I discuss the historical and conceptual roots of reasoning about the parameters of fundamental physics and cosmology based on selection effects. I argue concretely that such reasoning can and should be combined with arguments based on symmetry and dynamics; it supplements them, but does not replace them. * Summary talk at " Expectations of a Final Theory " , Trinity College, Cambridge, Septembe...

the years 1702–1706 brought into sharp contrast conflicting Šiews of the body in popular belief and Lutheran pastoral theology, and in the secularizing project of the early Enlightenment. The dispute centred on the practical, local implications of territorialism, a theory of church subordination to the state deŠeloped in the 1690s by the Saxon jurist Christian Thomasius (1655–1728), the most in...

Modern brutality, which found its culmination in using weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against humanity, is the dark side of the principal teachings of the Enlightenment. The great thinkers of the Enlightenment, blaming religion as the main source of violence, removed God from the center of Western political and social thought to replace it with human. Although they were not conscious of the ...

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 323 20 MARCH 2009 1531 COVER Movement trajectories, each recorded during a 1-hour time period, for rats with brain lesions that reduce dopamine signaling. These animals serve as a model of Parkinson's disease and display severe difficulty in initiating movements, as illustrated by the white trajectories (on black background) showing limited locomotion. Black traje...

important contributions made to British rheumatology by the Medical Research Council. As with so many well-meant volumes of this sort, the book becomes more than a trifle self-congratulatory. I have no doubt that in this country the Heberden Society was a much-needed stimulus to the development ofa group of professional rheumatologists, for whom the Society provided self-respect at a time when ...

Research on phototropism has had far-reaching consequences in the field of plant biology, from helping to refute the ancient misconception of plant insensitivity to the environment to the discovery of the plant hormone auxin and the identification of the phototropin photoreceptors. In this essay, we trace the major trends and ideas that shaped past shoot phototropism research and briefly summar...

lishing their sovereignty. yet the fully enlightened earth radiate~ b~ disaster triumphant. The program of the Enlightenment was 4-IJ the disenchantment of the world; the dissolution of myths and f#lJ)·r the substitution of knowledge for fancy. Bacon, the "father of experimental philosophy,"l had defined its motives. He looked down on the masters of tradition, the "great reputed authors" who fi...

Research on phototropism has had far-reaching consequences in the field of plant biology, from helping to refute the ancient misconception of plant insensitivity to the environment to the discovery of the plant hormone auxin and the identification of the phototropin photoreceptors. In this essay, we trace the major trends and ideas that shaped past shoot phototropism research and briefly summar...