Essential Knowledge

Articles by authors in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series. Written by leading thinkers, the series offers accessible, concise books on subjects that range from the cultural and the historical to the scientific and the technical.

Latest Articles

Science & Tech	How Expectations and Conditioning Shape Our Response to Placebos Kathryn Hall, an expert on placebos, considers the ways that expectations and learning affect our response to them. Kathryn T. Hall \| Jan 12, 2023
Science & Tech	History's Great Recommenders: From Ancient Times to Tomorrow For as long as humans have existed, they have sought new tools, techniques, and technologies in their personal quests for actionable advice. Michael Schrage \| Dec 5, 2022
Science & Tech	Finding Language in the Brain Psycholinguist Giosuè Baggio sheds light on the thrilling, evolving field of neurolinguistics, where neuroscience and linguistics meet. Giosuè Baggio \| Nov 25, 2022
Culture	When Elites Tried to Monopolize Hunting A brief history. Jan E. Dizard & Mary Zeiss Stange \| Oct 18, 2022
Culture	The New Art of Making Books On "bookworks." Amaranth Borsuk \| Sep 19, 2022
Culture	Gender Has a History and It’s More Recent Than You May Realize The story of how society, ignorant of medical research, made a stigma out of something our bodies do quite naturally: not conform to a sexual binary. Kathryn Bond Stockton \| Jun 8, 2022
Culture	Reckoning With Medicine’s Rescue Fantasy Shawn Abreu is a medical doctor who is fellowship-trained in hospice and palliative medicine. Nicole Piemonte is an assistant dean... Feb 1, 2022
Philosophy	Why the Classical Argument Against Free Will Is a Failure Despite bold philosophical and scientific claims, there’s still no good reason to doubt the existence of free will. Mark Balaguer \| Jan 27, 2022
Culture	School Choice: A User Guide Education researcher and author David Garcia discusses the complex landscape and historical roots of schooling in the United States. The Editors \| Jan 13, 2022
Culture	A Crisis of Vision: Can Art Shake Humanity From Its Global Stupor? How visual culture can be mobilized to address the most altering event in the story of humanity. Alexis L. Boylan \| Sep 8, 2021