http://www.edge.org/annual-questionsThe reader is not expected to agree with everything written in this book, which would probably defeat the point of its premise - but it allows the reader to examine a wide range of interesting theories and personal beliefs set in the anthology - the clarity and conciseness with which many of these have been espoused making it a digestible perusal even for average readers like myself.Highly recommendable.

Short 1-3 page "essays" on the beliefs of researchers and thinkers working at the fringes of empirical science (neuroscience, quantum physics, psychology, virtual reality, mathematics, etc.). It's a good introduction to a lot of ideas and figures. What is interesting is that many of the essays will expound upon a particular hypothesis before the next essay presents the antithesis.

I read this starting shortly after I wrote my outline of a philosophy. I got it on the Kindle reader for my iPhone, and especially because if the very short "chapters" it's made for great train reading.It's also been really fun and interesting. A good reminder that people believe all kinds of crazy things - even smart people. I've been able to compare a lot of ideas with my own. Some of them seem spot on, others totally delusional.There's a range of interpretations of the question ("What do you

Quite bluntly, this book is a load of rubbish.  There is a sense of irony that few of the supposedly "great thinkers" of this book seem to get, and that is that a lot less is certain that the writers included here tend to think.  Most of the writers (although mercifully not all) are atheists of a particularly unfortuante kind, the kind that are unaware of their own dependence on assumptions and presumptions about that which is true.  A great many of the authors, even worse, have a degree of cont...

This book includes tiny essays (no more than four pages each, sometimes as short as a paragraph) by the world's smartest people about their hunches, estimates, guesses about a broad range of topics. It's a pretty thoughtful survey that results in a lot of interesting ideas. Some of the more interesting concepts and quotes:"I believe that the human race will never decide that an advanced computer possesses consciousness.""We will find ways to circumvent the speed of light as a limit on the commun...

I'm not convinced that this was a great idea for a book. It reads like an internet forum (which is more or less what it actually started as), where some people write at length and others can barely be bothered to go beyond a few sentences. For instance, they put Richard Dawkins' name on the back cover, presumably to attract sales, but his contribution amounts to a single paragraph. It contains an interesting idea, but it's over and then we're on to someone else's two cents. That's not very satis...

The Seed Media Offices recently sent a book to me to review. This book, What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty (2006, Harper Perennial) is edited by John Brockman, publisher of Edge. The book is a collection of essays written by more than 100 scientists and other leading scholars in response to the question, "What do you believe even though you cannot prove it?" Each essay is blog-length, ranging between five words and approximately 800–...

This book has such an interesting premise that I decided to take a chance on it. I was hoping for some soaring flights of speculative thought, and did find some ideas that made me pause and think. The book consists of 109 short contributions, ranging from a single sentence to three pages, with most a page and a half, and it is a mixed bag of profound and pedestrian.It didn’t start out well for me. The selections are loosely grouped together, and in the first one the writers talk about their beli...

Very interesting read. Check out Edge.org... it's all there, plus more. Very thought provoking.From Publishers WeeklyThe title's question was posed on Edge.org (an online intellectual clearing house), challenging more than 100 intellectuals of every stripe—from Richard Dawkins to Ian McEwan—to confess the personal theories they cannot demonstrate with certainty. The results, gathered by literary agent and editor Brockman, is a stimulating collection of micro-essays (mainly by scientists) divulgi...

Great book format for getting introduced to many scientists, but the content gets repetitive and overlaps heavily with, "What Have You Changed Your Mind About?" by the same author (in fact, some of the essays are word-for-word repeats).

Nice little collection, although there was a little too much repetition of some of the main themes (especially physics, neuroscience, and evolution). I was drawn to the evolution category in particular, where there were some real gems such as Judith Rich Harris' speculations about a potential role in evolution for parental selection (i.e. which offspring to keep and which to abandon when resources are limiting - potentially contributing to the evolution of traits deemed preferable by parents); J...

What was more interesting than the essays themselves, were the various ways in which these scientists and academics – by the very nature of their pursuits more fluent in the language and concepts of evidence, proof, belief, doubt, and faith than your everyday average person – deconstructed the question and reframed it in an answerable way.THAT was the cool thing about this collection.Mostly a mixed bag, but there were also several really great short essays. Particularly those by Scott Altran, Sa...

It’s taken a couple attempts to finish this book, but I’m glad I did. I was lost for some of the astrophysics entries; there seemed to be too many complex terms and obscure theories that overwhelmed my science knowledge. But, thankfully, that didn’t happen very often. Most of the entries provided new points of view for phenomenon I was familiar with (or able to easily research and understand). I’m somewhat familiar with evolution, but hadn’t thought about evolution in relation to beliefs. One es...

This is what I would call a toilet book – the kind of reading matter that one keeps beside the toilet to be read in snatches. Most the articles go for three pages at the longest. What is particularly surprising is that the least interesting responses to the question of what you believe were from the most famous people. Dawkins, Davies, McEwan and even Diamond presented dull as dishwater articles – in fact, you could nearly guess exactly what each of them would say before reading their articles.

Brilliant idea leading to a most fascinating and enlightening readThis seemingly modest little book with a cartoon like cover is in my (in this case clearly) humble opinion one of the best books of 2006. John Brockman, who is a man with a gift for editing the scientific mind and for getting the most from people who are not necessarily at their best when writing for a general readership, is the force behind the idea for this book. The idea is something close to a stroke of genius: get an all-star...

A completely humbling experience. Reading this book feels like those existential conversations you have with your sister on a Sunday morning, it's exciting. Probing the minds of wiser men to explore theories that are just as outlandish as your sisters' but nonetheless intelligent and some even hopeful.

Probably would give this more a 3.5 star rating. Things I liked about the book was that it really was a smattering of shared ideas about what people think will be proved true. Like there is life out there somewhere in the universe. (not a surprising thought but one that popped up a lot.) There was other common un-provable ideas. One thing that popped up that I found (unsurprising) a bit of a "come on people" was the semantic responses of what can be proved, and what makes something provable etc....

I've read some atheist who ludicrously claim they hold no beliefs, they go about mocking faith and gloat about how they only have knowledge based on reason and science, he he... Considering these happily deluded pseudo-skeptics and "free-thinkers", I appreciated these quotes from this book:"I’ve always found belief a bit difficult; most of what I believe to be true lies far beyond my ability to prove it. As far as knowledge goes, I’m a consumer and sometimes a distributor, not a producer. My bel...

Okay, so this is supposed to be the responses of the greatest thinkers still alive in this century, at least in the scientific community anyway, to the question: "What do you believe but cannot prove?" And, I concede, that in several entries, I was inspired and challenged by the original theories posed about everything from the origin of the universe to whether or not animals have feelings to Armageddon and the existence of God. However, a good many of the entries (though the foreword cajoles yo...

An amazing tale that relates the history of science and what we believe in. Incredible narrated and written.