This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works PDF
Preview This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works
This Explains Everything Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works Edited by JOHN BROCKMAN CONTENTS PREFACE: The Edge Question, by John Brockman Evolution by Means of Natural Selection SUSAN BLACKMORE Life Is a Digital Code MATT RIDLEY Redundancy Reduction and Pattern Recognition RICHARD DAWKINS The Power of Absurdity SCOTT ATRAN How Apparent Finality Can Emerge CARLO ROVELLI The Overdue Demise of Monogamy AUBREY DE GREY Boltzmann’s Explanation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics LEONARD SUSSKIND The Dark Matter of the Mind JOEL GOLD “There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth . . . Than Are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy.” ALAN ALDA An Unresolved (and Therefore Unbeautiful) Reaction to the Edge Question REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN Ptolemy’s Universe JAMES J. O’DONNELL Quasi-Elegance PAUL STEINHARDT Mathematical Object or Natural Object? SHING-TUNG YAU Simplicity FRANK WILCZEK Simplicity Itself THOMAS METZINGER Einstein Explains Why Gravity Is Universal SEAN CARROLL Evolutionary Genetics and the Conflicts of Human Social Life STEVEN PINKER The Faurie-Raymond Hypothesis JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL Group Polarization DAVID G. MYERS The Price Equation ARMAND MARIE LEROI Unconscious Inferences GERD GIGERENZER Snowflakes and the Multiverse MARTIN J. REES Einstein’s Photons ANTON ZEILINGER Go Small JEREMY BERNSTEIN Why Is Our World Comprehensible? ANDREI LINDE Alfvén’s Cosmos GEORGE DYSON Our Universe Grew Like a Baby MAX TEGMARK Kepler et al. and the Nonexistent Problem GINO SEGRÈ How Incompatible Worldviews Can Coexist FREEMAN DYSON Impossible Inexactness SATYAJIT DAS The Next Level of Fundamental Matter? HAIM HARARI Observers Observing ROBERT PROVINE Genes, Claustrum, and Consciousness V. S. RAMACHANDRAN Overlapping Solutions DAVID M. EAGLEMAN Our Bounded Rationality MAHZARIN BANAJI Swarm Intelligence ROBERT SAPOLSKY Language and Natural Selection KEITH DEVLIN Commitment RICHARD H. THALER Tit for Tat JENNIFER JACQUET True or False: Beauty Is Truth JUDITH RICH HARRIS Eratosthenes and the Modular Mind DAN SPERBER Dan Sperber’s Explanation of Culture CLAY SHIRKY Metarepresentations Explain Human Uniqueness HUGO MERCIER Why the Human Mind May Seem to Have an Elegant Explanation Even If It Doesn’t NICHOLAS HUMPHREY Fitness Landscapes STEWART BRAND On Oceans and Airport Security KEVIN P. HAND Plate Tectonics Elegantly Validates Continental Drift PAUL SAFFO Why Some Sea Turtles Migrate DANIEL C. DENNETT A Hot Young Earth: Unquestionably Beautiful and Stunningly Wrong CARL ZIMMER Sexual-Conflict Theory DAVID M. BUSS The Seeds of Historical Dominance DAVID PIZARRO The Importance of Individuals HOWARD GARDNER Subjective Environment ANDRIAN KREYE My Favorite Annoying Elegant Explanation: Quantum Theory RAPHAEL BOUSSO Einstein’s Revenge: The New Geometric Quantum ERIC R. WEINSTEIN What Time Is It? DAVE WINER Realism and Other Metaphysical Half-Truths TANIA LOMBROZO All We Need Is Help SEIRIAN SUMNER In the Beginning Is the Theory HELENA CRONIN Thompson on Development PAUL BLOOM How Do You Get from a Lobster to a Cat? JOHN McWHORTER Germs Cause Disease GREGORY COCHRAN Dirt Is Matter Out of Place CHRISTINE FINN Information Is the Resolution of Uncertainty ANDREW LIH Everything Is the Way It Is Because It Got That Way PZ MYERS The Idea of Emergence DAVID CHRISTIAN Frames of Reference DIMITAR D. SASSELOV Epigenetics—the Missing Link HELEN FISHER Flocking Behavior in Birds JOHN NAUGHTON Lemons Are Fast BARRY C. SMITH Falling into Place: Entropy and the Desperate Ingenuity of Life JOHN TOOBY Why Things Happen PETER ATKINS Why We Feel Pressed for Time ELIZABETH DUNN Why the Sun Still Shines BART KOSKO Boscovich’s Explanation of Atomic Forces CHARLES SIMONYI Birds Are the Direct Descendants of Dinosaurs GREGORY S. PAUL Complexity Out of Simplicity BRUCE HOOD Russell’s Theory of Descriptions A. C. GRAYLING Feynman’s Lifeguard TIMO HANNAY The Limits of Intuition BRIAN ENO The Higgs Mechanism LISA RANDALL The Mind Thinks in Embodied Metaphors SIMONE SCHNALL Metaphors Are in the Mind BENJAMIN K. BERGEN The Pigeonhole Principle JON KLEINBERG Why Programs Have Bugs MARTI HEARST Cagepatterns HANS-ULRICH OBRIST The True Rotational Symmetry of Space SETH LLOYD The Pigeonhole Principle Revisited CHARLES SEIFE Moore’s Law RODNEY A. BROOKS Cosmic Complexity JOHN C. MATHER The Gaia Hypothesis SCOTT SAMPSON The Continuity Equations LAURENCE C. SMITH Pascal’s Wager TIM O’REILLY Evolutionarily Stable Strategies S. ABBAS RAZA The Collingridge Dilemma EVGENY MOROZOV Trusting Trust ERNST PÖPPEL It Just Is? BRUCE PARKER Subverting Biology PATRICK BATESON Sex at Your Fingertips SIMON BARON-COHEN Why Do Movies Move? ALVY RAY SMITH Would You Like Blue Cheese with It? ALBERT-LÁSZLÓ BARABÁSI Mother Nature’s Laws STUART PIMM The Oklo Pyramid KARL SABBAGH Kitty Genovese and Group Apathy ADAM ALTER The Wizard of I GERALD SMALLBERG One Coincidence; Two Déjà Vus DOUGLAS COUPLAND Occam’s Razor KATINKA MATSON Deep Time ALUN ANDERSON Placing Psychotherapy on a Scientific Basis: Five Easy Lessons ERIC R. KANDEL Transitional Objects SHERRY TURKLE Natural Selection Is Simple but the Systems It Shapes Are Unimaginably Complex RANDOLPH NESSE How to Have a Good Idea MARCEL KINSBOURNE Out of the Mouths of Babes NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS The Beauty in a Sunrise PHILIP CAMPBELL The Origin of Money DYLAN EVANS The Precession of the Simulacra DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF Time Perspective Theory PHILIP ZIMBARDO Developmental Timing Explains the Woes of Adolescence ALISON GOPNIK Implications of Ivan Pavlov’s Great Discovery STEPHEN M. KOSSLYN AND ROBIN ROSENBERG Nature Is Cleverer Than We Are TERRENCE J. SEJNOWSKI Imposing Randomness MICHAEL I. NORTON The Unification of Electricity and Magnetism LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS Furry Rubber Bands NEIL GERSHENFELD The Principle of Inertia LEE SMOLIN Seeing Is Believing: From Placebos to Movies in Our Brain ERIC J. TOPOL The Discontinuity of Science and Culture GERALD HOLTON Hormesis Is Redundancy NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB The Beautiful Law of Unintended Consequences ROBERT KURZBAN We Are What We Do TIMOTHY D. WILSON Personality Differences: The Importance of Chance SAMUEL BARONDES Metabolic Syndrome: Cell Energy Adaptations in a Toxic World? BEATRICE GOLOMB Death Is the Final Repayment EMANUEL DERMAN Denumerable Infinities and Mental States DAVID GELERNTER Inverse Power Laws RUDY RUCKER How the Leopard Got His Spots SAMUEL ARBESMAN The Universal Algorithm for Human Decision Making STANISLAS DEHAENE Lord Acton’s Dilemma MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI Fact, Fiction, and Our Probabilitic World VICTORIA STODDEN Elegant = Complex GEORGE CHURCH Tinbergen’s Questions IRENE PEPPERBERG The Universal Turing Machine GLORIA ORIGGI A Matter of Poetics RICHARD FOREMAN The Origins of Biological Electricity JARED DIAMOND Why the Greeks Painted Red People on Black Pots TIMOTHY TAYLOR Language As an Adaptive System ANDY CLARK The Mechanism of Mediocrity NICHOLAS J. CARR The Principle of Empiricism, or See for Yourself MICHAEL SHERMER We Are Stardust KEVIN KELLY Index Acknowledgments About the Author Also By John Brockman Back Ad Copyright About the Publisher PREFACE THE EDGE QUESTION In 1981, I founded the Reality Club. From its founding through 1996, the club held its meetings in Chinese restaurants, artists’ lofts, the boardrooms of investment-banking firms, ballrooms, museums, and living rooms, among other venues. The Reality Club differed from the Algonquin Round Table, the Apostles, and the Bloomsbury Group, but it offered the same quality of intellectual adventure. Perhaps the closest resemblance was to the late 18th-and early 19th-century Lunar Society of Birmingham, an informal gathering of the leading cultural figures of the new industrial age—James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley, Benjamin Franklin. In a similar fashion, the Reality Club was an attempt to gather together those people exploring the themes of the post–Industrial Age. In 1997, the Reality Club went online, rebranded as Edge. The ideas presented on Edge are speculative; they represent the frontiers in such areas as evolutionary biology, genetics, computer science, neurophysiology, psychology, cosmology, and physics. Emerging out of these contributions is a new natural philosophy, new ways of understanding physical systems, new ways of thinking that call into question many of our basic assumptions. For each of the anniversary editions of Edge, I and a number of Edge stalwarts, including Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and George Dyson, get together to plan the annual Edge Question—usually one that comes to one or another of us or our correspondents in the middle of the night. It’s not easy coming up with a question. (As the late James Lee Byars, my friend and sometime collaborator, used to say: “I can answer the question, but am I bright enough to ask it?”) We look for questions that inspire unpredictable answers—that provoke people into thinking thoughts they normally might not have. For this year’s question, our thanks go, once again, to Steven Pinker. Perhaps the greatest pleasure in science 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, Niels Bohr’s explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and James Watson and Francis Crick’s explanation of genetic replication via the double helix. The great theoretical physicist P. A. M. Dirac famously said that “it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment.” The Edge Question 2012 WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION? The online response to the Edge website this year (http://edge.org/annual- question/) was enormous—some 200 provocative (and often lengthy) discussions. What follows is necessarily an edited selection. In the spirit of Edge, the contributions presented here embrace scientific thinking in the broadest sense: as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything— including such fields of inquiry as philosophy, mathematics, economics, history, language, and human behavior. The common thread is that a simple and nonobvious idea is proposed as the explanation for a diverse and complicated set of phenomena. JOHN BROCKMAN Publisher & Editor, Edge EVOLUTION BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION
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