From the Editor

     As any member of Torch knows, and likely has experienced in any number of club meetings, much may be gained by considering another perspective, taking in new information, examining our assumptions. The articles in our Winter 2019 issue, in a variety of ways, exemplify and do honor to that indispensable principle of being willing to reconsider what we know.

    The evolving (and unfinished) story of human understanding of the cosmos repeatedly illustrates how gains in knowledge often call for a letting go of knowledge acquired previously. The Copernican revolution is the classic instance, and it makes for a key episode in "The Changing ‘Reality’ of Our Universe," by Ernst Behrens of the Lancaster club.

     If I have a clear, vivid, irresistible impression that God is present, then I may conclude that God exists, may I not? Well, not so fast. Parker English of the Portsmouth club scrutinizes the assumptions behind that and similar conclusions in "God in Experience."

     It's all in the genes, we may think at other moments. Here too, a closer look may tell us that the behavior of genes depends immensely on the contexts and processes that are the subjects of "Epigenetics" by Orlando Jack Miller of the Blue Ridge club.

     What could be more obvious and more widely assumed than that the American Revolution was necessary and inevitable? Edward Weber of the Toledo club takes us back to 1763 to look at a range of decisions that could have gone another way in "The Revolution That Should Not Have Happened."

     Wesley Turner looks at another conflict between England and the United States, the War of 1812, in "The Treaty of Ghent: Opening the Way to Lasting Peace." Prof. Turner of the St. Catherines, Ontario, club takes a perspective most of us in the United States rarely consider—the Canadian—in explaining why the Treaty of Ghent succeeded where so many peace treaties have failed.

     For any topic, there is the "big picture," which we are always being urged to look at. It is easy to forget there is a lot that is fascinating and enlightening in the smallest details of the picture as well. Retired railroad man Bruce Flohr of the San Antonio club lets us in on some of those details in "Railroad Trivia."