While theism continues to unite the vast majority of the world’s population, westerners of a certain age have never before accepted atheism with such enthusiasm.
Search Results
You searched for: Big Thinker
The town council at the center of the recent Greece vs. Galloway Supreme Court ruling hosted its first atheist invocation this week. Dan Courtney’s speech quoted Immanuel Kant and warned of the government turning a deaf ear to its citizens.
Consciousness is what it’s like and how it feels to be you. Thus, consciousness exists in a realm of irreducible subjectivity with which science isn’t always comfortable.
Big Think is a knowledge forum that features insights from the world’s leading thinkers. Whether it’s Michio Kaku discussing energy sources of the future or Stephen Dubner, the co-author of […]
Neil deGrasse Tyson recently joined the ranks of Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, and Lawrence Krauss when he called philosophy “distracting” and criticized it for not offering the kinds of tangible gains of science.
Two of America’s core values—democracy and meritocracy—seem increasingly conflicted and the way we talk about them isn’t helping: 1. “-ocracy” means “rule of.” Democracy is rule of the demos, the […]
This map shows that your chances of rising above your birth class vary tremendously depending on where you live.
Do you want to be more effective and attract desired outcomes? The ancient Chinese did, too. They devoted themselves to understanding wu wei—effortless action, or spontaneity. They saw it as […]
The Nantucket Project sees art + commerce as “the new convergence” that defines our world today.
By hitting snooze you are making the wake-up process more difficult and drawn out.
There has been a lot of attention in recent years on flow—complete absorption in a task that it almost seems effortless. The modern pursuit of flow—how to achieve it, how […]
“Keeping up with the Joneses” is actually an ancient notion. Humans are wired to compare ourselves to others and, as a result, we suffer a sense of restlessness about our […]
“Wu wei is an early Chinese term that means literally no doing or no trying,” says Edward Slingerland, author of the new critically acclaimed book about the power of spontaneity, Trying Not […]
Is there a way to see past the barrier the Universe puts up before it became transparent to light? Image credit: Mark Kamionkowski, of gravitational waves. “From earliest times, humans — explorers […]
There are many ways to transmit big ideas – through videos, through the written word, or as the title of this blog attests, through pictures that are worth more than 1,000 words.
What is Punk? Punk isn’t about mohawks or studded leather, says Henry Rollins – it’s about resistance to tyranny in any form. How Art Can Change Society, with Sarah Lewis Sarah […]
LOVERS of the Big Think will rejoice at hearing about the world’s largest migration of brain: BEIJING – Thousands of philosophers are expected to descend upon China’s capital in 2018 in […]
Did you watch “Cosmos” last night? The show was trending on Twitter during its broadcast, which is a good sign that television watchers crave shows that make them smarter. As […]
I participate in a Unitarian Universalist spiritual community. The UU faith has some basic beliefs, largely universal truths about how to be a good person, but when it comes […]
Death is big business. The projected revenue of the funeral industry is projected to be $16.2 billion in 2014. While it’s tough to consider the economics of death when a […]
SEATTLE – Bono calls economist Jeffrey Sachs “the squeaky wheel that roars.” To me, Sachs is the Bono of economics – a guy with impressive intelligence, passion, and powers of […]
On October 17th, 2005, comedian Stephen Colbert introduced the persona “Stephen Colbert” on the first episode of The Colbert Report by also introducing to the world the concept of “Truthiness.” […]
Star Talk Radio is one of the best things to have ever hit the podcast bin. While I’m a big fan of Cosmos—despite its having the worst music supervisor in […]
The loudest and largest generation in history, the baby boomers, are older. Their numbers and needs will place unprecedented demands on aging services in a time of workforce shortages and […]
IN THE old days of the three European missions – imperialism, colonialism, and orientalism – scholars insisted on the existence of Asian “philosophies” and, naturally, they called Asian thinkers “philosophers.” […]
Chicago native Judy Cohen Gerowitz became Judy Chicago in 1970 for many reasons. One was to throw off her father’s and husband’s names and the male dominance behind that practice. […]
David Shenk: I think the really dangerous and oppressive myth of IQ is that IQ tests are identifying some kind of quantity of intelligence that we are born with and that we have this static amount of intelligence that we’re going to carry with us throughout life.
I think that it’s great to inspire new generations of thinkers; it’s terrible to create new authority.
When it comes to making predictions, thinkers who are hedgehogs barely beat “dart-throwing chimps.” Despite that, hedgehogs hog the spotlight.
This week the agency put out a Request for Information in hopes of attracting creative thinkers who can help them “achieve the most science at minimum cost.”