Politics

The Neanderthal Renaissance: Hand prints on a cave wall, crumbs from a meal: the new science of Neanderthals radically recasts the meaning of humanity.

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Who were the Neanderthals? Even for archaeologists working at the trowel’s edge of contemporary science, it can be hard to see Neanderthals as anything more than intriguing abstractions, mixed up with the likes of mammoths, woolly rhinos and sabre-toothed cats. But they were certainly here: squinting against sunrises, sucking lungfuls of air, leaving footprints behind in …

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Is the Earth an Organism? The Gaia hypothesis states that our biosphere is evolving. Once sceptical, some prominent biologists are beginning to agree.

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Many of us, scientists included, harbor contradictory intuitions about Mother Nature. We can see that ecosystems often have an inherent ability to self-stabilize, and we know we wouldn’t be here if the planet hadn’t maintained conditions suitable for life for almost 4 billion years. One reaction is to claim that some Earth-wide equilibrium, though fragile, does exist, and reflects …

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Evolution Unleashed: Is evolutionary science due for a major overhaul – or is talk of ‘revolution’ misguided?

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When researchers at Emory University in Atlanta trained mice to fear the smell of almonds (by pairing it with electric shocks), they found, to their consternation, that both the children and grandchildren of these mice were spontaneously afraid of the same smell. That is not supposed to happen. Generations of schoolchildren have been taught that the …

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Vulnerable yet Vital: The dance of love and Lore between Grandparent and Grand child is at the center, not at the fringes, of our evolutionary story

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Human beings need special care while we are young and when we become old. The 2020 pandemic has made this vivid: millions of people across the world have taken care of children at home, and millions more have tried to care for grandparents, even when they couldn’t be physically close to them. COVID-19 has reminded …

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Rethinking Major Interventions Abroad

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Any major intervention abroad, if it is to achieve a lasting political settlement, will almost inevitably involve the commitment of ground forces. America’s air and naval forces are impressive, and there are few, if any, who can match them. But in the end, air and naval forces cannot seize, much less hold, ground. The bottom …

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Opinion: A majority of Americans think US democracy is broken. Here are 12 ideas for repairing it

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(CNN) —Though Americans don’t agree on many political issues, there is one issue both Democrats and Republicans acknowledge poses a major problem: the state of American democracy. According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 69% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans think the nation’s democracy is on the brink of collapse. And the figure for independents, 66%, …

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Schopenhauer and the insatiable will to live

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We may be all too familiar with roses as a rule, but it remains intriguing to look at a beautiful rose and wonder what forces, or perhaps intelligence, led its stem to be studded with protective thorns that say to the observer, “keep your distance.”  There are insects whose form is virtually indistinguishable from twigs …

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Introduction to Continental Philosophy

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The term ‘continental philosophy’ covers a plurality of philosophical currents, including German idealism, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, post-structuralism, and critical theory. Accordingly, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Arendt, Adorno, Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze are all considered continental philosophers. Generally speaking, ‘continental philosophy’ refers to a large set of 19th and 20th-century philosophical traditions and philosophers, mostly from …

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Climate change and the threat to civilization

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In a speech about climate change from April 4th of this year, UN General Secretary António Guterres lambasted “the empty pledges that put us on track to an unlivable world” and warned that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster” (1). Although stark, Guterres’ statements were not novel. Guterres has made similar remarks …

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