Edge editions

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Edge 249: Summer Reading Issue; Reality Club: "The End of Theory"

Edge 249 - July 8, 2008

http://www.edge.org

(10,600 words)

This online EDGE edition is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html

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THE THIRD CULTURE

SUMMER READING
Recent and Forthcoming Titles from Edge Contributors

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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#summer
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THE REALITY CLUB

RESPONSES TO CHIS ANDERSON'S THE END OF THEORY

George Dyson, Kevin Kelly, Stewart Brand, W. Daniel Hillis, Sean Carroll, Jaron Lanier, Joseph Traub, John Horgan, Bruce Sterling, Douglas Rushkoff, Oliver Morton, Daniel Everett, Gloria Origgi, Lee Smolin, Joel Garreau
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#rc

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GEORGE DYSON: Just as we may eventually take the brain apart, neuron by neuron, and never find the model, we may discover that true AI came into existence without anyone ever developing a coherent model of reality or an unambiguous theory of intelligence. Reality, with all its ambiguities, does the job just fine. It may be that our true destiny as a species is to build an intelligence that proves highly successful, whether we understand how it works or not. ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#dysong

KEVIN KELLY: My guess is that this emerging method will be one additional tool in the evolution of the scientific method. It will not replace any current methods (sorry, no end of science!) but will compliment established theory-driven science. Let's call this data intensive approach to problem solving Correlative Analytics. I think Chris squanders a unique opportunity by titling his thesis "The End of Theory" because this is a negation, the absence of something. Rather it is the beginning of something, and this is when you have a chance to accelerate that birth by giving it a positive name. ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#kelly

STEWART BRAND: Digital humanity apparently crossed from one watershed to another over the last few years. Now we are noticing. Noticing usually helps. We'll converge on one or two names for the new watershed and watch what induction tells us about how it works and what it's good for. . .. [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#brand

W. DANIEL HILLIS: Chris Anderson says that "this approach to science—hypothesize, model, test—is becoming obsolete". No doubt the statement is intended to be provocative, but I do not see even a little bit of truth in it. I share his enthusiasm for the possibilities created by petabyte datasets and parallel computing, but I do not see why large amounts of data will undermine the scientific method.
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#hillis

SEAN CARROLL: ... Sometimes it will be hard, or impossible, to discover simple models explaining huge collections of messy data taken from noisy, nonlinear phenomenon. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Hypotheses aren't simply useful tools in some potentially-outmoded vision of science; they are the whole point. Theory is understanding, and understanding our world is what science is all about. [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#carroll

JARON LANIER: Anderson pretends it's useless to be a human. Machines should now do the thinking, and be the heroes of discovery. ...I say "pretends" because I don't believe he is being sincere. I think it's a ploy to get a certain kind of attention. Hearing anti-human rhetoric has the same sting as a movie plot about a serial killer. Some deep, moral part of each of us is so offended that we can't turn off our attention. ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#lanier

JOSEPH TRAUB: I agree with Danny Hillis that large amounts of data will not undermine the scientific method. Indeed, scientific laws encode a huge amount of data. Think of Maxwell's equations or Kepler's laws for example. Why does Chris Anderson think that with still more data, laws (what he calls theory) will become less important?
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#traub

JOHN HORGAN: Chris Anderson seems to think computers will reduce science to pure induction, predicting the future based on the past. This method of course can't predict black swans, anomalous, truly novel events. Theory-laden human experts can't foresee black swans either, but for the foreseeable future, human experts will know how to handle black swans more adeptly when they appear. ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#horgan

BRUCE STERLING: ... I do have to wonder why—after Google promptly demolished advertising—Chris Anderson wants Google to pick on scientific theory. Advertising is nothing like scientific theory. Advertising has always been complete witch-doctor hokum. After blowing down the house of straw, Google might want to work its way up to the bricks. ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#sterling

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: When I read Anderson's extremely astute arguments about the direction of science, I find myself concerned that science could very well take the same course as politics or business. The techniques of mindless petabyte churn favor industry over consideration, consumption over creation, and—dare I say it—mindless fascism over thoughtful self-government. ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#rushkoff

OLIVER MORTON: Chris Anderson's provocations spur much thought—I'll limit it to two specifics and two generalities. The first specific is that Anderson mischaracterises particle physics. The problem with particle physics is not data poverty—it is theoretical affluence. The Tevatron, and LEP before it, have produced amounts of data vast for their times—data is in rich supply. The problem is that the standard model explains it all. The drive beyond the standard model is not a reflection of data poverty, but of theory feeding on theory because the data are so well served. ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#morton

DANIEL EVERETT: More intriguingly, do children acquire language based on a genetically limited set of hypotheses or do they treat language like the internet and function as statistical calculators, little "Googlers"? ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#everett

GLORIA ORIGGI: Science may become a cheaper game from the point of view of the investment for discovering new facts: but, as a philosopher, I do not think that cheap intellectual games are less challenging or less worth playing. ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#origgi

LEE SMOLIN: To see what to think about Anderson's hypothesis that computers storing and processing vast amounts of data will replace the need to formulate hypotheses and theories, one can look at whether it has any relevance to how supercomputers are actually being used in contemporary physics. ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#smolin

JOEL GARREAU: Maybe things are different in physics and biology. But in my experience studying culture, values and society, data lags reality by definition—they are a snapshot of the past. And when human reality does not conveniently line up with established ways of thinking, the data can lag by years, if not decades. ... [MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#garreau

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IN THE NEWS
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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
The Mirror Neuron Revolution: Explaining What Makes Humans Social
By Jonah Lehrer

Neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni discusses mirror neurons, autism and the potentially damaging effects of violent movies.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#iac

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
By Nicholas Carr

... As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#atl

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BLOGGINGHEADS TV
Science Saturday: Summer Doldrums Edition
John Horgan & George Johnson

The end of science: Wired Magazine steps on John's turf (07:25)
AI's as-yet-unfulfilled promise (09:41)
The limits of medical science (07:54)
Political pundits: just a bunch of dart-throwing monkeys (13:01)
Who cares why quantum mechanics works? (05:59)
Incredible propaganda for psychedelic drugs (02:40)

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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#btv

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LOS ANGELES TIMES
Mysteries of Time, and the Multiverse
By John Johnson Jr.

In his studies of entropy and the irreversibility of time, Caltech physicist Sean Carroll is exploring the idea that our universe is part of a larger structure.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#lat

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SEED MAGAZINE
THE SEED SALON
The Transcript: Tom Wolfe + Michael Gazzaniga

The father of cognitive neuroscience and the original New Journalist discuss status, free will, the human condition, and The Interpreter.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#seed

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HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
Should You Invest in the Long Tail?
By Anita Elberse

It was a compelling idea: In the digitized world, there's more money to be made in niche offerings than in blockbusters. The data tell a different story.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#hbr

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
PORTALS
Study Refutes Niche Theory Spawned by Web
By Lee Gomes

A book from 2006, "The Long Tail," was one of those that appear periodically and demand that we rethink everything we presume to know about how society works. In this case, the Web and its nearly unlimited choices were said to be remaking the economy and culture. Now, a new Harvard Business Review article pushes back, and says any change occurring may be of an entirely different sort.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#wsj

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NEWSWEEK
THE FUTURE OF ENERGY
A Bug to Save the Planet
By Fareed Zakaria

Genome pioneer Craig Venter wants to make a bacterium that will eat CO2 and produce fuel.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.html#nwbug

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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge249.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

Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022
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Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Edge 248: The End of Theory By Chris Anderson

Edge 247 - June 30, 2008

http://www.edge.org

(11,000 words)

This online EDGE edition is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge248.html

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THE THIRD CULTURE

THE END OF THEORY
Will the Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete?
By Chris Anderson

Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database. Now Google and like-minded companies are sifting through the most measured age in history, treating this massive corpus as a laboratory of the human condition. They are the children of the Petabyte Age.

The Petabyte Age is different because more is different. Kilobytes were stored on floppy disks. Megabytes were stored on hard disks. Terabytes were stored in disk arrays. Petabytes are stored in the cloud. As we moved along that progression, we went from the folder analogy to the file cabinet analogy to the library analogy to — well, at petabytes we ran out of organizational analogies.

[MORE]

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THE REALITY CLUB

George Dyson, Kevin Kelly, Stewart Brand respond to "The End of Theory"

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IN THE NEWS

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DER TAGESSPIEGEL
A NEW HUMANISM
("EIN NEUER HUMANISMUS")
By Kai Kupferschmidt

...as early as 1959 the physicist and writer Charles Percy Snow lamented that the humanities and natural sciences were adrift. Snow coined the phrase "two cultures". At the same time, he said saw a need for a "third culture" that would require a common culture of humanities and natural scientists.

The mid-nineties saw the American literary agent John Brockman present his idea of the third culture. It was different than the one imagined by Snow. Brockman noted that natural scientists such as the biologist Richard Dawkins or the physicist Roger Penrose had taken over the function which had previously been played by literary scholars by by writing books that explained science to the public. Brockman that this was the third culture.

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THE NEW REPUBLIC
Hedonic Man
By Alan Wolfe

The collaboration of Kahneman and Tversky produced one of the major intellectual accomplishments of the late twentieth century: a series of ingeniously designed experiments that raised uncomfortable questions about "utility maximization," which was the major assumption of microeconomics.

[MORE]

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WALL STREET JOURNAL
How The Rich Spend their Time: Stressed
By Robert Frank

According to research by Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist, quoted in an article in the Washington Post, "being wealthy is often a powerful predictor that people spend less time doing pleasurable things and more time doing compulsory things and feeling stressed."

[MORE]

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THE NEW YORKER
The Itch
By Atul Gawande

The theory—and a theory is all it is right now—has begun to make sense of some bewildering phenomena. Among them is an experiment that Ramachandran performed with volunteers who had phantom pain in an amputated arm.

[MORE]

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THE NEW YORKER
What Was I Thinking
By Elizabeth Kolbert

As an academic discipline, Ariely's field—behavioral economics—is roughly twenty-five years old. It emerged largely in response to work done in the nineteen-seventies by the Israeli-American psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. (Ariely, too, grew up in Israel.) When they examined how people deal with uncertainty, Tversky and Kahneman found that there were consistent biases to the responses, and that these biases could be traced to mental shortcuts, or what they called "heuristics."

[MORE]

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WALL STREET JOURNAL

Free To Choose, But Often Wrong

By David A. Shaywitz

...When psychologists Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky conducted an experimental survey in the early 1980s asking people to answer this simple question, they discovered, to their surprise, that most respondents picked "b," even though this was the narrower choice and hence the less likely one. It seems that saliency – in this case, Linda's passionate political profile – trumps logic.

[MORE]

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WASHIINGTON POST

How Rich People Spend Their Time

Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman has found, however, that being wealthy is often a powerful predictor that people spend less time doing pleasurable things, and more time doing compulsory things and feeling stressed. ...

[MORE]

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This online EDGE edition is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge248.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

Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022
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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Edge 246: THE (CHINESE) EMPEROR'S OLD CLOTHES

Edge 246 - JUNE 10, 2008

http://www.edge.org

(6,650 words)

This online EDGE edition is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge246.html

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"There is a profound issue lurking here," writes Pinker. "Everyone says that China will be the next scientific and economic power. Is this compatible with their ongoing rejection of open debate and exploration of ideas? Is a technologically advanced society compatible with anti-intellectualism and suppression of debate?" ...

THE (CHINESE) EMPEROR'S OLD CLOTHES

EDGE has received notice from the publisher that acquired PRC Chinese language rights to "What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable" that the book "can't be published in China because some content is not accordant to Chinese regulations, for example, some content about religious, soul." [sic]

The book, based on an edited selection from The 2006 EDGE Question, was published last year in the US (HarperCollins) and the UK (Free Press) as well as a number of foreign-language markets.

Steven Pinker, who also wrote the Introduction to the book, posed the EDGE Question:

WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

Richard Dawkins wrote the Afterword. ...

[MORE]
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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

Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022

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Thursday, June 5, 2008

Edge 245: Experiment Marathon Reykjavik

Edge 245 — June 5, 2008

http://www.edge.org

[9,400 words]

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This EDGE edition, with links, graphics, & video is available online at
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THE THIRD CULTURE
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EXPERIMENT MARATHON REYKJAVIK
Reykjavík Art Museum
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist
In Collaboration With Artist Olafur Elíasson

BRIAN ENO
Leads Impromptu A Capella Group

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WALL STREET JOURNAL
In Iceland, Building Bridges for Art
By Cathryn Drake

THE BOSTON GLOBE
Creators of Cool
By Tom Haines

ART FORUM
Amazing Race — Reykjavik
Cathryn Drake

ARTNET
Fire And Ice
By Ben Davis

ART REVIEW
Reykjavik Arts Festival Diary, Days 1–4
By James Westcott

ART FACT.NET
Art Facts.Net Interviews Hans Ulrich Obrist
Marek Claassen

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THIRD CULTURE NEWS
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FRANKFURTER RUNSCHAU
Die Mondflüge der Philosophie
Von Christian Schluter

NEW YORK TIMES
The Future Is Now? Pretty Soon, at Least
By John Tierney

NEW YORK TIMES
Dark, Perhaps Forever
By Dennis Overbye

NEW YORK TIMES
An Overflowing Five-Day Banquet of Science and Its Meanings
By Dennis Overbye

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Put a Little Science in Your Life
By Brian Greene

THE SUNDAY TIMES
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom
By Brian Appleyard

NATURE
Why we should love logarithms
By Philip Ball

NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
The Question of Global Warming
By Freeman Dyson

THE NEW REPUBLIC
The Stupidity of Dignity
By Steven Pinker

THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Alpha Geeks
By David Brooks

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Study Finds Big Social Factor in Quitting Smoking
By Gina Kolata

THE BOSTON GLOBE
The secret to happiness? Who knows?
By Alex Beam

WIRED
15th Anniversary: The Brian Eno Evolution
By Steven Leckart

THE INDEPENDENT
Brian Eno: As he turns 60, the professor of rock is as creative as ever
By Nick Hasted

NATURE
Written in the skies
Zeeya Merali

THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Neural Buddhists
By David Brooks

SEED MAGAZINE
The Seed Salon
Marc Hauser + Errol Morris

THE NEW YORKER
Birdbrain: The woman behind the world's chattiest parrots
By Margaret Talbot

SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG
Talent and Patents: The sciences fight for intellectual jurisdiction
By Andrian Kreye

SCIENCE
Neurobiology: The Roots of Morality
By Greg Miller

LOS ANGELES TIMES
Does your brain have a mind of its own?
By Gary Marcus

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes?
By Sean Carroll

THE SUN
Reconsiderations: Richard Dawkins and His Selfish Meme
By Pat Shipman

BLOOMBERG MARKETS
Flight of the Black Swan
By Stephanie Baker-Said

NEW YORK MAGAZINE
If God Is Dead, Who Gets His House?
By Sean McManus

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This EDGE edition, with links, graphics, & video is available online at
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EDGE Newsbytes:
http://www.edge.org/newsbytes.html
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EDGE

John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher
Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant

Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022

EDGE Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under
Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

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Thursday, May 8, 2008

Edge 244: Hans Ulrich Obrist: A Rule Of the Game

Edge 244 - May 8, 2008

http://www.edge.org

(5,340 words)

This online EDGE edition with links and graphics is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge244.html

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These are exhibitions which are not material, but which are more virtual, virtual in the sense of them always being able to be reactualized. They can be revisited and reactualized and updated, and they are also not related to a place. The exhibition can go to where the viewer is. Anybody in the world can download these formulas and pin them on the wall, or they can do their own and trigger their own formulas. We are in the very early days of understanding how the Internet can be used for exhibitions.

A RULE OF THE GAME
A Talk With Hans Ulrich Obrist

15 May – 17 August 2008
Reykjavik Art Museum – Hafnarhús

                      Experiment
                       Marathon
                       Reykjavík

Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist
In collaboration with artist Olafur Elíasson

Beginning May 15, EDGE travels to Iceland for the Reykjavik Arts Festival, which will reprise the EDGE "Formulae of the 21st Century" project, presented last October at the Serpentine Gallery, London, by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of the Serpentines Exhibitions and Programmes.

That EDGE project was a response to Obrist's question: "What Is Your Formula? Your Equation? Your Algorithm?" One of the highlights of the Reykjavik Arts Festival will be the Experiment Marathon Reykjavík, an exhibition and program of related events organized by the Reykjavík Art Museum and the Serpentine Gallery, London. Lasting from 15 May through August 17, the focus of the project is experimentation. The RAM [Reykjavik Art Museum] will become a laboratory in which leading artists, architects, film-makers, and scientists will create an environment of invention through a series of installations, performances and experimental films.

Additionally, previous related projects will be presented as archives within the exhibition. The exhibition and related events are curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, Serpentine Gallery, London, in collaboration with artist Olafur Elíasson.

The Experiment Marathon Reykjavík builds on the enormous success of the recent Serpentine Gallery Marathons which have taken place in successive Serpentine Gallery Pavilions, an annual architectural commission conceived in 2000 by Serpentine Gallery Director, Julia Peyton-Jones. In the 2007 Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon, which took place in the Pavilion designed by Olafur Elíasson and Kjetil Thorsen, leading artists, writers and scientists performed a huge variety of experiments, exploring perception, artificial intelligence, the body and language.

Participants included John Brockman, Steven Pinker, Marina Abramovic and John Baldessari. The event was collaboration with Thyssen- Bornemisza Art Contemporary. The Serpentine Gallery Marathon series began in 2006 with the 24-hour Interview Marathon conducted by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist. A presentation of these previous programs will be shown in the Reykjavik Experiment Marathon in a pavilion of archives designed by Ólafur Elíasson and Einar orsteinn. Another collection of archives will refer to Hans Ulrich Obrist's and Barbara Vanderlinden's exhibition, Laboratorium, from 1999.

A substantial catalogue will be published on this occasion, documenting the Experiment Marathon Reykjavík together with previous marathons and with textual contributions by Bruno Latour and others. Obrist and I, as Edge readers may recall, have a mutual connection: we both worked closely with the late James Lee Byars, the conceptual artist who, in 1971, implemented "The World Question Center" as a work of conceptual art.

As a curator, he is ever curious about the world around him and this includes the latest ideas and developments in science. Obrist interviewed me for Art Orbit in the 90's. With this Edge feature, I get to ask the questions.

HANS ULRICH OBRIST, a Swiss curator, is Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, of the Serpentine Gallery in London.

[MORE]

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IN THE NEWS
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THE NEW YORKER
May 12, 2008

ANNALS OF INNOVATION

IN THE AIR: Who says big ideas are rare?
By Malcolm Gladwell

... In 1999, when Nathan Myhrvold left Microsoft and struck out on his own, he set himself an unusual goal. He wanted to see whether the kind of insight that leads to invention could be engineered. He formed a company called Intellectual Ventures. He raised hundreds of millions of dollars. He hired the smartest people he knew. It was not a venture-capital firm. Venture capitalists fund insights-that is, they let the magical process that generates new ideas take its course, and then they jump in. Myhrvold wanted to make insights-to come up with ideas, patent them, and then license them to interested companies. ...

[MORE]

[ED. NOTE: See Lions: Africa's Magnificent Predators: A Photo Essay By Nathan Myhrvold, 8.1.07]

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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge244.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

Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Edge 243: Jared Diamond - "Vengeance Is Ours"; Stuart Kauffman - "Breaking The Galilean Spell"

Edge 243 - April 23, 2008

http://www.edge.org

(6,560 words)

This online EDGE edition with links and graphics is available at:
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NEW YORKER
April 21, 2008

Annals of Anthropology

VENGEANCE IS OURS
What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even?

By Jared Diamond

In 1992, when Daniel Wemp was about twenty-two years old, his beloved paternal uncle Soll was killed in a battle against the neighboring Ombal clan. In the New Guinea Highlands, where Daniel and his Handa clan live, uncles and aunts play a big role in raising children, so an uncle's death represents a much heavier blow than it might to most Americans. Daniel often did not even distinguish between his biological father and other male clansmen of his father's generation. And Soll had been very good to Daniel, who recalled him as a tall and handsome man, destined to become a leader. Soll's death demanded vengeance.

Daniel told me that responsibility for arranging revenge usually falls on the victim's firstborn son or, failing that, on one of his brothers. "Soll did have a son, but he was only six years old at the time of his father's death, much too young to organize the revenge," Daniel said. "On the other hand, my father was felt to be too old and weak by then; the avenger should be a strong young man in his prime. So I was the one who became expected to avenge Soll." As it turned out, it took three years, twenty-nine more killings, and the sacrifice of three hundred pigs before Daniel succeeded in discharging this responsibility.

I first met Daniel half a dozen years after these events, while he was working for the Papua New Guinea branch of ChevronTexaco, which was then managing oil fields in the Southern Highlands, about thirty miles from Daniel's home village. The fields, where I was doing environmental studies, lie in forest-covered hills near the beautiful Lake Kutubu. The weather is warm but wet—the region gets hundreds of inches of rain a year. As the driver assigned to me, Daniel picked me up an hour before dawn each day, drove me out along narrow dirt roads, waited while I jumped out every mile or so to record birdsongs, and drove me back to the oil camp in time for lunch. He was slim but muscular, and, like other New Guinea Highlanders, dark-skinned, with tightly coiled dark hair, dark eyes, and a strongly contoured face. From the outset, I found him to be a happy, enthusiastic, sociable person. During our hours together on the road, we enjoyed sharing our life stories. Despite some big differences between our backgrounds—Daniel's Highland village life focussed on growing sweet potatoes, raising pigs, and fighting, and my American city life focussed on college teaching and research—we enjoyed many of the same things, such as our wives and children, conversation, sports, birds, and driving cars. It was in these conversations that he told me the story of his revenge. ...

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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge243.html#nyorker
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BREAKING THE GALILEAN SPELL
By Stuart A. Kauffman

... Even deeper than emergence and its challenge to reductionism in this new scientific worldview is what I call breaking the Galilean spell. Galileo rolled balls down incline planes and showed that the distance traveled varied as the square of the time elapsed. From this he obtained a universal law of motion. Newton followed with his PRINCIPIA, setting the stage for all of modern science. With these triumphs, the Western world came to the view that all that happens in the universe is governed by natural law. Indeed, this is the heart of reductionism. Another Nobel laureate physicist, Murray Gell-Mann, has defined a natural law as a compressed description, available beforehand, of the regularities of a phenomenon. The Galilean spell that has driven so much science is the faith that all aspects of the natural world can be described by such laws. Perhaps my most radical scientific claim is that we can and must break the Galilean spell. Evolution of the biosphere, human economic life, and human history are partially indescribable by natural law. This claim flies in the face of our settled convictions since Galileo, Newton, and the Enlightenment. ...

STUART A. KAUFFMAN, a professor at the University of Calgary with a shared appointment between biological sciences and physics and astronomy, is the author of THE ORIGINS OF ORDER; AT HOME IN THE UNIVERSE; INVESTIGATIONS; and REINVENTING THE UNIVERSE: A NEW VIEW OF SCIENCE, REASON, AND THE SACRED (Basic Books, forthcoming, May 5th).

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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge243.html#sk
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THE REALITY CLUB
Kevin Kelly on "Eliza's World: By Nicholas Carr
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...Weizenbaum (and probably Carr) would have been one of those smart, well-meaning elder figures in ancient times preaching against the coming horrors of printing and books. They would highlight the loss or orality, and the way these new-fangled auxiliary technologies demean humanity. We have our own memories, people: use them! They would have been in good company, since even Plato lamented the same. ...

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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge243.html#rc
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IN THE NEWS
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CAMPAIGN
Web Secrets 6 - Edge.org

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Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Edge 241: Stephen Schneider- Modeling the Future; Edge in BA!!

Edge 241 - April 1, 2008

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(9,678 words)

This online EDGE edition with links and streaming video is available at: http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge241.html

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THE THIRD CULTURE
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LA NACION — Buenos Aires
Domingo 30 de marzo de 2008 | Publicado en la Edición impresa

Enfoques — La entrevista
("Week In Review" Sunday Supplement — Back Page)

"LOS CIENTIFICOS SON NATURALMENTE OPTIMISTAS"
Por Juana Libedinsky

NUEVA YORK — "Era julio y hacía tanto calor que se podía freír un huevo sobre Park Avenue. Salí a hacer unos mandados y, encerrado en el taxi para no dejar escapar el aire acondicionado, escuchaba distraído por la radio que la guerra en Irak iba peor que nunca, que Bush estaba haciendo todo lo que Bush estaba haciendo -y aclaro que en mi grupo casi todos pensamos igual, no hay más que un par de republicanos-, y entonces tuve la idea: ¡la pregunta del año sólo podía ser sobre qué es optimista uno!".

Sentado en su magnífico despacho sobre Central Park, con los desfiles del día de San Patricio que alborotaban la entrada, John Brockman, escritor, editor y agente detrás de casi todos los grandes best sellers científicos de los últimos años (como los libros de Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond y Nassim Taleb, entre otros) cuenta así cómo nació la idea para su última compilación, titulada, evidentemente " What are you optimistic about ?"

En ella, una buena parte de los pensadores hoy más destacados (el músico Brian Eno, el pionero de la inteligencia artificial Marvin Minsky, el decodificador del genoma humano Craig Venter, el premio Nobel George Smoot y el escritor Ray Kurtzweil entre muchos otros) contestan a qué miran con esperanza. Brockman les pidió específicamente que "sorprendieran" en sus respuestas, y vaya que lo lograron. ...

...Todas las respuestas fueron publicadas originariamente en www.edge.org , el sitio web que reúne a estos grandes pensadores y del cual Brockman también es editor.

La Fundación Edge, cuyo objeto fue definido como "una expresión colectiva de maravilla ante el mundo animado e inanimado... un extraordinario coloquio permanente" por el escritor Ian McEwan en The Telegraph y que según The New York Times "da hoy la visión de la ciencia del mañana", desde hace unos años que propone una pregunta que luego es editada en forma de libro. En la página online ya se puede ir viendo el material para el próximo libro, que saldrá en diciembre, con un tema que, como siempre, dará para el debate: "¿Sobre qué ha cambiado de idea?". ...

Spanish original PDF: http://www.edge.org/documents/press/la_nacion.pdf

English Translation: http://www.edge.org/documents/press/La_Nacion.html

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge241.html#nacion
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MODELING THE FUTURE
A Talk with Stephen Schneider

Edge Interview by Russell Weinberger

Warming is unequivocal, that's true. But that's not a sophisticated question. A much more sophisticated question is how much of the climate Ma Earth, a perverse lady, gives us is from her, and how much is caused by us. That's a much more sophisticated, and much more difficult question.

STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER, a climatologist, is Professor in the Biological Sciences Department at Stanford University. He is internationally recognized as one of the world's leading experts in atmospheric research and its implications for environment and society. He is author of Laboratory Earth: The Planetary Gamble We Can't Afford to Lose.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge241.html#schneider
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IN THE NEWS
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THE GUARDIAN March 15, 2008

THE ATHEIST DELUSION By John Gray

The notion that religion is a primitive version of science was popularised in the late 19th century in JG Frazer's survey of the myths of primitive peoples, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. For Frazer, religion and magical thinking were closely linked. Rooted in fear and ignorance, they were vestiges of human infancy that would disappear with the advance of knowledge. Dennett's atheism is not much more than a revamped version of Frazer's positivism. The positivists believed that with the development of transport and communication - in their day, canals and the telegraph - irrational thinking would wither way, along with the religions of the past. Despite the history of the past century, Dennett believes much the same. In an interview that appears on the website of the Edge Foundation (edge.org) under the title "The Evaporation of the Powerful Mystique of Religion", he predicts that "in about 25 years almost all religions will have evolved into very different phenomena, so much so that in most quarters religion will no longer command the awe that it does today". He is confident that this will come about, he tells us, mainly because of "the worldwide spread of information technology (not just the internet, but cell phones and portable radios and television)". The philosopher has evidently not reflected on the ubiquity of mobile phones among the Taliban, or the emergence of a virtual al-Qaida on the web. ...

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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge241.html#guardian
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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

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Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant

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5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022
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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Edge 249: Summer Reading Issue; Reality Club: "The End of Theory"

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Edge 248: The End of Theory By Chris Anderson

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Edge 246: THE (CHINESE) EMPEROR'S OLD CLOTHES

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Edge 245: Experiment Marathon Reykjavik

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Edge 244: Hans Ulrich Obrist: A Rule Of the Game

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Edge 243: Jared Diamond - "Vengeance Is Ours"; Stuart Kauffman - "Breaking The Galilean Spell"

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Edge 241: Stephen Schneider- Modeling the Future; Edge in BA!!

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