Scientific certainty survival kit: How to push back against skeptics who exploit uncertainty for political gain Paul Frost, Trent University; Marguerite Xenopoulos, Trent University; Michael Epp, Trent University, and Michael Hickson, Trent University The mathematician Kurt Gödel was obsessed by the … Continue reading How to push back against skeptics who exploit uncertainty for political gain
Alastair Wilson, University of Birmingham READER QUESTION: My understanding is that nothing comes from nothing. For something to exist, there must be material or a component available, and for them to be available, there must be something else available. Now … Continue reading How could the Big Bang arise from nothing?
Explainer: Nietzsche, nihilism and reasons to be cheerful Jamie Parr, Australian Catholic University German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is sometimes dismissed as a malevolent figure, obsessed with the problem of nihilism and the “death of God”. Understandably, these ideas are unsettling: … Continue reading Nietzsche’s Jihad for Questioning
Damien Neadle, Birmingham City University We have always known that orangutans infants are very dependent on their mothers in their early years. But it turns out that orangutan mothers also change their own behaviour to help their children learn and … Continue reading How orangutans mothers help their offspring learn
Nicholas R. Longrich, University of Bath For the first few million years of human evolution, technologies changed slowly. Some three million years ago, our ancestors were making chipped stone flakes and crude choppers. Two million years ago, hand-axes. A million … Continue reading How a handful of prehistoric geniuses launched humanity’s technological revolution
Nicholas R. Longrich, University of Bath For the first few million years of human evolution, technologies changed slowly. Some three million years ago, our ancestors were making chipped stone flakes and crude choppers. Two million years ago, hand-axes. A million … Continue reading How a handful of prehistoric geniuses launched humanity’s technological revolution
Doug Tallamy, University of Delaware E. O. Wilson was an extraordinary scholar in every sense of the word. Back in the 1980s, Milton Stetson, the chair of the biology department at the University of Delaware, told me that a scientist … Continue reading E.O. Wilson’s lifelong passion for ants helped him teach humans about how to live sustainably with nature
Anjana Susarla, Michigan State University; Dam Hee Kim, University of Arizona, and Ethan Zuckerman, UMass Amherst At the end of 2020, it seemed hard to imagine a worse year for misinformation on social media, given the intensity of the presidential … Continue reading What will 2022 bring in the way of Misinformation on Social Media? 3 experts weigh in
Joonas Rokka, EM Lyon and Ioana Lupu, ESSEC The consultant was on her way to a demanding client meeting when she realised she had had a miscarriage. But she did not interrupt her day. Instead, she went on to complete … Continue reading How workers become seduced by the cult of ‘Optimal Busyness’
Robyn J. Whitaker Christmas, at least in Western countries like Australia, brings together diverse myths and European traditions. Santa magically produces and delivers presents to the entire world in one night, hot Australians dream of a white Christmas, Jesus’s miraculous … Continue reading Miracles and magic: the dual stories at the heart of Christmas
Mohammed Abbasi 