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"Big, deep and ambitious questions....breathtaking in scope. Keep watching The WorldQuestion Center." —
New Scientist
 The
E dge 
Annual Question—2005
 
"Fantastically stimulating...Once you start, you can't stop thinkingabout that question." — BBC Radio 4
 
"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?"
 
Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either theevidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit dedivination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?
 
The 2005
Edge
Question has generated many eye-opening responses from a "who's who"of third culture scientists and science-minded thinkers. The 120 contributions comprise adocument of 60,000 words.
 
The New York Times
("Science Times") and
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
("Feuilliton")published excepts in their print and online editions simultaneously with
Edge
publication.Other international papers followed:
The Telegraph, La Stampa, The Guardian, SydneyMorning Herald, The Sunday Times (UK),
and
The Financial Express
of Bengladesh.
 
In a front-page article,
Il Sole 24 Ore
, Italy's largest financial daily, announced the
"Edge
 Question Forum" in "Domenica", the weekend Arts & Culture section. The Forum, anongoing project designed to bring third culture thinking to Italy, features excerpts fromthe
Edge
responses in addition to articles solicited rom Italian humanist intellectuals andscientists.
 
In the responses to this year's question, there's a focus on consciousness, on knowing,on ideas of truth and proof. If pushed to generalize, I would say it is a commentary onhow we are dealing with the idea of certainty.We are in the age of "searchculture", in which Google and other search engines areleading us into a future rich with an abundance of correct answers along with anaccompanying naïve sense of certainty. In the future, we will be able to answer thequestion, but will we be bright enough to ask it?
 
This is an alternative path. It may be that it's okay not to be certain, but to have ahunch, and to perceive on that basis. There is also evidence here that the scientists arethinking beyond their individual fields. Yes, they are engaged in the science of their ownareas of research, but more importantly they are also thinking deeply about creating newunderstandings about the limits of science, of seeing science not just as a question of knowing things, but as a means of tuning into the deeper questions of who we are andhow we know.It may sound as if I am referring to a group of intellectuals, and not scientists. In fact, Irefer to both. In 1991, I suggested the idea of a third culture, which "consists of thosescientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work andexpository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visiblethe deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are. "
 
I believe that the scientists of the third culture are the pre-eminent intellectuals of ourtime. But I can't prove it.Happy New Year!
 
John BrockmanPublisher & Editor
 
This year's
Edge 
Question was suggested by Nicholas Humphrey.
 
(120 contributors; 60,000 words:)
 
Howard Gardner•Nicholas Humphrey•Marc D. Hauser•Daniel Gilbert•George Dyson•Daniel C. Dennett•William Calvin•Lawrence Krauss•Neil Gershenfeld•Joseph LeDoux•Stephen Kosslyn•Philip W. Anderson• Kevin Kelly•Paul Davies•Haim Harari•Janna Levin•Steven Pinker•Alison Gopnik• Martin E. P. Seligman•John McWhorter•Freeman Dyson•Robert Sapolsky•Leonard Susskind•Keith Devlin•Susan Blackmore•Clifford Pickover•Piet Hut•Gino Segre• Roger Schank•Alan Kay•Bruce Sterling•Judith Rich Harris•Arnold Trehub•Gregory Benford•Lynn Margulis•Sam Harris•Elizabeth Spelke•Kai Krause•Todd Feinberg• Nassim Nicholas Taleb•Irene Pepperberg•Jesse Bering•Scott Atran•Karl Sabbagh• Gary Marcus•Stewart Kauffman•Ray Kurzweil•John Barrow•Jaron Lanier•Alex Pentland•Richard Dawkins•Jean Paul Schmetz•Thomas Metzinger•John R. Skoyles• John Horgan•David Gelernter•Jordan Pollack•Lee Smolin•Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi• Jeffrey Epstein•Michael Shermer•Leon Lederman•Tom Standage•Simon Baron- Cohen•Stephen Petranek•J. Craig Venter•Maria Spiropulu•David Buss•Esther Dyson•David Myers•Denis Dutton•Donald Hoffman•Kenneth Ford•Margaret Wertheim•Alun Anderson•Philip Zimbardo•Paul Bloom•Robert R. Provine•W. Daniel Hillis•Martin Nowak•Seth Lloyd•Donald I. Williamson•Jonathan Haidt• Rebecca Goldstein•Ned Block•Christine Finn•Rupert Sheldrake•Rudy Rucker• Douglas Rushkoff •Verena Huber-Dyson•Chris W. Anderson•Charles Simonyi• Carolyn Porco•Martin Rees•Pamela McCorduck•James O'Donnell•John McCarthy• Carlo Rovelli•Leo Chalupa•Howard Rheingold•Steve Giddings•Tor Nørretranders• Stanislas Deheane•Benoit Mandelbrot•Ellen Winner•Paul Steinhardt•Oliver Morton• Alexander Vilenkin•Terrence Sejnowski•Brian Goodwin•Stephen H. Schneider• Randolph Nesse•Timothy Taylor•Marti Hearst•Daniel Goleman•Jared Diamond• Anton Zeilinger•Ian Wilmut•Robert Trivers•Ian McEwan 
 
 
CONTRIBUTORS
 
IAN McEWAN
 
Novelist; Author,
Saturday
 What I believe but cannot prove is that no part of my consciousness will survive mydeath. I exclude the fact that I will linger, fadingly, in the thoughts of others, or thataspects of my consciousness will survive in writing, or in the positioning of a planted treeor a dent in my old car. I suspect that many contributors to
Edge
will take this premiseas a given—true but not significant. However, it divides the world crucially, and muchdamage has been done to thought as well as to persons, by those who are certain thatthere is a life, a better, more important life, elsewhere. That this span is brief, thatconsciousness is an accidental gift of blind processes, makes our existence all the moreprecious and our responsibilities for it all the more profound.
 
|back to contents| 
ROBERT TRIVERS
 
Evolutionary biologist, Rutgers University; Author,
Natural Selection and Social Theory
 
Think true, cannot prove.I believe that deceit and self deception play a disproportinate role in human-generateddisasters, including misguided wars, international affairs more gnerally, the collapse of civilizations, and state affairs, including disastrous social, political and economic policiesand miscarriages of justice.I believe deceit and self deception play an important role in the relativeunderdevelopment of the social sciences.I believe that processes of self deception are important in limiting theachievement of individuals.
 
|back to contents| 
IAN WILMUT
 
Biologist; Cloning Researcher; Roslin Institute, Edinburgh; Coauthor,
The Second Creation
 
I believe that it is possible to change adult cells from one phenotype to another.The birth of Dolly provided the insight behind this belief. She was the first adult clonedfrom another adult, of any species. Previously biologists had believed that themechanisms that direct the formation of all of the different tissues that make up an adultwere so complex and so rigidly fixed that they could not be reversed. Her birthdemonstrated that the mechanisms that were active in the nucleus transferred from themammary epithelial cell could be reversed by unknown factors in the recipientunfertilised egg.
 
We take for-granted the process by which the single cell embryo at fertilisation gives riseto all of the many tissues of an adult. As almost all of those cells have the same geneticinformation, the changes must be brought about by sequential differences in function of the genes. An impression is beginning to emerge of the factors that bring about these
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