Alex’s Heresies - embracing a physical reality

Irene Pepperberg is associate research professor at Brandeis University and the author of a new book, Alex and Me. She and Jonah Lehrer, the editor of Mind Matters, discuss what Alex and other African Grey Parrots can teach us about the evolution of intelligence and the concept of zero. [More]

This is the fifth article in the Mind Matters series on the neuroscience behind visual illusions.Scientists did not invent the vast majority of visual illusions. Rather, they are the work of visual artists, who have used their insights into the workings of the visual system to create visual illusions in their pieces of art. We have previously pointed out in our essays that, long before visual science existed as a formal discipline, artists had devised techniques to “trick” the brain into thinking that a flat canvas was three-dimensional, or that a series of brushstrokes in a still life was in fact a bowl of luscious fruit. Thus the visual arts have sometimes preceded the visual sciences in the discovery of fundamental vision principles, through the application of methodical--although perhaps more intuitive--research techniques. In this sense, art, illusions and visual science have always been implicitly linked. [More]

“Those who are thirsty need to seek the right fountain: the one without the spoilt water” — Angolan Cardinal Alexandre do Nascimento There seems to be quite a thirst for faith these days in Angola, which abandoned Marxism in the 1990s after three decades of civil war and is now experiencing a boom in religious sects [...]

(Editor’s note: Doug Hamilton, one of our most experienced correspondents and lively writers, recently took up a new post in Jerusalem. Here’s the back story to his latest feature “A Biblical view of peace high in the Holy Land.”) (Photo:the West Bank Jewish settlement of Psagot, 17 November 2008/Eliana Aponte) When I began my assignment to Israel [...]