Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Nautilus

    Flashback: Human Uniqueness

    by John Steele Mar 06, 2014 4 minutes

    A physicist and a philosopher walk into a lab… no, this isn’t the start of a joke. It’s an everyday occurrence in the lab of Andrew Briggs, Professor of Nanomaterials at Oxford University. While working on how to exploit quantum mechanics to better store and process information, he also maintains an active interest in philosophy, and even has a philosopher working as part of his team. His interests extend into the nature of scientific inquiry, and to the nature of human uniqueness—hearkening back to the very first issue of Nautilus.

    How does philosophy play a role in physics?

    Well, for the

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from Nautilus

    Nautilus7 min read
    The Feminist Botanist
    Lydia Becker sat down at her desk in the British village of Altham, a view of fields unfurling outside of her window. Surrounded by her notes and papers, the 36-year-old carefully wrote a short letter to the most eminent and controversial scientist o
    Nautilus13 min read
    The Shark Whisperer
    In the 1970s, when a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg was researching a new movie based on a novel about sharks, he returned to his alma mater, California State University Long Beach. The lab at Cal State Long Beach was one of the first places
    Nautilus9 min read
    The Invasive Species
    Several features of animal bodies have evolved and disappeared, then re-evolved over the history of the planet. Eyes, for example, both simple like people’s and compound like various arthropods’, have come and gone and come again. But species have no

    Related Books & Audiobooks