The myth of human nature
Appeals to human nature won’t help us make complex ethical decisions about new technologies like genome editing
Science & Technology
Monitoring methane, a life without pain, and the world’s most intense lasers
Chemistry, Biology, Physics: Three scientists talk through big recent developments in their fields.
Is it a problem when MPs ignore evidence?
Sometimes, values are prioritised over facts - as the debate over the "legal highs" ban shows.
Battling frog extinction, the protein puzzle, and the Nobel Prize for Physics
Chemistry, Biology, Physics: Three scientists talk through big recent developments in their fields.
The secrets of rock tides
The pull of the Moon does not create tides only in the Earth's oceans, but in its rocks as well.
Dawn of the replicants
Advances in design are creating robots that look – and behave – increasingly like humans. Is that such a good thing?
The death of the sun
Bad news: we’ve only got a few billion years before the sun dies. Should humanity survive that long, is there any chance of escape?
The Winter 2015 New Humanist is out now!
Should machines replicate people?; What history tells us about refugees; Mary Beard on Ancient Rome; the myth of "pure" religion; what happens when the Sun goes out; and more...
“Don’t waste time on climate change deniers – put your energy into action”
An interview with author and environmentalist Tim Flannery
When was modern science invented?
"All intellectual life is polemic". A Q&A with David Wootton, author of a new book about the scientific revolution.