Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche
Sally is a writer and editor with interests spanning science, philosophy, feminism and the arts. She was digital editor of FT Weekend and the technology and innovation correspondent for the Financial Times. Sally founded the Libreria bookshop in east London as its director, and was on the original editorial team of Nautilus Magazine.
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Illness and disease
More than pink
The culture around breast cancer is full of positivity and femininity. But it comes at the expense of the marginalised
Philippa Hetherington
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Metaphysics
We are interwoven beings
A dragon needs the clouds and the wind in order to fly. What happens when we too relinquish individualistic reasoning?
Mercedes Valmisa
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Evolution
Fortune favours the shrewd
Attaining and maintaining power lies at the heart of almost all animal societies. And it’s as devious as human politicking
Lee Alan Dugatkin
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Evolution
What on earth is a xenobot?
The more we understand how cells produce shape and form, the more inadequate the idea of a genomic blueprint looks
Philip Ball
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Ethics
Through the eyes of another
It’s impossible to shed our individual biases. So the best way to establish objectivity is by taking on new perspectives
Heidi Maibom
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Evolution
Connected-up-brains
Bat friends, monkeys sharing, and humans holding hands: the brains of social animals synchronise and expand one another
Sofia Quaglia
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Quantum theory
Quantum Wittgenstein
Metaphysical debates in quantum physics don’t get at ‘truth’ – they’re nothing but a form of ritual, activity and culture
Timothy Andersen
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Stories and literature
Kafka the hypochondriac
Franz Kafka believed illness was at the root of his writing yet he embraced wellness fads with hearty vigour
Will Rees
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Cognition and intelligence
Modular cognition
Powerful tricks from computer science and cybernetics show how evolution ‘hacked’ its way to intelligence from the bottom up
Michael Levin & Rafael Yuste
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Design and fashion
The Waste Age
Recognising that waste is central, not peripheral, to everything we design, make and do is key to transforming the future
Justin McGuirk
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Evolution
Promethean beasts
Far from being hardwired to flee fire, some animals use it to their own ends, helping us understand our own pyrocognition
Ivo Jacobs
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Space exploration
Decolonising the cosmos
Instead of treating Mars and the Moon as sites of conquest and settlement, we need a radical new ethics of space exploration
Ramin Skibba