Art versus science at Westminster Abbey
Amongst the faithful throngs, Rory Fenton sings the praises of the physicist Paul Dirac, for whom physics revealed the simple beauty of creation
Science & Technology
Thinking machine: an interview with Daniel Dennett
With his new book Daniel Dennett provides both a valuable toolkit for good thinking, and a reminder that for him philosophy is a contact sport. Caspar Melville meets him
Book review: Goldblatt’s Descent by Michael Honig
Inhumane doctors in a conformist system. Theodore Dalrymple reviews a satire of the NHS.
Your cousin the scientist
JP O’Malley has a family reunion with the geneticist Steve Jones
Iain M Banks’ Universe
The Scottish novelist was one of our greatest writers of science fiction, says Francis Spufford
Book review: Why Genes are not Selfish and People are Nice by Colin Tudge
Colin Tudge's attempt to overturn "dangerous" neo-Darwin materialism fails spectacularly, says Craig Purshouse
Introducing the Rationalists’ Parliament
With its focus on reason and evidence, our parallel assembly goes deeper than jeering and groupthink, says Adam Smith
In praise of astronauts
Commander Chris Hadfield's cover of Bowie's Space Oddity, recorded on the International Space Station, has made him the talk of an entire planet. Paul Sims salutes the good humour of…
Why is the Sun hot?
Our local star is very inefficient, says Marcus Chown. And we should be grateful for that
Time to rethink physics?
In his new book the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin calls for a major shift in the discipline and a recognition that rather than a relative value or an effect of…