There is an assumption that things used routinely are understood, and it does not hold in general.
A great many effective interventions were established empirically — somebody noticed that something…
The useful frame is that bread is a foam with a solid structure. Something has to make the gas, something has to trap it, and something has to set around…
Everything below comes from one thing: the axis the Earth spins on is not perpendicular to the plane it orbits in. Every seasonal phenomenon anywhere is a consequence of that…
The distinction that organises the whole subject is between comparing and measuring. A balance compares; a scale measures a force. Almost every difference between weighing devices follows from which one…
The organising fact is that a plant has several parts, and if you consistently select for one of them getting bigger, you eventually get a vegetable that is mostly that…
There is a phrase that gets used dismissively — that something is just a placebo — and it carries an assumption worth examining.
The assumption is that a placebo response…