Browsing: Lens_ideas

With our brains plugged into virtual worlds all day, what is real?

The Fall 2014 Quarterly looks ahead.

Gamers are giving scientists insights into how people react to a plague.

Sacred beliefs likely arose out of prehistoric bonding and rituals.

The dinosaur long ago renamed “Apatosaurus” is still often called “Brontosaurus.” stevegeer via iStock Over the past few decades, autism and Asperger syndrome have become prominent in the public consciousness, and that prominence has been reflected in popular art and entertainment. Autism, a mental illness characterized by repetitive behaviors and impaired social interactions, was brought […]

Galileo is the archetypal paradigm-busting scientist telling truth to hidebound authorities.Felix Parra: Galileo Demonstrating the New Astronomical Theories at the University of Padua, 1873. There’s a common trope in science in which a lone genius stands defiantly against a backward, close-minded establishment. Galileo’s Sun-centric astronomy vs. the Catholic Church; John Harrison’s longitude-revealing watch vs. the bigwigs […]

To try to understand what it might be like to be blind, think about how it “looks” behind your head.

We can experience nothingness, but does it actually exist?

A child asks, and war answers.

“I did not have to believe anything irrational about the universe.”