Geesteswetenschappen

We are living in a golden age of pseudoscience. Here are three helpful tools for separating science from its imitator

- by Aeon Video

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My father’s death sent me to the jiu-jitsu mat. Then came defeat, low testosterone and the lure of a chemical cheat code

- by Wes Brown

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Join the search for the elusive cassowary, a big bird that plays an outsized role in maintaining its rainforest home

- by Aeon Video

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Black philosophers now feature on Western curricula, but the European tradition diminishes their radicalism into reassurance

- by Takeshi Morisato

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Allan Basbaum has spent 50 years searching the nervous system for the places where pain begins – and where it can be stopped

- by Stephani Sutherland

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CD – Futura Resistenza

Suzana Lașcu, Robert Kroos and Reinier van Houdt have worked on recordings of old pinball machines – largely from the museum in Rotterdam dedicated to this pre-Internet hobby – transforming them into various musical textures. It →

Stephanie Rentschler employs speculative design and interdisciplinary research to connect the social, ecological, and technological. Her outstanding SlimeMoldCrypt exemplifies this approach. It uses Physarum polycephalum, a slime mould capable of modifying its network of tendrils in response to stimuli, creating →

CD – UNRec

Anouck Genthon and Lionel Marchetti develop with Suite blanche a composition that puts space at the center of its structure, understood not as a simple sound container but as an active element of the musical process. The →

Spector Books, book, ISBN 978-3959058933, English, 240 pages, 2025, Germany

There is a growing cultural interest in the non-visual, in stark contrast to the endless screens that convey the past and present at →

Arvida Byström (author of Inflated Fiction) is a model and artist who uses her physical and digital body as artistic territory. In Biblically Accurate Babe, she utilises an AI-powered website to artificially undress her own body, discovering how realistic the →

Prof Abbie Garrington reflects on an interview with the physicist Laura Grego about the battle for our skies

Where are the arts and humanities in current debates about space research? The physicist Laura Grego tells us we “have to be aware of what is happening in space”, that we should probe Elon Musk’s potential “appropriation” of space via satellite, and that our spacefaring era raises questions about our stewardship of the Earth for future generations, and the significance of human culture (‘Most people don’t know we’ve set up a doomsday system’: physicist Laura Grego on satellites, nuclear weapons and the battle for our skies, 20 July).

Meanwhile, your interviewer Aida Edemariam notes both the Artemis mission’s potential to inspire, and the relegation of most of us to an audience agog, with no say in civilisational decisions about major space missions.

Literature, the arts and social sciences must not be sacrificed as higher education funding is squeezed

“I ask nothing more from you than to do what you have been doing. Go out into the fray and keep reading,” was Percival Everett’s advice when he addressed graduating students at Wesleyan university in Connecticut last summer. Fitting words from a prize-winning novelist, at a time when gambling has become a more common leisure activity in the US than reading a book. In the UK, too, concerns are growing about the decline of reading, partly due to ubiquitous screen-based entertainment. Last week, parliament’s education committee called for the National Year of Reading to be extended to a decade, to inculcate the habit in children and young people.

All academic disciplines use books to convey information, but for literature and the humanities more widely, they are an indispensable currency. As the 2026 graduation season draws to a close, and robes and mortarboards are put away for another year, there is growing anger that these subjects are under attack from university administrations looking for ways to save money – while ministers look away.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Exclusive: Prof Evelyn Welch, vice-chancellor of Bristol University, believes her daughter’s success shows value of arts education

One of Britain’s leading university vice-chancellors has described sweeping cuts to arts and humanities across the sector as “absolutely tragic”, citing her famous daughter as an example of the value of a creative arts education.

Prof Evelyn Welch, the vice-chancellor of Bristol University and incoming chair of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, is the mother of Florence Welch, the singer-songwriter from Florence + the Machine.

Exclusive: Experts fear rise in education ‘cold spots’ and social immobility as 4,000 academic posts lost in one year

Thousands of university job cuts in humanities and social sciences are creating widespread cold spots for languages, classics and theology degrees, the British Academy has warned.

Universities’ finances are so precarious that redundancies are also occurring in business studies, law and English – subjects considered strategically important and traditionally popular courses.

Sara Robertson, Raisa McNab and John Worne fear that Britain risks becoming a monolingual island in a multilingual world. Plus letters from Dr Darren Paffey, Janet Fraser and Ilona Marchant

News that the University of Exeter is planning to cut 150 jobs (Fury over Exeter University plan to scrap dozens of humanities posts, 1 July), with a disproportionate threat to the teaching of humanities, is only the latest in a series of blows to the teaching of modern languages in the UK.

When universities close language departments, they reduce the pipeline of teachers, which further reduces school provision, leading to fewer students being able to study languages at university. Plus, regional closures disproportionately affect students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are more likely to study locally.