Essays

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Longform Essays written by serious and creative thinkers on philosophy, psychology, science, society and culture

Microscope slides with various textures and markings, some labelled, with a yellow hue on the right side.

essayGenetics

The clock in our genes

The biologist Victoria Foe discovered a timing device in ‘junk’ DNA that could unlock the evolution of complex life

Beatrice Steinert

A building with yellow wall, hands in silhouette in foreground, and animals resting in the sun.

essayHistory of ideas

An African philosophy

Lansana Keita rejected Eurocentric ideas, tracing the philosophical tradition back to African Kemet or ancient Egypt

Sanya Osha

Black and white photo of a policeman observing a women’s protest with signs like “All Women Are Beautiful”

essayLanguage and linguistics

Bitch: a history

The word can morph from noun to verb to adjective, from dog to human, from female to male. What will it do next?

Karen Stollznow

Black and white photo of a silhouette standing in calm water with distant hills and cloudy sky in the background.

essayComputing and artificial intelligence

Geist in the machine

As the 18th-century war between mechanism and romanticism returns, we face a new question: can we build artificial souls?

Peter Wolfendale

A man standing near a petrol pump on a traffic island between two diverging roads under a clear blue sky.

essayValues and beliefs

Abandoning ourselves

Since living requires choosing, we will always feel regret about the paths not taken. But what matters is the future we forge

Tasha Kleeman

Old black and white photo of a smiling person on a boat with the sea in the background.

essayHistory of science

Unbounded

In the early 20th century, Emmy Noether’s mathematics transcended the physical world. She longed to do the same herself

Julia Ravanis

A woman in a flowing white dress skateboarding past people walking on a sunny day next to a corrugated fence.

essayHistory of ideas

A duty to oneself

African philosophical values of harmony and vitality have much to offer our thinking about what we owe to ourselves

Thaddeus Metz

A passenger pigeon egg against a gradient background with a handwritten label in French detailing its origin.

essayBiology

Reversing extinction

Technologies of preserving and reviving organisms are already redefining the meaning of life, death, and extinction itself

Sadiah Qureshi

Sepia-toned photo of silhouetted figures dancing with sticks in a smoky environment, creating a dramatic atmosphere.

essayAnthropology

Does culture make emotion?

Franz Boas helps us solve the puzzle of where our emotional lives originate: in our selves or in the cultures around us

Noga Arikha

Black and white photo of a chalkboard filled with complex mathematical equations and diagrams.

essayMathematics

The eye of the mathematician

Is mathematical beauty real? Or is it just a subjective, human ‘wow’ that is becoming redundant in an AI age?

Rita Ahmadi

Surgeons in blue attire performing an operation in a theatre, with medical tools visible.

essayBioethics

Savage care

Neat ethical principles have nothing to say to doctors like me, faced with the brutal, bloody compromises of hospital life

Ronald W Dworkin

An older woman sitting on steps, speaking to journalists holding microphones and cameras outside a house.

essayBiography and memoir

On her own terms

Doris Lessing’s Golden Notebook remains shocking, necessary and imperfect – a dazzling experiment in living as a woman

Catherine Taylor