A cleaner formulation of Epimenides’ paradox—cleaner because one need not worry about Cretans and their attributes—is the liar’s paradox: This statement is false. The statement cannot be true, because then it is false. It cannot be false, because then it becomes true. It is neither true nor false, or it is both at once.

The ability of a thermodynamic system to produce work depends not on the heat itself, but on the contrast between hot and cold. A hot stone plunged into cold water can generate work—for example, by creating steam that drives a turbine—but the total heat in the system (stone plus water) remains constant. Eventually, the stone and the water reach the

Jonathan Miller rephrases McLuhan’s argument in quasi-technical terms of information: “The larger the number of senses involved, the better the chance of transmitting a reliable copy of the sender’s mental state.”

A part of Dawkins’s purpose was to explain altruism: behavior in individuals that goes against their own best interests. Nature is full of examples of animals risking their own lives in behalf of their progeny, their cousins, or just fellow members of their genetic club. Furthermore, they share food; they cooperate in building hives and dams; they

Brenner was in a thoughtful mood, drinking sherry before dinner at King’s College. When he began working with Crick, less than two decades before, molecular biology did not even have a name. Two decades later, in the 1990s, scientists worldwide would undertake the mapping of the entire human genome: perhaps 20,000 genes, 3 billion base pairs. What

Morse had a great insight from which all the rest flowed. Knowing nothing about pith balls, bubbles, or litmus paper, he saw that a sign could be made from something simpler, more fundamental, and less tangible—the most minimal event, the closing and opening of a circuit. Never mind needles. The electric current flowed and was interrupted, and the

The relationship between the telegraph and the newspaper was symbiotic. Positive feedback loops amplified the effect. Because the telegraph was an information technology, it served as an agent of its own ascendency.

Queen Victoria installed one at Windsor Castle and one at Buckingham Palace (fabricated in ivory; a gift from the savvy Bell). The topology changed when the number of sets reachable by other sets passed a critical threshold, and that happened surprisingly soon. Then community networks arose, their multiple connections managed through a new apparatu

Thus Gödel showed that a consistent formal system must be incomplete; no complete and consistent system can exist.