What ants teach us about the brain, cancer and the internet
By studying how ant colonies work without any one leader, Deborah Gordon has identified striking similarities in how ant colonies, brains, cells and computer networks regulate themselves.
Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change that Shape Life
Enrico Coen suggests that there are only seven organising principles sufficient to explain much, if not all, of biology – whether we are dealing with genetics, development, evolution, learning and brain function, populations or culture.
Cloudy with a Chance of Joy
Clouds are often given a ‘bad press’ but, as the founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society discusses, looking at clouds puts you in a frame of mind that involves embracing the fortuitous formations, the stimulation of the imagination and the creation of ideas.
How do Brains Imagine?
Cognitive scientists hypothesize that our ability to imagine is the result of something called a “mental workplace,” a neural network that coordinates activity across multiple regions of the brain.
Discussing his latest research, neuroscientist Alex Schlegel explores this in its relation to consciousness and the future of ‘fathoming the mind’.
Imagination may be more important than knowledge: The eight types of imagination we use
Murray Hunter explores imagination as a multidimensional concept which encompasses a number of different modes that may overlap, work in tandem, be functional, or even dysfunctional.
The Magic of Metaphor: What Children’s Minds Teach Us about the Evolution of the Imagination
Metaphorical thinking — our instinct not just for describing but for comprehending one thing in terms of another, for equating I with an other — shapes our view of the world and is essential to how we communicate, learn, discover and invent. Brain Pickings founder and author, Maria Popova, discusses how children have an instinctive metaphor-making ability.
How Intuition and the Imagination Fuel “Rational” Scientific Discovery and Creativity: A 1957 Guide
Originally published in ‘Brain Pickings’, the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large, this forms the second part of her article on W.I.B Beveridge’s ‘The Art of Scientific Investigation’ in which she examines his ideas on the role of intuition and the imagination.