"Big, deep and ambitious questions....breathtaking in scope. Keep watching The World Question Center." — New Scientist (editorial)

New Vordenker der "Dritten Kultur": Fragen für das Jahr 2002: "Wer Nicht Fragt, Bleibt Dumm"

THOSE WHO DON'T ASK REMAIN DUMB
The haze of ignorance still has not disappeared: Whoever wants real answers has to know what he's looking for — A poll of scientists and artists for the year 2002.

In a time when culture was still not numbered, the Count of Thüringen invited his nobles to the "Singers' War at the Wartburg," where he asked questions (if we are to believe Richard Wagner) that would bring glory, the most famous of which queried, "Could you explain to me the nature of love?" The publisher and literary agent, John Brockman, who now organizes singers' wars on the Internet, enjoys latching on to this tradition at the beginning of every year. (FAZ, January 9, 2001). His Tannhäuser may be named Steven Pinker, and his Wolfram von Eschenbach may go by Richard Dawkins, but it would do us well to trust that they and their compatriots could also turn out speculation on the count's favorite theme. Brockman's thinkers of the "Third Culture," whether they, like Dawkins, study evolutionary biology at Oxford or, like Alan Alda, portray scientists on Broadway, know no taboos. Everything is permitted, and nothing is excluded from this intellectual game. But in the end, as it takes place in its own Wartburg, reached electronically at www.edge.org, it concerns us and our unexplained and evidently inexplicable fate. In this new year Brockman himself doesn't ask, but rather once again facilitates the asking of questions. The contributions can be found from today onwards on the Internet. In conjunction with the start of the forum we are printing a selection of questions and commentary, at times in somewhat abridged form, in German translation. .... [click here]

F.A.Z. —Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14.01.2002, Nr. 11 / Seite 38

"Will non-sustainable developments (i.e., atmospheric change, deforestation, fresh water use, etc.) become halted in pleasant ways of our choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice?"

To my mind, by far the most important question concerns the way in which our currently non-sustainable course gets resolved in the next several decades.....[click here]

Jared M. Diamond is Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the widely acclaimed Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies.

"Do 'folk concepts' of the mind have anything to do with what really happens in the brain?''

When we speak about our experiences, we use terms like emotion, perception, thought, action, motivation, attention, free will. ....[click here]

David Berreby writes about science and culture, His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, The Sciences and many other publications.

"Will cognitive science change the way we think as much as other sciences have?"

Physical science has changed how we think. Those with a basic education no longer think of sun revolving around the earth, or of matter as made up of earth, air, fire, and water. ....[click here]

George Lakoff is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Where Mathematics Comes From (with Rafael Núñez).

"Who and what are the we in we?"

Humans are, to our knowledge, the only species who can inquire into the nature of nature....[click here]

Paul W. Ewald is a professor of biology at Amherst College and author of Plague Time.

"Is our brain smart enough to understand the brain?"

Here is a paradox for cognitive neuroscientists: We're trying to understand the brain with the very mental resources that are afforded by our brains.....[click here]

Stanislas Dehaene is a cognitive scientist at the Institut National de la Santé and author of The Number Sense: How Mathematical Knowledge Is Embedded In Our Brains.

"Do languages matter?"

A language dies when there is nobody left to speak it.....[click here]

Xeni Jardin is a freelance journalist and conference manager.

"After postfeminism, what's next?"

Women of a previous generation said that their own mothers had missed out on the fruits of feminism.....[click here]

Tracy Quan is a member of the International Network of Sex Work Projects. She is the author of the novel, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl.

"How do we scale up the number of quality human relationships one person can sustain by many orders of magnitude? In an increasingly connected world, how does one person interact with a hundred thousand, a million or even a billion people?"

Our one fixed resource is time — human attention. As we become increasingly networked in the technological sense, we also become more networked in the social sense.....[click here]

Adrian Scott is founder of Ryze, a business networking community. He is a founding investor in Napster, got his Ph.D. in nonlinear optimization at age 20, and has sung with Placido Domingo and performed with the NYC Ballet.

"Why is life so full of suffering?"

It is a bit embarrassing to admit a preoccupation with this gigantic old question, but it is human, I suppose.....[click here]

Randolph M. Nesse is Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan and editor of Evolution and the Capacity for Commitment.

Who am I? What am I?

Perhaps I am this stuff here, i.e., the ordered and chaotic collection of molecules that comprise my body and brain. ....[click here]

Ray Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, among other major inventions, and author of The Age of Spiritual Machines.

"What is value?"

Oscar Wilde once said that "A fool is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing"....[click here]

J. Doyne Farmer , one of the pioneers of what has come to be called chaos theory, is McKinsey Professor, Sante Fe, Institute, and the co-founder and former co-president of Prediction Company in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

"Are we ever going to be humble enough to assume that we are mere animals, like crabs, penguins, and chimpanzees, and not the chosen protégés of this or that God?"

Recent events around the world remind us of historical phenomena observed since the dawn of civilizations: wars, genocides, oppression, conquests, occupations, and, of course, killings in the name of some God.....[click here]

Rafael Núñez is professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California at San Diego, and author of Where Mathematics Comes From (with George Lakoff).

"Are space and time fundamental concepts or are they approximations to other, more subtle, ideas that still await our discovery?"

It is hard to conceive of a universe that does not exist in space and persist through time: space and time seem to be the basic framework of the cosmos. ....[click here]

Brian Greene is a professor of physics and of mathematics at Columbia University and author of The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for an Ultimate Theory.

"Is it possible to know what is good and what is evil?"

For the past four centuries, the attempt to answer this question has been the main driving force of world history ­ not only the history of ideas, but also the history of politics and collective violence. This is true for two reasons: ....[click here]

James Gilligan has been on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School since 1966. He is the author of Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic.

" Does life on Earth have a future?"

By "life on Earth" I mean the variety of life, the multitude of species, the dazzling array of ecosystems they create from the permanent snow fields of the Himalayas to steamy jungles, and coral reefs, and the variety of including ourselves including and the 6000+ languages we speak and our cultures that they largely define. ....[click here]

Stuart Pimm is Professor of Conservation Biology at Columbia University in New Yorkand author of The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth.

"Is the PC desktop really dead?"

Much ado has been made lately over the problems of the PC "desktop metaphor," the system of folders and icons included in Macintosh and Windows PCs....[click here]

Mark Hurst is the founder of Creative Good, Inc., a leading user experience consulting firm.

"How do women's minds work?"

Try this question on any man: All you'll get for an answer is a shrugging of shoulders along with a puzzled facial expression.....[click here]

"What will happen when the increasing speed of communication, the driving force behind cultural progress since the introduction of husbandry, suddenly becomes irrelevant?"

I am convinced that there is a predominant driving force behind cultural progress and that this driving force is speed of communications.....[click here]

Eberhard Zangger is the geoarchaeologist who uncovered the most plausible explanation for the legend of lost Atlantis of the past 2500 years and author of The Future of the Past.

"Will unification ever come to a stop?"

Unification of opposites is an underlying theme in the development of humanity. ....[click here]

Anton Zeilinger is a Professor of Physics at the University of Vienna whose work in quantum teleportation has received worldwide attention.

"Why do we decorate?"

Why do all the human cultures that we know of decorate things? Why not just leave them alone? Why put in all that extra, and apparently non-functional, energy? ....[click here]

Brian Eno, an artist, makes and produces records. He has produced U2 ("including this year's award- winning "All That You Can't Leave Behind"), Talking Heads and Devo and collaborated with David Bowie, John Cale, and Laurie Anderson.

"Why do people like music?"

People from every culture like listening to some kind of music, so it seems that it is something that is wired into us. Is there an evolutionary advantage to liking music?....[click here]

W. Daniel Hillis is Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Applied Minds, Inc., a research and development company and author of The Pattern on the Stone.

"How much can we expect the social sciences to help build a just and free society?"

Marx and Engels argued for "scientific socialism", that is, for a political movement that would bring about a just and free society with the help of science. ....[click here]

Dan Sperber is a social and cognitive scientist at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris and author, with Deirdre Wilson, of Relevance: Communication and Cognition.

"What is the difference between the sigmundoscope and the sigmoidoscope? Less cryptically, how is everyday narrative logic different from extensional mathematical logic?

It differs in countless ways, most of them poorly understood.....[click here]

John Allen Paulos is Professor of mathematics at Temple University adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University, and author Once Upon a Number.

"Why do people kill other people?"

No offense against another human being inflicts greater costs than killing....[click here]

David M. Buss is Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, and author of Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind.

Many human skills enable an individual to do something with less physiological effort....[click here]

Tor Nørretranders is a science writer, consultant, lecturer and organizer based in Copenhagen, Denmark and author of The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size.

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist at the Centre de Physique Theorique in Marseille, France.

Sir John Maddox who recently retired having served 23 years as the editor of Nature, is a trained physicist, and author of What Remains to be Discovered: The Agenda for Science in the Next Century.

The question of what is "real," defined here as the physical universe, acquires special subtlety from the perspective of brain and cognitive science....[click here]

Robert R. Provine is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Maryland and author of Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.

As any parent of adolescents has probably experienced, life has become sufficiently complex that emotional maturity by the end of teen years is a thing of the distant past....[click here]

Stephen H. Schneider is Professor in the Biological Sciences Department at Stanford University and author of Laboratory Earth.

Plato believed that human knowledge was inborn. Kant and Peirce agreed that much of knowledge had to exist prior to birth or it would be impossible to understand or learn anything....[click here]

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