by George L. Murphy | Jul 16, 2023 | Features
The Planck scale My first career was in physics, with an emphasis in general relativity, so a copy of Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale1Craig Callender and Nick Huggett (eds.), Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale: Contemporary theories in quantum...
by George L. Murphy | Jul 8, 2022 | Commentary
Lost and found When we returned last year to our winter retreat in Arizona after absence due to COVID-19 and other matters, I got into books I’d put in storage there. One I’d forgotten was a collection of Robert Oppenheimer’s post-war essays titled The Open...
by George L. Murphy | Oct 13, 2021 | Commentary
NATURE and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night: God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light. Alexander Pope’s lines were intended as an epitaph for Isaac Newton.https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/sir-isaac-newton Foremost in his mind...
by George L. Murphy | May 12, 2021 | Features
I’m writing this on April 22 which, as everyone — or at least a lot of people — knows as Earth Day. It occurred to me that probably many members of the ELCA don’t know that their church has also designated the Second Sunday after Pentecost, the one following...
by George L. Murphy | Apr 15, 2021 | Features
Before there was hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, before there was climate change denial or Intelligent Design, there was Immanuel Velikovsky. I first encountered “pseudoscience” in the 1950s when my brother got Martin Gardner’s Fad’s and...