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Philosophy
The philosopher Skye C. Cleary explores what being authentically happy looks like in a world where so many can't be.
Just being a pessimist, cynic, or apathetic doesn't make you a nihilist.
The acceptance of death is deeply embedded in our culture; it's time to overthrow that idea.
God is not a vending machine, but is it wrong to treat him like one?
While weltschmerz — literally "world-pain" — may be unpleasant, it can also spur us to change things for the better.
SARS-CoV-2 first emerged in humans in 2019. Despite much noise generated by lab leak proponents, the evidence indicates a natural origin.
An argument for emphasis on subjective experience.
Tech entrepreneur Alvin Wang Graylin sketches out a bold new age of AI-led enlightenment underscored by compassion.
From Nick Carraway to Charles Marlow, these side characters offered truths their scene-stealing protagonists couldn't.
A reader asks whether we have an ethical responsibility to always debate bad beliefs, especially those that come from our elders.
The road from Kant to modern cognitive psychology has taught us much about our mental filtering systems.
If you bring too much mass or energy together in one location, you'll inevitably create a black hole. So why didn't the Big Bang become one?
33 years ago, the theoretical biologist Robert Rosen offered an answer to the question "Is life computable?"
Ancient currents seemed to move in concert with a 2.4 million-year dance between the Red Planet and Earth.
Predicted way back in the 1960s, the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 completed the Standard Model. Here's why it remains fascinating.
If music is a window onto truth, what does screaming reveal?
Schopenhauer and Freud can help teams navigate the most prickly of collaboration problems.
Big Think recently spoke with behavioral scientist and author Katy Milkman about what really motivates us and steers our behavior.
Whole Foods Market founding CEO John Mackey synthesized the counterculture with capitalism and drove a food revolution.
Some think the reason fundamental scientific revolutions are so rare is because of groupthink. It's not; it's hard to mess with success.
If words are really only 7% of communication, then why would anyone need to learn a foreign language?
CERN's Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful particle accelerator ever. To go even further, we'll have to overcome something big.
In ~7 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and die. So will every star, eventually. Here are the different fates they'll encounter.
How heavy is the mask that you wear?
The mutual distance between well-separated galaxies increases with time as the Universe expands. What else expands, and what doesn't?
The burial spot was found in one of the Herculaneum scrolls charred by Mt. Vesuvius.
The "Shopping Cart Litmus Test" is a popular meme about morality. What does it really reveal about one's character?
Nobody likes the uneasy feeling of being watched — so can there be any workplace benefit to the all-seeing eye?
Author A.J. Jacobs explores how voting has changed since the days of the Founding Fathers — for better and for worse.
IceCube scientists have detected high-energy tau neutrinos from deep space, suggesting that neutrino transformations occur not only in lab experiments but also over cosmic distances.