John Brockman - This idea must die: scientific theories that are blocking progress

To Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennnet, Jared Diamond, and Steven Pinker

Pioneers of the Third Culture

CONTENTS

GEOFFREY WEST

MARCELO GLEISER

A. C. GRAYLING

SETH LLOYD

SCOTT ATRAN

LEO M. CHALUPA

HOWARD GARDNER

VICTORIA WYATT

NIGEL GOLDENFELD

NICHOLAS HUMPHREY

LEE SMOLIN

ALAN GUTH

BRUCE PARKER

ANDREI LINDE

MAX TEGMARK

LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS

PAUL STEINHARDT

ERIC R. WEINSTEIN

FRANK TIPLER

GORDON KANE

PETER WOIT

FREEMAN DYSON

DAVID DEUTSCH

W. DANIEL HILLIS

NINA JABLONSKI

RICHARD DAWKINS

PETER RICHERSON

JULIA CLARKE

KURT GRAY

MICHAEL SHERMER

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

ROGER HIGHFIELD

ANTON ZEILINGER

STEVE GIDDINGS

AMANDA GEFTER

HAIM HARARI

SARAH DEMERS

MARIA SPIROPULU

ED REGIS

SEAN CARROLL

NICHOLAS G. CARR

REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN

IAN BOGOST

SAM HARRIS

DANIEL C. DENNETT

SUSAN BLACKMORE

TODD C. SACKTOR

BRUCE HOOD

THOMAS METZINGER

JERRY COYNE

ROBERT PROVINE

JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL

GEORGE DYSON

ALAN ALDA

GAVIN SCHMIDT

MARTIN REES

SEIRIAN SUMNER

KEVIN KELLY

ERIC J. TOPOL

TIMO HANNAY

ROBERT SAPOLSKY

ATHENA VOULOUMANOS

STEVEN PINKER

ALISON GOPNIK

KILEY HAMLIN

OLIVER SCOTT CURRY

SIMON BARON-COHEN

DANIEL L. EVERETT

TOR NRRETRANDERS

JAMIL ZAKI

ADAM WAYTZ

GARY KLEIN

DEAN ORNISH

RICHARD NISBETT

AZRA RAZA

PAUL DAVIES

STEWART BRAND

BENJAMIN K. BERGEN

N. J. ENFIELD

JOHN M C WHORTER

DAN SPERBER

KAI KRAUSE

IAN M C EWAN

GARY MARCUS

CHRISTINE FINN

DIMITAR D. SASSELOV

SHERRY TURKLE

ROGER SCHANK

TANIA LOMBROZO

FRANK WILCZEK

ALEXANDER WISSNER-GROSS

DAVID GELERNTER

TERRENCE J. SEJNOWSKI

PATRICIA S. CHURCHLAND

TOM GRIFFITHS

ROBERT KURZBAN

RODNEY A. BROOKS

SARAH-JAYNE BLAKEMORE

STEPHEN M. KOSSLYN

ANDRIAN KREYE

ERNST PPPEL

ANDY CLARK

LAURIE R. SANTOS & TAMAR GENDLER

JAY ROSEN

ALEX (SANDY) PENTLAND

MARGARET LEVI

RICHARD H. THALER

SUSAN FISKE

MATT RIDLEY

CESAR HIDALGO

HANS ULRICH OBRIST

LUCA DE BIASE

MICHAEL I. NORTON

GIULIO BOCCALETTI

LAURENCE C. SMITH

DANIEL GOLEMAN

STUART PIMM

BUDDHINI SAMARASINGHE

SCOTT SAMPSON

EDWARD SLINGERLAND

ALEX HOLCOMBE

ADAM ALTER

BRIAN CHRISTIAN

KATHRYN CLANCY

AUBREY DE GREY

ROSS ANDERSON

KATE MILLS

MELANIE SWAN

FIERY CUSHMAN

SAMUEL ARBESMAN

JUNE GRUBER

ELDAR SHAFIR

DAVID BERREBY

DAVID M. BUSS

HELEN FISHER

BRIAN KNUTSON

PAUL BLOOM

PASCAL BOYER

LAURA BETZIG

JOHN TOOBY

STEPHEN STICH

ALUN ANDERSON

MARTIN NOWAK

MICHAEL McCULLOUGH

KATE JEFFERY

IRENE PEPPERBERG

STEVE FULLER

SATYAJIT DAS

DONALD D. HOFFMAN

GREGORY BENFORD

CARLO ROVELLI

ANDREW LIH

NEIL GERSHENFELD

SAMUEL BARONDES

HUGO MERCIER

JARED DIAMOND

MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

MARY CATHERINE BATESON

JONATHAN HAIDT

GERALD SMALLBERG

LISA BARRETT

ABIGAIL MARSH

DAVID G. MYERS

JOEL GOLD & IAN GOLD

BEATRICE GOLOMB

EDUARDO SALCEDO-ALBARN

CHARLES SEIFE

GERD GIGERENZER

EMANUEL DERMAN

VICTORIA STODDEN

NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS

NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

BART KOSKO

RICHARD SAUL WURMAN

PAUL SAFFO

My thanks to Laurie Santos for suggesting this years Edge Question and to Paul Bloom and Jonathan Haidt for their refinements. As always, thanks to Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, George Dyson, and Steven Pinker, for their continued support. I also wish to thank Peter Hubbard of HarperCollins for his encouragement. I am also indebted to my agent, Max Brockman, who saw the potential for this book, and, as always, to Sara Lippincott for her thoughtful and meticulous editing.

JOHN BROCKMAN

Publisher & Editor , Edge

Science advances by discovering new things and developing new ideas. Few truly new ideas are developed without abandoning old ones first. As theoretical physicist Max Planck (1858-1947) noted, A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. In other words, science advances by a series of funerals. Why wait that long?

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?

Ideas change, and the times we live in change. Perhaps the biggest change today is the rate of change. What established scientific idea is ready to be moved aside so that science can advance?

GEOFFREY WEST

Theoretical physicist; Distinguished Professor and past president, Santa Fe Institute

Everything? Well, wait a minute. Questioning a Theory of Everything may be beating a dead horse, since Im certainly not the first to be bothered by its implicit hyperbole, but lets face it, referring to ones field of study as the Theory of Everything smacks of arrogance and navet. Although its been around for only a relatively short period and may already be dying a natural death, the phrase (though certainly not the endeavor) should be retired from serious scientific literature and discourse.

Let me elaborate. The search for grand syntheses, for commonalities, regularities, ideas, and concepts transcending the narrow confines of specific problems or disciplines is one of the great inspirational drivers of science and scientists. Arguably, it is also a defining characteristic of Homo sapiens sapiens . Perhaps the binomial form of sapiens is some distorted poetic recognition of this. Like the invention of gods and God, the concept of a Theory of Everything connotes the grandest vision of all, the inspiration of all inspirations: namely, that we can encapsulate and understand the entirety of the universe in a small set of preceptsin this case, a concise set of mathematical equations. Like the concept of God, however, its potentially misleading and intellectually dangerous.

Among the classic grand syntheses in science are Newtons laws, which taught us that heavenly laws were no different than the earthly; Maxwells unification of electricity and magnetism, which brought the ephemeral aether into our lives; Darwins theory of natural selection, which reminded us that were just animals and plants after all; and the laws of thermodynamics, which suggest we cant go on forever. Each of these has had profound consequencesnot only in changing the way we think about the world but also in laying the foundations for technological advancements that have led to the standard of living many of us are privileged to enjoy. Nevertheless, theyre all, to varying degrees, incomplete. Indeed, understanding the boundaries of their applicability and the limits to their predictive power, and the ongoing search for exceptions, violations, and failures, have provoked even deeper questions and challenges, stimulating the continued progress of science and the unfolding of new ideas, techniques, and concepts.

One of the great scientific challenges is the search for a Grand Unified Theory of the elementary particles and their interactions, including its extension to understanding the cosmos and even the origin of spacetime itself. Such a theory would be based on a parsimonious set of underlying mathematizable universal principles that integrate and explain all the fundamental forces of nature, from gravity and electromagnetism to the weak and strong nuclear forces, incorporating Newtons laws, quantum mechanics, and general relativity. Fundamental quantities like the speed of light, the dimensionality of spacetime, and the masses of the elementary particles would all be predicted, and the equations governing the origin and evolution of the universe through to the formation of galaxies and beyond would be derivedand so on. This constitutes the Theory of Everything. Its a truly remarkable and enormously ambitious quest, which has occupied thousands of researchers for over fifty years at a cost of billions of dollars. Measured by almost any metric, this quest, which is still far from its ultimate goal, has been enormously successful, leading, for example, to the discovery of quarks and the Higgs boson, to black holes and the Big Bang, to quantum chromodynamics and string theory... and to many Nobel Prizes.