‘Developments take place in a world linked by ideas rather than by race.’… Read the rest

What a coincidence that we’re here and not on that nasty Pluto.… Read the rest

‘The protection built into Theory…is composed of layer on layer of ignorance.’… Read the rest

We need to know what’s out there so that we can change it.… Read the rest

No it’s not just an accident that the character who gets Tom Hanks killed in Saving Private Ryan is both an intellectual and a coward. Spielberg is making a point, a bad point, and we need to pay attention.… Read the rest

‘But the gender-genre books that are based largely on clinical intuition and popular psychology typically lack a basic skepticism toward received wisdom and the willingness to wrestle with an idea to see who wins.’… Read the rest

‘We are in danger of losing our grip on the concepts of truth, evidence, objectivity, disinterested inquiry.’… Read the rest

Investors need to know the truth, but voters don’t. Or not.… Read the rest

Biologists who had done no primary research in human sciences nevertheless issued anathemas on it.… Read the rest

Deniers distort history in order to promote antisemitism and white supremacy.… Read the rest

Militant Islam and militant Christian fundamentalism are indeed related.… Read the rest

In their ‘paranoiac and demonological theology of science’ Lewontin, Kamin and Rose fire both barrels with equal monotony and imprecision: ‘determinism’ and ‘reductionism’. But the gallant little fire brigade has perpetrated a fatuous little book.… Read the rest

Consider Will Crooks, Labour MP. ‘Growing up in extreme poverty…Crooks spent 2d. on a secondhand Iliad, and was dazzled…’… Read the rest

A scandal in anthropology is complicated by politics, emotion, prestige – the usual sort of thing.… Read the rest

Washington freed his slaves in his will, Jefferson did not. The reasons of each tell us much about American history.… Read the rest

Women’s groups demand that murderers be treated according to laws of the land and not be allowed to find shelter behind the curtain of ‘culture’. … Read the rest

‘We are born of primordial slime, not at the hands of a benevolent and concerned supreme being who lovingly crafted us from clay.’… Read the rest

‘We’re girls, so we’re less-than-nothings, Priscilla, 17, told Le Monde after her friend Sohane’s death.… Read the rest

Psychoanalysis was never, despite Freud’s ‘positivist rhetoric,’ a science; it was a ‘purely speculative enterprise,’ argues Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen.… Read the rest

Literary criticism, cultural studies; love letter and satire.… Read the rest