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Over at the Atlantic, there's a fascinating interview with Tim Maudlin, one of the founders of a new field, the philosophy of cosmology. He suggests that the mysteries of the universe, including what existed before the Big Bang, may be in part philosophical: More »
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Every year, Edge.org poses a question to a hand-picked group of the world's "most complex and sophisticated minds." Then they publish the responses. More »
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This problem of infinity was pondered by Georg Cantor. What he concluded started him down a road that wound through infamy, through respectability, and wound up in theology. Find out more than anyone ever cared to consider about the infinite. More »
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Though desire and its associated effects - lust, love, aggression, ambition - are generally the purview of poets, that hasn't stopped generations of thinkers from trying to explain it scientifically (and pseudoscientifically). Can desire really be described using the scientific method? Here are ten ways that researchers have answered that question with a resounding "yes." More »
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This really is the week for mathematical bugs. First, one beetle showed us why we live in a universe of despair. Now, another shows us that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong...and the more that things can go wrong, the more things will go wrong. See how a bug proves a knotty conjecture. More »
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George Polya was a mathematician. Like most mathematicians, he was concerned with very strange concepts. One of them was the idea of "random walks," or the completely random path a strolling insect might take. He took this concept and expanded it until he could prove the chances of getting hopelessly, unendingly lost in the universe. Find out why. More »
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In his principal philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre identified the power of the human gaze as one of existential affirmation; to stare into the face of another and not only recognize them as a person, but see them recognize you in return, was to Sartre a necessary interchange in the development of one's sense of individuality and self. More »
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How's your Monday coming along? Pretty rough? Well it's about to get a little hairier. If I'm not mistaken, this self-referential brain teaser is a play on the age-old Liar's paradox, (or, for those of you familiar with set theory, Russell's paradox), reframed in the form of a multiple-choice question. More »
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Let's say you're approaching a fork in the road, and at the very last minute you decide to take the right fork. Common sense says that you made at active decision to take the right fork — a decision you made more or less a split second before you shifted your body ever so slightly in the direction of said fork. More »
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That's what the Guardian claims in a new article today. Steven Spielberg's seminal 1977 film eschewed the rationality that had been science fiction's hallmark, in favor of an unexplained brush with the transcendent, which mostly takes place in suburbia. Instead of figuring stuff out, Richard Dreyfuss' character starts creating weird modern art, out of materials in his home. And Close Encounters "does not offer any sense of history or progress or any theory as to what the alien encounter means." More »
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By the 1700s, there could no longer be any doubt. Earth was just one of many worlds orbiting the Sun, which forced scientists and theologians alike to ponder a tricky question. Would God really have bothered to create empty worlds? More »
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Nobody knows what the future will bring, but most of us think about the future all the time. Will we succeed in our goals? Will we fail? Will the world fall apart? Is the Singularity coming soon? More »
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Everybody knows what you mean when you say you're happy or sad. But what about all those emotional states you don't have words for? Here are ten feelings you may have had, but never knew how to explain. More »
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Science fiction from the very literary to the very pulpy has pondered whether humans are doomed to oppress each other because we live in a hierarchical society. Can we ever change? Do we need to? More »
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Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat has created some of the series' most frightening monsters, including the Weeping Angel aliens in "Blink" who creep up when you glance away. This season, the Edvard Munch-inspired aliens called The Silence have a strange but potent superpower: the instant they leave the frame of your vision, you forget they exist. No wonder they've lurked hidden on Earth for so many thousands of years. More »
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Is your life really your life, or is it actually the dream of a butterfly? Or is it a complex computer simulation indistinguishable from "real" reality? Don't worry, it's just a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something. More »
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The most famous philosopher of the Victorian age, Herbert Spencer, coined the term "survival of the fittest", tried to apply the concepts of evolution to human society, and was described by Charles Darwin himself as "twenty times my superior." He was also a shameless hypochondriac, a sadistic prankster, and liked to dress in a one-piece suit that made him look like a bear. More »
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Philosopher John Holbo believes that the future might be the same as the present. Therefore, novels about today's world can count as science fiction - as long as they have the right perspective on technology and society. More »
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Before he wrote the famous eighteenth-century novel Candide, Voltaire wrote non-fiction books about Newtonian physics, and fiction about giant aliens visiting Earth from Sirius and Saturn. Cory Gross from Voyages Extraordinares explains. More »
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It's the opportunity of a lifetime. The Science Fiction Foundation is having a masterclass on science fiction criticism, led by The Quiet War author Paul McAuley and two other luminaries. Spend a weekend in London getting drunk on ideas. More »
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Science fiction takes us out of our own time and place, and confronts us with alien objects as well as incomprehensible future artifacts. By doing this, argues Daniel Rourke, SF brings us closer to seeing things as they really are. More »
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In many of the science fictional futures that we know and love, racism, sexism, and homophobia are often scrubbed out of existence. Here's why science fiction is in favor of allowing people to marry whoever they want. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5606754&view=rss&microfeed=true "Science fiction is naturally melodramatic and extreme... It asks two great questions, "What if?" and "If this goes on?" And it wants its answers — its disasters — to be big enough to be visible and understood. Is this depressing? Not necessarily. There is a line that comes (I think) from Isaac Asimov. It may be the great statement of science fiction. 'There will be a future, and it will be different.' ... As long as there is life, there is change and therefore history; and as long as there is life, there are alternatives." — Eleanor Arnason's Web Log More »
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Legendary philosopher Peter Singer once imagined a scenario where a pill could double human lifespan, and argued that such a world would never be as happy as one without the medicine. Science fiction author and philosopher Russell Blackford disagrees. More »
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Given everything that squid and owls have in common, why shouldn't they switch places for a while? That's the question that designer John Holbo asks in the beautifully-illustrated tale Squid & Owl, a romp through taxonomy, science and retro illustration. More »
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Want to understand the works of German philosopher Immanuel Kant but don't have the time to slog through them? In this video, comic book critic Douglas Wolk explains the concepts in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment using comics art. More »
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We've got an exclusive clip of Neal Stephenson doing what he does best: Seriously geeking out about obscure early-twentieth century metaphysics. Specifically, he admits that he has a little fetish for Edmund Husserl, a theorist who coined the term "phenomenology" in his effort to reconcile the hard truths of scientific knowledge with the ambiguities of human consciousness. Stephenson's interest in Husserl comes out of his obsession with Kurt Gödel, who loved Husserl (and is also every geek's philosopher dream date). The issues that arise out of phenomenology, specifically how people come to know things about measurable reality and their (hard to measure) consciousness, provide the intellectual backbone for Stephenson's forthcoming novel Anathem. More »
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Steampunk: A cultural dead-end reflecting the aesthetics of a long-gone time, courtesy of some SF and fantasy writers for whom a reformation of the past was more interesting than the future? Or shining (and well-bred) example for the future of humanity? Posters at the (steampunk-obsessed) Whitechapel message board are convinced that it's the latter, and are willing to make the case to convince you, as well. More »
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Neuroscience cultural critic Jonah Lehrer has just written about a strange new subculture: experimental philosophy, or x-phi. These ethical innovators want to combine the scientific method and its tools, like fMRI brain scans, with traditional philosophy. Many x-phi adherents are eager to do things like, say, map the neurology of altruistic behavior. Find out why x-phi is also the first school of philosophy to advocate burning furniture and vidcasting after the jump. More »
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