Dr. Robson Bonnichsen, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Oregon State University in Corvallis, was excavating a 10,000-year-old archeological site in southwestern Montana several years ago when his team discovered that the area was littered with ancient human hairs. The archeologists realized with some excitement that the hairs' DNA content could be studied for clues about the origins of the prehistoric people who once lived there.
Wielding his philosophical razor, William of Ockham declared, in the early 14th century, that in slicing the world into categories, thou shalt not multiply entities needlessly. He might have been pleased when, half a millennium later, James Clerk Maxwell helped tidy things up by writing the equations that show magnetism and electricity as perpendicular shadows cast by light beams, radio waves, X-rays and other forms of what we now call electromagnetic radiation. Einstein did Maxwell one better by equating mass with (...) energy. And today the physicists promise us that once we give them their superconducting supercollider, they will take a giant step toward the day when they can unify light with gravity and the two forces at work inside the nuclei of atoms -- showing how everything, even the geometry of space and time, crystallized from the primordial flash of the big bang. (shrink)
As he headed into the last years of his life, Albert Einstein thought he had been given a bad rap. Admittedly he had spoken rather loosely in the past. "I can't believe that God plays dice with the universe," he once exclaimed, expressing his exasperation at the reprehensible randomness of quantum mechanics. And when he had wanted to convey his conviction that the laws of nature, though sometimes obscure, are orderly and understandable by the human mind, he put it like (...) this: "The Lord is subtle but not malicious.". (shrink)
Early in my college career, I was perusing the science section of my favorite bookstore in Albuquerque —the Living Batch, where the really smart hippies hung out—when my eye was caught by the spine of a little paperback called The Universe and Dr. Einstein. Priced at ninetyfive cents, it promised to be “the clearest, most readable book on Einstein’s theories ever published.” On the cover was a tantalizing portrait of a well-tanned Einstein, his wild shock of hair blowing in the (...) cosmic wind. Behind him loomed the night sky, shining with constellations and mathematics. This was clearly the man who knew the answers and they would be imparted to me, a mere humanities major, in a book that was only 118 pages long. I bought it on the spot. (shrink)
Many readers encounter the history and mythology of the Illuminati for the first time in the course of reading Angels & Demons. They typically wonder if the Illuminati is a real organization in history and, if so, how much of Dan Brown’s description is accurate. To help answer that question, we turned to George Johnson, the well-known New York Times science writer. Johnson shares several interests with Dan Brown and fans of Angels & Demons: He has written extensively about the (...) conflicts and confluences of science and religion (including contributing an essay on that topic elsewhere in this volume). He has written about quantum physics and antimatter. And, as it turns out, he has written a book that deals extensively with the Order of Illuminati, its history, and the uses of myths and legends about the strange organization by (mostly right-wing) modern conspiracy theorists. That book, Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics, was published in 1983 and remains a veritable gold mine of hard fact and analysis about the real history of the Illuminati. Even more important than the factual history presented by Johnson is his description of the vast web of myth that has grown.. (shrink)
Americans are justly proud of their tradition of representative government. In fact, America's is the longest continuous representative government in existence. Ironically, it may be that, because of the two hundred uninterrupted years of the republic's existence, we take it for granted that we view its continuation as guaranteed. Although our republic has endured for more than two hundred years, it has not always existed in its present "form," it has not always represented many people who now routinely view its (...) protections and guarantees as birthrights. The unlanded masses, women, blacks and other minorities, all were for a great part of our history not represented in the American body politic. Now all of these groups, at least legally speaking, are full participants in the body politic and in the public affairs of this country. This volume examines the development of the American notion of popular sovereignty from its colonial and revolutionary origins, from the days of its severely restricted meaning through its progress toward inclusion of more of "the people." Four distinguished commentators examine the social and political developments that have accompanied the growth and expansion of "the will of the people.". (shrink)
o an outsider, nothing might seem more ridiculous than the spectacle of grown men and women sitting around a conference table soberly discussing what would happen if a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica were dropped down a black hole. Yet this very question lies at the heart of the "information paradox," a seeming contradiction to the laws of physics that is causing scientists to re-examine some of their most basic assumptions about how the universe is made.
ACCORDING to one of the weirder interpretations of quantum theory, electrons and the other subatomic particles that make up creation don't really come into existence -- taking on definite positions in time and space -- until they are beheld by a conscious observer. Extending this notion to a cosmic scale, the most radical proponents of what has come to be called the anthropic cosmological principle argue for a dizzying symbiosis in which the universe gives rise to conscious beings who in (...) turn give rise to the universe through the act of observation. (shrink)
The grandest unification theory of them all got its start in 1948, when two remarkable publications appeared. Claude Shannon's paper ''A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" and Norbert Wiener's book ''Cybernetics'' brought to the world's attention an idea that had been bubbling beneath the surface for years: information, like matter and energy, can be considered a thing in itself -- a fundamental building block of reality. Ever since, there has been a growing effort to explain the brain, the (...) body, civilization and, most recently, the universe itself as information processors. (shrink)
The daddy longlegs clinging vertically to my bathroom wall is a marvel of airy symmetry, its tiny head perched delicately at the center of eight arching limbs. A moment later, struck by the back of my hand, it lies crumpled on the floor. I’m sorry, but I don’t like spiders in the house.
n a low-key, musical version of the match between Garry Kasparov and the chess-playing machine called Deep Blue, a musician at the University of Oregon competed last month with a computer to compose music in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach. Dr. Steve Larson, who teaches music theory at the university, listened anxiously while his wife, the pianist Winifred Kerner, performed three entries in the contest -- one by Bach, one by Larson and one by a computer program called EMI, (...) or Experiments in Musical Intelligence. (shrink)
TRYING to trace the ancient roots of a modern language is always a maddeningly ambiguous and uncertain enterprise. With Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazic Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, the task is even harder because of the horrifying fact that most of the speakers were exterminated in the Holocaust.
ALONG the far wall of the spacious, newly renovated bookstore at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, stands a shrine to Richard Feynman, the university's celebrity scientist. Reaching from floor to ceiling, shelf upon shelf is loaded with multiple copies of more than fifty Feynman hits -- books, CDs, cassettes, and videotapes capturing the outpouring of words written about or uttered by the man many consider to be the greatest physicist of the second half.
UNTIL very recently, the most perplexing mystery of Southwestern archeology -- what caused the collapse of the ancient empire of the Anasazi -- seemed all but solved. Careful scrutiny of tree-ring records seemed to establish that in the late 1200's a prolonged dry spell called the Great Drought drove these people, the ancestors of today's pueblo Indians, to abandon their magnificent stone villages at Mesa Verde and elsewhere on the Colorado Plateau, never to return again.
While there are avid chess players in Japan, China, Korea and throughout the East, far more popular is the deceptively simple game of Go, in which black and white pieces called stones are used to form intricate, interlocking patterns that sprawl across the board. So subtle and beautiful is this ancient game that, to hear aficionados describe it, Go is to chess what Asian martial arts like aikido are to a boxing match.
EVEN more than the separation of church and state, the separation between church and laboratory is supposed to be absolute. Science is to concentrate on describing how the universe works, leaving questions of who or what created it and why it exists to the dens of the metaphysicians. Once they agree to play by these rules, scientists the world over can worship different gods while contemplating the same equations.
A study of the human drive to create order and reason notes the parallel beliefs of the ancient Anasazi people, the Tewa Native Americans, the Penitentes, and the scientists of the Santa Fe Institute.
Flesh of My Flesh is a collection of articles by today's most respected scientists, philosophers, bioethicists, theologians, and law professors about whether we should allow human cloning. It includes historical pieces to provide background for the current debate. Religious, philosophical, and legal points of view are all represented.
MANY moons from now, when extraterrestrial archeologists sift through the records of our brief civilization, they might be amused to stumble across the proceedings of an annual convention of stargazers called the American Astronomical Society. They would be right in concluding that 1996 was, in one way or another, a landmark year.
Scientists have long believed that constructing memories is like playing with neurological Tinkertoys. Exposed to a barrage of sensations from the outside world, we snap together brain cells to form new circuitry-patterns of electrical connections that stand for images, smells, touches and sounds.
ACCORDING to one of the weirder interpretations of quantum theory, electrons and the other subatomic particles that make up creation don't really come into existence -- taking on definite positions in time and space -- until they are beheld by a conscious observer. Extending this notion to a cosmic scale, the most radical proponents of what has come to be called the anthropic cosmological principle argue for a dizzying symbiosis in which the universe gives rise to conscious beings who in (...) turn give rise to the universe through the act of observation. (shrink)
Without so much as an America Online account, Timothy Dwight, president of Yale University two centuries ago, learned of an evil plot -- hatched in France by Freemasons hopped up on Enlightenment philosophy -- to overthrow the United States Government. A Bavarian secret society called the Order of the Illuminati was also involved. Unable to access alt.conspiracy or even a good E-mail program, Dwight had to resort to public speaking to spread the word.
hroughout the century, scientists have had to rely on maddeningly oblique methods, laden with assumptions, for measuring the size of the universe. They've had to guess, from purely theoretical considerations, how bright a star or galaxy really is. Then from its apparent brightness, dimmed by the journey of the light through space, they judge its distance.
FOR the techno-libertarians intent on keeping the abstract duchy called cyberspace the freest of all lands, the last few months have been a nightmare of bad vibrations rippling through what the electronic elite derisively calls the "old media.".
EVEN more than the separation of church and state, the separation between church and laboratory is supposed to be absolute. Science is to concentrate on describing how the universe works, leaving questions of who or what created it and why it exists to the dens of the metaphysicians. Once they agree to play by these rules, scientists the world over can worship different gods while contemplating the same equations.
