Articles by Ralph Lewis

I was delighted to read the article on evolution in the March 30, 1992, issue of The Scientist ("Evolution: It's Not Just A Single Theory, It's A Lot Of Theories," page 15). Since 1980 I have been saying what was said in the headline of the article (Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 23:551-72, 1980; The American Biology Teacher, 48[6]:344-7, 1986). There are also systems of theories in ecology, in molecular biology, and in all parts of biology. But would you learn this from reading the te

Before Greg Bogart (Letters, The Scientist, Nov. 25, 1991, page 14) decides that creation theories should be seriously considered in science, he should get answers to the following questions and compare them with answers to the questions applied to evolution. * What are the embedded and developing theories in creationism? (Embedded theories are fully developed, generally accepted theories.) * What are the basic premises--the postulates--of each theory? * What are some examples of lines of

Importance Of Theory Your article on Bell Labs (The Scientist, Sept. 5, page 1) brought to mind these words of Pasteur “Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of invention ... Progress with routine is possible, but desperately slow.” (The Life of Pasteur, by R. Vallery-Radot, pages 76 and 146). Except for AT&T with its Bell Labs, and two or three others, American businesses have never understood Pasteur’s wo

Professor Provine’s outstanding scholarly works make untrue his words, “I will die and soon be forgotten.” He has built for himself the kind of immortality that is the envy of those of us for whom his words will be the truth. This error about himself possibly derives from his failure to explicitly recognize that every theory has boundaries and only as the boundaries are discovered do we begin to fully understand the theory. In his second paragraph, Provine states the postulat