...For close to two decades Cass Seltzer has all but owned the psychology of religion, but only because nobody else wanted it, not anyone with the smarts to do academic research in psychology and the ambition to follow through. It had been impossible to get grants, and the prestigious journals would return his manuscripts without sending them out for peer review. The undergraduates crowded his courses, but that counted, if anything, as a strike against him in his department. The graduate students stayed away in droves. The sexy psychological research was all in neural network modeling and cognitive neuroscience. The mind is a neural computer and the folks with the algorithms ruled.

But now things had happened — fundamental and fundamentalist things — and religion as a phenomenon is on everybody's mind. And among all the changes that religion's new towering profile has wrought in the world, which are mostly alarming if not downright terrifying, is the transformation in the life of one Cass Seltzer.

First had come the book, which he had entitled The Varieties of Religious Illusion, a nod to both William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience and to Sigmund Freud's The Future of An Illusion. The book had brought Cass an indecent amount of attention. Time Magazine, in a cover story on the so-called new atheists, had ended by dubbing him "the atheist with a soul." When the magazine came out, Cass's literary agent, Sy Auerbach, called to congratulate him. "Now that you're famous, even I might have to take you seriously. ...

36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD [11.19.09]
By Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

Introduction

"What is this stuff, you ask one another," says the narrator in Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's new novel 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, "and how can it still be kicking around, given how much we already know?"

We have very short memories.

It was in April 2006 that President George W. Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and Senator John McCain all announced their support of teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. This assault on science and on the separation of church and state was a mobilizing moment for the Edge community which responded to this initiative with book of essays by 16 eminent scientists entitled Intelligent Thought, excerpts from which appeared on Edge.

At the time, three and a half years ago, no one was using the phrase "the new atheists". In fact, in early 2006 only Sam Harris's book The End of Faith (2004), and Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell (February, 2006) had been published. It was in response to the highly organized and well-financed campaign by the religious right that led champions of rational thinking such as Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, A.C. Grayling, and P.Z. Myers to mount an unrelenting campaign against the purveyors of superstition, supernaturalism, ignorance ... and their apologists (the self-proclaimed "moderates", or to use more apt terms, the "accommodationists", or the "faitheists").

The term "the new atheists" came into play in early 2007, followed by "I am an atheist, but". This is hardly the lingo of the far right. In fact, you don't have to leave the pages of Edge to read variations on this meme from some very distinguished and respected scientists. But what some appear to be saying is "I am an atheist but... other people, not as smart as I am, require religion (a) to get through the day, (b) to create sustainable societies, (c) to have moral values, etc. Others, intellectually lazy, afraid, or unable to invent their own personal narratives, simply wear their parents' old ideas like a hand-me-down suit, defaulting to the maudlin sentimentality that is the soundtrack to the American mind.

Now, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, known to Edge readers as a philosopher who has interesting things to say about Gödel and Spinoza, among others, enters into this conversation, taking on these and wider themes, and pushing the envelope by crossing over into the realm of fiction.

Goldstein isn't the first novelist to appear on Edge, nor the first to discuss religion. In October 1989, the novelist Ken Kesey came to New York spoke to The Reality Club. "As I've often told Ginsberg," he began, "you can't blame the President for the state of the country, it's always the poets' fault. You can't expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don't have it in them. Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold."

It's in this spirit that Edge presents a brief excerpt from the first chapter, and the nonfiction appendix from 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (21,250 words).

REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN is a philosopher, a novelist, and Edge contributor. She is the author of the nonfiction works Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, and Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel. Her other novels include The Mind-Body Problem and Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal, and Quantum Physics, and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's Edge Bio page

__

Further Readng on Edge:

"Reasonable Doubt: By Rebecca Newberger Goldstein" [7.29.06]
"Gödel and The Nature of Mathematical Truth: A Talk with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein" [6.8.05]

[...]

On "THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE": A Talk with Frank Schirrmacher

EVGENY MOROZOV: In a sense, dealing with personal failure — of any kind, whether real or imaginary — was much easier before social networking exploded: 5 or 10 or 15 years after college, your former pals may all be having nicer jobs and perks than you do — but that humiliating realization only happened once a year (if at all), usually at alumni reunions. Today we are constantly bombarded with new information about others, which plants more and more seeds of self-doubt deep into us. Self-denial — which is essential for letting us cope with the past — is no longer an option: all the evidence stares us in the face from our Facebook walls. [...]

DAVID GELERNTER: This is an observation about the invention of writing, not about "modern technology." Suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things." What stuff? Phonebooks? Calendars on paper? Clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions? "Suddenly people start forgetting things." When did they ever not forget things? [...]

18.11.2009

Frank Schirrmacher: Payback

DIE ICH-ERSCHÖPFUNG
Von Andrian Kreye

[Google Translation]

Wenn der Kopf im Internet nicht mehr mitkommt: Frank Schirrmachers Buch "Payback" bringt die digitale Debatte zwar auf den neuesten Stand, aber nicht weiter.

Dabei ist Frank Schirrmacher keineswegs ein digitaler Außenseiter. Im Onlinemagazin Edge.org begegnet er digitalen Vordenkern wie George Dyson, Jaron Lanier and David Gelernter auf Augenhöhe. Man merkt auch seinem Text an, dass ihm die Grenzen der linearen Erzählform längst zu eng geworden sind, dass Klammern, Einschübe und Fußnoten die Thesengebäude gerade noch zusammenhalten können, bevor die vernetzten Gedanken die Buchform sprengen.

[...]

November 15, 2009

[...]

Inflation does not provide a natural explanation for why the early universe looks like it does unless you can give me an answer for why inflation ever started in the first place. That is not a question we know the answer to right now.  That is why we need to go back before inflation into before the Big Bang, into a different part of the universe to understand why inflation happened versus something else. There you get into branes and the cyclic universe. ... I really don't like any of the models that are on the market right now. We really need to think harder about what the universe should look like.

WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE LOOK THE WAY IT DOES?
A Conversation with Sean Carroll

[24:21 minutes]

SEAN CARROLL, a theoretical physicist, is a senior research associate at Caltech. His research interests include theoretical aspects of cosmology, field theory, and gravitation. He is the author of a Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity; and From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time. And he is cofounder and contributor to the Cosmic Variance blog.

[...]

Beyond Edge

Debate: Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett vs Shmuley Boteach, Dinesh D'Souza, Nassim Taleb at Andres Roemer's La Ciudad de las Ideas. [...]

Alan Guth gives Newton Lecture 2009: "Inflationary cosmology: is our universe part of a multiverse?" — Institute of Phsyics [...]

Nathan Myhrvold, former chief technology officer at Microsoft, spins rose petals in a glass globe at his laboratory kitchen in Bellevue — Kenneth Chang, New York Times [...]

Jason Calacanis on How To Kill Google on YouTube [...]

On "THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE": A Talk with Frank Schirrmacher

JOHN BROCKMAN: What exactly is "the cybernetic idea"? Well, it's not to be confused with the discipline of cybernetics, which hit a wall, and stopped evolving during the 1950s. And it's not your usual kind of idea. The cybernetic idea is an invention. A very big invention. The late evolutionary biologist Gregory Bateson called it the most important idea since the idea of Jesus Christ. [...]

ANNALENA MCAFEE: Unlike your best friend, or the long-vanished bookstore owner, or the former manager of the defunct record shop — all of whom made a number of unintentionally insulting errors of taste — these predictive programs get it right 90 per cent of the time. I am willing to trade my free will — surely already compromised by my birthplace, my parents' religion and circumstances, my genetic inheritance — for these time-saving and life-enriching programs. [...]

GEORGE DYSON: Response to John Bargh ... First we had digital representations of existing ideas. Then we had digital expressions of new, previously unrepresented ideas. And now we have network processes (including human collaboration) that might actually be ideas. ... [...]

Leading scientists answer the question: What is your dangerous idea?
Climate change? Live to 200? Genetic engineering? Not necessarily. Leading scientists of our time to answer the question: What is your dangerous idea?

(German language original: Führende Wissenschafter beantworten die Frage: Was ist Ihre gefährlichste Idee?)

By Robert Buchacher

He is "a kind of thinker, that does not exist in Europe," said La Stampa, the international Turin newspaper. The New York writer, literary agent, corporate and political advisor, John Brockman, 68, is a sore thumb, a maverick brings people and ideas under the same roof, which at first glance don't go together at all. One of his many books is titled: Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein (1993). Brockman loves the challenge, he is a great lover of art, science, technology, media and the Internet. An intellectual catalyst.

Fascinated by new and unusual ideas, he is an assiduous networker. According to his friend Richard Dawkins, he has "the most enviable address book in the English-speaking world." In 1997 he created with the Internet platform edge (www.edge.org) a sort of Facebook of thinkers, imagine where minds not just their own ideas and projects, but also comment on the thoughts of others, "deliberately in a spirit of provocation," as Brockman says. In his own words Edge presents "speculative ideas, explores new territory in the fields of evolutionary biology, genetics, computer science, neurophysiology, psychology and physics, and answers questions like: What are the origins of the universe, of life, the mind? For the most exciting answers Brockman has created a book that has recently appeared in German. Supplemented by contributions of high profile Austrian scientists we publish excerpts from the book entitled: "What is your dangerous idea? The leading scientists of our time to think the unthinkable", edited by John Brockman.

J. Craig Venter; Paul CW Davies; Rodney Brooks; Paul W. Ewald; Martin Rees; Samuel Barondes; John Horgan; Peter C. Aichelburg; Ray Kurzweil; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; Josef Smolen; Georg Wick; Clifford Pickover; Lawrence M. Krauss; Michael Freissmuth; Jordan Pollac; Haim Harari.

[...]

DAVID PESCOVITS
TECHNOLOGY

THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE

We make technology, but our technology also makes us. At the online science/culture journal Edge, BB pal John Brockman went deep -- very deep -- into this concept. Frank Schirrmacher is co-publisher of the national German newspaper FAZ and a very, very big thinker. Schirrmacher has raised public awareness and discussion about some of the most controversial topics in science research today, from genetic engineering to the aging population to the impacts of neuroscience. At Edge, Schirrmacher riffs on the notion of the "informavore," an organism that devours information like it's food. After posting Schirrmacher's thoughts, Brockman invited other bright folks to respond, including the likes of George Dyson, Steven Pinker, John Perry Barlow, Doug Rushkoff, and Nick Bilton. Here's a taste of Schirrmacher, from "The Age of the Infomavore" [...]

Beyond Edge

Sean Parker is clicking for Causes. Brad Stone, The New York Times [...]

Richard Foreman's Idiot Savant at the Public Theater in New York: "Talk Talk : Richard Foreman Puts Language Onstage" New Yorker [...]; "Still Bouncing Off the Fun House Walls" New York Times [...]

Simon Baron-Cohen: Asperger Syndrome or Autism — New York Times OpEd [...]

A new take on the work that began with Robert Trivers' seminal paper on reciprocal altruism in 1971 — Nature [...] [...]

Nick Carr: Unsere Zukunft in der Matrix (Our future in the matrix) in Die Zeit [...] Google Translation [...]

Dan Sperber on Grieving Animals in Cognition & Culture [...]

On "THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE": A Talk with Frank Schirrmacher

Daniel Kahneman, George Dyson, Jaron Lanier, Nick Bilton, Nick Carr, Douglas Rushkoff, Jesse Dylan, Virginia Heffernan, Gerd Gigerenzer, John Perry Barlow, Steven Pinker, John Bargh

JOHN BARGH: The discovery of the pervasiveness of situational priming influences for all of the higher mental processes in humans does say something fundamentally new about human nature (for example, how tightly tied and responsive is our functioning to our particular physical and social surroundings).  It removes consciousness or free will as the bottleneck that exclusively generates choices and behavioral impulses, replacing it with the physical and social world itself as the source of these impulses. [...]

STEVEN PINKER: I would suggest another way to look at the effects of technology on our collective intelligence. Take the intellectual values that are timeless and indisputable: objectivity, truth, factual discovery, soundness of argument, insight, explanatory depth, openness to challenging ideas, scrutiny of received dogma, overturning of myth and superstition. Now ask, are new technologies enhancing or undermining those values? [...]

JOHN PERRY BARLOW: I have always wanted to convey to every human being the Right to Know — the protected technical means to fulfill all curiosities with the best answers human beings had yet derived — but the Ability to Know (Everything) is a capacity we don't and won't possess individually. [...]

GERD GIGERENZER: We might think of mentality and technology as two sides of the same coin, as a system in which knowledge, skills, and values are distributed.  This requires a new type of psychology that goes beyond the individual and studies the dynamics of human adaptation to the very tools humans create. [...]

VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN: ... there is a great deal of anxiety, irritation, unease and impatience in Internet use. There is even some self-loathing. What am I doing on the Web—when I used to read books bound in Moroccan leather; stroll in the sunshine; spend hours in focused contemplation of Hegel or Coleridge? [...]

JESSE DYLAN: How the human brain must adapt to the modern era and where those changes will take us are a mystery. What knowledge will a person need in the future when information is ubiquitous and all around us? Will Predictive technologies do away with free will. Google will be able to predict wether you are enjoying the Neil Young concert you are attending before you yourself know. Science fiction becomes reality. [...]

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: We continue to build and accept new technologies into our lives with little or no understanding of how these devices have been programmed. We do not know how to program our computers. We spend much more time and energy trying to figure out how to program one another, instead. And this is potentially a grave mistake. [...]

NICHOLAS CARR: "Importance is individualism," says Nick Bilton, reassuringly. We'll create and consume whatever information makes us happy, fulfills us, and leave the rest by the wayside. Maybe. Or maybe we'll school like fish in the Web's algorithmic currents, little Nemos, each of us convinced we're going our own way because, well, we never stop talking, never stop sharing the minutiae of our lives and thoughts. Look at me! Am I not an individual? [...]

NICK BILTON: The new generation, born connected, does not feel the need to consume all the information available at their fingertips. They consume what they want and then affect or change it, they add to it or negate it, they share it and then swiftly move along the path. They rely on their community, their swarm, to filter and share information and in turn they do the same; it's a communism of content. True ideology at it's best. [...]

JARON LANIER: To continue to perceive almost supernatural powers in the Internet (an ascendant perception, as Schirrmacher accurately reports) is to cede the future to reactive religious fanatics. [...]

GEORGE DYSON: When you are an informavore drowning in digital data, analog looks good. [...]

DANIEL KAHNEMAN: The link with Bargh is also interesting, because John pushes the idea that we are driven from the outside and controlled by a multitude of cues of which we are only vaguely aware — we are bathing in primes. [...]

TERCERA CULTURA — CHILE [Google Translation page]
Un podcast divulgacion de la Cience Cognitiva Contemporanea

Who Are We?

Third Culture was born as a podcast in August 2009. Our idea was to spread the extraordinary findings, illuminations and epiphanies that we had throughout this decade in our studies of science of the mind.

Our ideas was to spread the extraordinary findings, illuminations and epiphanies that we had throughout this decade in our studies of science of the mind."Coming from the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Chile, we had the experience of being a somewhat rare beasts: interested in science in a humanistic environment. We found, in the concept of Third Culture (developed in CP Snow in the late fifties and sponsored by John Brockman in the nineties), a space where we could move easily and at the same time, share our experience students and our academic colleagues. ...

...We believe we can build a community around the issues of mind, not only among specialists of the six disciplines founding (if we ignore the hexagon of the Sloan Foundation in the seventies): Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology, Linguistics and Anthropology, but also between those who come from the humanities, which, as you said people like Jonah Lehrer or Ian Richardson, have been turning the problem of the mind since time immemorial.

We know that the others can be seen as a kind of "sensationalism" intellectual, or syncretism, even as accommodationist: we believe that this is one of the greatest dangers. We also know that you can see the third culture as "selling the system" in the humanities, dominated by epistemological pessimism, not relying on scientific research. Finally we know that on that same line of reasoning, the third culture can be seen as an unconditional surrender to the dominant ideas of the traditional right, the market, and so on. We put it bluntly, we are people with leftist values, but we are not the guerrilla left ... we are from the Darwinian left (... that is, at bottom, we are only interested in sex ).

The page / blog terceracultura.cl is our third step in the dissemination of the Third Culture in Chile and Chilean in this space will links to programs, more extensive post blogs, discuss recent articles, open the door to debate and establish links with elsewhere. We expect maximum contact.

[...]

[ED. NOTE: A new podcast website from Chile on The Third Culture with entries about Danlel Gilbert, Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Guns Germs and Steel, Darwin in Chile, among others. — JB]

Alison Gopnik says babies can answer philosophical questions on Colbert [...]

Jerry Coyne on the debate that won't die [...]

Stewart Brand makes the case for nuclear power. Jim Witkin New York Times [...]

Scott Atran: "A Memory of Lévi-Strauss" on CongnitionandCulture.net [...]

We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on. There is one comment on Edge which I love, which is in Daniel Dennett's response to the 2007 annual question, in which he said that we have a population explosion of ideas, but not enough brains to cover them.

THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE (*) [10.27.09]
A Talk With Frank Schirrmacher

(*The term informavore characterizes an organism that consumes information. It is meant to be a description of human behavior in modern information society, in comparison to omnivore, as a description of humans consuming food. )

INTRODUCTION

The most significant intellectual development of the first decade of the 21st Century is that concepts of information and computation have infiltrated a wide range of sciences, from physics and cosmology, to cognitive psychology, to evolutionary biology, to genetic engineering. Such innovations as the binary code, the bit, and the algorithm have been applied in ways that reach far beyond the programming of computers, and are being used to understand such mysteries as the origins of the universe, the operation of the human body, and the working of the mind.

Enter Frank Schirrmacher, Editorial Director the editorial staff of the FAZ Feuilleton, a supplement of the FAZ on the arts and sciences. He is also one of the five publishers of the newspaper, responsible for the Feuilleton, and he has actively expanded science coverage in this section. He has been referred to as Germany's "Culture Czar", which may seem over the top, but his cultural influence is undeniable. He can, and does, begin national discussions on topics and ideas that interest him, such as genomic research, neuroscience, aging, and, in this regard, he has the ability to reshape the national consciousness.

I can provide a first-hand account of "the Schirrmacher treatment". ...

Frank Schirrmacher's Edge Bio Page

THE REALITY CLUB: Daniel Kahneman, George Dyson, Jaron Lanier, Nick Bilton, Nick Carr, Douglas Rushkoff, Jesse Dylan, Virginia Heffernan, Gerd Gigerenzer, John Perry Barlow, Steven Pinker, John Bargh, George Dyson, Annalena McAfee, John Brockman, David Gelernter, Evgeny Morozov

[...]

STUTTGARTER ZEITUNG
October 22, 2009

CONTROVERSY

ARE THE DISCIPLINARY BOUNDARIES PERMEABLE?

Yes, the themes of science overlap and are often inter-disciplinary perspective.

By Gábor Paál

[Rough Translation:] The boundaries between the cultures blur. The spiritual has long been the subject of empirical science, the nature of the object interpretation for philosophers and other scholars. This is especially evident here, where it goes in the broadest sense to Information: In communication science, psychology, neuroscience, robotics and memory research. Information is the elementary unit of all mental processes, information processes can also often investigate with scientific methods and use technically versatile.

The boundaries blur also in those sciences, dedicated to the multifaceted development of human culture. The time scale in which evolutionary scientists and historians move, now go smoothly into one  another. Researchers describe the history of thought — and thus of the mind — not just today but also based on neuroscience and evolutionary models. And in the debates of today — bioethics, neuroethics, global change — meet representatives of the two "cultures".

There were also other points to approach. For Charles Percy Snow was an important difference between them in the manner of publications: scientists write short articles in professional journals, humanities scholars, on the other hand, wrote thick tomes. Scientists are also doing so today.Researchers such as Richard Dawkins and Gregory Bateson began doing so as early as the 1970s, and many more have been added since then: mathematicians like Roger Penrose, biologists such as Lynn Margulis, geographers such as Jared Diamond or psycholinguist Steven Pinker (only the Germans move slowly).

The literary agent John Brockman, formerly referred to this genus of scientists as representatives of a "third culture" who come from the "hard" sciences, and deal with fundamental questions of human existence. They write thick books in which they develop — as do the "real" social scientists — hundreds of pages of their own theses. Inspired by Brockman's thesis, FAZ began to cover scientific developments the Feuilleton in the late 90's. And around the same time Der Spiegel regularly began to cover "third-culture topics" and enticed its readers with articles on the origin of language, the end of the universe or neuro-theology.

However, at least according to the claim, this is not entirely new. Brockman's "third culture" corresponds almost exactly to what Hegel called Realphilosophie: the application of logic and exact thinking in the real world. The concept deserves a revival. In contrast to traditional philosophy with its focus on literary texts juggling with terms and notions, Realphilosophie can be understood as the systematic reflection on existential questions, based on hard empirical data. It pertains where the empirical science reaches its limits — at all levels of organization in the world, the cosmos, life, spirit and culture.

There is still untapped potential in Realphilosophie. It is often a complaint that too few young people are interested in science and technology. Accordingly, more practical instructional opportunities in these subjects are being used to gain more interest. At the same time, however, what's being missed is the opportunity to awaken the fascination with realphilosophical topics of interest and in this way to also communicate an understanding of modern scientific thinking.

Original German-language version

On "Are The Disciplinary Boundaries Permeable?"

DANIEL C. DENNETT
Philisopher, Tufts; Author, Breaking the Spell

Hey, Hegel got all his ideas from Plato. Didn't you know that all of Western culture (including science, I guess) is a series of footnotes to Plato? Somebody said something like that once. I forget who. Oh, it must have been Plato's idea in the first place. (Except of course he got all his ideas from Socrates, who got his from Parmenides.)

A student of mine once wrote, on an hour exam, "Parmenides is the one who said 'there's just one thing--and I'm not it." Well, yes, he does seem to say that. I never taught the Pre-Socratics again.

Ps. Jetlagged in Oslo.

MICHAEL NAUMANN
Co-Publisher, Die Ziet

I thought the idea by Gábor Paál's description of your role in the emergence of science writing within the realm of your "Third Culture" gave you a well-deserved credit. It was quite hilarious, though in drawing an affiliation to Hegel. He had lots of insights into the consequences of the industrial revolution yet his historical speculations tied him firmly into the Gnosticism of linear Eschatology. He represents the total opposite to the central motive of French enlightenment, clarté. If you are really looking for European intellectual predecessors, you are much better placed in the tradition of the encyclopaedicists. It is a neighborhood, if I were you, I'd definitely prefer.

STEVEN PINKER
Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; Author, The Stuff of Thought.

I'm glad to hear that the third culture is superior to traditional begriffsfokussierten !

GÁBOR PAÁL
German Radio Journalist; Author; Founder of the Network on Science and the Media

Response to Michael Naumann's comment

When Hegel wrote about Realphilosophie he was not historical — his examples came from astronomy and biology. But anyway a revival of "Realphilosophie" does not at all mean to postulate a revival of Hegel and his other ideas. It's not a matter of looking for a neighboorhood to any person but to a very special concept and to fill it, of course with modern content.

Daniel Dennett and Philip Kitcher's Letters To The Editor of New York Times Book Review in response to Nicholas Wade's review ("Evolution All Around") of The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins [...]

THE FACT OF EVOLUTION

To the Editor:

Nicholas Wade chides Richard Dawkins in his review of "The Greatest Show on Earth" (Oct. 11) for getting "his knickers in a twist" over contemporary creationism, a worldwide campaign of disinformation on which millions of dollars are being spent annually. What would it take to get Nicholas Wade's knickers in a twist? The claim that condoms don't prevent the spread of HIV? Or does religious faith excuse any evil deed? If geologists had to confront a similar propaganda campaign against plate tectonics, they would get a little testy too, I imagine, and physicists might grow impatient if they had to devote half their professional time and energy to fending off claims that quantum mechanics is the work of the devil.

What is going on at The New York Times? Why is it so bizarrely respectful of those who doubt evolution? In recent years The Times has published three preposterous Op-Ed articles by evolution-doubters (Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Michael J. Behe and Senator Sam Brownback). These no more deserved space in The Times than the opinions of flat-earthers or trance-channelers. In the wake of Judge John E. Jones III's decision in the Dover, Pa., case that intelligent design is a religious viewpoint that may not be taught in public schools, one would think The Times would finally recognize that the intelligent design campaign is a hoax and dishonest to the core, and stop giving it respectability in its pages.

DANIEL DENNETT
North Andover, Mass.
The writer is the author of "Breaking the Spell" and "Darwin's Dangerous Idea."

To the Editor:

In his review of "The Greatest Show on Earth," Nicholas Wade charges that Richard Dawkins is guilty of a philosophical error. According to Wade, philosophers of science divide scientific propositions into three types — facts, laws and theories — and, contrary to Dawkins's assertions, evolution, which is plainly a systematic theory, cannot count as a fact. However, contemporary philosophy of science offers a vastly more intricate vocabulary for thinking about the sciences than that presupposed in Wade's oversimplified taxonomy and in his confused remarks about "absolute truth." Although philosophers may quarrel with aspects of Dawkins's arguments on a range of issues, he has a far firmer and more subtle understanding of the philosophical issues than that manifested in Wade's review.

The crucial point is that, as Dawkins appreciates, the distinction between theory and fact, in philosophical discussions as in everyday speech, can be drawn in two quite distinct ways. On the one hand, theories are conceived as general systems for explanation and prediction, while facts are specific reports about local events and processes. On the other hand, "theory" is used to suggest that there is room for reasonable doubt, whereas "fact" suggests something so amply confirmed by the evidence that it may be accepted without debate.

Opponents of evolution slide from supposing that evolution is a theory, in the first sense, to concluding that it is (only) a theory, in the second. Any such inference is fallacious, in that many systematic approaches to domains of natural phenomena — like the understanding of chemical reactions in terms of atoms and molecules, and the study of heredity in terms of nucleic acids — are so well supported that they count as facts (in the second sense). Many scientists and philosophers who have written about evolution have pointed out that the contemporary theory that descends from Darwin has the same status — it, too, should count as a "fact." Dawkins is entirely justified in following them.

PHILIP KITCHER
New York
The writer is the John Dewey professor of philosophy at Columbia University and a former editor in chief of Philosophy of Science, the journal of the Philosophy of Science Association.

More online responses [...]

"Two White Guys Walk Into a Bar" … Lisa Miller on Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens in Newsweek [...]

Jerry Coyne on "A big whine from Newsweek" [...] "Jesus 'n' Mo 'n' Karen Armstrong [...]

Gavin Schmidt explains how climate models are becoming an essential tool for politicians and policymakers in Physics World [...] "Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate scientist who works with Dr. Hansen and manages a popular blog on climate science, realclimate.org, said those promoting 350 or debating the number might be missing the point." Andrew Revkin in The New York Times [...]

Jerome Groopman in NYRB: "the cognitive errors common in clinical medicine were initially elucidated by the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in their seminal work in the early 1970s [...]

Denis Dutton's New York Times Oped "Has Conceptual Art Jumped the Shark Tank?" [...]

Is it science or new technology that leads the way? Markoff on Brian Arthur's The Nature of Technology in NYT Science Times [...]

Richard Dawkins: profiled in The New York Times by Sarah Lyall — "A Raconteur of Nature's Back Story"[...] Facing off against Bill O'Rielly on Fox News [...] Evolving his arguments — Susan Salter Reynolds in LA Times [...] 'Strident? Do they mean me?' Interviewed by Emma Townshend in the Independent [...]

"This is the most dynamic place for change on earth". Craig Venter in Time [...]

Venter Institute Team Demonstrates Successful Cross-Species Genome Transfer in Genome Web [...]

Michael Shermer's "An Open Letter to Bill Maher on Vaccinations" Huffington Post [...]

October 6, 2009

I.B.M. JOINS PURSUIT OF $1,000 PERSONAL GENOME
By John Markoff

One of the oldest names in computing is joining the race to sequence the genome for $1,000. On Tuesday, I.B.M. plans to give technical details of its effort to reach and surpass that goal, ultimately bringing the cost to as low as $100, making a personal genome cheaper than a ticket to a Broadway play.

The project places I.B.M. squarely in the middle of an international race to drive down the cost of gene sequencing to help move toward an era of personalized medicine. The hope is that tailored genomic medicine would offer significant improvements in diagnosis and treatment. ...

....One of the crucial advances needed to improve the quality of DNA analysis is to be able to read longer sequences. Current technology is generally in the range of 30 to 800 nucleotides, while the goal is to be able to read sequences of as long as one million bases, according to Dr. Church, who spoke in July at a forum sponsored by Edge.org, a nonprofit online science forum. ...

[...]

Copyright © Tim D. White

Science Magazine online extra: Ardipithecus ramidus ("Ardi") [...] Tim D. White, Berhane Asfaw et al's research paper [...] Author's Summary [...] Video [...]

Sam Harris's research paper in PLOS on "The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief" [...] Lisa Miller in Newsweek "Fact Impact: New study of the brain shows that facts and beliefs are processed in exactly the same way". [...]

Richard Dawkins on Colbert: "Instead of giving the evidence for evolution, Richard Dawkins wants to see the evidence for God." [...]

"...the irritation at the gross theological ignorance and illiteracy of men like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins who would not tolerate that level of gross travesty and cruel chariacture in a first year student..." [...]

Greg Paul's paper on mass belief and popular religiosity in Evolutionary Psychology "The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions" [...] Sharon Begley in Newsweek "(Un)wired for God" [...].

DOES TECHNOLOGY EVOLVE? [9.21.09]
A Conversation with Brian Arthur

The two legs of the Theory of Evolution that are in technology, are not at all Darwinian. They are quite different. They are that certain existing building blocks are combined and re-combined to form new building-block technologies; and every so often technologies get used to capture novel, newly discovered phenomena, and encapsulate those and get further building blocks. As with Darwin, most new technologies that come into being are only useful for their own purpose and don't form other building blocks, but occasionally some do.

W. BRIAN ARTHUR, is External Professor Citibank Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and one of the pioneers of the new science of complexity. His main interests are technology, and the economics of high technology. He is the author of the recently published The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves.

W. Brian Arthur's Edge Bio Page

[...]

THE MAKING OF A PHYSICIST
A Talk With Murray Gell-Mann

In honor of his 80th birthday (Sept. 15th), Edge is pleased to present a conversation (and streaming video) with physicist Murray Gell-Mann which was conducted in SantaFe in 2003 (Edge 121) — "something about his life and his attitude toward the world and toward physics."

Happy Birthday, Murray!!

—JB

Uncharacteristically, I discussed my application to Yale with my father, who asked, "What were you thinking of putting down?" I said, "Whatever would be appropriate for archaeology or linguistics, or both, because those are the things I'm most enthusiastic about. I'm also interested in natural history and exploration."

He said, "You'll starve!"

After all, this was 1944 and his experiences with the Depression were still quite fresh in his mind; we were still living in genteel poverty. He could have quit his job as the vault custodian in a bank and taken a position during the war that would have utilized his talents — his skill in mathematics, for example — but he didn't want to take the risk of changing jobs. He felt that after the war he would regret it, so he stayed where he was. This meant that we really didn't have any spare money at all.

I asked him, "What would you suggest?"

He mentioned engineering, to which I replied, "I'd rather starve. If I designed anything it would fall apart." And sure enough when I took an aptitude test a year later I was advised to take up nearly anything but engineering.

Then my father suggested, "Why don't we compromise — on physics?"

MURRAY GELL-MANN is a theoretical physicist; winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics; and the author of The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex.

Murray Gell-Mann's Edge Bio Page

[...]

WE ARE AS GODS AND HAVE TO GET GOOD AT IT [8.20.09]
Stewart Brand Talks About His Ecopragmatist Manifesto

The shift that has happened in 40 years which mainly has to do with climate change. Forty years ago, I could say in the Whole Earth Catalog, "we are as gods, we might as well get good at it". Photographs of earth from space had that god-like perspective.

What I'm saying now is we are as gods and have to get good at it. Necessity comes from climate change, potentially disastrous for civilization. The planet will be okay, life will be okay. We will lose vast quantities of species, probably lose the rain forests if the climate keeps heating up. So it's a global issue, a global phenomenon. It doesn't happen in just one area. The planetary perspective now is not just aesthetic. It's not just perspective. It's actually a world-sized problem that will take world sized solutions that involves forms of governance we don't have yet. It involves technologies we are just glimpsing. It involves what ecologists call ecosystem engineering. Beavers do it, earthworms do it. They don't usually do it at a planetary scale. We have to do it at a planetary scale. A lot of sentiments and aesthetics of the environmental movement stand in the way of that.

STEWART BRAND is cofounder and co-chairman of The Long Now Foundation. He is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder of The Well, and cofounder of Global Business Network. He is the original editor of The Whole Earth Catalog, (Winner of the National Book Award). His latest book is Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto (forthcoming, October 15th.)

Stewart Brand's Edge Bio Page

[...]

BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW
August 19, 2009

The Long List 50 books, CDS, and DVDs to know about now

SCIENCE

What's Next
by MAX BROCKMAN

Nearly impossible to put down: engaging original essays from brilliant young scientists on their work — — and its fascinating social, ethical, and philosophical implications.

[...]

FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG
15. August 2009
FEUILLETON

GENETIC ENGINEERING

THE CURRENT CATALOG OF LIFE
[Der Aktuelle Katalog Der Schöpfung Ist Da]
By Ed Regis

[ED. NOTE: Among the attendees of the recent Edge Master Class 2009 — A Short Course on Synthetic Genomics, was science writer Ed Regis (What Is Life?) who was commissioned by Frank Schirrmacher, Co-Publisher and Feuilleton Editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to write a report covering the event. A German translation of Regis's article was published on August 15th by FAZ along with an accompanying article. The original English language version is published below with permission.]

THE WALKMAN OF GENETIC ENGINEERING: THE MOVE FROM SCIENCE TO A NEW WORLD OF PRODUCTS

[Walkman der Gentechnik; Der Schritt von der Wissenschaft zu einer neuen Warenwelt]

By Andrian Kreye, Editor, The Feuilleton, Sueddeutsche Zeitung

...Genetic engineering is now at a point where computer science was around the mid-eighties. The early PCs were limited as to purpose and network. In two and a half decades, the computer has led us into a digial world in which every aspect of lives has been affected. According to Moore's Law, the performance of computers doubles every 18 months. Genetic engineering is following a similar growth. On the last weekend in July, Craig Venter and George Church met in Los Angeles to lead a seminar on synthetic genetic engineering for John Brockman's science forum Edge.org.

Genetic engineering under Church has been following the grwoth of computer science growing by a factor of tenfold per year. After all, the cost of sequencing a genome dropped from three billion dollars in 2000 to around $50 000 dollars as Stanford University's Dr. Steven Quake genomics engineer announced this week. 17 commercial companies already offer similar services. In June, a "Consumer Genetics" exhibition was held in Boston for the first time. The Vice President of Knome, Ari Kiirikki, assumes that the cost of sequencing a genome in the next ten years will fall to less than $1,000. In support for this development, the X-Prize Foundation has put up a prize of ten million dollars for the sequencing of 100 full genomes within ten days for the cost of less than $10,000 dollars per genome sequenced.

It is now up to the companies themselves to provide an ethical and legal standing to commercial genetic engineering. The States of New York and California have already made the sale of genetic tests subject to a prescription. This is however only a first step is to adjust a new a new commercialized science which is about to cause enormous changes similar to those brought about be computer science. Medical benefits are likely to be enormous. Who knows about dangers in its genetic make-up, can preventive measures meet. The potential for abuse is however likewise given. Health insurances and employers could discriminate against with the DNS information humans. Above all however our self-understanding will change. Which could change, if synthetic genetic engineering becomes a mass market, is not yet foreseeable. For example, Craig Venter is working on synthetic biofuels. If successful, such a development would re-align technology, economics and politics in a fundamental way. Of one thing we can already be certain. The question of whether genetic engineering will becomes available for all is no longer on the table. It has already happened.

HEUTE IN DEN FEUILLETONS

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 13.08.2009

Von aktuellen Entwicklungen aus der schönen neuen Welt der Genom-Sequenzierung berichtet Andrian Kreye: "Am letzten Juliwochenende trafen sich Craig Venter und George Church in Los Angeles, um für John Brockmans Wissenschaftsforum Edge.org ein Seminar über synthetische Gentechnik zu leiten. Die Gentechnik, so Church, habe die Informatik dabei längst hinter sich gelassen und entwickle sich mit einem Faktor von zehn pro Jahr. Immerhin — der Preis für die Sequenzierung eines Genoms ist von drei Milliarden Dollar im Jahr 2000 auf rund 50.000 Dollar gefallen, wie der Ingenieur der Stanford University Dr. Steven Quake diese Woche bekanntgab. 17 kommerzielle Firmen bieten ihre Dienste schon an."

Chris Anderson, W. Brian Arthur, John Barrow, Thomas Bass, Jeremy Bernstein, Susan Blackmore. Stewart Brand, John Brockman, Max Brockman, David Buss, Nicholas Christakis, Andy Clarke, Gregory Cochran,Jack Cohen, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Stanislas Dehaene, Keith Devlin, Denis Dutton, Freeman Dyson, David Eagleman, Todd Feinberg, James Fowler, Howard Gardner, Anthony Giddens, Daniel Goleman, Alison Gopnik, Susan Greenfield, Haim Harari, Henry Harpendening, Gerald Holton, Nicholas Humphrey, George Johnson, Steven Johnson, Stephen H Kellert, Marek Kohn, Ray Kurzweil, Jaron Lanier, Jonah Lehrer, John McWhorter, Thomas Metzinger, Oliver Morton, David G. Myers, Richard E. Nisbett, Alva Noë, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Dean Ornish, John Allen Paulos, Alex (Sandy) Pentland, Irene M. Pepperberg, Clifford Pickover, David G. Post, Douglas Rushkoff, Karl Sabbagh, Scott Sampson, Al Seckel, Clay Shirky, Gavin Schmidt, Tom Standage, Bruce Sterling, Ian Stewart, Steven Strogatz, Colin Tudge, Sherry Turkle, Antony Valentini, E.O. Wilson, Lewis Wolpert, Richard Wrangham, Carl Zimmer [...]

[ED. NOTE: It's summer, you're kicking back, relaxing on the beach, kayaking off the coast, desperately trying to finish your book before September, and you check your iPhone and find this email with a link to a 27,200-word edition of Edge. "This is too long", you think. "Come on Edge, it's the Web: cut it down, make it pithy. Why do I want to read long, thoughtful pieces when I can make do with a couple of screens and then jump to the next link? And, by the way, where are the links in these pieces? Who needs original work when I can be a part of the link economy? Edge, you must be joking. Nobody reads this way anymore."

Or do they? — JB]

[...]

AMAZING BABIES [8.11.09]
A Talk with Alison Gopnik

We've known for a long time that human children are the best learning machines in the universe. But it has always been like the mystery of the humming birds. We know that they fly, but we don't know how they can possibly do it. We could say that babies learn, but we didn't know how.

ALISON GOPNIK, a psychologist at UC-Berkeley, is coauthor of The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn, and author of The Philosophical Baby.

Alison Gopnik's Edge Bio Page

[...]

ECONOMICS IS NOT NATURAL SCIENCE [8.11.09]
By Douglas Rushkoff

An Edge Original Essay

We must stop perpetuating the fiction that existence itself is dictated by the immutable laws of economics. These so-called laws are, in actuality, the economic mechanisms of 13th Century monarchs. Some of us analyzing digital culture and its impact on business must reveal economics as the artificial construction it really is. Although it may be subjected to the scientific method and mathematical scrutiny, it is not a natural science; it is game theory, with a set of underlying assumptions that have little to do with anything resembling genetics, neurology, evolution, or natural systems.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF is a media analyst; documentary filmmaker, and author. His latest book is Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back.

Doulgas Rushkoff's Edge Bio Page

GEORGE DYSON
Science Historian; Darwin Among the Machines

...How to best transcend the current economic mess? Put Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, Elon Musk, Tim O'Reilly, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Nathan Myhrvold, and Danny Hillis in a room somewhere and don't let them out until they have framed a new, massively-distributed financial system, founded on sound, open, peer-to-peer principles, from the start. And don't call it a bank. Launch a new financial medium that is as open, scale-free, universally accessible, self-improving, and non-proprietary as the Internet, and leave the 13th century behind. ...

[...]

Re: A Short Course in Synthetic Genomics: Edge Master Class 2009

DAVID GROSS
Physicist, Director, Kavki Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCSB; Recipient 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics

"I should have accepted your invitation. I have been listening to the Master Class on the Web — fascinating. I am learning a lot and I wish I had been there. Thanks for the invite and thanks for putting up the videos. ... Invite me again..."

FRANK SCHIRRMACHER
Co-Publisher & Feuilleton Editor, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

I watched sessions 1 to 6. This is breathtaking. The Edge Master Class must have been spectacular and frightening. Now DNA and computers are reading each other without human intervention, without a human able to understand it. This is a milestone, and adds to the whole picture: we don't read, we will be read. What Edge has achieved collecting these great thinkers around is absolutley spectacular. Whenever I find an allusion to great writers or thinkers, I find out that they all are at Edge.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS
Physicist, Director, Origins Initiative, ASU; Author, Hiding In The Mirror

What struck me was the incredible power that is developing in bioinformatics and genomics, which so resembles the evolution in computer software and hardware over the past 30 years.

George Church's discussion of the acceleration of the Moore's law doubling time for genetic sequencing rates,, for example, was extraordinary, from 1.5 efoldings to close to 10 efoldings per year. When both George and Craig independently described their versions of the structure of the minimal genome appropriate for biological functioning and reproduction, I came away with the certainty that artificial lifeforms will be created within the next few years, and that they offered great hope for biologically induced solutions to physical problems, like potentially buildup of greenhouse gases.

At the same time, I came away feeling that the biological threats that come with this emerging knowledge and power are far greater than I had previously imagined, and this issue should be seriously addressed, to the extent it is possible. But ultimately I also came away with a more sober realization of the incredible complexity of the systems being manipulated, and how far we are from actually developing any sort of comprehensive understanding of the fundamental molecular basis of complex life. The simple animation demonstrated at the molecular level for Gene expression and replication demonstrated that the knowledge necessary to fully understand and reproduce biochemical activity in cells is daunting.

Two other comments: (1) was intrigued by the fact that the human genome has not been fully sequenced, in spite of the hype, and (2) was amazed at the available phase space for new discovery, especially in forms of microbial life on this planet, as demonstrated by Craig in his voyage around the world, skimming the surface, literally, of the ocean, and of course elsewhere in the universe, as alluded to by George.

Finally, I also began to think that structures on larger than molecular levels may be the key ones to understand for such things as memory, which make the possibilities for copying biological systems seem less like science fiction to me. George Church and I had an interesting discussion about this which piqued my interest, and I intend to follow this up.

DENIS DUTTON
Philosopher; Founder & Editor, Arts & Letters Daily; Author, The Art Instinct

Astonishing.