"What
Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?"
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| The
natural gift of consciousness should be treasured all the more
for its transience. |
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The
answers...exert an un- questionable morbid fascination — those
are the very ideas that scientists cannot confess in their
technical
papers.
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"Fate
largo alle «beautiful minds» di Roberto Casati;;
"La
terza cultura di John Brockman" di Armando Massarenti |
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God
(or Not), Physics and, of Course, Love: Scientists Take a Leap:
Fourteen scientists ponder everything from string theory to true
love. |
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| Space
Without Time, Time Without Rest: John Brockman's Question for the
Republic of Wisdom—It
can be more thrilling to start the New Year with a good question
than with a good intention. That's what John Brockman is doing for
the eight time in a row. |
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| What
do you believe to be true, even though you can’t prove it?
John Brockman asked over a hundred scientists and
intellectuals... more» ... Edge |
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| That's
what online magazine The Edge - the World Question Center asked
over 120 scientists, futurists, and other interesting minds. Their
answers are sometimes short and to the point |
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| Science's
Scourge of Believers Declares His Faith in Darwin... |
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| Singolare
inchiesta in usa di un sito internet. Ha chiesto ai signori della
ricerca di svelare i loro "atti di fede". Sono arrivate
le risposte piu' imprevedibili i fantasmi dello scienziato: non
ho prove ma ci credo. |
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| To
celebrate the new year, online magazine Edge asked some
leading thinkers a simple question: What do you believe but cannot
prove? Here is a selection of their responses... |
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| Scientists
dream too - imagine that |
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"Fantastically
stimulating ...Once
you start, you can't stop thinking about that question. It's like
the crack cocaine of the thinking world." — BBC Radio
4 |
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| Scientists,
increasingly, have become our public intellectuals, to whom we look
for explanations and solutions. These may be partial and imperfect,
but they are more satisfactory than the alternatives. |
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Bangladesh—The
cynic and the optimist, the agnostic and the believer, the
rationalist and the obscurantist, the scientist and the speculative
philosopher, the realist and the idealist-all converge on
a critical point in their thought process where reasoning
loses its power. |
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Il
Sole 24 Ore-Domenica Segnalate le vostre cuioosita, chiederemo
riposta alle persone piu autorevoli |
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| "So
now, into the breach comes John Brockman, the literary agent
and gadfly, whose online scientific salon, Edge.org, has become
one of the most interesting stopping places on the Web. He begins
every year by posing a question to his distinguished roster of
authors and invited guests. Last year he asked what sort of counsel
each would offer George W. Bush as the nation's top science adviser.
This time the question is "What's your law?" |
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| "John
Brockman, a New York literary agent, writer and impresario of
the online salon Edge, figures it is time for more scientists
to get in on the whole naming thing...As a New Year's exercise,
he asked scores of leading thinkers in the natural and social
sciences for "some bit of wisdom, some rule of nature, some
law-like pattern, either grand or small, that you've noticed
in the universe that might as well be named after you." |
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| "John
Brockman has posted an intriguing question on his Edge website.
Brockman advises his would-be legislators to stick to the scientific
disciplines." |
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| "Everything
answers to the rule of law. Nature. Science. Society. All of
it obeys a set of codes...It's the thinker's challenge to put
words to these unwritten rules. Do so, and he or she may go down
in history. Like a Newton or, more recently, a Gordon Moore,
who in 1965 coined the most cited theory of the technological
age, an observation on how computers grow exponentially cheaper
and more powerful... Recently, John Brockman went looking for
more laws." |
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| "In
2002, he [Brockman] asked respondents to imagine that they had
been nominated as White House science adviser and that President
Bush had sought their answer to 'What are the pressing scientific
issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice
on how I can begin to deal with them?'Here are excerpts of some
of the responses. " |
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| "Edge's
combination of political engagement and
blue-sky thinking makes stimulating reading
for anyone seeking a glimpse into the next
decade." |
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"Dear
W: Scientists Offer
President Advice on Policy" |
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"There
are 84 responses,
ranging in topic
from advanced nanotechnology
to the psychology
of foreign cultures,
and lots of ideas
regarding science,
technology, politics,
and education."
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| "Brockman's
thinkers of the 'Third Culture,' whether
they, like Dawkins, study evolutionary
biology at Oxford or, like Alan Alda, portray
scientists on Broadway, know no taboos.
Everything is permitted, and nothing is
excluded from this intellectual game." |
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"The
responses are generally written in an
engaging, casual style (perhaps encouraged
by the medium of e-mail), and are often
fascinating and thought - provoking....
These are all wonderful, intelligent
questions..."
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| "We
are interested in ‘thinking smart,'" declares Brockman
on the site, "we are not interested in the anesthesiology
of ‘wisdom.'" |
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"INSPIRED
ARENA: Edge has been bringing together the world's foremost
scientific thinkers since 1998, and the response to September
11 was measured and uplifting."
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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." |
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"Once
a year, John Brockman of New York, a writer and literary
agent who represents many scientists, poses a question in
his online journal, The Edge, and invites the thousand or
so people on his mailing list to answer it."
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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.
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| "A terrific, thought provoking site." |
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| "The
Power of Big Ideas" |
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| "The
Nominees for Best Invention Of the Last Two Millennia Are .
. ." |
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"...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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"Big,
deep and ambitious questions....breathtaking in
scope. Keep watching The World Question Center."
— New Scientist
The
Edge Annual Question—2005
"Fantastically
stimulating...Once you start, you can't stop thinking
about that question." —
BBC Radio 4 |
| "WHAT
DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE
IT?"
Great
minds can sometimes guess the truth before they
have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot
called it having the "esprit de divination").
What do you believe is true even though you cannot
prove it? |
|
The 2005 Edge Question has generated many
eye-opening responses from a "who's who" of third culture scientists and
science-minded thinkers. The 120 contributions
comprise a document of 60,000 words.
The New York Times ("Science Times") and Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung ("Feuilliton")
published excepts
in
their print and online editions simultaneously
with Edge publication. Other international
papers followed (below).
In
a front-page article, Il Sole 24 Ore,
Italy's largest financial daily, announced the
"Edge Question Forum" in "Domenica",
the weekend Arts & Culture section. The Forum,
an ongoing project designed to bring third culture
thinking to Italy, features excerpts from the
Edge responses in addition to articles
solicited rom Italian humanist intellectuals and
scientists.
In
the responses to this year's question,
there's a focus on consciousness, on
knowing,
on ideas of truth and proof. If pushed to generalize,
I would say it is a commentary on how we are
dealing
with the idea of certainty.
We are in the age of "searchculture", in which
Google and other search engines are leading us
into a future rich with an abundance of correct
answers along with an accompanying naïve
sense of certainty. In the future, we will be
able to answer the question, but will we be bright
enough to ask it?
This is an alternative path. It may be that it's
okay not to be certain, but to have a hunch, and
to perceive on that basis. There is also evidence
here that the scientists are thinking beyond their
individual fields. Yes, they are engaged in the
science of their own areas of research, but more
importantly they are also thinking deeply about
creating new understandings about the limits of
science, of seeing science not just as a question
of knowing things, but as a means of tuning into
the deeper questions of who we are and how we
know.
It may sound as if I am referring to a group of
intellectuals, and not scientists. In fact, I
refer to both. In 1991, I suggested the idea of
a third culture, which "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. "
I believe that the scientists of the third culture
are the pre-eminent intellectuals of our time.
But I can't prove it.
Happy
New Year!
John
Brockman
Publisher & Editor |
| This year's Edge Question was suggested by Nicholas Humphrey. |
  
April
2005
I call it "Broks's
paradox": the condition of believing that
the mind is separate from the body, even though
you know this belief to be untrue
Paul Broks
I've
been browsing the "World Question
Centre" at edge.org, the website
for thinking folk with time on their
hands. The 2005 Edge question
is a good one: "What do you believe
is true even though you cannot prove
it?"
...Ian McEwan" makes a telling point. "What I believe but cannot
prove," he says, "is that no part of my consciousness will survive
my death." His enlightened fellow Edge contributors will
take this as a given, but they may not appreciate its significance, which
is that belief in an afterlife "divides the world crucially, and much
damage has been done to thought as well as to persons by those who are
certain that there is a life, a better, more important life, elsewhere." The
natural gift of consciousness should be treasured all the more for its
transience. |
Society
LO
QUE CREEN LOS CIENTIFICOS
Domingo 20 of February of 2005
JAVIER
SAMPEDRO, Madrid
John Brockman, writer, publisher and events manager for the science elite,
has asked a hundred researchers the question, What do you believe is
true even though you cannot prove it? The answers are posted at his e-magazine
Edge (www.edge.org), and they exert an unquestionable
morbid fascination—those are the very ideas that scientists cannot
confess in their technical papers.
Since
the Big Bang, matter has been busy organizing
itself on particles, atoms, stars, planets,
organic compounds and (on Earth at least)
bacteria, animals and conscious brains. That
is what scientists think proved. But their
unproven beliefs tell another story, or thousand
others.
“I
doubt that the Big Bang is the beginning
of time, I strongly suspect that our history
extends backwards before that”, writes
in Edge Lee Smolin, theoretical
physicist. He cannot prove it, but he believes
it. As his colleague Lawrence Krauss believes,
without proofs too, that “there are
likely to be a large, and possibly infinite
number of other universes out there, some
of which may be experiencing Big Bangs at
the current moment”.
God
does not play dices, said Einstein, but Alexander
Vilenkin thinks he played dices too much…
Spanish
original...
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