(11,700 words)
This online EDGE edition with streaming video is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge286.html
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THE THIRD CULTURE
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CHIMERAS OF EXPERIENCE
A Conversation with Jonah Lehrer
EDGE Video
"The paradox of modern neuroscience is that the one reality you can't describe as it is presently conceived is the only reality we'll ever know, which is the subjective first person view of things. Even if you can find the circuit of cells that gives rise to that, and you can construct a good causal demonstration that you knock out these circuit of cells, and you create a zombie; even if you do that... and I know Dennett could dismantle this argument very, very quickly ... there's still a mystery that persists, and this is the old brain-body, mind-body problem, and we don't simply feel like three pounds of meat."
JONAH LEHRER, Contributing Editor at Wired and the author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist, has written for The New Yorker, Nature, Seed, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.
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The Third Culture has grown beyond EDGE, as scientists have become increasingly public -- and even famous -- figures. Seed approached six thinkers to ask where we are now: Whether the Two Cultures are still divided, and what role the Third Culture is playing.
SEED CELEBRATES THE QUESTIONS C.P. SNOW RAISED 50 YEARS AGO BY ASKING: WHERE ARE WE NOW?
Video
"Are we beyond the Two Cultures?" asks SEED Magazine in its May 7 commemoration of the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow's Two Cultures lecture. Readers following Edge since it began 12 years, 285 editions, and 2,939,953 words ago, know how to answer this question. Fortunately, Seedfollows up and asks "Where are we now?"
In the videos below, SEED asks six notable scientists, authors, thinkers -- all also early Edge contributors -- (E.O. Wilson, Janna Levin, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Steven Pinker, Marc D. Hauser, and Rebecca Goldstein) to comment on where the third culture is today.
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ARTICLES OF NOTE
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
May 21, 2009
What You Don't Know Makes You Nervous
By DANIEL GILBERT
An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait.
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NEW YORK TIMES
May 20, 2009
THE WILD SIDE
Guest Column: Math and the City
BY STEVEN STROGATZ
One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise be hidden. This week's column is about one such pattern. It's a beautiful law of collective organization that links urban studies to zoology. It reveals Manhattan and a mouse to be variations on a single structural theme.
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NEW YORK TIMES -- TIERNEY LAB
May 19, 2009
FINDINGS
Message in What We Buy, but Nobody's Listening
By JOHN TIERNEY
If you ask market researchers or advertising executives, you might hear about the difference between "rational" and "emotional" buying decisions, or about products falling into categories like "hedonic" or "utilitarian" or "positional." But GEOFFREY MILLER, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, says that even the slickest minds on Madison Avenue are still in the prescientific dark ages.
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THE REASON PROJECT LAUNCHES IT'S WEBSITE
.. The Reason Project seeks to encourage critical thinking and wise public policy through a variety of interrelated projects. The foundation will convene conferences, produce films, sponsor scientific studies and opinion polls, publish original research, award grants to other charitable organizations, and offer material support to religious dissidents and public intellectuals -- all with the purpose of eroding the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
May 18, 2009
Rip My Book, Please
An interview with The Long Tail's Chris Anderson on the meaning of free
by Andrew Richard Albanese
One day after News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch told reporters that his company is exploring how to charge for its online content, proclaiming that an "epochal" moment looms in Web history, PW asked Wired editor-in-chief CHRIS ANDERSON, bestselling author of THE LONG TAIL, about the dire state of newspapers in the digital age. "With The Long Tail, people were like, okay, smart guy, fix the music industry," Anderson quipped. "Now, it is going to be, okay, smart guy, fix the newspaper industry! I have to say, I do not have any answers."
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NEWSWEEK
May 18, 2009
Science Cult:
Ray Kurzweil's vision of a 'Singularity' has attracted some followers, but don't expect it anytime soon.
By John Horgan
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NEWSWEEK
May 16, 2009
I, Robot:
Ray Kurzweil can't wait to be a Cyborg--a human mind inside an everlasting machine. But is this the next great leap in human evolution
By Daniel Lyons
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PBS -- BILL MOYERS JOUNRAL
May 15, 2009
Daniel Goleman explains to Bill Moyers how better educated consumers can help build a sustainable economy.
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NATURE
May 14, 2009
COLUMN: MUSE
How much reason do you want?
By Philip Ball
The 'war' between science and religion is stuck in a rut. Can we change the record now, asks Philip Ball?
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LOS ANGELES TIMES - OPINION
May 17, 2009
Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining
By Charlotte Allen
Superstar atheists are motivated by anger -- and boohoo victimhood.
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SEED
May 16, 2009
ALISON GOPNIK DESCRIBES NEW EXPERIMENTS IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY THAT SHOW EVERYTHING WE THINK WE KNOW ABOUT BABIES IS WRONG.
By Evan Lerner
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NEW SCIENTIST
May 4, 2009
How to map the multiverse
by Anil Ananthaswamy
BRIAN GREENE spent a good part of the last decade extolling the virtues of string theory. [...] "But the fly in the ointment was that string theory allowed for, in principle, many universes," says Greene, who is a theoretical physicist at Columbia University in New York.
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THE WASHINGTON POST
May 6, 2009
paidContent.org - Conde Nast's Carey And Wired's Anderson: Pursuing The 'Fremium' Model
By David Kaplan
CHRIS ANDERSON, Wired: Print is not just about newspapers or magazine, you need to think of books as well. What we're seeing is a distinction between different kinds of print. We're now slowly figuring out what kind of print adds value in the internet age and what kind doesn't.
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COSMOS
October, 2008
Rage of reason
By Robin McKie
Richard Dawkins is a towering figure in evolution who skewers creationists for sport. He doesn't suffer fools gladly, but was kind enough to talk to Robin McKie.
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BOOKS FROM EDGE
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WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT
Edited by John Brockman
With An Introduction By BRIAN ENO
Harper Perennial
http://www.amazon.com/What-Have-Changed-Your-About/dp/0061686549
Praise for WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT?
The world's finest minds have responded with some of the most insightful, humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual treasure trove. ... Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening reading you can do for the new year. Read it now."
San Francisco Chronicle
"The splendidly enlightened Edge website (www.edge.org) has rounded off each year of inter-disciplinary debate by asking its heavy-hitting contributors to answer one question. I strongly recommend a visit." THE INDEPENDENT
"A great event in the Anglo-Saxon culture." EL MUNDS
"As fascinating and weighty as one would imagine." THE INDEPENDENT
"They are the intellectual elite, the brains the rest of us rely on to make sense of the universe and answer the big questions. But in a refreshing show of new year humility, the world's best thinkers have admitted that from time to time even they are forced to change their minds." THE GUARDIAN
"Even the world's best brains have to admit to being wrong sometimes: here, leading scientists respond to a new year challenge." THE TIMES
"Provocative ideas put forward today by leading figures." THE TELEGRAPH
The world's finest minds have responded with some of the most insightful, humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual treasure trove. ... Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening reading you can do for the new year. Read it now." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"As in the past, these world-class thinkers have responded to impossibly open-ended questions with erudition, imagination and clarity." THE NEWS & OBSERVER
"A jolt of fresh thinking...The answers address a fabulous array of issues. This is the intellectual equivalent of a New Year's dip in the lake - bracing, possibly shriek-inducing, and bound to wake you up." THE GLOBE & MAIL
"Answers ring like scientific odes to uncertainty, humility and doubt; passionate pleas for critical thought in a world threatened by blind convictions." THE TORONTO STAR
"For an exceptionally high quotient of interesting ideas to words, this is hard to beat. ...What a feast of egg-head opinionating!" NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
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This online EDGE edition with streaming video is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge286.html
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Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
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EDGE
John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher
Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant
Copyright (c) 2008 by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022
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