Science

Do We Need a God?

Maybe not.

Richard Eldridge

Unnatural Sentences

Gertrude Stein and the Correlations of Writing and Science.

Brenda Wineapple

Darwin and Design

A debate about the latest defense of intelligent design.

William A. Dembski
H. Allen Orr

A Sublime Detective Story

William Dembski's No Free Lunch makes a confused case for Intelligent Design.

H. Allen Orr

South Park

New-economy drivel leaves a San Francisco neighborhood high and dry.

Neil Shister

The Search for New Voting Technology

America’s voting technologies are gravely inefficient, but solutions are less complicated than many politicians have indicated.

Stephen Ansolabehere

with responses from

Lloyd Cutler & Robert Michel
Rogers M. Smith
Donna Brazile
David C. King
Daniel R. Ortiz
E. Joshua Rosenkranz
Robert Richie
Mickey Edwards
Heather Gerken
Marc Strassman
Michael Cornfield

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What’s Wrong with Missile Defense

An interview with Ted Postol.

Joshua Cohen

Is the Internet Bad for Democracy?

Emerging technologies increase people’s ability to wall themselves off from topics and opinions that they would prefer to avoid, creating serious dangers.

Cass Sunstein

with responses from

Jay Rosen
Simson Garfinkel
Michael Schudson
Ronald N. Jacobs
Shanto Iyengar
Henry Jenkins
Robert W. McChesney

Social Justice Is Good for Our Health

How greater economic equality would promote public health.

Norman Daniels
Bruce Kennedy
Ichiro Kawachi

with responses from

Michael Marmot
Marcia Angell
Sudhir Anand & Fabienne Peter
Ted Marmor
Ezekiel J. Emanuel
Barbara Starfield
Emmanuela Gakidou & Julio Frenk & Christopher Murray
Steffie Woolhander & David Himmelstein

Misbehavior

Stephen Jay Gould is wrong about evolution.

John Alcock

Beyond Backyard Environmentalism

The United States is in the midst of a fundamental reorientation of its environmental regulation, one that is as improbable as it is unremarked.

Charles Sabel
Bradley Karkkainen
Archon Fung

with responses from

Matt Wilson & Eric Weltman
Daniel J. Fiorino
Theodore J. Lowi
DeWitt John
Jacqueline Savitz
Lawrence Susskind
Daniel A. Farber
Jason F. Shogren
Cass Sunstein

Gould on God

Can religion and science be happily reconciled?

H. Allen Orr

Silence Is Death

An interview with the Rev. Eugene Rivers III.

Eugene F. Rivers III
Eva T. Thorne

Review: Books on Euthanasia

Two new collections of essays contribute to the public debate—with varied results.

Jyl Gentzler

The Car As Hero

Has any other industrial product so dominated its time?

Neil Shister

Skirmishes

Battling cystic fibrosis.

Rosemary Quigley

The Big Picture

A review of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by E. O. Wilson.

H. Allen Orr

The Problem with Thinking Locally

Markets need to be reshaped to protect the environment, and such reshaping will require political struggle.

Jay Mandle

How the Mind Really Works

An exchange on Robert C. Berwick and Jeremy C. Ahouse's review of Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works (BR, April/May 1998)

Steven Pinker
Robert C. Berwick
Jeremy C. Ahouse

The Softer Side of Sociobiology

The origins of human virtue remain far from certain.

H. Allen Orr

Can We Control Disease?

Science’s victory over bacteria, viruses, and other microbes is far from assured—and we may be part of the problem.

Peter Godfrey-Smith

Darwin v. Intelligent Design (Again)

The latest attack on evolution is cleverly argued, biologically informed—and wrong

H. Allen Orr

The Scope of Natural Selection

An exchange.

Daniel Dennett
H. Allen Orr

Dennett’s Strange Idea

On Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

H. Allen Orr

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