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The Will to Believe
‘The Will to Believe‘ is a lecture by American philosopher and psychologist William James, first published in 1896, which defends, in certain cases, the adoption of a belief without prior evidence of...
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Yule Log
‘The Yule Log‘ is a TV program which is broadcast traditionally on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, originally by NYC television station WPIX but now by many other Tribune Company-owned television...
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Hawala
Hawala [ha-wah-lah] (Arabic: ‘transfer’) is an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honor of a huge network of money brokers, primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa,...
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The Sunday Assembly
The Sunday Assembly is a non-religious gathering co-founded by stand-up comedians Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans in early 2013 in London. The gathering is designed to bring together non-religious...
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Black Pete
Black Pete (‘Zwarte Piet‘) is the companion of Saint Nicholas (‘Sinterklaas,’ from which the English term ‘Santa Claus’ is derived) in the folklore of the Low Countries (primarily Belgium and the...
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Fiat justitia ruat caelum
Fiat justitia ruat caelum is a Latin legal phrase, meaning ‘Let justice be done though the heavens fall.’ The maxim signifies the belief that justice must be realized regardless of consequences. In...
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Guardian of the Threshold
The Guardian of the Threshold is a menacing figure that is described by a number of esoteric schools of thought. Also called ‘dweller on the threshold,’ the term indicates a spectral image which is...
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Temporal Paradox
A temporal paradox is a thought experiment where a time traveler goes to the past, and does something that would prevent him from time travel in the first place. If he does not go back in time, he...
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Psychological Sublimation
In psychology, sublimation [suhb-luh-mey-shuhn] is a mature type of defense mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are consciously transformed into socially acceptable actions...
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Human Nature
Human nature refers to the distinguishing characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that humans tend to have naturally, independently of the influence of culture. The questions...
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Hard to Be a God
Hard to be a God is a 1964 science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky set in their ‘Noon Universe (a fictional setting in the 22nd century). The novel follows Anton, an undercover operative...
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Beyond the Black Rainbow
Beyond the Black Rainbow is a 2010 Canadian science fiction film written and directed by Panos Cosmatos in his feature film debut. The films begins in the 1960s, as Dr. Arboria founds the Arboria...
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Here Be Dragons
‘Here be dragons‘ means dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of the medieval practice of putting dragons, sea serpents and other mythological creatures in uncharted areas of maps. There...
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Black Swan Theory
The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with...
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Ietsism
Ietsism [eets-iz-uhm] (Dutch: ‘somethingism’) is an unspecified belief in some higher force. In some Eastern European censuses (Albanian, for example), those having ietsistic beliefs are counted as...
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God of the Gaps
God of the gaps is a theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God’s existence. The term was invented by Christian theologians not to discredit...
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Hacker Koan
Out of hacker culture, and especially the artificial intelligence community at MIT, there have sprung a number of humorous short stories about computer science dubbed hacker koans [koh-ahns]; most of...
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Ichthys
Ichthys [ik-thees], from the Koine Greek word for fish, is a symbol consisting of two intersecting arcs, the ends of the right side extending beyond the meeting point so as to resemble the profile of...
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Superficiality
What social psychologists call ‘The principle of superficiality versus depth’ has pervaded Western culture since at least the time of Plato. Socrates sought to convince his debaters to turn from the...
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Ego Reduction
The concept of ego reduction is predicated on the use of Sigmund Freud’s concept of the ego to describe the conscious adult self; and broadly describes the deflating of an over-inflated or egotistical...
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