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Gender is burdened by a lot of adjectives these days. It’s non-binary, it’s fluid, it’s ‘over’. According to the American rapper Young Thug, an artist at the helm of hip-hop who is known to occasionally wear dresses, ‘there’s no such thing as gender’ at all. These descriptions share the common assumption that gender is mutable, not fixed. Most contemporary public conversations about what it means
A return to feudalism? Satzuma’s Envoys. Hand tinted albumen print of a photograph by Felice Beato, one of the earliest war photographers. Japan, 1864-7. Photo by the Royal Photographic Society/V&A/Getty The ironic feudalistKure Tomofusa’s hatred of democracy, human rights and liberalism has found an echo in the West. But has he been joking all along?by Jeremy Woolsey + BIO A return to feudalism?
Over the past century, a powerful idea has taken root in the educational landscape. The notion of intelligence as something innate and fixed has been supplanted by the idea that intelligence is instead something malleable; that we are not prisoners of immutable characteristics and that, with the right training, we can be the authors of our own cognitive capabilities. Nineteenth-century scientists
The problem of time is one of the greatest puzzles of modern physics. The first bit of the conundrum is cosmological. To understand time, scientists talk about finding a ‘First Cause’ or ‘initial condition’ – a description of the Universe at the very beginning (or at ‘time equals zero’). But to determine a system’s initial condition, we need to know the total system. We need to make measurements o
The theory of mind mythEven experts can’t predict violence or suicide. Surely we’re kidding ourselves that we can see inside the minds of othersby Robert A Burton + BIO Robert A Burtonis a neurologist, author and the former associate director of the department of neurosciences at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center at Mount Zion. His latest book is A Skeptic’s Guide to the M
Escape the echo chamberFirst you don’t hear other views. Then you can’t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a cultby C Thi Nguyen + BIO C Thi Nguyenis an assistant professor of philosophy at Utah Valley University working in social epistemology, aesthetics and the philosophy of games. Previously, he wrote a column about food for the Los Angeles Times. His latest boo
Women of Phoenicia (1879) by Robert Fowler. Image by Public Catalogue Foundation. Supplied by National Museums Liverpool Phantasmic PhoeniciaThe British, Irish and Lebanese have all claimed descent from the ancient Phoenicians. But ancient Phoenicia never existedby Josephine Quinn + BIO Women of Phoenicia (1879) by Robert Fowler. Image by Public Catalogue Foundation. Supplied by National Museums L
For many of the most successful imperialist countries, empire was just not worth the trouble. Scandinavian monarchies in the 17th and 18th centuries endeavoured to build empires that would rival the Dutch or even the British, but come the 19th century they sold up the remnants of these overseas ambitions, and largely escaped the administrative responsibility, and moral condemnation, for the age of
Albert Einstein said that the ‘most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible’. He was right to be astonished. Human brains evolved to be adaptable, but our underlying neural architecture has barely changed since our ancestors roamed the savannah and coped with the challenges that life on it presented. It’s surely remarkable that these brains have allowed us to make se
Philosophy tool kitThinking like a philosopher need not be a strange and arcane art, if you get started with these tricks of the tradeby Alan Hájek + BIO Alan Hájekis professor of philosophy at the Australian National University in Canberra. His research interests are in probability and decision theory, formal epistemology, and the philosophy of science and language. He publishes regularly on thes
The teaching of Logic or Dialetics from a collection of scientific, philosophical and poetic writings, French, 13th century; Bibliothèque Sainte-Genevieve, Paris, France. Photo by Bridgeman What is logic?Is logical thinking a way to discover or to debate? The answers from philosophy and mathematics define human knowledgeby Catarina Dutilh Novaes + BIO The teaching of Logic or Dialetics from a coll
Precision, clarity … and tobacco. Austin (right) considers the point. Photo by George Douglas/Picture Post/Getty How not to be a chuckleheadSaturday mornings with J L Austin in postwar Oxford were a golden time for wordplay, silly jokes and serious philosophyby Nikhil Krishnan + BIO Precision, clarity … and tobacco. Austin (right) considers the point. Photo by George Douglas/Picture Post/Getty Nik
On the morning of 1 October 1970, the computer scientist Viktor Glushkov walked into the Kremlin to meet with the Politburo. He was an alert man with piercing eyes rimmed in black glasses, with the kind of mind that, given one problem, would derive a method for solving all similar problems. And at that moment the Soviet Union had a serious problem. A year earlier, the United States launched ARPANE
It was the summer of 1959, and the United States needed a Cold War win. In 1957, the Soviet bloc scored a major technological victory with Sputnik 1. The next year, China’s Communist leadership launched the sweeping, and ultimately devastating, Great Leap Forward. In the spring of 1959 in Cuba, Fidel Castro’s guerrillas forced president Fulgencio Batista into exile. The US needed to recapture the
The empty brainYour brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computerby Robert Epstein + BIO Robert Epsteinis a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California. He is the author of 15 books, and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today. No matter how hard they try, brain
Innovation is a dominant ideology of our era, embraced in America by Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and the Washington DC political elite. As the pursuit of innovation has inspired technologists and capitalists, it has also provoked critics who suspect that the peddlers of innovation radically overvalue innovation. What happens after innovation, they argue, is more important. Maintenance and repair,
English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a ‘spelling bee’ competition. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words
Scientific origins of racismA scientific theory that humans arose in multiple parts of the world is the real source of contemporary racist ideas
The Hidden Wiki holds the keys to a secret internet. To reach it, you need a special browser that can access ‘Tor Hidden Services’ – websites that have chosen to obscure their physical location. But even this browser isn’t enough. Like the Isla de Muerta in the film Pirates of the Caribbean, the landmarks of this hidden internet can be discovered only by those who already know where they are. Site
Ever since I was a child, I have been acutely sensitive to the idea — in the way that other people seem to feel only after bereavement or some shocking unexpected event — that the human intellect is unable, finally, to make sense of the world: everything is contradiction and paradox, and no one really knows much for sure, however loudly they profess to the contrary. It is an uncomfortable mindset,
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