The story of how Singapore became a nation with an economy worth nearly one trillion dollars is marked by a number of key events. From Sir Stamford Raffles’s establishment of a trading post on the island of Singapore to the Japanese occupation in World War II, every event has shown the vision and resilience […]

Andrea Mantegna was one of the most striking artists of the North Italian Renaissance. Known for his graphic style and innovative approach to perspective, he was a collector of antiques and an archaeologist deeply immersed in classical culture. Mantegna’s artistic upbringing in Northern Italy granted him a great intellectual basis that he applied to […]

The second of the Ten Commandments states “You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” How believers have interpreted this commandment in different traditions has had a […]

Picture a force compelling every living creature to endure, prosper, and triumph over adversity—a sort of life force. This is conatus, the core idea behind Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy of existence. It’s more than just survival instinct writ large. Instead, everything from human beings to animals to objects has its very essence defined by conatus. […]

The Second Council of Nicaea is the seventh and final of the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the early church, and it helped to determine and consolidate Christian orthodox thought regarding the person and nature of Jesus Christ in the preceding centuries.  It was held in 787 in Nicaea, in modern-day Turkey.   Events that […]