"What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, posed to the world's most influential thinkers. Their visionary answers flow from the frontiers of psychology, philosophy, economics, physics, sociology, and more. Surprising and enlightening, these insights will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the world."--Back cover.

Includes index.

David Brooks: Foreword -- John Brockman: Preface -- Martin Rees "Deep Time" And The Far Future -- Marcelo Gleiser We Are Unique -- P.Z. Myers The Mediocrity Principle -- Sean Carroll The Pointless Universe -- Samuel Arbesman The Copernican Principle -- J. Craig Venter We Are Not Alone In The Universe -- Stewart Brand Microbes Run The World -- Richard Dawkins The Double-Blind Control Experiment -- Max Tegmark Promoting A Scientific Lifestyle -- Roger Schank Experimentation -- Timo Hannay The Controlled Experiment -- Gino Segre Gedankenexperiment -- Kathryn Schulz The Pessimistic Meta-Induction From The History Of Science -- Samuel Barondes Each Of Us Is Ordinary, Yet One Of A Kind -- John Tooby Nexus Causality, Moral Warfare, And Misattribution Arbitrage -- David G. Myers Self-Serving Bias -- Gary Marcus Cognitive Humility -- Douglas Rushkoff Technologies Have Biases -- Gerald Smallberg -- Jonah Lehrer Control Your Spotlight -- Daniel Kahneman The Focusing Illusion -- Carlo Rovelli The Uselessness Of Certainty -- Lawrence Krauss Uncertainty -- Aubrey De Grey A Sense Of Proportion About Fear Of The Unknowns -- Nigel Goldenfield Because -- Stuart Firestein The Name Game -- Seth Lloyd Living Is Fatal -- Garret Lisi Uncalculated Risk -- Neil Gershenfeld Truth Is A Model -- Jon Kleinberg E Pluribus Unum -- Stefano Boeri A Proxemics Of Urban Sexuality -- Kevin Kelly Failure Liberates Success -- Nicholas A. Chrisrakis Holism -- Robert R. Provine TANSTAAFL -- Gerald Holton Skeptical Empiricism -- Thomas A. Bass Open Systems -- Geroge Church Non-Inherent Inheritance -- Paul Kedrosky Shifting Baseline Syndrome -- Martin Seligman PERMA -- Steven Pinker Positive-Sum Games -- Roger Highfield The Snuggle For Existence -- Dylan Evans The Law Of Comparative Advantage -- Jason Zweig Structured Serendipity -- Rudy Rucker The World Is Unpredictable -- Charles Seife Randomness -- Clifford Pickover The Kaleidoscopic Discovery Engine -- Rebecca Newberger Goldstein Inference To The Best Explanation -- Emanuel Derman Prgmamorphism -- Nicholas Carr Cognitive Load -- Hans Ulrich Obrist To Curate -- Richard Nisbett "Graceful" Shas -- Rob Kurzban Externalities -- James O'donnell Everything Is In Motion -- Douglas T. Kenrick Subselves And The Modular Mind -- Andy Clark Predictive Coding -- Donald Hoffman Our Sensory Desktop -- Barry C. Smith The Senses And The Multisensory -- David Eagleman The Umwelt -- Alison Gopnik The Rational Unconscious -- Adam Alter We Are Blind To Much That Shapes Our Mental Life -- W. Tecumseh Fitch An Instinct To Learn -- Michael Shermer Think Bottom Up, Not Top Down -- Irene Pepperberg Fixed-Action Patterns -- Terrence Sejnowski Powers Of 10 -- Juan Enriquez Life Code -- Stephen M. Kosslyn Constraint Satisfaction -- Daniel C. Dennett Cycles -- Jennifer Jacquet Keystone Consumers -- Jaron Lanier Cumulative Error -- Dan Sperber Cultural Attractors -- Giulio Boccaletti Scale Analysis -- Frank Wilczek Hidden Layers -- Lisa Randall "Science" -- Marcel Kinsbourne The Expanding In-Group -- Jonathan Haidt Contingent Superorganisms -- Clay Shirky The Pareto Principle -- William Calvin Find That Fame -- Jay Rosen Wicked Problems -- Daniel Goleman Anthropocene Thinking -- Alun Anderson Homo Dilatus -- Sam Harris We Are Lost In Thought -- Thomas Metzinger The Phenomenally Transparent Self-Model -- Sue Blackmore Correlation Is Not A Cause -- David Dalrymple Information Flow -- Lee Smolin Thinking In Time Versus Thinking Outside Of Time -- Richard Foreman Negative Capability Is A Profound Therapy -- Tor Norretranders -- Helen Fisher Temperament Dimensions -- Geoffrey Miller The Personality/Insanity Continuum -- Joel Gold ARISE -- Matthew Ritchie Systemic Equilibrium -- Linda Stone Projective Thinking -- V.S. Ramachandran Anomalies And Paradigms -- David Gelernter Recursive Structure -- Don Tapscott Designing Your Mind -- Adrain Kreye Free Jazz -- Matt Ridley Collective Intelligence -- Gerd Gigerenzer Risk Literacy -- Ross Anderson Science Versus Theater -- Keith Devlin The Base Rate -- Marti Hearst Findex -- Susan Fiske An Assertion Is Often An Empirical Question, Settled By Collecting Evidence -- Gregory Paul Scientists Should Be Scientists -- James Croak Bricoleur -- Mark Henderson Science's Methods Aren't Just For Science -- Nick Bostrom The Game Of Life -And Looking For Generators -- Robert Sapolsky Anecdotalism -- Tom Standage You Can Show That Something Is Definitely Dangerous But Not That It's Definitely Safe -- Christine Finn Absence And Evidence -- John Mcwhorter Path Dependence -- Scott D. Sampson Interbeing -- Dimitar Sasselov The Other -- Brian Eno Ecology -- Stephon H. Alexander Dualities -- Amanda Gefter Dualities -- Anthony Aguirre The Paradox -- Eric Topol Hunting For Root Cause: The Human "Black Box" -- David Rowan Personal Data Mining -- Satyajit Das Parallelism In Art And Commerce -- Laurence C. Smith Innovation -- Kevin Hand The Gibbs Landscape -- Vinod Khosla Black Swan Technologies -- Gloria Origgi Kakonomics -- Eric Weinstein Kayfabe -- Kai Krause -- Einstein's Blade In Ockham's Razor -- Dave Winer Heat-Seeking Missiles -- Marco Iacoboni Entanglement -- Timothy Taylor Technology Paved The Way For Humanity -- Paul Saffo Time Span Of Discretion -- Tania Lombrozo Defeasibility -- Richard Thaler Aether -- Mark Pagel Knowledge As A Hypothesis -- Evegny Morozov The Einstellung Effect -- Eduardo Salcedo-Albaran Homo Sensus Sapiens: The Animal That Feels And Reasons -- Fiery Cushman Understanding Confabulation -- David M. Buss Sexual Selection --B Art Kosko QED Moments -- Richard Saul Wurman Objects Of Understanding And Communication -- Carl Zimmer Life As A Side Effect -- Gregory Cochran The Veeck Effect -- Joshua Greene Supervenience! -- Hazel Rose Markus And Alana Conner The Culture Cycle -- Victoria Stodden Phase Transitions And Scale Transitions -- Brian Knutson Replicability -- Xeni Jardin Ambient Memory And The Myth Of Neutral Observation -- Diane E. Halpern A Statistically Significant Difference In Understanding The Scientific Process -- Beatrice Golomb The Dece(I)Bo Effect -- Andrew Revkin Anthropophilia -- Mahzarin R. Banaji A Solution For Collapsed Thinking: Signal Detection Theory -- David Pizarro Everyday Apophenia -- Ernst Poppel A Cognitive Toolkit Full Of Garbage -- Acknowledgments -- Index