Last week, NIH Director and BioLogos founder Francis Collins announced that he would no longer accept invitations to conferences with all-male panels.Read more…
Science Corner: In the Hot Zone
Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone was not my first introduction to emerging infectious diseases. … Still, Preston’s controversial best seller likely introduced me to the Ebola virus and to concepts like biosafety level 4 laboratories.Read more…
Science Book Review: The Big Nine – How the Tech Titans & Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity
[The Big Nine] reads like a blend of science fact and fiction as [author Amy] Webb tells us where we’ve been and imagines where we might go.Read more…
Science Corner: Welcome to the Human Club
We are already human, but not yet the human we are headed towards. The human experience is intrinsically one of becoming, not merely being.Read more…
Science Book Review: Complexity – A Guided Tour
Complexity introduces readers to the wide-ranging world of complexity science, with an emphasis on the computational side. Plus a robot that cleans up for you.Read more…
Science Corner: Portrait of an Emerging Scholar
We wander a bit outside the usual science themes, but we are not lost; we are with Tolkien.Read more…
Science Book Review: Underbug – An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology
Termites feature prominently, but it’s one of those “it was really about us all along” kind of stories.Read more…
Science Corner: The Time Stone Heals All Wounds?
What heals all wounds is healing.Read more…
Science Corner: Adding to the Conversation
Highlights from Francis Su’s webinar “The Integration of Faith and the Academic Calling.”Read more…
Science Corner: 2019 BioLogos Conference Recap
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the BioLogos conference in Baltimore, MD. Although there is a healthy dose of science, their conferences have a different feel than American Scientific Affiliation meetings, or at least the one I attended.Read more…
Science Corner: The Prizes are in Bloom
[Karen Uhlenbeck’s] work laid the foundation for a whole new branch of mathematics, geometric analysis, and she also provided mathematical physicists critical tools for working with the Yang-Mills equations which are central to the Standard Model of particle physics.Read more…
Science Corner: The Luck of the Streptomyces
Having just observed St. Patrick’s Day, I thought it fitting to discuss some science news from Ireland.Read more…
Science Corner: Subtraction by Addition
Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park was in the science news last week, which caught my eye because I had recently read Sean B. Carroll’s The Serengeti Rules. (Scientist/authors are rare, and yet biologist Sean B. Carroll must distinguish himself from physicistRead more…
Science Corner: Lent 2019
Since [Pope Francis] is a scientist and a theologian, I thought he would be a good point of reference [on Lenten practice].Read more…
Science Corner: “It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it.”
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”–surely a familiar quote to anyone who has spent time with Sherlock Holmes.Read more…
Science Corner: When All Else Fails, Quote a British Prime Minister
Listening to the recent debate between human debating champion Harish Natarajan and IBM’s Watson-derived Project Debater, I was amused to hear the AI conclude her remarks with a Benjamin Disraeli quote.Read more…
Science Book Review: The Revolutionary Genius of Plants Ch 7-9
We’re on our final week discussing the English translation of Stefano Mancuso’s The Revolutionary Genius of Plants, a colorful and wide-ranging survey of recent developments in our understanding of plant biology. Mancuso is particularly interested in what sets plants apartRead more…
Science Book Review: The Revolutionary Genius of Plants Ch 4-6
In chapter 4, [Mancuso] brings up what I thought was the most intriguing difference: plants stay put. OK, maybe that’s obvious, but what’s intriguing are the implications Mancuso teases out from it.Read more…
Science Book Review: The Revolutionary Genius of Plants Ch 1-3
Mancuso has a lot to say about the uniqueness of plants, how they can expand our understanding of life, and how the features of plants can be harnessed to address challenges faced by humans.Read more…
Science Book Review: Programming the Universe
Although Lloyd was not overtly concerned with any religious intersections, I found the discussion of the universe as a quantum computer relevant to a couple of issues that come up in science & faith conversations.Read more…
Science Corner: Nectar of the Plant Overlords
While we don’t have evidence of plant intelligence here on Earth, we may still have underestimated our local flora and overlooked their capacity to communicate.Read more…
Science Corner: Watching the Special Features
…understanding the chemical and physiological reactions that generate emotions can enrich rather than impoverish my relationship to music and art.Read more…
Science Corner: Hacking your Donor List
If your experience is anything like mine, your 2018 wrapped up with a blitz of requests for end-of-year charitable contributions.Read more…
Science Corner: Christmas Reading
If you have some extra time for a holiday or winter break and are looking for something to read, allow me to remind you of the books we’ve discussed over the past year.Read more…