On a May evening in 1959, C.P. Snow, a popular novelist and former research scientist, gave a lecture before a gathering of dons and… | Continue reading
A few years ago, at the Princeton Club in Manhattan, I chanced on a memorable chat with the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. His… | Continue reading
Must we always follow reason? Do I need a rational argument for why I should fall in love, cherish my children, enjoy the pleasures… | Continue reading
Science is not the massive structure built of facts that you were taught in school—at least not to scientists. What interests scientists… | Continue reading
In the annals of transportation history persists a tale of how automobiles in the early 20th century helped cities conquer their waste… | Continue reading
1 We Are Smothering the Planet with Our PoopThe next time you go grocery shopping, look at where your food comes from. Most of it… | Continue reading
I’m standing on an observation platform atop 24 colossal pressure cookers that belong to DC Water, the sewage treatment plant of… | Continue reading
In the annals of transportation history persists a tale of how automobiles in the early 20th century helped cities conquer their waste… | Continue reading
When Ernest Sternglass walked up the steps at 112 Mercer Street in April 1947, he knew it would not be a normal day. Like a church… | Continue reading
On a calm and cloudless night far out to sea, gazing toward the heavens, you’d expect to see the sky glowing with stars, offsetting… | Continue reading
“The brain is a funny thing,” guitarist Pat Martino told Nautilus in 2015. “It’s part of the vehicle, but it’s not part… | Continue reading
Can you imagine a mind without language? More specifically, can you imagine your mind without language? Can you think, plan, or relate… | Continue reading
One day in 2010, when oncologist Paul Muizelaar operated on a patient with glioblastoma—a brain tumor infamous for its deathly toll—he… | Continue reading
At first, no one looked twice at the new variant. Detected in South Africa in January 2021, the novel coronavirus lineage, called… | Continue reading
On a calm and cloudless night far out to sea, gazing toward the heavens, you’d expect to see the sky glowing with stars, offsetting… | Continue reading
Psychologists found that video games that allowed players to play out their “ideal selves” (embodying roles that allow them to… | Continue reading
On a chilly evening last fall, I stared into nothingness out of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my office on the outskirts of Harvard’s… | Continue reading
Prior to the rise of urban culture, the sounds of clucking hens must have been among the world’s most ubiquitous annoyances. For… | Continue reading
Take a walk on a busy avenue and you hear either traffic whizzing by or creeping in a honk-laden crawl. Add the hissing of pneumatic… | Continue reading
On a chilly evening last fall, I stared into nothingness out of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my office on the outskirts of Harvard’s… | Continue reading
Prior to the rise of urban culture, the sounds of clucking hens must have been among the world’s most ubiquitous annoyances. For… | Continue reading
Take a walk on a busy avenue and you hear either traffic whizzing by or creeping in a honk-laden crawl. Add the hissing of pneumatic… | Continue reading
The dinosaur is a chimera. Some parts of this complex assemblage are the result of biological evolution. But others are products of… | Continue reading
Ever since Frederick Winslow Taylor timed the exact number of seconds that Bethlehem Steel workers took to push shovels into a load… | Continue reading
For something so effortless and automatic, vision is a tough job for the brain. It’s remarkable that we can transform electromagnetic… | Continue reading
The fish market has become the site of an ontological crisis. Detailed labels inform us where each fillet is from or how it was caught… | Continue reading
James Watson once said his road to the 1962 Nobel Prize began in Naples, Italy. At a conference in 1951, he met Maurice Wilkins, the… | Continue reading
James Watson once said his road to the 1962 Nobel Prize began in Naples, Italy. At a conference in 1951, he met Maurice Wilkins, the… | Continue reading
For something so effortless and automatic, vision is a tough job for the brain. It’s remarkable that we can transform electromagnetic… | Continue reading
James Watson once said his road to the 1962 Nobel Prize began in Naples, Italy. At a conference in 1951, he met Maurice Wilkins, the… | Continue reading
The dinosaur is a chimera. Some parts of this complex assemblage are the result of biological evolution. But others are products of… | Continue reading
Most American newborns will arrive home from the hospital and start hitting their developmental milestones, to their parents’ delight.… | Continue reading
Can AI teach itself the laws of physics? Will classical computers soon be replaced by deep neural networks? Sure looks like it, if… | Continue reading
Consciousness is a thriving industry. It’s not just the meditation retreats and ayahuasca shamans. Or the conferences with a heady… | Continue reading
What could we not know about water? It’s wet! It’s clear. It comes from rain. It boils. It makes snow and it makes ice! Does our… | Continue reading
For an empirical science, physics can be remarkably dismissive of some of our most basic observations. We see objects existing in… | Continue reading
I have a childhood memory of looking in the bathroom mirror, and for the first time realizing that my experience at that precise moment—the… | Continue reading
I have a childhood memory of looking in the bathroom mirror, and for the first time realizing that my experience at that precise moment—the… | Continue reading
Terri Randall’s hope when she makes films about space exploration—like Chasing Pluto, for example, or Death Dive to Saturn—is… | Continue reading
I have a childhood memory of looking in the bathroom mirror, and for the first time realizing that my experience at that precise moment—the… | Continue reading
For an empirical science, physics can be remarkably dismissive of some of our most basic observations. We see objects existing in… | Continue reading
Consciousness is a thriving industry. It’s not just the meditation retreats and ayahuasca shamans. Or the conferences with a heady… | Continue reading
Neural networks need to “dream” of weird, senseless examples to learn well. Maybe we do, too.Photo Illustration by MDV Edwards… | Continue reading
Neural networks need to “dream” of weird, senseless examples to learn well. Maybe we do, too.Photo Illustration by MDV Edwards… | Continue reading
Dear Bella,I’m going to imitate Rudyard Kipling and tell you a just-so story. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the… | Continue reading
At first, they trickle in: one bird here, a few birds there. Then, at dusk’s cue, a dark smudge materializes on the horizon. Thousands… | Continue reading
Our brains can play the worst tricks on us. They are always looking to explain and categorize incoming stimuli, sometimes perceiving… | Continue reading
Remember domino theory? One country going Communist was supposed to topple the next, and then the next, and the next. The metaphor… | Continue reading