Inference

New: In the mid-1980s, an enigmatic document began circulating in French mathematical circles. Entitled Récoltes et Semailles, it was a lengthy, philosophical and deeply personal tract from the elusive mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, by then living in self-imposed seclusion. Now published officially for the first time, Pierre Schapira casts a critical eye over the book and some notable omissions.

(Essay available in both English and the original French.)

A Truncated Manuscript | Pierre Schapira | Inference In the mid-1980s, an enigmatic document began circulating in French mathematical circles. Entitled Récoltes et Semailles, it was a lengthy, philosophical and deeply personal tract from the elusive mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, by then living in self-imposed seclusion. Now published official...

As the end of the year approaches, the editors are delighted to present our second annual review, highlighting the essays that best represent our aims, ambitions, attitudes, and even our animadversions. Collected here are some notable essays we published this year, some illuminating exchanges from our letters section, and a selection of our favorite links from The Rambler.

Wishing our readers, contributors, and followers all the very best for the new year ahead.

2022: The Year in Review | The Editors | Inference As the end of the year approaches, the editors are delighted to present our second annual review, highlighting the essays that best represent our aims, ambitions, attitudes, and even our animadversions. Collected here are some notable essays we published this year, some illuminating exchanges from o...

New: A decisive breakthrough in fusion power or another incremental, yet significant, step towards a clean energy future? Daniel Jassby weighs up the latest milestone in fusion research achieved at the National Ignition Facility. https://inference-review.com/article/on-the-laser-fusion-milestone

Python is arguably the most popular programming language worldwide. Since its debut in 1991, Python’s accessibility and rich functionality has helped it gather a huge userbase. Its design was influenced by creator Guido van Rossum’s involvement with an earlier language, ABC. Lambert Meertens, one of ABC’s developers, recounts Python’s origins and how ABC’s design philosophy shaped its successor. https://inference-review.com/article/the-origins-of-python

New: From Douglas Hofstadter, a sweetish suite of machine translations of a pseudo-Swedish paragraph. The resulting gobbledygook reveals the zombie-like nature of these highly vaunted programs. https://inference-review.com/article/wacky-jabber

The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope are now just a few days away. Casey Papovich, an astronomer who will using data in his research, explains how is poised to answer deep questions about the nature of planets and the formation of the first galaxies.

A First Year of Discovery | Casey Papovich | Inference The first images from the largest and most advanced orbiting optical observatory to date—NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope—will be released on July 12. As one of the scientists who will be using the Webb, Casey Papovich examines how it may help answer deep questions about the nature of exoplan...

Bacterial motility is powered by the rotation of its filaments, or flagella. Over the past fifty years, imaging advances have allowed the piecing together of the flagellar motor’s organization.

Bacterial Swimming | Nicholas Taylor | Inference Bacterial motility is powered by the rotation of its filaments, or flagella. Each flagellar motor is made up of a long filament, connected to a basal body embedded in the bacterial cell envelope. Over the past fifty years, advances in electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography, together with gene...

Origin of life research is in trouble. Laboratory conditions cannot replicate prebiotic scenarios, meaning studies that purport to explain the emergence of life in fact explain nothing at all.

A Storm in a Primordial Teacup | A Storm in a Primordial Teacup | Inference Origin of life research is in trouble. Laboratory conditions cannot replicate prebiotic scenarios, meaning studies that purport to explain the emergence of life in fact explain nothing at all.

Were conscious perception updated only twice per second, as some claim, decisions would be made during an unconscious processing stage, meaning our free will might just be an illusion.

Long Thoughts | Rufin VanRullen | Inference Consciousness is formed in discrete windows of perception, yet the exact length of these windows remains debated. Michael Herzog et al. claim that consciousness is updated just twice per second. Should this be the case, decisions would take place during an unconscious processing stage, meaning our f...

The Antikythera mechanism, an astronomical calculator found in a first-century BCE shipwreck, has proven to be mechanically more sophisticated than anything known from the subsequent millennium.

A Mirror of Nature | Mike Edmunds | Inference The Antikythera mechanism, an astronomical calculator found in a first-century BCE shipwreck, has proven to be mechanically more sophisticated than anything known from the subsequent millennium. Yet rather than being an anachronism, the mechanism testifies to the reality of such complex machines in....

Prior to 2018, the standard for the kilogram was a platinum alloy cylinder created in 1889 and stored in Paris. In this note, Jeremy Bernstein explains how the kilogram is now defined using fundamental constants.

The Kilogram | Jeremy Bernstein | Inference Prior to 2018, the standard for the kilogram was a platinum alloy cylinder created in 1889 and stored in Paris. Over the years, the cylinder lost about 50 micrograms of mass by surface ablation. That original kilogram is not what it once was—albeit only fractionally. In this note, Jeremy Bernstein...

In Imperial Science, Bruce Hunt details how the desire for quick communications across the British Empire, drove progress in the physical sciences towards a theory of the electromagnetic field. Read the book review by David Kordahl.

Agents in the Ether | David Kordahl | Inference In the late nineteenth century, research in electromagnetism became intertwined with the Victorian British Empire’s ambitions to install a global network of submarine telegraph cables. In Imperial Science, Bruce Hunt details how the desire for quick communications from London to Egypt, and then on...