Repetition and rupture

Reinhart Koselleck, the last great theorist of history, sought in the apparent chaos of events a science of experience | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Deluded, with Reason

Extraordinary beliefs don’t arise in a vacuum. They take root in minds confronted by unusual and traumatic experiences | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Cape sundews trap bugs in a sticky situation

Watch as the carnivorous Cape sundew, a bog-dwelling plant of South Africa, uses electricity to capture its prey | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Deluded, with reason

Extraordinary beliefs don’t arise in a vacuum. They take root in minds confronted by unusual and traumatic experiences | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Complex systems science allows us to see new paths forward

Aeon is a magazine of ideas and culture. We publish in-depth essays, incisive articles, and a mix of original and curated videos — free to all. | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Complex systems science allows us to see new paths forward

The pandemic is an unprecedented opportunity – seeing human society as a complex system opens a better future for us all | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Uncertain times

The pandemic is an unprecedented opportunity – seeing human society as a complex system opens a better future for us all | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

The impossible chessboard puzzle

Can you find the key that will set you free? The methodical thrills of working through a nearly impossible-to-solve puzzle | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

The impossible chessboard puzzle

Can you find the key that will set you free? The methodical thrills of working through an impossible-to-solve prisoner puzzle | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

For Schopenhauer, happiness is a state of semi-satisfaction

Renowned for his pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer was nonetheless a conoisseur of very distinctive kinds of happiness | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Stone cut

What Antoni Gaudí began in 1882, Etsuro Sotoo aims to finish: the Sagrada Família as a divine conversation between artists | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

The semi-satisfied life

Renowned for his pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer was nonetheless a conoisseur of very distinctive kinds of happiness | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

The Fayum portraits

The Fayum portraits are a vivid evocation of the diverse peoples living in Egypt’s desert oasis amid the fall of Rome | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

No rest

In the 19th century, the rest cure tested women’s sanity. Today, it challenges cherished myths about work and productivity | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Forgive and be free

Hurts – your own or those done to you – keep you stuck. Forgiveness therapy can help you gain perspective and move on | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Catastrophe drives evolution. But life resides in the pauses

Evolution is extraordinarily creative in the wake of a cataclysm. How does life keep steadily ticking over in between? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Zea

An award-winning film captures a mysterious bubbling substance. What it is stays a mystery until the explosive finale | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Catastrophes and calms

Evolution is extraordinarily creative in the wake of a cataclysm. How does life keep steadily ticking over in between? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Susan Greenfield on neuronal assemblies

Why we don’t feel pain in dreams, and other brain puzzles that neuronal assemblies might help neuroscientists unlock | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

What do shoes do?

Partly of the earth, partly of our body, the shoe sits on the edge of an ontological threshold. Where can it transport us? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Aztecs Told History

For the warriors and wanderers who became the Aztec people, truth was not singular and history was braided from many voices | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Plato’s allegory of the cave

Plato’s timeless ‘allegory of the cave’, brought to life with retro-surreal animation and Orson Welles’s narration | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

How Aztecs told history

For the warriors and wanderers who became the Aztec people, truth was not singular and history was braided from many voices | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Real experts know what they don’t know and we should value it

The ignorant pundit is absolutely certain; the true expert understands their own limits and how to ask the right questions | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Confidence tricks

The ignorant pundit is absolutely certain; the true expert understands their own limits and how to ask the right questions | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Solos

An elegant meditation on the intersections of streets, stories and social forces that give shape to a Barcelona square | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Mummies among us

Before death became a source of disgust and denial, Europeans cheerfully painted with – and ingested – human remains | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Why language remains the most flexible brain-to-brain interface

Brain-to-brain interfaces promise to bypass language. But do we really want access to one another’s unmediated thoughts? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

The meaning of a monument

How the American Museum of Natural History grappled with its controversial statue of Roosevelt before pulling it down | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

The space between our heads

Brain-to-brain interfaces promise to bypass language. But do we really want access to one another’s unmediated thoughts? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Oppy: the life of a rover

‘My battery is low and it’s getting dark’: the sights and sounds of life on Mars before Oppy the rover’s expedition ended | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Universal unions

Being an employee is a threat to your liberty. But while firms exist, compulsory unions are a basic safeguard of freedom | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

What is the link between medieval and modern antisemitism?

Antisemitism flourished in response to the unsettling, abstract growth of finance capitalism in the early modern world | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Big Space: Our cosmic horizon is both unreachable and closer than ever

Our planet is a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea. Can we learn what lies beyond our own horizons of perception? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Big space

Our planet is a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea. Can we learn what lies beyond our own horizons of perception? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

The City Is a Lie

From Ancient Egypt’s deltas to Edinburgh’s crags and peaks, the city pushes back against the dream of human separateness | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

If language began in the hands, why did it ever leave?

If language began with gestures around a campfire and secret signals on hunts, why did speech come to dominate communication? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

All inclusive

A deadpan glimpse of life aboard a cruise ship, where rituals of excess and organised fun have built a $45 billion industry | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

The city is a lie

From Ancient Egypt’s deltas to Edinburgh’s crags and peaks, the city pushes back against the dream of human separateness | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

If language began in the hands, why did it ever leave?

If language began with gestures around a campfire and secret signals on hunts, why did speech come to dominate communication? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

The billionaire curse [philanthropy as enterprise]

Philanthropy is vital – but its mechanisms are as intricate and troubling as the baroque structures of high finance | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Time-based currency by Robert Owen

Before he pioneered the eight-hour workday, in 1832 Robert Owen tried to reboot currency with his banknote per working hour | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

In the wake

‘Once we are gone, the art of hand weaving itself will die’ – inside the workshop in Kerala still making textiles by hand | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

The billionaire curse

Philanthropy is vital – but its mechanisms are as intricate and troubling as the baroque structures of high finance | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

To see the antisemitism of medieval bestiaries, look for the owl

The owls are not what they seem: how medieval bestiaries expressed in visual code the antisemitism of the English Church | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

19th-century female husbands

Far from being a recent or 21st-century phenomenon, people have chosen, courageously, to trans gender throughout history | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Hand to mouth

If language began with gestures around a campfire and secret signals on hunts, why did speech come to dominate communication? | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago

Manhatta

The developing cityscape of 1920s New York, framed by Walt Whitman’s poetry and set to a new score, commissioned by Aeon | Continue reading


@aeon.co | 4 years ago