Category: Science

by James GleickCopyright 2003 Sir Isaac Newton ranks among history’s greatest geniuses. For inventing modern physics. For overturning Aristotle’s hegemony upon thought. For co-inventing calculus (as an introduction to physics). For being more into theology and alchemy than physics. His treasure-trove of personal writings – kept hidden until near the middle of the twentieth century – show this man to be, like Luther before him, the last of the great medievalists who birthed the movement…

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by Bertolt BrechtCopyright 1966 This book, as the introduction delineates, was originally written in Fascist Germany whose attitude towards science and knowledge in general paralleled the ignorance of the Papacy in Galileo’s era. Then in a post-atomic-bomb world with two superpowers on the brink, Brecht adapted this play into a new set of concerns about the “fruit” of knowledge. As such, in our era of Trumpian ignorance and North Korean nuclear ambition (two parties who…

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