by JohnBrockman (Editor)
The editor and literary agent John Brockman recently challenged the salon of scientists that he hosts on his website by asking: 'What is the most important invention of the past two thousand years?' Not content to be merely right, his contributors vied for originality, provocativeness and intellectual panache. This book provides a showcase for more than a hundred of their responses, which are as varied, and in some cases strange, as the participants themselves. Gutenberg's printing press wins the most endorsements and passing nods. But the neuroscientist Colin Blakemore and others argue for the birth-control pill. The biologist Richard Dawkins nominates the spectroscope. The physicist Freeman Dyson makes a case for hay. John Maddox, the former editor of Nature, favours the calculus.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Publisher: Phoenix
Published: 01 Mar 2001
ISBN 10: 0753811286
ISBN 13: 9780753811283
Book Overview: Inventive and educational, covering many of the most popular areas of current science A wealth of high-profile contributors such as Richard Dawkins, Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, Marvin Minsky and Steven Pinker A wonderfully eclectic, lively and stimulating collection, full of intriguing new ideas, and new perspectives on old ideas The readership of John Brockman's website, Edge, has climbed to over 100,000 visits per month Introduction by Jared Diamond; epilogue by Bill Gates 'Big, deep and ambitious...breathtaking in scope' New Scientist