The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “science”

What America Means: Poet Muriel Rukeyser on the Source of Character and Creativity
What America Means: Poet Muriel Rukeyser on the Source of Character and Creativity

“Creation is a delicate and experimental thing… Knowledge and effective action here become one gesture; the gesture of understanding the world and changing it.”

read article

The Boltzmann Brain Paradox: An Animated Thought Experiment About the Hallucination of Reality
The Boltzmann Brain Paradox: An Animated Thought Experiment About the Hallucination of Reality

A pleasingly disorienting foray into the fundamental perplexity of life.

read article

Affirmation in Solitude: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Poetry of Penguins
Affirmation in Solitude: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Poetry of Penguins

“The poets cannot hear each other; they cannot see each other. They can only feel the other’s warmth.”

read article

The Poetry of Science and Wonder as an Antidote to Self-Destruction: Rachel Carson’s Magnificent 1952 National Book Award Acceptance Speech
The Poetry of Science and Wonder as an Antidote to Self-Destruction: Rachel Carson’s Magnificent 1952 National Book Award Acceptance Speech

“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that… is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction… There can be no separate literature of science.”

read article

Le Monde de la Mer: Stunning 19th-Century French Illustrations of the Wonders of the Sea
Le Monde de la Mer: Stunning 19th-Century French Illustrations of the Wonders of the Sea

Dive into “the world of the sea in its luxury and its agitations.”

read article

Favorite Books of 2022
Favorite Books of 2022

From Rumi to Blake to Nick Cave, by way of trees, hummingbirds, grief, and music.

read article

Trees, Rivers, and the Exquisite Interdependence of Life: Artist Meredith Nemirov’s Consummate Map Paintings
Trees, Rivers, and the Exquisite Interdependence of Life: Artist Meredith Nemirov’s Consummate Map Paintings

“To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.”

read article

How the Psychedelic Amanita Muscaria Mushroom May Have Inspired the Santa Legend of Lapland
How the Psychedelic Amanita Muscaria Mushroom May Have Inspired the Santa Legend of Lapland

Shamans, neurochemistry, and the metabolic byproducts of wonder.

read article

The Poetic Science of the Aurora Borealis
The Poetic Science of the Aurora Borealis

“And now commenced a display which baffles all description.”

read article

Nature Is Always Listening: The Science of Mushrooms, Music, and How Sound Waves Stimulate Mycelial Growth
Nature Is Always Listening: The Science of Mushrooms, Music, and How Sound Waves Stimulate Mycelial Growth

What playing music has to do with the happiness of the forest.

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)