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Sally Davies

Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche

Sally is a writer and editor with interests spanning science, philosophy, feminism and the arts. She was digital editor of FT Weekend and the technology and innovation correspondent for the Financial Times. Sally founded the Libreria bookshop in east London as its director, and was on the original editorial team of Nautilus Magazine.

Written by Sally Davies

Edited by Sally Davies

Rubens painting Venus and Cupid reimagined with Venus on the left gazing in a mirror at her mastectomized breast. A cherub like Cupid to the right holds the mirror
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Illness and disease

More than pink

The culture around breast cancer is full of positivity and femininity. But it comes at the expense of the marginalised

Philippa Hetherington

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Metaphysics

We are interwoven beings

A dragon needs the clouds and the wind in order to fly. What happens when we too relinquish individualistic reasoning?

Mercedes Valmisa

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Evolution

Fortune favours the shrewd

Attaining and maintaining power lies at the heart of almost all animal societies. And it’s as devious as human politicking

Lee Alan Dugatkin

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Evolution

What on earth is a xenobot?

The more we understand how cells produce shape and form, the more inadequate the idea of a genomic blueprint looks

Philip Ball

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Ethics

Through the eyes of another

It’s impossible to shed our individual biases. So the best way to establish objectivity is by taking on new perspectives

Heidi Maibom

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Evolution

Connected-up-brains

Bat friends, monkeys sharing, and humans holding hands: the brains of social animals synchronise and expand one another

Sofia Quaglia

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Quantum theory

Quantum Wittgenstein

Metaphysical debates in quantum physics don’t get at ‘truth’ – they’re nothing but a form of ritual, activity and culture

Timothy Andersen

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Stories and literature

Kafka the hypochondriac

Franz Kafka believed illness was at the root of his writing yet he embraced wellness fads with hearty vigour

Will Rees

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Cognition and intelligence

Modular cognition

Powerful tricks from computer science and cybernetics show how evolution ‘hacked’ its way to intelligence from the bottom up

Michael Levin & Rafael Yuste

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Design and fashion

The Waste Age

Recognising that waste is central, not peripheral, to everything we design, make and do is key to transforming the future

Justin McGuirk

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Evolution

Promethean beasts

Far from being hardwired to flee fire, some animals use it to their own ends, helping us understand our own pyrocognition

Ivo Jacobs

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Space exploration

Decolonising the cosmos

Instead of treating Mars and the Moon as sites of conquest and settlement, we need a radical new ethics of space exploration

Ramin Skibba