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Philosophy
Examine life’s biggest questions, from ethics to existence, with curiosity and critical thinking.
In technology, we make cumulative advances that withstand time. Not so in politics and ethics, argues philosopher John Gray.
We experience time as real. But what if it's only an illusion: an illusion that's inherently relative? Does time fundamentally even exist?
Generations ago, cosmologists asserted that the Universe might not just be the same in all directions, but at all times. But is that true?
When the road runs out, you've got to make your own way.
We live in a four-dimensional Universe, where matter and energy curve the fabric of spacetime. But time sure is different from space!
The double-slit experiment, hundreds of years after it was first performed, still holds the key mystery at the heart of quantum physics.
Newton thought that gravitation would happen instantly, propagating at infinite speeds. Einstein showed otherwise; gravity isn't instant.
A good decision can blow up, and a terrible one can pay off.
The artistic and the mathematical mind are not so far apart.
As far as we can tell, there's no limit to how far it goes on; only a limit to how far we can see. Could the Universe truly be infinite?
Books to expand your perspective on history, philosophy, space exploration, and more this year.
Our Universe has a positive, non-zero value to the energy within empty space. Can we potentially save ourselves by considering vacuum decay?
The philosopher Svetlana Boym argues that "nostos" encourages people to reject the world as it is and seek to return to a better time — real or imagined.
People are almost always different to how we imagine them
Mathematics is our language for quantitatively describing reality, but it can also take us to worlds that never were. Physics needs more.
The movie gestures at one of humanity's biggest questions yet chooses to look away, writes Big Think producer Clark Frankel.
The ambiguity of Bartleby shows that opting out can be a form of resistance, retreat, or something harder to judge.
How a culture of independence gave rise to a philosophy of self-reliance, solitude, and inner authority.
Trying to solve one’s existential dread by finding a singular purpose is a game won only by not playing.