Journeys
Journeys are short guided walks through the tree. Each stop is a node; the claims, evidence and sources are on that node’s page. The stops are connected, but none of them is presented as the conclusion.
The story of the atom
The idea that matter is made of indivisible pieces runs from philosophical reasoning through kalām debates to the laboratory and the particle accelerator.
7 stops · 585 BCE – 2012
From the night sky to the beginning of the universe
The effort to explain the motion of the planets turned into a journey that asked about Earth's place, about gravity and finally about the history of the universe itself.
11 stops · 150 – 2021
The journey of medicine
The effort to understand and cure disease, on a road from books to experiment, from microbes to the genome.
8 stops · 1025 – 2025
From counting to artificial intelligence
A road from marking numbers to algorithms and on to the debate about thinking machines.
11 stops · 1800 BCE – 2025
Reason and revelation: a debate in Islamic thought
For centuries theologians, philosophers and Sufis answered one another on the place of reason and revelation in knowledge. This journey presents the views in turn and treats none of them as the conclusion.
9 stops · 750 – 1273
Views on the origin of living things
The answers to how living things arose and why they are so diverse are not a single “theory of evolution”. This journey visits the views in the order they appeared; the order is not a ranking and no view is offered as the conclusion. Each stop has its own claims, evidence and counter-evidence.
11 stops · 1809 – 2021
From brain to mind
A road from the discovery of nerve cells to the question of what consciousness is. As knowledge of how the brain works grew, the question of what the mind is took new forms; most of these questions are still open.
9 stops · 1888 – 2018