THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER

"Given the ability of regulatory proteins to rescue functions between taxa 
that haven't shared a common ancestor for over 600 million years how do we 
integrate this into the way we think about the evolution of phenotype?" 

JEREMY C. AHOUSE
Works in developmental genetics at University of Wisconsin, Madison. 



"Is a greater understanding of the way the brain works going to give me a 
new language to explain what it is like to be me? Will the words we use 
now one day seem as strange as the 'humours' we once used to explain the 
state of our bodies? And what will be the consequence if a scientist gains 
the power to know me better than I can know myself?" 

ALUN ANDERSON
Editor of New Scientist, biologist and author of Science And Technology In 
Japan. 



"What is the crucial distinction between inanimate matter and an entity 
which can act as an 'agent', manipulating the world on its own behalf; and 
how does that change happen?" 

PHILIP ANDERSON
Nobel laureate physicist at Princeton. 



"Exactly how much of nature can we trash and burn and get away with it?" 

NATALIE ANGIER
Science writer for The New York Times; author of Natural Obsessions, The 
Beauty Of The Beastly. 



"To what extent can we achieve a more just society through the use of 
better economic indicators, and to what extent is our choice of economic 
indicators just a reificiation of the wishes of those who are already 
economically powerful?" 

JOHN BAEZ
Mathematical physicist at University of California, Riverside. 



"What if Gutenberg had invented the world wide web instead of the movable 
type slug? How would the questions scientists chose to ask themselves over 
the past five centuries, and the language in which they chose to answer, 
have been different?" 

JAMES BAILEY
Former executive at Thinking Machines; author of After Thought. 



"As a theoretical physicist, the interpretation of quantum mechanics and 
the nature of time are what occupy me most, but, as a mystified sentient 
being, I should like to ask the child's question: Are the most remarkable 
things in life 
JULIAN BARBOUR
Theoretical physicist; author of The Frame Of Mind. 



"Will we ever generate enough bandwidth to convey prana?" 

JOHN PERRY BARLOW
Co-founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation; a former lyricist for the 
Grateful Dead. 



"Is the Universe a great mechanism, a great computation, a great symmetry, 
a great accident, or a great thought?" 

"Is there enough information in the observable universe to identify the 
fundamental laws of Nature beyond all reasonable doubt?" 

"Are there other minds that think about us?" 

JOHN D. BARROW
Cosmologist, Professor of Astronomy, University of Sussex, UK; author of 
Theories Of Everything; Pi In The Sky. 



"How can we build a new ethics of respect for life that goes beyond 
individual survival to include the necessity of death, the preservation of 
the environment, and our current and developing scientific knowledge?" 

MARY CATHERINE BATESON
Anthropologist, George Mason University; author Composing A Life; 
Peripheral Visions. 



"How can considering the longest time scales in human endeavor lead us to 
deal with the approaching crises of greenhouse warming and species 
diversity?" 

GREGORY BENFORD
Physicist, University of California, Irvine; author of Timescape. 



"How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of 
difficult and rare?" 

STEWART BRAND
Founder of The Whole Earth Catalog; author of How Buildings Learn. 



"Which cognitive skills develop in any reasonably normal human environment 
and which only in specific socio-cultural contexts?" 

JOHN T. BRUER
President, James S. McDonnell Foundation 



"What is the mathematical essence that distinguishes living from 
non-living, so that we can engineer a transcendence across the current 
boundaries?" 

ROD BROOKS
Computer scientist; director of MIT's AI Lab. 



"Do humans have evolved homicide modules 
DAVID BUSS
Psychologist at University of Texas at Austin; author of The Evolution Of 
Desire. 



"If Mosaic had never supported pictures (read: the Internet didn't become 
a commercial medium), what would I be doing right now?" 

JASON McCABE CALCANIS
Publisher, Silicon Alley Reporter. 



"How will minds expand, once we understand how the brain makes mind?" 

WILLIAM H. CALVIN Theoretical neurophysiologist, University of Washington; 
author of The Cerebral Code; How Brains Think. 



"Any musically aware listener will know of music that breaks out of 
established forms or syntax to profound effect 
PHILIP CAMPBELL
Editor of Nature. 



"It's probably the case that intergroup competition was an important part 
of human evolution and there is increasing evidence that 'ethnicity' may 
be a correlate of 'modernity.' If ethnicity, and the human use of 
biological cues (and cultural and linguistic cues) to indicate social 
identity are parts of our evolutionary legacy, it makes it that much 
harder to eradicate ethnocentrism and racism. Can we do it? How can we 
engage our focus on the flip side of competition 
RACHEL CASPARI
Anthropologist at the University of Michigan; coauthor of Race And Human 
Evolution. 



"How can we develop an objective language for describing subjective 
experience?" 

DAVID CHALMERS Philosopher, University of California, Santa Cruz; author 
of The Conscious Mind. 



"When will we learn to ask 'And then what' as a matter of course?" 

JEREMY CHERFAS
Biologist and BBC Radio Four broadcaster; author of The Seed Savers 
Handbook. 



"If Gordon Moore was correct in his prediction that the amount of 
information storable on semiconductor chips would double every 18 months, 
then over time is time more or less valuable?" 

LUYEN CHOU
President and CEO of Learn Technologies Interactive in New York City, an 
interactive media developer and publisher. 



"How can we sustain young people's interest in asking questions such as 
these? Does the emphasis on personal success and security divert psychic 
energy from taking the long-term view on things? How long can we keep 
curiosity and creativity alive in an increasingly materialistic culture?" 

MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI



Psychologist, University of Chicago; author of Flow: The Psychology Of 
Optimal Experience; Creativity. "What is information and where does it 
ultimately originate?" 

PAUL DAVIES
Physicist, University of Adelaide, Australia; author of The Mind Of God; 
Are We Alone. 



"What might a second specimen of the phenomenon that we call life look 
like?" 

RICHARD DAWKINS
Evolutionary biologist, Oxford; author of River Out Of Eden; Climbing 
Mount Improbable. 



"How can we even begin to formulate the right questions about 
consciousness?" 

STANISLAS DEHAENE
Cognitive neuropsychologist, Institut National de la Santi; author of The 
Number Sense. 



"How on earth does the brain manage its division of labor problem 
DANIEL C. DENNETT 
Philosopher, Tufts University; author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea; Kinds Of 
Minds. 



"Throughout its history, the scientific community has shown great 
integrity in resisting the onslaught of anti-rationalism. How can it now 
be persuaded to show the same integrity in regard to scientism?" 

DAVID DEUTSCH
Physicist, Oxford University; author of The Fabric Of Reality. 



"Why are decentralized processes ubiquitous in nature and society and why 
are they so poorly understood that people will sacrifice their autonomy 
and freedom for authoritarian, centralized solutions (gods, governments, 
and gurus) to personal and social problems?" 

ARTHUR DE VANY 
Professor, Mathematical Behavioral Sciences Dept., University Of 
California, Irvine. 



"Is justice real?" 

THOMAS DE ZENGOTITA 
Anthropologist; teaches philosophy and anthropology at The Dalton School 
and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University. 



"What do collapses of past societies teach us about our own future?" 

JARED DIAMOND
Biologist, UCLA Medical School; author of The Third Chimpanzee; Guns, 
Germs, And Steel 



"Is psychic phenomenon just wishful thinking and can we ever prove it 
exists or doesn't exist using scientific methodology." 

JOHN C. DVORAK
Columnist for Pc Magazine; Pc/Computing, Boardwatch. 



"What makes a soul? And if machines ever have souls, what will be the 
equivalent of psychoactive drugs? of pain? of the physical / emotional 
high I get from having a clean office?" 

ESTHER DYSON
President, Edventures Holdings, Inc; publisher of Release 1.0 Newsletter; 
author of Release 2.0. 



"The best questions were asked long ago. For example, Fermi's question, 
'Where are they?', and Blake's question, 'How do you know but ev'ry bird 
that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your 
senses five?' My question is, 'What goes on inside the head of a baby?' " 

FREEMAN DYSON
Physicist, Institute for Advanced Study; author of Disturbing The 
Universe; From Eros To Gaia. 



"Why not trees in the oceans?" 

GEORGE DYSON
Leading authority in the field of Russian Aleut kayaks; author of 
Baidarka; Darwin Among The Machines. 



"Most human beings perform effortlessly a variety of tasks that are 
computationally extremely difficult (such as seeing, holding objects and 
understanding speech); but they are generally poor and vary enormously in 
tasks that are computationally easy (such as solving puzzles, doing 
mathematics and science). Given that the latter skills are apparently as 
biologically valuable as the former, does this disparity reveal a 
fundamental limitation of the human brain?" 

COLIN BLAKEMORE
Neuroscientist, Oxford; President, British Association for the Advancement 
of Science; author of The Mind's Brain. 



"Quantum mechanics was (and is) such a shock because it contradicts 
beliefs about physical reality that we didn't even know we had, beliefs so 
deeply embedded in the language of everyday speech that their 
contradictions seem not so much false as simply nonsensical. When we 
contact alien intelligences, will the effect on our ideas of mental 
reality be as profound as those of quantum mechanics on our ideas of 
physical reality." 

SIDNEY COLEMAN
Physicist, Harvard University. 



"How can we learn to work with metaphor so that it serves rather than 
enthralls us?" 

"Can we hope to build a Grand Universal Theory of Ideas?" 

"Who holds the translation black box which will allow the subjective to 
talk to the objective?" 

LIZ ELSE
Editor at New Scientist. 



"Why does history matter?" 

KATIE HAFNER
Technology Correspondent, New York Times; author of Where Wizards Stay Up 
Late. 



"What is the evolutionary advantage of the universality of mysticism in 
human societies? could it have played a vital role when populations were 
small, and widely dispersed, but now is outdated for modern global 
societies?" 

DONALD JOHANSON
Paleoanthropologist at Institute of Human Origins, Arizona State 
University; author of Lucy; The Beginnings of Humankind. 



"We are hurtling toward an immersive, networked virtual reality, driven by 
two unstoppable trends 
JOHN McCREA
Web pioneer; Director of Marketing for the Cosmo Software division of 
Silicon Graphics. 



"Can we learn to die?" 

HANS-JOACHIM METZGER
Co-editor and translator of the German edition of the writings and 
lectures of Jacques Lacan. 



"What are the powers, and the limits, of human intuition?" 

DAVID G. MYERS
Psychologist at Hope College; author of The Pursuit of Happiness. 



"Is there such a thing as narrative complexity?" 

MICHAEL NESMITH
Artist, writer, and business man; former cast member of "The Monkees". 



"Is 'self' necessary to life?" 

"Is a sense of 'self' necessary to consciousness?" 

"What would a consciousness without a sense of 'self' be like?" 

GEORGE F. SMOOT
Research astrophysicist, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley; coauthor of 
Wrinkles in Time. 



"The main reason I have not sent you a question is that I can not think of 
one worth sending. So maybe my appropriate question is 'What question 
should I ask?' The one I wish I could identify would be of great 
intellectual or practical interest, and I (or someone) would have some 
hope of solving it. Peter Medawar once defined science as 'the art of the 
soluble'. This is an example of a definition that may be formally correct 
but does not help anyone trying to find out what science is, but it makes 
a good point. For a problem to be scientifically important it has to be 
soluble. How many angels can dance on a pinhead may be a problem of great 
interest to some people, but it is not soluble." 

GEORGE C. WILLIAMS
Evolutionary biologist (emeritus) at SUNY -Stony Brook; author of 
Adaptation and Natural Selection; The Ponyfish's Glow. 



"If tragedy + time = comedy, what is the formula for equally therapeutic 
music? Do (Blues) musicians reach a third person perspective similar to 
that found in meditation, mind-altering drugs, and genius?" 

DELTA WILLIS
Writer; author of The Sand Dollar & the Slide Rule; The Hominid Gang. 



"Why do people believe in things for which there is no evidence and would 
it be a mistake to try and persuade them not to?" 

LEWIS WOLPERT
Biologist at University College, London; author of The Triumph of the 
Embryo ; The Unnatural Nature of Science.