Description:

Drawn from the cutting-edge frontiers of science, *This Explains Everything* will revolutionize your understanding of the world. *What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation? * This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website"—*The Guardian*), posed to the world's most influential minds. Flowing from the horizons of physics, economics, psychology, neuroscience, and more, *This Explains Everything* presents 150 of the most surprising and brilliant theories of the way of our minds, societies, and universe work. Jared Diamond on biological electricity • Nassim Nicholas Taleb on positive stress • Steven Pinker on the deep genetic roots of human conflict • Richard Dawkins on pattern recognition • Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek on simplicity • Lisa Randall on the Higgs mechanism • BRIAN Eno on the limits of intuition • Richard Thaler on the power of commitment • V. S. Ramachandran on the "neural code" of consciousness • Nobel Prize winner ERIC KANDEL on the power of psychotherapy • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on "Lord Acton's Dictum" • Lawrence M. Krauss on the unification of electricity and magnetism • plus contributions by Martin J. Rees • Kevin Kelly • Clay Shirky • Daniel C. Dennett • Sherry Turkle • Philip Zimbardo • Lee Smolin • Rebecca Newberger Goldstein • Seth Lloyd • Stewart Brand • George Dyson • Matt Ridley