The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “science”

Blue Floats Away: A Tender Illustrated Fable About Our Capacity for Change, Told Through the Story of Water
Blue Floats Away: A Tender Illustrated Fable About Our Capacity for Change, Told Through the Story of Water

In praise of our unfathomed capacity to experience beautiful new things beyond our habitual ideas of the possible.

read article

Einstein’s Dreams: Physicist Alan Lightman’s Poetic Exploration of Time and the Antidote to Our Existential Anxiety
Einstein’s Dreams: Physicist Alan Lightman’s Poetic Exploration of Time and the Antidote to Our Existential Anxiety

“A life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.”

read article

Consciousness and the Nature of the Universe: How Panpsychism and Its Fault Lines Shade in the Ongoing Mystery of What We Are
Consciousness and the Nature of the Universe: How Panpsychism and Its Fault Lines Shade in the Ongoing Mystery of What We Are

“We’ve barely begun to understand our place in the cosmos. As we continue to look out from our planet and contemplate the nature of reality, we should remember that there is a mystery right here where we stand.”

read article

The Optimism of the Oyster
The Optimism of the Oyster

From the rudiments of consciousness to the redemptions of conservation, with a side of existential reckoning.

read article

Humanity’s Most Successful Scientific Theory, Animated
Humanity’s Most Successful Scientific Theory, Animated

How the gaps in gravity contour the next frontiers in the quest to understand the fundaments of what we are.

read article

The Music of Trees: Improvisation, Iteration, and the Science of Immortality
The Music of Trees: Improvisation, Iteration, and the Science of Immortality

“Potentially, every tree is immortal.”

read article

An Illustrated Love Letter to Rivers
An Illustrated Love Letter to Rivers

A painted landscape of fact and feeling along the flow of existence.

read article

Trees, Whales, and Our Digital Future: George Dyson on Nature, Human Nature, and the Relationship Between Our Minds and Our Machines
Trees, Whales, and Our Digital Future: George Dyson on Nature, Human Nature, and the Relationship Between Our Minds and Our Machines

“Nature’s answer to those who seek to control nature through programmable machines is to allow us to build systems whose nature is beyond programmable control.”

read article

Richard Dawkins on the Luckiness of Death
Richard Dawkins on the Luckiness of Death

“The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia.”

read article

Tree Islands and Networked Resilience: Biomimicry Pioneer Janine Benyus on the Power of Reciprocity in Nature and Our Human Future
Tree Islands and Networked Resilience: Biomimicry Pioneer Janine Benyus on the Power of Reciprocity in Nature and Our Human Future

“The more stressful the environment, the more likely you are to see plants working together to ensure mutual survival.”

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)