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Scientific Orthodoxies

From the December 2005 Print Edition

Back in the 1970s, when my wife Celeste was in the seventh grade at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the Bronx, her teacher, a Holy Cross Brother, tried to start one science class with a bang. Brandishing a textbook picture of nearly identical-looking embryos of different kinds of vertebrates—fish, . . . . Continue Reading »

A New Kind of Science

From the November 2002 Print Edition

One should hesitate to review a book that threatens pulling a muscle just by lifting it. Apart from the danger to one’s health, it likely will turn out to have been written by: 1) the unabomber or some other crank; 2) a fellow who unwisely declined the services of an editor; or 3) a genius who . . . . Continue Reading »

God...Sort of

From the June/July 1999 Print Edition

The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life.By Paul Davies.Simon & Schuster.  400 pp. $25.Paul Davies should need little introduction to readers of First Things. A theoretical physicist and prolific author, he won the 1995 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. As the . . . . Continue Reading »