Alex Callinicos looks at the political controversies that still surround Charles Darwin, who was born 200 years ago, and founded modern biology with his theory of evolution
Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace formulated the theory of evolution and fought for its acceptance across the scientific community, writes John Parrington.
When Nobel prize winner James Watson made racist comments about black people and intelligence last month, he was using his scientific credentials to legitimise bigotry.
Stem cell research is among the most exciting but also most controversial areas of science today. It was in the news again last week because of proposals by British scientists to make stem cells from embryos created by implanting the genes from a human cell into the egg of a rabbit, cow or goat.
Stephen Jay Gould, who died in 2002, was among the great scientists of his generation. Socialist Review spoke to Steven Rose, co-editor of a new collection of Gould's essays.
I discussed last week how Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper on the special theory of relativity helped resolve an emerging crisis in physics. In the same year Einstein published three other major scientific papers.
I showed last week how Isaac Newton developed laws of motion that allowed a materialist picture of the universe to emerge. This materialism was of a mechanical kind — with matter interacting like parts in a giant clockwork mechanism set into motion by god.
