Does everything in the world boil down to basic units – or can emergence explain how distinctive new things arise? | Continue reading
The music of Ancient Greece is no longer a mystery; recreating their songs reveals the roots of the Western tradition | Continue reading
Economic inequality is an urgent problem. Deeper still is our loss of mutual respect, the foundation of a fair society | Continue reading
How over-lighting our homes and streets turned the modern marvel of electric light into an urban blight to health | Continue reading
The trumpeting of elephants is a magnificent and unforgettable sound to human ears but, beyond the reach of our hearing, elephant communication involves something truly remarkable. The high-frequency vibrations of their massive vocal chords can reach the ears of other elephants w … | Continue reading
For big pharma, the perfect patient is wealthy, permanently ill and a daily pill-popper. Will medicine ever recover? | Continue reading
Charles Pierce, William James and truth as a property of our best beliefs: the key concepts of the pragmatic theory of truth | Continue reading
Vast lunar landscapes set to the aching, shimmering piano of Claude Debussy's 1905 composition ‘Clair de Lune’ (French for ‘moonlight’) offer an enchanting melding of science and art through the interplay of light, texture and music. The video, which traces the flow of sunlight o … | Continue reading
Vast lunar landscapes set to the aching, shimmering piano of Claude Debussy's 1905 composition ‘Clair de Lune’ (French for ‘moonlight’) offer an enchanting melding of science and art through the interplay of light, texture and music. The video, which traces the flow of sunlight o … | Continue reading
Competing claims of being on God’s side test the limits of a liberal social order straining to accommodate militant believers | Continue reading
In Japan, ghost stories are not to be scoffed at, but provide deep insights into the fuzzy boundary between life and death | Continue reading
Humans alone have language, but many animals clearly have consciousness. Are parallels between the two a red herring? | Continue reading
Just as the groundwork for the internet was laid decades before its widespread use, many scientists believe the technologies that will usher in the era of human customisation and augmentation are being developed in labs today. Moving far beyond the prevention of genetic illness a … | Continue reading
How over-lighting our homes and streets turned the modern marvel of electric light into an urban blight to health | Continue reading
Children learn best when their bodies are engaged in the living world. We must resist the ideology of screen-based learning | Continue reading
A second-generation hair trader, Zhang Ming Ye makes his living as a broker operating between factories that produce wigs and hairpieces and the collectors who travel village to village across Asia in search of people willing to sell their long hair. According to Ming Ye, the hai … | Continue reading
Children learn best when their bodies are engaged in the living world. We must resist the ideology of screen-based learning | Continue reading
We influence each other in many ways besides pure reason. What’s the moral difference between persuasion and manipulation? | Continue reading
Islamists and Western pundits speak of ‘the West’ and ‘the Muslim world’ but such tribalism is dangerous colonial propaganda | Continue reading
We influence each other in many ways besides pure reason. What’s the moral difference between persuasion and manipulation? | Continue reading
Recently diagnosed with lung cancer, Mark Zabawa believes that he might be approaching the end of a life fraught with struggles, including battles with mental illness and alcoholism. In The Last Storm, UK-based filmmaker Liam Saint-Pierre follows Mark as he sets out on a bucket-l … | Continue reading
Ever since Heisenberg and Tagore, physicists have flirted with Eastern philosophy. Is there anything in the romance? | Continue reading
How Ludwig Wittgenstein used the duck-rabbit figure to illustrate ‘seeing as’ and aspect perception | Continue reading
Why some people choose to do evil remains a puzzle, but are we starting to understand how this behaviour is triggered? | Continue reading
The Book of Exodus chronicles the Israelites’ flight from slavery in Egypt under the guidance of Moses, and their eventual covenant with the Abrahamic God. While Jews celebrate this founding myth as a triumph, the Jewish US writer, cartoonist and filmmaker Nina Paley wonders whet … | Continue reading
When a volcano erupts, lava is the least of your worries: what killed the villagers of Pompeii will take your breath away | Continue reading
Why some people choose to do evil remains a puzzle, but are we starting to understand how this behaviour is triggered? | Continue reading
More than a century of death notices have not diminished the achievements and the necessity of liberalism | Continue reading
‘I wondered if she knew I was waiting for her room.’Adapted from a semi-autobiographical short story by the Canadian writer Mordecai Richler, the celebrated and Oscar®-nominated film The Street (1976) tells the story of a young boy experiencing his grandmother's slow death while … | Continue reading
True slothfulness isn’t sleeping eight hours a night – it’s ignoring health and taking on responsibilities while underslept | Continue reading
In 1969, 14 African-American players on the University of Wyoming’s nationally ranked American football team planned a protest against the racist policies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before their game against Brigham Young University, which is owned and ope … | Continue reading
All the great inventions took painstaking, risky, indirect routes to fruition. Has Silicon Valley really escaped history? | Continue reading
The pleasure is incomparable: if only we could weigh the value of all our delights, the sum total would enhance our lives | Continue reading
Is woman not the equal of man? Eileen Hunt Botting introduces Mary Wollstonecraft on the rights and duties of women | Continue reading
Even experts can’t predict violence or suicide. Surely we’re kidding ourselves that we can see inside the minds of others | Continue reading
‘There’s so much behind my smile you don’t even know.’Ninnoc wants to stand out from the crowd, but she’s afraid of what it might cost her. As she navigates the social pressures of high school, Ninnoc wavers between frustration and despair, her head vibrating with a constant hum … | Continue reading
In 1683 an Ottoman siege was repelled from the walls of Vienna. But it was far from a fight between Islam and Christendom | Continue reading
Orwell’s predicted it: citizens willingly buy for entertainment the very screens that can be used against us | Continue reading
Even experts can’t predict violence or suicide. Surely we’re kidding ourselves that we can see inside the minds of others | Continue reading
Sitting atop four large tectonic plates, Japan is a hotbed of seismic activity, with some 1,500 earthquakes striking the country each year. While many pass without major incident, some prove disastrous, such as the 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku, which triggered … | Continue reading
Even experts can’t predict violence or suicide. Surely we’re kidding ourselves that we can see inside the minds of others | Continue reading
The anti-philosophites are wrong: philosophical choices always play a role in building and testing cosmological theories | Continue reading
When faced with a difficult choice, our mind will represent possible options. Why did this capacity evolve? | Continue reading
‘Boundaries between reality and dream are blurry.’Seeking a ‘normal’ relationship after several soured romances left him depressed, Dirk eventually found support and stability in a relationship with a rather unusual new partner: a life-sized and lifelike sex doll named Jenny. Dre … | Continue reading
When faced with a difficult choice, our mind will represent possible options. Why did this capacity evolve? | Continue reading
The town of Santa Clara del Cobre in the Mexican state of Michoacán is celebrated for the copper craftsmanship of the indigenous Purépecha people. Its reputation for copper production dates to pre-Columbian times, and the craft still dominates the local economy today, with some 8 … | Continue reading
As Hannah Arendt argued, there is one common thread which connects individuals drawn to all kinds of extremist ideologies | Continue reading
When you think of AI, do you picture a multi-skilled C-3PO droid? A cupboard of appliances might be nearer the mark | Continue reading