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This week’s theme is epistemological unease in the sciences: Complaints in a number of disciplines that studies didn’t really find the effects they’re reporting. One reason for these worries is […]

The mind allows us to understand what the world is like, but it is consciousness that gives us the subjective vantage to say “I am here, I exist, I have […]

“Brain imaging is not a very good way to test subtle distinctions [in the brain]…it’s like trying to find out something about New York City by studying New York State,” […]

If you read as much about art as I do, things that seem unrelated on the surface tend to pool together in the eddies of my consciousness. Two unrelated concepts […]

"New case studies focus on rare illusory body perceptions that could answer questions about how we maintain a 'self'." Scientific American on how the mind invents the 'I'.

Part of being a postmodern conservative is being open to the truth of the distinctively personal LOGOS of Christianity, to the possibility that the Christian understanding of being a person is […]

Britain's two most celebrated scientists have teamed up to discuss all of life's big issues: the unity of life, ethics, energy, Handel—and the joy of riding a snowmobile.

When you talk about Classical music, you often begin with the three Killer B’s: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. If you talk about American photography, you need to begin with the […]

After finishing The Help by Kathryn Stockett a couple of days ago, I just put the book down and sat still for a few minutes, letting the final remnants of […]

“If a week is a long time in politics”, as Harold Wilson once said, two weeks away from politics on paternity leave is clearly an age. The Leader of Britain’s […]

As California prepares to vote on a ballot initiative essentially legalizing marijuana, The Atlantic looks at the pop music—from Louis Armstrong to Ben Harper—that found peace with the drug.

"Is human uniqueness really nothing more than a neurological phenomenon?" A philosopher and author calls neurology's entry into the human sciences the emergence of 'neurotrash'.

Somali fisherman have made a conscious career change to piracy with Kalashnikovs and RPGs replacing fishing poles. Stanford's Hoover Institution looks at the burgeoning industry.

It’s human nature to try to understand something new by comparing it to something we already know. We always interpret the present based on past experience. But when we make […]

"A debate on Cartesian dualism has led to radically differing approaches to the treatment of depression." A new book reveals how much is at stake in our understanding of the mind.

There are seismic events which have such import, that it is possible to remember exactly where one was and what one was doing when the news first broke. I was […]

Far from simply being a relaxed state, meditation is a period of heightened mental activity. Long-term practice can increase one's capacity for attention as well as compassion.

Philosophy and physics are not often thought of together in academia. While physicists develop calculations and models to describe the world around them, philosophers are more interested in the fuzzier […]

When Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, who works primarily in black and white, encountered a photograph by Mika Ninagawa of Technicolor flowers in close-up during a tour of a museum, he […]

Midori Goto doesn’t lift weights or try to build muscle but she is “very conscious of having to warm up correctly” in order to handle the physical and mental strain […]

Without the ability to daydream and hallucinate, computers will never think as humans do. David Gelernter, Yale professor of computer science, predicts the next stages of AI.

"One of the main developments in recent American literature has got to be a newly self-conscious traditionalism." A report on this decade's fiction finds a rebirth of classical values.

One cannot put it much better than this: Literature is a felicity, but it is not a festival. It is a proposal, or an infinity of proposals, for an emendation, […]

Harvard psychologist Gene Heyman says what while people may have predispositions to addiction, evidence shows people consciously choose to break their addictive habits (or not).

Bill Maher’s mockumentary Religulous opens in theaters on Friday. Judging by Maher’s media interviews, it’s more of the same type of sophomoric ridicule that has been so self-defeating to the […]

Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions has released a primer on the “Psychology of Climate Change Communication,” synthesizing much of the research of the Center over the past […]

A novelist and two neuroscientists came by Big Think’s offices this past week. Jonathan Safran Foer, one of the most acclaimed young novelists of the past decade, spoke to us […]

Until she was 10 years old, performance artist Marina Abramović believed her parents when they told her that her birthday was November 29th, “Republic Day” in her native Yugoslavia. They […]

A study found that lap dancers make $90 more per shift when they are ovulating than when they are in their luteal stage, and $170 more than when they are in their menstrual phase.

“But ultimately, the world of high finance, [Stone] said, is just a backdrop for a film ‘about trust, love, greed betrayal.’” This is from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Dealbook column in […]