As the semanticist S.I. Hayakawa stressed in his classic book Language in Thought and Action, words are not the things they represent. Words are symbols. It’s the manipulation of those symbols that ...

It has been long thought that one of the characteristics that makes humans unique is our ability to learn and manipulate symbols for communication. However, this notion is starting to slowly unravel.

X is everywhere and it’s probably thanks to math. But why is x the symbol for the unknown? Despite being one of the rarest letters in English, the letter X is everywhere. We sign letters with it, we ...

You all know the score. A train leaves one city travelling at 35 miles per hour and another races toward it at 25 miles an hour from a city 60 miles away. How long do they take to meet in the middle?

HISTORIANS of mathematics attribute the first use of the cross x as a symbol for multiplication to William Oughtred (“Clavis Mathematicae”, London, 1631). See W. W. R. Ball's “Short Account of the ...

He is set to release his eighth album to his adoring fans - but many have only just learned the reason behind their short and ...