it's largely anecdotal, very far removed from physics or mathematics and plays a certain role the ceremonies of democratic life and has played that role for half a century or so. but, of course, it's like everything else, it's changing. it's undergoing change because of the intense intellectual pressure brought on any scientific theory by the profound questions. for example, we know perfectly well that questions about the origins of life from the standpoint of 2018 are hopeless. we do not understand how life emerged from what under a rock it did emerge. we are simply making a coherent chemical account. a chemist at rice university has written about this, for inference. journal i'm editing. he said it's time to -- and as