What is Science Matters?

Science Matters is to be a place for sharing all manner of ideas and opinions about science in all of its forms and in all of the ways in which it affects and informs our lives and our world. The topics will range from hot-button, science policy issues to arcane topics in the philosophy of physics. It aims to be accessible to the educated scientific laity. I will try to be more chatty than academic, though I know myself well enough to know that others will expect me to err on the academic side. So be it. Consider it my compliment to my readers.

Your comments and contributions are welcome. Edginess will be appreciated; tact will be, too.

Nothing that appears here is to be misconstrued as anything other than personal opinion. In no way are my own views to be misrepresented as those of Notre Dame or the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. Blame me, not my colleagues and friends.

My interests range widely. I am by training a physicist and philsosopher of science, having published a lot on Einstein, Bohr, and the history and foundations of modern physics. So expect a lot of geeky stuff. For more than twenty years I have also devoted a lot of attention to the history of the the philosophy of science, proudly claiming a parent’s role in the the founding of HOPOS (The International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science) and in the establishment and editing of its new journal of the same name, HOPOS, which is published by the University of Chicago Press. Of late, an old interest in nuclear weapons has morphed into an interest in the ethics of emerging weapons technologies, this latter the focus of a major new research, education, and outreach project in the Reilly Center, nicknamed ETNSI (Emerging Technologies of National Security and Intelligence), and of its collaboration with the CETMONS (Consortium for Emerging Technologies, Military Operations, and National Security) consortium.  Science and theology is an old and thriving concern, but my amateur standing in this area is safe. Posts on Science Matters will cluster around these interests, but they will often range well beyond.

If you are nourished by what you find here, please look for more in places like my personal web site and my Facebook page.

And don’t be shy about buying my lectures on Einstein from The Great Courses: Albert Einstein: Physicist, Philosopher, Humanitarian.