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The Edge Foundation is an organization of science and technology intellectuals created in 1988 as an outgrowth of The Reality Club. Its motto is 'to seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together and have themselves ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.' Currently, its main activity is maintaining the Edge.org website, where it produces a free web publication edited by publisher and businessman John Brockman.

The Third Culture

The Third Culture is a term used to describe the growing movement towards an integration of literary and scientific thinking. John Brockman published a book of the same name whose themes are continued at the Edge website. Here, scientists and others are invited to contribute their thoughts in a manner readily accessible to non-specialist readers. In doing so, leading thinkers are able to communicate directly with each other and the public without the intervention of middlemen such as journalists and journal editors. Many areas of academic work are incorporated, including genetics, physics, mathematics, psychology, evolutionary biology, philosophy and computing technology. Past and present contributors include: Martin Rees, Craig Venter, V.S. Ramachandran, Paul Bloom, Jesse Bering, Matt Ridley, Marco Iacaboni, Paul Davies, Ernst Poeppel, Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Jared Diamond, Leonard Susskind, Brian Greene, Simon Baron-Cohen, Freeman Dyson, Steven Pinker and Dan Sperber.

Publications

In recent years Edge has posed its members an annual question. In 2005 this was "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"[1] The responses generated were published as a book under the title What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty with an introduction by the novelist Ian McEwan.

In 2006 Edge posed the question, "What is your dangerous question"?[2] The responses formed the book What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable, which was published with an introduction by Steven Pinker and an afterword by Richard Dawkins.

In 2007 Edge posed the question, "What are you optimistic about? Why"?[3].

References

  • John Brockman, The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, Simon & Schuster: 1995 ISBN 0-684-82344-6
  • What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty, Free Press, UK, 2005 ISBN 0-7432-7592-6
  • What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable, Harper Perennial, 2007 ISBN 0061214957
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