Origins of science  The Greeks used the word episteme for science. Episteme means knowledge, techne (craftsmanship), understanding, and experience. Episteme / science was primarily knowledge from the observation of nature and natural phenomena, which slowly eclipsed the role of the divine and superstition in the organization and understanding of life and the cosmos.  In the fifth century BCE, Hippokrates, father of  medicine, said there was nothing divine in the disease of epilepsy. Careful observations of the patient  and knowledge of the natural origins of diseases sufficed to explain the natural causes of epilepsy. In the fourth century BCE, Aristotle invented biology-zoology. Science shone through his detailed and extraordinary work on the history, classification, anatomy, and behavior of animals. The Arabs called Aristotle The Philosopher. Charles Darwin praised Aristotle to heavens.  Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great who c...

Plagues from Mao to Trump On July 1, 1958, the ruler of China,  Mao Tse-tung , said farewell to the god of plagues. Mao’s celebration was short lived. The god of plagues has been ravaging China and the rest of the world to this day of the existential corona pandemic in 2020.  China started the twenty-first century with a plague. According to  Yanzhong Huang , professor of diplomacy at Seton Hall University,  the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) plague of 2002 caught the government of China unprepared. This was as much a blow to public health as it was a political embarrassment to the Communist Party. Politicians and doctors from the time of Mao to the time of Trump have treated plagues like so many other diseases: temporary harm exorcised with drugs and vaccines. In 2020, however, the plague of the corona virus demands a different philosophy: sensitive to the nature, harmony, and extreme vulnerability of the world. Humans are on...

The decision of Senator  Bernie Sanders  to withdraw from the Democratic presidential contest is a blow to the prospects of democracy in America. For several years, but especially since 2016, Sanders has been talking of the need for political revolution, by which he means: (1) revitalize democratic institutions and the economy by taxing the rich and closing the gigantic inequality gap between rich and everybody else, including the poor. He would use the revenue from taxing the billionaires for public works paying living wages and employing millions of Americans to rebuild the country’s crumbling infrastructure and fight climate change; and (2) reorganize and strengthen environmental protection and education, offer health care to all Americans, and see that workers had safety and health.   These reforms would raise the living standards and health of most Americans left behind by the present economy and culture dominated by the military-industrial complex and the bill...

The Triumph of Death by Pieter the Elder Bruegel, 1562. Public Domain. The corona virus of 2020 is sowing illness and death in 200 countries around the world. It’s a pandemic with the potential of vast death and partial destruction of national and world economies. In addition, it has potential deleterious political effects: the increase of the power of national and global oligarchies.   The plague is a disease that raises its devouring and catastrophic head every so many decades and centuries, especially when humans violently disturb the natural world.  The 2020 plague is one of a variety of pandemic diseases that have afflicted humans for millennia, not necessarily with the same intensity or virulence. The historical record of plagues is muddled. Like us, past societies under the existential stress of pandemics, failed to keep records, much less accurate records. In many instances, past and present, rulers, medical bureaucrats, and journalists subvert ...