The allegory of the cave, attributed to Socrates by Plato in The Republic (375 BCE), depicts human knowledge as emerging from a struggle between our senses and our reason. In this story, prisoners are chained inside a cave so that they are only able to see one wall. A fire behind them... Read more.

I have spent my whole life learning about the natural world. I am a professional botanist whose career was focused for fifty-plus years on trying to use science to understand and “save” specific unusual components of our earth’s ecosystems. I have learned a lot about climate change over the many... Read more.

Edifice of rock and ice
born of molten silicates
      thrust from below the earth’s rocky skin,
built of clouds of rock ash and rivers of liquid stone,
patiently etched by streams of ice fed by winter storms.

A mammoth... Read more.