Know This (by John Brockman, 2017)
Here's a great book:
Know This: Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments (Ed: John Brockman, 2017)
From Amazon :
I also cite Professor Jared Diamond a lot, in my PhD thesis (2016). (I'm a huge fan of his book Guns, Germs and Steel (1999) .)
Here's what Diamond says, in the above book: (excerpted from the Edge website)
This is also known as The Anna Karenina Principle...
It applies to: how you create a successful movie, or novel, or song, or - lots of things...
In Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond (1997) writes:
- I'm also a huge fan of Edge.org's annual question, as asked by John Brockman... I always feel smarter having read the book that results each year!
Another one of my favourite books in this ongoing Edge.org series edited by Brockman is, this one:
This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future (Edge Question Series, ed: Brockman 2009)
Here are some of my favourite quotes from that book:
Artificial Self-Replicating Meme Machines - Susan Blackmore
`Susan Blackmore is a psychologist and the author of Consciousness: An Introduction.
`I like to think of our planet as one in a million, or one in a trillion, of possible planets where evolution begins. This requires something (a replicator) that can be copied with variation, and selection. As Darwin realized, if more copies are made than can survive, then the survivors will pass on to the next generation of copying whatever helped them get through. This is how all design in the universe comes about.’
(Blackmore in Brockman 2010, p.135)
And this quote:
`The End of Analytic Science – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
The idea that will change the game of knowledge is that it is more important to understand events, objects and processes in their relationship with one another than in their singular structure. Western science has achieved wonders with its analytic focus, but it is now time to take synthesis seriously… How shall this breakthrough occur? Current systems theories are necessary but not sufficient, as they tend not to take values into account. Perhaps after this realization sets in, we shall have to rewrite science from the ground up.’
(Csikszentmihalyi in Brockman 2010, pp. 348-9)
And this one:
`Evolution Changes Everything – Scott Sampson.
Scott Sampson is adjunct professor of geology and geophysics at the university of Utah and the host of Dinosaur Planet.
Evolution is the scientific idea that will change everything within the next several decades.
I realize that this statement may seem improbable. If evolution is defined as simply change over time, the above statement borders on meaningless. If it is regarded in the narrower, Darwinian sense as descent with modification, any claim for evolution’s starring role also appears questionable – particularly given that 2009 is the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of On The Origin Of Species. Surely what Daniel Dennett has called Darwin’s “dangerous idea”, however conceived, has made its mark by now. Nevertheless I base my claim on evolution’s probable effect in two spheres: human consciousness, and science and technology.
Today the commonly accepted concept of evolution is extremely narrow, confined largely to the realm of biology and a longstanding emphasis on mutation and natural selection.
In recent decades, this limited perspective has become further entrenched by the dominance of molecular biology and its “promise” of human-engineered cells and lifeforms. Emphasis has been placed almost entirely on generating diversity, a process referred to as `complexification’, reflecting the reductionist worldview that has driven science for four centuries.
Yet science has also begun to explore another key element of evolution: unification, which transcends the biological to encompass the evolution of physical matter. The numerous and dramatic increases in complexity, it turns out, have been achieved largely through a process of integration, with smaller wholes becoming parts of larger wholes.
Again and again, we see the progressive development of multipart individuals from simpler forms.
Thus, for example, atoms become integrated into molecules, molecules into cells, and cells into organisms.
At each higher, emergent stage, older forms are enveloped and incorporated into newer forms, with the end result being a nested, multilevel hierarchy.
At first glance, the process of unification appears to contravene the second law of thermodynamics, by increasing order over entropy.
Again and again during the past fourteen billion years, concentrations of energy have emerged and self-organized as islands of order amid a sea of chaos, taking the guise of stars, galaxies, bacteria, gray whales and (on at least one planet) a biosphere.
Although the process of emergence remains somewhat of a mystery, we can now state with confidence that the epic of evolution has been guided by counterbalancing trends of complexification and unification.
This journey has not been an inevitable, deterministic march, but a quixotic, creative unfolding in which the future could not be predicted.’
(Sampson in Brockman 2010, pp. 1-2)
More on all that (unification and complexification) here, if of interest:
For more, see:
I also love - The 1999 Edge.org Question:
WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST 2,000 YEARS?
Here is one of my favourite answers, from that year:
Why?
...It solves problems! (Yay!)
Then again - since all life (anything, that is: alive) is: doing science (see: All Life is Problem Solving, Popper 1999) -- as I understand it, science was actually invented by: the first lifeform... anything that is alive is constantly (1) having theories, (2) testing the current theory, and (3) correcting errors.
(i.e., Theory, Trial and Error, and [if need be] Error-correction.)
But - humans became conscious of it (that method of discovering and testing knowledge), only in: the last 2,000 years. (Starting in: Ancient Greece.)
...Anyway, so - what about you-?
-----------------------------Dr. Joe T. Velikovsky, Ph.D (Communication)
`The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior... The language of this memorandum will often appear to refer to the special, but still very broad and important, field of the communication of speech; but practically everything said applies equally well to music of any sort, and to still or moving pictures, as in television." - The Mathematical Theory of Communication, (Shannon & Weaver 1949, pp. 3-4).
& Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer:
Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/
& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky
& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/
See also:
IMDb: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeteevee
------------------------------------------
Know This: Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments (Ed: John Brockman, 2017)
From Amazon :
`Today's most visionary thinkers reveal the cutting-edge scientific ideas and breakthroughs you must understand.
Scientific developments radically change and enlighten our understanding of the world -- whether it's advances in technology and medical research or the latest revelations of neuroscience, psychology, physics, economics, anthropology, climatology, or genetics. And yet amid the flood of information today, it's often difficult to recognize the truly revolutionary ideas that will have lasting impact.
In the spirit of identifying the most significant new theories and discoveries, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website" -- The Guardian), asked 198 of the finest minds:
What do you consider the most interesting recent scientific news? What makes it important?
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond on the best way to understand complex problems * author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Carlo Rovelli on the mystery of black holes * Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker on the quantification of human progress * TED Talks curator Chris J. Anderson on the growth of the global brain * Harvard cosmologist Lisa Randall on the true measure of breakthrough discoveries * Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek on why the twenty-first century will be shaped by our mastery of the laws of matter * philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on the underestimation of female genius * music legend Peter Gabriel on tearing down the barriers between imagination and reality * Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson on the surprising ability of small (and cheap) upstarts to compete with billion-dollar projects.
Plus Nobel laureate John C. Mather, Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy, Wired founding editor Kevin Kelly, psychologist Alison Gopnik, Genome author Matt Ridley, Harvard geneticist George Church, Why Does the World Exist? author Jim Holt, anthropologist Helen Fisher, and more.'Source: Amazon (2017) .
I also cite Professor Jared Diamond a lot, in my PhD thesis (2016). (I'm a huge fan of his book Guns, Germs and Steel (1999) .)
Here's what Diamond says, in the above book: (excerpted from the Edge website)
Jared Diamond
Professor of Geography, University of California Los Angeles; Author, The World Until Yesterday
`The Most Important X...Y...Z...
In many fields one hears questions in the format,
“What is the most important X…Y…Z…, etc.?”
For instance, what is the most important factor accounting for artistic creativity? or competitive biological success? or a happy marriage? or military success? or scientific creativity? or successful child-rearing? or a sustainable economy? or world peace?
In our complicated, multi-factorial world, the correct answer to such a question is almost always in the format:
“The most important consideration is: not to search for the most important consideration.”
Instead, there are normally many considerations, none of which can be ignored.
For instance, marital therapists have identified about 19 independent factors essential to a happy marriage: compatibility about sex, money, religion, politics, in-laws, child-rearing, styles of arguing, and 12 other factors.
If a couple agrees about 18 of those factors but can’t resolve a disagreement just about sex (or just about money, or just religion, or…etc.), they are in deep trouble.
Hence, if you hear a newly-married couple ask you in all seriousness, “What is the single most important requirement for a happy marriage?” you can bet that that marriage will end in divorce.'(Diamond, in Edge.org, 2017, bold emphasis mine)
This is also known as The Anna Karenina Principle...
It applies to: how you create a successful movie, or novel, or song, or - lots of things...
In Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond (1997) writes:
`We tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success. For most important things, though, success actually requires avoiding many separate possible causes of failure.'
(Diamond, 1997, p. 157).See my PhD (free, online) for more on that!
- I'm also a huge fan of Edge.org's annual question, as asked by John Brockman... I always feel smarter having read the book that results each year!
Another one of my favourite books in this ongoing Edge.org series edited by Brockman is, this one:
This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future (Edge Question Series, ed: Brockman 2009)
Here are some of my favourite quotes from that book:
Artificial Self-Replicating Meme Machines - Susan Blackmore
`Susan Blackmore is a psychologist and the author of Consciousness: An Introduction.
`I like to think of our planet as one in a million, or one in a trillion, of possible planets where evolution begins. This requires something (a replicator) that can be copied with variation, and selection. As Darwin realized, if more copies are made than can survive, then the survivors will pass on to the next generation of copying whatever helped them get through. This is how all design in the universe comes about.’
(Blackmore in Brockman 2010, p.135)
And this quote:
`The End of Analytic Science – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
The idea that will change the game of knowledge is that it is more important to understand events, objects and processes in their relationship with one another than in their singular structure. Western science has achieved wonders with its analytic focus, but it is now time to take synthesis seriously… How shall this breakthrough occur? Current systems theories are necessary but not sufficient, as they tend not to take values into account. Perhaps after this realization sets in, we shall have to rewrite science from the ground up.’
(Csikszentmihalyi in Brockman 2010, pp. 348-9)
And this one:
`Evolution Changes Everything – Scott Sampson.
Scott Sampson is adjunct professor of geology and geophysics at the university of Utah and the host of Dinosaur Planet.
Evolution is the scientific idea that will change everything within the next several decades.
I realize that this statement may seem improbable. If evolution is defined as simply change over time, the above statement borders on meaningless. If it is regarded in the narrower, Darwinian sense as descent with modification, any claim for evolution’s starring role also appears questionable – particularly given that 2009 is the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of On The Origin Of Species. Surely what Daniel Dennett has called Darwin’s “dangerous idea”, however conceived, has made its mark by now. Nevertheless I base my claim on evolution’s probable effect in two spheres: human consciousness, and science and technology.
Today the commonly accepted concept of evolution is extremely narrow, confined largely to the realm of biology and a longstanding emphasis on mutation and natural selection.
In recent decades, this limited perspective has become further entrenched by the dominance of molecular biology and its “promise” of human-engineered cells and lifeforms. Emphasis has been placed almost entirely on generating diversity, a process referred to as `complexification’, reflecting the reductionist worldview that has driven science for four centuries.
Yet science has also begun to explore another key element of evolution: unification, which transcends the biological to encompass the evolution of physical matter. The numerous and dramatic increases in complexity, it turns out, have been achieved largely through a process of integration, with smaller wholes becoming parts of larger wholes.
Again and again, we see the progressive development of multipart individuals from simpler forms.
Thus, for example, atoms become integrated into molecules, molecules into cells, and cells into organisms.
At each higher, emergent stage, older forms are enveloped and incorporated into newer forms, with the end result being a nested, multilevel hierarchy.
At first glance, the process of unification appears to contravene the second law of thermodynamics, by increasing order over entropy.
Again and again during the past fourteen billion years, concentrations of energy have emerged and self-organized as islands of order amid a sea of chaos, taking the guise of stars, galaxies, bacteria, gray whales and (on at least one planet) a biosphere.
Although the process of emergence remains somewhat of a mystery, we can now state with confidence that the epic of evolution has been guided by counterbalancing trends of complexification and unification.
This journey has not been an inevitable, deterministic march, but a quixotic, creative unfolding in which the future could not be predicted.’
(Sampson in Brockman 2010, pp. 1-2)
More on all that (unification and complexification) here, if of interest:
StoryAlity #132 – The holon/parton structure of the Meme, the unit of culture – and the narreme, or unit of story – book chapter (Velikovsky 2016)And - here is a diagram, of what Sampson (above) refers to as "a nested, multilevel hierarchy": (aka a holon/parton).
For more, see:
StoryAlity #132 – The holon/parton structure of the Meme, the unit of culture – and the narreme, or unit of story – book chapter (Velikovsky 2016)--------------------------
I also love - The 1999 Edge.org Question:
WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST 2,000 YEARS?
Here is one of my favourite answers, from that year:
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Psychologist; Director, Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont Graduate University; Author, Flow
Professor of psychology and education at the University of Chicago
`I always liked Lynn White's story about how the stirrup revolutionized warfare and made feudal society and culture possible. Or Lefebre des Noettes' argument about how the invention of the rudder made extensive sailing and the consequent expansion of Europe and its colonization of the world possible. But it's sobering to realize that it took us over one thousand years to realize the impact of these artifacts.
So I am not at all sure we have at this time a good grip on what the most important inventions of the past millennia have been.
Certainly the contraceptive pill is a good candidate, and so is the scientific method.
I am also intrigued by the effects of such inventions as the flag — a symbol of belonging that millions will follow to ruin or victory independently of biological connectedness; or the social security card that signifies that we are not alone and our welfare is a joint problem for the community; or the invention of civil rights which however abused and misused is pointing us towards a notion of universal human dignity that might yet eclipse in importance all the technological marvels of the millennium.'
...In my opinion, the scientific method is it! (Best invention of the past 2,000 years).
(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Edge.org, 1999, online, bold emphasis mine)
Why?
...It solves problems! (Yay!)
Then again - since all life (anything, that is: alive) is: doing science (see: All Life is Problem Solving, Popper 1999) -- as I understand it, science was actually invented by: the first lifeform... anything that is alive is constantly (1) having theories, (2) testing the current theory, and (3) correcting errors.
(i.e., Theory, Trial and Error, and [if need be] Error-correction.)
But - humans became conscious of it (that method of discovering and testing knowledge), only in: the last 2,000 years. (Starting in: Ancient Greece.)
...Anyway, so - what about you-?
What do you feel is the greatest invention of the past 2,000 years...?And: why so?
-----------------------------Dr. Joe T. Velikovsky, Ph.D (Communication)
`The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior... The language of this memorandum will often appear to refer to the special, but still very broad and important, field of the communication of speech; but practically everything said applies equally well to music of any sort, and to still or moving pictures, as in television." - The Mathematical Theory of Communication, (Shannon & Weaver 1949, pp. 3-4).
& Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer:
Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/
& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky
& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/
See also:
IMDb: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeteevee
------------------------------------------
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