As the semanticist S.I. Hayakawa stressed in his classic book Language in Thought and Action, words are not the things they represent. Words are symbols. It’s the manipulation of those symbols that ...

This essay is part of Demystifying the Mind, a special report on the new science of consciousness. The next installments will appear in the February 25 and March 10 issues of Science News. When ...

Science and its supporters, asserts bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe, are in dire need of their own emblem — a “symbolic unifier” that could be to science what Ichthys is to Christianity. What symbol could ...

It happens all over the periodic table. The chemical symbol for lead is Pb. For mercury, Hg. For antimony, Sb. My chemistry teacher in high school cracked up every time she referred to the symbol for ...

SCIENCE is under assault. In the US and throughout the world, rhetoric about evolution, stem cells, global warming and other controversial and cutting-edge technologies often transcends legitimate ...