encouraging abstention from sex. Priests would have to "practice what they preached." Siricius only decreed continence. But Callam contends that his ruling paved the way for the requirement of universal clerical celibacy in the 12th century.
Life or Death? "Brain Death and Personal Identity" Michael B. Green and Daniel Wikler, in Philosophy and Public Affairs (winter 1980), Princeton University Press, P.O. Box 231, Princeton, N.J. 08540.
When does a human being truly die? The...
an artificial aid which performed its function."
Most "moralist" philosophers who support a brain-death definition do so on a different basis. Human beings, they contend, distinguish the dead from the living not only analyzing vital signs but by reasses- sing their obligations toward them. Upper-brain "deathn-when a per- son "has no capacity for happiness, has no interestsw-justifies such a reassessment. The flaw in this argument, note Green and Wikler, is that it maintains...
the first photosynthesizers-the earliest ancestors of modern plants. For hundreds of millions of years these proto-plants released enough oxy- gen to transform Earth's atmosphere. Some bacteria "learned" how to both photosynthesize and respire.
But some microbes known as purple bacteria only developed re- spiratory systems. In a low-oxygen environment they might have died out. Atmospheric changes eventually made the dual system redundant. The respirers thrived and probably evolved into...
the likes of Kepler, Huygens, Wilkins, and, in the 18th century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant completed the intellectual revo- lution begun by Copernicus. These thinkers helped to free scientists of their preoccupation with the "closed world" of Earth and roused their curiosity about the larger universe.
"Ocean's Hot Springs Stir Scientific Ex- Natuye's ufldeysea citement" by Mitch Waldrop, in Chemical Laboratories and Engineering News (Mar. 10, 19801,
Membership and Subscription...
W. K.
Estes, in American Scientist (Jan.-Feb.
1980), 345 Whitney Ave., New Haven,
Conn. 0651 1.
Able to store millions of bits of data and retrieve them in microseconds, computers put human "short-term memoryw-which handles new in- formation and problem-solving-to shame. Technological advances are bound to make small computers as common as typewriters. Will hu- mans soon be able to leave all short-term memory tasks to electronics?
No, says Estes, a Harvard psychologist. Granted, short-term...
W. K.
Estes, in American Scientist (Jan.-Feb.
1980), 345 Whitney Ave., New Haven,
Conn. 0651 1.
Able to store millions of bits of data and retrieve them in microseconds, computers put human "short-term memoryw-which handles new in- formation and problem-solving-to shame. Technological advances are bound to make small computers as common as typewriters. Will hu- mans soon be able to leave all short-term memory tasks to electronics?
No, says Estes, a Harvard psychologist. Granted, short-term...
a University of Hawaii astronomer con- firm the cosmological origin of quasars, reports Maran, a NASA staff scientist.
Astronomers had previously devised a theoretical "proof" of quasars' cosmological origins, pegged to the accepted belief that the red shift of galaxies resulted from the universe's expansion. If it could be deter- mined that quasars characteristically occurred within the remotest, faintly visible groups of galaxies and displayed similar red shifts, then the common origin...
70 million people annually. But between 1950 and 1970, the annual increase grew from 43 million to 73 million.
The "fertility transition" underway today in Latin America, Asia, and Africa is much more rapid than that of 18th- and 19th-century Europe. China's birthrate, for example, fell from 40 per thousand persons to 26 in less than 30 years (1950-77). Since 1970, birthrates have fallen even faster in the rest of the Third World.
The new figures show that the population growth-rate...
fellow virtuosos. Beethoven's string quartets were simply too difficult for most amateur musicians, as were Schubert's songs. Both musicians, however, were acclaimed experts as geniuses. Their works were widely performed by professional musicians.
The myths of the rejection of Wolfgang Mozart (1756-91) may be the most persistent, says Lenneberg. Despite mountains of contrary evi- dence, scholars still view the prolific Austrian prodigy as poor and unappreciated by Viennese society. His poverty,...
starting with the corrupt text and moving backward. Most editions of the novel are shot through with more than 6,000 typographical errors. In 1977, Hans Walter ~abler, the general editor of a planned "Critical Edi- tion" of Joyce's works, turned to a computer in Munich for help.
Gabler fed the computer every known manuscript, author's change, and early edition of the novel. The computer compared these texts and provided a group of British and American Joyce scholars with a master list...