New Philosopher

If I blew a trumpet in your ear while you were reading this, I’d be distracting you. You wouldn’t get a sentence straight in your mind. Your brain would be engaged in a juggling act – to read while simultaneously being subjected to the deep brassy no

In a laboratory at Runwell Hospital near London, researcher Kathleen Montagu discovered something that explains a lot about you, and plenty about your friends too. It explains your restlessness, your desire to want and achieve more – be that to own a

To progress, wrote Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, you first need to ‘know yourself ’, or understand what it is exactly that you want out of your life, and, furthermore, how you hope to achieve it. But of course, this scenario will pla

Much of our life whizzes by without us even noticing, so much so that various studies estimate that about 47 per cent of our waking time our minds are elsewhere – wandering. This distracted state of mind not only consumes a great deal of energy, but

Is the possibility of becoming your ‘ideal self ’ just wishful thinking? One woman decided to find out, and takes us on a spellbinding journey into the world of becoming yourself. What is a meaningful life? What does it mean to flourish? Antonia Case

At the tail end of breakfast at a hotel in Lourdes, France, a man enters the room accompanied by a cacophony of glass-shattering screams – dumping his manic toddler a metre from my table before heading over to the cereal bar. The toddler is in the th

Despite his short life, the nineteenth century American author Henry David Thoreau has become an enduring symbol of not one, but two popular tropes. Through his much-loved book Walden, an account of his two years living in a hut he built by the side

It was a mild day in September 1899 when Dr David Orr Edson, son of former New York City mayor Franklin Edson, approached the corner of West 74th Street and Central Park West in an electric taxicab. As a southbound trolley car met the cab, sixty-nine

A few years ago I was in Oxford city centre on a busy Saturday. As I queued for a cashpoint there was a commotion next to me. A young man of about 20 had started foaming at the mouth and seemed to be on the verge of an epileptic fit. He fell towards

There has been an explosion of interest in mindfulness lately – that process of emptying the mind of its clutter and detritus and directing it to focus on something that repays your attention: the patterned surface of a leaf, the shape of a loved one

Over a decade ago you left the metropolis of New York to move to rural Tuscany with your family for a few years. With fewer distractions in Tuscany, how did it change your lifestyle and the way you work? My son was four years old, and we moved to a

For years, I played a game of virtual cat and mouse. I would post a photo, wait for ‘likes’, look to see what friends were doing, then, finding myself too distracted, my head spinning, delete the app. A few weeks later I would re-download it. I knew

Stefan van der Stigchel is a professor in Cognitive Psychology at the department of Experimental Psychology at Utrecht University and principal investigator of the research group AttentionLab. For his research on visual attention, he received a VENI

Contemporary life in post-industrial societies is beset by a curious, insidious paradox. On the one hand, we live and work in the knowledge economy, where information is the world’s most valuable commodity: data, it is said, is the new oil. On the ot

I think we’re beginning to see a time of darkness when, amid a plethora of high-tech connectivity, one-quarter of Americans say they have no close confidante, more than double the number thirty years ago. It’s a darkening time when we think togethern

Last year, I attended a conference at a country house hotel that boasted a slightly battered baby grand in its lounge. From the moment I saw it, I was desperate to play – and I found my moment during an afternoon pause between sessions. I should have

In fourth century Greece, a young Athenian named Demosthenes built himself an underground study, and shaved one half of his head so he couldn’t go out in public. The young Demosthenes entered his subterranean world and there he would remain, oftentim

Jamie Kreiner is Associate Dean, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of History at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on the mechanics of culture, especially in the quieter forces that shape ethical systems — forces that

In her new book, Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way To Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity, Dr Gloria Mark, Chancellor’s Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, recounts a 2004 study in which she observed knowledge

James M. Lang is the author of six books, including Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It and Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. Jim writes a monthly column on teaching and learning for The Chro

A 56-year-old man was admitted to a teaching hospital for a routine medical procedure. Following the procedure, the doctors decided to put him on the blood-thinning medication, Warfarin. The next day, after a further assessment of the man’s condition