February 7, 2011 at 1:04 pm
Night followed day in swift succession. On earth at that time a day lasted for only five or six hours. The planet spun madly on its axis. The moon hung heavy and threatening in the sky, far closer, and so looking much bigger, than today. Stars rarely shone, for the atmosphere was full of smog […]
February 4, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Mitochondria are a silly place to store genes. They are often glibly called the powerhouses of the cell, but the parallel is quite exact. Mitochondrial membranes generate an electric charge, operating across a few millionths of a millimetre, with the same voltage as a bolt of lightning, a thousand times more powerful than domestic writing. […]
February 3, 2011 at 1:18 pm
In the coming weeks, you’re going to see more posts from Core lecturers and faculty here on the Core blog, as we find ways to share part of the Core classroom experience with you readers. Prof. Eckel invited Prof. Wiebke Denecke — who lectured this past Tuesday on Confucius for the students of CC102 — […]
February 3, 2011 at 11:52 am
The word ‘fact’ is always likely to make biologists tremble in their boots, as there are so many exceptions to every rule; but one such ‘fact’ is virtually certain about oxygenic photosynthesis – it only evolved once. — Nick Lane, in his discussion of the evolution of photosynthesis, page 73, in Life Ascending: The Ten […]
February 2, 2011 at 12:01 pm
The chimeric ancestor of the eukaryotes apparently succumbed to an invasion of jumping genes from its mitochondria. — Nick Lane, in his discussion of the evolution of cellular complexity, page 115, in Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, a book now studied in CC106: Biodiversity
January 28, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Between friends there is no need for justice, but people who are just still need the quality of friendship; and indeed friendliness is considered to be justice in the fullest sense. It is not only a necessary thing but a splendid one. — Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
January 26, 2011 at 3:49 pm
When he had flown to the sky like a bird, That foremost of men was thrilled and amazed; then, perceiving that emblem of dharma, he set his mind on how he might leave home. -The Life of Buddha by Asvaghosa, translated by Patrick Olivelle, being studied this spring semester for the first time in the […]
January 24, 2011 at 4:24 pm
Try not to fret in this frozen city, Aristotle can help you find happiness without (much) reference to the weather: For some people think that happiness is a virtue, others that it is practical wisdom, others that it is some kind of theoretical wisdom; others again believe it to be all or some of these […]
November 24, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Marriage of man and wife is Fate itself, stronger than oaths, and Justice guards its life. But if one destroys the other and you relent — no revenge, not a glance in anger — then I say your manhunt of Orestes is unjust. — Apollo addressing the Leader, in Aeschylus’s Eumenides, the final play in […]
November 17, 2010 at 12:08 pm
On the relationship between religious faith and knowledge: Knowledge does not have the destructive power with which it is credited, but it is the only weapon that allows us to struggle against the dissolution from which it itself results. It is not by gagging science that one may restore authority to vanished traditions; we shall […]
