Eso lo explica todo

Edge Question

by Grupo Editorial Planeta (Editor)

Jared Diamond sobre la electricidad biológica. Nassim Nicholas Taleb sobre el estrés positivo. Steven Pinker sobre las profundas raíces genéticas del conflicto humano. Richard Dawkins sobre el reconocimiento de patrones. El premio Nobel de Física Frank Wilczek sobre la simplicidad. Lisa Randall sobre el mecanismo de Higgs. Brian Eno sobre los límites de la intuición. Richard Thaler sobre el poder del compromiso. V. S. Ramachandran sobre el «código neural» de la conciencia. El premio Nobel de Fisiología Eric Kandel sobre el poder de la psicoterapia. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi sobre el «dictum de Lord Acton». Lawrence M. Krauss sobre la unificación de la electricidad y el magnetismo.

Estas páginas recorren los asuntos más fascinantes de la humanidad, del elec-trón al universo: los pájaros como descendientes directos de los dinosaurios, el eslabón perdido, los gérmenes que provocan enfermedades, la entropía, por qué brilla el sol, por qué emigran algunas tortugas marinas, si la belleza es verdad, los límites de nuestra racionalidad, qué son las metáforas o el origen del dinero, entre muchos temas.

Bienvenido al paseo más asombroso por las fronteras del conocimiento.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychology, Essays, Physics, Audiobook

542 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 22, 2013

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is so good in concept and very difficult to slog through in delivery. I suspect that the 150 thinkers simply sent in emails of their ideas into the author because the perspectives range from a little over a page to several pages. What's unfortunate is that because of a lack of editing and/or structure to their responses, this book reads as if you're reading through John Brockman's email inbox.

Sadly, there are like a lot of brilliant people in this book who have ideas I would love to hear more about. But, I'm 25% in and I just can't take it anymore.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m aware you can give a lot of criticism on this kind of Edge-books (there is too much/too little in it, some contributions are substandard, etc ...) but I have read this with much enjoyment and fascination: not because it is coherent, or gives a complete overview of the current state of science in physics, chemistry, biology, cognitive studies, linguistics and psychology, or gives an answer to our deepest questions. No, on the contrary.

The question put to 150 top scientists (and a few eccentrics such as musician Brian Eno) is: "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?" Obviously you get very predictable answers such as Darwin's theory of evolution, the Big Bang and associated inflation theory, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum theory, the double helix DNA model, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the Peter principle, and so on.

Now, of course you can have serious doubts about the initial question: what is deep, elegant and beautiful, and are that relevant and/or coherent categories? These issues are also confronted in a number of contributions, and for example physics icon Paul Steinhardt clearly states: "while elegance and simplicity are useful criteria for judging theories, we can sometimes fail to think we are right when we are actually infinitely wrong".

But what attracted me most was that many top scientists very clearly indicate how little we still know and understand of the reality we live in, and how even the most profound scientific theories have their issues. Take the string theory, - on parallel universes -, for example, or the brain and consciousness research: they all point in the direction of several, at the same time possible, correct ànd overlapping explanations. This does not diminish the value of science, on the contrary, but it does show that science is constantly in motion, continues to struggle with recurring questions and thus remains incredibly fascinating. And subsequently: if this book teaches anything, it is that we absolutely have to get rid of the stupid scientism, namely that science could give the definitive answer to everything! This form of scientific fundamentalism is absurd. And for that reason it is really a shame that this book was given such a misleading title as "This explains everything".

[Book Shark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works Edited by John Brockman

"This Explains Everything" is a wonderful book of essays from the Edge that addresses a question that inspires unpredictable answers. The Edge is an organization that presents original ideas by today's leading thinkers from a wide spectrum of scientific fields. The 2012 Edge question is, "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?" This interesting 432-page book contains 148 short essays that addresses the question. The quality of the essays range from the 3-word absurdity of "Keep It Simple" to the elegant and profound essay that addresses why the sky is blue through a brief history of converging sciences.

For my sake, I created a spreadsheet of all the essays and graded them from zero to five stars based on quality. Five star essays are those that provide a great description of the author's favorite explanation. On the other hand, those receiving a one or even a zero represent essays that were not worthy of this book. Of course, this is just one reviewer's personal opinion.

Positives:
1. The book starts with a great premise, "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?"
2. A great range of scientific topics. Thought-provoking ideas.
3. Generally well written, well organized essays. High quality value.
4. You don't have to read the essays in orders, you can just jump to your favorite authors or topics.
5. The theory of evolution shines brightest amongst the stars; regardless of the field of expertise these authors have a great admiration for indeed one of the most beautiful, elegant explanations in all of science.
6. There were eleven outstanding essays deserving of five stars for me. In order of essay, the first by Gerd Gigerenzer, "Unconscious Inferences". It discusses the nature of perception. Excellent illustration to bring it all together.
7. V.S. Ramachandran's "Genes, Claustrum, and Consciousness". He argues that the same strategy used to crack the genetic code might prove successful in cracking the "neural" code. And that's why I read books of this ilk...
8. David M. Eagleman's "Overlapping Solutions" explains beautifully the overlapping ways the brain deals with the world.
9. Andrew Lih's "Information is the Resolution of Uncertainty" introduces us to Claude Shannon the man behind the elegant theory of information.
10. Helen Fisher's "Epigenetics- The Missing Link" provides the reader with the dare I say it emerging field of epigenetics in which the environmental forces can affect gene behavior.
11. John Tooby's "Falling into Place: Entropy and the Desperate Ingenuity of Life" provides a trio of elegant scientific ideas: entropy, natural selection, and frames of refernce.
12. Eric R. Kandel's "Placing Psychotherapy on a Scientific Basis: Five Easy Lessons" discusses the very topical need of treating mental illnesses. Great essay!
13. Randolph Nesse's excellent "Natural Selection is Simple but the Systems it shapes are Unimaginably Complex" makes it very clear that there is a distinction between machines and organisms.
14. My favorite essay belongs to Nicholas A. Christakis, "Out of the Mouth of Babes". It starts with a very simple question from childhood. Why is the sky blue? A question so simple a child can ask but takes many of the greatest minds over time to converge to a satisfactory answer. Philosophy and science as one, now that's beautiful!
15. Alison Gopnik's timely and fascinating "Developmental Timing Explains the Woes of Adolescence.
16. The great Jared Diamond completes the great eleven with the "Origins of Biological Electricity". Interesting, quirky interspersed with some great tidbits.
17. Great authors consistently provide great essays, you can always count on: Dawkins, Pinker, Steinhardt, Carroll, Zimmer, PZ Myers, Atkins, Krauss, and Shermer. They all provided excellent essays.
18. Alan Turing, Galileo, and of course Einstein deserve a special mention. Turing's life is fascinating and I highly recommend reading his biography. The great Darwin goes without saying.
19. Excellent editing.

Negatives:
1. Some essays were not worthy of this book. It's not my intent to denigrate any of these great minds so I'm not going to mention them by name. Thankfully just a few received zero stars.
2. I'm disappointed that no one mentioned Henrietta Swan Leavitt the astronomer who discovered how to calculate the distance from the stars. Or Barbara McClintock's genetic transposition. And of course one can never go wrong with Marie Curie. You know where I'm going with this...just an observation.

In summary, this is an interesting and fun book of essays for inquisitive minds. Philosophy is about asking the right questions and good science is about answering them. A perfect balance of elegance is attained when the right question is responded in turn with a sound, succinct scientific response. This book contains a wide range of responses from my favorite eleven to some not worthy of the book, but overall a fun and enjoyable read. I recommend it!

Further suggestions: “A Universe From Nothing” by Lawrence Krauss, "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins, "The Disappearing Spoon" by Sam Kean, "The Tell-Tale Brain" by V.S. Ramachandran, "The Believing Brain" by Michael Shermer, "How to Create a Mind" by Ray Kurzwell, "The Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond, "Why Evolution Is True" by Jerry A. Coyne, and "Subliminal" by Leonard Mlodinow.

[Sense of History]

For an historian it is not easy to get a lot out of these kinds of books, that is: at first glance it isn’t. In this book almost all of the 156 contributors are positive scientists, and in the human sciences psychologists, cognitivists and philosophers are in the majority. There are only 2 "labeled" historians, Big History-guru David Christian on cosmology, and archaeologist Timothy Taylor on Greek vases. Do we have to conclude from this that historians have not produced deep, beautiful and elegant theories about reality at all? Or that historical studies are by definition not scientific?

I am not going to dive into that last debate, but if this booklet makes anything clear, then it is that even the outspoken "scientific" sciences always offer approximations of reality and even the most elegant and profound theories have been adjusted and/or placed in a broader or different context. And then I wonder: is there really so much difference with historical studies? They always offer a provisional story of what happened in the past and they can - provided that certain methodological requirements have been met, provided they are sufficiently transparent and provided they do not suffer from an excessive degree of coherence compulsion – offer a reasonable approach to past reality. Really, what do you want more? Oh, and please don't answer "usefulness", because most of the deep, beautiful and elegant theories in this book don't live up to that criterium.

[Tom Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bathroom reader for smarty-pants. A lot of insightful commentary from the contemporary intelligentsia, but things don't go deeply into detail. It's nice to read one or two to get your brain juice flowing, but this is not a book to be read in extended sittings.

3.5 stars out of 5.

[David Tendo · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Deep"? Just another word for Pretentious. "Beautiful"? Try Narcissistic. "Elegant"? Tortuous comes to mind. Contrary to what it purports on the cover - NO, this does not explain everything. In fact it doesn't explain ANYTHING, at all! This book is just a collection of show-off-y crap by some of the world's greatest thinkers today; by "thinkers" I mean - egotistical, narcissistic morons. Oh, hey, is it coincidence that Nassim Nicholas Taleb (refer to my review of The Black Swan) is one of the contributors? It seems like they're having a show-off contest - who can use to biggest words in the most nonsensical ways possible. They may be the best at what they do, but that doesn't give them the right to make everyone else feel small by publishing this nonsense and claiming that it explains everything. To be honest, I read a few of the essays and had to stop, I couldn't even finish - just like The Black Swan. Avoid at all costs.

[Jorge Zuluaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entre todas las ideas bellas y elegantes de la historia, escribir un libro con una selección realizada por algunas de las mentes vivas más brillantes de todos los campos de las ciencias y las artes, es definitivamente una de ellas.

Eso es este libro: un compendio de 150+ ideas geniales reunidas en 400+ páginas.

Desde la evolución por selección natural (que es considerada por varios de los autores de este bello libro, como la idea más bella y elegante de la historia), hasta la ley de Zipf (una misteriosa regularidad estadística que ocurre en los números asociados con fenómenos muy complejos - el número de habitantes de un país, la riqueza de un individuo o corporación, el área de un continente, etc.), pasando por ideas muy populares e igualmente grandiosas, la navaja de Ockham, el mecanismo de Higgs, la ley de Moore, la epigenética, el dilema de Collindridge (del que estamos sufriendo hoy con las redes sociales), la emergencia en sistemas complejos, los límites de la intuición, el empirismo, el origen estelar de la materia y más, mucho más.

Lo que más me ha gustado: la brevedad con la que se expone cada idea.

Los ensayos cortos, preparados por personajes que van desde premios Nobel (Franz Wilczek, John Mather), hasta celebridades científicas como Sean Carroll, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Daniel Dennet, Steven Pinker, Lisa Randal o escritores, dramaturgos y actores (Alan Alda), cubren espacion que van desde una simple palabra (¿adivinan cuál puede ser el tema?) hasta a lo sumo 3 páginas. Todas bellamente escritas (algunas, incluso, con un estilo literario exquisito).

¿Podría ser de otra manera? ¡por supuesto que no!

Si se trata de hablar de las ideas más elegantes y bellas de la historia no puedes escribir 500 páginas sobre ellas. Eso es justamente lo que logran los autores de estos ensayos: transmitir a través del ejemplo la idea misma de elegancia, sencillez y belleza que caracteriza muchas de esas ideas.

El libro es ideal para todos los entusiastas de la ciencia.

Si no te gustan las neurociencias o la psicología, disfrutara como niñ@ de las más bellas ideas de la física o la cosmología; si tampoco es la física lo que te apasiona, tal vez encontrará un gran placer leyendo sobre las ideas más bellas en el mundo de la informática o las neurociencias; pero si lo suyo es la economía o la sociología, aquí también encontrará expuestas algunas de las más bellas ideas en esas disciplina. Hay lecturas para todos.

Aquí mis ideas favoritas (por si están cortos de tiempo y solo quieren saltar aquí y allá):

- La evolución (Blackmore)
- Einstein explica porque la gravedad es universal (Smolin)
- Los copos de nieve y el multiverso (Reese)
- ¿Por qué es comprensible nuestro mundo? (Linde)
- Kepler et al. y el problema inexistente (Segré) ¡fantástico!
- Porque la mente tiene una explicación (Humphrey)
- Porque hay tortugas marinas que emigran (Dennett)
- El conflicto sexual (Buss)
- El principio del palomar (Kleinberg)
- El dilema de Collindridge (Morozov)
- La selección natural es simple pero los sistemas son complejos (Nesse)
- El origen del dinero (Evans)
- Como adquirió manchas el leopardo (Abesman)
- Por qué los griego pintaban a gente roja en vasijas negras (Taylor)

Es una escueta selección que no hace justicia a las decenas de ideas bellas e inspiradoras en este libro.

De verdad aprendí cosas fantásticas ¡No dejen de leerlo!

[Pete Welter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the other Edge books, this one poses a single question to broad swath of thinkers. For this year, the question was "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?"

This is the second Edge collection I've read (there's a new one every year). In some sense, the question really isn't that important. What's these books are great for is getting samples of the thinking on big ideas from thinkers and practitioners from across a swath of disciplines. I use them to get exposed to concepts and research that I wouldn't otherwise bump into, and for that purpose this book succeeds.

So, if you are someone interested in exploring why the world works the way does, these books are give you 150 different takes on various answers to that question. I have a feeling that any two people who read the book will come away with a different set of the essays that really affected their thinking, based on individual interests. As I annotate my way through the book, I go back and checkmark the essays in the Table of Contents that I found particularly fascinating, and I usually pursue more reading of books or articles by those authors.

All that said, the two major themes that I took from the book were that:

1) across most disciplines and writers, evolution is the elegant theory most often cited. Evolution explains a huge swath of what we know about life and culture using quite simple mechanisms.

2) that all the thinking and brain stuff that happens below the level of conscious thought drives way more of why we do what we do than was previously understood.

[Mikhail · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent pack of short essays on scientific and not-very-scientific ideas. Plenty of choice. Here's my favourites:
1. Sensory adaptation (by Richard Dawkins): "The world at time t is not greatly different from the world at time t-1. Therefore it is not necessary for sensory systems continuously to report the state of the world. They need only signal changes, leaving the brain to assume that everything not reported remains the same."
2. Opinion segregation (by David G.Myers): "Group interaction tends to amplify people's initial inclinations.
3. John Conway's Life model (by Brian Eno): "We aren't good at intuiting the interaction of simple rules with initial conditions (and the bigger point here is that the human brain may be intrinsically limited in its ability to intuit certain things - like quantum theory or probability, for example... Intuition is not a quasi-mystical voice from outside ourselves speaking through us but a sort of quick-and-dirty processing of our prior experience."
4. Pascal's wager (by Tim O'Reilly): "All we need to think about are the consequences of being wrong."
5. Aaron Beck's work on depression (by Eric Kandel): "Depression is due to introjected anger. Patients with depression experience deep hostility toward someone they love."
6. Inverse power laws (by Rudy Rucker): "Galling as it seems, inverse-power-law distributions are a fundamental natural law about the behavior of systems. They are ubiquitous."
7. The Peter principle and the mechanism of mediocrity (by Nicholas Carr): "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting thought collage with a misleading title. The subtitle comes closer to capturing the contents: a collection of essays from a diverse group of thinkers responding to the question, What is your favorite deep, beautiful, or elegant explanation? From the preface:

The contributions presented here embrace scientific thinking in the broadest sense: as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything--including such fields of inquiry as philosophy, mathematics, economics, history, language, and human behavior. The common thread is that a simple and nonobvious idea is proposed as the explanation for a diverse and complicated set of phenomena.

The resulting compilation makes for a fascinating mix--while all were potentially enlightening, I only found half truly engaging and a handful really entertaining--what I found most valuable was the landscape of ideas created, giving insight into the perspectives of the scholarly community. Some of the explanations--like evolution by natural selection--are well-known and get mentioned many times, while others are specific or esoteric or recent. As would be expected, the ones in my areas of interest were the most interesting to me, but all contributed to making a whole that was greater for the sum of its parts.

Perhaps most valuable was the introduction the book provided to a wealth of different thinkers. I've already investigated a good number because I wanted to know more about who they are, where they are coming from, and what they have done, and I was intrigued enough by a few that I'm planning on reading their books and other works.

[Andrés Astudillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valoración de 4.5.

Es ciencia, y no soy científico. No tengo un doctorado en Cosmología o Paleogenética. Sin embargo, puedo indicar que el libro responde a una pregunta de la fundación EDGE sobre la ciencia.
La pregunta tiene que ver con una explicación que sea bella sobre la ciencia que pueda explicar algo increíble. En realidad, todos los libros de John Brockman corresponden a respuestas a estas preguntas de periodicidad anual.

El libro puede llegar a parecer un poco pesado y quizás aburrido solo porque tiene muchos autores. En realidad se han colocado pocos contribuyentes o autores al libro en la edición de Goodreads, pero es porque son demasiados; el libro es el compendio de opiniones que estos especialistas pueden ofrecer a la pregunta previamente planteada y en verdad, creo que superan los 70 autores.

Puede ser aburrido porque precisamente estos especialistas ofrecen su punto de vista personal, y por ejemplo, no me aburren las explicaciones sobre cosmología porque me encanta, pero como son personajes importantes de todas las ramas, aparecen temas como marketing, economía, finanzas, riesgos, política, biología, lógica (esto me aburre mucho en lo personal), neurología, astrofísica y mucha pero mucha psicología. Esto quiere decir que si no eres una persona con un leve background en lectura de ciencia y divulgación, probablemente te llegue a parecer un libro totalmente insondable o ininteligible. Lo es en algunas ocasiones. Muchas personas no conocen falacias en argumentación, o expresiones en latín, ni siquiera la Navaja de Ockham o como funciona la evolución, y estos temas se ven mucho en el libro, es por eso que lo recomiendo a personas que ya leen este tipo de especialidades, ellos sí lo van a encontrar hasta divertido.

Hubo algunas explicaciones muy buenas, verdaderamente desconocía sobre el tema de la testosterona fetal y de cómo esto incide en el desarrollo cognitivo; por eso siempre los varones aprendemos lenguaje más tarde que las mujeres. También me pareció increíble el tema sobre las sobredosis de drogas en relación con los estímulos condicionados. Es muy bueno ya que te permite ver temas diversos sobre los cuales se puede profundizar.

[Susan Beuerlein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accolades to This Explains Everything, which collects short essays on such topics as astronomy, biological electricity, metabolic syndrome, monogamy, decision-making, mediocrity, language, mathematics, sociology, and death.
The contributors—from Alan Alda to esteemed physicists to sociologists to mathematicians—ponder elegant and beautiful explanations of our universe. Readers may be challenged by the science, inspired by the history, and intrigued by Hamlet's notion: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
This Explains Everything is a great companion, with short and long essays on every topic under the sun. Feel your mind expand and shiver with enjoyment!

[Atila Iamarino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ótimas ideias e teorias pontuadas por algumas não tão boas e um pouco de groselha. Em geral as explicações são rasas, mas acho um ótimo livro pra se ter contato com muitos bons temas que merecem mais leitura depois. Aliás, é de longe o melhor livro desse tipo que já li.

[Bettie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A theory that explains a lot with a clear and simple set of ideas is much beloved by scientists and social scientists alike. In this book, about 150 renowned thinkers were asked what theory they thought explained the most with the least. Every year, Edge.org (the online face of an Algonquin Round Table-like group called “The Reality Club”) produces a question to direct toward members, and this book resulted from the 2012 question. The editor, John Brockman, had his work cut out for him given limited space and the fact that a few theories (e.g. Darwinian Evolution) would be rehashed ad nauseam without coordination. (Many authors sited Darwin, even if they weren’t discussing evolution because they knew it’d already been addressed from many angles.)

The contributors are a veritable who’s who of science, and include: Matt Ridley, Richard Dawkins, Leonard Susskind, Frank Wilczek, Steven Pinker, Martin J. Rees, Max Tegmark, Freeman Dyson, V.S. Ramachandran, David Eagleman, Robert Sapolsky, Richard Thaler, Daniel Dennett, Howard Gardener, Lisa Randall, Eric R. Kandel, Alison Gopnik, Lee Smolin, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jared Diamond, and Michael Shermer. One may note that not all of the authors are, strictly-speaking, scientists. The book even ventures into the arts and humanities, including contributors such as Alan Alda and Brian Eno. Of course, this means that the book sometimes veers away from theories that have explanatory power on the scale of natural selection or the neat offerings of physics and chemistry, but these entries often provide some intriguing food-for-thought.

All of the entries are short; some are less than a page and most are less than three. Given the range of authors, the approaches and the degree of colorfulness employed in entries varies greatly. There are few graphics and no ancillary matter (notations or bibliography) except for an editor’s introduction. It’s good bathroom reading, or for any other time when one has a couple free minutes to take in an idea.

I enjoyed this book, and found it thought-provoking. Often it wasn’t the expected theories (i.e. the most parsimonious) that provided the greatest revelatory insights. There were even responses that challenged the nature of the question. One won’t necessarily find all the responses present elegant theories, or that all of them even are theories, but that’s not the point. They are all ideas that have merit in some regard. One will see old standards (e.g. the 2nd law of thermodynamics) from new angles and will be exposed to ideas that might be entirely new (e.g. the Faurie-Raymond hypothesis that suggests the advantage of lefties in fighting.) I found essays on swarm intelligence and frames of reference taking my thinking in new directions.

I’d recommend this book for those looking for some interesting thinking on elegant ideas.

[Charlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very similar to Brockman's The Universe (one of my favorites). Once again, Brockman gathers all the greats and puts their ideas into one book. There were ~150 essays. Each answered the question, "What do you consider to be the most beautiful, deep, and elegant theory ?" The book got off to a rough start. Sadly Brockman began with essays from scientists who have become science deniers. For example, epigenetiphobe Dawkins was prominently featured early on and set the tone for the reader. I usually picture Brockman as progressive and existing on the cutting Edge. Starting with Dawkins made me wonder if the world was perhaps ready for a newer, younger, and more edgy editor than John Brockman (how long do we have to pay homage to people like Dawkins who work so hard at keeping other scientists down? Stop treating him like a king and make room for more progressive minds).

Despite initially setting the wrong tone, Brockman managed to wow his reader yet again with great summaries of the most important theories known to humans. Zimbardo's essay was laughable. His essay should have been titled, "The size of my ego is bigger than the size of the universe." At least Brockman shoved it in the middle, allowing the reader to brush it off and move on to better ideas. The majority of this book was filled with extremely passionate people discussing the most meaningful ideas the human brain can comprehend. Essay topics included information theory, the creation of the universe (John Mather's essay was my personal favorite), epigenetics, various psychological phenomenon, evolution, and so on. Very wide scope. Very enjoyable. A must read.

[Tam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because my flight kept getting delayed and the transit time is always super boring.

1. Great writing. I'm impressed. It helps that almost all these contributors are authors themselves, writing books that are directed towards general audience. It shows the romantic/poetic side of their thinking.

2. I was engrossed in the book, however, not by the writing, but instead by the ideas so enthusiastically and lovely presented. Some of them are new to me, some aren't. But again, the book reminds me how beautiful this life and universe is, how lucky we all are to be born, to be able to think, to read, to learn. I feel like a kid again, opening my eyes wide, forever marveling at the magic of the world

So: beautiful writing + superb ideas = definite recommendation.

P.S: Not all contributions are equally good. Some are great, some are not so, some can be even, well, not very much to my taste. It averages out, however, so all is good. I prefer theories in natural sciences.

[William Crosby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mish mash of diversity of various author's mini-essays on theories to explain various aspects of the world.

Lots of duplication. Sometimes an essay did not seem to answer the question (but rather talked about the question) or their favorite theory was not explained adequately.

After about the 20th mini-essay I got annoyed with the book and returned it to the library unfinished.

The idea sounded intriguing and so did the various essay titles: so I checked it out. Maybe 20 longer more developed diverse essays on the subject would have satisfied me better. Now I know that if I see another book like this to just not bother to check it out. This particular genre (although I like the occasional non-fiction science/theory/philosophy book) is not for me. But I see from the other reviews that other people seem to love this book. So go with what you like/don't like.

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 2012 Edge question is, "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?" This interesting book contains 148 short essays that addresses the question. The collection is dry in tone and stuffed with science. Took me about 8 months to read, but I don't regret it. I wish I'd retained more from it.

[Jessy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Browsed random sections for an hour or two at a bookstore -- 3.5-4 stars for learning some new, interesting tidbits I wouldn't have learned anywhere else, like the Peter principle, fitness landscapes, and self-perception theory.

[Binh Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is really neat! its like the go to for soo many different authors i really enjoyed all the different authors and specialist and definitely has my gears grinding. I have quite a few of his books and im really excited to jump into some more of them!

[Mahmoud Amr · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not!
Ps: Fuck pop "science"

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not what I thought it was going to be, but I liked it. Apparently this guy who runs "online science salon" Edge.org asked his members in 2012 "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?" and published many of the resulting short essays as this book. I was looking for several deeper chapters about selected scientific theories, and this turned out to be a collection of dozens of very short, often redundant, surface-level statements about which scientific ideas people think are great and why they like them. Ideas are most of the reason I enjoy reading short story collections, so I was still good with it.

As with a short story collection, the quality of the entries varies, but the editor presumably had a lot more material to work with than made it into the book so the quality here is definitely at a higher level than most books of short stories that I've read. There are enough essays that the editor doesn't even number them in the table of contents, so let me call out a few things that stood out to me:

Apparently discussions of evolution were the most common response, and many other essays start with something like "evolution is the best, but lots of other people will talk about that, so I'll go with this other thing instead". A little ironic that your essay was less fit to be included because of stiffer competition if you focused on evolution. The ones that made it run a bit of a gamut from discussing how simply and elegantly it explains things to those who favor it because it allows them to exclude God from their consideration. That seems a little irrelevant to science, but at least you get a feel for how they are thinking.

I don't know if this was just the result of a recognition bias, but there were proportionally more entries from people connected to UC San Diego than I expected (which includes Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the Salk Institute). Maybe the membership of this salon has an unusually large number of UCSD people, or the editor knows them better. Having attended UCSD, I enjoyed it but that appeal is probably somewhat limited among others. It's just a pleasant surprise to see material by people you know in a book you're reading (Terry Sejnowski's essay in particular). That happens a lot with the nonfiction I read as well, which often refers to papers by people I knew at UCSD.

Early on, I thought about what theory I would write about if I had been in a position to respond at the time. It wasn't hard to decide that I would write about a fundamental assumption that underpins all of science: we trust that everything has a regular and predictable cause. This seems pretty basic, but people didn't used to think that way and science didn't get far off the ground until they did. Fortunately I discovered someone beat me to it: Tania Lombrozo talked about Causation, as well as Other Minds and another of my favorite issues in how people think of science, Realism.

Other essays that stood out to me include one by John McWhorter who wrote Doing Our Own Thing, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America and The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, whose essay was titled "How do You Get From a Lobster to a Cat?" and was not about linguistics at all. Also Nassim Nicholas Taleb who wrote The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable and Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, whose essay WAS about his pet topic.

Anyway, if you're a big fan of science or you really like ideas, this is a great candidate for your to-read list.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I expected 20-30 essays on scientific, philosophical, and psychological theory, but this book contains 150. Consequently, the depth of exploration is limited, but the breadth impressive. The collection (packaged like an anthology) contains brilliant insights from incredible creative and scientific minds, like Daniel C. Dennett, Jared Diamond, Alvy Ray Smith (co-founder of Pixar), Steven Pinker, Brian Eno, etc. It offers vast professional diversity and thematic variety, and is an excellent introductory resource for the Renaissance-style inquisitive mind. However, the book is not without drawbacks. Negatives include: a vast number of underdeveloped essays (all are between 1 and 6 pages--woefully inadequate for exploring astrophysics or complexity theory, or anything in depth), an OVERWHELMINGLY male set of contributors, and the inevitable challenge, with so many essays, of separating chaff from wheat. While some amazing insights are included, some contributors obviously have difficultly writing for general audiences, understanding that they are not in front of the chalk board, or even constructing sentences properly [ScientistCommunicationProblems]. By contrast, other contributors brilliantly elucidate complicated theories through simple metaphors or believable anecdotes. But, the pendulum swings radically, so to speak. Editor John Brockman(Edge.org)'s hand is apparent in the arrangement of the essays--tangential references are often sequentially featured, so that seemingly disparate essays relate. For reader comprehension, though, it may have been more effective to create thematic cohesion, packaging disciplines together. The abrupt jumps from philosophy to biology to nuclear physics, while creatively provocative, challenge the reader to remember the presented concepts. I did enjoy the radically different contexts in which a theory may be presented, though. For example, the Pigeonhole Principle is discussed in terms of compression algorithms (p. 233) and also in relationship to genealogy (p. 221). As many previous reviewers have stated, this book is best enjoyed piecemeal, and cannot be digested as a whole. The advantage to this, though, is that it can be used as a springboard to exploration of the topics contained within. As a result of reading this book, for example, I purchased a physics text and a book on the fledgeling field of evolutionary psychology. Overall, I recommend that the inquisitive reader use this as a "choose your own adventure" book of theories, and further explore topics of interest on his/her own afterwards.

[Taede Smedes · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Brockman, uitgever en oprichter van de website Edge.org, stelt ieder jaar aan wetenschappers een bepaalde vraag, die ze vervolgens gaan uitwerken. Dit keer werd aan wetenschappers de vraag gesteld welk verklarend inzicht voor hen de meeste elegantie bezat.

In dit geven verschillende topwetenschappers - sommigen bekend, anderen in Nederland tot nog toe onbekend - zoals Susan Blackmore, Richard Dawkins, Leonard Susskind, Steven Pinker, Max Tegmark, Martin Rees, Freeman Dyson, Daniel Dennett en vele anderen, een antwoord vanuit hun eigen veld van expertise. Het merendeel van de bijdragen is natuurwetenschappelijk van aard.

De essays verschillen nogal. Sommigen zijn minder dan een pagina lang, anderen gaan tot drie pagina’s. Alle bijdragen zijn interessant en vlot geschreven (wat van een redacteur als Brockman ook verwacht kan worden).

In de Amerikaanse uitgave staan 150 bijdragen, de Nederlandse telt 156 omdat de uitgever het blijkbaar nodig vond een aantal Nederlandse bijdragen toe te voegen (o.a. van Asha ten Broeke en Stine Jensen). Die bijdragen halen het eerlijk gezegd qua niveau en stijl toch net niet bij de overige, van oorsprong Engelse teksten. De Nederlandse vertaling (door een indrukwekkend groot vertaalteam) is erg goed.

Dit is niet een boek om van a tot z te lezen. Daarvoor is het te vermoeiend, met name omdat voortdurend toch geswitcht moet worden naar weer een andere schrijfstijl. Het is een boek dat erg de moeite waard is om in te grasduinen, hap-snap. De meeste essays presenteren niet-alledaagse inzichten die aan het denken zetten. Heel diepgravend is het allemaal niet.

De uitgeverij - Maven Publishing - laat ook met dit boek zien dat ze bezig zijn om een grote speler te worden op de markt van populair-wetenschappelijke literatuur.

[Kazen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of collected essays asks the question, "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?" Many people, from Richard Dawkins to Brian Eno to professors you've never heard of (but are amazingly cool), contribute their ideas and theories.

The essays are lovingly ordered so that you flow from biology to physics to neuroscience to psychology in a way that never feels forced or jarring. One writer will expound about, say, the Pigeonhole Theory and the next will use it as a jumping off point for a completely different explanation.

With 150 different contributors there's bound to be dull bits, uneven spots, and a few oddities. Overall, however, the writing quality is high and the content gave me a lot to think about. This is a book to read slowly, maybe five essays a day, so you can ruminate over each idea. A few of my favorite essays are:

- Group Polarization by David G. Myers
- Dirt is Matter Out of Place by Christine Finn (the title gives it away, but hey)
- How Do You Get from a Lobster to a Cat? by John McWhorter
- Lemons are Fast by Barry C. Smith
- Why We Feel Pressed for Time by Elizabeth Dunn

After reading this book I have a healthy store of dinner party chatter and my mind has been opened. If you like a particular writer you can pick up other work they've done, as many are published authors. Even if you don't you'll enjoy the feeling of your mind being tickled by the interesting, elegant theories.

[Ovidiu Neatu · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Totul are o explicație(vol I)" este o colecție de răspunsuri din partea unor oameni de știință la întrebarea "Care este, pentru tine , cea mai profundă, elegantă sau frumoasă soluție?". Răspunsurile sunt relativ scurte -de cel mult 4 pagini- și vin din partea unor oameni de știință/filosofi renumiți: Susan Blackmore, Steven Pinker, Martin J. Rees, Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett și mulți alții.

Printre răspunsuri se regăsesc multe idei interesante dar în cea mai mare parte,Teoria Evoluției și Legea a Doua a Termodinamicii , sunt printre răspunsurile favorite. Deci autorii aduc în discuție scurte idei și remarci pe aceste teme în cea mai mare parte.

Partea faină e că descoperi noi persoane de urmărit și noi cărți de citit. Spre exemplu mi-a atras atenția John Tooby, părintele psihologiei evoluționiste.

p.s.: titlul original e "This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works" și e o singură carte de 400+ pagini, cei de la Nemira au decis să o scoată în două volume de 200+ pagini. Probabil o să vedem și al doilea volum în curând. (Se pricep cei de la Nemira la despărțit cărți în mai multe volume pentru că o fac frecvent. Probabil au vreun angajat care se numește Moise care face toată treaba.)

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of essays that read like an ode to science. Good poetry makes you feel your way to understanding, and these essays let you understand by feeling and just gives enough to whet you curiosity on the topic and give you further ideas for further listening.

This book would make a great first science book for the listener since it covers wide areas of science by making the listener feel the topic but not enough to fully understand or assimilate. As for me, the book makes a great last book in science to listen to because it summarizes superbly the 100 or so science books I've listened to (and reviewed) over the last 3 years. Now, I finally realize it's time for me to move on to other kinds of books to discover about our place in the universe.

One of the narrators of this book, Peter Berkrot, read "Confessions of a Crap Artist". You know it's a great narrator when your mind goes back to something he had read (over six months ago) and you give the narrator that personality he had from the other book. That character in "Crap Artist" makes the truly bizarre the normal, and his reading of the strange in science by making it normal made the listening experience all the more enjoyable.

[Greg Stoll · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book because I love learning about what we used to think about things that we now know are wrong. (see: "carrots help you see well in the dark") This book is not about that. (in my defense, I was in a hurry and needed new books while I was in India) The format of the book was a bit intimidating - essentially 150 short chapters, which made reading the book feel like quite a slog. Some of the essays were definitely interesting, but there was some repetition (for a while there it seemed like everyone wanted to pick natural selection :-) ), and some of them were way too long for the format.

Anyway, I think the book was decent, but I really didn't enjoy most of it while I was reading it.