This Idea Must Die

Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress

John Brockman

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780062374349
• eBook ISBN: 9780062374356
• Subtopic: History of Art

The bestselling editor of This Explains Everything brings together 175 of the world’s most brilliant minds to tackle Edge.org’s 2014 question: What scientific idea has become a relic blocking human progress?

Each year, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org—”The world’s smartest website” (The Guardian)—challenges some of the world’s greatest scientists, artists, and philosophers to answer a provocative question crucial to our time. In 2014 he asked 175 brilliant minds to ponder: What scientific idea needs to be put aside in order to make room for new ideas to advance? The answers are as surprising as they are illuminating. In :

• Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior
• Richard Dawkins renounces essentialism
• Sherry Turkle reevaluates our expectations of artificial intelligence
• Geoffrey West challenges the concept of a “Theory of Everything”
• Andrei Linde suggests that our universe and its laws may not be as unique as we think
• Martin Rees explains why scientific understanding is a limitless goal
• Nina Jablonski argues to rid ourselves of the concept of race
• Alan Guth rethinks the origins of the universe
• Hans Ulrich Obrist warns against glorifying unlimited economic growth
• and much more.

Profound, engaging, thoughtful, and groundbreaking, This Idea Must Die will change your perceptions and understanding of our world today . . . and tomorrow.

INDEX

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.

A

abortion, 85–87, 178, 238

Academy of Management Journal, 524

Acevedo, Bianca, 418

action

at a distance, 75

input-output model, 310–311

Adams, Douglas, 466

adaptive logics, 436

addiction, 416–419

adoption studies, 16–17

aesthetic motivation, 117–119

African Americans/Blacks, 81–82, 85–87, 229, 312–313

aging process, 19–20, 30–31

AIDS, 534

alchemy, 336

Alda, Alan, 163–164

Alter, Adam, 373–374

altruism, 197–199, 212–216, 218, 321–322, 407, 411, 424, 449–451

amyotropic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), 178

Anderson, Alun, 440–442

Anderson, Ross, 386–388

Andreoni, James, 215

anecdotes, 77–79, 128

animal rights, 87, 457, 460–461

animal studies

animal electricity, 487–488

emotional responses, 420

humaniqueness, 456–458, 461

mindlessness, 452–455

mouse models, 231–233

neurons, 283–284

orca (“killer whale”) behavior, 206

rat behavior, 201, 202, 208–209, 323, 499–500

squid anatomy, 487

anthropic principle, 46–47, 54, 72, 78, 88–91, 169, 452, 461–462, 463–466

antimatter, 117–119

antiparticle, 37

antisocial behavior, 198–199, 503–505

anxiety, 99

Apple, 266–267

Arbesman, Samuel, 400–402

Aristotle, 84, 217, 219, 256, 488

Aron, Art, 418

arrow-of-time mystery, 37–39, 41

art, 159–161, 336

artificial intelligence (AI). See also computers

expert systems, 435

mind/matter duality, 275–276

nature of, 268–270

robot companions, 264–267

Art Instinct, The (Dutton), 160

arXiv.org, 370, 377–378

Asch, Solomon, 409–410

Asians, 82

Aspect, Alain, 386

associationism, 200–207

astrology, 164

atheism, 101, 104

atoms, 26

Atran, Scott, 15–17

attractiveness/beauty, 413–415, 471

auditory systems, 308–309

Austen, Jane, 279

autism spectrum conditions, 27, 91, 178, 198, 500–501

auxiliary geometry, 61

average, 532–534

Aves, 94

B

background radiation, 239

Bacon, Francis, 257

Baron-Cohen, Simon, 204–207

Barondes, Samuel, 481–482

Barrett, Lisa, 499–502

barriers to understanding, 113–114, 167–169

baseball, 470

Basic, Inc. vs. Levinson, 327

Bates, Elizabeth, 287

Bateson, Mary Catherine, 491–492

Batson, C. Daniel, 216, 407, 411

Bayesian models of human learning, 193–194, 195

Bayes, Thomas, 256

beauty/attractiveness, 413–415, 471

Becutti, Guglielmo, 230

behavioral electrophysiology, 453

behavioral finance, 327

behavioral genetics, 100, 183–184

behavioral science, 208–211, 212–213

behaviorism, 204–207, 273, 413, 422, 452–453, 454, 494

behavior modification, 205–207

Benford, Gregory, 469–472

Bergen, Benjamin K., 240–242

Berkeley, George, 274–275

Berreby, David, 409–412

Berry, Thomas, 364

Bertelsmann Stiftung, 101

Betzig, Laura, 429–431

bias, 288–290

cognitive, 102, 504

cultural, 504–505

in funding research, 382–385

knowing and, 312–314, 464

publication, 220–221, 369–370, 374, 375–378

in sampling, 390

self-selection, 228–229

workplace, 379–381

BICEP2, 45, ...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface: The 2014 Edge Question
• The Theory of Everything
• Unification
• Simplicity
• The Universe
• IQ
• Brain Plasticity
• Changing the Brain
• “The Rocket Scientist”
• Indivi-duality
• The Bigger an Animal’s Brain, the Greater Its Intelligence
• The Big Bang Was the First Moment of Time
• The Universe Began in a State of Extraordinarily Low Entropy
• Entropy
• The Uniformity and Uniqueness of the Universe
• Infinity
• The Laws of Physics Are Predetermined
• Theories of Anything
• M-theory/String Theory Is the Only Game in Town
• String Theory
• Our World Has Only Three Space Dimensions
• The “Naturalness” Argument
• The Collapse of the Wave Function
• Quantum Jumps
• Cause and Effect
• Race
• Essentialism
• Human Nature
• The Urvogel
• Numbering Nature
• Hardwired = Permanent
• The Atheism Prerequisite
• Evolution Is “True”
• There Is No Reality in the Quantum World
• Spacetime
• The Universe
• The Higgs Particle Closes a Chapter in Particle Physics
• Aesthetic Motivation
• Naturalness, Hierarchy, and Spacetime
• Scientists Ought to Know Everything Scientifically Knowable
• Falsifiability
• Anti-anecdotalism
• Science Makes Philosophy Obsolete
• “Science”
• Our Narrow Definition of “Science”
• The Hard Problem
• The Neural Correlates of Consciousness
• Long-Term Memory Is Immutable
• The Self
• Cognitive Agency
• Free Will
• Common Sense
• There Can Be No Science of Art
• Science and Technology
• Things Are Either True or False
• Simple Answers
• We’ll Never Hit Barriers to Scientific Understanding
• Life Evolves Via a Shared Genetic Toolkit
• Fully Random Mutations
• One Genome per Individual
• Nature Versus Nurture
• The Particularist Use of “a” Gene-Environment Interaction
• Natural Selection Is the Only Engine of Evolution
• Behavior = Genes + Environment
• Innateness
• Moral Blank-Slateism
• Associationism
• Radical Behaviorism
• “Instinct” and “Innate”
• Altruism
• The Altruism Hierarch
• Humans Are by Nature Social Animals
• Evidence-Based Medicine
• Large Randomized Controlled Trials
• Multiple Regression as a Means of Discovering Causality
• Mouse Models
• The Somatic Mutation Theory of Cancer
• The Linear No-Threshold (LNT) Radiation Dose Hypothesis
• Universal Grammar
• A Science of Language Should Deal Only With “Competence”
• Languages Condition Worldviews
• The Standard Approach to Meaning
• The Uncertainty Principle
• Beware of Arrogance! Retire Nothing!
• Big Data
• The Stratigraphic Column
• The Habitable-Zone Concept
• Robot Companions
• “Artificial Intelligence”
• The Mind Is Just the Brain
• Mind Versus Matter
• Intelligence as a Property
• The Grand Analogy
• Grandmother Cells
• Brain Modules
• Bias Is Always Bad
• Cartesian Hydraulicism
• The Computational Metaphor
• Left-Brain/Right-Brain
• Left-Brain/Right-Brain
• Moore’s Law
• The Continuity of Time
• The Input-Output Model of Perception and Action
• Knowing Is Half the Battle
• Information Overload
• The Rational Individual
• Homo Economicus
• Don’t Discard Wrong Theories, Just Don’t Treat Them as True
• Rational Actor Models: The Competence Corollary
• Malthusianism
• Economic Growth
• Unlimited and Eternal Growth
• The Tragedy of the Commons
• Markets Are Bad; Markets Are Good
• Stationarity
• Stationarity
• The Carbon Footprint
• Unbridled Scientific and Technological Optimism
• Scientists Should Stick to Science
• Nature = Objects
• Scientific Morality
• Science Is Self-Correcting
• Replication as a Safety Net
• Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”
• The Way We Produce and Advance Science
• Allocating Funds via Peer Review
• Some Questions Are Too Hard for Young Scientists to Tackle
• Only Scientists Can Do Science
• The Scientific Method
• Big Effects Have Big Explanations
• Science = Big Science
• Sadness Is Always Bad, Happiness Is Always Good
• Opposites Can’t Both Be Right
• People Are Sheep
• Beauty Is in the Eyes of the Beholder
• Romantic Love and Addiction
• Emotion Is Peripheral
• Science Can Maximize Our Happiness
• Culture
• Culture
• Learning and Culture
• “Our” Intuitions
• We’re Stone Age Thinkers
• Inclusive Fitness
• Human Evolutionary Exceptionalism
• Animal Mindlessness
• Humaniqueness
• Human Being = Homo sapiens
• Anthropocentricity
• Truer Perceptions Are Fitter Perceptions
• The Intrinsic Beauty and Elegance of Mathematics Allows It to Describe Nature
• Geometry
• Calculus
• Computer Science
• Science Advances by Funerals
• Planck’s Cynical View of Scientific Change
• New Ideas Triumph by Replacing Old Ones
• Max Planck’s Faith
• The Illusion of Certainty
• The Pursuit of Parsimony
• The Clinician’s Law of Parsimony
• Essentialist Views of the Mind
• The Distinction Between Antisociality and Mental Illness
• Repression
• Mental Illness Is Nothing but Brain Illness
• Psychogenic Illness
• Crime Entails Only the Actions of Criminals
• Statistical Significance
• Scientific Inference via Statistical Rituals
• The Power of Statistics
• Reproducibility
• The Average
• Standard Deviation
• Statistical Independence
• Certainty. Absolute Truth. Exactitude.
• The Illusion of Scientific Progress
• Notes
• Index
• Excerpt from What to Think About Machines That Think
• About the Author
• Also by John Brockman
• Back Ads
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher