What We Believe but Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty (Repost)
What We Believe but Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty
Harper Perennial | February 28, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0060841818 | 272 pages | PDF | 1 MB
Harper Perennial | February 28, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0060841818 | 272 pages | PDF | 1 MB
The title's question was posed on Edge.org (an online intellectual clearing house), challenging more than 100 intellectuals of every stripe—from Richard Dawkins to Ian McEwan—to confess the personal theories they cannot demonstrate with certainty. The results, gathered by literary agent and editor Brockman, is a stimulating collection of micro-essays (mainly by scientists) divulging many of today's big unanswered questions reaching across the plane of human existence. Susan Blackmore, a lecturer on evolutionary theory, believes "it is possible to live happily and morally without believing in free will," and Daniel Goleman believes children today are "unintended victims of economic and technological progress." Other beliefs are more mundane and one is highly mathematically specific. Many contributors open with their discomfort at being asked to discuss unproven beliefs, which itself is an interesting reflection of the state of science.