Aeon

  • Why things happen

    Why things happen

    Either cause and effect are the very glue of the cosmos, or they are a naive illusion due to insufficient math. But which?

  • Human evolution is more a muddy delta than a branching tree

    Human evolution is more a muddy delta than a branching tree

    Where once we saw each branch in isolation, DNA evidence now reveals a network of connections. From an African origin more than 1.8 million years ago, human ancestors flowed into […]

  • The hunger mood

    The hunger mood

    Hunger isn’t in your stomach or your blood-sugar levels. It’s in your mind – and that’s where we need to shape up

  • Why physics needs art to help picture the universe

    Why physics needs art to help picture the universe

    Historians of science usually date the origin of the Scientific Revolution as 1543, when Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus first put the Earth in motion. While that is a convenient and defensible […]

  • Preternatural machines

    Preternatural machines

    Robots came to Europe before the dawn of the mechanical age. To a medieval world, they were indistinguishable from magic

  • User behaviour

    User behaviour

    Websites and apps are designed for compulsion, even addiction. Should the net be regulated like drugs or casinos?

  • Every living thing

    Every living thing

    Why shower precious resources on rescuing individual animals while habitats are destroyed and whole species disappear?

  • Inmortality instinct

    Inmortality instinct

    We have this powerful sense that death is a transition, not an end. Why can’t we imagine a world without us?

  • Why do archaeological fraudsters deceive us?

    Why do archaeological fraudsters deceive us?

    Why do archaeological fraudsters work so hard to deceive us? Because bad science makes for good stories