From The Philosopher, the history of science is often depicted as a series of progressive triumphs - but is that view a myth or a reality? Roger Highfield argues that the modern scientific method, an unending dialogue between theory and experiment, is the greatest of all inventions. Trials and errors: Jonah Lehrer on why science is failing us. Just-if-ication: Raam Gokhale on a discussion of scientific reasoning. Collaborators from national laboratories, universities, and international organizations are using the National Ignition Facility to probe key fundamental science questions. Rereading Darwin: Science now takes for granted the importance of forces and time spans we can’t perceive directly. If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? King of the Cosmos: Carl Zimmer profiles Neil deGrasse Tyson. Disgrace: Charles Gross on Marc Hauser and a case of scientific misconduct at Harvard. A review of Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything by Margaret Wertheim.
