Ed Simon

In the new book Purpose, a Yale psychiatrist argues Darwinian forces are divinely guided.

What it will mean to be moved by an AI’s mindless creativity.

Forty years ago, a paleontologist pictured Earth millions of years from now. His vision is a wake-up call for us today.

Now that we’re corralled into our homes and apartments, something seems pre-modern in how our worlds have shrunk. Unlike past quarantines, we’re also connected by digital technology to the rest of the globe, calling to mind poet John Donne’s line from a 1633 poem about making “one little room an everywhere.” Donne came of age […]

What Xenotext does is cause its audience to reevaluate their ideas of creation, both literary and biological.Illustration by GiroScience / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Language,” the Beat writer William S. Burroughs supposedly once exclaimed, “is a virus from outer space.” Burroughs was making a metaphorical extrapolation […]

Tibetan Buddhists have a concept called the “tulpa,” thought-created beings who develop an existence independent of their creators.

The major exception to the flatness of ancient characters.

Fingers Crossed: Pascal reasoned that life is a sort of “game,” and that our faith in God, or lack-there-of, is our wager as to the ultimate nature of reality.Photograph by Albert / Flickr Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . On the evening of November 23rd, 1654, the brilliant polymath […]