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From: "Edge" <editor@edge.org>
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2014 11:15:39
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Subject: Edge #417 - Steven Pinker: Writing In The 21st Century; Hans Ulrich Obrist: Intellectual Enzyme
Edge.org
June 9, 2014
http://www.edge.org
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THE THIRD CULTURE
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"What are the arts but products of the human mind which resonate with our aesthetic and emotional faculties? What are social issues, but ways in which humans try to coordinate their behavior and come to working arrangements that benefit everyone? There's no aspect of life that cannot be illuminated by a better understanding of the mind from scientific psychology. And for me the most recent example is the process of writing itself."
WRITING IN THE 21ST CENTURY
A Conversation with STEVEN PINKER
[5,700 words]
EdgeVideo
[37 minutes]
Introduction
Psychologist Steven Pinker's 1994 book THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT discussed all aspects of language in a unified, Darwinian framework, and in his next book, HOW THE MIND WORKS he did the same for the rest of the mind, explaining "what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life".
He has written four more consequential books: WORDS AND RULES (1999), THE BLANK SLATE (2002), THE STUFF OF THOUGHT (2007), and THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE (2011). The evolution in his thinking, and the expansion of his range, the depth of his vision, are evident in his contributions on many important issues on these pages over the years: "A Biological Understanding of Human Nature", "The Science of Gender and Science", "A Preface to Dangerous Ideas", "Language and Human Nature", "A History of Violence", "The False Allure of Group Selection", "Napoleon Chagnon: Blood Is Their Argument", and "Science Is Not Your Enemy". In addition to his many honors, he is the Edge Question Laureate, having suggested three of Edge's Annual Questions: "What Is Your Dangerous Idea?"; What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?"; and "What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?". He is a consummate third culture intellectual.
In the conversation below, Pinker begins by stating his belief that "science can inform all aspects of life, particularly psychology, my own favorite science. Psychology looks in one direction to biology, to neuroscience, to genetics, to evolution. And it looks in another direction to the rest of intellectual and cultural life—because what are the arts but products of the human mind which resonate with our aesthetic and emotional faculties? What are social issues but ways in which humans try to coordinate their behavior and come to working arrangements that benefit everyone? There's no aspect of life that cannot be illuminated by a better understanding of the mind from scientific psychology. And for me the most recent example is the process of writing itself."...
—John Brockman
STEVEN PINKER is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of ten books, including THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT, HOW THE MIND WORKS, THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE, and THE SENSE OF STYLE (September).
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WRITING IN THE 21ST CENTURY
I believe that science can inform all aspects of life, particularly psychology, my own favorite science. Psychology looks in one direction to biology, to neuroscience, to genetics, to evolution. And it looks in another direction to the rest of intellectual and cultural life—because what are the arts but products of the human mind which resonate with our aesthetic and emotional faculties? What are social issues but ways in which humans try to coordinate their behavior and come to working arrangements that benefit everyone? There's no aspect of life that cannot be illuminated by a better understanding of the mind from scientific psychology. And for me the most recent example is the process of writing itself.
I'm a psychologist who studies language—a psycholinguist—and I'm also someone who uses language in my books and articles to convey ideas about, among other things the science of language itself. But also, ideas about war and peace and emotion and cognition and human nature. The question I'm currently asking myself is how our scientific understanding of language can be put into practice to improve the way that we communicate anything, including science?
In particular, can you use linguistics, cognitive science, and psycholinguistics to come up with a better style manual—a 21st century alternative to the classic guides like Strunk and White's The Elements of Style?
Writing is inherently a topic in psychology. It's a way that one mind can cause ideas to happen in another mind. The medium by which we share complex ideas, namely language, has been studied intensively for more than half a century. And so if all that work is of any use it ought to be of use in crafting more stylish and transparent prose. ...
Permalink: http://edge.org/conversation/writing-in-the-21st-century
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INTELLECTUAL ENZYME
By Hans Ulrich Obrist
[ED. NOTE: The legendary curator Hans Ulrich Obrist (known as "HUO"), is Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes at London's Serpentine Gallery. Since 2009, he has been ranked #1, #2, #2, #10, and #5 in Art Review's "Power 100", a ranked list of the contemporary artword's most powerful figures. A long-time Edge collaborator, we have been interviewing each other for fifteen years. Below, he talks to me in Munich. In the next Edge edition, I bring my camera to The Serpentine Gallery in London and return the favor. —JB]
Das Magazin
INTELLECTUAL ENZYME
Allgemein vom 3. Mai 2014
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PHOTO
Teamwork, from left: John Brockman, Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan in 1966 in the New York Factory. Photo: Nat Finkelstein. http://bit.ly/Ssit8c
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The idea of the autonomy of art has led to the fact that even today it amounts to a breach of taboo if one wants to bring art and artists into dialogue with other disciplines such as technology, science or politics. One person who never had any time for such a separation is John Brockman. He is a writer, literary agent, curator, worked in business, and for the White House in Washington. He sees it as his main role to bring experts from the most different disciplines down from their ivory towers so that they can converse not only with their peers but also with the wider public and with the luminaries of other subjects.
Stewart Brand, author of the legendary WHOLE EARTH CATALOG and the forerunner of the ecological movement, has called Brockman "an intellectual enzyme", bringing the thoughts, visions and knowledge of the most different people together and catalysing them. Prototypical of this idea are his Edge Foundation and its website, edge.org, a platform for the exchange of ideas among the intellectual elite. Prototypical of this, too, was the collaboration between artists such as Nam June Paik, Andy Warhol or Robert Rauschenberg in 1965 in New York that led to an invitation by MIT whereby biophysicists, cyberneticists, musicians, painters and theatre directors held an interdisciplinary symposium.
Finally Brockman has also proved his own talent for synthesis as a writer. In his first book BY THE LATE JOHN BROCKMAN, he considers the world through the lens of information theory, in 37 through Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and in Afterwords as a verbal construct. Above all, his first work was a magnificent combination, not just in content but also in form, of philosophy and experimental literature, which he presented in 1968 in a six-part reading of the book in the New Yorker Poetry Center. Each page of the book contained only one paragraph, composed of citations from the likes of Ludwig Wittgenstein or Samuel Beckett. The very? process of reading is supposed to create a performance, freely after Marcel Duchamp's dictum that an artist makes the material available but that it is up to the observer or reader to make an artwork out of it.
A new edition of BY THE LATE JOHN BROCKMAN, 37 and AFTERWORDS will be published this September by Harper Collins Publishers in the US and UK under the title BY THE LATE JOHN BROCKMAN, and in Germany by S. Fischer under the title NACHWORTE: GEDANKEN DES WEGBEREITERS DER DRITTEN KULTUR (AFTERWORDS: THOUGHTS OF THE THIRD CULTURE PIONEER).
HANS ULRICH OBRIST is curator and co-director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. His most recent book is WAYS OF CURATING.
http://edge.org/conversation/intellectual-enzyme
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IN THE NEWS
http://edge.org/edgenews
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THE THIRD CULTURE—CONTINUED
Johanne Lebel, editor of Discover the magazine ACFAS, ASP—Agence Science.Press [5.30.14]
[ 2nd part of the reflection on the scientific and the "third culture". Click here for Part I. December 12, 2013: bit.ly/TxQzZS.]
My previous post, The third culture or CP Snow Revisited, addressed the rift between science and the humanities, and I ended by saying that he had not only build bridges between the two, but propose a new cultural map.
As worth exploring, I mentioned the "third culture" of John Brockman , which defines the term based on the text The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution of CP Snow: "The" third culture "refers to scientists and other thinkers empirical world who, through their work and writings take the place traditionally occupied by intellectuals, and put forward the deep meaning of your lives, redefining who and what we are "[translation by the author].
Brockman therefore refers to these scientists, intellectuals, from the vast body of empirical knowledge developed in the 20th century, not only the rethinking howthe world but play leapfrog over disciplinary fences.Consider, for example, Jared Diamond and historical geography, or the sociologist Nicholas Christakis and its reflection onthe science of social connections. But you could also attach the Michel Serres, Joel De Rosnay, Ilya Prigogine, Henri Atlan, etc....
bit.ly/1rZw8UR
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CONTAMINATE THE ACADEMY: The Ways In Which Online Culture That Wants To Overcome The Old Categories
By Danna Serena
Corriere Della Sera — La Lettura[5.27.14]
...John Brockman, pioneer of knowledge online with his Edge.org, is an expert in "life of the mind": each year he encourages the community of scientists, intellectuals and thinkers that animate the site with questions and challenges of an epistemological and ethical nature (the Question for 2014 is: "What scientific theories are ready to be retired?"). For Brockman, to embrace Scruton's ["high culture"] thesis is tantamount to accepting the aphorism of conceptual artist James Lee Byars: "Meditate the putrifying corpse." "Many people don't know and don't know that they don't know. Why spend a life looking through a rear-view mirror", he explained toLa Lettura by email.
Brockman rejects the label of a niche site: "the point is that there is no more mass audience. Individuals know what they love and the Internet allows them to follow their own interests. Edge is not for everybody. It is helpful for our readers to understand who the contributors are, and how their ideas play out in the cultural landscape. In a sense, it is an elite, but elitism is a good and necessary when the group is transparent and open to new people, and ideas are considered on a meritocratic basis".
The author sensed the cultural change, in the early days of the Internet, when, in 1980, he created the Reality Club (which turned into the Edge Foundation) to bring together artists, scientists, politicians and businessmen to create a new kind of knowledge. "The site, established at the end of 1996, has no interest in 'democratizing' science. Rather it's an expansive conversation between minds."
http://bit.ly/1w8iGgX
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JENNIFER JACQUET ON HOW YOU CAN HELP SAVE SEA LIFE
By Alison Bruzek & Catherine Whelan,
WGBH FORUM [5.25.14]
Jennifer Jacquet, Clinical Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies at NYU (and EDGE's Roving Editor), in a videotaped talk at the New England Aquarium.
Jacquet talks about different initiatives for consumers that have (and have not) had an impact on overfishing and sea life, including sea food wallet cards listing the various endangered species of fish. She also mentions her own struggles against big organizations who have environmentally harmful fishing processes and how people can help fight back. [Watch 58 minute video.]
http://wgbhnews.org/post/jennifer-jacquet-how-you-can-help-save-sea-life
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