Author: Mary

A time-worn joke about humans is that we’re nothing more than water’s way of getting from one place to another. What if living things in general beg...

One possible way to unify a big-history narrative is to use the theme of growing complexity in the universe. Stuart Kauffman studies complexity and self-organiz...

In George Eliot’s Middlemarch, one of the characters speaks of how “There must be a systole and diastole in all inquiry,” referring to a rhyth...

Two recent news stories give us an evocative look back at human societies in Turkey thousands of years ago. This article from Smithsonian.com describes the ongo...

Recent research suggests that listening to music that makes you happy may be good cardiovascular hygiene, with a positive effect on not only mood but also the e...

I’ve always liked an epitaph supposedly used by Epicureans in ancient Greece: “I was not; I was; I am not; I do not mind.” It expresses a beni...

I’ve run across several things lately about the psychology and even the physiology of people’s political beliefs. For instance, this press release f...

“Every day is better than the one before it,” sang Al Stewart in a bouncy, optimistic song about Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic. Think...