This Idea Must Die Book Report

   This Idea Must Die, edited by John Brockman brings together 175 of the world's most brilliant minds. These brilliant minds believe that some scientific theories are blocking progress and need to be retired. For example everyone knows gravity is a real thing, but this book will make you really think that there is a .0001% chance that gravity is not real. Overall this book makes you think or reconsider everything you know.
 
   My favorite section in this book was "Altruism." The definition of altruism is that you do something for other people, not just for yourself. I really liked this topic because I believe our society is starting to become more selfish. My favorite quote in this entire book is "Everyone feels better when you're well, and you feel better when everyone is well." This gives me hope that if everyone can work together and be kind that this world can be a better place. I feel that the violence rate has gone up and that we need to come together before it gets any worse.

   The second passage I really enjoyed was "Beware of Arrogance! Retire Nothing!" This entire book is about retiring scientific theories that need to be updated, but in this passage wrote by Ian McEwan, he goes against the entire book. He states that we shouldn't retire anything, as wrong scientific theories can help us learn and develop a better scientific theory. I agree that we shouldn't just throw aways theories because they are wrong. We can use these theories to see how we got there and build upon it to better understand the topic.

   "Science and Technology" written by Geroge Dyson was one of the short, but interesting passage in the book. This section is about half a page and it talks about how there can be science without technology and that technology can go on without science. Before reading this I didn't think that technology can really advance or thrive without science and vice versa with science. Some examples of science thriving without technology is the Pythagoreans to Japanese temple geometry. This shows that we shouldn't heavily depend on one or the other to thrive.

   In conclusion, if you like to make your brain work and question theories this is the perfect book for you! I really liked the book because it gave me a lot of knowledge in theories that I've never heard of before. Also liked that the book was challenging in terms of the scientific vocabulary used in the book so that I had to search it online to find out the definition which allowed me to learn new vocabulary. What I didn't like about the book was that it wasn't really organized. Sections could be half a page or 5 pages, but the constant skipping between topics made me lose interest very easily in certain topics, but overall a very educating book!

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530111-000-this-idea-must-die-which-science-ideas-should-retire/