Small issue, big answers [1]

[2]
[ Tue. Jan. 1. 2008 ]

Even the best minds of this world sometimes have to accept that they were wrong. Scientists answer the question of the Edge Foundation, which they have changed their minds - and why.

? What would you have changed your mind and why "that question the Edge Foundation's leading scholars and thinkers have asked - and got surprising answers. The organization is an informal group of intellectuals who want to work together to find answers to questions that move the company. For each year presents its coordinator, the publisher John Brockman, the members remains a tricky task. "What is your dangerous idea?", "What do you think is true, although you can not prove?" Were issues of recent years. The answers are on the website www.edge.org [4] read. 

The question this year was: 
When thinking changes your opinion, that's philosophy. 
When God changes your opinion, that's faith. 
When facts change your opinion, that's science. 
What would you have changed your opinion and why? 

More than 120 scientists have racked their brains over this small issue and found that they had at least something from which they were firmly convinced revise. Perhaps it is because they are scientists. For a scientist, at least once in his career does not think his change in, be narrow-minded, stuck, rigid and dogmatic, writes Richard Dawkins [5] , evolutionary biologist and author of the bestseller The God Delusion. In this, the members of this profession would be fundamentally different from politicians who are afraid of being accused of being a little flag in the wind, if they change their mind. 

The responses of the intellectuals are personal, sometimes quite technical, but also political. They cover a wide range of what concerns people: climate change, the difference between men and women, but also the question of the existence of God. 

Craig Venter: Saving the Earth [6] 
The gene pioneer Craig Venter believed for years that only future generations must also consider how they solve the problem of dwindling natural energy resources. He believed that ultimately only the diminishing oil reserves go - and not the CO2 emissions. This idea he had to revise the increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is irrefutable, wrote the researchers. His answer is also an appeal: "Our planet is in crisis and we must mobilize all our intellectual powers to save him." 

Helena Cronin: Stupid men, wise men [7] 
Helena Cronin, a Evolutionstheoretikerin at the London School of Economics addressed the question of why men seem more successful at work and the thesis that the different talents of both sexes are innate. Men are more aggressive, risk-taking and ambitious. With these capabilities, they are superior to women who are more socially competent and more talk. This opinion has it fundamentally changed talents, tastes and temperament were not sufficient to explain why men are more successful than women, notes the scientist. Their new argument: Take one to a normal distribution, be it simple so that the women are rather average, while men occupy the extremes. "More dumbbels but more Nobels", that is either extremely stupid or extremely smart is the male sex, it sums up their knowledge. 

Leon Lederman: Scientists in politics! [8] 
The physics Nobel laureate Leon Lederman Max is worried about what the responsibilities of a researcher. He concludes: Do not just research and teaching should address a scientist, but also in politics, he wants the thinking elite, "A Congress that is dominated by lawyers and economists, makes no sense in the 21st Century in which it is almost always for scientific and technological issues. " 

Patrick Bateson: Well but godless [9] 
Sometimes a single call to change a fundamental review. It happened to the behavioral scientist Patrick Bateson of the University of Cambridge. He has always said he was an agnostic, someone who could affirm the existence of God nor deny. The term "atheism" was it always been too aggressive. Until he was placed at dinner next to a staunch supporter of creationism. The table conversation with his neighbor has left the scientist tracks. The narrowness of his interlocutor has taken him to call himself an atheist today.

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