The huge success of physics has led many to claim she is the queen of all sciences. According to this view, everything that takes place in the world could be explained, at least in principle, by the ultimate version of physics. But in truth, physics only …
You can't choose your family. But despite this, most of us wouldn’t choose to be without them either. For the lucky, families are a place of love, care and safety. But for many, the family creates everlasting trauma in a life. Even in so-called ‘happy …
Two of the key founders of quantum physics, Einstein and Schrödinger, were deeply sceptical of its implications about uncertainty and the nature of reality. Today, the orthodox reading is that uncertainty is indeed an inherent feature of quantum systems, …
The perpetual battle between predator and prey in nature is a display of a gruesome will, a will-to-live at the ground of all things. While the bloody mess we see when a tiger catches its prey suggests no hint of compassion, humans can consciously deny our …
Bruno Latour, a leading French intellectual who died on October 9, posed a major challenge to modern philosophy’s key assumption: the existence of a distinction between the human subject and the world. His radical alternative suggestion of seeing the world …
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine many in the West described Putin as crazy. Yet for 30 years, Putin repeatedly claimed in his speeches that Russia and Ukraine were ‘one people’. When it comes to China and Taiwan it can seem that Westerners are …
Digital platforms create new marketplaces and prosperity on the Internet, but they are ruled by Silicon Valley despots with little or no accountability. Users and workers have become the hapless subjects of online economic empires. It is only through …
The 2022 Physics Nobel Prize is misunderstood even by the Nobel prize committee itself. What the work of John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger has shown, building on John Bell’s ideas, isn’t that quantum mechanics cannot be replaced by a …
Alcohol has long been recognized as a useful social lubricant for parties and gatherings. Yet few of us understand the historical importance of intoxication, and the fundamental role it has played in forming societies. In this article, Edward Slingerland …
Earlier this summer, an article by Eric Lerner put the dominant theory about the origin of the universe into question. On October 1st, at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in London, Lerner took part in a live debate on “Cosmology and the Big Bust”, alongside …
Sexual desire is an incredibly personal and seemingly unchangeable part of who we are. But what about those who are systematically undesired? This problem isn't one of individuals and personal tastes. Instead, we need to reshape the environment and …
Artificial intelligence systems have beaten humans at chess, poker, Jeopardy, Go, and countless other games. But machines still falter when it comes to understanding some basic rules about the physical world. Building a machine-learning system based on how …
Nietzsche exalted Russia as a dark, patient, durable power that promised a lot more than what he saw as the weak and decaying Europe. The ideas driving Putin’s war against Ukraine are a lot more Nietzschean, and European, than many like to admit, argues …
The relationship between morality and emotion has divided thinkers for centuries. Most contemporary ethical systems demand impartiality; that we should not allow emotion, particularly empathy, to distract us from doing what is morally right. In this …
Infinity is back. Or rather, it never (ever, ever…) went away. While mathematicians have a good sense of the infinite as a concept, cosmologists and physicists are finding it much more difficult to make sense of the infinite in nature, writes Peter Cameron …
In this exclusive interview with the Institute of Art and Ideas, in the run up to HowTheLightGetsIn London 2022, groundbreaking ethicist and philosopher Peter Singer clarifies his stance on moral objectivity, the role of intuitions in ethics and where we …
Contrary to popular opinion, argues Brian Wong, the China-Russia alliance has not soured after Xi’s meeting with Putin at the SCO summit in Samarkand last week. China is simply continuing their balancing act of affirming Western culpability for the war …
Jean-Luc Godard, who passed away on the 13th September, will be remembered as an enigmatic figure and pioneer of French New Wave cinema. Yet his legacy invites a grander question of the cinema’s potential (or perhaps lack thereof) to explore philosophical …
Psychiatry is caught up in a number of philosophical errors. One is reductionism, as psychiatry tends to seek underlying biological causes for mental disorders. The other is dualism, as it thinks of mental disorders as either caused by our brains or caused …
Electric cars are hyped to an almost religious status. Companies, both old and new, from Tesla and Rivian, Ford and Mercedes, all are going electric. However, they are ineffective at solving climate change. We should focus our efforts elsewhere, writes …
