What We Believe But Cannot Prove
Encyclopedia
What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty is a non-fiction
book edited by literary agent
John Brockman
with an introduction by novelist Ian McEwan
and published by Harper Perennial
. The book consists of various responses to a question posed by the Edge Foundation
, with answers as short as one sentence or as long as a few pages. Among the 107 contributors are such notable scientists and philosophers as Richard Dawkins
, Daniel C. Dennett, Jared Diamond
, Rebecca Goldstein
, Steven Pinker
, Sir Martin Rees and Craig Venter
.
, the workings of the human mind, and science
itself. A common focus of responders are the issue of extra-terrestrial life and the question of whether humanity has a supranatural
element beyond flesh and blood. Among the more esoteric topics is the question of cockroach
consciousness
.
A pervasive theme, according to Publishers Weekly
, is the discomfort responders felt in professing unproven beliefs, which Publishers Weekly declared "an interesting reflection of the state of science". The question inspired implicit or explicit reflection in a number of responders about the scientific method
's reliance on observable
, empirical
and measurable
evidence
, with a good many of what The Observer
points out as largely American responders defending against "a return to an age of uncertainty in which creationism and intelligent design hold sway in the public mind". "What's really at stake here", Wired
said in its review, "is the nature of 'proof' itself".
described the book as "astounding reading", stating that "[t]aken as a whole, this little compendium of essays will send you careening from mathematics to economics to the moral progress of the human race, and it is marvelous to watch this muddle of disciplines overlap". In Paste Magazines "Best Books of 2007" column, in which 13 notable authors were asked each to recommend a favorite book, Esquire
columnist Tom Junod
described it as "at once rigorous, exquisitely reasoned, untainted by mysticism, somewhat useless, and altogether mindblowing". The Skeptical Inquirer stated that the book "offers an impressive array of insights and challenges that will surely delight curious readers, generalists, and specialists alike".
Several reviews focused positively on the invitation to speculate afforded respondents and the insight their speculations may offer into the future of scientific discourse. Science News
and The Guardian
described the book respectively as "a tantalizing glimpse into the future of human inquiry" and "[s]cientific pipedreams at their very best". The Daily Telegraph
praised the book as "refreshing" and "intriguing and unexpected", noting that "[b]y unleashing scientists from the rigours of established method we gain fascinating glimpses into the future directions of arcane disciplines few fully understand".
While still generally positive, some reviewers did criticize certain aspects of the book, including redundancy and tone. The Observer described the essays as "compelling and repetitive by turns". Publisher's Weekly referred to the collection as "stimulating", but found it "unfortunate that the tone of most contributions isn't livelier and that there aren't explanations of some of the more esoteric concepts discussed", limitations which would "keep these adroit musings from finding a wider audience."
Non-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
book edited by literary agent
Literary agent
A literary agent is an agent who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers and film producers and assists in the sale and deal negotiation of the same. Literary agents most often represent novelists, screenwriters and major non-fiction writers...
John Brockman
John Brockman (literary agent)
John Brockman is a literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. He founded the Edge Foundation, an organization aimed to bring together people working at the edge of a broad range of scientific and technical fields. Referencing C.P...
with an introduction by novelist Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....
and published by Harper Perennial
Harper Perennial
Harper Perennial is a paperback imprint of the publishing house HarperCollins Publishers. Harper Perennial has divisions located in New York, London, Toronto, and Sydney. The imprint is descended from the Perennial Library imprint founded by Harper & Row in 1964...
. The book consists of various responses to a question posed by the Edge Foundation
Edge Foundation, Inc.
The Edge Foundation, Inc. is an organization of science and technology intellectuals created in 1988 as an outgrowth of The Reality Club. Its motto is 'To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together and have them ask...
, with answers as short as one sentence or as long as a few pages. Among the 107 contributors are such notable scientists and philosophers as Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
, Daniel C. Dennett, Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond
Jared Mason Diamond is an American scientist and author whose work draws from a variety of fields. He is currently Professor of Geography and Physiology at UCLA...
, Rebecca Goldstein
Rebecca Goldstein
Rebecca Goldstein is an American novelist and professor of philosophy. She has written five novels, a number of short stories and essays, and biographical studies of mathematician Kurt Gödel and philosopher Baruch Spinoza....
, Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
, Sir Martin Rees and Craig Venter
Craig Venter
John Craig Venter is an American biologist and entrepreneur, most famous for his role in being one of the first to sequence the human genome and for his role in creating the first cell with a synthetic genome in 2010. Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research and the J...
.
Overview
Each year, the Edge Foundation poses a question on its website to members of the "third culture", defined by Brockman as "those scientists and other thinkers...who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are". In 2005, the Edge foundation asked, "Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? The essays and answers posted there make up the book. They are loosely grouped by subject area, though with no clear subject divisions.Synopsis
The essays cover a broad range of topics, including evolutionEvolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
, the workings of the human mind, and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
itself. A common focus of responders are the issue of extra-terrestrial life and the question of whether humanity has a supranatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
element beyond flesh and blood. Among the more esoteric topics is the question of cockroach
Cockroach
Cockroaches are insects of the order Blattaria or Blattodea, of which about 30 species out of 4,500 total are associated with human habitations...
consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
.
A pervasive theme, according to Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
, is the discomfort responders felt in professing unproven beliefs, which Publishers Weekly declared "an interesting reflection of the state of science". The question inspired implicit or explicit reflection in a number of responders about the scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
's reliance on observable
Observable
In physics, particularly in quantum physics, a system observable is a property of the system state that can be determined by some sequence of physical operations. For example, these operations might involve submitting the system to various electromagnetic fields and eventually reading a value off...
, empirical
Empirical
The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....
and measurable
Measure
- Legal :* Measure of the Church of England is a law passed by the General Synod and the UK Parliament equivalent of an Act* Measure of the National Assembly for Wales, a law specific to Wales passed by the Welsh Assembly between 2007 and 2011...
evidence
Evidence
Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either presumed to be true, or were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth...
, with a good many of what The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
points out as largely American responders defending against "a return to an age of uncertainty in which creationism and intelligent design hold sway in the public mind". "What's really at stake here", Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
said in its review, "is the nature of 'proof' itself".
Reception
Reviews of What We Believe But Cannot Prove were primarily positive. The Boston GlobeThe Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
described the book as "astounding reading", stating that "[t]aken as a whole, this little compendium of essays will send you careening from mathematics to economics to the moral progress of the human race, and it is marvelous to watch this muddle of disciplines overlap". In Paste Magazines "Best Books of 2007" column, in which 13 notable authors were asked each to recommend a favorite book, Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
columnist Tom Junod
Tom Junod
Tom Junod is an American journalist. He is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors.-Background and education:...
described it as "at once rigorous, exquisitely reasoned, untainted by mysticism, somewhat useless, and altogether mindblowing". The Skeptical Inquirer stated that the book "offers an impressive array of insights and challenges that will surely delight curious readers, generalists, and specialists alike".
Several reviews focused positively on the invitation to speculate afforded respondents and the insight their speculations may offer into the future of scientific discourse. Science News
Science News
Science News is an American bi-weekly magazine devoted to short articles about new scientific and technical developments, typically gleaned from recent scientific and technical journals. Science News has been published since 1922 by Society for Science & the Public, a non-profit organization...
and The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
described the book respectively as "a tantalizing glimpse into the future of human inquiry" and "[s]cientific pipedreams at their very best". The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
praised the book as "refreshing" and "intriguing and unexpected", noting that "[b]y unleashing scientists from the rigours of established method we gain fascinating glimpses into the future directions of arcane disciplines few fully understand".
While still generally positive, some reviewers did criticize certain aspects of the book, including redundancy and tone. The Observer described the essays as "compelling and repetitive by turns". Publisher's Weekly referred to the collection as "stimulating", but found it "unfortunate that the tone of most contributions isn't livelier and that there aren't explanations of some of the more esoteric concepts discussed", limitations which would "keep these adroit musings from finding a wider audience."
See also
- The Third CultureThe Third CultureThe Third Culture is a book by John Brockman which discusses the work of several well-known scientists who are directly communicating their new, sometimes provocative, ideas to the general public...
- What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable
External links
- Thinkers lay out the beliefs they can't prove, NPRNPRNPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
discussion. - The World Question Center 2005, where the original question was posed.