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Issues

Volume 5, Issue 2

May 4, 2020

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May 4, 2020

Critical Essays

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The Yang–Mills Model
Sheldon Lee Glashow
[short_description] A great master of theoretical physics reviews the development of the first and greatest non-abelian gauge theory and its role in the construction of the Standard Model of particle physics.
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Hot Wired
Brian Miller & Jeremy England
[short_description] Jeremy England argues that descendants of the Crooks fluctuation theorem play a role in explaining life’s origin. Brian Miller is equally persuaded that these theorems are of little relevance.
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Misused Terms in Linguistics
Evelina Leivada
[short_description] Many terms in linguistics are often used incorrectly or incoherently. Evelina Leivada points to ten of the very terms that linguists have learned to love, striking evidence that love is often blind.

Review Essays

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Reflections on Project Orion
Jeremy Bernstein
[short_description] How might nuclear bombs propel a spaceship? Very carefully. Jeremy Bernstein recalls studying this problem with Freeman Dyson. Dyson’s previously unpublished remarks on the project are included.
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Apollo 11 and Fundamental Science
Álvaro De Rújula
[short_description] Over the years, some commentators have unkindly suggested that the only interesting spin-off from the entire Apollo enterprise was the development of Moon Boots. This is simply not the case.

Book Reviews

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The Restless Cosmopolitan
George Scialabba
[short_description] From the Cynics to Adam Smith to today, Martha Nussbaum has followed one question through the history of moral philosophy: Are basic material and social resources essential to human dignity?
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The Good Soldier
David Berlinski
[short_description] Whether about free will, consciousness, or what is fundamental in the universe, David Berlinski finds Brian Greene to be gabbling and inexact. Berlinski reviews Greene’s book Until the End of Time.
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A Gentle Giant
Robert MacLean Losee
[short_description] Claude Shannon was an unmatched problem-solver, whether in electrical engineering, mathematics, or cryptography, but he is chiefly implicated in the creation of information theory.
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Ancient Associations
Richard Chacon
[short_description] The Power of Ritual in Prehistory by Brian Hayden is the first new comparative study of secret societies in almost a century. Richard Chacon regards it as a landmark in anthropological research.
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From Conception to Kamchatka
Joshua Socolar
[short_description] In The Second Kind of Impossible, Paul Steinhardt tells the story of his first encounters with quasicrystals and his subsequent decades-long search for a naturally formed example.
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Just a Thought
David Lobina
[short_description] Inner Speech: New Voices contains papers by philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists, but linguists are thin on the ground. This is a mistake, David Lobina argues.
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Points and Lines
Daniel Kleitman
[short_description] In Forbidden Configurations in Discrete Geometry, David Eppstein examines simple problems in plain geometry. Although most of the problems are relatively easy to grasp, general solutions are unknown.

Experiment Reviews

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The Pre-Clovis Peoples
Yuichi Nakazawa
[short_description] Scholars have long debated the timing and route by which humans first arrived in the New World. A new study finds evidence of human activity 2,800 years earlier than previously thought.
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Life Lessons
John Hewitt
[short_description] Shoichi Kato et al. have exploited the minimalist cell architecture and mitochondrial dynamics of Cyanidioschyzon merolae to shed new light on life at its most primitive stage of endosymbiosis.

Biographies

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Freeman Dyson
In Praise of a Great Contrarian
Lawrence Krauss
[short_description] Freeman Dyson died on February 28, 2020, at the age of 96. In this tribute, Lawrence Krauss recounts his friendship with Dyson and celebrates his life, achievements, and influence in physics.
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Mitchell Feigenbaum
A Remembrance
David Campbell
[short_description] On June 30, 2019, the physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum died in New York City at the age of 74. His friend and colleague David Campbell offers this tribute to Feigenbaum’s life and work.

Interviews

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The Unity of Partial Differential Equations
Sergiu Klainerman & Jean-Michel Kantor
[short_description] Sergiu Klainerman is interviewed about his education in Romania; his interest in partial differential equations, general relativity, fluid mechanics; and his expectations for research in the future.

Special Reports

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The COVID Conversation
Sandro Galea
[short_description] Policymakers and the media have reacted hastily to COVID-19 research, and not always for the best. Scientific researchers now have new responsibilities to contextualize their findings for the public.
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Inequality and Instability in the Time of COVID-19
Walter Scheidel
[short_description] COVID-19 has widened fault lines between the advantaged and disadvantaged. Yet while many past crises leveled inequality, stabilizers in the modern economy may prevent social and policy reform.
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Digital Contact Tracing in South Korea
Jae Chun Choe
[short_description] South Korea has impressively managed its COVID-19 crisis without lockdowns, roadblocks, or immigration controls. This is only possible given rapid and effective testing and contact tracing systems.
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Exponential Growth
Sheldon Lee Glashow
[short_description] Exponential growth features frequently in epidemiological projections. Because of carelessness or ignorance, its implications can be easily, and sometimes grievously, underestimated.

Letters to the Editors

######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### The Hidden Costs of Good Eats
Mario Giampietro
[short_description] In the modern world, we never eat alone. Each bite we take is accompanied by another form of consumption: the energy and materials devoured by the machines and technology that sustain our economy.
######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### On the Mind–Machine Problem
Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón
[short_description] In any formal sense, based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, it is difficult to conclude that the mind is anything more than a machine. But still something about the theorems invites one to wonder…
######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Chlorine and Seawater
Jeffrey Severinghaus
[short_description] The inert chloride ion has an exceedingly long residence time and high concentration in the ocean. It accumulated over 120 million years or so, mainly from inputs such as rivers and volcanoes.
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Patrick Moore
[short_description] The author finds little correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature, and no evidence in the geological record that the oceans have regulated the climate by absorbing CO2.
######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Liminality and Human Rights
Mark Goodale
[short_description] Periods of liminality are moments in which cultural norms can be questioned, different values adopted, and social structures refashioned. A liminal approach to human rights history is revealing…
######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### A False Promise of Progress
Miguel Córdova Ramírez
[short_description] An architect examines the consequences of architectural modernism in the developing country of Peru, where the conferences Walter Gropius held were enormously influential.
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Martin Horáček
[short_description] One hundred years ago, Sir Patrick Geddes coined the term “conservative surgery” when speaking of urban planning. Today it should be a mission to recast architects as physicians.
######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### The Origins of Architectural Barbarism
Malcolm Millais
[short_description] Architectural barbarism, better known as modern architecture, never made any sense, nor did it fulfill any need or provide any benefits. Stranger still are the events that led to its survival…
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Michael Mehaffy
[short_description] The most charitable thing to say about those working in architectural professions is that we are like medieval doctors in the age of potions and bloodletting, awaiting the arrival of our germ theory.
######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Hennig, Phylogenetics, and Evolution
Edward Wiley
[short_description] Around 520 BCE, Xenophanes observed that people’s concepts of their gods are reflections of themselves. So it is with scientists we admire. Andrew Brower has put his own assumptions onto Willi Hennig.
######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### An Unfinished Revolution
Quentin Wheeler
[short_description] The revolution in systematics begun by Willi Hennig is unfinished and, unless biologists abandon goals that have been central to the discipline for centuries, its completion ought to be a top priority.
######### Card Letter *XXX* ######### Hennig, History, and Hubris
David Williams
[short_description] Rather than with Darwin or even Hennig, a more fitting context to understand cladistics can be found in the work of Linnaeus and the many others who studied what a natural classification might be.
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