Issues

Volume 2, Issue 4

December 31, 2016

Critical Essays

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Super-Saturated Chemistry

Marc Henry

[short_description] Is chemistry soluble in physics? Marc Henry says no. Quantum chemistry is a mathematical experiment, not the numerical resolution of a physical equation.

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Philosophy

Imperfect Ignorance

Arthur Cody

[short_description] Belief, memory, and intention are comprehended only in their own terms. Philosopher Arthur Cody argues that our cognitive faculties do not fit into our scientific explanatory systems.

Review Essays

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Computer Science

Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains

Jean-Paul Delahaye

[short_description] What are cryptocurrencies and how do they work? Using bitcoin as a case study, Jean-Paul Delahaye surveys the current state of peer-to-peer cash systems and what their future may look like.

Short Notes

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Biology

The Obstetrical Dilemma

Chase Nelson

[short_description] Bipedalism requires a narrow pelvis, larger brains require wide birth canals. Chase Nelson analyzes a new theory about human neonate helplessness: helplessness itself exerts a selective force.

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Physics

The Dark Side

Daniel Kleitman

[short_description] The frustrations of being an astrobiologist. Mathematician Daniel Kleitman responds to Caleb Scharf’s Nautilus article “Is Physical Law an Alien Intelligence?”

Book Reviews

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Biology

The Difference It Makes

George Scialabba

[short_description] Agency, autonomy, and artificial intelligence. George Scialabba reviews The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick by Jessica Riskin.

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Economics

The King’s Revolt

Henri Lepage

[short_description] Mainstream economic doctrine may itself be an obstacle to economic normality. Economist Henri Lepage reviews Mervyn King’s The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy.

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Physics

The Pope

Jeremy Bernstein

[short_description] The human (and elemental) interactions that led to developing the atomic bomb. Jeremy Bernstein reviews The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age by Segrè and Hoerlin.

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Philosophy

Successful Science

Merrilee Salmon

[short_description] Does knowledge gained through the scientific method have a unique claim to truth? Is this the only true path? Merrilee Salmon reviews Scientism: The New Orthodoxy, eds. R. Williams and D. Robinson.

Experiment Reviews

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Chemistry

Chiral Induced Spin Selectivity

James Tour

[short_description] Synthetic chemist James Tour reviews an experiment showing chiral induced spin selectivity: K. Michaeli, N. Kantor-Uriel, R. Naaman, and D. Wadleck, “The Electron’s Spin and Molecular Chirality.”

Biographies

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Astronomy

Montaigne, Peiresc, Gassendi, and Cassini

The Provençal Humanists and Copernicus

Jean-Pierre Luminet

[short_description] In the early 17th-century, the fate of the Copernican revolution was uncertain. The Provençal humanists Peiresc and Gassendi continued the revolution and shaped the development of Western science.

Letters to the Editors

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Sheldon Lee Glashow

[short_description] Cosmology has evolved over the past few decades from a hand-waving qualitative discipline to what is more and more becoming an exact science. Max Tegmark’s work has been integral in this progression.

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John Bolender

[short_description] For Ludwig Wittgenstein, the label “language” lumps together activities by reason of their overlapping similarities, their family resemblances. He saw no need to suppose any prevailing hidden unity.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Beneath the Surface

Norbert Hornstein & Kleanthes Grohmann

[short_description] At the core of case lies an abstract, phonetically null Case. The authors discuss how Jean-Roger Vergnaud’s proposal regarding abstract Case enhanced the explanatory power of Universal Grammar.

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Robert Freidin

[short_description] The following remarks attempt to place Jean-Roger Vergnaud’s letter to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik more centrally within the history of modern generative grammar from its inception to the present.

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Pello Salaburu

[short_description] Who is the intended audience of David Berlinski and Juan Uriagereka’s essay “Recovery of Case”?

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David Lahti

[short_description] You are a fish, as Bret Weinstein notes in his piece on how to talk about organisms. Since mammals are nested within a broader clade that we nickname “fish,” we are indeed fish in that sense.

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Simone Immler

[short_description] Why do humans seem to have an intrinsic need to categorize and group similar items together? Our natural surroundings, with their splendid diversity of organisms, are not exempt from this habit of ours.

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Andrew Brower

[short_description] In arguing that taxa are defined by ancestry and not by characters, Bret Weinstein makes a metaphysical leap that sells short the taxonomic work that allows claims about ancestors and evolution.

ISSN #2576–4403