If intelligence is merely optimisation then machines will outrun us. Kant tells us how human reason is so much more ...

In the mid-1990s, thinkers pushed back against the idea we’re built by language, turning to feeling and the body instead ...

In tropical forests ruled by aggressive ants, these species have adopted a ‘fake it till you make it’ survival strategy ...

In 1981, Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, set out to study the ancient meditation practices of Buddhist monks on the Tibetan Plateau. With the Dalai Lama’s blessing, Benson ...

There’s a common story of how the Maya civilisation was wiped out: they fell foul of unstoppable climate change. Several periods of extreme drought withered their crops and killed off thousands in ...

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 ...

My best friend in high school was tall, lean and pretty. She had a long neck and luscious dark hair, alabaster skin punctuated by a constellation of beauty marks, and a teeth gap that she flaunted ...

From our origins in Africa, humans began migrating around the globe roughly 100,000 years ago. But it was only with the advent of agriculture about 12,000 years ago that our population started to ...

Music was ubiquitous in ancient Greece. Now we can hear how it actually sounded ...

Eugenics was a mixture of science and social movement that aimed to improve the human race over generations. Those of good stock were to produce more children, and those of bad stock were to produce ...

The opposition between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ is problematic for many reasons, but there’s one that we rarely discuss. The ‘nature vs culture’ dualism leaves out an entire domain that properly belongs ...

is an Irish Research Council postdoctoral research fellow at University College Dublin. His research focuses on epistemology, ethics and the philosophy of mind and language. Humanity occupies a very ...