Philosophers pride themselves on arguing well. The idea behind the so-called Socratic method is that by offering arguments and counter-arguments, we can | Continue reading
In 1770, the Hungarian inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen built an elaborate mechanical chess-playing automaton that beat human opponents and dazzled the | Continue reading
Book review - History | The Napoleonic Wars: A global history by Alexander Mikaberidze, reviewed by Brendan Simms - The TLS | Continue reading
It is entirely appropriate to celebrate Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 200th birthday with a biography of his second wife. For the arrival in 1866 of the | Continue reading
According to Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel was the greatest logician since Aristotle. (Alfred Tarski, ever competitive, declared himself the world’s | Continue reading
Those seeking to understand liberal debates about the justice of contemporary societies will in one way or another gravitate to the writings of the | Continue reading
When King George IV tried to divorce his wife, Caroline of Brunswick, in 1820, those tasked with judging whether she was guilty of adultery were faced | Continue reading
Why read a poet’s letters? Because if, as Elizabeth Bishop said, for poets writing letters is “like working without really doing it”, then for readers | Continue reading
Readers might know of the French philosopher and experimental psychologist Pierre Janet through his connection with Sigmund Freud. Both men worked on | Continue reading
Dozens of new remedies for deafness have emerged since the days of Harriet Martineau, and Jaipreet Virdi surveys them briskly in Hearing Happiness. First ... | Continue reading
The Man of To-morrow's Lament by Vladimir Nabokov, with a commentary by Andrei Babikov | Continue reading
When I arrived with bright eyes and a bushy tail (as I like to think) in the PhD programme in philosophy at the University of Virginia in 1983, I tried to | Continue reading
Vaughn Scribner doesn’t mention my favourite mermaid in Merpeople: A human history, his otherwise comprehensive study of the fabled sea folk. Perhaps | Continue reading
The art of letter writing has died many times over: with the introduction of the penny post, the telegram, the telephone, the email. It seems that the end | Continue reading
Albert Camus spent Christmas 1959 at his house in the Vaucluse with his family and his publisher, Michel Gallimard. After New Year, instead of returning | Continue reading
In 1918, three years after Einstein completed his new theory of gravity, he declared that “the supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at the | Continue reading
In 1592, Thomas Nashe published a letter to the Devil in the voice of his alter ego, Pierce Pennilesse. Ostensibly a satire on the seven deadly sins, | Continue reading
Book review - Architecture - The TLS | Fake Heritage: Why we rebuild monuments by John Darlington, reviewed by Simon Jenkins | Continue reading
Footnotes to Plato - Philosophy - The TLS | Crispin Sartwell on Jonathan Edwards | Continue reading
Book review - Philosophy - The TLS | Time of the Magicians: The invention of modern thought, 1919–29 by Wolfram Eilenberger, reviewed by David Motadel | Continue reading
Re-reading John le Carré | Continue reading
Book revew - Education - The TLS | Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, reviewed by Simon Jenkins | Continue reading
A handful of Agatha Christie’s sixty-six detective novels are cited as “classics”: Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, The Murder of | Continue reading
The TLS - Philosophy - Book Review | Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James can save your life by John Kaag, reviewed by Andrew Stark | Continue reading
A question to test your historical knowledge: “D-Day refers to what event in British history?” Of course you know, or at least you thought you did. The | Continue reading
During the 1920s, Frank Ramsey made massive contributions to no fewer than four disciplines: philosophy, economics, mathematics and subjective utility | Continue reading
Dave Brubeck's life and music: biography by Philip Clark, reviewed by Russell Davies - The TLS | Continue reading
The TLS - Twentieth Century History - Book Review | Following lunatics: The fantasies of Mussolini and Hitler, review by Richard Overy | Continue reading
The TLS - Modern History - Book Review | Men on Horseback: The power of charisma in the age of revolution by David Bell, reviewed by Sudhir Hazareesingh | Continue reading
The TLS - Essay | Keep doing what you love: The scholar who kept working while hiding from the Nazis: a lesson for academics today by Federico Varese | Continue reading
The TLS - Classics - Roman - Essay | Re-reading Fergus Millar’s The Emperor in the Roman World (1977), an essay by Mary Beard | Continue reading
How, when and why did novels start? Conventionally, people used to say two things, in the main: that Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) was a | Continue reading
The TLS - Book review | The Social Cost of Cheap Food by Sébastien Rioux; Feeding Britain by Tim Lang; Hunger by Martín Caparrós, reviewed by Bee Wilson | Continue reading
Philosophy essay - The TLS | How philosophy can happen in isolation, an essay by Anil Gomes | Continue reading
Food & Drink - Book review | Coffeeland: A history by Augustine Sedgewick, book reviewed by Judith Hawley - The TLS | Continue reading
Book review | The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr, and the debate over race in America by Nicholas Buccola - The TLS | Continue reading
Sarah Sawyer explores Putnam’s view that meanings ‘just ain’t in the head’ | Continue reading
Book review - Philosophy | The Promise of Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning and judgment by Brian Cantwell Smith, reviewed by Tim Crane - The TLS | Continue reading
Physics essay | Richard Feynman: profound scientific insights, gift for public education, and sometimes sexist attitudes, by Paul Halpern | Continue reading
Essay - Literature | Infecting the teller: The failure of a mathematical approach to Shakespeare's authorship, by Brian Vickers - The TLS | Continue reading
Book review | V. S. Naipaul's Journeys: From periphery to center by Sanjay Krishnan, reviewed by Helen Hayward - The TLS | Continue reading
Essay | Meeting Mr George: Did Andrew Marvell spy for the Dutch? - Written by Edward Holberton, Martin Dzelzainis and Steph Coster - The TLS | Continue reading
Book review: A selection of books on the public and private lives of Albert Einstein, reviewed by P. D. Smith | Continue reading
Contributors to the TLS find cultural things to occupy them in isolation | The TLS has contributed to the Society of Authors emergency fund | Continue reading
Book review: Summertime by Richard Crawford; The Cambridge Companion to Gershwin edited by Anna Harwell Celenza, reviewed by Russell Davies - The TLS | Continue reading
Book review | The Dictionary Wars: The American fight over the English language by Peter Martin, reviewed by Kory Stamper - The TLS | Continue reading
Katrina Gulliver considers how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy | Continue reading
Hannah Arendt | Philosophy Essay | Finn Bowring explores the ‘epistemological cubism’ of the great German-American theorist, Hannah Arendt | Continue reading