essay
Language and linguistics
The grammar of a god-ocean
To truly explore alien languages, linguists must open themselves to the maximum conceivable degree of cosmic otherness
Eli K P William
essay
Consciousness and altered states
Kind of confusing
Is consciousness like jazz, something hard to pin down? Or is it more like the biology of dolphins, odd but natural?
Tim Bayne
essay
Illness and disease
The power of the ‘C’ word
Saying the word ‘cancer’ changes a person’s life and can lead to overtreatment and fear. Is the word too hot to use at all?
Benjamin Chin-Yee
essay
Religion
An unholy alliance
In the 1930s, the rise of Nazism brought centuries of animosity between Europe’s Catholics and Protestants to an end. Why?
Udi Greenberg
essay
Biology
Memories without brains
Certain slime moulds can make decisions, solve mazes and remember things. What can we learn from the blob?
Matthew Sims
essay
Death
Freedom over death
Death is a certainty. But choosing how and when we depart is a modest opportunity for freedom – and dignity
Michael Cholbi
essay
Thinkers and theories
The French liar
René Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, was furiously condemned by his contemporaries. Why did they fear him?
Sandrine Parageau
essay
Architecture
The replica and the original
Architectural copies of lost structures require reckoning with history and heritage. At what cost is the past rebuilt?
Elizabeth Kostina
essay
The future
Homo crustaceous
‘Everything becomes crab’ is more than an absurd meme. The crab is a deep symbol of our devil’s bargain with technology
Michael Garfield
essay
History of ideas
From scattered traces
How the ideas circulating among one noblewoman’s coterie in 16th-century Dubrovnik anticipated modern feminist thought
Luka Boršić
essay
Neurodiversity
Rethinking adult ADHD
The diagnostic category of adult ADHD is becoming more inclusive. That’s not the same as it being overdiagnosed
Margaret Sibley
essay
Design and fashion
Walk in these
Shoes are deeply personal, literally moulded to our lives. But they create our social lives as much as express them
Matthew McCormack