advance <>Date: 12 Feb 2007 16:55Subject: advance 202: Dennett: Open Letter to H. Allen Orr; Foreman: Wake Up Mr. Sleepy!; Schwartz: Davos Report To: Rhys Evans <>February 12. 2007EDGE 202[14,000 words] This EDGE edition at 14,000 words with streaming video graphics and links is available online at ------------------------THE REALITY CLUB------------------------When I explained then in a private letter to you what I had meant you conceded to me in your private response that you had not seen my inform in the light I intended and that my claim was not in fact the blunder you had said it was-but of course you never chose to recant your criticism in create so your uncorrected accusation stands to this day. Such a gentleman and a scholar you are! But times have changed. We now have blogs so this time you can readily act in public to my open earn. OPEN LETTER TO H. ALLEN ORRBy Daniel C. DennettFROM: Daniel C. DennettTO: H. Allen OrrDear Allen,You claim Dawkins ignores the best thinking on the subject. The Selfish Gene which you rightly admire doesn't waste any time rebutting Teilhard de Chardin or any of the perennial would-be defenders of Lamarckism or even?I might add?many of the murkier claims made by Richard Lewontin over the years. Do you object that he thus "ignores the best thinking on evolution"? No you say he "wrestled with the best thinkers." So you must have in object some neglected gems on religion: what arguments andor thinkers on the topic of religion ought Dawkins to undergo tackled in detail? What in your opinion is the best thinking on the affect? I hope that you don't convey the recent reviews. Some of them did indeed "shred" Dawkins' 747 argument if by that you mean they scoffed and hooted and clawed at it. Did any of them in your opinion rebut it soundly? Tom Nagel made some dismissive remarks-not arguments-in passing. Do you count that? I'd really desire to experience which published evaluate of the 747 argument you approve so I can explain to you a non-philosopher what its shortcomings are. Maybe there are some good ones I haven't seen but I'll lead with my chin. I myself think Dawkins has made some excellent improvements on the standard arguments improvements any philosopher would be proud to have composed. As I said in my own analyse in Free Inquiry: "Dawkins set out to expose and discredit every obtain of the God delusion and even when he is going over familiar ground as he often must he almost invariably finds some novel twist that refreshes our imaginations. Some of the innovations are substantial. After flattening all the serious arguments for the existence of God he turns the tables and frames an argument against the existence of God exploiting one of the favorite ideas of Intelligent Design demagogues: the improbability of design. The basic argument that postulating God as creator raises the question of who created God has been around for years but Dawkins gives it a proper spine and uses it to show first that "Chance and design both fail as solutions to the problem of statistical improbability because one of them is the problem and the other one regresses to it. Natural selection is a real solution. It is the only workable solution that has ever been suggested." (p121) Then he goes on to show how understanding this conclusion illuminates the confusing controversies surrounding the proper use of the anthropic principle. We are accustomed to physicists presuming that since their science is more "basic" than biology they have a deeper perspective from which to sort out the remaining perplexities but sometimes the perspective of biology can actually clarify what has been murky and ill-motivated in the physicists' discussions." I'd be interested to see the 'shreddings" that persuaded you otherwise. And you say that C. S. Lewis "had already dispensed with" one of Dawkins' claims. Am I to take it that you are now endorsing the quote from Lewis as an adequate rebuttal or pre-refutation of Dawkins? You misconstrued my NYRB letter in several ways. I didn't say you held Dawkins' book to too high a standard; I said you imposed a goal on the schedule that was not Dawkins' goal. I didn't say or evince that Dawkins' book was "merely a popular survey" and I didn't say or imply that you were "disturbed by Dawkins' atheism." I said you adopted a manifold standard-like many atheists. I might add-and were attempting to protect religion from serious criticism for reasons I am curious to know. These misconstruals do not touch me as unintended but perhaps you construe with a broad brush. As I create verbally this communicate. I am reminded of your earlier trashing more than ten years ago of my book Darwin's Dangerous Idea first in Evolution which does not accept rebuttals from authors and then slightly enlarged in the Boston Review which does. You leveled very serious charges of error and incomprehension in that analyse and when I challenged them you responded with a haughty dismissal of my objections (in an exchange in the Boston analyse). Quoting an example dealing with the go of evolution: "Now I've been in the population genetics business for some time and frankly. I have no idea what Dennett is talking about. And-I can find no polite way of putting this-it's hard to escape the conclusion that Dennett has no idea what he's talking about either." (1996 p37) Now that was rude-even ruder than your reply this time. When I explained then in a private letter to you what I had meant you conceded to me in your private response that you had not seen my point in the light I intended and that my claim was not in fact the blunder you had said it was-but of course you never chose to recant your criticism in create so your uncorrected accusation stands to this day. Such a gentleman and a scholar you are! But times have changed. We now have blogs so this time you can readily respond in public to my open letter. say that I have not yet claimed that you have no idea what you're talking about; we philosophers try not to move to conclusions. I have however asked you twice now to tell us what you're talking about. Please. I await your reply. Dan Dennett------------------------NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKSVolume 54. Number3 March 1. 2007earn'THE GOD DELUSION' by Daniel C. Dennett. Reply by H. Allen Orr In response to A Mission to Convert (January 11. 2007)To the Editors:H. Allen Orr in "A Mission to Convert" [NYR. January 11] his analyse of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion and other recent books on science and religion says that Dawkins is an amateur not professional atheist and has failed to come to grips with "religious thought" with its "meticulous reasoning" in any serious way. He notes that the book is "defiantly middlebrow," and I wonder just which highbrow thinkers about religion Orr believes Dawkins should have grappled with. I myself have looked over large piles of recent religious thought in the last few years in the course of researching my own book on these topics and I have found almost all of it to be so dreadful that ignoring it entirely seemed both the most charitable and most constructive policy. (I devote a scant six pages of Beraking the Spell to the arguments for and against the existence of God while Dawkins devotes roughly a hundred laying out the standard arguments with admirable clarity and fairness and skewering them efficiently.) There are indeed recherchÈ versions of these traditional arguments that perhaps have not yet been exhaustively eviscerated by scholars but Dawkins ignores them (as do I) and says why: his book is a consciousness-raiser aimed at the general religious public not an attempt to contribute to the academic microdiscipline of philosophical theology. The arguments Dawkins exposes and rebuts are the arguments that waft from thousands of pulpits every week and reach millions of television viewers every day and neither the televangelists nor the authors of best-selling spiritual books pay the slightest heed to the subtleties of the theologians either. Who does Orr favor? Polkinghorne. Peacocke. Plantinga or some more recondite thinkers? Orr brandishes the names of two philosophers. William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein and cites C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity a fairly nauseating example of middle-brow homiletic in roughly the same league on the undergraduate hit walk as Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ (1998) and transparently evasive when it comes to "meticulous reasoning." If it were a schedule in biology?Orr's discipline?I daresay he'd come down on it like a pit bull but like many others he adopts a double standard when the topic is religion. [.. more] H. Allen Orr replies:Daniel Dennett's main complaint about my review is that I held Dawkins's book to too high a standard. The God Delusion was he says a popular work and as such one can't expect it to grapple seriously with religious thought. There are two things wrong with this objection. The first is that the mere fact that a book is intended for a broad audience doesn't mean its author can ignore the best thinking on a subject. Indeed it's precisely the task of the popularizer to take this beat thinking and present it in a form that can be understood by intelligent laymen. This assign is certainly feasible. Ironically the clearest evidence comes from Dawkins himself. In his popular works on evolution and especially in The Selfish Gene. Dawkins wrestled with the best evolutionary thinkers ?Darwin. Hamilton and Trivers?and presented their ideas in a way that could be appreciated by a broad audience. This is what made The Selfish Gene brilliant; the absence of any analogous treatment of religion in Dawkins's new schedule is what makes it considerably less than brilliant. The back up thing wrong with Dennett's objection is that it's simply not true that The God Delusion was merely a popular survey and "not an attempt to contribute to.. philosophical theology." Dennett has apparently forgotten that the heart of Dawkins's book was his philosophical argument for the near impossibility of God. Dawkins presented his so-called Ultimate Boeing 747 argument in a chapter entitled "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God," branded his argument "unanswerable," and boasted that it had stumped all theologians who had met it. I can see why Dennett would like to drop about Dawkins's attempt at philosophy?the Ultimate 747 argument was shredded by reviewers?but it's absurd to pretend now that The God Delusion had no philosophical ambitions. [.. more]------------------------THE THIRD CULTURE-----------------------WAKE UP MR. SLEEPY! YOUR UNCONSCIOUS object IS DEADBy Richard ForemanFebruary 12. 2007RICHARD FOREMAN RETURNS TO THE ONTOLOGICAL THEATRE WITH HIS LATEST MIXED MEDIA EXTRAVAGANZA In 2005. Edge featured Richard Foreman's "The Pancake People or. 'The Gods are Pounding My Head' which he noted that "I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the compel of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". A new self that needs to include less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance?as we all change state "pancake people"?move wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button". He then announced his 40+ career as New York's leading avant garde theatrical director had go to an end and he was going to begin exploring film. Now Foreman is back as a new hybrid vision comfort young and artistically radical as he approaches 70. Richard Foreman's 45th Ontological-Hysteric production plunges into a new world in which human consciousness is turned inside out. Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! Your Unconscious object Is Dead! is his second communicate defining a new kind of theater in which film and live action analyse parallel contrapuntal dream narratives. Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! postulates the invention of the airplane (controlled by a horde of baby-doll pilots) as the death knell of the unconscious mind. Foreman is responding to a world in which visionary sages and poets are being replaced by specialists who make platitudes out of the immediately observable and hand-feed them to the public. In Richard Foreman's universe his muse and affiliate the unconscious fights back to life in a shape resembling "the stone that rolls up the hill backwards" (the evil one) and from such "evil" life renews itself. [See New York Times review]. ----------THE NEW YORK TIMESFebruary 5. 2007Throw a Bucket of Ice Water on Your Brain By BEN BRANTLEYThose among you who presume you are still alive might be interested to know that Richard Foreman is throwing a funeral for you at the Ontological Theater at St. Mark's Church. Never mind that your beat says your heart is still pumping. Mr. Foreman says the most essential part of you ? your independent intuitive object ? is a cold corpse. He has thoughtfully whipped up a memorial service a dazzling exercise in reality-shifting called "Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! Your Unconscious Mind Is Dead!," that is as invigorating as it is mournful. Who knows? It might indeed be enough to wake the dead. Two years ago Mr. Foreman the great gray wizard of experimental theater announced that he would no longer be creating the exquisitely unsettling dreamscapes that had been his specialty since the 1960s. It was measure he said to bid farewell to the theater. You undergo to be skeptical when brilliant artists declare they are leaving the art they love. Mr. Foreman has continued to ply his exotic trade of nonnarrative nonlinear play making set in fun houses crammed with mysterious cultural detritus but with one essential difference: He has added film to the mix of what had been resolutely and religiously theatrical productions which would seem to be a case of sleeping with the enemy. "Wake Up" is Mr. Foreman's back up film-theater hybrid. Even more than his first. "Zomboid!," presented last year it shows how this priest of the theater has embraced his old adversary only to disarm it. Mr. Foreman creates beautiful filmic pictures for his audience's consumption. But he refuses to let us indulge in them. The theory at bring home the bacon would seem to be that we have come to trust too much in the surfaces of artfully arranged pictures and information. Hooking the mind to such surfaces. Mr. Foreman says is fatal to the unconscious. ("When the world sees itself it doesn't," says a line from the script.) While "Wake Up" is clearly a bid to resurrect theatergoers' deeper imaginations the elegiac undercurrent that courses through the show suggests its creator worries that he may be too late. ... An optimist could say that Mr. Foreman is portraying a rebirth of unconsciousness ? a dying that is actually as the title promises a reawakening. Maybe. But as exhilarating as "change state Up" is it is also steeped in melancholy. Usually with Mr. Foreman snatches of music call the comic frenzy of silent movies. This time the aural backdrop is darker: a mixture of ringing cellphones a wandering plaintive soprano and a hushed percussive beat that suggests an advancing army. "It can't be fixed" is the mantra that stuck in my head. But that's probably just my unconscious object talking. (Yours may have a different opinion.) Hey that means it's not dead after all. Mr. Foreman appears to have done his job.[.. continue][Click on image for Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theatre] ------------------------YOU TUBETHE DAWKINS DELUSIONDr. Terry Tommyrot"No. Richard Dawkins does not exist. I have never seen him. Science has given a beat and satisfying explanation of the schedule alleged to be his handiwork. It is but a collection of fortuitously ordered a's b's and c's recombined from previous patterns. There is the alphabet there is a book of nursery rhymes and there is "The God Delusion" - and one developed from the other though some of the details of which is the most primitive remain to be sorted out. The links between them may still be missing but Science will have that worked out at any moment. Anyone who doubts this fact is either lying mad or stupid (or wicked but I'd rather not think about that possibility)." [.. continue]------------------------CONSTELLATIONSBy Brian EnoLuminous a new exhibit of 77 Million Paintings by seminial sound and light artist Brian Eno is about to open in central London at Selfridges' London (400 Oxford St. London W1A 2LR) and run between 27 January to 11 March in the Ultralounge its dedicated space for special projects. Another Eno installation. Constellations will be exhibited at the North London BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art from 31 January to 15 April. This is the first measure these digital light paintings which are accompanied by a randomly assembled ambient music track have been exhibited in a contemporary UK art gallery. Eno primarily known for shattering musical conventions as a founding member of Roxy Music and pioneer of ambient music has created a computer programme that continually fuses his virtual paintings to create 77 million permutations. 'We are used to artists producing defined and finished things what's interesting about this kind of generative work is that I can't possibly predict the outcome of 77 Million Paintings,' says Eno. More than 300 Eno paintings most of them scratched or inked onto slides were digitized to act Constellations (77 Million Paintings). The constantly evolving paintings will be shown on a assort of screens installed throughout the Level 4 gallery space. 'The 77 million permutations of the bring home the bacon creates unique moments for each viewer and provides a different experience every time,' adds Eno. It's been estimated that it would take over 9,000 years to watch the entire show at the fastest speed available on the software and it would take several million years to witness all the possible combinations it can create. Click here for Brian Eno's advance Bio Page.------------------------THE COLBERT REPORTFebruary 8. 2007Steven Pinker Explains How The Brain Works in Five Words[click on image] ... [STEPHEN COLBERT:] Your specialty is the brain and how it works. Right?[STEVEN PINKER:] Right. It's a complicated subject. How does the hit work? Five words or less. Brain cells fire in patterns. hit cells fire in patterns. Not bad. And these patterns establish our behavior and cram desire that,A copy corresponds to a thought. One patterns causes another pattern that's what come about when we evaluate. OK. Let me ask you something. You're also you're also uh language is very important to you. Umm uhh wha wha what why is language important?It's the way we get our thoughts across. It's the way we work the way we share our knowledge? How important is volume? I sight if I'm trying to get an idea across if I shout it at the person I'm saying it to it makes it seem more important. Is that common?I evaluate that's common unfortunately yes. Now uh your book here you've got a book called The Blank designate. The Human Denial of Nature. What are we denying about human nature. Sir?A lot of populate are upset about the very idea that there is such a thing as human nature. Some populate fear that ? Well that God gave us our nature. Some populate fear that human nature is a product of evolution rather than a ?I don?t fear it I deny it. I'm not afraid of evolution because I know it's not really there. I'm not afraid of ghosts either. Some people are afraid of the idea that if were born with any kind of talent or temperaments then different populate can be born with different talents and temperaments and that seems to open the door to discrimination and oppression. Some populate are disturb that if we undergo any kind of instincts we may have selfish and nasty instincts and that would seem to get in the way of hopes for social reform. Why try to make the world a better place if people are rotten to the core out and we'll just foul it up no matter what you do. Well I say some people get it some people just don?t. Well that would imply that there are differences among people. There are. And there are people that would want to deny that there could be differences among people and if we all start off with nothing then by definition we're all the same. No we don't all start off with nothing in my opinion if I may and I may because it's my show. I don't think we start off with nothing. I think we can achieve nothing. I think we can become a blank slate. I've worked very hard over the years to stop thinking and now I'm empty inside. What do you think people undergo uh what do you think people have instinctually other than original sin. What do they have when they're born? ... [.. continued]------------------------THE HARVARD CRIMSONFebruary 8. 2007Pinker's Brain Picked On 'Colbert inform' By Claire M. Guehenno. color Staff WriterLast night. Colbert?who plays a right-wing pundit on his show "The Colbert Report" - welcomed Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker as a guest on his schedule. The appearance came just two months after Colbert journeyed to Cambridge himself to record segments for his show at the Institute of Politics. In measure night's segment entitled "Pinker and the Brain," Colbert and Pinker discussed basic hit function and human nature. Colbert introduced Pinker by saying that because Pinker is a Harvard professor he "probably thinks I think he's a pompous know-it-all." Colbert asked Pinker to summarize the hit in five words or less to which he responded "Brain cells fire in patterns."Pinker said he was surprised by his own ability to describe the brain in so few words under pressure. "I never thought I could sum up how the hit works in exactly five words!" he wrote in an e-mail after he taped the show adding that he was "pretty nervous beforehand."Most of the discussion focused on Pinker's 2002 book "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature"?a book on evolutionary psychology?as Pinker struggled to explain his beliefs about brain answer while Colbert joked and interrupted him. Colbert also poked fun at Pinker's 2003 move from MIT to Harvard."You were at MIT first then went to Harvard? That's like going from the nerds' delay to the rich nerds' table," Colbert said. At the "rich nerds' table," Pinker continues to be a professor of some of the College's most popular classes. Pinker who has in the past led the popular core out Science B-62. "The Human Mind," is co-teaching Psychology 1002. "Morality and restrict," with Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz this spring. There was no specific cause for Pinker's appearance on the show as he has not published any major works in the past year. A Comedy Central representative said she could not mention on why Pinker was chosen as a guest. [.. continue]------------------------What is Davos and how does it work? Officially the meeting is called the World Economic Forum. This is their annual meeting but there are many other meetings during the year held around the world but this is their big event they are known for. It was founded and run by Klaus Schwab in the early eighties as mostly a European event but has grown huge and global with about 2000 participants from all over the world. DAVOS REPORTBy Peter SchwartzIntroductionEvery year dozens of Edgies are invited to the World Economic Forum event and the dancing bears to perform for the corporate and govermental elite. Attending this years conference were Peter Schwartz. Larry Brilliant. John Markoff. Paul Saffo. Lord Martin Rees. Adam Bly. Dan Dubno and Yossi Vardi. Peter Schwartz founder of Global Business Network (GBN) is equally at home and astute in the worlds of science technology and the corporate boardroom. This year he wrote a communicate which is is distilled into this report. [.. continue]------------------------EDGE BOOKS------------------------"Danger - brilliant minds at bring home the bacon... A brilliant book: exhilarating hilarious and chilling." - The Evening Standard (London) [US EDITION NOW AVAILABLE FROM HARPERCOLLINS!]WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?Today's Leading Thinkers on the UnthinkableWith an Introduction by STEVEN PINKER and an Afterword by RICHARD DAWKINS Edited By JOHN BROCKMAN"A selection of the most explosive ideas of our age."Sunday tell"Provocative"The Independent"Challenging notions put forward by some of the world's sharpest minds" Sunday Times"A titillating compilation"The GuardianHardcover - UK £12.99. 352 pp Free Press. UKPaperback - US $13.95. 336 pp Harper Perennial----------"... This collection mostly written by working scientists does not represent the antithesis of science. These are not simply the unbuttoned musings of professionals on their day off. The contributions ranging across many disparate fields express the spirit of a scientific consciousness at its best - informed guesswork " - Ian McEwan from the Introduction in The TelegraphWHAT WE BELIEVE BUT CANNOT PROVEToday's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of CertaintyWith an Introduction by IAN MCEWANEdited By JOHN BROCKMAN "An unprecedented roster of brilliant minds the sum of which is nothing short of an oracle ? a book ro be dog-eared and debated."Seed"Scientific pipedreams at their very best." The Guardian"Makes for some astounding reading."Boston GlobeFantastically stimulating... It's desire the crack cocaine of the thinking world.... Once you start you can't stop thinking about that question." BBC Radio 4Paperback - US $13.95. 272 pp Harper PerennialPaperback - UK £7.99 288 pp Pocket Books------------------------IN THE NEWS------------------------Canberra Times. Seed. New York Times. Boston Globe. Toronto Star. Les Affaires. Tonight. Genome Technology Online. Le Monde ------------------------CANBERRA TIMESFebruary 10. 2007Peering dangerously into a future of ageless codgersAN IDEA may be dangerous either to its conceiver or to others including its proponents. Four hundred years ago heliocentricity was acutely dangerous to Galileo whom it led before the Holy Inquisition. Two and a half centuries later. Darwin's notions on natural selection and the evolution of species jeopardised the certainties and imperilled the livelihoods of many professional Christians. To this day the idea that God does not exist is dangerous enough to get atheists murdered in America. The editor of this anthology of dangerous ideas. John Brockman is among other things the publisher of advance the "Third Culture" website (). He has already published What We Believe but Cannot be to which this volume is a affiliate. Each year. Brockman asks a question of his contributors. Last year's was: "What is your dangerous idea?" He meant not necessarily a new idea or change surface one which they had originated but one which is dangerous "not because it is assumed to be false but because it might be true". This volume with an introduction by Steven Pinker and an afterword by Richard Dawkins publishes the responses given in 2006 by 108 of "Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable". ... There is much in many of these brief essays to astonish to be appalled at to mull over or to wish for. Some of them suffer from galloping emailographism that mannerism of the hasty respondent whose elliptical prose can make even the most pregnant idea indigestible. But most of them from the three-sentence reminder by Nicholas Humphrey of Bertrand Russell's dangerous idea ("That it is undesirable to believe in a proposition when there is no fasten whatever for supposing it true") to the five pages of V. S. Ramachandran on Francis Crick's "Astonishing Hypothesis" (that what we think of as our self is merely the activity of 100 billion bits of jelly the neurons which constitute the hit) are vitally engaging to anyone with an ounce of interest in matters such as being or whatever meaning we might consider being to undergo. ... Mind you there is one glimpse of the future which rings grotesque enough to be plausible. Gerald Holton's "Projection of the Longevity Curve" in which we see a future matriarch. 200 years old on her death bed surrounded by her children aged about 180 her grandchildren of about 150 her great-grandchildren of about 120 their offspring aged in their 90s and so on for several more generations. A touching picture as the author says. "But what are the costs involved?" ------------------------SeedFebruary 8. 2007More from the Vanguard of ScienceSee what Marc Hauser. Drew Endy. Joshua Greene and others undergo to say about where their fields are going in 2007 By alter cater Cosmology and Particle PhysicsOn the theoretical side particle phenomenologists will act to develop physics beyond the Standard Model; string theorists are connecting more strongly to cosmology and astrophysics; and cosmologists are investigating models of dark matter dark energy and modified gravity. ... - Sean Carroll. CaltechSynthetic GenomicsThe goal of synthetic biology is to make possible the engineering of living organisms that behave as expected. Progress in the field is based on three new foundational technologies that go beyond classical genetic engineering: automated DNA synthesis standardization and abstraction. Synthesis enables direct construction of genetic material from raw chemicals and information. Standards and abstraction together provide the languages and grammars needed to be the information used by DNA synthesizers. 2007 should witness two important milestones for automated DNA synthesis (which enables direct construction of genetic material from raw chemicals and information). ... -Drew Endy. MITNeuroscienceIn the measure five years the scientific chew over of morality has exploded. We're now probing the moral brain desire never before using functional neuroimaging studies of neurological patients and sophisticated cognitive testing techniques. As a result of this work it's now clear (to some of us at any rate) that moral decision-making is neither a pristine rational enterprise nor simply a matter of emotional expression. ... -Joshua Greene. Harvard UniversityHigh Energy PhysicsThe coming year will see a number of interesting developments as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) goes online. The enormous be of data generated by the LHC will compel us to refine our methods?and explore new ones?for extracting and interpreting information from high energy collisions. This work should bring about to new insights into the masses of elementary particles and the consequences of various models for particle physics and cosmology. ... Lisa Randall. Harvard University[...]------------------------------------------------------------------------THE NEW YORK TIMESJanuary 30. 2007SCIENCE TIMESHow Do We See Red? Count the Ways By Natalie AngierValentine?s Day is nearly upon us that sweet Hallmark holiday when you can have anything your heart desires so long as it's red. Red roses red nighties red shoes and red socks. Red Oreo filling red bagels red lox. As it happens red is an exquisite ambassador for love and in more ways than people may realize. Not only is red the color of the blood that flushes the face and swells the pelvis and that one swears one would spill to save the beloved?s prized hide. It is also a book metaphoric conjoin for the complexity and contrariness of love. In red we see shades of life death fury shame courage anguish pride and the occasional overuse of exfoliants designed to combat signs of aging. Red is bright and bold and has a big lipsticked mouth through which it happily speaks out of all sides at once. Yoo-hoo! yodels red come change state undergo a look. forbid alter there red amends one false move and you?re dead. Such visual semiotics are not limited to the human race. Red is the do signaling color in the natural world variously showcasing a fruitful bounty warning of a fatal poison or boasting of a sturdy constitution and the genes to match. Red in other words is the poster child for the poster for colors that have something important to say. "Our visual system was shaped by colors already in use among many plants and animals and red in particular stands out against the green backdrop of nature," said Dr. Nicholas Humphrey a philosopher at the London School of Economics and the author of "Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness." "If you want to alter a inform you make it in red. [...]------------------------------------------------------------------------BOSTON GLOBEFebruary 5. 2007Morality playA Harvard researcher believes that humans have an innate sense of alter and wrong but others say morality is mostly learned By Carey Goldberg. Globe StaffLast week. Harvard professor Marc Hauser dropped in to his daughter Sofia's kindergarten categorise and presented the children with a moral dilemma. You must all keep your eyes closed for 30 seconds he told them. If none of you raises your hand during that time you will each get a pelt of stickers when it's over. But if one of you raises your transfer only that child will get all the stickers. The task brought immediate cries of protest. Hauser recalled. "But that's not fair!" some children exclaimed shocked at the idea that one child could hog all the stickers. Some might say that the kindergartners in their short lives had already learned much about the nature of justice. But Hauser goes a step further: Morality he argues is influenced by cultural teachings but is also so deep and universal an aspect of human existence that it is effectively "hard-wired" into the brain much like the instinct for language. At bring home the bacon he says are principles as unconscious and yet powerful as the grammar rules we use when we communicate -- and the contend to scientists is to figure out what those built-in moral rules are and how they bring home the bacon. To that end. Hauser and other researchers are experimenting with children monkeys on-line survey takers brain-damaged patients and change surface psychopaths and remote hunter-gatherers. His theory that morality is based in biology has plunged Hauser into an intellectual break that spans from the pages of The New York Times to the rows of students who take his evolution classes at Harvard. A psychologist evolutionary biologist and anthropologist. Hauser has felt students grow restless as he talks about the underpinnings of morality. In one class he said a student complained. "I experience where you're going: Because it's universal it's biological and therefore there's no role for religion." Hauser recalls responding: "I'm not saying you shouldn't derive meaning from religion. I'm just telling you that at some aim the nature of the moral judgments that you make and I make are the same even though I don't go to church and you do." [...]------------------------------------------------------------------------THE TORONTO STAR Who believes in God?Michael Shermer was once a fundamentalist Christian but is now an agnostic and an advocate for humanist philosophy. ... When Sulloway and I noticed the difference between why populate believe in God and why they think other people believe in God we decided to undertake an extensive analysis of all the written answers people provided in our analyse. In addition we inquired about family demographics religious background personality characteristics and other factors that alter to religious belief and skepticism. We discovered that the seven strongest predictors of belief in God are: 1 being raised in a religious manner2 parents' religiosity3 lower levels of education4 being female5 a large family6 lack of conflict with parents7 being younger... [... ]------------------------------------------------------------------------JOURNAL LES AFFAIRES 2 fÈvrier 2007L'optimisme boursier actuel est inquiÈtantBernard Mooney. Journal Les Affaires Le marchÈ boursier se distingue ‡ bien des Ègards. Ainsi dans la vie de tous les jours l'enthousiasme l'optimisme et la confiance sont des valeurs importantes. Mais ‡ la Bourse ces belles qualitÈs peuvent devenir des piËges co?teux. Le paradoxe c'est que notre monde en gÈnÈral est en manque d'optimisme alors mÍme qu'il y en a probablement trop dans les walkÈs financiers. Le site Web offre un lieu d'Èchange ‡ un grand nombre de scientifiques philosophes penseurs et intellectuels de tous genres. Le consulter est fascinant. La quantitÈ et la qualitÈ des interventions qu'on y trouve sont vraiment exceptionnelles. Au dÈbut de chaque annÈe. John Brockman. Èditeur d' be une challenge fondamentale ‡ ses participants. En 2006 la question Ètait "Quelle est votre idÈe dangereuse?" Cette annÈe sa question est "- propos de quoi Ítes-vous optimiste?" Et des personnalitÈs comme le psychologue Steven Pinker le philosophe Daniel Dennett le biologiste Richard Dawkins le psychologue Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi le biologiste et gÈographe Jared Diamond le physicien Freeman Dyson le psychologue Daniel Goleman et des dizaines d'autres y ont rÈpondu. [...]------------------------------------------------------------------------TONIGHT (South Africa)February 1. 2007What Is Your Dangerous Idea?Question everything ban nothing think dangerously By James Mitchell Dare to question. Most don't. Indeed many people get alarmed agitated when difficult questions are posed. Questioning settled assumptions forces populate to think which can be a frightening radical exercise. Consider the "dangerous ideas" listed here: "Do women on add up have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men?Were the events in the Bible fictitious ? not just the miracles but those involving kings and empires? Do most victims of sexual abuse experience lifelong damage? Did Native Americans engage in genocide and despoil the landscape? Do men have an innate tendency to assail? Are suicide terrorists well-educated mentally healthy and morally driven? Are Ashkenazi Jews on average smarter than Gentiles because their ancestors were selected for the shrewdness needed in money lending? ... Steven Pinker in his introduction calls these "dangerous ideas - ideas that are denounced not because they are self-evidently false not because they advise harmful action but because they are thought to corrode the prevailing moral order".... .. psychologist Daniel Gilbert employs just 131 words to injure down the thought "that ideas can be dangerous". Paradoxically he states "the most dangerous idea is the only dangerous idea: The idea that ideas can be dangerous." Whew! I was worried for a moment. Like the meaning of life there's no simple say. Which is why so many desperate for certainty shy away books like this. Personally. I relish such questions and if you undergo any choose of an open enquiring mind then so will you. [...]------------------------------------------------------------------------GENOME TECNOLOGY ONLINEJanuary 31. 2007Keeping the Glass Half FullThe Edge Foundation an intellectual group of leaders from various fields has issued its question of the year: What are you optimistic about? While we might rephrase the challenge to destroy that irksome preposition the point today is that genomic heavyweight George Church has sent in his response and it's worth a read. Church predicts that 2007 will be the year of the personal genome with the mainstream public finally getting involved (and interested) in the handle and its consequences. "I am optimistic that while society is not now ready it will be this year," Church writes. analyse out his full response here. And for the record - it's people desire George Church who act us optimistic. Thanks. George![...]------------------------------------------------------------------------LE MONDE 08janvier 2007 "Dans quel domaine Ítes-vous optimiste? Et pourquoi?"C'est la double challenge posÈe par John Brockman. Èditeur de Edge ‡ plus de 160 "penseurs de la troisiËme grow ces savants et autres penseurs du monde empirique qui par leur travail ou leurs Ècrits prennent la place des intellectuels traditionnels en rendant visibles les sens profonds de nos vies en redÈfinissant autant qui nous sommes que ce que nous sommes". «a change des unes constamment catastrophiques de nos mÈdias habituels. Quelques exemples:Brian Eno estime que la rÈalitÈ du rÈchauffement global est de plus en plus acceptÈe et que cela pourrait donner lieu ‡ un premier cas de gouvernance globale. D'o? sa principale source d'optimisme: "le pouvoir croissant des gens. Le monde bouge communique se connecte et fusionne en des blocs d'affect qui transfËreront une partie du pouvoir des gouvernements nationaux prisonniers de leurs horizons ‡ court terme dans des groupes plus vaques plus globaux et plus consensuels. Quelque chose comme une vraie dÈmocratie (et une bonne dose de chaos dans l'intÈrim) pourrait Ítre ‡ l'horizon". Xeni Jardin de BoingBoing est optimiste aprËs avoir suivi les travaux de la Forensic Anthropology Foundation du Guatemala un groupe qui se consacre ‡ identifier les morts assassinÈs par la dictature en s'appuyant sur des logiciels change state source des ordinateurs recyclÈs et l'aide de laboratoires amÈricains displace l'analyse de l'ADN. "Quant au moins une personne croit que la vÈritÈ Áa compte il y a de l'espoir," conclue-t-elle. [...]----------------------------------------------------This EDGE edition at 14,000 words with streaming video graphics and links is available online at --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------EDGEJohn Brockman. Editor and Publisher Russell Weinberger. Associate Publisher Karla Taylor. Editorial AssistantCopyright (c) 2007 by EDGE Foundation. Inc. All Rights Reserved. Published by EDGE Foundation. Inc.,5 East 59th Street. New York. NY 10022 advance Foundation. Inc is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---You are currently subscribed to advance_editions as: To unsubscribe send a blank email to --
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