Nothing, Everything

Alexander Kharazishvili

[short_description] No finite set is bigger than everything, and so every finite set is smaller than something. If one object is added to a small finite set, it gets bigger, but stays small. Could that be right?

Short Notes

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Physics

Three for the Road

Jeremy Bernstein

[short_description] In this compendium piece, Jeremy Bernstein delves into the background and implications of ideas such as particle scattering, quantum entanglement, and the reality of Planck numbers.

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Physics

Finishing Physics

David LePoire

[short_description] Within physics, David LePoire argues, logistic development is apparent both in its subfields and the field as a whole; his logistic analysis suggests that one more stage is yet to come.

Book Reviews

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Anthropology

Great Scott

George Scialabba

[short_description] James C. Scott’s Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States explores the mixed blessings of agriculture and animal domestication. George Scialabba casts a critical eye over Scott’s book.

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Physics

To Be, Not To Be, Maybe

Tim Maudlin

[short_description] Philosopher of science Tim Maudlin reviews a recent book on quantum theory and its implications for philosophy: Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics by Peter J. Lewis.

Experiment Reviews

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Linguistics

Handmade

Vivian Cook

[short_description] Linguist Vivian Cook reviews a paper by Elena Pagliarini et al., “Children’s First Handwriting Productions Show a Rhythmic Structure,” and claims that some characteristics of handwriting are innate.

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Physics

B-Meson Decay

Joaquim Matias

[short_description] Particle physicist Joaquim Matias analyzes recent results from the Large Hadron Collider—in particular, rare decays of B-mesons—for evidence of New Physics.

Letters to the Editors

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On Atoms and Empty Space

John Iliopoulos

[short_description] Physics has ancient beginnings in the Greek period, in the work of Democritus of Abdera, father of atomic theory, and Euclid from Alexandria, generator of the first axiomatic system ever conceived.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Embroidering the Tapestry

Álvaro De Rújula

[short_description] Sheldon Lee Glashow (Shelly to his friends) is not just your friendly-neighborhood run-of-the-mill Nobel laureate. He will join the other great scientists who stand upon the shoulders of giants.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On the Discovery of Fission

Jeremy Bernstein

[short_description] Nuclear fission was proposed in a 1934 paper by Ida Noddack, whose work, though serious, was ignored. Fission was realized a decade later through a series of other steps.

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Peter Woit

[short_description] Theories involving a multiverse have “slipped the leash” of experiment, leading this area of theoretical physics to a strange place. One where the question of what is science has become open to debate.

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Martin Rees

[short_description] The question “Do other universes exist?” is a genuinely scientific one. Martin Rees outlines why it may be answered within a few decades, and why he already suspects that the answer may be yes.

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Richard Dawid

[short_description] We are not free to choose the world we live in. We may prefer living in a world where physical theories are empirically fully testable within a short time. But it so happens that this is not the case.

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Daniel Harlow

[short_description] The notion of a multiverse is not scientific, George Ellis has argued. But Daniel Harlow makes the case that multiverse theories are indeed predictive, as scientific theories should be.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On the Essence of Discovery

Matthew Kleban

[short_description] When progress in science entails revolutionary shifts in world view, controversy inevitably follows. George Ellis has reacted against the multiverse theory, but Matthew Kleban comes to its defense.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On Testability in Science

Ikjyot Singh Kohli

[short_description] In this letter, Ikjyot Singh Kohli debates the applicability of the rigorousness of the scientific method to some of the theories that George Ellis discusses, especially with respect to the multiverse.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### The Importance of CISS

James Tour

[short_description] The neglect of chiral induced spin selectivity (CISS) can and has caused data misinterpretation regarding the manner by which biological systems respire, synthesize, process, and transfer information.

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Michael Valenzuela

[short_description] Wisdom is accrued by many, but certainly not all, elders. Here Michael Valenzuela and William von Hippel agree. But in other aspects of the effects of aging on the brain, they cannot.

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Thomas Suddendorf

[short_description] Humans can travel mentally in time and imagine their remote future lives. The unwelcome prospect of suffering the “lamentable imbecility” of old age drives research aimed at slowing age-related decline.

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Susan Charles

[short_description] It is a fact that we become less physically resilient as we age. What makes less sense is that wisdom—in attitude and perspective about life—would appear during a time in life marked by decline.

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Vincent Goulding

[short_description] Economic equality, much like Thomas More’s utopia, is a pipedream when any given society finds itself mired in peace and prosperity. Is the cure for inequality worth the medicine required to get there?

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Mark Moyar

[short_description] Humans can be quite aware of policies that enhance their own material welfare and yet will reject them, if rejecting them means that a small group of others will fare even better than the majority.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### A Newtonian Perspective

Robert Ajemian & Emilio Bizzi

[short_description] If speech is one possible sensorimotor instantiation of a more universal mental propensity, then why throughout human history has the spoken word been preferred to, say, the signed word?

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On Tool Grammar

Larry Smith

[short_description] “What is the Chomskyan Notion of Creativity,” Larry Smith asks, “and how does it differ from other possible conceptions such as our notion of Tool Grammar Creativity?”

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Basic Building Blocks

David Lobina

[short_description] To gain insight into the evolutionary trajectory of complex human traits like language, ought we to decompose what prima facie look like complex human abilities into basic building blocks?

ISSN #2576–4403