'Monstrum marinum daemoniforme' from Ulysse Aldrovandi's 'Monstrorum Historia' (1642, Bologna), p.350

What is a monster?

07 September 2015

In the outrage that erupted when an American dentist killed a lion, the trophy hunter was branded a 'monster'. Natalie Lawrence, a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, explores notions of the monstrous and how they tie into ideas about morality.

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Looking for the good

03 August 2014

Anthropology looks at human differences in its study of the ‘other’ and at human commonalities in its more recent focus on the ‘suffering’. In identifying ways that anthropology can contribute to solutions for world problems, Professor Joel Robbins proposes an approach he calls the ‘anthropology of the good’.

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Dalek

EX-TRA-PO-LATE! Moral philosophy and the Daleks

19 April 2011

They’ve had viewers cowering behind the sofa since ‘Doctor Who’ began – but what exactly is it that makes people so frightened of the Daleks? A new study by a Cambridge researcher claims to have the answer.

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Rethinking

Rethinking eccentricity

01 May 2009

Miranda Gill traces shifting 19th-century perceptions of eccentricity, from its association with the intoxicating lure of modernity and fashion to the murky underworld of circus freaks and half-mad visionaries.

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