Knowledge

Does Science Over-Reach?

Josh Landy and Ken Taylor collect their data with Massimo Pugliucci from the CUNY Graduate Center, editor of Science Unlimited?: The Challenges of Scientism.

Philosophy Talk

Physics Needs Philosophy / Philosophy Needs Physics

Philosophy has always played an essential role in the development of science, physics in particular, and is likely to continue to do so.

Scientific American

Will Science Ever Solve the Mysteries of Consciousness, Free Will and God?

Are consciousness, free will and God insoluble mysteries?

Scientific American

How Much Can We Know?

The reach of the scientific method is constrained by the limitations of our tools and the intrinsic impenetrability of some of nature’s deepest questions.

Nature

Out of the Armchair

A growing number of philosophers are conducting experiments to test their arguments. Is this the future for philosophy?

Aeon

3Q: Alan Lightman on Science, Religion, and Our Yearning for Absolute Knowledge

Lightman's new book, Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, examines the tensions between belief and knowing.

MIT News

Why Too Much Experience Can Backfire

Sometimes expertise gets in the way of making the right call.

Scientific American

Knowing What We Know (And What We Don’t)

How can we balance skepticism and dogmatism? John Perry and Ken Taylor are joined by Baron Reed, associate professor of philosophy at Northwestern University and author of “The Long Road to Skepticism.”

Philosophy Talk

The Most Unknown

An epic documentary film that sends nine scientists to extraordinary parts of the world to uncover unexpected answers to some of humanity’s biggest questions. How did life begin? What is time? What is consciousness? How much do we really know?

Motherboard

A New Goal: Aim to Be Less Wrong

When beginning from the assumption that you are wrong, a criticism may be easier to construe as a helpful pointer, says psychologist Tania Lombrozo.

13.7: Cosmos & Culture

The Value of Thought Experiments

Think your way to scientific truth.

The Philosopher’s Zone, ABC Radio National

Studies Link Intellectual Humility With Openness to Other Viewpoints

Promisingly, early findings suggest that it may be possible to foster intellectual humility relatively easily, as least over the short term.

British Psychological Society Research Digest

Special Issue: Information, Matter, and Life

There are aspects of the relationship among information, matter, and life that deserve closer attention, that have a direct bearing on how we understand ourselves and our world — and so shape our moral and social lives.

The New Atlantis

Can Children Save Us From the Fake News Epidemic?

Child development research may hold the answer to our brutally partisan deadlock.

THINK, NBC News

Black Holes Are Simpler Than Forests and Science Has Its Limits

Some insights might have to await a post-human intelligence.

Aeon

How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds

Research suggests that as the brain grows dependent on phone technology, the intellect weakens.

The Wall Street Journal

Teaching Humility in an Age of Arrogance

Our cultural embrace of epistemic or intellectual arrogance is the result of a toxic mix of technology, psychology, and ideology. To combat it, we have to reconnect with some basic values, including ones that philosophers have long thought were essential both to serious intellectual endeavors and to politics.

The Chronicle Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education

How to See Past Your Own Perspective and Find Truth

Humility means “seeing your worldview as open to improvement by the evidence and experience of others,” says philosopher Michael Patrick Lynch.

TED

Is There a Limit to Human Knowledge?

Our understanding of some physical concepts that seek to explain our universe — dark matter and dark energy, quantum gravity, supersymmetry, and the cosmological constant — remain unresolved.

The New York Academy of Sciences