by Nevill Coghill Upon a hill towards the sun,When part of my pilgrimage was done,I found my lover in a tree,Gathering bitter fruit for me.The branches tore his hands and feet,Yet, on the fruit he bade me eat,The bitterness was washed away;And in a year that was a dayThe tree was sometimes wild with flower,Sometimes a green and leafy bower,Sometimes Read More ›
Baylor University in Waco, Texas, is deeply committed to retaining its Baptist identity — so a student solemnly assured me when I visited the campus recently. Many parents pay dearly to send their children to a university that will pass on their Baptist heritage. Those same parents might be surprised to learn that the Baylor faculty wants to shut down Read More ›
Vice President Gore keeps telling us how proud he is that he voted against the Reagan tax rate reductions in 1981. This is a curious boast for a politician to make since, a year after the tax cuts went into effect, inflation and unemployment fell sharply and the economy began to grow very rapidly. Most observers credit the Reagan tax Read More ›
In criticizing Phillip Johnson’s “intelligent design creationism,” Robert Pennock raises a particularly worrisome legal consequence of Johnson’s view. According to Pennock, Johnson insists “that science admit the reality of supernatural influences in the daily workings of the world.” But what if the same reasoning that Johnson is trying to import into science were adopted in Johnson’s own area of specialization Read More ›
Stock markets are world-wide webs of information. So why half the time do they behave like members of some candy mountain mystical sect, torn between dreams of eternal wealth and horror of a bottomless pit? Ultimately ruling markets are data about the remorselessly real facts of supply and demand, the empirical realities of finance and the intricate, unforgiving details of Read More ›
This week Baylor University hosted a major conference on a profound subject. Organized by the new Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor and entitled The Nature of Nature, the conference will entertain weighty questions: Is nature all there is, or does it point beyond itself? Does the world exhibit signs of purpose, and if so, might we be able to detect Read More ›
The case of James H. Armstrong, M.D. v. The State of Montana should have been merely a skirmish in the never-ending national struggle over abortion. Instead, relying on the reasoning of certain “experts” in the moral choices surrounding health care, the Montana Supreme Court issued in October 1999 a sweeping decision that could make huge changes in the way Montanans live—and Read More ›
The computer age is over. Bandwidth and now “storewidth”, eclipse the PC paradigm. PCs remain important but peripheral. After a cataclysmic global run of 30 years, the PC revolution has stiffened into an establishment. So swiftly and subliminally did this silicon tide pass through the economy that many analysts missed much of the motion until it stopped. Then they mistook Read More ›
For two millennia, the design argument provided an intellectual foundation for much of Western thought. From classical antiquity through the rise of modern science, leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists — from Plato to Aquinas to Newton — maintained that nature manifests the design of a preexistent mind or intelligence. Moreover, for many Western thinkers, the idea that the physical universe Read More ›
C-SPAN has just released its rankings of American presidents. Several dozen notable historians and professional observers of the presidency were surveyed and asked to rank the presidents in 10 different categories. Most of the categories are somewhat subjective, such as “moral authority” and “pursued equal justice for all.” One category, however, “economic management,” can be analyzed empirically. Numbers are available Read More ›