How can we reconcile Errol Morris’s stated mission of pursuing the truth with him helping to promote Theranos?
art and science
With a Microscope and Sketchbook, a Pioneering Neuroscientist Magnified the Brain’s Mysteries
NYU’s Grey Art Gallery is exhibiting 80 drawings by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the “father of modern neuroscience” who used art to reveal the anatomy of the brain.
Explore the Color Code of a 19th-Century Artist Who Painted Nature
Decode the color system of 19th-century nature artist Ferdinand Bauer, who documented the Australian coast, through an online interactive.
A 19th-Century Guide to Seeing Ghosts Everywhere
The 1864 Spectropia used optical illusions to manifest ghosts in Victorian homes, and was designed to attack the quackery of Spiritualism.
The Rise of Paleoart, and the Artist’s Role in Our Visions of Dinosaurs
Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past, 1830-1980 argues for the art history importance of dinosaur illustrations, as they shape our understanding of this extinct world through the visual culture of the present.
Recovering the Philosophy Chamber, Harvard’s Enlightenment-Era Teaching Cabinet
The small chamber was at the heart of intellectual life in New England from 1766 to 1820, and then it all but disappeared.
The Early-20th-Century Painter Who Captured Solar Eclipses
In 1918, painter Howard Russell Butler precisely captured what the camera could not: the fiery colors of a solar eclipse.
A History of Science Fiction’s Future Visions
The Barbican Centre’s Into the Unknown explores science fiction as a cultural force, and how it channels our most optimistic and dystopian projections about the future.
Help NASA Design a Radiation Shield That Folds Like Origami
NASA is launching an idea challenge for a compact radiation shield that would protect spacecraft and the astronauts within.
Scientists Encode Living DNA with Muybridge’s Galloping Horse Film
Harvard scientists successfully recorded five frames of Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 galloping horse on living bacteria, and retrieved the images in sequence.
A Book Gathers Botanical Sketches from Across the Centuries
Botanical Sketchbooks is a compendium of the diverse ways plants have been observed, studied, and immortalized in centuries of art.
Rediscover a 19th-Century Compendium of North American Trees
Botanists François-André Michaux and Thomas Nuttall documented every known tree in North America. A new book compiles over 270 plates from their original publication.