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Edge.org
Edge.org is a website for science and technology intellectuals. Its chief editor is the publisher and businessman John Brockman. The site is a critically noted online magazine exploring scientific and intellectual ideas. The website is produced by Edge Foundation, Inc., which was created in 1988 as an outgrowth of The Reality Club. In 2019, BuzzFeed News reviewed Edge's IRS filings and reported that Jeffrey Epstein was "by far its largest financial donor", and that "his association with Edge gave him access to leading scientists and figures in the tech industry." Edge.org A long-running feature on Edge is the Annual Question, which gathers many short essays on topical questions from philosophers and scientists; these essays are usually published collectively as a book shortly thereafter. Many of the feature articles on Edge are structured as video interviews with a prominent figure in some scientific field (such as Daniel Kahneman or Steven Pinker) discussing his or her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Brockman (literary Agent)
John Brockman (born February 16, 1941) is an American literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. He established the Edge Foundation, an organization that brings together leading edge thinkers across a broad range of scientific and technical fields. Early life Brockman was born to immigrants of Polish-Jewish descent in a poor Irish Catholic enclave of Boston, Massachusetts. Expanding on C. P. Snow's " two cultures", he introduced the "third culture" consisting of "those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are." Career While working as a banker at the time, Brockman had a chance encounter in Central Park where he met avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas. This meeting marked the beginning of Brockman's involvement in the arts, leading him to manage performan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
What Is Your Dangerous Idea?
''What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable'' is a book edited by John Brockman, which deals with "dangerous" ideas, or ideas that some people would react to in ways that suggest a disruption of morality and ethics. Scientists, philosophers, artists, and various other groups of people have written in to the online salon called the Edge, where thinkers in several areas post and discuss their ideas. This collection of responses forms the entirety of the book (possibly with some excluded because of the great number of posts). The basic concept behind the book is "to gather a hundred of the most brilliant minds in the world in a room, lock them in, and have them ask each other the questions they were asking themselves". Ideas Members of the Edge Foundation were asked this question in 2006: The question was suggested by Steven Pinker, a psychologist. People answered to this question in entries, some of which lasted several pages. These entries we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychology, cognitive psychologist, psycholinguistics, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He specializes in visual cognition and developmental linguistics, and his experimental topics include mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, regularity and irregularity in language, the neural basis of words and grammar, and childhood language development. Other experimental topics he works on are the psychology of cooperation and of communication, including emotional expression, euphemism, innuendo, and how people use "common knowledge", a term of art meaning the shared understanding in which two or more people know something, know that the other one knows, know the other one knows that they know, and so on. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Third Culture
''The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution'' is a 1995 book by John Brockman which discusses the work of several well-known scientists who are directly communicating their new, sometimes provocative, ideas to the general public. John Brockman has continued the themes of 'The Third Culture' in the website of the Edge Foundation, where leading scientists and thinkers contribute their thoughts in plain English. The title of the book refers to C. P. Snow's 1959 work ''The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'', which described the conflict between the cultures of the humanities and science. Contents Contributions by twenty-three authors were included in the 1995 book: * physicist Paul Davies * biologist Richard Dawkins * philosopher Daniel Dennett * paleontologist Niles Eldredge * chaos theorist J. Doyne Farmer * theoretical physicist Murray Gell-Mann * biologist Brian Goodwin * geologist/biologist Stephen Jay Gould * physicist Alan Guth * inventor W. Daniel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Reality Club
The Reality Club was a group of mostly New York City-based intellectuals that met regularly from 1981 through 1996 for seminars on a variety of topics. In January 1997, it reorganized as a web-based publication maintained by the Edge Foundation ( edge.org). It was founded as a salon by literary agent John Brockman. He wrote books about the philosophy of science and his clients included scientific authors such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker who were the basis for the gatherings. The title of ''Reality Club'' was a pun, as a theme was the nature of reality in the context of the clash between concepts such as post-structuralism and scientific realism. Attendees *Isaac AsimovRené Scheu: ( de) Edge Questions: Was die klügsten Köpfe umtreibt(Edge questions: What drives the brightest minds)'', NZZ 2.2.18 * Daniel Hillis *John Searle John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Professor for Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008, and is on the advisory board of the University of Austin. His book ''The Selfish Gene'' (1976) popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and coined the word ''meme''. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards. A vocal Atheism, atheist, Dawkins is known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. He wrote ''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1986), in which he argues against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a creator deity based upon the Evolution of biological complexity, complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a ''blind'' watc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Press (publisher)
Free Press was an American independent book publisher that later became an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It was one of the best-known publishers specializing in serious nonfiction, including path-breaking sociology books of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. After a period under new ownership in the 1980s of publishing neoconservative books, it was purchased by Simon & Schuster in 1994. By 2012, the imprint ceased to exist as a distinct entity; however, some books were still being published using the Free Press imprint. History Free Press was founded by Jeremiah Kaplan (1926–1993) and Charles Liebman in 1947 and concentrated on religion and social science. They chose the name Free Press because they wanted to print books devoted to civil liberties. It was launched with three classic titles: ''Division of Labor'' by Emile Durkheim, ''The Theory of Economic and Social Organization'' by Max Weber and ''The Scientific Outlook'' by Bertrand Russell. It was headquartered in Glencoe, Il ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan (born 21 June 1948) is a British novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". McEwan began his career writing sparse, Gothic short stories. His first two novels, '' The Cement Garden'' (1978) and '' The Comfort of Strangers'' (1981), earned him the nickname "Ian Macabre". These were followed by three novels of some success in the 1980s and early 1990s. His novel '' Enduring Love'' was adapted into a film of the same name. He won the Booker Prize with ''Amsterdam'' (1998). His next novel, '' Atonement'', garnered acclaim and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film featuring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. His later novels have included '' The Children Act'', '' Nutshell'', and '' Machines Like Me''. He was awarded the 1999 Shakespeare Prize, and the 2011 Jerusalem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinians, Augustinian friar working in the 19th century in Brno, was the first to study genetics scientifically. Mendel studied "trait inheritance", patterns in the way traits are handed down from parents to offspring over time. He observed that organisms (pea plants) inherit traits by way of discrete "units of inheritance". This term, still used today, is a somewhat ambiguous definition of what is referred to as a gene. Phenotypic trait, Trait inheritance and Molecular genetics, molecular inheritance mechanisms of genes are still primary principles of genetics in the 21st century, but modern genetics has expanded to study the function and behavior of genes. Gene structure and function, variation, and distribution are studied within the context of the Cell (bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computing Technology
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, engineering, mathematical, technological, and social aspects. Major computing disciplines include computer engineering, computer science, cybersecurity, data science, information systems, information technology, and software engineering. The term ''computing'' is also synonymous with counting and calculating. In earlier times, it was used in reference to the action performed by mechanical computing machines, and before that, to human computers. History The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper (or for chalk and slate) with or without the aid of tables. Computing is intimately tied to the representation of numbers, though mathematic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western philosophy, Western, Islamic philosophy, Arabic–Persian, Indian philosophy, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the Spirituality, spiritual problem of how to reach Enlightenment in Buddhism, enlighten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
