In Essence

In Essence | Spring 1980
Nature's Simplest Building Blocks

Mitch Waldrop, in Chemica2 and in on a T~eory
Close d Mat- BUiZdiMgBlocks Navs 21, 1980),

Engineering(Jan. Mem-
bership ancf Subscription Services, ACS,
P.O. Box 3337, Columbus, Ohio 43210.
Particle physicists--who study the nucleus of the atom--are nearing an
understanding of the basic nature of matter and its building blocks,
says ~hemical and Engineering News correspondent Waldrop. Among
the pioneers are Harvard physicists Sheldon Glashow and Stephen
Weinberg, and Abdus Salam of the I...

In Essence | Spring 1980
Eternal Life Is Not in the Cards

Leonard Hayflick, in Scientific American Not in the Cards (Jan. 1980). 415 Madison Ave., New York,
N.Y. 10017.
The only obstacles separating man from eternal life may well be disease and that mysterious pattern of decay known as "the aging process." But seekers after perpetual youth will probably be disappointed. Recent findings in cell biology suggest that aging is one of the body's normal functions, instead of a breakdown of those functions, writes Hayflick, a biologist at the Children's...

In Essence | Spring 1980
What Is 'Genius'?

Stephen Jay Gould. in Natural History (Dec. 1979). ~ernbershi~ D&
Services, Box 6000, Moines, Iowa 50340.
How can the process of scientific creativity be explained? Do discov- eries result from inductive reasoning, with scientists cautiously con- structing theories from a growing foundation of facts? Or are they the products of sudden, inexplicable strokes of genius the gifted few?
Gould, who teaches the history of science at Harvard, rejects both theories. Describing Charles Darwin's progress...

In Essence | Spring 1980
Pueblo Astranomy

Stephen Jay Gould. in Natural History (Dec. 1979). ~ernbershi~ D&
Services, Box 6000, Moines, Iowa 50340.
How can the process of scientific creativity be explained? Do discov- eries result from inductive reasoning, with scientists cautiously con- structing theories from a growing foundation of facts? Or are they the products of sudden, inexplicable strokes of genius the gifted few?
Gould, who teaches the history of science at Harvard, rejects both theories. Describing Charles Darwin's progress...

In Essence | Spring 1980
One-Celled Wonders

Chaco Canyon between A.D. 800 and 1250. Skilled builders and traders, they developed advanced irrigation systems and lived in massive, sophisticated pueblos. One multistoried complex contained some 800 rooms. Between 30 and 40 Anasazi towns were linked hundreds of miles of smooth dirt roads, some 30 feet wide. The roads also led to agricultural areas and rock quarries, indicating a highly organized network of farming, man- ufacturing, and commerce.
The calendar is as accurate as any known mechanism...

In Essence | Spring 1980
Early Man's Climate Changes

monitoring worldwide research and keeping records of discoveries, these institutes are starting to serve as reference centers for microbe specialists. They can help experts find and obtain strains they need, and identify projects and experiments that could benefit from microbe supplies on file. (Tens of thousands of microbe strains are catalogued in the system's directory.) They also train new microbe specialists from developing countries and promote new appli- cations of microbiology-such as water...

In Essence | Spring 1980
Iron Curtain Nuclear Protests

sending vast clouds of dust into the atmosphere, starting around 2000 B.C. In West Africa's Sahel, experts trace the re- gion's weak plant life to both overgrazing and slash-and-burn agricul- ture centuries ago. "Killer droughts" such as occurred in 1973-74 were probably a recurring result.
Humans have cleared 7 million square kilometers of tropical forest alone, equivalent to half the Earth's present jungle area. Forty percent of the rain forests of Africa and Brazil have been destroyed....

In Essence | Spring 1980
Behind Buffalo's Big Blizzards

Kyshtym seriously malfunctioned. A cooling system foul-up crippled a breeder reactor near the Caspian Sea in 1973. In Czechoslovakia, one power station leaked radioactive gas in 1976 and radioactive waste water in 1977.
Will a strong "no-nuke" movement develop within the Soviet bloc? Probably not under the more repressive regimes in the USSR, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Rumania, say the authors. But in Poland and Hungary, where Western newscasts have alerted radio listeners...

In Essence | Spring 1980
Fiction with a Future

the modernists-that middle-class morality, linearity, cause and effect, and transparent lan- guage cannot capture the chaos of 20th-century life. Disjunction, simul- taneity, and irrationality must be incorporated into literature. But the postmodernist must also remember that the bewildering works the modernists wrote as protests against traditionalism have made their point. We don't need any more Finnegan's Wakes, writes Barth. Post- modernists should give us books more readable than the forbiddingly...

In Essence | Spring 1980
Abstract Art: A Dead End

the modernists-that middle-class morality, linearity, cause and effect, and transparent lan- guage cannot capture the chaos of 20th-century life. Disjunction, simul- taneity, and irrationality must be incorporated into literature. But the postmodernist must also remember that the bewildering works the modernists wrote as protests against traditionalism have made their point. We don't need any more Finnegan's Wakes, writes Barth. Post- modernists should give us books more readable than the forbiddingly...

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