From Spontaneous Generations, a special issue on Scientific Instruments: Knowledge, Practice, and Culture. The scientific method: J. Craig Venter wants to create creatures — bacteria, algae or even plants — to carry out industrial tasks and displace fossil fuels. About 13.7 billion years ago, the Big Bang created a big mess of matter that eventually gave rise to life, the universe, and everything — now a new material may help scientists understand why. Stewart Brand interviews Martin Rees on life's future in the cosmos. Can evolution be as certain as 2+2? Murray Gell-Mann won a Nobel prize for physics and still is working on quantum mechanics, but at 80 he has returned to his first passion — linguistics. Making heroes of inventors: William Rosen on James Watt, the most useful man who ever lived. A review of Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science by Michael Ruse (and more). In defense of difference: Scientists offer new insight into what to protect of the world's rapidly vanishing languages, cultures, and species. Changing one of nature's constants: If correct, new finding could upend physicists’ view of universe (and more and more). Are we living in a designer universe? The creators of the world were closer to men than to gods. A look at how string theory finally does something useful. More and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more on Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design.
