Einstein’s two mistakes
Scientific research is based on the relationship between the reality of nature, as it is observed, and a representation of this reality, formulated by a theory in mathematical language. If all the consequences of the theory are experimentally proven, it is considered as validated. This approach, which has been used for nearly four centuries, has built a consistent body of knowledge. But these advances have been made thanks to the intelligence of human beings who, despite all, can still hold onto their preexisting beliefs and biases. This can affect the progress of science, even for the grea...
THE VIETNAM SYNDROME
To be writing these words is, for me, to undergo the severest test of my core belief—that sentences can be more powerful than pictures. A writer can hope to do what a photographer cannot: convey how things smelled and sounded as well as how things looked. I seriously doubt my ability to perform this task on this occasion. Unless you see the landscape of ecocide, or meet the eyes of its victims, you will quite simply have no idea. I am content, just for once—and especially since it is the work of the brave and tough and undeterrable James Nachtwey—to be occupying the space between pictures....
'Literary tragedy' of Bulwer-Lytton's dark and stormy night under debate
The great-great-great grandson of the much-maligned author Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton is to take part in a debate to defend his ancestor's writing. The Honourable Henry Lytton Cobbold, of Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, is travelling to Bulwer-Lytton's namesake, the town of Lytton in Canada, to take on the founder of the International Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, Professor Scott Rice.Bulwer-Lytton has been ridiculed by the contest since 1982, when Rice came up with the idea for a competition to compose the opening sentence to the worst possible novel, inspired by Bulwer-Lytton's no...
Why Molière most likely did write his plays
As for Shakespeare, a hard-fought debate has emerged about Molière, a supposedly uneducated actor who, according to some, could not have written the masterpieces attributed to him. In the past decades, the century-old thesis according to which Pierre Corneille would be their actual author has become popular, mostly because of new works in computational linguistics. These results are reassessed here through state-of-the-art attribution methods. We study a corpus of comedies in verse by major authors of Molière and Corneille’s time. Analysis of lexicon, rhymes, word forms, affixes...
Dr. David Livingstone, a Bicentenary
Two hundred years ago the remarkable Dr. David Livingstone was born in the small village of Blantyre, Scotland.His family was poor, and he started work in a cotton mill at the age of 10. His life as a laborer did not prevent him from the Herculean task (for a poor man) of pursuing the study of medicine, and at the age of 23 he entered Anderson College in Glasgow.Livingstone was from a deeply religious family, but he rejected the antagonism growing between Science and Religion. He believed in a Christian theology that was dedicated to a scientific understanding of nature....
