bigthinkeditor
Social Darwinism, or destructive competition as a means of maintaining society, is an ethically bankrupt ideology and one the U.S. must abandon to remain competitive.
A feature in the Boston Globe argues that it is delusional and dangerous to think that all religions are paths to the same holy wisdom.
More than any other living poet, Derek Walcott best fulfills T.S. Eliot’s poetic ideal following his new publication, writes The New York Times.
The Economist is conducting a live debate on whether GDP growth is a poor measure of improving living standards; two of their columnists start the debate.
The Chronicle of Higher Education recalls George Orwell’s advice on writing in order to explain why American academic writing is so unfortunately esoteric and—poorly written.
The National Review comments on one of William F. Buckley’s favorite quotes: “The problem with socialism is socialism; the problem with capitalism is capitalists.”
The wealth disparities of naked capitalism are indefensible, but so too is the welfare state; there must be a third way, writes the New Statesman.
A Croatian girl recently came out of a coma having forgotten her native tongue but remembering German, her second language, perfectly fine.
The cultural revolution of the 50s and 60s made the development of the morning-after pill an important moment in the women’s rights movement.
Learning music at an early age creates new neural pathways between the brain’s hemispheres aiding in spatial and mathematical reasoning.
Though popularly billed as the spokesman for the free-market, it’s high time we realize Adam Smith felt government intervention in markets was necessary.
Is China’s interest in Africa’s resources a path toward development for the Dark Continent or is it yet another round of colonialism?
Curiosity didn’t kill the cat; it saved the marriage. Curiosity is the single most important trait in finding a good date or life-partner, writes psychologist Paul Dobransky.
A survey of contemporary philosophers’ beliefs was conducted at the world’s top 99 university (analytical) philosophy departments; most are scientists who like Hume, Aristotle and Kant.
Recent books demonstrate how terrorists make rational calculations when deciding whether to join the ranks; understanding their motivations will aid in stopping them.
Bill Gates argues that private enterprise is insufficient to meet our renewable energy goals; public funds are best suited for critical research and development.
The popular notion that Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić, contributed significantly to his mathematical theorems lacks fundamental evidence, writes Allen Esterson.
Harper’s magazine tries to make sense of the many baffling studies conducted on the effects of cell phone radiation on the brain.
Rather than apologize for recent Western economic dominance, we should try to copy its model and implement it in developing nations to reduce poverty, writes David Landes.
Music Professor Jason Freeman has created open source composition software to encourage the public to remix and compose sheet music.
“Suck it up, suck it up, suck it up,” is the refrain taught to members of the U.S. Navy. But despite their often-stoic exteriors, soldiers are real people with real […]
Ernst Weizsäcker, Co-chair of the U.N. International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, believes that we could be doing five times better than we are when it comes to addressing global […]
For Matthew Malin and Andrew Goetz, a business was born from a bar of soap. For most of his life, Goetz washed his face, body, hair and shaved with the […]
Anti-whaling countries could issue a number of allowances to countries defying a moratorium on whaling—potentially limiting the total number of whales being slaughtered each year.
Researchers doing a statistical analysis of dinosaur fossils have discovered that the entire western interior of the United States was populated by a single community of dinosaurs.
How will the effects of climate change impact politics in America over the next 25 years? Internal migrations could “open up all sorts of new routes to the magic number, 270.”
Many are beginning to acknowledge that disease-specific health campaigns in Third World countries can only work if they also strengthen the health systems in those nations.
When undersea eruptions destroy life around hydrothermal vents—the intersections of tectonic plates—new species travel from as far as 200 miles away to repopulate the area.
Behind the scenes at the German-language version of Wikipedia, a small cadre of dedicated volunteers gets into bitter disputes over what is true and what isn’t.
“Requiring derivatives and synthetic securities to be registered would be simple and effective; yet the legislation currently under consideration contains no such requirement,” writes George Soros.