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The Frontiers of Knowledge
From the bestselling polymath, a gripping history of science, life on earth and the human mind - and what we might know in the future.
In very recent times humanity has learned a vast amount about the universe, the past, and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to the science we have, for example, addresses just 5% of the universe; pre-history is still being revealed, with thousands of historical sites yet to be explored; and the new neurosciences of mind and brain are just beginning.
What do we know, and how do we know it? What do we now know that we don't know? And what have we learned about the obstacles to knowing more? In a time of deepening battles over what knowledge and truth mean, these questions matter more than ever. Bestselling polymath and philosopher A. C. Grayling seeks to answer them in three crucial areas at the frontiers of science, history, and psychology.
A remarkable history of science, life on earth, and the human mind itself, this is a compelling and fascinating tour de force, written with verve, clarity and remarkable breadth of knowledge.
In very recent times humanity has learned a vast amount about the universe, the past, and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to the science we have, for example, addresses just 5% of the universe; pre-history is still being revealed, with thousands of historical sites yet to be explored; and the new neurosciences of mind and brain are just beginning.
What do we know, and how do we know it? What do we now know that we don't know? And what have we learned about the obstacles to knowing more? In a time of deepening battles over what knowledge and truth mean, these questions matter more than ever. Bestselling polymath and philosopher A. C. Grayling seeks to answer them in three crucial areas at the frontiers of science, history, and psychology.
A remarkable history of science, life on earth, and the human mind itself, this is a compelling and fascinating tour de force, written with verve, clarity and remarkable breadth of knowledge.
456 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2022
118 people are currently reading
1381 people want to read
About the author
A.C. Grayling
94 books659 followersAnthony Clifford "A. C." Grayling is a British philosopher. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.
He is a director and contributor at Prospect Magazine, as well as a Vice President of the British Humanist Association. His main academic interests lie in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophical logic. He has described himself as "a man of the left" and is associated in Britain with the new atheism movement, and is sometimes described as the 'Fifth Horseman of New Atheism'. He appears in the British media discussing philosophy.
He is a director and contributor at Prospect Magazine, as well as a Vice President of the British Humanist Association. His main academic interests lie in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophical logic. He has described himself as "a man of the left" and is associated in Britain with the new atheism movement, and is sometimes described as the 'Fifth Horseman of New Atheism'. He appears in the British media discussing philosophy.
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July 30, 2021
It’s remarkable to think that it was only a few centuries ago that the majority of the Western world believed that the earth was less than 10,000 years old, that the sun and planets revolved around the stationary earth, and that humans were specially created in God’s image, equipped with immortal souls that survived bodily death to inhabit, for all eternity, a supernatural realm (a subset of the population, amazingly enough, still believes all or most of this).
Since then, our picture of the world has changed dramatically, to say the least. We now know that the universe is billions of years old, that the earth is one of an estimated 700 quintillion planets occupying one of around 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, and that humans are one among a number of primate species having evolved over the course of millions of years.
The incredible story of how we came to know all of this, what we have left to discover, and the lessons we’ve learned about the process of inquiry itself is the ambitious project undertaken by the philosopher and polymath A. C. Grayling in his latest book, Frontiers of Knowledge: What We Now Know About Science, History, and the Mind. Having already written The History of Philosophy in 2019 (one of, if not the best single-volume accounts of the history of the subject), Grayling turns his attention to the development and current state of our scientific and historical knowledge.
Grayling sets out to explore three subjects that have utterly transformed our modern world-views: science, history, and psychology, and more specifically, fundamental physics and cosmology, human evolution and our pre-classical past, and the new sciences of the brain and mind, making up the three main sections of the book.
Science
Grayling begins part one by recounting the history of technology, the rise of science, and the development of modern physics. But this is not simply a book about the history of science. Grayling is more interested in the deeper epistemological questions concerning how we know what we do and what we've discovered about the process of scientific discovery itself. As Grayling wrote:
“[In addition to what we know], it also matters that we understand how we know. When we see how scientific and historical knowledge is acquired, what problems are overcome in acquiring it, and what questions are raised about the assumptions and methods involved, we not only learn how to evaluate what we know, but we also learn a great deal about responsible thinking and the demands of intellectual honesty. These matter in every sphere of human activity, and they are at a premium.”
If we really want to understand the state of knowledge in physics, for example, we can’t just set about learning the history of physics and its various experiments and discoveries. We must also consider the methodological principles by which those discoveries were made, the philosophical implications of those discoveries, and the fundamental philosophical problems associated with their interpretations. This is, in fact, what is missing, or else covered inadequately, in most accounts of popular science written by practicing scientists.
To take one example of a methodological problem (Grayling lists a dozen), consider the Ptolemy Problem. Here’s how Grayling describes it:
“Ptolemy’s geocentric [earth-centered] model of the universe ‘worked’ in a number of ways, permitting the successful navigation of the oceans and prediction of eclipses, thus showing that a theory can be efficacious in some respects while still being incorrect. How do we avoid being misled by pragmatic adequacy?”
This should bring to mind the current state of our knowledge in quantum physics; while quantum mechanics is pragmatically adequate—being responsible for a host of technologies—this fact in itself—just as with the geocentric model of the universe—is no guarantee that it is the correct model of reality. Basic methodological considerations such as these—often overlooked in the more superficial popular science books available—is what sets Grayling’s book apart from the others.
The most interesting part of Grayling’s coverage of particle physics is his suggestion that the reason quantum physics seems so foreign to us is that we are not cognitively primed to understand scales that small. He notes how contemporary cognitive science is catching up to the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, which essentially states that how the world appears to us is a product of our cognitive capacities, not how the world is “in itself.”
Any researcher studying human perception understands this. Taking vision as an example, think about how, as light enters the lens of the eye and strikes the retina, an electrical impulse is sent along the optic nerve to the visual cortex in the occipital lobe of the brain, where the image is “seen.” The resulting image, however, is only a re-construction by the brain of electricity and chemical reactions—encased as they are in our pitch-black skulls—into a three-dimensional full-color image that is projected “out there” in three-dimensional space.
The eyes, in this case, are not acting as “windows” into the world, where the brain just sees an unadulterated picture of reality; instead, the brain is actively creating our reality based on how it is designed to structure experience. We can never step outside of our brains to compare our perceptions to how the world “really is,” but there is no reason to suppose that our brains are primed to pick up on every aspect of the underlying reality, only the parts which impinge on our perceptual systems and then only based on how they are reconstructed in the “virtual reality” created by our cognitive architecture. (Keep in mind, for example, that visible light accounts for only 0.0035 percent of the entire electromagnetic spectrum.)
As Grayling notes, this is a big clue as to why quantum physics is so puzzling, and a point that escapes the notice of most philosophically-naive physicists. If what we are perceiving in the world of everyday objects is not the world in itself, but rather our own cognitive constructions—like the icons on a computer interface that mask the internal workings of the computer—then even if we use technology to penetrate smaller scales, we are still only able to conceptualize subatomic scales according to our macroscopic pictures of reality. And if our understanding begins to break down, it’s not because we have yet to fully understand the subatomic world, it’s because we don’t have the cognitive capacity to ever understand the subatomic world, or the fundamental structure of reality that exists at scales our brains never evolved to care about.
To take the computer example a little further, if everyday objects are like the icons on a computer interface, then zooming in to everyday objects with the assistance of technology is like zooming in on the icons to discover that they are composed of pixels. But whether viewing the icons from a distance or up close as a collection of pixels, both perspectives still mask the underlying operations of the computer—the hardware, transistors, and electrical activity responsible for the generation of the icon images—in the same way that everyday objects and the subatomic world mask an underlying reality we’re not equipped to penetrate.
As Grayling points out, the current mysteries of quantum physics can then be explained in one of two ways. The first option is to suppose that our theories of quantum physics are either wrong or incomplete, but their experimental success suggests otherwise (unless this is an example of the Ptolemy problem described above). The second possibility—and one I find to be more likely—is that, as Grayling puts it, “the cognitive architecture of our thought imposes conceptions of order, causality, linearity, consistency, monotonicity, uniformity, predictability, and so on, which are as useful to conceptualizing quantum phenomena as it would be to apply dog-grooming techniques to solving quadratic equations.”
We simply did not evolve to understand the very small and very large scales of space and time that exist outside of our cognitive and experimental reach. This may sound like a defeatist position—and we may well do better to assume it’s not true, in case new discoveries or experiments prove it to be wrong—but it does go a long way in explaining our lack of progress in understanding the incoherence of the quantum world.
This Kantian way of seeing the world also explains why mathematics is so effective in science; if we experience the world according to the way our brains structure reality—and our brains structure reality quantitatively in space and time—then it is no longer such a mystery as to why that particular tool or way of thinking is so effective. The corollary, however, is that, as we come to rely more on mathematics to explain the nature of reality, we must confront the possibility that what we’re describing has more to do with the nature of our minds than with nature itself.
Grayling ends the section on science by considering whether or not we are justified in seeking a “theory of everything,” and why we are so obsessed with the idea that all of reality must necessarily be reduced to a single substance or equation. The origin of this idea lies with the ancient Greeks—and specifically Parmenides—but there is little reason to think that the universe out of necessity must conform to our ideas about how we think the universe “should” be. And even if experiment or mathematical discovery suggests that the universe is structured in a particular way, it’s possible that, as discussed above, this is telling us more about how our brains actively construct reality than reality itself.
Kant, incredibly, was aware of all of this long ago. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant wrote:
“Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason.”
If modern science is butting up against those cognitive limitations, the prospects of discovering a “theory of everything,” or explaining the deep mysteries of the quantum world, are slim. Still, we have no choice but to pursue the answers, due to innate human curiosity and because it cannot be predicted ahead of time what human ingenuity will discover. For this reason, cognitive closure—based on the human desire to eliminate ambiguity and arrive at definite conclusions—is one of the biggest intellectual mistakes we can make, and represents the most significant obstacle to continued progress. We must push forward, keeping in mind the limitations and issues we must overcome.
History
Next, Grayling turns to history, as he recounts our evolutionary and pre-classical past, noting how it was not until as late as the nineteenth century before we were able to piece together anything at all (excluding mythology) about history prior to ancient Greece. Before then, most people just assumed that pre-history was what the Old Testament said it was. We now have a much richer conception of our past compared to the 6,000 years presented in the Bible, including the fact that we used to co-exist with several other species of Homo before they all went extinct.
Sticking with the same approach, Grayling presents a clear picture of what we know about our past, how we know it, what we have left to learn, and the methodological considerations and debates that are often missing from historical accounts that paint a far more straightforward picture than what the evidence allows.
The strength of this section lies in Grayling’s consideration of the philosophy of history, and the question of whether we can ever truly understand the past in objective terms without reading into the past our present concerns, viewpoints, perspectives, and biases.
Since we can reconstruct the past only through preserved remains and written accounts—and since we know that written accounts are not always reliable—we have reason to suspect that the past may have been significantly different from what we can assemble from the available evidence.
Consider that even reports of traffic accidents, for example, vary by observer depending on the vagaries of memory, disposition, sympathy, and motivation. And if accounts can vary widely concerning an event that just recently transpired, imagine how greatly the problem is exacerbated the further one goes back in time.
All history, in a sense, is therefore selection and interpretation, often written by the victors, as exemplified in the numerous “patriotic” retellings of US history that exclude the genocide and removal of an entire native population. It must be remembered that what is left out of any historical account can be equally (or more) important than what is included, as is the method by which the assemblage of facts is interpreted in light of the motivation of the author.
But history is not a merely subjective endeavor, either. While the past is messy and often uncertain, the process of historical inquiry has developed methods by which reasonable positions can be ascertained. History denial (Grayling covers Holocaust denial in great detail), revisionism, and conspiratorial thinking can be weeded out by the same process of discovery and peer review available in the natural sciences. Events with several credible, consistent accounts that all converge on a specific interpretation can be taken as highly probable to have occurred as documented, whereas events with a limited number of more questionable accounts should be viewed with more suspicion.
Although certainty is elusive in the historical domain (as in all others), historical knowledge does not require certainty, either. Historical viewpoints need only be well supported in view of the totality of available evidence, and we must guard against our tendencies for cognitive closure, prepared to update our beliefs in the light of new evidence. As Grayling wrote:
“History as enquiry lives, develops, changes, fluctuates in focus and meanings, and the best hope of grasping history as the past is to cleave to the evidence, be scrupulous in reasoning, dispassionate in judgement, and never tempted to start from conclusions with the intention of bending facts to fit them. In that direction lies the possibility of convergence on a best-supported understanding of the past.”
The Mind
In the final section, Grayling covers the new sciences of the brain and mind, charting the evolution of our understanding of the brain, the rise of neuroscience, and the perpetual mystery of consciousness. Cognitive closure is a particular hazard in this area, exemplified by the philosophers that—based on the reductionist findings of neuroscience—proclaim consciousness to be an illusion simply because it can’t be explained in reductionist terms.
Of course, if consciousness is an illusion, these philosophers never tell us who or what, exactly, is being deceived. It seems far more likely that what neuroscience is showing us is a series of correlations between brain states and mental activity, but is effectively silent on how subjective experience—what it’s like to feel pain or see the color red—arises from the electrochemical excitations of the brain.
Clearly, there is a deeper mystery here. On the one hand, you have physical objects that occupy space and that are positioned in time (including the brain itself). On the other hand, you have thoughts, emotions, and ideas, which, while just as real, are immaterial in nature and do not take up physical space. The fundamental task is how to explain the coexistence of both physical and immaterial realities, not to deny the problem.
Several potential explanations exist: Perhaps everything is ultimately composed of matter, as the materialists suppose, or everything is composed of mind, as the philosopher George Berkeley and others have proposed. Or rather, mind and matter might interact with each other, as the dualists maintain, or, instead, mind and matter might not interact with each other but are simply two sides of the same coin operating in parallel, as Spinoza claimed.
The remarkable fact is that, even with all the advances of neuroscience, we’re no closer to resolving these disputes. That’s why, as Grayling wrote, “the great, and true, commonplace about consciousness is that it is simultaneously the most familiar and the most mysterious thing in the universe.”
Understanding the richness of the philosophical debate is what makes it so irritating when a neuroscientist or philosopher comes along and pretends to have solved the problem, or states that the problem doesn’t exist, or that consciousness is an “illusion.” There is a deeper mystery here waiting to be solved, and whether neuroscience will one day solve it remains an open question. The other possibility is that, once again, we’ve hit the limits of our understanding, unable to step outside of our own consciousness to study it in objective terms.
One of the more interesting points in this section is Grayling’s assertion that we cannot understand the mind without reference to the physical and social environments in which it develops. And so even if the reductionist account is true—and all mental phenomena reduce to fundamental physics—as a method of explanation, physics and neuroscience offer very limited insights into the human mind. One is far better off learning about human nature by reading literature, history, and philosophy (the humanities), as it better captures the social and cultural environments in which mental development ultimately depends.
A final point is that the neurosciences represent one of the greatest existential dangers to humanity if scientific discoveries are not accompanied by richer discussions of ethics. If we ever reach the point where brain scan technology or medical interventions can, for example, read or change the contents of thought (rather than just measure brain activity), we need to be prepared to discuss the ethical and legal ramifications of those interventions.
As Grayling’s law states, “Anything that CAN be done WILL be done if it brings advantage or profit to those who can do it.” The corollary, of course, is that “What CAN be done will NOT be done if it brings costs, economic or otherwise, to those who can stop it.”
Since then, our picture of the world has changed dramatically, to say the least. We now know that the universe is billions of years old, that the earth is one of an estimated 700 quintillion planets occupying one of around 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, and that humans are one among a number of primate species having evolved over the course of millions of years.
The incredible story of how we came to know all of this, what we have left to discover, and the lessons we’ve learned about the process of inquiry itself is the ambitious project undertaken by the philosopher and polymath A. C. Grayling in his latest book, Frontiers of Knowledge: What We Now Know About Science, History, and the Mind. Having already written The History of Philosophy in 2019 (one of, if not the best single-volume accounts of the history of the subject), Grayling turns his attention to the development and current state of our scientific and historical knowledge.
Grayling sets out to explore three subjects that have utterly transformed our modern world-views: science, history, and psychology, and more specifically, fundamental physics and cosmology, human evolution and our pre-classical past, and the new sciences of the brain and mind, making up the three main sections of the book.
Science
Grayling begins part one by recounting the history of technology, the rise of science, and the development of modern physics. But this is not simply a book about the history of science. Grayling is more interested in the deeper epistemological questions concerning how we know what we do and what we've discovered about the process of scientific discovery itself. As Grayling wrote:
“[In addition to what we know], it also matters that we understand how we know. When we see how scientific and historical knowledge is acquired, what problems are overcome in acquiring it, and what questions are raised about the assumptions and methods involved, we not only learn how to evaluate what we know, but we also learn a great deal about responsible thinking and the demands of intellectual honesty. These matter in every sphere of human activity, and they are at a premium.”
If we really want to understand the state of knowledge in physics, for example, we can’t just set about learning the history of physics and its various experiments and discoveries. We must also consider the methodological principles by which those discoveries were made, the philosophical implications of those discoveries, and the fundamental philosophical problems associated with their interpretations. This is, in fact, what is missing, or else covered inadequately, in most accounts of popular science written by practicing scientists.
To take one example of a methodological problem (Grayling lists a dozen), consider the Ptolemy Problem. Here’s how Grayling describes it:
“Ptolemy’s geocentric [earth-centered] model of the universe ‘worked’ in a number of ways, permitting the successful navigation of the oceans and prediction of eclipses, thus showing that a theory can be efficacious in some respects while still being incorrect. How do we avoid being misled by pragmatic adequacy?”
This should bring to mind the current state of our knowledge in quantum physics; while quantum mechanics is pragmatically adequate—being responsible for a host of technologies—this fact in itself—just as with the geocentric model of the universe—is no guarantee that it is the correct model of reality. Basic methodological considerations such as these—often overlooked in the more superficial popular science books available—is what sets Grayling’s book apart from the others.
The most interesting part of Grayling’s coverage of particle physics is his suggestion that the reason quantum physics seems so foreign to us is that we are not cognitively primed to understand scales that small. He notes how contemporary cognitive science is catching up to the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, which essentially states that how the world appears to us is a product of our cognitive capacities, not how the world is “in itself.”
Any researcher studying human perception understands this. Taking vision as an example, think about how, as light enters the lens of the eye and strikes the retina, an electrical impulse is sent along the optic nerve to the visual cortex in the occipital lobe of the brain, where the image is “seen.” The resulting image, however, is only a re-construction by the brain of electricity and chemical reactions—encased as they are in our pitch-black skulls—into a three-dimensional full-color image that is projected “out there” in three-dimensional space.
The eyes, in this case, are not acting as “windows” into the world, where the brain just sees an unadulterated picture of reality; instead, the brain is actively creating our reality based on how it is designed to structure experience. We can never step outside of our brains to compare our perceptions to how the world “really is,” but there is no reason to suppose that our brains are primed to pick up on every aspect of the underlying reality, only the parts which impinge on our perceptual systems and then only based on how they are reconstructed in the “virtual reality” created by our cognitive architecture. (Keep in mind, for example, that visible light accounts for only 0.0035 percent of the entire electromagnetic spectrum.)
As Grayling notes, this is a big clue as to why quantum physics is so puzzling, and a point that escapes the notice of most philosophically-naive physicists. If what we are perceiving in the world of everyday objects is not the world in itself, but rather our own cognitive constructions—like the icons on a computer interface that mask the internal workings of the computer—then even if we use technology to penetrate smaller scales, we are still only able to conceptualize subatomic scales according to our macroscopic pictures of reality. And if our understanding begins to break down, it’s not because we have yet to fully understand the subatomic world, it’s because we don’t have the cognitive capacity to ever understand the subatomic world, or the fundamental structure of reality that exists at scales our brains never evolved to care about.
To take the computer example a little further, if everyday objects are like the icons on a computer interface, then zooming in to everyday objects with the assistance of technology is like zooming in on the icons to discover that they are composed of pixels. But whether viewing the icons from a distance or up close as a collection of pixels, both perspectives still mask the underlying operations of the computer—the hardware, transistors, and electrical activity responsible for the generation of the icon images—in the same way that everyday objects and the subatomic world mask an underlying reality we’re not equipped to penetrate.
As Grayling points out, the current mysteries of quantum physics can then be explained in one of two ways. The first option is to suppose that our theories of quantum physics are either wrong or incomplete, but their experimental success suggests otherwise (unless this is an example of the Ptolemy problem described above). The second possibility—and one I find to be more likely—is that, as Grayling puts it, “the cognitive architecture of our thought imposes conceptions of order, causality, linearity, consistency, monotonicity, uniformity, predictability, and so on, which are as useful to conceptualizing quantum phenomena as it would be to apply dog-grooming techniques to solving quadratic equations.”
We simply did not evolve to understand the very small and very large scales of space and time that exist outside of our cognitive and experimental reach. This may sound like a defeatist position—and we may well do better to assume it’s not true, in case new discoveries or experiments prove it to be wrong—but it does go a long way in explaining our lack of progress in understanding the incoherence of the quantum world.
This Kantian way of seeing the world also explains why mathematics is so effective in science; if we experience the world according to the way our brains structure reality—and our brains structure reality quantitatively in space and time—then it is no longer such a mystery as to why that particular tool or way of thinking is so effective. The corollary, however, is that, as we come to rely more on mathematics to explain the nature of reality, we must confront the possibility that what we’re describing has more to do with the nature of our minds than with nature itself.
Grayling ends the section on science by considering whether or not we are justified in seeking a “theory of everything,” and why we are so obsessed with the idea that all of reality must necessarily be reduced to a single substance or equation. The origin of this idea lies with the ancient Greeks—and specifically Parmenides—but there is little reason to think that the universe out of necessity must conform to our ideas about how we think the universe “should” be. And even if experiment or mathematical discovery suggests that the universe is structured in a particular way, it’s possible that, as discussed above, this is telling us more about how our brains actively construct reality than reality itself.
Kant, incredibly, was aware of all of this long ago. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant wrote:
“Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason.”
If modern science is butting up against those cognitive limitations, the prospects of discovering a “theory of everything,” or explaining the deep mysteries of the quantum world, are slim. Still, we have no choice but to pursue the answers, due to innate human curiosity and because it cannot be predicted ahead of time what human ingenuity will discover. For this reason, cognitive closure—based on the human desire to eliminate ambiguity and arrive at definite conclusions—is one of the biggest intellectual mistakes we can make, and represents the most significant obstacle to continued progress. We must push forward, keeping in mind the limitations and issues we must overcome.
History
Next, Grayling turns to history, as he recounts our evolutionary and pre-classical past, noting how it was not until as late as the nineteenth century before we were able to piece together anything at all (excluding mythology) about history prior to ancient Greece. Before then, most people just assumed that pre-history was what the Old Testament said it was. We now have a much richer conception of our past compared to the 6,000 years presented in the Bible, including the fact that we used to co-exist with several other species of Homo before they all went extinct.
Sticking with the same approach, Grayling presents a clear picture of what we know about our past, how we know it, what we have left to learn, and the methodological considerations and debates that are often missing from historical accounts that paint a far more straightforward picture than what the evidence allows.
The strength of this section lies in Grayling’s consideration of the philosophy of history, and the question of whether we can ever truly understand the past in objective terms without reading into the past our present concerns, viewpoints, perspectives, and biases.
Since we can reconstruct the past only through preserved remains and written accounts—and since we know that written accounts are not always reliable—we have reason to suspect that the past may have been significantly different from what we can assemble from the available evidence.
Consider that even reports of traffic accidents, for example, vary by observer depending on the vagaries of memory, disposition, sympathy, and motivation. And if accounts can vary widely concerning an event that just recently transpired, imagine how greatly the problem is exacerbated the further one goes back in time.
All history, in a sense, is therefore selection and interpretation, often written by the victors, as exemplified in the numerous “patriotic” retellings of US history that exclude the genocide and removal of an entire native population. It must be remembered that what is left out of any historical account can be equally (or more) important than what is included, as is the method by which the assemblage of facts is interpreted in light of the motivation of the author.
But history is not a merely subjective endeavor, either. While the past is messy and often uncertain, the process of historical inquiry has developed methods by which reasonable positions can be ascertained. History denial (Grayling covers Holocaust denial in great detail), revisionism, and conspiratorial thinking can be weeded out by the same process of discovery and peer review available in the natural sciences. Events with several credible, consistent accounts that all converge on a specific interpretation can be taken as highly probable to have occurred as documented, whereas events with a limited number of more questionable accounts should be viewed with more suspicion.
Although certainty is elusive in the historical domain (as in all others), historical knowledge does not require certainty, either. Historical viewpoints need only be well supported in view of the totality of available evidence, and we must guard against our tendencies for cognitive closure, prepared to update our beliefs in the light of new evidence. As Grayling wrote:
“History as enquiry lives, develops, changes, fluctuates in focus and meanings, and the best hope of grasping history as the past is to cleave to the evidence, be scrupulous in reasoning, dispassionate in judgement, and never tempted to start from conclusions with the intention of bending facts to fit them. In that direction lies the possibility of convergence on a best-supported understanding of the past.”
The Mind
In the final section, Grayling covers the new sciences of the brain and mind, charting the evolution of our understanding of the brain, the rise of neuroscience, and the perpetual mystery of consciousness. Cognitive closure is a particular hazard in this area, exemplified by the philosophers that—based on the reductionist findings of neuroscience—proclaim consciousness to be an illusion simply because it can’t be explained in reductionist terms.
Of course, if consciousness is an illusion, these philosophers never tell us who or what, exactly, is being deceived. It seems far more likely that what neuroscience is showing us is a series of correlations between brain states and mental activity, but is effectively silent on how subjective experience—what it’s like to feel pain or see the color red—arises from the electrochemical excitations of the brain.
Clearly, there is a deeper mystery here. On the one hand, you have physical objects that occupy space and that are positioned in time (including the brain itself). On the other hand, you have thoughts, emotions, and ideas, which, while just as real, are immaterial in nature and do not take up physical space. The fundamental task is how to explain the coexistence of both physical and immaterial realities, not to deny the problem.
Several potential explanations exist: Perhaps everything is ultimately composed of matter, as the materialists suppose, or everything is composed of mind, as the philosopher George Berkeley and others have proposed. Or rather, mind and matter might interact with each other, as the dualists maintain, or, instead, mind and matter might not interact with each other but are simply two sides of the same coin operating in parallel, as Spinoza claimed.
The remarkable fact is that, even with all the advances of neuroscience, we’re no closer to resolving these disputes. That’s why, as Grayling wrote, “the great, and true, commonplace about consciousness is that it is simultaneously the most familiar and the most mysterious thing in the universe.”
Understanding the richness of the philosophical debate is what makes it so irritating when a neuroscientist or philosopher comes along and pretends to have solved the problem, or states that the problem doesn’t exist, or that consciousness is an “illusion.” There is a deeper mystery here waiting to be solved, and whether neuroscience will one day solve it remains an open question. The other possibility is that, once again, we’ve hit the limits of our understanding, unable to step outside of our own consciousness to study it in objective terms.
One of the more interesting points in this section is Grayling’s assertion that we cannot understand the mind without reference to the physical and social environments in which it develops. And so even if the reductionist account is true—and all mental phenomena reduce to fundamental physics—as a method of explanation, physics and neuroscience offer very limited insights into the human mind. One is far better off learning about human nature by reading literature, history, and philosophy (the humanities), as it better captures the social and cultural environments in which mental development ultimately depends.
A final point is that the neurosciences represent one of the greatest existential dangers to humanity if scientific discoveries are not accompanied by richer discussions of ethics. If we ever reach the point where brain scan technology or medical interventions can, for example, read or change the contents of thought (rather than just measure brain activity), we need to be prepared to discuss the ethical and legal ramifications of those interventions.
As Grayling’s law states, “Anything that CAN be done WILL be done if it brings advantage or profit to those who can do it.” The corollary, of course, is that “What CAN be done will NOT be done if it brings costs, economic or otherwise, to those who can stop it.”
May 31, 2022
A beautiful book about the nature of knowledge. I am in disbelief regarding what A. C. Grayling has managed to achieve within the span of 340 pages.
In this book, A. C. Grayling gives the reader a high-level view of knowledge from 3 perspectives:
1. Knowledge of how the world is (science)
2. Knowledge of how the world was (history)
3. Knowledge of what it is like to be (consciousness)
A. C. Grayling achieves this with absolute clairvoyance. His intellectual honesty and humility are admirable.
Science:
In this section, Grayling begins with an examination of practical and theoretical knowledge. He goes through the rich history of tool making, which goes much further back than the history of scientific knowledge. Grayling points out that the history of scientific knowledge mostly consisted of mythological explanations until recently. In ~600 BCE, Thales of Miletus conjectured that water was fundamental to the world because he observed that organisms died without it and flourished with it. This is one of the earliest recorded instances of observation-based conjecture, earning Thales the title of First Philosopher.
I was astonished to find out that Black Holes were first hypothesised in 1795. Pierre Simon Laplace used Newton’s law of gravity to work out that if an object were compacted into a small enough radius, its escape velocity would have to be greater than the speed of light—which is impossible. Laplace must’ve been a total genius. He was way ahead of his time. It reminds me of a quote by John Locke in 1690, which more or less described computation.
Grayling rightly spends a great deal of the science section on perception and its limitations. He draws an analogy between human perception and looking through a pinhole. Grayling makes an important distinction between natural and constructed knowledge. For example, when we look at a mountain, we are interpreting input data from reality. However, when we create art, we project our mental worlds onto the physical world—although the mental world is ultimately an imitation of the physical world.
Grayling then goes on to consider the unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in science as a striking phenomenon. Grayling suggests that symmetrical structures are stable, iterative, reproducible, homogeneous, and consist of interchangeable parts. All of these are features of both mathematics as well as the fundamental reality.
Grayling uses our failure to grasp quantum mechanics to hypothesise that limitations imposed by our fallible brains could cause this. We have been shaped by ~3.5 billion years of biological evolution, and there is no compelling reason to believe that evolution optimised us for grasping the fundamental nature of reality. Grayling revisits this hypothesis in section 3.
The human brain models its environment to help us manage our intercourse with reality. However, it is not a model of fundamental reality. Humans live at the scale of around between the size of an atom and the size of the observable universe. Our cognitive capacities organise the world into causally interactive entities with determinate nature. The reality our brains are optimising to model is only a sliver of the actual reality. Our brains are like permanent VR goggles that we must ultimately see reality through, no matter how great our instruments are.
History:
History to most of us is ink on paper. We don’t live and experience history. We don’t know what it really felt like when people of the past came up with nonsensical explanations of phenomena that are completely obvious to us today.
This quote stood out to me out of this section:
This has a firm Popperian undertone. Starting from conclusions and trying to cherry-pick, arrange and bend the evidence to fit a conclusion is deeply human. We, humans, are full of passion and emotion. When a scientist/historian spends years working on a research project, they unsurprisingly want the project to be fruitful. They will passionately defend what they wish to be true and unconscious bias is nearly unavoidable. These cognitive biases are why we have peer review and why Popper advocated for an open society. Scepticism is welcomed so that provisional truths are stress-tested and updated, thus getting us closer and closer to the Truth.
TODO: a complete review of this section.
The Mind:
Grayling revisits the hypothesis that the human intellect could have limitations imposed by our natural intuitions and biases that may explain the futility in our pursuit of consciousness.
Trying to grasp consciousness from the inside is like trying to capture our own shadow. As we do the chasing of the shadow, the shadow will continue eluding us. The body is the source of the shadow, but it is at the same time what is pursuing the shadow.
One way around this challenge is to stop pursuing our consciousness through introspection. But instead, get scientific and dissect a brain to understand how the thing is wired up. However, doing this will only get us so far. What happens on the fundamental physics level is responsible for how consciousness works, but it is irrelevant to our subjective experiences.
Consider how genes ultimately program us. Genes want to propagate. However, we humans are NOT fitness maximisers; we are adaptation executors. Genes programmed us to have dopamine receptors because people who released dopamine when they ate sugary foods or had sex propagated their genes more successfully. However, today we overeat ice cream, use contraception, and do all kinds of things that don’t help our genes to propagate. We use our adaptations in ways that don't help our genes. The fact that we are fundamentally made of atoms, programmed by genes, or made of cells does not mean we can readily explain everything about ourselves.
You won't explain everything about computer programs because you completely understand how electrons and atoms work. Fundamental building blocks get combined in novel ways that give rise to phenomena that cannot be predicted and explained by merely understanding the building blocks alone. If our understanding of the lower levels cannot explain high-level phenomena, then it must be the case that we have an incomplete understanding. Using "emergence" to fill the gaps in our understanding is meaningless and offers no explanatory power.
Reductionist approaches to consciousness provide inadequate explanations. A deep understanding of how consciousness works requires the understanding of high-level patterns and their relationships and interactions. Understanding microscopic objects interacting in microscopic time intervals is insufficient. Instead, pursuing consciousness could be more fruitful by studying its higher-level properties, such as how organisms interact with their environment and studying humanity itself, its art, literature, language, history, philosophy, and inventions. A complete explanation of consciousness will be based on the laws of physics, but to get there, we should not neglect the insights we can garner from the high-level properties of consciousness.
This quote by the brilliant Douglas Hofstadter beautifully captures a similar insight:
This book gets a strong recommendation from me.
In this book, A. C. Grayling gives the reader a high-level view of knowledge from 3 perspectives:
1. Knowledge of how the world is (science)
2. Knowledge of how the world was (history)
3. Knowledge of what it is like to be (consciousness)
A. C. Grayling achieves this with absolute clairvoyance. His intellectual honesty and humility are admirable.
Science:
In this section, Grayling begins with an examination of practical and theoretical knowledge. He goes through the rich history of tool making, which goes much further back than the history of scientific knowledge. Grayling points out that the history of scientific knowledge mostly consisted of mythological explanations until recently. In ~600 BCE, Thales of Miletus conjectured that water was fundamental to the world because he observed that organisms died without it and flourished with it. This is one of the earliest recorded instances of observation-based conjecture, earning Thales the title of First Philosopher.
I was astonished to find out that Black Holes were first hypothesised in 1795. Pierre Simon Laplace used Newton’s law of gravity to work out that if an object were compacted into a small enough radius, its escape velocity would have to be greater than the speed of light—which is impossible. Laplace must’ve been a total genius. He was way ahead of his time. It reminds me of a quote by John Locke in 1690, which more or less described computation.
"The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three:
1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas
are made.
2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and seeing them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them
into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations.
3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made."
—John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
Grayling rightly spends a great deal of the science section on perception and its limitations. He draws an analogy between human perception and looking through a pinhole. Grayling makes an important distinction between natural and constructed knowledge. For example, when we look at a mountain, we are interpreting input data from reality. However, when we create art, we project our mental worlds onto the physical world—although the mental world is ultimately an imitation of the physical world.
Grayling then goes on to consider the unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in science as a striking phenomenon. Grayling suggests that symmetrical structures are stable, iterative, reproducible, homogeneous, and consist of interchangeable parts. All of these are features of both mathematics as well as the fundamental reality.
Grayling uses our failure to grasp quantum mechanics to hypothesise that limitations imposed by our fallible brains could cause this. We have been shaped by ~3.5 billion years of biological evolution, and there is no compelling reason to believe that evolution optimised us for grasping the fundamental nature of reality. Grayling revisits this hypothesis in section 3.
The human brain models its environment to help us manage our intercourse with reality. However, it is not a model of fundamental reality. Humans live at the scale of around between the size of an atom and the size of the observable universe. Our cognitive capacities organise the world into causally interactive entities with determinate nature. The reality our brains are optimising to model is only a sliver of the actual reality. Our brains are like permanent VR goggles that we must ultimately see reality through, no matter how great our instruments are.
The cognitive architecture of our thoughts imposes conceptions of order, causality, linearity, consistency, monotonicity, uniformity, predictability, and so on, which are as useful to conceptualising quantum phenomena as it would be to apply dog-grooming techniques to solving quadratic equations.
History:
History to most of us is ink on paper. We don’t live and experience history. We don’t know what it really felt like when people of the past came up with nonsensical explanations of phenomena that are completely obvious to us today.
This quote stood out to me out of this section:
History as enquiry lives, develops, changes, fluctuates in focus and meanings, and the best hope of grasping history as the past is to cleave to the evidence, be scrupulous in reasoning, dispassionate in judgment, and never tempted to start from conclusions to bend facts to fit them. In that direction lies the possibility of convergence on a best-supported understanding of the past.
This has a firm Popperian undertone. Starting from conclusions and trying to cherry-pick, arrange and bend the evidence to fit a conclusion is deeply human. We, humans, are full of passion and emotion. When a scientist/historian spends years working on a research project, they unsurprisingly want the project to be fruitful. They will passionately defend what they wish to be true and unconscious bias is nearly unavoidable. These cognitive biases are why we have peer review and why Popper advocated for an open society. Scepticism is welcomed so that provisional truths are stress-tested and updated, thus getting us closer and closer to the Truth.
TODO: a complete review of this section.
The Mind:
Grayling revisits the hypothesis that the human intellect could have limitations imposed by our natural intuitions and biases that may explain the futility in our pursuit of consciousness.
Trying to grasp consciousness from the inside is like trying to capture our own shadow. As we do the chasing of the shadow, the shadow will continue eluding us. The body is the source of the shadow, but it is at the same time what is pursuing the shadow.
One way around this challenge is to stop pursuing our consciousness through introspection. But instead, get scientific and dissect a brain to understand how the thing is wired up. However, doing this will only get us so far. What happens on the fundamental physics level is responsible for how consciousness works, but it is irrelevant to our subjective experiences.
Consider how genes ultimately program us. Genes want to propagate. However, we humans are NOT fitness maximisers; we are adaptation executors. Genes programmed us to have dopamine receptors because people who released dopamine when they ate sugary foods or had sex propagated their genes more successfully. However, today we overeat ice cream, use contraception, and do all kinds of things that don’t help our genes to propagate. We use our adaptations in ways that don't help our genes. The fact that we are fundamentally made of atoms, programmed by genes, or made of cells does not mean we can readily explain everything about ourselves.
You won't explain everything about computer programs because you completely understand how electrons and atoms work. Fundamental building blocks get combined in novel ways that give rise to phenomena that cannot be predicted and explained by merely understanding the building blocks alone. If our understanding of the lower levels cannot explain high-level phenomena, then it must be the case that we have an incomplete understanding. Using "emergence" to fill the gaps in our understanding is meaningless and offers no explanatory power.
Reductionist approaches to consciousness provide inadequate explanations. A deep understanding of how consciousness works requires the understanding of high-level patterns and their relationships and interactions. Understanding microscopic objects interacting in microscopic time intervals is insufficient. Instead, pursuing consciousness could be more fruitful by studying its higher-level properties, such as how organisms interact with their environment and studying humanity itself, its art, literature, language, history, philosophy, and inventions. A complete explanation of consciousness will be based on the laws of physics, but to get there, we should not neglect the insights we can garner from the high-level properties of consciousness.
This quote by the brilliant Douglas Hofstadter beautifully captures a similar insight:
Saying that studying the brain is limited to the study of physical entities would be like saying that literary criticisms must focus on paper and bookbinding, ink and its chemistry, page sizes, and margin widths, typefaces, and paragraph lengths, and so forth. But what about the high abstractions that are the heart of literature—plot and character, style and point of view, irony and humour, allusion and metaphor, empathy and distance, and so on? Where did these crucial essences disappear in the list of topics for literary critics?
This book gets a strong recommendation from me.
July 30, 2021
I absolutely loved taking this journey through frontier knowledge with Grayling for everything, but essentially because I agree that the three big fronts of it today are: physics, history and psychology... goes straight into my all-time books, standing as the best book of 2021.
Fiz uma resenha em portugês para o Journal of Digital Media & Interaction, podem ler aqui:
https://proa.ua.pt/index.php/jdmi/art...
Fiz uma resenha em portugês para o Journal of Digital Media & Interaction, podem ler aqui:
https://proa.ua.pt/index.php/jdmi/art...
December 23, 2021
This short book was an absolutely outstanding read! Heavy on content, flowing with ideas and knowledge, every other sentence of this work would leave you better informed than the previous one. I am not sure if the phrase ‘coffee lounge book’ carries a negative or a positive connotation, but if I owned a coffee lounge or a small library frequented by intellectually inclined individuals who I wanted informed on the history of how ideas in physics, the mind / consciousness and history, have developed and where we as humans stand with what major questions in each of these fields, I would have certainly used this book.
Not only is Grayling extremely well informed, he has written this book with a general audience in mind, making his writing extremely accessible – although I daresay, in the past few years I have been passionate about these three subjects (physics in my teens and early 20s, history then and now, and mind / consciousness more lately in my 30s) so my commentary on their ‘accessibility’ might be off somewhat? Still, give this a shot because I have yet to find a book that does this much justice to these subjects, in such few pages.
Rating: 5 of 5, absolute must read for everyone
Not only is Grayling extremely well informed, he has written this book with a general audience in mind, making his writing extremely accessible – although I daresay, in the past few years I have been passionate about these three subjects (physics in my teens and early 20s, history then and now, and mind / consciousness more lately in my 30s) so my commentary on their ‘accessibility’ might be off somewhat? Still, give this a shot because I have yet to find a book that does this much justice to these subjects, in such few pages.
Rating: 5 of 5, absolute must read for everyone
March 14, 2022
Part of my occasional self improvement plan to get a bit smarter on things I’m uncertain about before it’s too late..!
A book by a ‘popular’ philosopher in the UK, popular in that he writes in the press frequently, and lectures widely. I saw him at a local lecture several years ago and found myself nodding in agreement to much of his talk. He specialises more in ethical issues on a humanist foundation.
This books covers three topics. Science, History and the Mind/Brain/Consciousness debate. His aim is to see how much we can say we really know about each subject. What can we say is true, or otherwise, about issues within these general fields.
For each topic we get a bit of an intro with a history of how that subject has developed from its most primitive state to what we claim to know now.
My view of the book changed as I read through it, mainly because it depends how much you already know about each of these topics. Coming from a science/engineering background I’d claim to know a reasonable amount about the first topic! And his outline of the background and history of Science and Technology slightly bored me. You’ll find better specialist ‘History of Science’ books, and here the author gave us a rather unstructured, rushed job, with everything piled in from Stone Axes to Black Holes. I also found myself disagreeing with the partition he placed between Science and Technology/Engineering. Another discussion for another day, but I’d claim that today’s advanced engineering, as opposed to trial and error Stone Age manufacture with which he starts, uses the scientific method and understands more about modelling reality, and the use and limitations of Models, than perhaps cutting edge particle physicists do!
However, once we get through the history of science and technology he’s more interesting in discussing the tension currently present between those searching for a Theory of Everything, and those who understand the problems our grey matter has in comprehending the outside world at levels beyond our everyday experience. Not news to me in this section but he summarises the situation well without committing to a personal position.
Rather surprised that it’s all about the physical sciences too, with modern Biology not getting a mention. An area where reductionism can very clearly be questioned as a strategy. So, the weakest section for me.
The History section was more interesting to me. Again, no big surprises or insights but he neatly summarises what we think we know about history (‘the winner writes history’ is just the start of it), and how one persons inspirational Wild West adventure is another’s massacre of indigenous peoples. The same with colonial histories, slavery, etc. Sobering and a little depressing is a good summary for this section, as we apparently seem to learn little from history.
Finally the section that interests me most. Can we say we understand anything about the workings of the brain and especially the mind? The author starts with the basics on the history of brain research, usually via correlations between brain damage/lesions and impairment of function. Fortunately things have advanced with modern non-invasive techniques such as MRI. But the author then moves onto what this means for the Mind, what we think of as ourselves, as a person, with feelings. Of course, no solutions offered and again the author doesn’t commit to a personal position though he does his best to sink a few past ideas that he doesn’t think have merit. Although he very quickly dismisses Duality (the mind being a separate, ethereal part of us and the brain) he does still spend rather more time than I expected discussing it. I did like how he brought the ‘why do we feel as we do’ about issues and ourselves as a counterpoint to those who have a rather more computational view of the brain, in the debate on Consciousness.
Overall, a nice popular review of what it means to say we understand these three different topics. I didn’t get any new insights, I think, but sometimes it’s nice to have a ‘current status’ neatly packaged, which is what this book does. Not disappointed in having read it, but maybe just a touch less stimulating than I’d hoped. 3.5*.
A book by a ‘popular’ philosopher in the UK, popular in that he writes in the press frequently, and lectures widely. I saw him at a local lecture several years ago and found myself nodding in agreement to much of his talk. He specialises more in ethical issues on a humanist foundation.
This books covers three topics. Science, History and the Mind/Brain/Consciousness debate. His aim is to see how much we can say we really know about each subject. What can we say is true, or otherwise, about issues within these general fields.
For each topic we get a bit of an intro with a history of how that subject has developed from its most primitive state to what we claim to know now.
My view of the book changed as I read through it, mainly because it depends how much you already know about each of these topics. Coming from a science/engineering background I’d claim to know a reasonable amount about the first topic! And his outline of the background and history of Science and Technology slightly bored me. You’ll find better specialist ‘History of Science’ books, and here the author gave us a rather unstructured, rushed job, with everything piled in from Stone Axes to Black Holes. I also found myself disagreeing with the partition he placed between Science and Technology/Engineering. Another discussion for another day, but I’d claim that today’s advanced engineering, as opposed to trial and error Stone Age manufacture with which he starts, uses the scientific method and understands more about modelling reality, and the use and limitations of Models, than perhaps cutting edge particle physicists do!
However, once we get through the history of science and technology he’s more interesting in discussing the tension currently present between those searching for a Theory of Everything, and those who understand the problems our grey matter has in comprehending the outside world at levels beyond our everyday experience. Not news to me in this section but he summarises the situation well without committing to a personal position.
Rather surprised that it’s all about the physical sciences too, with modern Biology not getting a mention. An area where reductionism can very clearly be questioned as a strategy. So, the weakest section for me.
The History section was more interesting to me. Again, no big surprises or insights but he neatly summarises what we think we know about history (‘the winner writes history’ is just the start of it), and how one persons inspirational Wild West adventure is another’s massacre of indigenous peoples. The same with colonial histories, slavery, etc. Sobering and a little depressing is a good summary for this section, as we apparently seem to learn little from history.
Finally the section that interests me most. Can we say we understand anything about the workings of the brain and especially the mind? The author starts with the basics on the history of brain research, usually via correlations between brain damage/lesions and impairment of function. Fortunately things have advanced with modern non-invasive techniques such as MRI. But the author then moves onto what this means for the Mind, what we think of as ourselves, as a person, with feelings. Of course, no solutions offered and again the author doesn’t commit to a personal position though he does his best to sink a few past ideas that he doesn’t think have merit. Although he very quickly dismisses Duality (the mind being a separate, ethereal part of us and the brain) he does still spend rather more time than I expected discussing it. I did like how he brought the ‘why do we feel as we do’ about issues and ourselves as a counterpoint to those who have a rather more computational view of the brain, in the debate on Consciousness.
Overall, a nice popular review of what it means to say we understand these three different topics. I didn’t get any new insights, I think, but sometimes it’s nice to have a ‘current status’ neatly packaged, which is what this book does. Not disappointed in having read it, but maybe just a touch less stimulating than I’d hoped. 3.5*.
December 12, 2021
The major contentions at the heart of this fascinating book are: (1) a priori knowledge when reined in by empiricism can lead us to noumena; (2) history ought to be an intersubjective method of inquiry rather than mere propaganda of successive so-called victors – the challenge of Verstehen notwithstanding; (3) consciousness is an emergent relational property which is not epiphenomenal.
To facilitate these epistemological discussions, Grayling supplies sweeping but succinct overarching summaries of how post-classical physics, pre-classical history, and neuroscience – the eponymous frontiers – come into being. To those who are already familiar with these topics they may be superfluous; to those who are not they seem rushed and terse. For example, renormalisation and spin are mentioned (on p.139) without any explanation of these terms. Interested readers may want to consult other works if needed. The concluding remarks remind us that Socratic ignorance is the bulwark against hubris – reason ultimately is the arbiter of truth. Four stars.
To facilitate these epistemological discussions, Grayling supplies sweeping but succinct overarching summaries of how post-classical physics, pre-classical history, and neuroscience – the eponymous frontiers – come into being. To those who are already familiar with these topics they may be superfluous; to those who are not they seem rushed and terse. For example, renormalisation and spin are mentioned (on p.139) without any explanation of these terms. Interested readers may want to consult other works if needed. The concluding remarks remind us that Socratic ignorance is the bulwark against hubris – reason ultimately is the arbiter of truth. Four stars.
August 13, 2021
Part 1 Science, reads more like notes from Grayling's notebook than a fully fleshed out essay. I struggled through it.
Part 2 History, is genius and it is where Grayling as a writer finds flow. Highly recommended.
Part 3 the Brain and the Mind, is very interesting and will expand yours as it did mine :)
Definitely worth of a re-read.
Part 2 History, is genius and it is where Grayling as a writer finds flow. Highly recommended.
Part 3 the Brain and the Mind, is very interesting and will expand yours as it did mine :)
Definitely worth of a re-read.
March 31, 2022
interesting reflections on different subjects, but complete lack of real synthesis.
May 11, 2022
Way too opinionated for what it aims to be.
April 5, 2024
Though the books is very well written doesn't go into much deep in each subject. More than really exploring in the frontiers of knowledge it just recap our current knowledge in each of the three subjects, without really exploring if there's a frontier or limit of what can we know.
If a whopping 95 percent of the matter in the universe is dark energy and dark matter, why do people spend a lot of time in String Theory that does not explain that?
"Rationalism" expresses that rational thought can reach an eternal and immutable opinion through truths such as those of mathematics... but mathematics is also part of our perception, since without being able to see mathematical symbols, with our eyes or with our ears, or at least be able to symbolize in some way in our mind what those symbols represent. We cannot abstract ourselves from the world, and formulate an opinion or a conclusion about it. In any case, rationalism or empiricism needs our perception to formulate an opinion; the brain in the abstract isolated from the world does not exist. A blind, deaf, mute, limbless person cannot formulate a theory of anything.
If a whopping 95 percent of the matter in the universe is dark energy and dark matter, why do people spend a lot of time in String Theory that does not explain that?
"Rationalism" expresses that rational thought can reach an eternal and immutable opinion through truths such as those of mathematics... but mathematics is also part of our perception, since without being able to see mathematical symbols, with our eyes or with our ears, or at least be able to symbolize in some way in our mind what those symbols represent. We cannot abstract ourselves from the world, and formulate an opinion or a conclusion about it. In any case, rationalism or empiricism needs our perception to formulate an opinion; the brain in the abstract isolated from the world does not exist. A blind, deaf, mute, limbless person cannot formulate a theory of anything.
November 20, 2021
Excellent guided tour to the frontiers of our current understanding of ancient history, the nature of matter and our brain and mind. Sometimes delightfully rambling
December 31, 2024
Great overview of current human science. The history of science is the strongest, then history, and weakest that of the mind. Not unexpected.
November 18, 2021
A fascinating account of how the incredible depth of attained knowledge has revealed the infinitely greater amount we still have to learn.
March 24, 2025
Voxa txt • R404
A. C. Grayling, în lucrarea „Frontierele cunoașterii” (The Frontiers of Knowledge), explorează limitele cunoașterii umane, rolul științei, filosofiei și rațiunii în înțelegerea lumii, dar și întrebările fundamentale care rămân încă deschise. El abordează teme esențiale legate de natura cunoașterii, progresul științific, dar și de limitările acesteia.
Printre ideile principale ale lucrării se numără:
1. Limitele cunoașterii umane: Grayling argumentează că, deși știința a avansat semnificativ în înțelegerea lumii, există încă multe limite în ceea ce privește cunoașterea umană. Aceste limite nu sunt doar rezultatul unor obstacole tehnologice sau metodologice, ci și al capacităților noastre cognitive. De asemenea, el discută despre întrebările fundamentale, cum ar fi originile universului sau natura conștiinței, care poate că vor rămâne permanent dincolo de înțelegerea umană.
2. Relația dintre știință și filosofie: În viziunea lui Grayling, filosofia joacă un rol crucial în clarificarea conceptelor fundamentale care stau la baza științei și în evaluarea limitelor și implicațiilor cunoașterii științifice. Filosofia ajută la reflectarea asupra naturii cunoașterii, asupra modului în care formulăm teorii și interpretăm datele, iar acest dialog între știință și filosofie este esențial pentru a înțelege adevărurile fundamentale ale lumii.
3. Progresul științific și impactul său asupra cunoașterii: Grayling subliniază importanța progresului științific în extinderea orizonturilor cunoașterii umane. Cu toate acestea, el este conștient că, deși știința oferă răspunsuri la multe întrebări, nu toate întrebările pot fi abordate cu ajutorul metodei științifice. Există domenii, precum cele legate de valori, etică sau religie, care nu pot fi rezolvate doar prin știință.
4. Conștiința și problema subiectivității: Grayling discută și despre problema conștiinței, una dintre cele mai mari provocări pentru știință și filosofie. Deși există progrese semnificative în domeniul neuroștiinței, înțelegerea conștiinței umane și a subiectivității rămâne un teren neexplorat în multe privințe. El argumentează că, deși putem studia mecanismele cerebrale, natura experienței subiective, cum ar fi sentimentul de „eu”, nu poate fi pe deplin explicată prin știință.
5. Relația cu religia și cunoașterea spirituală: Grayling este un critic al ideilor religioase tradiționale și susține că, deși religia a oferit răspunsuri pentru multe întrebări fundamentale de-a lungul istoriei, știința și rațiunea trebuie să fie considerate sursele primare de cunoaștere. În această lucrare, el abordează relația dintre știință și religie, susținând că multe dintre întrebările care au fost cândva atribuite divinității pot fi acum abordate prin metode științifice.
6. Întrebările fundamentale și deschiderea cunoașterii: Grayling este de părere că există întrebări fundamentale, precum cele legate de originea universului, natura timpului sau alegerile morale, care rămân deschise și la care răspunsurile nu sunt întotdeauna clare sau disponibile. El propune o abordare deschisă, în care cunoașterea este un proces continuu și evolutiv, în care știința, filosofia și chiar artele joacă un rol important în extinderea orizonturilor umane.
În concluzie, „Frontierele cunoașterii” reprezintă o meditație asupra limitelor și posibilităților cunoașterii umane. A. C. Grayling susține că, deși știința a adus progrese semnificative, există domenii care vor rămâne în afara capacității de înțelegere umană, iar filosofia și rațiunea continuă să joace un rol crucial în investigarea acestor frontiere.
A. C. Grayling, în lucrarea „Frontierele cunoașterii” (The Frontiers of Knowledge), explorează limitele cunoașterii umane, rolul științei, filosofiei și rațiunii în înțelegerea lumii, dar și întrebările fundamentale care rămân încă deschise. El abordează teme esențiale legate de natura cunoașterii, progresul științific, dar și de limitările acesteia.
Printre ideile principale ale lucrării se numără:
1. Limitele cunoașterii umane: Grayling argumentează că, deși știința a avansat semnificativ în înțelegerea lumii, există încă multe limite în ceea ce privește cunoașterea umană. Aceste limite nu sunt doar rezultatul unor obstacole tehnologice sau metodologice, ci și al capacităților noastre cognitive. De asemenea, el discută despre întrebările fundamentale, cum ar fi originile universului sau natura conștiinței, care poate că vor rămâne permanent dincolo de înțelegerea umană.
2. Relația dintre știință și filosofie: În viziunea lui Grayling, filosofia joacă un rol crucial în clarificarea conceptelor fundamentale care stau la baza științei și în evaluarea limitelor și implicațiilor cunoașterii științifice. Filosofia ajută la reflectarea asupra naturii cunoașterii, asupra modului în care formulăm teorii și interpretăm datele, iar acest dialog între știință și filosofie este esențial pentru a înțelege adevărurile fundamentale ale lumii.
3. Progresul științific și impactul său asupra cunoașterii: Grayling subliniază importanța progresului științific în extinderea orizonturilor cunoașterii umane. Cu toate acestea, el este conștient că, deși știința oferă răspunsuri la multe întrebări, nu toate întrebările pot fi abordate cu ajutorul metodei științifice. Există domenii, precum cele legate de valori, etică sau religie, care nu pot fi rezolvate doar prin știință.
4. Conștiința și problema subiectivității: Grayling discută și despre problema conștiinței, una dintre cele mai mari provocări pentru știință și filosofie. Deși există progrese semnificative în domeniul neuroștiinței, înțelegerea conștiinței umane și a subiectivității rămâne un teren neexplorat în multe privințe. El argumentează că, deși putem studia mecanismele cerebrale, natura experienței subiective, cum ar fi sentimentul de „eu”, nu poate fi pe deplin explicată prin știință.
5. Relația cu religia și cunoașterea spirituală: Grayling este un critic al ideilor religioase tradiționale și susține că, deși religia a oferit răspunsuri pentru multe întrebări fundamentale de-a lungul istoriei, știința și rațiunea trebuie să fie considerate sursele primare de cunoaștere. În această lucrare, el abordează relația dintre știință și religie, susținând că multe dintre întrebările care au fost cândva atribuite divinității pot fi acum abordate prin metode științifice.
6. Întrebările fundamentale și deschiderea cunoașterii: Grayling este de părere că există întrebări fundamentale, precum cele legate de originea universului, natura timpului sau alegerile morale, care rămân deschise și la care răspunsurile nu sunt întotdeauna clare sau disponibile. El propune o abordare deschisă, în care cunoașterea este un proces continuu și evolutiv, în care știința, filosofia și chiar artele joacă un rol important în extinderea orizonturilor umane.
În concluzie, „Frontierele cunoașterii” reprezintă o meditație asupra limitelor și posibilităților cunoașterii umane. A. C. Grayling susține că, deși știința a adus progrese semnificative, există domenii care vor rămâne în afara capacității de înțelegere umană, iar filosofia și rațiunea continuă să joace un rol crucial în investigarea acestor frontiere.
June 16, 2023
Grayling makes the case for being the Renaissance Person that he quite likely is in this exhaustive dive into three areas of knowledge: science and physics, history, and the mind and neuroscience. It gets tedious at times because he really goes deep and, while reading it, I couldn't always convince myself to stay alert and try to remember how, say, Australopithecus africanus evolved alongside Paranthropus aethiopicus, Paranthropus bosei, Australopithecus sediba, and Paranthropus robustus, or that the cortex of the brain is divided into six upper layers - the neocortex - and four lower layers - the allocortex, etc. Lots of minutiae in this book to make that point that knowledge builds on specialization but at the expense of siloing us off from "the view from Olympus":
Another aim, seemingly, was to use his "Twelve Problems" of knowledge acquisition that he introduced in the beginning of the book, such as The Pinhole Problem, where our area of acccess and inquiry into the nature of reality, space and time, is but a tiny pinhole in the whole universe, so how can we get an accurate picture of the universe?, or The Hammer Problem, "summed up pithily as 'If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.'" But at the end of each of the three parts on the three areas of knowledge, Grayling only has a few words in passing to say how that particular field of knowledge is or was beset by one of those epistemological problems. And he certainly doesn't go anywhere near expounding on how any of these problems can be overcome in knowledge endeavors. Which is a shame, really, given how the Introduction of the book seemed to focus on those twelve problems... Being a philosopher, I had expected he would traverse some Duhem-Quinean, Kuhnian, or Polanyian terrain, but he doesn't. Ah well.
Still, it's an impressive book, mainly for the fact that one man can research three rarely overlapping knowledge domains and come off as sounding very well read and knowledgeable in each of them.
And in terms of readability, it's mostly that. But he does have long intricate sentences that make wild use of en-dashes, colons and semicolons - sometimes all three in one sentence; a feat that I don't think I have a clear grasp of as I: a simpleton, am demonstrating now. (OK, that colon was very misplaced.) But here's a nice example:
Damn, Grayling! I feel I sometimes think like this, and attempt to write like this. But if I have what's going on here – a colon-ed off clause after a semi-colon-ed off clause, all ensconced between two en-dashes – I think I would seriously reconsider rewriting that sentence; or, at the least, take one of those punctuation marks out: my vote is the semi-colon. Nope, that still wasn't a good use of the colon dammit!
Humanity's great strides in knowledge have been achieved at the price of losing a conspectus, a sense of place in time and meanings, a sense of human focus amid the nonhuman and sometimes inhuman immensity of things.
Another aim, seemingly, was to use his "Twelve Problems" of knowledge acquisition that he introduced in the beginning of the book, such as The Pinhole Problem, where our area of acccess and inquiry into the nature of reality, space and time, is but a tiny pinhole in the whole universe, so how can we get an accurate picture of the universe?, or The Hammer Problem, "summed up pithily as 'If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.'" But at the end of each of the three parts on the three areas of knowledge, Grayling only has a few words in passing to say how that particular field of knowledge is or was beset by one of those epistemological problems. And he certainly doesn't go anywhere near expounding on how any of these problems can be overcome in knowledge endeavors. Which is a shame, really, given how the Introduction of the book seemed to focus on those twelve problems... Being a philosopher, I had expected he would traverse some Duhem-Quinean, Kuhnian, or Polanyian terrain, but he doesn't. Ah well.
Still, it's an impressive book, mainly for the fact that one man can research three rarely overlapping knowledge domains and come off as sounding very well read and knowledgeable in each of them.
And in terms of readability, it's mostly that. But he does have long intricate sentences that make wild use of en-dashes, colons and semicolons - sometimes all three in one sentence; a feat that I don't think I have a clear grasp of as I: a simpleton, am demonstrating now. (OK, that colon was very misplaced.) But here's a nice example:
If humanity can survive these first steps - there are no guarantees it will; we are still bedevilled by too much primitivism in our thinking and feeling: we still go to war, quarrel among ourselves, believe nonsense, waste our short lives on trivialities - the way the world, time, and mind will seem to others further along in humanity's story are inconceivable to us now.
Damn, Grayling! I feel I sometimes think like this, and attempt to write like this. But if I have what's going on here – a colon-ed off clause after a semi-colon-ed off clause, all ensconced between two en-dashes – I think I would seriously reconsider rewriting that sentence; or, at the least, take one of those punctuation marks out: my vote is the semi-colon. Nope, that still wasn't a good use of the colon dammit!
June 28, 2023
Wonderful book, seeks to give an up-to-date survey of the discoveries and basics of three main fields:- Physics, History and Neuroscience. Each chapter is a treasure-trove of new ideas and conceptions. The focus on the 'Frontiers of Knowledge' highlights Grayling's concern with the epistemological basis of these fields, and what these may tell us about scientific enquiry in general.
The author identifies 12 main epistemological concerns (p. 7):
1. The Pinhole problem (how can we extrapolate from our finite local point of view to propose grand theories of the universe? Can we ever move beyond this pinhole?)
2. The Metaphor problem (What do the metaphors we employ to discuss theories tell us and are they valid?)
3. The Map problem (what is the relation between theories and reality?)
4. The Criteria problem (Are extra-theoretical criteria like beauty and simplicity valid?)
5. The Truth problem (is truth pragmatic or correspondent to reality?)
6. The Ptolemy problem (Is pragmatic adequacy enough for a theory?)
7. The Hammer problem (Do we only see what our equipment can show us and does this imply a lack?)
8. The Lamplight problem (We only see what is accessible to enquiry but this is not of course the totality of what there is)
9. The Meddler problem (Does our observation of phenomena impact the phenomena themselves?)
10. The Reading-in problem (In history, for instance, we often interpret data as per our local assumptions. Is it possible or desirable to avoid this?)
11. The Parmenides problem (Most theories seek to reduce everything to a single explanatory principle. However is this principle of simplicity itself valid?)
12. The Closure problem (The human impulse to tidy up and fix a narrative is very deep. However, does everything conform to our narratives of it?)
A short outline of what the chapters discuss follows:
PART I: Science:
Chapter 1: The development of technology from our hominid past to printing and the microscope.
Chapter 2: The development of science from ancient religious attempts to reduce the plurality of the world of experience to a few causal factors to Maxwell, Planck and Thomson's discoveries in Physics. Galileo, Bacon, Newtown etc. are discussed.
Chapter 3: The scientific picture of the world from the Pre-Socratics to Quantum Theory, General Relativity, Cosmology, String Theory.
Chapter 4: Analyzes the basic epistemological problems of the Scientific Worldview and whether it is possible to progress beyond the pinhole.
PART II: History:
Chapter 1: Ancient History- Sumer, Egypt, Proto Indo-European etc.
Chapter 2: The evolution of humanity from our hominid ancestors.
Chapter 3: Historiography: How should we discuss history and write the past, since the writing of history is always politically oriented?
Chapter 4: How should we interpret historical and archaeological data and is reading-in an issue or inevitable and should be acknowledged?
PART III: The Brain and the Mind:
Chapter 1: A general history of medicine, the roots of neuroscience (how MRIs work)
Chapter 2: Neuroscience: How the Brain works
Chapter 3: The relation between the brain and consciousness
Chapter 4: Is the Self an illusion, the relation between mind and brain.
Lots of fascinating ideas!
Follow-up:
Is the Mind something that emerges in the interaction between the brain and its environment? Additionally, there was a fascinating section on whether visual perception is not solely retina-based! There are multiple visual pathways (p.292) leading to conditions like blindsight and Anton-Babinski syndrome. The sections on physics also successfully explored the disputes within the field.
The author identifies 12 main epistemological concerns (p. 7):
1. The Pinhole problem (how can we extrapolate from our finite local point of view to propose grand theories of the universe? Can we ever move beyond this pinhole?)
2. The Metaphor problem (What do the metaphors we employ to discuss theories tell us and are they valid?)
3. The Map problem (what is the relation between theories and reality?)
4. The Criteria problem (Are extra-theoretical criteria like beauty and simplicity valid?)
5. The Truth problem (is truth pragmatic or correspondent to reality?)
6. The Ptolemy problem (Is pragmatic adequacy enough for a theory?)
7. The Hammer problem (Do we only see what our equipment can show us and does this imply a lack?)
8. The Lamplight problem (We only see what is accessible to enquiry but this is not of course the totality of what there is)
9. The Meddler problem (Does our observation of phenomena impact the phenomena themselves?)
10. The Reading-in problem (In history, for instance, we often interpret data as per our local assumptions. Is it possible or desirable to avoid this?)
11. The Parmenides problem (Most theories seek to reduce everything to a single explanatory principle. However is this principle of simplicity itself valid?)
12. The Closure problem (The human impulse to tidy up and fix a narrative is very deep. However, does everything conform to our narratives of it?)
A short outline of what the chapters discuss follows:
PART I: Science:
Chapter 1: The development of technology from our hominid past to printing and the microscope.
Chapter 2: The development of science from ancient religious attempts to reduce the plurality of the world of experience to a few causal factors to Maxwell, Planck and Thomson's discoveries in Physics. Galileo, Bacon, Newtown etc. are discussed.
Chapter 3: The scientific picture of the world from the Pre-Socratics to Quantum Theory, General Relativity, Cosmology, String Theory.
Chapter 4: Analyzes the basic epistemological problems of the Scientific Worldview and whether it is possible to progress beyond the pinhole.
PART II: History:
Chapter 1: Ancient History- Sumer, Egypt, Proto Indo-European etc.
Chapter 2: The evolution of humanity from our hominid ancestors.
Chapter 3: Historiography: How should we discuss history and write the past, since the writing of history is always politically oriented?
Chapter 4: How should we interpret historical and archaeological data and is reading-in an issue or inevitable and should be acknowledged?
PART III: The Brain and the Mind:
Chapter 1: A general history of medicine, the roots of neuroscience (how MRIs work)
Chapter 2: Neuroscience: How the Brain works
Chapter 3: The relation between the brain and consciousness
Chapter 4: Is the Self an illusion, the relation between mind and brain.
Lots of fascinating ideas!
Follow-up:
Is the Mind something that emerges in the interaction between the brain and its environment? Additionally, there was a fascinating section on whether visual perception is not solely retina-based! There are multiple visual pathways (p.292) leading to conditions like blindsight and Anton-Babinski syndrome. The sections on physics also successfully explored the disputes within the field.
November 9, 2023
The Frontiers of Knowledge - What We Now Know about Science, History and the Mind
by
A.C. Grayling
What do we, as a species, collectively know? A tricky question, because we first need to define what knowledge is, which Grayling defines as what is true and accepted on indubitable grounds. On indubitable ground, meaning that there is no possibility that we are wrong. But in all honesty, there are only beliefs that are highly credible and well-supported, which we may informally call knowledge. This allows for the possibility of being wrong. The fact that we could be wrong, means we accept defeasibility, which is a, if not the cornerstone of the scientific method.
This “scientific” method is how we acquire knowledge: by setting up hypotheses, testing them through carefully thought out experiments and publishing the results with the methods so that they can be independently verified and corrected, if necessary. And usually this is how any field advances their frontier.
In “The Frontiers of Knowledge” Grayling examines three areas of research that have experienced and are continuing to experience rapid and monumental progress, often dispelling old hypotheses and replacing them with new insights. The three fields, as mentioned in the subtitle of the book are physics, with a focus on astrophysics and cosmology, the human history of how we ended up in the present, including but not limited to archeological findings that have really molded our current understanding of our past, and finally the field(s) of research on the brain and mind (often simply referred to as neuroscience as a collective).
Though by no means comprehensive, which was never the author’s intent, the book serves as an excellent overview of not only the still unanswered questions and how we got to the understanding we have today, but also looks forwards into the future and hints at moral dilemmas caused by new knowledge, implications of new technologies for law and societies and other possible, perhaps improbable, changes to our lives.
Certainly will be a worthy addition to your ever growing to-be-read book.
by
A.C. Grayling
What do we, as a species, collectively know? A tricky question, because we first need to define what knowledge is, which Grayling defines as what is true and accepted on indubitable grounds. On indubitable ground, meaning that there is no possibility that we are wrong. But in all honesty, there are only beliefs that are highly credible and well-supported, which we may informally call knowledge. This allows for the possibility of being wrong. The fact that we could be wrong, means we accept defeasibility, which is a, if not the cornerstone of the scientific method.
This “scientific” method is how we acquire knowledge: by setting up hypotheses, testing them through carefully thought out experiments and publishing the results with the methods so that they can be independently verified and corrected, if necessary. And usually this is how any field advances their frontier.
In “The Frontiers of Knowledge” Grayling examines three areas of research that have experienced and are continuing to experience rapid and monumental progress, often dispelling old hypotheses and replacing them with new insights. The three fields, as mentioned in the subtitle of the book are physics, with a focus on astrophysics and cosmology, the human history of how we ended up in the present, including but not limited to archeological findings that have really molded our current understanding of our past, and finally the field(s) of research on the brain and mind (often simply referred to as neuroscience as a collective).
Though by no means comprehensive, which was never the author’s intent, the book serves as an excellent overview of not only the still unanswered questions and how we got to the understanding we have today, but also looks forwards into the future and hints at moral dilemmas caused by new knowledge, implications of new technologies for law and societies and other possible, perhaps improbable, changes to our lives.
Certainly will be a worthy addition to your ever growing to-be-read book.
September 7, 2021
This is a succinct summary of the state of the art of the art of knowledge in three specific areas: fundamental physic;, human history and pre-history; and neuroscience and the brain. If these area fascinate you, and they should, then I think you'll enjoy this, even if you're very familiar with them.
Grayling lays out of schema of several familiar epistemic problems we have to grapple with as with strive to achieve "knowledge" in these areas: the "pinhole problem", the "when all you have is a hammer" problem etc, and discusses how they impact our understanding of these fields.
As well as surveying the boundaries of knowledge in these areas, he spends a lot of time, as you would expect, on the philosophical implications and considerations relevant to the topic. Some of this is confronting, particularly as it concerns the many shameful (to put it mildly) aspects of human history.
It's not a long book, but it one of those intellectually rich meals that leaves you feeling pretty satisfied.
Grayling lays out of schema of several familiar epistemic problems we have to grapple with as with strive to achieve "knowledge" in these areas: the "pinhole problem", the "when all you have is a hammer" problem etc, and discusses how they impact our understanding of these fields.
As well as surveying the boundaries of knowledge in these areas, he spends a lot of time, as you would expect, on the philosophical implications and considerations relevant to the topic. Some of this is confronting, particularly as it concerns the many shameful (to put it mildly) aspects of human history.
It's not a long book, but it one of those intellectually rich meals that leaves you feeling pretty satisfied.
January 5, 2022
We know less than we think we do. In this ambitious and detailed look at the current state of human enquiry, Grayling explores the evolving research into history, science, and the human mind. In explaining what we know and what we don’t, Grayling begins by making distinctions between knowledge, belief, and opinion. We espouse each based on evidence and it is in the area of interpreting the evidence for all things where he has produced an unequalled body of work. He starts with science, or more correctly, technology, taking the reader back to examine the first stone tools. The book concludes by analysing neuroscience, consciousness and the cognitive brain. It can be heavy going at times, but The Frontiers of Knowledge is a landmark study of humanity at the dawn of the most challenging century of our brief time on this planet.
December 29, 2021
An interesting book providing an excellent overview of where we stand with our knowledge of science (focused primarily on physics and cosmology), history (focused on prehistory and evolution) and the mind and brain. After covering the current state of knowledge, Grayling reviews the philosophical issues around those. Worth pointing out is that the author covers complex topics such as advanced physics (relativity, quantum mechanics, etc..) in a clear understandable way accessible to non specialists
December 31, 2023
AC Grayling's work offers a fantastic insight into the paradox of knowledge and serves as a brilliantly research and written antidote to the at-times prevailing idea that we have reached the pinnacle of human knowledge. The work offers a great insight into where we currently are across the physical sciences, history and the mind/brain, offering a fascinating look into the progression of thinking but also the foundational issues of epistemology. Definitely one to be read multiple times and applied to all thinking.
January 3, 2023
What a tour de force. AC Grayling does a staggering job of summarising and interpreting the state of understanding of science, history and the mind. My only criticism if his work is that the section on the mind does not consider mental disease, and barely mentions the value that evolutionary psychology can bring. However, strongly recommended.
September 14, 2024
Um bom livro, mas demasiado científico para o meu cérebro de humanidades. O tldr é o paradoxo do conhecimento (percebi as últimas descobertas na física, arqueologia e neurociência, mas cheguei ao final sem qualquer vontade de ler mais sobre o assunto, porque - para mim - essas áreas são profundamente aborrecidas, por mais que quisesse o oposto quando decidi comprar o livro).
June 3, 2022
Grayling outlines very clearly where thinking has reached in physics, history and pyschology. Both the linking of these three disciplines in a single volume and his interesting insights make going over familar territory worthwhile.
May 16, 2023
Upon finishing the book I immediately want to read it again to better process its content. Fantastic from beginning to end. Fascinating and informative. It also adds a good half-dozen other books to my reading list with the topics it touches upon.
Recommend wholeheartedly.
Recommend wholeheartedly.
September 21, 2021
Six stars. Will return with a full review once my brain has cooled down below boiling point.
January 29, 2022
Only made it 100 pages, is an interesting read but astoundingly boring
March 13, 2022
There were some bores in here, but that is more likely to be a reflection of my interests rather than any wrongdoing on Grayling's part. In any case, it was, overall, a very stimulating read.
March 23, 2022
Good Idea but pedantic and sometimes repetitive...
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