The Blind Spot

by Byers, William

• ISBN13: 9780691146843
• ISBN10: 0691146845
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-28
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

In today's unpredictable and chaotic world, we look to science to provide certainty and answers--and often blame it when things go wrong.The Blind Spotreveals why our faith in scientific certainty is a dangerous illusion, and how only by embracing science's inherent ambiguities and paradoxes can we truly appreciate its beauty and harness its potential. Crackling with insights into our most perplexing contemporary dilemmas, from climate change to the global financial meltdown, this book challenges our most sacredly held beliefs about science, technology, and progress. At the same time, it shows how the secret to better science can be found where we least expect it--in the uncertain, the ambiguous, and the inevitably unpredictable. William Byers explains why the subjective element in scientific inquiry is in fact what makes it so dynamic, and deftly balances the need for certainty and rigor in science with the equally important need for creativity, freedom, and downright wonder. Drawing on an array of fascinating examples--from Wall Street's overreliance on algorithms to provide certainty in uncertain markets, to undecidable problems in mathematics and computer science, to Georg Cantor's paradoxical but true assertion about infinity--Byers demonstrates how we can and must learn from the existence of blind spots in our scientific and mathematical understanding. The Blind Spotoffers an entirely new way of thinking about science, one that highlights its strengths and limitations, its unrealized promise, and, above all, its unavoidable ambiguity. It also points to a more sophisticated approach to the most intractable problems of our time.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Revelation of Uncertainty	p. vii
The Blind Spot	p. 1
The Blind Spot Revealed	p. 17
Certainity or Wonder?	p. 38
A World in Crisis!	p. 59
Ambiguity	p. 69
Self-Reference: The Human Element in Science	p. 91
The Mystery of Number	p. 106
Science as the Ambiguous Search for Unity	p. 124
The Still Point	p. 156
Conclusion: Living in a World of Uncertainty	p. 179
Acknowledgments	p. 187
Notes	p. 189
References	p. 197
Index	p. 203
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.