‘THE WORLD IS heavy on us,” says Katsunobu Sakurai, recalling the day its weight almost crushed the life out of his city.

ALL THE knowledge and skills of the neuroscience community seem to fade into insignificance when compared with the ability of some parasites to alter the behaviour of their hosts so as to gain an evolutionary advantage. For example, a parasitic hairworm that infects a grasshopper induces the insect to seek a water source and to jump in and drown. Once the grasshopper is in the water the parasite emerges from its anal opening and swims off to seek a mate and to continue its lifecycle.

WE PICTURE philosophers as people who read and think deeply about the nature of things and publish a distillation of these thoughts. I was therefore intrigued by Joshua Knobe’s article in the November 2011 issue of Scientific American about a new breed of philosophers who conduct scientific experiments.