\n<\/span>the Hudson burns<\/span>
\n<\/span>in indian autumn<\/span>
\n<\/span>Saugerties<\/span>
\n<\/span>Cocksackie<\/span>
\n<\/span>fall away through<\/span>
\n<\/span>all those trees<\/span><\/p>\n
The leaves die turning<\/span> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New York-Albany God i had forgotten how the Hudson burns in indian autumn Saugerties Cocksackie fall away through all those trees The leaves die turning falling fallen falling into loam of dark yellow into death Disappearing falling fallen falling god god those \u2018pestilence-stricken multitudes\u2019 rushed into the streets blown all blasted They are hurting them…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309639"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309643,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309639\/revisions\/309643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309632,"date":"2026-08-18T09:34:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T13:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309632"},"modified":"2026-08-18T08:37:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:37:19","slug":"on-sonny-rollins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/on-sonny-rollins.html","title":{"rendered":"On Sonny Rollins"},"content":{"rendered":" Nate Wooley at n+1<\/em>:<\/p>\n At the dawn of the 1970s, Rollins took another two-year hiatus. Again, no prison; this time, not even the bridge. Just a period of quiet self-discovery. He immersed himself in meditation and yoga, studying at an ashram near Mumbai. The son of islanders also found new inspiration in his roots, visiting the Caribbean for the first time and developing a fascination with calypso, a bouncing, convivial music invented by the enslaved people of 19th-century Trinidad and Tobago. Its infectious dance rhythms perfectly fit Rollins\u2019s increasingly angular phrasing and broken articulation. Upon returning to the scene in 1971, Rollins concentrated much of his musical energy on calypso, as well as soul and funk, an aesthetic that found its finest form in his 1978 album\u00a0Don\u2019t Stop the Carnival<\/em>. Not everyone appreciated the new direction, but no one could deny Rollins\u2019s immense creativity. From this point onward, he continued to follow his gut. He released albums more rarely, explored the saxophone as a solo instrument, and even turned to orchestral composition with a concerto for saxophone written for the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra\u2014with the solo part, of course, played by himself.<\/p>\n more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nate Wooley at n+1: At the dawn of the 1970s, Rollins took another two-year hiatus. Again, no prison; this time, not even the bridge. Just a period of quiet self-discovery. He immersed himself in meditation and yoga, studying at an ashram near Mumbai. The son of islanders also found new inspiration in his roots, visiting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309632"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309636,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309632\/revisions\/309636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309628,"date":"2026-08-18T08:32:42","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309628"},"modified":"2026-08-18T08:32:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:32:42","slug":"the-self-built-homes-of-santiago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/the-self-built-homes-of-santiago.html","title":{"rendered":"The Self-Built Homes Of Santiago"},"content":{"rendered":" Consuelo Araos at Aeon Magazine<\/em>:<\/p>\n more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Consuelo Araos at Aeon Magazine: Victoria\u2019s story is part of a broader reality among poor urban populations across Latin America, where roughly a quarter to a third of urban residents have lived in informal housing conditions as cities expanded through the late 20th and early\u00a021st century.\u00a0In Santiago, much of what is now the pericentral belt…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309628"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309631,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309628\/revisions\/309631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309624,"date":"2026-08-18T08:15:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309624"},"modified":"2026-08-18T08:15:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:15:12","slug":"will-you-be-wearing-an-exoskeleton-in-ten-years-the-tech-that-could-change-how-we-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/will-you-be-wearing-an-exoskeleton-in-ten-years-the-tech-that-could-change-how-we-move.html","title":{"rendered":"Will you be wearing an exoskeleton in ten years? The tech that could change how we move"},"content":{"rendered":" Chris Stokel-Walker in\u00a0Nature:<\/em><\/p>\n Ferris admits he was \u201cjumping the gun\u201d, but his vision is getting closer to reality.\u00a0At the time he made his forecast, exoskeletons were mostly being used in clinical settings\u00a0to rehabilitate people<\/a> after spinal-cord damage or stroke. \u201cExoskeletons were really targeted as: function is lost, and we need to replace this function,\u201d says Taylor Dick, a neuromuscular biomechanist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Today, researchers and companies are increasingly talking about augmentation instead: adding a fraction of the force needed for a movement.<\/p>\n More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chris Stokel-Walker in\u00a0Nature: Daniel Ferris says that the best exoskeletons are the ones you forget about. When the biomechanical engineer has one on, he notices little more than a slight tugging. But after removing the device, it can seem as if he is suddenly trudging uphill.\u00a0Ferris has been designing wearable exoskeletons and powered prostheses for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309627,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309624\/revisions\/309627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309620,"date":"2026-08-18T08:03:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309620"},"modified":"2026-08-18T08:03:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:03:37","slug":"these-artists-may-have-left-pakistan-but-its-still-present-in-their-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/these-artists-may-have-left-pakistan-but-its-still-present-in-their-work.html","title":{"rendered":"These Artists May Have Left Pakistan, but It\u2019s Still Present in Their Work"},"content":{"rendered":" Aatish Taseer in\u00a0The New York Times:<\/em><\/p>\n Two decades on, Toor\u2019s talent has been recognized across the globe, most notably with a 2020 solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, but what I couldn\u2019t have known then was that Toor would be only the brightest star in a firmament of diasporic creativity out of Pakistan. From the haunting voice of the musician\u00a0Arooj Aftab<\/a>\u00a0to the pastorals of the writers Daniyal Mueenuddin and Taymour Soomro, or the lambent note of protest in the expressive nudes of the painter Hiba Schahbaz and the sly subversiveness of the director Saim Sadiq\u2019s film \u201cJoyland<\/a>\u201d (2022), the meeting of Pakistan and the West, on both sides of the Atlantic, has brought forth a dazzling generation of artists.<\/p>\n More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aatish Taseer in\u00a0The New York Times: ON A SUMMER day in New York some 20 years ago, the singer and songwriter\u00a0Ali Sethi\u00a0(then an aspiring novelist) took me to his apartment off Washington Square Park. Sethi\u2019s parents were family friends of ours in Lahore, Pakistan \u2014 his father edited The Daily Times, which my father owned…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309620"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309623,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309620\/revisions\/309623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309592,"date":"2026-08-18T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T10:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309592"},"modified":"2026-08-18T00:01:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T04:01:49","slug":"the-existential-urgency-of-becoming-someone-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/the-existential-urgency-of-becoming-someone-else.html","title":{"rendered":"The Existential Urgency of Becoming Someone Else"},"content":{"rendered":" by Rachel Robison-Greene<\/strong><\/p>\n Last week I spent the night at my parents\u2019 house for the first time in over a decade. I went for a jog through the neighborhood just like I used to only now, in my forties, I prefer run tracks that are a little less angry than The Sex Pistols. Then I was feigning anger to project an aesthetic. Now the world is maddening enough. I don\u2019t need to blast rage into my skull as I work out. Houses in the neighborhood were familiar but rundown. The trees in the woods where I used to play seemed impossibly large. Ten-year-old me would now have quite the time finding my way out. Being in the spaces of my youth was unexpectedly intense, like I had intruded into someone else\u2019s dream.<\/p>\n Philosophers spend plenty of time discussing what it is to persist through time and change. Some think a person at a later time is one and the same as a person at some earlier time if the later person has the same body as the person at the earlier time. This view is viscerally tempting. My body bears the scars of falling off of my bike and sliding down a large neighborhood hill when I was nine and of a glue gun mishap while making a wreath for Mother\u2019s Day when I was eleven. Others argue that it is a memory connection that makes a person the same person through time and change. There is something undeniably true about this too. As I moved through the streets I could have run with my eyes closed, I could almost hear the laughter of old friends and smell sprinkler water and plastic swimming pools. Those memories are indelible.<\/p>\n It\u2019s reasonable to spend plenty of time thinking about persistence of identity. Living a meaningful life seems to require that we can put the pieces, separated out in time and space, together in a way that we can make sense out of. Perhaps I only understand my current craving for adventure by remembering the little girl who would jump in any body of water. Maybe my philosophical interest in justice was caused by watching peers be bullied or left out. All of these things matter because we want to understand our character traits as enduring and developed and our life arcs as the plot of a good story we\u2019re still in the process of writing.<\/p>\n We spend less time thinking about the urgency, even the necessity of change. I cherish my childhood, but I can\u2019t deny that this neighborhood is, for me in this moment, a liminal space. It feels like, if I run a block downtown, I might just stumble upon a Blockbuster Video or a teenager wearing JNCO jeans and a beanie. I can\u2019t stay here, not in just this way. In some ways, discontinuity is as important as its more widely contemplated opposite.<\/p>\n Often the ways in which I am not the girl from my past or the woman from my young adulthood seem more important to me than the ways in which I resemble her. Growth requires motion. The values that matter to us the most require change.<\/p>\n Consider the path toward something like wisdom. We don\u2019t attain new information by staying where we are. Knowledge changes us. All things being equal, it\u2019s desirable to change in this way. In light of the knowledge I\u2019ve attained, I have a different set of beliefs and am disposed to engage in different behavior from my younger self.<\/p>\n Authenticity requires commitment to truth, but it also requires movement away from those aspects of our former selves that feel restricting and that no longer serve us. Knowledge and authenticity are formidable companions in this way. The more I come to know about myself and the world around me, the more liberated I am to make decisions that feel authentic for me.<\/p>\n Love is closely related. Healthy forms of love require wanting the best for other people and for ourselves. If I love someone, I want them to be authentic and happy. When I demonstrate genuine care for another person, I want them to evolve into the best version of themselves. When I practice healthy self-love, I want the same for myself.<\/p>\n In no domain of my life have I found this to resonate more than in parenting. We feel intense attachment to our very young children. It strikes us as impossible that we could ever give them up. But give them up we must. We must give them, and ourselves, the freedom to become new people as they grow.<\/p>\n My students tend to love to debate questions related to personal identity and persistence through time. Despite the existence of countless memes on the internet, they often haven\u2019t encountered The Ship of Theseus puzzle\u2014during a long voyage, how many pieces of a ship would have to fall to the bottom of the ocean and be replaced before it is no longer the same ship? This question is endlessly metaphysically interesting, especially when it is applied to people rather than planks.<\/p>\n It strikes me that a question about the necessity<\/em> of change is more existentially<\/em> compelling and would be well-paired with the metaphysical one. We can ask ourselves how much similarity is required for \u201csameness\u201d, but we should also ask ourselves how much difference is necessary for flourishing. Which is more important? It might be more important to flourish through change than to retain metaphysical identity through remaining the same.<\/p>\n It\u2019s common to feel uncomfortable in circumstances in which we are expected to immediately adopt the roles and dynamics of much younger versions of ourselves, often versions with which we no longer identify. It can feel like we\u2019re being asked to play a character. We appreciate the familiar, but we don\u2019t want to pretend to be people that we are not. We want to be comforted rather than haunted by the ghosts of former selves and the places we can\u2019t stay.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Rachel Robison-Greene Last week I spent the night at my parents\u2019 house for the first time in over a decade. I went for a jog through the neighborhood just like I used to only now, in my forties, I prefer run tracks that are a little less angry than The Sex Pistols. Then I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1737,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309592"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309604,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309592\/revisions\/309604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309459,"date":"2026-08-18T05:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309459"},"modified":"2026-08-17T02:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T06:32:08","slug":"evolutionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/evolutionism.html","title":{"rendered":"Evolutionism?"},"content":{"rendered":" by Barry Goldman<\/strong><\/p>\n Owen Jones and Rob Kurzban have new books out. Jones is the director of the Weaver Program in Law, Brain Sciences, and Behavior at Vanderbilt. He previously led the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. Kurzban is a former psychology professor at Penn and the author of Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind<\/em>. Both men are deeply knowledgeable thinkers and graceful writers. Both books are extensively researched and thoroughly annotated. I enjoyed them, and I recommend them without hesitation. So, what\u2019s the problem?<\/p>\n I can\u2019t resist telling a story from my youth that kept occurring to me as I read. Many years ago, my mother had a friend whose son was a dope fiend (her term). At her wit\u2019s end, the distraught woman managed to get an audience with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Mendel Schneerson. She explained the situation and pleaded for his advice. He said, \u201cKeep a kosher home.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course he did.<\/p>\n I suspect we can agree with D\u2019Arcy Wentworth Thompson that, \u201cEverything is the way it is because it got that way.\u201d And we can agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky that \u201cNothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” We might even agree with Daniel Dennett that evolution by natural selection is \u201cthe single best idea anyone has ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, there is something about books by evolutionary thinkers that is reminiscent of books by Marxists. Where Marxists have historical materialism and class struggle, evolutionists have reproductive advantage. It explains everything<\/em>.<\/p>\n Jones\u2019s book, Force of Nature: Understanding Evolution\u2019s Deepest Logic \u2013 and Putting It to Use, <\/em>explains natural selection and shows how understanding it can illuminate problems in medicine, agriculture, artificial intelligence, economic decision making, and law.<\/p>\n In the chapter on law, he writes:<\/p>\n Consider, for instance, the interplay between natural selection and the evolved emotional underpinnings of what we call jealousy, which in humans and other species help to focus attention on acute risks of losing a mate. (What we have labeled emotions\u2014such as jealousy, fear, sadness, lust, and the like\u2014 are, biologically speaking, evolved shortcuts to historically adaptive behavior, which tend to quickly and often powerfully bypass slower and more analytic regions of the brain.)<\/p>\n Kurzban\u2019s book is All the Feels: The Evolved Function of Every Human Emotion and Sensation.<\/em> In Kurzban\u2019s view:<\/p>\n Our felt experiences exist because they measure <\/em>something useful and motivate <\/em>appropriate behavior. Importantly, I\u2019m using the words \u201cuseful\u201d and \u201cappropriate\u201d in the evolutionary sense: How did these experiences contribute to survival and reproduction?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with sex. There are a lot of questions we could ask about sex. One of them \u2013 perhaps not the first one most of us would think of, but a central question for evolutionary thinkers \u2013 is: Why is sex fun? The answer goes like this. Suppose we had a population of animals for whom sex was fun and another population of the same animal for whom it was not. The animals for whom sex was fun would do it more. Consequently, they would have more babies. And if the trait was heritable, those babies would also think sex was fun, they would do it more, and they would have more babies. Since the whole idea is that the team that has more babies is the winner, the sex is fun team wins.<\/p>\n It ain\u2019t rocket surgery, as the kids used to say. It\u2019s more like the Brazil nut effect. Why are the Brazil nuts on top when you open a can of mixed nuts? It\u2019s not because they want<\/em> to go to the top or because God designed <\/em>them to go to the top or because Nature has a master plan with everything in its place. It is because gravity makes things fall down, and small things can fall through small openings that bigger things can\u2019t. You can call it granular convection and act like it\u2019s a marvelous scientific discovery if you want. Or you can just look at the crumbs at the bottom of your cereal box.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a graphic: https:\/\/vimeo.com\/265919301?fl=pl&fe=cm<\/a><\/p>\n Perhaps the sex example was too easy. Let\u2019s try a hard one, Why is fun fun? In other words, what is it about enjoying fun that confers a reproductive advantage?<\/p>\n Here the explanation gets labored. Fun is fun because it is safe practice. Or, if it is not safe practice, then it signals fitness. Or, um, it\u2019s complicated. But for sure fun is fun because it is \u201cfitness-good.\u201d In an evolved species traits do not evolve unless they confer a reproductive advantage. Jones says, \u201cSpecies tend not to evolve capabilities that never come in handy.\u201d That\u2019s just bedrock true. Except when it\u2019s not. Later in the book he says:<\/p>\n Consider, for instance, the classic example of an evolved physical feature that is unlikely to be an adaptation: the whiteness of bones. The whiteness is almost certainly a mere byproduct of limited available materials and therefore an incidental consequence of using calcium to build bones, rather than of whiteness providing a reproductive advantage over, say, magenta bones.<\/p>\n The need to provide a \u201cfitness-good\u201d explanation for each evolved feeling produces some odd reasoning. Here is a sentence from Kurzban\u2019s chapter on sadness along with the accompanying citation:<\/p>\n When parents suffer the death of a child, the sadness they feel is always great, but it is greater when the lost child was closer to the age of reproduction, reflecting the loss of someone closer to achieving reproductive success.<\/p>\n Crawford, C., Salter, B. E., & Jang, K. L. (1989). Human grief: Is its intensity related to the reproductive value of the deceased? Ethology and Sociobiology, 10<\/em>, 297\u2013307.<\/p>\n Reading this I couldn\u2019t stop thinking of the line from Annie Hall where Woody Allen says to Christopher Walken, \u201cI have to go now, Duane, because I\u2019m due back on the planet Earth.<\/p>\n In the chapter on Awe, Kurzban writes:<\/p>\n Proposals about the function of awe generally have to do with things like \u201cmeaning,\u201d \u201cconnectedness,\u201d and \u201cpurpose.\u201d A recent book, Awe<\/em>, by Dacher Keltner, arguably one of the most prominent researchers working on this question, suggests that awe \u201cshifts our minds from a more reductionistic mode of seeing things in terms of separateness and independence to a view of phenomena as interrelating and dependent.\u201d An odd feature of this idea is that it doesn\u2019t indicate what the emotion is for, from an evolutionary perspective. It\u2019s certainly a powerful feeling. What\u2019s the function? Keltner\u2019s suggestion, which might be true, is typical of the sorts of proposals one sees in social psychology, but ideas to do with \u201cmeaning,\u201d \u201cconnectedness,\u201d and \u201cpurpose\u201d don\u2019t make a lot of sense from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.<\/p>\n Precisely.<\/p>\n There is a famous video<\/a> of Richard Feynman talking about the beauty of a flower. He says the beauty the rest of us experience is also available to him and that scientific knowledge only adds to the excitement, mystery and awe. Maybe.<\/p>\n As I said, I enjoyed these books. I learned quite a bit about psychology experiments, pop culture, swallow-tailed kites, Greek mythology, and about Jones and Kurzban. I learned about Hamilton\u2019s Rule and the \u201cconditions under which altruistic behaviors can evolve through natural selection:<\/p>\n an altruistic act is beneficial to the altruist’s inclusive fitness if the benefit to the recipient (B) multiplied by their genetic relatedness (r) exceeds the cost to the altruist (C). In simpler terms, altruism evolves when the benefits to relatives outweigh the costs to the altruist.<\/p>\n I did not find that scientific knowledge added to my excitement, mystery, and awe. But perhaps that is just because I am not of this church.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Barry Goldman Owen Jones and Rob Kurzban have new books out. Jones is the director of the Weaver Program in Law, Brain Sciences, and Behavior at Vanderbilt. He previously led the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. Kurzban is a former psychology professor at Penn and the author of Why Everyone (Else)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":692,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309459"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309538,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309459\/revisions\/309538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309598,"date":"2026-08-18T04:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T08:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309598"},"modified":"2026-08-17T23:52:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T03:52:55","slug":"perceptions-531","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/perceptions-531.html","title":{"rendered":"Perceptions"},"content":{"rendered":" Woodcut.<\/p>\n More here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Treiborlang Lyngdoh Mawlong. From “Somewhere, Elsewhere, Here”, 2020. Woodcut. More here and here. Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309602,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309598\/revisions\/309602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309568,"date":"2026-08-17T14:45:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T18:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309568"},"modified":"2026-08-17T07:14:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:14:39","slug":"the-tantalizing-possibility-of-locating-consciousness-in-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/the-tantalizing-possibility-of-locating-consciousness-in-the-brain.html","title":{"rendered":"The Tantalizing Possibility Of Locating Consciousness In The Brain"},"content":{"rendered":" Daniel Freeman at Noema<\/em>:<\/p>\n How can this computer seem so very human? It demonstrates abilities we usually associate with intelligent beings: language, abstraction, social inference, even a sense of humor. The design of modern chatbots was inspired by the neocortex, the pinnacle of mammalian evolution, so their human-like behavior should not have come as a complete surprise. But what few anticipated was that such complex behavior could emerge in the complete absence of biological neurons.<\/p>\n More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Daniel Freeman at Noema: It is past midnight in a fluorescent-lit office. A neuroscientist opens ChatGPT and uploads the seventh version of a paper, which is littered with critical notes from a peer reviewer. \u201cWhy is Reviewer #2 such an idiot?\u201d the neuroscientist asks the chatbot. The reply comes instantly, witty and sympathetic, reframing the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309570,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309568\/revisions\/309570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309565,"date":"2026-08-17T13:45:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T17:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309565"},"modified":"2026-08-17T07:08:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:08:00","slug":"almost-three-quarters-of-england-is-now-in-drought-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/almost-three-quarters-of-england-is-now-in-drought-conditions.html","title":{"rendered":"Almost three-quarters of England is now in drought conditions"},"content":{"rendered":" Madeleine Cuff at New Scientist<\/em>:<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>falling fallen<\/span>
\n<\/span>falling into loam of dark<\/span>
\n<\/span>yellow into death<\/span>
\n<\/span>Disappearing<\/span>
\n<\/span>falling fallen falling <\/span>
\n<\/span>god god those<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u2018pestilence-stricken multitudes\u2019<\/span>
\n<\/span>rushed into the streets<\/span>
\n<\/span>blown all blasted<\/span>
\n<\/span>They are hurting them<\/span>
\n<\/span>with wood rakes
\nThey are raking them<\/span>
\n<\/span>in great hills<\/span>
\n<\/span>They are burning them<\/span>
\n<\/span>lord lord<\/span>
\n<\/span>the leaves curl burning<\/span>
\n<\/span>the curled smoke gives up<\/span>
\n<\/span>to eternity<\/span>
\n<\/span>Never<\/span>
\n<\/span>never the same leaf turn again<\/span>
\n<\/span>the same leaves burn<\/span>
\n<\/span>lord lord<\/span>
\n<\/span>in a red field<\/span>
\n<\/span>a white stallion stands<\/span>
\n<\/span>and pees his oblivion<\/span>
\n<\/span>upon those leaves<\/span>
\n<\/span>washing my bus window<\/span>
\n<\/span>only now blacked out<\/span>
\n<\/span>by a covered bridge<\/span>
\n<\/span>we flash through<\/span>
\n<\/span>only once<\/span>
\n<\/span>No roundtrip ticket<\/span>
\n<\/span>Lord Lord never returning<\/span>
\n<\/span>the youth years fallen<\/span>
\n<\/span>away back then<\/span>
\n<\/span>Under the Linden trees in Boston Common<\/span>
\n<\/span>Lord Lord<\/span>
\n<\/span>trees think<\/span>
\n<\/span>through these wood of years<\/span>
\n<\/span>They flame forever<\/span>
\n<\/span>with those thoughts
\n<\/span>Lord lord
\n<\/span>i did not see eternity<\/span>
\n<\/span>the other night<\/span>
\n<\/span>but now in burning<\/span>
\n<\/span>turning day<\/span>
\n<\/span>Lord Lord Lord<\/span>
\n<\/span>every bush burns<\/span>
\n<\/span>Love licks <\/span>
\n<\/span>all down<\/span>
\n<\/span>All gone<\/span>
\n<\/span>in the red end<\/span>
\n<\/span>Lord Lord Lord Lord<\/span>
\n<\/span>Small nuts fall<\/span>
\n<\/span>Mine too<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>By Lawrence Ferlinghetti<\/a><\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>From <\/span><\/i>Poet\u2019s Choice<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/i>Time Life Books 1962<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>\u2014Ferlinghetti\u2019s note on the poem: \u201cThis is a favorite poem of mine<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>because it fills a central moment in the middle of the journey of my life<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>when I came to myself in a dark wood . . . .\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/SonnyRollins-286x360.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/images-19.jpg\")
V<\/span>ictoria\u2019s story is part of a broader reality among poor urban populations across Latin America, where roughly a quarter to a third of urban residents have lived in informal housing conditions as cities expanded through the late 20th and early\u00a021st century.<\/span>\u00a0In Santiago, much of what is now the pericentral belt took shape between the 1960s and \u201980s through a precarious process of informal occupation of marginal land and later state-regularised\u00a0poblaciones<\/em>\u00a0that\u00a0shaped<\/a>\u00a0the city\u2019s growth. These are neighbourhoods slowly and collectively assembled by hand over multiple generations \u2013 their houses, streets and public spaces still bearing the marks of that history, as do the family configurations and forms of local sociability, as well as civic and political participation, that\u00a0took<\/a> shape within them. Although it may be technically correct to consider the self-built house as merely one particular residential typology among others, I have come to think otherwise. I arrived with the vocabulary of deficit \u2013 informality, overcrowding, the housing unit to be counted and completed \u2013 and the field slowly took it apart. In all their precariousness \u2013 and perhaps partly because of it \u2013 self-built houses reveal some conditions without which a place cannot truly be lived as a house.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/d41586-026-02527-z_53116670-360x202.webp\")
Daniel Ferris says that the best exoskeletons are the ones you forget about. When the biomechanical engineer has one on, he notices little more than a slight tugging. But after removing the device, it can seem as if he is suddenly trudging uphill.\u00a0Ferris has been designing wearable exoskeletons and powered prostheses for decades, and has long thought that they would soon become a part of everyday life. In 2009, he published a prediction1<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0that \u201cby 2024, people will be walking down the street, in the malls, and to their homes wearing robotic exoskeletons\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/17tmag-diaspora-slide-GHKH-superJumbo-360x294.webp\")
ON A SUMMER day in New York some 20 years ago, the singer and songwriter\u00a0Ali Sethi<\/a>\u00a0(then an aspiring novelist) took me to his apartment off Washington Square Park. Sethi\u2019s parents were family friends of ours in Lahore, Pakistan \u2014 his father edited The Daily Times, which my father owned \u2014 and he shared his apartment with two Lahori painters,\u00a0Komail Aijazuddin<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Salman Toor<\/a>. To see Toor\u2019s early works on the walls, enveloped in afternoon gloom, was to be given my first (and perhaps most profound) experience of that phrase the American critic Edmund Wilson once popularized, \u201cthe shock of recognition.\u201d Here, I thought, was an artistic talent as raw and conspicuous as any I\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/kids-thinking-stuff-360x239.webp\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/all-the-feels-2-225x360.jpg\")
<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/force-of-nature-1.jpg\")
<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-17-at-8.33.18-PM.png\")
Treiborlang Lyngdoh Mawlong. From “Somewhere, Elsewhere, Here”, 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-17-131214-360x247.png\")
It is past midnight in a fluorescent-lit office. A neuroscientist opens ChatGPT and uploads the seventh version of a paper, which is littered with critical notes from a peer reviewer. \u201cWhy is Reviewer #2 such an idiot?\u201d the neuroscientist asks the chatbot. The reply comes instantly, witty and sympathetic, reframing the criticism in a way that puts everything into perspective. The neuroscientist laughs, then pauses.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/SEI_308198316-360x240.png\")
Summer 2026 is likely to be the warmest on record in the UK, with repeated searing heatwaves and a severe drought affecting much of the country. In southern England in particular, the landscape is parched and crispy, rivers and reservoirs are running low, and trees are shedding their leaves in a stress response to the dry weather.\u00a0Much of Europe<\/a>\u00a0is baking under similar conditions.<\/p>\n