2012 : WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?
"The World's Smartest Website."
— John Naughton, The Observer
Scientists' greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called "beautiful" or "elegant". Historical examples are Kepler's explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr's explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and Watson and Crick's double helix. Einstein famously said that he did not need experimental confirmation of his general theory of relativity because it "was so beautiful it had to be true."WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT,
OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?Since this question is about explanation, answers may embrace scientific thinking in the broadest sense: as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, including other fields of inquiry such as philosophy, mathematics, economics, history, political theory, literary theory, or the human spirit. The only requirement is that some simple and non-obvious idea explain some diverse and complicated set of phenomena.
[Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting this year's Edge Question and to Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and George Dyson for their ongoing advice and support.]
192 CONTRIBUTORS (128,500 words): Emanuel Derman, Nicholas Humphrey, Dylan Evans, Howard Gardner, Jeremy Berstein, Rudy Rucker, Michael Shermer, Nicholas Carr, Susam Blackmore, Scott Atran, David Christian, Andy Clark, Donald Hoffman, Derek Lowe, Roger Schank, Arnold Trehub, Timothy Taylor, Cliff Pickover, Ed Regis, Jared Diamond, Robert Provine, Richard Nisbett, Peter Woit, Haim Harari, Satyajit Das, Juan Enriquez, Jamshed Bharucha, Richard Foreman, Scott D. Sampson, Jonathan Gotschall, Keith Devlin, Clay Shirky, Steven Pinker, Gloria Origgi, Sean Carroll, Irene Pepperberg, Tor Nørretranders, Alan Alda, Jennifer Jacquet, George Dyson, Nigel Goldenfeld, Aubrey De Grey, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, George Church, Kevin Kelly, Stephen M. Kosslyn and Robin S. Rosenberg, Lawrence M. Krauss, James Croak, Armand Marie Leroi, Leonard Susskind, Douglas Rushkoff, Victoria Stodden, Daniel C. Dennett, Shing-tung Yau, Philip Campbell, Freeman Dyson, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Martin Rees, Stanislas Dehaene, Samuel Arbesman, David Gelernter, Timothy D. Wilson, Judith Rich Harris, Samuel Barondes, Peter Atkins, Robert Kurzban, Todd C. Sacktor, Gerald Holton, Frank Wilczek, Elizabeth Dunn, Eric J. Topol, Lee Smolin, Roger Highfield, Michael I. Norton, Richard Dawkins, Neil Gershenfeld, Alison Gopnik, Terrence J. Sejnowski, Rodney Brooks, Philip Zimbardo, Christopher Sykes, Nicholas A. Christakis, Marcel Kinsbourne, Thomas A. Bass, Randolph Nesse, Sherry Turkle, Gino Segre, Eric R. Kandel, Hugo Mercier, Beatrice Golomb, Benjamin Bergen, Alun Anderson, Alvy Ray Smith, Katinka Matson, Steve Giddings, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Gerd Gigerenzer , Gerald Smallberg, Paul Steinhardt, Adam Alter, Karl Sabbagh, David G. Myers, Lica DiBiase, Stuart Pimm, James J. O'Donnell, Albert-László Barabási, Simon Baron-Cohen, Charles Seife, Patrick Bateson, Carlo Rovelli, Jordan Pollack, Robert Sapolsky, Frank Tipler, Bruce Parker, Marcelo Gleiser, Richard Saul Wurman, Gary Klein, Ernst Pöppel, Evgeny Morozov, Gregory Benford, S. Abbas Raza, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Thomas Metzinger, David Haig, Melanie Swan, Laurence C. Smith, John C. Mather, Seth Lloyd, P. Murali Doriaswamy, Marti Hearst, Jon Kleinberg, Kai Krause, Joel Gold, Simone Schnall, Paul Saffo, Lisa Randall, Brian Eno, Giulio Boccaletti, Paul Bloom, Timo Hannay, Anthony Grayling, Matt Ridley, Doug Coupland, Amanda Gefter, Bruce Hood, Gregory Paul, Stephon Alexander, Bart Kosko, John Tooby, Stuart Kauffman, Barry C. Smith, John Naughton, Helen Fisher, Virginia Heffernan, Dimitar Sasselov, Eric Weinstein, Max Tegmark, PZ Myers, Andrew Lih, Christine Finn, Gregory Cochran, John McWhorter, Michael Vassar, Brian Knutson, Eduardo Salcedo-Albaran, Antony Garrett Lisi, Helena Cronin, Tania Lombrozo, Kevin Hand, Seirian Sumner, David Eagleman, Tim O'Reilly, Marco Iacoboni, Raphael Bousso, David Dalrymple, Emily Pronin, Dave Winer, Alanna Conner & Hazel Rose Markus, David Pizarro, Andrian Kreye, David Buss, Carl Zimmer, Stewart Brand, Anton Zeilinger, Carolyn Porco, Dan Sperber, Mahzarin Banaji, V.S. Ramachandran, Nathan Myhrvold, Charles Simonyi, Richard Thaler, Andrei Linde [Continue to responses.]
THE EDGE ANNUAL QUESTION
"An intellectual treasure trove" Forthcoming February 14th—Order Now
Mind: "(A) treasure chest ... A coffer of cutting-edge contemporary thought, The Mind contains the building blocks of tomorrow's history book—whatever medium they may come in—and invites a provocative peer forward as we gaze back at some of the most defining ideas of our time." Culture: the 17 pieces exude the kind of intellectual inquiry and cultural curiosity that give progress its wings. (A) lavish cerebral feast ... one of this year's most significant time-capsules of contemporary thought." — Atlantic |
"The Man Who Runs The World's Smartest Website" (in The Observer)
Since the mid-1960s John Brockman has been at the cutting edge of ideas. He is a passionate advocate of both science and the arts, and his website Edge is a salon for the world's finest minds
To say that John Brockman is a literary agent is like saying that David Hockney is a photographer. For while it's true that Hockney has indeed made astonishingly creative use of photography, and Brockman is indeed a successful literary agent who represents an enviable stable of high-profile scientists and communicators, in both cases the description rather understates the reality. More accurate ways of describing Brockman would be to say that he is a "cultural impresario" or, as his friend Stewart Brand puts it, an "intellectual enzyme". (Brand goes on helpfully to explain that an enzyme is "a biological catalyst – an adroit enabler of otherwise impossible things".)
The first thing you notice about Brockman, though, is the interesting way he bridges CP Snow's "Two Cultures" – the parallel universes of the arts and the sciences. When profilers ask him for pictures, one he often sends shows him with Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan, no less. Or shots of the billboard photographs of his head that were used to publicise an eminently forgettable 1968 movie, . But he's also one of the few people around who can phone Nobel laureates in science with a good chance that they will take the call. . . . [Download Guardian Digital pdf of print edition] [Photo Credit: Peter Yang]
Rethinking "Out of Africa"
I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the "Out of Africa" model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin. Twenty years ago, I would have argued that our species evolved in one place, maybe in East Africa or South Africa. There was a period of time in just one place where a small population of humans became modern, physically and behaviourally. Isolated and perhaps stressed by climate change, this drove a rapid and punctuational origin for our species. Now I don’t think it was that simple, either within or outside of Africa.
CHRISTOPHER STRINGER is one of the world's foremost paleoanthropologists. He is a founder and most powerful advocate of the leading theory concerning our evolution: Recent African Origin or "Out of Africa". He has worked at The Natural History Museum, London since 1973, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and currently leads the large and successful Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (AHOB), His most recent book is The Origin of Our Species (titled Lone Survivors in the US).
Christopher Stringer's Edge Bio Page
Rethinking "Out of Africa"
[CHRISTOPHER STRINGER:] At the moment, I'm looking again at the whole question of a recent African origin for modern humans—the leading idea over the last 20 years. This argues that we had a recent African origin, that we came out of Africa, and that we replaced all of the other human forms that were outside of Africa. But we're having to re-evaluate that now because genetic data suggest that the modern humans who came out of Africa about 60,000 years ago probably interbred with Neanderthals, first of all, and then some of them later on interbred with another group of people called the Denisovans, over in south eastern Asia.
If this is so, then we are not purely of recent African origin. We're mostly of recent African origin, but there was contact with these other so-called species. We're having to re-evaluate the Out-of-Africa theory, and we're having to re-evaluate the species concepts we apply, because in one view of thinking, species should be self-contained units. They don't interbreed with other species. However, for me, the whole idea of Neanderthals as a different species is really a recognition of their separate evolutionary history—the fact that we can show that they evolved through time in a particular direction, distinct from modern humans, and they separated maybe 400,000 years ago from our lineage. And morphologically we can distinguish a relatively complete Neanderthal fossil from any recent human.
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LATEST NEWS
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 KING OF THE CYBERSPACE BRAINIACS : Agent, editor and online salon founder John Brockman tells Lee Randall about his mission to bring together the world's finest minds
Lee Randall, The Scotsman
[1.28.12]
...That site, www.edge.org, is a renowned intellectual salon attracting the best and the brightest minds, predominantly scientific, to an ongoing conversation about the ideas and innovations shaping the way we understand the world. ...The UK books are a year behind America's, so How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? dates from 2010. That doesn't make it any less fascinating, and for some, the book format increases their accessibility. |
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 SCHOLARS AND SCIENTISTS DELVE INTO BIG IDEAS
FROM Darwinian evolution to the idea that personality is largely shaped by chance, the favorite theories of the world's most eminent thinkers are as eclectic as science itself. Shanghai Daily [1.21.12] ... Science theories that explain puzzling human behavior or the inner workings of the universe were also particular favorites of the Edge contributors: Psychologist Alison Gopnik of the University of California, Berkeley, is partial to one that accounts for why teenagers are so restless, reckless and emotional. Two brain systems, an emotional motivational system and a cognitive control system, have fallen out of sync, she explains. ... |
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 HERE IS A SMALL SAMPLE: ...
DOZENS of intellectuals address the impact of the Net in a new book, How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think? The Sunday Herald (Scotland) [1.29.12] To the question 'How is the internet changing the way you think?' the right answer is 'Too soon to tell'. The deep changes will be manifested only when new cultural norms shape what the technology makes possible. - CLAY SHIRKY ... Some people will find ... an intellectual environment suited to their mental proclivities. Others will see a catastrophic erosion in the ability of humans to engage in more meditative modes of thought. Many likely will be somewhere between, worried about its long-term effects on the depth of ... |
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 THE SMART LIST 2012: 50 PEOPLE WHO WILL CHANGE THE WORLD
John Brockman -- president the Edge Foundation, selects, Jennifer Jacquet -- postdoctoral researcher Wired UK Staff, Wired.UK [1.24.12] She is intellectually fearless, deeply serious about science, personally effervescent and always curious. Her interests are environmental sustainability (particularly fish), the evolution and function of guilt, honour and shame, and the role of IT in shaping environmental action - all of which fall under a broad interest in the tragedy of the commons. ... |
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 HAS IT ALL BECOME MUCH TOO FAST NOW?
You can hear this faint alarm bell of anxiety ringing in the title of John Brockman's thought-provoking collection of essays, How Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? (Note the implication: the internet is m Andrew Pettie, The Daily Telegraph (London) [1.28.12] You can hear this faint alarm bell of anxiety ringing in the title of John Brockman's thought-provoking collection of essays, How Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? (Note the implication: the internet is moulding us, not the other way around.)...Thankfully, many of Edge's essayists violently disagree with each other. To some, the internet is "a work of genius, one of the highest achievements of the human species" (Richard Dawkins) and "the most human of technologies" (the historian Noga Arikha). To others, i... |
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 THE KEYS TO THE FUTURE
Our time is characterized by a 'scientific wave that seems to overwhelm all other knowledge, starting with those humanities. Only a few "surfers" can ride it, among them ... Miguel Gotor, La Repubblica [1.15.12] The concept of collective intelligence proposed by the science writer Matt Ridley goes in this direction: we live in a society centered on the cult of 'individual intelligence, the charisma and meritocracy, but the development of the human species was gregarious but guaranteed the ability to operate complex systems "networking", through the division of labor and the sharing of objectives. |
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 CULT VIP
JOHN BROCKMAN: THE WISEGUY Since the mid-60s, whether promoting pop culture happenings, Dada revolutionaries or the leading science writers of the day, John Brockman has been in the vanguard of intellectual fashion. Jacqueline Marcus, Dazed [1.9.12]...In 1996 the Reality Club morphed into online salon Edge.org, a place where, he explains, "science and scientific methods are being brought into areas where no one ever thought it was possible, like morality, psychology, into decision making." Like Brockman himself, Edge is wholly unpretentious: "There's no talking down to people, there's no baby talk, if somebody talks for an hour-and-a-half, I print it. |
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 WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE TEENAGE MIND?
Children today reach puberty earlier and adulthood later. The result: A lot of teenage weirdness. Alison Gopnik on how we might readjust adolescence.
Alison Gopnik, Wall Street Journal
[1.28.12]
[Adapted from Alison Gopnik's essay] for www.edge.org, in response to the website's 2012 annual question: "What is your favorite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?" |
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 THE DISCREET CHARM OF SCIENCE As we read on the site guided and animated by John Brockman, Edge's demand for 2012 has been designed by Steven Pinker, psychologist and cognitive scientist, and was discussed with Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and George Dyson.
Il24 Sole Ore
[1.22.12]
And the answers do not disappoint. In fact, reinforce, if proof were still needed the deep sense of cultural path Edge: breaking the walls that traditionally separate scientific specialties and interdisciplinary approach to research in this time of great change, not only preference intellectual or fashionable slogan, but real preconditions for an exploration of the very sources of innovative knowledge. |
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