This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress
John Brockman (editor), 2015
Why does a “left brain or right brain” test tell you nothing about yourself, and why does a price of $19.99 feel like a better deal even when you know the trick? John Brockman asked leading scientists around the world which scientific idea is ready for retirement and gathered 175 answers into one book. Here are seven of those ideas about the brain, emotions, memory and ourselves, and after them a lot of “obvious” things stop being obvious.
Who it is for
For anyone who likes to understand how the brain and behaviour work and is ready to put what “everybody knows” to the test. And for everyone tired of sensational science stories in the news.
You may know that $19.99 is pretty much the same as $20.00, but the first still feels like a significantly better deal.
The question put to scientists
The physicist Max Planck never managed to win over one famous chemist. Planck was sure of his proof, but, as he recalled, all his sound arguments fell on deaf ears. Hence his bitter rule: a new scientific truth triumphs when its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
The literary agent John Brockman publishes Edge, an online club for science, and puts one shared question to scientists. In 2014, at the suggestion of the psychologist Laurie Santos, the question went like this: what scientific idea is ready for retirement? Brockman added: if science really advances by a series of farewells to old ideas, why wait that long?
Answers came from physicists, biologists, psychologists, doctors and economists, and also from a writer and an actor. The result was 175 short essays. Many of the ideas they named live not only in textbooks but in our heads too: about the left and the right hemisphere, about genes and upbringing, about people being as obedient as a herd.
Ahead are seven such ideas, the ones closest to everyday life. Each has its own accusers and arguments. The authors also argue with one another, so this is not a set of ready-made truths but an invitation to test your own beliefs. Let's start with the brain.
You don't have a “dominant” hemisphere
You have surely come across tests like “Which hemisphere is yours, left or right?” The neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore writes that the hemisphere idea has infiltrated schools and workplaces and helps sell a lot of self-help books. The left hemisphere is supposed to be logical and the right one creative, and in each person one of them is in charge.
Blakemore calls this pseudoscience. The hemispheres are in constant communication with each other, and both are at work in almost any task. People with a damaged right hemisphere don't lose their creativity. And people with a damaged left hemisphere sometimes lose speech, but can still reason logically.
The psychologist Stephen Kosslyn adds a correction: there are differences, but not the ones the tests describe. The left hemisphere prefers to process the details of an object, the right one its overall shape. The left one is better at grasping the literal meaning of a phrase, the right one the hidden hint. Picture a friend in pouring rain saying, “Lovely weather, just wonderful.” One side of the brain prefers to work on the words, the other on the irony, and you laugh with your whole brain.
Blakemore also sees direct harm in such a label: it is easy to take it for something innate and fixed. A child who has been called “right-brained” may decide that logic isn't for them and stop trying.
About the author
John Brockman, an American literary agent and the publisher of Edge.org, an online club for science. He edits collections in which leading scientists answer one shared question.
All books by this author: John Brockman (editor)
Terms from the book
- Freud
- Planck
- Blakemore
- Galton
- Darwin
- eugenics
- Hebb
- heritability
- Asch
- Shafir
- Gruber
- Myers
- dementia
- plate tectonics
- Edge: Edge.org, John Brockman's online club for science, where scientists discuss ideas. The answers to its shared question of 2014 make up this book.
- Santos: Laurie Santos, a psychologist at Yale University who studies how humans and animals think. She suggested the question of this collection.
- Kosslyn: Stephen Kosslyn, an American psychologist who studies thinking and the brain, coauthor of a book about the “top brain” and the “bottom brain”.
- Hannay: Timo Hannay, managing director of the science publishing company Digital Science and a co-organizer of the SciFoo meetings of scientists.
- Gopnik: Alison Gopnik, an American psychologist and philosopher, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of a book about how young children think.
- Meaney: Michael Meaney, a Canadian neuroscientist at McGill University who studies how a mother's care shapes the development of her offspring.
- G. I. Joe: An American cartoon series of the 1980s. At the end of each episode came a short lesson for viewers and a line saying that knowing is half the battle.
- Gendler: Tamar Gendler, a philosopher and professor of philosophy and psychology at Yale University.
- Berreby: David Berreby, an American journalist who writes about science and about how people divide into “us” and “them”.
- Hodges: Bert Hodges, a psychologist who, together with Anne Geyer, took a fresh look at the results of Asch's experiments.
- Geyer: Anne Geyer, a psychologist and coauthor of the new look at Asch's experiments. It showed that the participants more often stood their ground.
- Darley: John Darley, an American social psychologist who studied when people help strangers.
- Batson: Dan Batson, an American social psychologist who studies what moves people when they help others.
- unconscious: Mental processes a person is not aware of. Freud believed that painful memories are repressed into it.
- Sacktor: Todd Sacktor, an American neuroscientist and neurologist who studies how the brain stores long-term memory.
- reconsolidation: Storing a memory again. When we recall something, the memory becomes fragile for a short time and is then saved anew.
- Provine: Robert Provine, an American neuroscientist and psychologist known for his research on laughter and other “odd” habits of the body.
- cataract: A clouding of the lens of the eye that makes a person see worse and worse. It is treated with surgery.
- Nisbett: Richard Nisbett, an American psychologist at the University of Michigan and author of a book about how intelligence develops.
- multiple regression: A statistical method that looks for a link between two quantities while trying to account for the influence of many others. It finds the link, but it cannot prove the cause.
- Mercier: Hugo Mercier, a cognitive scientist at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland who writes about how arguments change people's minds.
- McEwan: Ian McEwan, a British writer, author of the novels “Amsterdam” and “On Chesil Beach”.
All terms
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