‘Nothing’ is a tricky concept to think about and it is as much a philosophical problem as it is a scientific problem. The question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” has been tackled by different philosophers in different ways. Parmenides, the ancient Greek philosopher, stated that “nothing comes from nothing” which means for something…
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Max Tegmark is a Swedish-American cosmologist. He has made important contributions to physics, such as measuring dark matter and increasing of understanding of how light in the early universe informs the Big Bang model. He currently teaches at MIT and has proposed his own Theory of Everything (TOE). This Theory of Everything is also known…
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The hygiene hypothesis is the idea that allergies, such as hay fever and asthma, are the result of a lack of early childhood exposure to germs and parasites. Looking at this idea from another angle, we can say that allergies are the result of living in a highly sanitised and clean environment (since sanitation involves…
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This lecture, ‘Why Study Psychedelic Drugs?’, is from ‘A Discussion on Scientific Research with Psychedelic Drugs’, a conference chaired by Professor David Nutt at Imperial College London (12/06/2013). In this lecture, Professor David Nutt outlines why the scientific investigation of psychedelic drugs is worthwhile and valuable. He points to the fact that actual scientific discoveries…
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In his book Food of the Gods (1992), Terence McKenna describes one of his many controversial ideas. This idea, known as the ‘Stoned Ape Theory’, relates to how our ancestors evolved to produce language and create art. In a nutshell, the Stoned Ape Theory says that magic mushrooms sped up the evolutionary process and that, ultimately,…
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