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"Big,
deep and ambitious questions....breathtaking in scope. Keep watching
The World Question Center." —
New
Scientist (editorial)
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1998
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| "What
Questions Are You Asking Yourself?" |
"A
site that has raised electronic discourse on the Web to a whole
new level.... Genuine learning seems to be going on here."
— Atlantic
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1999
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| "What
Is The Most Important Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?" |
"...Thoughtful and often surprising
answers ....a fascinating survey of intellectual and creative
wonders of the world ..... Reading them reminds me of how wondrous
our world is." — Bill Gates,
New York Times Syndicated Column
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2000
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| "What
Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?" |
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"Don't
assume for a second that Ted Koppel, Charlie Rose and the editorial
high command at the New York Times have a handle on all
the pressing issues of the day.... a lengthy list of profound,
esoteric and outright entertaining responses. — San Jose
Mercury News ("Web Site for Intellectuals Inspires Serious
Thinking")
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2001
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| "What
Questions Have Disappeared?" |
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"Responses
to this year's question are deliciously creative... the variety
astonishes. Edge continues to launch intellectual skyrockets
of stunning brilliance. Nobody in the world is doing what Edge
is doing." (Arts & Letters Daily)
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Paul
Davies
Does
the existence of these other universes amount to more than an
intellectual exercise? Can we ever discover that the hypothesized
alternative universes are really there? If not, is the multiverse
not simply theology dressed up in techno jargon?
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"I
can repeat the question, but am I bright enought to ask it?"
2002
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The
5th Annual Edge Question is a meta-question that reflects
the spirit of the EDGE motto: "To arrive at the edge of
the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated
minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other
the questions they are asking themselves."
WHAT
IS YOUR QUESTION? ... WHY?
I
have asked Edge contributors for "hard-edge"
questions, derived from empirical results or experience specific
to their expertise, that render visible the deeper meanings
of our lives, redefine who and what we are. The goal is a series
of interrogatives in which "thinking smart prevails over
the anaesthesiology of wisdom."
Happy
New Year!
John
Brockman
Publisher & Editor
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Kevin Kelly
What is your heresy?
I've noticed that the more scientifically educated a person is,
the more likely they will harbor a quiet heresy. This is a strongly
held belief that goes against the grain of their peers, something
not in the accepted cannon of their friends and colleagues. Often
the person finds it difficult to fully justify their own belief.
It may or may not be believed by others outside their circle,
that doesn't matter. What is important is that this view is not
held by people they respect and admire. It's become almost a game
for me to uncover a person's heresy because I've found that this
unconventional view — held with much effort against the tide
of their peer's views — tells me more about them than does
the bulk of their well-thought out, well-reasoned, and well argued
conventional views. The more unexpected the belief is, the more
I like them.
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Paul Davies
Does the existence of these other universes
amount to more than an intellectual exercise? Can we ever discover
that the hypothesized alternative universes are really there?
If not, is the multiverse not simply theology dressed up in techno
jargon?
Universe or multiverse, that is the question? Of late, it
is fashionable among leading physicists and cosmologists to suppose
that alongside the physical world we see lies a stupendous array
of alternative realities, some resembling our universe, others
very different. The multiverse theory comes in several varieties,
but in the most ambitious the "other universes" have
different physical laws. Only in a tiny fraction of universes
will the laws come out just right, by pure accident, for conscious
beings such as ourselves to emerge and marvel at how bio-friendly
their world appears. The multiverse has replaced God as an explanation
for the appearance of design in the structure of the physical
world. Like God, the agency concerned lies beyond direct observation,
inferred by inductive reasoning from the properties of the one
universe we do see. The meta-question is, does the existence of
these other universes amount to more than an intellectual exercise?
Can we ever discover that the hypothesized alternative universes
are really there? If not, is the multiverse not simply theology
dressed up in techno jargon? And finally, could there be a Third
Way, in which the ingenious features of the universe are explained
neither by an Infinite Designer Mind, nor by an Infinite Invisible
Multiverse, but by an entirely new principle of explanation.
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