Butterflies and Fish
Institute for Advanced Study astrophysicist Scott Tremaine explains how our personal biases and assumptions impact our quest for scientific knowledge.
Tag: research
Changing Vocabularies
UCLA historian Nile Green describes how deliberately changing our vocabulary forces us to deepen our cultural understanding.
Copying Space
Neuroscientist Jennifer Groh describes how investigating how the brain coordinates sensory perceptions gives rise to an intriguing evolutionary hypothesis.
Overcoming Impossible
Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt’s remarkable discovery of natural quasicrystals demonstrates the importance that persistence plays in scientific breakthroughs.
Many Keys
UCLA historian Margaret Jacob describes how a careful study of history can increase our understanding of basic human motivations.
Testing the Universe
Roger Penrose, University of Oxford, confronts us with the question of to what extent our theories of cosmology are testable.
Embracing the Unknown
Northeastern University psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett on how harnessing theory of knowledge can deepen one’s understanding of emotions.
Making Models
Making Models examines various aspects of how models are constructed and applied across different disciplines in the arts and sciences.
Recognizing Defeat?
Princeton University cosmologist Paul Steinhardt describes how many physicists stubbornly refuse to abandon a theory of the universe he helped develop.
Intuiting Truth
University of Toronto philosopher James Robert Brown demonstrates how pictures can enable us to intuit certain mathematical truths.
Emotional Rescue
UNC Chapel Hill social psychologist Barbara Fredrickson describes how positive emotions help us to better understand and adapt to the world around us.