Philosophy

The nature of natural laws

Physicists and philosophers today have formulated three opposing models that explain how laws work. Which is the best?

Mario Hubert

Elusive but everywhere

A new theory argues that unseen ‘fields’ guide all goal-directed things in the Universe, from falling rocks to voyaging turtles

Daniel W McShea & Gunnar O Babcock

The forces of chance

Social scientists cling to simple models of reality – with disastrous results. Instead they must embrace chaos theory

Brian Klaas

Life makes mistakes

Hens try to hatch golf balls, whales get beached. Getting things wrong seems to play a fundamental role in life on Earth

David S Oderberg

Desperate remedies

In order to make headway on knotty metaphysical problems, philosophers should look to the methods used by scientists

Nina Emery

Why not scientism?

Science is not the only form of knowledge but it is the best, being the most successful epistemic enterprise in history

Moti Mizrahi

Bernard Williams on Descartes’s audacious endeavour to prove knowledge is possible

43 minutes

A sliver of reality

Science and mathematics may never fully capture the physical universe. Are there hard limits to human intelligence?

David H Wolpert

The lady vanishes

The history of ideas still struggles to remember the names of notable women philosophers. Mary Hesse is a salient example

Ann-Sophie Barwich

What is a law of nature?

Laws of nature are impossible to break, and nearly as difficult to define. Just what kind of necessity do they possess?

Marc Lange

The unresolved probability paradox that goes to the heart of scientific objectivity

8 minutes

The beautiful experiment

Science has become extraordinarily technocratic and complex. Is the simple and decisive experiment still a worthy ideal?

Milena Ivanova