Space & Physics
'Theory of Everything' Brilliantly Dramatizes Paradox of Modern Science
I met Stephen Hawking in the summer of 1990, when I spent five days in northern Sweden at a conference attended by 30 or so leading cosmologists.
Stories by John Horgan
Space & Physics
Surfer-Physicist Offers Alternative to String Theory, Academia
In 2007 Garrett Lisi was a 39-year-old physicist, unaffiliated with any institution, toiling in obscurity on what he called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” which could account for all of nature’s forces...
Quest for Intelligence Genes Churns Out More Dubious Results
For more than 20 years, I’ve hammered behavioral genetics, and especially research linking genes to intelligence. Last spring, I proposed a ban on research into race and intelligence...
The Sciences
Atomic Reporters Aim to Improve Nuclear Coverage
Yes, the Cold War ended long ago, but we still live in a nuclear-armed world, in which the possibility of nuclear war, terrorism and accidents is all too real.
Chewing the Fat With Diet “Journalist” Gary Taubes
Weight-loss research has generated headlines lately, leading me to wonder what my pal Gary Taubes is up to. Over the past dozen years, Taubes has transformed himself from a mere journalist into a major player in dietary science, who has helped raise millions for research...
Environment
Merchants of Doubt Author Slams "Corrosive" Climate Change Skepticism
Historian of science Naomi Oreskes, now at Harvard, first came to my attention 20 years ago, when she and two co-authors argued in Science that “verification and validation of numerical models of natural systems is impossible.” In The End of Science, I cited the Oreskes et al...
Evolution
Chimp-Violence Researchers Respond to Criticism on Cross-Check
Is chimpanzee violence a product of nature or nurture? Genes or environment? Two weeks ago Nature published a report, "Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts," in which 30 primatologists came down on the side of nature...
More Cool Sh*t I’ve Read Lately
I’ve been over-posting this month, so I’m going to make my monthly “Cool Sh*t” post short. (See last month’s candidates here.) Below are three articles that offer provocative takes by smart, informed authors on important topics...
Health
U.S. Department of Defense Health Official Speaks Out on Ebola and Other Threats
Earlier this month, I posted a Q&A on the Ebola outbreak with a Stevens colleague, medical anthropologist Theresa MacPhail. MacPhail also put me in touch with someone who could provide more insight into the outbreak, Dr...
The Sciences
Physics Titan Still Thinks String Theory Is "On the Right Track"
At a 1990 conference on cosmology, I asked attendees, who included folks like Stephen Hawking, Michael Turner, James Peebles, Alan Guth and Andrei Linde, to nominate the smartest living physicist...
Anthropologist Brian Ferguson Challenges Claim that Chimp Violence is Adaptive
In my last post, I critiqued "Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts," a new paper in Nature that represents a broadside in the old debate over whether war is innate...
Evolution
Chimp Violence Fails to Support Deep-Roots Theory of War
On this blog, in my book The End of War and elsewhere (see Further Reading and Viewing), I have knocked the deep roots theory of war, which holds that war stems from an instinct deeply embedded in the genes of our male ancestors...
My Weird ’96 Chat with Jerry Brown about Evils of Science
My growing concerns about science’s soul have aroused some old, odd memories. One dates back to 1996, shortly after the publication of The End of Science.
Ebola “Fear Mongering” Critiqued by Medical Anthropologist
A new semester has just started at Stevens Institute of Technology, and I’m more excited than usual—that is, less depressed that summer vacation is over.
U.S. Bombs, Which Helped Spawn ISIS, Can’t Crush It
Once again, U.S. leaders are beating the war drums–or rather, beating them harder, because when in recent memory have the drums fallen silent?
Cool Sh*t I’ve Read and Seen Lately. Cops Waging War, Masters of Sex, Nabokov and More!
I’ve got an especially eclectic bunch of “Cool Sh*t” to nominate this month. Two articles by top-notch science journalists, a tough, timely investigative report by the ACLU, a sexy cable series and a classic short-story collection...
The Sciences
The Philosophy of Guessing Has Harmed Physics, Expert Says
As readers of this blog know, late last spring I spoke at a cool conference in England called How the Light Gets In, where I hung out with all kinds of professional reality-ponderers.
The Sciences
To End War, Focus on Culture Rather than "Root Causes"
Last week, on the same day that McSweeney’s Books published a new, paperback edition of my book The End of War, I argued that we must and can end war and militarism, our most urgent problems...
A Brief Correspondence on Copernicus, Descartes, Kant, Darwin, Freud, George Ellis and Thomas Nagel (Among Others)
My friend Gabriel Finkelstein is an historian of science whose most recent book, Emil du Bois-Reymond: Neuroscience, Self, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany, profiles a 19th-century German polymath who was extraordinarily prescient about science's potential and limits...
Cool Sh*t I’ve Been Reading This Summer
I’m on vacation, in an island paradise, and I’m sorely tempted to skip my end-of-the-month “Cool Sh*t” post. I want to just hang out on the beach and watch the waves roll in...
