Ecology's Big, Hot Idea

Ecology's Big, Hot Idea

L ife is complicated. It comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes, places, and combinations, and has evolved a dizzying variety of solutions to the problem of carrying on living. Yet look inside a cell and life takes on, if not simplicity, then at least a certain uniformity—a genetic system based around nucleic acids, for example, and a common set of chemical reactions for turning food into fuel. An...

What's the big idea? Toward a pedagogy of idea power

A key to understanding why School is what it is lies in recognizing a systematic tendency to deform ideas in specific ways in order to make them fit into a pedagogical framework. One of these deformations is described here as " disempowering ideas. " The insight leads to a new direction for innovation in education: re-empowering the disempowered ideas. Doing so is not easy: it needs a new epist...

THE BIG IDEA Beware the Next Big Thing

THE BIG IDEA Before You Make That Big Decision

The Hot Big Bang and Beyond ∗

The hot big-bang cosmology provides a reliable accounting of the Universe from about 10 sec after the bang until the present, as well as a robust framework for speculating back to times as early as 10 sec. Cosmology faces a number of important challenges; foremost among them are determining the quantity and composition of matter in the Universe and developing a detailed and coherent picture of ...