Aeon

Why Huygens father and son personify the scientific revolution

How a father’s mere curiosity about nature evolved during the Dutch Golden Age into the son’s focused scientific enquiry

The rise and fall of the Oxford School of fantasy literature

By conquering young minds, the writing of J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis worked to recapture a world that was swiftly ebbing away

Vienna, Schoenberg and the advent of musical modernism

How did the city of elegant classicism give birth to an explosive modernism, threatening to destroy its very traditions?

Meet Jack Tar, the sailor with a nation in his calloused hands

He was a patriot and a prisoner, a delegate and a drunk; circling the globe when few Englishmen ever left their home counties

The psychiatrist who didn’t believe in mental illness

Even in the decade of dissent, Thomas Szasz stood alone when he attacked the idea of madness from the political Right