Issues

Volume 4, Issue 1

May 31, 2018

Critical Essays

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The Standard Model

Sheldon Lee Glashow

[short_description] The third and final installment in Sheldon Lee Glashow’s history of physics. In this essay Glashow examines a development in which he played a key role, the formulation of the Standard Model.

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Biology

Many Little Lives

J. Scott Turner

[short_description] Claude Bernard was the first to propose the concept of homeostasis. J. Scott Turner discusses the ongoing negotiation and mutual accommodation between parts of an organism—its many little lives.

Short Notes

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Physics

A Letter

Jeremy Bernstein

[short_description] The February 15, 1939, issue of the Physical Review included a letter by Niels Bohr entitled “Resonance in Uranium and Thorium Disintegration and the Phenomenon of Nuclear Fission.”

Book Reviews

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Genetics

Black as Death

Monica Green

[short_description] A new account argues for the importance of climate and disease as forces shaping medieval Europe. Monica Green offers a detailed critique and reviews new research into the origins of the Black Death.

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Mathematics

Woit’s Way

Andrew Jordan

[short_description] Peter Woit’s book Quantum Theory, Groups and Representations is based on a series of lectures that he gave at Columbia University. Woit is a fine teacher. Andrew Jordan finds much to admire.

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Philosophy

The Grand Illusion

Michael Tye

[short_description] Daniel Dennett has a knack for telling many scientists what they want to hear: nothing in philosophy might cause them to lose sleep. They are right not to lose sleep, but not for the reasons provided.

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Psychology

Hogamous, Higamous

Robert Dunn

[short_description] In Testosterone Rex, Cordelia Fine assesses the behavior of men and women as a manifestation of ancient evolutionary urges. Robert Dunn argues culture also plays a role in gender variation.

Experiment Reviews

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Physics

Quantum Critical Proteins

Stuart Lindsay

[short_description] Hydrogen atoms are explained by quantum mechanics; cats are not. Stuart Lindsay argues proteins may be closer to hydrogen atoms than cats and details new work on the electrical properties of proteins.

Biographies

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Astronomy

Al-Bīrūnī

The First Golden Age of Islamic Science

Julio Samsó

[short_description] One of the most significant figures in the Islamic Golden Age was the polymath and scholar Al-Bīrūnī. Julio Samsó provides an account of Al-Bīrūnī’s life and his work on astronomy and mathematics.

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Paleontology

Camille Arambourg

Among the Fossils of Algeria

Djillali Hadjouis

[short_description] During the 1950s, the French paleontologist and vertebrate specialist Camille Arambourg made many important discoveries in North Africa. Djillali Hadjouis examines Arambourg’s most significant work.

Letters to the Editors

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Physical Mathematics

Édouard Brézin

[short_description] The two fields of physics and mathematics have always been intimately mixed. Even when explored independently, abstract mathematics often later found applications in the natural world.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### A Remarkable Connection

John Iliopoulos

[short_description] The bridge between mathematics and physics was a one-way street, with physicists using mathematical results to solve physics problems. Then string theory opened the bridge to two-way communication.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### The Mathematics of the Universe

Hirosi Ooguri

[short_description] Here is an answer to the question of why the relationship between mathematics and physics has been so active and productive during the last four decades, whereas before the two were almost divorced.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### An Ode to Ugly Physics

Xi Yin

[short_description] The deepest and most far-reaching ideas of physics are not the most elegant or beautiful, but the ideas that are confusing, not rigorous, or, in fact, utterly incomprehensible to mathematicians.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On the Ising Model

Martin Krieger

[short_description] In the last 75 years, physicists have solved the 2D Ising model of ferromagnetism in numerous ways. The solutions may be combinatorial, algebraic, or analytic—but all come to the same result.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Closed Timelike Curves and Singularities

Jean-Pierre Luminet

[short_description] Discovered in 1949 by Kurt Gödel, the homogeneous rotating universe model contains closed timelike curves and therefore allows for travel into the past, accompanied by all its paradoxes.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Beyond Gödel’s Time

Peter Riggs

[short_description] The Gödel space-time model displays an intrinsic rotation of matter, which is responsible for some fascinating characteristics. It is a theoretical model of a possible, though not the actual, universe.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Big History, Little Value

Tom Payne

[short_description] Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus should be read, not as a sequence of vatic pronouncements, but as a range of thought experiments—admittedly chilling ones—and as prophecies that may come true.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On Development and Evolution

Kenneth Schaffner

[short_description] The author of Behaving: What’s Genetic, What’s Not, and Why Should We Care? comments on developmental processes and the strength of evolutionary explanations for behavior.

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On Cognitive Evolution

Atsushi Iriki

[short_description] The author outlines some philosophical advances that Frans de Waal has made in relation to scientific methodology and our understanding of cognitive evolution.

ISSN #2576–4403