July 24, 2020
How the Novel Coronavirus Is Different from Everything That Came Before
For a while the COVID-19 infection rate looked to be stabilizing in the U.S., and the country almost dared to relax a little. Then in late June it went up again—way, way up. In half a year,...
May 21, 2020
Going “COVID Cuckoo” for a Cure
COVID-19 has infected millions people around the globe and has kept billions of others in a state of suspended reality as we worry about ourselves and our loved ones, grieve losses, face financial uncertainty, and long...
March 21, 2018
Pythagoras and the cult of number perfection
For anyone who has taken high school math, the most famous Ionian is likely to be Pythagoras. His name, after all, is attached to the theorem that states: the sum of the areas of the squares drawn...
March 7, 2018
Anaximenes of Miletus: Moving to purely naturalistic explanations
Anaximenes (c. 585 – 528 BCE) is the third person in a series of philosophers from the Ionian city of Miletus. Thought to have been a student of Anaximander (610 – 546 BCE), Anaximenes has sometimes...
February 21, 2018
Anaximander: Evolution, Earth as a body in space, and the first experiment
Anaximander of Miletus (c. 610 – 546 BCE) is thought to have been a student of Thales, the Ionian Greek philosopher also of the city of Miletus, who started philosophy in the early 6th century BCE....
February 7, 2018
Thales of Miletus: Grandfather of the Age of Science
Thales of Miletus (c. 624 – 546 BCE) is remembered as the first philosopher known to history, but he was also the first scientist, or rather proto-scientist. An early leader in the enlightenment of Ionia, Thales...
January 24, 2018
Ancient Ionia and the origins of scientific thinking
Science as we know it — complete with the scientific method, formation of hypotheses and systematic subjection of hypotheses to testing with planned experiments — did not take form until recent centuries. But scientific thinking dates...
January 10, 2018
Menstruation and Lunation: Related in culture but not in physiology
Throughout history, there has been a strong cultural connection between reproduction and the moon that is preserved to this day in human languages. Menstruation and menses have common roots in Greek and Latin, due to beliefs...
December 26, 2017
The Tree of Life got a makeover
Long ago, biologists categorized life forms into two divisions: animal and vegetable. Then, they added a category for fungus, and one for microorganisms. Further study revealed that microorganisms must be divided up too. An example of...
July 3, 2017
Preserving specimens in situ for future researchers
There’s an old joke that there were five paleoanthropologists for every hominin fossil. It’s based partly on truth, which should give you an idea of the rarity of such finds. A major part of what we...
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