What Is Your Dangerous Idea?

John Brockman

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061844805
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The world's leading scientific thinkers explore bold, remarkable, perilous ideas that could change our lives—for better... or for worse...

From Copernicus to Darwin, to current-day thinkers, scientists have always promoted theories and unveiled discoveries that challenge everything society holds dear; ideas with both positive and dire consequences. Many thoughts that resonate today are dangerous not because they are assumed to be false, but because they might turn out to be true.

What do the world's leading scientists and thinkers consider to be their most dangerous idea? Through the leading online forum Edge (www.edge.org), the call went out, and this compelling and easily digestible volume collects the answers. From using medication to permanently alter our personalities to contemplating a universe in which we are utterly alone, to the idea that the universe might be fundamentally inexplicable, What Is Your Dangerous Idea? takes an unflinching look at the daring, breathtaking, sometimes terrifying thoughts that could forever alter our world and the way we live in it.

Contributors include
Daniel C. Dennett • Jared Diamond • Brian Greene • Matt Ridley • Howard Gardner and Freeman Dyson, among others

Contents

PREFACE

The Edge Question

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

by Steven Pinker

John Horgan

We Have No Souls

Paul Bloom

The Rejection of Soul

David Buss

The Evolution of Evil

Irene Pepperberg

The Differences Between Humans and Nonhumans Are Quantitative, Not Qualitative

Steven Pinker

Groups of People May Differ Genetically in Their Average Talents and Temperaments

J. Craig Venter

The Genetic Basis of Human Behavior

Jerry Coyne

Marionettes on Genetic Strings

V. S. Ramachandran

Francis Crick’s Dangerous Idea

Rodney Brooks

Being Alone in the Universe

Scott D. Sampson

Life as an Agent of Energy Dispersal

Keith Devlin

We Are Entirely Alone

Martin Rees

Science May Be Running Out of Control

Frank J. Tipler

Why I Hope the Standard Model Is Wrong About Why There Is More Matter Than Antimatter

Jeremy Bernstein

The Idea That We Understand Plutonium

W. Daniel Hillis

The Idea That We Should All Share Our Most Dangerous Ideas

Daniel Gilbert

The Idea That Ideas Can Be Dangerous

Paul C. W. Davies

The Fight Against Global Warming Is Lost

Gregory Be...