Lightman, Alan, A Sense of the Mysterious. New York: Vintage Books (Random House), 2005. Lightman writes beautifully and in this small book concentrates on the emotional life of the scientists, and how important this often forgotten aspect is to the creative work of discovery. The mysterious is the muse.
Maddox, John, What Remains to be Discovered. New York: Touchstone/Simon and Shuster, 1998. The late John Maddox was the editor of Nature for a remarkable 23 years, from 1966 to 1973. He oversaw tremendous growth in the number of papers published, and in the influence of the journal and the way science was done. This book is his look into the future through the lens of what we don’t know yet. It’s a bit of a gamble because it requires predicting as well as questioning, but it certainly does provide plenty of information and plenty of speculation by someone who was at the center of discovery for many years.
Poincare, Hénri, The Value of Science. Edited and with Introduction by Stephen Jay Gould. The Modern Library Science Series, New York 2001. Hénri Poincare was a prolific scientist, thinker, and writer who had that knack for explaining difficult things to a nonexpert—whether philosophy to a scientist, or vice versa, or both to a lay public. He has been called the Carl Sagan of his day. This volume brings together his three main books: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science, and Science and Method. You buy this as a reference book, and then you find yourself lost in pages full of ideas.
Stanford, P. Kyle, Exceeding Our Grasp. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
This is one of the scariest history/philosophy of science books I have ever read. Stanford delves deeply into the problem of “unconceived alternatives”—things we should have thought of, were right in front of our noses, but somehow eluded us, sometimes for centuries. Why the nearly 100-year-long blank between Darwin and the identification of the gene as the basis of heredity? In fact, Darwin had enough information to have postulated the gene, but he never conceived the possibility. The scary point, of course, is what are we looking at and not seeing today?
Additional Articles Consulted
Anderson, P. W. (1997). Is measurement itself an emergent property? Complexity, 3(1), 14–16. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-0526(199709/10)3:1<14::AID-CPLX5>3.0.CO;2-E
Casti, J. L. (1997). The borderline. Complexity, 3(1): 5–7.
Caves, C., & Schack, R. (1997). Quantifying degrees of unpredictability. Complexity, 3(1), 46–57.
Chaitin, G. (2006). The limits of reason. Scientific American, 294, 74–81.
Daston, L. (1992). Objectivity and the escape from perspective. Social Studies of Science, 22(4), 597–618. doi:10.1177/030631292022004002
Gell Mann, M. (1997). Fundamental sources of unpredictability. Complexity, 3(1), 9–13. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-0526(199709/10)3:1<9::AID-CPLX4>3.3.CO;2-I
Glass, D. J., & Hall, N. (2008). A brief history of the hypothesis. Cell, 134(3), 378–381. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2008.07.033
Gomory, R. E. (1995). The known, the unknown and the unknowable. Scientific American, 272(6), 120. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0695-120
Hut, P., Ruelle, D., & Traub, J. (1998). Varieties of limits to scientific knowledge. Complexity, 3(6), 33–38. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-0526-(199807/08)3:6<33::AID-CPLX5>3.3.CO;2-C
Kennedy, D., & Norman, C. (2005). What don’t we know? Science, 309(1), 75. doi:10.1126/science.309.5731.75
Krauss, L. (2004). Questions that plague physics. Scientific American, 291, 82–85. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0804-82
Maddox, S. J. (1999). The unexpected science to come. Scientific American, 281(6), 62–67. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1299-62
Schwartz, M. A. (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science, 121 (Pt 11), 1771. doi:10.1242/jcs.033340
Siegfried, T. (2005). In praise of hard questions. Science, 309(1), 76–77. doi:10.1126/science.309.5731.76
Index
Abbott, Edwin, 33
Abbott, Larry, 133–143
Adrian, Lord, 25
agnotology, 30
Allen, Steve
“The Question Man”, 16
Anderson, Carl, 51
Aristotle, 131, 91
celestial views, 114–115
senses, 129
artificial intelligence, 70–71
atomism, 34
Bacon, Francis, 14
Berkeley Institute, 11–12
Boring, Edward G., 24
brain
artificial intelligence, 70–71
case study, 125–151
glial cells, 27–28
language, 131
memory, 133–143
motor systems, 130
muscle contractions, 143–146
neurons, 71–73
neuroscience, 131–133
sensory systems, 129–130
synapses, 139–143
visual system, 126–130
Breton, Andre, 131
Brock, Thomas, 63
bubble chambers, 51
caloric, 23
Carlin, George, 34
Chimpanzee mirror experiments, 101–103
Chomsky, Noam, 106
Chudnovsky, Maria, 61
citizen science, 173
Clever Hans, 94–96
cloud chambers, 51
colliders, 68
Columbia University, 2, 61, 86
Combinatorics, 38
Commission for University
Reform in Germany, 175
consciousness, 136
Copernican cognitivism, 33
cosmic background radiation (CMB), 121
Cretin’s paradox, 41–42
Crick, Francis, 84
curiosity-driven research, 79–81
Darwin, Charles
complexity of eye, 127
curiosity, 62
model systems, 72–73
On the Origin of Species, 94
The Expression of the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 56
de Waal, Frans, 103
Descartes, Rene, 170
animal cognition, 92
pineal gland, 91
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 169
Dirac, Paul, 50
Edison, Thomas, 52
education
government support, 172
ignorance, 174–176
Einstein, Albert, 28
modern science in West, 66–67
relativity, 110, 83
view of universe, 23
Weizmann, 83–84
Elephants
mirror self-recognition, 103–104
facts, 20–22
Faraday, Michael, 52–53
Fermi, Enrico, 50, 57
forgetfulness, 142
formalism, 37–38
Franklin, Benjamin, 53
Freeze, Hudson, 63
Fusi, Stefano, 139–143
Galileo, 169–173
Gallup, Gordon Jr., 101
Gödel, Kurt, 35, 37, 42, 40
Golden Fleece Awards, 74
Goldstein, Rebecca, 40
Google, 11, 174
Google Earth, 74
Google search
“ignorance”, 13
Greene, Brian, 111–113
Griffin, Donald, 93
Gross, David, 57–58
Guth, Alan, 121
Haldane, J. B. S., 32
Handbook of Ignorance, 60
Hanig, D. P., 24
Hartline, Keffer, 25
Heisenberg, Werner
quantum physics, 36
uncertainty principle, 35
Helfand, David, 114–118
Herculano-Houzel, Suzana, 27
Hilbert, David, 46
“23 problems”, 86, 54, 48–49
Congress of Mathematicians, 47
formalism, 37–38
positivism, 40
solvable ignorance, 48
Hippasus, 43
Hodgkin, Alan, 79
Hut, Piet, 43
Huxley, T
homas, 45
Hypothesis, 76–79
IBM Deep Blue supercomputer, 129
Ignorance. A science course, 5
immune system, 64
Industrial Revolution, 132
inflationary period, 122
journals
controversy, 77–78
Nature, 68–69
Science, 68–69
science papers, 84–85
Keats, John, 17
knowledge
dark side of, 22–28
ignorance following, 11
Krakauer, John, 143–146
lasers, 50
Leibniz, Gottfried
calculus, 38
On the Art of Combinations, 39
Liar’s paradox, 41–42
Lorenz, Konrad, 156
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 50
Maxwell, James Clerk, 7
Medawar, Peter, 64
Method of Ignorance, 60
Michelson, Albert, 22
Miller, Amber
astrophysics, 118–123
inflationary model, 122
universe, 124
mind, 92–93
Minsky, Marvin, 70–71
Morgan, John, 86
National Institutes of Health (NIH), 164
Nature, 68–69
Negative capability, 17
nervous system
motor, 130
sensory, 25–26
spikes, 25–26
neuroscience
brain, 131–133
spike analysis, 25–26
synapses, 139–143
New York Times Science, 84–85
Newton, Isaac, 67, 14
hypotheses non fingo, 78
Principia Mathematica, 12–13
Nobel, Alfred, 57–58
noise, 31
olfaction, 161–162
Parkinson’s
dopamine, 149–150
motor systems, 146–150
Pasteur, Louis
chance, 159
chance discovery, 80
Pepperberg, Irene
African Grey Parrot, 106–107
animal cognition, 89–107
Pfungst, Oscar, 95
Philips, Emo, 125
phlogiston, 23
phrenology, 23–28
physics
case study, 108–125
dark room, 22–23
model systems, 73–74
Planck, Max, 22
Poincare conjecture, 86
polymerase chain reaction (PCR), 63
Poovey, Mary
A History of the Modern Fact, 20
positivism, 40
positron emission tomography (PET), 51–52
Proctor, Robert, 15–16, 30
Proxmire, William Golden Fleece Award, 74
public awareness of science, 169–173
Pythagoreans, 43
quantum mechanics
Dirac, 50–52
Greene, 111–114
Planck, 22
entanglement, 36–37
questions
answers and, 11
for course, 86–88
Reiss, Diana
animal cognition, 89–107
dolphin, 99–101, 97
Rescher, Nicholas, 33
research
basic and applied, 52
curiosity-driven, 79–81
retina, 162
Rumsfeld, Donald H., 29
Russell, Bertrand, 34
Sagan, Carl, 70
San Francisco State
University, 154
Schrodinger, Erwin, 17, 37, 169
scientific method
Bacon, 14
golden rule, 2
research, 19
scientist
discovery process, 151–152
education, 174–176
writing grants, 59–60
sensory perception, 24–25
sensory systems
basic senses, 129–130
perception, 58–59
Shaw, George Bernard, 28
Skinner, B. F., 104, 156
Society for Neuroscience, 59, 141
Socrates, 12
Stein, Gertrude 11, 112
Technology predictions, 47–50
thermophiles, 62–63
Toklas, Alice B, 11
uncertainty
Schrodinger, 17
uncertainty principle
Heisenberg, 35
University of California
Berkeley, 158
Van Osten, Herr, 94–96
Wiles, Andrew, 2
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 144
Wolpert, Daniel, 128
Yale University, 164
Yeats, W. B., 176
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