A series of excerpts from the upcoming novel.
history
Atom by Atom: Building Protein Models
How we learned to see the folds, twists, and curls of proteins.
The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread
Snowclones and the history of the next big thing.
Visions of The Lone Scientific Genius
What the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery can tell us about how we mythologize
our lone scientific visionaries in hindsight.
The Daily Life of Amoeba Proteus
Seeing amoeba and seeing ourselves.
The Biological Facts Committee
The American Museum of Natural History’s tumultuous struggle to define biology in the early 20th century.
Conversations with Evelyn Fox Keller
Crossing disciplinary boundaries, from physics to biology to philosophy of science.
He Told Animal Stories
Konrad Lorenz and analogy as a scientific method. An excerpt from Bird Lovers, Backyard.
The Cat Went Over Radioactive Mountain
Inside Yucca Mountain, incomprehensibly long time scales clash with human ones—pairing the monumental and the mundane.
The Dirty History of Doctors’ Hands
What the history of handwashing in hospitals tells us about ego and the kneejerk reflex to reject evidence.
The Coyote Among the Seals
Coyotes are experts at crossing boundaries in the Southern California ecotone.
Relics of Imagined Futures
“We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” – Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog
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