Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics, says Stephen Hawking. But are Hawking’s theoretical ideas not philosophical in their essence?
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Mood rings famously are meant to change color to reflect the mood of the wearer. Some are cheap and ugly. Some are expensive and set in precious metal. All work using the same mechanics.
One of the biggest mysteries of physics could end with what scientists find 4,850 feet below the Black Hills of South Dakota, where a laboratory will replace a defunct gold mine.
Whether Goldman Sachs’ $450 million investment in Facebook will create another technology bubble depends on how and when emerging tech companies go public.
When we feel distant from our work—when it seems wonderfully far away—we are able to think about work in a new way. We have the breakthrough while on break, says Jonah Lehrer.
Smear campaigns work because people are more likely to believe misinformation about someone they see as different from themselves, sometimes even blatant lies.
Men and women may be more similar to each other than we think—the process of sex determination is not over by birth, but continues into life, up to and including puberty.
Gross domestic product is taken to be the leading indicator of national well-being. But we should ask ourselves: is it really wise to accord such importance to growth?
Only lately have researchers begun to study courage systematically, to try to define what it is, where it comes from and how it manifests itself in the body and brain.
The Republican Party’s maniacal obsession with repealing, revoking, or rescinding any trace of the healthcare legislation the Obama Administration and the Democrats passed into law almost a year ago has […]
This simple quiz neatly divides the world into two kinds of people. A hundred thousand unexplained dead fish is a job for: a) theology; or, b) ichthyology. [Photo credit: psyberartist, […]
After spiking in attention leading up to the December 2009 Copenhagen meetings, analysis by DailyClimate.org and by Max Boykoff at the University of Colorado show a sharp decline in both […]
Another important thing to remember when raising money for charity, or engineering any sort of grassroots movement for that matter, is that the key to men and women’s hearts (and […]
Did a cheeky Ozzy intern change this map as a nod to his separatist mates back home?
Nowhere is the sensemaking power of design more evident than in pictograms, signage and icon design. A new effort from Mozilla and rockstar designer Aza Raskin aims to bring this […]
When students ask Sally Blount how she became the first female dean of an internationally renowned U.S. business school, she warns them not to look at her career for any […]
For a disorder that affects 1 in every 110 American children and 1 in every 70 American boys, there are a surprising number of misconceptions about autism. Study after study […]
By now most of us have seen the 1950’s “The Good Wife’s Guide“—the one that tells women that a “Good Wife” is one who acknowledges her husband as master of […]
2011 has begun, but its not too late to look back on 2010. Last year was a remarkable year for volcanic eruptions – quite a few eruptions caught the attention […]
Libertarians, of both left and right, haven’t been this close to power since 1776. But do we want to live in their world? To what extend do we really want freedom?
William Burroughs famously remarked that Islam had hit a one thousand year writer’s block. Is this assessment justified, especially in the areas of science and politics?
In the nineteenth century, filibusters were rarer than visible comets. Now they are as common as sunsets—and as destructive as tsunamis, says The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg.
After seven months, The New York Times’ series on philosophy closes today. Simon Critchley reminds us what questions philosophy seeks to answer, such as, “What is knowledge?”
There can be few drivers who have not wanted to hurl a G.P.S. system out of the window when it guides the car into a traffic jam. Will new emotionally sensitive systems help?
The U.S. spends much more per student than any other country. Yet from the very beginning, American students have generally performed below average compared to other rich countries.
More than 2.5 billion people around the world lack access to formal financial services. But new mobile banking services in Africa are helping millions of people out of poverty.
Recent decades have seen a massive redistribution of wealth, imposing the cost of successive crises on the poorest. Enough already, says Amherst economics professor Richard Wolff.
Whether running for president of the United States or for city council, politicians can count on seeing their words broken into ever smaller and more fragmentary bits.
John Stuart Mill, in his classic defense of liberty, argued that each individual is the best guardian of his or her own interests. But recent research suggests that we can use some help.
Long before “The Situation” and his kind entered the zeitgeist, Andy Warhol filmed his own reality show featuring his personal constellation of “Superstars”—artists, musicians, poets, actors, models, and sometimes just […]