Is the Future Unknowable? Uncertainty, Free Will, and the Limits of Science

But it's the idea of progress that we have that's new. And I think we take that for granted in many ways. We think progress has always been People have always recognized progress. That's not true. The Greeks had no single word for progress. The Athenian Greeks, who we look to as you know the fountains of the civilization and all that, they actually had no word in their language for progress. They had the concept to some extent, but considered it negative. When you should follow the science and when you should not, which science you should follow. I hate that s follow the science thing. It's not a religion. And I don't know which science you mean. Natural science, social science, political science. I don't know. Wha what do you want me to follow? You know I point out of the book. That I think many people don't know that I didn't know it. I came across it that the word optimism didn't even exist until seventeen fifty nine, when it was invented. Honestly invented by Voltaire for his novel Candide or Optimism. So we didn't even have a word for it. We had an idea that the Latin existed optimus or optimum, but that only referred to the best case. of uh situation or a thing, the best version of something, not an outlook on life. So I think that's the two main differences that I would see, and I think they're both the result of the scientific revolution

Oh right, hey everybody, it's Michael Shermer. It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer Show. My guest today is Doctor Stewart. Fierstein, he's a professor of neuroscience and at Columbia University and a member of the Santa Fe Institute, yes, the famous Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, where all the great uh complexity theory and chaos theory people work. Uh I love that place. He's published over a hundred scientific papers and journals such as Nature. Science, cell, and neuron. He's a Guggenheim fellow, a member of the advisory committee for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. And an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He's also the author of books. Ignorance failure. And he lives in New York City and he has a new book out. It's called It Could Be Otherwise. There it is. Science in the Age of Uncertainty. It could be otherwise. Stuart, nice to see you. Thanks for coming on the show to talk to me. Thank you so much. Well I tell you when your your publisher sent me this book, I'm like oh my god, I have to have the I have to read this book because I was just about finishing up a a manuscript for my next book called Contingency. Um let's see, what's the subtitle?

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