The Darwinian "theory of everything" has always stood above its presumptive competitors because it came packaged with several "big problems," which could just as easily have been the theory's undoing as its vindication: altruism, sociality, organs of extreme perfection, and animal-built structures. With respect to the last one, the basic problem is that when we build, we act as purposeful, intentional and designing agents. Yet it is Darwinism's core assumption that such agency has no place in guiding evolution.

When animals build things, sometimes appearing to anticipate, match or exceed our own capabilities as architects, what are we to think? Do we conclude that other creatures can also act as intentional agents? In that case, the Darwinian vision of a world without such agency is undermined. Or do we conclude that our own intentionality is a quality apart, with no precedent in the living world from which we sprang? Drawing such a conclusion would be tantamount to succoring Darwin's bête noir, Platonic essentialism. This problem is not trivial: Indeed, it drove a wedge between Darwin and his "co-Darwinist," Alfred Russel Wallace. Yet Darwin himself, confronted with the magnificent structures built by bowerbirds, resorted to attributing them to the birds' pursuit of "pleasure"—a purposeful agency if ever there was one.

Nature's Awful Beauty

Neuroscientist Christopher deCharms is helping to develop a new kind of MRI that allows doctor and patient to look inside the brain in real time -- to see visual representations of brain processes as they happen. With his company Omneuron, deCharms has developed technology they call rtfMRI, for "real-time functional MRI" -- which is exactly what it sounds like. You move your arm, your brain lights up. You feel pain, your brain lights up.

How could we use the ability to see our brains in action? For a start, to help treat chronic pain with a kind of biofeedback; being able to visualize pain can help patients control it. And longer-term uses boggle the mind. Ours is the first generation, he believes, to be able to train and build our minds as systematically as a weightlifter builds a muscle. What will we do with this?

TED | Speakers | Christopher deCharms

BEGINNING IN 1997, an important change swept over cotton farms in northern China. By adopting new farming techniques, growers found they could spray far less insecticide over their fields. Within four years they had reduced their annual use of the poisonous chemicals by 156 million pounds - almost as much as is used in the entire state of California each year. Cotton yields in the region climbed, and production costs fell. Strikingly, the number of insecticide-related illnesses among farmers in the region dropped to a quarter of their previous level.

This story, which has been repeated around the world, is precisely the kind of triumph over chemicals that organic-farming advocates wish for.

But the hero in this story isn't organic farming. It is genetic engineering.

The new organic

Science and religion have often been at loggerheads. Now the former has decided to resolve the problem by trying to explain the existence of the latter

Where angels no longer fear to tread

If Craig Venter is the iconic scientist of the early 21st century, what conception of science does he embody?

Belligerent, innovative, ambitious and entrepreneurial, he is an emblem of the radical changes in American scientific life, and especially in the lives of biomedical scientists, over the past thirty years or so. The intense relationship between biomedical science and capital is substantially new, and so is the texture of much scientific practice in the area, including the pace of work, the funds required to do the work, the instrumental production and processing of inconceivably large amounts of scientific information, and the institutional configurations in which biomedical science now happens. At the same time, Venter expresses sentiments about science that could scarcely be more traditional, even romantic.

A ruggedly freebooting individualist, contemptuous of authority and of bureaucracy, he revives an old conception of scientific independence and integrity in an age when the bureaucracies that allegedly block the advance of science are as much academic and non-profit as they are commercial.

When academic bureaucracies are said to protect intellectual orthodoxies, when cumbersome and politicised government bureaucracies harbour cults of personality, and when corporate bureaucracies build on business models that stultify both science and commercial growth, the only person you can trust is an edgy hybrid of self-confessed ‘bad boy’ and self-advertised humanitarian who thinks he has a spoon long enough to sup with all the institutional devils and sacrifice his integrity to none. The imaginative development of new institutional forms appropriate to the new science, the new economy, and a newly emerging moral order is made to depend on a unique individual.

Later this year, when ‘boot up’ inevitably happens, he will – according to some conceptions of the thing – have created life. If you trust Craig Venter, he will, like his predecessor in the life-creating business, see that it is good.

I’m a Surfer

I am sure I am not the only one in this year of Einstein who receives calls from journalists asking, "Why is there no new Einstein?" While we have ready answers, there is still the disquieting worry that perhaps a lesson might be learned from the fact that this one person, who was initially unable to find an academic job, did more to advance physics than most of the rest of us put together have since.

Two from the archive:

Paul Graham:

It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck.

Richard Hamming:

I finally adopted what I called "Great Thoughts Time." When I went to lunch Friday noon, I would only discuss great thoughts after that. By great thoughts I mean ones like: "What will be the role of computers in all of AT&T?", "How will computers change science?" For example, I came up with the observation at that time that nine out of ten experiments were done in the lab and one in ten on the computer. I made a remark to the vice presidents one time, that it would be reversed, i.e. nine out of ten experiments would be done on the computer and one in ten in the lab. They knew I was a crazy mathematician and had no sense of reality. I knew they were wrong and they've been proved wrong while I have been proved right. They built laboratories when they didn't need them. I saw that computers were transforming science because I spent a lot of time asking "What will be the impact of computers on science and how can I change it?" I asked myself, "How is it going to change Bell Labs?" I remarked one time, in the same address, that more than one-half of the people at Bell Labs will be interacting closely with computing machines before I leave. Well, you all have terminals now. I thought hard about where was my field going, where were the opportunities, and what were the important things to do. Let me go there so there is a chance I can do important things.

Why is there no new Einstein?

The main purpose of the project Videolectures.Net is to provide free and open access of a high quality video lectures presented by distinguished scholars and scientists at the most important and prominent events like conferences, summer schools, workshops and science promotional events from many fields of Science. The portal is aimed at promoting science, exchanging ideas and fostering knowledge sharing by providing high quality didactic contents not only to a scientific community but also to a general public.

Videolectures.net

In making the case that she would be a better President than Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton never forgets to summon the argument that she has more experience. But experience doesn't always help. In fact, three decades of research into expert performance has shown that experience itself — the raw amount of time you spend pursuing any particular activity, from brain surgery to skiing — can actually hinder your ability to deliver reproducibly superior performance.

The Science of Experience

How do we know what another person is thinking? New research suggests we use the same brain region that we do when thinking about ourselves — but only as long as we judge the person to be similar to us.

When second-guessing the opinions and feelings of those unlike ourselves, this brain region does not get involved, the new research shows. This may mean we are more likely to fall back on stereotyping — potentially helping to explain the causes of social tensions such as racism or religious disputes.

How we judge the thoughts of others

Another example that we've been investigating are huge swarms of Mormon crickets. If you look at these swarms, all of the individuals are marching in the same direction, and it looks like cooperative behavior. Perhaps they have come to a collective decision to move from one place to another. We investigated this collective decision, and what really makes this system work in the case of the Mormon cricket is cannibalism.

From the archive:

If Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan -- a Camry, say -- to the ultra-efficient Prius.

Ants Have Algorithms