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Title: The New Humanists : Science at the Edge by John Brockman ISBN: 0-7607-4529-3 Publisher: Barnes & Noble Pub. Date: 28 September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: For a good whetting of the appetite!
Comment: What we have here is an excellent collection of scientists and philosophers writing articles about the latest research programmes in physics, artificial intellegence, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology. All of these contributers are members of www.edge.org, which is a forum for 'leading minds' to converge and converse on what the latest programmes, excitements, and theories in their field are.
What I thought I'd find is cocksure scientists writing in a clamour about their ultimate victory in the science wars and how this would inevitably lead to a reductionistic view of everyhing and anything. (Call me cynical, but the popular science market has been doing a lot of this lately). I did find a little of that only a little); by in large, though, the focus was simply on what certain fields were really doing, how it MAY affect other fields and the general populace, and overall abstainment when it comes to grand proclomations. No 'theories of everything', 'consciliences' that repeat Wilson's mistakes of wanting to 'scientize' all other disciplines, and no cockiness.
All that having been said, this book is absolutely thrilling. These scientists (the likes of Dennett, Pinker, Minsky, and Smolin) are writing fasinating essays of very promising theories in their fields and their roles in hashing them out. Can universes organize themselves? What are animals really thinking? Is the brain reducible to algorithms and if so, could machines achieve a first person experiencial perspective? How malleable is human nature?
If you are like me and REALLY excited about these questions and hearing scientists - if not answering them - discussing what answers might look like, then this book is a fantastic exploration. The big winners, you ask? In my humble opinion Jaron Lanier's essay on scientism and AI takes the cake; also Dennett's article delineating the intentional stance is good. David Deutch does an excellent job writing on quantum computation as doe Marvin Minsky on why AI might want to rethink how it looks at the mind.
The last 30-or-so pages is a miscelleneous collection of thoughts by leading scientists and philosophers in response to John Brockman's lead off essay discussing the relation of science and humanities. Again, Laneir comes off the most thoughtful and thought-provoking (ironically he is the only contributor WITHOUT a formal degree) but the rest of the responses are insightful and well written.
If you want to explore a variety of fields, points of view, and ideas, this is a tremendous book. Brockman and the contributors certainly did science and society a service in putting this one together.
Rating: 5
Summary: Humanists or humanoids?
Comment: This is a very interesting selection of essays, which is worth reading, but since it will get its fans, let's consider some overhead flack. I will give this five stars (instead of one) not because I agree with or endorse with the basis thrust of the collection (which has many different perspectives of interest) but to focus intent on the critique of persistent fallacies. In the words of that stubborn humanist pushover Darth Vader, 'we must counterattack at once'. I like science too, but it must be science. Scientists have a bad habit of snapping their fingers and expecting the public to get in line, thinking we are supposed to aye aye in an epistemological chain of command that supposes any methodology able to split atoms deserves to rewrite all our views of everything, true in advance, by promissory note. I say this because reductionist intimidation doesn't get results anymore, and the frustrated attacks on classical humanists gets a bit dreary. The first order of business is figuring out how an entire century of the world's smartest scientists are incapable of figuring out the flaw in the foundational main gun of the enterprise of this scientism, Darwin's theory of evolution. If they can't figure that out, we are done. Beating the drum for a third culture isn't going to help much. Granting the mood here is fatigue with postmodern jargonizing, and/or various stale notions in need of fresh breezes, one wonders how postmodernism or the classical humanist is preventing the Big Breakthrough!? If you are that close to the Answer, forget them and give us a print out. There's the ideological giveaway, the culture wars, and that dratted left. If only the culture wars would go away science could advance. What? I fear this is in fact a variant of the Darwin tactics: where the dialectic is chronic, stubborn, and instead of a real theory, marginalize the opposition via loudmouthing and enforce junk science answers just to make it look like science has all the answers. That _is_ how Darwin's theory became dominant. The New Science of Man? This has been promised for a long time. The nineteenth century literature on the question is of colossal size, but progress via amnesia is in effect. The age of the genome should be the big chance, but it seems we are sailing away from what we already knew just as get close. Maybe the science of man will never happen.
Melodrama aside, I do find this compendium interesting and the search for a new humanism is always relevant. This collection is packed with a lot of interesting 'fresh breezes' and states its business in efficient blunderbuss fashion, including a very fair series of end commentaries in or out of dissent. We have, to start, Jared Diamond's essential keynote idea of great importance, how do we get past an idea of culture that is broader than the racist fare currently dominant? Geographical determinism induced by Darwinian preconceptions quietly omits to mention that Darwin's theory is the most racist theory of all, consider the subtitle to Darwin's book. Next, Pinker's with his takes on the blank slate, the Noble Savage, and Cartesian Buddha/Dog nature. Three strikes and you are out. Now that they are putting electrodes on Buddhist monks, let's be unenlightened and bring up the subject of reincarnation. No Cartesian, I nonetheless think Descartes did a fine job for Western Civ. by locking our heads in a dualistic box for safe keeping, no reductionist exits possible. Moore's Law won't work here, artificial intelligence has doubled to octupled byte for bit since the sixties and yet my PC has learned nothing. From there we go through much interesting material on cosmology, quantum computation, quantum gravity, string theory, capped by Sir Martin Rees with The question, understanding how complexity emerges in the dreams of a final theory, no doubt in the Zoroastrian end times of theory.
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Title: Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett ISBN: 0670031860 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 10 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: A Devil's Chaplain : Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love by Richard Dawkins ISBN: 0618335404 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 29 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Nature Via Nurture : Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley ISBN: 0060006781 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought by Gary Marcus ISBN: 0465044050 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 16 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Isaac Newton by James Gleick ISBN: 0375422331 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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