Matt Ridley
My latest Wall Street Journal article is on Nick Humphrey’s theory of consciousness, as set out in his fine new book Soul Dust In ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” published in 1759, Adam Smith boldly recast the question of virtue in terms of what we now call empathy (but which he called sympathy). Smith argued that we […]
Matt Ridley
Time for a re-boot to find a cheaper design? I have written two articles in the past few days on the implications of the Fukushima nuclear crisis (accident?, incident? drama? — not sure what the right word is). This was for The Times on 16th March: The uranium price fell sharply this week. After […]
Matt Ridley
Did the ancestors of modern humans beings spend a lot of time by the seaside? Latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal: Photo: Jon Erlandson Last week archaeologists working on the Channel Islands of California announced that they had found delicate stone tools of remarkable antiquity-possibly as old as 13,000 years. […]
Matt Ridley
Latest Mind and Matter column from the Wall Street Journal: When did you last read an account of how microchips actually work? You know, replete with all that stuff about electrons and holes and “p-doping” and “n-doping” and the delights of gallium arsenide. The golden age of such articles, when you could read about them in […]
Speaking in hands before tongues?
Matt Ridley
The intriguing theory that language evolved for gesture first and speech later My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal: Three years ago Queen Elizabeth II asked a group of speech therapists if her father’s stutter had been caused by his being forced to write with his right hand despite being a natural […]
Matt Ridley
Are the magnetic poles about the flip? Unlikely. My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is about the weakening of the magnetic field and, more generally, the question of how we scare ourselves by knowing more: The earth’s magnetic field is weakening at an accelerating rate. It is 15% weaker than […]
Matt Ridley
Latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal, on `unlearning’: For adults, one of the most important lessons to learn in life is the necessity of unlearning. We all think that we know certain things to be true beyond doubt, but these things often turn out to be false and, until we unlearn them, […]
Matt Ridley
From the Wall Street Journal, my latest Mind and Matter on stability, the moon and aliens This month saw the discovery of the first small and “rocky” planet like ours outside the solar system, Kepler 10b, orbiting a star more than 500 light years away. This month also saw terrible floods in part of Australia. […]
Matt Ridley
Latest Mind and Matter column is on why there is nothing so old as the recently new: Watching friends learn kite-surfing last week, equipped not only with new designs of inflatable kites shaped like pterodactyls but new kinds of harnesses shaped like medieval chastity belts and even new helmets shaped like Elizabethan sleeping caps, it […]
How new words and new genes are coined
Matt Ridley
In the evolution of a language, the same principles apply to DNA as to English My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal, with added links: Don’t look for the soul in the language of DNA Back in the genomic bronze age-the 1990s-scientists used to think that there would prove to be lots […]
