Cruel and unscientific, the ‘vegetative state’ diagnosis stems from a hierarchical and bigoted view of all living things - by Ben Platts-Mills Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The colourised deep-space images from NASA are more than just intergalactic eye candy – they help us understand better - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
How medieval thinkers foreshadowed modern physics in investigating the character of machines, devices and forces - by Henrik Lagerlund & Sylvain Roudaut Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A knife cuts, an eye sees. And, to achieve our highest purpose, humans should philosophise – according to Aristotle - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
To understand helpless human babies, our big brains and oddly involved dads, look to the evolution of birds not mammals - by Antone Martinho-Truswell Read at Aeon | Continue reading
From civil rights marches to moonwalks, historical imagery that belongs to everyone is locked away behind paywalls. Why? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Economics is the language of power and affects us all. What can we do to improve its impoverished menu of ideas? - by Ha-Joon Chang Read at Aeon | Continue reading
‘It’s like being in love with someone’: Barry Duncan, MIT’s master palindromist, spells out his ‘doubly satisfying’ process - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The stories of oral societies, passed from generation to generation, are more than they seem. They are scientific records - by Patrick Nunn Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A fun toy or a terrible warning – what does the arrival in 1964 of the first TV transmitter to Scottish Shetland portend? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
He was the first great observer of nature. But his theory of human reproduction was deeply sexist – and enduring - by Emily Thomas Read at Aeon | Continue reading
How Goya went from royal portraiture and Church commissions to a series of ‘Black Paintings’ without even a hint of God - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
In science our concepts have neat, hard edges. In poetry our concepts stretch and expand. Both are necessary for knowledge - by James Camien McGuiggan Read at Aeon | Continue reading
We have laws to protect children from factory work. Why aren’t they protected from parents who monetise their lives online? - by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Carl Sagan explains how, with just ‘sticks, eyes, feet and brains’, an ancient Greek polymath first calculated Earth’s size - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
This ancient practice, nurturing animals and trees in an ecological system, fights climate change and restores the land - by Liz Carlisle & Niki Mazaroli Read at Aeon | Continue reading
They appear from the sea ice – the eerie tradition celebrated by the Labrador Inuit people of Canada every 6 January - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Scholars cannot agree whether the letters of Plato are fake or genuine. Is this just a symptom of misplaced reverence? - by James Romm Read at Aeon | Continue reading
If all artists take inspiration from previous artists’ work, does AI art really pose a new threat to human creativity? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today - by Lydia Moland Read at Aeon | Continue reading
I am an unequivocal rationalist and yet I still want to see something strange and wonderful in life’s weird coincidences - by Paul Broks Read at Aeon | Continue reading
From clay to ceramic, making a Korean moon jar is a meticulous process that reflects ancient Confucian values - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
It takes nerve to go against the grain and take your child out of school. But, for some, that’s when learning really starts - by Naomi Fisher & Heidi Steel Read at Aeon | Continue reading
‘Reclaiming myself and my image’ – one woman’s powerful, lyrical meditation on childhood trauma and personal transformation - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Alexandre Kojève was an immense influence on many French thinkers. What was so compelling about his lectures on Hegel? - by Samantha Rose Hill Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A slice-of-life documentary on Mumbai’s curious poster politics offers a wry commentary on self-image in the digital age - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The idea of the soul is obviously a nonsense, yet its immaterial mysterious nature has deep hooks in the human psyche - by David P Barash Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Since antiquity, artists have depicted a perverse scene of a daughter breastfeeding her aged father. What does it mean? - by Margie Orford Read at Aeon | Continue reading
How an imaginative piece of medieval cartography navigates history, mythology and religion to orient us in the Middle Ages - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Is Earth’s most-spoken language a living ‘gift’ or a many-headed ‘monster’? Both views distract us from the real dilemma - by Mario Saraceni Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The Great Salt Lake’s ecosystem in free fall. What’s the emotional toll of watching it evaporate before your eyes? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Straight men rarely write about the end of their marriages. Our enduring ideas about gender explain this silence - by Joshua Coleman Read at Aeon | Continue reading
The French artist Alain Biet’s ‘visual symphony of everyday objects’ celebrates human ingenuity by mining magic from the mundane - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Stalin presented Orthodox leaders with a proposal: the Soviet state that had destroyed their Church would bring it back - by Kathryn David Read at Aeon | Continue reading
By showing us a new cosmos, the discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope will ripple through our moral universe - by Claire Isabel Webb Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Watch as a computer code visualises, in real time, the ratios embedded in a virtuoso musician’s improvisations on the piano - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
The very attributes that make small dogs cute and popular are slowly strangling their ability to function as real animals - by Jessica Pierce Read at Aeon | Continue reading
How one man’s activism helped uncover the reckless nuclear tests that contaminated lands and bodies in South Australia - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Cultural exchange between Iran and India led to the creation of literary histories that inspired modern nationalism - by Alexander Jabbari Read at Aeon | Continue reading
A precise digital construction of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison offers a subtle commentary on power and surveillance - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Were it not for her friendship with John Locke, the radical feminist gems of philosopher Damaris Masham might be unknown - by Regan Penaluna Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Why don’t we experience ‘quantum weirdness’ in our everyday lives? A brief dive into the current crossroads of physics - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
Hunter-gatherers don’t live in an economic idyll but their deep appreciation of rest puts industrialised work to shame - by Vivek V Venkataraman Read at Aeon | Continue reading
How the Parthenon Marbles came to be on display in the British Museum, thousands of miles from the temple they once adorned - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
As AI drum machines embrace humanising imperfections, what does this mean for ‘real’ drummers and the soul of music? - by Jack Stilgoe Read at Aeon | Continue reading
Why Laura Leigh campaigns to protect the magnificent sight of wild horses running free in the Western United States - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon | Continue reading
From mansplaining about breastfeeding to debates on developmental toys, medieval parenting was full of familiar dilemmas - by Katherine Harvey Read at Aeon | Continue reading
When everyday life is marked by oppression and violence, can a martyr’s death truly be an act of freedom and resistance? - by Umar Lateef Misgar Read at Aeon | Continue reading