Topic description and stories

Maintaining Brain Health

Opinion: Neuralink wants to wire your brain to the internet – what could possibly go wrong?

03 May 2017

A company in Silicon Valley claims to be developing a "whole brain interface” for communicating wirelessly with the world. Christopher Markou...

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Stephen Hawking speaking at tonight's launch

“The best or worst thing to happen to humanity” - Stephen Hawking launches Centre for the Future of Intelligence

19 Oct 2016

Artificial intelligence has the power to eradicate poverty and disease or hasten the end of human civilisation as we know it – according to a speech...

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Banksy in Boston: Portrait from the F̶O̶L̶L̶O̶W̶ ̶Y̶O̶U̶R̶ ̶D̶R̶E̶A̶M̶S̶ CANCELLED piece in context on Essex St, Chinatown, Boston

Opinion: Brexistentialism: Britain, the drop out nation in crisis, meets Jean-Paul Sartre

11 Jul 2016

Andy Martin (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages) discusses existentialism and the EU referendum.

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Detail from the Cambridge Songs manuscript leaf that was stolen from and then recovered by Cambridge University Library.

First performance in 1,000 years: ‘lost’ songs from the Middle Ages are brought back to life

23 Apr 2016

An ancient song repertory will be heard for the first time in 1,000 years this week after being ‘reconstructed’ by a Cambridge researcher and a world...

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Supercomputer

The future of intelligence: Cambridge University launches new centre to study AI and the future of humanity

03 Dec 2015

The University of Cambridge is launching a new research centre, thanks to a £10 million grant from the Leverhulme Trust, to explore the opportunities...

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Sri Aurobindo Ghosh

Spiritual violence and the divine revolution of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh

29 Oct 2015

In 1879, a young Indian boy arrived in England from Calcutta (now Kolkata), in the state of Bengal, sent by his father to receive a British education...

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Light cycles

Humanity's last invention and our uncertain future

25 Nov 2012

A philosopher, a scientist and a software engineer have come together to propose a new centre at Cambridge to address developments in human...

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Detail from the Ripley Scroll housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum

Body, soul and gold: quests for perfection in English alchemy

08 Nov 2012

From the elixirs of legend to transmutation of base metals into gold, medieval medical practice and social mobility were steeped in alchemy.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, one of the leading figures in the German Idealist movement.

The Impact of Idealism

06 Sep 2012

German Idealism changed the world and influenced politics, science, art and numerous other fields. The ways in which it shaped the modern world have...

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Dr Andy Martin

Beauty and despair

11 Jun 2012

A high level inquiry reported last month that more than half of the British public has a negative body image. Cambridge academic Andy Martin reflects...

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Jean Paul Sartre on the beach

Locked in combat: two French thinkers slog it out

31 May 2012

“Hell is other people,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre. His rival on the stage of occupied and post-war Paris was Albert Camus (“I am the world”). The two...

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Composite of Wittgenstein's face, along with those of his sisters

Wittgenstein’s camera

05 Jul 2011

To mark the 60th anniversary of his death, an exhibition exploring Wittgenstein’s experiments in photography, and how they relate to his philosophy...

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