A few years ago, at the Princeton Club in Manhattan, I chanced on a memorable chat with the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. His spouse, the philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, with…

Must we always follow reason? Do I need a rational argument for why I should fall in love, cherish my children, enjoy the pleasures of life? Isn’t it sometimes OK to go crazy, to…

Science is not the massive structure built of facts that you were taught in school—at least not to scientists. What interests scientists is what they don’t know, what remains to…

The dinosaur is a chimera. Some parts of this complex assemblage are the result of biological evolution. But others are products of human ingenuity, constructed by artists, scientists,…

Neural networks need to “dream” of weird, senseless examples to learn well. Maybe we do, too.Photo Illustration by MDV Edwards / ShutterstockFor many of us over the last year and…

Structuresstructure (noun): the arrangement of or relation between the parts of something complex; the organization of interrelated elements.1.My partner trained as an architect, and…

Setting: Chesterfield High, an unusual school in the suburbs of Ohio.The teacher writes on the board:2, 3, 5, 7, ...How, he asks, do we complete this pattern?Now a student might say…

The following is adapted from a speech Roger Payne gave at this year’s Interspecies Internet conference. His remarks have been lightly edited for clarity.Because I am involved with…

What is the role of reasonable doubt in advancing science? And how should we contrast scientific doubt with the cavilling doubt of conspiracy theories which play little part in advancing…

Science is not just something we do at school or professionals undertake in labs. It is at the heart of how everything works. With the development of applied scientific principles,…