The Origin of Life

The origin of life is in a sense a genetic problem, for, as H. J. Muller pointed out many years ago, the essential attribute that identifies living matter is its capacity to replicate itself and its variants (1). Because this uniquely biological property has its physical basis in proteins and nucleic acids, the goal of modern work on the origin of life is to discover the manner of origin of these polymers and of the interactions between them that constitute the genetic mechanism. In attempting to review this subject in a limited space, we cannot undertake an exhaustive treatment. Rather, we summarize work published principally since 1970 in the following areas, with emphasis on those aspects that are of greatest current interest: 1. precambrian paleontology, 2. chemical evolution of genetically important monomers, 3. prebiotic dehydration-condensation reactions, 4. organic compounds in meteorites and interstellar space, and 5. biological exploration of the planets. A large number of review articles (2-5), critical and theoretical discussions (6-8), books (9-16), and conference proceedings (17-21) dealing with the origin of have appeared in recent years. In addition, a new serial, the Journal of Molecular Evolution, publishing papers on this and related subjects, appeared in 1971; the journal Space Life Sciences has been renamed "Origins of Life," and a society, the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, was recently founded

Science and Ideology in Economic, Political, and Social Thought

This paper has two sources: One is my own research in three broad areas: business cycles, economic measurement and social choice. In all of these fields I attempted to apply the basic precepts of the scientific method as it is understood in the natural sciences. I found that my effort at using natural science methods in economics was met with little understanding and often considerable hostility. I found economics to be driven less by common sense and empirical evidence, then by various ideologies that exhibited either a political or a methodological bias, or both. This brings me to the second source: Several books have appeared recently that describe in historical terms the ideological forces that have shaped either the direct areas in which I worked, or a broader background. These books taught me that the ideological forces in the social sciences are even stronger than I imagined on the basis of my own experiences. The scientific method is the antipode to ideology. I feel that the scientific work that I have done on specific, long standing and fundamental problems in economics and political science have given me additional insights into the destructive role of ideology beyond the history of thought orientation of the works I will be discussing

“Black, White and Grey”: Wartime Arguments for and against the Strategic Bomber Offensive

The strategic bomber offensive against Nazi Germany has attracted more than its fair share of attention, most of which has been highly critical, both on moral as well as pragmatic grounds. Scholarly articles and books, in addition to a much larger number of sensationalized popular accounts, have appeared at a steady rate since the end of the war.1 More recently, journalists and television producers—capitalising on the fiftieth anniversary commemorations of the Second World War—have taken an interest in this controversial yet highly marketable and therefore profitable subject. Partly revisionist, and deliberately emotive, their “factions” (part fact and part dramatic recreation or fiction) all too often have focused narrowly on a single, spurious theme; the Anglo-American bomber offensive was orchestrated and conducted by a group of “bloodthirsty bone-heads and blimps,” whose policy of saturation bombing was a grievous crime against humanity.

Some open problems and conjectures on submanifolds of finite type: recent development

Submanifolds of finite type were introduced by the author during the late 1970s. The first results on this subject were collected in author's books [26,29]. In 1991, a list of twelve open problems and three conjectures on finite type submanifolds was published in [40]. A detailed survey of the results, up to 1996, on this subject was given by the author in [48]. Recently, the study of finite type submanifolds, in particular, of biharmonic submanifolds, have received a growing attention with many progresses since the beginning of this century. In this article, we provide a detailed account of recent development on the problems and conjectures listed in [40].Comment: 22 pages; to appeared in Tamkang J. Math. 45 (2014). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1307.658

Science and Ideology in Economic, Political, and Social Thought

This paper has two sources: One is my own research in three broad areas: business cycles, economic measurement and social choice. In all of these fields I attempted to apply the basic precepts of the scientific method as it is understood in the natural sciences. I found that my effort at using natural science methods in economics was met with little understanding and often considerable hostility. I found economics to be driven less by common sense and empirical evidence, then by various ideologies that exhibited either a political or a methodological bias, or both. This brings me to the second source: Several books have appeared recently that describe in historical terms the ideological forces that have shaped either the direct areas in which I worked, or a broader background. These books taught me that the ideological forces in the social sciences are even stronger than I imagined on the basis of my own experiences. The scientific method is the antipode to ideology. I feel that the scientific work that I have done on specific, long standing and fundamental problems in economics and political science have given me additional insights into the destructive role of ideology beyond the history of thought orientation of the works I will be discussing.Business cycles; Ideology; Science; Voting; Welfare measurement