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There is a simple way to produce a perfect model of our climate that will predict the weather with 100% accuracy. First, start with a universe that is exactly like ours; then wait 13 billion years. THE PHYSICS THAT WE KNOW [6.29.09]
Introduction There is a simple way to produce a perfect model of our climate that will predict the weather with 100% accuracy. First, start with a universe that is exactly like ours; then wait 13 billion years. But if you want something useful right now, if you want to construct a means of taking the knowledge that we have and use it to predict future climate, you build computer simulations. Your models are messy, complicated, in constant need of fine tuning, exacting and inexact at the same time. You're using the past to predict the future, extrapolating the very complicated from the very simple, and relying on an ever-changing data stream to inform the outcome. Climatologist Gavin Schmidt explains:
— Russell Weinberger GAVIN SCHMIDT is a climatologist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, where he models past, present, and future climate. His essay "Why Hasn't Specialization Led To The Balkanization Of Science?" in included in What's Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science, edited By Max Brockman
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Max Brockman, ed. | What's Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science (Vintage)
If your favorite day of the week is Tuesday, because that's when the Science section of The New York Times is published, and your favorite NPR show is Ira Flatow's Science Times, then you'll love What's Next? Dispatches on the Future of Science, a collection of essays written by young scientists about what they do and how they see the future of their fields. Even if you're not quite that much of a science geek, if you have an interest in the world around you and the process by which scientific research can both explain and mold that world, you'll enjoy this collection edited by Max Brockman. No expertise in any field is required to understand these essays; if you can follow Malcolm Gladwell, you'll have no troubles with What's Next? Brockman's essayists represent a variety of fields, from physics to paleoanthropology, with a heavy leaning toward the human sciences. This is a good choice from the marketing point of view, since non-scientists tend to be more interested in topics relating to human psychology than, say, the role played by dark energy in accelerating the expansion of the universe, but fans of hard science may feel slighted. That objection aside, this is the perfect collection for people who like to stay up on recent scientific research but haven't the time or expertise to go to the original sources (which, in the case of modern science, usually means articles published in professional journals, which are not generally available to those without access to an academic library). Each essay is self-contained, making it possible to choose those most relevant to your own interests. And it's a great airplane or beach book because you can read the essays in any order; each is brief enough to be read between the interruptions of gate announcements or children demanding attention. My personal favorite is "What Makes Big Ideas Sticky?" by UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman, which argues that ideas which mirror the structure and function of the human brain may seem so obviously true to us that they resist being discarded, even in the face of overwhelming amounts of scientific research demonstrating their lack of merit. The collection closes with an essay by NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt entitled "Why hasn't specialization led to the Balkanization of science?" He argues that in contradiction to the stereotype of the scientist as someone who knows more and more about less and less, interdisciplinary research is central to modern science and describes both the factors which lead to greater isolation among fields of research, and those which encourage cooperation and sharing of ideas. Communication of major ideas in nontechnical language is one of the factors which encourages cooperation, and What's Next? represents an important contribution to that effort. 256 pages. $14.95 (paperback) |
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"What To Read Now. And Why —Newsweek's Fifty Books For Our Times": 4. The Big Switch By Nicholas Carr. 17. The Trouble With Physics By Lee Smolin. 39. Why Evolution Is True By Jerry A. Coyne [...] Malcolm Gladwell tales on the digital determinists re Chris Anderson's Free [...] Lera Boroditsky: Language pervades the deepest domains of thought, shaping us from the nuts and bolts of perception to our loftiest abstract notions and major life decisions... more» [...] "Dear Malcolm: Why so threatened?" Chris Anderson Responds to Gladwell [...] Geoffrey Miller's "most expensive" and "happiness" lists [...] "Lee Smolin argues against the timeless multiverse" [...] *Check for more outside the box try www.edge.org, search unthinkable. [...] Jerry Coyne asks"Which theology should we respect?" [...] Malcolm is wrong...Free is the name of Chris's new book, and it's going to be wildly misunderstood and widely argued about. [...] PZ Myers: "I may not be perfectly rational, but my magic invisible monkeys are!" [...] Sputnik is back. This time it's Jonathan Harris, not the Russians. Don't miss it: The Sputnik Observatory. Edgy. [...] "Dawkins sets up kids' camp to groom atheists." [...] Sean Carroll: Many older scientists do all sorts of crazy things [...] Craig Venter — The Genius of Charles Darwin: The Uncut Interviews — Richard Dawkins [...] Paul Krassner, Yippie! co-founder and provocateur takes on Larry King in mock interview [...] |
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BRAIN TIME [6.24.09]
DAVID M. EAGLEMAN is director of Baylor College of Medicine's Laboratory for Perception and Action at Oxford University, whose long-range goal is to understand the neural mechanisms of time perception. He also directs BCM's Initiative on Law, Brains, and Behavior, which seeks to determine how new discoveries in neuroscience will change our laws and criminal justice system. He is the author of Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives. David M. Eagleman's Edge Bio Page From WHAT'S NEXT? Dispatches on the Future of Science Edited By Max Brockman |
Your brain, after all, is encased in darkness and silence in the vault of the skull. Its only contact with the outside world is via the electrical signals exiting and entering along the super-highways of nerve bundles. Because different types of sensory information (hearing, seeing, touch, and so on) are processed at different speeds by different neural architectures, your brain faces an enormous challenge: what is the best story that can be constructed about the outside world? Beyond Edge Sam Harris v. Philip Ball "What should science do?" ... Sam Harris and Philip Ball discuss the conflict between religion and science. They do not agree… [...] Charlie Rose's "A conversation about Personalized Medicine with Steven Pinker, Anne Wojcicki, George Church and Linda Avey "A. C. Grayling on a neuroscientist's attempt to "rewire her own brain." [...] "[Howard] Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences was a great idea and worth investigating. It's just not panning out. Hanging on to the theory for nostalgic or political value is not science. It's time that we begin to work with the reality that we have, not the one we wish we had. To do otherwise would be just plain stupid." [...] Sean Carroll Science and Religion are Not Compatible [...] "What getting mugged taught Douglas Rushkoff about the financial crisis" Michael Shermer "... the scientific method is the best tool ever devised to discriminate between true and false patterns, to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and to detect baloney". [...] Josh Timomen's first RDF TV Video — Michael Shermer's "The Baloney Detection Kit" Sean Carroll Are we living in the Golden age of cosmology?" PZ Myers: "They want to blur the boundaries between legitimate science, which questions traditional dogma, and religion, which is traditional dogma, by playing favorites with religion in a game that apes scientific institutions."[...] "Correspondence regarding the Templeton Foundation: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, AC Grayling, Edwin Cartlidge" [...] Sharon Begley on Evo-Psych & Wilson, Gould, Buss, Miller— "Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around?"[...] Tim Radford re-reads Pinker's Blank Slate — "Are We Prisoners of Our Genes?"[...] |
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We discovered a new vein of research — the relation between physical and social or psychological concepts — that we came to by taking evolutionary principles seriously and applying them to psychology. We weren't using evolutionary psychology, which has largely been focused on mating and reproduction. Our focus, rather, was in terms of evolutionary biology and the basic principles of natural selection: and that field makes clear that humans must have had these kinds of mechanisms or these processes to guide our behavior prior to evolution or emergence of consciousness. THE SIMPLIFIER
Introduction "They say that in science there are complicators and there are simplifiers," says John Bargh, Yale social psychologist known for his early work on the topic of automaticity, and more recently for bringing experimental methodology to the philosophical question of free will. According to Bargh, the tension between the complicators and the simplifiers is a good thing in any field of ideas or science. "I've always been a simplifier." he says, "looking for the simple mechanisms that produce complex effect, instead of building a complicated model. Once we find one of these veins — one of these avenues of research — we just go for it and mine it and mine it until we run out of gold. Bargh's lines of research all focus on unconscious mechanisms that underlie social perception, evaluation and preferences, and motivation and goal pursuit in realistic and complex social environments. That each of these basic psychological phenomena occur without the person's intention and awareness, yet have such strong effects on the person's decisions and behavior, has considerable implications for philosophical matters such as free will, and the nature and purpose of consciousness itself. He maintains that the resulting findings "are very consistent and in harmony with evolutionary biology. And this is very unlike psychology, which has always presumed a kind of consciousness bottle-neck or a self, some kind of a homunculus type of self sitting there, making all the decisions and deciding without any explanation of where they comes from or what's causing the self or what's causing the conscious choices. Emphasizing what our unconscious systems do for us, in turn, links us very strongly to other organisms and other animals very closely. Recent primate research is showing that primates are closer to us than we thought. They fall for the same kind of economic fallacies that Kahneman and Tversky talked about in humans 30 years ago." — Russell Weinberger JOHN A. BARGH is professor of social psychology at Yale University and director of the ACME (Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation and Evaluation) Lab.
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NEW BOOKS For prophetic visions of the future, some people turn to horoscopes. But if you want to know what the future holds, better to ask a scientist... more» |
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Does language shape our thinking?
An essay on how language influences thought from the pop-science anthology "What's Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science" has been posted on The Edge. Author Lera Boroditsky, an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience and symbolic systems at Stanford, writes:
She brings up experiments and other examples involving use of language and direction, time, color and gender, all of which seem to demonstrate that yes, language shapes how we think. But my favorite is this example above. Only a linguist — or perhaps a social scientist — would put Chomsky in a hypothetical. — Carolyn Kellogg |
Beyond Edge Lawrence Krauss takes on the God Squad at the World Science Festival [...] Clay Shirky's Ted Talk at the State Department: How Twitter can make history [...] PZ Myers on Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution [...] Antony Valenti goes beyond the pragmatic "shut up and calculate" mentality that stifled attempts to probe what Quantum Mecanics Really Means [...] Look out, creationists. There’s a new sheriff in town, and he talks like an Oxford don [...] |
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HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? [6.11.09]
Lera Boroditsky's Edge Bio Page From WHAT'S NEXT? Dispatches on the Future of Science Edited By Max Brockman |
Top scientists predict the future of science FOR PROPHETIC visions of the future, some people turn to horoscopes or fortune tellers. But if you really want to know what the future holds, ask a scientist. Not just a renowned, seasoned scientist, but a fresh mind, someone who is asking themselves the questions that will define the next generation of scientific thought. That's precisely what Max Brockman has done in this captivating collection of essays, written by "rising stars in their respective disciplines: those who, in their research, are tackling some of science's toughest questions and raising new ones". The result is a medley of big ideas on topics ranging from cosmology and climate change, to morality and cognitive enhancement. The collection is diverse, but one theme resounds: when it comes to the human race, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We owe our evolutionary success to our unique modes of social behaviour. Social species In their essay "Out of our minds", journalist Vanessa Woods and anthropologist Brian Hare suggest that it wasn't intelligence that led to social behaviour, but rather social behaviour that paved the way for the evolution of human intelligence. "Humans got their smarts only because we got friendlier first," they write. We are a social species, and we have our brains to thank. As Harvard University neuroscientist Jason Mitchell writes: "The most dramatic innovation introduced with the rollout of our species is not the prowess of individual minds, but the ability to harness that power across many individuals." Language allows us to do this in an unprecedented way — it serves as a vehicle for transferring one's own mental states into another's mind. Lera Boroditsky — a professor of psychology, neuroscience and symbolic systems at Stanford University — has an interesting piece about the ways in which our native language shapes the way we think about such basic categories as space, time and colour. ... |
 ON "THE IMPENDING DEMISE OF THE UNIVERSITY" JAMES O'DONNELL What strikes me most about Tapscott's essay is how far out of touch it is with current realities. Oh, I give you the NetGen kids pounding their phones to tweet each other and the hyper-multitasking and the creativity that arises in such settings. (I'm tweeting a little myself now, quite content that no one is following at http://www.twitter.com/Eugippius — all my tweets are quotations from Greek or Latin authors that I'm thinking about. Content of a new medium is always an old medium, and that can be quite powerful, bidirectionally.) I freely grant that there are dismal moments to be survived along the educational path. And I know with piercing claritiy just how challenging a business model we've chosen for ourselves. ... MARC D. HAUSER I certainly don't think of my students as blank vessels, and I don't imagine colleagues of mine having similar conceptions. Rather, I think all good teachers think that their students have heavily loaded vessels, with strong conceptions of how the world works, but often, these views are either wrong or narrow minded. The art of good teaching is to allow the student to discover alternatives, to see the elegance of a good argument, and to understand how to engage in a conceptual revolution, overturning some of their cherished beliefs. This can happen in large class rooms or in seminars. ... |
Beyond Edge Daniel Engber's Edge Question response to "What have you changed your mind about?" begets a five-part series on animal research for Slate [...] Carolyn Porco's Cassini Imaging Team releases "a series of images and movies, dramatic and stark, revealing the waves on the edges of the Keeler gap in Saturn's A ring to be mile-high giants, towering over the rings surrounding them". [...] Don Tapscott talks about his Edge Feature, "The Impending Demise of the University", on Huffington Post. 91 comments in 18 hours. [...] "Accommodation" debate: posts in chronological order (suggested presentation): Nicholas Kristof's NYT column on Richard Nisbett's "Intelligence and How to Get It" [...] Alan Alda, Edward O. Wilson at World Science Festival opening [...] Dennis Overbye at Brian Greene's Cosmic Circus. [...] Daniel C. Dennett and Richard Dawkins The Genius of Charles Darwin: The Uncut Interviews Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins The Genius of Charles Darwin: The Uncut Interviews |
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IMPENDING DEMISE OF THE UNIVERSITY [6.4.09]
In the industrial
model of student mass production, the teacher is the broadcaster. A
broadcast is by definition the transmission of information from transmitter
to receiver in a one-way, linear fashion. The teacher is the transmitter
and student is a receptor in the learning process. The formula goes
like this:
"I'm a professor and I have knowledge. You're a student, you're an
empty vessel and you don't. Get ready, here it comes. Your goal is to
take this data into your short-term memory and through practice and repetition
build deeper cognitive structures so you can recall it to me when I test
you."... The definition of a lecture has become the process in which the notes
of the teacher go to the notes of the student without going through the
brains of either. DON TAPSCOTT is the author of 13 books on new technology in society, most recently Grown Up Digital. He recently completed a $4 million dollar investigation of the Net Generation. He is Chairman of the think tank nGenera Insight and an Adjunct Professor at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
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STEWART BRAND One of the finest short essays I've seen. I'm eager to hear Smith's perspective on the Northern Rim as a climate driver. As the permafrost melts and the boreal forest marches north, what happens with methane and CO2 emissions? What happens with snow and vegetation albedo? What happens with cloud and precipitation regimes? How are coastal areas different from the vast inlands? ... ALUN ANDERSON This is a fun essay if you read it backwards. The real conclusion towards the end is that we are talking about a "conversion from land that is hardly livable to land that is somewhat livable" which is perhaps not such a big change. I don't think that the small change in winter low temperatures as climate warms is the constraint on the development of the Arctic. The fundamental constraints are the world price of natural resources and the strength of the environmental lobby (outside of Russia). There has been development in the Arctic already, long before the temperature warmed a little bit. It is just very very expensive. ... LAWRENCE C. SMITH Brand and Anderson's remarks highlight beautifully the strange dichotomy that our northern high latitudes have with the rest of the world. They are remote, marginal, and thinly populated yet also have enormous potential to play with the rest of us. One way, as Anderson describes, is through sharing of their vast resource wealth. It’s an iffy affair that depends crucially on the economics of transport, labor availability, and commodity prices; and often environmental regulation. The prospect of southern refugees pouring into the Arctic — or even wanting to — is miniscule; time will whether coming decades will see the rapid growth of human activities in the North. But the pressures are there, and climate change is just one of several including demographic, political, and resource-based. Aboriginal people are in a surprisingly good position to advance northern development and with it, themselves. ... |
NEW WILL WE DECAMP FOR THE NORTHERN RIM? [5.26.09]
Laurence C. Smith is Professor and vice chairman of geography and professor of earth and space sciences at UCLA. He studies likely impacts of northern climate change including the economic effects in the Northern Rim. Laurence C. Smith's Edge Bio Page From WHAT'S NEXT? Dispatches on the Future of Science Edited By Max Brockman |
The engrossing essay collection which offers a youthful spin on some of the most pressing scientific issues of today—and tomorrow...Kinda scary? Yes! Super smart and interesting? Definitely. — The Observer's Very Short List "A captivating collection of essays ... a medley of big ideas." — Amanda Gefter, New Scientist "The perfect collection for people who like to stay up on recent scientific research but haven't the time or expertise to go to the original sources." — Playback.stl.com WHAT'S NEXT? [5.26.09]
If these authors are the future of science, then the science of the future will be one exciting ride! Find out what the best minds of the new generation are thinking before the Nobel Committee does. A fascinating chronicle of the big, new ideas that are keeping young scientists up at night. — Daniel Gilbert "A preview of the ideas you're going to be reading about in ten years." — Steven Pinker
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ONLINE Max Brockman: PREFACE
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ONLINE Laurence C. Smith: "WILL WE DECAMP FOR THE NORTHERN RIM?" Laurence C. Smith is Professor and vice chairman of geography and professor of earth and space sciences at UCLA. He studies likely impacts of northern climate change including the economic effects in the Northern Rim. Laurence C. Smith's Edge Bio Page |
Christian Keysers: "MIRROR NEURONS: ARE WE ETHICAL BY NATURE" Christian Keysers, a neuroscientist, is professor of the social brain and scientific director at the Neuroimaging Center of the University Medical Center Groningen. His research contributed to the discovery of auditory mirror neurons and enlarged the concept of mirror neurons by applying it to emotions and sensations. Christian Keysers's Edge Bio Page |
Evolution has equipped our brains with circuits that enable us to experience what other individuals do and feel.Nick Bostrom: "HOW SHALL WE ENHANCE HUMAN BEINGS?"
Nick Bostrom, a philosopher and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. His research covers issues in the foundations of probability theory, global catastrophic risk, the ethics of human enhancement, and the effects of future technologies. Nick Bostrom's Edge Bio Page |
Given our rudimentary understanding of the human organism, particularly the brain, how can we hope to enhance such a system? It would amount to outdoing evolution....Sean Carroll : "OUR PLACE IN AN UNNATURAL UNIVERSE" Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist, is a senior research associate at Caltech. His research ranges over a number of topics in theoretical physics, including cosmology, field theory, particle physics, and gravitation. He is the author if a graduate textbook, Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity and cofounder and contributor to the Cosmic Variance blog. Sean Carroll's Edge Bio Page |
The early universe is hot and dense; the late universe is cold and dilute. Well...why is it like that? The truth is, we have no idea. Stephon H. S. Alexander: "JUST WHAT IS DARK ENERGY?"
Stephon H. S. Alexander is an assistant professor of physics and of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on unresolved problems—such as the cosmological-constant or dark-energy problem—that connect cosmology to quantum gravity and the standard model of elementary particles. Stephon H. S. Alexander's Edge Bio Page |
Dark energy, itself directly unobservable, is the most bewildering substance known, the only "stuff" that acts both on subatomic scales and across the largest distances in the cosmos.Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: "DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL BRAIN IN ADOLESCENCE" Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London.Her research focuses on the development of mentalizing, action understanding, and executive function during adolescence, using a variety of behavioral and neuroimaging methods. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore's Edge Bio Page |
Using modern brain-imaging techniques, scientists are discovering that the human brain does indeed change well beyond early childhood.Jason P. Mitchell: "WATCHING MINDS INTERACT" Perhaps the least anticipated contribution of brain imaging to psychological science has been a sudden appreciation of the centrality of social thought to the human mental repertoire. Jason P. Mitchell is principal investigator of Harvard University's Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, where he uses functional neuroimaging (fMRI) and behavioral methods to study how perceivers infer the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of others. Jason P. Mitchell's Edge Bio Page |
Matthew D. Lieberman: "WHAT MAKES BIG IDEAS STICKY?" Matthew D. Lieberman, an associate professor of psychology at UCLA, conducts research in such social cognitive neuroscience topics as self-control, self-awareness, automaticity, social rejection, and persuasion. Matthew D. Lieberman's Edge Bio Page |
Big Ideas sometimes match the structure and function of the human brain such that the brain causes us to see the world in ways that make it virtually impossible not to believe them.Joshua D. Greene: "FRUIT FLIES OF THE MORAL MIND"
Joshua D. Greene, a cognitive neuroscientist and a philosopher, is an assistant professor at Harvard University's Department of Psychology. His primary research interest is the psychological and neuroscientific study of morality, focusing on the interplay between emotional and "cognitive" processes in moral decision making. Joshua D. Greene's Edge Bio Page |
People often speak of a "moral faculty" or a "moral sense," suggesting that moral judgment is a unified phenomenon, but recent advances in the scientific study of moral judgment paint a very different picture.ONLINE Lera Boroditsky: "DO OUR LANGUAGES SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK?" Lera Boroditsky is an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and symbolic systems at Stanford University. Her research centers on the nature of mental representation and how knowledge emerges out of the interactions of mind, world, and language. Lera Boroditsky's Edge Bio Page |
Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity.Sam Cooke: "MEMORY ENHANCEMENT, MEMORY ERASURE: IS THIS THE FUTURE OF OUR PAST?"
Sam Cooke, a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a neuroscientist who probes the biology of memory. Sam Cooke's Edge Bio Page |
Once we come to understand how our memories are formed, stored, and recalled within the brain, we may be able to manipulate them—to shape our own stories. Our past—or at least our recollection of our past—may become a matter of choice.Deena Skolnick Weisberg: "THE VITAL IMPORTANCE OF IMAGINATION"
Deena Skolnick Weisberg is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the psychology department at Rutgers University. Her research focuses primarily on the cognitive skills underlying the creation and representation of non-real scenarios—particularly stories, games of pretending, and counterfactual situations—and on how those skills mature in child development. Deena Skolnick Weisberg's Edge Bio Page |
The main goal of my research is to discover the nature of the what-if mechanism and how it allows us to create and comprehend fictional worlds.ONLINE David M. Eagleman: "BRAIN TIME"
David M. Eagleman is Director of the Laboratory for Perception and Action at Baylor College of Medicine The Dynamically Reorganizing Brain; and a book of fiction titled Sum. David Eagleman's Edge Bio Page |
The days of thinking of time as a river—evenly flowing, always advancing—are over. Time perception, just like vision, is a construction of the brain and is shockingly easy to manipulate experimentally.Vanessa Woods & Brian Hare: "OUT OF OUR MINDS: HOW DID HUMANS COME DOWN FROM THE TREES AND WHY DID NO ONE FOLLOW?"
Vanessa Woods, author of It's Every Monkey for Themselves, is an award-winning journalist who has a double degree in biology and English from the University of New South Wales. She is a researcher with the Hominoid Psychology Research Group and studies the psychology of bonobos and chimpanzees in Africa. Vanessa Woods's Edge Bio Page
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In the 6 million years since hominids split from the evolutionary ancestor we share with chimpanzees and bonobos, something happened to our brains that allowed us to become master cooperators, accumulate knowledge at a rapid rate, and manipulate tools to colonize almost every corner of the planet.
Brian Hare is an anthropologist and an assistant professor in the Department of
Biological Anthropology and Anatomy at Duke University. His research centers on human cognitive evolution, and his
experience in the field includes work in Siberia, the jungle of Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo. Nathan Wolfe: "THE ALIENS AMONG US"
Nathan Wolfe is the Lorry Lokey Visiting Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University and directs the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative. His research combines methods from molecular virology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology to study the biology of viral emergence. Nathan Wolfe's Edge Bio Page |
While viruses have to infect cellular forms of life in order to complete their life cycles, this does not mean that causing devastation is their destiny. The existing equilibrium of our planet is dependent on the actions of the viral world, and their elimination would have profound consequences.Seirian Sumner: "HOW DID THE SOCIAL INSECTS BECOME SOCIAL?"
Seirian Sumner is a research fellow in evolutionary biology at the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London. Her research focuses on the evolution of sociality—how eusociality evolves and how social behavior is maintained. She has worked with a variety of bees, wasps, and ants from around the world, studying their behavior through observation, experimental manipulation, and molecular analyses, including gene expression. Seirian Sumner's Edge Bio Page |
We would like to know what the conditions and selection pressures were that tipped the ancestors of the eusocial insects over the ledge and down toward eusociality.Katerina Harvati : "EXTINCTION AND THE EVOLUTION OF HUMANKIND"
Katerina Harvati is a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology specializing in Neanderthal evolution and modern human origins. Her research interests include evolutionary theory, the relationship between morphological variation and genetic and environmental factors, and the evolution of primate and human life history. Katerina Harvati's Edge Bio Page |
It is now clear that humans (whether fossil or living) are not immune from biological forces and that extinction was (and, indeed, is) a distinct possibility.Gavin Schmidt: "WHY HASN'T SPECIALIZATION LED TO THE BALKANIZATION OF SCIENCE?" Gavin Schmidt is a climatologist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, where he models past, present, and future climate. He is a cofounder and contributing editor of RealClimate.org, which provides context and background on climate science issues that are missing in popular media coverage.Gavin Schmidt's Edge Bio Page |
Even as scientific output has increased exponentially, concerns have been raised that growing specialization will end by making it impossible for scientists in different fields to communicate, let alone collaborate.The engrossing essay collection which offers a youthful spin on some of the most pressing scientific issues of today—and tomorrow...Kinda scary? Yes! Super smart and interesting? Definitely. — The Observer's Very Short List "A captivating collection of essays ... a medley of big ideas." — Amanda Gefter, New Scientist "The perfect collection for people who like to stay up on recent scientific research but haven't the time or expertise to go to the original sources." — Playback.stl.com WHAT'S NEXT?
If these authors are the future of science, then the science of the future will be one exciting ride! Find out what the best minds of the new generation are thinking before the Nobel Committee does. A fascinating chronicle of the big, new ideas that are keeping young scientists up at night. — Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness "A preview of the ideas you're going to be reading about in ten years." — Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought "Brockman has a nose for talent." — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author The Black Swan "Capaciously accessible, these writings project a curiosity to which followers of science news will gravitate." — Booklist |
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The paradox of modern neuroscience is that the one reality you can't describe as it is presently conceived is the only reality we'll ever know, which is the subjective first person view of things. Even if you can find the circuit of cells that gives rise to that, and you can construct a good causal demonstration that you knock out these circuit of cells, and you create a zombie; even if you do that... and I know Dennett could dismantle this argument very, very quickly ... there's still a mystery that persists, and this is the old brain-body, mind-body problem, and we don't simply feel like three pounds of meat. CHIMERAS OF EXPERIENCE [5.21.09]
JONAH LEHRER, Contributing Editor at Wired and the author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist, has written for The New Yorker, Nature, Seed, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.
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The Third Culture has grown beyond Edge, as scientists have become increasingly public — and even famous — figures. Seed approached six thinkers to ask where we are now: Whether the Two Cultures are still divided, and what role the Third Culture is playing. SEED CELEBRATES THE QUESTIONS C.P. SNOW RAISED 50 YEARS AGO BY ASKING: WHERE ARE WE NOW? Introduction "Are we beyond the Two Cultures?" asks Seed Magazine in its May 7 commemoration of the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow's Two Cultures lecture. Readers following Edge since it began 12 years, 285 editions, and 2,939,953 words ago, know how to answer this question. Fortunately, Seed follows up and asks "Where are we now?" It's been clear for several years that the third culture I predicted I fifteen years earlier has been in need of an update. "There are encouraging signs," I wrote in "The Expanding Third Culture" (2006), "that the third culture includes scholars in the humanities who think the way scientists do. Like their colleagues in the sciences, they believe there is a real world and their job is to understand it and explain it. They test their ideas in terms of logical coherence, explanatory power, conformity with empirical facts. They do not defer to intellectual authorities: Anyone's ideas can be challenged, and understanding and knowledge accumulate through such challenges. They are not reducing the humanities to biological and physical principles, but they do believe that art, literature, history, politics—a whole panoply of humanist concerns—need to take the sciences into account." Seed has played in this field of ideas, creating their own kind of culture, one that embraces artists, architects, novelists designers, musicians, etc., presenting their work in vibrant and imaginative ways. In the videos below, Seed asks six notable scientists, authors, thinkers (all also early Edge contributors) to comment on where the third culture is today.
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"For those seeking substance over sheen, the occasional videos released at Edge.org hit the mark. The Edge Foundation community is a circle, mainly scientists but also other academics, entrepreneurs, and cultural figures. ... Edge's long-form interview videos are a deep-dive into the daily lives and passions of its subjects, and their passions are presented without primers or apologies. The decidedly noncommercial nature of Edge's offerings, and the egghead imprimatur of the Edge community, lend its videos a refreshing air, making one wonder if broadcast television will ever offer half the off-kilter sparkle of their salon chatter. — Boston Globe
Mahzarin Banaji, John Bargh, Samuel Barondes, Yochai Benkler, Paul Bloom, Rodney Brooks, Hubert Burda, George Church, Nicholas Christakis, Brian Cox, Iain Couzin, Helena Cronin, Paul Davies, Daniel C. Dennett, David Deutsch,Dennis Dutton, Jared Diamond, Freeman Dyson, Drew Endy, Peter Galison, Murray Gell-Mann, David Gelernter, Neil Gershenfeld, Anthony Giddens, Gerd Gigerenzer, Daniel Gilbert, Rebecca Goldstein, John Gottman, Brian Greene, Anthony Greenwald, Alan Guth, David Haig, Marc D. Hauser, Walter Isaacson, Steve Jones, Daniel Kahneman, Stuart Kauffman, Ken Kesey, Stephen Kosslyn, Lawrence Krauss, Ray Kurzweil, Jaron Lanier, Jonah Lehrer, Armand Leroi, Seth Lloyd, Gary Marcus, John Markoff, Ernst Mayr, Marvin Minsky, Sendhil Mullainathan, Dennis Overbye, Dean Ornish, Elaine Pagels, Steven Pinker, Jordan Pollack, Lisa Randall, Martin Rees, Matt Ridley, Lee Smolin, Elisabeth Spelke, Scott Sampson, Robert Sapolsky, Dimitar Sasselov, Stephen Schneider, Martin Seligman, Robert Shapiro, Clay Shirky, Gavin Schmidt, Lee Smolin, Dan Sperber, Paul Steinhardt, Steven Strogatz, Seirian Sumner, Leonard Susskind, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Timothy Taylor, Richard Thaler, Robert Trivers, Neil Turok, J.Craig Venter, Edward O. Wilson, Lewis Wolpert, Richard Wrangham, Philip Zimbardo |
After all, we are witnessing the Waterloo of Wall Street. So, ironically, it was in the Canadian province of Ontario, in the small town of Waterloo, that a meeting was convened to shed new light on the world's financial debacle. In a densely packed conference schedule, the general approach was to take measure of the crisis not only in a new way, but with instruments never used before. Even the venue for event, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, was itself programmatic, though invitations to participate were sent far beyond the boundaries of economics and physics to mathematicians, lawyers, behavioral economists, risk managers, evolutionary biologists, complexity theorists and computer scientists.— Jordan Mejias, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung THE ECONOMIC MANHATTAN PROJECT — THE VIDEOS In December, Edge published "Can Science Help Solve the Economic Crisis?" by Mike Brown, Stuart Kauffman, Zoe-Vonna Palmrose, and Lee Smolin. The paper was prompted by a suggestion by Eric Weinstein for an "Economic Manhattan Project". This led to the Perimeter Institute conference: "The Economic Crisis and its Implications for The Science of Economics". According to the organizers, "Concerns over the current financial situation are giving rise to a need to evaluate the very mathematics that underpins economics as a predictive and descriptive science. A growing desire to examine economics through the lens of diverse scientific methodologies — including physics and complex systems — is making way to a meeting of leading economists and theorists of finance together with physicists, mathematicians, biologists and computer scientists in an effort to evaluate current theories of markets and identify key issues that can motivate new directions for research."
The conference began on May 1st, with a day of invited talks by leading experts to a public audience on the status of economic and financial theory in light of the crisis. I was pleased to be invited and to listen to the first day of public talks. Among those participating were Nouriel Roubini, Nassim Taleb, Emanuel Derman, Andrew Lo, Richard Alexander, Eric Weinstein, introduced by Theoretical Physicist Neil Turok, who recently moved Cambridge to become the Executive Director of Perimeter, and Lee Smolin, a founding member and research physicist. Doyne Farmer of the Santa Fe Institute, and one of the original Edge contributors, was also in attendance.
Eric Weinstein set the stage with a statement on his talk, which began the proceedings:
Jordan Mejias, arts correspondent for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and frequent Edge contributor, attended as well. His interesting report ran on the front page of the FAZ Feuilleton.
I am pleased to present the video presentations of Eric Weinstein; Nouriel Roubini; Nassim Taleb, a panel discussion of Eric Weinstein, Nouriel Roubini, Richard Freeman, and Nassim Taleb; Emanuel Derman, Andrew Lo, Richard Alexander; a panel discussion of Emanuel Derman, Andrew Lo, Richard Alexander, Bill Janeway, Zoe-Vonna Palmrose; and Doyne Farmer. |
A SCIENCE LESS DISMAL: WELCOME TO THE ECONOMIC MANHATTAN PROJECT
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INTERPRETING THE FAILURE TO PREDICT FINANCIAL CRISES AND RECESSION
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PANEL DISCUSSION |
SCIENTISTS, SCIENSTERS, ANTI-SCIENTISTS & ECONOMISTS |
THE ADAPTIVE MARKETS HYPOTHESIS AND FINANCIAL CRISIS |
HUMAN EVOLUTION AND ECONOMICS
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PANEL DISCUSSION
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PHYSICISTS ATTEMPT TO SCALE THE IVORY TOWERS OF FINANCE (TEN YEARS LATER, LOOKING FORWARD)
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The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are. ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PUBLICATION OF
The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers isn the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are. Increasingly, The Third Culture has moved into the mainstream and the questions it is asking are those that inform us about ourselves and the world around us. I am pleased to honor the memory of C.P. Snow and his "Two Cultures" by presenting "The Third Culture" on Edge, from 1997 to today (2,939,953 words). John Brockman, Editor |
Today, May 7, 2009, marks the 50th Anniversary of the publication of C.P. Snow's Rede Lecture, "The Two Cultures". In a second edition of The Two Cultures, published in 1963, Snow added a new essay, "The Two Cultures: A Second Look," in which he optimistically suggested that a new culture, a "third culture," would emerge and close the communications gap between the literary intellectuals and the scientists. In Snow's third culture, the literary intellectuals would be on speaking terms with the scientists. This never happened. Although I borrowed Snow's phrase in my 1991 essay The threat of deadly new viruses is on the rise due to population growth, climate change and increased contact between humans and animals. What the world needs to do to prepare. THE AGE OF PANDEMIC [5.7.09]  LAWRENCE B. BRILLIANT, is chairman of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee and chief philanthropy evangelist at Google.He is a medical doctor who was a professor of international health and epidemiology at the University of Michigan from 1976-1986 and prior to that he lived in India and worked as a medical officer for the United Nations World Health Organization helping lead the successful effort to eradicate smallpox. He is a founder and a director of the Seva Foundation, an international organization dedicated to fighting blindness. Brilliant will soon begin work as president of the Skoll Urgent Threats Fund. |
My organization and its collaborators have recently set up virus monitoring stations in China, Laos, Madagascar, Malaysia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Yet this is just a beginning. To establish a worldwide safety net, we would need to monitor thousands of people exposed to animals in dozens of sites around the world — not only hunters but also people working on farms and in animal markets. It is important that the American government make pandemic prevention a priority and devote more resources to expanding disease surveillance in people and in wild and domestic animal populations throughout the world. HOW TO PREVENT A PANDEMIC
NATHAN WOLFE is the Lorry Lokey Visiting Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University and directs the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (www.gvfi.org). His research combines methods from molecular virology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology to study the biology of viral emergence. |
MADDOX BY HIS SUCCESSOR [4.26.09]
It has been said of the archetypal Great Man (by Nietzsche) that "he is colder, harder, less hesitating and without fear of opinion". To me, whether Maddox was a Great Man or not, that seems a fair description. Nietzsche also said that such a person "wears a mask: there is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame." Maddox was as capable as anyone of openly enjoying people's company or, when necessary, of good poker-like negotiation. He was someone for whom collegiality mattered, but for whom it was ultimately impersonal. He was a good judge of people, often supportive, never (as far as I know) betraying the interests of his staff whereas, in professional contexts, he could be ruthless and always retained a cool-headed detachment. These qualities, combined with his journalistic virtuosities, made him a controversial editor but also a great one. PHILIP CAMPBELL succeeded John Maddox as editor of Nature in 1995. |
"We met, he kissed me, and then it all fell apart. We just couldn't agree about Jerry Fodor and Bill Bryson. A poignant pic." — Armand Marie Leroi EDGE LONDON DINNER — 2009 PHOTO ALBUM
Terry Gilliam & Brian Eno & Alfonso Cuarón & Armand Leroi & Andrew Franklin, Profile Books & Bruno Maddox & Roger Highfield, New Scientist & Richard Dawkins & Sally Gaminera, Transworld Publishers & Brenda Maddox & Katinka Matson Edge Foundation & Maja Hoffmann, Luma Foundation & Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Gallery & Toby Coppel & Stefan McGrath, Penguin Press & Andrea Cane, Mondadori & Russell Weinberger, Edge Foundation & Peter Sillem, S. Fisher Verlag & Gino, Zilli Fish & James Geary & John Lloyd, QI & Thomas Rathnow, Siedler Verlag & Britta Egetemeier, Piper Verlag & Rupert Sheldrake & Nicholas Humphrey & Vittorio Bo , Genoa Science Festival & Lewis Wolpert & Tom Standage, The Economist & Phillip Campbell, Nature & Jeremy Webb, New Scientist & Helen Conford, Penguin Press & Mark Henderson, The Times; Max Brockman, Brockman, Inc. & Albert Bonnier, Bonnier Publishing & Slav Todorov, Quercus Publishing & Alok Jha, The Guardian & Anjana Ahuja, The Times & AC Grayling & Dominque LeGlu, Éditions Robert Laffont & Will Goodlad, Penguin Press & Matt Ridley & Lala Ward & David Goodhart, Prospect & Timothy Taylor & Geoffrey Carr, The Economist & Nick Bostrom & Armand Leroi & Andrew Franklin, Profile Books [...Continue to Photo Album of the Edge London Dinner - 2009] |
The central idea we were working on was this idea of de-localized information — information for which I didn't care what computer it was stored on. It didn't depend on any particular computer. I didn't know the identities of other computers in the ensemble that I was working on. I just knew myself and the cybersphere, or sometimes we called it the tuplesphere, or just a bunch of information floating around. We used the analogy — we talked about helium balloons. We used a million ways to try and explain this idea. LORD OF THE CLOUD  Video 1
Today, Bill Gates's name is synonymous with Microsoft Basic. A mention of Bill Joy in the press is usally accompanied by acknowledgement of his early development work on UNIX. Ted Nelson is always associated with hypertext. Jaron Lanier is often identified and credited with his pioneering work on virtual reality. But rarely are "cloud computing" and "lifestreams" (or "lifestreaming") presented in connection with, and with proper credit to, the visionary behind them. Edge asked John Markoff, who covers technology for The New York Times, and first brought Gelernter's ideas to a wide reading public with his 1991 New York Times profile, and social software seer Clay Shirky. a professor at NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), to talk to Gelernter about his ideas. The roundtable took place in New York City on April 25, 2009. DAVID
GELERNTER is a professor of computer science at Yale and chief scientist
at Mirror Worlds Technologies (New Haven). His research centers on information
management, parallel programming, and artificial intelligence. The "tuple
spaces" introduced in Nicholas Carriero and Gelernter's Linda system
(1983) are the basis of many computer communication systems worldwide. He is the
author of Mirror Worlds, and Drawiing
a Life: Surviving the Unabomber. JOHN MARKOFF covers the computer industry and technology for The New York Times. He is the coauthor ofTakedown: The Pursuit and Capture of America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw (with Tsutomu Shimomura), and author of What The Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. CLAY SHIRKY is an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology—how our networks shape culture and vice-versa. He is the author of Here Comes Everybody.
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DO WOMEN HAVE BETTER EMPATHY THAN MEN?
Simon Baron-Cohen In this Edge Video, psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen looks at one test he's developed to see if there are differences between males and females in the mind. "It turns out that when you test newborn babies—this experiment was done at the age of 24 hours old, where we had 100 babies who were tested looking at two kinds of objects—a human face and a mechanical mobile. And they were filmed for how long they looked at each of these two objects. What you can see here is that on the first day of life, we had more boys than girls looking for longer at the mechanical mobile and more girls than boys looking at the face. So you can see that these differences when they emerge, first of all they seem to emerge very early—at birth—suggesting that there may be a biological component to a sex difference in, in this case, interest in faces; and secondly, they don't apply to all males or all females, these differences emerge as statistical trends when you compare groups."
SIMON BARON-COHEN is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. His several books include Mindblindness; and The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain. Simon Baron-Cohen's Edge Bio Page
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Science is the greatest achievement of human history so far. I say that as a huge admirer of the Renaissance and Renaissance art, music and literature, but the world-transforming power of science and the tremendous insights that we've gained show that this is an enterprise, a wonderful collective enterprise, that is a great achievement of humanity. How are we going to make more people party to that? That's a pressing question for our century. PRESSING QUESTIONS FOR OUR CENTURY [4.16.09]
AC GRAYLING is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. His most recent book is Ideas That Matter.
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AVAILABLE IN BOOKSTORES AND ONLINE WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT "A
great event in the Anglo-Saxon culture."
Praise for "The splendidly enlightened Edge website (www.edge.org) has rounded off each year of inter-disciplinary debate by asking its heavy-hitting contributors to answer one question. I strongly recommend a visit." The Independent "A great event in the Anglo-Saxon culture." El Mundo "As fascinating and weighty as one would imagine." The Independent "They are the intellectual elite, the brains the rest of us rely on to make sense of the universe and answer the big questions. But in a refreshing show of new year humility, the world's best thinkers have admitted that from time to time even they are forced to change their minds." The Guardian "Even the world's best brains have to admit to being wrong sometimes: here, leading scientists respond to a new year challenge." The Times "Provocative ideas put forward today by leading figures."The Telegraph The world's finest minds have responded with some of the most insightful, humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual treasure trove. ... Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening reading you can do for the new year. Read it now." San Francisco Chronicle "As in the past, these world-class thinkers have responded to impossibly open-ended questions with erudition, imagination and clarity." The News & Observer "A jolt of fresh thinking...The answers address a fabulous array of issues. This is the intellectual equivalent of a New Year's dip in the lake — bracing, possibly shriek-inducing, and bound to wake you up." The Globe and Mail "Answers ring like scientific odes to uncertainty, humility and doubt; passionate pleas for critical thought in a world threatened by blind convictions." The Toronto Star "For an exceptionally high quotient of interesting ideas to words, this is hard to beat. ...What a feast of egg-head opinionating!" National Review Online |
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WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? "The optimistic visions seem not just wonderful but plausible." Wall Street Journal "Persuasively upbeat." O, The Oprah Magazine "Our greatest minds provide nutshell insights on how science will help forge a better world ahead." Seed "Uplifting...an enthralling book." The Mail on Sunday |
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WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?
"Danger — brilliant minds at work...A brilliant bok: exhilarating, hilarious, and chilling." The Evening Standard (London) "A selection of the most explosive ideas of our age." Sunday Herald "Provocative" The Independent "Challenging notions put forward by some of the world's sharpest minds" Sunday Times "A titillating compilation" The Guardian "Reads like an intriguing dinner party conversation among great minds in science" Discover |
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WHAT WE BELIEVE BUT CANNOT PROVE?
"Whether or not we believe proof or prove belief, understanding belief itself becomes essential in a time when so many people in the world are ardent believers." LA Times "Belief appears to motivate even the most rigorously scientific minds. It stimulates and challenges, it tricks us into holding things to be true against our better judgment, and, like scepticism -its opposite -it serves a function in science that is playful as well as thought-provoking. not we believe proof or prove belief, understanding belief itself becomes essential in a time when so many people in the world are ardent believers." The Times "John Brockman is the PT Barnum of popular science. He has always been a great huckster of ideas." The Observer "An unprecedented roster of brilliant minds, the sum of which is nothing short of an oracle — a book ro be dog-eared and debated." Seed "Scientific pipedreams at their very best." The Guardian "Makes for some astounding reading." Boston Globe "Fantastically stimulating...It's like the crack cocaine of the thinking world.... Once you start, you can't stop thinking about that question." BBC Radio 4 "Intellectual and creative magnificence" The Skeptical Inquirer |
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"Stellar" "Important" |
 [2006] "Irresistible" "Excellent" "Fascinating" |
 [2006] "incisive" "deeply passionate" "engaging" |
 [2004] "Intriguing" "Engrossing" "Invigorating" |
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 [1994] "Rousing" |
 [2000] "Dazzling" "Wondrous" "Outstanding" |
 [2002] "Provocative" "Captivating" "Mind-stretching" |
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John Brockman, Editor and Publisher |
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