Author: Mary

Neurologist Oliver Sacks has written a haunting essay for the New Yorker about musician and musicologist Clive Wearing, a man who suffered a brain infection ove...

Terry Bisson’s short story “They’re Made Out of Meat” describes the incredulous and dismissive reaction of a non-meat-based intelligence...

Lately I’ve had several chances to go out stargazing. In addition to relishing the sight of a lunar eclipse or a distant galaxy, I’ve enjoyed the op...

This article from American Scholar is one of the most haunting pieces of autobiographical writing I’ve ever read. Paul West, author of 50+ books and total...

When Daniel Dennett visited Indiana University last year, one of his talks included frequent references to magic. Not the “real magic” that doesn...

A recent study indicates that clinically depressed people have a harder time than their healthy counterparts in controlling their emotional response to negative...

New Caledonian crows are a fascinating species. The corvids tend to be relatively smart birds anyway (some people think they’re smarter than most people; ...

For some reason the subject of diaries has come up several times in my life lately. Actually the subject of unexpected death has been on my mind, for a variety ...

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins started out by describing what he called Einsteinian religion—the metaphorical use of religious terms to refer to the sum t...