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Why You Don't (and Can't) Think Alone

Science (and life) keep hammering nails “into the coffin of the rational individual." But rationalism and individualism still haunt and systematically mislead—even about where your mind is.

Illustration by Julia Suits, The New Yorker cartoonist & author of The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions

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The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone Steven Sloman Philip Fernbach Yuval Harari brain mind rationality independence Daniel Kahneman individual knowledge

How Ancient Greece and Rome (But Definitely Not Britain) Inspired American Architecture

Wake up and smell the independence. Thomas Jefferson urged 18th century Americans to think of themselves not as colonial Englishmen, but as a new culture. To that end, he used architecture to serve as a visual reminder of America's proud new direction.

1979. U.S. Capitol dome, Washington, D.C.

The United States was a brand-new country in the 18th century. A country that had just fought for independence and won it. Across the ocean in Europe, that same century was the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason. Liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, and constitution reigned with a thick French accent.

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architecture Thomas Jefferson Jeffersonian Monticello Poplar Forest independence age of enlightenment Picryl Andrea Palladio Julien David Le Roy Roland Fréart Antoine Desgodetz University of Virginia Benjamin Franklin