The myth of the lone genius: How scientific revolutions really happen
17 June 2025
How do you get a bright and new idea, or the clever turn of phrase that illuminates your thought? By staring stoically at a well-lit light bulb until, by empathy, the ‘outer’ bulb ignites the ‘inner’ one? By h...
The vulnerabilities of international law
11 June 2025
Analogies allow us to illuminate issues from a different point of view and break out of our self-regarding Einstellung – the belief that, having ‘done the right thing’, we can move on secure in the success and c...
Weapons of Emotional Destruction
01 May 2025
Over 5,000 years ago, humans domesticated the horse. It transformed mobility. It also transformed local affrays into distance projection of power: warfare. Such is the unintended power of enablers. The enabling imp...
What’s wrong with doping?
23 April 2025
(A contrarian query) I’ll admit to a disinterest – I do not watch Olympic Games (and very few professional sport events). When the tally of medals happened to appear on the screen, I glanced at it distracted...
How concepts get their meaning
17 April 2025
In his recent essay titled Che cos’è un dispositivo? (What Is a Dispositif?), the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben outlines the genealogy of the concept 'dispositif', tracing it to Hegel and other precursors. I ...
On the origins of ideas
11 April 2025
(against anachronism in ideas) Where does a river begin? The Mississippi is an incontrovertible reality. Or is it? The Mississippi watershed – a visual reminder that what appears as a singular, incontrover...
The strategy of provocation
01 April 2025
Provoking a stalker In this short film, an ermine (actually, the stoat in winter coat) is playing peek-a-boo from his home in a rotting tree. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkemK00kPo4 Now you may just exc...
Do we have a moral obligation to save wild bees?
23 March 2025
In a new study, scientists show that 80% of crop pollination across five continents is carried out by just 2% of all wild bee species in the areas they studied. The other 700, rarer species serve only a marginal funct...
The complexity of history: Beyond cause and effect
14 March 2025
In a previous post, I mused that we are only beginning to understand the complexity of social realities and history. It sounds clever, but what do I really mean? As luck would have it, I have recently been reading abo...
What can the Amazons teach us?
06 March 2025
It is a fact – even though it may have escaped The New York Times – that the Amazons were real fighting and warring women of the Scythian steppes, which extended from the Danube basin all the way to Mongolia. In t...
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