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Galileo’s Defence of Science
The greatest European scientist in the early 1600s was the Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). In astronomy he pioneered the use of the telescope and defended the theory of a sun-centered universe, advanced by the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus in 1543. His public support of Copernicus disturbed Catholic clergymen and theologians, who were…
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A Creation Myth from Ancient Egypt
In the beginning nothing existed but the deep, dark waters of Nun. There was no land and no sky. No gods, no people, no light and no time. Only the endless, motionless waters. But deep within the still waters of Nun there floated a perfect egg. And trapped within that perfect egg was a solitary…
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What Buddha Discovered While Sitting Under the Bodhi Tree
The monk Gautama awoke in the morning to the sound of birds singing. He was covered with dirt and dust, and his robe was so tattered and threadbare it no longer covered his body. He remembered seeing a corpse in the cemetery the day before, and he guessed that today or tomorrow people would lift…
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Pakistan and Islam: An Ideological Confusion
It would seem self-evident that, as a Muslim homeland built in the name of Islam, Pakistan would be better equipped than most states to define the role of Islam in national politics. Yet, the debate on the place of Islam in national life has raged on, muddied by the claims and counter-claims of its many…
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What Sex Meant in Ancient Greece
In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes tells a story about the origin of human beings. According to his myth, humans descend from creature who had spherical bodies, genitals on the outside, four hands and feet, two faces each, and were divided into three genders: one group had two male genitals; the second group had two female genitals;…
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What is Emotion?
The word emotion is a modern invention — and not a particularly helpful one. The first books to use the word in the title do not appear until the 19th century. The most famous of these is The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, by Charles Darwin, which was published in 1872. Philosophers…
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Heraclitus: The Introvert Philosopher from Ancient Greece
Heraclitus (540–480 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher who earned the reputation of ‘the riddler’. The title was fair too — consider what he had to say on the subject of death: Death is all things we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep. Obscurity was a trait that Heraclitus happily embraced. One commentator…
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