To empathize or scream, that is the question.

Is capitalism naturally unempathetic?

Researchers speculate the famous monument was one of the world’s first solar calendars, possibly inspired by trade with ancient Egyptians. 

Perspective twisting books on biology, social science, medical science, cosmology, and tech.

What do we do when we know an infant will not have a life worth living? Philosophy is here to help.

Americans must choose the middle path, away from the fundamentalist positions on both the right and the left, argues a Washington think tank.

A visual history of the expanding Universe includes the hot, dense state known as the Big Bang and the growth and formation of structure subsequently. The full suite of data, […]

This old-style television set, complete with antennae to pick up broadcast signals, is considered tremendously archaic by modern standards. Yet these antennae are, in some sense, a very specific type […]

Many women are unable to have children due to age restrictions on IVF. Dr. Dominic Wilkinson, Director of Medical Ethics at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, challenges the 4 most flawed arguments.  

"The starting point for understanding inequality in the context of human progress is to recognize that income inequality is not a fundamental component of well-being."

LHC researchers discover a double-heavy set of quarks that may reveal new insights into the strong force.

A newly discovered papyrus contains an eye-witness account of the gathering of materials for the Great Pyramid.

Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and holder of 355 patents, established in his 1895 will his wishes to develop the Nobel Prize foundation and the rules under which it […]

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, our deepest view of the Universe to date, which reveals galaxies from when the Universe was only 3–4% its current age. The fact that so […]

The fluctuations in the CMB give rise to the Universe’s structure as it exists today. (Image credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team) The Big Bang’s leftover glow tells us a lot […]

The death of any given person is just a lack of connectedness to future experiences. 

How the Cosmic Microwave Background — the Big Bang’s leftover radiation glow — continues to shed light on the birth of our Universe. Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration. The announcement of the […]

No other idea explains even two of these. Image credit: NASA / CXC / ESO WFI / Magellan composite. Any recent article about the remaining mysteries of the Universe will […]

There is a reserve of extra performance that the body can be tricked into accessing in competition. 

Who could have predicted that Chief Justice John Roberts would break with the conservative block on the Supreme Court and write the majority opinion upholding the individual mandate, one of […]

Enjoy the inauguration of Barack Obama, Democrats: it may be the last opportunity to cheer a president from your party for quite a while. 

“The owl of Minerva,” Hegel wrote, “takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.” A year ago I launched Praxis as a forum for thinking reflectively about […]

Last Friday, I posted a piece in The Stone at The New York Times suggesting the work of philosopher John Rawls as an intellectual touchstone for the Occupy Wall Street […]

Following on the heels of the Pussy Riot verdicts in Moscow, about a dozen women from the feminist group Code Pink dressed up in vagina costumes outside the Republican National […]

In the avalanche of analysis and speculation about Chief Justice Roberts’ stunning decision to side with the Supreme Court’s liberal wing to uphold Obama’s healthcare law, one strain paints Roberts […]

In the midst of an intense meditation on Walt Whitman in his Studies in Classic American Literature, D. H. Lawrence suddenly proclaims: The essential function of art is moral. Not […]

President Obama apparently thinks the safer way to justify higher taxes on the super rich is to pitch the proposal based on its deficit-reduction potential. But if he wants to get the ball rolling for meaningful tax reform, Obama will summon his rhetorical powers to explain how the Buffett Rule could help reduce the nation's massive and destructive wealth inequality.

A little science-fiction philosophy to provoke you to remember on Memorial Day, courtesy of Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit: Suppose you were given the chance to teleport yourself, Star Trek style, […]

Ned Resnikoff picks up on my old post, via a terrific recent one by Daniel Little, on the radicalism of John Rawls’ position on economic liberty: If we’ve to fairly […]

Happiness is not an unalloyed good, Kant says. Without the correct character and orientation, without a sense of duty, happiness is just an animalistic state of mind.