Albert Einstein once said: “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
Articles from February 2023
A self-sustaining fusion reaction taking place 93 million miles from Earth • Photo by Oscar Ävalos on Unsplash
Photo by Robynne Hu on Unsplash
The end is near?
Ray Kurzweil is back. The in-your-face futurist/inventor from Massachusetts has a new book — “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” — that touts the tipping point when silicon, not carbon, becomes the basis for intelligent life on Earth.
Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash
Pathways to God
This past Wednesday I was asked by the director of the Stonehill College Honor’s Program to talk to the students about intelligent design. The title of my talk was “Why ‘Intelligent Design’ Is Not Science — and Bad Religion.”
Photo by Aleksandra Dementeva on Unsplash
The web of life
On Thursday mornings I meet my two students, Greg and Bailey, at 8 AM for a walk in the woods or meadows. They see things my aging eyes are likely to miss. Together, we don’t miss much.
Modern reconstruction of a Neanderthal • ©2021 Neanderthal Museum—Holger Neumann
Rewriting history
Pity the poor Neanderthals, who had the misfortune of being discovered at the time Darwin was evoking the outrage of his contemporaries by suggesting that humans, apes, and gorillas have a common ancestry.
18th-century illustration of the Lighthouse of Alexandria by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach
Retreat from reason
Is there a flight from reason in the United States?
Photo by Sangharsh Lohakare on Unsplash
Six impossible things
I can’t remember the first time I heard it said that there is an arm’s length of DNA in every cell of our bodies, but I am certain that I blinked with disbelief. How can an arm’s length of anything fit into a microscopically small volume?
An Daingean • Photo by Craig (CC BY-SA 2.0)
What’s in a name?
Ireland is divided into four provinces and thirty-two counties, and these are further divided into some 60,000 townlands. Names lay thick upon this land.
Mursi Tribe stick fighters • Photo by Rod Waddington (CC BY-SA 2.0)
On aggression
Two weeks ago [in 2005], The Sunday Times Magazine published a photo essay by the distinguished photographer Don McCullin on the tribes of the Omo valley in southern Ethiopia.
Photo by Tarik Haiga on Unsplash
On saying “I don’t know”
When Charles and Emma Darwin bought the house that would be their family home for forty years, at Downe, sixteen miles south of London, one of Charles’ first improvements was to have the flints removed from the property’s chalky meadow.