Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it’s impossible to look an ape in the eye and not...

It is said that man is wolf to man. I find this very unfair to wolves.

I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence,...

Without agreement on rank and a certain respect for authority there can be no great sensitivity to social rules, as anyone who has tried to teach simple house rules to a cat will agree.

Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously gave us the ‘God is dead’ phrase was interested in the sources of morality. He warned that the emergence of something (whether an organ, a legal institution, or a religious ritual)...

If faith makes people buy an entire package of myths and values without asking too many questions, scientists are only slightly better.

Ironically, torture requires empathy, too, in the sense that one cannot deliberately inflict pain without realizing what is painful.

If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee’s eyes, an intelligent self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?