As big questions go, you can’t get much bigger than “What is the meaning of life?” It is a question that is often modified ...

Think of a mystery musical instrument. If a physicist is told the loudness of the sound it makes at every possible frequency, in principle they can use this information to figure out the shape of the ...

For many generations in societies shaped by Christianity, monogamy has been the almost undisputed champion of relationship norms. In Britain and the US, it has been held up as the dominant – really ...

The view that more information produces better decisions is at odds with the world around us.

The popular association of atheism with immorality is a particular deterrent for women who have religious doubts, since in Arab society they are expected to be “virtuous” in order to marry. “It is ...

Most scientific breakthroughs take years of research – but often, serendipity provides the final push, as these historic discoveries show .

The great Buddha statue in Nha Trang, Vietnam by Petr Ruzicka On paper, Buddhism looks pretty good. It has a philosophical subtlety married to a stated devotion to tolerance that makes it stand out ...

Technology is enabling us to retreat from the outside world. But we should resist the urge – for ourselves and for each other Patrons outside a busy pub in the Yorkshire Dales. Credit: Alamy There ...

Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, discusses her new book, on the importance of fiction to democracy.

Time’s Monster: History, Conscience and Britain’s Empire (Allen Lane) by Priya Satia Priya Satia begins Time’s Monster with a statement: historians, she says, are above all storytellers. At first ...

When Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán strode up to the podium in April to give his victory speech, a look of glee was spread across his face. He had just beaten a six-party united opposition to ...

This article is a preview from the Winter 2017 edition of New Humanist. How many of us haven’t in some idle moment imagined what the world might be like if it had always been run by women? Not that ...