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Neuroscientists have often argued "the mind is nothing more than a pattern of electrical activity in the brain” and have sought to explain how the brain works based on scans of brain activity. These claims are seemingly confirmed by the success of technology such as Neuralink that enables individuals to control robots with their thoughts. But critics argue such claims are profoundly mistaken. Scans of blood flow in the brain or PET scans do not provide an account of how the brain thinks. While Neuralink relies on trial and error and pattern matching rather than an explanation of how the brain works. Furthermore, neuroscience has not yielded medical breakthroughs in the treatment of brain disease and critics argue this is because it fundamentally does not explain brain function.
Were we mistaken to imagine that neuroscience can explain how the brain works? Are maps of physical brain function in principle incapable of explaining how we think? Or will neuroscience prove to enable powerful technology even if it does not explain thought?
We often see reason as providing a solid basis for our theories. Some have even imagined that reason alone can deliver truth. But far from being a stable foundation, critics of reason argue that it is equally a vehicle of destruction. Reason’s drive to question everything makes it a restless force that destabilizes all frameworks. The French Revolution, born from Enlightenment ideals of reason, devoured its own architects and created unrestrained terror. Postmodernism applied the principles of reason to uncover flaws in every outlook including its own. At a personal level, Cornell studies show that simply writing out reasons for our beliefs weakens rather than strengthens our attachment to them.
Should we see reason as a double-edged sword, refining our theories but also undermining them and making society inherently unstable? Do we need to guard against the disruptive power of reason with foundations built on authority, tradition, or religion? Or is the revolutionary character of reason the very basis of its success in driving change, progress, and better living standards for all.
We believed that freedom would do the work of equality, that once women could make their own choices, the rest would take care of itself. But studies show that the greater the gender-equality in a country, the more likely women are to choose traditionally gendered paths — prioritising family, part-time work, or careers in care and education. Nordic countries, for example, celebrated for gender equality, have some of the lowest proportions of women in leadership. At the same time, freedom has come with a cost. Women pursuing traditional roles are shamed for betraying feminist ideals. And when women pursue work success, 87% report being penalised and undermined.
Should we recognise that freedom isn't enough to ensure equality and further intervention is required? Are women's choices revealing their true preferences? Or is the core issue that we don't give sufficient status and financial reward to traditionally female gendered roles?
Gutenberg’s printing press transformed the world. The surge in literacy and the democratization of knowledge helped ignite the Enlightenment. 500 years later the internet is initiating a new transformation. Zuckerberg claims his digital networks have connected billions and made information more accessible than ever before. But critics claim that beneath this triumph of access lies a crisis of thought. Reading is in freefall: fewer young people enjoy reading today than at any point in the past twenty years, and OECD data show literacy stagnating across the developed world. Some argue we are witnessing a reversal of the Enlightenment itself with shorter attention spans and less ability to handle complex ideas.
If the literate mind shaped the modern world, what kind of world will the post-literate mind create? Are the rise of digital media and the decline of literacy dangerous trends that threaten our politics, culture, and thought itself? Or should we celebrate the internet as a new and radical extension of Gutenberg's dream of democratizing the production and distribution of knowledge?
The West is often seen as the home of liberal democracy, and liberalism and democracy seen as inseparable. But from the start, there has been tension between democracy as the will of the majority, and liberalism as the protection of minority rights and free speech. Now we are seeing the rise of so-called "illiberal democracies," sceptical of checks on executive power and liberal institutions. Illiberal democracies are now the most common form of government, according to The Economist. Victor Orbán, the President of Hungary, listed his own country along with Singapore, Russia, Turkey, and China among them, with 3% higher growth on average over the last 30 years than the liberal democracies of the West.
Does illiberal democracy threaten autocratic, or even fascist regimes? Is democracy meaningless if government constrains freedom of speech or seeks to influence the media and the judiciary? Or are unelected bodies such as the civil service, federal agencies, academia, and the law themselves potential threats to the democratic will of the people?
From the Big Bang to the expanding universe, we imagine we have a detailed account of the origin and formation of the cosmos. But, in the last few years, new evidence from the James Webb Telescope is challenging these assumptions and leading some to propose radically different alternatives. In 2023 the telescope identified a higher rate of expansion for the universe, and mature galaxies billions of years earlier than previously predicted. In 2024, NASA confirmed the differences couldn't be explained by measurement error. In combination these have led some to claim there a crisis in cosmology sufficiently profound to threaten a wholesale change in our understanding.
Do the findings of the James Webb telescope mean our standard account of the universe is mistaken, or can we patch up the current theory to make it compatible with the new observations? Will a new theory require a change to our account of dark energy and the identification of new particles, or is the Big Bang inflation model itself at stake?
When Fukuyama famously declared “the end of history,” it summed up his view that liberal economics had won the battle against socialism and would remain the dominant economic framework for all time to come. The success of Chinese state capitalism has been an obvious challenge to the claim. But now from Trump to Le Pen, Reform to the AfD, there is within the West a challenge to traditional liberal economics that comes not from socialism but from populist economic nationalism. It takes issue with central elements of liberal economics, arguing against free trade and in favour of tariffs and state intervention, while at the same time proposing tax cuts. Economic history, it would seem, isn't over yet.
Are we seeing the emergence of a new and credible economic theory in support of populist nationalism? Or is this no more than a combination of popular policies that makes no economic sense? More fundamentally, is this evidence that liberal economics is not a coherent economic theory in the first place and that a grand overall economic theory is neither necessary nor possible?
We tend to believe that language is the best way to express thought. Yet words can obscure as much as they reveal. Philosophers from Nietzsche to Heidegger argue that language is largely metaphor and unable to describe reality fully. Artists have long recognized this. "If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint," said Edward Hopper. The feeling created by a Rothko painting, for example, would be difficult or impossible to create using words. Meanwhile, in everyday conversations, spoken language accounts for only 7% of the emotional judgements we make, with tone and body language accounting for the rest.
In a world rapidly shifting towards videos, images, and music, can non-verbal forms of expression say more than words ever could? Are non-verbal forms of expression the key to accessing truths that language cannot reach? Or is language the only route to clarity, complexity, and precision, and images and video a threat to our culture and thought?
“The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery,” wrote Bertrand Russell in 1932. Meanwhile, John Maynard Keynes hailed a coming “age of leisure,” when technology would make work unnecessary. Yet as AI seemingly offers the potential to deliver that dream, many across the political spectrum are having doubts. Keir Starmer calls Labour “the party of work,” Donald Trump boasts that he has “no time for rest” and praises “the dignity of work,” while Xi Jinping recently stated hard work is “the noblest, most beautiful virtue.” Moreover, work has long been seen as the key to human flourishing by thinkers from Karl Marx to Simone Weil.
Is it time to recognise that a life of leisure is not a utopia but a vacuous waste? Is the challenge with work not to eradicate it, but to ensure that it is valuable, purposeful, and rewarding? Or could a life of leisure be harnessed to create a life of intensity, wisdom, and fulfilment, or would that just be work by another name.
We have always sought a map to place where we are in the world. Not just on earth but in the heavens as well. For thousands of years Aristotle and Ptolemy's Earth-centred model dominated. It was displaced by Copernicus and the Sun-centred solar system we all take for granted. And today many cosmologists believe we can capture a picture of the universe itself. But critics argue such a map is impossible. From Earth, the Sun appears to move around us, yet from the perspective of the solar system, the galaxy, and the cosmic microwave background, each cosmic scale offers a different view of motion and structure. Some imagined the microwave background would provide a universal rest frame, but recent observations reveal unevenness, reminding us that we have no final vantage point from which to view the universe.
Is the idea of an objective and universal map of the cosmos illusory? Should we accept that we can give no account of where we are in the universe? Or might we one day map the universe as it truly is, and what might it in principle look like?
"In the 21st century, we are defined not by our borders, but by our bonds," said President Obama. For decades in response to an increasingly global economy, the direction of travel had been the softening of borders and a suspicion of nationalism. But times have changed. Across the western world support for populist parties has mounted along with calls for tighter borders, defence of national identities, and an end to immigration. And across the political spectrum the rhetoric has followed. Globalists who had once defended an end to borders now come under attack as defenders of an educated elite.
Is nationalism and national identity necessary to protect the lives and living standards of the average working person, and are open borders and global travel the goal and privilege of the elite? Or is nationalism always a vehicle for intolerance, and the resort of demagogues and tyrants? And as national identities become more precisely drawn how are we to avoid increasing conflict not only between nations but within them?
“Look deep into nature, and you will understand everything better,” claimed Albert Einstein. And we naturally expect scientific investigation into nature to reveal a comprehensible universe. Yet the more modern physics develops, the less it seems to make sense. Relativity tells us that the passing of time is an illusion; quantum mechanics that observation creates reality and effects can precede causes. While string theorists claim we inhabit a universe of 26 hidden dimensions. Physicists admit they can ''calculate but not visualise'' with little agreement on what their own theories mean.
Is our inability to make our physical theories intelligible a challenge to our everyday understanding of the world, or a challenge to contemporary physics? Should we treat the theories as mathematical models and give up on them as descriptions of reality? Or could it be that theoretical physics can capture in mathematics a truth about the universe that is beyond our understanding?
We imagine ourselves as the initiators of ideas. Creativity and innovation take place in individual minds. Yet research from biology to psychology—from Richard Dawkins’ meme theory to Carl Jung’s archetypes—proposes instead that we act as hosts for ideas rather than creating them ourselves. Psychologists from Washington University describe ideas as spreading like “social contagions"; once shared through enough of a network, they reinforce themselves, outpacing individual choice. Political ideologies, viral memes, and mass protests demonstrate this dynamic. While philosophers such as Wittgenstein have argued that language is inherently social, suggesting that ideas are impossible in the minds of isolated individuals.
Is it a mistake to see individuals as the origin of ideas and creativity, and if so what are the consequences for how we think about freedom and politics? Can individuals, from Napoleon to Trump, Darwin to Einstein, change history, or are they merely conduits for cultural movements that would happen with or without them? And if we are vehicles for ideas, how should we respond when the ones that possess us become destructive?
Lyotard called the end to grand narratives, the end to the possibility of a single overall account of the human condition, be it religion, Marxism, liberal democracy, or the Enlightenment. He went on to argue that "grand narratives have always been in conflict with science". But increasingly critics argue science has given rise to its own grand narratives, with uncanny similarities to those it displaced. The sense of mystery and awe implicit in many religions now finds its parallel in the ineffable vastness of the universe. The Marxist unfolding of history has echoes in the unavoidable consequence of the initial conditions in Einsteinian physics. While the Genesis story has direct parallels with the Big Bang, a theory first put forward by a Catholic priest.
Rather than replacing grand narratives, have we just conjured up new versions? Is there a danger that the scientific narratives of today carry the same risks as the ideologies of the past? At root, why are we attached to these tales and could we even in principle get rid of them?
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