Philosophers and scientists have always kept close company. Look back far enough, and it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Before we had instruments to measure reality, we had to reason our way into it, but that intellectual lineage is what eventually gave us the scientific method. As technology advanced and the scope for observation expanded, specializations splintered off from philosophy to reconstitute as the sciences.
Astronomy cleared the sky of deities and showed us a universe governed by gravity, not gods. Geography mapped a not-so-flat Earth, then geology dated it, stratifying earthly time in isotopes and sedimentary layers. Physics folded time into space, and with it, reimagined us not as beings apart from nature, but as a continuation of its energy and mass. We are not, as Pink Floyd suggested, “lost souls swimming in a fishbowl.” We are matter, muddling our way through life in relativistic motion.
Now, in the 21st century, science is tracing a map through the other great unknown: the mind.
Advances in biophotonics and neuroimaging have brought us closer than ever to a material picture ... Continue Reading »
When Simon Squibb was kicked out of his family home aged 15, he quickly built up the first of many businesses that helped him transform his name into a global brand. A gardening venture born of teenage survival kick-started the journey that would lead to the creation of YouTube’s most-watched business video: “30 years of business knowledge in 2hr 26mins.” (15M views to date)
More than 18 million social media followers now watch Squibb hand cash to strangers in the street if he likes their business idea. He also bought a staircase in London with a doorbell for people to “pitch their dreams,” and now has a similar doorbell in New York, which he runs with Sir Richard Branson.
Here, Squibb reveals to Big Think how he became a “professional talker” and how other leaders can explain ideas more clearly; why he’s opposed to traditional school education; and why he wants to give all his money away rather than leave it to his son.
Big Think: You’ve built 19 businesses, and invested in more than 80. Do you think entrepreneurs are made — ... Continue Reading »
Since ancient times, humanity has studied the skies.
70,000 years ago, a brown dwarf pair known as Scholz’s Star, right on the precipice of igniting hydrogen fusion in its core, passed through the Solar System’s Oort cloud. Stars, failed stars, and stellar remnants pass through our Solar System multiple times every million years. Both modern humans and Neanderthals were likely around to see this event. Unlike the illustration, however, it’s so intrinsically faint that it still wouldn’t have been visible to human eyes; today, it’s approximately 22 light-years away.
Credit: José A. Peñas/SINC
Cometary sightings, eclipses, and “temporary” stars date back thousands of years.
This particular image contrasts the constellations of the sky as they appeared thousands of years ago with corresponding artwork carved into stone at around the same time. Evidence that ancient peoples had an advanced knowledge of astronomy can be traced back as far as 38,000 years ago from cave paintings and other archaeological evidence.
Credit: M. Sweatman & A. Coombs, Athens Journal of History, 2018
Some ~2800 years ago, the Babylonians already predicted eclipses.
When the Moon passes directly between the Earth and ... Continue Reading »
Bryan Washington’s characters reveal themselves through what they don’t, won’t, or can’t say as much as the utterances they give voice to. Though he constructs his stories from the first-person perspective, his protagonists never exist in heroic isolation. Each is shaped — in ways small and large, superficial and profound, knowingly and unknowingly — by the people they interact with and the cultures they inhabit.
Most of Washington’s stories are set in Houston, where he grew up, or Japan, where he currently lives. Occasionally, as in Palaver, the author’s third novel, the two collide. A finalist for the 2025 National Book Award, Palaver tells the story of an unnamed son who moved from Texas to Tokyo to escape his homophobic brother, only to receive a surprise visit from his unnamed mother more than a decade later. Like much of Washington’s previous literary work, Palaver deals with themes of estrangement, loneliness, and forgiveness.
Unlike those works, as a review from the Washington Post points out, the novel errs on the side of hope. It “deconstructs the myriad ways we intentionally or unintentionally tear ... Continue Reading »
Most of us think happiness is something you achieve: status, money, accomplishment. Robert Waldinger’s work asks a more unsettling question: what if happiness is less about what you get and more about who you keep?
Drawing on the longest study of adult life ever conducted, Waldinger traces human wellbeing across 8 decades, from the Great Depression to old age, following people from radically different starting points to see what endures.
This video The happiness shortcut that hides in plain sight is featured on Big Think.
Continue Reading »
When it comes to science in general, and physics in particular, we don’t just want to know what’s going to happen under a given set of circumstances. We also want to know the answer to the key question of, “how much,” “how many,” or “in what amount,” when it comes to our answers. Being quantitative, and answering questions of amounts and timescales, not merely qualitative, is what separates a successful physical theory from one that must be discarded. In the expanding Universe, this is more important than ever, as questions of what we expect to form, when, and in what quantities, are essential for testing whether our theories of the Universe actually match up with our observed reality.
Clearly, we live in a Universe where stars came into existence long ago: back in the first few hundred million years of cosmic history. But is what we see compatible with what physics predicts when we take the expanding, accelerating Universe into account? That’s the big inquiry put forth by Patreon supporter Jeff Bonwick, who wants to know:
“Star formation makes qualitative sense: gas, ... Continue Reading »
How does life build complexity from pure chance? Sean B. Carroll takes up the “staircase of evolution,” showing how random mutation and natural selection shape everything from the smallest cells in our bodies to entire species.
If you want to understand the forces that silently govern life, this discussion reframes evolution as an active, ongoing process shaping every organism, including you.
This video The evolutionary logic of survival and death, in 54 minutes is featured on Big Think.
Continue Reading »
Over the last few years, AI has dazzled us all. It can write our emails, optimize our workflows, and create alarmingly realistic videos. But is it intelligent? Can it actually understand things?
I’m not so sure. This week, I published an essay for my Long Game column in Big Think about this idea. To do that, I tell a story about a slime mold that might just be more “intelligent” than a human — even though it has no brain. (No, I haven’t lost my marbles yet; read it and you’ll understand.)
The basic premise is this: the world is pouring incomprehensible amounts of energy and capital into building systems that mimic a single, narrow form of human intelligence. But in the process, we may be ignoring a far older, and potentially wiser, form of intelligence. It’s also a type of intelligence that is in high demand as the world changes faster than ever.
Key quote: “In our rush to create artificial minds, we seem to have forgotten to study the real ones. Because once you start noticing the intelligence threaded through the ... Continue Reading »
12.5 to 12.6 billion years after the beginning of the Universe.
On Earth, biological organisms are getting more and more interesting as the years tick by. As the unbroken chain of life continues, the combined factors of inheritance, random mutations, and horizontal gene transfer serve to increase the total amount of genetic information found in the genomes of the most complex organisms. This results in them gaining more specialized features, and many new characteristics begin emerging.
Some organisms thrive together in colonies, with identical unicellular lifeforms binding to one another to ensure that the majority of them survive and thrive. Other organisms develop multicellularity: the ability for a single organism to produce multiple component parts — cells — that all remain bound together as part of the original, parent organism. And still other organisms become differentiated, where new subcomponents develop within an organism, conferring features and abilities onto it that it didn’t possess before. At this moment in time, the last of these effects leads to an entirely new kingdom of life on Earth: the fungi.
Evolving well before plants or animals ... Continue Reading »
This December, like every December, will include a single moment — often marked by a particular day, which is December 21st here in 2025 — where our planet’s axial tilt is perfectly aligned with the invisible line connecting the Earth to the Sun. In December, it’s the northern hemisphere’s pole that’s tilted away from the Sun, while the southern hemisphere’s pole is tipped toward it; in June, the opposite situation is true. When your pole is tipped toward the Sun, your hemisphere experiences the longest days and shortest nights; when the pole is tipped away, you get long nights and short days. This remains true, solstice after solstice and year after year, no matter how much time passes.
Although there are many factors at play that determine the behavior of each planet — its spin and orbital angular momenta, the eccentricity of its orbit, the effects of general relativity and the other planets — there’s only one that determines when the solstices are: axial tilt. As every planet revolves around the Sun, it rotates on its axis, and only the orientation of that axis matters. ... Continue Reading »
Philosophers and scientists have always kept close company. Look back far enough, and it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Before we had instruments to measure reality, we had to reason our way into it, but that intellectual lineage is what eventually gave us the scientific method. As technology advanced and the scope for observation expanded, specializations splintered off from philosophy to reconstitute as the sciences.
Astronomy cleared the sky of deities and showed us a universe governed by gravity, not gods. Geography mapped a not-so-flat Earth, then geology dated it, stratifying earthly time in isotopes and sedimentary layers. Physics folded time into space, and with it, reimagined us not as beings apart from nature, but as a continuation of its energy and mass. We are not, as Pink Floyd suggested, “lost souls swimming in a fishbowl.” We are matter, muddling our way through life in relativistic motion.
Now, in the 21st century, science is tracing a map through the other great unknown: the mind.
Advances in biophotonics and neuroimaging have brought us closer than ever to a material picture ... 
When Simon Squibb was kicked out of his family home aged 15, he quickly built up the first of many businesses that helped him transform his name into a global brand. A gardening venture born of teenage survival kick-started the journey that would lead to the creation of YouTube’s most-watched business video: “30 years of business knowledge in 2hr 26mins.” (15M views to date)
More than 18 million social media followers now watch Squibb hand cash to strangers in the street if he likes their business idea. He also bought a staircase in London with a doorbell for people to “pitch their dreams,” and now has a similar doorbell in New York, which he runs with Sir Richard Branson.
Here, Squibb reveals to Big Think how he became a “professional talker” and how other leaders can explain ideas more clearly; why he’s opposed to traditional school education; and why he wants to give all his money away rather than leave it to his son.
Big Think: You’ve built 19 businesses, and invested in more than 80. Do you think entrepreneurs are made — ... 
Since ancient times, humanity has studied the skies.
70,000 years ago, a brown dwarf pair known as Scholz’s Star, right on the precipice of igniting hydrogen fusion in its core, passed through the Solar System’s Oort cloud. Stars, failed stars, and stellar remnants pass through our Solar System multiple times every million years. Both modern humans and Neanderthals were likely around to see this event. Unlike the illustration, however, it’s so intrinsically faint that it still wouldn’t have been visible to human eyes; today, it’s approximately 22 light-years away.
Credit: José A. Peñas/SINC
Cometary sightings, eclipses, and “temporary” stars date back thousands of years.
This particular image contrasts the constellations of the sky as they appeared thousands of years ago with corresponding artwork carved into stone at around the same time. Evidence that ancient peoples had an advanced knowledge of astronomy can be traced back as far as 38,000 years ago from cave paintings and other archaeological evidence.
Credit: M. Sweatman & A. Coombs, Athens Journal of History, 2018
Some ~2800 years ago, the Babylonians already predicted eclipses.
When the Moon passes directly between the Earth and ... 
Bryan Washington’s characters reveal themselves through what they don’t, won’t, or can’t say as much as the utterances they give voice to. Though he constructs his stories from the first-person perspective, his protagonists never exist in heroic isolation. Each is shaped — in ways small and large, superficial and profound, knowingly and unknowingly — by the people they interact with and the cultures they inhabit.
Most of Washington’s stories are set in Houston, where he grew up, or Japan, where he currently lives. Occasionally, as in Palaver, the author’s third novel, the two collide. A finalist for the 2025 National Book Award, Palaver tells the story of an unnamed son who moved from Texas to Tokyo to escape his homophobic brother, only to receive a surprise visit from his unnamed mother more than a decade later. Like much of Washington’s previous literary work, Palaver deals with themes of estrangement, loneliness, and forgiveness.
Unlike those works, as a review from the Washington Post points out, the novel errs on the side of hope. It “deconstructs the myriad ways we intentionally or unintentionally tear ... 
When it comes to science in general, and physics in particular, we don’t just want to know what’s going to happen under a given set of circumstances. We also want to know the answer to the key question of, “how much,” “how many,” or “in what amount,” when it comes to our answers. Being quantitative, and answering questions of amounts and timescales, not merely qualitative, is what separates a successful physical theory from one that must be discarded. In the expanding Universe, this is more important than ever, as questions of what we expect to form, when, and in what quantities, are essential for testing whether our theories of the Universe actually match up with our observed reality.
Clearly, we live in a Universe where stars came into existence long ago: back in the first few hundred million years of cosmic history. But is what we see compatible with what physics predicts when we take the expanding, accelerating Universe into account? That’s the big inquiry put forth by Patreon supporter Jeff Bonwick, who wants to know:
“Star formation makes qualitative sense: gas, ... 
Over the last few years, AI has dazzled us all. It can write our emails, optimize our workflows, and create alarmingly realistic videos. But is it intelligent? Can it actually understand things?
I’m not so sure. This week, I published an essay for my Long Game column in Big Think about this idea. To do that, I tell a story about a slime mold that might just be more “intelligent” than a human — even though it has no brain. (No, I haven’t lost my marbles yet; read it and you’ll understand.)
The basic premise is this: the world is pouring incomprehensible amounts of energy and capital into building systems that mimic a single, narrow form of human intelligence. But in the process, we may be ignoring a far older, and potentially wiser, form of intelligence. It’s also a type of intelligence that is in high demand as the world changes faster than ever.
Key quote: “In our rush to create artificial minds, we seem to have forgotten to study the real ones. Because once you start noticing the intelligence threaded through the ... 
12.5 to 12.6 billion years after the beginning of the Universe.
On Earth, biological organisms are getting more and more interesting as the years tick by. As the unbroken chain of life continues, the combined factors of inheritance, random mutations, and horizontal gene transfer serve to increase the total amount of genetic information found in the genomes of the most complex organisms. This results in them gaining more specialized features, and many new characteristics begin emerging.
Some organisms thrive together in colonies, with identical unicellular lifeforms binding to one another to ensure that the majority of them survive and thrive. Other organisms develop multicellularity: the ability for a single organism to produce multiple component parts — cells — that all remain bound together as part of the original, parent organism. And still other organisms become differentiated, where new subcomponents develop within an organism, conferring features and abilities onto it that it didn’t possess before. At this moment in time, the last of these effects leads to an entirely new kingdom of life on Earth: the fungi.
Evolving well before plants or animals ... 
This December, like every December, will include a single moment — often marked by a particular day, which is December 21st here in 2025 — where our planet’s axial tilt is perfectly aligned with the invisible line connecting the Earth to the Sun. In December, it’s the northern hemisphere’s pole that’s tilted away from the Sun, while the southern hemisphere’s pole is tipped toward it; in June, the opposite situation is true. When your pole is tipped toward the Sun, your hemisphere experiences the longest days and shortest nights; when the pole is tipped away, you get long nights and short days. This remains true, solstice after solstice and year after year, no matter how much time passes.
Although there are many factors at play that determine the behavior of each planet — its spin and orbital angular momenta, the eccentricity of its orbit, the effects of general relativity and the other planets — there’s only one that determines when the solstices are: axial tilt. As every planet revolves around the Sun, it rotates on its axis, and only the orientation of that axis matters. ...