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The bestselling editor of This Explains Everything brings together 175 of the world’s most brilliant minds to tackle Edge.org’s 2014 question: What scientific idea has become a relic blocking human progress?
Each year, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org—”The world’s smartest website” (The Guardian)—challenges some of the world’s greatest scientists, artists, and philosophers to answer a provocative question crucial to our time. In 2014 he asked 175 brilliant minds to ponder: What scientific idea needs to be put aside in order to make room for new ideas to advance? The answers are as surprising as they are illuminating. In :
- Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior
- Richard Dawkins renounces essentialism
- Sherry Turkle reevaluates our expectations of artificial intelligence
- Geoffrey West challenges the concept of a “Theory of Everything”
- Andrei Linde suggests that our universe and its laws may not be as unique as we think
- Martin Rees explains why scientific understanding is a limitless goal
- Nina Jablonski argues to rid ourselves of the concept of race
- Alan Guth rethinks the origins of the universe
- Hans Ulrich Obrist warns against glorifying unlimited economic growth
- and much more.
Profound, engaging, thoughtful, and groundbreaking, This Idea Must Die will change your perceptions and understanding of our world today . . . and tomorrow.
- Sales Rank: #22203 in Books
- Published on: 2015-02-17
- Released on: 2015-02-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .95" w x 5.31" l, 1.21 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 592 pages
Review
Praise for This Idea Must Die:“Take a look. No matter who you are, you are bound to find something that will drive you crazy.” (New York Times)
“Garrulous and argumentative. ... Brockman’s formula is tried and tested. Better still, it shows no sign of getting old.” (New Scientist)
“This Idea Must Die is an excellent gathering of thoughts, rants and lamentations to add to your book list.” (Forbes)
“Discern[s] the zeitgeist of ideas with which some of our era’s greatest minds are tussling. ... Profound. ... Provocative. ... Mind-stretching.” (Brain Pickings)
“Fascinating. ... Thought-provoking.” (Science News)
“A fascinating smorgasbord of 175 short essays about every field and facet of research.” (Science News)
“Brockman succeeds in presenting scientific work that will appeal to a variety of readers, no matter their background.” (Publishers Weekly)
Praise for Edge:“Physics, statistics, robotics, linguistics, medicine-all are zestfully scrutinized in this exuberant, mind-blowing gathering of innovative thinkers.” (Booklist)
“An epicenter of bleeding-edge insight across science, technology, and beyond.” (Atlantic Monthly)
“The brightest minds in the known universe.” (Vanity Fair)
“A forum for the world’s most brilliant minds.” (The Observer (UK))
“A provocative and informative compilation.” (Library Journal)
From the Back Cover
Reporting from the cutting edge of scientific discovery, today's visionary thinkers target the greatest roadblocks to innovation.
Few truly new ideas are developed without first abandoning old ones. In the past, discoveries often had to wait for the rise of the next generation to see questions in a new light and let go of old truisms. Today, in a world that is defined by a rapid rate of change, staying on the cutting edge has as much to do with shedding outdated notions as adopting new ones. In this spirit, John Brockman, publisher of the online salon Edge.org ("the world's smartest website"—The Guardian), asked 175 of the world's most influential scientists, economists, artists, and philosophers: What scientific idea is ready for retirement?
Jared Diamond explores the diverse ways that new ideas emerge * Nassim Nicholas Taleb takes down the standard deviation * Richard Thaler and novelist Ian McEwan reveal the usefulness of "bad" ideas * Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior * Richard Dawkins renounces essentialism * Sherry Turkle reevaluates our expectations of artificial intelligence * Physicist Andrei Linde suggests that our universe and its laws may not be as unique as we think * Martin Rees explains why scientific understanding is a limitless goal * Alan Guth rethinks the origins of the universe * Sam Harris argues that our definition of science is too narrow * Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek disputes the division between mind and matter * Lawrence Krauss challenges the notion that the laws of physics were preordained * plus contributions from Daniel Goleman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Nicholas Carr, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Matt Ridley, Stewart Brand, Sean Carroll, Daniel C. Dennett, Helen Fisher, Douglas Rushkoff, Lee Smolin, Kevin Kelly, Freeman Dyson, and others.
About the Author
The publisher of the online science salon Edge.org, John Brockman is the editor of the national bestsellers This Idea Must Die, This Explains Everything, This Will Make You Smarter, and other volumes.
Most helpful customer reviews
69 of 71 people found the following review helpful.
What did I just read?
By Black Canary
I knew it was micro-essays, but you'd think that they could at least have a bit more content to them. Most of them felt like they were written as a half-baked ramble that slipped out after a dinner party in which the author drank too much wine and received too much encouragement. The claim that STEM majors need more liberal arts background is all too apparent in this compilation, as many of the essays were almost incomprehensible or stale (even at 3 pages!). However, I did thoroughly enjoy Jared Diamond's pokes at the very question Edge.org posed, and Nowak's sore jab at "the cult" of inclusive fitness researchers (if you don't know about that whole fiasco with the petition against his work, it's a juicy piece of scientist poo-flinging).
I still like the idea. It is a conflicting set of teasers of "well-supported" opinions from scientists in diverse disciplines, aka an Ivy League Scientist gossip mag.
Or, rather, it's a snippet of 175 scientists' views, allowing one to decide whether or not to completely avoid that scientist or follow up on their work. Daniel Goleman still pisses me off, and it's nice to have that affirmed after 10 years, for example.
Overall, 3 stars. Mostly because it entertained me for the evening and gave me a few scientists to look into. Yet what sounded like insightful criticisms of paradigms fell very flat most of the time, and nothing really knocked my socks off, so I didn't learn as much as I'd hoped I would. I recommend reading the following essays from the book (or at least, I thought they were more coherent, well thought or nice contributions):
"Indivi-Duality" Nigel Goldenfeld
"The Universe Began in a State of Extraordinarily Low Entropy" Alan Guth (entropy is always fun)
"Entropy" Bruce Parker (entropy is always fun pt. 2, but this guy doesn't get it)
"The Uncertainty Principle" Kai Krause
"Big Data" Gary Marcus (especially in conjunction with "The Scientific Method")
"Bias Is Always Bad" Tom Griffiths
"Unbridled Scientific and Technological Optimism" Stuart Pimm (though a bit weak at the end)
"Inclusive Fitness" Martin Nowak (just for the giggles)
"New Ideas Triumph by Replacing Old Ones" Jared Diamond (also for giggles)
225 of 244 people found the following review helpful.
like the backs of 200 cereal boxes
By j a haverstick
I was really looking forward to this. I had imagined it was a half dozen or dozen essays from some of the renowned authors cited in the blurbs. Well, sure, it could hardly be a comprehensive essay from any of them, but it would be provocative light reading leading to more in-depth adventures, I hoped. Imagine my dissapointment when it arrived and had nearly 200 essays! A few are one or two paragraphs, the most complete about two and a half pages! I've looked at about 20 mostly from people I know or subjects I follow. Based on that sample I can state what is perhaps obvious: no really informative content on subjects like the mind/matter controversy or the nature of science can be presented in such a format. In fact some of them, for instance Dennet on consciousness, are just gooblygook, so why did he bother? I'm giving it a 3 because if you're prepared for what it is, I can see reading it in an airplane or something. Otherwise, save your money. My mistake in not being up on pop intellectualism; it seems to be one of a series of such collections of "essays".
67 of 75 people found the following review helpful.
A mix of clear argument and unsupported opinion
By Michael J. Edelman
John Brockton was an early participant in the TED conferences, which started out as a series of thoughtful inquiries at the edge of science, but which have morphed into a sort of semi-scientific Moth show, in which people from science, politics, and show business present shallow, preferably heart-warming tales with an often tenuous connection to science. Benjamin Bratton called TED "middlebrow megachurch infotainment" which I think sums it up well. Brockman also regularly (every six months or so) releases a volume of essays that also purport to be deep intellectual works, but are typically (but not always) short, shallow, essays in the same mold as the TED talks, and that can be skimmed through without too much thought. Some of the ideas found in this book are thoughtful, and worth pondering; some are so oversimplified as to be worthless.
In the former group I'd put Max Tegmark's essay on infinities, which, at 4 pages in length, is one of the longer essays in the book. In the second, Michael Shermer's essay, which seems to be simultaneously displaying the author's lack of knowledge who tilting at windmills. Many are not arguments, just opinions or argument without evidence. The opening essay, in which Geoffrey West argues agains the search for a grand unification, consists of three pages of history, and an argument presented in one assertion: The dynamics of complex systems are too complicated to be encompassed in one equation, or even a finite number of equations. Well, perhaps; but merely asserting that doesn't help the reader understand it. Some seem to be arguing against positions no one actui=ally holds, like Buddhini Samarasinghe passionate argument against the notion that "Scientists should stick to science"- seriously, is anyone really making that argument in the public forum anymore?
One particularly annoying essay is Sean Carroll's diatribe against falsifiability, in which he manages to completely misrepresent Popper's notion of falsifiability. Carroll states that falsifiability is the idea that a scientific theory is only acceptable if it can muster evidence to prove what it asserts. Quoting:
"String theory and other approaches to quantum gravity involve phenomena that are likely to manifest themselves only at energies enormously higher than anything we have access to here on Earth... Some scientists, leaning on Popper, have suggested that these theories are non-scientific because they are not falsifiable."
But to say that is to misunderstand Popper. Popper's idea of falsifiability is intended to demarcate what kinds of statements are the realm of science, and which are not. In order for a statement or theory to be accessible to scientific method, it must include or imply in principle a methodology by which it can be disproven. Note that distinction. When Democrates proposed, sometime around the 5th Century BC, that all things are made up of indivisible parts that define their nature, he had no way of testing it. Confirmation of the atomic theory had to wait another seven hundred years. So was Democrates' assertion non-falsifiable? No, because it was stated in a manner such that one could conceivably find counterexamples. So it is with string theory; given the right tools, we should find (or not find) the hidden dimensions curled up at some small scale.
But you'd never know that from Carroll's essay. He sums up Popper in one short sentence, and he gets it wrong. That's unfortunately the pattern of so many of these essays- the non-specialist reader has no idea of the context of most of the ideas presented and has no way to judge them. What we have, then, is a mixture of well presented ideas, misconceptions, and unsupported opinions, and it's up to the reader to figure out which is which.
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