Any object, whether animate or inanimate, will have a size. Airplanes, boats, or musical string instruments vary in size just like animals and plants, and in all cases, their size and their material construction are totally different matters even though they affect one another.

That the role of size has been to some degree neglected in biology may lie in its simplicity. Size may be a property that affects all of life, but it seems pallid compared to the matter which makes up life. Yet size is an aspect of the living that plays a remarkable, overreaching role that affects life's matter in all its aspects.

It is hard to explain the huge variety of diatoms - a microorganism that has 100,000 species - in terms of natural selection.

There are good reasons why natural selection has become widely accepted as an explanation of evolutionary development. When applied to mammals and other large animals, it fits perfectly. But we cannot assume that all evolutionary steps arise from selection, particularly when looking at smaller animals.

My father left me with his love of Jewish studies and cultural life. To this very day, along with several physicians and scientist colleagues, I take regular periodical lessons taught by a Rabbinical scholar on how the Jewish law views moral and ethical problems related to modern medicine and science.

Science does not limit itself merely to what is currently verifiable. But it is interested in questions that are potentially verifiable (or, rather, falsifiable).

Networked science has the potential to speed up dramatically the rate of discovery across all of science.

The facts of science are real enough, and so are the techniques that scientists use, and so are the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith.